the return of the native by thomas hardy contents author's preface book first: the three women i. a face on which time makes but little impression ii. humanity appears upon the scene, hand in hand with trouble iii. the custom of the country iv. the halt on the turnpike road v. perplexity among honest people vi. the figure against the sky vii. queen of night viii. those who are found where there is said to be nobody ix. love leads a shrewd man into strategy x. a desperate attempt at persuasion xi. the dishonesty of an honest woman book second: the arrival i. tidings of the comer ii. the people at blooms-end make ready iii. how a little sound produced a great dream iv. eustacia is led on to an adventure v. through the moonlight vi. the two stand face to face vii. a coalition between beauty and oddness viii. firmness is discovered in a gentle heart book third: the fascination i. "my mind to me a kingdom is" ii. the new course causes disappointment iii. the first act in a timeworn drama iv. an hour of bliss and many hours of sadness v. sharp words are spoken, and a crisis ensues vi. yeobright goes, and the breach is complete vii. the morning and the evening of a day viii. a new force disturbs the current book fourth: the closed door i. the rencounter by the pool ii. he is set upon by adversities; but he sings a song iii. she goes out to battle against depression iv. rough coercion is employed v. the journey across the heath vi. a conjuncture, and its result upon the pedestrian vii. the tragic meeting of two old friends viii. eustacia hears of good fortune, and beholds evil book fifth: the discovery i. "wherefore is light given to him that is in misery" ii. a lurid light breaks in upon a darkened understanding iii. eustacia dresses herself on a black morning iv. the ministrations of a half-forgotten one v. an old move inadvertently repeated vi. thomasin argues with her cousin, and he writes a letter vii. the night of the sixth of november viii. rain, darkness, and anxious wanderers ix. sights and sounds draw the wanderers together book sixth: aftercourses i. the inevitable movement onward ii. thomasin walks in a green place by the roman road iii. the serious discourse of clym with his cousin iv. cheerfulness again asserts itself at blooms-end, and clym finds his vocation "to sorrow i bade good morrow, and thought to leave her far away behind; but cheerly, cheerly, she loves me dearly; she is so constant to me, and so kind. i would deceive her, and so leave her, but ah! she is so constant and so kind." author's preface the date at which the following events are assumed to have occurred may be set down as between and , when the old watering-place herein called "budmouth" still retained sufficient afterglow from its georgian gaiety and prestige to lend it an absorbing attractiveness to the romantic and imaginative soul of a lonely dweller inland. under the general name of "egdon heath," which has been given to the sombre scene of the story, are united or typified heaths of various real names, to the number of at least a dozen; these being virtually one in character and aspect, though their original unity, or partial unity, is now somewhat disguised by intrusive strips and slices brought under the plough with varying degrees of success, or planted to woodland. it is pleasant to dream that some spot in the extensive tract whose south-western quarter is here described, may be the heath of that traditionary king of wessex--lear. july postscript to prevent disappointment to searchers for scenery it should be added that though the action of the narrative is supposed to proceed in the central and most secluded part of the heaths united into one whole, as above described, certain topographical features resembling those delineated really lie on the margin of the waste, several miles to the westward of the centre. in some other respects also there has been a bringing together of scattered characteristics. the first edition of this novel was published in three volumes in . april t. h. book first the three women i a face on which time makes but little impression a saturday afternoon in november was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as egdon heath embrowned itself moment by moment. overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor. the heaven being spread with this pallid screen and the earth with the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was clearly marked. in such contrast the heath wore the appearance of an instalment of night which had taken up its place before its astronomical hour was come: darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day stood distinct in the sky. looking upwards, a furze-cutter would have been inclined to continue work; looking down, he would have decided to finish his faggot and go home. the distant rims of the world and of the firmament seemed to be a division in time no less than a division in matter. the face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking and dread. in fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the egdon waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at such a time. it could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen, its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours before the next dawn; then, and only then, did it tell its true tale. the spot was, indeed, a near relation of night, and when night showed itself an apparent tendency to gravitate together could be perceived in its shades and the scene. the sombre stretch of rounds and hollows seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as rapidly as the heavens precipitated it. and so the obscurity in the air and the obscurity in the land closed together in a black fraternization towards which each advanced half-way. the place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. every night its titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one last crisis--the final overthrow. it was a spot which returned upon the memory of those who loved it with an aspect of peculiar and kindly congruity. smiling champaigns of flowers and fruit hardly do this, for they are permanently harmonious only with an existence of better reputation as to its issues than the present. twilight combined with the scenery of egdon heath to evolve a thing majestic without severity, impressive without showiness, emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity. the qualifications which frequently invest the façade of a prison with far more dignity than is found in the façade of a palace double its size lent to this heath a sublimity in which spots renowned for beauty of the accepted kind are utterly wanting. fair prospects wed happily with fair times; but alas, if times be not fair! men have oftener suffered from the mockery of a place too smiling for their reason than from the oppression of surroundings oversadly tinged. haggard egdon appealed to a subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more recently learnt emotion, than that which responds to the sort of beauty called charming and fair. indeed, it is a question if the exclusive reign of this orthodox beauty is not approaching its last quarter. the new vale of tempe may be a gaunt waste in thule; human souls may find themselves in closer and closer harmony with external things wearing a sombreness distasteful to our race when it was young. the time seems near, if it has not actually arrived, when the chastened sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain will be all of nature that is absolutely in keeping with the moods of the more thinking among mankind. and ultimately, to the commonest tourist, spots like iceland may become what the vineyards and myrtle-gardens of south europe are to him now; and heidelberg and baden be passed unheeded as he hastens from the alps to the sand-dunes of scheveningen. the most thorough-going ascetic could feel that he had a natural right to wander on egdon: he was keeping within the line of legitimate indulgence when he laid himself open to influences such as these. colours and beauties so far subdued were, at least, the birthright of all. only in summer days of highest feather did its mood touch the level of gaiety. intensity was more usually reached by way of the solemn than by way of the brilliant, and such a sort of intensity was often arrived at during winter darkness, tempests, and mists. then egdon was aroused to reciprocity; for the storm was its lover, and the wind its friend. then it became the home of strange phantoms; and it was found to be the hitherto unrecognized original of those wild regions of obscurity which are vaguely felt to be compassing us about in midnight dreams of flight and disaster, and are never thought of after the dream till revived by scenes like this. it was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature--neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. as with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. it had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities. this obscure, obsolete, superseded country figures in domesday. its condition is recorded therein as that of heathy, furzy, briary wilderness--"bruaria." then follows the length and breadth in leagues; and, though some uncertainty exists as to the exact extent of this ancient lineal measure, it appears from the figures that the area of egdon down to the present day has but little diminished. "turbaria bruaria"--the right of cutting heath-turf--occurs in charters relating to the district. "overgrown with heth and mosse," says leland of the same dark sweep of country. here at least were intelligible facts regarding landscape--far-reaching proofs productive of genuine satisfaction. the untameable, ishmaelitish thing that egdon now was it always had been. civilization was its enemy; and ever since the beginning of vegetation its soil had worn the same antique brown dress, the natural and invariable garment of the particular formation. in its venerable one coat lay a certain vein of satire on human vanity in clothes. a person on a heath in raiment of modern cut and colours has more or less an anomalous look. we seem to want the oldest and simplest human clothing where the clothing of the earth is so primitive. to recline on a stump of thorn in the central valley of egdon, between afternoon and night, as now, where the eye could reach nothing of the world outside the summits and shoulders of heathland which filled the whole circumference of its glance, and to know that everything around and underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as the stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, and harassed by the irrepressible new. the great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. who can say of a particular sea that it is old? distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. the sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet egdon remained. those surfaces were neither so steep as to be destructible by weather, nor so flat as to be the victims of floods and deposits. with the exception of an aged highway, and a still more aged barrow presently to be referred to--themselves almost crystallized to natural products by long continuance--even the trifling irregularities were not caused by pickaxe, plough, or spade, but remained as the very finger-touches of the last geological change. the above-mentioned highway traversed the lower levels of the heath, from one horizon to another. in many portions of its course it overlaid an old vicinal way, which branched from the great western road of the romans, the via iceniana, or ikenild street, hard by. on the evening under consideration it would have been noticed that, though the gloom had increased sufficiently to confuse the minor features of the heath, the white surface of the road remained almost as clear as ever. ii humanity appears upon the scene, hand in hand with trouble along the road walked an old man. he was white-headed as a mountain, bowed in the shoulders, and faded in general aspect. he wore a glazed hat, an ancient boat-cloak, and shoes; his brass buttons bearing an anchor upon their face. in his hand was a silver-headed walking-stick, which he used as a veritable third leg, perseveringly dotting the ground with its point at every few inches' interval. one would have said that he had been, in his day, a naval officer of some sort or other. before him stretched the long, laborious road, dry, empty, and white. it was quite open to the heath on each side, and bisected that vast dark surface like the parting-line on a head of black hair, diminishing and bending away on the furthest horizon. the old man frequently stretched his eyes ahead to gaze over the tract that he had yet to traverse. at length he discerned, a long distance in front of him, a moving spot, which appeared to be a vehicle, and it proved to be going the same way as that in which he himself was journeying. it was the single atom of life that the scene contained, and it only served to render the general loneliness more evident. its rate of advance was slow, and the old man gained upon it sensibly. when he drew nearer he perceived it to be a spring van, ordinary in shape, but singular in colour, this being a lurid red. the driver walked beside it; and, like his van, he was completely red. one dye of that tincture covered his clothes, the cap upon his head, his boots, his face, and his hands. he was not temporarily overlaid with the colour; it permeated him. the old man knew the meaning of this. the traveller with the cart was a reddleman--a person whose vocation it was to supply farmers with redding for their sheep. he was one of a class rapidly becoming extinct in wessex, filling at present in the rural world the place which, during the last century, the dodo occupied in the world of animals. he is a curious, interesting, and nearly perished link between obsolete forms of life and those which generally prevail. the decayed officer, by degrees, came up alongside his fellow-wayfarer, and wished him good evening. the reddleman turned his head, and replied in sad and occupied tones. he was young, and his face, if not exactly handsome, approached so near to handsome that nobody would have contradicted an assertion that it really was so in its natural colour. his eye, which glared so strangely through his stain, was in itself attractive--keen as that of a bird of prey, and blue as autumn mist. he had neither whisker nor moustache, which allowed the soft curves of the lower part of his face to be apparent. his lips were thin, and though, as it seemed, compressed by thought, there was a pleasant twitch at their corners now and then. he was clothed throughout in a tight-fitting suit of corduroy, excellent in quality, not much worn, and well-chosen for its purpose, but deprived of its original colour by his trade. it showed to advantage the good shape of his figure. a certain well-to-do air about the man suggested that he was not poor for his degree. the natural query of an observer would have been, why should such a promising being as this have hidden his prepossessing exterior by adopting that singular occupation? after replying to the old man's greeting he showed no inclination to continue in talk, although they still walked side by side, for the elder traveller seemed to desire company. there were no sounds but that of the booming wind upon the stretch of tawny herbage around them, the crackling wheels, the tread of the men, and the footsteps of the two shaggy ponies which drew the van. they were small, hardy animals, of a breed between galloway and exmoor, and were known as "heath-croppers" here. now, as they thus pursued their way, the reddleman occasionally left his companion's side, and, stepping behind the van, looked into its interior through a small window. the look was always anxious. he would then return to the old man, who made another remark about the state of the country and so on, to which the reddleman again abstractedly replied, and then again they would lapse into silence. the silence conveyed to neither any sense of awkwardness; in these lonely places wayfarers, after a first greeting, frequently plod on for miles without speech; contiguity amounts to a tacit conversation where, otherwise than in cities, such contiguity can be put an end to on the merest inclination, and where not to put an end to it is intercourse in itself. possibly these two might not have spoken again till their parting, had it not been for the reddleman's visits to his van. when he returned from his fifth time of looking in the old man said, "you have something inside there besides your load?" "yes." "somebody who wants looking after?" "yes." not long after this a faint cry sounded from the interior. the reddleman hastened to the back, looked in, and came away again. "you have a child there, my man?" "no, sir, i have a woman." "the deuce you have! why did she cry out?" "oh, she has fallen asleep, and not being used to traveling, she's uneasy, and keeps dreaming." "a young woman?" "yes, a young woman." "that would have interested me forty years ago. perhaps she's your wife?" "my wife!" said the other bitterly. "she's above mating with such as i. but there's no reason why i should tell you about that." "that's true. and there's no reason why you should not. what harm can i do to you or to her?" the reddleman looked in the old man's face. "well, sir," he said at last, "i knew her before today, though perhaps it would have been better if i had not. but she's nothing to me, and i am nothing to her; and she wouldn't have been in my van if any better carriage had been there to take her." "where, may i ask?" "at anglebury." "i know the town well. what was she doing there?" "oh, not much--to gossip about. however, she's tired to death now, and not at all well, and that's what makes her so restless. she dropped off into a nap about an hour ago, and 'twill do her good." "a nice-looking girl, no doubt?" "you would say so." the other traveller turned his eyes with interest towards the van window, and, without withdrawing them, said, "i presume i might look in upon her?" "no," said the reddleman abruptly. "it is getting too dark for you to see much of her; and, more than that, i have no right to allow you. thank god she sleeps so well: i hope she won't wake till she's home." "who is she? one of the neighbourhood?" "'tis no matter who, excuse me." "it is not that girl of blooms-end, who has been talked about more or less lately? if so, i know her; and i can guess what has happened." "'tis no matter... now, sir, i am sorry to say that we shall soon have to part company. my ponies are tired, and i have further to go, and i am going to rest them under this bank for an hour." the elder traveller nodded his head indifferently, and the reddleman turned his horses and van in upon the turf, saying, "good night." the old man replied, and proceeded on his way as before. the reddleman watched his form as it diminished to a speck on the road and became absorbed in the thickening films of night. he then took some hay from a truss which was slung up under the van, and, throwing a portion of it in front of the horses, made a pad of the rest, which he laid on the ground beside his vehicle. upon this he sat down, leaning his back against the wheel. from the interior a low soft breathing came to his ear. it appeared to satisfy him, and he musingly surveyed the scene, as if considering the next step that he should take. to do things musingly, and by small degrees, seemed, indeed, to be a duty in the egdon valleys at this transitional hour, for there was that in the condition of the heath itself which resembled protracted and halting dubiousness. it was the quality of the repose appertaining to the scene. this was not the repose of actual stagnation, but the apparent repose of incredible slowness. a condition of healthy life so nearly resembling the torpor of death is a noticeable thing of its sort; to exhibit the inertness of the desert, and at the same time to be exercising powers akin to those of the meadow, and even of the forest, awakened in those who thought of it the attentiveness usually engendered by understatement and reserve. the scene before the reddleman's eyes was a gradual series of ascents from the level of the road backward into the heart of the heath. it embraced hillocks, pits, ridges, acclivities, one behind the other, till all was finished by a high hill cutting against the still light sky. the traveller's eye hovered about these things for a time, and finally settled upon one noteworthy object up there. it was a barrow. this bossy projection of earth above its natural level occupied the loftiest ground of the loneliest height that the heath contained. although from the vale it appeared but as a wart on an atlantean brow, its actual bulk was great. it formed the pole and axis of this heathery world. as the resting man looked at the barrow he became aware that its summit, hitherto the highest object in the whole prospect round, was surmounted by something higher. it rose from the semi-globular mound like a spike from a helmet. the first instinct of an imaginative stranger might have been to suppose it the person of one of the celts who built the barrow, so far had all of modern date withdrawn from the scene. it seemed a sort of last man among them, musing for a moment before dropping into eternal night with the rest of his race. there the form stood, motionless as the hill beneath. above the plain rose the hill, above the hill rose the barrow, and above the barrow rose the figure. above the figure was nothing that could be mapped elsewhere than on a celestial globe. such a perfect, delicate, and necessary finish did the figure give to the dark pile of hills that it seemed to be the only obvious justification of their outline. without it, there was the dome without the lantern; with it the architectural demands of the mass were satisfied. the scene was strangely homogeneous, in that the vale, the upland, the barrow, and the figure above it amounted only to unity. looking at this or that member of the group was not observing a complete thing, but a fraction of a thing. the form was so much like an organic part of the entire motionless structure that to see it move would have impressed the mind as a strange phenomenon. immobility being the chief characteristic of that whole which the person formed portion of, the discontinuance of immobility in any quarter suggested confusion. yet that is what happened. the figure perceptibly gave up its fixity, shifted a step or two, and turned round. as if alarmed, it descended on the right side of the barrow, with the glide of a water-drop down a bud, and then vanished. the movement had been sufficient to show more clearly the characteristics of the figure, and that it was a woman's. the reason of her sudden displacement now appeared. with her dropping out of sight on the right side, a new-comer, bearing a burden, protruded into the sky on the left side, ascended the tumulus, and deposited the burden on the top. a second followed, then a third, a fourth, a fifth, and ultimately the whole barrow was peopled with burdened figures. the only intelligible meaning in this sky-backed pantomime of silhouettes was that the woman had no relation to the forms who had taken her place, was sedulously avoiding these, and had come thither for another object than theirs. the imagination of the observer clung by preference to that vanished, solitary figure, as to something more interesting, more important, more likely to have a history worth knowing than these new-comers, and unconsciously regarded them as intruders. but they remained, and established themselves; and the lonely person who hitherto had been queen of the solitude did not at present seem likely to return. iii the custom of the country had a looker-on been posted in the immediate vicinity of the barrow, he would have learned that these persons were boys and men of the neighbouring hamlets. each, as he ascended the barrow, had been heavily laden with furze-faggots, carried upon the shoulder by means of a long stake sharpened at each end for impaling them easily--two in front and two behind. they came from a part of the heath a quarter of a mile to the rear, where furze almost exclusively prevailed as a product. every individual was so involved in furze by his method of carrying the faggots that he appeared like a bush on legs till he had thrown them down. the party had marched in trail, like a travelling flock of sheep; that is to say, the strongest first, the weak and young behind. the loads were all laid together, and a pyramid of furze thirty feet in circumference now occupied the crown of the tumulus, which was known as rainbarrow for many miles round. some made themselves busy with matches, and in selecting the driest tufts of furze, others in loosening the bramble bonds which held the faggots together. others, again, while this was in progress, lifted their eyes and swept the vast expanse of country commanded by their position, now lying nearly obliterated by shade. in the valleys of the heath nothing save its own wild face was visible at any time of day; but this spot commanded a horizon enclosing a tract of far extent, and in many cases lying beyond the heath country. none of its features could be seen now, but the whole made itself felt as a vague stretch of remoteness. while the men and lads were building the pile, a change took place in the mass of shade which denoted the distant landscape. red suns and tufts of fire one by one began to arise, flecking the whole country round. they were the bonfires of other parishes and hamlets that were engaged in the same sort of commemoration. some were distant, and stood in a dense atmosphere, so that bundles of pale strawlike beams radiated around them in the shape of a fan. some were large and near, glowing scarlet-red from the shade, like wounds in a black hide. some were maenades, with winy faces and blown hair. these tinctured the silent bosom of the clouds above them and lit up their ephemeral caves, which seemed thenceforth to become scalding caldrons. perhaps as many as thirty bonfires could be counted within the whole bounds of the district; and as the hour may be told on a clock-face when the figures themselves are invisible, so did the men recognize the locality of each fire by its angle and direction, though nothing of the scenery could be viewed. the first tall flame from rainbarrow sprang into the sky, attracting all eyes that had been fixed on the distant conflagrations back to their own attempt in the same kind. the cheerful blaze streaked the inner surface of the human circle--now increased by other stragglers, male and female--with its own gold livery, and even overlaid the dark turf around with a lively luminousness, which softened off into obscurity where the barrow rounded downwards out of sight. it showed the barrow to be the segment of a globe, as perfect as on the day when it was thrown up, even the little ditch remaining from which the earth was dug. not a plough had ever disturbed a grain of that stubborn soil. in the heath's barrenness to the farmer lay its fertility to the historian. there had been no obliteration, because there had been no tending. it seemed as if the bonfire-makers were standing in some radiant upper story of the world, detached from and independent of the dark stretches below. the heath down there was now a vast abyss, and no longer a continuation of what they stood on; for their eyes, adapted to the blaze, could see nothing of the deeps beyond its influence. occasionally, it is true, a more vigorous flare than usual from their faggots sent darting lights like aides-de-camp down the inclines to some distant bush, pool, or patch of white sand, kindling these to replies of the same colour, till all was lost in darkness again. then the whole black phenomenon beneath represented limbo as viewed from the brink by the sublime florentine in his vision, and the muttered articulations of the wind in the hollows were as complaints and petitions from the "souls of mighty worth" suspended therein. it was as if these men and boys had suddenly dived into past ages, and fetched therefrom an hour and deed which had before been familiar with this spot. the ashes of the original british pyre which blazed from that summit lay fresh and undisturbed in the barrow beneath their tread. the flames from funeral piles long ago kindled there had shone down upon the lowlands as these were shining now. festival fires to thor and woden had followed on the same ground and duly had their day. indeed, it is pretty well known that such blazes as this the heathmen were now enjoying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled druidical rites and saxon ceremonies than the invention of popular feeling about gunpowder plot. moreover to light a fire is the instinctive and resistant act of man when, at the winter ingress, the curfew is sounded throughout nature. it indicates a spontaneous, promethean rebelliousness against that fiat that this recurrent season shall bring foul times, cold darkness, misery and death. black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, let there be light. the brilliant lights and sooty shades which struggled upon the skin and clothes of the persons standing round caused their lineaments and general contours to be drawn with dureresque vigour and dash. yet the permanent moral expression of each face it was impossible to discover, for as the nimble flames towered, nodded, and swooped through the surrounding air, the blots of shade and flakes of light upon the countenances of the group changed shape and position endlessly. all was unstable; quivering as leaves, evanescent as lightning. shadowy eye-sockets, deep as those of a death's head, suddenly turned into pits of lustre: a lantern-jaw was cavernous, then it was shining; wrinkles were emphasized to ravines, or obliterated entirely by a changed ray. nostrils were dark wells; sinews in old necks were gilt mouldings; things with no particular polish on them were glazed; bright objects, such as the tip of a furze-hook one of the men carried, were as glass; eyeballs glowed like little lanterns. those whom nature had depicted as merely quaint became grotesque, the grotesque became preternatural; for all was in extremity. hence it may be that the face of an old man, who had like others been called to the heights by the rising flames, was not really the mere nose and chin that it appeared to be, but an appreciable quantity of human countenance. he stood complacently sunning himself in the heat. with a speaker, or stake, he tossed the outlying scraps of fuel into the conflagration, looking at the midst of the pile, occasionally lifting his eyes to measure the height of the flame, or to follow the great sparks which rose with it and sailed away into darkness. the beaming sight, and the penetrating warmth, seemed to breed in him a cumulative cheerfulness, which soon amounted to delight. with his stick in his hand he began to jig a private minuet, a bunch of copper seals shining and swinging like a pendulum from under his waistcoat: he also began to sing, in the voice of a bee up a flue-- "the king´ call'd down´ his no-bles all´, by one´, by two´, by three´; earl mar´-shal, i'll´ go shrive´-the queen´, and thou´ shalt wend´ with me´. "a boon´, a boon´, quoth earl´ mar-shal´, and fell´ on his bend´-ded knee´, that what´-so-e'er´ the queen´ shall say´, no harm´ there-of´ may be´." want of breath prevented a continuance of the song; and the breakdown attracted the attention of a firm-standing man of middle age, who kept each corner of his crescent-shaped mouth rigorously drawn back into his cheek, as if to do away with any suspicion of mirthfulness which might erroneously have attached to him. "a fair stave, grandfer cantle; but i am afeard 'tis too much for the mouldy weasand of such a old man as you," he said to the wrinkled reveller. "dostn't wish th' wast three sixes again, grandfer, as you was when you first learnt to sing it?" "hey?" said grandfer cantle, stopping in his dance. "dostn't wish wast young again, i say? there's a hole in thy poor bellows nowadays seemingly." "but there's good art in me? if i couldn't make a little wind go a long ways i should seem no younger than the most aged man, should i, timothy?" "and how about the new-married folks down there at the quiet woman inn?" the other inquired, pointing towards a dim light in the direction of the distant highway, but considerably apart from where the reddleman was at that moment resting. "what's the rights of the matter about 'em? you ought to know, being an understanding man." "but a little rakish, hey? i own to it. master cantle is that, or he's nothing. yet 'tis a gay fault, neighbour fairway, that age will cure." "i heard that they were coming home to-night. by this time they must have come. what besides?" "the next thing is for us to go and wish 'em joy, i suppose?" "well, no." "no? now, i thought we must. _i_ must, or 'twould be very unlike me--the first in every spree that's going! "do thou´ put on´ a fri´-ar's coat´, and i'll´ put on´ a-no´-ther, and we´ will to´ queen ele´anor go´, like fri´ar and´ his bro´ther. "i met mis'ess yeobright, the young bride's aunt, last night, and she told me that her son clym was coming home a' christmas. wonderful clever, 'a believe--ah, i should like to have all that's under that young man's hair. well, then, i spoke to her in my well-known merry way, and she said, 'o that what's shaped so venerable should talk like a fool!'--that's what she said to me. i don't care for her, be jowned if i do, and so i told her. 'be jowned if i care for 'ee,' i said. i had her there--hey?" "i rather think she had you," said fairway. "no," said grandfer cantle, his countenance slightly flagging. "'tisn't so bad as that with me?" "seemingly 'tis; however, is it because of the wedding that clym is coming home a' christmas--to make a new arrangement because his mother is now left in the house alone?" "yes, yes--that's it. but, timothy, hearken to me," said the grandfer earnestly. "though known as such a joker, i be an understanding man if you catch me serious, and i am serious now. i can tell 'ee lots about the married couple. yes, this morning at six o'clock they went up the country to do the job, and neither vell nor mark have been seen of 'em since, though i reckon that this afternoon has brought 'em home again man and woman--wife, that is. isn't it spoke like a man, timothy, and wasn't mis'ess yeobright wrong about me?" "yes, it will do. i didn't know the two had walked together since last fall, when her aunt forbad the banns. how long has this new set-to been mangling then? do you know, humphrey?" "yes, how long?" said grandfer cantle smartly, likewise turning to humphrey. "i ask that question." "ever since her aunt altered her mind, and said she might have the man after all," replied humphrey, without removing his eyes from the fire. he was a somewhat solemn young fellow, and carried the hook and leather gloves of a furze-cutter, his legs, by reason of that occupation, being sheathed in bulging leggings as stiff as the philistine's greaves of brass. "that's why they went away to be married, i count. you see, after kicking up such a nunny-watch and forbidding the banns 'twould have made mis'ess yeobright seem foolish-like to have a banging wedding in the same parish all as if she'd never gainsaid it." "exactly--seem foolish-like; and that's very bad for the poor things that be so, though i only guess as much, to be sure," said grandfer cantle, still strenuously preserving a sensible bearing and mien. "ah, well, i was at church that day," said fairway, "which was a very curious thing to happen." "if 'twasn't my name's simple," said the grandfer emphatically. "i ha'n't been there to-year; and now the winter is a-coming on i won't say i shall." "i ha'n't been these three years," said humphrey; "for i'm so dead sleepy of a sunday; and 'tis so terrible far to get there; and when you do get there 'tis such a mortal poor chance that you'll be chose for up above, when so many bain't, that i bide at home and don't go at all." "i not only happened to be there," said fairway, with a fresh collection of emphasis, "but i was sitting in the same pew as mis'ess yeobright. and though you may not see it as such, it fairly made my blood run cold to hear her. yes, it is a curious thing; but it made my blood run cold, for i was close at her elbow." the speaker looked round upon the bystanders, now drawing closer to hear him, with his lips gathered tighter than ever in the rigorousness of his descriptive moderation. "'tis a serious job to have things happen to 'ee there," said a woman behind. "'ye are to declare it,' was the parson's words," fairway continued. "and then up stood a woman at my side--a-touching of me. 'well, be damned if there isn't mis'ess yeobright a-standing up,' i said to myself. yes, neighbours, though i was in the temple of prayer that's what i said. 'tis against my conscience to curse and swear in company, and i hope any woman here will overlook it. still what i did say i did say, and 'twould be a lie if i didn't own it." "so 'twould, neighbour fairway." "'be damned if there isn't mis'ess yeobright a-standing up,' i said," the narrator repeated, giving out the bad word with the same passionless severity of face as before, which proved how entirely necessity and not gusto had to do with the iteration. "and the next thing i heard was, 'i forbid the banns,' from her. 'i'll speak to you after the service,' said the parson, in quite a homely way--yes, turning all at once into a common man no holier than you or i. ah, her face was pale! maybe you can call to mind that monument in weatherbury church--the cross-legged soldier that have had his arm knocked away by the school-children? well, he would about have matched that woman's face, when she said, 'i forbid the banns.'" the audience cleared their throats and tossed a few stalks into the fire, not because these deeds were urgent, but to give themselves time to weigh the moral of the story. "i'm sure when i heard they'd been forbid i felt as glad as if anybody had gied me sixpence," said an earnest voice--that of olly dowden, a woman who lived by making heath brooms, or besoms. her nature was to be civil to enemies as well as to friends, and grateful to all the world for letting her remain alive. "and now the maid have married him just the same," said humphrey. "after that mis'ess yeobright came round and was quite agreeable," fairway resumed, with an unheeding air, to show that his words were no appendage to humphrey's, but the result of independent reflection. "supposing they were ashamed, i don't see why they shouldn't have done it here-right," said a wide-spread woman whose stays creaked like shoes whenever she stooped or turned. "'tis well to call the neighbours together and to hae a good racket once now and then; and it may as well be when there's a wedding as at tide-times. i don't care for close ways." "ah, now, you'd hardly believe it, but i don't care for gay weddings," said timothy fairway, his eyes again travelling round. "i hardly blame thomasin yeobright and neighbour wildeve for doing it quiet, if i must own it. a wedding at home means five and six-handed reels by the hour; and they do a man's legs no good when he's over forty." "true. once at the woman's house you can hardly say nay to being one in a jig, knowing all the time that you be expected to make yourself worth your victuals." "you be bound to dance at christmas because 'tis the time o' year; you must dance at weddings because 'tis the time o' life. at christenings folk will even smuggle in a reel or two, if 'tis no further on than the first or second chiel. and this is not naming the songs you've got to sing... for my part i like a good hearty funeral as well as anything. you've as splendid victuals and drink as at other parties, and even better. and it don't wear your legs to stumps in talking over a poor fellow's ways as it do to stand up in hornpipes." "nine folks out of ten would own 'twas going too far to dance then, i suppose?" suggested grandfer cantle. "'tis the only sort of party a staid man can feel safe at after the mug have been round a few times." "well, i can't understand a quiet lady-like little body like tamsin yeobright caring to be married in such a mean way," said susan nunsuch, the wide woman, who preferred the original subject. "'tis worse than the poorest do. and i shouldn't have cared about the man, though some may say he's good-looking." "to give him his due he's a clever, learned fellow in his way--a'most as clever as clym yeobright used to be. he was brought up to better things than keeping the quiet woman. an engineer--that's what the man was, as we know; but he threw away his chance, and so 'a took a public house to live. his learning was no use to him at all." "very often the case," said olly, the besom-maker. "and yet how people do strive after it and get it! the class of folk that couldn't use to make a round o to save their bones from the pit can write their names now without a sputter of the pen, oftentimes without a single blot: what do i say?--why, almost without a desk to lean their stomachs and elbows upon." "true: 'tis amazing what a polish the world have been brought to," said humphrey. "why, afore i went a soldier in the bang-up locals (as we was called), in the year four," chimed in grandfer cantle brightly, "i didn't know no more what the world was like than the commonest man among ye. and now, jown it all, i won't say what i bain't fit for, hey?" "couldst sign the book, no doubt," said fairway, "if wast young enough to join hands with a woman again, like wildeve and mis'ess tamsin, which is more than humph there could do, for he follows his father in learning. ah, humph, well i can mind when i was married how i zid thy father's mark staring me in the face as i went to put down my name. he and your mother were the couple married just afore we were and there stood they father's cross with arms stretched out like a great banging scarecrow. what a terrible black cross that was--thy father's very likeness in en! to save my soul i couldn't help laughing when i zid en, though all the time i was as hot as dog-days, what with the marrying, and what with the woman a-hanging to me, and what with jack changley and a lot more chaps grinning at me through church window. but the next moment a strawmote would have knocked me down, for i called to mind that if thy father and mother had had high words once, they'd been at it twenty times since they'd been man and wife, and i zid myself as the next poor stunpoll to get into the same mess... ah--well, what a day 'twas!" "wildeve is older than tamsin yeobright by a goodfew summers. a pretty maid too she is. a young woman with a home must be a fool to tear her smock for a man like that." the speaker, a peat or turf-cutter, who had newly joined the group, carried across his shoulder the singular heart-shaped spade of large dimensions used in that species of labour; and its well-whetted edge gleamed like a silver bow in the beams of the fire. "a hundred maidens would have had him if he'd asked 'em," said the wide woman. "didst ever know a man, neighbour, that no woman at all would marry?" inquired humphrey. "i never did," said the turf-cutter. "nor i," said another. "nor i," said grandfer cantle. "well, now, i did once," said timothy fairway, adding more firmness to one of his legs. "i did know of such a man. but only once, mind." he gave his throat a thorough rake round, as if it were the duty of every person not to be mistaken through thickness of voice. "yes, i knew of such a man," he said. "and what ghastly gallicrow might the poor fellow have been like, master fairway?" asked the turf-cutter. "well, 'a was neither a deaf man, nor a dumb man, nor a blind man. what 'a was i don't say." "is he known in these parts?" said olly dowden. "hardly," said timothy; "but i name no name... come, keep the fire up there, youngsters." "whatever is christian cantle's teeth a-chattering for?" said a boy from amid the smoke and shades on the other side of the blaze. "be ye a-cold, christian?" a thin jibbering voice was heard to reply, "no, not at all." "come forward, christian, and show yourself. i didn't know you were here," said fairway, with a humane look across towards that quarter. thus requested, a faltering man, with reedy hair, no shoulders, and a great quantity of wrist and ankle beyond his clothes, advanced a step or two by his own will, and was pushed by the will of others half a dozen steps more. he was grandfer cantle's youngest son. "what be ye quaking for, christian?" said the turf-cutter kindly. "i'm the man." "what man?" "the man no woman will marry." "the deuce you be!" said timothy fairway, enlarging his gaze to cover christian's whole surface and a great deal more; grandfer cantle meanwhile staring as a hen stares at the duck she has hatched. "yes, i be he; and it makes me afeard," said christian. "d'ye think 'twill hurt me? i shall always say i don't care, and swear to it, though i do care all the while." "well, be damned if this isn't the queerest start ever i know'd," said mr. fairway. "i didn't mean you at all. there's another in the country, then! why did ye reveal yer misfortune, christian?" "'twas to be if 'twas, i suppose. i can't help it, can i?" he turned upon them his painfully circular eyes, surrounded by concentric lines like targets. "no, that's true. but 'tis a melancholy thing, and my blood ran cold when you spoke, for i felt there were two poor fellows where i had thought only one. 'tis a sad thing for ye, christian. how'st know the women won't hae thee?" "i've asked 'em." "sure i should never have thought you had the face. well, and what did the last one say to ye? nothing that can't be got over, perhaps, after all?" "'get out of my sight, you slack-twisted, slim-looking maphrotight fool,' was the woman's words to me." "not encouraging, i own," said fairway. "'get out of my sight, you slack-twisted, slim-looking maphrotight fool,' is rather a hard way of saying no. but even that might be overcome by time and patience, so as to let a few grey hairs show themselves in the hussy's head. how old be you, christian?" "thirty-one last tatie-digging, mister fairway." "not a boy--not a boy. still there's hope yet." "that's my age by baptism, because that's put down in the great book of the judgment that they keep in church vestry; but mother told me i was born some time afore i was christened." "ah!" "but she couldn't tell when, to save her life, except that there was no moon." "no moon: that's bad. hey, neighbours, that's bad for him!" "yes, 'tis bad," said grandfer cantle, shaking his head. "mother know'd 'twas no moon, for she asked another woman that had an almanac, as she did whenever a boy was born to her, because of the saying, 'no moon, no man,' which made her afeard every man-child she had. do ye really think it serious, mister fairway, that there was no moon?" "yes; 'no moon, no man.' 'tis one of the truest sayings ever spit out. the boy never comes to anything that's born at new moon. a bad job for thee, christian, that you should have showed your nose then of all days in the month." "i suppose the moon was terrible full when you were born?" said christian, with a look of hopeless admiration at fairway. "well, 'a was not new," mr. fairway replied, with a disinterested gaze. "i'd sooner go without drink at lammas-tide than be a man of no moon," continued christian, in the same shattered recitative. "'tis said i be only the rames of a man, and no good for my race at all; and i suppose that's the cause o't." "ay," said grandfer cantle, somewhat subdued in spirit; "and yet his mother cried for scores of hours when 'a was a boy, for fear he should outgrow hisself and go for a soldier." "well, there's many just as bad as he." said fairway. "wethers must live their time as well as other sheep, poor soul." "so perhaps i shall rub on? ought i to be afeared o' nights, master fairway?" "you'll have to lie alone all your life; and 'tis not to married couples but to single sleepers that a ghost shows himself when 'a do come. one has been seen lately, too. a very strange one." "no--don't talk about it if 'tis agreeable of ye not to! 'twill make my skin crawl when i think of it in bed alone. but you will--ah, you will, i know, timothy; and i shall dream all night o't! a very strange one? what sort of a spirit did ye mean when ye said, a very strange one, timothy?--no, no--don't tell me." "i don't half believe in spirits myself. but i think it ghostly enough--what i was told. 'twas a little boy that zid it." "what was it like?--no, don't--" "a red one. yes, most ghosts be white; but this is as if it had been dipped in blood." christian drew a deep breath without letting it expand his body, and humphrey said, "where has it been seen?" "not exactly here; but in this same heth. but 'tisn't a thing to talk about. what do ye say," continued fairway in brisker tones, and turning upon them as if the idea had not been grandfer cantle's--"what do you say to giving the new man and wife a bit of a song to-night afore we go to bed--being their wedding-day? when folks are just married 'tis as well to look glad o't, since looking sorry won't unjoin 'em. i am no drinker, as we know, but when the womenfolk and youngsters have gone home we can drop down across to the quiet woman, and strike up a ballet in front of the married folks' door. 'twill please the young wife, and that's what i should like to do, for many's the skinful i've had at her hands when she lived with her aunt at blooms-end." "hey? and so we will!" said grandfer cantle, turning so briskly that his copper seals swung extravagantly. "i'm as dry as a kex with biding up here in the wind, and i haven't seen the colour of drink since nammet-time today. 'tis said that the last brew at the woman is very pretty drinking. and, neighbours, if we should be a little late in the finishing, why, tomorrow's sunday, and we can sleep it off?" "grandfer cantle! you take things very careless for an old man," said the wide woman. "i take things careless; i do--too careless to please the women! klk! i'll sing the 'jovial crew,' or any other song, when a weak old man would cry his eyes out. jown it; i am up for anything. "the king´ look'd o´ver his left´ shoul-der´, and a grim´ look look´-ed hee´, earl mar´-shal, he said´, but for´ my oath´ or hang´-ed thou´ shouldst bee´." "well, that's what we'll do," said fairway. "we'll give 'em a song, an' it please the lord. what's the good of thomasin's cousin clym a-coming home after the deed's done? he should have come afore, if so be he wanted to stop it, and marry her himself." "perhaps he's coming to bide with his mother a little time, as she must feel lonely now the maid's gone." "now, 'tis very odd, but i never feel lonely--no, not at all," said grandfer cantle. "i am as brave in the night-time as a' admiral!" the bonfire was by this time beginning to sink low, for the fuel had not been of that substantial sort which can support a blaze long. most of the other fires within the wide horizon were also dwindling weak. attentive observation of their brightness, colour, and length of existence would have revealed the quality of the material burnt, and through that, to some extent the natural produce of the district in which each bonfire was situate. the clear, kingly effulgence that had characterized the majority expressed a heath and furze country like their own, which in one direction extended an unlimited number of miles; the rapid flares and extinctions at other points of the compass showed the lightest of fuel--straw, beanstalks, and the usual waste from arable land. the most enduring of all--steady unaltering eyes like planets--signified wood, such as hazel-branches, thorn-faggots, and stout billets. fires of the last-mentioned materials were rare, and though comparatively small in magnitude beside the transient blazes, now began to get the best of them by mere long continuance. the great ones had perished, but these remained. they occupied the remotest visible positions--sky-backed summits rising out of rich coppice and plantation districts to the north, where the soil was different, and heath foreign and strange. save one; and this was the nearest of any, the moon of the whole shining throng. it lay in a direction precisely opposite to that of the little window in the vale below. its nearness was such that, notwithstanding its actual smallness, its glow infinitely transcended theirs. this quiet eye had attracted attention from time to time; and when their own fire had become sunken and dim it attracted more; some even of the wood fires more recently lighted had reached their decline, but no change was perceptible here. "to be sure, how near that fire is!" said fairway. "seemingly. i can see a fellow of some sort walking round it. little and good must be said of that fire, surely." "i can throw a stone there," said the boy. "and so can i!" said grandfer cantle. "no, no, you can't, my sonnies. that fire is not much less than a mile off, for all that 'a seems so near." "'tis in the heath, but not furze," said the turf-cutter. "'tis cleft-wood, that's what 'tis," said timothy fairway. "nothing would burn like that except clean timber. and 'tis on the knap afore the old captain's house at mistover. such a queer mortal as that man is! to have a little fire inside your own bank and ditch, that nobody else may enjoy it or come anigh it! and what a zany an old chap must be, to light a bonfire when there's no youngsters to please." "cap'n vye has been for a long walk to-day, and is quite tired out," said grandfer cantle, "so 'tisn't likely to be he." "and he would hardly afford good fuel like that," said the wide woman. "then it must be his grand-daughter," said fairway. "not that a body of her age can want a fire much." "she is very strange in her ways, living up there by herself, and such things please her," said susan. "she's a well-favoured maid enough," said humphrey the furze-cutter; "especially when she's got one of her dandy gowns on." "that's true," said fairway. "well, let her bonfire burn an't will. ours is well-nigh out by the look o't." "how dark 'tis now the fire's gone down!" said christian cantle, looking behind him with his hare eyes. "don't ye think we'd better get home-along, neighbours? the heth isn't haunted, i know; but we'd better get home... ah, what was that?" "only the wind," said the turf-cutter. "i don't think fifth-of-novembers ought to be kept up by night except in towns. it should be by day in outstep, ill-accounted places like this!" "nonsense, christian. lift up your spirits like a man! susy, dear, you and i will have a jig--hey, my honey?--before 'tis quite too dark to see how well-favoured you be still, though so many summers have passed since your husband, a son of a witch, snapped you up from me." this was addressed to susan nunsuch; and the next circumstance of which the beholders were conscious was a vision of the matron's broad form whisking off towards the space whereon the fire had been kindled. she was lifted bodily by mr. fairway's arm, which had been flung round her waist before she had become aware of his intention. the site of the fire was now merely a circle of ashes flecked with red embers and sparks, the furze having burnt completely away. once within the circle he whirled her round and round in a dance. she was a woman noisily constructed; in addition to her enclosing framework of whalebone and lath, she wore pattens summer and winter, in wet weather and in dry, to preserve her boots from wear; and when fairway began to jump about with her, the clicking of the pattens, the creaking of the stays, and her screams of surprise, formed a very audible concert. "i'll crack thy numskull for thee, you mandy chap!" said mrs. nunsuch, as she helplessly danced round with him, her feet playing like drumsticks among the sparks. "my ankles were all in a fever before, from walking through that prickly furze, and now you must make 'em worse with these vlankers!" the vagary of timothy fairway was infectious. the turf-cutter seized old olly dowden, and, somewhat more gently, poussetted with her likewise. the young men were not slow to imitate the example of their elders, and seized the maids; grandfer cantle and his stick jigged in the form of a three-legged object among the rest; and in half a minute all that could be seen on rainbarrow was a whirling of dark shapes amid a boiling confusion of sparks, which leapt around the dancers as high as their waists. the chief noises were women's shrill cries, men's laughter, susan's stays and pattens, olly dowden's "heu-heu-heu!" and the strumming of the wind upon the furze-bushes, which formed a kind of tune to the demoniac measure they trod. christian alone stood aloof, uneasily rocking himself as he murmured, "they ought not to do it--how the vlankers do fly! 'tis tempting the wicked one, 'tis." "what was that?" said one of the lads, stopping. "ah--where?" said christian, hastily closing up to the rest. the dancers all lessened their speed. "'twas behind you, christian, that i heard it--down there." "yes--'tis behind me!" christian said. "matthew, mark, luke, and john, bless the bed that i lie on; four angels guard--" "hold your tongue. what is it?" said fairway. "hoi-i-i-i!" cried a voice from the darkness. "halloo-o-o-o!" said fairway. "is there any cart track up across here to mis'ess yeobright's, of blooms-end?" came to them in the same voice, as a long, slim indistinct figure approached the barrow. "ought we not to run home as hard as we can, neighbours, as 'tis getting late?" said christian. "not run away from one another, you know; run close together, i mean." "scrape up a few stray locks of furze, and make a blaze, so that we can see who the man is," said fairway. when the flame arose it revealed a young man in tight raiment, and red from top to toe. "is there a track across here to mis'ess yeobright's house?" he repeated. "ay--keep along the path down there." "i mean a way two horses and a van can travel over?" "well, yes; you can get up the vale below here with time. the track is rough, but if you've got a light your horses may pick along wi' care. have ye brought your cart far up, neighbour reddleman?" "i've left it in the bottom, about half a mile back. i stepped on in front to make sure of the way, as 'tis night-time, and i han't been here for so long." "oh, well, you can get up," said fairway. "what a turn it did give me when i saw him!" he added to the whole group, the reddleman included. "lord's sake, i thought, whatever fiery mommet is this come to trouble us? no slight to your looks, reddleman, for ye bain't bad-looking in the groundwork, though the finish is queer. my meaning is just to say how curious i felt. i half thought it 'twas the devil or the red ghost the boy told of." "it gied me a turn likewise," said susan nunsuch, "for i had a dream last night of a death's head." "don't ye talk o't no more," said christian. "if he had handkerchief over his head he'd look for all the world like the devil in the picture of the temptation." "well, thank you for telling me," said the young reddleman, smiling faintly. "and good night t'ye all." he withdrew from their sight down the barrow. "i fancy i've seen that young man's face before," said humphrey. "but where, or how, or what his name is, i don't know." the reddleman had not been gone more than a few minutes when another person approached the partially revived bonfire. it proved to be a well-known and respected widow of the neighbourhood, of a standing which can only be expressed by the word genteel. her face, encompassed by the blackness of the receding heath, showed whitely, and without half-lights, like a cameo. she was a woman of middle-age, with well-formed features of the type usually found where perspicacity is the chief quality enthroned within. at moments she seemed to be regarding issues from a nebo denied to others around. she had something of an estranged mien; the solitude exhaled from the heath was concentrated in this face that had risen from it. the air with which she looked at the heathmen betokened a certain unconcern at their presence, or at what might be their opinions of her for walking in that lonely spot at such an hour, this indirectly implying that in some respect or other they were not up to her level. the explanation lay in the fact that though her husband had been a small farmer she herself was a curate's daughter, who had once dreamt of doing better things. persons with any weight of character carry, like planets, their atmospheres along with them in their orbits; and the matron who entered now upon the scene could, and usually did, bring her own tone into a company. her normal manner among the heathfolk had that reticence which results from the consciousness of superior communicative power. but the effect of coming into society and light after lonely wandering in darkness is a sociability in the comer above its usual pitch, expressed in the features even more than in words. "why, 'tis mis'ess yeobright," said fairway. "mis'ess yeobright, not ten minutes ago a man was here asking for you--a reddleman." "what did he want?" said she. "he didn't tell us." "something to sell, i suppose; what it can be i am at a loss to understand." "i am glad to hear that your son mr. clym is coming home at christmas, ma'am," said sam, the turf-cutter. "what a dog he used to be for bonfires!" "yes. i believe he is coming," she said. "he must be a fine fellow by this time," said fairway. "he is a man now," she replied quietly. "'tis very lonesome for 'ee in the heth tonight, mis'ess," said christian, coming from the seclusion he had hitherto maintained. "mind you don't get lost. egdon heth is a bad place to get lost in, and the winds do huffle queerer tonight than ever i heard 'em afore. them that know egdon best have been pixy-led here at times." "is that you, christian?" said mrs. yeobright. "what made you hide away from me?" "'twas that i didn't know you in this light, mis'ess; and being a man of the mournfullest make, i was scared a little, that's all. oftentimes if you could see how terrible down i get in my mind, 'twould make 'ee quite nervous for fear i should die by my hand." "you don't take after your father," said mrs. yeobright, looking towards the fire, where grandfer cantle, with some want of originality, was dancing by himself among the sparks, as the others had done before. "now, grandfer," said timothy fairway, "we are ashamed of ye. a reverent old patriarch man as you be--seventy if a day--to go hornpiping like that by yourself!" "a harrowing old man, mis'ess yeobright," said christian despondingly. "i wouldn't live with him a week, so playward as he is, if i could get away." "'twould be more seemly in ye to stand still and welcome mis'ess yeobright, and you the venerablest here, grandfer cantle," said the besom-woman. "faith, and so it would," said the reveller checking himself repentantly. "i've such a bad memory, mis'ess yeobright, that i forget how i'm looked up to by the rest of 'em. my spirits must be wonderful good, you'll say? but not always. 'tis a weight upon a man to be looked up to as commander, and i often feel it." "i am sorry to stop the talk," said mrs. yeobright. "but i must be leaving you now. i was passing down the anglebury road, towards my niece's new home, who is returning tonight with her husband; and seeing the bonfire and hearing olly's voice among the rest i came up here to learn what was going on. i should like her to walk with me, as her way is mine." "ay, sure, ma'am, i'm just thinking of moving," said olly. "why, you'll be safe to meet the reddleman that i told ye of," said fairway. "he's only gone back to get his van. we heard that your niece and her husband were coming straight home as soon as they were married, and we are going down there shortly, to give 'em a song o' welcome." "thank you indeed," said mrs. yeobright. "but we shall take a shorter cut through the furze than you can go with long clothes; so we won't trouble you to wait." "very well--are you ready, olly?" "yes, ma'am. and there's a light shining from your niece's window, see. it will help to keep us in the path." she indicated the faint light at the bottom of the valley which fairway had pointed out; and the two women descended the tumulus. iv the halt on the turnpike road down, downward they went, and yet further down--their descent at each step seeming to outmeasure their advance. their skirts were scratched noisily by the furze, their shoulders brushed by the ferns, which, though dead and dry, stood erect as when alive, no sufficient winter weather having as yet arrived to beat them down. their tartarean situation might by some have been called an imprudent one for two unattended women. but these shaggy recesses were at all seasons a familiar surrounding to olly and mrs. yeobright; and the addition of darkness lends no frightfulness to the face of a friend. "and so tamsin has married him at last," said olly, when the incline had become so much less steep that their footsteps no longer required undivided attention. mrs. yeobright answered slowly, "yes: at last." "how you will miss her--living with 'ee as a daughter, as she always have." "i do miss her." olly, though without the tact to perceive when remarks were untimely, was saved by her very simplicity from rendering them offensive. questions that would have been resented in others she could ask with impunity. this accounted for mrs. yeobright's acquiescence in the revival of an evidently sore subject. "i was quite strook to hear you'd agreed to it, ma'am, that i was," continued the besom-maker. "you were not more struck by it than i should have been last year this time, olly. there are a good many sides to that wedding. i could not tell you all of them, even if i tried." "i felt myself that he was hardly solid-going enough to mate with your family. keeping an inn--what is it? but 'a's clever, that's true, and they say he was an engineering gentleman once, but has come down by being too outwardly given." "i saw that, upon the whole, it would be better she should marry where she wished." "poor little thing, her feelings got the better of her, no doubt. 'tis nature. well, they may call him what they will--he've several acres of heth-ground broke up here, besides the public house, and the heth-croppers, and his manners be quite like a gentleman's. and what's done cannot be undone." "it cannot," said mrs. yeobright. "see, here's the waggon-track at last. now we shall get along better." the wedding subject was no further dwelt upon; and soon a faint diverging path was reached, where they parted company, olly first begging her companion to remind mr. wildeve that he had not sent her sick husband the bottle of wine promised on the occasion of his marriage. the besom-maker turned to the left towards her own house, behind a spur of the hill, and mrs. yeobright followed the straight track, which further on joined the highway by the quiet woman inn, whither she supposed her niece to have returned with wildeve from their wedding at anglebury that day. she first reached wildeve's patch, as it was called, a plot of land redeemed from the heath, and after long and laborious years brought into cultivation. the man who had discovered that it could be tilled died of the labour; the man who succeeded him in possession ruined himself in fertilizing it. wildeve came like amerigo vespucci, and received the honours due to those who had gone before. when mrs. yeobright had drawn near to the inn, and was about to enter, she saw a horse and vehicle some two hundred yards beyond it, coming towards her, a man walking alongside with a lantern in his hand. it was soon evident that this was the reddleman who had inquired for her. instead of entering the inn at once, she walked by it and towards the van. the conveyance came close, and the man was about to pass her with little notice, when she turned to him and said, "i think you have been inquiring for me? i am mrs. yeobright of blooms-end." the reddleman started, and held up his finger. he stopped the horses, and beckoned to her to withdraw with him a few yards aside, which she did, wondering. "you don't know me, ma'am, i suppose?" he said. "i do not," said she. "why, yes, i do! you are young venn--your father was a dairyman somewhere here?" "yes; and i knew your niece, miss tamsin, a little. i have something bad to tell you." "about her--no! she has just come home, i believe, with her husband. they arranged to return this afternoon--to the inn beyond here." "she's not there." "how do you know?" "because she's here. she's in my van," he added slowly. "what new trouble has come?" murmured mrs. yeobright, putting her hand over her eyes. "i can't explain much, ma'am. all i know is that, as i was going along the road this morning, about a mile out of anglebury, i heard something trotting after me like a doe, and looking round there she was, white as death itself. 'oh, diggory venn!' she said, 'i thought 'twas you: will you help me? i am in trouble.'" "how did she know your christian name?" said mrs. yeobright doubtingly. "i had met her as a lad before i went away in this trade. she asked then if she might ride, and then down she fell in a faint. i picked her up and put her in, and there she has been ever since. she has cried a good deal, but she has hardly spoke; all she has told me being that she was to have been married this morning. i tried to get her to eat something, but she couldn't; and at last she fell asleep." "let me see her at once," said mrs. yeobright, hastening towards the van. the reddleman followed with the lantern, and, stepping up first, assisted mrs. yeobright to mount beside him. on the door being opened she perceived at the end of the van an extemporized couch, around which was hung apparently all the drapery that the reddleman possessed, to keep the occupant of the little couch from contact with the red materials of his trade. a young girl lay thereon, covered with a cloak. she was asleep, and the light of the lantern fell upon her features. a fair, sweet, and honest country face was revealed, reposing in a nest of wavy chestnut hair. it was between pretty and beautiful. though her eyes were closed, one could easily imagine the light necessarily shining in them as the culmination of the luminous workmanship around. the groundwork of the face was hopefulness; but over it now lay like a foreign substance a film of anxiety and grief. the grief had been there so shortly as to have abstracted nothing of the bloom, and had as yet but given a dignity to what it might eventually undermine. the scarlet of her lips had not had time to abate, and just now it appeared still more intense by the absence of the neighbouring and more transient colour of her cheek. the lips frequently parted, with a murmur of words. she seemed to belong rightly to a madrigal--to require viewing through rhyme and harmony. one thing at least was obvious: she was not made to be looked at thus. the reddleman had appeared conscious of as much, and, while mrs. yeobright looked in upon her, he cast his eyes aside with a delicacy which well became him. the sleeper apparently thought so too, for the next moment she opened her own. the lips then parted with something of anticipation, something more of doubt; and her several thoughts and fractions of thoughts, as signalled by the changes on her face, were exhibited by the light to the utmost nicety. an ingenuous, transparent life was disclosed, as if the flow of her existence could be seen passing within her. she understood the scene in a moment. "o yes, it is i, aunt," she cried. "i know how frightened you are, and how you cannot believe it; but all the same, it is i who have come home like this!" "tamsin, tamsin!" said mrs. yeobright, stooping over the young woman and kissing her. "o my dear girl!" thomasin was now on the verge of a sob, but by an unexpected self-command she uttered no sound. with a gentle panting breath she sat upright. "i did not expect to see you in this state, any more than you me," she went on quickly. "where am i, aunt?" "nearly home, my dear. in egdon bottom. what dreadful thing is it?" "i'll tell you in a moment. so near, are we? then i will get out and walk. i want to go home by the path." "but this kind man who has done so much will, i am sure, take you right on to my house?" said the aunt, turning to the reddleman, who had withdrawn from the front of the van on the awakening of the girl, and stood in the road. "why should you think it necessary to ask me? i will, of course," said he. "he is indeed kind," murmured thomasin. "i was once acquainted with him, aunt, and when i saw him today i thought i should prefer his van to any conveyance of a stranger. but i'll walk now. reddleman, stop the horses, please." the man regarded her with tender reluctance, but stopped them. aunt and niece then descended from the van, mrs. yeobright saying to its owner, "i quite recognize you now. what made you change from the nice business your father left you?" "well, i did," he said, and looked at thomasin, who blushed a little. "then you'll not be wanting me any more to-night, ma'am?" mrs. yeobright glanced around at the dark sky, at the hills, at the perishing bonfires, and at the lighted window of the inn they had neared. "i think not," she said, "since thomasin wishes to walk. we can soon run up the path and reach home: we know it well." and after a few further words they parted, the reddleman moving onwards with his van, and the two women remaining standing in the road. as soon as the vehicle and its driver had withdrawn so far as to be beyond all possible reach of her voice, mrs. yeobright turned to her niece. "now, thomasin," she said sternly, "what's the meaning of this disgraceful performance?" v perplexity among honest people thomasin looked as if quite overcome by her aunt's change of manner. "it means just what it seems to mean: i am--not married," she replied faintly. "excuse me--for humiliating you, aunt, by this mishap: i am sorry for it. but i cannot help it." "me? think of yourself first." "it was nobody's fault. when we got there the parson wouldn't marry us because of some trifling irregularity in the license." "what irregularity?" "i don't know. mr. wildeve can explain. i did not think when i went away this morning that i should come back like this." it being dark, thomasin allowed her emotion to escape her by the silent way of tears, which could roll down her cheek unseen. "i could almost say that it serves you right--if i did not feel that you don't deserve it," continued mrs. yeobright, who, possessing two distinct moods in close contiguity, a gentle mood and an angry, flew from one to the other without the least warning. "remember, thomasin, this business was none of my seeking; from the very first, when you began to feel foolish about that man, i warned you he would not make you happy. i felt it so strongly that i did what i would never have believed myself capable of doing--stood up in the church, and made myself the public talk for weeks. but having once consented, i don't submit to these fancies without good reason. marry him you must after this." "do you think i wish to do otherwise for one moment?" said thomasin, with a heavy sigh. "i know how wrong it was of me to love him, but don't pain me by talking like that, aunt! you would not have had me stay there with him, would you?--and your house is the only home i have to return to. he says we can be married in a day or two." "i wish he had never seen you." "very well; then i will be the miserablest woman in the world, and not let him see me again. no, i won't have him!" "it is too late to speak so. come with me. i am going to the inn to see if he has returned. of course i shall get to the bottom of this story at once. mr. wildeve must not suppose he can play tricks upon me, or any belonging to me." "it was not that. the license was wrong, and he couldn't get another the same day. he will tell you in a moment how it was, if he comes." "why didn't he bring you back?" "that was me!" again sobbed thomasin. "when i found we could not be married i didn't like to come back with him, and i was very ill. then i saw diggory venn, and was glad to get him to take me home. i cannot explain it any better, and you must be angry with me if you will." "i shall see about that," said mrs. yeobright; and they turned towards the inn, known in the neighbourhood as the quiet woman, the sign of which represented the figure of a matron carrying her head under her arm, beneath which gruesome design was written the couplet so well known to frequenters of the inn:-- since the woman's quiet let no man breed a riot. the front of the house was towards the heath and rainbarrow, whose dark shape seemed to threaten it from the sky. upon the door was a neglected brass plate, bearing the unexpected inscription, "mr. wildeve, engineer"--a useless yet cherished relic from the time when he had been started in that profession in an office at budmouth by those who had hoped much from him, and had been disappointed. the garden was at the back, and behind this ran a still deep stream, forming the margin of the heath in that direction, meadow-land appearing beyond the stream. but the thick obscurity permitted only skylines to be visible of any scene at present. the water at the back of the house could be heard, idly spinning whirpools in its creep between the rows of dry feather-headed reeds which formed a stockade along each bank. their presence was denoted by sounds as of a congregation praying humbly, produced by their rubbing against each other in the slow wind. the window, whence the candlelight had shone up the vale to the eyes of the bonfire group, was uncurtained, but the sill lay too high for a pedestrian on the outside to look over it into the room. a vast shadow, in which could be dimly traced portions of a masculine contour, blotted half the ceiling. "he seems to be at home," said mrs. yeobright. "must i come in, too, aunt?" asked thomasin faintly. "i suppose not; it would be wrong." "you must come, certainly--to confront him, so that he may make no false representations to me. we shall not be five minutes in the house, and then we'll walk home." entering the open passage she tapped at the door of the private parlour, unfastened it, and looked in. the back and shoulders of a man came between mrs. yeobright's eyes and the fire. wildeve, whose form it was, immediately turned, arose, and advanced to meet his visitors. he was quite a young man, and of the two properties, form and motion, the latter first attracted the eye in him. the grace of his movement was singular: it was the pantomimic expression of a lady-killing career. next came into notice the more material qualities, among which was a profuse crop of hair impending over the top of his face, lending to his forehead the high-cornered outline of an early gothic shield; and a neck which was smooth and round as a cylinder. the lower half of his figure was of light build. altogether he was one in whom no man would have seen anything to admire, and in whom no woman would have seen anything to dislike. he discerned the young girl's form in the passage, and said, "thomasin, then, has reached home. how could you leave me in that way, darling?" and turning to mrs. yeobright: "it was useless to argue with her. she would go, and go alone." "but what's the meaning of it all?" demanded mrs. yeobright haughtily. "take a seat," said wildeve, placing chairs for the two women. "well, it was a very stupid mistake, but such mistakes will happen. the license was useless at anglebury. it was made out for budmouth, but as i didn't read it i wasn't aware of that." "but you had been staying at anglebury?" "no. i had been at budmouth--till two days ago--and that was where i had intended to take her; but when i came to fetch her we decided upon anglebury, forgetting that a new license would be necessary. there was not time to get to budmouth afterwards." "i think you are very much to blame," said mrs. yeobright. "it was quite my fault we chose anglebury," thomasin pleaded. "i proposed it because i was not known there." "i know so well that i am to blame that you need not remind me of it," replied wildeve shortly. "such things don't happen for nothing," said the aunt. "it is a great slight to me and my family; and when it gets known there will be a very unpleasant time for us. how can she look her friends in the face tomorrow? it is a very great injury, and one i cannot easily forgive. it may even reflect on her character." "nonsense," said wildeve. thomasin's large eyes had flown from the face of one to the face of the other during this discussion, and she now said anxiously, "will you allow me, aunt, to talk it over alone with damon for five minutes? will you, damon?" "certainly, dear," said wildeve, "if your aunt will excuse us." he led her into an adjoining room, leaving mrs. yeobright by the fire. as soon as they were alone, and the door closed, thomasin said, turning up her pale, tearful face to him, "it is killing me, this, damon! i did not mean to part from you in anger at anglebury this morning; but i was frightened, and hardly knew what i said. i've not let aunt know how much i have suffered to-day; and it is so hard to command my face and voice, and to smile as if it were a slight thing to me; but i try to do so, that she may not be still more indignant with you. i know you could not help it, dear, whatever aunt may think." "she is very unpleasant." "yes," thomasin murmured, "and i suppose i seem so now... damon, what do you mean to do about me?" "do about you?" "yes. those who don't like you whisper things which at moments make me doubt you. we mean to marry, i suppose, don't we?" "of course we do. we have only to go to budmouth on monday, and we marry at once." "then do let us go!--o damon, what you make me say!" she hid her face in her handkerchief. "here am i asking you to marry me, when by rights you ought to be on your knees imploring me, your cruel mistress, not to refuse you, and saying it would break your heart if i did. i used to think it would be pretty and sweet like that; but how different!" "yes, real life is never at all like that." "but i don't care personally if it never takes place," she added with a little dignity; "no, i can live without you. it is aunt i think of. she is so proud, and thinks so much of her family respectability, that she will be cut down with mortification if this story should get abroad before--it is done. my cousin clym, too, will be much wounded." "then he will be very unreasonable. in fact, you are all rather unreasonable." thomasin coloured a little, and not with love. but whatever the momentary feeling which caused that flush in her, it went as it came, and she humbly said, "i never mean to be, if i can help it. i merely feel that you have my aunt to some extent in your power at last." "as a matter of justice it is almost due to me," said wildeve. "think what i have gone through to win her consent; the insult that it is to any man to have the banns forbidden: the double insult to a man unlucky enough to be cursed with sensitiveness, and blue demons, and heaven knows what, as i am. i can never forget those banns. a harsher man would rejoice now in the power i have of turning upon your aunt by going no further in the business." she looked wistfully at him with her sorrowful eyes as he said those words, and her aspect showed that more than one person in the room could deplore the possession of sensitiveness. seeing that she was really suffering he seemed disturbed and added, "this is merely a reflection you know. i have not the least intention to refuse to complete the marriage, tamsie mine--i could not bear it." "you could not, i know!" said the fair girl, brightening. "you, who cannot bear the sight of pain in even an insect, or any disagreeable sound, or unpleasant smell even, will not long cause pain to me and mine." "i will not, if i can help it." "your hand upon it, damon." he carelessly gave her his hand. "ah, by my crown, what's that?" he said suddenly. there fell upon their ears the sound of numerous voices singing in front of the house. among these, two made themselves prominent by their peculiarity: one was a very strong bass, the other a wheezy thin piping. thomasin recognized them as belonging to timothy fairway and grandfer cantle respectively. "what does it mean--it is not skimmity-riding, i hope?" she said, with a frightened gaze at wildeve. "of course not; no, it is that the heath-folk have come to sing to us a welcome. this is intolerable!" he began pacing about, the men outside singing cheerily-- "he told´ her that she´ was the joy´ of his life´. and if´ she'd con-sent´ he would make her his wife´; she could´ not refuse´ him; to church´ so they went´, young will was forgot´, and young sue´ was content´; and then´ was she kiss'd´ and set down´ on his knee´, no man´ in the world´ was so lov´-ing as he´!" mrs. yeobright burst in from the outer room. "thomasin, thomasin!" she said, looking indignantly at wildeve; "here's a pretty exposure! let us escape at once. come!" it was, however, too late to get away by the passage. a rugged knocking had begun upon the door of the front room. wildeve, who had gone to the window, came back. "stop!" he said imperiously, putting his hand upon mrs. yeobright's arm. "we are regularly besieged. there are fifty of them out there if there's one. you stay in this room with thomasin; i'll go out and face them. you must stay now, for my sake, till they are gone, so that it may seem as if all was right. come, tamsie dear, don't go making a scene--we must marry after this; that you can see as well as i. sit still, that's all--and don't speak much. i'll manage them. blundering fools!" he pressed the agitated girl into a seat, returned to the outer room and opened the door. immediately outside, in the passage, appeared grandfer cantle singing in concert with those still standing in front of the house. he came into the room and nodded abstractedly to wildeve, his lips still parted, and his features excruciatingly strained in the emission of the chorus. this being ended, he said heartily, "here's welcome to the newmade couple, and god bless 'em!" "thank you," said wildeve, with dry resentment, his face as gloomy as a thunderstorm. at the grandfer's heels now came the rest of the group, which included fairway, christian, sam the turf-cutter, humphrey, and a dozen others. all smiled upon wildeve, and upon his tables and chairs likewise, from a general sense of friendliness towards the articles as well as towards their owner. "we be not here afore mrs. yeobright after all," said fairway, recognizing the matron's bonnet through the glass partition which divided the public apartment they had entered from the room where the women sat. "we struck down across, d'ye see, mr. wildeve, and she went round by the path." "and i see the young bride's little head!" said grandfer, peeping in the same direction, and discerning thomasin, who was waiting beside her aunt in a miserable and awkward way. "not quite settled in yet--well, well, there's plenty of time." wildeve made no reply; and probably feeling that the sooner he treated them the sooner they would go, he produced a stone jar, which threw a warm halo over matters at once. "that's a drop of the right sort, i can see," said grandfer cantle, with the air of a man too well-mannered to show any hurry to taste it. "yes," said wildeve, "'tis some old mead. i hope you will like it." "o ay!" replied the guests, in the hearty tones natural when the words demanded by politeness coincide with those of deepest feeling. "there isn't a prettier drink under the sun." "i'll take my oath there isn't," added grandfer cantle. "all that can be said against mead is that 'tis rather heady, and apt to lie about a man a good while. but tomorrow's sunday, thank god." "i feel'd for all the world like some bold soldier after i had had some once," said christian. "you shall feel so again," said wildeve, with condescension, "cups or glasses, gentlemen?" "well, if you don't mind, we'll have the beaker, and pass 'en round; 'tis better than heling it out in dribbles." "jown the slippery glasses," said grandfer cantle. "what's the good of a thing that you can't put down in the ashes to warm, hey, neighbours; that's what i ask?" "right, grandfer," said sam; and the mead then circulated. "well," said timothy fairway, feeling demands upon his praise in some form or other, "'tis a worthy thing to be married, mr. wildeve; and the woman you've got is a dimant, so says i. yes," he continued, to grandfer cantle, raising his voice so as to be heard through the partition, "her father (inclining his head towards the inner room) was as good a feller as ever lived. he always had his great indignation ready against anything underhand." "is that very dangerous?" said christian. "and there were few in these parts that were upsides with him," said sam. "whenever a club walked he'd play the clarinet in the band that marched before 'em as if he'd never touched anything but a clarinet all his life. and then, when they got to church door he'd throw down the clarinet, mount the gallery, snatch up the bass-viol, and rozum away as if he'd never played anything but a bass-viol. folk would say--folk that knowed what a true stave was--'surely, surely that's never the same man that i saw handling the clarinet so masterly by now!" "i can mind it," said the furze-cutter. "'twas a wonderful thing that one body could hold it all and never mix the fingering." "there was kingsbere church likewise," fairway recommenced, as one opening a new vein of the same mine of interest. wildeve breathed the breath of one intolerably bored, and glanced through the partition at the prisoners. "he used to walk over there of a sunday afternoon to visit his old acquaintance andrew brown, the first clarinet there; a good man enough, but rather screechy in his music, if you can mind?" "'a was." "and neighbour yeobright would take andrey's place for some part of the service, to let andrey have a bit of a nap, as any friend would naturally do." "as any friend would," said grandfer cantle, the other listeners expressing the same accord by the shorter way of nodding their heads. "no sooner was andrey asleep and the first whiff of neighbour yeobright's wind had got inside andrey's clarinet than everyone in church feeled in a moment there was a great soul among 'em. all heads would turn, and they'd say, 'ah, i thought 'twas he!' one sunday i can well mind--a bass-viol day that time, and yeobright had brought his own. 'twas the hundred-and-thirty-third to 'lydia'; and when they'd come to 'ran down his beard and o'er his robes its costly moisture shed,' neighbour yeobright, who had just warmed to his work, drove his bow into them strings that glorious grand that he e'en a'most sawed the bass-viol into two pieces. every winder in church rattled as if 'twere a thunderstorm. old pa'son williams lifted his hands in his great holy surplice as natural as if he'd been in common clothes, and seemed to say to hisself, 'o for such a man in our parish!' but not a soul in kingsbere could hold a candle to yeobright." "was it quite safe when the winder shook?" christian inquired. he received no answer, all for the moment sitting rapt in admiration of the performance described. as with farinelli's singing before the princesses, sheridan's renowned begum speech, and other such examples, the fortunate condition of its being for ever lost to the world invested the deceased mr. yeobright's _tour de force_ on that memorable afternoon with a cumulative glory which comparative criticism, had that been possible, might considerably have shorn down. "he was the last you'd have expected to drop off in the prime of life," said humphrey. "ah, well: he was looking for the earth some months afore he went. at that time women used to run for smocks and gown-pieces at greenhill fair, and my wife that is now, being a long-legged slittering maid, hardly husband-high, went with the rest of the maidens, for 'a was a good runner afore she got so heavy. when she came home i said--we were then just beginning to walk together--'what have ye got, my honey?' 'i've won--well, i've won--a gown-piece,' says she, her colours coming up in a moment. 'tis a smock for a crown, i thought; and so it turned out. ay, when i think what she'll say to me now without a mossel of red in her face, it do seem strange that 'a wouldn't say such a little thing then... however, then she went on, and that's what made me bring up the story. 'well, whatever clothes i've won, white or figured, for eyes to see or for eyes not to see' ('a could do a pretty stroke of modesty in those days), 'i'd sooner have lost it than have seen what i have. poor mr. yeobright was took bad directly he reached the fair ground, and was forced to go home again.' that was the last time he ever went out of the parish." "'a faltered on from one day to another, and then we heard he was gone." "d'ye think he had great pain when 'a died?" said christian. "o no: quite different. nor any pain of mind. he was lucky enough to be god a'mighty's own man." "and other folk--d'ye think 'twill be much pain to 'em, mister fairway?" "that depends on whether they be afeard." "i bain't afeard at all, i thank god!" said christian strenuously. "i'm glad i bain't, for then 'twon't pain me... i don't think i be afeard--or if i be i can't help it, and i don't deserve to suffer. i wish i was not afeard at all!" there was a solemn silence, and looking from the window, which was unshuttered and unblinded, timothy said, "well, what a fess little bonfire that one is, out by cap'n vye's! 'tis burning just the same now as ever, upon my life." all glances went through the window, and nobody noticed that wildeve disguised a brief, telltale look. far away up the sombre valley of heath, and to the right of rainbarrow, could indeed be seen the light, small, but steady and persistent as before. "it was lighted before ours was," fairway continued; "and yet every one in the country round is out afore 'n." "perhaps there's meaning in it!" murmured christian. "how meaning?" said wildeve sharply. christian was too scattered to reply, and timothy helped him. "he means, sir, that the lonesome dark-eyed creature up there that some say is a witch--ever i should call a fine young woman such a name--is always up to some odd conceit or other; and so perhaps 'tis she." "i'd be very glad to ask her in wedlock, if she'd hae me, and take the risk of her wild dark eyes ill-wishing me," said grandfer cantle staunchly. "don't ye say it, father!" implored christian. "well, be dazed if he who do marry the maid won't hae an uncommon picture for his best parlour," said fairway in a liquid tone, placing down the cup of mead at the end of a good pull. "and a partner as deep as the north star," said sam, taking up the cup and finishing the little that remained. "well, really, now i think we must be moving," said humphrey, observing the emptiness of the vessel. "but we'll gie 'em another song?" said grandfer cantle. "i'm as full of notes as a bird!" "thank you, grandfer," said wildeve. "but we will not trouble you now. some other day must do for that--when i have a party." "be jown'd if i don't learn ten new songs for't, or i won't learn a line!" said grandfer cantle. "and you may be sure i won't disappoint ye by biding away, mr. wildeve." "i quite believe you," said that gentleman. all then took their leave, wishing their entertainer long life and happiness as a married man, with recapitulations which occupied some time. wildeve attended them to the door, beyond which the deep-dyed upward stretch of heath stood awaiting them, an amplitude of darkness reigning from their feet almost to the zenith, where a definite form first became visible in the lowering forehead of rainbarrow. diving into the dense obscurity in a line headed by sam the turf-cutter, they pursued their trackless way home. when the scratching of the furze against their leggings had fainted upon the ear, wildeve returned to the room where he had left thomasin and her aunt. the women were gone. they could only have left the house in one way, by the back window; and this was open. wildeve laughed to himself, remained a moment thinking, and idly returned to the front room. here his glance fell upon a bottle of wine which stood on the mantelpiece. "ah--old dowden!" he murmured; and going to the kitchen door shouted, "is anybody here who can take something to old dowden?" there was no reply. the room was empty, the lad who acted as his factotum having gone to bed. wildeve came back put on his hat, took the bottle, and left the house, turning the key in the door, for there was no guest at the inn tonight. as soon as he was on the road the little bonfire on mistover knap again met his eye. "still waiting, are you, my lady?" he murmured. however, he did not proceed that way just then; but leaving the hill to the left of him, he stumbled over a rutted road that brought him to a cottage which, like all other habitations on the heath at this hour, was only saved from being visible by a faint shine from its bedroom window. this house was the home of olly dowden, the besom-maker, and he entered. the lower room was in darkness; but by feeling his way he found a table, whereon he placed the bottle, and a minute later emerged again upon the heath. he stood and looked north-east at the undying little fire--high up above him, though not so high as rainbarrow. we have been told what happens when a woman deliberates; and the epigram is not always terminable with woman, provided that one be in the case, and that a fair one. wildeve stood, and stood longer, and breathed perplexedly, and then said to himself with resignation, "yes--by heaven, i must go to her, i suppose!" instead of turning in the direction of home he pressed on rapidly by a path under rainbarrow towards what was evidently a signal light. vi the figure against the sky when the whole egdon concourse had left the site of the bonfire to its accustomed loneliness, a closely wrapped female figure approached the barrow from that quarter of the heath in which the little fire lay. had the reddleman been watching he might have recognized her as the woman who had first stood there so singularly, and vanished at the approach of strangers. she ascended to her old position at the top, where the red coals of the perishing fire greeted her like living eyes in the corpse of day. there she stood still, around her stretching the vast night atmosphere, whose incomplete darkness in comparison with the total darkness of the heath below it might have represented a venial beside a mortal sin. that she was tall and straight in build, that she was lady-like in her movements, was all that could be learnt of her just now, her form being wrapped in a shawl folded in the old cornerwise fashion, and her head in a large kerchief, a protection not superfluous at this hour and place. her back was towards the wind, which blew from the north-west; but whether she had avoided that aspect because of the chilly gusts which played about her exceptional position, or because her interest lay in the south-east, did not at first appear. her reason for standing so dead still as the pivot of this circle of heath-country was just as obscure. her extraordinary fixity, her conspicuous loneliness, her heedlessness of night, betokened among other things an utter absence of fear. a tract of country unaltered from that sinister condition which made caesar anxious every year to get clear of its glooms before the autumnal equinox, a kind of landscape and weather which leads travellers from the south to describe our island as homer's cimmerian land, was not, on the face of it, friendly to women. it might reasonably have been supposed that she was listening to the wind, which rose somewhat as the night advanced, and laid hold of the attention. the wind, indeed, seemed made for the scene, as the scene seemed made for the hour. part of its tone was quite special; what was heard there could be heard nowhere else. gusts in innumerable series followed each other from the north-west, and when each one of them raced past the sound of its progress resolved into three. treble, tenor, and bass notes were to be found therein. the general ricochet of the whole over pits and prominences had the gravest pitch of the chime. next there could be heard the baritone buzz of a holly tree. below these in force, above them in pitch, a dwindled voice strove hard at a husky tune, which was the peculiar local sound alluded to. thinner and less immediately traceable than the other two, it was far more impressive than either. in it lay what may be called the linguistic peculiarity of the heath; and being audible nowhere on earth off a heath, it afforded a shadow of reason for the woman's tenseness, which continued as unbroken as ever. throughout the blowing of these plaintive november winds that note bore a great resemblance to the ruins of human song which remain to the throat of fourscore and ten. it was a worn whisper, dry and papery, and it brushed so distinctly across the ear that, by the accustomed, the material minutiae in which it originated could be realized as by touch. it was the united products of infinitesimal vegetable causes, and these were neither stems, leaves, fruit, blades, prickles, lichen, nor moss. they were the mummied heath-bells of the past summer, originally tender and purple, now washed colourless by michaelmas rains, and dried to dead skins by october suns. so low was an individual sound from these that a combination of hundreds only just emerged from silence, and the myriads of the whole declivity reached the woman's ear but as a shrivelled and intermittent recitative. yet scarcely a single accent among the many afloat to-night could have such power to impress a listener with thoughts of its origin. one inwardly saw the infinity of those combined multitudes; and perceived that each of the tiny trumpets was seized on, entered, scoured and emerged from by the wind as thoroughly as if it were as vast as a crater. "the spirit moved them." a meaning of the phrase forced itself upon the attention; and an emotional listener's fetichistic mood might have ended in one of more advanced quality. it was not, after all, that the left-hand expanse of old blooms spoke, or the right-hand, or those of the slope in front; but it was the single person of something else speaking through each at once. suddenly, on the barrow, there mingled with all this wild rhetoric of night a sound which modulated so naturally into the rest that its beginning and ending were hardly to be distinguished. the bluffs, and the bushes, and the heather-bells had broken silence; at last, so did the woman; and her articulation was but as another phrase of the same discourse as theirs. thrown out on the winds it became twined in with them, and with them it flew away. what she uttered was a lengthened sighing, apparently at something in her mind which had led to her presence here. there was a spasmodic abandonment about it as if, in allowing herself to utter the sound. the woman's brain had authorized what it could not regulate. one point was evident in this; that she had been existing in a suppressed state, and not in one of languor, or stagnation. far away down the valley the faint shine from the window of the inn still lasted on; and a few additional moments proved that the window, or what was within it, had more to do with the woman's sigh than had either her own actions or the scene immediately around. she lifted her left hand, which held a closed telescope. this she rapidly extended, as if she were well accustomed to the operation, and raising it to her eye directed it towards the light beaming from the inn. the handkerchief which had hooded her head was now a little thrown back, her face being somewhat elevated. a profile was visible against the dull monochrome of cloud around her; and it was as though side shadows from the features of sappho and mrs. siddons had converged upwards from the tomb to form an image like neither but suggesting both. this, however, was mere superficiality. in respect of character a face may make certain admissions by its outline; but it fully confesses only in its changes. so much is this the case that what is called the play of the features often helps more in understanding a man or woman than the earnest labours of all the other members together. thus the night revealed little of her whose form it was embracing, for the mobile parts of her countenance could not be seen. at last she gave up her spying attitude, closed the telescope, and turned to the decaying embers. from these no appreciable beams now radiated, except when a more than usually smart gust brushed over their faces and raised a fitful glow which came and went like the blush of a girl. she stooped over the silent circle, and selecting from the brands a piece of stick which bore the largest live coal at its end, brought it to where she had been standing before. she held the brand to the ground, blowing the red coal with her mouth at the same time; till it faintly illuminated the sod, and revealed a small object, which turned out to be an hourglass, though she wore a watch. she blew long enough to show that the sand had all slipped through. "ah!" she said, as if surprised. the light raised by her breath had been very fitful, and a momentary irradiation of flesh was all that it had disclosed of her face. that consisted of two matchless lips and a cheek only, her head being still enveloped. she threw away the stick, took the glass in her hand, the telescope under her arm, and moved on. along the ridge ran a faint foot-track, which the lady followed. those who knew it well called it a path; and, while a mere visitor would have passed it unnoticed even by day, the regular haunters of the heath were at no loss for it at midnight. the whole secret of following these incipient paths, when there was not light enough in the atmosphere to show a turnpike-road, lay in the development of the sense of touch in the feet, which comes with years of night-rambling in little-trodden spots. to a walker practised in such places a difference between impact on maiden herbage, and on the crippled stalks of a slight footway, is perceptible through the thickest boot or shoe. the solitary figure who walked this beat took no notice of the windy tune still played on the dead heath-bells. she did not turn her head to look at a group of dark creatures further on, who fled from her presence as she skirted a ravine where they fed. they were about a score of the small wild ponies known as heath-croppers. they roamed at large on the undulations of egdon, but in numbers too few to detract much from the solitude. the pedestrian noticed nothing just now, and a clue to her abstraction was afforded by a trivial incident. a bramble caught hold of her skirt, and checked her progress. instead of putting it off and hastening along, she yielded herself up to the pull, and stood passively still. when she began to extricate herself it was by turning round and round, and so unwinding the prickly switch. she was in a desponding reverie. her course was in the direction of the small undying fire which had drawn the attention of the men on rainbarrow and of wildeve in the valley below. a faint illumination from its rays began to glow upon her face, and the fire soon revealed itself to be lit, not on the level ground, but on a salient corner or redan of earth, at the junction of two converging bank fences. outside was a ditch, dry except immediately under the fire, where there was a large pool, bearded all round by heather and rushes. in the smooth water of the pool the fire appeared upside down. the banks meeting behind were bare of a hedge, save such as was formed by disconnected tufts of furze, standing upon stems along the top, like impaled heads above a city wall. a white mast, fitted up with spars and other nautical tackle, could be seen rising against the dark clouds whenever the flames played brightly enough to reach it. altogether the scene had much the appearance of a fortification upon which had been kindled a beacon fire. nobody was visible; but ever and anon a whitish something moved above the bank from behind, and vanished again. this was a small human hand, in the act of lifting pieces of fuel into the fire; but for all that could be seen the hand, like that which troubled belshazzar, was there alone. occasionally an ember rolled off the bank, and dropped with a hiss into the pool. at one side of the pool rough steps built of clods enabled any one who wished to do so to mount the bank; which the woman did. within was a paddock in an uncultivated state, though bearing evidence of having once been tilled; but the heath and fern had insidiously crept in, and were reasserting their old supremacy. further ahead were dimly visible an irregular dwelling-house, garden, and outbuildings, backed by a clump of firs. the young lady--for youth had revealed its presence in her buoyant bound up the bank--walked along the top instead of descending inside, and came to the corner where the fire was burning. one reason for the permanence of the blaze was now manifest: the fuel consisted of hard pieces of wood, cleft and sawn--the knotty boles of old thorn trees which grew in twos and threes about the hillsides. a yet unconsumed pile of these lay in the inner angle of the bank; and from this corner the upturned face of a little boy greeted her eyes. he was dilatorily throwing up a piece of wood into the fire every now and then, a business which seemed to have engaged him a considerable part of the evening, for his face was somewhat weary. "i am glad you have come, miss eustacia," he said, with a sigh of relief. "i don't like biding by myself." "nonsense. i have only been a little way for a walk. i have been gone only twenty minutes." "it seemed long," murmured the sad boy. "and you have been so many times." "why, i thought you would be pleased to have a bonfire. are you not much obliged to me for making you one?" "yes; but there's nobody here to play wi' me." "i suppose nobody has come while i've been away?" "nobody except your grandfather: he looked out of doors once for 'ee. i told him you were walking round upon the hill to look at the other bonfires." "a good boy." "i think i hear him coming again, miss." an old man came into the remoter light of the fire from the direction of the homestead. he was the same who had overtaken the reddleman on the road that afternoon. he looked wistfully to the top of the bank at the woman who stood there, and his teeth, which were quite unimpaired, showed like parian from his parted lips. "when are you coming indoors, eustacia?" he asked. "'tis almost bedtime. i've been home these two hours, and am tired out. surely 'tis somewhat childish of you to stay out playing at bonfires so long, and wasting such fuel. my precious thorn roots, the rarest of all firing, that i laid by on purpose for christmas--you have burnt 'em nearly all!" "i promised johnny a bonfire, and it pleases him not to let it go out just yet," said eustacia, in a way which told at once that she was absolute queen here. "grandfather, you go in to bed. i shall follow you soon. you like the fire, don't you, johnny?" the boy looked up doubtfully at her and murmured, "i don't think i want it any longer." her grandfather had turned back again, and did not hear the boy's reply. as soon as the white-haired man had vanished she said in a tone of pique to the child, "ungrateful little boy, how can you contradict me? never shall you have a bonfire again unless you keep it up now. come, tell me you like to do things for me, and don't deny it." the repressed child said, "yes, i do, miss," and continued to stir the fire perfunctorily. "stay a little longer and i will give you a crooked six-pence," said eustacia, more gently. "put in one piece of wood every two or three minutes, but not too much at once. i am going to walk along the ridge a little longer, but i shall keep on coming to you. and if you hear a frog jump into the pond with a flounce like a stone thrown in, be sure you run and tell me, because it is a sign of rain." "yes, eustacia." "miss vye, sir." "miss vy--stacia." "that will do. now put in one stick more." the little slave went on feeding the fire as before. he seemed a mere automaton, galvanized into moving and speaking by the wayward eustacia's will. he might have been the brass statue which albertus magnus is said to have animated just so far as to make it chatter, and move, and be his servant. before going on her walk again the young girl stood still on the bank for a few instants and listened. it was to the full as lonely a place as rainbarrow, though at rather a lower level; and it was more sheltered from wind and weather on account of the few firs to the north. the bank which enclosed the homestead, and protected it from the lawless state of the world without, was formed of thick square clods, dug from the ditch on the outside, and built up with a slight batter or incline, which forms no slight defense where hedges will not grow because of the wind and the wilderness, and where wall materials are unattainable. otherwise the situation was quite open, commanding the whole length of the valley which reached to the river behind wildeve's house. high above this to the right, and much nearer thitherward than the quiet woman inn, the blurred contour of rainbarrow obstructed the sky. after her attentive survey of the wild slopes and hollow ravines a gesture of impatience escaped eustacia. she vented petulant words every now and then, but there were sighs between her words, and sudden listenings between her sighs. descending from her perch she again sauntered off towards rainbarrow, though this time she did not go the whole way. twice she reappeared at intervals of a few minutes and each time she said-- "not any flounce into the pond yet, little man?" "no, miss eustacia," the child replied. "well," she said at last, "i shall soon be going in, and then i will give you the crooked sixpence, and let you go home." "thank'ee, miss eustacia," said the tired stoker, breathing more easily. and eustacia again strolled away from the fire, but this time not towards rainbarrow. she skirted the bank and went round to the wicket before the house, where she stood motionless, looking at the scene. fifty yards off rose the corner of the two converging banks, with the fire upon it; within the bank, lifting up to the fire one stick at a time, just as before, the figure of the little child. she idly watched him as he occasionally climbed up in the nook of the bank and stood beside the brands. the wind blew the smoke, and the child's hair, and the corner of his pinafore, all in the same direction; the breeze died, and the pinafore and hair lay still, and the smoke went up straight. while eustacia looked on from this distance the boy's form visibly started: he slid down the bank and ran across towards the white gate. "well?" said eustacia. "a hop-frog have jumped into the pond. yes, i heard 'en!" "then it is going to rain, and you had better go home. you will not be afraid?" she spoke hurriedly, as if her heart had leapt into her throat at the boy's words. "no, because i shall hae the crooked sixpence." "yes, here it is. now run as fast as you can--not that way--through the garden here. no other boy in the heath has had such a bonfire as yours." the boy, who clearly had had too much of a good thing, marched away into the shadows with alacrity. when he was gone eustacia, leaving her telescope and hour-glass by the gate, brushed forward from the wicket towards the angle of the bank, under the fire. here, screened by the outwork, she waited. in a few moments a splash was audible from the pond outside. had the child been there he would have said that a second frog had jumped in; but by most people the sound would have been likened to the fall of a stone into the water. eustacia stepped upon the bank. "yes?" she said, and held her breath. thereupon the contour of a man became dimly visible against the low-reaching sky over the valley, beyond the outer margin of the pool. he came round it and leapt upon the bank beside her. a low laugh escaped her--the third utterance which the girl had indulged in tonight. the first, when she stood upon rainbarrow, had expressed anxiety; the second, on the ridge, had expressed impatience; the present was one of triumphant pleasure. she let her joyous eyes rest upon him without speaking, as upon some wondrous thing she had created out of chaos. "i have come," said the man, who was wildeve. "you give me no peace. why do you not leave me alone? i have seen your bonfire all the evening." the words were not without emotion, and retained their level tone as if by a careful equipoise between imminent extremes. at this unexpectedly repressing manner in her lover the girl seemed to repress herself also. "of course you have seen my fire," she answered with languid calmness, artificially maintained. "why shouldn't i have a bonfire on the fifth of november, like other denizens of the heath?" "i knew it was meant for me." "how did you know it? i have had no word with you since you--you chose her, and walked about with her, and deserted me entirely, as if i had never been yours life and soul so irretrievably!" "eustacia! could i forget that last autumn at this same day of the month and at this same place you lighted exactly such a fire as a signal for me to come and see you? why should there have been a bonfire again by captain vye's house if not for the same purpose?" "yes, yes--i own it," she cried under her breath, with a drowsy fervour of manner and tone which was quite peculiar to her. "don't begin speaking to me as you did, damon; you will drive me to say words i would not wish to say to you. i had given you up, and resolved not to think of you any more; and then i heard the news, and i came out and got the fire ready because i thought that you had been faithful to me." "what have you heard to make you think that?" said wildeve, astonished. "that you did not marry her!" she murmured exultingly. "and i knew it was because you loved me best, and couldn't do it... damon, you have been cruel to me to go away, and i have said i would never forgive you. i do not think i can forgive you entirely, even now--it is too much for a woman of any spirit to quite overlook." "if i had known you wished to call me up here only to reproach me, i wouldn't have come." "but i don't mind it, and i do forgive you now that you have not married her, and have come back to me!" "who told you that i had not married her?" "my grandfather. he took a long walk today, and as he was coming home he overtook some person who told him of a broken-off wedding: he thought it might be yours, and i knew it was." "does anybody else know?" "i suppose not. now damon, do you see why i lit my signal fire? you did not think i would have lit it if i had imagined you to have become the husband of this woman. it is insulting my pride to suppose that." wildeve was silent; it was evident that he had supposed as much. "did you indeed think i believed you were married?" she again demanded earnestly. "then you wronged me; and upon my life and heart i can hardly bear to recognize that you have such ill thoughts of me! damon, you are not worthy of me: i see it, and yet i love you. never mind, let it go--i must bear your mean opinion as best i may... it is true, is it not," she added with ill-concealed anxiety, on his making no demonstration, "that you could not bring yourself to give me up, and are still going to love me best of all?" "yes; or why should i have come?" he said touchily. "not that fidelity will be any great merit in me after your kind speech about my unworthiness, which should have been said by myself if by anybody, and comes with an ill grace from you. however, the curse of inflammability is upon me, and i must live under it, and take any snub from a woman. it has brought me down from engineering to innkeeping: what lower stage it has in store for me i have yet to learn." he continued to look upon her gloomily. she seized the moment, and throwing back the shawl so that the firelight shone full upon her face and throat, said with a smile, "have you seen anything better than that in your travels?" eustacia was not one to commit herself to such a position without good ground. he said quietly, "no." "not even on the shoulders of thomasin?" "thomasin is a pleasing and innocent woman." "that's nothing to do with it," she cried with quick passionateness. "we will leave her out; there are only you and me now to think of." after a long look at him she resumed with the old quiescent warmth: "must i go on weakly confessing to you things a woman ought to conceal; and own that no words can express how gloomy i have been because of that dreadful belief i held till two hours ago--that you had quite deserted me?" "i am sorry i caused you that pain." "but perhaps it is not wholly because of you that i get gloomy," she archly added. "it is in my nature to feel like that. it was born in my blood, i suppose." "hypochondriasis." "or else it was coming into this wild heath. i was happy enough at budmouth. o the times, o the days at budmouth! but egdon will be brighter again now." "i hope it will," said wildeve moodily. "do you know the consequence of this recall to me, my old darling? i shall come to see you again as before, at rainbarrow." "of course you will." "and yet i declare that until i got here tonight i intended, after this one good-bye, never to meet you again." "i don't thank you for that," she said, turning away, while indignation spread through her like subterranean heat. "you may come again to rainbarrow if you like, but you won't see me; and you may call, but i shall not listen; and you may tempt me, but i won't give myself to you any more." "you have said as much before, sweet; but such natures as yours don't so easily adhere to their words. neither, for the matter of that, do such natures as mine." "this is the pleasure i have won by my trouble," she whispered bitterly. "why did i try to recall you? damon, a strange warring takes place in my mind occasionally. i think when i become calm after your woundings, 'do i embrace a cloud of common fog after all?' you are a chameleon, and now you are at your worst colour. go home, or i shall hate you!" he looked absently towards rainbarrow while one might have counted twenty, and said, as if he did not much mind all this, "yes, i will go home. do you mean to see me again?" "if you own to me that the wedding is broken off because you love me best." "i don't think it would be good policy," said wildeve, smiling. "you would get to know the extent of your power too clearly." "but tell me!" "you know." "where is she now?" "i don't know. i prefer not to speak of her to you. i have not yet married her; i have come in obedience to your call. that is enough." "i merely lit that fire because i was dull, and thought i would get a little excitement by calling you up and triumphing over you as the witch of endor called up samuel. i determined you should come; and you have come! i have shown my power. a mile and half hither, and a mile and half back again to your home--three miles in the dark for me. have i not shown my power?" he shook his head at her. "i know you too well, my eustacia; i know you too well. there isn't a note in you which i don't know; and that hot little bosom couldn't play such a coldblooded trick to save its life. i saw a woman on rainbarrow at dusk looking down towards my house. i think i drew out you before you drew out me." the revived embers of an old passion glowed clearly in wildeve now; and he leant forward as if about to put his face towards her cheek. "o no," she said, intractably moving to the other side of the decayed fire. "what did you mean by that?" "perhaps i may kiss your hand?" "no, you may not." "then i may shake your hand?" "no." "then i wish you good night without caring for either. good-bye, good-bye." she returned no answer, and with the bow of a dancing-master he vanished on the other side of the pool as he had come. eustacia sighed: it was no fragile maiden sigh, but a sigh which shook her like a shiver. whenever a flash of reason darted like an electric light upon her lover--as it sometimes would--and showed his imperfections, she shivered thus. but it was over in a second, and she loved on. she knew that he trifled with her; but she loved on. she scattered the half-burnt brands, went indoors immediately, and up to her bedroom without a light. amid the rustles which denoted her to be undressing in the darkness other heavy breaths frequently came; and the same kind of shudder occasionally moved through her when, ten minutes later, she lay on her bed asleep. vii queen of night eustacia vye was the raw material of a divinity. on olympus she would have done well with a little preparation. she had the passions and instincts which make a model goddess, that is, those which make not quite a model woman. had it been possible for the earth and mankind to be entirely in her grasp for a while, had she handled the distaff, the spindle, and the shears at her own free will, few in the world would have noticed the change of government. there would have been the same inequality of lot, the same heaping up of favours here, of contumely there, the same generosity before justice, the same perpetual dilemmas, the same captious alteration of caresses and blows that we endure now. she was in person full-limbed and somewhat heavy; without ruddiness, as without pallor; and soft to the touch as a cloud. to see her hair was to fancy that a whole winter did not contain darkness enough to form its shadow: it closed over her forehead like nightfall extinguishing the western glow. her nerves extended into those tresses, and her temper could always be softened by stroking them down. when her hair was brushed she would instantly sink into stillness and look like the sphinx. if, in passing under one of the egdon banks, any of its thick skeins were caught, as they sometimes were, by a prickly tuft of the large _ulex europaeus_--which will act as a sort of hairbrush--she would go back a few steps, and pass against it a second time. she had pagan eyes, full of nocturnal mysteries, and their light, as it came and went, and came again, was partially hampered by their oppressive lids and lashes; and of these the under lid was much fuller than it usually is with english women. this enabled her to indulge in reverie without seeming to do so: she might have been believed capable of sleeping without closing them up. assuming that the souls of men and women were visible essences, you could fancy the colour of eustacia's soul to be flame-like. the sparks from it that rose into her dark pupils gave the same impression. the mouth seemed formed less to speak than to quiver, less to quiver than to kiss. some might have added, less to kiss than to curl. viewed sideways, the closing-line of her lips formed, with almost geometric precision, the curve so well known in the arts of design as the cima-recta, or ogee. the sight of such a flexible bend as that on grim egdon was quite an apparition. it was felt at once that the mouth did not come over from sleswig with a band of saxon pirates whose lips met like the two halves of a muffin. one had fancied that such lip-curves were mostly lurking underground in the south as fragments of forgotten marbles. so fine were the lines of her lips that, though full, each corner of her mouth was as clearly cut as the point of a spear. this keenness of corner was only blunted when she was given over to sudden fits of gloom, one of the phases of the night-side of sentiment which she knew too well for her years. her presence brought memories of such things as bourbon roses, rubies, and tropical midnights; her moods recalled lotus-eaters and the march in "athalie"; her motions, the ebb and flow of the sea; her voice, the viola. in a dim light, and with a slight rearrangement of her hair, her general figure might have stood for that of either of the higher female deities. the new moon behind her head, an old helmet upon it, a diadem of accidental dewdrops round her brow, would have been adjuncts sufficient to strike the note of artemis, athena, or hera respectively, with as close an approximation to the antique as that which passes muster on many respected canvases. but celestial imperiousness, love, wrath, and fervour had proved to be somewhat thrown away on netherward egdon. her power was limited, and the consciousness of this limitation had biassed her development. egdon was her hades, and since coming there she had imbibed much of what was dark in its tone, though inwardly and eternally unreconciled thereto. her appearance accorded well with this smouldering rebelliousness, and the shady splendour of her beauty was the real surface of the sad and stifled warmth within her. a true tartarean dignity sat upon her brow, and not factitiously or with marks of constraint, for it had grown in her with years. across the upper part of her head she wore a thin fillet of black velvet, restraining the luxuriance of her shady hair, in a way which added much to this class of majesty by irregularly clouding her forehead. "nothing can embellish a beautiful face more than a narrow band drawn over the brow," says richter. some of the neighbouring girls wore coloured ribbon for the same purpose, and sported metallic ornaments elsewhere; but if anyone suggested coloured ribbon and metallic ornaments to eustacia vye she laughed and went on. why did a woman of this sort live on egdon heath? budmouth was her native place, a fashionable seaside resort at that date. she was the daughter of the bandmaster of a regiment which had been quartered there--a corfiote by birth, and a fine musician--who met his future wife during her trip thither with her father the captain, a man of good family. the marriage was scarcely in accord with the old man's wishes, for the bandmaster's pockets were as light as his occupation. but the musician did his best; adopted his wife's name, made england permanently his home, took great trouble with his child's education, the expenses of which were defrayed by the grandfather, and throve as the chief local musician till her mother's death, when he left off thriving, drank, and died also. the girl was left to the care of her grandfather, who, since three of his ribs became broken in a shipwreck, had lived in this airy perch on egdon, a spot which had taken his fancy because the house was to be had for next to nothing, and because a remote blue tinge on the horizon between the hills, visible from the cottage door, was traditionally believed to be the english channel. she hated the change; she felt like one banished; but here she was forced to abide. thus it happened that in eustacia's brain were juxtaposed the strangest assortment of ideas, from old time and from new. there was no middle distance in her perspective: romantic recollections of sunny afternoons on an esplanade, with military bands, officers, and gallants around, stood like gilded letters upon the dark tablet of surrounding egdon. every bizarre effect that could result from the random intertwining of watering-place glitter with the grand solemnity of a heath, was to be found in her. seeing nothing of human life now, she imagined all the more of what she had seen. where did her dignity come from? by a latent vein from alcinous' line, her father hailing from phaeacia's isle?--or from fitzalan and de vere, her maternal grandfather having had a cousin in the peerage? perhaps it was the gift of heaven--a happy convergence of natural laws. among other things opportunity had of late years been denied her of learning to be undignified, for she lived lonely. isolation on a heath renders vulgarity well-nigh impossible. it would have been as easy for the heath-ponies, bats, and snakes to be vulgar as for her. a narrow life in budmouth might have completely demeaned her. the only way to look queenly without realms or hearts to queen it over is to look as if you had lost them; and eustacia did that to a triumph. in the captain's cottage she could suggest mansions she had never seen. perhaps that was because she frequented a vaster mansion than any of them, the open hills. like the summer condition of the place around her, she was an embodiment of the phrase "a populous solitude"--apparently so listless, void, and quiet, she was really busy and full. to be loved to madness--such was her great desire. love was to her the one cordial which could drive away the eating loneliness of her days. and she seemed to long for the abstraction called passionate love more than for any particular lover. she could show a most reproachful look at times, but it was directed less against human beings than against certain creatures of her mind, the chief of these being destiny, through whose interference she dimly fancied it arose that love alighted only on gliding youth--that any love she might win would sink simultaneously with the sand in the glass. she thought of it with an ever-growing consciousness of cruelty, which tended to breed actions of reckless unconventionality, framed to snatch a year's, a week's, even an hour's passion from anywhere while it could be won. through want of it she had sung without being merry, possessed without enjoying, outshone without triumphing. her loneliness deepened her desire. on egdon, coldest and meanest kisses were at famine prices; and where was a mouth matching hers to be found? fidelity in love for fidelity's sake had less attraction for her than for most women: fidelity because of love's grip had much. a blaze of love, and extinction, was better than a lantern glimmer of the same which should last long years. on this head she knew by prevision what most women learn only by experience: she had mentally walked round love, told the towers thereof, considered its palaces, and concluded that love was but a doleful joy. yet she desired it, as one in a desert would be thankful for brackish water. she often repeated her prayers; not at particular times, but, like the unaffectedly devout, when she desired to pray. her prayer was always spontaneous, and often ran thus, "o deliver my heart from this fearful gloom and loneliness; send me great love from somewhere, else i shall die." her high gods were william the conqueror, strafford, and napoleon buonaparte, as they had appeared in the lady's history used at the establishment in which she was educated. had she been a mother she would have christened her boys such names as saul or sisera in preference to jacob or david, neither of whom she admired. at school she had used to side with the philistines in several battles, and had wondered if pontius pilate were as handsome as he was frank and fair. thus she was a girl of some forwardness of mind, indeed, weighed in relation to her situation among the very rearward of thinkers, very original. her instincts towards social non-comformity were at the root of this. in the matter of holidays, her mood was that of horses who, when turned out to grass, enjoy looking upon their kind at work on the highway. she only valued rest to herself when it came in the midst of other people's labour. hence she hated sundays when all was at rest, and often said they would be the death of her. to see the heathmen in their sunday condition, that is, with their hands in their pockets, their boots newly oiled, and not laced up (a particularly sunday sign), walking leisurely among the turves and furze-faggots they had cut during the week, and kicking them critically as if their use were unknown, was a fearful heaviness to her. to relieve the tedium of this untimely day she would overhaul the cupboards containing her grandfather's old charts and other rubbish, humming saturday-night ballads of the country people the while. but on saturday nights she would frequently sing a psalm, and it was always on a week-day that she read the bible, that she might be unoppressed with a sense of doing her duty. such views of life were to some extent the natural begettings of her situation upon her nature. to dwell on a heath without studying its meanings was like wedding a foreigner without learning his tongue. the subtle beauties of the heath were lost to eustacia; she only caught its vapours. an environment which would have made a contented woman a poet, a suffering woman a devotee, a pious woman a psalmist, even a giddy woman thoughtful, made a rebellious woman saturnine. eustacia had got beyond the vision of some marriage of inexpressible glory; yet, though her emotions were in full vigour, she cared for no meaner union. thus we see her in a strange state of isolation. to have lost the godlike conceit that we may do what we will, and not to have acquired a homely zest for doing what we can, shows a grandeur of temper which cannot be objected to in the abstract, for it denotes a mind that, though disappointed, forswears compromise. but, if congenial to philosophy, it is apt to be dangerous to the commonwealth. in a world where doing means marrying, and the commonwealth is one of hearts and hands, the same peril attends the condition. and so we see our eustacia--for at times she was not altogether unlovable--arriving at that stage of enlightenment which feels that nothing is worth while, and filling up the spare hours of her existence by idealizing wildeve for want of a better object. this was the sole reason of his ascendency: she knew it herself. at moments her pride rebelled against her passion for him, and she even had longed to be free. but there was only one circumstance which could dislodge him, and that was the advent of a greater man. for the rest, she suffered much from depression of spirits, and took slow walks to recover them, in which she carried her grandfather's telescope and her grandmother's hourglass--the latter because of a peculiar pleasure she derived from watching a material representation of time's gradual glide away. she seldom schemed, but when she did scheme, her plans showed rather the comprehensive strategy of a general than the small arts called womanish, though she could utter oracles of delphian ambiguity when she did not choose to be direct. in heaven she will probably sit between the héloïses and the cleopatras. viii those who are found where there is said to be nobody as soon as the sad little boy had withdrawn from the fire he clasped the money tight in the palm of his hand, as if thereby to fortify his courage, and began to run. there was really little danger in allowing a child to go home alone on this part of egdon heath. the distance to the boy's house was not more than three-eighths of a mile, his father's cottage, and one other a few yards further on, forming part of the small hamlet of mistover knap: the third and only remaining house was that of captain vye and eustacia, which stood quite away from the small cottages, and was the loneliest of lonely houses on these thinly populated slopes. he ran until he was out of breath, and then, becoming more courageous, walked leisurely along, singing in an old voice a little song about a sailor-boy and a fair one, and bright gold in store. in the middle of this the child stopped: from a pit under the hill ahead of him shone a light, whence proceeded a cloud of floating dust and a smacking noise. only unusual sights and sounds frightened the boy. the shrivelled voice of the heath did not alarm him, for that was familiar. the thorn-bushes which arose in his path from time to time were less satisfactory, for they whistled gloomily, and had a ghastly habit after dark of putting on the shapes of jumping madmen, sprawling giants, and hideous cripples. lights were not uncommon this evening, but the nature of all of them was different from this. discretion rather than terror prompted the boy to turn back instead of passing the light, with a view of asking miss eustacia vye to let her servant accompany him home. when the boy had reascended to the top of the valley he found the fire to be still burning on the bank, though lower than before. beside it, instead of eustacia's solitary form, he saw two persons, the second being a man. the boy crept along under the bank to ascertain from the nature of the proceedings if it would be prudent to interrupt so splendid a creature as miss eustacia on his poor trivial account. after listening under the bank for some minutes to the talk he turned in a perplexed and doubting manner and began to withdraw as silently as he had come. that he did not, upon the whole, think it advisable to interrupt her conversation with wildeve, without being prepared to bear the whole weight of her displeasure, was obvious. here was a scyllaeo-charybdean position for a poor boy. pausing when again safe from discovery, he finally decided to face the pit phenomenon as the lesser evil. with a heavy sigh he retraced the slope, and followed the path he had followed before. the light had gone, the rising dust had disappeared--he hoped for ever. he marched resolutely along, and found nothing to alarm him till, coming within a few yards of the sandpit, he heard a slight noise in front, which led him to halt. the halt was but momentary, for the noise resolved itself into the steady bites of two animals grazing. "two he'th-croppers down here," he said aloud. "i have never known 'em come down so far afore." the animals were in the direct line of his path, but that the child thought little of; he had played round the fetlocks of horses from his infancy. on coming nearer, however, the boy was somewhat surprised to find that the little creatures did not run off, and that each wore a clog, to prevent his going astray; this signified that they had been broken in. he could now see the interior of the pit, which, being in the side of the hill, had a level entrance. in the innermost corner the square outline of a van appeared, with its back towards him. a light came from the interior, and threw a moving shadow upon the vertical face of gravel at the further side of the pit into which the vehicle faced. the child assumed that this was the cart of a gipsy, and his dread of those wanderers reached but to that mild pitch which titillates rather than pains. only a few inches of mud wall kept him and his family from being gipsies themselves. he skirted the gravel-pit at a respectful distance, ascended the slope, and came forward upon the brow, in order to look into the open door of the van and see the original of the shadow. the picture alarmed the boy. by a little stove inside the van sat a figure red from head to heels--the man who had been thomasin's friend. he was darning a stocking, which was red like the rest of him. moreover, as he darned he smoked a pipe, the stem and bowl of which were red also. at this moment one of the heath-croppers feeding in the outer shadows was audibly shaking off the clog attached to its foot. aroused by the sound the reddleman laid down his stocking, lit a lantern which hung beside him, and came out from the van. in sticking up the candle he lifted the lantern to his face, and the light shone into the whites of his eyes and upon his ivory teeth, which, in contrast with the red surrounding, lent him a startling aspect enough to the gaze of a juvenile. the boy knew too well for his peace of mind upon whose lair he had lighted. uglier persons than gipsies were known to cross egdon at times, and a reddleman was one of them. "how i wish 'twas only a gipsy!" he murmured. the man was by this time coming back from the horses. in his fear of being seen the boy rendered detection certain by nervous motion. the heather and peat stratum overhung the brow of the pit in mats, hiding the actual verge. the boy had stepped beyond the solid ground; the heather now gave way, and down he rolled over the scarp of grey sand to the very foot of the man. the red man opened the lantern and turned it upon the figure of the prostrate boy. "who be ye?" he said. "johnny nunsuch, master!" "what were you doing up there?" "i don't know." "watching me, i suppose?" "yes, master." "what did you watch me for?" "because i was coming home from miss vye's bonfire." "beest hurt?" "no." "why, yes, you be: your hand is bleeding. come under my tilt and let me tie it up." "please let me look for my sixpence." "how did you come by that?" "miss vye gied it to me for keeping up her bonfire." the sixpence was found, and the man went to the van, the boy behind, almost holding his breath. the man took a piece of rag from a satchel containing sewing materials, tore off a strip, which, like everything else, was tinged red, and proceeded to bind up the wound. "my eyes have got foggy-like--please may i sit down, master?" said the boy. "to be sure, poor chap. 'tis enough to make you feel fainty. sit on that bundle." the man finished tying up the gash, and the boy said, "i think i'll go home now, master." "you are rather afraid of me. do you know what i be?" the child surveyed his vermilion figure up and down with much misgiving and finally said, "yes." "well, what?" "the reddleman!" he faltered. "yes, that's what i be. though there's more than one. you little children think there's only one cuckoo, one fox, one giant, one devil, and one reddleman, when there's lots of us all." "is there? you won't carry me off in your bags, will ye, master? 'tis said that the reddleman will sometimes." "nonsense. all that reddlemen do is sell reddle. you see all these bags at the back of my cart? they are not full of little boys--only full of red stuff." "was you born a reddleman?" "no, i took to it. i should be as white as you if i were to give up the trade--that is, i should be white in time--perhaps six months: not at first, because 'tis grow'd into my skin and won't wash out. now, you'll never be afraid of a reddleman again, will ye?" "no, never. willy orchard said he seed a red ghost here t'other day--perhaps that was you?" "i was here t'other day." "were you making that dusty light i saw by now?" "oh yes: i was beating out some bags. and have you had a good bonfire up there? i saw the light. why did miss vye want a bonfire so bad that she should give you sixpence to keep it up?" "i don't know. i was tired, but she made me bide and keep up the fire just the same, while she kept going up across rainbarrow way." "and how long did that last?" "until a hopfrog jumped into the pond." the reddleman suddenly ceased to talk idly. "a hopfrog?" he inquired. "hopfrogs don't jump into ponds this time of year." "they do, for i heard one." "certain-sure?" "yes. she told me afore that i should hear'n; and so i did. they say she's clever and deep, and perhaps she charmed 'en to come." "and what then?" "then i came down here, and i was afeard, and i went back; but i didn't like to speak to her, because of the gentleman, and i came on here again." "a gentleman--ah! what did she say to him, my man?" "told him she supposed he had not married the other woman because he liked his old sweetheart best; and things like that." "what did the gentleman say to her, my sonny?" "he only said he did like her best, and how he was coming to see her again under rainbarrow o' nights." "ha!" cried the reddleman, slapping his hand against the side of his van so that the whole fabric shook under the blow. "that's the secret o't!" the little boy jumped clean from the stool. "my man, don't you be afraid," said the dealer in red, suddenly becoming gentle. "i forgot you were here. that's only a curious way reddlemen have of going mad for a moment; but they don't hurt anybody. and what did the lady say then?" "i can't mind. please, master reddleman, may i go home-along now?" "ay, to be sure you may. i'll go a bit of ways with you." he conducted the boy out of the gravel-pit and into the path leading to his mother's cottage. when the little figure had vanished in the darkness the reddleman returned, resumed his seat by the fire, and proceeded to darn again. ix love leads a shrewd man into strategy reddlemen of the old school are now but seldom seen. since the introduction of railways wessex farmers have managed to do without these mephistophelian visitants, and the bright pigment so largely used by shepherds in preparing sheep for the fair is obtained by other routes. even those who yet survive are losing the poetry of existence which characterized them when the pursuit of the trade meant periodical journeys to the pit whence the material was dug, a regular camping out from month to month, except in the depth of winter, a peregrination among farms which could be counted by the hundred, and in spite of this arab existence the preservation of that respectability which is insured by the never-failing production of a well-lined purse. reddle spreads its lively hues over everything it lights on, and stamps unmistakably, as with the mark of cain, any person who has handled it half an hour. a child's first sight of a reddleman was an epoch in his life. that blood-coloured figure was a sublimation of all the horrid dreams which had afflicted the juvenile spirit since imagination began. "the reddleman is coming for you!" had been the formulated threat of wessex mothers for many generations. he was successfully supplanted for a while, at the beginning of the present century, by buonaparte; but as process of time rendered the latter personage stale and ineffective the older phrase resumed its early prominence. and now the reddleman has in his turn followed buonaparte to the land of worn-out bogeys, and his place is filled by modern inventions. the reddleman lived like a gipsy; but gipsies he scorned. he was about as thriving as travelling basket and mat makers; but he had nothing to do with them. he was more decently born and brought up than the cattle-drovers who passed and repassed him in his wanderings; but they merely nodded to him. his stock was more valuable than that of pedlars; but they did not think so, and passed his cart with eyes straight ahead. he was such an unnatural colour to look at that the men of round-abouts and wax-work shows seemed gentlemen beside him; but he considered them low company, and remained aloof. among all these squatters and folks of the road the reddleman continually found himself; yet he was not of them. his occupation tended to isolate him, and isolated he was mostly seen to be. it was sometimes suggested that reddlemen were criminals for whose misdeeds other men had wrongfully suffered: that in escaping the law they had not escaped their own consciences, and had taken to the trade as a lifelong penance. else why should they have chosen it? in the present case such a question would have been particularly apposite. the reddleman who had entered egdon that afternoon was an instance of the pleasing being wasted to form the ground-work of the singular, when an ugly foundation would have done just as well for that purpose. the one point that was forbidding about this reddleman was his colour. freed from that he would have been as agreeable a specimen of rustic manhood as one would often see. a keen observer might have been inclined to think--which was, indeed, partly the truth--that he had relinquished his proper station in life for want of interest in it. moreover, after looking at him one would have hazarded the guess that good-nature, and an acuteness as extreme as it could be without verging on craft, formed the frame-work of his character. while he darned the stocking his face became rigid with thought. softer expressions followed this, and then again recurred the tender sadness which had sat upon him during his drive along the highway that afternoon. presently his needle stopped. he laid down the stocking, arose from his seat, and took a leather pouch from a hook in the corner of the van. this contained among other articles a brown-paper packet, which, to judge from the hinge-like character of its worn folds, seemed to have been carefully opened and closed a good many times. he sat down on a three-legged milking stool that formed the only seat in the van, and, examining his packet by the light of a candle, took thence an old letter and spread it open. the writing had originally been traced on white paper, but the letter had now assumed a pale red tinge from the accident of its situation; and the black strokes of writing thereon looked like the twigs of a winter hedge against a vermilion sunset. the letter bore a date some two years previous to that time, and was signed "thomasin yeobright." it ran as follows:-- dear diggory venn,--the question you put when you overtook me coming home from pond-close gave me such a surprise that i am afraid i did not make you exactly understand what i meant. of course, if my aunt had not met me i could have explained all then at once, but as it was there was no chance. i have been quite uneasy since, as you know i do not wish to pain you, yet i fear i shall be doing so now in contradicting what i seemed to say then. i cannot, diggory, marry you, or think of letting you call me your sweetheart. i could not, indeed, diggory. i hope you will not much mind my saying this, and feel in a great pain. it makes me very sad when i think it may, for i like you very much, and i always put you next to my cousin clym in my mind. there are so many reasons why we cannot be married that i can hardly name them all in a letter. i did not in the least expect that you were going to speak on such a thing when you followed me, because i had never thought of you in the sense of a lover at all. you must not becall me for laughing when you spoke; you mistook when you thought i laughed at you as a foolish man. i laughed because the idea was so odd, and not at you at all. the great reason with my own personal self for not letting you court me is, that i do not feel the things a woman ought to feel who consents to walk with you with the meaning of being your wife. it is not as you think, that i have another in my mind, for i do not encourage anybody, and never have in my life. another reason is my aunt. she would not, i know, agree to it, even if i wished to have you. she likes you very well, but she will want me to look a little higher than a small dairy-farmer, and marry a professional man. i hope you will not set your heart against me for writing plainly, but i felt you might try to see me again, and it is better that we should not meet. i shall always think of you as a good man, and be anxious for your well-doing. i send this by jane orchard's little maid, --and remain diggory, your faithful friend, thomasin yeobright to mr. venn, dairy-farmer since the arrival of that letter, on a certain autumn morning long ago, the reddleman and thomasin had not met till today. during the interval he had shifted his position even further from hers than it had originally been, by adopting the reddle trade; though he was really in very good circumstances still. indeed, seeing that his expenditure was only one-fourth of his income, he might have been called a prosperous man. rejected suitors take to roaming as naturally as unhived bees; and the business to which he had cynically devoted himself was in many ways congenial to venn. but his wanderings, by mere stress of old emotions, had frequently taken an egdon direction, though he never intruded upon her who attracted him thither. to be in thomasin's heath, and near her, yet unseen, was the one ewe-lamb of pleasure left to him. then came the incident of that day, and the reddleman, still loving her well, was excited by this accidental service to her at a critical juncture to vow an active devotion to her cause, instead of, as hitherto, sighing and holding aloof. after what had happened, it was impossible that he should not doubt the honesty of wildeve's intentions. but her hope was apparently centred upon him; and dismissing his regrets venn determined to aid her to be happy in her own chosen way. that this way was, of all others, the most distressing to himself, was awkward enough; but the reddleman's love was generous. his first active step in watching over thomasin's interests was taken about seven o'clock the next evening, and was dictated by the news which he had learnt from the sad boy. that eustacia was somehow the cause of wildeve's carelessness in relation to the marriage had at once been venn's conclusion on hearing of the secret meeting between them. it did not occur to his mind that eustacia's love-signal to wildeve was the tender effect upon the deserted beauty of the intelligence which her grandfather had brought home. his instinct was to regard her as a conspirator against rather than as an antecedent obstacle to thomasin's happiness. during the day he had been exceedingly anxious to learn the condition of thomasin; but he did not venture to intrude upon a threshold to which he was a stranger, particularly at such an unpleasant moment as this. he had occupied his time in moving with his ponies and load to a new point in the heath, eastward to his previous station; and here he selected a nook with a careful eye to shelter from wind and rain, which seemed to mean that his stay there was to be a comparatively extended one. after this he returned on foot some part of the way that he had come; and, it being now dark, he diverged to the left till he stood behind a holly-bush on the edge of a pit not twenty yards from rainbarrow. he watched for a meeting there, but he watched in vain. nobody except himself came near the spot that night. but the loss of his labour produced little effect upon the reddleman. he had stood in the shoes of tantalus, and seemed to look upon a certain mass of disappointment as the natural preface to all realizations, without which preface they would give cause for alarm. the same hour the next evening found him again at the same place; but eustacia and wildeve, the expected trysters, did not appear. he pursued precisely the same course yet four nights longer, and without success. but on the next, being the day-week of their previous meeting, he saw a female shape floating along the ridge and the outline of a young man ascending from the valley. they met in the little ditch encircling the tumulus--the original excavation from which it had been thrown up by the ancient british people. the reddleman, stung with suspicion of wrong to thomasin, was aroused to strategy in a moment. he instantly left the bush and crept forward on his hands and knees. when he had got as close as he might safely venture without discovery he found that, owing to a cross-wind, the conversation of the trysting pair could not be overheard. near him, as in divers places about the heath, were areas strewn with large turves, which lay edgeways and upside down awaiting removal by timothy fairway, previous to the winter weather. he took two of these as he lay, and dragged them over him till one covered his head and shoulders, the other his back and legs. the reddleman would now have been quite invisible, even by daylight; the turves, standing upon him with the heather upwards, looked precisely as if they were growing. he crept along again, and the turves upon his back crept with him. had he approached without any covering the chances are that he would not have been perceived in the dusk; approaching thus, it was as though he burrowed underground. in this manner he came quite close to where the two were standing. "wish to consult me on the matter?" reached his ears in the rich, impetuous accents of eustacia vye. "consult me? it is an indignity to me to talk so: i won't bear it any longer!" she began weeping. "i have loved you, and have shown you that i loved you, much to my regret; and yet you can come and say in that frigid way that you wish to consult with me whether it would not be better to marry thomasin. better--of course it would be. marry her: she is nearer to your own position in life than i am!" "yes, yes; that's very well," said wildeve peremptorily. "but we must look at things as they are. whatever blame may attach to me for having brought it about, thomasin's position is at present much worse than yours. i simply tell you that i am in a strait." "but you shall not tell me! you must see that it is only harassing me. damon, you have not acted well; you have sunk in my opinion. you have not valued my courtesy--the courtesy of a lady in loving you--who used to think of far more ambitious things. but it was thomasin's fault. she won you away from me, and she deserves to suffer for it. where is she staying now? not that i care, nor where i am myself. ah, if i were dead and gone how glad she would be! where is she, i ask?" "thomasin is now staying at her aunt's shut up in a bedroom, and keeping out of everybody's sight," he said indifferently. "i don't think you care much about her even now," said eustacia with sudden joyousness: "for if you did you wouldn't talk so coolly about her. do you talk so coolly to her about me? ah, i expect you do! why did you originally go away from me? i don't think i can ever forgive you, except on one condition, that whenever you desert me, you come back again, sorry that you served me so." "i never wish to desert you." "i do not thank you for that. i should hate it to be all smooth. indeed, i think i like you to desert me a little once now and then. love is the dismallest thing where the lover is quite honest. o, it is a shame to say so; but it is true!" she indulged in a little laugh. "my low spirits begin at the very idea. don't you offer me tame love, or away you go!" "i wish tamsie were not such a confoundedly good little woman," said wildeve, "so that i could be faithful to you without injuring a worthy person. it is i who am the sinner after all; i am not worth the little finger of either of you." "but you must not sacrifice yourself to her from any sense of justice," replied eustacia quickly. "if you do not love her it is the most merciful thing in the long run to leave her as she is. that's always the best way. there, now i have been unwomanly, i suppose. when you have left me i am always angry with myself for things that i have said to you." wildeve walked a pace or two among the heather without replying. the pause was filled up by the intonation of a pollard thorn a little way to windward, the breezes filtering through its unyielding twigs as through a strainer. it was as if the night sang dirges with clenched teeth. she continued, half sorrowfully, "since meeting you last, it has occurred to me once or twice that perhaps it was not for love of me you did not marry her. tell me, damon: i'll try to bear it. had i nothing whatever to do with the matter?" "do you press me to tell?" "yes, i must know. i see i have been too ready to believe in my own power." "well, the immediate reason was that the license would not do for the place, and before i could get another she ran away. up to that point you had nothing to do with it. since then her aunt has spoken to me in a tone which i don't at all like." "yes, yes! i am nothing in it--i am nothing in it. you only trifle with me. heaven, what can i, eustacia vye, be made of to think so much of you!" "nonsense; do not be so passionate... eustacia, how we roved among these bushes last year, when the hot days had got cool, and the shades of the hills kept us almost invisible in the hollows!" she remained in moody silence till she said, "yes; and how i used to laugh at you for daring to look up to me! but you have well made me suffer for that since." "yes, you served me cruelly enough until i thought i had found some one fairer than you. a blessed find for me, eustacia." "do you still think you found somebody fairer?" "sometimes i do, sometimes i don't. the scales are balanced so nicely that a feather would turn them." "but don't you really care whether i meet you or whether i don't?" she said slowly. "i care a little, but not enough to break my rest," replied the young man languidly. "no, all that's past. i find there are two flowers where i thought there was only one. perhaps there are three, or four, or any number as good as the first... mine is a curious fate. who would have thought that all this could happen to me?" she interrupted with a suppressed fire of which either love or anger seemed an equally possible issue, "do you love me now?" "who can say?" "tell me; i will know it!" "i do, and i do not," said he mischievously. "that is, i have my times and my seasons. one moment you are too tall, another moment you are too do-nothing, another too melancholy, another too dark, another i don't know what, except--that you are not the whole world to me that you used to be, my dear. but you are a pleasant lady to know, and nice to meet, and i dare say as sweet as ever--almost." eustacia was silent, and she turned from him, till she said, in a voice of suspended mightiness, "i am for a walk, and this is my way." "well, i can do worse than follow you." "you know you can't do otherwise, for all your moods and changes!" she answered defiantly. "say what you will; try as you may; keep away from me all that you can--you will never forget me. you will love me all your life long. you would jump to marry me!" "so i would!" said wildeve. "such strange thoughts as i've had from time to time, eustacia; and they come to me this moment. you hate the heath as much as ever; that i know." "i do," she murmured deeply. "'tis my cross, my shame, and will be my death!" "i abhor it too," said he. "how mournfully the wind blows round us now!" she did not answer. its tone was indeed solemn and pervasive. compound utterances addressed themselves to their senses, and it was possible to view by ear the features of the neighbourhood. acoustic pictures were returned from the darkened scenery; they could hear where the tracts of heather began and ended; where the furze was growing stalky and tall; where it had been recently cut; in what direction the fir-clump lay, and how near was the pit in which the hollies grew; for these differing features had their voices no less than their shapes and colours. "god, how lonely it is!" resumed wildeve. "what are picturesque ravines and mists to us who see nothing else? why should we stay here? will you go with me to america? i have kindred in wisconsin." "that wants consideration." "it seems impossible to do well here, unless one were a wild bird or a landscape-painter. well?" "give me time," she softly said, taking his hand. "america is so far away. are you going to walk with me a little way?" as eustacia uttered the latter words she retired from the base of the barrow, and wildeve followed her, so that the reddleman could hear no more. he lifted the turves and arose. their black figures sank and disappeared from against the sky. they were as two horns which the sluggish heath had put forth from its crown, like a mollusc, and had now again drawn in. the reddleman's walk across the vale, and over into the next where his cart lay, was not sprightly for a slim young fellow of twenty-four. his spirit was perturbed to aching. the breezes that blew around his mouth in that walk carried off upon them the accents of a commination. he entered the van, where there was a fire in a stove. without lighting his candle he sat down at once on the three-legged stool, and pondered on what he had seen and heard touching that still loved-one of his. he uttered a sound which was neither sigh nor sob, but was even more indicative than either of a troubled mind. "my tamsie," he whispered heavily. "what can be done? yes, i will see that eustacia vye." x a desperate attempt at persuasion the next morning, at the time when the height of the sun appeared very insignificant from any part of the heath as compared with the altitude of rainbarrow, and when all the little hills in the lower levels were like an archipelago in a fog-formed aegean, the reddleman came from the brambled nook which he had adopted as his quarters and ascended the slopes of mistover knap. though these shaggy hills were apparently so solitary, several keen round eyes were always ready on such a wintry morning as this to converge upon a passer-by. feathered species sojourned here in hiding which would have created wonder if found elsewhere. a bustard haunted the spot, and not many years before this five and twenty might have been seen in egdon at one time. marsh-harriers looked up from the valley by wildeve's. a cream-coloured courser had used to visit this hill, a bird so rare that not more than a dozen have ever been seen in england; but a barbarian rested neither night nor day till he had shot the african truant, and after that event cream-coloured coursers thought fit to enter egdon no more. a traveller who should walk and observe any of these visitants as venn observed them now could feel himself to be in direct communication with regions unknown to man. here in front of him was a wild mallard--just arrived from the home of the north wind. the creature brought within him an amplitude of northern knowledge. glacial catastrophes, snowstorm episodes, glittering auroral effects, polaris in the zenith, franklin underfoot,--the category of his commonplaces was wonderful. but the bird, like many other philosophers, seemed as he looked at the reddleman to think that a present moment of comfortable reality was worth a decade of memories. venn passed on through these towards the house of the isolated beauty who lived up among them and despised them. the day was sunday; but as going to church, except to be married or buried, was exceptional at egdon, this made little difference. he had determined upon the bold stroke of asking for an interview with miss vye--to attack her position as thomasin's rival either by art or by storm, showing therein, somewhat too conspicuously, the want of gallantry characteristic of a certain astute sort of men, from clowns to kings. the great frederick making war on the beautiful archduchess, napoleon refusing terms to the beautiful queen of prussia, were not more dead to difference of sex than the reddleman was, in his peculiar way, in planning the displacement of eustacia. to call at the captain's cottage was always more or less an undertaking for the inferior inhabitants. though occasionally chatty, his moods were erratic, and nobody could be certain how he would behave at any particular moment. eustacia was reserved, and lived very much to herself. except the daughter of one of the cotters, who was their servant, and a lad who worked in the garden and stable, scarcely anyone but themselves ever entered the house. they were the only genteel people of the district except the yeobrights, and though far from rich, they did not feel that necessity for preserving a friendly face towards every man, bird, and beast which influenced their poorer neighbours. when the reddleman entered the garden the old man was looking through his glass at the stain of blue sea in the distant landscape, the little anchors on his buttons twinkling in the sun. he recognized venn as his companion on the highway, but made no remark on that circumstance, merely saying, "ah, reddleman--you here? have a glass of grog?" venn declined, on the plea of it being too early, and stated that his business was with miss vye. the captain surveyed him from cap to waistcoat and from waistcoat to leggings for a few moments, and finally asked him to go indoors. miss vye was not to be seen by anybody just then; and the reddleman waited in the window-bench of the kitchen, his hands hanging across his divergent knees, and his cap hanging from his hands. "i suppose the young lady is not up yet?" he presently said to the servant. "not quite yet. folks never call upon ladies at this time of day." "then i'll step outside," said venn. "if she is willing to see me, will she please send out word, and i'll come in." the reddleman left the house and loitered on the hill adjoining. a considerable time elapsed, and no request for his presence was brought. he was beginning to think that his scheme had failed, when he beheld the form of eustacia herself coming leisurely towards him. a sense of novelty in giving audience to that singular figure had been sufficient to draw her forth. she seemed to feel, after a bare look at diggory venn, that the man had come on a strange errand, and that he was not so mean as she had thought him; for her close approach did not cause him to writhe uneasily, or shift his feet, or show any of those little signs which escape an ingenuous rustic at the advent of the uncommon in womankind. on his inquiring if he might have a conversation with her she replied, "yes, walk beside me," and continued to move on. before they had gone far it occurred to the perspicacious reddleman that he would have acted more wisely by appearing less unimpressionable, and he resolved to correct the error as soon as he could find opportunity. "i have made so bold, miss, as to step across and tell you some strange news which has come to my ears about that man." "ah! what man?" he jerked his elbow to the south-east--the direction of the quiet woman. eustacia turned quickly to him. "do you mean mr. wildeve?" "yes, there is trouble in a household on account of him, and i have come to let you know of it, because i believe you might have power to drive it away." "i? what is the trouble?" "it is quite a secret. it is that he may refuse to marry thomasin yeobright after all." eustacia, though set inwardly pulsing by his words, was equal to her part in such a drama as this. she replied coldly, "i do not wish to listen to this, and you must not expect me to interfere." "but, miss, you will hear one word?" "i cannot. i am not interested in the marriage, and even if i were i could not compel mr. wildeve to do my bidding." "as the only lady on the heath i think you might," said venn with subtle indirectness. "this is how the case stands. mr. wildeve would marry thomasin at once, and make all matters smooth, if so be there were not another woman in the case. this other woman is some person he has picked up with, and meets on the heath occasionally, i believe. he will never marry her, and yet through her he may never marry the woman who loves him dearly. now, if you, miss, who have so much sway over us men-folk, were to insist that he should treat your young neighbour tamsin with honourable kindness and give up the other woman, he would perhaps do it, and save her a good deal of misery." "ah, my life!" said eustacia, with a laugh which unclosed her lips so that the sun shone into her mouth as into a tulip, and lent it a similar scarlet fire. "you think too much of my influence over men-folk indeed, reddleman. if i had such a power as you imagine i would go straight and use it for the good of anybody who has been kind to me--which thomasin yeobright has not particularly, to my knowledge." "can it be that you really don't know of it--how much she had always thought of you?" "i have never heard a word of it. although we live only two miles apart i have never been inside her aunt's house in my life." the superciliousness that lurked in her manner told venn that thus far he had utterly failed. he inwardly sighed and felt it necessary to unmask his second argument. "well, leaving that out of the question, 'tis in your power, i assure you, miss vye, to do a great deal of good to another woman." she shook her head. "your comeliness is law with mr. wildeve. it is law with all men who see 'ee. they say, 'this well-favoured lady coming--what's her name? how handsome!' handsomer than thomasin yeobright," the reddleman persisted, saying to himself, "god forgive a rascal for lying!" and she was handsomer, but the reddleman was far from thinking so. there was a certain obscurity in eustacia's beauty, and venn's eye was not trained. in her winter dress, as now, she was like the tiger-beetle, which, when observed in dull situations, seems to be of the quietest neutral colour, but under a full illumination blazes with dazzling splendour. eustacia could not help replying, though conscious that she endangered her dignity thereby. "many women are lovelier than thomasin," she said, "so not much attaches to that." the reddleman suffered the wound and went on: "he is a man who notices the looks of women, and you could twist him to your will like withywind, if you only had the mind." "surely what she cannot do who has been so much with him i cannot do living up here away from him." the reddleman wheeled and looked her in the face. "miss vye!" he said. "why do you say that--as if you doubted me?" she spoke faintly, and her breathing was quick. "the idea of your speaking in that tone to me!" she added, with a forced smile of hauteur. "what could have been in your mind to lead you to speak like that?" "miss vye, why should you make believe that you don't know this man?--i know why, certainly. he is beneath you, and you are ashamed." "you are mistaken. what do you mean?" the reddleman had decided to play the card of truth. "i was at the meeting by rainbarrow last night and heard every word," he said. "the woman that stands between wildeve and thomasin is yourself." it was a disconcerting lift of the curtain, and the mortification of candaules' wife glowed in her. the moment had arrived when her lip would tremble in spite of herself, and when the gasp could no longer be kept down. "i am unwell," she said hurriedly. "no--it is not that--i am not in a humour to hear you further. leave me, please." "i must speak, miss vye, in spite of paining you. what i would put before you is this. however it may come about--whether she is to blame, or you--her case is without doubt worse than yours. your giving up mr. wildeve will be a real advantage to you, for how could you marry him? now she cannot get off so easily--everybody will blame her if she loses him. then i ask you--not because her right is best, but because her situation is worst--to give him up to her." "no--i won't, i won't!" she said impetuously, quite forgetful of her previous manner towards the reddleman as an underling. "nobody has ever been served so! it was going on well--i will not be beaten down--by an inferior woman like her. it is very well for you to come and plead for her, but is she not herself the cause of all her own trouble? am i not to show favour to any person i may choose without asking permission of a parcel of cottagers? she has come between me and my inclination, and now that she finds herself rightly punished she gets you to plead for her!" "indeed," said venn earnestly, "she knows nothing whatever about it. it is only i who ask you to give him up. it will be better for her and you both. people will say bad things if they find out that a lady secretly meets a man who has ill-used another woman." "i have not injured her--he was mine before he was hers! he came back--because--because he liked me best!" she said wildly. "but i lose all self-respect in talking to you. what am i giving way to!" "i can keep secrets," said venn gently. "you need not fear. i am the only man who knows of your meetings with him. there is but one thing more to speak of, and then i will be gone. i heard you say to him that you hated living here--that egdon heath was a jail to you." "i did say so. there is a sort of beauty in the scenery, i know; but it is a jail to me. the man you mention does not save me from that feeling, though he lives here. i should have cared nothing for him had there been a better person near." the reddleman looked hopeful; after these words from her his third attempt seemed promising. "as we have now opened our minds a bit, miss," he said, "i'll tell you what i have got to propose. since i have taken to the reddle trade i travel a good deal, as you know." she inclined her head, and swept round so that her eyes rested in the misty vale beneath them. "and in my travels i go near budmouth. now budmouth is a wonderful place--wonderful--a great salt sheening sea bending into the land like a bow--thousands of gentlepeople walking up and down--bands of music playing--officers by sea and officers by land walking among the rest--out of every ten folks you meet nine of 'em in love." "i know it," she said disdainfully. "i know budmouth better than you. i was born there. my father came to be a military musician there from abroad. ah, my soul, budmouth! i wish i was there now." the reddleman was surprised to see how a slow fire could blaze on occasion. "if you were, miss," he replied, "in a week's time you would think no more of wildeve than of one of those he'th-croppers that we see yond. now, i could get you there." "how?" said eustacia, with intense curiosity in her heavy eyes. "my uncle has been for five and twenty years the trusty man of a rich widow-lady who has a beautiful house facing the sea. this lady has become old and lame, and she wants a young company-keeper to read and sing to her, but can't get one to her mind to save her life, though she've advertised in the papers, and tried half a dozen. she would jump to get you, and uncle would make it all easy." "i should have to work, perhaps?" "no, not real work: you'd have a little to do, such as reading and that. you would not be wanted till new year's day." "i knew it meant work," she said, drooping to languor again. "i confess there would be a trifle to do in the way of amusing her; but though idle people might call it work, working people would call it play. think of the company and the life you'd lead, miss; the gaiety you'd see, and the gentleman you'd marry. my uncle is to inquire for a trustworthy young lady from the country, as she don't like town girls." "it is to wear myself out to please her! and i won't go. o, if i could live in a gay town as a lady should, and go my own ways, and do my own doings, i'd give the wrinkled half of my life! yes, reddleman, that would i." "help me to get thomasin happy, miss, and the chance shall be yours," urged her companion. "chance--'tis no chance," she said proudly. "what can a poor man like you offer me, indeed?--i am going indoors. i have nothing more to say. don't your horses want feeding, or your reddlebags want mending, or don't you want to find buyers for your goods, that you stay idling here like this?" venn spoke not another word. with his hands behind him he turned away, that she might not see the hopeless disappointment in his face. the mental clearness and power he had found in this lonely girl had indeed filled his manner with misgiving even from the first few minutes of close quarters with her. her youth and situation had led him to expect a simplicity quite at the beck of his method. but a system of inducement which might have carried weaker country lasses along with it had merely repelled eustacia. as a rule, the word budmouth meant fascination on egdon. that royal port and watering place, if truly mirrored in the minds of the heath-folk, must have combined, in a charming and indescribable manner, a carthaginian bustle of building with tarentine luxuriousness and baian health and beauty. eustacia felt little less extravagantly about the place; but she would not sink her independence to get there. when diggory venn had gone quite away, eustacia walked to the bank and looked down the wild and picturesque vale towards the sun, which was also in the direction of wildeve's. the mist had now so far collapsed that the tips of the trees and bushes around his house could just be discerned, as if boring upwards through a vast white cobweb which cloaked them from the day. there was no doubt that her mind was inclined thitherward; indefinitely, fancifully--twining and untwining about him as the single object within her horizon on which dreams might crystallize. the man who had begun by being merely her amusement, and would never have been more than her hobby but for his skill in deserting her at the right moments, was now again her desire. cessation in his love-making had revivified her love. such feeling as eustacia had idly given to wildeve was dammed into a flood by thomasin. she had used to tease wildeve, but that was before another had favoured him. often a drop of irony into an indifferent situation renders the whole piquant. "i will never give him up--never!" she said impetuously. the reddleman's hint that rumour might show her to disadvantage had no permanent terror for eustacia. she was as unconcerned at that contingency as a goddess at a lack of linen. this did not originate in inherent shamelessness, but in her living too far from the world to feel the impact of public opinion. zenobia in the desert could hardly have cared what was said about her at rome. as far as social ethics were concerned eustacia approached the savage state, though in emotion she was all the while an epicure. she had advanced to the secret recesses of sensuousness, yet had hardly crossed the threshold of conventionality. xi the dishonesty of an honest woman the reddleman had left eustacia's presence with desponding views on thomasin's future happiness; but he was awakened to the fact that one other channel remained untried by seeing, as he followed the way to his van, the form of mrs. yeobright slowly walking towards the quiet woman. he went across to her; and could almost perceive in her anxious face that this journey of hers to wildeve was undertaken with the same object as his own to eustacia. she did not conceal the fact. "then," said the reddleman, "you may as well leave it alone, mrs. yeobright." "i half think so myself," she said. "but nothing else remains to be done besides pressing the question upon him." "i should like to say a word first," said venn firmly. "mr. wildeve is not the only man who has asked thomasin to marry him; and why should not another have a chance? mrs. yeobright, i should be glad to marry your niece, and would have done it any time these last two years. there, now it is out, and i have never told anybody before but herself." mrs. yeobright was not demonstrative, but her eyes involuntarily glanced towards his singular though shapely figure. "looks are not everything," said the reddleman, noticing the glance. "there's many a calling that don't bring in so much as mine, if it comes to money; and perhaps i am not so much worse off than wildeve. there is nobody so poor as these professional fellows who have failed; and if you shouldn't like my redness--well, i am not red by birth, you know; i only took to this business for a freak; and i might turn my hand to something else in good time." "i am much obliged to you for your interest in my niece; but i fear there would be objections. more than that, she is devoted to this man." "true; or i shouldn't have done what i have this morning." "otherwise there would be no pain in the case, and you would not see me going to his house now. what was thomasin's answer when you told her of your feelings?" "she wrote that you would object to me; and other things." "she was in a measure right. you must not take this unkindly: i merely state it as a truth. you have been good to her, and we do not forget it. but as she was unwilling on her own account to be your wife, that settles the point without my wishes being concerned." "yes. but there is a difference between then and now, ma'am. she is distressed now, and i have thought that if you were to talk to her about me, and think favourably of me yourself, there might be a chance of winning her round, and getting her quite independent of this wildeve's backward and forward play, and his not knowing whether he'll have her or no." mrs. yeobright shook her head. "thomasin thinks, and i think with her, that she ought to be wildeve's wife, if she means to appear before the world without a slur upon her name. if they marry soon, everybody will believe that an accident did really prevent the wedding. if not, it may cast a shade upon her character--at any rate make her ridiculous. in short, if it is anyhow possible they must marry now." "i thought that till half an hour ago. but, after all, why should her going off with him to anglebury for a few hours do her any harm? anybody who knows how pure she is will feel any such thought to be quite unjust. i have been trying this morning to help on this marriage with wildeve--yes, i, ma'am--in the belief that i ought to do it, because she was so wrapped up in him. but i much question if i was right, after all. however, nothing came of it. and now i offer myself." mrs. yeobright appeared disinclined to enter further into the question. "i fear i must go on," she said. "i do not see that anything else can be done." and she went on. but though this conversation did not divert thomasin's aunt from her purposed interview with wildeve, it made a considerable difference in her mode of conducting that interview. she thanked god for the weapon which the reddleman had put into her hands. wildeve was at home when she reached the inn. he showed her silently into the parlour, and closed the door. mrs. yeobright began-- "i have thought it my duty to call today. a new proposal has been made to me, which has rather astonished me. it will affect thomasin greatly; and i have decided that it should at least be mentioned to you." "yes? what is it?" he said civilly. "it is, of course, in reference to her future. you may not be aware that another man has shown himself anxious to marry thomasin. now, though i have not encouraged him yet, i cannot conscientiously refuse him a chance any longer. i don't wish to be short with you; but i must be fair to him and to her." "who is the man?" said wildeve with surprise. "one who has been in love with her longer than she has with you. he proposed to her two years ago. at that time she refused him." "well?" "he has seen her lately, and has asked me for permission to pay his addresses to her. she may not refuse him twice." "what is his name?" mrs. yeobright declined to say. "he is a man thomasin likes," she added, "and one whose constancy she respects at least. it seems to me that what she refused then she would be glad to get now. she is much annoyed at her awkward position." "she never once told me of this old lover." "the gentlest women are not such fools as to show every card." "well, if she wants him i suppose she must have him." "it is easy enough to say that; but you don't see the difficulty. he wants her much more than she wants him; and before i can encourage anything of the sort i must have a clear understanding from you that you will not interfere to injure an arrangement which i promote in the belief that it is for the best. suppose, when they are engaged, and everything is smoothly arranged for their marriage, that you should step between them and renew your suit? you might not win her back, but you might cause much unhappiness." "of course i should do no such thing," said wildeve "but they are not engaged yet. how do you know that thomasin would accept him?" "that's a question i have carefully put to myself; and upon the whole the probabilities are in favour of her accepting him in time. i flatter myself that i have some influence over her. she is pliable, and i can be strong in my recommendations of him." "and in your disparagement of me at the same time." "well, you may depend upon my not praising you," she said drily. "and if this seems like manoeuvring, you must remember that her position is peculiar, and that she has been hardly used. i shall also be helped in making the match by her own desire to escape from the humiliation of her present state; and a woman's pride in these cases will lead her a very great way. a little managing may be required to bring her round; but i am equal to that, provided that you agree to the one thing indispensable; that is, to make a distinct declaration that she is to think no more of you as a possible husband. that will pique her into accepting him." "i can hardly say that just now, mrs. yeobright. it is so sudden." "and so my whole plan is interfered with! it is very inconvenient that you refuse to help my family even to the small extent of saying distinctly you will have nothing to do with us." wildeve reflected uncomfortably. "i confess i was not prepared for this," he said. "of course i'll give her up if you wish, if it is necessary. but i thought i might be her husband." "we have heard that before." "now, mrs. yeobright, don't let us disagree. give me a fair time. i don't want to stand in the way of any better chance she may have; only i wish you had let me know earlier. i will write to you or call in a day or two. will that suffice?" "yes," she replied, "provided you promise not to communicate with thomasin without my knowledge." "i promise that," he said. and the interview then terminated, mrs. yeobright returning homeward as she had come. by far the greatest effect of her simple strategy on that day was, as often happens, in a quarter quite outside her view when arranging it. in the first place, her visit sent wildeve the same evening after dark to eustacia's house at mistover. at this hour the lonely dwelling was closely blinded and shuttered from the chill and darkness without. wildeve's clandestine plan with her was to take a little gravel in his hand and hold it to the crevice at the top of the window shutter, which was on the outside, so that it should fall with a gentle rustle, resembling that of a mouse, between shutter and glass. this precaution in attracting her attention was to avoid arousing the suspicions of her grandfather. the soft words, "i hear; wait for me," in eustacia's voice from within told him that she was alone. he waited in his customary manner by walking round the enclosure and idling by the pool, for wildeve was never asked into the house by his proud though condescending mistress. she showed no sign of coming out in a hurry. the time wore on, and he began to grow impatient. in the course of twenty minutes she appeared from round the corner, and advanced as if merely taking an airing. "you would not have kept me so long had you known what i come about," he said with bitterness. "still, you are worth waiting for." "what has happened?" said eustacia. "i did not know you were in trouble. i too am gloomy enough." "i am not in trouble," said he. "it is merely that affairs have come to a head, and i must take a clear course." "what course is that?" she asked with attentive interest. "and can you forget so soon what i proposed to you the other night? why, take you from this place, and carry you away with me abroad." "i have not forgotten. but why have you come so unexpectedly to repeat the question, when you only promised to come next saturday? i thought i was to have plenty of time to consider." "yes, but the situation is different now." "explain to me." "i don't want to explain, for i may pain you." "but i must know the reason of this hurry." "it is simply my ardour, dear eustacia. everything is smooth now." "then why are you so ruffled?" "i am not aware of it. all is as it should be. mrs. yeobright--but she is nothing to us." "ah, i knew she had something to do with it! come, i don't like reserve." "no--she has nothing. she only says she wishes me to give up thomasin because another man is anxious to marry her. the woman, now she no longer needs me, actually shows off!" wildeve's vexation had escaped him in spite of himself. eustacia was silent a long while. "you are in the awkward position of an official who is no longer wanted," she said in a changed tone. "it seems so. but i have not yet seen thomasin." "and that irritates you. don't deny it, damon. you are actually nettled by this slight from an unexpected quarter." "well?" "and you come to get me because you cannot get her. this is certainly a new position altogether. i am to be a stop-gap." "please remember that i proposed the same thing the other day." eustacia again remained in a sort of stupefied silence. what curious feeling was this coming over her? was it really possible that her interest in wildeve had been so entirely the result of antagonism that the glory and the dream departed from the man with the first sound that he was no longer coveted by her rival? she was, then, secure of him at last. thomasin no longer required him. what a humiliating victory! he loved her best, she thought; and yet--dared she to murmur such treacherous criticism ever so softly?--what was the man worth whom a woman inferior to herself did not value? the sentiment which lurks more or less in all animate nature--that of not desiring the undesired of others--was lively as a passion in the super-subtle, epicurean heart of eustacia. her social superiority over him, which hitherto had scarcely ever impressed her, became unpleasantly insistent, and for the first time she felt that she had stooped in loving him. "well, darling, you agree?" said wildeve. "if it could be london, or even budmouth, instead of america," she murmured languidly. "well, i will think. it is too great a thing for me to decide offhand. i wish i hated the heath less--or loved you more." "you can be painfully frank. you loved me a month ago warmly enough to go anywhere with me." "and you loved thomasin." "yes, perhaps that was where the reason lay," he returned, with almost a sneer. "i don't hate her now." "exactly. the only thing is that you can no longer get her." "come--no taunts, eustacia, or we shall quarrel. if you don't agree to go with me, and agree shortly, i shall go by myself." "or try thomasin again. damon, how strange it seems that you could have married her or me indifferently, and only have come to me because i am--cheapest! yes, yes--it is true. there was a time when i should have exclaimed against a man of that sort, and been quite wild; but it is all past now." "will you go, dearest? come secretly with me to bristol, marry me, and turn our backs upon this dog-hole of england for ever? say yes." "i want to get away from here at almost any cost," she said with weariness, "but i don't like to go with you. give me more time to decide." "i have already," said wildeve. "well, i give you one more week." "a little longer, so that i may tell you decisively. i have to consider so many things. fancy thomasin being anxious to get rid of you! i cannot forget it." "never mind that. say monday week. i will be here precisely at this time." "let it be at rainbarrow," said she. "this is too near home; my grandfather may be walking out." "thank you, dear. on monday week at this time i will be at the barrow. till then good-bye." "good-bye. no, no, you must not touch me now. shaking hands is enough till i have made up my mind." eustacia watched his shadowy form till it had disappeared. she placed her hand to her forehead and breathed heavily; and then her rich, romantic lips parted under that homely impulse--a yawn. she was immediately angry at having betrayed even to herself the possible evanescence of her passion for him. she could not admit at once that she might have overestimated wildeve, for to perceive his mediocrity now was to admit her own great folly heretofore. and the discovery that she was the owner of a disposition so purely that of the dog in the manger had something in it which at first made her ashamed. the fruit of mrs. yeobright's diplomacy was indeed remarkable, though not as yet of the kind she had anticipated. it had appreciably influenced wildeve, but it was influencing eustacia far more. her lover was no longer to her an exciting man whom many women strove for, and herself could only retain by striving with them. he was a superfluity. she went indoors in that peculiar state of misery which is not exactly grief, and which especially attends the dawnings of reason in the latter days of an ill-judged, transient love. to be conscious that the end of the dream is approaching, and yet has not absolutely come, is one of the most wearisome as well as the most curious stages along the course between the beginning of a passion and its end. her grandfather had returned, and was busily engaged in pouring some gallons of newly arrived rum into the square bottles of his square cellaret. whenever these home supplies were exhausted he would go to the quiet woman, and, standing with his back to the fire, grog in hand, tell remarkable stories of how he had lived seven years under the water-line of his ship, and other naval wonders, to the natives, who hoped too earnestly for a treat of ale from the teller to exhibit any doubts of his truth. he had been there this evening. "i suppose you have heard the egdon news, eustacia?" he said, without looking up from the bottles. "the men have been talking about it at the woman as if it were of national importance." "i have heard none," she said. "young clym yeobright, as they call him, is coming home next week to spend christmas with his mother. he is a fine fellow by this time, it seems. i suppose you remember him?" "i never saw him in my life." "ah, true; he left before you came here. i well remember him as a promising boy." "where has he been living all these years?" "in that rookery of pomp and vanity, paris, i believe." book second the arrival i tidings of the comer on fine days at this time of the year, and earlier, certain ephemeral operations were apt to disturb, in their trifling way, the majestic calm of egdon heath. they were activities which, beside those of a town, a village, or even a farm, would have appeared as the ferment of stagnation merely, a creeping of the flesh of somnolence. but here, away from comparisons, shut in by the stable hills, among which mere walking had the novelty of pageantry, and where any man could imagine himself to be adam without the least difficulty, they attracted the attention of every bird within eyeshot, every reptile not yet asleep, and set the surrounding rabbits curiously watching from hillocks at a safe distance. the performance was that of bringing together and building into a stack the furze-faggots which humphrey had been cutting for the captain's use during the foregoing fine days. the stack was at the end of the dwelling, and the men engaged in building it were humphrey and sam, the old man looking on. it was a fine and quiet afternoon, about three o'clock; but the winter solstice having stealthily come on, the lowness of the sun caused the hour to seem later than it actually was, there being little here to remind an inhabitant that he must unlearn his summer experience of the sky as a dial. in the course of many days and weeks sunrise had advanced its quarters from north-east to south-east, sunset had receded from north-west to south-west; but egdon had hardly heeded the change. eustacia was indoors in the dining-room, which was really more like a kitchen, having a stone floor and a gaping chimney-corner. the air was still, and while she lingered a moment here alone sounds of voices in conversation came to her ears directly down the chimney. she entered the recess, and, listening, looked up the old irregular shaft, with its cavernous hollows, where the smoke blundered about on its way to the square bit of sky at the top, from which the daylight struck down with a pallid glare upon the tatters of soot draping the flue as seaweed drapes a rocky fissure. she remembered: the furze-stack was not far from the chimney, and the voices were those of the workers. her grandfather joined in the conversation. "that lad ought never to have left home. his father's occupation would have suited him best, and the boy should have followed on. i don't believe in these new moves in families. my father was a sailor, so was i, and so should my son have been if i had had one." "the place he's been living at is paris," said humphrey, "and they tell me 'tis where the king's head was cut off years ago. my poor mother used to tell me about that business. 'hummy,' she used to say, 'i was a young maid then, and as i was at home ironing mother's caps one afternoon the parson came in and said, "they've cut the king's head off, jane; and what 'twill be next god knows."'" "a good many of us knew as well as he before long," said the captain, chuckling. "i lived seven years under water on account of it in my boyhood--in that damned surgery of the _triumph_, seeing men brought down to the cockpit with their legs and arms blown to jericho... and so the young man has settled in paris. manager to a diamond merchant, or some such thing, is he not?" "yes, sir, that's it. 'tis a blazing great business that he belongs to, so i've heard his mother say--like a king's palace, as far as diments go." "i can well mind when he left home," said sam. "'tis a good thing for the feller," said humphrey. "a sight of times better to be selling diments than nobbling about here." "it must cost a good few shillings to deal at such a place." "a good few indeed, my man," replied the captain. "yes, you may make away with a deal of money and be neither drunkard nor glutton." "they say, too, that clym yeobright is become a real perusing man, with the strangest notions about things. there, that's because he went to school early, such as the school was." "strange notions, has he?" said the old man. "ah, there's too much of that sending to school in these days! it only does harm. every gatepost and barn's door you come to is sure to have some bad word or other chalked upon it by the young rascals: a woman can hardly pass for shame some times. if they'd never been taught how to write they wouldn't have been able to scribble such villainy. their fathers couldn't do it, and the country was all the better for it." "now, i should think, cap'n, that miss eustacia had about as much in her head that comes from books as anybody about here?" "perhaps if miss eustacia, too, had less romantic nonsense in her head it would be better for her," said the captain shortly; after which he walked away. "i say, sam," observed humphrey when the old man was gone, "she and clym yeobright would make a very pretty pigeon-pair--hey? if they wouldn't i'll be dazed! both of one mind about niceties for certain, and learned in print, and always thinking about high doctrine--there couldn't be a better couple if they were made o' purpose. clym's family is as good as hers. his father was a farmer, that's true; but his mother was a sort of lady, as we know. nothing would please me better than to see them two man and wife." "they'd look very natty, arm-in-crook together, and their best clothes on, whether or no, if he's at all the well-favoured fellow he used to be." "they would, humphrey. well, i should like to see the chap terrible much after so many years. if i knew for certain when he was coming i'd stroll out three or four miles to meet him and help carry anything for'n; though i suppose he's altered from the boy he was. they say he can talk french as fast as a maid can eat blackberries; and if so, depend upon it we who have stayed at home shall seem no more than scroff in his eyes." "coming across the water to budmouth by steamer, isn't he?" "yes; but how he's coming from budmouth i don't know." "that's a bad trouble about his cousin thomasin. i wonder such a nice-notioned fellow as clym likes to come home into it. what a nunnywatch we were in, to be sure, when we heard they weren't married at all, after singing to 'em as man and wife that night! be dazed if i should like a relation of mine to have been made such a fool of by a man. it makes the family look small." "yes. poor maid, her heart has ached enough about it. her health is suffering from it, i hear, for she will bide entirely indoors. we never see her out now, scampering over the furze with a face as red as a rose, as she used to do." "i've heard she wouldn't have wildeve now if he asked her." "you have? 'tis news to me." while the furze-gatherers had desultorily conversed thus eustacia's face gradually bent to the hearth in a profound reverie, her toe unconsciously tapping the dry turf which lay burning at her feet. the subject of their discourse had been keenly interesting to her. a young and clever man was coming into that lonely heath from, of all contrasting places in the world, paris. it was like a man coming from heaven. more singular still, the heathmen had instinctively coupled her and this man together in their minds as a pair born for each other. that five minutes of overhearing furnished eustacia with visions enough to fill the whole blank afternoon. such sudden alternations from mental vacuity do sometimes occur thus quietly. she could never have believed in the morning that her colourless inner world would before night become as animated as water under a microscope, and that without the arrival of a single visitor. the words of sam and humphrey on the harmony between the unknown and herself had on her mind the effect of the invading bard's prelude in the "castle of indolence," at which myriads of imprisoned shapes arose where had previously appeared the stillness of a void. involved in these imaginings she knew nothing of time. when she became conscious of externals it was dusk. the furze-rick was finished; the men had gone home. eustacia went upstairs, thinking that she would take a walk at this her usual time; and she determined that her walk should be in the direction of blooms-end, the birthplace of young yeobright and the present home of his mother. she had no reason for walking elsewhere, and why should she not go that way? the scene of a day-dream is sufficient for a pilgrimage at nineteen. to look at the palings before the yeobrights' house had the dignity of a necessary performance. strange that such a piece of idling should have seemed an important errand. she put on her bonnet, and, leaving the house, descended the hill on the side towards blooms-end, where she walked slowly along the valley for a distance of a mile and a half. this brought her to a spot in which the green bottom of the dale began to widen, the furze bushes to recede yet further from the path on each side, till they were diminished to an isolated one here and there by the increasing fertility of the soil. beyond the irregular carpet of grass was a row of white palings, which marked the verge of the heath in this latitude. they showed upon the dusky scene that they bordered as distinctly as white lace on velvet. behind the white palings was a little garden; behind the garden an old, irregular, thatched house, facing the heath, and commanding a full view of the valley. this was the obscure, removed spot to which was about to return a man whose latter life had been passed in the french capital--the centre and vortex of the fashionable world. ii the people at blooms-end make ready all that afternoon the expected arrival of the subject of eustacia's ruminations created a bustle of preparation at blooms-end. thomasin had been persuaded by her aunt, and by an instinctive impulse of loyalty towards her cousin clym, to bestir herself on his account with an alacrity unusual in her during these most sorrowful days of her life. at the time that eustacia was listening to the rickmakers' conversation on clym's return, thomasin was climbing into a loft over her aunt's fuel-house, where the store-apples were kept, to search out the best and largest of them for the coming holiday-time. the loft was lighted by a semicircular hole, through which the pigeons crept to their lodgings in the same high quarters of the premises; and from this hole the sun shone in a bright yellow patch upon the figure of the maiden as she knelt and plunged her naked arms into the soft brown fern, which, from its abundance, was used on egdon in packing away stores of all kinds. the pigeons were flying about her head with the greatest unconcern, and the face of her aunt was just visible above the floor of the loft, lit by a few stray motes of light, as she stood half-way up the ladder, looking at a spot into which she was not climber enough to venture. "now a few russets, tamsin. he used to like them almost as well as ribstones." thomasin turned and rolled aside the fern from another nook, where more mellow fruit greeted her with its ripe smell. before picking them out she stopped a moment. "dear clym, i wonder how your face looks now?" she said, gazing abstractedly at the pigeon-hole, which admitted the sunlight so directly upon her brown hair and transparent tissues that it almost seemed to shine through her. "if he could have been dear to you in another way," said mrs. yeobright from the ladder, "this might have been a happy meeting." "is there any use in saying what can do no good, aunt?" "yes," said her aunt, with some warmth. "to thoroughly fill the air with the past misfortune, so that other girls may take warning and keep clear of it." thomasin lowered her face to the apples again. "i am a warning to others, just as thieves and drunkards and gamblers are," she said in a low voice. "what a class to belong to! do i really belong to them? 'tis absurd! yet why, aunt, does everybody keep on making me think that i do, by the way they behave towards me? why don't people judge me by my acts? now, look at me as i kneel here, picking up these apples--do i look like a lost woman?... i wish all good women were as good as i!" she added vehemently. "strangers don't see you as i do," said mrs. yeobright; "they judge from false report. well, it is a silly job, and i am partly to blame." "how quickly a rash thing can be done!" replied the girl. her lips were quivering, and tears so crowded themselves into her eyes that she could hardly distinguish apples from fern as she continued industriously searching to hide her weakness. "as soon as you have finished getting the apples," her aunt said, descending the ladder, "come down, and we'll go for the holly. there is nobody on the heath this afternoon, and you need not fear being stared at. we must get some berries, or clym will never believe in our preparations." thomasin came down when the apples were collected, and together they went through the white palings to the heath beyond. the open hills were airy and clear, and the remote atmosphere appeared, as it often appears on a fine winter day, in distinct planes of illumination independently toned, the rays which lit the nearer tracts of landscape streaming visibly across those further off; a stratum of ensaffroned light was imposed on a stratum of deep blue, and behind these lay still remoter scenes wrapped in frigid grey. they reached the place where the hollies grew, which was in a conical pit, so that the tops of the trees were not much above the general level of the ground. thomasin stepped up into a fork of one of the bushes, as she had done under happier circumstances on many similar occasions, and with a small chopper that they had brought she began to lop off the heavily-berried boughs. "don't scratch your face," said her aunt, who stood at the edge of the pit, regarding the girl as she held on amid the glistening green and scarlet masses of the tree. "will you walk with me to meet him this evening?" "i should like to. else it would seem as if i had forgotten him," said thomasin, tossing out a bough. "not that that would matter much; i belong to one man; nothing can alter that. and that man i must marry, for my pride's sake." "i am afraid--" began mrs. yeobright. "ah, you think, 'that weak girl--how is she going to get a man to marry her when she chooses?' but let me tell you one thing, aunt: mr. wildeve is not a profligate man, any more than i am an improper woman. he has an unfortunate manner, and doesn't try to make people like him if they don't wish to do it of their own accord." "thomasin," said mrs. yeobright quietly, fixing her eye upon her niece, "do you think you deceive me in your defence of mr. wildeve?" "how do you mean?" "i have long had a suspicion that your love for him has changed its colour since you have found him not to be the saint you thought him, and that you act a part to me." "he wished to marry me, and i wish to marry him." "now, i put it to you: would you at this present moment agree to be his wife if that had not happened to entangle you with him?" thomasin looked into the tree and appeared much disturbed. "aunt," she said presently, "i have, i think, a right to refuse to answer that question." "yes, you have." "you may think what you choose. i have never implied to you by word or deed that i have grown to think otherwise of him, and i never will. and i shall marry him." "well, wait till he repeats his offer. i think he may do it, now that he knows--something i told him. i don't for a moment dispute that it is the most proper thing for you to marry him. much as i have objected to him in bygone days, i agree with you now, you may be sure. it is the only way out of a false position, and a very galling one." "what did you tell him?" "that he was standing in the way of another lover of yours." "aunt," said thomasin, with round eyes, "what do you mean?" "don't be alarmed; it was my duty. i can say no more about it now, but when it is over i will tell you exactly what i said, and why i said it." thomasin was perforce content. "and you will keep the secret of my would-be marriage from clym for the present?" she next asked. "i have given my word to. but what is the use of it? he must soon know what has happened. a mere look at your face will show him that something is wrong." thomasin turned and regarded her aunt from the tree. "now, hearken to me," she said, her delicate voice expanding into firmness by a force which was other than physical. "tell him nothing. if he finds out that i am not worthy to be his cousin, let him. but, since he loved me once, we will not pain him by telling him my trouble too soon. the air is full of the story, i know; but gossips will not dare to speak of it to him for the first few days. his closeness to me is the very thing that will hinder the tale from reaching him early. if i am not made safe from sneers in a week or two i will tell him myself." the earnestness with which thomasin spoke prevented further objections. her aunt simply said, "very well. he should by rights have been told at the time that the wedding was going to be. he will never forgive you for your secrecy." "yes, he will, when he knows it was because i wished to spare him, and that i did not expect him home so soon. and you must not let me stand in the way of your christmas party. putting it off would only make matters worse." "of course i shall not. i do not wish to show myself beaten before all egdon, and the sport of a man like wildeve. we have enough berries now, i think, and we had better take them home. by the time we have decked the house with this and hung up the mistletoe, we must think of starting to meet him." thomasin came out of the tree, shook from her hair and dress the loose berries which had fallen thereon, and went down the hill with her aunt, each woman bearing half the gathered boughs. it was now nearly four o'clock, and the sunlight was leaving the vales. when the west grew red the two relatives came again from the house and plunged into the heath in a different direction from the first, towards a point in the distant highway along which the expected man was to return. iii how a little sound produced a great dream eustacia stood just within the heath, straining her eyes in the direction of mrs. yeobright's house and premises. no light, sound, or movement was perceptible there. the evening was chilly; the spot was dark and lonely. she inferred that the guest had not yet come; and after lingering ten or fifteen minutes she turned again towards home. she had not far retraced her steps when sounds in front of her betokened the approach of persons in conversation along the same path. soon their heads became visible against the sky. they were walking slowly; and though it was too dark for much discovery of character from aspect, the gait of them showed that they were not workers on the heath. eustacia stepped a little out of the foot-track to let them pass. they were two women and a man; and the voices of the women were those of mrs. yeobright and thomasin. they went by her, and at the moment of passing appeared to discern her dusky form. there came to her ears in a masculine voice, "good night!" she murmured a reply, glided by them, and turned round. she could not, for a moment, believe that chance, unrequested, had brought into her presence the soul of the house she had gone to inspect, the man without whom her inspection would not have been thought of. she strained her eyes to see them, but was unable. such was her intentness, however, that it seemed as if her ears were performing the functions of seeing as well as hearing. this extension of power can almost be believed in at such moments. the deaf dr. kitto was probably under the influence of a parallel fancy when he described his body as having become, by long endeavour, so sensitive to vibrations that he had gained the power of perceiving by it as by ears. she could follow every word that the ramblers uttered. they were talking no secrets. they were merely indulging in the ordinary vivacious chat of relatives who have long been parted in person though not in soul. but it was not to the words that eustacia listened; she could not even have recalled, a few minutes later, what the words were. it was to the alternating voice that gave out about one-tenth of them--the voice that had wished her good night. sometimes this throat uttered yes, sometimes it uttered no; sometimes it made inquiries about a timeworn denizen of the place. once it surprised her notions by remarking upon the friendliness and geniality written in the faces of the hills around. the three voices passed on, and decayed and died out upon her ear. thus much had been granted her; and all besides withheld. no event could have been more exciting. during the greater part of the afternoon she had been entrancing herself by imagining the fascination which must attend a man come direct from beautiful paris--laden with its atmosphere, familiar with its charms. and this man had greeted her. with the departure of the figures the profuse articulations of the women wasted away from her memory; but the accents of the other stayed on. was there anything in the voice of mrs. yeobright's son--for clym it was--startling as a sound? no; it was simply comprehensive. all emotional things were possible to the speaker of that "good night." eustacia's imagination supplied the rest--except the solution to one riddle. what could the tastes of that man be who saw friendliness and geniality in these shaggy hills? on such occasions as this a thousand ideas pass through a highly charged woman's head; and they indicate themselves on her face; but the changes, though actual, are minute. eustacia's features went through a rhythmical succession of them. she glowed; remembering the mendacity of the imagination, she flagged; then she freshened; then she fired; then she cooled again. it was a cycle of aspects, produced by a cycle of visions. eustacia entered her own house; she was excited. her grandfather was enjoying himself over the fire, raking about the ashes and exposing the red-hot surface of the turves, so that their lurid glare irradiated the chimney-corner with the hues of a furnace. "why is it that we are never friendly with the yeobrights?" she said, coming forward and stretching her soft hands over the warmth. "i wish we were. they seem to be very nice people." "be hanged if i know why," said the captain. "i liked the old man well enough, though he was as rough as a hedge. but you would never have cared to go there, even if you might have, i am well sure." "why shouldn't i?" "your town tastes would find them far too countrified. they sit in the kitchen, drink mead and elderwine, and sand the floor to keep it clean. a sensible way of life; but would you like it?" "i thought mrs. yeobright was a ladylike woman? a curate's daughter, was she not?" "yes; but she was obliged to live as her husband did; and i suppose she has taken kindly to it by this time. ah, i recollect that i once accidentally offended her, and i have never seen her since." that night was an eventful one to eustacia's brain, and one which she hardly ever forgot. she dreamt a dream; and few human beings, from nebuchadnezzar to the swaffham tinker, ever dreamt a more remarkable one. such an elaborately developed, perplexing, exciting dream was certainly never dreamed by a girl in eustacia's situation before. it had as many ramifications as the cretan labyrinth, as many fluctuations as the northern lights, as much colour as a parterre in june, and was as crowded with figures as a coronation. to queen scheherazade the dream might have seemed not far removed from commonplace; and to a girl just returned from all the courts of europe it might have seemed not more than interesting. but amid the circumstances of eustacia's life it was as wonderful as a dream could be. there was, however, gradually evolved from its transformation scenes a less extravagant episode, in which the heath dimly appeared behind the general brilliancy of the action. she was dancing to wondrous music, and her partner was the man in silver armour who had accompanied her through the previous fantastic changes, the visor of his helmet being closed. the mazes of the dance were ecstatic. soft whispering came into her ear from under the radiant helmet, and she felt like a woman in paradise. suddenly these two wheeled out from the mass of dancers, dived into one of the pools of the heath, and came out somewhere beneath into an iridescent hollow, arched with rainbows. "it must be here," said the voice by her side, and blushingly looking up she saw him removing his casque to kiss her. at that moment there was a cracking noise, and his figure fell into fragments like a pack of cards. she cried aloud. "o that i had seen his face!" eustacia awoke. the cracking had been that of the window shutter downstairs, which the maid-servant was opening to let in the day, now slowly increasing to nature's meagre allowance at this sickly time of the year. "o that i had seen his face!" she said again. "'twas meant for mr. yeobright!" when she became cooler she perceived that many of the phases of the dream had naturally arisen out of the images and fancies of the day before. but this detracted little from its interest, which lay in the excellent fuel it provided for newly kindled fervour. she was at the modulating point between indifference and love, at the stage called "having a fancy for." it occurs once in the history of the most gigantic passions, and it is a period when they are in the hands of the weakest will. the perfervid woman was by this time half in love with a vision. the fantastic nature of her passion, which lowered her as an intellect, raised her as a soul. if she had had a little more self-control she would have attenuated the emotion to nothing by sheer reasoning, and so have killed it off. if she had had a little less pride she might have gone and circumambulated the yeobrights' premises at blooms-end at any maidenly sacrifice until she had seen him. but eustacia did neither of these things. she acted as the most exemplary might have acted, being so influenced; she took an airing twice or thrice a day upon the egdon hills, and kept her eyes employed. the first occasion passed, and he did not come that way. she promenaded a second time, and was again the sole wanderer there. the third time there was a dense fog; she looked around, but without much hope. even if he had been walking within twenty yards of her she could not have seen him. at the fourth attempt to encounter him it began to rain in torrents, and she turned back. the fifth sally was in the afternoon: it was fine, and she remained out long, walking to the very top of the valley in which blooms-end lay. she saw the white paling about half a mile off; but he did not appear. it was almost with heart-sickness that she came home and with a sense of shame at her weakness. she resolved to look for the man from paris no more. but providence is nothing if not coquettish; and no sooner had eustacia formed this resolve than the opportunity came which, while sought, had been entirely withholden. iv eustacia is led on to an adventure in the evening of this last day of expectation, which was the twenty-third of december, eustacia was at home alone. she had passed the recent hour in lamenting over a rumour newly come to her ears--that yeobright's visit to his mother was to be of short duration, and would end some time the next week. "naturally," she said to herself. a man in the full swing of his activities in a gay city could not afford to linger long on egdon heath. that she would behold face to face the owner of the awakening voice within the limits of such a holiday was most unlikely, unless she were to haunt the environs of his mother's house like a robin, to do which was difficult and unseemly. the customary expedient of provincial girls and men in such circumstances is churchgoing. in an ordinary village or country town one can safely calculate that, either on christmas-day or the sunday contiguous, any native home for the holidays, who has not through age or _ennui_ lost the appetite for seeing and being seen, will turn up in some pew or other, shining with hope, self-consciousness, and new clothes. thus the congregation on christmas morning is mostly a tussaud collection of celebrities who have been born in the neighbourhood. hither the mistress, left neglected at home all the year, can steal and observe the development of the returned lover who has forgotten her, and think as she watches him over her prayer-book that he may throb with a renewed fidelity when novelties have lost their charm. and hither a comparatively recent settler like eustacia may betake herself to scrutinize the person of a native son who left home before her advent upon the scene, and consider if the friendship of his parents be worth cultivating during his next absence in order to secure a knowledge of him on his next return. but these tender schemes were not feasible among the scattered inhabitants of egdon heath. in name they were parishioners, but virtually they belonged to no parish at all. people who came to these few isolated houses to keep christmas with their friends remained in their friends' chimney-corners drinking mead and other comforting liquors till they left again for good and all. rain, snow, ice, mud everywhere around, they did not care to trudge two or three miles to sit wet-footed and splashed to the nape of their necks among those who, though in some measure neighbours, lived close to the church, and entered it clean and dry. eustacia knew it was ten to one that clym yeobright would go to no church at all during his few days of leave, and that it would be a waste of labour for her to go driving the pony and gig over a bad road in hope to see him there. it was dusk, and she was sitting by the fire in the dining-room or hall, which they occupied at this time of the year in preference to the parlour, because of its large hearth, constructed for turf-fires, a fuel the captain was partial to in the winter season. the only visible articles in the room were those on the window-sill, which showed their shapes against the low sky: the middle article being the old hourglass, and the other two a pair of ancient british urns which had been dug from a barrow near, and were used as flower-pots for two razor-leaved cactuses. somebody knocked at the door. the servant was out; so was her grandfather. the person, after waiting a minute, came in and tapped at the door of the room. "who's there?" said eustacia. "please, cap'n vye, will you let us--" eustacia arose and went to the door. "i cannot allow you to come in so boldly. you should have waited." "the cap'n said i might come in without any fuss," was answered in a lad's pleasant voice. "oh, did he?" said eustacia more gently. "what do you want, charley?" "please will your grandfather lend us his fuel-house to try over our parts in, tonight at seven o'clock?" "what, are you one of the egdon mummers for this year?" "yes, miss. the cap'n used to let the old mummers practise here." "i know it. yes, you may use the fuel-house if you like," said eustacia languidly. the choice of captain vye's fuel-house as the scene of rehearsal was dictated by the fact that his dwelling was nearly in the centre of the heath. the fuel-house was as roomy as a barn, and was a most desirable place for such a purpose. the lads who formed the company of players lived at different scattered points around, and by meeting in this spot the distances to be traversed by all the comers would be about equally proportioned. for mummers and mumming eustacia had the greatest contempt. the mummers themselves were not afflicted with any such feeling for their art, though at the same time they were not enthusiastic. a traditional pastime is to be distinguished from a mere revival in no more striking feature than in this, that while in the revival all is excitement and fervour, the survival is carried on with a stolidity and absence of stir which sets one wondering why a thing that is done so perfunctorily should be kept up at all. like balaam and other unwilling prophets, the agents seem moved by an inner compulsion to say and do their allotted parts whether they will or no. this unweeting manner of performance is the true ring by which, in this refurbishing age, a fossilized survival may be known from a spurious reproduction. the piece was the well-known play of "saint george," and all who were behind the scenes assisted in the preparations, including the women of each household. without the cooperation of sisters and sweethearts the dresses were likely to be a failure; but on the other hand, this class of assistance was not without its drawbacks. the girls could never be brought to respect tradition in designing and decorating the armour; they insisted on attaching loops and bows of silk and velvet in any situation pleasing to their taste. gorget, gusset, basinet, cuirass, gauntlet, sleeve, all alike in the view of these feminine eyes were practicable spaces whereon to sew scraps of fluttering colour. it might be that joe, who fought on the side of christendom, had a sweetheart, and that jim, who fought on the side of the moslem, had one likewise. during the making of the costumes it would come to the knowledge of joe's sweetheart that jim's was putting brilliant silk scallops at the bottom of her lover's surcoat, in addition to the ribbons of the visor, the bars of which, being invariably formed of coloured strips about half an inch wide hanging before the face, were mostly of that material. joe's sweetheart straightway placed brilliant silk on the scallops of the hem in question, and, going a little further, added ribbon tufts to the shoulder pieces. jim's, not to be outdone, would affix bows and rosettes everywhere. the result was that in the end the valiant soldier, of the christian army, was distinguished by no peculiarity of accoutrement from the turkish knight; and what was worse, on a casual view saint george himself might be mistaken for his deadly enemy, the saracen. the guisers themselves, though inwardly regretting this confusion of persons, could not afford to offend those by whose assistance they so largely profited, and the innovations were allowed to stand. there was, it is true, a limit to this tendency to uniformity. the leech or doctor preserved his character intact: his darker habiliments, peculiar hat, and the bottle of physic slung under his arm, could never be mistaken. and the same might be said of the conventional figure of father christmas, with his gigantic club, an older man, who accompanied the band as general protector in long night journeys from parish to parish, and was bearer of the purse. seven o'clock, the hour of the rehearsal, came round, and in a short time eustacia could hear voices in the fuel-house. to dissipate in some trifling measure her abiding sense of the murkiness of human life she went to the "linhay" or lean-to-shed, which formed the root-store of their dwelling and abutted on the fuel-house. here was a small rough hole in the mud wall, originally made for pigeons, through which the interior of the next shed could be viewed. a light came from it now; and eustacia stepped upon a stool to look in upon the scene. on a ledge in the fuel-house stood three tall rush-lights and by the light of them seven or eight lads were marching about, haranguing, and confusing each other, in endeavours to perfect themselves in the play. humphrey and sam, the furze and turf cutters, were there looking on, so also was timothy fairway, who leant against the wall and prompted the boys from memory, interspersing among the set words remarks and anecdotes of the superior days when he and others were the egdon mummers-elect that these lads were now. "well, ye be as well up to it as ever ye will be," he said. "not that such mumming would have passed in our time. harry as the saracen should strut a bit more, and john needn't holler his inside out. beyond that perhaps you'll do. have you got all your clothes ready?" "we shall by monday." "your first outing will be monday night, i suppose?" "yes. at mrs. yeobright's." "oh, mrs. yeobright's. what makes her want to see ye? i should think a middle-aged woman was tired of mumming." "she's got up a bit of a party, because 'tis the first christmas that her son clym has been home for a long time." "to be sure, to be sure--her party! i am going myself. i almost forgot it, upon my life." eustacia's face flagged. there was to be a party at the yeobrights'; she, naturally, had nothing to do with it. she was a stranger to all such local gatherings, and had always held them as scarcely appertaining to her sphere. but had she been going, what an opportunity would have been afforded her of seeing the man whose influence was penetrating her like summer sun! to increase that influence was coveted excitement; to cast it off might be to regain serenity; to leave it as it stood was tantalizing. the lads and men prepared to leave the premises, and eustacia returned to her fireside. she was immersed in thought, but not for long. in a few minutes the lad charley, who had come to ask permission to use the place, returned with the key to the kitchen. eustacia heard him, and opening the door into the passage said, "charley, come here." the lad was surprised. he entered the front room not without blushing; for he, like many, had felt the power of this girl's face and form. she pointed to a seat by the fire, and entered the other side of the chimney-corner herself. it could be seen in her face that whatever motive she might have had in asking the youth indoors would soon appear. "which part do you play, charley--the turkish knight, do you not?" inquired the beauty, looking across the smoke of the fire to him on the other side. "yes, miss, the turkish knight," he replied diffidently. "is yours a long part?" "nine speeches, about." "can you repeat them to me? if so i should like to hear them." the lad smiled into the glowing turf and began-- "here come i, a turkish knight, who learnt in turkish land to fight," continuing the discourse throughout the scenes to the concluding catastrophe of his fall by the hand of saint george. eustacia had occasionally heard the part recited before. when the lad ended she began, precisely in the same words, and ranted on without hitch or divergence till she too reached the end. it was the same thing, yet how different. like in form, it had the added softness and finish of a raffaelle after perugino, which, while faithfully reproducing the original subject, entirely distances the original art. charley's eyes rounded with surprise. "well, you be a clever lady!" he said, in admiration. "i've been three weeks learning mine." "i have heard it before," she quietly observed. "now, would you do anything to please me, charley?" "i'd do a good deal, miss." "would you let me play your part for one night?" "oh, miss! but your woman's gown--you couldn't." "i can get boy's clothes--at least all that would be wanted besides the mumming dress. what should i have to give you to lend me your things, to let me take your place for an hour or two on monday night, and on no account to say a word about who or what i am? you would, of course, have to excuse yourself from playing that night, and to say that somebody--a cousin of miss vye's--would act for you. the other mummers have never spoken to me in their lives, so that it would be safe enough; and if it were not, i should not mind. now, what must i give you to agree to this? half a crown?" the youth shook his head "five shillings?" he shook his head again. "money won't do it," he said, brushing the iron head of the fire-dog with the hollow of his hand. "what will, then, charley?" said eustacia in a disappointed tone. "you know what you forbade me at the maypoling, miss," murmured the lad, without looking at her, and still stroking the firedog's head. "yes," said eustacia, with a little more hauteur. "you wanted to join hands with me in the ring, if i recollect?" "half an hour of that, and i'll agree, miss." eustacia regarded the youth steadfastly. he was three years younger than herself, but apparently not backward for his age. "half an hour of what?" she said, though she guessed what. "holding your hand in mine." she was silent. "make it a quarter of an hour," she said. "yes, miss eustacia--i will, if i may kiss it too. a quarter of an hour. and i'll swear to do the best i can to let you take my place without anybody knowing. don't you think somebody might know your tongue, miss?" "it is possible. but i will put a pebble in my mouth to make is less likely. very well; you shall be allowed to have my hand as soon as you bring the dress and your sword and staff. i don't want you any longer now." charley departed, and eustacia felt more and more interest in life. here was something to do: here was some one to see, and a charmingly adventurous way to see him. "ah," she said to herself, "want of an object to live for--that's all is the matter with me!" eustacia's manner was as a rule of a slumberous sort, her passions being of the massive rather than the vivacious kind. but when aroused she would make a dash which, just for the time, was not unlike the move of a naturally lively person. on the question of recognition she was somewhat indifferent. by the acting lads themselves she was not likely to be known. with the guests who might be assembled she was hardly so secure. yet detection, after all, would be no such dreadful thing. the fact only could be detected, her true motive never. it would be instantly set down as the passing freak of a girl whose ways were already considered singular. that she was doing for an earnest reason what would most naturally be done in jest was at any rate a safe secret. the next evening eustacia stood punctually at the fuel-house door, waiting for the dusk which was to bring charley with the trappings. her grandfather was at home tonight, and she would be unable to ask her confederate indoors. he appeared on the dark ridge of heathland, like a fly on a negro, bearing the articles with him, and came up breathless with his walk. "here are the things," he whispered, placing them upon the threshold. "and now, miss eustacia--" "the payment. it is quite ready. i am as good as my word." she leant against the door-post, and gave him her hand. charley took it in both his own with a tenderness beyond description, unless it was like that of a child holding a captured sparrow. "why, there's a glove on it!" he said in a deprecating way. "i have been walking," she observed. "but, miss!" "well--it is hardly fair." she pulled off the glove, and gave him her bare hand. they stood together minute after minute, without further speech, each looking at the blackening scene, and each thinking his and her own thoughts. "i think i won't use it all up tonight," said charley devotedly, when six or eight minutes had been passed by him caressing her hand. "may i have the other few minutes another time?" "as you like," said she without the least emotion. "but it must be over in a week. now, there is only one thing i want you to do: to wait while i put on the dress, and then to see if i do my part properly. but let me look first indoors." she vanished for a minute or two, and went in. her grandfather was safely asleep in his chair. "now, then," she said, on returning, "walk down the garden a little way, and when i am ready i'll call you." charley walked and waited, and presently heard a soft whistle. he returned to the fuel-house door. "did you whistle, miss vye?" "yes; come in," reached him in eustacia's voice from a back quarter. "i must not strike a light till the door is shut, or it may be seen shining. push your hat into the hole through to the wash-house, if you can feel your way across." charley did as commanded, and she struck the light, revealing herself to be changed in sex, brilliant in colours, and armed from top to toe. perhaps she quailed a little under charley's vigorous gaze, but whether any shyness at her male attire appeared upon her countenance could not be seen by reason of the strips of ribbon which used to cover the face in mumming costumes, representing the barred visor of the mediaeval helmet. "it fits pretty well," she said, looking down at the white overalls, "except that the tunic, or whatever you call it, is long in the sleeve. the bottom of the overalls i can turn up inside. now pay attention." eustacia then proceeded in her delivery, striking the sword against the staff or lance at the minatory phrases, in the orthodox mumming manner, and strutting up and down. charley seasoned his admiration with criticism of the gentlest kind, for the touch of eustacia's hand yet remained with him. "and now for your excuse to the others," she said. "where do you meet before you go to mrs. yeobright's?" "we thought of meeting here, miss, if you have nothing to say against it. at eight o'clock, so as to get there by nine." "yes. well, you of course must not appear. i will march in about five minutes late, ready-dressed, and tell them that you can't come. i have decided that the best plan will be for you to be sent somewhere by me, to make a real thing of the excuse. our two heath-croppers are in the habit of straying into the meads, and tomorrow evening you can go and see if they are gone there. i'll manage the rest. now you may leave me." "yes, miss. but i think i'll have one minute more of what i am owed, if you don't mind." eustacia gave him her hand as before. "one minute," she said, and counted on till she reached seven or eight minutes. hand and person she then withdrew to a distance of several feet, and recovered some of her old dignity. the contract completed, she raised between them a barrier impenetrable as a wall. "there, 'tis all gone; and i didn't mean quite all," he said, with a sigh. "you had good measure," said she, turning away. "yes, miss. well, 'tis over, and now i'll get home-along." v through the moonlight the next evening the mummers were assembled in the same spot, awaiting the entrance of the turkish knight. "twenty minutes after eight by the quiet woman, and charley not come." "ten minutes past by blooms-end." "it wants ten minutes to, by grandfer cantle's watch." "and 'tis five minutes past by the captain's clock." on egdon there was no absolute hour of the day. the time at any moment was a number of varying doctrines professed by the different hamlets, some of them having originally grown up from a common root, and then become divided by secession, some having been alien from the beginning. west egdon believed in blooms-end time, east egdon in the time of the quiet woman inn. grandfer cantle's watch had numbered many followers in years gone by, but since he had grown older faiths were shaken. thus, the mummers having gathered hither from scattered points each came with his own tenets on early and late; and they waited a little longer as a compromise. eustacia had watched the assemblage through the hole; and seeing that now was the proper moment to enter, she went from the "linhay" and boldly pulled the bobbin of the fuel-house door. her grandfather was safe at the quiet woman. "here's charley at last! how late you be, charley." "'tis not charley," said the turkish knight from within his visor. "'tis a cousin of miss vye's, come to take charley's place from curiosity. he was obliged to go and look for the heath-croppers that have got into the meads, and i agreed to take his place, as he knew he couldn't come back here again tonight. i know the part as well as he." her graceful gait, elegant figure, and dignified manner in general won the mummers to the opinion that they had gained by the exchange, if the newcomer were perfect in his part. "it don't matter--if you be not too young," said saint george. eustacia's voice had sounded somewhat more juvenile and fluty than charley's. "i know every word of it, i tell you," said eustacia decisively. dash being all that was required to carry her triumphantly through, she adopted as much as was necessary. "go ahead, lads, with the try-over. i'll challenge any of you to find a mistake in me." the play was hastily rehearsed, whereupon the other mummers were delighted with the new knight. they extinguished the candles at half-past eight, and set out upon the heath in the direction of mrs. yeobright's house at bloom's-end. there was a slight hoar-frost that night, and the moon, though not more than half full, threw a spirited and enticing brightness upon the fantastic figures of the mumming band, whose plumes and ribbons rustled in their walk like autumn leaves. their path was not over rainbarrow now, but down a valley which left that ancient elevation a little to the east. the bottom of the vale was green to a width of ten yards or thereabouts, and the shining facets of frost upon the blades of grass seemed to move on with the shadows of those they surrounded. the masses of furze and heath to the right and left were dark as ever; a mere half-moon was powerless to silver such sable features as theirs. half-an-hour of walking and talking brought them to the spot in the valley where the grass riband widened and led down to the front of the house. at sight of the place eustacia, who had felt a few passing doubts during her walk with the youths, again was glad that the adventure had been undertaken. she had come out to see a man who might possibly have the power to deliver her soul from a most deadly oppression. what was wildeve? interesting, but inadequate. perhaps she would see a sufficient hero tonight. as they drew nearer to the front of the house the mummers became aware that music and dancing were briskly flourishing within. every now and then a long low note from the serpent, which was the chief wind instrument played at these times, advanced further into the heath than the thin treble part, and reached their ears alone; and next a more than usually loud tread from a dancer would come the same way. with nearer approach these fragmentary sounds became pieced together, and were found to be the salient points of the tune called "nancy's fancy." he was there, of course. who was she that he danced with? perhaps some unknown woman, far beneath herself in culture, was by that most subtle of lures sealing his fate this very instant. to dance with a man is to concentrate a twelve-month's regulation fire upon him in the fragment of an hour. to pass to courtship without acquaintance, to pass to marriage without courtship, is a skipping of terms reserved for those alone who tread this royal road. she would see how his heart lay by keen observation of them all. the enterprising lady followed the mumming company through the gate in the white paling, and stood before the open porch. the house was encrusted with heavy thatchings, which dropped between the upper windows; the front, upon which the moonbeams directly played, had originally been white; but a huge pyracanth now darkened the greater portion. it became at once evident that the dance was proceeding immediately within the surface of the door, no apartment intervening. the brushing of skirts and elbows, sometimes the bumping of shoulders, could be heard against the very panels. eustacia, though living within two miles of the place, had never seen the interior of this quaint old habitation. between captain vye and the yeobrights there had never existed much acquaintance, the former having come as a stranger and purchased the long-empty house at mistover knap not long before the death of mrs. yeobright's husband; and with that event and the departure of her son such friendship as had grown up became quite broken off. "is there no passage inside the door, then?" asked eustacia as they stood within the porch. "no," said the lad who played the saracen. "the door opens right upon the front sitting-room, where the spree's going on." "so that we cannot open the door without stopping the dance." "that's it. here we must bide till they have done, for they always bolt the back door after dark." "they won't be much longer," said father christmas. this assertion, however, was hardly borne out by the event. again the instruments ended the tune; again they recommenced with as much fire and pathos as if it were the first strain. the air was now that one without any particular beginning, middle, or end, which perhaps, among all the dances which throng an inspired fiddler's fancy, best conveys the idea of the interminable--the celebrated "devil's dream." the fury of personal movement that was kindled by the fury of the notes could be approximately imagined by these outsiders under the moon, from the occasional kicks of toes and heels against the door, whenever the whirl round had been of more than customary velocity. the first five minutes of listening was interesting enough to the mummers. the five minutes extended to ten minutes, and these to a quarter of an hour; but no signs of ceasing were audible in the lively dream. the bumping against the door, the laughter, the stamping, were all as vigorous as ever, and the pleasure in being outside lessened considerably. "why does mrs. yeobright give parties of this sort?" eustacia asked, a little surprised to hear merriment so pronounced. "it is not one of her bettermost parlour-parties. she's asked the plain neighbours and workpeople without drawing any lines, just to give 'em a good supper and such like. her son and she wait upon the folks." "i see," said eustacia. "'tis the last strain, i think," said saint george, with his ear to the panel. "a young man and woman have just swung into this corner, and he's saying to her, 'ah, the pity; 'tis over for us this time, my own.'" "thank god!" said the turkish knight, stamping, and taking from the wall the conventional lance that each of the mummers carried. her boots being thinner than those of the young men, the hoar had damped her feet and made them cold. "upon my song 'tis another ten minutes for us," said the valiant soldier, looking through the keyhole as the tune modulated into another without stopping. "grandfer cantle is standing in this corner, waiting his turn." "'twon't be long; 'tis a six-handed reel," said the doctor. "why not go in, dancing or no? they sent for us," said the saracen. "certainly not," said eustacia authoritatively, as she paced smartly up and down from door to gate to warm herself. "we should burst into the middle of them and stop the dance, and that would be unmannerly." "he thinks himself somebody because he has had a bit more schooling than we," said the doctor. "you may go to the deuce!" said eustacia. there was a whispered conversation between three or four of them, and one turned to her. "will you tell us one thing?" he said, not without gentleness. "be you miss vye? we think you must be." "you may think what you like," said eustacia slowly. "but honourable lads will not tell tales upon a lady." "we'll say nothing, miss. that's upon our honour." "thank you," she replied. at this moment the fiddles finished off with a screech, and the serpent emitted a last note that nearly lifted the roof. when, from the comparative quiet within, the mummers judged that the dancers had taken their seats, father christmas advanced, lifted the latch, and put his head inside the door. "ah, the mummers, the mummers!" cried several guests at once. "clear a space for the mummers." hump-backed father christmas then made a complete entry, swinging his huge club, and in a general way clearing the stage for the actors proper, while he informed the company in smart verse that he was come, welcome or welcome not; concluding his speech with "make room, make room, my gallant boys, and give us space to rhyme; we've come to show saint george's play, upon this christmas time." the guests were now arranging themselves at one end of the room, the fiddler was mending a string, the serpent-player was emptying his mouthpiece, and the play began. first of those outside the valiant soldier entered, in the interest of saint george-- "here come i, the valiant soldier; slasher is my name;" and so on. this speech concluded with a challenge to the infidel, at the end of which it was eustacia's duty to enter as the turkish knight. she, with the rest who were not yet on, had hitherto remained in the moonlight which streamed under the porch. with no apparent effort or backwardness she came in, beginning-- "here come i, a turkish knight, who learnt in turkish land to fight; i'll fight this man with courage bold: if his blood's hot i'll make it cold!" during her declamation eustacia held her head erect, and spoke as roughly as she could, feeling pretty secure from observation. but the concentration upon her part necessary to prevent discovery, the newness of the scene, the shine of the candles, and the confusing effect upon her vision of the ribboned visor which hid her features, left her absolutely unable to perceive who were present as spectators. on the further side of a table bearing candles she could faintly discern faces, and that was all. meanwhile jim starks as the valiant soldier had come forward, and, with a glare upon the turk, replied-- "if, then, thou art that turkish knight, draw out thy sword, and let us fight!" and fight they did; the issue of the combat being that the valiant soldier was slain by a preternaturally inadequate thrust from eustacia, jim, in his ardour for genuine histrionic art, coming down like a log upon the stone floor with force enough to dislocate his shoulder. then, after more words from the turkish knight, rather too faintly delivered, and statements that he'd fight saint george and all his crew, saint george himself magnificently entered with the well-known flourish-- "here come i, saint george, the valiant man, with naked sword and spear in hand, who fought the dragon and brought him to the slaughter, and by this won fair sabra, the king of egypt's daughter; what mortal man would dare to stand before me with my sword in hand?" this was the lad who had first recognized eustacia; and when she now, as the turk, replied with suitable defiance, and at once began the combat, the young fellow took especial care to use his sword as gently as possible. being wounded, the knight fell upon one knee, according to the direction. the doctor now entered, restored the knight by giving him a draught from the bottle which he carried, and the fight was again resumed, the turk sinking by degrees until quite overcome--dying as hard in this venerable drama as he is said to do at the present day. this gradual sinking to the earth was, in fact, one reason why eustacia had thought that the part of the turkish knight, though not the shortest, would suit her best. a direct fall from upright to horizontal, which was the end of the other fighting characters, was not an elegant or decorous part for a girl. but it was easy to die like a turk, by a dogged decline. eustacia was now among the number of the slain, though not on the floor, for she had managed to sink into a sloping position against the clock-case, so that her head was well elevated. the play proceeded between saint george, the saracen, the doctor, and father christmas; and eustacia, having no more to do, for the first time found leisure to observe the scene round, and to search for the form that had drawn her hither. vi the two stand face to face the room had been arranged with a view to the dancing, the large oak table having been moved back till it stood as a breastwork to the fireplace. at each end, behind, and in the chimney-corner were grouped the guests, many of them being warm-faced and panting, among whom eustacia cursorily recognized some well-to-do persons from beyond the heath. thomasin, as she had expected, was not visible, and eustacia recollected that a light had shone from an upper window when they were outside--the window, probably, of thomasin's room. a nose, chin, hands, knees, and toes projected from the seat within the chimney opening, which members she found to unite in the person of grandfer cantle, mrs. yeobright's occasional assistant in the garden, and therefore one of the invited. the smoke went up from an etna of peat in front of him, played round the notches of the chimney-crook, struck against the saltbox, and got lost among the flitches. another part of the room soon riveted her gaze. at the other side of the chimney stood the settle, which is the necessary supplement to a fire so open that nothing less than a strong breeze will carry up the smoke. it is, to the hearths of old-fashioned cavernous fireplaces, what the east belt of trees is to the exposed country estate, or the north wall to the garden. outside the settle candles gutter, locks of hair wave, young women shiver, and old men sneeze. inside is paradise. not a symptom of a draught disturbs the air; the sitters' backs are as warm as their faces, and songs and old tales are drawn from the occupants by the comfortable heat, like fruit from melon plants in a frame. it was, however, not with those who sat in the settle that eustacia was concerned. a face showed itself with marked distinctness against the dark-tanned wood of the upper part. the owner, who was leaning against the settle's outer end, was clement yeobright, or clym, as he was called here; she knew it could be nobody else. the spectacle constituted an area of two feet in rembrandt's intensest manner. a strange power in the lounger's appearance lay in the fact that, though his whole figure was visible, the observer's eye was only aware of his face. to one of middle age the countenance was that of a young man, though a youth might hardly have seen any necessity for the term of immaturity. but it was really one of those faces which convey less the idea of so many years as its age than of so much experience as its store. the number of their years may have adequately summed up jared, mahalaleel, and the rest of the antediluvians, but the age of a modern man is to be measured by the intensity of his history. the face was well shaped, even excellently. but the mind within was beginning to use it as a mere waste tablet whereon to trace its idiosyncrasies as they developed themselves. the beauty here visible would in no long time be ruthlessly over-run by its parasite, thought, which might just as well have fed upon a plainer exterior where there was nothing it could harm. had heaven preserved yeobright from a wearing habit of meditation, people would have said, "a handsome man." had his brain unfolded under sharper contours they would have said, "a thoughtful man." but an inner strenuousness was preying upon an outer symmetry, and they rated his look as singular. hence people who began by beholding him ended by perusing him. his countenance was overlaid with legible meanings. without being thought-worn he yet had certain marks derived from a perception of his surroundings, such as are not unfrequently found on men at the end of the four or five years of endeavour which follow the close of placid pupilage. he already showed that thought is a disease of flesh, and indirectly bore evidence that ideal physical beauty is incompatible with emotional development and a full recognition of the coil of things. mental luminousness must be fed with the oil of life, even though there is already a physical need for it; and the pitiful sight of two demands on one supply was just showing itself here. when standing before certain men the philosopher regrets that thinkers are but perishable tissue, the artist that perishable tissue has to think. thus to deplore, each from his point of view, the mutually destructive interdependence of spirit and flesh would have been instinctive with these in critically observing yeobright. as for his look, it was a natural cheerfulness striving against depression from without, and not quite succeeding. the look suggested isolation, but it revealed something more. as is usual with bright natures, the deity that lies ignominiously chained within an ephemeral human carcase shone out of him like a ray. the effect upon eustacia was palpable. the extraordinary pitch of excitement that she had reached beforehand would, indeed, have caused her to be influenced by the most commonplace man. she was troubled at yeobright's presence. the remainder of the play ended: the saracen's head was cut off, and saint george stood as victor. nobody commented, any more than they would have commented on the fact of mushrooms coming in autumn or snowdrops in spring. they took the piece as phlegmatically as did the actors themselves. it was a phase of cheerfulness which was, as a matter of course, to be passed through every christmas; and there was no more to be said. they sang the plaintive chant which follows the play, during which all the dead men rise to their feet in a silent and awful manner, like the ghosts of napoleon's soldiers in the midnight review. afterwards the door opened, and fairway appeared on the threshold, accompanied by christian and another. they had been waiting outside for the conclusion of the play, as the players had waited for the conclusion of the dance. "come in, come in," said mrs. yeobright; and clym went forward to welcome them. "how is it you are so late? grandfer cantle has been here ever so long, and we thought you'd have come with him, as you live so near one another." "well, i should have come earlier," mr. fairway said, and paused to look along the beam of the ceiling for a nail to hang his hat on; but, finding his accustomed one to be occupied by the mistletoe, and all the nails in the walls to be burdened with bunches of holly, he at last relieved himself of the hat by ticklishly balancing it between the candlebox and the head of the clock-case. "i should have come earlier, ma'am," he resumed, with a more composed air, "but i know what parties be, and how there's none too much room in folks' houses at such times, so i thought i wouldn't come till you'd got settled a bit." "and i thought so too, mrs. yeobright," said christian earnestly, "but father there was so eager that he had no manners at all, and left home almost afore 'twas dark. i told him 'twas barely decent in a' old man to come so oversoon; but words be wind." "klk! i wasn't going to bide waiting about, till half the game was over! i'm as light as a kite when anything's going on!" crowed grandfer cantle from the chimney-seat. fairway had meanwhile concluded a critical gaze at yeobright. "now, you may not believe it," he said to the rest of the room, "but i should never have knowed this gentleman if i had met him anywhere off his own he'th--he's altered so much." "you too have altered, and for the better, i think timothy," said yeobright, surveying the firm figure of fairway. "master yeobright, look me over too. i have altered for the better, haven't i, hey?" said grandfer cantle, rising and placing himself something above half a foot from clym's eye, to induce the most searching criticism. "to be sure we will," said fairway, taking the candle and moving it over the surface of the grandfer's countenance, the subject of his scrutiny irradiating himself with light and pleasant smiles, and giving himself jerks of juvenility. "you haven't changed much," said yeobright. "if there's any difference, grandfer is younger," appended fairway decisively. "and yet not my own doing, and i feel no pride in it," said the pleased ancient. "but i can't be cured of my vagaries; them i plead guilty to. yes, master cantle always was that, as we know. but i am nothing by the side of you, mister clym." "nor any o' us," said humphrey, in a low rich tone of admiration, not intended to reach anybody's ears. "really, there would have been nobody here who could have stood as decent second to him, or even third, if i hadn't been a soldier in the bang-up locals (as we was called for our smartness)," said grandfer cantle. "and even as 'tis we all look a little scammish beside him. but in the year four 'twas said there wasn't a finer figure in the whole south wessex than i, as i looked when dashing past the shop-winders with the rest of our company on the day we ran out o' budmouth because it was thoughted that boney had landed round the point. there was i, straight as a young poplar, wi' my firelock, and my bag-net, and my spatter-dashes, and my stock sawing my jaws off, and my accoutrements sheening like the seven stars! yes, neighbours, i was a pretty sight in my soldiering days. you ought to have seen me in four!" "'tis his mother's side where master clym's figure comes from, bless ye," said timothy. "i know'd her brothers well. longer coffins were never made in the whole country of south wessex, and 'tis said that poor george's knees were crumpled up a little e'en as 'twas." "coffins, where?" inquired christian, drawing nearer. "have the ghost of one appeared to anybody, master fairway?" "no, no. don't let your mind so mislead your ears, christian; and be a man," said timothy reproachfully. "i will." said christian. "but now i think o't my shadder last night seemed just the shape of a coffin. what is it a sign of when your shade's like a coffin, neighbours? it can't be nothing to be afeared of, i suppose?" "afeared, no!" said the grandfer. "faith, i was never afeard of nothing except boney, or i shouldn't ha' been the soldier i was. yes, 'tis a thousand pities you didn't see me in four!" by this time the mummers were preparing to leave; but mrs. yeobright stopped them by asking them to sit down and have a little supper. to this invitation father christmas, in the name of them all, readily agreed. eustacia was happy in the opportunity of staying a little longer. the cold and frosty night without was doubly frigid to her. but the lingering was not without its difficulties. mrs. yeobright, for want of room in the larger apartment, placed a bench for the mummers half-way through the pantry door, which opened from the sitting-room. here they seated themselves in a row, the door being left open: thus they were still virtually in the same apartment. mrs. yeobright now murmured a few words to her son, who crossed the room to the pantry-door, striking his head against the mistletoe as he passed, and brought the mummers beef and bread, cake pastry, mead, and elder-wine, the waiting being done by him and his mother, that the little maid-servant might sit as guest. the mummers doffed their helmets, and began to eat and drink. "but you will surely have some?" said clym to the turkish knight, as he stood before that warrior, tray in hand. she had refused, and still sat covered, only the sparkle of her eyes being visible between the ribbons which covered her face. "none, thank you," replied eustacia. "he's quite a youngster," said the saracen apologetically, "and you must excuse him. he's not one of the old set, but have jined us because t'other couldn't come." "but he will take something?" persisted yeobright. "try a glass of mead or elder-wine." "yes, you had better try that," said the saracen. "it will keep the cold out going home-along." though eustacia could not eat without uncovering her face she could drink easily enough beneath her disguise. the elder-wine was accordingly accepted, and the glass vanished inside the ribbons. at moments during this performance eustacia was half in doubt about the security of her position; yet it had a fearful joy. a series of attentions paid to her, and yet not to her but to some imaginary person, by the first man she had ever been inclined to adore, complicated her emotions indescribably. she had loved him partly because he was exceptional in this scene, partly because she had determined to love him, chiefly because she was in desperate need of loving somebody after wearying of wildeve. believing that she must love him in spite of herself, she had been influenced after the fashion of the second lord lyttleton and other persons, who have dreamed that they were to die on a certain day, and by stress of a morbid imagination have actually brought about that event. once let a maiden admit the possibility of her being stricken with love for some one at a certain hour and place, and the thing is as good as done. did anything at this moment suggest to yeobright the sex of the creature whom that fantastic guise inclosed, how extended was her scope both in feeling and in making others feel, and how far her compass transcended that of her companions in the band? when the disguised queen of love appeared before aeneas a preternatural perfume accompanied her presence and betrayed her quality. if such a mysterious emanation ever was projected by the emotions of an earthly woman upon their object, it must have signified eustacia's presence to yeobright now. he looked at her wistfully, then seemed to fall into a reverie, as if he were forgetting what he observed. the momentary situation ended, he passed on, and eustacia sipped her wine without knowing what she drank. the man for whom she had predetermined to nourish a passion went into the small room, and across it to the further extremity. the mummers, as has been stated, were seated on a bench, one end of which extended into the small apartment, or pantry, for want of space in the outer room. eustacia, partly from shyness, had chosen the midmost seat, which thus commanded a view of the interior of the pantry as well as the room containing the guests. when clym passed down the pantry her eyes followed him in the gloom which prevailed there. at the remote end was a door which, just as he was about to open it for himself, was opened by somebody within; and light streamed forth. the person was thomasin, with a candle, looking anxious, pale, and interesting. yeobright appeared glad to see her, and pressed her hand. "that's right, tamsie," he said heartily, as though recalled to himself by the sight of her, "you have decided to come down. i am glad of it." "hush--no, no," she said quickly. "i only came to speak to you." "but why not join us?" "i cannot. at least i would rather not. i am not well enough, and we shall have plenty of time together now you are going to be home a good long holiday." "it isn't nearly so pleasant without you. are you really ill?" "just a little, my old cousin--here," she said, playfully sweeping her hand across her heart. "ah, mother should have asked somebody else to be present tonight, perhaps?" "o no, indeed. i merely stepped down, clym, to ask you--" here he followed her through the doorway into the private room beyond, and, the door closing, eustacia and the mummer who sat next to her, the only other witness of the performance, saw and heard no more. the heat flew to eustacia's head and cheeks. she instantly guessed that clym, having been home only these two or three days, had not as yet been made acquainted with thomasin's painful situation with regard to wildeve; and seeing her living there just as she had been living before he left home, he naturally suspected nothing. eustacia felt a wild jealousy of thomasin on the instant. though thomasin might possibly have tender sentiments towards another man as yet, how long could they be expected to last when she was shut up here with this interesting and travelled cousin of hers? there was no knowing what affection might not soon break out between the two, so constantly in each other's society, and not a distracting object near. clym's boyish love for her might have languished, but it might easily be revived again. eustacia was nettled by her own contrivances. what a sheer waste of herself to be dressed thus while another was shining to advantage! had she known the full effect of the encounter she would have moved heaven and earth to get here in a natural manner. the power of her face all lost, the charm of her emotions all disguised, the fascinations of her coquetry denied existence, nothing but a voice left to her; she had a sense of the doom of echo. "nobody here respects me," she said. she had overlooked the fact that, in coming as a boy among other boys, she would be treated as a boy. the slight, though of her own causing, and self-explanatory, she was unable to dismiss as unwittingly shown, so sensitive had the situation made her. women have done much for themselves in histrionic dress. to look far below those who, like a certain fair personator of polly peachum early in the last century, and another of lydia languish early in this, have won not only love but ducal coronets into the bargain, whole shoals of them have reached to the initial satisfaction of getting love almost whence they would. but the turkish knight was denied even the chance of achieving this by the fluttering ribbons which she dared not brush aside. yeobright returned to the room without his cousin. when within two or three feet of eustacia he stopped, as if again arrested by a thought. he was gazing at her. she looked another way, disconcerted, and wondered how long this purgatory was to last. after lingering a few seconds he passed on again. to court their own discomfiture by love is a common instinct with certain perfervid women. conflicting sensations of love, fear, and shame reduced eustacia to a state of the utmost uneasiness. to escape was her great and immediate desire. the other mummers appeared to be in no hurry to leave; and murmuring to the lad who sat next to her that she preferred waiting for them outside the house, she moved to the door as imperceptibly as possible, opened it, and slipped out. the calm, lone scene reassured her. she went forward to the palings and leant over them, looking at the moon. she had stood thus but a little time when the door again opened. expecting to see the remainder of the band eustacia turned; but no--clym yeobright came out as softly as she had done, and closed the door behind him. he advanced and stood beside her. "i have an odd opinion," he said, "and should like to ask you a question. are you a woman--or am i wrong?" "i am a woman." his eyes lingered on her with great interest. "do girls often play as mummers now? they never used to." "they don't now." "why did you?" "to get excitement and shake off depression," she said in low tones. "what depressed you?" "life." "that's a cause of depression a good many have to put up with." "yes." a long silence. "and do you find excitement?" asked clym at last. "at this moment, perhaps." "then you are vexed at being discovered?" "yes; though i thought i might be." "i would gladly have asked you to our party had i known you wished to come. have i ever been acquainted with you in my youth?" "never." "won't you come in again, and stay as long as you like?" "no. i wish not to be further recognized." "well, you are safe with me." after remaining in thought a minute he added gently, "i will not intrude upon you longer. it is a strange way of meeting, and i will not ask why i find a cultivated woman playing such a part as this." she did not volunteer the reason which he seemed to hope for, and he wished her good night, going thence round to the back of the house, where he walked up and down by himself for some time before re-entering. eustacia, warmed with an inner fire, could not wait for her companions after this. she flung back the ribbons from her face, opened the gate, and at once struck into the heath. she did not hasten along. her grandfather was in bed at this hour, for she so frequently walked upon the hills on moonlight nights that he took no notice of her comings and goings, and, enjoying himself in his own way, left her to do likewise. a more important subject than that of getting indoors now engrossed her. yeobright, if he had the least curiosity, would infallibly discover her name. what then? she first felt a sort of exultation at the way in which the adventure had terminated, even though at moments between her exultations she was abashed and blushful. then this consideration recurred to chill her: what was the use of her exploit? she was at present a total stranger to the yeobright family. the unreasonable nimbus of romance with which she had encircled that man might be her misery. how could she allow herself to become so infatuated with a stranger? and to fill the cup of her sorrow there would be thomasin, living day after day in inflammable proximity to him; for she had just learnt that, contrary to her first belief, he was going to stay at home some considerable time. she reached the wicket at mistover knap, but before opening it she turned and faced the heath once more. the form of rainbarrow stood above the hills, and the moon stood above rainbarrow. the air was charged with silence and frost. the scene reminded eustacia of a circumstance which till that moment she had totally forgotten. she had promised to meet wildeve by the barrow this very night at eight, to give a final answer to his pleading for an elopement. she herself had fixed the evening and the hour. he had probably come to the spot, waited there in the cold, and been greatly disappointed. "well, so much the better: it did not hurt him," she said serenely. wildeve had at present the rayless outline of the sun through smoked glass, and she could say such things as that with the greatest facility. she remained deeply pondering; and thomasin's winning manner towards her cousin arose again upon eustacia's mind. "o that she had been married to damon before this!" she said. "and she would if it hadn't been for me! if i had only known--if i had only known!" eustacia once more lifted her deep stormy eyes to the moonlight, and, sighing that tragic sigh of hers which was so much like a shudder, entered the shadow of the roof. she threw off her trappings in the out-house, rolled them up, and went indoors to her chamber. vii a coalition between beauty and oddness the old captain's prevailing indifference to his granddaughter's movements left her free as a bird to follow her own courses; but it so happened that he did take upon himself the next morning to ask her why she had walked out so late. "only in search of events, grandfather," she said, looking out of the window with that drowsy latency of manner which discovered so much force behind it whenever the trigger was pressed. "search of events--one would think you were one of the bucks i knew at one-and-twenty." "it is so lonely here." "so much the better. if i were living in a town my whole time would be taken up in looking after you. i fully expected you would have been home when i returned from the woman." "i won't conceal what i did. i wanted an adventure, and i went with the mummers. i played the part of the turkish knight." "no, never? ha, ha! good gad! i didn't expect it of you, eustacia." "it was my first performance, and it certainly will be my last. now i have told you--and remember it is a secret." "of course. but, eustacia, you never did--ha! ha! dammy, how 'twould have pleased me forty years ago! but remember, no more of it, my girl. you may walk on the heath night or day, as you choose, so that you don't bother me; but no figuring in breeches again." "you need have no fear for me, grandpapa." here the conversation ceased, eustacia's moral training never exceeding in severity a dialogue of this sort, which, if it ever became profitable to good works, would be a result not dear at the price. but her thoughts soon strayed far from her own personality; and, full of a passionate and indescribable solicitude for one to whom she was not even a name, she went forth into the amplitude of tanned wild around her, restless as ahasuerus the jew. she was about half a mile from her residence when she beheld a sinister redness arising from a ravine a little way in advance--dull and lurid like a flame in sunlight and she guessed it to signify diggory venn. when the farmers who had wished to buy in a new stock of reddle during the last month had inquired where venn was to be found, people replied, "on egdon heath." day after day the answer was the same. now, since egdon was populated with heath-croppers and furze-cutters rather than with sheep and shepherds, and the downs where most of the latter were to be found lay some to the north, some to the west of egdon, his reason for camping about there like israel in zin was not apparent. the position was central and occasionally desirable. but the sale of reddle was not diggory's primary object in remaining on the heath, particularly at so late a period of the year, when most travellers of his class had gone into winter quarters. eustacia looked at the lonely man. wildeve had told her at their last meeting that venn had been thrust forward by mrs. yeobright as one ready and anxious to take his place as thomasin's betrothed. his figure was perfect, his face young and well outlined, his eyes bright, his intelligence keen, and his position one which he could readily better if he chose. but in spite of possibilities it was not likely that thomasin would accept this ishmaelitish creature while she had a cousin like yeobright at her elbow, and wildeve at the same time not absolutely indifferent. eustacia was not long in guessing that poor mrs. yeobright, in her anxiety for her niece's future, had mentioned this lover to stimulate the zeal of the other. eustacia was on the side of the yeobrights now, and entered into the spirit of the aunt's desire. "good morning, miss," said the reddleman, taking off his cap of hareskin, and apparently bearing her no ill-will from recollection of their last meeting. "good morning, reddleman," she said, hardly troubling to lift her heavily shaded eyes to his. "i did not know you were so near. is your van here too?" venn moved his elbow towards a hollow in which a dense brake of purple-stemmed brambles had grown to such vast dimensions as almost to form a dell. brambles, though churlish when handled, are kindly shelter in early winter, being the latest of the deciduous bushes to lose their leaves. the roof and chimney of venn's caravan showed behind the tracery and tangles of the brake. "you remain near this part?" she asked with more interest. "yes, i have business here." "not altogether the selling of reddle?" "it has nothing to do with that." "it has to do with miss yeobright?" her face seemed to ask for an armed peace, and he therefore said frankly, "yes, miss; it is on account of her." "on account of your approaching marriage with her?" venn flushed through his stain. "don't make sport of me, miss vye," he said. "it isn't true?" "certainly not." she was thus convinced that the reddleman was a mere _pis aller_ in mrs. yeobright's mind; one, moreover, who had not even been informed of his promotion to that lowly standing. "it was a mere notion of mine," she said quietly; and was about to pass by without further speech, when, looking round to the right, she saw a painfully well-known figure serpentining upwards by one of the little paths which led to the top where she stood. owing to the necessary windings of his course his back was at present towards them. she glanced quickly round; to escape that man there was only one way. turning to venn, she said, "would you allow me to rest a few minutes in your van? the banks are damp for sitting on." "certainly, miss; i'll make a place for you." she followed him behind the dell of brambles to his wheeled dwelling, into which venn mounted, placing the three-legged stool just within the door. "that is the best i can do for you," he said, stepping down and retiring to the path, where he resumed the smoking of his pipe as he walked up and down. eustacia bounded into the vehicle and sat on the stool, ensconced from view on the side towards the trackway. soon she heard the brushing of other feet than the reddleman's, a not very friendly "good day" uttered by two men in passing each other, and then the dwindling of the footfall of one of them in a direction onwards. eustacia stretched her neck forward till she caught a glimpse of a receding back and shoulders; and she felt a wretched twinge of misery, she knew not why. it was the sickening feeling which, if the changed heart has any generosity at all in its composition, accompanies the sudden sight of a once-loved one who is beloved no more. when eustacia descended to proceed on her way the reddleman came near. "that was mr. wildeve who passed, miss," he said slowly, and expressed by his face that he expected her to feel vexed at having been sitting unseen. "yes, i saw him coming up the hill," replied eustacia. "why should you tell me that?" it was a bold question, considering the reddleman's knowledge of her past love; but her undemonstrative manner had power to repress the opinions of those she treated as remote from her. "i am glad to hear that you can ask it," said the reddleman bluntly. "and, now i think of it, it agrees with what i saw last night." "ah--what was that?" eustacia wished to leave him, but wished to know. "mr. wildeve stayed at rainbarrow a long time waiting for a lady who didn't come." "you waited too, it seems?" "yes, i always do. i was glad to see him disappointed. he will be there again tonight." "to be again disappointed. the truth is, reddleman, that that lady, so far from wishing to stand in the way of thomasin's marriage with mr. wildeve, would be very glad to promote it." venn felt much astonishment at this avowal, though he did not show it clearly; that exhibition may greet remarks which are one remove from expectation, but it is usually withheld in complicated cases of two removes and upwards. "indeed, miss," he replied. "how do you know that mr. wildeve will come to rainbarrow again tonight?" she asked. "i heard him say to himself that he would. he's in a regular temper." eustacia looked for a moment what she felt, and she murmured, lifting her deep dark eyes anxiously to his, "i wish i knew what to do. i don't want to be uncivil to him; but i don't wish to see him again; and i have some few little things to return to him." "if you choose to send 'em by me, miss, and a note to tell him that you wish to say no more to him, i'll take it for you quite privately. that would be the most straightforward way of letting him know your mind." "very well," said eustacia. "come towards my house, and i will bring it out to you." she went on, and as the path was an infinitely small parting in the shaggy locks of the heath, the reddleman followed exactly in her trail. she saw from a distance that the captain was on the bank sweeping the horizon with his telescope; and bidding venn to wait where he stood she entered the house alone. in ten minutes she returned with a parcel and a note, and said, in placing them in his hand, "why are you so ready to take these for me?" "can you ask that?" "i suppose you think to serve thomasin in some way by it. are you as anxious as ever to help on her marriage?" venn was a little moved. "i would sooner have married her myself," he said in a low voice. "but what i feel is that if she cannot be happy without him i will do my duty in helping her to get him, as a man ought." eustacia looked curiously at the singular man who spoke thus. what a strange sort of love, to be entirely free from that quality of selfishness which is frequently the chief constituent of the passion, and sometimes its only one! the reddleman's disinterestedness was so well deserving of respect that it overshot respect by being barely comprehended; and she almost thought it absurd. "then we are both of one mind at last," she said. "yes," replied venn gloomily. "but if you would tell me, miss, why you take such an interest in her, i should be easier. it is so sudden and strange." eustacia appeared at a loss. "i cannot tell you that, reddleman," she said coldly. venn said no more. he pocketed the letter, and, bowing to eustacia, went away. rainbarrow had again become blended with night when wildeve ascended the long acclivity at its base. on his reaching the top a shape grew up from the earth immediately behind him. it was that of eustacia's emissary. he slapped wildeve on the shoulder. the feverish young innkeeper and ex-engineer started like satan at the touch of ithuriel's spear. "the meeting is always at eight o'clock, at this place," said venn, "and here we are--we three." "we three?" said wildeve, looking quickly round. "yes; you, and i, and she. this is she." he held up the letter and parcel. wildeve took them wonderingly. "i don't quite see what this means," he said. "how do you come here? there must be some mistake." "it will be cleared from your mind when you have read the letter. lanterns for one." the reddleman struck a light, kindled an inch of tallow-candle which he had brought, and sheltered it with his cap. "who are you?" said wildeve, discerning by the candlelight an obscure rubicundity of person in his companion. "you are the reddleman i saw on the hill this morning--why, you are the man who--" "please read the letter." "if you had come from the other one i shouldn't have been surprised," murmured wildeve as he opened the letter and read. his face grew serious. to mr. wildeve. after some thought i have decided once and for all that we must hold no further communication. the more i consider the matter the more i am convinced that there must be an end to our acquaintance. had you been uniformly faithful to me throughout these two years you might now have some ground for accusing me of heartlessness; but if you calmly consider what i bore during the period of your desertion, and how i passively put up with your courtship of another without once interfering, you will, i think, own that i have a right to consult my own feelings when you come back to me again. that these are not what they were towards you may, perhaps, be a fault in me, but it is one which you can scarcely reproach me for when you remember how you left me for thomasin. the little articles you gave me in the early part of our friendship are returned by the bearer of this letter. they should rightly have been sent back when i first heard of your engagement to her. eustacia by the time that wildeve reached her name the blankness with which he had read the first half of the letter intensified to mortification. "i am made a great fool of, one way and another," he said pettishly. "do you know what is in this letter?" the reddleman hummed a tune. "can't you answer me?" asked wildeve warmly. "ru-um-tum-tum," sang the reddleman. wildeve stood looking on the ground beside venn's feet, till he allowed his eyes to travel upwards over diggory's form, as illuminated by the candle, to his head and face. "ha-ha! well, i suppose i deserve it, considering how i have played with them both," he said at last, as much to himself as to venn. "but of all the odd things that ever i knew, the oddest is that you should so run counter to your own interests as to bring this to me." "my interests?" "certainly. 'twas your interest not to do anything which would send me courting thomasin again, now she has accepted you--or something like it. mrs. yeobright says you are to marry her. 'tisn't true, then?" "good lord! i heard of this before, but didn't believe it. when did she say so?" wildeve began humming as the reddleman had done. "i don't believe it now," cried venn. "ru-um-tum-tum," sang wildeve. "o lord--how we can imitate!" said venn contemptuously. "i'll have this out. i'll go straight to her." diggory withdrew with an emphatic step, wildeve's eye passing over his form in withering derision, as if he were no more than a heath-cropper. when the reddleman's figure could no longer be seen, wildeve himself descended and plunged into the rayless hollow of the vale. to lose the two women--he who had been the well-beloved of both--was too ironical an issue to be endured. he could only decently save himself by thomasin; and once he became her husband, eustacia's repentance, he thought, would set in for a long and bitter term. it was no wonder that wildeve, ignorant of the new man at the back of the scene, should have supposed eustacia to be playing a part. to believe that the letter was not the result of some momentary pique, to infer that she really gave him up to thomasin, would have required previous knowledge of her transfiguration by that man's influence. who was to know that she had grown generous in the greediness of a new passion, that in coveting one cousin she was dealing liberally with another, that in her eagerness to appropriate she gave way? full of this resolve to marry in haste, and wring the heart of the proud girl, wildeve went his way. meanwhile diggory venn had returned to his van, where he stood looking thoughtfully into the stove. a new vista was opened up to him. but, however promising mrs. yeobright's views of him might be as a candidate for her niece's hand, one condition was indispensable to the favour of thomasin herself, and that was a renunciation of his present wild mode of life. in this he saw little difficulty. he could not afford to wait till the next day before seeing thomasin and detailing his plan. he speedily plunged himself into toilet operations, pulled a suit of cloth clothes from a box, and in about twenty minutes stood before the van-lantern as a reddleman in nothing but his face, the vermilion shades of which were not to be removed in a day. closing the door and fastening it with a padlock, venn set off towards blooms-end. he had reached the white palings and laid his hand upon the gate when the door of the house opened, and quickly closed again. a female form had glided in. at the same time a man, who had seemingly been standing with the woman in the porch, came forward from the house till he was face to face with venn. it was wildeve again. "man alive, you've been quick at it," said diggory sarcastically. "and you slow, as you will find," said wildeve. "and," lowering his voice, "you may as well go back again now. i've claimed her, and got her. good night, reddleman!" thereupon wildeve walked away. venn's heart sank within him, though it had not risen unduly high. he stood leaning over the palings in an indecisive mood for nearly a quarter of an hour. then he went up the garden path, knocked, and asked for mrs. yeobright. instead of requesting him to enter she came to the porch. a discourse was carried on between them in low measured tones for the space of ten minutes or more. at the end of the time mrs. yeobright went in, and venn sadly retraced his steps into the heath. when he had again regained his van he lit the lantern, and with an apathetic face at once began to pull off his best clothes, till in the course of a few minutes he reappeared as the confirmed and irretrievable reddleman that he had seemed before. viii firmness is discovered in a gentle heart on that evening the interior of blooms-end, though cosy and comfortable, had been rather silent. clym yeobright was not at home. since the christmas party he had gone on a few days' visit to a friend about ten miles off. the shadowy form seen by venn to part from wildeve in the porch, and quickly withdraw into the house, was thomasin's. on entering she threw down a cloak which had been carelessly wrapped round her, and came forward to the light, where mrs. yeobright sat at her work-table, drawn up within the settle, so that part of it projected into the chimney-corner. "i don't like your going out after dark alone, tamsin," said her aunt quietly, without looking up from her work. "i have only been just outside the door." "well?" inquired mrs. yeobright, struck by a change in the tone of thomasin's voice, and observing her. thomasin's cheek was flushed to a pitch far beyond that which it had reached before her troubles, and her eyes glittered. "it was he who knocked," she said. "i thought as much." "he wishes the marriage to be at once." "indeed! what--is he anxious?" mrs. yeobright directed a searching look upon her niece. "why did not mr. wildeve come in?" "he did not wish to. you are not friends with him, he says. he would like the wedding to be the day after tomorrow, quite privately; at the church of his parish--not at ours." "oh! and what did you say?" "i agreed to it," thomasin answered firmly. "i am a practical woman now. i don't believe in hearts at all. i would marry him under any circumstances since--since clym's letter." a letter was lying on mrs. yeobright's work-basket, and at thomasin's word her aunt reopened it, and silently read for the tenth time that day:-- what is the meaning of this silly story that people are circulating about thomasin and mr. wildeve? i should call such a scandal humiliating if there was the least chance of its being true. how could such a gross falsehood have arisen? it is said that one should go abroad to hear news of home, and i appear to have done it. of course i contradict the tale everywhere; but it is very vexing, and i wonder how it could have originated. it is too ridiculous that such a girl as thomasin could so mortify us as to get jilted on the wedding-day. what has she done? "yes," mrs. yeobright said sadly, putting down the letter. "if you think you can marry him, do so. and since mr. wildeve wishes it to be unceremonious, let it be that too. i can do nothing. it is all in your own hands now. my power over your welfare came to an end when you left this house to go with him to anglebury." she continued, half in bitterness, "i may almost ask, why do you consult me in the matter at all? if you had gone and married him without saying a word to me, i could hardly have been angry--simply because, poor girl, you can't do a better thing." "don't say that and dishearten me." "you are right: i will not." "i do not plead for him, aunt. human nature is weak, and i am not a blind woman to insist that he is perfect. i did think so, but i don't now. but i know my course, and you know that i know it. i hope for the best." "and so do i, and we will both continue to," said mrs. yeobright, rising and kissing her. "then the wedding, if it comes off, will be on the morning of the very day clym comes home?" "yes. i decided that it ought to be over before he came. after that you can look him in the face, and so can i. our concealments will matter nothing." mrs. yeobright moved her head in thoughtful assent, and presently said, "do you wish me to give you away? i am willing to undertake that, you know, if you wish, as i was last time. after once forbidding the banns i think i can do no less." "i don't think i will ask you to come," said thomasin reluctantly, but with decision. "it would be unpleasant, i am almost sure. better let there be only strangers present, and none of my relations at all. i would rather have it so. i do not wish to do anything which may touch your credit, and i feel that i should be uncomfortable if you were there, after what has passed. i am only your niece, and there is no necessity why you should concern yourself more about me." "well, he has beaten us," her aunt said. "it really seems as if he had been playing with you in this way in revenge for my humbling him as i did by standing up against him at first." "o no, aunt," murmured thomasin. they said no more on the subject then. diggory venn's knock came soon after; and mrs. yeobright, on returning from her interview with him in the porch, carelessly observed, "another lover has come to ask for you." "no?" "yes, that queer young man venn." "asks to pay his addresses to me?" "yes; and i told him he was too late." thomasin looked silently into the candle-flame. "poor diggory!" she said, and then aroused herself to other things. the next day was passed in mere mechanical deeds of preparation, both the women being anxious to immerse themselves in these to escape the emotional aspect of the situation. some wearing apparel and other articles were collected anew for thomasin, and remarks on domestic details were frequently made, so as to obscure any inner misgivings about her future as wildeve's wife. the appointed morning came. the arrangement with wildeve was that he should meet her at the church to guard against any unpleasant curiosity which might have affected them had they been seen walking off together in the usual country way. aunt and niece stood together in the bedroom where the bride was dressing. the sun, where it could catch it, made a mirror of thomasin's hair, which she always wore braided. it was braided according to a calendric system: the more important the day the more numerous the strands in the braid. on ordinary working-days she braided it in threes; on ordinary sundays in fours; at may-polings, gipsyings, and the like, she braided it in fives. years ago she had said that when she married she would braid it in sevens. she had braided it in sevens today. "i have been thinking that i will wear my blue silk after all," she said. "it is my wedding day, even though there may be something sad about the time. i mean," she added, anxious to correct any wrong impression, "not sad in itself, but in its having had great disappointment and trouble before it." mrs. yeobright breathed in a way which might have been called a sigh. "i almost wish clym had been at home," she said. "of course you chose the time because of his absence." "partly. i have felt that i acted unfairly to him in not telling him all; but, as it was done not to grieve him, i thought i would carry out the plan to its end, and tell the whole story when the sky was clear." "you are a practical little woman," said mrs. yeobright, smiling. "i wish you and he--no, i don't wish anything. there, it is nine o'clock," she interrupted, hearing a whizz and a dinging downstairs. "i told damon i would leave at nine," said thomasin, hastening out of the room. her aunt followed. when thomasin was going up the little walk from the door to the wicket-gate, mrs. yeobright looked reluctantly at her, and said, "it is a shame to let you go alone." "it is necessary," said thomasin. "at any rate," added her aunt with forced cheerfulness, "i shall call upon you this afternoon, and bring the cake with me. if clym has returned by that time he will perhaps come too. i wish to show mr. wildeve that i bear him no ill-will. let the past be forgotten. well, god bless you! there, i don't believe in old superstitions, but i'll do it." she threw a slipper at the retreating figure of the girl, who turned, smiled, and went on again. a few steps further, and she looked back. "did you call me, aunt?" she tremulously inquired. "good-bye!" moved by an uncontrollable feeling as she looked upon mrs. yeobright's worn, wet face, she ran back, when her aunt came forward, and they met again. "o--tamsie," said the elder, weeping, "i don't like to let you go." "i--i--am--" thomasin began, giving way likewise. but, quelling her grief, she said "good-bye!" again and went on. then mrs. yeobright saw a little figure wending its way between the scratching furze-bushes, and diminishing far up the valley--a pale-blue spot in a vast field of neutral brown, solitary and undefended except by the power of her own hope. but the worst feature in the case was one which did not appear in the landscape; it was the man. the hour chosen for the ceremony by thomasin and wildeve had been so timed as to enable her to escape the awkwardness of meeting her cousin clym, who was returning the same morning. to own to the partial truth of what he had heard would be distressing as long as the humiliating position resulting from the event was unimproved. it was only after a second and successful journey to the altar that she could lift up her head and prove the failure of the first attempt a pure accident. she had not been gone from blooms-end more than half an hour when yeobright came by the meads from the other direction and entered the house. "i had an early breakfast," he said to his mother after greeting her. "now i could eat a little more." they sat down to the repeated meal, and he went on in a low, anxious voice, apparently imagining that thomasin had not yet come downstairs, "what's this i have heard about thomasin and mr. wildeve?" "it is true in many points," said mrs. yeobright quietly; "but it is all right now, i hope." she looked at the clock. "true?" "thomasin is gone to him today." clym pushed away his breakfast. "then there is a scandal of some sort, and that's what's the matter with thomasin. was it this that made her ill?" "yes. not a scandal: a misfortune. i will tell you all about it, clym. you must not be angry, but you must listen, and you'll find that what we have done has been done for the best." she then told him the circumstances. all that he had known of the affair before he returned from paris was that there had existed an attachment between thomasin and wildeve, which his mother had at first discountenanced, but had since, owing to the arguments of thomasin, looked upon in a little more favourable light. when she, therefore, proceeded to explain all he was greatly surprised and troubled. "and she determined that the wedding should be over before you came back," said mrs. yeobright, "that there might be no chance of her meeting you, and having a very painful time of it. that's why she has gone to him; they have arranged to be married this morning." "but i can't understand it," said yeobright, rising. "'tis so unlike her. i can see why you did not write to me after her unfortunate return home. but why didn't you let me know when the wedding was going to be--the first time?" "well, i felt vexed with her just then. she seemed to me to be obstinate; and when i found that you were nothing in her mind i vowed that she should be nothing in yours. i felt that she was only my niece after all; i told her she might marry, but that i should take no interest in it, and should not bother you about it either." "it wouldn't have been bothering me. mother, you did wrong." "i thought it might disturb you in your business, and that you might throw up your situation, or injure your prospects in some way because of it, so i said nothing. of course, if they had married at that time in a proper manner, i should have told you at once." "tamsin actually being married while we are sitting here!" "yes. unless some accident happens again, as it did the first time. it may, considering he's the same man." "yes, and i believe it will. was it right to let her go? suppose wildeve is really a bad fellow?" "then he won't come, and she'll come home again." "you should have looked more into it." "it is useless to say that," his mother answered with an impatient look of sorrow. "you don't know how bad it has been here with us all these weeks, clym. you don't know what a mortification anything of that sort is to a woman. you don't know the sleepless nights we've had in this house, and the almost bitter words that have passed between us since that fifth of november. i hope never to pass seven such weeks again. tamsin has not gone outside the door, and i have been ashamed to look anybody in the face; and now you blame me for letting her do the only thing that can be done to set that trouble straight." "no," he said slowly. "upon the whole i don't blame you. but just consider how sudden it seems to me. here was i, knowing nothing; and then i am told all at once that tamsie is gone to be married. well, i suppose there was nothing better to do. do you know, mother," he continued after a moment or two, looking suddenly interested in his own past history, "i once thought of tamsin as a sweetheart? yes, i did. how odd boys are! and when i came home and saw her this time she seemed so much more affectionate than usual, that i was quite reminded of those days, particularly on the night of the party, when she was unwell. we had the party just the same--was not that rather cruel to her?" "it made no difference. i had arranged to give one, and it was not worth while to make more gloom than necessary. to begin by shutting ourselves up and telling you of tamsin's misfortunes would have been a poor sort of welcome." clym remained thinking. "i almost wish you had not had that party," he said; "and for other reasons. but i will tell you in a day or two. we must think of tamsin now." they lapsed into silence. "i'll tell you what," said yeobright again, in a tone which showed some slumbering feeling still. "i don't think it kind to tamsin to let her be married like this, and neither of us there to keep up her spirits or care a bit about her. she hasn't disgraced herself, or done anything to deserve that. it is bad enough that the wedding should be so hurried and unceremonious, without our keeping away from it in addition. upon my soul, 'tis almost a shame. i'll go." "it is over by this time," said his mother with a sigh; "unless they were late, or he--" "then i shall be soon enough to see them come out. i don't quite like your keeping me in ignorance, mother, after all. really, i half hope he has failed to meet her!" "and ruined her character?" "nonsense: that wouldn't ruin thomasin." he took up his hat and hastily left the house. mrs. yeobright looked rather unhappy, and sat still, deep in thought. but she was not long left alone. a few minutes later clym came back again, and in his company came diggory venn. "i find there isn't time for me to get there," said clym. "is she married?" mrs. yeobright inquired, turning to the reddleman a face in which a strange strife of wishes, for and against, was apparent. venn bowed. "she is, ma'am." "how strange it sounds," murmured clym. "and he didn't disappoint her this time?" said mrs. yeobright. "he did not. and there is now no slight on her name. i was hastening ath'art to tell you at once, as i saw you were not there." "how came you to be there? how did you know it?" she asked. "i have been in that neighbourhood for some time, and i saw them go in," said the reddleman. "wildeve came up to the door, punctual as the clock. i didn't expect it of him." he did not add, as he might have added, that how he came to be in that neighbourhood was not by accident; that, since wildeve's resumption of his right to thomasin, venn, with the thoroughness which was part of his character, had determined to see the end of the episode. "who was there?" said mrs. yeobright. "nobody hardly. i stood right out of the way, and she did not see me." the reddleman spoke huskily, and looked into the garden. "who gave her away?" "miss vye." "how very remarkable! miss vye! it is to be considered an honour, i suppose?" "who's miss vye?" said clym. "captain vye's granddaughter, of mistover knap." "a proud girl from budmouth," said mrs. yeobright. "one not much to my liking. people say she's a witch, but of course that's absurd." the reddleman kept to himself his acquaintance with that fair personage, and also that eustacia was there because he went to fetch her, in accordance with a promise he had given as soon as he learnt that the marriage was to take place. he merely said, in continuation of the story-- "i was sitting on the churchyard wall when they came up, one from one way, the other from the other; and miss vye was walking thereabouts, looking at the head-stones. as soon as they had gone in i went to the door, feeling i should like to see it, as i knew her so well. i pulled off my boots because they were so noisy, and went up into the gallery. i saw then that the parson and clerk were already there." "how came miss vye to have anything to do with it, if she was only on a walk that way?" "because there was nobody else. she had gone into the church just before me, not into the gallery. the parson looked round before beginning, and as she was the only one near he beckoned to her, and she went up to the rails. after that, when it came to signing the book, she pushed up her veil and signed; and tamsin seemed to thank her for her kindness." the reddleman told the tale thoughtfully, for there lingered upon his vision the changing colour of wildeve, when eustacia lifted the thick veil which had concealed her from recognition and looked calmly into his face. "and then," said diggory sadly, "i came away, for her history as tamsin yeobright was over." "i offered to go," said mrs. yeobright regretfully. "but she said it was not necessary." "well, it is no matter," said the reddleman. "the thing is done at last as it was meant to be at first, and god send her happiness. now i'll wish you good morning." he placed his cap on his head and went out. from that instant of leaving mrs. yeobright's door, the reddleman was seen no more in or about egdon heath for a space of many months. he vanished entirely. the nook among the brambles where his van had been standing was as vacant as ever the next morning, and scarcely a sign remained to show that he had been there, excepting a few straws, and a little redness on the turf, which was washed away by the next storm of rain. the report that diggory had brought of the wedding, correct as far as it went, was deficient in one significant particular, which had escaped him through his being at some distance back in the church. when thomasin was tremblingly engaged in signing her name wildeve had flung towards eustacia a glance that said plainly, "i have punished you now." she had replied in a low tone--and he little thought how truly--"you mistake; it gives me sincerest pleasure to see her your wife today." book third the fascination i "my mind to me a kingdom is" in clym yeobright's face could be dimly seen the typical countenance of the future. should there be a classic period to art hereafter, its pheidias may produce such faces. the view of life as a thing to be put up with, replacing that zest for existence which was so intense in early civilizations, must ultimately enter so thoroughly into the constitution of the advanced races that its facial expression will become accepted as a new artistic departure. people already feel that a man who lives without disturbing a curve of feature, or setting a mark of mental concern anywhere upon himself, is too far removed from modern perceptiveness to be a modern type. physically beautiful men--the glory of the race when it was young--are almost an anachronism now; and we may wonder whether, at some time or other, physically beautiful women may not be an anachronism likewise. the truth seems to be that a long line of disillusive centuries has permanently displaced the hellenic idea of life, or whatever it may be called. what the greeks only suspected we know well; what their aeschylus imagined our nursery children feel. that old-fashioned revelling in the general situation grows less and less possible as we uncover the defects of natural laws, and see the quandary that man is in by their operation. the lineaments which will get embodied in ideals based upon this new recognition will probably be akin to those of yeobright. the observer's eye was arrested, not by his face as a picture, but by his face as a page; not by what it was, but by what it recorded. his features were attractive in the light of symbols, as sounds intrinsically common become attractive in language, and as shapes intrinsically simple become interesting in writing. he had been a lad of whom something was expected. beyond this all had been chaos. that he would be successful in an original way, or that he would go to the dogs in an original way, seemed equally probable. the only absolute certainty about him was that he would not stand still in the circumstances amid which he was born. hence, when his name was casually mentioned by neighbouring yeomen, the listener said, "ah, clym yeobright: what is he doing now?" when the instinctive question about a person is, what is he doing? it is felt that he will be found to be, like most of us, doing nothing in particular. there is an indefinite sense that he must be invading some region of singularity, good or bad. the devout hope is that he is doing well. the secret faith is that he is making a mess of it. half a dozen comfortable marketmen, who were habitual callers at the quiet woman as they passed by in their carts, were partial to the topic. in fact, though they were not egdon men, they could hardly avoid it while they sucked their long clay tubes and regarded the heath through the window. clym had been so inwoven with the heath in his boyhood that hardly anybody could look upon it without thinking of him. so the subject recurred: if he were making a fortune and a name, so much the better for him; if he were making a tragical figure in the world, so much the better for a narrative. the fact was that yeobright's fame had spread to an awkward extent before he left home. "it is bad when your fame outruns your means," said the spanish jesuit gracian. at the age of six he had asked a scripture riddle: "who was the first man known to wear breeches?" and applause had resounded from the very verge of the heath. at seven he painted the battle of waterloo with tiger-lily pollen and black-currant juice, in the absence of water-colours. by the time he reached twelve he had in this manner been heard of as artist and scholar for at least two miles round. an individual whose fame spreads three or four thousand yards in the time taken by the fame of others similarly situated to travel six or eight hundred, must of necessity have something in him. possibly clym's fame, like homer's, owed something to the accidents of his situation; nevertheless famous he was. he grew up and was helped out in life. that waggery of fate which started clive as a writing clerk, gay as a linen-draper, keats as a surgeon, and a thousand others in a thousand other odd ways, banished the wild and ascetic heath lad to a trade whose sole concern was with the especial symbols of self-indulgence and vainglory. the details of this choice of a business for him it is not necessary to give. at the death of his father a neighbouring gentleman had kindly undertaken to give the boy a start, and this assumed the form of sending him to budmouth. yeobright did not wish to go there, but it was the only feasible opening. thence he went to london; and thence, shortly after, to paris, where he had remained till now. something being expected of him, he had not been at home many days before a great curiosity as to why he stayed on so long began to arise in the heath. the natural term of a holiday had passed, yet he still remained. on the sunday morning following the week of thomasin's marriage a discussion on this subject was in progress at a hair-cutting before fairway's house. here the local barbering was always done at this hour on this day, to be followed by the great sunday wash of the inhabitants at noon, which in its turn was followed by the great sunday dressing an hour later. on egdon heath sunday proper did not begin till dinner-time, and even then it was a somewhat battered specimen of the day. these sunday-morning hair-cuttings were performed by fairway; the victim sitting on a chopping-block in front of the house, without a coat, and the neighbours gossiping around, idly observing the locks of hair as they rose upon the wind after the snip, and flew away out of sight to the four quarters of the heavens. summer and winter the scene was the same, unless the wind were more than usually blusterous, when the stool was shifted a few feet round the corner. to complain of cold in sitting out of doors, hatless and coatless, while fairway told true stories between the cuts of the scissors, would have been to pronounce yourself no man at once. to flinch, exclaim, or move a muscle of the face at the small stabs under the ear received from those instruments, or at scarifications of the neck by the comb, would have been thought a gross breach of good manners, considering that fairway did it all for nothing. a bleeding about the poll on sunday afternoons was amply accounted for by the explanation. "i have had my hair cut, you know." the conversation on yeobright had been started by a distant view of the young man rambling leisurely across the heath before them. "a man who is doing well elsewhere wouldn't bide here two or three weeks for nothing," said fairway. "he's got some project in's head--depend upon that." "well, 'a can't keep a diment shop here," said sam. "i don't see why he should have had them two heavy boxes home if he had not been going to bide; and what there is for him to do here the lord in heaven knows." before many more surmises could be indulged in yeobright had come near; and seeing the hair-cutting group he turned aside to join them. marching up, and looking critically at their faces for a moment, he said, without introduction, "now, folks, let me guess what you have been talking about." "ay, sure, if you will," said sam. "about me." "now, it is a thing i shouldn't have dreamed of doing, otherwise," said fairway in a tone of integrity; "but since you have named it, master yeobright, i'll own that we was talking about 'ee. we were wondering what could keep you home here mollyhorning about when you have made such a world-wide name for yourself in the nick-nack trade--now, that's the truth o't." "i'll tell you," said yeobright, with unexpected earnestness. "i am not sorry to have the opportunity. i've come home because, all things considered, i can be a trifle less useless here than anywhere else. but i have only lately found this out. when i first got away from home i thought this place was not worth troubling about. i thought our life here was contemptible. to oil your boots instead of blacking them, to dust your coat with a switch instead of a brush: was there ever anything more ridiculous? i said." "so 'tis; so 'tis!" "no, no--you are wrong; it isn't." "beg your pardon, we thought that was your maning?" "well, as my views changed my course became very depressing. i found that i was trying to be like people who had hardly anything in common with myself. i was endeavouring to put off one sort of life for another sort of life, which was not better than the life i had known before. it was simply different." "true; a sight different," said fairway. "yes, paris must be a taking place," said humphrey. "grand shop-winders, trumpets, and drums; and here be we out of doors in all winds and weathers--" "but you mistake me," pleaded clym. "all this was very depressing. but not so depressing as something i next perceived--that my business was the idlest, vainest, most effeminate business that ever a man could be put to. that decided me: i would give it up and try to follow some rational occupation among the people i knew best, and to whom i could be of most use. i have come home; and this is how i mean to carry out my plan. i shall keep a school as near to egdon as possible, so as to be able to walk over here and have a night-school in my mother's house. but i must study a little at first, to get properly qualified. now, neighbours, i must go." and clym resumed his walk across the heath. "he'll never carry it out in the world," said fairway. "in a few weeks he'll learn to see things otherwise." "'tis good-hearted of the young man," said another. "but, for my part, i think he had better mind his business." ii the new course causes disappointment yeobright loved his kind. he had a conviction that the want of most men was knowledge of a sort which brings wisdom rather than affluence. he wished to raise the class at the expense of individuals rather than individuals at the expense of the class. what was more, he was ready at once to be the first unit sacrificed. in passing from the bucolic to the intellectual life the intermediate stages are usually two at least, frequently many more; and one of those stages is almost sure to be worldly advance. we can hardly imagine bucolic placidity quickening to intellectual aims without imagining social aims as the transitional phase. yeobright's local peculiarity was that in striving at high thinking he still cleaved to plain living--nay, wild and meagre living in many respects, and brotherliness with clowns. he was a john the baptist who took ennoblement rather than repentance for his text. mentally he was in a provincial future, that is, he was in many points abreast with the central town thinkers of his date. much of this development he may have owed to his studious life in paris, where he had become acquainted with ethical systems popular at the time. in consequence of this relatively advanced position, yeobright might have been called unfortunate. the rural world was not ripe for him. a man should be only partially before his time: to be completely to the vanward in aspirations is fatal to fame. had philip's warlike son been intellectually so far ahead as to have attempted civilization without bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that he seemed, but nobody would have heard of an alexander. in the interests of renown the forwardness should lie chiefly in the capacity to handle things. successful propagandists have succeeded because the doctrine they bring into form is that which their listeners have for some time felt without being able to shape. a man who advocates aesthetic effort and deprecates social effort is only likely to be understood by a class to which social effort has become a stale matter. to argue upon the possibility of culture before luxury to the bucolic world may be to argue truly, but it is an attempt to disturb a sequence to which humanity has been long accustomed. yeobright preaching to the egdon eremites that they might rise to a serene comprehensiveness without going through the process of enriching themselves, was not unlike arguing to ancient chaldeans that in ascending from earth to the pure empyrean it was not necessary to pass first into the intervening heaven of ether. was yeobright's mind well-proportioned? no. a well-proportioned mind is one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safely say that it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman, tortured as a heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. also, on the other hand, that it will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet, revered as a priest, or exalted as a king. its usual blessings are happiness and mediocrity. it produces the poetry of rogers, the paintings of west, the statecraft of north, the spiritual guidance of tomline; enabling its possessors to find their way to wealth, to wind up well, to step with dignity off the stage, to die comfortably in their beds, and to get the decent monument which, in many cases, they deserve. it never would have allowed yeobright to do such a ridiculous thing as throw up his business to benefit his fellow-creatures. he walked along towards home without attending to paths. if anyone knew the heath well it was clym. he was permeated with its scenes, with its substance, and with its odours. he might be said to be its product. his eyes had first opened thereon; with its appearance all the first images of his memory were mingled; his estimate of life had been coloured by it: his toys had been the flint knives and arrow-heads which he found there, wondering why stones should "grow" to such odd shapes; his flowers, the purple bells and yellow furze; his animal kingdom, the snakes and croppers; his society, its human haunters. take all the varying hates felt by eustacia vye towards the heath, and translate them into loves, and you have the heart of clym. he gazed upon the wide prospect as he walked, and was glad. to many persons this egdon was a place which had slipped out of its century generations ago, to intrude as an uncouth object into this. it was an obsolete thing, and few cared to study it. how could this be otherwise in the days of square fields, plashed hedges, and meadows watered on a plan so rectangular that on a fine day they looked like silver gridirons? the farmer, in his ride, who could smile at artificial grasses, look with solicitude at the coming corn, and sigh with sadness at the fly-eaten turnips, bestowed upon the distant upland of heath nothing better than a frown. but as for yeobright, when he looked from the heights on his way he could not help indulging in a barbarous satisfaction at observing that, in some of the attempts at reclamation from the waste, tillage, after holding on for a year or two, had receded again in despair, the ferns and furze-tufts stubbornly reasserting themselves. he descended into the valley, and soon reached his home at blooms-end. his mother was snipping dead leaves from the window-plants. she looked up at him as if she did not understand the meaning of his long stay with her; her face had worn that look for several days. he could perceive that the curiosity which had been shown by the hair-cutting group amounted in his mother to concern. but she had asked no question with her lips, even when the arrival of his trunk suggested that he was not going to leave her soon. her silence besought an explanation of him more loudly than words. "i am not going back to paris again, mother," he said. "at least, in my old capacity. i have given up the business." mrs. yeobright turned in pained surprise. "i thought something was amiss, because of the boxes. i wonder you did not tell me sooner." "i ought to have done it. but i have been in doubt whether you would be pleased with my plan. i was not quite clear on a few points myself. i am going to take an entirely new course." "i am astonished, clym. how can you want to do better than you've been doing?" "very easily. but i shall not do better in the way you mean; i suppose it will be called doing worse. but i hate that business of mine, and i want to do some worthy thing before i die. as a schoolmaster i think to do it--a school-master to the poor and ignorant, to teach them what nobody else will." "after all the trouble that has been taken to give you a start, and when there is nothing to do but to keep straight on towards affluence, you say you will be a poor man's schoolmaster. your fancies will be your ruin, clym." mrs. yeobright spoke calmly, but the force of feeling behind the words was but too apparent to one who knew her as well as her son did. he did not answer. there was in his face that hopelessness of being understood which comes when the objector is constitutionally beyond the reach of a logic that, even under favouring conditions, is almost too coarse a vehicle for the subtlety of the argument. no more was said on the subject till the end of dinner. his mother then began, as if there had been no interval since the morning. "it disturbs me, clym, to find that you have come home with such thoughts as those. i hadn't the least idea that you meant to go backward in the world by your own free choice. of course, i have always supposed you were going to push straight on, as other men do--all who deserve the name--when they have been put in a good way of doing well." "i cannot help it," said clym, in a troubled tone. "mother, i hate the flashy business. talk about men who deserve the name, can any man deserving the name waste his time in that effeminate way, when he sees half the world going to ruin for want of somebody to buckle to and teach them how to breast the misery they are born to? i get up every morning and see the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain, as st. paul says, and yet there am i, trafficking in glittering splendours with wealthy women and titled libertines, and pandering to the meanest vanities--i, who have health and strength enough for anything. i have been troubled in my mind about it all the year, and the end is that i cannot do it any more." "why can't you do it as well as others?" "i don't know, except that there are many things other people care for which i don't; and that's partly why i think i ought to do this. for one thing, my body does not require much of me. i cannot enjoy delicacies; good things are wasted upon me. well, i ought to turn that defect to advantage, and by being able to do without what other people require i can spend what such things cost upon anybody else." now, yeobright, having inherited some of these very instincts from the woman before him, could not fail to awaken a reciprocity in her through her feelings, if not by arguments, disguise it as she might for his good. she spoke with less assurance. "and yet you might have been a wealthy man if you had only persevered. manager to that large diamond establishment--what better can a man wish for? what a post of trust and respect! i suppose you will be like your father; like him, you are getting weary of doing well." "no," said her son, "i am not weary of that, though i am weary of what you mean by it. mother, what is doing well?" mrs. yeobright was far too thoughtful a woman to be content with ready definitions, and, like the "what is wisdom?" of plato's socrates, and the "what is truth?" of pontius pilate, yeobright's burning question received no answer. the silence was broken by the clash of the garden gate, a tap at the door, and its opening. christian cantle appeared in the room in his sunday clothes. it was the custom on egdon to begin the preface to a story before absolutely entering the house, so as to be well in for the body of the narrative by the time visitor and visited stood face to face. christian had been saying to them while the door was leaving its latch, "to think that i, who go from home but once in a while, and hardly then, should have been there this morning!" "'tis news you have brought us, then, christian?" said mrs. yeobright. "ay, sure, about a witch, and ye must overlook my time o' day; for, says i, 'i must go and tell 'em, though they won't have half done dinner.' i assure ye it made me shake like a driven leaf. do ye think any harm will come o't?" "well--what?" "this morning at church we was all standing up, and the pa'son said, 'let us pray.' 'well,' thinks i, 'one may as well kneel as stand'; so down i went; and, more than that, all the rest were as willing to oblige the man as i. we hadn't been hard at it for more than a minute when a most terrible screech sounded through church, as if somebody had just gied up their heart's blood. all the folk jumped up and then we found that susan nunsuch had pricked miss vye with a long stocking-needle, as she had threatened to do as soon as ever she could get the young lady to church, where she don't come very often. she've waited for this chance for weeks, so as to draw her blood and put an end to the bewitching of susan's children that has been carried on so long. sue followed her into church, sat next to her, and as soon as she could find a chance in went the stocking-needle into my lady's arm." "good heaven, how horrid!" said mrs. yeobright. "sue pricked her that deep that the maid fainted away; and as i was afeard there might be some tumult among us, i got behind the bass-viol and didn't see no more. but they carried her out into the air, 'tis said; but when they looked round for sue she was gone. what a scream that girl gied, poor thing! there were the pa'son in his surplice holding up his hand and saying, 'sit down, my good people, sit down!' but the deuce a bit would they sit down. o, and what d'ye think i found out, mrs. yeobright? the pa'son wears a suit of clothes under his surplice!--i could see his black sleeves when he held up his arm." "'tis a cruel thing," said yeobright. "yes," said his mother. "the nation ought to look into it," said christian. "here's humphrey coming, i think." in came humphrey. "well, have ye heard the news? but i see you have. 'tis a very strange thing that whenever one of egdon folk goes to church some rum job or other is sure to be doing. the last time one of us was there was when neighbour fairway went in the fall; and that was the day you forbad the banns, mrs. yeobright." "has this cruelly treated girl been able to walk home?" said clym. "they say she got better, and went home very well. and now i've told it i must be moving homeward myself." "and i," said humphrey. "truly now we shall see if there's anything in what folks say about her." when they were gone into the heath again yeobright said quietly to his mother, "do you think i have turned teacher too soon?" "it is right that there should be schoolmasters, and missionaries, and all such men," she replied. "but it is right, too, that i should try to lift you out of this life into something richer, and that you should not come back again, and be as if i had not tried at all." later in the day sam, the turf-cutter, entered. "i've come a-borrowing, mrs. yeobright. i suppose you have heard what's been happening to the beauty on the hill?" "yes, sam: half a dozen have been telling us." "beauty?" said clym. "yes, tolerably well-favoured," sam replied. "lord! all the country owns that 'tis one of the strangest things in the world that such a woman should have come to live up there." "dark or fair?" "now, though i've seen her twenty times, that's a thing i cannot call to mind." "darker than tamsin," murmured mrs. yeobright. "a woman who seems to care for nothing at all, as you may say." "she is melancholy, then?" inquired clym. "she mopes about by herself, and don't mix in with the people." "is she a young lady inclined for adventures?" "not to my knowledge." "doesn't join in with the lads in their games, to get some sort of excitement in this lonely place?" "no." "mumming, for instance?" "no. her notions be different. i should rather say her thoughts were far away from here, with lords and ladies she'll never know, and mansions she'll never see again." observing that clym appeared singularly interested mrs. yeobright said rather uneasily to sam, "you see more in her than most of us do. miss vye is to my mind too idle to be charming. i have never heard that she is of any use to herself or to other people. good girls don't get treated as witches even on egdon." "nonsense--that proves nothing either way," said yeobright. "well, of course i don't understand such niceties," said sam, withdrawing from a possibly unpleasant argument; "and what she is we must wait for time to tell us. the business that i have really called about is this, to borrow the longest and strongest rope you have. the captain's bucket has dropped into the well, and they are in want of water; and as all the chaps are at home today we think we can get it out for him. we have three cart-ropes already, but they won't reach to the bottom." mrs. yeobright told him that he might have whatever ropes he could find in the outhouse, and sam went out to search. when he passed by the door clym joined him, and accompanied him to the gate. "is this young witch-lady going to stay long at mistover?" he asked. "i should say so." "what a cruel shame to ill-use her, she must have suffered greatly--more in mind than in body." "'twas a graceless trick--such a handsome girl, too. you ought to see her, mr. yeobright, being a young man come from far, and with a little more to show for your years than most of us." "do you think she would like to teach children?" said clym. sam shook his head. "quite a different sort of body from that, i reckon." "o, it was merely something which occurred to me. it would of course be necessary to see her and talk it over--not an easy thing, by the way, for my family and hers are not very friendly." "i'll tell you how you mid see her, mr. yeobright," said sam. "we are going to grapple for the bucket at six o'clock tonight at her house, and you could lend a hand. there's five or six coming, but the well is deep, and another might be useful, if you don't mind appearing in that shape. she's sure to be walking round." "i'll think of it," said yeobright; and they parted. he thought of it a good deal; but nothing more was said about eustacia inside the house at that time. whether this romantic martyr to superstition and the melancholy mummer he had conversed with under the full moon were one and the same person remained as yet a problem. iii the first act in a timeworn drama the afternoon was fine, and yeobright walked on the heath for an hour with his mother. when they reached the lofty ridge which divided the valley of blooms-end from the adjoining valley they stood still and looked round. the quiet woman inn was visible on the low margin of the heath in one direction, and afar on the other hand rose mistover knap. "you mean to call on thomasin?" he inquired. "yes. but you need not come this time," said his mother. "in that case i'll branch off here, mother. i am going to mistover." mrs. yeobright turned to him inquiringly. "i am going to help them get the bucket out of the captain's well," he continued. "as it is so very deep i may be useful. and i should like to see this miss vye--not so much for her good looks as for another reason." "must you go?" his mother asked. "i thought to." and they parted. "there is no help for it," murmured clym's mother gloomily as he withdrew. "they are sure to see each other. i wish sam would carry his news to other houses than mine." clym's retreating figure got smaller and smaller as it rose and fell over the hillocks on his way. "he is tender-hearted," said mrs. yeobright to herself while she watched him; "otherwise it would matter little. how he's going on!" he was, indeed, walking with a will over the furze, as straight as a line, as if his life depended upon it. his mother drew a long breath, and, abandoning the visit to thomasin, turned back. the evening films began to make nebulous pictures of the valleys, but the high lands still were raked by the declining rays of the winter sun, which glanced on clym as he walked forward, eyed by every rabbit and fieldfare around, a long shadow advancing in front of him. on drawing near to the furze-covered bank and ditch which fortified the captain's dwelling he could hear voices within, signifying that operations had been already begun. at the side-entrance gate he stopped and looked over. half a dozen able-bodied men were standing in a line from the well-mouth, holding a rope which passed over the well-roller into the depths below. fairway, with a piece of smaller rope round his body, made fast to one of the standards, to guard against accidents, was leaning over the opening, his right hand clasping the vertical rope that descended into the well. "now, silence, folks," said fairway. the talking ceased, and fairway gave a circular motion to the rope, as if he were stirring batter. at the end of a minute a dull splashing reverberated from the bottom of the well; the helical twist he had imparted to the rope had reached the grapnel below. "haul!" said fairway; and the men who held the rope began to gather it over the wheel. "i think we've got sommat," said one of the haulers-in. "then pull steady," said fairway. they gathered up more and more, till a regular dripping into the well could be heard below. it grew smarter with the increasing height of the bucket, and presently a hundred and fifty feet of rope had been pulled in. fairway then lit a lantern, tied it to another cord, and began lowering it into the well beside the first. clym came forward and looked down. strange humid leaves, which knew nothing of the seasons of the year, and quaint-natured mosses were revealed on the wellside as the lantern descended; till its rays fell upon a confused mass of rope and bucket dangling in the dank, dark air. "we've only got en by the edge of the hoop--steady, for god's sake!" said fairway. they pulled with the greatest gentleness, till the wet bucket appeared about two yards below them, like a dead friend come to earth again. three or four hands were stretched out, then jerk went the rope, whizz went the wheel, the two foremost haulers fell backward, the beating of a falling body was heard, receding down the sides of the well, and a thunderous uproar arose at the bottom. the bucket was gone again. "damn the bucket!" said fairway. "lower again," said sam. "i'm as stiff as a ram's horn stooping so long," said fairway, standing up and stretching himself till his joints creaked. "rest a few minutes, timothy," said yeobright. "i'll take your place." the grapnel was again lowered. its smart impact upon the distant water reached their ears like a kiss, whereupon yeobright knelt down, and leaning over the well began dragging the grapnel round and round as fairway had done. "tie a rope round him--it is dangerous!" cried a soft and anxious voice somewhere above them. everybody turned. the speaker was a woman, gazing down upon the group from an upper window, whose panes blazed in the ruddy glare from the west. her lips were parted and she appeared for the moment to forget where she was. the rope was accordingly tied round his waist, and the work proceeded. at the next haul the weight was not heavy, and it was discovered that they had only secured a coil of the rope detached from the bucket. the tangled mass was thrown into the background. humphrey took yeobright's place, and the grapnel was lowered again. yeobright retired to the heap of recovered rope in a meditative mood. of the identity between the lady's voice and that of the melancholy mummer he had not a moment's doubt. "how thoughtful of her!" he said to himself. eustacia, who had reddened when she perceived the effect of her exclamation upon the group below, was no longer to be seen at the window, though yeobright scanned it wistfully. while he stood there the men at the well succeeded in getting up the bucket without a mishap. one of them went to inquire for the captain, to learn what orders he wished to give for mending the well-tackle. the captain proved to be away from home, and eustacia appeared at the door and came out. she had lapsed into an easy and dignified calm, far removed from the intensity of life in her words of solicitude for clym's safety. "will it be possible to draw water here tonight?" she inquired. "no, miss; the bottom of the bucket is clean knocked out. and as we can do no more now we'll leave off, and come again tomorrow morning." "no water," she murmured, turning away. "i can send you up some from blooms-end," said clym, coming forward and raising his hat as the men retired. yeobright and eustacia looked at each other for one instant, as if each had in mind those few moments during which a certain moonlight scene was common to both. with the glance the calm fixity of her features sublimed itself to an expression of refinement and warmth: it was like garish noon rising to the dignity of sunset in a couple of seconds. "thank you; it will hardly be necessary," she replied. "but if you have no water?" "well, it is what i call no water," she said, blushing, and lifting her long-lashed eyelids as if to lift them were a work requiring consideration. "but my grandfather calls it water enough. i'll show you what i mean." she moved away a few yards, and clym followed. when she reached the corner of the enclosure, where the steps were formed for mounting the boundary bank, she sprang up with a lightness which seemed strange after her listless movement towards the well. it incidentally showed that her apparent languor did not arise from lack of force. clym ascended behind her, and noticed a circular burnt patch at the top of the bank. "ashes?" he said. "yes," said eustacia. "we had a little bonfire here last fifth of november, and those are the marks of it." on that spot had stood the fire she had kindled to attract wildeve. "that's the only kind of water we have," she continued, tossing a stone into the pool, which lay on the outside of the bank like the white of an eye without its pupil. the stone fell with a flounce, but no wildeve appeared on the other side, as on a previous occasion there. "my grandfather says he lived for more than twenty years at sea on water twice as bad as that," she went on, "and considers it quite good enough for us here on an emergency." "well, as a matter of fact there are no impurities in the water of these pools at this time of the year. it has only just rained into them." she shook her head. "i am managing to exist in a wilderness, but i cannot drink from a pond," she said. clym looked towards the well, which was now deserted, the men having gone home. "it is a long way to send for spring-water," he said, after a silence. "but since you don't like this in the pond, i'll try to get you some myself." he went back to the well. "yes, i think i could do it by tying on this pail." "but, since i would not trouble the men to get it, i cannot in conscience let you." "i don't mind the trouble at all." he made fast the pail to the long coil of rope, put it over the wheel, and allowed it to descend by letting the rope slip through his hands. before it had gone far, however, he checked it. "i must make fast the end first, or we may lose the whole," he said to eustacia, who had drawn near. "could you hold this a moment, while i do it--or shall i call your servant?" "i can hold it," said eustacia; and he placed the rope in her hands, going then to search for the end. "i suppose i may let it slip down?" she inquired. "i would advise you not to let it go far," said clym. "it will get much heavier, you will find." however, eustacia had begun to pay out. while he was tying she cried, "i cannot stop it!" clym ran to her side, and found he could only check the rope by twisting the loose part round the upright post, when it stopped with a jerk. "has it hurt you?" "yes," she replied. "very much?" "no; i think not." she opened her hands. one of them was bleeding; the rope had dragged off the skin. eustacia wrapped it in her handkerchief. "you should have let go," said yeobright. "why didn't you?" "you said i was to hold on... this is the second time i have been wounded today." "ah, yes; i have heard of it. i blush for my native egdon. was it a serious injury you received in church, miss vye?" there was such an abundance of sympathy in clym's tone that eustacia slowly drew up her sleeve and disclosed her round white arm. a bright red spot appeared on its smooth surface, like a ruby on parian marble. "there it is," she said, putting her finger against the spot. "it was dastardly of the woman," said clym. "will not captain vye get her punished?" "he is gone from home on that very business. i did not know that i had such a magic reputation." "and you fainted?" said clym, looking at the scarlet little puncture as if he would like to kiss it and make it well. "yes, it frightened me. i had not been to church for a long time. and now i shall not go again for ever so long--perhaps never. i cannot face their eyes after this. don't you think it dreadfully humiliating? i wished i was dead for hours after, but i don't mind now." "i have come to clean away these cobwebs," said yeobright. "would you like to help me--by high-class teaching? we might benefit them much." "i don't quite feel anxious to. i have not much love for my fellow-creatures. sometimes i quite hate them." "still i think that if you were to hear my scheme you might take an interest in it. there is no use in hating people--if you hate anything, you should hate what produced them." "do you mean nature? i hate her already. but i shall be glad to hear your scheme at any time." the situation had now worked itself out, and the next natural thing was for them to part. clym knew this well enough, and eustacia made a move of conclusion; yet he looked at her as if he had one word more to say. perhaps if he had not lived in paris it would never have been uttered. "we have met before," he said, regarding her with rather more interest than was necessary. "i do not own it," said eustacia, with a repressed, still look. "but i may think what i like." "yes." "you are lonely here." "i cannot endure the heath, except in its purple season. the heath is a cruel taskmaster to me." "can you say so?" he asked. "to my mind it is most exhilarating, and strengthening, and soothing. i would rather live on these hills than anywhere else in the world." "it is well enough for artists; but i never would learn to draw." "and there is a very curious druidical stone just out there." he threw a pebble in the direction signified. "do you often go to see it?" "i was not even aware there existed any such curious druidical stone. i am aware that there are boulevards in paris." yeobright looked thoughtfully on the ground. "that means much," he said. "it does indeed," said eustacia. "i remember when i had the same longing for town bustle. five years of a great city would be a perfect cure for that." "heaven send me such a cure! now, mr. yeobright, i will go indoors and plaster my wounded hand." they separated, and eustacia vanished in the increasing shade. she seemed full of many things. her past was a blank, her life had begun. the effect upon clym of this meeting he did not fully discover till some time after. during his walk home his most intelligible sensation was that his scheme had somehow become glorified. a beautiful woman had been intertwined with it. on reaching the house he went up to the room which was to be made his study, and occupied himself during the evening in unpacking his books from the boxes and arranging them on shelves. from another box he drew a lamp and a can of oil. he trimmed the lamp, arranged his table, and said, "now, i am ready to begin." he rose early the next morning, read two hours before breakfast by the light of his lamp--read all the morning, all the afternoon. just when the sun was going down his eyes felt weary, and he leant back in his chair. his room overlooked the front of the premises and the valley of the heath beyond. the lowest beams of the winter sun threw the shadow of the house over the palings, across the grass margin of the heath, and far up the vale, where the chimney outlines and those of the surrounding treetops stretched forth in long dark prongs. having been seated at work all day, he decided to take a turn upon the hills before it got dark; and, going out forthwith, he struck across the heath towards mistover. it was an hour and a half later when he again appeared at the garden gate. the shutters of the house were closed, and christian cantle, who had been wheeling manure about the garden all day, had gone home. on entering he found that his mother, after waiting a long time for him, had finished her meal. "where have you been, clym?" she immediately said. "why didn't you tell me that you were going away at this time?" "i have been on the heath." "you'll meet eustacia vye if you go up there." clym paused a minute. "yes, i met her this evening," he said, as though it were spoken under the sheer necessity of preserving honesty. "i wondered if you had." "it was no appointment." "no; such meetings never are." "but you are not angry, mother?" "i can hardly say that i am not. angry? no. but when i consider the usual nature of the drag which causes men of promise to disappoint the world i feel uneasy." "you deserve credit for the feeling, mother. but i can assure you that you need not be disturbed by it on my account." "when i think of you and your new crotchets," said mrs. yeobright, with some emphasis, "i naturally don't feel so comfortable as i did a twelvemonth ago. it is incredible to me that a man accustomed to the attractive women of paris and elsewhere should be so easily worked upon by a girl in a heath. you could just as well have walked another way." "i had been studying all day." "well, yes," she added more hopefully, "i have been thinking that you might get on as a schoolmaster, and rise that way, since you really are determined to hate the course you were pursuing." yeobright was unwilling to disturb this idea, though his scheme was far enough removed from one wherein the education of youth should be made a mere channel of social ascent. he had no desires of that sort. he had reached the stage in a young man's life when the grimness of the general human situation first becomes clear; and the realization of this causes ambition to halt awhile. in france it is not uncustomary to commit suicide at this stage; in england we do much better, or much worse, as the case may be. the love between the young man and his mother was strangely invisible now. of love it may be said, the less earthly the less demonstrative. in its absolutely indestructible form it reaches a profundity in which all exhibition of itself is painful. it was so with these. had conversations between them been overheard, people would have said, "how cold they are to each other!" his theory and his wishes about devoting his future to teaching had made an impression on mrs. yeobright. indeed, how could it be otherwise when he was a part of her--when their discourses were as if carried on between the right and the left hands of the same body? he had despaired of reaching her by argument; and it was almost as a discovery to him that he could reach her by a magnetism which was as superior to words as words are to yells. strangely enough he began to feel now that it would not be so hard to persuade her who was his best friend that comparative poverty was essentially the higher course for him, as to reconcile to his feelings the act of persuading her. from every provident point of view his mother was so undoubtedly right, that he was not without a sickness of heart in finding he could shake her. she had a singular insight into life, considering that she had never mixed with it. there are instances of persons who, without clear ideas of the things they criticize, have yet had clear ideas of the relations of those things. blacklock, a poet blind from his birth, could describe visual objects with accuracy; professor sanderson, who was also blind, gave excellent lectures on colour, and taught others the theory of ideas which they had and he had not. in the social sphere these gifted ones are mostly women; they can watch a world which they never saw, and estimate forces of which they have only heard. we call it intuition. what was the great world to mrs. yeobright? a multitude whose tendencies could be perceived, though not its essences. communities were seen by her as from a distance; she saw them as we see the throngs which cover the canvases of sallaert, van alsloot, and others of that school--vast masses of beings, jostling, zigzagging, and processioning in definite directions, but whose features are indistinguishable by the very comprehensiveness of the view. one could see that, as far as it had gone, her life was very complete on its reflective side. the philosophy of her nature, and its limitation by circumstances, was almost written in her movements. they had a majestic foundation, though they were far from being majestic; and they had a groundwork of assurance, but they were not assured. as her once elastic walk had become deadened by time, so had her natural pride of life been hindered in its blooming by her necessities. the next slight touch in the shaping of clym's destiny occurred a few days after. a barrow was opened on the heath, and yeobright attended the operation, remaining away from his study during several hours. in the afternoon christian returned from a journey in the same direction, and mrs. yeobright questioned him. "they have dug a hole, and they have found things like flowerpots upside down, mis'ess yeobright; and inside these be real charnel bones. they have carried 'em off to men's houses; but i shouldn't like to sleep where they will bide. dead folks have been known to come and claim their own. mr. yeobright had got one pot of the bones, and was going to bring 'em home--real skellington bones--but 'twas ordered otherwise. you'll be relieved to hear that he gave away his pot and all, on second thoughts; and a blessed thing for ye, mis'ess yeobright, considering the wind o' nights." "gave it away?" "yes. to miss vye. she has a cannibal taste for such churchyard furniture seemingly." "miss vye was there too?" "ay, 'a b'lieve she was." when clym came home, which was shortly after, his mother said, in a curious tone, "the urn you had meant for me you gave away." yeobright made no reply; the current of her feeling was too pronounced to admit it. the early weeks of the year passed on. yeobright certainly studied at home, but he also walked much abroad, and the direction of his walk was always towards some point of a line between mistover and rainbarrow. the month of march arrived, and the heath showed its first signs of awakening from winter trance. the awakening was almost feline in its stealthiness. the pool outside the bank by eustacia's dwelling, which seemed as dead and desolate as ever to an observer who moved and made noises in his observation, would gradually disclose a state of great animation when silently watched awhile. a timid animal world had come to life for the season. little tadpoles and efts began to bubble up through the water, and to race along beneath it; toads made noises like very young ducks, and advanced to the margin in twos and threes; overhead, bumble-bees flew hither and thither in the thickening light, their drone coming and going like the sound of a gong. on an evening such as this yeobright descended into the blooms-end valley from beside that very pool, where he had been standing with another person quite silently and quite long enough to hear all this puny stir of resurrection in nature; yet he had not heard it. his walk was rapid as he came down, and he went with a springy tread. before entering upon his mother's premises he stopped and breathed. the light which shone forth on him from the window revealed that his face was flushed and his eye bright. what it did not show was something which lingered upon his lips like a seal set there. the abiding presence of this impress was so real that he hardly dared to enter the house, for it seemed as if his mother might say, "what red spot is that glowing upon your mouth so vividly?" but he entered soon after. the tea was ready, and he sat down opposite his mother. she did not speak many words; and as for him, something had been just done and some words had been just said on the hill which prevented him from beginning a desultory chat. his mother's taciturnity was not without ominousness, but he appeared not to care. he knew why she said so little, but he could not remove the cause of her bearing towards him. these half-silent sittings were far from uncommon with them now. at last yeobright made a beginning of what was intended to strike at the whole root of the matter. "five days have we sat like this at meals with scarcely a word. what's the use of it, mother?" "none," said she, in a heart-swollen tone. "but there is only too good a reason." "not when you know all. i have been wanting to speak about this, and i am glad the subject is begun. the reason, of course, is eustacia vye. well, i confess i have seen her lately, and have seen her a good many times." "yes, yes; and i know what that amounts to. it troubles me, clym. you are wasting your life here; and it is solely on account of her. if it had not been for that woman you would never have entertained this teaching scheme at all." clym looked hard at his mother. "you know that is not it," he said. "well, i know you had decided to attempt it before you saw her; but that would have ended in intentions. it was very well to talk of, but ridiculous to put in practice. i fully expected that in the course of a month or two you would have seen the folly of such self-sacrifice, and would have been by this time back again to paris in some business or other. i can understand objections to the diamond trade--i really was thinking that it might be inadequate to the life of a man like you even though it might have made you a millionaire. but now i see how mistaken you are about this girl i doubt if you could be correct about other things." "how am i mistaken in her?" "she is lazy and dissatisfied. but that is not all of it. supposing her to be as good a woman as any you can find, which she certainly is not, why do you wish to connect yourself with anybody at present?" "well, there are practical reasons," clym began, and then almost broke off under an overpowering sense of the weight of argument which could be brought against his statement. "if i take a school an educated woman would be invaluable as a help to me." "what! you really mean to marry her?" "it would be premature to state that plainly. but consider what obvious advantages there would be in doing it. she--" "don't suppose she has any money. she hasn't a farthing." "she is excellently educated, and would make a good matron in a boarding-school. i candidly own that i have modified my views a little, in deference to you; and it should satisfy you. i no longer adhere to my intention of giving with my own mouth rudimentary education to the lowest class. i can do better. i can establish a good private school for farmers' sons, and without stopping the school i can manage to pass examinations. by this means, and by the assistance of a wife like her--" "oh, clym!" "i shall ultimately, i hope, be at the head of one of the best schools in the county." yeobright had enunciated the word "her" with a fervour which, in conversation with a mother, was absurdly indiscreet. hardly a maternal heart within the four seas could, in such circumstances, have helped being irritated at that ill-timed betrayal of feeling for a new woman. "you are blinded, clym," she said warmly. "it was a bad day for you when you first set eyes on her. and your scheme is merely a castle in the air built on purpose to justify this folly which has seized you, and to salve your conscience on the irrational situation you are in." "mother, that's not true," he firmly answered. "can you maintain that i sit and tell untruths, when all i wish to do is to save you from sorrow? for shame, clym! but it is all through that woman--a hussy!" clym reddened like fire and rose. he placed his hand upon his mother's shoulder and said, in a tone which hung strangely between entreaty and command, "i won't hear it. i may be led to answer you in a way which we shall both regret." his mother parted her lips to begin some other vehement truth, but on looking at him she saw that in his face which led her to leave the words unsaid. yeobright walked once or twice across the room, and then suddenly went out of the house. it was eleven o'clock when he came in, though he had not been further than the precincts of the garden. his mother was gone to bed. a light was left burning on the table, and supper was spread. without stopping for any food he secured the doors and went upstairs. iv an hour of bliss and many hours of sadness the next day was gloomy enough at blooms-end. yeobright remained in his study, sitting over the open books; but the work of those hours was miserably scant. determined that there should be nothing in his conduct towards his mother resembling sullenness, he had occasionally spoken to her on passing matters, and would take no notice of the brevity of her replies. with the same resolve to keep up a show of conversation he said, about seven o'clock in the evening, "there's an eclipse of the moon tonight. i am going out to see it." and, putting on his overcoat, he left her. the low moon was not as yet visible from the front of the house, and yeobright climbed out of the valley until he stood in the full flood of her light. but even now he walked on, and his steps were in the direction of rainbarrow. in half an hour he stood at the top. the sky was clear from verge to verge, and the moon flung her rays over the whole heath, but without sensibly lighting it, except where paths and water-courses had laid bare the white flints and glistening quartz sand, which made streaks upon the general shade. after standing awhile he stooped and felt the heather. it was dry, and he flung himself down upon the barrow, his face towards the moon, which depicted a small image of herself in each of his eyes. he had often come up here without stating his purpose to his mother; but this was the first time that he had been ostensibly frank as to his purpose while really concealing it. it was a moral situation which, three months earlier, he could hardly have credited of himself. in returning to labour in this sequestered spot he had anticipated an escape from the chafing of social necessities; yet behold they were here also. more than ever he longed to be in some world where personal ambition was not the only recognized form of progress--such, perhaps, as might have been the case at some time or other in the silvery globe then shining upon him. his eye travelled over the length and breadth of that distant country--over the bay of rainbows, the sombre sea of crises, the ocean of storms, the lake of dreams, the vast walled plains, and the wondrous ring mountains--till he almost felt himself to be voyaging bodily through its wild scenes, standing on its hollow hills, traversing its deserts, descending its vales and old sea bottoms, or mounting to the edges of its craters. while he watched the far-removed landscape a tawny stain grew into being on the lower verge: the eclipse had begun. this marked a preconcerted moment: for the remote celestial phenomenon had been pressed into sublunary service as a lover's signal. yeobright's mind flew back to earth at the sight; he arose, shook himself and listened. minute after minute passed by, perhaps ten minutes passed, and the shadow on the moon perceptibly widened. he heard a rustling on his left hand, a cloaked figure with an upturned face appeared at the base of the barrow, and clym descended. in a moment the figure was in his arms, and his lips upon hers. "my eustacia!" "clym, dearest!" such a situation had less than three months brought forth. they remained long without a single utterance, for no language could reach the level of their condition: words were as the rusty implements of a by-gone barbarous epoch, and only to be occasionally tolerated. "i began to wonder why you did not come," said yeobright, when she had withdrawn a little from his embrace. "you said ten minutes after the first mark of shade on the edge of the moon, and that's what it is now." "well, let us only think that here we are." then, holding each other's hand, they were again silent, and the shadow on the moon's disc grew a little larger. "has it seemed long since you last saw me?" she asked. "it has seemed sad." "and not long? that's because you occupy yourself, and so blind yourself to my absence. to me, who can do nothing, it has been like living under stagnant water." "i would rather bear tediousness, dear, than have time made short by such means as have shortened mine." "in what way is that? you have been thinking you wished you did not love me." "how can a man wish that, and yet love on? no, eustacia." "men can, women cannot." "well, whatever i may have thought, one thing is certain--i do love you--past all compass and description. i love you to oppressiveness--i, who have never before felt more than a pleasant passing fancy for any woman i have ever seen. let me look right into your moonlit face and dwell on every line and curve in it! only a few hair-breadths make the difference between this face and faces i have seen many times before i knew you; yet what a difference--the difference between everything and nothing at all. one touch on that mouth again! there, and there, and there. your eyes seem heavy, eustacia." "no, it is my general way of looking. i think it arises from my feeling sometimes an agonizing pity for myself that i ever was born." "you don't feel it now?" "no. yet i know that we shall not love like this always. nothing can ensure the continuance of love. it will evaporate like a spirit, and so i feel full of fears." "you need not." "ah, you don't know. you have seen more than i, and have been into cities and among people that i have only heard of, and have lived more years than i; but yet i am older at this than you. i loved another man once, and now i love you." "in god's mercy don't talk so, eustacia!" "but i do not think i shall be the one who wearies first. it will, i fear, end in this way: your mother will find out that you meet me, and she will influence you against me!" "that can never be. she knows of these meetings already." "and she speaks against me?" "i will not say." "there, go away! obey her. i shall ruin you. it is foolish of you to meet me like this. kiss me, and go away for ever. for ever--do you hear?--for ever!" "not i." "it is your only chance. many a man's love has been a curse to him." "you are desperate, full of fancies, and wilful; and you misunderstand. i have an additional reason for seeing you tonight besides love of you. for though, unlike you, i feel our affection may be eternal, i feel with you in this, that our present mode of existence cannot last." "oh! 'tis your mother. yes, that's it! i knew it." "never mind what it is. believe this, i cannot let myself lose you. i must have you always with me. this very evening i do not like to let you go. there is only one cure for this anxiety, dearest--you must be my wife." she started: then endeavoured to say calmly, "cynics say that cures the anxiety by curing the love." "but you must answer me. shall i claim you some day--i don't mean at once?" "i must think," eustacia murmured. "at present speak of paris to me. is there any place like it on earth?" "it is very beautiful. but will you be mine?" "i will be nobody else's in the world--does that satisfy you?" "yes, for the present." "now tell me of the tuileries, and the louvre," she continued evasively. "i hate talking of paris! well, i remember one sunny room in the louvre which would make a fitting place for you to live in--the galerie d'apollon. its windows are mainly east; and in the early morning, when the sun is bright, the whole apartment is in a perfect blaze of splendour. the rays bristle and dart from the encrustations of gilding to the magnificent inlaid coffers, from the coffers to the gold and silver plate, from the plate to the jewels and precious stones, from these to the enamels, till there is a perfect network of light which quite dazzles the eye. but now, about our marriage--" "and versailles--the king's gallery is some such gorgeous room, is it not?" "yes. but what's the use of talking of gorgeous rooms? by the way, the little trianon would suit us beautifully to live in, and you might walk in the gardens in the moonlight and think you were in some english shrubbery; it is laid out in english fashion." "i should hate to think that!" "then you could keep to the lawn in front of the grand palace. all about there you would doubtless feel in a world of historical romance." he went on, since it was all new to her, and described fontainebleau, st. cloud, the bois, and many other familiar haunts of the parisians; till she said-- "when used you to go to these places?" "on sundays." "ah, yes. i dislike english sundays. how i should chime in with their manners over there! dear clym, you'll go back again?" clym shook his head, and looked at the eclipse. "if you'll go back again i'll--be something," she said tenderly, putting her head near his breast. "if you'll agree i'll give my promise, without making you wait a minute longer." "how extraordinary that you and my mother should be of one mind about this!" said yeobright. "i have vowed not to go back, eustacia. it is not the place i dislike; it is the occupation." "but you can go in some other capacity." "no. besides, it would interfere with my scheme. don't press that, eustacia. will you marry me?" "i cannot tell." "now--never mind paris; it is no better than other spots. promise, sweet!" "you will never adhere to your education plan, i am quite sure; and then it will be all right for me; and so i promise to be yours for ever and ever." clym brought her face towards his by a gentle pressure of the hand, and kissed her. "ah! but you don't know what you have got in me," she said. "sometimes i think there is not that in eustacia vye which will make a good homespun wife. well, let it go--see how our time is slipping, slipping, slipping!" she pointed towards the half eclipsed moon. "you are too mournful." "no. only i dread to think of anything beyond the present. what is, we know. we are together now, and it is unknown how long we shall be so; the unknown always fills my mind with terrible possibilities, even when i may reasonably expect it to be cheerful... clym, the eclipsed moonlight shines upon your face with a strange foreign colour, and shows its shape as if it were cut out in gold. that means that you should be doing better things than this." "you are ambitious, eustacia--no, not exactly ambitious, luxurious. i ought to be of the same vein, to make you happy, i suppose. and yet, far from that, i could live and die in a hermitage here, with proper work to do." there was that in his tone which implied distrust of his position as a solicitous lover, a doubt if he were acting fairly towards one whose tastes touched his own only at rare and infrequent points. she saw his meaning, and whispered, in a low, full accent of eager assurance "don't mistake me, clym: though i should like paris, i love you for yourself alone. to be your wife and live in paris would be heaven to me; but i would rather live with you in a hermitage here than not be yours at all. it is gain to me either way, and very great gain. there's my too candid confession." "spoken like a woman. and now i must soon leave you. i'll walk with you towards your house." "but must you go home yet?" she asked. "yes, the sand has nearly slipped away, i see, and the eclipse is creeping on more and more. don't go yet! stop till the hour has run itself out; then i will not press you any more. you will go home and sleep well; i keep sighing in my sleep! do you ever dream of me?" "i cannot recollect a clear dream of you." "i see your face in every scene of my dreams, and hear your voice in every sound. i wish i did not. it is too much what i feel. they say such love never lasts. but it must! and yet once, i remember, i saw an officer of the hussars ride down the street at budmouth, and though he was a total stranger and never spoke to me, i loved him till i thought i should really die of love--but i didn't die, and at last i left off caring for him. how terrible it would be if a time should come when i could not love you, my clym!" "please don't say such reckless things. when we see such a time at hand we will say, 'i have outlived my faith and purpose,' and die. there, the hour has expired: now let us walk on." hand in hand they went along the path towards mistover. when they were near the house he said, "it is too late for me to see your grandfather tonight. do you think he will object to it?" "i will speak to him. i am so accustomed to be my own mistress that it did not occur to me that we should have to ask him." then they lingeringly separated, and clym descended towards blooms-end. and as he walked further and further from the charmed atmosphere of his olympian girl his face grew sad with a new sort of sadness. a perception of the dilemma in which his love had placed him came back in full force. in spite of eustacia's apparent willingness to wait through the period of an unpromising engagement, till he should be established in his new pursuit, he could not but perceive at moments that she loved him rather as a visitant from a gay world to which she rightly belonged than as a man with a purpose opposed to that recent past of his which so interested her. often at their meetings a word or a sigh escaped her. it meant that, though she made no conditions as to his return to the french capital, this was what she secretly longed for in the event of marriage; and it robbed him of many an otherwise pleasant hour. along with that came the widening breach between himself and his mother. whenever any little occurrence had brought into more prominence than usual the disappointment that he was causing her it had sent him on lone and moody walks; or he was kept awake a great part of the night by the turmoil of spirit which such a recognition created. if mrs. yeobright could only have been led to see what a sound and worthy purpose this purpose of his was and how little it was being affected by his devotions to eustacia, how differently would she regard him! thus as his sight grew accustomed to the first blinding halo kindled about him by love and beauty, yeobright began to perceive what a strait he was in. sometimes he wished that he had never known eustacia, immediately to retract the wish as brutal. three antagonistic growths had to be kept alive: his mother's trust in him, his plan for becoming a teacher, and eustacia's happiness. his fervid nature could not afford to relinquish one of these, though two of the three were as many as he could hope to preserve. though his love was as chaste as that of petrarch for his laura, it had made fetters of what previously was only a difficulty. a position which was not too simple when he stood wholehearted had become indescribably complicated by the addition of eustacia. just when his mother was beginning to tolerate one scheme he had introduced another still bitterer than the first, and the combination was more than she could bear. v sharp words are spoken, and a crisis ensues when yeobright was not with eustacia he was sitting slavishly over his books; when he was not reading he was meeting her. these meetings were carried on with the greatest secrecy. one afternoon his mother came home from a morning visit to thomasin. he could see from a disturbance in the lines of her face that something had happened. "i have been told an incomprehensible thing," she said mournfully. "the captain has let out at the woman that you and eustacia vye are engaged to be married." "we are," said yeobright. "but it may not be yet for a very long time." "i should hardly think it would be yet for a very long time! you will take her to paris, i suppose?" she spoke with weary hopelessness. "i am not going back to paris." "what will you do with a wife, then?" "keep a school in budmouth, as i have told you." "that's incredible! the place is overrun with schoolmasters. you have no special qualifications. what possible chance is there for such as you?" "there is no chance of getting rich. but with my system of education, which is as new as it is true, i shall do a great deal of good to my fellow-creatures." "dreams, dreams! if there had been any system left to be invented they would have found it out at the universities long before this time." "never, mother. they cannot find it out, because their teachers don't come in contact with the class which demands such a system--that is, those who have had no preliminary training. my plan is one for instilling high knowledge into empty minds without first cramming them with what has to be uncrammed again before true study begins." "i might have believed you if you had kept yourself free from entanglements; but this woman--if she had been a good girl it would have been bad enough; but being--" "she is a good girl." "so you think. a corfu bandmaster's daughter! what has her life been? her surname even is not her true one." "she is captain vye's granddaughter, and her father merely took her mother's name. and she is a lady by instinct." "they call him 'captain,' but anybody is captain." "he was in the royal navy!" "no doubt he has been to sea in some tub or other. why doesn't he look after her? no lady would rove about the heath at all hours of the day and night as she does. but that's not all of it. there was something queer between her and thomasin's husband at one time--i am as sure of it as that i stand here." "eustacia has told me. he did pay her a little attention a year ago; but there's no harm in that. i like her all the better." "clym," said his mother with firmness, "i have no proofs against her, unfortunately. but if she makes you a good wife, there has never been a bad one." "believe me, you are almost exasperating," said yeobright vehemently. "and this very day i had intended to arrange a meeting between you. but you give me no peace; you try to thwart my wishes in everything." "i hate the thought of any son of mine marrying badly! i wish i had never lived to see this; it is too much for me--it is more than i dreamt!" she turned to the window. her breath was coming quickly, and her lips were pale, parted, and trembling. "mother," said clym, "whatever you do, you will always be dear to me--that you know. but one thing i have a right to say, which is, that at my age i am old enough to know what is best for me." mrs. yeobright remained for some time silent and shaken, as if she could say no more. then she replied, "best? is it best for you to injure your prospects for such a voluptuous, idle woman as that? don't you see that by the very fact of your choosing her you prove that you do not know what is best for you? you give up your whole thought--you set your whole soul--to please a woman." "i do. and that woman is you." "how can you treat me so flippantly!" said his mother, turning again to him with a tearful look. "you are unnatural, clym, and i did not expect it." "very likely," said he cheerlessly. "you did not know the measure you were going to mete me, and therefore did not know the measure that would be returned to you again." "you answer me; you think only of her. you stick to her in all things." "that proves her to be worthy. i have never yet supported what is bad. and i do not care only for her. i care for you and for myself, and for anything that is good. when a woman once dislikes another she is merciless!" "o clym! please don't go setting down as my fault what is your obstinate wrong-headedness. if you wished to connect yourself with an unworthy person why did you come home here to do it? why didn't you do it in paris?--it is more the fashion there. you have come only to distress me, a lonely woman, and shorten my days! i wish that you would bestow your presence where you bestow your love!" clym said huskily, "you are my mother. i will say no more--beyond this, that i beg your pardon for having thought this my home. i will no longer inflict myself upon you; i'll go." and he went out with tears in his eyes. it was a sunny afternoon at the beginning of summer, and the moist hollows of the heath had passed from their brown to their green stage. yeobright walked to the edge of the basin which extended down from mistover and rainbarrow. by this time he was calm, and he looked over the landscape. in the minor valleys, between the hillocks which diversified the contour of the vale, the fresh young ferns were luxuriantly growing up, ultimately to reach a height of five or six feet. he descended a little way, flung himself down in a spot where a path emerged from one of the small hollows, and waited. hither it was that he had promised eustacia to bring his mother this afternoon, that they might meet and be friends. his attempt had utterly failed. he was in a nest of vivid green. the ferny vegetation round him, though so abundant, was quite uniform: it was a grove of machine-made foliage, a world of green triangles with saw-edges, and not a single flower. the air was warm with a vaporous warmth, and the stillness was unbroken. lizards, grasshoppers, and ants were the only living things to be beheld. the scene seemed to belong to the ancient world of the carboniferous period, when the forms of plants were few, and of the fern kind; when there was neither bud nor blossom, nothing but a monotonous extent of leafage, amid which no bird sang. when he had reclined for some considerable time, gloomily pondering, he discerned above the ferns a drawn bonnet of white silk approaching from the left, and yeobright knew directly that it covered the head of her he loved. his heart awoke from its apathy to a warm excitement, and, jumping to his feet, he said aloud, "i knew she was sure to come." she vanished in a hollow for a few moments, and then her whole form unfolded itself from the brake. "only you here?" she exclaimed, with a disappointed air, whose hollowness was proved by her rising redness and her half-guilty low laugh. "where is mrs. yeobright?" "she has not come," he replied in a subdued tone. "i wish i had known that you would be here alone," she said seriously, "and that we were going to have such an idle, pleasant time as this. pleasure not known beforehand is half wasted; to anticipate it is to double it. i have not thought once today of having you all to myself this afternoon, and the actual moment of a thing is so soon gone." "it is indeed." "poor clym!" she continued, looking tenderly into his face. "you are sad. something has happened at your home. never mind what is--let us only look at what seems." "but, darling, what shall we do?" said he. "still go on as we do now--just live on from meeting to meeting, never minding about another day. you, i know, are always thinking of that--i can see you are. but you must not--will you, dear clym?" "you are just like all women. they are ever content to build their lives on any incidental position that offers itself; whilst men would fain make a globe to suit them. listen to this, eustacia. there is a subject i have determined to put off no longer. your sentiment on the wisdom of _carpe diem_ does not impress me today. our present mode of life must shortly be brought to an end." "it is your mother!" "it is. i love you none the less in telling you; it is only right you should know." "i have feared my bliss," she said, with the merest motion of her lips. "it has been too intense and consuming." "there is hope yet. there are forty years of work in me yet, and why should you despair? i am only at an awkward turning. i wish people wouldn't be so ready to think that there is no progress without uniformity." "ah--your mind runs off to the philosophical side of it. well, these sad and hopeless obstacles are welcome in one sense, for they enable us to look with indifference upon the cruel satires that fate loves to indulge in. i have heard of people, who, upon coming suddenly into happiness, have died from anxiety lest they should not live to enjoy it. i felt myself in that whimsical state of uneasiness lately; but i shall be spared it now. let us walk on." clym took the hand which was already bared for him--it was a favourite way with them to walk bare hand in bare hand--and led her through the ferns. they formed a very comely picture of love at full flush, as they walked along the valley that late afternoon, the sun sloping down on their right, and throwing their thin spectral shadows, tall as poplar trees, far out across the furze and fern. eustacia went with her head thrown back fancifully, a certain glad and voluptuous air of triumph pervading her eyes at having won by her own unaided self a man who was her perfect complement in attainment, appearance, and age. on the young man's part, the paleness of face which he had brought with him from paris, and the incipient marks of time and thought, were less perceptible than when he returned, the healthful and energetic sturdiness which was his by nature having partially recovered its original proportions. they wandered onward till they reached the nether margin of the heath, where it became marshy and merged in moorland. "i must part from you here, clym," said eustacia. they stood still and prepared to bid each other farewell. everything before them was on a perfect level. the sun, resting on the horizon line, streamed across the ground from between copper-coloured and lilac clouds, stretched out in flats beneath a sky of pale soft green. all dark objects on the earth that lay towards the sun were overspread by a purple haze, against which groups of wailing gnats shone out, rising upwards and dancing about like sparks of fire. "o! this leaving you is too hard to bear!" exclaimed eustacia in a sudden whisper of anguish. "your mother will influence you too much; i shall not be judged fairly, it will get afloat that i am not a good girl, and the witch story will be added to make me blacker!" "they cannot. nobody dares to speak disrespectfully of you or of me." "oh how i wish i was sure of never losing you--that you could not be able to desert me anyhow!" clym stood silent a moment. his feelings were high, the moment was passionate, and he cut the knot. "you shall be sure of me, darling," he said, folding her in his arms. "we will be married at once." "o clym!" "do you agree to it?" "if--if we can." "we certainly can, both being of full age. and i have not followed my occupation all these years without having accumulated money; and if you will agree to live in a tiny cottage somewhere on the heath, until i take a house in budmouth for the school, we can do it at a very little expense." "how long shall we have to live in the tiny cottage, clym?" "about six months. at the end of that time i shall have finished my reading--yes, we will do it, and this heartaching will be over. we shall, of course, live in absolute seclusion, and our married life will only begin to outward view when we take the house in budmouth, where i have already addressed a letter on the matter. would your grandfather allow you?" "i think he would--on the understanding that it should not last longer than six months." "i will guarantee that, if no misfortune happens." "if no misfortune happens," she repeated slowly. "which is not likely. dearest, fix the exact day." and then they consulted on the question, and the day was chosen. it was to be a fortnight from that time. this was the end of their talk, and eustacia left him. clym watched her as she retired towards the sun. the luminous rays wrapped her up with her increasing distance, and the rustle of her dress over the sprouting sedge and grass died away. as he watched, the dead flat of the scenery overpowered him, though he was fully alive to the beauty of that untarnished early summer green which was worn for the nonce by the poorest blade. there was something in its oppressive horizontality which too much reminded him of the arena of life; it gave him a sense of bare equality with, and no superiority to, a single living thing under the sun. eustacia was now no longer the goddess but the woman to him, a being to fight for, support, help, be maligned for. now that he had reached a cooler moment he would have preferred a less hasty marriage; but the card was laid, and he determined to abide by the game. whether eustacia was to add one other to the list of those who love too hotly to love long and well, the forthcoming event was certainly a ready way of proving. vi yeobright goes, and the breach is complete all that evening smart sounds denoting an active packing up came from yeobright's room to the ears of his mother downstairs. next morning he departed from the house and again proceeded across the heath. a long day's march was before him, his object being to secure a dwelling to which he might take eustacia when she became his wife. such a house, small, secluded, and with its windows boarded up, he had casually observed a month earlier, about two miles beyond the village of east egdon, and six miles distant altogether; and thither he directed his steps today. the weather was far different from that of the evening before. the yellow and vapoury sunset which had wrapped up eustacia from his parting gaze had presaged change. it was one of those not infrequent days of an english june which are as wet and boisterous as november. the cold clouds hastened on in a body, as if painted on a moving slide. vapours from other continents arrived upon the wind, which curled and parted round him as he walked on. at length clym reached the margin of a fir and beech plantation that had been enclosed from heath land in the year of his birth. here the trees, laden heavily with their new and humid leaves, were now suffering more damage than during the highest winds of winter, when the boughs are especially disencumbered to do battle with the storm. the wet young beeches were undergoing amputations, bruises, cripplings, and harsh lacerations, from which the wasting sap would bleed for many a day to come, and which would leave scars visible till the day of their burning. each stem was wrenched at the root, where it moved like a bone in its socket, and at every onset of the gale convulsive sounds came from the branches, as if pain were felt. in a neighbouring brake a finch was trying to sing; but the wind blew under his feathers till they stood on end, twisted round his little tail, and made him give up his song. yet a few yards to yeobright's left, on the open heath, how ineffectively gnashed the storm! those gusts which tore the trees merely waved the furze and heather in a light caress. egdon was made for such times as these. yeobright reached the empty house about mid-day. it was almost as lonely as that of eustacia's grandfather, but the fact that it stood near a heath was disguised by a belt of firs which almost enclosed the premises. he journeyed on about a mile further to the village in which the owner lived, and, returning with him to the house, arrangements were completed, and the man undertook that one room at least should be ready for occupation the next day. clym's intention was to live there alone until eustacia should join him on their wedding day. then he turned to pursue his way homeward through the drizzle that had so greatly transformed the scene. the ferns, among which he had lain in comfort yesterday, were dripping moisture from every frond, wetting his legs through as he brushed past; and the fur of the rabbits leaping before him was clotted into dark locks by the same watery surrounding. he reached home damp and weary enough after his ten-mile walk. it had hardly been a propitious beginning, but he had chosen his course, and would show no swerving. the evening and the following morning were spent in concluding arrangements for his departure. to stay at home a minute longer than necessary after having once come to his determination would be, he felt, only to give new pain to his mother by some word, look, or deed. he had hired a conveyance and sent off his goods by two o'clock that day. the next step was to get some furniture, which, after serving for temporary use in the cottage, would be available for the house at budmouth when increased by goods of a better description. a mart extensive enough for the purpose existed at anglebury, some miles beyond the spot chosen for his residence, and there he resolved to pass the coming night. it now only remained to wish his mother good-bye. she was sitting by the window as usual when he came downstairs. "mother, i am going to leave you," he said, holding out his hand. "i thought you were, by your packing," replied mrs. yeobright in a voice from which every particle of emotion was painfully excluded. "and you will part friends with me?" "certainly, clym." "i am going to be married on the twenty-fifth." "i thought you were going to be married." "and then--and then you must come and see us. you will understand me better after that, and our situation will not be so wretched as it is now." "i do not think it likely i shall come to see you." "then it will not be my fault or eustacia's, mother. good-bye!" he kissed her cheek, and departed in great misery, which was several hours in lessening itself to a controllable level. the position had been such that nothing more could be said without, in the first place, breaking down a barrier; and that was not to be done. no sooner had yeobright gone from his mother's house than her face changed its rigid aspect for one of blank despair. after a while she wept, and her tears brought some relief. during the rest of the day she did nothing but walk up and down the garden path in a state bordering on stupefaction. night came, and with it but little rest. the next day, with an instinct to do something which should reduce prostration to mournfulness, she went to her son's room, and with her own hands arranged it in order, for an imaginary time when he should return again. she gave some attention to her flowers, but it was perfunctorily bestowed, for they no longer charmed her. it was a great relief when, early in the afternoon, thomasin paid her an unexpected visit. this was not the first meeting between the relatives since thomasin's marriage; and past blunders having been in a rough way rectified, they could always greet each other with pleasure and ease. the oblique band of sunlight which followed her through the door became the young wife well. it illuminated her as her presence illuminated the heath. in her movements, in her gaze, she reminded the beholder of the feathered creatures who lived around her home. all similes and allegories concerning her began and ended with birds. there was as much variety in her motions as in their flight. when she was musing she was a kestrel, which hangs in the air by an invisible motion of its wings. when she was in a high wind her light body was blown against trees and banks like a heron's. when she was frightened she darted noiselessly like a kingfisher. when she was serene she skimmed like a swallow, and that is how she was moving now. "you are looking very blithe, upon my word, tamsie," said mrs. yeobright, with a sad smile. "how is damon?" "he is very well." "is he kind to you, thomasin?" and mrs. yeobright observed her narrowly. "pretty fairly." "is that honestly said?" "yes, aunt. i would tell you if he were unkind." she added, blushing, and with hesitation, "he--i don't know if i ought to complain to you about this, but i am not quite sure what to do. i want some money, you know, aunt--some to buy little things for myself--and he doesn't give me any. i don't like to ask him; and yet, perhaps, he doesn't give it me because he doesn't know. ought i to mention it to him, aunt?" "of course you ought. have you never said a word on the matter?" "you see, i had some of my own," said thomasin evasively, "and i have not wanted any of his until lately. i did just say something about it last week; but he seems--not to remember." "he must be made to remember. you are aware that i have a little box full of spade-guineas, which your uncle put into my hands to divide between yourself and clym whenever i chose. perhaps the time has come when it should be done. they can be turned into sovereigns at any moment." "i think i should like to have my share--that is, if you don't mind." "you shall, if necessary. but it is only proper that you should first tell your husband distinctly that you are without any, and see what he will do." "very well, i will... aunt, i have heard about clym. i know you are in trouble about him, and that's why i have come." mrs. yeobright turned away, and her features worked in her attempt to conceal her feelings. then she ceased to make any attempt, and said, weeping, "o thomasin, do you think he hates me? how can he bear to grieve me so, when i have lived only for him through all these years?" "hate you--no," said thomasin soothingly. "it is only that he loves her too well. look at it quietly--do. it is not so very bad of him. do you know, i thought it not the worst match he could have made. miss vye's family is a good one on her mother's side; and her father was a romantic wanderer--a sort of greek ulysses." "it is no use, thomasin; it is no use. your intention is good; but i will not trouble you to argue. i have gone through the whole that can be said on either side times, and many times. clym and i have not parted in anger; we have parted in a worse way. it is not a passionate quarrel that would have broken my heart; it is the steady opposition and persistence in going wrong that he has shown. o thomasin, he was so good as a little boy--so tender and kind!" "he was, i know." "i did not think one whom i called mine would grow up to treat me like this. he spoke to me as if i opposed him to injure him. as though i could wish him ill!" "there are worse women in the world than eustacia vye." "there are too many better; that's the agony of it. it was she, thomasin, and she only, who led your husband to act as he did: i would swear it!" "no," said thomasin eagerly. "it was before he knew me that he thought of her, and it was nothing but a mere flirtation." "very well; we will let it be so. there is little use in unravelling that now. sons must be blind if they will. why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close? clym must do as he will--he is nothing more to me. and this is maternity--to give one's best years and best love to ensure the fate of being despised!" "you are too unyielding. think how many mothers there are whose sons have brought them to public shame by real crimes before you feel so deeply a case like this." "thomasin, don't lecture me--i can't have it. it is the excess above what we expect that makes the force of the blow, and that may not be greater in their case than in mine: they may have foreseen the worst... i am wrongly made, thomasin," she added, with a mournful smile. "some widows can guard against the wounds their children give them by turning their hearts to another husband and beginning life again. but i always was a poor, weak, one-idea'd creature--i had not the compass of heart nor the enterprise for that. just as forlorn and stupefied as i was when my husband's spirit flew away i have sat ever since--never attempting to mend matters at all. i was comparatively a young woman then, and i might have had another family by this time, and have been comforted by them for the failure of this one son." "it is more noble in you that you did not." "the more noble, the less wise." "forget it, and be soothed, dear aunt. and i shall not leave you alone for long. i shall come and see you every day." and for one week thomasin literally fulfilled her word. she endeavoured to make light of the wedding; and brought news of the preparations, and that she was invited to be present. the next week she was rather unwell, and did not appear. nothing had as yet been done about the guineas, for thomasin feared to address her husband again on the subject, and mrs. yeobright had insisted upon this. one day just before this time wildeve was standing at the door of the quiet woman. in addition to the upward path through the heath to rainbarrow and mistover, there was a road which branched from the highway a short distance below the inn, and ascended to mistover by a circuitous and easy incline. this was the only route on that side for vehicles to the captain's retreat. a light cart from the nearest town descended the road, and the lad who was driving pulled up in front of the inn for something to drink. "you come from mistover?" said wildeve. "yes. they are taking in good things up there. going to be a wedding." and the driver buried his face in his mug. wildeve had not received an inkling of the fact before, and a sudden expression of pain overspread his face. he turned for a moment into the passage to hide it. then he came back again. "do you mean miss vye?" he said. "how is it--that she can be married so soon?" "by the will of god and a ready young man, i suppose." "you don't mean mr. yeobright?" "yes. he has been creeping about with her all the spring." "i suppose--she was immensely taken with him?" "she is crazy about him, so their general servant of all work tells me. and that lad charley that looks after the horse is all in a daze about it. the stun-poll has got fondlike of her." "is she lively--is she glad? going to be married so soon--well!" "it isn't so very soon." "no; not so very soon." wildeve went indoors to the empty room, a curious heartache within him. he rested his elbow upon the mantelpiece and his face upon his hand. when thomasin entered the room he did not tell her of what he had heard. the old longing for eustacia had reappeared in his soul; and it was mainly because he had discovered that it was another man's intention to possess her. to be yearning for the difficult, to be weary of that offered; to care for the remote, to dislike the near; it was wildeve's nature always. this is the true mark of the man of sentiment. though wildeve's fevered feeling had not been elaborated to real poetical compass, it was of the standard sort. he might have been called the rousseau of egdon. vii the morning and the evening of a day the wedding morning came. nobody would have imagined from appearances that blooms-end had any interest in mistover that day. a solemn stillness prevailed around the house of clym's mother, and there was no more animation indoors. mrs. yeobright, who had declined to attend the ceremony, sat by the breakfast table in the old room which communicated immediately with the porch, her eyes listlessly directed towards the open door. it was the room in which, six months earlier, the merry christmas party had met, to which eustacia came secretly and as a stranger. the only living thing that entered now was a sparrow; and seeing no movements to cause alarm, he hopped boldly round the room, endeavoured to go out by the window, and fluttered among the pot-flowers. this roused the lonely sitter, who got up, released the bird, and went to the door. she was expecting thomasin, who had written the night before to state that the time had come when she would wish to have the money, and that she would if possible call this day. yet thomasin occupied mrs. yeobright's thoughts but slightly as she looked up the valley of the heath, alive with butterflies, and with grasshoppers whose husky noises on every side formed a whispered chorus. a domestic drama, for which the preparations were now being made a mile or two off, was but little less vividly present to her eyes than if enacted before her. she tried to dismiss the vision, and walked about the garden plot; but her eyes ever and anon sought out the direction of the parish church to which mistover belonged, and her excited fancy clove the hills which divided the building from her eyes. the morning wore away. eleven o'clock struck: could it be that the wedding was then in progress? it must be so. she went on imagining the scene at the church, which he had by this time approached with his bride. she pictured the little group of children by the gate as the pony-carriage drove up in which, as thomasin had learnt, they were going to perform the short journey. then she saw them enter and proceed to the chancel and kneel; and the service seemed to go on. she covered her face with her hands. "o, it is a mistake!" she groaned. "and he will rue it some day, and think of me!" while she remained thus, overcome by her forebodings, the old clock indoors whizzed forth twelve strokes. soon after, faint sounds floated to her ear from afar over the hills. the breeze came from that quarter, and it had brought with it the notes of distant bells, gaily starting off in a peal: one, two, three, four, five. the ringers at east egdon were announcing the nuptials of eustacia and her son. "then it is over," she murmured. "well, well! and life too will be over soon. and why should i go on scalding my face like this? cry about one thing in life, cry about all; one thread runs through the whole piece. and yet we say, 'a time to laugh!'" towards evening wildeve came. since thomasin's marriage mrs. yeobright had shown towards him that grim friendliness which at last arises in all such cases of undesired affinity. the vision of what ought to have been is thrown aside in sheer weariness, and browbeaten human endeavour listlessly makes the best of the fact that is. wildeve, to do him justice, had behaved very courteously to his wife's aunt; and it was with no surprise that she saw him enter now. "thomasin has not been able to come, as she promised to do," he replied to her inquiry, which had been anxious, for she knew that her niece was badly in want of money. "the captain came down last night and personally pressed her to join them today. so, not to be unpleasant, she determined to go. they fetched her in the pony-chaise, and are going to bring her back." "then it is done," said mrs. yeobright. "have they gone to their new home?" "i don't know. i have had no news from mistover since thomasin left to go." "you did not go with her?" said she, as if there might be good reasons why. "i could not," said wildeve, reddening slightly. "we could not both leave the house; it was rather a busy morning, on account of anglebury great market. i believe you have something to give to thomasin? if you like, i will take it." mrs. yeobright hesitated, and wondered if wildeve knew what the something was. "did she tell you of this?" she inquired. "not particularly. she casually dropped a remark about having arranged to fetch some article or other." "it is hardly necessary to send it. she can have it whenever she chooses to come." "that won't be yet. in the present state of her health she must not go on walking so much as she has done." he added, with a faint twang of sarcasm, "what wonderful thing is it that i cannot be trusted to take?" "nothing worth troubling you with." "one would think you doubted my honesty," he said, with a laugh, though his colour rose in a quick resentfulness frequent with him. "you need think no such thing," said she drily. "it is simply that i, in common with the rest of the world, feel that there are certain things which had better be done by certain people than by others." "as you like, as you like," said wildeve laconically. "it is not worth arguing about. well, i think i must turn homeward again, as the inn must not be left long in charge of the lad and the maid only." he went his way, his farewell being scarcely so courteous as his greeting. but mrs. yeobright knew him thoroughly by this time, and took little notice of his manner, good or bad. when wildeve was gone mrs. yeobright stood and considered what would be the best course to adopt with regard to the guineas, which she had not liked to entrust to wildeve. it was hardly credible that thomasin had told him to ask for them, when the necessity for them had arisen from the difficulty of obtaining money at his hands. at the same time thomasin really wanted them, and might be unable to come to blooms-end for another week at least. to take or send the money to her at the inn would be impolite, since wildeve would pretty surely be present, or would discover the transaction; and if, as her aunt suspected, he treated her less kindly than she deserved to be treated, he might then get the whole sum out of her gentle hands. but on this particular evening thomasin was at mistover, and anything might be conveyed to her there without the knowledge of her husband. upon the whole the opportunity was worth taking advantage of. her son, too, was there, and was now married. there could be no more proper moment to render him his share of the money than the present. and the chance that would be afforded her, by sending him this gift, of showing how far she was from bearing him ill-will, cheered the sad mother's heart. she went upstairs and took from a locked drawer a little box, out of which she poured a hoard of broad unworn guineas that had lain there many a year. there were a hundred in all, and she divided them into two heaps, fifty in each. tying up these in small canvas bags, she went down to the garden and called to christian cantle, who was loitering about in hope of a supper which was not really owed him. mrs. yeobright gave him the moneybags, charged him to go to mistover, and on no account to deliver them into any one's hands save her son's and thomasin's. on further thought she deemed it advisable to tell christian precisely what the two bags contained, that he might be fully impressed with their importance. christian pocketed the money-bags, promised the greatest carefulness, and set out on his way. "you need not hurry," said mrs. yeobright. "it will be better not to get there till after dusk, and then nobody will notice you. come back here to supper, if it is not too late." it was nearly nine o'clock when he began to ascend the vale towards mistover; but the long days of summer being at their climax, the first obscurity of evening had only just begun to tan the landscape. at this point of his journey christian heard voices, and found that they proceeded from a company of men and women who were traversing a hollow ahead of him, the tops only of their heads being visible. he paused and thought of the money he carried. it was almost too early even for christian seriously to fear robbery; nevertheless he took a precaution which ever since his boyhood he had adopted whenever he carried more than two or three shillings upon his person--a precaution somewhat like that of the owner of the pitt diamond when filled with similar misgivings. he took off his boots, untied the guineas, and emptied the contents of one little bag into the right boot, and of the other into the left, spreading them as flatly as possible over the bottom of each, which was really a spacious coffer by no means limited to the size of the foot. pulling them on again and lacing them to the very top, he proceeded on his way, more easy in his head than under his soles. his path converged towards that of the noisy company, and on coming nearer he found to his relief that they were several egdon people whom he knew very well, while with them walked fairway, of blooms-end. "what! christian going too?" said fairway as soon as he recognized the newcomer. "you've got no young woman nor wife to your name to gie a gown-piece to, i'm sure." "what d'ye mean?" said christian. "why, the raffle. the one we go to every year. going to the raffle as well as ourselves?" "never knew a word o't. is it like cudgel-playing or other sportful forms of bloodshed? i don't want to go, thank you, mister fairway, and no offence." "christian don't know the fun o't, and 'twould be a fine sight for him," said a buxom woman. "there's no danger at all, christian. every man puts in a shilling apiece, and one wins a gown-piece for his wife or sweetheart if he's got one." "well, as that's not my fortune there's no meaning in it to me. but i should like to see the fun, if there's nothing of the black art in it, and if a man may look on without cost or getting into any dangerous wrangle?" "there will be no uproar at all," said timothy. "sure, christian, if you'd like to come we'll see there's no harm done." "and no ba'dy gaieties, i suppose? you see, neighbours, if so, it would be setting father a bad example, as he is so light moral'd. but a gown-piece for a shilling, and no black art--'tis worth looking in to see, and it wouldn't hinder me half an hour. yes, i'll come, if you'll step a little way towards mistover with me afterwards, supposing night should have closed in, and nobody else is going that way?" one or two promised; and christian, diverging from his direct path, turned round to the right with his companions towards the quiet woman. when they entered the large common room of the inn they found assembled there about ten men from among the neighbouring population, and the group was increased by the new contingent to double that number. most of them were sitting round the room in seats divided by wooden elbows like those of crude cathedral stalls, which were carved with the initials of many an illustrious drunkard of former times who had passed his days and his nights between them, and now lay as an alcoholic cinder in the nearest churchyard. among the cups on the long table before the sitters lay an open parcel of light drapery--the gown-piece, as it was called--which was to be raffled for. wildeve was standing with his back to the fireplace smoking a cigar; and the promoter of the raffle, a packman from a distant town, was expatiating upon the value of the fabric as material for a summer dress. "now, gentlemen," he continued, as the newcomers drew up to the table, "there's five have entered, and we want four more to make up the number. i think, by the faces of those gentlemen who have just come in, that they are shrewd enough to take advantage of this rare opportunity of beautifying their ladies at a very trifling expense." fairway, sam, and another placed their shillings on the table, and the man turned to christian. "no, sir," said christian, drawing back, with a quick gaze of misgiving. "i am only a poor chap come to look on, an it please ye, sir. i don't so much as know how you do it. if so be i was sure of getting it i would put down the shilling; but i couldn't otherwise." "i think you might almost be sure," said the pedlar. "in fact, now i look into your face, even if i can't say you are sure to win, i can say that i never saw anything look more like winning in my life." "you'll anyhow have the same chance as the rest of us," said sam. "and the extra luck of being the last comer," said another. "and i was born wi' a caul, and perhaps can be no more ruined than drowned?" christian added, beginning to give way. ultimately christian laid down his shilling, the raffle began, and the dice went round. when it came to christian's turn he took the box with a trembling hand, shook it fearfully, and threw a pair-royal. three of the others had thrown common low pairs, and all the rest mere points. "the gentleman looked like winning, as i said," observed the chapman blandly. "take it, sir; the article is yours." "haw-haw-haw!" said fairway. "i'm damned if this isn't the quarest start that ever i knowed!" "mine?" asked christian, with a vacant stare from his target eyes. "i--i haven't got neither maid, wife, nor widder belonging to me at all, and i'm afeard it will make me laughed at to ha'e it, master traveller. what with being curious to join in i never thought of that! what shall i do wi' a woman's clothes in my bedroom, and not lose my decency!" "keep 'em, to be sure," said fairway, "if it is only for luck. perhaps 'twill tempt some woman that thy poor carcase had no power over when standing empty-handed." "keep it, certainly," said wildeve, who had idly watched the scene from a distance. the table was then cleared of the articles, and the men began to drink. "well, to be sure!" said christian, half to himself. "to think i should have been born so lucky as this, and not have found it out until now! what curious creatures these dice be--powerful rulers of us all, and yet at my command! i am sure i never need be afeared of anything after this." he handled the dice fondly one by one. "why, sir," he said in a confidential whisper to wildeve, who was near his left hand, "if i could only use this power that's in me of multiplying money i might do some good to a near relation of yours, seeing what i've got about me of hers--eh?" he tapped one of his money-laden boots upon the floor. "what do you mean?" said wildeve. "that's a secret. well, i must be going now." he looked anxiously towards fairway. "where are you going?" wildeve asked. "to mistover knap. i have to see mrs. thomasin there--that's all." "i am going there, too, to fetch mrs. wildeve. we can walk together." wildeve became lost in thought, and a look of inward illumination came into his eyes. it was money for his wife that mrs. yeobright could not trust him with. "yet she could trust this fellow," he said to himself. "why doesn't that which belongs to the wife belong to the husband too?" he called to the pot-boy to bring him his hat, and said, "now, christian, i am ready." "mr. wildeve," said christian timidly, as he turned to leave the room, "would you mind lending me them wonderful little things that carry my luck inside 'em, that i might practise a bit by myself, you know?" he looked wistfully at the dice and box lying on the mantlepiece. "certainly," said wildeve carelessly. "they were only cut out by some lad with his knife, and are worth nothing." and christian went back and privately pocketed them. wildeve opened the door and looked out. the night was warm and cloudy. "by gad! 'tis dark," he continued. "but i suppose we shall find our way." "if we should lose the path it might be awkward," said christian. "a lantern is the only shield that will make it safe for us." "let's have a lantern by all means." the stable lantern was fetched and lighted. christian took up his gownpiece, and the two set out to ascend the hill. within the room the men fell into chat till their attention was for a moment drawn to the chimney-corner. this was large, and, in addition to its proper recess, contained within its jambs, like many on egdon, a receding seat, so that a person might sit there absolutely unobserved, provided there was no fire to light him up, as was the case now and throughout the summer. from the niche a single object protruded into the light from the candles on the table. it was a clay pipe, and its colour was reddish. the men had been attracted to this object by a voice behind the pipe asking for a light. "upon my life, it fairly startled me when the man spoke!" said fairway, handing a candle. "oh--'tis the reddleman! you've kept a quiet tongue, young man." "yes, i had nothing to say," observed venn. in a few minutes he arose and wished the company good night. meanwhile wildeve and christian had plunged into the heath. it was a stagnant, warm, and misty night, full of all the heavy perfumes of new vegetation not yet dried by hot sun, and among these particularly the scent of the fern. the lantern, dangling from christian's hand, brushed the feathery fronds in passing by, disturbing moths and other winged insects, which flew out and alighted upon its horny panes. "so you have money to carry to mrs. wildeve?" said christian's companion, after a silence. "don't you think it very odd that it shouldn't be given to me?" "as man and wife be one flesh, 'twould have been all the same, i should think," said christian. "but my strict documents was, to give the money into mrs. wildeve's hand--and 'tis well to do things right." "no doubt," said wildeve. any person who had known the circumstances might have perceived that wildeve was mortified by the discovery that the matter in transit was money, and not, as he had supposed when at blooms-end, some fancy nick-nack which only interested the two women themselves. mrs. yeobright's refusal implied that his honour was not considered to be of sufficiently good quality to make him a safer bearer of his wife's property. "how very warm it is tonight, christian!" he said, panting, when they were nearly under rainbarrow. "let us sit down for a few minutes, for heaven's sake." wildeve flung himself down on the soft ferns; and christian, placing the lantern and parcel on the ground, perched himself in a cramped position hard by, his knees almost touching his chin. he presently thrust one hand into his coat-pocket and began shaking it about. "what are you rattling in there?" said wildeve. "only the dice, sir," said christian, quickly withdrawing his hand. "what magical machines these little things be, mr. wildeve! 'tis a game i should never get tired of. would you mind my taking 'em out and looking at 'em for a minute, to see how they are made? i didn't like to look close before the other men, for fear they should think it bad manners in me." christian took them out and examined them in the hollow of his hand by the lantern light. "that these little things should carry such luck, and such charm, and such a spell, and such power in 'em, passes all i ever heard or zeed," he went on, with a fascinated gaze at the dice, which, as is frequently the case in country places, were made of wood, the points being burnt upon each face with the end of a wire. "they are a great deal in a small compass, you think?" "yes. do ye suppose they really be the devil's playthings, mr. wildeve? if so, 'tis no good sign that i be such a lucky man." "you ought to win some money, now that you've got them. any woman would marry you then. now is your time, christian, and i would recommend you not to let it slip. some men are born to luck, some are not. i belong to the latter class." "did you ever know anybody who was born to it besides myself?" "o yes. i once heard of an italian, who sat down at a gaming table with only a louis (that's a foreign sovereign) in his pocket. he played on for twenty-four hours, and won ten thousand pounds, stripping the bank he had played against. then there was another man who had lost a thousand pounds, and went to the broker's next day to sell stock, that he might pay the debt. the man to whom he owed the money went with him in a hackney-coach; and to pass the time they tossed who should pay the fare. the ruined man won, and the other was tempted to continue the game, and they played all the way. when the coachman stopped he was told to drive home again: the whole thousand pounds had been won back by the man who was going to sell." "ha--ha--splendid!" exclaimed christian. "go on--go on!" "then there was a man of london, who was only a waiter at white's clubhouse. he began playing first half-crown stakes, and then higher and higher, till he became very rich, got an appointment in india, and rose to be governor of madras. his daughter married a member of parliament, and the bishop of carlisle stood godfather to one of the children." "wonderful! wonderful!" "and once there was a young man in america who gambled till he had lost his last dollar. he staked his watch and chain, and lost as before; staked his umbrella, lost again; staked his hat, lost again; staked his coat and stood in his shirt-sleeve; lost again. began taking off his breeches, and then a looker-on gave him a trifle for his pluck. with this he won. won back his coat, won back his hat, won back his umbrella, his watch, his money, and went out of the door a rich man." "oh, 'tis too good--it takes away my breath! mr. wildeve, i think i will try another shilling with you, as i am one of that sort; no danger can come o't, and you can afford to lose." "very well," said wildeve, rising. searching about with the lantern, he found a large flat stone, which he placed between himself and christian, and sat down again. the lantern was opened to give more light, and it's rays directed upon the stone. christian put down a shilling, wildeve another, and each threw. christian won. they played for two, christian won again. "let us try four," said wildeve. they played for four. this time the stakes were won by wildeve. "ah, those little accidents will, of course, sometimes happen, to the luckiest man," he observed. "and now i have no more money!" explained christian excitedly. "and yet, if i could go on, i should get it back again, and more. i wish this was mine." he struck his boot upon the ground, so that the guineas chinked within. "what! you have not put mrs. wildeve's money there?" "yes. 'tis for safety. is it any harm to raffle with a married lady's money when, if i win, i shall only keep my winnings, and give her her own all the same; and if t'other man wins, her money will go to the lawful owner?" "none at all." wildeve had been brooding ever since they started on the mean estimation in which he was held by his wife's friends; and it cut his heart severely. as the minutes passed he had gradually drifted into a revengeful intention without knowing the precise moment of forming it. this was to teach mrs. yeobright a lesson, as he considered it to be; in other words, to show her if he could, that her niece's husband was the proper guardian of her niece's money. "well, here goes!" said christian, beginning to unlace one boot. "i shall dream of it nights and nights, i suppose; but i shall always swear my flesh don't crawl when i think o't!" he thrust his hand into the boot and withdrew one of poor thomasin's precious guineas, piping hot. wildeve had already placed a sovereign on the stone. the game was then resumed. wildeve won first, and christian ventured another, winning himself this time. the game fluctuated, but the average was in wildeve's favour. both men became so absorbed in the game that they took no heed of anything but the pigmy objects immediately beneath their eyes, the flat stone, the open lantern, the dice, and the few illuminated fern-leaves which lay under the light, were the whole world to them. at length christian lost rapidly; and presently, to his horror, the whole fifty guineas belonging to thomasin had been handed over to his adversary. "i don't care--i don't care!" he moaned, and desperately set about untying his left boot to get at the other fifty. "the devil will toss me into the flames on his three-pronged fork for this night's work, i know! but perhaps i shall win yet, and then i'll get a wife to sit up with me o' nights, and i won't be afeard, i won't! here's another for'ee, my man!" he slapped another guinea down upon the stone, and the dice-box was rattled again. time passed on. wildeve began to be as excited as christian himself. when commencing the game his intention had been nothing further than a bitter practical joke on mrs. yeobright. to win the money, fairly or otherwise, and to hand it contemptuously to thomasin in her aunt's presence, had been the dim outline of his purpose. but men are drawn from their intentions even in the course of carrying them out, and it was extremely doubtful, by the time the twentieth guinea had been reached, whether wildeve was conscious of any other intention than that of winning for his own personal benefit. moreover, he was now no longer gambling for his wife's money, but for yeobright's; though of this fact christian, in his apprehensiveness, did not inform him till afterwards. it was nearly eleven o'clock, when, with almost a shriek, christian placed yeobright's last gleaming guinea upon the stone. in thirty seconds it had gone the way of its companions. christian turned and flung himself on the ferns in a convulsion of remorse, "o, what shall i do with my wretched self?" he groaned. "what shall i do? will any good heaven hae mercy upon my wicked soul?" "do? live on just the same." "i won't live on just the same! i'll die! i say you are a--a--" "a man sharper than my neighbour." "yes, a man sharper than my neighbour; a regular sharper!" "poor chips-in-porridge, you are very unmannerly." "i don't know about that! and i say you be unmannerly! you've got money that isn't your own. half the guineas are poor mr. clym's." "how's that?" "because i had to gie fifty of 'em to him. mrs. yeobright said so." "oh?... well, 'twould have been more graceful of her to have given them to his wife eustacia. but they are in my hands now." christian pulled on his boots, and with heavy breathings, which could be heard to some distance, dragged his limbs together, arose, and tottered away out of sight. wildeve set about shutting the lantern to return to the house, for he deemed it too late to go to mistover to meet his wife, who was to be driven home in the captain's four-wheel. while he was closing the little horn door a figure rose from behind a neighbouring bush and came forward into the lantern light. it was the reddleman approaching. viii a new force disturbs the current wildeve stared. venn looked coolly towards wildeve, and, without a word being spoken, he deliberately sat himself down where christian had been seated, thrust his hand into his pocket, drew out a sovereign, and laid it on the stone. "you have been watching us from behind that bush?" said wildeve. the reddleman nodded. "down with your stake," he said. "or haven't you pluck enough to go on?" now, gambling is a species of amusement which is much more easily begun with full pockets than left off with the same; and though wildeve in a cooler temper might have prudently declined this invitation, the excitement of his recent success carried him completely away. he placed one of the guineas on a slab beside the reddleman's sovereign. "mine is a guinea," he said. "a guinea that's not your own," said venn sarcastically. "it is my own," answered wildeve haughtily. "it is my wife's, and what is hers is mine." "very well; let's make a beginning." he shook the box, and threw eight, ten, and nine; the three casts amounted to twenty-seven. this encouraged wildeve. he took the box; and his three casts amounted to forty-five. down went another of the reddleman's sovereigns against his first one which wildeve laid. this time wildeve threw fifty-one points, but no pair. the reddleman looked grim, threw a raffle of aces, and pocketed the stakes. "here you are again," said wildeve contemptuously. "double the stakes." he laid two of thomasin's guineas, and the reddleman his two pounds. venn won again. new stakes were laid on the stone, and the gamblers proceeded as before. wildeve was a nervous and excitable man, and the game was beginning to tell upon his temper. he writhed, fumed, shifted his seat; and the beating of his heart was almost audible. venn sat with lips impassively closed and eyes reduced to a pair of unimportant twinkles; he scarcely appeared to breathe. he might have been an arab, or an automaton; he would have been like a red sandstone statue but for the motion of his arm with the dice-box. the game fluctuated, now in favour of one, now in favour of the other, without any great advantage on the side of either. nearly twenty minutes were passed thus. the light of the candle had by this time attracted heathflies, moths, and other winged creatures of night, which floated round the lantern, flew into the flame, or beat about the faces of the two players. but neither of the men paid much attention to these things, their eyes being concentrated upon the little flat stone, which to them was an arena vast and important as a battlefield. by this time a change had come over the game; the reddleman won continually. at length sixty guineas--thomasin's fifty, and ten of clym's--had passed into his hands. wildeve was reckless, frantic, exasperated. "'won back his coat,'" said venn slily. another throw, and the money went the same way. "'won back his hat,'" continued venn. "oh, oh!" said wildeve. "'won back his watch, won back his money, and went out of the door a rich man,'" added venn sentence by sentence, as stake after stake passed over to him. "five more!" shouted wildeve, dashing down the money. "and three casts be hanged--one shall decide." the red automaton opposite lapsed into silence, nodded, and followed his example. wildeve rattled the box, and threw a pair of sixes and five points. he clapped his hands; "i have done it this time--hurrah!" "there are two playing, and only one has thrown," said the reddleman, quietly bringing down the box. the eyes of each were then so intently converged upon the stone that one could fancy their beams were visible, like rays in a fog. venn lifted the box, and behold a triplet of sixes was disclosed. wildeve was full of fury. while the reddleman was grasping the stakes wildeve seized the dice and hurled them, box and all, into the darkness, uttering a fearful imprecation. then he arose and began stamping up and down like a madman. "it is all over, then?" said venn. "no, no!" cried wildeve. "i mean to have another chance yet. i must!" "but, my good man, what have you done with the dice?" "i threw them away--it was a momentary irritation. what a fool i am! here--come and help me to look for them--we must find them again." wildeve snatched up the lantern and began anxiously prowling among the furze and fern. "you are not likely to find them there," said venn, following. "what did you do such a crazy thing as that for? here's the box. the dice can't be far off." wildeve turned the light eagerly upon the spot where venn had found the box, and mauled the herbage right and left. in the course of a few minutes one of the dice was found. they searched on for some time, but no other was to be seen. "never mind," said wildeve; "let's play with one." "agreed," said venn. down they sat again, and recommenced with single guinea stakes; and the play went on smartly. but fortune had unmistakably fallen in love with the reddleman tonight. he won steadily, till he was the owner of fourteen more of the gold pieces. seventy-nine of the hundred guineas were his, wildeve possessing only twenty-one. the aspect of the two opponents was now singular. apart from motions, a complete diorama of the fluctuations of the game went on in their eyes. a diminutive candle-flame was mirrored in each pupil, and it would have been possible to distinguish therein between the moods of hope and the moods of abandonment, even as regards the reddleman, though his facial muscles betrayed nothing at all. wildeve played on with the recklessness of despair. "what's that?" he suddenly exclaimed, hearing a rustle; and they both looked up. they were surrounded by dusky forms between four and five feet high, standing a few paces beyond the rays of the lantern. a moment's inspection revealed that the encircling figures were heath-croppers, their heads being all towards the players, at whom they gazed intently. "hoosh!" said wildeve, and the whole forty or fifty animals at once turned and galloped away. play was again resumed. ten minutes passed away. then a large death's head moth advanced from the obscure outer air, wheeled twice round the lantern, flew straight at the candle, and extinguished it by the force of the blow. wildeve had just thrown, but had not lifted the box to see what he had cast; and now it was impossible. "what the infernal!" he shrieked. "now, what shall we do? perhaps i have thrown six--have you any matches?" "none," said venn. "christian had some--i wonder where he is. christian!" but there was no reply to wildeve's shout, save a mournful whining from the herons which were nesting lower down the vale. both men looked blankly round without rising. as their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness they perceived faint greenish points of light among the grass and fern. these lights dotted the hillside like stars of a low magnitude. "ah--glowworms," said wildeve. "wait a minute. we can continue the game." venn sat still, and his companion went hither and thither till he had gathered thirteen glowworms--as many as he could find in a space of four or five minutes--upon a foxglove leaf which he pulled for the purpose. the reddleman vented a low humorous laugh when he saw his adversary return with these. "determined to go on, then?" he said drily. "i always am!" said wildeve angrily. and shaking the glowworms from the leaf he ranged them with a trembling hand in a circle on the stone, leaving a space in the middle for the descent of the dice-box, over which the thirteen tiny lamps threw a pale phosphoric shine. the game was again renewed. it happened to be that season of the year at which glowworms put forth their greatest brilliancy, and the light they yielded was more than ample for the purpose, since it is possible on such nights to read the handwriting of a letter by the light of two or three. the incongruity between the men's deeds and their environment was great. amid the soft juicy vegetation of the hollow in which they sat, the motionless and the uninhabited solitude, intruded the chink of guineas, the rattle of dice, the exclamations of the reckless players. wildeve had lifted the box as soon as the lights were obtained, and the solitary die proclaimed that the game was still against him. "i won't play any more--you've been tampering with the dice," he shouted. "how--when they were your own?" said the reddleman. "we'll change the game: the lowest point shall win the stake--it may cut off my ill luck. do you refuse?" "no--go on," said venn. "o, there they are again--damn them!" cried wildeve, looking up. the heath-croppers had returned noiselessly, and were looking on with erect heads just as before, their timid eyes fixed upon the scene, as if they were wondering what mankind and candle-light could have to do in these haunts at this untoward hour. "what a plague those creatures are--staring at me so!" he said, and flung a stone, which scattered them; when the game was continued as before. wildeve had now ten guineas left; and each laid five. wildeve threw three points; venn two, and raked in the coins. the other seized the die, and clenched his teeth upon it in sheer rage, as if he would bite it in pieces. "never give in--here are my last five!" he cried, throwing them down. "hang the glowworms--they are going out. why don't you burn, you little fools? stir them up with a thorn." he probed the glowworms with a bit of stick, and rolled them over, till the bright side of their tails was upwards. "there's light enough. throw on," said venn. wildeve brought down the box within the shining circle and looked eagerly. he had thrown ace. "well done!--i said it would turn, and it has turned." venn said nothing; but his hand shook slightly. he threw ace also. "o!" said wildeve. "curse me!" the die smacked the stone a second time. it was ace again. venn looked gloomy, threw: the die was seen to be lying in two pieces, the cleft sides uppermost. "i've thrown nothing at all," he said. "serves me right--i split the die with my teeth. here--take your money. blank is less than one." "i don't wish it." "take it, i say--you've won it!" and wildeve threw the stakes against the reddleman's chest. venn gathered them up, arose, and withdrew from the hollow, wildeve sitting stupefied. when he had come to himself he also arose, and, with the extinguished lantern in his hand, went towards the high-road. on reaching it he stood still. the silence of night pervaded the whole heath except in one direction; and that was towards mistover. there he could hear the noise of light wheels, and presently saw two carriage-lamps descending the hill. wildeve screened himself under a bush and waited. the vehicle came on and passed before him. it was a hired carriage, and behind the coachman were two persons whom he knew well. there sat eustacia and yeobright, the arm of the latter being round her waist. they turned the sharp corner at the bottom towards the temporary home which clym had hired and furnished, about five miles to the eastward. wildeve forgot the loss of the money at the sight of his lost love, whose preciousness in his eyes was increasing in geometrical progression with each new incident that reminded him of their hopeless division. brimming with the subtilized misery that he was capable of feeling, he followed the opposite way towards the inn. about the same moment that wildeve stepped into the highway venn also had reached it at a point a hundred yards further on; and he, hearing the same wheels, likewise waited till the carriage should come up. when he saw who sat therein he seemed to be disappointed. reflecting a minute or two, during which interval the carriage rolled on, he crossed the road, and took a short cut through the furze and heath to a point where the turnpike-road bent round in ascending a hill. he was now again in front of the carriage, which presently came up at a walking pace. venn stepped forward and showed himself. eustacia started when the lamp shone upon him, and clym's arm was involuntarily withdrawn from her waist. he said, "what, diggory? you are having a lonely walk." "yes--i beg your pardon for stopping you," said venn. "but i am waiting about for mrs. wildeve: i have something to give her from mrs. yeobright. can you tell me if she's gone home from the party yet?" "no. but she will be leaving soon. you may possibly meet her at the corner." venn made a farewell obeisance, and walked back to his former position, where the by-road from mistover joined the highway. here he remained fixed for nearly half an hour, and then another pair of lights came down the hill. it was the old-fashioned wheeled nondescript belonging to the captain, and thomasin sat in it alone, driven by charley. the reddleman came up as they slowly turned the corner. "i beg pardon for stopping you, mrs. wildeve," he said. "but i have something to give you privately from mrs. yeobright." he handed a small parcel; it consisted of the hundred guineas he had just won, roughly twisted up in a piece of paper. thomasin recovered from her surprise, and took the packet. "that's all, ma'am--i wish you good night," he said, and vanished from her view. thus venn, in his anxiety to rectify matters, had placed in thomasin's hands not only the fifty guineas which rightly belonged to her, but also the fifty intended for her cousin clym. his mistake had been based upon wildeve's words at the opening of the game, when he indignantly denied that the guinea was not his own. it had not been comprehended by the reddleman that at half-way through the performance the game was continued with the money of another person; and it was an error which afterwards helped to cause more misfortune than treble the loss in money value could have done. the night was now somewhat advanced; and venn plunged deeper into the heath, till he came to a ravine where his van was standing--a spot not more than two hundred yards from the site of the gambling bout. he entered this movable home of his, lit his lantern, and, before closing his door for the night, stood reflecting on the circumstances of the preceding hours. while he stood the dawn grew visible in the north-east quarter of the heavens, which, the clouds having cleared off, was bright with a soft sheen at this midsummer time, though it was only between one and two o'clock. venn, thoroughly weary, then shut his door and flung himself down to sleep. book fourth the closed door i the rencounter by the pool the july sun shone over egdon and fired its crimson heather to scarlet. it was the one season of the year, and the one weather of the season, in which the heath was gorgeous. this flowering period represented the second or noontide division in the cycle of those superficial changes which alone were possible here; it followed the green or young-fern period, representing the morn, and preceded the brown period, when the heathbells and ferns would wear the russet tinges of evening; to be in turn displaced by the dark hue of the winter period, representing night. clym and eustacia, in their little house at alderworth, beyond east egdon, were living on with a monotony which was delightful to them. the heath and changes of weather were quite blotted out from their eyes for the present. they were enclosed in a sort of luminous mist, which hid from them surroundings of any inharmonious colour, and gave to all things the character of light. when it rained they were charmed, because they could remain indoors together all day with such a show of reason; when it was fine they were charmed, because they could sit together on the hills. they were like those double stars which revolve round and round each other, and from a distance appear to be one. the absolute solitude in which they lived intensified their reciprocal thoughts; yet some might have said that it had the disadvantage of consuming their mutual affections at a fearfully prodigal rate. yeobright did not fear for his own part; but recollection of eustacia's old speech about the evanescence of love, now apparently forgotten by her, sometimes caused him to ask himself a question; and he recoiled at the thought that the quality of finiteness was not foreign to eden. when three or four weeks had been passed thus, yeobright resumed his reading in earnest. to make up for lost time he studied indefatigably, for he wished to enter his new profession with the least possible delay. now, eustacia's dream had always been that, once married to clym, she would have the power of inducing him to return to paris. he had carefully withheld all promise to do so; but would he be proof against her coaxing and argument? she had calculated to such a degree on the probability of success that she had represented paris, and not budmouth, to her grandfather as in all likelihood their future home. her hopes were bound up in this dream. in the quiet days since their marriage, when yeobright had been poring over her lips, her eyes, and the lines of her face, she had mused and mused on the subject, even while in the act of returning his gaze; and now the sight of the books, indicating a future which was antagonistic to her dream, struck her with a positively painful jar. she was hoping for the time when, as the mistress of some pretty establishment, however small, near a parisian boulevard, she would be passing her days on the skirts at least of the gay world, and catching stray wafts from those town pleasures she was so well fitted to enjoy. yet yeobright was as firm in the contrary intention as if the tendency of marriage were rather to develop the fantasies of young philanthropy than to sweep them away. her anxiety reached a high pitch; but there was something in clym's undeviating manner which made her hesitate before sounding him on the subject. at this point in their experience, however, an incident helped her. it occurred one evening about six weeks after their union, and arose entirely out of the unconscious misapplication of venn of the fifty guineas intended for yeobright. a day or two after the receipt of the money thomasin had sent a note to her aunt to thank her. she had been surprised at the largeness of the amount; but as no sum had ever been mentioned she set that down to her late uncle's generosity. she had been strictly charged by her aunt to say nothing to her husband of this gift; and wildeve, as was natural enough, had not brought himself to mention to his wife a single particular of the midnight scene in the heath. christian's terror, in like manner, had tied his tongue on the share he took in that proceeding; and hoping that by some means or other the money had gone to its proper destination, he simply asserted as much, without giving details. therefore, when a week or two had passed away, mrs. yeobright began to wonder why she never heard from her son of the receipt of the present; and to add gloom to her perplexity came the possibility that resentment might be the cause of his silence. she could hardly believe as much, but why did he not write? she questioned christian, and the confusion in his answers would at once have led her to believe that something was wrong, had not one-half of his story been corroborated by thomasin's note. mrs. yeobright was in this state of uncertainty when she was informed one morning that her son's wife was visiting her grandfather at mistover. she determined to walk up the hill, see eustacia, and ascertain from her daughter-in-law's lips whether the family guineas, which were to mrs. yeobright what family jewels are to wealthier dowagers, had miscarried or not. when christian learnt where she was going his concern reached its height. at the moment of her departure he could prevaricate no longer, and, confessing to the gambling, told her the truth as far as he knew it--that the guineas had been won by wildeve. "what, is he going to keep them?" mrs. yeobright cried. "i hope and trust not!" moaned christian. "he's a good man, and perhaps will do right things. he said you ought to have gied mr. clym's share to eustacia, and that's perhaps what he'll do himself." to mrs. yeobright, as soon as she could calmly reflect, there was much likelihood in this, for she could hardly believe that wildeve would really appropriate money belonging to her son. the intermediate course of giving it to eustacia was the sort of thing to please wildeve's fancy. but it filled the mother with anger none the less. that wildeve should have got command of the guineas after all, and should rearrange the disposal of them, placing clym's share in clym's wife's hands, because she had been his own sweetheart, and might be so still, was as irritating a pain as any that mrs. yeobright had ever borne. she instantly dismissed the wretched christian from her employ for his conduct in the affair; but, feeling quite helpless and unable to do without him, told him afterwards that he might stay a little longer if he chose. then she hastened off to eustacia, moved by a much less promising emotion towards her daughter-in-law than she had felt half an hour earlier, when planning her journey. at that time it was to inquire in a friendly spirit if there had been any accidental loss; now it was to ask plainly if wildeve had privately given her money which had been intended as a sacred gift to clym. she started at two o'clock, and her meeting with eustacia was hastened by the appearance of the young lady beside the pool and bank which bordered her grandfather's premises, where she stood surveying the scene, and perhaps thinking of the romantic enactments it had witnessed in past days. when mrs. yeobright approached, eustacia surveyed her with the calm stare of a stranger. the mother-in-law was the first to speak. "i was coming to see you," she said. "indeed!" said eustacia with surprise, for mrs. yeobright, much to the girl's mortification, had refused to be present at the wedding. "i did not at all expect you." "i was coming on business only," said the visitor, more coldly than at first. "will you excuse my asking this--have you received a gift from thomasin's husband?" "a gift?" "i mean money!" "what--i myself?" "well, i meant yourself, privately--though i was not going to put it in that way." "money from mr. wildeve? no--never! madam, what do you mean by that?" eustacia fired up all too quickly, for her own consciousness of the old attachment between herself and wildeve led her to jump to the conclusion that mrs. yeobright also knew of it, and might have come to accuse her of receiving dishonourable presents from him now. "i simply ask the question," said mrs. yeobright. "i have been--" "you ought to have better opinions of me--i feared you were against me from the first!" exclaimed eustacia. "no. i was simply for clym," replied mrs. yeobright, with too much emphasis in her earnestness. "it is the instinct of everyone to look after their own." "how can you imply that he required guarding against me?" cried eustacia, passionate tears in her eyes. "i have not injured him by marrying him! what sin have i done that you should think so ill of me? you had no right to speak against me to him when i have never wronged you." "i only did what was fair under the circumstances," said mrs. yeobright more softly. "i would rather not have gone into this question at present, but you compel me. i am not ashamed to tell you the honest truth. i was firmly convinced that he ought not to marry you--therefore i tried to dissuade him by all the means in my power. but it is done now, and i have no idea of complaining any more. i am ready to welcome you." "ah, yes, it is very well to see things in that business point of view," murmured eustacia with a smothered fire of feeling. "but why should you think there is anything between me and mr. wildeve? i have a spirit as well as you. i am indignant; and so would any woman be. it was a condescension in me to be clym's wife, and not a manoeuvre, let me remind you; and therefore i will not be treated as a schemer whom it becomes necessary to bear with because she has crept into the family." "oh!" said mrs. yeobright, vainly endeavouring to control her anger. "i have never heard anything to show that my son's lineage is not as good as the vyes'--perhaps better. it is amusing to hear you talk of condescension." "it was condescension, nevertheless," said eustacia vehemently. "and if i had known then what i know now, that i should be living in this wild heath a month after my marriage, i--i should have thought twice before agreeing." "it would be better not to say that; it might not sound truthful. i am not aware that any deception was used on his part--i know there was not--whatever might have been the case on the other side." "this is too exasperating!" answered the younger woman huskily, her face crimsoning, and her eyes darting light. "how can you dare to speak to me like that? i insist upon repeating to you that had i known that my life would from my marriage up to this time have been as it is, i should have said no. i don't complain. i have never uttered a sound of such a thing to him; but it is true. i hope therefore that in the future you will be silent on my eagerness. if you injure me now you injure yourself." "injure you? do you think i am an evil-disposed person?" "you injured me before my marriage, and you have now suspected me of secretly favouring another man for money!" "i could not help what i thought. but i have never spoken of you outside my house." "you spoke of me within it, to clym, and you could not do worse." "i did my duty." "and i'll do mine." "a part of which will possibly be to set him against his mother. it is always so. but why should i not bear it as others have borne it before me!" "i understand you," said eustacia, breathless with emotion. "you think me capable of every bad thing. who can be worse than a wife who encourages a lover, and poisons her husband's mind against his relative? yet that is now the character given to me. will you not come and drag him out of my hands?" mrs. yeobright gave back heat for heat. "don't rage at me, madam! it ill becomes your beauty, and i am not worth the injury you may do it on my account, i assure you. i am only a poor old woman who has lost a son." "if you had treated me honourably you would have had him still." eustacia said, while scalding tears trickled from her eyes. "you have brought yourself to folly; you have caused a division which can never be healed!" "i have done nothing. this audacity from a young woman is more than i can bear." "it was asked for; you have suspected me, and you have made me speak of my husband in a way i would not have done. you will let him know that i have spoken thus, and it will cause misery between us. will you go away from me? you are no friend!" "i will go when i have spoken a word. if anyone says i have come here to question you without good grounds for it, that person speaks untruly. if anyone says that i attempted to stop your marriage by any but honest means, that person, too, does not speak the truth. i have fallen on an evil time; god has been unjust to me in letting you insult me! probably my son's happiness does not lie on this side of the grave, for he is a foolish man who neglects the advice of his parent. you, eustacia, stand on the edge of a precipice without knowing it. only show my son one-half the temper you have shown me today--and you may before long--and you will find that though he is as gentle as a child with you now, he can be as hard as steel!" the excited mother then withdrew, and eustacia, panting, stood looking into the pool. ii he is set upon by adversities; but he sings a song the result of that unpropitious interview was that eustacia, instead of passing the afternoon with her grandfather, hastily returned home to clym, where she arrived three hours earlier than she had been expected. she came indoors with her face flushed, and her eyes still showing traces of her recent excitement. yeobright looked up astonished; he had never seen her in any way approaching to that state before. she passed him by, and would have gone upstairs unnoticed, but clym was so concerned that he immediately followed her. "what is the matter, eustacia?" he said. she was standing on the hearthrug in the bedroom, looking upon the floor, her hands clasped in front of her, her bonnet yet unremoved. for a moment she did not answer; and then she replied in a low voice-- "i have seen your mother; and i will never see her again!" a weight fell like a stone upon clym. that same morning, when eustacia had arranged to go and see her grandfather, clym had expressed a wish that she would drive down to blooms-end and inquire for her mother-in-law, or adopt any other means she might think fit to bring about a reconciliation. she had set out gaily; and he had hoped for much. "why is this?" he asked. "i cannot tell--i cannot remember. i met your mother. and i will never meet her again." "why?" "what do i know about mr. wildeve now? i won't have wicked opinions passed on me by anybody. o! it was too humiliating to be asked if i had received any money from him, or encouraged him, or something of the sort--i don't exactly know what!" "how could she have asked you that?" "she did." "then there must have been some meaning in it. what did my mother say besides?" "i don't know what she said, except in so far as this, that we both said words which can never be forgiven!" "oh, there must be some misapprehension. whose fault was it that her meaning was not made clear?" "i would rather not say. it may have been the fault of the circumstances, which were awkward at the very least. o clym--i cannot help expressing it--this is an unpleasant position that you have placed me in. but you must improve it--yes, say you will--for i hate it all now! yes, take me to paris, and go on with your old occupation, clym! i don't mind how humbly we live there at first, if it can only be paris, and not egdon heath." "but i have quite given up that idea," said yeobright, with surprise. "surely i never led you to expect such a thing?" "i own it. yet there are thoughts which cannot be kept out of mind, and that one was mine. must i not have a voice in the matter, now i am your wife and the sharer of your doom?" "well, there are things which are placed beyond the pale of discussion; and i thought this was specially so, and by mutual agreement." "clym, i am unhappy at what i hear," she said in a low voice; and her eyes drooped, and she turned away. this indication of an unexpected mine of hope in eustacia's bosom disconcerted her husband. it was the first time that he had confronted the fact of the indirectness of a woman's movement towards her desire. but his intention was unshaken, though he loved eustacia well. all the effect that her remark had upon him was a resolve to chain himself more closely than ever to his books, so as to be the sooner enabled to appeal to substantial results from another course in arguing against her whim. next day the mystery of the guineas was explained. thomasin paid them a hurried visit, and clym's share was delivered up to him by her own hands. eustacia was not present at the time. "then this is what my mother meant," exclaimed clym. "thomasin, do you know that they have had a bitter quarrel?" there was a little more reticence now than formerly in thomasin's manner towards her cousin. it is the effect of marriage to engender in several directions some of the reserve it annihilates in one. "your mother told me," she said quietly. "she came back to my house after seeing eustacia." "the worst thing i dreaded has come to pass. was mother much disturbed when she came to you, thomasin?" "yes." "very much indeed?" "yes." clym leant his elbow upon the post of the garden gate, and covered his eyes with his hand. "don't trouble about it, clym. they may get to be friends." he shook his head. "not two people with inflammable natures like theirs. well, what must be will be." "one thing is cheerful in it--the guineas are not lost." "i would rather have lost them twice over than have had this happen." amid these jarring events yeobright felt one thing to be indispensable--that he should speedily make some show of progress in his scholastic plans. with this view he read far into the small hours during many nights. one morning, after a severer strain than usual, he awoke with a strange sensation in his eyes. the sun was shining directly upon the window-blind, and at his first glance thitherward a sharp pain obliged him to close his eyelids quickly. at every new attempt to look about him the same morbid sensibility to light was manifested, and excoriating tears ran down his cheeks. he was obliged to tie a bandage over his brow while dressing; and during the day it could not be abandoned. eustacia was thoroughly alarmed. on finding that the case was no better the next morning they decided to send to anglebury for a surgeon. towards evening he arrived, and pronounced the disease to be acute inflammation induced by clym's night studies, continued in spite of a cold previously caught, which had weakened his eyes for the time. fretting with impatience at this interruption to a task he was so anxious to hasten, clym was transformed into an invalid. he was shut up in a room from which all light was excluded, and his condition would have been one of absolute misery had not eustacia read to him by the glimmer of a shaded lamp. he hoped that the worst would soon be over; but at the surgeon's third visit he learnt to his dismay that although he might venture out of doors with shaded eyes in the course of a month, all thought of pursuing his work, or of reading print of any description, would have to be given up for a long time to come. one week and another week wore on, and nothing seemed to lighten the gloom of the young couple. dreadful imaginings occurred to eustacia, but she carefully refrained from uttering them to her husband. suppose he should become blind, or, at all events, never recover sufficient strength of sight to engage in an occupation which would be congenial to her feelings, and conduce to her removal from this lonely dwelling among the hills? that dream of beautiful paris was not likely to cohere into substance in the presence of this misfortune. as day after day passed by, and he got no better, her mind ran more and more in this mournful groove, and she would go away from him into the garden and weep despairing tears. yeobright thought he would send for his mother; and then he thought he would not. knowledge of his state could only make her the more unhappy; and the seclusion of their life was such that she would hardly be likely to learn the news except through a special messenger. endeavouring to take the trouble as philosophically as possible, he waited on till the third week had arrived, when he went into the open air for the first time since the attack. the surgeon visited him again at this stage, and clym urged him to express a distinct opinion. the young man learnt with added surprise that the date at which he might expect to resume his labours was as uncertain as ever, his eyes being in that peculiar state which, though affording him sight enough for walking about, would not admit of their being strained upon any definite object without incurring the risk of reproducing ophthalmia in its acute form. clym was very grave at the intelligence, but not despairing. a quiet firmness, and even cheerfulness, took possession of him. he was not to be blind; that was enough. to be doomed to behold the world through smoked glass for an indefinite period was bad enough, and fatal to any kind of advance; but yeobright was an absolute stoic in the face of mishaps which only affected his social standing; and, apart from eustacia, the humblest walk of life would satisfy him if it could be made to work in with some form of his culture scheme. to keep a cottage night-school was one such form; and his affliction did not master his spirit as it might otherwise have done. he walked through the warm sun westward into those tracts of egdon with which he was best acquainted, being those lying nearer to his old home. he saw before him in one of the valleys the gleaming of whetted iron, and advancing, dimly perceived that the shine came from the tool of a man who was cutting furze. the worker recognized clym, and yeobright learnt from the voice that the speaker was humphrey. humphrey expressed his sorrow at clym's condition, and added; "now, if yours was low-class work like mine, you could go on with it just the same." "yes, i could," said yeobright musingly. "how much do you get for cutting these faggots?" "half-a-crown a hundred, and in these long days i can live very well on the wages." during the whole of yeobright's walk home to alderworth he was lost in reflections which were not of an unpleasant kind. on his coming up to the house eustacia spoke to him from the open window, and he went across to her. "darling," he said, "i am much happier. and if my mother were reconciled to me and to you i should, i think, be happy quite." "i fear that will never be," she said, looking afar with her beautiful stormy eyes. "how can you say 'i am happier,' and nothing changed?" "it arises from my having at last discovered something i can do, and get a living at, in this time of misfortune." "yes?" "i am going to be a furze and turf-cutter." "no, clym!" she said, the slight hopefulness previously apparent in her face going off again, and leaving her worse than before. "surely i shall. is it not very unwise in us to go on spending the little money we've got when i can keep down expenditure by an honest occupation? the outdoor exercise will do me good, and who knows but that in a few months i shall be able to go on with my reading again?" "but my grandfather offers to assist us, if we require assistance." "we don't require it. if i go furze-cutting we shall be fairly well off." "in comparison with slaves, and the israelites in egypt, and such people!" a bitter tear rolled down eustacia's face, which he did not see. there had been _nonchalance_ in his tone, showing her that he felt no absolute grief at a consummation which to her was a positive horror. the very next day yeobright went to humphrey's cottage, and borrowed of him leggings, gloves, a whet-stone, and a hook, to use till he should be able to purchase some for himself. then he sallied forth with his new fellow-labourer and old acquaintance, and selecting a spot where the furze grew thickest he struck the first blow in his adopted calling. his sight, like the wings in "rasselas," though useless to him for his grand purpose, sufficed for this strait, and he found that when a little practice should have hardened his palms against blistering he would be able to work with ease. day after day he rose with the sun, buckled on his leggings, and went off to the rendezvous with humphrey. his custom was to work from four o'clock in the morning till noon; then, when the heat of the day was at its highest, to go home and sleep for an hour or two; afterwards coming out again and working till dusk at nine. this man from paris was now so disguised by his leather accoutrements, and by the goggles he was obliged to wear over his eyes, that his closest friend might have passed by without recognizing him. he was a brown spot in the midst of an expanse of olive-green gorse, and nothing more. though frequently depressed in spirit when not actually at work, owing to thoughts of eustacia's position and his mother's estrangement, when in the full swing of labour he was cheerfully disposed and calm. his daily life was of a curious microscopic sort, his whole world being limited to a circuit of a few feet from his person. his familiars were creeping and winged things, and they seemed to enroll him in their band. bees hummed around his ears with an intimate air, and tugged at the heath and furze-flowers at his side in such numbers as to weigh them down to the sod. the strange amber-coloured butterflies which egdon produced, and which were never seen elsewhere, quivered in the breath of his lips, alighted upon his bowed back, and sported with the glittering point of his hook as he flourished it up and down. tribes of emerald-green grasshoppers leaped over his feet, falling awkwardly on their backs, heads, or hips, like unskilful acrobats, as chance might rule; or engaged themselves in noisy flirtations under the fern-fronds with silent ones of homely hue. huge flies, ignorant of larders and wire-netting, and quite in a savage state, buzzed about him without knowing that he was a man. in and out of the fern-dells snakes glided in their most brilliant blue and yellow guise, it being the season immediately following the shedding of their old skins, when their colours are brightest. litters of young rabbits came out from their forms to sun themselves upon hillocks, the hot beams blazing through the delicate tissue of each thin-fleshed ear, and firing it to a blood-red transparency in which the veins could be seen. none of them feared him. the monotony of his occupation soothed him, and was in itself a pleasure. a forced limitation of effort offered a justification of homely courses to an unambitious man, whose conscience would hardly have allowed him to remain in such obscurity while his powers were unimpeded. hence yeobright sometimes sang to himself, and when obliged to accompany humphrey in search of brambles for faggot-bonds he would amuse his companion with sketches of parisian life and character, and so while away the time. on one of these warm afternoons eustacia walked out alone in the direction of yeobright's place of work. he was busily chopping away at the furze, a long row of faggots which stretched downward from his position representing the labour of the day. he did not observe her approach, and she stood close to him, and heard his undercurrent of song. it shocked her. to see him there, a poor afflicted man, earning money by the sweat of his brow, had at first moved her to tears; but to hear him sing and not at all rebel against an occupation which, however satisfactory to himself, was degrading to her, as an educated lady-wife, wounded her through. unconscious of her presence, he still went on singing:-- "le point du jour À nos bosquets rend toute leur parure; flore est plus belle à son retour; l'oiseau reprend doux chant d'amour; tout célèbre dans la nature le point du jour. "le point du jour cause parfois, cause douleur extrême; que l'espace des nuits est court pour le berger brûlant d'amour, forcé de quitter ce qu'il aime au point du jour!" it was bitterly plain to eustacia that he did not care much about social failure; and the proud fair woman bowed her head and wept in sick despair at thought of the blasting effect upon her own life of that mood and condition in him. then she came forward. "i would starve rather than do it!" she exclaimed vehemently. "and you can sing! i will go and live with my grandfather again!" "eustacia! i did not see you, though i noticed something moving," he said gently. he came forward, pulled off his huge leather glove, and took her hand. "why do you speak in such a strange way? it is only a little old song which struck my fancy when i was in paris, and now just applies to my life with you. has your love for me all died, then, because my appearance is no longer that of a fine gentleman?" "dearest, you must not question me unpleasantly, or it may make me not love you." "do you believe it possible that i would run the risk of doing that?" "well, you follow out your own ideas, and won't give in to mine when i wish you to leave off this shameful labour. is there anything you dislike in me that you act so contrarily to my wishes? i am your wife, and why will you not listen? yes, i am your wife indeed!" "i know what that tone means." "what tone?" "the tone in which you said, 'your wife indeed.' it meant, 'your wife, worse luck.'" "it is hard in you to probe me with that remark. a woman may have reason, though she is not without heart, and if i felt 'worse luck,' it was no ignoble feeling--it was only too natural. there, you see that at any rate i do not attempt untruths. do you remember how, before we were married, i warned you that i had not good wifely qualities?" "you mock me to say that now. on that point at least the only noble course would be to hold your tongue, for you are still queen of me, eustacia, though i may no longer be king of you." "you are my husband. does not that content you?" "not unless you are my wife without regret." "i cannot answer you. i remember saying that i should be a serious matter on your hands." "yes, i saw that." "then you were too quick to see! no true lover would have seen any such thing; you are too severe upon me, clym--i don't like your speaking so at all." "well, i married you in spite of it, and don't regret doing so. how cold you seem this afternoon! and yet i used to think there never was a warmer heart than yours." "yes, i fear we are cooling--i see it as well as you," she sighed mournfully. "and how madly we loved two months ago! you were never tired of contemplating me, nor i of contemplating you. who could have thought then that by this time my eyes would not seem so very bright to yours, nor your lips so very sweet to mine? two months--is it possible? yes, 'tis too true!" "you sigh, dear, as if you were sorry for it; and that's a hopeful sign." "no. i don't sigh for that. there are other things for me to sigh for, or any other woman in my place." "that your chances in life are ruined by marrying in haste an unfortunate man?" "why will you force me, clym, to say bitter things? i deserve pity as much as you. as much?--i think i deserve it more. for you can sing! it would be a strange hour which should catch me singing under such a cloud as this! believe me, sweet, i could weep to a degree that would astonish and confound such an elastic mind as yours. even had you felt careless about your own affliction, you might have refrained from singing out of sheer pity for mine. god! if i were a man in such a position i would curse rather than sing." yeobright placed his hand upon her arm. "now, don't you suppose, my inexperienced girl, that i cannot rebel, in high promethean fashion, against the gods and fate as well as you. i have felt more steam and smoke of that sort than you have ever heard of. but the more i see of life the more do i perceive that there is nothing particularly great in its greatest walks, and therefore nothing particularly small in mine of furze-cutting. if i feel that the greatest blessings vouchsafed to us are not very valuable, how can i feel it to be any great hardship when they are taken away? so i sing to pass the time. have you indeed lost all tenderness for me, that you begrudge me a few cheerful moments?" "i have still some tenderness left for you." "your words have no longer their old flavour. and so love dies with good fortune!" "i cannot listen to this, clym--it will end bitterly," she said in a broken voice. "i will go home." iii she goes out to battle against depression a few days later, before the month of august had expired, eustacia and yeobright sat together at their early dinner. eustacia's manner had become of late almost apathetic. there was a forlorn look about her beautiful eyes which, whether she deserved it or not, would have excited pity in the breast of anyone who had known her during the full flush of her love for clym. the feelings of husband and wife varied, in some measure, inversely with their positions. clym, the afflicted man, was cheerful; and he even tried to comfort her, who had never felt a moment of physical suffering in her whole life. "come, brighten up, dearest; we shall be all right again. some day perhaps i shall see as well as ever. and i solemnly promise that i'll leave off cutting furze as soon as i have the power to do anything better. you cannot seriously wish me to stay idling at home all day?" "but it is so dreadful--a furze-cutter! and you a man who have lived about the world, and speak french, and german, and who are fit for what is so much better than this." "i suppose when you first saw me and heard about me i was wrapped in a sort of golden halo to your eyes--a man who knew glorious things, and had mixed in brilliant scenes--in short, an adorable, delightful, distracting hero?" "yes," she said, sobbing. "and now i am a poor fellow in brown leather." "don't taunt me. but enough of this. i will not be depressed any more. i am going from home this afternoon, unless you greatly object. there is to be a village picnic--a gipsying, they call it--at east egdon, and i shall go." "to dance?" "why not? you can sing." "well, well, as you will. must i come to fetch you?" "if you return soon enough from your work. but do not inconvenience yourself about it. i know the way home, and the heath has no terror for me." "and can you cling to gaiety so eagerly as to walk all the way to a village festival in search of it?" "now, you don't like my going alone! clym, you are not jealous?" "no. but i would come with you if it could give you any pleasure; though, as things stand, perhaps you have too much of me already. still, i somehow wish that you did not want to go. yes, perhaps i am jealous; and who could be jealous with more reason than i, a half-blind man, over such a woman as you?" "don't think like it. let me go, and don't take all my spirits away!" "i would rather lose all my own, my sweet wife. go and do whatever you like. who can forbid your indulgence in any whim? you have all my heart yet, i believe; and because you bear with me, who am in truth a drag upon you, i owe you thanks. yes, go alone and shine. as for me, i will stick to my doom. at that kind of meeting people would shun me. my hook and gloves are like the st. lazarus rattle of the leper, warning the world to get out of the way of a sight that would sadden them." he kissed her, put on his leggings, and went out. when he was gone she rested her head upon her hands and said to herself, "two wasted lives--his and mine. and i am come to this! will it drive me out of my mind?" she cast about for any possible course which offered the least improvement on the existing state of things, and could find none. she imagined how all those budmouth ones who should learn what had become of her would say, "look at the girl for whom nobody was good enough!" to eustacia the situation seemed such a mockery of her hopes that death appeared the only door of relief if the satire of heaven should go much further. suddenly she aroused herself and exclaimed, "but i'll shake it off. yes, i will shake it off! no one shall know my suffering. i'll be bitterly merry, and ironically gay, and i'll laugh in derision. and i'll begin by going to this dance on the green." she ascended to her bedroom and dressed herself with scrupulous care. to an onlooker her beauty would have made her feelings almost seem reasonable. the gloomy corner into which accident as much as indiscretion had brought this woman might have led even a moderate partisan to feel that she had cogent reasons for asking the supreme power by what right a being of such exquisite finish had been placed in circumstances calculated to make of her charms a curse rather than a blessing. it was five in the afternoon when she came out from the house ready for her walk. there was material enough in the picture for twenty new conquests. the rebellious sadness that was rather too apparent when she sat indoors without a bonnet was cloaked and softened by her outdoor attire, which always had a sort of nebulousness about it, devoid of harsh edges anywhere; so that her face looked from its environment as from a cloud, with no noticeable lines of demarcation between flesh and clothes. the heat of the day had scarcely declined as yet, and she went along the sunny hills at a leisurely pace, there being ample time for her idle expedition. tall ferns buried her in their leafage whenever her path lay through them, which now formed miniature forests, though not one stem of them would remain to bud the next year. the site chosen for the village festivity was one of the lawn-like oases which were occasionally, yet not often, met with on the plateaux of the heath district. the brakes of furze and fern terminated abruptly round the margin, and the grass was unbroken. a green cattle-track skirted the spot, without, however, emerging from the screen of fern, and this path eustacia followed, in order to reconnoitre the group before joining it. the lusty notes of the east egdon band had directed her unerringly, and she now beheld the musicians themselves, sitting in a blue waggon with red wheels scrubbed as bright as new, and arched with sticks, to which boughs and flowers were tied. in front of this was the grand central dance of fifteen or twenty couples, flanked by minor dances of inferior individuals whose gyrations were not always in strict keeping with the tune. the young men wore blue and white rosettes, and with a flush on their faces footed it to the girls, who, with the excitement and the exercise, blushed deeper than the pink of their numerous ribbons. fair ones with long curls, fair ones with short curls, fair ones with love-locks, fair ones with braids, flew round and round; and a beholder might well have wondered how such a prepossessing set of young women of like size, age, and disposition, could have been collected together where there were only one or two villages to choose from. in the background was one happy man dancing by himself, with closed eyes, totally oblivious of all the rest. a fire was burning under a pollard thorn a few paces off, over which three kettles hung in a row. hard by was a table where elderly dames prepared tea, but eustacia looked among them in vain for the cattle-dealer's wife who had suggested that she should come, and had promised to obtain a courteous welcome for her. this unexpected absence of the only local resident whom eustacia knew considerably damaged her scheme for an afternoon of reckless gaiety. joining in became a matter of difficulty, notwithstanding that, were she to advance, cheerful dames would come forward with cups of tea and make much of her as a stranger of superior grace and knowledge to themselves. having watched the company through the figures of two dances, she decided to walk a little further, to a cottage where she might get some refreshment, and then return homeward in the shady time of evening. this she did; and by the time that she retraced her steps towards the scene of the gipsying, which it was necessary to repass on her way to alderworth, the sun was going down. the air was now so still that she could hear the band afar off, and it seemed to be playing with more spirit, if that were possible, than when she had come away. on reaching the hill the sun had quite disappeared; but this made little difference either to eustacia or to the revellers, for a round yellow moon was rising before her, though its rays had not yet outmastered those from the west. the dance was going on just the same, but strangers had arrived and formed a ring around the figure, so that eustacia could stand among these without a chance of being recognized. a whole village-full of sensuous emotion, scattered abroad all the year long, surged here in a focus for an hour. the forty hearts of those waving couples were beating as they had not done since, twelve months before, they had come together in similar jollity. for the time paganism was revived in their hearts, the pride of life was all in all, and they adored none other than themselves. how many of those impassioned but temporary embraces were destined to become perpetual was possibly the wonder of some of those who indulged in them, as well as of eustacia who looked on. she began to envy those pirouetters, to hunger for the hope and happiness which the fascination of the dance seemed to engender within them. desperately fond of dancing herself, one of eustacia's expectations of paris had been the opportunity it might afford her of indulgence in this favourite pastime. unhappily, that expectation was now extinct within her for ever. whilst she abstractedly watched them spinning and fluctuating in the increasing moonlight she suddenly heard her name whispered by a voice over her shoulder. turning in surprise, she beheld at her elbow one whose presence instantly caused her to flush to the temples. it was wildeve. till this moment he had not met her eye since the morning of his marriage, when she had been loitering in the church, and had startled him by lifting her veil and coming forward to sign the register as witness. yet why the sight of him should have instigated that sudden rush of blood she could not tell. before she could speak he whispered, "do you like dancing as much as ever?" "i think i do," she replied in a low voice. "will you dance with me?" "it would be a great change for me; but will it not seem strange?" "what strangeness can there be in relations dancing together?" "ah--yes, relations. perhaps none." "still, if you don't like to be seen, pull down your veil; though there is not much risk of being known by this light. lots of strangers are here." she did as he suggested; and the act was a tacit acknowledgment that she accepted his offer. wildeve gave her his arm and took her down on the outside of the ring to the bottom of the dance, which they entered. in two minutes more they were involved in the figure and began working their way upwards to the top. till they had advanced halfway thither eustacia wished more than once that she had not yielded to his request; from the middle to the top she felt that, since she had come out to seek pleasure, she was only doing a natural thing to obtain it. fairly launched into the ceaseless glides and whirls which their new position as top couple opened up to them, eustacia's pulses began to move too quickly for long rumination of any kind. through the length of five-and-twenty couples they threaded their giddy way, and a new vitality entered her form. the pale ray of evening lent a fascination to the experience. there is a certain degree and tone of light which tends to disturb the equilibrium of the senses, and to promote dangerously the tenderer moods; added to movement, it drives the emotions to rankness, the reason becoming sleepy and unperceiving in inverse proportion; and this light fell now upon these two from the disc of the moon. all the dancing girls felt the symptoms, but eustacia most of all. the grass under their feet became trodden away, and the hard beaten surface of the sod, when viewed aslant towards the moonlight, shone like a polished table. the air became quite still, the flag above the waggon which held the musicians clung to the pole, and the players appeared only in outline against the sky; except when the circular mouths of the trombone, ophicleide, and french horn gleamed out like huge eyes from the shade of their figures. the pretty dresses of the maids lost their subtler day colours and showed more or less of a misty white. eustacia floated round and round on wildeve's arm, her face rapt and statuesque; her soul had passed away from and forgotten her features, which were left empty and quiescent, as they always are when feeling goes beyond their register. how near she was to wildeve! it was terrible to think of. she could feel his breathing, and he, of course, could feel hers. how badly she had treated him! yet, here they were treading one measure. the enchantment of the dance surprised her. a clear line of difference divided like a tangible fence her experience within this maze of motion from her experience without it. her beginning to dance had been like a change of atmosphere; outside, she had been steeped in arctic frigidity by comparison with the tropical sensations here. she had entered the dance from the troubled hours of her late life as one might enter a brilliant chamber after a night walk in a wood. wildeve by himself would have been merely an agitation; wildeve added to the dance, and the moonlight, and the secrecy, began to be a delight. whether his personality supplied the greater part of this sweetly compounded feeling, or whether the dance and the scene weighed the more therein, was a nice point upon which eustacia herself was entirely in a cloud. people began to say "who are they?" but no invidious inquiries were made. had eustacia mingled with the other girls in their ordinary daily walks the case would have been different: here she was not inconvenienced by excessive inspection, for all were wrought to their brightest grace by the occasion. like the planet mercury surrounded by the lustre of sunset, her permanent brilliancy passed without much notice in the temporary glory of the situation. as for wildeve, his feelings are easy to guess. obstacles were a ripening sun to his love, and he was at this moment in a delirium of exquisite misery. to clasp as his for five minutes what was another man's through all the rest of the year was a kind of thing he of all men could appreciate. he had long since begun to sigh again for eustacia; indeed, it may be asserted that signing the marriage register with thomasin was the natural signal to his heart to return to its first quarters, and that the extra complication of eustacia's marriage was the one addition required to make that return compulsory. thus, for different reasons, what was to the rest an exhilarating movement was to these two a riding upon the whirlwind. the dance had come like an irresistible attack upon whatever sense of social order there was in their minds, to drive them back into old paths which were now doubly irregular. through three dances in succession they spun their way; and then, fatigued with the incessant motion, eustacia turned to quit the circle in which she had already remained too long. wildeve led her to a grassy mound a few yards distant, where she sat down, her partner standing beside her. from the time that he addressed her at the beginning of the dance till now they had not exchanged a word. "the dance and the walking have tired you?" he said tenderly. "no; not greatly." "it is strange that we should have met here of all places, after missing each other so long." "we have missed because we tried to miss, i suppose." "yes. but you began that proceeding--by breaking a promise." "it is scarcely worth while to talk of that now. we have formed other ties since then--you no less than i." "i am sorry to hear that your husband is ill." "he is not ill--only incapacitated." "yes: that is what i mean. i sincerely sympathize with you in your trouble. fate has treated you cruelly." she was silent awhile. "have you heard that he has chosen to work as a furze-cutter?" she said in a low, mournful voice. "it has been mentioned to me," answered wildeve hesitatingly. "but i hardly believed it." "it is true. what do you think of me as a furze-cutter's wife?" "i think the same as ever of you, eustacia. nothing of that sort can degrade you: you ennoble the occupation of your husband." "i wish i could feel it." "is there any chance of mr. yeobright getting better?" "he thinks so. i doubt it." "i was quite surprised to hear that he had taken a cottage. i thought, in common with other people, that he would have taken you off to a home in paris immediately after you had married him. 'what a gay, bright future she has before her!' i thought. he will, i suppose, return there with you, if his sight gets strong again?" observing that she did not reply he regarded her more closely. she was almost weeping. images of a future never to be enjoyed, the revived sense of her bitter disappointment, the picture of the neighbours' suspended ridicule which was raised by wildeve's words, had been too much for proud eustacia's equanimity. wildeve could hardly control his own too forward feelings when he saw her silent perturbation. but he affected not to notice this, and she soon recovered her calmness. "you do not intend to walk home by yourself?" he asked. "o yes," said eustacia. "what could hurt me on this heath, who have nothing?" "by diverging a little i can make my way home the same as yours. i shall be glad to keep you company as far as throope corner." seeing that eustacia sat on in hesitation he added, "perhaps you think it unwise to be seen in the same road with me after the events of last summer?" "indeed i think no such thing," she said haughtily. "i shall accept whose company i choose, for all that may be said by the miserable inhabitants of egdon." "then let us walk on--if you are ready. our nearest way is towards that holly-bush with the dark shadow that you see down there." eustacia arose, and walked beside him in the direction signified, brushing her way over the damping heath and fern, and followed by the strains of the merrymakers, who still kept up the dance. the moon had now waxed bright and silvery, but the heath was proof against such illumination, and there was to be observed the striking scene of a dark, rayless tract of country under an atmosphere charged from its zenith to its extremities with whitest light. to an eye above them their two faces would have appeared amid the expanse like two pearls on a table of ebony. on this account the irregularities of the path were not visible, and wildeve occasionally stumbled; whilst eustacia found it necessary to perform some graceful feats of balancing whenever a small tuft of heather or root of furze protruded itself through the grass of the narrow track and entangled her feet. at these junctures in her progress a hand was invariably stretched forward to steady her, holding her firmly until smooth ground was again reached, when the hand was again withdrawn to a respectful distance. they performed the journey for the most part in silence, and drew near to throope corner, a few hundred yards from which a short path branched away to eustacia's house. by degrees they discerned coming towards them a pair of human figures, apparently of the male sex. when they came a little nearer eustacia broke the silence by saying, "one of those men is my husband. he promised to come to meet me." "and the other is my greatest enemy," said wildeve. "it looks like diggory venn." "that is the man." "it is an awkward meeting," said she; "but such is my fortune. he knows too much about me, unless he could know more, and so prove to himself that what he now knows counts for nothing. well, let it be: you must deliver me up to them." "you will think twice before you direct me to do that. here is a man who has not forgotten an item in our meetings at rainbarrow: he is in company with your husband. which of them, seeing us together here, will believe that our meeting and dancing at the gipsy-party was by chance?" "very well," she whispered gloomily. "leave me before they come up." wildeve bade her a tender farewell, and plunged across the fern and furze, eustacia slowly walking on. in two or three minutes she met her husband and his companion. "my journey ends here for tonight, reddleman," said yeobright as soon as he perceived her. "i turn back with this lady. good night." "good night, mr. yeobright," said venn. "i hope to see you better soon." the moonlight shone directly upon venn's face as he spoke, and revealed all its lines to eustacia. he was looking suspiciously at her. that venn's keen eye had discerned what yeobright's feeble vision had not--a man in the act of withdrawing from eustacia's side--was within the limits of the probable. if eustacia had been able to follow the reddleman she would soon have found striking confirmation of her thought. no sooner had clym given her his arm and led her off the scene than the reddleman turned back from the beaten track towards east egdon, whither he had been strolling merely to accompany clym in his walk, diggory's van being again in the neighbourhood. stretching out his long legs, he crossed the pathless portion of the heath somewhat in the direction which wildeve had taken. only a man accustomed to nocturnal rambles could at this hour have descended those shaggy slopes with venn's velocity without falling headlong into a pit, or snapping off his leg by jamming his foot into some rabbit burrow. but venn went on without much inconvenience to himself, and the course of his scamper was towards the quiet woman inn. this place he reached in about half an hour, and he was well aware that no person who had been near throope corner when he started could have got down here before him. the lonely inn was not yet closed, though scarcely an individual was there, the business done being chiefly with travellers who passed the inn on long journeys, and these had now gone on their way. venn went to the public room, called for a mug of ale, and inquired of the maid in an indifferent tone if mr. wildeve was at home. thomasin sat in an inner room and heard venn's voice. when customers were present she seldom showed herself, owing to her inherent dislike for the business; but perceiving that no one else was there tonight she came out. "he is not at home yet, diggory," she said pleasantly. "but i expected him sooner. he has been to east egdon to buy a horse." "did he wear a light wideawake?" "yes." "then i saw him at throope corner, leading one home," said venn drily. "a beauty, with a white face and a mane as black as night. he will soon be here, no doubt." rising and looking for a moment at the pure, sweet face of thomasin, over which a shadow of sadness had passed since the time when he had last seen her, he ventured to add, "mr. wildeve seems to be often away at this time." "o yes," cried thomasin in what was intended to be a tone of gaiety. "husbands will play the truant, you know. i wish you could tell me of some secret plan that would help me to keep him home at my will in the evenings." "i will consider if i know of one," replied venn in that same light tone which meant no lightness. and then he bowed in a manner of his own invention and moved to go. thomasin offered him her hand; and without a sigh, though with food for many, the reddleman went out. when wildeve returned, a quarter of an hour later, thomasin said simply, and in the abashed manner usual with her now, "where is the horse, damon?" "o, i have not bought it, after all. the man asks too much." "but somebody saw you at throope corner leading it home--a beauty, with a white face and a mane as black as night." "ah!" said wildeve, fixing his eyes upon her; "who told you that?" "venn the reddleman." the expression of wildeve's face became curiously condensed. "that is a mistake--it must have been some one else," he said slowly and testily, for he perceived that venn's countermoves had begun again. iv rough coercion is employed those words of thomasin, which seemed so little, but meant so much, remained in the ears of diggory venn: "help me to keep him home in the evenings." on this occasion venn had arrived on egdon heath only to cross to the other side: he had no further connection with the interests of the yeobright family, and he had a business of his own to attend to. yet he suddenly began to feel himself drifting into the old track of manoeuvring on thomasin's account. he sat in his van and considered. from thomasin's words and manner he had plainly gathered that wildeve neglected her. for whom could he neglect her if not for eustacia? yet it was scarcely credible that things had come to such a head as to indicate that eustacia systematically encouraged him. venn resolved to reconnoitre somewhat carefully the lonely road which led along the vale from wildeve's dwelling to clym's house at alderworth. at this time, as had been seen, wildeve was quite innocent of any predetermined act of intrigue, and except at the dance on the green he had not once met eustacia since her marriage. but that the spirit of intrigue was in him had been shown by a recent romantic habit of his: a habit of going out after dark and strolling towards alderworth, there looking at the moon and stars, looking at eustacia's house, and walking back at leisure. accordingly, when watching on the night after the festival, the reddleman saw him ascend by the little path, lean over the front gate of clym's garden, sigh, and turn to go back again. it was plain that wildeve's intrigue was rather ideal than real. venn retreated before him down the hill to a place where the path was merely a deep groove between the heather; here he mysteriously bent over the ground for a few minutes, and retired. when wildeve came on to that spot his ankle was caught by something, and he fell headlong. as soon as he had recovered the power of respiration he sat up and listened. there was not a sound in the gloom beyond the spiritless stir of the summer wind. feeling about for the obstacle which had flung him down, he discovered that two tufts of heath had been tied together across the path, forming a loop, which to a traveller was certain overthrow. wildeve pulled off the string that bound them, and went on with tolerable quickness. on reaching home he found the cord to be of a reddish colour. it was just what he had expected. although his weaknesses were not specially those akin to physical fear, the species of _coup-de-jarnac_ from one he knew too well troubled the mind of wildeve. but his movements were unaltered thereby. a night or two later he again went along the vale to alderworth, taking the precaution of keeping out of any path. the sense that he was watched, that craft was employed to circumvent his errant tastes, added piquancy to a journey so entirely sentimental, so long as the danger was of no fearful sort. he imagined that venn and mrs. yeobright were in league, and felt that there was a certain legitimacy in combating such a coalition. the heath tonight appeared to be totally deserted: and wildeve, after looking over eustacia's garden gate for some little time, with a cigar in his mouth, was tempted by the fascination that emotional smuggling had for his nature to advance towards the window, which was not quite closed, the blind being only partly drawn down. he could see into the room, and eustacia was sitting there alone. wildeve contemplated her for a minute, and then retreating into the heath beat the ferns lightly, whereupon moths flew out alarmed. securing one, he returned to the window, and holding the moth to the chink, opened his hand. the moth made towards the candle upon eustacia's table, hovered round it two or three times, and flew into the flame. eustacia started up. this had been a well-known signal in old times when wildeve had used to come secretly wooing to mistover. she at once knew that wildeve was outside, but before she could consider what to do her husband came in from upstairs. eustacia's face burnt crimson at the unexpected collision of incidents, and filled it with an animation that it too frequently lacked. "you have a very high colour, dearest," said yeobright, when he came close enough to see it. "your appearance would be no worse if it were always so." "i am warm," said eustacia. "i think i will go into the air for a few minutes." "shall i go with you?" "o no. i am only going to the gate." she arose, but before she had time to get out of the room a loud rapping began upon the front door. "i'll go--i'll go," said eustacia in an unusually quick tone for her; and she glanced eagerly towards the window whence the moth had flown; but nothing appeared there. "you had better not at this time of the evening," he said. clym stepped before her into the passage, and eustacia waited, her somnolent manner covering her inner heat and agitation. she listened, and clym opened the door. no words were uttered outside, and presently he closed it and came back, saying, "nobody was there. i wonder what that could have meant?" he was left to wonder during the rest of the evening, for no explanation offered itself, and eustacia said nothing, the additional fact that she knew of only adding more mystery to the performance. meanwhile a little drama had been acted outside which saved eustacia from all possibility of compromising herself that evening at least. while wildeve had been preparing his moth-signal another person had come behind him up to the gate. this man, who carried a gun in his hand, looked on for a moment at the other's operation by the window, walked up to the house, knocked at the door, and then vanished round the corner and over the hedge. "damn him!" said wildeve. "he has been watching me again." as his signal had been rendered futile by this uproarious rapping wildeve withdrew, passed out at the gate, and walked quickly down the path without thinking of anything except getting away unnoticed. half-way down the hill the path ran near a knot of stunted hollies, which in the general darkness of the scene stood as the pupil in a black eye. when wildeve reached this point a report startled his ear, and a few spent gunshots fell among the leaves around him. there was no doubt that he himself was the cause of that gun's discharge; and he rushed into the clump of hollies, beating the bushes furiously with his stick; but nobody was there. this attack was a more serious matter than the last, and it was some time before wildeve recovered his equanimity. a new and most unpleasant system of menace had begun, and the intent appeared to be to do him grievous bodily harm. wildeve had looked upon venn's first attempt as a species of horse-play, which the reddleman had indulged in for want of knowing better; but now the boundary line was passed which divides the annoying from the perilous. had wildeve known how thoroughly in earnest venn had become he might have been still more alarmed. the reddleman had been almost exasperated by the sight of wildeve outside clym's house, and he was prepared to go to any lengths short of absolutely shooting him, to terrify the young innkeeper out of his recalcitrant impulses. the doubtful legitimacy of such rough coercion did not disturb the mind of venn. it troubles few such minds in such cases, and sometimes this is not to be regretted. from the impeachment of strafford to farmer lynch's short way with the scamps of virginia there have been many triumphs of justice which are mockeries of law. about half a mile below clym's secluded dwelling lay a hamlet where lived one of the two constables who preserved the peace in the parish of alderworth, and wildeve went straight to the constable's cottage. almost the first thing that he saw on opening the door was the constable's truncheon hanging to a nail, as if to assure him that here were the means to his purpose. on inquiry, however, of the constable's wife he learnt that the constable was not at home. wildeve said he would wait. the minutes ticked on, and the constable did not arrive. wildeve cooled down from his state of high indignation to a restless dissatisfaction with himself, the scene, the constable's wife, and the whole set of circumstances. he arose and left the house. altogether, the experience of that evening had had a cooling, not to say a chilling, effect on misdirected tenderness, and wildeve was in no mood to ramble again to alderworth after nightfall in hope of a stray glance from eustacia. thus far the reddleman had been tolerably successful in his rude contrivances for keeping down wildeve's inclination to rove in the evening. he had nipped in the bud the possible meeting between eustacia and her old lover this very night. but he had not anticipated that the tendency of his action would be to divert wildeve's movement rather than to stop it. the gambling with the guineas had not conduced to make him a welcome guest to clym; but to call upon his wife's relative was natural, and he was determined to see eustacia. it was necessary to choose some less untoward hour than ten o'clock at night. "since it is unsafe to go in the evening," he said, "i'll go by day." meanwhile venn had left the heath and gone to call upon mrs. yeobright, with whom he had been on friendly terms since she had learnt what a providential countermove he had made towards the restitution of the family guineas. she wondered at the lateness of his call, but had no objection to see him. he gave her a full account of clym's affliction, and of the state in which he was living; then, referring to thomasin, touched gently upon the apparent sadness of her days. "now, ma'am, depend upon it," he said, "you couldn't do a better thing for either of 'em than to make yourself at home in their houses, even if there should be a little rebuff at first." "both she and my son disobeyed me in marrying; therefore i have no interest in their households. their troubles are of their own making." mrs. yeobright tried to speak severely; but the account of her son's state had moved her more than she cared to show. "your visits would make wildeve walk straighter than he is inclined to do, and might prevent unhappiness down the heath." "what do you mean?" "i saw something tonight out there which i didn't like at all. i wish your son's house and mr. wildeve's were a hundred miles apart instead of four or five." "then there was an understanding between him and clym's wife when he made a fool of thomasin!" "we'll hope there's no understanding now." "and our hope will probably be very vain. o clym! o thomasin!" "there's no harm done yet. in fact, i've persuaded wildeve to mind his own business." "how?" "o, not by talking--by a plan of mine called the silent system." "i hope you'll succeed." "i shall if you help me by calling and making friends with your son. you'll have a chance then of using your eyes." "well, since it has come to this," said mrs. yeobright sadly, "i will own to you, reddleman, that i thought of going. i should be much happier if we were reconciled. the marriage is unalterable, my life may be cut short, and i should wish to die in peace. he is my only son; and since sons are made of such stuff i am not sorry i have no other. as for thomasin, i never expected much from her; and she has not disappointed me. but i forgave her long ago; and i forgive him now. i'll go." at this very time of the reddleman's conversation with mrs. yeobright at blooms-end another conversation on the same subject was languidly proceeding at alderworth. all the day clym had borne himself as if his mind were too full of its own matter to allow him to care about outward things, and his words now showed what had occupied his thoughts. it was just after the mysterious knocking that he began the theme. "since i have been away today, eustacia, i have considered that something must be done to heal up this ghastly breach between my dear mother and myself. it troubles me." "what do you propose to do?" said eustacia abstractedly, for she could not clear away from her the excitement caused by wildeve's recent manoeuvre for an interview. "you seem to take a very mild interest in what i propose, little or much," said clym, with tolerable warmth. "you mistake me," she answered, reviving at his reproach. "i am only thinking." "what of?" "partly of that moth whose skeleton is getting burnt up in the wick of the candle," she said slowly. "but you know i always take an interest in what you say." "very well, dear. then i think i must go and call upon her."... he went on with tender feeling: "it is a thing i am not at all too proud to do, and only a fear that i might irritate her has kept me away so long. but i must do something. it is wrong in me to allow this sort of thing to go on." "what have you to blame yourself about?" "she is getting old, and her life is lonely, and i am her only son." "she has thomasin." "thomasin is not her daughter; and if she were that would not excuse me. but this is beside the point. i have made up my mind to go to her, and all i wish to ask you is whether you will do your best to help me--that is, forget the past; and if she shows her willingness to be reconciled, meet her half-way by welcoming her to our house, or by accepting a welcome to hers?" at first eustacia closed her lips as if she would rather do anything on the whole globe than what he suggested. but the lines of her mouth softened with thought, though not so far as they might have softened; and she said, "i will put nothing in your way; but after what has passed it is asking too much that i go and make advances." "you never distinctly told me what did pass between you." "i could not do it then, nor can i now. sometimes more bitterness is sown in five minutes than can be got rid of in a whole life; and that may be the case here." she paused a few moments, and added, "if you had never returned to your native place, clym, what a blessing it would have been for you!... it has altered the destinies of--" "three people." "five," eustacia thought; but she kept that in. v the journey across the heath thursday, the thirty-first of august, was one of a series of days during which snug houses were stifling, and when cool draughts were treats; when cracks appeared in clayey gardens, and were called "earthquakes" by apprehensive children; when loose spokes were discovered in the wheels of carts and carriages; and when stinging insects haunted the air, the earth, and every drop of water that was to be found. in mrs. yeobright's garden large-leaved plants of a tender kind flagged by ten o'clock in the morning; rhubarb bent downward at eleven; and even stiff cabbages were limp by noon. it was about eleven o'clock on this day that mrs. yeobright started across the heath towards her son's house, to do her best in getting reconciled with him and eustacia, in conformity with her words to the reddleman. she had hoped to be well advanced in her walk before the heat of the day was at its highest, but after setting out she found that this was not to be done. the sun had branded the whole heath with his mark, even the purple heath-flowers having put on a brownness under the dry blazes of the few preceding days. every valley was filled with air like that of a kiln, and the clean quartz sand of the winter water-courses, which formed summer paths, had undergone a species of incineration since the drought had set in. in cool, fresh weather mrs. yeobright would have found no inconvenience in walking to alderworth, but the present torrid attack made the journey a heavy undertaking for a woman past middle age; and at the end of the third mile she wished that she had hired fairway to drive her a portion at least of the distance. but from the point at which she had arrived it was as easy to reach clym's house as to get home again. so she went on, the air around her pulsating silently, and oppressing the earth with lassitude. she looked at the sky overhead, and saw that the sapphirine hue of the zenith in spring and early summer had been replaced by a metallic violet. occasionally she came to a spot where independent worlds of ephemerons were passing their time in mad carousal, some in the air, some on the hot ground and vegetation, some in the tepid and stringy water of a nearly dried pool. all the shallower ponds had decreased to a vaporous mud amid which the maggoty shapes of innumerable obscure creatures could be indistinctly seen, heaving and wallowing with enjoyment. being a woman not disinclined to philosophize she sometimes sat down under her umbrella to rest and to watch their happiness, for a certain hopefulness as to the result of her visit gave ease to her mind, and between important thoughts left it free to dwell on any infinitesimal matter which caught her eyes. mrs. yeobright had never before been to her son's house, and its exact position was unknown to her. she tried one ascending path and another, and found that they led her astray. retracing her steps, she came again to an open level, where she perceived at a distance a man at work. she went towards him and inquired the way. the labourer pointed out the direction, and added, "do you see that furze-cutter, ma'am, going up that footpath yond?" mrs. yeobright strained her eyes, and at last said that she did perceive him. "well, if you follow him you can make no mistake. he's going to the same place, ma'am." she followed the figure indicated. he appeared of a russet hue, not more distinguishable from the scene around him than the green caterpillar from the leaf it feeds on. his progress when actually walking was more rapid than mrs. yeobright's; but she was enabled to keep at an equable distance from him by his habit of stopping whenever he came to a brake of brambles, where he paused awhile. on coming in her turn to each of these spots she found half a dozen long limp brambles which he had cut from the bush during his halt and laid out straight beside the path. they were evidently intended for furze-faggot bonds which he meant to collect on his return. the silent being who thus occupied himself seemed to be of no more account in life than an insect. he appeared as a mere parasite of the heath, fretting its surface in his daily labour as a moth frets a garment, entirely engrossed with its products, having no knowledge of anything in the world but fern, furze, heath, lichens, and moss. the furze-cutter was so absorbed in the business of his journey that he never turned his head; and his leather-legged and gauntleted form at length became to her as nothing more than a moving handpost to show her the way. suddenly she was attracted to his individuality by observing peculiarities in his walk. it was a gait she had seen somewhere before; and the gait revealed the man to her, as the gait of ahimaaz in the distant plain made him known to the watchman of the king. "his walk is exactly as my husband's used to be," she said; and then the thought burst upon her that the furze-cutter was her son. she was scarcely able to familiarize herself with this strange reality. she had been told that clym was in the habit of cutting furze, but she had supposed that he occupied himself with the labour only at odd times, by way of useful pastime; yet she now beheld him as a furze-cutter and nothing more--wearing the regulation dress of the craft, and thinking the regulation thoughts, to judge by his motions. planning a dozen hasty schemes for at once preserving him and eustacia from this mode of life she throbbingly followed the way, and saw him enter his own door. at one side of clym's house was a knoll, and on the top of the knoll a clump of fir trees so highly thrust up into the sky that their foliage from a distance appeared as a black spot in the air above the crown of the hill. on reaching this place mrs. yeobright felt distressingly agitated, weary, and unwell. she ascended, and sat down under their shade to recover herself, and to consider how best to break the ground with eustacia, so as not to irritate a woman underneath whose apparent indolence lurked passions even stronger and more active than her own. the trees beneath which she sat were singularly battered, rude, and wild, and for a few minutes mrs. yeobright dismissed thoughts of her own storm-broken and exhausted state to contemplate theirs. not a bough in the nine trees which composed the group but was splintered, lopped, and distorted by the fierce weather that there held them at its mercy whenever it prevailed. some were blasted and split as if by lightning, black stains as from fire marking their sides, while the ground at their feet was strewn with dead fir-needles and heaps of cones blown down in the gales of past years. the place was called the devil's bellows, and it was only necessary to come there on a march or november night to discover the forcible reasons for that name. on the present heated afternoon, when no perceptible wind was blowing, the trees kept up a perpetual moan which one could hardly believe to be caused by the air. here she sat for twenty minutes or more ere she could summon resolution to go down to the door, her courage being lowered to zero by her physical lassitude. to any other person than a mother it might have seemed a little humiliating that she, the elder of the two women, should be the first to make advances. but mrs. yeobright had well considered all that, and she only thought how best to make her visit appear to eustacia not abject but wise. from her elevated position the exhausted woman could perceive the roof of the house below, and the garden and the whole enclosure of the little domicile. and now, at the moment of rising, she saw a second man approaching the gate. his manner was peculiar, hesitating, and not that of a person come on business or by invitation. he surveyed the house with interest, and then walked round and scanned the outer boundary of the garden, as one might have done had it been the birthplace of shakespeare, the prison of mary stuart, or the château of hougomont. after passing round and again reaching the gate he went in. mrs. yeobright was vexed at this, having reckoned on finding her son and his wife by themselves; but a moment's thought showed her that the presence of an acquaintance would take off the awkwardness of her first appearance in the house, by confining the talk to general matters until she had begun to feel comfortable with them. she came down the hill to the gate, and looked into the hot garden. there lay the cat asleep on the bare gravel of the path, as if beds, rugs, and carpets were unendurable. the leaves of the hollyhocks hung like half-closed umbrellas, the sap almost simmered in the stems, and foliage with a smooth surface glared like metallic mirrors. a small apple tree, of the sort called ratheripe, grew just inside the gate, the only one which throve in the garden, by reason of the lightness of the soil; and among the fallen apples on the ground beneath were wasps rolling drunk with the juice, or creeping about the little caves in each fruit which they had eaten out before stupefied by its sweetness. by the door lay clym's furze-hook and the last handful of faggot-bonds she had seen him gather; they had plainly been thrown down there as he entered the house. vi a conjuncture, and its result upon the pedestrian wildeve, as has been stated, was determined to visit eustacia boldly, by day, and on the easy terms of a relation, since the reddleman had spied out and spoilt his walks to her by night. the spell that she had thrown over him in the moonlight dance made it impossible for a man having no strong puritanic force within him to keep away altogether. he merely calculated on meeting her and her husband in an ordinary manner, chatting a little while, and leaving again. every outward sign was to be conventional; but the one great fact would be there to satisfy him: he would see her. he did not even desire clym's absence, since it was just possible that eustacia might resent any situation which could compromise her dignity as a wife, whatever the state of her heart towards him. women were often so. he went accordingly; and it happened that the time of his arrival coincided with that of mrs. yeobright's pause on the hill near the house. when he had looked round the premises in the manner she had noticed he went and knocked at the door. there was a few minutes' interval, and then the key turned in the lock, the door opened, and eustacia herself confronted him. nobody could have imagined from her bearing now that here stood the woman who had joined with him in the impassioned dance of the week before, unless indeed he could have penetrated below the surface and gauged the real depth of that still stream. "i hope you reached home safely?" said wildeve. "o yes," she carelessly returned. "and were you not tired the next day? i feared you might be." "i was rather. you need not speak low--nobody will overhear us. my small servant is gone on an errand to the village." "then clym is not at home?" "yes, he is." "o! i thought that perhaps you had locked the door because you were alone and were afraid of tramps." "no--here is my husband." they had been standing in the entry. closing the front door and turning the key, as before, she threw open the door of the adjoining room and asked him to walk in. wildeve entered, the room appearing to be empty; but as soon as he had advanced a few steps he started. on the hearth rug lay clym asleep. beside him were the leggings, thick boots, leather gloves, and sleeve-waistcoat in which he worked. "you may go in; you will not disturb him," she said, following behind. "my reason for fastening the door is that he may not be intruded upon by any chance comer while lying here, if i should be in the garden or upstairs." "why is he sleeping there?" said wildeve in low tones. "he is very weary. he went out at half-past four this morning, and has been working ever since. he cuts furze because it is the only thing he can do that does not put any strain upon his poor eyes." the contrast between the sleeper's appearance and wildeve's at this moment was painfully apparent to eustacia, wildeve being elegantly dressed in a new summer suit and light hat; and she continued: "ah! you don't know how differently he appeared when i first met him, though it is such a little while ago. his hands were as white and soft as mine; and look at them now, how rough and brown they are! his complexion is by nature fair, and that rusty look he has now, all of a colour with his leather clothes, is caused by the burning of the sun." "why does he go out at all?" wildeve whispered. "because he hates to be idle; though what he earns doesn't add much to our exchequer. however, he says that when people are living upon their capital they must keep down current expenses by turning a penny where they can." "the fates have not been kind to you, eustacia yeobright." "i have nothing to thank them for." "nor has he--except for their one great gift to him." "what's that?" wildeve looked her in the eyes. eustacia blushed for the first time that day. "well, i am a questionable gift," she said quietly. "i thought you meant the gift of content--which he has, and i have not." "i can understand content in such a case--though how the outward situation can attract him puzzles me." "that's because you don't know him. he's an enthusiast about ideas, and careless about outward things. he often reminds me of the apostle paul." "i am glad to hear that he's so grand in character as that." "yes; but the worst of it is that though paul was excellent as a man in the bible he would hardly have done in real life." their voices had instinctively dropped lower, though at first they had taken no particular care to avoid awakening clym. "well, if that means that your marriage is a misfortune to you, you know who is to blame," said wildeve. "the marriage is no misfortune in itself," she retorted with some little petulance. "it is simply the accident which has happened since that has been the cause of my ruin. i have certainly got thistles for figs in a worldly sense, but how could i tell what time would bring forth?" "sometimes, eustacia, i think it is a judgment upon you. you rightly belonged to me, you know; and i had no idea of losing you." "no, it was not my fault! two could not belong to you; and remember that, before i was aware, you turned aside to another woman. it was cruel levity in you to do that. i never dreamt of playing such a game on my side till you began it on yours." "i meant nothing by it," replied wildeve. "it was a mere interlude. men are given to the trick of having a passing fancy for somebody else in the midst of a permanent love, which reasserts itself afterwards just as before. on account of your rebellious manner to me i was tempted to go further than i should have done; and when you still would keep playing the same tantalizing part i went further still, and married her." turning and looking again at the unconscious form of clym, he murmured, "i am afraid that you don't value your prize, clym... he ought to be happier than i in one thing at least. he may know what it is to come down in the world, and to be afflicted with a great personal calamity; but he probably doesn't know what it is to lose the woman he loved." "he is not ungrateful for winning her," whispered eustacia, "and in that respect he is a good man. many women would go far for such a husband. but do i desire unreasonably much in wanting what is called life--music, poetry, passion, war, and all the beating and pulsing that are going on in the great arteries of the world? that was the shape of my youthful dream; but i did not get it. yet i thought i saw the way to it in my clym." "and you only married him on that account?" "there you mistake me. i married him because i loved him, but i won't say that i didn't love him partly because i thought i saw a promise of that life in him." "you have dropped into your old mournful key." "but i am not going to be depressed," she cried perversely. "i began a new system by going to that dance, and i mean to stick to it. clym can sing merrily; why should not i?" wildeve looked thoughtfully at her. "it is easier to say you will sing than to do it; though if i could i would encourage you in your attempt. but as life means nothing to me, without one thing which is now impossible, you will forgive me for not being able to encourage you." "damon, what is the matter with you, that you speak like that?" she asked, raising her deep shady eyes to his. "that's a thing i shall never tell plainly; and perhaps if i try to tell you in riddles you will not care to guess them." eustacia remained silent for a minute, and she said, "we are in a strange relationship today. you mince matters to an uncommon nicety. you mean, damon, that you still love me. well, that gives me sorrow, for i am not made so entirely happy by my marriage that i am willing to spurn you for the information, as i ought to do. but we have said too much about this. do you mean to wait until my husband is awake?" "i thought to speak to him; but it is unnecessary. eustacia, if i offend you by not forgetting you, you are right to mention it; but do not talk of spurning." she did not reply, and they stood looking musingly at clym as he slept on in that profound sleep which is the result of physical labour carried on in circumstances that wake no nervous fear. "god, how i envy him that sweet sleep!" said wildeve. "i have not slept like that since i was a boy--years and years ago." while they thus watched him a click at the gate was audible, and a knock came to the door. eustacia went to a window and looked out. her countenance changed. first she became crimson, and then the red subsided till it even partially left her lips. "shall i go away?" said wildeve, standing up. "i hardly know." "who is it?" "mrs. yeobright. o, what she said to me that day! i cannot understand this visit--what does she mean? and she suspects that past time of ours." "i am in your hands. if you think she had better not see me here i'll go into the next room." "well, yes: go." wildeve at once withdrew; but before he had been half a minute in the adjoining apartment eustacia came after him. "no," she said, "we won't have any of this. if she comes in she must see you--and think if she likes there's something wrong! but how can i open the door to her, when she dislikes me--wishes to see not me, but her son? i won't open the door!" mrs. yeobright knocked again more loudly. "her knocking will, in all likelihood, awaken him," continued eustacia, "and then he will let her in himself. ah--listen." they could hear clym moving in the other room, as if disturbed by the knocking, and he uttered the word "mother." "yes--he is awake--he will go to the door," she said, with a breath of relief. "come this way. i have a bad name with her, and you must not be seen. thus i am obliged to act by stealth, not because i do ill, but because others are pleased to say so." by this time she had taken him to the back door, which was open, disclosing a path leading down the garden. "now, one word, damon," she remarked as he stepped forth. "this is your first visit here; let it be your last. we have been hot lovers in our time, but it won't do now. good-bye." "good-bye," said wildeve. "i have had all i came for, and i am satisfied." "what was it?" "a sight of you. upon my eternal honour i came for no more." wildeve kissed his hand to the beautiful girl he addressed, and passed into the garden, where she watched him down the path, over the stile at the end, and into the ferns outside, which brushed his hips as he went along till he became lost in their thickets. when he had quite gone she slowly turned, and directed her attention to the interior of the house. but it was possible that her presence might not be desired by clym and his mother at this moment of their first meeting, or that it would be superfluous. at all events, she was in no hurry to meet mrs. yeobright. she resolved to wait till clym came to look for her, and glided back into the garden. here she idly occupied herself for a few minutes, till finding no notice was taken of her she retraced her steps through the house to the front, where she listened for voices in the parlour. but hearing none she opened the door and went in. to her astonishment clym lay precisely as wildeve and herself had left him, his sleep apparently unbroken. he had been disturbed and made to dream and murmur by the knocking, but he had not awakened. eustacia hastened to the door, and in spite of her reluctance to open it to a woman who had spoken of her so bitterly, she unfastened it and looked out. nobody was to be seen. there, by the scraper, lay clym's hook and the handful of faggot-bonds he had brought home; in front of her were the empty path, the garden gate standing slightly ajar; and, beyond, the great valley of purple heath thrilling silently in the sun. mrs. yeobright was gone. clym's mother was at this time following a path which lay hidden from eustacia by a shoulder of the hill. her walk thither from the garden gate had been hasty and determined, as of a woman who was now no less anxious to escape from the scene than she had previously been to enter it. her eyes were fixed on the ground; within her two sights were graven--that of clym's hook and brambles at the door, and that of a woman's face at a window. her lips trembled, becoming unnaturally thin as she murmured, "'tis too much--clym, how can he bear to do it! he is at home; and yet he lets her shut the door against me!" in her anxiety to get out of the direct view of the house she had diverged from the straightest path homeward, and while looking about to regain it she came upon a little boy gathering whortleberries in a hollow. the boy was johnny nunsuch, who had been eustacia's stoker at the bonfire, and, with the tendency of a minute body to gravitate towards a greater, he began hovering round mrs. yeobright as soon as she appeared, and trotted on beside her without perceptible consciousness of his act. mrs. yeobright spoke to him as one in a mesmeric sleep. "'tis a long way home, my child, and we shall not get there till evening." "i shall," said her small companion. "i am going to play marnels afore supper, and we go to supper at six o'clock, because father comes home. does your father come home at six too?" "no, he never comes; nor my son either, nor anybody." "what have made you so down? have you seen a ooser?" "i have seen what's worse--a woman's face looking at me through a window-pane." "is that a bad sight?" "yes. it is always a bad sight to see a woman looking out at a weary wayfarer and not letting her in." "once when i went to throope great pond to catch effets i seed myself looking up at myself, and i was frightened and jumped back like anything." ..."if they had only shown signs of meeting my advances half-way how well it might have been done! but there is no chance. shut out! she must have set him against me. can there be beautiful bodies without hearts inside? i think so. i would not have done it against a neighbour's cat on such a fiery day as this!" "what is it you say?" "never again--never! not even if they send for me!" "you must be a very curious woman to talk like that." "o no, not at all," she said, returning to the boy's prattle. "most people who grow up and have children talk as i do. when you grow up your mother will talk as i do too." "i hope she won't; because 'tis very bad to talk nonsense." "yes, child; it is nonsense, i suppose. are you not nearly spent with the heat?" "yes. but not so much as you be." "how do you know?" "your face is white and wet, and your head is hanging-down-like." "ah, i am exhausted from inside." "why do you, every time you take a step, go like this?" the child in speaking gave to his motion the jerk and limp of an invalid. "because i have a burden which is more than i can bear." the little boy remained silently pondering, and they tottered on side by side until more than a quarter of an hour had elapsed, when mrs. yeobright, whose weakness plainly increased, said to him, "i must sit down here to rest." when she had seated herself he looked long in her face and said, "how funny you draw your breath--like a lamb when you drive him till he's nearly done for. do you always draw your breath like that?" "not always." her voice was now so low as to be scarcely above a whisper. "you will go to sleep there, i suppose, won't you? you have shut your eyes already." "no. i shall not sleep much till--another day, and then i hope to have a long, long one--very long. now can you tell me if rimsmoor pond is dry this summer?" "rimsmoor pond is, but oker's pool isn't, because he is deep, and is never dry--'tis just over there." "is the water clear?" "yes, middling--except where the heath-croppers walk into it." "then, take this, and go as fast as you can, and dip me up the clearest you can find. i am very faint." she drew from the small willow reticule that she carried in her hand an old-fashioned china teacup without a handle; it was one of half a dozen of the same sort lying in the reticule, which she had preserved ever since her childhood, and had brought with her today as a small present for clym and eustacia. the boy started on his errand, and soon came back with the water, such as it was. mrs. yeobright attempted to drink, but it was so warm as to give her nausea, and she threw it away. afterwards she still remained sitting, with her eyes closed. the boy waited, played near her, caught several of the little brown butterflies which abounded, and then said as he waited again, "i like going on better than biding still. will you soon start again?" "i don't know." "i wish i might go on by myself," he resumed, fearing, apparently, that he was to be pressed into some unpleasant service. "do you want me any more, please?" mrs. yeobright made no reply. "what shall i tell mother?" the boy continued. "tell her you have seen a broken-hearted woman cast off by her son." before quite leaving her he threw upon her face a wistful glance, as if he had misgivings on the generosity of forsaking her thus. he gazed into her face in a vague, wondering manner, like that of one examining some strange old manuscript the key to whose characters is undiscoverable. he was not so young as to be absolutely without a sense that sympathy was demanded, he was not old enough to be free from the terror felt in childhood at beholding misery in adult quarters hitherto deemed impregnable; and whether she were in a position to cause trouble or to suffer from it, whether she and her affliction were something to pity or something to fear, it was beyond him to decide. he lowered his eyes and went on without another word. before he had gone half a mile he had forgotten all about her, except that she was a woman who had sat down to rest. mrs. yeobright's exertions, physical and emotional, had well-nigh prostrated her; but she continued to creep along in short stages with long breaks between. the sun had now got far to the west of south and stood directly in her face, like some merciless incendiary, brand in hand, waiting to consume her. with the departure of the boy all visible animation disappeared from the landscape, though the intermittent husky notes of the male grasshoppers from every tuft of furze were enough to show that amid the prostration of the larger animal species an unseen insect world was busy in all the fullness of life. in two hours she reached a slope about three-fourths the whole distance from alderworth to her own home, where a little patch of shepherd's-thyme intruded upon the path; and she sat down upon the perfumed mat it formed there. in front of her a colony of ants had established a thoroughfare across the way, where they toiled a never-ending and heavy-laden throng. to look down upon them was like observing a city street from the top of a tower. she remembered that this bustle of ants had been in progress for years at the same spot--doubtless those of the old times were the ancestors of these which walked there now. she leant back to obtain more thorough rest, and the soft eastern portion of the sky was as great a relief to her eyes as the thyme was to her head. while she looked a heron arose on that side of the sky and flew on with his face towards the sun. he had come dripping wet from some pool in the valleys, and as he flew the edges and lining of his wings, his thighs, and his breast were so caught by the bright sunbeams that he appeared as if formed of burnished silver. up in the zenith where he was seemed a free and happy place, away from all contact with the earthly ball to which she was pinioned; and she wished that she could arise uncrushed from its surface and fly as he flew then. but, being a mother, it was inevitable that she should soon cease to ruminate upon her own condition. had the track of her next thought been marked by a streak in the air, like the path of a meteor, it would have shown a direction contrary to the heron's, and have descended to the eastward upon the roof of clym's house. vii the tragic meeting of two old friends he in the meantime had aroused himself from sleep, sat up, and looked around. eustacia was sitting in a chair hard by him, and though she held a book in her hand she had not looked into it for some time. "well, indeed!" said clym, brushing his eyes with his hands. "how soundly i have slept! i have had such a tremendous dream, too: one i shall never forget." "i thought you had been dreaming," said she. "yes. it was about my mother. i dreamt that i took you to her house to make up differences, and when we got there we couldn't get in, though she kept on crying to us for help. however, dreams are dreams. what o'clock is it, eustacia?" "half-past two." "so late, is it? i didn't mean to stay so long. by the time i have had something to eat it will be after three." "ann is not come back from the village, and i thought i would let you sleep on till she returned." clym went to the window and looked out. presently he said, musingly, "week after week passes, and yet mother does not come. i thought i should have heard something from her long before this." misgiving, regret, fear, resolution, ran their swift course of expression in eustacia's dark eyes. she was face to face with a monstrous difficulty, and she resolved to get free of it by postponement. "i must certainly go to blooms-end soon," he continued, "and i think i had better go alone." he picked up his leggings and gloves, threw them down again, and added, "as dinner will be so late today i will not go back to the heath, but work in the garden till the evening, and then, when it will be cooler, i will walk to blooms-end. i am quite sure that if i make a little advance mother will be willing to forget all. it will be rather late before i can get home, as i shall not be able to do the distance either way in less than an hour and a half. but you will not mind for one evening, dear? what are you thinking of to make you look so abstracted?" "i cannot tell you," she said heavily. "i wish we didn't live here, clym. the world seems all wrong in this place." "well--if we make it so. i wonder if thomasin has been to blooms-end lately. i hope so. but probably not, as she is, i believe, expecting to be confined in a month or so. i wish i had thought of that before. poor mother must indeed be very lonely." "i don't like you going tonight." "why not tonight?" "something may be said which will terribly injure me." "my mother is not vindictive," said clym, his colour faintly rising. "but i wish you would not go," eustacia repeated in a low tone. "if you agree not to go tonight i promise to go by myself to her house tomorrow, and make it up with her, and wait till you fetch me." "why do you want to do that at this particular time, when at every previous time that i have proposed it you have refused?" "i cannot explain further than that i should like to see her alone before you go," she answered, with an impatient move of her head, and looking at him with an anxiety more frequently seen upon those of a sanguine temperament than upon such as herself. "well, it is very odd that just when i had decided to go myself you should want to do what i proposed long ago. if i wait for you to go tomorrow another day will be lost; and i know i shall be unable to rest another night without having been. i want to get this settled, and will. you must visit her afterwards: it will be all the same." "i could even go with you now?" "you could scarcely walk there and back without a longer rest than i shall take. no, not tonight, eustacia." "let it be as you say, then," she replied in the quiet way of one who, though willing to ward off evil consequences by a mild effort, would let events fall out as they might sooner than wrestle hard to direct them. clym then went into the garden; and a thoughtful languor stole over eustacia for the remainder of the afternoon, which her husband attributed to the heat of the weather. in the evening he set out on the journey. although the heat of summer was yet intense the days had considerably shortened, and before he had advanced a mile on his way all the heath purples, browns, and greens had merged in a uniform dress without airiness or graduation, and broken only by touches of white where the little heaps of clean quartz sand showed the entrance to a rabbit-burrow, or where the white flints of a footpath lay like a thread over the slopes. in almost every one of the isolated and stunted thorns which grew here and there a night-hawk revealed his presence by whirring like the clack of a mill as long as he could hold his breath, then stopping, flapping his wings, wheeling round the bush, alighting, and after a silent interval of listening beginning to whirr again. at each brushing of clym's feet white miller-moths flew into the air just high enough to catch upon their dusty wings the mellowed light from the west, which now shone across the depressions and levels of the ground without falling thereon to light them up. yeobright walked on amid this quiet scene with a hope that all would soon be well. three miles on he came to a spot where a soft perfume was wafted across his path, and he stood still for a moment to inhale the familiar scent. it was the place at which, four hours earlier, his mother had sat down exhausted on the knoll covered with shepherd's-thyme. while he stood a sound between a breathing and a moan suddenly reached his ears. he looked to where the sound came from; but nothing appeared there save the verge of the hillock stretching against the sky in an unbroken line. he moved a few steps in that direction, and now he perceived a recumbent figure almost close at his feet. among the different possibilities as to the person's individuality there did not for a moment occur to yeobright that it might be one of his own family. sometimes furze-cutters had been known to sleep out of doors at these times, to save a long journey homeward and back again; but clym remembered the moan and looked closer, and saw that the form was feminine; and a distress came over him like cold air from a cave. but he was not absolutely certain that the woman was his mother till he stooped and beheld her face, pallid, and with closed eyes. his breath went, as it were, out of his body and the cry of anguish which would have escaped him died upon his lips. during the momentary interval that elapsed before he became conscious that something must be done all sense of time and place left him, and it seemed as if he and his mother were as when he was a child with her many years ago on this heath at hours similar to the present. then he awoke to activity; and bending yet lower he found that she still breathed, and that her breath though feeble was regular, except when disturbed by an occasional gasp. "o, what is it! mother, are you very ill--you are not dying?" he cried, pressing his lips to her face. "i am your clym. how did you come here? what does it all mean?" at that moment the chasm in their lives which his love for eustacia had caused was not remembered by yeobright, and to him the present joined continuously with that friendly past that had been their experience before the division. she moved her lips, appeared to know him, but could not speak; and then clym strove to consider how best to move her, as it would be necessary to get her away from the spot before the dews were intense. he was able-bodied, and his mother was thin. he clasped his arms round her, lifted her a little, and said, "does that hurt you?" she shook her head, and he lifted her up; then, at a slow pace, went onward with his load. the air was now completely cool; but whenever he passed over a sandy patch of ground uncarpeted with vegetation there was reflected from its surface into his face the heat which it had imbibed during the day. at the beginning of his undertaking he had thought but little of the distance which yet would have to be traversed before blooms-end could be reached; but though he had slept that afternoon he soon began to feel the weight of his burden. thus he proceeded, like aeneas with his father; the bats circling round his head, nightjars flapping their wings within a yard of his face, and not a human being within call. while he was yet nearly a mile from the house his mother exhibited signs of restlessness under the constraint of being borne along, as if his arms were irksome to her. he lowered her upon his knees and looked around. the point they had now reached, though far from any road, was not more than a mile from the blooms-end cottages occupied by fairway, sam, humphrey, and the cantles. moreover, fifty yards off stood a hut, built of clods and covered with thin turves, but now entirely disused. the simple outline of the lonely shed was visible, and thither he determined to direct his steps. as soon as he arrived he laid her down carefully by the entrance, and then ran and cut with his pocketknife an armful of the dryest fern. spreading this within the shed, which was entirely open on one side, he placed his mother thereon; then he ran with all his might towards the dwelling of fairway. nearly a quarter of an hour had passed, disturbed only by the broken breathing of the sufferer, when moving figures began to animate the line between heath and sky. in a few moments clym arrived with fairway, humphrey, and susan nunsuch; olly dowden, who had chanced to be at fairway's, christian and grandfer cantle following helter-skelter behind. they had brought a lantern and matches, water, a pillow, and a few other articles which had occurred to their minds in the hurry of the moment. sam had been despatched back again for brandy, and a boy brought fairway's pony, upon which he rode off to the nearest medical man, with directions to call at wildeve's on his way, and inform thomasin that her aunt was unwell. sam and the brandy soon arrived, and it was administered by the light of the lantern; after which she became sufficiently conscious to signify by signs that something was wrong with her foot. olly dowden at length understood her meaning, and examined the foot indicated. it was swollen and red. even as they watched the red began to assume a more livid colour, in the midst of which appeared a scarlet speck, smaller than a pea, and it was found to consist of a drop of blood, which rose above the smooth flesh of her ankle in a hemisphere. "i know what it is," cried sam. "she has been stung by an adder!" "yes," said clym instantly. "i remember when i was a child seeing just such a bite. o, my poor mother!" "it was my father who was bit," said sam. "and there's only one way to cure it. you must rub the place with the fat of other adders, and the only way to get that is by frying them. that's what they did for him." "'tis an old remedy," said clym distrustfully, "and i have doubts about it. but we can do nothing else till the doctor comes." "'tis a sure cure," said olly dowden, with emphasis. "i've used it when i used to go out nursing." "then we must pray for daylight, to catch them," said clym gloomily. "i will see what i can do," said sam. he took a green hazel which he had used as a walking-stick, split it at the end, inserted a small pebble, and with the lantern in his hand went out into the heath. clym had by this time lit a small fire, and despatched susan nunsuch for a frying-pan. before she had returned sam came in with three adders, one briskly coiling and uncoiling in the cleft of the stick, and the other two hanging dead across it. "i have only been able to get one alive and fresh as he ought to be," said sam. "these limp ones are two i killed today at work; but as they don't die till the sun goes down they can't be very stale meat." the live adder regarded the assembled group with a sinister look in its small black eye, and the beautiful brown and jet pattern on its back seemed to intensify with indignation. mrs. yeobright saw the creature, and the creature saw her: she quivered throughout, and averted her eyes. "look at that," murmured christian cantle. "neighbours, how do we know but that something of the old serpent in god's garden, that gied the apple to the young woman with no clothes, lives on in adders and snakes still? look at his eye--for all the world like a villainous sort of black currant. 'tis to be hoped he can't ill-wish us! there's folks in heath who've been overlooked already. i will never kill another adder as long as i live." "well, 'tis right to be afeard of things, if folks can't help it," said grandfer cantle. "'twould have saved me many a brave danger in my time." "i fancy i heard something outside the shed," said christian. "i wish troubles would come in the daytime, for then a man could show his courage, and hardly beg for mercy of the most broomstick old woman he should see, if he was a brave man, and able to run out of her sight!" "even such an ignorant fellow as i should know better than do that," said sam. "well, there's calamities where we least expect it, whether or no. neighbours, if mrs. yeobright were to die, d'ye think we should be took up and tried for the manslaughter of a woman?" "no, they couldn't bring it in as that," said sam, "unless they could prove we had been poachers at some time of our lives. but she'll fetch round." "now, if i had been stung by ten adders i should hardly have lost a day's work for't," said grandfer cantle. "such is my spirit when i am on my mettle. but perhaps 'tis natural in a man trained for war. yes, i've gone through a good deal; but nothing ever came amiss to me after i joined the locals in four." he shook his head and smiled at a mental picture of himself in uniform. "i was always first in the most galliantest scrapes in my younger days!" "i suppose that was because they always used to put the biggest fool afore," said fairway from the fire, beside which he knelt, blowing it with his breath. "d'ye think so, timothy?" said grandfer cantle, coming forward to fairway's side with sudden depression in his face. "then a man may feel for years that he is good solid company, and be wrong about himself after all?" "never mind that question, grandfer. stir your stumps and get some more sticks. 'tis very nonsense of an old man to prattle so when life and death's in mangling." "yes, yes," said grandfer cantle, with melancholy conviction. "well, this is a bad night altogether for them that have done well in their time; and if i were ever such a dab at the hautboy or tenor-viol, i shouldn't have the heart to play tunes upon 'em now." susan now arrived with the frying-pan, when the live adder was killed and the heads of the three taken off. the remainders, being cut into lengths and split open, were tossed into the pan, which began hissing and crackling over the fire. soon a rill of clear oil trickled from the carcases, whereupon clym dipped the corner of his handkerchief into the liquid and anointed the wound. viii eustacia hears of good fortune, and beholds evil in the meantime eustacia, left alone in her cottage at alderworth, had become considerably depressed by the posture of affairs. the consequences which might result from clym's discovery that his mother had been turned from his door that day were likely to be disagreeable, and this was a quality in events which she hated as much as the dreadful. to be left to pass the evening by herself was irksome to her at any time, and this evening it was more irksome than usual by reason of the excitements of the past hours. the two visits had stirred her into restlessness. she was not wrought to any great pitch of uneasiness by the probability of appearing in an ill light in the discussion between clym and his mother, but she was wrought to vexation; and her slumbering activities were quickened to the extent of wishing that she had opened the door. she had certainly believed that clym was awake, and the excuse would be an honest one as far as it went; but nothing could save her from censure in refusing to answer at the first knock. yet, instead of blaming herself for the issue she laid the fault upon the shoulders of some indistinct, colossal prince of the world, who had framed her situation and ruled her lot. at this time of the year it was pleasanter to walk by night than by day, and when clym had been absent about an hour she suddenly resolved to go out in the direction of blooms-end, on the chance of meeting him on his return. when she reached the garden gate she heard wheels approaching, and looking round beheld her grandfather coming up in his car. "i can't stay a minute, thank ye," he answered to her greeting. "i am driving to east egdon; but i came round here just to tell you the news. perhaps you have heard--about mr. wildeve's fortune?" "no," said eustacia blankly. "well, he has come into a fortune of eleven thousand pounds--uncle died in canada, just after hearing that all his family, whom he was sending home, had gone to the bottom in the _cassiopeia_; so wildeve has come into everything, without in the least expecting it." eustacia stood motionless awhile. "how long has he known of this?" she asked. "well, it was known to him this morning early, for i knew it at ten o'clock, when charley came back. now, he is what i call a lucky man. what a fool you were, eustacia!" "in what way?" she said, lifting her eyes in apparent calmness. "why, in not sticking to him when you had him." "had him, indeed!" "i did not know there had ever been anything between you till lately; and, faith, i should have been hot and strong against it if i had known; but since it seems that there was some sniffing between ye, why the deuce didn't you stick to him?" eustacia made no reply, but she looked as if she could say as much upon that subject as he if she chose. "and how is your poor purblind husband?" continued the old man. "not a bad fellow either, as far as he goes." "he is quite well." "it is a good thing for his cousin what-d'ye-call-her? by george, you ought to have been in that galley, my girl! now i must drive on. do you want any assistance? what's mine is yours, you know." "thank you, grandfather, we are not in want at present," she said coldly. "clym cuts furze, but he does it mostly as a useful pastime, because he can do nothing else." "he is paid for his pastime, isn't he? three shillings a hundred, i heard." "clym has money," she said, colouring, "but he likes to earn a little." "very well; good night." and the captain drove on. when her grandfather was gone eustacia went on her way mechanically; but her thoughts were no longer concerning her mother-in-law and clym. wildeve, notwithstanding his complaints against his fate, had been seized upon by destiny and placed in the sunshine once more. eleven thousand pounds! from every egdon point of view he was a rich man. in eustacia's eyes, too, it was an ample sum--one sufficient to supply those wants of hers which had been stigmatized by clym in his more austere moods as vain and luxurious. though she was no lover of money she loved what money could bring; and the new accessories she imagined around him clothed wildeve with a great deal of interest. she recollected now how quietly well-dressed he had been that morning: he had probably put on his newest suit, regardless of damage by briars and thorns. and then she thought of his manner towards herself. "o i see it, i see it," she said. "how much he wishes he had me now, that he might give me all i desire!" in recalling the details of his glances and words--at the time scarcely regarded--it became plain to her how greatly they had been dictated by his knowledge of this new event. "had he been a man to bear a jilt ill-will he would have told me of his good fortune in crowing tones; instead of doing that he mentioned not a word, in deference to my misfortunes, and merely implied that he loved me still, as one superior to him." wildeve's silence that day on what had happened to him was just the kind of behaviour calculated to make an impression on such a woman. those delicate touches of good taste were, in fact, one of the strong points in his demeanour towards the other sex. the peculiarity of wildeve was that, while at one time passionate, upbraiding, and resentful towards a woman, at another he would treat her with such unparalleled grace as to make previous neglect appear as no discourtesy, injury as no insult, interference as a delicate attention, and the ruin of her honour as excess of chivalry. this man, whose admiration today eustacia had disregarded, whose good wishes she had scarcely taken the trouble to accept, whom she had shown out of the house by the back door, was the possessor of eleven thousand pounds--a man of fair professional education, and one who had served his articles with a civil engineer. so intent was eustacia upon wildeve's fortunes that she forgot how much closer to her own course were those of clym; and instead of walking on to meet him at once she sat down upon a stone. she was disturbed in her reverie by a voice behind, and turning her head beheld the old lover and fortunate inheritor of wealth immediately beside her. she remained sitting, though the fluctuation in her look might have told any man who knew her so well as wildeve that she was thinking of him. "how did you come here?" she said in her clear low tone. "i thought you were at home." "i went on to the village after leaving your garden; and now i have come back again: that's all. which way are you walking, may i ask?" she waved her hand in the direction of blooms-end. "i am going to meet my husband. i think i may possibly have got into trouble whilst you were with me today." "how could that be?" "by not letting in mrs. yeobright." "i hope that visit of mine did you no harm." "none. it was not your fault," she said quietly. by this time she had risen; and they involuntarily sauntered on together, without speaking, for two or three minutes; when eustacia broke silence by saying, "i assume i must congratulate you." "on what? o yes; on my eleven thousand pounds, you mean. well, since i didn't get something else, i must be content with getting that." "you seem very indifferent about it. why didn't you tell me today when you came?" she said in the tone of a neglected person. "i heard of it quite by accident." "i did mean to tell you," said wildeve. "but i--well, i will speak frankly--i did not like to mention it when i saw, eustacia, that your star was not high. the sight of a man lying wearied out with hard work, as your husband lay, made me feel that to brag of my own fortune to you would be greatly out of place. yet, as you stood there beside him, i could not help feeling too that in many respects he was a richer man than i." at this eustacia said, with slumbering mischievousness, "what, would you exchange with him--your fortune for me?" "i certainly would," said wildeve. "as we are imagining what is impossible and absurd, suppose we change the subject?" "very well; and i will tell you of my plans for the future, if you care to hear them. i shall permanently invest nine thousand pounds, keep one thousand as ready money, and with the remaining thousand travel for a year or so." "travel? what a bright idea! where will you go to?" "from here to paris, where i shall pass the winter and spring. then i shall go to italy, greece, egypt, and palestine, before the hot weather comes on. in the summer i shall go to america; and then, by a plan not yet settled, i shall go to australia and round to india. by that time i shall have begun to have had enough of it. then i shall probably come back to paris again, and there i shall stay as long as i can afford to." "back to paris again," she murmured in a voice that was nearly a sigh. she had never once told wildeve of the parisian desires which clym's description had sown in her; yet here was he involuntarily in a position to gratify them. "you think a good deal of paris?" she added. "yes. in my opinion it is the central beauty-spot of the world." "and in mine! and thomasin will go with you?" "yes, if she cares to. she may prefer to stay at home." "so you will be going about, and i shall be staying here!" "i suppose you will. but we know whose fault that is." "i am not blaming you," she said quickly. "oh, i thought you were. if ever you should be inclined to blame me, think of a certain evening by rainbarrow, when you promised to meet me and did not. you sent me a letter; and my heart ached to read that as i hope yours never will. that was one point of divergence. i then did something in haste... but she is a good woman, and i will say no more." "i know that the blame was on my side that time," said eustacia. "but it had not always been so. however, it is my misfortune to be too sudden in feeling. o, damon, don't reproach me any more--i can't bear that." they went on silently for a distance of two or three miles, when eustacia said suddenly, "haven't you come out of your way, mr. wildeve?" "my way is anywhere tonight. i will go with you as far as the hill on which we can see blooms-end, as it is getting late for you to be alone." "don't trouble. i am not obliged to be out at all. i think i would rather you did not accompany me further. this sort of thing would have an odd look if known." "very well, i will leave you." he took her hand unexpectedly, and kissed it--for the first time since her marriage. "what light is that on the hill?" he added, as it were to hide the caress. she looked, and saw a flickering firelight proceeding from the open side of a hovel a little way before them. the hovel, which she had hitherto always found empty, seemed to be inhabited now. "since you have come so far," said eustacia, "will you see me safely past that hut? i thought i should have met clym somewhere about here, but as he doesn't appear i will hasten on and get to blooms-end before he leaves." they advanced to the turf-shed, and when they got near it the firelight and the lantern inside showed distinctly enough the form of a woman reclining on a bed of fern, a group of heath men and women standing around her. eustacia did not recognize mrs. yeobright in the reclining figure, nor clym as one of the standers-by till she came close. then she quickly pressed her hand upon wildeve's arm and signified to him to come back from the open side of the shed into the shadow. "it is my husband and his mother," she whispered in an agitated voice. "what can it mean? will you step forward and tell me?" wildeve left her side and went to the back wall of the hut. presently eustacia perceived that he was beckoning to her, and she advanced and joined him. "it is a serious case," said wildeve. from their position they could hear what was proceeding inside. "i cannot think where she could have been going," said clym to some one. "she had evidently walked a long way, but even when she was able to speak just now she would not tell me where. what do you really think of her?" "there is a great deal to fear," was gravely answered, in a voice which eustacia recognized as that of the only surgeon in the district. "she has suffered somewhat from the bite of the adder; but it is exhaustion which has overpowered her. my impression is that her walk must have been exceptionally long." "i used to tell her not to overwalk herself this weather," said clym, with distress. "do you think we did well in using the adder's fat?" "well, it is a very ancient remedy--the old remedy of the viper-catchers, i believe," replied the doctor. "it is mentioned as an infallible ointment by hoffman, mead, and i think the abbé fontana. undoubtedly it was as good a thing as you could do; though i question if some other oils would not have been equally efficacious." "come here, come here!" was then rapidly said in anxious female tones; and clym and the doctor could be heard rushing forward from the back part of the shed to where mrs. yeobright lay. "oh, what is it?" whispered eustacia. "'twas thomasin who spoke," said wildeve. "then they have fetched her. i wonder if i had better go in--yet it might do harm." for a long time there was utter silence among the group within; and it was broken at last by clym saying, in an agonized voice, "o doctor, what does it mean?" the doctor did not reply at once; ultimately he said, "she is sinking fast. her heart was previously affected, and physical exhaustion has dealt the finishing blow." then there was a weeping of women, then waiting, then hushed exclamations, then a strange gasping sound, then a painful stillness. "it is all over," said the doctor. further back in the hut the cotters whispered, "mrs. yeobright is dead." almost at the same moment the two watchers observed the form of a small old-fashioned child entering at the open side of the shed. susan nunsuch, whose boy it was, went forward to the opening and silently beckoned to him to go back. "i've got something to tell 'ee, mother," he cried in a shrill tone. "that woman asleep there walked along with me today; and she said i was to say that i had seed her, and she was a broken-hearted woman and cast off by her son, and then i came on home." a confused sob as from a man was heard within, upon which eustacia gasped faintly, "that's clym--i must go to him--yet dare i do it? no: come away!" when they had withdrawn from the neighbourhood of the shed she said huskily, "i am to blame for this. there is evil in store for me." "was she not admitted to your house after all?" wildeve inquired. "no; and that's where it all lies! oh, what shall i do! i shall not intrude upon them: i shall go straight home. damon, good-bye! i cannot speak to you any more now." they parted company; and when eustacia had reached the next hill she looked back. a melancholy procession was wending its way by the light of the lantern from the hut towards blooms-end. wildeve was nowhere to be seen. book fifth the discovery i "wherefore is light given to him that is in misery" one evening, about three weeks after the funeral of mrs. yeobright, when the silver face of the moon sent a bundle of beams directly upon the floor of clym's house at alderworth, a woman came forth from within. she reclined over the garden gate as if to refresh herself awhile. the pale lunar touches which make beauties of hags lent divinity to this face, already beautiful. she had not long been there when a man came up the road and with some hesitation said to her, "how is he tonight, ma'am, if you please?" "he is better, though still very unwell, humphrey," replied eustacia. "is he light-headed, ma'am?" "no. he is quite sensible now." "do he rave about his mother just the same, poor fellow?" continued humphrey. "just as much, though not quite so wildly," she said in a low voice. "it was very unfortunate, ma'am, that the boy johnny should ever ha' told him his mother's dying words, about her being broken-hearted and cast off by her son. 'twas enough to upset any man alive." eustacia made no reply beyond that of a slight catch in her breath, as of one who fain would speak but could not; and humphrey, declining her invitation to come in, went away. eustacia turned, entered the house, and ascended to the front bedroom, where a shaded light was burning. in the bed lay clym, pale, haggard, wide awake, tossing to one side and to the other, his eyes lit by a hot light, as if the fire in their pupils were burning up their substance. "is it you, eustacia?" he said as she sat down. "yes, clym. i have been down to the gate. the moon is shining beautifully, and there is not a leaf stirring." "shining, is it? what's the moon to a man like me? let it shine--let anything be, so that i never see another day!... eustacia, i don't know where to look: my thoughts go through me like swords. o, if any man wants to make himself immortal by painting a picture of wretchedness, let him come here!" "why do you say so?" "i cannot help feeling that i did my best to kill her." "no, clym." "yes, it was so; it is useless to excuse me! my conduct to her was too hideous--i made no advances; and she could not bring herself to forgive me. now she is dead! if i had only shown myself willing to make it up with her sooner, and we had been friends, and then she had died, it wouldn't be so hard to bear. but i never went near her house, so she never came near mine, and didn't know how welcome she would have been--that's what troubles me. she did not know i was going to her house that very night, for she was too insensible to understand me. if she had only come to see me! i longed that she would. but it was not to be." there escaped from eustacia one of those shivering sighs which used to shake her like a pestilent blast. she had not yet told. but yeobright was too deeply absorbed in the ramblings incidental to his remorseful state to notice her. during his illness he had been continually talking thus. despair had been added to his original grief by the unfortunate disclosure of the boy who had received the last words of mrs. yeobright--words too bitterly uttered in an hour of misapprehension. then his distress had overwhelmed him, and he longed for death as a field labourer longs for the shade. it was the pitiful sight of a man standing in the very focus of sorrow. he continually bewailed his tardy journey to his mother's house, because it was an error which could never be rectified, and insisted that he must have been horribly perverted by some fiend not to have thought before that it was his duty to go to her, since she did not come to him. he would ask eustacia to agree with him in his self-condemnation; and when she, seared inwardly by a secret she dared not tell, declared that she could not give an opinion, he would say, "that's because you didn't know my mother's nature. she was always ready to forgive if asked to do so; but i seemed to her to be as an obstinate child, and that made her unyielding. yet not unyielding: she was proud and reserved, no more... yes, i can understand why she held out against me so long. she was waiting for me. i dare say she said a hundred times in her sorrow, 'what a return he makes for all the sacrifices i have made for him!' i never went to her! when i set out to visit her it was too late. to think of that is nearly intolerable!" sometimes his condition had been one of utter remorse, unsoftened by a single tear of pure sorrow: and then he writhed as he lay, fevered far more by thought than by physical ills. "if i could only get one assurance that she did not die in a belief that i was resentful," he said one day when in this mood, "it would be better to think of than a hope of heaven. but that i cannot do." "you give yourself up too much to this wearying despair," said eustacia. "other men's mothers have died." "that doesn't make the loss of mine less. yet it is less the loss than the circumstances of the loss. i sinned against her, and on that account there is no light for me." "she sinned against you, i think." "no, she did not. i committed the guilt; and may the whole burden be upon my head!" "i think you might consider twice before you say that," eustacia replied. "single men have, no doubt, a right to curse themselves as much as they please; but men with wives involve two in the doom they pray down." "i am in too sorry a state to understand what you are refining on," said the wretched man. "day and night shout at me, 'you have helped to kill her.' but in loathing myself i may, i own, be unjust to you, my poor wife. forgive me for it, eustacia, for i scarcely know what i do." eustacia was always anxious to avoid the sight of her husband in such a state as this, which had become as dreadful to her as the trial scene was to judas iscariot. it brought before her eyes the spectre of a worn-out woman knocking at a door which she would not open; and she shrank from contemplating it. yet it was better for yeobright himself when he spoke openly of his sharp regret, for in silence he endured infinitely more, and would sometimes remain so long in a tense, brooding mood, consuming himself by the gnawing of his thought, that it was imperatively necessary to make him talk aloud, that his grief might in some degree expend itself in the effort. eustacia had not been long indoors after her look at the moonlight when a soft footstep came up to the house, and thomasin was announced by the woman downstairs. "ah, thomasin! thank you for coming tonight," said clym when she entered the room. "here am i, you see. such a wretched spectacle am i, that i shrink from being seen by a single friend, and almost from you." "you must not shrink from me, dear clym," said thomasin earnestly, in that sweet voice of hers which came to a sufferer like fresh air into a black hole. "nothing in you can ever shock me or drive me away. i have been here before, but you don't remember it." "yes, i do; i am not delirious, thomasin, nor have i been so at all. don't you believe that if they say so. i am only in great misery at what i have done: and that, with the weakness, makes me seem mad. but it has not upset my reason. do you think i should remember all about my mother's death if i were out of my mind? no such good luck. two months and a half, thomasin, the last of her life, did my poor mother live alone, distracted and mourning because of me; yet she was unvisited by me, though i was living only six miles off. two months and a half--seventy-five days did the sun rise and set upon her in that deserted state which a dog didn't deserve! poor people who had nothing in common with her would have cared for her, and visited her had they known her sickness and loneliness; but i, who should have been all to her, stayed away like a cur. if there is any justice in god let him kill me now. he has nearly blinded me, but that is not enough. if he would only strike me with more pain i would believe in him for ever!" "hush, hush! o, pray, clym, don't, don't say it!" implored thomasin, affrighted into sobs and tears; while eustacia, at the other side of the room, though her pale face remained calm, writhed in her chair. clym went on without heeding his cousin. "but i am not worth receiving further proof even of heaven's reprobation. do you think, thomasin, that she knew me--that she did not die in that horrid mistaken notion about my not forgiving her, which i can't tell you how she acquired? if you could only assure me of that! do you think so, eustacia? do speak to me." "i think i can assure you that she knew better at last," said thomasin. the pallid eustacia said nothing. "why didn't she come to my house? i would have taken her in and showed her how i loved her in spite of all. but she never came; and i didn't go to her, and she died on the heath like an animal kicked out, nobody to help her till it was too late. if you could have seen her, thomasin, as i saw her--a poor dying woman, lying in the dark upon the bare ground, moaning, nobody near, believing she was utterly deserted by all the world, it would have moved you to anguish, it would have moved a brute. and this poor woman my mother! no wonder she said to the child, 'you have seen a broken-hearted woman.' what a state she must have been brought to, to say that! and who can have done it but i? it is too dreadful to think of, and i wish i could be punished more heavily than i am. how long was i what they called out of my senses?" "a week, i think." "and then i became calm." "yes, for four days." "and now i have left off being calm." "but try to be quiet: please do, and you will soon be strong. if you could remove that impression from your mind--" "yes, yes," he said impatiently. "but i don't want to get strong. what's the use of my getting well? it would be better for me if i die, and it would certainly be better for eustacia. is eustacia there?" "yes." "it would be better for you, eustacia, if i were to die?" "don't press such a question, dear clym." "well, it really is but a shadowy supposition; for unfortunately i am going to live. i feel myself getting better. thomasin, how long are you going to stay at the inn, now that all this money has come to your husband?" "another month or two, probably; until my illness is over. we cannot get off till then. i think it will be a month or more." "yes, yes. of course. ah, cousin tamsie, you will get over your trouble--one little month will take you through it, and bring something to console you; but i shall never get over mine, and no consolation will come!" "clym, you are unjust to yourself. depend upon it, aunt thought kindly of you. i know that, if she had lived, you would have been reconciled with her." "but she didn't come to see me, though i asked her, before i married, if she would come. had she come, or had i gone there, she would never have died saying, 'i am a broken-hearted woman, cast off by my son.' my door has always been open to her--a welcome here has always awaited her. but that she never came to see." "you had better not talk any more now, clym," said eustacia faintly from the other part of the room, for the scene was growing intolerable to her. "let me talk to you instead for the little time i shall be here," thomasin said soothingly. "consider what a one-sided way you have of looking at the matter, clym. when she said that to the little boy you had not found her and taken her into your arms; and it might have been uttered in a moment of bitterness. it was rather like aunt to say things in haste. she sometimes used to speak so to me. though she did not come i am convinced that she thought of coming to see you. do you suppose a man's mother could live two or three months without one forgiving thought? she forgave me; and why should she not have forgiven you?" "you laboured to win her round; i did nothing. i, who was going to teach people the higher secrets of happiness, did not know how to keep out of that gross misery which the most untaught are wise enough to avoid." "how did you get here tonight, thomasin?" said eustacia. "damon set me down at the end of the lane. he has driven into east egdon on business, and he will come and pick me up by-and-by." accordingly they soon after heard the noise of wheels. wildeve had come, and was waiting outside with his horse and gig. "send out and tell him i will be down in two minutes," said thomasin. "i will run down myself," said eustacia. she went down. wildeve had alighted, and was standing before the horse's head when eustacia opened the door. he did not turn for a moment, thinking the comer thomasin. then he looked, started ever so little, and said one word: "well?" "i have not yet told him," she replied in a whisper. "then don't do so till he is well--it will be fatal. you are ill yourself." "i am wretched... o damon," she said, bursting into tears, "i--i can't tell you how unhappy i am! i can hardly bear this. i can tell nobody of my trouble--nobody knows of it but you." "poor girl!" said wildeve, visibly affected at her distress, and at last led on so far as to take her hand. "it is hard, when you have done nothing to deserve it, that you should have got involved in such a web as this. you were not made for these sad scenes. i am to blame most. if i could only have saved you from it all!" "but, damon, please pray tell me what i must do? to sit by him hour after hour, and hear him reproach himself as being the cause of her death, and to know that i am the sinner, if any human being is at all, drives me into cold despair. i don't know what to do. should i tell him or should i not tell him? i always am asking myself that. o, i want to tell him; and yet i am afraid. if he find it out he must surely kill me, for nothing else will be in proportion to his feelings now. 'beware the fury of a patient man' sounds day by day in my ears as i watch him." "well, wait till he is better, and trust to chance. and when you tell, you must only tell part--for his own sake." "which part should i keep back?" wildeve paused. "that i was in the house at the time," he said in a low tone. "yes; it must be concealed, seeing what has been whispered. how much easier are hasty actions than speeches that will excuse them!" "if he were only to die--" wildeve murmured. "do not think of it! i would not buy hope of immunity by so cowardly a desire even if i hated him. now i am going up to him again. thomasin bade me tell you she would be down in a few minutes. good-bye." she returned, and thomasin soon appeared. when she was seated in the gig with her husband, and the horse was turning to go off, wildeve lifted his eyes to the bedroom windows. looking from one of them he could discern a pale, tragic face watching him drive away. it was eustacia's. ii a lurid light breaks in upon a darkened understanding clym's grief became mitigated by wearing itself out. his strength returned, and a month after the visit of thomasin he might have been seen walking about the garden. endurance and despair, equanimity and gloom, the tints of health and the pallor of death, mingled weirdly in his face. he was now unnaturally silent upon all of the past that related to his mother; and though eustacia knew that he was thinking of it none the less, she was only too glad to escape the topic ever to bring it up anew. when his mind had been weaker his heart had led him to speak out; but reason having now somewhat recovered itself he sank into taciturnity. one evening when he was thus standing in the garden, abstractedly spudding up a weed with his stick, a bony figure turned the corner of the house and came up to him. "christian, isn't it?" said clym. "i am glad you have found me out. i shall soon want you to go to blooms-end and assist me in putting the house in order. i suppose it is all locked up as i left it?" "yes, mister clym." "have you dug up the potatoes and other roots?" "yes, without a drop o' rain, thank god. but i was coming to tell 'ee of something else which is quite different from what we have lately had in the family. i am sent by the rich gentleman at the woman, that we used to call the landlord, to tell 'ee that mrs. wildeve is doing well of a girl, which was born punctually at one o'clock at noon, or a few minutes more or less; and 'tis said that expecting of this increase is what have kept 'em there since they came into their money." "and she is getting on well, you say?" "yes, sir. only mr. wildeve is twanky because 'tisn't a boy--that's what they say in the kitchen, but i was not supposed to notice that." "christian, now listen to me." "yes, sure, mr. yeobright." "did you see my mother the day before she died?" "no, i did not." yeobright's face expressed disappointment. "but i zeed her the morning of the same day she died." clym's look lighted up. "that's nearer still to my meaning," he said. "yes, i know 'twas the same day; for she said, 'i be going to see him, christian; so i shall not want any vegetables brought in for dinner.'" "see whom?" "see you. she was going to your house, you understand." yeobright regarded christian with intense surprise. "why did you never mention this?" he said. "are you sure it was my house she was coming to?" "o yes. i didn't mention it because i've never zeed you lately. and as she didn't get there it was all nought, and nothing to tell." "and i have been wondering why she should have walked in the heath on that hot day! well, did she say what she was coming for? it is a thing, christian, i am very anxious to know." "yes, mister clym. she didn't say it to me, though i think she did to one here and there." "do you know one person to whom she spoke of it?" "there is one man, please, sir, but i hope you won't mention my name to him, as i have seen him in strange places, particular in dreams. one night last summer he glared at me like famine and sword, and it made me feel so low that i didn't comb out my few hairs for two days. he was standing, as it might be, mister yeobright, in the middle of the path to mistover, and your mother came up, looking as pale--" "yes, when was that?" "last summer, in my dream." "pooh! who's the man?" "diggory, the reddleman. he called upon her and sat with her the evening before she set out to see you. i hadn't gone home from work when he came up to the gate." "i must see venn--i wish i had known it before," said clym anxiously. "i wonder why he has not come to tell me?" "he went out of egdon heath the next day, so would not be likely to know you wanted him." "christian," said clym, "you must go and find venn. i am otherwise engaged, or i would go myself. find him at once, and tell him i want to speak to him." "i am a good hand at hunting up folk by day," said christian, looking dubiously round at the declining light; "but as to nighttime, never is such a bad hand as i, mister yeobright." "search the heath when you will, so that you bring him soon. bring him tomorrow, if you can." christian then departed. the morrow came, but no venn. in the evening christian arrived, looking very weary. he had been searching all day, and had heard nothing of the reddleman. "inquire as much as you can tomorrow without neglecting your work," said yeobright. "don't come again till you have found him." the next day yeobright set out for the old house at blooms-end, which, with the garden, was now his own. his severe illness had hindered all preparations for his removal thither; but it had become necessary that he should go and overlook its contents, as administrator to his mother's little property; for which purpose he decided to pass the next night on the premises. he journeyed onward, not quickly or decisively, but in the slow walk of one who has been awakened from a stupefying sleep. it was early afternoon when he reached the valley. the expression of the place, the tone of the hour, were precisely those of many such occasions in days gone by; and these antecedent similarities fostered the illusion that she, who was there no longer, would come out to welcome him. the garden gate was locked and the shutters were closed, just as he himself had left them on the evening after the funeral. he unlocked the gate, and found that a spider had already constructed a large web, tying the door to the lintel, on the supposition that it was never to be opened again. when he had entered the house and flung back the shutters he set about his task of overhauling the cupboards and closets, burning papers, and considering how best to arrange the place for eustacia's reception, until such time as he might be in a position to carry out his long-delayed scheme, should that time ever arrive. as he surveyed the rooms he felt strongly disinclined for the alterations which would have to be made in the time-honoured furnishing of his parents and grandparents, to suit eustacia's modern ideas. the gaunt oak-cased clock, with the picture of the ascension on the door-panel and the miraculous draught of fishes on the base; his grandmother's corner cupboard with the glass door, through which the spotted china was visible; the dumb-waiter; the wooden tea-trays; the hanging fountain with the brass tap--whither would these venerable articles have to be banished? he noticed that the flowers in the window had died for want of water, and he placed them out upon the ledge, that they might be taken away. while thus engaged he heard footsteps on the gravel without, and somebody knocked at the door. yeobright opened it, and venn was standing before him. "good morning," said the reddleman. "is mrs. yeobright at home?" yeobright looked upon the ground. "then you have not seen christian or any of the egdon folks?" he said. "no. i have only just returned after a long stay away. i called here the day before i left." "and you have heard nothing?" "nothing." "my mother is--dead." "dead!" said venn mechanically. "her home now is where i shouldn't mind having mine." venn regarded him, and then said, "if i didn't see your face i could never believe your words. have you been ill?" "i had an illness." "well, the change! when i parted from her a month ago everything seemed to say that she was going to begin a new life." "and what seemed came true." "you say right, no doubt. trouble has taught you a deeper vein of talk than mine. all i meant was regarding her life here. she has died too soon." "perhaps through my living too long. i have had a bitter experience on that score this last month, diggory. but come in; i have been wanting to see you." he conducted the reddleman into the large room where the dancing had taken place the previous christmas; and they sat down in the settle together. "there's the cold fireplace, you see," said clym. "when that half-burnt log and those cinders were alight she was alive! little has been changed here yet. i can do nothing. my life creeps like a snail." "how came she to die?" said venn. yeobright gave him some particulars of her illness and death, and continued: "after this no kind of pain will ever seem more than an indisposition to me.--i began saying that i wanted to ask you something, but i stray from subjects like a drunken man. i am anxious to know what my mother said to you when she last saw you. you talked with her a long time, i think?" "i talked with her more than half an hour." "about me?" "yes. and it must have been on account of what we said that she was on the heath. without question she was coming to see you." "but why should she come to see me if she felt so bitterly against me? there's the mystery." "yet i know she quite forgave 'ee." "but, diggory--would a woman, who had quite forgiven her son, say, when she felt herself ill on the way to his house, that she was broken-hearted because of his ill-usage? never!" "what i know is that she didn't blame you at all. she blamed herself for what had happened, only herself. i had it from her own lips." "you had it from her lips that i had not ill-treated her; and at the same time another had it from her lips that i had ill-treated her? my mother was no impulsive woman who changed her opinion every hour without reason. how can it be, venn, that she should have told such different stories in close succession?" "i cannot say. it is certainly odd, when she had forgiven you, and had forgiven your wife, and was going to see ye on purpose to make friends." "if there was one thing wanting to bewilder me it was this incomprehensible thing!... diggory, if we, who remain alive, were only allowed to hold conversation with the dead--just once, a bare minute, even through a screen of iron bars, as with persons in prison--what we might learn! how many who now ride smiling would hide their heads! and this mystery--i should then be at the bottom of it at once. but the grave has for ever shut her in; and how shall it be found out now?" no reply was returned by his companion, since none could be given; and when venn left, a few minutes later, clym had passed from the dullness of sorrow to the fluctuation of carking incertitude. he continued in the same state all the afternoon. a bed was made up for him in the same house by a neighbour, that he might not have to return again the next day; and when he retired to rest in the deserted place it was only to remain awake hour after hour thinking the same thoughts. how to discover a solution to this riddle of death seemed a query of more importance than highest problems of the living. there was housed in his memory a vivid picture of the face of a little boy as he entered the hovel where clym's mother lay. the round eyes, eager gaze, the piping voice which enunciated the words, had operated like stilettos on his brain. a visit to the boy suggested itself as a means of gleaning new particulars; though it might be quite unproductive. to probe a child's mind after the lapse of six weeks, not for facts which the child had seen and understood, but to get at those which were in their nature beyond him, did not promise much; yet when every obvious channel is blocked we grope towards the small and obscure. there was nothing else left to do; after that he would allow the enigma to drop into the abyss of undiscoverable things. it was about daybreak when he had reached this decision, and he at once arose. he locked up the house and went out into the green patch which merged in heather further on. in front of the white garden-palings the path branched into three like a broad-arrow. the road to the right led to the quiet woman and its neighbourhood; the middle track led to mistover knap; the left-hand track led over the hill to another part of mistover, where the child lived. on inclining into the latter path yeobright felt a creeping chilliness, familiar enough to most people, and probably caused by the unsunned morning air. in after days he thought of it as a thing of singular significance. when yeobright reached the cottage of susan nunsuch, the mother of the boy he sought, he found that the inmates were not yet astir. but in upland hamlets the transition from a-bed to abroad is surprisingly swift and easy. there no dense partition of yawns and toilets divides humanity by night from humanity by day. yeobright tapped at the upper window-sill, which he could reach with his walking-stick; and in three or four minutes the woman came down. it was not till this moment that clym recollected her to be the person who had behaved so barbarously to eustacia. it partly explained the insuavity with which the woman greeted him. moreover, the boy had been ailing again; and susan now, as ever since the night when he had been pressed into eustacia's service at the bonfire, attributed his indispositions to eustacia's influence as a witch. it was one of those sentiments which lurk like moles underneath the visible surface of manners, and may have been kept alive by eustacia's entreaty to the captain, at the time that he had intended to prosecute susan for the pricking in church, to let the matter drop; which he accordingly had done. yeobright overcame his repugnance, for susan had at least borne his mother no ill-will. he asked kindly for the boy; but her manner did not improve. "i wish to see him," continued yeobright, with some hesitation; "to ask him if he remembers anything more of his walk with my mother than what he has previously told." she regarded him in a peculiar and criticizing manner. to anybody but a half-blind man it would have said, "you want another of the knocks which have already laid you so low." she called the boy downstairs, asked clym to sit down on a stool, and continued, "now, johnny, tell mr. yeobright anything you can call to mind." "you have not forgotten how you walked with the poor lady on that hot day?" said clym. "no," said the boy. "and what she said to you?" the boy repeated the exact words he had used on entering the hut. yeobright rested his elbow on the table and shaded his face with his hand; and the mother looked as if she wondered how a man could want more of what had stung him so deeply. "she was going to alderworth when you first met her?" "no; she was coming away." "that can't be." "yes; she walked along with me. i was coming away too." "then where did you first see her?" "at your house." "attend, and speak the truth!" said clym sternly. "yes, sir; at your house was where i seed her first." clym started up, and susan smiled in an expectant way which did not embellish her face; it seemed to mean, "something sinister is coming!" "what did she do at my house?" "she went and sat under the trees at the devil's bellows." "good god! this is all news to me!" "you never told me this before?" said susan. "no, mother; because i didn't like to tell 'ee i had been so far. i was picking black-hearts, and went further than i meant." "what did she do then?" said yeobright. "looked at a man who came up and went into your house." "that was myself--a furze-cutter, with brambles in his hand." "no; 'twas not you. 'twas a gentleman. you had gone in afore." "who was he?" "i don't know." "now tell me what happened next." "the poor lady went and knocked at your door, and the lady with black hair looked out of the side window at her." the boy's mother turned to clym and said, "this is something you didn't expect?" yeobright took no more notice of her than if he had been of stone. "go on, go on," he said hoarsely to the boy. "and when she saw the young lady look out of the window the old lady knocked again; and when nobody came she took up the furze-hook and looked at it, and put it down again, and then she looked at the faggot-bonds; and then she went away, and walked across to me, and blowed her breath very hard, like this. we walked on together, she and i, and i talked to her and she talked to me a bit, but not much, because she couldn't blow her breath." "o!" murmured clym, in a low tone, and bowed his head. "let's have more," he said. "she couldn't talk much, and she couldn't walk; and her face was, o so queer!" "how was her face?" "like yours is now." the woman looked at yeobright, and beheld him colourless, in a cold sweat. "isn't there meaning in it?" she said stealthily. "what do you think of her now?" "silence!" said clym fiercely. and, turning to the boy, "and then you left her to die?" "no," said the woman, quickly and angrily. "he did not leave her to die! she sent him away. whoever says he forsook her says what's not true." "trouble no more about that," answered clym, with a quivering mouth. "what he did is a trifle in comparison with what he saw. door kept shut, did you say? kept shut, she looking out of window? good heart of god!--what does it mean?" the child shrank away from the gaze of his questioner. "he said so," answered the mother, "and johnny's a god-fearing boy and tells no lies." "'cast off by my son!' no, by my best life, dear mother, it is not so! but by your son's, your son's--may all murderesses get the torment they deserve!" with these words yeobright went forth from the little dwelling. the pupils of his eyes, fixed steadfastly on blankness, were vaguely lit with an icy shine; his mouth had passed into the phase more or less imaginatively rendered in studies of oedipus. the strangest deeds were possible to his mood. but they were not possible to his situation. instead of there being before him the pale face of eustacia, and a masculine shape unknown, there was only the imperturbable countenance of the heath, which, having defied the cataclysmal onsets of centuries, reduced to insignificance by its seamed and antique features the wildest turmoil of a single man. iii eustacia dresses herself on a black morning a consciousness of a vast impassivity in all which lay around him took possession even of yeobright in his wild walk towards alderworth. he had once before felt in his own person this overpowering of the fervid by the inanimate; but then it had tended to enervate a passion far sweeter than that which at present pervaded him. it was once when he stood parting from eustacia in the moist still levels beyond the hills. but dismissing all this he went onward home, and came to the front of his house. the blinds of eustacia's bedroom were still closely drawn, for she was no early riser. all the life visible was in the shape of a solitary thrush cracking a small snail upon the door-stone for his breakfast, and his tapping seemed a loud noise in the general silence which prevailed; but on going to the door clym found it unfastened, the young girl who attended upon eustacia being astir in the back part of the premises. yeobright entered and went straight to his wife's room. the noise of his arrival must have aroused her, for when he opened the door she was standing before the looking-glass in her night-dress, the ends of her hair gathered into one hand, with which she was coiling the whole mass round her head, previous to beginning toilette operations. she was not a woman given to speaking first at a meeting, and she allowed clym to walk across in silence, without turning her head. he came behind her, and she saw his face in the glass. it was ashy, haggard, and terrible. instead of starting towards him in sorrowful surprise, as even eustacia, undemonstrative wife as she was, would have done in days before she burdened herself with a secret, she remained motionless, looking at him in the glass. and while she looked the carmine flush with which warmth and sound sleep had suffused her cheeks and neck dissolved from view, and the deathlike pallor in his face flew across into hers. he was close enough to see this, and the sight instigated his tongue. "you know what is the matter," he said huskily. "i see it in your face." her hand relinquished the rope of hair and dropped to her side, and the pile of tresses, no longer supported, fell from the crown of her head about her shoulders and over the white night-gown. she made no reply. "speak to me," said yeobright peremptorily. the blanching process did not cease in her, and her lips now became as white as her face. she turned to him and said, "yes, clym, i'll speak to you. why do you return so early? can i do anything for you?" "yes, you can listen to me. it seems that my wife is not very well?" "why?" "your face, my dear; your face. or perhaps it is the pale morning light which takes your colour away? now i am going to reveal a secret to you. ha-ha!" "o, that is ghastly!" "what?" "your laugh." "there's reason for ghastliness. eustacia, you have held my happiness in the hollow of your hand, and like a devil you have dashed it down!" she started back from the dressing-table, retreated a few steps from him, and looked him in the face. "ah! you think to frighten me," she said, with a slight laugh. "is it worth while? i am undefended, and alone." "how extraordinary!" "what do you mean?" "as there is ample time i will tell you, though you know well enough. i mean that it is extraordinary that you should be alone in my absence. tell me, now, where is he who was with you on the afternoon of the thirty-first of august? under the bed? up the chimney?" a shudder overcame her and shook the light fabric of her night-dress throughout. "i do not remember dates so exactly," she said. "i cannot recollect that anybody was with me besides yourself." "the day i mean," said yeobright, his voice growing louder and harsher, "was the day you shut the door against my mother and killed her. o, it is too much--too bad!" he leant over the footpiece of the bedstead for a few moments, with his back towards her; then rising again: "tell me, tell me! tell me--do you hear?" he cried, rushing up to her and seizing her by the loose folds of her sleeve. the superstratum of timidity which often overlies those who are daring and defiant at heart had been passed through, and the mettlesome substance of the woman was reached. the red blood inundated her face, previously so pale. "what are you going to do?" she said in a low voice, regarding him with a proud smile. "you will not alarm me by holding on so; but it would be a pity to tear my sleeve." instead of letting go he drew her closer to him. "tell me the particulars of--my mother's death," he said in a hard, panting whisper; "or--i'll--i'll--" "clym," she answered slowly, "do you think you dare do anything to me that i dare not bear? but before you strike me listen. you will get nothing from me by a blow, even though it should kill me, as it probably will. but perhaps you do not wish me to speak--killing may be all you mean?" "kill you! do you expect it?" "i do." "why?" "no less degree of rage against me will match your previous grief for her." "phew--i shall not kill you," he said contemptuously, as if under a sudden change of purpose. "i did think of it; but--i shall not. that would be making a martyr of you, and sending you to where she is; and i would keep you away from her till the universe come to an end, if i could." "i almost wish you would kill me," said she with gloomy bitterness. "it is with no strong desire, i assure you, that i play the part i have lately played on earth. you are no blessing, my husband." "you shut the door--you looked out of the window upon her--you had a man in the house with you--you sent her away to die. the inhumanity--the treachery--i will not touch you--stand away from me--and confess every word!" "never! i'll hold my tongue like the very death that i don't mind meeting, even though i can clear myself of half you believe by speaking. yes. i will! who of any dignity would take the trouble to clear cobwebs from a wild man's mind after such language as this? no; let him go on, and think his narrow thoughts, and run his head into the mire. i have other cares." "'tis too much--but i must spare you." "poor charity." "by my wretched soul you sting me, eustacia! i can keep it up, and hotly too. now, then, madam, tell me his name!" "never, i am resolved." "how often does he write to you? where does he put his letters--when does he meet you? ah, his letters! do you tell me his name?" "i do not." "then i'll find it myself." his eyes had fallen upon a small desk that stood near, on which she was accustomed to write her letters. he went to it. it was locked. "unlock this!" "you have no right to say it. that's mine." without another word he seized the desk and dashed it to the floor. the hinge burst open, and a number of letters tumbled out. "stay!" said eustacia, stepping before him with more excitement than she had hitherto shown. "come, come! stand away! i must see them." she looked at the letters as they lay, checked her feeling, and moved indifferently aside; when he gathered them up, and examined them. by no stretch of meaning could any but a harmless construction be placed upon a single one of the letters themselves. the solitary exception was an empty envelope directed to her, and the handwriting was wildeve's. yeobright held it up. eustacia was doggedly silent. "can you read, madam? look at this envelope. doubtless we shall find more soon, and what was inside them. i shall no doubt be gratified by learning in good time what a well-finished and full-blown adept in a certain trade my lady is." "do you say it to me--do you?" she gasped. he searched further, but found nothing more. "what was in this letter?" he said. "ask the writer. am i your hound that you should talk to me in this way?" "do you brave me? do you stand me out, mistress? answer. don't look at me with those eyes as if you would bewitch me again! sooner than that i die. you refuse to answer?" "i wouldn't tell you after this, if i were as innocent as the sweetest babe in heaven!" "which you are not." "certainly i am not absolutely," she replied. "i have not done what you suppose; but if to have done no harm at all is the only innocence recognized, i am beyond forgiveness. but i require no help from your conscience." "you can resist, and resist again! instead of hating you i could, i think, mourn for and pity you, if you were contrite, and would confess all. forgive you i never can. i don't speak of your lover--i will give you the benefit of the doubt in that matter, for it only affects me personally. but the other: had you half-killed me, had it been that you wilfully took the sight away from these feeble eyes of mine, i could have forgiven you. but that's too much for nature!" "say no more. i will do without your pity. but i would have saved you from uttering what you will regret." "i am going away now. i shall leave you." "you need not go, as i am going myself. you will keep just as far away from me by staying here." "call her to mind--think of her--what goodness there was in her: it showed in every line of her face! most women, even when but slightly annoyed, show a flicker of evil in some curl of the mouth or some corner of the cheek; but as for her, never in her angriest moments was there anything malicious in her look. she was angered quickly, but she forgave just as readily, and underneath her pride there was the meekness of a child. what came of it?--what cared you? you hated her just as she was learning to love you. o! couldn't you see what was best for you, but must bring a curse upon me, and agony and death upon her, by doing that cruel deed! what was the fellow's name who was keeping you company and causing you to add cruelty to her to your wrong to me? was it wildeve? was it poor thomasin's husband? heaven, what wickedness! lost your voice, have you? it is natural after detection of that most noble trick... eustacia, didn't any tender thought of your own mother lead you to think of being gentle to mine at such a time of weariness? did not one grain of pity enter your heart as she turned away? think what a vast opportunity was then lost of beginning a forgiving and honest course. why did not you kick him out, and let her in, and say i'll be an honest wife and a noble woman from this hour? had i told you to go and quench eternally our last flickering chance of happiness here you could have done no worse. well, she's asleep now; and have you a hundred gallants, neither they nor you can insult her any more." "you exaggerate fearfully," she said in a faint, weary voice; "but i cannot enter into my defence--it is not worth doing. you are nothing to me in future, and the past side of the story may as well remain untold. i have lost all through you, but i have not complained. your blunders and misfortunes may have been a sorrow to you, but they have been a wrong to me. all persons of refinement have been scared away from me since i sank into the mire of marriage. is this your cherishing--to put me into a hut like this, and keep me like the wife of a hind? you deceived me--not by words, but by appearances, which are less seen through than words. but the place will serve as well as any other--as somewhere to pass from--into my grave." her words were smothered in her throat, and her head drooped down. "i don't know what you mean by that. am i the cause of your sin?" (eustacia made a trembling motion towards him.) "what, you can begin to shed tears and offer me your hand? good god! can you? no, not i. i'll not commit the fault of taking that." (the hand she had offered dropped nervelessly, but the tears continued flowing.) "well, yes, i'll take it, if only for the sake of my own foolish kisses that were wasted there before i knew what i cherished. how bewitched i was! how could there be any good in a woman that everybody spoke ill of?" "o, o, o!" she cried, breaking down at last; and, shaking with sobs which choked her, she sank upon her knees. "o, will you have done! o, you are too relentless--there's a limit to the cruelty of savages! i have held out long--but you crush me down. i beg for mercy--i cannot bear this any longer--it is inhuman to go further with this! if i had--killed your--mother with my own hand--i should not deserve such a scourging to the bone as this. o, o! god have mercy upon a miserable woman!... you have beaten me in this game--i beg you to stay your hand in pity!... i confess that i--wilfully did not undo the door the first time she knocked--but--i--should have unfastened it the second--if i had not thought you had gone to do it yourself. when i found you had not i opened it, but she was gone. that's the extent of my crime--towards her. best natures commit bad faults sometimes, don't they?--i think they do. now i will leave you--for ever and ever!" "tell all, and i will pity you. was the man in the house with you wildeve?" "i cannot tell," she said desperately through her sobbing. "don't insist further--i cannot tell. i am going from this house. we cannot both stay here." "you need not go: i will go. you can stay here." "no, i will dress, and then i will go." "where?" "where i came from, or elsewhere." she hastily dressed herself, yeobright moodily walking up and down the room the whole of the time. at last all her things were on. her little hands quivered so violently as she held them to her chin to fasten her bonnet that she could not tie the strings, and after a few moments she relinquished the attempt. seeing this he moved forward and said, "let me tie them." she assented in silence, and lifted her chin. for once at least in her life she was totally oblivious of the charm of her attitude. but he was not, and he turned his eyes aside, that he might not be tempted to softness. the strings were tied; she turned from him. "do you still prefer going away yourself to my leaving you?" he inquired again. "i do." "very well--let it be. and when you will confess to the man i may pity you." she flung her shawl about her and went downstairs, leaving him standing in the room. eustacia had not long been gone when there came a knock at the door of the bedroom; and yeobright said, "well?" it was the servant; and she replied, "somebody from mrs. wildeve's have called to tell 'ee that the mis'ess and the baby are getting on wonderful well, and the baby's name is to be eustacia clementine." and the girl retired. "what a mockery!" said clym. "this unhappy marriage of mine to be perpetuated in that child's name!" iv the ministrations of a half-forgotten one eustacia's journey was at first as vague in direction as that of thistledown on the wind. she did not know what to do. she wished it had been night instead of morning, that she might at least have borne her misery without the possibility of being seen. tracing mile after mile along between the dying ferns and the wet white spiders' webs, she at length turned her steps towards her grandfather's house. she found the front door closed and locked. mechanically she went round to the end where the stable was, and on looking in at the stable-door she saw charley standing within. "captain vye is not at home?" she said. "no, ma'am," said the lad in a flutter of feeling; "he's gone to weatherbury, and won't be home till night. and the servant is gone home for a holiday. so the house is locked up." eustacia's face was not visible to charley as she stood at the doorway, her back being to the sky, and the stable but indifferently lighted; but the wildness of her manner arrested his attention. she turned and walked away across the enclosure to the gate, and was hidden by the bank. when she had disappeared charley, with misgiving in his eyes, slowly came from the stable door, and going to another point in the bank he looked over. eustacia was leaning against it on the outside, her face covered with her hands, and her head pressing the dewy heather which bearded the bank's outer side. she appeared to be utterly indifferent to the circumstance that her bonnet, hair, and garments were becoming wet and disarranged by the moisture of her cold, harsh pillow. clearly something was wrong. charley had always regarded eustacia as eustacia had regarded clym when she first beheld him--as a romantic and sweet vision, scarcely incarnate. he had been so shut off from her by the dignity of her look and the pride of her speech, except at that one blissful interval when he was allowed to hold her hand, that he had hardly deemed her a woman, wingless and earthly, subject to household conditions and domestic jars. the inner details of her life he had only conjectured. she had been a lovely wonder, predestined to an orbit in which the whole of his own was but a point; and this sight of her leaning like a helpless, despairing creature against a wild wet bank filled him with an amazed horror. he could no longer remain where he was. leaping over, he came up, touched her with his finger, and said tenderly, "you are poorly, ma'am. what can i do?" eustacia started up, and said, "ah, charley--you have followed me. you did not think when i left home in the summer that i should come back like this!" "i did not, dear ma'am. can i help you now?" "i am afraid not. i wish i could get into the house. i feel giddy--that's all." "lean on my arm, ma'am, till we get to the porch, and i will try to open the door." he supported her to the porch, and there depositing her on a seat hastened to the back, climbed to a window by the help of a ladder, and descending inside opened the door. next he assisted her into the room, where there was an old-fashioned horsehair settee as large as a donkey-waggon. she lay down here, and charley covered her with a cloak he found in the hall. "shall i get you something to eat and drink?" he said. "if you please, charley. but i suppose there is no fire?" "i can light it, ma'am." he vanished, and she heard a splitting of wood and a blowing of bellows; and presently he returned, saying, "i have lighted a fire in the kitchen, and now i'll light one here." he lit the fire, eustacia dreamily observing him from her couch. when it was blazing up he said, "shall i wheel you round in front of it, ma'am, as the morning is chilly?" "yes, if you like." "shall i go and bring the victuals now?" "yes, do," she murmured languidly. when he had gone, and the dull sounds occasionally reached her ears of his movements in the kitchen, she forgot where she was, and had for a moment to consider by an effort what the sounds meant. after an interval which seemed short to her whose thoughts were elsewhere, he came in with a tray on which steamed tea and toast, though it was nearly lunch-time. "place it on the table," she said. "i shall be ready soon." he did so, and retired to the door; when, however, he perceived that she did not move he came back a few steps. "let me hold it to you, if you don't wish to get up," said charley. he brought the tray to the front of the couch, where he knelt down, adding, "i will hold it for you." eustacia sat up and poured out a cup of tea. "you are very kind to me, charley," she murmured as she sipped. "well, i ought to be," said he diffidently, taking great trouble not to rest his eyes upon her, though this was their only natural position, eustacia being immediately before him. "you have been kind to me." "how have i?" said eustacia. "you let me hold your hand when you were a maiden at home." "ah, so i did. why did i do that? my mind is lost--it had to do with the mumming, had it not?" "yes, you wanted to go in my place." "i remember. i do indeed remember--too well!" she again became utterly downcast; and charley, seeing that she was not going to eat or drink any more, took away the tray. afterwards he occasionally came in to see if the fire was burning, to ask her if she wanted anything, to tell her that the wind had shifted from south to west, to ask her if she would like him to gather her some blackberries; to all which inquiries she replied in the negative or with indifference. she remained on the settee some time longer, when she aroused herself and went upstairs. the room in which she had formerly slept still remained much as she had left it, and the recollection that this forced upon her of her own greatly changed and infinitely worsened situation again set on her face the undetermined and formless misery which it had worn on her first arrival. she peeped into her grandfather's room, through which the fresh autumn air was blowing from the open window. her eye was arrested by what was a familiar sight enough, though it broke upon her now with a new significance. it was a brace of pistols, hanging near the head of her grandfather's bed, which he always kept there loaded, as a precaution against possible burglars, the house being very lonely. eustacia regarded them long, as if they were the page of a book in which she read a new and a strange matter. quickly, like one afraid of herself, she returned downstairs and stood in deep thought. "if i could only do it!" she said. "it would be doing much good to myself and all connected with me, and no harm to a single one." the idea seemed to gather force within her, and she remained in a fixed attitude nearly ten minutes, when a certain finality was expressed in her gaze, and no longer the blankness of indecision. she turned and went up the second time--softly and stealthily now--and entered her grandfather's room, her eyes at once seeking the head of the bed. the pistols were gone. the instant quashing of her purpose by their absence affected her brain as a sudden vacuum affects the body: she nearly fainted. who had done this? there was only one person on the premises besides herself. eustacia involuntarily turned to the open window which overlooked the garden as far as the bank that bounded it. on the summit of the latter stood charley, sufficiently elevated by its height to see into the room. his gaze was directed eagerly and solicitously upon her. she went downstairs to the door and beckoned to him. "you have taken them away?" "yes, ma'am." "why did you do it?" "i saw you looking at them too long." "what has that to do with it?" "you have been heart-broken all the morning, as if you did not want to live." "well?" "and i could not bear to leave them in your way. there was meaning in your look at them." "where are they now?" "locked up." "where?" "in the stable." "give them to me." "no, ma'am." "you refuse?" "i do. i care too much for you to give 'em up." she turned aside, her face for the first time softening from the stony immobility of the earlier day, and the corners of her mouth resuming something of that delicacy of cut which was always lost in her moments of despair. at last she confronted him again. "why should i not die if i wish?" she said tremulously. "i have made a bad bargain with life, and i am weary of it--weary. and now you have hindered my escape. o, why did you, charley! what makes death painful except the thought of others' grief?--and that is absent in my case, for not a sigh would follow me!" "ah, it is trouble that has done this! i wish in my very soul that he who brought it about might die and rot, even if 'tis transportation to say it!" "charley, no more of that. what do you mean to do about this you have seen?" "keep it close as night, if you promise not to think of it again." "you need not fear. the moment has passed. i promise." she then went away, entered the house, and lay down. later in the afternoon her grandfather returned. he was about to question her categorically; but on looking at her he withheld his words. "yes, it is too bad to talk of," she slowly returned in answer to his glance. "can my old room be got ready for me tonight, grandfather? i shall want to occupy it again." he did not ask what it all meant, or why she had left her husband, but ordered the room to be prepared. v an old move inadvertently repeated charley's attentions to his former mistress were unbounded. the only solace to his own trouble lay in his attempts to relieve hers. hour after hour he considered her wants: he thought of her presence there with a sort of gratitude, and, while uttering imprecations on the cause of her unhappiness, in some measure blessed the result. perhaps she would always remain there, he thought, and then he would be as happy as he had been before. his dread was lest she should think fit to return to alderworth, and in that dread his eyes, with all the inquisitiveness of affection, frequently sought her face when she was not observing him, as he would have watched the head of a stockdove to learn if it contemplated flight. having once really succoured her, and possibly preserved her from the rashest of acts, he mentally assumed in addition a guardian's responsibility for her welfare. for this reason he busily endeavoured to provide her with pleasant distractions, bringing home curious objects which he found in the heath, such as white trumpet-shaped mosses, red-headed lichens, stone arrow-heads used by the old tribes on egdon, and faceted crystals from the hollows of flints. these he deposited on the premises in such positions that she should see them as if by accident. a week passed, eustacia never going out of the house. then she walked into the enclosed plot and looked through her grandfather's spy-glass, as she had been in the habit of doing before her marriage. one day she saw, at a place where the high-road crossed the distant valley, a heavily laden waggon passing along. it was piled with household furniture. she looked again and again, and recognized it to be her own. in the evening her grandfather came indoors with a rumour that yeobright had removed that day from alderworth to the old house at blooms-end. on another occasion when reconnoitring thus she beheld two female figures walking in the vale. the day was fine and clear; and the persons not being more than half a mile off she could see their every detail with the telescope. the woman walking in front carried a white bundle in her arms, from one end of which hung a long appendage of drapery; and when the walkers turned, so that the sun fell more directly upon them, eustacia could see that the object was a baby. she called charley, and asked him if he knew who they were, though she well guessed. "mrs. wildeve and the nurse-girl," said charley. "the nurse is carrying the baby?" said eustacia. "no, 'tis mrs. wildeve carrying that," he answered, "and the nurse walks behind carrying nothing." the lad was in good spirits that day, for the fifth of november had again come round, and he was planning yet another scheme to divert her from her too absorbing thoughts. for two successive years his mistress had seemed to take pleasure in lighting a bonfire on the bank overlooking the valley; but this year she had apparently quite forgotten the day and the customary deed. he was careful not to remind her, and went on with his secret preparations for a cheerful surprise, the more zealously that he had been absent last time and unable to assist. at every vacant minute he hastened to gather furze-stumps, thorn-tree roots, and other solid materials from the adjacent slopes, hiding them from cursory view. the evening came, and eustacia was still seemingly unconscious of the anniversary. she had gone indoors after her survey through the glass, and had not been visible since. as soon as it was quite dark charley began to build the bonfire, choosing precisely that spot on the bank which eustacia had chosen at previous times. when all the surrounding bonfires had burst into existence charley kindled his, and arranged its fuel so that it should not require tending for some time. he then went back to the house, and lingered round the door and windows till she should by some means or other learn of his achievement and come out to witness it. but the shutters were closed, the door remained shut, and no heed whatever seemed to be taken of his performance. not liking to call her he went back and replenished the fire, continuing to do this for more than half an hour. it was not till his stock of fuel had greatly diminished that he went to the back door and sent in to beg that mrs. yeobright would open the window-shutters and see the sight outside. eustacia, who had been sitting listlessly in the parlour, started up at the intelligence and flung open the shutters. facing her on the bank blazed the fire, which at once sent a ruddy glare into the room where she was, and overpowered the candles. "well done, charley!" said captain vye from the chimney-corner. "but i hope it is not my wood that he's burning... ah, it was this time last year that i met with that man venn, bringing home thomasin yeobright--to be sure it was! well, who would have thought that girl's troubles would have ended so well? what a snipe you were in that matter, eustacia! has your husband written to you yet?" "no," said eustacia, looking vaguely through the window at the fire, which just then so much engaged her mind that she did not resent her grandfather's blunt opinion. she could see charley's form on the bank, shovelling and stirring the fire; and there flashed upon her imagination some other form which that fire might call up. she left the room, put on her garden-bonnet and cloak, and went out. reaching the bank, she looked over with a wild curiosity and misgiving, when charley said to her, with a pleased sense of himself, "i made it o' purpose for you, ma'am." "thank you," she said hastily. "but i wish you to put it out now." "it will soon burn down," said charley, rather disappointed. "is it not a pity to knock it out?" "i don't know," she musingly answered. they stood in silence, broken only by the crackling of the flames, till charley, perceiving that she did not want to talk to him, moved reluctantly away. eustacia remained within the bank looking at the fire, intending to go indoors, yet lingering still. had she not by her situation been inclined to hold in indifference all things honoured of the gods and of men she would probably have come away. but her state was so hopeless that she could play with it. to have lost is less disturbing than to wonder if we may possibly have won: and eustacia could now, like other people at such a stage, take a standing-point outside herself, observe herself as a disinterested spectator, and think what a sport for heaven this woman eustacia was. while she stood she heard a sound. it was the splash of a stone in the pond. had eustacia received the stone full in the bosom her heart could not have given a more decided thump. she had thought of the possibility of such a signal in answer to that which had been unwittingly given by charley; but she had not expected it yet. how prompt wildeve was! yet how could he think her capable of deliberately wishing to renew their assignations now? an impulse to leave the spot, a desire to stay, struggled within her; and the desire held its own. more than that it did not do, for she refrained even from ascending the bank and looking over. she remained motionless, not disturbing a muscle of her face or raising her eyes; for were she to turn up her face the fire on the bank would shine upon it, and wildeve might be looking down. there was a second splash into the pond. why did he stay so long without advancing and looking over? curiosity had its way: she ascended one or two of the earth-steps in the bank and glanced out. wildeve was before her. he had come forward after throwing the last pebble, and the fire now shone into each of their faces from the bank stretching breast-high between them. "i did not light it!" cried eustacia quickly. "it was lit without my knowledge. don't, don't come over to me!" "why have you been living here all these days without telling me? you have left your home. i fear i am something to blame for this?" "i did not let in his mother; that's how it is!" "you do not deserve what you have got, eustacia; you are in great misery; i see it in your eyes, your mouth, and all over you. my poor, poor girl!" he stepped over the bank. "you are beyond everything unhappy!" "no, no; not exactly--" "it has been pushed too far--it is killing you: i do think it!" her usually quiet breathing had grown quicker with his words. "i--i--" she began, and then burst into quivering sobs, shaken to the very heart by the unexpected voice of pity--a sentiment whose existence in relation to herself she had almost forgotten. this outbreak of weeping took eustacia herself so much by surprise that she could not leave off, and she turned aside from him in some shame, though turning hid nothing from him. she sobbed on desperately; then the outpour lessened, and she became quieter. wildeve had resisted the impulse to clasp her, and stood without speaking. "are you not ashamed of me, who used never to be a crying animal?" she asked in a weak whisper as she wiped her eyes. "why didn't you go away? i wish you had not seen quite all that; it reveals too much by half." "you might have wished it, because it makes me as sad as you," he said with emotion and deference. "as for revealing--the word is impossible between us two." "i did not send for you--don't forget it, damon; i am in pain, but i did not send for you! as a wife, at least, i've been straight." "never mind--i came. o, eustacia, forgive me for the harm i have done you in these two past years! i see more and more that i have been your ruin." "not you. this place i live in." "ah, your generosity may naturally make you say that. but i am the culprit. i should either have done more or nothing at all." "in what way?" "i ought never to have hunted you out, or, having done it, i ought to have persisted in retaining you. but of course i have no right to talk of that now. i will only ask this: can i do anything for you? is there anything on the face of the earth that a man can do to make you happier than you are at present? if there is, i will do it. you may command me, eustacia, to the limit of my influence; and don't forget that i am richer now. surely something can be done to save you from this! such a rare plant in such a wild place it grieves me to see. do you want anything bought? do you want to go anywhere? do you want to escape the place altogether? only say it, and i'll do anything to put an end to those tears, which but for me would never have been at all." "we are each married to another person," she said faintly; "and assistance from you would have an evil sound--after--after--" "well, there's no preventing slanderers from having their fill at any time; but you need not be afraid. whatever i may feel i promise you on my word of honour never to speak to you about--or act upon--until you say i may. i know my duty to thomasin quite as well as i know my duty to you as a woman unfairly treated. what shall i assist you in?" "in getting away from here." "where do you wish to go to?" "i have a place in my mind. if you could help me as far as budmouth i can do all the rest. steamers sail from there across the channel, and so i can get to paris, where i want to be. yes," she pleaded earnestly, "help me to get to budmouth harbour without my grandfather's or my husband's knowledge, and i can do all the rest." "will it be safe to leave you there alone?" "yes, yes. i know budmouth well." "shall i go with you? i am rich now." she was silent. "say yes, sweet!" she was silent still. "well, let me know when you wish to go. we shall be at our present house till december; after that we remove to casterbridge. command me in anything till that time." "i will think of this," she said hurriedly. "whether i can honestly make use of you as a friend, or must close with you as a lover--that is what i must ask myself. if i wish to go and decide to accept your company i will signal to you some evening at eight o'clock punctually, and this will mean that you are to be ready with a horse and trap at twelve o'clock the same night to drive me to budmouth harbour in time for the morning boat." "i will look out every night at eight, and no signal shall escape me." "now please go away. if i decide on this escape i can only meet you once more unless--i cannot go without you. go--i cannot bear it longer. go--go!" wildeve slowly went up the steps and descended into the darkness on the other side; and as he walked he glanced back, till the bank blotted out her form from his further view. vi thomasin argues with her cousin, and he writes a letter yeobright was at this time at blooms-end, hoping that eustacia would return to him. the removal of furniture had been accomplished only that day, though clym had lived in the old house for more than a week. he had spent the time in working about the premises, sweeping leaves from the garden-paths, cutting dead stalks from the flower-beds, and nailing up creepers which had been displaced by the autumn winds. he took no particular pleasure in these deeds, but they formed a screen between himself and despair. moreover, it had become a religion with him to preserve in good condition all that had lapsed from his mother's hands to his own. during these operations he was constantly on the watch for eustacia. that there should be no mistake about her knowing where to find him he had ordered a notice board to be affixed to the garden gate at alderworth, signifying in white letters whither he had removed. when a leaf floated to the earth he turned his head, thinking it might be her footfall. a bird searching for worms in the mould of the flower-beds sounded like her hand on the latch of the gate; and at dusk, when soft, strange ventriloquisms came from holes in the ground, hollow stalks, curled dead leaves, and other crannies wherein breezes, worms, and insects can work their will, he fancied that they were eustacia, standing without and breathing wishes of reconciliation. up to this hour he had persevered in his resolve not to invite her back. at the same time the severity with which he had treated her lulled the sharpness of his regret for his mother, and awoke some of his old solicitude for his mother's supplanter. harsh feelings produce harsh usage, and this by reaction quenches the sentiments that gave it birth. the more he reflected the more he softened. but to look upon his wife as innocence in distress was impossible, though he could ask himself whether he had given her quite time enough--if he had not come a little too suddenly upon her on that sombre morning. now that the first flush of his anger had paled he was disinclined to ascribe to her more than an indiscreet friendship with wildeve, for there had not appeared in her manner the signs of dishonour. and this once admitted, an absolutely dark interpretation of her act towards his mother was no longer forced upon him. on the evening of the fifth november his thoughts of eustacia were intense. echoes from those past times when they had exchanged tender words all the day long came like the diffused murmur of a seashore left miles behind. "surely," he said, "she might have brought herself to communicate with me before now, and confess honestly what wildeve was to her." instead of remaining at home that night he determined to go and see thomasin and her husband. if he found opportunity he would allude to the cause of the separation between eustacia and himself, keeping silence, however, on the fact that there was a third person in his house when his mother was turned away. if it proved that wildeve was innocently there he would doubtless openly mention it. if he were there with unjust intentions wildeve, being a man of quick feeling, might possibly say something to reveal the extent to which eustacia was compromised. but on reaching his cousin's house he found that only thomasin was at home, wildeve being at that time on his way towards the bonfire innocently lit by charley at mistover. thomasin then, as always, was glad to see clym, and took him to inspect the sleeping baby, carefully screening the candlelight from the infant's eyes with her hand. "tamsin, have you heard that eustacia is not with me now?" he said when they had sat down again. "no," said thomasin, alarmed. "and not that i have left alderworth?" "no. i never hear tidings from alderworth unless you bring them. what is the matter?" clym in a disturbed voice related to her his visit to susan nunsuch's boy, the revelation he had made, and what had resulted from his charging eustacia with having wilfully and heartlessly done the deed. he suppressed all mention of wildeve's presence with her. "all this, and i not knowing it!" murmured thomasin in an awestruck tone. "terrible! what could have made her--o, eustacia! and when you found it out you went in hot haste to her? were you too cruel?--or is she really so wicked as she seems?" "can a man be too cruel to his mother's enemy?" "i can fancy so." "very well, then--i'll admit that he can. but now what is to be done?" "make it up again--if a quarrel so deadly can ever be made up. i almost wish you had not told me. but do try to be reconciled. there are ways, after all, if you both wish to." "i don't know that we do both wish to make it up," said clym. "if she had wished it, would she not have sent to me by this time?" "you seem to wish to, and yet you have not sent to her." "true; but i have been tossed to and fro in doubt if i ought, after such strong provocation. to see me now, thomasin, gives you no idea of what i have been; of what depths i have descended to in these few last days. o, it was a bitter shame to shut out my mother like that! can i ever forget it, or even agree to see her again?" "she might not have known that anything serious would come of it, and perhaps she did not mean to keep aunt out altogether." "she says herself that she did not. but the fact remains that keep her out she did." "believe her sorry, and send for her." "how if she will not come?" "it will prove her guilty, by showing that it is her habit to nourish enmity. but i do not think that for a moment." "i will do this. i will wait for a day or two longer--not longer than two days certainly; and if she does not send to me in that time i will indeed send to her. i thought to have seen wildeve here tonight. is he from home?" thomasin blushed a little. "no," she said. "he is merely gone out for a walk." "why didn't he take you with him? the evening is fine. you want fresh air as well as he." "oh, i don't care for going anywhere; besides, there is baby." "yes, yes. well, i have been thinking whether i should not consult your husband about this as well as you," said clym steadily. "i fancy i would not," she quickly answered. "it can do no good." her cousin looked her in the face. no doubt thomasin was ignorant that her husband had any share in the events of that tragic afternoon; but her countenance seemed to signify that she concealed some suspicion or thought of the reputed tender relations between wildeve and eustacia in days gone by. clym, however, could make nothing of it, and he rose to depart, more in doubt than when he came. "you will write to her in a day or two?" said the young woman earnestly. "i do so hope the wretched separation may come to an end." "i will," said clym; "i don't rejoice in my present state at all." and he left her and climbed over the hill to blooms-end. before going to bed he sat down and wrote the following letter:-- my dear eustacia,--i must obey my heart without consulting my reason too closely. will you come back to me? do so, and the past shall never be mentioned. i was too severe; but o, eustacia, the provocation! you don't know, you never will know, what those words of anger cost me which you drew down upon yourself. all that an honest man can promise you i promise now, which is that from me you shall never suffer anything on this score again. after all the vows we have made, eustacia, i think we had better pass the remainder of our lives in trying to keep them. come to me, then, even if you reproach me. i have thought of your sufferings that morning on which i parted from you; i know they were genuine, and they are as much as you ought to bear. our love must still continue. such hearts as ours would never have been given us but to be concerned with each other. i could not ask you back at first, eustacia, for i was unable to persuade myself that he who was with you was not there as a lover. but if you will come and explain distracting appearances i do not question that you can show your honesty to me. why have you not come before? do you think i will not listen to you? surely not, when you remember the kisses and vows we exchanged under the summer moon. return then, and you shall be warmly welcomed. i can no longer think of you to your prejudice--i am but too much absorbed in justifying you.--your husband as ever, clym. "there," he said, as he laid it in his desk, "that's a good thing done. if she does not come before tomorrow night i will send it to her." meanwhile, at the house he had just left thomasin sat sighing uneasily. fidelity to her husband had that evening induced her to conceal all suspicion that wildeve's interest in eustacia had not ended with his marriage. but she knew nothing positive; and though clym was her well-beloved cousin there was one nearer to her still. when, a little later, wildeve returned from his walk to mistover, thomasin said, "damon, where have you been? i was getting quite frightened, and thought you had fallen into the river. i dislike being in the house by myself." "frightened?" he said, touching her cheek as if she were some domestic animal. "why, i thought nothing could frighten you. it is that you are getting proud, i am sure, and don't like living here since we have risen above our business. well, it is a tedious matter, this getting a new house; but i couldn't have set about it sooner, unless our ten thousand pounds had been a hundred thousand, when we could have afforded to despise caution." "no--i don't mind waiting--i would rather stay here twelve months longer than run any risk with baby. but i don't like your vanishing so in the evenings. there's something on your mind--i know there is, damon. you go about so gloomily, and look at the heath as if it were somebody's gaol instead of a nice wild place to walk in." he looked towards her with pitying surprise. "what, do you like egdon heath?" he said. "i like what i was born near to; i admire its grim old face." "pooh, my dear. you don't know what you like." "i am sure i do. there's only one thing unpleasant about egdon." "what's that?" "you never take me with you when you walk there. why do you wander so much in it yourself if you so dislike it?" the inquiry, though a simple one, was plainly disconcerting, and he sat down before replying. "i don't think you often see me there. give an instance." "i will," she answered triumphantly. "when you went out this evening i thought that as baby was asleep i would see where you were going to so mysteriously without telling me. so i ran out and followed behind you. you stopped at the place where the road forks, looked round at the bonfires, and then said, 'damn it, i'll go!' and you went quickly up the left-hand road. then i stood and watched you." wildeve frowned, afterwards saying, with a forced smile, "well, what wonderful discovery did you make?" "there--now you are angry, and we won't talk of this any more." she went across to him, sat on a footstool, and looked up in his face. "nonsense!" he said, "that's how you always back out. we will go on with it now we have begun. what did you next see? i particularly want to know." "don't be like that, damon!" she murmured. "i didn't see anything. you vanished out of sight, and then i looked round at the bonfires and came in." "perhaps this is not the only time you have dogged my steps. are you trying to find out something bad about me?" "not at all! i have never done such a thing before, and i shouldn't have done it now if words had not sometimes been dropped about you." "what do you mean?" he impatiently asked. "they say--they say you used to go to alderworth in the evenings, and it puts into my mind what i have heard about--" wildeve turned angrily and stood up in front of her. "now," he said, flourishing his hand in the air, "just out with it, madam! i demand to know what remarks you have heard." "well, i heard that you used to be very fond of eustacia--nothing more than that, though dropped in a bit-by-bit way. you ought not to be angry!" he observed that her eyes were brimming with tears. "well," he said, "there is nothing new in that, and of course i don't mean to be rough towards you, so you need not cry. now, don't let us speak of the subject any more." and no more was said, thomasin being glad enough of a reason for not mentioning clym's visit to her that evening, and his story. vii the night of the sixth of november having resolved on flight eustacia at times seemed anxious that something should happen to thwart her own intention. the only event that could really change her position was the appearance of clym. the glory which had encircled him as her lover was departed now; yet some good simple quality of his would occasionally return to her memory and stir a momentary throb of hope that he would again present himself before her. but calmly considered it was not likely that such a severance as now existed would ever close up: she would have to live on as a painful object, isolated, and out of place. she had used to think of the heath alone as an uncongenial spot to be in; she felt it now of the whole world. towards evening on the sixth her determination to go away again revived. about four o'clock she packed up anew the few small articles she had brought in her flight from alderworth, and also some belonging to her which had been left here: the whole formed a bundle not too large to be carried in her hand for a distance of a mile or two. the scene without grew darker; mud-coloured clouds bellied downwards from the sky like vast hammocks slung across it, and with the increase of night a stormy wind arose; but as yet there was no rain. eustacia could not rest indoors, having nothing more to do, and she wandered to and fro on the hill, not far from the house she was soon to leave. in these desultory ramblings she passed the cottage of susan nunsuch, a little lower down than her grandfather's. the door was ajar, and a riband of bright firelight fell over the ground without. as eustacia crossed the firebeams she appeared for an instant as distinct as a figure in a phantasmagoria--a creature of light surrounded by an area of darkness: the moment passed, and she was absorbed in night again. a woman who was sitting inside the cottage had seen and recognized her in that momentary irradiation. this was susan herself, occupied in preparing a posset for her little boy, who, often ailing, was now seriously unwell. susan dropped the spoon, shook her fist at the vanished figure, and then proceeded with her work in a musing, absent way. at eight o'clock, the hour at which eustacia had promised to signal wildeve if ever she signalled at all, she looked around the premises to learn if the coast was clear, went to the furze-rick, and pulled thence a long-stemmed bough of that fuel. this she carried to the corner of the bank, and, glancing behind to see if the shutters were all closed, she struck a light, and kindled the furze. when it was thoroughly ablaze eustacia took it by the stem and waved it in the air above her head till it had burned itself out. she was gratified, if gratification were possible to such a mood, by seeing a similar light in the vicinity of wildeve's residence a minute or two later. having agreed to keep watch at this hour every night, in case she should require assistance, this promptness proved how strictly he had held to his word. four hours after the present time, that is, at midnight, he was to be ready to drive her to budmouth, as prearranged. eustacia returned to the house. supper having been got over she retired early, and sat in her bedroom waiting for the time to go by. the night being dark and threatening, captain vye had not strolled out to gossip in any cottage or to call at the inn, as was sometimes his custom on these long autumn nights; and he sat sipping grog alone downstairs. about ten o'clock there was a knock at the door. when the servant opened it the rays of the candle fell upon the form of fairway. "i was a-forced to go to lower mistover tonight," he said, "and mr. yeobright asked me to leave this here on my way; but, faith, i put it in the lining of my hat, and thought no more about it till i got back and was hasping my gate before going to bed. so i have run back with it at once." he handed in a letter and went his way. the girl brought it to the captain, who found that it was directed to eustacia. he turned it over and over, and fancied that the writing was her husband's, though he could not be sure. however, he decided to let her have it at once if possible, and took it upstairs for that purpose; but on reaching the door of her room and looking in at the keyhole he found there was no light within, the fact being that eustacia, without undressing, had flung herself upon the bed, to rest and gather a little strength for her coming journey. her grandfather concluded from what he saw that he ought not to disturb her; and descending again to the parlour he placed the letter on the mantelpiece to give it to her in the morning. at eleven o'clock he went to bed himself, smoked for some time in his bedroom, put out his light at half-past eleven, and then, as was his invariable custom, pulled up the blind before getting into bed, that he might see which way the wind blew on opening his eyes in the morning, his bedroom window commanding a view of the flagstaff and vane. just as he had lain down he was surprised to observe the white pole of the staff flash into existence like a streak of phosphorus drawn downwards across the shade of night without. only one explanation met this--a light had been suddenly thrown upon the pole from the direction of the house. as everybody had retired to rest the old man felt it necessary to get out of bed, open the window softly, and look to the right and left. eustacia's bedroom was lighted up, and it was the shine from her window which had lighted the pole. wondering what had aroused her, he remained undecided at the window, and was thinking of fetching the letter to slip it under her door, when he heard a slight brushing of garments on the partition dividing his room from the passage. the captain concluded that eustacia, feeling wakeful, had gone for a book, and would have dismissed the matter as unimportant if he had not also heard her distinctly weeping as she passed. "she is thinking of that husband of hers," he said to himself. "ah, the silly goose! she had no business to marry him. i wonder if that letter is really his?" he arose, threw his boat-cloak round him, opened the door, and said, "eustacia!" there was no answer. "eustacia!" he repeated louder, "there is a letter on the mantelpiece for you." but no response was made to this statement save an imaginary one from the wind, which seemed to gnaw at the corners of the house, and the stroke of a few drops of rain upon the windows. he went on to the landing, and stood waiting nearly five minutes. still she did not return. he went back for a light, and prepared to follow her; but first he looked into her bedroom. there, on the outside of the quilt, was the impression of her form, showing that the bed had not been opened; and, what was more significant, she had not taken her candlestick downstairs. he was now thoroughly alarmed; and hastily putting on his clothes he descended to the front door, which he himself had bolted and locked. it was now unfastened. there was no longer any doubt that eustacia had left the house at this midnight hour; and whither could she have gone? to follow her was almost impossible. had the dwelling stood in an ordinary road, two persons setting out, one in each direction, might have made sure of overtaking her; but it was a hopeless task to seek for anybody on a heath in the dark, the practicable directions for flight across it from any point being as numerous as the meridians radiating from the pole. perplexed what to do, he looked into the parlour, and was vexed to find that the letter still lay there untouched. at half-past eleven, finding that the house was silent, eustacia had lighted her candle, put on some warm outer wrappings, taken her bag in her hand, and, extinguishing the light again, descended the staircase. when she got into the outer air she found that it had begun to rain, and as she stood pausing at the door it increased, threatening to come on heavily. but having committed herself to this line of action there was no retreating for bad weather. even the receipt of clym's letter would not have stopped her now. the gloom of the night was funereal; all nature seemed clothed in crape. the spiky points of the fir trees behind the house rose into the sky like the turrets and pinnacles of an abbey. nothing below the horizon was visible save a light which was still burning in the cottage of susan nunsuch. eustacia opened her umbrella and went out from the enclosure by the steps over the bank, after which she was beyond all danger of being perceived. skirting the pool, she followed the path towards rainbarrow, occasionally stumbling over twisted furze-roots, tufts of rushes, or oozing lumps of fleshy fungi, which at this season lay scattered about the heath like the rotten liver and lungs of some colossal animal. the moon and stars were closed up by cloud and rain to the degree of extinction. it was a night which led the traveller's thoughts instinctively to dwell on nocturnal scenes of disaster in the chronicles of the world, on all that is terrible and dark in history and legend--the last plague of egypt, the destruction of sennacherib's host, the agony in gethsemane. eustacia at length reached rainbarrow, and stood still there to think. never was harmony more perfect than that between the chaos of her mind and the chaos of the world without. a sudden recollection had flashed on her this moment: she had not money enough for undertaking a long journey. amid the fluctuating sentiments of the day her unpractical mind had not dwelt on the necessity of being well-provided, and now that she thoroughly realized the condition she sighed bitterly and ceased to stand erect, gradually crouching down under the umbrella as if she were drawn into the barrow by a hand from beneath. could it be that she was to remain a captive still? money: she had never felt its value before. even to efface herself from the country means were required. to ask wildeve for pecuniary aid without allowing him to accompany her was impossible to a woman with a shadow of pride left in her; to fly as his mistress--and she knew that he loved her--was of the nature of humiliation. anyone who had stood by now would have pitied her, not so much on account of her exposure to weather, and isolation from all of humanity except the mouldered remains inside the tumulus; but for that other form of misery which was denoted by the slightly rocking movement that her feelings imparted to her person. extreme unhappiness weighed visibly upon her. between the drippings of the rain from her umbrella to her mantle, from her mantle to the heather, from the heather to the earth, very similar sounds could be heard coming from her lips; and the tearfulness of the outer scene was repeated upon her face. the wings of her soul were broken by the cruel obstructiveness of all about her; and even had she seen herself in a promising way of getting to budmouth, entering a steamer, and sailing to some opposite port, she would have been but little more buoyant, so fearfully malignant were other things. she uttered words aloud. when a woman in such a situation, neither old, deaf, crazed, nor whimsical, takes upon herself to sob and soliloquize aloud there is something grievous the matter. "can i go, can i go?" she moaned. "he's not great enough for me to give myself to--he does not suffice for my desire!... if he had been a saul or a buonaparte--ah! but to break my marriage vow for him--it is too poor a luxury!... and i have no money to go alone! and if i could, what comfort to me? i must drag on next year, as i have dragged on this year, and the year after that as before. how i have tried and tried to be a splendid woman, and how destiny has been against me!... i do not deserve my lot!" she cried in a frenzy of bitter revolt. "o, the cruelty of putting me into this ill-conceived world! i was capable of much; but i have been injured and blighted and crushed by things beyond my control! o, how hard it is of heaven to devise such tortures for me, who have done no harm to heaven at all!" the distant light which eustacia had cursorily observed in leaving the house came, as she had divined, from the cottage window of susan nunsuch. what eustacia did not divine was the occupation of the woman within at that moment. susan's sight of her passing figure earlier in the evening, not five minutes after the sick boy's exclamation, "mother, i do feel so bad!" persuaded the matron that an evil influence was certainly exercised by eustacia's propinquity. on this account susan did not go to bed as soon as the evening's work was over, as she would have done at ordinary times. to counteract the malign spell which she imagined poor eustacia to be working, the boy's mother busied herself with a ghastly invention of superstition, calculated to bring powerlessness, atrophy, and annihilation on any human being against whom it was directed. it was a practice well known on egdon at that date, and one that is not quite extinct at the present day. she passed with her candle into an inner room, where, among other utensils, were two large brown pans, containing together perhaps a hundredweight of liquid honey, the produce of the bees during the foregoing summer. on a shelf over the pans was a smooth and solid yellow mass of a hemispherical form, consisting of beeswax from the same take of honey. susan took down the lump, and cutting off several thin slices, heaped them in an iron ladle, with which she returned to the living-room, and placed the vessel in the hot ashes of the fireplace. as soon as the wax had softened to the plasticity of dough she kneaded the pieces together. and now her face became more intent. she began moulding the wax; and it was evident from her manner of manipulation that she was endeavouring to give it some preconceived form. the form was human. by warming and kneading, cutting and twisting, dismembering and re-joining the incipient image she had in about a quarter of an hour produced a shape which tolerably well resembled a woman, and was about six inches high. she laid it on the table to get cold and hard. meanwhile she took the candle and went upstairs to where the little boy was lying. "did you notice, my dear, what mrs. eustacia wore this afternoon besides the dark dress?" "a red ribbon round her neck." "anything else?" "no--except sandal-shoes." "a red ribbon and sandal-shoes," she said to herself. mrs. nunsuch went and searched till she found a fragment of the narrowest red ribbon, which she took downstairs and tied round the neck of the image. then fetching ink and a quill from the rickety bureau by the window, she blackened the feet of the image to the extent presumably covered by shoes; and on the instep of each foot marked cross-lines in the shape taken by the sandal-strings of those days. finally she tied a bit of black thread round the upper part of the head, in faint resemblance to a snood worn for confining the hair. susan held the object at arm's length and contemplated it with a satisfaction in which there was no smile. to anybody acquainted with the inhabitants of egdon heath the image would have suggested eustacia yeobright. from her work-basket in the window-seat the woman took a paper of pins, of the old long and yellow sort whose heads were disposed to come off at their first usage. these she began to thrust into the image in all directions, with apparently excruciating energy. probably as many as fifty were thus inserted, some into the head of the wax model, some into the shoulders, some into the trunk, some upwards through the soles of the feet, till the figure was completely permeated with pins. she turned to the fire. it had been of turf; and though the high heap of ashes which turf fires produce was somewhat dark and dead on the outside, upon raking it abroad with the shovel the inside of the mass showed a glow of red heat. she took a few pieces of fresh turf from the chimney-corner and built them together over the glow, upon which the fire brightened. seizing with the tongs the image that she had made of eustacia, she held it in the heat, and watched it as it began to waste slowly away. and while she stood thus engaged there came from between her lips a murmur of words. it was a strange jargon--the lord's prayer repeated backwards--the incantation usual in proceedings for obtaining unhallowed assistance against an enemy. susan uttered the lugubrious discourse three times slowly, and when it was completed the image had considerably diminished. as the wax dropped into the fire a long flame arose from the spot, and curling its tongue round the figure ate still further into its substance. a pin occasionally dropped with the wax, and the embers heated it red as it lay. viii rain, darkness, and anxious wanderers while the effigy of eustacia was melting to nothing, and the fair woman herself was standing on rainbarrow, her soul in an abyss of desolation seldom plumbed by one so young, yeobright sat lonely at blooms-end. he had fulfilled his word to thomasin by sending off fairway with the letter to his wife, and now waited with increased impatience for some sound or signal of her return. were eustacia still at mistover the very least he expected was that she would send him back a reply tonight by the same hand; though, to leave all to her inclination, he had cautioned fairway not to ask for an answer. if one were handed to him he was to bring it immediately; if not, he was to go straight home without troubling to come round to blooms-end again that night. but secretly clym had a more pleasing hope. eustacia might possibly decline to use her pen--it was rather her way to work silently--and surprise him by appearing at his door. how fully her mind was made up to do otherwise he did not know. to clym's regret it began to rain and blow hard as the evening advanced. the wind rasped and scraped at the corners of the house, and filliped the eavesdroppings like peas against the panes. he walked restlessly about the untenanted rooms, stopping strange noises in windows and doors by jamming splinters of wood into the casements and crevices, and pressing together the lead-work of the quarries where it had become loosened from the glass. it was one of those nights when cracks in the walls of old churches widen, when ancient stains on the ceilings of decayed manor houses are renewed and enlarged from the size of a man's hand to an area of many feet. the little gate in the palings before his dwelling continually opened and clicked together again, but when he looked out eagerly nobody was there; it was as if invisible shapes of the dead were passing in on their way to visit him. between ten and eleven o'clock, finding that neither fairway nor anybody else came to him, he retired to rest, and despite his anxieties soon fell asleep. his sleep, however, was not very sound, by reason of the expectancy he had given way to, and he was easily awakened by a knocking which began at the door about an hour after. clym arose and looked out of the window. rain was still falling heavily, the whole expanse of heath before him emitting a subdued hiss under the downpour. it was too dark to see anything at all. "who's there?" he cried. light footsteps shifted their position in the porch, and he could just distinguish in a plaintive female voice the words, "o clym, come down and let me in!" he flushed hot with agitation. "surely it is eustacia!" he murmured. if so, she had indeed come to him unawares. he hastily got a light, dressed himself, and went down. on his flinging open the door the rays of the candle fell upon a woman closely wrapped up, who at once came forward. "thomasin!" he exclaimed in an indescribable tone of disappointment. "it is thomasin, and on such a night as this! o, where is eustacia?" thomasin it was, wet, frightened, and panting. "eustacia? i don't know, clym; but i can think," she said with much perturbation. "let me come in and rest--i will explain this. there is a great trouble brewing--my husband and eustacia!" "what, what?" "i think my husband is going to leave me or do something dreadful--i don't know what--clym, will you go and see? i have nobody to help me but you! eustacia has not yet come home?" "no." she went on breathlessly: "then they are going to run off together! he came indoors tonight about eight o'clock and said in an off-hand way, 'tamsie, i have just found that i must go a journey.' 'when?' i said. 'tonight,' he said. 'where?' i asked him. 'i cannot tell you at present,' he said; 'i shall be back again tomorrow.' he then went and busied himself in looking up his things, and took no notice of me at all. i expected to see him start, but he did not, and then it came to be ten o'clock, when he said, 'you had better go to bed.' i didn't know what to do, and i went to bed. i believe he thought i fell asleep, for half an hour after that he came up and unlocked the oak chest we keep money in when we have much in the house and took out a roll of something which i believe was bank-notes, though i was not aware that he had 'em there. these he must have got from the bank when he went there the other day. what does he want bank-notes for, if he is only going off for a day? when he had gone down i thought of eustacia, and how he had met her the night before--i know he did meet her, clym, for i followed him part of the way; but i did not like to tell you when you called, and so make you think ill of him, as i did not think it was so serious. then i could not stay in bed; i got up and dressed myself, and when i heard him out in the stable i thought i would come and tell you. so i came downstairs without any noise and slipped out." "then he was not absolutely gone when you left?" "no. will you, dear cousin clym, go and try to persuade him not to go? he takes no notice of what i say, and puts me off with the story of his going on a journey, and will be home tomorrow, and all that; but i don't believe it. i think you could influence him." "i'll go," said clym. "o, eustacia!" thomasin carried in her arms a large bundle; and having by this time seated herself she began to unroll it, when a baby appeared as the kernel to the husks--dry, warm, and unconscious of travel or rough weather. thomasin briefly kissed the baby, and then found time to begin crying as she said, "i brought baby, for i was afraid what might happen to her. i suppose it will be her death, but i couldn't leave her with rachel!" clym hastily put together the logs on the hearth, raked abroad the embers, which were scarcely yet extinct, and blew up a flame with the bellows. "dry yourself," he said. "i'll go and get some more wood." "no, no--don't stay for that. i'll make up the fire. will you go at once--please will you?" yeobright ran upstairs to finish dressing himself. while he was gone another rapping came to the door. this time there was no delusion that it might be eustacia's: the footsteps just preceding it had been heavy and slow. yeobright thinking it might possibly be fairway with a note in answer, descended again and opened the door. "captain vye?" he said to a dripping figure. "is my granddaughter here?" said the captain. "no." "then where is she?". "i don't know." "but you ought to know--you are her husband." "only in name apparently," said clym with rising excitement. "i believe she means to elope tonight with wildeve. i am just going to look to it." "well, she has left my house; she left about half an hour ago. who's sitting there?" "my cousin thomasin." the captain bowed in a preoccupied way to her. "i only hope it is no worse than an elopement," he said. "worse? what's worse than the worst a wife can do?" "well, i have been told a strange tale. before starting in search of her i called up charley, my stable lad. i missed my pistols the other day." "pistols?" "he said at the time that he took them down to clean. he has now owned that he took them because he saw eustacia looking curiously at them; and she afterwards owned to him that she was thinking of taking her life, but bound him to secrecy, and promised never to think of such a thing again. i hardly suppose she will ever have bravado enough to use one of them; but it shows what has been lurking in her mind; and people who think of that sort of thing once think of it again." "where are the pistols?" "safely locked up. o no, she won't touch them again. but there are more ways of letting out life than through a bullet-hole. what did you quarrel about so bitterly with her to drive her to all this? you must have treated her badly indeed. well, i was always against the marriage, and i was right." "are you going with me?" said yeobright, paying no attention to the captain's latter remark. "if so i can tell you what we quarrelled about as we walk along." "where to?" "to wildeve's--that was her destination, depend upon it." thomasin here broke in, still weeping: "he said he was only going on a sudden short journey; but if so why did he want so much money? o, clym, what do you think will happen? i am afraid that you, my poor baby, will soon have no father left to you!" "i am off now," said yeobright, stepping into the porch. "i would fain go with 'ee," said the old man doubtfully. "but i begin to be afraid that my legs will hardly carry me there such a night as this. i am not so young as i was. if they are interrupted in their flight she will be sure to come back to me, and i ought to be at the house to receive her. but be it as 'twill i can't walk to the quiet woman, and that's an end on't. i'll go straight home." "it will perhaps be best," said clym. "thomasin, dry yourself, and be as comfortable as you can." with this he closed the door upon her, and left the house in company with captain vye, who parted from him outside the gate, taking the middle path, which led to mistover. clym crossed by the right-hand track towards the inn. thomasin, being left alone, took off some of her wet garments, carried the baby upstairs to clym's bed, and then came down to the sitting-room again, where she made a larger fire, and began drying herself. the fire soon flared up the chimney, giving the room an appearance of comfort that was doubled by contrast with the drumming of the storm without, which snapped at the window-panes and breathed into the chimney strange low utterances that seemed to be the prologue to some tragedy. but the least part of thomasin was in the house, for her heart being at ease about the little girl upstairs she was mentally following clym on his journey. having indulged in this imaginary peregrination for some considerable interval, she became impressed with a sense of the intolerable slowness of time. but she sat on. the moment then came when she could scarcely sit longer; and it was like a satire on her patience to remember that clym could hardly have reached the inn as yet. at last she went to the baby's bedside. the child was sleeping soundly; but her imagination of possibly disastrous events at her home, the predominance within her of the unseen over the seen, agitated her beyond endurance. she could not refrain from going down and opening the door. the rain still continued, the candlelight falling upon the nearest drops and making glistening darts of them as they descended across the throng of invisible ones behind. to plunge into that medium was to plunge into water slightly diluted with air. but the difficulty of returning to her house at this moment made her all the more desirous of doing so: anything was better than suspense. "i have come here well enough," she said, "and why shouldn't i go back again? it is a mistake for me to be away." she hastily fetched the infant, wrapped it up, cloaked herself as before, and shoveling the ashes over the fire, to prevent accidents, went into the open air. pausing first to put the door key in its old place behind the shutter, she resolutely turned her face to the confronting pile of firmamental darkness beyond the palings, and stepped into its midst. but thomasin's imagination being so actively engaged elsewhere, the night and the weather had for her no terror beyond that of their actual discomfort and difficulty. she was soon ascending blooms-end valley and traversing the undulations on the side of the hill. the noise of the wind over the heath was shrill, and as if it whistled for joy at finding a night so congenial as this. sometimes the path led her to hollows between thickets of tall and dripping bracken, dead, though not yet prostrate, which enclosed her like a pool. when they were more than usually tall she lifted the baby to the top of her head, that it might be out of the reach of their drenching fronds. on higher ground, where the wind was brisk and sustained, the rain flew in a level flight without sensible descent, so that it was beyond all power to imagine the remoteness of the point at which it left the bosoms of the clouds. here self-defence was impossible, and individual drops stuck into her like the arrows into saint sebastian. she was enabled to avoid puddles by the nebulous paleness which signified their presence, though beside anything less dark than the heath they themselves would have appeared as blackness. yet in spite of all this thomasin was not sorry that she had started. to her there were not, as to eustacia, demons in the air, and malice in every bush and bough. the drops which lashed her face were not scorpions, but prosy rain; egdon in the mass was no monster whatever, but impersonal open ground. her fears of the place were rational, her dislikes of its worst moods reasonable. at this time it was in her view a windy, wet place, in which a person might experience much discomfort, lose the path without care, and possibly catch cold. if the path is well known the difficulty at such times of keeping therein is not altogether great, from its familiar feel to the feet; but once lost it is irrecoverable. owing to her baby, who somewhat impeded thomasin's view forward and distracted her mind, she did at last lose the track. this mishap occurred when she was descending an open slope about two-thirds home. instead of attempting, by wandering hither and thither, the hopeless task of finding such a mere thread, she went straight on, trusting for guidance to her general knowledge of the contours, which was scarcely surpassed by clym's or by that of the heath-croppers themselves. at length thomasin reached a hollow and began to discern through the rain a faint blotted radiance, which presently assumed the oblong form of an open door. she knew that no house stood hereabouts, and was soon aware of the nature of the door by its height above the ground. "why, it is diggory venn's van, surely!" she said. a certain secluded spot near rainbarrow was, she knew, often venn's chosen centre when staying in this neighbourhood; and she guessed at once that she had stumbled upon this mysterious retreat. the question arose in her mind whether or not she should ask him to guide her into the path. in her anxiety to reach home she decided that she would appeal to him, notwithstanding the strangeness of appearing before his eyes at this place and season. but when, in pursuance of this resolve, thomasin reached the van and looked in she found it to be untenanted; though there was no doubt that it was the reddleman's. the fire was burning in the stove, the lantern hung from the nail. round the doorway the floor was merely sprinkled with rain, and not saturated, which told her that the door had not long been opened. while she stood uncertainly looking in thomasin heard a footstep advancing from the darkness behind her, and turning, beheld the well-known form in corduroy, lurid from head to foot, the lantern beams falling upon him through an intervening gauze of raindrops. "i thought you went down the slope," he said, without noticing her face. "how do you come back here again?" "diggory?" said thomasin faintly. "who are you?" said venn, still unperceiving. "and why were you crying so just now?" "o, diggory! don't you know me?" said she. "but of course you don't, wrapped up like this. what do you mean? i have not been crying here, and i have not been here before." venn then came nearer till he could see the illuminated side of her form. "mrs. wildeve!" he exclaimed, starting. "what a time for us to meet! and the baby too! what dreadful thing can have brought you out on such a night as this?" she could not immediately answer; and without asking her permission he hopped into his van, took her by the arm, and drew her up after him. "what is it?" he continued when they stood within. "i have lost my way coming from blooms-end, and i am in a great hurry to get home. please show me as quickly as you can! it is so silly of me not to know egdon better, and i cannot think how i came to lose the path. show me quickly, diggory, please." "yes, of course. i will go with 'ee. but you came to me before this, mrs. wildeve?" "i only came this minute." "that's strange. i was lying down here asleep about five minutes ago, with the door shut to keep out the weather, when the brushing of a woman's clothes over the heath-bushes just outside woke me up (for i don't sleep heavy), and at the same time i heard a sobbing or crying from the same woman. i opened my door and held out my lantern, and just as far as the light would reach i saw a woman: she turned her head when the light sheened on her, and then hurried on downhill. i hung up the lantern, and was curious enough to pull on my things and dog her a few steps, but i could see nothing of her any more. that was where i had been when you came up; and when i saw you i thought you were the same one." "perhaps it was one of the heath-folk going home?" "no, it couldn't be. 'tis too late. the noise of her gown over the he'th was of a whistling sort that nothing but silk will make." "it wasn't i, then. my dress is not silk, you see... are we anywhere in a line between mistover and the inn?" "well, yes; not far out." "ah, i wonder if it was she! diggory, i must go at once!" she jumped down from the van before he was aware, when venn unhooked the lantern and leaped down after her. "i'll take the baby, ma'am," he said. "you must be tired out by the weight." thomasin hesitated a moment, and then delivered the baby into venn's hands. "don't squeeze her, diggory," she said, "or hurt her little arm; and keep the cloak close over her like this, so that the rain may not drop in her face." "i will," said venn earnestly. "as if i could hurt anything belonging to you!" "i only meant accidentally," said thomasin. "the baby is dry enough, but you are pretty wet," said the reddleman when, in closing the door of his cart to padlock it, he noticed on the floor a ring of water drops where her cloak had hung from her. thomasin followed him as he wound right and left to avoid the larger bushes, stopping occasionally and covering the lantern, while he looked over his shoulder to gain some idea of the position of rainbarrow above them, which it was necessary to keep directly behind their backs to preserve a proper course. "you are sure the rain does not fall upon baby?" "quite sure. may i ask how old he is, ma'am?" "he!" said thomasin reproachfully. "anybody can see better than that in a moment. she is nearly two months old. how far is it now to the inn?" "a little over a quarter of a mile." "will you walk a little faster?" "i was afraid you could not keep up." "i am very anxious to get there. ah, there is a light from the window!" "'tis not from the window. that's a gig-lamp, to the best of my belief." "o!" said thomasin in despair. "i wish i had been there sooner--give me the baby, diggory--you can go back now." "i must go all the way," said venn. "there is a quag between us and that light, and you will walk into it up to your neck unless i take you round." "but the light is at the inn, and there is no quag in front of that." "no, the light is below the inn some two or three hundred yards." "never mind," said thomasin hurriedly. "go towards the light, and not towards the inn." "yes," answered venn, swerving round in obedience; and, after a pause, "i wish you would tell me what this great trouble is. i think you have proved that i can be trusted." "there are some things that cannot be--cannot be told to--" and then her heart rose into her throat, and she could say no more. ix sights and sounds draw the wanderers together having seen eustacia's signal from the hill at eight o'clock, wildeve immediately prepared to assist her in her flight, and, as he hoped, accompany her. he was somewhat perturbed, and his manner of informing thomasin that he was going on a journey was in itself sufficient to rouse her suspicions. when she had gone to bed he collected the few articles he would require, and went upstairs to the money-chest, whence he took a tolerably bountiful sum in notes, which had been advanced to him on the property he was so soon to have in possession, to defray expenses incidental to the removal. he then went to the stable and coach-house to assure himself that the horse, gig, and harness were in a fit condition for a long drive. nearly half an hour was spent thus, and on returning to the house wildeve had no thought of thomasin being anywhere but in bed. he had told the stable-lad not to stay up, leading the boy to understand that his departure would be at three or four in the morning; for this, though an exceptional hour, was less strange than midnight, the time actually agreed on, the packet from budmouth sailing between one and two. at last all was quiet, and he had nothing to do but to wait. by no effort could he shake off the oppression of spirits which he had experienced ever since his last meeting with eustacia, but he hoped there was that in his situation which money could cure. he had persuaded himself that to act not ungenerously towards his gentle wife by settling on her the half of his property, and with chivalrous devotion towards another and greater woman by sharing her fate, was possible. and though he meant to adhere to eustacia's instructions to the letter, to deposit her where she wished and to leave her, should that be her will, the spell that she had cast over him intensified, and his heart was beating fast in the anticipated futility of such commands in the face of a mutual wish that they should throw in their lot together. he would not allow himself to dwell long upon these conjectures, maxims, and hopes, and at twenty minutes to twelve he again went softly to the stable, harnessed the horse, and lit the lamps; whence, taking the horse by the head, he led him with the covered car out of the yard to a spot by the roadside some quarter of a mile below the inn. here wildeve waited, slightly sheltered from the driving rain by a high bank that had been cast up at this place. along the surface of the road where lit by the lamps the loosened gravel and small stones scudded and clicked together before the wind, which, leaving them in heaps, plunged into the heath and boomed across the bushes into darkness. only one sound rose above this din of weather, and that was the roaring of a ten-hatch weir to the southward, from a river in the meads which formed the boundary of the heath in this direction. he lingered on in perfect stillness till he began to fancy that the midnight hour must have struck. a very strong doubt had arisen in his mind if eustacia would venture down the hill in such weather; yet knowing her nature he felt that she might. "poor thing! 'tis like her ill-luck," he murmured. at length he turned to the lamp and looked at his watch. to his surprise it was nearly a quarter past midnight. he now wished that he had driven up the circuitous road to mistover, a plan not adopted because of the enormous length of the route in proportion to that of the pedestrian's path down the open hillside, and the consequent increase of labour for the horse. at this moment a footstep approached; but the light of the lamps being in a different direction the comer was not visible. the step paused, then came on again. "eustacia?" said wildeve. the person came forward, and the light fell upon the form of clym, glistening with wet, whom wildeve immediately recognized; but wildeve, who stood behind the lamp, was not at once recognized by yeobright. he stopped as if in doubt whether this waiting vehicle could have anything to do with the flight of his wife or not. the sight of yeobright at once banished wildeve's sober feelings, who saw him again as the deadly rival from whom eustacia was to be kept at all hazards. hence wildeve did not speak, in the hope that clym would pass by without particular inquiry. while they both hung thus in hesitation a dull sound became audible above the storm and wind. its origin was unmistakable--it was the fall of a body into the stream in the adjoining mead, apparently at a point near the weir. both started. "good god! can it be she?" said clym. "why should it be she?" said wildeve, in his alarm forgetting that he had hitherto screened himself. "ah!--that's you, you traitor, is it?" cried yeobright. "why should it be she? because last week she would have put an end to her life if she had been able. she ought to have been watched! take one of the lamps and come with me." yeobright seized the one on his side and hastened on; wildeve did not wait to unfasten the other, but followed at once along the meadow-track to the weir, a little in the rear of clym. shadwater weir had at its foot a large circular pool, fifty feet in diameter, into which the water flowed through ten huge hatches, raised and lowered by a winch and cogs in the ordinary manner. the sides of the pool were of masonry, to prevent the water from washing away the bank; but the force of the stream in winter was sometimes such as to undermine the retaining wall and precipitate it into the hole. clym reached the hatches, the framework of which was shaken to its foundations by the velocity of the current. nothing but the froth of the waves could be discerned in the pool below. he got upon the plank bridge over the race, and holding to the rail, that the wind might not blow him off, crossed to the other side of the river. there he leant over the wall and lowered the lamp, only to behold the vortex formed at the curl of the returning current. wildeve meanwhile had arrived on the former side, and the light from yeobright's lamp shed a flecked and agitated radiance across the weir pool, revealing to the ex-engineer the tumbling courses of the currents from the hatches above. across this gashed and puckered mirror a dark body was slowly borne by one of the backward currents. "o, my darling!" exclaimed wildeve in an agonized voice; and, without showing sufficient presence of mind even to throw off his greatcoat, he leaped into the boiling caldron. yeobright could now also discern the floating body, though but indistinctly; and imagining from wildeve's plunge that there was life to be saved he was about to leap after. bethinking himself of a wiser plan he placed the lamp against a post to make it stand upright, and running round to the lower part of the pool, where there was no wall, he sprang in and boldly waded upwards towards the deeper portion. here he was taken off his legs, and in swimming was carried round into the centre of the basin, where he perceived wildeve struggling. while these hasty actions were in progress here, venn and thomasin had been toiling through the lower corner of the heath in the direction of the light. they had not been near enough to the river to hear the plunge, but they saw the removal of the carriage-lamp, and watched its motion into the mead. as soon as they reached the car and horse venn guessed that something new was amiss, and hastened to follow in the course of the moving light. venn walked faster than thomasin, and came to the weir alone. the lamp placed against the post by clym still shone across the water, and the reddleman observed something floating motionless. being encumbered with the infant, he ran back to meet thomasin. "take the baby, please, mrs. wildeve," he said hastily. "run home with her, call the stable-lad, and make him send down to me any men who may be living near. somebody has fallen into the weir." thomasin took the child and ran. when she came to the covered car the horse, though fresh from the stable, was standing perfectly still, as if conscious of misfortune. she saw for the first time whose it was. she nearly fainted, and would have been unable to proceed another step but that the necessity of preserving the little girl from harm nerved her to an amazing self-control. in this agony of suspense she entered the house, put the baby in a place of safety, woke the lad and the female domestic, and ran out to give the alarm at the nearest cottage. diggory, having returned to the brink of the pool, observed that the small upper hatches or floats were withdrawn. he found one of these lying upon the grass, and taking it under one arm, and with his lantern in his hand, entered at the bottom of the pool as clym had done. as soon as he began to be in deep water he flung himself across the hatch; thus supported he was able to keep afloat as long as he chose, holding the lantern aloft with his disengaged hand. propelled by his feet he steered round and round the pool, ascending each time by one of the back streams and descending in the middle of the current. at first he could see nothing. then amidst the glistening of the whirlpools and the white clots of foam he distinguished a woman's bonnet floating alone. his search was now under the left wall, when something came to the surface almost close beside him. it was not, as he had expected, a woman, but a man. the reddleman put the ring of the lantern between his teeth, seized the floating man by the collar, and, holding on to the hatch with his remaining arm, struck out into the strongest race, by which the unconscious man, the hatch, and himself were carried down the stream. as soon as venn found his feet dragging over the pebbles of the shallower part below he secured his footing and waded towards the brink. there, where the water stood at about the height of his waist, he flung away the hatch, and attempted to drag forth the man. this was a matter of great difficulty, and he found as the reason that the legs of the unfortunate stranger were tightly embraced by the arms of another man, who had hitherto been entirely beneath the surface. at this moment his heart bounded to hear footsteps running towards him, and two men, roused by thomasin, appeared at the brink above. they ran to where venn was, and helped him in lifting out the apparently drowned persons, separating them, and laying them out upon the grass. venn turned the light upon their faces. the one who had been uppermost was yeobright; he who had been completely submerged was wildeve. "now we must search the hole again," said venn. "a woman is in there somewhere. get a pole." one of the men went to the foot-bridge and tore off the handrail. the reddleman and the two others then entered the water together from below as before, and with their united force probed the pool forwards to where it sloped down to its central depth. venn was not mistaken in supposing that any person who had sunk for the last time would be washed down to this point, for when they had examined to about half-way across something impeded their thrust. "pull it forward," said venn, and they raked it in with the pole till it was close to their feet. venn vanished under the stream, and came up with an armful of wet drapery enclosing a woman's cold form, which was all that remained of the desperate eustacia. when they reached the bank there stood thomasin, in a stress of grief, bending over the two unconscious ones who already lay there. the horse and cart were brought to the nearest point in the road, and it was the work of a few minutes only to place the three in the vehicle. venn led on the horse, supporting thomasin upon his arm, and the two men followed, till they reached the inn. the woman who had been shaken out of her sleep by thomasin had hastily dressed herself and lighted a fire, the other servant being left to snore on in peace at the back of the house. the insensible forms of eustacia, clym, and wildeve were then brought in and laid on the carpet, with their feet to the fire, when such restorative processes as could be thought of were adopted at once, the stableman being in the meantime sent for a doctor. but there seemed to be not a whiff of life left in either of the bodies. then thomasin, whose stupor of grief had been thrust off awhile by frantic action, applied a bottle of hartshorn to clym's nostrils, having tried it in vain upon the othertwo. he sighed. "clym's alive!" she exclaimed. he soon breathed distinctly, and again and again did she attempt to revive her husband by the same means; but wildeve gave no sign. there was too much reason to think that he and eustacia both were for ever beyond the reach of stimulating perfumes. their exertions did not relax till the doctor arrived, when one by one, the senseless three were taken upstairs and put into warm beds. venn soon felt himself relieved from further attendance, and went to the door, scarcely able yet to realize the strange catastrophe that had befallen the family in which he took so great an interest. thomasin surely would be broken down by the sudden and overwhelming nature of this event. no firm and sensible mrs. yeobright lived now to support the gentle girl through the ordeal; and, whatever an unimpassioned spectator might think of her loss of such a husband as wildeve, there could be no doubt that for the moment she was distracted and horrified by the blow. as for himself, not being privileged to go to her and comfort her, he saw no reason for waiting longer in a house where he remained only as a stranger. he returned across the heath to his van. the fire was not yet out, and everything remained as he had left it. venn now bethought himself of his clothes, which were saturated with water to the weight of lead. he changed them, spread them before the fire, and lay down to sleep. but it was more than he could do to rest here while excited by a vivid imagination of the turmoil they were in at the house he had quitted, and, blaming himself for coming away, he dressed in another suit, locked up the door, and again hastened across to the inn. rain was still falling heavily when he entered the kitchen. a bright fire was shining from the hearth, and two women were bustling about, one of whom was olly dowden. "well, how is it going on now?" said venn in a whisper. "mr. yeobright is better; but mrs. yeobright and mr. wildeve are dead and cold. the doctor says they were quite gone before they were out of the water." "ah! i thought as much when i hauled 'em up. and mrs. wildeve?" "she is as well as can be expected. the doctor had her put between blankets, for she was almost as wet as they that had been in the river, poor young thing. you don't seem very dry, reddleman." "oh, 'tis not much. i have changed my things. this is only a little dampness i've got coming through the rain again." "stand by the fire. mis'ess says you be to have whatever you want, and she was sorry when she was told that you'd gone away." venn drew near to the fireplace, and looked into the flames in an absent mood. the steam came from his leggings and ascended the chimney with the smoke, while he thought of those who were upstairs. two were corpses, one had barely escaped the jaws of death, another was sick and a widow. the last occasion on which he had lingered by that fireplace was when the raffle was in progress; when wildeve was alive and well; thomasin active and smiling in the next room; yeobright and eustacia just made husband and wife, and mrs. yeobright living at blooms-end. it had seemed at that time that the then position of affairs was good for at least twenty years to come. yet, of all the circle, he himself was the only one whose situation had not materially changed. while he ruminated a footstep descended the stairs. it was the nurse, who brought in her hand a rolled mass of wet paper. the woman was so engrossed with her occupation that she hardly saw venn. she took from a cupboard some pieces of twine, which she strained across the fireplace, tying the end of each piece to the firedog, previously pulled forward for the purpose, and, unrolling the wet papers, she began pinning them one by one to the strings in a manner of clothes on a line. "what be they?" said venn. "poor master's bank-notes," she answered. "they were found in his pocket when they undressed him." "then he was not coming back again for some time?" said venn. "that we shall never know," said she. venn was loth to depart, for all on earth that interested him lay under this roof. as nobody in the house had any more sleep that night, except the two who slept for ever, there was no reason why he should not remain. so he retired into the niche of the fireplace where he had used to sit, and there he continued, watching the steam from the double row of bank-notes as they waved backwards and forwards in the draught of the chimney till their flaccidity was changed to dry crispness throughout. then the woman came and unpinned them, and, folding them together, carried the handful upstairs. presently the doctor appeared from above with the look of a man who could do no more, and, pulling on his gloves, went out of the house, the trotting of his horse soon dying away upon the road. at four o'clock there was a gentle knock at the door. it was from charley, who had been sent by captain vye to inquire if anything had been heard of eustacia. the girl who admitted him looked in his face as if she did not know what answer to return, and showed him in to where venn was seated, saying to the reddleman, "will you tell him, please?" venn told. charley's only utterance was a feeble, indistinct sound. he stood quite still; then he burst out spasmodically, "i shall see her once more?" "i dare say you may see her," said diggory gravely. "but hadn't you better run and tell captain vye?" "yes, yes. only i do hope i shall see her just once again." "you shall," said a low voice behind; and starting round they beheld by the dim light a thin, pallid, almost spectral form, wrapped in a blanket, and looking like lazarus coming from the tomb. it was yeobright. neither venn nor charley spoke, and clym continued, "you shall see her. there will be time enough to tell the captain when it gets daylight. you would like to see her too--would you not, diggory? she looks very beautiful now." venn assented by rising to his feet, and with charley he followed clym to the foot of the staircase, where he took off his boots; charley did the same. they followed yeobright upstairs to the landing, where there was a candle burning, which yeobright took in his hand, and with it led the way into an adjoining room. here he went to the bedside and folded back the sheet. they stood silently looking upon eustacia, who, as she lay there still in death, eclipsed all her living phases. pallor did not include all the quality of her complexion, which seemed more than whiteness; it was almost light. the expression of her finely carved mouth was pleasant, as if a sense of dignity had just compelled her to leave off speaking. eternal rigidity had seized upon it in a momentary transition between fervour and resignation. her black hair was looser now than either of them had ever seen it before, and surrounded her brow like a forest. the stateliness of look which had been almost too marked for a dweller in a country domicile had at last found an artistically happy background. nobody spoke, till at length clym covered her and turned aside. "now come here," he said. they went to a recess in the same room, and there, on a smaller bed, lay another figure--wildeve. less repose was visible in his face than in eustacia's, but the same luminous youthfulness overspread it, and the least sympathetic observer would have felt at sight of him now that he was born for a higher destiny than this. the only sign upon him of his recent struggle for life was in his finger-tips, which were worn and sacrificed in his dying endeavours to obtain a hold on the face of the weir-wall. yeobright's manner had been so quiet, he had uttered so few syllables since his reappearance, that venn imagined him resigned. it was only when they had left the room and stood upon the landing that the true state of his mind was apparent. here he said, with a wild smile, inclining his head towards the chamber in which eustacia lay, "she is the second woman i have killed this year. i was a great cause of my mother's death, and i am the chief cause of hers." "how?" said venn. "i spoke cruel words to her, and she left my house. i did not invite her back till it was too late. it is i who ought to have drowned myself. it would have been a charity to the living had the river overwhelmed me and borne her up. but i cannot die. those who ought to have lived lie dead; and here am i alive!" "but you can't charge yourself with crimes in that way," said venn. "you may as well say that the parents be the cause of a murder by the child, for without the parents the child would never have been begot." "yes, venn, that is very true; but you don't know all the circumstances. if it had pleased god to put an end to me it would have been a good thing for all. but i am getting used to the horror of my existence. they say that a time comes when men laugh at misery through long acquaintance with it. surely that time will soon come to me!" "your aim has always been good," said venn. "why should you say such desperate things?" "no, they are not desperate. they are only hopeless; and my great regret is that for what i have done no man or law can punish me!" book sixth aftercourses i the inevitable movement onward the story of the deaths of eustacia and wildeve was told throughout egdon, and far beyond, for many weeks and months. all the known incidents of their love were enlarged, distorted, touched up, and modified, till the original reality bore but a slight resemblance to the counterfeit presentation by surrounding tongues. yet, upon the whole, neither the man nor the woman lost dignity by sudden death. misfortune had struck them gracefully, cutting off their erratic histories with a catastrophic dash, instead of, as with many, attenuating each life to an uninteresting meagreness, through long years of wrinkles, neglect, and decay. on those most nearly concerned the effect was somewhat different. strangers who had heard of many such cases now merely heard of one more; but immediately where a blow falls no previous imaginings amount to appreciable preparation for it. the very suddenness of her bereavement dulled, to some extent, thomasin's feelings; yet, irrationally enough, a consciousness that the husband she had lost ought to have been a better man did not lessen her mourning at all. on the contrary, this fact seemed at first to set off the dead husband in his young wife's eyes, and to be the necessary cloud to the rainbow. but the horrors of the unknown had passed. vague misgivings about her future as a deserted wife were at an end. the worst had once been matter of trembling conjecture; it was now matter of reason only, a limited badness. her chief interest, the little eustacia, still remained. there was humility in her grief, no defiance in her attitude; and when this is the case a shaken spirit is apt to be stilled. could thomasin's mournfulness now and eustacia's serenity during life have been reduced to common measure, they would have touched the same mark nearly. but thomasin's former brightness made shadow of that which in a sombre atmosphere was light itself. the spring came and calmed her; the summer came and soothed her; the autumn arrived, and she began to be comforted, for her little girl was strong and happy, growing in size and knowledge every day. outward events flattered thomasin not a little. wildeve had died intestate, and she and the child were his only relatives. when administration had been granted, all the debts paid, and the residue of her husband's uncle's property had come into her hands, it was found that the sum waiting to be invested for her own and the child's benefit was little less than ten thousand pounds. where should she live? the obvious place was blooms-end. the old rooms, it is true, were not much higher than the between-decks of a frigate, necessitating a sinking in the floor under the new clock-case she brought from the inn, and the removal of the handsome brass knobs on its head, before there was height for it to stand; but, such as the rooms were, there were plenty of them, and the place was endeared to her by every early recollection. clym very gladly admitted her as a tenant, confining his own existence to two rooms at the top of the back staircase, where he lived on quietly, shut off from thomasin and the three servants she had thought fit to indulge in now that she was a mistress of money, going his own ways, and thinking his own thoughts. his sorrows had made some change in his outward appearance; and yet the alteration was chiefly within. it might have been said that he had a wrinkled mind. he had no enemies, and he could get nobody to reproach him, which was why he so bitterly reproached himself. he did sometimes think he had been ill-used by fortune, so far as to say that to be born is a palpable dilemma, and that instead of men aiming to advance in life with glory they should calculate how to retreat out of it without shame. but that he and his had been sarcastically and pitilessly handled in having such irons thrust into their souls he did not maintain long. it is usually so, except with the sternest of men. human beings, in their generous endeavour to construct a hypothesis that shall not degrade a first cause, have always hesitated to conceive a dominant power of lower moral quality than their own; and, even while they sit down and weep by the waters of babylon, invent excuses for the oppression which prompts their tears. thus, though words of solace were vainly uttered in his presence, he found relief in a direction of his own choosing when left to himself. for a man of his habits the house and the hundred and twenty pounds a year which he had inherited from his mother were enough to supply all worldly needs. resources do not depend upon gross amounts, but upon the proportion of spendings to takings. he frequently walked the heath alone, when the past seized upon him with its shadowy hand, and held him there to listen to its tale. his imagination would then people the spot with its ancient inhabitants: forgotten celtic tribes trod their tracks about him, and he could almost live among them, look in their faces, and see them standing beside the barrows which swelled around, untouched and perfect as at the time of their erection. those of the dyed barbarians who had chosen the cultivable tracts were, in comparison with those who had left their marks here, as writers on paper beside writers on parchment. their records had perished long ago by the plough, while the works of these remained. yet they all had lived and died unconscious of the different fates awaiting their relics. it reminded him that unforeseen factors operate in the evolution of immortality. winter again came round, with its winds, frosts, tame robins, and sparkling starlight. the year previous thomasin had hardly been conscious of the season's advance; this year she laid her heart open to external influences of every kind. the life of this sweet cousin, her baby, and her servants, came to clym's senses only in the form of sounds through a wood partition as he sat over books of exceptionally large type; but his ear became at last so accustomed to these slight noises from the other part of the house that he almost could witness the scenes they signified. a faint beat of half-seconds conjured up thomasin rocking the cradle, a wavering hum meant that she was singing the baby to sleep, a crunching of sand as between millstones raised the picture of humphrey's, fairway's, or sam's heavy feet crossing the stone floor of the kitchen; a light boyish step, and a gay tune in a high key, betokened a visit from grandfer cantle; a sudden break-off in the grandfer's utterances implied the application to his lips of a mug of small beer, a bustling and slamming of doors meant starting to go to market; for thomasin, in spite of her added scope of gentility, led a ludicrously narrow life, to the end that she might save every possible pound for her little daughter. one summer day clym was in the garden, immediately outside the parlour window, which was as usual open. he was looking at the pot-flowers on the sill; they had been revived and restored by thomasin to the state in which his mother had left them. he heard a slight scream from thomasin, who was sitting inside the room. "o, how you frightened me!" she said to some one who had entered. "i thought you were the ghost of yourself." clym was curious enough to advance a little further and look in at the window. to his astonishment there stood within the room diggory venn, no longer a reddleman, but exhibiting the strangely altered hues of an ordinary christian countenance, white shirt-front, light flowered waistcoat, blue-spotted neckerchief, and bottle-green coat. nothing in this appearance was at all singular but the fact of its great difference from what he had formerly been. red, and all approach to red, was carefully excluded from every article of clothes upon him; for what is there that persons just out of harness dread so much as reminders of the trade which has enriched them? yeobright went round to the door and entered. "i was so alarmed!" said thomasin, smiling from one to the other. "i couldn't believe that he had got white of his own accord! it seemed supernatural." "i gave up dealing in reddle last christmas," said venn. "it was a profitable trade, and i found that by that time i had made enough to take the dairy of fifty cows that my father had in his lifetime. i always thought of getting to that place again if i changed at all, and now i am there." "how did you manage to become white, diggory?" thomasin asked. "i turned so by degrees, ma'am." "you look much better than ever you did before." venn appeared confused; and thomasin, seeing how inadvertently she had spoken to a man who might possibly have tender feelings for her still, blushed a little. clym saw nothing of this, and added good-humouredly-- "what shall we have to frighten thomasin's baby with, now you have become a human being again?" "sit down, diggory," said thomasin, "and stay to tea." venn moved as if he would retire to the kitchen, when thomasin said with pleasant pertness as she went on with some sewing, "of course you must sit down here. and where does your fifty-cow dairy lie, mr. venn?" "at stickleford--about two miles to the right of alderworth, ma'am, where the meads begin. i have thought that if mr. yeobright would like to pay me a visit sometimes he shouldn't stay away for want of asking. i'll not bide to tea this afternoon, thank'ee, for i've got something on hand that must be settled. 'tis maypole-day tomorrow, and the shadwater folk have clubbed with a few of your neighbours here to have a pole just outside your palings in the heath, as it is a nice green place." venn waved his elbow towards the patch in front of the house. "i have been talking to fairway about it," he continued, "and i said to him that before we put up the pole it would be as well to ask mrs. wildeve." "i can say nothing against it," she answered. "our property does not reach an inch further than the white palings." "but you might not like to see a lot of folk going crazy round a stick, under your very nose?" "i shall have no objection at all." venn soon after went away, and in the evening yeobright strolled as far as fairway's cottage. it was a lovely may sunset, and the birch trees which grew on this margin of the vast egdon wilderness had put on their new leaves, delicate as butterflies' wings, and diaphanous as amber. beside fairway's dwelling was an open space recessed from the road, and here were now collected all the young people from within a radius of a couple of miles. the pole lay with one end supported on a trestle, and women were engaged in wreathing it from the top downwards with wildflowers. the instincts of merry england lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on egdon. indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine. yeobright did not interrupt the preparations, and went home again. the next morning, when thomasin withdrew the curtains of her bedroom window, there stood the maypole in the middle of the green, its top cutting into the sky. it had sprung up in the night, or rather early morning, like jack's bean-stalk. she opened the casement to get a better view of the garlands and posies that adorned it. the sweet perfume of the flowers had already spread into the surrounding air, which, being free from every taint, conducted to her lips a full measure of the fragrance received from the spire of blossom in its midst. at the top of the pole were crossed hoops decked with small flowers; beneath these came a milk-white zone of maybloom; then a zone of bluebells, then of cowslips, then of lilacs, then of ragged-robins, daffodils, and so on, till the lowest stage was reached. thomasin noticed all these, and was delighted that the may revel was to be so near. when afternoon came people began to gather on the green, and yeobright was interested enough to look out upon them from the open window of his room. soon after this thomasin walked out from the door immediately below and turned her eyes up to her cousin's face. she was dressed more gaily than yeobright had ever seen her dressed since the time of wildeve's death, eighteen months before; since the day of her marriage even she had not exhibited herself to such advantage. "how pretty you look today, thomasin!" he said. "is it because of the maypole?" "not altogether." and then she blushed and dropped her eyes, which he did not specially observe, though her manner seemed to him to be rather peculiar, considering that she was only addressing himself. could it be possible that she had put on her summer clothes to please him? he recalled her conduct towards him throughout the last few weeks, when they had often been working together in the garden, just as they had formerly done when they were boy and girl under his mother's eye. what if her interest in him were not so entirely that of a relative as it had formerly been? to yeobright any possibility of this sort was a serious matter; and he almost felt troubled at the thought of it. every pulse of loverlike feeling which had not been stilled during eustacia's lifetime had gone into the grave with her. his passion for her had occurred too far on in his manhood to leave fuel enough on hand for another fire of that sort, as may happen with more boyish loves. even supposing him capable of loving again, that love would be a plant of slow and laboured growth, and in the end only small and sickly, like an autumn-hatched bird. he was so distressed by this new complexity that when the enthusiastic brass band arrived and struck up, which it did about five o'clock, with apparently wind enough among its members to blow down his house, he withdrew from his rooms by the back door, went down the garden, through the gate in the hedge, and away out of sight. he could not bear to remain in the presence of enjoyment today, though he had tried hard. nothing was seen of him for four hours. when he came back by the same path it was dusk, and the dews were coating every green thing. the boisterous music had ceased; but, entering the premises as he did from behind, he could not see if the may party had all gone till he had passed through thomasin's division of the house to the front door. thomasin was standing within the porch alone. she looked at him reproachfully. "you went away just when it began, clym," she said. "yes. i felt i could not join in. you went out with them, of course?" "no, i did not." "you appeared to be dressed on purpose." "yes, but i could not go out alone; so many people were there. one is there now." yeobright strained his eyes across the dark-green patch beyond the paling, and near the black form of the maypole he discerned a shadowy figure, sauntering idly up and down. "who is it?" he said. "mr. venn," said thomasin. "you might have asked him to come in, i think, tamsie. he has been very kind to you first and last." "i will now," she said; and, acting on the impulse, went through the wicket to where venn stood under the maypole. "it is mr. venn, i think?" she inquired. venn started as if he had not seen her--artful man that he was--and said, "yes." "will you come in?" "i am afraid that i--" "i have seen you dancing this evening, and you had the very best of the girls for your partners. is it that you won't come in because you wish to stand here, and think over the past hours of enjoyment?" "well, that's partly it," said mr. venn, with ostentatious sentiment. "but the main reason why i am biding here like this is that i want to wait till the moon rises." "to see how pretty the maypole looks in the moonlight?" "no. to look for a glove that was dropped by one of the maidens." thomasin was speechless with surprise. that a man who had to walk some four or five miles to his home should wait here for such a reason pointed to only one conclusion: the man must be amazingly interested in that glove's owner. "were you dancing with her, diggory?" she asked, in a voice which revealed that he had made himself considerably more interesting to her by this disclosure. "no," he sighed. "and you will not come in, then?" "not tonight, thank you, ma'am." "shall i lend you a lantern to look for the young person's glove, mr. venn?" "o no; it is not necessary, mrs. wildeve, thank you. the moon will rise in a few minutes." thomasin went back to the porch. "is he coming in?" said clym, who had been waiting where she had left him. "he would rather not tonight," she said, and then passed by him into the house; whereupon clym too retired to his own rooms. when clym was gone thomasin crept upstairs in the dark, and, just listening by the cot, to assure herself that the child was asleep, she went to the window, gently lifted the corner of the white curtain, and looked out. venn was still there. she watched the growth of the faint radiance appearing in the sky by the eastern hill, till presently the edge of the moon burst upwards and flooded the valley with light. diggory's form was now distinct on the green; he was moving about in a bowed attitude, evidently scanning the grass for the precious missing article, walking in zigzags right and left till he should have passed over every foot of the ground. "how very ridiculous!" thomasin murmured to herself, in a tone which was intended to be satirical. "to think that a man should be so silly as to go mooning about like that for a girl's glove! a respectable dairyman, too, and a man of money as he is now. what a pity!" at last venn appeared to find it; whereupon he stood up and raised it to his lips. then placing it in his breast-pocket--the nearest receptacle to a man's heart permitted by modern raiment--he ascended the valley in a mathematically direct line towards his distant home in the meadows. ii thomasin walks in a green place by the roman road clym saw little of thomasin for several days after this; and when they met she was more silent than usual. at length he asked her what she was thinking of so intently. "i am thoroughly perplexed," she said candidly. "i cannot for my life think who it is that diggory venn is so much in love with. none of the girls at the maypole were good enough for him, and yet she must have been there." clym tried to imagine venn's choice for a moment; but ceasing to be interested in the question he went on again with his gardening. no clearing up of the mystery was granted her for some time. but one afternoon thomasin was upstairs getting ready for a walk, when she had occasion to come to the landing and call "rachel." rachel was a girl about thirteen, who carried the baby out for airings; and she came upstairs at the call. "have you seen one of my last new gloves about the house, rachel?" inquired thomasin. "it is the fellow to this one." rachel did not reply. "why don't you answer?" said her mistress. "i think it is lost, ma'am." "lost? who lost it? i have never worn them but once." rachel appeared as one dreadfully troubled, and at last began to cry. "please, ma'am, on the day of the maypole i had none to wear, and i seed yours on the table, and i thought i would borrow 'em. i did not mean to hurt 'em at all, but one of them got lost. somebody gave me some money to buy another pair for you, but i have not been able to go anywhere to get 'em." "who's somebody?" "mr. venn." "did he know it was my glove?" "yes. i told him." thomasin was so surprised by the explanation that she quite forgot to lecture the girl, who glided silently away. thomasin did not move further than to turn her eyes upon the grass-plat where the maypole had stood. she remained thinking, then said to herself that she would not go out that afternoon, but would work hard at the baby's unfinished lovely plaid frock, cut on the cross in the newest fashion. how she managed to work hard, and yet do no more than she had done at the end of two hours, would have been a mystery to anyone not aware that the recent incident was of a kind likely to divert her industry from a manual to a mental channel. next day she went her ways as usual, and continued her custom of walking in the heath with no other companion than little eustacia, now of the age when it is a matter of doubt with such characters whether they are intended to walk through the world on their hands or on their feet; so that they get into painful complications by trying both. it was very pleasant to thomasin, when she had carried the child to some lonely place, to give her a little private practice on the green turf and shepherd's-thyme, which formed a soft mat to fall headlong upon when equilibrium was lost. once, when engaged in this system of training, and stooping to remove bits of stick, fern-stalks, and other such fragments from the child's path, that the journey might not be brought to an untimely end by some insuperable barrier a quarter of an inch high, she was alarmed by discovering that a man on horseback was almost close beside her, the soft natural carpet having muffled the horse's tread. the rider, who was venn, waved his hat in the air and bowed gallantly. "diggory, give me my glove," said thomasin, whose manner it was under any circumstances to plunge into the midst of a subject which engrossed her. venn immediately dismounted, put his hand in his breastpocket, and handed the glove. "thank you. it was very good of you to take care of it." "it is very good of you to say so." "o no. i was quite glad to find you had it. everybody gets so indifferent that i was surprised to know you thought of me." "if you had remembered what i was once you wouldn't have been surprised." "ah, no," she said quickly. "but men of your character are mostly so independent." "what is my character?" he asked. "i don't exactly know," said thomasin simply, "except it is to cover up your feelings under a practical manner, and only to show them when you are alone." "ah, how do you know that?" said venn strategically. "because," said she, stopping to put the little girl, who had managed to get herself upside down, right end up again, "because i do." "you mustn't judge by folks in general," said venn. "still i don't know much what feelings are now-a-days. i have got so mixed up with business of one sort and t'other that my soft sentiments are gone off in vapour like. yes, i am given up body and soul to the making of money. money is all my dream." "o diggory, how wicked!" said thomasin reproachfully, and looking at him in exact balance between taking his words seriously and judging them as said to tease her. "yes, 'tis rather a rum course," said venn, in the bland tone of one comfortably resigned to sins he could no longer overcome. "you, who used to be so nice!" "well, that's an argument i rather like, because what a man has once been he may be again." thomasin blushed. "except that it is rather harder now," venn continued. "why?" she asked. "because you be richer than you were at that time." "o no--not much. i have made it nearly all over to the baby, as it was my duty to do, except just enough to live on." "i am rather glad of that," said venn softly, and regarding her from the corner of his eye, "for it makes it easier for us to be friendly." thomasin blushed again, and, when a few more words had been said of a not unpleasing kind, venn mounted his horse and rode on. this conversation had passed in a hollow of the heath near the old roman road, a place much frequented by thomasin. and it might have been observed that she did not in future walk that way less often from having met venn there now. whether or not venn abstained from riding thither because he had met thomasin in the same place might easily have been guessed from her proceedings about two months later in the same year. iii the serious discourse of clym with his cousin throughout this period yeobright had more or less pondered on his duty to his cousin thomasin. he could not help feeling that it would be a pitiful waste of sweet material if the tender-natured thing should be doomed from this early stage of her life onwards to dribble away her winsome qualities on lonely gorse and fern. but he felt this as an economist merely, and not as a lover. his passion for eustacia had been a sort of conserve of his whole life, and he had nothing more of that supreme quality left to bestow. so far the obvious thing was not to entertain any idea of marriage with thomasin, even to oblige her. but this was not all. years ago there had been in his mother's mind a great fancy about thomasin and himself. it had not positively amounted to a desire, but it had always been a favourite dream. that they should be man and wife in good time, if the happiness of neither were endangered thereby, was the fancy in question. so that what course save one was there now left for any son who reverenced his mother's memory as yeobright did? it is an unfortunate fact that any particular whim of parents, which might have been dispersed by half an hour's conversation during their lives, becomes sublimated by their deaths into a fiat the most absolute, with such results to conscientious children as those parents, had they lived, would have been the first to decry. had only yeobright's own future been involved he would have proposed to thomasin with a ready heart. he had nothing to lose by carrying out a dead mother's hope. but he dreaded to contemplate thomasin wedded to the mere corpse of a lover that he now felt himself to be. he had but three activities alive in him. one was his almost daily walk to the little graveyard wherein his mother lay; another, his just as frequent visits by night to the more distant enclosure, which numbered his eustacia among its dead; the third was self-preparation for a vocation which alone seemed likely to satisfy his cravings--that of an itinerant preacher of the eleventh commandment. it was difficult to believe that thomasin would be cheered by a husband with such tendencies as these. yet he resolved to ask her, and let her decide for herself. it was even with a pleasant sense of doing his duty that he went downstairs to her one evening for this purpose, when the sun was printing on the valley the same long shadow of the housetop that he had seen lying there times out of number while his mother lived. thomasin was not in her room, and he found her in the front garden. "i have long been wanting, thomasin," he began, "to say something about a matter that concerns both our futures." "and you are going to say it now?" she remarked quickly, colouring as she met his gaze. "do stop a minute, clym, and let me speak first, for oddly enough, i have been wanting to say something to you." "by all means say on, tamsie." "i suppose nobody can overhear us?" she went on, casting her eyes around and lowering her voice. "well, first you will promise me this--that you won't be angry and call me anything harsh if you disagree with what i propose?" yeobright promised, and she continued: "what i want is your advice, for you are my relation--i mean, a sort of guardian to me--aren't you, clym?" "well, yes, i suppose i am; a sort of guardian. in fact, i am, of course," he said, altogether perplexed as to her drift. "i am thinking of marrying," she then observed blandly. "but i shall not marry unless you assure me that you approve of such a step. why don't you speak?" "i was taken rather by surprise. but, nevertheless, i am very glad to hear such news. i shall approve, of course, dear tamsie. who can it be? i am quite at a loss to guess. no i am not--'tis the old doctor!--not that i mean to call him old, for he is not very old after all. ah--i noticed when he attended you last time!" "no, no," she said hastily. "'tis mr. venn." clym's face suddenly became grave. "there, now, you don't like him, and i wish i hadn't mentioned him!" she exclaimed almost petulantly. "and i shouldn't have done it, either, only he keeps on bothering me so till i don't know what to do!" clym looked at the heath. "i like venn well enough," he answered at last. "he is a very honest and at the same time astute man. he is clever too, as is proved by his having got you to favour him. but really, thomasin, he is not quite--" "gentleman enough for me? that is just what i feel. i am sorry now that i asked you, and i won't think any more of him. at the same time i must marry him if i marry anybody--that i will say!" "i don't see that," said clym, carefully concealing every clue to his own interrupted intention, which she plainly had not guessed. "you might marry a professional man, or somebody of that sort, by going into the town to live and forming acquaintances there." "i am not fit for town life--so very rural and silly as i always have been. do not you yourself notice my countrified ways?" "well, when i came home from paris i did, a little; but i don't now." "that's because you have got countrified too. o, i couldn't live in a street for the world! egdon is a ridiculous old place; but i have got used to it, and i couldn't be happy anywhere else at all." "neither could i," said clym. "then how could you say that i should marry some town man? i am sure, say what you will, that i must marry diggory, if i marry at all. he has been kinder to me than anybody else, and has helped me in many ways that i don't know of!" thomasin almost pouted now. "yes, he has," said clym in a neutral tone. "well, i wish with all my heart that i could say, marry him. but i cannot forget what my mother thought on that matter, and it goes rather against me not to respect her opinion. there is too much reason why we should do the little we can to respect it now." "very well, then," sighed thomasin. "i will say no more." "but you are not bound to obey my wishes. i merely say what i think." "o no--i don't want to be rebellious in that way," she said sadly. "i had no business to think of him--i ought to have thought of my family. what dreadfully bad impulses there are in me!" her lips trembled, and she turned away to hide a tear. clym, though vexed at what seemed her unaccountable taste, was in a measure relieved to find that at any rate the marriage question in relation to himself was shelved. through several succeeding days he saw her at different times from the window of his room moping disconsolately about the garden. he was half angry with her for choosing venn; then he was grieved at having put himself in the way of venn's happiness, who was, after all, as honest and persevering a young fellow as any on egdon, since he had turned over a new leaf. in short, clym did not know what to do. when next they met she said abruptly, "he is much more respectable now than he was then!" "who? o yes--diggory venn." "aunt only objected because he was a reddleman." "well, thomasin, perhaps i don't know all the particulars of my mother's wish. so you had better use your own discretion." "you will always feel that i slighted your mother's memory." "no, i will not. i shall think you are convinced that, had she seen diggory in his present position, she would have considered him a fitting husband for you. now, that's my real feeling. don't consult me any more, but do as you like, thomasin. i shall be content." it is to be supposed that thomasin was convinced; for a few days after this, when clym strayed into a part of the heath that he had not lately visited, humphrey, who was at work there, said to him, "i am glad to see that mrs. wildeve and venn have made it up again, seemingly." "have they?" said clym abstractedly. "yes; and he do contrive to stumble upon her whenever she walks out on fine days with the chiel. but, mr. yeobright, i can't help feeling that your cousin ought to have married you. 'tis a pity to make two chimley-corners where there need be only one. you could get her away from him now, 'tis my belief, if you were only to set about it." "how can i have the conscience to marry after having driven two women to their deaths? don't think such a thing, humphrey. after my experience i should consider it too much of a burlesque to go to church and take a wife. in the words of job, 'i have made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should i think upon a maid?'" "no, mr. clym, don't fancy that about driving two women to their deaths. you shouldn't say it." "well, we'll leave that out," said yeobright. "but anyhow god has set a mark upon me which wouldn't look well in a lovemaking scene. i have two ideas in my head, and no others. i am going to keep a night-school; and i am going to turn preacher. what have you got to say to that, humphrey?" "i'll come and hear 'ee with all my heart." "thanks. 'tis all i wish." as clym descended into the valley thomasin came down by the other path, and met him at the gate. "what do you think i have to tell you, clym?" she said, looking archly over her shoulder at him. "i can guess," he replied. she scrutinized his face. "yes, you guess right. it is going to be after all. he thinks i may as well make up my mind, and i have got to think so too. it is to be on the twenty-fifth of next month, if you don't object." "do what you think right, dear. i am only too glad that you see your way clear to happiness again. my sex owes you every amends for the treatment you received in days gone by." iv cheerfulness again asserts itself at blooms-end, and clym finds his vocation anybody who had passed through blooms-end about eleven o'clock on the morning fixed for the wedding would have found that, while yeobright's house was comparatively quiet, sounds denoting great activity came from the dwelling of his nearest neighbour, timothy fairway. it was chiefly a noise of feet, briskly crunching hither and thither over the sanded floor within. one man only was visible outside, and he seemed to be later at an appointment than he had intended to be, for he hastened up to the door, lifted the latch, and walked in without ceremony. the scene within was not quite the customary one. standing about the room was the little knot of men who formed the chief part of the egdon coterie, there being present fairway himself, grandfer cantle, humphrey, christian, and one or two turf-cutters. it was a warm day, and the men were as a matter of course in their shirtsleeves, except christian, who had always a nervous fear of parting with a scrap of his clothing when in anybody's house but his own. across the stout oak table in the middle of the room was thrown a mass of striped linen, which grandfer cantle held down on one side, and humphrey on the other, while fairway rubbed its surface with a yellow lump, his face being damp and creased with the effort of the labour. "waxing a bed-tick, souls?" said the newcomer. "yes, sam," said grandfer cantle, as a man too busy to waste words. "shall i stretch this corner a shade tighter, timothy?" fairway replied, and the waxing went on with unabated vigour. "'tis going to be a good bed, by the look o't," continued sam, after an interval of silence. "who may it be for?" "'tis a present for the new folks that's going to set up housekeeping," said christian, who stood helpless and overcome by the majesty of the proceedings. "ah, to be sure; and a valuable one, 'a b'lieve." "beds be dear to fokes that don't keep geese, bain't they, mister fairway?" said christian, as to an omniscient being. "yes," said the furze-dealer, standing up, giving his forehead a thorough mopping, and handing the beeswax to humphrey, who succeeded at the rubbing forthwith. "not that this couple be in want of one, but 'twas well to show 'em a bit of friendliness at this great racketing vagary of their lives. i set up both my own daughters in one when they was married, and there have been feathers enough for another in the house the last twelve months. now then, neighbours, i think we have laid on enough wax. grandfer cantle, you turn the tick the right way outwards, and then i'll begin to shake in the feathers." when the bed was in proper trim fairway and christian brought forward vast paper bags, stuffed to the full, but light as balloons, and began to turn the contents of each into the receptacle just prepared. as bag after bag was emptied, airy tufts of down and feathers floated about the room in increasing quantity till, through a mishap of christian's, who shook the contents of one bag outside the tick, the atmosphere of the room became dense with gigantic flakes, which descended upon the workers like a windless snowstorm. "i never saw such a clumsy chap as you, christian," said grandfer cantle severely. "you might have been the son of a man that's never been outside blooms-end in his life for all the wit you have. really all the soldiering and smartness in the world in the father seems to count for nothing in forming the nater of the son. as far as that chiel christian is concerned i might as well have stayed at home and seed nothing, like all the rest of ye here. though, as far as myself is concerned, a dashing spirit has counted for sommat, to be sure!" "don't ye let me down so, father; i feel no bigger than a ninepin after it. i've made but a bruckle hit, i'm afeard." "come, come. never pitch yerself in such a low key as that, christian; you should try more," said fairway. "yes, you should try more," echoed the grandfer with insistence, as if he had been the first to make the suggestion. "in common conscience every man ought either to marry or go for a soldier. 'tis a scandal to the nation to do neither one nor t'other. i did both, thank god! neither to raise men nor to lay 'em low--that shows a poor do-nothing spirit indeed." "i never had the nerve to stand fire," faltered christian. "but as to marrying, i own i've asked here and there, though without much fruit from it. yes, there's some house or other that might have had a man for a master--such as he is--that's now ruled by a woman alone. still it might have been awkward if i had found her; for, d'ye see, neighbours, there'd have been nobody left at home to keep down father's spirits to the decent pitch that becomes a old man." "and you've your work cut out to do that, my son," said grandfer cantle smartly. "i wish that the dread of infirmities was not so strong in me!--i'd start the very first thing tomorrow to see the world over again! but seventy-one, though nothing at home, is a high figure for a rover... ay, seventy-one, last candlemasday. gad, i'd sooner have it in guineas than in years!" and the old man sighed. "don't you be mournful, grandfer," said fairway. "empt some more feathers into the bed-tick, and keep up yer heart. though rather lean in the stalks you be a green-leaved old man still. there's time enough left to ye yet to fill whole chronicles." "begad, i'll go to 'em, timothy--to the married pair!" said granfer cantle in an encouraged voice, and starting round briskly. "i'll go to 'em tonight and sing a wedding song, hey? 'tis like me to do so, you know; and they'd see it as such. my 'down in cupid's gardens' was well liked in four; still, i've got others as good, and even better. what do you say to my she cal´-led to´ her love´ from the lat´-tice a-bove, 'o come in´ from the fog´-gy fog´-gy dew´.' "'twould please 'em well at such a time! really, now i come to think of it, i haven't turned my tongue in my head to the shape of a real good song since old midsummer night, when we had the 'barley mow' at the woman; and 'tis a pity to neglect your strong point where there's few that have the compass for such things!" "so 'tis, so 'tis," said fairway. "now gie the bed a shake down. we've put in seventy pound of best feathers, and i think that's as many as the tick will fairly hold. a bit and a drap wouldn't be amiss now, i reckon. christian, maul down the victuals from corner-cupboard if canst reach, man, and i'll draw a drap o' sommat to wet it with." they sat down to a lunch in the midst of their work, feathers around, above, and below them; the original owners of which occasionally came to the open door and cackled begrudgingly at sight of such a quantity of their old clothes. "upon my soul i shall be chokt," said fairway when, having extracted a feather from his mouth, he found several others floating on the mug as it was handed round. "i've swallered several; and one had a tolerable quill," said sam placidly from the corner. "hullo--what's that--wheels i hear coming?" grandfer cantle exclaimed, jumping up and hastening to the door. "why, 'tis they back again: i didn't expect 'em yet this half-hour. to be sure, how quick marrying can be done when you are in the mind for't!" "o yes, it can soon be done," said fairway, as if something should be added to make the statement complete. he arose and followed the grandfer, and the rest also went to the door. in a moment an open fly was driven past, in which sat venn and mrs. venn, yeobright, and a grand relative of venn's who had come from budmouth for the occasion. the fly had been hired at the nearest town, regardless of distance and cost, there being nothing on egdon heath, in venn's opinion, dignified enough for such an event when such a woman as thomasin was the bride; and the church was too remote for a walking bridal-party. as the fly passed the group which had run out from the homestead they shouted "hurrah!" and waved their hands; feathers and down floating from their hair, their sleeves, and the folds of their garments at every motion, and grandfer cantle's seals dancing merrily in the sunlight as he twirled himself about. the driver of the fly turned a supercilious gaze upon them; he even treated the wedded pair themselves with something like condescension; for in what other state than heathen could people, rich or poor, exist who were doomed to abide in such a world's end as egdon? thomasin showed no such superiority to the group at the door, fluttering her hand as quickly as a bird's wing towards them, and asking diggory, with tears in her eyes, if they ought not to alight and speak to these kind neighbours. venn, however, suggested that, as they were all coming to the house in the evening, this was hardly necessary. after this excitement the saluting party returned to their occupation, and the stuffing and sewing were soon afterwards finished, when fairway harnessed a horse, wrapped up the cumbrous present, and drove off with it in the cart to venn's house at stickleford. yeobright, having filled the office at the wedding service which naturally fell to his hands, and afterwards returned to the house with the husband and wife, was indisposed to take part in the feasting and dancing that wound up the evening. thomasin was disappointed. "i wish i could be there without dashing your spirits," he said. "but i might be too much like the skull at the banquet." "no, no." "well, dear, apart from that, if you would excuse me, i should be glad. i know it seems unkind; but, dear thomasin, i fear i should not be happy in the company--there, that's the truth of it. i shall always be coming to see you at your new home, you know, so that my absence now will not matter." "then i give in. do whatever will be most comfortable to yourself." clym retired to his lodging at the housetop much relieved, and occupied himself during the afternoon in noting down the heads of a sermon, with which he intended to initiate all that really seemed practicable of the scheme that had originally brought him hither, and that he had so long kept in view under various modifications, and through evil and good report. he had tested and weighed his convictions again and again, and saw no reason to alter them, though he had considerably lessened his plan. his eyesight, by long humouring in his native air, had grown stronger, but not sufficiently strong to warrant his attempting his extensive educational project. yet he did not repine: there was still more than enough of an unambitious sort to tax all his energies and occupy all his hours. evening drew on, and sounds of life and movement in the lower part of the domicile became more pronounced, the gate in the palings clicking incessantly. the party was to be an early one, and all the guests were assembled long before it was dark. yeobright went down the back staircase and into the heath by another path than that in front, intending to walk in the open air till the party was over, when he would return to wish thomasin and her husband good-bye as they departed. his steps were insensibly bent towards mistover by the path that he had followed on that terrible morning when he learnt the strange news from susan's boy. he did not turn aside to the cottage, but pushed on to an eminence, whence he could see over the whole quarter that had once been eustacia's home. while he stood observing the darkening scene somebody came up. clym, seeing him but dimly, would have let him pass silently, had not the pedestrian, who was charley, recognized the young man and spoken to him. "charley, i have not seen you for a length of time," said yeobright. "do you often walk this way?" "no," the lad replied. "i don't often come outside the bank." "you were not at the maypole." "no," said charley, in the same listless tone. "i don't care for that sort of thing now." "you rather liked miss eustacia, didn't you?" yeobright gently asked. eustacia had frequently told him of charley's romantic attachment. "yes, very much. ah, i wish--" "yes?" "i wish, mr. yeobright, you could give me something to keep that once belonged to her--if you don't mind." "i shall be very happy to. it will give me very great pleasure, charley. let me think what i have of hers that you would like. but come with me to the house, and i'll see." they walked towards blooms-end together. when they reached the front it was dark, and the shutters were closed, so that nothing of the interior could be seen. "come round this way," said clym. "my entrance is at the back for the present." the two went round and ascended the crooked stair in darkness till clym's sitting-room on the upper floor was reached, where he lit a candle, charley entering gently behind. yeobright searched his desk, and taking out a sheet of tissue-paper unfolded from it two or three undulating locks of raven hair, which fell over the paper like black streams. from these he selected one, wrapped it up, and gave it to the lad, whose eyes had filled with tears. he kissed the packet, put it in his pocket, and said in a voice of emotion, "o, mr. clym, how good you are to me!" "i will go a little way with you," said clym. and amid the noise of merriment from below they descended. their path to the front led them close to a little side-window, whence the rays of candles streamed across the shrubs. the window, being screened from general observation by the bushes, had been left unblinded, so that a person in this private nook could see all that was going on within the room which contained the wedding-guests, except in so far as vision was hindered by the green antiquity of the panes. "charley, what are they doing?" said clym. "my sight is weaker again tonight, and the glass of this window is not good." charley wiped his own eyes, which were rather blurred with moisture, and stepped closer to the casement. "mr. venn is asking christian cantle to sing," he replied, "and christian is moving about in his chair as if he were much frightened at the question, and his father has struck up a stave instead of him." "yes, i can hear the old man's voice," said clym. "so there's to be no dancing, i suppose. and is thomasin in the room? i see something moving in front of the candles that resembles her shape, i think." "yes. she do seem happy. she is red in the face, and laughing at something fairway has said to her. o my!" "what noise was that?" said clym. "mr. venn is so tall that he knocked his head against the beam in gieing a skip as he passed under. mrs. venn has run up quite frightened and now she's put her hand to his head to feel if there's a lump. and now they be all laughing again as if nothing had happened." "do any of them seem to care about my not being there?" clym asked. "no, not a bit in the world. now they are all holding up their glasses and drinking somebody's health." "i wonder if it is mine?" "no, 'tis mr. and mrs. venn's, because he is making a hearty sort of speech. there--now mrs. venn has got up, and is going away to put on her things, i think." "well, they haven't concerned themselves about me, and it is quite right they should not. it is all as it should be, and thomasin at least is happy. we will not stay any longer now, as they will soon be coming out to go home." he accompanied the lad into the heath on his way home, and, returning alone to the house a quarter of an hour later, found venn and thomasin ready to start, all the guests having departed in his absence. the wedded pair took their seats in the four-wheeled dogcart which venn's head milker and handy man had driven from stickleford to fetch them in; little eustacia and the nurse were packed securely upon the open flap behind; and the milker, on an ancient overstepping pony, whose shoes clashed like cymbals at every tread, rode in the rear, in the manner of a body-servant of the last century. "now we leave you in absolute possession of your own house again," said thomasin as she bent down to wish her cousin good night. "it will be rather lonely for you, clym, after the hubbub we have been making." "o, that's no inconvenience," said clym, smiling rather sadly. and then the party drove off and vanished in the night shades, and yeobright entered the house. the ticking of the clock was the only sound that greeted him, for not a soul remained; christian, who acted as cook, valet, and gardener to clym, sleeping at his father's house. yeobright sat down in one of the vacant chairs, and remained in thought a long time. his mother's old chair was opposite; it had been sat in that evening by those who had scarcely remembered that it ever was hers. but to clym she was almost a presence there, now as always. whatever she was in other people's memories, in his she was the sublime saint whose radiance even his tenderness for eustacia could not obscure. but his heart was heavy; that mother had not crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladness of his heart. and events had borne out the accuracy of her judgment, and proved the devotedness of her care. he should have heeded her for eustacia's sake even more than for his own. "it was all my fault," he whispered. "o, my mother, my mother! would to god that i could live my life again, and endure for you what you endured for me!" on the sunday after this wedding an unusual sight was to be seen on rainbarrow. from a distance there simply appeared to be a motionless figure standing on the top of the tumulus, just as eustacia had stood on that lonely summit some two years and a half before. but now it was fine warm weather, with only a summer breeze blowing, and early afternoon instead of dull twilight. those who ascended to the immediate neighbourhood of the barrow perceived that the erect form in the centre, piercing the sky, was not really alone. round him upon the slopes of the barrow a number of heathmen and women were reclining or sitting at their ease. they listened to the words of the man in their midst, who was preaching, while they abstractedly pulled heather, stripped ferns, or tossed pebbles down the slope. this was the first of a series of moral lectures or sermons on the mount, which were to be delivered from the same place every sunday afternoon as long as the fine weather lasted. the commanding elevation of rainbarrow had been chosen for two reasons: first, that it occupied a central position among the remote cottages around; secondly, that the preacher thereon could be seen from all adjacent points as soon as he arrived at his post, the view of him being thus a convenient signal to those stragglers who wished to draw near. the speaker was bareheaded, and the breeze at each waft gently lifted and lowered his hair, somewhat too thin for a man of his years, these still numbering less than thirty-three. he wore a shade over his eyes, and his face was pensive and lined; but, though these bodily features were marked with decay there was no defect in the tones of his voice, which were rich, musical, and stirring. he stated that his discourses to people were to be sometimes secular, and sometimes religious, but never dogmatic; and that his texts would be taken from all kinds of books. this afternoon the words were as follows:-- "'and the king rose up to meet her, and bowed himself unto her, and sat down on his throne, and caused a seat to be set for the king's mother; and she sat on his right hand. then she said, i desire one small petition of thee; i pray thee say me not nay. and the king said unto her, ask, on, my mother: for i will not say thee nay.'" yeobright had, in fact, found his vocation in the career of an itinerant open-air preacher and lecturer on morally unimpeachable subjects; and from this day he laboured incessantly in that office, speaking not only in simple language on rainbarrow and in the hamlets round, but in a more cultivated strain elsewhere--from the steps and porticoes of town-halls, from market-crosses, from conduits, on esplanades and on wharves, from the parapets of bridges, in barns and outhouses, and all other such places in the neighbouring wessex towns and villages. he left alone creeds and systems of philosophy, finding enough and more than enough to occupy his tongue in the opinions and actions common to all good men. some believed him, and some believed not; some said that his words were commonplace, others complained of his want of theological doctrine; while others again remarked that it was well enough for a man to take to preaching who could not see to do anything else. but everywhere he was kindly received, for the story of his life had become generally known. note: this edition has not been prepared in a normal project gutenberg methodology. a year ago we released moby dick (from the on-line book initiative) without editing which meant it was available as one single zip file which contained one file for each chapter (i noted chapter was missing, and we are replacing it when we do a copyright analysis on the various chapters we received. we did not receive much, if any, response to this method of release of an etext, but we have continued to produce most of our etexts in this normal project gutenberg format with blank lines between paragraphs, no hyphenation and no characters one wouldn't expect to find on the obvious parts of the printed page. however, once a year, at least, we will present a book in various other format designs to let you know what is available, to go gain a response to the kind of formatting we do. we usually spend a hour day revising any etext we receive into what we consider easy to read formats, chapter and paragraph separation, two spaces between an end of one sentence and the beginning of the next, standardizing punctuation, etc, not to mention checking spelling. even though chapter and page headers and footers were supplied with the text of this book when we received it, it would appear this is fairly obviously mostly scanner output, which may explain punctuation. far from the madding crowd by thomas hardy, from the penguin edition, chapter i description of farmer oak -- an incident when farmer oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun. his christian name was gabriel, and on working days he was a young man of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress, and general good character. on sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given to postponing, and hampered by his best clothes and umbrella: upon the whole, one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle space of laodicean neutrality which lay between the communion people of the parish and the drunken section, -- that is, he went to church, but yawned privately by the time the con- gegation reached the nicene creed,- and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to be listening to the sermon. or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture. since he lived six times as many working-days as sundays, oak's appearance in his old clothes was most peculiarly his own -- the mental picture formed by his neighbours in imagining him being always dressed in that way. he wore a low-crowned felt hat, spread out at the base by tight jamming upon the head for security in high winds, and a coat like dr. johnson's; his lower extremities being encased in ordinary leather leggings and boots emphatically large, affording to each foot a roomy apartment so constructed that any wearer might stand in a river all day long and know nothing of damp -- their maker being a conscientious man who endeavoured to compensate for any weakness in his cut by unstinted dimension and solidity. mr. oak carried about him, by way of watch,- what may be called a small silver clock; in other words, it was a watch as to shape and intention, and a small clock as to size. this instrument being several years older than oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity of going either too fast or not at all. the smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to. the stopping peculiarity of his watch oak remedied by thumps and shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences from the other two defects by constant comparisons with and observations of the sun and stars, and by pressing his face close to the glass of his neighbours' windows, till he could discern the hour marked by the green-faced timekeepers within. it may be mentioned that oak's fob being difficult of access, by reason of its somewhat high situation in the waistband of his trousers (which also lay at a remote height under his waistcoat), the watch was as a necessity pulled out by throwing the body to one side, compressing the mouth and face to a mere mass of ruddy flesh on account of the exertion, and drawing up the watch by its chain, like a bucket from a well. but some thoughtfull persons, who had seen him walking across one of his fields on a certain december morning -- sunny and exceedingly mild -- might have regarded gabriel oak in other aspects than these. in his face one might notice that many of the hues and curves of youth had tarried on to manhood: there even remained in his remoter crannies some relics of the boy. his height and breadth would have been sufficient to make his presence imposing, had they been exhibited with due consideration. but there is a way some men have, rural and urban alike, for which the mind is more responsible than flesh and sinew: it is a way of curtail- ing their dimensions by their manner of showing them. and from a quiet modesty that would have become a vestal which seemed continually to impress upon him that he had no great claim on the world's room, oak walked unassumingly and with a faintly perceptible bend, yet distinct from a bowing of the shoulders. this may be said to be a defect in an individual if he depends for his valuation more upon his appearance than upon his capacity to wear well, which oak did not. he had just reached the time of life at which "young" is ceasing to be the prefix of "man" in speaking of one. he was at the brightest period of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions were clearly separated: he had passed the time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family. in short, he was twenty-eight, and a bachelor. the field he was in this morning sloped to a ridge called norcombe hill. through a spur of this hill ran the highway between emminster and chalk- newton. casually glancing over the hedge, oak saw coming down the incline before him an ornamental spring waggon, painted yellow and gaily marked, drawn by two horses, a waggoner walking alongside bearing a whip perpendicularly. the waggon was laden with household goods and window plants, and on the apex of the whole sat a woman, "young" and attractive. gabriel had not beheld the sight for more than half a minute, when the vehicle was brought to a standstill just beneath his eyes. "the tailboard of the waggon is gone, miss." said the waggoner. "then i heard it fall." said the girl, in a soft, though not particularly low voice. "i heard a noise i could not account for when we were coming up the hill." "i'll run back." "do." she answered. the sensible horses stood -- perfectly still, and the waggoner's steps sank fainter and fainter in the distance. the girl on the summit of the load sat motionless, surrounded by tables and chairs with their legs upwards, backed by an oak settle, and ornamented in front by pots of geraniums, myrtles, and cactuses, together with a caged canary -- all probably from the windows of the house just vacated. there was also a cat in a willow basket, from the partly-opened lid of which she gazed with half-closed eyes, and affectionately-surveyed the small birds around. the handsome girl waited for some time idly in her place, and the only sound heard in the stillness was the hopping of the canary up-and down the perches of its prison. then she looked attentively downwards. it was not at the bird, nor at the cat; it was at an oblong package tied in paper, and lying between them. she turned her head to learn if the waggoner were coming. he was not yet in sight; and her-eyes crept back to the package, her thoughts seeming to run upon what was inside it. at length she drew the article into her lap, and untied the paper covering; a small swing looking-glass was disclosed, in which she proceeded to survey herself attentively. she parted her lips and smiled. it was a fine morning, and the sun lighted up to a scarlet glow the crimson jacket she wore, and painted a soft lustre upon her bright face and dark hair. the myrtles, geraniums, and cactuses packed around her were fresh and green, and at such a leafless season they invested the whole concern of horses, waggon, furniture, and girl with a peculiar vernal charm. what possessed her to indulge in such a performance in the sight of the sparrows, blackbirds, and unperceived farmer who were alone its spectators, -- whether the smile began as a factitious one, to test her capacity in that art, -- nobody knows; it ended certainly in a real smile. she blushed at herself, and seeing her reflection blush, blushed the more. the change from the customary spot and necessary occasion of such an act -- from the dressing hour in a bedroom to a time of travelling out of doors -- lent to the idle deed a novelty it did not intrinsically possess. the picture was a delicate one. woman's prescriptive infirmity had stalked into the sunlight, which had clothed it in the freshness of an originality. a cynical inference was irresistible by gabriel oak as he regarded the scene, generous though he fain would have been. there was no necessity whatever for her looking in the glass. she did not adjust her hat, or pat her hair, or press a dimple into shape, or do one thing to signify that any such intention had been her motive in taking up the glass. she simply observed herself as a fair product of nature in the feminine kind, her thoughts seeming to glide into far-off though likely dramas in which men would play a part -- vistas of probable triumphs -- the smiles being of a phase suggesting that hearts were imagined as lost and won. still, this was but conjecture, and the whole series of actions was so idly put forth as to make it rash to assert that intention had any part in them at all. the waggoner's steps were heard returning. she put the glass in the paper, and the whole again into its place. when the waggon had passed on, gabriel withdrew from his point of espial, and descending into the road, followed the vehicle to the turnpike-gate some way beyond the bottom of the hill, where the object of his contemplation now halted for the payment of toll. about twenty steps still remained between him and the gate, when he heard a dispute. lt was a difference con- cerning twopence between the persons with the waggon and the man at the toll-bar. "mis'ess's niece is upon the top of the things, and she says that's enough that i've offered ye, you great miser, and she won't pay any more." these were the waggoner's words. "very well; then mis'ess's niece can't pass." said the turnpike-keeper, closing the gate. oak looked from one to the other of the disputants, and fell into a reverie. there was something in the tone of twopence remarkably insignificant. threepence had a definite value as money -- it was an appreciable infringement on a day's wages, and, as such, a higgling matter; but twopence -- " here." he said, stepping forward and handing twopence to the gatekeeper; "let the young woman pass." he looked up at her then; she heard his words, and looked down. gabriel's features adhered throughout their form so exactly to the middle line between the beauty of st. john and the ugliness of judas iscariot, as represented in a window of the church he attended, that not a single lineament could be selected and called worthy either of distinction or notoriety. the redjacketed and dark- haired maiden seemed to think so too, for she carelessly glanced over him, and told her man to drive on. she might have looked her thanks to gabriel on a minute scale, but she did not speak them; more probably she felt none, for in gaining her a passage he had lost her her point, and we know how women take a favour of that kind. the gatekeeper surveyed the retreating vehicle. "that's a handsome maid" he said to oak "but she has her faults." said gabriel. "true, farmer." "and the greatest of them is -- well, what it is always." "beating people down? ay, 'tis so." "o no." "what, then?" gabriel, perhaps a little piqued by the comely traveller's indifference, glanced back to where he had witnessed her performance over the hedge, and said, "vanity." chapter ii night -- the flock -- an interior -- another interior it was nearly midnight on the eve of st. thomas's, the shortest day in the year. a desolating wind wandered from the north over the hill whereon oak had watched the yellow waggon and its occupant in the sunshine of a few days earlier. norcombe hill -- not far from lonely toller-down -- was one of the spots which suggest to a passer-by that he is in the presence of a shape approaching the indestructible as nearly as any to be found on earth. it was a featureless convexity of chalk and soil -- an ordinary specimen of those smoothly-outlined protuber- ances of the globe which may remain undisturbed on some great day of confusion, when far grander heights and dizzy granite precipices topple down. the hill was covered on its northern side by an ancient and decaying plantation of beeches, whose upper verge formed a line over the crest, fringing its arched curve against the sky, like a mane. to-night these trees sheltered the southern slope from the keenest blasts, which smote the wood and floundered through it with a sound as of grumbling, or gushed over its crowning boughs in a weakened moan. the dry leaves in the ditch simmered and boiled in the same breezes, a tongue of air occasionally ferreting out a few, and sending them spinning across the grass. a group or two of the latest in date amongst the dead multitude had remained till this very mid-winter time on the twigs which bore them and in falling rattled against the trunks with smart taps: between this half-wooded, half naked hill, and the vague still horizon that its summit indistinctly com- manded, was a mysterious sheet of fathomless shade -- the sounds from which suggested that what it con- cealed bore some reduced resemblance to features here. the thin grasses, more or less coating the hill, were touched by the wind in breezes of differing powers, and almost of differing natures -- one rubbing the blades heavily, another raking them piercingly, another brushing them like a soft broom. the instinctive act of human- kind was to stand and listen, and learn how the trees to each other in the regular antiphonies of a cathedral choir; how hedges and other shapes to leeward them caught the note, lowering it to the tenderest sob; and how the hurrying gust then plunged into the south, to be heard no more. the sky was clear -- remarkably clear -- and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse. the north star was directly in the wind's eye, and since evening the bear had swung round it outwardly to the east, till he was now at a right angle with the meridian. a difference of colour in the stars -- oftener read of than seen in england-was really perceptible here. the sovereign brilliancy of sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called capella was yellow, aldebaran and betelgueux shone with a fiery red. to persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement. the sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of still- ness, or by the better outlook upon space that a hill affords, or by the wind, or by the solitude; but whatever be its origin, the impression of riding along is vivid and abiding. the poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of differ- ence from the mass of civilised mankind, who are dreamwrapt and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. after such a nocturnal reconnoitre it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of such majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame. suddenly an unexpected series of sounds began to be heard in this place up against the sky. they had a clearness which was to be found nowhere in the wind, and a sequence which was to be found nowhere in nature. they were the notes of farmer oak's flute. the tune was not floating unhindered into the open air: it seemed muffled in some way, and was altogether too curtailed in power to spread high or wide. it came from the direction of a small dark object under the plantation hedge -- a shepherd's hut -- now presenting an outline to which an uninitiated person might have been puzzled to attach either meaning or use. the image as a whole was that of a small noah's ark on a small ararat, allowing the traditionary outlines and general form of the ark which are followed by toy- makers -- and by these means are established in men's imaginations among their firmest, because earliest im- pressions -- to pass as an approximate pattern. the hut stood on little wheels, which raised its floor about a foot from the ground. such shepherds' huts are dragged into the fields when the lambing season comes on, to shelter the shepherd in his- enforced nightly attendance. it was only latterly that people had begun to call gabriel "farmer" oak. during the twelvemonth pre- ceding this time he had been enabled by sustained efforts of industry and chronic good spirits to lease the small sheep farm of which norcombe hill was a portion, and stock it with two hundred sheep. previously he had been a bailiff for a short time, and earlier still a shepherd only, having from his childhood assisted his father in tending the flocks of large proprietors, till old gabriel sank to rest. this venture, unaided and alone, into the paths of farming as master and not as man, with an advance of sheep not yet paid for, was a critical juncture with gabriel oak, and he recognised his position clearly. the first movement in his new progress was the lambing of his ewes, and sheep having been his speciality from his "youth, he wisely refrained from deputing -- the task of tending them at this season to a hireling or a novice. the wind continued to beat-about the corners of the hut, but the flute-playing ceased. a rectangular space of light appeared in the side of the hut, and in the opening the outline of farmer oak's figure. he carried a lantern in his hand, and closing the door behind him, came forward and busied himself about this nook of the field for nearly twenty minutes, the lantern light appear- ing and disappearing here and there, and brightening him or darkening him as he stood before or behind it. oak's motions, though they had a quiet-energy, were slow, and their deliberateness accorded well with his occupation. fitness being the basis of beauty, nobody could-have denied that his steady swings and turns" in and- about the flock had elements of grace, yet, although if occasion demanded he could do or think a thing with as mercurial a dash as can the men of towns who are more to the manner born, his special power, morally, physically, and mentally, was static, owing little or nothing to momentum as a rule. a close examination of the ground hereabout, even by the wan starlight only, revealed how a portion of what would have been casually called a wild slope had been appropriated by farmer oak for his great purpose this winter. detached hurdles thatched with straw were stuck into the ground at various scattered points, amid and under which the whitish forms of his meek ewes moved and rustled. the ring of the sheep-bell, which had been silent during his absence, recommenced, in tones that had more mellowness than clearness, owing to an increasing growth of surrounding wool. this continued till oak withdrew again from the flock. he -- returned to the hut, bringing in his arms a new-born lamb, consisting of four legs large enough for a full- grown sheep, united by a seemingly inconsiderable mem- brane about half the substance of the legs collectively, which constituted the animal's entire body just at present. the little speck of life he placed on a wisp of hay before the small stove, where a can of milk was simmer- ing. oak extinguished the lantern by blowing into it and then pinching the snuff, the cot being lighted by a candle suspended by a twisted wire. a rather hard couch, formed of a few corn sacks thrown carelessly down, covered half the floor of this little habitation, and here the young man stretched himself along, loosened his woollen cravat, and closed his eyes. in about the time a person unaccustomed to bodily labour would have decided upon which side to lie, farmer oak was asleep. the inside of the hut, as it now presented itself, was cosy and alluring, and the scarlet handful of fire in addition to the candle, reflecting its own genial colour upon whatever it could reach, flung associations of enjoyment even over utensils and tools. in the corner stood the sheep-crook, and along a shelf at one side were ranged bottles and canisters of the simple prepara- tions pertaining to bovine surgery and physic; spirits of wine, turpentine, tar, magnesia, ginger, and castor-oil being the chief. on a triangular shelf across the corner stood bread, bacon, cheese, and a cup for ale or cider, which was supplied from a flagon beneath. beside the provisions lay the flute whose notes had lately been called forth by the lonely watcher to beguile a tedious hour. the house was ventilated by two round holes, like the lights of a ship's cabin, with wood slides- the lamb, revived by the warmth began to bleat" instant meaning, as expected sounds will. passing from the profoundest sleep to the most alert wakefulness with the same ease that had accompanied the reverse operation, he looked at his watch, found that the hour- hand had shifted again, put on his hat, took the lamb in his arms, and carried it into the darkness. after placing the little creature with its mother, he stood and carefully examined the sky, to ascertain the time of night from the altitudes of the stars. the dog-star and aldebaran, pointing to the restless pleiades, were half-way up the southern sky, and between them hung orion, which gorgeous constellation never burnt more vividly than now, as it soared forth above the rim of the landscape. castor and pollux will the north-west; far away through the plantation vega and cassiopeia's chair stood daintily poised on the uppermost boughs. "one o'clock." said gabriel. being a man not without a frequent consciousness that there was some charm in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky as a useful instrument, and regarded it in an appreciative spirit, as a work of art superlatively beautiful. for a moment he seemed impressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with the complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and sounds of man. human shapes,interferences, troubles, and joys were all as if they were not, and there seemed to be on the shaded hemisphere of the globe no sentient being save himself; he could fancy them all gone round to the sunny side. occupied this, with eyes stretched afar, oak gradually per- ceived that what he had previously taken to be a star low down behind the outskirts of the plantation was in reality no such thing. it was an artificial light, almost close at hand. to find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction -- every kind of evidence in the logician's list -- have united to persuade con- sciousness that it is quite in isolation. farmer oak went towards the plantation and pushed through its lower boughs to the windy side. a dim mass under the slope reminded him that a shed occupied a place here, the site being a cutting into the slope of the hill, so that at its back part the roof was almost level with the ground. in front it was formed of board nailed to posts and covered with tar as a preservative. through crevices in the roof and side spread streaks and spots of light, a combination of which made the radiance that had attracted him. oak stepped up behind, where,leaning down upon the roof and putting his eye close to a hole, he could see into the interior clearly. the place contained two women and two cows. by the side of the latter a steaming bran-mash stood in a bucket. one of the women was past middle age. her companion was ap- parently young and graceful; he could form no decided opinion upon her looks, her position being almost beneath his eye, so that he saw her in a bird's-eye view, as milton's satan first saw paradise. she wore no bonnet or het, but had enveloped her- self in a large cloak, which was carelessly flung over her head as a covering. "there, now we'll go home," said the elder of the two, resting her knuckles upon her hips, and looking at their goings-on as a whole. "i do hope daisy will fetch round again now. i have never been more frightened in my life, but i don't mind break- ing my rest if she recovers." the young woman, whose eyelids were apparently inclined to fall together on the smallest provocation of silence,yawned in sympathy. "i wish we were rich enough to pay a man to do these things," she said. "as we are not, we must do them ourselves," said the other; "for you must help me if you stay." "well, my hat is gone, however," continued the younger. "it went over the hedge, i think. the idea of such a slight wind catching it." the cow standing erect was of the devon breed, and was encased in a tight warm hide of rich indian red, as absolutely uniform from eyes to tail as if the animal had been dipped in a dye of that colour, her long back being mathematically level. the other was spotted,grey and white. beside her oak now noticed a little calf about a day old, looking idiotically at the two women, which showed that it had not long been accustomed to the phenomenon of eyesight, and often turn- ing to the lantern, which it apparently mistook for the moon. inherited instinct having as yet had little time for correction by experience. between the sheep and the cows lucina had been busy on norcombe hill lately. "i think we had better send for some oatmeal," said the "yes, aunt; and i'll ride over for it as soon as it is light." "but there's no side-saddle." "i can ride on the other: trust me." oak, upon hearing these remarks, became more curious to observe her features, but this prospect being denied him by the hooding effect of the cloak, and by his aerial position, he felt himself drawing upon his fancy for their details. in making even horizontal and clear inspections we colour and mould according to the warts within us whatever our eyes bring in. had gabriel been able from the first to get a distinct view of her - countenance, his estimate of it as very handsome or slightly so would have been as his soul required a divinity at the moment or was ready supplied with one. having for some time known the want of a satisfactory form to fill an increasing void within him, his position moreover affording the widest scope for his fancy, he painted her a beauty. by one of those whimsical coincidences in which nature, like a busy mother, seems to spare a moment from her unremitting labours to turn and make her children smile, the girl now dropped the cloak, and forth tumbled ropes of black hair over a red jacket. oak knew her instantly as the heroine of the yellow waggon, myrtles, and looking-glass: prosily, as the woman who owed him twopence. they placed the calf beside its mother again, took up the lantern, and went out, the light sinking down the hill till it was no more than a nebula. gabriel oak returned to his flock. chapter iii a girl on horseback -- conversation the sluggish day began to break. even its position terrestrially is one of the elements of a new interest, and for no particular reason save that the incident of the night had occurred there, oak went again into the plantation. lingering and musing here, he heard the steps of a horse at the foot of the hill, and soon there appeared in view an auburn pony with a girl on its back, ascending by the path leading past the cattle- shed. she was the young woman of the night before. gabriel instantly thought of the hat she had mentioned as having lost in the wind; possibly she had come to look for it. he hastily scanned the ditch and after walking about ten yards along it, found the hat among the leaves. gabriel took it in his hand and returned to his hut. here he ensconced himself, and peeped through the loophole in the direction of the riders approach. she came up and looked around -- then on the other side of the hedge. gabriel was about to advance and restore the missing article when an unexpected per- formance induced him to suspend the action for the present. the path, after passing the cowshed, bisected the plantation. it was not a bridle-path -- merely a pedestrian's track, and the boughs spread horizontally at a height not greater than seven feet above the ground, which made it impossible to ride erect beneath them. the girl, who wore no riding-habit, looked around for a moment, as if to assure herself that all humanity was out of view, then dexterously dropped backwards flat upon the pony's back, her head over its tail, her feet against its shoulders, and her eyes to the sky. the rapidity of her glide into this position was that of a kingfisher -- its noiselessness that of a hawk. gabriel's eyes had scarcely been able to follow her. the tall lank pony seemed used to such doings, and ambled along unconcerned. thus she passed under the level boughs. the performer seemed quite at home anywhere between a horse's head and its tail, and the necessity for this abnormal attitude having ceased with the passage of the plantation, she began to adopt another, even more obviously convenient than the first. she had no side-saddle, and it was very apparent that a firm seat upon the smooth leather beneath her was un- attainable sideways. springing to her accustomed perpendicular like a bowed sapling, and satisfying her, self that nobody was in sight, she seated herself in the manner demanded by the saddle, though hardly expected of the woman, and trotted off in the direction of tewnell mill. oak was amused, perhaps a little astonished, and hanging up the hat in his hut, went again among his ewes. an hour passed, the girl returned, properly seated now, with a bag of bran in front of her. on nearing the cattle-shed she was met by a boy bringing a milking-pail, who held the reins of the pony whilst she slid off. the boy led away the horse, leaving the pail with the young woman. soon soft shirts alternating with loud shirts came in regular succession from within the shed, the obvious sounds of a person milking a cow. gabriel took the lost hat in his hand, and waited beside the path she would follow in leaving the hill. she came, the pail in one hand, hanging against her knee. the left arm was extended as a balance, enough of it being shown bare to make oak wish that the event ha happened in the summer, when the whole would have been revealed. there was a bright air and manner about her now, by which she seemed to imply that the desirability of her existence could not be questioned; and this rather saucy assumption failed in being offensive, because a beholder felt it to be, upon the whole, true. like exceptional emphasis in the tone of a genius, that which would have made mediocrity ridiculous was an addition to recognised power. it was with some surprise that she saw gabriel's face rising like the moon behind the hedge. the adjustment of the farmer's hazy conceptions of her charms to the portrait of herself she now presented him with was less a diminution than a difference. the starting-point selected by the judgment was. her height she seemed tall, but the pail was a small one, and the hedge diminutive; hence, making allowance for error by comparison with these, she could have been not above the height to be chosen by women as best. all features of consequence were severe and regular. it may have been observed by persons who go about the shires with eyes for beauty, that in englishwoman a classically-formed face is seldom found to be united with a figure of the same pattern, the highly-finished features being generally too large for the remainder of the frame; that a graceful and proportionate figure of eight heads usually goes off into random facial curves. without throwing a nymphean tissue over a milkmaid, let it be said that here criticism checked itself as out of place, and looked at her proportions with a long consciousness of pleasure. from the contours of her figure in its upper part, she must have had a beautiful neck and shoulders; but since her infancy nobody had ever seen them. had she been put into a low dress she would have run and thrust her head into a bush. yet she was not a shy girl by any means; it was merely her instinct to draw the line dividing the seen from the unseen higher than they do it in towns. that the girl's thoughts hovered about her face and form as soon as she caught oak's eyes conning the same page was natural, and almost certain. the self- consciousness shown would have been vanity if a little more pronounced, dignity if a little less. rays of male vision seem to have a tickling effect upon virgin faces in rural districts; she brushed hers with her hand, as if gabriel had been irritating its pink surface by actual touch, and the free air of her previous movements was reduced at the same time to a chastened phase of itself. yet it was the man who blushed, the maid not at all. "i found a hat." said oak. "it is mine." said she, and, from a sense of proportion, kept down to a small smile an inclination to laugh dis- tinctly: "it flew away last night." "one o'clock this morning?" "well -- it was." she was surprised. "how did you know?" she said. "i was here." "you are farmer oak, are you not?" "that or thereabouts. i'm lately come to this place." "a large farm?" she inquired, casting her eyes round, and swinging back her hair, which was black in the shaded hollows of its mass; but it being now an hour past sunrise, the rays touched its prominent curves with a colour of their own. "no; not large. about a hundred." (in speaking of farms the word "acres" is omitted by the natives, by analogy to such old expressions as "a stag of ten.") "i wanted my hat this morning." she went on. "i had to ride to tewnell mill." "yes you had." "how do you know?" "i saw you!" "where?" she inquired, a misgiving bringing every muscle of her lineaments and frame to a standstill. "here-going through the plantation, and all down the hill." said farmer oak, with an aspect excessively knowing with regard to some matter in his mind, as he gazed at a remote point in the direction named, and then turned back to meet his colloquist's eyes. a perception caused him to withdraw his own eyes from hers as suddenly as if he had been caught in a theft. recollection of the strange antics she had indulged in when passing through the trees, was suc- ceeded in the girl by a nettled palpitation, and that by a hot face. it was a time to see a woman redden who was not given to reddening as a rule; not a point in the milkmaid but was of the deepest rose-colour. from the maiden's blush, through all varieties of the provence down to the crimson tuscany, the countenance of oak's acquaintance quickly graduated; whereupon he, in con- siderateness, turned away his head. the sympathetic man still looked the other way, and wondered when she would recover coolness sufficient to justify him in facing her again. he heard what seemed to be the flitting of a dead leaf upon the breeze, and looked. she had gone away. with an air between that of tragedy and comedy! gabriel returned to his work. five mornings and evenings passed. the young woman came regularly to milk the healthy cow or to attend to the sick one, but never allowed her vision to stray in the direction of oak's person. his want of tact had deeply offended her -- not by seeing what he could not help, but by letting her know that he had seen it. for, as without law there is no sin, without eyes there is no indecorum; and she appeared to feel that gabriel's espial had made her an indecorous woman without her own connivance. it was food for great regret with him; it was also a contretemps which touched into life a latent heat he had experienced in that direction. the acquaintanceship might, however, have ended in a slow forgetting, but for an incident which occurred at the end of the same week. one afternoon it began to freeze, and the frost increased with evening, which drew on like a stealthy tightening of bonds. it was a time when in cottages the breath of the sleepers freezes to the sheets; when round the drawing-room fire of a thick-walled mansion the sitters' backs are cold, even whilst their faces are all aglow. many a small bird went to bed supperless that night among the bare boughs. as the milking-hour drew near, oak kept his usual watch upon the cowshed. at last he felt cold, and shaking an extra quantity of bedding round the yearling ewes he entered the hut and heaped more fuel upon the stove. the wind came in at the bottom of the door, and to prevent it oak laid a sack there and wheeled the cot round a little more to the south. then the wind spouted in at a ventilating hole -- of which there was one on each side of the hut. gabriel had always known that when the fire was lighted and the door closed one of these must be kept open -- that chosen being always on the side away from the wind. closing the slide to windward, he turned to open the other; on second -- thoughts the farmer con- sidered that he would first sit down leaving both closed for a minute or two, till the temperature of the hut was a little raised. he sat down. his head began to ache in an unwonted manner, and, fancying himself weary by reason of the broken rests of the preceding nights, oak decided to get up, open the slide, and then allow himself to fall asleep. he fell asleep, however, without having performed the necessary preliminary. how long he remained unconscious gabriel never knew. during the first stages of his return to percep- tion peculiar deeds seemed to be in course of enactment. his dog was howling, his head was aching fearfully -- somebody was pulling him about, hands were loosening his neckerchief. on opening his eyes he found that evening had sunk to dusk in a strange manner of unexpectedness. the young girl with the remarkably pleasant lips and white teeth was beside him. more than this -- astonishingly more -- his head was upon her lap, his face and neck were disagreeably wet, and her fingers were unbuttoning his collar. "whatever is the matter?" said oak, vacantly. she seemed to experience mirth, but of too insignifi- cant a kind to start enjoyment. "nothing now', she answered, "since you are not dead it is a wonder you were not,suffocated in this hut of yours." "ah, the hut!" murmured gabriel. "i gave ten pounds for that hut. but i'll sell it, and sit under thatched hurdles as they did in old times, curl up to sleep in a lock of straw! it played me nearly the same trick the other day!" gabriel, by way of emphasis, brought down his fist upon the floor. "it was not exactly the fault of the hut." she ob- served in a tone which showed her to be that novelty among women -- one who finished a thought before beginning the sentence which was to convey it. "you should i think, have considered, and not have been so foolish as to leave the slides closed." "yes i suppose i should." said oak, absently. he was endeavouring to catch and appreciate the sensation of being thus with her, his head upon her dress, before the event passed on into the heap of bygone things. he wished she knew his impressions; but he would as soon have thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey the intangibilities of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language. so he remained silent. she made him sit up, and then oak began wiping his face and shaking himself like a samson. "how can i thank 'ee?" he said at last, gratefully, some of the natural rusty red having returned to his face. "oh, never mind that." said the girl, smiling, and allowing her smile to hold good for gabriel's next remark, whatever that might prove to be. "how did you find me?" "i heard your dog howling and scratching at the door of the hut when i came to the milking (it was so lucky, daisy's milking is almost over for the season, and i shall not come here after this week or the next). the dog saw me, and jumped over to me, and laid hold of my skirt. i came across and looked round the hut the very first thing to see if the slides were closed. my uncle has a hut like this one, and i have heard him tell his shepherd not to go to sleep without leaving a slide open. i opened the door, and there you were like dead. i threw the milk over you, as there was no water, forgetting it was warm, and no use." "i wonder if i should have died?" gabriel said, in a low voice, which was rather meant to travel back to himself than to her. "o no," the girl replied. she seemed to prefer a less tragic probability; to have saved a man from death involved talk that should harmonise with the dignity of such a deed -- and she shunned it. "i believe you saved my life, miss -- -- i don't know your name. i know your aunt's, but not yours." "i would just as soon not tell it -- rather not. there is no reason either why i should, as you probably will never have much to do with me." "still, i should like to know." "you can inquire at my aunt's -- she will tell you." "my name is gabriel oak." "and mine isn't. you seem fond of yours in speaking it so decisively, gabriel oak." "you see, it is the only one i shall ever have, and i must make the most of it." "i always think mine sounds odd and disagreeable." "i should think you might soon get a new one." "mercy! -- how many opinions you keep about you concerning other people, gabriel oak." "well miss-excuse the words-i thought you would like them but i can't match you i know in napping out my mind upon my tongue. i never was very clever in my inside. but i thank you. come give me your hand!" she hesitated, somewhat disconcerted at oak's old- fashioned earnest conclusion. to a dialogue lightly carried on."very well." she said, and gave him her hand, compressing her lips to a demure impassivity. he held it but an instant, and in his fear of being too demonstrative, swerved to the opposite extreme, touching her fingers with the lightness of a small-hearted person. "i am sorry." he said, the instant after. "what for?" "you may have it again if you like; there it is." she gave him her hand again. oak held it longer this time -- indeed, curiously long. "how soft it is -- being winter time, too -- not chapped or rough or anything!" he said. "there -- that's long enough." said she, though with- out pulling it away "but i suppose you are thinking you would like to kiss it? you may if you want to." "i wasn't thinking of any such thing." said gabriel, simply; "but i will" "that you won't!" she snatched back her hand. gabriel felt himself guilty of another want of tact. "now find out my name." she said, teasingly; and withdrew. chapter iv gabriel's resolve -- the visit -- the mistake the only superiority in women that is tolerable to the rival sex is, as a rule, that of the unconscious kind; but a superiority which recognizes itself may sometimes please by suggesting possibilities of capture to the subordinated man. this well-favoured and comely girl soon made appre- ciable inroads upon the emotional constitution of young farmer oak. love, being an extremely exacting usurer (a sense of exorbitant profit, spiritually, by an exchange of hearts, being at the bottom of pure passions, as that of exorbi- tant profit, bodily or materially, is at the bottom of those of lower atmosphere), every morning oak's feelings were as sensitive as the money-market in calculations upon his chances. his dog waited for his meals in a way so like that in which oak waited for the girl's presence, that the farmer was quite struck with the resemblance, felt it lowering, and would not look at the dog. however, he continued to watch through the hedge for her regular coming, and thus his sentiments towards her were deepened without any corresponding effect being produced upon herself. oak had nothing finished and ready to say as yet, and not being able to frame love phrases which end where they begin; passionate tales -- -- full of sound and fury -- signifying nothing -- he said no word at all. by making inquiries he found that the girl's name was bathsheba everdene, and that the cow would go dry in about seven days. he dreaded the eight day. at last the eighth day came. the cow had ceased to give milk for that year, and bathsheba everdene came up the hill no more. gabriel had reached a pitch of existence he never could have anticipated a short time before. he liked saying `bathsheba' as a private enjoyment instead of whistling; turned over his taste to black hair, though he had sworn by brown ever since he was a boy, isolated himself till the space he filled in a possible strength in an actual weakness. marriage transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should be, and happily often is, in direct pro- portion to the degree of imbecility it supplants. oak began now to see light in this direction, and said to himself, "i'll make her my wife, or upon my soul i shall be good for nothing!" all this while he was perplexing himself about an errand on which he might consistently visit the cottage of bathsheba's aunt. he found his opportunity in the death of a ewe, mother of a living lamb. on a day which had a summer face and a winter constitution-a fine january morning, when there was just enough blue sky visible to make cheerfully-disposed people wish for more, and an occasional gleam of silvery sunshine, oak put the lamb into a respectable sunday basket, and stalked across the fields to the house of mrs. hurst, the aunt -- george, the dog walking behind, with a countenance of great concern at the serious turn pastoral affairs seemed to be taking. gabriel had watched the blue wood-smoke curling from the chimney with strange meditation. at evening he had fancifully traced it down the chimney to the spot of its origin -- seen the hearth and bathsheba beside it -- beside it in her out-door dress; for the clothes she had worn on the hill were by association equally with her person included in the compass of his affection; they seemed at this early time of his love a necessary ingredient of the sweet mixture called bath- sheba everdene. he had made a toilet of a nicely-adjusted kind -- of a nature between the carefully neat and the carelessly ornate -- of a degree between fine-market-day and wet- sunday selection. he thoroughly cleaned his silver watch-chain with whiting, put new lacing straps to his boots, looked to the brass eyelet-holes, went to the inmost heart of the plantation for a new walking-stick, and trimmed it vigorously on his way back; took a new handkerchief from the bottom of his clothes-box, put on the light waistcoat patterned all over with sprigs of an elegant flower uniting the beauties of both rose and lily without the defects of either, and used all the hair-oil he possessed upon his usually dry, sandy, and inextricably curly hair, till he had deepened it to a splendidly novel colour, between that of guano and roman cement, making it stick to his head like mace round a nutmeg, or wet seaweed round a boulder after the ebb. nothing disturbed the stillness of the cottage save the chatter of a knot of sparrows on the eaves; one might fancy scandal and rumour to be no less the staple topic of these little coteries on roofs than of those under them. it seemed that the omen was an unpropitious one, for, as the rather untoward commence- ment of oak's overtures, just as he arrived by the garden gate, he saw a cat inside, going into various arched shapes and fiendish convulsions at the sight of his dog george. the dog took no notice , for he had arrived at an age at which all superfluous barking was cynically avoided as a waste of breath -- in fact he never barked even at the sheep except to order, when it was done with an absolutely neutral countenance, as a sort of com- mination-service, which, though offensive, had to be gone through once now and then to frighten the flock for their own good. a voice came from behind some laurel-bushes into which the cat had run: "poor dear! did a nasty brute of a dog want to kill it; -- did he poor dear!" "i beg your pardon." said oak to the voice, "but george was walking on behind me with a temper as mild as milk." almost before he had ceased speaking, oak was seized with a misgiving as to whose ear was the recipient of his answer. nobody appeared, and he heard the person retreat among the bushes. gabriel meditated, and so deeply that he brought small furrows into his forehead by sheer force of reverie. where the issue of an interview is as likely to be a vast change for the worse as for the better, any initial difference from expectation causes nipping sensations of failure. oak went up to the door a little abashed: his mental rehearsal and the reality had had no common grounds of opening. bathsheba's aunt was indoors. "will you tell miss everdene that somebody would be glad to speak to her?" said mr. oak. (calling one's self merely some- body, without giving a name, is not to be taken as an example of the ill-breeding of the rural world: it springs from a refined modesty, of which townspeople, with their cards and announcements, have no notion whatever.) bathsheba was out. the voice had evidently been hers. "will you come in, mr. oak?" "oh, thank 'ee, said gabriel, following her to the fireplace. "i've brought a lamb for miss everdene. i thought she might like one to rear; girls do." "she might." said mrs. hurst, musingly; " though she's only a visitor here. if you will wait a minute, bathsheba will be in." "yes, i will wait." said gabriel, sitting down. "the lamb isn't really the business i came about, mrs. hurst. in short, i was going to ask her if she'd like to be married." "and were you indeed?" "yes. because if she would, i should be very glad to marry her. d'ye know if she's got any other young man hanging about her at all?" "let me think," said mrs. hurst, poking the fire superfluously.... "yes -- bless you, ever so many young men. you see, farmer oak, she's so good-looking, and an excellent scholar besides -- she was going to be a governess once, you know, only she was too wild. not that her young men ever come here -- but, lord, in the nature of women, she must have a dozen!" "that's unfortunate." said farmer oak, contemplating a crack in the stone floor with sorrow. "i'm only an every-day sort of man, and my only chance was in being the first comer... , well, there's no use in my waiting, for that was all i came about: so i'll take myself off home-along, mrs. hurst." when gabriel had gone about two hundred yards along the down, he heard a "hoi-hoi!" uttered behind him, in a piping note of more treble quality than that in which the exclamation usually embodies itself when shouted across a field. he looked round, and saw a girl racing after him, waving a white handkerchief. oak stood still -- and the runner drew nearer. it was bathsheba everdene. gabriel's colour deepened: hers was already deep, not, as it appeared, from emotion, but from running. "farmer oak -- i -- " she said, pausing for want of breath pulling up in front of him with a slanted face and putting her hand to her side. "i have just called to see you," said gabriel, pending her further speech. "yes-i know that!" she said panting like a robin, her face red and moist from her exertions, like a peony petal before the sun dries off the dew. "i didn't know you had come to ask to have me, or i should have come in from the garden instantly. i ran after you to say -- that my aunt made a mistake in sending you away from courting me -- -- -- " gabriel expanded."i'm sorry to have made you run so fast, my dear." he said, with a grateful sense of favours to come. "wait a bit till you've found your breath." "-- it was quite a mistake-aunt's telling you i had a young man "already."- bathsheba went on. "i haven't a sweetheart at all -- and i never had one, and i thought that, as times go with women, it was such a pity to send you away thinking that i had several." "really and truly i am glad to hear that!" said farmer oak, smiling one of his long special smiles, and blushing with gladness. he held out his hand to take hers, which, when she had eased her side by pressing it there, was prettily extended upon her bosom to still her loud-beating heart. directly he seized it she put it behind her, so that it slipped through his fingers like an eel. " "i have a nice snug little farm." said gabriel, with half a degree less assurance than when he had seized her hand. "yes; you have." "a man has advanced me money to begin with, but still, it will soon be paid off and though i am only an every-day sort of man, i have got on a little since i was a boy." gabriel uttered "a little" in a tone to-show her that it was the complacent form of "a great deal." e continued: " when we be married, i am quite sure i can work twice as hard as i do now." he went forward and stretched out his arm again. bathsheba had overtaken him at a point beside which stood a low stunted holly bush, now laden with red berries. seeing his advance take the form of an attitude threatening a possible enclosure, if not compression, of her person, she edged off round the bush. "why, farmer oak." she said, over the top, looking at him with rounded eyes, "i never said i was going to marry you." "well -- that is a tale!" said oak, with dismay." to run after anybody like this, and then say you don't want him!" "what i meant to tell you was only this." she said eagerly, and yet half conscious of the absurdity of the position she had made for herself -- "that nobody has got me yet as a sweetheart, instead of my having a dozen, as my aunt said; i hate to be thought men's property in that way, though possibly i shall be had some day. why, if i'd wanted you i shouldn't have run after you like this; 'twould have been the forwardest thing! but there was no harm in 'hurrying to correct a piece of false news that had been told you." "oh, no -- no harm at all." but there is such a thing as being too generous in expressing a judgment impuls- ively, and oak added with a more appreciative sense of all the circumstances -- "well, i am not quite certain it was no harm." "indeed, i hadn't time to think before starting whether i wanted to marry or not, for you'd have been gone over the hill." "come." said gabriel, freshening again; "think a minute or two. i'll wait a while, miss everdene. will you marry me? do, bathsheba. i love you far more than common!" "i'll try to think." she observed, rather more timor- ously; "if i can think out of doors; my mind spreads away so." "but you can give a guess." "then give me time." bathsheba looked thought- fully into the distance, away from the direction in which gabriel stood. "i can make you happy," said he to the back of her head, across the bush. "you shall have as piano in a year or two -- farmers' wives are getting to have pianos now -- and i'll practise up the flute right well to play with you in the evenings." "yes; i should like that." "and have one of those little ten-pound" gigs for market -- and nice flowers, and birds -- cocks and hens i mean, because they be useful." continued gabriel, feeling balanced between poetry and practicality. "i should like it very much." "and a frame for cucumbers -- like a gentleman and lady." yes." "and when the wedding was over, we'd have it put in the newspaper list of marriages." "dearly i should like that!" "and the babies in the births -- every man jack of "em! and at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there i shall be -- and whenever i look up there will be you." "wait wait and don't be improper!" her countenance fell, and she was silent awhile. he regarded the red berries between them over and over again, to such an extent, that holly seemed in his after life to be a cypher signifying a proposal of marriage. bathsheba decisively turned to him. "no;" 'tis no use." she said. "i don't want to marry you." "try." "i have tried hard all the time i've been thinking; for a marriage would be very nice in one sense. people would talk about me, and think i had won my battle, and i should feel triumphant, and all that, but a husband -- -- -- "well!" "why, he'd always be there, as you say; whenever i looked up, there he'd be." "of course he would -- i, that is." "well, what i mean is that i shouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding, if i could be one without having a husband. but since a woman can't show off in that way by herself, i shan't marry -- at least yet." "that's a terrible wooden story." at this criticism of her statement bathsheba made an addition to her dignity by a slight sweep away from him. "upon my heart and soul, i don't know what a maid can say stupider than that." said oak. "but dearest." he continued in a palliative voice, "don't be like it!" oak sighed a deep honest sigh -- none the less so in that, being like the sigh of a pine plantation, it was rather noticeable as a disturbance of the atmo- sphere. "why won't you have me?" he appealed, creeping round the holly to reach her side. "i cannot." she said, retreating. "but why?" he persisted, standing still at last in despair of ever reaching her, and facing over the bush. "because i don't love you." "yes, but -- -- " she contracted a yawn to an inoffensive smallness, so that it was hardly ill-mannered at all. "i don't love you." she said." "but i love you -- and, as for myself, i am content to be liked." "o mr. oak -- that's very fine! you'd get to despise me." "never." said mr oak, so earnestly that he seemed to be coming, by the force of his words, straight through the bush and into her arms. "i shall do one thing in this life -- one thing certain -- that is, love you, and long for you, and keep wanting you till i die." his voice had a genuine pathos now, and his large brown hands perceptibly trembled. "it seems dreadfully wrong not to have you when you feel so much!" she said with a little distress, and looking hopelessly around for some means of escape from her moral dilemma. "h(ow i wish i hadn't run after you!" however she seemed to have a short cut for getting back to cheerfulness, and set her face to signify archness. "it wouldn't do, mr oak. i want somebody to tame me; i am too independent; and you would never be able to, i know." oak cast his eyes down the field in a way implying that it was useless to attempt argument. "mr. oak." she said, with luminous distinctness and common sense, " you are better off than i. i have hardly a penny in the world -- i am staying with my aunt for my bare sustenance. i am better educated than you -- and i don't love you a bit: that's my side of the case. now yours: you are a farmer just begin- ing; and you ought in common prudence, if you marry at all (which you should certainly not think of doing at present) to marry a woman with money, who would admiration. "that's the very thing i had been thinking myself!" he naively said. farmer oak had one-and-a-half christian character- istics too many to succeed with bathsheba: his humility, and a superfluous moiety of honesty. bathsheba was decidedly disconcerted, "well, then, why did you come and disturb me?" she said, almost angrily, if not quite, an enlarging red spot rising in each cheek. "i can't do what i think would be -- would be -- -- " "right?" "no: wise." "you have made an admission now, mr. oak." she exclaimed, with even more hauteur, and rocking her head disdainfully. "after that, do you think i could marry you? not if i know it." he broke in passionately. "but don't mistake me like that! because i am open enough to own what every man in my shoes would have thought of, you make your colours come up your face, and get crabbed with me. that about your not being good enough for me is nonsense. you speak like a lady -- all the parish notice it, and your uncle at weatherbury is, i have heerd, a large farmer -- much larger than ever i shall be. may i call in the evening, or will you walk along with me o' sundays? i don't want you to make-up your mind at once, if you'd rather not." "no -- no -- i cannot. don't press me any more -- don't. i don't love you -- so 'twould be ridiculous," he said, with a laugh. no man likes to see his emotions the sport of a merry-go-round of skittishness. "very well." said oak, firmly, with the bearing of one who was going to give " his days and nights to ecclesiastes for ever. "then i'll ask you no more." chapter v departure of bathsheba -- a pastoral tragedy the news which one day reached gabriel, that bath- sheba everdene had left the neighbourhood, had an influence upon him which might have surprised any who never suspected that the more emphatic the renun- ciation the less absolute its character. it may have been observed that there is no regula path for getting out of love as there is for getting in. some people look upon marriage as a short cut that way, but it has been known to fail. separation, which was the means that chance offered to gabriel oak by bathsheba's disappearance though effectual with people of certain humours is apt to idealise the removed object with others -- notably those whose affection, placid and regular as it may be flows deep and long. oak belonged to the even-tempered order of humanity, and felt the secret fusion of himself in bathsheba to be burning with a finer flame now that she was gone -- that was all. his incipient friendship with her aunt-had been nipped by the failure of his suit, and all that oak learnt of bathsheba's movements was done indirectly. it ap- peared that she had gone to a place called weatherbury, more than twenty miles off, but in what capacity -- whether as a visitor, or permanently, he could not discover. gabriel had two dogs. george, the elder, exhibited an ebony-tipped nose, surrounded by a narrow margin of pink flesh, and a coat marked in random splotches approximating in colour to white and slaty grey; but the grey, after years of sun and rain, had been scorched and washed out of the more prominent locks, leaving them of a reddish-brown, as if the blue component of the grey had faded, like the indigo from the same kind of colour in turner's pictures. in substance it had originally been hair, but long contact with sheep seemed to be turning it by degrees into wool of a poor quality and staple. this dog had originally belonged to a shepherd of inferior morals and dreadful temper, and the result was that george knew the exact degrees of condemnation signified by cursing and swearing of all descriptions better than the wickedest old man in the neighbourhood. long experience had so precisely taught the animal the difference between such exclamations as "come in!" and "d -- -- ye, come in!" that he knew to a hair's breadth the rate of trotting back from the ewes' tails that each call involved, if a staggerer with the sheep crook was to be escaped. though old, he was clever and trustworthy still. the young dog, george's son, might possibly have been the image of his mother, for there was not much resemblance between him and george. he was learn- ing the sheep-keeping business, so as to follow on at the flock when the other should die, but had got no further than the rudiments as yet -- still finding an insuperable difficulty in distinguishing between doing a thing well enough and doing it too well. so earnest and yet so wrong-headed was this young dog (he had no, name in particular, and answered with perfect readiness to any pleasant interjection), that if sent behind the flock to help them on, he did it so thoroughly that he would have chased them across the whole county with the greatest pleasure if not called off or reminded when to step by the example of old george. thus much for the dogs. on the further side of norcombe hill was a chalk-pit, from which chalk had been drawn for generations, and spread over adjacent farms. two hedges converged upon it in the form of a v, but without quite meeting. the narrow opening left, which was immediately over the brow of the pit, was protected by a rough railing. one night, when farmer oak had returned to, his house, believing there would be no further necessity for his attendance on the down, he called as usual to the dogs, previously to shutting them up in the outhouse till next morning. only one responded -- old george; the other-could not be found, either in the house, lane, or garden. - gabriel then remembered that he had left the two dogs on the hill eating a dead lamb (a kind of meat he usually kept from them, except when other food-ran finished his meal, he went indoors to the luxury of a bed, which latterly he had only enjoyed on sundays. it was a still, moist night. just before dawn he was assisted in waking by the abnormal reverberation of familiar music. to the shepherd, the note of the sheep" chronic sound that only makes itself noticed by ceasing ever distant, that all is well in the fold. in the solemn this exceptional ringing may be caused in two ways -- by the rapid feeding of the sheep bearing the bell, as when the flock breaks into new pasture, which gives it an intermittent rapidity, or by the sheep starting off in a run, when the sound has a regular palpitation. the experienced ear of oak knew the sound he now heard to be caused by the running of the flock with great velocity. he jumped out of bed, dressed, tore down the lane through a foggy dawn, and ascended the hill. the forward ewes were kept apart from those among which the fall of lambs would be later, there being two hundred of the latter class in gabriel's flock. these two hundred seemed to have absolutely vanished from the hill. there were the fifty with their lambs, enclosed at the other end as he had left them, but the rest, forming the bulk of the flock, were nowhere. gabriel called at the top of his voice the shepherd's call. "ovey, ovey, ovey!" not a single bleat. he went to the hedge -- a gap had been broken through it, and in the gap were the footprints of the sheep. rather surprised to find them break fence at this season, yet putting it down instantly to their great fondness for ivy in winter-time, of which a great deal grew in the plantation, he followed through the hedge. they were not in the plantation. he called again: the valleys and farthest hills resounded as when the sailors invoked the lost hylas on the mysian shore; but no sheep. he passed through the trees and along the ridge of the hill. on the extreme summit, where the ends of the two converging hedges of which we have spoken were stopped short by meeting the brow of the chalk-pit, he saw the younger dog standing against the sky -- dark and motionless as napoleon at st. helena. a horrible conviction darted through oak. with a sensation of bodily faintness he advanced: at one point the rails were broken through, and there he saw the footprints of his ewes. the dog came up, licked his hand, and made signs implying that he expected some great reward for signal services rendered. oak looked over the precipice. the ewes lay dead and dying at its foot -- a heap of two hundred mangled carcasses, representing in their condition just now at least two hundred more. oak was an intensely humane man: indeed, his humanity often tore in pieces any politic intentions of his which bordered on strategy, and carried him on as by gravitation. a shadow in his life had always been that his flock ended in mutton -- that a day came and found every shepherd an arrant traitor to his defenseless sheep. his first feeling now was one of pity for the untimely fate of these gentle ewes and their unborn lambs. it was a second to remember another phase of the matter. the sheep were not insured. all the savings of a frugal life had been dispersed at a blow; his hopes of being an independent farmer were laid low -- possibly for ever. gabriel's energies, patience, and industry had been so severely taxed during the years of his life between eighteen and eight-and-twenty, to reach his present stage of progress that no more seemed to be left in him. he hands. stupors, however, do not last for ever, and farmer oak recovered from his. it was as remarkable as it was characteristic that the one sentence he uttered was in thankfulness: -- "thank god i am not married: what would she have done in the poverty now coming upon me!" oak raised his head, and wondering what he could do listlessly surveyed the scene. by the outer margin of the pit was an oval pond, and over it hung the attenuated skeleton of a chrome-yellow moon which had only a few days to last -- the morning star dogging her on the left hand. the pool glittered like a dead man's eye, and as the world awoke a breeze blew, shaking and elongating the reflection of the moon without breaking it, and turning the image of the star to a phosphoric streak upon the water. all this oak saw and remembered. as far as could be learnt it appeared that the poor young dog, still under the impression that since he was kept for running after sheep, the more he ran after them the better, had at the end of his meal off the dead lamb, which may have given him additional energy and spirits, collected all the ewes into a corner, driven the timid creatures through the hedge, across the upper field, and by main force of worrying had given them momentum enough to break down a portion of the rotten railing, and so hurled them over the edge. george's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically shot at twelve o'clock that same day -- another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise. gabriel's farm had been stocked by a dealer -- on the strength of oak's promising look and character -- who was receiving a percentage from the farmer till such time as the advance should be cleared off oak found- that the value of stock, plant, and implements which were really his own would be about sufficient to pay his debts, leaving himself a free man with the clothes he stood up in, and nothing more. chapter vi the fair -- the journey -- the fire two months passed away. we are brought on to a day in february, on which was held the yearly statute or hiring fair in the county-town of casterbridge. at one end of the street stood from two to three hundred blithe and hearty labourers waiting upon chance -- all men of the stamp to whom labour suggests nothing worse than a wrestle with gravitation, and pleasure nothing better than a renunciation of the same among these, carters and waggoners were distinguished by having a piece of whip-cord twisted round their hats; thatchers wore a fragment of woven straw; shepherds held their sheep-crooks in their hands; and thus the situation required was known to the hirers at a glance. in the crowd was an athletic young fellow of some- what superior appearance to the rest -- in fact, his superiority was marked enough to lead several ruddy peasants standing by to speak to him inquiringly, as to a farmer, and to use `sir' as a finishing word. his answer always was, "i am looking for a place myself -- a bailiff's. do ye know of anybody who wants one?" gabriel was paler now. his eyes were more medi- tative, and his expression was more sad. he had passed through an ordeal of wretchedness which had given him more than it had taken away. he had sunk from his modest elevation as pastoral king into the very slime-pits of siddim; but there was left to him a digni- fied calm he had never before known, and that indiffer- ence to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not. and thus the abasement had been exaltation, and the loss gain. in the morning a regiment of cavalry had left the town, and a sergeant and his party had been beating up for recruits through the four streets. as the end of the day drew on, and he found himself not hired, gabriel almost wished that he had joined them, and gone off to serve his country. weary of standing in the market- place, and not much minding the kind of work he turned his hand to, he decided to offer himself in some other capacity than that of bailiff. all the farmers seemed to be wanting shepherds. sheep-tending was gabriel's speciality. turning down an obscure street and entering an obscurer lane, he went up to a smith's shop. "how long would it take you to make a shepherd's crook?" "twenty minutes." "how much?" "two shillings." he sat on a bench and the crook was made, a stem being given him into the bargain. he then went to a ready-made clothes' shop, the owner of which had a large rural connection. as the crook had absorbed most of gabriel's money, he attempted, and carried out, an exchange of his overcoat for a shepherd's regulation smock-frock. this transaction having been completed, he again hurried off to the centre of the town, and stood on the kerb of the pavement, as a shepherd, crook in hand. now that oak had turned himself into a shepherd, it seemed that bailifs were most in demand. however, two or three farmers noticed him and drew near. dialogues followed, more or lessin the subjoined for: -- "where do you come from?" "norcombe." "that's a long way. "fifteen miles." "who's farm were you upon last?" "my own." this reply invariably operated like a rumour of cholera. the inquiring farmer would edge away and shake his head dubiously. gabriel, like his dog, was too good to be trustworthy,. and he never made advance beyond this point. it is safer to accept any chance that offers itself, and extemporize a procedure to fit it, than to get a good shepherd, but had laid himself out for anything in the whole cycle of labour that was required in the fair. it grew dusk. some merry men were whistling and singing by the corn-exchange. gabriel's hand, which had lain for some time idle in his smock-frock pocket, touched his flute which he carried there. here was an opportunity for putting his dearly bought wisdom into practice. he drew out his flute and began to play "jockey to the fair" in the style of a man who had never known moment's sorrow. oak could pipe with arcadian sweetness and the sound of the well-known notes cheered his own heart as well as those of the loungers. he played on with spirit, and in half an hour had earned in pence what was a small fortune to a destitute man. by making inquiries he learnt that there was another fair at shottsford the next day. "how far is shottsford?" "ten miles t'other side of weatherbury." weatherbury! it was where bathsheba had gone two months before. this information was like coming from night into noon. "how far is it to weatherbury?" "five or six miles." bathsheba had probably left weatherbury long before this time, but the place had enough interest attaching to it to lead oak to choose shottsford fair as his next field of inquiry, because it lay in the weatherbury quarter. moreover, the weatherbury folk were by no means uninteresting intrinsically. if report spoke truly they were as hardy, merry, thriving, wicked a set as any in the whole county. oak resolved to sleep at weatherbury -- that -- night on his way to shottsford, and struck out at once -- into the -- high road which had been recommended as the direct route to the village in question. the road stretched through water-meadows traversed by little brooks, whose quivering surfaces were braided along their centres, and folded into creases at the sides; or, where the flow was more rapid, the stream was pied with spots of white froth, which rode on in undisturbed serenity. on the higher levels the dead and dry carcasses of leaves tapped the ground as they bowled along helter- skelter upon the shoulders of the wind, and little birds in the hedges were rustling their feathers and tucking themselves in comfortably for the night, retaining their places if oak kept moving, but flying away if he stopped to look at them. he passed by yalbury-wood where the game-birds were rising to their roosts, and heard the crack-voiced cock-pheasants "cu-uck, cuck," and the wheezy whistle of the hens. by the time he had walked three or four miles every shape in the-landscape had assumed a uniform hue of blackness. he descended yalbury hill and could just discern ahead of him a waggon, drawn up under a great over-hanging tree by the roadside. on coming close, he found there were no horses attached to it, the spot being apparently quite deserted. the waggon, from its position, seemed to have been left there for the night, for beyond about half a truss of hay which was heaped in the bottom, it was quite empty. gabriel sat down on the shafts of the vehicle and con- sidered his position. he calculated that he had walked a very fair proportion of the journey; and having been on foot since daybreak, he felt tempted to lie down upon the hay in the waggon instead of pushing on to the village of weatherbury, and having to pay for a lodging. eating his las slices of bread and ham, and drinking from the bottle of cider he had taken the precaution to bring with him, he got into the lonely waggon. here he spread half of the hay as a bed, and, as well as he could in the darkness, pulled the other half over him by way of bed-clothes, covering himself entirely, and feeling, physically, as comfortable as ever he had been in his life. inward melancholy it was impossible for a man like oak, introspective far beyond his neighbours, to banish quite, whilst conning the present. untoward page of his history. so, thinking of his misfortunes, amorous and pastoral he fell asleep, shepherds enjoying, in common with sailors, the privilege of being able to summon the god instead of having to wait for him. on somewhat suddenly awaking after a sleep of whose length he had no idea, oak found that the waggon was in motion. he was being carried along the road at a rate rather considerable for a vehicle without springs, and under circumstances of physical uneasiness, his head being dandled up and down on the bed of the waggon like a kettledrum-stick. he then dis- tinguished voices in conversation, coming from the forpart of the waggon. his concern at this dilemma (which would have been alarm, had he been a thriving man; but -- misfortune is a fine opiate to personal terror) led him to peer cautiously from the hay, and the first sight he beheld was the stars above him. charles's wain was getting towards a right angle with the pole star, and gabriel concluded that it must be about nine o'clock -- in other words, that he had slept two hours. this small astronomical calculation was made without any positive effort, and whilst he was stealthily turning to discover, if possible, into whose hands he had fallen. two figures were dimly visible in front, sitting with their legs outside the waggon, one of whom was driving. gabriel soon found that this was the waggoner, and it appeared they had come from casterbridge fair, like himself. a conversation was in progress, which continued thus: -- "be as 'twill, she's a fine handsome body as far's looks be concerned. but that's only the skin of the woman, and these dandy cattle be as-proud as a lucifer in their insides." "ay -- so 'a do seem, billy smallbury -- so 'a do seem." this utterance was very shaky by nature, and more so by circumstance, the jolting of the waggon not being- without its effect upon the speaker's larynx. it came "from the man who held the reins. "she's a very vain feymell -- so 'tis said here and there." "ah, now. if so be 'tis like that, i can't look her in the face. lord, no: not i -- heh-heh-heh! such a shy man as i be!" "yes -- she's very vain. 'tis said that every night at going to bed she looks in the glass to put on her night- cap properly." "and not a married woman. oh, the world!" "and 'a can play the peanner, so 'tis said. can play so clever that 'a can make a psalm tune sound as well as the merriest loose song a man can wish for." "d'ye tell o't! a happy time for us, and i feel quite a new man! and how do she play?" "that i don't know, master poorgrass." on hearing these and other similar remarks, a wild thought flashed into gabriel's mind that they might be speaking of bathsheba. there were, however, no ground for retaining such a supposition, for the waggon, though going in the direction of weatherbury, might be going beyond it, and the woman alluded to seemed to be the mistress of some estate. they were now apparently close upon weatherbury and not to alarm the speakers unnecessarily, gabriel slipped out of the waggon unseen. he turned to an opening in the hedge, which he found to be a gate, and mounting thereon, he sat meditating whether to seek a cheap lodging in the village, or to ensure a cheaper one by lying under some hay or corn-stack. the crunching jangle of the waggon died upon his ear. he was about to walk on, when he noticed on his left hand an unusual light -- appearing about half a mile distant. oak watched it, and the glow increased. something was on fire. gabriel again mounted the gate, and, leaping down on the other side upon what he found to be ploughed soil, made across the field in the exact direction of the fire. the blaze, enlarging in a double ratio by his approach and its own increase, showed him as he drew nearer the outlines of ricks beside it, lighted up to great distinctness. a rick-yard was the source of the fire. his weary face now began to be painted over with a rich orange glow, and the whole front of his smock- frock and gaiters was covered with a dancing shadow pattern of thorn-twigs -- the light reaching him through a leafless intervening hedge -- and the metallic curve of his sheep-crook shone silver-bright in the same abound- ing rays. he came up to the boundary fence, and stood to regain breath. it seemed as if the spot was unoccupied by a living soul. the fire was issuing from a long straw-stack, which was so far gone as to preclude a possibility of saving it. a rick burns differently from a house. as the wind blows the fire inwards, the portion in flames completely disappears like melting sugar, and the outline is lost to the eye. however, a hay or a wheat-rick, well put together, will resist combustion for a length of time, if it begins on the outside. this before gabriel's eyes was a- rick of straw, loosely put together, and the flames darted into it with lightning swiftness. it glowed on the windward side, rising and falling in intensity, like the coal of a cigar. then a superincumbent bundle rolled down, with a whisking noise; flames elongated, and bent themselves about with a quiet roar, but no crackle. banks of smoke went off horizontally at the back like passing clouds, and behind these burned hidden pyres, illuminating the semi-transparent sheet of smoke to a lustrous yellow uniformity. individual straws in the foreground were consumed in a creeping movement of ruddy heat, as if they were knots of red worms, and above shone imaginary fiery faces, tongues hanging from lips, glaring eyes, and other impish forms, from which at intervals sparks flew in clusters like birds from a nest, oak suddenly ceased from being a mere spectator by discovering the case to be more serious than he had at first imagined. a scroll of smoke blew aside and revealed to him a wheat-rick in startling juxtaposition with the decaying one, and behind this a series of others, composing the main corn produce of the farm; so that instead of the straw-stack standing, as he had imagined comparatively isolated, there was a regular connection between it and the remaining stacks of the group. gabriel leapt over the hedge, and saw that he was not alone. the first man he came to was running about in a great hurry, as if his thoughts were several yards in advance of his body, which they could never drag on fast enough. "o, man -- fire, fire! a good master and a. bad servant is fire, fire! -- i mane a bad servant and a good master o, mark clark -- come! and you, billy smallbury -- and you, maryann money -- and you, jan coggan, and matthew there!" other figures now appeared behind this shouting man and among the smoke, and gabriel found that, far from being alone he was in a great company -- whose shadows danced merrily up and down, timed by the jigging of the flames, and not at all by their owners' movements. the assemblage -- belonging to that class of society which casts its thoughts into the form of feeling, and its feelings into the form of commotion -- set to work with a remarkable confusion of purpose. "stop the draught under the wheat-rick!" cried gabriel to those nearest to him. the corn stood on stone staddles, and between these, tongues of yellow hue from the burning straw licked and darted playfully. if the fire once got under this stack, all would be lost. "get a tarpaulin -- quick!" said gabriel. a rick-cloth was brought, and they hung it like a curtain across the channel. the flames immediately ceased to go under the bottom of the corn-stack, and stood up vertical. "stand here with a bucket of water and keep the cloth wet." said gabriel again. the flames, now driven upwards, began to attack the angles of the huge roof covering the wheat-stack. "a ladder." cried gabriel. "the ladder was against the straw-rick and is burnt to a cinder." said a spectre-like form in the smoke. oak seized the cut ends of the sheaves, as if he were going to engage in the operation of "reed-drawing," and digging in his feet, and occasionally sticking in the stem of his sheep-crook, he clambered up the beetling face. he at once sat astride the very apex, and began with his crook to beat off the fiery fragments which had lodged thereon, shouting to the others to get him a bough and a ladder, and some water. billy smallbury -- one of the men who had been on the waggon -- by this time had found a ladder, which mark clark ascended, holding on beside oak upon the thatch. the smoke at this corner was stifling, and clark, a nimble fellow, having been handed a bucket of water, bathed oak's face and sprinkled him generally, whilst gabriel, now with a long beech-bough in one hand, in addition to his crook in the other, kept sweeping the stack and dislodging all fiery particles. on the ground the groups of villagers were still occupied in doing all they could to keep down the conflagration, which was not much. they were all tinged orange, and backed up by shadows of varying pattern. round the corner of the largest stack, out of the direct rays of the fire, stood a pony, bearing a young woman on its back. by her side was another woman, on foot. these two seemed to keep at a distance from the fire, that the horse might not become restive. "he's a shepherd." said the woman on foot. "yes -- he is. see how his crook shines as he beats the rick with it. and his smock-frock is burnt in two holes, i declare! a fine young shepherd he is too, ma'am." "whose shepherd is he?" said the equestrian in a clear voice. "don't know, ma'am." "don't any of the others know?" "nobody at all -- i've asked 'em. quite a stranger, they say." the young woman on the pony rode out from the shade and looked anxiously around. "do you think the barn is safe?" she said. "d'ye think the barn is safe, jan coggan?" said the second woman, passing on the question to the nearest man in that direction. "safe -now -- leastwise i think so. if this rick had gone the barn would have followed. 'tis- that bold shepherd up there that have done the most good -- he sitting on the top o' rick, whizzing his great long-arms about like a windmill." "he does work hard." said the young woman on horseback, looking up at gabriel through her thick woollen veil. "i wish he was shepherd here. don't any of you know his name." "never heard the man's name in my life, or seed his form afore." the fire began to get worsted, and gabriel's elevated position being no longer required of him, he made as if to descend. "maryann." said the girl on horseback, "go to him as he comes down, and say that the farmer wishes to thank him for the great service he has done." maryann stalked off towards the rick and met oak at the foot of the ladder. she delivered her message. "where is your master the farmer?" asked gabriel, kindling with the idea of getting employment that seemed to strike him now. "'tisn't a master; 'tis a mistress, shepherd." "a woman farmer?" "ay, 'a b'lieve, and a rich one too!" said a by- stander. "lately 'a came here from a distance. took on her uncle's farm, who died suddenly. used to measure his money in half-pint cups. they say now that she've business in every bank in casterbridge, and thinks no more of playing pitch-and-toss sovereign than you and i, do pitch-halfpenny -- not a bit in the world, shepherd." "that's she, back there upon the pony." said mary- ann. "wi' her face a-covered up in that black cloth with holes in it." oak, his features smudged, grimy, and undiscoverable from the smoke and heat, his smock-frock burnt-into holes and dripping with water, the ash stem of his sheep- crook charred six inches shorter, advansed with the humility stern adversity had thrust upon him up to the slight female form in the saddle. he lifted his hat with respect, and not without gallantry: stepping close to her hanging feet he said in a hesitating voice, -- "do you happen to want a shepherd, ma'am?" she lifted the wool veil tied round her face, and looked all astonishment. gabriel and his cold-hearted darling, bathsheba everdene, were face to face. bathsheba did not speak, and he mechanically repeated in an abashed and sad voice, -- "do you want a shepherd, ma'am?" chapter vii recognition -- a timid girl bathsheba withdrew into the shade. she scarcely knew whether most to be amused at the singularity of the meeting, or to be concerned at its awkwardness. there was room for a little pity, also for a very little exultation: the former at his position, the latter at her own. embarrassed she was not, and she" remembered gabriel's declaration of love to her at norcombe only to think she had nearly forgotten it. "yes," she murmured, putting on an air of dignity, and turning again to him with a little warmth of cheek; "i do want a shepherd. but -- -- " "he's the very man, ma'am." said one of the villagers, quietly. conviction breeds conviction. "ay, that 'a is." said a second, decisively. "the man, truly!" said a third, with heartiness." "he's all there!" said number four, fervidly." then will you tell him to speak to the bailiff, said bathsheba. all "was practical again now. a summer eve and loneliness would have been necessary to give the meeting its proper fulness of romance. the palpitation within his breast at discovering that this ashtoreth of strange report was only a modification of venus the well-known and admired, retired with him to talk over the necessary preliminaries of hiring. the fire before them wasted away. "men." said bathsheba, " you shall take a little refreshment after this extra work. will you come to the house?" "we could knock in a bit and a drop a good deal freer, miss, if so be ye'd send it to warren's malthouse," replied the spokesman. bathsheba then rode off into the darkness, and the men straggled on to the village in twos and threes -- oak and the bailiff being left by the rick alone. "and now." said the bailiff, finally, "all is settled, i think, about your coming, and i am going home-along. good-night to ye, shepherd." "can you get me a lodging?" inquired gabriel. "that i can't, indeed," he said, moving past oak as a christian edges past an offertory-plate when he does not mean to contribute. "if you follow on the road till you come to warren's malthouse, where they are all gone to have their snap of victuals, i daresay some of 'em will tell you of a place. good-night to ye, shepherd." the bailiff who showed this nervous dread of loving his neighbour as himself, went up the hill, and oak walked on to the village, still astonished at the ren- counter with bathsheba, glad of his nearness to her, and perplexed at the rapidity with which the unpractised girl of norcombe had developed into the supervising and cool woman here. but some women only require an emerg- ency to make them fit for one. obliged, to some extent, to forgo dreaming in order to find the way, he reached the churchyard, and passed round it under the wall where several ancient trees grew. there was a wide margin of grass along here, and gabriel's footsteps were deadened by its softness, even at this indurating period of the year. when abreast of a trunk which appeared to be the oldest of the old, he became aware that a figure was standing behind it. gabriel did not pause in his walk, and in another moment he accidentally kicked a loose stone. the noise was enough to disturb the motionless stranger, who started and assumed a careless position. it was a slim girl, rather thinly clad. "good-night to you." said gabriel, heartily. "good-night." said the girl to gabriel. the voice was unexpectedly attractive; it was "the low and dulcet note suggestive of romance," common in descriptions, rare in experience. "i'll thank you to tell me if i'm in the way for warren's malthouse?" gabriel resumed, primarily to gain the information, indirectly to get more of the music. "quite right. it's at the bottom of the hill. and do you know -- --" the girl hesitated and then went on again. "do you know how late they keep open the buck's head inn?" she seemed" to be won by gabriel's heartiness, as gabriel had been won by her modulations. "i don't know where the buck's head is, or anything about it. do you think of going there to-night?" "yes -- --" the woman again paused. there was no necessity for any continuance of speech, and the fact that she did add more seemed to proceed from an unconscious desire to show unconcern by making a remark, which is noticeable in the ingenuous when they are acting by stealth. "you are not a weatherbury man?" she said, timorously. "i am not. i am the new shepherd -- just arrived." "only a shepherd -- and you seem almost a farmer by your ways." "only a shepherd." gabriel repeated, in a dull cadence of finality. "his thoughts were directed to the past, his eyes to the feet of the girl; and for the first time he saw lying there a bundle of some sort. she may have perceived the direction of his face, for she said coaxingly, -- "you won't say anything in the parish about having seen me here, will you -- at least, not for a day or two?" "i won't if you wish me not to." said oak. "thank you, indeed." the other replied."i am rather poor, and i don't want people to know anything about me." then she was silent and shivered. "you ought to have a cloak on such a cold night," gabriel observed. "i would advise 'ee to get indoors." "o no! would you mind going on and leaving me? i thank you much for what you have told me." "i will go on." he said; adding hesitatingly, -- "since you are not very well off, perhaps you would accept this trifle from me. it is only a shilling, but it is all i have to spare." "yes, i will take it." said the stranger, gratefully. she extended her hand; gabriel his. in feeling for each other's palm in the gloom before the money could be passed, a minute incident occurred which told much. gabriel's fingers alighted on the young woman's wrist. it was beating with a throb of tragic intensity. he had frequently felt the same quick, hard beat in the femoral artery of -- his lambs when overdriven. it suggested a consumption too great of a vitality which, to judge from her figure and stature, was already too little. "what is the matter?" "nothing." "but there is?" "no, no, no! let your having seen me be a secret!" "very well; i will. good-night, again." "good-night." the young girl remained motionless by the tree, and gabriel descended into the village of weatherbury, or lower longpuddle as it was sometimes called. he fancied that he had felt himself in the penumbra of a very deep sadness when touching that slight and fragile creature. but wisdom lies in moderating mere impres- sions, and gabriel endeavoured to think little of this. chapter viii the malthouse -- the chat -- news warren's malthouse was enclosed by an old wall inwrapped with ivy, and though not much of the exterior was visible at this hour, the character and purposes of the building were clearly enough shown by its outline upon the sky. from the walls an overhanging thatched roof sloped up to a point in the centre, upon which rose a small wooden lantern, fitted with louvre-boards on all the four sides, and from these openings a mist was dimly perceived to be escaping into the night air. there was no window in front; but a square hole in the door was glazed with a single pane, through which red, comfortable rays now stretched out upon the ivied wall in front. voices were to be heard inside. oak's hand skimmed the surface of the door with fingers extended to an elymas-the-somerer pattern, till he found a leathern strap, which he pulled. this lifted a wooden latch, and the door swung open. the room inside was lighted only by the, ruddy glow from the kiln mouth, which shone over ,the floor with the streaming, horizontality of the setting sun, and threw upwards the shadows of all facial irregularities in those assembled around. the stone-flag floor was worn into a path from the doorway to the kiln, and into undula- tions everywhere. a curved settle of unplaned oak stretched along one side, and in a remote corner was a small bed and bedstead, the owner and frequent occupier of which was the maltster. this aged man was now sitting opposite the fire, his frosty white hair and beard overgrowing his gnarled figure like the grey moss and lichen upon a leafless apple-tree. he wore breeches and the laced-up shoes called ankle-jacks; he kept his eyes fixed upon the fire. gabriel's nose was greeted by an atmosphere laden with the sweet smell of new malt. the conversation (which seemed to have been concerning the origin of the fire) immediately ceased, and every one ocularly criticised him to the degree expressed by contracting the flesh of their foreheads and looking at him with narrowed eye- lids, as if he had been a light too strong for their sight. several exclaimed meditatively, after this operation had been completed: -- "oh, 'tis the new shepherd, 'a b'lieve." "we thought we heard a hand pawing about the door for the bobbin, but weren't sure 'twere not a dead leaf blowed across." said another. "come in, shepherd; sure ye be welcome, though we don't know yer name." "gabriel oak, that's my name, neighbours." the ancient maltster sitting in the midst turned up this -- his turning being as the turning of a rusty crane. "that's never gable oak's grandson over at nor- combe -- never!" he said, as a formula expressive of surprise, which nobody was supposed to take literally'. "my father and my grandfather were old men of the name of gabriel." said the shepherd, placidly. "thought i knowed the man's face as i seed him on the rick! -- thought i did! and where be ye trading o't to now, shepherd?" "i'm thinking of biding here." said mr. oak. "knowed yer grandfather for years and years!" continued the maltster, the words coming forth of their own accord as if the momentum previously imparted had been sufficient. "ah -- and did you!" "knowed yer grandmother." "and her too!" "likewise knowed yer father when he was a child. why, my boy jacob there and your father were sworn brothers -- that they were sure -- weren't ye, jacob?" "ay, sure." said his son, a young man about sixty- five, with a semi-bald head and one tooth in the left centre of his upper jaw, which made much of itself by standing prominent, like a milestone in a bank. "but "twas joe had most to do with him. however, my son william must have knowed the very man afore us -- didn't ye, billy, afore ye left norcombe?" "no, 'twas andrew." said jacob's son billy, a child of forty, or thereabouts, who manifested the peculiarity of possessing a cheerful soul in a gloomy body, and whose whiskers were assuming a chinchilla shade here and there. "i can mind andrew." said oak, "as being a man in the place when i was quite a child." "ay -- the other day i and my youngest daughter, liddy, were over at my grandson's christening." continued billy. "we were talking about this very family, and "twas only last purification day in this very world, when the use-money is gied away to the second-best poor folk, you know, shepherd, and i can mind the day because they all had to traypse up to the vestry -- yes, this very man's family." "come, shepherd, and drink. 'tis gape and swaller with us -- a drap of sommit, but not of much account." said the maltster, removing from the fire his eyes, which were vermilion-red and bleared by gazing into it for so many years. "take up the god-forgive- me, jacob. see if 'tis warm, jacob." jacob stooped to the god-forgive-me, which was a two-handled tall mug standing in the ashes, cracked and charred with heat: it was rather furred with ex- traneous matter about the outside, especially in the crevices of the handles, the innermost curves of which may not have seen daylight for several years by reason of this encrustation thereon -- formed of ashes accident- ally wetted with cider and baked hard; but to the mind of any sensible drinker the cup was no worse for that, being incontestably clean on the inside and about the rim. it may be observed that such a class of mug is called a god-forgive-me in weatherbury and its vicinity for uncertain reasons; probably because its size makes any given toper feel ashamed of himself when he sees its bottom in drinking it empty. jacob, on receiving the order to see if the liquor was warm enough, placidly dipped his forefinger into it by way of thermometer, and having pronounced it nearly of the proper degree, raised the cup and very civilly attempted to dust some of the ashes from the bottom with the skirt of his smock-frock, because shepherd oak was a stranger. "a clane cup for the shepherd." said the maltster commandingly. "no -- not at all," said gabriel, in a reproving tone of considerateness. "i never fuss about dirt in its pure state, and when i know what sort it is." taking the mug he drank an inch or more from the depth of its contents, and duly passed it to the next man. wouldn't think of giving such trouble to neighbours in washing up when there's so much work to be done in the world already." continued oak in a moister tone, after recovering from the stoppage of breath which is occasioned by pulls at large mugs. "a right sensible man." said jacob. "true, true; it can't be gainsaid!" observed a brisk young man -- mark clark by name, a genial and pleasant gentleman, whom to meet anywhere in your travels was to know, to know was to drink with, and to drink with was, unfortunately, to pay for. "and here's a mouthful of bread and bacon that mis'ess have sent, shepherd. the cider will go down better with a bit of victuals. don't ye chaw quite close, shepherd, for i let the bacon fall in the road outside as i was bringing it along, and may be 'tis rather gritty. there, 'tis clane dirt; and we all know what that is, as you say, and you bain't a particular man we see, shepherd." "true, true -- not at all." said the friendly oak. "don't let your teeth quite meet, and you won't feel the sandiness at all. ah! 'tis wonderful what can be done by contrivance!" "my own mind exactly, neighbour." "ah, he's his grandfer's own grandson! -- his grandfer were just such a nice unparticular man!" said the maltster. "drink, henry fray -- drink." magnanimously said jan coggan, a person who held saint-simonian notions of share and share alike where liquor was concerned, as the vessel showed signs of approaching him in its gradual revolution among them. having at this moment reached the end of a wistful gaze into mid-air, henry did not refuse. he was a man of more than middle age, with eyebrows high up in his forehead, who laid it down that the law of the world was bad, with a long-suffering look through his listeners at the world alluded to, as it presented itself to his imagination. he always signed his name "henery" -- strenuously insisting upon that spelling, and if any passing schoolmaster ventured to remark that the second "e" was superfluous and old-fashioned, he received the reply that "h-e-n-e-r-y" was the name he was christened and the name he would stick to -- in the tone of one to whom orthographical differences were matters which had a great deal to do with personal character. mr. jan coggan, who had passed the cup to henery, was a crimson man with a spacious countenance, and private glimmer in his eye, whose name had appeared on the marriage register of weatherbury and neighbour- ing parishes as best man and chief witness in countless unions of the previous twenty years; he also very frequently filled the post of head godfather in baptisms of the subtly-jovial kind. "come, mark clark -- come. ther's plenty more in the barrel." said jan. "ay -- that i will, 'tis my only doctor." replied mr. clark, who, twenty years younger than jan coggan, revolved in the same orbit. he secreted mirth on all occasions for special discharge at popular parties. "why, joseph poorgrass, ye han't had a drop!" said mr. coggan to a self-conscious man in the background, thrusting the cup towards him. "such a modest man as he is!" said jacob smallbury. "why, ye've hardly had strength of eye enough to look in our young mis'ess's face, so i hear, joseph?" all looked at joseph poorgrass with pitying reproach. "no -- i've hardly looked at her at all." simpered joseph, reducing his body smaller whilst talking, apparently from a meek sense of undue prominence. "and when i seed her, 'twas nothing but blushes with me!" "poor feller." said mr. clark. "'tis a curious nature for a man." said jan coggan. "yes." continued joseph poorgrass -- his shyness, which was so painful as a defect, filling him with a mild complacency now that it was regarded as an interesting study. "'twere blush, blush, blush with me every minute of the time, when she was speaking to me." "i believe ye, joseph poorgrass, for we all know ye to be a very bashful man." "'tis a' awkward gift for a man, poor soul." said the maltster. "and ye have suffered from it a long time, we know." "ay ever since i was a boy. yes -- mother was concerned to her heart about it -- yes. but twas all nought." "did ye ever go into the world to try and stop it, joseph poorgrass?" "oh ay, tried all sorts o' company. they took me to greenhill fair, and into a great gay jerry-go-nimble show, where there were women-folk riding round -- standing upon horses, with hardly anything on but their smocks; but it didn't cure me a morsel. and then i was put errand-man at the women's skittle alley at the back of the tailor's arms in casterbridge. 'twas a horrible sinful situation, and a very curious place for a good man. i had to stand and look ba'dy people in the face from morning till night; but 'twas no use -- i was just as-bad as ever after all. blushes hev been in the family for generations. there, 'tis a happy pro- vidence that i be no worse." "true." said jacob smallbury, deepening his thoughts to a profounder view of the subject. "'tis a thought to look at, that ye might have been worse; but even as you be, 'tis a very bad affliction for 'ee, joseph. for ye see, shepherd, though 'tis very well for a woman, dang it all, 'tis awkward for a man like him, poor feller?" "'tis -- 'tis." said gabriel, recovering from a medita- tion. "yes, very awkward for the man." "ay, and he's very timid, too." observed jan coggan. "once he had been working late at yalbury bottom, and had had a drap of drink, and lost his way as he was coming home-along through yalbury wood, didn't ye, master poorgrass?" "no, no, no; not that story!" expostulated the modest man, forcing a laugh to bury his concern. "-- -- and so 'a lost himself quite." continued mr coggan, with an impassive face, implying that a true narrative, like time and tide, must run its course and would respect no man. "and as he was coming along in the middle of the night, much afeared, and not able to find his way out of the trees nohow, 'a cried out, "man-a-lost! man-a-lost!" a owl in a tree happened to be crying "whoo-whoo-whoo!" as owls do, you know, shepherd" (gabriel nodded), " and joseph, all in a tremble, said, " joseph poorgrass, of weatherbury, sir!" "no, no, now -- that's too much!" said the timid man, becoming a man of brazen courage all of a sudden. "i didn't say sir. i'll tike my oath i didn't say " joseph poorgrass o' weatherbury, sir." no, no; what's right is right, and i never said sir to the bird, knowing very well that no man of a gentleman's rank would be hollering there at that time o' night." joseph poor- grass of weatherbury," -- that's every word i said, and i shouldn't ha' said that if 't hadn't been for keeper day's metheglin.... there, 'twas a merciful thing it ended where it did." the question of which was right being tacitly waived by the company, jan went on meditatively: -- "and he's the fearfullest man, bain't ye, joseph? ay, another time ye were lost by lambing-down gate, weren't ye, joseph?" "i was." replied poorgrass, as if there were some conditions too serious even for modesty to remember itself under, this being one. "yes; that were the middle of the night, too. the gate would not open, try how he would, and knowing there was the devil's hand in it, he kneeled down." "ay." said joseph, acquiring confidence from the warmth of the fire, the cider, and a perception of the narrative capabilities of the experience alluded to. "my heart died within me, that time; but i kneeled down and said the lord's prayer, and then the belie right through, and then the ten commandments, in earnest prayer. but no, the gate wouldn't open; and then i went on with dearly beloved brethren, and, thinks i, this makes four, and 'tis all i know out of book, and if this don't do it nothing will, and i'm a lost man. well, when i got to saying after me, i rose from my knees and found the gate would open -- yes, neighbours, the gate opened the same as ever." a meditation on the obvious inference was indulged in by all, and during its continuance each directed his vision into the ashpit, which glowed like a desert in the tropics under a vertical sun, shaping their eyes long and liny, partly because of the light, partly from the depth of the subject discussed. gabriel broke the silence. "what sort of a place is this to live at, and what sort of a mis'ess is she to work under?" gabriel's bosom thrilled gently as he thus slipped under the notice of the assembly the inner- most subject of his heart. "we d' know little of her -- nothing. she only showed herself a few days ago. her uncle was took bad, and the doctor was called with his world-wide skill; but he couldn't save the man. as i take it, she's going to keep on the farm. "that's about the shape o't, 'a b'lieve." said jan uncle was a very fair sort of man. did ye know en, be under 'em as under one here and there. her uncle was a very fair sort of man. did ye know 'en, shepherd -- a bachelor-man?" "not at all." "i used to go to his house a-courting my first wife, charlotte, who was his dairymaid. well, a very good- hearted man were farmer everdene, and i being a respectable young fellow was allowed to call and see her and drink as much ale as i liked, but not to carry away any -- outside my skin i mane of course." "ay, ay, jan coggan; we know yer meaning." "and so you see 'twas beautiful ale, and i wished to value his kindness as much as i could, and not to be so ill-mannered as to drink only a thimbleful, which would have been insulting the man's generosity -- -- " "true, master coggan, 'twould so." corroborated mark clark. " -- -- and so i used to eat a lot of salt fish afore going, and then by the time i got there i were as dry as a lime-basket -- so thorough dry that that ale would slip down -- ah, 'twould slip down sweet! happy times! heavenly times! such lovely drunks as i used to have at that house! you can mind, jacob? you used to go wi' me sometimes." "i can -- i can." said jacob. "that one, too, that we had at buck's head on a white monday was a pretty tipple." "'twas. but for a wet of the better class, that brought you no nearer to the horned man than you were afore you begun, there was none like those in farmer everdene's kitchen. not a single damn allowed; no, not a bare poor one, even at the most cheerful moment when all were blindest, though the good old word of sin thrown in here and there at such times is a great relief to a merry soul." "true." said the maltster. "nater requires her swearing at the regular times, or she's not herself; and unholy exclamations is a necessity of life." "but charlotte." continued coggan -- "not a word of the sort would charlotte allow, nor the smallest item of taking in vain.... ay, poor charlotte, i wonder if she had the good fortune to get into heaven when 'a died! but 'a was never much in luck's way, and perhaps 'a went downwards after all, poor soul." "and did any of you know miss everdene's-father and mother?" inquired the shepherd, who found some difficulty in keeping the conversation in the desired channel. "i knew them a little." said jacob smallbury; "but they were townsfolk, and didn't live here. they've been dead for years. father, what sort of people were mis'ess' father and mother?" "well." said the maltster, "he wasn't much to look at; but she was a lovely woman. he was fond enough of her as his sweetheart." "used to kiss her scores and long-hundreds o times, so 'twas said." observed coggan. "he was very proud of her, too, when they were married, as i've been told." said the maltster. "ay." said coggan. "he admired her so much that he used to light the candle three time a night to look at her." "boundless love; i shouldn't have supposed it in the universe!" murmered joseph poorgrass, who habitually spoke on a large scale in his moral reflections. "well, to be sure." said gabriel. "oh, 'tis true enough. i knowed the man and woman both well. levi everdene -- that was the man's name, sure. "man." saith i in my hurry, but he were of a higher circle of life than that -- 'a was a gentleman- tailor really, worth scores of pounds. and he became a very celebrated bankrupt two or three times." "oh, i thought he was quite a common man!" said joseph. "o no, no! that man failed for heaps of money; hundreds in gold and silver." the maltster being rather short of breath, mr. coggan, after absently scrutinising a coal which had fallen among the ashes, took up the narrative, with a private twirl of his eye: -- "well, now, you'd hardly believe it, but that man -- husbands alive, after a while. understand? 'a didn't want to be fickle, but he couldn't help it. the poor feller were faithful and true enough to her in his wish, but his heart would rove, do what he would. he spoke to me in real tribulation about it once. "coggan," he said, "i could never wish for a handsomer woman than i've got, but feeling she's ticketed as my lawful wife, i can't help my wicked heart wandering, do what i will." but at last i believe he cured it by making her take off her wedding-ring and calling her by her maiden name as they sat together after the shop was shut, and so 'a would get to fancy she was only his sweetheart, and not married to him at all. and as soon as he could thoroughly fancy he was doing wrong and committing the seventh, 'a got to like her as well as ever, and they lived on a perfect picture of mutel love." "well, 'twas a most ungodly remedy." murmured joseph poorgrass; "but we ought to feel deep cheerful- ness that a happy providence kept it from being any worse. you see, he might have gone the bad road and given his eyes to unlawfulness entirely -- yes, gross un- lawfulness, so to say it." "you see." said billy smallbury, "the man's will was to do right, sure enough, but his heart didn't chime in." "he got so much better, that he was quite godly in his later years, wasn't he, jan?" said joseph poor- grass. "he got himself confirmed over again in a more serious way, and took to saying "amen" almost as loud as the clerk, and he liked to copy comforting verses from the tombstones. he used, too, to hold the money- plate at let your light so shine, and stand godfather to poor little come-by-chance children; and he kept a missionary box upon his table to nab folks unawares when they called; yes, and he would-box the charity- boys' ears, if they laughed in church, till they could hardly stand upright, and do other deeds of piety natural to the saintly inclined." "ay, at that time he thought of nothing but high things." added billy smallbury. "one day parson thirdly met him and said, "good-morning, mister everdene; 'tis a fine day!" "amen" said everdene, quite absent- like, thinking only of religion when he seed a parson- "their daughter was not at all a pretty chile at that time." said henery fray. "never should have. thought she'd have growed up such a handsome body as she is." "'tis to be hoped her temper is as good as her face." "well, yes; but the baily will have most to do with the business and ourselves. ah!" henery gazed into the ashpit, and smiled volumes of ironical knowledge. "a queer christian, like the devil's head in a cowl, "he is." said henery, implying that irony must cease at a certain point. "between we two, man and man, i believe that man would as soon tell a lie sundays as working-days -- that i do so." "good faith, you do talk!" said gabriel. "true enough." said the man of bitter moods, looking round upon the company with the antithetic laughter that comes from a keener appreciation of the miseries of life than ordinary men are capable of. 'ah, there's people of one sort, and people of another, but that man -- bless your souls!" gabriel thought fit to change the subject. "you must be a very aged man, malter, to have sons growed mild and ancient" he remarked. "father's so old that 'a can't mind his age, can ye, father?" interposed jacob. "and he growled terrible crooked too, lately" jacob continued, surveying his father's figure, which was rather more bowed than his own. "really one may say that father there is three-double." "crooked folk will last a long while." said the maltster, grimly, and not in the best humour. "shepherd would like to hear the pedigree of yer life, father -- wouldn't ye, shepherd? "ay that i should." said gabriel with the heartiness of a man who had longed to hear it for several months. "what may your age be, malter?" the maltster cleared his throat in an exaggerated form for emphasis, and elongating his gaze to the remotest point of the ashpit! said, in the slow speech justifiable when the importance of a subject is so generally felt that any mannerism must be tolerated in getting at it, "well, i don't mind the year i were born in, but perhaps i can reckon up the places i've lived at, and so get it that way. i bode at upper long- puddle across there" (nodding to the north) "till i were eleven. i bode seven at kingsbere" (nodding to the east) "where i took to malting. i went therefrom to norcombe, and malted there two-and-twenty years, and- two-and-twenty years i was there turnip-hoeing and harvesting. ah, i knowed that old place, norcombe, years afore you were thought of, master oak" (oak smiled sincere belief in the fact). "then i malted at dur- nover four year, and four year turnip-hoeing; and i was fourteen times eleven months at millpond st. jude's" (nodding north-west-by-north). "old twills wouldn't hire me for more than eleven months at a time, to keep me from being chargeable to the parish if so be i was disabled. then i was three year at mellstock, and i've been here one-and-thirty year come candlemas. how much is that?" "hundred and seventeen." chuckled another old gentleman, given to mental arithmetic and little con- versation, who had hitherto sat unobserved in a corner. "well, then, that's my age." said the maltster, em- phatically. "o no, father!" said jacob. "your turnip-hoeing were in the summer and your malting in the winter of the same years, and ye don't ought to count-both halves father." "chok' it all! i lived through the summers, didn't i? that's my question. i suppose ye'll say next i be no age at all to speak of?" "sure we shan't." said gabriel, soothingly. "ye be a very old aged person, malter." attested jan must have a wonderful talented constitution to be able to live so long, mustn't he, neighbours?" "true, true; ye must, malter, wonderful," said the meeting unanimously. the maltster, being know pacified, was even generous enough to voluntarily disparage in a slight degree the virtue of having lived a great many years, by mentioning that the cup they were drinking out of was three years older than he. while the cup was being examined, the end of gabriel oak's flute became visible over his smock-frock i seed you blowing into a great flute by now at caster- bridge?" "you did." said gabriel, blushing faintly. "i've been in great trouble, neighbours, and was driven to it. take it careless-like, shepherd and your time will come tired?" "neither drum nor trumpet have i heard since christmas." said jan coggan. "come, raise a tune, master oak!" "that i will." said gabriel, pulling out his flute and putting it together. "a poor tool, neighbours; but such as i can do ye shall have and welcome." oak then struck up "jockey to the fair." and played that sparkling melody three times through accenting the notes in the third round in a most artistic and lively manner by bending his body in small jerks and tapping with his foot to beat time. "he can blow the flute very well -- that 'a can." said a young married man, who having no individuality worth mentioning was known as "susan tall's husband." he continued, "i'd as lief as not be able to blow into a flute as well-as that." "he's a clever man, and 'tis a true comfort for us to have such a shepherd." murmured joseph poorgrass, in a soft cadence. "we ought to feel full o' thanksgiving that he's not a player of ba'dy songs 'instead of these merry tunes; for 'twould have been just as easy for god to have made the shepherd a loose low man -- a man of iniquity, so to speak it -- as what he is. yes, for our wives" and daughters' sakes we should feel real thanks giving." "true, true, -- real thanksgiving!" dashed in mark clark conclusively, not feeling it to be of any conse- quence to his opinion that he had only heard about a word and three-quarters of what joseph had said. "yes." added joseph, beginning to feel like a man in the bible; "for evil do thrive so in these times that ye may be as much deceived in the cleanest shaved and whitest shirted man as in the raggedest tramp upon the turnpike, if i may term it so." "ay, i can mind yer face now, shepherd." said henery fray, criticising gabriel with misty eyes as he entered upon his second tune. "yes -- now i see 'ee blowing into the flute i know 'ee to be the same man i see play at casterbridge, for yer mouth were scrimped up and yer eyes a-staring out like a strangled man's -- just as they be now." "'tis a pity that playing the flute should make a man look such a scarecrow." observed mr. mark clark, with additional criticism of gabriel's countenance, the latter person jerking out, with the ghastly grimace required by the instrument, the chorus of "dame durden! "i hope you don't mind that young man's bad manners in naming your features?" whispered joseph to gabriel. "not at all." said mr. oak. "for by nature ye be a very handsome man, shepherd." continued joseph poorgrass, with winning sauvity. "ay, that ye be, shepard." said the company. "thank you very much." said oak, in the modest tone good manners demanded, thinking, however, that he would never let bathsheba see him playing the flute; in this severe showing a discretion equal to that related to its sagacious inventress, the divine minerva herself. "ah, when i and my wife were married at norcombe church." said the old maltster, not pleased at finding himself left out of the subject "we were called the handsomest couple in the neighbourhood -- everybody said so." "danged if ye bain't altered now, malter." said a voice with the vigour natural to the enunciation of a remark- ably evident truism. it came from the old man in the background, whose offensiveness and spiteful ways were barely atoned for by the occasional chuckle he con- tributed to general laughs. "o no, no." said gabriel. "don't ye play no more shepherd" said susan tall's husband, the young married man who had spoken once before. "i must be moving and when there's tunes going on i seem as if hung in wires. if i thought after i'd left that music was still playing, and i not there, i should be quite melancholy-like." "what's yer hurry then, laban?" inquired coggan. "you used to bide as late as the latest." "well, ye see, neighbours, i was lately married to a woman, and she's my vocation now, and so ye see -- -- " the young man hated lamely. "new lords new laws, as the saying is, i suppose," remarked coggan. "ay, 'a b'lieve -- ha, ha!" said susan tall's husband, in a tone intended to imply his habitual reception of jokes without minding them at all. the young man then wished them good-night and withdrew. henery fray was the first to follow. then gabriel arose and went off with jan coggan, who had offered him a lodging. a few minutes later, when the remaining ones were on their legs and about to depart, fray came back again in a hurry. flourishing his finger ominously he threw a gaze teeming with tidings just -- where his eye alighted by accident, which happened to be in joseph poorgrass's face. "o -- what's the matter, what's the matter, henery?" said joseph, starting back. "what's a-brewing, henrey?" asked jacob and mark clark. "baily pennyways -- baily pennyways -- i said so; yes, i said so!" "what, found out stealing anything?" "stealing it is. the news is, that after miss everdene got home she went out again to see all was safe, as she usually do, and coming in found baily pennyways creeping down the granary steps with half a a bushel of barley. she fleed at him like a cat -- never such a tomboy as she is -- of course i speak with closed doors?" "you do -- you do, henery." "she fleed at him, and, to cut a long story short, he owned to having carried off five sack altogether, upon her promising not to persecute him. well, he's turned out neck and crop, and my question is, who's going to be baily now?" the question was such a profound one that henery was obliged to drink there and then from the large cup till the bottom was distinctly visible inside. before he had replaced it on the table, in came the young man, susan tall's husband, in a still greater hurry. "have ye heard the news that's all over parish?" "about baily pennyways?" "but besides that?" "no -- not a morsel of it!" they replied, looking into the very midst of laban tall as if to meet his words half-way down his throat. "what a night of horrors!" murmured joseph poor- grass, waving his hands spasmodically. "i've had the news-bell ringing in my left ear quite bad enough for a murder, and i've seen a magpie all alone!" "fanny robin -- miss everdene's youngest servant -- can't be found. they've been wanting to lock up the door these two hours, but she isn't come in. and they don't know what to do about going to hed for fear of locking her out. they wouldn't be so concerned if she hadn't been noticed in such low spirits these last few days, and maryann d'think the beginning of a crowner's inquest has happened to the poor girl." "o -- 'tis burned -- 'tis burned!" came from joseph poorgrass's dry lips. "no -- 'tis drowned!" said tall. "or 'tis her father's razor!" suggested billy smallbury, with a vivid sense of detail. "well -- miss everdene wants to speak to one or two of us before we go to bed. what with this trouble about the baily, and now about the girl, mis'ess is almost wild." they all hastened up the lane to the farmhouse, excepting the old maltster, whom neither news, fire, rain, nor thunder could draw from his hole. there, as the others' footsteps died away he sat down again and continued gazing as usual into the furnace with his red, bleared eyes. from the bedroom window above their heads bath- sheba's head and shoulders, robed in mystic white, were dimly seen extended into the air. "are any of my men among you?" she said anxiously. "yes, ma'am, several." said susan tall's husband. "tomorrow morning i wish two or three of you to make inquiries in the villages round if they have seen such a person as fanny robin. do it quietly; there is no reason for alarm as yet. she must have left whilst we were all at the fire." "i beg yer pardon, but had she any young man court- ing her in the parish, ma'am?" asked jacob smallbury. "i don't know." said bathsheba. "i've never heard of any such thing, ma'am." said two or three. "it is hardly likely, either." continued bathsheba. "for any lover of hers might have come to the house if he had been a respectable lad. the most mysterious matter connected with her absence -- indeed, the only thing which gives me serious alarm -- is that she was seen to go out of the house by maryann with only her indoor working gown on -- not even a bonnet." "and you mean, ma'am, excusing my words, that a young woman would hardly go to see her young man without dressing up." said jacob, turning his mental vision upon past experiences. "that's true -- she would not, ma'am." "she had, i think, a bundle, though i couldn't see very well." said a female voice from another window, which seemed that of maryann. "but she had no young man about here. hers lives in casterbridge, and i believe he's a soldier." "do you know his name?" bathsheba said. "no, mistress; she was very close about it." "perhaps i might be able to find out if i went to casterbridge barracks." said william smallbury. "very well; if she doesn't return tomorrow, mind you go there and try to discover which man it is, and see him. i feel more responsible than i should if she had had any friends or relations alive. i do hope she has come to no harm through a man of that kind.... and then there's this disgraceful affair of the bailiff -- but i can't speak of him now." bathsheba had so many reasons for uneasiness that it seemed she did not think it worth while to dwell upon any particular one. "do as i told you, then" she said in conclusion, closing the casement. "ay, ay, mistress; we will." they replied, and moved away. that night at coggan's, gabriel oak, beneath the screen of closed eyelids, was busy with fancies, and full of movement, like a river flowing rapidly under its ice. night had always been the time at which he saw bath- sheba most vividly, and through the slow hours of shadow he tenderly regarded her image now. it is rarely that the pleasures of the imagination will compen- sate for the pain of sleeplessness, but they possibly did with oak to-night, for the delight of merely seeing her effaced for the time his perception of the great differ- ence between seeing and possessing. he also thought of plans for fetching his few utensils and books from norcombe. the young man's best companion, the farrier's sure guide, the veterinary surgeon, paradise lost, the pilgrim's progress, robinson crusoe, ash's dictionary, the walkingame's arithmetic, constituted his library; and though a limited series, it was one from which he had acquired more sound informa- tion by diligent perusal than many a man of opportunities has done from a furlong of laden shelves. chapter ix the homestead -- a visitor -- half-confidences by daylight, the bower of oak's new-found mistress, bathsheba everdene, presented itself as a hoary build- ing, of the early stage of classic renaissance as regards its architecture, and of 'a proportion which told at a glance that, as is so frequently the case, it had once been the memorial hall upon a small estate around it, now altogether effaced as a distinct property, and merged in the vast tract of a non-resident landlord, which com- prised several such modest demesnes. fluted pilasters, worked from the solid stone, decorated its front, and above the roof the chimneys were panelled or columnar, some coped gables with finials and like features still retaining traces of their gothic extraction. soft brown mosses, like faded velveteen, formed cushions upon the stone tiling, and tufts of the houseleek or sengreen sprouted from the eaves of the low surrounding buildings. a gravel walk leading from the door to the road in front was encrusted at the sides with more moss -- here it was a silver-green variety, the nut-brown of the gravel being visible to the width of only a foot or two in the centre. this circum- stance, and the generally sleepy air of the whole prospect here, together with the animated and contrasting state of the reverse facade, suggested to the imagination that on the adaptation of the building for farming purposes the vital principle' of the house had turned round inside its body to face the other way. reversals of this kind, strange deformities, tremendous paralyses, are often seen to be inflicted by trade upon edifices -- either individual or in the aggregate as streets and towns -- which were originally planned for pleasure alone. lively voices were heard this morning in the upper rooms, the main staircase to which was of hard oak, the balusters, heavy as bed-posts, being turned and moulded in the quaint fashion of their century, the handrail as stout as a parapet-top, and the stairs themselves con- tinually twisting round like a person trying to look over his shoulder. going up, the floors above were found to have a very irregular surface, rising to ridges, sinking into valley; and being just then uncarpeted, the face of the boards was seen to be eaten into innumerable the opening and shutting of every door a tremble followed every bustling movement, and a creak accom- panied a walker about the house like a spirit, wherever- he went. in the room from which the conversation proceeded, bathsheba and her servant-companion, liddy small- bury were to be discovered sitting upon the floor, and sorting a complication of papers, books, bottles, and rubbish spread out thereon -- remnants from the house- hold stores of the late occupier. liddy, the maltster's great-granddaughter, was about bathsheba's equal in age, and her face was a prominent advertisement of the features' might have lacked in form was amply made up for by perfection of hue, which at this winter-time was the softened ruddiness on a surface of high rotundity and, like the presentations of those great colourists, it was a face which kept well back from the boundary between comeliness and the ideal. though elastic in nature she was less daring than bathsheba, and occa- sionally showed some earnestness, which consisted half of genuine feeling, and half of mannerliness superadded by way of duty. through a partly-opened door the noise of a scrubbing- brush led up to the charwoman, maryann money, a person who for a face had a circular disc, furrowed less by age than by long gazes of perplexity at distant objects. to think of her was to get good-humoured; to speak of her was to raise the image of a dried normandy pippin. "stop your scrubbing a moment." said bathsheba through the door to her. "i hear something." maryann suspended the brush. the tramp of a horse was apparent, approaching the front of the building. the paces slackened, turned in at the wicket, and, what was most unusual, came up the mossy path close to the door. the door was tapped with the end of a crop or stick. "what impertinence!" said liddy, in a low voice. "to ride up the footpath like that! why didn't he stop at the gate? lord! 'tis a gentleman! i see the top of his hat." "be quiet!" said bathsheba. the further expression of liddy's concern was con- tinued by aspect instead of narrative. "why doesn't mrs. coggan go to the door?" bath- sheba continued. rat-tat-tat-tat, resounded more decisively from bath- sheba's oak. "maryann, you go!" said she, fluttering under the onset of a crowd of romantic possibilities. "o ma'am -- see, here's a mess!" the argument was unanswerable after a glance at maryann. "liddy -- you must." said bathsheba. liddy held up her hands and arms, coated with dust from the rubbish they were sorting, and looked implor- ingly at her mistress. "there -- mrs. coggan is going!" said bathsheba, exhaling her relief in the form of a long breath which had lain in her bosom a minute or more. the door opened, and a deep voice said -- "is miss everdene at home?" "i'll see, sir." said mrs. coggan, and in a minute appeared in the room. "dear, what a thirtover place this world is!" con- tinued mrs. coggan (a wholesome-looking lady who had a voice for each class of remark according to the emotion involved; who could toss a pancake or twirl a mop with the accuracy of pure mathematics, and who at this moment showed hands shaggy with frag- ments of dough and arms encrusted with flour). "i am never up to my elbows, miss, in making a pudding but one of two things do happen -- either my nose must needs begin tickling, and i can't live without scratching a woman's dress being a part of her countenance, and any disorder in the one being of the same nature with a malformation or wound in the other, bathsheba said at once -- "i can't see him in this state. whatever shall i do?" not-at-homes were hardly naturalized in weatherbury farmhouses, so liddy suggested -- "say you're a fright with dust, and can't come down." "yes -- that sounds very well." said mrs. coggan, critically. "say i can't see him -- that will do." mrs. coggan went downstairs, and returned the answer as requested, adding, however, on her own responsibility, "miss is dusting bottles, sir, and is quite a object -- that's why 'tis." "oh, very well." said the deep voice." indifferently. "all i wanted to ask was, if anything had been heard of fanny robin?" "nothing, sir -- but we may know to-night. william smallbury is gone to casterbridge, where her young man lives, as is supposed, and the other men be inquir- ing about everywhere." the horse's tramp then recommenced and -retreated, and the door closed. "who is mr. boldwood?" said bathsheba. "a gentleman-farmer at little weatherbury." "married?" "no, miss." "how old is he?" "forty, i should say -- very handsome -- rather stern- looking -- and rich." "what a bother this dusting is! i am always in some unfortunate plight or other," bathsheba said, complainingly. "why should he inquire about fanny?" "oh, because, as she had no friends in her childhood, he took her and put her to school, and got her her place here under your uncle. he's a very kind man that way, but lord -- there!" "what?" "never was such a hopeless man for a woman! he's been courted by sixes and sevens -- all the girls, gentle and simple, for miles round, have tried him. jane perkins worked at him for two months like a slave, and the two miss taylors spent a year upon him, and he cost farmer ives's daughter nights of tears and twenty pounds' worth of new clothes; but lord -- the money might as well have been thrown out of the window." a little boy came up at this moment and looked in upon them. this child was one of the coggans who, with the smallburys, were as common among the families of this district as the avons and derwents among our rivers. he always had a loosened tooth or a cut finger to show to particular friends, which he did with an air of being thereby elevated above the common herd of afflictionless humanity -- to which exhibition of congratulation as well as pity. "i've got a pen-nee!" said master coggan in a scanning measure. "well -- who gave it you, teddy?" said liddy. "mis-terr bold-wood! he gave it to me for opening the gate." "what did he say?" "he said "where are you going, my little man?'" and i said, "to miss everdene's please," and he said, "she is a staid woman, isn't she, my little man?" and i said, "yes." "you naughty child! what did you say that for?" "cause he gave me the penny!" "what a pucker everything is in!" said bathsheba, discontentedly when the child had gone. 'get away, thing! you ought to be married by this time, and not here troubling me!" "ay, mistress -- so i did. but what between the poor men i won't have, and the rich men who won't have me, i stand as a pelicon in the wilderness!" "did anybody ever want to marry you miss?" liddy ventured to ask when they were again alone. "lots of "em, i daresay.?" bathsheba paused, as if about to refuse a reply, but the temptation to say yes, since it was really in her power was irresistible by aspiring virginity, in spite of her spleen at having been published as old. "a man wanted to once." she said, in a highly experi- enced tone and the image of gabriel oak, as the farmer, rose before her. "how nice it must seem!" said liddy, with the fixed features of mental realization. "and you wouldn't have him?" "he wasn't quite good enough for me." "how sweet to be able to disdain, when most of us are glad to say, "thank you!" i seem i hear it. "no, sir -- i'm your better." or "kiss my foot, sir; my face is for mouths of consequence." and did you love him, miss?" "oh, no. but i rather liked him." "do you now?" "of course not -- what footsteps are those i hear?" liddy looked from a back window into the courtyard behind, which was now getting low-toned and dim with the earliest films of night. a crooked file of men was approaching the back door. the whole string of trailing individuals advanced in the completest balance of inten- tion, like the remarkable creatures known as chain salpae, which, distinctly organized in other respects, have one will common to a whole family. some were, as usual, in snow-white smock-frocks of russia duck, and some in whitey-brown ones of drabbet -- marked on the wrists, breasts, backs, and sleeves with honeycomb-work. two or three women in pattens brought up the rear. "the philistines be upon us." said liddy, making her nose white against the glass. "oh, very well. maryann, go down and keep them in the kitchen till i am dressed, and then show them in to me in the hall." chapter x half-an-hour later bathsheba, in finished dress, and followed by liddy, entered the upper end of the old hall to find that her men had all deposited themselves on a long form and a settle at the lower extremity. she sat down at a table and opened the time-book, pen in her hand, with a canvas money-bag beside her. from this she poured a small heap of coin. liddy chose a position at her elbow and began to sew, sometimes pausing and looking round, or with the air of a privileged person, taking up one of the half-sovereigns lying before her and surveying it merely as a work of art, while strictly preventing her countenance from expressing any wish to possess it as money. "now before i begin, men." said bathsheba, "i have two matters to speak of. the first is that the bailiff is dismissed for thieving, and that i have formed a resolu- tion to have no bailiff at all, but to manage everything with my own head and hands." the men breathed an audible breath of amazement. "the next matter is, have you heard anything of fanny?" "nothing, ma'am. "have you done anything?" "i met farmer boldwood." said jacob smallbury, 'and i went with him and two of his men, and dragged new- mill pond, but we found nothing." "and the new shepherd have been to buck's head, by yalbury, thinking she had gone there, but nobody had seed her." said laban tall. "hasn't william smallbury been to casterbridge?" "yes, ma'am, but he's not yet come home. he promised to be back by six." "it wants a quarter to six at present." said bathsheba, looking at her watch. "i daresay he'll be in directly. well, now then" -- she looked into the book -- "joseph poorgrass, are you there?" "yes, sir -- ma'am i mane." said the person addressed. "i be the personal name of poorgrass." "and what are you?" "nothing in my own eye. in the eye of other people -- well, i don't say it; though public thought will out." "what do you do on the farm?" "i do do carting things all the year, and in seed time i shoots the rooks and sparrows, and helps at pig-killing, sir." "how much to you?" "please nine and ninepence and a good halfpenny where 'twas a bad one, sir -- ma'am i mane." "quite correct. now here are ten shillings in addi- tion as a small present, as i am a new comer." bathsheba blushed slightly at the sense of being generous in public, and henery fray, who had drawn up towards her chair, lifted his eyebrows and fingers to express amazement on a small scale. "how much do i owe you -- that man in the corner -- what's your name?" continued bathsheba. "matthew moon, ma'am." said a singular framework of clothes with nothing of any consequence inside them, which advanced with the toes in no definite direction forwards, but turned in or out as they chanced to swing. "matthew mark, did you say? -- speak out -- i shall not hurt you." inquired the young farmer, kindly. "matthew moon mem" said henery fray, correct- ingly, from behind her chair, to which point he had edged himself. "matthew moon." murmured bathsheba, turning her bright eyes to the book. "ten and twopence halfpenny is the sum put down to you, i see?" "yes, mis'ess." said matthew, as the rustle of wind among dead leaves. "here it is and ten shillings. now -the next -- andrew randle, you are a new man, i hear. how come you to leave your last farm?" "p-p-p-p-p-pl-pl-pl-pl-l-l-l-l-ease, ma'am, p-p-p-p-pl-pl- pl-pl-please, ma'am-please'm-please'm -- -- " "'a's a stammering man, mem." said henery fray in an undertone, "and they turned him away because the only time he ever did speak plain he said his soul was his own, and other iniquities, to the squire. "a can cuss, mem, as well as you or i, but 'a can't speak a common speech to save his life." "andrew randle, here's yours -- finish thanking me in a day or two. temperance miller -- oh, here's another, soberness -- both women i suppose?" "yes'm. here we be, 'a b'lieve." was echoed in shrill unison. "what have you been doing?" "tending thrashing-machine and wimbling haybonds, and saying "hoosh!" to the cocks and hens when they go upon your seeds and planting early flourballs and thompson's wonderfuls with a dibble." "yes -- i see. are they satisfactory women?" she inquired softly of henery fray. "o mem -- don't ask me! yielding women?" as scarlet a pair as ever was!" groaned henery under his breath. "sit down. "who, mem?" "sit down," joseph poorgrass, in the background twitched, and his lips became dry with fear of some terrible conse- quences, as he saw bathsheba summarily speaking, and henery slinking off to a corner. "now the next. laban tall, you'll stay on working for me?" "for you or anybody that pays me well, ma'am," replied the young married man. "true -- the man must live!" said a woman in the back quarter, who had just entered with clicking pattens. "what woman is that?" bathsheba asked. "i be his lawful wife!" continued the voice with greater prominence of manner and tone. this lady called herself five-and-twenty, looked thirty, passed as thirty-five, and was forty. she was a woman who never, like some newly married, showed conjugal tenderness in public, perhaps because she had none to show. "oh, you are." said bathsheba. "well, laban, will you stay on?" "yes, he'll stay, ma'am!" said again the shrill tongue of laban's lawful wife. "well, he can speak for himself, i suppose." "o lord, not he, ma'am! a simple tool. well enough, but a poor gawkhammer mortal." the wife replied "heh-heh-heh!" laughed the married man with a hideous effort of appreciation, for he was as irrepressibly good-humoured under ghastly snubs as a parliamentary candidate on the hustings. the names remaining were called in the same manner. "now i think i have done with you." said bathsheba, closing the book and shaking back a stray twine of hair. "has william smallbury returned?" "no, ma'am." "the new shepherd will want a man under him," suggested henery fray, trying to make himself official again by a sideway approach towards her chair. "oh -- he will. who can he have?" "young cain ball is a very good lad." henery said, "and shepherd oak don't mind his youth?" he added, turning with an apologetic smile to the shepherd, who had just appeared on the scene, and was now leaning against the doorpost with his arms folded. "no, i don't mind that." said gabriel. "how did cain come by such a name?" asked bathsheba. "oh you see, mem, his pore mother, not being a scripture-read woman made a mistake at his christening, thinking 'twas abel killed cain, and called en cain, but 'twas too late, for the name could never be got rid of in the parish. 'tis very unfortunate for the boy." "it is rather unfortunate." "yes. however, we soften it down as much as we can, and call him cainey. ah, pore widow-woman! she cried her heart out about it almost. she was brought up by a very heathen father and mother, who never sent her to church or school, and it shows how the sins of the parents are visited upon the children, mem." mr. fray here drew up his features to the mild degree of melancholy required when the persons involved in the given misfortune do not belong to your own family. "very well then, cainey ball to be under-shepherd and you quite understand your duties? -- you i mean, gabriel oak?" "quite well, i thank you miss everdene." said shepard oak from the doorpost. "if i don't, i'll inquire." gabriel was rather staggered by the remark- able coolness of her manner. certainly nobody without previous information would have dreamt that oak and the handsome woman before whom he stood had ever been other than strangers. but perhaps her air was the inevitable result of the social rise which had advanced her from a cottage to a large house and fields. the case is not unexampled in high places. when, in the writings of the later poets, jove and his family are found to have moved from their cramped quarters on the peak of olympus into the wide sky above it, their words show a proportionate increase of arrogance and reserve. footsteps were heard in the passage, combining in their character the qualities both of weight and measure, rather at the expense of velocity. (all.) "here's billy smallbury come from caster- bridge." "and what's the news?" said bathsheba, as william, after marching to the middle of the hall, took a hand- kerchief from his hat and wiped his forehead from its centre to its remoter boundaries. "i should have been sooner, miss." he said, "if it hadn't been for the weather." he then stamped with each foot severely, and on looking down his boots were perceived to be clogged with snow. "come at last, is it?" said henery. "well, what about fanny?" said bathsheba. "well, ma'am, in round numbers, she's run away with the soldiers." said william. "no; not a steady girl like fanny!" "i'll tell ye all particulars. when i got to caster, bridge barracks, they said, " the eleventh dragoon- guards be gone away, and new troops have come." the eleventh left last week for melchester and onwards. the route came from government like a thief in the night, as is his nature to, and afore the eleventh knew it almost, they were on the march. they passed near here." gabriel had listened with interest. "i saw them go," he said. "yes." continued william," they pranced down the street playing "the girl i left behind me." so 'tis said, in glorious notes of triumph. every looker-on's inside shook with the blows of the great drum to his deepest vitals, and there was not a dry eye throughout the town among the public-house people and the name- less women!" "but they're not gone to any war?" "no, ma'am; but they be gone to take the places of them who may, which is very close connected. and so i said to myself, fanny's young man was one of the regiment, and she's gone after him. there, ma'am, that's it in black and white." gabriel remained musing and said nothing, for he was in doubt. "well, we are not likely to know more to-night, at any rate." said bathsheba. "but one of you had better run across to farmer boldwood's and tell him that much." she then rose; but before retiring, addressed a few words to them with a pretty dignity, to which her mourning dress added a soberness that was hardly to be found in the words themselves. "now mind, you have a mistress instead of a master i don't yet know my powers or my talents in farming; but i shall do my best, and if you serve me well, so shall i serve you. don't any unfair ones among you (if there are any such, but i hope not) suppose that because i'm a woman i don't understand the difference between bad goings-on and good." (all.) "nom!" (liddy.) "excellent well said." "i shall be up before you are awake; i shall be afield before you are up; and i shall have breakfasted before you are afield. in short, i shall astonish you all. (all.) "yes'm!" "and so good-night." (all.) "good-night, ma'am." then this small-thesmothete stepped from the table, and surged out of the hall, her black silk dress licking up a few straws and dragging them along with a scratch- ing noise upon the floor. biddy, elevating her feelings to the occasion from a sense of grandeur, floated off behind bathsheba with a milder dignity not entirely free from travesty, and the door was closed. chapter xi outside the barracks -- snow -- a meeting for dreariness nothing could surpass a prospect in the outskirts of a certain town and military station, many miles north of weatherbury, at a later hour on this same snowy evening -- if that may be called a prospect of which the chief constituent was darkness. it was a night when sorrow may come to the brightest without causing any great sense of incongruity: when, with impressible persons, love becomes solicitous- ness, hope sinks to misgiving, and faith to hope: when the exercise of memory does not stir feelings of regret at opportunities for ambition that have been passed by, and anticipation does not prompt to enterprise. the scene was a public path, bordered on the left hand by a river, behind which rose a high wall. on the right was a tract of land, partly meadow'and partly moor, reaching, at its remote verge, to a wide undulating uplan. the changes of the seasons are less obtrusive on spots of this kind than amid woodland scenery. still, to a close observer, they are just as perceptible; the difference is that their media of manifestation are less trite and familiar than such well-known ones as the bursting of the buds or the fall of the leaf. many are not so stealthy and gradual as we may be apt to imagine in considering the general torpidity of a moor or waste. winter, in coming to the country hereabout, advanced in well-marked stages, wherein might have been successively observed the retreat of the snakes, the transformation of the ferns, the filling of the pools, a rising of fogs, the embrowning by frost, the collapse of the fungi, and an obliteration by snow. this climax of the series had been reached to-night on the aforesaid moor, and for the first time in the season its irregularities were forms without features; suggestive of anything, proclaiming nothing, and without more character than that of being the limit of something else -- the lowest layer of a firmament of snow. from this chaotic skyful of crowding flakes the mead and moor momentarily received additional clothing, only to appear momentarily more naked thereby. the vast arch of cloud above was strangely low, and formed as it were the roof of a large dark cavern, gradually sinking in upon its floor; for the instinctive thought was that the snow lining the heavens and that encrusting the earth would soon unite into one mass without any intervening stratum of air at all. we turn our attention to the left-hand characteristics; which were flatness in respect of the river, verticality in respect of the wall behind it, and darkness as to both. these features made up the mass. if anything could be darker than the sky, it was the wall, and if any thing could be gloomier than the wall it was the river beneath. the indistinct summit of the facade was notched and pronged by chimneys here and there, and upon its face were faintly signified the oblong shapes of windows, though only in the upper part. below, down to the water's edge, the flat was unbroken by hole or projection. an indescribable succession of dull blows, perplexing in their regularity, sent their sound- with difficulty through the fluffy atmosphere. it was a neighbouring clock striking ten the bell was in the open air, and being overlaid with several inches of muffling snow, had lost its voice for the time. about this hour the snow abated: ten flakes fell where twenty had fallen, then one had the room of ten. not long after a form moved by the brink of the river. by its outline upon the colourless background, a close observer might have seen that it was small. this was all that was positively discoverable, though it seemed human. the shape went slowly along, but without much exertion, for the snow, though sudden, was not as yet more than two inches deep. at this time some words were spoken aloud: -- "one. two. three. four. five." between each utterance the little shape advanced about half a dozen yards. it was evident now that the windows high in the wall were being counted. the word "five" represented the fifth window from the end of the wall. here the spot stopped, and dwindled smaller. the figure was stooping. then a morsel of snow flew across the river towards the fifth window. it smacked against the wall at a point several yards from its mark. the throw was the idea of a man conjoined with the execution of a woman. no man who had ever seen bird, rabbit, or squirrel in his childhood, could possibly have thrown with such utter imbecility as was shown here. another attempt, and another; till by degrees the wall must have become pimpled with the adhering lumps of snow at last one fragment struck the fifth window. the river would have been; seen by day to be of that deep smooth sort which races middle and sides with the same gliding precision, any irregularities of speed being immediately corrected by a small whirl- pool. nothing was heard in reply to the signal but the gurgle and cluck of one of these invisible wheels -- together with a few small sounds which a sad man would have called moans, and a happy man laughter -- caused by the flapping of the waters against trifling objects in other parts of the stream. the window was struck again in the same manner. then a noise was heard, apparently produced by the opening of the window. this was followed by a voice from the same quarter. "who's there?" the tones were masculine, and not those of surprise. the high wall being that of a barrack, and marriage being looked upon with disfavour in the army, assigna- tions and communications had probably been made across the river before tonight. "is it sergeant troy?" said the blurred spot in the snow, tremulously. this person was so much like a mere shade upon the earth, and the other speaker so much a part of the building, that one would have said the wall was holding a conversation with the snow. "yes." came suspiciously from the shadow." what girl are you?" "o, frank -- don't you know me?" said the spot. "your wife, fanny robin." "fanny!" said the wall, in utter astonishment. "yes." said the girl, with a half-suppressed gasp of emotion. there was something in the woman's tone which is not that of the wife, and there was a mannerin the man which is rarely a husband's. the dialogue went on: "how did you come here?" "i asked which was your window. forgive me!" "i did not expect you to-night. indeed, i did not think you would come at all. it was a wonder you found me here. i am orderly to-morrow." "you said i was to come." "well -- i said that you might." "yes, i mean that i might. you are glad to see me, frank?" "o yes -- of course." "can you -- come to me!" my dear fan, no! the bugle has sounded, the barrack gates are closed, and i have no leave. we are all of us as good as in the county gaol till to-morrow morning." "then i shan't see you till then!" the words- were in a faltering tone of disappointment. "how did you get here from weatherbury?" "i walked -- some part of the way -- the rest by the carriers." "i am surprised." "yes -- so am i. and frank, when will it be?" "what?" "that you promised." "i don't quite recollect." "o you do! don't speak like that. it weighs me to the earth. it makes me say what ought to be said first by you." "never mind -- say it." "o, must i? -- it is, when shall we be married, frank?" "oh, i " see. well -- you have to get proper clothes." "i have money. will it be by banns or license?" "banns, i should think." "and we live in two parishes." "do we? what then?" "my lodgings are in st. mary's, and this is not. so they will have to be published in both." "is that the law?" "yes. o frank -- you think me forward, i am afraid! don't, dear frank -- will you -- for i love you so. and you said lots of times you would marry me, and and -- i -- i -- i -- -- " "don't cry, now! it is foolish. if i said so, of course i will." "and shall i put up the banns in my parish, and will you in yours?" "yes" "to-morrow?" "not tomorrow. we'll settle in a few days." "you have the permission of the officers?" "no, not yet." "o -- how is it? you said you almost had before you left casterbridge." "the fact is, i forgot to ask. your coming like this i'll go away now. will you **qode,and seq be to-morroy is so sudden and unexpected." "yes -- yes -- it is. it was wrong of me to worry you. i'll go away now. will you come and see me to-morrow, at mrs. twills's, in north street? i don't like to come to the barracks. there are bad women about, and they think me one." "quite,so. i'll come to you, my dean good-night." "good-night, frank -- good-night!" and the noise was again heard of a window closing the little spot moved away. when she passed the corner a subdued exclamation was heard inside the wall. "ho -- ho -- sergeant -- ho -- ho!" an expostulation followed, but it was indistinct; and it became lost amid a low peal of laughter, which was hardly distinguishable from the gurgle of the tiny whirlpools outside. chapter xii farmers -- a rule -- in exception the first public evidence of bathsheba's decision to be a farmer in her own person and by proxy no more was her appearance the following market-day in. the cornmarket at casterbridge. the low though extensive hall, supported by beams and pillars, and latterly dignified by-the name of corn ex- change, was thronged with hot men who talked among each other in twos and threes, the speaker of the minute looking sideways into his auditor's face and concentrating his argument by a contraction of one eyelid during de- livery. the greater number carried in their hands ground-ash saplings, using them partly as walking-sticks and partly for poking up pigs, sheep, neighbours with their backs turned, and restful things in general, which seemed to require such treatment in the course of their peregrinations. during conversations each subjected his sapling to great varieties of usage -- bending it round his back, forming an"arch of it between his two hands, overweighting it on the ground till it reached nearly a semicircle; or perhaps it was hastily tucked under the arm whilst the sample-bag was pulled forth and a hand- ful of corn poured into the palm, which, after criticism, was flung upon the floor, an issue of events perfectly well known to half-a-dozen acute town-bred fowls which had as usual crept into the building unobserved, and waited the fulfilment of their anticipations with a high- stretched neck and oblique eye. among these heavy yeomen a feminine figure glided, the single one of her sex that the room contained. she was prettily and even daintily dressed. she moved between them as a chaise between carts, was heard after them as a romance after sermons, was felt among them like a breeze among furnaces. it had required a little determination -- far more than she had at first imagined -- to take up a position here, for at her first entry the lumbering dialogues had ceased, nearly every face had been turned towards her, and those that were already turned rigidly fixed there. two or three only of the farmers were personally known to bathsheba, and to these she had made her way. but if she was to be the practical woman she had intended to show herself, business must be carried on, introductions or none, and she ultimately acquired con- fidence enough to speak and reply boldly to men merely known to her by hearsay. bathsheba too had her sample-bags, and by degrees adopted the professional pour into the hand -- holding up the grains in her narrow palm for inspection, in perfect casterbridge manner. something in the exact arch of her upper unbroken row of teeth, and in the keenly pointed corners of her red mouth when, with parted lips, she somewhat defiantly turned up her face to argue a point with a tall man, suggested that there was potentiality enough in that lithe slip of humanity for alarming exploits of sex, and daring enough to carry them out. but her eyes had a softness -- invariably a softness -- which, had they not been dark, would have seemed mistiness; as they were, it lowered an expression that might have been piercing to simple clearness, strange to say of a woman in full bloom and vigor, she always allowed her interlocutors to finish their state- ments before rejoining with hers. in arguing on prices, he held to her own firmly, as was natural in a dealer, and reduced theirs persistently, as was inevitable in a oman. but there was an elasticity in her firmness which removed it from obstinacy, as there was a naivete in her cheapening which saved it from meanness. those of the farmers with whom she had no dealings by far the greater part) were continually asking each other, "who is she?" the reply would be -- "farmer everdene's niece; took on weatherbury upper farm; turned away the baily, and swears she'll do everything herself." the other man would then shake his head. "yes, 'tis a pity she's so headstrong." the first would say. "but we ought to be proud of her here -- she lightens up the old place. 'tis such a shapely maid, however, that she'll soon get picked up." it would be ungallant to suggest that the novelty of her engagement in such an occupation had almost as much to do with the magnetism as had the beauty of her face and movements. however, the interest was general, and this saturday's debut in the forum, whatever it may have been to bathsheba as the buying and selling farmer, was unquestionably a triumph to her as the maiden. indeed, the sensation was so pronounced that her instinct on two or three occasions was merely to walk as a queen among these gods of the fallow, like a little sister of a little jove, and to neglect closing prices altogether. the numerous evidences of-her power to attract were only thrown into greater relief by a marked exception. women seem to have eyes in their ribbons for such matters as these. bathsheba, without looking within a right angle of him, was conscious of a black sheep among the flock. it perplexed her first. if there had been a respect- able minority on either side, the case would have been most natural. if nobody had regarded her, she would have -- taken the matter indifferently -- such cases had occurred. if everybody, this man included, she would have taken it as a matter of course -- people had done so before. but the smallness of the exception made the mystery. she soon knew thus much of the recusant's appear- ance. he was a gentlemanly man, with full and distinctly outlined roman features, the prominences of which glowed in the sun with a bronze-like richness of tone. he was erect in attitude, and quiet in demeanour. one characteristic pre-eminently marked him -- dignity. apparently he had some time ago reached that entrance to middle age at which a man's aspect naturally ceases to alter for the term of a dozen years or so; and, artificially, a woman't does likewise. thirty-five and fifty were his limits of variation -- he might have been either, or anywhere between the two. it may be said that married men of forty are usually ready and generous enough to fling passing glances at any specimen of moderate beauty they may discern by the way. probably, as with persons playing whist for love, the consciousness of a certain immunity under any circumstances from that worst possible ultimate, the having to pay, makes them unduly speculative. bathsheba was convinced that this unmoved person was not a married man. when marketing was over, she rushed off to liddy, who was waiting for her -- beside the yellowing in which they had driven to town. the horse was put in, and on they trotted bathsheba's sugar, tea, and drapery parcels being packed behind, and expressing in some indescribable manner, by their colour, shape, and general lineaments, that they were that young lady- farmer's property, and the grocer's and drapers no more. "i've been through it, liddy, and it is over. i shan't mind it again, for they will all have grown accustomed to seeing me there; but this morning it was as bad as being married -- eyes everywhere!" "i knowed it would. be." liddy said "men be such a terrible class of society to look at a body." "but there was one man who had more sense than to waste his time upon me." the information was put in this form that liddy might not for a moment suppose her mistress was at all piqued. "a very good-looking man." she continued, "upright; about forty, i should think. do you know at all who he could be?" liddy couldn't think. "can't you guess at all?" said bathsheba with some disappointment. "i haven't a notion; besides, 'tis no difference, since he took less notice of you than any of the rest. now, if he'd taken more, it would have mattered a great deal." bathsheba was suffering from the reverse feeling just then, and they bowled along in silence. a low carriage, bowling along still more rapidly behind a horse of un- impeachable breed, overtook and passed them. "why, there he is!" she said. liddy looked. "that! that's farmer boldwood -- of course 'tis -- the man you couldn't see the other day when he called." "oh, farmer boldwood." murmured bathsheba, and looked at him as he outstripped them. the farmer had never turned his head once, but with eyes fixed on the most advanced point along the road, passed as uncon- sciously and abstractedly as if bathsheba and her charms were thin air. "he's an interesting man -- don't you think so?" she remarked. "o yes, very. everybody owns it." replied liddy. "i wonder why he is so wrapt up and indifferent, and seemingly so far away from all he sees around him," "it is said -- but not known for certain -- that he met with some bitter disappointment when he was a young man and merry. a woman jilted him, they say." "people always say that -- and we know very well women scarcely ever jilt men; 'tis the men who jilt us. i expect it is simply his nature to be so reserved." "simply his nature -- i expect so, miss -- nothing else in the world." "still, 'tis more romantic to think he has been served cruelly, poor thing'! perhaps, after all, he has! i "depend upon it he has. o yes, miss, he has! feel he must have." "however, we are very apt to think extremes of people. i -- shouldn't wonder after all if it wasn't a little of both -- just between the two -- rather cruelly used and rather reserved." "o dear no, miss -- i can't think it between the two!" "that's most likely." "well, yes, so it is. i am convinced it is most likely. you may -- take my word, miss, that that's what's the matter with him." chapter xiii sortes sanctorum -- the valentine it was sunday afternoon in the farmhouse, on the thirteenth of february. dinner being over, bathsheba, for want of a better companion, had asked liddy to come and sit with her. the mouldy pile was dreary in winter-time before the candles were lighted and the shutters closed; the atmosphere of the place seemed as old as the walls; every nook behind the furniture had a temperature of its own, for the fire was not kindled in this part of the house early in the day; and bathsheba's new piano, which was an old one in other annals, looked particularly sloping and out of level on the warped floor before night threw a shade over its less prominent angles and hid the unpleasantness. liddy, like a little brook, though shallow, was always rippling; her presence had not so much weight as to task thought, and yet enough to exercise it. on the table lay an old quarto bible, bound in leather. liddy looking at it said, -- "did you ever find out, miss, who you are going to marry by means of the bible and key?, "don't be so foolish, liddy. as if such things could be." "well, there's a good deal in it, all the same." "nonsense, child." "and it makes your heart beat fearful. some believe in it; some don't; i do." "very well, let's try it." said bathsheba, bounding from her seat with that total disregard of consistency which can be indulged in towards a dependent, and entering into the spirit of divination at once. "go and get the front door key." liddy fetched it. "i wish it wasn't sunday." she said, on returning." perhaps 'tis wrong." "what's right week days is right sundays." replied her mistress in a tone which was a proof in itself. the book was opened -- the leaves, drab with age, being quite worn away at much-read verses by the fore" fingers "of unpractised readers in former days, where they were moved along under the line as an aid to the vision. the special verse in the book of ruth was sought out by bathsheba, and the sublime words met her eye. they slightly thrilled and abashed her. it was wisdom in the abstract facing folly in the concrete. folly in the concrete blushed, persisted in her intention, and placed the key on -the book. a rusty patch immediately upon the verse, caused by previous pressure of an iron substance thereon, told that this was not the first time the old volume had been used for the purpose. "now keep steady, and be silent." said bathsheba. the 'verse was repeated; the book turned round; bathsheba blushed guiltily. "who did you try?" said liddy curiously. "i shall not tell you." "did you notice mr. boldwood's doings in church this morning, miss?"liddy continued, adumbrating by the remark the track her thoughts had taken. "no, indeed." said bathsheba, with serene indifference "his pew is exactly opposite yours, miss." "i know it." "and you did not see his goings on!," certainly i did not, i tell you." liddy assumed a smaller physiognomy, and shut her lips decisively. this move was unexpected, and proportionately dis concerting. "what did he do?" bathsheba said perforce. "didn't turn his head to look at you once all the service. "why should he?" again demanded her mistress, wearing a nettled look. "i didn't ask him to. "oh no. but everybody else was noticing you; and it was odd he didn't. there, 'tis like him. rich and gentlemanly, what does he care?" bathsheba dropped into a silence intended to ex- press that she had opinions on the matter too abstruse for liddy's comprehension, rather than that she had nothing to say. "dear me -- i had nearly forgotten the valentine i bought yesterday." she exclaimed at length. "valentine! who for, miss?" said liddy. "farmer boldwood?" it was the single name among all possible wrong ones that just at this moment seemed to bathsheba more pertinent than the right. "well, no. it is only for little teddy coggan. have promised him something, and this will be a pretty surprise for him. liddy, you may as well bring me my desk and i'll direct it at once." bathsheba took from her desk a gorgeously illumin- ated and embossed design in post-octavo, which had been "bought on the previous market-day at the chief stationer's in casterbridge. in the centre was a small oval enclosure; this was left blank, that the sender might insert tender words more appropriate to the special occasion than any generalities by a printer could possibly be. "here's a place for writing." said bathsheba. "what shall i put?" "something of this sort, i should think', returned liddy promptly: -- "the rose is red, the violet blue, carnation's sweet, and so are you." "yes, that shall be it. it just suits itself to a chubby- faced child like him." said bathsheba. she inserted the words in a small though legible handwriting; enclosed the sheet in an envelope, and dipped her pen for the direction. "what fun it would be to send it to the stupid old boldwood, and how he would wonder!" said the irrepressible liddy, lifting her eyebrows, and indulging in an awful mirth on the verge of fear as she thought of the moral and social magnitude of the man contem- plated. bathsheba paused to regard the idea at full length. boldwood's had begun to be a troublesome image -- a species of daniel in her kingdom who persisted in kneeling eastward when reason and common sense said that he might just as well follow suit with the rest, and afford her the official glance of admiration which cost nothing at all. she was far from being seriously concerned about his nonconformity. still, it was faintly depressing that the most dignified and valuable man in the parish should withhold his eyes, and that a girl like liddy should talk about it. so liddy's idea was at first rather harassing than piquant. "no, i won't do that. he wouldn't see any humour in it." "he'd worry to death." said the persistent liddy. "really, i don't care particularly to send it to teddy." remarked her mistress. "he's rather a naughty child sometimes." "yes -- that he is." "let's toss as men do." said bathsheba, idly. "now then, head, boldwood; tail, teddy. no, we won't toss money on a sunday that would be tempting the devil indeed." "toss this hymn-book; there can't be no sinfulness in that, miss." "very well. open, boldwood -- shut, teddy. no; it's more likely to fall open. open, teddy -- shut, boldwood." the book went fluttering in the air and came down shut. bathsheba, a small yawn upon her mouth, took the pen, and with off-hand serenity directed the missive to boldwood. "now light a candle, liddy. which seal shall we use? here's a unicorn's head -- there's nothing in that. what's this? -- two doves -- no. it ought to be something extraordinary, ought it not, liddy? here's one with a motto -- i remember it is some funny one, but i can't read it. we'll try this, and if it doesn't do we'll have another." a large red seal was duly affixed. bathsheba looked closely at the hot wax to discover the words. "capital!" she exclaimed, throwing down the letter frolicsomely. "'twould upset the solemnity of a parson the same evening the letter was sent, and was duly returned to weatherbury again in the morning. of love as a spectacle bathsheba had a fair knowledge; but of love subjectively she knew nothing. chapter xiv effect of the letter -- sunrise at dusk, on the evening of st. valentine's day, bold- wood sat down to supper as usual, by a beaming fire of aged logs. upon the mantel-shelf before him was a time-piece, surmounted by a spread eagle, and upon the eagle's wings was the letter bathsheba had sent. here the bachelor's gaze was continually fastening itself, till the large red seal became as a blot of blood on the retina of his eye; and as he ate and drank he still read in fancy the words thereon, although they were too remote for his sight -- "marry me." the pert injunction was like those crystal substances which, colourless themselves, assume the tone of objects about them. here, in the quiet of boldwood's parlour, where everything that ,was not grave was extraneous, and where the atmosphere was that of a puritan sunday lasting all the week, the letter and its dictum changed" their tenor from the thoughtlessness of their origin to a deep solemnity, imbibed from their accessories now. since the receipt of the missive in the morning, boldwood had felt the symmetry of his existence to be slowly getting distorted in the direction of an ideal passion. the disturbance was as the first floating weed to columbus -- the eontemptibly little suggesting possibilities of the infinitely great. the letter must have had an origin and a motive. that the latter was of the smallest magnitude com- patible with its existence at all, boldwood, of course, did not know. and such an explanation did not strike him as a possibility even. it is foreign to a mystified condition of mind to realize of the mystifier that the processes of approving a course suggested by circumstance, and of striking out a course from inner impulse, would look the same in the result. the vast difference between starting a train of events, and direct- ing into a particular groove a series already started, is rarely apparent to the person confounded by the issue. when boldwood went to bed he placed the valen- tine in the corner of the looking-glass. he was conscious of its presence, even when his back was turned upon it. it was the first time in boldwood's life that such an event had occurred. the same fascination that caused him to think it an act which had a deliberate motive prevented him from regarding it as an impertinence. he looked again at the direction. the mysterious influences of night invested the writing with the presence of the unknown writer. somebody's some woman's -- hand had travelled softly over the paper bearing his name; her unrevealed eyes had watched every curve as she formed it; her brain had seen him in imagination the while. why should she have imagined him? her mouth -- were the lips red or pale, plump or creased? -- had curved itself to a certain expression as the pen went on -- the corners had moved with all their natural tremulousness: what had been the expression? the vision of the woman writing, as a supplement to the words written, had no individuality. she was a misty shape, and well she might be, considering that her original was at that moment sound asleep and oblivious of all love and letter-writing under the sky. whenever boldwood dozed she took a form, and com- paratively ceased to be a vision: when he awoke there was the letter justifying the dream. the moon shone to-night, and its light was not of a customary kind. his window admitted only a reflection of its rays, and the pale sheen had that reversed direction which snow gives, coming upward and lighting up his ceiling in an unnatural way, casting shadows in strange places, and putting lights where shadows had used to be. the substance of the epistle had occupied him but little in comparison with the fact of its arrival. he suddenly wondered if anything more might be found in the envelope than what he had withdrawn. he jumped out of bed in the weird light, took the letter, pulled out the flimsy sheet, shook the envelope -- searched it. nothing more was there. boldwood looked, as he had a hundred times the preceding day, at the insistent red seal: "marry me." he said aloud. the solemn and reserved yeoman again closed the letter, and stuck it in the frame of the glass. in doing so he caught sight of his reflected features, wan in expression, and insubstantial in form. he saw how closely compressed was his mouth, and that his eyes were wide-spread and vacant. feeling uneasy and dis- satisfied with himself for this nervous excitability, he returned to bed. then the dawn drew on. the full power of the clear heaven was not equal to that of a cloudy sky at noon, when boldwood arose and dressed himself. he descended the stairs and went out towards the gate of a field to the east, leaning over which he paused and looked around. it was one of the usual slow sunrises of this time of the year, and the sky, pure violet in the zenith, was leaden to the northward, and murky to the east, where, over the snowy down or ewe-lease on weatherbury upper farm, and apparently resting upon the ridge, the only half of the sun yet visible burnt rayless, like a red and flameless fire shining over a white hearthstone. the whole effect resembled a sunset as childhood resembles age. in other directions, the fields and sky were so much of one colour by the snow, that it was difficult in a hasty glance to tell whereabouts the horizon occurred; and in general there was here, too, that before-mentioned preternatural inversion of light and shade which attends the prospect when the garish brightness commonly in the sky is found on the earth, and the shades of earth are in the sky. over the west hung the wasting moon, now dull and greenish-yellow, like tarnished brass. boldwood was listlessly noting how the frost had hardened and glazed the surface of the snow, till it shone in the red eastern light wit-h the polish of marble; how, in some portions of the slope, withered grass-bents, encased in icicles, bristled through the smooth wan coverlet in the twisted and curved shapes of old venetian glass; and how the footprints of a few birds, which had hopped over the snow whilst it lay in the state of a soft fleece, were now frozen to a short perma- nency. a half-muffled noise of light wheels interrupted him. boldwood turned back into the road. it was the mail-cart -- a crazy, two-wheeled vehicle, hardly heavy enough to resist a puff of wind. the driver held out a letter. boldwood seized it and opened it, ex- pecting another anonymous one -- so greatly are people's ideas of probability a mere sense that precedent will repeat itself. "i don't think it is for you, sir." said the man, when he saw boldwood's action. "though there is no name i think it is for your shepherd." boldwood looked then at the address -- to the new shepherd, weatherbury farm, near casterbridge. "oh -- what a mistake! -- it is not mine. nor is it for my shepherd. it is for miss everdene's." you had better take it on to him -- gabriel oak -- and say i opened it in mistake." at this moment, on the ridge, up against the blazing sky, a figure was visible, like the black snuff in the midst of a candle-flame. then it moved and began to bustle about vigorously from place to place, carrying square skeleton masses, which were riddled by the same rays. a small figure on all fours followed behind. the tall form was that of gabriel oak; the small one that of george; the articles in course of transit were hurdles. "wait," said boldwood." that's the man on the hill. i'll take the letter to him myself." to boldwood it was now no longer merely a letter to i another man. it was an opportunity. exhibiting a face pregnant with intention, he entered the snowy field. gabriel, at that minute, descended the hill towards the right. the glow stretched down in this direction now, and touched the distant roof of warren's malthouse whither the shepherd was apparently bent: boldwood followed at a distance. chapter xv the scarlet and orange light outside the malthouse did not penetrate to its interior, which was, as usual, lighted by a rival glow of similar hue, radiating from the hearth. the maltster, after having lain down in his clothes for a few hours, was now sitting beside a three-legged table, breakfasting of bread and bacon. this was eaten on the plateless system, which is performed by placing a slice of bread upon the table, the meat flat upon the bread, a mustard plaster upon the meat, and a pinch of salt upon the whole, then cutting them vertically downwards with a large pocket-knife till wood is reached, when the severed lamp is impaled on the knife, elevated, and sent the proper way of food. the maltster's lack of teeth appeared not to sensibly diminish his powers as a mill. he had been without them for so many years that toothlessness was felt less to be a defect than hard gums an acquisition. indeed, he seemed to approach the grave as a hyperbolic curve approaches a straight line -- less directly as he got nearer, till it was doubtful if he would ever reach it at all. in the ashpit was a heap of potatoes roasting, and a boiling pipkin of charred bread, called "coffee." for the benefit of whomsoever should call, for warren's was a sort of clubhouse. used as an alternative to the in! "i say, says i, we get a fine day, and then down comes a snapper at night." was a remark now suddenly heard spreading into the malthouse from the door, which had been opened the previous moment. the form of henery fray advanced to the fire, stamping the snow from his boots when about half-way there. the speech and entry had not seemed to be at all an abrupt begin- ning to the maltster, introductory matter being often omitted in this neighbourhood, both from word and deed, and the maltster having the same latitude allowed him, did not hurry to reply. he picked up a fragment of cheese, by pecking upon it with his knife, as a butcher picks up skewers. henery appeared in a drab kerseymere great-coat, buttoned over his smock-frock, the white skirts of the latter being visible to the distance of about a foot below the coat-tails, which, when you got used to the style of dress, looked natural enough, and even ornamental -- it certainly was comfortable. matthew moon, joseph poorgrass, and other carters and waggoners followed at his heels, with great lanterns dangling from their hands, which showed that they had just come from the cart-horse stables, where they had been busily engaged since four o'clock that morning. "and how is she getting on without a baily?" the maltster inquired. henery shook his head, and smiled one of the bitter smiles, dragging all the flesh of his forehead into a corrugated heap in the centre. "she'll rue it -- surely, surely!" he said " benjy pennyways were not a true man or an honest baily -- as big a betrayer as judas iscariot himself. but to think she can carr' on alone!" he allowed his head to swing laterally three or four times in silence. "never in all my creeping up -- never!" this was recognized by all as the conclusion of some gloomy speech which had been expressed in thought alone during the shake of the head; henery meanwhile retained several marks of despair upon his face, to imply that they would be required for use again directly he should go on speaking. "all will be ruined, and ourselves too, or there's no meat in gentlemen's houses!" said mark clark. "a headstrong maid, that's what she is -- and won't listen to no advice at all. pride and vanity have ruined many a cobbler's dog. dear, dear, when i think o' it, i sorrows like a man in travel!" "true, henery, you do, i've heard ye." said joseph poorgrass in a voice of thorough attestation, and with a wire-drawn smile of misery. "'twould do a martel man no harm to have what's under her bonnet." said billy smallbury, who had just entered, bearing his one tooth before him. "she can spaik real language, and must have some sense some- where. do ye foller me?" "i do: but no baily -- i deserved that place." wailed henery, signifying wasted genius by gazing blankly at visions of a high destiny apparently visible to him on billy smallbury's smock-frock. "there, 'twas to be, i suppose. your lot is your lot, and scripture is nothing; for if you do good you don't get rewarded according to your works, but be cheated in some mean way out of your recompense." "no, no; i don't agree with'ee there." said mark clark. god's a perfect gentleman in that respect." "good works good pay, so to speak it." attested joseph poorgrass. a short pause ensued, and as a sort of entr'acte henery turned and blew out the lanterns, which the increase of daylight rendered no longer necessary even in the malthouse, with its one pane of glass. "i wonder what a farmer-woman can want with a harpsichord, dulcimer, pianner, or whatever 'tis they d'call it?" said the maltster. "liddy saith she've a new one." "got a pianner?" "ay. seems her old uncle's things were not good enough for her. she've bought all but everything new. there's heavy chairs for the stout, weak and wiry ones for the slender; great watches, getting on to the size of clocks, to stand upon the chimbley-piece." pictures, for the most part wonderful frames." "and long horse-hair settles for the drunk, with horse- hair pillows at each end." said mr. clark. "likewise looking-glasses for the pretty, and lying books for the wicked." firm loud tread was now heard stamping outside; the door was opened about six inches, and somebody on the other side exclaimed -- "neighbours, have ye got room for a few new-born lambs?"ay, sure, shepherd." said the conclave. the door was flung back till it kicked the wall and trembled from top to bottom with the blow. mr. oak appeared in the entry with a steaming face, hay- bands wound about his ankles to keep out the snow, a leather strap round his waist outside the smock-frock, and looking altogether an epitome of the world's health and vigour. four lambs hung in various embarrassing attitudes over his shoulders, and the dog george, whom gabriel had contrived to fetch from norcombe, stalked solemnly behind. "well, shepherd oak, and how's lambing this year, if i mid say it?" inquired joseph poorgrass. "terrible trying," said oak. "i've been wet through twice a-day, either in snow or rain, this last fortnight. cainy and i haven't tined our eyes to-night." "a good few twins, too, i hear?" "too many by half. yes; 'tis a very queer lambing this year. we shan't have done by lady day." "and last year 'twer all over by sexajessamine sunday." joseph remarked. "bring on the rest cain." said gabriel, " and then run back to the ewes. i'll follow you soon." cainy ball -- a cheery-faced young lad, with a small circular orifice by way of mouth, advanced and deposited two others, and retired as he was bidden. oak lowered the lambs from their unnatural elevation, wrapped them in hay, and placed them round the fire. "we've no lambing-hut here, as i used to have at norcombe." said gabriel, " and 'tis such a plague to bring the weakly ones to a house. if 'twasn't for your place here, malter, i don't know what i should do! this keen weather. and how is it with you to-day, malter?" "oh, neither sick nor sorry, shepherd, but no younger." "ay -- i understand." "sit down, shepherd oak," continued the ancient man of malt. "and how was the old place at norcombe, when ye went for your dog? i should like to see the old familiar spot; but faith, i shouldn't" know a soul there now." "i suppose you wouldn't. 'tis altered very much." "is it true that dicky hill's wooden cider-house is pulled down?" "o yes -- years ago, and dicky's cottage just above it." "well, to be sure!, "yes; and tompkins's old apple-tree is rooted that used to bear two hogsheads of cider; and no help from other trees." "rooted? -- you don't say it! ah! stirring times we live in -- stirring times." and you can mind the old well that used to be in the middle of the place? that's turned into a solid iron pump with a large stone trough, and all complete." "dear, dear -- how the face of nations alter, and what we live to see nowadays! yes -- and 'tis the same here. they've been talking but now of the mis'ess's strange doings." "what have you been saying about her?" inquired oak, sharply turning to the rest, and getting very warm. "these middle-aged men have been pulling her over the coals for pride and vanity." said mark clark; "but i say, let her have rope enough. bless her pretty face shouldn't i like to do so -- upon her cherry lips!" the gallant mark clark here made a peculiar and well known sound with his own. "mark." said gabriel, sternly, "now you mind this! none of that dalliance-talk -- that smack-and-coddle style of yours -- about miss everdene. i don't allow it. do you hear? " "with all my heart, as i've got no chance." replied mr. clark, cordially. "i suppose you've been speaking against her?" said oak, turning to joseph poorgrass with a very grim look. "no, no -- not a word i -- 'tis a real joyful thing that she's no worse, that's what i say." said joseph, trembling and blushing with terror. "matthew just said -- -- " "matthew moon, what have you been saying?" asked oak. "i? why ye know i wouldn't harm a worm -- no, not one underground worm?" said matthew moon, looking very uneasy. "well, somebody has -- and look here, neighbours." gabriel, though one of the quietest and most gentle men on earth, rose to the occasion, with martial promptness and vigour. "that's my fist." here he placed his fist, rather smaller in size than a common loaf, in the mathemarical centre of the maltster's little table, and with it gave a bump or two thereon, as if to ensure that their eyes all thoroughly took in the idea of fistiness before he went further. "now -- the first man in the parish that i hear prophesying bad of our mistress, why" (here the fist was raised and let fall as t'hor might have done with his hammer in assaying it) -- "he'll smell and taste that -- or i'm a dutchman." all earnestly expressed by their features that their minds did not wander to holland for a moment on account of this statement, but were deploring the difference which gave rise to the figure; and mark clark cried "hear, hear; just what i should ha' said." the dog george looked up at the same time after the shepherd's menace, and though he understood english but imperfectly, began to growl. "now, don't ye take on so, shepherd, and sit down!" said henery, with a deprecating peacefulness equal to anything of the kind in christianity. "we hear that ye be a extraordinary good and clever man, shepherd." said joseph poorgrass with considerable anxiety from behind the maltster's bed- stead whither he had retired for safety. "'tis a great thing to be clever, i'm sure." he added, making move- ments associated with states of mind rather than body; "we wish we were, don't we, neighbours?" "ay, that we do, sure." said matthew moon, with a small anxious laugh towards oak, to show how very friendly disposed he was likewise. "who's been telling you i'm clever?" said oak. "'tis blowed about from pillar to post quite common," said matthew. "we hear that ye can tell the time as well by the stars as we can by the sun and moon, shepherd." "yes, i can do a little that way." said gabriel, as a man of medium sentiments on the subject. names upon their waggons almost like copper-plate, with beautiful flourishes, and great long tails. a excellent fine thing for ye to be such a clever man, shepherd. joseph poorgrass used to prent to farmer james everdene's waggons before you came, and 'a could never mind which way to turn the j's and e's -- could ye, joseph?" joseph shook his head to express how absolute was the fact that he couldn't. "and so you used to do 'em the wrong way, like this, didn't ye, joseph?" matthew marked on the dusty floor with his whip-handle. "and how farmer james would cuss, and call thee a fool, wouldn't he, joseph, when 'a seed his name looking so inside-out-like?" continued matthew moon with feeling. "ay -- 'a would." said joseph, meekly. "but, you see, i wasn't so much to blame, for them j's and e's be such trying sons o' witches for the memory to mind whether they face backward or forward; and i always had such a forgetful memory, too." "'tis a bad afiction for ye, being such a man of calamities in other ways." "well, 'tis; but a happy providence ordered that it should be no worse, and i feel my thanks. as to shepherd, there, i'm sure mis'ess ought to have made ye her baily -- such a fitting man for't as you be." "i don't mind owning that i expected it." said oak, frankly." indeed, i hoped for the place. at the same time, miss everdene has a right to be own baily if she choose -- and to keep me down to be a common shepherd only." oak drew a slow breath, looked sadly into the bright ashpit, and seemed lost in thoughts not of the most hopeful hue. the genial warmth of the fire now began to stimulate the nearly lifeless lambs to bleat and move their limbs briskly upon the hay, and to recognize for the first time the fact that they were born. their noise increased to a chorus of baas, upon which oak pulled the milk-can from before the fire, and taking a small tea-pot from the pocket of his smock-frock, filled it with milk, and taught those of the helpless creatures which were not to be restored to their dams how to drink from the spout -- a trick they acquired with astonishing aptitude. "and she don't even let ye have the skins of the dead lambs, i hear?" resumed joseph poorgrass, his eyes lingering on the operations of oak with the neces- sary melancholy. "i don't have them." said gabriel. "ye be very badly used, shepherd." hazarded joseph again, in the hope of getting oak as an ally in lamenta- tion after all. "i think she's took against ye -- that i do." "o no -- not at all." replied gabriel, hastily, and a sigh escaped him, which the deprivation of lamb skins could hardly have caused. before any further remark had been added a shade darkened the door, and boldwood entered the malthouse, bestowing upon each a nod of a quality between friendli- ness and condescension. "ah! oak, i thought you were here." he said. "i met the mail-cart ten minutes ago, and a letter was put into my hand, which i opened without reading the address. i believe it is yours. you must excuse the accident please." "o yes -- not a bit of difference, mr. boldwood -- not a bit." said gabriel, readily. he had not a corre- spondent on earth, nor was there a possible letter coming to him whose contents the whole parish would not have been welcome to persue. oak stepped aside, and read the following in an unknown hand: -- "dear friend, -- i do not know your name, but l think these few lines will reach you, which i wrote to thank you for your kindness to me the night i left weatherbury in a reckless way. i also return the money i owe you, which you will excuse my not keeping as a gift. all has ended well, and i am happy to say i am going to be married to the young man who has courted me for some time -- sergeant troy, of the th dragoon guards, now quartered in this town. he would, i know, object to my having received anything except as a loan, being a man of great respecta- bility and high honour -- indeed, a nobleman by blood. "i should be much obliged to you if you would keep the contents of this letter a secret for the present, dear friend. we mean to surprise weatherbury by coming there soon as husband and wife, though l blush to state it to one nearly a stranger. the sergeant grew up in weatherbury. thank- ing you again for your kindness, "i am, your sincere well-wisher, "fanny robin." "have you read it, mr. boldwood?" said gabriel; "if not, you had better do so. i know you are interested in fanny robin." boldwood read the letter and looked grieved. "fanny -- poor fanny! the end she is so confident of has not yet come, she should remember -- and may never come. i see she gives no address." "what sort of a man is this sergeant troy?" said gabriel. "h'm -- i'm afraid not one to build much hope upon in such a case as this." the farmer murmured, "though he's a clever fellow, and up to everything. a slight romance attaches to him, too. his mother was a french governess, and it seems that a secret attachment existed between her and the late lord severn. she was married to a poor medical man, and soon after an infant was horn; and while money was forthcoming all went on well. unfortunately for her boy, his best friends died; and he got then a situation as second clerk at a lawyer's in casterbridge. he stayed there for some time, and might have worked himself into a dignified position of some sort had he not indulged in the wild freak of enlisting. i have much doubt if ever little fanny will surprise us in the way she mentions -- very much doubt a silly girl! -- silly girl!" the door was hurriedly burst open again, and in came running cainy ball out of breath, his mouth red and open, like the bell of a penny trumpet, from which he coughed with noisy vigour and great distension of face. "now, cain ball." said oak, sternly, "why will you run so fast and lose your breath so? i'm always telling you of it." "oh -- i -- a puff of mee breath -- went -- the -- wrong way, please, mister oak, and made me cough -- hok -- hok!" "well -- what have you come for?" "i've run to tell ye." said the junior shepherd, supporting his exhausted youthful frame against the doorpost," that you must come directly'. two more ewes have twinned -- that's what's the matter, shepherd oak." "oh, that's it." said oak, jumping up, and dimissing for the present his thoughts on poor fanny. "you are a good boy to run and tell me, cain, and you shall smell a large plum pudding some day as a treat. but, before we go, cainy, bring the tarpot, and we'll mark this lot and have done with 'em." oak took from his illimitable pockets a marking iron, dipped it into the pot, and imprintcd on the buttocks of the infant sheep the initials of her he delighted to muse on -- "b. e.." which signified to all the region round that henceforth the lambs belonged to farmer bathsheba everdene, and to no one else. "now, cainy, shoulder your two, and off good morning, mr. boldwood." the shepherd lifted the sixteen large legs and four small bodies he had himself brought, and vanished with them in the direction of the lambing field hard by -- their frames being now in a sleek and hopeful state, pleasantly contrasting with their death's-door plight of half an hour before. boldwood followed him a little way up the field, hesitated, and turned back. he followed him again with a last resolve, annihilating return. on approaching the nook in which the fold was constructed, the farmer drew out-his pocket-book, unfastened-it, and allowed it to lie open on his hand. a letter was revealed -- bath- sheba's. "i was going to ask you, oak." he said, with unreal carelessness, "if you know whose writing this is? " oak glanced into the book, and replied instantly, with a flushed face, " miss everdene's." oak had coloured simply at the consciousness of sounding her name. he now felt a strangely distressing qualm from a new thought." the letter could of course be no other than anonymous, or the inquiry would not have been necessary. boldwood mistook his confusion: sensitive persons are always ready with their "is it i?" in preference to objective reasoning. "the question was perfectly fair." he returned -- and there was something incongruous in the serious earnest- ness with which he applied himself to an argument on a valentine. "you know it is always expected that privy inquiries will be made: that's where the -- fun lies." if the word "fun" had been "torture." it could not have been uttered with a more constrained and restless countenance than was boldwood's then." soon parting from gabriel, the lonely and reserved man returned to his house to breakfast -- feeling twinges of shame and regret at having so far exposed his mood by those fevered questions to a stranger. he again placed the letter on the mantelpiece, and sat down to think of the circumstances attending it by the light of gabriel's information. chapter xvi all saints' and all souls' on a week-day morning a small congregation, con- sisting mainly of women and girls, rose from its knees in the mouldy nave of a church called all saints', in the distant barrack-town before mentioned, at the end of a service without a sermon. they were about to disperse, when a smart footstep, entering the porch and coming up the central passage, arrested their attention. the step echoed with a ring unusual in a church; it was the clink of spurs. everybody looked. a young cavalry soldier in a red uniform, with the three chevrons of a sergeant upon his sleeve, strode up the aisle, with an embarrassment which was only the more marked by the intense vigour of his step, and by the deter- mination upon his face to show none. a slight flush had mounted his cheek by the time he had run the gauntlet between these women; but, passing on through the chancel arch, he never paused till he came close to the altar railing. here for a moment he stood alone. the officiating curate, who had not yet doffed his surplice, perceived the new-comer, and followed him to the communion-space. he whispered to the soldier, and then beckoned to the clerk, who in his turn whispered to an elderly woman, apparently his wife, and they also went up the chancel steps. "'tis a wedding!" murmured some of the women, brightening. "let's wait!" the majority again sat down. there was a creaking of machinery behind, and some of the young ones turned their heads. from the interior face of the west wall of the tower projected a little canopy with a quarter-jack and small bell beneath it, the automaton being driven by the same clock machinery that struck the large bell in the tower. be- tween the tower and the church was a close screen, the door of which was kept shut during services, hiding this grotesque clockwork from sight. at present, how- ever, the door was open, and the egress of the jack, the blows on the bell, and the mannikin's retreat into.the nook again, were visible to many, and audible through- out the church. the jack had struck half-past eleven. "where's the woman?" whispered some of the spectators. the young sergeant stood still with the abnormal rigidity of the old pillars around. he faced the south- east, and was as silent as he was still. the silence grew to be a noticeable thing as the minutes went on, and nobody else appeared, and not a soul moved. the rattle of the quarter-jack again from its niche, its blows for three-quarters, its fussy retreat, were almost painfully abrupt, and caused many of the congregation to start palpably. "i wonder where the woman is!" a voice whispered again. there began now that slight shifting of feet, that artificial coughing among several, which betrays a nervous suspense. at length there was a titter. but the soldier never moved. there he stood, his face to the south-east, upright as a column, his cap in his hand. the clock ticked on. the women threw off their nervousness, and titters and giggling became more frequent. then came a dead silence. every one was waiting for the end. some persons may have noticed how extraordinarily the striking of quarters. seems to quicken the flight of time. it was hardly credible that the jack had not got wrong with the minutes when the rattle began again, the puppet emerged, and the four quarters were struck fitfully as before: one could al- most be positive that there was a malicious leer upon the hideous creature's face, and a mischievous delight in its twitchings. then, followed the dull and remote resonance of the twelve heavy strokes in the tower above. the women were impressed, and there was no giggle this time. the clergyman glided into the vestry, and the clerk vanished. the sergeant had not yet turned; every woman in the church was waiting to see his face, and he appeared to know it. at last he did turn, and stalked resolutely down the nave, braving them all, with a compressed lip. two bowed and toothless old almsmen then looked at each other and chuckled, innocently enough; but the sound had a strange weird effect in that place. opposite to the church was a paved square, around which several overhanging wood buildings of old time cast a picturesque shade. the young man on leaving the door went to cross the square, when, in the middle, he met a little woman. the expression of her face, which had been one of intense anxiety, sank at the sight of his nearly to terror. "well?" he said, in a suppressed passion, fixedly looking at her. "o, frank -- i made a mistake! -- i thought that church with the spire was all saints', and i was at the door at half-past eleven to a minute as you said. waited till a quarter to twelve, and found then that i was in all souls'. but i wasn't much frightened, for i thought it could be to-morrow as well." "you fool, for so fooling me! but say no more." "shall it be to-morrow, frank?" she asked blankly. "to-morrow!" and he gave vent to a hoarse laugh. "i don't go through that experience again for some time, i warrant you!" "but after all." she expostulated in a trembling voice, "the mistake was not such a terrible thing! now, dear frank, when shall it be?" "ah, when? god knows!" he said, with a light irony, and turning from her walked rapidly away. chapter xvii in the market-place on saturday boldwood was in casterbridge market house as usual, when the disturber of his dreams entered and became visible to him. adam had awakened from his deep sleep, and behold! there was eve. the farmer took courage, and for the first time really looked at her. material causes and emotional effects are not to be arranged in regular equation. the result from capital employed in the production of any movement of a mental nature is sometimes as tremendous as the cause itself is absurdly minute. when women are in a freakish mood, their usual intuition, either from carelessness or inherent defect, seemingly fails to teach them this, and hence it was that bathsheba was fated to be astonished today. boldwood looked at her -- not slily, critically, or understandingly, but blankly at gaze, in the way a reaper looks up at a passing train -- as something foreign to his element, and but dimly understood. to bold- wood women had been remote phenomena rather than necessary complements -- comets of such uncertain aspect, movement, and permanence, that whether their orbits were as geometrical, unchangeable, and as subject to laws as his own, or as absolutely erratic as they superficially appeared, he had not deemed it his duty to consider. he saw her black hair, her correct facial curves and profile, and the roundness of her chin and throat. he saw then the side of her eyelids, eyes, and lashes, and the shape of her ear. next he noticed her figure, her skirt, and the very soles of her shoes. boldwood thought her beautiful, but wondered whether he was right in his thought, for it seemed impossible that this romance in the flesh, if so sweet as he imagined, could have been going on long without creating a commotion of delight among men, and pro- voking more inquiry than bathsheba had done, even though that was not a little. to the best of his judge- ment neither nature nor art could improve this perfect one of an imperfect many. his heart began to move within him. boldwood, it must be remembered, though forty years of age, had never before inspected a woman with the very centre and force of his glance; they had struck upon all his senses at wide angles. was she really beautiful? he could not assure himself that his opinion was true even now. he fur- tively said to a neighbour, "is miss everdene considered handsome?" "o yes; she was a good deal noticed the first time she came, if you remember. a very handsome girl indeed." a man is never more credulous than in receiving favourable opinions on the beauty of a woman he is half, or quite, in love with; a mere child's word on the point has the weight of an r.a.'s. boldwood was satisfied now. and this charming woman had in effect said to him, "marry me." why should she have done that strange thing? boldwood's blindness to the difference between approving of what circumstances suggest, and originating what they do not suggest, was well matched by bathsheba's insensibility to the possibly great issues of little beginnings. she was at this moment coolly dealing with a dashing young farmer, adding up accounts with him as indiffer- ently as if his face had been the pages of a ledger. it was evident that such a nature as his had no attraction for a woman of bathsheba's taste. but boldwood grew hot down to his hands with an incipient jealousy; he trod for the first time the threshold of "the injured lover's hell." his first impulse was to go and thrust himself between them. this could be done, but only in one way -- by asking to see a sample of her corn. boldwood renounced the idea. he could not make the request; it was debasing loveliness to ask it to buy and sell, and jarred with his conceptions of her. all this time bathsheba was conscious of having broken into that dignified stronghold at last. his eyes, she knew, were following her everywhere. this was a triumph; and had it come naturally, such a triumph would have been the sweeter to her for this piquing delay. but it had been brought about by misdirected ingenuity, and she valued it only as she valued an artificial flower or a wax fruit. being a woman with some good sense in reasoning on subjects wherein her heart was not involved, bath- sheba genuinely repented that a freak which had owed its existence as much to liddy as to herself, should ever have been undertaken, to disturb the placidity of a man she respected too highly to deliberately tease. she that day nearly formed the intention of begging his pardon on the very next occasion of their meeting. the worst features of this arrangement were that, if he thought she ridiculed him, an apology would in- crease the offence by being disbelieved; and if he thought she wanted him to woo her, it would read like additional evidence of her forwardness. chapter xviii boldwood in meditation -- regret boldwood was tenant of what was called little weatherbury farm, and his person was the nearest ap- proach to aristocracy that this remoter quarter of the parish could boast of. genteel strangers, whose god was their town, who might happen to be compelled to linger about this nook for a day, heard the sound of light wheels, and prayed to see good society, to the degree of a solitary lord, or squire at the very least, but it was only mr. boldwood going out for the day. they heard the sound of wheels yet once more, and were re-animated to expectancy: it was only mr. bold- wood coming home again. his house stood recessed from the road, and the stables, which are to a farm what a fireplace is to a room, were behind, their lower portions being lost amid bushes of laurel. inside the blue door, open half-way down, were to be seen at this time the backs and tails of half-a-dozen warm and contented horses standing in their stalls; and as thus viewed, they pre- sented alternations of roan and bay, in shapes like a moorish arch, the tail being a streak down the midst of each. over these, and lost to the eye gazing in from the outer light, the mouths of the same animals could be heard busily sustaining the above-named warmth and plumpness by quantities of oats and hay. the restless and shadowy figure of a colt wandered about a loose-box at the end, whilst the steady grind of all the eaters was occasionally diversified by the rattle of a rope or the stamp of a foot. pacing up and down at the heels of the animals was farmer boldwood himself. this place was his almonry and cloister in one: here, after looking to the feeding of his four-footed dependants, the celibate would walk and meditate of an evening till the moon's rays streamed in through the cobwebbed windows, or total darkness enveloped the scene. his square-framed perpendicularity showed more fully now than in the crowd and bustle of the market-house. in this meditative walk his foot met the floor with heel and toe simultaneously, and his fine reddish-fleshed face was bent downwards just enough to render obscure the still mouth and the well-rounded though rather prominent and broad chin. a few clear and thread-like horizontal lines were the only interruption to the otherwise smooth surface of his large forehead. the phases of boldwood's life were ordinary enough, but his was not an ordinary nature. that stillness, which struck casual observers more than anything else in his character and habit, and seemed so precisely like the rest of inanition, may have been the perfect balance of enormous antagonistic forces -- positives and negatives in fine adjustment. his equilibrium disturbed, he was in extremity at once. if an emotion possessed him at all, it ruled him; a feeling not mastering him was entirely latent. stagnant or rapid, it was never slow. he was always hit mortally, or he was missed. he had no light and careless touches in his constitu- tion, either for good or for evil. stern in the outlines of action, mild in the details, he was serious throughout all. he saw no absurd sides to the follies of life, and thus, though not quite companionable in the eyes of merry men and scoffers, and those to whom all things show life as a jest, he was not intolerable to the earnest and those acquainted with grief. being a man -who read all the dramas of life seriously, if he failed to please when they were comedies, there was no frivolous treat- ment to reproach him for when they chanced to end tragically. bathsheba was far from dreaming that the dark and silent shape upon which she had so carelessly thrown a seed was a hotbed of tropic intensity. had she known boldwood's moods, her blame would have been fearful, and the stain upon her heart ineradicable. moreover, had she known her present power for good or evil over this man, she would have trembled at her responsibility. luckily for her present, unluckily for her future tran- quillity, her understanding had not yet told her what boldwood was. nobody knew entirely; for though it was possible to form guesses concerning his wild capa- bilities from old floodmarks faintly visible, he had never been seen at the high tides which caused them. farmer boldwood came to the stable-door and looked forth across the level fields. beyond the first enclosure was a hedge, and on the other side of this a meadow belonging to bathsheba's farm. it was now early spring -- the time of going to grass with the sheep, when they have the first feed of the meadows, before these are laid up for mowing. the wind, which had been blowing east for several weeks, had veered to the southward, and the middle of spring had come abruptly -- almost without a beginning. it was that period in the vernal quarter when we map suppose the dryads to be waking for the season. the vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps to rise, till in the completest silence of lone gardens and trackless plantations, where- everything seems -help- less and still after the bond and slavery of frost, there are bustlings, strainings, united thrusts, and pulls-all- together, in comparison with which the powerful tugs of cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy efforts. boldwood, looking into the distant meadows, saw there three figures. they were those of miss everdene, shepherd oak, and cainy ball. when bathsheba's figure shone upon the farmer's eyes it lighted him up as the moon lights up a great tower. a man's body is as the shell; or the tablet, of his soul, as he is reserved or ingenuous, overflowing or self-contained. there was a change in boldwood's exterior from its former impassibleness; and his face showed that he was now living outside his defences for the first time, and with a fearful sense of exposure. it is the usual experience of strong natures when they love. at last he arrived at a conclusion. it was to go across and inquire boldly of her. the insulation of his heart by reserve during these many years, without a channel of any kind for disposable emotion, had worked its effect. it has been observed more than once that the causes of love are chiefly subjective, and boldwood was a living testimony to the truth of the proposition. no mother existed to absorb his devotion, no sister for his tenderness, no idle ties for sense. he became surcharged with the compound, which was genuine lover's love. he approached the gate of the meadow. beyond it the ground was melodious with ripples, and the sky with larks; the low bleating of the flock mingling with both. mistress and man were engaged in the operation of making a lamb "take." which is performed whenever an ewe has lost her own offspring, one of the twins of another ewe being given her as a substitute. gabriel had skinned the dead lamb, and was tying the skin over the body of the live lamb, in the customary manner, whilst bathsheba was holding open a little pen of four hurdles, into which the mother and foisted lamb were driven, where they would remain till the old sheep conceived an affection for the young one. bathsheba looked up at the completion of the manouvre, and saw the farmer by the gate, where he was overhung by a willow tree in full bloom. gabriel, to whom her face was as the uncertain glory of an april day, was ever regardful of its faintest changes, and instantly discerned thereon the mark of some influence from without, in the form of a keenly self-conscious reddening. he also turned and beheld boldwood. at onee connecting these signs with the letter bold- wood had shown him, gabriel suspected her of some coquettish procedure begun by that means, and carried on since, he knew not how. farmer boldwood had read the pantomime denoting that they were aware of his presence, and the perception was as too much light turned upon his new sensibility. he was still in the road, and by moving on he hoped that neither would recognize that he had originally intended to enter the field. he passed by with an utter and overwhelming sensation of ignorance, shyness, and doubt. perhaps in her manner there were signs that she wished to see him -- perhaps not -- he could not read a woman. the cabala of this erotic philosophy seemed to consist of the subtlest meanings expressed in misleading ways. every turn, look, word, and accent contained a mystery quite distinct from its obvious import, and not one had ever been pondered by him until now. as for bathsheba, she was not deceived into the belief that farmer boldwood had walked by on business or in idleness. she collected the probabilities of the case, and concluded that she was herself responsible for boldwood's appearance there. it troubled her much to see what a great flame a little wildfire was likely to kindle. bathsheba was no schemer for marriage, nor was she deliberately a trifler with the affections of men, and a censor's experience on seeing an actual flirt after observing her would have been a feeling of surprise that bathsheba could be so different from such a one, and yet so like what a flirt is supposed to be. she resolved never again, by look or by sign, to interrupt the steady flow of this man's life. but a resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible. chapter xix the sheep-washing -- the offer boldwood did eventually call upon her. she was not at home. "of course not." he murmured. in con- templating bathsheba as a woman, he had forgotten the accidents of her position as an agriculturist -- that being as much of a farmer, and as extensive a farmer, as himself, her probable whereabouts was out-of-doors at this time of the year. this, and the other oversights boldwood was guilty of, were natural to the mood, and still more natural to the circumstances. the great aids to idealization in love were present here: occasional observation of her from a distance, and the absence of social intercourse with her -- visual familiarity, oral strangeness. the smaller human elements were kept out of sight; the pettinesses that enter so largely into all earthly living and doing were disguised by the accident of lover and loved-one not being on visiting terms; and there was hardly awakened a thought in boldwood that sorry household realities appertained to her, or that she, like all others, had moments of commonplace, when to be least plainly seen was to be most prettily remembered. thus a mild sort of apotheosis took place in his fancy, whilst she still lived and breathed within his own horizon, a troubled creature like himself. it was the end of may when the farmer determined to be no longer repulsed by trivialities or distracted by suspense. he had by this time grown used to being in love; the passion now startled him less even when it tortured him more, and he felt himself adequate to the situation. on inquiring for her at her house they had told him she was at the sheepwashing, and he went off to seek her there. the sheep-washing pool was a perfectly circular basin of brickwork in the meadows, full of the clearest water. to birds on the wing its glassy surface, reflecting the light sky, must have been visible for miles around as a glistening cyclops' eye in a green face. the grass about the margin at this season was a sight to remember long -- in a minor sort of way. its activity in sucking the moisture from the rich damp sod. was almost a pro- cess observable by the eye. the outskirts of this level water-meadow were diversified by rounded and hollow pastures, where just now every flower that was not a buttercup was a daisy. the river slid along noiselessly as a shade, the swelling reeds and sedge forming a flexible palisade upon its moist brink. to the north of the mead were trees, the leaves of which were new, soft, and moist, not yet having stiffened and darkened under summer sun and drought, their colour being yellow beside a green -- green beside a yellow. from the recesses of this knot of foliage the loud notes of three cuckoos were resounding through the still air. boldwood went meditating down the slopes with his eyes on his boots, which the yellow pollen from the buttercups had bronzed in artistic gradations. a tribu- tary of the main stream flowed through the basin of the pool by an inlet and outlet at opposite points of its diameter. shepherd oak, jan coggan, moon, poor- grass, cain ball, and several others were assembled here, all dripping wet to the very roots of their hair, and bathsheba was standing by in a new riding-habit -- the most elegant she had ever worn -- the reins of her horse being looped over her arm. flagons of cider were rolling about upon the green. the meek sheep were pushed into the pool by coggan and matthew moon, who stood by the lower hatch, immersed to their waists; then gabriel, who stood on the brink, thrust them under as they swam along, with an instrument like a crutch, formed for the purpose, and also for assisting the exhausted animals when the wool became saturated and they began to sink. they were let out against the stream, and through the upper opening, all impurities flowing away below. cainy ball and joseph, who performed this latter operation, were if possible wetter than the rest; they resembled dolphins under a fountain, every protuberance and angle of their clothes dribbling forth a small rill. boldwood came close and bade her good-morning, with such constraint that she could not but think he had stepped across to the washing for its own sake, hoping not to find her there; more, she fancied his brow severe and his eye slighting. bathsheba immediately contrived to withdraw, and glided along by the river till she was a stone's throw off. she heard footsteps brushing the grass, and had a consciousness that love was encircling her like a perfume. instead of turning or waiting, bathsheba went further among the high sedges, but boldwood seemed determined, and pressed on till they were completely past the bend of the river. here, without being seen, they could hear the splashing and shouts of the washers above. "miss everdene!" said the farmer. she trembled, turned, and said "good morning." his tone was so utterly removed from all she had expected as a beginning. it was lowness and quiet accentuated: an emphasis of deep meanings, their form, at the same time, being scarcely expressed. silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech. in the same way, to say a little is often to tell more than to say a great deal. boldwood told everything in that word. as the consciousness expands on learning that what was fancied to be the rumble of wheels is the reverbera- tion of thunder, so did bathsheba's at her intuitive conviction. "i feel -- almost too much -- to think." he said, with a solemn simplicity. "i have come to speak to you with- out preface. my life is not my own since i have beheld you clearly, miss everdene -- i come to make you an offer of marriage." bathsheba tried to preserve an absolutely neutral countenance, and all the motion she made was that of closing lips which had previously been a little parted. "i am now forty-one years old." he went on. "i may have been called a confirmed bachelor, and i was a confirmed bachelor. i had never any views of myself as a husband in my earlier days, nor have i made any calculation on the subject since i have been older. but we all change, and my change, in this matter, came with seeing you. i have felt lately, more and more, that my present way of living is bad in every respect. beyond all things, i want you as my wife." "i feel, mr. boldwood, that though i respect you much, i do not feel -- what would justify me to -- in accepting your offer." she stammered. this giving back of dignity for dignity seemed to open the sluices of feeling that boldwood had as yet kept closed. "my life is a burden without you." he exclaimed, in a low voice. "i want you -- i want you to let me say i love you again and again!" bathsheba answered nothing, and the mare upon her arm seemed so impressed that instead of cropping the herbage she looked up. "i think and hope you care enough for me to listen to what i have to tell!" bathsheba's momentary impulse at hearing this was to ask why he thought that, till she remembered that, far from being a conceited assumption on boldwood's part, it was but the natural conclusion of serious reflec- tion based on deceptive premises of her own offering. "i wish i could say courteous flatteries to you." the farmer continued in an easier tone, " and put my rugged feeling into a graceful shape: but i have neither power nor patience to learn such things. i want you for my wife -- so wildly that no other feeling can abide in me; but i should not have spoken out had i not been led to hope." the valentine again! o that valentine!" she said to herself, but not a word to him. "if you can love me say so, miss everdene. if not -- don't say no!" "mr. boldwood, it is painful to have to say i am surprised, so that i don't know how to answer you with propriety and respect -- but am only just able to speak out my feeling -- i mean my meaning; that i am afraid i can't marry you, much as i respect you. you are too dignified for me to suit you, sir." "but, miss everdene!" "i -- i didn't -- i know i ought never to have dreamt of sending that valentine -- forgive me, sir -- it was a wanton thing which no woman with any self-respect should have done. if you will only pardon my thought- lessness, i promise never to -- -- " "no, no, no. don't say thoughtlessness! make me think it was something more -- that it was a sort of prophetic instinct -- the beginning of a feeling that you would like me. you torture me to say it was done in thoughtlessness -- i never thought of it in that light, and i can't endure it. ah! i wish i knew how to win you! but that i can't do -- i can only ask if i have already got you. if i have not, and it is not true that you have come unwittingly to me as i have to you, i can say no more." "i have not fallen in love with you, mr. boldwood -- certainly i must say that." she allowed a very small smile to creep for the first time over her serious face in saying this, and the white row of upper teeth, and keenly- cut lips already noticed, suggested an idea of heartless- ness, which was immediately contradicted by the pleasant eyes. "but you will just think -- in kindness and conde- scension think -- if you cannot bear with me as a husband! i fear i am too old for you, but believe me i will take more care of you than would many a man of your own age. i will protect and cherish you with all my strength -- i will indeed! you shall have no cares -- be worried by no household affairs, and live quite at ease, miss everdene. the dairy superintendence shall be done by a man -- i can afford it will -- you shall never have so much as to look out of doors at haymaking time, or to think of weather in the harvest. i rather cling; to the chaise, because it is he same my poor father and mother drove, but if you don't like it i will sell it, and you shall have a pony-carriage of your own. i cannot say how far above every other idea and object on earth you seem to me -- nobody knows -- god only knows -- how much you are to me!" bathsheba's heart was young, and it swelled with sympathy for the deep-natured man who spoke so simply. "don't say it! don't! i cannot bear you to feel so much, and me to feel nothing. and i am afraid they will notice us, mr. boldwood. will you let the matter rest now? i cannot think collectedly. i did not know you were going to say this to me. o, i am wicked to have made you suffer so!" she was frightened as well as agitated at his vehemence. "say then, that you don't absolutely refuse. do not quite refuse?" "i can do nothing. i cannot answer."i may speak to you again on the subject?" "yes." "i may think of you?" "yes, i suppose you may think of me." "and hope to obtain you?" "no -- do not hope! let us go on." "i will call upon you again to-morrow." "no -- please not. give me time." "yes -- i will give you any time." he said earnestly and gratefully. "i am happier now." "no -- i beg you! don't be happier if happiness only comes from my agreeing. be neutral, mr. bold- wood! i must think." "i will wait." he said. and then she turned away. boldwood dropped his gaze to the ground, and stood long like a man who did not know where he was. realities then returned upon him like the pain of a wound received in an excitement which eclipses it, and he, too, then went on. chapter xx perplexity -- grinding the shears -- a quarrel "he is so disinterested and kind to offer me all that i can desire." bathsheba mused. yet farmer boldwood, whether by nature kind or the reverse to kind, did not exercise kindness, here. the rarest offerings of the purest loves are but a self- indulgence, and no generosity at all. bathsheba, not being the least in love with him, was eventually able to look calmly at his offer. it was one which many women of her own station in the neighbour- hood, and not a few of higher rank, would have been wild to accept and proud to publish. in every point of view, ranging from politic to passionate, it was desirable that she, a lonely girl, should marry, and marry this earnest, well-to-do, and respected man. he was close to her doors: his standing was sufficient: his qualities were even supererogatory. had she felt, which she did not, any wish whatever for the married state in the abstract, she could not reasonably have rejected him, being a woman who frequently appealed to her under, standing for deliverance from her whims. boldwood as a means to marriage was unexceptionable: she esteemed and liked him, yet she did not want him. it appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible with, out possession; with totally differing aims the method is the same on both sides. but the understood incentive on the woman's part was wanting here. besides, bath- sheba's position as absolute mistress of a farm and house was a novel one, and the novelty had not yet begun to wear off. but a disquiet filled her which was somewhat to her credit, for it would have affected few. beyond the men- tioned reasons with which she combated her objections, she had a strong feeling that, having been the one who began the game, she ought in honesty to accept the conse- quences. still the reluctance remained. she said in the same breath that it would be ungenerous not to marry boldwood, and that she couldn't do it to save her life. bathsheba's was an impulsive nature under a delibera- tive aspect. an elizabeth in brain and a mary stuart in spirit, she often performed actions of the greatest temerity with a manner of extreme discretion. many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into deeds. the next day to that of the declaration she found gabriel oak at the bottom of her garden, grinding his shears for the sheep-shearing. all the surrounding cottages were more or less scenes of the same operation; the scurr of whetting spread into the sky from all parts of the village as from an armury previous to a campaign. peace and war kiss each other at their hours of prepara- tion -- sickles, scythes, shears, and pruning-hooks, ranking with swords, bayonets, and lances, in their common necessity for point and edge. cainy ball turned the handle of gabriel's grindstone, his head performing a melancholy see-saw up and down with each turn of the wheel. oak stood somewhat as eros is represented when in the act of sharpening his arrows: his figure slightly bent, the weight of his body thrown over on the shears, and his head balanced side- ways, with a critical compression of the lips and contrac- tion of the eyelids to crown the attitude. his mistress came up and looked upon them in silence for a minute or two; then she said -- "cain, go to the lower mead and catch the bay mare. i'll turn the winch of the grindstone. i want to speak to you, gabriel. cain departed, and bathsheba took the handle. gabriel had glanced up in intense surprise, quelled its expression, and looked down again. bathsheba turned the winch, and gabriel applied the shears. the peculiar motion involved in turning a wheel has a wonderful tendency to benumb the mind. it is a sort of attenuated variety of ixion's punishment, and contributes a dismal chapter to the history of heavy, and the body's centre of gravity seems to settle by degrees in a leaden lump somewhere be- tween the eyebrows and the crown. bathsheba felt the unpleasant symptoms after two or three dozen turns. "will you turn, gabriel, and let me hold the shears?" she said. "my head is in a'whirl, and i can't talk. gabriel turned. bathsheba then began, with some awkwardness, allowing her thoughts to stray occasion- ally from her story to attend to the shears, which required a little nicety in sharpening. "i wanted to ask you if the men made any observa- tions on my going behind the sedge with mr. boldwood yesterday?" "yes, they did." said gabriel. "you don't hold the shears right, miss -- i knew you wouldn't know the way -- hold like this." he relinquished the winch, and inclosing her two hands completely in his own (taking each as we some- times slap a child's hand in teaching him to write), grasped the shears with her. "incline the edge so," he said. hands and shears were inclined to suit the words, and held thus for a peculiarly long time by the in- structor as he spoke. "that will do." exclaimed bathsheba. "loose my hands. i won't have them held! turn the winch." gabriel freed her hands quietly, retired to his handle, and the grinding went on. "did the men think it odd?" she said again. "odd was not the idea, miss." "what did they say?" "that farmer boldwood's name and your own were likely to be flung over pulpit together before the year was out." "i thought so by the look of them! why, there's nothing in it. a more foolish remark was never made, and i want you to contradict it! that's what i came for." gabriel looked incredulous and sad, but between his moments of incredulity, relieved. "they must have heard our conversation." she continued. "well, then, bathsheba!" said oak, stopping the handle, and gazing into her face with astonishment. "miss everdene, you mean," she said, with dignity. "i mean this, that if mr. boldwood really spoke of marriage, i bain't going to tell a story and say he didn't to please you. i have already tried to please you too much for my own good!" bathsheba regarded him with round-eyed perplexity. she did not know whether to pity him for disappointed love of her, or to be angry with him for having got over it -- his tone being ambiguous. "i said i wanted you just to mention that it was not true i was going to be married to him." she mur- mured, with a slight decline in her assurance. "i can say that to them if you wish, miss everdene. and i could likewise give an opinion to 'ee on what you have done." "i daresay. but i don't want your opinion."i suppose not." said gabriel bitterly, and going on with his turning, his words rising and falling in a regular swell and cadence as he stooped or rose with the winch, which directed them, according to his position, perpendicularly into the earth, or horizontally along the garden, his eyes being fixed on a leaf upon the ground. with bathsheba a hastened act was a rash act; but, as does not always happen, time gained was prudence insured. it must be added, however, that time was very seldom gained. at this period the single opinion in the parish on herself and her doings that she valued as sounder than her own was gabriel oak's. and the outspoken honesty of his character was such- that on any subject even that of her love for, or marriage with, another man, the same disinter- estedness of opinion might be calculated on, and be had for the asking. thoroughly convinced of the impossibility of his own suit, a high resolve constrained him not to injure that of another. this is a lover's most stoical virtue, as the lack of it is a lover's most venial sin. knowing he would reply truly, she asked the question, painful as she must have known the sub- ject would be. such is the selfishness of some charm- ing women. perhaps it was some excuse for her thus torturing honesty to her own advantage, that she had absolutely no other sound judgment within easy reach. "well, what is your opinion of my conduct." she said, quietly. "that it is unworthy of any thoughtful, and meek, and comely woman." in an instant bathsheba's face coloured with the angry crimson of a danby sunset. but she forbore to utter this feeling, and the reticence of her tongue only made the loquacity of her face the more notice- able. the next thing gabriel did was to make a mistake. "perhaps you don't like the rudeness of my repri- manding you, for i know it is rudeness; but i thought it would do good." she instantly replied sarcastically -- "on the contrary, my opinion of you is so low, that i see in your abuse the praise of discerning people!" "i am glad you don't mind it, for i said it honestly and with every serious meaning." "i see. but, unfortunately, when you try not to speak in jest you are amusing -- just as when you wish to avoid seriousness you sometimes say a sensible word it was a hard hit, but bathsheba had unmistakably lost her temper, and on that account gabriel had never in his life kept his own better. he said nothing. she then broke out -- "i may ask, i suppose, where in particular my unworthiness lies? in my not marrying you, perhaps! "not by any means." said gabriel quietly. "i have long given up thinking of that matter."or wishing it, i suppose." she said; and it was apparent that she expected an unhesitating denial of this supposition. whatever gabriel felt, he coolly echoed her words -- "or wishing it either." a woman may be treated with a bitterness which is sweet to her, and with a rudeness which is not offensive. bathsheba would have submitted to an indignant chastisement for her levity had gabriel pro- tested that he was loving her at the same time; the impetuosity of passion unrequited is bearable, even if it stings and anathematizes there is a triumph in the humiliation, and a tenderness in the strife. this was what she had been expecting, and what she had not got. to be lectured because the lecturer saw her in the cold morning light of open-shuttered disillusion was exasperating. he had not finished, either. he continued in a more agitated voice: -- "my opinion is (since you ask it) that you are greatly to blame for playing pranks upon a man like mr. boldwood, merely as a pastime. leading on a man you don't care for is not a praiseworthy action. and even, miss everdene, if you seriously inclined towards him, you might have let him find it out in some way of true loving-kindness, and not by sending him a valentine's letter." bathsheba laid down the shears. "i cannot allow any man to -- to criticise my private conduct!" she exclaimed. "nor will i for a minute. so you'll please leave the farm at the end of the week!" it may have been a peculiarity -- at any rate it was a fact -- that when bathsheba was swayed by an emotion of an earthly sort her lower lip trembled: when by a refined emotion, her upper or heavenward one. her nether lip quivered now. "very well, so i will." said gabriel calmly. he had been held to her by a beautiful thread which it pained him to spoil by breaking, rather than by a chain he could not break. "i should be even better pleased to go at once." he added. "go at once then, in heaven's name!" said she,her eyes flashing at his, though never meeting them. "don't let me see your face any more." "very well, miss everdene -- so it shall be." and he took his shears and went away from her in placid dignity, as moses left the presence of pharaoh. chapter xxi troubles in the fold -- a message gabriel oak had ceased to feed the weatherbury flock for about four-and-twenty hours, when on sunday afternoon the elderly gentlemen joseph poorgrass, matthew moon, fray, and half-a-dozen others, came running up to the house of the mistress of the upper farm. "whatever is the matter, men?" she said, meeting them at the door just as she was coming out on her way to church, and ceasing in a moment from the close compression of her two red lips, with which she had accompanied the exertion of pulling on a tight glove. "sixty!" said joseph poorgrass. "seventy!" said moon. "fifty-nine!" said susan tall's husband. "-- sheep have broke fence." said fray. "-- and got into a field of young clover." said tall. "-- young clover!" said moon. "-- clover!" said joseph poorgrass. "and they be getting blasted." said henery fray. "that they be." said joseph. "and will all die as dead as nits, if they bain't got out and cured!"said tall. joseph's countenance was drawn into lines and puckers by his concern. fray's forehead was wrinkled both perpendicularly and crosswise, after the pattern of a portcullis, expressive of a double despair. laban tall's lips were thin, and his face were rigid. matthew's jaws sank, and his eyes turned whichever way the strongest muscle happened to pull them. "yes." said joseph, "and i was sitting at home, looking for ephesians, and says i to myself, "'tis nothing but corinthians and thessalonians in this danged testament." when who should come in but henery there: "joseph," he said, "the sheep have with bathsheba it was a moment when thought was blasted theirselves -- " with bathsheba it was a moment when thought was speech and speech exclamation. moreover, she had hardly recovered her equanimity since the disturbance which she had suffered from oak's remarks. "that's enought -- that's enough! -- oh, you fools!" she cried, throwing the parasol and prayer-book into the passage, and running out of doors in the direction signified. "to come to me, and not go and get them out directly! oh, the stupid numskulls!" her eyes were at their darkest and brightest now. bathsheba's beauty belonged rather to the demonian than to the angelic school, she never looked so well as when she was angry -- and particularly when the effect was heightened by a rather dashing velvet dress, care- fully put on before a glass. all the ancient men ran in a jumbled throng after her to the clover-field, joseph sinking down in the midst when about half-way, like an individual withering in a world which was more and more insupportable. having once received the stimulus that her presence always gave them they went round among the sheep with a will. the majority of the afflicted animals were lying down, and could not be stirred. these were bodily lifted out, and the others driven into the adjoining field. here, after the lapse of a few minutes, several more fell down, and lay helpless and livid as the rest. bathsheba, with a sad, bursting heart, looked at these primest specimens of her prime flock as they rolled there -- swoln with wind and the rank mist they drew. many of them foamed at the mouth, their breathing being quick and short, whilst the bodies of all were fearfully distended. "o, what can i do, what can i do!" said bathsheba, helplessly. "sheep are such unfortunate animals! -- there's always something happening to them! i never knew a flock pass a year without getting into some scrape or other." "there's only one way of saving them." said tall. "what way? tell me quick!" "they must be pierced in the side with a thing made on purpose." "can you do it? can i?" "no, ma'am. we can't, nor you neither. it must be done in a particular spot. if ye go to the right or left but an inch you stab the ewe and kill her. not even a shepherd can do it, as a rule." "then they must die." she said, in a resigned tone. "only one man in the neighbourhood knows the way," said joseph, now just come up. "he could cure 'em all if he were here." "who is he? let's get him!" "shepherd oak," said matthew. "ah, he's a clever man in talents!" "ah, that he is so!" said joseph poorgrass. "true -- he's the man." said laban tall. "how dare you name that man in my presence!" she said excitedly. "i told you never to allude to him, nor shall you if you stay with me. ah!" she added, brighten- ing, "farmer boldwood knows!" "o no, ma'am" said matthew. "two of his store ewes got into some vetches t'other day, and were just like these. he sent a man on horseback here post-haste for gable, and gable went and saved 'em, farmer boldwood hev got the thing they do it with. 'tis a holler pipe, with a sharp pricker inside. isn't it, joseph?" "ay -- a holler pipe." echoed joseph. "that's what 'tis." "ay, sure -- that's the machine." chimed in henery fray, reflectively, with an oriental indifference to the flight of time. "well," burst out bathsheba, "don't stand there with your "ayes" and your "sures" talking at me! get somebody to cure the sheep instantly!" all then stalked or in consternation, to get some- body as directed, without any idea of who it was to be. in a minute they had vanished through the gate, and she stood alone with the dying flock. "never will i send for him never!" she said firmly. one of the ewes here contracted its muscles horribly, extended itself, and jumped high into the air. the leap was an astonishing one. the ewe fell heavily, and lay still. bathsheba went up to it. the sheep was dead. "o, what shall i do -- what shall i do!" she again exclaimed, wringing her hands. "i won't send for him. no, i won't!" the most vigorous expression of a resolution does not always coincide with the greatest vigour of the resolution itself. it is often flung out as a sort of prop to support a decaying conviction which, whilst strong, required no enunciation to prove it so. the "no, i won't" of bathsheba meant virtually, "i think i must." she followed her assistants through the gate, and lifted her hand to one of them. laban answered to her signal. "where is oak staying?" "across the valley at nest cottage!" "jump on the bay mare, and ride across, and say he must return instantly -- that i say so." tall scrambled off to the field, and in two minutes was on poll, the bay, bare-backed, and with only a halter by way of rein. he diminished down the hill. bathsheba watched. so did all the rest. tall cantered along the bridle-path through sixteen acres, sheeplands, middle field the flats, cappel's piece, shrank almost to a point, crossed the bridge, and ascended from the valley through springmead and whitepits on the other side. the cottage to which gabriel had retired before taking his final departure from the locality was visible as a white spot on the opposite hill, backed by blue firs. bathsheba walked up and down. the men entered the field and endeavoured to ease the anguish of the dumb creatures by rubbing them. nothing availed. bathsheba continued walking. the horse was seen descending the hill, and the wearisome series had to be repeated in reverse order: whitepits, springmead, cappel's piece, the flats, middle field, sheeplands, sixteen acres. she hoped tall had had presence of mind enough to give the mare up to gabriel, and return himself on foot. the rider neared them. it was tall. "o, what folly!" said bathsheba. gabriel was not visible anywhere. "perhaps he is already gone!" she said. tall came into the inclosure, and leapt off, his face tragic as morton's after the battle of shrewsbury. "well?" said bathsheba, unwilling to believe that her verbal lettre-de-cachet could possibly have miscarried. "he says beggars mustn't be choosers." replied laban. "what!" said the young farmer, opening her eyes and drawing in her breath for an outburst. joseph poorgrass retired a few steps behind a hurdle. "he says he shall not come unless you request en to come civilly and in a proper manner, as becomes any "woman begging a favour." "oh, oh, that's his answer! where does he get his airs? who am i, then, to be treated like that? shall i beg to a man who has begged to me?" another of the flock sprang into the air, and fell dead. the men looked grave, as if they suppressed opinion. bathsheba turned aside, her eyes full of tears. the strait she was in through pride and shrewishness could not be disguised longer: she burst out crying bitterly; they all saw it; and she attempted no further concealment. "i wouldn't cry about it, miss." said william small- bury, compassionately. "why not ask him softer like? i'm sure he'd come then. gable is a true man in that way." bathsheba checked her grief and wiped her eyes. "o, it is a wicked cruelty to me -- it is -- it is!" she murmured. "and he drives me to do what i wouldn't; yes, he does! -- tall, come indoors." after this collapse, not very dignified for the head of an establishment, she went into the house, tall at her heels. here she sat down and hastily scribbled a note between the small convulsive sobs of convalescence which follow a fit of crying as a ground-swell follows a storm. the note was none the less polite for being written in a hurry. she held it at a distance, was about to fold it, then added these words at the bottom: -- "do not desert me, gabriel!" she looked a little redder in refolding it, and closed her lips, as if thereby to suspend till too late the action of conscience in examining whether such strategy were justifiable. the note was despatched as the message had been, and bathsheba waited indoors for the result. it was an anxious quarter of an hour that intervened between the messenger's departure and the sound of the horse's tramp again outside. she- could not watch this time, but, leaning over the old bureau at which she had written the letter, closed her eyes, as if to keep out both hope and fear. the case, however, was a promising one. gabriel was not angry: he was simply neutral, although her first command had been so haughty. such imperiousness would have damned a little less beauty; and on the other hand, such beauty would have redeemed a little less imperiousness. she went out when the horse was heard, and looked up. a mounted figure passed between her and the sky, and drew on towards the field of sheep, the rider turning his face in receding. gabriel looked at her. it was a moment when a woman's eyes and tongue tell distinctly opposite tales. bathsheba looked full of gratitude, and she said: -- "o, gabriel, how could you serve me so unkindly!" such a tenderly-shaped reproach for his previous delay was the one speech in the language that he could pardon for not being commendation of his readiness now. gabriel murmured a confused reply, and hastened on. she knew from the look which sentence in her note had brought him. bathsheba followed to the field. gabriel was already among the turgid, prostrate forms. he had flung off his coat, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and taken from his pocket the instrument of salvation. it was a small tube or trochar, with a lance passing down the inside; and gabriel began to use it with a dexterity that would have graced a hospital surgeon. passing his hand over the sheep's left flank, and selecting the proper point, he punctured the skin and rumen with the lance as it stood in the tube; then he suddenly withdrew the lance, retaining the tube in its place. a current of air rushed up the tube, forcible enough to have extinguished a candle held at the orifice. it has been said that mere ease after torment is de- light for a time; and the countenances of these poor creatures expressed it now. forty-nine operations were successfully performed. owing to the great hurry necessitated by the far-gone state of some of the flock, gabriel missed his aim in one case, and in one only -- striking wide of the mark, and inflicting a mortal blow at once upon the suffering ewe. four had died; three recovered without an operation. the total number of sheep which had thus strayed and injured themselves so dangerously was fifty-seven. when the love-led man had ceased from his labours, bathsheba came and looked him in the face. "gabriel, will you stay on with me?" she, said, smiling winningly, and not troubling to bring her lips quite together again at the end, because there was going to be another smile soon. "i will." said gabriel. and she smiled on him again. chapter xxii the great barn and the sheep-shearers men thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not making the most of good spirits when they have them as by lacking good spirits when they are indispensable. gabriel lately, for the first time since his prostration by misfortune, had been independent in thought and vigorous in action to a marked extent -- conditions which, powerless without an opportunity as an opportunity without them is barren, would have given him a sure lift upwards when the favourable-con- junction should have occurred. but this incurable loitering beside bathsheba everdene stole his time ruinously. the spring tides were going by without floating him off, and the neap might soon come which could not. it was the first day of june, and the sheep-shearing season culminated, the landscape, even to the leanest pasture, being all health and colour. every green was young, every pore was open, and every stalk was swollen with racing currents of juice. god was palpably present in the country, and the devil had gone with the world to town. flossy catkins of the later kinds, fern-sprouts like bishops' croziers, the square-headed moschatel, the odd cuckoo-pint, -- like an apoplectic saint in a niche of malachite, -- snow-white ladies'-smocks, the toothwort, approximating to human flesh, the enchanter's night- shade, and the black-petaled doleful-bells, were among the quainter objects of the vegetable world in and about weatherbury at this teeming time; and of the animal, the metamorphosed figures of mr. jan coggan, the master-shearer; the second and third shearers, who travelled in the exercise of their calling, and do not re- quire definition by name; henery fray the fourth shearer, susan tall's husband the fifth, joseph poorgrass the sixth, young cain ball as assistant-shearer, and gabriel oak as general supervisor. none of these were clothed to any extent worth mentioning, each appearing to have hit in the matter of raiment the decent mean between a high and low caste hindoo. an angularity of lineament, and a fixity of facial machinery in general, proclaimed that serious work was the order of the day. they sheared in the great barn, called for the nonce the shearing-barn, which on ground-plan resembled a church with transepts. it not only emulated the form of the neighbouring church of the parish, but vied with it in antiquity. whether the barn had ever formed one of a group of conventual buildings nobody seemed to be aware; no trace of such surroundings remained. the vast porches at the sides, lofty enough to admit a waggon laden to its highest with corn in the sheaf, were spanned by heavy-pointed arches of stone, broadly and boldly cut, whose very simplicity was the origin of a grandeur not apparent in erections where more ornament has been attempted. the dusky, filmed, chestnut roof, braced and tied in by huge collars, curves, and diagonals, was far nobler in design, because more wealthy in material, than nine-tenths of those in our modern churches. along each side wall was a range of striding buttresses, throwing deep shadows on the spaces between them, which were perforated by lancet openings, combining in their proportions the precise requirements both of beauty and ventilation. one could say about this barn, what could hardly be said of either the church or the castle, akin to it in age and style, that the purpose which had dictated its original erection was the same with that to which it was still applied. unlike and superior to either of those two typical remnants of mediaevalism, the old barn embodied practices which had suffered no mutila- tion at the hands of time. here at least the spirit of the ancient builders was at one with the spirit of the modern beholder. standing before this abraded pile, the eye regarded its present usage, the mind-dwelt upon its past history, with a satisfied sense of functional continuity throughout -- a feeling almost of gratitude, and quite of pride, at the permanence of the idea which had heaped it up. the fact that four centuries had neither proved it to be founded on a mistake, inspired any hatred of its purpose, nor given rise to any reaction that had battered it down, invested this simple grey effort of old minds with a repose, if not a grandeur, which a too curious reflection was apt to disturb in its ecclesiastical and military compeers. for once medievalism and modernism had a common stand- point. the lanccolate windows, the time-eaten arch- stones and chamfers, the orientation of the axis, the misty chestnut work of the rafters, referred to no exploded fortifying art or worn-out religious creed. the defence and salvation of the body by daily bread is still a study, a religion, and a desire. to-day the large side doors were thrown open towards the sun to admit a bountiful light to the immediate spot of the shearers' operations, which was the wood threshing-floor in the centre, formed of thick oak, black with age and polished by the beating of flails for many generations, till it had grown as slippery and as rich in hue as the state-room floors of an elizabethan mansion. here the shearers knelt, the sun slanting in upon their bleached shirts, tanned arms, and the polished shears they flourished, causing these to bristle with a thousand rays strong enough to blind a weak-eyed man. beneath them a captive sheep lay panting, quickening its pants as misgiving merged in terror, till it quivered like the hot landscape outside. this picture of to-day in its frame of four hundred years ago did not produce that marked contrast between ancient and modern which is implied by the contrast of date. in comparison with cities, weatherbury was immutable. the citizen's then is the rustic's now. in london, twenty or thirty-years ago are old times; in paris ten years, or five; in weatherbury three or four score years were included in the mere present, and nothing less than a century set a mark on its face or tone. five decades hardly modified the cut of a gaiter, the embroidery of a smock-frock, by the breadth of a hair. ten generations failed to alter the turn of a single phrase. in these wessex nooks the busy out- sider's ancient times are only old; his old times are still new; his present is futurity. so the barn was natural to the shearers, and the shearers were in harmony with the barn. the spacious ends of the building, answering ecclesi- astically to nave and chancel extremities, were fenced off with hurdles, the sheep being all collected in a crowd within these two enclosures; and in one angle a catching- pen was formed, in which three or four sheep were continuously kept ready for the shearers to seize without loss of time. in the background, mellowed by tawny shade, were the three women, maryann money, and temperance and soberness miller, gathering up the fleeces and twisting ropes of wool with a wimble for tying them round. they were indifferently well assisted by the old maltster, who, when the malting season from october to april had passed, made himself useful upon any of the bordering farmsteads. "behind all was bathsheba, carefully watching the men to see that there was no cutting or wounding through carelessness, and that the animals were shorn close. gabriel, who flitted and hovered under her bright eyes like a moth, did not shear continuously, half his time being spent in attending to the others and selecting the sheep for them. at the present moment he was engaged in handing round a mug of mild liquor, supplied from a barrel in the corner, and cut pieces of bread and cheese. bathsheba, after throwing a glance here, a caution there, and lecturing one of the younger operators who had allowed his last finished sheep to go off among the flock without re-stamping it with her initials, came again to gabriel, as he put down the luncheon to drag a frightened ewe to his shear-station, flinging it over upon its back with a dexterous twist of the arm he lopped off the tresses about its head, and opened up the neck and collar, his mistress quietly looking on: "she blushes at the insult." murmured bathsheba, watching the pink flush which arose and overspread the neck and shoulders of the ewe where they were left bare by the clicking shears -- a flush which was enviable, for its delicacy, by many queens of coteries, and would have been creditable, for its promptness, to any woman in the world. poor gabriel's soul was fed with a luxury of content by having her over him, her eyes critically regarding his skilful shears, which apparently were going to gather up a piece of the flesh at every close, and yet never did so. like guildenstern, oak was happy in that he was not over happy. he had no wish to converse with her: that his bright lady and himself formed one group, exclusively their own, and containing no others in the world, was enough. so the chatter was all on her side. there is a loquacity that tells nothing, which was bathsheba's; and there is a silence which says much: that was gabriel's. full of this dim and temperate bliss, he went on to fling the ewe over upon her other side, covering her head with his knee, gradually running the shears line after line round her dewlap; thence about her flank and back, and finishing over the tail. "well done, and done quickly!" said bathsheba, looking at her watch as the last snip resounded. "how long, miss?" said gabriel, wiping his brow. "three-and-twenty minutes and a half since you took the first lock from its forehead. it is the first time that i have ever seen one done in less than half an hour." the clean, sleek creature arose from its fleece -- how perfectly like aphrodite rising from the foam should have been seen to be realized -- looking startled and shy at the loss of its garment, which lay on the floor in one soft cloud, united throughout, the portion visible being the inner surface only, which, never before exposed, was white as snow, and without flaw or blemish of the minutest kind. "cain ball!" "yes, mister oak; here i be!" cainy now runs forward with the tar-pot. "b. e." is newly stamped upon the shorn skin, and away the simple dam leaps, panting, over the board into the shirtless flock outside. then up comes maryann; throws the loose locks into the middle of the fleece, rolls it up, and carries it into the background as three-and-a-half pounds of unadulterated warmth for the winter enjoy- ment of persons unknown and far away, who will, however, never experience the superlative comfort derivable from the wool as it here exists, new and pure -- before the unctuousness of its nature whilst in a living state has dried, stiffened, and been washed out -- rendering it just now as superior to anything woollen as cream is superior to milk-and-water. but heartless circumstance could not leave entire gabriel's happiness of this morning. the rams, old ewes, and two-shear ewes had duly undergone their stripping, and the men were proceeding with the shear- lings and hogs, when oak's belief that she was going to stand pleasantly by and time him through another performance was painfully interrupted by farmer bold- wood's appearance in the extremest corner of the barn. nobody seemed to have perceived his entry, but there he certainly was. boldwood always carried with him a social atmosphere of his own, which everybody felt who came near him; and the talk, which bathsheba's presence had somewhat suppressed, was now totally suspended. he crossed over towards bathsheba, who turned to greet him with a carriage of perfect ease. he spoke to her in low tones, and she instinctively modulated her own to the same pitch, and her voice ultimately even caught the inflection of his. she was far from having a wish to appear mysteriously connected with him; but woman at the impressionable age gravitates to the larger body not only in her choice of words, which is apparent every day, but even in her shades of tone and humour, when the influence is great. what they conversed about was not audible to gabriel, who was too independent to get near, though too concerned to disregard. the issue of their dialogue was the taking of her hand by the courteous farmer to help her over the spreading-board into the bright june sunlight outside. standing beside the sheep already shorn, they went on talking again. concerning the flock? apparently not. gabriel theorized, not without truth, that in quiet discussion of any matter within reach of the speakers' eyes, these are usually fixed upon it. bathsheba demurely regarded a contemptible straw lying upon the ground, in a way which suggested less ovine criticism than womanly embarrassment. she became more or less red in the cheek, the blood wavering in uncertain flux and reflux over the sensitive space between ebb and flood. gabriel sheared on, constrained and sad. she left boldwood's side, and he walked up and down alone for nearly a quarter of an hour. then she reappeared in her new riding-habit of myrtle-green, which fitted her to the waist as a rind fits its fruit; and young bob coggan led -on -her mare, boldwood fetching his own horse from the tree under which it had been tied. oak's eyes could not forsake them; and in en- deavouring to continue his shearing at the same time that he watched boldwood's manner, he snipped the sheep in the groin. the animal plunged; bathsheba instantly gazed towards it, and saw the blood. "o, gabriel!" she exclaimed, with severe remon- strance you who are so strict with the other men -- see what you are doing yourself!" to an outsider there was not much to complain of in this remark; but to oak, who "knew bathsheba to be well aware that she herself was the cause of the poor ewe's wound, because she had wounded the ewe's shearer in a -- still more vital part, it had a sting which the abiding sense of his inferiority to both herself and boldwood was not calculated to heal. but a manly resolve to recognize boldly that he had no longer a lover's interest in her, helped him occasionally to conceal a feeling. "bottle!" he shouted, in an unmoved voice of routine. cainy ball ran up, the wound was anointed, and the shearing continued. boldwood gently tossed bathsheba into the saddle, and before they turned away she again spoke out to oak with the same dominative and tantalizing graciousness. "i am going now to see mr. boldwood's leicesters. take my place in the barn, gabriel, and keep the men carefully to their work." the horses' heads were put about, and they trotted away. boldwood's deep attachment was a matter of great interest among all around him; but, after having been pointed out for so many years as the perfect exemplar of thriving bachelorship, his lapse was an anticlimax somewhat resembling that of st. john long's death by consumption in the midst of his proofs that it was not a fatal disease. "that means matrimony." said temperance miller, following them out of sight with her eyes. "i reckon that's the size o't." said coggan, working along without looking up. "well, better wed over the mixen than over the moor," said laban tall, turning his sheep. henery fray spoke, exhibiting miserable eyes at the same time: "i don't see why a maid should take a husband when she's bold enough to fight her own battles, and don't want a home; for 'tis keeping another woman out. but let it be, for 'tis a pity he and she should trouble two houses." as usual with decided characters, bathsheba invari- ably provoked the criticism of individuals like henery fray. her emblazoned fault was to be too pronounced in her objections, and not sufficiently overt in her likings. we learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they reject, that give them the colours they are known by; and win the same way people are specialized by their dislikes and antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no attribute at all. henery continued in a more complaisant mood: "i once hinted my mind to her on a few things, as nearly as a battered frame dared to do so to such a froward piece. you all know, neighbours, what a man i be, and how i come down with my powerful words when my pride is boiling wi' scarn?" "we do, we do, henery." "so i said, " mistress everdene, there's places empty, and there's gifted men willing; but the spite -- no. not the spite -- i didn't say spite -- "but the villainy of the contrarikind." i said (meaning womankind), " keeps 'em out." that wasn't too strong for her, say?" "passably well put." "yes; and i would have said it, had death and salvation overtook me for it. such is my spirit when i have a mind." "a true man, and proud as a lucifer." "you see the artfulness? why, 'twas about being baily really; but i didn't put it so plain that she could understand my meaning, so i could lay it on all the stronger. that was my depth! ... however, let her marry an she will. perhaps 'tis high time. i believe farmer boldwood kissed her behind the spear-bed at the sheep-washing t'other day -- that i do." "what a lie!" said gabriel. "ah, neighbour oak -- how'st know?" said, henery, mildly. "because she told me all that passed." said oak, with a pharisaical sense that he was not as other shearers in this matter. "ye have a right to believe it." said henery, with dudgeon; "a very true right. but i mid see a little distance into things! to be long-headed enough for a baily's place is a poor mere trifle -- yet a trifle more than nothing. however, i look round upon life quite cool. do you heed me, neighbours? my words, though made as simple as i can, mid be rather deep for some heads." "o yes, henery, we quite heed ye." "a strange old piece, goodmen -- whirled about from here to yonder, as if i were nothing! a little warped, too. but i have my depths; ha, and even my great depths! i might gird at a certain shepherd, brain to brain. but no -- o no!" "a strange old piece, ye say!" interposed the maltster, in a querulous voice. "at the same time ye be no old man worth naming -- no old man at all. yer teeth bain't half gone yet; and what's a old man's standing if se be his teeth bain't gone? weren't i stale in wedlock afore ye were out of arms? 'tis a poor thing to be sixty, when there's people far past four-score -- a boast'weak as water." it was the unvaying custom in weatherbury to sink minor differences when the maltster had to be pacified. "weak as-water! yes." said jan coggan.- "malter, we feel ye to be a wonderful veteran man, and nobody can gainsay it." "nobody." said joseph poorgrass. "ye be a very rare old spectacle, malter, and we all admire ye for that gift. " "ay, and as a young man, when my senses were in prosperity, i was likewise liked by a good-few who knowed me." said the maltster. "'ithout doubt you was -- 'ithout doubt." the bent and hoary 'man was satisfied, and so apparently was henery frag. that matters should continue pleasant maryann spoke, who, what with her brown complexion, and the working wrapper of rusty linsey, had at present the mellow hue of an old sketch in oils -- notably some of nicholas poussin's: -- "do anybody know of a crooked man, or a lame, or any second-hand fellow at all that would do for poor me?" said maryann. "a perfect one i don't expect to at my time of life. if i could hear of such a thing twould do me more good than toast and ale." coggan furnished a suitable reply. oak went on with his shearing, and said not another word. pestilent moods had come, and teased away his quiet. bathsheba had shown indications of anointing him above his fellows by installing him as the bailiff that the farm imperatively required. he did not covet the post relatively to the farm: in relation to herself, as beloved by him and unmarried to another, he had coveted it. his readings of her seemed now to be vapoury and indistinct. his lecture to her was, he thought, one of the absurdest mistakes. far from coquetting with boldwood, she had trifled with himself in thus feigning that she had trifled with another. he was inwardly convinced that, in accordance with the anticipations of his easy-going and worse-educated comrades, that day would see boldwood the accepted husband of miss everdene. gabriel at this time of his life had out- grown the instinctive dislike which every christian boy has for reading the bible, perusing it now quite frequently, and he inwardly said, "i find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets!" this was mere exclamation -- the froth of the storm. he adored bathsheba just the same. "we workfolk shall have some lordly- junketing to-night." said cainy ball, casting forth his thoughts in a new direction. "this morning i see'em making the great puddens in the milking-pails -- lumps of fat as big as yer thumb, mister oak! i've never seed such splendid large knobs of fat before in the days of my life -- they never used to be bigger then a horse-bean. and there was a great black crock upon the brandish with his legs a-sticking out, but i don't know what was in within." "and there's two bushels of biffins for apple-pies," said maryann. "well, i hope to do my duty by it all." said joseph poorgrass, in a pleasant, masticating manner of anticipa- tion. "yes; victuals and drink is a cheerful thing, and gives nerves to the nerveless, if the form of words may be used. 'tis the gospel of the body, without which we perish, so to speak it." chapter xxiii eventide -- a second declaration for the shearing-supper a long table was placed on the grass-plot beside the house, the end of the table being thrust over the sill of the wide parlour window and a foot or two into the room. miss everdene sat inside the window, facing down the table. she was thus at the head without mingling with the men. this evening bathsheba was unusually excited, her red cheeks and lips contrasting lustrously with the mazy skeins of her shadowy hair. she seemed to expect assistance, and the seat at the bottom of the table was at her request left vacant until after they had begun and the duties appertaining to that end, which he did with great readiness. at this moment mr. boldwood came in at the gate, and crossed the green to bathsheba at the window. he apologized for his lateness: his arrival was evidently by arrangement. "gabriel." said she, " will you move again, please, and let mr. boldwood come there?" oak moved in silence back to his original seat. the gentleman-farmer was dressed in cheerful style, in a new coat and white waistcoat, quite contrasting with his usual sober suits of grey. inwardy, too, he was blithe, and consequently chatty to an exceptional degree. so also was bathsheba now that he had come, though the uninvited presence of pennyways, the bailiff who had been dismissed for theft, disturbed her equan- imity for a while. supper being ended, coggan began on his own private account, without reference to listeners: -- l've lost my love and l care not, i've lost my love, and l care not; i shall soon have another that's better than t'other! i've lost my love, and i care not. this lyric, when concluded, was received with a silently appreciative gaze at the table, implying that the performance, like a work by those established authors who are independent of notices in the papers, was a well-known delight which required no applause. "now, master poorgrass, your song!" said coggan. "i be all but in liquor, and the gift is wanting in me." said joseph, diminishing himself. "nonsense; wou'st never be so ungrateful, joseph -- never!" said coggan, expressing hurt feelings by an inflection of voice. "and mistress is looking hard at ye, as much as to say, "sing at once, joseph poor- grass." "faith, so she is; well, i must suffer it! ... just eye my features, and see if the tell-tale blood overheats me much, neighbours?" "no, yer blushes be quite reasonable." said coggan. "i always tries to keep my colours from rising when a beauty's eyes get fixed on me." said joseph, differently; "but if so be 'tis willed they do, they must." "now, joseph, your song, please." said bathsheba, from the window. "well, really, ma'am." he replied, in a yielding tone, "i don't know what to say. it would be a poor plain ballet of my own composure." hear, hear!" said the supper-party. poorgrass, thus assured, trilled forth a flickering yet commendable piece of sentiment, the tune of which consisted of the key-note and another, the latter being the sound chiefly dwelt upon. this was so successful that he rashly plunged into a second in the same breath, after a few false starts: -- i sow'-ed th'-e i sow'-ed i sow'-ed the'-e seeds' of love', i-it was' all' i'-in the'-e spring', i-in a'-pril', ma'-ay, a'-nd sun'-ny' june', when sma'-all bi'-irds they' do' sing. "well put out of hand." said coggan, at the end of the verse. `they do sing' was a very taking paragraph." "ay; and there was a pretty place at "seeds of love." and 'twas well heaved out. though "love " is a nasty high corner when a man's voice is getting crazed. next verse, master poorgrass." but during this rendering young bob coggan ex- hibited one of those anomalies which will afflict little people when other persons are particularly serious: in trying to check his laughter, he pushed down his throat as much of the tablecloth as he could get hold of, when, after continuing hermetically sealed for a short time, his mirth burst out through his nose. joseph perceived it, and with hectic cheeks of indignation instantly ceased singing. coggan boxed bob's ears immediately. "go on, joseph -- go on, and never mind the young scamp." said coggan. "'tis a very catching ballet. now then again -- the next bar; i'll help ye to flourish up the shrill notes where yer wind is rather wheezy: -- o the wi'-il-lo'-ow tree' will' twist', and the wil'-low' tre'-ee wi'ill twine'. but the singer could not be set going again. bob coggan was sent home for his ill manners, and tran- quility was restored by jacob smallbury, who volunteered a ballad as inclusive and interminable as that with which the worthy toper old silenus amused on a similar occasion the swains chromis and mnasylus, and other jolly dogs of his day. it was still the beaming time of evening, though night was stealthily making itself visible low down upon the ground, the western lines of light taking the earth without alighting upon it to any extent, or illuminating the dead levels at all. the sun had crept round the tree as a last effort before death, and then began to sink, the shearers' lower parts becoming steeped in embrowning twilight, whilst their heads and shoulders were still enjoying day, touched with a yellow of self- sustained brilliancy that seemed inherent rather than acquired. the sun went down in an ochreous mist; but they sat, and talked on, and grew as merry as the gods in homer's heaven. bathsheba still remained enthroned inside the window, and occupied herself in knitting, from which she sometimes looked up to view the fading scene outside. the slow twilight expanded and enveloped them completely before the signs of moving were shown. gabriel suddenly missed farmer boldwood from his place at the bottom of the table. how long he had been gone oak did not know; but he had apparently withdrawn into the encircling dusk. whilst he was thinking of this, liddy brought candles into the back part of the room overlooking the shearers, and their lively new flames shone down the table and over the men, and dispersed among the green shadows behind. bathsheba's form, still in its original position, was now again distinct between their eyes and the light, which revealed that boldwood had gone inside the room, and was sitting near her. next came the question of the evening. would miss everdene sing to them the song she always sang so charmingly -- " the banks of allan water" -- before they went home? after a moment's consideration bathsheba assented, beckoning to gabriel, who hastened up into the coveted atmosphere. "have you brought your flute? " she whispered. "yes, miss." "play to my singing, then." she stood up in the window-opening, facing the men, the candles behind her, gabriel on her right hand, immediately outside the sash-frame. boldwood had drawn up on her left, within the room. her singing was soft and rather tremulous at first, but it soon swelled to a steady clearness. subsequent events caused one of the verses to be remembered for many months, and even years, by more than one of those who were gathered there: -- for his bride a soldier sought her, and a winning tongue had he: on the banks of allan water none was gay as she! in addition to the dulcet piping of gabriel's flute, boldwood supplied a bass in his customary profound voice, uttering his notes so softly, however, as to abstain entirely from making anything like an ordinary duet of the song; they rather formed a rich unexplored shadow, which threw her tones into relief. the shearers reclined against each other as at suppers in the early ages of the world, and so silent and absorbed were they that her breathing could almost be heard between the bars; and at the end of the ballad, when the last tone loitered on to an inexpressible close, there arose that buzz of pleasure which is the attar of applause. it is scarcely necessary to state that gabriel could not avoid noting the farmer's bearing to-night towards their entertainer. yet there was nothing exceptional in his actions beyond what appertained to his time of performing them. it was when the rest were all looking away that boldwood observed her; when they regarded her he turned aside; when they thanked or praised he was silent; when they were inattentive he murmured his thanks. the meaning lay in the difference between actions, none of which had any meaning of itself; and the necessity of being jealous, which lovers are troubled with, did not lead oak to underestimate these signs. bathsheba then wished them good-night, withdrew from the window, and retired to the back part of the room, boldwood thereupon closing the sash and the shutters, and remaining inside with her. oak wandered away under the quiet and scented trees. recovering from the softer impressions produced by bathsheba's voice, the shearers rose to leave, coggan turning to pennyways as he pushed back the bench to pass out: -- "i like to give praise where praise is due, and the man deserves it -- that 'a do so." he remarked, looking at the worthy thief, as if he were the masterpiece of some world-renowned artist. "i'm sure i should never have believed it if we hadn't proved it, so to allude," hiccupped joseph poorgrass, "that every cup, every one of the best knives and forks, and every empty bottle be in their place as perfect now as at the beginning, and not one stole at all. "i'm sure i don't deserve half the praise you give me." said the virtuous thief, grimly. "well, i'll say this for pennyways." added coggan, "that whenever he do really make up his mind to do a noble thing in the shape of a good action, as i could see by his face he. did to-night afore sitting down, he's generally able to carry it out. yes, i'm proud to say. neighbours, that he's stole nothing at all. "well." -- 'tis an honest deed, and we thank ye for it, pennyways." said joseph; to which opinion the remainder of the company subscribed unanimously. at this time of departure, when nothing more was visible of the inside of the parlour than a thin and still chink of light between the shutters, a passionate scene was in course of enactment there." miss everdene and boldwood were alone. her cheeks had lost a great deal of their healthful fire from the very seriousness of her position; but her eye was bright with the excitement of a triumph -- though it was a triumph which had rather been contemplated than desired. she was standing behind a low arm-chair, from which she had just risen, and he was kneeling in it -- inclining himself over its back towards her, and holding her hand in both his own. his body moved restlessly, and it was with what keats daintily calls a too happy happiness. this unwonted abstraction by love of all dignity from a man of whom it had ever seemed the chief component, was, in its distressing incongruity, a pain to her which quenched much of the pleasure she derived from the proof that she was idolized. "i will try to love you." she was saying, in a trembling voice quite unlike her usual self-confidence. "and if i can believe in any way that i shall make you a good wife i shall indeed be willing to marry you. but, mr. boldwood, hesitation on so high a matter is honourable in any woman, and i don't want to give a solemn promise to-night. i would rather ask you to wait a few weeks till i can see my situation better."but you have every reason to believe that then -- -- " "i have every reason to hope that at the end of the five or six weeks, between this time and harvest, that you say you are going to be away from home, i shall be able to promise to be your wife." she said, firmly. "but remember this distinctly, i don't promise yet." "it is enough i don't ask more. i can wait on those dear words. and now, miss everdene, good- night!" "good-night." she said, graciously -- almost tenderly; and boldwood withdrew with a serene smile. bathsheba knew more of him now; he had entirely bared his heart before her, even until he had almost worn in her eyes the sorry look of a grand bird without the feathers that make it grand. she had been awe- struck at her past temerity, and was struggling to make amends without thinking whether the sin quite deserved the penalty she was schooling herself to pay. to have brought all this about her ears was terrible; but after a while the situation was not without a fearful joy. the facility with which even the most timid woman some- times acquire a relish for the dreadful when that is amalgamated with a little triumph, is marvellous. chapter xxiv the same night -- the fir plantation among the multifarious duties which bathsheba had voluntarily imposed upon herself by dispensing with the services of a bailiff, was the particular one of looking round the homestead before going to bed, to see that all was right and safe for the night. gabriel had almost constantly preceded her in this tour every evening, watching her affairs as carefully as any specially appointed officer of surveillance could have done; but this tender devotion was to a great extent unknown to his mistress, and as much as was known was somewhat thanklessly received. women are never tired of bewailing man's fickleness in love, but they only seem to snub his con- stancy. as watching is best done invisibly, she usually carried a dark lantern in her hand, and every now and then turned on the light to examine nooks and corners with the coolness of a metropolitan policeman. this cool- ness may have owed its existence not so much to her fearlessness of expected danger as to her freedom from the suspicion of any; her worst anticipated discovery being that a horse might not be well bedded, the fowls not all in, or a door not closed. this night the buildings were inspected as usual, and she went round to the farm paddock. here the only sounds disturbing the stillness were steady munch- ings of many mouths, and stentorian breathings from all but invisible noses, ending in snores and puffs like the blowing of bellows slowly. then the munching would recommence, when the lively imagination might assist the eye to discern a group of pink-white nostrils, shaped as caverns, and very clammy and humid on their sur- faces, not exactly pleasant to the touch until one got used to them; the mouths beneath having a great partiality for closing upon any loose end of bathsheba's apparel which came within reach of their tongues. above each of these a still keener vision suggested a brown forehead and two staring though not unfriendly eyes, and above all a pair of whitish crescent-shaped horns like two particularly new moons, an occasional stolid " moo!" proclaiming beyond the shade of a doubt that these phenomena were the features and persons of daisy, whitefoot, bonny-lass, jolly-o, spot, twinkle-eye, etc., etc. -- the respectable dairy of devon cows belonging to bathsheba aforesaid. her way back to the house was by a path through a young plantation of tapering firs, which had been planted some years earlier to shelter the premises from the north wind. by reason of the density of the interwoven foliage overhead, it was gloomy there at cloudless noontide, twilight in the evening, dark as midnight at dusk, and black as the ninth plague of egypt at midnight. to describe the spot is to call it a vast, low, naturally formed hall, the plumy ceiling of which was supported by slender pillars of living wood, the floor being covered with a soft dun carpet of dead spikelets and mildewed cones, with a tuft of grass-blades here and there. this bit of the path was always the crux of the night's ramble, though, before starting, her apprehen- sions of danger were not vivid enough to lead her to take a companion. slipping along here covertly as time, bathsheba fancied she could hear footsteps enter- ing the track at the opposite end. it was certainly a rustle of footsteps. her own instantly fell as gently as snowflakes. she reassured herself by a remembrance that the path was public, and that the traveller was probably some villager returning home; regetting, at the same time, that the meeting should be about to occur in the darkest point of her route, even though only just outside her own door. the noise approached, came close, and a figure was apparently on the point of gliding past her when some- thing tugged at her skirt and pinned it forcibly to the ground. the instantaneous check nearly threw bath- sheba off her balance. in recovering she struck against warm clothes and buttons. "a rum start, upon my soul!" said a masculine voice, a foot or so above her head. "have i hurt you, mate?" "no." said bathsheba, attempting to shrink a way. "we have got hitched together somehow, i think." "yes." "are you a woman?" "yes." "a lady, i should have said." "it doesn't matter." "i am a man." "oh!" bathsheba softly tugged again, but to no purpose. "is that a dark lantern you have? i fancy so." said the man. "yes." "if you'll allow me i'll open it, and set you free." a hand seized the lantern, the door was opened, the rays burst out from their prison, and bathsheba beheld her position with astonishment. the man to whom she was hooked was brilliant in brass and scarlet. he was a soldier. his sudden appearance was to darkness what the sound of a trumpet is to silense. gloom, the genius loci at all times hitherto, was now totally overthrown, less by the lantern-light than by what the lantern lighted. the contrast of this revelation with her anticipations of some sinister figure in sombre garb was so great that it had upon her the effect of a fairy transformation. it was immediately apparent that the military man's spur had become entangled in the gimp which decorated the skirt of her dress. he caught a view of her face. "i'll unfasten you in one moment, miss." he said, with new-born gallantry. "o no -- i can do it, thank you." she hastily replied, and stooped for the performance. the unfastening was not such a trifling affair. the rowel of the spur had so wound itself among the gimp cords in those few moments, that separation was likely to be a matter of time. he too stooped, and the lantern standing on the ground betwixt them threw the gleam from its open side among the fir-tree needles and the blades of long damp grass with the effect of a large glowworm. it radiated upwards into their faces, and sent over half the planta- tion gigantic shadows of both man and woman, each dusky shape becoming distorted and mangled upon the tree-trunks till it wasted to nothing. he looked hard into her eyes when she raised them for a moment; bathsheba looked down again, for his gaze was too strong to be received point-blank with her own. but she had obliquely noticed that he was young and slim, and that he wore three chevrons upon his sleeve. bathsheba pulled again. "you are a prisoner, miss; it is no use blinking the matter." said the soldier, drily. "i must cut your dress if you are in such a hurry." "yes -- please do!" she exclaimed, helplessly. " "it wouldn't be necessary if you could wait a moment," and he unwound a cord from the little wheel. she withdrew her own hand, but, whether by accident or design, he touched it. bathsheba was vexed; she hardly knew why. his unravelling went on, but it nevertheless seemed coming to no end. she looked at him again. "thank you for the sight of such a beautiful face!" said the young sergeant, without ceremony. she coloured with embarrassment. "'twas un- willingly shown." she replied, stiffly, and with as much dignity -- which was very little -- as she could infuse into a position of captivity "i like you the better for that incivility, miss." he said. "i should have liked -- i wish -- you had never shown yourself to me by intruding here!" she pulled again, and the gathers of her dress began to give way like liliputian musketry. "i deserve the chastisement your words give me. but why should such a fair and dutiful girl have such an aversion to her father's sex?" "go on your way, please." "what, beauty, and drag you after me? do but look; i never saw such a tangle!" "o, 'tis shameful of you; you have been making it worse on purpose to keep me here -- you have!" "indeed, i don't think so." said the sergeant, with a merry twinkle. "i tell you you have!" she exclaimed, in high temper. i insist upon undoing it. now, allow me!" "certainly, miss; i am not of steel." he added a sigh which had as much archness in it as a sigh could possess without losing its nature altogether. "i am thankful for beauty, even when 'tis thrown to me like a bone to a dog. these moments will be over too soon!" she closed her lips in a determined silence. bathsheba was revolving in her mind whether by a bold and desperate rush she could free herself at the risk of leaving her skirt bodily behind her. the thought was too dreadful. the dress -- which she had put on to appear stately at the supper -- was the head and front of her wardrobe; not another in her stock became her so well. what woman in bathsheba's position, not naturally timid, and within call of her retainers, would have bought escape from a dashing soldier at so dear a price? "all in good time; it will soon be done, i perceive," said her cool friend. "this trifling provokes, and -- and -- -- " "not too cruel!" "-- insults me!" "it is done in order that i may have the pleasure of apologizing to so charming a woman, which i straightway do most humbly, madam." he said, bowing low. bathsheba really knew not what to say. "i've seen a good many women in my time, continued the young man in a murmur, and more thoughtfully than hitherto, critically regarding her bent head at the same time; "but i've never seen a woman so beautiful as you. take it or leave it -- be offended or like it -- i don't care." "who are you, then, who can so well afford to despise opinion?" "no stranger. sergeant troy. i am staying in this place. -- there! it is undone at last, you see. your light fingers were more eager than mine. i wish it had been the knot of knots, which there's no untying!" this was worse and worse. she started up, and so did he. how to decently get away from him -- that was her difficulty now. she sidled off inch by inch, the lantern in her hand, till she could see the redness of his coat no longer. "ah, beauty; good-bye!" he said. she made no reply, and, reaching a distance of twenty or thirty yards, turned about, and ran indoors. liddy had just retired to rest. in ascending to her own chamber, bathsheba opened the girl's door an inch or two, and, panting, said -- "liddy, is any soldier staying in the village -- sergeant somebody -- rather gentlemanly for a sergeant, and good looking -- a red coat with blue facings?" "no, miss ... no, i say; but really it might be sergeant troy home on furlough, though i have not seen him. he was here once in that way when the regiment was at casterbridge." "yes; that's the name. had he a moustache -- no whiskers or beard?" "he had." "what kind of a person is he?" "o! miss -- i blush to name it -- a gay man! but i know him to be very quick and trim, who might have made his thousands, like a squire. such a clever young dandy as he is! he's a doctor's son by name, which is a great deal; and he's an earl's son by nature!" "which is a great deal more. fancy! is it true?" "yes. and, he was brought up so well, and sent to casterbridge grammar school for years and years. learnt all languages while he was there; and it was said he got on so far that he could take down chinese in shorthand; but that i don't answer for, as it was only reported. however, he wasted his gifted lot, and listed a soldier; but even then he rose to be a sergeant without trying at all. ah! such a blessing it is to be high-born; nobility of blood will shine out even in the ranks and files. and is he really come home, miss?" "i believe so. good-night, liddy." after all, how could a cheerful wearer of skirts be permanently offended with the man? there are occasions when girls like bathsheba will put up with a great deal of unconventional behaviour. when they want to be praised, which is often, when they want to be mastered, which is sometimes; and when they want no nonsense, which is seldom. just now the first feeling was in the ascendant with bathsheba, with a dash of the second. moreover, by chance or by devilry, the ministrant was antecedently made interesting by being a handsome stranger who had evidently seen better days. so she could not clearly decide whether it was her opinion that he had insulted her or not. " "was ever anything so odd!" she at last exclaimed to herself, in her own room. "and was ever anything so meanly done as what i did do to sulk away like that from a man who was only civil and kind!" clearly she did not think his barefaced praise of her person an insult now. it was a fatal omission of boldwood's that he had never once told her she was beautiful. chapter xxv the new acquaintance described idiosyncrasy and vicissitude had combined to stamp sergeant troy as an exceptional being. he was a man to whom memories were an in- cumbrance, and anticipations a superfluity. simply feeling, considering, and caring for what was before his eyes, he was vulnerable only in the present. his out- look upon time was as a transient flash of the eye now and then: that projection of consciousness into days gone by and to come, which makes the past a synonym for the pathetic and the future a word for circum- spection, was foreign to troy. with him the past was yesterday; the future, to-morrow; never, the day after. on this account he might, in certain lights, have been regarded as one of the most fortunate of his order. for it may be argued with great plausibility that reminiscence is less an endowment than a disease, and that expectation in its only comfortable form -- that of absolute faith -- is practically an impossibility; whilst in the form of hope and the secondary compounds, patience, impatience, resolve, curiosity, it is a constant fluctuation between pleasure and pain. sergeant troy, being entirely innocent of the practice of expectation, was never disappointed. to set against this negative gain there may have been some positive losses from a certain narrowing of the higher tastes and sensations which it entailed. but limitation of the capacity is never recognized as a loss by the loser therefrom: in this attribute moral or aesthetic poverty contrasts plausibly with material, since those who suffer do not mind it, whilst those who mind it soon cease to suffer. it is not a denial of anything to have been always without it, and what troy had never enjoyed he did not miss; but, being fully conscious that what sober people missed he enjoyed, his capacity, though really less, seemed greater than theirs. he was moderately truthful towards men, but to women lied like a cretan -- a system of ethics above all others calculated to win popularity at the first flush of admission into lively society; and the possibility of the favour gained being transitory had reference only to the future. he never passed the line which divides the spruce vices from the ugly; and hence, though his morals had hardly been applauded, disapproval of them" had fre- quently been tempered with a smile. this treatment had led to his becoming a sort of regrater of other men's gallantries, to his own aggrandizement as a corinthian, rather than to the moral profit of his hearers. his reason and his propensities had seldom any reciprocating influence, having separated by mutual consent long ago: thence it sometimes happened that, while his intentions were as honourable as could be wished, any particular deed formed a dark background which threw them into fine relief. the sergeant's vicious phases being the offspring of impulse, and his virtuous phases of cool meditation, the latter had a modest tendency to be oftener heard of than seen. troy was full of activity, but his activities were less of a locomotive than a vegetative nature; and, never being based upon any original choice of foundation or direc- tion, they were exercised on whatever object chance might place in their way. hence, whilst he sometimes reached the brilliant in speech because that -was spontaneous, he fell below the commonplace in action, from inability to guide incipient effort. he had a quick comprehension and considerable force of char- acter; but, being without the power to combine them, the comprehension became engaged with trivialities whilst waiting for the will to direct it, and the force wasted itself in useless grooves through unheeding the comprehension. he was a fairly well-educated man for one of middle class -- exceptionally well educated for a common soldier. he spoke fluently and unceasingly. he could in this way be one thing and seem another: for instance, he could speak of love and think of dinner; call on the intend to owe. the wondrous power of flattery in passados at woman is a perception so universal as to be remarked upon by many people almost as automatically as they repeat a proverb, or say that they are christians and the like, without thinking much of the enormous corollaries which spring from the proposition. still less is it acted upon for the good of the complemental being alluded to. with the majority such an opinion is shelved with all those trite aphorisms which require some catastrophe to bring their tremendous meanings thoroughly home. when expressed with some amount of reflectiveness it seems co-ordinate with a belief that this flattery must be reasonable to be effective. it is to the credit of men that few attempt to settle the question by experi- ment, and it is for their happiness, perhaps, that accident has never settled it for them. nevertheless, that a male dissembler who by deluging her with untenable fictions charms the female wisely, may acquire powers reaching to the extremity of perdition, is a truth taught to many by unsought and wringing occurrences. and some profess to have attained to the same knowledge by experiment as aforesaid, and jauntily continue their indulgence in such experiments with terrible effect. sergeant troy was one. he had been known to observe casually that in dealing with womankind the only alternative to flattery was cursing and swearing. there was no third method. "treat them fairly, and you are a lost man." he would say. this philosopher's public appearance in weatherbury promptly followed his arrival there. a week or two after the shearing, bathsheba, feeling a nameless relief of spirits on account of boldwood's absence, approached her hayfields and looked over the hedge towards the haymakers. they consisted in about equal proportions of gnarled and flexuous forms, the former being the men, the latter the women, who wore tilt bonnets covered with nankeen, which hung in a curtain upon their shoulders. coggan and mark clark were mowing in a less forward meadow, clark humming a tune to the strokes of his scythe, to which jan made no attempt to keep time with his. in the first mead they were already loading hay, the women raking it into cocks and windrows, and the men tossing it upon the waggon. from behind the waggon a bright scarlet spot emerged, and went on loading unconcernedly with the rest. it was the gallant sergeant, who had come hay- making for pleasure; and nobody could deny that he was doing the mistress of the farm real knight-service by this voluntary contribution of his labour at a busy time. as soon as she had entered the field troy saw her, and sticking his pitchfork into the ground and picking up his crop or cane, he came forward. bathsheba blushed with half-angry embarrassment, and adjusted her eyes as well as her feet to the direct line of her path. chapter xxvi scene on the verge of the hay-mead "ah, miss everdene!" said the sergeant, touching his diminutive cap. "little did i think it was you i was speaking to the other night. and yet, if i had reflected, the "queen of the corn-market" (truth is truth at any hour of the day or night, and i heard you so named in casterbridge yesterday), the "queen of the corn-market." i say, could be no other woman. i step across now to beg your forgiveness a thousand times for having been led by my feelings to express myself too strongly for a stranger. to be sure i am no stranger to the place -- i am sergeant troy, as i told you, and i have assisted your uncle in these fields no end of times when i was a lad. i have been doing the same for you today." "i suppose i must thank you for that, sergeant troy." said the queen of the corn-market, in an in- differently grateful tone. the sergeant looked hurt and sad. "indeed you must not, miss everdene." he said. "why could you think such a thing necessary?" "i am glad it is not." "why? if i may ask without offence." "because i don't much want to thank you for any" thing." "i am afraid i have made a hole with my tongue that my heart will never mend. o these intolerable times: that ill-luck should follow a man for honestly telling a woman she is beautiful! 'twas the most i said -- you must own that; and the least i could say -- that i own myself." "there is some talk i could do without more easily than money." "indeed. that remark is a sort of digression." "no. it means that i would rather have your room than your company." "and i would rather have curses from you than kisses from any other woman; so i'll stay here." bathsheba was absolutely speechless. and yet she could not help feeling that the assistance he was render- ing forbade a harsh repulse. "well." continued troy, "i suppose there is a praise which is rudeness, and that may be mine. at the same time there is a treatment which is injustice, and that may be yours. because a plain blunt man, who has never been taught concealment, speaks out his mind without exactly intending it, he's to be snapped off like the son of a sinner." "indeed there's no such case between us." she said, turning away. "i don't allow strangers to be bold and impudent -- even in praise of me." "ah -- it is not the fact but the method which offends you." he said, carelessly. "but i have the sad satis- faction of knowing that my words, whether pleasing or offensive, are unmistakably true. would you have had me look at you, and tell my acquaintance that you are quite a common-place woman, to save you the embar- rassment of being stared at if they come near you? not i. i couldn't tell any such ridiculous lie about a beauty to encourage a single woman in england in too excessive a modesty." "it is all pretence -- what you are saying!" exclaimed bathsheba, laughing in spite of herself at the sergeant's sly method. "you have a rare invention, sergeant troy. why couldn't you have passed by me that night, and said nothing? -- that was all i meant to reproach you for." "because i wasn't going to. half the pleasure of a feeling lies in being able to express it on the spur of the moment, and i let out mine. it would have been just the same if you had been the reverse person -- ugly and old -- i should have exclaimed about it in the same way. " "how long is it since you have been so afflicted with strong feeling, then?" "oh, ever since i was big enough to know loveliness from deformity." "'tis to be hoped your sense of the difference you speak of doesn't stop at faces, but extends to morals as well. " "i won't speak of morals or religion -- my own or anybody else's. though perhaps i should have been a very good christian if you pretty women hadn't made me an idolater." bathsheba moved on to hide the irrepressible dimp- lings of merriment. troy followed, whirling his crop. "but -- miss everdene -- you do forgive me?" "hardly. " "why?" "you say such things." "i said you were beautiful, and i'll say so still; for, by -- so you are! the most beautiful ever i saw, or may i fall dead this instant! why, upon my -- -- " "don't -- don't! i won't listen to you -- you are so profane!" she said, in a restless state between distress at hearing him and a penchant to hear more. "i again say you are a most fascinating woman. there's nothing remarkable in my saying so, is there? i'm sure the fact is evident enough. miss everdene, my opinion may be too forcibly let out to please you, and, for the matter of that, too insignificant to convince you, but surely it is honest, and why can't it be ex- cused? " "because it -- it isn't a correct one." she femininely murmured. "o, fie -- fie-! am i any worse for breaking the third of that terrible ten than you for breaking the ninth?" "well, it doesn't seem quite true to me that i am fascinating." she replied evasively. "not so to you: then i say with all respect that, if so, it is owing to your modesty, miss everdene. but surely you must have been told by everybody of what everybody notices? and you should take their words for it." "they don't say so exactly." "o yes, they must!" "well, i mean to my face, as you do." she went on, allowing herself to be further lured into a conversation that intention had rigorously forbidden. "but you know they think so?" "no -- that is -- i certainly have heard liddy say they do, but -- --" she paused. capitulation -- that was the purport of the simple reply, guarded as it was -- capitulation, unknown to her- self. never did a fragile tailless sentence convey a more perfect meaning. the careless sergeant smiled within himself, and probably too the devil smiled from a loop-hole in tophet, for the moment was the turning- point of a career. her tone and mien signified beyond mistake that the seed which was to lift the foundation had taken root in the chink: the remainder was a mere question of time and natural changes. "there the truth comes out!" said the soldier, in reply. "never tell me that a young lady can live in a buzz of admiration without knowing something about it. ah." well, miss everdene, you are -- pardon my blunt way -- you are rather an injury to our race than other- wise. "how -- indeed?" she said, opening her eyes. "o, it is true enough. i may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb (an old country saying, not of much account, but it will do for a rough soldier), and so i will speak my mind, regardless of your pleasure, and without hoping or intending to get your pardon. why, miss everdene, it is in this manner that your good looks may do more. harm than good in the world." the sergeant looked down the mead in critical abstrac- ion. "probably some one man on an average falls in" love, with each ordinary woman. she can marry him: he is content, and leads a useful life. such women as you a hundred men always covet -- your eyes will be- witch scores on scores into an unavailing fancy for you you can only marry one of that many. out of these say twenty will endeavour to. drown the bitterness of espised love in drink; twenty more will mope away their lives without a wish or attempt to make a mark in he world, because they have no ambition apart from their attachment to you; twenty more -- the susceptible person myself possibly among them -- will be always draggling after you, getting where they may just see you, doing desperate things. men are such constant fools! the rest may try to get over their passion with more or less success. but all these men will be saddened. and not only those ninety-nine men, but the ninety-nine women they might have married are saddened with them. there's my tale. that's why i say that a woman so charming as yourself, miss ever- dene, is hardly a blessing to her race." the handsome sergeant's features were during this speech as rigid and stern as john knox's in addressing his gay young queen. seeing she made no reply, he said, "do you read french?" "no; i began, but when i got to the verbs, father died." she said simply. "i do -- when i have an opportunity, which latterly has not been often (my mother was a parisienne) -- and there's a proverb they have, qui aime bien chatie bien -- "he chastens who loves well." do you understand me? "ah!" she replied, and there was even a little tremu- lousness in the usually cool girl's voice; "if you can only fight half as winningly as you can talk, you are able to make a pleasure of a bayonet wound!" and then poor bathsheba instantly perceived her slip in making this admission: in hastily trying to retrieve it, she went from bad to worse. "don't, however, suppose that i derive any pleasure from what you tell me." "i know you do not -- i know it perfectly." said troy, with much hearty conviction on the exterior of his face: and altering the expression to moodiness; "when a dozen men arfe ready to speak tenderly to you, and give the admiration you deserve without adding the warning you need, it stands to reason that my poor rough-and-ready mixture of praise and blame cannot convey much pleasure. fool as i may be, i am not so conceited as to suppose that!" "i think you -- are conceited, nevertheless." said bathsheba, looking askance at a reed she was fitfully pulling with one hand, having lately grown feverish under the soldier's system of procedure -- not because the nature of his cajolery was entirely unperceived, but because its vigour was overwhelming. "i would not own it to anybody else -- nor do i exactly to you. still, there might have been some self- conceit in my foolish supposition the other night. i knew that what i said in admiration might be an opinion too often forced upon you to give any pleasure but i certainly did think that the kindness of your nature might prevent you judging an uncontrolled tongue harshly -- which you have done -- and thinking badly of me and wounding me this morning, when i am working hard to save your hay." "well, you need not think more of that: perhaps you did not mean to be rude to me by speaking out your mind: indeed, i believe you did not." said the shrewd woman, in painfully innocent earnest. "and i thank you for giving help here. but -- but mind you don't speak to me again in that way, or in any other, unless i speak to you." "o, miss bathsheba! that is to hard!" "no, it isn't. why is it?" "you will never speak to me; for i shall not be here long. i am soon going back again to the miser- able monotony of drill -- and perhaps our regiment will be ordered out soon. and yet you take away the one little ewe-lamb of pleasure that i have in this dull life of mine. well, perhaps generosity is not a woman's most marked characteristic." "when are you going from here?" she asked, with some interest. "in a month." "but how can it give you pleasure to speak to me?" "can you ask miss everdene -- knowing as you do -- what my offence is based on?" "i you do care so much for a silly trifle of that kind, then, i don't mind doing it." she uncertainly and doubtingly answered. "but you can't really care for a word from me? you only say so -- i think you only say so." "that's unjust -- but i won't repeat the remark. i am too gratified to get such a mark of your friendship at any price to cavil at the tone. i do miss everdene, care for it. you may think a man foolish to want a mere word -- just a good morning. perhaps he is -- i don't know. but you have never been a man looking upon a woman, and that woman yourself." "well." "then you know nothing of what such an experience is like -- and heaven forbid that you ever should!" "nonsense, flatterer! what is it like? i am interested in knowing." "put shortly, it is not being able to think, hear, or look in any direction except one without wretchedness, nor there without torture." "ah, sergeant, it won't do -- you are pretending!" she said, shaking her head." your words are too dashing to be true." "i am not, upon the honour of a soldier" "but why is it so? -- of course i ask for mere pas- time." because you are so distracting -- and i am so distracted. " "you look like it." "i am indeed." "why, you only saw me the other night!" "that makes no difference. the lightning works in- stantaneously. i loved you then, at once -- as i do now." bathsheba surveyed him curiously, from the feet upward, as high as she liked to venture her glance, which was not quite so high as his eyes. "you cannot and you don"t." she said demurely. "there is-no such sudden feeling in people. i won't listen to you any longer. hear me, i wish i knew what o'clock it is -- i am going -- i have wasted too much time here already!" the sergeant looked at his watch and told her. "what, haven't you a watch, miss?" he inquired. "i have not just at present -- i am about to get a new one." "no. you shall be given one. yes -- you shall. a gift, miss everdene -- a gift." and before she knew what the young -- man was intending, a heavy gold watch was in her hand. "it is an unusually good one for a man like me to possess." he quietly said. "that watch has a history. press the spring and open the back." she did so. "what do you see?" "a crest and a motto." "a coronet with five points, and beneath, cedit amor rebus -- "love yields to circumstance." it's the motto of the earls of severn. that watch belonged to the last lord, and was given to my mother's husband, a medical man, for his use till i came of age, when it was to be given to me. it was all the fortune that ever i inherited. that watch has regulated imperial interests in its time -- the stately ceremonial, the courtly assigna- tion, pompous travels, and lordly sleeps. now it is yours. "but, sergeant troy, i cannot take this -- i cannot!" she exclaimed, with round-eyed wonder. "a gold watch! what are you doing? don't be such a dissembler!" the sergeant retreated to avoid receiving back his gift, which she held out persistently towards him. bathsheba followed as he retired. "keep it -- do, miss everdene -- keep it!" said the erratic child of impulse. "the fact of your possessing it makes it worth ten times as much to me. a more plebeian one will answer my purpose just as well, and the pleasure of knowing whose heart my old one beats against -- well, i won't speak of that. it is in far worthier hands than ever it has been in before." "but indeed i can't have it!" she said, in a perfect simmer of distress. "o, how can you do such a thing; that is if you really mean it! give me your dead father's watch, and such a valuable one! you should not be so reckless, indeed, sergeant troy!" "i loved my father: good; but better, i love you more. that's how i can do it." said the sergeant, with an intonation of such exquisite fidelity to nature that it. was evidently not all acted now. her beauty, which, whilst it had been quiescent, he had praised in jest, had in its animated phases moved him to earnest; and though his seriousness was less than she imagined, it was probably more than he imagined himself. bathsheba was brimming with agitated bewilderment, and she said, in half-suspicious accents of feeling, "can it be! o, how can it be, that you care for me, and so suddenly,! you have seen so little of me: i may not be really so -- so nice-looking as i seem to you. please, do take it; o, do! i cannot and will not have it. believe me, your generosity is too great. i have never done you a single kindness, and why should you be so kind to me?" a factitious reply had been again upon his lips, but it was again suspended, and he looked at her with an arrested eye. the truth was, that as she now stood -- excited, wild, and honest as the day -- her alluring beauty bore out so fully the epithets he had bestowed upon it that he was quite startled at his temerity in advancing them as false. he said mechanically, "ah, why?" and continued to look at her. "and my workfolk see me following you about the field, and are wondering. o, this is dreadful!" she went on, unconscious of the transmutation she was effecting. "i did not quite mean you to accept it at first, for it as my one poor patent of nobility." he broke out, bluntly; "but, upon my soul, i wish you would now. without any shamming, come! don't deny me the happiness of wearing it for my sake? but you are too lovely even to care to be kind as others are." "no, no; don"t say so! i have reasons for reserve which i cannot explain." "bet it be, then, let it be." he said, receiving back the watch at last; "i must be leaving you now. and will you speak to me for these few weeks of my stay?" "indeed i will. yet, i don't know if i will! o, why did you come and disturb me so!" "perhaps in setting a gin, i have caught myself. such things have happened. well, will you let me work in your fields?" he coaxed. "yes, i suppose so; if it is any pleasure to you." "miss everdene, i thank you. "no, no." "good-bye!" the sergeant brought his hand to the cap on the slope of his head, saluted, and returned to the distant group of haymakers. bathsheba could not face the haymakers now. her heart erratically flitting hither and thither from per- plexed excitement, hot, and almost tearful, she retreated homeward, murmuring, o, what have i done! what does it mean! i wish i knew how much of it was true! chapter xxvii hiving the bees the weatherbury bees were late in their swarming this year. it was in the latter part of june, and the day after the interview with troy in the hayfield, that bathsheba was standing in her garden, watching a swarm in the air and guessing their probable settling place. not only were they late this year, but unruly. sometimes through- out a whole season all the swarms would alight on the lowest attainable bough -- such as part of a currant-bush or espalier apple-tree; next year they would, with just the same unanimity, make straight off to the uppermost member of some tall, gaunt costard, or quarrenden, and there defy all invaders who did not come armed with ladders and staves to take them. this was the case at present. bathsheba's eyes, shaded by one hand, were following the ascending multitude against the unexplorable stretch of blue till they ultimately halted by one of the unwieldy trees spoken of. a process somewhat analogous to that of alleged formations of the universe, time and times ago, was observable. the bustling swarm had swept the sky in a scattered and uniform haze, which now thickened to a nebulous centre: this glided on to a bough and grew still denser, till it formed a solid black spot upon the light. the men and women being all busily engaged in saving the hay -- even liddy had left the house for the purpose of lending a hand -- bathsheba resolved to hive the bees herself, if possible. she had dressed the hive with herbs and honey, fetched a ladder, brush, and crook, made herself impregnable with armour of leather gloves, straw hat, and large gauze veil -- once green but now faded to snuff colour -- and ascended a dozen rungs of the ladder. at once she heard, not ten yards off, a voice that was beginning to have a strange power in agitating her. "miss everdene, let me assist you; you should not attempt such a thing alone." troy was just opening the garden gate. bathsheba flung down the brush, crook, and empty hive, pulled the skirt of her dress tightly round her ankles in a tremendous flurry, and as well as she could slid down the ladder. by the time she reached the bottom troy was there also, and he stooped to pick up the hive. "how fortunate i am to have dropped in at this moment!" exclaimed the sergeant. she found her voice in a minute. "what! and will you shake them in for me?" she asked, in what, for a defiant girl, was a faltering way; though, for a timid girl, it would have seemed a brave way enough. "will i!" said troy. "why, of course i will. how blooming you are to-day!" troy flung down his cane and put his foot on the ladder to ascend. "but you must have on the veil and gloves, or you'll be stung fearfully!" "ah, yes. i must put on the veil and gloves. will you kindly show me how to fix them properly?" "and you must have the broad-brimmed hat, too, for your cap has no brim to keep the veil off, and they'd reach your face." "the broad-brimmed hat, too, by all means." so a whimsical fate ordered that her hat should be taken off -- veil and all attached -- and placed upon his head, troy tossing his own into a gooseberry bush. then the veil had to be tied at its lower edge round his collar and the gloves put on him. he looked such an extraordinary object in this guise that, flurried as she was, she could not avoid laughing outright. it was the removal of yet another stake from the palisade of cold manners which had kept him off bathsheba looked on from the ground whilst he was busy sweeping and shaking the bees from the tree, holding up the hive with the other hand for them to fall into. she made use of an unobserved minute whilst his attention was absorbed in the operation to arrange her plumes a little. he came down holding the hive at arm's length, behind which trailed a cloud of bees. "upon my life." said troy, through the veil," holding up this hive makes one's arm ache worse than a week of sword-exercise." when the manoeuvre was complete he approached her. "would you be good enough to untie me and let me out? i am nearly stifled inside this silk cage." to hide her embarrassment during the unwonted process of untying the string about his neck, she said: -- "i have never seen that you spoke of." "what?" "the sword-exercise." "ah! would you like to?" said troy. bathsheba hesitated. she had heard wondrous reports from time to time by dwellers in weatherbury, who had by chance sojourned awhile in casterbridge, near the barracks, of this strange and glorious perform- ance, *tlie sword-exercise. men and boys who had peeped through chinks or over walls into the barrack- yard returned with accounts of its being the most flashing affair conceivable; accoutrements and weapons glistening like stars-here,there,around-yet all by rule and compass. so she said mildly what she felt strongly. "yes; i should like to see it very much." "and so you shall; you shall see me go through it." "no! how?" "let me consider." "not with a walking-stick -- i don't care to see that. lt must be a real sword." "yes, i know; and i have no sword here; but i think i could get one by the evening. now, will you do this?" "o no, indeed!" said bathsheba, blushing." thank you very much, but i couldn't on any account. "surely you might? nobody would know." she shook her head, but with a weakened negation. "if i were to." she said, "i must bring liddy too. might i not?" troy looked far away. "i don't see why you want to bring her." he said coldly. an unconscious look of assent in bathsheba's eyes betrayed that something more than his coldness had made her also feel that liddy would be superfluous in the suggested scene. she had felt it, even whilst making the proposal. "well, i won't bring liddy -- and i'll come. but only for a very short time." she added; "a very short time." "it will not take five minutes." said troy. chapter xxviii the hollow amid the ferns the hill opposite bathsheba's dwelling extended, a mile off, into an uncultivated tract of land, dotted at this season with tall thickets of brake fern, plump and diaphanous from recent rapid growth, and radiant in hues of clear and untainted green. at eight o'clock this midsummer evening, whilst the bristling ball of gold in the west still swept the tips of the ferns with its long, luxuriant rays, a soft brushing- by of garments might have been heard among them, and bathsheba appeared in their midst, their soft, feathery arms caressing her up to her shoulders. she paused, turned, went back over the hill and half-way to her own door, whence she cast a farewell glance upon the spot she had just left, having resolved not to remain near the place after all. she saw a dim spot of artificial red moving round the shoulder of the rise. it disappeared on the other side. she waited one minute -- two minutes -- thought of troy's disappointment at her non-fulfilment of a promised engagement, till she again ran along the field, clambered over the bank, and followed the original direction. she was now literally trembling and panting at this her temerity in such an errant undertaking; her breath came and went quickly, and her eyes shone with an in- frequent light. yet go she must. she reached the verge of a pit in the middle of the ferns. troy stood in the bottom, looking up towards her. "i heard you rustling through the fern before i saw you." he said, coming up and giving her his hand to help her down the slope. the pit was a saucer-shaped concave, naturally formed, with a top diameter of about thirty feet, and shallow enough to allow the sunshine to reach their heads. standing in the centre, the sky overhead was met by a circular horizon of fern: this grew nearly to the bottom of the slope and then abruptly ceased. the middle within the belt of verdure was floored with a thick flossy carpet of moss and grass intermingled, so yielding that the foot was half-buried within it. "now." said troy, producing the sword, which, as he raised it into the sunlight, gleamed a sort of greeting, like a living thing, "first, we have four right and four left cuts; four right and four left thrusts. infantry cuts and guards are more interesting than ours, to my mind; but they are not so swashing. they have seven cuts and three thrusts. so much as a preliminary. well, next, our cut one is as if you were sowing your corn -- so." bathsheba saw a sort of rainbow, upside down in the air, and troy's arm was still again. "cut two, as if you were hedging -- so. three, as if you were reaping -- so." four, as if you were threshing -- in that way. "then the same on the left. the thrusts are these: one, two, three, four, right; one, two, three, four, left." he repeated them. "have 'em again?" he said. "one, two -- -- " she hurriedly interrupted: "i'd rather not; though i don't mind your twos and fours; but your ones and threes are terrible!" "very well. i'll let you off the ones and threes. next, cuts, points and guards altogether." troy duly exhibited them. "then there's pursuing practice, in this way." he gave the movements as before. "there, those are the stereotyped forms. the infantry have two most diabolical upward cuts, which we are too humane to use. like this -- three, four." "how murderous and bloodthirsty!" "they are rather deathy. now i'll be more inter- esting, and let you see some loose play -- giving all the cuts and points, infantry and cavalry, quicker than lightning, and as promiscuously -- with just enough rule to regulate instinct and yet not to fetter it. you are my antagonist, with this difference from real warfare, that i shall miss you every time by one hair's breadth, or perhaps two. mind you don't flinch, whatever you do." i'll be sure not to!" she said invincibly. he pointed to about a yard in front of him. bathsheba's adventurous spirit was beginning to find some grains of relish in these highly novel proceedings. she took up her position as directed, facing troy. "now just to learn whether you have pluck enough to let me do what i wish, i'll give you a preliminary test." he flourished the sword by way of introduction number two, and the next thing of which she was conscious was that the point and blade of the sword were darting with a gleam towards her left side, just above her hip; then of their reappearance on her right side, emerging as it were from between her ribs, having apparently passed through her body. the third item of consciousness was that of seeing the same sword, perfectly clean and free from blood held vertically in troy's hand (in the position technically called "recover swords"). all was as quick as electricity. "oh!" she cried out in affright, pressing her hand to her side." have you run me through? -- no, you have not! whatever have you done!" "i have not touched you." said troy, quietly. "it was mere sleight of hand. the sword passed behind you. now you are not afraid, are you? because if you are l can't perform. i give my word that l will not only not hurt you, but not once touch you." "i don't think i am afraid. you are quite sure you will not hurt me?" "quite sure." "is the sword very sharp?" "o no -- only stand as still as a statue. now!" in an instant the atmosphere was transformed to bathsheba's eyes. beams of light caught from the low sun's rays, above, around, in front of her, well-nigh shut out earth and heaven -- all emitted in the marvellous evolutions of troy's reflecting blade, which seemed everywhere at once, and yet nowherre specially. these circling gleams were accompanied by a keen rush that was almost a whistling -- also springing from all sides of her at once. in short, she was enclosed in a firmament of light, and of sharp hisses, resembling a sky-full of meteors close at hand. never since the broadsword became the national weapon had there been more dexterity shown in its management than by the hands of sergeant troy, and never had he been in such splendid temper for the performance as now in the evening sunshine among the ferns with bathsheba. it may safely be asserted with respect to the closeness of his cuts, that had it been possible for the edge of the sword to leave in the air a permanent substance wherever it flew past, the space left untouched would have been almost a mould of bathsheba's figure. behind the luminous streams of this aurora militaris, she could see the hue of troy's sword arm, spread in a scarlet haze over the space covered by its motions, like a twanged harpstring, and behind all troy himself, mostly facing her; sometimes, to show the rear cuts, half turned away, his eye nevertheless always keenly measuring her breadth and outline, and his lips tightly closed in sustained effort. next, his movements lapsed slower, and she could see them individually. the hissing of the sword had ceased, and he stopped entirely. "that outer loose lock of hair wants tidying, he said, before she had moved or spoken. "wait: i'll do it for you." an arc of silver shone on her right side: the sword had descended. the lock droped to the ground. "bravely borne!" said troy. "you didn't flinch a shade's thickness. wonderful in a woman!" "it was because i didn't expect it. o, you have spoilt my hair!" "only once more." "no -- no! i am afraid of you -- indeed i am!" she cried. "i won't touch you at all -- not even your hair. i am only going to kill that caterpillar settling on you. now: still!" it appeared that a caterpillar had come from the fern and chosen the front of her bodice as his resting place. she saw the point glisten towards her bosom, and seemingly enter it. bathsheba closed her eyes in the full persuasion that she was killed at last. how- ever, feeling just as usual, she opened them again. "there it is, look." said the sargeant, holding his sword before her eyes. the caterpillar was spitted upon its point. "why, it is magic!" said bathsheba, amazed. "o no -- dexterity. i merely gave point to your bosom where the caterpillar was, and instead of running you through checked the extension a thousandth of an inch short of your surface." "but how could you chop off a curl of my hair with a sword that has no edge?" "no edge! this sword will shave like a razor. look here." he touched the palm of his hand with the blade, and then, lifting it, showed her a thin shaving of scarf- skin dangling therefrom. "but you said before beginning that it was blunt and couldn't cut me!" "that was to get you to stand still, and so make sure of your safety. the risk of injuring you through your moving was too great not to force me to tell you a fib to escape it." she shuddered. "i have been within an inch of my life, and didn't know it!" "more precisely speaking, you have been within half an inch of being pared alive two hundred and ninety-five tinies." "cruel, cruel, 'tis of you!" "you have been perfectly safe, nevertheless. my sword never errs." and troy returned the weapon to the scabbard. bathsheba, overcome by a hundred tumultuous feel- ings resulting from the scene, abstractedly sat down on a tuft of heather. "i must leave you now." said troy, softly. "and i'll venture to take and keep this in remembrance of you." she saw him stoop to the grass, pick up the winding lock which he had severed from her manifold tresses, twist it round his fingers, unfasten a button in the breast of his coat, and carefully put it inside. she felt power- less to withstand or deny him. he was altogether too much for her, and bathsheba seemed as one who, facing a reviving wind, finds it blow so strongly that it stops the breath. he drew near and said, "i must be leaving you." he drew nearer still. a minute later and she saw his scarlet form disappear amid the ferny thicket, almost in a flash, like a brand swiftly waved. that minute's interval had brought the blood beating into her face, set her stinging as if aflame to the very hollows of her feet, and enlarged emotion to a compass which quite swamped thought. it had brought upon her a stroke resulting, as did that of moses in horeh, in a liquid stream -- here a stream of tears. she felt like one who has sinned a great sin. the circumstance had been the gentle dip of troy's mouth downwards upon her own. he had kissed her. chapter xxix particulars of a twilight walk we now see the element of folly distinctly mingling with the many varying particulars which made up the character of bathsheba everdene. it was almost foreign to her intrinsic nature. introduced as lymph on the dart of eros, it eventually permeated and coloured her whole constitution. bathsheba, though she had too much understanding to be entirely governed by her womanliness, had too much womanliness to use her understanding to the best advantage. perhaps in no minor point does woman astonish her helpmate more than in the strange power she possesses of believing cajoleries that she knows to be false -- except, indeed, in that of being utterly sceptical on strictures that she knows to be true. bathsheba loved troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-reliance. when a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away. one source of her inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. she has never had practice in making the best of such a condition. weakness is doubly weak by being new. bathsheba was not conscious of guile in this matter. though in one sense a woman of the world, it was, after all, that world of daylight coteries and green carpets wherein cattle form the passing crowd and winds the busy hum; where a quiet family of rabbits or hares lives on the other side of your party-wall, where your neigh- bour is everybody in the tything, and where calculation formulated self-indulgence of bad, nothing at all. had her utmost thoughts in this direction been distinctly worded (and by herself they never were), they would only have amounted to such a matter as that she felt her impulses to be pleasanter guides than her discretion . her love was entire as a child's, and though warm as summer it was fresh as spring. her culpability lay in her making no attempt to control feeling by subtle and careful inquiry into consciences. she could show others the steep and thorny way, but 'reck'd not her own rede," and troy's deformities lay deep down from a woman's vision, whilst his embellishments were upon the very surface; thus contrasting with homely oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest, and whose vertues were as metals in a mine. the difference between love and respect was mark- edly shown in her conduct. bathsheba had spoken of her interest in boldwood with the greatest freedom to liddy, but she had only communed with her own heart concerning "troy". all this infatuation gabriel saw, and was troubled thereby from the time of his daily journey a-field to the time of his return, and on to the small hours of many a night. that he was not beloved had hitherto been his great that bathsheba was getting into the toils was now a sorrow greater than the first, and one which nearly obscured it. it was a result which paralleled the oft-quoted observation of hippocrates concerning physical pains. that is a noble though perhaps an unpromising love which not even the fear of breeding aversion in the bosom of the one beloved can deter from combating his or her errors. oak determined to speak to his mistress. he would base his appeal on what he considered her unfair treatment of farmer boldwood, now absent from home. an opportunity occurred one evening when she had gone for a short walk by a path through the neighbour- ing cornfields. it was dusk when oak, who had not been far a-field that day, took the same path and met her returning, quite pensively, as he thought. the wheat was now tall, and the path was narrow; thus the way was quite a sunken groove between the embowing thicket on either side. two persons could not walk abreast without damaging the crop, and oak stood aside to let her pass. "oh, is it gabriel?" she said. "you are taking a walk too. good-night." "i thought i would come to meet you, as it is rather late," said oak, turning and following at her heels when she had brushed somewhat quickly by him. "thank you, indeed, but i am not very fearful." "o no; but there are bad characters about." "i never meet them." now oak, with marvellous ingenuity, had been going to introduce the gallant sergeant through the channel of "bad characters." but all at once the scheme broke down, it suddenly occurring to him that this was rather a clumsy way, and too barefaced to begin with. he tried another preamble. "and as the man who would naturally come to meet you is away from home, too -- i mean farmer boldwood -- why, thinks i, i'll go." he said. "ah, yes." she walked on without turning her head, and for many steps nothing further was heard from her quarter than the rustle of her dress against the heavy corn-ears. then she resumed rather tartly -- "i don't quite understand what you meant by saying that mr. boldwood would naturally come to meet me." i meant on account of the wedding which they say is likely to take place between you and him, miss. for- give my speaking plainly." "they say what is not true." she returned quickly. no marriage is likely to take place between us." gabriel now put forth his unobscured opinion, for the moment had come. "well, miss everdene." he said, "putting aside what people say, i never in my life saw any courting if his is not a courting of you." bathsheba would probably have terminated the con- versation there and then by flatly forbidding the subject, had not her conscious weakness of position allured her to palter and argue in endeavours to better it. "since this subject has been mentioned." she said very emphatically, "i am glad of the opportunity of clearing up a mistake which is very common and very provoking. i didn't definitely promise mr. boldwood anything. i have never cared for him. i respect him, and he has urged me to marry him. but i have given him no distinct answer. as soon as he returns i shall do so; and the answer will be that i cannot think of marrying him." "people are full of mistakes, seemingly." "they are." the other day they said you were trifling with him, and you almost proved that you were not; lately they have said that you be not, and you straightway begin to show -- -- " that i am, i suppose you mean." "well, i hope they speak the truth." they do, but wrongly applied. i don't trifle with him; but then, i have nothing to do with him." oak was unfortunately led on to speak of boldwood's rival in a wrong tone to her after all. "i wish you had never met that young sergeant troy, miss." he sighed. bathsheba's steps became faintly spasmodic. "why?" she asked. "he is not good enough for 'ee." "did any one tell you to speak to me like this?" "nobody at all." "then it appears to me that sergeant troy does not concern us here." she said, intractably." yet i must say that sergeant troy is an educated man, and quite worthy of any woman. he is well born." "his being higher in learning and birth than the ruck o' soldiers is anything but a proof of his worth. it show's his course to be down'ard." "i cannot see what this has to do with our conversa- tion. mr. troy's course is not by any means downward; and his superiority is a proof of his worth!" "i believe him to have no conscience at all. and i cannot help begging you, miss, to have nothing to do with him. listen to me this once -- only this once! i don't say he's such a bad man as i have fancied -- i pray to god he is not. but since we don't exactly know what he is, why not behave as if he might be bad, simply for your own safety? don't trust him, mistress; i ask you not to trust him so." "why, pray?" "i like soldiers, but this one i do not like." he said, sturdily. "his cleverness in his calling may have tempted him astray, and what is mirth to the neighbours is ruin to the woman. when he tries to talk to 'ee again, why not turn away with a short "good day," and when you see him coming one way, turn the other. when he says anything laughable, fail to see the point and don't smile, and speak of him before those who will report your talk as "that fantastical man." or " that sergeant what's-his-name." "that man of a family that has come to the dogs." don't be unmannerly towards en, but harmless-uncivil, and so get rid of the man." no christmas robin detained by a window-pane ever pulsed as did bathsheba now. i say -- i say again -- that it doesn't become you to talk about him. why he should be mentioned passes me quite . she exclaimed desperately. "i know this, th-th-that he is a thoroughly conscientious man -- blunt sometimes even to rudeness -- but always speaking his mind about you plain to your face!" "oh." "he is as good as anybody in this parish! he is very particular, too, about going to church -- yes, he is!" "i am afraid nobody saw him there. i never did certainly." "the reason of that is." she said eagerly, " that he goes in privately by the old tower door, just when the service commences, and sits at the back of the gallery. he told me so." this supreme instance of troy's goodness fell upon gabriel ears like the thirteenth stroke of crazy clock. it was not only received with utter incredulity as re- garded itself, but threw a doubt on all the assurances that had preceded it. oak was grieved to find how entirely she trusted him. he brimmed with deep feeling as he replied in a steady voice, the steadiness of which was spoilt by the palpable- ness of his great effort to keep it so: -- "you know, mistress, that i love you, and shall love you always. i only mention this to bring to your mind that at any rate i would wish to do you no harm: beyond that i put it aside. i have lost in the race for money and good things, and i am not such a fool as to pretend to 'ee now i am poor, and you have got alto- gether above me. but bathsheba, dear mistress, this i beg you to consider -- that, both to keep yourself well honoured among the workfolk, and in common generosity to an honourable man who loves you as well as i, you particulars of a twilight walk should be more discreet in your bearing towards this soldier." "don't, don't, don't!" she exclaimed, in a choking voice. "are ye not more to me than my own affairs, and even life!" he went on. "come, listen to me! i am six years older than you, and mr. boldwood is ten years older than i, and consider -- i do beg of 'ee to consider before it is too late -- how safe you would be in his hands!" oak's allusion to his own love for her lessened, to some extent, her anger at his interference; but she could not really forgive him for letting his wish to marry her be eclipsed by his wish to do her good, any more than for his slighting treatment of troy. "i wish you to go elsewhere." she commanded, a paleness of face invisible to the eye being suggested by the trembling words. "do not remain on this farm any longer. i don't want you -- i beg you to go!" "that's nonsense." said oak, calmly. "this is the second time you have pretended to dismiss me; and what's the use o' it?" "pretended! you shall go, sir -- your lecturing i will not hear! i am mistress here." "go, indeed -- what folly will you say next? treating me like dick, tom and harry when you know that a short time ago my position was as good as yours! upon my life, bathsheba, it is too barefaced. you know, too, that i can't go without putting things in such a strait as you wouldn't get out of i can't tell when. unless, indeed, you'll promise to have an understanding man as bailiff, or manager, or something. i'll go at once if you'll promise that." "i shall have no bailiff; i shall continue to be my own manager." she said decisively. "very well, then; you should be thankful to me for biding. how would the farm go on with nobody to mind it but a woman? but mind this, i don't wish "ee to feel you owe me anything. not i. what i do, i do. sometimes i say i should be as glad as a bird to leave the place -- for don't suppose i'm content to be a nobody. i was made for better things. however, i don't like to see your concerns going to ruin, as they must if you keep in this mind.... i hate taking my own measure so plain, but, upon my life, your provok- ing ways make a man say what he wouldn't dream of at other times! i own to being rather interfering. but you know well enough how it is, and who she is that i like too well, and feel too much like a fool about to be civil to her!" it is more than probable that she privately and un- consciously respected him a little for this grim fidelity, which had been shown in his tone even more than in his words. at any rate she murmured something to the effect that he might stay if he wished. she said more distinctly, " will you leave me alone now? i don't order it as a mistress -- i ask it as a woman, and i expect you not to be so uncourteous as to refuse." "certainly i will, miss everdene." said gabriel, gently. he wondered that the request should have come at this moment, for the strife was over, and they were on a most desolate hill, far from every human habitation, and the hour was getting late. he stood still and allowed her to get far ahead of him till he could only see her form upon the sky. a distressing explanation of this anxiety to be rid of him at that point now ensued. a figure apparently rose from the earth beside her. the shape beyond all doubt was troy's. oak would not be even a possible listener, and at once turned back till a good two hundred yards were between the lovers and himself. gabriel went home by way of the churchyard. in passing the tower he thought of what she had said about the sergeant's virtuous habit of entering the church un- particulars of a twilight walk perceived at the beginning of service. believing that the little gallery door alluded to was quite disused, he ascended the external flight of steps at the top of which it stood, and examined it. the pale lustre yet hanging in the north-western heaven was sufficient to show that a sprig of ivy had grown from the wall across the door to a length of more than a foot, delicately tying the panel to the stone jamb. it was a decisive proof that the door had not been opened at least since troy came back to weatherbury. chapter xxx hot cheeks and tearful eyes half an hour later bathsheba entered her own house. there burnt upon her face when she met the light of the candles the flush and excitement which were little less than chronic with her now. the farewell words of troy, who had accompanied her to the very door, still lingered in her ears. he had bidden her adieu for two days, which were so he stated, to be spent at bath in visiting some friends. he had also kissed her a second time. it is only fair to bathsheba to explain here a little fact which did not come to light till a long time after- wards: that troy's presentation of himself so aptly at the roadside this evening was not by any distinctly pre- concerted arrangement. he had hinted -- she had forbidden; and it was only on the chance of his still coming that she had dismissed oak, fearing a meeting between them just then. she now sank down into a chair, wild and perturbed by all these new and fevering sequences. then she jumped up with a manner of decision, and fetched her desk from a side table. in three minutes, without pause or modification, she had written a letter to boldwood, at his address beyond casterbridge, saying mildly but firmly that she had well considered the whole subject he had brought before her and kindly given her time to decide upon; that her final decision was that she could not marry him. she had expressed to oak an intention to wait till boldwood came home before communicating to him her conclusive reply. but bathsheba found that she could not wait. it was impossible to send this letter till the next day; yet to quell her uneasiness by getting it out of her hands, and so, as it were, setting the act in motion at once, she arose to take it to any one of the women who might be in the kitchen. she paused in the passage. a dialogue was going on in the kitchen, and bathsheba and troy were the subject of it. "if he marry her, she'll gie up farming." "twill be a gallant life, but may bring some trouble between the mirth -- so say i." "well, i wish i had half such a husband." bathsheba had too much sense to mind seriously what her servitors said about her; but too much womanly redundance of speech to leave alone what was said till it died the natural death of unminded things. she burst in upon them. "who are you speaking of?" she asked. there was a pause before anybody replied. at last liddy said frankly," what was passing was a bit of a word about yourself, miss." "i thought so! maryann and liddy and temper- ance -- now i forbid you to suppose such things. you know i don't care the least for mr. troy -- not i. every- body knows how much i hate him. -- yes." repeated the froward young person, "hate him!" "we know you do, miss." said liddy; "and so do we all." "i hate him too." said maryann. "maryann -- o you perjured woman! how can you speak that wicked story!" said bathsheba, excitedly. "you admired him from your heart only this morning in the very world, you did. yes, maryann, you know it!" "yes, miss, but so did you. he is a wild scamp now, and you are right to hate him." "he's not a wild scamp! how dare you to my face! i have no right to hate him, nor you, nor anybody. but i am a silly woman! what is it to me what he is? you know it is nothing. i don't care for him; i don"t mean to defend his good name, not i. mind this, if any of you say a word against him you'll be dismissed instantly!" she flung down the letter and surged back into the parlour, with a big heart and tearful eyes, liddy following her. "o miss!" said mild liddy, looking pitifully into bathsheba's face. "i am sorry we mistook you so! did think you cared for him; but i see you don't now." "shut the door, liddy." liddy closed the door, and went on: " people always say such foolery, miss. i'll make answer hencefor'ard, "of course a lady like miss everdene can't love him;" i'll say it out in plain black and white." bathsheba burst out: "o liddy, are you such a simpleton? can't you read riddles? can't you see? are you a woman yourself?" liddy's clear eyes rounded with wonderment. "yes; you must be a blind thing, liddy!" she said, in reckless abandonment and grief. "o, i love him to very distraction and misery and agony! don't be frightened at me, though perhaps i am enough to frighten any innocent woman. come closer -- closer." she put her arms round liddy's neck. "i must let it out to somebody; it is wearing me away! don't you yet know enough of me to see through that miserable denial of mine? o god, what a lie it was! heaven and my love forgive me. and don't you know that a woman who loves at all thinks nothing of perjury when it is balanced against her love? there, go out of the room; i want to be quite alone." liddy went towards the door. "liddy, come here. solemnly swear to me that he's not a fast man; that it is all lies they say about him!" "put, miss, how can i say he is not if -- -- " "you graceless girl! how can you have the cruel heart to repeat what they say? unfeeling thing that you are.... but i'll see if you or anybody else in the village, or town either, dare do such a thing!" she started off, pacing from fireplace to door, and back again. "no, miss. i don't -- i know it is not true!" said liddy, frightened at bathsheba's unwonted vehemence. i suppose you only agree with me like that to please me. but, liddy, he cannot be had, as is said. do you hear? " "yes, miss, yes." "and you don't believe he is?" "i don't know what to say, miss." said liddy, be- ginning to cry. "if i say no, you don"t believe me; and if i say yes, you rage at me!" "say you don't believe it -- say you don't!" "i don't believe him to be so had as they make out." "he is not had at all.... my poor life and heart, how weak i am!" she moaned, in a relaxed, desultory way, heedless of liddy's presence. "o, how i wish i had never seen him! loving is misery for women always. i shall never forgive god for making me a woman, and dearly am i beginning to pay for the honour of owning a pretty face." she freshened and turned to liddy suddenly. "mind this, lydia smallbury, if you repeat anywhere a single word of what l have said to you inside this closed door, i'll never trust you, or love you, or have you with me a moment longer -- not a moment!" "i don't want to repeat anything." said liddy, with womanly dignity of a diminutive order; "but i don't wish to stay with you. and, if you please, i'll go at the end of the harvest, or this week, or to-day.... i don't see that i deserve to be put upon and stormed at for nothing!" concluded the small woman, bigly. "no, no, liddy; you must stay!" said bathsheba, dropping from haughtiness to entreaty with capricious inconsequence. "you must not notice my being in a taking just now. you are not as a servant -- you are a companion to me. dear, dear -- i don't know what i am doing since this miserable ache o'! my heart has weighted and worn upon me so! what shall i come to! i suppose i shall get further and further into troubles. i wonder sometimes if i am doomed to die in the union. i am friendless enough, god knows!" "i won't notice anything, nor will i leave you!" sobbed liddy, impulsively putting up her lips to bathsheba's, and kissing her. then bathsheba kissed liddy, and all was smooth again. "i don't often cry, do i, lidd? but you have made tears come into my eyes." she said, a smile shining through the moisture. "try to think him a good man, won't you, dear liddy?" "i will, miss, indeed." "he is a sort of steady man in a wild way, you know. way. i am afraid that's how i am. and promise me to keep my secret -- do, liddy! and do not let them know that i have been crying about him, because it will be dreadful for me, and no good to him, poor thing!"death's head himself shan't wring it from me, mistress, if i've a mind to keep anything; and i'll always be your friend." replied liddy, emphatically, at the same time bringing a few more tears into her own eyes, not from any particular necessity, but from an artistic sense of making herself in keeping with the remainder of the picture, which seems to influence women at such times. "i think god likes us to be good friends, don't you?" "indeed i do." "and, dear miss, you won"t harry me and storm at me, will you? because you seem to swell so tall as a lion then, and it frightens me! do you know, i fancy you would be a match for any man when you are in one o' your takings." "never! do you?" said bathsheba, slightly laughing, though somewhat seriously alarmed by this amazonian picture of herself. "i hope i am not a bold sort of maid -- mannish?" she continued with some anxiety. "o no, not mannish; but so almighty womanish that 'tis getting on that way sometimes. ah! miss." she said, after having drawn her breath very sadly in and sent it very sadly out, "i wish i had half your failing that way. 'tis a great protection to a poor maid in these illegit'mate days!" chapter xxxi blame -- fury the next evening bathsheba, with the idea of getting out of the way of mr. boldwood in the event of his returning to answer her note in person, proceeded to fulfil an engagement made with liddy some few hours earlier. bathsheba's companion, as a gage of their reconciliation, had been granted a week's holiday to visit her sister, who was married to a thriving hurdler and cattle-crib-maker living in a delightful labyrinth of hazel copse not far beyond yalbury. the arrangement was that miss everdene should honour them by coming there for a day or two to inspect some ingenious con- trivances which this man of the woods had introduced into his wares. leaving her instructions with gabriel and maryann, that they were to see everything carefully locked up for the night, she went out of the house just at the close of a timely thunder-shower, which had refined the air, and daintily bathed the coat of the land, though all beneath was dry as ever. freshness was exhaled in an essence from the varied contours of bank and hollow, as if the earth breathed maiden breath; and the pleased birds were hymning to the scene. before her, among the clouds, there was a contrast in the shape of lairs of fierce light which showed themselves in the neighbour- hood of a hidden sun, lingering on to the farthest north- west corner of the heavens that this midsummer season allowed. she had walked nearly two miles of her journey, watching how the day was retreating, and thinking how the time of deeds was quietly melting into the time of thought, to give place in its turn to the time of prayer and sleep, when she beheld advancing over yalbury hill the very man she sought so anxiously to elude. boldwood was stepping on, not with that quiet tread of reserved strength which was his customary gait, in which he always seemed to be balancing two thoughts. his manner was stunned and sluggish now. boldwood had for the first time been awakened to woman's privileges in tergiversation even when it involves another person's possible blight. that bathsheba was a firm and positive girl, far less inconsequent than her fellows, had been the very lung of his hope; for he had held that these qualities would lead her to adhere to a straight course for consistency's sake, and accept him, though her fancy might not flood him with the iridescent hues of uncritical love. but the argument now came back as sorry gleams from a broken mirror. the dis- covery was no less a scourge than a surprise. he came on looking upon the ground, and did not see bathsheba till they were less than a stone's throw apart. he looked up at the sound of her pit-pat, and his changed appearance sufficiently denoted to her the depth and strength of the feelings paralyzed by her letter. "oh; is it you, mr. boldwood?" she faltered, a guilty warmth pulsing in her face. those who have the power of reproaching in silence may find it a means more effective than words. there are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can enter an ear. it is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter moods that they avoid the pathway of sound. bold- wood's look was unanswerable. seeing she turned a little aside, he said, "what, are you afraid of me?" why should you say that?" said bathsheba. "i fancied you looked so." said he. "and it is most strange, because of its contrast with my feeling for you. she regained self-possession, fixed her eyes calmly, and waited. "you know what that feeling is." continued boldwood, deliberately. "a thing strong as death. no dismissal by a hasty letter affects that." "i wish you did not feel so strongly about me." she murmured. "it is generous of you, and more than i deserve, but i must not hear it now." "hear it? what do you think i have to say, then? i am not to marry you, and that's enough. your letter was excellently plain. i want you to hear nothing -- not i." bathsheba was unable to direct her will into any definite groove for freeing herself from this fearfully and was moving on. boldwood walked up to her heavily and dully. "bathsheba -- darling -- is it final indeed?" "indeed it is." "o, bathsheba -- have pity upon me!" boldwood burst out. "god's sake, yes -- i am come to that low, lowest stage -- to ask a woman for pity! still, she is you -- she is you." bathsheba commanded herself well. but she could hardly get a clear voice for what came instinctively to her lips: "there is little honour to the woman in that speech." it was only whispered, for something unutter- ably mournful no less than distressing in this spectacle of a man showing himself to be so entirely the vane of a passion enervated the feminine instinct for punctilios. "i am beyond myself about this, and am mad." he said. "i am no stoic at all to he supplicating here; but i do supplicate to you. i wish you knew what is in me of devotion to you; but it is impossible, that. in bare human mercy to a lonely man, don't throw me off now!" "i don't throw you off -- indeed, how can i? i never had you." in her noon-clear sense that she had never loved him she forgot for a moment her thoughtless angle on that day in february. "but there was a time when you turned to me, before i thought of you! i don't reproach you, for even now i feel that the ignorant and cold darkness that i should have lived in if you had not attracted me by that letter -- valentine you call it -- would have been worse than my knowledge of you, though it has brought this misery. but, i say, there was a time when i knew nothing of you, and cared nothing for you, and yet you drew me on. and if you say you gave me no en- couragement, i cannot but contradict you." "what you call encouragement was the childish game of an idle minute. i have bitterly repented of it -- ay, bitterly, and in tears. can you still go on re- minding me?" "i don't accuse you of it -- i deplore it. i took for earnest what you insist was jest, and now this that i pray to be jest you say is awful, wretched earnest. our moods meet at wrong places. i wish your feeling was more like mine, or my feeling more like yours! o, could i but have foreseen the torture that trifling trick was going to lead me into, how i should have cursed you; but only having been able to see it since, i cannot do that, for i love you too well! but it is weak, idle drivelling to go on like this.... bathsheba, you are the first woman of any shade or nature that i have ever looked at to love, and it is the having been so near claiming you for my own that makes this denial so hard to bear. how nearly you promised me! but i don't speak now to move your heart, and make you grieve because of my pain; it is no use, that. i must bear it; my pain would get no less by paining you." "but i do pity you -- deeply -- o so deeply!" she earnestly said. "do no such thing -- do no such thing. your dear love, bathsheba, is such a vast thing beside your pity, that the loss of your pity as well as your love is no great addition to my sorrow, nor does the gain of your pity make it sensibly less. o sweet -- how dearly you spoke to me behind the spear-bed at the washing-pool, and in the barn at the shearing, and that dearest last time in the evening at your home! where are your pleasant words all gone -- your earnest hope to be able to love me? where is your firm conviction that you would get to care for me very much? really forgotten? -- really?" she checked emotion, looked him quietly and clearly in the face, and said in her low, firm voice, " mr. bold- wood, i promised you nothing. would you have had me a woman of clay when you paid me that furthest, highest compliment a man can pay a woman -- telling her he loves her? i was bound to show some feeling, if l would not be a graceless shrew. yet each of those pleasures was just for the day -- the day just for the pleasure. how was i to know that what is a pastime to all other men was death to you? have reason, do, and think more kindly of me!" "well, never mind arguing -- never mind. one thing is sure: you were all but mine, and now you are not nearly mine. everything is changed, and that by you alone, remember. you were nothing to me once, and i was contented; you are now nothing to me again, and how different the second nothing is from the first! would to god you had never taken me up, since it was only to throw me down!" bathsheba, in spite of her mettle, began to feel un- mistakable signs that she was inherently the weaker vessel. she strove miserably against this feminity which would insist upon supplying unbidden emotions in stronger and stronger current. she had tried to elude agitation by fixing her mind on the trees, sky, any trivial object before her eyes, whilst his reproaches fell, but ingenuity could not save her now. "i did not take you up -- surely i did not!" she answered as heroically as she could. "but don't be in this mood with me. i can endure being told i am in the wrong, if you will only tell it me gently! o sir, will you not kindly forgive me, and look at it cheerfully?" "cheerfully! can a man fooled to utter heart- burning find a reason for being merry> if i have lost, how can i be as if i had won? heavens you must be heartless quite! had i known what a fearfully bitter sweet this was to be, how would i have avoided you, and never seen you, and been deaf of you. i tell you all this, but what do you care! you don't care." she returned silent and weak denials to his charges, and swayed her head desperately, as if to thrust away the words as they came showering about her ears from the lips of the trembling man in the climax of life, with his bronzed roman face and fine frame. "dearest, dearest, i am wavering even now between the two opposites of recklessly renouncing you, and labouring humbly for you again. forget that you have said no, and let it be as it was! say, bathsheba, that you only wrote that refusal to me in fun -- come, say it to me!" "it would be untrue, and painful to both of us. you overrate my capacity for love. i don't possess half the warmth of nature you believe me to have. an un- protected childhood in a cold world has beaten gentle- ness out of me." he immediately said with more resentment: "that may be true, somewhat; but ah, miss everdene, it won't do as a reason! you are not the cold woman you would have me believe. no, no! it isn't because you have no feeling in you that you don't love me. you naturally would have me think so -- you would hide from that you have a burning heart like mine. you have love enough, but it is turned into a new channel. i know where." the swift music of her heart became hubbub now, and she throbbed to extremity. he was coming to troy. he did then know what had occurred! and the name fell from his lips the next moment. "why did troy not leave my treasure alone?" he asked, fiercely. "when i had no thought of injuring him, why did he force himself upon your notice! before he worried you your inclination was to have me; when next i should have come to you your answer would have been yes. can you deny it -- i ask, can you deny it?" she delayed the reply, but was to honest to with hold it." i cannot." she whispered. "i know you cannot. but he stole in in my absence and robbed me. why did't he win you away before, when nobody would have been grieved? -- when nobody would have been set tale-bearing. now the people sneer at me -- the very hills and sky seem to laugh at me till i blush shamefuly for my folly. i have lost my respect, my good name, my standing -- lost it, never to get it again. go and marry your man -- go on!" "o sir -- mr. boldwood!" "you may as well. i have no further claim upon you. as for me, i had better go somewhere alone, and hide -- and pray. i loved a woman once. i am now ashamed. when i am dead they'll say, miserable love-sick man that he was. heaven -- heaven -- if i had got jilted secretly, and the dishonour not known, and my position kept! but no matter, it is gone, and the woman not gained. shame upon him -- shame!" his unreasonable anger terrified her, and she glided from him, without obviously moving, as she said, "i am only a girl -- do not speak to me so!" "all the time you knew -- how very well you knew -- that your new freak was my misery. dazzled by brass and scarlet -- o, bathsheba -- this is woman's folly indeed!" she fired up at once. "you are taking too much upon yourself!" she said, vehemently. "everybody is upon me -- everybody. it is unmanly to attack a woman so! i have nobody in the world to fight my battles for me; but no mercy is shown. yet if a thousand of you sneer and say things against me, i will not be put down!" "you'll chatter with him doubtless about me. say to him, "boldwood would have died for me." yes, and you have given way to him, knowing him to be not the man for you. he has kissed you -- claimed you as his. do you hear -- he has kissed you. deny it!" the most tragic woman is cowed by a tragic man, and although boldwood was, in vehemence and glow, nearly her own self rendered into another sex, bathsheba's cheek quivered. she gasped," leave me, sir -- leave me! i am nothing to you. let me go on!" "deny that he has kissed you." "i shall not." "ha -- then he has!" came hoarsely from the farmer. "he has," she said, slowly, and, in spite of her fear, defiantly. "i am not ashamed to speak the truth." "then curse him; and curse him!" said boldwood, breaking into a whispered fury." whilst i would have given worlds to touch your hand, you have let a rake come in without right or ceremony and -- kiss you! heaven's mercy -- kiss you! ... ah, a time of his life shall come when he will have to repent, and think wretchedly of the pain he has caused another man; and then may he ache, and wish, and curse, and yearn -- as i do now!" "don't, don't, o, don't pray down evil upon him!" she implored in a miserable cry. "anything but that -- anything. o, be kind to him, sir, for i love him true ." boldwood's ideas had reached that point of fusion at which outline and consistency entirely disappear. the impending night appeared to concentrate in his eye. he did not hear her at all now. "i'll punish him -- by my soul, that will i! i'll meet him, soldier or no, and i'll horsewhip the untimely stripling for this reckless theft of my one delight. if he were a hundred men i'd horsewhip him -- --" he dropped his voice suddenly and unnaturally. "bath- sheba, sweet, lost coquette, pardon me! i've been blaming you, threatening you, behaving like a churl to you, when he's the greatest sinner. he stole your dear heart away with his unfathomable lies! ... lt is a fortunate thing for him that he's gone back to his regiment -- that he's away up the country, and not here! i hope he may not return here just yet. i pray god he may not come into my sight, for i may be tempted beyond myself. o, bathsheba, keep him away -- yes, keep him away from me!" for a moment boldwood stood so inertly after this that his soul seemed to have been entirely exhaled with the breath of his passionate words. he turned his face away, and withdrew, and his form was soon covered over by the twilight as his footsteps mixed in with the low hiss of the leafy trees. bathsheba, who had been standing motionless as a model all this latter time, flung her hands to her face, and wildly attempted to ponder on the exhibition which had just passed away. such astounding wells of fevered feeling in a still man like mr. boldwood were incompre- hensible, dreadful. instead of being a man trained to repression he was -- what she had seen him. the force of the farmer's threats lay in their relation to a circumstance known at present only to herself: her lover was coming back to weatherby in the course of the very next day or two. troy had not returned to his distant barracks as boldwood and others supposed, but had merely gone to visit some acquaintance in bath, and had yet a week or more remaining to his furlough. she felt wretchedly certain that if he revisited her just at this nick of time, and came into contact with boldwood,a fierce quarrel would be the consequence. she panted with solicitude when she thought of possible injury to troy. the least spark would kindle the farmer's swift feelings of rage and jealousy; he would lose his self-mastery as he had this evening; troy's blitheness might become aggressive; it might take the direction of derision, and boldwood's anger might then take the direction of revenge. with almost a morbid dread of being thought a gushing girl, this guileless woman too well concealed from the world under a manner of carelessness the warm depths of her strong emotions. but now there was no reserve. in fer her distraction, instead of advancing further she walked up and down, beating the air with her fingers, pressing on her brow, and sobbing brokenly to herself. then she sat down on a heap of stones by the wayside to think. there she remained long. above the dark margin of the earth appeared foreshores and promontor- ies of coppery cloud,bounding a green and pellucid expanse in the western sky. amaranthine glosses came over them then, and the unresting world wheeled her round to a contrasting prospect eastward, in the shape of indecisive and palpitating stars. she gazed upon their silent throes amid the shades of space, but realised none at all. her troubled spirit was far away with troy. chapter xxxii night -- horses tramping the village of weatherbury was quiet as the graveyard in its midst, and the living were lying well nigh as still as the dead. the church clock struck eleven. the air was so empty of other sounds that the whirr of the clock-work immediately before the strokes was distinct, and so was also the click of the same at their close. the notes flew forth with the usual blind obtuseness of inanimate things -- flapping and rebounding among walls, undulating against the scattered clouds, spreading through their interstices into unexplored miles of space. bathsheba's crannied and mouldy halls were to-night occupied only by maryann, liddy being, as was stated, with her sister, whom bathsheba had set out to visit. a few minutes after eleven had struck, maryann turned in her bed with a sense of being disturbed. she was totally unconscious of the nature of the interruption to her sleep. it led to a dream, and the dream to an awakening, with an uneasy sensation that something had happened. she left her bed and looked out of the window. the paddock abutted on this end of the building, and in the paddock she could just discern by the uncertain gray a moving figure approaching the horse that was feeding there. the figure seized the horse by the forelock, and led it to the corner of the field. here she could see some object which circum- stances proved to be a vehicle for after a few minutes the horse down the road, mingled with the sound of light wheels. two varieties only of humanity could have entered the paddock with the ghostlike glide of that mysterious figure. they were a woman and a gipsy man. a woman was out of the question in such an occupation at this hour, and the comer could be no less than a thief, who might probably have known the weakness of the house- hold on this particular night, and have chosen it on that account for his daring attempt. moreover, to raise suspicion to conviction itself, there were gipsies in! weatherbury bottom. maryann, who had been afraid to shout in the robber's presence, having seen him depart had no fear. she hastily slipped on her clothes, stumped down the dis- jointed staircase with its hundred creaks, ran to coggan's, the nearest house, and raised an alarm. coggan called gabriel, who now again lodged in his house as at first, and together they went to the paddock. beyond all doubt the horse was gone. "hark!" said gabriel. they listened. distinct upon the stagnant air came the sounds of a trotting horse passing up longpuddle lane -- just beyond the gipsies' encampment in weather- bury bottom. "that's our dainty-i'll swear to her step." said jan. "mighty me! won't mis'ess storm and call us stupids wen she comes back!" moaned maryann. "how i wish it had happened when she was at home, and none of us had been answerable!" "we must ride after." said gabriel, decisively. be responsible to miss everdene for what we do. yes, we'll follow. " "faith, i don't see how." said coggan. "all our horses are too heavy for that trick except little poppet, and what's she between two of us?-if we only had that pair over the hedge we might do something." "which pair?" "mr boldwood's tidy and moll." "then wait here till i come hither again." said gabriel. he ran down the hill towards farmer boldwood's. "farmer boldwood is not at home." said maryann. "all the better." said coggan. "i know what he's gone for." less than five minutes brought up oak again, running at the same pace, with two halters dangling from his hand. "where did you find 'em?" said coggan, turning round and leaping upon the hedge without waiting for an answer. "under the eaves. i knew where they were kept," said gabriel, following him. "coggan, you can ride bare-backed? there's no time to look for saddles." "like a hero!" said jan. "maryann, you go to hed." gabriel shouted to her from the top of the hedge. springing down into boldwood's pastures, each pocketed his halter to hide it from the horses, who, seeing the men empty-handed, docilely allowed them- selves to he seized by the mane, when the halters were dexterously slipped on. having neither bit nor bridle, oak and coggan extemporized the former by passing the rope in each case through the animal's mouth and looping it on the other side. oak vaulted astride, and coggan clambered up by aid of the hank, when they ascended to the gate and galloped off in the direction taken by bathsheha's horse and the robber. whose vehicle the horse had been harnessed to was a matter of some uncertainty. weatherbury bottom was reached in three or four minutes. they scanned the shady green patch by the roadside. the gipsies were gone. "the villains!" said gabriel. "which way have they gone, i wonder?" "straight on, as sure as god made little apples," said jan. "very well; we are better mounted, and must over- discovered. the road-metal grew softer and more rain had wetted its surface to a somewhat plastic, but not muddy state. they came to cross-roads. coggan suddenly pulled up moll and slipped off. "what's the matter?" said gabriel. "we must try to track 'em, since we can't hear 'em," said jan, fumbling in his pockets. he struck a light, and held the match to the ground. the rain had been heavier here, and all foot and horse tracks made previous to the storm had been abraded and blurred by the drops, and they were now so many little scoops of water, which reflected the flame of the match like eyes. one set of tracks was fresh and had no water in them; one pair of ruts was also empty, and not small canals, like the others. the footprints forming this recent impression were full of information as to pace; they were in equidistant pairs, three or four feet apart, the right and left foot of each pair being exactly opposite one another. "straight on!" jan exclaimed. "tracks like that mean a stiff gallop. no wonder we don't hear him. and the horse is harnessed -- look at the ruts. ay, "how do you know?" "old jimmy harris only shoed her last week, and i'd swear to his make among ten thousand." "the rest of the gipsies must ha" gone on earlier, or some other way." said oak. "you saw there were no other tracks?" "true." they rode along silently for a long weary time. coggan carried an old pinchbeck repeater which he had inherited from some genius in his family; and it now struck one. he lighted another match, and ex- amined the ground again. "'tis a canter now." he said, throwing away the light. "a twisty, rickety pace for a gig. the fact is, they over- drove her at starting, we shall catch 'em yet." again they hastened on, and entered blackmore vale. coggan's watch struck one. when they looked again the hoof-marks were so spaced as to form a sort of zigzag if united, like the lamps along a street. "that's a trot, i know." said gabriel. "only a trot now." said coggan, cheerfully. "we shall overtake him in time." they pushed rapidly on for yet two or three miles. "ah! a moment." said jan. "let's see how she was driven up this hill. "twill help us." a light was promptly struck upon his gaiters as before, and the ex- amination made, "hurrah!" said coggan. "she walked up here -- and well she might. we shall get them in two miles, for a crown." they rode three, and listened. no sound was to be heard save a millpond trickling hoarsely through a hatch, and suggesting gloomy possibilities of drowning by jumping in. gabriel dismounted when they came to a turning. the tracks were absolutely the only guide as to the direction that they now had, and great caution was necessary to avoid confusing them with some others which had made their appearance lately. "what does this mean? -- though i guess." said gabriel, looking up at coggan as he moved the match over the ground about the turning. coggan, who, no less than the panting horses, had latterly shown signs of weariness, again scrutinized the mystic characters. this time only three were of the regular horseshoe shape. every fourth was a dot. he screwed up his face and emitted a long "whew-w-w!" "lame." said oak. "yes dainty is lamed; the near-foot-afore." said coggan slowly staring still at the footprints. "we'll push on." said gabriel, remounting his humid steed. although the road along its greater part had been as good as any turnpike-road in the country, it was nomin- ally only a byway. the last turning had brought them into the high road leading to bath. coggan recollected himself. "we shall have him now!" he exclaimed. "where?" "sherton turnpike. the keeper of that gate is the sleepiest man between here and london -- dan randall. that's his name -- knowed en for years, when he was at casterbridge gate. between the lameness and the gate 'tis a done job." 'twas said until, against a shady background of foliage, five white bars were visible, crossing their route a little way ahead. "hush -- we are almost close!" said gabriel. "amble on upon the grass." said coggan. the white bars were blotted out in the midst by a dark shape in front of them. the silence of this lonely time was pierced by an exclamation from that quarter. "hoy-a-hoy! gate!" it appeared that there had been a previous call which they had not noticed, for on their close approach the door of the turnpike-house opened, and the keeper came out half-dressed, with a candle in his hand. the rays illumined the whole group. "keep the gate close!" shouted gabriel. "he has stolen the horse!" who?" said the turnpike-man. gabriel looked at the driver of the gig, and saw a woman -- bathsheba, his mistress. on hearing his voice she had turned her face away from the light. coggan had, however, caught sight of her in the meanwhile. "why, 'tis mistress-i'll take my oath!" he said, amazed. bathsheba it certainly was, and she had by this time done the trick she could do so well in crises not of love, namely, mask a surprise by coolness of manner. "well, gabriel." she inquired quietly," where are you going?" "we thought -- --" began gabriel. "bath." she said, taking for her own use the assurance that gabriel lacked. "an important matter made it necessary for me to give up my visit to liddy, and go off at once. what, then, were you following me?" "we thought the horse was stole." "well-what a thing! how very foolish of you not to know that i had taken the trap and horse. i could neither wake maryann nor get into the house, though i hammered for ten minutes against her window-sill. fortunately, i could get the key of the coach-house, so i troubled no one further. didn't you think it might be me?" "why should we, miss?" "perhaps not why, those are never farmer bold- wood's horses! goodness mercy! what have you been doing bringing trouble upon me in this way? what! mustn't a lady move an inch from her door without being dogged like a thief?" "but how was we to know, if you left no account of your doings?" expostulated coggan, "and ladies don't drive at these hours, miss, as a jineral rule of society." "i did leave an account -- and you would have seen it in the morning. i wrote in chalk on the coach-house doors that i had come back for the horse and gig, and driven off; that i could arouse nobody, and should return soon." "but you'll consider, ma'am, that we couldn't see that till it got daylight." "true." she said, and though vexed at first she had too much sense to blame them long or seriously for a devotion to her that was as valuable as it was rare. she added with a very pretty grace," well, i really thank you heartily for taking all this trouble; but i wish you had borrowed anybody's horses but mr. boldwood's." "dainty is lame, miss." said coggan. "can ye go on?" "lt was only a stone in her shoe. i got down and pulled it out a hundred yards back. i can manage very well, thank you. i shall be in bath by daylight. will you now return, please?" she turned her head -- the gateman's candle shimmering upon her quick, clear eyes as she did so -- passed through the gate, and was soon wrapped in the embowering shades of mysterious summer boughs. coggan and gabriel put about their horses, and, fanned by the velvety air of this july night, retraced the road by which they had come. "a strange vagary, this of hers, isn't it, oak?" said coggan, curiously. "yes." said gabriel, shortly. "she won't be in bath by no daylight!" "coggan, suppose we keep this night's work as quiet as we can?" "i am of one and the same mind." "very well. we shall be home by three o'clock or so, and can creep into the parish like lambs." bathsheba's perturbed meditations by the roadside had ultimately evolved a conclusion that there were only two remedies for the present desperate state of affairs. the first was merely to keep troy away from weather- bury till boldwood's indignation had cooled; the second to listen to oak's entreaties, and boldwood's denuncia- tions, and give up troy altogether. alas! could she give up this new love -- induce him to renounce her by saying she did not like him -- could no more speak to him, and beg him, for her good, to end his furlough in bath, and see her and weather- bury no more? it was a picture full of misery, but for a while she contemplated it firmly, allowing herself, nevertheless, as girls will, to dwell upon the happy life she would have enjoyed had troy been boldwood, and the path of love the path of duty -- inflicting upon herself gratuit- ous tortures by imagining him the lover of another woman after forgetting her; for she had penetrated troy's nature so far as to estimate his tendencies pretty accurately, hut unfortunately loved him no less in thinking that he might soon cease to love her -- indeed, considerably more. she jumped to her feet. she would see him at once. yes, she would implore him by word of mouth to assist her in this dilemma. a letter to keep him away could not reach him in time, even if he should be disposed to listen to it. was bathsheba altogether blind to the obvious fact that the support of a lover's arms is not of a kind best calculated to assist a resolve to renounce him? or was she sophistically sensible, with a thrill of pleasure, that by adopting this course for getting rid of him she was ensuring a meeting with him, at any rate, once more? it was now dark, and the hour must have been nearly ten. the only way to accomplish her purpose was to give up her idea of visiting liddy at yalbury, return to weatherbury farm, put the horse into the gig, and drive at once to bath. the scheme seemed at first impossible: the journey was a fearfully heavy one, even for a strong horse, at her own estimate; and she much underrated the distance. it was most venturesome for a woman, at night, and alone. but could she go on to liddy's and leave things to take their course? no, no; anything but that. bath- sheba was full of a stimulating turbulence, beside which caution vainly prayed for a hearing. she turned back towards the village. her walk was slow, for she wished not to enter weatherbury till the cottagers were in bed, and, par- ticularly, till boldwood was secure. her plan was now to drive to bath during the night, see sergeant troy in the morning before he set out to come to her, bid him farewell, and dismiss him: then to rest the horse thoroughly (herself to weep the while, she thought), starting early the next morning on her return journey. by this arrangement she could trot dainty gently all the day, reach liddy at yalbury in the evening, and come home to weatherbury with her whenever they chose -- so nobody would know she had been to bath at all. such was bathsheba's scheme. but in her topo- graphical ignorance as a late comer to the place, she misreckoned the distance of her journey as not much more than half what it really was. her idea, however, she proceeded to carry out, with what initial success we have already seen. chapter xxxiii in the sun -- a harbinger a week passed, and there were no tidings of bath- sheba; nor was there any explanation of her gilpin's rig. then a note came for maryann, stating that the business which had called her mistress to bath still detained her there; but that she hoped to return in the course of another week. another week passed. the oat-harvest began, and all the men were a-field under a monochromatic lammas sky, amid the trembling air and short shadows of noon. indoors nothing was to be heard save the droning of blue-bottle flies; out-of-doors the whetting of scythes and the hiss of tressy oat-ears rubbing together as their perpendicular stalks of amber-yellow fell heavily to each swath. every drop of moisture not in the men's bottles and flagons in the form of cider was raining as perspira- tion from their foreheads and cheeks. drought was everywhere else. they were about to withdraw for a while into the charitable shade of a tree in the fence, when coggan saw a figure in a blue coat and brass buttons running to them across the field. "i wonder who that is?" he said. "i hope nothing is wrong about mistress." said maryann, who with some other women was tying the bundles (oats being always sheafed on this farm), "but an unlucky token came to me indoors this morning. l went to unlock the door and dropped the key, and it fell upon the stone floor and broke into two pieces. breaking a key is a dreadful bodement. i wish mis'ess was home." "'tis cain ball." said gabriel, pausing from whetting his reaphook. oak was not bound by his agreement to assist in the corn-field; but the harvest month is an anxious time for a farmer, and the corn was bathsheba's, so he lent a hand. "he's dressed up in his best clothes." said matthew moon. "he hev been away from home for a few days, since he's had that felon upon his finger; for 'a said, since i can't work i'll have a hollerday." "a good time for one -- a excellent time." said joseph poorgrass, straightening his back; for he, like some of the others, had a way of resting a while from his labour on such hot days for reasons preternaturally small; of which cain pall's advent on a week-day in his sunday- clothes was one of the first magnitude. "twas a bad leg allowed me to read the pilgrim's progress, and mark clark learnt alifours in a whitlow." "ay, and my father put his arm out of joint to have time to go courting." said jan coggan, in an eclipsing tone, wiping his face with his shirt-sleeve and thrusting back his hat upon the nape of his neck. by this time cainy was nearing the group of harvesters, and was perceived to be carrying a large slice of bread and ham in one hand, from which he took mouthfuls as he ran, the other being wrapped in a bandage. when he came close, his mouth assumed the bell shape, and he began to cough violently. "now, cainy!" said gabriel, sternly. "how many more times must i tell you to keep from running so fast when you be eating? you'll choke yourself some day, that's what you'll do, cain ball." "hok-hok-hok!" replied cain. "a crumb of my victuals went the wrong way -- hok-hok!, that's what 'tis, mister oak! and i've been visiting to bath because i had a felon on my thumb; yes, and l've seen -- ahok-hok!" directly cain mentioned bath, they all threw down their hooks and forks and drew round him. un- fortunately the erratic crumb did not improve his narrative powers, and a supplementary hindrance was that of a sneeze, jerking from his pocket his rather large watch, which dangled in front of the young man pendulum-wise. "yes." he continued, directing his thoughts to bath and letting his eyes follow, "l've seed the world at last -- yes -- and i've seed our mis'ess -- ahok-hok-hok!" "bother the boy!" said gabriel." something is always going the wrong way down your throat, so that you can't tell what's necessary to be told." "ahok! there! please, mister oak, a gnat have just fleed into my stomach and brought the cough on again!" "yes, that's just it. your mouth is always open, you young rascal!" "'tis terrible bad to have a gnat fly down yer throat, pore boy!" said matthew moon. "well, at bath you saw -- --" prompted gabriel. "i saw our mistress." continued the junior shepherd, "and a sojer, walking along. and bymeby they got closer and closer, and then they went arm-in-crook, like courting complete -- hok-hok! like courting complete -- hok! -- courting complete -- -- " losing the thread of his narrative at this point simultaneously with his loss of breath, their informant looked up and down the field apparently for some clue to it. "well, i see our mis'ess and a soldier -- a-ha-a-wk!" "damn the boy!" said gabriel. "'tis only my manner, mister oak, if ye'll excuse it," said cain ball, looking reproachfully at oak, with eyes drenched in their own dew. !here's some cider for him -- that'll cure his throat," said jan coggan, lifting a flagon of cider, pulling out the cork, and applying the hole to cainy's mouth; joseph poorgrass in the meantime beginning to think apprehensively of the serious consequences that would follow cainy ball's strangulation in his cough, and the history of his bath adventures dying with him. "for my poor self, i always say "please god" afore i do anything." said joseph, in an unboastful voice; "and so should you, cain ball. "'tis a great safeguard, and might perhaps save you from being choked to death some day." mr. coggan poured the liquor with unstinted liber- ality at the suffering cain's circular mouth; half of it running down the side of the flagon, and half of what reached his mouth running down outside his throat, and half of what ran in going the wrong way, and being coughed and sneezed around the persons of the gathered reapers in the form of a cider fog, which for a moment hung in the sunny air like a small exhalation. "there's a great clumsy sneeze! why can't ye have better manners, you young dog!" said coggan, with- drawing the flagon. "the cider went up my nose!" cried cainy, as soon as he could speak; "and now 'tis gone down my neck, and into my poor dumb felon, and over my shiny buttons and all my best cloze!" "the poor lad's cough is terrible unfortunate." said matthew moon. "and a great history on hand, too. bump his back, shepherd." "'tis my nater." mourned cain. "mother says i always was so excitable when my feelings were worked up to a point!" "true, true." said joseph poorgrass. "the balls were always a very excitable family. i knowed the boy's grandfather -- a truly nervous and modest man, even to genteel refinery. 'twas blush, blush with him, almost as much as 'tis with me -- not but that 'tis a fault in me!" "not at all, master poorgrass." said coggan. "'tis a very noble quality in ye." "heh-heh! well, i wish to noise nothing abroad -- nothing at all." murmured poorgrass, diffidently. "but we be born to things -- that's true. yet i would rather my trifle were hid; though, perhaps, a high nater is a little high, and at my birth all things were possible to my maker, and he may have begrudged no gifts.... but under your bushel, joseph! under your bushel with "ee! a strange desire, neighbours, this desire to hide, and no praise due. yet there is a sermon on the mount with a calendar of the blessed at the head, and certain meek men may be named therein." "cainy's grandfather was a very clever man." said matthew moon. "invented a' apple-tree out of his own head, which is called by his name to this day -- the early ball. you know 'em, jan? a quarrenden grafted on a tom putt, and a rathe-ripe upon top o' that again. "'tis trew 'a used to bide about in a public-house wi' a woman in a way he had no business to by rights, but there -- 'a were a clever man in the sense of the term." "now then." said gabriel, impatiently, " what did you see, cain?" "i seed our mis'ess go into a sort of a park place, where there's seats, and shrubs and flowers, arm-in-crook with a sojer." continued cainy, firmly, and with a dim sense that his words were very effective as regarded gabriel's emotions. "and i think the sojer was sergeant troy. and they sat there together for more than half-an-hour, talking moving things, and she once was crying a'most to death. and when they came out her eyes were shining and she was as white as a lily; and they looked into one another's faces, as far-gone friendly as a man and woman can be." gabriel's features seemed to get thinner. "well, what did you see besides?" "oh, all sorts." "white as a lily? you are sure 'twas she? "yes." "well, what besides?" "great glass windows to the shops, and great clouds in the sky, full of rain, and old wooden trees in the country round." "you stun-poll! what will ye say next?" said coggan. "let en alone." interposed joseph poorgrass. "the boy's meaning is that the sky and the earth in the kingdom of bath is not altogether different from ours here. 'tis for our good to gain knowledge of strange cities, and as such the boy's words should be suffered, so to speak it." "and the people of bath." continued cain, "never need to light their fires except as a luxury, for the water springs up out of the earth ready boiled for use." "'tis true as the light." testified matthew moon." i've heard other navigators say the same thing." "they drink nothing else there." said cain," and seem to enjoy it, to see how they swaller it down." "well, it seems a barbarian practice enough to us, but i daresay the natives think nothing o' it." said matthew. "and don't victuals spring up as well as drink?" asked coggan, twirling his eye. "no-i own to a blot there in bath -- a true blot. god didn't provide 'em with victuals as well as (- and 'twas a drawback i couldn't get over at all." "well, 'tis a curious place, to say the least." observed moon; "and it must be a curious people that live therein. " "miss everdene and the soldier were walking about together, you say?" said gabriel, returning to the group. "ay, and she wore a beautiful gold-colour silk gown, trimmed with black lace, that would have stood alone 'ithout legs inside if required. 'twas a very winsome sight; and her hair was brushed splendid. and when the sun shone upon the bright gown and his red coat -- my! how handsome they looked. you could see 'em all the length of the street." "and what then?" murmured gabriel. "and then i went into griffin's to hae my boots hobbed, and then i went to riggs's batty-cake shop, and asked 'em for a penneth of the cheapest and nicest stales, that were all but blue-mouldy, but not quite. and whilst i was chawing 'em down i walked on and seed a clock with a face as big as a baking trendle -- -- " "but that's nothing to do with mistress!" "i'm coming to that, if you'll leave me alone, mister oak!" remonstrated cainy. "if you excites me, perhaps you'll bring on my cough, and then i shan't be able to tell ye nothing." "yes-let him tell it his own way." said coggan. gabriel settled into a despairing attitude of patience, and cainy went on: -- "and there were great large houses, and more people all the week long than at weatherbury club- walking on white tuesdays. and i went to grand churches and chapels. and how the parson would pray! yes; he would kneel down and put up his hands together, and make the holy gold rings on his fingers gleam and twinkle in yer eyes, that he'd earned by praying so excellent well! -- ah yes, i wish i lived there." "our poor parson thirdly can't get no money to buy such rings." said matthew moon, thoughtfully. "and as good a man as ever walked. i don't believe poor thirdly have a single one, even of humblest tin or copper. such a great ornament as they'd be to him on a dull afternoon, when he's up in the pulpit lighted by the wax candles! but 'tis impossible, poor man. ah, to think how unequal things be." "perhaps he's made of different stuff than to wear "em." said gabriel, grimly." well, that's enough of this. go on, cainy -- quick." "oh -- and the new style of parsons wear moustaches and long beards." continued the illustrious traveller, "and look like moses and aaron complete, and make we fokes in the congregation feel all over like the children of israel." "a very right feeling -- very." said joseph poorgrass. "and there's two religions going on in the nation now -- high church and high chapel. and, thinks i, i'll play fair; so i went to high church in the morning, and high chapel in the afternoon." "a right and proper boy." said joseph poorgrass. "well, at high church they pray singing, and worship all the colours of the rainbow; and at high chapel they pray preaching, and worship drab and whitewash only. and then-i didn't see no more of miss everdene at all." "why didn't you say so afore, then?" exclaimed oak, with much disappointment. "ah." said matthew moon, 'she'll wish her cake dough if so be she's over intimate with that man." "she's not over intimate with him." said gabriel, indignantly. "she would know better." said coggan. "our mis'ess has too much sense under they knots of black hair to do such a mad thing." "you see, he's not a coarse, ignorant man, for he was well brought up." said matthew, dubiously. "'twas only wildness that made him a soldier, and maids rather like your man of sin." "now, cain ball." said gabriel restlessly, "can you swear in the most awful form that the woman you saw was miss everdene?" "cain ball, you be no longer a babe and suckling," said joseph in the sepulchral tone the circumstances demanded, "and you know what taking an oath is. 'tis a horrible testament mind ye, which you say and seal with your blood-stone, and the prophet matthew tells us that on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder. now, before all the work-folk here assembled, can you swear to your words as the shep- herd asks ye?" "please no, mister oak!" said cainy, looking from one to the other with great uneasiness at the spiritual magnitude of the position. "i don't mind saying 'tis true, but i don't like to say 'tis damn true, if that's what you mane." "cain, cain, how can you!" asked joseph sternly. "you be asked to swear in a holy manner, and you swear like wicked shimei, the son of gera, who cursed as he came. young man, fie!" "no, i don't! 'tis you want to squander a pore boy's soul, joseph poorgrass -- that's what 'tis!" said cain, beginning to cry. "all i mane is that in common truth 'twas miss everdene and sergeant troy, but in the horrible so-help-me truth that ye want to make of it perhaps 'twas somebody else!" "there's no getting at the rights of it." said gabriel, turning to his work. "cain ball, you'll come to a bit of bread!" groaned joseph poorgrass. then the reapers' hooks were flourished again, and the old sounds went on. gabriel, without making any pretence of being lively, did nothing to show that he was particularly dull. however, coggan knew pretty nearly how the land lay, and when they were in a nook together he said -- "don't take on about her, gabriel. what difference does it make whose sweetheart she is, since she can't be yours?" "that's the very thing i say to myself." said gabriel. chapter xxxiv home again -- a trickster that same evening at dusk gabriel was leaning over coggan's garden-gate, taking an up-and-down survey before retiring to rest. a vehicle of some kind was softly creeping along the grassy margin of the lane. from it spread the tones of two women talking. the tones were natural and not at all suppressed. oak instantly knew the voices to he those of bathsheba and liddy. the carriage came opposite and passed by. it was miss everdene's gig, and liddy and her mistress were the only occupants of the seat. liddy was asking questions about the city of bath, and her companion was answering them listlessly and unconcernedly. both bathsheba and the horse seemed weary. the exquisite relief of finding that she was here again, safe and sound, overpowered all reflection, and oak could only luxuriate in the sense of it. all grave reports were forgotten. he lingered and lingered on, till there was no difference between the eastern and western expanses of sky, and the timid hares began to limp courageously round the dim hillocks. gabriel might have been there an additional half-hour when a dark form walked slowly by. "good-night, gabriel." the passer said. it was boldwood. "good-night, sir." said gabriel. boldwood likewise vanished up the road, and oak shortly afterwards turned indoors to bed. farmer boldwood went on towards miss everdene's house. he reached the front, and approaching the entrance, saw a light in the parlour. the blind was not drawn down, and inside the room was bathsheba, looking over some papers or letters. her back was towards boldwood. he went to the door, knocked, and waited with tense muscles and an aching brow. boldwood had not been outside his garden since his meeting with bathsheba in the road to yalbury. silent and alone, he had remained in moody medita- tion on woman's ways, deeming as essentials of the whole sex the accidents of the single one of their number he had ever closely beheld. by degrees a more charitable temper had pervaded him, and this was the reason of his sally to-night. he had come to apologize and beg forgiveness of bathsheba with some- thing like a sense of shame at his violence, having but just now learnt that she had returned -- only from a visit to liddy, as he supposed, the bath escapade being quite unknown to him. he inquired for miss everdene. liddy's manner was odd, but he did not notice it. she went in, leaving him standing there, and in her absence the blind of the room containing bathsheba was pulled down. bold- wood augured ill from that sign. liddy came out. "my mistress cannot see you, sir." she said. the farmer instantly went out by the gate. he as unforgiven -- that was the issue of it all. he had seen her who was to him simultaneously a delight and a torture, sitting in the room he had shared with her as a peculiarly privileged guest only a little earlier in he summer, and she had denied him an entrance there now. boldwood did not hurry homeward. it was ten o'clock at least, when, walking deliberately through the lower part of weatherbury, he heard the carrier's spring van entering the village. the van ran to and from a town in a northern direction, and it was owned and driven by a weatherbury man, at the door of whose house it now pulled up. the lamp fixed to the head of the hood illuminated a scarlet and gilded form, who was the first to alight. "ah!" said boldwood to himself, "come to see her again." troy entered the carrier's house, which had been the place of his lodging on his last visit to his native place. boldwood was moved by a sudden determina- tion. he hastened home. in ten minutes he was back again, and made as if he were going to call upon troy at the carrier's. but as he approached, some one opened the door and came out. he heard this person say " good-night" to the inmates, and the voice was troy's. "this was strange, coming so immediately after his arrival. boldwood, however, hastened up to him. troy had what appeared to be a carpet-bag in his hand -- the same that he had brought with him. it seemed as if he were going to leave again this very night. troy turned up the hill and quickened his pace. boldwood stepped forward. "sergeant troy?" "yes-i'm sergeant troy." "just arrived from up the country, i think?"just arrived from bath." "i am william boldwood." "indeed." the tone in which this word was uttered was all that had been wanted to bring boldwood to the point. "i wish to speak a word with you." he said. "what about?" "about her who lives just ahead there -- and about a woman you have wronged." "i wonder at your impertinence." said troy, moving on. "now look here." said boldwood, standing in front of him, " wonder or not, you are going to hold a conver- sation with me." troy heard the dull determination in boldwood's voice, looked at his stalwart frame, then at the thick cudgel he carried in his hand. he remembered it was past ten o'clock. it seemed worth while to be civil to boldwood. "very well, i'll listen with pleasure." said troy, placing his bag on the ground, "only speak low, for somebody or other may overhear us in the farmhouse there." "well then -- i know a good deal concerning your fanny robin's attachment to you. i may say, too, that i believe i am the only person in the village, excepting gabriel oak, who does know it. you ought to marry her." "i suppose i ought. indeed, l wish to, but i cannot." "why?" troy was about to utter something hastily; he then checked himself and said, "i am too poor." his voice was changed. previously it had had a devil-may-care tone. it was the voice of a trickster now. boldwood's present mood was not critical enough to notice tones. he continued, "i may as well speak plainly; and understand, i don't wish to enter into the questions of right or wrong, woman's honour and shame, or to express any opinion on your conduct. i intend a business transaction with you." "i see." said troy. "suppose we sit down here." an old tree trunk lay under the hedge immediately opposite, and they sat down. the tone in which this word was uttered was all troy heard the dull determination in boldwood's voice, looked at his stalwart frame, then at the thick plainly; and understand, i don't wish to enter into the "i was engaged to be married to miss everdene," said boldwood, "but you came and -- -- " "not engaged." said troy. "as good as engaged." "if i had not turned up she might have become en- gaged to you." "hang might!"would, then." "if you had not come i should certainly -- yes, certainly -- have been accepted by this time. if you had not seen her you might have been married to fanny. well, there's too much difference between miss ever- dene's station and your own for this flirtation with her ever to benefit you by ending in marriage. so all i ask is, don't molest her any more. marry fanny. make it worth your while." "how will you?" "i'll pay you well now, i'll settle a sum of money upon her, and i'll see that you don't suffer from poverty in the future. i'll put it clearly. bathsheba is only playing with you: you are too poor for her as i said; so give up wasting your time about a great match you'll never make for a moderate and rightful match you may make to-morrow; take up your carpet-bag, turn about, leave weatherbury now, this night, and you shall take fifty pounds with you. fanny shall have fifty to enable her to prepare for the wedding, when you have told me where she is living, and she shall have five hundred paid down on her wedding-day." in making this statement boldwood's voice revealed only too clearly a consciousness of the weakness of his position, his aims, and his method. his manner had lapsed quite from that of the firm and dignified bold- wood of former times; and such a scheme as he had now engaged in he would have condemned as childishly imbecile only a few months ago. we discern a grand force in the lover which he lacks whilst a free man; but there is a breadth of vision in the free man which in the lover we vainly seek. where there is much bias there must be some narrowness, and love, though added emotion, is subtracted capacity. boldwood exemplified this to an abnormal degree: he knew nothing of fanny robin's circumstances or whereabouts, he knew nothing of troy's possibilities, yet that was what he said. "i like fanny best." said troy; "and if, as you say, miss everdene is out of my reach, why i have all to gain by accepting your money, and marrying fan. but she's only a servant." "never mind -- do you agree to my arrangement?" "i do." "ah!" said boldwood, in a more elastic voice. "o, troy, if you like her best, why then did you step in here and injure my happiness?" "i love fanny best now." said troy. "but bathsh -- -- miss everdene inflamed me, and displaced fanny for a time. it is over now." "why should it be over so soon? and why then did you come here again?" "there are weighty reasons. fifty pounds at once, you said!" "i did." said boldwood, " and here they are -- fifty sovereigns." he handed troy a small packet. "you have everything ready -- it seems that you calculated on my accepting them." said the sergeant, taking the packet. "i thought you might accept them." said boldwood. "you've only my word that the programme shall be adhered to, whilst i at any rate have fifty pounds." "l had thought of that, and l have considered that if i can't appeal to your honour i can trust to your -- well, shrewdness we'll call it -- not to lose five hundred pounds in prospect, and also make a bitter enemy of a man who is willing to be an extremely useful friend." "stop, listen!" said troy in a whisper. a light pit-pat was audible upon the road just above them. "by george -- 'tis she." he continued. "i must go on and meet her." "she -- who?" "bathsheba." "bathsheba -- out alone at this time o' night!" said boldwood in amazement, and starting up." why must you meet her?" "she was expecting me to-night -- and i must now speak to her, and wish her good-bye, according to your wish. " "i don't see the necessity of speaking." "it can do no harm -- and she'll be wandering about looking for me if i don't. you shall hear all i say to her. it will help you in your love-making when i am gone." "your tone is mocking." "o no. and remember this, if she does not know what has become of me, she will think more about me than if i tell her flatly i have come to give her up." "will you confine your words to that one point? -- shall i hear every word you say?" "every word. now sit still there, and hold my" carpet bag for me, and mark what you hear." the light footstep came closer, halting occasionally, as if the walker listened for a sound. troy whistled a double note in a soft, fluty tone. "come to that, is it!" murmured boldwood, uneasily. "you promised silence." said troy. "i promise again." troy stepped forward. "frank, dearest, is that you?" the tones were bathsheba's. "o god!" said boldwood. "yes." said troy to her. "how late you are." she continued, tenderly. "did you come by the carrier? i listened and heard his wheels entering the village, but it was some time ago, and i had almost given you up, frank." "i was sure to come." said frank. "you knew i should, did you not?" "well, i thought you would." she said, playfully; "and, frank, it is so lucky! there's not a soul in my house but me to-night. i've packed them all off so nobody on earth will know of your visit to your lady's bower. liddy wanted to go to her grandfather's to tell him about her holiday, and i said she might stay with them till to-morrow -- when you'll be gone again." "capital." said troy." but, dear me, i. had better go back for my bag, because my slippers and brush and comb are in it; you run home whilst i fetch it, and i'll promise to be in your parlour in ten minutes." "yes." she turned and tripped up the hill again. during the progress of this dialogue there was a nervous twitching of boldwood's tightly closed lips, and his face became bathed in a clammy dew. he now started forward towards troy. troy turned to him and took up the bag. "shall i tell her i have come to give her up and cannot marry her?" said the soldier, mockingly. "no, no; wait a minute. i want to say more to you -- more to you!" said boldwood, in a hoarse whisper. "now." said troy," you see my dilemma. perhaps i am a bad man -- the victim of my impulses -- led away to do what i ought to leave undone. i can't, however, marry them both. and i have two reasons for- choosing fanny. first, i like her best upon the whole, and second, you make it worth my while." at the same instant boldwood sprang upon him, and held him by the neck. troy felt boldwood's grasp slowly tightening. the move was absolutely unexpected. "a moment." he gasped. "you are injuring her you love!" "well, what do you mean?" said the farmer. give me breath." said troy. boldwood loosened his hand, saying, "by heaven, i've a mind to kill you!" "and ruin her." "save her." "oh, how can she be saved now, unless i marry her?" boldwood groaned. he reluctantly released the soldier, and flung him back against the hedge. "devil, you torture me!" said he. troy rebounded like a ball, and was about to make a dash at the farmer; but he checked himself, saying lightly -- "it is not worth while to measure my strength with you. indeed it is a barbarous way of settling a quarrel. i shall shortly leave the army because of the same conviction. now after that revelation of how the land lies with bathsheba, 'twould be a mistake to kill me, would it not?" "'twould be a mistake to kill you." repeated boldwood, mechanically, with a bowed head. "better kill yourself." "far better." "i'm glad you see it." "troy, make her your wife, and don't act upon what i arranged just now. the alternative is dreadful, but take bathsheba; i give her up! she must love you indeed to sell soul and body to you so utterly as she has done. wretched woman -- deluded woman -- you are, bathsheba!" "but about fanny?" "bathsheba is a woman well to do." continued bold- wood, in nervous anxiety, and, troy, she will make a good wife; and, indeed, she is worth your hastening on your marriage with her! " "but she has a will-not to say a temper, and i shall be a mere slave to her. i could do anything with poor fanny robin." "troy." said boldwood, imploringly," i'll do anything for you, only don't desert her; pray don't desert her, troy." "which, poor fanny?" "no; bathsheba everdene. love her best! love her tenderly! how shall i get you to see how advan- tageous it will be to you to secure her at once?" "i don't wish to secure her in any new way." boldwood's arm moved spasmodically towards troy's person again. he repressed the instinct, and his form drooped as with pain. troy went on -- "i shall soon purchase my discharge, and then -- -- " "but i wish you to hasten on this marriage! it will be better for you both. you love each other, and you must let me help you to do it." "how?" "why, by settling the five hundred on bathsheba instead of fanny, to enable you to marry at once. no; she wouldn't have it of me. i'll pay it down to you on the wedding-day." troy paused in secret amazement at boldwood's wild infatuation. he carelessly said, "and am i to have anything now?" "yes, if you wish to. but i have not much additional money with me. i did not expect this; but all i have is yours." boldwood, more like a somnambulist than a wakeful man, pulled out the large canvas bag he carried by way of a purse, and searched it. "i have twenty-one pounds more with me." he said. "two notes and a sovereign. but before i leave you i must have a paper signed -- -- " "pay me the money, and we'll go straight to her parlour, and make any arrangement you please to secure my compliance with your wishes. but she must know nothing of this cash business." "nothing, nothing." said boldwood, hastily. "here is the sum, and if you'll come to my house we'll write out the agreement for the remainder, and the terms also." "first we'll call upon her." "but why? come with me to-night, and go with me to-morrow to the surrogate's." "but she must be consulted; at any rate informed." "very well; go on." they went up the hill to bathsheba's house. when they stood at the entrance, troy said, "wait here a moment." opening the door, he glided inside, leaving the door ajar. boldwood waited. in two minutes a light appeared in the passage. boldwood then saw that the chain had been fastened across the door. troy appeared inside, carrying a bedroom candlestick. "what, did you think i should break in?" said boldwood, contemptuously. "oh, no, it is merely my humour to secure things. will you read this a moment? i'll hold the light." troy handed a folded newspaper through the slit between door and doorpost, and put the candle close. "that's the paragraph." he said, placing his finger on a line. boldwood looked and read -- "marriages. "on the th inst., at st. ambrose's church, bath, by the rev. g. mincing, b.a., francis troy, only son of the late edward troy, esq., h.d., of weatherbury, and sergeant with dragoon guards, to bathsheba, only surviving daughter of the late mr, john everdene, of casterbridge." "this may be called fort meeting feeble, hey, boldwood?" said troy. a low gurgle of derisive laughter followed the words. the paper fell from boldwood's hands. troy continued -- "fifty pounds to marry fanny, good. twenty-- one pounds not to marry fanny, but bathsheba. good. finale: already bathsheba's husband. now, boldwood, yours is the ridiculous fate which always attends inter- ference between a man and his wife. and another word. bad as i am, i am not such a villain as to make the marriage or misery of any woman a matter of huckster and sale. fanny has long ago left me. don't know where she is. i have searched everywhere. another word yet. you say you love bathsheba; yet on the merest apparent evidence you instantly believe in her dishonour. a fig for such love! now that i've taught you a lesson, take your money back again." "i will not; i will not!" said boldwood, in a hiss. "anyhow i won't have it." said troy, contemptuously. he wrapped the packet of gold in the notes, and threw the whole into the road. boldwood shook his clenched fist at him. "you juggler of satan! you black hound! but i'll punish you yet; mark me, i'll punish you yet!" another peal of laughter. troy then closed the door, and locked himself in. throughout the whole of that night boldwood's dark downs of weatherbury like an unhappy shade in the mournful fields by acheron. chapter xxxv at an upper window it was very early the next morning -- a time of sun and dew. the confused beginnings of many birds' songs spread into the healthy air, and the wan blue of the heaven was here and there coated with thin webs of incorporeal cloud which were of no effect in obscuring day. all the lights in the scene were yellow as to colour, and all the shadows were attenuated as to form. the creeping plants about the old manor-house were bowed with rows of heavy water drops, which had upon objects behind them the effect of minute lenses of high magnifying power. just before the clock struck five gabriel oak and coggan passed the village cross, and went on together to the fields. they were yet barely in view of their mistress's house, when oak fancied he saw the opening of a casement in one of the upper windows. the two men were at this moment partially screened by an elder bush, now beginning to be enriched with black bunches of fruit, and they paused before emerging from its shade. a handsome man leaned idly from the lattice. he looked east and then west, in the manner of one who makes a first morning survey. the man was sergeant troy. his red jacket was loosely thrown on, but not buttoned, and he had altogether the relaxed bearing of a soldier taking his ease. coggan spoke first, looking quietly at the window. "she has married him!" he said. gabriel had previously beheld the sight, and he now stood with his back turned, making no reply. "i fancied we should know something to-day." con- tinued coggan. "i heard wheels pass my door just after dark -- you were out somewhere."he glanced round upon gabriel. "good heavens above us, oak, how white your face is; you look like a corpse!" "do i?" said oak, with a faint smile. "lean on the gate: i'll wait a bit." "all right, all right." they stood by the gate awhile, gabriel listlessly staring at the ground. his mind sped into the future, and saw there enacted in years of leisure the scenes o repentance that would ensue from this work of haste that they were married he had instantly decided. why had it been so mysteriously managed? it had become known that she had had a fearful journey to bath, owing to her miscalculating the distance: that the horse had broken down, and that she had been more than two days getting there. it was not bathsheba's way to do things furtively. with all her faults, she was candour itself. could she have been entrapped? the union was not only an unutterable grief to him: it amazed him, notwithstanding that he had passed the preceding week in a suspicion that such might be the issue of troy's meeting her away from home. her quiet return with liddy had to some extent dispersed the dread. just as that imperceptible motion which appears like stillness is infinitely divided in its properties from stili ness itself, so had his hope undistinguishable from despair differed from despair indeed. in a few minutes they moved on again towards the house. the sergeant still looked from the window. "morning, comrades!" he shouted, in a cheery voice, when they came up. coggan replied to the greeting. "bain't ye going to answer the man?" he then said to gabriel. "i'd say good morning -- you needn't spend a hapenny of meaning upon it, and yet keep the man civil." gabriel soon decided too that, since the deed was done, to put the best face upon the matter would be the greatest kindness to her he loved. "good morning, sergeant troy." he returned, in a ghastly voice. "a rambling, gloomy house this." said troy, smiling. "why -- they may not be married!" suggested coggan. "perhaps she's not there." gabriel shook his head. the soldier turned a little towards the east, and the sun kindled his scarlet coat to an orange glow. "but it is a nice old house." responded gabriel. "yes -- i suppose so; but i feel like new wine in an old bottle here. my notion is that sash-windows should be put throughout, and these old wainscoted walls brightened up a bit; or the oak cleared quite away, and the walls papered." "it would be a pity, i think." well, no. a philosopher once said in my hearing that the old builders, who worked when art was a living thing, had no respect for the work of builders who went before them, but pulled down and altered as they thought fit; and why shouldn't we?"'creation and preservation don't do well together." says he, "and a million of antiquarians can't invent a style." my mind exactly. i am for making this place more modern, that we may be cheerful whilst we can." the military man turned and surveyed the interior of the room, to assist his ideas of improvement in this direction. gabriel and coggan began to move on. "oh, coggan." said troy, as if inspired by a recollec- tion" do you know if insanity has ever appeared in mr. boldwood's family?" jan reflected for a moment. "i once heard that an uncle of his was queer in his head, but i don't know the rights o't." he said. "it is of no importance." said troy, lightly. "well, i shall be down in the fields with you some time this week; but i have a few matters to attend to first. so good-day to you. we shall, of course, keep on just as friendly terms as usual. i'm not a proud man: nobody is ever able to say that of sergeant troy. however, what is must be, and here's half-a-crown to drink my health, men." troy threw the coin dexterously across the front plot and over the fence towards gabriel, who shunned it in its fall, his face turning to an angry red. coggan twirled his eye, edged forward, and caught the money in its ricochet upon the road. "very well-you keep it, coggan." said gabriel with disdain and almost fiercely. "as for me, i'll do with- out gifts from him!" "don't show it too much." said coggan, musingly. "for if he's married to her, mark my words, he'll buy his discharge and be our master here. therefore 'tis well to say `friend' outwardly, though you say `troublehouse' within." "well-perhaps it is best to be silent; but i can't go further than that. i can't flatter, and if my place here is only to be kept by smoothing him down, my place must be lost." a horseman, whom they had for some time seen in the distance, now appeared close beside them. "there's mr. boldwood." said oak." i wonder what troy meant by his question." coggan and oak nodded respectfully to the farmer, just checked their paces to discover if they were wanted, and finding they were not stood back to let him pass on. the only signs of the terrible sorrow boldwood had been combating through the night, and was combating now, were the want of colour in his well-defined face, the enlarged appearance of the veins in his forehead and temples, and the sharper lines about his mouth. the horse bore him away, and the very step of the animal seemed significant of dogged despair. gabriel, for a minute, rose above his own grief in noticing boldwood's. he saw the square figure sitting erect upon the horse, the head turned to neither side, the elbows steady by the hips, the brim of the hat level and undisturbed in its onward glide, until the keen edges of boldwood's shape sank by degrees over the hill. to one who knew the man and his story there was something more striking in this immobility than in a collapse. the clash of discord between mood and matter here was forced painfully home to the heart; and, as in laughter there are more dreadful phases than in tears, so was there in the steadiness of this agonized man an expression deeper than a cry. chapter xxxvi wealth in jeopardy -- the revel one night, at the end of august, when bathsheba's experiences as a married woman were still new, and when the weather was yet dry and sultry, a man stood motionless in the stockyard of weatherbury upper farm, looking at the moon and sky. the night had a sinister aspect. a heated breeze from the south slowly fanned the summits of lofty objects, and in the sky dashes of buoyant cloud were sailing in a course at right angles to that of another stratum, neither of them in the direction of the breeze below. the moon, as seen through these films, had a lurid metallic look. the fields were sallow with the impure light, and all were tinged in monochrome, as if beheld through stained glass. the same evening the sheep had trailed homeward head to tail, the behaviour of the rooks had been confused, and the horses had moved with timidity and caution. thunder was imminent, and, taking some secondary appearances into consideration, it was likely to be followed by one of the lengthened rains which mark the close of dry weather for the season. before twelve hours had passed a harvest atmosphere would be a bygone thing. oak gazed with misgiving at eight naked and un- protected ricks, massive and heavy with the rich produce of one-half the farm for that year. he went on to the barn. this was the night which had been selected by sergeant troy -- ruling now in the room of his wife -- for giving the harvest supper and dance. as oak approached the building the sound of violins and a tambourine, and the regular jigging of many feet, grew more distinct. he came close to the large doors, one of which stood slightly ajar, and looked in. the central space, together with the recess at one end, was emptied of all incumbrances, and this area, covering about two-thirds of the whole, was appropriated for the gathering, the remaining end, which was piled to the ceiling with oats, being screened off with sail- cloth. tufts and garlands of green foliage decorated the walls, beams, and extemporized chandeliers, and immediately opposite to oak a rostrum had been erected, bearing a table and chairs. here sat three fiddlers, and beside them stood a frantic man with his hair on end, perspiration streaming down his cheeks, and a tambourine quivering in his hand. the dance ended, and on the black oak floor in the midst a new row of couples formed for another. "now, ma'am, and no offence i hope, i ask what dance you would like next?" said the first violin. "really, it makes no difference." said the clear voice of bathsheba, who stood at the inner end of the build- ing, observing the scene from behind a table covered with cups and viands. troy was lolling beside her. "then." said the fiddler, "i'll venture to name that the right and proper thing is "the soldier's joy" -- there being a gallant soldier married into the farm -- hey, my sonnies, and gentlemen all?" "it shall be "the soldier's joy," exclaimed a chorus. "thanks for the compliment." said the sergeant gaily, taking bathsheba by the hand and leading her to the top of the dance. "for though i have pur- chased my discharge from her most gracious majesty's regiment of cavalry the th dragoon guards, to attend to the new duties awaiting me here, i shall continue a soldier in spirit and feeling as long as i live." so the dance began. as to the merits of "the soldier's joy." there cannot be, and never were, two opinions. it has been observed in the musical circles of weatherbury and its vicinity that this melody, at the end of three-quarters of an hour of thunderous footing, still possesses more stimulative properties for the heel and toe than the majority of other dances at their first opening. "the soldier's joy" has, too, an additional charm, in being so admirably adapted to the tambourine aforesaid -- no mean instrument in the hands of a performer who understands the proper convulsions, spasms, st. vitus's dances, and fearful frenzies necessary when exhibiting its tones in their highest perfection. the immortal tune ended, a fine dd rolling forth from the bass-viol with the sonorousness of a cannonade, and gabriel delayed his entry no longer. he avoided bathsheba, and got as near as possible to the platform, where sergeant troy was now seated, drinking brandy- and-water, though the others drank without exception cider and ale. gabriel could not easily thrust himself within speaking distance of the sergeant, and he sent a message, asking him to come down for a moment. "the sergeant said he could not attend. "will you tell him, then." said gabriel, "that i only stepped ath'art to say that a heavy rain is sure to fall soon, and that something should be done to protect the ricks?" "m. troy says it will not rain." returned the messenger, "and he cannot stop to talk to you about such fidgets." in juxtaposition with troy, oak had a melancholy tendency to look like a candle beside gas, and ill at ease, he went out again, thinking he would go home; for, under the circumstances, he had no heart for the scene in the barn. at the door he paused for a moment: troy was speaking. "friends, it is not only the harvest home that we are celebrating to-night; but this is also a wedding feast. a short time ago i had the happiness to lead to the altar this lady, your mistress, and not until now have we been able to give any public flourish to the event in weatherbury. that it may be thoroughly well done, and that every man may go happy to bed, i have ordered to be brought here some bottles of brandy and kettles of hot water. a treble-strong goblet will he handed round to each guest." bathsheba put her hand upon his arm, and, with upturned pale face, said imploringly," no -- don't give it to them -- pray don't, frank! it will only do them harm: they have had enough of everything." "true -- we don't wish for no more, thank ye." said one or two. "pooh!" said the sergeant contemptuously, and raised his voice as if lighted up by a new idea. "friends." he said," we'll send the women-folk home! 'tis time they were in bed. then we cockbirds will have a jolly carouse to ourselves! if any of the men show the white feather, let them look elsewhere for a winter's work." bathsheba indignantly left the barn, followed by all the women and children. the musicians, not looking upon themselves as "company." slipped quietly away to their spring waggon and put in the horse. thus troy and the men on the farm were left sole occupants of the place. oak, not to appear unneces- sarily disagreeable, stayed a little while; then he, too, arose and quietly took his departure, followed by a friendly oath from the sergeant for not staying to a second round of grog. gabriel proceeded towards his home. in approach- ing the door, his toe kicked something which felt and sounded soft, leathery, and distended, like a boxing- glove. it was a large toad humbly travelling across the path. oak took it up, thinking it might be better to kill the creature to save it from pain; but finding it uninjured, he placed it again among the grass. he knew what this direct message from the great mother meant. and soon came another. when he struck a light indoors there appeared upon the table a thin glistening streak, as if a brush of varnish had been lightly dragged across it. oak's eyes followed the serpentine sheen to the other side, where it led up to a huge brown garden-slug, which had come indoors to-night for reasons of its own. it was nature's second way of hinting to him that he was to prepare for foul weather. oak sat down meditating for nearly an hour. during this time two black spiders, of the kind common in thatched houses, promenaded the ceiling, ultimately dropping to the floor. this reminded him that if there was one class of manifestation on this matter that he thoroughly understood, it was the instincts of sheep. he left the room, ran across two or three fields towards the flock, got upon a hedge, and looked over among them. they were crowded close together on the other side around some furze bushes, and the first peculiarity ob- servable was that, on the sudden appearance of oak's head over the fence, they did not stir or run away. they had now a terror of something greater than their terror of man. but this was not the most noteworthy feature: they were all grouped in such a way that their tails, without a single exception, were towards that half of the horizon from which the storm threatened. there was an inner circle closely huddled, and outside these they radiated wider apart, the pattern formed by the flock as a whole not being unlike a vandyked lace collar, to which the clump of furze-bushes stood in the position of a wearer's neck. opinion. he knew now that he was right, and that troy was wrong. every voice in nature was unanimous in bespeaking change. but two distinct translations attached to these dumb expressions. apparently there was to be a thunder-storm, and afterwards a cold con- tinuous rain. the creeping things seemed to know all about the later rain, hut little of the interpolated thunder-storm; whilst the sheep knew all about the thunder-storm and nothing of the later rain. this complication of weathers being uncommon, was all the more to be feared. oak returned to the stack-yard. all was silent here, and the conical tips of the ricks jutted darkly into the sky. there were five wheat-ricks in this yard, and three stacks of barley. the wheat when threshed would average about thirty quarters to each stack; the barley, at least forty. their value to bathsheba, and indeed to anybody, oak mentally estimated by the following simple calcula- tion: -- x = quarters= l. x = quarters= l. total . . l. seven hundred and fifty pounds in the divinest form that money can wear -- that of necessary food for man and beast: should the risk be run of deteriorating this bulk of corn to less than half its value, because of the instability of a woman?"never, if i can prevent it!" said gabriel. such was the argument that oak set outwardly before him. but man, even to himself, is a palimpsest, having an ostensible writing, and another beneath the lines. it is possible that there was this golden legend under the utilitarian one: "i will help to my last effort the woman i have loved so dearly." he went back to the barn to endeavour to obtain assistance for covering the ricks that very night. all was silent within, and he would have passed on in the belief that the party had broken up, had not a dim light, yellow as saffron by contrast with the greenish whiteness outside, streamed through a knot-hole in the folding doors. gabriel looked in. an unusual picture met his eye. the candles suspended among the evergreens had burnt down to their sockets, and in some cases the leaves tied about them were scorched. many of the lights had quite gone out, others smoked and stank, grease dropping from them upon the floor. here, under the table, and leaning against forms and chairs in every conceivable attitude except the perpendicular,!" were the wretched persons of all the work-folk, the hair of their heads at such low levels being suggestive of mops and brooms. in the midst of these shone red and distinct the figure of sergeant troy, leaning back in a chair. coggan was on his back, with his mouth open, huzzing forth snores, as were several others; the united breathings of the horizonal assemblage forming a subdued roar like london from a distance. joseph poorgrass was curled round in the fashion of a hedge- hog, apparently in attempts to present the least possible portion of his surface to the air; and behind him was dimly visible an unimportant remnant of william small- bury. the glasses and cups still stood upon the table, a water-jug being overturned, from which a small rill, after tracing its course with marvellous precision down the centre of the long table, fell into the neck of the unconscious mark clark, in a steady, monotonous drip, like the dripping of a stalactite in a cave. gabriel glanced hopelessly at the group, which, with one or two exceptions, composed all the able-bodied men upon the farm. he saw at once that if the ricks were to be saved that night, or even the next morning, he must save them with his own hands. a faint "ting-ting" resounded from under coggan's waistcoat. it was coggan's watch striking the hour of two. oak went to the recumbent form of matthew moon, who usually undertook the rough thatching of the home- stead, and shook him. the shaking was without effect. gabriel shouted in his ear, "where's your thatching- beetle and rick-stick and spars?" "under the staddles." said moon, mechanically, with the unconscious promptness of a medium. gabriel let go his head, and it dropped upon the floor like a bowl. he then went to susan tall's husband. "where's the key of the granary?" no answer. the question was repeated, with the same result. to be shouted to at night was evidently less of a novelty to susan tall's husband than to matthew moon. oak flung down tall's head into the corner again and turned away. to be just, the men were not greatly to blame for this painful and demoralizing termination to the evening's entertainment. sergeant troy had so strenu- ously insisted, glass in hand, that drinking should be the bond of their union, that those who wished to refuse hardly liked to be so unmannerly under the circum- stances. having from their youth up been entirely un- accustomed to any liquor stronger than cider or mild ale, it was no wonder that they had succumbed, one and all, with extraordinary uniformity, after the lapse of about an hour. gabriel was greatly depressed. this debauch boded ill for that wilful and fascinating mistress whom the faithful man even now felt within him as the embodi- ment of all that was sweet and bright and hopeless. he put out the expiring lights, that the barn might not be endangered, closed the door upon the men in their deep and oblivious sleep, and went again into the lone night. a hot breeze, as if breathed from the parted lips of some dragon about to swallow the globe, fanned him from the south, while directly opposite in the north rose a grim misshapen body of cloud, in the very teeth of the wind. so unnaturally did it rise that one could fancy it to be lifted by machinery from below. meanwhile the faint cloudlets had flown back into the south-east corner of the sky, as if in terror of the large cloud, like a young brood gazed in upon by some monster. going on to the village, oak flung a small stone against the window of laban tall's bedroom, expecting susan to open it; but nobody stirred. he went round to the back door, which had been left unfastened for laban's entry, and passed in to the foot of the stair- case. "mrs. tall, i've come for the key of the granary, to get at the rick-cloths." said oak, in a stentorian voice. "is that you?" said mrs. susan tall, half awake. "yes." said gabriel. "come along to bed, do, you drawlatching rogue -- keeping a body awake like this ." "it isn't laban -- 'tis gabriel oak. i want the key of the granary." "gabriel. what in the name of fortune did you pretend to be laban for?" "i didn't. i thought you meant -- -- " "yes you did! what do you want here?" "the key of the granary." "take it then. 'tis on the nail. people coming disturbing women at this time of night ought -- -- " gabriel took the key, without waiting to hear the conclusion of the tirade. ten minutes later his lonely figure might have been seen dragging four large water- proof coverings across the yard, and soon two of these heaps of treasure in grain were covered snug -- two cloths to each. two hundred pounds were secured. three wheat-stacks remained open, and there were no more cloths. oak looked under the staddles and found a fork. he mounted the third pile of wealth and began operating, adopting the plan of sloping the upper sheaves one over the other; and, in addition, filling the interstices with the material of some untied sheaves. so far all was well. by this hurried contrivance bathsheba's property in wheat was safe for at any rate a week or two, provided always that there was not much wind. next came the barley. this it was only possible to protect by systematic thatching. time went on, and the moon vanished not to reappear. it was the farewell of the ambassador previous to war. the night had a haggard look, like a sick thing; and there came finally an utter expiration of air from the whole heaven in the form of a slow breeze, which might have been likened to a death. and now nothing was heard in the yard but the dull thuds of the beetle which drove in the spars, and the rustle of thatch in the intervals. chapter xxxvii the storm -- the two together a light flapped over the scene, as if reflected from phosphorescent wings crossing the sky, and a rumble filled the air. it was the first move of the approaching storm. the second peal was noisy, with comparatively little visible lightning. gabriel saw a candle shining in bath- sheba's bedroom, and soon a shadow swept to and fro upon the blind. then there came a third flash. manoeuvres of a most extraordinary kind were going on in the vast firmamental hollows overhead. the lightning now was the colour of silver, and gleamed in the heavens like a mailed army. rumbles became rattles. gabriel from his elevated position could see over the landscape at least half-a-dozen miles in front. every hedge, bush, and tree was distinct as in a line engraving. in a paddock in the same direction was a herd of heifers, and the forms of these were visible at this moment in the act of galloping about in the wildest and maddest confusion, flinging their heels and tails high into the air, their heads to earth. a poplar in the immediate fore- ground was like an ink stroke on burnished tin. then the picture vanished, leaving the darkness so intense that gabriel worked entirely by feeling with his hands. he had stuck his ricking-rod, or poniard, as it was indifferently called -- a long iron lance, polished by handling -- into the stack, used to support the sheaves instead of the support called a groom used on houses, a blue light appeared in the zenith, and in some in- describable manner flickered down near the top of the rod. it was the fourth of the larger flashes. a moment later and there was a smack -- smart, clear, and short, gabriel felt his position to be anything but a safe one, and he resolved to descend. not a drop of rain had fallen as yet. he wiped his weary brow, and looked again at the black forms of the unprotected stacks. was his life so valuable to him after all? what were his prospects that he should be so chary of running risk, when important and urgent labour could not be carried on without such risk? he resolved to stick to the stack. how- ever, he took a precaution. under the staddles was a long tethering chain, used to prevent the escape of errant horses. this he carried up the ladder, and sticking his rod through the clog at one end, allowed the other end of the chain to trail upon the ground the spike attached to it he drove in. under the shadow of this extemporized lightning-conductor he felt himself comparatively safe. before oak had laid his hands upon his tools again out leapt the fifth flash, with the spring of a serpent and the shout of a fiend. it was green as an emerald, and the reverberation was stunning. what was this the light revealed to him? in the open ground before him, as he looked over the ridge of the rick, was a dark and apparently female form. could it be that of the only venturesome woman in the parish -- bathsheba? the form moved on a step: then he could see no more. "is that you, ma'am?" said gabriel to the darkness. "who is there?" said the voice of bathsheba, "gabriel. i am on the rick, thatching." "o, gabriel! -- and are you? i have come about them. the weather awoke me, and i thought of the corn. i am so distressed about it -- can we save it any- how? i cannot find my husband. is he with you?" he is not here." "do you know where he is?" "asleep in the barn." "he promised that the stacks should be seen to, and now they are all neglected! can i do anything to help? liddy is afraid to come out. fancy finding you here at such an hour! surely i can do something?" "you can bring up some reed-sheaves to me, one by one, ma'am; if you are not afraid to come up the ladder in the dark." said gabriel. "every moment is precious now, and that would save a good deal of time. it is not very dark when the lightning has been gone a bit." "i'll do anything!" she said, resolutely. she instantly took a sheaf upon her shoulder, clambered up close to his heels, placed it behind the rod, and descended for another. at her third ascent the rick suddenly brightened with the brazen glare of shining majolica -- every knot in every straw was visible. on the slope in front of him appeared two human shapes, black as jet. the rick lost its sheen -- the shapes vanished. gabriel turned his head. it had been the sixth flash which had come from the east behind him, and the two dark forms on the slope had been the shadows of himself and bathsheba. then came the peal. it hardly was credible that such a heavenly light could be the parent of such a diabolical sound. "how terrible!" she exclaimed, and clutched him by the sleeve. gabriel turned, and steadied her on her aerial perch by holding her arm. at the same moment, while he was still reversed in his attitude, there was more light, and he saw, as it were, a copy of the tall poplar tree on the hill drawn in black on the wall of the barn. it was the shadow of that tree, thrown across by a secondary flash in the west. the next flare came. bathsheba was on the ground now, shouldering another sheaf, and she bore its dazzle without flinching -- thunder and ali-and again ascended with the load. there was then a silence everywhere for four or five minutes, and the crunch of the spars, as gabriel hastily drove them in, could again be distinctly heard. he thought the crisis of the storm had passed. but there came a burst of light. "hold on!" said gabriel, taking the sheaf from her shoulder, and grasping her arm again. heaven opened then, indeed. the flash was almost too novel for its inexpressibly dangerous nature to be at once realized, and they could only comprehend the magnificence of its beauty. it sprang from east, west, north, south, and was a perfect dance of death. the forms of skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for bones -- dancing, leaping, striding, racing around, and mingling altogether in unparalleled con- fusion. with these were intertwined undulating snakes of green, and behind these was a broad mass of lesser light. simultaneously came from every part of the tumbling sky what may be called a shout; since, though no shout ever came near it, it was more of the nature of a shout than of anything else earthly. in the meantime one of the grisly forms had alighted upon the point of gabriel's rod, to run invisibly down it, down the chain, and into the earth. gabriel was almost blinded, and he could feel bathsheba's warm arm tremble in his hand -- a sensation novel and thrilling enough; but love, life, everything human, seemed small and trifling in such close juxtaposition with an infuriated universe. oak had hardly time to gather up these impressions into a thought, and to see how strangely the red feather of her hat shone in this light, when the tall tree on the hill before mentioned seemed on fire to a white heat, and a new one among these terrible voices mingled with the last crash of those preceding. it was a stupefying blast, harsh and pitiless, and it fell upon their ears in a dead, flat blow, without that reverberation which lends the tones of a drum to more distant thunder. by the lustre reflected from every part of the earth and from the wide domical scoop above it, he saw that the tree was sliced down the whole length of its tall, straight stem, a huge riband of bark being apparently flung off. the other portion remained erect, and revealed the bared surface as a strip of white down the front. the lightning had struck the tree. a sulphurous smell filled the air; then all was silent, and black as a cave in hinnom. "we had a narrow escape!" said gabriel, hurriedly. "you had better go down." bathsheba said nothing; but he could distinctly hear her rhythmical pants, and the recurrent rustle of the sheaf beside her in response to her frightened pulsations. she descended the ladder, and, on second thoughts, he followed her. the darkness was now impenetrable by the sharpest vision. they both stood still at the bottom, side by side. bathsheba appeared to think only of the weather -- oak thought only of her just then. at last he said -- "the storm seems to have passed now, at any rate." "i think so too." said bathsheba. "though there are multitudes of gleams, look!" the sky was now filled with an incessant light, frequent repetition melting into complete continuity, as an unbroken sound results from the successive strokes on a gong. "nothing serious." said he. "i cannot understand no rain falling. but heaven be praised, it is all the better for us. i am now going up again." "gabriel, you are kinder than i deserve! i will stay and help you yet. o, why are not some of the others here!" "they would have been here if they could." said oak, in a hesitating way. "o, i know it all -- all." she said, adding slowly: "they are all asleep in the barn, in a drunken sleep, and my husband among them. that's it, is it not? don't think i am a timid woman and can't endure things." "i am not certain." said gabriel. "i will go and see," he crossed to the barn, leaving her there alone. he looked through the chinks of the door. all was in total darkness, as he had left it, and there still arose, as at the former time, the steady buzz of many snores. he felt a zephyr curling about his cheek, and turned. it was bathsheba's breath -- she had followed him, and was looking into the same chink. he endeavoured to put off the immediate and pain- ful subject of their thoughts by remarking gently, "if you'll come back again, miss -- ma'am, and hand up a few more; it would save much time." then oak went back again, ascended to the top, stepped off the ladder for greater expedition, and went on thatching. she followed, but without a sheaf "gabriel." she said, in a strange and impressive voice. oak looked up at her. she had not spoken since he left the barn. the soft and continual shimmer of the dying lightning showed a marble face high against the black sky of the opposite quarter. bathsheba was sitting almost on the apex of the stack, her feet gathered up beneath her, and resting on the top round of the ladder. "yes, mistress." he said. "i suppose you thought that when i galloped away to bath that night it was on purpose to be married?" "i did at last -- not at first." he answered, somewhat surprised at the abruptness with which this new subject was broached. "and others thought so, too?" "yes." "and you blamed me for it?" "well-a little." "i thought so. now, i care a little for your good opinion, and i want to explain something-i have longed to do it ever since i returned, and you looked so gravely at me. for if i were to die -- and i may die soon -- it would be dreadful that you should always think mistakenly of me. now, listen." gabriel ceased his rustling. "i went to bath that night in the full intention of breaking off my engagement to mr. troy. it was owing to circumstances which occurred after i got there that -- that we were married. now, do you see the matter in a new light?" "i do -- somewhat." "i must, i suppose, say more, now that i have begun. and perhaps it's no harm, for you are certainly under no delusion that i ever loved you, or that i can have any object in speaking, more than that object i have mentioned. well, i was alone in a strange city, and the horse was lame. and at last i didn't know what to do. i saw, when it was too late, that scandal might seize hold of me for meeting him alone in that way. but i was coming away, when he suddenly said he had that day seen a woman more beautiful than i, and that his constancy could not be counted on unless i at once became his.... and i was grieved and troubled -- --" she cleared her voice, and waited a moment, as if to gather breath. "and then, between jealousy and distraction, i married him!" she whispered with desperate impetuosity. gabriel made no reply. "he was not to blame, for it was perfectly true about -- about his seeing somebody else." she quickly added. "and now i don't wish for a single remark from you upon the subject -- indeed, i forbid it. i only wanted you to know that misunderstood bit of my history before a time comes when you could never know it. -- you want some more sheaves?" she went down the ladder, and the work proceeded. gabriel soon perceived a languor in the movements of his mistress up and down, and he said to her, gently as a mother -- "i think you had better go indoors now, you are tired. i can finish the rest alone. if the wind does not change the rain is likely to keep off." "if i am useless i will go." said bathsheba, in a flagging cadence. "but o, if your life should be lost!" "you are not useless; but i would rather not tire you longer. you have done well." "and you better!" she said, gratefully.! thank you for your devotion, a thousand times, gabriel! good- night-i know you are doing your very best for me." she diminished in the gloom, and vanished, and he heard the latch of the gate fall as she passed through. he worked in a reverie now, musing upon her story, and upon the contradictoriness of that feminine heart which had caused her to speak more warmly to him to-night than she ever had done whilst unmarried and free to speak as warmly as she chose. he was disturbed in his meditation by a grating noise from the coach-house. it was the vane on the roof turning round, and this change in the wind was the signal for a disastrous rain. chapter xxxviii rain -- one solitary meets another it was now five o'clock, and the dawn was promising to break in hues of drab and ash. the air changed its temperature and stirred itself more vigorously. cool breezes coursed in transparent eddies round oak's face. the wind shifted yet a point or two and blew stronger. in ten minutes every wind of heaven seemed to be roaming at large. some of the thatching on the wheat-stacks was now whirled fantas- tically aloft, and had to be replaced and weighted with some rails that lay near at hand. this done, oak slaved away again at the barley. a huge drop of rain smote his face, the wind snarled round every corner, the trees rocked to the bases of their trunks, and the twigs clashed in strife. driving in spars at any point and on any system, inch by inch he covered more and more safely from ruin this distracting impersonation of seven hundred pounds. "the rain came on in earnest, and oak soon felt the water to be tracking cold and clammy routes down his back. ultimately he was reduced well-nigh to a homogeneous sop, and the dyes of his clothes trickled down and stood in a pool at the foot of the ladder. the rain stretched obliquely through the dull atmo- sphere in liquid spines, unbroken in continuity between their beginnings in the clouds and their points in him. oak suddenly remembered that eight months before this time he had been fighting against fire in the same spot as desperately as he was fighting against water now -- and for a futile love of the same woman. as for her -- -- but oak was generous and true, and dis- missed his reflections. it was about seven o'clock in the dark leaden morning when gabriel came down from the last stack, and thankfully exclaimed, "it is done!" he was drenched, weary, and sad, and yet not so sad as drenched and weary, for he was cheered by a sense of success in a good cause. faint sounds came from the barn, and he looked that way. figures stepped singly and in pairs through the doors -- all walking awkwardly, and abashed, save the foremost, who wore a red jacket, and advanced with his hands in his pockets, whistling. the others shambled after with a conscience-stricken air: the whole procession was not unlike flaxman's group of the suitors tottering on towards the infernal regions under the conduct of mercury. the gnarled shapes passed into the village, troy, their leader, entering the farmhouse. not a single one of them had turned his face to the ricks, or apparently bestowed one thought upon their condition. soon oak too went homeward, by a different route from theirs. in front of him against the wet glazed surface of the lane he saw a person walking yet more slowly than himself under an umbrella. the man turned and plainly started; he was boldwood. "how are you this morning, sir?" said oak. "yes, it is a wet day. -- oh, i am well, very well, i thank you; quite well." "i am glad to hear it, sir." boldwood seemed to awake to the present by degrees. "you look tired and ill, oak." he said then, desultorily regarding his companion. "i am tired. you look strangely altered, sir." "i? not a bit of it: i am well enough. what put that into your head?" "i thought you didn't look quite so topping as you used to, that was all." "indeed, then you are mistaken." said boldwood, shortly. "nothing hurts me. my constitution is an iron one." "i've been working hard to get our ricks covered, and was barely in time. never had such a struggle in my life.... yours of course are safe, sir." "o yes." boldwood added, after an interval of silence: " what did you ask, oak?" "your ricks are all covered before this time?" "no." "at any rate, the large ones upon the stone staddles?" "they are not." "them under the hedge?" "no. i forgot to tell the thatcher to set about it." "nor the little one by the stile?"nor the little one by the stile. i overlooked the ricks this year." "then not a tenth of your corn will come to measure, sir." "possibly not. "overlooked them." repeated gabriel slowly to him- self. it is difficult to describe the intensely dramatic effect that announcement had upon oak at such a moment. all the night he had been feeling that the neglect he was labouring to repair was abnormal and isolated -- the only instance of the kind within the circuit of the county. yet at this very time, within the same parish, a greater waste had been going on, uncomplained of and disregarded. a few months earlier boldwood's forgetting his husbandry would have been as preposter- ous an idea as a sailor forgetting he was in a ship. oak was just thinking that whatever he himself might have suffered from bathsheba's marriage, here was a man who had suffered more, when boldwood spoke in a changed voice -- that of one who yearned to make a confidence and relieve his heart by an outpouring. "oak, you know as well as i that things have gone wrong with me lately. i may as well own it. i was going to get a little settled in life; but in some way my plan has come to nothing." "i thought my mistress would have married you," said gabriel, not knowing enough of the full depths of boldwood's love to keep silence on the farmer's account, and determined not to evade discipline by doing so on his own. "however, it is so sometimes, and nothing happens that we expect." he added, with the repose of a man whom misfortune had inured rather than sub- dued. "i daresay i am a joke about the parish." said bold- wood, as if the subject came irresistibly to his tongue, and with a miserable lightness meant to express his indifference. "o no -- i don't think that." -- but the real truth of the matter is that there was not, as some fancy, any jilting on -- her part. no engagement ever existed between me and miss ever- dene. people say so, but it is untrue: she never promised me!" boldwood stood still now and turned his wild face to oak. "o, gabriel." he continued, "i am weak and foolish, and i don't know what, and i can't fend off my miserable grief! ... i had some faint belief in the mercy of god till i lost that woman. yes, he prepared a gourd to shade me, and like the prophet i thanked him and was glad. but the next day he prepared a worm to smite the gourd and wither it; and i feel it is better to die than to live!" a silence followed. boldwood aroused himself from the momentary mood of confidence into which he had drifted, and walked on again, resuming his usual reserve, "no, gabriel." he resumed, with a carelessness which was like the smile on the countenance of a skull: "it was made more of by other people than ever it was by us. i do feel a little regret occasionally, but no woman ever had power over me for any length of time. well, good morning; i can trust you not to mention to others what has passed between us two here." chapter xxxix coming home -- a cry on the turnpike road, between casterbridge and weatherbury, and about three miles from the former which pervade the highways of this undulating part of south wessex. i returning from market it is usual for the farmers and other gig-gentry to alight at the bottom and walk up. one saturday evening in the month of october bathsheba's vehicle was duly creeping up this incline. she was sitting listlessly in the second seat of the gig, whilst walking beside her in farmer's marketing suit of unusually fashionable cut was an erect, well-made young man. though on foot, he held the reins and whip, and occasionally aimed light cuts at the horse's ear with the end of the lash, as a recreation. this man was her husband, formerly sergeant troy, who, having bought his discharge with bathsheba's money, was gradually transforming himself into a farmer of a spirited and very modern school. people of unalter- able ideas still insisted upon calling him "sergeant" hen they met him, which was in some degree owing to his having still retained the well-shaped moustache of his military days, and the soldierly bearing insepar- able from his form and training. "yes, if it hadn't been for that wretched rain i should have cleared two hundred as easy as looking, my love." he was saying. "don't you see, it altered all the chances? to speak like a book i once read, wet weather is the narrative, and fine days are the episodes, of our country's history; now, isn't that true?" "but the time of year is come for changeable weather." "well, yes. the fact is, these autumn races are the ruin of everybody. never did i see such a day as 'twas! 'tis a wild open place, just out of budmouth, and a drab sea rolled in towards us like liquid misery. wind and rain -- good lord! dark? why, 'twas as black as my hat before the last race was run. 'twas five o'clock, and you couldn't see the horses till they were almost in, leave alone colours. the ground was as heavy as lead, and all judgment from a fellow's experi- ence went for nothing. horses, riders, people, were all blown about like ships at sea. three booths were blown over, and the wretched folk inside crawled out upon their hands and knees; and in the next field were as many as a dozen hats at one time. aye, pimpernel regularly stuck fast, when about sixty yards off, and when i saw policy stepping on, it did knock my heart against the lining of my ribs, i assure you, my love!" "and you mean, frank." said bathsheba, sadly -- her voice was painfully lowered from the fulness and vivacity of the previous summer -- "that you have lost more than a hundred pounds in a month by this dreadful horse-racing? o, frank, it is cruel; it is foolish of you to take away my money so. we shall have to leave the farm; that will be the end of it!" "humbug about cruel. now, there 'tis again -- turn on the waterworks; that's just like you." "but you'll promise me not to go to budmouth second meeting, won't you?" she implored. bathsheba was at the full depth for tears, but she maintained a dry eye. "i don't see why i should; in fact, if it turns out to be a fine day, i was thinking of taking you." "never, never! i'll go a hundred miles the other way first. i hate the sound of the very word!" "but the question of going to see the race or staying at home has very little to do with the matter. bets are all booked safely enough before the race begins, you may depend. whether it is a bad race for me or a good one, will have very little to do with our going there next monday." "but you don't mean to say that you have risked anything on this one too!" she exclaimed, with an agonized look. "there now, don't you be a little fool. wait till you are told. why, bathsheba, you have lost all the pluck and sauciness you formerly had, and upon my life if i had known what a chicken-hearted creature you were under all your boldness, i'd never have-i know what." a flash of indignation might have been seen in bathsheba's dark eyes as she looked resolutely ahead after this reply. they moved on without further speech, some early-withered leaves from the trees which hooded the road at this spot occasionally spinning downward across their path to the earth. a woman appeared on the brow of the hill. the ridge was in a cutting, so that she was very near the husband and wife before she became visible. troy had turned towards the gig to remount, and whilst putting his foot on the step-the woman passed behind him. though the overshadowing trees and the approach of eventide enveloped them in gloom, bathsheba could see plainly enough to discern the extreme poverty of the woman's garb, and the sadness of her face. "please, sir, do you know at what time casterbridge union-house closes at night?" the woman said these words to troy over his shoulder. troy started visibly at the sound of the voice; yet he seemed to recover presence of mind sufficient to prevent himself from giving way to his impulse to suddenly turn and face her. he said, slowly -- "i don't know." the woman, on hearing him speak, quickly looked up, examined the side of his face, and recognized the soldier under the yeoman's garb. her face was drawn into an expression which had gladness and agony both among its elements. she uttered an hysterical cry, and fell down. "o, poor thing!" exclaimed bathsheba, instantly preparing to alight. "stay where you are, and attend to the horse!" said troy, peremptorily throwing her the reins and the whip. "walk the horse to the top: i'll see to the woman." "but i -- " "do you hear? clk -- poppet!" the horse, gig, and bathsheba moved on. "how on earth did you come here? i thought you were miles away, or dead! why didn't you write to me?" said troy to the woman, in a strangely gentle, yet hurried voice, as he lifted her up. "i feared to." "have you any money?" "none." "good heaven -- i wish i had more to give you! here's -- wretched -- the merest trifle. it is every farthing i have left. i have none but what my wife gives me, you know, and i can't ask her now." he woman made no answer. "i have only another moment." continued troy; "and now listen. where are you going to-night? casterbridge union?" "yes; i thought to go there." "you shan't go there; yet, wait. yes, perhaps for to-night; i can do nothing better -- worse luck! sleep there to-night, and stay there to-morrow. monday is the first free day i have; and on monday morning, at ten exactly, meet me on grey's bridge just out of the town. i'll bring all the money i can muster. you shan't want-i'll see that, fanny; then i'll get you a lodging somewhere. good-bye till then. i am a brute -- but good-bye!" after advancing the distance which completed the ascent of the hill, bathsheba turned her head. the woman was upon her feet, and bathsheba saw her withdrawing from troy, and going feebly down the hill by the third milestone from casterbridge. troy then came on towards his wife, stepped into the gig, took the reins from her hand, and without making any observation whipped the horse into a trot. he was rather agitated. "do you know who that woman was?" said bath- sheba, looking searchingly into his face. "i do." he said, looking boldly back into hers. "i thought you did." said she, with angry hauteur, and still regarding him. "who is she?" he suddenly seemed to think that frankness would benefit neither of the women. "nothing to either of us." he said. "i know her by sight." "what is her name?" "how should i know her name?" "i think you do." "think if you will, and be -- -- " the sentence was completed by a smart cut of the whip round poppet's flank, which caused the animal to start forward at a wild pace. no more was said. chapter xl on casterbridge highway for a considerable time the woman walked on. her steps became feebler, and she strained her eyes to look afar upon the naked road, now indistinct amid the penumbrae of night. at length her onward walk dwindled to the merest totter, and she opened a gate within which was a haystack. underneath this she sat down and presently slept. when the woman awoke it was to find herself in the depths of a moonless and starless night. a heavy un- broken crust of cloud stretched across the sky, shutting out every speck of heaven; and a distant halo which hung over the town of casterbridge was visible against the black concave, the luminosity appearing the brighter by its great contrast with the circumscribing darkness. towards this weak, soft glow the woman turned her eyes. "if i could only get there!" she said. "meet him the day after to-morrow: god help me! perhaps i shall be in my grave before then." a manor-house clock from the far depths of shadow struck the hour, one, in a small, attenuated tone. after midnight the voice of a clock seems to lose in breadth as much as in length, and to diminish its sonorousness to a thin falsetto. afterwards a light -- two lights -- arose from the re- mote shade, and grew larger. a carriage rolled along the road, and passed the gate. it probably contained some late diners-out. the beams from one lamp shone for a moment upon the crouching woman, and threw her face into vivid relieff. the face was young in the groundwork, old in the finish; the general contours were flexuous and childlike, but the finer lineaments had begun to be sharp and thin. the pedestrian stood up, apparently with revived determination, and looked around. the road appeared to be familiar to her, and she carefully scanned the fence as she slowly walked along. presently there became visible a dim white shape; it was another milestone. she drew her fingers across its face to feel the marks. "two more!" she said. she leant against the stone as a means of rest for a short interval, then bestirred herself, and again pursued her way. for a slight distance she bore up bravely, afterwards flagging as before. this was beside a lone copsewood, wherein heaps of white chips strewn upon the leafy ground showed that woodmen had been faggoting and making hurdles during the day. now there was not a rustle, not a breeze, not the faintest clash of twigs to keep her company. the woman looked over the gate, opened it, and went in. close to the entrance stood a row of faggots, bound and un- bound, together with stakes of all sizes. for a few seconds the wayfarer stood with that tense stillness which signifies itself to be not the end but merely the suspension, of a previous motion. her attitude was that of a person who listens, either to the external world of sound, or to the imagined discourse of thought. a close criticism might have detected signs proving that she was intent on the latter alternative. moreover, as was shown by what followed, she was oddly exercising the faculty of invention upon the spe- ciality of the clever jacquet droz, the designer of auto- matic substitutes for human limbs. by the aid of the casterbridge aurora, and by feeling with her hands, the woman selected two sticks from the heaps. these sticks were nearly straight to the height of three or four feet, where each branched into a fork like the letter y. she sat down, snapped off the small upper twigs, and carried the remainder with her into the road. she placed one of these forks under each arm as a crutch, tested them, timidly threw her whole weight upon them -- so little that it was -- and swung herself forward. the girl had made for herself a material aid. the crutches answered well. the pat of her feet, and the tap of her sticks upon the highway, were all the sounds that came from the traveller now. she had passed the last milestone by a good long distance, and began to look wistfully towards the bank as if calculating upon another milestone soon. the crutches, though so very useful, had their limits of power. mechanism only transfers labour, being powerless to supersede it, and the original amount of exertion was not cleared away; it was thrown into the body and arms. she was exhausted, and each swing forward became fainter. at last she swayed sideways, and fell. here she lay, a shapeless heap, for ten minutes and more. the morning wind began to boom dully over the flats, and to move afresh dead leaves which had lain still since yesterday. the woman desperately turned round upon her knees, and next rose to her feet. steadying herself by the help of one crutch, she essayed a step, then another, then a third, using the crutches now as walking-sticks only. thus she pro- gressed till descending mellstock hill another milestone appeared, and soon the beginning of an iron-railed fence came into view. she staggered across to the first post, clung to it, and looked around. the casterbridge lights were now individually visible, it was getting towards morning, and vehicles might be hoped for, if not expected soon. she listened. there was not a sound of life save that acme and sublimation of all dismal sounds, the hark of a fox, its three hollow notes being rendered at intervals of a minute with the precision of a funeral bell. "less than a mile!" the woman murmured. "no; more." she added, after a pause. "the mile is to the county hall, and my resting-place is on the other side casterbridge. a little over a mile, and there i am!" after an interval she again spoke. "five or six steps to a yard -- six perhaps. i have to go seventeen hundred yards. a hundred times six, six hundred. seventeen times that. o pity me, lord!" holding to the rails, she advanced, thrusting one hand forward upon the rail, then the other, then leaning over it whilst she dragged her feet on beneath. this woman was not given to soliloquy; but ex- tremity of feeling lessens the individuality of the weak, as it increases that of the strong. she said again in the same tone, "i'll believe that the end lies five posts for- ward, and no further, and so get strength to pass them." this was a practical application of the principle that a half-feigned and fictitious faith is better than no faith at all. she passed five posts and held on to the fifth. "i'll pass five more by believing my longed-for spot is at the next fifth. i can do it." she passed five more. "it lies only five further." she passed five more. "but it is five further." she passed them. "that stone bridge is the end of my journey." she said, when the bridge over the froom was in view. she crawled to the bridge. during the effort each breath of the woman went into the air as if never to return again. "now for the truth of the matter." she said, sitting down. "the truth is, that i have less than half a mile." self-beguilement with what she had known all the time to be false had given her strength to come over half a mile that she would have been powerless to face in the lump. the artifice showed that the woman, by some mysterious intuition, had grasped the paradoxical truth that blindness may operate more vigorously than prescience, and the short-sighted effect more than the far-seeing; that limitation, and not comprehensiveness, is needed for striking a blow. the half-mile stood now before the sick and weary woman like a stolid juggernaut. it was an impassive king of her world. the road here ran across durnover moor, open to the road on either side. she surveyed the wide space, the lights, herself, sighed, and lay down against a guard-stone of the bridge. never was ingenuity exercised so sorely as the traveller here exercised hers. every conceivable aid, method, stratagem, mechanism, by which these last desperate eight hundred yards could be overpassed by a human being unperceived, was revolved in her busy brain, and dismissed as impracticable. she thought of sticks, wheels, crawling -- she even thought of rolling. but the exertion demanded by either of these latter two was greater than to walk erect. the faculty of con- trivance was worn out, hopelessness had come at last. "no further!" she whispered, and closed her eyes. from the stripe of shadow on the opposite side of the bridge a portion of shade seemed to detach itself and move into isolation upon the pale white of the road. it glided noiselessly towards the recumbent woman. she became conscious of something touching her hand; it was softness and it was warmth. she opened her eye's, and the substance touched her face. a dog was licking her cheek. he was huge, heavy, and quiet creature, standing darkly against the low horizon, and at least two feet higher than the present position of her eyes. whether newfoundland, mastiff, bloodhound, or what not, it was impossible to say. he seemed to be of too strange and mysterious a nature to belong to any variety among those of popular nomenclature. being thus assignable to no breed, he was the ideal embodiment of canine greatness -- a generalization from what was common to all. night, in its sad, solemn, and benevolent aspect, apart from its stealthy and cruel side, was personified in this form darkness endows the small and ordinary ones among mankind with poetical power, and even the suffering woman threw her idea into figure. in her reclining position she looked up to him just as in earlier times she had, when standing, looked up to a man. the animal, who was as homeless as she, respectfully withdrew a step or two when the woman moved, and, seeing that she did not repulse him, he licked her hand again. a thought moved within her like lightning. "perhaps i can make use of him -- i might do it then!" she pointed in the direction of casterbridge, and the dog seemed to misunderstand: he trotted on. then, finding she could not follow, he came back and whined. the ultimate and saddest singularity of woman's effort and invention was reached when, with a quickened breath- ing, she rose to a stooping posture, and, resting her two little arms upon the shoulders of the dog, leant firmly thereon, and murmured stimulating words. whilst she sorrowed in her heart she cheered with her voice, and what was stranger than that the strong should need encouragement from the weak was that cheerfulness should be so well stimulated by such utter dejection. her friend moved forward slowly, and she with small mincing steps moved forward beside him, half her weight being thrown upon the animal. sometimes she sank as she had sunk from walking erect, from the crutches, from the rails. the dog, who now thoroughly understood her desire and her incapacity, was frantic in his distress on these occasions; he would tug at her dress and run forward. she always called him back, and it was now to be observed that the woman listened for human sounds only to avoid them. it was evident that she had an object in keeping her presence on the road and her forlorn state unknown. their progress was necessarily very slow. they reached the bottom of the town, and the casterbridge lamps lay before them like fallen pleiads as they turned to the left into the dense shade of a deserted avenue of chestnuts, and so skirted the borough. thus the town was passed, and the goal was reached. on this much-desired spot outside the town rose a picturesque building. originally it had been a mere case to hold people. the shell had been so thin, so devoid of excrescence, and so closely drawn over the accommodation granted, that the grim character of what was beneath showed through it, as the shape of a body is visible under a winding-sheet. then nature, as if offended, lent a hand. masses of ivy grew up, completely covering the walls, till the place looked like an abbey; and it was discovered that the view from the front, over the casterbridge chimneys, was one of the most magnificent in the county. a neighbouring earl once said that he would give up a year's rental to have at his own door the view enjoyed by the inmates from theirs -- and very probably the inmates would have given up the view for his year's rental. this stone edifice consisted of a central mass and two wings, whereon stood as sentinels a few slim chimneys, now gurgling sorrowfully to the slow wind. in the wall was a gate, and by the gate a bellpull formed of a hanging wire. the woman raised herself as high as possible upon her knees, and could just reach the handle. she moved it and fell forwards in a bowed attitude, her face upon her bosom. it was getting on towards six o'clock, and sounds of movement were to be heard inside the building which was the haven of rest to this wearied soul. a little door by the large one was opened, and a man appeared inside. he discerned the panting heap of clothes, went back for a light, and came again. he entered a second time, and returned with two women. these lifted the prostrate figure and assisted her in through the doorway. the man then closed the door. how did she get here?" said one of the women. "the lord knows." said the other. there is a dog outside," murmured the overcome traveller. "where is he gone? he helped me." i stoned him away." said the man. the little procession then moved forward -- the man in front bearing the light, the two bony women next, supporting between them the small and supple one. thus they entered the house and disappeared. chapter xli suspicion -- fanny is sent for bathsheba said very little to her husband all that evening of their return from market, and he was not disposed to say much to her. he exhibited the un- pleasant combination of a restless condition with a silent tongue. the next day, which was sunday, passed nearly in the same manner as regarded their taciturnity, bathsheba going to church both morning and afternoon. this was the day before the budmouth races. in the evening troy said, suddenly -- "bathsheba, could you let me have twenty pounds?" her countenance instantly sank." twenty pounds? she said. "the fact is, i want it badly." the anxiety upon troy's face was unusual and very marked. lt was a culmination of the mood he had been in all the day. "ah! for those races to-morrow." troy for the moment made no reply. her mistake had its advantages to a man who shrank from having his mind inspected as he did now. "well, suppose i do want it for races?" he said, at last. "o, frank!" bathsheba replied, and there was such a volume of entreaty in the words. "only such a few weeks ago you said that i was far sweeter than all your other pleasures put together, and that you would give them all up for me; and now, won't you give up this one, which is more a worry than a pleasure? do, frank. come, let me fascinate you by all i can do -- by pretty words and pretty looks, and everything i can think of -- to stay at home. say yes to your wife -- say yes!" the tenderest and softest phases of bathsheba's nature were prominent now -- advanced impulsively for his acceptance, without any of the disguises and defences which the wariness of her character when she was cool too frequently threw over them. few men could have resisted the arch yet dignified entreaty of the beautiful face, thrown a little back and sideways in the well known attitude that expresses more than the words it accompanies, and which seems to have been designed for these special occasions. had the woman not been his wife, troy would have succumbed instantly; as it was, he thought he would not deceive her longer. "the money is not wanted for racing debts at all," he said. "what is it for?" she asked. "you worry me a great deal by these mysterious responsibilities, frank." troy hesitated. he did not now love her enough to allow himself to be carried too far by her ways. yet it was necessary to be civil. "you wrong me by such a suspicious manner, he said. "such strait-waistcoating as you treat me to is not becoming in you at so early a date." "i think that i have a right to grumble a little if i pay." she said, with features between a smile and a pout. exactly; and, the former being done, suppose we proceed to the latter. bathsheba, fun is all very well, but don't go too far, or you may have cause to regret something." she reddened. "i do that already." she said, quickly "what do you regret?" suspicion "that my romance has come to an end." "all romances end at marriage." "i wish you wouldn't talk like that. you grieve me to my soul by being smart at my expense." "you are dull enough at mine. i believe you hate me." "not you -- only your faults. i do hate them." "'twould be much more becoming if you set your- self to cure them. come, let's strike a balance with the twenty pounds, and be friends." she gave a sigh of resignation. "i have about that sum here for household expenses. if you must have it, take it." "very good. thank you. i expect i shall have gone away before you are in to breakfast to-morrow." "and must you go? ah! there was a time, frank, when it would have taken a good many promises to other people to drag you away from me. you used to call me darling, then. but it doesn't matter to you how my days are passed now." "i must go, in spite of sentiment." troy, as he spoke, looked at his watch, and, apparently actuated by non lucendo principles, opened the case at the back, revealing, snugly stowed within it, a small coil of hair. bathsheba's eyes had been accidentally lifted at that moment, and she saw the action and saw the hair. she flushed in pain and surprise, and some words escaped her before she had thought whether or not it was wise to utter them. "a woman's curl of hair!" she said. "o, frank, whose is that?" troy had instantly closed his watch. he carelessly replied, as one who cloaked some feelings that the sight had stirred." why, yours, of course. whose should it be? i had quite forgotten that i had it." "what a dreadful fib, frank!" "i tell you i had forgotten it!" he said, loudly. "i don't mean that -- it was yellow hair." "nonsense." "that's insulting me. i know it was yellow. now whose was it? i want to know." "very well i'll tell you, so make no more ado. it is the hair of a young woman i was going to marry before i knew you." "you ought to tell me her name, then." "i cannot do that." "is she married yet?" "no." "is she alive?" "yes." "is she pretty?" "yes." "it is wonderful how she can be, poor thing, under such an awful affliction!" "affliction -- what affliction?" he inquired, quickly. "having hair of that dreadful colour." "oh -- ho-i like that!" said troy, recovering him- self. "why, her hair has been admired by everybody who has seen her since she has worn it loose, which has not been long. it is beautiful hair. people used to turn their heads to look at it, poor girl!" "pooh! that's nothing -- that's nothing!" she ex- claimed, in incipient accents of pique. "if i cared for your love as much as i used to i could say people had turned to look at mine." "bathsheba, don't be so fitful and jealous. you knew what married life would be like, and shouldn't have entered it if you feared these contingencies." troy had by this time driven her to bitterness: her heart was big in her throat, and the ducts to her eyes were painfully full. ashamed as she was to show emotion, at last she burst out: -- "this is all i get for loving you so well! ah! when i married you your life was dearer to me than my own. i would have died for you -- how truly i can say that i would have died for you! and now you sneer at my foolishness in marrying you. o! is it kind to me to throw my mistake in my face? whatever opinion you may have of my wisdom, you should not tell me of it so mercilessly, now that i am in your power." "i can't help how things fall out." said troy; "upon my heart, women will be the death of me!" "well you shouldn't keep people's hair. you'll burn it, won't you, frank?" frank went on as if he had not heard her. "there are considerations even before my consideration for you; reparations to be made -- ties you know nothing of if you repent of marrying, so do i." trembling now, she put her hand upon his arm, saying, in mingled tones of wretchedness and coaxing, "i only repent it if you don't love me better than any woman in the world! i don't otherwise, frank. you don't repent because you already love somebody better than you love me, do you?" "i don't know. why do you say that?" "you won't burn that curl. you like the woman who owns that pretty hair -- yes; it is pretty -- more beautiful than my miserable black mane! well, it is no use; i can't help being ugly. you must like her best, if you will!" "until to-day, when i took it from a drawer, i have never looked upon that bit of hair for several months -- that i am ready to swear." "but just now you said "ties;" and then -- that woman we met?" "'twas the meeting with her that reminded me of the hair." "is it hers, then?" "yes. there, now that you have wormed it out of me, i hope you are content." "and what are the ties?" "oh! that meant nothing -- a mere jest." "a mere jest!" she said, in mournful astonishment. "can you jest when i am so wretchedly in earnest? tell me the truth, frank. i am not a fool, you know, although i am a woman, and have my woman's moments. come! treat me fairly." she said, looking honestly and fearlessly into his face. "i don't want much; bare justice -- that's all! ah! once i felt i could be content with nothing less than the highest homage from the husband i should choose. now, anything short of cruelty will content me. yes! the independent and spirited bathsheba is come to this!" "for heaven's sake don't be so desperate!"troy said, snappishly, rising as he did so, and leaving the room. directly he had gone, bathsheba burst into great sobs -- dry-eyed sobs, which cut as they came, without any softening by tears. but she determined to repress all evidences of feeling. she was conquered; but she would never own it as long as she lived. her pride was indeed brought low by despairing discoveries of her spoliation by marriage with a less pure nature than her own. she chafed to and fro in rebelliousness, like a caged leopard; her whole soul was in arms, and the blood fired her face. until she had met troy, bath- sheba had been proud of her position as a woman; it had been a glory to her to know that her lips had been touched by no man's on earth -- that her waist had never been encircled by a lover's arm. she hated herself now. in those earlier days she had always nourished a secret contempt for girls who were the slaves of the first goodlooking young fellow who should choose to salute them. she had never taken kindly to the idea of marriage in the abstract as did the majority of women she saw about her. in the turmoil of her anxiety for her lover she had agreed to marry him; but the perception that had accompanied her happiest hours on this account was rather that of self-sacrifice than of promotion and honour. although she scarcely knew the divinity's name, diana was the goddess whom bathsheba instinctively adored. that she had never, by look, word, or sign, encouraged a man to approach her -- that she had felt herself sufficient to herself, and had in the independence of her girlish heart fancied there was a certain degradation in renouncing the simplicity of a maiden existence to become the humbler half of an indifferent matrimonial whole -- were facts now bitterly remembered. o, if she had never stooped to folly of this kind, respectable as it was, and could only stand again, as she had stood on the hill at norcombe, and dare troy or any other man to pollute a hair of her head by his interference! the next morning she rose earlier than usual, and had the horse saddled for her ride round the farm in the customary way. when she came in at half-past eight -- their usual hour for breakfasting -- she was in- formed that her husband had risen, taken his breakfast, and driven off to casterbridge with the gig and poppet. after breakfast she was cool and collected -- quite herself in fact -- and she rambled to the gate, intending to walk to another quarter of the farm, which she still personally superintended as well as her duties in the house would permit, continually, however, finding her- self preceded in forethought by gabriel oak, for whom she began to entertain the genuine friendship of a sister. of course, she sometimes thought of him in the light of an old lover, and had momentary imaginings of what life with him as a husband would have been like; also of life with boldwood under the same conditions. but bathsheba, though she could feel, was not much given to futile dreaming, and her musings under this head were short and entirely confined to the times when troy's neglect was more than ordinarily evident. she saw coming up the road a man like mr. boldwood. it was mr. boldwood. bathsheba blushed painfully, and watched. the farmer stopped when still a long way off, and held up his hand to gabriel oak, who was in a footpath across the field. the two men then approached each other and seemed to engage in earnest conversation. thus they continued for a long time. joseph poor- grass now passed near them, wheeling a barrow of apples up the hill to bathsheba's residence. boldwood and gabriel called to him, spoke to him for a few minutes, and then all three parted, joseph immediately coming up the hill with his barrow. bathsheba, who had seen this pantomime with some surprise, experienced great relief when boldwood turned back again. "well, what's the message, joseph?" she said. he set down his barrow, and, putting upon himself the refined aspect that a conversation with a lady re- quired, spoke to bathsheba over the gate. "you'll never see fanny robin no more -- use nor principal -- ma'am." "why?" "because she's dead in the union." "fanny dead -- never!" "yes, ma'am." "what did she die from?" "i don't know for certain; but i should be inclined to think it was from general weakness of constitution. she was such a limber maid that 'a could stand no hardship, even when i knowed her, and 'a went like a candle-snoff, so 'tis said. she was took bad in the morning, and, being quite feeble and worn out, she died in the evening. she belongs by law to our parish; and mr. boldwood is going to send a waggon at three this afternoon to fetch her home here and bury her." "indeed i shall not let mr. boldwood do any such thing-i shall do it! fanny was my uncle's servant, and, although i only knew her for a couple of days, fanny is sent for she belongs to me. how very, very sad this is! -- the idea of fanny being in a workhouse." bathsheba had begun to know what suffering was, and she spoke with real feeling.... "send across to mr. boldwood's, and say that mrs. troy will take upon herself the duty of fetching an old servant of the family.... we ought not to put her in a waggon; we'll get a hearse." "there will hardly be time, ma'am, will there?" "perhaps not." she said, musingly. "when did you say we must be at the door -- three o'clock?" "three o'clock this afternoon, ma'am, so to speak it." "very well-you go with it. a pretty waggon is better than an ugly hearse, after all. joseph, have the new spring waggon with the blue body and red wheels, and wash it very clean. and, joseph -- -- " "yes, ma'am." "carry with you some evergreens and flowers to put upon her coffin -- indeed, gather a great many, and completely bury her in them. get some boughs of laurustinus, and variegated box, and yew, and boy'siove; ay, and some hunches of chrysanthemum. and let old pleasant draw her, because she knew him so well."i will, ma'am. i ought to have said that the union, in the form of four labouring men, will meet me when i gets to our churchyard gate, and take her and bury her according to the rites of the board of guardians, as by law ordained." "dear me -- casterbridge union -- and is fanny come to this?" said bathsheba, musing. "i wish i had known of it sooner. i thought she was far away. how long has she lived there?" "on'y been there a day or two." "oh! -- then she has not been staying there as a regular inmate?" "no. she first went to live in a garrison-town t'other side o' wessex, and since then she's been picking up a living at seampstering in melchester for several months, at the house of a very respectable widow-woman who takes in work of that sort. she only got handy the union-house on sunday morning 'a b'lieve, and 'tis sup- posed here and there that she had traipsed every step of the way from melchester. why she left her place, i can't say, for i don't know; and as to a lie, why, i wouldn't tell it. that's the short of the story, ma'am." "ah-h!" no gem ever flashed from a rosy ray to a white one more rapidly than changed the young wife's counten- ance whilst this word came from her in a long-drawn breath. "did she walk along our turnpike-road?" she said, in a suddenly restless and eager voice. "i believe she did.... ma'am, shall i call liddy? you bain't well, ma'am, surely? you look like a lily -- so pale and fainty!" "no; don't call her; it is nothing. when did she pass weatherbury?" "last saturday night." "that will do, joseph; now you may go." certainly, ma'am." "joseph, come hither a moment. what was the colour of fanny robin's hair?" "really, mistress, now that 'tis put to me so judge- and-jury like, i can't call to mind, if ye'll believe me!" "never mind; go on and do what i told you. stop -- well no, go on." she turned herself away from him, that he might no longer notice the mood which had set its sign so visibly upon her, and went indoors with a distressing sense of faintness and a beating brow. about an hour after, she heard the noise of the waggon and went out, still with a painful consciousness of her bewildered and troubled look. joseph, dressed in his best suit of clothes, was putting in the horse to start. the shrubs and flowers were all piled in the waggon, as she had directed bathsheba hardly saw them now. "whose sweetheart did you say, joseph?" "i don't know, ma'am." "are you quite sure?" "yes, ma'am, quite sure."sure of what?" "i'm sure that all i know is that she arrived in the morning and died in the evening without further parley. what oak and mr. boldwood told me was only these few words. `little fanny robin is dead, joseph,' gabriel said, looking in my face in his steady old way. i was very sorry, and i said, `ah! -- and how did she come to die?' `well, she's dead in casterhridge union,' he said, `and perhaps 'tisn't much matter about how she came to die. she reached the union early sunday morning, and died in the afternoon -- that's clear enough.' then i asked what she'd been doing lately, and mr. boldwood turned round to me then, and left off spitting a thistle with the end of his stick. he told me about her having lived by seampstering in melchester, as i mentioned to you, and that she walked therefrom at the end of last week, passing near here saturday night in the dusk. they then said i had better just name a hint of her death to you, and away they went. her death might have been brought on by biding in the night wind, you know, ma'am; for people used to say she'd go off in a decline: she used to cough a good deal in winter time. however, 'tisn't much odds to us about that now, for 'tis all over." "have you heard a different story at all?' she looked at him so intently that joseph's eyes quailed. "not a word, mistress, i assure 'ee!" he said. "hardly anybody in the parish knows the news yet." "i wonder why gabriel didn't bring the message to me himself. he mostly makes a point of seeing me upon the most trifling errand." these words were merely murmured, and she was looking upon the ground. "perhaps he was busy, ma'am." joseph suggested. "and sometimes he seems to suffer from things upon his mind, connected with the time when he was better off than 'a is now. 'a's rather a curious item, but a very understanding shepherd, and learned in books." "did anything seem upon his mind whilst he was speaking to you about this?" "i cannot but say that there did, ma'am. he was terrible down, and so was farmer boldwood." "thank you, joseph. that will do. go on now, or you'll be late." bathsheba, still unhappy, went indoors again. in the course of the afternoon she said to liddy, who had been informed of the occurrence, " what was the colour of poor fanny robin's hair? do you know? i cannot recollect-i only saw her for a day or two." "it was light, ma'am; but she wore it rather short, and packed away under her cap, so that you would hardly notice it. but i have seen her let it down when she was going to bed, and it looked beautiful then. real golden hair." "her young man was a soldier, was he not?" "yes. in the same regiment as mr. troy. he says he knew him very well."what, mr. troy says so? how came he to say that?" "one day i just named it to him, and asked him if he knew fanny's young man. he said, "o yes, he knew the young man as well as he knew himself, and that there wasn't a man in the regiment he liked better." "ah! said that, did he?" "yes; and he said there was a strong likeness be- tween himself and the other young man, so that some- times people mistook them -- -- " "liddy, for heaven's sake stop your talking!" said bathsheba, with the nervous petulance that comes from worrying perceptions. chapter xlii joseph and his burden a wall bounded the site of casterbridge union- house, except along a portion of the end. here a high gable stood prominent, and it was covered like the front with a mat of ivy. in this gable was no window, chimney, ornament, or protuberance of any kind. the single feature appertaining to it, beyond the expanse of dark green leaves, was a small door. the situation of the door was peculiar. the sill was three or four feet above the ground, and for a moment one was at a loss for an explanation of this exceptional altitude, till ruts immediately beneath sug- gested that the door was used solely for the passage of articles and persons to and from the level of a vehicle standing on the outside. upon the whole, the door seemed to advertise itself as a species of traitor's gate translated to another sphere. that entry and exit hereby was only at rare intervals became apparent on noting that tufts of grass were allowed to flourish undis- turbed in the chinks of the sill. as the clock over the south-street alms-house pointed to five minutes to three, a blue spring waggon, picked out with red, and containing boughs and flowers, passed the end of the street, and up towards this side of the building. whilst the chimes were yet stammering out a shattered form of "malbrook." joseph poorgrass rang the bell, and received directions to back his waggon against the high door under the gable. the door then opened, and a plain elm coffin was slowly thrust forth, and laid by two men in fustian along the middle of the vehicle. one of the men then stepped up beside it, took from his pocket a lump of chalk, and wrote upon the cover the name and a few other words in a large scrawling hand. (we believe that they do these things more tenderly now, and provide a plate.) he covered the whole with a black cloth, threadbare, but decent, the tailboard of the waggon was returned to its place, one of the men handed a certificate of registry to poorgrass, and both entered the door, closing it behind them. their connection with her, short as it had been, was over for ever. joseph then placed the flowers as enjoined, and the evergreens around the flowers, till it was difficult to divine what the waggon contained; he smacked his whip, and the rather pleasing funeral car crept down the hill, and along the road to weatherbury. the afternoon drew on apace, and, looking to the right towards the sea as he walked beside the horse, poor- grass saw strange clouds and scrolls of mist rolling over the long ridges which girt the landscape in that quarter. they came in yet greater volumes, and indolently crept across the intervening valleys, and around the withered papery flags of the moor and river brinks. then their dank spongy forms closed in upon the sky. it was a sudden overgrowth of atmospheric fungi which had their roots in the neighbouring sea, and by the time that horse, man, and corpse entered yalbury great wood, these silent workings of an invisible hand had reached them, and they were completely enveloped, this being the first arrival of the autumn fogs, and the first fog of the series. the air was as an eye suddenly struck blind. the waggon and its load rolled no longer on the horizontal division between clearness and opacity, but were imbedded in an elastic body of a monotonous pallor throughout. there was no perceptible motion in the air, not a visible drop of water fell upon a leaf of the beeches, birches, and firs composing the wood on either side. the trees stood in an attitude of intentness, as if they waited longingly for a wind to come and rock them. a startling quiet overhung all surrounding things -- so completely, that the crunching of the waggon- wheels was as a great noise, and small rustles, which had never obtained a hearing except by night, were dis- tinctly individualized. joseph poorgrass looked round upon his sad burden as it loomed faintly through the flowering laurustinus, then at the unfathomable gloom amid the high trees on each hand, indistinct, shadowless, and spectrelike in their monochrome of grey. he felt anything but cheer- ful, and wished he had the company even of a child or dog. stopping the home, he listened. not a footstep or wheel was audible anywhere around, and the dead silence was broken only by a heavy particle falling from a tree through the evergreens and alighting with a smart rap upon the coffin of poor fanny. the fog had by this time saturated the trees, and this was the first dropping of water from the overbrimming leaves. the hollow echo of its fall reminded the waggoner painfully of the grim leveller. then hard by came down another drop, then two or three. presently there was a continual tapping of these heavy drops upon the dead leaves, the road, and the travellers. the nearer boughs were beaded with the mist to the greyness of aged men, and the rusty- red leaves of the beeches were hung with similar drops, like diamonds on auburn hair. at the roadside hamlet called roy-town, just beyond this wood, was the old inn buck's head. it was about a mile and a half from weatherbury, and in the meridian times of stage-coach travelling had been the place where many coaches changed and kept their relays of horses. all the old stabling was now pulled down, and little remained besides the habitable inn itself, which, standing a little way back from the road, sig- nified its existence to people far up and down the highway by a sign hanging from the horizontal bough of an elm on the opposite side of the way. travellers -- for the variety tourist had hardly developed into a distinct species at this date -- some- times said in passing, when they cast their eyes up to the sign-bearing tree, that artists were fond of repre- senting the signboard hanging thus, but that they themselves had never before noticed so perfect an instance in actual working order. it was near this tree that the waggon was standing into which gabriel oak crept on his first journey to weatherbury; but, owing to the darkness, the sign and the inn had been un- observed. the manners of the inn were of the old-established type. indeed, in the minds of its frequenters they existed as unalterable formulae: e.g. -- rap with the bottom of your pint for more liquor. for tobacco, shout. in calling for the girl in waiting, say, "maid!" ditto for the landlady, "old soul!" etc., etc. it was a relief to joseph's heart when the friendly signboard came in view, and, stopping his horse immediately beneath it, he proceeded to fulfil an intention made a long time before. his spirits were oozing out of him quite. he turned the horse's head to the green bank, and entered the hostel for a mug of ale. going down into the kitchen of the inn, the floor of which was a step below the passage, which in its turn was a step below the road outside, what should joseph see to gladden his eyes but two copper-coloured discs, in the form of the countenances of mr. jan coggan and mr. mark clark. these owners of the two most appreciative throats in the neighbourhood, within the pale of respectability, were now sitting face to face over a threelegged circular table, having an iron rim to keep cups and pots from being accidentally elbowed off; they might have been said to resemble the setting sun and the full moon shining vis-a-vis across the globe. "why, 'tis neighbour poorgrass!" said mark clark. "i'm sure your face don't praise your mistress's table, joseph." "i've had a very pale companion for the last four miles." said joseph, indulging in a shudder toned down by resignation. "and to speak the truth, 'twas beginning to tell upon me. i assure ye, i ha'n't seed the colour of victuals or drink since breakfast time this morning, and that was no more than a dew-bit afield." "then drink, joseph, and don't restrain yourself!" said coggan, handing him a hooped mug three- quarters full. joseph drank for a moderately long time, then for a longer time, saying, as he lowered the jug, "'tis pretty drinking -- very pretty drinking, and is more than cheerful on my melancholy errand, so to speak it." "true, drink is a pleasant delight." said jan, as one who repeated a truism so familiar to his brain that he hardly noticed its passage over his tongue; and, lifting the cup, coggan tilted his head gradually backwards, with closed eyes, that his expectant soul might not be diverted for one instant from its bliss by irrelevant surroundings. "well, i must be on again." said poorgrass. "not but that i should like another nip with ye; but the parish might lose confidence in me if i was seed here." "where be ye trading o't to to-day, then, joseph?" "back to weatherbury. i've got poor little fanny robin in my waggon outside, and i must be at the churchyard gates at a quarter to five with her." "ay-i've heard of it. and so she's nailed up in parish boards after all, and nobody to pay the bell shilling and the grave half-crown." "the parish pays the grave half-crown, but not the bell shilling, because the bell's a luxery: but 'a can hardly do without the grave, poor body. however, i expect our mistress will pay all." "a pretty maid as ever i see! but what's yer hurry, joseph? the pore woman's dead, and you can't bring her to life, and you may as well sit down comfortable, and finish another with us." "i don't mind taking just the least thimbleful ye can dream of more with ye, sonnies. but only a few minutes, because 'tis as 'tis." "of course, you'll have another drop. a man's twice the man afterwards. you feel so warm and glorious, and you whop and slap at your work without any trouble, and everything goes on like sticks a- breaking. too much liquor is bad, and leads us to that horned man in the smoky house; but after all, many people haven't the gift of enjoying a wet, and since we be highly favoured with a power that way, we should make the most o't."true." said mark clark. "'tis a talent the lord has mercifully bestowed upon us, and we ought not to neglect it. but, what with the parsons and clerks and schoolpeople and serious tea-parties, the merry old ways of good life have gone to the dogs -- upon my carcase, they have!" "well, really, i must be onward again now." said joseph. "now, now, joseph; nonsense! the poor woman is dead, isn't she, and what's your hurry?" "well, i hope providence won't be in a way with me for my doings." said joseph, again sitting down. "i've been troubled with weak moments lately, 'tis true. i've been drinky once this month already, and i did not go to church a-sunday, and i dropped a curse or two yesterday; so i don't want to go too far for my safety. your next world is your next world, and not to be squandered offhand." "i believe ye to be a chapelmember, joseph. that i do." "oh, no, no! i don't go so far as that." "for my part." said coggan, "i'm staunch church of england." "ay, and faith, so be i." said mark clark. "i won't say much for myself; i don't wish to," coggan continued, with that tendency to talk on principles which is characteristic of the barley-corn. "but i've never changed a single doctrine: i've stuck like a plaster to the old faith i was born in. yes; there's this to be said for the church, a man can belong to the church and bide in his cheerful old inn, and never trouble or worry his mind about doctrines at all. but to be a meetinger, you must go to chapel in all winds and weathers, and make yerself as frantic as a skit. not but that chapel members be clever chaps enough in their way. they can lift up beautiful prayers out of their own heads, all about their families and shipwrecks in the newspaper." "they can -- they can." said mark clark, with cor- roborative feeling; "but we churchmen, you see, must have it all printed aforehand, or, dang it all, we should no more know what to say to a great gaffer like the lord than babes unborn," "chapelfolk be more hand-in-glove with them above than we." said joseph, thoughtfully. "yes." said coggan. "we know very well that if anybody do go to heaven, they will. they've worked hard for it, and they deserve to have it, such as 'tis. i bain't such a fool as to pretend that we who stick to the church have the same chance as they, because we know we have not. but i hate a feller who'll change his old ancient doctrines for the sake of getting to heaven. i'd as soon turn king's-evidence for the few pounds you get. why, neighbours, when every one of my taties were frosted, our parson thirdly were the man who gave me a sack for seed, though he hardly had one for his own use, and no money to buy 'em. if it hadn't been for him, i shouldn't hae had a tatie to put in my garden. d'ye think i'd turn after that? no, i'll stick to my side; and if we be in the wrong, so be it: i'll fall with the fallen!" "well said -- very well said." observed joseph. -- "however, folks, i must be moving now: upon my life i must. pa'son thirdly will be waiting at the church gates, and there's the woman a-biding outside in the waggon." "joseph poorgrass, don't be so miserable! pa'son thirdly won't mind. he's a generous man; he's found me in tracts for years, and i've consumed a good many in the course of a long and shady life; but he's never been the man to cry out at the expense. sit down." the longer joseph poorgrass remained, the less his spirit was troubled by the duties which devolved upon him this afternoon. the minutes glided by uncounted, until the evening shades began perceptibly to deepen, and the eyes of the three were but sparkling points on the surface of darkness. coggan's repeater struck six from his pocket in the usual still small tones. at that moment hasty steps were heard in the entry, and the door opened to admit the figure of gabriel oak, followed by the maid of the inn bearing a candle. he stared sternly at the one lengthy and two round faces of the sitters, which confronted him with the expressions of a fiddle and a couple of warming-pans. joseph poor- grass blinked, and shrank several inches into the back- ground. "upon my soul, i'm ashamed of you; 'tis disgraceful, joseph, disgraceful!" said gabriel, indignantly. "coggan, you call yourself a man, and don't know better than this." coggan looked up indefinitely at oak, one or other of his eyes occasionally opening and closing of its own accord, as if it were not a member, but a dozy individual with a distinct personality. "don't take on so, shepherd!" said mark clark, looking reproachfully at the candle, which appeared to possess special features of interest for his eyes. "nobody can hurt a dead woman." at length said coggan, with the precision of a machine. "all that could be done for her is done -- she's beyond us: and why should a man put himself in a tearing hurry for lifeless clay that can neither feel nor see, and don't know what you do with her at all? if she'd been alive, i would have been the first to help her. if she now wanted victuals and drink, i'd pay for it, money down. but she's dead, and no speed of ours will bring her to life. the woman's past us -- time spent upon her is throwed away: why should we hurry to do what's not required? drink, shepherd, and be friends, for to-morrow we may be like her." "we may." added mark clark, emphatically, at once drinking himself, to run no further risk of losing his chance by the event alluded to, jan meanwhile merging his additional thoughts of to-morrow in a song: -- to-mor-row, to-mor-row! and while peace and plen-ty i find at my board, with a heart free from sick-ness and sor-row, with my friends will i share what to-day may af-ford, and let them spread the ta-ble to-mor-row. to-mor -- row', to-mor -- "do hold thy horning, jan!" said oak; and turning upon poorgrass, " as for you, joseph, who do your wicked deeds in such confoundedly holy ways, you are as drunk as you can stand." "no, shepherd oak, no! listen to reason, shepherd. all that's the matter with me is the affliction called a multiplying eye, and that's how it is i look double to you-i mean, you look double to me." a multiplying eye is a very bad thing." said mark clark. "it always comes on when i have been in a public -- house a little time." said joseph poorgrass, meekly. "yes; i see two of every sort, as if i were some holy man living in the times of king noah and entering into the ark.... y-y-y-yes." he added, becoming much affected by the picture of himself as a person thrown away, and shedding tears; "i feel too good for england: i ought to have lived in genesis by rights, like the other men of sacrifice, and then i shouldn't have b-b-been called a d-d-drunkard in such a way!" "i wish you'd show yourself a man of spirit, and not sit whining there!" "show myself a man of spirit? ... ah, well! let me take the name of drunkard humbly-iet me be a man of contrite knees-iet it be! l know that i always do say "please god" afore i do anything, from my getting up to my going down of the same, and i be willing to take as much disgrace as there is in that holy act. hah, yes! ... but not a man of spirit? have i ever allowed the toe of pride to be lifted against my hinder parts without groaning manfully that i question the right to do so? i inquire that query boldly?" "we can't say that you have, hero poorgrass," admitted jan. "never have i allowed such treatment to pass un- questioned! yet the shepherd says in the face of that rich testimony that i be not a man of spirit! well, let it pass by, and death is a kind friend!" gabriel, seeing that neither of the three was in a fit state to cake charge of the waggon for the remainder of the journey, made no reply, but, closing the door again upon them, went across to where the vehicle stood, now getting indistinct in the fog and gloom of this mildewy time. he pulled the horse's head from the large patch of turf it had eaten bare, readjusted the boughs over the coffin, and drove along through the unwholesome night. it had gradually become rumoured in the village that the body to be brought and buried that day was all that was left of the unfortunate fanny robin who had followed the eleventh from casterbridge through melchester and onwards. but, thanks to boldwood's reticence and oak's generosity, the lover she had followed had never been individualized as troy. gabriel hoped that the whole truth of the matter might not be published till at any rate the girl had been in her grave for a few days, when the interposing barriers of earth and time, and a sense that the events had been somewhat shut into oblivion, would deaden the sting that revelation and invidious remark would have for bathsheba just now. by the time that gabriel reached the old manor- house, her residence, which lay in his way to the church, it was quite dark. a man came from the gate and said through the fog, which hung between them like blown flour -- "is that poorgrass with the corpse?" gabriel recognized the voice as that of the parson. "the corpse is here, sir." said gabriel. "i have just been to inquire of mrs. troy if she could tell me the reason of the delay. i am afraid it is too late now for the funeral to be performed with proper decency. have you the registrar's certificate?" "no." said gabriel. "i expect poorgrass has that; and he's at the buck's head. i forgot to ask him for it." "then that settles the matter. we'll put off the funeral till to-morrow morning. the body may be brought on to the church, or it may be left here at the farm and fetched by the bearers in the morning. they waited more than an hour, and have now gone home." gabriel had his reasons for thinking the latter a most objectionable plan, notwithstanding that fanny had been an inmate of the farm-house for several years in the lifetime of bathsheba's uncle. visions of several unhappy contingencies which might arise from this delay flitted before him. but his will was not law, and he went indoors to inquire of his mistress what were her wishes on the subject. he found her in an unusual mood: her eyes as she looked up to him were suspicious and perplexed as with some antecedent thought. troy had not yet returned. at first bathsheba assented with a mien of indifference to his proposition that they should go on to the church at once with their burden; but immediately afterwards, following gabriel to the gate, she swerved to the extreme of solicitousness on fanny's account, and desired that the girl might be brought into the house. oak argued upon the convenience of leaving her in the waggon, just as she lay now, with her flowers and green leaves about her, merely wheeling the vehicle into the coach-house till the morning, but to no purpose, "it is unkind and unchristian." she said, "to leave the poor thing in a coach-house all night." very well, then." said the parson. "and i will arrange that the funeral shall take place early to- morrow. perhaps mrs. troy is right in feeling that we cannot treat a dead fellow-creature too thoughtfully we must remember that though she may have erred grievously in leaving her home, she is still our sister: and it is to be believed that god's uncovenanted mercies are extended towards her, and that she is a member of the flock of christ." the parson's words spread into the heavy air with a sad yet unperturbed cadence, and gabriel shed an honest tear. bathsheba seemed unmoved. mr. thirdly then left them, and gabriel lighted a lantern. fetching three other men to assist him, they bore the unconscious truant indoors, placing the coffin on two benches in the middle of a little sitting-room next the hall, as bathsheba directed. every one except gabriel oak then left the room. he still indecisively lingered beside the body. he was deeply troubled at the wretchedly ironical aspect that circumstances were putting on with regard to troy's wife, and at his own powerlessness to counteract them, (n spite of his careful manoeuvring all this day, the very worst event that could in any way have happened in connection with the burial had happened now. oak imagined a terrible discovery resulting from this after- noon's work that might cast over bathsheba's life a shade which the interposition of many lapsing years might but indifferently lighten, and which nothing at all might altogether remove. suddenly, as in a last attempt to save bathsheba from, at any rate, immediate anguish, he looked again, as he had looked before, at the chalk writing upon the coffinlid. the scrawl was this simple one, " fanny robin and child." gabriel took his handkerchief and carefully rubbed out the two latter words, leaving visible the inscription "fanny robin" only. he then left the room, and went out quietly by the front door. chapter xliii fanny's revenge "do you want me any longer ma'am? " inquired liddy, at a later hour the same evening, standing by the door with a chamber candlestick in her hand and addressing bathsheba, who sat cheerless and alone in the large parlour beside the first fire of the season. "no more to-night, liddy." "i'll sit up for master if you like, ma'am. i am not at all afraid of fanny, if i may sit in my own room and have a candle. she was such a childlike, nesh young thing that her spirit couldn't appear to anybody if it tried, i'm quite sure." "o no, no! you go to bed. i'll sit up for him myself till twelve o'clock, and if he has not arrived by that time, i shall give him up and go to bed too." it is half-past ten now." "oh! is it?" why don't you sit upstairs, ma'am?" "why don't i?" said bathsheba, desultorily. "it isn't worth while -- there's a fire here, liddy." she suddenly exclaimed in an impulsive and excited whisper, have you heard anything strange said of fanny?" the words had no sooner escaped her than an expres- sion of unutterable regret crossed her face, and she burst into tears. "no -- not a word!" said liddy, looking at the weeping woman with astonishment. "what is it makes you cry so, ma'am; has anything hurt you?" she came to bathsheba's side with a face full of sympathy. "no, liddy-i don't want you any more. i can hardly say why i have taken to crying lately: i never used to cry. good-night." liddy then left the parlour and closed the door. bathsheba was lonely and miserable now; not lone- lier actually than she had been before her marriage; but her loneliness then was to that of the present time as the solitude of a mountain is to the solitude of a cave. and within the last day or two had come these disquieting thoughts about her husband's past. her wayward sentiment that evening concerning fanny's temporary resting-place had been the result of a strange complication of impulses in bathsheba's bosom. per- haps it would be more accurately described as a determined rebellion against her prejudices, a revulsion from a lower instinct of uncharitableness, which would have withheld all sympathy from the dead woman, be- cause in life she had preceded bathsheba in the atten- tions of a man whom bathsheba had by no means ceased from loving, though her love was sick to death just now with the gravity of a further misgiving. in five or ten minutes there was another tap at the door. liddy reappeared, and coming in a little way stood hesitating, until at length she said,!maryann has just heard something very strange, but i know it isn't true. and we shall be sure to know the rights of it in a day or two." "what is it?" "oh, nothing connected with you or us, ma'am. it is about fanny. that same thing you have heard." "i have heard nothing." "i mean that a wicked story is got to weatherbury within this last hour -- that -- --" liddy came close to her mistress and whispered the remainder of the sentence slowly into her ear, inclining her head as she spoke in the direction of the room where fanny lay. bathsheba trembled from head to foot. "i don't believe it!" she said, excitedly. "and there's only one name written on the coffin-cover." "nor i, ma'am. and a good many others don't; for we should surely have been told more about it if it had been true -- don't you think so, ma'am?" "we might or we might not." bathsheba turned and looked into the fire, that liddy might not see her face. finding that her mistress was going to say no more, liddy glided out, closed the door softly, and went to bed. bathsheba's face, as she continued looking into the fire that evening, might have excited solicitousness on her account even among those who loved her least. the sadness of fanny robin's fate did not make bath- sheba's glorious, although she was the esther to this poor vashti, and their fates might be supposed to stand in some respects as contrasts to each other. when liddy came into the room a second time the beautiful eyes which met hers had worn a listless, weary look- when she went out after telling the story they had ex- pressed wretchedness in full activity. her simple country nature, fed on old-fashioned principles, was troubled by that which would have troubled a woman of the world very little, both fanny and her child, if she had one, being dead. bathsheba had grounds for conjecturing a connection between her own history and the dimly suspected tragedy of fanny's end which oak and boldwood never for a moment credited her with possessing. the meeting with the lonely woman on the previous saturday night had been unwitnessed and unspoken of. oak may have had the best of intentions in withholding for as many days as possible the details of what had happened to fanny; but had he known that bathsheba's perceptions had already been exercised in the matter, he would have done nothing to lengthen the minutes of suspense she was now undergoing, when the certainty which must terminate it would be the worst fact suspected after all. she suddenly felt a longing desire to speak to some one stronger than herself, and so get strength to sustain her surmised position with dignity and her lurking doubts with stoicism. where could she find such a friend? nowhere in the house. she was by far the coolest of the women under her roof. patience and suspension of judgement for a few hours were what she wanted to learn, and there was nobody to teach her. might she but go to gabriel oak! -- but that could not be. what a way oak had, she thought, of enduring things. boldwood, who seemed so much deeper and higher and stronger in feeling than gabriel, had not yet learnt, any more than she herself, the simple lesson which oak showed a mastery of by every turn and look he gave -- that among the multitude of interests by which he was surrounded, those which affected his personal wellbeing were not the most absorbing and important in his eyes. oak meditatively looked upon the horizon of circumstances without any special regard to his own standpoint in the midst. that was how she would wish to be. but then oak was not racked by incertitude upon the inmost matter of his bosom, as she was at this moment. oak knew all about fanny that he wished to know -- she felt convinced of that. if she were to go to him now at once and say no more than these few words,!what is the truth of the story?" he would feel bound in honour to tell her. it would be an inexpressible relief. no further speech would need to be uttered. he knew her so well that no eccentricity of behaviour in her would alarm him. she flung a cloak round her, went to the door and opened it. every blade, every twig was still. the air was yet thick with moisture, though somewhat less dense than during the afternoon, and a steady smack of drops upon the fallen leaves under the boughs was almost musical in its soothing regularity. lt seemed better to be out of the house than within it, and bathsheba closed the door, and walked slowly down the lane till she came opposite to gabriel's cottage, where he now lived alone, having left coggan's house through being pinched for room. there was a light in one window only', and that was downstairs. the shutters were not closed, nor was any blind or curtain drawn over the window, neither robbery nor observation being a contingency which could do much injury to the occupant of the domicile. yes, it was gabriel himself who was sitting up: he was reading, from her standing-place in the road she could see him plainly, sitting quite still, his light curly head upon his hand, and only occasionally looking up to snuff the candle which stood beside him. at length he looked at the clock, seemed surprised at the lateness of the hour, closed his book, and arose. he was going to bed, she knew, and if she tapped it must be done at once. alas for her resolve! she felt she could not do it, not for worlds now could she give a hint about her misery to him, much less ask him plainly for information on the cause of fanny's death. she must suspect, and guess, and chafe, and bear it all alone. like a homeless wanderer she lingered by the bank, as if lulled and fascinated by the atmosphere of content which seemed to spread from that little dwelling, and was so sadly lacking in her own. gabriel appeared in an upper room, placed his light in the window-bench, and then -- knelt down to pray. the contrast of the picture with her rebellious and agitated existence at this same time was too much for her to bear to look upon longer. it was not for her to make a truce with trouble by any such means. she must tread her giddy distracting measure to its last note, as she had begun it. with a swollen heart she went again up the lane, and entered her own door. more fevered now by a reaction from the first feelings which oak's example had raised in her, she paused in the hall, looking at the door of the room wherein fanny lay. she locked her fingers, threw back her head, and strained her hot hands rigidly across her forehead, saying, with a hysterical sob, "would to god you would speak and tell me your secret, fanny! . , . o, i hope, hope it is not true that there are two of you! ... if i could only look in upon you for one little minute, i should know all!" a few moments passed, and she added, slowly, "and i will" bathsheba in after times could never gauge the mood which carried her through the actions following this murmured resolution on this memorable evening of her life. she went to the lumber-closet for a screw-driver. at the end of a short though undefined time she found herself in the small room, quivering with emotion, a mist before her eyes, and an excruciating pulsation in her brain, standing beside the uncovered coffin of the girl whose conjectured end had so entirely engrossed her, and saying to herself in a husky voice as she gazed within -- "it was best to know the worst, and i know it now!" she was conscious of having brought about this situation by a series of actions done as by one in an extravagant dream; of following that idea as to method, which had burst upon her in the hall with glaring obviousness, by gliding to the top of the stairs, assuring herself by listening to the heavy breathing of her maids that they were asleep, gliding down again, turning the handle of the door within which the young girl lay, and deliberately setting herself to do what, if she had antici- pated any such undertaking at night and alone, would have horrified her, but which, when done, was not so dreadful as was the conclusive proof of her husband's conduct which came with knowing beyond doubt the last chapter of fanny's story. bathsheba's head sank upon her bosom, and the breath which had been bated in suspense, curiosity, and interest, was exhaled now in the form of a whispered wail: "oh-h-h!" she said, and the silent room added length to her moan. her tears fell fast beside the unconscious pair in the coffin: tears of a complicated origin, of a nature inde- scribable, almost indefinable except as other than those of simple sorrow. assuredly their wonted fires must have lived in fanny's ashes when events were so shaped as to chariot her hither in this natural, unobtrusive, yet effectual manner. the one feat alone -- that of dying -- by which a mean condition could be resolved into a grand one, fanny had achieved. and to that had destiny subjoined this rencounter to-night, which had, in bathsheba's wild imagining, turned her companion's failure to success, her humiliation to triumph, her luck- lessness to ascendency; et had thrown over herself a garish light of mockery, and set upon all things about her an ironical smile. fanny's face was framed in by that yellow hair of hers; and there was no longer much room for doubt as to the origin of the curl owned by troy. in bath- sheba's heated fancy the innocent white countenance expressed a dim triumphant consciousness of the pain she was retaliating for her pain with all the merciless rigour of the mosaic law: "burning for burning; wound for wound: strife for strife. bathsheba indulged in contemplations of escape from her position by immediate death, which thought she, though it was an inconvenient and awful way, had limits to its inconvenience and awfulness that could not be overpassed; whilst the shames of life were measureless. yet even this scheme of extinction by death was out tamely copying her rival's method without the reasons which had glorified it in her rival's case. she glided rapidly up and down the room, as was mostly her habit hen excited, her hands hanging clasped in front of her, as she thought and in part expressed in broken words: o, i hate her, yet i don't mean that i hate her, for it is grievous and wicked; and yet i hate her a little! yes, my flesh insists upon hating her, whether my spirit is willing or no!... if she had only lived, i could ave been angry and cruel towards her with some justifi- cation; but to be vindictive towards a poor dead woman recoils upon myself. o god, have mercy,! i am miserable at all this!" bathsheba became at this moment so terrified at her own state of mind that she looked around for some sort of refuge from herself. the vision of oak kneeling down that night recurred to her, and with the imitative instinct which animates women she seized upon the idea, resolved to kneel, and, if possible, pray. gabriel had prayed; so would she. she knelt beside the coffin, covered her face with her hands, and for a time the room was silent as a tomb. whether from a purely mechanical, or from any other cause, when bathsheba arose it was with a quieted spirit, and a regret for the antagonistic instincts which had seized upon her just before. in her desire to make atonement she took flowers from a vase by the window, and began laying them around the dead girl's head. bathsheba knew no other way of showing kindness to persons departed than by giving them flowers. she knew not how long she remained engaged thus. she forgot time, life, where she was, what she was doing. a slamming together of the coach-house doors in the yard brought her to her- self again. an instant after, the front door opened and closed, steps crossed the hall, and her husband appeared at the entrance to the room, looking in upon her. he beheld it all by degrees, stared in stupefaction at the scene, as if he thought it an illusion raised by some fiendish incantation. bathsheba, pallid as a corpse on end, gazed back at him in the same wild way. so little are instinctive guesses the fruit of a legitimate induction, that at this moment, as he stood with the door in his hand, troy never once thought of fanny in connection with what he saw. his first confused idea was that somebody in the house had died. "well -- what?" said troy, blankly. "i must go! i must go!" said bathsheba, to herself more than to him. she came with a dilated eye towards the door, to push past him. "what's the matter, in god's name? who's dead?" said troy. "i cannot say; let me go out. i want air!" she continued. "but no; stay, i insist!" he seized her hand, and then volition seemed to leave her, and she went off into a state of passivity. he, still holding her, came up the room, and thus, hand in hand, troy and bathsheba approached the coffin's side. the candle was standing on a bureau close by them, and the light slanted down, distinctly enkindling the cold features of both mother and babe. troy looked in, dropped his wife's hand, knowledge of it all came over him in a lurid sheen, and he stood still. so still he remained that he could be imagined to have left in him no motive power whatever. the clashes of feeling in all directions confounded one another, produced a neutrality, and there was motion in none. "do you know her?" said bathsheba, in a small enclosed echo, as from the interior of a cell. "i do." said troy. "is it she?" "it is." he had originally stood perfectly erect. and now, in the wellnigh congealed immobility of his frame could be discerned an incipient movement, as in the darkest night may be discerned light after a while. he was gradually sinking forwards. the lines of his features softened, and dismay modulated to illimitable sadness. bathsheba was regarding him from the other side, still with parted lips and distracted eyes. capacity for intense feeling is proportionate to the general intensity of the nature ,and perhaps in all fanny's sufferings, much greater relatively to her strength, there never was a time she suffered in an absolute sense what bathsheba suffered now. what troy did was to sink upon his knees with an indefinable union of remorse and reverence upon his face, and, bending over fanny robin, gently kissed her, as one would kiss an infant asleep to avoid awakening it. at the sight and sound of that, to her, unendurable act, bathsheba sprang towards him. all the strong feelings which had been scattered over her existence since she knew what feeling was, seemed gathered together into one pulsation now. the revulsion from her indignant mood a little earlier, when she had meditated upon compromised honour, forestalment, eclipse in maternity by another, was violent and entire. all that was forgotten in the simple and still strong attachment of wife to husband. she had sighed for her self-completeness then, and now she cried aloud against the severance of the union she had deplored. she flung her arms round troy's neck, exclaiming wildly from the deepest deep of her heart -- "don't -- don't kiss them! o, frank, i can"t bear it-i can't! i love you better than she did: kiss me too, frank -- kiss me! you will, frank, kiss me too!" there was something so abnormal and startling in the childlike pain and simplicity of this appeal from a woman of bathsheba's calibre and independence, that troy, loosening her tightly clasped arms from his neck, looked at her in bewilderment. it was such and unex- pected revelation of all women being alike at heart, even those so different in their accessories as fanny and this one beside him, that troy could hardly seem to believe her to be his proud wife bathsheba. fanny's own spirit seemed to be animating her frame. but this was the mood of a few instants only. when the momentary "i will not kiss you!" he said pushing her away. had the wife now but gone no further. yet, perhaps. under the harrowing circumstances, to speak out was the one wrong act which can be better under- stood, if not forgiven in her, than the right and politic one, her rival being now but a corpse. all the feeling she had been betrayed into showing she drew back to herself again by a strenuous effort of self-command. "what have you to say as your reason?" she asked her bitter voice being strangely low -- quite that of another woman now. "i have to say that i have been a bad, black-hearted man." he answered. less than she." "ah! don't taunt me, madam. this woman is more to me, dead as she is, than ever you were, or are, or can be. if satan had not tempted me with that face of yours, and those cursed coquetries, i should have he turned to fanny then. "but never mind, darling, wife!" at these words there arose from bathsheba's lips a long, low cry of measureless despair and indignation, such a wail of anguish as had never before been heard within those old-inhabited walls. it was the product* of her union with troy. "if she's -- that, -- what -- am i?" she added, as a continuation of the same cry, and sobbing pitifully: and the rarity with her of such abandonment only made the condition more dire. "you are nothing to me -- nothing." said troy, heartlessly. "a ceremony before a priest doesn't make a marriage. i am not morally yours." a vehement impulse to flee from him, to run from this place, hide, and escape his words at any price, not stopping short of death itself, mastered bathsheba now. she waited not an instant, but turned to the door and ran out. chapter xliv under a tree -- reaction bathsheba went along the dark road, neither know- ing nor caring about the direction or issue of her flight. the first time that she definitely noticed her position was when she reached a gate leading into a thicket over- hung by some large oak and beech trees. on looking into the place, it occurred to her that she had seen it by daylight on some previous occasion, and that what appeared like an impassable thicket was in reality a brake of fern now withering fast. she could think of nothing better to do with her palpitating self than to go in here and hide; and entering, she lighted on a spot sheltered from the damp fog by a reclining trunk, where she sank down upon a tangled couch of fronds and stems. she mechanically pulled some armfuls round her to keep off the breezes, and closed her eyes. whether she slept or not that night bathsheba was not clearly aware. but it was with a freshened exist- ence and a cooler brain that, a long time afterwards, she became conscious of some interesting proceedings which were going on in the trees above her head and around. a coarse-throated chatter was the first sound. it was a sparrow just waking. next: "chee-weeze-weeze-weeze!" from another retreat. it was a finch. third: "tink-tink-tink-tink-a-chink!" from the hedge, it was a robin. "chuck-chuck-chuck!" overhead. a squirrel. then, from the road, "with my ra-ta-ta, and my rum-tum-tum!" it was a ploughboy. presently he came opposite, and she believed from his voice that he was one of the boys on her own farm. he was followed by a shambling tramp of heavy feet, and looking through the ferns bathsheba could just discern in the wan light of daybreak a team of her own horses. they stopped to drink at a pond on the other side of the way'. she watched them flouncing into the pool, drinking, tossing up their heads, drinking again, the water dribbling from their lips in silver threads. there was another flounce, and they came out of the pond, and turned back again towards the farm. she looked further around. day was just dawning, and beside its cool air and colours her heated actions and resolves of the night stood out in lurid contrast. she perceived that in her lap, and clinging to her hair, were red and yellow leaves which had come down from the tree and settled silently upon her during her partial sleep. bathsheba shook her dress to get rid of them, when multitudes of the same family lying round about her rose and fluttered away in the breeze thus created, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing." there was an opening towards the east, and the glow from the as yet unrisen sun attracted her eyes thither. from her feet, and between the beautiful yellowing ferns with their feathery arms, the ground sloped downwards to a hollow, in which was a species of swamp, dotted with fungi. a morning mist hung over it now -- a fulsome yet magnificent silvery veil, full of light from the sun, yet semi-opaque -- the hedge behind it being in some measure hidden by its hazy luminousness. up the sides of this depression grew sheaves of the common rush, and here and there a peculiar species of flag, the blades of which glistened in the emerging sun, like scythes. but the general aspect of the swamp was malignant. from its moist and poisonous coat seemed to be exhaled the essences of evil things in the earth, and in the waters under the earth. the fungi grew in all manner of positions from rotting leaves and tree stumps, some exhibiting to her listless gaze their clammy tops, others their oozing gills. some were marked with great splotches, red as arterial blood, others were saffron yellow, and others tall and attenuated, with stems like macaroni. some were leathery and of richest browns. the hollow seemed a nursery of pestilences small and great, in the immediate neighbourhood of comfort and health, and bathsheba arose with a tremor at the thought of having passed the night on the brink of so dismal a place. "there were now other footsteps to be heard along the road. bathsheba's nerves were still unstrung: she crouched down out of sight again, and the pedes- trian came into view. he was a schoolboy, with a bag slung over his shoulder containing his dinner, and a hook in his hand. he paused by the gate, and, without looking up, continued murmuring words in tones quite loud enough to reach her ears. "o lord, o lord, o lord, o lord, o lord": -- that i know out o' book. "give us, give us, give us, give us, give us": -- that i know. "grace that, grace that, grace that, grace that": -- that i know." other words followed to the same effect. the boy was of the dunce class apparently; the book was a psalter, and this was his way of learning the collect. in the worst attacks of trouble there appears to be always a super- ficial film of consciousness which is left disengaged and open to the notice of trifles, and bathsheba was faintly amused at the boy's method, till he too passed on. by this time stupor had given place to anxiety, and anxiety began to make room for hunger and thirst. a form now appeared upon the rise on the other side of the swamp, half-hidden by the mist, and came towards bathsheba. the woman -- for it was a woman -- approached with her face askance, as if looking earnestly on all sides of her. when she got a little further round to the left, and drew nearer, bathsheba could see the newcomer's profile against the sunny sky', and knew the wavy sweep from forehead to chin, with neither angle nor decisive line anywhere about it, to be the familiar contour of liddy smallbury. bathsheba's heart bounded with gratitude in the thought that she was not altogether deserted, and she jumped up. "o, liddy!" she said, or attempted to say; but the words had only been framed by her lips; there came no sound. she had lost her voice by exposure to the clogged atmosphere all these hours of night. "o, ma'am! i am so glad i have found you." said the girl, as soon as she saw bathsheba. "you can't come across." bathsheba said in a whisper, which she vainly endeavoured to make loud enough to reach liddy's ears. liddy, not knowing this, stepped down upon the swamp, saying, as she did so, "it will bear me up, i think." bathsheba never forgot that transient little picture of liddy crossing the swamp to her there in the morning light. iridescent bubbles of dank subter- ranean breath rose from the sweating sod beside the waiting maid's feet as she trod, hissing as they burst and expanded away to join the vapoury firmament above. liddy did not sink, as bathsheba had anticipated. she landed safely on the other side, and looked up at the beautiful though pale and weary face of her young mistress. "poor thing!" said liddy, with tears in her eyes, do hearten yourself up a little, ma'am. however did -- -- " "i can't speak above a whisper -- my voice is gone for the present." said bathsheba, hurriedly." i suppose the damp air from that hollow has taken it away liddy, don't question me, mind. who sent you -- anybody?" "nobody. i thought, when i found you were not at home, that something cruel had happened. i fancy i heard his voice late last night; and so, knowing something was wrong -- -- " "is he at home?" "no; he left just before i came out." "is fanny taken away?" "not yet. she will soon be -- at nine o'clock." "we won't go home at present, then. suppose we walk about in this wood?" liddy, without exactly understanding everything, or anything, in this episode, assented, and they walked together further among the trees. "but you had better come in, ma'am, and have something to eat. you will die of a chill!" "i shall not come indoors yet -- perhaps never." "shall i get you something to eat, and something else to put over your head besides that little shawl?" "if you will, liddy." liddy vanished, and at the end of twenty minutes returned with a cloak, hat, some slices of bread and butter, a tea-cup, and some hot tea in a little china jug "is fanny gone?" said bathsheba. "no." said her companion, pouring out the tea. bathsheba wrapped herself up and ate and drank sparingly. her voice was then a little clearer, and trifling colour returned to her face. "now we'll walk about again." she said. they wandered about the wood for nearly two hours, bathsheba replying in monosyllables to liddy's prattle, for her mind ran on one subject, and one only. she interrupted with -- "l wonder if fanny is gone by this time?" "i will go and see." she came back with the information that the men were just taking away the corpse; that bathsheba had been inquired for; that she had replied to the effect that her mistress was unwell and could not be seen. "then they think i am in my bedroom?" "yes." liddy then ventured to add:" you said when i first found you that you might never go home again -- you didn't mean it, ma'am?" "no; i've altered my mind. it is only women with no pride in them who run away from their husbands. there is one position worse than that of being found dead in your husband's house from his ill usage, and that is, to be found alive through having gone away to the house of somebody else. i've thought of it all this morning, and i've chosen my course. a runaway wife is an encumbrance to everybody, a burden to herself and a byword -- all of which make up a heap of misery greater than any that comes by staying at home -- though this may include the trifling items of insult, beating, and starvation. liddy, if ever you marry -- god forbid that you ever should! -- you'll find yourself in a fearful situation; but mind this, don't you flinch. stand your ground, and be cut to pieces. that's what i'm going to do." "o, mistress, don't talk so!" said liddy,-taking her hand; "but i knew you had too much sense to bide away. may i ask what dreadful thing it is that has happened between you and him?" "you may ask; but i may not tell." in about ten minutes they returned to the house by a circuitous route, entering at the rear. bathsheba glided up the back stairs to a disused attic, and her companion followed. "liddy." she said, with a lighter heart, for youth and hope had begun to reassert themselves;" you are to be my confidante for the present -- somebody must be -- and i choose you. well, i shall take up my abode here for a while. will you get a fire lighted, put down a piece of carpet, and help me to make the place comfortable. afterwards, i want you and maryann to bring up that little stump bedstead in the small room, and the be belonging to it, and a table, and some other things. what shall i do to pass the heavy time away?" "hemming handkerchiefs is a very good thing." said liddy. "o no, no! i hate needlework-i always did." "knitting?" "and that, too." "you might finish your sampler. only the carna- tions and peacocks want filling in; and then it could be framed and glazed, and hung beside your aunt" ma'am." "samplers are out of date -- horribly countrified. no liddy, i'll read. bring up some books -- not new ones. i haven't heart to read anything new." "some of your uncle's old ones, ma'am?" "yes. some of those we stowed away in boxes." a faint gleam of humour passed over her face as she said: "bring beaumont and fletcher's maid's tragedy, and the mourning bride, and let me see -- night thoughts, and the vanity of human wishes." "and that story of the black man, who murdered his wife desdemona? it is a nice dismal one that would suit you excellent just now." "now, liddy, you've been looking into my book without telling me; and i said you were not to! how do you know it would suit me? it wouldn't suit me a all." "but if the others do -- -- " "no, they don't; and i won't read dismal books. why should i read dismal books, indeed? bring me love in a village, and maid of the mill, and doctor syntax, and some volumes of the spectator." all that day bathsheba and liddy lived in the attic in a state of barricade; a precaution which proved to be needless as against troy, for he did not appear in the neighbourhood or trouble them at all. bathsheba sat at the window till sunset, sometimes attempting to read, at other times watching every movement outside without much purpose, and listening without much interest to every sound. the sun went down almost blood-red that night, and a livid cloud received its rays in the east. up against this dark background the west front of the church tower -- the only part of the edifice visible from the farm-house windows -- rose distinct and lustrous, the vane upon the summit bristling with rays. hereabouts, at six o'clock, the young men of the village gathered, as was their custom, for a game of prisoners' base. the spot had been consecrated to this ancient diversion from time immemorial, the old stocks conveniently forming a base facing the boundary of the churchyard, in front of which the ground was trodden hard and bare as a pavement by the players. she could see the brown and black heads of the young lads darting about right and left, their white shirt-sleeves gleaming in the sun; whilst occasionally a shout and a peal of hearty laughter varied the stillness of the evening air. they continued playing for a quarter of an hour or so, when the game concluded abruptly, and the players leapt over the wall and vanished round to the other side behind a yew-tree, which was also half behind a beech, now spreading in one mass of golden foliage, on which the branches traced black lines. "why did the base-players finish their game so suddenly?" bathsheba inquired, the next time that liddy entered the room. "i think 'twas because two men came just then from casterbridge and began putting up grand carved tombstone." said liddy. "the lads went to see whose it was." "do you know?" bathsheba asked. "i don't." said liddy. chapter xlv troy's romanticism when troy's wife had left the house at the previous midnight his first act was to cover the dead from sight. this done he ascended the stairs, and throwing himself down upon the bed dressed as he was, he waited miser- ably for the morning. fate had dealt grimly with him through the last four- and-twenty hours. his day had been spent in a way which varied very materially from his intentions regard- ing it. there is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct -- not more in our- selves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as if leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration. twenty pounds having been secured from bathsheba, he had managed to add to the sum every farthing he could muster on his own account, which had been seven pounds ten. with this money, twenty-seven pounds ten in all, he had hastily driven from the gate that morning to keep his appointment with fanny robin. on reaching casterbridge he left the horse and trap at an inn, and at five minutes before ten came back to the bridge at the lower end of the town, and sat himself upon the parapet. the clocks struck the hour, and no fanny appeared. in fact, at that moment she was being robed in her grave-clothes by two attendants at the union poorhouse -- the first and last tiring-women the gentle creature had ever been honoured with. the quarter went, the half hour. a rush of recollection came upon troy as he waited: this was the second time she had broken a serious engagement with him in anger he vowed it should be the last, and at eleven o'clock, when he had lingered and watched the stone of the bridge till he knew every lichen upon their face and heard the chink of the ripples underneath till they oppressed him, he jumped from his seat, went to the inn for his gig, and in a bitter mood of indifference con- cerning the past, and recklessness about the future, drove on to budmouth races. he reached the race-course at two o'clock, and re- mained either there or in the town till nine, but fanny's image, as it had appeared to him in the sombre shadows of that saturday evening, returned to his mind, backed up by bathsheba's reproaches. he vowed he would not bet, and he kept his vow, for on leaving the town at nine o'clock in the evening he had diminish his cash only to the extent of a few shillings. he trotted slowly homeward, and it was now that was struck for the first time with a thought that fanny had been really prevented by illness from keeping her promise. this time she could have made no mistake he regretted that he had not remained in casterbridge and made inquiries. reaching home he quietly un- harnessed the horse and came indoors, as we have seen, to the fearful shock that awaited him. as soon as it grew light enough to distinguish objects, troy arose from the coverlet of the bed, and in a mood of absolute indifference to bathsheba's whereabouts, a almost oblivious of her existence, he stalked downstairs and left the house by the back door. his walk was towards the churchyard, entering which he searched around till he found a newly dug unoccupied grave -- the grave dug the day before for fanny. the position of this having been marked, he hastened on to caster- bridge, only pausing whereon he had last seen fanny alive. reaching the town, troy descended into a side street and entered a pair of gates surmounted by a board bearing the words, "lester, stone and marble mason." within were lying about stones of all sizes and designs, inscribed as being sacred to the memory of unnamed persons who had not yet died. troy was so unlike himself now in look, word, and deed, that the want of likeness was perceptible even to his own consciousness. his method of engaging himself in this business of purchasing a tomb was that of an absolutely unpractised man. he could not bring him- self to consider, calculate, or economize. he waywardly wished for something, and he set about obtaining it like a child in a nursery. 'i want a good tomb." he said to the man who stood in a little office within the yard. "i want as good a one as you can give me for twenty- seven pounds," it was all the money he possessed. "that sum to include everything?" "everything. cutting the name, carriage to weather- bury, and erection. and i want it now at once ." "we could not get anything special worked this week. "if you would like one of these in stock it could be got ready immediately." "very well." said troy, impatiently. "let's see what you have." "the best i have in stock is this one," said the stone- cutter, going into a shed." here's a marble headstone beautifully crocketed, with medallions beneath of typical subjects; here's the footstone after the same pattern, and here's the coping to enclose the- grave. the slabs are the best of their kind, and i can warrant them "well, i could add the name, and put it up at visitor who wore not a shred of mourning. troy then settled the account and went away. in the afternoon almost done. he waited in the yard till the tomb was way to weatherbury, giving directions to the two men the grave of the person named in the inscription. bridge. he carried rather a heavy basket upon his occasionally at bridges and gates, whereon he deposited returning in the darkness, the men and the waggon the work was done, and, on being assured that it was, troy entered weatherbury churchyard about ten had marked the vacant grave early in the morning. it extent from the view of passers along the road -- a spot and bushes of alder, but now it was cleared and made the ground elsewhere. here now stood the tomb as the men had stated, snow- white and shapely in the gloom, consisting of head and foot-stone, and enclosing border of marble-work uniting them. in the midst was mould, suitable for plants. troy deposited his basket beside the tomb, and vanished for a few minutes. when he returned he carried a spade and a lantern, the light of which he directed for a few moments upon the marble, whilst he read the inscription. he hung his lantern on the lowest bough of the yew-tree, and took from his basket flower- roots of several varieties. there were bundles of snow- drop, hyacinth and crocus bulbs, violets and double daisies, which were to bloom in early spring, and of carnations, pinks, picotees, lilies of the valley, forget-me- not, summer's-farewell, meadow-saffron and others, for the later seasons of the year. troy laid these out upon the grass, and with an im- passive face set to work to plant them. the snowdrops were arranged in a line on the outside of the coping, the remainder within the enclosure of the grave. the crocuses and hyacinths were to grow in rows; some of the summer flowers he placed over her head and feet, the lilies and forget-me-nots over her heart. the remainder were dispersed in the spaces between these. troy, in his prostration at this time, had no percep- tion that in the futility of these romantic doings, dictated by a remorseful reaction from previous indifference, there was any element of absurdity. deriving his idiosyn- crasies from both sides of the channel, he showed at such junctures as the present the inelasticity of the englishman, together with that blindness to the line where sentiment verges on mawkishness, characteristic of the french. lt was a cloudy, muggy, and very dark night, and the rays from troy's lantern spread into the two old yews with a strange illuminating power, flickering, as it seemed, up to the black ceiling of cloud above. he felt a large drop of rain upon the back of his hand, and presently one came and entered one of the holes of the lantern, whereupon the candle sputtered and went out- troy was weary and it being now not far from midnight, and the rain threatening to increase, he resolved to leave the finishing touches of his labour until the day should break. he groped along the wall and over the graves in the dark till he found himself round at the north side. here he entered the porch, and, reclining upon the bench within, fell asleep. chapter xlvi the gurgoyle: its doings the tower of weatherbury church was a square erection of fourteenth-century date, having two stone gurgoyles on each of the four faces of its parapet. of these eight carved protuberances only two at this time continued to serve the purpose of their erection -- that of spouting the water from the lead roof within. one mouth in each front had been closed by bygone church- wardens as superfluous, and two others were broken away and choked -- a matter not of much consequence to the wellbeing of the tower, for the two mouths which still remained open and active were gaping enough to do all the work. it has been sometimes argued that there is no truer criterion of the vitality of any given art-period than the power of the master-spirits of that time in grotesque; and certainly in the instance of gothic art there is no disputing the proposition. weatherbury tower was a somewhat early instance of the use of an ornamental parapet in parish as distinct from cathedral churches, and the gurgoyles, which are the necessary correlatives of a parapet, were exceptionally prominent -- of the boldest cut that the hand could shape, and of the most original design that a human brain could conceive. there was, so to speak, that symmetry in their distortion which is less the characteristic of british than of continental grotesques of the period. all the eight were different from each other. a beholder was con- vinced that nothing on earth could be more hideous than those he saw on the north side until he went round to the south. of the two on this latter face, only that at the south-eastern corner concerns the story. it was too human to be called like a dragon, too impish to be like a man, too animal to be like a fiend, and not enough like a bird to be called a griffin. this horrible stone entity was fashioned as if covered with a wrinkled hide; it had short, erect ears, eyes starting from their sockets, and its fingers and hands were seizing the corners of its mouth, which they thus seemed to pull open to give free passage to the water it vomited. the lower row of teeth was quite washed away, though the upper still remained. here and thus, jutting a couple of feet from the wall against which its feet rested as a support, the creature had for four hundred years laughed at the surrounding landscape, voicelessly in dry weather, and in wet with a gurgling and snorting sound. troy slept on in the porch, and the rain increased outside. presently the gurgoyle spat. in due time a small stream began to trickle through the seventy feet of aerial space between its mouth and the ground, which the water-drops smote like duckshot in their accelerated velocity. the stream thickened in substance, and in- creased in power, gradually spouting further and yet further from the side of the tower. when the rain fell in a steady and ceaseless torrent the stream dashed downward in volumes. we follow its course to the ground at this point of time. the end of the liquid parabola has come forward from the wall, has advanced over the plinth mouldings, over a heap of stones, over the marble border, into the midst of fanny robin's grave. the force of the stream had, until very lately, been received upon some loose stones spread thereabout, which had acted as a shield to the soil under the onset. these during the summer had been cleared from the ground, and there was now nothing to resist the down- fall but the bare earth. for several years the stream had not spouted so far from the tower as it was doing on this night, and such a contingency had been over- looked. sometimes this obscure corner received no inhabitant for the space of two or three years, and then it was usually but a pauper, a poacher, or other sinner of undignified sins. the persistent torrent from the gurgoyle's jaws directed all its vengeance into the grave. the rich tawny mould was stirred into motion, and boiled like chocolate. the water accumulated and washed deeper down, and the roar of the pool thus formed spread into the night as the head and chief among other noises of the kind created by the deluging rain. the flowers so carefully planted by fanny's repentant lover began to move and writhe in their bed. the winter-violets turned slowly upside down, and became a mere mat of mud. soon the snowdrop and other bulbs danced in the boiling mass like ingredients in a cauldron. plants of the tufted species were loosened, rose to the surface, and floated of. troy did not awake from his comfortless sleep till it was broad day. not having been in bed for two nights his shoulders felt stiff his feet tender, and his head heavy. he remembered his position, arose, shivered, took the spade, and again went out. the rain had quite ceased, and the sun was shining through the green, brown, and yellow leaves, now sparkling and varnished by the raindrops to the bright- ness of similar effects in the landscapes of ruysdael and hobbema, and full of all those infinite beauties that arise from the union of water and colour with high lights. the air was rendered so transparent by the heavy fall of rain that the autumn hues of the middle distance were as rich as those near at hand, and the remote fields intercepted by the angle of the tower ap- peared in the same plane as the tower itself. he entered the gravel path which would take him behind the tower. the path, instead of being stony as it had been the night before, was browned over with a thin coating of mud. at one place in the path he saw a tuft of stringy roots washed white and clean as a bundle of tendons. he picked it up -- surely it could not be one of the primroses he had planted? he saw a bulb, another, and another as he advanced. beyond doubt they were the crocuses. with a face of perplexed dismay troy turned the corner and then beheld the wreck the stream had made. the pool upon the grave had soaked away into the ground, and in its place was a hollow. the disturbed earth was washed over the grass and pathway in the guise of the brown mud he had already seen, and it spotted the marble tombstone with the same stains. nearly all the flowers were washed clean out of the ground, and they lay, roots upwards, on the spots whither they had been splashed by the stream. troy's brow became heavily contracted. he set his teeth closely, and his compressed lips moved as those of one in great pain. this singular accident, by a strange confluence of emotions in him, was felt as the sharpest sting of all. troy's face was very expressive, and any observer who had seen him now would hardly have believed him to be a man who had laughed, and sung, and poured love-trifles into a woman's ear. to curse his miserable lot was at first his impulse, but even that lowest stage of rebellion needed an activity whose absence was necessarily antecedent to the existence of the morbid misery which wrung him. the sight, coming as it did, superimposed upon the other dark scenery of the previous days, formed a sort of climax to the whole panorama, and it was more than he could endure. sanguine by nature, troy had a power of eluding grief by simply adjourning it. he could put off the consideration of any particular spectre till the matter had become old and softened by time. the planting of flowers on fanny's grave had been perhaps but a species of elusion of the primary grief, and now it was as if his intention had been known and circumvented. almost for the first time in his life, troy, as he stood by this dismantled grave, wished himself another man. lt is seldom that a person with much animal spirit does not feel that the fact of his life being his own is the one qualification which singles it out as a more hopeful life than that of others who may actually resemble him in every particular. troy had felt, in his transient way, hundreds of times, that he could not envy other people their condition, because the possession of that condition would have necessitated a different personality, when he desired no other than his own. he had not minded the peculiarities of his birth, the vicissitudes of his life, the meteorlike uncertainty of all that related to him, because these appertained to the hero of his story, without whom there would have been no story at all for him; and it seemed to be only in the nature of things that matters would right themselves at some proper date and wind up well. this very morning the illusion completed its disappearance, and, as it were, all of a sudden, troy hated himself. the suddenness was probably more apparent than real. a coral reef which just comes short of the ocean surface is no more to the horizon than if it had never been begun, and the mere finishing stroke is what often appears to create an event which has long been potentially an accomplished thing. he stood and mediated -- a miserable man. whither should he go? " he that is accursed, let him be accursed still." was the pitiless anathema written in this spoliated effort of his new-born solicitousness. a man who has spent his primal strength in journeying in one direction has not much spirit left for reversing his course. troy had, since yesterday, faintly reversed his; but the merest opposition had disheartened him. to turn about would have been hard enough under the greatest providential encouragement; but to find that providence, far from helping him into a new course, or showing any wish that he might adopt one, actually jeered his first trembling and critical attempt in that kind, was more than nature could bear. he slowly withdrew from the grave. he did not attempt to fill up the hole, replace the flowers, or do anything at all. he simply threw up his cards and forswore his game for that time and always. going out of the churchyard silently and unobserved -- none of the villagers having yet risen -- he passed down some fields at the back, and emerged just as secretly upon the high road. shortly afterwards he had gone from the village. meanwhile, bathsheba remained a voluntary prisoner in the attic. the door was kept locked, except during the entries and exits of liddy, for whom a bed had been arranged in a small adjoining room. the light of troy's lantern in the churchyard was noticed about ten o'clock by the maid-servant, who casually glanced from the window in that direction whilst taking her supper, and she called bathsheba's attention to it. they looked curiously at the phenomenon for a time, until liddy was sent to bed. bathsheba did not sleep very heavily that night. when her attendant was unconscious and softly breath- ing in the next room, the mistress of the house was still looking out of the window at the faint gleam spreading from among the trees -- not in a steady shine, but blinking like a revolving coastlight, though this appearance failed to suggest to her that a person was passing and repassing in front of it. bathsheba sat here till it began to rain, and the light vanished, when she withdrew to lie restlessly in her bed and re-enact in a worn mind the lurid scene of yesternight. almost before the first faint sign of dawn appeared she arose again, and opened the window to obtain a full breathing of the new morning air, the panes being now wet with trembling tears left by the night rain, each one rounded with a pale lustre caught from primrose- hued slashes through a cloud low down in the awaken- ing sky. from the trees came the sound of steady dripping upon the drifted leaves under them, and from the direction of the church she could hear another noise -- peculiar, and not intermittent like the rest, the purl of water falling into a pool. liddy knocked at eight o'clock, and bathsheba un- locked the door. "what a heavy rain we've had in the night, ma'am!" said liddy, when her inquiries about breakfast had been made. "yes, very heavy." "did you hear the strange noise from the church yard?" "i heard one strange noise. i've been thinking it must have been the water from the tower spouts." "well, that's what the shepherd was saying, ma'am. he's now gone on to see." "oh! gabriel has been here this morning!" "only just looked in in passing -- quite in his old way, which i thought he had left off lately. but the tower spouts used to spatter on the stones, and we are puzzled, for this was like the boiling of a pot." not being able to read, think, or work, bathsheba asked liddy to stay and breakfast with her. the tongue of the more childish woman still ran upon recent events. "are you going across to the church, ma'am?" she asked. "not that i know of." said bathsheba. "i thought you might like to go and see where they have put fanny. the trees hide the place from your window." bathsheba had all sorts of dreads about meeting her husband. "has mr. troy been in to-night?" she said "no, ma'am; i think he's gone to budmouth. budmouth! the sound of the word carried with it a much diminished perspective of him and his deeds; there were thirteen miles interval betwixt them now. she hated questioning liddy about her husband's movements, and indeed had hitherto sedulously avoided doing so; but now all the house knew that there had been some dreadful disagreement between them, and it was futile to attempt disguise. bathsheba had reached a stage at which people cease to have any appreciative regard for public opinion. "what makes you think he has gone there?" she said. "laban tall saw him on the budmouth road this morning before breakfast." bathsheba was momentarily relieved of that wayward heaviness of the past twenty-four hours which had quenched the vitality of youth in her without sub- stituting the philosophy of maturer years, and the resolved to go out and walk a little way. so when breakfast was over, she put on her bonnet, and took a direction towards the church. it was nine o'clock, and the men having returned to work again from their first meal, she was not likely to meet many of them in the road. knowing that fanny had been laid in the reprobates' quarter of the graveyard, called in the parish "behind church." which was invisible from the road, it was impossible to resist the impulse to enter and look upon a spot which, from nameless feelings, she at the same time dreaded to see. she had been unable to overcome an impression that some connection existed between her rival and the light through the trees. bathsheba skirted the buttress, and beheld the hole and the tomb, its delicately veined surface splashed and stained just as troy had seen it and left it two hours earlier. on the other side of the scene stood gabriel. his eyes, too, were fixed on the tomb, and her arrival having been noiseless, she had not as yet attracted his attention. bathsheba did not at once perceive that the grand tomb and the disturbed grave were fanny's, and she looked on both sides and around for some humbler mound, earthed up and clodded in the usual way. then her eye followed oak's, and she read the words with which the inscription opened: -- "erected by francis troy in beloved memory of fanny robin." oak saw her, and his first act was to gaze inquiringly and learn how she received this knowledge of the authorship of the work, which to himself had caused considerable astonishment. but such discoveries did not much affect her now. emotional convulsions seemed to have become the commonplaces of her history, and she bade him good morning, and asked him to fill in the hole with the spade which was standing by. whilst oak was doing as she desired, bathsheba collected the flowers, and began planting them with that sympathetic manipulation of roots and leaves which is so conspicuous in a woman's gardening, and which flowers seem to understand and thrive upon. she requested oak to get the churchwardens to turn the leadwork at the mouth of the gurgoyle that hung gaping down upon them, that by this means the stream might be directed sideways, and a repetition of the accident prevented. finally, with the superfluous magnanimity of a woman whose narrower instincts have brought down bitterness upon her instead of love, she wiped the mud spots from the tomb as if she rather liked its words than otherwise, chapter xlvii adventures by the shore troy wandered along towards the south. a composite feeling, made up of disgust with the, to him, humdrum tediousness of a farmer's life, gloomily images of her who lay in the churchyard, remorse, and a general averseness to his wife's society, impelled him to seek a home in any place on earth save weatherbury. the sad accessories of fanny's end confronted him as vivid pictures which threatened to be indelible, and made life in bathsheba's house intolerable. at three in the afternoon he found himself at the foot of a slope more than a mile in length, which ran to the ridge of a range of hills lying parallel with the shore, and forming a monotonous barrier between the basin of cultivated country inland and the wilder scenery of the coast. up the hill stretched a road nearly straight and perfectly white, the two sides approaching each other in a gradual taper till they met the sky at the top about two miles off. through- out the length of this narrow and irksome inclined plane not a sign of life was visible on this garish afternoon troy toiled up the road with a languor and depression greater than any he had experienced for many a day and year before. the air was warm and muggy, and the top seemed to recede as he approached. at last he reached the summit, and a wide and novel prospect burst upon him with an effect almost like that of the pacific upon balboa's gaze. the broad steely sea, marked only by faint lines, which had a semblance of being etched thereon to a degree not deep enough to disturb its general evenness, stretched the whole width of his front and round to the right, where, near the town and port of budmouth, the sun bristled down upon it, and banished all colour, to substitute in its place a clear oily polish. nothing moved in sky, land, or sea, except a frill of milkwhite foam along the nearer angles of the shore, shreds of which licked the contiguous stones like tongues. he descended and came to a small basin of sea enclosed by the cliffs. troy's nature freshened within him; he thought he would rest and bathe here before going farther. he undressed and plunged in. inside the cove the water was uninteresting to a swimmer, being smooth as a pond, and to get a little of the ocean swell, troy presently swam between the two projecting spurs of rock which formed the pillars of hercules to this miniature mediterranean. unfortunately for troy a current unknown to him existed outside, which, un- important to craft of any burden, was awkward for a swimmer who might be taken in it unawares. troy found himself carried to the left and then round in a swoop out to sea. he now recollected the place and its sinister character. many bathers had there prayed for a dry death from time to time, and, like gonzalo also, had been unanswered; and troy began to deem it possible that he might be added to their number. not a boat of any kind was at present within sight, but far in the distance budmouth lay upon the sea, as it were quietly regarding his efforts, and beside the town the harbour showed its position by a dim meshwork of ropes and spars. after wellnigh exhausting himself in attempts to get back to the mouth of the cove, in his weakness swimming several inches deeper than was his wont, keeping up his breathing entirely by his nostrils, turning upon his back a dozen times over, swimming en papillon and so on, troy resolved as a last resource to tread water at a slight incline, and so endeavour to reach the shore at any point, merely giving himself a gentle impetus inwards whilst carried on in the general direc- tion of the tide. this, necessarily a slow process, he found to be not altogether so difficult, and though there was no choice of a landing-place -- the objects on shore passing by him in a sad and slow procession -- he per- ceptibly approached the extremity of a spit of land yet further to the right, now well defined against the sunny portion of the horizon. while the swimmer's eye's were fixed upon the spit as his only means of salvation on this side of the unknown, a moving object broke the outline of the extremity, and immediately a ship's boat appeared manned with several sailor lads, her bows towards the sea. all troy's vigour spasmodically revived to prolong the struggle yet a little further. swimming with his right arm, he held up his left to hail them, splashing upon the waves, and shouting with all his might. from the position of the setting sun his white form was distinctly visible upon the now deep-hued bosom of the sea to the east of the boat, and the men saw him at once. backing their oars and putting the boat about, they pulled towards him with a will, and in five or six minutes from the time of his first halloo, two of the sailors hauled him in over the stern. they formed part of a brig's crew, and had come ashore for sand. lending him what little clothing they could spare among them as a slight protection against late they made again towards the roadstead where their and now night drooped slowly upon the wide watery levels in front; and at no great distance from them, where the shoreline curved round, and formed a long riband of shade upon the horizon, a series of points of yellow light began to start into existence, denoting the spot to be the site of budmouth, where the lamps were being lighted along the parade. the cluck of their oars was the only sound of any distinctness upon the sea, and as they laboured amid the thickening shades the lamplights grew larger, each appearing to send a flaming sword deep down into the waves before it, until there arose, among other dim shapes of the kind, the form of the vessel for which they were bound. chapter xlviii doubts arise -- doubts linger bathsheba underwent the enlargement of her husband's absence from hours to days with a slight feeling of surprise, and a slight feeling of relief; yet neither sensation rose at any time far above the level commonly designated as indifference. she belonged to him: the certainties of that position were so well defined, and the reasonable probabilities of its issue so bounded that she could not speculate on contingencies. taking no further interest in herself as a splendid woman, she acquired the indifferent feelings of an outsider in contem- plating her probable fate as a singular wretch; for bath- sheba drew herself and her future in colours that no reality could exceed for darkness. her original vigorous pride of youth had sickened, and with it had declined all her anxieties about coming years, since anxiety recognizes a better and a worse alternative, and bath- sheba had made up her mind that alternatives on any noteworthy scale had ceased for her. soon, or later -- and that not very late -- her husband would be home again. and then the days of their tenancy of the upper farm would be numbered. there had origin- ally been shown by the agent to the estate some distrust of bathsheba's tenure as james everdene's successor, on the score of her sex, and her youth, and her beauty; but the peculiar nature of her uncle's will, his own frequent testimony before his death to her cleverness in such a pursuit, and her vigorous marshalling of the numerous flocks and herds which came suddenly into her hands before negotiations were concluded, had won confidence in her powers, and no further objections had been raised. she had latterly been in great doubt as to what the legal effects of her marriage would be upon her position; but no notice had been taken as yet of her change of name, and only one point was clear -- that in the event of her own or her husband's inability to meet the agent at the forthcoming january rent-day, very little consideration would be shown, and, for that matter, very little would be deserved. once out of the farm, the approach of poverty would be sure. hence bathsheba lived in a perception that her purposes were broken of. she was not a woman who could hope on without good materials for the process, differing thus from the less far-sighted and energetic, though more petted ones of the sex, with whom hope goes on as a sort of clockwork which the merest food and shelter are sufficient to wind up; and perceiving clearly that her mistake had been a fatal one, she accepted her position, and waited coldly for the end. the first saturday after troy's departure she went to casterbridge alone, a journey she had not before taken since her marriage. on this saturday bathsheba was passing slowly on foot through the crowd of rural business-men gathered as usual in front of the market- house, who were as usual gazed upon by the burghers with feelings that those healthy lives were dearly paid for by exclusion from possible aldermanship, when a man, who had apparently been following her, said some words to another on her left hand. bathsheba's ears were keen as those of any wild animal, and she dis- tinctly heard what the speaker said, though her back was towards him "i am looking for mrs. troy. is that she there?" "yes; that's the young lady, i believe." said the the person addressed. "i have some awkward news to break to her. her husband is drowned." as if endowed with the spirit of prophecy, bathsheba gasped out, "no, it is not true; it cannot be true!" then she said and heard no more. the ice of self- command which had latterly gathered over her was broken, and the currents burst forth again, and over whelmed her. a darkness came into her eyes, and she fell. but not to the ground. a gloomy man, who had been observing her from under the portico of the old corn-exchange when she passed through the group without, stepped quickly to her side at the moment of her exclamation, and caught her in his arms as she sank down. "what is it?" said boldwood, looking up at the bringer of the big news, as he supported her. "her husband was drowned this week while bathing in lulwind cove. a coastguardsman found his clothes, and brought them into budmouth yesterday." thereupon a strange fire lighted up boldwood's eye, and his face flushed with the suppressed excitement of an unutterable thought. everybody's glance was now centred upon him and the unconscious bathsheba. he lifted her bodily off the ground, and smoothed down the folds of her dress as a child might have taken a storm-beaten bird and arranged its ruffled plumes, and bore her along the pavement to the king's arms inn. here he passed with her under the archway into a private room; and by the time he had deposited -- so lothly -- the precious burden upon a sofa, bathsheba had opened her eyes. remembering all that had occurred, she murmured, "i want to go home!" boldwood left the room. he stood for a moment in the passage to recover his senses. the experience had been too much for his consciousness to keep up with, and now that he had grasped it it had gone again. for those few heavenly, golden moments she had been in his arms. what did it matter about her not knowing it? she had been close to his breast; he had been close to hers. he started onward again, and sending a woman to her, went out to ascertain all the facts of the case. these appeared to be limited to what he had already heard. he then ordered her horse to be put into the gig, and when all was ready returned to inform her. he found that, though still pale and unwell, she had in the meantime sent for the budmouth man who brought the tidings, and learnt from him all there was to know. being hardly in a condition to drive home as she had driven to town, boldwood, with every delicacy of manner and feeling, offered to get her a driver, or to give her a seat in his phaeton, which was more com- fortable than her own conveyance. these proposals bathsheba gently declined, and the farmer at once de- parted. about half-an-hour later she invigorated herself by an effort, and took her seat and the reins as usual-in external appearance much as if nothing had happened. she went out of the town by a tortuous back street, and drove slowly along, unconscious of the road and the scene. the first shades of evening were showing them- selves when bathsheba reached home, where, silently alighting and leaving the horse in the hands of the boy, she proceeded at once upstairs. liddy met her on the landing. the news had preceded bathsheba to weather- bury by half-an-hour, and liddy looked inquiringly into her mistress's face. bathsheba had nothing to say. she entered her bedroom and sat by the window, and thought and thought till night enveloped her, and the extreme lines only of her shape were visible. somebody came to the door, knocked, and opened it. "well, what is it, liddy?" she said. "i was thinking there must be something got for you to wear." said liddy, with hesitation. "what do you mean?" "mourning." "no, no, no." said bathsheba, hurriedly. "but i suppose there must be something done for poor -- -- " "not at present, i think. it is not necessary." "why not, ma'am?" "because he's still alive." "how do you know that?" said liddy, amazed. "i don't know it. but wouldn't it have been different, or shouldn't i have heard more, or wouldn't they have found him, liddy? -- or-i don't know how it is, but death would have been different from how this is. i am perfectly convinced that he is still alive!" bathsheba remained firm in this opinion till monday, when two circumstances conjoined to shake it. the first was a short paragraph in the local newspaper, which, beyond making by a methodizing pen formidable pre- sumptive evidence of troy's death by drowning, con- tained the important testimony of a young mr. barker, m.d., of budmouth, who spoke to being an eyewitness of the accident, in a letter to the editor. in this he stated that he was passing over the cliff on the remoter side of the cove just as the sun was setting. at that time he saw a bather carried along in the current outside the mouth of the cove, and guessed in an instant that there was but a poor chance for him unless he should be possessed of unusual muscular powers. he drifted behind a projection of the coast, and mr. barker followed along the shore in the same direction. but by the time that he could reach an elevation sufficiently great to command a view of the sea beyond, dusk had set in, and nothing further was to be seen. the other circumstance was the arrival of his clothes, when it became necessary for her to examine and identify them -- though this had virtually been done long before by those who inspected the letters in his pockets. it was so evident to her in the midst of her agitation that troy had undressed in the full conviction of dressing again almost immediately, that the notion that anything but death could have prevented him was a perverse one to entertain. then bathsheba said to herself that others were assured in their opinion; strange that she should not be. a strange reflection occurred to her, causing her face to flush. suppose that troy had followed fanny into another world. had he done this intentionally, yet contrived to make his death appear like an accident? nevertheless, this thought of how the apparent might differ from the real-made vivid by her bygone jealousy of fanny, and the remorse he had shown that night -- did not blind her to the perception of a likelier difference, less tragic, but to herself far more disastrous. when alone late that evening beside a small fire, and much calmed down, bathsheba took troy's watch into her hand, which had been restored to her with the rest of the articles belonging to him. she opened the case as he had opened it before her a week ago. there was the little coil of pale hair which had been as the fuze to this great explosion. "he was hers and she was his; they should be gone together." she said. "i am nothing to either of them, and why should i keep her hair?" she took it in her hand, and held it over the fire." no-i'll not burn it -i'll keep it in memory of her, poor thing!" she added, snatching back her hand. chapter xlix oak's advancement -- a great hope the later autumn and the winter drew on apace, and the leaves lay thick upon the turf of the glades and the mosses of the woods. bathsheba, having previously been living in a state of suspended feeling which was not suspense, now lived in a mood of quietude which was not precisely peacefulness. while she had known him to be alive she could have thought of his death with equanimity; but now that it might be she had lost him, she regretted that he was not hers still. she kept the farm going, raked in her profits without caring keenly about them, and expended money on ventures because she had done so in bygone days, which, though not long gone by, seemed infinitely removed from her present. she looked back upon that past over a great gulf, as if she were now a dead person, having the faculty of meditation still left in her, by means of which, like the mouldering gentlefolk of the poet's story, she could sit and ponder what a gift life used to be. however, one excellent result of her general apathy was the long-delayed installation of oak as bailiff; but he having virtually exercised that function for a long time already, the change, beyond the substantial in- crease of wages it brought, was little more than a nominal one addressed to the outside world. boldwood lived secluded and inactive. much of his wheat and all his barley of that season had been spoilt by the rain. it sprouted, grew into intricate mats, and was ultimately thrown to the pigs in armfuls. the strange neglect which had produced this ruin and waste became the subject of whispered talk among all the people round; and it was elicited from one of boldwood's men that forgetfulness had nothing to do with it, for he had been reminded of the danger to his corn as many times and as persistently as inferiors dared to do. the sight of the pigs turning in disgust from the rotten ears seemed to arouse boldwood, and he one evening sent for oak. whether it was sug- gested by bathsheba's recent act of promotion or not, the farmer proposed at the interview that gabriel should undertake the superintendence of the lower farm as well as of bathsheba's, because of the necessity boldwood felt for such aid, and the impossibility of discovering a more trustworthy man. gabriel's malig- nant star was assuredly setting fast. bathsheba, when she learnt of this proposal-for oak was obliged to consult her -- at first languidly objected. she considered that the two farms together were too extensive for the observation of one man. boldwood, who was apparently determined by personal rather than commercial reasons, suggested that oak should be furnished with a horse for his sole use, when the plan would present no difficulty, the two farms lying side by side. boldwood did not directly communicate with her during these negotiations, only speaking to oak, who was the go-between throughout. all was harmoniously arranged at last, and we now see oak mounted on a strong cob, and daily trotting the length breadth of about two thousand acres in a cheerful spirit of surveillance, as if the crops belonged to him -- the actual mistress of the one-half and the master of the other, sitting in their respective homes in gloomy and sad seclusion. out of this there arose, during the spring succeeding, a talk in the parish that gabriel oak was feathering his nest fast. "whatever d'ye think." said susan tall," gable oak is coming it quite the dand. he now wears shining boots with hardly a hob in 'em, two or three times a-week, and a tall hat a-sundays, and 'a hardly knows the name of smockfrock. when i see people strut enough to he cut up into bantam cocks, i stand dormant with wonder, and says no more!" it was eventually known that gabriel, though paid a fixed wage by bathsheba independent of the fluctua- tions of agricultural profits, had made an engagement with boldwood by which oak was to receive a share of the receipts -- a small share certainly, yet it was money of a higher quality than mere wages, and capable of expansion in a way that wages were not. some were beginning to consider oak a "near" man, for though his condition had thus far improved, he lived in no better style than before, occupying the same cottage, paring his own potatoes, mending his stockings, and sometimes even making his bed with his own hands. but as oak was not only provokingly indifferent to public opinion, but a man who clung persistently to old habits and usages, simply because they were old, there was room for doubt as to his motives. a great hope had latterly germinated in boldwood, whose unreasoning devotion to bathsheba could only be characterized as a fond madness which neither time nor circumstance, evil nor good report, could weaken or destroy. this fevered hope had grown up again like a grain of mustard-seed during the quiet which followed the hasty conjecture that troy was drowned. he nourished it fearfully, and almost shunned the contemplation of it in earnest, lest facts should reveal the wildness of the dream. bathsheba having at last been persuaded to wear mourning, her appearance as she entered the church in that guise was in itself a weekly addition to his faith that a time was coming -- very far off perhaps, yet surely nearing -- when his waiting on events should have its reward. how long he might have to wait he had not yet closely considered. what he would try to recognize was that the severe schooling she had been subjected to had made bathsheba much more con- siderate than she had formerly been of the feelings of others, and he trusted that, should she be willing at any time in the future to marry any man at all, that man would be himself. there was a substratum of good feeling in her: her self-reproach for the injury she had thoughtlessly done him might be depended upon now to a much greater extent than before her infatuation and disappointment. it would be possible to approach her by the channel of her good nature, and to suggest a friendly businesslike compact between them for fulfilment at some future day, keeping the passionate side of his desire entirely out of her sight. such was boldwood's hope. to the eyes of the middle-aged, bathsheba was perhaps additionally charming just now. her exuber- ance of spirit was pruned down; the original phantom of delight had shown herself to be not too bright for human nature's daily food, and she had been able to enter this second poetical phase without losing much of the first in the process. bathsheba's return from a two months' visit to her old aunt at norcombe afforded the impassioned and yearning farmer a pretext for inquiring directly after her -- now possibly in the ninth month of her widowhood -- and endeavouring to get a notion of her middle of the haymaking, and boldwood contrived to "i am glad to see you out of doors, lydia." he said she simpered, and wondered in her heart why he "i hope mrs. troy is quite well after her long the coldest-hearted neighbour could scarcely say less "she is quite well, sir. "yes, cheerful. "fearful, did you say?" "o no. i merely said she was cheerful." "tells you all her affairs?" "no, sir. "some of them?" "yes, sir. "mrs troy puts much confidence in you, lydia, and very wisely, perhaps." "she do, sir. i've been with her all through her troubles, and was with her at the time of mr. troy's going and all. and if she were to marry again i expect i should bide with her." "she promises that you shall -- quite natural." said the strategic lover, throbbing throughout him at the presumption which liddy's words appeared to warrant -- that his darling had thought of re-marriage. "no -- she doesn't promise it exactly. i merely judge on my own account. "yes, yes, i understand. when she alludes to the possibility of marrying again, you conclude -- -- " "she never do allude to it, sir." said liddy, thinking how very stupid mr. boldwood was getting. "of course not." he returned hastily, his hope falling again." you needn't take quite such long reaches with your rake, lydia -- short and quick ones are best. well, perhaps, as she is absolute mistress again now, it is wise of her to resolve never to give up her freedom." "my mistress did certainly once say, though not seriously, that she supposed she might marry again at the end of seven years from last year, if she cared to risk mr. troy's coming back and claiming her." "ah, six years from the present time. said that she might. she might marry at once in every reasonable person's opinion, whatever the lawyers may say to the contrary." "have you been to ask them?" said liddy, innocently. "not i." said boldwood, growing red." liddy, you needn't stay here a minute later than you wish, so mr, oak says. i am now going on a little farther. good" afternoon." he went away vexed with himself, and ashamed of having for this one time in his life done anything which could be called underhand. poor boldwood had no more skill in finesse than a battering-ram, and he was uneasy with a sense of having made himself to appear stupid and, what was worse, mean. but he had, after all, lighted upon one fact by way of repayment. it was a singularly fresh and fascinating fact, and though not without its sadness it was pertinent and real. in little more than six years from this time bathsheba might certainly marry him. there was something definite in that hope, for admitting that there might have been no deep thought in her words to liddy about marriage, they showed at least her creed on the matter. this pleasant notion was now continually in his mind. six years were a long time, but how much shorter than never, the idea he had for so long been obliged to endure! jacob had served twice seven years for rachel: what were six for such a woman as this? he tried to like the notion of waiting for her better than that of winning her at once. boldwood felt his love to be so deep and strong and eternal, that it was pos- sible she had never yet known its full volume, and this patience in delay would afford him an opportunity of giving sweet proof on the point. he would annihilate the six years of his life as if they were minutes -- so little did he value his time on earth beside her love. he would let her see, all those six years of intangible ether- eal courtship, how little care he had for anything but as it bore upon the consummation. meanwhile the early and the late summer brought round the week in which greenhill fair was held. this fair was frequently attended by the folk of weather- bury. chapter l the sheep fair -- troy touches his wife's hand greenhill was the nijni novgorod of south wessex; and the busiest, merriest, noisiest day of the whole statute number was the day of the sheep fair. this yearly gathering was upon the summit of a hill which retained in good preservation the remains of an ancient earthwork, consisting of a huge rampart and entrenchment of an oval form encircling the top of the hill, though somewhat broken down here and there. to each of the two chief openings on opposite sides a winding road ascended, and the level green space of ten or fifteen acres enclosed by the bank was the site of the fair. a few permanent erections dotted the spot, but the majority of visitors patronized canvas alone for resting and feeding under during the time of their sojourn here. shepherds who attended with their flocks from long distances started from home two or three days, or even a week, before the fair, driving their charges a few miles each day -- not more than ten or twelve -- and resting them at night in hired fields by the wayside at pre- viously chosen points, where they fed, having fasted since morning. the shepherd of each flock marched behind, a bundle containing his kit for the week strapped upon his shoulders, and in his hand his crook, which he used as the staff of his pilgrimage. several of the sheep would get worn and lame, and occasionally a lambing occurred on the road. to meet these contingencies, there was frequently provided, to accompany the flocks from the remoter points, a pony and waggon into which the weakly ones were taken for the remainder of the journey. the weatherbury farms, however, were no such long distance from the hill, and those arrangements were not necessary in their case. but the large united flocks of bathsheba and farmer boldwood formed a valuable and imposing multitude which demanded much attention, and on this account gabriel, in addition to boldwood's shepherd and cain ball, accompanied them along the way, through the decayed old town of kings- bere, and upward to the plateau, -- old george the dog of course behind them. when the autumn sun slanted over greenhill this morning and lighted the dewy flat upon its crest, nebu- lous clouds of dust were to be seen floating between the pairs of hedges which streaked the wide prospect around in all directions. these gradually converged upon the base of the hill, and the flocks became individually visible, climbing the serpentine ways which led to the top. thus, in a slow procession, they entered the opening to which the roads tended, multitude after multitude, horned and hornless -- blue flocks and red flocks, buff flocks and brown flocks, even green and salmon-tinted flocks, according to the fancy of the colourist and custom of the farm. men were shouting, dogs were barking, with greatest animation, but the thronging travellers in so long a journey had grown nearly indifferent to such terrors, though they still bleated piteously at the unwontedness of their experi- ences, a tall shepherd rising here and there in the midst of them, like a gigantic idol amid a crowd of prostrate devotees. the great mass of sheep in the fair consisted of south downs and the old wessex horned breeds, to the latter class bathsheba's and farmer boldwood's mainly belonged. these filed in about nine o'clock, their vermiculated horns lopping gracefully on each side of their cheeks in geometrically perfect spirals, a small pink and white ear nestling under each horn. before and behind came other varieties, perfect leopards as to the full rich substance of their coats, and only lacking the spots. there were also a few of the oxfordshire breed, whose wool was beginning to curl like a child's flaxen hair, though surpassed in this respect by the effeminate leicesters, which were in turn less curly than the cots- wolds. but the most picturesque by far was a small flock of exmoors, which chanced to be there this year. their pied faces and legs, dark and heavy horns, tresses of wool hanging round their swarthy foreheads, quite relieved the monotony of the flocks in that quarter. all these bleating, panting, and weary thousands had entered and were penned before the morning had far advanced, the dog belonging to each flock being tied to the corner of the pen containing it. alleys for pedes- trians intersected the pens, which soon became crowded with buyers and sellers from far and near. in another part of the hill an altogether different scene began to force itself upon the eye towards mid- day. a circular tent, of exceptional newness and size, was in course of erection here. as the day drew on, the flocks began to change hands, lightening the shep- herd's responsibilities; and they turned their attention to this tent and inquired of a man at work there, whose soul seemed concentrated on tying a bothering knot in no time, what was going on. "the royal hippodrome performance of turpin's ride to york and the death of black bess." replied the man promptly, without turning his eyes or leaving off trying. as soon as the tent was completed the band struck up highly stimulating harmonies, and the announce- ment was publicly made, black bess standing in a con- spicuous position on the outside, as a living proof, if proof were wanted, of the truth of the oracular utterances from the stage over which the people were to enter. these were so convinced by such genuine appeals to heart and understanding both that they soon began to crowd in abundantly, among the foremost being visible jan coggan and joseph poorgrass, who were holiday keeping here to-day, "'that's the great ruffen pushing me!" screamed a woman in front of jan over her shoulder at him when the rush was at its fiercest. "how can i help pushing ye when the folk behind push me?" said coggan, in a deprecating tone, turning without turning his body, which was jammed as in a vice. there was a silence; then the drums and trumpets again sent forth their echoing notes. the crowd was again ecstasied, and gave another lurch in which coggan and poorgrass were again thrust by those behind upon the women in front. "o that helpless feymels should be at the mercy of she swayed like a reed shaken by the wind. now." said coggan, appealing in an earnest voice to the public at large as it stood clustered about his shoulder-blades. "did ye ever hear such onreasonable woman as that? upon my carcase, neighbours, if i could only get out of this cheesewring, the damn women might eat the show for me!" "don't ye lose yer temper, jan!" implored joseph poorgrass, in a whisper." they might get their men to murder us, for i think by the shine of their eyes that they be a sinful form of womankind." jan held his tongue, as if he had no objection to be pacified to please a friend, and they gradually reached the foot of the ladder, poorgrass being flattened like a jumping-jack, and the sixpence, for admission, which he had got ready half-an-hour earlier, having become so reeking hot in the tight squeeze of his excited hand that the woman in spangles, brazen rings set with glass diamonds, and with chalked face and shoulders, who took the money of him, hastily dropped it again from a fear that some trick had been played to burn her fingers. so they all entered, and the cloth of the tent, to the eyes of an observer on the outside, became bulged into innumerable pimples such as we observe on a sack of potatoes, caused by the various human heads, backs, and elbows at high pressure within. at the rear of the large tent there were two small dressing-tents. one of these, alloted to the male per- formers, was partitioned into halves by a cloth; and in one of the divisions there was sitting on the grass, pull ing on a pair of jack-boots, a young man whom we instantly recognise as sergeant troy. troy's appearance in this position may be briefly accounted for. the brig aboard which he was taken in budmouth roads was about to start on a voyage, though somewhat short of hands. troy read the articles and joined, but before they sailed a boat was despatched across the bay to lulwind cove; as he had half expected, his clothes were gone. he ultimately worked his passage to the united states, where he made a precarious living in various towns as professor of gymnastics, sword exercise, fencing, and pugilism. a few months were sufficient to give him a distaste for this kind of life. there was a certain animal form of refinement in his nature; and however pleasant a strange condition might be whilst privations were easily warded off, it was dis- advantageously coarse when money was short. there was ever present, too, the idea that he could claim a home and its comforts did he but chose to return to england and weatherbury farm. whether bathsheba thought him dead was a frequent subject of curious conjecture. to england he did return at last; but the but the fact of drawing nearer to weatherbury abstracted its fascinations, and his intention to enter his old groove at the place became modified. it was with gloom he con- sidered on landing at liverpool that if he were to go home his reception would be of a kind very unpleasant to con- template; for what troy had in the way of emotion was an occasional fitful sentiment which sometimes caused him as much inconvenience as emotion of a strong and healthy kind. bathsheba was not a women to be made a fool of, or a woman to suffer in silence; and how could he endure existence with a spirited wife to whom at first entering he would be beholden for food and lodging? moreover, it was not at all unlikely that his wife would fail at her farming, if she had not already done so; and he would then become liable for her maintenance: and what a life such a future of poverty with her would be, the spectre of fanny constantly be- tween them, harrowing his temper and embittering her words! thus, for reasons touching on distaste, regret, and shame commingled, he put off his return from day to day, and would have decided to put it off altogether if he could have found anywhere else the ready-made establishment which existed for him there. at this time -- the july preceding the september in which we find at greenhill fair -- he fell in with a travelling circus which was performing in the outskirts of a northern town. troy introduced himself to the manager by taming a restive horse of the troupe, hitting a suspended apple with pistol-- bullet fired from the animal's back when in full gallop, and other feats. for his merits in these -- all more or less based upon his ex- periences as a dragoon-guardsman -- troy was taken into the company, and the play of turpin was prepared with a view to his personation of the chief character. troy was not greatly elated by the appreciative spirit in which he was undoubtedly treated, but he thought the engage- ment might afford him a few weeks for consideration. it was thus carelessly, and without having formed any definite plan for the future, that troy found himself at greenhill fair with the rest of the company on this day. and now the mild autumn sun got lower, and in front of the pavilion the following incident had taken place. bathsheba -- who was driven to the fair that day by her odd man poorgrass -- had, like every one else, read or heard the announcement that mr. francis, the great cosmopolitan equestrian and roughrider, would enact the part of turpin, and she was not yet too old and careworn to be without a little curiosity to see him. this particular show was by far the largest and grandest in the fair, a horde of little shows grouping themselves under its shade like chickens around a hen. the crowd had passed in, and boldwood, who had been watching all the day for an opportunity of speaking to her, seeing her comparatively isolated, came up to her side. "i hope the sheep have done well to-day, mrs. troy?" he said, nervously. "o yes, thank you." said bathsheba, colour springing up in the centre of her cheeks. "i was fortunate enough to sell them all just as we got upon the hill, so we hadn't to pen at all." "and now you are entirely at leisure?" "yes, except that i have to see one more dealer in two hours' time: otherwise i should be going home. he was looking at this large tent and the announcement. have you ever seen the play of "turpin's ride to york?" turpin was a real man, was he not?" "o yes, perfectly true -- all of it. indeed, i think i've heard jan coggan say that a relation of his knew tom king, turpin's friend, quite well." "coggan is rather given to strange stories connected with his relations, we must remember. i hope they can all be believed." "yes, yes; we know coggan. but turpin is true enough. you have never seen it played, i suppose?" "never. i was not allowed to go into these places when i was young. hark! what's that prancing? how they shout!" "black bess just started off, i suppose. am i right in supposing you would like to see the performance, mrs. troy? please excuse my mistake, if it is one; but if you would like to, i'll get a seat for you with pleasure." perceiving that she hesitated, he added, "i myself shall not stay to see it: i've seen it before." now bathsheba did care a little to see the show, and had only withheld her feet from the ladder because she feared to go in alone. she had been hoping that oak might appear, whose assistance in such cases was always accepted as an inalienable right, but oak was nowhere to be seen; and hence it was that she said, "then if you will just look in first, to see if there's room, i think i will go in for a minute or two." and so a short time after this bathsheba appeared in the tent with boldwood at her elbow, who, taking her to a "reserved" seat, again withdrew. this feature consisted of one raised bench in very conspicuous part of the circle, covered with red cloth, and floored with a piece of carpet, and bathsheba immediately found, to her confusion, that she was the single reserved individual in the tent, the rest of the crowded spectators, one and all, standing on their legs on the borders of the arena, where they got twice as good a view of the performance for half the money. hence as many eyes were turned upon her, enthroned alone in this place of honour, against a scarlet back- ground, as upon the ponies and clown who were engaged in preliminary exploits in the centre, turpin not having yet appeared. once there, bathsheba was forced to make the best of it and remain: she sat down, spreading her skirts with some dignity over the unoccupied space on each side of her, and giving a new and feminine aspect to the pavilion. in a few minutes she noticed the fat red nape of coggan's neck among those standing just below her, and joseph poor- grass's saintly profile a little further on. the interior was shadowy with a peculiar shade. the strange luminous semi-opacities of fine autumn afternoons and eves intensified into rembrandt effects the few yellow sunbeams which came through holes and divisions in the canvas, and spirted like jets of gold-dust across the dusky blue atmosphere of haze pervading the tent, until they alighted on inner surfaces of cloth opposite, and shone like little lamps suspended there. troy, on peeping from his dressing-tent through a slit for a reconnoitre before entering, saw his unconscious wife on high before him as described, sitting as queen of the tournament. he started back in utter confusion, for although his disguise effectually concealed his person- ality, he instantly felt that she would be sure to recognize his voice. he had several times during the day thought of the possibility of some weatherbury person or other appearing and recognizing him; but he had taken the risk carelessly. if they see me, let them, he had said. but here was bathsheba in her own person; and the reality of the scene was so much intenser than any of his prefigurings that he felt he had not half enough considered the point. she looked so charming and fair that his cool mood about weatherbury people was changed. he had not expected her to exercise this power over him in the twinkling of an eye. should he go on, and care nothing? he could not bring himself to do that. beyond a politic wish to remain unknown, there suddenly arose in him now a sense of shame at the possibility that his attractive young wife, who already despised him, should despise him more by discovering him in so mean a condition after so long a time. he actually blushed at the thought, and was vexed beyond measure that his sentiments of dislike towards weatherbury should have led him to dally about the country in this way. but troy was never more clever than when absolutely at his wit's end. he hastily thrust aside the curtain dividing his own little dressing space from that of the manager and proprietor, who now appeared as the individual called tom king as far down as his waist, and as the aforesaid respectable manager thence to his toes. "here's the devil to pay!" said troy. "how's that?" "why, there's a blackguard creditor in the tent i don't want to see, who'll discover me and nab me as sure as satan if i open my mouth. what's to be done?" you must appear now, i think." "i can't." but the play must proceed." "do you give out that turpin has got a bad cold, and can't speak his part, but that he'll perform it just the same without speaking." the proprietor shook his head. "anyhow, play or no play, i won't open my mouth, said troy, firmly. "very well, then let me see. i tell you how we'll manage." said the other, who perhaps felt it would be extremely awkward to offend his leading man just at this time. "i won't tell 'em anything about your keeping silence; go on with the piece and say nothing, doing what you can by a judicious wink now and then, and a few indomitable nods in the heroic places, you know. they'll never find out that the speeches are omitted." this seemed feasible enough, for turpin's speeches were not many or long, the fascination of the piece lying entirely in the action; and accordingly the play began, and at the appointed time black bess leapt into the grassy circle amid the plaudits of the spectators. at the turnpike scene, where bess and turpin are hotly pursued at midnight by the officers, and half-awake gatekeeper in his tasselled nightcap denies that any horseman has passed, coggan uttered a broad-chested "well done!" which could be heard all over the fair above the bleating, and poorgrass smiled delightedly with a nice sense of dramatic contrast between our hero, who coolly leaps the gate, and halting justice in the form of his enemies, who must needs pull up cumbersomely and wait to be let through. at the death of tom king, he could not refrain from seizing coggan by the hand, and whispering, with tears in his eyes, "of course he's not really shot, jan -- only seemingly!" and when the last sad scene came on, and the body of the gallant and faithful bess had to be carried out on a shutter by twelve volunteers from among the spectators, nothing could restrain poorgrass from lending a hand, exclaiming, as he asked jan to join him, "twill be something to tell of at warren's in future years, jan, and hand down to our children." for many a year in weatherbury, joseph told, with the air of a man who had had experiences in his time, that he touched with his own hand the hoof of bess as she lay upon the board upon his shoulder. if, as some thinkers hold, immortality consists in being enshrined in others" memories, then did black bess become immortal that day if she never had done so before. meanwhile troy had added a few touches to his ordinary make-up for the character, the more effectually to disguise himself, and though he had felt faint qualms on first entering, the metamorphosis effected by judici- ously "lining" his face with a wire rendered him safe from the eyes of bathsheba and her men. nevertheless, he was relieved when it was got through. there a second performance in the evening, and the tent was lighted up. troy had taken his part very quietly this time, venturing to introduce a few speeches on occasion; and was just concluding it when, whilst standing at the edge of the circle contiguous to the first row of spectators, he observed within a yard of him the eye of a man darted keenly into his side features. troy hastily shifted his position, after having recognized in sworn enemy, who still hung about the outskirts of at first troy resolved to take no notice and abide by circumstances. that he had been recognized by this man was highly probable; yet there was room for a doubt. then the great objection he had felt to allowing news of his proximity to precede him to weatherbury in the event of his return, based on a feeling that knowledge of his present occupation would discredit him still further in his wife's eyes, returned in full force. moreover, should he resolve not to return at all, a tale of his being alive and being in the neighbourhood would be awkward; and he was anxious to acquire a knowledge of his wife's temporal affairs before deciding which to do. in this dilemma troy at once went out to recon- noitre. it occurred to him that to find pennyways, and make a friend of him if possible, would be a very wise act. he had put on a thick beard borrowed from the establishment, and this he wandered about the fair- field. it was now almost dark, and respectable people were getting their carts and gigs ready to go home the largest refreshment booth in the fair was provided by an innkeeper from a neighbouring town. this was considered an unexceptionable place for obtaining the necessary food and rest: host trencher (as he was jauntily called by the local newspaper) being a sub- stantial man of high repute for catering through all the county round. the tent was divided into first and second-class compartments, and at the end of the first- class division was a yet further enclosure for the most exclusive, fenced of from the body of the tent by a luncheon-bar, behind which the host himself stood bustling about in white apron and shirt-sleeves, and look- ing as if he had never lived anywhere but under canvas all his life. in these penetralia were chairs and a table, which, on candles being lighted, made quite a cozy and luxurious show, with an urn, plated tea and coffee pots, china teacups, and plum cakes. troy stood at the entrance to the booth, where a gipsy-woman was frying pancakes over a little fire of sticks and selling them at a penny a-piece, and looked over the heads of the people within. he could see nothing of pennyways, but he soon discerned bathsheba through an opening into the reserved space at the further end. troy thereupon retreated, went round the tent into the darkness, and listened. he could hear bathsheba's voice immediately inside the canvas; she was conversing with a man. a warmth overspread his face: surely she was not so unprincipled as to flirt in a fair! he wondered if, then, she reckoned upon his death as an absolute certainty. to get at the root of the matter, troy took a penknife from his pocket and softly made two little cuts crosswise in the cloth, which, by folding back the corners left a hole the size of a wafer. close to this he placed his face, withdrawing it again in a movement of surprise; for his eye had been within twelve inches of the top of bathsheba's head. lt was too near to be convenient. he made another hole a little to one side and lower down, in a shaded place beside her chair, from which it was easy and safe to survey her by looking horizontally'. troy took in the scene completely now. she was leaning back, sipping a cup of tea that she held in her hand, and the owner of the male voice was boldwood, who had apparently just brought the cup to her, bathsheba, being in a negligent mood, leant so idly against the canvas that it was pressed to the shape of her shoulder, and she was, in fact, as good as in troy's arms; and he was obliged to keep his breast carefully backward that she might not feel its warmth through the cloth as he gazed in. troy found unexpected chords of feeling to be stirred again within him as they had been stirred earlier in the day. she was handsome as ever, and she was his. it was some minutes before he could counteract his sudden wish to go in, and claim her. then he thought how the proud girl who had always looked down upon him even whilst it was to love him, would hate him on dis- covering him to be a strolling player. were he to make himself known, that chapter of his life must at all risks be kept for ever from her and from the weatherbury people, or his name would be a byword throughout the parish. he would be nicknamed "turpin" as long as he lived. assuredly before he could claim her these few past months of his existence must be entirely blotted out. "shall i get you another cup before you start, ma'am?" said farmer boldwood. i thank you," said bathsheba. "but i must be going at once. it was great neglect in that man to keep me waiting here till so late. i should have gone two hours ago, if it had not been for him. i had no idea of coming in here; but there's nothing so refreshing as a cup of tea, though i should never have got one if you hadn't helped me." troy scrutinized her cheek as lit by the candles, and watched each varying shade thereon, and the white shell-like sinuosities of her little ear. she took out her purse and was insisting to boldwood on paying for her tea for herself, when at this moment pennyways entered the tent. troy trembled: here was his scheme for respectability endangered at once. he was about to leave his hole of espial, attempt to follow pennyways, and find out if the ex-bailiff had recognized him, when he was arrested by the conversation, and found he was too late. "excuse me, ma'am." said pennyways; "i've some private information for your ear alone." i cannot hear it now." she said, coldly. that bathsheba could not endure this man was evident; in fact, he was continually coming to her with some tale or other, by which he might creep into favour at the expense of persons maligned. "i'll write it down." said pennyways, confidently. he stooped over the table, pulled a leaf from a warped pocket-book, and wrote upon the paper, in a round hand -- "your husband is here. i've seen him. who's the fool now?" this he folded small, and handed towards her. bathsheba would not read it; she would not even put out her hand to take it. pennyways, then, with a laugh of derision, tossed it into her lap, and, turning away, left her. from the words and action of pennyways, troy, though he had not been able to see what the ex-bailiff wrote, had not a moment's doubt that the note referred to him. nothing that he could think of could be done to check the exposure. "curse my luck!" he whispered, and added imprecations which rustled in the gloom like a pestilent wind. meanwhile boldwood said, taking up the note from her lap -- "don't you wish to read it, mrs. troy? if not, i'll destroy it." "oh, well." said bathsheba, carelessly, "perhaps it is unjust not to read it; but i can guess what it is about. he wants me to recommend him, or it is to tell me of some little scandal or another connected with my work- people. he's always doing that." bathsheba held the note in her right hand. bold- wood handed towards her a plate of cut bread-and- butter; when, in order to take a slice, she put the note into her left hand, where she was still holding the purse, and then allowed her hand to drop beside her close to the canvas. the moment had come for saving his game, and troy impulsively felt that he would play the card, for yet another time he looked at the fair hand, and saw the pink finger-tips, and the blue veins of the wrist, encircled by a bracelet of coral chippings which she wore: how familiar it all was to him! then, with the lightning action in which he was such an adept, he noiselessly slipped his hand under the bottom of the tent-cloth, which was far from being pinned tightly down, lifted it a little way, keeping his eye to the hole, snatched the note from her fingers, dropped the canvas, and ran away in the gloom towards the bank and ditch, smiling at the scream of astonishment which burst from her. troy then slid down on the outside of the rampart, hastened round in the bottom of the entrenchment to a distance of a hundred yards, ascended again, and crossed boldly in a slow walk towards the front entrance of the tent. his object was now to get to pennyways, and prevent a repetition of the announcement until such time as he should choose. troy reached the tent door, and standing among the groups there gathered, looked anxiously for pennyways, evidently not wishing to make himself prominent by inquiring for him. one or two men were speaking of a daring attempt that had just been made to rob a young lady by lifting the canvas of the tent beside her. it was supposed that the rogue had imagined a slip of paper which she held in her hand to he a bank note, for he had seized it, and made off with it, leaving her purse behind. his chagrin and disappointment at dis- covering its worthlessness would be a good joke, it was said. however, the occurrence seemed to have become known to few, for it had not interrupted a fiddler, who had lately begun playing by the door of the tent, nor the four bowed old men with grim countenances and walking-sticks in hand, who were dancing "major malley's reel" to the tune. behind these stood pennyways. troy glided up to him, beckoned, and whispered a few words; and with a mutual glance of concurrence the two men went into the night together. chapter li bathsheba talks with her outrider the arrangement for getting back again to weather- bury had been that oak should take the place of poor- grass in bathsheba's conveyance and drive her home, it being discovered late in the afternoon that joseph was suffering from his old complaint, a multiplying eye, and was, therefore, hardly trustworthy as coachman and protector to a woman. but oak had found himself so occupied, and was full of so many cares relative to those portions of boldwood's flocks that were not disposed of, that bathsheba, without telling oak or anybody, resolved to drive home herself, as she had many times done from casterbridge market, and trust to her good angel for performing the journey un- molested. but having fallen in with farmer boldwood accidentally (on her part at least) at the refreshment- tent, she found it impossible to refuse his offer to ride on horseback beside her as escort. it had grown twilight before she was aware, but boldwood assured her that there was no cause for uneasiness, as the moon would be up in half-an-hour. immediately after the incident in the tent, she had risen to go -- now absolutely alarmed and really grateful for her old lover's protection -- though regretting gabriel's absence, whose company she would have much preferred, as being more proper as well as more pleasant, since he was her own managing-man and servant. this, how- ever, could not be helped; she would not, on any consideration, treat boldwood harshly, having once already illused him, and the moon having risen, and the gig being ready, she drove across the hilltop in the wending way's which led downwards -- to oblivious obscurity, as it seemed, for the moon and the hill it flooded with light were in appearance on a level, the rest of the world lying as a vast shady concave between them. boldwood mounted his horse, and followed in close attendance behind. thus they descended into the lowlands, and the sounds of those left on the hill came like voices from the sky, and the lights were as those of a camp in heaven. they soon passed the merry stragglers in the immediate vicinity of the hill, traversed kingsbere, and got upon the high road. the keen instincts of bathsheba had perceived that the farmer's staunch devotion to herself was still un- diminished, and she sympathized deeply. the sight had quite depressed her this evening; had reminded her of her folly; she wished anew, as she had wished many months ago, for some means of making repara- tion for her fault. hence her pity for the man who so persistently loved on to his own injury and per- manent gloom had betrayed bathsheba into an injudi- cious considerateness of manner, which appeared almost like tenderness, and gave new vigour to the exquisite dream of a jacob's seven years service in poor boldwood's mind. he soon found an excuse for advancing from his position in the rear, and rode close by her side. they had gone two or three miles in the moonlight, speaking desultorily across the wheel of her gig concerning the fair, farming, oak's usefulness to them both, and other indifferent subjects, when boldwood said suddenly and simply -- "mrs. troy, you will marry again some day?" this point-blank query unmistakably confused her, it was not till a minute or more had elapsed that she said, "i have not seriously thought of any such subject." "i quite understand that. yet your late husband has been dead nearly one year, and -- " "you forget that his death was never absolutely proved, and may not have taken place; so that i may not be really a widow." she said, catching at the straw of escape that the fact afforded "not absolutely proved, perhaps, but it was proved circumstantially. a man saw him drowning, too. no reasonable person has any doubt of his death; nor have you, ma'am, i should imagine. "o yes i have, or i should have acted differently," she said, gently. "from the first, i have had a strange uaccountable feeling that he could not have perished, but i have been able to explain that in several ways since. even were i half persuaded that i shall see him no more, i am far from thinking of marriage with another. i should be very contemptible to indulge in such a thought." they were silent now awhile, and having struck into an unfrequented track across a common, the creaks of boldwood's saddle and gig springs were all the sounds to be heard. boldwood ended the pause. "do you remember when i carried you fainting in my arms into the king's arms, in casterbridge? every dog has his day: that was mine." "i know-i know it all." she said, hurriedly. "i, for one, shall never cease regretting that events so fell out as to deny you to me." "i, too, am very sorry." she said, and then checked herself. "i mean, you know, i am sorry you thought i -- " "i have always this dreary pleasure in thinking over those past times with you -- that i was something to you before he was anything, and that you belonged almost to me. but, of course, that's nothing. you never liked me." "i did; and respected you, too."do you now?" "yes." "which?" "how do you mean which?" "do you like me, or do you respect me?" "i don't know -- at least, i cannot tell you. it is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs. my treatment of you was thoughtless, inexcusable, wicked! i shall eternally regret it. if there had been anything i could have done to make amends i would most gladly have done it -- there was nothing on earth i so longed to do as to repair the error. but that was not possible." "don't blame yourself -- you were not so far in the wrong as you suppose. bathsheba, suppose you had real complete proof that you are what, in fact, you are -- a widow -- would you repair the old wrong to me by marrying me?" "i cannot say. i shouldn't yet, at any rate." "but you might at some future time of your life?" "o yes, i might at some time." "well, then, do you know that without further proof of any kind you may marry again in about six years from the present -- subject to nobody's objection or blame?" "o yes." she said, quickly. "i know all that. but don't talk of it -- seven or six years -- where may we all be by that time?" "they will soon glide by, and it will seem an astonishingly short time to look back upon when they are past -- much less than to look forward to now." "yes, yes; i have found that in my own experience." "now listen once more." boldwood pleaded. "if i wait that time, will you marry me? you own that you owe me amends -- let that be your way of making them." "but, mr. boldwood -- six years -- " "do you want to be the wife of any other man?" "no indeed! i mean, that i don't like to talk about this matter now. perhaps it is not proper, and i ought not to allow it. let us drop it. my husband may be living, as i said." "of course, i'll drop the subject if you wish. but propriety has nothing to do with reasons. i am a middle-aged man, willing to protect you for the remainder of our lives. on your side, at least, there is no passion or blamable haste -- on mine, perhaps, there is. but i can't help seeing that if you choose from a feeling of pity, and, as you say, a wish to make amends, to make a bargain with me for a far-ahead time -- an agreement which will set all things right and make me happy, late though it may be -- there is no fault to be found with you as a woman. hadn't i the first place beside you? haven't you been almost mine once already? surely you can say to me as much as this, you will have me back again should circumstances permit? now, pray speak! o bathsheba, promise -- it is only a little promise -- that if you marry again, you will marry me!" his tone was so excited that she almost feared him at this moment, even whilst she sympathized. it was a simple physical fear -- the weak of the strong; there no emotional aversion or inner repugnance. she said, with some distress in her voice, for she remembered vividly his outburst on the yalbury road, and shrank from a repetition of his anger: -- "i will never marry another man whilst you wish me to be your wife, whatever comes -- but to say more -- you have taken me so by surprise -- " "but let it stand in these simple words -- that in six years' time you will be my wife? unexpected accidents we'll not mention, because those, of course, must be given way to. now, this time i know you will keep your word." "that's why i hesitate to give it." "but do give it! remember the past, and be kind." she breathed; and then said mournfully: "o what shall i do? i don't love you, and i much fear that i never shall love you as much as a woman ought to love a husband. if you, sir, know that, and i can yet give you happiness by a mere promise to marry at the end of six years, if my husband should not come back, it is a great honour to me. and if you value such an act of friendship from a woman who doesn't esteem her- self as she did, and has little love left, why it will -- " "promise!" " -- consider, if i cannot promise soon." "but soon is perhaps never?" "o no, it is not! i mean soon. christmas, we'll say." "christmas!" he said nothing further till he added: "well, i'll say no more to you about it till that time." bathsheba was in a very peculiar state of mind, which showed how entirely the soul is the slave of the body, the ethereal spirit dependent for its quality upon the tangible flesh and blood. it is hardly too much to say that she felt coerced by a force stronger than her own will, not only into the act of promising upon this singularly remote and vague matter, but into the emo- tion of fancying that she ought to promise. when the weeks intervening between the night of this conversa- tion and christmas day began perceptibly to diminish, her anxiety and perplexity increased. one day she was led by an accident into an oddly confidential dialogue with gabriel about her difficulty it afforded her a little relief -- of a dull and cheerless kind. they were auditing accounts, and something occurred in the course of their labours which led oak to say, speaking of boldwood, " he'll never forget you, ma'am, never." then out came her trouble before she was aware; and she told him how she had again got into the toils; what boldwood had asked her, and how he was ex- pecting her assent. "the most mournful reason of all for my agreeing to it." she said sadly, "and the true reason why i think to do so for good or for evil, is this -- it is a thing i have not breathed to a living soul as yet-i believe that if i don't give my word, he'll go out of his mind." "really, do ye?" said gabriel, gravely. "i believe this." she continued, with reckless frank- ness; "and heaven knows i say it in a spirit the very reverse of vain, for i am grieved and troubled to my soul about it-i believe i hold that man's future in my hand. his career depends entirely upon my treatment of him. o gabriel, i tremble at my responsibility, for it is terrible!" "well, i think this much, ma'am, as i told you years ago." said oak, "that his life is a total blank whenever he isn't hoping for 'ee; but i can't suppose-i hope that nothing so dreadful hangs on to it as you fancy. his natural manner has always been dark and strange, you know. but since the case is so sad and oddlike, why don't ye give the conditional promise? i think i would." "but is it right? some rash acts of my past life have taught me that a watched woman must have very much circumspection to retain only a very little credit, and i do want and long to be discreet in this! and six years -- why we may all be in our graves by that bathsheba talks with oak time, even if mr. troy does not come back again, which he may not impossibly do! such thoughts give a sort of absurdity to the scheme. now, isn't it preposterous, gabriel? however he came to dream of it, i cannot think. but is it wrong? you know -- you are older than i." "eight years older, ma'am." "yes, eight years -- and is it wrong?" "perhaps it would be an uncommon agreement for a man and woman to make: i don't see anything really wrong about it." said oak, slowly. "in fact the very thing that makes it doubtful if you ought to marry en under any condition, that is, your not caring about him -- for i may suppose -- -- " "yes, you may suppose that love is wanting." she said shortly. "love is an utterly bygone, sorry, worn- out, miserable thing with me -- for him or any one else." "well, your want of love seems to me the one thing that takes away harm from such an agreement with him. if wild heat had to do wi' it, making ye long to over- come the awkwardness about your husband's vanishing, it mid be wrong; but a cold-hearted agreement to oblige a man seems different, somehow. the real sin, ma'am in my mind, lies in thinking of ever wedding wi' a man you don't love honest and true." "that i'm willing to pay the penalty of." said bath- sheba, firmly. "you know, gabriel, this is what i can- not get off my conscience -- that i once seriously injured him in sheer idleness. if i had never played a trick upon him, he would never have wanted to marry me. o if i could only pay some heavy damages in money to him for the harm i did, and so get the sin off my soul that way!.. well, there's the debt, which can only be discharged in one way, and i believe i am bound to do it if it honestly lies in my power, without any consideration of my own future at all. when a rake gambles away his expectations, the fact that it is an inconvenient debt doesn't make him the less liable. i've been a rake, and the single point i ask you is, con- sidering that my own scruples, and the fact that in the eye of the law my husband is only missing, will keep any man from marrying me until seven years have passed -- am i free to entertain such an idea, even though 'tis a sort of penance -- for it will be that? i hate the act of marriage under such circumstances, and the class of women i should seem to belong to by doing it!" "it seems to me that all depends upon whe'r you think, as everybody else do, that your husband is dead." "i shall get to, i suppose, because i cannot help feeling what would have brought him back long before this time if he had lived." "well, then, in religious sense you will be as free to think o' marrying again as any real widow of one year's standing. but why don't ye ask mr. thirdly's advice on how to treat mr. boldwood?" "no. when i want a broad-minded opinion for general enlightenment, distinct from special advice, i never go to a man who deals in the subject pro- fessionally. so i like the parson's opinion on law, the lawyer's on doctoring, the doctor's on business, and my business-man's -- that is, yours -- on morals." "and on love -- -- " "my own." "i'm afraid there's a hitch in that argument." said oak, with a grave smile. she did not reply at once, and then saying, "good evening mr. oak." went away. she had spoken frankly, and neither asked nor ex- pected any reply from gabriel more satisfactory than that she had obtained. yet in the centremost parts of her complicated heart there existed at this minute a little pang of disappointment, for a reason she would not allow herself to recognize. oak had not once wished her free that he might marry her himself -- had not once said, "i could wait for you as well as he." that was the insect sting. not that she would have listened to any such hypothesis. o no -- for wasn't she saying all the time that such thoughts of the future were improper, and wasn't gabriel far too poor a man to speak sentiment to her? yet he might have just hinted about that old love of his, and asked, in a playful off-hand way, if he might speak of it. it would have seemed pretty and sweet, if no more; and then she would have shown how kind and inoffensive a woman's "no" can sometimes be. but to give such cool advice -- the very advice she had asked for -- it ruffled our heroine all the afternoon. chapter lii converging courses i christmas-eve came, and a party that boldwood was to give in the evening was the great subject of talk in weatherbury. it was not that the rarity of christmas parties in the parish made this one a wonder, but that boldwood should be the giver. the announcement had had an abnormal and incongruous sound, as if one should hear of croquet-playing in a cathedral aisle, or that some much-respected judge was going upon the stage. that the party was intended to be a truly jovial one there was no room for doubt. a large bough of mistletoe had been brought from the woods that day, and suspended in the hall of the bachelor's home. holly and ivy had followed in armfuls. from six that morning till past noon the huge wood fire in the kitchen roared and sparkled at its highest, the kettle, the saucepan, and the threelegged pot appearing in the midst of the flames like shadrach, meshach, and abednego; moreover, roasting and basting operations were continually carried on in front of the genial blaze. as it grew later the fire was made up in the large long hall into which the staircase descended, and all encumbrances were cleared out for dancing. the log which was to form the back-brand of the evening fire was the uncleft trunk of a tree, so unwieldy that it could be neither brought nor rolled to its place; and accord- ingly two men were to be observed dragging and heaving it in by chains and levers as the hour of assembly drew near. ii in spite of all this, the spirit of revelry was wanting in the atmosphere of the house. such a thing had never been attempted before by its owner, and it was now done as by a wrench. intended gaieties would insist upon appearing like solemn grandeurs, the organ- ization of the whole effort was carried out coldly, by hirelings, and a shadow seemed to move about the rooms, saying that the proceedings were unnatural to the place and the lone man who lived therein, and hence not good. bathsheba was at this time in her room, dressing for the event. she had called for candles, and liddy entered and placed one on each side of her mistress's glass. "don't go away, liddy." said bathsheba, almost timidly." i am foolishly agitated-i cannot tell why. i wish i had not been obliged to go to this dance; but there's no escaping now. i have not spoken to mr. boldwood since the autumn, when i promised to see him at christmas on business, but i had no idea there was to be anything of this kind." "but i would go now." said liddy, who was going with her; for boldwood had been indiscriminate in his invitations. "yes, i shall make my appearance, of course." said bathsheba." but i am the cause of the party, and that upsets me! -- don't tell, liddy." "o no, ma'am, you the cause of it, ma'am?" "yes. i am the reason of the party-i. if it had not been for me, there would never have been one. i can't explain any more -- there's no more to be explained. i wish i had never seen weatherbury." "that's wicked of you -- to wish to be worse off than you are." "no, liddy. i have never been free from trouble since i have lived here, and this party is likely to bring me more. now, fetch my black silk dress, and see how it sits upon me." "but you will leave off that, surely, ma'am? you have been a widowlady fourteen months, and ought to brighten up a little on such a night as this." "is it necessary? no; i will appear as usual, for if i were to wear any light dress people would say things about me, and i should seem to he rejoicing when i am solemn all the time. the party doesn't suit me a bit; but never mind, stay and help to finish me off." iii boldwood was dressing also at this hour. a tailor from casterbridge was with him, assisting him in the operation of trying on a new coat that had just been brought home. never had boldwood been so fastidious, unreasonable about the fit, and generally difficult to please. the tailor walked round and round him, tugged at the waist, pulled the sleeve, pressed out the collar, and for the first time in his experience boldwood was not bored- times had been when the farmer had exclaimed against all such niceties as childish, but now no philosophic or hasty rebuke whatever was provoked by this man for attaching as much importance to a crease in the coat as to an earthquake in south america. boldwood at last expressed himself nearly satisfied, and paid the bill, the tailor passing out of the door just as oak came in to report progress for the day. "oh, oak." said boldwood. "i shall of course see you here to-night. make yourself merry. i am deter- mined that neither expense nor trouble shall be spared." "i'll try to be here, sir, though perhaps it may not be very early." said gabriel, quietly. "i am glad indeed to see such a change in 'ee from what it used to be." "yes-i must own it-i am bright to-night: cheerful and more than cheerful-so much so that i am almost sad again with the sense that all of it is passing away. and sometimes, when i am excessively hopeful and blithe, a trouble is looming in the distance: so that i often get to look upon gloom in me with content, and to fear a happy mood. still this may be absurd-i feel that it is absurd. perhaps my day is dawning at last." "i hope it 'ill be a long and a fair one." "thank you -- thank you. yet perhaps my cheerful mess rests on a slender hope. and yet i trust my hope. it is faith, not hope. i think this time i reckon with my host. -- oak, my hands are a little shaky, or some- thing; i can't tie this neckerchief properly. perhaps you will tie it for me. the fact is, i have not been well lately, you know." "i am sorry to hear that, sir." "oh, it's nothing. i want it done as well as you can, please. is there any late knot in fashion, oak?" "i don't know, sir." said oak. his tone had sunk to sadness. boldwood approached gabriel, and as oak tied the neckerchief the farmer went on feverishly -- "does a woman keep her promise, gabriel?" "if it is not inconvenient to her she may." "-- or rather an implied promise." "i won't answer for her implying." said oak, with faint bitterness. "that's a word as full o' holes as a sieve with them." oak, don't talk like that. you have got quite cynical lately -- how is it? we seem to have shifted our positions: i have become the young and hopeful man, and you the old and unbelieving one. however, does a woman keep a promise, not to marry, but to enter on an engagement to marry at some time? now you know women better than i -- tell me." "i am afeard you honour my understanding too much. however, she may keep such a promise, if it is made with an honest meaning to repair a wrong." "it has not gone far yet, but i think it will soon -- yes, i know it will." he said, in an impulsive whisper. "i have pressed her upon the subject, and she inclines to be kind to me, and to think of me as a husband at a long future time, and that's enough for me. how can i expect more? she has a notion that a woman should not marry within seven years of her husband's disappearance -- that her own self shouldn't, i mean -- because his body was not found. it may be merely this legal reason which influences her, or it may be a religious one, but she is reluctant to talk on the point- yet she has promised -- implied -- that she will ratify an engagement to-night." "seven years." murmured oak. "no, no -- it's no such thing!" he said, with im- patience. five years, nine months, and a few days. fifteen months nearly have passed since he vanished, and is there anything so wonderful in an engagement of little more than five years?" "it seems long in a forward view. don't build too much upon such promises, sir. remember, you have once be'n deceived. her meaning may be good; but there -- she's young yet." "deceived? never!" said boldwood, vehemently. "she never promised me at that first time, and hence she did not break her promise! if she promises me, she'll marry me, bathsheba is a woman to her word." iv troy was sitting in a corner of the white hart tavern at casterbridge, smoking and drinking a steaming mixture from a glass. a knock was given at the door, and pennyways entered. "well, have you seen him?" troy inquired, pointing to a chair. "boldwood?" "no -- lawyer long." "he wadn' at home. i went there first, too." "that's a nuisance." "'tis rather, i suppose." "yet i don't see that, because a man appears to be drowned and was not, he should be liable for anything. i shan't ask any lawyer -- not i." "but that's not it, exactly. if a man changes his name and so forth, and takes steps to deceive the world and his own wife, he's a cheat, and that in the eye of the law is ayless a rogue, and that is ayless a lammocken vagabond; and that's a punishable situation." "ha-ha! well done, pennyways." troy had laughed, but it was with some anxiety that he said, "now, what i want to know is this, do you think there's really anything going on between her and boldwood? upon my soul, i should never have believed it! how she. must detest me! have you found out whether she has encouraged him?" "i haen't been able to learn. there's a deal of feeling on his side seemingly, but i don't answer for her. i didn't know a word about any such thing till yesterday, and all i heard then was that she was gwine to the party at his house to-night. this is the first time she has ever gone there, they say. and they say that she've not so much as spoke to him since they were at greenhill fair: but what can folk believe o't? how- ever, she's not fond of him -- quite offish and quite care less, i know." "i'm not so sure of that.... she's a handsome woman, pennyways, is she not? own that you never saw a finer or more splendid creature in your life. upon my honour, when i set eyes upon her that day i wondered what i could have been made of to be able to leave her by herself so long. and then i was hampered with that bothering show, which i'm free of at last, thank the stars." he smoked on awhile, and then added, "how did she look when you passed by yesterday?" "oh, she took no great heed of me, ye may well fancy; but she looked well enough, far's i know. just flashed her haughty eyes upon my poor scram body, and then let them go past me to what was yond, much as if i'd been no more than a leafless tree. she had just got off her mare to look at the last wring-down of cider for the year; she had been riding, and so her colours were up and her breath rather quick, so that her bosom plimmed and feli-plimmed and feli-every time plain to my eye. ay, and there were the fellers round her wringing down the cheese and bustling about and saying, ware o' the pommy, ma'am: 'twill spoil yer gown. "never mind me," says she. then gabe brought her some of the new cider, and she must needs go drinking it through a strawmote, and not in a nateral way at all. "liddy," says she, "bring indoors a few gallons, and i'll make some cider-wine." sergeant, i was no more to her than a morsel of scroffin the fuel house!" "i must go and find her out at once -- o yes, i see that-i must go. oak is head man still, isn't he?" "yes, 'a b'lieve. and at little weatherbury farm too. he manages everything." "twill puzzle him to manage her, or any other man of his compass!" "i don't know about that. she can't do without him, and knowing it well he's pretty independent. and she've a few soft corners to her mind, though i've never been able to get into one, the devil's in't!" "ah baily she's a notch above you, and you must own it: a higher class of animal-a finer tissue. how- ever, stick to me, and neither this haughty goddess, dashing piece of womanhood, juno-wife of mine (juno was a goddess, you know), nor anybody else shall hurt you. but all this wants looking into, i perceive. what with one thing and another, i see that my work is well cut out for me." v "how do i look to-night, liddy?" said bathsheba, giving a final adjustment to her dress before leaving the glass. "i never saw you look so well before. yes-i'll tell you when you looked like it -- that night, a year and a half ago, when you came in so wildlike, and scolded us for making remarks about you and mr. troy." "everybody will think that i am setting myself to captivate mr. boldwood, i suppose." she murmured. "at least they'll say so. can't my hair be brushed down a little flatter? i dread going -- yet i dread the risk of wounding him by staying away."anyhow, ma'am, you can't well be dressed plainer than you are, unless you go in sackcloth at once. 'tis your excitement is what makes you look so noticeable to-night." "i don't know what's the matter, i feel wretched at one time, and buoyant at another. i wish i could have continued quite alone as i have been for the last year or so, with no hopes and no fears, and no pleasure and no grief. "now just suppose mr. boldwood should ask you -- only just suppose it -- to run away with him, what would you do, ma'am?" "liddy -- none of that." said bathsheba, gravely. "mind, i won't hear joking on any such matter. do you hear?" "i beg pardon, ma'am. but knowing what rum things we women be, i just said -- however, i won't speak of it again." "no marrying for me yet for many a year; if ever, "twill be for reasons very, very different from those you think, or others will believe! now get my cloak, for it is time to go." vi "oak, said boldwood, "before you go i want to mention what has been passing in my mind lately -- that little arrangement we made about your share in the farm i mean. that share is small, too small, consider- ing how little i attend to business now, and how much time and thought you give to it. well, since the world is brightening for me, i want to show my sense of it by increasing your proportion in the partnership. i'll make a memorandum of the arrangement which struck me as likely to be convenient, for i haven't time to talk about it now; and then we'll discuss it at our leisure. my intention is ultimately to retire from the manage- ment altogether, and until you can take all the expendi- ture upon your shoulders, i'll be a sleeping partner in the stock. then, if i marry her -- and i hope-i feel i shall, why -- -- " "pray don't speak of it, sir." said oak, hastily. "we don't know what may happen. so many upsets may befall 'ee. there's many a slip, as they say -- and i would advise you-i know you'll pardon me this once -- not to be too sure." "i know, i know. but the feeling i have about in- creasing your share is on account of what i know of you oak, i have learnt a little about your secret: your interest in her is more than that of bailiff for an em- ployer. but you have behaved like a man, and i, as a sort of successful rival-successful partly through your goodness of heart -- should like definitely to show my sense of your friendship under what must have been a great pain to you." "o that's not necessary, thank 'ee." said oak, hurriedly. "i must get used to such as that; other men have, and so shall i." oak then left him. he was uneasy on boldwood's account, for he saw anew that this constant passion of the farmer made him not the man he once had been. as boldwood continued awhile in his room alone -- ready and dressed to receive his company -- the mood of anxiety about his appearance seemed to pass away, and to be succeeded by a deep solemnity. he looked out of the window, and regarded the dim outline of the trees upon the sky, and the twilight deepening to darkness. then he went to a locked closet, and took from a locked drawer therein a small circular case the size of a pillbox, and was about to put it into his pocket. but he lingered to open the cover and take a momentary glance inside. it contained a woman's finger-ring, set all the way round with small diamonds, and from its appearance had evidently been recently purchased. boldwood's eyes dwelt upon its many sparkles a long time, though that its material aspect concerned him little was plain from his manner and mien, which were those of a mind following out the presumed thread of that jewel's future history. the noise of wheels at the front of the house became audible. boldwood closed the box, stowed it away carefully in his pocket, and went out upon the landing. the old man who was his indoor factotum came at the same moment to the foot of the stairs. "they be coming, sir -- lots of 'em -- a-foot and a- driving!" "i was coming down this moment. those wheels i heard -- is it mrs. troy?" "no, sir -- 'tis not she yet." a reserved and sombre expression had returned to boldwood's face again, but it poorly cloaked his feel- ings when he pronounced bathsheba's name; and his feverish anxiety continued to show its existence by a galloping motion of his fingers upon the side of his thigh as he went down the stairs. vii "how does this cover me?" said troy to pennyways, "nobody would recognize me now, i'm sure." he was buttoning on a heavy grey overcoat of noachian cut, with cape and high collar, the latter being erect and rigid, like a girdling wall, and nearly reaching to the verge of travelling cap which was pulled down over his ears. pennyways snuffed the candle, and then looked up and deliberately inspected troy "you've made up your mind to go then?" he said. "made up my mind? yes; of course i have." "why not write to her? 'tis a very queer corner that you have got into, sergeant. you see all these things will come to light if you go back, and they won't sound well at all. faith, if i was you i'd even bide as you be -- a single man of the name of francis. a good wife is good, but the best wife is not so good as no wife at all. now that's my outspoke mind, and i've been called a long-headed feller here and there." "all nonsense!" said troy, angrily. "there she is with plenty of money, and a house and farm, and horses, and comfort, and here am i living from hand to mouth -- a needy adventurer. besides, it is no use talking now; it is too late, and i am glad of it; i've been seen and recognized here this very afternoon. i should have gone back to her the day after the fair, if it hadn't been for you talking about the law, and rubbish about getting a separation; and i don't put it off any longer. what the deuce put it into my head to run away at all, i can't think! humbugging sentiment -- that's what it was. but what man on earth was to know that his wife would be in such a hurry to get rid of his name!" "i should have known it. she's bad enough for anything." "pennyways, mind who you are talking to." "well, sergeant, all i say is this, that if i were you i'd go abroad again where i came from -- 'tisn't too late to do it now. i wouldn't stir up the business and get a bad name for the sake of living with her -- for all that about your play-acting is sure to come out, you know, although you think otherwise. my eyes and limbs, there'll be a racket if you go back just now -- in the middle of bold- wood's christmasing!" "h'm, yes. i expect i shall not be a very welcome guest if he has her there." said the sergeant, with a slight laugh. "a sort of alonzo the brave; and when i go in the guests will sit in silence and fear, and all laughter and pleasure will be hushed, and the lights in the chamber burn blue, and the worms -- ugh, horrible! -- ring for some more brandy, pennyways, i felt an awful shudder just then! well, what is there besides? a stick-i must have a walking-stick." pennyways now felt himself to be in something of a difficulty, for should bathsheba and troy become recon- ciled it would be necessary to regain her good opinion if he would secure the patronage of her husband. i sometimes think she likes you yet, and is a good woman at bottom." he said, as a saving sentence. "but there's no telling to a certainty from a body's outside. well, you'll do as you like about going, of course, sergeant, and as for me, i'll do as you tell me." "now, let me see what the time is." said troy, after emptying his glass in one draught as he stood. 'half- past six o'clock. i shall not hurry along the road, and shall be there then before nine." chapter liii concurritur -- horae momento outside the front of boldwood's house a group of men stood in the dark, with their faces towards the door, which occasionally opened and closed for the passage of some guest or servant, when a golden rod of light would stripe the ground for the moment and vanish again, leaving nothing outside but the glowworm shine of the pale lamp amid the evergreens over the door. "he was seen in casterbridge this afternoon -- so the boy said." one of them remarked in a whisper. "and l for one believe it. his body was never found, you know." "'tis a strange story." said the next. "you may depend upon't that she knows nothing about it." "not a word." "perhaps he don't mean that she shall." said another man. "if he's alive and here in the neighbourhood, he means mischief." said the first. "poor young thing: i do pity her, if 'tis true. he'll drag her to the dogs." "o no; he'll settle down quiet enough." said one disposed to take a more hopeful view of the case. "what a fool she must have been ever to have had anything to do with the man! she is so self-willed and independent too, that one is more minded to say it serves her right than pity her." "no, no. i don't hold with 'ee there. she was no otherwise than a girl mind, and how could she tell what the man was made of? if 'tis really true, 'tis too hard a punishment, and more than she ought to hae. -- hullo, who's that?" this was to some footsteps that were heard approaching. "william smallbury." said a dim figure in the shades, coming up and joining them. "dark as a hedge, to- night, isn't it? i all but missed the plank over the river ath'art there in the bottom -- never did such a thing before in my life. be ye any of boldwood's workfolk?" he peered into their faces. "yes -- all o' us. we met here a few minutes ago." "oh, i hear now -- that's sam samway: thought i knowed the voice, too. going in?" "presently. but i say, william." samway whispered, "have ye heard this strange tale?" "what -- that about sergeant troy being seen, d'ye mean, souls?" said smallbury, also lowering his voice. "ay: in casterbridge." "yes, i have. laban tall named a hint of it to me but now -- but i don't think it. hark, here laban comes himself, 'a b'lieve." a footstep drew near. "laban?" "yes, 'tis i." said tall. "have ye heard any more about that?" "no." said tall, joining the group. "and i'm in- clined to think we'd better keep quiet. if so be 'tis not true, 'twill flurry her, and do her much harm to repeat it; and if so be 'tis true, 'twill do no good to forestall her time o' trouble. god send that it mid be a lie, for though henery fray and some of 'em do speak against her, she's never been anything but fair to me. she's hot and hasty, but she's a brave girl who'll never tell a lie however much the truth may harm her, and i've no cause to wish her evil." "she never do tell women's little lies, that's true; and 'tis a thing that can be said of very few. ay, all the harm she thinks she says to yer face: there's nothing underhand wi' her." they stood silent then, every man busied with his own thoughts, during which interval sounds of merri- ment could be heard within. then the front door again opened, the rays streamed out, the wellknown form of boldwood was seen in the rectangular area of light, the door closed, and boldwood walked slowly down the path. "'tis master." one of the men whispered, as he neared them. "we'd better stand quiet -- he'll go in again directly. he would think it unseemly o' us to be loitering here. boldwood came on, and passed by the men without seeing them, they being under the bushes on the grass. he paused, leant over the gate, and breathed a long breath. they heard low words come from him. "i hope to god she'll come, or this night will be nothing but misery to me! o my darling, my darling, why do you keep me in suspense like this?" he said this to himself, and they all distinctly heard it. boldwood remained silent after that, and the noise from indoors was again just audible, until, a few minutes later, light wheels could be distinguished coming down the hill. they drew nearer, and ceased at the gate. boldwood hastened back to the door, and opened it; and the light shone upon bathsheba coming up the path. boldwood compressed his emotion to mere welcome: the men marked her light laugh and apology as she met him: he took her into the house; and the door closed again. "gracious heaven, i didn't know it was like that with him!" said one of the men. "i thought that fancy of his was over long ago. "you don't know much of master, if you thought that." said samway. "i wouldn't he should know we heard what 'a said for the world." remarked a third. "i wish we had told of the report at once." the first uneasily continued. "more harm may come of this than we know of. poor mr. boldwood, it will, be hard upon en. i wish troy was in -- -- well, god forgive me for such a wish! a scoundrel to play a poor wife such tricks. nothing has prospered in weatherbury since he came here. and now i've no heart to go in. let's look into warren's for a few minutes first, shall us, neighbours?" samway, tall, and smallbury agreed to go to warren's, and went out at the gate, the remaining ones entering the house. the three soon drew near the malt-house, approaching it from the adjoining orchard, and not by way of the street. the pane of glass was illuminated as usual. smallbury was a little in advance of the rest when, pausing, he turned suddenly to his companions and said, "hist! see there." the light from the pane was now perceived to be shining not upon the ivied wall as usual, but upon some object close to the glass. it was a human face. "let's come closer." whispered samway; and they approached on tiptoe. there was no disbelieving the report any longer. troy's face was almost close to the pane, and he was looking in. not only was he looking in, but he appeared to have been arrested by a conversation which was in progress in the malt-house, the voices of the interlocutors being those of oak and the maltster. "the spree is all in her honour, isn't it -- hey?" said the old man. "although he made believe 'tis only keeping up o' christmas?" "i cannot say." replied oak. "o 'tis true enough, faith. i cannot understand farmer boldwood being such a fool at his time of life as to ho and hanker after thik woman in the way 'a do, and she not care a bit about en." the men, after recognizing troy's features, withdrew across the orchard as quietly as they had come. the air was big with bathsheba's fortunes to-night: every word everywhere concerned her. when they were quite out of earshot all by one instinct paused. "it gave me quite a turn -- his face." said tall, breathing. "and so it did me." said samway. "what's to be done?" "i don't see that 'tis any business of ours." smallbury murmured dubiously. "but it is! 'tis a thing which is everybody's business, said samway. "we know very well that master's on a wrong tack, and that she's quite in the dark, and we should let 'em know at once. laban, you know her best -- you'd better go and ask to speak to her." "i bain't fit for any such thing." said laban, nervously. "i should think william ought to do it if anybody. he's oldest." "i shall have nothing to do with it." said smallbury. "'tis a ticklish business altogether. why, he'll go on to her himself in a few minutes, ye'll see." "we don't know that he will. come, laban." "very well, if i must i must, i suppose." tall reluct- antly answered. "what must i say?" "just ask to see master." "o no; i shan't speak to mr. boldwood. if i tell anybody, 'twill be mistress." "very well." said samway. laban then went to the door. when he opened it the hum of bustle rolled out as a wave upon a still strand -- the assemblage being immediately inside the hall-and was deadened to a murmur as he closed it again. each man waited intently, and looked around at the dark tree tops gently rocking against the sky and occasionally shivering in a slight wind, as if he took interest in the scene, which neither did. one of them began walking up and down, and then came to where he started from and stopped again, with a sense that walking was thing not worth doing now. "i should think laban must have seen mistress by this time." said smallbury, breaking the silence. "per- haps she won't come and speak to him." the door opened. tall appeared, and joined them "well?" said both. "i didn't like to ask for her after all." laban faltered out. "they were all in such a stir, trying to put a little spirit into the party. somehow the fun seems to hang fire, though everything's there that a heart can desire, and i couldn't for my soul interfere and throw damp upon it -- if 'twas to save my life, i couldn't!" "i suppose we had better all go in together." said samway, gloomily. "perhaps i may have a chance of saying a word to master." so the men entered the hall, which was the room selected and arranged for the gathering because of its size. the younger men and maids were at last just beginning to dance. bathsheba had been perplexed how to act, for she was not much more than a slim young maid herself, and the weight of stateliness sat heavy upon her. sometimes she thought she ought not to have come under any circumstances; then she considered what cold unkindness that would have been, and finally resolved upon the middle course of staying for about an hour only, and gliding off unobserved, having from the first made up her mind that she could on no account dance, sing, or take any active part in the proceedings. her allotted hour having been passed in chatting and looking on, bathsheba told liddy not to hurry her- self, and went to the small parlour to prepare for departure, which, like the hall, was decorated with holly and ivy, and well lighted up. nobody was in the room, but she had hardly been there a moment when the master of the house entered. "mrs. troy -- you are not going?" he said. "we've hardly begun!" "if you'll excuse me, i should like to go now." her manner was restive, for she remembered her promise, and imagined what he was about to say. "but as it is not late." she added, "i can walk home, and leave my man and liddy to come when they choose." "i've been trying to get an opportunity of speaking to you." said boldwood. "you know perhaps what i long to say?" bathsheba silently looked on the floor. "you do give it?" he said, eagerly. "what?" she whispered. "now, that's evasion! why, the promise. i don't want to intrude upon you at all, or to let it become known to anybody. but do give your word! a mere business compact, you know, between two people who are beyond the influence of passion." boldwood knew how false this picture was as regarded himself; but he had proved that it was the only tone in which she would allow him to approach her. "a promise to marry me at the end of five years and three-quarters. you owe it to me!" "i feel that i do." said bathsheba; "that is, if you demand it. but i am a changed woman -- an unhappy woman -- and not -- not -- -- " "you are still a very beautiful woman, said boldwood. honesty and pure conviction suggested the remark, unaccompanied by any perception that it might have been adopted by blunt flattery to soothe and win her. however, it had not much effect now, for for she said, in a passionless murmur which was in itself a proof of her words: "i have no feeling in the matter at all. and i don't at all know what is right to do in my diddicult position, and i have nobody to advise me. but i give my promise, if i must. i give it as the rendering of a debt, conditionally, of course, on my being a widow." "you'll marry me between five and six years hence?" "don't press me too hard. i'll marry nobody else." "but surely you will name the time, or there's nothing in the promise at all?" o, i don't know, pray let me go!" she said, her bosom beginning to rise. "i am afraid what to do! want to be just to you, and to be that seems to be wrong- ing myself, and perhaps it is breaking the commandments. there is considerable doubt of his death, and then it is dreadful; let me ask a solicitor, mr. boldwood, if i ought or no!" "say the words, dear one, and the subject shall be dismissed; a blissful loving intimacy of six years, and then marriage -- o bathsheba, say them!" he begged in a husky voice, unable to sustain the forms of mere friendship any longer. "promise yourself to me; i deserve it, indeed i do, for i have loved you more than anybody in the world! and if i said hasty words and showed uncalled-for heat of manner towards you, believe me, dear, i did not mean to distress you; i was in agony, bathsheba, and i did not know what i said. you wouldn't let a dog suffer what i have suffered, could you but know it! sometimes i shrink from your knowing what i have felt for you, and sometimes i am distressed that all of it you never will know. be gracious, and give up a little to me, when i would give up my life for you!" the trimmings of her dress, as they quivered against the light, showed how agitated she was, and at last she burst out crying. 'and you'll not -- press me -- about anything more -- if i say in five or six years?" she sobbed, when she had power to frame the words. "yes, then i'll leave it to time." "very well. if he does not return, i'll marry you in six years from this day, if we both live." she said solemnly. "and you'll take this as a token from me." boldwood had come close to her side, and now he clasped one of her hands in both his own, and lifted it to his breast. "what is it? oh i cannot wear a ring!" she ex- claimed, on seeing what he held; "besides, i wouldn't have a soul know that it's an engagement! perhaps it is improper? besides, we are not engaged in the usual sense, are we? don't insist, mr. boldwood -- don't!" in her trouble at not being able to get her hand away from him at once, she stamped passionately on the floor with one foot, and tears crowded to her eyes again. "it means simply a pledge -- no sentiment -- the seal of a practical compact." he said more quietly, but still retaining her hand in his firm grasp. "come, now!" and boldwood slipped the ring on her finger. "i cannot wear it." she said, weeping as if her heart would break. "you frighten me, almost. so wild a scheme! please let me go home!" "only to-night: wear it just to-night, to please me!" bathsheba sat down in a chair, and buried her face in her handkerchief, though boldwood kept her hand yet. at length she said, in a sort of hopeless whisper -- "very well, then, i will to-night, if you wish it so earnestly. now loosen my hand; i will, indeed i will wear it to-night." "and it shall be the beginning of a pleasant secret courtship of six years, with a wedding at the end?" "it must be, i suppose, since you will have it so!" she said, fairly beaten into non-resistance. boldwood pressed her hand, and allowed it to drop in her lap. "i am happy now." he said. "god bless you!" he left the room, and when he thought she might be sufficiently composed sent one of the maids to her bathsheba cloaked the effects of the late scene as she best could, followed the girl, and in a few moments came downstairs with her hat and cloak on, ready to go. to get to the door it was necessary to pass through the hall, and before doing so she paused on the bottom of the staircase which descended into one corner, to take a last look at the gathering. there was no music or dancing in progress just now. at the lower end, which had been arranged for the work- folk specially, a group conversed in whispers, and with clouded looks. boldwood was standing by the fireplace, and he, too, though so absorbed in visions arising from her promise that he scarcely saw anything, seemed at that moment to have observed their peculiar manner, and their looks askance. "what is it you are in doubt about, men?" he said. one of them turned and replied uneasily: "it was something laban heard of, that's all, sir." "news? anybody married or engaged, born or dead?" inquired the farmer, gaily. "tell it to us, tall. one would think from your looks and mysterious ways that it was something very dreadful indeed." "o no, sir, nobody is dead." said tall. "i wish somebody was." said samway, in a whisper. "what do you say, samway?" asked boldwood, some- what sharply. "if you have anything to say, speak out; if not, get up another dance." "mrs. troy has come downstairs." said samway to tall. "if you want to tell her, you had better do it now." "do you know what they mean?" the farmer asked bathsheba, across the room. "i don't in the least," said bathsheba. there was a smart rapping at the door. one of the men opened it instantly, and went outside. "mrs. troy is wanted." he said, on returning. "quite ready." said bathsheba. "though i didn't tell them to send." "it is a stranger, ma'am." said the man by the door. "a stranger?" she said. "ask him to come in." said boldwood. the message was given, and troy, wrapped up to his eyes as we have seen him, stood in the doorway. there was an unearthly silence, all looking towards the newcomer. those who had just learnt that he was in the neighbourhood recognized him instantly; those who did not were perplexed. nobody noted bathsheba. she was leaning on the stairs. her brow had heavily contracted; her whole face was pallid, her lips apart, her eyes rigidly staring at their visitor. boldwood was among those who did not notice that he was troy. "come in, come in!" he repeated, cheerfully, "and drain a christmas beaker with us, stranger!" troy next advanced into the middle of the room, took off his cap, turned down his coat-collar, and looked boldwood in the face. even then boldwood did not recognize that the impersonator of heaven's persistent irony towards him, who had once before broken in upon his bliss, scourged him, and snatched his delight away, had come to do these things a second time. troy began to laugh a mechanical laugh: boldwood recognized him now. troy turned to bathsheba. the poor girl's wretched- ness at this time was beyond all fancy or narration. she had sunk down on the lowest stair; and there she sat, her mouth blue and dry, and her dark eyes fixed vacantly upon him, as if she wondered whether it were not all a terrible illusion. then troy spoke. "bathsheba, i come here for you!" she made no reply. "come home with me: come! bathsheba moved her feet a little, but did not rise. troy went across to her. "come, madam, do you hear what i say?" he said, peremptorily. a strange voice came from the fireplace -- a voice sounding far off and confined, as if from a dungeon. hardly a soul in the assembly recognized the thin tones to be those of boldwood. sudden dispaire had trans- formed him. "bathsheba, go with your husband!" nevertheless, she did not move. the truth was that bathsheba was beyond the pale of activity -- and yet not in a swoon. she was in a state of mental gutta serena; her mind was for the minute totally deprived of light at the same time no obscuration was apparent from without. troy stretched out his hand to pull her her towards him, when she quickly shrank back. this visible dread of him seemed to irritate troy, and he seized her arm and pulled it sharply. whether his grasp pinched her, or whether his mere touch was the 'cause, was never known, but at the moment of his seizure she writhed, and gave a quick, low scream. the scream had been heard but a few seconds when it was followed by sudden deafening report that echoed through the room and stupefied them all. the oak partition shook with the concussion, and the place was filled with grey smoke. in bewilderment they turned their eyes to boldwood. at his back, as stood before the fireplace, was a gun- rack, as is usual in farmhouses, constructed to hold two guns. when bathsheba had cried out in her husband's grasp, boldwood's face of gnashing despair had changed. the veins had swollen, and a frenzied look had gleamed in his eye. he had turned quickly, taken one of the guns, cocked it, and at once discharged it at troy. troy fell. the distance apart of the two men was so small that the charge of shot did not spread in the least, but passed like a bullet into his body. he uttered a long guttural sigh -- there was a contraction -- an exten- sion -- then his muscles relaxed, and he lay still. boldwood was seen through the smoke to be now again engaged with the gun. it was double-barrelled, and he had, meanwhile, in some way fastened his hand- kerchief to the trigger, and with his foot on the other end was in the act of turning the second barrel upon himself. samway his man was the first to see this, and in the midst of the general horror darted up to him. boldwood had already twitched the handkerchief, and the gun exploded a second time, sending its contents, by a timely blow from samway, into the beam which crossed the ceiling. "well, it makes no difference!" boldwood gasped. "there is another way for me to die." then he broke from samway, crossed the room to bathsheba, and kissed her hand. he put on his hat, opened the door, and went into the darkness, nobody thinking of preventing him. chapter liv after the shock boldwood passed into the high road and turned in the direction of casterbridge. here he walked at an even, steady pace over yalbury hill, along the dead level beyond, mounted mellstock hill, and between eleven and twelve o'clock crossed the moor into the town. the streets were nearly deserted now, and the waving lamp-flames only lighted up rows of grey shop-shutters, and strips of white paving upon which his step echoed as his passed along. he turned to the right, and halted before an archway of heavy stonework, which was closed by an iron studded pair of doors. this was the entrance to the gaol, and over it a lamp was fixed, the light en- abling the wretched traveller to find a bellpull. the small wicket at last opened, and a porter appeared. boldwood stepped forward, and said some- thing in a low tone, when, after a delay, another man came. boldwood entered, and the door was closed behind him, and he walked the world no more. long before this time weatherbury had been thoroughly aroused, and the wild deed which had ter- minated boldwood's merrymaking became known to all. of those out of the house oak was one of the first to hear of the catastrophe, and when he entered the room, which was about five minutes after boldwood's exit, the scene was terrible. all the female guests were huddled aghast against the walls like sheep in a storm, and the men were bewildered as to what to do. as for bathsheba, she had changed. she was sitting on the floor beside the body of troy, his head pillowed in her lap, where she had herself lifted it. with one hand she held her handkerchief to his breast and covered the wound, though scarcely a single drop of blood had flowed, and with the other she tightly clasped one of his. the household convulsion had made her herself again. the temporary coma had ceased, and activity had come with the necessity for it. deeds of endur- ance, which seem ordinary in philosophy, are rare in conduct, and bathsheba was astonishing all around her now, for her philosophy was her conduct, and she seldom thought practicable what she did not practise. she was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. she was indispensable to high generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises. troy recumbent in his wife's lap formed now the sole spectacle in the middle of the spacious room. "gabriel." she said, automatically, when he entered, turning up a face of which only the wellknown lines remained to tell him it was hers, all else in the picture having faded quite. "ride to casterbridge instantly for a surgeon. it is, i believe, useless, but go. mr. boldwood has shot my husband." her statement of the fact in such quiet and simple words came with more force than a tragic declamation, and had somewhat the effect of setting the distorted images in each mind present into proper focus. oak, almost before he had comprehended anything beyond the briefest abstract of the event, hurried out of the room, saddled a horse and rode away. not till he had ridden more than a mile did it occur to him that he would have done better by sending some other man on this errand, remaining himself in the house. what had become of boldwood? he should have been looked after. was he mad -- had there been a quarrel? then how had troy got there? where had he come from? how did this remarkable reappearance effect itself when he was supposed by many to be at the bottom of the sea? oak had in some slight measure been prepared for the presence of troy by hearing a rumour of his return just before entering boldwood's house; but before he had weighed that information, this fatal event had been superimposed. however, it was too late now to think of sending another messenger, and he rode on, in the excitement of these self-inquiries not discerning, when about three miles from caster- bridge, a square-figured pedestrian passing along under the dark hedge in the same direction as his own. the miles necessary to be traversed, and other hindrances incidental to the lateness of the hour and the darkness of the night, delayed the arrival of mr, aldritch, the surgeon; and more than three hours passed between the time at which the shot was fired and that of his entering the house. oak was addition- ally detained in casterbridge through having to give notice to the authorities of what had happened; and he then found that boldwood had also entered the town, and delivered himself up. in the meantime the surgeon, having hastened into the hall at boldwood's, found it in darkness and quite deserted. he went on to the back of the house, where he discovered in the kitchen an old man, of whom he made inquiries. "she's had him took away to her own house, sir," said his informant. "who has?" said the doctor. "mrs. troy. 'a was quite dead, sir." this was astonishing information. "she had no right to do that." said the doctor. "there will have to be an inquest, and she should have waited to know what to do." "yes, sir; it was hinted to her that she had better wait till the law was known. but she said law was nothing to her, and she wouldn't let her dear husband's corpse bide neglected for folks to stare at for all the crowners in england." mr. aldritch drove at once back again up the hill to bathsheba's. the first person he met was poor liddy, who seemed literally to have dwindled smaller in these few latter hours. "what has been done?" he said. "i don't know, sir." said liddy, with suspended breath. "my mistress has done it all." "where is she?" "upstairs with him, sir. when he was brought home and taken upstairs, she said she wanted no further help from the men. and then she called me, and made me fill the bath, and after that told me i had better go and lie down because i looked so ill. then she locked herself into the room alone with him, and would not let a nurse come in, or anybody at all. but i thought i'd wait in the next room in case she should want me. i heard her moving about inside for more than an hour, but she only came out once, and that was for more candles, because hers had burnt down into the socket. she said we were to let her know when you or mr. thirdly came, sir." oak entered with the parson at this moment, and they all went upstairs together, preceded by liddy smallbury. everything was silent as the grave when they paused on the landing. liddy knocked, and bathsheba's dress was heard rustling across the room: the key turned in the lock, and she opened the door. her looks were calm and nearly rigid, like a slightly animated bust of melpomene. "oh, mr. aldritch, you have come at last." she murmured from her lips merely, and threw back the door. "ah, and mr. thirdly. well, all is done, and anybody in the world may see him now." she then passed by him, crossed the landing, and entered another room. looking into the chamber of death she had vacated they saw by the light of the candles which were on the drawers a tall straight shape lying at the further end of the bedroom, wrapped in white. everything around was quite orderly. the doctor went in, and after a few minutes returned to the landing again, where oak and the parson still waited. "it is all done, indeed, as she says." remarked mr. aldritch, in a subdued voice. "the body has been undressed and properly laid out in grave clothes. gracious heaven -- this mere girl! she must have the nerve of a stoic!" "the heart of a wife merely." floated in a whisper about the ears of the three, and turning they saw bathsheba in the midst of them. then, as if at that instant to prove that her fortitude had been more of will than of spontaneity, she silently sank down between them and was a shapeless heap of drapery on the floor. the simple consciousness that superhuman strain was no longer required had at once put a period to her power to continue it. they took her away into a further room, and the medical attendance which had been useless in troy's case was invaluable in bathsheba's, who fell into a series of fainting-fits that had a serious aspect for a time. the sufferer was got to bed, and oak, finding from the bulletins that nothing really dreadful was to be apprehended on her score, left the house. liddy kept watch in bathsheba's chamber, where she heard her mistress, moaning in whispers through the dull slow hours of that wretched night: "o it is my fault -- how can i live! o heaven, how can i live!" chapter lv the march following -- "bathsheba boldwood" we pass rapidly on into the month of march, to a breezy day without sunshine, frost, or dew. on yai*- bury hill, about midway between weatherbury and casterbridge, where the turnpike road passes over the crest, a numerous concourse of people had gathered, the eyes of the greater number being fre- quently stretched afar in a northerly direction. the groups consisted of a throng of idlers, a party of javelin-men, and two trumpeters, and in the midst were carriages, one of which contained the high sheriff. with the idlers, many of whom had mounted to the top of a cutting formed for the road, were several weatherbury men and boys -- among others poorgrass, coggan, and cain ball. at the end of half-an-hour a faint dust was seen in the expected quarter, and shortly after a travelling- carriage, bringing one of the two judges on the western circuit, came up the hill and halted on the top. the judge changed carriages whilst a flourish was blown by the big-cheeked trumpeters, and a procession being formed of the vehicles and javelin-men, they all pro- ceeded towards the town, excepting the weatherbury men, who as soon as they had seen the judge move off returned home again to their work. "joseph, i seed you squeezing close to the carriage," said coggan, as they walked. "did ye notice my lord judge's face?" "i did." said poorgrass. "i looked hard at en, as if i would read his very soul; and there was mercy in his eyes -- or to speak with the exact truth required of us at this solemn time, in the eye that was towards me." "well, i hope for the best." said coggan, though bad that must be. however, i shan't go to the trial, and i'd advise the rest of ye that bain't wanted to bide away. 'twill disturb his mind more than anything to see us there staring at him as if he were a show." "the very thing i said this morning." observed joseph, "justice is come to weigh him in the balances," i said in my reflectious way, "and if he's found wanting, so be it unto him," and a bystander said "hear, hear, a man who can talk like that ought to be heard." but i don't like dwelling upon it, for my few words are my few words, and not much; though the speech of some men is rumoured abroad as though by nature formed for such." "so 'tis, joseph. and now, neighbours, as i said, every man bide at home." the resolution was adhered to; and all waited anxiously for the news next day. their suspense was diverted, however, by a discovery which was made in the afternoon, throwing more light on boldwood's conduct and condition than any details which had preceded it. that he had been from the time of greenhill fair until the fatal christmas eve in excited and unusual moods was known to those who had been intimate with him; but nobody imagined that there had shown in him unequivocal symptoms of the mental derange- ment which bathsheba and oak, alone of all others and at different times, had momentarily suspected. in a locked closet was now discovered an extraordinary collection of articles. there were several sets of ladies" dresses in the piece, of sundry expensive materials; silks and satins, poplins and velvets, all of colours which from bathsheba's style of dress might have been judged to be her favourites. there were two muffs, sable and ermine. above all there was a case of jewellery, containing four heavy gold bracelets and several lockets and rings, all of fine quality and manu- facture. these things had been bought in bath and other towns from time to time, and brought home by stealth. they were all carefully packed in paper, and each package was labelled " bathsheba boldwood." a date being subjoined six years in advance in every instance. these somewhat pathetic evidences of a mind crazed with care and love were the subject of discourse in warren's malt-house when oak entered from caster- bridge with tidings of the kiln glow shone upon it, told the tale sufficiently well. boldwood, as every one supposed he would do, had pleaded guilty, and had been sentenced to death. the conviction that boldwood had not been morally responsible for his later acts now became general. facts elicited previous to the trial had pointed strongly in the same direction, but they had not been of sufficient weight to lead to an order for an examination into the state of boldwood's mind. it was astonishing, now that a presumption of insanity was raised, how many collateral circumstances were remembered to which a condition of mental disease seemed to afford the only explanation -- among others, the unprecedented neglect of his corn stacks in the previous summer. a petition was addressed to the home secretary, advancing the circumstances which appeared to justify a request for a reconsideration of the sentence. it was not "numerously signed" by the inhabitants of caster- bridge, as is usual in such cases, for boldwood had never made many friends over the counter. the shops thought it very natural that a man who, by importing direct from the producer, had daringly set aside the first great principle of provincial existence, namely that god made country villages to supply customers to county towns, should have confused ideas about the decalogue. the prompters were a few merciful men who had perhaps too feelingly considered the facts latterly unearthed, and the result was that evidence was taken which it was hoped might remove the crime in a moral point of view, out of the category of wilful murder, and lead it to be regarded as a sheer outcome of madness. the upshot of the petition was waited for in weather- bury with solicitous interest. the execution had been fixed for eight o'clock on a saturday morning about a fortnight after the sentence was passed, and up to friday afternoon no answer had been received. at that time gabriel came from casterbridge gaol, whither he had been to wish boldwood good-bye, and turned down a by-street to avoid the town. when past the last house he heard a hammering, and lifting his bowed head he looked back for a moment. over the chimneys he could see the upper part of the gaol entrance, rich and glowing in the afternoon sun, and some moving figures were there. they were carpenters lifting a post into a vertical position within the parapet. he with- drew his eyes quickly, and hastened on. it was dark when he reached home, and half the village was out to meet him. "no tidings." gabriel said, wearily. "and i'm afraid there's no hope. i've been with him more than two hours." "do ye think he really was out of his mind when he did it?" said smallbury. "i can't honestly say that i do." oak replied. "how- ever, that we can talk of another time. has there been any change in mistress this afternoon?" "none at all." "is she downstairs?" "no. and getting on so nicely as she was too. she's but very little better now again than she was at christmas. she keeps on asking if you be come, and if there's news, till one's wearied out wi' answering her. shall i go and say you've come?" "no." said oak. "there's a chance yet; but i couldn't stay in town any longer -- after seeing him too, so laban -- laban is here, isn't he?" "yes." said tall. "what i've arranged is, that you shall ride to town the last thing to-night; leave here about nine, and wait a while there, getting home about twelve. if nothing has been received by eleven to-night, they say there's no chance at all." "i do so hope his life will be spared." said liddy. "if it is not, she'll go out of her mind too. poor thing; her sufferings have been dreadful; she deserves any- body's pity." "is she altered much?" said coggan. "if you haven't seen poor mistress since christmas, you wouldn't know her." said liddy. "her eyes are so miserable that she's not the same woman. only two years ago she was a romping girl, and now she's this!" laban departed as directed, and at eleven o'clock that night several of the villagers strolled along the road to casterbridge and awaited his arrival-among them oak, and nearly all the rest of bathsheba's men. gabriel's anxiety was great that boldwood might be saved, even though in his conscience he felt that he ought to die; for there had been qualities in the farmer which oak loved. at last, when they all were weary the tramp of a horse was heard in the distance -- first dead, as if on turf it trode, then, clattering on the village road in other pace than forth he yode. "we shall soon know now, one way or other." said coggan, and they all stepped down from the bank on which they had been standing into the road, and the rider pranced into the midst of them. "is that you, laban?" said gabriel. "yes -- 'tis come. he's not to die. 'tis confine- ment during her majesty's pleasure." "hurrah!" said coggan, with a swelling heart. "god's above the devil yet!" chapter lvi beauty in loneliness -- after all bathsheba revived with the spring. the utter prostration that had followed the low fever from which she had suffered diminished perceptibly when all un- certainty upon every subject had come to an end. but she remained alone now for the greater part of her time, and stayed in the house, or at furthest went into the garden. she shunned every one, even liddy, and could be brought to make no confidences, and to ask for no sympathy. as the summer drew on she passed more of her time in the open air, and began to examine into farming matters from sheer necessity, though she never rode out or personally superintended as at former times. one friday evening in august she walked a little way along the road and entered the village for the first time since the sombre event of the preceding christmas. none of the old colour had as yet come to her cheek, and its absolute paleness was heightened by the jet black of her gown, till it appeared preternatural. when she reached a little shop at the other end of the place, which stood nearly opposite to the churchyard, bath- sheba heard singing inside the church, and she knew that the singers were practising. she crossed the road, opened the gate, and entered the graveyard, the high sills of the church windows effectually screening her from the eyes of those gathered within. her stealthy walk was to the nook wherein troy had worked at planting flowers upon fanny robin's grave, and she came to the marble tombstone. a motion of satisfaction enlivened her face as she read the complete inscription. first came the words of troy himself: -- erected by francis troy in beloved memory of fanny robin, who died october , -- , aged years. underneath this was now inscribed in new letters: -- in the same grave lie the remains of the aforesaid francis troy, who died december th, -- , whilst she stood and read and meditated the tones of the organ began again in the church, and she went with the same light step round to the porch and listened. the door was closed, and the choir was learning a new hymn. bathsheba was stirred by emotions which latterly she had assumed to be altogether dead within her. the little attenuated voices of the children brought to her ear in destinct utterance the words they sang without thought or comprehension -- lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, lead thou me on. bathsheba's feeling was always to some extent de- pendent upon her whim, as is the case with many other women. something big came into her throat and an uprising to her eyes -- and she thought that she would allow the imminent tears to flow if they wished. they did flow and plenteously, and one fell upon the stone bench beside her. once that she had begun to cry for she hardly knew what, she could not leave off for crowd- ing thoughts she knew too well. she would have given anything in the world to be, as those children were, un- concerned at the meaning of their words, because too innocent to feel the necessity for any such expression. all the impassioned scenes of her brief expenence seemed to revive with added emotion at that moment, and those scenes which had been without emotion during enactment had emotion then. yet grief came to her rather as a luxury than as the scourge of former times. owing to bathsheba's face being buried in her hands she did not notice a form which came quietly into the porch, and on seeing her, first moved as if to retreat, then paused and regarded her. bathsheba did not raise her head for some time, and when she looked round her face was wet, and her eyes drowned and dim. "mr. oak." exclaimed she, disconcerted, " how long have you been here?" "a few minutes, ma'am." said oak, respectfully. "are you going in?" said bathsheba; and there came from within the church as from a prompter -- l loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, pride ruled my will: remember not past years. "i was." said gabriel. "i am one of the bass singers, you know. i have sung bass for several months. "indeed: i wasn't aware of that. i'll leave you, then." which i have loved long since, and lost awhile, sang the children. "don't let me drive you away, mistress. i think i won't go in to-night." "o no -- you don't drive me away. then they stood in a state of some embarrassment bathsheba trying to wipe her dreadfully drenched and inflamed face without his noticing her. at length oak said, i've not seen you-i mean spoken to you -- since ever so long, have i?" but he feared to bring distress- ing memories back, and interrupted himself with: "were you going into church?" "no." she said. i came to see the tombstone privately -- to see if they had cut the inscription as i wished mr. oak, you needn't mind speaking to me, if you wish to, on the matter which is in both our minds at this moment." "and have they done it as you wished?" said oak. "yes. come and see it, if you have not already." so together they went and read the tomb. "eight months ago!" gabriel murmured when he saw the date. "it seems like yesterday to me." and to me as if it were years ago-long years, and i had been dead between. and now i am going home, mr. oak." oak walked after her. "i wanted to name a small matter to you as soon as i could." he said, with hesitation. "merrily about business, and i think i may just mention it now, if you'll allow me." "o yes, certainly." it is that i may soon have to give up the manage- ment of your farm, mrs. troy. the fact is, i am think- ing of leaving england -- not yet, you know -- next spring. " "leaving england!" she said, in surprise and genuine disappointment." why, gabriel, what are you going to do that for?" "well, i've thought it best." oak stammered out. "california is the spot i've had in my mind to try." "but it is understood everywhere that you are going to take poor mr. boldwood's farm on your own account." "i've had the refusal o' it 'tis true; but nothing is settled yet, and i have reasons for giving up. i shall finish out my year there as manager for the trustees, but no more." "and what shall i do without you? oh, gabriel, i don't think you ought to go away. you've been with me so long -- through bright times and dark times -- such old friends that as we are -- that it seems unkind almost. i had fancied that if you leased the other farm as master, you might still give a helping look across at mine. and now going away!" "i would have willingly." "yet now that i am more helpless than ever you go away!" "yes, that's the ill fortune o' it." said gabriel, in a distressed tone. "and it is because of that very help- lessness that i feel bound to go. good afternoon, ma'am" he concluded, in evident anxiety to get away, and at once went out of the churchyard by a path she could follow on no pretence whatever. bathsheba went home, her mind occupied with a new trouble, which being rather harassing than deadly was calculated to do good by diverting her from the chronic gloom of her life. she was set thinking a great deal about oak and of his which to shun her; and there occurred to bathsheba several incidents of latter in- tercourse with him, which, trivial when singly viewed amounted together to a perceptible disinclination for her society. it broke upon her at length as a great pain that her last old disciple was about to forsake her and flee. he who had believed in her and argued on her side when all the rest of the world was against her, had at last like the others become weary and neglectful of the old cause, and was leaving her to fight her battles alone. three weeks went on, and more evidence of his want of interest in her was forthcoming. she noticed that instead of entering the small parlour or office where the farm accounts were kept, and waiting, or leaving a memorandum as he had hitherto done during her seclusion, oak never came at all when she was likely to be there, only entering at unseasonable hours when her presence in that part of the house was least to be expected. whenever he wanted directions he sent a message, or note with neither heading nor signature, to which she was obliged to reply in the same off-hand style. poor bathsheba began to suffer now from the most torturing sting of ali-a sensation that she was despised. the autumn wore away gloomily enough amid these melancholy conjectures, and christmas-day came, com- pleting a year of her legal widowhood, and two years and a quarter of her life alone. on examining her heart it appeared beyond measure strange that the sub- ject of which the season might have been supposed suggestive -- the event in the hall at boldwood's -- was not agitating her at all; but instead, an agonizing con- viction that everybody abjured her -- for what she could not tell -- and that oak was the ringleader of the recusants. coming out of church that day she looked round in hope that oak, whose bass voice she had heard rolling out from the gallery overhead in a most unconcerned manner, might chance to linger in her path in the old way. there he was, as usual, coming down the path behind her. but on seeing bathsheba turn, he looked aside, and as soon as he got beyond the gate, and there was the barest excuse for a divergence, he made one, and vanished. the next morning brought the culminating stroke; she had been expecting it long. it was a formal notice by letter from him that he should not renew his engage- ment with her for the following lady-day. bathsheba actually sat and cried over this letter most bitterly. she was aggrieved and wounded that the possession of hopeless love from gabriel, which she had after all grown to regard as her inalienable right for life, should have been withdrawn just at his own pleasure in this way. she was bewildered too by the prospect of having to rely on her own resources again: it seemed to herself that she never could again acquire energy sufficient to go to market, barter, and sell. since troy's death oak had attended all sales and fairs for her, transacting her business at the same time with his own. what should she do now? her life was becoming a desolation. so desolate was bathsheba this evening, that in an absolute hunger for pity and sympathy, and miserable in that she appeared to have outlived the only true friend- ship she had ever owned, she put on her bonnet and cloak and went down to oak's house just after sunset, guided on her way by the pale primrose rays of a crescent moon a few days old. a lively firelight shone from the window, but nobody was visible in the room. she tapped nervously, and then thought it doubtful if it were right for a single woman to call upon a bachelor who lived alone, although he was her manager, and she might be supposed to call on business without any real impropriety. gabriel opened the door, and the moon shone upon his fore- haad. "mr. oak." said bathsheba, faintly. "yes; i am mr. oak." said gabriel. "who have i the honour -- o how stupid of me, not to know you, mistress!" "i shall not be your mistress much longer, shall i gabriel?" she said, in pathetic tones. "well, no. i suppose -- but come in, ma'am. oh -- and i'll get a light." oak replied, with some awkwardness. "no; not on my account." "it is so seldom that i get a lady visitor that i'm afraid i haven't proper accommodation. will you sit down, please? here's a chair, and there's one, too. i am sorry that my chairs all have wood seats, and are rather hard, but i was thinking of getting some new ones." oak placed two or three for her. "they are quite easy enough for me." so down she sat, and down sat he, the fire dancing in their faces, and upon the old furniture all a-sheenen wi' long years o' handlen, that formed oak's array of household possessions, which sent back a dancing reflection in reply. it was very odd to these two persons, who knew each other passing well, that the mere circumstance of their meeting in a new place and in a new way should make them so awkward and constrained. in the fields, or at her house, there had never been any embarrassment; but now that oak had become the entertainer their lives seemed to be moved back again to the days when they were strangers. "you'll think it strange that i have come, but -- " "o no; not at all." "but i thought -- gabriel, i have been uneasy in the belief that i have offended you, and that you are going away on that account. it grieved me very much and i couldn't help coming." "offended me! as if you could do that, bathsheba!" "haven't i?" she asked, gladly. "but, what are you going away for else?" "i am not going to emigrate, you know; i wasn't aware that you would wish me not to when i told 'ee or i shouldn't ha' thought of doing it." he said, simply. "i have arranged for little weatherbury farm and shall have it in my own hands at lady-day. you know i've had a share in it for some time. still, that wouldn't prevent my attending to your business as before, hadn't it been that things have been said about us." "what?" said bathsheba, in surprise. "things said about you and me! what are they?" "i cannot tell you." "it would be wiser if you were to, i think. you have played the part of mentor to me many times, and i don't see why you should fear to do it now." "it is nothing that you have done, this time. the top and tail o't is this -- that i am sniffing about here, and waiting for poor boldwood's farm, with a thought of getting you some day." "getting me! what does that mean?" "marrying o' 'ee, in plain british. you asked me to tell, so you mustn't blame me." bathsheba did not look quite so alarmed as if a cannon had been discharged by her ear, which was what oak had expected. "marrying me! i didn't know it was that you meant." she said, quietly. "such a thing as that is too absurd -- too soon -- to think of, by far!" "yes; of course, it is too absurd. i don't desire any such thing; i should think that was plain enough by this time. surely, surely you be the last person in the world i think of marrying. it is too absurd, as you say "too -- s-s-soon" were the words i used." "i must beg your pardon for correcting you, but you said, "too absurd," and so do i." "i beg your pardon too! she returned, with tears in her eyes. ""too soon" was what i said. but it doesn't matter a bit -- not at ali-but i only meant, "too soon" indeed, i didn't, mr. oak, and you must believe me!" gabriel looked her long in the face, but the firelight being faint there was not much to be seen. "bathsheba," he said, tenderly and in surprise, and coming closer: "if i only knew one thing -- whether you would allow me to love you and win you, and marry you after ali-if i only knew that!" "but you never will know." she murmured. "why?" "because you never ask. "oh -- oh!" said gabriel, with a low laugh of joyous- ness. "my own dear -- " "you ought not to have sent me that harsh letter this morning." she interrupted. "it shows you didn't care a bit about me, and were ready to desert me like all the rest of them! it was very cruel of you, consider- ing i was the first sweetheart that you ever had, and you were the first i ever had; and i shall not forget it!" "now, bathsheba, was ever anybody so provoking he said, laughing. "you know it was purely that i, as an unmarried man, carrying on a business for you as a very taking young woman, had a proper hard part to play -- more particular that people knew i had a sort of feeling for'ee; and i fancied, from the way we were mentioned together, that it might injure your good name. nobody knows the heat and fret i have been caused by it." "and was that all?" "all." "oh, how glad i am i came!" she exclaimed, thank- fully, as she rose from her seat. "i have thought so much more of you since i fancied you did not want even to see me again. but i must be going now, or i shall be missed. why gabriel." she said, with a slight laugh, as they went to the door, "it seems exactly as if i had come courting you -- how dreadful!" "and quite right too." said oak. "i've danced at your skittish heels, my beautiful bathsheba, for many a long mile, and many a long day; and it is hard to be- grudge me this one visit." he accompanied her up the hill, explaining to her the details of his forthcoming tenure of the other farm. they spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably un- necessary between such tried friends. theirs was that substantial affection which arises (if any arises at all) when the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other's character, and not the best till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic reality. this good-fellowship -- camaraderie -- usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures merely. where, however, happy circumstance permits its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death -- that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam. chapter lvii a foggy night and morning -- conclusion "the most private, secret, plainest wedding that it is possible to have." those had been bathsheba's words to oak one evening, some time after the event of the preceding chapter, and he meditated a full hour by the clock upon how to carry out her wishes to the letter. "a licence -- o yes, it must be a licence." he said to himself at last. "very well, then; first, a license." on a dark night, a few days later, oak came with mysterious steps from the surrogate's door, in caster- bridge. on the way home he heard a heavy tread in front of him, and, overtaking the man, found him to be coggan. they walked together into the village until they came to a little lane behind the church, leading down to the cottage of laban tall, who had lately been installed as clerk of the parish, and was yet in mortal terror at church on sundays when he heard his lone voice among certain hard words of the psalms, whither no man ventured to follow him. "well, good-night, coggan." said oak, "i'm going down this way." "oh!" said coggan, surprised; "what's going on to- night then, make so bold mr. oak?" it seemed rather ungenerous not to tell coggan, under the circumstances, for coggan had been true as steel all through the time of gabriel's unhappiness about bathsheba, and gabriel said, " you can keep a secret, coggan?" "you've proved me, and you know." "yes, i have, and i do know. well, then, mistress and i mean to get married to-morrow morning." "heaven's high tower! and yet i've thought of such a thing from time to time; true, i have. but keeping it so close! well, there, 'tis no consarn of amine, and i wish 'ee joy o' her." "thank you, coggan. but i assure 'ee that this great hush is not what i wished for at all, or what either of us would have wished if it hadn't been for certain things that would make a gay wedding seem hardly the thing. bathsheba has a great wish that all the parish shall not be in church, looking at her -- she's shylike and nervous about it, in fact -- so i be doing this to humour her." "ay, i see: quite right, too, i suppose i must say. and you be now going down to the clerk." "yes; you may as well come with me." "i am afeard your labour in keeping it close will be throwed away." said coggan, as they walked along. "labe tall's old woman will horn it all over parish in half-an-hour. " "so she will, upon my life; i never thought of that." said oak, pausing. "yet i must tell him to- night, i suppose, for he's working so far off, and leaves early." "i'll tell 'ee how we could tackle her." said coggan. "i'll knock and ask to speak to laban outside the door, you standing in the background. then he'll come out, and you can tell yer tale. she'll never guess what i want en for; and i'll make up a few words about the farm-work, as a blind." this scheme was considered feasible; and coggan advanced boldly, and rapped at mrs. tall's door. mrs. tall herself opened it. "i wanted to have a word with laban." "he's not at home, and won't be this side of eleven o'clock. he've been forced to go over to yalbury since shutting out work. i shall do quite as well." "i hardly think you will. stop a moment;" and coggan stepped round the corner of the porch to consult oak. "who's t'other man, then?" said mrs. tall. "only a friend." said coggan. "say he's wanted to meet mistress near church-hatch to-morrow morning at ten." said oak, in a whisper. "that he must come without fail, and wear his best clothes." "the clothes will floor us as safe as houses!" said coggan. "it can't be helped said oak. "tell her." so coggan delivered the message. "mind, het or wet, blow or snow, he must come, added jan. "'tis very particular, indeed. the fact is, 'tis to witness her sign some law-work about taking shares wi' another farmer for a long span o' years. there, that's what 'tis, and now i've told 'ee, mother tall, in a way i shouldn't ha' done if i hadn't loved 'ee so hopeless well." coggan retired before she could ask any further; and next they called at the vicar's in a manner which excited no curiosity at all. then gabriel went home, and prepared for the morrow. "liddy." said bathsheba, on going to bed that night, "i want you to call me at seven o'clock to-morrow, in case i shouldn't wake." "but you always do wake afore then, ma'am." "yes, but i have something important to do, which i'll tell you of when the time comes, and it's best to make sure." conclusion bathsheba, however, awoke voluntarily at four, nor could she by any contrivance get to sleep again. about six, being quite positive that her watch had stopped during the night, she could wait no longer. she went and tapped at liddy's door, and after some labour awoke her. "but i thought it was i who had to call you?" said the bewildered liddy. "and it isn't six yet." indeed it is; how can you tell such a story, liddy? i know it must be ever so much past seven. come to my room as soon as you can; i want you to give my hair a good brushing." when liddy came to bathsheba's room her mistress was already waiting. liddy could not understand this extraordinary promptness. "whatever is going on, ma'am?" she said. "well, i'll tell you." said bathsheba, with a mischiev- ous smile in her bright eyes. "farmer oak is coming here to dine with me to-day!" "farmer oak -- and nobody else? -- you two alone?" "yes." "but is it safe, ma'am, after what's been said?" asked her companion, dubiously. "a woman's good name is such a perishable article that -- -- " bathsheba laughed with a flushed cheek, and whispered in liddy's ear, although there was nobody present. then liddy stared and exclaimed, " souls alive, what news! it makes my heart go quite bumpity-bump" "it makes mine rather furious, too." said bathsheba. "however, there's no getting out of it now!" it was a damp disagreeable morning. nevertheless, at twenty minutes to ten o'clock, oak came out of his house, and went up the hill side with that sort of stride a man puts out when walking in search of a bride, and knocked bathsheba's door. ten minutes later a large and a smaller umbrella might have been seen moving from the same door, and through the mist along the road to the church. the distance was not more than a quarter of a mile, and these two sensible persons deemed it unnecessary to drive. an observer must have been very close indeed to discover that the forms under the umbrellas were those of oak and bathsheba, arm-in- arm for the first time in their lives, oak in a greatcoat extending to his knees, and bathsheba in a cloak that reached her clogs. yet, though so plainly dressed there was a certain rejuvenated appearance about her: -- as though a rose should shut and be a bud again. repose had again incarnadined her cheeks; and having, at gabriel's request, arranged her hair this morning as she had worn it years ago on norcombe hill, she seemed in his eyes remarkably like a girl of that fascinating dream, which, considering that she was now only three or four-and-twenty, was perhaps not very wonderful. in the church were tall, liddy, and the parson, and in a remarkably short space of time the deed was done. the two sat down very quietly to tea in bathsheba's parlour in the evening of the same day, for it had been arranged that farmer oak should go there to live, since he had as yet neither money, house, nor furniture worthy of the name, though he was on a sure way towards them, whilst bathsheba was, comparatively, in a plethora of all three. just as bathsheba was pouring out a cup of tea, their ears were greeted by the firing of a cannon, followed by what seemed like a tremendous blowing of trumpets, in the front of the house. "there!" said oak, laughing, "i knew those fellows were up to something, by the look on their face; " oak took up the light and went into the porch, followed by bathsheba with a shawl over her head. the rays fell upon a group of male figures gathered upon the gravel in front, who, when they saw the newly-married couple in the porch, set up a loud "hurrah!" and at the same moment bang again went the cannon in the background, followed by a hideous clang of music from a drum, tambourine, clarionet, serpent, hautboy, tenor- viol, and double-bass -- the only remaining relics of the true and original weatherbury band -- venerable worm- eaten instruments, which had celebrated in their own persons the victories of marlhorough, under the fingers of the forefathers of those who played them now. the performers came forward, and marched up to the front. "those bright boys, mark clark and jan, are at the bottom of all this." said oak. "come in, souls, and have something to eat and drink wi' me and my wife." "not to-night." said mr. clark, with evident self- denial. "thank ye all the same; but we'll call at a more seemly time. however, we couldn't think of letting the day pass without a note of admiration of some sort. if ye could send a drop of som'at down to warren's, why so it is. here's long life and happiness to neighbour oak and his comely bride!" "thank ye; thank ye all." said gabriel. "a bit and a drop shall be sent to warren's for ye at once. i had a thought that we might very likely get a salute of some sort from our old friends, and i was saying so to my wife but now." "faith." said coggan, in a critical tone, turning to his companions, "the man hev learnt to say "my wife" in a wonderful naterel way, considering how very youth- ful he is in wedlock as yet -- hey, neighbours all?" "i never heerd a skilful old married feller of twenty years" standing pipe "my wife" in a more used note than 'a did." said jacob smallbury. "it might have been a little more true to nater if't had been spoke a little chillier, but that wasn't to be expected just now. "that improvement will come wi' time." said jan, twirling his eye. then oak laughed, and bathsheba smiled (for she never laughed readily now), and their friends turned to go. "yes; i suppose that's the size o't." said joseph poorgrass with a cheerful sigh as they moved away; "and i wish him joy o' her; though i were once or twice upon saying to-day with holy hosea, in my scripture manner, which is my second nature. "ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone." but since 'tis as 'tis why, it might have been worse, and i feel my thanks accordingly." the end this ebook was produced from the macmillan and co. edition by les bowler, st. ives, dorset. the hand of ethelberta--a comedy in chapters by thomas hardy. "vitae post-scenia celant."--lucretius. preface this somewhat frivolous narrative was produced as an interlude between stories of a more sober design, and it was given the sub-title of a comedy to indicate--though not quite accurately--the aim of the performance. a high degree of probability was not attempted in the arrangement of the incidents, and there was expected of the reader a certain lightness of mood, which should inform him with a good-natured willingness to accept the production in the spirit in which it was offered. the characters themselves, however, were meant to be consistent and human. on its first appearance the novel suffered, perhaps deservedly, for what was involved in these intentions--for its quality of unexpectedness in particular--that unforgivable sin in the critic's sight--the immediate precursor of 'ethelberta' having been a purely rural tale. moreover, in its choice of medium, and line of perspective, it undertook a delicate task: to excite interest in a drama--if such a dignified word may be used in the connection--wherein servants were as important as, or more important than, their masters; wherein the drawing-room was sketched in many cases from the point of view of the servants' hall. such a reversal of the social foreground has, perhaps, since grown more welcome, and readers even of the finer crusted kind may now be disposed to pardon a writer for presenting the sons and daughters of mr. and mrs. chickerel as beings who come within the scope of a congenial regard. t. h. december . contents . a street in anglebury--a heath near it--inside the 'red lion' inn . christopher's house--sandbourne town--sandbourne moor . sandbourne moor (continued) . sandbourne pier--road to wyndway--ballroom in wyndway house . at the window--the road home . the shore by wyndway . the dining-room of a town house--the butler's pantry . christopher's lodgings--the grounds about rookington . a lady's drawing-rooms--ethelberta's dressing-room . lady petherwin's house . sandbourne and its neighbourhood--some london streets . arrowthorne park and lodge . the lodge (continued)--the copse behind . a turnpike road . an inner room at the lodge . a large public hall . ethelberta's house . near sandbourne--london streets--ethelberta's . ethelberta's drawing-room . the neighbourhood of the hall--the road home . a street--neigh's rooms--christopher's rooms . ethelberta's house . ethelberta's house (continued) . ethelberta's house (continued)--the british museum . the royal academy--the farnfield estate . ethelberta's drawing-room . mrs. belmaine's--cripplegate church . ethelberta's--mr. chickerel's room . ethelberta's dressing-room--mr. doncastle's house . on the housetop . knollsea--a lofty down--a ruined castle . a room in enckworth court . the english channel--normandy . the hotel beau sejour, and spots near it . the hotel (continued), and the quay in front . the house in town . knollsea--an ornamental villa . enckworth court . knollsea--melchester . melchester (continued) . workshops--an inn--the street . the doncastles' residence, and outside the same . the railway--the sea--the shore beyond . sandbourne--a lonely heath--the 'red lion'--the highway . knollsea--the road thence--enckworth . enckworth (continued)--the anglebury highway . enckworth and its precincts--melchester sequel. anglebury--enckworth--sandbourne . a street in anglebury--a heath near it--inside the 'red lion' inn young mrs. petherwin stepped from the door of an old and well-appointed inn in a wessex town to take a country walk. by her look and carriage she appeared to belong to that gentle order of society which has no worldly sorrow except when its jewellery gets stolen; but, as a fact not generally known, her claim to distinction was rather one of brains than of blood. she was the daughter of a gentleman who lived in a large house not his own, and began life as a baby christened ethelberta after an infant of title who does not come into the story at all, having merely furnished ethelberta's mother with a subject of contemplation. she became teacher in a school, was praised by examiners, admired by gentlemen, not admired by gentlewomen, was touched up with accomplishments by masters who were coaxed into painstaking by her many graces, and, entering a mansion as governess to the daughter thereof, was stealthily married by the son. he, a minor like herself, died from a chill caught during the wedding tour, and a few weeks later was followed into the grave by sir ralph petherwin, his unforgiving father, who had bequeathed his wealth to his wife absolutely. these calamities were a sufficient reason to lady petherwin for pardoning all concerned. she took by the hand the forlorn ethelberta--who seemed rather a detached bride than a widow--and finished her education by placing her for two or three years in a boarding-school at bonn. latterly she had brought the girl to england to live under her roof as daughter and companion, the condition attached being that ethelberta was never openly to recognize her relations, for reasons which will hereafter appear. the elegant young lady, as she had a full right to be called if she cared for the definition, arrested all the local attention when she emerged into the summer-evening light with that diadem-and-sceptre bearing--many people for reasons of heredity discovering such graces only in those whose vestibules are lined with ancestral mail, forgetting that a bear may be taught to dance. while this air of hers lasted, even the inanimate objects in the street appeared to know that she was there; but from a way she had of carelessly overthrowing her dignity by versatile moods, one could not calculate upon its presence to a certainty when she was round corners or in little lanes which demanded no repression of animal spirits. 'well to be sure!' exclaimed a milkman, regarding her. 'we should freeze in our beds if 'twere not for the sun, and, dang me! if she isn't a pretty piece. a man could make a meal between them eyes and chin--eh, hostler? odd nation dang my old sides if he couldn't!' the speaker, who had been carrying a pair of pails on a yoke, deposited them upon the edge of the pavement in front of the inn, and straightened his back to an excruciating perpendicular. his remarks had been addressed to a rickety person, wearing a waistcoat of that preternatural length from the top to the bottom button which prevails among men who have to do with horses. he was sweeping straws from the carriage-way beneath the stone arch that formed a passage to the stables behind. 'never mind the cursing and swearing, or somebody who's never out of hearing may clap yer name down in his black book,' said the hostler, also pausing, and lifting his eyes to the mullioned and transomed windows and moulded parapet above him--not to study them as features of ancient architecture, but just to give as healthful a stretch to the eyes as his acquaintance had done to his back. 'michael, a old man like you ought to think about other things, and not be looking two ways at your time of life. pouncing upon young flesh like a carrion crow--'tis a vile thing in a old man.' ''tis; and yet 'tis not, for 'tis a naterel taste,' said the milkman, again surveying ethelberta, who had now paused upon a bridge in full view, to look down the river. 'now, if a poor needy feller like myself could only catch her alone when she's dressed up to the nines for some grand party, and carry her off to some lonely place--sakes, what a pot of jewels and goold things i warrant he'd find about her! 'twould pay en for his trouble.' 'i don't dispute the picter; but 'tis sly and untimely to think such roguery. though i've had thoughts like it, 'tis true, about high women--lord forgive me for't.' 'and that figure of fashion standing there is a widow woman, so i hear?' 'lady--not a penny less than lady. ay, a thing of twenty-one or thereabouts.' 'a widow lady and twenty-one. 'tis a backward age for a body who's so forward in her state of life.' 'well, be that as 'twill, here's my showings for her age. she was about the figure of two or three-and-twenty when a' got off the carriage last night, tired out wi' boaming about the country; and nineteen this morning when she came downstairs after a sleep round the clock and a clane-washed face: so i thought to myself, twenty-one, i thought.' 'and what's the young woman's name, make so bold, hostler?' 'ay, and the house were all in a stoor with her and the old woman, and their boxes and camp-kettles, that they carry to wash in because hand- basons bain't big enough, and i don't know what all; and t'other folk stopping here were no more than dirt thencefor'ard.' 'i suppose they've come out of some noble city a long way herefrom?' 'and there was her hair up in buckle as if she'd never seen a clay-cold man at all. however, to cut a long story short, all i know besides about 'em is that the name upon their luggage is lady petherwin, and she's the widow of a city gentleman, who was a man of valour in the lord mayor's show.' 'who's that chap in the gaiters and pack at his back, come out of the door but now?' said the milkman, nodding towards a figure of that description who had just emerged from the inn and trudged off in the direction taken by the lady--now out of sight. 'chap in the gaiters? chok' it all--why, the father of that nobleman that you call chap in the gaiters used to be hand in glove with half the queen's court.' 'what d'ye tell o'?' 'that man's father was one of the mayor and corporation of sandbourne, and was that familiar with men of money, that he'd slap 'em upon the shoulder as you or i or any other poor fool would the clerk of the parish.' 'o, what's my lordlin's name, make so bold, then?' 'ay, the toppermost class nowadays have left off the use of wheels for the good of their constitutions, so they traipse and walk for many years up foreign hills, where you can see nothing but snow and fog, till there's no more left to walk up; and if they reach home alive, and ha'n't got too old and weared out, they walk and see a little of their own parishes. so they tower about with a pack and a stick and a clane white pocket-handkerchief over their hats just as you see he's got on his. he's been staying here a night, and is off now again. "young man, young man," i think to myself, "if your shoulders were bent like a bandy and your knees bowed out as mine be, till there is not an inch of straight bone or gristle in 'ee, th' wouldstn't go doing hard work for play 'a b'lieve."' 'true, true, upon my song. such a pain as i have had in my lynes all this day to be sure; words don't know what shipwreck i suffer in these lynes o' mine--that they do not! and what was this young widow lady's maiden name, then, hostler? folk have been peeping after her, that's true; but they don't seem to know much about her family.' 'and while i've tended horses fifty year that other folk might straddle 'em, here i be now not a penny the better! often-times, when i see so many good things about, i feel inclined to help myself in common justice to my pocket. "work hard and be poor, do nothing and get more." but i draw in the horns of my mind and think to myself, "forbear, john hostler, forbear!"--her maiden name? faith, i don't know the woman's maiden name, though she said to me, "good evening, john;" but i had no memory of ever seeing her afore--no, no more than the dead inside church- hatch--where i shall soon be likewise--i had not. "ay, my nabs," i think to myself, "more know tom fool than tom fool knows."' 'more know tom fool--what rambling old canticle is it you say, hostler?' inquired the milkman, lifting his ear. 'let's have it again--a good saying well spit out is a christmas fire to my withered heart. more know tom fool--' 'than tom fool knows,' said the hostler. 'ah! that's the very feeling i've feeled over and over again, hostler, but not in such gifted language. 'tis a thought i've had in me for years, and never could lick into shape!--o-ho-ho-ho! splendid! say it again, hostler, say it again! to hear my own poor notion that had no name brought into form like that--i wouldn't ha' lost it for the world! more know tom fool than--than--h-ho-ho-ho-ho!' 'don't let your sense o' vitness break out in such uproar, for heaven's sake, or folk will surely think you've been laughing at the lady and gentleman. well, here's at it again--night t'ee, michael.' and the hostler went on with his sweeping. 'night t'ee, hostler, i must move too,' said the milkman, shouldering his yoke, and walking off; and there reached the inn in a gradual diminuendo, as he receded up the street, shaking his head convulsively, 'more know--tom fool--than tom fool--ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!' the 'red lion,' as the inn or hotel was called which of late years had become the fashion among tourists, because of the absence from its precincts of all that was fashionable and new, stood near the middle of the town, and formed a corner where in winter the winds whistled and assembled their forces previous to plunging helter-skelter along the streets. in summer it was a fresh and pleasant spot, convenient for such quiet characters as sojourned there to study the geology and beautiful natural features of the country round. the lady whose appearance had asserted a difference between herself and the anglebury people, without too clearly showing what that difference was, passed out of the town in a few moments and, following the highway across meadows fed by the froom, she crossed the railway and soon got into a lonely heath. she had been watching the base of a cloud as it closed down upon the line of a distant ridge, like an upper upon a lower eyelid, shutting in the gaze of the evening sun. she was about to return before dusk came on, when she heard a commotion in the air immediately behind and above her head. the saunterer looked up and saw a wild-duck flying along with the greatest violence, just in its rear being another large bird, which a countryman would have pronounced to be one of the biggest duck-hawks that he had ever beheld. the hawk neared its intended victim, and the duck screamed and redoubled its efforts. ethelberta impulsively started off in a rapid run that would have made a little dog bark with delight and run after, her object being, if possible, to see the end of this desperate struggle for a life so small and unheard-of. her stateliness went away, and it could be forgiven for not remaining; for her feet suddenly became as quick as fingers, and she raced along over the uneven ground with such force of tread that, being a woman slightly heavier than gossamer, her patent heels punched little d's in the soil with unerring accuracy wherever it was bare, crippled the heather-twigs where it was not, and sucked the swampy places with a sound of quick kisses. her rate of advance was not to be compared with that of the two birds, though she went swiftly enough to keep them well in sight in such an open place as that around her, having at one point in the journey been so near that she could hear the whisk of the duck's feathers against the wind as it lifted and lowered its wings. when the bird seemed to be but a few yards from its enemy she saw it strike downwards, and after a level flight of a quarter of a minute, vanish. the hawk swooped after, and ethelberta now perceived a whitely shining oval of still water, looking amid the swarthy level of the heath like a hole through to a nether sky. into this large pond, which the duck had been making towards from the beginning of its precipitate flight, it had dived out of sight. the excited and breathless runner was in a few moments close enough to see the disappointed hawk hovering and floating in the air as if waiting for the reappearance of its prey, upon which grim pastime it was so intent that by creeping along softly she was enabled to get very near the edge of the pool and witness the conclusion of the episode. whenever the duck was under the necessity of showing its head to breathe, the other bird would dart towards it, invariably too late, however; for the diver was far too experienced in the rough humour of the buzzard family at this game to come up twice near the same spot, unaccountably emerging from opposite sides of the pool in succession, and bobbing again by the time its adversary reached each place, so that at length the hawk gave up the contest and flew away, a satanic moodiness being almost perceptible in the motion of its wings. the young lady now looked around her for the first time, and began to perceive that she had run a long distance--very much further than she had originally intended to come. her eyes had been so long fixed upon the hawk, as it soared against the bright and mottled field of sky, that on regarding the heather and plain again it was as if she had returned to a half-forgotten region after an absence, and the whole prospect was darkened to one uniform shade of approaching night. she began at once to retrace her steps, but having been indiscriminately wheeling round the pond to get a good view of the performance, and having followed no path thither, she found the proper direction of her journey to be a matter of some uncertainty. 'surely,' she said to herself, 'i faced the north at starting:' and yet on walking now with her back where her face had been set, she did not approach any marks on the horizon which might seem to signify the town. thus dubiously, but with little real concern, she walked on till the evening light began to turn to dusk, and the shadows to darkness. presently in front of her ethelberta saw a white spot in the shade, and it proved to be in some way attached to the head of a man who was coming towards her out of a slight depression in the ground. it was as yet too early in the evening to be afraid, but it was too late to be altogether courageous; and with balanced sensations ethelberta kept her eye sharply upon him as he rose by degrees into view. the peculiar arrangement of his hat and pugree soon struck her as being that she had casually noticed on a peg in one of the rooms of the 'red lion,' and when he came close she saw that his arms diminished to a peculiar smallness at their junction with his shoulders, like those of a doll, which was explained by their being girt round at that point with the straps of a knapsack that he carried behind him. encouraged by the probability that he, like herself, was staying or had been staying at the 'red lion,' she said, 'can you tell me if this is the way back to anglebury?' 'it is one way; but the nearest is in this direction,' said the tourist--the same who had been criticized by the two old men. at hearing him speak all the delicate activities in the young lady's person stood still: she stopped like a clock. when she could again fence with the perception which had caused all this, she breathed. 'mr. julian!' she exclaimed. the words were uttered in a way which would have told anybody in a moment that here lay something connected with the light of other days. 'ah, mrs. petherwin!--yes, i am mr. julian--though that can matter very little, i should think, after all these years, and what has passed.' no remark was returned to this rugged reply, and he continued unconcernedly, 'shall i put you in the path--it is just here?' 'if you please.' 'come with me, then.' she walked in silence at his heels, not a word passing between them all the way: the only noises which came from the two were the brushing of her dress and his gaiters against the heather, or the smart rap of a stray flint against his boot. they had now reached a little knoll, and he turned abruptly: 'that is anglebury--just where you see those lights. the path down there is the one you must follow; it leads round the hill yonder and directly into the town.' 'thank you,' she murmured, and found that he had never removed his eyes from her since speaking, keeping them fixed with mathematical exactness upon one point in her face. she moved a little to go on her way; he moved a little less--to go on his. 'good-night,' said mr. julian. the moment, upon the very face of it, was critical; and yet it was one of those which have to wait for a future before they acquire a definite character as good or bad. thus much would have been obvious to any outsider; it may have been doubly so to ethelberta, for she gave back more than she had got, replying, 'good-bye--if you are going to say no more.' then in struck mr. julian: 'what can i say? you are nothing to me. . . . i could forgive a woman doing anything for spite, except marrying for spite.' 'the connection of that with our present meeting does not appear, unless it refers to what you have done. it does not refer to me.' 'i am not married: you are.' she did not contradict him, as she might have done. 'christopher,' she said at last, 'this is how it is: you knew too much of me to respect me, and too little to pity me. a half knowledge of another's life mostly does injustice to the life half known.' 'then since circumstances forbid my knowing you more, i must do my best to know you less, and elevate my opinion of your nature by forgetting what it consists in,' he said in a voice from which all feeling was polished away. 'if i did not know that bitterness had more to do with those words than judgment, i--should be--bitter too! you never knew half about me; you only knew me as a governess; you little think what my beginnings were.' 'i have guessed. i have many times told myself that your early life was superior to your position when i first met you. i think i may say without presumption that i recognize a lady by birth when i see her, even under reverses of an extreme kind. and certainly there is this to be said, that the fact of having been bred in a wealthy home does slightly redeem an attempt to attain to such a one again.' ethelberta smiled a smile of many meanings. 'however, we are wasting words,' he resumed cheerfully. 'it is better for us to part as we met, and continue to be the strangers that we have become to each other. i owe you an apology for having been betrayed into more feeling than i had a right to show, and let us part friends. good night, mrs. petherwin, and success to you. we may meet again, some day, i hope.' 'good night,' she said, extending her hand. he touched it, turned about, and in a short time nothing remained of him but quick regular brushings against the heather in the deep broad shadow of the moor. ethelberta slowly moved on in the direction that he had pointed out. this meeting had surprised her in several ways. first, there was the conjuncture itself; but more than that was the fact that he had not parted from her with any of the tragic resentment that she had from time to time imagined for that scene if it ever occurred. yet there was really nothing wonderful in this: it is part of the generous nature of a bachelor to be not indisposed to forgive a portionless sweetheart who, by marrying elsewhere, has deprived him of the bliss of being obliged to marry her himself. ethelberta would have been disappointed quite had there not been a comforting development of exasperation in the middle part of his talk; but after all it formed a poor substitute for the loving hatred she had expected. when she reached the hotel the lamp over the door showed a face a little flushed, but the agitation which at first had possessed her was gone to a mere nothing. in the hall she met a slender woman wearing a silk dress of that peculiar black which in sunlight proclaims itself to have once seen better days as a brown, and days even better than those as a lavender, green, or blue. 'menlove,' said the lady, 'did you notice if any gentleman observed and followed me when i left the hotel to go for a walk this evening?' the lady's-maid, thus suddenly pulled up in a night forage after lovers, put a hand to her forehead to show that there was no mistake about her having begun to meditate on receiving orders to that effect, and said at last, 'you once told me, ma'am, if you recollect, that when you were dressed, i was not to go staring out of the window after you as if you were a doll i had just manufactured and sent round for sale.' 'yes, so i did.' 'so i didn't see if anybody followed you this evening.' 'then did you hear any gentleman arrive here by the late train last night?' 'o no, ma'am--how could i?' said mrs. menlove--an exclamation which was more apposite than her mistress suspected, considering that the speaker, after retiring from duty, had slipped down her dark skirt to reveal a light, puffed, and festooned one, put on a hat and feather, together with several pennyweights of metal in the form of rings, brooches, and earrings--all in a time whilst one could count a hundred--and enjoyed half-an-hour of prime courtship by an honourable young waiter of the town, who had proved constant as the magnet to the pole for the space of the day and a half that she had known him. going at once upstairs, ethelberta ran down the passage, and after some hesitation softly opened the door of the sitting-room in the best suite of apartments that the inn could boast of. in this room sat an elderly lady writing by the light of two candles with green shades. well knowing, as it seemed, who the intruder was, she continued her occupation, and her visitor advanced and stood beside the table. the old lady wore her spectacles low down her cheek, her glance being depressed to about the slope of her straight white nose in order to look through them. her mouth was pursed up to almost a youthful shape as she formed the letters with her pen, and a slight move of the lip accompanied every downstroke. there were two large antique rings on her forefinger, against which the quill rubbed in moving backwards and forwards, thereby causing a secondary noise rivalling the primary one of the nib upon the paper. 'mamma,' said the younger lady, 'here i am at last.' a writer's mind in the midst of a sentence being like a ship at sea, knowing no rest or comfort till safely piloted into the harbour of a full stop, lady petherwin just replied with 'what,' in an occupied tone, not rising to interrogation. after signing her name to the letter, she raised her eyes. 'why, how late you are, ethelberta, and how heated you look!' she said. 'i have been quite alarmed about you. what do you say has happened?' the great, chief, and altogether eclipsing thing that had happened was the accidental meeting with an old lover whom she had once quarrelled with; and ethelberta's honesty would have delivered the tidings at once, had not, unfortunately, all the rest of her attributes been dead against that act, for the old lady's sake even more than for her own. 'i saw a great cruel bird chasing a harmless duck!' she exclaimed innocently. 'and i ran after to see what the end of it would be--much further than i had any idea of going. however, the duck came to a pond, and in running round it to see the end of the fight, i could not remember which way i had come.' 'mercy!' said her mother-in-law, lifting her large eyelids, heavy as window-shutters, and spreading out her fingers like the horns of a snail. 'you might have sunk up to your knees and got lost in that swampy place--such a time of night, too. what a tomboy you are! and how did you find your way home after all!' 'o, some man showed me the way, and then i had no difficulty, and after that i came along leisurely.' 'i thought you had been running all the way; you look so warm.' 'it is a warm evening. . . . yes, and i have been thinking of old times as i walked along,' she said, 'and how people's positions in life alter. have i not heard you say that while i was at bonn, at school, some family that we had known had their household broken up when the father died, and that the children went away you didn't know where?' 'do you mean the julians?' 'yes, that was the name.' 'why, of course you know it was the julians. young julian had a day or two's fancy for you one summer, had he not?--just after you came to us, at the same time, or just before it, that my poor boy and you were so desperately attached to each other.' 'o yes, i recollect,' said ethelberta. 'and he had a sister, i think. i wonder where they went to live after the family collapse.' 'i do not know,' said lady petherwin, taking up another sheet of paper. 'i have a dim notion that the son, who had been brought up to no profession, became a teacher of music in some country town--music having always been his hobby. but the facts are not very distinct in my memory.' and she dipped her pen for another letter. ethelberta, with a rather fallen countenance, then left her mother-in- law, and went where all ladies are supposed to go when they want to torment their minds in comfort--to her own room. here she thoughtfully sat down awhile, and some time later she rang for her maid. 'menlove,' she said, without looking towards a rustle and half a footstep that had just come in at the door, but leaning back in her chair and speaking towards the corner of the looking-glass, 'will you go down and find out if any gentleman named julian has been staying in this house? get to know it, i mean, menlove, not by directly inquiring; you have ways of getting to know things, have you not? if the devoted george were here now, he would help--' 'george was nothing to me, ma'am.' 'james, then.' 'and i only had james for a week or ten days: when i found he was a married man, i encouraged his addresses very little indeed.' 'if you had encouraged him heart and soul, you couldn't have fumed more at the loss of him. but please to go and make that inquiry, will you, menlove?' in a few minutes ethelberta's woman was back again. 'a gentleman of that name stayed here last night, and left this afternoon.' 'will you find out his address?' now the lady's-maid had already been quick-witted enough to find out that, and indeed all about him; but it chanced that a fashionable illustrated weekly paper had just been sent from the bookseller's, and being in want of a little time to look it over before it reached her mistress's hands, mrs. menlove retired, as if to go and ask the question--to stand meanwhile under the gas-lamp in the passage, inspecting the fascinating engravings. but as time will not wait for tire-women, a natural length of absence soon elapsed, and she returned again and said, 'his address is, upper street, sandbourne.' 'thank you, that will do,' replied her mistress. the hour grew later, and that dreamy period came round when ladies' fancies, that have lain shut up close as their fans during the day, begin to assert themselves anew. at this time a good guess at ethelberta's thoughts might have been made from her manner of passing the minutes away. instead of reading, entering notes in her diary, or doing any ordinary thing, she walked to and fro, curled her pretty nether lip within her pretty upper one a great many times, made a cradle of her locked fingers, and paused with fixed eyes where the walls of the room set limits upon her walk to look at nothing but a picture within her mind. . christopher's house--sandbourne town--sandbourne moor during the wet autumn of the same year, the postman passed one morning as usual into a plain street that ran through the less fashionable portion of sandbourne, a modern coast town and watering-place not many miles from the ancient anglebury. he knocked at the door of a flat-faced brick house, and it was opened by a slight, thoughtful young man, with his hat on, just then coming out. the postman put into his hands a book packet, addressed, 'christopher julian, esq.' christopher took the package upstairs, opened it with curiosity, and discovered within a green volume of poems, by an anonymous writer, the title-page bearing the inscription, 'metres by e.' the book was new, though it was cut, and it appeared to have been looked into. the young man, after turning it over and wondering where it came from, laid it on the table and went his way, being in haste to fulfil his engagements for the day. in the evening, on returning home from his occupations, he sat himself down cosily to read the newly-arrived volume. the winds of this uncertain season were snarling in the chimneys, and drops of rain spat themselves into the fire, revealing plainly that the young man's room was not far enough from the top of the house to admit of a twist in the flue, and revealing darkly a little more, if that social rule-of-three inverse, the higher in lodgings the lower in pocket, were applicable here. however, the aspect of the room, though homely, was cheerful, a somewhat contradictory group of furniture suggesting that the collection consisted of waifs and strays from a former home, the grimy faces of the old articles exercising a curious and subduing effect on the bright faces of the new. an oval mirror of rococo workmanship, and a heavy cabinet-piano with a cornice like that of an egyptian temple, adjoined a harmonium of yesterday, and a harp that was almost as new. printed music of the last century, and manuscript music of the previous evening, lay there in such quantity as to endanger the tidiness of a retreat which was indeed only saved from a chronic state of litter by a pair of hands that sometimes played, with the lightness of breezes, about the sewing-machine standing in a remote corner--if any corner could be called remote in a room so small. fire lights and shades from the shaking flames struck in a butterfly flutter on the underparts of the mantelshelf, and upon the reader's cheek as he sat. presently, and all at once, a much greater intentness pervaded his face: he turned back again, and read anew the subject that had arrested his eyes. he was a man whose countenance varied with his mood, though it kept somewhat in the rear of that mood. he looked sad when he felt almost serene, and only serene when he felt quite cheerful. it is a habit people acquire who have had repressing experiences. a faint smile and flush now lightened his face, and jumping up he opened the door and exclaimed, 'faith! will you come here for a moment?' a prompt step was heard on the stairs, and the young person addressed as faith entered the room. she was small in figure, and bore less in the form of her features than in their shades when changing from expression to expression the evidence that she was his sister. 'faith--i want your opinion. but, stop, read this first.' he laid his finger upon a page in the book, and placed it in her hand. the girl drew from her pocket a little green-leather sheath, worn at the edges to whity-brown, and out of that a pair of spectacles, unconsciously looking round the room for a moment as she did so, as if to ensure that no stranger saw her in the act of using them. here a weakness was uncovered at once; it was a small, pretty, and natural one; indeed, as weaknesses go in the great world, it might almost have been called a commendable trait. she then began to read, without sitting down. these 'metres by e.' composed a collection of soft and marvellously musical rhymes, of a nature known as the vers de societe. the lines presented a series of playful defences of the supposed strategy of womankind in fascination, courtship, and marriage--the whole teeming with ideas bright as mirrors and just as unsubstantial, yet forming a brilliant argument to justify the ways of girls to men. the pervading characteristic of the mass was the means of forcing into notice, by strangeness of contrast, the single mournful poem that the book contained. it was placed at the very end, and under the title of 'cancelled words,' formed a whimsical and rather affecting love-lament, somewhat in the tone of many of sir thomas wyatt's poems. this was the piece which had arrested christopher's attention, and had been pointed out by him to his sister faith. 'it is very touching,' she said, looking up. 'what do you think i suspect about it--that the poem is addressed to me! do you remember, when father was alive and we were at solentsea that season, about a governess who came there with a sir ralph petherwin and his wife, people with a sickly little daughter and a grown-up son?' 'i never saw any of them. i think i remember your knowing something about a young man of that name.' 'yes, that was the family. well, the governess there was a very attractive woman, and somehow or other i got more interested in her than i ought to have done (this is necessary to the history), and we used to meet in romantic places--and--and that kind of thing, you know. the end of it was, she jilted me and married the son.' 'you were anxious to get away from solentsea.' 'was i? then that was chiefly the reason. well, i decided to think no more of her, and i was helped to do it by the troubles that came upon us shortly afterwards; it is a blessed arrangement that one does not feel a sentimental grief at all when additional grief comes in the shape of practical misfortune. however, on the first afternoon of the little holiday i took for my walking tour last summer, i came to anglebury, and stayed about the neighbourhood for a day or two to see what it was like, thinking we might settle there if this place failed us. the next evening i left, and walked across the heath to flychett--that's a village about five miles further on--so as to be that distance on my way for next morning; and while i was crossing the heath there i met this very woman. we talked a little, because we couldn't help it--you may imagine the kind of talk it was--and parted as coolly as we had met. now this strange book comes to me; and i have a strong conviction that she is the writer of it, for that poem sketches a similar scene--or rather suggests it; and the tone generally seems the kind of thing she would write--not that she was a sad woman, either.' 'she seems to be a warm-hearted, impulsive woman, to judge from these tender verses.' 'people who print very warm words have sometimes very cold manners. i wonder if it is really her writing, and if she has sent it to me!' 'would it not be a singular thing for a married woman to do? though of course'--(she removed her spectacles as if they hindered her from thinking, and hid them under the timepiece till she should go on reading)--'of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them. i am sure i would not have sent it to a man for the world!' 'i do not see any absolute harm in her sending it. perhaps she thinks that, since it is all over, we may as well die friends.' 'if i were her husband i should have doubts about the dying. and "all over" may not be so plain to other people as it is to you.' 'perhaps not. and when a man checks all a woman's finer sentiments towards him by marrying her, it is only natural that it should find a vent somewhere. however, she probably does not know of my downfall since father's death. i hardly think she would have cared to do it had she known that. (i am assuming that it is ethelberta--mrs. petherwin--who sends it: of course i am not sure.) we must remember that when i knew her i was a gentleman at ease, who had not the least notion that i should have to work for a living, and not only so, but should have first to invent a profession to work at out of my old tastes.' 'kit, you have made two mistakes in your thoughts of that lady. even though i don't know her, i can show you that. now i'll tell you! the first is in thinking that a married lady would send the book with that poem in it without at any rate a slight doubt as to its propriety: the second is in supposing that, had she wished to do it, she would have given the thing up because of our misfortunes. with a true woman the second reason would have had no effect had she once got over the first. i'm a woman, and that's why i know.' christopher said nothing, and turned over the poems. * * * * * he lived by teaching music, and, in comparison with starving, thrived; though the wealthy might possibly have said that in comparison with thriving he starved. during this night he hummed airs in bed, thought he would do for the ballad of the fair poetess what other musicians had done for the ballads of other fair poetesses, and dreamed that she smiled on him as her prototype sappho smiled on phaon. the next morning before starting on his rounds a new circumstance induced him to direct his steps to the bookseller's, and ask a question. he had found on examining the wrapper of the volume that it was posted in his own town. 'no copy of the book has been sold by me,' the bookseller's voice replied from far up the alpine height of the shop-ladder, where he stood dusting stale volumes, as was his habit of a morning before customers came. 'i have never heard of it--probably never shall;' and he shook out the duster, so as to hit the delicate mean between stifling christopher and not stifling him. 'surely you don't live by your shop?' said christopher, drawing back. the bookseller's eyes rested on the speaker's; his face changed; he came down and placed his hand on the lapel of christopher's coat. 'sir,' he said, 'country bookselling is a miserable, impoverishing, exasperating thing in these days. can you understand the rest?' 'i can; i forgive a starving man anything,' said christopher. 'you go a long way very suddenly,' said the book seller. 'half as much pity would have seemed better. however, wait a moment.' he looked into a list of new books, and added: 'the work you allude to was only published last week; though, mind you, if it had been published last century i might not have sold a copy.' although his time was precious, christopher had now become so interested in the circumstance that the unseen sender was somebody breathing his own atmosphere, possibly the very writer herself--the book being too new to be known--that he again passed through the blue shadow of the spire which stretched across the street to-day, and went towards the post-office, animated by a bright intention--to ask the postmaster if he knew the handwriting in which the packet was addressed. now the postmaster was an acquaintance of christopher's, but, as regarded putting that question to him, there was a difficulty. everything turned upon whether the postmaster at the moment of asking would be in his under- government manner, or in the manner with which mere nature had endowed him. in the latter case his reply would be all that could be wished; in the former, a man who had sunk in society might as well put his tongue into a mousetrap as make an inquiry so obviously outside the pale of legality as was this. so he postponed his business for the present, and refrained from entering till he passed by after dinner, when pleasant malt liquor, of that capacity for cheering which is expressed by four large letter x's marching in a row, had refilled the globular trunk of the postmaster and neutralized some of the effects of officiality. the time was well chosen, but the inquiry threatened to prove fruitless: the postmaster had never, to his knowledge, seen the writing before. christopher was turning away when a clerk in the background looked up and stated that some young lady had brought a packet with such an address upon it into the office two days earlier to get it stamped. 'do you know her?' said christopher. 'i have seen her about the neighbourhood. she goes by every morning; i think she comes into the town from beyond the common, and returns again between four and five in the afternoon.' 'what does she wear?' 'a white wool jacket with zigzags of black braid.' christopher left the post-office and went his way. among his other pupils there were two who lived at some distance from sandbourne--one of them in the direction indicated as that habitually taken by the young person; and in the afternoon, as he returned homeward, christopher loitered and looked around. at first he could see nobody; but when about a mile from the outskirts of the town he discerned a light spot ahead of him, which actually turned out to be the jacket alluded to. in due time he met the wearer face to face; she was not ethelberta petherwin--quite a different sort of individual. he had long made up his mind that this would be the case, yet he was in some indescribable way disappointed. of the two classes into which gentle young women naturally divide, those who grow red at their weddings, and those who grow pale, the present one belonged to the former class. she was an april-natured, pink-cheeked girl, with eyes that would have made any jeweller in england think of his trade--one who evidently took her day in the daytime, frequently caught the early worm, and had little to do with yawns or candlelight. she came and passed him; he fancied that her countenance changed. but one may fancy anything, and the pair receded each from each without turning their heads. he could not speak to her, plain and simple as she seemed. it is rarely that a man who can be entered and made to throb by the channel of his ears is not open to a similar attack through the channel of his eyes--for many doors will admit to one mansion--allowance being made for the readier capacity of chosen and practised organs. hence the beauties, concords, and eloquences of the female form were never without their effect upon christopher, a born musician, artist, poet, seer, mouthpiece--whichever a translator of nature's oracles into simple speech may be called. the young girl who had gone by was fresh and pleasant; moreover, she was a sort of mysterious link between himself and the past, which these things were vividly reviving in him. the following week christopher met her again. she had not much dignity, he had not much reserve, and the sudden resolution to have a holiday which sometimes impels a plump heart to rise up against a brain that overweights it was not to be resisted. he just lifted his hat, and put the only question he could think of as a beginning: 'have i the pleasure of addressing the author of a book of very melodious poems that was sent me the other day?' the girl's forefinger twirled rapidly the loop of braid that it had previously been twirling slowly, and drawing in her breath, she said, 'no, sir.' 'the sender, then?' 'yes.' she somehow presented herself as so insignificant by the combined effect of the manner and the words that christopher lowered his method of address to her level at once. 'ah,' he said, 'such an atmosphere as the writer of "metres by e." seems to breathe would soon spoil cheeks that are fresh and round as lady-apples--eh, little girl? but are you disposed to tell me that writer's name?' by applying a general idea to a particular case a person with the best of intentions may find himself immediately landed in a quandary. in saying to the country girl before him what would have suited the mass of country lasses well enough, christopher had offended her beyond the cure of compliment. 'i am not disposed to tell the writer's name,' she replied, with a dudgeon that was very great for one whose whole stock of it was a trifle. and she passed on and left him standing alone. thus further conversation was checked; but, through having rearranged the hours of his country lessons, christopher met her the next wednesday, and the next friday, and throughout the following week--no further words passing between them. for a while she went by very demurely, apparently mindful of his offence. but effrontery is not proved to be part of a man's nature till he has been guilty of a second act: the best of men may commit a first through accident or ignorance--may even be betrayed into it by over-zeal for experiment. some such conclusion may or may not have been arrived at by the girl with the lady-apple cheeks; at any rate, after the lapse of another week a new spectacle presented itself; her redness deepened whenever christopher passed her by, and embarrassment pervaded her from the lowest stitch to the tip of her feather. she had little chance of escaping him by diverging from the road, for a figure could be seen across the open ground to the distance of half a mile on either side. one day as he drew near as usual, she met him as women meet a cloud of dust--she turned and looked backwards till he had passed. this would have been disconcerting but for one reason: christopher was ceasing to notice her. he was a man who often, when walking abroad, and looking as it were at the scene before his eyes, discerned successes and failures, friends and relations, episodes of childhood, wedding feasts and funerals, the landscape suffering greatly by these visions, until it became no more than the patterned wall-tints about the paintings in a gallery; something necessary to the tone, yet not regarded. nothing but a special concentration of himself on externals could interrupt this habit, and now that her appearance along the way had changed from a chance to a custom he began to lapse again into the old trick. he gazed once or twice at her form without seeing it: he did not notice that she trembled. he sometimes read as he walked, and book in hand he frequently approached her now. this went on till six weeks had passed from the time of their first encounter. latterly might have been once or twice heard, when he had moved out of earshot, a sound like a small gasping sigh; but no arrangements were disturbed, and christopher continued to keep down his eyes as persistently as a saint in a church window. the last day of his engagement had arrived, and with it the last of his walks that way. on his final return he carried in his hand a bunch of flowers which had been presented to him at the country-house where his lessons were given. he was taking them home to his sister faith, who prized the lingering blossoms of the seeding season. soon appeared as usual his fellow-traveller; whereupon christopher looked down upon his nosegay. 'sweet simple girl,' he thought, 'i'll endeavour to make peace with her by means of these flowers before we part for good.' when she came up he held them out to her and said, 'will you allow me to present you with these?' the bright colours of the nosegay instantly attracted the girl's hand--perhaps before there had been time for thought to thoroughly construe the position; for it happened that when her arm was stretched into the air she steadied it quickly, and stood with the pose of a statue--rigid with uncertainty. but it was too late to refuse: christopher had put the nosegay within her fingers. whatever pleasant expression of thanks may have appeared in her eyes fell only on the bunch of flowers, for during the whole transaction they reached to no higher level than that. to say that he was coming no more seemed scarcely necessary under the circumstances, and wishing her 'good afternoon' very heartily, he passed on. he had learnt by this time her occupation, which was that of pupil-teacher at one of the schools in the town, whither she walked daily from a village near. if he had not been poor and the little teacher humble, christopher might possibly have been tempted to inquire more briskly about her, and who knows how such a pursuit might have ended? but hard externals rule volatile sentiment, and under these untoward influences the girl and the book and the truth about its author were matters upon which he could not afford to expend much time. all christopher did was to think now and then of the pretty innocent face and round deep eyes, not once wondering if the mind which enlivened them ever thought of him. . sandbourne moor (continued) it was one of those hostile days of the year when chatterbox ladies remain miserably in their homes to save the carriage and harness, when clerks' wives hate living in lodgings, when vehicles and people appear in the street with duplicates of themselves underfoot, when bricklayers, slaters, and other out-door journeymen sit in a shed and drink beer, when ducks and drakes play with hilarious delight at their own family game, or spread out one wing after another in the slower enjoyment of letting the delicious moisture penetrate to their innermost down. the smoke from the flues of sandbourne had barely strength enough to emerge into the drizzling rain, and hung down the sides of each chimney-pot like the streamer of a becalmed ship; and a troop of rats might have rattled down the pipes from roof to basement with less noise than did the water that day. on the broad moor beyond the town, where christopher's meetings with the teacher had so regularly occurred, were a stream and some large pools; and beside one of these, near some hatches and a weir, stood a little square building, not much larger inside than the lord mayor's coach. it was known simply as 'the weir house.' on this wet afternoon, which was the one following the day of christopher's last lesson over the plain, a nearly invisible smoke came from the puny chimney of the hut. though the door was closed, sounds of chatting and mirth fizzed from the interior, and would have told anybody who had come near--which nobody did--that the usually empty shell was tenanted to-day. the scene within was a large fire in a fireplace to which the whole floor of the house was no more than a hearthstone. the occupants were two gentlemanly persons, in shooting costume, who had been traversing the moor for miles in search of wild duck and teal, a waterman, and a small spaniel. in the corner stood their guns, and two or three wild mallards, which represented the scanty product of their morning's labour, the iridescent necks of the dead birds replying to every flicker of the fire. the two sportsmen were smoking, and their man was mostly occupying himself in poking and stirring the fire with a stick: all three appeared to be pretty well wetted. one of the gentlemen, by way of varying the not very exhilarating study of four brick walls within microscopic distance of his eye, turned to a small square hole which admitted light and air to the hut, and looked out upon the dreary prospect before him. the wide concave of cloud, of the monotonous hue of dull pewter, formed an unbroken hood over the level from horizon to horizon; beneath it, reflecting its wan lustre, was the glazed high-road which stretched, hedgeless and ditchless, past a directing-post where another road joined it, and on to the less regular ground beyond, lying like a riband unrolled across the scene, till it vanished over the furthermost undulation. beside the pools were occasional tall sheaves of flags and sedge, and about the plain a few bushes, these forming the only obstructions to a view otherwise unbroken. the sportsman's attention was attracted by a figure in a state of gradual enlargement as it approached along the road. 'i should think that if pleasure can't tempt a native out of doors to- day, business will never force him out,' he observed. 'there is, for the first time, somebody coming along the road.' 'if business don't drag him out pleasure'll never tempt en, is more like our nater in these parts, sir,' said the man, who was looking into the fire. the conversation showed no vitality, and down it dropped dead as before, the man who was standing up continuing to gaze into the moisture. what had at first appeared as an epicene shape the decreasing space resolved into a cloaked female under an umbrella: she now relaxed her pace, till, reaching the directing-post where the road branched into two, she paused and looked about her. instead of coming further she slowly retraced her steps for about a hundred yards. 'that's an appointment,' said the first speaker, as he removed the cigar from his lips; 'and by the lords, what a day and place for an appointment with a woman!' 'what's an appointment?' inquired his friend, a town young man, with a tussaud complexion and well-pencilled brows half way up his forehead, so that his upper eyelids appeared to possess the uncommon quality of tallness. 'look out here, and you'll see. by that directing-post, where the two roads meet. as a man devoted to art, ladywell, who has had the honour of being hung higher up on the academy walls than any other living painter, you should take out your sketch-book and dash off the scene.' where nothing particular is going on, one incident makes a drama; and, interested in that proportion, the art-sportsman puts up his eyeglass (a form he adhered to before firing at game that had risen, by which merciful arrangement the bird got safe off), placed his face beside his companion's, and also peered through the opening. the young pupil-teacher--for she was the object of their scrutiny--re-approached the spot whereon she had been accustomed for the last many weeks of her journey home to meet christopher, now for the first time missing, and again she seemed reluctant to pass the hand-post, for that marked the point where the chance of seeing him ended. she glided backwards as before, this time keeping her face still to the front, as if trying to persuade the world at large, and her own shamefacedness, that she had not yet approached the place at all. 'query, how long will she wait for him (for it is a man to a certainty)?' resumed the elder of the smokers, at the end of several minutes of silence, when, full of vacillation and doubt, she became lost to view behind some bushes. 'will she reappear?' the smoking went on, and up she came into open ground as before, and walked by. 'i wonder who the girl is, to come to such a place in this weather? there she is again,' said the young man called ladywell. 'some cottage lass, not yet old enough to make the most of the value set on her by her follower, small as that appears to be. now we may get an idea of the hour named by the fellow for the appointment, for, depend upon it, the time when she first came--about five minutes ago--was the time he should have been there. it is now getting on towards five--half- past four was doubtless the time mentioned.' 'she's not come o' purpose: 'tis her way home from school every day,' said the waterman. 'an experiment on woman's endurance and patience under neglect. two to one against her staying a quarter of an hour.' 'the same odds against her not staying till five would be nearer probability. what's half-an-hour to a girl in love?' 'on a moorland in wet weather it is thirty perceptible minutes to any fireside man, woman, or beast in christendom--minutes that can be felt, like the egyptian plague of darkness. now, little girl, go home: he is not worth it.' twenty minutes passed, and the girl returned miserably to the hand-post, still to wander back to her retreat behind the sedge, and lead any chance comer from the opposite quarter to believe that she had not yet reached this ultimate point beyond which a meeting with christopher was impossible. 'now you'll find that she means to wait the complete half-hour, and then off she goes with a broken heart.' all three now looked through the hole to test the truth of the prognostication. the hour of five completed itself on their watches; the girl again came forward. and then the three in ambuscade could see her pull out her handkerchief and place it to her eyes. 'she's grieving now because he has not come. poor little woman, what a brute he must be; for a broken heart in a woman means a broken vow in a man, as i infer from a thousand instances in experience, romance, and history. don't open the door till she is gone, ladywell; it will only disturb her.' as they had guessed, the pupil-teacher, hearing the distant town-clock strike the hour, gave way to her fancy no longer, and launched into the diverging path. this lingering for christopher's arrival had, as is known, been founded on nothing more of the nature of an assignation than lay in his regular walk along the plain at that time every monday, wednesday, and friday of the six previous weeks. it must be said that he was very far indeed from divining that his injudicious peace-offering of the flowers had stirred into life such a wearing, anxious, hopeful, despairing solicitude as this, which had been latent for some time during his constant meetings with the little stranger. she vanished in the mist towards the left, and the loiterers in the hut began to move and open the door, remarking, 'now then for wyndway house, a change of clothes, and a dinner.' . sandbourne pier--road to wyndway--ball-room in wyndway house the last light of a winter day had gone down behind the houses of sandbourne, and night was shut close over all. christopher, about eight o'clock, was standing at the end of the pier with his back towards the open sea, whence the waves were pushing to the shore in frills and coils that were just rendered visible in all their bleak instability by the row of lights along the sides of the jetty, the rapid motion landward of the wavetips producing upon his eye an apparent progress of the pier out to sea. this pier-head was a spot which christopher enjoyed visiting on such moaning and sighing nights as the present, when the sportive and variegated throng that haunted the pier on autumn days was no longer there, and he seemed alone with weather and the invincible sea. somebody came towards him along the deserted footway, and rays from the nearest lamp streaked the face of his sister faith. 'o christopher, i knew you were here,' she said eagerly. 'you are wanted; there's a servant come from wyndway house for you. he is sent to ask if you can come immediately to play at a little dance they have resolved upon this evening--quite suddenly it seems. if you can come, you must bring with you any assistant you can lay your hands upon at a moment's notice, he says.' 'wyndway house; why should the people send for me above all other musicians in the town?' faith did not know. 'if you really decide to go,' she said, as they walked homeward, 'you might take me as your assistant. i should answer the purpose, should i not, kit? since it is only a dance or two they seem to want.' 'and your harp i suppose you mean. yes; you might be competent to take a part. it cannot be a regular ball; they would have had the quadrille band for anything of that sort. faith--we'll go. however, let us see the man first, and inquire particulars.' reaching home, christopher found at his door a horse and wagonette in charge of a man-servant in livery, who repeated what faith had told her brother. wyndway house was a well-known country-seat three or four miles out of the town, and the coachman mentioned that if they were going it would be well that they should get ready to start as soon as they conveniently could, since he had been told to return by ten if possible. christopher quickly prepared himself, and put a new string or two into faith's harp, by which time she also was dressed; and, wrapping up herself and her instrument safe from the night air, away they drove at half-past nine. 'is it a large party?' said christopher, as they whizzed along. 'no, sir; it is what we call a dance--that is, 'tis like a ball, you know, on a small scale--a ball on a spurt, that you never thought of till you had it. in short, it grew out of a talk at dinner, i believe; and some of the young people present wanted a jig, and didn't care to play themselves, you know, young ladies being an idle class of society at the best of times. we've a house full of sleeping company, you understand--been there a week some of 'em--most of 'em being mistress's relations.' 'they probably found it a little dull.' 'well, yes--it is rather dull for 'em--christmas-time and all. as soon as it was proposed they were wild for sending post-haste for somebody or other to play to them.' 'did they name me particularly?' said christopher. 'yes; "mr. christopher julian," she says. "the gent who's turned music- man?" i said. "yes, that's him," says she.' 'there were music-men living nearer to your end of the town than i.' 'yes, but i know it was you particular: though i don't think mistress thought anything about you at first. mr. joyce--that's the butler--said that your name was mentioned to our old party, when he was in the room, by a young lady staying with us, and mistress says then, "the julians have had a downfall, and the son has taken to music." then when dancing was talked of, they said, "o, let's have him by all means."' 'was the young lady who first inquired for my family the same one who said, "let's have him by all means?"' 'o no; but it was on account of her asking that the rest said they would like you to play--at least that's as i had it from joyce.' 'do you know that lady's name?' 'mrs. petherwin.' 'ah!' 'cold, sir?' 'o no.' christopher did not like to question the man any further, though what he had heard added new life to his previous curiosity; and they drove along the way in silence, faith's figure, wrapped up to the top of her head, cutting into the sky behind them like a sugar-loaf. such gates as crossed the roads had been left open by the forethought of the coachman, and, passing the lodge, they proceeded about half-a-mile along a private drive, then ascended a rise, and came in view of the front of the mansion, punctured with windows that were now mostly lighted up. 'what is that?' said faith, catching a glimpse of something that the carriage-lamp showed on the face of one wall as they passed, a marble bas- relief of some battle-piece, built into the stonework. 'that's the scene of the death of one of the squire's forefathers--colonel sir martin jones, who was killed at the moment of victory in the battle of salamanca--but i haven't been here long enough to know the rights of it. when i am in one of my meditations, as i wait here with the carriage sometimes, i think how many more get killed at the moment of victory than at the moment of defeat. this is the entrance for you, sir.' and he turned the corner and pulled up before a side door. they alighted and went in, christopher shouldering faith's harp, and she marching modestly behind, with curly-eared music-books under her arm. they were shown into the house-steward's room, and ushered thence along a badly-lit passage and past a door within which a hum and laughter were audible. the door next to this was then opened for them, and they entered. * * * * * scarcely had faith, or christopher either, ever beheld a more shining scene than was presented by the saloon in which they now found themselves. coming direct from the gloomy park, and led to the room by that back passage from the servants' quarter, the light from the chandelier and branches against the walls, striking on gilding at all points, quite dazzled their sight for a minute or two; it caused faith to move forward with her eyes on the floor, and filled christopher with an impulse to turn back again into some dusky corner where every thread of his not over-new dress suit--rather moth-eaten through lack of feasts for airing it--could be counted less easily. he was soon seated before a grand piano, and faith sat down under the shadow of her harp, both being arranged on a dais within an alcove at one end of the room. a screen of ivy and holly had been constructed across the front of this recess for the games of the children on christmas eve, and it still remained there, a small creep-hole being left for entrance and exit. then the merry guests tumbled through doors at the further end, and dancing began. the mingling of black-coated men and bright ladies gave a charming appearance to the groups as seen by faith and her brother, the whole spectacle deriving an unexpected novelty from the accident of reaching their eyes through interstices in the tracery of green leaves, which added to the picture a softness that it would not otherwise have possessed. on the other hand, the musicians, having a much weaker light, could hardly be discerned by the performers in the dance. the music was now rattling on, and the ladies in their foam-like dresses were busily threading and spinning about the floor, when faith, casually looking up into her brother's face, was surprised to see that a change had come over it. at the end of the quadrille he leant across to her before she had time to speak, and said quietly, 'she's here!' 'who?' said faith, for she had not heard the words of the coachman. 'ethelberta.' 'which is she?' asked faith, peeping through with the keenest interest. 'the one who has the skirts of her dress looped up with convolvulus flowers--the one with her hair fastened in a sort of venus knot behind; she has just been dancing with that perfumed piece of a man they call mr. ladywell--it is he with the high eyebrows arched like a girl's.' he added, with a wrinkled smile, 'i cannot for my life see anybody answering to the character of husband to her, for every man takes notice of her.' they were interrupted by another dance being called for, and then, his fingers tapping about upon the keys as mechanically as fowls pecking at barleycorns, christopher gave himself up with a curious and far from unalloyed pleasure to the occupation of watching ethelberta, now again crossing the field of his vision like a returned comet whose characteristics were becoming purely historical. she was a plump-armed creature, with a white round neck as firm as a fort--altogether a vigorous shape, as refreshing to the eye as the green leaves through which he beheld her. she danced freely, and with a zest that was apparently irrespective of partners. he had been waiting long to hear her speak, and when at length her voice did reach his ears, it was the revelation of a strange matter to find how great a thing that small event had become to him. he knew the old utterance--rapid but not frequent, an obstructive thought causing sometimes a sudden halt in the midst of a stream of words. but the features by which a cool observer would have singled her out from others in his memory when asking himself what she was like, was a peculiar gaze into imaginary far-away distance when making a quiet remark to a partner--not with contracted eyes like a seafaring man, but with an open full look--a remark in which little words in a low tone were made to express a great deal, as several single gentlemen afterwards found. the production of dance-music when the criticizing stage among the dancers has passed, and they have grown full of excitement and animal spirits, does not require much concentration of thought in the producers thereof; and desultory conversation accordingly went on between faith and her brother from time to time. 'kit,' she said on one occasion, 'are you looking at the way in which the flowers are fastened to the leaves?--taking a mean advantage of being at the back of the tapestry? you cannot think how you stare at them.' 'i was looking through them--certainly not at them. i have a feeling of being moved about like a puppet in the hands of a person who legally can be nothing to me.' 'that charming woman with the shining bunch of hair and convolvuluses?' 'yes: it is through her that we are brought here, and through her writing that poem, "cancelled words," that the book was sent me, and through the accidental renewal of acquaintance between us on anglebury heath, that she wrote the poem. i was, however, at the moment you spoke, thinking more particularly of the little teacher whom ethelberta must have commissioned to send the book to me; and why that girl was chosen to do it.' 'there may be a hundred reasons. kit, i have never yet seen her look once this way.' christopher had certainly not yet received look or gesture from her; but his time came. it was while he was for a moment outside the recess, and he caught her in the act. she became slightly confused, turned aside, and entered into conversation with a neighbour. it was only a look, and yet what a look it was! one may say of a look that it is capable of division into as many species, genera, orders, and classes, as the animal world itself. christopher saw ethelberta petherwin's performance in this kind--the well-known spark of light upon the well-known depths of mystery--and felt something going out of him which had gone out of him once before. thus continually beholding her and her companions in the giddy whirl, the night wore on with the musicians, last dances and more last dances being added, till the intentions of the old on the matter were thrice exceeded in the interests of the young. watching the couples whirl and turn, advance and recede as gently as spirits, knot themselves like house-flies and part again, and lullabied by the faint regular beat of their footsteps to the tune, the players sank into the peculiar mesmeric quiet which comes over impressionable people who play for a great length of time in the midst of such scenes; and at last the only noises that christopher took cognizance of were those of the exceptional kind, breaking above the general sea of sound--a casual smart rustle of silk, a laugh, a stumble, the monosyllabic talk of those who happened to linger for a moment close to the leafy screen--all coming to his ears like voices from those old times when he had mingled in similar scenes, not as servant but as guest. . at the window--the road home the dancing was over at last, and the radiant company had left the room. a long and weary night it had been for the two players, though a stimulated interest had hindered physical exhaustion in one of them for a while. with tingling fingers and aching arms they came out of the alcove into the long and deserted apartment, now pervaded by a dry haze. the lights had burnt low, and faith and her brother were waiting by request till the wagonette was ready to take them home, a breakfast being in course of preparation for them meanwhile. christopher had crossed the room to relieve his cramped limbs, and now, peeping through a crevice in the window curtains, he said suddenly, 'who's for a transformation scene? faith, look here!' he touched the blind, up it flew, and a gorgeous scene presented itself to her eyes. a huge inflamed sun was breasting the horizon of a wide sheet of sea which, to her surprise and delight, the mansion overlooked. the brilliant disc fired all the waves that lay between it and the shore at the bottom of the grounds, where the water tossed the ruddy light from one undulation to another in glares as large and clear as mirrors, incessantly altering them, destroying them, and creating them again; while further off they multiplied, thickened, and ran into one another like struggling armies, till they met the fiery source of them all. 'o, how wonderful it is!' said faith, putting her hand on christopher's arm. 'who knew that whilst we were all shut in here with our puny illumination such an exhibition as this was going on outside! how sorry and mean the grand and stately room looks now!' christopher turned his back upon the window, and there were the hitherto beaming candle-flames shining no more radiantly than tarnished javelin- heads, while the snow-white lengths of wax showed themselves clammy and cadaverous as the fingers of a corpse. the leaves and flowers which had appeared so very green and blooming by the artificial light were now seen to be faded and dusty. only the gilding of the room in some degree brought itself into keeping with the splendours outside, stray darts of light seizing upon it and lengthening themselves out along fillet, quirk, arris, and moulding, till wasted away. 'it seems,' said faith, 'as if all the people who were lately so merry here had died: we ourselves look no more than ghosts.' she turned up her weary face to her brother's, which the incoming rays smote aslant, making little furrows of every wrinkle thereon, and shady ravines of every little furrow. 'you are very tired, faith,' he said. 'such a heavy night's work has been almost too much for you.' 'o, i don't mind that,' said faith. 'but i could not have played so long by myself.' 'we filled up one another's gaps; and there were plenty of them towards the morning; but, luckily, people don't notice those things when the small hours draw on.' 'what troubles me most,' said faith, 'is not that i have worked, but that you should be so situated as to need such miserable assistance as mine. we are poor, are we not, kit?' 'yes, we know a little about poverty,' he replied. while thus lingering 'in shadowy thoroughfares of thought,' faith interrupted with, 'i believe there is one of the dancers now!--why, i should have thought they had all gone to bed, and wouldn't get up again for days.' she indicated to him a figure on the lawn towards the left, looking upon the same flashing scene as that they themselves beheld. 'it is your own particular one,' continued faith. 'yes, i see the blue flowers under the edge of her cloak.' 'and i see her squirrel-coloured hair,' said christopher. both stood looking at this apparition, who once, and only once, thought fit to turn her head towards the front of the house they were gazing from. faith was one in whom the meditative somewhat overpowered the active faculties; she went on, with no abundance of love, to theorize upon this gratuitously charming woman, who, striking freakishly into her brother's path, seemed likely to do him no good in her sisterly estimation. ethelberta's bright and shapely form stood before her critic now, smartened by the motes of sunlight from head to heel: what faith would have given to see her so clearly within! 'without doubt she is already a lady of many romantic experiences,' she said dubiously. 'and on the way to many more,' said christopher. the tone was just of the kind which may be imagined of a sombre man who had been up all night piping that others might dance. faith parted her lips as if in consternation at possibilities. ethelberta, having already become an influence in christopher's system, might soon become more--an indestructible fascination--to drag him about, turn his soul inside out, harrow him, twist him, and otherwise torment him, according to the stereotyped form of such processes. they were interrupted by the opening of a door. a servant entered and came up to them. 'this is for you, i believe, sir,' he said. 'two guineas;' and he placed the money in christopher's hand. 'some breakfast will be ready for you in a moment if you like to have it. would you wish it brought in here; or will you come to the steward's room?' 'yes, we will come.' and the man then began to extinguish the lights one by one. christopher dropped the two pounds and two shillings singly into his pocket, and looking listlessly at the footman said, 'can you tell me the address of that lady on the lawn? ah, she has disappeared!' 'she wore a dress with blue flowers,' said faith. 'and remarkable bright in her manner? o, that's the young widow, mrs--what's that name--i forget for the moment.' 'widow?' said christopher, the eyes of his understanding getting wonderfully clear, and faith uttering a private ejaculation of thanks that after all no commandments were likely to be broken in this matter. 'the lady i mean is quite a girlish sort of woman.' 'yes, yes, so she is--that's the one. coachman says she must have been born a widow, for there is not time for her ever to have been made one. however, she's not quite such a chicken as all that. mrs. petherwin, that's the party's name.' 'does she live here?' 'no, she is staying in the house visiting for a few days with her mother- in-law. they are a london family, i don't know her address.' 'is she a poetess?' 'that i cannot say. she is very clever at verses; but she don't lean over gates to see the sun, and goes to church as regular as you or i, so i should hardly be inclined to say that she's the complete thing. when she's up in one of her vagaries she'll sit with the ladies and make up pretty things out of her head as fast as sticks a-breaking. they will run off her tongue like cotton from a reel, and if she can ever be got in the mind of telling a story she will bring it out that serious and awful that it makes your flesh creep upon your bones; if she's only got to say that she walked out of one door into another, she'll tell it so that there seems something wonderful in it. 'tis a bother to start her, so our people say behind her back, but, once set going, the house is all alive with her. however, it will soon be dull enough; she and lady petherwin are off to-morrow for rookington, where i believe they are going to stay over new year's day.' 'where do you say they are going?' inquired christopher, as they followed the footman. 'rookington park--about three miles out of sandbourne, in the opposite direction to this.' 'a widow,' christopher murmured. faith overheard him. 'that makes no difference to us, does it?' she said wistfully. forty minutes later they were driving along an open road over a ridge which commanded a view of a small inlet below them, the sands of this nook being sheltered by crumbling cliffs. here at once they saw, in the full light of the sun, two women standing side by side, their faces directed over the sea. 'there she is again!' said faith. 'she has walked along the shore from the lawn where we saw her before.' 'yes,' said the coachman, 'she's a curious woman seemingly. she'll talk to any poor body she meets. you see she had been out for a morning walk instead of going to bed, and that is some queer mortal or other she has picked up with on her way.' 'i wonder she does not prefer some rest,' faith observed. the road then dropped into a hollow, and the women by the sea were no longer within view from the carriage, which rapidly neared sandbourne with the two musicians. . the shore by wyndway the east gleamed upon ethelberta's squirrel-coloured hair as she said to her companion, 'i have come, picotee; but not, as you imagine, from a night's sleep. we have actually been dancing till daylight at wyndway.' 'then you should not have troubled to come! i could have borne the disappointment under such circumstances,' said the pupil-teacher, who, wearing a dress not so familiar to christopher's eyes as had been the little white jacket, had not been recognized by him from the hill. 'you look so tired, berta. i could not stay up all night for the world!' 'one gets used to these things,' said ethelberta quietly. 'i should have been in bed certainly, had i not particularly wished to use this opportunity of meeting you before you go home to-morrow. i could not have come to sandbourne to-day, because we are leaving to return again to rookington. this is all that i wish you to take to mother--only a few little things which may be useful to her; but you will see what it contains when you open it.' she handed to picotee a small parcel. 'this is for yourself,' she went on, giving a small packet besides. 'it will pay your fare home and back, and leave you something to spare.' 'thank you,' said picotee docilely. 'now, picotee,' continued the elder, 'let us talk for a few minutes before i go back: we may not meet again for some time.' she put her arm round the waist of picotee, who did the same by ethelberta; and thus interlaced they walked backwards and forwards upon the firm flat sand with the motion of one body animated by one will. 'well, what did you think of my poems?' 'i liked them; but naturally, i did not understand all the experience you describe. it is so different from mine. yet that made them more interesting to me. i thought i should so much like to mix in the same scenes; but that of course is impossible.' 'i am afraid it is. and you posted the book as i said?' 'yes.' she added hurriedly, as if to change the subject, 'i have told nobody that we are sisters, or that you are known in any way to me or to mother or to any of us. i thought that would be best, from what you said.' 'yes, perhaps it is best for the present.' 'the box of clothes came safely, and i find very little alteration will be necessary to make the dress do beautifully for me on sundays. it is quite new-fashioned to me, though i suppose it was old-fashioned to you. o, and berta, will the title of lady petherwin descend to you when your mother-in-law dies?' 'no, of course not. she is only a knight's widow, and that's nothing.' 'the lady of a knight looks as good on paper as the lady of a lord.' 'yes. and in other places too sometimes. however, about your journey home. be very careful; and don't make any inquiries at the stations of anybody but officials. if any man wants to be friendly with you, try to find out if it is from a genuine wish to assist you, or from admiration of your fresh face.' 'how shall i know which?' said picotee. ethelberta laughed. 'if heaven does not tell you at the moment i cannot,' she said. 'but humanity looks with a different eye from love, and upon the whole it is most to be prized by all of us. i believe it ends oftener in marriage than do a lover's flying smiles. so that for this and other reasons love from a stranger is mostly worthless as a speculation; and it is certainly dangerous as a game. well, picotee, has any one paid you real attentions yet?' 'no--that is--' 'there is something going on.' 'only a wee bit.' 'i thought so. there was a dishonesty about your dear eyes which has never been there before, and love-making and dishonesty are inseparable as coupled hounds. up comes man, and away goes innocence. are you going to tell me anything about him?' 'i would rather not, ethelberta; because it is hardly anything.' 'well, be careful. and mind this, never tell him what you feel.' 'but then he will never know it.' 'nor must he. he must think it only. the difference between his thinking and knowing is often the difference between your winning and losing. but general advice is not of much use, and i cannot give more unless you tell more. what is his name?' picotee did not reply. 'never mind: keep your secret. however, listen to this: not a kiss--not so much as the shadow, hint, or merest seedling of a kiss!' 'there is no fear of it,' murmured picotee; 'though not because of me!' 'you see, my dear picotee, a lover is not a relative; and he isn't quite a stranger; but he may end in being either, and the way to reduce him to whichever of the two you wish him to be is to treat him like the other. men who come courting are just like bad cooks: if you are kind to them, instead of ascribing it to an exceptional courtesy on your part, they instantly set it down to their own marvellous worth.' 'but i ought to favour him just a little, poor thing? just the smallest glimmer of a gleam!' 'only a very little indeed--so that it comes as a relief to his misery, not as adding to his happiness.' 'it is being too clever, all this; and we ought to be harmless as doves.' 'ah, picotee! to continue harmless as a dove you must be wise as a serpent, you'll find--ay, ten serpents, for that matter.' 'but if i cannot get at him, how can i manage him in these ways you speak of?' 'get at him? i suppose he gets at you in some way, does he not?--tries to see you, or to be near you?' 'no--that's just the point--he doesn't do any such thing, and there's the worry of it!' 'well, what a silly girl! then he is not your lover at all?' 'perhaps he's not. but i am his, at any rate--twice over.' 'that's no use. supply the love for both sides? why, it's worse than furnishing money for both. you don't suppose a man will give his heart in exchange for a woman's when he has already got hers for nothing? that's not the way old adam does business at all.' picotee sighed. 'have you got a young man, too, berta?' 'a young man?' 'a lover i mean--that's what we call 'em down here.' 'it is difficult to explain,' said ethelberta evasively. 'i knew one many years ago, and i have seen him again, and--that is all.' 'according to my idea you have one, but according to your own you have not; he does not love you, but you love him--is that how it is?' 'i have not quite considered how it is.' 'do you love him?' 'i have never seen a man i hate less.' 'a great deal lies covered up there, i expect!' 'he was in that carriage which drove over the hill at the moment we met here.' 'ah-ah--some great lord or another who has his day by candlelight, and so on. i guess the style. somebody who no more knows how much bread is a loaf than i do the price of diamonds and pearls.' 'i am afraid he's only a commoner as yet, and not a very great one either. but surely you guess, picotee? but i'll set you an example of frankness by telling his name. my friend, mr. julian, to whom you posted the book. such changes as he has seen!--from affluence to poverty. he and his sister have been playing dances all night at wyndway--what is the matter?' 'only a pain!' 'my dear picotee--' 'i think i'll sit down for a moment, berta.' 'what--have you over-walked yourself, dear?' 'yes--and i got up very early, you see.' 'i hope you are not going to be ill, child. you look as if you ought not to be here.' 'o, it is quite trifling. does not getting up in a hurry cause a sense of faintness sometimes?' 'yes, in people who are not strong.' 'if we don't talk about being faint it will go off. faintness is such a queer thing that to think of it is to have it. let us talk as we were talking before--about your young man and other indifferent matters, so as to divert my thoughts from fainting, dear berta. i have always thought the book was to be forwarded to that gentleman because he was a connection of yours by marriage, and he had asked for it. and so you have met this--this mr. julian, and gone for walks with him in evenings, i suppose, just as young men and women do who are courting?' 'no, indeed--what an absurd child you are!' said ethelberta. 'i knew him once, and he is interesting; a few little things like that make it all up.' 'the love is all on one side, as with me.' 'o no, no: there is nothing like that. i am not attached to any one, strictly speaking--though, more strictly speaking, i am not unattached.' ''tis a delightful middle mind to be in. i know it, for i was like it once; but i had scarcely been so long enough to know where i was before i was gone past.' 'you should have commanded yourself, or drawn back entirely; for let me tell you that at the beginning of caring for a man--just when you are suspended between thinking and feeling--there is a hair's-breadth of time at which the question of getting into love or not getting in is a matter of will--quite a thing of choice. at the same time, drawing back is a tame dance, and the best of all is to stay balanced awhile.' 'you do that well, i'll warrant.' 'well, no; for what between continually wanting to love, to escape the blank lives of those who do not, and wanting not to love, to keep out of the miseries of those who do, i get foolishly warm and foolishly cold by turns.' 'yes--and i am like you as far as the "foolishly" goes. i wish we poor girls could contrive to bring a little wisdom into our love by way of a change!' 'that's the very thing that leading minds in town have begun to do, but there are difficulties. it is easy to love wisely, but the rich man may not marry you; and it is not very hard to reject wisely, but the poor man doesn't care. altogether it is a precious problem. but shall we clamber out upon those shining blocks of rock, and find some of the little yellow shells that are in the crevices? i have ten minutes longer, and then i must go.' . the dining-room of a town house--the butler's pantry a few weeks later there was a friendly dinner-party at the house of a gentleman called doncastle, who lived in a moderately fashionable square of west london. all the friends and relatives present were nice people, who exhibited becoming signs of pleasure and gaiety at being there; but as regards the vigour with which these emotions were expressed, it may be stated that a slight laugh from far down the throat and a slight narrowing of the eye were equivalent as indices of the degree of mirth felt to a ha-ha-ha! and a shaking of the shoulders among the minor traders of the kingdom; and to a ho-ho-ho! contorted features, purple face, and stamping foot among the gentlemen in corduroy and fustian who adorn the remoter provinces. the conversation was chiefly about a volume of musical, tender, and humorous rhapsodies lately issued to the world in the guise of verse, which had been reviewed and talked about everywhere. this topic, beginning as a private dialogue between a young painter named ladywell and the lady on his right hand, had enlarged its ground by degrees, as a subject will extend on those rare occasions when it happens to be one about which each person has thought something beforehand, instead of, as in the natural order of things, one to which the oblivious listener replies mechanically, with earnest features, but with thoughts far away. and so the whole table made the matter a thing to inquire or reply upon at once, and isolated rills of other chat died out like a river in the sands. 'witty things, and occasionally anacreontic: and they have the originality which such a style must naturally possess when carried out by a feminine hand,' said ladywell. 'if it is a feminine hand,' said a man near. ladywell looked as if he sometimes knew secrets, though he did not wish to boast. 'written, i presume you mean, in the anacreontic measure of three feet and a half--spondees and iambics?' said a gentleman in spectacles, glancing round, and giving emphasis to his inquiry by causing bland glares of a circular shape to proceed from his glasses towards the person interrogated. the company appeared willing to give consideration to the words of a man who knew such things as that, and hung forward to listen. but ladywell stopped the whole current of affairs in that direction by saying-- 'o no; i was speaking rather of the matter and tone. in fact, the seven days' review said they were anacreontic, you know; and so they are--any one may feel they are.' the general look then implied a false encouragement, and the man in spectacles looked down again, being a nervous person, who never had time to show his merits because he was so much occupied in hiding his faults. 'do you know the authoress, mr. neigh?' continued ladywell. 'can't say that i do,' he replied. neigh was a man who never disturbed the flesh upon his face except when he was obliged to do so, and paused ten seconds where other people only paused one; as he moved his chin in speaking, motes of light from under the candle-shade caught, lost, and caught again the outlying threads of his burnished beard. 'she will be famous some day; and you ought at any rate to read her book.' 'yes, i ought, i know. in fact, some years ago i should have done it immediately, because i had a reason for pushing on that way just then.' 'ah, what was that?' 'well, i thought of going in for westminster abbey myself at that time; but a fellow has so much to do, and--' 'what a pity that you didn't follow it up. a man of your powers, mr. neigh--' 'afterwards i found i was too steady for it, and had too much of the respectable householder in me. besides, so many other men are on the same tack; and then i didn't care about it, somehow.' 'i don't understand high art, and am utterly in the dark on what are the true laws of criticism,' a plain married lady, who wore archaeological jewellery, was saying at this time. 'but i know that i have derived an unusual amount of amusement from those verses, and i am heartily thankful to "e." for them.' 'i am afraid,' said a gentleman who was suffering from a bad shirt-front, 'that an estimate which depends upon feeling in that way is not to be trusted as permanent opinion.' the subject now flitted to the other end. 'somebody has it that when the heart flies out before the understanding, it saves the judgment a world of pains,' came from a voice in that quarter. 'i, for my part, like something merry,' said an elderly woman, whose face was bisected by the edge of a shadow, which toned her forehead and eyelids to a livid neutral tint, and left her cheeks and mouth like metal at a white heat in the uninterrupted light. 'i think the liveliness of those ballads as great a recommendation as any. after all, enough misery is known to us by our experiences and those of our friends, and what we see in the newspapers, for all purposes of chastening, without having gratuitous grief inflicted upon us.' 'but you would not have wished that "romeo and juliet" should have ended happily, or that othello should have discovered the perfidy of his ancient in time to prevent all fatal consequences?' 'i am not afraid to go so far as that,' said the old lady. 'shakespeare is not everybody, and i am sure that thousands of people who have seen those plays would have driven home more cheerfully afterwards if by some contrivance the characters could all have been joined together respectively. i uphold our anonymous author on the general ground of her levity.' 'well, it is an old and worn argument--that about the inexpedience of tragedy--and much may be said on both sides. it is not to be denied that the anonymous sappho's verses--for it seems that she is really a woman--are clever.' 'clever!' said ladywell--the young man who had been one of the shooting- party at sandbourne--'they are marvellously brilliant.' 'she is rather warm in her assumed character.' 'that's a sign of her actual coldness; she lets off her feeling in theoretic grooves, and there is sure to be none left for practical ones. whatever seems to be the most prominent vice, or the most prominent virtue in anybody's writing is the one thing you are safest from in personal dealings with the writer.' 'o, i don't mean to call her warmth of feeling a vice or virtue exactly--' 'i agree with you,' said neigh to the last speaker but one, in tones as emphatic as they possibly could be without losing their proper character of indifference to the whole matter. 'warm sentiment of any sort, whenever we have it, disturbs us too much to leave us repose enough for writing it down.' 'i am sure, when i was at the ardent age,' said the mistress of the house, in a tone of pleasantly agreeing with every one, particularly those who were diametrically opposed to each other, 'i could no more have printed such emotions and made them public than i--could have helped privately feeling them.' 'i wonder if she has gone through half she says? if so, what an experience!' 'o no--not at all likely,' said mr. neigh. 'it is as risky to calculate people's ways of living from their writings as their incomes from their way of living.' 'she is as true to nature as fashion is false,' said the painter, in his warmth becoming scarcely complimentary, as sometimes happens with young persons. 'i don't think that she has written a word more than what every woman would deny feeling in a society where no woman says what she means or does what she says. and can any praise be greater than that?' 'ha-ha! capital!' 'all her verses seem to me,' said a rather stupid person, 'to be simply-- "tral'-la-la-lal'-la-la-la', tral'-la-la-lal'-la-la-lu', tral'-la-la-lal'-la-la-lalla', tral'-la-la-lu'." when you take away the music there is nothing left. yet she is plainly a woman of great culture.' 'have you seen what the london light says about them--one of the finest things i have ever read in the way of admiration?' continued ladywell, paying no attention to the previous speaker. he lingered for a reply, and then impulsively quoted several lines from the periodical he had named, without aid or hesitation. 'good, is it not?' added ladywell. they assented, but in such an unqualified manner that half as much readiness would have meant more. but ladywell, though not experienced enough to be quite free from enthusiasm, was too experienced to mind indifference for more than a minute or two. when the ladies had withdrawn, the young man went on-- 'colonel staff said a funny thing to me yesterday about these very poems. he asked me if i knew her, and--' 'her? why, he knows that it is a lady all the time, and we were only just now doubting whether the sex of the writer could be really what it seems. shame, ladywell!' said his friend neigh. 'ah, mr. ladywell,' said another, 'now we have found you out. you know her!' 'now--i say--ha-ha!' continued the painter, with a face expressing that he had not at all tried to be found out as the man possessing incomparably superior knowledge of the poetess. 'i beg pardon really, but don't press me on the matter. upon my word the secret is not my own. as i was saying, the colonel said, "do you know her?"--but you don't care to hear?' 'we shall be delighted!' 'so the colonel said, "do you know her?" adding, in a most comic way, "between u. and e., ladywell, i believe there is a close affinity"--meaning me, you know, by u. just like the colonel--ha-ha-ha!' the older men did not oblige ladywell a second time with any attempt at appreciation; but a weird silence ensued, during which the smile upon ladywell's face became frozen to painful permanence. 'meaning by e., you know, the "e" of the poems--heh-heh!' he added. 'it was a very humorous incident certainly,' said his friend neigh, at which there was a laugh--not from anything connected with what he said, but simply because it was the right thing to laugh when neigh meant you to do so. 'now don't, neigh--you are too hard upon me. but, seriously, two or three fellows were there when i said it, and they all began laughing--but, then, the colonel said it in such a queer way, you know. but you were asking me about her? well, the fact is, between ourselves, i do know that she is a lady; and i don't mind telling a word--' 'but we would not for the world be the means of making you betray her confidence--would we, jones?' 'no, indeed; we would not.' 'no, no; it is not that at all--this is really too bad!--you must listen just for a moment--' 'ladywell, don't betray anybody on our account.' 'whoever the illustrious young lady may be she has seen a great deal of the world,' said mr. doncastle blandly, 'and puts her experience of the comedy of its emotions, and of its method of showing them, in a very vivid light.' 'i heard a man say that the novelty with which the ideas are presented is more noticeable than the originality of the ideas themselves,' observed neigh. 'the woman has made a great talk about herself; and i am quite weary of people asking of her condition, place of abode, has she a father, has she a mother, or dearer one yet than all other.' 'i would have burlesque quotation put down by act of parliament, and all who dabble in it placed with him who can cite scripture for his purposes,' said ladywell, in retaliation. after a pause neigh remarked half-privately to their host, who was his uncle: 'your butler chickerel is a very intelligent man, as i have heard.' 'yes, he does very well,' said mr. doncastle. 'but is he not a--very extraordinary man?' 'not to my knowledge,' said doncastle, looking up surprised. 'why do you think that, alfred?' 'well, perhaps it was not a matter to mention. he reads a great deal, i dare say?' 'i don't think so.' 'i noticed how wonderfully his face kindled when we began talking about the poems during dinner. perhaps he is a poet himself in disguise. did you observe it?' 'no. to the best of my belief he is a very trustworthy and honourable man. he has been with us--let me see, how long?--five months, i think, and he was fifteen years in his last place. it certainly is a new side to his character if he publicly showed any interest in the conversation, whatever he might have felt.' 'since the matter has been mentioned,' said mr. jones, 'i may say that i too noticed the singularity of it.' 'if you had not said otherwise,' replied doncastle somewhat warmly, 'i should have asserted him to be the last man-servant in london to infringe such an elementary rule. if he did so this evening, it is certainly for the first time, and i sincerely hope that no annoyance was caused--' 'o no, no--not at all--it might have been a mistake of mine,' said jones. 'i should quite have forgotten the circumstance if mr. neigh's words had not brought it to my mind. it was really nothing to notice, and i beg that you will not say a word to him about it on my account.' 'he has a taste that way, my dear uncle, nothing more, depend upon it,' said neigh. 'if i had such a man belonging to me i should only be too proud. certainly do not mention it.' 'of course chickerel is chickerel,' mr. doncastle rejoined. 'we all know what that means. and really, on reflecting, i do remember that he is of a literary turn of mind--not further by an inch than is commendable, you know. i am quite aware as i glance down the papers and prints any morning that chickerel's eyes have been over the ground before mine, and that he generally forestalls the rest of us by a chapter or so in the last new book sent home; but in these vicious days that particular weakness is really virtue, just because it is not quite a vice.' 'yes,' said mr. jones, the reflective man in spectacles, 'positive virtues are getting moved off the stage: negative ones are moved on to the place of positives; we thank bare justice as we used only to thank generosity; call a man honest who steals only by law, and consider him a benefactor if he does not steal at all.' 'hear, hear!' said neigh. 'we will decide that chickerel is even a better trained fellow than if he had shown no interest at all in his face.' 'the action being like those trifling irregularities in art at its vigorous periods, which seemed designed to hide the unpleasant monotony of absolute symmetry,' said ladywell. 'on the other hand, an affected want of training of that sort would be even a better disguise for an artful man than a perfectly impassible demeanour. he is two removes from discovery in a hidden scheme, whilst a neutral face is only one.' 'you quite alarm me by these subtle theories,' said mr. doncastle, laughing; and the subject then became compounded with other matters, till the speakers rose to rejoin the charming flock upstairs. * * * * * in the basement story at this hour mr. chickerel the butler, who had formed the subject of discussion on the floor above, was busily engaged in looking after his two subordinates as they bustled about in the operations of clearing away. he was a man of whom, if the shape of certain bones and muscles of the face is ever to be taken as a guide to the character, one might safely have predicated conscientiousness in the performance of duties, a thorough knowledge of all that appertained to them, a general desire to live on without troubling his mind about anything which did not concern him. any person interested in the matter would have assumed without hesitation that the estimate his employer had given of chickerel was a true one--more, that not only would the butler under all ordinary circumstances resolutely prevent his face from showing curiosity in an unbecoming way, but that, with the soul of a true gentleman, he would, if necessary, equivocate as readily as the noblest of his betters to remove any stain upon his honour in such trifles. hence it is apparent that if chickerel's countenance really appeared, as neigh had asserted, full of curiosity with regard to the gossip that was going on, the feelings which led to the exhibition must have been of a very unusual and irrepressible kind. his hair was of that peculiar bluish-white which is to be observed when the oncoming years, instead of singling out special locks of a man's head for operating against, advance uniformly over the whole field, and enfeeble the colour at all points before absolutely extinguishing it anywhere; his nose was of the knotty shape in the gristle and earthward tendency in the flesh which is commonly said to carry sound judgment above it, his eyes were thoughtful, and his face was thin--a contour which, if it at once abstracted from his features that cheerful assurance of single-minded honesty which adorns the exteriors of so many of his brethren, might have raised a presumption in the minds of some beholders that perhaps in this case the quality might not be altogether wanting within. the coffee having been served to the people upstairs, one of the footmen rushed into his bedroom on the lower floor, and in a few minutes emerged again in the dress of a respectable clerk who had been born for better things, with the trifling exceptions that he wore a low-crowned hat, and instead of knocking his heels on the pavement walked with a gait as delicate as a lady's. going out of the area-door with a cigar in his mouth, he mounted the steps hastily to keep an appointment round the corner--the keeping of which as a private gentleman necessitated the change of the greater part of his clothes twice within a quarter of an hour--the limit of his time of absence. the other footman was upstairs, and the butler, finding that he had a few minutes to himself, sat down at the table and wrote:-- 'my dear ethelberta,--i did not intend to write to you for some few days to come, but the way in which you have been talked about here this evening makes me anxious to send a line or two at once, though i have very little time to spare, as usual. we have just had a dinner- party--indeed the carriages have not yet been brought round--and the talk at dinner was about your verses, of course. the thing was brought up by a young fellow named ladywell--do you know him? he is a painter by profession, but he has a pretty good private income beyond what he gets by practising his line of business among the nobility, and that i expect is not little, for he is well known, and encouraged because he is young, and good-looking, and so forth. his family own a good bit of land somewhere out aldbrickham way. however, i am before my story. from what they all said it is pretty clear that you are thought a great deal of in fashionable society as a poetess--but perhaps you know this as well as i--moving in it as you do yourself, my dear. 'the ladies afterwards got very curious about your age, so curious, in fact, and so full of certainty that you were thirty-five and a blighted existence, if an hour, that i felt inclined to rap out there and then, and hang what came of it: "my daughter, ladies, was to my own and her mother's certain knowledge only twenty-one last birthday, and has as bright a heart as anybody in london." one of them actually said that you must be fifty to have got such an experience. her guess was a very shrewd one in the bottom of it, however, for it was grounded upon the way you use those strange experiences of mine in the society that i tell you of, and dress them up as if they were yours; and, as you see, she hit off my own age to a year. i thought it was very sharp of her to be so right, although so wrong. 'i do not want to influence your plans in any way about things which your school learning fits you to understand much better than i, who never had such opportunities, but i think that if i were in your place, berta, i would not let my name be known just yet, for people always want what's kept from them, and don't value what's given. i am not sure, but i think that after the women had gone upstairs the others turned their thoughts upon you again; what they said about you i don't know, for if there's one thing i hate 'tis hanging about the doors when the men begin to get moved by their wine, which they did to a large extent to-night, and spoke very loud. they always do here, for old don is a hearty giver in his way. however, as you see these people from their own level now, it is not much that i can tell you in seeing them only from the under side, though i see strange things sometimes, and of course-- "what great ones do the less will prattle of," as it says in that book of select pieces that you gave me. 'well, my dear girl, i hope you will prosper. one thing above all others you'll have to mind, and it is that folk must continually strain to advance in order to remain where they are: and you particularly. but as for trying too hard, i wouldn't do it. much lies in minding this, that your best plan for lightness of heart is to raise yourself a little higher than your old mates, but not so high as to be quite out of their reach. all human beings enjoy themselves from the outside, and so getting on a little has this good in it, you still keep in your old class where your feelings are, and are thoughtfully treated by this class: while by getting on too much you are sneered at by your new acquaintance, who don't know the skill of your rise, and you are parted from and forgot by the old ones who do. whatever happens, don't be too quick to feel. you will surely get some hard blows when you are found out, for if the great can find no excuse for hitting with a mind, they'll do it and say 'twas in fun. but you are young and healthy, and youth and health are power. i wish i could have a decent footman here with me, but i suppose it is no use trying. it is such men as these that provoke the contempt we get. well, thank god a few years will see the end of me, for i am growing ashamed of my company--so different as they are to the servants of old times.--your affectionate father, r. chickerel. 'p.s.--do not press lady petherwin any further to remove the rules on which you live with her. she is quite right: she cannot keep us, and to recognize us would do you no good, nor us either. we are content to see you secretly, since it is best for you.' . christopher's lodgings--the grounds about rookington meanwhile, in the distant town of sandbourne, christopher julian had recovered from the weariness produced by his labours at the wyndway evening-party where ethelberta had been a star. instead of engaging his energies to clear encumbrances from the tangled way of his life, he now set about reading the popular 'metres by e.' with more interest and assiduity than ever; for though julian was a thinker by instinct, he was a worker by effort only; and the higher of these kinds being dependent upon the lower for its exhibition, there was often a lamentable lack of evidence of his power in either. it is a provoking correlation, and has conduced to the obscurity of many a genius. 'kit,' said his sister, on reviving at the end of the bad headache which had followed the dance, 'those poems seem to have increased in value with you. the lady, lofty as she appears to be, would be flattered if she only could know how much you study them. have you decided to thank her for them? now let us talk it over--i like having a chat about such a pretty new subject.' 'i would thank her in a moment if i were absolutely certain that she had anything to do with sending them, or even writing them. i am not quite sure of that yet.' 'how strange that a woman could bring herself to write those verses!' 'not at all strange--they are natural outpourings.' faith looked critically at the remoter caverns of the fire. 'why strange?' continued christopher. 'there is no harm in them.' 'o no--no harm. but i cannot explain to you--unless you see it partly of your own accord--that to write them she must be rather a fast lady--not a bad fast lady; a nice fast lady, i mean, of course. there, i have said it now, and i daresay you are vexed with me, for your interest in her has deepened to what it originally was, i think. i don't mean any absolute harm by "fast," kit.' 'bold, forward, you mean, i suppose?' faith tried to hit upon a better definition which should meet all views; and, on failing to do so, looked concerned at her brother's somewhat grieved appearance, and said, helplessly, 'yes, i suppose i do.' 'my idea of her is quite the reverse. a poetess must intrinsically be sensitive, or she could never feel: but then, frankness is a rhetorical necessity even with the most modest, if their inspirations are to do any good in the world. you will, for certain, not be interested in something i was going to tell you, which i thought would have pleased you immensely; but it is not worth mentioning now.' 'if you will not tell me, never mind. but don't be crabbed, kit! you know how interested i am in all your affairs.' 'it is only that i have composed an air to one of the prettiest of her songs, "when tapers tall"--but i am not sure about the power of it. this is how it begins--i threw it off in a few minutes, after you had gone to bed.' he went to the piano and lightly touched over an air, the manuscript copy of which he placed in front of him, and listened to hear her opinion, having proved its value frequently; for it was not that of a woman merely, but impersonally human. though she was unknown to fame, this was a great gift in faith, since to have an unsexed judgment is as precious as to be an unsexed being is deplorable. 'it is very fair indeed,' said the sister, scarcely moving her lips in her great attention. 'now again, and again, and again. how could you do it in the time!' kit knew that she admired his performance: passive assent was her usual praise, and she seldom insisted vigorously upon any view of his compositions unless for purposes of emendation. 'i was thinking that, as i cannot very well write to her, i may as well send her this,' said christopher, with lightened spirits, voice to correspond, and eyes likewise; 'there can be no objection to it, for such things are done continually. consider while i am gone, faith. i shall be out this evening for an hour or two.' when christopher left the house shortly after, instead of going into the town on some errand, as was customary whenever he went from home after dark, he ascended a back street, passed over the hills behind, and walked at a brisk pace inland along the road to rookington park, where, as he had learnt, ethelberta and lady petherwin were staying for a time, the day or two which they spent at wyndway having formed a short break in the middle of this visit. the moon was shining to-night, and christopher sped onwards over the pallid high-road as readily as he could have done at noonday. in three-quarters of an hour he reached the park gates; and entering now upon a tract which he had never before explored, he went along more cautiously and with some uncertainty as to the precise direction that the road would take. a frosted expanse of even grass, on which the shadow of his head appeared with an opal halo round it, soon allowed the house to be discovered beyond, the other portions of the park abounding with timber older and finer than that of any other spot in the neighbourhood. christopher withdrew into the shade, and wheeled round to the front of the building that contained his old love. here he gazed and idled, as many a man has done before him--wondering which room the fair poetess occupied, waiting till lights began to appear in the upper windows--which they did as uncertainly as glow-worms blinking up at eventide--and warming with currents of revived feeling in perhaps the sweetest of all conditions. new love is brightest, and long love is greatest; but revived love is the tenderest thing known upon earth. occupied thus, christopher was greatly surprised to see, on casually glancing to one side, another man standing close to the shadowy trunk of another tree, in a similar attitude to his own, gazing, with arms folded, as blankly at the windows of the house as christopher himself had been gazing. not willing to be discovered, christopher stuck closer to his tree. while he waited thus, the stranger began murmuring words, in a slow soft voice. christopher listened till he heard the following:-- 'pale was the day and rayless, love, that had an eve so dim.' two well-known lines from one of ethelberta's poems. jealousy is a familiar kind of heat which disfigures, licks playfully, clouds, blackens, and boils a man as a fire does a pot; and on recognizing these pilferings from what he had grown to regard as his own treasury, christopher's fingers began to nestle with great vigour in the palms of his hands. three or four minutes passed, when the unknown rival gave a last glance at the windows, and walked away. christopher did not like the look of that walk at all--there was grace enough in it to suggest that his antagonist had no mean chance of finding favour in a woman's eyes. a sigh, too, seemed to proceed from the stranger's breast; but as their distance apart was too great for any such sound to be heard by any possibility, christopher set down that to imagination, or to the brushing of the wind over the trees. the lighted windows went out one by one, and all the house was in darkness. julian then walked off himself, with a vigour that was spasmodic only, and with much less brightness of mind than he had experienced on his journey hither. the stranger had gone another way, and christopher saw no more of him. when he reached sandbourne, faith was still sitting up. 'but i told you i was going to take a long walk,' he said. 'no, christopher: really you did not. how tired and sad you do look--though i always know beforehand when you are in that state: one of your feet has a drag about it as you pass along the pavement outside the window.' 'yes, i forgot that i did not tell you.' he could not begin to describe his pilgrimage: it was too silly a thing even for her to hear of. 'it does not matter at all about my staying up,' said faith assuringly; 'that is, if exercise benefits you. walking up and down the lane, i suppose?' 'no; not walking up and down the lane.' 'the turnpike-road to rookington is pleasant.' 'faith, that is really where i have been. how came you to know?' 'i only guessed. verses and an accidental meeting produce a special journey.' 'ethelberta is a fine woman, physically and mentally, both. i wonder people do not talk about her twice as much as they do.' 'then surely you are getting attached to her again. you think you discover in her more than anybody else does; and love begins with a sense of superior discernment.' 'no, no. that is only nonsense,' he said hurriedly. 'however, love her or love her not, i can keep a corner of my heart for you, faith. there is another brute after her too, it seems.' 'of course there is: i expect there are many. her position in society is above ours, so that it is an unwise course to go troubling yourself more about her.' 'no. if a needy man must be so foolish as to fall in love, it is best to do so where he cannot double his foolishness by marrying the woman.' 'i don't like to hear you talk so slightingly of what poor father did.' christopher fixed his attention on the supper. that night, late as it was, when faith was in bed and sleeping, he sat before a sheet of music- paper, neatly copying his composition upon it. the manuscript was intended as an offering to ethelberta at the first convenient opportunity. * * * * * 'well, after all my trouble to find out about ethelberta, here comes the clue unasked for,' said the musician to his sister a few days later. she turned and saw that he was reading the wessex reflector. 'what is it?' asked faith. 'the secret of the true authorship of the book is out at last, and it is ethelberta of course. i am so glad to have it proved hers.' 'but can we believe--?' 'o yes. just hear what "our london correspondent" says. it is one of the nicest bits of gossip that he has furnished us with for a long time.' 'yes: now read it, do.' '"the author of 'metres by e.'"' christopher began, '"a book of which so much has been said and conjectured, and one, in fact, that has been the chief talk for several weeks past of the literary circles to which i belong, is a young lady who was a widow before she reached the age of eighteen, and is now not far beyond her fourth lustrum. i was additionally informed by a friend whom i met yesterday on his way to the house of lords, that her name is mrs. petherwin--christian name ethelberta; and that she resides with her mother-in-law at their house in exonbury crescent. she is, moreover, the daughter of the late bishop of silchester (if report may be believed), whose active benevolence, as your readers know, left his family in comparatively straitened circumstances at his death. the marriage was a secret one, and much against the wish of her husband's friends, who are wealthy people on all sides. the death of the bridegroom two or three weeks after the wedding led to a reconciliation; and the young poetess was taken to the home which she still occupies, devoted to the composition of such brilliant effusions as those the world has lately been favoured with from her pen."' 'if you want to send her your music, you can do so now,' said faith. 'i might have sent it before, but i wanted to deliver it personally. however, it is all the same now, i suppose, whether i send it or not. i always knew that our destinies would lie apart, though she was once temporarily under a cloud. her momentary inspiration to write that "cancelled words" was the worst possible omen for me. it showed that, thinking me no longer useful as a practical chance, she would make me ornamental as a poetical regret. but i'll send the manuscript of the song.' 'in the way of business, as a composer only; and you must say to yourself, "ethelberta, as thou art but woman, i dare; but as widow i fear thee."' notwithstanding christopher's affected carelessness, that evening saw a great deal of nicety bestowed upon the operation of wrapping up and sending off the song. he dropped it into the box and heard it fall, and with the curious power which he possessed of setting his wisdom to watch any particular folly in himself that it could not hinder, speculated as he walked on the result of this first tangible step of return to his old position as ethelberta's lover. . a lady's drawing-rooms--ethelberta's dressing-room it was a house on the north side of hyde park, between ten and eleven in the evening, and several intelligent and courteous people had assembled there to enjoy themselves as far as it was possible to do so in a neutral way--all carefully keeping every variety of feeling in a state of solution, in spite of any attempt such feelings made from time to time to crystallize on interesting subjects in hand. 'neigh, who is that charming woman with her head built up in a novel way even for hair architecture--the one with her back towards us?' said a man whose coat fitted doubtfully to a friend whose coat fitted well. 'just going to ask for the same information,' said mr. neigh, determining the very longest hair in his beard to an infinitesimal nicety by drawing its lower portion through his fingers. 'i have quite forgotten--cannot keep people's names in my head at all; nor could my father either--nor any of my family--a very odd thing. but my old friend mrs. napper knows for certain.' and he turned to one of a small group of middle-aged persons near, who, instead of skimming the surface of things in general, like the rest of the company, were going into the very depths of them. 'o--that is the celebrated mrs. petherwin, the woman who makes rhymes and prints 'em,' said mrs. napper, in a detached sentence, and then continued talking again to those on the other side of her. the two loungers went on with their observations of ethelberta's headdress, which, though not extraordinary or eccentric, did certainly convey an idea of indefinable novelty. observers were sometimes half inclined to think that her cuts and modes were acquired by some secret communication with the mysterious clique which orders the livery of the fashionable world, for--and it affords a parallel to cases in which clever thinkers in other spheres arrive independently at one and the same conclusion--ethelberta's fashion often turned out to be the coming one. 'o, is that the woman at last?' said neigh, diminishing his broad general gaze at the room to a close criticism of ethelberta. '"the rhymes," as mrs. napper calls them, are not to be despised,' said his companion. 'they are not quite virginibus puerisque, and the writer's opinions of life and society differ very materially from mine, but i cannot help admiring her in the more reflective pieces; the songs i don't care for. the method in which she handles curious subjects, and at the same time impresses us with a full conviction of her modesty, is very adroit, and somewhat blinds us to the fact that no such poems were demanded of her at all.' 'i have not read them,' said neigh, secretly wrestling with his jaw, to prevent a yawn; 'but i suppose i must. the truth is, that i never care much for reading what one ought to read; i wish i did, but i cannot help it. and, no doubt, you admire the lady immensely for writing them: i don't. everybody is so talented now-a-days that the only people i care to honour as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity. i am myself hoping for a corner in some biographical dictionary when the time comes for those works only to contain lists of the exceptional individuals of whom nothing is known but that they lived and died.' 'ah--listen. they are going to sing one of her songs,' said his friend, looking towards a bustling movement in the neighbourhood of the piano. 'i believe that song, "when tapers tall," has been set to music by three or four composers already.' 'men of any note?' said neigh, at last beaten by his yawn, which courtesy nevertheless confined within his person to such an extent that only a few unimportant symptoms, such as reduced eyes and a certain rectangular manner of mouth in speaking, were visible. 'scarcely,' replied the other man. 'established writers of music do not expend their energies upon new verse until they find that such verse is likely to endure; for should the poet be soon forgotten, their labour is in some degree lost.' 'artful dogs--who would have thought it?' said neigh, just as an exercise in words; and they drew nearer to the piano, less to become listeners to the singing than to be spectators of the scene in that quarter. but among some others the interest in the songs seemed to be very great; and it was unanimously wished that the young lady who had practised the different pieces of music privately would sing some of them now in the order of their composers' reputations. the musical persons in the room unconsciously resolved themselves into a committee of taste. one and another had been tried, when, at the end of the third, a lady spoke to ethelberta. 'now, mrs. petherwin,' she said, gracefully throwing back her face, 'your opinion is by far the most valuable. in which of the cases do you consider the marriage of verse and tune to have been most successful?' ethelberta, finding these and other unexpected calls made upon herself, came to the front without flinching. 'the sweetest and the best that i like by far,' she said, 'is none of these. it is one which reached me by post only this morning from a place in wessex, and is written by an unheard-of man who lives somewhere down there--a man who will be, nevertheless, heard a great deal of some day, i hope--think. i have only practised it this afternoon; but, if one's own judgment is worth anything, it is the best.' 'let us have your favourite, by all means,' said another friend of ethelberta's who was present--mrs. doncastle. 'i am so sorry that i cannot oblige you, since you wish to hear it,' replied the poetess regretfully; 'but the music is at home. i had not received it when i lent the others to miss belmaine, and it is only in manuscript like the rest.' 'could it not be sent for?' suggested an enthusiast who knew that ethelberta lived only in the next street, appealing by a look to her, and then to the mistress of the house. 'certainly, let us send for it,' said that lady. a footman was at once quietly despatched with precise directions as to where christopher's sweet production might be found. 'what--is there going to be something interesting?' asked a young married friend of mrs. napper, who had returned to her original spot. 'yes--the best song she has written is to be sung in the best manner to the best air that has been composed for it. i should not wonder if she were going to sing it herself.' 'did you know anything of mrs. petherwin until her name leaked out in connection with these ballads?' 'no; but i think i recollect seeing her once before. she is one of those people who are known, as one may say, by subscription: everybody knows a little, till she is astonishingly well known altogether; but nobody knows her entirely. she was the orphan child of some clergyman, i believe. lady petherwin, her mother-in-law, has been taking her about a great deal latterly.' 'she has apparently a very good prospect.' 'yes; and it is through her being of that curious undefined character which interprets itself to each admirer as whatever he would like to have it. old men like her because she is so girlish; youths because she is womanly; wicked men because she is good in their eyes; good men because she is wicked in theirs.' 'she must be a very anomalous sort of woman, at that rate.' 'yes. like the british constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.' 'these poems must have set her up. she appears to be quite the correct spectacle. happy mrs. petherwin!' the subject of their dialogue was engaged in a conversation with mrs. belmaine upon the management of households--a theme provoked by a discussion that was in progress in the pages of some periodical of the time. mrs. belmaine was very full of the argument, and went on from point to point till she came to servants. the face of ethelberta showed caution at once. 'i consider that lady plamby pets her servants by far too much,' said mrs. belmaine. 'o, you do not know her? well, she is a woman with theories; and she lends her maids and men books of the wrong kind for their station, and sends them to picture exhibitions which they don't in the least understand--all for the improvement of their taste, and morals, and nobody knows what besides. it only makes them dissatisfied.' the face of ethelberta showed venturesomeness. 'yes, and dreadfully ambitious!' she said. 'yes, indeed. what a turn the times have taken! people of that sort push on, and get into business, and get great warehouses, until at last, without ancestors, or family, or name, or estate--' 'or the merest scrap of heirloom or family jewel.' 'or heirlooms, or family jewels, they are thought as much of as if their forefathers had glided unobtrusively through the peerage--' 'ever since the first edition.' 'yes.' mrs. belmaine, who really sprang from a good old family, had been going to say, 'for the last seven hundred years,' but fancying from ethelberta's addendum that she might not date back more than a trifling century or so, adopted the suggestion with her usual well-known courtesy, and blushed down to her locket at the thought of the mistake that she might have made. this sensitiveness was a trait in her character which gave great gratification to her husband, and, indeed, to all who knew her. 'and have you any theory on the vexed question of servant-government?' continued mrs. belmaine, smiling. 'but no--the subject is of far too practical a nature for one of your bent, of course.' 'o no--it is not at all too practical. i have thought of the matter often,' said ethelberta. 'i think the best plan would be for somebody to write a pamphlet, "the shortest way with the servants," just as there was once written a terribly stinging one, "the shortest way with the dissenters," which had a great effect.' 'i have always understood that that was written by a dissenter as a satire upon the church?' 'ah--so it was: but the example will do to illustrate my meaning.' 'quite so--i understand--so it will,' said mrs. belmaine, with clouded faculties. meanwhile christopher's music had arrived. an accomplished gentleman who had every musical talent except that of creation, scanned the notes carefully from top to bottom, and sat down to accompany the singer. there was no lady present of sufficient confidence or skill to venture into a song she had never seen before, and the only one who had seen it was ethelberta herself; she did not deny having practised it the greater part of the afternoon, and was very willing to sing it now if anybody would derive pleasure from the performance. then she began, and the sweetness of her singing was such that even the most unsympathetic honoured her by looking as if they would be willing to listen to every note the song contained if it were not quite so much trouble to do so. some were so interested that, instead of continuing their conversation, they remained in silent consideration of how they would continue it when she had finished; while the particularly civil people arranged their countenances into every attentive form that the mind could devise. one emotional gentleman looked at the corner of a chair as if, till that moment, such an object had never crossed his vision before; the movement of his finger to the imagined tune was, for a deaf old clergyman, a perfect mine of interest; whilst a young man from the country was powerless to put an end to an enchanted gaze at nothing at all in the exact middle of the room before him. neigh, and the general phalanx of cool men and celebrated club yawners, were so much affected that they raised their chronic look of great objection to things, to an expression of scarcely any objection at all. 'what makes it so interesting,' said mrs. doncastle to ethelberta, when the song was over and she had retired from the focus of the company, 'is, that it is played from the composer's own copy, which has never met the public eye, or any other than his own before to-day. and i see that he has actually sketched in the lines by hand, instead of having ruled paper--just as the great old composers used to do. you must have been as pleased to get it fresh from the stocks like that as he probably was pleased to get your thanks.' ethelberta became reflective. she had not thanked christopher; moreover, she had decided, after some consideration, that she ought not to thank him. what new thoughts were suggested by that remark of mrs. doncastle's, and what new inclination resulted from the public presentation of his tune and her words as parts of one organic whole, are best explained by describing her doings at a later hour, when, having left her friends somewhat early, she had reached home and retired from public view for that evening. ethelberta went to her room, sent away the maid who did double duty for herself and lady petherwin, walked in circles about the carpet till the fire had grown haggard and cavernous, sighed, took a sheet of paper and wrote:-- 'dear mr. julian,--i have said i would not write: i have said it twice; but discretion, under some circumstances, is only another name for unkindness. before thanking you for your sweet gift, let me tell you in a few words of something which may materially change an aspect of affairs under which i appear to you to deserve it. 'with regard to my history and origin you are altogether mistaken; and how can i tell whether your bitterness at my previous silence on those points may not cause you to withdraw your act of courtesy now? but the gratification of having at last been honest with you may compensate even for the loss of your respect. 'the matter is a small one to tell, after all. what will you say on learning that i am not the trodden-down "lady by birth" that you have supposed me? that my father is not dead, as you probably imagine; that he is working for his living as one among a peculiarly stigmatized and ridiculed multitude? 'had he been a brawny cottager, carpenter, mason, blacksmith, well- digger, navvy, tree-feller--any effective and manly trade, in short, a worker in which can stand up in the face of the noblest and daintiest, and bare his gnarled arms and say, with a consciousness of superior power, "look at a real man!" i should have been able to show you antecedents which, if not intensely romantic, are not altogether antagonistic to romance. but the present fashion of associating with one particular class everything that is ludicrous and bombastic overpowers me when i think of it in relation to myself and your known sensitiveness. when the well-born poetess of good report melts into. . .' having got thus far, a faint-hearted look, which had begun to show itself several sentences earlier, became pronounced. she threw the writing into the dull fire, poked and stirred it till a red inflammation crept over the sheet, and then started anew:-- 'dear mr. julian,--not knowing your present rank as composer--whether on the very brink of fame, or as yet a long way off--i cannot decide what form of expression my earnest acknowledgments should take. let me simply say in one short phrase, i thank you infinitely! 'i am no musician, and my opinion on music may not be worth much: yet i know what i like (as everybody says, but i do not use the words as a form to cover a hopeless blank on all connected with the subject), and this sweet air i love. you must have glided like a breeze about me--seen into a heart not worthy of scrutiny, jotted down words that cannot justify attention--before you could have apotheosized the song in so exquisite a manner. my gratitude took the form of wretchedness when, on hearing the effect of the ballad in public this evening, i thought that i had not power to withhold a reply which might do us both more harm than good. then i said, "away with all emotion--i wish the world was drained dry of it--i will take no notice," when a lady whispered at my elbow to the effect that of course i had expressed my gratification to you. i ought first to have mentioned that your creation has been played to-night to full drawing-rooms, and the original tones cooled the artificial air like a fountain almost. 'i prophesy great things of you. perhaps, at the time when we are each but a row of bones in our individual graves, your genius will be remembered, while my mere cleverness will have been long forgotten. 'but--you must allow a woman of experience to say this--the undoubted power that you possess will do you socially no good unless you mix with it the ingredient of ambition--a quality in which i fear you are very deficient. it is in the hope of stimulating you to a better opinion of yourself that i write this letter. 'probably i shall never meet you again. not that i think circumstances to be particularly powerful to prevent such a meeting, rather it is that i shall energetically avoid it. there can be no such thing as strong friendship between a man and a woman not of one family. 'more than that there must not be, and this is why we will not meet. you see that i do not mince matters at all; but it is hypocrisy to avoid touching upon a subject which all men and women in our position inevitably think of, no matter what they say. some women might have written distantly, and wept at the repression of their real feeling; but it is better to be more frank, and keep a dry eye.--yours, ethelberta.' her feet felt cold and her heart weak as she directed the letter, and she was overpowered with weariness. but murmuring, 'if i let it stay till the morning i shall not send it, and a man may be lost to fame because of a woman's squeamishness--it shall go,' she partially dressed herself, wrapped a large cloak around her, descended the stairs, and went out to the pillar-box at the corner, leaving the door not quite close. no gust of wind had realized her misgivings that it might be blown shut on her return, and she re-entered as softly as she had emerged. it will be seen that ethelberta had said nothing about her family after all. . lady petherwin's house the next day old lady petherwin, who had not accompanied ethelberta the night before, came into the morning-room, with a newspaper in her hand. 'what does this mean, ethelberta?' she inquired in tones from which every shade of human expressiveness was extracted by some awful and imminent mood that lay behind. she was pointing to a paragraph under the heading of 'literary notes,' which contained in a few words the announcement of ethelberta's authorship that had more circumstantially appeared in the wessex reflector. 'it means what it says,' said ethelberta quietly. 'then it is true?' 'yes. i must apologize for having kept it such a secret from you. it was not done in the spirit that you may imagine: it was merely to avoid disturbing your mind that i did it so privately.' 'but surely you have not written every one of those ribald verses?' ethelberta looked inclined to exclaim most vehemently against this; but what she actually did say was, '"ribald"--what do you mean by that? i don't think that you are aware what "ribald" means.' 'i am not sure that i am. as regards some words as well as some persons, the less you are acquainted with them the more it is to your credit.' 'i don't quite deserve this, lady petherwin.' 'really, one would imagine that women wrote their books during those dreams in which people have no moral sense, to see how improper some, even virtuous, ladies become when they get into print.' 'i might have done a much more unnatural thing than write those poems. and perhaps i might have done a much better thing, and got less praise. but that's the world's fault, not mine.' 'you might have left them unwritten, and shown more fidelity.' 'fidelity! it is more a matter of humour than principle. what has fidelity to do with it?' 'fidelity to my dear boy's memory.' 'it would be difficult to show that because i have written so-called tender and gay verse, i feel tender and gay. it is too often assumed that a person's fancy is a person's real mind. i believe that in the majority of cases one is fond of imagining the direct opposite of one's principles in sheer effort after something fresh and free; at any rate, some of the lightest of those rhymes were composed between the deepest fits of dismals i have ever known. however, i did expect that you might judge in the way you have judged, and that was my chief reason for not telling you what i had done.' 'you don't deny that you tried to escape from recollections you ought to have cherished? there is only one thing that women of your sort are as ready to do as to take a man's name, and that is, drop his memory.' 'dear lady petherwin--don't be so unreasonable as to blame a live person for living! no woman's head is so small as to be filled for life by a memory of a few months. four years have passed since i last saw my boy- husband. we were mere children; see how i have altered since in mind, substance, and outline--i have even grown half an inch taller since his death. two years will exhaust the regrets of widows who have long been faithful wives; and ought i not to show a little new life when my husband died in the honeymoon?' 'no. accepting the protection of your husband's mother was, in effect, an avowal that you rejected the idea of being a widow to prolong the idea of being a wife; and the sin against your conventional state thus assumed is almost as bad as would have been a sin against the married state itself. if you had gone off when he died, saying, "thank heaven, i am free!" you would, at any rate, have shown some real honesty.' 'i should have been more virtuous by being more unfeeling. that often happens.' 'i have taken to you, and made a great deal of you--given you the inestimable advantages of foreign travel and good society to enlarge your mind. in short, i have been like a naomi to you in everything, and i maintain that writing these poems saps the foundation of it all.' 'i do own that you have been a very good naomi to me thus far; but ruth was quite a fast widow in comparison with me, and yet naomi never blamed her. you are unfortunate in your illustration. but it is dreadfully flippant of me to answer you like this, for you have been kind. but why will you provoke me!' 'yes, you are flippant, ethelberta. you are too much given to that sort of thing.' 'well, i don't know how the secret of my name has leaked out; and i am not ribald, or anything you say,' said ethelberta, with a sigh. 'then you own you do not feel so ardent as you seem in your book?' 'i do own it.' 'and that you are sorry your name has been published in connection with it?' 'i am.' 'and you think the verses may tend to misrepresent your character as a gay and rapturous one, when it is not?' 'i do fear it.' 'then, of course, you will suppress the poems instantly. that is the only way in which you can regain the position you have hitherto held with me.' ethelberta said nothing; and the dull winter atmosphere had far from light enough in it to show by her face what she might be thinking. 'well?' said lady petherwin. 'i did not expect such a command as that,' said ethelberta. 'i have been obedient for four years, and would continue so--but i cannot suppress the poems. they are not mine now to suppress.' 'you must get them into your hands. money will do it, i suppose?' 'yes, i suppose it would--a thousand pounds.' 'very well; the money shall be forthcoming,' said lady petherwin, after a pause. 'you had better sit down and write about it at once.' 'i cannot do it,' said ethelberta; 'and i will not. i don't wish them to be suppressed. i am not ashamed of them; there is nothing to be ashamed of in them; and i shall not take any steps in the matter.' 'then you are an ungrateful woman, and wanting in natural affection for the dead! considering your birth--' 'that's an intolerable--' lady petherwin crashed out of the room in a wind of indignation, and went upstairs and heard no more. adjoining her chamber was a smaller one called her study, and, on reaching this, she unlocked a cabinet, took out a small deed-box, removed from it a folded packet, unfolded it, crumpled it up, and turning round suddenly flung it into the fire. then she stood and beheld it eaten away word after word by the flames, 'testament'--'all that freehold'--'heirs and assigns' appearing occasionally for a moment only to disappear for ever. nearly half the document had turned into a glossy black when the lady clasped her hands. 'what have i done!' she exclaimed. springing to the tongs she seized with them the portion of the writing yet unconsumed, and dragged it out of the fire. ethelberta appeared at the door. 'quick, ethelberta!' said lady petherwin. 'help me to put this out!' and the two women went trampling wildly upon the document and smothering it with a corner of the hearth-rug. 'what is it?' said ethelberta. 'my will!' said lady petherwin. 'i have kept it by me lately, for i have wished to look over it at leisure--' 'good heavens!' said ethelberta. 'and i was just coming in to tell you that i would always cling to you, and never desert you, ill-use me how you might!' 'such an affectionate remark sounds curious at such a time,' said lady petherwin, sinking down in a chair at the end of the struggle. 'but,' cried ethelberta, 'you don't suppose--' 'selfishness, my dear, has given me such crooked looks that i can see it round a corner.' 'if you mean that what is yours to give may not be mine to take, it would be as well to name it in an impersonal way, if you must name it at all,' said the daughter-in-law, with wet eyelids. 'god knows i had no selfish thought in saying that. i came upstairs to ask you to forgive me, and knew nothing about the will. but every explanation distorts it all the more!' 'we two have got all awry, dear--it cannot be concealed--awry--awry. ah, who shall set us right again? however, now i must send for mr. chancerly--no, i am going out on other business, and i will call upon him. there, don't spoil your eyes: you may have to sell them.' she rang the bell and ordered the carriage; and half-an-hour later lady petherwin's coachman drove his mistress up to the door of her lawyer's office in lincoln's inn fields. . sandbourne and its neighbourhood--some london streets while this was going on in town, christopher, at his lodgings in sandbourne, had been thrown into rare old visions and dreams by the appearance of ethelberta's letter. flattered and encouraged to ambition as well as to love by her inspiriting sermon, he put off now the last remnant of cynical doubt upon the genuineness of his old mistress, and once and for all set down as disloyal a belief he had latterly acquired that 'come, woo me, woo me; for i am like enough to consent,' was all a young woman had to tell. all the reasoning of political and social economists would not have convinced christopher that he had a better chance in london than in sandbourne of making a decent income by reasonable and likely labour; but a belief in a far more improbable proposition, impetuously expressed, warmed him with the idea that he might become famous there. the greater is frequently more readily credited than the less, and an argument which will not convince on a matter of halfpence appears unanswerable when applied to questions of glory and honour. the regulation wet towel and strong coffee of the ambitious and intellectual student floated before him in visions; but it was with a sense of relief that he remembered that music, in spite of its drawbacks as a means of sustenance, was a profession happily unencumbered with those excruciating preliminaries to greatness. christopher talked about the new move to his sister, and he was vexed that her hopefulness was not roused to quite the pitch of his own. as with others of his sort, his too general habit of accepting the most clouded possibility that chances offered was only transcended by his readiness to kindle with a fitful excitement now and then. faith was much more equable. 'if you were not the most melancholy man god ever created,' she said, kindly looking at his vague deep eyes and thin face, which was but a few degrees too refined and poetical to escape the epithet of lantern-jawed from any one who had quarrelled with him, 'you would not mind my coolness about this. it is a good thing of course to go; i have always fancied that we were mistaken in coming here. mediocrity stamped "london" fetches more than talent marked "provincial." but i cannot feel so enthusiastic.' 'still, if we are to go, we may as well go by enthusiasm as by calculation; it is a sensation pleasanter to the nerves, and leads to just as good a result when there is only one result possible.' 'very well,' said faith. 'i will not depress you. if i had to describe you i should say you were a child in your impulses, and an old man in your reflections. have you considered when we shall start?' 'yes.' 'what have you thought?' 'that we may very well leave the place in six weeks if we wish.' 'we really may?' 'yes. and what is more, we will.' * * * * * christopher and faith arrived in london on an afternoon at the end of winter, and beheld from one of the river bridges snow-white scrolls of steam from the tall chimneys of lambeth, rising against the livid sky behind, as if drawn in chalk on toned cardboard. the first thing he did that evening, when settled in their apartments near the british museum, before applying himself to the beginning of the means by which success in life might be attained, was to go out in the direction of ethelberta's door, leaving faith unpacking the things, and sniffing extraordinary smoke-smells which she discovered in all nooks and crannies of the rooms. it was some satisfaction to see ethelberta's house, although the single feature in which it differed from the other houses in the crescent was that no lamp shone from the fanlight over the entrance--a speciality which, if he cared for omens, was hardly encouraging. fearing to linger near lest he might be detected, christopher stole a glimpse at the door and at the steps, imagined what a trifle of the depression worn in each step her feet had tended to produce, and strolled home again. feeling that his reasons for calling just now were scarcely sufficient, he went next day about the business that had brought him to town, which referred to a situation as organist in a large church in the north-west district. the post was half ensured already, and he intended to make of it the nucleus of a professional occupation and income. then he sat down to think of the preliminary steps towards publishing the song that had so pleased her, and had also, as far as he could understand from her letter, hit the popular taste very successfully; a fact which, however little it may say for the virtues of the song as a composition, was a great recommendation to it as a property. christopher was delighted to perceive that out of this position he could frame an admissible, if not an unimpeachable, reason for calling upon ethelberta. he determined to do so at once, and obtain the required permission by word of mouth. he was greatly surprised, when the front of the house appeared in view on this spring afternoon, to see what a white and sightless aspect pervaded all the windows. he came close: the eyeball blankness was caused by all the shutters and blinds being shut tight from top to bottom. possibly this had been the case for some time--he could not tell. in one of the windows was a card bearing the announcement, 'this house to be let furnished.' here was a merciless clash between fancy and fact. regretting now his faint-heartedness in not letting her know beforehand by some means that he was about to make a new start in the world, and coming to dwell near her, christopher rang the bell to make inquiries. a gloomy caretaker appeared after a while, and the young man asked whither the ladies had gone to live. he was beyond measure depressed to learn that they were in the south of france--arles, the man thought the place was called--the time of their return to town being very uncertain; though one thing was clear, they meant to miss the forthcoming london season altogether. as christopher's hope to see her again had brought a resolve to do so, so now resolve led to dogged patience. instead of attempting anything by letter, he decided to wait; and he waited well, occupying himself in publishing a 'march' and a 'morning and evening service in e flat.' some four-part songs, too, engaged his attention when the heavier duties of the day were over--these duties being the giving of lessons in harmony and counterpoint, in which he was aided by the introductions of a man well known in the musical world, who had been acquainted with young julian as a promising amateur long before he adopted music as the staff of his pilgrimage. it was the end of summer when he again tried his fortune at the house in exonbury crescent. scarcely calculating upon finding her at this stagnant time of the town year, and only hoping for information, julian was surprised and excited to see the shutters open, and the house wearing altogether a living look, its neighbours having decidedly died off meanwhile. 'the family here,' said a footman in answer to his inquiry, 'are only temporary tenants of the house. it is not lady petherwin's people.' 'do you know the petherwins' present address?' 'underground, sir, for the old lady. she died some time ago in switzerland, and was buried there, i believe.' 'and mrs. petherwin--the young lady,' said christopher, starting. 'we are not acquainted personally with the family,' the man replied. 'my master has only taken the house for a few months, whilst extensive alterations are being made in his own on the other side of the park, which he goes to look after every day. if you want any further information about lady petherwin, mrs. petherwin will probably give it. i can let you have her address.' 'ah, yes; thank you,' said christopher. the footman handed him one of some cards which appeared to have been left for the purpose. julian, though tremblingly anxious to know where ethelberta was, did not look at it till he could take a cool survey in private. the address was 'arrowthorne lodge, upper wessex.' 'dear me!' said christopher to himself, 'not far from melchester; and not dreadfully far from sandbourne.' . arrowthorne park and lodge summer was just over when christopher julian found himself rattling along in the train to sandbourne on some trifling business appertaining to his late father's affairs, which would afford him an excuse for calling at arrowthorne about the song of hers that he wished to produce. he alighted in the afternoon at a little station some twenty miles short of sandbourne, and leaving his portmanteau behind him there, decided to walk across the fields, obtain if possible the interview with the lady, and return then to the station to finish the journey to sandbourne, which he could thus reach at a convenient hour in the evening, and, if he chose, take leave of again the next day. it was an afternoon which had a fungous smell out of doors, all being sunless and stagnant overhead and around. the various species of trees had begun to assume the more distinctive colours of their decline, and where there had been one pervasive green were now twenty greenish yellows, the air in the vistas between them being half opaque with blue exhalation. christopher in his walk overtook a countryman, and inquired if the path they were following would lead him to arrowthorne lodge. ''twill take 'ee into arr'thorne park,' the man replied. 'but you won't come anigh the lodge, unless you bear round to the left as might be.' 'mrs. petherwin lives there, i believe?' 'no, sir. leastwise unless she's but lately come. i have never heard of such a woman.' 'she may possibly be only visiting there.' 'ah, perhaps that's the shape o't. well, now you tell o't, i have seen a strange face thereabouts once or twice lately. a young good-looking maid enough, seemingly.' 'yes, she's considered a very handsome lady.' 'i've heard the woodmen say, now that you tell o't, that they meet her every now and then, just at the closing in of the day, as they come home along with their nitches of sticks; ay, stalking about under the trees by herself--a tall black martel, so long-legged and awful-like that you'd think 'twas the old feller himself a-coming, they say. now a woman must be a queer body to my thinking, to roam about by night so lonesome and that? ay, now that you tell o't, there is such a woman, but 'a never have showed in the parish; sure i never thought who the body was--no, not once about her, nor where 'a was living and that--not i, till you spoke. well, there, sir, that's arr'thorne lodge; do you see they three elms?' he pointed across the glade towards some confused foliage a long way off. 'i am not sure about the sort of tree you mean,' said christopher, 'i see a number of trees with edges shaped like edges of clouds.' 'ay, ay, they be oaks; i mean the elms to the left hand.' 'but a man can hardly tell oaks from elms at that distance, my good fellow!' 'that 'a can very well--leastwise, if he's got the sense.' 'well, i think i see what you mean,' said christopher. 'what next?' 'when you get there, you bear away smart to nor'-west, and you'll come straight as a line to the lodge.' 'how the deuce am i to know which is north-west in a strange place, with no sun to tell me?' 'what, not know nor-west? well, i should think a boy could never live and grow up to be a man without knowing the four quarters. i knowed 'em when i was a mossel of a chiel. we be no great scholars here, that's true, but there isn't a tom-rig or jack-straw in these parts that don't know where they lie as well as i. now i've lived, man and boy, these eight-and-sixty years, and never met a man in my life afore who hadn't learnt such a common thing as the four quarters.' christopher parted from his companion and soon reached a stile, clambering over which he entered a park. here he threaded his way, and rounding a clump of aged trees the young man came in view of a light and elegant country-house in the half-timbered gothic style of the late revival, apparently only a few years old. surprised at finding himself so near, christopher's heart fluttered unmanageably till he had taken an abstract view of his position, and, in impatience at his want of nerve, adopted a sombre train of reasoning to convince himself that, far from indulgence in the passion of love bringing bliss, it was a folly, leading to grief and disquiet--certainly one which would do him no good. cooled down by this, he stepped into the drive and went up to the house. 'is mrs. petherwin at home?' he said modestly. 'who did you say, sir?' he repeated the name. 'don't know the person.' 'the lady may be a visitor--i call on business.' 'she is not visiting in this house, sir.' 'is not this arrowthorne lodge?' 'certainly not.' 'then where is arrowthorne lodge, please?' 'well, it is nearly a mile from here. under the trees by the high-road. if you go across by that footpath it will bring you out quicker than by following the bend of the drive.' christopher wondered how he could have managed to get into the wrong park; but, setting it down to his ignorance of the difference between oak and elm, he immediately retraced his steps, passing across the park again, through the gate at the end of the drive, and into the turnpike road. no other gate, park, or country seat of any description was within view. 'can you tell me the way to arrowthorne lodge?' he inquired of the first person he met, who was a little girl. 'you are just coming away from it, sir,' said she. 'i'll show you; i am going that way.' they walked along together. getting abreast the entrance of the park he had just emerged from, the child said, 'there it is, sir; i live there too.' christopher, with a dazed countenance, looked towards a cottage which stood nestling in the shrubbery and ivy like a mushroom among grass. 'is that arrowthorne lodge?' he repeated. 'yes, and if you go up the drive, you come to arrowthorne house.' 'arrowthorne lodge--where mrs. petherwin lives, i mean.' 'yes. she lives there along wi' mother and we. but she don't want anybody to know it, sir, cause she's celebrate, and 'twouldn't do at all.' christopher said no more, and the little girl became interested in the products of the bank and ditch by the wayside. he left her, pushed open the heavy gate, and tapped at the lodge door. the latch was lifted. 'does mrs. petherwin,' he began, and, determined that there should be no mistake, repeated, 'does mrs. ethelberta petherwin, the poetess, live here?' turning full upon the person who opened the door. 'she does, sir,' said a faltering voice; and he found himself face to face with the pupil-teacher of sandbourne. . the lodge (continued)--the copse behind 'this is indeed a surprise; i--am glad to see you!' christopher stammered, with a wire-drawn, radically different smile from the one he had intended--a smile not without a tinge of ghastliness. 'yes--i am home for the holidays,' said the blushing maiden; and, after a critical pause, she added, 'if you wish to speak to my sister, she is in the plantation with the children.' 'o no--no, thank you--not necessary at all,' said christopher, in haste. 'i only wish for an interview with a lady called mrs. petherwin.' 'yes; mrs petherwin--my sister,' said picotee. 'she is in the plantation. that little path will take you to her in five minutes.' the amazed christopher persuaded himself that this discovery was very delightful, and went on persuading so long that at last he felt it to be so. unable, like many other people, to enjoy being satirized in words because of the irritation it caused him as aimed-at victim, he sometimes had philosophy enough to appreciate a satire of circumstance, because nobody intended it. pursuing the path indicated, he found himself in a thicket of scrubby undergrowth, which covered an area enclosed from the park proper by a decaying fence. the boughs were so tangled that he was obliged to screen his face with his hands, to escape the risk of having his eyes filliped out by the twigs that impeded his progress. thus slowly advancing, his ear caught, between the rustles, the tones of a voice in earnest declamation; and, pushing round in that direction, he beheld through some beech boughs an open space about ten yards in diameter, floored at the bottom with deep beds of curled old leaves, and cushions of furry moss. in the middle of this natural theatre was the stump of a tree that had been felled by a saw, and upon the flat stool thus formed stood ethelberta, whom christopher had not beheld since the ball at wyndway house. round her, leaning against branches or prostrate on the ground, were five or six individuals. two were young mechanics--one of them evidently a carpenter. then there was a boy about thirteen, and two or three younger children. ethelberta's appearance answered as fully as ever to that of an english lady skilfully perfected in manner, carriage, look, and accent; and the incongruity of her present position among lives which had had many of nature's beauties stamped out of them, and few of the beauties of art stamped in, brought him, as a second feeling, a pride in her that almost equalled his first sentiment of surprise. christopher's attention was meanwhile attracted from the constitution of the group to the words of the speaker in the centre of it--words to which her auditors were listening with still attention. it appeared to christopher that ethelberta had lately been undergoing some very extraordinary experiences. what the beginning of them had been he could not in the least understand, but the portion she was describing came distinctly to his ears, and he wondered more and more. 'he came forward till he, like myself, was about twenty yards from the edge. i instinctively grasped my useless stiletto. how i longed for the assistance which a little earlier i had so much despised! reaching the block or boulder upon which i had been sitting, he clasped his arms around from behind; his hands closed upon the empty seat, and he jumped up with an oath. this method of attack told me a new thing with wretched distinctness; he had, as i suppose, discovered my sex, male attire was to serve my turn no longer. the next instant, indeed, made it clear, for he exclaimed, "you don't escape me, masquerading madam," or some such words, and came on. my only hope was that in his excitement he might forget to notice where the grass terminated near the edge of the cliff, though this could be easily felt by a careful walker: to make my own feeling more distinct on this point i hastily bared my feet.' the listeners moistened their lips, ethelberta took breath, and then went on to describe the scene that ensued, 'a dreadful variation on the game of blindman's buff,' being the words by which she characterized it. ethelberta's manner had become so impassioned at this point that the lips of her audience parted, the children clung to their elders, and christopher could control himself no longer. he thrust aside the boughs, and broke in upon the group. 'for heaven's sake, ethelberta,' he exclaimed with great excitement, 'where did you meet with such a terrible experience as that?' the children shrieked, as if they thought that the interruption was in some way the catastrophe of the events in course of narration. every one started up; the two young mechanics stared, and one of them inquired, in return, 'what's the matter, friend?' christopher had not yet made reply when ethelberta stepped from her pedestal down upon the crackling carpet of deep leaves. 'mr. julian!' said she, in a serene voice, turning upon him eyes of such a disputable stage of colour, between brown and grey, as would have commended itself to a gallant duellist of the last century as a point on which it was absolutely necessary to take some friend's life or other. but the calmness was artificially done, and the astonishment that did not appear in ethelberta's tones was expressed by her gaze. christopher was not in a mood to draw fine distinctions between recognized and unrecognized organs of speech. he replied to the eyes. 'i own that your surprise is natural,' he said, with an anxious look into her face, as if he wished to get beyond this interpolated scene to something more congenial and understood. 'but my concern at such a history of yourself since i last saw you is even more natural than your surprise at my manner of breaking in.' 'that history would justify any conduct in one who hears it--' 'yes, indeed.' 'if it were true,' added ethelberta, smiling. 'but it is as false as--' she could name nothing notoriously false without raising an image of what was disagreeable, and she continued in a better manner: 'the story i was telling is entirely a fiction, which i am getting up for a particular purpose--very different from what appears at present.' 'i am sorry there was such a misunderstanding,' christopher stammered, looking upon the ground uncertain and ashamed. 'yet i am not, either, for i am very glad you have not undergone such trials, of course. but the fact is, i--being in the neighbourhood--i ventured to call on a matter of business, relating to a poem which i had the pleasure of setting to music at the beginning of the year.' ethelberta was only a little less ill at ease than christopher showed himself to be by this way of talking. 'will you walk slowly on?' she said gently to the two young men, 'and take the children with you; this gentleman wishes to speak to me on business.' the biggest young man caught up a little one under his arm, and plunged amid the boughs; another little one lingered behind for a few moments to look shyly at christopher, with an oblique manner of hiding her mouth against her shoulder and her eyes behind her pinafore. then she vanished, the boy and the second young man followed, and ethelberta and christopher stood within the wood-bound circle alone. 'i hope i have caused no inconvenience by interrupting the proceedings,' said christopher softly; 'but i so very much wished to see you!' 'did you, indeed--really wish to see me?' she said gladly. 'never mind inconvenience then; it is a word which seems shallow in meaning under the circumstances. i surely must say that a visit is to my advantage, must i not? i am not as i was, you see, and may receive as advantages what i used to consider as troubles.' 'has your life really changed so much?' 'it has changed. but what i first meant was that an interesting visitor at a wrong time is better than a stupid one at a right time.' 'i had been behind the trees for some minutes, looking at you, and thinking of you; but what you were doing rather interrupted my first meditation. i had thought of a meeting in which we should continue our intercourse at the point at which it was broken off years ago, as if the omitted part had not existed at all; but something, i cannot tell what, has upset all that feeling, and--' 'i can soon tell you the meaning of my extraordinary performance,' ethelberta broke in quickly, and with a little trepidation. 'my mother- in-law, lady petherwin, is dead; and she has left me nothing but her house and furniture in london--more than i deserve, but less than she had distinctly led me to expect; and so i am somewhat in a corner.' 'it is always so.' 'not always, i think. but this is how it happened. lady petherwin was very capricious; when she was not foolishly kind she was unjustly harsh. a great many are like it, never thinking what a good thing it would be, instead of going on tacking from side to side between favour and cruelty, to keep to a mean line of common justice. and so we quarrelled, and she, being absolute mistress of all her wealth, destroyed her will that was in my favour, and made another, leaving me nothing but the fag-end of the lease of the town-house and the furniture in it. then, when we were abroad, she turned to me again, forgave everything, and, becoming ill afterwards, wrote a letter to the brother, to whom she had left the bulk of her property, stating that i was to have twenty-thousand of the one- hundred-thousand pounds she had bequeathed to him--as in the original will--doing this by letter in case anything should happen to her before a new will could be considered, drawn, and signed, and trusting to his honour quite that he would obey her expressed wish should she die abroad. well, she did die, in the full persuasion that i was provided for; but her brother (as i secretly expected all the time) refused to be morally bound by a document which had no legal value, and the result is that he has everything, except, of course, the furniture and the lease. it would have been enough to break the heart of a person who had calculated upon getting a fortune, which i never did; for i felt always like an intruder and a bondswoman, and had wished myself out of the petherwin family a hundred times, with my crust of bread and liberty. for one thing, i was always forbidden to see my relatives, and it pained me much. now i am going to move for myself, and consider that i have a good chance of success in what i may undertake, because of an indifference i feel about succeeding which gives the necessary coolness that any great task requires.' 'i presume you mean to write more poems?' 'i cannot--that is, i can write no more that satisfy me. to blossom into rhyme on the sparkling pleasures of life, you must be under the influence of those pleasures, and i am at present quite removed from them--surrounded by gaunt realities of a very different description.' 'then try the mournful. trade upon your sufferings: many do, and thrive.' 'it is no use to say that--no use at all. i cannot write a line of verse. and yet the others flowed from my heart like a stream. but nothing is so easy as to seem clever when you have money.' 'except to seem stupid when you have none,' said christopher, looking at the dead leaves. ethelberta allowed herself to linger on that thought for a few seconds; and continued, 'then the question arose, what was i to do? i felt that to write prose would be an uncongenial occupation, and altogether a poor prospect for a woman like me. finally i have decided to appear in public.' 'not on the stage?' 'certainly not on the stage. there is no novelty in a poor lady turning actress, and novelty is what i want. ordinary powers exhibited in a new way effect as much as extraordinary powers exhibited in an old way.' 'yes--so they do. and extraordinary powers, and a new way too, would be irresistible.' 'i don't calculate upon both. i had written a prose story by request, when it was found that i had grown utterly inane over verse. it was written in the first person, and the style was modelled after de foe's. the night before sending it off, when i had already packed it up, i was reading about the professional story-tellers of eastern countries, who devoted their lives to the telling of tales. i unfastened the manuscript and retained it, convinced that i should do better by telling the story.' 'well thought of!' exclaimed christopher, looking into her face. 'there is a way for everybody to live, if they can only find it out.' 'it occurred to me,' she continued, blushing slightly, 'that tales of the weird kind were made to be told, not written. the action of a teller is wanted to give due effect to all stories of incident; and i hope that a time will come when, as of old, instead of an unsocial reading of fiction at home alone, people will meet together cordially, and sit at the feet of a professed romancer. i am going to tell my tales before a london public. as a child, i had a considerable power in arresting the attention of other children by recounting adventures which had never happened; and men and women are but children enlarged a little. look at this.' she drew from her pocket a folded paper, shook it abroad, and disclosed a rough draft of an announcement to the effect that mrs. petherwin, professed story-teller, would devote an evening to that ancient form of the romancer's art, at a well-known fashionable hall in london. 'now you see,' she continued, 'the meaning of what you observed going on here. that you heard was one of three tales i am preparing, with a view of selecting the best. as a reserved one, i have the tale of my own life--to be played as a last card. it was a private rehearsal before my brothers and sisters--not with any view of obtaining their criticism, but that i might become accustomed to my own voice in the presence of listeners.' 'if i only had had half your enterprise, what i might have done in the world!' 'now did you ever consider what a power de foe's manner would have if practised by word of mouth? indeed, it is a style which suits itself infinitely better to telling than to writing, abounding as it does in colloquialisms that are somewhat out of place on paper in these days, but have a wonderful power in making a narrative seem real. and so, in short, i am going to talk de foe on a subject of my own. well?' the last word had been given tenderly, with a long-drawn sweetness, and was caused by a look that christopher was bending upon her at the moment, in which he revealed that he was thinking less of the subject she was so eagerly and hopefully descanting upon than upon her aspect in explaining it. it is a fault of manner particularly common among men newly imported into the society of bright and beautiful women; and we will hope that, springing as it does from no unworthy source, it is as soon forgiven in the general world as it was here. 'i was only following a thought,' said christopher:--'a thought of how i used to know you, and then lost sight of you, and then discovered you famous, and how we are here under these sad autumn trees, and nobody in sight.' 'i think it must be tea-time,' she said suddenly. 'tea is a great meal with us here--you will join us, will you not?' and ethelberta began to make for herself a passage through the boughs. another rustle was heard a little way off, and one of the children appeared. 'emmeline wants to know, please, if the gentleman that come to see 'ee will stay to tea; because, if so, she's agoing to put in another spoonful for him and a bit of best green.' 'o georgina--how candid! yes, put in some best green.' before christopher could say any more to her, they were emerging by the corner of the cottage, and one of the brothers drew near them. 'mr. julian, you'll bide and have a cup of tea wi' us?' he inquired of christopher. 'an old friend of yours, is he not, mrs. petherwin? dan and i be going back to sandbourne to-night, and we can walk with 'ee as far as the station.' 'i shall be delighted,' said christopher; and they all entered the cottage. the evening had grown clearer by this time; the sun was peeping out just previous to departure, and sent gold wires of light across the glades and into the windows, throwing a pattern of the diamond quarries, and outlines of the geraniums in pots, against the opposite wall. one end of the room was polygonal, such a shape being dictated by the exterior design; in this part the windows were placed, as at the east end of continental churches. thus, from the combined effects of the ecclesiastical lancet lights and the apsidal shape of the room, it occurred to christopher that the sisters were all a delightful set of pretty saints, exhibiting themselves in a lady chapel, and backed up by unkempt major prophets, as represented by the forms of their big brothers. christopher sat down to tea as invited, squeezing himself in between two children whose names were almost as long as their persons, and whose tin cups discoursed primitive music by means of spoons rattled inside them until they were filled. the tea proceeded pleasantly, notwithstanding that the cake, being a little burnt, tasted on the outside like the latter plums in snapdragon. christopher never could meet the eye of picotee, who continued in a wild state of flushing all the time, fixing her looks upon the sugar-basin, except when she glanced out of the window to see how the evening was going on, and speaking no word at all unless it was to correct a small sister of somewhat crude manners as regards filling the mouth, which picotee did in a whisper, and a gentle inclination of her mouth to the little one's ear, and a still deeper blush than before. their visitor next noticed that an additional cup-and-saucer and plate made their appearance occasionally at the table, were silently replenished, and then carried off by one of the children to an inner apartment. 'our mother is bedridden,' said ethelberta, noticing christopher's look at the proceeding. 'emmeline attends to the household, except when picotee is at home, and joey attends to the gate; but our mother's affliction is a very unfortunate thing for the poor children. we are thinking of a plan of living which will, i hope, be more convenient than this is; but we have not yet decided what to do.' at this minute a carriage and pair of horses became visible through one of the angular windows of the apse, in the act of turning in from the highway towards the park gate. the boy who answered to the name of joey sprang up from the table with the promptness of a jack-in-the-box, and ran out at the door. everybody turned as the carriage passed through the gate, which joey held open, putting his other hand where the brim of his hat would have been if he had worn one, and lapsing into a careless boy again the instant that the vehicle had gone by. 'there's a tremendous large dinner-party at the house to-night,' said emmeline methodically, looking at the equipage over the edge of her teacup, without leaving off sipping. 'that was lord mountclere. he's a wicked old man, they say.' 'lord mountclere?' said ethelberta musingly. 'i used to know some friends of his. in what way is he wicked?' 'i don't know,' said emmeline, with simplicity. 'i suppose it is because he breaks the commandments. but i wonder how a big rich lord can want to steal anything.' emmeline's thoughts of breaking commandments instinctively fell upon the eighth, as being in her ideas the only case wherein the gain could be considered as at all worth the hazard. ethelberta said nothing; but christopher thought that a shade of depression passed over her. 'hook back the gate, joey,' shouted emmeline, when the carriage had proceeded up the drive. 'there's more to come.' joey did as ordered, and by the time he got indoors another carriage turned in from the public road--a one-horse brougham this time. 'i know who that is: that's mr. ladywell,' said emmeline, in the same matter-of-fact tone. 'he's been here afore: he's a distant relation of the squire's, and he once gave me sixpence for picking up his gloves.' 'what shall i live to see?' murmured the poetess, under her breath, nearly dropping her teacup in an involuntary trepidation, from which she made it a point of dignity to recover in a moment. christopher's eyes, at that exhibition from ethelberta, entered her own like a pair of lances. picotee, seeing christopher's quick look of jealousy, became involved in her turn, and grew pale as a lily in her endeavours to conceal the complications to which it gave birth in her poor little breast likewise. 'you judge me very wrongly,' said ethelberta, in answer to christopher's hasty look of resentment. 'in supposing mr. ladywell to be a great friend of yours?' said christopher, who had in some indescribable way suddenly assumed a right to ethelberta as his old property. 'yes: for i hardly know him, and certainly do not value him.' after this there was something in the mutual look of the two, though their words had been private, which did not tend to remove the anguish of fragile picotee. christopher, assured that ethelberta's embarrassment had been caused by nothing more than the sense of her odd social subsidence, recovered more bliss than he had lost, and regarded calmly the profile of young ladywell between the two windows of his brougham as it passed the open cottage door, bearing him along unconscious as the dead of the nearness of his beloved one, and of the sad buffoonery that fate, fortune, and the guardian angels had been playing with ethelberta of late. he recognized the face as that of the young man whom he had encountered when watching ethelberta's window from rookington park. 'perhaps you remember seeing him at the christmas dance at wyndway?' she inquired. 'he is a good-natured fellow. afterwards he sent me that portfolio of sketches you see in the corner. he might possibly do something in the world as a painter if he were obliged to work at the art for his bread, which he is not.' she added with bitter pleasantry: 'in bare mercy to his self-respect i must remain unseen here.' it impressed christopher to perceive how, under the estrangement which arose from differences of education, surroundings, experience, and talent, the sympathies of close relationship were perceptible in ethelberta's bearing towards her brothers and sisters. at a remark upon some simple pleasure wherein she had not participated because absent and occupied by far more comprehensive interests, a gloom as of banishment would cross her face and dim it for awhile, showing that the free habits and enthusiasms of country life had still their charm with her, in the face of the subtler gratifications of abridged bodices, candlelight, and no feelings in particular, which prevailed in town. perhaps the one condition which could work up into a permanent feeling the passing revival of his fancy for a woman whose chief attribute he had supposed to be sprightliness was added now by the romantic ubiquity of station that attached to her. a discovery which might have grated on the senses of a man wedded to conventionality was a positive pleasure to one whose faith in society had departed with his own social ruin. the room began to darken, whereupon christopher arose to leave; and the brothers sol and dan offered to accompany him. . a turnpike road 'we be thinking of coming to london ourselves soon,' said sol, a carpenter and joiner by trade, as he walked along at christopher's left hand. 'there's so much more chance for a man up the country. now, if you was me, how should you set about getting a job, sir?' 'what can you do?' said christopher. 'well, i am a very good staircase hand; and i have been called neat at sash-frames; and i can knock together doors and shutters very well; and i can do a little at the cabinet-making. i don't mind framing a roof, neither, if the rest be busy; and i am always ready to fill up my time at planing floor-boards by the foot.' 'and i can mix and lay flat tints,' said dan, who was a house painter, 'and pick out mouldings, and grain in every kind of wood you can mention--oak, maple, walnut, satinwood, cherry-tree--' 'you can both do too much to stand the least chance of being allowed to do anything in a city, where limitation is all the rule in labour. to have any success, sol, you must be a man who can thoroughly look at a door to see what ought to be done to it, but as to looking at a window, that's not your line; or a person who, to the remotest particular, understands turning a screw, but who does not profess any knowledge of how to drive a nail. dan must know how to paint blue to a marvel, but must be quite in the dark about painting green. if you stick to some such principle of specialty as this, you may get employment in london.' 'ha-ha-ha!' said dan, striking at a stone in the road with the stout green hazel he carried. 'a wink is as good as a nod: thank'ee--we'll mind all that now.' 'if we do come,' said sol, 'we shall not mix up with mrs. petherwin at all.' 'o indeed!' 'o no. (perhaps you think it odd that we call her "mrs. petherwin," but that's by agreement as safer and better than berta, because we be such rough chaps you see, and she's so lofty.) 'twould demean her to claim kin wi' her in london--two journeymen like we, that know nothing besides our trades.' 'not at all,' said christopher, by way of chiming in in the friendliest manner. 'she would be pleased to see any straightforward honest man and brother, i should think, notwithstanding that she has moved in other society for a time.' 'ah, you don't know berta!' said dan, looking as if he did. 'how--in what way do you mean?' said christopher uneasily. 'so lofty--so very lofty! isn't she, sol? why she'll never stir out from mother's till after dark, and then her day begins; and she'll traipse about under the trees, and never go into the high-road, so that nobody in the way of gentle-people shall run up against her and know her living in such a little small hut after biding in a big mansion-place. there, we don't find fault wi' her about it: we like her just the same, though she don't speak to us in the street; for a feller must be a fool to make a piece of work about a woman's pride, when 'tis his own sister, and hang upon her and bother her when he knows 'tis for her good that he should not. yes, her life has been quare enough. i hope she enjoys it, but for my part i like plain sailing. none of your ups and downs for me. there, i suppose 'twas her nater to want to look into the world a bit.' 'father and mother kept berta to school, you understand, sir,' explained the more thoughtful sol, 'because she was such a quick child, and they always had a notion of making a governess of her. sums? if you said to that child, "berta, 'levenpence-three-farthings a day, how much a year?" she would tell 'ee in three seconds out of her own little head. and that hard sum about the herrings she had done afore she was nine.' 'true, she had,' said dan. 'and we all know that to do that is to do something that's no nonsense.' 'what is the sum?' christopher inquired. 'what--not know the sum about the herrings?' said dan, spreading his gaze all over christopher in amazement. 'never heard of it,' said christopher. 'why down in these parts just as you try a man's soul by the ten commandments, you try his head by that there sum--hey, sol?' 'ay, that we do.' 'a herring and a half for three-halfpence, how many can ye get for 'levenpence: that's the feller; and a mortal teaser he is, i assure 'ee. our parson, who's not altogether without sense o' week days, said one afternoon, "if cunning can be found in the multiplication table at all, chickerel, 'tis in connection with that sum." well, berta was so clever in arithmetic that she was asked to teach summing at miss courtley's, and there she got to like foreign tongues more than ciphering, and at last she hated ciphering, and took to books entirely. mother and we were very proud of her at that time: not that we be stuck-up people at all--be we, sol?' 'not at all; nobody can say that we be that, though there's more of it in the country than there should be by all account.' 'you'd be surprised to see how vain the girls about here be getting. little rascals, why they won't curtsey to the loftiest lady in the land; no, not if you were to pay 'em to do it. now, the men be different. any man will touch his hat for a pint of beer. but then, of course, there's some difference between the two. touching your hat is a good deal less to do than bending your knees, as berta used to say, when she was blowed up for not doing it. she was always one of the independent sort--you never seed such a maid as she was! now, picotee was quite the other way.' 'has picotee left sandbourne entirely?' 'o no; she is home for the holidays. well, mr. julian, our road parts from yours just here, unless you walk into the next town along with us. but i suppose you get across to this station and go by rail?' 'i am obliged to go that way for my portmanteau,' said christopher, 'or i should have been pleased to walk further. shall i see you in sandbourne to-morrow? i hope so.' 'well, no. 'tis hardly likely that you will see us--hardly. we know how unpleasant it is for a high sort of man to have rough chaps like us hailing him, so we think it best not to meet you--thank you all the same. so if you should run up against us in the street, we should be just as well pleased by your taking no notice, if you wouldn't mind. 'twill save so much awkwardness--being in our working clothes. 'tis always the plan that mrs. petherwin and we agree to act upon, and we find it best for both. i hope you take our meaning right, and as no offence, mr. julian.' 'and do you do the same with picotee?' 'o lord, no--'tisn't a bit of use to try. that's the worst of picotee--there's no getting rid of her. the more in the rough we be the more she'll stick to us; and if we say she shan't come, she'll bide and fret about it till we be forced to let her.' christopher laughed, and promised, on condition that they would retract the statement about their not being proud; and then he wished his friends good-night. . an inner room at the lodge at the lodge at this time a discussion of some importance was in progress. the scene was mrs. chickerel's bedroom, to which, unfortunately, she was confined by some spinal complaint; and here she now appeared as an interesting woman of five-and-forty, properly dressed as far as visible, and propped up in a bed covered with a quilt which presented a field of little squares in many tints, looking altogether like a bird's-eye view of a market garden. mrs. chickerel had been nurse in a nobleman's family until her marriage, and after that she played the part of wife and mother, upon the whole, affectionately and well. among her minor differences with her husband had been one about the naming of the children; a matter that was at last compromised by an agreement under which the choice of the girls' names became her prerogative, and that of the boys' her husband's, who limited his field of selection to strict historical precedent as a set-off to mrs. chickerel's tendency to stray into the regions of romance. the only grown-up daughters at home, ethelberta and picotee, with their brother joey, were sitting near her; the two youngest children, georgina and myrtle, who had been strutting in and out of the room, and otherwise endeavouring to walk, talk, and speak like the gentleman just gone away, were packed off to bed. emmeline, of that transitional age which causes its exponent to look wistfully at the sitters when romping and at the rompers when sitting, uncertain whether her position in the household is that of child or woman, was idling in a corner. the two absent brothers and two absent sisters--eldest members of the family--completed the round ten whom mrs. chickerel with thoughtless readiness had presented to a crowded world, to cost ethelberta many wakeful hours at night while she revolved schemes how they might be decently maintained. 'i still think,' ethelberta was saying, 'that the plan i first proposed is the best. i am convinced that it will not do to attempt to keep on the lodge. if we are all together in town, i can look after you much better than when you are far away from me down here.' 'shall we not interfere with you--your plans for keeping up your connections?' inquired her mother, glancing up towards ethelberta by lifting the flesh of her forehead, instead of troubling to raise her face altogether. 'not nearly so much as by staying here.' 'but,' said picotee, 'if you let lodgings, won't the gentlemen and ladies know it?' 'i have thought of that,' said ethelberta, 'and this is how i shall manage. in the first place, if mother is there, the lodgings can be let in her name, all bills will be receipted by her, and all tradesmen's orders will be given as from herself. then, we will take no english lodgers at all; we will advertise the rooms only in continental newspapers, as suitable for a french or german gentleman or two, and by this means there will be little danger of my acquaintance discovering that my house is not entirely a private one, or of any lodger being a friend of my acquaintance. i have thought over every possible way of combining the dignified social position i must maintain to make my story- telling attractive, with my absolute lack of money, and i can see no better one.' 'then if gwendoline is to be your cook, she must soon give notice at her present place?' 'yes. everything depends upon gwendoline and cornelia. but there is time enough for them to give notice--christmas will be soon enough. if they cannot or will not come as cook and housemaid, i am afraid the plan will break down. a vital condition is that i do not have a soul in the house (beyond the lodgers) who is not one of my own relations. when we have put joey into buttons, he will do very well to attend to the door.' 'but s'pose,' said joey, after a glassy look at his future appearance in the position alluded to, 'that any of your gentle-people come to see ye, and when i opens the door and lets 'em in a swinging big lodger stalks downstairs. what will 'em think? up will go their eye-glasses at one another till they glares each other into holes. my gracious!' 'the one who calls will only think that another visitor is leaving, joey. but i shall have no visitors, or very few. i shall let it be well known among my late friends that my mother is an invalid, and that on this account we receive none but the most intimate friends. these intimate friends not existing, we receive nobody at all.' 'except sol and dan, if they get a job in london? they'll have to call upon us at the back door, won't they, berta?' said joey. 'they must go down the area steps. but they will not mind that; they like the idea.' 'and father, too, must he go down the steps?' 'he may come whichever way he likes. he will be glad enough to have us near at any price. i know that he is not at all happy at leaving you down here, and he away in london. you remember that he has only taken the situation at mr. doncastle's on the supposition that you all come to town as soon as he can see an opening for getting you there; and as nothing of the sort has offered itself to him, this will be the very thing. of course, if i succeed wonderfully well in my schemes for story- tellings, readings of my ballads and poems, lectures on the art of versification, and what not, we need have no lodgers; and then we shall all be living a happy family--all taking our share in keeping the establishment going.' 'except poor me!' sighed the mother. 'my dear mother, you will be necessary as a steadying power--a flywheel, in short, to the concern. i wish that father could live there, too.' 'he'll never give up his present way of life--it has grown to be a part of his nature. poor man, he never feels at home except in somebody else's house, and is nervous and quite a stranger in his own. sich is the fatal effects of service!' 'o mother, don't!' said ethelberta tenderly, but with her teeth on edge; and picotee curled up her toes, fearing that her mother was going to moralize. 'well, what i mean is, that your father would not like to live upon your earnings, and so forth. but in town we shall be near him--that's one comfort, certainly.' 'and i shall not be wanted at all,' said picotee, in a melancholy tone. 'it is much better to stay where you are,' her mother said. 'you will come and spend the holidays with us, of course, as you do now.' 'i should like to live in london best,' murmured picotee, her head sinking mournfully to one side. 'i hate being in sandbourne now!' 'nonsense!' said ethelberta severely. 'we are all contriving how to live most comfortably, and it is by far the best thing for you to stay at the school. you used to be happy enough there.' picotee sighed, and said no more. . a large public hall it was the second week in february, parliament had just met, and ethelberta appeared for the first time before an audience in london. there was some novelty in the species of entertainment that the active young woman had proposed to herself, and this doubtless had due effect in collecting the body of strangers that greeted her entry, over and above those friends who came to listen to her as a matter of course. men and women who had become totally indifferent to new actresses, new readers, and new singers, once more felt the freshness of curiosity as they considered the promise of the announcement. but the chief inducement to attend lay in the fact that here was to be seen in the flesh a woman with whom the tongue of rumour had been busy in many romantic ways--a woman who, whatever else might be doubted, had certainly produced a volume of verses which had been the talk of the many who had read them, and of the many more who had not, for several consecutive weeks. what was her story to be? persons interested in the inquiry--a small proportion, it may be owned, of the whole london public, and chiefly young men--answered this question for themselves by assuming that it would take the form of some pungent and gratifying revelation of the innermost events of her own life, from which her gushing lines had sprung as an inevitable consequence, and which being once known, would cause such musical poesy to appear no longer wonderful. the front part of the room was well filled, rows of listeners showing themselves like a drilled-in crop of which not a seed has failed. they were listeners of the right sort, a majority having noses of the prominent and dignified type, which when viewed in oblique perspective ranged as regularly as bow-windows at a watering place. ethelberta's plan was to tell her pretended history and adventures while sitting in a chair--as if she were at her own fireside, surrounded by a circle of friends. by this touch of domesticity a great appearance of truth and naturalness was given, though really the attitude was at first more difficult to maintain satisfactorily than any one wherein stricter formality should be observed. she gently began her subject, as if scarcely knowing whether a throng were near her or not, and, in her fear of seeming artificial, spoke too low. this defect, however, she soon corrected, and ultimately went on in a charmingly colloquial manner. what ethelberta relied upon soon became evident. it was not upon the intrinsic merits of her story as a piece of construction, but upon her method of telling it. whatever defects the tale possessed--and they were not a few--it had, as delivered by her, the one pre-eminent merit of seeming like truth. a modern critic has well observed of de foe that he had the most amazing talent on record for telling lies; and ethelberta, in wishing her fiction to appear like a real narrative of personal adventure, did wisely to make de foe her model. his is a style even better adapted for speaking than for writing, and the peculiarities of diction which he adopts to give verisimilitude to his narratives acquired enormous additional force when exhibited as viva-voce mannerisms. and although these artifices were not, perhaps, slavishly copied from that master of feigning, they would undoubtedly have reminded her hearers of him, had they not mostly been drawn from an easeful section in society which is especially characterized by the mental condition of knowing nothing about any author a week after they have read him. the few there who did remember de foe were impressed by a fancy that his words greeted them anew in a winged auricular form, instead of by the weaker channels of print and eyesight. the reader may imagine what an effect this well- studied method must have produced when intensified by a clear, living voice, animated action, and the brilliant and expressive eye of a handsome woman--attributes which of themselves almost compelled belief. when she reached the most telling passages, instead of adding exaggerated action and sound, ethelberta would lapse to a whisper and a sustained stillness, which were more striking than gesticulation. all that could be done by art was there, and if inspiration was wanting nobody missed it. it was in performing this feat that ethelberta seemed first to discover in herself the full power of that self-command which further onward in her career more and more impressed her as a singular possession, until at last she was tempted to make of it many fantastic uses, leading to results that affected more households than her own. a talent for demureness under difficulties without the cold-bloodedness which renders such a bearing natural and easy, a face and hand reigning unmoved outside a heart by nature turbulent as a wave, is a constitutional arrangement much to be desired by people in general; yet, had ethelberta been framed with less of that gift in her, her life might have been more comfortable as an experience, and brighter as an example, though perhaps duller as a story. 'ladywell, how came this mrs. petherwin to think of such a queer trick as telling romances, after doing so well as a poet?' said a man in the stalls to his friend, who had been gazing at the story-teller with a rapt face. 'what--don't you know?--everybody did, i thought,' said the painter. 'a mistake. indeed, i should not have come here at all had i not heard the subject mentioned by accident yesterday at grey's; and then i remembered her to be the same woman i had met at some place--belmaine's i think it was--last year, when i thought her just getting on for handsome and clever, not to put it too strongly.' 'ah! naturally you would not know much,' replied ladywell, in an eager whisper. 'perhaps i am judging others by myself a little more than--but, as you have heard, she is an acquaintance of mine. i know her very well, and, in fact, i originally suggested the scheme to her as a pleasant way of adding to her fame. "depend upon it, dear mrs. petherwin," i said, during a pause in one of our dances together some time ago, "any public appearance of yours would be successful beyond description."' 'o, i had no idea that you knew her so well! then it is quite through you that she has adopted this course?' 'well, not entirely--i could not say entirely. she said that some day, perhaps, she might do such a thing; and, in short, i reduced her vague ideas to form.' 'i should not mind knowing her better--i must get you to throw us together in some way,' said neigh, with some interest. 'i had no idea that you were such an old friend. you could do it, i suppose?' 'really, i am afraid--hah-hah--may not have the opportunity of obliging you. i met her at wyndway, you know, where she was visiting with lady petherwin. it was some time ago, and i cannot say that i have ever met her since.' 'or before?' said neigh. 'well--no; i never did.' 'ladywell, if i had half your power of going to your imagination for facts, i would be the greatest painter in england.' 'now neigh--that's too bad--but with regard to this matter, i do speak with some interest,' said ladywell, with a pleased sense of himself. 'in love with her?--smitten down?--done for?' 'now, now! however, several other fellows chaff me about her. it was only yesterday that jones said--' 'do you know why she cares to do this sort of thing?' 'merely a desire for fame, i suppose.' 'i should think she has fame enough already.' 'that i can express no opinion upon. i am thinking of getting her permission to use her face in a subject i am preparing. it is a fine face for canvas. glorious contour--glorious. ah, here she is again, for the second part.' 'dream on, young fellow. you'll make a rare couple!' said neigh, with a flavour of superciliousness unheeded by his occupied companion. further back in the room were a pair of faces whose keen interest in the performance contrasted much with the languidly permissive air of those in front. when the ten minutes' break occurred, christopher was the first of the two to speak. 'well, what do you think of her, faith?' he said, shifting restlessly on his seat. 'i like the quiet parts of the tale best, i think,' replied the sister; 'but, of course, i am not a good judge of these things. how still the people are at times! i continually take my eyes from her to look at the listeners. did you notice the fat old lady in the second row, with her cloak a little thrown back? she was absolutely unconscious, and stayed with her face up and lips parted like a little child of six.' 'she well may! the thing is a triumph. that fellow ladywell is here, i believe--yes, it is he, busily talking to the man on his right. if i were a woman i would rather go donkey-driving than stick myself up there, for gaping fops to quiz and say what they like about! but she had no choice, poor thing; for it was that or nothing with her.' faith, who had secret doubts about the absolute necessity of ethelberta's appearance in public, said, with remote meanings, 'perhaps it is not altogether a severe punishment to her to be looked at by well-dressed men. suppose she feels it as a blessing, instead of an affliction?' 'she is a different sort of woman, faith, and so you would say if you knew her. of course, it is natural for you to criticize her severely just now, and i don't wish to defend her.' 'i think you do a little, kit.' 'no; i am indifferent about it all. perhaps it would have been better for me if i had never seen her; and possibly it might have been better for her if she had never seen me. she has a heart, and the heart is a troublesome encumbrance when great things have to be done. i wish you knew her: i am sure you would like each other.' 'o yes,' said faith, in a voice of rather weak conviction. 'but, as we live in such a plain way, it would be hardly desirable at present.' * * * * * ethelberta being regarded, in common with the latest conjurer, spirit- medium, aeronaut, giant, dwarf or monarch, as a new sensation, she was duly criticized in the morning papers, and even obtained a notice in some of the weekly reviews. 'a handsome woman,' said one of these, 'may have her own reasons for causing the flesh of the london public to creep upon its bones by her undoubtedly remarkable narrative powers; but we question if much good can result from such a form of entertainment. nevertheless, some praise is due. we have had the novel-writer among us for some time, and the novel- reader has occasionally appeared on our platforms; but we believe that this is the first instance on record of a novel-teller--one, that is to say, who relates professedly as fiction a romantic tale which has never been printed--the whole owing its chief interest to the method whereby the teller identifies herself with the leading character in the story.' another observed: 'when once we get away from the magic influence of the story-teller's eye and tongue, we perceive how improbable, even impossible, is the tissue of events to which we have been listening with so great a sense of reality, and we feel almost angry with ourselves at having been the victims of such utter illusion.' 'mrs. petherwin's personal appearance is decidedly in her favour,' said another. 'she affects no unconsciousness of the fact that form and feature are no mean vehicles of persuasion, and she uses the powers of each to the utmost. there spreads upon her face when in repose an air of innocence which is charmingly belied by the subtlety we discover beneath it when she begins her tale; and this amusing discrepancy between her physical presentment and the inner woman is further illustrated by the misgiving, which seizes us on her entrance, that so impressionable a lady will never bear up in the face of so trying an audience. . . . the combinations of incident which mrs. petherwin persuades her hearers that she has passed through are not a little marvellous; and if what is rumoured be true, that the tales are to a great extent based upon her own experiences, she has proved herself to be no less daring in adventure than facile in her power of describing it.' . ethelberta's house after such successes as these, christopher could not forego the seductive intention of calling upon the poetess and romancer, at her now established town residence in exonbury crescent. one wintry afternoon he reached the door--now for the third time--and gave a knock which had in it every tender refinement that could be thrown into the somewhat antagonistic vehicle of noise. turning his face down the street he waited restlessly on the step. there was a strange light in the atmosphere: the glass of the street-lamps, the varnished back of a passing cab, a milk-woman's cans, and a row of church-windows glared in his eyes like new-rubbed copper; and on looking the other way he beheld a bloody sun hanging among the chimneys at the upper end, as a danger-lamp to warn him off. by this time the door was opened, and before him stood ethelberta's young brother joey, thickly populated with little buttons, the remainder of him consisting of invisible green. 'ah, joseph,' said christopher, instantly recognizing the boy. 'what, are you here in office? is your--' joey lifted his forefinger and spread his mouth in a genial manner, as if to signify particular friendliness mingled with general caution. 'yes, sir, mrs. petherwin is my mistress. i'll see if she is at home, sir,' he replied, raising his shoulders and winking a wink of strategic meanings by way of finish--all which signs showed, if evidence were wanted, how effectually this pleasant young page understood, though quite fresh from wessex, the duties of his peculiar position. mr. julian was shown to the drawing-room, and there he found ethelberta alone. she gave him a hand so cool and still that christopher, much as he desired the contact, was literally ashamed to let her see and feel his own, trembling with unmanageable excess of feeling. it was always so, always had been so, always would be so, at these meetings of theirs: she was immeasurably the strongest; and the deep-eyed young man fancied, in the chagrin which the perception of this difference always bred in him, that she triumphed in her superior control. yet it was only in little things that their sexes were thus reversed: christopher would receive quite a shock if a little dog barked at his heels, and be totally unmoved when in danger of his life. certainly the most self-possessed woman in the world, under pressure of the incongruity between their last meeting and the present one, might have shown more embarrassment than ethelberta showed on greeting him to- day. christopher was only a man in believing that the shyness which she did evince was chiefly the result of personal interest. she might or might not have been said to blush--perhaps the stealthy change upon her face was too slow an operation to deserve that name: but, though pale when he called, the end of ten minutes saw her colour high and wide. she soon set him at his ease, and seemed to relax a long-sustained tension as she talked to him of her arrangements, hopes, and fears. 'and how do you like london society?' said ethelberta. 'pretty well, as far as i have seen it: to the surface of its front door.' 'you will find nothing to be alarmed at if you get inside.' 'o no--of course not--except my own shortcomings,' said the modest musician. 'london society is made up of much more refined people than society anywhere else.' 'that's a very prevalent opinion; and it is nowhere half so prevalent as in london society itself. however, come and see my house--unless you think it a trouble to look over a house?' 'no; i should like it very much.' the decorations tended towards the artistic gymnastics prevalent in some quarters at the present day. upon a general flat tint of duck's-egg green appeared quaint patterns of conventional foliage, and birds, done in bright auburn, several shades nearer to redbreast-red than was ethelberta's hair, which was thus thrust further towards brown by such juxtaposition--a possible reason for the choice of tint. upon the glazed tiles within the chimney-piece were the forms of owls, bats, snakes, frogs, mice, spiders in their webs, moles, and other objects of aversion and darkness, shaped in black and burnt in after the approved fashion. 'my brothers sol and dan did most of the actual work,' said ethelberta, 'though i drew the outlines, and designed the tiles round the fire. the flowers, mice, and spiders are done very simply, you know: you only press a real flower, mouse, or spider out flat under a piece of glass, and then copy it, adding a little more emaciation and angularity at pleasure.' 'in that "at pleasure" is where all the art lies,' said he. 'well, yes--that is the case,' said ethelberta thoughtfully; and preceding him upstairs, she threw open a door on one of the floors, disclosing dan in person, engaged upon a similar treatment of this floor also. sol appeared bulging from the door of a closet, a little further on, where he was fixing some shelves; and both wore workmen's blouses. at once coming down from the short ladder he was standing upon, dan shook christopher's hand with some velocity. 'we do a little at a time, you see,' he said, 'because colonel down below, and mrs. petherwin's visitors, shan't smell the turpentine.' 'we be pushing on to-day to get it out of the way,' said sol, also coming forward and greeting their visitor, but more reluctantly than his brother had done. 'now i'll tell ye what--you two,' he added, after an uneasy pause, turning from christopher to ethelberta and back again in great earnestness; 'you'd better not bide here, talking to we rough ones, you know, for folks might find out that there's something closer between us than workmen and employer and employer's friend. so berta and mr. julian, if you'll go on and take no more notice o' us, in case of visitors, it would be wiser--else, perhaps, if we should be found out intimate with ye, and bring down your gentility, you'll blame us for it. i get as nervous as a cat when i think i may be the cause of any disgrace to ye.' 'don't be so silly, sol,' said ethelberta, laughing. 'ah, that's all very well,' said sol, with an unbelieving smile; 'but if we bain't company for you out of doors, you bain't company for we within--not that i find fault with ye or mind it, and shan't take anything for painting your house, nor will dan neither, any more for that--no, not a penny; in fact, we are glad to do it for 'ee. at the same time, you keep to your class, and we'll keep to ours. and so, good afternoon, berta, when you like to go, and the same to you, mr. julian. dan, is that your mind?' 'i can but own it,' said dan. the two brothers then turned their backs upon their visitors, and went on working, and ethelberta and her lover left the room. 'my brothers, you perceive,' said she, 'represent the respectable british workman in his entirety, and a touchy individual he is, i assure you, on points of dignity, after imbibing a few town ideas from his leaders. they are painfully off-hand with me, absolutely refusing to be intimate, from a mistaken notion that i am ashamed of their dress and manners; which, of course, is absurd.' 'which, of course, is absurd,' said christopher. 'of course it is absurd!' she repeated with warmth, and looking keenly at him. but, finding no harm in his face, she continued as before: 'yet, all the time, they will do anything under the sun that they think will advance my interests. in our hearts we are one. all they ask me to do is to leave them to themselves, and therefore i do so. now, would you like to see some more of your acquaintance?' she introduced him to a large attic; where he found himself in the society of two or three persons considerably below the middle height, whose manners were of that gushing kind sometimes called continental, their ages ranging from five years to eight. these were the youngest children, presided over by emmeline, as professor of letters, capital and small. 'i am giving them the rudiments of education here,' said ethelberta; 'but i foresee several difficulties in the way of keeping them here, which i must get over as best i can. one trouble is, that they don't get enough air and exercise.' 'is mrs. chickerel living here as well?' christopher ventured to inquire, when they were downstairs again. 'yes; but confined to her room as usual, i regret to say. two more sisters of mine, whom you have never seen at all, are also here. they are older than any of the rest of us, and had, broadly speaking, no education at all, poor girls. the eldest, gwendoline, is my cook, and cornelia is my housemaid. i suffer much sadness, and almost misery sometimes, in reflecting that here are we, ten brothers and sisters, born of one father and mother, who might have mixed together and shared all in the same scenes, and been properly happy, if it were not for the strange accidents that have split us up into sections as you see, cutting me off from them without the compensation of joining me to any others. they are all true as steel in keeping the secret of our kin, certainly; but that brings little joy, though some satisfaction perhaps.' 'you might be less despondent, i think. the tale-telling has been one of the successes of the season.' 'yes, i might; but i may observe that you scarcely set the example of blitheness.' 'ah--that's not because i don't recognize the pleasure of being here. it is from a more general cause: simply an underfeeling i have that at the most propitious moment the distance to the possibility of sorrow is so short that a man's spirits must not rise higher than mere cheerfulness out of bare respect to his insight. "as long as skies are blue, and fields are green, evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow."' ethelberta bowed uncertainly; the remark might refer to her past conduct or it might not. 'my great cause of uneasiness is the children,' she presently said, as a new page of matter. 'it is my duty, at all risk and all sacrifice of sentiment, to educate and provide for them. the grown- up ones, older than myself, i cannot help much, but the little ones i can. i keep my two french lodgers for the sake of them.' 'the lodgers, of course, don't know the relationship between yourself and the rest of the people in the house?' 'o no!--nor will they ever. my mother is supposed to let the ground and first floors to me--a strange lady--as she does the second and third floors to them. still, i may be discovered.' 'well--if you are?' 'let me be. life is a battle, they say; but it is only so in the sense that a game of chess is a battle--there is no seriousness in it; it may be put an end to at any inconvenient moment by owning yourself beaten, with a careless "ha-ha!" and sweeping your pieces into the box. experimentally, i care to succeed in society; but at the bottom of my heart, i don't care.' 'for that very reason you are likely to do it. my idea is, make ambition your business and indifference your relaxation, and you will fail; but make indifference your business and ambition your relaxation, and you will succeed. so impish are the ways of the gods.' 'i hope that you at any rate will succeed,' she said, at the end of a silence. 'i never can--if success means getting what one wants.' 'why should you not get that?' 'it has been forbidden to me.' her complexion changed just enough to show that she knew what he meant. 'if you were as bold as you are subtle, you would take a more cheerful view of the matter,' she said, with a look signifying innermost things. 'i will instantly! shall i test the truth of my cheerful view by a word of question?' 'i deny that you are capable of taking that view, and until you prove that you are, no question is allowed,' she said, laughing, and still warmer in the face and neck. 'nothing but melancholy, gentle melancholy, now as in old times when there was nothing to cause it.' 'ah--you only tease.' 'you will not throw aside that bitter medicine of distrust, for the world. you have grown so used to it, that you take it as food, as some invalids do their mixtures.' 'ethelberta, you have my heart--my whole heart. you have had it ever since i first saw you. now you understand me, and no pretending that you don't, mind, this second time.' 'i understood you long ago; you have not understood me.' 'you are mysterious,' he said lightly; 'and perhaps if i disentangle your mystery i shall find it to cover--indifference. i hope it does--for your sake.' 'how can you say so!' she exclaimed reproachfully. 'yet i wish it did too--i wish it did cover indifference--for yours. but you have all of me that you care to have, and may keep it for life if you wish to. listen, surely there was a knock at the door? let us go inside the room: i am always uneasy when anybody comes, lest any awkward discovery should be made by a visitor of my miserable contrivances for keeping up the establishment.' joey met them before they had left the landing. 'please, berta,' he whispered, 'mr. ladywell has called, and i've showed him into the liberry. you know, berta, this is how it was, you know: i thought you and mr. julian were in the drawing-room, and wouldn't want him to see ye together, and so i asked him to step into the liberry a minute.' 'you must improve your way of speaking,' she said, with quick embarrassment, whether at the mention of ladywell's name before julian, or at the way joey coupled herself with christopher, was quite uncertain. 'will you excuse me for a few moments?' she said, turning to christopher. 'pray sit down; i shall not be long.' and she glided downstairs. they had been standing just by the drawing-room door, and christopher turned back into the room with no very satisfactory countenance. it was very odd, he thought, that she should go down to ladywell in that mysterious manner, when he might have been admitted to where they were talking without any trouble at all. what could ladywell have to say, as an acquaintance calling upon her for a few minutes, that he was not to hear? indeed, if it came to that, what right had ladywell to call upon her at all, even though she were a widow, and to some extent chartered to live in a way which might be considered a trifle free if indulged in by other young women. this was the first time that he himself had ventured into her house on that very account--a doubt whether it was quite proper to call, considering her youth, and the fertility of her position as ground for scandal. but no sooner did he arrive than here was ladywell blundering in, and, since this conjunction had occurred on his first visit, the chances were that ladywell came very often. julian walked up and down the room, every moment expanding itself to a minute in his impatience at the delay and vexation at the cause. after scrutinizing for the fifth time every object on the walls as if afflicted with microscopic closeness of sight, his hands under his coat-tails, and his person jigging up and down upon his toes, he heard her coming up the stairs. when she entered the apartment her appearance was decidedly that of a person subsiding after some little excitement. 'i did not calculate upon being so long,' she said sweetly, at the same time throwing back her face and smiling. 'but i--was longer than i expected.' 'it seemed rather long,' said christopher gloomily, 'but i don't mind it.' 'i am glad of that,' said ethelberta. 'as you asked me to stay, i was very pleased to do so, and always should be; but i think that now i will wish you good-bye.' 'you are not vexed with me?' she said, looking quite into his face. 'mr. ladywell is nobody, you know.' 'nobody?' 'well, he is not much, i mean. the case is, that i am sitting to him for a subject in which my face is to be used--otherwise than as a portrait--and he called about it.' 'may i say,' said christopher, 'that if you want yourself painted, you are ill-advised not to let it be done by a man who knows how to use the brush a little?' 'o, he can paint!' said ethelberta, rather warmly. 'his last picture was excellent, i think. it was greatly talked about.' 'i imagined you to say that he was a mere nobody!' 'yes, but--how provoking you are!--nobody, i mean, to talk to. he is a true artist, nevertheless.' christopher made no reply. the warm understanding between them had quite ended now, and there was no fanning it up again. sudden tiffs had been the constant misfortune of their courtship in days gone by, had been the remote cause of her marriage to another; and the familiar shadows seemed to be rising again to cloud them with the same persistency as ever. christopher went downstairs with well-behaved moodiness, and left the house forthwith. the postman came to the door at the same time. ethelberta opened a letter from picotee--now at sandbourne again; and, stooping to the fire-light, she began to read:-- 'my dear ethelberta,--i have tried to like staying at sandbourne because you wished it, but i can't endure the town at all, dear berta; everything is so wretched and dull! o, i only wish you knew how dismal it is here, and how much i would give to come to london! i cannot help thinking that i could do better in town. you see, i should be close to you, and should have the benefit of your experience. i would not mind what i did for a living could i be there where you all are. it is so like banishment to be here. if i could not get a pupil-teachership in some london school (and i believe i could by advertising) i could stay with you, and be governess to georgina and myrtle, for i am sure you cannot spare time enough to teach them as they ought to be taught, and emmeline is not old enough to have any command over them. i could also assist at your dressmaking, and you must require a great deal of that to be done if you continue to appear in public. mr. long read in the papers the account of your first evening, and afterwards i heard two ladies of our committee talking about it; but of course not one of them knew my personal interest in the discussion. now will you, ethelberta, think if i may not come: do, there's a dear sister! i will do anything you set me about if i may only come.--your ever affectionate, picotee.' 'great powers above--what worries do beset me!' cried ethelberta, jumping up. 'what can possess the child so suddenly?--she used to like sandbourne well enough!' she sat down, and hastily scribbled the following reply:-- 'my dear picotee--there is only a little time to spare before the post goes, but i will try to answer your letter at once. whatever is the reason of this extraordinary dislike to sandbourne? it is a nice healthy place, and you are likely to do much better than either of our elder sisters, if you follow straight on in the path you have chosen. of course, if such good fortune should attend me that i get rich by my contrivances of public story-telling and so on, i shall share everything with you and the rest of us, in which case you shall not work at all. but (although i have been unexpectedly successful so far) this is problematical; and it would be rash to calculate upon all of us being able to live, or even us seven girls only, upon the fortune i am going to make that way. so, though i don't mean to be harsh, i must impress upon you the necessity of going on as you are going just at present. i know the place must be dull, but we must all put up with dulness sometimes. you, being next to me in age, must aid me as well as you can in doing something for the younger ones; and if anybody at all comes and lives here otherwise than as a servant, it must be our father--who will not, however, at present hear of such a thing when i mention it to him. do think of all this, picotee, and bear up! perhaps we shall all be happy and united some day. joey is waiting to run to the post-office with this at once. all are well. sol and dan have nearly finished the repairs and decorations of my house--but i will tell you of that another time.--your affectionate sister, berta.' . near sandbourne--london streets--ethelberta's when this letter reached its destination the next morning, picotee, in her over-anxiety, could not bring herself to read it in anybody's presence, and put it in her pocket till she was on her walk across the moor. she still lived at the cottage out of the town, though at some inconvenience to herself, in order to teach at a small village night-school whilst still carrying on her larger occupation of pupil-teacher in sandbourne. so she walked and read, and was soon in tears. moreover, when she thought of what ethelberta would have replied had that keen sister known the wildness of her true reason in wishing to go, she shuddered with misery. to wish to get near a man only because he had been kind to her, and had admired her pretty face, and had given her flowers, to nourish a passion all the more because of its hopeless impracticability, were things to dream of, not to tell. picotee was quite an unreasoning animal. her sister arranged situations for her, told her how to conduct herself in them, how to make up anew, in unobtrusive shapes, the valuable wearing apparel she sent from time to time--so as to provoke neither exasperation in the little gentry, nor superciliousness in the great. ethelberta did everything for her, in short; and picotee obeyed orders with the abstracted ease of mind which people show who have their thinking done for them, and put out their troubles as they do their washing. she was quite willing not to be clever herself, since it was unnecessary while she had a much-admired sister, who was clever enough for two people and to spare. this arrangement, by which she gained an untroubled existence in exchange for freedom of will, had worked very pleasantly for picotee until the anomaly of falling in love on her own account created a jar in the machinery. then she began to know how wearing were miserable days, and how much more wearing were miserable nights. she pictured christopher in london calling upon her dignified sister (for ethelberta innocently mentioned his name sometimes in writing) and imagined over and over again the mutual signs of warm feeling between them. and now picotee resolved upon a noble course. like juliet, she had been troubled with a consciousness that perhaps her love for christopher was a trifle forward and unmaidenly, even though she had determined never to let him or anybody in the whole world know of it. to set herself to pray that she might have strength to see him without a pang the lover of her sister, who deserved him so much more than herself, would be a grand penance and corrective. after uttering petitions to this effect for several days, she still felt very bad; indeed, in the psychological difficulty of striving for what in her soul she did not desire, rather worse, if anything. at last, weary of walking the old road and never meeting him, and blank in a general powerlessness, she wrote the letter to ethelberta, which was only the last one of a series that had previously been written and torn up. now this hope had been whirled away like thistledown, and the case was grievous enough to distract a greater stoic than picotee. the end of it was that she left the school on insufficient notice, gave up her cottage home on the plea--true in the letter--that she was going to join a relative in london, and went off thither by a morning train, leaving her things packed ready to be sent on when she should write for them. picotee arrived in town late on a cold february afternoon, bearing a small bag in her hand. she crossed westminster bridge on foot, just after dusk, and saw a luminous haze hanging over each well-lighted street as it withdrew into distance behind the nearer houses, showing its direction as a train of morning mist shows the course of a distant stream when the stream itself is hidden. the lights along the riverside towards charing cross sent an inverted palisade of gleaming swords down into the shaking water, and the pavement ticked to the touch of pedestrians' feet, most of whom tripped along as if walking only to practise a favourite quick step, and held handkerchiefs to their mouths to strain off the river mist from their lungs. she inquired her way to exonbury crescent, and between five and six o'clock reached her sister's door. two or three minutes were passed in accumulating resolution sufficient to ring the bell, which when at last she did, was not performed in a way at all calculated to make the young man joey hasten to the door. after the lapse of a certain time he did, however, find leisure to stroll and see what the caller might want, out of curiosity to know who there could be in london afraid to ring a bell twice. joey's delight exceeded even his surprise, the ruling maxim of his life being the more the merrier, under all circumstances. the beaming young man was about to run off and announce her upstairs and downstairs, left and right, when picotee called him hastily to her. in the hall her quick young eye had caught sight of an umbrella with a peculiar horn handle--an umbrella she had been accustomed to meet on sandbourne moor on many happy afternoons. christopher was evidently in the house. 'joey,' she said, as if she were ready to faint, 'don't tell berta i am come. she has company, has she not?' 'o no--only mr. julian!' said the brother. 'he's quite one of the family!' 'never mind--can't i go down into the kitchen with you?' she inquired. there had been bliss and misery mingled in those tidings, and she scarcely knew for a moment which way they affected her. what she did know was that she had run her dear fox to earth, and a sense of satisfaction at that feat prevented her just now from counting the cost of the performance. 'does mr. julian come to see her very often?' said she. 'o yes--he's always a-coming--a regular bore to me.' 'a regular what?' 'bore!--ah, i forgot, you don't know our town words. however, come along.' they passed by the doors on tiptoe, and their mother upstairs being, according to joey's account, in the midst of a nap, picotee was unwilling to disturb her; so they went down at once to the kitchen, when forward rushed gwendoline the cook, flourishing her floury hands, and cornelia the housemaid, dancing over her brush; and these having welcomed and made picotee comfortable, who should ring the area-bell, and be admitted down the steps, but sol and dan. the workman-brothers, their day's duties being over, had called to see their relations, first, as usual, going home to their lodgings in marylebone and making themselves as spruce as bridegrooms, according to the rules of their newly-acquired town experience. for the london mechanic is only nine hours a mechanic, though the country mechanic works, eats, drinks, and sleeps a mechanic throughout the whole twenty-four. 'god bless my soul--picotee!' said dan, standing fixed. 'well--i say, this is splendid! ha-ha!' 'picotee--what brought you here?' said sol, expanding the circumference of his face in satisfaction. 'well, come along--never mind so long as you be here.' picotee explained circumstances as well as she could without stating them, and, after a general conversation of a few minutes, sol interrupted with--'anybody upstairs with mrs. petherwin?' 'mr. julian was there just now,' said joey; 'but he may be gone. berta always lets him slip out how he can, the form of ringing me up not being necessary with him. wait a minute--i'll see.' joseph vanished up the stairs; and, the question whether christopher were gone or not being an uninteresting one to the majority, the talking went on upon other matters. when joey crept down again a minute later, picotee was sitting aloof and silent, and he accordingly singled her out to speak to. 'such a lark, picotee!' he whispered. 'berta's a-courting of her young man. would you like to see how they carries on a bit?' 'dearly i should!' said picotee, the pupils of her eyes dilating. joey conducted her to the top of the basement stairs, and told her to listen. within a few yards of them was the morning-room door, now standing ajar; and an intermittent flirtation in soft male and female tones could be heard going on inside. picotee's lips parted at thus learning the condition of things, and she leant against the stair-newel. 'my? what's the matter?' said joey. 'if this is london, i don't like it at all!' moaned picotee. 'well--i never see such a girl--fainting all over the stairs for nothing in the world.' 'o--it will soon be gone--it is--it is only indigestion.' 'indigestion? much you simple country people can know about that! you should see what devils of indigestions we get in high life--eating 'normous great dinners and suppers that require clever physicians to carry 'em off, or else they'd carry us off with gout next day; and waking in the morning with such a splitting headache, and dry throat, and inward cusses about human nature, that you feel all the world like some great lord. however, now let's go down again.' 'no, no, no!' said the unhappy maiden imploringly. 'hark!' they listened again. the voices of the musician and poetess had changed: there was a decided frigidity in their tone--then came a louder expression--then a silence. 'you needn't be afeard,' said joey. 'they won't fight; bless you, they busts out quarrelling like this times and times when they've been over- friendly, but it soon gets straight with 'em again.' there was now a quick walk across the room, and joey and his sister drew down their heads out of sight. then the room door was slammed, quick footsteps went along the hall, the front door closed just as loudly, and christopher's tread passed into nothing along the pavement. 'that's rather a wuss one than they mostly have; but lord, 'tis nothing at all.' 'i don't much like biding here listening!' said picotee. 'o, 'tis how we do all over the west end,' said joey. ''tis yer ignorance of town life that makes it seem a good deal to 'ee.' 'you can't make much boast about town life; for you haven't left off talking just as they do down in wessex.' 'well, i own to that--what's fair is fair, and 'tis a true charge; but if i talk the wessex way 'tisn't for want of knowing better; 'tis because my staunch nater makes me bide faithful to our old ancient institutions. you'd soon own 'twasn't ignorance in me, if you knowed what large quantities of noblemen i gets mixed up with every day. in fact 'tis thoughted here and there that i shall do very well in the world.' 'well, let us go down,' said picotee. 'everything seems so overpowering here.' 'o, you'll get broke in soon enough. i felt just the same when i first entered into society.' 'do you think berta will be angry with me? how does she treat you?' 'well, i can't complain. you see she's my own flesh and blood, and what can i say? but, in secret truth, the wages is terrible low, and barely pays for the tobacco i consooms.' 'o joey, you wicked boy! if mother only knew that you smoked!' 'i don't mind the wickedness so much as the smell. and mrs. petherwin has got such a nose for a fellow's clothes. 'tis one of the greatest knots in service--the smoke question. 'tis thoughted that we shall make a great stir about it in the mansions of the nobility soon.' 'how much more you know of life than i do--you only fourteen and me seventeen!' 'yes, that's true. you see, age is nothing--'tis opportunity. and even i can't boast, for many a younger man knows more.' 'but don't smoke, joey--there's a dear!' 'what can i do? society hev its rules, and if a person wishes to keep himself up, he must do as the world do. we be all fashion's slave--as much a slave as the meanest in the land!' they got downstairs again; and when the dinner of the french lady and gentleman had been sent up and cleared away, and also ethelberta's evening tea (which she formed into a genuine meal, making a dinner of luncheon, when nobody was there, to give less trouble to her servant-sisters), they all sat round the fire. then the rustle of a dress was heard on the staircase, and squirrel-haired ethelberta appeared in person. it was her custom thus to come down every spare evening, to teach joey and her sisters something or other--mostly french, which she spoke fluently; but the cook and housemaid showed more ambition than intelligence in acquiring that tongue, though joey learnt it readily enough. there was consternation in the camp for a moment or two, on account of poor picotee, ethelberta being not without firmness in matters of discipline. her eye instantly lighted upon her disobedient sister, now looking twice as disobedient as she really was. 'o, you are here, picotee? i am glad to see you,' said the mistress of the house quietly. this was altogether to picotee's surprise, for she had expected a round rating at least, in her freshness hardly being aware that this reserve of feeling was an acquired habit of ethelberta's, and that civility stood in town for as much vexation as a tantrum represented in wessex. picotee lamely explained her outward reasons for coming, and soon began to find that ethelberta's opinions on the matter would not be known by the tones of her voice. but innocent picotee was as wily as a religionist in sly elusions of the letter whilst infringing the spirit of a dictum; and by talking very softly and earnestly about the wondrous good she could do by remaining in the house as governess to the children, and playing the part of lady's-maid to her sister at show times, she so far coaxed ethelberta out of her intentions that she almost accepted the plan as a good one. it was agreed that for the present, at any rate, picotee should remain. then a visit was made to mrs. chickerel's room, where the remainder of the evening was passed; and harmony reigned in the household. . ethelberta's drawing-room picotee's heart was fitfully glad. she was near the man who had enlarged her capacity from girl's to woman's, a little note or two of young feeling to a whole diapason; and though nearness was perhaps not in itself a great reason for felicity when viewed beside the complete realization of all that a woman can desire in such circumstances, it was much in comparison with the outer darkness of the previous time. it became evident to all the family that some misunderstanding had arisen between ethelberta and mr. julian. what picotee hoped in the centre of her heart as to the issue of the affair it would be too complex a thing to say. if christopher became cold towards her sister he would not come to the house; if he continued to come it would really be as ethelberta's lover--altogether, a pretty game of perpetual check for picotee. he did not make his appearance for several days. picotee, being a presentable girl, and decidedly finer-natured than her sisters below stairs, was allowed to sit occasionally with ethelberta in the afternoon, when the teaching of the little ones had been done for the day; and thus she had an opportunity of observing ethelberta's emotional condition with reference to christopher, which picotee did with an interest that the elder sister was very far from suspecting. at first ethelberta seemed blithe enough without him. one more day went, and he did not come, and then her manner was that of apathy. another day passed, and from fanciful elevations of the eyebrow, and long breathings, it became apparent that ethelberta had decidedly passed the indifferent stage, and was getting seriously out of sorts about him. next morning she looked all hope. he did not come that day either, and ethelberta began to look pale with fear. 'why don't you go out?' said picotee timidly. 'i can hardly tell: i have been expecting some one.' 'when she comes i must run up to mother at once, must i not?' said clever picotee. 'it is not a lady,' said ethelberta blandly. she came then and stood by picotee, and looked musingly out of the window. 'i may as well tell you, perhaps,' she continued. 'it is mr. julian. he is--i suppose--my lover, in plain english.' 'ah!' said picotee. 'whom i am not going to marry until he gets rich.' 'ah--how strange! if i had him--such a lover, i mean--i would marry him if he continued poor.' 'i don't doubt it, picotee; just as you come to london without caring about consequences, or would do any other crazy thing and not mind in the least what came of it. but somebody in the family must take a practical view of affairs, or we should all go to the dogs.' picotee recovered from the snubbing which she felt that she deserved, and charged gallantly by saying, with delicate showings of indifference, 'do you love this mr. what's-his-name of yours?' 'mr. julian? o, he's a very gentlemanly man. that is, except when he is rude, and ill-uses me, and will not come and apologize!' 'if i had him--a lover, i would ask him to come if i wanted him to.' ethelberta did not give her mind to this remark; but, drawing a long breath, said, with a pouting laugh, which presaged unreality, 'the idea of his getting indifferent now! i have been intending to keep him on until i got tired of his attentions, and then put an end to them by marrying him; but here is he, before he has hardly declared himself, forgetting my existence as much as if he had vowed to love and cherish me for life. 'tis an unnatural inversion of the manners of society.' 'when did you first get to care for him, dear berta?' 'o--when i had seen him once or twice.' 'goodness--how quick you were!' 'yes--if i am in the mind for loving i am not to be hindered by shortness of acquaintanceship.' 'nor i neither!' sighed picotee. 'nor any other woman. we don't need to know a man well in order to love him. that's only necessary when we want to leave off.' 'o berta--you don't believe that!' 'if a woman did not invariably form an opinion of her choice before she has half seen him, and love him before she has half formed an opinion, there would be no tears and pining in the whole feminine world, and poets would starve for want of a topic. i don't believe it, do you say? ah, well, we shall see.' picotee did not know what to say to this; and ethelberta left the room to see about her duties as public story-teller, in which capacity she had undertaken to appear again this very evening. . the neighbourhood of the hall--the road home london was illuminated by the broad full moon. the pavements looked white as if mantled with snow; ordinary houses were sublimated to the rank of public buildings, public buildings to palaces, and the faces of women walking the streets to those of calendared saints and guardian-angels, by the pure bleaching light from the sky. in the quiet little street where opened the private door of the hall chosen by ethelberta for her story-telling, a brougham was waiting. the time was about eleven o'clock; and presently a lady came out from the building, the moonbeams forthwith flooding her face, which they showed to be that of the story-teller herself. she hastened across to the carriage, when a second thought arrested her motion: telling the man-servant and a woman inside the brougham to wait for her, she wrapped up her features and glided round to the front of the house, where she paused to observe the carriages and cabs driving up to receive the fashionable crowd stepping down from the doors. standing here in the throng which her own talent and ingenuity had drawn together, she appeared to enjoy herself by listening for a minute or two to the names of several persons of more or less distinction as they were called out, and then regarded attentively the faces of others of lesser degree: to scrutinize the latter was, as the event proved, the real object of the journey from round the corner. when nearly every one had left the doors, she turned back disappointed. ethelberta had been fancying that her alienated lover christopher was in the back rows to-night, but, as far as could now be observed, the hopeful supposition was a false one. when she got round to the back again, a man came forward. it was ladywell, whom she had spoken to already that evening. 'allow me to bring you your note-book, mrs. petherwin: i think you had forgotten it,' he said. 'i assure you that nobody has handled it but myself.' ethelberta thanked him, and took the book. 'i use it to look into between the parts, in case my memory should fail me,' she explained. 'i remember that i did lay it down, now you remind me.' ladywell had apparently more to say, and moved by her side towards the carriage; but she declined the arm he offered, and said not another word till he went on, haltingly: 'your triumph to-night was very great, and it was as much a triumph to me as to you; i cannot express my feeling--i cannot say half that i would. if i might only--' 'thank you much,' said ethelberta, with dignity. 'thank you for bringing my book, but i must go home now. i know that you will see that it is not necessary for us to be talking here.' 'yes--you are quite right,' said the repressed young painter, struck by her seriousness. 'blame me; i ought to have known better. but perhaps a man--well, i will say it--a lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms. i saw that, and hoped that i might speak without real harm.' 'you calculated how to be uncalculating, and are natural by art!' she said, with the slightest accent of sarcasm. 'but pray do not attend me further--it is not at all necessary or desirable. my maid is in the carriage.' she bowed, turned, and entered the vehicle, seating herself beside picotee. 'it was harsh!' said ladywell to himself, as he looked after the retreating carriage. 'i was a fool; but it was harsh. yet what man on earth likes a woman to show too great a readiness at first? she is right: she would be nothing without repulse!' and he moved away in an opposite direction. 'what man was that?' said picotee, as they drove along. 'o--a mere mr. ladywell: a painter of good family, to whom i have been sitting for what he calls an idealization. he is a dreadful simpleton.' 'why did you choose him?' 'i did not: he chose me. but his silliness of behaviour is a hopeful sign for the picture. i have seldom known a man cunning with his brush who was not simple with his tongue; or, indeed, any skill in particular that was not allied to general stupidity.' 'your own skill is not like that, is it, berta?' 'in men--in men. i don't mean in women. how childish you are!' the slight depression at finding that christopher was not present, which had followed ethelberta's public triumph that evening, was covered over, if not removed, by ladywell's declaration, and she reached home serene in spirit. that she had not the slightest notion of accepting the impulsive painter made little difference; a lover's arguments being apt to affect a lady's mood as much by measure as by weight. a useless declaration like a rare china teacup with a hole in it, has its ornamental value in enlarging a collection. no sooner had they entered the house than mr. julian's card was discovered; and joey informed them that he had come particularly to speak with ethelberta, quite forgetting that it was her evening for tale-telling. this was real delight, for between her excitements ethelberta had been seriously sick-hearted at the horrible possibility of his never calling again. but alas! for christopher. there being nothing like a dead silence for getting one's off-hand sweetheart into a corner, there is nothing like prematurely ending it for getting into that corner one's self. 'now won't i punish him for daring to stay away so long!' she exclaimed as soon as she got upstairs. 'it is as bad to show constancy in your manners as fickleness in your heart at such a time as this.' 'but i thought honesty was the best policy?' said picotee. 'so it is, for the man's purpose. but don't you go believing in sayings, picotee: they are all made by men, for their own advantages. women who use public proverbs as a guide through events are those who have not ingenuity enough to make private ones as each event occurs.' she sat down, and rapidly wrote a line to mr. julian:-- 'exonbury crescent. 'i return from mayfair hall to find you have called. you will, i know, be good enough to forgive my saying what seems an unfriendly thing, when i assure you that the circumstances of my peculiar situation make it desirable, if not necessary. it is that i beg you not to give me the pleasure of a visit from you for some little time, for unhappily the frequency of your kind calls has been noticed; and i am now in fear that we may be talked about--invidiously--to the injury of us both. the town, or a section of it, has turned its bull's-eye upon me with a brightness which i did not in the least anticipate; and you will, i am sure, perceive how indispensable it is that i should be circumspect.--yours sincerely, e. petherwin.' . a street--neigh's rooms--christopher's rooms as soon as ethelberta had driven off from the hall, ladywell turned back again; and, passing the front entrance, overtook his acquaintance mr. neigh, who had been one of the last to emerge. the two were going in the same direction, and they walked a short distance together. 'has anything serious happened?' said neigh, noticing an abstraction in his companion. 'you don't seem in your usual mood to-night.' 'o, it is only that affair between us,' said ladywell. 'affair? between you and whom?' 'her and myself, of course. it will be in every fellow's mouth now, i suppose!' 'but--not anything between yourself and mrs. petherwin?' 'a mere nothing. but surely you started, neigh, when you suspected it just this moment?' 'no--you merely fancied that.' 'did she not speak well to-night! you were in the room, i believe?' 'yes, i just turned in for half-an-hour: it seems that everybody does, so i thought i must. but i had no idea that you were feeble that way.' 'it is very kind of you, neigh--upon my word it is--very kind; and of course i appreciate the delicacy which--which--' 'what's kind?' 'i mean your well-intentioned plan for making me believe that nothing is known of this. but stories will of course get wind; and if our attachment has made more noise in the world than i intended it should, and causes any public interest, why--ha-ha!--it must. there is some little romance in it perhaps, and people will talk of matters of that sort between individuals of any repute--little as that is with one of the pair.' 'of course they will--of course. you are a rising man, remember, whom some day the world will delight to honour.' 'thank you for that, neigh. thank you sincerely.' 'not at all. it is merely justice to say it, and one must he generous to deserve thanks.' 'ha-ha!--that's very nicely put, and undeserved i am sure. and yet i need a word of that sort sometimes!' 'genius is proverbially modest.' 'pray don't, neigh--i don't deserve it, indeed. of course it is well meant in you to recognize any slight powers, but i don't deserve it. certainly, my self-assurance was never too great. 'tis the misfortune of all children of art that they should be so dependent upon any scraps of praise they can pick up to help them along.' 'and when that child gets so deep in love that you can only see the whites of his eyes--' 'ah--now, neigh--don't, i say!' 'but why did--' 'why did i love her?' 'yes, why did you love her?' 'ah, if i could only turn self-vivisector, and watch the operation of my heart, i should know!' 'my dear fellow, you must be very bad indeed to talk like that. a poet himself couldn't be cleaner gone.' 'now, don't chaff, neigh; do anything, but don't chaff. you know that i am the easiest man in the world for taking it at most times. but i can't stand it now; i don't feel up to it. a glimpse of paradise, and then perdition. what would you do, neigh?' 'she has refused you, then?' 'well--not positively refused me; but it is so near it that a dull man couldn't tell the difference. i hardly can myself.' 'how do you really stand with her?' said neigh, with an anxiety ill-concealed. 'off and on--neither one thing nor the other. i was determined to make an effort the last time she sat to me, and so i met her quite coolly, and spoke only of technicalities with a forced smile--you know that way of mine for drawing people out, eh, neigh?' 'quite, quite.' 'a forced smile, as much as to say, "i am obliged to entertain you, but as a mere model for art purposes." but the deuce a bit did she care. and then i frequently looked to see what time it was, as the end of the sitting drew near--rather a rude thing to do, as a rule.' 'of course. but that was your finesse. ha-ha!--capital! yet why not struggle against such slavery? it is regularly pulling you down. what's a woman's beauty, after all?' 'well you may say so! a thing easier to feel than define,' murmured ladywell. 'but it's no use, neigh--i can't help it as long as she repulses me so exquisitely! if she would only care for me a little, i might get to trouble less about her.' 'and love her no more than one ordinarily does a girl by the time one gets irrevocably engaged to her. but i suppose she keeps you back so thoroughly that you carry on the old adoration with as much vigour as if it were a new fancy every time?' 'partly yes, and partly no! it's very true, and it's not true!' ''tis to be hoped she won't hate you outright, for then you would absolutely die of idolizing her.' 'don't, neigh!--still there's some truth in it--such is the perversity of our hearts. fancy marrying such a woman!' 'we should feel as eternally united to her after years and years of marriage as to a dear new angel met at last night's dance.' 'exactly--just what i should have said. but did i hear you say "we," neigh? you didn't say "we should feel?"' 'say "we"?--yes--of course--putting myself in your place just in the way of speaking, you know.' 'of course, of course; but one is such a fool at these times that one seems to detect rivalry in every trumpery sound! were you never a little touched?' 'not i. my heart is in the happy position of a country which has no history or debt.' 'i suppose i should rejoice to hear it,' said ladywell. 'but the consciousness of a fellow-sufferer being in just such another hole is such a relief always, and softens the sense of one's folly so very much.' 'there's less christianity in that sentiment than in your confessing to it, old fellow. i know the truth of it nevertheless, and that's why married men advise others to marry. were all the world tied up, the pleasantly tied ones would be equivalent to those at present free. but what if your fellow-sufferer is not only in another such a hole, but in the same one?' 'no, neigh--never! don't trifle with a friend who--' 'that is, refused like yourself, as well as in love.' 'ah, thanks, thanks! it suddenly occurred to me that we might be dead against one another as rivals, and a friendship of many long--days be snapped like a--like a reed.' 'no--no--only a jest,' said neigh, with a strangely accelerated speech. 'love-making is an ornamental pursuit that matter-of-fact fellows like me are quite unfit for. a man must have courted at least half-a-dozen women before he's a match for one; and since triumph lies so far ahead, i shall keep out of the contest altogether.' 'your life would be pleasanter if you were engaged. it is a nice thing, after all.' 'it is. the worst of it would be that, when the time came for breaking it off, a fellow might get into an action for breach--women are so fond of that sort of thing now; and i hate love-affairs that don't end peaceably!' 'but end it by peaceably marrying, my dear fellow!' 'it would seem so singular. besides, i have a horror of antiquity: and you see, as long as a man keeps single, he belongs in a measure to the rising generation, however old he may be; but as soon as he marries and has children, he belongs to the last generation, however young he may be. old jones's son is a deal younger than young brown's father, though they are both the same age.' 'at any rate, honest courtship cures a man of many evils he had no power to stem before.' 'by substituting an incurable matrimony!' 'ah--two persons must have a mind for that before it can happen!' said ladywell, sorrowfully shaking his head. 'i think you'll find that if one has a mind for it, it will be quite sufficient. but here we are at my rooms. come in for half-an-hour?' 'not to-night, thanks!' they parted, and neigh went in. when he got upstairs he murmured in his deepest chest note, 'o, lords, that i should come to this! but i shall never be such a fool as to marry her! what a flat that poor young devil was not to discover that we were tarred with the same brush. o, the deuce, the deuce!' he continued, walking about the room as if passionately stamping, but not quite doing it because another man had rooms below. neigh drew from his pocket-book an envelope embossed with the name of a fashionable photographer, and out of this pulled a portrait of the lady who had, in fact, enslaved his secret self equally with his frank young friend the painter. after contemplating it awhile with a face of cynical adoration, he murmured, shaking his head, 'ah, my lady; if you only knew this, i should be snapped up like a snail! not a minute's peace for me till i had married you. i wonder if i shall!--i wonder.' neigh was a man of five-and-thirty--ladywell's senior by ten years; and, being of a phlegmatic temperament, he had glided thus far through the period of eligibility with impunity. he knew as well as any man how far he could go with a woman and yet keep clear of having to meet her in church without her bonnet; but it is doubtful if his mind that night were less disturbed with the question how to guide himself out of the natural course which his passion for ethelberta might tempt him into, than was ladywell's by his ardent wish to secure her. * * * * * about the time at which neigh and ladywell parted company, christopher julian was entering his little place in bloomsbury. the quaint figure of faith, in her bonnet and cloak, was kneeling on the hearth-rug endeavouring to stir a dull fire into a bright one. 'what--faith! you have never been out alone?' he said. faith's soft, quick-shutting eyes looked unutterable things, and she replied, 'i have been to hear mrs. petherwin's story-telling again.' 'and walked all the way home through the streets at this time of night, i suppose!' 'well, nobody molested me, either going or coming back.' 'faith, i gave you strict orders not to go into the streets after two o'clock in the day, and now here you are taking no notice of what i say at all!' 'the truth is, kit, i wanted to see with my spectacles what this woman was really like, and i went without them last time. i slipped in behind, and nobody saw me.' 'i don't think much of her after what i have seen tonight,' said christopher, moodily recurring to a previous thought. 'why? what is the matter?' 'i thought i would call on her this afternoon, but when i got there i found she had left early for the performance. so in the evening, when i thought it would be all over, i went to the private door of the hall to speak to her as she came out, and ask her flatly a question or two which i was fool enough to think i must ask her before i went to bed. just as i was drawing near she came out, and, instead of getting into the brougham that was waiting for her, she went round the corner. when she came back a man met her and gave her something, and they stayed talking together two or three minutes. the meeting may certainly not have been intentional on her part; but she has no business to be going on so coolly when--when--in fact, i have come to the conclusion that a woman's affection is not worth having. the only feeling which has any dignity or permanence or worth is family affection between close blood-relations.' 'and yet you snub me sometimes, mr. kit.' 'and, for the matter of that, you snub me. still, you know what i mean--there's none of that off-and-on humbug between us. if we grumble with one another we are united just the same: if we don't write when we are parted, we are just the same when we meet--there has been some rational reason for silence; but as for lovers and sweethearts, there is nothing worth a rush in what they feel!' faith said nothing in reply to this. the opinions she had formed upon the wisdom of her brother's pursuit of ethelberta would have come just then with an ill grace. it must, however, have been evident to christopher, had he not been too preoccupied for observation, that faith's impressions of ethelberta were not quite favourable as regarded her womanhood, notwithstanding that she greatly admired her talents. . ethelberta's house ethelberta came indoors one day from the university boat-race, and sat down, without speaking, beside picotee, as if lost in thought. 'did you enjoy the sight?' said picotee. 'i scarcely know. we couldn't see at all from mrs. belmaine's carriage, so two of us--very rashly--agreed to get out and be rowed across to the other side where the people were quite few. but when the boatman had us in the middle of the river he declared he couldn't land us on the other side because of the barges, so there we were in a dreadful state--tossed up and down like corks upon great waves made by steamers till i made up my mind for a drowning. well, at last we got back again, but couldn't reach the carriage for the crowd; and i don't know what we should have done if a gentleman hadn't come--sent by mrs. belmaine, who was in a great fright about us; then he was introduced to me, and--i wonder how it will end!' 'was there anything so wonderful in the beginning, then?' 'yes. one of the coolest and most practised men in london was ill-mannered towards me from sheer absence of mind--and could there be higher flattery? when a man of that sort does not give you the politeness you deserve, it means that in his heart he is rebelling against another feeling which his pride suggests that you do not deserve. o, i forgot to say that he is a mr. neigh, a nephew of mr. doncastle's, who lives at ease about piccadilly and pall mall, and has a few acres somewhere--but i don't know much of him. the worst of my position now is that i excite this superficial interest in many people and a deep friendship in nobody. if what all my supporters feel could be collected into the hearts of two or three they would love me better than they love themselves; but now it pervades all and operates in none.' 'but it must operate in this gentleman?' 'well, yes--just for the present. but men in town have so many contrivances for getting out of love that you can't calculate upon keeping them in for two days together. however, it is all the same to me. there's only--but let that be.' 'what is there only?' said picotee coaxingly. 'only one man,' murmured ethelberta, in much lower tones. 'i mean, whose wife i should care to be; and the very qualities i like in him will, i fear, prevent his ever being in a position to ask me.' 'is he the man you punished the week before last by forbidding him to come?' 'perhaps he is: but he does not want civility from me. where there's much feeling there's little ceremony.' 'it certainly seems that he does not want civility from you to make him attentive to you,' said picotee, stifling a sigh; 'for here is a letter in his handwriting, i believe.' 'you might have given it to me at once,' said ethelberta, opening the envelope hastily. it contained very few sentences: they were to the effect that christopher had received her letter forbidding him to call; that he had therefore at first resolved not to call or even see her more, since he had become such a shadow in her path. still, as it was always best to do nothing hastily, he had on second thoughts decided to ask her to grant him a last special favour, and see him again just once, for a few minutes only that afternoon, in which he might at least say farewell. to avoid all possibility of compromising her in anybody's eyes, he would call at half-past six, when other callers were likely to be gone, knowing that from the peculiar constitution of the household the hour would not interfere with her arrangements. there being no time for an answer, he would assume that she would see him, and keep the engagement; the request being one which could not rationally be objected to. 'there--read it!' said ethelberta, with glad displeasure. 'did you ever hear such audacity? fixing a time so soon that i cannot reply, and thus making capital out of a pretended necessity, when it is really an arbitrary arrangement of his own. that's real rebellion--forcing himself into my house when i said strictly he was not to come; and then, that it cannot rationally be objected to--i don't like his "rationally."' 'where there's much love there's little ceremony, didn't you say just now?' observed innocent picotee. 'and where there's little love, no ceremony at all. these manners of his are dreadful, and i believe he will never improve.' 'it makes you care not a bit about him, does it not, berta?' said picotee hopefully. 'i don't answer for that,' said ethelberta. 'i feel, as many others do, that a want of ceremony which is produced by abstraction of mind is no defect in a poet or musician, fatal as it may be to an ordinary man.' 'mighty me! you soon forgive him.' 'picotee, don't you be so quick to speak. before i have finished, how do you know what i am going to say? i'll never tell you anything again, if you take me up so. of course i am going to punish him at once, and make him remember that i am a lady, even if i do like him a little.' 'how do you mean to punish him?' said picotee, with interest. 'by writing and telling him that on no account is he to come.' 'but there is not time for a letter--' 'that doesn't matter. it will show him that i did not mean him to come.' at hearing the very merciful nature of the punishment, picotee sighed without replying; and ethelberta despatched her note. the hour of appointment drew near, and ethelberta showed symptoms of unrest. six o'clock struck and passed. she walked here and there for nothing, and it was plain that a dread was filling her: her letter might accidentally have had, in addition to the moral effect which she had intended, the practical effect which she did not intend, by arriving before, instead of after, his purposed visit to her, thereby stopping him in spite of all her care. 'how long are letters going to bloomsbury?' she said suddenly. 'two hours, joey tells me,' replied picotee, who had already inquired on her own private account. 'there!' exclaimed ethelberta petulantly. 'how i dislike a man to misrepresent things! he said there was not time for a reply!' 'perhaps he didn't know,' said picotee, in angel tones; 'and so it happens all right, and he has got it, and he will not come after all.' they waited and waited, but christopher did not appear that night; the true case being that his declaration about insufficient time for a reply was merely an ingenious suggestion to her not to be so cruel as to forbid him. he was far from suspecting when the letter of denial did reach him--about an hour before the time of appointment--that it was sent by a refinement of art, of which the real intention was futility, and that but for his own misstatement it would have been carefully delayed. the next day another letter came from the musician, decidedly short and to the point. the irate lover stated that he would not be made a fool of any longer: under any circumstances he meant to come that self-same afternoon, and should decidedly expect her to see him. 'i will not see him!' said ethelberta. 'why did he not call last night?' 'because you told him not to,' said picotee. 'good gracious, as if a woman's words are to be translated as literally as homer! surely he is aware that more often than not "no" is said to a man's importunities because it is traditionally the correct modest reply, and for nothing else in the world. if all men took words as superficially as he does, we should die of decorum in shoals.' 'ah, berta! how could you write a letter that you did not mean should be obeyed?' 'i did in a measure mean it, although i could have shown christian forgiveness if it had not been. never mind; i will not see him. i'll plague my heart for the credit of my sex.' to ensure the fulfilment of this resolve, ethelberta determined to give way to a headache that she was beginning to be aware of, go to her room, disorganize her dress, and ruin her hair by lying down; so putting it out of her power to descend and meet christopher on any momentary impulse. picotee sat in the room with her, reading, or pretending to read, and ethelberta pretended to sleep. christopher's knock came up the stairs, and with it the end of the farce. 'i'll tell you what,' said ethelberta in the prompt and broadly-awake tone of one who had been concentrated on the expectation of that sound for a length of time, 'it was a mistake in me to do this! joey will be sure to make a muddle of it.' joey was heard coming up the stairs. picotee opened the door, and said, with an anxiety transcending ethelberta's, 'well?' 'o, will you tell mrs. petherwin that mr. julian says he'll wait.' 'you were not to ask him to wait,' said ethelberta, within. 'i know that,' said joey, 'and i didn't. he's doing that out of his own head.' 'then let mr. julian wait, by all means,' said ethelberta. 'allow him to wait if he likes, but tell him it is uncertain if i shall be able to come down.' joey then retired, and the two sisters remained in silence. 'i wonder if he's gone,' ethelberta said, at the end of a long time. 'i thought you were asleep,' said picotee. 'shall we ask joey? i have not heard the door close.' joey was summoned, and after a leisurely ascent, interspersed by various gymnastic performances over the handrail here and there, appeared again. 'he's there jest the same: he don't seem to be in no hurry at all,' said joey. 'what is he doing?' inquired picotee solicitously. 'o, only looking at his watch sometimes, and humming tunes, and playing rat-a-tat-tat upon the table. he says he don't mind waiting a bit.' 'you must have made a mistake in the message,' said ethelberta, within. 'well, no. i am correct as a jineral thing. i jest said perhaps you would be engaged all the evening, and perhaps you wouldn't.' when joey had again retired, and they had waited another ten minutes, ethelberta said, 'picotee, do you go down and speak a few words to him. i am determined he shall not see me. you know him a little; you remember when he came to the lodge?' 'what must i say to him?' ethelberta paused before replying. 'try to find out if--if he is much grieved at not seeing me, and say--give him to understand that i will forgive him, picotee.' 'very well.' 'and picotee--' 'yes.' 'if he says he must see me--i think i will get up. but only if he says must: you remember that.' picotee departed on her errand. she paused on the staircase trembling, and thinking between the thrills how very far would have been the conduct of her poor slighted self from proud recalcitration had mr. julian's gentle request been addressed to her instead of to ethelberta; and she went some way in the painful discovery of how much more tantalizing it was to watch an envied situation that was held by another than to be out of sight of it altogether. here was christopher waiting to bestow love, and ethelberta not going down to receive it: a commodity unequalled in value by any other in the whole wide world was being wantonly wasted within that very house. if she could only have stood to-night as the beloved ethelberta, and not as the despised picotee, how different would be this going down! thus she went along, red and pale moving in her cheeks as in the northern lights at their strongest time. meanwhile christopher had sat waiting minute by minute till the evening shades grew browner, and the fire sank low. joey, finding himself not particularly wanted upon the premises after the second inquiry, had slipped out to witness a nigger performance round the corner, and julian began to think himself forgotten by all the household. the perception gradually cooled his emotions and enabled him to hold his hat quite steadily. when picotee gently thrust open the door she was surprised to find the room in darkness, the fire gone completely out, and the form of christopher only visible by a faint patch of light, which, coming from a lamp on the opposite side of the way and falling upon the mirror, was thrown as a pale nebulosity upon his shoulder. picotee was too flurried at sight of the familiar outline to know what to do, and, instead of going or calling for a light, she mechanically advanced into the room. christopher did not turn or move in any way, and then she perceived that he had begun to doze in his chair. instantly, with the precipitancy of the timorous, she said, 'mr. julian!' and touched him on the shoulder--murmuring then, 'o, i beg pardon, i--i will get a light.' christopher's consciousness returned, and his first act, before rising, was to exclaim, in a confused manner, 'ah--you have come--thank you, berta!' then impulsively to seize her hand, as it hung beside his head, and kiss it passionately. he stood up, still holding her fingers. picotee gasped out something, but was completely deprived of articulate utterance, and in another moment being unable to control herself at this sort of first meeting with the man she had gone through fire and water to be near, and more particularly by the overpowering kiss upon her hand, burst into hysterical sobbing. julian, in his inability to imagine so much emotion--or at least the exhibition of it--in ethelberta, gently drew picotee further forward by the hand he held, and utilized the solitary spot of light from the mirror by making it fall upon her face. recognizing the childish features, he at once, with an exclamation, dropped her hand and started back. being in point of fact a complete bundle of nerves and nothing else, his thin figure shook like a harp-string in painful excitement at a contretemps which would scarcely have quickened the pulse of an ordinary man. poor picotee, feeling herself in the wind of a civil d---, started back also, sobbing more than ever. it was a little too much that the first result of his discovery of the mistake should be absolute repulse. she leant against the mantelpiece, when julian, much bewildered at her superfluity of emotion, assisted her to a seat in sheer humanity. but christopher was by no means pleased when he again thought round the circle of circumstances. 'how could you allow such an absurd thing to happen?' he said, in a stern, though trembling voice. 'you knew i might mistake. i had no idea you were in the house: i thought you were miles away, at sandbourne or somewhere! but i see: it is just done for a joke, ha-ha!' this made picotee rather worse still. 'o-o-o-o!' she replied, in the tone of pouring from a bottle. 'what shall i do-o-o-o! it is--not done for a--joke at all-l-l-l!' 'not done for a joke? then never mind--don't cry, picotee. what was it done for, i wonder?' picotee, mistaking the purport of his inquiry, imagined him to refer to her arrival in the house, quite forgetting, in her guilty sense of having come on his account, that he would have no right or thought of asking questions about a natural visit to a sister, and she said: 'when you--went away from--sandbourne, i--i--i didn't know what to do, and then i ran away, and came here, and then ethelberta--was angry with me; but she says i may stay; but she doesn't know that i know you, and how we used to meet along the road every morning--and i am afraid to tell her--o, what shall i do!' 'never mind it,' said christopher, a sense of the true state of her case dawning upon him with unpleasant distinctness, and bringing some irritation at his awkward position; though it was impossible to be long angry with a girl who had not reasoning foresight enough to perceive that doubtful pleasure and certain pain must be the result of any meeting whilst hearts were at cross purposes in this way. 'where is your sister?' he asked. 'she wouldn't come down, unless she must,' said picotee. 'you have vexed her, and she has a headache besides that, and i came instead.' 'so that i mightn't be wasted altogether. well, it's a strange business between the three of us. i have heard of one-sided love, and reciprocal love, and all sorts, but this is my first experience of a concatenated affection. you follow me, i follow ethelberta, and she follows--heaven knows who!' 'mr. ladywell!' said the mortified picotee. 'good god, if i didn't think so!' said christopher, feeling to the soles of his feet like a man in a legitimate drama. 'no, no, no!' said the frightened girl hastily. 'i am not sure it is mr. ladywell. that's altogether a mistake of mine!' 'ah, yes, you want to screen her,' said christopher, with a withering smile at the spot of light. 'very sisterly, doubtless; but none of that will do for me. i am too old a bird by far--by very far! now are you sure she does not love ladywell?' 'yes!' 'well, perhaps i blame her wrongly. she may have some little good faith--a woman has, here and there. how do you know she does not love ladywell?' 'because she would prefer mr. neigh to him, any day.' 'ha!' 'no, no--you mistake, sir--she doesn't love either at all--ethelberta doesn't. i meant that she cannot love mr. ladywell because he stands lower in her opinion than mr. neigh, and him she certainly does not care for. she only loves you. if you only knew how true she is you wouldn't be so suspicious about her, and i wish i had not come here--yes, i do!' 'i cannot tell what to think of it. perhaps i don't know much of this world after all, or what girls will do. but you don't excuse her to me, picotee.' before this time picotee had been simulating haste in getting a light; but in her dread of appearing visibly to christopher's eyes, and showing him the precise condition of her tear-stained face, she put it off moment after moment, and stirred the fire, in hope that the faint illumination thus produced would be sufficient to save her from the charge of stupid conduct as entertainer. fluttering about on the horns of this dilemma, she was greatly relieved when christopher, who read her difficulty, and the general painfulness of the situation, said that since ethelberta was really suffering from a headache he would not wish to disturb her till to-morrow, and went off downstairs and into the street without further ceremony. meanwhile other things had happened upstairs. no sooner had picotee left her sister's room, than ethelberta thought it would after all have been much better if she had gone down herself to speak to this admirably persistent lover. was she not drifting somewhat into the character of coquette, even if her ground of offence--a word of christopher's about somebody else's mean parentage, which was spoken in utter forgetfulness of her own position, but had wounded her to the quick nevertheless--was to some extent a tenable one? she knew what facilities in suffering christopher always showed; how a touch to other people was a blow to him, a blow to them his deep wound, although he took such pains to look stolid and unconcerned under those inflictions, and tried to smile as if he had no feelings whatever. it would be more generous to go down to him, and be kind. she jumped up with that alertness which comes so spontaneously at those sweet bright times when desire and duty run hand in hand. she hastily set her hair and dress in order--not such matchless order as she could have wished them to be in, but time was precious--and descended the stairs. when on the point of pushing open the drawing-room door, which wanted about an inch of being closed, she was astounded to discover that the room was in total darkness, and still more to hear picotee sobbing inside. to retreat again was the only action she was capable of at that moment: the clash between this picture and the anticipated scene of picotee and christopher sitting in frigid propriety at opposite sides of a well-lighted room was too great. she flitted upstairs again with the least possible rustle, and flung herself down on the couch as before, panting with excitement at the new knowledge that had come to her. there was only one possible construction to be put upon this in ethelberta's rapid mind, and that approximated to the true one. she had known for some time that picotee once had a lover, or something akin to it, and that he had disappointed her in a way which had never been told. no stranger, save in the capacity of the one beloved, could wound a woman sufficiently to make her weep, and it followed that christopher was the man of picotee's choice. as ethelberta recalled the conversations, conclusion after conclusion came like pulsations in an aching head. 'o, how did it happen, and who is to blame?' she exclaimed. 'i cannot doubt his faith, and i cannot doubt hers; and yet how can i keep doubting them both?' it was characteristic of ethelberta's jealous motherly guard over her young sisters that, amid these contending inquiries, her foremost feeling was less one of hope for her own love than of championship for picotee's. . ethelberta's house (continued) picotee was heard on the stairs: ethelberta covered her face. 'is he waiting?' she said faintly, on finding that picotee did not begin to speak. 'no; he is gone,' said picotee. 'ah, why is that?' came quickly from under the handkerchief. 'he has forgotten me--that's what it is!' 'o no, he has not!' said picotee, just as bitterly. ethelberta had far too much heroism to let much in this strain escape her, though her sister was prepared to go any lengths in the same. 'i suppose,' continued ethelberta, in the quiet way of one who had only a headache the matter with her, 'that he remembered you after the meeting at anglebury?' 'yes, he remembered me.' 'did you tell me you had seen him before that time?' 'i had seen him at sandbourne. i don't think i told you.' 'at whose house did you meet him?' 'at nobody's. i only saw him sometimes,' replied picotee, in great distress. ethelberta, though of all women most miserable, was brimming with compassion for the throbbing girl so nearly related to her, in whom she continually saw her own weak points without the counterpoise of her strong ones. but it was necessary to repress herself awhile: the intended ways of her life were blocked and broken up by this jar of interests, and she wanted time to ponder new plans. 'picotee, i would rather be alone now, if you don't mind,' she said. 'you need not leave me any light; it makes my eyes ache, i think.' picotee left the room. but ethelberta had not long been alone and in darkness when somebody gently opened the door, and entered without a candle. 'berta,' said the soft voice of picotee again, 'may i come in?' 'o yes,' said ethelberta. 'has everything gone right with the house this evening?' 'yes; and gwendoline went out just now to buy a few things, and she is going to call round upon father when he has got his dinner cleared away.' 'i hope she will not stay and talk to the other servants. some day she will let drop something or other before father can stop her.' 'o berta!' said picotee, close beside her. she was kneeling in front of the couch, and now flinging her arm across ethelberta's shoulder and shaking violently, she pressed her forehead against her sister's temple, and breathed out upon her cheek: 'i came in again to tell you something which i ought to have told you just now, and i have come to say it at once because i am afraid i shan't be able to to-morrow. mr. julian was the young man i spoke to you of a long time ago, and i should have told you all about him, but you said he was your young man too, and--and i didn't know what to do then, because i thought it was wrong in me to love your young man; and berta, he didn't mean me to love him at all, but i did it myself, though i did not want to do it, either; it would come to me! and i didn't know he belonged to you when i began it, or i would not have let him meet me at all; no i wouldn't!' 'meet you? you don't mean to say he used to meet you?' whispered ethelberta. 'yes,' said picotee; 'but he could not help it. we used to meet on the road, and there was no other road unless i had gone ever so far round. but it is worse than that, berta! that was why i couldn't bide in sandbourne, and--and ran away to you up here; it was not because i wanted to see you, berta, but because i--i wanted--' 'yes, yes, i know,' said ethelberta hurriedly. 'and then when i went downstairs he mistook me for you for a moment, and that caused--a confusion!' 'o, well, it does not much matter,' said ethelberta, kissing picotee soothingly. 'you ought not of course to have come to london in such a manner; but, since you have come, we will make the best of it. perhaps it may end happily for you and for him. who knows?' 'then don't you want him, berta?' 'o no; not at all!' 'what--and don't you really want him, berta?' repeated picotee, starting up. 'i would much rather he paid his addresses to you. he is not the sort of man i should wish to--think it best to marry, even if i were to marry, which i have no intention of doing at present. he calls to see me because we are old friends, but his calls do not mean anything more than that he takes an interest in me. it is not at all likely that i shall see him again! and i certainly never shall see him unless you are present.' 'that will be very nice.' 'yes. and you will be always distant towards him, and go to leave the room when he comes, when i will call you back; but suppose we continue this to-morrow? i can tell you better then what to do.' when picotee had left her the second time, ethelberta turned over upon her breast and shook in convulsive sobs which had little relationship with tears. this abandonment ended as suddenly as it had begun--not lasting more than a minute and a half altogether--and she got up in an unconsidered and unusual impulse to seek relief from the stinging sarcasm of this event--the unhappy love of picotee--by mentioning something of it to another member of the family, her eldest sister gwendoline, who was a woman full of sympathy. ethelberta descended to the kitchen, it being now about ten o'clock. the room was empty, gwendoline not having yet returned, and cornelia, being busy about her own affairs upstairs. the french family had gone to the theatre, and the house on that account was very quiet to-night. ethelberta sat down in the dismal place without turning up the gas, and in a few minutes admitted gwendoline. the round-faced country cook floundered in, untying her bonnet as she came, laying it down on a chair, and talking at the same time. 'such a place as this london is, to be sure!' she exclaimed, turning on the gas till it whistled. 'i wish i was down in wessex again. lord-a-mercy, berta, i didn't see it was you! i thought it was cornelia. as i was saying, i thought that, after biding in this underground cellar all the week, making up messes for them french folk, and never pleasing 'em, and never shall, because i don't understand that line, i thought i would go out and see father, you know.' 'is he very well?' said ethelberta. 'yes; and he is going to call round when he has time. well, as i was a- coming home-along i thought, "please the lord i'll have some chippols for supper just for a plain trate," and i went round to the late greengrocer's for 'em; and do you know they sweared me down that they hadn't got such things as chippols in the shop, and had never heard of 'em in their lives. at last i said, "why, how can you tell me such a brazen story?--here they be, heaps of 'em!" it made me so vexed that i came away there and then, and wouldn't have one--no, not at a gift.' 'they call them young onions here,' said ethelberta quietly; 'you must always remember that. but, gwendoline, i wanted--' ethelberta felt sick at heart, and stopped. she had come down on the wings of an impulse to unfold her trouble about picotee to her hard-headed and much older sister, less for advice than to get some heart- ease by interchange of words; but alas, she could proceed no further. the wretched homeliness of gwendoline's mind seemed at this particular juncture to be absolutely intolerable, and ethelberta was suddenly convinced that to involve gwendoline in any such discussion would simply be increasing her own burden, and adding worse confusion to her sister's already confused existence. 'what were you going to say?' said the honest and unsuspecting gwendoline. 'i will put it off until to-morrow,' ethelberta murmured gloomily; 'i have a bad headache, and i am afraid i cannot stay with you after all.' as she ascended the stairs, ethelberta ached with an added pain not much less than the primary one which had brought her down. it was that old sense of disloyalty to her class and kin by feeling as she felt now which caused the pain, and there was no escaping it. gwendoline would have gone to the ends of the earth for her: she could not confide a thought to gwendoline! 'if she only knew of that unworthy feeling of mine, how she would grieve,' said ethelberta miserably. she next went up to the servants' bedrooms, and to where cornelia slept. on ethelberta's entrance cornelia looked up from a perfect wonder of a bonnet, which she held in her hands. at sight of ethelberta the look of keen interest in her work changed to one of gaiety. 'i am so glad--i was just coming down,' cornelia said in a whisper; whenever they spoke as relations in this house it was in whispers. 'now, how do you think this bonnet will do? may i come down, and see how i look in your big glass?' she clapped the bonnet upon her head. 'won't it do beautiful for sunday afternoon?' 'it looks very attractive, as far as i can see by this light,' said ethelberta. 'but is it not rather too brilliant in colour--blue and red together, like that? remember, as i often tell you, people in town never wear such bright contrasts as they do in the country.' 'o berta!' said cornelia, in a deprecating tone; 'don't object. if there's one thing i do glory in it is a nice flare-up about my head o' sundays--of course if the family's not in mourning, i mean.' but, seeing that ethelberta did not smile, she turned the subject, and added docilely: 'did you come up for me to do anything? i will put off finishing my bonnet if i am wanted.' 'i was going to talk to you about family matters, and picotee,' said ethelberta. 'but, as you are busy, and i have a headache, i will put it off till to-morrow.' cornelia seemed decidedly relieved, for family matters were far from attractive at the best of times; and ethelberta went down to the next floor, and entered her mother's room. after a short conversation mrs. chickerel said, 'you say you want to ask me something?' 'yes: but nothing of importance, mother. i was thinking about picotee, and what would be the best thing to do--' 'ah, well you may, berta. i am so uneasy about this life you have led us into, and full of fear that your plans may break down; if they do, whatever will become of us? i know you are doing your best; but i cannot help thinking that the coming to london and living with you was wild and rash, and not well weighed afore we set about it. you should have counted the cost first, and not advised it. if you break down, and we are all discovered living so queer and unnatural, right in the heart of the aristocracy, we should be the laughing-stock of the country: it would kill me, and ruin us all--utterly ruin us!' 'o mother, i know all that so well!' exclaimed ethelberta, tears of anguish filling her eyes. 'don't depress me more than i depress myself by such fears, or you will bring about the very thing we strive to avoid! my only chance is in keeping in good spirits, and why don't you try to help me a little by taking a brighter view of things?' 'i know i ought to, my dear girl, but i cannot. i do so wish that i never let you tempt me and the children away from the lodge. i cannot think why i allowed myself to be so persuaded--cannot think! you are not to blame--it is i. i am much older than you, and ought to have known better than listen to such a scheme. this undertaking seems too big--the bills frighten me. i have never been used to such wild adventure, and i can't sleep at night for fear that your tale-telling will go wrong, and we shall all be exposed and shamed. a story-teller seems such an impossible castle-in-the-air sort of a trade for getting a living by--i cannot think how ever you came to dream of such an unheard-of thing.' 'but it is not a castle in the air, and it does get a living!' said ethelberta, her lip quivering. 'well, yes, while it is just a new thing; but i am afraid it cannot last--that's what i fear. people will find you out as one of a family of servants, and their pride will be stung at having gone to hear your romancing; then they will go no more, and what will happen to us and the poor little ones?' 'we must all scatter again!' 'if we could get as we were once, i wouldn't mind that. but we shall have lost our character as simple country folk who know nothing, which are the only class of poor people that squires will give any help to; and i much doubt if the girls would get places after such a discovery--it would be so awkward and unheard-of.' 'well, all i can say is,' replied ethelberta, 'that i will do my best. all that i have is theirs and yours as much as mine, and these arrangements are simply on their account. i don't like my relations being my servants; but if they did not work for me, they would have to work for others, and my service is much lighter and pleasanter than any other lady's would be for them, so the advantages are worth the risk. if i stood alone, i would go and hide my head in any hole, and care no more about the world and its ways. i wish i was well out of it, and at the bottom of a quiet grave--anybody might have the world for me then! but don't let me disturb you longer; it is getting late.' ethelberta then wished her mother good-night, and went away. to attempt confidences on such an ethereal matter as love was now absurd; her hermit spirit was doomed to dwell apart as usual; and she applied herself to deep thinking without aid and alone. not only was there picotee's misery to disperse; it became imperative to consider how best to overpass a more general catastrophe. . ethelberta's house (continued)--the british museum mrs. chickerel, in deploring the risks of their present speculative mode of life, was far from imagining that signs of the foul future so much dreaded were actually apparent to ethelberta at the time the lament was spoken. hence the daughter's uncommon sensitiveness to prophecy. it was as if a dead-reckoner poring over his chart should predict breakers ahead to one who already beheld them. that her story-telling would prove so attractive ethelberta had not ventured to expect for a moment; that having once proved attractive there should be any falling-off until such time had elapsed as would enable her to harvest some solid fruit was equally a surprise. future expectations are often based without hesitation upon one happy accident, when the only similar condition remaining to subsequent sets of circumstances is that the same person forms the centre of them. her situation was so peculiar, and so unlike that of most public people, that there was hardly an argument explaining this triumphant opening which could be used in forecasting the close; unless, indeed, more strategy were employed in the conduct of the campaign than ethelberta seemed to show at present. there was no denying that she commanded less attention than at first: the audience had lessened, and, judging by appearances, might soon be expected to be decidedly thin. in excessive lowness of spirit, ethelberta translated these signs with the bias that a lingering echo of her mother's dismal words naturally induced, reading them as conclusive evidence that her adventure had been chimerical in its birth. yet it was very far less conclusive than she supposed. public interest might without doubt have been renewed after a due interval, some of the falling- off being only an accident of the season. her novelties had been hailed with pleasure, the rather that their freshness tickled than that their intrinsic merit was appreciated; and, like many inexperienced dispensers of a unique charm, ethelberta, by bestowing too liberally and too frequently, was destroying the very element upon which its popularity depended. her entertainment had been good in its conception, and partly good in its execution; yet her success had but little to do with that goodness. indeed, what might be called its badness in a histrionic sense--that is, her look sometimes of being out of place, the sight of a beautiful woman on a platform, revealing tender airs of domesticity which showed her to belong by character to a quiet drawing-room--had been primarily an attractive feature. but alas, custom was staling this by improving her up to the mark of an utter impersonator, thereby eradicating the pretty abashments of a poetess out of her sphere; and more than one well-wisher who observed ethelberta from afar feared that it might some day come to be said of her that she had 'enfeoffed herself to popularity: that, being daily swallowed by men's eyes, they surfeited with honey, and began to loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little more than a little is by much too much.' but this in its extremity was not quite yet. we discover her one day, a little after this time, sitting before a table strewed with accounts and bills from different tradesmen of the neighbourhood, which she examined with a pale face, collecting their totals on a blank sheet. picotee came into the room, but ethelberta took no notice whatever of her. the younger sister, who subsisted on scraps of notice and favour, like a dependent animal, even if these were only an occasional glance of the eye, could not help saying at last, 'berta, how silent you are. i don't think you know i am in the room.' 'i did not observe you,' said ethelberta. 'i am very much engaged: these bills have to be paid.' 'what, and cannot we pay them?' said picotee, in vague alarm. 'o yes, i can pay them. the question is, how long shall i be able to do it?' 'that is sad; and we are going on so nicely, too. it is not true that you have really decided to leave off story-telling now the people don't crowd to hear it as they did?' 'i think i shall leave off.' 'and begin again next year?' 'that is very doubtful.' 'i'll tell you what you might do,' said picotee, her face kindling with a sense of great originality. 'you might travel about to country towns and tell your story splendidly.' 'a man in my position might perhaps do it with impunity; but i could not without losing ground in other domains. a woman may drive to mayfair from her house in exonbury crescent, and speak from a platform there, and be supposed to do it as an original way of amusing herself; but when it comes to starring in the provinces she establishes herself as a woman of a different breed and habit. i wish i were a man! i would give up this house, advertise it to be let furnished, and sally forth with confidence. but i am driven to think of other ways to manage than that.' picotee fell into a conjectural look, but could not guess. 'the way of marriage,' said ethelberta. 'otherwise perhaps the poetess may live to become what dryden called himself when he got old and poor--a rent-charge on providence. . . . . yes, i must try that way,' she continued, with a sarcasm towards people out of hearing. i must buy a "peerage" for one thing, and a "baronetage," and a "house of commons," and a "landed gentry," and learn what people are about me. 'i must go to doctors' commons and read up wills of the parents of any likely gudgeons i may know. i must get a herald to invent an escutcheon of my family, and throw a genealogical tree into the bargain in consideration of my taking a few second-hand heirlooms of a pawnbroking friend of his. i must get up sham ancestors, and find out some notorious name to start my pedigree from. it does not matter what his character was; either villain or martyr will do, provided that he lived five hundred years ago. it would be considered far more creditable to make good my descent from satan in the age when he went to and fro on the earth than from a ministering angel under victoria.' 'but, berta, you are not going to marry any stranger who may turn up?' said picotee, who had creeping sensations of dread when ethelberta talked like this. 'i had no such intention. but, having once put my hand to the plough, how shall i turn back?' 'you might marry mr. ladywell,' said picotee, who preferred to look at things in the concrete. 'yes, marry him villainously; in cold blood, without a moment to prepare himself.' 'ah, you won't!' 'i am not so sure about that. i have brought mother and the children to town against her judgment and against my father's; they gave way to my opinion as to one who from superior education has larger knowledge of the world than they. i must prove my promises, even if heaven should fall upon me for it, or what a miserable future will theirs be! we must not be poor in london. poverty in the country is a sadness, but poverty in town is a horror. there is something not without grandeur in the thought of starvation on an open mountain or in a wide wood, and your bones lying there to bleach in the pure sun and rain; but a back garret in a rookery, and the other starvers in the room insisting on keeping the window shut--anything to deliver us from that!' 'how gloomy you can be, berta! it will never be so dreadful. why, i can take in plain sewing, and you can do translations, and mother can knit stockings, and so on. how much longer will this house be yours?' 'two years. if i keep it longer than that i shall have to pay rent at the rate of three hundred a year. the petherwin estate provides me with it till then, which will be the end of lady petherwin's term.' 'i see it; and you ought to marry before the house is gone, if you mean to marry high,' murmured picotee, in an inadequate voice, as one confronted by a world so tragic that any hope of her assisting therein was out of the question. it was not long after this exposition of the family affairs that christopher called upon them; but picotee was not present, having gone to think of superhuman work on the spur of ethelberta's awakening talk. there was something new in the way in which ethelberta received the announcement of his name; passion had to do with it, so had circumspection; the latter most, for the first time since their reunion. 'i am going to leave this part of england,' said christopher, after a few gentle preliminaries. 'i was one of the applicants for the post of assistant-organist at melchester cathedral when it became vacant, and i find i am likely to be chosen, through the interest of one of my father's friends.' 'i congratulate you.' 'no, ethelberta, it is not worth that. i did not originally mean to follow this course at all; but events seemed to point to it in the absence of a better.' 'i too am compelled to follow a course i did not originally mean to take.' after saying no more for a few moments, she added, in a tone of sudden openness, a richer tincture creeping up her cheek, 'i want to put a question to you boldly--not exactly a question--a thought. have you considered whether the relations between us which have lately prevailed are--are the best for you--and for me?' 'i know what you mean,' said christopher, hastily anticipating all that she might be going to say; 'and i am glad you have given me the opportunity of speaking upon that subject. it has been very good and considerate in you to allow me to share your society so frequently as you have done since i have been in town, and to think of you as an object to exist for and strive for. but i ought to have remembered that, since you have nobody at your side to look after your interests, it behoved me to be doubly careful. in short, ethelberta, i am not in a position to marry, nor can i discern when i shall be, and i feel it would be an injustice to ask you to be bound in any way to one lower and less talented than you. you cannot, from what you say, think it desirable that the engagement should continue. i have no right to ask you to be my betrothed, without having a near prospect of making you my wife. i don't mind saying this straight out--i have no fear that you will doubt my love; thank heaven, you know what that is well enough! however, as things are, i wish you to know that i cannot conscientiously put in a claim upon your attention.' a second meaning was written in christopher's look, though he scarcely uttered it. a woman so delicately poised upon the social globe could not in honour be asked to wait for a lover who was unable to set bounds to the waiting period. yet he had privily dreamed of an approach to that position--an unreserved, ideally perfect declaration from ethelberta that time and practical issues were nothing to her; that she would stand as fast without material hopes as with them; that love was to be an end with her henceforth, having utterly ceased to be a means. therefore this surreptitious hope of his, founded on no reasonable expectation, was like a guilty thing surprised when ethelberta answered, with a predominance of judgment over passion still greater than before: 'it is unspeakably generous in you to put it all before me so nicely, christopher. i think infinitely more of you for being so unreserved, especially since i too have been thinking much on the indefiniteness of the days to come. we are not numbered among the blest few who can afford to trifle with the time. yet to agree to anything like a positive parting will be quite unnecessary. you did not mean that, did you? for it is harsh if you did.' ethelberta smiled kindly as she said this, as much as to say that she was far from really upbraiding him. 'let it be only that we will see each other less. we will bear one another in mind as deeply attached friends if not as definite lovers, and keep up friendly remembrances of a sort which, come what may, will never have to be ended by any painful process termed breaking off. different persons, different natures; and it may be that marriage would not be the most favourable atmosphere for our old affection to prolong itself in. when do you leave london?' the disconnected query seemed to be subjoined to disperse the crude effect of what had gone before. 'i hardly know,' murmured christopher. 'i suppose i shall not call here again.' whilst they were silent somebody entered the room softly, and they turned to discover picotee. 'come here, picotee,' said ethelberta. picotee came with an abashed bearing to where the other two were standing, and looked down steadfastly. 'mr. julian is going away,' she continued, with determined firmness. 'he will not see us again for a long time.' and ethelberta added, in a lower tone, though still in the unflinching manner of one who had set herself to say a thing, and would say it--'he is not to be definitely engaged to me any longer. we are not thinking of marrying, you know, picotee. it is best that we should not.' 'perhaps it is,' said christopher hurriedly, taking up his hat. 'let me now wish you good-bye; and, of course, you will always know where i am, and how to find me.' it was a tender time. he inclined forward that ethelberta might give him her hand, which she did; whereupon their eyes met. mastered by an impelling instinct she had not reckoned with, ethelberta presented her cheek. christopher kissed it faintly. tears were in ethelberta's eyes now, and she was heartfull of many emotions. placing her arm round picotee's waist, who had never lifted her eyes from the carpet, she drew the slight girl forward, and whispered quickly to him--'kiss her, too. she is my sister, and i am yours.' it seemed all right and natural to their respective moods and the tone of the moment that free old wessex manners should prevail, and christopher stooped and dropped upon picotee's cheek likewise such a farewell kiss as he had imprinted upon ethelberta's. 'care for us both equally!' said ethelberta. 'i will,' said christopher, scarcely knowing what he said. when he had reached the door of the room, he looked back and saw the two sisters standing as he had left them, and equally tearful. ethelberta at once said, in a last futile struggle against letting him go altogether, and with thoughts of her sister's heart: 'i think that picotee might correspond with faith; don't you, mr. julian?' 'my sister would much like to do so,' said he. 'and you would like it too, would you not, picotee?' 'o yes,' she replied. 'and i can tell them all about you.' 'then it shall be so, if miss julian will.' she spoke in a settled way, as if something intended had been set in train; and christopher having promised for his sister, he went out of the house with a parting smile of misgiving. he could scarcely believe as he walked along that those late words, yet hanging in his ears, had really been spoken, that still visible scene enacted. he could not even recollect for a minute or two how the final result had been produced. did he himself first enter upon the long-looming theme, or did she? christopher had been so nervously alive to the urgency of setting before the hard-striving woman a clear outline of himself, his surroundings and his fears, that he fancied the main impulse to this consummation had been his, notwithstanding that a faint initiative had come from ethelberta. all had completed itself quickly, unceremoniously, and easily. ethelberta had let him go a second time; yet on foregoing mornings and evenings, when contemplating the necessity of some such explanation, it had seemed that nothing less than atlantean force could overpower their mutual gravitation towards each other. on his reaching home faith was not in the house, and, in the restless state which demands something to talk at, the musician went off to find her, well knowing her haunt at this time of the day. he entered the spiked and gilded gateway of the museum hard by, turned to the wing devoted to sculptures, and descended to a particular basement room, which was lined with bas-reliefs from nineveh. the place was cool, silent, and soothing; it was empty, save of a little figure in black, that was standing with its face to the wall in an innermost nook. this spot was faith's own temple; here, among these deserted antiques, faith was always happy. christopher looked on at her for some time before she noticed him, and dimly perceived how vastly differed her homely suit and unstudied contour--painfully unstudied to fastidious eyes--from ethelberta's well-arranged draperies, even from picotee's clever bits of ribbon, by which she made herself look pretty out of nothing at all. yet this negligence was his sister's essence; without it she would have been a spoilt product. she had no outer world, and her rusty black was as appropriate to faith's unseen courses as were ethelberta's correct lights and shades to her more prominent career. 'look, kit,' said faith, as soon as she knew who was approaching. 'this is a thing i never learnt before; this person is really sennacherib, sitting on his throne; and these with fluted beards and hair like plough- furrows, and fingers with no bones in them, are his warriors--really carved at the time, you know. only just think that this is not imagined of assyria, but done in assyrian times by assyrian hands. don't you feel as if you were actually in nineveh; that as we now walk between these slabs, so walked ninevites between them once?' 'yes. . . . faith, it is all over. ethelberta and i have parted.' 'indeed. and so my plan is to think of verses in the bible about sennacherib and his doings, which resemble these; this verse, for instance, i remember: "now in the fourteenth year of king hezekiah did sennacherib, king of assyria, come up against all the fenced cities of judah and took them. and hezekiah, king of judah, sent to the king of assyria to lachish," and so on. well, there it actually is, you see. there's sennacherib, and there's lachish. is it not glorious to think that this is a picture done at the time of those very events?' 'yes. we did not quarrel this time, ethelberta and i. if i may so put it, it is worse than quarrelling. we felt it was no use going on any longer, and so--come, faith, hear what i say, or else tell me that you won't hear, and that i may as well save my breath!' 'yes, i will really listen,' she said, fluttering her eyelids in her concern at having been so abstracted, and excluding sennacherib there and then from christopher's affairs by the first settlement of her features to a present-day aspect, and her eyes upon his face. 'you said you had seen ethelberta. yes, and what did she say?' 'was there ever anybody so provoking! why, i have just told you!' 'yes, yes; i remember now. you have parted. the subject is too large for me to know all at once what i think of it, and you must give me time, kit. speaking of ethelberta reminds me of what i have done. i just looked into the academy this morning--i thought i would surprise you by telling you about it. and what do you think i saw? ethelberta--in the picture painted by mr. ladywell.' 'it is never hung?' said he, feeling that they were at one as to a topic at last. 'yes. and the subject is an elizabethan knight parting from a lady of the same period--the words explaining the picture being-- "farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing, and like enough thou know'st thy estimate." the lady is ethelberta, to the shade of a hair--her living face; and the knight is--' 'not ladywell?' 'i think so; i am not sure.' 'no wonder i am dismissed! and yet she hates him. well, come along, faith. women allow strange liberties in these days.' . the royal academy--the farnfield estate ethelberta was a firm believer in the kindly effects of artistic education upon the masses. she held that defilement of mind often arose from ignorance of eye; and her philanthropy being, by the simple force of her situation, of that sort which lingers in the neighbourhood of home, she concentrated her efforts in this kind upon sol and dan. accordingly, the academy exhibition having now just opened, she ordered the brothers to appear in their best clothes at the entrance to burlington house just after noontide on the saturday of the first week, this being the only day and hour at which they could attend without 'losing a half' and therefore it was necessary to put up with the inconvenience of arriving at a crowded and enervating time. when ethelberta was set down in the quadrangle she perceived the faithful pair, big as the zamzummims of old time, standing like sentinels in the particular corner that she had named to them: for sol and dan would as soon have attempted petty larceny as broken faith with their admired lady- sister ethelberta. they welcomed her with a painfully lavish exhibition of large new gloves, and chests covered with broad triangular areas of padded blue silk, occupying the position that the shirt-front had occupied in earlier days, and supposed to be lineally descended from the tie of a neckerchief. the dress of their sister for to-day was exactly that of a respectable workman's relative who had no particular ambition in the matter of fashion--a black stuff gown, a plain bonnet to match. a veil she wore for obvious reasons: her face was getting well known in london, and it had already appeared at the private view in an uncovered state, when it was scrutinized more than the paintings around. but now homely and useful labour was her purpose. catalogue in hand she took the two brothers through the galleries, teaching them in whispers as they walked, and occasionally correcting them--first, for too reverential a bearing towards the well-dressed crowd, among whom they persisted in walking with their hats in their hands and with the contrite bearing of meek people in church; and, secondly, for a tendency which they too often showed towards straying from the contemplation of the pictures as art to indulge in curious speculations on the intrinsic nature of the delineated subject, the gilding of the frames, the construction of the skylights overhead, or admiration for the bracelets, lockets, and lofty eloquence of persons around them. 'now,' said ethelberta, in a warning whisper, 'we are coming near the picture which was partly painted from myself. and, dan, when you see it, don't you exclaim "hullo!" or "that's berta to a t," or anything at all. it would not matter were it not dangerous for me to be noticed here to- day. i see several people who would recognize me on the least provocation.' 'not a word,' said dan. 'don't you be afeard about that. i feel that i baint upon my own ground to-day; and wouldn't do anything to cause an upset, drown me if i would. would you, sol?' in this temper they all pressed forward, and ethelberta could not but be gratified at the reception of ladywell's picture, though it was accorded by critics not very profound. it was an operation of some minutes to get exactly opposite, and when side by side the three stood there they overheard the immediate reason of the pressure. 'farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing' had been lengthily discoursed upon that morning by the coryphaeus of popular opinion; and the spirit having once been poured out sons and daughters could prophesy. but, in truth, ladywell's work, if not emphatically original, was happily centred on a middle stratum of taste, and apart from this adventitious help commanded, and deserved to command, a wide area of appreciation. while they were standing here in the very heart of the throng ethelberta's ears were arrested by two male voices behind her, whose words formed a novel contrast to those of the other speakers around. 'some men, you see, with extravagant expectations of themselves, coolly get them gratified, while others hope rationally and are disappointed. luck, that's what it is. and the more easily a man takes life the more persistently does luck follow him.' 'of course; because, if he's industrious he does not want luck's assistance. natural laws will help him instead.' 'well, if it is true that ladywell has painted a good picture he has done it by an exhaustive process. he has painted every possible bad one till nothing more of that sort is left for him. you know what lady's face served as the original to this, i suppose?' 'mrs. petherwin's, i hear.' 'yes, mrs. alfred neigh that's to be.' 'what, that elusive fellow caught at last?' 'so it appears; but she herself is hardly so well secured as yet, it seems, though he takes the uncertainty as coolly as possible. i knew nothing about it till he introduced the subject as we were standing here on monday, and said, in an off-hand way, "i mean to marry that lady." i asked him how. "easily," he said; "i will have her if there are a hundred at her heels." you will understand that this was quite in confidence.' 'of course, of course.' then there was a slight laugh, and the companions proceeded to other gossip. ethelberta, calm and compressed in manner, sidled along to extricate herself, not daring to turn round, and dan and sol followed, till they were all clear of the spot. the brothers, who had heard the words equally well with ethelberta, made no remark to her upon them, assuming that they referred to some peculiar system of courtship adopted in high life, with which they had rightly no concern. ethelberta ostensibly continued her business of tutoring the young workmen just as before, though every emotion in her had been put on the alert by this discovery. she had known that neigh admired her; yet his presumption in uttering such a remark as he was reported to have uttered, confidentially or otherwise, nearly took away her breath. perhaps it was not altogether disagreeable to have her breath so taken away. 'i mean to marry that lady.' she whispered the words to herself twenty times in the course of the afternoon. sol and dan were left considerably longer to their private perceptions of the false and true in art than they had been earlier in the day. when she reached home ethelberta was still far removed in her reflections; and it was noticed afterwards that about this time in her career her openness of manner entirely deserted her. she mostly was silent as to her thoughts, and she wore an air of unusual stillness. it was the silence and stillness of a starry sky, where all is force and motion. this deep undecipherable habit sometimes suggested, though it did not reveal, ethelberta's busy brain to her sisters, and they said to one another, 'i cannot think what's coming to berta: she is not so nice as she used to be.' the evening under notice was passed desultorily enough after the discovery of neigh's self-assured statement. among other things that she did after dark, while still musingly examining the probabilities of the report turning out true, was to wander to the large attic where the children slept, a frequent habit of hers at night, to learn if they were snug and comfortable. they were talking now from bed to bed, the person under discussion being herself. herself seemed everywhere to-day. 'i know that she is a fairy,' myrtle was insisting, 'because she must be, to have such pretty things in her house, and wear silk dresses such as mother and we and picotee haven't got, and have money to give us whenever we want it.' 'emmeline says perhaps she knows the fairy's godmother, and is not a fairy herself, because berta is too tall for a real fairy.' 'she must be one; for when there was a notch burnt in the hem of my pretty blue frock she said it should be gone in the morning if i would go to bed and not cry; and in the morning it was gone, and all nice and straight as new.' ethelberta was recalling to mind how she had sat up and repaired the damage alluded to by cutting off half an inch of the skirt all round and hemming it anew, when the breathing of the children became regular, and they fell asleep. here were bright little minds ready for a training, which without money and influence she could never give them. the wisdom which knowledge brings, and the power which wisdom may bring, she had always assumed would be theirs in her dreams for their social elevation. by what means were these things to be ensured to them if her skill in bread-winning should fail her? would not a well-contrived marriage be of service? she covered and tucked in one more closely, lifted another upon the pillow and straightened the soft limbs to an easy position; then sat down by the window and looked out at the flashing stars. thoughts of neigh's audacious statement returned again upon ethelberta. he had said that he meant to marry her. of what standing was the man who had uttered such an intention respecting one to whom a politic marriage had become almost a necessity of existence? she had often heard neigh speak indefinitely of some estate--'my little place' he had called it--which he had purchased no very long time ago. all she knew was that its name was farnfield, that it lay thirty or forty miles out of london in a south-westerly direction, a railway station in the district bearing the same name, so that there was probably a village or small town adjoining. whether the dignity of this landed property was that of domain, farmstead, allotment, or garden-plot, ethelberta had not the slightest conception. she was almost certain that neigh never lived there, but that might signify nothing. the exact size and value of the estate would, she mused, be curious, interesting, and almost necessary information to her who must become mistress of it were she to allow him to carry out his singularly cool and crude, if tender, intention. moreover, its importance would afford a very good random sample of his worldly substance throughout, from which alone, after all, could the true spirit and worth and seriousness of his words be apprehended. impecuniosity may revel in unqualified vows and brim over with confessions as blithely as a bird of may, but such careless pleasures are not for the solvent, whose very dreams are negotiable, and are expressed with due care accordingly. that neigh had used the words she had far more than prima-facie appearances for believing. neigh's own conduct towards her, though peculiar rather than devoted, found in these words alone a reasonable key. but, supposing the estate to be such a verbal hallucination as, for instance, hers had been at arrowthorne, when her poor, unprogressive, hopelessly impracticable christopher came there to visit her, and was so wonderfully undeceived about her social standing: what a fiasco, and what a cuckoo-cry would his utterances about marriage seem then. christopher had often told her of his expectations from 'arrowthorne lodge,' and of the blunders that had resulted in consequence. had not ethelberta's affection for christopher partaken less of lover's passion than of old- established tutelary tenderness she might have been reminded by this reflection of the transcendent fidelity he had shown under that trial--as severe a trial, considering the abnormal, almost morbid, development of the passion for position in present-day society, as can be prepared for men who move in the ordinary, unheroic channels of life. by the following evening the consideration of this possibility, that neigh's position might furnish scope for such a disillusive discovery by herself as hers had afforded to christopher, decoyed ethelberta into a curious little scheme. she was piqued into a practical undertaking by the man who could say to his friend with such sangfroid, 'i mean to marry that lady.' merely telling picotee to prepare for an evening excursion, of which she was to talk to no one, ethelberta made ready likewise, and they left the house in a cab about half-an-hour before sunset, and drove to the waterloo station. with the decline and departure of the sun a fog gathered itself out of the low meadow-land that bordered the railway as they went along towards the west, stretching over it like a placid lake, till at the end of the journey, the mist became generally pervasive, though not dense. avoiding observation as much as they conveniently could, the two sisters walked from the long wooden shed which formed the station here, into the rheumy air and along the road to the open country. picotee occasionally questioned ethelberta on the object of the strange journey: she did not question closely, being satisfied that in such sure hands as ethelberta's she was safe. deeming it unwise to make any inquiry just yet beyond the simple one of the way to farnfield, ethelberta led her companion along a newly-fenced road across a heath. in due time they came to an ornamental gate with a curved sweep of wall on each side, signifying the entrance to some enclosed property or other. ethelberta, being quite free from any digested plan for encouraging neigh in his resolve to wive, was startled to find a hope in her that this very respectable beginning before their eyes was the entrance to the farnfield property: that she hoped it was nevertheless unquestionable. just beyond lay a turnpike-house, where was dimly visible a woman in the act of putting up a shutter to the front window. compelled by this time to come to special questions, ethelberta instructed picotee to ask of this person if the place they had just passed was the entrance to farnfield park. the woman replied that it was. directly she had gone indoors ethelberta turned back again towards the park gate. 'what have we come for, berta?' said picotee, as she turned also. 'i'll tell you some day,' replied her sister. it was now much past eight o'clock, and, from the nature of the evening, dusk. the last stopping up-train was about ten, so that half-an-hour could well be afforded for looking round. ethelberta went to the gate, which was found to be fastened by a chain and padlock. 'ah, the london season,' she murmured. there was a wicket at the side, and they entered. an avenue of young fir trees three or four feet in height extended from the gate into the mist, and down this they walked. the drive was not in very good order, and the two women were frequently obliged to walk on the grass to avoid the rough stones in the carriage-way. the double line of young firs now abruptly terminated, and the road swept lower, bending to the right, immediately in front being a large lake, calm and silent as a second sky. they could hear from somewhere on the margin the purl of a weir, and around were clumps of shrubs, araucarias and deodars being the commonest. ethelberta could not resist being charmed with the repose of the spot, and hastened on with curiosity to reach the other side of the pool, where, by every law of manorial topography, the mansion would be situate. the fog concealed all objects beyond a distance of twenty yards or thereabouts, but it was nearly full moon, and though the orb was hidden, a pale diffused light enabled them to see objects in the foreground. reaching the other side of the lake the drive enlarged itself most legitimately to a large oval, as for a sweep before a door, a pile of rockwork standing in the midst. but where should have been the front door of a mansion was simply a rough rail fence, about four feet high. they drew near and looked over. in the enclosure, and on the site of the imaginary house, was an extraordinary group. it consisted of numerous horses in the last stage of decrepitude, the animals being such mere skeletons that at first ethelberta hardly recognized them to be horses at all; they seemed rather to be specimens of some attenuated heraldic animal, scarcely thick enough through the body to throw a shadow: or enlarged castings of the fire-dog of past times. these poor creatures were endeavouring to make a meal from herbage so trodden and thin that scarcely a wholesome blade remained; the little that there was consisted of the sourer sorts common on such sandy soils, mingled with tufts of heather and sprouting ferns. 'why have we come here, dear berta?' said picotee, shuddering. 'i hardly know,' said ethelberta. adjoining this enclosure was another and smaller one, formed of high boarding, within which appeared to be some sheds and outhouses. ethelberta looked through the crevices, and saw that in the midst of the yard stood trunks of trees as if they were growing, with branches also extending, but these were sawn off at the points where they began to be flexible, no twigs or boughs remaining. each torso was not unlike a huge hat-stand, and suspended to the pegs and prongs were lumps of some substance which at first she did not recognize; they proved to be a chronological sequel to the previous scene. horses' skulls, ribs, quarters, legs, and other joints were hung thereon, the whole forming a huge open-air larder emitting not too sweet a smell. but what stygian sound was this? there had arisen at the moment upon the mute and sleepy air a varied howling from a hundred tongues. it had burst from a spot close at hand--a low wooden building by a stream which fed the lake--and reverberated for miles. no further explanation was required. 'we are close to a kennel of hounds,' said ethelberta, as picotee held tightly to her arm. 'they cannot get out, so you need not fear. they have a horrid way of suddenly beginning thus at different hours of the night, for no apparent reason: though perhaps they hear us. these poor horses are waiting to be killed for their food.' the experience altogether, from its intense melancholy, was very depressing, almost appalling to the two lone young women, and they quickly retraced their footsteps. the pleasant lake, the purl of the weir, the rudimentary lawns, shrubberies, and avenue, had changed their character quite. ethelberta fancied at that moment that she could not have married neigh, even had she loved him, so horrid did his belongings appear to be. but for many other reasons she had been gradually feeling within this hour that she would not go out of her way at a beck from a man whose interest was so unimpassioned. thinking no more of him as a possible husband she ceased to be afraid to make inquiries about the peculiarities of his possessions. in the high- road they came on a local man, resting from wheeling a wheelbarrow, and ethelberta asked him, with the air of a countrywoman, who owned the estate across the road. 'the man owning that is one of the name of neigh,' said the native, wiping his face. ''tis a family that have made a very large fortune by the knacker business and tanning, though they be only sleeping partners in it now, and live like lords. mr. neigh was going to pull down the old huts here, and improve the place and build a mansion--in short, he went so far as to have the grounds planted, and the roads marked out, and the fish-pond made, and the place christened farnfield park; but he did no more. "i shall never have a wife," he said, "so why should i want a house to put her in?" he's a terrible hater of women, i hear, particularly the lower class.' 'indeed!' 'yes, and since then he has let half the land to the honourable mr. mountclere, a brother of lord mountclere's. mr. mountclere wanted the spot for a kennel, and as the land is too poor and sandy for cropping, mr. neigh let him have it. 'tis his hounds that you hear howling.' they passed on. 'berta, why did we come down here?' said picotee. 'to see the nakedness of the land. it was a whim only, and as it will end in nothing, it is not worth while for me to make further explanation.' it was with a curious sense of renunciation that ethelberta went homeward. neigh was handsome, grim-natured, rather wicked, and an indifferentist; and these attractions interested her as a woman. but the news of this evening suggested to ethelberta that herself and neigh were too nearly cattle of one colour for a confession on the matter of lineage to be well received by him; and without confidence of every sort on the nature of her situation, she was determined to contract no union at all. the sympathy of unlikeness might lead the scion of some family, hollow and fungous with antiquity, and as yet unmarked by a mesalliance, to be won over by her story; but the antipathy of resemblance would be ineradicable. . ethelberta's drawing-room while ethelberta during the next few days was dismissing that evening journey from her consideration, as an incident altogether foreign to the organized course of her existence, the hidden fruit thereof was rounding to maturity in a species unforeseen. inferences unassailable as processes, are, nevertheless, to be suspected, from the almost certain deficiency of particulars on some side or other. the truth in relation to neigh's supposed frigidity was brought before her at the end of the following week, when dan and sol had taken picotee, cornelia, and the young children to kew for the afternoon. early that morning, hours before it was necessary, there had been such a chatter of preparation in the house as was seldom heard there. sunday hats and bonnets had been retrimmed with such cunning that it would have taken a milliner's apprentice at least to discover that any thread in them was not quite new. there was an anxious peep through the blind at the sky at daybreak by georgina and myrtle, and the perplexity of these rural children was great at the weather-signs of the town, where atmospheric effects had nothing to do with clouds, and fair days and foul came apparently quite by chance. punctually at the hour appointed two friendly human shadows descended across the kitchen window, followed by sol and dan, much to the relief of the children's apprehensions that they might forget the day. the brothers were by this time acquiring something of the airs and manners of london workmen; they were less spontaneous and more comparative; less genial, but smarter; in obedience to the usual law by which the emotion that takes the form of humour in country workmen becomes transmuted to irony among the same order in town. but the fixed and dogged fidelity to one another under apparent coolness, by which this family was distinguished, remained unshaken in these members as in all the rest, leading them to select the children as companions in their holiday in preference to casual acquaintance. at last they were ready, and departed, and ethelberta, after chatting with her mother awhile, proceeded to her personal duties. the house was very silent that day, gwendoline and joey being the only ones left below stairs. ethelberta was wishing that she had thrown off her state and gone to kew to have an hour of childhood over again in a romp with the others, when she was startled by the announcement of a male visitor--none other than mr. neigh. ethelberta's attitude on receipt of this information sufficiently expressed a revived sense that the incidence of mr. neigh on her path might have a meaning after all. neigh had certainly said he was going to marry her, and now here he was come to her house--just as if he meant to do it forthwith. she had mentally discarded him; yet she felt a shock which was scarcely painful, and a dread which was almost exhilarating. her flying visit to farnfield she thought little of at this moment. from the fact that the mind prefers imaginings to recapitulation, conjecture to history, ethelberta had dwelt more upon neigh's possible plans and anticipations than upon the incidents of her evening journey; and the former assumed a more distinct shape in her mind's eye than anything on the visible side of the curtain. neigh was perhaps not quite so placidly nonchalant as in ordinary; still, he was by far the most trying visitor that ethelberta had lately faced, and she could not get above the stage--not a very high one for the mistress of a house--of feeling her personality to be inconveniently in the way of his eyes. he had somewhat the bearing of a man who was going to do without any fuss what gushing people would call a philanthropic action. 'i have been intending to write a line to you,' said neigh; 'but i felt that i could not be sure of writing my meaning in a way which might please you. i am not bright at a letter--never was. the question i mean is one that i hope you will be disposed to answer favourably, even though i may show the awkwardness of a fellow-person who has never put such a question before. will you give me a word of encouragement--just a hope that i may not be unacceptable as a husband to you? your talents are very great; and of course i know that i have nothing at all in that way. still people are happy together sometimes in spite of such things. will you say "yes," and settle it now?' 'i was not expecting you had come upon such an errand as this,' said she, looking up a little, but mostly looking down. 'i cannot say what you wish, mr. neigh. 'perhaps i have been too sudden and presumptuous. yes, i know i have been that. however, directly i saw you i felt that nobody ever came so near my idea of what is desirable in a lady, and it occurred to me that only one obstacle should stand in the way of the natural results, which obstacle would be your refusal. in common kindness consider. i daresay i am judged to be a man of inattentive habits--i know that's what you think of me; but under your influence i should be very different; so pray do not let your dislike to little matters influence you.' 'i would not indeed. but believe me there can be no discussion of marriage between us,' said ethelberta decisively. 'if that's the case i may as well say no more. to burden you with my regrets would be out of place, i suppose,' said neigh, looking calmly out of the window. 'apart from personal feeling, there are considerations which would prevent what you contemplated,' she murmured. 'my affairs are too lengthy, intricate, and unpleasant for me to explain to anybody at present. and that would be a necessary first step.' 'not at all. i cannot think that preliminary to be necessary at all. i would put my lawyer in communication with yours, and we would leave the rest to them: i believe that is the proper way. you could say anything in confidence to your family-man; and you could inquire through him anything you might wish to know about my--about me. all you would need to say to myself are just the two little words--"i will," in the church here at the end of the crescent.' 'i am sorry to pain you, mr. neigh--so sorry,' said ethelberta. 'but i cannot say them.' she was rather distressed that, despite her discouraging words, he still went on with his purpose, as if he imagined what she so distinctly said to be no bar, but rather a stimulant, usual under the circumstances. 'it does not matter about paining me,' said neigh. 'don't take that into consideration at all. but i did not expect you to leave me so entirely without help--to refuse me absolutely as far as words go--after what you did. if it had not been for that i should never have ventured to call. i might otherwise have supposed your interest to be fixed in another quarter; but your acting in that manner encouraged me to think you could listen to a word.' 'what do you allude to?' said ethelberta. 'how have i acted?' neigh appeared reluctant to go any further; but the allusion soon became sufficiently clear. 'i wish my little place at farnfield had been worthier of you,' he said brusquely. 'however, that's a matter of time only. it is useless to build a house there yet. i wish i had known that you would be looking over it at that time of the evening. a single word, when we were talking about it the other day, that you were going to be in the neighbourhood, would have been sufficient. nothing could have given me so much delight as to have driven you round.' he knew that she had been to farnfield: that knowledge was what had inspired him to call upon her to-day! ethelberta breathed a sort of exclamation, not right out, but stealthily, like a parson's damn. her face did not change, since a face must be said not to change while it preserves the same pleasant lines in the mobile parts as before; but anybody who has preserved his pleasant lines under the half-minute's peer of the invidious camera, and found what a wizened, starched kind of thing they stiffen to towards the end of the time, will understand the tendency of ethelberta's lovely features now. 'yes; i walked round,' said ethelberta faintly. neigh was decidedly master of the position at last; but he spoke as if he did not value that. his knowledge had furnished him with grounds for calling upon her, and he hastened to undeceive her from supposing that he could think ill of any motive of hers which gave him those desirable grounds. 'i supposed you, by that, to give some little thought to me occasionally,' he resumed, in the same slow and orderly tone. 'how could i help thinking so? it was your doing that which encouraged me. now, was it not natural--i put it to you?' ethelberta was almost exasperated at perceiving the awful extent to which she had compromised herself with this man by her impulsive visit. lightly and philosophically as he seemed to take it--as a thing, in short, which every woman would do by nature unless hindered by difficulties--it was no trifle to her as long as he was ignorant of her justification; and this she determined that he should know at once, at all hazards. 'it was through you in the first place that i did look into your grounds!' she said excitedly. 'it was your presumption that caused me to go there. i should not have thought of such a thing else. if you had not said what you did say i never should have thought of you or farnfield either--farnfield might have been in kamtschatka for all i cared.' 'i hope sincerely that i never said anything to disturb you?' 'yes, you did--not to me, but to somebody,' said ethelberta, with her eyes over-full of retained tears. 'what have i said to somebody that can be in the least objectionable to you?' inquired neigh, with much concern. 'you said--you said, you meant to marry me--just as if i had no voice in the matter! and that annoyed me, and made me go there out of curiosity.' neigh changed colour a little. 'well, i did say it: i own that i said it,' he replied at last. probably he knew enough of her nature not to feel long disconcerted by her disclosure, however she might have become possessed of the information. the explanation was certainly a great excuse to her curiosity; but if ethelberta had tried she could not have given him a better ground for making light of her objections to his suit. 'i felt that i must marry you, that we were predestined to marry ages ago, and i feel it still!' he continued, with listless ardour. 'you seem to regret your interest in farnfield; but to me it is a charm, and has been ever since i heard of it.' 'if you only knew all!' she said helplessly, showing, without perceiving it, an unnecessary humility in the remark, since there was no more reason just then that she should go into details about her life than that he should about his. but melancholy and mistaken thoughts of herself as a counterfeit had brought her to this. 'i do not wish to know more,' said neigh. 'and would you marry any woman off-hand, without being thoroughly acquainted with her circumstances?' she said, looking at him curiously, and with a little admiration, for his unconscionably phlegmatic treatment of her motives in going to farnfield had a not unbecoming daring about it in ethelberta's eye. 'i would marry a woman off-hand when that woman is you. i would make you mine this moment did i dare; or, to speak with absolute accuracy, within twenty-four hours. do assent to it, dear mrs. petherwin, and let me be sure of you for ever. i'll drive to doctors' commons this minute, and meet you to-morrow morning at nine in the church just below. it is a simple impulse, but i would adhere to it in the coolest moment. shall it be arranged in that way, instead of our waiting through the ordinary routine of preparation? i am not a youth now, but i can see the bliss of such an act as that, and the contemptible nature of methodical proceedings beside it!' he had taken her hand. ethelberta gave it a subtle movement backwards to imply that he was not to retain the prize, and said, 'one whose inner life is almost unknown to you, and whom you have scarcely seen except at other people's houses!' 'we know each other far better than we may think at first,' said neigh. 'we are not people to love in a hurry, and i have not done so in this case. as for worldly circumstances, the most important items in a marriage contract are the persons themselves, and, as far as i am concerned, if i get a lady fair and wise i care for nothing further. i know you are beautiful, for all london owns it; i know you are talented, for i have read your poetry and heard your romances; and i know you are politic and discreet--' 'for i have examined your property,' said she, with a weak smile. neigh bowed. 'and what more can i wish to know? come, shall it be?' 'certainly not to-morrow.' 'i would be entirely in your hands in that matter. i will not urge you to be precipitate--i could not expect you to be ready yet. my suddenness perhaps offended you; but, having thought deeply of this bright possibility, i was apt to forget the forbearance that one ought to show at first in mentioning it. if i have done wrong forgive me.' 'i will think of that,' said ethelberta, with a cooler manner. 'but seriously, all these words are nothing to the purpose. i must remark that i prize your friendship, but it is not for me to marry now. you have convinced me of your goodness of heart and freedom from unworthy suspicions; let that be enough. the best way in which i in my turn can convince you of my goodness of heart is by asking you to see me in private no more.' 'and do you refuse to think of me as ---. why do you treat me like that, after all?' said neigh, surprised at this want of harmony with his principle that one convert to matrimony could always find a second ready- made. 'i cannot explain, i cannot explain,' said she, impatiently. 'i would and i would not--explain i mean, not marry. i don't love anybody, and i have no heart left for beginning. it is only honest in me to tell you that i am interested in watching another man's career, though that is not to the point either, for no close relationship with him is contemplated. but i do not wish to speak of this any more. do not press me to it.' 'certainly i will not,' said neigh, seeing that she was distressed and sorrowful. 'but do consider me and my wishes; i have a right to ask it for it is only asking a continuance of what you have already begun to do. to-morrow i believe i shall have the happiness of seeing you again.' she did not say no, and long after the door had closed upon him she remained fixed in thought. 'how can he be blamed for his manner,' she said, 'after knowing what i did!' ethelberta as she sat felt herself much less a petherwin than a chickerel, much less a poetess richly freighted with fancy than an adventuress with a nebulous prospect. neigh was one of the few men whose presence seemed to attenuate her dignity in some mysterious way to its very least proportions; and that act of espial, which had so quickly and inexplicably come to his knowledge, helped his influence still more. she knew little of the nature of the town bachelor; there were opaque depths in him which her thoughts had never definitely plumbed. notwithstanding her exaltation to the atmosphere of the petherwin family, ethelberta was very far from having the thoroughbred london woman's knowledge of sets, grades, coteries, cliques, forms, glosses, and niceties, particularly on the masculine side. setting the years from her infancy to her first look into town against those linking that epoch with the present, the former period covered not only the greater time, but contained the mass of her most vivid impressions of life and its ways. but in recognizing her ignorance of the ratio between words to women and deeds to women in the ethical code of the bachelor of the club, she forgot that human nature in the gross differs little with situation, and that a gift which, if the germs were lacking, no amount of training in clubs and coteries could supply, was mother-wit like her own. . mrs. belmaine's--cripplegate church neigh's remark that he believed he should see ethelberta again the next day referred to a contemplated pilgrimage of an unusual sort which had been arranged for that day by mrs. belmaine upon the ground of an incidental suggestion of ethelberta's. one afternoon in the week previous they had been chatting over tea at the house of the former lady, neigh being present as a casual caller, when the conversation was directed upon milton by somebody opening a volume of the poet's works that lay on a table near. 'milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: england hath need of thee--' said mrs. belmaine with the degree of flippancy which is considered correct for immortal verse, the bible, god, etc., in these days. and ethelberta replied, lit up by a quick remembrance, 'it is a good time to talk of milton; for i have been much impressed by reading the "life;" and i have decided to go and see his tomb. could we not all go? we ought to quicken our memories of the great, and of where they lie, by such a visit occasionally.' 'we ought,' said mrs. belmaine. 'and why shouldn't we?' continued ethelberta, with interest. 'to westminster abbey?' said mr. belmaine, a common man of thirty, younger than his wife, who had lately come into the room. 'no; to where he lies comparatively alone--cripplegate church.' 'i always thought that milton was buried in poet's corner,' said mr. belmaine. 'so did i,' said neigh; 'but i have such an indifferent head for places that my thinking goes for nothing.' 'well, it would be a pretty thing to do,' said mrs. belmaine, 'and instructive to all of us. if mrs. petherwin would like to go, i should. we can take you in the carriage and call round for mrs. doncastle on our way, and set you both down again coming back.' 'that would be excellent,' said ethelberta. 'there is nowhere i like going to so much as the depths of the city. the absurd narrowness of world-renowned streets is so surprising--so crooked and shady as they are too, and full of the quaint smells of old cupboards and cellars. walking through one of them reminds me of being at the bottom of some crevasse or gorge, the proper surface of the globe being the tops of the houses.' 'you will come to take care of us, john? and you, mr. neigh, would like to come? we will tell mr. ladywell that he may join us if he cares to,' said mrs. belmaine. 'o yes,' said her husband quietly; and neigh said he should like nothing better, after a faint aspect of apprehension at the remoteness of the idea from the daily track of his thoughts. mr. belmaine observing this, and mistaking it for an indication that neigh had been dragged into the party against his will by his over-hasty wife, arranged that neigh should go independently and meet them there at the hour named if he chose to do so, to give him an opportunity of staying away. ethelberta also was by this time doubting if she had not been too eager with her proposal. to go on such a sentimental errand might be thought by her friends to be simply troublesome, their adherence having been given only in the regular course of complaisance. she was still comparatively an outsider here, her life with lady petherwin having been passed chiefly in alternations between english watering-places and continental towns. however, it was too late now to muse on this, and it may be added that from first to last ethelberta never discovered from the belmaines whether her proposal had been an infliction or a charm, so perfectly were they practised in sustaining that complete divorce between thinking and saying which is the hall-mark of high civilization. but, however she might doubt the belmaines, she had no doubt as to neigh's true sentiments: the time had come when he, notwithstanding his air of being oppressed by almost every lively invention of town and country for charming griefs to rest, would not be at all oppressed by a quiet visit to the purlieus of st giles's, cripplegate, since she was the originator, and was going herself. it was a bright hope-inspiring afternoon in this mid-may time when the carriage containing mr. and mrs. belmaine, mrs. doncastle, and ethelberta, crept along the encumbered streets towards barbican; till turning out of that thoroughfare into redcross street they beheld the bold shape of the old tower they sought, clothed in every neutral shade, standing clear against the sky, dusky and grim in its upper stage, and hoary grey below, where every corner of every stone was completely rounded off by the waves of wind and storm. all people were busy here: our visitors seemed to be the only idle persons the city contained; and there was no dissonance--there never is--between antiquity and such beehive industry; for pure industry, in failing to observe its own existence and aspect, partakes of the unobtrusive nature of material things. this intra-mural stir was a flywheel transparent by excessive motion, through which milton and his day could be seen as if nothing intervened. had there been ostensibly harmonious accessories, a crowd of observing people in search of the poetical, conscious of the place and the scene, what a discord would have arisen there! but everybody passed by milton's grave except ethelberta and her friends, and for the moment the city's less invidious conduct appeared to her more respectful as a practice than her own. but she was brought out of this rumination by the halt at the church door, and completely reminded of the present by finding the church open, and neigh--the, till yesterday, unimpassioned neigh--waiting in the vestibule to receive them, just as if he lived there. ladywell had not arrived. it was a long time before ethelberta could get back to milton again, for neigh was continuing to impend over her future more and more visibly. the objects along the journey had distracted her mind from him; but the moment now was as a direct renewal and prolongation of the declaration-time yesterday, and as if in furtherance of the conclusion of the episode. they all alighted and went in, the coachman being told to take the carriage to a quiet nook further on, and return in half-an-hour. mrs. belmaine and her carriage some years before had accidentally got jammed crosswise in cheapside through the clumsiness of the man in turning up a side street, blocking that great artery of the civilized world for the space of a minute and a half, when they were pounced upon by half-a-dozen policemen and forced to back ignominiously up a little slit between the houses where they did not mean to go, amid the shouts of the hindered drivers; and it was her nervous recollection of that event which caused mrs. belmaine to be so precise in her directions now. by the time that they were grouped around the tomb the visit had assumed a much more solemn complexion than any one among them had anticipated. ashamed of the influence that she discovered neigh to be exercising over her, and opposing it steadily, ethelberta drew from her pocket a small edition of milton, and proposed that she should read a few lines from 'paradise lost.' the responsibility of producing a successful afternoon was upon her shoulders; she was, moreover, the only one present who could properly manage blank verse, and this was sufficient to justify the proposal. she stood with her head against the marble slab just below the bust, and began a selected piece, neigh standing a few yards off on her right looking into his hat in order to listen accurately, mr. and mrs. belmaine and mrs. doncastle seating themselves in a pew directly facing the monument. the ripe warm colours of afternoon came in upon them from the west, upon the sallow piers and arches, and the infinitely deep brown pews beneath, the aisle over ethelberta's head being in misty shade through which glowed a lurid light from a dark-stained window behind. the sentences fell from her lips in a rhythmical cadence one by one, and she could be fancied a priestess of him before whose image she stood, when with a vivid suggestiveness she delivered here, not many yards from the central money-mill of the world, yet out from the very tomb of their author, the passage containing the words: 'mammon led them on; mammon, the least erected spirit that fell from heaven.' when she finished reading ethelberta left the monument, and then each one present strayed independently about the building, ethelberta turning to the left along the passage to the south door. neigh--from whose usually apathetic face and eyes there had proceeded a secret smouldering light as he listened and regarded her--followed in the same direction and vanished at her heels into the churchyard, whither she had now gone. mr. and mrs. belmaine exchanged glances, and instead of following the pair they went with mrs. doncastle into the vestry to inquire of the person in charge for the register of the marriage of oliver cromwell, which was solemnized here. the church was now quite empty, and its stillness was as a vacuum into which an occasional noise from the street overflowed and became rarefied away to nothing. something like five minutes had passed when a hansom stopped outside the door, and ladywell entered the porch. he stood still, and, looking inquiringly round for a minute or two, sat down in one of the high pews, as if under the impression that the others had not yet arrived. while he sat here neigh reappeared at the south door opposite, and came slowly in. ladywell, in rising to go to him, saw that neigh's attention was engrossed by something he held in his hand. it was his pocket-book, and neigh was looking at a few loose flower-petals which had been placed between the pages. when ladywell came forward neigh looked up, started, and closed the book quickly, so that some of the petals fluttered to the ground between the two men. they were striped, red and white, and appeared to be leaves of the harlequin rose. 'ah! here you are, ladywell,' he said, recovering himself. 'we had given you up: my aunt said that you would not care to come. they are all in the vestry.' how it came to pass that neigh designated those in the vestry as 'all,' when there was one in the churchyard, was a thing that he himself could hardly have explained, so much more had it to do with instinct than with calculation. 'never mind them--don't interrupt them,' said ladywell. 'the plain truth is that i have been very greatly disturbed in mind; and i could not appear earlier by reason of it. i had some doubt about coming at all.' 'i am sorry to hear that.' 'neigh--i may as well tell you and have done with it. i have found that a lady of my acquaintance has two strings to her bow, or i am very much in error.' 'what--mrs. petherwin?' said neigh uneasily. 'but i thought that--that fancy was over with you long ago. even your acquaintance with her was at an end, i thought.' 'in a measure it is at an end. but let me tell you that what you call a fancy has been anything but a fancy with me, to be over like a spring shower. to speak plainly, neigh, i consider myself badly used by that woman; damn badly used.' 'badly used?' said neigh mechanically, and wondering all the time if ladywell had been informed that ethelberta was to be one of the party to- day. 'well, i ought not to talk like that,' said ladywell, adopting a lighter tone. 'all is fair in courtship, i suppose, now as ever. indeed, i mean to put a good face upon it: if i am beaten, i am. but it is very provoking, after supposing matters to be going on smoothly, to find out that you are quite mistaken.' 'i told you you were quite mistaken in supposing she cared for you.' 'that is just the point i was not mistaken in,' said ladywell warmly. 'she did care for me, and i stood as well with her as any man could stand until this fellow came, whoever he is. i sometimes feel so disturbed about it that i have a good mind to call upon her and ask his name. wouldn't you, neigh? will you accompany me?' 'i would in a moment, but, but-- i strongly advise you not to go,' said neigh earnestly. 'it would be rash, you know, and rather unmannerly; and would only hurt your feelings.' 'well, i am always ready to yield to a friend's arguments. . . . a sneaking scamp, that's what he is. why does he not show himself?' 'don't you really know who he is?' said neigh, in a pronounced and exceptional tone, on purpose to give ladywell a chance of suspecting, for the position was getting awkward. but ladywell was blind as bartimeus in that direction, so well had indifference to ethelberta's charms been feigned by neigh until he thought seriously of marrying her. yet, unfortunately for the interests of calmness, ladywell was less blind with his outward eye. in his reflections his glance had lingered again upon the pocket-book which neigh still held in his hand, and upon the two or three rose-leaves on the floor, until he said idly, superimposing humorousness upon misery, as men in love can: 'rose-leaves, neigh? i thought you did not care for flowers. what makes you amuse yourself with such sentimental objects as those, only fit for women, or painters like me? if i had not observed you with my own eyes i should have said that you were about the last man in the world to care for things of that sort. whatever makes you keep rose-leaves in your pocket-book?' 'the best reason on earth,' said neigh. 'a woman gave them to me.' 'that proves nothing unless she is a great deal to you,' said ladywell, with the experienced air of a man who, whatever his inferiority in years to neigh, was far beyond him in knowledge of that sort, by virtue of his recent trials. 'she is a great deal to me.' 'if i did not know you to be such a confirmed misogynist i should say that this is a serious matter.' 'it is serious,' said neigh quietly. 'the probability is that i shall marry the woman who gave me these. anyhow i have asked her the question, and she has not altogether said no.' 'i am glad to hear it, neigh,' said ladywell heartily. 'i am glad to hear that your star is higher than mine.' before neigh could make further reply ladywell was attracted by the glow of green sunlight reflected through the south door by the grass of the churchyard, now in all its spring freshness and luxuriance. he bent his steps thither, followed anxiously by neigh. 'i had no idea there was such a lovely green spot in the city,' ladywell continued, passing out. 'trees too, planted in the manner of an orchard. what a charming place!' the place was truly charming just at that date. the untainted leaves of the lime and plane trees and the newly-sprung grass had in the sun a brilliancy of beauty that was brought into extraordinary prominence by the sable soil showing here and there, and the charcoaled stems and trunks out of which the leaves budded: they seemed an importation, not a produce, and their delicacy such as would perish in a day. 'what is this round tower?' ladywell said again, walking towards the iron- grey bastion, partly covered with ivy and virginia creeper, which stood obtruding into the enclosure. 'o, didn't you know that was here? that's a piece of the old city wall,' said neigh, looking furtively around at the same time. behind the bastion the churchyard ran into a long narrow strip, grassed like the other part, but completely hidden from it by the cylinder of ragged masonry. on rounding this projection, ladywell beheld within a few feet of him a lady whom he knew too well. 'mrs. petherwin here!' exclaimed he, proving how ignorant he had been of the composition of the party he was to meet, and accounting at the same time for his laxity in attending it. 'i forgot to tell you,' said neigh awkwardly, behind him, 'that mrs. petherwin was to come with us.' ethelberta's look was somewhat blushful and agitated, as if from some late transaction: she appeared to have been secluding herself there till she should have recovered her equanimity. however, she came up to him and said, 'i did not see you before this moment: we had been thinking you would not come.' while these words were being prettily spoken, ladywell's face became pale as death. on ethelberta's bosom were the stem and green calyx of a rose, almost all its flower having disappeared. it had been a harlequin rose, for two or three of its striped leaves remained to tell the tale. she could not help noticing his fixed gaze, and she said quickly, 'yes, i have lost my pretty rose: this may as well go now,' and she plucked the stem from its fastening in her dress and flung it away. poor ladywell turned round to meet mr. and mrs. belmaine, whose voices were beginning to be heard just within the church door, leaving neigh and ethelberta together. it was a graceful act of young ladywell's that, in the midst of his own pain at the strange tale the rose-leaves suggested--neigh's rivalry, ethelberta's mutability, his own defeat--he was not regardless of the intense embarrassment which might have been caused had he remained. the two were silent at first, and it was evident that ethelberta's mood was one of anger at something that had gone before. she turned aside from him to follow the others, when neigh spoke in a tone somewhat bitter and somewhat stern. 'what--going like that! after being compromised together, why don't you close with me? ladywell knows all: i had already told him that the rose- leaves were given me by my intended wife. we seem to him to be practising deceptions all of a piece, and what folly it is to play off so! as to what i did, that i ask your forgiveness for.' ethelberta looked upon the ground and maintained a compressed lip. neigh resumed: 'if i showed more feeling than you care for, i insist that it was not more than was natural under the circumstances, if not quite proper. opinions may differ, but my experience goes to prove that conventional squeamishness at such times as these is more talked and written about than practised. plain behaviour must be expected when marriage is the question. nevertheless, i do say--and i cannot say more--that i am sincerely sorry to have offended you by exceeding my privileges. i will never do so again.' 'don't say privileges. you have none.' 'i am sorry that i thought otherwise, and that others will think so too. ladywell is, at any rate, bent on thinking so. . . . it might have been made known to him in a gentle way--but god disposes.' 'there is nothing to make known--i don't understand,' said ethelberta, going from him. by this time ladywell had walked round the gravel walks with the two other ladies and mr. belmaine, and they were all turning to come back again. the young painter had deputed his voice to reply to their remarks, but his understanding continued poring upon other things. when he came up to ethelberta, his agitation had left him: she too was free from constraint; while neigh was some distance off, carefully examining nothing in particular in an old fragment of wall. the little party was now united again as to its persons; though in spirit far otherwise. they went through the church in general talk, ladywell sad but serene, and ethelberta keeping far-removed both from him and from neigh. she had at this juncture entered upon that sphinx-like stage of existence in which, contrary to her earlier manner, she signified to no one of her ways, plans, or sensations, and spoke little on any subject at all. there were occasional smiles now which came only from the face, and speeches from the lips merely. the journey home was performed as they had come, ladywell not accepting the seat in neigh's cab which was phlegmatically offered him. mrs. doncastle's acquaintance with ethelberta had been slight until this day; but the afternoon's proceeding had much impressed the matron with her younger friend. before they parted she said, with the sort of affability which is meant to signify the beginning of permanent friendship: 'a friend of my husband's, lord mountclere, has been anxious for some time to meet you. he is a great admirer of the poems, and more still of the story-telling invention, and your power in it. he has been present many times at the mayfair hall to hear you. when will you dine with us to meet him? i know you will like him. will thursday be convenient?' ethelberta stood for a moment reflecting, and reflecting hoped that mrs. doncastle had not noticed her momentary perplexity. crises were becoming as common with her as blackberries; and she had foreseen this one a long time. it was not that she was to meet lord mountclere, for he was only a name and a distant profile to her: it was that her father would necessarily be present at the meeting, in the most anomalous position that human nature could endure. however, having often proved in her disjointed experience that the shortest way out of a difficulty lies straight through it, ethelberta decided to dine at the doncastles', and, as she murmured that she should have great pleasure in meeting any friend of theirs, set about contriving how the encounter with her dearest relative might be made safe and unsuspected. she bade them adieu blithely; but the thoughts engendered by the invitation stood before her as sorrowful and rayless ghosts which could not be laid. often at such conjunctures as these, when the futility of her great undertaking was more than usually manifest, did ethelberta long like a tired child for the conclusion of the whole matter; when her work should be over, and the evening come; when she might draw her boat upon the shore, and in some thymy nook await eternal night with a placid mind. . ethelberta's--mr. chickerel's room the question of neigh or no neigh had reached a pitch of insistence which no longer permitted of dallying, even by a popular beauty. his character was becoming defined to ethelberta as something very differently composed from that of her first imagining. she had set him down to be a man whose external in excitability owed nothing to self-repression, but stood as the natural surface of the mass within. neigh's urban torpor, she said, might have been in the first instance produced by art, but, were it thus, it had gone so far as to permeate him. this had been disproved, first surprisingly, by his reported statement; wondrously, in the second place, by his call upon her and sudden proposal; thirdly, to a degree simply astounding, by what had occurred in the city that day. for neigh, before the fervour had subsided which was produced in him by her look and general power while reading 'paradise lost,' found himself alone with her in a nook outside the church, and there had almost demanded her promise to be his wife. she had replied by asking for time, and idly offering him the petals of her rose, that had shed themselves in her hand. neigh, in taking them, pressed her fingers more warmly than she thought she had given him warrant for, which offended her. it was certainly a very momentary affair, and when it was over seemed to surprise himself almost as much as it had vexed her; but it had reminded her of one truth which she was in danger of forgetting. the town gentleman was not half so far removed from sol and dan, and the hard-handed order in general, in his passions as in his philosophy. he still continued to be the male of his species, and when the heart was hot with a dream pall mall had much the same aspect as wessex. well, she had not accepted him yet; indeed, for the moment they were in a pet with one another. yet that might soon be cleared off, and then recurred the perpetual question, would the advantage that might accrue to her people by her marriage be worth the sacrifice? one palliative feature must be remembered when we survey the matrimonial ponderings of the poetess and romancer. what she contemplated was not meanly to ensnare a husband just to provide incomes for her and her family, but to find some man she might respect, who would maintain her in such a stage of comfort as should, by setting her mind free from temporal anxiety, enable her to further organize her talent, and provide incomes for them herself. plenty of saleable originality was left in her as yet, but it was getting crushed under the rubbish of her necessities. she was not sure that neigh would stand the test of her revelations. it would be possible to lead him to marry her without revealing anything--the events of the last few days had shown her that--yet ethelberta's honesty shrank from the safe course of holding her tongue. it might be pleasant to many a modern gentleman to find himself allied with a lady, none of whose ancestors had ever pandered to a court, lost an army, taken a bribe, oppressed a community, or broken a bank; but the added disclosure that, in avoiding these stains, her kindred had worked and continued to work with their hands for bread, might lead such an one to consider that the novelty was dearly purchased. ethelberta was, upon the whole, dissatisfied with her progress thus far. she had planned many things and fulfilled few. had her father been by this time provided for and made independent of the world, as she had thought he might be, not only would her course with regard to neigh be quite clear, but the impending awkwardness of dining with her father behind her chair could not have occurred. true, that was a small matter beside her regret for his own sake that he was still in harness; and a mere change of occupation would be but a tribute to a fastidiousness which he did not himself share. she had frequently tried to think of a vocation for him that would have a more dignified sound, and be less dangerously close to her own path: the post of care-taker at some provincial library, country stationer, registrar of births and deaths, and many others had been discussed and dismissed in face of the unmanageable fact that her father was serenely happy and comfortable as a butler, looking with dread at any hint of change short of perfect retirement. since, then, she could not offer him this retirement, what right had she to interfere with his mode of life at all? in no other social groove on earth would he thrive as he throve in his present one, to which he had been accustomed from boyhood, and where the remuneration was actually greater than in professions ten times as stately in name. for the rest, too, ethelberta had indulged in hopes, the high education of the younger ones being the chief of these darling wishes. picotee wanted looking to badly enough. sol and dan required no material help; they had quickly obtained good places of work under a pimlico builder; for though the brothers scarcely showed as yet the light-fingered deftness of london artizans, the want was in a measure compensated by their painstaking, and employers are far from despising country hands who bring with them strength, industry, and a desire to please. but their sister had other lines laid down for them than those of level progress; to start them some day as masters instead of men was a long-cherished wish of ethelberta's. thus she had quite enough machinery in her hands to keep decently going, even were she to marry a man who would take a kindly view of her peculiar situation, and afford her opportunities of strengthening her powers for her kindred's good. but what would be the result if, eighteen months hence--the date at which her occupation of the house in exonbury crescent came to an end--she were still a widow, with no accumulated capital, her platform talents grown homely and stunted through narrow living, and her tender vein of poesy completely dispersed by it? to calmly relinquish the struggle at that point would have been the act of a stoic, but not of a woman, particularly when she considered the children, the hopes of her mother for them, and her own condition--though this was least--under the ironical cheers which would greet a slip back into the mire. it here becomes necessary to turn for a moment to master joey chickerel, ethelberta's troublesome page and brother. the face of this juvenile was that of a graeco-roman satyr to the furthest degree of completeness. viewed in front, the outer line of his upper lip rose in a double arch nearly to his little round nostrils, giving an expression of a jollity so delicious to himself as to compel a perpetual drawing in of his breath. during half-laughs his lips parted in the middle, and remained closed at the corners, which were small round pits like his nostrils, the same form being repeated as dimples a little further back upon his cheek. the opening for each eye formed a sparkling crescent, both upper and under lid having the convexity upwards. but during some few days preceding the dinner-party at the doncastles' all this changed. the luxuriant curves departed, a compressed lineality was to be observed everywhere, the pupils of his eyes seemed flattened, and the carriage of his head was limp and sideways. this was a feature so remarkable and new in him that picotee noticed it, and was lifted from the melancholy current of her own affairs in contemplating his. 'well, what's the matter?' said picotee. 'o--nothing,' said joey. 'nothing? how can you say so?' 'the world's a holler mockery--that's what i say.' 'yes, so it is, to some; but not to you,' said picotee, sighing. 'don't talk argument, picotee. i only hope you'll never feel what i feel now. if it wasn't for my juties here i know what i'd do; i'd 'list, that's what i'd do. but having my position to fill here as the only responsible man-servant in the house, i can't leave.' 'has anybody been beating you?' 'beating! do i look like a person who gets beatings? no, it is a madness,' said joey, putting his hand upon his chest. 'the case is, i am in love.' 'o joey, a boy no bigger than you are!' said picotee reprovingly. her personal interest in the passion, however, provoked her to inquire, in the next breath, 'who is it? do tell, joey.' 'no bigger than i! what hev bigness to do with it? that's just like your old-fashioned notions. bigness is no more wanted in courting nowadays than in soldiering or smoking or any other duty of man. husbands is rare; and a promising courter who means business will fetch his price in these times, big or small, i assure ye. i might have been engaged a dozen times over as far as the bigness goes. you should see what a miserable little fellow my rival is afore you talk like that. now you know i've got a rival, perhaps you'll own there must be something in it.' 'yes, that seems like the real thing. but who is the young woman?' 'well, i don't mind telling you, picotee. it is mrs. doncastle's new maid. i called to see father last night, and had supper there; and you should have seen how lovely she were--eating sparrowgrass sideways, as if she were born to it. but, of course, there's a rival--there always is--i might have known that, and i will crush him!' 'but mrs. doncastle's new maid--if that was she i caught a glimpse of the other day--is ever so much older than you--a dozen years.' 'what's that to a man in love? pooh--i wish you would leave me, picotee; i wants to be alone.' a short time after this picotee was in the company of ethelberta, and she took occasion to mention joey's attachment. ethelberta grew exceedingly angry directly she heard of it. 'what a fearful nuisance that boy is becoming,' she said. 'does father know anything of this?' 'i think not,' said picotee. 'o no, he cannot; he would not allow any such thing to go on; she is so much older than joey.' 'i should think he wouldn't allow it! the fact is i must be more strict about this growing friendliness between you all and the doncastle servants. there shall be absolutely no intimacy or visiting of any sort. when father wants to see any of you he must come here, unless there is a most serious reason for your calling upon him. some disclosure or reference to me otherwise than as your mistress, will certainly be made else, and then i am ruined. i will speak to father myself about joey's absurd nonsense this evening. i am going to see him on another matter.' and ethelberta sighed. 'i am to dine there on thursday,' she added. 'to dine there, berta? well, that is a strange thing! why, father will be close to you!' 'yes,' said ethelberta quietly. 'how i should like to see you sitting at a grand dinner-table, among lordly dishes and shining people, and father about the room unnoticed! berta, i have never seen a dinner-party in my life, and father said that i should some day; he promised me long ago.' 'how will he be able to carry out that, my dear child?' said ethelberta, drawing her sister gently to her side. 'father says that for an hour and a half the guests are quite fixed in the dining-room, and as unlikely to move as if they were trees planted round the table. do let me go and see you, berta,' picotee added coaxingly. 'i would give anything to see how you look in the midst of elegant people talking and laughing, and you my own sister all the time, and me looking on like puss-in-the-corner.' ethelberta could hardly resist the entreaty, in spite of her recent resolution. 'we will leave that to be considered when i come home to-night,' she said. 'i must hear what father says.' after dark the same evening a woman, dressed in plain black and wearing a hood, went to the servants' entrance of mr. doncastle's house, and inquired for mr. chickerel. ethelberta found him in a room by himself, and on entering she closed the door behind her, and unwrapped her face. 'can you sit with me a few minutes, father?' she said. 'yes, for a quarter of an hour or so,' said the butler. 'has anything happened? i thought it might be picotee.' 'no. all's well yet. but i thought it best to see you upon one or two matters which are harassing me a little just now. the first is, that stupid boy joey has got entangled in some way with the lady's-maid at this house; a ridiculous affair it must be by all account, but it is too serious for me to treat lightly. she will worm everything out of him, and a pretty business it will be then.' 'god bless my soul! why, the woman is old enough to be his mother! i have never heard a sound of it till now. what do you propose to do?' 'i have hardly thought: i cannot tell at all. but we will consider that after i have done. the next thing is, i am to dine here thursday--that is, to-morrow.' 'you going to dine here, are you?' said her father in surprise. 'dear me, that's news. we have a dinner-party to-morrow, but i was not aware that you knew our people.' 'i have accepted the invitation,' said ethelberta. 'but if you think i had better stay away, i will get out of it by some means. heavens! what does that mean--will anybody come in?' she added, rapidly pulling up her hood and jumping from the seat as the loud tones of a bell clanged forth in startling proximity. 'o no--it is all safe,' said her father. 'it is the area door--nothing to do with me. about the dinner: i don't see why you may not come. of course you will take no notice of me, nor shall i of you. it is to be rather a large party. lord what's-his-name is coming, and several good people.' 'yes; he is coming to meet me, it appears. but, father,' she said more softly and slowly, 'how wrong it will be for me to come so close to you, and never recognize you! i don't like it. i wish you could have given up service by this time; it would have been so much less painful for us all round. i thought we might have been able to manage it somehow.' 'nonsense, nonsense,' said mr. chickerel crossly. 'there is not the least reason why i should give up. i want to save a little money first. if you don't like me as i am, you must keep away from me. don't be uneasy about my comfort; i am right enough, thank god. i can mind myself for many a year yet.' ethelberta looked at him with tears in her eyes, but she did not speak. she never could help crying when she met her father here. 'i have been in service now for more than seven-and-thirty years,' her father went on. 'it is an honourable calling; and why should you maintain me because you can earn a few pounds by your gifts, and an old woman left you her house and a few sticks of furniture? if she had left you any money it would have been a different thing, but as you have to work for every penny you get, i cannot think of it. suppose i should agree to come and live with you, and then you should be ill, or such like, and i no longer able to help myself? o no, i'll stick where i am, for here i am safe as to food and shelter at any rate. surely, ethelberta, it is only right that i, who ought to keep you all, should at least keep your mother and myself? as to our position, that we cannot help; and i don't mind that you are unable to own me.' 'i wish i could own you--all of you.' 'well, you chose your course, my dear; and you must abide by it. having put your hand to the plough, it will be foolish to turn back.' 'it would, i suppose. yet i wish i could get a living by some simple humble occupation, and drop the name of petherwin, and be berta chickerel again, and live in a green cottage as we used to do when i was small. i am miserable to a pitiable degree sometimes, and sink into regrets that i ever fell into such a groove as this. i don't like covert deeds, such as coming here to-night, and many are necessary with me from time to time. there is something without which splendid energies are a drug; and that is a cold heart. there is another thing necessary to energy, too--the power of distinguishing your visions from your reasonable forecasts when looking into the future, so as to allow your energy to lay hold of the forecasts only. i begin to have a fear that mother is right when she implies that i undertook to carry out visions and all. but ten of us are so many to cope with. if god almighty had only killed off three-quarters of us when we were little, a body might have done something for the rest; but as we are it is hopeless!' 'there is no use in your going into high doctrine like that,' said chickerel. 'as i said before, you chose your course. you have begun to fly high, and you had better keep there.' 'and to do that there is only one way--that is, to do it surely, so that i have some groundwork to enable me to keep up to the mark in my profession. that way is marriage.' 'marriage? who are you going to marry?' 'god knows. perhaps lord mountclere. stranger things have happened.' 'yes, so they have; though not many wretcheder things. i would sooner see you in your grave, ethelberta, than lord mountclere's wife, or the wife of anybody like him, great as the honour would be.' 'of course that was only something to say; i don't know the man even.' 'i know his valet. however, marry who you may, i hope you'll be happy, my dear girl. you would be still more divided from us in that event; but when your mother and i are dead, it will make little difference.' ethelberta placed her hand upon his shoulder, and smiled cheerfully. 'now, father, don't despond. all will be well, and we shall see no such misfortune as that for many a year. leave all to me. i am a rare hand at contrivances.' 'you are indeed, berta. it seems to me quite wonderful that we should be living so near together and nobody suspect the relationship, because of the precautions you have taken.' 'yet the precautions were rather lady petherwin's than mine, as you know. consider how she kept me abroad. my marriage being so secret made it easy to cut off all traces, unless anybody had made it a special business to search for them. that people should suspect as yet would be by far the more wonderful thing of the two. but we must, for one thing, have no visiting between our girls and the servants here, or they soon will suspect.' ethelberta then laid down a few laws on the subject, and, explaining the other details of her visit, told her father soon that she must leave him. he took her along the passage and into the area. they were standing at the bottom of the steps, saying a few parting words about picotee's visit to see the dinner, when a female figure appeared by the railing above, slipped in at the gate, and flew down the steps past the father and daughter. at the moment of passing she whispered breathlessly to him, 'is that you, mr. chickerel?' 'yes,' said the butler. she tossed into his arms a quantity of wearing apparel, and adding, 'please take them upstairs for me--i am late,' rushed into the house. 'good heavens, what does that mean?' said ethelberta, holding her father's arm in her uneasiness. 'that's the new lady's-maid, just come in from an evening walk--that young scamp's sweetheart, if what you tell me is true. i don't yet know what her character is, but she runs neck and neck with time closer than any woman i ever met. she stays out at night like this till the last moment, and often throws off her dashing courting-clothes in this way, as she runs down the steps, to save a journey to the top of the house to her room before going to mrs. doncastle's, who is in fact at this minute waiting for her. only look here.' chickerel gathered up a hat decked with feathers and flowers, a parasol, and a light muslin train-skirt, out of the pocket of the latter tumbling some long golden tresses of hair. 'what an extraordinary woman,' said ethelberta. 'a perfect cinderella. the idea of joey getting desperate about a woman like that; no doubt she has just come in from meeting him.' 'no doubt--a blockhead. that's his taste, is it! i'll soon see if i can't cure his taste if it inclines towards mrs. menlove.' 'mrs. what?' 'menlove; that's her name. she came about a fortnight ago.' 'and is that menlove--what shall we do!' exclaimed ethelberta. 'the idea of the boy singling out her--why it is ruin to him, to me, and to us all!' she hastily explained to her father that menlove had been lady petherwin's maid and her own at some time before the death of her mother- in-law, that she had only stayed with them through a three months' tour because of her flightiness, and hence had learnt nothing of ethelberta's history, and probably had never thought at all about it. but nevertheless they were as well acquainted as a lady and her maid well could be in the time. 'like all such doubtful characters,' continued ethelberta, 'she was one of the cleverest and lightest-handed women we ever had about us. when she first came, my hair was getting quite weak; but by brushing it every day in a peculiar manner, and treating it as only she knew how, she brought it into splendid condition.' 'well, this is the devil to pay, upon my life!' said mr. chickerel, with a miserable gaze at the bundle of clothes and the general situation at the same time. 'unfortunately for her friendship, i have snubbed her two or three times already, for i don't care about her manner. you know she has a way of trading on a man's sense of honour till it puts him into an awkward position. she is perfectly well aware that, whatever scrape i find her out in, i shall not have the conscience to report her, because i am a man, and she is a defenceless woman; and so she takes advantage of one's feeling by making me, or either of the menservants, her bottle-holder, as you see she has done now.' 'this is all simply dreadful,' said ethelberta. 'joey is shrewd and trustworthy; but in the hands of such a woman as that! i suppose she did not recognize me.' 'there was no chance of that in the dark.' 'well, i cannot do anything in it,' said she. 'i cannot manage joey at all.' 'i will see if i can,' said mr. chickerel. 'courting at his age, indeed--what shall we hear next!' chickerel then accompanied his daughter along the street till an empty cab passed them, and putting her into it he returned to the house again. . ethelberta's dressing-room--mr. doncastle's house the dressing of ethelberta for the dinner-party was an undertaking into which picotee threw her whole skill as tirewoman. her energies were brisker that day than they had been at any time since the julians first made preparations for departure from town; for a letter had come to her from faith, telling of their arrival at the old cathedral city, which was found to suit their inclinations and habits infinitely better than london; and that she would like picotee to visit them there some day. picotee felt, and so probably felt the writer of the letter, that such a visit would not be very practicable just now; but it was a pleasant idea, and for fastening dreams upon was better than nothing. such musings were encouraged also by ethelberta's remarks as the dressing went on. 'we will have a change soon,' she said; 'we will go out of town for a few days. it will do good in many ways. i am getting so alarmed about the health of the children; their faces are becoming so white and thin and pinched that an old acquaintance would hardly know them; and they were so plump when they came. you are looking as pale as a ghost, and i daresay i am too. a week or two at knollsea will see us right.' 'o, how charming!' said picotee gladly. knollsea was a village on the coast, not very far from melchester, the new home of christopher; not very far, that is to say, in the eye of a sweetheart; but seeing that there was, as the crow flies, a stretch of thirty-five miles between the two places, and that more than one-third the distance was without a railway, an elderly gentleman might have considered their situations somewhat remote from each other. 'why have you chosen knollsea?' inquired picotee. 'because of aunt's letter from rouen--have you seen it?' 'i did not read it through.' 'she wants us to get a copy of the register of her baptism; and she is not absolutely certain which of the parishes in and about knollsea they were living in when she was born. mother, being a year younger, cannot tell of course. first i thought of writing to the clergyman of each parish, but that would be troublesome, and might reveal the secret of my birth; but if we go down there for a few days, and take some lodgings, we shall be able to find out all about it at leisure. gwendoline and joey can attend to mother and the people downstairs, especially as father will look in every evening until he goes out of town, to see if they are getting on properly. it will be such a weight off my soul to slip away from acquaintances here.' 'will it?' 'yes. at the same time i ought not to speak so, for they have been very kind. i wish we could go to rouen afterwards; aunt repeats her invitation as usual. however, there is time enough to think of that.' ethelberta was dressed at last, and, beholding the lonely look of poor picotee when about to leave the room, she could not help having a sympathetic feeling that it was rather hard for her sister to be denied so small an enjoyment as a menial peep at a feast when she herself was to sit down to it as guest. 'if you still want to go and see the procession downstairs you may do so,' she said reluctantly; 'provided that you take care of your tongue when you come in contact with menlove, and adhere to father's instructions as to how long you may stay. it may be in the highest degree unwise; but never mind, go.' then ethelberta departed for the scene of action, just at the hour of the sun's lowest decline, when it was fading away, yellow and mild as candle- light, and when upper windows facing north-west reflected to persons in the street dissolving views of tawny cloud with brazen edges, the original picture of the same being hidden from sight by soiled walls and slaty slopes. before entering the presence of host and hostess, ethelberta contrived to exchange a few words with her father. 'in excellent time,' he whispered, full of paternal pride at the superb audacity of her situation here in relation to his. 'about half of them are come.' 'mr. neigh?' 'not yet; he's coming.' 'lord mountclere?' 'yes. he came absurdly early; ten minutes before anybody else, so that mrs. d. could hardly get on her bracelets and things soon enough to scramble downstairs and receive him; and he's as nervous as a boy. keep up your spirits, dear, and don't mind me.' 'i will, father. and let picotee see me at dinner if you can. she is very anxious to look at me. she will be here directly.' and ethelberta, having been announced, joined the chamberful of assembled guests, among whom for the present we lose sight of her. * * * * * meanwhile the evening outside the house was deepening in tone, and the lamps began to blink up. her sister having departed, picotee hastily arrayed herself in a little black jacket and chip hat, and tripped across the park to the same point. chickerel had directed a maid-servant known as jane to receive his humbler daughter and make her comfortable; and that friendly person, who spoke as if she had known picotee five-and-twenty years, took her to the housekeeper's room, where the visitor deposited her jacket and hat, and rested awhile. a quick-eyed, light-haired, slight-built woman came in when jane had gone. 'are you miss chickerel?' she said to picotee. 'yes,' said picotee, guessing that this was menlove, and fearing her a little. 'jane tells me that you have come to visit your father, and would like to look at the company going to dinner. well, they are not much to see, you know; but such as they are you are welcome to the sight of. come along with me.' 'i think i would rather wait for father, if you will excuse me, please.' 'your father is busy now; it is no use for you to think of saying anything to him.' picotee followed her guide up a back staircase to the height of several flights, and then, crossing a landing, they descended to the upper part of the front stairs. 'now look over the balustrade, and you will see them all in a minute,' said mrs. menlove. 'o, you need not be timid; you can look out as far as you like. we are all independent here; no slavery for us: it is not as it is in the country, where servants are considered to be of different blood and bone from their employers, and to have no eyes for anything but their work. here they are coming.' picotee then had the pleasure of looking down upon a series of human crowns--some black, some white, some strangely built upon, some smooth and shining--descending the staircase in disordered column and great discomfort, their owners trying to talk, but breaking off in the midst of syllables to look to their footing. the young girl's eyes had not drooped over the handrail more than a few moments when she softly exclaimed, 'there she is, there she is! how lovely she looks, does she not?' 'who?' said mrs. menlove. picotee recollected herself, and hastily drew in her impulses. 'my dear mistress,' she said blandly. 'that is she on mr. doncastle's arm. and look, who is that funny old man the elderly lady is helping downstairs?' 'he is our honoured guest, lord mountclere. mrs. doncastle will have him all through the dinner, and after that he will devote himself to mrs. petherwin, your "dear mistress." he keeps looking towards her now, and no doubt thinks it a nuisance that she is not with him. well, it is useless to stay here. come a little further--we'll follow them.' menlove began to lead the way downstairs, but picotee held back. 'won't they see us?' she said. 'no. and if they do, it doesn't matter. mrs. doncastle would not object in the least to the daughter of her respected head man being accidentally seen in the hall.' they descended to the bottom and stood in the hall. 'o, there's father!' whispered picotee, with childlike gladness, as chickerel became visible to her by the door. the butler nodded to his daughter, and became again engrossed in his duties. 'i wish i could see her--my mistress--again,' said picotee. 'you seem mightily concerned about your mistress,' said menlove. 'do you want to see if you have dressed her properly?' 'yes, partly; and i like her, too. she is very kind to me.' 'you will have a chance of seeing her soon. when the door is nicely open you can look in for a moment. i must leave you now for a few minutes, but i will come again.' menlove departed, and picotee stood waiting. she wondered how ethelberta was getting on, and whether she enjoyed herself as much as it seemed her duty to do in such a superbly hospitable place. picotee then turned her attention to the hall, every article of furniture therein appearing worthy of scrutiny to her unaccustomed eyes. here she walked and looked about for a long time till an excellent opportunity offered itself of seeing how affairs progressed in the dining-room. through the partly-opened door there became visible a sideboard which first attracted her attention by its richness. it was, indeed, a noticeable example of modern art-workmanship, in being exceptionally large, with curious ebony mouldings at different stages; and, while the heavy cupboard doors at the bottom were enriched with inlays of paler wood, other panels were decorated with tiles, as if the massive composition had been erected on the spot as part of the solid building. however, it was on a space higher up that picotee's eyes and thoughts were fixed. in the great mirror above the middle ledge she could see reflected the upper part of the dining-room, and this suggested to her that she might see ethelberta and the other guests reflected in the same way by standing on a chair, which, quick as thought, she did. to picotee's dazed young vision her beautiful sister appeared as the chief figure of a glorious pleasure-parliament of both sexes, surrounded by whole regiments of candles grouped here and there about the room. she and her companions were seated before a large flowerbed, or small hanging garden, fixed at about the level of the elbow, the attention of all being concentrated rather upon the uninteresting margin of the bed, and upon each other, than on the beautiful natural objects growing in the middle, as it seemed to picotee. in the ripple of conversation ethelberta's clear voice could occasionally be heard, and her young sister could see that her eyes were bright, and her face beaming, as if divers social wants and looming penuriousness had never been within her experience. mr. doncastle was quite absorbed in what she was saying. so was the queer old man whom menlove had called lord mountclere. 'the dashing widow looks very well, does she not?' said a person at picotee's elbow. it was her conductor menlove, now returned again, whom picotee had quite forgotten. 'she will do some damage here to-night you will find,' continued menlove. 'how long have you been with her?' 'o, a long time--i mean rather a short time,' stammered picotee. 'i know her well enough. i was her maid once, or rather her mother-in- law's, but that was long before you knew her. i did not by any means find her so lovable as you seem to think her when i had to do with her at close quarters. an awful flirt--awful. don't you find her so?' 'i don't know.' 'if you don't yet you will know. but come down from your perch--the dining-room door will not be open again for some time--and i will show you about the rooms upstairs. this is a larger house than mrs. petherwin's, as you see. just come and look at the drawing-rooms.' wishing much to get rid of menlove, yet fearing to offend her, picotee followed upstairs. dinner was almost over by this time, and when they entered the front drawing-room a young man-servant and maid were there rekindling the lights. 'now let's have a game of cat-and-mice,' said the maid-servant cheerily. 'there's plenty of time before they come up.' 'agreed,' said menlove promptly. 'you will play, will you not, miss chickerel?' 'no, indeed,' said picotee, aghast. 'never mind, then; you look on.' away then ran the housemaid and menlove, and the young footman started at their heels. round the room, over the furniture, under the furniture, through the furniture, out of one window, along the balcony, in at another window, again round the room--so they glided with the swiftness of swallows and the noiselessness of ghosts. then the housemaid drew a jew's-harp from her pocket, and struck up a lively waltz sotto voce. the footman seized menlove, who appeared nothing loth, and began spinning gently round the room with her, to the time of the fascinating measure 'which fashion hails, from countesses to queens, and maids and valets dance behind the scenes.' picotee, who had been accustomed to unceiled country cottages all her life, wherein the scamper of a mouse is heard distinctly from floor to floor, exclaimed in a terrified whisper, at viewing all this, 'they'll hear you underneath, they'll hear you, and we shall all be ruined!' 'not at all,' came from the cautious dancers. 'these are some of the best built houses in london--double floors, filled in with material that will deaden any row you like to make, and we make none. but come and have a turn yourself, miss chickerel.' the young man relinquished menlove, and on the spur of the moment seized picotee. picotee flounced away from him in indignation, backing into a corner with ruffled feathers, like a pullet trying to appear a hen. 'how dare you touch me!' she said, with rounded eyes. 'i'll tell somebody downstairs of you, who'll soon see about it!' 'what a baby; she'll tell her father.' 'no i shan't; somebody you are all afraid of, that's who i'll tell.' 'nonsense,' said menlove; 'he meant no harm.' playtime was now getting short, and further antics being dangerous on that account, the performers retired again downstairs, picotee of necessity following. her nerves were screwed up to the highest pitch of uneasiness by the grotesque habits of these men and maids, who were quite unlike the country servants she had known, and resembled nothing so much as pixies, elves, or gnomes, peeping up upon human beings from their shady haunts underground, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill--sometimes doing heavy work, sometimes none; teasing and worrying with impish laughter half suppressed, and vanishing directly mortal eyes were bent on them. separate and distinct from overt existence under the sun, this life could hardly be without its distinctive pleasures, all of them being more or less pervaded by thrills and titillations from games of hazard, and the perpetual risk of sensational surprises. long before this time picotee had begun to be anxious to get home again, but menlove seemed particularly to desire her company, and pressed her to sit awhile, telling her young friend, by way of entertainment, of various extraordinary love adventures in which she had figured as heroine when travelling on the continent. these stories had one and all a remarkable likeness in a certain point--menlove was always unwilling to love the adorer, and the adorer was always unwilling to live afterwards on account of it. 'ha-ha-ha!' in men's voices was heard from the distant dining-room as the two women went on talking. 'and then,' continued menlove, 'there was that duel i was the cause of between the courier and the french valet. dear me, what a trouble that was; yet i could do nothing to prevent it. this courier was a very handsome man--they are handsome sometimes.' 'yes, they are. my aunt married one.' 'did she? where do they live?' 'they keep an hotel at rouen,' murmured picotee, in doubt whether this should have been told or not. 'well, he used to follow me to the english church every sunday regularly, and i was so determined not to give my hand where my heart could never be, that i slipped out at the other door while he stood expecting me by the one i entered. here i met m. pierre, when, as ill luck would have it, the other came round the corner, and seeing me talking to the valet, he challenged him at once.' 'ha-ha-ha!' was heard again afar. 'did they fight?' said picotee. 'yes, i believe they did. we left nice the next day; but i heard some time after of a duel not many miles off, and although i could not get hold of the names, i make no doubt it was between those two gentlemen. i never knew which of them fell; poor fellow, whichever it was.' 'ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!' came from the dining-room. 'whatever are those boozy men laughing at, i wonder?' said menlove. 'they are always so noisy when the ladies have gone upstairs. upon my soul, i'll run up and find out.' 'no, no, don't,' entreated picotee, putting her hand on her entertainer's arm. 'it seems wrong; it is no concern of ours.' 'wrong be hanged--anything on an impulse,' said mrs. menlove, skipping across the room and out of the door, which stood open, as did others in the house, the evening being sultry and oppressive. picotee waited in her seat until it occurred to her that she could escape the lady's-maid by going off into her father's pantry in her absence. but before this had been put into effect menlove appeared again. 'such fun as they are having up there,' she said. 'somebody asked mr. neigh to tell a story which he had told at some previous time, but he was very reluctant to do so, and pretended he could not recollect it. well, then, the other man--i could not distinguish him by his voice--began telling it, to prompt mr. neigh's memory; and, as far as i could understand, it was about some lady who thought mr. neigh was in love with her, and, to find whether he was worth accepting or not, she went with her maid at night to see his estate, and wandered about and got lost, and was frightened, and i don't know what besides. then mr. neigh laughed too, and said he liked such common sense in a woman. no names were mentioned, but i fancy, from the awkwardness of mr. neigh at being compelled to tell it, that the lady is one of those in the drawing-room. i should like to know which it was.' 'i know--have heard something about it,' said picotee, blushing with anger. 'it was nothing at all like that. i wonder mr. neigh had the audacity ever to talk of the matter, and to misrepresent it so greatly!' 'tell all about it, do,' said menlove. 'o no,' said picotee. 'i promised not to say a word.' 'it is your mistress, i expect.' 'you may think what you like; but the lady is anything but a mistress of mine.' the flighty menlove pressed her to tell the whole story, but finding this useless the subject was changed. presently her father came in, and, taking no notice of menlove, told his daughter that she had been called for. picotee very readily put on her things, and on going outside found joey awaiting her. mr. chickerel followed closely, with sharp glances from the corner of his eye, and it was plain from joey's nervous manner of lingering in the shadows of the area doorway instead of entering the house, that the butler had in some way set himself to prevent all communion between the fair lady's-maid and his son for that evening at least. he watched picotee and her brother off the premises, and the pair went on their way towards exonbury crescent, very few words passing between them. picotee's thoughts had turned to the proposed visit to knollsea, and joey was sulky under disappointment and the blank of thwarted purposes. . on the housetop 'picotee, are you asleep?' ethelberta whispered softly at dawn the next morning, by the half-opened door of her sister's bedroom. 'no, i keep waking, it is so warm.' 'so do i. suppose we get up and see the sun rise. the east is filling with flame.' 'yes, i should like it,' said picotee. the restlessness which had brought ethelberta hither in slippers and dressing-gown at such an early hour owed its origin to another cause than the warmth of the weather; but of that she did not speak as yet. picotee's room was an attic, with windows in the roof--a chamber dismal enough at all times, and very shadowy now. while picotee was wrapping up, ethelberta placed a chair under the window, and mounting upon this they stepped outside, and seated themselves within the parapet. the air was as clear and fresh as on a mountain side; sparrows chattered, and birds of a species unsuspected at later hours could be heard singing in the park hard by, while here and there on ridges and flats a cat might be seen going calmly home from the devilries of the night to resume the amiabilities of the day. 'i am so sorry i was asleep when you reached home,' said picotee. 'i was so anxious to tell you something i heard of, and to know what you did; but my eyes would shut, try as i might, and then i tried no longer. did you see me at all, berta?' 'never once. i had an impression that you were there. i fancied you were from father's carefully vacuous look whenever i glanced at his face. but were you careful about what you said, and did you see menlove? i felt all the time that i had done wrong in letting you come; the gratification to you was not worth the risk to me.' 'i saw her, and talked to her. but i am certain she suspected nothing. i enjoyed myself very much, and there was no risk at all.' 'i am glad it is no worse news. however, you must not go there again: upon that point i am determined.' 'it was a good thing i did go, all the same. i'll tell you why when you have told me what happened to you.' 'nothing of importance happened to me.' 'i expect you got to know the lord you were to meet?' 'o yes--lord mountclere.' 'and it's dreadful how fond he is of you--quite ridiculously taken up with you--i saw that well enough. such an old man, too; i wouldn't have him for the world!' 'don't jump at conclusions so absurdly, picotee. why wouldn't you have him for the world?' 'because he is old enough to be my grandfather, and yours too.' 'indeed he is not; he is only middle-aged.' 'o berta! sixty-five at least.' 'he may or may not be that; and if he is, it is not old. he is so entertaining that one forgets all about age in connection with him.' 'he laughs like this--"hee-hee-hee!"' picotee introduced as much antiquity into her face as she could by screwing it up and suiting the action to the word. 'this very odd thing occurred,' said ethelberta, to get picotee off the track of lord mountclere's peculiarities, as it seemed. 'i was saying to mr. neigh that we were going to knollsea for a time, feeling that he would not be likely to know anything about such an out-of-the-way place, when lord mountclere, who was near, said, "i shall be at enckworth court in a few days, probably at the time you are at knollsea. the imperial archaeological association holds its meetings in that part of wessex this season, and corvsgate castle, near knollsea, is one of the places on our list." then he hoped i should be able to attend. did you ever hear anything so strange? now, i should like to attend very much, not on lord mountclere's account, but because such gatherings are interesting, and i have never been to one; yet there is this to be considered, would it be right for me to go without a friend to such a place? another point is, that we shall live in menagerie style at knollsea for the sake of the children, and we must do it economically in case we accept aunt charlotte's invitation to rouen; hence, if he or his friends find us out there it will be awkward for me. so the alternative is knollsea or some other place for us.' 'let it be knollsea, now we have once settled it,' said picotee anxiously. 'i have mentioned to faith julian that we shall be there.' 'mentioned it already! you must have written instantly.' 'i had a few minutes to spare, and i thought i might as well write.' 'very well; we will stick to knollsea,' said ethelberta, half in doubt. 'yes--otherwise it will be difficult to see about aunt's baptismal certificate. we will hope nobody will take the trouble to pry into our household. . . . and now, picotee, i want to ask you something--something very serious. how would you like me to marry mr. neigh?' ethelberta could not help laughing with a faint shyness as she asked the question under the searching east ray. 'he has asked me to marry him,' she continued, 'and i want to know what you would say to such an arrangement. i don't mean to imply that the event is certain to take place; but, as a mere supposition, what do you say to it, picotee?' ethelberta was far from putting this matter before picotee for advice or opinion; but, like all people who have an innate dislike to hole-and-corner policy, she felt compelled to speak of it to some one. 'i should not like him for you at all,' said picotee vehemently. 'i would rather you had mr. ladywell.' 'o, don't name him!' 'i wouldn't have mr. neigh at any price, nevertheless. it is about him that i was going to tell you.' picotee proceeded to relate menlove's account of the story of ethelberta's escapade, which had been dragged from neigh the previous evening by the friend to whom he had related it before he was so enamoured of ethelberta as to regard that performance as a positive virtue in her. 'nobody was told, or even suspected, who the lady of the anecdote was,' picotee concluded; 'but i knew instantly, of course, and i think it very unfortunate that we ever went to that dreadful ghostly estate of his, berta.' ethelberta's face heated with mortification. she had no fear that neigh had told names or other particulars which might lead to her identification by any friend of his, and she could make allowance for bursts of confidence; but there remained the awkward fact that he himself knew her to be the heroine of the episode. what annoyed her most was that neigh could ever have looked upon her indiscretion as a humorous incident, which he certainly must have done at some time or other to account for his telling it. had he been angry with her, or sneered at her for going, she could have forgiven him; but to see her manoeuvre in the light of a joke, to use it as illustrating his grim theory of womankind, and neither to like nor to dislike her the more for it from first to last, this was to treat her with a cynicism which was intolerable. that neigh's use of the incident as a stock anecdote ceased long before he had decided to ask her to marry him she had no doubt, but it showed that his love for her was of that sort in which passion makes war upon judgment, and prevails in spite of will. moreover, he might have been speaking ironically when he alluded to the act as a virtue in a woman, which seemed the more likely when she remembered his cool bearing towards her in the drawing-room. possibly it was an antipathetic reaction, induced by the renewed recollection of her proceeding. 'i will never marry mr. neigh!' she said, with decision. 'that shall settle it. you need not think over any such contingency, picotee. he is one of those horrid men who love with their eyes, the remainder part of him objecting all the time to the feeling; and even if his objections prove the weaker, and the man marries, his general nature conquers again by the time the wedding trip is over, so that the woman is miserable at last, and had better not have had him at all.' 'that applies still more to lord mountclere, to my thinking. i never saw anything like the look of his eyes upon you.' 'o no, no--you understand nothing if you say that. but one thing be sure of, there is no marriage likely to take place between myself and mr. neigh. i have longed for a sound reason for disliking him, and now i have got it. well, we will talk no more of this--let us think of the nice little pleasure we have in store--our stay at knollsea. there we will be as free as the wind. and when we are down there, i can drive across to corvsgate castle if i wish to attend the imperial association meeting, and nobody will know where i came from. knollsea is not more than five miles from the castle, i think.' picotee was by this time beginning to yawn, and ethelberta did not feel nearly so wakeful as she had felt half-an-hour earlier. tall and swarthy columns of smoke were now soaring up from the kitchen chimneys around, spreading horizontally when at a great height, and forming a roof of haze which was turning the sun to a copper colour, and by degrees spoiling the sweetness of the new atmosphere that had rolled in from the country during the night, giving it the usual city smell. the resolve to make this rising the beginning of a long and busy day, which should set them beforehand with the rest of the world, weakened with their growing weariness, and an impulse to lie down just for a quarter of an hour before dressing, ended in a sound sleep that did not relinquish its hold upon them till late in the forenoon. . knollsea--a lofty down--a ruined castle knollsea was a seaside village lying snug within two headlands as between a finger and thumb. everybody in the parish who was not a boatman was a quarrier, unless he were the gentleman who owned half the property and had been a quarryman, or the other gentleman who owned the other half, and had been to sea. the knowledge of the inhabitants was of the same special sort as their pursuits. the quarrymen in white fustian understood practical geology, the laws and accidents of dips, faults, and cleavage, far better than the ways of the world and mammon; the seafaring men in guernsey frocks had a clearer notion of alexandria, constantinople, the cape, and the indies than of any inland town in their own country. this, for them, consisted of a busy portion, the channel, where they lived and laboured, and a dull portion, the vague unexplored miles of interior at the back of the ports, which they seldom thought of. some wives of the village, it is true, had learned to let lodgings, and others to keep shops. the doors of these latter places were formed of an upper hatch, usually kept open, and a lower hatch, with a bell attached, usually kept shut. whenever a stranger went in, he would hear a whispering of astonishment from a back room, after which a woman came forward, looking suspiciously at him as an intruder, and advancing slowly enough to allow her mouth to get clear of the meal she was partaking of. meanwhile the people in the back room would stop their knives and forks in absorbed curiosity as to the reason of the stranger's entry, who by this time feels ashamed of his unwarrantable intrusion into this hermit's cell, and thinks he must take his hat off. the woman is quite alarmed at seeing that he is not one of the fifteen native women and children who patronize her, and nervously puts her hand to the side of her face, which she carries slanting. the visitor finds himself saying what he wants in an apologetic tone, when the woman tells him that they did keep that article once, but do not now; that nobody does, and probably never will again; and as he turns away she looks relieved that the dilemma of having to provide for a stranger has passed off with no worse mishap than disappointing him. a cottage which stood on a high slope above this townlet and its bay resounded one morning with the notes of a merry company. ethelberta had managed to find room for herself and her young relations in the house of one of the boatmen, whose wife attended upon them all. captain flower, the husband, assisted her in the dinner preparations, when he slipped about the house as lightly as a girl and spoke of himself as cook's mate. the house was so small that the sailor's rich voice, developed by shouting in high winds during a twenty years' experience in the coasting trade, could be heard coming from the kitchen between the chirpings of the children in the parlour. the furniture of this apartment consisted mostly of the painting of a full-rigged ship, done by a man whom the captain had specially selected for the purpose because he had been seven- and-twenty years at sea before touching a brush, and thereby offered a sufficient guarantee that he understood how to paint a vessel properly. before this picture sat ethelberta in a light linen dress, and with tightly-knotted hair--now again berta chickerel as of old--serving out breakfast to the rest of the party, and sometimes lifting her eyes to the outlook from the window, which presented a happy combination of grange scenery with marine. upon the irregular slope between the house and the quay was an orchard of aged trees wherein every apple ripening on the boughs presented its rubicund side towards the cottage, because that building chanced to lie upwards in the same direction as the sun. under the trees were a few cape sheep, and over them the stone chimneys of the village below: outside these lay the tanned sails of a ketch or smack, and the violet waters of the bay, seamed and creased by breezes insufficient to raise waves; beyond all a curved wall of cliff, terminating in a promontory, which was flanked by tall and shining obelisks of chalk rising sheer from the trembling blue race beneath. by one sitting in the room that commanded this prospect, a white butterfly among the apple-trees might be mistaken for the sails of a yacht far away on the sea; and in the evening when the light was dim, what seemed like a fly crawling upon the window-pane would turn out to be a boat in the bay. when breakfast was over, ethelberta sat leaning on the window-sill considering her movements for the day. it was the time fixed for the meeting of the imperial association at corvsgate castle, the celebrated ruin five miles off, and the meeting had some fascinations for her. for one thing, she had never been present at a gathering of the kind, although what was left in any shape from the past was her constant interest, because it recalled her to herself and fortified her mind. persons waging a harassing social fight are apt in the interest of the combat to forget the smallness of the end in view; and the hints that perishing historical remnants afforded her of the attenuating effects of time even upon great struggles corrected the apparent scale of her own. she was reminded that in a strife for such a ludicrously small object as the entry of drawing-rooms, winning, equally with losing, is below the zero of the true philosopher's concern. there could never be a more excellent reason than this for going to view the meagre stumps remaining from flourishing bygone centuries, and it had weight with ethelberta this very day; but it would be difficult to state the whole composition of her motive. the approaching meeting had been one of the great themes at mr. doncastle's dinner-party, and lord mountclere, on learning that she was to be at knollsea, had recommended her attendance at some, if not all of the meetings, as a desirable and exhilarating change after her laborious season's work in town. it was pleasant to have won her way so far in high places that her health of body and mind should be thus considered--pleasant, less as personal gratification, than that it casually reflected a proof of her good judgment in a course which everybody among her kindred had condemned by calling a foolhardy undertaking. and she might go without the restraint of ceremony. unconventionality--almost eccentricity--was de rigueur for one who had been first heard of as a poetess; from whose red lips magic romance had since trilled for weeks to crowds of listeners, as from a perennial spring. so ethelberta went, after a considerable pondering how to get there without the needless sacrifice either of dignity or cash. it would be inconsiderate to the children to spend a pound on a brougham when as much as she could spare was wanted for their holiday. it was almost too far too walk. she had, however, decided to walk, when she met a boy with a donkey, who offered to lend it to her for three shillings. the animal was rather sad-looking, but ethelberta found she could sit upon the pad without discomfort. considering that she might pull up some distance short of the castle, and leave the ass at a cottage before joining her four-wheeled friends, she struck the bargain and rode on her way. this was, first by a path on the shore where the tide dragged huskily up and down the shingle without disturbing it, and thence up the steep crest of land opposite, whereon she lingered awhile to let the ass breathe. on one of the spires of chalk into which the hill here had been split was perched a cormorant, silent and motionless, with wings spread out to dry in the sun after his morning's fishing, their white surface shining like mail. retiring without disturbing him and turning to the left along the lofty ridge which ran inland, the country on each side lay beneath her like a map, domains behind domains, parishes by the score, harbours, fir- woods, and little inland seas mixing curiously together. thence she ambled along through a huge cemetery of barrows, containing human dust from prehistoric times. standing on the top of a giant's grave in this antique land, ethelberta lifted her eyes to behold two sorts of weather pervading nature at the same time. far below on the right hand it was a fine day, and the silver sunbeams lighted up a many-armed inland sea which stretched round an island with fir-trees and gorse, and amid brilliant crimson heaths wherein white paths and roads occasionally met the eye in dashes and zigzags like flashes of lightning. outside, where the broad channel appeared, a berylline and opalized variegation of ripples, currents, deeps, and shallows, lay as fair under the sun as a new jerusalem, the shores being of gleaming sand. upon the radiant heather bees and butterflies were busy, she knew, and the birds on that side were just beginning their autumn songs. on the left, quite up to her position, was dark and cloudy weather, shading a valley of heavy greens and browns, which at its further side rose to meet the sea in tall cliffs, suggesting even here at their back how terrible were their aspects seaward in a growling southwest gale. here grassed hills rose like knuckles gloved in dark olive, and little plantations between them formed a still deeper and sadder monochrome. a zinc sky met a leaden sea on this hand, the low wind groaned and whined, and not a bird sang. the ridge along which ethelberta rode divided these two climates like a wall; it soon became apparent that they were wrestling for mastery immediately in her pathway. the issue long remained doubtful, and this being an imaginative hour with her, she watched as typical of her own fortunes how the front of battle swayed--now to the west, flooding her with sun, now to the east, covering her with shade: then the wind moved round to the north, a blue hole appeared in the overhanging cloud, at about the place of the north star; and the sunlight spread on both sides of her. the towers of the notable ruin to be visited rose out of the furthermost shoulder of the upland as she advanced, its site being the slope and crest of a smoothly nibbled mount at the toe of the ridge she had followed. when observing the previous uncertainty of the weather on this side ethelberta had been led to doubt if the meeting would be held here to-day, and she was now strengthened in her opinion that it would not by the total absence of human figures amid the ruins, though the time of appointment was past. this disposed of another question which had perplexed her: where to find a stable for the ass during the meeting, for she had scarcely liked the idea of facing the whole body of lords and gentlemen upon the animal's back. she now decided to retain her seat, ride round the ruin, and go home again, without troubling further about the movements of the association or acquaintance with the members composing it. accordingly ethelberta crossed the bridge over the moat, and rode under the first archway into the outer ward. as she had expected, not a soul was here. the arrow-slits, portcullis-grooves, and staircases met her eye as familiar friends, for in her childhood she had once paid a visit to the spot. ascending the green incline and through another arch into the second ward, she still pressed on, till at last the ass was unable to clamber an inch further. here she dismounted, and tying him to a stone which projected like a fang from a raw edge of wall, performed the remainder of the ascent on foot. once among the towers above, she became so interested in the windy corridors, mildewed dungeons, and the tribe of daws peering invidiously upon her from overhead, that she forgot the flight of time. nearly three-quarters of an hour passed before she came out from the immense walls, and looked from an opening to the front over the wide expanse of the outer ward, by which she had ascended. ethelberta was taken aback to see there a file of shining carriages, which had arrived during her seclusion in the keep. from these began to burst a miscellany of many-coloured draperies, blue, buff, pied, and black; they united into one, and crept up the incline like a cloud, which then parted into fragments, dived into old doorways, and lost substance behind projecting piles. recognizing in this the ladies and gentlemen of the meeting, her first thought was how to escape, for she was suddenly overcome with dread to meet them all single-handed as she stood. she drew back and hurried round to the side, as the laughter and voices of the assembly began to be audible, and, more than ever vexed that she could not have fallen in with them in some unobtrusive way, ethelberta found that they were immediately beneath her. venturing to peep forward again, what was her mortification at finding them gathered in a ring, round no object of interest belonging to the ruin, but round her faithful beast, who had loosened himself in some way from the stone, and stood in the middle of a plat of grass, placidly regarding them. being now in the teeth of the association, there was nothing to do but to go on, since, if she did not, the next few steps of their advance would disclose her. she made the best of it, and began to descend in the broad view of the assembly, from the midst of which proceeded a laugh--'hee-hee- hee!' ethelberta knew that lord mountclere was there. 'the poor thing has strayed from its owner,' said one lady, as they all stood eyeing the apparition of the ass. 'it may belong to some of the villagers,' said the president in a historical voice: 'and it may be appropriate to mention that many were kept here in olden times: they were largely used as beasts of burden in victualling the castle previous to the last siege, in the year sixteen hundred and forty-five.' 'it is very weary, and has come a long way, i think,' said a lady; adding, in an imaginative tone, 'the humble creature looks so aged and is so quaintly saddled that we may suppose it to be only an animated relic, of the same date as the other remains.' by this time lord mountclere had noticed ethelberta's presence, and straightening himself to ten years younger, he lifted his hat in answer to her smile, and came up jauntily. it was a good time now to see what the viscount was really like. he appeared to be about sixty-five, and the dignified aspect which he wore to a gazer at a distance became depreciated to jocund slyness upon nearer view, when the small type could be read between the leading lines. then it could be seen that his upper lip dropped to a point in the middle, as if impressing silence upon his too demonstrative lower one. his right and left profiles were different, one corner of his mouth being more compressed than the other, producing a deep line thence downwards to the side of his chin. each eyebrow rose obliquely outwards and upwards, and was thus far above the little eye, shining with the clearness of a pond that has just been able to weather the heats of summer. below this was a preternaturally fat jowl, which, by thrusting against cheeks and chin, caused the arch old mouth to be almost buried at the corners. a few words of greeting passed, and ethelberta told him how she was fearing to meet them all, united and primed with their morning's knowledge as they appeared to be. 'well, we have not done much yet,' said lord mountclere. 'as for myself, i have given no thought at all to our day's work. i had not forgotten your promise to attend, if you could possibly drive across, and--hee-hee- hee!--i have frequently looked towards the hill where the road descends. . . . will you now permit me to introduce some of my party--as many of them as you care to know by name? i think they would all like to speak to you.' ethelberta then found herself nominally made known to ten or a dozen ladies and gentlemen who had wished for special acquaintance with her. she stood there, as all women stand who have made themselves remarkable by their originality, or devotion to any singular cause, as a person freed of her hampering and inconvenient sex, and, by virtue of her popularity, unfettered from the conventionalities of manner prescribed by custom for household womankind. the charter to move abroad unchaperoned, which society for good reasons grants only to women of three sorts--the famous, the ministering, and the improper--ethelberta was in a fair way to make splendid use of: instead of walking in protected lanes she experienced that luxury of isolation which normally is enjoyed by men alone, in conjunction with the attention naturally bestowed on a woman young and fair. among the presentations were mr. and mrs. tynn, member and member's mainspring for north wessex; sir cyril and lady blandsbury; lady jane joy; and the honourable edgar mountclere, the viscount's brother. there also hovered near her the learned doctor yore; mr. small, a profound writer, who never printed his works; the reverend mr. brook, rector; the very reverend dr. taylor, dean; and the undoubtedly reverend mr. tinkleton, nonconformist, who had slipped into the fold by chance. these and others looked with interest at ethelberta: the old county fathers hard, as at a questionable town phenomenon, the county sons tenderly, as at a pretty creature, and the county daughters with great admiration, as at a lady reported by their mammas to be no better than she should be. it will be seen that ethelberta was the sort of woman that well-rooted local people might like to look at on such a free and friendly occasion as an archaeological meeting, where, to gratify a pleasant whim, the picturesque form of acquaintance is for the nonce preferred to the useful, the spirits being so brisk as to swerve from strict attention to the select and sequent gifts of heaven, blood and acres, to consider for an idle moment the subversive mephistophelian endowment, brains. 'our progress in the survey of the castle has not been far as yet,' lord mountclere resumed; 'indeed, we have only just arrived, the weather this morning being so unsettled. when you came up we were engaged in a preliminary study of the poor animal you see there: how it could have got up here we cannot understand.' he pointed as he spoke to the donkey which had brought ethelberta thither, whereupon she was silent, and gazed at her untoward beast as if she had never before beheld him. the ass looked at ethelberta as though he would say, 'why don't you own me, after safely bringing you over those weary hills?' but the pride and emulation which had made her what she was would not permit her, as the most lovely woman there, to take upon her own shoulders the ridicule that had already been cast upon the ass. had he been young and gaily caparisoned, she might have done it; but his age, the clumsy trappings of rustic make, and his needy woful look of hard servitude, were too much to endure. 'many come and picnic here,' she said serenely, 'and the animal may have been left till they return from some walk.' 'true,' said lord mountclere, without the slightest suspicion of the truth. the humble ass hung his head in his usual manner, and it demanded little fancy from ethelberta to imagine that he despised her. and then her mind flew back to her history and extraction, to her father--perhaps at that moment inventing a private plate-powder in an underground pantry--and with a groan at her inconsistency in being ashamed of the ass, she said in her heart, 'my god, what a thing am i!' they then all moved on to another part of the castle, the viscount busying himself round and round her person like the head scraper at a pig- killing; and as they went indiscriminately mingled, jesting lightly or talking in earnest, she beheld ahead of her the form of neigh among the rest. now, there could only be one reason on earth for neigh's presence--her remark that she might attend--for neigh took no more interest in antiquities than in the back of the moon. ethelberta was a little flurried; perhaps he had come to scold her, or to treat her badly in that indefinable way of his by which he could make a woman feel as nothing without any direct act at all. she was afraid of him, and, determining to shun him, was thankful that lord mountclere was near, to take off the edge of neigh's manner towards her if he approached. 'do you know in what part of the ruins the lecture is to be given?' she said to the viscount. 'wherever you like,' he replied gallantly. 'do you propose a place, and i will get dr. yore to adopt it. say, shall it be here, or where they are standing?' how could ethelberta refrain from exercising a little power when it was put into her hands in this way? 'let it be here,' she said, 'if it makes no difference to the meeting.' 'it shall be,' said lord mountclere. and then the lively old nobleman skipped like a roe to the president and to dr. yore, who was to read the paper on the castle, and they soon appeared coming back to where the viscount's party and ethelberta were beginning to seat themselves. the bulk of the company followed, and dr. yore began. he must have had a countenance of leather--as, indeed, from his colour he appeared to have--to stand unmoved in his position, and read, and look up to give explanations, without a change of muscle, under the dozens of bright eyes that were there converged upon him, like the sticks of a fan, from the ladies who sat round him in a semicircle upon the grass. however, he went on calmly, and the women sheltered themselves from the heat with their umbrellas and sunshades, their ears lulled by the hum of insects, and by the drone of the doctor's voice. the reader buzzed on with the history of the castle, tracing its development from a mound with a few earthworks to its condition in norman times; he related monkish marvels connected with the spot; its resistance under matilda to stephen, its probable shape while a residence of king john, and the sad story of the damsel of brittany, sister of his victim arthur, who was confined here in company with the two daughters of alexander, king of scotland. he went on to recount the confinement of edward ii. herein, previous to his murder at berkeley, the gay doings in the reign of elizabeth, and so downward through time to the final overthrow of the stern old pile. as he proceeded, the lecturer pointed with his finger at the various features appertaining to the date of his story, which he told with splendid vigour when he had warmed to his work, till his narrative, particularly in the conjectural and romantic parts, where it became coloured rather by the speaker's imagination than by the pigments of history, gathered together the wandering thoughts of all. it was easy for him then to meet those fair concentred eyes, when the sunshades were thrown back, and complexions forgotten, in the interest of the history. the doctor's face was then no longer criticized as a rugged boulder, a dried fig, an oak carving, or a walnut shell, but became blotted out like a mountain top in a shining haze by the nebulous pictures conjured by his tale. then the lecture ended, and questions were asked, and individuals of the company wandered at will, the light dresses of the ladies sweeping over the hot grass and brushing up thistledown which had hitherto lain quiescent, so that it rose in a flight from the skirts of each like a comet's tail. some of lord mountclere's party, including himself and ethelberta, wandered now into a cool dungeon, partly open to the air overhead, where long arms of ivy hung between their eyes and the white sky. while they were here, lady jane joy and some other friends of the viscount told ethelberta that they were probably coming on to knollsea. she instantly perceived that getting into close quarters in that way might be very inconvenient, considering the youngsters she had under her charge, and straightway decided upon a point that she had debated for several days--a visit to her aunt in normandy. in london it had been a mere thought, but the channel had looked so tempting from its brink that the journey was virtually fixed as soon as she reached knollsea, and found that a little pleasure steamer crossed to cherbourg once a week during the summer, so that she would not have to enter the crowded routes at all. 'i am afraid i shall not see you in knollsea,' she said. 'i am about to go to cherbourg and then to rouen.' 'how sorry i am. when do you leave?' 'at the beginning of next week,' said ethelberta, settling the time there and then. 'did i hear you say that you were going to cherbourg and rouen?' lord mountclere inquired. 'i think to do so,' said ethelberta. 'i am going to normandy myself,' said a voice behind her, and without turning she knew that neigh was standing there. they next went outside, and lord mountclere offered ethelberta his arm on the ground of assisting her down the burnished grass slope. ethelberta, taking pity upon him, took it; but the assistance was all on her side; she stood like a statue amid his slips and totterings, some of which taxed her strength heavily, and her ingenuity more, to appear as the supported and not the supporter. the incident brought neigh still further from his retirement, and she learnt that he was one of a yachting party which had put in at knollsea that morning; she was greatly relieved to find that he was just now on his way to london, whence he would probably proceed on his journey abroad. ethelberta adhered as well as she could to her resolve that neigh should not speak with her alone, but by dint of perseverance he did manage to address her without being overheard. 'will you give me an answer?' said neigh. 'i have come on purpose.' 'i cannot just now. i have been led to doubt you.' 'doubt me? what new wrong have i done?' 'spoken jestingly of my visit to farnfield.' 'good ---! i did not speak or think of you. when i told that incident i had no idea who the lady was--i did not know it was you till two days later, and i at once held my tongue. i vow to you upon my soul and life that what i say is true. how shall i prove my truth better than by my errand here?' 'don't speak of this now. i am so occupied with other things. i am going to rouen, and will think of it on my way.' 'i am going there too. when do you go?' 'i shall be in rouen next wednesday, i hope.' 'may i ask where?' 'hotel beau sejour.' 'will you give me an answer there? i can easily call upon you. it is now a month and more since you first led me to hope--' 'i did not lead you to hope--at any rate clearly.' 'indirectly you did. and although i am willing to be as considerate as any man ought to be in giving you time to think over the question, there is a limit to my patience. any necessary delay i will put up with, but i won't be trifled with. i hate all nonsense, and can't stand it.' 'indeed. good morning.' 'but mrs. petherwin--just one word.' 'i have nothing to say.' 'i will meet you at rouen for an answer. i would meet you in hades for the matter of that. remember this: next wednesday, if i live, i shall call upon you at rouen.' she did not say nay. 'may i?' he added. 'if you will.' 'but say it shall be an appointment?' 'very well.' lord mountclere was by this time toddling towards them to ask if they would come on to his house, enckworth court, not very far distant, to lunch with the rest of the party. neigh, having already arranged to go on to town that afternoon, was obliged to decline, and ethelberta thought fit to do the same, idly asking lord mountclere if enckworth court lay in the direction of a gorge that was visible where they stood. 'no; considerably to the left,' he said. 'the opening you are looking at would reveal the sea if it were not for the trees that block the way. ah, those trees have a history; they are half-a-dozen elms which i planted myself when i was a boy. how time flies!' 'it is unfortunate they stand just so as to cover the blue bit of sea. that addition would double the value of the view from here.' 'you would prefer the blue sea to the trees?' 'in that particular spot i should; they might have looked just as well, and yet have hidden nothing worth seeing. the narrow slit would have been invaluable there.' 'they shall fall before the sun sets, in deference to your opinion,' said lord mountclere. 'that would be rash indeed,' said ethelberta, laughing, 'when my opinion on such a point may be worth nothing whatever.' 'where no other is acted upon, it is practically the universal one,' he replied gaily. and then ethelberta's elderly admirer bade her adieu, and away the whole party drove in a long train over the hills towards the valley wherein stood enckworth court. ethelberta's carriage was supposed by her friends to have been left at the village inn, as were many others, and her retiring from view on foot attracted no notice. she watched them out of sight, and she also saw the rest depart--those who, their interest in archaeology having begun and ended with this spot, had, like herself, declined the hospitable viscount's invitation, and started to drive or walk at once home again. thereupon the castle was quite deserted except by ethelberta, the ass, and the jackdaws, now floundering at ease again in and about the ivy of the keep. not wishing to enter knollsea till the evening shades were falling, she still walked amid the ruins, examining more leisurely some points which the stress of keeping herself companionable would not allow her to attend to while the assemblage was present. at the end of the survey, being somewhat weary with her clambering, she sat down on the slope commanding the gorge where the trees grew, to make a pencil sketch of the landscape as it was revealed between the ragged walls. thus engaged she weighed the circumstances of lord mountclere's invitation, and could not be certain if it were prudishness or simple propriety in herself which had instigated her to refuse. she would have liked the visit for many reasons, and if lord mountclere had been anybody but a remarkably attentive old widower, she would have gone. as it was, it had occurred to her that there was something in his tone which should lead her to hesitate. were any among the elderly or married ladies who had appeared upon the ground in a detached form as she had done--and many had appeared thus--invited to enckworth; and if not, why were they not? that lord mountclere admired her there was no doubt, and for this reason it behoved her to be careful. his disappointment at parting from her was, in one aspect, simply laughable, from its odd resemblance to the unfeigned sorrow of a boy of fifteen at a first parting from his first love; in another aspect it caused reflection; and she thought again of his curiosity about her doings for the remainder of the summer. * * * * * while she sketched and thought thus, the shadows grew longer, and the sun low. and then she perceived a movement in the gorge. one of the trees forming the curtain across it began to wave strangely: it went further to one side, and fell. where the tree had stood was now a rent in the foliage, and through the narrow rent could be seen the distant sea. ethelberta uttered a soft exclamation. it was not caused by the surprise she had felt, nor by the intrinsic interest of the sight, nor by want of comprehension. it was a sudden realization of vague things hitherto dreamed of from a distance only--a sense of novel power put into her hands without request or expectation. a landscape was to be altered to suit her whim. she had in her lifetime moved essentially larger mountains, but they had seemed of far less splendid material than this; for it was the nature of the gratification rather than its magnitude which enchanted the fancy of a woman whose poetry, in spite of her necessities, was hardly yet extinguished. but there was something more, with which poetry had little to do. whether the opinion of any pretty woman in england was of more weight with lord mountclere than memories of his boyhood, or whether that distinction was reserved for her alone; this was a point that she would have liked to know. the enjoyment of power in a new element, an enjoyment somewhat resembling in kind that which is given by a first ride or swim, held ethelberta to the spot, and she waited, but sketched no more. another tree-top swayed and vanished as before, and the slit of sea was larger still. her mind and eye were so occupied with this matter that, sitting in her nook, she did not observe a thin young man, his boots white with the dust of a long journey on foot, who arrived at the castle by the valley-road from knollsea. he looked awhile at the ruin, and, skirting its flank instead of entering by the great gateway, climbed up the scarp and walked in through a breach. after standing for a moment among the walls, now silent and apparently empty, with a disappointed look he descended the slope, and proceeded along on his way. ethelberta, who was in quite another part of the castle, saw the black spot diminishing to the size of a fly as he receded along the dusty road, and soon after she descended on the other side, where she remounted the ass, and ambled homeward as she had come, in no bright mood. what, seeing the precariousness of her state, was the day's triumph worth after all, unless, before her beauty abated, she could ensure her position against the attacks of chance? 'to be thus is nothing; but to be safely thus.' --she said it more than once on her journey that day. on entering the sitting-room of their cot up the hill she found it empty, and from a change perceptible in the position of small articles of furniture, something unusual seemed to have taken place in her absence. the dwelling being of that sort in which whatever goes on in one room is audible through all the rest, picotee, who was upstairs, heard the arrival and came down. picotee's face was rosed over with the brilliance of some excitement. 'what do you think i have to tell you, berta?' she said. 'i have no idea,' said her sister. 'surely,' she added, her face intensifying to a wan sadness, 'mr. julian has not been here?' 'yes,' said picotee. 'and we went down to the sands--he, and myrtle, and georgina, and emmeline, and i--and cornelia came down when she had put away the dinner. and then we dug wriggles out of the sand with myrtle's spade: we got such a lot, and had such fun; they are in a dish in the kitchen. mr. julian came to see you; but at last he could wait no longer, and when i told him you were at the meeting in the castle ruins he said he would try to find you there on his way home, if he could get there before the meeting broke up.' 'then it was he i saw far away on the road--yes, it must have been.' she remained in gloomy reverie a few moments, and then said, 'very well--let it be. picotee, get me some tea: i do not want dinner.' but the news of christopher's visit seemed to have taken away her appetite for tea also, and after sitting a little while she flung herself down upon the couch, and told picotee that she had settled to go and see their aunt charlotte. 'i am going to write to sol and dan to ask them to meet me there,' she added. 'i want them, if possible, to see paris. it will improve them greatly in their trades, i am thinking, if they can see the kinds of joinery and decoration practised in france. they agreed to go, if i should wish it, before we left london. you, of course, will go as my maid.' picotee gazed upon the sea with a crestfallen look, as if she would rather not cross it in any capacity just then. 'it would scarcely be worth going to the expense of taking me, would it?' she said. the cause of picotee's sudden sense of economy was so plain that her sister smiled; but young love, however foolish, is to a thinking person far too tragic a power for ridicule; and ethelberta forbore, going on as if picotee had not spoken: 'i must have you with me. i may be seen there: so many are passing through rouen at this time of the year. cornelia can take excellent care of the children while we are gone. i want to get out of england, and i will get out of england. there is nothing but vanity and vexation here.' 'i am sorry you were away when he called,' said picotee gently. 'o, i don't mean that. i wish there were no different ranks in the world, and that contrivance were not a necessary faculty to have at all. well, we are going to cross by the little steamer that puts in here, and we are going on monday.' she added in another minute, 'what had mr. julian to tell us that he came here? how did he find us out?' 'i mentioned that we were coming here in my letter to faith. mr. julian says that perhaps he and his sister may also come for a few days before the season is over. i should like to see miss julian again. she is such a nice girl.' 'yes.' ethelberta played with her hair, and looked at the ceiling as she reclined. 'i have decided after all,' she said, 'that it will be better to take cornelia as my maid, and leave you here with the children. cornelia is stronger as a companion than you, and she will be delighted to go. do you think you are competent to keep myrtle and georgina out of harm's way?' 'o yes--i will be exceedingly careful,' said picotee, with great vivacity. 'and if there is time i can go on teaching them a little.' then picotee caught ethelberta's eye, and colouring red, sank down beside her sister, whispering, 'i know why it is! but if you would rather have me with you i will go, and not once wish to stay.' ethelberta looked as if she knew all about that, and said, 'of course there will be no necessity to tell the julians about my departure until they have fixed the time for coming, and cannot alter their minds.' the sound of the children with cornelia, and their appearance outside the window, pushing between the fuchsia bushes which overhung the path, put an end to this dialogue; they entered armed with buckets and spades, a very moist and sandy aspect pervading them as far up as the high-water mark of their clothing, and began to tell ethelberta of the wonders of the deep. . a room in enckworth court 'are you sure the report is true?' 'i am sure that what i say is true, my lord; but it is hardly to be called a report. it is a secret, known at present to nobody but myself and mrs. doncastle's maid.' the speaker was lord mountclere's trusty valet, and the conversation was between him and the viscount in a dressing-room at enckworth court, on the evening after the meeting of archaeologists at corvsgate castle. 'h'm-h'm; the daughter of a butler. does mrs. doncastle know of this yet, or mr. neigh, or any of their friends?' 'no, my lord.' 'you are quite positive?' 'quite positive. i was, by accident, the first that mrs. menlove named the matter to, and i told her it might be much to her advantage if she took particular care it should go no further.' 'mrs. menlove! who's she?' 'the lady's-maid at mrs. doncastle's, my lord.' 'o, ah--of course. you may leave me now, tipman.' lord mountclere remained in thought for a moment. 'a clever little puss, to hoodwink us all like this--hee-hee!' he murmured. 'her education--how finished; and her beauty--so seldom that i meet with such a woman. cut down my elms to please a butler's daughter--what a joke--certainly a good joke! to interest me in her on the right side instead of the wrong was strange. but it can be made to change sides--hee-hee!--it can be made to change sides! tipman!' tipman came forward from the doorway. 'will you take care that that piece of gossip you mentioned to me is not repeated in this house? i strongly disapprove of talebearing of any sort, and wish to hear no more of this. such stories are never true. answer me--do you hear? such stories are never true.' 'i beg pardon, but i think your lordship will find this one true,' said the valet quietly. 'then where did she get her manners and education? do you know?' 'i do not, my lord. i suppose she picked 'em up by her wits.' 'never mind what you suppose,' said the old man impatiently. 'whenever i ask a question of you tell me what you know, and no more.' 'quite so, my lord. i beg your lordship's pardon for supposing.' 'h'm-h'm. have the fashion-books and plates arrived yet?' 'le follet has, my lord; but not the others.' 'let me have it at once. always bring it to me at once. are there any handsome ones this time?' 'they are much the same class of female as usual, i think, my lord,' said tipman, fetching the paper and laying it before him. 'yes, they are,' said the viscount, leaning back and scrutinizing the faces of the women one by one, and talking softly to himself in a way that had grown upon him as his age increased. 'yet they are very well: that one with her shoulder turned is pure and charming--the brown-haired one will pass. all very harmless and innocent, but without character; no soul, or inspiration, or eloquence of eye. what an eye was hers! there is not a girl among them so beautiful. . . . tipman! come and take it away. i don't think i will subscribe to these papers any longer--how long have i subscribed? never mind--i take no interest in these things, and i suppose i must give them up. what white article is that i see on the floor yonder?' 'i can see nothing, my lord.' 'yes, yes, you can. at the other end of the room. it is a white handkerchief. bring it to me.' 'i beg pardon, my lord, but i cannot see any white handkerchief. whereabouts does your lordship mean?' 'there in the corner. if it is not a handkerchief, what is it? walk along till you come to it--that is it; now a little further--now your foot is against it.' 'o that--it is not anything. it is the light reflected against the skirting, so that it looks like a white patch of something--that is all.' 'h'm-hm. my eyes--how weak they are! i am getting old, that's what it is: i am an old man.' 'o no, my lord.' 'yes, an old man.' 'well, we shall all be old some day, and so will your lordship, i suppose; but as yet--' 'i tell you i am an old man!' 'yes, my lord--i did not mean to contradict. an old man in one sense--old in a young man's sense, but not in a house-of-parliament or historical sense. a little oldish--i meant that, my lord.' 'i may be an old man in one sense or in another sense in your mind; but let me tell you there are men older than i--' 'yes, so there are, my lord.' 'people may call me what they please, and you may be impertinent enough to repeat to me what they say, but let me tell you i am not a very old man after all. i am not an old man.' 'old in knowledge of the world i meant, my lord, not in years.' 'well, yes. experience of course i cannot be without. and i like what is beautiful. tipman, you must go to knollsea; don't send, but go yourself, as i wish nobody else to be concerned in this. go to knollsea, and find out when the steamboat for cherbourg starts; and when you have done that, i shall want you to send taylor to me. i wish captain strong to bring the fawn round into knollsea bay. next week i may want you to go to cherbourg in the yacht with me--if the channel is pretty calm--and then perhaps to rouen and paris. but i will speak of that to-morrow.' 'very good, my lord.' 'meanwhile i recommend that you and mrs. menlove repeat nothing you may have heard concerning the lady you just now spoke of. here is a slight present for mrs. menlove; and accept this for yourself.' he handed money. 'your lordship may be sure we will not,' the valet replied. . the english channel--normandy on monday morning the little steamer speedwell made her appearance round the promontory by knollsea bay, to take in passengers for the transit to cherbourg. breezes the freshest that could blow without verging on keenness flew over the quivering deeps and shallows; and the sunbeams pierced every detail of barrow, path and rabbit-run upon the lofty convexity of down and waste which shut in knollsea from the world to the west. they left the pier at eight o'clock, taking at first a short easterly course to avoid a sinister ledge of limestones jutting from the water like crocodile's teeth, which first obtained notoriety in english history through being the spot whereon a formidable danish fleet went to pieces a thousand years ago. at the moment that the speedwell turned to enter upon the direct course, a schooner-yacht, whose sheets gleamed like bridal satin, loosed from a remoter part of the bay; continuing to bear off, she cut across the steamer's wake, and took a course almost due southerly, which was precisely that of the speedwell. the wind was very favourable for the yacht, blowing a few points from north in a steady pressure on her quarter, and, having been built with every modern appliance that shipwrights could offer, the schooner found no difficulty in getting abreast, and even ahead, of the steamer, as soon as she had escaped the shelter of the hills. the more or less parallel courses of the vessels continued for some time without causing any remark among the people on board the speedwell. at length one noticed the fact, and another; and then it became the general topic of conversation in the group upon the bridge, where ethelberta, her hair getting frizzed and her cheeks carnationed by the wind, sat upon a camp-stool looking towards the prow. 'she is bound for guernsey,' said one. 'in half-an-hour she will put about for a more westerly course, you'll see.' 'she is not for guernsey or anywhere that way,' said an acquaintance, looking through his glass. 'if she is out for anything more than a morning cruise, she is bound for our port. i should not wonder if she is crossing to get stocked, as most of them do, to save the duty on her wine and provisions.' 'do you know whose yacht it is?' 'i do not.' ethelberta looked at the light leaning figure of the pretty schooner, which seemed to skate along upon her bilge and make white shavings of all the sea that touched her. she at first imagined that this might be the yacht neigh had arrived in at the end of the previous week, for she knew that he came as one of a yachting party, and she had noticed no other boat of that sort in the bay since his arrival. but as all his party had gone ashore and not yet returned, she was surprised to see the supposed vessel here. to add to her perplexity, she could not be positive, now that it came to a real nautical query, whether the craft of neigh's friends had one mast or two, for she had caught but a fragmentary view of the topsail over the apple-trees. 'is that the yacht which has been lying at knollsea for the last few days?' she inquired of the master of the speedwell, as soon as she had an opportunity. the master warmed beneath his copper-coloured rind. 'o no, miss; that one you saw was a cutter--a smaller boat altogether,' he replied. 'built on the sliding-keel principle, you understand, miss--and red below her water-line, if you noticed. this is lord mountclere's yacht--the fawn. you might have seen her re'ching in round old-harry rock this morning afore we started.' 'lord mountclere's?' 'yes--a nobleman of this neighbourhood. but he don't do so much at yachting as he used to in his younger days. i believe he's aboard this morning, however.' ethelberta now became more absorbed than ever in their ocean comrade, and watched its motions continually. the schooner was considerably in advance of them by this time, and seemed to be getting by degrees out of their course. she wondered if lord mountclere could be really going to cherbourg: if so, why had he said nothing about the trip to her when she spoke of her own approaching voyage thither? the yacht changed its character in her eyes; losing the indefinite interest of the unknown, it acquired the charm of a riddle on motives, of which the alternatives were, had lord mountclere's journey anything to do with her own, or had it not? common probability pointed to the latter supposition; but the time of starting, the course of the yacht, and recollections of lord mountclere's homage, suggested the more extraordinary possibility. she went across to cornelia. 'the man who handed us on board--didn't i see him speaking to you this morning?' she said. 'o yes,' said cornelia. 'he asked if my mistress was the popular mrs. petherwin? 'and you told him, i suppose?' 'yes.' 'what made you do that, cornelia?' 'i thought i might: i couldn't help it. when i went through the toll- gate, such a gentlemanly-looking man asked me if he should help me to carry the things to the end of the pier; and as we went on together he said he supposed me to be mrs. petherwin's maid. i said, "yes." the two men met afterwards, so there would ha' been no good in my denying it to one of 'em.' 'who was this gentlemanly person?' 'i asked the other man that, and he told me one of lord mountclere's upper servants. i knew then there was no harm in having been civil to him. he is well-mannered, and talks splendid language.' 'that yacht you see on our right hand is lord mountclere's property. if i do not mistake, we shall have her closer by-and-by, and you may meet your gentlemanly friend again. be careful how you talk to him.' ethelberta sat down, thought of the meeting at corvsgate castle, of the dinner-party at mr. doncastle's, of the strange position she had there been in, and then of her father. she suddenly reproached herself for thoughtlessness; for in her pocket lay a letter from him, which she had taken from the postman that morning at the moment of coming from the door, and in the hurry of embarking had forgotten ever since. opening it quickly, she read:-- 'my dear ethelberta,--your letter reached me yesterday, and i called round at exonbury crescent in the afternoon, as you wished. everything is going on right there, and you have no occasion to be anxious about them. i do not leave town for another week or two, and by the time i am gone sol and dan will have returned from paris, if your mother and gwendoline want any help: so that you need not hurry back on their account. 'i have something else to tell you, which is not quite so satisfactory, and it is this that makes me write at once; but do not be alarmed. it began in this way. a few nights after the dinner-party here i was determined to find out if there was any truth in what you had been told about that boy, and having seen menlove go out as usual after dark, i followed her. sure enough, when she had got into the park, up came master joe, smoking a cigar. as soon as they had met i went towards them, and menlove, seeing somebody draw nigh, began to edge off, when the blockhead said, "never mind, my love, it is only the old man." being very provoked with both of them, though she was really the most to blame, i gave him some smart cuts across the shoulders with my cane, and told him to go home, which he did with a flea in his ear, the rascal. i believe i have cured his courting tricks for some little time. 'well, menlove then walked by me, quite cool, as if she were merely a lady passing by chance at the time, which provoked me still more, knowing the whole truth of it, and i could not help turning upon her and saying, "you, madam, ought to be served the same way." she replied in very haughty words, and i walked away, saying that i had something better to do than argue with a woman of her character at that hour of the evening. this so set her up that she followed me home, marched into my pantry, and told me that if i had been more careful about my manners in calling her a bad character, it might have been better both for me and my stuck-up daughter--a daw in eagle's plumes--and so on. now it seems that she must have coaxed something out of joey about you--for what lad in the world could be a match for a woman of her experience and arts! i hope she will do you no serious damage; but i tell you the whole state of affairs exactly as they are, that you may form your own opinions. after all, there is no real disgrace, for none of us have ever done wrong, but have worked honestly for a living. however, i will let you know if anything serious really happens.' this was all that her father said on the matter, the letter concluding with messages to the children and directions from their mother with regard to their clothes. ethelberta felt very distinctly that she was in a strait; the old impression that, unless her position were secured soon, it never would be secured, returned with great force. a doubt whether it was worth securing would have been very strong ere this, had not others besides herself been concerned in her fortunes. she looked up from her letter, and beheld the pertinacious yacht; it led her up to a conviction that therein lay a means and an opportunity. nothing further of importance occurred in crossing. ethelberta's head ached after a while, and cornelia's healthy cheeks of red were found to have diminished their colour to the size of a wafer and the quality of a stain. the speedwell entered the breakwater at cherbourg to find the schooner already in the roadstead; and by the time the steamer was brought up ethelberta could see the men on board the yacht clewing up and making things snug in a way from which she inferred that they were not going to leave the harbour again that day. with the aspect of a fair galleon that could easily out-manoeuvre her persevering buccaneer, ethelberta passed alongside. could it be possible that lord mountclere had on her account fixed this day for his visit across the channel? 'well, i would rather be haunted by him than by mr. neigh,' she said; and began laying her plans so as to guard against inconvenient surprises. the next morning ethelberta was at the railway station, taking tickets for herself and cornelia, when she saw an old yet sly and somewhat merry- faced englishman a little way off. he was attended by a younger man, who appeared to be his valet. 'i will exchange one of these tickets,' she said to the clerk, and having done so she went to cornelia to inform her that it would after all be advisable for them to travel separate, adding, 'lord mountclere is in the station, and i think he is going on by our train. remember, you are my maid again now. is not that the gentlemanly man who assisted you yesterday?' she signified the valet as she spoke. 'it is,' said cornelia. when the passengers were taking their seats, and ethelberta was thinking whether she might not after all enter a second-class with cornelia instead of sitting solitary in a first because of an old man's proximity, she heard a shuffling at her elbow, and the next moment found that he was overtly observing her as if he had not done so in secret at all. she at once gave him an unsurprised gesture of recognition. 'i saw you some time ago; what a singular coincidence,' she said. 'a charming one,' said lord mountclere, smiling a half-minute smile, and making as if he would take his hat off and would not quite. 'perhaps we must not call it coincidence entirely,' he continued; 'my journey, which i have contemplated for some time, was not fixed this week altogether without a thought of your presence on the road--hee-hee! do you go far to-day?' 'as far as caen,' said ethelberta. 'ah! that's the end of my day's journey, too,' said lord mountclere. they parted and took their respective places, lord mountclere choosing a compartment next to the one ethelberta was entering, and not, as she had expected, attempting to join her. now she had instantly fancied when the viscount was speaking that there were signs of some departure from his former respectful manner towards her; and an enigma lay in that. at their earlier meetings he had never ventured upon a distinct coupling of himself and herself as he had done in his broad compliment to-day--if compliment it could be called. she was not sure that he did not exceed his license in telling her deliberately that he had meant to hover near her in a private journey which she was taking without reference to him. she did not object to the act, but to the avowal of the act; and, being as sensitive as a barometer on signs affecting her social condition, it darted upon ethelberta for one little moment that he might possibly have heard a word or two about her being nothing more nor less than one of a tribe of thralls; hence his freedom of manner. certainly a plain remark of that sort was exactly what a susceptible peer might be supposed to say to a pretty woman of far inferior degree. a rapid redness filled her face at the thought that he might have smiled upon her as upon a domestic whom he was disposed to chuck under the chin. 'but no,' she said. 'he would never have taken the trouble to follow and meet with me had he learnt to think me other than a lady. it is extremity of devotion--that's all.' it was not ethelberta's inexperience, but that her conception of self precluded such an association of ideas, which led her to dismiss the surmise that his attendance could be inspired by a motive beyond that of paying her legitimate attentions as a co-ordinate with him and his in the social field. even if he only meant flirtation, she read it as of that sort from which courtship with an eye to matrimony differs only in degree. hence, she thought, his interest in her was not likely, under the ordinary influences of caste feeling, to continue longer than while he was kept in ignorance of her consanguinity with a stock proscribed. she sighed at the anticipated close of her full-feathered towering when her ties and bonds should be uncovered. she might have seen matters in a different light, and sighed more. but in the stir of the moment it escaped her thought that ignorance of her position, and a consequent regard for her as a woman of good standing, would have prevented his indulgence in any course which was open to the construction of being disrespectful. valognes, carentan, isigny, bayeux, were passed, and the train drew up at caen. ethelberta's intention had been to stay here for one night, but having learnt from lord mountclere, as previously described, that this was his destination, she decided to go on. on turning towards the carriage after a few minutes of promenading at the caen station, she was surprised to perceive that lord mountclere, who had alighted as if to leave, was still there. they spoke again to each other. 'i find i have to go further,' he suddenly said, when she had chatted with him a little time. and beckoning to the man who was attending to his baggage, he directed the things to be again placed in the train. time passed, and they changed at the next junction. when ethelberta entered a carriage on the branch line to take her seat for the remainder of the journey, there sat the viscount in the same division. he explained that he was going to rouen. ethelberta came to a quick resolution. her audacity, like that of a child getting nearer and nearer a parent's side, became wonderfully vigorous as she approached her destination; and though there were three good hours of travel to rouen as yet, the heavier part of the journey was past. at her aunt's would be a safe refuge, play what pranks she might, and there she would to-morrow meet those bravest of defenders sol and dan, to whom she had sent as much money as she could conveniently spare towards their expenses, with directions that they were to come by the most economical route, and meet her at the house of her aunt, madame moulin, previous to their educational trip to paris, their own contribution being the value of the week's work they would have to lose. thus backed up by sol and dan, her aunt, and cornelia, ethelberta felt quite the reverse of a lonely female persecuted by a wicked lord in a foreign country. 'he shall pay for his weaknesses, whatever they mean,' she thought; 'and what they mean i will find out at once.' 'i am going to paris,' she said. 'you cannot to-night, i think.' 'to-morrow, i mean.' 'i should like to go on to-morrow. perhaps i may. so that there is a chance of our meeting again.' 'yes; but i do not leave rouen till the afternoon. i first shall go to the cathedral, and drive round the city.' lord mountclere smiled pleasantly. there seemed a sort of encouragement in her words. ethelberta's thoughts, however, had flown at that moment to the approaching situation at her aunt's hotel: it would be extremely embarrassing if he should go there. 'where do you stay, lord mountclere?' she said. thus directly asked, he could not but commit himself to the name of the hotel he had been accustomed to patronize, which was one in the upper part of the city. 'mine is not that one,' said ethelberta frigidly. no further remark was made under this head, and they conversed for the remainder of the daylight on scenery and other topics, lord mountclere's air of festivity lending him all the qualities of an agreeable companion. but notwithstanding her resolve, ethelberta failed, for that day at least, to make her mind clear upon lord mountclere's intentions. to that end she would have liked first to know what were the exact limits set by society to conduct under present conditions, if society had ever set any at all, which was open to question: since experience had long ago taught her that much more freedom actually prevails in the communion of the sexes than is put on paper as etiquette, or admitted in so many words as correct behaviour. in short, everything turned upon whether he had learnt of her position when off the platform at mayfair hall. wearied with these surmises, and the day's travel, she closed her eyes. and then her enamoured companion more widely opened his, and traced the beautiful features opposite him. the arch of the brows--like a slur in music--the droop of the lashes, the meeting of the lips, and the sweet rotundity of the chin--one by one, and all together, they were adored, till his heart was like a retort full of spirits of wine. it was a warm evening, and when they arrived at their journey's end distant thunder rolled behind heavy and opaque clouds. ethelberta bade adieu to her attentive satellite, called to cornelia, and entered a cab; but before they reached the inn the thunder had increased. then a cloud cracked into flame behind the iron spire of the cathedral, showing in relief its black ribs and stanchions, as if they were the bars of a blazing cresset held on high. 'ah, we will clamber up there to-morrow,' said ethelberta. a wondrous stillness pervaded the streets of the city after this, though it was not late; and their arrival at m. moulin's door was quite an event for the quay. no rain came, as they had expected, and by the time they halted the western sky had cleared, so that the newly-lit lamps on the quay, and the evening glow shining over the river, inwove their harmonious rays as the warp and woof of one lustrous tissue. before they had alighted there appeared from the archway madame moulin in person, followed by the servants of the hotel in a manner signifying that they did not receive a visitor once a fortnight, though at that moment the clatter of sixty knives, forks, and tongues was audible through an open window from the adjoining dining-room, to the great interest of a group of idlers outside. ethelberta had not seen her aunt since she last passed through the town with lady petherwin, who then told her that this landlady was the only respectable relative she seemed to have in the world. aunt charlotte's face was an english outline filled in with french shades under the eyes, on the brows, and round the mouth, by the natural effect of years; she resembled the british hostess as little as well could be, no point in her causing the slightest suggestion of drops taken for the stomach's sake. telling the two young women she would gladly have met them at the station had she known the hour of their arrival, she kissed them both without much apparent notice of a difference in their conditions; indeed, seeming rather to incline to cornelia, whose country face and homely style of clothing may have been more to her mind than ethelberta's finished travelling-dress, a class of article to which she appeared to be well accustomed. her husband was at this time at the head of the table-d'hote, and mentioning the fact as an excuse for his non- appearance, she accompanied them upstairs. after the strain of keeping up smiles with lord mountclere, the rattle and shaking, and the general excitements of the chase across the water and along the rail, a face in which she saw a dim reflex of her mother's was soothing in the extreme, and ethelberta went up to the staircase with a feeling of expansive thankfulness. cornelia paused to admire the clean court and the small caged birds sleeping on their perches, the boxes of veronica in bloom, of oleander, and of tamarisk, which freshened the air of the court and lent a romance to the lamplight, the cooks in their paper caps and white blouses appearing at odd moments from an avernus behind; while the prompt 'v'la!' of teetotums in mob caps, spinning down the staircase in answer to the periodic clang of bells, filled her with wonder, and pricked her conscience with thoughts of how seldom such transcendent nimbleness was attempted by herself in a part so nearly similar. . the hotel beau sejour and spots near it the next day, much to ethelberta's surprise, there was a letter for her in her mother's up-hill hand. she neglected all the rest of its contents for the following engrossing sentences:-- 'menlove has wormed everything out of poor joey, we find, and your father is much upset about it. she had another quarrel with him, and then declared she would expose you and us to mrs. doncastle and all your friends. i think that menlove is the kind of woman who will stick to her word, and the question for you to consider is, how can you best face out any report of the truth which she will spread, and contradict the lies that she will add to it? it appears to me to be a dreadful thing, and so it will probably appear to you. the worst part will be that your sisters and brothers are your servants, and that your father is actually engaged in the house where you dine. i am dreadful afraid that this will be considered a fine joke for gossips, and will cause no end of laughs in society at your expense. at any rate, should menlove spread the report, it would absolutely prevent people from attending your lectures next season, for they would feel like dupes, and be angry with theirselves, and you, and all of us. 'the only way out of the muddle that i can see for you is to put some scheme of marrying into effect as soon as possible, and before these things are known. surely by this time, with all your opportunities, you have been able to strike up an acquaintance with some gentleman or other, so as to make a suitable match. you see, my dear berta, marriage is a thing which, once carried out, fixes you more firm in a position than any personal brains can do; for as you stand at present, every loose tooth, and every combed-out hair, and every new wrinkle, and every sleepless night, is so much took away from your chance for the future, depending as it do upon your skill in charming. i know that you have had some good offers, so do listen to me, and warm up the best man of them again a bit, and get him to repeat his words before your roundness shrinks away, and 'tis too late. 'mr. ladywell has called here to see you; it was just after i had heard that this menlove might do harm, so i thought i could do no better than send down word to him that you would much like to see him, and were wondering sadly why he had not called lately. i gave him your address at rouen, that he might find you, if he chose, at once, and be got to propose, since he is better than nobody. i believe he said, directly joey gave him the address, that he was going abroad, and my opinion is that he will come to you, because of the encouragement i gave him. if so, you must thank me for my foresight and care for you. 'i heave a sigh of relief sometimes at the thought that i, at any rate, found a husband before the present man-famine began. don't refuse him this time, there's a dear, or, mark my words, you'll have cause to rue it--unless you have beforehand got engaged to somebody better than he. you will not if you have not already, for the exposure is sure to come soon.' 'o, this false position!--it is ruining your nature, my too thoughtful mother! but i will not accept any of them--i'll brazen it out!' said ethelberta, throwing the letter wherever it chose to fly, and picking it up to read again. she stood and thought it all over. 'i must decide to do something!' was her sigh again; and, feeling an irresistible need of motion, she put on her things and went out to see what resolve the morning would bring. no rain had fallen during the night, and the air was now quiet in a warm heavy fog, through which old cider-smells, reminding her of wessex, occasionally came from narrow streets in the background. ethelberta passed up the rue grand-pont into the little dusky rue saint-romain, behind the cathedral, being driven mechanically along by the fever and fret of her thoughts. she was about to enter the building by the transept door, when she saw lord mountclere coming towards her. ethelberta felt equal to him, or a dozen such, this morning. the looming spectres raised by her mother's information, the wearing sense of being over-weighted in the race, were driving her to a hamlet-like fantasticism and defiance of augury; moreover, she was abroad. 'i am about to ascend to the parapets of the cathedral,' said she, in answer to a half inquiry. 'i should be delighted to accompany you,' he rejoined, in a manner as capable of explanation by his knowledge of her secret as was ethelberta's manner by her sense of nearing the end of her maying. but whether this frequent glide into her company was meant as ephemeral flirtation, to fill the half-hours of his journey, or whether it meant a serious love- suit--which were the only alternatives that had occurred to her on the subject--did not trouble her now. 'i am bound to be civil to so great a lord,' she lightly thought, and expressing no objection to his presence, she passed with him through the outbuildings, containing gothic lumber from the shadowy pile above, and ascended the stone staircase. emerging from its windings, they duly came to the long wooden ladder suspended in mid-air that led to the parapet of the tower. this being wide enough for two abreast, she could hardly do otherwise than wait a moment for the viscount, who up to this point had never faltered, and who amused her as they went by scraps of his experience in various countries, which, to do him justice, he told with vivacity and humour. thus they reached the end of the flight, and entered behind a balustrade. 'the prospect will be very lovely from this point when the fog has blown off,' said lord mountclere faintly, for climbing and chattering at the same time had fairly taken away his breath. he leant against the masonry to rest himself. 'the air is clearing already; i fancy i saw a sunbeam or two.' 'it will be lovelier above,' said ethelberta. 'let us go to the platform at the base of the fleche, and wait for a view there.' 'with all my heart,' said her attentive companion. they passed in at a door and up some more stone steps, which landed them finally in the upper chamber of the tower. lord mountclere sank on a beam, and asked smilingly if her ambition was not satisfied with this goal. 'i recollect going to the top some years ago,' he added, 'and it did not occur to me as being a thing worth doing a second time. and there was no fog then, either.' 'o,' said ethelberta, 'it is one of the most splendid things a person can do! the fog is going fast, and everybody with the least artistic feeling in the direction of bird's-eye views makes the ascent every time of coming here.' 'of course, of course,' said lord mountclere. 'and i am only too happy to go to any height with you.' 'since you so kindly offer, we will go to the very top of the spire--up through the fog and into the sunshine,' said ethelberta. lord mountclere covered a grim misgiving by a gay smile, and away they went up a ladder admitting to the base of the huge iron framework above; then they entered upon the regular ascent of the cage, towards the hoped- for celestial blue, and among breezes which never descended so low as the town. the journey was enlivened with more breathless witticisms from lord mountclere, till she stepped ahead of him again; when he asked how many more steps there were. she inquired of the man in the blue blouse who accompanied them. 'fifty- five,' she returned to lord mountclere a moment later. they went round, and round, and yet around. 'how many are there now?' lord mountclere demanded this time of the man. 'a hundred and ninety, monsieur,' he said. 'but there were only fifty-five ever so long ago!' 'two hundred and five, then,' said the man. 'perhaps the mist prevented mademoiselle hearing me distinctly?' 'never mind: i would follow were there five thousand more, did mademoiselle bid me!' said the exhausted nobleman gallantly, in english. 'hush!' said ethelberta, with displeasure. 'he doesn't understand a word,' said lord mountclere. they paced the remainder of their spiral pathway in silence, and having at last reached the summit, lord mountclere sank down on one of the steps, panting out, 'dear me, dear me!' ethelberta leaned and looked around, and said, 'how extraordinary this is. it is sky above, below, everywhere.' he dragged himself together and stepped to her side. they formed as it were a little world to themselves, being completely ensphered by the fog, which here was dense as a sea of milk. below was neither town, country, nor cathedral--simply whiteness, into which the iron legs of their gigantic perch faded to nothing. 'we have lost our labour; there is no prospect for you, after all, lord mountclere,' said ethelberta, turning her eyes upon him. he looked at her face as if there were, and she continued, 'listen; i hear sounds from the town: people's voices, and carts, and dogs, and the noise of a railway-train. shall we now descend, and own ourselves disappointed?' 'whenever you choose.' before they had put their intention in practice there appeared to be reasons for waiting awhile. out of the plain of fog beneath, a stone tooth seemed to be upheaving itself: then another showed forth. these were the summits of the st. romain and the butter towers--at the western end of the building. as the fog stratum collapsed other summits manifested their presence further off--among them the two spires and lantern of st. ouen's; when to the left the dome of st. madeline's caught a first ray from the peering sun, under which its scaly surface glittered like a fish. then the mist rolled off in earnest, and revealed far beneath them a whole city, its red, blue, and grey roofs forming a variegated pattern, small and subdued as that of a pavement in mosaic. eastward in the spacious outlook lay the hill of st. catherine, breaking intrusively into the large level valley of the seine; south was the river which had been the parent of the mist, and the ile lacroix, gorgeous in scarlet, purple, and green. on the western horizon could be dimly discerned melancholy forests, and further to the right stood the hill and rich groves of boisguillaume. ethelberta having now done looking around, the descent was begun and continued without intermission till they came to the passage behind the parapet. ethelberta was about to step airily forward, when there reached her ear the voices of persons below. she recognized as one of them the slow unaccented tones of neigh. 'please wait a minute!' she said in a peremptory manner of confusion sufficient to attract lord mountclere's attention. a recollection had sprung to her mind in a moment. she had half made an appointment with neigh at her aunt's hotel for this very week, and here was he in rouen to keep it. to meet him while indulging in this vagary with lord mountclere--which, now that the mood it had been engendered by was passing off, she somewhat regretted--would be the height of imprudence. 'i should like to go round to the other side of the parapet for a few moments,' she said, with decisive quickness. 'come with me, lord mountclere.' they went round to the other side. here she kept the viscount and their suisse until she deemed it probable that neigh had passed by, when she returned with her companions and descended to the bottom. they emerged into the rue saint-romain, whereupon a woman called from the opposite side of the way to their guide, stating that she had told the other english gentleman that the english lady had gone into the fleche. ethelberta turned and looked up. she could just discern neigh's form upon the steps of the fleche above, ascending toilsomely in search of her. 'what english gentleman could that have been?' said lord mountclere, after paying the man. he spoke in a way which showed he had not overlooked her confusion. 'it seems that he must have been searching for us, or rather for you?' 'only mr. neigh,' said ethelberta. 'he told me he was coming here. i believe he is waiting for an interview with me.' 'h'm,' said lord mountclere. 'business--only business,' said she. 'shall i leave you? perhaps the business is important--most important.' 'unfortunately it is.' 'you must forgive me this once: i cannot help--will you give me permission to make a difficult remark?' said lord mountclere, in an impatient voice. 'with pleasure.' 'well, then, the business i meant was--an engagement to be married.' had it been possible for a woman to be perpetually on the alert she might now have supposed that lord mountclere knew all about her; a mechanical deference must have restrained such an illusion had he seen her in any other light than that of a distracting slave. but she answered quietly, 'so did i.' 'but how does he know--dear me, dear me! i beg pardon,' said the viscount. she looked at him curiously, as if to imply that he was seriously out of his reckoning in respect of her if he supposed that he would be allowed to continue this little play at love-making as long as he chose, when she was offered the position of wife by a man so good as neigh. they stood in silence side by side till, much to her ease, cornelia appeared at the corner waiting. at the last moment he said, in somewhat agitated tones, and with what appeared to be a renewal of the respect which had been imperceptibly dropped since they crossed the channel, 'i was not aware of your engagement to mr. neigh. i fear i have been acting mistakenly on that account.' 'there is no engagement as yet,' said she. lord mountclere brightened like a child. 'then may i have a few words in private--' 'not now--not to-day,' said ethelberta, with a certain irritation at she knew not what. 'believe me, lord mountclere, you are mistaken in many things. i mean, you think more of me than you ought. a time will come when you will despise me for this day's work, and it is madness in you to go further.' lord mountclere, knowing what he did know, may have imagined what she referred to; but ethelberta was without the least proof that he had the key to her humour. 'well, well, i'll be responsible for the madness,' he said. 'i know you to be--a famous woman, at all events; and that's enough. i would say more, but i cannot here. may i call upon you?' 'not now.' 'when shall i?' 'if you must, let it be a month hence at my house in town,' she said indifferently, the hamlet mood being still upon her. 'yes, call upon us then, and i will tell you everything that may remain to be told, if you should be inclined to listen. a rumour is afloat which will undeceive you in much, and depress me to death. and now i will walk back: pray excuse me.' she entered the street, and joined cornelia. lord mountclere paced irregularly along, turned the corner, and went towards his inn, nearing which his tread grew lighter, till he scarcely seemed to touch the ground. he became gleeful, and said to himself, nervously palming his hip with his left hand, as if previous to plunging it into hot water for some prize: 'upon my life i've a good mind! upon my life i have!. . . . i must make a straightforward thing of it, and at once; or he will have her. but he shall not, and i will--hee-hee!' the fascinated man, screaming inwardly with the excitement, glee, and agony of his position, entered the hotel, wrote a hasty note to ethelberta and despatched it by hand, looked to his dress and appearance, ordered a carriage, and in a quarter of an hour was being driven towards the hotel beau sejour, whither his note had preceded him. . the hotel (continued), and the quay in front ethelberta, having arrived there some time earlier, had gone straight to her aunt, whom she found sitting behind a large ledger in the office, making up the accounts with her husband, a well-framed reflective man with a grey beard. m. moulin bustled, waited for her remarks and replies, and made much of her in a general way, when ethelberta said, what she had wanted to say instantly, 'has a gentleman called mr. neigh been here?' 'o yes--i think it is neigh--there's a card upstairs,' replied her aunt. 'i told him you were alone at the cathedral, and i believe he walked that way. besides that one, another has come for you--a mr. ladywell, and he is waiting.' 'not for me?' 'yes, indeed. i thought he seemed so anxious, under a sort of assumed calmness, that i recommended him to remain till you came in.' 'goodness, aunt; why did you?' ethelberta said, and thought how much her mother's sister resembled her mother in doings of that sort. 'i thought he had some good reason for seeing you. are these men intruders, then?' 'o no--a woman who attempts a public career must expect to be treated as public property: what would be an intrusion on a domiciled gentlewoman is a tribute to me. you cannot have celebrity and sex-privilege both.' thus ethelberta laughed off the awkward conjuncture, inwardly deploring the unconscionable maternal meddling which had led to this, though not resentfully, for she had too much staunchness of heart to decry a parent's misdirected zeal. had the clanship feeling been universally as strong as in the chickerel family, the fable of the well-bonded fagot might have remained unwritten. ladywell had sent her a letter about getting his picture of herself engraved for an illustrated paper, and she had not replied, considering that she had nothing to do with the matter, her form and feature having been given in the painting as no portrait at all, but as those of an ideal. to see him now would be vexatious; and yet it was chilly and formal to an ungenerous degree to keep aloof from him, sitting lonely in the same house. 'a few weeks hence,' she thought, 'when menlove's disclosures make me ridiculous, he may slight me as a lackey's girl, an upstart, an adventuress, and hardly return my bow in the street. then i may wish i had given him no personal cause for additional bitterness.' so, putting off the fine lady, ethelberta thought she would see ladywell at once. ladywell was unaffectedly glad to meet her; so glad, that ethelberta wished heartily, for his sake, there could be warm friendship between herself and him, as well as all her lovers, without that insistent courtship-and-marriage question, which sent them all scattering like leaves in a pestilent blast, at enmity with one another. she was less pleased when she found that ladywell, after saying all there was to say about his painting, gently signified that he had been misinformed, as he believed, concerning her future intentions, which had led to his absenting himself entirely from her; the remark being of course, a natural product of her mother's injudicious message to him. she cut him short with terse candour. 'yes,' she said, 'a false report is in circulation. i am not yet engaged to be married to any one, if that is your meaning.' ladywell looked cheerful at this frank answer, and said tentatively, 'am i forgotten?' 'no; you are exactly as you always were in my mind.' 'then i have been cruelly deceived. i was guided too much by appearances, and they were very delusive. i am beyond measure glad i came here to-day. i called at your house and learnt that you were here; and as i was going out of town, in any indefinite direction, i settled then to come this way. what a happy idea it was! to think of you now--and i may be permitted to--' 'assuredly you may not. how many times i have told you that!' 'but i do not wish for any formal engagement,' said ladywell quickly, fearing she might commit herself to some expression of positive denial, which he could never surmount. 'i'll wait--i'll wait any length of time. remember, you have never absolutely forbidden my--friendship. will you delay your answer till some time hence, when you have thoroughly considered; since i fear it may be a hasty one now?' 'yes, indeed; it may be hasty.' 'you will delay it?' 'yes.' 'when shall it be?' 'say a month hence. i suggest that, because by that time you will have found an answer in your own mind: strange things may happen before then. "she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them; then shall she say, i will go and return to my first"--however, that's no matter.' 'what--did you--?' ladywell began, altogether bewildered by this. 'it is a passage in hosea which came to my mind, as possibly applicable to myself some day,' she answered. 'it was mere impulse.' 'ha-ha!--a jest--one of your romances broken loose. there is no law for impulse: that is why i am here.' thus fancifully they conversed till the interview concluded. getting her to promise that she would see him again, ladywell retired to a sitting- room on the same landing, in which he had been writing letters before she came up. immediately upon this her aunt, who began to suspect that something peculiar was in the wind, came to tell her that mr. neigh had been inquiring for her again. 'send him in,' said ethelberta. neigh's footsteps approached, and the well-known figure entered. ethelberta received him smilingly, for she was getting so used to awkward juxtapositions that she treated them quite as a natural situation. she merely hoped that ladywell would not hear them talking through the partition. neigh scarcely said anything as a beginning: she knew his errand perfectly; and unaccountable as it was to her, the strange and unceremonious relationship between them, that had originated in the peculiar conditions of their first close meeting, was continued now as usual. 'have you been able to bestow a thought on the question between us? i hope so,' said neigh. 'it is no use,' said ethelberta. 'wait a month, and you will not require an answer. you will not mind speaking low, because of a person in the next room?' 'not at all.--why will that be?' 'i might say; but let us speak of something else.' 'i don't see how we can,' said neigh brusquely. 'i had no other reason on earth for calling here. i wished to get the matter settled, and i could not be satisfied without seeing you. i hate writing on matters of this sort. in fact i can't do it, and that's why i am here.' he was still speaking when an attendant entered with a note. 'will you excuse me one moment?' said ethelberta, stepping to the window and opening the missive. it contained these words only, in a scrawl so full of deformities that she could hardly piece its meaning together:-- 'i must see you again to-day unless you absolutely deny yourself to me, which i shall take as a refusal to meet me any more. i will arrive, punctually, five minutes after you receive this note. do pray be alone if you can, and eternally gratify,--yours, 'mountclere.' 'if anything has happened i shall be pleased to wait,' said neigh, seeing her concern when she had closed the note. 'o no, it is nothing,' said ethelberta precipitately. 'yet i think i will ask you to wait,' she added, not liking to dismiss neigh in a hurry; for she was not insensible to his perseverance in seeking her over all these miles of sea and land; and secondly, she feared that if he were to leave on the instant he might run into the arms of lord mountclere and ladywell. 'i shall be only too happy to stay till you are at leisure,' said neigh, in the unimpassioned delivery he used whether his meaning were a trite compliment or the expression of his most earnest feeling. 'i may be rather a long time,' said ethelberta dubiously. 'my time is yours.' ethelberta left the room and hurried to her aunt, exclaiming, 'o, aunt charlotte, i hope you have rooms enough to spare for my visitors, for they are like the fox, the goose, and the corn, in the riddle; i cannot leave them together, and i can only be with one at a time. i want the nicest drawing-room you have for an interview of a bare two minutes with an old gentleman. i am so sorry this has happened, but it is not altogether my fault! i only arranged to see one of them; but the other was sent to me by mother, in a mistake, and the third met with me on my journey: that's the explanation. there's the oldest of them just come.' she looked through the glass partition, and under the arch of the court- gate, as the wheels of the viscount's carriage were heard outside. ethelberta ascended to a room on the first floor, lord mountclere was shown up, and the door closed upon them. at this time neigh was very comfortably lounging in an arm-chair in ethelberta's room on the second floor. this was a pleasant enough way of passing the minutes with such a tender interview in prospect; and as he leant he looked with languid and luxurious interest through the open casement at the spars and rigging of some luggers on the seine, the pillars of the suspension bridge, and the scenery of the faubourg st. sever on the other side of the river. how languid his interest might ultimately have become there is no knowing; but there soon arose upon his ear the accents of ethelberta in low distinctness from somewhere outside the room. 'yes; the scene is pleasant to-day,' she said. 'i like a view over a river.' 'i should think the steamboats are objectionable when they stop here,' said another person. neigh's face closed in to an aspect of perplexity. 'surely that cannot be lord mountclere?' he muttered. had he been certain that ethelberta was only talking to a stranger, neigh would probably have felt their conversation to be no business of his, much as he might have been surprised to find her giving audience to another man at such a place. but his impression that the voice was that of his acquaintance, lord mountclere, coupled with doubts as to its possibility, was enough to lead him to rise from the chair and put his head out of the window. upon a balcony beneath him were the speakers, as he had suspected--ethelberta and the viscount. looking right and left, he saw projecting from the next window the head of his friend ladywell, gazing right and left likewise, apparently just drawn out by the same voice which had attracted himself. 'what--you, neigh!--how strange,' came from ladywell's lips before he had time to recollect that great coolness existed between himself and neigh on ethelberta's account, which had led to the reduction of their intimacy to the most attenuated of nods and good-mornings ever since the harlequin- rose incident at cripplegate. 'yes; it is rather strange,' said neigh, with saturnine evenness. 'still a fellow must be somewhere.' each then looked over his window-sill downwards, upon the speakers who had attracted them thither. lord mountclere uttered something in a low tone which did not reach the young men; to which ethelberta replied, 'as i have said, lord mountclere, i cannot give you an answer now. i must consider what to do with mr. neigh and mr. ladywell. it is too sudden for me to decide at once. i could not do so until i have got home to england, when i will write you a letter, stating frankly my affairs and those of my relatives. i shall not consider that you have addressed me on the subject of marriage until, having received my letter, you--' 'repeat my proposal,' said lord mountclere. 'yes.' 'my dear mrs. petherwin, it is as good as repeated! but i have no right to assume anything you don't wish me to assume, and i will wait. how long is it that i am to suffer in this uncertainty?' 'a month. by that time i shall have grown weary of my other two suitors.' 'a month! really inflexible?' ethelberta had returned inside the window, and her answer was inaudible. ladywell and neigh looked up, and their eyes met. both had been reluctant to remain where they stood, but they were too fascinated to instantly retire. neigh moved now, and ladywell did the same. each saw that the face of his companion was flushed. 'come in and see me,' said ladywell quickly, before quite withdrawing his head. 'i am staying in this room.' 'i will,' said neigh; and taking his hat he left ethelberta's apartment forthwith. on entering the quarters of his friend he found him seated at a table whereon writing materials were strewn. they shook hands in silence, but the meaning in their looks was enough. 'just let me write a note, ladywell, and i'm your man,' said neigh then, with the freedom of an old acquaintance. 'i was going to do the same thing,' said ladywell. neigh then sat down, and for a minute or two nothing was to be heard but the scratching of a pair of pens, ending on the one side with a more boisterous scratch, as the writer shaped 'eustace ladywell,' and on the other with slow firmness in the characters 'alfred neigh.' 'there's for you, my fair one,' said neigh, closing and directing his letter. 'yours is for mrs. petherwin? so is mine,' said ladywell, grasping the bell-pull. 'shall i direct it to be put on her table with this one?' 'thanks.' and the two letters went off to ethelberta's sitting-room, which she had vacated to receive lord mountclere in an empty one beneath. neigh's letter was simply a pleading of a sudden call away which prevented his waiting till she should return; ladywell's, though stating the same reason for leaving, was more of an upbraiding nature, and might almost have told its reader, were she to take the trouble to guess, that he knew of the business of lord mountclere with her to-day. 'now, let us get out of this place,' said neigh. he proceeded at once down the stairs, followed by ladywell, who--settling his account at the bureau without calling for a bill, and directing his portmanteau to be sent to the right-bank railway station--went with neigh into the street. they had not walked fifty yards up the quay when two british workmen, in holiday costume, who had just turned the corner of the rue jeanne d'arc, approached them. seeing him to be an englishman, one of the two addressed neigh, saying, 'can you tell us the way, sir, to the hotel bold soldier?' neigh pointed out the place he had just come from to the tall young men, and continued his walk with ladywell. ladywell was the first to break silence. 'i have been considerably misled, neigh,' he said; 'and i imagine from what has just happened that you have been misled too.' 'just a little,' said neigh, bringing abstracted lines of meditation into his face. 'but it was my own fault: for i ought to have known that these stage and platform women have what they are pleased to call bohemianism so thoroughly engrained with their natures that they are no more constant to usage in their sentiments than they are in their way of living. good lord, to think she has caught old mountclere! she is sure to have him if she does not dally with him so long that he gets cool again.' 'a beautiful creature like her to think of marrying such an infatuated idiot as he!' 'he can give her a title as well as younger men. it will not be the first time that such matches have been made.' 'i can't believe it,' said ladywell vehemently. 'she has too much poetry in her--too much good sense; her nature is the essence of all that's romantic. i can't help saying it, though she has treated me cruelly.' 'she has good looks, certainly. i'll own to that. as for her romance and good-feeling, that i leave to you. i think she has treated you no more cruelly, as you call it, than she has me, come to that.' 'she told me she would give me an answer in a month,' said ladywell emotionally. 'so she told me,' said neigh. 'and so she told him,' said ladywell. 'and i have no doubt she will keep her word to him in her usual precise manner.' 'but see what she implied to me! i distinctly understood from her that the answer would be favourable.' 'so did i.' 'so does he.' 'and he is sure to be the one who gets it, since only one of us can. well, i wouldn't marry her for love, money, nor--' 'offspring.' 'exactly: i would not. "i'll give you an answer in a month"--to all three of us! for god's sake let's sit down here and have something to drink.' they drew up a couple of chairs to one of the tables of a wine-shop close by, and shouted to the waiter with the vigour of persons going to the dogs. here, behind the horizontal-headed trees that dotted this part of the quay, they sat over their bottles denouncing womankind till the sun got low down upon the river, and the houses on the further side began to be toned by a blue mist. at last they rose from their seats and departed, neigh to dine and consider his route, and ladywell to take the train for dieppe. while these incidents had been in progress the two workmen had found their way into the hotel where ethelberta was staying. passing through the entrance, they stood at gaze in the court, much perplexed as to the door to be made for; the difficulty was solved by the appearance of cornelia, who in expectation of them had been for the last half-hour leaning over the sill of her bed-room window, which looked into the interior, amusing herself by watching the movements to and fro in the court beneath. after conversing awhile in undertones as if they had no real right there at all, cornelia told them she would call their sister, if an old gentleman who had been to see her were gone again. cornelia then ran away, and sol and dan stood aloof, till they had seen the old gentleman alluded to go to the door and drive off, shortly after which ethelberta ran down to meet them. 'whatever have you got as your luggage?' she said, after hearing a few words about their journey, and looking at a curious object like a huge extended accordion with bellows of gorgeous-patterned carpeting. 'well, i thought to myself,' said sol, ''tis a terrible bother about carrying our things. so what did i do but turn to and make a carpet-bag that would hold all mine and dan's too. this, you see, berta, is a deal top and bottom out of three-quarter stuff, stained and varnished. well, then you see i've got carpet sides tacked on with these brass nails, which make it look very handsome; and so when my bag is empty 'twill shut up and be only a couple of boards under yer arm, and when 'tis open it will hold a'most anything you like to put in it. that portmantle didn't cost more than three half-crowns altogether, and ten pound wouldn't ha' got anything so strong from a portmantle maker, would it, dan?' 'well, no.' 'and then you see, berta,' sol continued in the same earnest tone, and further exhibiting the article, 'i've made this trap-door in the top with hinges and padlock complete, so that--' 'i am afraid it is tiring you after your journey to explain all this to me,' said ethelberta gently, noticing that a few gallic smilers were gathering round. 'aunt has found a nice room for you at the top of the staircase in that corner--"escalier d" you'll see painted at the bottom--and when you have been up come across to me at number thirty-four on this side, and we'll talk about everything.' 'look here, sol,' said dan, who had left his brother and gone on to the stairs. 'what a rum staircase--the treads all in little blocks, and painted chocolate, as i am alive!' 'i am afraid i shall not be able to go on to paris with you, after all,' ethelberta continued to sol. 'something has just happened which makes it desirable for me to return at once to england. but i will write a list of all you are to see, and where you are to go, so that it will make little difference, i hope.' ten minutes before this time ethelberta had been frankly and earnestly asked by lord mountclere to become his bride; not only so, but he pressed her to consent to have the ceremony performed before they returned to england. ethelberta had unquestionably been much surprised; and, barring the fact that the viscount was somewhat ancient in comparison with herself, the temptation to close with his offer was strong, and would have been felt as such by any woman in the position of ethelberta, now a little reckless by stress of circumstances, and tinged with a bitterness of spirit against herself and the world generally. but she was experienced enough to know what heaviness might result from a hasty marriage, entered into with a mind full of concealments and suppressions which, if told, were likely to stop the marriage altogether; and after trying to bring herself to speak of her family and situation to lord mountclere as he stood, a certain caution triumphed, and she concluded that it would be better to postpone her reply till she could consider which of two courses it would be advisable to adopt; to write and explain to him, or to explain nothing and refuse him. the third course, to explain nothing and hasten the wedding, she rejected without hesitation. with a pervading sense of her own obligations in forming this compact it did not occur to her to ask if lord mountclere might not have duties of explanation equally with herself, though bearing rather on the moral than the social aspects of the case. her resolution not to go on to paris was formed simply because lord mountclere himself was proceeding in that direction, which might lead to other unseemly rencounters with him had she, too, persevered in her journey. she accordingly gave sol and dan directions for their guidance to paris and back, starting herself with cornelia the next day to return again to knollsea, and to decide finally and for ever what to do in the vexed question at present agitating her. never before in her life had she treated marriage in such a terribly cool and cynical spirit as she had done that day; she was almost frightened at herself in thinking of it. how far any known system of ethics might excuse her on the score of those curious pressures which had been brought to bear upon her life, or whether it could excuse her at all, she had no spirit to inquire. english society appeared a gloomy concretion enough to abide in as she contemplated it on this journey home; yet, since its gloominess was less an essential quality than an accident of her point of view, that point of view she had determined to change. there lay open to her two directions in which to move. she might annex herself to the easy-going high by wedding an old nobleman, or she might join for good and all the easy-going low, by plunging back to the level of her family, giving up all her ambitions for them, settling as the wife of a provincial music-master named julian, with a little shop of fiddles and flutes, a couple of old pianos, a few sheets of stale music pinned to a string, and a narrow back parlour, wherein she would wait for the phenomenon of a customer. and each of these divergent grooves had its fascinations, till she reflected with regard to the first that, even though she were a legal and indisputable lady mountclere, she might be despised by my lord's circle, and left lone and lorn. the intermediate path of accepting neigh or ladywell had no more attractions for her taste than the fact of disappointing them had qualms for her conscience; and how few these were may be inferred from her opinion, true or false, that two words about the spigot on her escutcheon would sweep her lovers' affections to the antipodes. she had now and then imagined that her previous intermarriage with the petherwin family might efface much besides her surname, but experience proved that the having been wife for a few weeks to a minor who died in his father's lifetime, did not weave such a tissue of glory about her course as would resist a speedy undoing by startling confessions on her station before her marriage, and her environments now. . the house in town returning by way of knollsea, where she remained a week or two, ethelberta appeared one evening at the end of september before her house in exonbury crescent, accompanied by a pair of cabs with the children and luggage; but picotee was left at knollsea, for reasons which ethelberta explained when the family assembled in conclave. her father was there, and began telling her of a surprising change in menlove--an unasked-for concession to their cause, and a vow of secrecy which he could not account for, unless any friend of ethelberta's had bribed her. 'o no--that cannot be,' said she. any influence of lord mountclere to that effect was the last thing that could enter her thoughts. 'however, what menlove does makes little difference to me now.' and she proceeded to state that she had almost come to a decision which would entirely alter their way of living. 'i hope it will not be of the sort your last decision was,' said her mother. 'no; quite the reverse. i shall not live here in state any longer. we will let the house throughout as lodgings, while it is ours; and you and the girls must manage it. i will retire from the scene altogether, and stay for the winter at knollsea with picotee. i want to consider my plans for next year, and i would rather be away from town. picotee is left there, and i return in two days with the books and papers i require.' 'what are your plans to be?' 'i am going to be a schoolmistress--i think i am.' 'a schoolmistress?' 'yes. and picotee returns to the same occupation, which she ought never to have forsaken. we are going to study arithmetic and geography until christmas; then i shall send her adrift to finish her term as pupil-teacher, while i go into a training-school. by the time i have to give up this house i shall just have got a little country school.' 'but,' said her mother, aghast, 'why not write more poems and sell 'em?' 'why not be a governess as you were?' said her father. 'why not go on with your tales at mayfair hall?' said gwendoline. 'i'll answer as well as i can. i have decided to give up romancing because i cannot think of any more that pleases me. i have been trying at knollsea for a fortnight, and it is no use. i will never be a governess again: i would rather be a servant. if i am a schoolmistress i shall be entirely free from all contact with the great, which is what i desire, for i hate them, and am getting almost as revolutionary as sol. father, i cannot endure this kind of existence any longer; i sleep at night as if i had committed a murder: i start up and see processions of people, audiences, battalions of lovers obtained under false pretences--all denouncing me with the finger of ridicule. mother's suggestion about my marrying i followed out as far as dogged resolution would carry me, but during my journey here i have broken down; for i don't want to marry a second time among people who would regard me as an upstart or intruder. i am sick of ambition. my only longing now is to fly from society altogether, and go to any hovel on earth where i could be at peace.' 'what--has anybody been insulting you?' said mrs. chickerel. 'yes; or rather i sometimes think he may have: that is, if a proposal of marriage is only removed from being a proposal of a very different kind by an accident.' 'a proposal of marriage can never be an insult,' her mother returned. 'i think otherwise,' said ethelberta. 'so do i,' said her father. 'unless the man was beneath you, and i don't suppose he was that,' added mrs. chickerel. 'you are quite right; he was not that. but we will not talk of this branch of the subject. by far the most serious concern with me is that i ought to do some good by marriage, or by heroic performance of some kind; while going back to give the rudiments of education to remote hamleteers will do none of you any good whatever.' 'never you mind us,' said her father; 'mind yourself.' 'i shall hardly be minding myself either, in your opinion, by doing that,' said ethelberta dryly. 'but it will be more tolerable than what i am doing now. georgina, and myrtle, and emmeline, and joey will not get the education i intended for them; but that must go, i suppose.' 'how full of vagaries you are,' said her mother. 'why won't it do to continue as you are? no sooner have i learnt up your schemes, and got enough used to 'em to see something in 'em, than you must needs bewilder me again by starting some fresh one, so that my mind gets no rest at all.' ethelberta too keenly felt the justice of this remark, querulous as it was, to care to defend herself. it was hopeless to attempt to explain to her mother that the oscillations of her mind might arise as naturally from the perfection of its balance, like those of a logan-stone, as from inherent lightness; and such an explanation, however comforting to its subject, was little better than none to simple hearts who only could look to tangible outcrops. 'really, ethelberta,' remonstrated her mother, 'this is very odd. making yourself miserable in trying to get a position on our account is one thing, and not necessary; but i think it ridiculous to rush into the other extreme, and go wilfully down in the scale. you may just as well exercise your wits in trying to swim as in trying to sink.' 'yes; that's what i think,' said her father. 'but of course berta knows best.' 'i think so too,' said gwendoline. 'and so do i,' said cornelia. 'if i had once moved about in large circles like ethelberta, i wouldn't go down and be a schoolmistress--not i.' 'i own it is foolish--suppose it is,' said ethelberta wearily, and with a readiness of misgiving that showed how recent and hasty was the scheme. 'perhaps you are right, mother; anything rather than retreat. i wonder if you are right! well, i will think again of it to-night. do not let us speak more about it now.' she did think of it that night, very long and painfully. the arguments of her relatives seemed ponderous as opposed to her own inconsequent longing for escape from galling trammels. if she had stood alone, the sentiment that she had begun to build but was not able to finish, by whomsoever it might have been entertained, would have had few terrors; but that the opinion should be held by her nearest of kin, to cause them pain for life, was a grievous thing. the more she thought of it, the less easy seemed the justification of her desire for obscurity. from regarding it as a high instinct she passed into a humour that gave that desire the appearance of a whim. but could she really set in train events, which, if not abortive, would take her to the altar with viscount mountclere? in one determination she never faltered; to commit her sin thoroughly if she committed it at all. her relatives believed her choice to lie between neigh and ladywell alone. but once having decided to pass over christopher, whom she had loved, there could be no pausing for ladywell because she liked him, or for neigh in that she was influenced by him. they were both too near her level to be trusted to bear the shock of receiving her from her father's hands. but it was possible that though her genesis might tinge with vulgarity a commoner's household, susceptible of such depreciation, it might show as a picturesque contrast in the family circle of a peer. hence it was just as well to go to the end of her logic, where reasons for tergiversation would be most pronounced. this thought of the viscount, however, was a secret for her own breast alone. nearly the whole of that night she sat weighing--first, the question itself of marrying lord mountclere; and, at other times, whether, for safety, she might marry him without previously revealing family particulars hitherto held necessary to be revealed--a piece of conduct she had once felt to be indefensible. the ingenious ethelberta, much more prone than the majority of women to theorize on conduct, felt the need of some soothing defence of the actions involved in any ambiguous course before finally committing herself to it. she took down a well-known treatise on utilitarianism which she had perused once before, and to which she had given her adherence ere any instance had arisen wherein she might wish to take it as a guide. here she desultorily searched for argument, and found it; but the application of her author's philosophy to the marriage question was an operation of her own, as unjustifiable as it was likely in the circumstances. 'the ultimate end,' she read, 'with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of other people) is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality. . . . this being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard of morality.' it was an open question, so far, whether her own happiness should or should not be preferred to that of others. but that her personal interests were not to be considered as paramount appeared further on:-- 'the happiness which forms the standard of what is right in conduct is not the agent's own happiness but that of all concerned. as between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.' as to whose happiness was meant by that of 'other people,' 'all concerned,' and so on, her luminous moralist soon enlightened her:-- 'the occasions on which any person (except one in a thousand) has it in his power to do this on an extended scale--in other words, to be a public benefactor--are but exceptional; and on these occasions alone is he called on to consider public utility; in every other case private utility, the interest or happiness of some few persons, is all he has to attend to.' and that these few persons should be those endeared to her by every domestic tie no argument was needed to prove. that their happiness would be in proportion to her own well-doing, and power to remove their risks of indigence, required no proving either to her now. by a sorry but unconscious misapplication of sound and wide reasoning did the active mind of ethelberta thus find itself a solace. at about the midnight hour she felt more fortified on the expediency of marriage with lord mountclere than she had done at all since musing on it. in respect of the second query, whether or not, in that event, to conceal from lord mountclere the circumstances of her position till it should be too late for him to object to them, she found her conscience inconveniently in the way of her theory, and the oracle before her afforded no hint. 'ah--it is a point for a casuist!' she said. an old treatise on casuistry lay on the top shelf. she opened it--more from curiosity than from guidance this time, it must be observed--at a chapter bearing on her own problem, 'the disciplina arcani, or, the doctrine of reserve.' here she read that there were plenty of apparent instances of this in scripture, and that it was formed into a recognized system in the early church. with reference to direct acts of deception, it was argued that since there were confessedly cases where killing is no murder, might there not be cases where lying is no sin? it could not be right--or, indeed, anything but most absurd--to say in effect that no doubt circumstances would occur where every sound man would tell a lie, and would be a brute or a fool if he did not, and to say at the same time that it is quite indefensible in principle. duty was the key to conduct then, and if in such cases duties appeared to clash they would be found not to do so on examination. the lesser duty would yield to the greater, and therefore ceased to be a duty. this author she found to be not so tolerable; he distracted her. she put him aside and gave over reading, having decided on this second point, that she would, at any hazard, represent the truth to lord mountclere before listening to another word from him. 'well, at last i have done,' she said, 'and am ready for my role.' in looking back upon her past as she retired to rest, ethelberta could almost doubt herself to be the identical woman with her who had entered on a romantic career a few short years ago. for that doubt she had good reason. she had begun as a poet of the satanic school in a sweetened form; she was ending as a pseudo-utilitarian. was there ever such a transmutation effected before by the action of a hard environment? it was not without a qualm of regret that she discerned how the last infirmity of a noble mind had at length nearly departed from her. she wondered if her early notes had had the genuine ring in them, or whether a poet who could be thrust by realities to a distance beyond recognition as such was a true poet at all. yet ethelberta's gradient had been regular: emotional poetry, light verse, romance as an object, romance as a means, thoughts of marriage as an aid to her pursuits, a vow to marry for the good of her family; in other words, from soft and playful romanticism to distorted benthamism. was the moral incline upward or down? . knollsea--an ornamental villa her energies collected and fermented anew by the results of the vigil, ethelberta left town for knollsea, where she joined picotee the same evening. picotee produced a letter, which had been addressed to her sister at their london residence, but was not received by her there, mrs. chickerel having forwarded it to knollsea the day before ethelberta arrived in town. the crinkled writing, in character like the coast-line of tierra del fuego, was becoming familiar by this time. while reading the note she informed picotee, between a quick breath and a rustle of frills, that it was from lord mountclere, who wrote on the subject of calling to see her, suggesting a day in the following week. 'now, picotee,' she continued, 'we shall have to receive him, and make the most of him, for i have altered my plans since i was last in knollsea.' 'altered them again? what are you going to be now--not a poor person after all?' 'indeed not. and so i turn and turn. can you imagine what lord mountclere is coming for? but don't say what you think. before i reply to this letter we must go into new lodgings, to give them as our address. the first business to-morrow morning will be to look for the gayest house we can find; and captain flower and this little cabin of his must be things we have never known.' the next day after breakfast they accordingly sallied forth. knollsea had recently begun to attract notice in the world. it had this year undergone visitation from a score of professional gentlemen and their wives, a minor canon, three marine painters, seven young ladies with books in their hands, and nine-and-thirty babies. hence a few lodging-houses, of a dash and pretentiousness far beyond the mark of the old cottages which formed the original substance of the village, had been erected to meet the wants of such as these. to a building of this class ethelberta now bent her steps, and the crush of the season having departed in the persons of three-quarters of the above-named visitors, who went away by a coach, a van, and a couple of wagonettes one morning, she found no difficulty in arranging for a red and yellow streaked villa, which was so bright and glowing that the sun seemed to be shining upon it even on a cloudy day, and the ruddiest native looked pale when standing by its walls. it was not without regret that she renounced the sailor's pretty cottage for this porticoed and balconied dwelling; but her lines were laid down clearly at last, and thither she removed forthwith. from this brand-new house did ethelberta pen the letter fixing the time at which she would be pleased to see lord mountclere. when the hour drew nigh enormous force of will was required to keep her perturbation down. she had not distinctly told picotee of the object of the viscount's visit, but picotee guessed nearly enough. ethelberta was upon the whole better pleased that the initiative had again come from him than if the first step in the new campaign had been her sending the explanatory letter, as intended and promised. she had thought almost directly after the interview at rouen that to enlighten him by writing a confession in cold blood, according to her first intention, would be little less awkward for her in the method of telling than in the facts to be told. so the last hair was arranged and the last fold adjusted, and she sat down to await a new page of her history. picotee sat with her, under orders to go into the next room when lord mountclere should call; and ethelberta determined to waste no time, directly he began to make advances, in clearing up the phenomena of her existence to him; to the end that no fact which, in the event of his taking her to wife, could be used against her as an example of concealment, might remain unrelated. the collapse of his attachment under the test might, however, form the grand climax of such a play as this. the day was rather cold for the season, and ethelberta sat by a fire; but the windows were open, and picotee was amusing herself on the balcony outside. the hour struck: ethelberta fancied she could hear the wheels of a carriage creeping up the steep ascent which led to the drive before the door. 'is it he?' she said quickly. 'no,' said picotee, whose indifference contrasted strangely with the restlessness of her who was usually the coolest. 'it is a man shaking down apples in the garden over the wall.' they lingered on till some three or four minutes had gone by. 'surely that's a carriage?' said ethelberta, then. 'i think it is,' said picotee outside, stretching her neck forward as far as she could. 'no, it is the men on the beach dragging up their boats; they expect wind to-night.' 'how wearisome! picotee, you may as well come inside; if he means to call he will; but he ought to be here by this time.' it was only once more, and that some time later that she again said 'listen!' 'that's not the noise of a carriage; it is the fizz of a rocket. the coastguardsmen are practising the life-apparatus to-day, to be ready for the autumn wrecks.' 'ah!' said ethelberta, her face clearing up. hers had not been a sweetheart's impatience, but her mood had intensified during these minutes of suspense to a harassing mistrust of her man-compelling power, which was, if that were possible, more gloomy than disappointed love. 'i know now where he is. that operation with the cradle-apparatus is very interesting, and he is stopping to see it. . . . but i shall not wait indoors much longer, whatever he may be stopping to see. it is very unaccountable, and vexing, after moving into this new house too. we were much more comfortable in the old one. in keeping any previous appointment in which i have been concerned he has been ridiculously early.' 'shall i run round?' said picotee, 'and if he is not watching them we will go out.' 'very well,' said her sister. the time of picotee's absence seemed an age. ethelberta heard the roar of another rocket, and still picotee did not return. 'what can the girl be thinking of?' she mused. . . . 'what a half-and-half policy mine has been! thinking of marrying for position, and yet not making it my rigid plan to secure the man the first moment that he made his offer. so i lose the comfort of having a soul above worldliness, and my compensation for not having it likewise!' a minute or two more and in came picotee. 'what has kept you so long--and how excited you look,' said ethelberta. 'i thought i would stay a little while, as i had never seen a rocket-apparatus,' said picotee, faintly and strangely. 'but is he there?' asked her sister impatiently. 'yes--he was. he's gone now!' 'lord mountclere?' 'no. there is no old man there at all. mr julian was there.' a little 'ah!' came from ethelberta, like a note from a storm-bird at night. she turned round and went into the back room. 'is mr. julian going to call here?' she inquired, coming forward again. 'no--he's gone by the steamboat. he was only passing through on his way to sandbourne, where he is gone to settle a small business relating to his father's affairs. he was not in knollsea ten minutes, owing to something which detained him on the way.' 'did he inquire for me?' 'no. and only think, ethelberta--such a remarkable thing has happened, though i nearly forgot to tell you. he says that coming along the road he was overtaken by a carriage, and when it had just passed him one of the horses shied, pushed the other down a slope, and overturned the carriage. one wheel came off and trundled to the bottom of the hill by itself. christopher of course ran up, and helped out of the carriage an old gentleman--now do you know what's likely?' 'it was lord mountclere. i am glad that's the cause,' said ethelberta involuntarily. 'i imagined you would suppose it to be lord mountclere. but mr. julian did not know the gentleman, and said nothing about who he might be.' 'did he describe him?' 'not much--just a little.' 'well?' 'he said he was a sly old dog apparently, to hear how he swore in whispers. this affair is what made mr. julian so late that he had no time to call here. lord mountclere's ankle--if it was lord mountclere--was badly sprained. but the servants were not injured beyond a scratch on the coachman's face. then they got another carriage and drove at once back again. it must be he, or else why is he not come? it is a pity, too, that mr. julian was hindered by this, so that there was no opportunity for him to bide a bit in knollsea.' ethelberta was not disposed to believe that christopher would have called, had time favoured him to the utmost. between himself and her there was that kind of division which is more insurmountable than enmity; for estrangements produced by good judgment will last when those of feeling break down in smiles. not the lovers who part in passion, but the lovers who part in friendship, are those who most frequently part for ever. 'did you tell mr. julian that the injured gentleman was possibly lord mountclere, and that he was coming here?' said ethelberta. 'i made no remark at all--i did not think of him till afterwards.' the inquiry was hardly necessary, for picotee's words would dry away like a brook in the sands when she held conversation with christopher. as they had anticipated, the sufferer was no other than their intending visitor. next morning there was a note explaining the accident, and expressing its writer's suffering from the cruel delay as greater than that from the swollen ankle, which was progressing favourably. nothing further was heard of lord mountclere for more than a week, when she received another letter, which put an end to her season of relaxation, and once more braced her to the contest. this epistle was very courteously written, and in point of correctness, propriety, and gravity, might have come from the quill of a bishop. herein the old nobleman gave a further description of the accident, but the main business of the communication was to ask her if, since he was not as yet very active, she would come to enckworth court and delight himself and a small group of friends who were visiting there. she pondered over the letter as she walked by the shore that day, and after some hesitation decided to go. . enckworth court it was on a dull, stagnant, noiseless afternoon of autumn that ethelberta first crossed the threshold of enckworth court. the daylight was so lowered by the impervious roof of cloud overhead that it scarcely reached further into lord mountclere's entrance-hall than to the splays of the windows, even but an hour or two after midday; and indoors the glitter of the fire reflected itself from the very panes, so inconsiderable were the opposing rays. enckworth court, in its main part, had not been standing more than a hundred years. at that date the weakened portions of the original mediaeval structure were pulled down and cleared away, old jambs being carried off for rick-staddles, and the foliated timbers of the hall roof making themselves useful as fancy chairs in the summer-houses of rising inns. a new block of masonry was built up from the ground of such height and lordliness that the remnant of the old pile left standing became as a mere cup-bearer and culinary menial beside it. the rooms in this old fragment, which had in times past been considered sufficiently dignified for dining-hall, withdrawing-room, and so on, were now reckoned barely high enough for sculleries, servants' hall, and laundries, the whole of which were arranged therein. the modern portion had been planned with such a total disregard of association, that the very rudeness of the contrast gave an interest to the mass which it might have wanted had perfect harmony been attempted between the old nucleus and its adjuncts, a probable result if the enlargement had taken place later on in time. the issue was that the hooded windows, simple string-courses, and random masonry of the gothic workman, stood elbow to elbow with the equal-spaced ashlar, architraves, and fasciae of the classic addition, each telling its distinct tale as to stage of thought and domestic habit without any of those artifices of blending or restoration by which the seeker for history in stones will be utterly hoodwinked in time to come. to the left of the door and vestibule which ethelberta passed through rose the principal staircase, constructed of a freestone so milk-white and delicately moulded as to be easily conceived in the lamplight as of biscuit-ware. who, unacquainted with the secrets of geometrical construction, could imagine that, hanging so airily there, to all appearance supported on nothing, were twenty or more tons dead weight of stone, that would have made a prison for an elephant if so arranged? the art which produced this illusion was questionable, but its success was undoubted. 'how lovely!' said ethelberta, as she looked at the fairy ascent. 'his staircase alone is worth my hand!' passing along by the colonnade, which partly fenced the staircase from the visitor, the saloon was reached, an apartment forming a double cube. about the left-hand end of this were grouped the drawing-rooms and library; while on the right was the dining-hall, with billiard, smoking, and gun rooms in mysterious remoteness beyond. without attempting to trace an analogy between a man and his mansion, it may be stated that everything here, though so dignified and magnificent, was not conceived in quite the true and eternal spirit of art. it was a house in which pugin would have torn his hair. those massive blocks of red-veined marble lining the hall--emulating in their surface-glitter the escalier de marbre at versailles--were cunning imitations in paint and plaster by workmen brought from afar for the purpose, at a prodigious expense, by the present viscount's father, and recently repaired and re- varnished. the dark green columns and pilasters corresponding were brick at the core. nay, the external walls, apparently of massive and solid freestone, were only veneered with that material, being, like the pillars, of brick within. to a stone mask worn by a brick face a story naturally appertained--one which has since done service in other quarters. when the vast addition had just been completed king george visited enckworth. its owner pointed out the features of its grand architectural attempt, and waited for commendation. 'brick, brick, brick,' said the king. the georgian lord mountclere blushed faintly, albeit to his very poll, and said nothing more about his house that day. when the king was gone he sent frantically for the craftsmen recently dismissed, and soon the green lawns became again the colour of a nine-elms cement wharf. thin freestone slabs were affixed to the whole series of fronts by copper cramps and dowels, each one of substance sufficient to have furnished a poor boy's pocket with pennies for a month, till not a speck of the original surface remained, and the edifice shone in all the grandeur of massive masonry that was not massive at all. but who remembered this save the builder and his crew? and as long as nobody knew the truth, pretence looked just as well. what was honest in enckworth court was that portion of the original edifice which still remained, now degraded to subservient uses. where the untitled mountclere of the white rose faction had spread his knees over the brands, when the place was a castle and not a court, the still- room maid now simmered her preserves; and where elizabethan mothers and daughters of that sturdy line had tapestried the love-scenes of isaac and jacob, boots and shoes were now cleaned and coals stowed away. lord mountclere had so far recovered from the sprain as to be nominally quite well, under pressure of a wish to receive guests. the sprain had in one sense served him excellently. he had now a reason, apart from that of years, for walking with his stick, and took care to let the reason be frequently known. to-day he entertained a larger number of persons than had been assembled within his walls for a great length of time. until after dinner ethelberta felt as if she were staying at an hotel. few of the people whom she had met at the meeting of the imperial association greeted her here. the viscount's brother was not present, but sir cyril blandsbury and his wife were there, a lively pair of persons, entertaining as actors, and friendly as dogs. beyond these all the faces and figures were new to her, though they were handsome and dashing enough to satisfy a court chronicler. ethelberta, in a dress sloped about as high over the shoulder as would have drawn approval from reynolds, and expostulation from lely, thawed and thawed each friend who came near her, and sent him or her away smiling; yet she felt a little surprise. she had seldom visited at a country-house, and knew little of the ordinary composition of a group of visitors within its walls; but the present assemblage seemed to want much of that old-fashioned stability and quaint monumental dignity she had expected to find under this historical roof. nobody of her entertainer's own rank appeared. not a single clergyman was there. a tendency to talk walpolean scandal about foreign courts was particularly manifest. and although tropical travellers, indian officers and their wives, courteous exiles, and descendants of irish kings, were infinitely more pleasant than lord mountclere's landed neighbours would probably have been, to such a cosmopolite as ethelberta a calm tory or old whig company would have given a greater treat. they would have struck as gratefully upon her senses as sylvan scenery after crags and cliffs, or silence after the roar of a cataract. it was evening, and all these personages at enckworth court were merry, snug, and warm within its walls. dinner-time had passed, and everything had gone on well, when mrs. tara o'fanagan, who had a gold-clamped tooth, which shone every now and then, asked ethelberta if she would amuse them by telling a story, since nobody present, except lord mountclere, had ever heard one from her lips. seeing that ethelberta had been working at that art as a profession, it can hardly be said that the question was conceived with tact, though it was put with grace. lord mountclere evidently thought it objectionable, for he looked unhappy. to only one person in the brilliant room did the request appear as a timely accident, and that was to ethelberta herself. her honesty was always making war upon her manoeuvres, and shattering their delicate meshes, to her great inconvenience and delay. thus there arose those devious impulses and tangential flights which spoil the works of every would-be schemer who instead of being wholly machine is half heart. one of these now was to show herself as she really was, not only to lord mountclere, but to his friends assembled, whom, in her ignorance, she respected more than they deserved, and so get rid of that self-reproach which had by this time reached a morbid pitch, through her over-sensitiveness to a situation in which a large majority of women and men would have seen no falseness. full of this curious intention, she quietly assented to the request, and laughingly bade them put themselves in listening order. 'an old story will suit us,' said the lady who had importuned her. 'we have never heard one.' 'no; it shall be quite new,' she replied. 'one not yet made public; though it soon will be.' the narrative began by introducing to their notice a girl of the poorest and meanest parentage, the daughter of a serving-man, and the fifth of ten children. she graphically recounted, as if they were her own, the strange dreams and ambitious longings of this child when young, her attempts to acquire education, partial failures, partial successes, and constant struggles; instancing how, on one of these occasions, the girl concealed herself under a bookcase of the library belonging to the mansion in which her father served as footman, and having taken with her there, like a young fawkes, matches and a halfpenny candle, was going to sit up all night reading when the family had retired, until her father discovered and prevented her scheme. then followed her experiences as nursery-governess, her evening lessons under self-selected masters, and her ultimate rise to a higher grade among the teaching sisterhood. next came another epoch. to the mansion in which she was engaged returned a truant son, between whom and the heroine an attachment sprang up. the master of the house was an ambitious gentleman just knighted, who, perceiving the state of their hearts, harshly dismissed the homeless governess, and rated the son, the consequence being that the youthful pair resolved to marry secretly, and carried their resolution into effect. the runaway journey came next, and then a moving description of the death of the young husband, and the terror of the bride. the guests began to look perplexed, and one or two exchanged whispers. this was not at all the kind of story that they had expected; it was quite different from her usual utterances, the nature of which they knew by report. ethelberta kept her eye upon lord mountclere. soon, to her amazement, there was that in his face which told her that he knew the story and its heroine quite well. when she delivered the sentence ending with the professedly fictitious words: 'i thus was reduced to great distress, and vainly cast about me for directions what to do,' lord mountclere's manner became so excited and anxious that it acted reciprocally upon ethelberta; her voice trembled, she moved her lips but uttered nothing. to bring the story up to the date of that very evening had been her intent, but it was beyond her power. the spell was broken; she blushed with distress and turned away, for the folly of a disclosure here was but too apparent. though every one saw that she had broken down, none of them appeared to know the reason why, or to have the clue to her performance. fortunately lord mountclere came to her aid. 'let the first part end here,' he said, rising and approaching her. 'we have been well entertained so far. i could scarcely believe that the story i was listening to was utterly an invention, so vividly does mrs. petherwin bring the scenes before our eyes. she must now be exhausted; we will have the remainder to-morrow.' they all agreed that this was well, and soon after fell into groups, and dispersed about the rooms. when everybody's attention was thus occupied lord mountclere whispered to ethelberta tremulously, 'don't tell more: you think too much of them: they are no better than you! will you meet me in the little winter garden two minutes hence? pass through that door, and along the glass passage.' he himself left the room by an opposite door. she had not set three steps in the warm snug octagon of glass and plants when he appeared on the other side. 'you knew it all before!' she said, looking keenly at him. 'who told you, and how long have you known it?' 'before yesterday or last week,' said lord mountclere. 'even before we met in france. why are you so surprised?' ethelberta had been surprised, and very greatly, to find him, as it were, secreted in the very rear of her position. that nothing she could tell was new to him was a good deal to think of, but it was little beside the recollection that he had actually made his first declaration in the face of that knowledge of her which she had supposed so fatal to all her matrimonial ambitions. 'and now only one point remains to be settled,' he said, taking her hand. 'you promised at rouen that at our next interview you would honour me with a decisive reply--one to make me happy for ever.' 'but my father and friends?' said she. 'are nothing to be concerned about. modern developments have shaken up the classes like peas in a hopper. an annuity, and a comfortable cottage--' 'my brothers are workmen.' 'manufacture is the single vocation in which a man's prospects may be said to be illimitable. hee-hee!--they may buy me up before they die! and now what stands in the way? it would take fifty alliances with fifty families so little disreputable as yours, darling, to drag mine down.' ethelberta had anticipated the scene, and settled her course; what had to be said and done here was mere formality; yet she had been unable to go straight to the assent required. however, after these words of self-depreciation, which were let fall as much for her own future ease of conscience as for his present warning, she made no more ado. 'i shall think it a great honour to be your wife,' she said simply. . knollsea--melchester the year was now moving on apace, but ethelberta and picotee chose to remain at knollsea, in the brilliant variegated brick and stone villa to which they had removed in order to be in keeping with their ascending fortunes. autumn had begun to make itself felt and seen in bolder and less subtle ways than at first. in the morning now, on coming downstairs, in place of a yellowish-green leaf or two lying in a corner of the lowest step, which had been the only previous symptoms around the house, she saw dozens of them playing at corkscrews in the wind, directly the door was opened. beyond, towards the sea, the slopes and scarps that had been muffled with a thick robe of cliff herbage, were showing their chill grey substance through the withered verdure, like the background of velvet whence the pile has been fretted away. unexpected breezes broomed and rasped the smooth bay in evanescent patches of stippled shade, and, besides the small boats, the ponderous lighters used in shipping stone were hauled up the beach in anticipation of the equinoctial attack. a few days after ethelberta's reception at enckworth, an improved stanhope, driven by lord mountclere himself, climbed up the hill until it was opposite her door. a few notes from a piano softly played reached his ear as he descended from his place: on being shown in to his betrothed, he could perceive that she had just left the instrument. moreover, a tear was visible in her eye when she came near him. they discoursed for several minutes in the manner natural between a defenceless young widow and an old widower in lord mountclere's position to whom she was plighted--a great deal of formal considerateness making itself visible on her part, and of extreme tenderness on his. while thus occupied, he turned to the piano, and casually glanced at a piece of music lying open upon it. some words of writing at the top expressed that it was the composer's original copy, presented by him, christopher julian, to the author of the song. seeing that he noticed the sheet somewhat lengthily, ethelberta remarked that it had been an offering made to her a long time ago--a melody written to one of her own poems. 'in the writing of the composer,' observed lord mountclere, with interest. 'an offering from the musician himself--very gratifying and touching. mr. christopher julian is the name i see upon it, i believe? i knew his father, dr. julian, a sandbourne man, if i recollect.' 'yes,' said ethelberta placidly. but it was really with an effort. the song was the identical one which christopher sent up to her from sandbourne when the fire of her hope burnt high for less material ends; and the discovery of the sheet among her music that day had started eddies of emotion for some time checked. 'i am sorry you have been grieved,' said lord mountclere, with gloomy restlessness. 'grieved?' said ethelberta. 'did i not see a tear there? or did my eyes deceive me?' 'you might have seen one.' 'ah! a tear, and a song. i think--' 'you naturally think that a woman who cries over a man's gift must be in love with the giver?' ethelberta looked him serenely in the face. lord mountclere's jealous suspicions were considerably shaken. 'not at all,' he said hastily, as if ashamed. 'one who cries over a song is much affected by its sentiment.' 'do you expect authors to cry over their own words?' she inquired, merging defence in attack. 'i am afraid they don't often do that.' 'you would make me uneasy.' 'on the contrary, i would reassure you. are you not still doubting?' she asked, with a pleasant smile. 'i cannot doubt you!' 'swear, like a faithful knight.' 'i swear, my fairy, my flower!' after this the old man appeared to be pondering; indeed, his thoughts could hardly be said to be present when he uttered the words. for though the tabernacle was getting shaky by reason of years and merry living, so that what was going on inside might often be guessed without by the movement of the hangings, as in a puppet-show with worn canvas, he could be quiet enough when scheming any plot of particular neatness, which had less emotion than impishness in it. such an innocent amusement he was pondering now. before leaving her, he asked if she would accompany him to a morning instrumental concert at melchester, which was to take place in the course of that week for the benefit of some local institution. 'melchester,' she repeated faintly, and observed him as searchingly as it was possible to do without exposing herself to a raking fire in return. could he know that christopher was living there, and was this said in prolongation of his recent suspicion? but lord mountclere's face gave no sign. 'you forget one fatal objection,' said she; 'the secrecy in which it is imperative that the engagement between us should be kept.' 'i am not known in melchester without my carriage; nor are you.' 'we may be known by somebody on the road.' 'then let it be arranged in this way. i will not call here to take you up, but will meet you at the station at anglebury; and we can go on together by train without notice. surely there can be no objection to that? it would be mere prudishness to object, since we are to become one so shortly.' he spoke a little impatiently. it was plain that he particularly wanted her to go to melchester. 'i merely meant that there was a chance of discovery in our going out together. and discovery means no marriage.' she was pale now, and sick at heart, for it seemed that the viscount must be aware that christopher dwelt at that place, and was about to test her concerning him. 'why does it mean no marriage?' said he. 'my father might, and almost certainly would, object to it. although he cannot control me, he might entreat me.' 'why would he object?' said lord mountclere uneasily, and somewhat haughtily. 'i don't know.' 'but you will be my wife--say again that you will.' 'i will.' he breathed. 'he will not object--hee-hee!' he said. 'o no--i think you will be mine now.' 'i have said so. but look to me all the same.' 'you malign yourself, dear one. but you will meet me at anglebury, as i wish, and go on to melchester with me?' 'i shall be pleased to--if my sister may accompany me.' 'ah--your sister. yes, of course.' they settled the time of the journey, and when the visit had been stretched out as long as it reasonably could be with propriety, lord mountclere took his leave. when he was again seated on the driving-phaeton which he had brought that day, lord mountclere looked gleeful, and shrewd enough in his own opinion to outwit mephistopheles. as soon as they were ascending a hill, and he could find time to free his hand, he pulled off his glove, and drawing from his pocket a programme of the melchester concert referred to, contemplated therein the name of one of the intended performers. the name was that of mr. c. julian. replacing it again, he looked ahead, and some time after murmured with wily mirth, 'an excellent test--a lucky thought!' nothing of importance occurred during the intervening days. at two o'clock on the appointed afternoon ethelberta stepped from the train at melchester with the viscount, who had met her as proposed; she was followed behind by picotee. the concert was to be held at the town-hall half-an-hour later. they entered a fly in waiting, and secure from recognition, were driven leisurely in that direction, picotee silent and absorbed with her own thoughts. 'there's the cathedral,' said lord mountclere humorously, as they caught a view of one of its towers through a street leading into the close. 'yes.' 'it boasts of a very fine organ.' 'ah.' 'and the organist is a clever young man.' 'oh.' lord mountclere paused a moment or two. 'by the way, you may remember that he is the mr. julian who set your song to music!' 'i recollect it quite well.' her heart was horrified and she thought lord mountclere must be developing into an inquisitor, which perhaps he was. but none of this reached her face. they turned in the direction of the hall, were set down, and entered. the large assembly-room set apart for the concert was upstairs, and it was possible to enter it in two ways: by the large doorway in front of the landing, or by turning down a side passage leading to council-rooms and subsidiary apartments of small size, which were allotted to performers in any exhibition; thus they could enter from one of these directly upon the platform, without passing through the audience. 'will you seat yourselves here?' said lord mountclere, who, instead of entering by the direct door, had brought the young women round into this green-room, as it may be called. 'you see we have come in privately enough; when the musicians arrive we can pass through behind them, and step down to our seats from the front.' the players could soon be heard tuning in the next room. then one came through the passage-room where the three waited, and went in, then another, then another. last of all came julian. ethelberta sat facing the door, but christopher, never in the least expecting her there, did not recognize her till he was quite inside. when he had really perceived her to be the one who had troubled his soul so many times and long, the blood in his face--never very much--passed off and left it, like the shade of a cloud. between them stood a table covered with green baize, which, reflecting upwards a band of sunlight shining across the chamber, flung upon his already white features the virescent hues of death. the poor musician, whose person, much to his own inconvenience, constituted a complete breviary of the gentle emotions, looked as if he were going to fall down in a faint. ethelberta flung at lord mountclere a look which clipped him like pincers: he never forgot it as long as he lived. 'this is your pretty jealous scheme--i see it!' she hissed to him, and without being able to control herself went across to julian. but a slight gasp came from behind the door where picotee had been sitting. ethelberta and lord mountclere looked that way: and behold, picotee had nearly swooned. ethelberta's show of passion went as quickly as it had come, for she felt that a splendid triumph had been put into her hands. 'now do you see the truth?' she whispered to lord mountclere without a drachm of feeling; pointing to christopher and then to picotee--as like as two snowdrops now. 'i do, i do,' murmured the viscount hastily. they both went forward to help christopher in restoring the fragile picotee: he had set himself to that task as suddenly as he possibly could to cover his own near approach to the same condition. not much help was required, the little girl's indisposition being quite momentary, and she sat up in the chair again. 'are you better?' said ethelberta to christopher. 'quite well--quite,' he said, smiling faintly. 'i am glad to see you. i must, i think, go into the next room now.' he bowed and walked out awkwardly. 'are you better, too?' she said to picotee. 'quite well,' said picotee. 'you are quite sure you know between whom the love lies now--eh?' ethelberta asked in a sarcastic whisper of lord mountclere. 'i am--beyond a doubt,' murmured the anxious nobleman; he feared that look of hers, which was not less dominant than irresistible. some additional moments given to thought on the circumstances rendered ethelberta still more indignant and intractable. she went out at the door by which they had entered, along the passage, and down the stairs. a shuffling footstep followed, but she did not turn her head. when they reached the bottom of the stairs the carriage had gone, their exit not being expected till two hours later. ethelberta, nothing daunted, swept along the pavement and down the street in a turbulent prance, lord mountclere trotting behind with a jowl reduced to a mere nothing by his concern at the discourtesy into which he had been lured by jealous whisperings. 'my dearest--forgive me; i confess i doubted you--but i was beside myself,' came to her ears from over her shoulder. but ethelberta walked on as before. lord mountclere sighed like a poet over a ledger. 'an old man--who is not very old--naturally torments himself with fears of losing--no, no--it was an innocent jest of mine--you will forgive a joke--hee-hee?' he said again, on getting no reply. 'you had no right to mistrust me!' 'i do not--you did not blench. you should have told me before that it was your sister and not yourself who was entangled with him.' 'you brought me to melchester on purpose to confront him!' 'yes, i did.' 'are you not ashamed?' 'i am satisfied. it is better to know the truth by any means than to die of suspense; better for us both--surely you see that?' they had by this time got to the end of a long street, and into a deserted side road by which the station could be indirectly reached. picotee appeared in the distance as a mere distracted speck of girlhood, following them because not knowing what else to do in her sickness of body and mind. once out of sight here, ethelberta began to cry. 'ethelberta,' said lord mountclere, in an agony of trouble, 'don't be vexed! it was an inconsiderate trick--i own it. do what you will, but do not desert me now! i could not bear it--you would kill me if you were to leave me. anything, but be mine.' ethelberta continued her way, and drying her eyes entered the station, where, on searching the time-tables, she found there would be no train for anglebury for the next two hours. then more slowly she turned towards the town again, meeting picotee and keeping in her company. lord mountclere gave up the chase, but as he wished to get into the town again, he followed in the same direction. when ethelberta had proceeded as far as the red lion hotel, she turned towards it with her companion, and being shown to a room, the two sisters shut themselves in. lord mountclere paused and entered the white hart, the rival hotel to the red lion, which stood in an adjoining street. having secluded himself in an apartment here, walked from window to window awhile, and made himself generally uncomfortable, he sat down to the writing materials on the table, and concocted a note:-- 'white hart hotel. 'my dear mrs. petherwin,--you do not mean to be so cruel as to break your plighted word to me? remember, there is no love without much jealousy, and lovers are ever full of sighs and misgiving. i have owned to as much contrition as can reasonably be expected. i could not endure the suspicion that you loved another.--yours always, 'mountclere.' this he sent, watching from the window its progress along the street. he awaited anxiously for an answer, and waited long. it was nearly twenty minutes before he could hear a messenger approaching the door. yes--she had actually sent a reply; he prized it as if it had been the first encouragement he had ever in his life received from woman:-- 'my lord' (wrote ethelberta),--'i am not prepared at present to enter into the question of marriage at all. the incident which has occurred affords me every excuse for withdrawing my promise, since it was given under misapprehensions on a point that materially affects my happiness. 'e. petherwin.' 'ho-ho-ho--miss hoity-toity!' said lord mountclere, trotting up and down. but, remembering it was her june against his november, this did not last long, and he frantically replied:-- 'my darling,--i cannot release you--i must do anything to keep my treasure. will you not see me for a few minutes, and let bygones go to the winds?' was ever a thrush so safe in a cherry net before! the messenger came back with the information that mrs. petherwin had taken a walk to the close, her companion alone remaining at the hotel. there being nothing else left for the viscount to do, he put on his hat, and went out on foot in the same direction. he had not walked far when he saw ethelberta moving slowly along the high street before him. ethelberta was at this hour wandering without any fixed intention beyond that of consuming time. she was very wretched, and very indifferent: the former when thinking of her past, the latter when thinking of the days to come. while she walked thus unconscious of the streets, and their groups of other wayfarers, she saw christopher emerge from a door not many paces in advance, and close it behind him: he stood for a moment on the step before descending into the road. she could not, even had she wished it, easily check her progress without rendering the chance of his perceiving her still more certain. but she did not wish any such thing, and it made little difference, for he had already seen her in taking his survey round, and came down from the door to her side. it was impossible for anything formal to pass between them now. 'you are not at the concert, mr. julian?' she said. 'i am glad to have a better opportunity of speaking to you, and of asking for your sister. unfortunately there is not time for us to call upon her to-day.' 'thank you, but it makes no difference,' said julian, with somewhat sad reserve. 'i will tell her i have met you; she is away from home just at present.' and finding that ethelberta did not rejoin immediately he observed, 'the chief organist, old dr. breeve, has taken my place at the concert, as it was arranged he should do after the opening part. i am now going to the cathedral for the afternoon service. you are going there too?' 'i thought of looking at the interior for a moment.' so they went on side by side, saying little; for it was a situation in which scarcely any appropriate thing could be spoken. ethelberta was the less reluctant to walk in his company because of the provocation to skittishness that lord mountclere had given, a provocation which she still resented. but she was far from wishing to increase his jealousy; and yet this was what she was doing, lord mountclere being a perturbed witness from behind of all that was passing now. they turned the corner of the short street of connection which led under an archway to the cathedral close, the old peer dogging them still. christopher seemed to warm up a little, and repeated the invitation. 'you will come with your sister to see us before you leave?' he said. 'we have tea at six.' 'we shall have left melchester before that time. i am now only waiting for the train.' 'you two have not come all the way from knollsea alone?' 'part of the way,' said ethelberta evasively. 'and going back alone?' 'no. only for the last five miles. at least that was the arrangement--i am not quite sure if it holds good.' 'you don't wish me to see you safely in the train?' 'it is not necessary: thank you very much. we are well used to getting about the world alone, and from melchester to knollsea is no serious journey, late or early. . . . yet i think i ought, in honesty, to tell you that we are not entirely by ourselves in melchester to-day.' 'i remember i saw your friend--relative--in the room at the town-hall. it did not occur to my mind for the moment that he was any other than a stranger standing there.' 'he is not a relative,' she said, with perplexity. 'i hardly know, christopher, how to explain to you my position here to-day, because of some difficulties that have arisen since we have been in the town, which may alter it entirely. on that account i will be less frank with you than i should like to be, considering how long we have known each other. it would be wrong, however, if i were not to tell you that there has been a possibility of my marriage with him.' 'the elderly gentleman?' 'yes. and i came here in his company, intending to return with him. but you shall know all soon. picotee shall write to faith.' 'i always think the cathedral looks better from this point than from the point usually chosen by artists,' he said, with nervous quickness, directing her glance upwards to the silent structure, now misty and unrelieved by either high light or deep shade. 'we get the grouping of the chapels and choir-aisles more clearly shown--and the whole culminates to a more perfect pyramid from this spot--do you think so?' 'yes. i do.' a little further, and christopher stopped to enter, when ethelberta bade him farewell. 'i thought at one time that our futures might have been different from what they are apparently becoming,' he said then, regarding her as a stall-reader regards the brilliant book he cannot afford to buy. 'but one gets weary of repining about that. i wish picotee and yourself could see us oftener; i am as confirmed a bachelor now as faith is an old maid. i wonder if--should the event you contemplate occur--you and he will ever visit us, or we shall ever visit you!' christopher was evidently imagining the elderly gentleman to be some retired farmer, or professional man already so intermixed with the metamorphic classes of society as not to be surprised or inconvenienced by her beginnings; one who wished to secure ethelberta as an ornament to his parlour fire in a quiet spirit, and in no intoxicated mood regardless of issues. she could scarcely reply to his supposition; and the parting was what might have been predicted from a conversation so carefully controlled. ethelberta, as she had intended, now went on further, and entering the nave began to inspect the sallow monuments which lined the grizzled pile. she did not perceive amid the shadows an old gentleman who had crept into the mouldy place as stealthily as a worm into a skull, and was keeping himself carefully beyond her observation. she continued to regard feature after feature till the choristers had filed in from the south side, and peals broke forth from the organ on the black oaken mass at the junction of nave and choir, shaking every cobweb in the dusky vaults, and ethelberta's heart no less. she knew the fingers that were pressing out those rolling sounds, and knowing them, became absorbed in tracing their progress. to go towards the organ-loft was an act of unconsciousness, and she did not pause till she stood almost beneath it. ethelberta was awakened from vague imaginings by the close approach of the old gentleman alluded to, who spoke with a great deal of agitation. 'i have been trying to meet with you,' said lord mountclere. 'come, let us be friends again!--ethelberta, i must not lose you! you cannot mean that the engagement shall be broken off?' he was far too desirous to possess her at any price now to run a second risk of exasperating her, and forbore to make any allusion to the recent pantomime between herself and christopher that he had beheld, though it might reasonably have filled him with dread and petulance. 'i do not mean anything beyond this,' said she, 'that i entirely withdraw from it on the faintest sign that you have not abandoned such miserable jealous proceedings as those you adopted to-day.' 'i have quite abandoned them. will you come a little further this way, and walk in the aisle? you do still agree to be mine?' 'if it gives you any pleasure, i do.' 'yes, yes. i implore that the marriage may be soon--very soon.' the viscount spoke hastily, for the notes of the organ which were plunging into their ears ever and anon from the hands of his young rival seemed inconveniently and solemnly in the way of his suit. 'well, lord mountclere?' 'say in a few days?--it is the only thing that will satisfy me.' 'i am absolutely indifferent as to the day. if it pleases you to have it early i am willing.' 'dare i ask that it may be this week?' said the delighted old man. 'i could not say that.' 'but you can name the earliest day?' 'i cannot now. we had better be going from here, i think.' the cathedral was filling with shadows, and cold breathings came round the piers, for it was november, when night very soon succeeds noon in spots where noon is sobered to the pallor of eve. but the service was not yet over, and before quite leaving the building ethelberta cast one other glance towards the organ and thought of him behind it. at this moment her attention was arrested by the form of her sister picotee, who came in at the north door, closed the lobby-wicket softly, and went lightly forward to the choir. when within a few yards of it she paused by a pillar, and lingered there looking up at the organ as ethelberta had done. no sound was coming from the ponderous mass of tubes just then; but in a short space a whole crowd of tones spread from the instrument to accompany the words of a response. picotee started at the burst of music as if taken in a dishonest action, and moved on in a manner intended to efface the lover's loiter of the preceding moments from her own consciousness no less than from other people's eyes. 'do you see that?' said ethelberta. 'that little figure is my dearest sister. could you but ensure a marriage between her and him she listens to, i would do anything you wish!' 'that is indeed a gracious promise,' said lord mountclere. 'and would you agree to what i asked just now?' 'yes.' 'when?' a gleeful spark accompanied this. 'as you requested.' 'this week? the day after to-morrow?' 'if you will. but remember what lies on your side of the contract. i fancy i have given you a task beyond your powers.' 'well, darling, we are at one at last,' said lord mountclere, rubbing his hand against his side. 'and if my task is heavy and i cannot guarantee the result, i can make it very probable. marry me on friday--the day after to-morrow--and i will do all that money and influence can effect to bring about their union.' 'you solemnly promise? you will never cease to give me all the aid in your power until the thing is done?' 'i do solemnly promise--on the conditions named.' 'very good. you will have ensured my fulfilment of my promise before i can ensure yours; but i take your word.' 'you will marry me on friday! give me your hand upon it.' she gave him her hand. 'is it a covenant?' he asked. 'it is,' said she. lord mountclere warmed from surface to centre as if he had drunk of hippocras, and, after holding her hand for some moments, raised it gently to his lips. 'two days and you are mine,' he said. 'that i believe i never shall be.' 'never shall be? why, darling?' 'i don't know. some catastrophe will prevent it. i shall be dead perhaps.' 'you distress me. ah,--you meant me--you meant that i should be dead, because you think i am old! but that is a mistake--i am not very old!' 'i thought only of myself--nothing of you.' 'yes, i know. dearest, it is dismal and chilling here--let us go.' ethelberta mechanically moved with him, and felt there was no retreating now. in the meantime the young ladykin whom the solemn vowing concerned had lingered round the choir screen, as if fearing to enter, yet loth to go away. the service terminated, the heavy books were closed, doors were opened, and the feet of the few persons who had attended evensong began pattering down the paved alleys. not wishing picotee to know that the object of her secret excursion had been discovered, ethelberta now stepped out of the west doorway with the viscount before picotee had emerged from the other; and they walked along the path together until she overtook them. 'i fear it becomes necessary for me to stay in melchester to-night,' said lord mountclere. 'i have a few matters to attend to here, as the result of our arrangements. but i will first accompany you as far as anglebury, and see you safely into a carriage there that shall take you home. to- morrow i will drive to knollsea, when we will make the final preparations.' ethelberta would not have him go so far and back again, merely to attend upon her; hence they parted at the railway, with due and correct tenderness; and when the train had gone, lord mountclere returned into the town on the special business he had mentioned, for which there remained only the present evening and the following morning, if he were to call upon her in the afternoon of the next day--the day before the wedding--now so recklessly hastened on his part, and so coolly assented to on hers. by the time that the two young people had started it was nearly dark. some portions of the railway stretched through little copses and plantations where, the leaf-shedding season being now at its height, red and golden patches of fallen foliage lay on either side of the rails; and as the travellers passed, all these death-stricken bodies boiled up in the whirlwind created by the velocity, and were sent flying right and left of them in myriads, a clean-fanned track being left behind. picotee was called from the observation of these phenomena by a remark from her sister: 'picotee, the marriage is to be very early indeed. it is to be the day after to-morrow--if it can. nevertheless i don't believe in the fact--i cannot.' 'did you arrange it so? nobody can make you marry so soon.' 'i agreed to the day,' murmured ethelberta languidly. 'how can it be? the gay dresses and the preparations and the people--how can they be collected in the time, berta? and so much more of that will be required for a lord of the land than for a common man. o, i can't think it possible for a sister of mine to marry a lord!' 'and yet it has been possible any time this last month or two, strange as it seems to you. . . . it is to be not only a plain and simple wedding, without any lofty appliances, but a secret one--as secret as if i were some under-age heiress to an indian fortune, and he a young man of nothing a year.' 'has lord mountclere said it must be so private? i suppose it is on account of his family.' 'no. i say so; and it is on account of my family. father might object to the wedding, i imagine, from what he once said, or he might be much disturbed about it; so i think it better that he and the rest should know nothing till all is over. you must dress again as my sister to-morrow, dear. lord mountclere is going to pay us an early visit to conclude necessary arrangements.' 'o, the life as a lady at enckworth court! the flowers, the woods, the rooms, the pictures, the plate, and the jewels! horses and carriages rattling and prancing, seneschals and pages, footmen hopping up and hopping down. it will be glory then!' 'we might hire our father as one of my retainers, to increase it,' said ethelberta drily. picotee's countenance fell. 'how shall we manage all about that? 'tis terrible, really!' 'the marriage granted, those things will right themselves by time and weight of circumstances. you take a wrong view in thinking of glories of that sort. my only hope is that my life will be quite private and simple, as will best become my inferiority and lord mountclere's staidness. such a splendid library as there is at enckworth, picotee--quartos, folios, history, verse, elzevirs, caxtons--all that has been done in literature from moses down to scott--with such companions i can do without all other sorts of happiness.' 'and you will not go to town from easter to lammastide, as other noble ladies do?' asked the younger girl, rather disappointed at this aspect of a viscountess's life. 'i don't know.' 'but you will give dinners, and travel, and go to see his friends, and have them to see you?' 'i don't know.' 'will you not be, then, as any other peeress; and shall not i be as any other peeress's sister?' 'that, too, i do not know. all is mystery. nor do i even know that the marriage will take place. i feel that it may not; and perhaps so much the better, since the man is a stranger to me. i know nothing whatever of his nature, and he knows nothing of mine.' . melchester (continued) the commotion wrought in julian's mind by the abrupt incursion of ethelberta into his quiet sphere was thorough and protracted. the witchery of her presence he had grown strong enough to withstand in part; but her composed announcement that she had intended to marry another, and, as far as he could understand, was intending it still, added a new chill to the old shade of disappointment which custom was day by day enabling him to endure. during the whole interval in which he had produced those diapason blasts, heard with such inharmonious feelings by the three auditors outside the screen, his thoughts had wandered wider than his notes in conjectures on the character and position of the gentleman seen in ethelberta's company. owing to his assumption that lord mountclere was but a stranger who had accidentally come in at the side door, christopher had barely cast a glance upon him, and the wide difference between the years of the viscount and those of his betrothed was not so particularly observed as to raise that point to an item in his objections now. lord mountclere was dressed with all the cunning that could be drawn from the metropolis by money and reiterated dissatisfaction; he prided himself on his upright carriage; his stick was so thin that the most malevolent could not insinuate that it was of any possible use in walking; his teeth had put on all the vigour and freshness of a second spring. hence his look was the slowest of possible clocks in respect of his age, and his manner was equally as much in the rear of his appearance. christopher was now over five-and-twenty. he was getting so well accustomed to the spectacle of a world passing him by and splashing him with its wheels that he wondered why he had ever minded it. his habit of dreaming instead of doing had led him up to a curious discovery. it is no new thing for a man to fathom profundities by indulging humours: the active, the rapid, the people of splendid momentum, have been surprised to behold what results attend the lives of those whose usual plan for discharging their active labours has been to postpone them indefinitely. certainly, the immediate result in the present case was, to all but himself, small and invisible; but it was of the nature of highest things. what he had learnt was that a woman who has once made a permanent impression upon a man cannot altogether deny him her image by denying him her company, and that by sedulously cultivating the acquaintance of this creature of contemplation she becomes to him almost a living soul. hence a sublimated ethelberta accompanied him everywhere--one who never teased him, eluded him, or disappointed him: when he smiled she smiled, when he was sad she sorrowed. he may be said to have become the literal duplicate of that whimsical unknown rhapsodist who wrote of his own similar situation-- 'by absence this good means i gain, that i can catch her, where none can watch her, in some close corner of my brain: there i embrace and kiss her; and so i both enjoy and miss her.' this frame of mind naturally induced an amazing abstraction in the organist, never very vigilant at the best of times. he would stand and look fixedly at a frog in a shady pool, and never once think of batrachians, or pause by a green bank to split some tall blade of grass into filaments without removing it from its stalk, passing on ignorant that he had made a cat-o'-nine-tails of a graceful slip of vegetation. he would hear the cathedral clock strike one, and go the next minute to see what time it was. 'i never seed such a man as mr. julian is,' said the head blower. 'he'll meet me anywhere out-of-doors, and never wink or nod. you'd hardly expect it. i don't find fault, but you'd hardly expect it, seeing how i play the same instrument as he do himself, and have done it for so many years longer than he. how i have indulged that man, too! if 'tis pedals for two martel hours of practice i never complain; and he has plenty of vagaries. when 'tis hot summer weather there's nothing will do for him but choir, great, and swell altogether, till yer face is in a vapour; and on a frosty winter night he'll keep me there while he tweedles upon the twelfth and sixteenth till my arms be scrammed for want of motion. and never speak a word out-of-doors.' somebody suggested that perhaps christopher did not notice his coadjutor's presence in the street; and time proved to the organ-blower that the remark was just. whenever christopher caught himself at these vacuous tricks he would be struck with admiration of ethelberta's wisdom, foresight, and self-command in refusing to wed such an incapable man: he felt that he ought to be thankful that a bright memory of her was not also denied to him, and resolved to be content with it as a possession, since it was as much of her as he could decently maintain. wrapped thus in a humorous sadness he passed the afternoon under notice, and in the evening went home to faith, who still lived with him, and showed no sign of ever being likely to do otherwise. their present place and mode of life suited her well. she revived at melchester like an exotic sent home again. the leafy close, the climbing buttresses, the pondering ecclesiastics, the great doors, the singular keys, the whispered talk, echoes of lonely footsteps, the sunset shadow of the tall steeple, reaching further into the town than the good bishop's teaching, and the general complexion of a spot where morning had the stillness of evening and spring some of the tones of autumn, formed a proper background to a person constituted as faith, who, like miss hepzibah pyncheon's chicken, possessed in miniature all the antiquity of her progenitors. after tea christopher went into the streets, as was frequently his custom, less to see how the world crept on there than to walk up and down for nothing at all. it had been market-day, and remnants of the rural population that had visited the town still lingered at corners, their toes hanging over the edge of the pavement, and their eyes wandering about the street. the angle which formed the turning-point of christopher's promenade was occupied by a jeweller's shop, of a standing which completely outshone every other shop in that or any trade throughout the town. indeed, it was a staple subject of discussion in melchester how a shop of such pretensions could find patronage sufficient to support its existence in a place which, though well populated, was not fashionable. it had not long been established there, and was the enterprise of an incoming man whose whole course of procedure seemed to be dictated by an intention to astonish the native citizens very considerably before he had done. nearly everything was glass in the frontage of this fairy mart, and its contents glittered like the hammochrysos stone. the panes being of plate-glass, and the shop having two fronts, a diagonal view could be had through it from one to the other of the streets to which it formed a corner. this evening, as on all evenings, a flood of radiance spread from the window-lamps into the thick autumn air, so that from a distance that corner appeared as the glistening nucleus of all the light in the town. towards it idle men and women unconsciously bent their steps, and closed in upon the panes like night-birds upon the lantern of a lighthouse. when christopher reached the spot there stood close to the pavement a plain close carriage, apparently waiting for some person who was purchasing inside. christopher would hardly have noticed this had he not also perceived, pressed against the glass of the shop window, an unusual number of local noses belonging to overgrown working lads, tosspots, an idiot, the ham-smoker's assistant with his sleeves rolled up, a scot-and- lot freeholder, three or four seamstresses, the young woman who brought home the washing, and so on. the interest of these gazers in some proceedings within, which by reason of the gaslight were as public as if carried on in the open air, was very great. 'yes, that's what he's a buying o'--haw, haw!' said one of the young men, as the shopman removed from the window a gorgeous blue velvet tray of wedding-rings, and laid it on the counter. ''tis what you may come to yerself, sooner or later, god have mercy upon ye; and as such no scoffing matter,' said an older man. 'faith, i'd as lief cry as laugh to see a man in that corner.' 'he's a gent getting up in years too. he must hev been through it a few times afore, seemingly, to sit down and buy the tools so cool as that.' 'well, no. see what the shyest will do at such times. you bain't yerself then; no man living is hisself then.' 'true,' said the ham-smoker's man. ''tis a thought to look at that a chap will take all this trouble to get a woman into his house, and a twelvemonth after would as soon hear it thunder as hear her sing!' the policeman standing near was a humane man, through having a young family he could hardly keep, and he hesitated about telling them to move on. christopher had before this time perceived that the articles were laid down before an old gentleman who was seated in the shop, and that the gentleman was none other than he who had been with ethelberta in the concert-room. the discovery was so startling that, constitutionally indisposed as he was to stand and watch, he became as glued to the spot as the other idlers. finding himself now for the first time directly confronting the preliminaries of ethelberta's marriage to a stranger, he was left with far less equanimity than he could have supposed possible to the situation. 'so near the time!' he said, and looked hard at lord mountclere. christopher had now a far better opportunity than before for observing ethelberta's betrothed. apart from any bias of jealousy, disappointment, or mortification, he was led to judge that this was not quite the man to make ethelberta happy. he had fancied her companion to be a man under fifty; he was now visibly sixty or more. and it was not the sort of sexagenarianism beside which a young woman's happiness can sometimes contrive to keep itself alive in a quiet sleepy way. suddenly it occurred to him that this was the man whom he had helped in the carriage accident on the way to knollsea. he looked again. by no means undignified, the face presented that combination of slyness and jocundity which we are accustomed to imagine of the canonical jolly- dogs in mediaeval tales. the gamesome curate of meudon might have supplied some parts of the countenance; cunning friar tuck the remainder. nothing but the viscount's constant habit of going to church every sunday morning when at his country residence kept unholiness out of his features, for though he lived theologically enough on the sabbath, as it became a man in his position to do, he was strikingly mundane all the rest of the week, always preferring the devil to god in his oaths. and nothing but antecedent good-humour prevented the short fits of crossness incident to his passing infirmities from becoming established. his look was exceptionally jovial now, and the corners of his mouth twitched as the telegraph-needles of a hundred little erotic messages from his heart to his brain. anybody could see that he was a merry man still, who loved good company, warming drinks, nymph-like shapes, and pretty words, in spite of the disagreeable suggestions he received from the pupils of his eyes, and the joints of his lively limbs, that imps of mischief were busy sapping and mining in those regions, with the view of tumbling him into a certain cool cellar under the church aisle. in general, if a lover can find any ground at all for serenity in the tide of an elderly rival's success, he finds it in the fact itself of that ancientness. the other side seems less a rival than a makeshift. but christopher no longer felt this, and the significant signs before his eyes of the imminence of ethelberta's union with this old hero filled him with restless dread. true, the gentleman, as he appeared illuminated by the jeweller's gas-jets, seemed more likely to injure ethelberta by indulgence than by severity, while her beauty lasted; but there was a nameless something in him less tolerable than this. the purchaser having completed his dealings with the goldsmith, was conducted to the door by the master of the shop, and into the carriage, which was at once driven off up the street. christopher now much desired to know the name of the man whom a nice chain of circumstantial evidence taught him to regard as the happy winner where scores had lost. he was grieved that ethelberta's confessed reserve should have extended so far as to limit her to mere indefinite hints of marriage when they were talking almost on the brink of the wedding-day. that the ceremony was to be a private one--which it probably would be because of the disparity of ages--did not in his opinion justify her secrecy. he had shown himself capable of a transmutation as valuable as it is rare in men, the change from pestering lover to staunch friend, and this was all he had got for it. but even an old lover sunk to an indifferentist might have been tempted to spend an unoccupied half-hour in discovering particulars now, and christopher had not lapsed nearly so far as to absolute unconcern. that evening, however, nothing came in his way to enlighten him. but the next day, when skirting the close on his ordinary duties, he saw the same carriage standing at a distance, and paused to behold the same old gentleman come from a well-known office and re-enter the vehicle--lord mountclere, in fact, in earnest pursuit of the business of yesternight, having just pocketed a document in which romance, rashness, law, and gospel are so happily made to work together that it may safely be regarded as the neatest compromise which has ever been invented since adam sinned. this time julian perceived that the brougham was one belonging to the white hart hotel, which lord mountclere was using partly from the necessities of these hasty proceedings, and also because, by so doing, he escaped the notice that might have been bestowed upon his own equipage, or men-servants, the mountclere hammer-cloths being known in melchester. christopher now walked towards the hotel, leisurely, yet with anxiety. he inquired of a porter what people were staying there that day, and was informed that they had only one person in the house, lord mountclere, whom sudden and unexpected business had detained in melchester since the previous day. christopher lingered to hear no more. he retraced the street much more quickly than he had come; and he only said, 'lord mountclere--it must never be!' as soon as he entered the house, faith perceived that he was greatly agitated. he at once told her of his discovery, and she exclaimed, 'what a brilliant match!' 'o faith,' said christopher, 'you don't know! you are far from knowing. it is as gloomy as midnight. good god, can it be possible?' faith blinked in alarm, without speaking. 'did you never hear anything of lord mountclere when we lived at sandbourne?' 'i knew the name--no more.' 'no, no--of course you did not. well, though i never saw his face, to my knowledge, till a short time ago, i know enough to say that, if earnest representations can prevent it, this marriage shall not be. father knew him, or about him, very well; and he once told me--what i cannot tell you. fancy, i have seen him three times--yesterday, last night, and this morning--besides helping him on the road some weeks ago, and never once considered that he might be lord mountclere. he is here almost in disguise, one may say; neither man nor horse is with him; and his object accounts for his privacy. i see how it is--she is doing this to benefit her brothers and sisters, if possible; but she ought to know that if she is miserable they will never be happy. that's the nature of women--they take the form for the essence, and that's what she is doing now. i should think her guardian angel must have quitted her when she agreed to a marriage which may tear her heart out like a claw.' 'you are too warm about it, kit--it cannot be so bad as that. it is not the thing, but the sensitiveness to the thing, which is the true measure of its pain. perhaps what seems so bad to you falls lightly on her mind. a campaigner in a heavy rain is not more uncomfortable than we are in a slight draught; and ethelberta, fortified by her sapphires and gold cups and wax candles, will not mind facts which look like spectres to us outside. a title will turn troubles into romances, and she will shine as an interesting viscountess in spite of them.' the discussion with faith was not continued, christopher stopping the argument by saying that he had a good mind to go off at once to knollsea, and show her her danger. but till the next morning ethelberta was certainly safe; no marriage was possible anywhere before then. he passed the afternoon in a state of great indecision, constantly reiterating, 'i will go!' . workshops--an inn--the street on an extensive plot of ground, lying somewhere between the thames and the kensington squares, stood the premises of messrs. nockett and perch, builders and contractors. the yard with its workshops formed part of one of those frontier lines between mangy business and garnished domesticity that occur in what are called improving neighbourhoods. we are accustomed to regard increase as the chief feature in a great city's progress, its well-known signs greeting our eyes on every outskirt. slush- ponds may be seen turning into basement-kitchens; a broad causeway of shattered earthenware smothers plots of budding gooseberry-bushes and vegetable trenches, foundations following so closely upon gardens that the householder may be expected to find cadaverous sprouts from overlooked potatoes rising through the chinks of his cellar floor. but the other great process, that of internal transmutation, is not less curious than this encroachment of grey upon green. its first erections are often only the milk-teeth of a suburb, and as the district rises in dignity they are dislodged by those which are to endure. slightness becomes supplanted by comparative solidity, commonness by novelty, lowness and irregularity by symmetry and height. an observer of the precinct which has been named as an instance in point might have stood under a lamp-post and heard simultaneously the peal of the visitor's bell from the new terrace on the right hand, and the stroke of tools from the musty workshops on the left. waggons laden with deals came up on this side, and landaus came down on the other--the former to lumber heavily through the old-established contractors' gates, the latter to sweep fashionably into the square. about twelve o'clock on the day following lord mountclere's exhibition of himself to christopher in the jeweller's shop at melchester, and almost at the identical time when the viscount was seen to come from the office for marriage-licences in the same place, a carriage drove nearly up to the gates of messrs. nockett and co.'s yard. a gentleman stepped out and looked around. he was a man whose years would have been pronounced as five-and-forty by the friendly, fifty by the candid, fifty-two or three by the grim. he was as handsome a study in grey as could be seen in town, there being far more of the raven's plumage than of the gull's in the mixture as yet; and he had a glance of that practised sort which can measure people, weigh them, repress them, encourage them to sprout and blossom as a march sun encourages crocuses, ask them questions, give them answers--in short, a glance that could do as many things as an american cooking-stove or a multum-in-parvo pocket-knife. but, as with most men of the world, this was mere mechanism: his actual emotions were kept so far within his person that they were rarely heard or seen near his features. on reading the builders' names over the gateway he entered the yard, and asked at the office if solomon chickerel was engaged on the premises. the clerk was going to be very attentive, but finding the visitor had come only to speak to a workman, his tense attitude slackened a little, and he merely signified the foot of a flemish ladder on the other side of the yard, saying, 'you will find him, sir, up there in the joiner's shop.' when the man in the black coat reached the top he found himself at the end of a long apartment as large as a chapel and as low as a malt-room, across which ran parallel carpenters' benches to the number of twenty or more, a gangway being left at the side for access throughout. behind every bench there stood a man or two, planing, fitting, or chiselling, as the case might be. the visitor paused for a moment, as if waiting for some cessation of their violent motions and uproar till he could make his errand known. he waited ten seconds, he waited twenty; but, beyond that a quick look had been thrown upon him by every pair of eyes, the muscular performances were in no way interrupted: every one seemed oblivious of his presence, and absolutely regardless of his wish. in truth, the texture of that salmon-coloured skin could be seen to be aristocratic without a microscope, and the exceptious artizan has an offhand way when contrasts are made painfully strong by an idler of this kind coming, gloved and brushed, into the very den where he is sweating and muddling in his shirt-sleeves. the gentleman from the carriage then proceeded down the workshop, wading up to his knees in a sea of shavings, and bruising his ankles against corners of board and sawn-off blocks, that lay hidden like reefs beneath. at the ninth bench he made another venture. 'sol chickerel?' said the man addressed, as he touched his plane-iron upon the oilstone. 'he's one of them just behind.' 'damn it all, can't one of you show me?' the visitor angrily observed, for he had been used to more attention than this. 'here, point him out.' he handed the man a shilling. 'no trouble to do that,' said the workman; and he turned and signified sol by a nod without moving from his place. the stranger entered sol's division, and, nailing him with his eye, said at once: 'i want to speak a few words with you in private. is not a mrs. petherwin your sister?' sol started suspiciously. 'has anything happened to her?' he at length said hurriedly. 'o no. it is on a business matter that i have called. you need not mind owning the relationship to me--the secret will be kept. i am the brother of one whom you may have heard of from her--lord mountclere.' 'i have not. but if you will wait a minute, sir--' he went to a little glazed box at the end of the shop, where the foreman was sitting, and, after speaking a few words to this person, sol led mountclere to the door, and down the ladder. 'i suppose we cannot very well talk here, after all?' said the gentleman, when they reached the yard, and found several men moving about therein. 'perhaps we had better go to some room--the nearest inn will answer the purpose, won't it?' 'excellently.' 'there's the "green bushes" over the way. they have a very nice private room upstairs.' 'yes, that will do.' and passing out of the yard, the man with the glance entered the inn with sol, where they were shown to the parlour as requested. while the waiter was gone for some wine, which mountclere ordered, the more ingenuous of the two resumed the conversation by saying, awkwardly: 'yes, mrs. petherwin is my sister, as you supposed, sir; but on her account i do not let it be known.' 'indeed,' said mountclere. 'well, i came to see you in order to speak of a matter which i thought you might know more about than i do, for it has taken me quite by surprise. my brother, lord mountclere, is, it seems, to be privately married to mrs. petherwin to-morrow.' 'is that really the fact?' said sol, becoming quite shaken. 'i had no thought that such a thing could be possible!' 'it is imminent.' 'father has told me that she has lately got to know some nobleman; but i never supposed there could be any meaning in that.' 'you were altogether wrong,' said mountclere, leaning back in his chair and looking at sol steadily. 'do you feel it to be a matter upon which you will congratulate her?' 'a very different thing!' said sol vehemently. 'though he is your brother, sir, i must say this, that i would rather she married the poorest man i know.' 'why?' 'from what my father has told me of him, he is not--a more desirable brother-in-law to me than i shall be in all likelihood to him. what business has a man of that character to marry berta, i should like to ask?' 'that's what i say,' returned mountclere, revealing his satisfaction at sol's estimate of his noble brother: it showed that he had calculated well in coming here. 'my brother is getting old, and he has lived strangely: your sister is a highly respectable young lady.' 'and he is not respectable, you mean? i know he is not. i worked near enckworth once.' 'i cannot say that,' returned mountclere. possibly a certain fraternal feeling repressed a direct assent: and yet this was the only representation which could be expected to prejudice the young man against the wedding, if he were such an one as the visitor supposed sol to be--a man vulgar in sentiment and ambition, but pure in his anxiety for his sister's happiness. 'at any rate, we are agreed in thinking that this would be an unfortunate marriage for both,' added mountclere. 'about both i don't know. it may be a good thing for him. when do you say it is to be, sir--to-morrow?' 'yes.' 'i don't know what to do!' said sol, walking up and down. 'if half what i have heard is true, i would lose a winter's work to prevent her marrying him. what does she want to go mixing in with people who despise her for? now look here, mr. mountclere, since you have been and called me out to talk this over, it is only fair that you should tell me the exact truth about your brother. is it a lie, or is it true, that he is not fit to be the husband of a decent woman?' 'that is a curious inquiry,' said mountclere, whose manner and aspect, neutral as a winter landscape, had little in common with sol's warm and unrestrained bearing. 'there are reasons why i think your sister will not be happy with him.' 'then it is true what they say,' said sol, bringing down his fist upon the table. 'i know your meaning well enough. what's to be done? if i could only see her this minute, she might be kept out of it.' 'you think your presence would influence your sister--if you could see her before the wedding?' 'i think it would. but who's to get at her?' 'i am going, so you had better come on with me--unless it would be best for your father to come.' 'perhaps it might,' said the bewildered sol. 'but he will not be able to get away; and it's no use for dan to go. if anybody goes i must! if she has made up her mind nothing can be done by writing to her.' 'i leave at once to see lord mountclere,' the other continued. 'i feel that as my brother is evidently ignorant of the position of mrs. petherwin's family and connections, it is only fair in me, as his nearest relative, to make them clear to him before it is too late.' 'you mean that if he knew her friends were working-people he would not think of her as a wife? 'tis a reasonable thought. but make your mind easy: she has told him. i make a great mistake if she has for a moment thought of concealing that from him.' 'she may not have deliberately done so. but--and i say this with no ill- feeling--it is a matter known to few, and she may have taken no steps to undeceive him. i hope to bring him to see the matter clearly. unfortunately the thing has been so secret and hurried that there is barely time. i knew nothing until this morning--never dreamt of such a preposterous occurrence.' 'preposterous! if it should come to pass, she would play her part as his lady as well as any other woman, and better. i wish there was no more reason for fear on my side than there is on yours! things have come to a sore head when she is not considered lady enough for such as he. but perhaps your meaning is, that if your brother were to have a son, you would lose your heir-presumptive title to the cor'net of mountclere? well, 'twould be rather hard for ye, now i come to think o't--upon my life, 'twould.' 'the suggestion is as delicate as the --- atmosphere of this vile room. but let your ignorance be your excuse, my man. it is hardly worth while for us to quarrel when we both have the same object in view: do you think so?' 'that's true--that's true. when do you start, sir?' 'we must leave almost at once,' said mountclere, looking at his watch. 'if we cannot catch the two o'clock train, there is no getting there to- night--and to-morrow we could not possibly arrive before one.' 'i wish there was time for me to go and tidy myself a bit,' said sol, anxiously looking down at his working clothes. 'i suppose you would not like me to go with you like this?' 'confound the clothes! if you cannot start in five minutes, we shall not be able to go at all.' 'very well, then--wait while i run across to the shop, then i am ready. how do we get to the station?' 'my carriage is at the corner waiting. when you come out i will meet you at the gates.' sol then hurried downstairs, and a minute or two later mr. mountclere followed, looking like a man bent on policy at any price. the carriage was brought round by the time that sol reappeared from the yard. he entered and sat down beside mountclere, not without a sense that he was spoiling good upholstery; the coachman then allowed the lash of his whip to alight with the force of a small fly upon the horses, which set them up in an angry trot. sol rolled on beside his new acquaintance with the shamefaced look of a man going to prison in a van, for pedestrians occasionally gazed at him, full of what seemed to himself to be ironical surprise. 'i am afraid i ought to have changed my clothes after all,' he said, writhing under a perception of the contrast between them. 'not knowing anything about this, i ain't a bit prepared. if i had got even my second- best hat, it wouldn't be so bad.' 'it makes no difference,' said mountclere inanimately. 'or i might have brought my portmantle, with some things.' 'it really is not important.' on reaching the station they found there were yet a few minutes to spare, which sol made use of in writing a note to his father, to explain what had occurred. . the doncastles' residence, and outside the same mrs. doncastle's dressing-bell had rung, but menlove, the lady's maid, having at the same time received a letter by the evening post, paused to read it before replying to the summons:-- 'enckworth court, wednesday. darling louisa,--i can assure you that i am no more likely than yourself to form another attachment, as you will perceive by what follows. before we left town i thought that to be able to see you occasionally was sufficient for happiness, but down in this lonely place the case is different. in short, my dear, i ask you to consent to a union with me as soon as you possibly can. your prettiness has won my eyes and lips completely, sweet, and i lie awake at night to think of the golden curls you allowed to escape from their confinement on those nice times of private clothes, when we walked in the park and slipped the bonds of service, which you were never born to any more than i. . . . 'had not my own feelings been so strong, i should have told you at the first dash of my pen that what i expected is coming to pass at last--the old dog is going to be privately married to mrs. p. yes, indeed, and the wedding is coming off to-morrow, secret as the grave. all her friends will doubtless leave service on account of it. what he does now makes little difference to me, of course, as i had already given warning, but i shall stick to him like a briton in spite of it. he has to-day made me a present, and a further five pounds for yourself, expecting you to hold your tongue on every matter connected with mrs. p.'s friends, and to say nothing to any of them about this marriage until it is over. his lordship impressed this upon me very strong, and familiar as a brother, and of course we obey his instructions to the letter; for i need hardly say that unless he keeps his promise to help me in setting up the shop, our nuptials cannot be consumed. his help depends upon our obedience, as you are aware. . . .' this, and much more, was from her very last lover, lord mountclere's valet, who had been taken in hand directly she had convinced herself of joey's hopeless youthfulness. the missive sent mrs. menlove's spirits soaring like spring larks; she flew upstairs in answer to the bell with a joyful, triumphant look, which the illuminated figure of mrs. doncastle in her dressing-room could not quite repress. one could almost forgive menlove her arts when so modest a result brought such vast content. mrs. doncastle seemed inclined to make no remark during the dressing, and at last menlove could repress herself no longer. 'i should like to name something to you, m'm.' 'yes.' 'i shall be wishing to leave soon, if it is convenient.' 'very well, menlove,' answered mrs. doncastle, as she serenely surveyed her right eyebrow in the glass. 'am i to take this as a formal notice?' 'if you please; but i could stay a week or two beyond the month if suitable. i am going to be married--that's what it is, m'm.' 'o! i am glad to hear it, though i am sorry to lose you.' 'it is lord mountclere's valet--mr. tipman--m'm.' 'indeed.' menlove went on building up mrs. doncastle's hair awhile in silence. 'i suppose you heard the other news that arrived in town to-day, m'm?' she said again. 'lord mountclere is going to be married to-morrow.' 'to-morrow? are you quite sure?' 'o yes, m'm. mr. tipman has just told me so in his letter. he is going to be married to mrs. petherwin. it is to be quite a private wedding.' mrs. doncastle made no remark, and she remained in the same still position as before; but a countenance expressing transcendent surprise was reflected to menlove by the glass. at this sight menlove's tongue so burned to go further, and unfold the lady's relations with the butler downstairs, that she would have lost a month's wages to be at liberty to do it. the disclosure was almost too magnificent to be repressed. to deny herself so exquisite an indulgence required an effort which nothing on earth could have sustained save the one thing that did sustain it--the knowledge that upon her silence hung the most enormous desideratum in the world, her own marriage. she said no more, and mrs. doncastle went away. it was an ordinary family dinner that day, but their nephew neigh happened to be present. just as they were sitting down mrs. doncastle said to her husband: 'why have you not told me of the wedding to-morrow?--or don't you know anything about it?' 'wedding?' said mr. doncastle. 'lord mountclere is to be married to mrs. petherwin quite privately.' 'good god!' said some person. mr. doncastle did not speak the words; they were not spoken by neigh: they seemed to float over the room and round the walls, as if originating in some spiritualistic source. yet mrs. doncastle, remembering the symptoms of attachment between ethelberta and her nephew which had appeared during the summer, looked towards neigh instantly, as if she thought the words must have come from him after all; but neigh's face was perfectly calm; he, together with her husband, was sitting with his eyes fixed in the direction of the sideboard; and turning to the same spot she beheld chickerel standing pale as death, his lips being parted as if he did not know where he was. 'did you speak?' said mrs. doncastle, looking with astonishment at the butler. 'chickerel, what's the matter--are you ill?' said mr. doncastle simultaneously. 'was it you who said that?' 'i did, sir,' said chickerel in a husky voice, scarcely above a whisper. 'i could not help it.' 'why?' 'she is my daughter, and it shall be known at once!' 'who is your daughter?' he paused a few moments nervously. 'mrs. petherwin,' he said. upon this announcement neigh looked at poor chickerel as if he saw through him into the wall. mrs. doncastle uttered a faint exclamation and leant back in her chair: the bare possibility of the truth of chickerel's claims to such paternity shook her to pieces when she viewed her intimacies with ethelberta during the past season--the court she had paid her, the arrangements she had entered into to please her; above all, the dinner-party which she had contrived and carried out solely to gratify lord mountclere and bring him into personal communication with the general favourite; thus making herself probably the chief though unconscious instrument in promoting a match by which her butler was to become father-in-law to a peer she delighted to honour. the crowd of perceptions almost took away her life; she closed her eyes in a white shiver. 'do you mean to say that the lady who sat here at dinner at the same time that lord mountclere was present, is your daughter?' asked doncastle. 'yes, sir,' said chickerel respectfully. 'how did she come to be your daughter?' 'i-- well, she is my daughter, sir.' 'did you educate her?' 'not altogether, sir. she was a very clever child. lady petherwin took a deal of trouble about her education. they were both left widows about the same time: the son died, then the father. my daughter was only seventeen then. but though she's older now, her marriage with lord mountclere means misery. he ought to marry another woman.' 'it is very extraordinary,' mr. doncastle murmured. 'if you are ill you had better go and rest yourself, chickerel. send in thomas.' chickerel, who seemed to be much disturbed, then very gladly left the room, and dinner proceeded. but such was the peculiarity of the case, that, though there was in it neither murder, robbery, illness, accident, fire, or any other of the tragic and legitimate shakers of human nerves, two of the three who were gathered there sat through the meal without the least consciousness of what viands had composed it. impressiveness depends as much upon propinquity as upon magnitude; and to have honoured unawares the daughter of the vilest antipodean miscreant and murderer would have been less discomfiting to mrs. doncastle than it was to make the same blunder with the daughter of a respectable servant who happened to live in her own house. to neigh the announcement was as the catastrophe of a story already begun, rather than as an isolated wonder. ethelberta's words had prepared him for something, though the nature of that thing was unknown. 'chickerel ought not to have kept us in ignorance of this--of course he ought not!' said mrs. doncastle, as soon as they were left alone. 'i don't see why not,' replied mr. doncastle, who took the matter very coolly, as was his custom. 'then she herself should have let it be known.' 'nor does that follow. you didn't tell mrs. petherwin that your grandfather narrowly escaped hanging for shooting his rival in a duel.' 'of course not. there was no reason why i should give extraneous information.' 'nor was there any reason why she should. as for chickerel, he doubtless felt how unbecoming it would be to make personal remarks upon one of your guests--ha-ha-ha! well, well--ha-ha-ha-ha!' 'i know this,' said mrs. doncastle, in great anger, 'that if my father had been in the room, i should not have let the fact pass unnoticed, and treated him like a stranger!' 'would you have had her introduce chickerel to us all round? my dear margaret, it was a complicated position for a woman.' 'then she ought not to have come!' 'there may be something in that, though she was dining out at other houses as good as ours. well, i should have done just as she did, for the joke of the thing. ha-ha-ha!--it is very good--very. it was a case in which the appetite for a jest would overpower the sting of conscience in any well-constituted being--that, my dear, i must maintain.' 'i say she should not have come!' answered mrs. doncastle firmly. 'of course i shall dismiss chickerel.' 'of course you will do no such thing. i have never had a butler in the house before who suited me so well. it is a great credit to the man to have such a daughter, and i am not sure that we do not derive some lustre of a humble kind from his presence in the house. but, seriously, i wonder at your short-sightedness, when you know the troubles we have had through getting new men from nobody knows where.' neigh, perceiving that the breeze in the atmosphere might ultimately intensify to a palpable black squall, seemed to think it would be well to take leave of his uncle and aunt as soon as he conveniently could; nevertheless, he was much less discomposed by the situation than by the active cause which had led to it. when mrs. doncastle arose, her husband said he was going to speak to chickerel for a minute or two, and neigh followed his aunt upstairs. presently doncastle joined them. 'i have been talking to chickerel,' he said. 'it is a very curious affair--this marriage of his daughter and lord mountclere. the whole situation is the most astounding i have ever met with. the man is quite ill about the news. he has shown me a letter which has just reached him from his son on the same subject. lord mountclere's brother and this young man have actually gone off together to try to prevent the wedding, and chickerel has asked to be allowed to go himself, if he can get soon enough to the station to catch the night mail. of course he may go if he wishes.' 'what a funny thing!' said the lady, with a wretchedly factitious smile. 'the times have taken a strange turn when the angry parent of the comedy, who goes post-haste to prevent the undutiful daughter's rash marriage, is a gentleman from below stairs, and the unworthy lover a peer of the realm!' neigh spoke for almost the first time. 'i don't blame chickerel in objecting to lord mountclere. i should object to him myself if i had a daughter. i never liked him.' 'why?' said mrs. doncastle, lifting her eyelids as if the act were a heavy task. 'for reasons which don't generally appear.' 'yes,' said mr. doncastle, in a low tone. 'still, we must not believe all we hear.' 'is chickerel going?' said neigh. 'he leaves in five or ten minutes,' said doncastle. after a few further words neigh mentioned that he was unable to stay longer that evening, and left them. when he had reached the outside of the door he walked a little way up the pavement and back again, as if reluctant to lose sight of the street, finally standing under a lamp-post whence he could command a view of mr. doncastle's front. presently a man came out in a great-coat and with a small bag in his hand; neigh at once recognizing the person as chickerel, went up to him. 'mr. doncastle tells me you are going on a sudden journey. at what time does your train leave?' neigh asked. 'i go by the ten o'clock, sir: i hope it is a third-class,' said chickerel; 'though i am afraid it may not be.' 'it is as much as you will do to get to the station,' said neigh, turning the face of his watch to the light. 'here, come into my cab--i am driving that way.' 'thank you, sir,' said chickerel. neigh called a cab at the first opportunity, and they entered and drove along together. neither spoke during the journey. when they were driving up to the station entrance neigh looked again to see the hour. 'you have not a minute to lose,' he said, in repressed anxiety. 'and your journey will be expensive: instead of walking from anglebury to knollsea, you had better drive--above all, don't lose time. never mind what class the train is. take this from me, since the emergency is great.' he handed something to chickerel folded up small. the butler took it without inquiry, and stepped out hastily. 'i sincerely hope she-- well, good-night, chickerel,' continued neigh, ending his words abruptly. the cab containing him drove again towards the station-gates, leaving chickerel standing on the kerb. he passed through the booking-office, and looked at the paper neigh had put into his hand. it was a five-pound note. chickerel mused on the circumstance as he took his ticket and got into the train. . the railway--the sea--the shore beyond by this time sol and the honourable edgar mountclere had gone far on their journey into wessex. enckworth court, mountclere's destination, though several miles from knollsea, was most easily accessible by the same route as that to the village, the latter being the place for which sol was bound. from the few words that passed between them on the way, mountclere became more stubborn than ever in a belief that this was a carefully laid trap of the fair ethelberta's to ensnare his brother without revealing to him her family ties, which it therefore behoved him to make clear, with the utmost force of representation, before the fatal union had been contracted. being himself the viscount's only remaining brother and near relative, the disinterestedness of his motives may be left to imagination; that there was much real excuse for his conduct must, however, be borne in mind. whether his attempt would prevent the union was another question: he believed that, conjoined with his personal influence over the viscount, and the importation of sol as a firebrand to throw between the betrothed pair, it might do so. about half-an-hour before sunset the two individuals, linked by their differences, reached the point of railway at which the branch to sandbourne left the main line. they had taken tickets for sandbourne, intending to go thence to knollsea by the steamer that plied between the two places during the summer months--making this a short and direct route. but it occurred to mountclere on the way that, summer being over, the steamer might possibly have left off running, the wind might be too high for a small boat, and no large one might be at hand for hire: therefore it would be safer to go by train to anglebury, and the remaining sixteen miles by driving over the hills, even at a great loss of time. accident, however, determined otherwise. they were in the station at the junction, inquiring of an official if the speedwell had ceased to sail, when a countryman who had just come up from sandbourne stated that, though the speedwell had left off for the year, there was that day another steamer at sandbourne. this steamer would of necessity return to knollsea that evening, partly because several people from that place had been on board, and also because the knollsea folk were waiting for groceries and draperies from london: there was not an ounce of tea or a hundredweight of coal in the village, owing to the recent winds, which had detained the provision parcels at sandbourne, and kept the colliers up-channel until the change of weather this day. to introduce necessaries by a roundabout land journey was not easy when they had been ordered by the other and habitual route. the boat returned at six o'clock. so on they went to sandbourne, driving off to the pier directly they reached that place, for it was getting towards night. the steamer was there, as the man had told them, much to the relief of sol, who, being extremely anxious to enter knollsea before a late hour, had known that this was the only way in which it could be done. some unforeseen incident delayed the boat, and they walked up and down the pier to wait. the prospect was gloomy enough. the wind was north- east; the sea along shore was a chalky-green, though comparatively calm, this part of the coast forming a shelter from wind in its present quarter. the clouds had different velocities, and some of them shone with a coppery glare, produced by rays from the west which did not enter the inferior atmosphere at all. it was reflected on the distant waves in patches, with an effect as if the waters were at those particular spots stained with blood. this departed, and what daylight was left to the earth came from strange and unusual quarters of the heavens. the zenith would be bright, as if that were the place of the sun; then all overhead would close, and a whiteness in the east would give the appearance of morning; while a bank as thick as a wall barricaded the west, which looked as if it had no acquaintance with sunsets, and would blush red no more. 'any other passengers?' shouted the master of the steamboat. 'we must be off: it may be a dirty night.' sol and mountclere went on board, and the pier receded in the dusk. 'shall we have any difficulty in getting into knollsea bay?' said mountclere. 'not if the wind keeps where it is for another hour or two.' 'i fancy it is shifting to the east'ard,' said sol. the captain looked as if he had thought the same thing. 'i hope i shall be able to get home to-night,' said a knollsea woman. 'my little children be left alone. your mis'ess is in a bad way, too--isn't she, skipper?' 'yes.' 'and you've got the doctor from sandbourne aboard, to tend her?' 'yes.' 'then you'll be sure to put into knollsea, if you can?' 'yes. don't be alarmed, ma'am. we'll do what we can. but no one must boast.' the skipper's remark was the result of an observation that the wind had at last flown to the east, the single point of the compass whence it could affect knollsea bay. the result of this change was soon perceptible. about midway in their transit the land elbowed out to a bold chalk promontory; beyond this stretched a vertical wall of the same cliff, in a line parallel with their course. in fair weather it was possible and customary to steer close along under this hoary facade for the distance of a mile, there being six fathoms of water within a few boats' lengths of the precipice. but it was an ugly spot at the best of times, landward no less than seaward, the cliff rounding off at the top in vegetation, like a forehead with low-grown hair, no defined edge being provided as a warning to unwary pedestrians on the downs above. as the wind sprung up stronger, white clots could be discerned at the water level of the cliff, rising and falling against the black band of shaggy weed that formed a sort of skirting to the base of the wall. they were the first-fruits of the new east blast, which shaved the face of the cliff like a razor--gatherings of foam in the shape of heads, shoulders, and arms of snowy whiteness, apparently struggling to rise from the deeps, and ever sinking back to their old levels again. they reminded an observer of a drowning scene in a picture of the deluge. at some points the face of rock was hollowed into gaping caverns, and the water began to thunder into these with a leap that was only topped by the rebound seaward again. the vessel's head was kept a little further to sea, but beyond that everything went on as usual. the precipice was still in view, and before it several huge columns of rock appeared, detached from the mass behind. two of these were particularly noticeable in the grey air--one vertical, stout and square; the other slender and tapering. they were individualized as husband and wife by the coast men. the waves leapt up their sides like a pack of hounds; this, however, though fearful in its boisterousness, was nothing to the terrible games that sometimes went on round the knees of those giants in stone. yet it was sufficient to cause the course of the frail steamboat to be altered yet a little more--from south-west-by-south to south-by-west--to give the breakers a still wider berth. 'i wish we had gone by land, sir; 'twould have been surer play,' said sol to mountclere, a cat-and-dog friendship having arisen between them. 'yes,' said mountclere. 'knollsea is an abominable place to get into with an east wind blowing, they say.' another circumstance conspired to make their landing more difficult, which mountclere knew nothing of. with the wind easterly, the highest sea prevailed in knollsea bay from the slackening of flood-tide to the first hour of ebb. at that time the water outside stood without a current, and ridges and hollows chased each other towards the beach unchecked. when the tide was setting strong up or down channel its flow across the mouth of the bay thrust aside, to some extent, the landward plunge of the waves. we glance for a moment at the state of affairs on the land they were nearing. this was the time of year to know the truth about the inner nature and character of knollsea; for to see knollsea smiling to the summer sun was to see a courtier before a king; knollsea was not to be known by such simple means. the half-dozen detached villas used as lodging-houses in the summer, standing aloof from the cots of the permanent race, rose in the dusk of this gusty evening, empty, silent, damp, and dark as tombs. the gravel walks leading to them were invaded by leaves and tufts of grass. as the darkness thickened the wind increased, and each blast raked the iron railings before the houses till they hummed as if in a song of derision. certainly it seemed absurd at this time of year that human beings should expect comfort in a spot capable of such moods as these. however, one of the houses looked cheerful, and that was the dwelling to which ethelberta had gone. its gay external colours might as well have been black for anything that could be seen of them now, but an unblinded window revealed inside it a room bright and warm. it was illuminated by firelight only. within, ethelberta appeared against the curtains, close to the glass. she was watching through a binocular a faint light which had become visible in the direction of the bluff far away over the bay. 'here is the spruce at last, i think,' she said to her sister, who was by the fire. 'i hope they will be able to land the things i have ordered. they are on board i know.' the wind continued to rise till at length something from the lungs of the gale alighted like a feather upon the pane, and remained there sticking. seeing the substance, ethelberta opened the window to secure it. the fire roared and the pictures kicked the walls; she closed the sash, and brought to the light a crisp fragment of foam. 'how suddenly the sea must have risen,' said picotee. the servant entered the room. 'please, mis'ess says she is afraid you won't have your things to-night, 'm. they say the steamer can't land, and mis'ess wants to know if she can do anything?' 'it is of no consequence,' said ethelberta. 'they will come some time, unless they go to the bottom.' the girl left the room. 'shall we go down to the shore and see what the night is like?' said ethelberta. 'this is the last opportunity i shall have.' 'is it right for us to go, considering you are to be married to-morrow?' said picotee, who had small affection for nature in this mood. her sister laughed. 'let us put on our cloaks--nobody will know us. i am sorry to leave this grim and primitive place, even for enckworth court.' they wrapped themselves up, and descended the hill. on drawing near the battling line of breakers which marked the meeting of sea and land they could perceive within the nearly invisible horizon an equilateral triangle of lights. it was formed of three stars, a red on the one side, a green on the other, and a white on the summit. this, composed of mast-head and side lamps, was all that was visible of the spruce, which now faced end-on about half-a-mile distant, and was still nearing the pier. the girls went further, and stood on the foreshore, listening to the din. seaward appeared nothing distinct save a black horizontal band embodying itself out of the grey water, strengthening its blackness, and enlarging till it looked like a nearing wall. it was the concave face of a coming wave. on its summit a white edging arose with the aspect of a lace frill; it broadened, and fell over the front with a terrible concussion. then all before them was a sheet of whiteness, which spread with amazing rapidity, till they found themselves standing in the midst of it, as in a field of snow. both felt an insidious chill encircling their ankles, and they rapidly ran up the beach. 'you girls, come away there, or you'll be washed off: what need have ye for going so near?' ethelberta recognized the stentorian voice as that of captain flower, who, with a party of boatmen, was discovered to be standing near, under the shelter of a wall. he did not know them in the gloom, and they took care that he should not. they retreated further up the beach, when the hissing fleece of froth slid again down the shingle, dragging the pebbles under it with a rattle as of a beast gnawing bones. the spot whereon the men stood was called 'down-under-wall;' it was a nook commanding a full view of the bay, and hither the nautical portion of the village unconsciously gravitated on windy afternoons and nights, to discuss past disasters in the reticent spirit induced by a sense that they might at any moment be repeated. the stranger who should walk the shore on roaring and sobbing november eves when there was not light sufficient to guide his footsteps, and muse on the absoluteness of the solitude, would be surprised by a smart 'good-night' being returned from this corner in company with the echo of his tread. in summer the six or eight perennial figures stood on the breezy side of the wall--in winter and in rain to leeward; but no weather was known to dislodge them. 'i had no sooner come ashore than the wind began to fly round,' said the previous speaker; 'and it must have been about the time they were off old- harry point. "she'll put back for certain," i said; and i had no more thought o' seeing her than john's set-net that was carried round the point o' monday.' 'poor feller: his wife being in such a state makes him anxious to land if 'a can: that's what 'tis, plain enough.' 'why that?' said flower. 'the doctor's aboard, 'a believe: "i'll have the most understanding man in sandbourne, cost me little or much," he said.' ''tis all over and she's better,' said the other. 'i called half-an-hour afore dark.' flower, being an experienced man, knew how the judgment of a ship's master was liable to be warped by family anxieties, many instances of the same having occurred in the history of navigation. he felt uneasy, for he knew the deceit and guile of this bay far better than did the master of the spruce, who, till within a few recent months, had been a stranger to the place. indeed, it was the bay which had made flower what he was, instead of a man in thriving retirement. the two great ventures of his life had been blown ashore and broken up within that very semicircle. the sturdy sailor now stood with his eyes fixed on the triangle of lights which showed that the steamer had not relinquished her intention of bringing up inside the pier if possible; his right hand was in his pocket, where it played with a large key which lay there. it was the key of the lifeboat shed, and flower was coxswain. his musing was on the possibility of a use for it this night. it appeared that the captain of the spruce was aiming to pass in under the lee of the pier; but a strong current of four or five knots was running between the piles, drifting the steamer away at every attempt as soon as she slowed. to come in on the other side was dangerous, the hull of the vessel being likely to crash against and overthrow the fragile erection, with damage to herself also. flower, who had disappeared for a few minutes, now came back. 'it is just possible i can make 'em hear with the trumpet, now they be to leeward,' he said, and proceeded with two or three others to grope his way out upon the pier, which consisted simply of a row of rotten piles covered with rotten planking, no balustrade of any kind existing to keep the unwary from tumbling off. at the water level the piles were eaten away by the action of the sea to about the size of a man's wrist, and at every fresh influx the whole structure trembled like a spider's web. in this lay the danger of making fast, for a strong pull from a headfast rope might drag the erection completely over. flower arrived at the end, where a lantern hung. 'spruce ahoy!' he blared through the speaking trumpet two or three times. there seemed to be a reply of some sort from the steamer. 'tuesday's gale hev loosened the pier, cap'n ounce; the bollards be too weak to make fast to: must land in boats if ye will land, but dangerous; yer wife is out of danger, and 'tis a boy-y-y-y!' ethelberta and picotee were at this time standing on the beach a hundred and fifty yards off. whether or not the master of the steamer received the information volunteered by flower, the two girls saw the triangle of lamps get narrow at its base, reduce themselves to two in a vertical line, then to one, then to darkness. the spruce had turned her head from knollsea. 'they have gone back, and i shall not have my wedding things after all!' said ethelberta. 'well, i must do without them.' 'you see, 'twas best to play sure,' said flower to his comrades, in a tone of complacency. 'they might have been able to do it, but 'twas risky. the shop-folk be out of stock, i hear, and the visiting lady up the hill is terribly in want of clothes, so 'tis said. but what's that? ounce ought to have put back afore.' then the lantern which hung at the end of the jetty was taken down, and the darkness enfolded all around from view. the bay became nothing but a voice, the foam an occasional touch upon the face, the spruce an imagination, the pier a memory. everything lessened upon the senses but one; that was the wind. it mauled their persons like a hand, and caused every scrap of their raiment to tug westward. to stand with the face to sea brought semi-suffocation, from the intense pressure of air. the boatmen retired to their position under the wall, to lounge again in silence. conversation was not considered necessary: their sense of each other's presence formed a kind of conversation. meanwhile picotee and ethelberta went up the hill. 'if your wedding were going to be a public one, what a misfortune this delay of the packages would be,' said picotee. 'yes,' replied the elder. 'i think the bracelet the prettiest of all the presents he brought to- day--do you?' 'it is the most valuable.' 'lord mountclere is very kind, is he not? i like him a great deal better than i did--do you, berta?' 'yes, very much better,' said ethelberta, warming a little. 'if he were not so suspicious at odd moments i should like him exceedingly. but i must cure him of that by a regular course of treatment, and then he'll be very nice.' 'for an old man. he likes you better than any young man would take the trouble to do. i wish somebody else were old too.' 'he will be some day.' 'yes, but--' 'never mind: time will straighten many crooked things.' 'do you think lord mountclere has reached home by this time?' 'i should think so: though i believe he had to call at the parsonage before leaving knollsea.' 'had he? what for?' 'why, of course somebody must--' 'o yes. do you think anybody in knollsea knows it is going to be except us and the parson?' 'i suppose the clerk knows.' 'i wonder if a lord has ever been married so privately before.' 'frequently: when he marries far beneath him, as in this case. but even if i could have had it, i should not have liked a showy wedding. i have had no experience as a bride except in the private form of the ceremony.' 'berta, i am sometimes uneasy about you even now and i want to ask you one thing, if i may. are you doing this for my sake? would you have married mr. julian if it had not been for me?' 'it is difficult to say exactly. it is possible that if i had had no relations at all, i might have married him. and i might not.' 'i don't intend to marry.' 'in that case you will live with me at enckworth. however, we will leave such details till the ground-work is confirmed. when we get indoors will you see if the boxes have been properly corded, and are quite ready to be sent for? then come in and sit by the fire, and i'll sing some songs to you.' 'sad ones, you mean.' 'no, they shall not be sad.' 'perhaps they may be the last you will ever sing to me.' 'they may be. such a thing has occurred.' 'but we will not think so. we'll suppose you are to sing many to me yet.' 'yes. there's good sense in that, picotee. in a world where the blind only are cheerful we should all do well to put out our eyes. there, i did not mean to get into this state: forgive me, picotee. it is because i have had a thought--why i cannot tell--that as much as this man brings to me in rank and gifts he may take out of me in tears.' 'berta!' 'but there's no reason in it--not any; for not in a single matter does what has been supply us with any certain ground for knowing what will be in the world. i have seen marriages where happiness might have been said to be ensured, and they have been all sadness afterwards; and i have seen those in which the prospect was black as night, and they have led on to a time of sweetness and comfort. and i have seen marriages neither joyful nor sorry, that have become either as accident forced them to become, the persons having no voice in it at all. well, then, why should i be afraid to make a plunge when chance is as trustworthy as calculation?' 'if you don't like him well enough, don't have him, berta. there's time enough to put it off even now.' 'o no. i would not upset a well-considered course on the haste of an impulse. our will should withstand our misgivings. now let us see if all has been packed, and then we'll sing.' that evening, while the wind was wheeling round and round the dwelling, and the calm eye of the lighthouse afar was the single speck perceptible of the outside world from the door of ethelberta's temporary home, the music of songs mingled with the stroke of the wind across the iron railings, and was swept on in the general tide of the gale, and the noise of the rolling sea, till not the echo of a tone remained. an hour before this singing, an old gentleman might have been seen to alight from a little one-horse brougham, and enter the door of knollsea parsonage. he was bent upon obtaining an entrance to the vicar's study without giving his name. but it happened that the vicar's wife was sitting in the front room, making a pillow-case for the children's bed out of an old surplice which had been excommunicated the previous easter; she heard the newcomer's voice through the partition, started, and went quickly to her husband, who was where he ought to have been, in his study. at her entry he looked up with an abstracted gaze, having been lost in meditation over a little schooner which he was attempting to rig for their youngest boy. at a word from his wife on the suspected name of the visitor, he resumed his earlier occupation of inserting a few strong sentences, full of the observation of maturer life, between the lines of a sermon written during his first years of ordination, in order to make it available for the coming sunday. his wife then vanished with the little ship in her hand, and the visitor appeared. a talk went on in low tones. after a ten minutes' stay he departed as secretly as he had come. his errand was the cause of much whispered discussion between the vicar and his wife during the evening, but nothing was said concerning it to the outside world. . sandbourne--a lonely heath--the 'red lion'--the highway it was half-past eleven before the spruce, with mountclere and sol chickerel on board, had steamed back again to sandbourne. the direction and increase of the wind had made it necessary to keep the vessel still further to sea on their return than in going, that they might clear without risk the windy, sousing, thwacking, basting, scourging jack ketch of a corner called old-harry point, which lay about halfway along their track, and stood, with its detached posts and stumps of white rock, like a skeleton's lower jaw, grinning at british navigation. here strong currents and cross currents were beginning to interweave their scrolls and meshes, the water rising behind them in tumultuous heaps, and slamming against the fronts and angles of cliff, whence it flew into the air like clouds of flour. who could now believe that this roaring abode of chaos smiled in the sun as gently as an infant during the summer days not long gone by, every pinnacle, crag, and cave returning a doubled image across the glassy sea? they were now again at sandbourne, a point in their journey reached more than four hours ago. it became necessary to consider anew how to accomplish the difficult remainder. the wind was not blowing much beyond what seamen call half a gale, but there had been enough unpleasantness afloat to make landsmen glad to get ashore, and this dissipated in a slight measure their vexation at having failed in their purpose. still, mountclere loudly cursed their confidence in that treacherously short route, and sol abused the unknown sandbourne man who had brought the news of the steamer's arrival to them at the junction. the only course left open to them now, short of giving up the undertaking, was to go by the road along the shore, which, curving round the various little creeks and inland seas between their present position and knollsea, was of no less length than thirty miles. there was no train back to the junction till the next morning, and sol's proposition that they should drive thither in hope of meeting the mail-train, was overruled by mountclere. 'we will have nothing more to do with chance,' he said. 'we may miss the train, and then we shall have gone out of the way for nothing. more than that, the down mail does not stop till it gets several miles beyond the nearest station for knollsea; so it is hopeless.' 'if there had only been a telegraph to the confounded place!' 'telegraph--we might as well telegraph to the devil as to an old booby and a damned scheming young widow. i very much question if we shall do anything in the matter, even if we get there. but i suppose we had better go on now?' 'you can do as you like. i shall go on, if i have to walk every step o't.' 'that's not necessary. i think the best posting-house at this end of the town is tempett's--we must knock them up at once. which will you do--attempt supper here, or break the back of our journey first, and get on to anglebury? we may rest an hour or two there, unless you feel really in want of a meal.' 'no. i'll leave eating to merrier men, who have no sister in the hands of a cursed old vandal.' 'very well,' said mountclere. 'we'll go on at once.' an additional half-hour elapsed before they were fairly started, the lateness and abruptness of their arrival causing delay in getting a conveyance ready: the tempestuous night had apparently driven the whole town, gentle and simple, early to their beds. and when at length the travellers were on their way the aspect of the weather grew yet more forbidding. the rain came down unmercifully, the booming wind caught it, bore it across the plain, whizzed it against the carriage like a sower sowing his seed. it was precisely such weather, and almost at the same season, as when picotee traversed the same moor, stricken with her great disappointment at not meeting christopher julian. further on for several miles the drive lay through an open heath, dotted occasionally with fir plantations, the trees of which told the tale of their species without help from outline or colour; they spoke in those melancholy moans and sobs which give to their sound a solemn sadness surpassing even that of the sea. from each carriage-lamp the long rays stretched like feelers into the air, and somewhat cheered the way, until the insidious damp that pervaded all things above, around, and underneath, overpowered one of them, and rendered every attempt to rekindle it ineffectual. even had the two men's dislike to each other's society been less, the general din of the night would have prevented much talking; as it was, they sat in a rigid reticence that was almost a third personality. the roads were laid hereabouts with a light sandy gravel, which, though not clogging, was soft and friable. it speedily became saturated, and the wheels ground heavily and deeply into its substance. at length, after crossing from ten to twelve miles of these eternal heaths under the eternally drumming storm, they could discern eyelets of light winking to them in the distance from under a nebulous brow of pale haze. they were looking on the little town of havenpool. soon after this cross-roads were reached, one of which, at right angles to their present direction, led down on the left to that place. here the man stopped, and informed them that the horses would be able to go but a mile or two further. 'very well, we must have others that can,' said mountclere. 'does our way lie through the town?' 'no, sir--unless we go there to change horses, which i thought to do. the direct road is straight on. havenpool lies about three miles down there on the left. but the water is over the road, and we had better go round. we shall come to no place for two or three miles, and then only to flychett.' 'what's flychett like?' 'a trumpery small bit of a village.' 'still, i think we had better push on,' said sol. 'i am against running the risk of finding the way flooded about havenpool.' 'so am i,' returned mountclere. 'i know a wheelwright in flychett,' continued sol, 'and he keeps a beer- house, and owns two horses. we could hire them, and have a bit of sommat in the shape of victuals, and then get on to anglebury. perhaps the rain may hold up by that time. anything's better than going out of our way.' 'yes. and the horses can last out to that place,' said mountclere. 'up and on again, my man.' on they went towards flychett. still the everlasting heath, the black hills bulging against the sky, the barrows upon their round summits like warts on a swarthy skin. the storm blew huskily over bushes of heather and furze that it was unable materially to disturb, and the travellers proceeded as before. but the horses were now far from fresh, and the time spent in reaching the next village was quite half as long as that taken up by the previous heavy portion of the drive. when they entered flychett it was about three. 'now, where's the inn?' said mountclere, yawning. 'just on the knap,' sol answered. ''tis a little small place, and we must do as well as we can.' they pulled up before a cottage, upon the whitewashed front of which could be seen a square board representing the sign. after an infinite labour of rapping and shouting, a casement opened overhead, and a woman's voice inquired what was the matter. sol explained, when she told them that the horses were away from home. 'now we must wait till these are rested,' growled mountclere. 'a pretty muddle!' 'it cannot be helped,' answered sol; and he asked the woman to open the door. she replied that her husband was away with the horses and van, and that they could not come in. sol was known to her, and he mentioned his name; but the woman only began to abuse him. 'come, publican, you'd better let us in, or we'll have the law for't,' rejoined sol, with more spirit. 'you don't dare to keep nobility waiting like this.' 'nobility!' 'my mate hev the title of honourable, whether or no; so let's have none of your slack,' said sol. 'don't be a fool, young chopstick,' exclaimed mountclere. 'get the door opened.' 'i will--in my own way,' said sol testily. 'you mustn't mind my trading upon your quality, as 'tis a case of necessity. this is a woman nothing will bring to reason but an appeal to the higher powers. if every man of title was as useful as you are to-night, sir, i'd never call them lumber again as long as i live.' 'how singular!' 'there's never a bit of rubbish that won't come in use if you keep it seven years.' 'if my utility depends upon keeping you company, may i go to h--- for lacking every atom of the virtue.' 'hear, hear! but it hardly is becoming in me to answer up to a man so much older than i, or i could say more. suppose we draw a line here for the present, sir, and get indoors?' 'do what you will, in heaven's name.' a few more words to the woman resulted in her agreeing to admit them if they would attend to themselves afterwards. this sol promised, and the key of the door was let down to them from the bedroom window by a string. when they had entered, sol, who knew the house well, busied himself in lighting a fire, the driver going off with a lantern to the stable, where he found standing-room for the two horses. mountclere walked up and down the kitchen, mumbling words of disgust at the situation, the few of this kind that he let out being just enough to show what a fearfully large number he kept in. 'a-calling up people at this time of morning!' the woman occasionally exclaimed down the stairs. 'but folks show no mercy upon their flesh and blood--not one bit or mite.' 'now never be stomachy, my good soul,' cried sol from the fireplace, where he stood blowing the fire with his breath. 'only tell me where the victuals bide, and i'll do all the cooking. we'll pay like princes--especially my mate.' 'there's but little in house,' said the sleepy woman from her bedroom. 'there's pig's fry, a side of bacon, a conger eel, and pickled onions.' 'conger eel?' said sol to mountclere. 'no, thank you.' 'pig's fry?' 'no, thank you.' 'well, then, tell me where the bacon is,' shouted sol to the woman. 'you must find it,' came again down the stairs. ''tis somewhere up in chimley, but in which part i can't mind. really i don't know whether i be upon my head or my heels, and my brain is all in a spin, wi' being rafted up in such a larry!' 'bide where you be, there's a dear,' said sol. 'we'll do it all. just tell us where the tea-caddy is, and the gridiron, and then you can go to sleep again.' the woman appeared to take his advice, for she gave the information, and silence soon reigned upstairs. when one piece of bacon had been with difficulty cooked over the newly- lit fire, sol said to mountclere, with the rasher on his fork: 'now look here, sir, i think while i am making the tea, you ought to go on griddling some more of these, as you haven't done nothing at all?' 'i do the paying. . . . well, give me the bacon.' 'and when you have done yours, i'll cook the man's, as the poor feller's hungry, i make no doubt.' mountclere, fork in hand, then began with his rasher, tossing it about the gridiron in masterly style, sol attending to the tea. he was attracted from this occupation by a brilliant flame up the chimney, mountclere exclaiming, 'now the cursed thing is on fire!' 'blow it out--hard--that's it! well now, sir, do you come and begin upon mine, as you must be hungry. i'll finish the griddling. ought we to mind the man sitting down in our company, as there's no other room for him? i hear him coming in.' 'o no--not at all. put him over at that table.' 'and i'll join him. you can sit here by yourself, sir.' the meal was despatched, and the coachman again retired, promising to have the horses ready in about an hour and a half. sol and mountclere made themselves comfortable upon either side of the fireplace, since there was no remedy for the delay: after sitting in silence awhile, they nodded and slept. how long they would have remained thus, in consequence of their fatigues, there is no telling, had not the mistress of the cottage descended the stairs about two hours later, after peeping down upon them at intervals of five minutes during their sleep, lest they should leave without her knowledge. it was six o'clock, and sol went out for the man, whom he found snoring in the hay-loft. there was now real necessity for haste, and in ten minutes they were again on their way. * * * * * day dawned upon the 'red lion' inn at anglebury with a timid and watery eye. from the shadowy archway came a shining lantern, which was seen to be dangling from the hand of a little bow-legged old man--the hostler, john. having reached the front, he looked around to measure the daylight, opened the lantern, and extinguished it by a pinch of his fingers. he paused for a moment to have the customary word or two with his neighbour the milkman, who usually appeared at this point at this time. 'it sounds like the whistle of the morning train,' the milkman said as he drew near, a scream from the further end of the town reaching their ears. 'well, i hope, now the wind's in that quarter, we shall ha'e a little more fine weather--hey, hostler?' 'what be ye a talking o'?' 'can hear the whistle plain, i say.' 'o ay. i suppose you do. but faith, 'tis a poor fist i can make at hearing anything. there, i could have told all the same that the wind was in the east, even if i had not seed poor thomas tribble's smoke blowing across the little orchard. joints be a true weathercock enough when past three-score. these easterly rains, when they do come, which is not often, come wi' might enough to squail a man into his grave.' 'well, we must look for it, hostler. . . . why, what mighty ekkypage is this, come to town at such a purblinking time of day?' ''tis what time only can tell--though 'twill not be long first,' the hostler replied, as the driver of the pair of horses and carriage containing sol and mountclere slackened pace, and drew rein before the inn. fresh horses were immediately called for, and while they were being put in the two travellers walked up and down. 'it is now a quarter to seven o'clock,' said mountclere; 'and the question arises, shall i go on to knollsea, or branch off at corvsgate castle for enckworth? i think the best plan will be to drive first to enckworth, set me down, and then get him to take you on at once to knollsea. what do you say?' 'when shall i reach knollsea by that arrangement?' 'by half-past eight o'clock. we shall be at enckworth before eight, which is excellent time.' 'very well, sir, i agree to that,' said sol, feeling that as soon as one of the two birds had been caught, the other could not mate without their knowledge. the carriage and horses being again ready, away they drove at once, both having by this time grown too restless to spend in anglebury a minute more than was necessary. the hostler and his lad had taken the jaded sandbourne horses to the stable, rubbed them down, and fed them, when another noise was heard outside the yard; the omnibus had returned from meeting the train. relinquishing the horses to the small stable-lad, the old hostler again looked out from the arch. a young man had stepped from the omnibus, and he came forward. 'i want a conveyance of some sort to take me to knollsea, at once. can you get a horse harnessed in five minutes?' 'i'll make shift to do what i can master, not promising about the minutes. the truest man can say no more. won't ye step into the bar, sir, and give your order? i'll let ye know as soon as 'tis ready.' christopher turned into a room smelling strongly of the night before, and stood by the newly-kindled fire to wait. he had just come in haste from melchester. the upshot of his excitement about the wedding, which, as the possible hour of its solemnization drew near, had increased till it bore him on like a wind, was this unpremeditated journey. lying awake the previous night, the hangings of his bed pulsing to every beat of his heart, he decided that there was one last and great service which it behoved him, as an honest man and friend, to say nothing of lover, to render to ethelberta at this juncture. it was to ask her by some means whether or not she had engaged with open eyes to marry lord mountclere; and if not, to give her a word or two of enlightenment. that done, she might be left to take care of herself. his plan was to obtain an interview with picotee, and learn from her accurately the state of things. should he, by any possibility, be mistaken in his belief as to the contracting parties, a knowledge of the mistake would be cheaply purchased by the journey. should he not, he would send up to ethelberta the strong note of expostulation which was already written, and waiting in his pocket. to intrude upon her at such a time was unseemly; and to despatch a letter by a messenger before evidence of its necessity had been received was most undesirable. the whole proceeding at best was clumsy; yet earnestness is mostly clumsy; and how could he let the event pass without a protest? before daylight on that autumn morning he had risen, told faith of his intention, and started off. as soon as the vehicle was ready, christopher hastened to the door and stepped up. the little stable-boy led the horse a few paces on the way before relinquishing his hold; at the same moment a respectably dressed man on foot, with a small black bag in his hand, came up from the opposite direction, along the street leading from the railway. he was a thin, elderly man, with grey hair; that a great anxiety pervaded him was as plainly visible as were his features. without entering the inn, he came up at once to old john. 'have you anything going to knollsea this morning that i can get a lift in?' said the pedestrian--no other than ethelberta's father. 'nothing empty, that i know of.' 'or carrier?' 'no.' 'a matter of fifteen shillings, then, i suppose?' 'yes--no doubt. but yond there's a young man just now starting; he might not take it ill if ye were to ask him for a seat, and go halves in the hire of the trap. shall i call out?' 'ah, do.' the hostler bawled to the stable-boy, who put the question to christopher. there was room for two in the dogcart, and julian had no objection to save the shillings of a fellow-traveller who was evidently not rich. when chickerel mounted to his seat, christopher paused to look at him as we pause in some enactment that seems to have been already before us in a dream long ago. ethelberta's face was there, as the landscape is in the map, the romance in the history, the aim in the deed: denuded, rayless, and sorry, but discernible. for the moment, however, this did not occur to julian. he took the whip, the boy loosed his hold upon the horse, and they proceeded on their way. 'what slap-dash jinks may there be going on at knollsea, then, my sonny?' said the hostler to the lad, as the dogcart and the backs of the two men diminished on the road. 'you be a knollsea boy: have anything reached your young ears about what's in the wind there, david straw?' 'no, nothing: except that 'tis going to be christmas day in five weeks: and then a hide-bound bull is going to be killed if he don't die afore the time, and gi'ed away by my lord in three-pound junks, as a reward to good people who never curse and sing bad songs, except when they be drunk; mother says perhaps she will have some, and 'tis excellent if well stewed, mother says.' 'a very fair chronicle for a boy to give, but not what i asked for. when you try to answer a old man's question, always bear in mind what it was that old man asked. a hide-bound bull is good when well stewed, i make no doubt--for they who like it; but that's not it. what i said was, do you know why three fokes, a rich man, a middling man, and a poor man, should want horses for knollsea afore seven o'clock in the morning on a blinking day in fall, when everything is as wet as a dishclout, whereas that's more than often happens in fine summer weather?' 'no--i don't know, john hostler.' 'then go home and tell your mother that ye be no wide-awake boy, and that old john, who went to school with her father afore she was born or thought o', says so. . . . chok' it all, why should i think there's sommat going on at knollsea? honest travelling have been so rascally abused since i was a boy in pinners, by tribes of nobodies tearing from one end of the country to t'other, to see the sun go down in salt water, or the moon play jack-lantern behind some rotten tower or other, that, upon my song, when life and death's in the wind there's no telling the difference!' 'i like their sixpences ever so much.' 'young sonny, don't you answer up to me when you baint in the story--stopping my words in that fashion. i won't have it, david. now up in the tallet with ye, there's a good boy, and down with another lock or two of hay--as fast as you can do it for me.' the boy vanished under the archway, and the hostler followed at his heels. meanwhile the carriage bearing mr. mountclere and sol was speeding on its way to enckworth. when they reached the spot at which the road forked into two, they left the knollsea route, and keeping thence under the hills for the distance of five or six miles, drove into lord mountclere's park. in ten minutes the house was before them, framed in by dripping trees. mountclere jumped out, and entered without ceremony. sol, being anxious to know if lord mountclere was there, ordered the coachman to wait a few moments. it was now nearly eight o'clock, and the smoke which ascended from the newly-lit fires of the court painted soft blue tints upon the brown and golden leaves of lofty boughs adjoining. 'o, ethelberta!' said sol, as he regarded the fair prospect. the gravel of the drive had been washed clean and smooth by the night's rain, but there were fresh wheelmarks other than their own upon the track. yet the mansion seemed scarcely awake, and stillness reigned everywhere around. not more than three or four minutes had passed when the door was opened for mountclere, and he came hastily from the doorsteps. 'i must go on with you,' he said, getting into the vehicle. 'he's gone.' 'where--to knollsea?' said sol. 'yes,' said mountclere. 'now, go ahead to knollsea!' he shouted to the man. 'to think i should be fooled like this! i had no idea that he would be leaving so soon! we might perhaps have been here an hour earlier by hard striving. but who was to dream that he would arrange to leave it at such an unearthly time of the morning at this dark season of the year? drive--drive!' he called again out of the window, and the pace was increased. 'i have come two or three miles out of my way on account of you,' said sol sullenly. 'and all this time lost. i don't see why you wanted to come here at all. i knew it would be a waste of time.' 'damn it all, man,' said mountclere; 'it is no use for you to be angry with me!' 'i think it is, for 'tis you have brought me into this muddle,' said sol, in no sweeter tone. 'ha, ha! upon my life i should be inclined to laugh, if i were not so much inclined to do the other thing, at berta's trick of trying to make close family allies of such a cantankerous pair as you and i! so much of one mind as we be, so alike in our ways of living, so close connected in our callings and principles, so matched in manners and customs! 'twould be a thousand pities to part us--hey, mr. mountclere!' mountclere faintly laughed with the same hideous merriment at the same idea, and then both remained in a withering silence, meant to express the utter contempt of each for the other, both in family and in person. they passed the lodge, and again swept into the highroad. 'drive on!' said mountclere, putting his head again out of the window, and shouting to the man. 'drive like the devil!' he roared again a few minutes afterwards, in fuming dissatisfaction with their rate of progress. 'baint i doing of it?' said the driver, turning angrily round. 'i ain't going to ruin my governor's horses for strangers who won't pay double for 'em--not i. i am driving as fast as i can. if other folks get in the way with their traps i suppose i must drive round 'em, sir?' there was a slight crash. 'there!' continued the coachman. 'that's what comes of my turning round!' sol looked out on the other side, and found that the forewheel of their carriage had become locked in the wheel of a dogcart they had overtaken, the road here being very narrow. their coachman, who knew he was to blame for this mishap, felt the advantage of taking time by the forelock in a case of accusation, and began swearing at his victim as if he were the sinner. sol jumped out, and looking up at the occupants of the other conveyance, saw against the sky the back elevation of his father and christopher julian, sitting upon a little seat which they overhung, like two big puddings upon a small dish. 'father--what, you going?' said sol. 'is it about berta that you've come?' 'yes, i got your letter,' said chickerel, 'and i felt i should like to come--that i ought to come, to save her from what she'll regret. luckily, this gentleman, a stranger to me, has given me a lift from anglebury, or i must have hired.' he pointed to christopher. 'but he's mr. julian!' said sol. 'you are mrs. petherwin's father?--i have travelled in your company without knowing it!' exclaimed christopher, feeling and looking both astonished and puzzled. at first, it had appeared to him that, in direct antagonism to his own purpose, her friends were favouring ethelberta's wedding; but it was evidently otherwise. 'yes, that's father,' said sol. 'father, this is mr. julian. mr. julian, this gentleman here is lord mountclere's brother--and, to cut the story short, we all wish to stop the wedding.' 'then let us get on, in heaven's name!' said mountclere. 'you are the lady's father?' 'i am,' said chickerel. 'then you had better come into this carriage. we shall go faster than the dogcart. now, driver, are the wheels right again?' chickerel hastily entered with mountclere, sol joined them, and they sped on. christopher drove close in their rear, not quite certain whether he did well in going further, now that there were plenty of people to attend to the business, but anxious to see the end. the other three sat in silence, with their eyes upon their knees, though the clouds were dispersing, and the morning grew bright. in about twenty minutes the square unembattled tower of knollsea church appeared below them in the vale, its summit just touching the distant line of sea upon sky. the element by which they had been victimized on the previous evening now smiled falsely to the low morning sun. they descended the road to the village at a little more mannerly pace than that of the earlier journey, and saw the rays glance upon the hands of the church clock, which marked five-and-twenty minutes to nine. . knollsea--the road thence--enckworth all eyes were directed to the church-gate, as the travellers descended the hill. no wedding carriages were there, no favours, no slatternly group of women brimming with interest, no aged pauper on two sticks, who comes because he has nothing else to do till dying time, no nameless female passing by on the other side with a laugh of indifference, no ringers taking off their coats as they vanish up a turret, no hobbledehoys on tiptoe outside the chancel windows--in short, none whatever of the customary accessories of a country wedding was anywhere visible. 'thank god!' said chickerel. 'wait till you know he deserves it,' said mountclere. 'nothing's done yet between them.' 'it is not likely that anything is done at this time of day. but i have decided to go to the church first. you will probably go to your relative's house at once?' sol looked to his father for a reply. 'no, i too shall go to the church first, just to assure myself,' said chickerel. 'i shall then go on to mrs petherwin's.' the carriage was stopped at the corner of a steep incline leading down to the edifice. mountclere and chickerel alighted and walked on towards the gates, sol remaining in his place. christopher was some way off, descending the hill on foot, having halted to leave his horse and trap at a small inn at the entrance to the village. when chickerel and mountclere reached the churchyard gate they found it slightly open. the church-door beyond it was also open, but nobody was near the spot. 'we have arrived not a minute too soon, however,' said mountclere. 'preparations have apparently begun. it was to be an early wedding, no doubt.' entering the building, they looked around; it was quite empty. chickerel turned towards the chancel, his eye being attracted by a red kneeling- cushion, placed at about the middle of the altar-railing, as if for early use. mountclere strode to the vestry, somewhat at a loss how to proceed in his difficult task of unearthing his brother, obtaining a private interview with him, and then, by the introduction of sol and chickerel, causing a general convulsion. 'ha! here's somebody,' he said, observing a man in the vestry. he advanced with the intention of asking where lord mountclere was to be found. chickerel came forward in the same direction. 'are you the parish clerk?' said mountclere to the man, who was dressed up in his best clothes. 'i hev the honour of that calling,' the man replied. two large books were lying before him on the vestry table, one of them being open. as the clerk spoke he looked slantingly on the page, as a person might do to discover if some writing were dry. mountclere and chickerel gazed on the same page. the book was the marriage-register. 'too late!' said chickerel. there plainly enough stood the signatures of lord mountclere and ethelberta. the viscount's was very black, and had not yet dried. her strokes were firm, and comparatively thick for a woman's, though paled by juxtaposition with her husband's muddled characters. in the space for witnesses' names appeared in trembling lines as fine as silk the autograph of picotee, the second name being that of a stranger, probably the clerk. 'yes, yes--we are too late, it seems,' said mountclere coolly. 'who could have thought they'd marry at eight!' chickerel stood like a man baked hard and dry. further than his first two words he could say nothing. 'they must have set about it early, upon my soul,' mountclere continued. 'when did the wedding take place?' he asked of the clerk sharply. 'it was over about five minutes before you came in,' replied that luminary pleasantly, as he played at an invisible game of pitch-and-toss with some half-sovereigns in his pocket. 'i received orders to have the church ready at five minutes to eight this morning, though i knew nothing about such a thing till bedtime last night. it was very private and plain, not that i should mind another such a one, sir;' and he secretly pitched and tossed again. meanwhile sol had found himself too restless to sit waiting in the carriage for more than a minute after the other two had left it. he stepped out at the same instant that christopher came past, and together they too went on to the church. 'father, ought we not to go on at once to ethelberta's, instead of waiting?' said sol, on reaching the vestry, still in ignorance. ''twas no use in coming here.' 'no use at all,' said chickerel, as if he had straw in his throat. 'look at this. i would almost sooner have had it that in leaving this church i came from her grave--well, no, perhaps not that, but i fear it is a bad thing.' sol then saw the names in the register, christopher saw them, and the man closed the book. christopher could not well command himself, and he retired. 'i knew it. i always said that pride would lead berta to marry an unworthy man, and so it has!' said sol bitterly. 'what shall we do now? i'll see her.' 'do no such thing, young man,' said mountclere. 'the best course is to leave matters alone. they are married. if you are wise, you will try to think the match a good one, and be content to let her keep her position without inconveniencing her by your intrusions or complaints. it is possible that the satisfaction of her ambition will help her to endure any few surprises to her propriety that may occur. she is a clever young woman, and has played her cards adroitly. i only hope she may never repent of the game! a-hem. good morning.' saying this, mountclere slightly bowed to his relations, and marched out of the church with dignity; but it was told afterwards by the coachman, who had no love for mountclere, that when he stepped into the fly, and was as he believed unobserved, he was quite overcome with fatuous rage, his lips frothing like a mug of hot ale. 'what an impertinent gentleman 'tis,' said chickerel. 'as if we had tried for her to marry his brother!' 'he knows better than that,' said sol. 'but he'll never believe that berta didn't lay a trap for the old fellow. he thinks at this moment that lord mountclere has never been told of us and our belongings.' 'i wonder if she has deceived him in anything,' murmured chickerel. 'i can hardly suppose it. but she is altogether beyond me. however, if she has misled him on any point she will suffer for it.' 'you need not fear that, father. it isn't her way of working. why couldn't she have known that when a title is to be had for the asking, the owner must be a shocking one indeed?' 'the title is well enough. any poor scrubs in our place must be fools not to think the match a very rare and astonishing honour, as far as the position goes. but that my brave girl will be miserable is a part of the honour i can't stomach so well. if he had been any other lord in the kingdom, we might have been merry indeed. i believe he will ruin her happiness--yes, i do--not by any personal snubbing or rough conduct, but by other things, causing her to be despised; and that is a thing she can't endure.' 'she's not to be despised without a deal of trouble--we must remember that. and if he insults her by introducing new favourites, as they say he did his first wife, i'll call upon him and ask his meaning, and take her away.' 'nonsense--we shall never know what he does, or how she feels; she will never let out a word. however unhappy she may be, she will always deny it--that's the unfortunate part of such marriages.' 'an old chap like that ought to leave young women alone, damn him!' the clerk came nearer. 'i am afraid i cannot allow bad words to be spoke in this sacred pile,' he said. 'as far as my personal self goes, i should have no objection to your cussing as much as you like, but as a official of the church my conscience won't allow it to be done.' 'your conscience has allowed something to be done that cussing and swearing are godly worship to.' 'the prettiest maid is left out of harness, however,' said the clerk. 'the little witness was the chicken to my taste--lord forgive me for saying it, and a man with a wife and family!' sol and his father turned to withdraw, and soon forgot the remark, but it was frequently recalled by christopher. 'do you think of trying to see ethelberta before you leave?' said sol. 'certainly not,' said chickerel. 'mr. mountclere's advice was good in that. the more we keep out of the way the more good we are doing her. i shall go back to anglebury by the carrier, and get on at once to london. you will go with me, i suppose?' 'the carrier does not leave yet for an hour or two.' 'i shall walk on, and let him overtake me. if possible, i will get one glimpse of enckworth court, berta's new home; there may be time, if i start at once.' 'i will walk with you,' said sol. 'there is room for one with me,' said christopher. 'i shall drive back early in the afternoon.' 'thank you,' said sol. 'i will endeavour to meet you at corvsgate.' thus it was arranged. chickerel could have wished to search for picotee, and learn from her the details of this mysterious matter. but it was particularly painful to him to make himself busy after the event; and to appear suddenly and uselessly where he was plainly not wanted to appear would be an awkwardness which the pleasure of seeing either daughter could scarcely counterbalance. hence he had resolved to return at once to town, and there await the news, together with the detailed directions as to his own future movements, carefully considered and laid down, which were sure to be given by the far-seeing ethelberta. sol and his father walked on together, chickerel to meet the carrier just beyond enckworth, sol to wait for christopher at corvsgate. his wish to see, in company with his father, the outline of the seat to which ethelberta had been advanced that day, was the triumph of youthful curiosity and interest over dogged objection. his father's wish was based on calmer reasons. christopher, lone and out of place, remained in the church yet a little longer. he desultorily walked round. reaching the organ chamber, he looked at the instrument, and was surprised to find behind it a young man. julian first thought him to be the organist; on second inspection, however, he proved to be a person christopher had met before, under far different circumstances; it was our young friend ladywell, looking as sick and sorry as a lily with a slug in its stalk. the occasion, the place, and their own condition, made them kin. christopher had despised ladywell, ladywell had disliked christopher; but a third item neutralized the other two--it was their common lot. christopher just nodded, for they had only met on ethelberta's stairs. ladywell nodded more, and spoke. 'the church appears to be interesting,' he said. 'yes. such a tower is rare in england,' said christopher. they then dwelt on other features of the building, thence enlarging to the village, and then to the rocks and marine scenery, both avoiding the malady they suffered from--the marriage of ethelberta. 'the village streets are very picturesque, and the cliff scenery is good of its kind,' rejoined ladywell. 'the rocks represent the feminine side of grandeur. here they are white, with delicate tops. on the west coast they are higher, black, and with angular summits. those represent grandeur in its masculine aspect. it is merely my own idea, and not very bright, perhaps.' 'it is very ingenious,' said christopher, 'and perfectly true.' ladywell was pleased. 'i am here at present making sketches for my next subject--a winter sea. otherwise i should not have--happened to be in the church.' 'you are acquainted with mrs. petherwin--i think you are mr. ladywell, who painted her portrait last season?' 'yes,' said ladywell, colouring. 'you may have heard her speak of mr. julian?' 'o yes,' said ladywell, offering his hand. then by degrees their tongues wound closer round the subject of their sadness, each tacitly owning to what he would not tell. 'i saw it,' said ladywell heavily. 'did she look troubled?' 'not in the least--bright and fresh as a may morning. she has played me many a bitter trick, and poor neigh too, a friend of mine. but i cannot help forgiving her. . . . i saw a carriage at the door, and strolled in. the ceremony was just proceeding, so i sat down here. well, i have done with knollsea. the place has no further interest for me now. i may own to you as a friend, that if she had not been living here i should have studied at some other coast--of course that's in confidence.' 'i understand, quite.' 'i only arrived in the neighbourhood two days ago, and did not set eyes upon her till this morning, she has kept so entirely indoors.' then the young men parted, and half-an-hour later the ingenuous ladywell came from the visitors' inn by the shore, a man walking behind him with a quantity of artists' materials and appliances. he went on board the steamer, which this morning had performed the passage in safety. ethelberta single having been the loadstone in the cliffs that had attracted ladywell hither, ethelberta married was the negative pole of the same, sending him away. and thus did a woman put an end to the only opportunity of distinction, on art-exhibition walls, that ever offered itself to the tortuous ways, quaint alleys, and marbled bluffs of knollsea, as accessories in the picture of a winter sea. christopher's interest in the village was of the same evaporating nature. he looked upon the sea, and the great swell, and the waves sending up a sound like the huzzas of multitudes; but all the wild scene was irksome now. the ocean-bound steamers far away on the horizon inspired him with no curiosity as to their destination; the house ethelberta had occupied was positively hateful; and he turned away to wait impatiently for the hour at which he had promised to drive on to meet sol at corvsgate. sol and chickerel plodded along the road, in order to skirt enckworth before the carrier came up. reaching the top of a hill on their way, they paused to look down on a peaceful scene. it was a park and wood, glowing in all the matchless colours of late autumn, parapets and pediments peering out from a central position afar. at the bottom of the descent before them was a lodge, to which they now descended. the gate stood invitingly open. exclusiveness was no part of the owner's instincts: one could see that at a glance. no appearance of a well-rolled garden-path attached to the park-drive; as is the case with many, betokening by the perfection of their surfaces their proprietor's deficiency in hospitality. the approach was like a turnpike road full of great ruts, clumsy mendings; bordered by trampled edges and incursions upon the grass at pleasure. butchers and bakers drove as freely herein as peers and peeresses. christening parties, wedding companies, and funeral trains passed along by the doors of the mansion without check or question. a wild untidiness in this particular has its recommendations; for guarded grounds ever convey a suspicion that their owner is young to landed possessions, as religious earnestnesss implies newness of conversion, and conjugal tenderness recent marriage. half-an-hour being wanting as yet to chickerel's time with the carrier, sol and himself, like the rest of the world when at leisure, walked into the extensive stretch of grass and grove. it formed a park so large that not one of its owners had ever wished it larger, not one of its owner's rivals had ever failed to wish it smaller, and not one of its owner's satellites had ever seen it without praise. they somewhat avoided the roadway passing under the huge, misshapen, ragged trees, and through fern brakes, ruddy and crisp in their decay. on reaching a suitable eminence, the father and son stood still to look upon the many-chimneyed building, or rather conglomeration of buildings, to which these groves and glades formed a setting. 'we will just give a glance,' said chickerel, 'and then go away. it don't seem well to me that ethelberta should have this; it is too much. the sudden change will do her no good. i never believe in anything that comes in the shape of wonderful luck. as it comes, so it goes. had she been brought home today to one of those tenant-farms instead of these woods and walls, i could have called it good fortune. what she should have done was glorify herself by glorifying her own line of life, not by forsaking that line for another. better have been admired as a governess than shunned as a peeress, which is what she will be. but it is just the same everywhere in these days. young men will rather wear a black coat and starve than wear fustian and do well.' 'one man to want such a monstrous house as that! well, 'tis a fine place. see, there's the carpenters' shops, the timber-yard, and everything, as if it were a little town. perhaps berta may hire me for a job now and then.' 'i always knew she would cut herself off from us. she marked for it from childhood, and she has finished the business thoroughly.' 'well, it is no matter, father, for why should we want to trouble her? she may write, and i shall answer; but if she calls to see me, i shall not return the visit; and if she meets me with her husband or any of her new society about her, i shall behave as a stranger.' 'it will be best,' said chickerel. 'well, now i must move.' however, by the sorcery of accident, before they had very far retraced their steps an open carriage became visible round a bend in the drive. chickerel, with a servant's instinct, was for beating a retreat. 'no,' said sol. 'let us stand our ground. we have already been seen, and we do no harm.' so they stood still on the edge of the drive, and the carriage drew near. it was a landau, and the sun shone in upon lord mountclere, with lady mountclere sitting beside him, like abishag beside king david. very blithe looked the viscount, for he rode upon a cherub to-day. she appeared fresh, rosy, and strong, but dubious; though if mien was anything, she was a viscountess twice over. her dress was of a dove-coloured material, with a bonnet to match, a little tufted white feather resting on the top, like a truce-flag between the blood of noble and vassal. upon the cool grey of her shoulders hung a few locks of hair, toned warm as fire by the sunshiny addition to its natural hue. chickerel instinctively took off his hat; sol did the same. for only a moment did ethelberta seem uncertain how to act. but a solution to her difficulty was given by the face of her brother. there she saw plainly at one glance more than a dozen speeches would have told--for sol's features thoroughly expressed his intention that to him she was to be a stranger. her eyes flew to chickerel, and he slightly shook his head. she understood them now. with a tear in her eye for her father, and a sigh in her bosom for sol, she bowed in answer to their salute; her husband moved his hat and nodded, and the carriage rolled on. lord mountclere might possibly be making use of the fine morning in showing her the park and premises. chickerel, with a moist eye, now went on with his son towards the highroad. when they reached the lodge, the lodge-keeper was walking in the sun, smoking his pipe. 'good morning,' he said to chickerel. 'any rejoicings at the court to-day?' the butler inquired. 'quite the reverse. not a soul there. 'tisn't knowed anywhere at all. i had no idea of such a thing till he brought my lady here. not going off, neither. they've come home like the commonest couple in the land, and not even the bells allowed to ring.' they walked along the public road, and the carrier came in view. 'father,' said sol, 'i don't think i'll go further with you. she's gone into the house; and suppose she should run back without him to try to find us? it would be cruel to disappoint her. i'll bide about here for a quarter of an hour, in case she should. mr. julian won't have passed corvsgate till i get there.' 'well, one or two of her old ways may be left in her still, and it is not a bad thought. then you will walk the rest of the distance if you don't meet mr. julian? i must be in london by the evening.' 'any time to-night will do for me. i shall not begin work until to-morrow, so that the four o'clock train will answer my purpose.' thus they parted, and sol strolled leisurely back. the road was quite deserted, and he lingered by the park fence. 'sol!' said a bird-like voice; 'how did you come here?' he looked up, and saw a figure peering down upon him from the top of the park wall, the ground on the inside being higher than the road. the speaker was to the expected ethelberta what the moon is to the sun, a star to the moon. it was picotee. 'hullo, picotee!' said sol. 'there's a little gate a quarter of a mile further on,' said picotee. 'we can meet there without your passing through the big lodge. i'll be there as soon as you.' sol ascended the hill, passed through the second gate, and turned back again, when he met picotee coming forward under the trees. they walked together in this secluded spot. 'berta says she wants to see you and father,' said picotee breathlessly. 'you must come in and make yourselves comfortable. she had no idea you were here so secretly, and she didn't know what to do.' 'father's gone,' said sol. 'how vexed she will be! she thinks there is something the matter--that you are angry with her for not telling you earlier. but you will come in, sol?' 'no, i can't come in,' said her brother. 'why not? it is such a big house, you can't think. you need not come near the front apartments, if you think we shall be ashamed of you in your working clothes. how came you not to dress up a bit, sol? still, berta won't mind it much. she says lord mountclere must take her as she is, or he is kindly welcome to leave her.' 'ah, well! i might have had a word or two to say about that, but the time has gone by for it, worse luck. perhaps it is best that i have said nothing, and she has had her way. no, i shan't come in, picotee. father is gone, and i am going too.' 'o sol!' 'we are rather put out at her acting like this--father and i and all of us. she might have let us know about it beforehand, even if she is a lady and we what we always was. it wouldn't have let her down so terrible much to write a line. she might have learnt something that would have led her to take a different step.' 'but you will see poor berta? she has done no harm. she was going to write long letters to all of you to-day, explaining her wedding, and how she is going to help us all on in the world.' sol paused irresolutely. 'no, i won't come in,' he said. 'it would disgrace her, for one thing, dressed as i be; more than that, i don't want to come in. but i should like to see her, if she would like to see me; and i'll go up there to that little fir plantation, and walk up and down behind it for exactly half-an-hour. she can come out to me there.' sol had pointed as he spoke to a knot of young trees that hooded a knoll a little way off. 'i'll go and tell her,' said picotee. 'i suppose they will be off somewhere, and she is busy getting ready?' 'o no. they are not going to travel till next year. ethelberta does not want to go anywhere; and lord mountclere cannot endure this changeable weather in any place but his own house.' 'poor fellow!' 'then you will wait for her by the firs? i'll tell her at once.' picotee left him, and sol went across the glade. . enckworth (continued)--the anglebury highway he had not paced behind the firs more than ten minutes when ethelberta appeared from the opposite side. at great inconvenience to herself, she had complied with his request. ethelberta was trembling. she took her brother's hand, and said, 'is father, then, gone?' 'yes,' said sol. 'i should have been gone likewise, but i thought you wanted to see me.' 'of course i did, and him too. why did you come so mysteriously, and, i must say, unbecomingly? i am afraid i did wrong in not informing you of my intention.' 'to yourself you may have. father would have liked a word with you before--you did it.' 'you both looked so forbidding that i did not like to stop the carriage when we passed you. i want to see him on an important matter--his leaving mrs. doncastle's service at once. i am going to write and beg her to dispense with a notice, which i have no doubt she will do.' 'he's very much upset about you.' 'my secrecy was perhaps an error of judgment,' she said sadly. 'but i had reasons. why did you and my father come here at all if you did not want to see me?' 'we did want to see you up to a certain time.' 'you did not come to prevent my marriage?' 'we wished to see you before the marriage--i can't say more.' 'i thought you might not approve of what i had done,' said ethelberta mournfully. 'but a time may come when you will approve.' 'never.' 'don't be harsh, sol. a coronet covers a multitude of sins.' 'a coronet: good lord--and you my sister! look at my hand.' sol extended his hand. 'look how my thumb stands out at the root, as if it were out of joint, and that hard place inside there. did you ever see anything so ugly as that hand--a misshaped monster, isn't he? that comes from the jackplane, and my pushing against it day after day and year after year. if i were found drowned or buried, dressed or undressed, in fustian or in broadcloth, folk would look at my hand and say, "that man's a carpenter." well now, how can a man, branded with work as i be, be brother to a viscountess without something being wrong? of course there's something wrong in it, or he wouldn't have married you--something which won't be righted without terrible suffering.' 'no, no,' said she. 'you are mistaken. there is no such wonderful quality in a title in these days. what i really am is second wife to a quiet old country nobleman, who has given up society. what more commonplace? my life will be as simple, even more simple, than it was before.' 'berta, you have worked to false lines. a creeping up among the useless lumber of our nation that'll be the first to burn if there comes a flare. i never see such a deserter of your own lot as you be! but you were always like it, berta, and i am ashamed of ye. more than that, a good woman never marries twice.' 'you are too hard, sol,' said the poor viscountess, almost crying. 'i've done it all for you! even if i have made a mistake, and given my ambition an ignoble turn, don't tell me so now, or you may do more harm in a minute than you will cure in a lifetime. it is absurd to let republican passions so blind you to fact. a family which can be honourably traced through history for five hundred years, does affect the heart of a person not entirely hardened against romance. whether you like the peerage or no, they appeal to our historical sense and love of old associations.' 'i don't care for history. prophecy is the only thing can do poor men any good. when you were a girl, you wouldn't drop a curtsey to 'em, historical or otherwise, and there you were right. but, instead of sticking to such principles, you must needs push up, so as to get girls such as you were once to curtsey to you, not even thinking marriage with a bad man too great a price to pay for't.' 'a bad man? what do you mean by that? lord mountclere is rather old, but he's worthy. what did you mean, sol?' 'nothing--a mere sommat to say.' at that moment picotee emerged from behind a tree, and told her sister that lord mountclere was looking for her. 'well, sol, i cannot explain all to you now,' she said. 'i will send for you in london.' she wished him goodbye, and they separated, picotee accompanying sol a little on his way. ethelberta was greatly perturbed by this meeting. after retracing her steps a short distance, she still felt so distressed and unpresentable that she resolved not to allow lord mountclere to see her till the clouds had somewhat passed off; it was but a bare act of justice to him to hide from his sight such a bridal mood as this. it was better to keep him waiting than to make him positively unhappy. she turned aside, and went up the valley, where the park merged in miles of wood and copse. she opened an iron gate and entered the wood, casually interested in the vast variety of colours that the half-fallen leaves of the season wore: more, much more, occupied with personal thought. the path she pursued became gradually involved in bushes as well as trees, giving to the spot the character rather of a coppice than a wood. perceiving that she had gone far enough, ethelberta turned back by a path which at this point intersected that by which she had approached, and promised a more direct return towards the court. she had not gone many steps among the hazels, which here formed a perfect thicket, when she observed a belt of holly- bushes in their midst; towards the outskirts of these an opening on her left hand directly led, thence winding round into a clear space of greensward, which they completely enclosed. on this isolated and mewed- up bit of lawn stood a timber-built cottage, having ornamental barge-boards, balconettes, and porch. it was an erection interesting enough as an experiment, and grand as a toy, but as a building contemptible. a blue gauze of smoke floated over the chimney, as if somebody was living there; round towards the side some empty hen-coops were piled away; while under the hollies were divers frameworks of wire netting and sticks, showing that birds were kept here at some seasons of the year. being lady of all she surveyed, ethelberta crossed the leafy sward, and knocked at the door. she was interested in knowing the purpose of the peculiar little edifice. the door was opened by a woman wearing a clean apron upon a not very clean gown. ethelberta asked who lived in so pretty a place. 'miss gruchette,' the servant replied. 'but she is not here now.' 'does she live here alone?' 'yes--excepting myself and a fellow-servant.' 'oh.' 'she lives here to attend to the pheasants and poultry, because she is so clever in managing them. they are brought here from the keeper's over the hill. her father was a fancier.' 'miss gruchette attends to the birds, and two servants attend to miss gruchette?' 'well, to tell the truth, m'm, the servants do almost all of it. still, that's what miss gruchette is here for. would you like to see the house? it is pretty.' the woman spoke with hesitation, as if in doubt between the desire of earning a shilling and the fear that ethelberta was not a stranger. that ethelberta was lady mountclere she plainly did not dream. 'i fear i can scarcely stay long enough; yet i will just look in,' said ethelberta. and as soon as they had crossed the threshold she was glad of having done so. the cottage internally may be described as a sort of boudoir extracted from the bulk of a mansion and deposited in a wood. the front room was filled with nicknacks, curious work-tables, filigree baskets, twisted brackets supporting statuettes, in which the grotesque in every case ruled the design; love-birds, in gilt cages; french bronzes, wonderful boxes, needlework of strange patterns, and other attractive objects. the apartment was one of those which seem to laugh in a visitor's face and on closer examination express frivolity more distinctly than by words. 'miss gruchette is here to keep the fowls?' said ethelberta, in a puzzled tone, after a survey. 'yes. but they don't keep her.' ethelberta did not attempt to understand, and ceased to occupy her mind with the matter. they came from the cottage to the door, where she gave the woman a trifling sum, and turned to leave. but footsteps were at that moment to be heard beating among the leaves on the other side of the hollies, and ethelberta waited till the walkers should have passed. the voices of two men reached herself and the woman as they stood. they were close to the house, yet screened from it by the holly-bushes, when one could be heard to say distinctly, as if with his face turned to the cottage-- 'lady mountclere gone for good?' 'i suppose so. ha-ha! so come, so go.' the speakers passed on, their backs becoming visible through the opening. they appeared to be woodmen. 'what lady mountclere do they mean?' said ethelberta. the woman blushed. 'they meant miss gruchette.' 'oh--a nickname.' 'yes.' 'why?' the woman whispered why in a story of about two minutes' length. ethelberta turned pale. 'is she going to return?' she inquired, in a thin hard voice. 'yes; next week. you know her, m'm?' 'no. i am a stranger.' 'so much the better. i may tell you, then, that an old tale is flying about the neighbourhood--that lord mountclere was privately married to another woman, at knollsea, this morning early. can it be true?' 'i believe it to be true.' 'and that she is of no family?' 'of no family.' 'indeed. then the lord only knows what will become of the poor thing. there will be murder between 'em.' 'between whom?' 'her and the lady who lives here. she won't budge an inch--not she!' ethelberta moved aside. a shade seemed to overspread the world, the sky, the trees, and the objects in the foreground. she kept her face away from the woman, and, whispering a reply to her good-morning, passed through the hollies into the leaf-strewn path. as soon as she came to a large trunk she placed her hands against it and rested her face upon them. she drew herself lower down, lower, lower, till she crouched upon the leaves. 'ay--'tis what father and sol meant! o heaven!' she whispered. she soon arose, and went on her way to the house. her fair features were firmly set, and she scarcely heeded the path in the concentration which had followed her paroxysm. when she reached the park proper she became aware of an excitement that was in progress there. ethelberta's absence had become unaccountable to lord mountclere, who could hardly permit her retirement from his sight for a minute. but at first he had made due allowance for her eccentricity as a woman of genius, and would not take notice of the half-hour's desertion, unpardonable as it might have been in other classes of wives. then he had inquired, searched, been alarmed: he had finally sent men-servants in all directions about the park to look for her. he feared she had fallen out of a window, down a well, or into the lake. the next stage of search was to have been drags and grapnels: but ethelberta entered the house. lord mountclere rushed forward to meet her, and such was her contrivance that he noticed no change. the searchers were called in, ethelberta explaining that she had merely obeyed the wish of her brother in going out to meet him. picotee, who had returned from her walk with sol, was upstairs in one of the rooms which had been allotted to her. ethelberta managed to run in there on her way upstairs to her own chamber. 'picotee, put your things on again,' she said. 'you are the only friend i have in this house, and i want one badly. go to sol, and deliver this message to him--that i want to see him at once. you must overtake him, if you walk all the way to anglebury. but the train does not leave till four, so that there is plenty of time.' 'what is the matter?' said picotee. 'i cannot walk all the way.' 'i don't think you will have to do that--i hope not.' 'he is going to stop at corvsgate to have a bit of lunch: i might overtake him there, if i must!' 'yes. and tell him to come to the east passage door. it is that door next to the entrance to the stable-yard. there is a little yew-tree outside it. on second thoughts you, dear, must not come back. wait at corvsgate in the little inn parlour till sol comes to you again. you will probably then have to go home to london alone; but do not mind it. the worst part for you will be in going from the station to the crescent; but nobody will molest you in a four-wheel cab: you have done it before. however, he will tell you if this is necessary when he gets back. i can best fight my battles alone. you shall have a letter from me the day after to-morrow, stating where i am. i shall not be here.' 'but what is it so dreadful?' 'nothing to frighten you.' but she spoke with a breathlessness that completely nullified the assurance. 'it is merely that i find i must come to an explanation with lord mountclere before i can live here permanently, and i cannot stipulate with him while i am here in his power. till i write, good-bye. your things are not unpacked, so let them remain here for the present--they can be sent for.' poor picotee, more agitated than her sister, but never questioning her orders, went downstairs and out of the house. she ran across the shrubberies, into the park, and to the gate whereat sol had emerged some half-hour earlier. she trotted along upon the turnpike road like a lost doe, crying as she went at the new trouble which had come upon berta, whatever that trouble might be. behind her she heard wheels and the stepping of a horse, but she was too concerned to turn her head. the pace of the vehicle slackened, however, when it was abreast of picotee, and she looked up to see christopher as the driver. 'miss chickerel!' he said, with surprise. picotee had quickly looked down again, and she murmured, 'yes.' christopher asked what he could not help asking in the circumstances, 'would you like to ride?' 'i should be glad,' said she, overcoming her flurry. 'i am anxious to overtake my brother sol.' 'i have arranged to pick him up at corvsgate,' said christopher. he descended, and assisted her to mount beside him, and drove on again, almost in silence. he was inclined to believe that some supernatural legerdemain had to do with these periodic impacts of picotee on his path. she sat mute and melancholy till they were within half-a-mile of corvsgate. 'thank you,' she said then, perceiving sol upon the road, 'there is my brother; i will get down now.' 'he was going to ride on to anglebury with me,' said julian. picotee did not reply, and sol turned round. seeing her he instantly exclaimed, 'what's the matter, picotee?' she explained to him that he was to go back immediately, and meet her sister at the door by the yew, as ethelberta had charged her. christopher, knowing them so well, was too much an interested member of the group to be left out of confidence, and she included him in her audience. 'and what are you to do?' said sol to her. 'i am to wait at corvsgate till you come to me.' 'i can't understand it,' sol muttered, with a gloomy face. 'there's something wrong; and it was only to be expected; that's what i say, mr. julian.' 'if necessary i can take care of miss chickerel till you come,' said christopher. 'thank you,' said sol. 'then i will return to you as soon as i can, at the "castle" inn, just ahead. 'tis very awkward for you to be so burdened by us, mr. julian; but we are in a trouble that i don't yet see the bottom of.' 'i know,' said christopher kindly. 'we will wait for you.' he then drove on with picotee to the inn, which was not far off, and sol returned again to enckworth. feeling somewhat like a thief in the night, he zigzagged through the park, behind belts and knots of trees, until he saw the yew, dark and clear, as if drawn in ink upon the fair face of the mansion. the way up to it was in a little cutting between shrubs, the door being a private entrance, sunk below the surface of the lawn, and invisible from other parts of the same front. as soon as he reached it, ethelberta opened it at once, as if she had listened for his footsteps. she took him along a passage in the basement, up a flight of steps, and into a huge, solitary, chill apartment. it was the ball-room. spacious mirrors in gilt frames formed panels in the lower part of the walls, the remainder being toned in sage-green. in a recess between each mirror was a statue. the ceiling rose in a segmental curve, and bore sprawling upon its face gilt figures of wanton goddesses, cupids, satyrs with tambourines, drums, and trumpets, the whole ceiling seeming alive with them. but the room was very gloomy now, there being little light admitted from without, and the reflections from the mirrors gave a depressing coldness to the scene. it was a place intended to look joyous by night, and whatever it chose to look by day. 'we are safe here,' said she. 'but we must listen for footsteps. i have only five minutes: lord mountclere is waiting for me. i mean to leave this place, come what may.' 'why?' said sol, in astonishment. 'i cannot tell you--something has occurred. god has got me in his power at last, and is going to scourge me for my bad doings--that's what it seems like. sol, listen to me, and do exactly what i say. go to anglebury, hire a brougham, bring it on as far as little enckworth: you will have to meet me with it at one of the park gates later in the evening--probably the west, at half-past seven. leave it at the village with the man, come on here on foot, and stay under the trees till just before six: it will then be quite dark, and you must stand under the projecting balustrade a little further on than the door you came in by. i will just step upon the balcony over it, and tell you more exactly than i can now the precise time that i shall be able to slip out, and where the carriage is to be waiting. but it may not be safe to speak on account of his closeness to me--i will hand down a note. i find it is impossible to leave the house by daylight--i am certain to be pursued--he already suspects something. now i must be going, or he will be here, for he watches my movements because of some accidental words that escaped me.' 'berta, i shan't have anything to do with this,' said sol. 'it is not right!' 'i am only going to rouen, to aunt charlotte!' she implored. 'i want to get to southampton, to be in time for the midnight steamer. when i am at rouen i can negotiate with lord mountclere the terms on which i will return to him. it is the only chance i have of rooting out a scandal and a disgrace which threatens the beginning of my life here! my letters to him, and his to me, can be forwarded through you or through father, and he will not know where i am. any woman is justified in adopting such a course to bring her husband to a sense of her dignity. if i don't go away now, it will end in a permanent separation. if i leave at once, and stipulate that he gets rid of her, we may be reconciled.' 'i can't help you: you must stick to your husband. i don't like them, or any of their sort, barring about three or four, for the reason that they despise me and all my sort. but, ethelberta, for all that i'll play fair with them. no half-and-half trimming business. you have joined 'em, and 'rayed yourself against us; and there you'd better bide. you have married your man, and your duty is towards him. i know what he is and so does father; but if i were to help you to run away now, i should scorn myself more than i scorn him.' 'i don't care for that, or for any such politics! the mountclere line is noble, and how was i to know that this member was not noble, too? as the representative of an illustrious family i was taken with him, but as a man--i must shun him.' 'how can you shun him? you have married him!' 'nevertheless, i won't stay! neither law nor gospel demands it of me after what i have learnt. and if law and gospel did demand it, i would not stay. and if you will not help me to escape, i go alone.' 'you had better not try any such wild thing.' the creaking of a door was heard. 'o sol,' she said appealingly, 'don't go into the question whether i am right or wrong--only remember that i am very unhappy. do help me--i have no other person in the world to ask! be under the balcony at six o'clock. say you will--i must go--say you will!' 'i'll think,' said sol, very much disturbed. 'there, don't cry; i'll try to be under the balcony, at any rate. i cannot promise more, but i'll try to be there.' she opened in the panelling one of the old-fashioned concealed modes of exit known as jib-doors, which it was once the custom to construct without architraves in the walls of large apartments, so as not to interfere with the general design of the room. sol found himself in a narrow passage, running down the whole length of the ball-room, and at the same time he heard lord mountclere's voice within, talking to ethelberta. sol's escape had been marvellous: as it was the viscount might have seen her tears. he passed down some steps, along an area from which he could see into a row of servants' offices, among them a kitchen with a fireplace flaming like an altar of sacrifice. nobody seemed to be concerned about him; there were workmen upon the premises, and he nearly matched them. at last he got again into the shrubberies and to the side of the park by which he had entered. on reaching corvsgate he found picotee in the parlour of the little inn, as he had directed. mr. julian, she said, had walked up to the ruins, and would be back again in a few minutes. sol ordered the horse to be put in, and by the time it was ready christopher came down from the hill. room was made for sol by opening the flap of the dogcart, and christopher drove on. he was anxious to know the trouble, and sol was not reluctant to share the burden of it with one whom he believed to be a friend. he told, scrap by scrap, the strange request of ethelberta. christopher, though ignorant of ethelberta's experience that morning, instantly assumed that the discovery of some concealed spectre had led to this precipitancy. 'when does she wish you to meet her with the carriage?' 'probably at half-past seven, at the west lodge; but that is to be finally fixed by a note she will hand down to me from the balcony.' 'which balcony?' 'the nearest to the yew-tree.' 'at what time will she hand the note?' 'as the court clock strikes six, she says. and if i am not there to take her instructions of course she will give up the idea, which is just what i want her to do.' christopher begged sol to go. whether ethelberta was right or wrong, he did not stop to inquire. she was in trouble; she was too clear-headed to be in trouble without good reason; and she wanted assistance out of it. but such was sol's nature that the more he reflected the more determined was he in not giving way to her entreaty. by the time that they reached anglebury he repented having given way so far as to withhold a direct refusal. 'it can do no good,' he said mournfully. 'it is better to nip her notion in its beginning. she says she wants to fly to rouen, and from there arrange terms with him. but it can't be done--she should have thought of terms before.' christopher made no further reply. leaving word at the 'red lion' that a man was to be sent to take the horse of him, he drove directly onwards to the station. 'then you don't mean to help her?' said julian, when sol took the tickets--one for himself and one for picotee. 'i serve her best by leaving her alone!' said sol. 'i don't think so.' 'she has married him.' 'she is in distress.' 'she has married him.' sol and picotee took their seats, picotee upbraiding her brother. 'i can go by myself!' she said, in tears. 'do go back for berta, sol. she said i was to go home alone, and i can do it!' 'you must not. it is not right for you to be hiring cabs and driving across london at midnight. berta should have known better than propose it.' 'she was flurried. go, sol!' but her entreaty was fruitless. 'have you got your ticket, mr. julian?' said sol. 'i suppose we shall go together till we get near melchester?' 'i have not got my ticket yet--i'll be back in two minutes.' the minutes went by, and christopher did not reappear. the train moved off: christopher was seen running up the platform, as if in a vain hope to catch it. 'he has missed the train,' said sol. picotee looked disappointed, and said nothing. they were soon out of sight. 'god forgive me for such a hollow pretence!' said christopher to himself. 'but he would have been uneasy had he known i wished to stay behind. i cannot leave her in trouble like this!' he went back to the 'red lion' with the manner and movement of a man who after a lifetime of desultoriness had at last found something to do. it was now getting late in the afternoon. christopher ordered a one-horse brougham at the inn, and entering it was driven out of the town towards enckworth as the evening shades were beginning to fall. they passed into the hamlet of little enckworth at half-past five, and drew up at a beer- house at the end. jumping out here, julian told the man to wait till he should return. thus far he had exactly obeyed her orders to sol. he hoped to be able to obey them throughout, and supply her with the aid her brother refused. he also hoped that the change in the personality of her confederate would make no difference to her intention. that he was putting himself in a wrong position he allowed, but time and attention were requisite for such analysis: meanwhile ethelberta was in trouble. on the one hand was she waiting hopefully for sol; on the other was sol many miles on his way to town; between them was himself. he ran with all his might towards enckworth park, mounted the lofty stone steps by the lodge, saw the dark bronze figures on the piers through the twilight, and then proceeded to thread the trees. among these he struck a light for a moment: it was ten minutes to six. in another five minutes he was panting beneath the walls of her house. enckworth court was not unknown to christopher, for he had frequently explored that spot in his sandbourne days. he perceived now why she had selected that particular balcony for handing down directions; it was the only one round the house that was low enough to be reached from the outside, the basement here being a little way sunk in the ground. he went close under, turned his face outwards, and waited. about a foot over his head was the stone floor of the balcony, forming a ceiling to his position. at his back, two or three feet behind, was a blank wall--the wall of the house. in front of him was the misty park, crowned by a sky sparkling with winter stars. this was abruptly cut off upward by the dark edge of the balcony which overhung him. it was as if some person within the room above had been awaiting his approach. he had scarcely found time to observe his situation when a human hand and portion of a bare arm were thrust between the balusters, descended a little way from the edge of the balcony, and remained hanging across the starlit sky. something was between the fingers. christopher lifted his hand, took the scrap, which was paper, and the arm was withdrawn. as it withdrew, a jewel on one of the fingers sparkled in the rays of a large planet that rode in the opposite sky. light steps retreated from the balcony, and a window closed. christopher had almost held his breath lest ethelberta should discover him at the critical moment to be other than sol, and mar her deliverance by her alarm. the still silence was anything but silence to him; he felt as if he were listening to the clanging chorus of an oratorio. and then he could fancy he heard words between ethelberta and the viscount within the room; they were evidently at very close quarters, and dexterity must have been required of her. he went on tiptoe across the gravel to the grass, and once on that he strode in the direction whence he had come. by the thick trunk of one of a group of aged trees he stopped to get a light, just as the court clock struck six in loud long tones. the transaction had been carried out, through her impatience possibly, four or five minutes before the time appointed. the note contained, in a shaken hand, in which, however, the well-known characters were distinguishable, these words in pencil: 'at half-past seven o'clock. just outside the north lodge; don't fail.' this was the time she had suggested to sol as that which would probably best suit her escape, if she could escape at all. she had changed the place from the west to the north lodge--nothing else. the latter was certainly more secluded, though a trifle more remote from the course of the proposed journey; there was just time enough and none to spare for fetching the brougham from little enckworth to the lodge, the village being two miles off. the few minutes gained by her readiness at the balcony were useful now. he started at once for the village, diverging somewhat to observe the spot appointed for the meeting. it was excellently chosen; the gate appeared to be little used, the lane outside it was covered with trees, and all around was silent as the grave. after this hasty survey by the wan starlight, he hastened on to little enckworth. an hour and a quarter later a little brougham without lamps was creeping along by the park wall towards this spot. the leaves were so thick upon the unfrequented road that the wheels could not be heard, and the horse's pacing made scarcely more noise than a rabbit would have done in limping along. the vehicle progressed slowly, for they were in good time. about ten yards from the park entrance it stopped, and christopher stepped out. 'we may have to wait here ten minutes,' he said to the driver. 'and then shall we be able to reach anglebury in time for the up mail-train to southampton?' 'half-past seven, half-past eight, half-past nine--two hours. o yes, sir, easily. a young lady in the case perhaps, sir?' 'yes.' 'well, i hope she'll be done honestly by, even if she is of humble station. 'tis best, and cheapest too, in the long run.' the coachman was apparently imagining the dove about to flit away to be one of the pretty maid-servants that abounded in enckworth court; such escapades as these were not unfrequent among them, a fair face having been deemed a sufficient recommendation to service in that house, without too close an inquiry into character, since the death of the first viscountess. 'now then, silence; and listen for a footstep at the gate.' such calmness as there was in the musician's voice had been produced by considerable effort. for his heart had begun to beat fast and loud as he strained his attentive ear to catch the footfall of a woman who could only be his illegally. the obscurity was as great as a starry sky would permit it to be. beneath the trees where the carriage stood the darkness was total. . enckworth and its precincts--melchester to be wise after the event is often to act foolishly with regard to it; and to preserve the illusion which has led to the event would frequently be a course that omniscience itself could not find fault with. reaction with ethelberta was complete, and the more violent in that it threatened to be useless. sol's bitter chiding had been the first thing to discompose her fortitude. it reduced her to a consciousness that she had allowed herself to be coerced in her instincts, and yet had not triumphed in her duty. she might have pleased her family better by pleasing her tastes, and have entirely avoided the grim irony of the situation disclosed later in the day. after the second interview with sol she was to some extent composed in mind by being able to nurse a definite intention. as momentum causes the narrowest wheel to stand upright, a scheme, fairly imbibed, will give the weakest some power to maintain a position stoically. in the temporary absence of lord mountclere, about six o'clock, she slipped out upon the balcony and handed down a note. to her relief, a hand received it instantly. the hour and a half wanting to half-past seven she passed with great effort. the main part of the time was occupied by dinner, during which she attempted to devise some scheme for leaving him without suspicion just before the appointed moment. happily, and as if by a providence, there was no necessity for any such thing. a little while before the half-hour, when she moved to rise from dinner, he also arose, tenderly begging her to excuse him for a few minutes, that he might go and write an important note to his lawyer, until that moment forgotten, though the postman was nearly due. she heard him retire along the corridor and shut himself into his study, his promised time of return being a quarter of an hour thence. five minutes after that memorable parting ethelberta came from the little door by the bush of yew, well and thickly wrapped up from head to heels. she skimmed across the park and under the boughs like a shade, mounting then the stone steps for pedestrians which were fixed beside the park gates here as at all the lodges. outside and below her she saw an oblong shape--it was a brougham, and it had been drawn forward close to the bottom of the steps that she might not have an inch further to go on foot than to this barrier. the whole precinct was thronged with trees; half their foliage being overhead, the other half under foot, for the gardeners had not yet begun to rake and collect the leaves; thus it was that her dress rustled as she descended the steps. the carriage door was held open by the driver, and she entered instantly. he shut her in, and mounted to his seat. as they drove away she became conscious of another person inside. 'o! sol--it is done!' she whispered, believing the man to be her brother. her companion made no reply. ethelberta, familiar with sol's moods of troubled silence, did not press for an answer. it was, indeed, certain that sol's assistance would have been given under a sullen protest; even if unwilling to disappoint her, he might well have been taciturn and angry at her course. they sat in silence, and in total darkness. the road ascended an incline, the horse's tramp being still deadened by the carpet of leaves. then the large trees on either hand became interspersed by a low brushwood of varied sorts, from which a large bird occasionally flew, in its fright at their presence beating its wings recklessly against the hard stems with force enough to cripple the delicate quills. it showed how deserted was the spot after nightfall. 'sol?' said ethelberta again. 'why not talk to me?' she now noticed that her fellow-traveller kept his head and his whole person as snugly back in the corner, out of her way, as it was possible to do. she was not exactly frightened, but she could not understand the reason. the carriage gave a quick turn, and stopped. 'where are we now?' she said. 'shall we get to anglebury by nine? what is the time, sol?' 'i will see,' replied her companion. they were the first words he had uttered. the voice was so different from her brother's that she was terrified; her limbs quivered. in another instant the speaker had struck a wax vesta, and holding it erect in his fingers he looked her in the face. 'hee-hee-hee!' the laugher was her husband the viscount. he laughed again, and his eyes gleamed like a couple of tarnished brass buttons in the light of the wax match. ethelberta might have fallen dead with the shock, so terrible and hideous was it. yet she did not. she neither shrieked nor fainted; but no poor january fieldfare was ever colder, no ice-house more dank with perspiration, than she was then. 'a very pleasant joke, my dear--hee-hee! and no more than was to be expected on this merry, happy day of our lives. nobody enjoys a good jest more than i do: i always enjoyed a jest--hee-hee! now we are in the dark again; and we will alight and walk. the path is too narrow for the carriage, but it will not be far for you. take your husband's arm.' while he had been speaking a defiant pride had sprung up in her, instigating her to conceal every weakness. he had opened the carriage door and stepped out. she followed, taking the offered arm. 'take the horse and carriage to the stables,' said the viscount to the coachman, who was his own servant, the vehicle and horse being also his. the coachman turned the horse's head and vanished down the woodland track by which they had ascended. the viscount moved on, uttering private chuckles as numerous as a woodpecker's taps, and ethelberta with him. she walked as by a miracle, but she would walk. she would have died rather than not have walked then. she perceived now that they were somewhere in enckworth wood. as they went, she noticed a faint shine upon the ground on the other side of the viscount, which showed her that they were walking beside a wet ditch. she remembered having seen it in the morning: it was a shallow ditch of mud. she might push him in, and run, and so escape before he could extricate himself. it would not hurt him. it was her last chance. she waited a moment for the opportunity. 'we are one to one, and i am the stronger!' she at last exclaimed triumphantly, and lifted her hand for a thrust. 'on the contrary, darling, we are one to half-a-dozen, and you considerably the weaker,' he tenderly replied, stepping back adroitly, and blowing a whistle. at once the bushes seemed to be animated in four or five places. 'john?' he said, in the direction of one of them. 'yes, my lord,' replied a voice from the bush, and a keeper came forward. 'william?' another man advanced from another bush. 'quite right. remain where you are for the present. is tomkins there?' 'yes, my lord,' said a man from another part of the thicket. 'you go and keep watch by the further lodge: there are poachers about. where is strongway?' 'just below, my lord.' 'tell him and his brother to go to the west gate, and walk up and down. let them search round it, among the trees inside. anybody there who cannot give a good account of himself to be brought before me to-morrow morning. i am living at the cottage at present. that's all i have to say to you.' and, turning round to ethelberta: 'now, dearest, we will walk a little further if you are able. i have provided that your friends shall be taken care of.' he tried to pull her hand towards him, gently, like a cat opening a door. they walked a little onward, and lord mountclere spoke again, with imperturbable good-humour: 'i will tell you a story, to pass the time away. i have learnt the art from you--your mantle has fallen upon me, and all your inspiration with it. listen, dearest. i saw a young man come to the house to-day. afterwards i saw him cross a passage in your company. you entered the ball-room with him. that room is a treacherous place. it is panelled with wood, and between the panels and the walls are passages for the servants, opening from the room by doors hidden in the woodwork. lady mountclere knew of one of these, and made use of it to let out her conspirator; lord mountclere knew of another, and made use of it to let in himself. his sight is not good, but his ears are unimpaired. a meeting was arranged to take place at the west gate at half-past seven, unless a note handed from the balcony mentioned another time and place. he heard it all--hee-hee! 'when lady mountclere's confederate came for the note, i was in waiting above, and handed one down a few minutes before the hour struck, confirming the time, but changing the place. when lady mountclere handed down her note, just as the clock was striking, her confederate had gone, and i was standing beneath the balcony to receive it. she dropped it into her husband's hands--ho-ho-ho-ho! 'lord mountclere ordered a brougham to be at the west lodge, as fixed by lady mountclere's note. probably lady mountclere's friend ordered a brougham to be at the north gate, as fixed by my note, written in imitation of lady mountclere's hand. lady mountclere came to the spot she had mentioned, and like a good wife rushed into the arms of her husband--hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!' as if by an ungovernable impulse, ethelberta broke into laughter also--laughter which had a wild unnatural sound; it was hysterical. she sank down upon the leaves, and there continued the fearful laugh just as before. lord mountclere became greatly frightened. the spot they had reached was a green space within a girdle of hollies, and in front of them rose an ornamental cottage. this was the building which ethelberta had visited earlier in the day: it was the petit trianon of enckworth court. the viscount left her side and hurried forward. the door of the building was opened by a woman. 'have you prepared for us, as i directed?' 'yes, my lord; tea and coffee are both ready.' 'never mind that now. lady mountclere is ill; come and assist her indoors. tell the other woman to bring wine and water at once.' he returned to ethelberta. she was better, and was sitting calmly on the bank. she rose without assistance. 'you may retire,' he said to the woman who had followed him, and she turned round. when ethelberta saw the building, she drew back quickly. 'where is the other lady mountclere?' she inquired. 'gone!' 'she shall never return--never?' 'never. it was not intended that she should.' 'that sounds well. lord mountclere, we may as well compromise matters.' 'i think so too. it becomes a lady to make a virtue of a necessity.' 'it was stratagem against stratagem. mine was ingenious; yours was masterly! accept my acknowledgment. we will enter upon an armed neutrality.' 'no. let me be your adorer and slave again, as ever. your beauty, dearest, covers everything! you are my mistress and queen! but here we are at the door. tea is prepared for us here. i have a liking for life in this cottage mode, and live here on occasion. women, attend to lady mountclere.' the woman who had seen ethelberta in the morning was alarmed at recognizing her, having since been informed officially of the marriage: she murmured entreaties for pardon. they assisted the viscountess to a chair, the door was closed, and the wind blew past as if nobody had ever stood there to interrupt its flight. * * * * * full of misgivings, christopher continued to wait at the north gate. half- past seven had long since been past, and no ethelberta had appeared. he did not for the moment suppose the delay to be hers, and this gave him patience; having taken up the position, he was induced by fidelity to abide by the consequences. it would be only a journey of two hours to reach anglebury station; he would ride outside with the driver, put her into the train, and bid her adieu for ever. she had cried for help, and he had heard her cry. at last through the trees came the sound of the court clock striking eight, and then, for the first time, a doubt arose in his mind whether she could have mistaken the gate. she had distinctly told sol the west lodge; her note had expressed the north lodge. could she by any accident have written one thing while meaning another? he entered the carriage, and drove round to the west gate. all was as silent there as at the other, the meeting between ethelberta and lord mountclere being then long past; and he drove back again. he left the carriage, and entered the park on foot, approaching the house slowly. all was silent; the windows were dark; moping sounds came from the trees and sky, as from sorrow whispering to night. by this time he felt assured that the scheme had miscarried. while he stood here a carriage without lights came up the drive; it turned in towards the stable-yard without going to the door. the carriage had plainly been empty. returning across the grass by the way he had come, he was startled by the voices of two men from the road hard by. 'have ye zeed anybody?' 'not a soul.' 'shall we go across again?' 'what's the good? let's home to supper.' 'my lord must have heard somebody, or 'a wouldn't have said it.' 'perhaps he's nervous now he's living in the cottage again. i thought that fancy was over. well, i'm glad 'tis a young wife he's brought us. she'll have her routs and her rackets as well as the high-born ones, you'll see, as soon as she gets used to the place.' 'she must be a queer christian to pick up with him.' 'well, if she've charity 'tis enough for we poor men; her faith and hope may be as please god. now i be for on-along homeward.' as soon as they had gone christopher moved from his hiding, and, avoiding the gravel-walk, returned to his coachman, telling him to drive at once to anglebury. julian was so impatient of the futility of his adventure that he wished to annihilate its existence. on reaching anglebury he determined to get on at once to melchester, that the event of the night might be summarily ended; to be still in the neighbourhood was to be still engaged in it. he reached home before midnight. walking into their house in a quiet street, as dissatisfied with himself as a man well could be who still retained health and an occupation, he found faith sitting up as usual. his news was simple: the marriage had taken place before he could get there, and he had seen nothing of either ceremony or viscountess. the remainder he reserved for a more convenient season. edith looked anxiously at him as he ate supper, smiling now and then. 'well, i am tired of this life,' said christopher. 'so am i,' said faith. 'ah, if we were only rich!' 'ah, yes.' 'or if we were not rich,' she said, turning her eyes to the fire. 'if we were only slightly provided for, it would be better than nothing. how much would you be content with, kit?' 'as much as i could get.' 'would you be content with a thousand a year for both of us?' 'i daresay i should,' he murmured, breaking his bread. 'or five hundred for both?' 'or five hundred.' 'or even three hundred?' 'bother three hundred. less than double the sum would not satisfy me. we may as well imagine much as little.' faith's countenance had fallen. 'o kit,' she said, 'you always disappoint me.' 'i do. how do i disappoint you this time?' 'by not caring for three hundred a year--a hundred and fifty each--when that is all i have to offer you.' 'faith!' said he, looking up for the first time. 'ah--of course! lucy's will. i had forgotten.' 'it is true, and i had prepared such a pleasant surprise for you, and now you don't care! our cousin lucy did leave us something after all. i don't understand the exact total sum, but it comes to a hundred and fifty a year each--more than i expected, though not so much as you deserved. here's the letter. i have been dwelling upon it all day, and thinking what a pleasure it would be; and it is not after all!' 'good gracious, faith, i was only supposing. the real thing is another matter altogether. well, the idea of lucy's will containing our names! i am sure i would have gone to the funeral had i known.' 'i wish it were a thousand.' 'o no--it doesn't matter at all. but, certainly, three hundred for two is a tantalizing sum: not enough to enable us to change our condition, and enough to make us dissatisfied with going on as we are.' 'we must forget we have it, and let it increase.' 'it isn't enough to increase much. we may as well use it. but how? take a bigger house--what's the use? give up the organ?--then i shall be rather worse off than i am at present. positively, it is the most provoking amount anybody could have invented had they tried ever so long. poor lucy, to do that, and not even to come near us when father died. . . . ah, i know what we'll do. we'll go abroad--we'll live in italy.' sequel. anglebury--enckworth--sandbourne two years and a half after the marriage of ethelberta and the evening adventures which followed it, a man young in years, though considerably older in mood and expression, walked up to the 'red lion' inn at anglebury. the anachronism sat not unbecomingly upon him, and the voice was precisely that of the christopher julian of heretofore. his way of entering the inn and calling for a conveyance was more off-hand than formerly; he was much less afraid of the sound of his own voice now than when he had gone through the same performance on a certain chill evening the last time that he visited the spot. he wanted to be taken to knollsea to meet the steamer there, and was not coming back by the same vehicle. it was a very different day from that of his previous journey along the same road; different in season; different in weather; and the humour of the observer differed yet more widely from its condition then than did the landscape from its former hues. in due time they reached a commanding situation upon the road, from which were visible knots and plantations of trees on the enckworth manor. christopher broke the silence. 'lord mountclere is still alive and well, i am told?' 'o ay. he'll live to be a hundred. never such a change as has come over the man of late years.' 'indeed!' 'o, 'tis my lady. she's a one to put up with! still, 'tis said here and there that marrying her was the best day's work that he ever did in his life, although she's got to be my lord and my lady both.' 'is she happy with him?' 'she is very sharp with the pore man--about happy i don't know. he was a good-natured old man, for all his sins, and would sooner any day lay out money in new presents than pay it in old debts. but 'tis altered now. 'tisn't the same place. ah, in the old times i have seen the floor of the servants' hall over the vamp of your boot in solid beer that we had poured aside from the horns because we couldn't see straight enough to pour it in. see? no, we couldn't see a hole in a ladder! and now, even at christmas or whitsuntide, when a man, if ever he desires to be overcome with a drop, would naturally wish it to be, you can walk out of enckworth as straight as you walked in. all her doings.' 'then she holds the reins?' 'she do! there was a little tussle at first; but how could a old man hold his own against such a spry young body as that! she threatened to run away from him, and kicked up bob's-a-dying, and i don't know what all; and being the woman, of course she was sure to beat in the long run. pore old nobleman, she marches him off to church every sunday as regular as a clock, makes him read family prayers that haven't been read in enckworth for the last thirty years to my certain knowledge, and keeps him down to three glasses of wine a day, strict, so that you never see him any the more generous for liquor or a bit elevated at all, as it used to be. there, 'tis true, it has done him good in one sense, for they say he'd have been dead in five years if he had gone on as he was going.' 'so that she's a good wife to him, after all.' 'well, if she had been a little worse 'twould have been a little better for him in one sense, for he would have had his own way more. but he was a curious feller at one time, as we all know and i suppose 'tis as much as he can expect; but 'tis a strange reverse for him. it is said that when he's asked out to dine, or to anything in the way of a jaunt, his eye flies across to hers afore he answers: and if her eye says yes, he says yes: and if her eye says no, he says no. 'tis a sad condition for one who ruled womankind as he, that a woman should lead him in a string whether he will or no.' 'sad indeed!' 'she's steward, and agent, and everything. she has got a room called "my lady's office," and great ledgers and cash-books you never see the like. in old times there were bailiffs to look after the workfolk, foremen to look after the tradesmen, a building-steward to look after the foremen, a land-steward to look after the building-steward, and a dashing grand agent to look after the land-steward: fine times they had then, i assure ye. my lady said they were eating out the property like a honeycomb, and then there was a terrible row. half of 'em were sent flying; and now there's only the agent, and the viscountess, and a sort of surveyor man, and of the three she does most work so 'tis said. she marks the trees to be felled, settles what horses are to be sold and bought, and is out in all winds and weathers. there, if somebody hadn't looked into things 'twould soon have been all up with his lordship, he was so very extravagant. in one sense 'twas lucky for him that she was born in humble life, because owing to it she knows the ins and outs of contriving, which he never did.' 'then a man on the verge of bankruptcy will do better to marry a poor and sensible wife than a rich and stupid one. well, here we are at the tenth milestone. i will walk the remainder of the distance to knollsea, as there is ample time for meeting the last steamboat.' when the man was gone christopher proceeded slowly on foot down the hill, and reached that part of the highway at which he had stopped in the cold november breeze waiting for a woman who never came. he was older now, and he had ceased to wish that he had not been disappointed. there was the lodge, and around it were the trees, brilliant in the shining greens of june. every twig sustained its bird, and every blossom its bee. the roadside was not muffled in a garment of dead leaves as it had been then, and the lodge-gate was not open as it always used to be. he paused to look through the bars. the drive was well kept and gravelled; the grass edgings, formerly marked by hoofs and ruts, and otherwise trodden away, were now green and luxuriant, bent sticks being placed at intervals as a protection. while he looked through the gate a woman stepped from the lodge to open it. in her haste she nearly swung the gate into his face, and would have completely done so had he not jumped back. 'i beg pardon, sir,' she said, on perceiving him. 'i was going to open it for my lady, and i didn't see you.' christopher moved round the corner. the perpetual snubbing that he had received from ethelberta ever since he had known her seemed about to be continued through the medium of her dependents. a trotting, accompanied by the sound of light wheels, had become perceptible; and then a vehicle came through the gate, and turned up the road which he had come down. he saw the back of a basket carriage, drawn by a pair of piebald ponies. a lad in livery sat behind with folded arms; the driver was a lady. he saw her bonnet, her shoulders, her hair--but no more. she lessened in his gaze, and was soon out of sight. he stood a long time thinking; but he did not wish her his. in this wholesome frame of mind he proceeded on his way, thankful that he had escaped meeting her, though so narrowly. but perhaps at this remote season the embarrassment of a rencounter would not have been intense. at knollsea he entered the steamer for sandbourne. mr. chickerel and his family now lived at firtop villa, in that place, a house which, like many others, had been built since julian's last visit to the town. he was directed to the outskirts, and into a fir plantation where drives and intersecting roads had been laid out, and where new villas had sprung up like mushrooms. he entered by a swing gate, on which 'firtop' was painted, and a maid-servant showed him into a neatly- furnished room, containing mr. chickerel, mrs. chickerel, and picotee, the matron being reclined on a couch, which improved health had permitted her to substitute for a bed. he had been expected, and all were glad to see again the sojourner in foreign lands, even down to the ladylike tabby, who was all purr and warmth towards him except when she was all claws and nippers. but had the prime sentiment of the meeting shown itself it would have been the unqualified surprise of christopher at seeing how much picotee's face had grown to resemble her sister's: it was less a resemblance in contours than in expression and tone. they had an early tea, and then mr. chickerel, sitting in a patriarchal chair, conversed pleasantly with his guest, being well acquainted with him through other members of the family. they talked of julian's residence at different italian towns with his sister; of faith, who was at the present moment staying with some old friends in melchester: and, as was inevitable, the discourse hovered over and settled upon ethelberta, the prime ruler of the courses of them all, with little exception, through recent years. 'it was a hard struggle for her,' said chickerel, looking reflectively out at the fir trees. 'i never thought the girl would have got through it. when she first entered the house everybody was against her. she had to fight a whole host of them single-handed. there was the viscount's brother, other relations, lawyers, ladies, servants, not one of them was her friend; and not one who wouldn't rather have seen her arrive there in evil relationship with him than as she did come. but she stood her ground. she was put upon her mettle; and one by one they got to feel there was somebody among them whose little finger, if they insulted her, was thicker than a mountclere's loins. she must have had a will of iron; it was a situation that would have broken the hearts of a dozen ordinary women, for everybody soon knew that we were of no family, and that's what made it so hard for her. but there she is as mistress now, and everybody respecting her. i sometimes fancy she is occasionally too severe with the servants and i know what service is. but she says it is necessary, owing to her birth; and perhaps she is right.' 'i suppose she often comes to see you?' 'four or five times a year,' said picotee. 'she cannot come quite so often as she would,' said mrs. chickerel, 'because of her lofty position, which has its juties. well, as i always say, berta doesn't take after me. i couldn't have married the man even though he did bring a coronet with him.' 'i shouldn't have cared to let him ask ye,' said chickerel. 'however, that's neither here nor there--all ended better than i expected. he's fond of her.' 'and it is wonderful what can be done with an old man when you are his darling,' said mrs. chickerel. 'if i were berta i should go to london oftener,' said picotee, to turn the conversation. 'but she lives mostly in the library. and, o, what do you think? she is writing an epic poem, and employs emmeline as her reader.' 'dear me. and how are sol and dan? you mentioned them once in your letters,' said christopher. 'berta has set them up as builders in london.' 'she bought a business for them,' said chickerel. 'but sol wouldn't accept her help for a long time, and now he has only agreed to it on condition of paying her back the money with interest, which he is doing. they have just signed a contract to build a hospital for twenty thousand pounds.' picotee broke in--'you knew that both gwendoline and cornelia married two years ago, and went to queensland? they married two brothers, who were farmers, and left england the following week. georgie and myrtle are at school.' 'and joey?' 'we are thinking of making joseph a parson,' said mrs. chickerel. 'indeed! a parson.' 'yes; 'tis a genteel living for the boy. and he's talents that way. since he has been under masters he knows all the strange sounds the old romans and greeks used to make by way of talking, and the love stories of the ancient women as if they were his own. i assure you, mr. julian, if you could hear how beautiful the boy tells about little cupid with his bow and arrows, and the rows between that pagan apostle jupiter and his wife because of another woman, and the handsome young gods who kissed venus, you'd say he deserved to be made a bishop at once!' the evening advanced, and they walked in the garden. here, by some means, picotee and christopher found themselves alone. 'your letters to my sister have been charming,' said christopher. 'and so regular, too. it was as good as a birthday every time one arrived.' picotee blushed and said nothing. christopher had full assurance that her heart was where it always had been. a suspicion of the fact had been the reason of his visit here to- day. 'other letters were once written from england to italy, and they acquired great celebrity. do you know whose?' 'walpole's?' said picotee timidly. 'yes; but they never charmed me half as much as yours. you may rest assured that one person in the world thinks walpole your second.' 'you should not have read them; they were not written to you. but i suppose you wished to hear of ethelberta?' 'at first i did,' said christopher. 'but, oddly enough, i got more interested in the writer than in her news. i don't know if ever before there has been an instance of loving by means of letters. if not, it is because there have never been such sweet ones written. at last i looked for them more anxiously than faith.' 'you see, you knew me before.' picotee would have withdrawn this remark if she could, fearing that it seemed like a suggestion of her love long ago. 'then, on my return, i thought i would just call and see you, and go away and think what would be best for me to do with a view to the future. but since i have been here i have felt that i could not go away to think without first asking you what you think on one point--whether you could ever marry me?' 'i thought you would ask that when i first saw you.' 'did you. why?' 'you looked at me as if you would.' 'well,' continued christopher, 'the worst of it is i am as poor as job. faith and i have three hundred a year between us, but only half is mine. so that before i get your promise i must let your father know how poor i am. besides what i mention, i have only my earnings by music. but i am to be installed as chief organist at melchester soon, instead of deputy, as i used to be; which is something.' 'i am to have five hundred pounds when i marry. that was lord mountclere's arrangement with ethelberta. he is extremely anxious that i should marry well.' 'that's unfortunate. a marriage with me will hardly be considered well.' 'o yes, it will,' said picotee quickly, and then looked frightened. christopher drew her towards him, and imprinted a kiss upon her cheek, at which picotee was not so wretched as she had been some years before when he mistook her for another in that performance. 'berta will never let us come to want,' she said, with vivacity, when she had recovered. 'she always gives me what is necessary.' 'we will endeavour not to trouble her,' said christopher, amused by picotee's utter dependence now as ever upon her sister, as upon an eternal providence. 'however, it is well to be kin to a coach though you never ride in it. now, shall we go indoors to your father? you think he will not object?' 'i think he will be very glad,' replied picotee. 'berta will, i know.' transcribed by david price, email ccx @coventry.ac.uk from the macmillan and co. edition. proofed by margaret rose price, dagny and david price. under the greenwood tree or the mellstock quire a rural painting of the dutch school by thomas hardy preface this story of the mellstock quire and its old established west-gallery musicians, with some supplementary descriptions of similar officials in two on a tower, a few crusted characters, and other places, is intended to be a fairly true picture, at first hand, of the personages, ways, and customs which were common among such orchestral bodies in the villages of fifty or sixty years ago. one is inclined to regret the displacement of these ecclesiastical bandsmen by an isolated organist (often at first a barrel-organist) or harmonium player; and despite certain advantages in point of control and accomplishment which were, no doubt, secured by installing the single artist, the change has tended to stultify the professed aims of the clergy, its direct result being to curtail and extinguish the interest of parishioners in church doings. under the old plan, from half a dozen to ten full-grown players, in addition to the numerous more or less grown-up singers, were officially occupied with the sunday routine, and concerned in trying their best to make it an artistic outcome of the combined musical taste of the congregation. with a musical executive limited, as it mostly is limited now, to the parson's wife or daughter and the school- children, or to the school-teacher and the children, an important union of interests has disappeared. the zest of these bygone instrumentalists must have been keen and staying to take them, as it did, on foot every sunday after a toilsome week, through all weathers, to the church, which often lay at a distance from their homes. they usually received so little in payment for their performances that their efforts were really a labour of love. in the parish i had in my mind when writing the present tale, the gratuities received yearly by the musicians at christmas were somewhat as follows: from the manor-house ten shillings and a supper; from the vicar ten shillings; from the farmers five shillings each; from each cottage-household one shilling; amounting altogether to not more than ten shillings a head annually--just enough, as an old executant told me, to pay for their fiddle-strings, repairs, rosin, and music-paper (which they mostly ruled themselves). their music in those days was all in their own manuscript, copied in the evenings after work, and their music-books were home-bound. it was customary to inscribe a few jigs, reels, horn-pipes, and ballads in the same book, by beginning it at the other end, the insertions being continued from front and back till sacred and secular met together in the middle, often with bizarre effect, the words of some of the songs exhibiting that ancient and broad humour which our grandfathers, and possibly grandmothers, took delight in, and is in these days unquotable. the aforesaid fiddle-strings, rosin, and music-paper were supplied by a pedlar, who travelled exclusively in such wares from parish to parish, coming to each village about every six months. tales are told of the consternation once caused among the church fiddlers when, on the occasion of their producing a new christmas anthem, he did not come to time, owing to being snowed up on the downs, and the straits they were in through having to make shift with whipcord and twine for strings. he was generally a musician himself, and sometimes a composer in a small way, bringing his own new tunes, and tempting each choir to adopt them for a consideration. some of these compositions which now lie before me, with their repetitions of lines, half-lines, and half-words, their fugues and their intermediate symphonies, are good singing still, though they would hardly be admitted into such hymn-books as are popular in the churches of fashionable society at the present time. august . under the greenwood tree was first brought out in the summer of in two volumes. the name of the story was originally intended to be, more appropriately, the mellstock quire, and this has been appended as a sub- title since the early editions, it having been thought unadvisable to displace for it the title by which the book first became known. in rereading the narrative after a long interval there occurs the inevitable reflection that the realities out of which it was spun were material for another kind of study of this little group of church musicians than is found in the chapters here penned so lightly, even so farcically and flippantly at times. but circumstances would have rendered any aim at a deeper, more essential, more transcendent handling unadvisable at the date of writing; and the exhibition of the mellstock quire in the following pages must remain the only extant one, except for the few glimpses of that perished band which i have given in verse elsewhere. t. h. april . part the first--winter chapter i: mellstock-lane to dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. at the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall. and winter, which modifies the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy its individuality. on a cold and starry christmas-eve within living memory a man was passing up a lane towards mellstock cross in the darkness of a plantation that whispered thus distinctively to his intelligence. all the evidences of his nature were those afforded by the spirit of his footsteps, which succeeded each other lightly and quickly, and by the liveliness of his voice as he sang in a rural cadence: "with the rose and the lily and the daffodowndilly, the lads and the lasses a-sheep-shearing go." the lonely lane he was following connected one of the hamlets of mellstock parish with upper mellstock and lewgate, and to his eyes, casually glancing upward, the silver and black-stemmed birches with their characteristic tufts, the pale grey boughs of beech, the dark-creviced elm, all appeared now as black and flat outlines upon the sky, wherein the white stars twinkled so vehemently that their flickering seemed like the flapping of wings. within the woody pass, at a level anything lower than the horizon, all was dark as the grave. the copse-wood forming the sides of the bower interlaced its branches so densely, even at this season of the year, that the draught from the north-east flew along the channel with scarcely an interruption from lateral breezes. after passing the plantation and reaching mellstock cross the white surface of the lane revealed itself between the dark hedgerows like a ribbon jagged at the edges; the irregularity being caused by temporary accumulations of leaves extending from the ditch on either side. the song (many times interrupted by flitting thoughts which took the place of several bars, and resumed at a point it would have reached had its continuity been unbroken) now received a more palpable check, in the shape of "ho-i-i-i-i-i!" from the crossing lane to lower mellstock, on the right of the singer who had just emerged from the trees. "ho-i-i-i-i-i!" he answered, stopping and looking round, though with no idea of seeing anything more than imagination pictured. "is that thee, young dick dewy?" came from the darkness. "ay, sure, michael mail." "then why not stop for fellow-craters--going to thy own father's house too, as we be, and knowen us so well?" dick dewy faced about and continued his tune in an under-whistle, implying that the business of his mouth could not be checked at a moment's notice by the placid emotion of friendship. having come more into the open he could now be seen rising against the sky, his profile appearing on the light background like the portrait of a gentleman in black cardboard. it assumed the form of a low-crowned hat, an ordinary-shaped nose, an ordinary chin, an ordinary neck, and ordinary shoulders. what he consisted of further down was invisible from lack of sky low enough to picture him on. shuffling, halting, irregular footsteps of various kinds were now heard coming up the hill, and presently there emerged from the shade severally five men of different ages and gaits, all of them working villagers of the parish of mellstock. they, too, had lost their rotundity with the daylight, and advanced against the sky in flat outlines, which suggested some processional design on greek or etruscan pottery. they represented the chief portion of mellstock parish choir. the first was a bowed and bent man, who carried a fiddle under his arm, and walked as if engaged in studying some subject connected with the surface of the road. he was michael mail, the man who had hallooed to dick. the next was mr. robert penny, boot- and shoemaker; a little man, who, though rather round-shouldered, walked as if that fact had not come to his own knowledge, moving on with his back very hollow and his face fixed on the north-east quarter of the heavens before him, so that his lower waist-coat-buttons came first, and then the remainder of his figure. his features were invisible; yet when he occasionally looked round, two faint moons of light gleamed for an instant from the precincts of his eyes, denoting that he wore spectacles of a circular form. the third was elias spinks, who walked perpendicularly and dramatically. the fourth outline was joseph bowman's, who had now no distinctive appearance beyond that of a human being. finally came a weak lath-like form, trotting and stumbling along with one shoulder forward and his head inclined to the left, his arms dangling nervelessly in the wind as if they were empty sleeves. this was thomas leaf. "where be the boys?" said dick to this somewhat indifferently-matched assembly. the eldest of the group, michael mail, cleared his throat from a great depth. "we told them to keep back at home for a time, thinken they wouldn't be wanted yet awhile; and we could choose the tuens, and so on." "father and grandfather william have expected ye a little sooner. i have just been for a run round by ewelease stile and hollow hill to warm my feet." "to be sure father did! to be sure 'a did expect us--to taste the little barrel beyond compare that he's going to tap." "'od rabbit it all! never heard a word of it!" said mr. penny, gleams of delight appearing upon his spectacle-glasses, dick meanwhile singing parenthetically-- "the lads and the lasses a-sheep-shearing go." "neighbours, there's time enough to drink a sight of drink now afore bedtime?" said mail. "true, true--time enough to get as drunk as lords!" replied bowman cheerfully. this opinion being taken as convincing they all advanced between the varying hedges and the trees dotting them here and there, kicking their toes occasionally among the crumpled leaves. soon appeared glimmering indications of the few cottages forming the small hamlet of upper mellstock for which they were bound, whilst the faint sound of church- bells ringing a christmas peal could be heard floating over upon the breeze from the direction of longpuddle and weatherbury parishes on the other side of the hills. a little wicket admitted them to the garden, and they proceeded up the path to dick's house. chapter ii: the tranter's it was a long low cottage with a hipped roof of thatch, having dormer windows breaking up into the eaves, a chimney standing in the middle of the ridge and another at each end. the window-shutters were not yet closed, and the fire- and candle-light within radiated forth upon the thick bushes of box and laurestinus growing in clumps outside, and upon the bare boughs of several codlin-trees hanging about in various distorted shapes, the result of early training as espaliers combined with careless climbing into their boughs in later years. the walls of the dwelling were for the most part covered with creepers, though these were rather beaten back from the doorway--a feature which was worn and scratched by much passing in and out, giving it by day the appearance of an old keyhole. light streamed through the cracks and joints of outbuildings a little way from the cottage, a sight which nourished a fancy that the purpose of the erection must be rather to veil bright attractions than to shelter unsightly necessaries. the noise of a beetle and wedges and the splintering of wood was periodically heard from this direction; and at some little distance further a steady regular munching and the occasional scurr of a rope betokened a stable, and horses feeding within it. the choir stamped severally on the door-stone to shake from their boots any fragment of earth or leaf adhering thereto, then entered the house and looked around to survey the condition of things. through the open doorway of a small inner room on the right hand, of a character between pantry and cellar, was dick dewy's father reuben, by vocation a "tranter," or irregular carrier. he was a stout florid man about forty years of age, who surveyed people up and down when first making their acquaintance, and generally smiled at the horizon or other distant object during conversations with friends, walking about with a steady sway, and turning out his toes very considerably. being now occupied in bending over a hogshead, that stood in the pantry ready horsed for the process of broaching, he did not take the trouble to turn or raise his eyes at the entry of his visitors, well knowing by their footsteps that they were the expected old comrades. the main room, on the left, was decked with bunches of holly and other evergreens, and from the middle of the beam bisecting the ceiling hung the mistletoe, of a size out of all proportion to the room, and extending so low that it became necessary for a full-grown person to walk round it in passing, or run the risk of entangling his hair. this apartment contained mrs. dewy the tranter's wife, and the four remaining children, susan, jim, bessy, and charley, graduating uniformly though at wide stages from the age of sixteen to that of four years--the eldest of the series being separated from dick the firstborn by a nearly equal interval. some circumstance had apparently caused much grief to charley just previous to the entry of the choir, and he had absently taken down a small looking-glass, holding it before his face to learn how the human countenance appeared when engaged in crying, which survey led him to pause at the various points in each wail that were more than ordinarily striking, for a thorough appreciation of the general effect. bessy was leaning against a chair, and glancing under the plaits about the waist of the plaid frock she wore, to notice the original unfaded pattern of the material as there preserved, her face bearing an expression of regret that the brightness had passed away from the visible portions. mrs. dewy sat in a brown settle by the side of the glowing wood fire--so glowing that with a heedful compression of the lips she would now and then rise and put her hand upon the hams and flitches of bacon lining the chimney, to reassure herself that they were not being broiled instead of smoked--a misfortune that had been known to happen now and then at christmas-time. "hullo, my sonnies, here you be, then!" said reuben dewy at length, standing up and blowing forth a vehement gust of breath. "how the blood do puff up in anybody's head, to be sure, a-stooping like that! i was just going out to gate to hark for ye." he then carefully began to wind a strip of brown paper round a brass tap he held in his hand. "this in the cask here is a drop o' the right sort" (tapping the cask); "'tis a real drop o' cordial from the best picked apples--sansoms, stubbards, five-corners, and such-like--you d'mind the sort, michael?" (michael nodded.) "and there's a sprinkling of they that grow down by the orchard- rails--streaked ones--rail apples we d'call 'em, as 'tis by the rails they grow, and not knowing the right name. the water-cider from 'em is as good as most people's best cider is." "ay, and of the same make too," said bowman. "'it rained when we wrung it out, and the water got into it,' folk will say. but 'tis on'y an excuse. watered cider is too common among us." "yes, yes; too common it is!" said spinks with an inward sigh, whilst his eyes seemed to be looking at the case in an abstract form rather than at the scene before him. "such poor liquor do make a man's throat feel very melancholy--and is a disgrace to the name of stimmilent." "come in, come in, and draw up to the fire; never mind your shoes," said mrs. dewy, seeing that all except dick had paused to wipe them upon the door-mat. "i am glad that you've stepped up-along at last; and, susan, you run down to grammer kaytes's and see if you can borrow some larger candles than these fourteens. tommy leaf, don't ye be afeard! come and sit here in the settle." this was addressed to the young man before mentioned, consisting chiefly of a human skeleton and a smock-frock, who was very awkward in his movements, apparently on account of having grown so very fast that before he had had time to get used to his height he was higher. "hee--hee--ay!" replied leaf, letting his mouth continue to smile for some time after his mind had done smiling, so that his teeth remained in view as the most conspicuous members of his body. "here, mr. penny," resumed mrs. dewy, "you sit in this chair. and how's your daughter, mrs. brownjohn?" "well, i suppose i must say pretty fair." he adjusted his spectacles a quarter of an inch to the right. "but she'll be worse before she's better, 'a b'lieve." "indeed--poor soul! and how many will that make in all, four or five?" "five; they've buried three. yes, five; and she not much more than a maid yet. she do know the multiplication table onmistakable well. however, 'twas to be, and none can gainsay it." mrs. dewy resigned mr. penny. "wonder where your grandfather james is?" she inquired of one of the children. "he said he'd drop in to-night." "out in fuel-house with grandfather william," said jimmy. "now let's see what we can do," was heard spoken about this time by the tranter in a private voice to the barrel, beside which he had again established himself, and was stooping to cut away the cork. "reuben, don't make such a mess o' tapping that barrel as is mostly made in this house," mrs. dewy cried from the fireplace. "i'd tap a hundred without wasting more than you do in one. such a squizzling and squirting job as 'tis in your hands! there, he always was such a clumsy man indoors." "ay, ay; i know you'd tap a hundred beautiful, ann--i know you would; two hundred, perhaps. but i can't promise. this is a' old cask, and the wood's rotted away about the tap-hole. the husbird of a feller sam lawson--that ever i should call'n such, now he's dead and gone, poor heart!--took me in completely upon the feat of buying this cask. 'reub,' says he--'a always used to call me plain reub, poor old heart!--'reub,' he said, says he, 'that there cask, reub, is as good as new; yes, good as new. 'tis a wine-hogshead; the best port-wine in the commonwealth have been in that there cask; and you shall have en for ten shillens, reub,'--'a said, says he--'he's worth twenty, ay, five-and-twenty, if he's worth one; and an iron hoop or two put round en among the wood ones will make en worth thirty shillens of any man's money, if--'" "i think i should have used the eyes that providence gave me to use afore i paid any ten shillens for a jimcrack wine-barrel; a saint is sinner enough not to be cheated. but 'tis like all your family was, so easy to be deceived." "that's as true as gospel of this member," said reuben. mrs. dewy began a smile at the answer, then altering her lips and refolding them so that it was not a smile, commenced smoothing little bessy's hair; the tranter having meanwhile suddenly become oblivious to conversation, occupying himself in a deliberate cutting and arrangement of some more brown paper for the broaching operation. "ah, who can believe sellers!" said old michael mail in a carefully-cautious voice, by way of tiding-over this critical point of affairs. "no one at all," said joseph bowman, in the tone of a man fully agreeing with everybody. "ay," said mail, in the tone of a man who did not agree with everybody as a rule, though he did now; "i knowed a' auctioneering feller once--a very friendly feller 'a was too. and so one hot day as i was walking down the front street o' casterbridge, jist below the king's arms, i passed a' open winder and see him inside, stuck upon his perch, a-selling off. i jist nodded to en in a friendly way as i passed, and went my way, and thought no more about it. well, next day, as i was oilen my boots by fuel-house door, if a letter didn't come wi' a bill charging me with a feather-bed, bolster, and pillers, that i had bid for at mr. taylor's sale. the slim-faced martel had knocked 'em down to me because i nodded to en in my friendly way; and i had to pay for 'em too. now, i hold that that was coming it very close, reuben?" "'twas close, there's no denying," said the general voice. "too close, 'twas," said reuben, in the rear of the rest. "and as to sam lawson--poor heart! now he's dead and gone too!--i'll warrant, that if so be i've spent one hour in making hoops for that barrel, i've spent fifty, first and last. that's one of my hoops"--touching it with his elbow--"that's one of mine, and that, and that, and all these." "ah, sam was a man," said mr. penny, contemplatively. "sam was!" said bowman. "especially for a drap o' drink," said the tranter. "good, but not religious-good," suggested mr. penny. the tranter nodded. having at last made the tap and hole quite ready, "now then, suze, bring a mug," he said. "here's luck to us, my sonnies!" the tap went in, and the cider immediately squirted out in a horizontal shower over reuben's hands, knees, and leggings, and into the eyes and neck of charley, who, having temporarily put off his grief under pressure of more interesting proceedings, was squatting down and blinking near his father. "there 'tis again!" said mrs. dewy. "devil take the hole, the cask, and sam lawson too, that good cider should be wasted like this!" exclaimed the tranter. "your thumb! lend me your thumb, michael! ram it in here, michael! i must get a bigger tap, my sonnies." "idd it cold inthide te hole?" inquired charley of michael, as he continued in a stooping posture with his thumb in the cork-hole. "what wonderful odds and ends that chiel has in his head to be sure!" mrs. dewy admiringly exclaimed from the distance. "i lay a wager that he thinks more about how 'tis inside that barrel than in all the other parts of the world put together." all persons present put on a speaking countenance of admiration for the cleverness alluded to, in the midst of which reuben returned. the operation was then satisfactorily performed; when michael arose and stretched his head to the extremest fraction of height that his body would allow of, to re-straighten his back and shoulders--thrusting out his arms and twisting his features to a mass of wrinkles to emphasize the relief aquired. a quart or two of the beverage was then brought to table, at which all the new arrivals reseated themselves with wide-spread knees, their eyes meditatively seeking out any speck or knot in the board upon which the gaze might precipitate itself. "whatever is father a-biding out in fuel-house so long for?" said the tranter. "never such a man as father for two things--cleaving up old dead apple-tree wood and playing the bass-viol. 'a'd pass his life between the two, that 'a would." he stepped to the door and opened it. "father!" "ay!" rang thinly from round the corner. "here's the barrel tapped, and we all a-waiting!" a series of dull thuds, that had been heard without for some time past, now ceased; and after the light of a lantern had passed the window and made wheeling rays upon the ceiling inside the eldest of the dewy family appeared. chapter iii: the assembled quire william dewy--otherwise grandfather william--was now about seventy; yet an ardent vitality still preserved a warm and roughened bloom upon his face, which reminded gardeners of the sunny side of a ripe ribstone-pippin; though a narrow strip of forehead, that was protected from the weather by lying above the line of his hat-brim, seemed to belong to some town man, so gentlemanly was its whiteness. his was a humorous and kindly nature, not unmixed with a frequent melancholy; and he had a firm religious faith. but to his neighbours he had no character in particular. if they saw him pass by their windows when they had been bottling off old mead, or when they had just been called long-headed men who might do anything in the world if they chose, they thought concerning him, "ah, there's that good-hearted man--open as a child!" if they saw him just after losing a shilling or half-a-crown, or accidentally letting fall a piece of crockery, they thought, "there's that poor weak-minded man dewy again! ah, he's never done much in the world either!" if he passed when fortune neither smiled nor frowned on them, they merely thought him old william dewy. "ah, so's--here you be!--ah, michael and joseph and john--and you too, leaf! a merry christmas all! we shall have a rare log-wood fire directly, reub, to reckon by the toughness of the job i had in cleaving 'em." as he spoke he threw down an armful of logs which fell in the chimney-corner with a rumble, and looked at them with something of the admiring enmity he would have bestowed on living people who had been very obstinate in holding their own. "come in, grandfather james." old james (grandfather on the maternal side) had simply called as a visitor. he lived in a cottage by himself, and many people considered him a miser; some, rather slovenly in his habits. he now came forward from behind grandfather william, and his stooping figure formed a well- illuminated picture as he passed towards the fire-place. being by trade a mason, he wore a long linen apron reaching almost to his toes, corduroy breeches and gaiters, which, together with his boots, graduated in tints of whitish-brown by constant friction against lime and stone. he also wore a very stiff fustian coat, having folds at the elbows and shoulders as unvarying in their arrangement as those in a pair of bellows: the ridges and the projecting parts of the coat collectively exhibiting a shade different from that of the hollows, which were lined with small ditch-like accumulations of stone and mortar-dust. the extremely large side-pockets, sheltered beneath wide flaps, bulged out convexly whether empty or full; and as he was often engaged to work at buildings far away--his breakfasts and dinners being eaten in a strange chimney-corner, by a garden wall, on a heap of stones, or walking along the road--he carried in these pockets a small tin canister of butter, a small canister of sugar, a small canister of tea, a paper of salt, and a paper of pepper; the bread, cheese, and meat, forming the substance of his meals, hanging up behind him in his basket among the hammers and chisels. if a passer-by looked hard at him when he was drawing forth any of these, "my buttery," he said, with a pinched smile. "better try over number seventy-eight before we start, i suppose?" said william, pointing to a heap of old christmas-carol books on a side table. "wi' all my heart," said the choir generally. "number seventy-eight was always a teaser--always. i can mind him ever since i was growing up a hard boy-chap." "but he's a good tune, and worth a mint o' practice," said michael. "he is; though i've been mad enough wi' that tune at times to seize en and tear en all to linnit. ay, he's a splendid carrel--there's no denying that." "the first line is well enough," said mr. spinks; "but when you come to 'o, thou man,' you make a mess o't." "we'll have another go into en, and see what we can make of the martel. half-an-hour's hammering at en will conquer the toughness of en; i'll warn it." "'od rabbit it all!" said mr. penny, interrupting with a flash of his spectacles, and at the same time clawing at something in the depths of a large side-pocket. "if so be i hadn't been as scatter-brained and thirtingill as a chiel, i should have called at the schoolhouse wi' a boot as i cam up along. whatever is coming to me i really can't estimate at all!" "the brain has its weaknesses," murmured mr. spinks, waving his head ominously. mr. spinks was considered to be a scholar, having once kept a night-school, and always spoke up to that level. "well, i must call with en the first thing to-morrow. and i'll empt my pocket o' this last too, if you don't mind, mrs. dewy." he drew forth a last, and placed it on a table at his elbow. the eyes of three or four followed it. "well," said the shoemaker, seeming to perceive that the interest the object had excited was greater than he had anticipated, and warranted the last's being taken up again and exhibited; "now, whose foot do ye suppose this last was made for? it was made for geoffrey day's father, over at yalbury wood. ah, many's the pair o' boots he've had off the last! well, when 'a died, i used the last for geoffrey, and have ever since, though a little doctoring was wanted to make it do. yes, a very queer natured last it is now, 'a b'lieve," he continued, turning it over caressingly. "now, you notice that there" (pointing to a lump of leather bradded to the toe), "that's a very bad bunion that he've had ever since 'a was a boy. now, this remarkable large piece" (pointing to a patch nailed to the side), "shows a' accident he received by the tread of a horse, that squashed his foot a'most to a pomace. the horseshoe cam full-butt on this point, you see. and so i've just been over to geoffrey's, to know if he wanted his bunion altered or made bigger in the new pair i'm making." during the latter part of this speech, mr. penny's left hand wandered towards the cider-cup, as if the hand had no connection with the person speaking; and bringing his sentence to an abrupt close, all but the extreme margin of the bootmaker's face was eclipsed by the circular brim of the vessel. "however, i was going to say," continued penny, putting down the cup, "i ought to have called at the school"--here he went groping again in the depths of his pocket--"to leave this without fail, though i suppose the first thing to-morrow will do." he now drew forth and placed upon the table a boot--small, light, and prettily shaped--upon the heel of which he had been operating. "the new schoolmistress's!" "ay, no less, miss fancy day; as neat a little figure of fun as ever i see, and just husband-high." "never geoffrey's daughter fancy?" said bowman, as all glances present converged like wheel-spokes upon the boot in the centre of them. "yes, sure," resumed mr. penny, regarding the boot as if that alone were his auditor; "'tis she that's come here schoolmistress. you knowed his daughter was in training?" "strange, isn't it, for her to be here christmas night, master penny?" "yes; but here she is, 'a b'lieve." "i know how she comes here--so i do!" chirruped one of the children. "why?" dick inquired, with subtle interest. "pa'son maybold was afraid he couldn't manage us all to-morrow at the dinner, and he talked o' getting her jist to come over and help him hand about the plates, and see we didn't make pigs of ourselves; and that's what she's come for!" "and that's the boot, then," continued its mender imaginatively, "that she'll walk to church in to-morrow morning. i don't care to mend boots i don't make; but there's no knowing what it may lead to, and her father always comes to me." there, between the cider-mug and the candle, stood this interesting receptacle of the little unknown's foot; and a very pretty boot it was. a character, in fact--the flexible bend at the instep, the rounded localities of the small nestling toes, scratches from careless scampers now forgotten--all, as repeated in the tell-tale leather, evidencing a nature and a bias. dick surveyed it with a delicate feeling that he had no right to do so without having first asked the owner of the foot's permission. "now, neighbours, though no common eye can see it," the shoemaker went on, "a man in the trade can see the likeness between this boot and that last, although that is so deformed as hardly to recall one of god's creatures, and this is one of as pretty a pair as you'd get for ten-and- sixpence in casterbridge. to you, nothing; but 'tis father's voot and daughter's voot to me, as plain as houses." "i don't doubt there's a likeness, master penny--a mild likeness--a fantastical likeness," said spinks. "but i han't got imagination enough to see it, perhaps." mr. penny adjusted his spectacles. "now, i'll tell ye what happened to me once on this very point. you used to know johnson the dairyman, william?" "ay, sure; i did." "well, 'twasn't opposite his house, but a little lower down--by his paddock, in front o' parkmaze pool. i was a-bearing across towards bloom's end, and lo and behold, there was a man just brought out o' the pool, dead; he had un'rayed for a dip, but not being able to pitch it just there had gone in flop over his head. men looked at en; women looked at en; children looked at en; nobody knowed en. he was covered wi' a sheet; but i catched sight of his voot, just showing out as they carried en along. 'i don't care what name that man went by,' i said, in my way, 'but he's john woodward's brother; i can swear to the family voot.' at that very moment up comes john woodward, weeping and teaving, 'i've lost my brother! i've lost my brother!'" "only to think of that!" said mrs. dewy. "'tis well enough to know this foot and that foot," said mr. spinks. "'tis long-headed, in fact, as far as feet do go. i know little, 'tis true--i say no more; but show me a man's foot, and i'll tell you that man's heart." "you must be a cleverer feller, then, than mankind in jineral," said the tranter. "well, that's nothing for me to speak of," returned mr. spinks. "a man lives and learns. maybe i've read a leaf or two in my time. i don't wish to say anything large, mind you; but nevertheless, maybe i have." "yes, i know," said michael soothingly, "and all the parish knows, that ye've read sommat of everything a'most, and have been a great filler of young folks' brains. learning's a worthy thing, and ye've got it, master spinks." "i make no boast, though i may have read and thought a little; and i know--it may be from much perusing, but i make no boast--that by the time a man's head is finished, 'tis almost time for him to creep underground. i am over forty-five." mr. spinks emitted a look to signify that if his head was not finished, nobody's head ever could be. "talk of knowing people by their feet!" said reuben. "rot me, my sonnies, then, if i can tell what a man is from all his members put together, oftentimes." "but still, look is a good deal," observed grandfather william absently, moving and balancing his head till the tip of grandfather james's nose was exactly in a right line with william's eye and the mouth of a miniature cavern he was discerning in the fire. "by the way," he continued in a fresher voice, and looking up, "that young crater, the schoolmis'ess, must be sung to to-night wi' the rest? if her ear is as fine as her face, we shall have enough to do to be up-sides with her." "what about her face?" said young dewy. "well, as to that," mr. spinks replied, "'tis a face you can hardly gainsay. a very good pink face, as far as that do go. still, only a face, when all is said and done." "come, come, elias spinks, say she's a pretty maid, and have done wi' her," said the tranter, again preparing to visit the cider-barrel. chapter iv: going the rounds shortly after ten o'clock the singing-boys arrived at the tranter's house, which was invariably the place of meeting, and preparations were made for the start. the older men and musicians wore thick coats, with stiff perpendicular collars, and coloured handkerchiefs wound round and round the neck till the end came to hand, over all which they just showed their ears and noses, like people looking over a wall. the remainder, stalwart ruddy men and boys, were dressed mainly in snow-white smock-frocks, embroidered upon the shoulders and breasts, in ornamental forms of hearts, diamonds, and zigzags. the cider-mug was emptied for the ninth time, the music-books were arranged, and the pieces finally decided upon. the boys in the meantime put the old horn-lanterns in order, cut candles into short lengths to fit the lanterns; and, a thin fleece of snow having fallen since the early part of the evening, those who had no leggings went to the stable and wound wisps of hay round their ankles to keep the insidious flakes from the interior of their boots. mellstock was a parish of considerable acreage, the hamlets composing it lying at a much greater distance from each other than is ordinarily the case. hence several hours were consumed in playing and singing within hearing of every family, even if but a single air were bestowed on each. there was lower mellstock, the main village; half a mile from this were the church and vicarage, and a few other houses, the spot being rather lonely now, though in past centuries it had been the most thickly-populated quarter of the parish. a mile north-east lay the hamlet of upper mellstock, where the tranter lived; and at other points knots of cottages, besides solitary farmsteads and dairies. old william dewy, with the violoncello, played the bass; his grandson dick the treble violin; and reuben and michael mail the tenor and second violins respectively. the singers consisted of four men and seven boys, upon whom devolved the task of carrying and attending to the lanterns, and holding the books open for the players. directly music was the theme, old william ever and instinctively came to the front. "now mind, neighbours," he said, as they all went out one by one at the door, he himself holding it ajar and regarding them with a critical face as they passed, like a shepherd counting out his sheep. "you two counter- boys, keep your ears open to michael's fingering, and don't ye go straying into the treble part along o' dick and his set, as ye did last year; and mind this especially when we be in 'arise, and hail.' billy chimlen, don't you sing quite so raving mad as you fain would; and, all o' ye, whatever ye do, keep from making a great scuffle on the ground when we go in at people's gates; but go quietly, so as to strike up all of a sudden, like spirits." "farmer ledlow's first?" "farmer ledlow's first; the rest as usual." "and, voss," said the tranter terminatively, "you keep house here till about half-past two; then heat the metheglin and cider in the warmer you'll find turned up upon the copper; and bring it wi' the victuals to church-hatch, as th'st know." * * * * * just before the clock struck twelve they lighted the lanterns and started. the moon, in her third quarter, had risen since the snowstorm; but the dense accumulation of snow-cloud weakened her power to a faint twilight, which was rather pervasive of the landscape than traceable to the sky. the breeze had gone down, and the rustle of their feet and tones of their speech echoed with an alert rebound from every post, boundary-stone, and ancient wall they passed, even where the distance of the echo's origin was less than a few yards. beyond their own slight noises nothing was to be heard, save the occasional bark of foxes in the direction of yalbury wood, or the brush of a rabbit among the grass now and then, as it scampered out of their way. most of the outlying homesteads and hamlets had been visited by about two o'clock; they then passed across the outskirts of a wooded park toward the main village, nobody being at home at the manor. pursuing no recognized track, great care was necessary in walking lest their faces should come in contact with the low-hanging boughs of the old lime-trees, which in many spots formed dense over-growths of interlaced branches. "times have changed from the times they used to be," said mail, regarding nobody can tell what interesting old panoramas with an inward eye, and letting his outward glance rest on the ground, because it was as convenient a position as any. "people don't care much about us now! i've been thinking we must be almost the last left in the county of the old string players? barrel-organs, and the things next door to 'em that you blow wi' your foot, have come in terribly of late years." "ay!" said bowman, shaking his head; and old william, on seeing him, did the same thing. "more's the pity," replied another. "time was--long and merry ago now!--when not one of the varmits was to be heard of; but it served some of the quires right. they should have stuck to strings as we did, and kept out clarinets, and done away with serpents. if you'd thrive in musical religion, stick to strings, says i." "strings be safe soul-lifters, as far as that do go," said mr. spinks. "yet there's worse things than serpents," said mr. penny. "old things pass away, 'tis true; but a serpent was a good old note: a deep rich note was the serpent." "clar'nets, however, be bad at all times," said michael mail. "one christmas--years agone now, years--i went the rounds wi' the weatherbury quire. 'twas a hard frosty night, and the keys of all the clar'nets froze--ah, they did freeze!--so that 'twas like drawing a cork every time a key was opened; and the players o' 'em had to go into a hedger-and-ditcher's chimley-corner, and thaw their clar'nets every now and then. an icicle o' spet hung down from the end of every man's clar'net a span long; and as to fingers--well, there, if ye'll believe me, we had no fingers at all, to our knowing." "i can well bring back to my mind," said mr. penny, "what i said to poor joseph ryme (who took the treble part in chalk-newton church for two-and- forty year) when they thought of having clar'nets there. 'joseph,' i said, says i, 'depend upon't, if so be you have them tooting clar'nets you'll spoil the whole set-out. clar'nets were not made for the service of the lard; you can see it by looking at 'em,' i said. and what came o't? why, souls, the parson set up a barrel-organ on his own account within two years o' the time i spoke, and the old quire went to nothing." "as far as look is concerned," said the tranter, "i don't for my part see that a fiddle is much nearer heaven than a clar'net. 'tis further off. there's always a rakish, scampish twist about a fiddle's looks that seems to say the wicked one had a hand in making o'en; while angels be supposed to play clar'nets in heaven, or som'at like 'em, if ye may believe picters." "robert penny, you was in the right," broke in the eldest dewy. "they should ha' stuck to strings. your brass-man is a rafting dog--well and good; your reed-man is a dab at stirring ye--well and good; your drum-man is a rare bowel-shaker--good again. but i don't care who hears me say it, nothing will spak to your heart wi' the sweetness o' the man of strings!" "strings for ever!" said little jimmy. "strings alone would have held their ground against all the new comers in creation." ("true, true!" said bowman.) "but clarinets was death." ("death they was!" said mr. penny.) "and harmonions," william continued in a louder voice, and getting excited by these signs of approval, "harmonions and barrel-organs" ("ah!" and groans from spinks) "be miserable--what shall i call 'em?--miserable--" "sinners," suggested jimmy, who made large strides like the men, and did not lag behind like the other little boys. "miserable dumbledores!" "right, william, and so they be--miserable dumbledores!" said the choir with unanimity. by this time they were crossing to a gate in the direction of the school, which, standing on a slight eminence at the junction of three ways, now rose in unvarying and dark flatness against the sky. the instruments were retuned, and all the band entered the school enclosure, enjoined by old william to keep upon the grass. "number seventy-eight," he softly gave out as they formed round in a semicircle, the boys opening the lanterns to get a clearer light, and directing their rays on the books. then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time-worn hymn, embodying a quaint christianity in words orally transmitted from father to son through several generations down to the present characters, who sang them out right earnestly: "remember adam's fall, o thou man: remember adam's fall from heaven to hell. remember adam's fall; how he hath condemn'd all in hell perpetual there for to dwell. remember god's goodnesse, o thou man: remember god's goodnesse, his promise made. remember god's goodnesse; he sent his son sinlesse our ails for to redress; be not afraid! in bethlehem he was born, o thou man: in bethlehem he was born, for mankind's sake. in bethlehem he was born, christmas-day i' the morn: our saviour thought no scorn our faults to take. give thanks to god alway, o thou man: give thanks to god alway with heart-most joy. give thanks to god alway on this our joyful day: let all men sing and say, holy, holy!" having concluded the last note, they listened for a minute or two, but found that no sound issued from the schoolhouse. "four breaths, and then, 'o, what unbounded goodness!' number fifty-nine," said william. this was duly gone through, and no notice whatever seemed to be taken of the performance. "good guide us, surely 'tisn't a' empty house, as befell us in the year thirty-nine and forty-three!" said old dewy. "perhaps she's jist come from some musical city, and sneers at our doings?" the tranter whispered. "'od rabbit her!" said mr. penny, with an annihilating look at a corner of the school chimney, "i don't quite stomach her, if this is it. your plain music well done is as worthy as your other sort done bad, a' b'lieve, souls; so say i." "four breaths, and then the last," said the leader authoritatively. "'rejoice, ye tenants of the earth,' number sixty-four." at the close, waiting yet another minute, he said in a clear loud voice, as he had said in the village at that hour and season for the previous forty years--"a merry christmas to ye!" chapter v: the listeners when the expectant stillness consequent upon the exclamation had nearly died out of them all, an increasing light made itself visible in one of the windows of the upper floor. it came so close to the blind that the exact position of the flame could be perceived from the outside. remaining steady for an instant, the blind went upward from before it, revealing to thirty concentrated eyes a young girl, framed as a picture by the window architrave, and unconsciously illuminating her countenance to a vivid brightness by a candle she held in her left hand, close to her face, her right hand being extended to the side of the window. she was wrapped in a white robe of some kind, whilst down her shoulders fell a twining profusion of marvellously rich hair, in a wild disorder which proclaimed it to be only during the invisible hours of the night that such a condition was discoverable. her bright eyes were looking into the grey world outside with an uncertain expression, oscillating between courage and shyness, which, as she recognized the semicircular group of dark forms gathered before her, transformed itself into pleasant resolution. opening the window, she said lightly and warmly--"thank you, singers, thank you!" together went the window quickly and quietly, and the blind started downward on its return to its place. her fair forehead and eyes vanished; her little mouth; her neck and shoulders; all of her. then the spot of candlelight shone nebulously as before; then it moved away. "how pretty!" exclaimed dick dewy. "if she'd been rale wexwork she couldn't ha' been comelier," said michael mail. "as near a thing to a spiritual vision as ever i wish to see!" said tranter dewy. "o, sich i never, never see!" said leaf fervently. all the rest, after clearing their throats and adjusting their hats, agreed that such a sight was worth singing for. "now to farmer shiner's, and then replenish our insides, father?" said the tranter. "wi' all my heart," said old william, shouldering his bass-viol. farmer shiner's was a queer lump of a house, standing at the corner of a lane that ran into the principal thoroughfare. the upper windows were much wider than they were high, and this feature, together with a broad bay-window where the door might have been expected, gave it by day the aspect of a human countenance turned askance, and wearing a sly and wicked leer. to-night nothing was visible but the outline of the roof upon the sky. the front of this building was reached, and the preliminaries arranged as usual. "four breaths, and number thirty-two, 'behold the morning star,'" said old william. they had reached the end of the second verse, and the fiddlers were doing the up bow-stroke previously to pouring forth the opening chord of the third verse, when, without a light appearing or any signal being given, a roaring voice exclaimed-- "shut up, woll 'ee! don't make your blaring row here! a feller wi' a headache enough to split his skull likes a quiet night!" slam went the window. "hullo, that's a' ugly blow for we!" said the tranter, in a keenly appreciative voice, and turning to his companions. "finish the carrel, all who be friends of harmony!" commanded old william; and they continued to the end. "four breaths, and number nineteen!" said william firmly. "give it him well; the quire can't be insulted in this manner!" a light now flashed into existence, the window opened, and the farmer stood revealed as one in a terrific passion. "drown en!--drown en!" the tranter cried, fiddling frantically. "play fortissimy, and drown his spaking!" "fortissimy!" said michael mail, and the music and singing waxed so loud that it was impossible to know what mr. shiner had said, was saying, or was about to say; but wildly flinging his arms and body about in the forms of capital xs and ys, he appeared to utter enough invectives to consign the whole parish to perdition. "very onseemly--very!" said old william, as they retired. "never such a dreadful scene in the whole round o' my carrel practice--never! and he a churchwarden!" "only a drap o' drink got into his head," said the tranter. "man's well enough when he's in his religious frame. he's in his worldly frame now. must ask en to our bit of a party to-morrow night, i suppose, and so put en in humour again. we bear no mortal man ill-will." they now crossed mellstock bridge, and went along an embowered path beside the froom towards the church and vicarage, meeting voss with the hot mead and bread-and-cheese as they were approaching the churchyard. this determined them to eat and drink before proceeding further, and they entered the church and ascended to the gallery. the lanterns were opened, and the whole body sat round against the walls on benches and whatever else was available, and made a hearty meal. in the pauses of conversation there could be heard through the floor overhead a little world of undertones and creaks from the halting clockwork, which never spread further than the tower they were born in, and raised in the more meditative minds a fancy that here lay the direct pathway of time. having done eating and drinking, they again tuned the instruments, and once more the party emerged into the night air. "where's dick?" said old dewy. every man looked round upon every other man, as if dick might have been transmuted into one or the other; and then they said they didn't know. "well now, that's what i call very nasty of master dicky, that i do," said michael mail. "he've clinked off home-along, depend upon't," another suggested, though not quite believing that he had. "dick!" exclaimed the tranter, and his voice rolled sonorously forth among the yews. he suspended his muscles rigid as stone whilst listening for an answer, and finding he listened in vain, turned to the assemblage. "the treble man too! now if he'd been a tenor or counter chap, we might ha' contrived the rest o't without en, you see. but for a quire to lose the treble, why, my sonnies, you may so well lose your . . . " the tranter paused, unable to mention an image vast enough for the occasion. "your head at once," suggested mr. penny. the tranter moved a pace, as if it were puerile of people to complete sentences when there were more pressing things to be done. "was ever heard such a thing as a young man leaving his work half done and turning tail like this!" "never," replied bowman, in a tone signifying that he was the last man in the world to wish to withhold the formal finish required of him. "i hope no fatal tragedy has overtook the lad!" said his grandfather. "o no," replied tranter dewy placidly. "wonder where he's put that there fiddle of his. why that fiddle cost thirty shillings, and good words besides. somewhere in the damp, without doubt; that instrument will be unglued and spoilt in ten minutes--ten! ay, two." "what in the name o' righteousness can have happened?" said old william, more uneasily. "perhaps he's drownded!" leaving their lanterns and instruments in the belfry they retraced their steps along the waterside track. "a strapping lad like dick d'know better than let anything happen onawares," reuben remarked. "there's sure to be some poor little scram reason for't staring us in the face all the while." he lowered his voice to a mysterious tone: "neighbours, have ye noticed any sign of a scornful woman in his head, or suchlike?" "not a glimmer of such a body. he's as clear as water yet." "and dicky said he should never marry," cried jimmy, "but live at home always along wi' mother and we!" "ay, ay, my sonny; every lad has said that in his time." they had now again reached the precincts of mr. shiner's, but hearing nobody in that direction, one or two went across to the schoolhouse. a light was still burning in the bedroom, and though the blind was down, the window had been slightly opened, as if to admit the distant notes of the carollers to the ears of the occupant of the room. opposite the window, leaning motionless against a beech tree, was the lost man, his arms folded, his head thrown back, his eyes fixed upon the illuminated lattice. "why, dick, is that thee? what b'st doing here?" dick's body instantly flew into a more rational attitude, and his head was seen to turn east and west in the gloom, as if endeavouring to discern some proper answer to that question; and at last he said in rather feeble accents--"nothing, father." "th'st take long enough time about it then, upon my body," said the tranter, as they all turned anew towards the vicarage. "i thought you hadn't done having snap in the gallery," said dick. "why, we've been traypsing and rambling about, looking everywhere, and thinking you'd done fifty deathly things, and here have you been at nothing at all!" "the stupidness lies in that point of it being nothing at all," murmured mr. spinks. the vicarage front was their next field of operation, and mr. maybold, the lately-arrived incumbent, duly received his share of the night's harmonies. it was hoped that by reason of his profession he would have been led to open the window, and an extra carol in quick time was added to draw him forth. but mr. maybold made no stir. "a bad sign!" said old william, shaking his head. however, at that same instant a musical voice was heard exclaiming from inner depths of bedclothes--"thanks, villagers!" "what did he say?" asked bowman, who was rather dull of hearing. bowman's voice, being therefore loud, had been heard by the vicar within. "i said, 'thanks, villagers!'" cried the vicar again. "oh, we didn't hear 'ee the first time!" cried bowman. "now don't for heaven's sake spoil the young man's temper by answering like that!" said the tranter. "you won't do that, my friends!" the vicar shouted. "well to be sure, what ears!" said mr. penny in a whisper. "beats any horse or dog in the parish, and depend upon't, that's a sign he's a proper clever chap." "we shall see that in time," said the tranter. old william, in his gratitude for such thanks from a comparatively new inhabitant, was anxious to play all the tunes over again; but renounced his desire on being reminded by reuben that it would be best to leave well alone. "now putting two and two together," the tranter continued, as they went their way over the hill, and across to the last remaining houses; "that is, in the form of that young female vision we zeed just now, and this young tenor-voiced parson, my belief is she'll wind en round her finger, and twist the pore young feller about like the figure of --that she will so, my sonnies." chapter vi: christmas morning the choir at last reached their beds, and slept like the rest of the parish. dick's slumbers, through the three or four hours remaining for rest, were disturbed and slight; an exhaustive variation upon the incidents that had passed that night in connection with the school-window going on in his brain every moment of the time. in the morning, do what he would--go upstairs, downstairs, out of doors, speak of the wind and weather, or what not--he could not refrain from an unceasing renewal, in imagination, of that interesting enactment. tilted on the edge of one foot he stood beside the fireplace, watching his mother grilling rashers; but there was nothing in grilling, he thought, unless the vision grilled. the limp rasher hung down between the bars of the gridiron like a cat in a child's arms; but there was nothing in similes, unless she uttered them. he looked at the daylight shadows of a yellow hue, dancing with the firelight shadows in blue on the whitewashed chimney corner, but there was nothing in shadows. "perhaps the new young wom--sch--miss fancy day will sing in church with us this morning," he said. the tranter looked a long time before he replied, "i fancy she will; and yet i fancy she won't." dick implied that such a remark was rather to be tolerated than admired; though deliberateness in speech was known to have, as a rule, more to do with the machinery of the tranter's throat than with the matter enunciated. they made preparations for going to church as usual; dick with extreme alacrity, though he would not definitely consider why he was so religious. his wonderful nicety in brushing and cleaning his best light boots had features which elevated it to the rank of an art. every particle and speck of last week's mud was scraped and brushed from toe and heel; new blacking from the packet was carefully mixed and made use of, regardless of expense. a coat was laid on and polished; then another coat for increased blackness; and lastly a third, to give the perfect and mirror-like jet which the hoped-for rencounter demanded. it being christmas-day, the tranter prepared himself with sunday particularity. loud sousing and snorting noises were heard to proceed from a tub in the back quarters of the dwelling, proclaiming that he was there performing his great sunday wash, lasting half-an-hour, to which his washings on working-day mornings were mere flashes in the pan. vanishing into the outhouse with a large brown towel, and the above-named bubblings and snortings being carried on for about twenty minutes, the tranter would appear round the edge of the door, smelling like a summer fog, and looking as if he had just narrowly escaped a watery grave with the loss of much of his clothes, having since been weeping bitterly till his eyes were red; a crystal drop of water hanging ornamentally at the bottom of each ear, one at the tip of his nose, and others in the form of spangles about his hair. after a great deal of crunching upon the sanded stone floor by the feet of father, son, and grandson as they moved to and fro in these preparations, the bass-viol and fiddles were taken from their nook, and the strings examined and screwed a little above concert-pitch, that they might keep their tone when the service began, to obviate the awkward contingency of having to retune them at the back of the gallery during a cough, sneeze, or amen--an inconvenience which had been known to arise in damp wintry weather. the three left the door and paced down mellstock-lane and across the ewe- lease, bearing under their arms the instruments in faded green-baize bags, and old brown music-books in their hands; dick continually finding himself in advance of the other two, and the tranter moving on with toes turned outwards to an enormous angle. at the foot of an incline the church became visible through the north gate, or 'church hatch,' as it was called here. seven agile figures in a clump were observable beyond, which proved to be the choristers waiting; sitting on an altar-tomb to pass the time, and letting their heels dangle against it. the musicians being now in sight, the youthful party scampered off and rattled up the old wooden stairs of the gallery like a regiment of cavalry; the other boys of the parish waiting outside and observing birds, cats, and other creatures till the vicar entered, when they suddenly subsided into sober church-goers, and passed down the aisle with echoing heels. the gallery of mellstock church had a status and sentiment of its own. a stranger there was regarded with a feeling altogether differing from that of the congregation below towards him. banished from the nave as an intruder whom no originality could make interesting, he was received above as a curiosity that no unfitness could render dull. the gallery, too, looked down upon and knew the habits of the nave to its remotest peculiarity, and had an extensive stock of exclusive information about it; whilst the nave knew nothing of the gallery folk, as gallery folk, beyond their loud-sounding minims and chest notes. such topics as that the clerk was always chewing tobacco except at the moment of crying amen; that he had a dust-hole in his pew; that during the sermon certain young daughters of the village had left off caring to read anything so mild as the marriage service for some years, and now regularly studied the one which chronologically follows it; that a pair of lovers touched fingers through a knot-hole between their pews in the manner ordained by their great exemplars, pyramus and thisbe; that mrs. ledlow, the farmer's wife, counted her money and reckoned her week's marketing expenses during the first lesson--all news to those below--were stale subjects here. old william sat in the centre of the front row, his violoncello between his knees and two singers on each hand. behind him, on the left, came the treble singers and dick; and on the right the tranter and the tenors. farther back was old mail with the altos and supernumeraries. but before they had taken their places, and whilst they were standing in a circle at the back of the gallery practising a psalm or two, dick cast his eyes over his grandfather's shoulder, and saw the vision of the past night enter the porch-door as methodically as if she had never been a vision at all. a new atmosphere seemed suddenly to be puffed into the ancient edifice by her movement, which made dick's body and soul tingle with novel sensations. directed by shiner, the churchwarden, she proceeded to the small aisle on the north side of the chancel, a spot now allotted to a throng of sunday-school girls, and distinctly visible from the gallery-front by looking under the curve of the furthermost arch on that side. before this moment the church had seemed comparatively empty--now it was thronged; and as miss fancy rose from her knees and looked around her for a permanent place in which to deposit herself--finally choosing the remotest corner--dick began to breathe more freely the warm new air she had brought with her; to feel rushings of blood, and to have impressions that there was a tie between her and himself visible to all the congregation. ever afterwards the young man could recollect individually each part of the service of that bright christmas morning, and the trifling occurrences which took place as its minutes slowly drew along; the duties of that day dividing themselves by a complete line from the services of other times. the tunes they that morning essayed remained with him for years, apart from all others; also the text; also the appearance of the layer of dust upon the capitals of the piers; that the holly-bough in the chancel archway was hung a little out of the centre--all the ideas, in short, that creep into the mind when reason is only exercising its lowest activity through the eye. by chance or by fate, another young man who attended mellstock church on that christmas morning had towards the end of the service the same instinctive perception of an interesting presence, in the shape of the same bright maiden, though his emotion reached a far less developed stage. and there was this difference, too, that the person in question was surprised at his condition, and sedulously endeavoured to reduce himself to his normal state of mind. he was the young vicar, mr. maybold. the music on christmas mornings was frequently below the standard of church-performances at other times. the boys were sleepy from the heavy exertions of the night; the men were slightly wearied; and now, in addition to these constant reasons, there was a dampness in the atmosphere that still further aggravated the evil. their strings, from the recent long exposure to the night air, rose whole semitones, and snapped with a loud twang at the most silent moment; which necessitated more retiring than ever to the back of the gallery, and made the gallery throats quite husky with the quantity of coughing and hemming required for tuning in. the vicar looked cross. when the singing was in progress there was suddenly discovered to be a strong and shrill reinforcement from some point, ultimately found to be the school-girls' aisle. at every attempt it grew bolder and more distinct. at the third time of singing, these intrusive feminine voices were as mighty as those of the regular singers; in fact, the flood of sound from this quarter assumed such an individuality, that it had a time, a key, almost a tune of its own, surging upwards when the gallery plunged downwards, and the reverse. now this had never happened before within the memory of man. the girls, like the rest of the congregation, had always been humble and respectful followers of the gallery; singing at sixes and sevens if without gallery leaders; never interfering with the ordinances of these practised artists--having no will, union, power, or proclivity except it was given them from the established choir enthroned above them. a good deal of desperation became noticeable in the gallery throats and strings, which continued throughout the musical portion of the service. directly the fiddles were laid down, mr. penny's spectacles put in their sheath, and the text had been given out, an indignant whispering began. "did ye hear that, souls?" mr. penny said, in a groaning breath. "brazen-faced hussies!" said bowman. "true; why, they were every note as loud as we, fiddles and all, if not louder!" "fiddles and all!" echoed bowman bitterly. "shall anything saucier be found than united 'ooman?" mr. spinks murmured. "what i want to know is," said the tranter (as if he knew already, but that civilization required the form of words), "what business people have to tell maidens to sing like that when they don't sit in a gallery, and never have entered one in their lives? that's the question, my sonnies." "'tis the gallery have got to sing, all the world knows," said mr. penny. "why, souls, what's the use o' the ancients spending scores of pounds to build galleries if people down in the lowest depths of the church sing like that at a moment's notice?" "really, i think we useless ones had better march out of church, fiddles and all!" said mr. spinks, with a laugh which, to a stranger, would have sounded mild and real. only the initiated body of men he addressed could understand the horrible bitterness of irony that lurked under the quiet words 'useless ones,' and the ghastliness of the laughter apparently so natural. "never mind! let 'em sing too--'twill make it all the louder--hee, hee!" said leaf. "thomas leaf, thomas leaf! where have you lived all your life?" said grandfather william sternly. the quailing leaf tried to look as if he had lived nowhere at all. "when all's said and done, my sonnies," reuben said, "there'd have been no real harm in their singing if they had let nobody hear 'em, and only jined in now and then." "none at all," said mr. penny. "but though i don't wish to accuse people wrongfully, i'd say before my lord judge that i could hear every note o' that last psalm come from 'em as much as from us--every note as if 'twas their own." "know it! ah, i should think i did know it!" mr. spinks was heard to observe at this moment, without reference to his fellow players--shaking his head at some idea he seemed to see floating before him, and smiling as if he were attending a funeral at the time. "ah, do i or don't i know it!" no one said "know what?" because all were aware from experience that what he knew would declare itself in process of time. "i could fancy last night that we should have some trouble wi' that young man," said the tranter, pending the continuance of spinks's speech, and looking towards the unconscious mr. maybold in the pulpit. "i fancy," said old william, rather severely, "i fancy there's too much whispering going on to be of any spiritual use to gentle or simple." then folding his lips and concentrating his glance on the vicar, he implied that none but the ignorant would speak again; and accordingly there was silence in the gallery, mr. spinks's telling speech remaining for ever unspoken. dick had said nothing, and the tranter little, on this episode of the morning; for mrs. dewy at breakfast expressed it as her intention to invite the youthful leader of the culprits to the small party it was customary with them to have on christmas night--a piece of knowledge which had given a particular brightness to dick's reflections since he had received it. and in the tranter's slightly-cynical nature, party feeling was weaker than in the other members of the choir, though friendliness and faithful partnership still sustained in him a hearty earnestness on their account. chapter vii: the tranter's party during the afternoon unusual activity was seen to prevail about the precincts of tranter dewy's house. the flagstone floor was swept of dust, and a sprinkling of the finest yellow sand from the innermost stratum of the adjoining sand-pit lightly scattered thereupon. then were produced large knives and forks, which had been shrouded in darkness and grease since the last occasion of the kind, and bearing upon their sides, "shear-steel, warranted," in such emphatic letters of assurance, that the warranter's name was not required as further proof, and not given. the key was left in the tap of the cider-barrel, instead of being carried in a pocket. and finally the tranter had to stand up in the room and let his wife wheel him round like a turnstile, to see if anything discreditable was visible in his appearance. "stand still till i've been for the scissors," said mrs. dewy. the tranter stood as still as a sentinel at the challenge. the only repairs necessary were a trimming of one or two whiskers that had extended beyond the general contour of the mass; a like trimming of a slightly-frayed edge visible on his shirt-collar; and a final tug at a grey hair--to all of which operations he submitted in resigned silence, except the last, which produced a mild "come, come, ann," by way of expostulation. "really, reuben, 'tis quite a disgrace to see such a man," said mrs. dewy, with the severity justifiable in a long-tried companion, giving him another turn round, and picking several of smiler's hairs from the shoulder of his coat. reuben's thoughts seemed engaged elsewhere, and he yawned. "and the collar of your coat is a shame to behold--so plastered with dirt, or dust, or grease, or something. why, wherever could you have got it?" "'tis my warm nater in summer-time, i suppose. i always did get in such a heat when i bustle about." "ay, the dewys always were such a coarse-skinned family. there's your brother bob just as bad--as fat as a porpoise--wi' his low, mean, 'how'st do, ann?' whenever he meets me. i'd 'how'st do' him indeed! if the sun only shines out a minute, there be you all streaming in the face--i never see!" "if i be hot week-days, i must be hot sundays." "if any of the girls should turn after their father 'twill be a bad look- out for 'em, poor things! none of my family were sich vulgar sweaters, not one of 'em. but, lord-a-mercy, the dewys! i don't know how ever i cam' into such a family!" "your woman's weakness when i asked ye to jine us. that's how it was i suppose." but the tranter appeared to have heard some such words from his wife before, and hence his answer had not the energy it might have shown if the inquiry had possessed the charm of novelty. "you never did look so well in a pair o' trousers as in them," she continued in the same unimpassioned voice, so that the unfriendly criticism of the dewy family seemed to have been more normal than spontaneous. "such a cheap pair as 'twas too. as big as any man could wish to have, and lined inside, and double-lined in the lower parts, and an extra piece of stiffening at the bottom. and 'tis a nice high cut that comes up right under your armpits, and there's enough turned down inside the seams to make half a pair more, besides a piece of cloth left that will make an honest waistcoat--all by my contriving in buying the stuff at a bargain, and having it made up under my eye. it only shows what may be done by taking a little trouble, and not going straight to the rascally tailors." the discourse was cut short by the sudden appearance of charley on the scene, with a face and hands of hideous blackness, and a nose like a guttering candle. why, on that particularly cleanly afternoon, he should have discovered that the chimney-crook and chain from which the hams were suspended should have possessed more merits and general interest as playthings than any other articles in the house, is a question for nursing mothers to decide. however, the humour seemed to lie in the result being, as has been seen, that any given player with these articles was in the long-run daubed with soot. the last that was seen of charley by daylight after this piece of ingenuity was when in the act of vanishing from his father's presence round the corner of the house--looking back over his shoulder with an expression of great sin on his face, like cain as the outcast in bible pictures. * * * * * the guests had all assembled, and the tranter's party had reached that degree of development which accords with ten o'clock p.m. in rural assemblies. at that hour the sound of a fiddle in process of tuning was heard from the inner pantry. "that's dick," said the tranter. "that lad's crazy for a jig." "dick! now i cannot--really, i cannot have any dancing at all till christmas-day is out," said old william emphatically. "when the clock ha' done striking twelve, dance as much as ye like." "well, i must say there's reason in that, william," said mrs. penny. "if you do have a party on christmas-night, 'tis only fair and honourable to the sky-folk to have it a sit-still party. jigging parties be all very well on the devil's holidays; but a jigging party looks suspicious now. o yes; stop till the clock strikes, young folk--so say i." it happened that some warm mead accidentally got into mr. spinks's head about this time. "dancing," he said, "is a most strengthening, livening, and courting movement, 'specially with a little beverage added! and dancing is good. but why disturb what is ordained, richard and reuben, and the company zhinerally? why, i ask, as far as that do go?" "then nothing till after twelve," said william. though reuben and his wife ruled on social points, religious questions were mostly disposed of by the old man, whose firmness on this head quite counterbalanced a certain weakness in his handling of domestic matters. the hopes of the younger members of the household were therefore relegated to a distance of one hour and three-quarters--a result that took visible shape in them by a remote and listless look about the eyes--the singing of songs being permitted in the interim. at five minutes to twelve the soft tuning was again heard in the back quarters; and when at length the clock had whizzed forth the last stroke, dick appeared ready primed, and the instruments were boldly handled; old william very readily taking the bass-viol from its accustomed nail, and touching the strings as irreligiously as could be desired. the country-dance called the 'triumph, or follow my lover,' was the figure with which they opened. the tranter took for his partner mrs. penny, and mrs. dewy was chosen by mr. penny, who made so much of his limited height by a judicious carriage of the head, straightening of the back, and important flashes of his spectacle-glasses, that he seemed almost as tall as the tranter. mr. shiner, age about thirty-five, farmer and church-warden, a character principally composed of a crimson stare, vigorous breath, and a watch-chain, with a mouth hanging on a dark smile but never smiling, had come quite willingly to the party, and showed a wondrous obliviousness of all his antics on the previous night. but the comely, slender, prettily-dressed prize fancy day fell to dick's lot, in spite of some private machinations of the farmer, for the reason that mr. shiner, as a richer man, had shown too much assurance in asking the favour, whilst dick had been duly courteous. we gain a good view of our heroine as she advances to her place in the ladies' line. she belonged to the taller division of middle height. flexibility was her first characteristic, by which she appeared to enjoy the most easeful rest when she was in gliding motion. her dark eyes--arched by brows of so keen, slender, and soft a curve, that they resembled nothing so much as two slurs in music--showed primarily a bright sparkle each. this was softened by a frequent thoughtfulness, yet not so frequent as to do away, for more than a few minutes at a time, with a certain coquettishness; which in its turn was never so decided as to banish honesty. her lips imitated her brows in their clearly-cut outline and softness of bend; and her nose was well shaped--which is saying a great deal, when it is remembered that there are a hundred pretty mouths and eyes for one pretty nose. add to this, plentiful knots of dark-brown hair, a gauzy dress of white, with blue facings; and the slightest idea may be gained of the young maiden who showed, amidst the rest of the dancing-ladies, like a flower among vegetables. and so the dance proceeded. mr. shiner, according to the interesting rule laid down, deserted his own partner, and made off down the middle with this fair one of dick's--the pair appearing from the top of the room like two persons tripping down a lane to be married. dick trotted behind with what was intended to be a look of composure, but which was, in fact, a rather silly expression of feature--implying, with too much earnestness, that such an elopement could not be tolerated. then they turned and came back, when dick grew more rigid around his mouth, and blushed with ingenuous ardour as he joined hands with the rival and formed the arch over his lady's head; which presumably gave the figure its name; relinquishing her again at setting to partners, when mr. shiner's new chain quivered in every link, and all the loose flesh upon the tranter--who here came into action again--shook like jelly. mrs. penny, being always rather concerned for her personal safety when she danced with the tranter, fixed her face to a chronic smile of timidity the whole time it lasted--a peculiarity which filled her features with wrinkles, and reduced her eyes to little straight lines like hyphens, as she jigged up and down opposite him; repeating in her own person not only his proper movements, but also the minor flourishes which the richness of the tranter's imagination led him to introduce from time to time--an imitation which had about it something of slavish obedience, not unmixed with fear. the ear-rings of the ladies now flung themselves wildly about, turning violent summersaults, banging this way and that, and then swinging quietly against the ears sustaining them. mrs. crumpler--a heavy woman, who, for some reason which nobody ever thought worth inquiry, danced in a clean apron--moved so smoothly through the figure that her feet were never seen; conveying to imaginative minds the idea that she rolled on castors. minute after minute glided by, and the party reached the period when ladies' back-hair begins to look forgotten and dissipated; when a perceptible dampness makes itself apparent upon the faces even of delicate girls--a ghastly dew having for some time rained from the features of their masculine partners; when skirts begin to be torn out of their gathers; when elderly people, who have stood up to please their juniors, begin to feel sundry small tremblings in the region of the knees, and to wish the interminable dance was at jericho; when (at country parties of the thorough sort) waistcoats begin to be unbuttoned, and when the fiddlers' chairs have been wriggled, by the frantic bowing of their occupiers, to a distance of about two feet from where they originally stood. fancy was dancing with mr. shiner. dick knew that fancy, by the law of good manners, was bound to dance as pleasantly with one partner as with another; yet he could not help suggesting to himself that she need not have put quite so much spirit into her steps, nor smiled quite so frequently whilst in the farmer's hands. "i'm afraid you didn't cast off," said dick mildly to mr. shiner, before the latter man's watch-chain had done vibrating from a recent whirl. fancy made a motion of accepting the correction; but her partner took no notice, and proceeded with the next movement, with an affectionate bend towards her. "that shiner's too fond of her," the young man said to himself as he watched them. they came to the top again, fancy smiling warmly towards her partner, and went to their places. "mr. shiner, you didn't cast off," said dick, for want of something else to demolish him with; casting off himself, and being put out at the farmer's irregularity. "perhaps i sha'n't cast off for any man," said mr. shiner. "i think you ought to, sir." dick's partner, a young lady of the name of lizzy--called lizz for short--tried to mollify. "i can't say that i myself have much feeling for casting off," she said. "nor i," said mrs. penny, following up the argument, "especially if a friend and neighbour is set against it. not but that 'tis a terrible tasty thing in good hands and well done; yes, indeed, so say i." "all i meant was," said dick, rather sorry that he had spoken correctingly to a guest, "that 'tis in the dance; and a man has hardly any right to hack and mangle what was ordained by the regular dance-maker, who, i daresay, got his living by making 'em, and thought of nothing else all his life." "i don't like casting off: then very well; i cast off for no dance-maker that ever lived." dick now appeared to be doing mental arithmetic, the act being really an effort to present to himself, in an abstract form, how far an argument with a formidable rival ought to be carried, when that rival was his mother's guest. the dead-lock was put an end to by the stamping arrival up the middle of the tranter, who, despising minutiae on principle, started a theme of his own. "i assure you, neighbours," he said, "the heat of my frame no tongue can tell!" he looked around and endeavoured to give, by a forcible gaze of self-sympathy, some faint idea of the truth. mrs. dewy formed one of the next couple. "yes," she said, in an auxiliary tone, "reuben always was such a hot man." mrs. penny implied the species of sympathy that such a class of affliction required, by trying to smile and to look grieved at the same time. "if he only walk round the garden of a sunday morning, his shirt-collar is as limp as no starch at all," continued mrs. dewy, her countenance lapsing parenthetically into a housewifely expression of concern at the reminiscence. "come, come, you women-folk; 'tis hands across--come, come!" said the tranter; and the conversation ceased for the present. chapter viii: they dance more wildly dick had at length secured fancy for that most delightful of country-dances, opening with six-hands-round. "before we begin," said the tranter, "my proposal is, that 'twould be a right and proper plan for every mortal man in the dance to pull off his jacket, considering the heat." "such low notions as you have, reuben! nothing but strip will go down with you when you are a-dancing. such a hot man as he is!" "well, now, look here, my sonnies," he argued to his wife, whom he often addressed in the plural masculine for economy of epithet merely; "i don't see that. you dance and get hot as fire; therefore you lighten your clothes. isn't that nature and reason for gentle and simple? if i strip by myself and not necessary, 'tis rather pot-housey i own; but if we stout chaps strip one and all, why, 'tis the native manners of the country, which no man can gainsay? hey--what did you say, my sonnies?" "strip we will!" said the three other heavy men who were in the dance; and their coats were accordingly taken off and hung in the passage, whence the four sufferers from heat soon reappeared, marching in close column, with flapping shirt-sleeves, and having, as common to them all, a general glance of being now a match for any man or dancer in england or ireland. dick, fearing to lose ground in fancy's good opinion, retained his coat like the rest of the thinner men; and mr. shiner did the same from superior knowledge. and now a further phase of revelry had disclosed itself. it was the time of night when a guest may write his name in the dust upon the tables and chairs, and a bluish mist pervades the atmosphere, becoming a distinct halo round the candles; when people's nostrils, wrinkles, and crevices in general, seem to be getting gradually plastered up; when the very fiddlers as well as the dancers get red in the face, the dancers having advanced further still towards incandescence, and entered the cadaverous phase; the fiddlers no longer sit down, but kick back their chairs and saw madly at the strings, with legs firmly spread and eyes closed, regardless of the visible world. again and again did dick share his love's hand with another man, and wheel round; then, more delightfully, promenade in a circle with her all to himself, his arm holding her waist more firmly each time, and his elbow getting further and further behind her back, till the distance reached was rather noticeable; and, most blissful, swinging to places shoulder to shoulder, her breath curling round his neck like a summer zephyr that had strayed from its proper date. threading the couples one by one they reached the bottom, when there arose in dick's mind a minor misery lest the tune should end before they could work their way to the top again, and have anew the same exciting run down through. dick's feelings on actually reaching the top in spite of his doubts were supplemented by a mortal fear that the fiddling might even stop at this supreme moment; which prompted him to convey a stealthy whisper to the far-gone musicians, to the effect that they were not to leave off till he and his partner had reached the bottom of the dance once more, which remark was replied to by the nearest of those convulsed and quivering men by a private nod to the anxious young man between two semiquavers of the tune, and a simultaneous "all right, ay, ay," without opening the eyes. fancy was now held so closely that dick and she were practically one person. the room became to dick like a picture in a dream; all that he could remember of it afterwards being the look of the fiddlers going to sleep, as humming-tops sleep, by increasing their motion and hum, together with the figures of grandfather james and old simon crumpler sitting by the chimney-corner, talking and nodding in dumb-show, and beating the air to their emphatic sentences like people near a threshing machine. the dance ended. "piph-h-h-h!" said tranter dewy, blowing out his breath in the very finest stream of vapour that a man's lips could form. "a regular tightener, that one, sonnies!" he wiped his forehead, and went to the cider and ale mugs on the table. "well!" said mrs. penny, flopping into a chair, "my heart haven't been in such a thumping state of uproar since i used to sit up on old midsummer- eves to see who my husband was going to be." "and that's getting on for a good few years ago now, from what i've heard you tell," said the tranter, without lifting his eyes from the cup he was filling. being now engaged in the business of handing round refreshments, he was warranted in keeping his coat off still, though the other heavy men had resumed theirs. "and a thing i never expected would come to pass, if you'll believe me, came to pass then," continued mrs. penny. "ah, the first spirit ever i see on a midsummer-eve was a puzzle to me when he appeared, a hard puzzle, so say i!" "so i should have fancied," said elias spinks. "yes," said mrs. penny, throwing her glance into past times, and talking on in a running tone of complacent abstraction, as if a listener were not a necessity. "yes; never was i in such a taking as on that midsummer- eve! i sat up, quite determined to see if john wildway was going to marry me or no. i put the bread-and-cheese and beer quite ready, as the witch's book ordered, and i opened the door, and i waited till the clock struck twelve, my nerves all alive and so strained that i could feel every one of 'em twitching like bell-wires. yes, sure! and when the clock had struck, lo and behold, i could see through the door a little small man in the lane wi' a shoemaker's apron on." here mr. penny stealthily enlarged himself half an inch. "now, john wildway," mrs. penny continued, "who courted me at that time, was a shoemaker, you see, but he was a very fair-sized man, and i couldn't believe that any such a little small man had anything to do wi' me, as anybody might. but on he came, and crossed the threshold--not john, but actually the same little small man in the shoemaker's apron--" "you needn't be so mighty particular about little and small!" said her husband. "in he walks, and down he sits, and o my goodness me, didn't i flee upstairs, body and soul hardly hanging together! well, to cut a long story short, by-long and by-late, john wildway and i had a miff and parted; and lo and behold, the coming man came! penny asked me if i'd go snacks with him, and afore i knew what i was about a'most, the thing was done." "i've fancied you never knew better in your life; but i mid be mistaken," said mr. penny in a murmur. after mrs. penny had spoken, there being no new occupation for her eyes, she still let them stay idling on the past scenes just related, which were apparently visible to her in the centre of the room. mr. penny's remark received no reply. during this discourse the tranter and his wife might have been observed standing in an unobtrusive corner, in mysterious closeness to each other, a just perceptible current of intelligence passing from each to each, which had apparently no relation whatever to the conversation of their guests, but much to their sustenance. a conclusion of some kind having at length been drawn, the palpable confederacy of man and wife was once more obliterated, the tranter marching off into the pantry, humming a tune that he couldn't quite recollect, and then breaking into the words of a song of which he could remember about one line and a quarter. mrs. dewy spoke a few words about preparations for a bit of supper. that elder portion of the company which loved eating and drinking put on a look to signify that till this moment they had quite forgotten that it was customary to expect suppers on these occasions; going even further than this politeness of feature, and starting irrelevant subjects, the exceeding flatness and forced tone of which rather betrayed their object. the younger members said they were quite hungry, and that supper would be delightful though it was so late. good luck attended dick's love-passes during the meal. he sat next fancy, and had the thrilling pleasure of using permanently a glass which had been taken by fancy in mistake; of letting the outer edge of the sole of his boot touch the lower verge of her skirt; and to add to these delights the cat, which had lain unobserved in her lap for several minutes, crept across into his own, touching him with fur that had touched her hand a moment before. there were, besides, some little pleasures in the shape of helping her to vegetable she didn't want, and when it had nearly alighted on her plate taking it across for his own use, on the plea of waste not, want not. he also, from time to time, sipped sweet sly glances at her profile; noticing the set of her head, the curve of her throat, and other artistic properties of the lively goddess, who the while kept up a rather free, not to say too free, conversation with mr. shiner sitting opposite; which, after some uneasy criticism, and much shifting of argument backwards and forwards in dick's mind, he decided not to consider of alarming significance. "a new music greets our ears now," said miss fancy, alluding, with the sharpness that her position as village sharpener demanded, to the contrast between the rattle of knives and forks and the late notes of the fiddlers. "ay; and i don't know but what 'tis sweeter in tone when you get above forty," said the tranter; "except, in faith, as regards father there. never such a mortal man as he for tunes. they do move his soul; don't 'em, father?" the eldest dewy smiled across from his distant chair an assent to reuben's remark. "spaking of being moved in soul," said mr. penny, "i shall never forget the first time i heard the 'dead march.' 'twas at poor corp'l nineman's funeral at casterbridge. it fairly made my hair creep and fidget about like a vlock of sheep--ah, it did, souls! and when they had done, and the last trump had sounded, and the guns was fired over the dead hero's grave, a' icy-cold drop o' moist sweat hung upon my forehead, and another upon my jawbone. ah, 'tis a very solemn thing!" "well, as to father in the corner there," the tranter said, pointing to old william, who was in the act of filling his mouth; "he'd starve to death for music's sake now, as much as when he was a boy-chap of fifteen." "truly, now," said michael mail, clearing the corner of his throat in the manner of a man who meant to be convincing; "there's a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating." he lifted the cup to his mouth, and drank himself gradually backwards from a perpendicular position to a slanting one, during which time his looks performed a circuit from the wall opposite him to the ceiling overhead. then clearing the other corner of his throat: "once i was a-setting in the little kitchen of the dree mariners at casterbridge, having a bit of dinner, and a brass band struck up in the street. such a beautiful band as that were! i was setting eating fried liver and lights, i well can mind--ah, i was! and to save my life, i couldn't help chawing to the tune. band played six-eight time; six-eight chaws i, willynilly. band plays common; common time went my teeth among the liver and lights as true as a hair. beautiful 'twere! ah, i shall never forget that there band!" "that's as tuneful a thing as ever i heard of," said grandfather james, with the absent gaze which accompanies profound criticism. "i don't like michael's tuneful stories then," said mrs. dewy. "they are quite coarse to a person o' decent taste." old michael's mouth twitched here and there, as if he wanted to smile but didn't know where to begin, which gradually settled to an expression that it was not displeasing for a nice woman like the tranter's wife to correct him. "well, now," said reuben, with decisive earnestness, "that sort o' coarse touch that's so upsetting to ann's feelings is to my mind a recommendation; for it do always prove a story to be true. and for the same reason, i like a story with a bad moral. my sonnies, all true stories have a coarse touch or a bad moral, depend upon't. if the story- tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd ha' troubled to invent parables?" saying this the tranter arose to fetch a new stock of cider, ale, mead, and home-made wines. mrs. dewy sighed, and appended a remark (ostensibly behind her husband's back, though that the words should reach his ears distinctly was understood by both): "such a man as dewy is! nobody do know the trouble i have to keep that man barely respectable. and did you ever hear too--just now at supper-time--talking about 'taties' with michael in such a work-folk way. well, 'tis what i was never brought up to! with our family 'twas never less than 'taters,' and very often 'pertatoes' outright; mother was so particular and nice with us girls there was no family in the parish that kept them selves up more than we." the hour of parting came. fancy could not remain for the night, because she had engaged a woman to wait up for her. she disappeared temporarily from the flagging party of dancers, and then came downstairs wrapped up and looking altogether a different person from whom she had been hitherto, in fact (to dick's sadness and disappointment), a woman somewhat reserved and of a phlegmatic temperament--nothing left in her of the romping girl that she had seemed but a short quarter-hour before, who had not minded the weight of dick's hand upon her waist, nor shirked the purlieus of the mistletoe. "what a difference!" thought the young man--hoary cynic pro tem. "what a miserable deceiving difference between the manners of a maid's life at dancing times and at others! look at this lovely fancy! through the whole past evening touchable, squeezeable--even kissable! for whole half- hours i held her so chose to me that not a sheet of paper could have been shipped between us; and i could feel her heart only just outside my own, her life beating on so close to mine, that i was aware of every breath in it. a flit is made upstairs--a hat and a cloak put on--and i no more dare to touch her than--" thought failed him, and he returned to realities. but this was an endurable misery in comparison with what followed. mr. shiner and his watch-chain, taking the intrusive advantage that ardent bachelors who are going homeward along the same road as a pretty young woman always do take of that circumstance, came forward to assure fancy--with a total disregard of dick's emotions, and in tones which were certainly not frigid--that he (shiner) was not the man to go to bed before seeing his lady fair safe within her own door--not he, nobody should say he was that;--and that he would not leave her side an inch till the thing was done--drown him if he would. the proposal was assented to by miss day, in dick's foreboding judgment, with one degree--or at any rate, an appreciable fraction of a degree--of warmth beyond that required by a disinterested desire for protection from the dangers of the night. all was over; and dick surveyed the chair she had last occupied, looking now like a setting from which the gem has been torn. there stood her glass, and the romantic teaspoonful of elder wine at the bottom that she couldn't drink by trying ever so hard, in obedience to the mighty arguments of the tranter (his hand coming down upon her shoulder the while, like a nasmyth hammer); but the drinker was there no longer. there were the nine or ten pretty little crumbs she had left on her plate; but the eater was no more seen. there seemed a disagreeable closeness of relationship between himself and the members of his family, now that they were left alone again face to face. his father seemed quite offensive for appearing to be in just as high spirits as when the guests were there; and as for grandfather james (who had not yet left), he was quite fiendish in being rather glad they were gone. "really," said the tranter, in a tone of placid satisfaction, "i've had so little time to attend to myself all the evenen, that i mean to enjoy a quiet meal now! a slice of this here ham--neither too fat nor too lean--so; and then a drop of this vinegar and pickles--there, that's it--and i shall be as fresh as a lark again! and to tell the truth, my sonny, my inside has been as dry as a lime-basket all night." "i like a party very well once in a while," said mrs. dewy, leaving off the adorned tones she had been bound to use throughout the evening, and returning to the natural marriage voice; "but, lord, 'tis such a sight of heavy work next day! what with the dirty plates, and knives and forks, and dust and smother, and bits kicked off your furniture, and i don't know what all, why a body could a'most wish there were no such things as christmases . . . ah-h dear!" she yawned, till the clock in the corner had ticked several beats. she cast her eyes round upon the displaced, dust-laden furniture, and sank down overpowered at the sight. "well, i be getting all right by degrees, thank the lord for't!" said the tranter cheerfully through a mangled mass of ham and bread, without lifting his eyes from his plate, and chopping away with his knife and fork as if he were felling trees. "ann, you may as well go on to bed at once, and not bide there making such sleepy faces; you look as long-favoured as a fiddle, upon my life, ann. there, you must be wearied out, 'tis true. i'll do the doors and draw up the clock; and you go on, or you'll be as white as a sheet to-morrow." "ay; i don't know whether i shan't or no." the matron passed her hand across her eyes to brush away the film of sleep till she got upstairs. dick wondered how it was that when people were married they could be so blind to romance; and was quite certain that if he ever took to wife that dear impossible fancy, he and she would never be so dreadfully practical and undemonstrative of the passion as his father and mother were. the most extraordinary thing was, that all the fathers and mothers he knew were just as undemonstrative as his own. chapter ix: dick calls at the school the early days of the year drew on, and fancy, having spent the holiday weeks at home, returned again to mellstock. every spare minute of the week following her return was used by dick in accidentally passing the schoolhouse in his journeys about the neighbourhood; but not once did she make herself visible. a handkerchief belonging to her had been providentially found by his mother in clearing the rooms the day after that of the dance; and by much contrivance dick got it handed over to him, to leave with her at any time he should be near the school after her return. but he delayed taking the extreme measure of calling with it lest, had she really no sentiment of interest in him, it might be regarded as a slightly absurd errand, the reason guessed; and the sense of the ludicrous, which was rather keen in her, do his dignity considerable injury in her eyes; and what she thought of him, even apart from the question of her loving, was all the world to him now. but the hour came when the patience of love at twenty-one could endure no longer. one saturday he approached the school with a mild air of indifference, and had the satisfaction of seeing the object of his quest at the further end of her garden, trying, by the aid of a spade and gloves, to root a bramble that had intruded itself there. he disguised his feelings from some suspicious-looking cottage-windows opposite by endeavouring to appear like a man in a great hurry of business, who wished to leave the handkerchief and have done with such trifling errands. this endeavour signally failed; for on approaching the gate he found it locked to keep the children, who were playing 'cross-dadder' in the front, from running into her private grounds. she did not see him; and he could only think of one thing to be done, which was to shout her name. "miss day!" the words were uttered with a jerk and a look meant to imply to the cottages opposite that he was now simply one who liked shouting as a pleasant way of passing his time, without any reference to persons in gardens. the name died away, and the unconscious miss day continued digging and pulling as before. he screwed himself up to enduring the cottage-windows yet more stoically, and shouted again. fancy took no notice whatever. he shouted the third time, with desperate vehemence, turning suddenly about and retiring a little distance, as if it were by no means for his own pleasure that he had come. this time she heard him, came down the garden, and entered the school at the back. footsteps echoed across the interior, the door opened, and three-quarters of the blooming young schoolmistress's face and figure stood revealed before him; a slice on her left-hand side being cut off by the edge of the door. having surveyed and recognized him, she came to the gate. at sight of him had the pink of her cheeks increased, lessened, or did it continue to cover its normal area of ground? it was a question meditated several hundreds of times by her visitor in after-hours--the meditation, after wearying involutions, always ending in one way, that it was impossible to say. "your handkerchief: miss day: i called with." he held it out spasmodically and awkwardly. "mother found it: under a chair." "o, thank you very much for bringing it, mr. dewy. i couldn't think where i had dropped it." now dick, not being an experienced lover--indeed, never before having been engaged in the practice of love-making at all, except in a small schoolboy way--could not take advantage of the situation; and out came the blunder, which afterwards cost him so many bitter moments and a sleepless night:- "good morning, miss day." "good morning, mr. dewy." the gate was closed; she was gone; and dick was standing outside, unchanged in his condition from what he had been before he called. of course the angel was not to blame--a young woman living alone in a house could not ask him indoors unless she had known him better--he should have kept her outside before floundering into that fatal farewell. he wished that before he called he had realized more fully than he did the pleasure of being about to call; and turned away. part the second--spring chapter i: passing by the school it followed that, as the spring advanced, dick walked abroad much more frequently than had hitherto been usual with him, and was continually finding that his nearest way to or from home lay by the road which skirted the garden of the school. the first-fruits of his perseverance were that, on turning the angle on the nineteenth journey by that track, he saw miss fancy's figure, clothed in a dark-gray dress, looking from a high open window upon the crown of his hat. the friendly greeting resulting from this rencounter was considered so valuable an elixir that dick passed still oftener; and by the time he had almost trodden a little path under the fence where never a path was before, he was rewarded with an actual meeting face to face on the open road before her gate. this brought another meeting, and another, fancy faintly showing by her bearing that it was a pleasure to her of some kind to see him there; but the sort of pleasure she derived, whether exultation at the hope her exceeding fairness inspired, or the true feeling which was alone dick's concern, he could not anyhow decide, although he meditated on her every little movement for hours after it was made. chapter ii: a meeting of the quire it was the evening of a fine spring day. the descending sun appeared as a nebulous blaze of amber light, its outline being lost in cloudy masses hanging round it, like wild locks of hair. the chief members of mellstock parish choir were standing in a group in front of mr. penny's workshop in the lower village. they were all brightly illuminated, and each was backed up by a shadow as long as a steeple; the lowness of the source of light rendering the brims of their hats of no use at all as a protection to the eyes. mr. penny's was the last house in that part of the parish, and stood in a hollow by the roadside so that cart-wheels and horses' legs were about level with the sill of his shop-window. this was low and wide, and was open from morning till evening, mr. penny himself being invariably seen working inside, like a framed portrait of a shoemaker by some modern moroni. he sat facing the road, with a boot on his knees and the awl in his hand, only looking up for a moment as he stretched out his arms and bent forward at the pull, when his spectacles flashed in the passer's face with a shine of flat whiteness, and then returned again to the boot as usual. rows of lasts, small and large, stout and slender, covered the wall which formed the background, in the extreme shadow of which a kind of dummy was seen sitting, in the shape of an apprentice with a string tied round his hair (probably to keep it out of his eyes). he smiled at remarks that floated in from without, but was never known to answer them in mr. penny's presence. outside the window the upper-leather of a wellington-boot was usually hung, pegged to a board as if to dry. no sign was over his door; in fact--as with old banks and mercantile houses--advertising in any shape was scorned, and it would have been felt as beneath his dignity to paint up, for the benefit of strangers, the name of an establishment whose trade came solely by connection based on personal respect. his visitors now came and stood on the outside of his window, sometimes leaning against the sill, sometimes moving a pace or two backwards and forwards in front of it. they talked with deliberate gesticulations to mr. penny, enthroned in the shadow of the interior. "i do like a man to stick to men who be in the same line o' life--o' sundays, anyway--that i do so." "'tis like all the doings of folk who don't know what a day's work is, that's what i say." "my belief is the man's not to blame; 'tis she--she's the bitter weed!" "no, not altogether. he's a poor gawk-hammer. look at his sermon yesterday." "his sermon was well enough, a very good guessable sermon, only he couldn't put it into words and speak it. that's all was the matter wi' the sermon. he hadn't been able to get it past his pen." "well--ay, the sermon might have been good; for, 'tis true, the sermon of old eccl'iastes himself lay in eccl'iastes's ink-bottle afore he got it out." mr. penny, being in the act of drawing the last stitch tight, could afford time to look up and throw in a word at this point. "he's no spouter--that must be said, 'a b'lieve." "'tis a terrible muddle sometimes with the man, as far as spout do go," said spinks. "well, we'll say nothing about that," the tranter answered; "for i don't believe 'twill make a penneth o' difference to we poor martels here or hereafter whether his sermons be good or bad, my sonnies." mr. penny made another hole with his awl, pushed in the thread, and looked up and spoke again at the extension of arms. "'tis his goings-on, souls, that's what it is." he clenched his features for an herculean addition to the ordinary pull, and continued, "the first thing he done when he came here was to be hot and strong about church business." "true," said spinks; "that was the very first thing he done." mr. penny, having now been offered the ear of the assembly, accepted it, ceased stitching, swallowed an unimportant quantity of air as if it were a pill, and continued: "the next thing he do do is to think about altering the church, until he found 'twould be a matter o' cost and what not, and then not to think no more about it." "true: that was the next thing he done." "and the next thing was to tell the young chaps that they were not on no account to put their hats in the christening font during service." "true." "and then 'twas this, and then 'twas that, and now 'tis--" words were not forcible enough to conclude the sentence, and mr. penny gave a huge pull to signify the concluding word. "now 'tis to turn us out of the quire neck and crop," said the tranter after an interval of half a minute, not by way of explaining the pause and pull, which had been quite understood, but as a means of keeping the subject well before the meeting. mrs. penny came to the door at this point in the discussion. like all good wives, however much she was inclined to play the tory to her husband's whiggism, and vice versa, in times of peace, she coalesced with him heartily enough in time of war. "it must be owned he's not all there," she replied in a general way to the fragments of talk she had heard from indoors. "far below poor mr. grinham" (the late vicar). "ay, there was this to be said for he, that you were quite sure he'd never come mumbudgeting to see ye, just as you were in the middle of your work, and put you out with his fuss and trouble about ye." "never. but as for this new mr. maybold, though he mid be a very well- intending party in that respect, he's unbearable; for as to sifting your cinders, scrubbing your floors, or emptying your slops, why, you can't do it. i assure you i've not been able to empt them for several days, unless i throw 'em up the chimley or out of winder; for as sure as the sun you meet him at the door, coming to ask how you are, and 'tis such a confusing thing to meet a gentleman at the door when ye are in the mess o' washing." "'tis only for want of knowing better, poor gentleman," said the tranter. "his meaning's good enough. ay, your pa'son comes by fate: 'tis heads or tails, like pitch-halfpenny, and no choosing; so we must take en as he is, my sonnies, and thank god he's no worse, i suppose." "i fancy i've seen him look across at miss day in a warmer way than christianity asked for," said mrs. penny musingly; "but i don't quite like to say it." "o no; there's nothing in that," said grandfather william. "if there's nothing, we shall see nothing," mrs. penny replied, in the tone of a woman who might possibly have private opinions still. "ah, mr. grinham was the man!" said bowman. "why, he never troubled us wi' a visit from year's end to year's end. you might go anywhere, do anything: you'd be sure never to see him." "yes, he was a right sensible pa'son," said michael. "he never entered our door but once in his life, and that was to tell my poor wife--ay, poor soul, dead and gone now, as we all shall!--that as she was such a' old aged person, and lived so far from the church, he didn't at all expect her to come any more to the service." "and 'a was a very jinerous gentleman about choosing the psalms and hymns o' sundays. 'confound ye,' says he, 'blare and scrape what ye will, but don't bother me!'" "and he was a very honourable man in not wanting any of us to come and hear him if we were all on-end for a jaunt or spree, or to bring the babies to be christened if they were inclined to squalling. there's good in a man's not putting a parish to unnecessary trouble." "and there's this here man never letting us have a bit o' peace; but keeping on about being good and upright till 'tis carried to such a pitch as i never see the like afore nor since!" "no sooner had he got here than he found the font wouldn't hold water, as it hadn't for years off and on; and when i told him that mr. grinham never minded it, but used to spet upon his vinger and christen 'em just as well, 'a said, 'good heavens! send for a workman immediate. what place have i come to!' which was no compliment to us, come to that." "still, for my part," said old william, "though he's arrayed against us, i like the hearty borussnorus ways of the new pa'son." "you, ready to die for the quire," said bowman reproachfully, "to stick up for the quire's enemy, william!" "nobody will feel the loss of our church-work so much as i," said the old man firmly; "that you d'all know. i've a-been in the quire man and boy ever since i was a chiel of eleven. but for all that 'tisn't in me to call the man a bad man, because i truly and sincerely believe en to be a good young feller." some of the youthful sparkle that used to reside there animated william's eye as he uttered the words, and a certain nobility of aspect was also imparted to him by the setting sun, which gave him a titanic shadow at least thirty feet in length, stretching away to the east in outlines of imposing magnitude, his head finally terminating upon the trunk of a grand old oak-tree. "mayble's a hearty feller enough," the tranter replied, "and will spak to you be you dirty or be you clane. the first time i met en was in a drong, and though 'a didn't know me no more than the dead, 'a passed the time of day. 'd'ye do?' he said, says he, nodding his head. 'a fine day.' then the second time i met en was full-buff in town street, when my breeches were tore into a long strent by getting through a copse of thorns and brimbles for a short cut home-along; and not wanting to disgrace the man by spaking in that state, i fixed my eye on the weathercock to let en pass me as a stranger. but no: 'how d'ye do, reuben?' says he, right hearty, and shook my hand. if i'd been dressed in silver spangles from top to toe, the man couldn't have been civiller." at this moment dick was seen coming up the village-street, and they turned and watched him. chapter iii: a turn in the discussion "i'm afraid dick's a lost man," said the tranter. "what?--no!" said mail, implying by his manner that it was a far commoner thing for his ears to report what was not said than that his judgment should be at fault. "ay," said the tranter, still gazing at dick's unconscious advance. "i don't at all like what i see! there's too many o' them looks out of the winder without noticing anything; too much shining of boots; too much peeping round corners; too much looking at the clock; telling about clever things she did till you be sick of it; and then upon a hint to that effect a horrible silence about her. i've walked the path once in my life and know the country, neighbours; and dick's a lost man!" the tranter turned a quarter round and smiled a smile of miserable satire at the setting new moon, which happened to catch his eye. the others became far too serious at this announcement to allow them to speak; and they still regarded dick in the distance. "'twas his mother's fault," the tranter continued, "in asking the young woman to our party last christmas. when i eyed the blue frock and light heels o' the maid, i had my thoughts directly. 'god bless thee, dicky my sonny,' i said to myself; 'there's a delusion for thee!'" "they seemed to be rather distant in manner last sunday, i thought?" mail tentatively observed, as became one who was not a member of the family. "ay, that's a part of the zickness. distance belongs to it, slyness belongs to it, queerest things on earth belongs to it! there, 'tmay as well come early as late s'far as i know. the sooner begun, the sooner over; for come it will." "the question i ask is," said mr. spinks, connecting into one thread the two subjects of discourse, as became a man learned in rhetoric, and beating with his hand in a way which signified that the manner rather than the matter of his speech was to be observed, "how did mr. maybold know she could play the organ? you know we had it from her own lips, as far as lips go, that she has never, first or last, breathed such a thing to him; much less that she ever would play." in the midst of this puzzle dick joined the party, and the news which had caused such a convulsion among the ancient musicians was unfolded to him. "well," he said, blushing at the allusion to miss day, "i know by some words of hers that she has a particular wish not to play, because she is a friend of ours; and how the alteration comes, i don't know." "now, this is my plan," said the tranter, reviving the spirit of the discussion by the infusion of new ideas, as was his custom--"this is my plan; if you don't like it, no harm's done. we all know one another very well, don't we, neighbours?" that they knew one another very well was received as a statement which, though familiar, should not be omitted in introductory speeches. "then i say this"--and the tranter in his emphasis slapped down his hand on mr. spinks's shoulder with a momentum of several pounds, upon which mr. spinks tried to look not in the least startled--"i say that we all move down-along straight as a line to pa'son mayble's when the clock has gone six to-morrow night. there we one and all stand in the passage, then one or two of us go in and spak to en, man and man; and say, 'pa'son mayble, every tradesman d'like to have his own way in his workshop, and mellstock church is yours. instead of turning us out neck and crop, let us stay on till christmas, and we'll gie way to the young woman, mr. mayble, and make no more ado about it. and we shall always be quite willing to touch our hats when we meet ye, mr. mayble, just as before.' that sounds very well? hey?" "proper well, in faith, reuben dewy." "and we won't sit down in his house; 'twould be looking too familiar when only just reconciled?" "no need at all to sit down. just do our duty man and man, turn round, and march out--he'll think all the more of us for it." "i hardly think leaf had better go wi' us?" said michael, turning to leaf and taking his measure from top to bottom by the eye. "he's so terrible silly that he might ruin the concern." "he don't want to go much; do ye, thomas leaf?" said william. "hee-hee! no; i don't want to. only a teeny bit!" "i be mortal afeard, leaf, that you'll never be able to tell how many cuts d'take to sharpen a spar," said mail. "i never had no head, never! that's how it happened to happen, hee-hee!" they all assented to this, not with any sense of humiliating leaf by disparaging him after an open confession, but because it was an accepted thing that leaf didn't in the least mind having no head, that deficiency of his being an unimpassioned matter of parish history. "but i can sing my treble!" continued thomas leaf, quite delighted at being called a fool in such a friendly way; "i can sing my treble as well as any maid, or married woman either, and better! and if jim had lived, i should have had a clever brother! to-morrow is poor jim's birthday. he'd ha' been twenty-six if he'd lived till to-morrow." "you always seem very sorry for jim," said old william musingly. "ah! i do. such a stay to mother as he'd always ha' been! she'd never have had to work in her old age if he had continued strong, poor jim!" "what was his age when 'a died?" "four hours and twenty minutes, poor jim. 'a was born as might be at night; and 'a didn't last as might be till the morning. no, 'a didn't last. mother called en jim on the day that would ha' been his christening day if he had lived; and she's always thinking about en. you see he died so very young." "well, 'twas rather youthful," said michael. "now to my mind that woman is very romantical on the matter o' children?" said the tranter, his eye sweeping his audience. "ah, well she mid be," said leaf. "she had twelve regular one after another, and they all, except myself, died very young; either before they was born or just afterwards." "pore feller, too. i suppose th'st want to come wi' us?" the tranter murmured. "well, leaf, you shall come wi' us as yours is such a melancholy family," said old william rather sadly. "i never see such a melancholy family as that afore in my life," said reuben. "there's leaf's mother, poor woman! every morning i see her eyes mooning out through the panes of glass like a pot-sick winder-flower; and as leaf sings a very high treble, and we don't know what we should do without en for upper g, we'll let en come as a trate, poor feller." "ay, we'll let en come, 'a b'lieve," said mr. penny, looking up, as the pull happened to be at that moment. "now," continued the tranter, dispersing by a new tone of voice these digressions about leaf; "as to going to see the pa'son, one of us might call and ask en his meaning, and 'twould be just as well done; but it will add a bit of flourish to the cause if the quire waits on him as a body. then the great thing to mind is, not for any of our fellers to be nervous; so before starting we'll one and all come to my house and have a rasher of bacon; then every man-jack het a pint of cider into his inside; then we'll warm up an extra drop wi' some mead and a bit of ginger; every one take a thimbleful--just a glimmer of a drop, mind ye, no more, to finish off his inner man--and march off to pa'son mayble. why, sonnies, a man's not himself till he is fortified wi' a bit and a drop? we shall be able to look any gentleman in the face then without shrink or shame." mail recovered from a deep meditation and downward glance into the earth in time to give a cordial approval to this line of action, and the meeting adjourned. chapter iv: the interview with the vicar at six o'clock the next day, the whole body of men in the choir emerged from the tranter's door, and advanced with a firm step down the lane. this dignity of march gradually became obliterated as they went on, and by the time they reached the hill behind the vicarage a faint resemblance to a flock of sheep might have been discerned in the venerable party. a word from the tranter, however, set them right again; and as they descended the hill, the regular tramp, tramp, tramp of the united feet was clearly audible from the vicarage garden. at the opening of the gate there was another short interval of irregular shuffling, caused by a rather peculiar habit the gate had, when swung open quickly, of striking against the bank and slamming back into the opener's face. "now keep step again, will ye?" said the tranter. "it looks better, and more becomes the high class of arrant which has brought us here." thus they advanced to the door. at reuben's ring the more modest of the group turned aside, adjusted their hats, and looked critically at any shrub that happened to lie in the line of vision; endeavouring thus to give a person who chanced to look out of the windows the impression that their request, whatever it was going to be, was rather a casual thought occurring whilst they were inspecting the vicar's shrubbery and grass-plot than a predetermined thing. the tranter, who, coming frequently to the vicarage with luggage, coals, firewood, etc., had none of the awe for its precincts that filled the breasts of most of the others, fixed his eyes firmly on the knocker during this interval of waiting. the knocker having no characteristic worthy of notice, he relinquished it for a knot in one of the door-panels, and studied the winding lines of the grain. "o, sir, please, here's tranter dewy, and old william dewy, and young richard dewy, o, and all the quire too, sir, except the boys, a-come to see you!" said mr. maybold's maid-servant to mr. maybold, the pupils of her eyes dilating like circles in a pond. "all the choir?" said the astonished vicar (who may be shortly described as a good-looking young man with courageous eyes, timid mouth, and neutral nose), abandoning his writing and looking at his parlour-maid after speaking, like a man who fancied he had seen her face before but couldn't recollect where. "and they looks very firm, and tranter dewy do turn neither to the right hand nor to the left, but stares quite straight and solemn with his mind made up!" "o, all the choir," repeated the vicar to himself, trying by that simple device to trot out his thoughts on what the choir could come for. "yes; every man-jack of 'em, as i be alive!" (the parlour-maid was rather local in manner, having in fact been raised in the same village.) "really, sir, 'tis thoughted by many in town and country that--" "town and country!--heavens, i had no idea that i was public property in this way!" said the vicar, his face acquiring a hue somewhere between that of the rose and the peony. "well, 'it is thought in town and country that--'" "it is thought that you be going to get it hot and strong!--excusen my incivility, sir." the vicar suddenly recalled to his recollection that he had long ago settled it to be decidedly a mistake to encourage his servant jane in giving personal opinions. the servant jane saw by the vicar's face that he recalled this fact to his mind; and removing her forehead from the edge of the door, and rubbing away the indent that edge had made, vanished into the passage as mr. maybold remarked, "show them in, jane." a few minutes later a shuffling and jostling (reduced to as refined a form as was compatible with the nature of shuffles and jostles) was heard in the passage; then an earnest and prolonged wiping of shoes, conveying the notion that volumes of mud had to be removed; but the roads being so clean that not a particle of dirt appeared on the choir's boots (those of all the elder members being newly oiled, and dick's brightly polished), this wiping might have been set down simply as a desire to show that respectable men had no wish to take a mean advantage of clean roads for curtailing proper ceremonies. next there came a powerful whisper from the same quarter:- "now stand stock-still there, my sonnies, one and all! and don't make no noise; and keep your backs close to the wall, that company may pass in and out easy if they want to without squeezing through ye: and we two are enough to go in." . . . the voice was the tranter's. "i wish i could go in too and see the sight!" said a reedy voice--that of leaf. "'tis a pity leaf is so terrible silly, or else he might," said another. "i never in my life seed a quire go into a study to have it out about the playing and singing," pleaded leaf; "and i should like to see it just once!" "very well; we'll let en come in," said the tranter. "you'll be like chips in porridge, { } leaf--neither good nor hurt. all right, my sonny, come along;" and immediately himself, old william, and leaf appeared in the room. "we took the liberty to come and see 'ee, sir," said reuben, letting his hat hang in his left hand, and touching with his right the brim of an imaginary one on his head. "we've come to see 'ee, sir, man and man, and no offence, i hope?" "none at all," said mr. maybold. "this old aged man standing by my side is father; william dewy by name, sir." "yes; i see it is," said the vicar, nodding aside to old william, who smiled. "i thought you mightn't know en without his bass-viol," the tranter apologized. "you see, he always wears his best clothes and his bass-viol a-sundays, and it do make such a difference in a' old man's look." "and who's that young man?" the vicar said. "tell the pa'son yer name," said the tranter, turning to leaf, who stood with his elbows nailed back to a bookcase. "please, thomas leaf, your holiness!" said leaf, trembling. "i hope you'll excuse his looks being so very thin," continued the tranter deprecatingly, turning to the vicar again. "but 'tisn't his fault, poor feller. he's rather silly by nature, and could never get fat; though he's a' excellent treble, and so we keep him on." "i never had no head, sir," said leaf, eagerly grasping at this opportunity for being forgiven his existence. "ah, poor young man!" said mr. maybold. "bless you, he don't mind it a bit, if you don't, sir," said the tranter assuringly. "do ye, leaf?" "not i--not a morsel--hee, hee! i was afeard it mightn't please your holiness, sir, that's all." the tranter, finding leaf get on so very well through his negative qualities, was tempted in a fit of generosity to advance him still higher, by giving him credit for positive ones. "he's very clever for a silly chap, good-now, sir. you never knowed a young feller keep his smock-frocks so clane; very honest too. his ghastly looks is all there is against en, poor feller; but we can't help our looks, you know, sir." "true: we cannot. you live with your mother, i think, leaf?" the tranter looked at leaf to express that the most friendly assistant to his tongue could do no more for him now, and that he must be left to his own resources. "yes, sir: a widder, sir. ah, if brother jim had lived she'd have had a clever son to keep her without work!" "indeed! poor woman. give her this half-crown. i'll call and see your mother." "say, 'thank you, sir,'" the tranter whispered imperatively towards leaf. "thank you, sir!" said leaf. "that's it, then; sit down, leaf," said mr. maybold. "y-yes, sir!" the tranter cleared his throat after this accidental parenthesis about leaf, rectified his bodily position, and began his speech. "mr. mayble," he said, "i hope you'll excuse my common way, but i always like to look things in the face." reuben made a point of fixing this sentence in the vicar's mind by gazing hard at him at the conclusion of it, and then out of the window. mr. maybold and old william looked in the same direction, apparently under the impression that the things' faces alluded to were there visible. "what i have been thinking"--the tranter implied by this use of the past tense that he was hardly so discourteous as to be positively thinking it then--"is that the quire ought to be gie'd a little time, and not done away wi' till christmas, as a fair thing between man and man. and, mr. mayble, i hope you'll excuse my common way?" "i will, i will. till christmas," the vicar murmured, stretching the two words to a great length, as if the distance to christmas might be measured in that way. "well, i want you all to understand that i have no personal fault to find, and that i don't wish to change the church music by forcible means, or in a way which should hurt the feelings of any parishioners. why i have at last spoken definitely on the subject is that a player has been brought under--i may say pressed upon--my notice several times by one of the churchwardens. and as the organ i brought with me is here waiting" (pointing to a cabinet-organ standing in the study), "there is no reason for longer delay." "we made a mistake i suppose then, sir? but we understood the young woman didn't want to play particularly?" the tranter arranged his countenance to signify that he did not want to be inquisitive in the least. "no, nor did she. nor did i definitely wish her to just yet; for your playing is very good. but, as i said, one of the churchwardens has been so anxious for a change, that, as matters stand, i couldn't consistently refuse my consent." now for some reason or other, the vicar at this point seemed to have an idea that he had prevaricated; and as an honest vicar, it was a thing he determined not to do. he corrected himself, blushing as he did so, though why he should blush was not known to reuben. "understand me rightly," he said: "the church-warden proposed it to me, but i had thought myself of getting--miss day to play." "which churchwarden might that be who proposed her, sir?--excusing my common way." the tranter intimated by his tone that, so far from being inquisitive, he did not even wish to ask a single question. "mr. shiner, i believe." "clk, my sonny!--beg your pardon, sir, that's only a form of words of mine, and slipped out accidental--he nourishes enmity against us for some reason or another; perhaps because we played rather hard upon en christmas night. anyhow 'tis certain sure that mr. shiner's real love for music of a particular kind isn't his reason. he've no more ear than that chair. but let that be." "i don't think you should conclude that, because mr. shiner wants a different music, he has any ill-feeling for you. i myself, i must own, prefer organ-music to any other. i consider it most proper, and feel justified in endeavouring to introduce it; but then, although other music is better, i don't say yours is not good." "well then, mr. mayble, since death's to be, we'll die like men any day you name (excusing my common way)." mr. maybold bowed his head. "all we thought was, that for us old ancient singers to be choked off quiet at no time in particular, as now, in the sundays after easter, would seem rather mean in the eyes of other parishes, sir. but if we fell glorious with a bit of a flourish at christmas, we should have a respectable end, and not dwindle away at some nameless paltry second-sunday-after or sunday-next-before something, that's got no name of his own." "yes, yes, that's reasonable; i own it's reasonable." "you see, mr. mayble, we've got--do i keep you inconvenient long, sir?" "no, no." "we've got our feelings--father there especially." the tranter, in his earnestness, had advanced his person to within six inches of the vicar's. "certainly, certainly!" said mr. maybold, retreating a little for convenience of seeing. "you are all enthusiastic on the subject, and i am all the more gratified to find you so. a laodicean lukewarmness is worse than wrongheadedness itself." "exactly, sir. in fact now, mr. mayble," reuben continued, more impressively, and advancing a little closer still to the vicar, "father there is a perfect figure o' wonder, in the way of being fond of music!" the vicar drew back a little further, the tranter suddenly also standing back a foot or two, to throw open the view of his father, and pointing to him at the same time. old william moved uneasily in the large chair, and with a minute smile on the mere edge of his lips, for good-manners, said he was indeed very fond of tunes. "now, you see exactly how it is," reuben continued, appealing to mr. maybold's sense of justice by looking sideways into his eyes. the vicar seemed to see how it was so well that the gratified tranter walked up to him again with even vehement eagerness, so that his waistcoat-buttons almost rubbed against the vicar's as he continued: "as to father, if you or i, or any man or woman of the present generation, at the time music is a-playing, was to shake your fist in father's face, as may be this way, and say, 'don't you be delighted with that music!'"--the tranter went back to where leaf was sitting, and held his fist so close to leaf's face that the latter pressed his head back against the wall: "all right, leaf, my sonny, i won't hurt you; 'tis just to show my meaning to mr. mayble.--as i was saying, if you or i, or any man, was to shake your fist in father's face this way, and say, 'william, your life or your music!' he'd say, 'my life!' now that's father's nature all over; and you see, sir, it must hurt the feelings of a man of that kind for him and his bass- viol to be done away wi' neck and crop." the tranter went back to the vicar's front and again looked earnestly at his face. "true, true, dewy," mr. maybold answered, trying to withdraw his head and shoulders without moving his feet; but finding this impracticable, edging back another inch. these frequent retreats had at last jammed mr. maybold between his easy-chair and the edge of the table. and at the moment of the announcement of the choir, mr. maybold had just re-dipped the pen he was using; at their entry, instead of wiping it, he had laid it on the table with the nib overhanging. at the last retreat his coat-tails came in contact with the pen, and down it rolled, first against the back of the chair, thence turning a summersault into the seat, thence falling to the floor with a rattle. the vicar stooped for his pen, and the tranter, wishing to show that, however great their ecclesiastical differences, his mind was not so small as to let this affect his social feelings, stooped also. "and have you anything else you want to explain to me, dewy?" said mr. maybold from under the table. "nothing, sir. and, mr. mayble, you be not offended? i hope you see our desire is reason?" said the tranter from under the chair. "quite, quite; and i shouldn't think of refusing to listen to such a reasonable request," the vicar replied. seeing that reuben had secured the pen, he resumed his vertical position, and added, "you know, dewy, it is often said how difficult a matter it is to act up to our convictions and please all parties. it may be said with equal truth, that it is difficult for a man of any appreciativeness to have convictions at all. now in my case, i see right in you, and right in shiner. i see that violins are good, and that an organ is good; and when we introduce the organ, it will not be that fiddles were bad, but that an organ was better. that you'll clearly understand, dewy?" "i will; and thank you very much for such feelings, sir. piph-h-h-h! how the blood do get into my head, to be sure, whenever i quat down like that!" said reuben, who having also risen to his feet stuck the pen vertically in the inkstand and almost through the bottom, that it might not roll down again under any circumstances whatever. now the ancient body of minstrels in the passage felt their curiosity surging higher and higher as the minutes passed. dick, not having much affection for this errand, soon grew tired, and went away in the direction of the school. yet their sense of propriety would probably have restrained them from any attempt to discover what was going on in the study had not the vicar's pen fallen to the floor. the conviction that the movement of chairs, etc., necessitated by the search, could only have been caused by the catastrophe of a bloody fight beginning, overpowered all other considerations; and they advanced to the door, which had only just fallen to. thus, when mr. maybold raised his eyes after the stooping he beheld glaring through the door mr. penny in full- length portraiture, mail's face and shoulders above mr. penny's head, spinks's forehead and eyes over mail's crown, and a fractional part of bowman's countenance under spinks's arm--crescent-shaped portions of other heads and faces being visible behind these--the whole dozen and odd eyes bristling with eager inquiry. mr. penny, as is the case with excitable boot-makers and men, seeing the vicar look at him and hearing no word spoken, thought it incumbent upon himself to say something of any kind. nothing suggested itself till he had looked for about half a minute at the vicar. "you'll excuse my naming of it, sir," he said, regarding with much commiseration the mere surface of the vicar's face; "but perhaps you don't know that your chin have bust out a-bleeding where you cut yourself a-shaving this morning, sir." "now, that was the stooping, depend upon't," the tranter suggested, also looking with much interest at the vicar's chin. "blood always will bust out again if you hang down the member that's been bleeding." old william raised his eyes and watched the vicar's bleeding chin likewise; and leaf advanced two or three paces from the bookcase, absorbed in the contemplation of the same phenomenon, with parted lips and delighted eyes. "dear me, dear me!" said mr. maybold hastily, looking very red, and brushing his chin with his hand, then taking out his handkerchief and wiping the place. "that's it, sir; all right again now, 'a b'lieve--a mere nothing," said mr. penny. "a little bit of fur off your hat will stop it in a minute if it should bust out again." "i'll let 'ee have a bit off mine," said reuben, to show his good feeling; "my hat isn't so new as yours, sir, and 'twon't hurt mine a bit." "no, no; thank you, thank you," mr. maybold again nervously replied. "'twas rather a deep cut seemingly?" said reuben, feeling these to be the kindest and best remarks he could make. "o, no; not particularly." "well, sir, your hand will shake sometimes a-shaving, and just when it comes into your head that you may cut yourself, there's the blood." "i have been revolving in my mind that question of the time at which we make the change," said mr. maybold, "and i know you'll meet me half-way. i think christmas-day as much too late for me as the present time is too early for you. i suggest michaelmas or thereabout as a convenient time for both parties; for i think your objection to a sunday which has no name is not one of any real weight." "very good, sir. i suppose mortal men mustn't expect their own way entirely; and i express in all our names that we'll make shift and be satisfied with what you say." the tranter touched the brim of his imaginary hat again, and all the choir did the same. "about michaelmas, then, as far as you are concerned, sir, and then we make room for the next generation." "about michaelmas," said the vicar. chapter v: returning home ward "'a took it very well, then?" said mail, as they all walked up the hill. "he behaved like a man, 'a did so," said the tranter. "and i'm glad we've let en know our minds. and though, beyond that, we ha'n't got much by going, 'twas worth while. he won't forget it. yes, he took it very well. supposing this tree here was pa'son mayble, and i standing here, and thik gr't stone is father sitting in the easy-chair. 'dewy,' says he, 'i don't wish to change the church music in a forcible way.'" "that was very nice o' the man, even though words be wind." "proper nice--out and out nice. the fact is," said reuben confidentially, "'tis how you take a man. everybody must be managed. queens must be managed: kings must be managed; for men want managing almost as much as women, and that's saying a good deal." "'tis truly!" murmured the husbands. "pa'son mayble and i were as good friends all through it as if we'd been sworn brothers. ay, the man's well enough; 'tis what's put in his head that spoils him, and that's why we've got to go." "there's really no believing half you hear about people nowadays." "bless ye, my sonnies! 'tisn't the pa'son's move at all. that gentleman over there" (the tranter nodded in the direction of shiner's farm) "is at the root of the mischty." "what! shiner?" "ay; and i see what the pa'son don't see. why, shiner is for putting forward that young woman that only last night i was saying was our dick's sweet-heart, but i suppose can't be, and making much of her in the sight of the congregation, and thinking he'll win her by showing her off. well, perhaps 'a woll." "then the music is second to the woman, the other churchwarden is second to shiner, the pa'son is second to the churchwardens, and god a'mighty is nowhere at all." "that's true; and you see," continued reuben, "at the very beginning it put me in a stud as to how to quarrel wi' en. in short, to save my soul, i couldn't quarrel wi' such a civil man without belying my conscience. says he to father there, in a voice as quiet as a lamb's, 'william, you are a' old aged man, as all shall be, so sit down in my easy-chair, and rest yourself.' and down father zot. i could fain ha' laughed at thee, father; for thou'st take it so unconcerned at first, and then looked so frightened when the chair-bottom sunk in." "you see," said old william, hastening to explain, "i was scared to find the bottom gie way--what should i know o' spring bottoms?--and thought i had broke it down: and of course as to breaking down a man's chair, i didn't wish any such thing." "and, neighbours, when a feller, ever so much up for a miff, d'see his own father sitting in his enemy's easy-chair, and a poor chap like leaf made the best of, as if he almost had brains--why, it knocks all the wind out of his sail at once: it did out of mine." "if that young figure of fun--fance day, i mean," said bowman, "hadn't been so mighty forward wi' showing herself off to shiner and dick and the rest, 'tis my belief we should never ha' left the gallery." "'tis my belief that though shiner fired the bullets, the parson made 'em," said mr. penny. "my wife sticks to it that he's in love wi' her." "that's a thing we shall never know. i can't onriddle her, nohow." "thou'st ought to be able to onriddle such a little chiel as she," the tranter observed. "the littler the maid, the bigger the riddle, to my mind. and coming of such a stock, too, she may well be a twister." "yes; geoffrey day is a clever man if ever there was one. never says anything: not he." "never." "you might live wi' that man, my sonnies, a hundred years, and never know there was anything in him." "ay; one o' these up-country london ink-bottle chaps would call geoffrey a fool." "ye never find out what's in that man: never," said spinks. "close? ah, he is close! he can hold his tongue well. that man's dumbness is wonderful to listen to." "there's so much sense in it. every moment of it is brimmen over wi' sound understanding." "'a can hold his tongue very clever--very clever truly," echoed leaf. "'a do look at me as if 'a could see my thoughts running round like the works of a clock." "well, all will agree that the man can halt well in his talk, be it a long time or be it a short time. and though we can't expect his daughter to inherit his closeness, she may have a few dribblets from his sense." "and his pocket, perhaps." "yes; the nine hundred pound that everybody says he's worth; but i call it four hundred and fifty; for i never believe more than half i hear." "well, he've made a pound or two, and i suppose the maid will have it, since there's nobody else. but 'tis rather sharp upon her, if she's been born to fortune, to bring her up as if not born for it, and letting her work so hard." "'tis all upon his principle. a long-headed feller!" "ah," murmured spinks, "'twould be sharper upon her if she were born for fortune, and not to it! i suffer from that affliction." chapter vi: yalbury wood and the keeper's house a mood of blitheness rarely experienced even by young men was dick's on the following monday morning. it was the week after the easter holidays, and he was journeying along with smart the mare and the light spring-cart, watching the damp slopes of the hill-sides as they streamed in the warmth of the sun, which at this unsettled season shone on the grass with the freshness of an occasional inspector rather than as an accustomed proprietor. his errand was to fetch fancy, and some additional household goods, from her father's house in the neighbouring parish to her dwelling at mellstock. the distant view was darkly shaded with clouds; but the nearer parts of the landscape were whitely illumined by the visible rays of the sun streaming down across the heavy gray shade behind. the tranter had not yet told his son of the state of shiner's heart that had been suggested to him by shiner's movements. he preferred to let such delicate affairs right themselves; experience having taught him that the uncertain phenomenon of love, as it existed in other people, was not a groundwork upon which a single action of his own life could be founded. geoffrey day lived in the depths of yalbury wood, which formed portion of one of the outlying estates of the earl of wessex, to whom day was head game-keeper, timber-steward, and general overlooker for this district. the wood was intersected by the highway from casterbridge to london at a place not far from the house, and some trees had of late years been felled between its windows and the ascent of yalbury hill, to give the solitary cottager a glimpse of the passers-by. it was a satisfaction to walk into the keeper's house, even as a stranger, on a fine spring morning like the present. a curl of wood-smoke came from the chimney, and drooped over the roof like a blue feather in a lady's hat; and the sun shone obliquely upon the patch of grass in front, which reflected its brightness through the open doorway and up the staircase opposite, lighting up each riser with a shiny green radiance, and leaving the top of each step in shade. the window-sill of the front room was between four and five feet from the floor, dropping inwardly to a broad low bench, over which, as well as over the whole surface of the wall beneath, there always hung a deep shade, which was considered objectionable on every ground save one, namely, that the perpetual sprinkling of seeds and water by the caged canary above was not noticed as an eyesore by visitors. the window was set with thickly-leaded diamond glazing, formed, especially in the lower panes, of knotty glass of various shades of green. nothing was better known to fancy than the extravagant manner in which these circular knots or eyes distorted everything seen through them from the outside--lifting hats from heads, shoulders from bodies; scattering the spokes of cart- wheels, and bending the straight fir-trunks into semicircles. the ceiling was carried by a beam traversing its midst, from the side of which projected a large nail, used solely and constantly as a peg for geoffrey's hat; the nail was arched by a rainbow-shaped stain, imprinted by the brim of the said hat when it was hung there dripping wet. the most striking point about the room was the furniture. this was a repetition upon inanimate objects of the old principle introduced by noah, consisting for the most part of two articles of every sort. the duplicate system of furnishing owed its existence to the forethought of fancy's mother, exercised from the date of fancy's birthday onwards. the arrangement spoke for itself: nobody who knew the tone of the household could look at the goods without being aware that the second set was a provision for fancy, when she should marry and have a house of her own. the most noticeable instance was a pair of green-faced eight-day clocks, ticking alternately, which were severally two and half minutes and three minutes striking the hour of twelve, one proclaiming, in italian flourishes, thomas wood as the name of its maker, and the other--arched at the top, and altogether of more cynical appearance--that of ezekiel saunders. they were two departed clockmakers of casterbridge, whose desperate rivalry throughout their lives was nowhere more emphatically perpetuated than here at geoffrey's. these chief specimens of the marriage provision were supported on the right by a couple of kitchen dressers, each fitted complete with their cups, dishes, and plates, in their turn followed by two dumb-waiters, two family bibles, two warming- pans, and two intermixed sets of chairs. but the position last reached--the chimney-corner--was, after all, the most attractive side of the parallelogram. it was large enough to admit, in addition to geoffrey himself, geoffrey's wife, her chair, and her work- table, entirely within the line of the mantel, without danger or even inconvenience from the heat of the fire; and was spacious enough overhead to allow of the insertion of wood poles for the hanging of bacon, which were cloaked with long shreds of soot, floating on the draught like the tattered banners on the walls of ancient aisles. these points were common to most chimney corners of the neighbourhood; but one feature there was which made geoffrey's fireside not only an object of interest to casual aristocratic visitors--to whom every cottage fireside was more or less a curiosity--but the admiration of friends who were accustomed to fireplaces of the ordinary hamlet model. this peculiarity was a little window in the chimney-back, almost over the fire, around which the smoke crept caressingly when it left the perpendicular course. the window-board was curiously stamped with black circles, burnt thereon by the heated bottoms of drinking-cups, which had rested there after previously standing on the hot ashes of the hearth for the purpose of warming their contents, the result giving to the ledge the look of an envelope which has passed through innumerable post-offices. fancy was gliding about the room preparing dinner, her head inclining now to the right, now to the left, and singing the tips and ends of tunes that sprang up in her mind like mushrooms. the footsteps of mrs. day could be heard in the room overhead. fancy went finally to the door. "father! dinner." a tall spare figure was seen advancing by the window with periodical steps, and the keeper entered from the garden. he appeared to be a man who was always looking down, as if trying to recollect something he said yesterday. the surface of his face was fissured rather than wrinkled, and over and under his eyes were folds which seemed as a kind of exterior eyelids. his nose had been thrown backwards by a blow in a poaching fray, so that when the sun was low and shining in his face, people could see far into his head. there was in him a quiet grimness, which would in his moments of displeasure have become surliness, had it not been tempered by honesty of soul, and which was often wrongheadedness because not allied with subtlety. although not an extraordinarily taciturn man among friends slightly richer than himself, he never wasted words upon outsiders, and to his trapper enoch his ideas were seldom conveyed by any other means than nods and shakes of the head. their long acquaintance with each other's ways, and the nature of their labours, rendered words between them almost superfluous as vehicles of thought, whilst the coincidence of their horizons, and the astonishing equality of their social views, by startling the keeper from time to time as very damaging to the theory of master and man, strictly forbade any indulgence in words as courtesies. behind the keeper came enoch (who had been assisting in the garden) at the well-considered chronological distance of three minutes--an interval of non-appearance on the trapper's part not arrived at without some reflection. four minutes had been found to express indifference to indoor arrangements, and simultaneousness had implied too great an anxiety about meals. "a little earlier than usual, fancy," the keeper said, as he sat down and looked at the clocks. "that ezekiel saunders o' thine is tearing on afore thomas wood again." "i kept in the middle between them," said fancy, also looking at the two clocks. "better stick to thomas," said her father. "there's a healthy beat in thomas that would lead a man to swear by en offhand. he is as true as the town time. how is it your stap-mother isn't here?" as fancy was about to reply, the rattle of wheels was heard, and "weh- hey, smart!" in mr. richard dewy's voice rolled into the cottage from round the corner of the house. "hullo! there's dewy's cart come for thee, fancy--dick driving--afore time, too. well, ask the lad to have pot-luck with us." dick on entering made a point of implying by his general bearing that he took an interest in fancy simply as in one of the same race and country as himself; and they all sat down. dick could have wished her manner had not been so entirely free from all apparent consciousness of those accidental meetings of theirs: but he let the thought pass. enoch sat diagonally at a table afar off, under the corner cupboard, and drank his cider from a long perpendicular pint cup, having tall fir-trees done in brown on its sides. he threw occasional remarks into the general tide of conversation, and with this advantage to himself, that he participated in the pleasures of a talk (slight as it was) at meal-times, without saddling himself with the responsibility of sustaining it. "why don't your stap-mother come down, fancy?" said geoffrey. "you'll excuse her, mister dick, she's a little queer sometimes." "o yes,--quite," said richard, as if he were in the habit of excusing people every day. "she d'belong to that class of womankind that become second wives: a rum class rather." "indeed," said dick, with sympathy for an indefinite something. "yes; and 'tis trying to a female, especially if you've been a first wife, as she hev." "very trying it must be." "yes: you see her first husband was a young man, who let her go too far; in fact, she used to kick up bob's-a-dying at the least thing in the world. and when i'd married her and found it out, i thought, thinks i, ''tis too late now to begin to cure 'e;' and so i let her bide. but she's queer,--very queer, at times!" "i'm sorry to hear that." "yes: there; wives be such a provoking class o' society, because though they be never right, they be never more than half wrong." fancy seemed uneasy under the infliction of this household moralizing, which might tend to damage the airy-fairy nature that dick, as maiden shrewdness told her, had accredited her with. her dead silence impressed geoffrey with the notion that something in his words did not agree with her educated ideas, and he changed the conversation. "did fred shiner send the cask o' drink, fancy?" "i think he did: o yes, he did." "nice solid feller, fred shiner!" said geoffrey to dick as he helped himself to gravy, bringing the spoon round to his plate by way of the potato-dish, to obviate a stain on the cloth in the event of a spill. now geoffrey's eyes had been fixed upon his plate for the previous four or five minutes, and in removing them he had only carried them to the spoon, which, from its fulness and the distance of its transit, necessitated a steady watching through the whole of the route. just as intently as the keeper's eyes had been fixed on the spoon, fancy's had been fixed on her father's, without premeditation or the slightest phase of furtiveness; but there they were fastened. this was the reason why: dick was sitting next to her on the right side, and on the side of the table opposite to her father. fancy had laid her right hand lightly down upon the table-cloth for an instant, and to her alarm dick, after dropping his fork and brushing his forehead as a reason, flung down his own left hand, overlapping a third of fancy's with it, and keeping it there. so the innocent fancy, instead of pulling her hand from the trap, settled her eyes on her father's, to guard against his discovery of this perilous game of dick's. dick finished his mouthful; fancy finished her crumb, and nothing was done beyond watching geoffrey's eyes. then the hands slid apart; fancy's going over six inches of cloth, dick's over one. geoffrey's eye had risen. "i said fred shiner is a nice solid feller," he repeated, more emphatically. "he is; yes, he is," stammered dick; "but to me he is little more than a stranger." "o, sure. now i know en as well as any man can be known. and you know en very well too, don't ye, fancy?" geoffrey put on a tone expressing that these words signified at present about one hundred times the amount of meaning they conveyed literally. dick looked anxious. "will you pass me some bread?" said fancy in a flurry, the red of her face becoming slightly disordered, and looking as solicitous as a human being could look about a piece of bread. "ay, that i will," replied the unconscious geoffrey. "ay," he continued, returning to the displaced idea, "we are likely to remain friendly wi' mr. shiner if the wheels d'run smooth." "an excellent thing--a very capital thing, as i should say," the youth answered with exceeding relevance, considering that his thoughts, instead of following geoffrey's remark, were nestling at a distance of about two feet on his left the whole time. "a young woman's face will turn the north wind, master richard: my heart if 'twon't." dick looked more anxious and was attentive in earnest at these words. "yes; turn the north wind," added geoffrey after an impressive pause. "and though she's one of my own flesh and blood . . . " "will you fetch down a bit of raw-mil' cheese from pantry-shelf?" fancy interrupted, as if she were famishing. "ay, that i will, chiel; chiel, says i, and mr. shiner only asking last saturday night . . . cheese you said, fancy?" dick controlled his emotion at these mysterious allusions to mr. shiner,--the better enabled to do so by perceiving that fancy's heart went not with her father's--and spoke like a stranger to the affairs of the neighbourhood. "yes, there's a great deal to be said upon the power of maiden faces in settling your courses," he ventured, as the keeper retreated for the cheese. "the conversation is taking a very strange turn: nothing that i have ever done warrants such things being said!" murmured fancy with emphasis, just loud enough to reach dick's ears. "you think to yourself, 'twas to be," cried enoch from his distant corner, by way of filling up the vacancy caused by geoffrey's momentary absence. "and so you marry her, master dewy, and there's an end o't." "pray don't say such things, enoch," came from fancy severely, upon which enoch relapsed into servitude. "if we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single, we do," replied dick. geoffrey had by this time sat down again, and he now made his lips thin by severely straining them across his gums, and looked out of the window along the vista to the distant highway up yalbury hill. "that's not the case with some folk," he said at length, as if he read the words on a board at the further end of the vista. fancy looked interested, and dick said, "no?" "there's that wife o' mine. it was her doom to be nobody's wife at all in the wide universe. but she made up her mind that she would, and did it twice over. doom? doom is nothing beside a elderly woman--quite a chiel in her hands!" a movement was now heard along the upstairs passage, and footsteps descending. the door at the foot of the stairs opened, and the second mrs. day appeared in view, looking fixedly at the table as she advanced towards it, with apparent obliviousness of the presence of any other human being than herself. in short, if the table had been the personages, and the persons the table, her glance would have been the most natural imaginable. she showed herself to possess an ordinary woman's face, iron-grey hair, hardly any hips, and a great deal of cleanliness in a broad white apron- string, as it appeared upon the waist of her dark stuff dress. "people will run away with a story now, i suppose," she began saying, "that jane day's tablecloths are as poor and ragged as any union beggar's!" dick now perceived that the tablecloth was a little the worse for wear, and reflecting for a moment, concluded that 'people' in step-mother language probably meant himself. on lifting his eyes he found that mrs. day had vanished again upstairs, and presently returned with an armful of new damask-linen tablecloths, folded square and hard as boards by long compression. these she flounced down into a chair; then took one, shook it out from its folds, and spread it on the table by instalments, transferring the plates and dishes one by one from the old to the new cloth. "and i suppose they'll say, too, that she ha'n't a decent knife and fork in her house!" "i shouldn't say any such ill-natured thing, i am sure--" began dick. but mrs. day had vanished into the next room. fancy appeared distressed. "very strange woman, isn't she?" said geoffrey, quietly going on with his dinner. "but 'tis too late to attempt curing. my heart! 'tis so growed into her that 'twould kill her to take it out. ay, she's very queer: you'd be amazed to see what valuable goods we've got stowed away upstairs." back again came mrs. day with a box of bright steel horn-handled knives, silver-plated forks, carver, and all complete. these were wiped of the preservative oil which coated them, and then a knife and fork were laid down to each individual with a bang, the carving knife and fork thrust into the meat dish, and the old ones they had hitherto used tossed away. geoffrey placidly cut a slice with the new knife and fork, and asked dick if he wanted any more. the table had been spread for the mixed midday meal of dinner and tea, which was common among frugal countryfolk. "the parishioners about here," continued mrs. day, not looking at any living being, but snatching up the brown delf tea-things, "are the laziest, gossipest, poachest, jailest set of any ever i came among. and they'll talk about my teapot and tea-things next, i suppose!" she vanished with the teapot, cups, and saucers, and reappeared with a tea-service in white china, and a packet wrapped in brown paper. this was removed, together with folds of tissue- paper underneath; and a brilliant silver teapot appeared. "i'll help to put the things right," said fancy soothingly, and rising from her seat. "i ought to have laid out better things, i suppose. but" (here she enlarged her looks so as to include dick) "i have been away from home a good deal, and i make shocking blunders in my housekeeping." smiles and suavity were then dispensed all around by this bright little bird. after a little more preparation and modification, mrs. day took her seat at the head of the table, and during the latter or tea division of the meal, presided with much composure. it may cause some surprise to learn that, now her vagary was over, she showed herself to be an excellent person with much common sense, and even a religious seriousness of tone on matters pertaining to her afflictions. chapter vii: dick makes himself useful the effect of geoffrey's incidental allusions to mr. shiner was to restrain a considerable flow of spontaneous chat that would otherwise have burst from young dewy along the drive homeward. and a certain remark he had hazarded to her, in rather too blunt and eager a manner, kept the young lady herself even more silent than dick. on both sides there was an unwillingness to talk on any but the most trivial subjects, and their sentences rarely took a larger form than could be expressed in two or three words. owing to fancy being later in the day than she had promised, the charwoman had given up expecting her; whereupon dick could do no less than stay and see her comfortably tided over the disagreeable time of entering and establishing herself in an empty house after an absence of a week. the additional furniture and utensils that had been brought (a canary and cage among the rest) were taken out of the vehicle, and the horse was unharnessed and put in the plot opposite, where there was some tender grass. dick lighted the fire already laid; and activity began to loosen their tongues a little. "there!" said fancy, "we forgot to bring the fire-irons!" she had originally found in her sitting-room, to bear out the expression 'nearly furnished' which the school-manager had used in his letter to her, a table, three chairs, a fender, and a piece of carpet. this 'nearly' had been supplemented hitherto by a kind friend, who had lent her fire-irons and crockery until she should fetch some from home. dick attended to the young lady's fire, using his whip-handle for a poker till it was spoilt, and then flourishing a hurdle stick for the remainder of the time. "the kettle boils; now you shall have a cup of tea," said fancy, diving into the hamper she had brought. "thank you," said dick, whose drive had made him ready for some, especially in her company. "well, here's only one cup-and-saucer, as i breathe! whatever could mother be thinking about? do you mind making shift, mr. dewy?" "not at all, miss day," said that civil person. "--and only having a cup by itself? or a saucer by itself?" "don't mind in the least." "which do you mean by that?" "i mean the cup, if you like the saucer." "and the saucer, if i like the cup?" "exactly, miss day." "thank you, mr. dewy, for i like the cup decidedly. stop a minute; there are no spoons now!" she dived into the hamper again, and at the end of two or three minutes looked up and said, "i suppose you don't mind if i can't find a spoon?" "not at all," said the agreeable richard. "the fact is, the spoons have slipped down somewhere; right under the other things. o yes, here's one, and only one. you would rather have one than not, i suppose, mr. dewy?" "rather not. i never did care much about spoons." "then i'll have it. i do care about them. you must stir up your tea with a knife. would you mind lifting the kettle off, that it may not boil dry?" dick leapt to the fireplace, and earnestly removed the kettle. "there! you did it so wildly that you have made your hand black. we always use kettle-holders; didn't you learn housewifery as far as that, mr. dewy? well, never mind the soot on your hand. come here. i am going to rinse mine, too." they went to a basin she had placed in the back room. "this is the only basin i have," she said. "turn up your sleeves, and by that time my hands will be washed, and you can come." her hands were in the water now. "o, how vexing!" she exclaimed. "there's not a drop of water left for you, unless you draw it, and the well is i don't know how many furlongs deep; all that was in the pitcher i used for the kettle and this basin. do you mind dipping the tips of your fingers in the same?" "not at all. and to save time i won't wait till you have done, if you have no objection?" thereupon he plunged in his hands, and they paddled together. it being the first time in his life that he had touched female fingers under water, dick duly registered the sensation as rather a nice one. "really, i hardly know which are my own hands and which are yours, they have got so mixed up together," she said, withdrawing her own very suddenly. "it doesn't matter at all," said dick, "at least as far as i am concerned." "there! no towel! whoever thinks of a towel till the hands are wet?" "nobody." "'nobody.' how very dull it is when people are so friendly! come here, mr. dewy. now do you think you could lift the lid of that box with your elbow, and then, with something or other, take out a towel you will find under the clean clothes? be sure don't touch any of them with your wet hands, for the things at the top are all starched and ironed." dick managed, by the aid of a knife and fork, to extract a towel from under a muslin dress without wetting the latter; and for a moment he ventured to assume a tone of criticism. "i fear for that dress," he said, as they wiped their hands together. "what?" said miss day, looking into the box at the dress alluded to. "o, i know what you mean--that the vicar will never let me wear muslin?" "yes." "well, i know it is condemned by all orders in the church as flaunting, and unfit for common wear for girls who've their living to get; but we'll see." "in the interest of the church, i hope you don't speak seriously." "yes, i do; but we'll see." there was a comely determination on her lip, very pleasant to a beholder who was neither bishop, priest, nor deacon. "i think i can manage any vicar's views about me if he's under forty." dick rather wished she had never thought of managing vicars. "i certainly shall be glad to get some of your delicious tea," he said in rather a free way, yet modestly, as became one in a position between that of visitor and inmate, and looking wistfully at his lonely saucer. "so shall i. now is there anything else we want, mr dewy?" "i really think there's nothing else, miss day." she prepared to sit down, looking musingly out of the window at smart's enjoyment of the rich grass. "nobody seems to care about me," she murmured, with large lost eyes fixed upon the sky beyond smart. "perhaps mr. shiner does," said dick, in the tone of a slightly injured man. "yes, i forgot--he does, i know." dick precipitately regretted that he had suggested shiner, since it had produced such a miserable result as this. "i'll warrant you'll care for somebody very much indeed another day, won't you, mr. dewy?" she continued, looking very feelingly into the mathematical centre of his eyes. "ah, i'll warrant i shall," said dick, feelingly too, and looking back into her dark pupils, whereupon they were turned aside. "i meant," she went on, preventing him from speaking just as he was going to narrate a forcible story about his feelings; "i meant that nobody comes to see if i have returned--not even the vicar." "if you want to see him, i'll call at the vicarage directly we have had some tea." "no, no! don't let him come down here, whatever you do, whilst i am in such a state of disarrangement. parsons look so miserable and awkward when one's house is in a muddle; walking about, and making impossible suggestions in quaint academic phrases till your flesh creeps and you wish them dead. do you take sugar?" mr. maybold was at this instant seen coming up the path. "there! that's he coming! how i wish you were not here!--that is, how awkward--dear, dear!" she exclaimed, with a quick ascent of blood to her face, and irritated with dick rather than the vicar, as it seemed. "pray don't be alarmed on my account, miss day--good-afternoon!" said dick in a huff, putting on his hat, and leaving the room hastily by the back-door. the horse was caught and put in, and on mounting the shafts to start he saw through the window the vicar, standing upon some books piled in a chair, and driving a nail into the wall; fancy, with a demure glance, holding the canary-cage up to him, as if she had never in her life thought of anything but vicars and canaries. chapter viii: dick meets his father for several minutes dick drove along homeward, with the inner eye of reflection so anxiously set on his passages at arms with fancy, that the road and scenery were as a thin mist over the real pictures of his mind. was she a coquette? the balance between the evidence that she did love him and that she did not was so nicely struck, that his opinion had no stability. she had let him put his hand upon hers; she had allowed her gaze to drop plumb into the depths of his--his into hers--three or four times; her manner had been very free with regard to the basin and towel; she had appeared vexed at the mention of shiner. on the other hand, she had driven him about the house like a quiet dog or cat, said shiner cared for her, and seemed anxious that mr. maybold should do the same. thinking thus as he neared the handpost at mellstock cross, sitting on the front board of the spring cart--his legs on the outside, and his whole frame jigging up and down like a candle-flame to the time of smart's trotting--who should he see coming down the hill but his father in the light wagon, quivering up and down on a smaller scale of shakes, those merely caused by the stones in the road. they were soon crossing each other's front. "weh-hey!" said the tranter to smiler. "weh-hey!" said dick to smart, in an echo of the same voice. "th'st hauled her back, i suppose?" reuben inquired peaceably. "yes," said dick, with such a clinching period at the end that it seemed he was never going to add another word. smiler, thinking this the close of the conversation, prepared to move on. "weh-hey!" said the tranter. "i tell thee what it is, dick. that there maid is taking up thy thoughts more than's good for thee, my sonny. thou'rt never happy now unless th'rt making thyself miserable about her in one way or another." "i don't know about that, father," said dick rather stupidly. "but i do--wey, smiler!--'od rot the women, 'tis nothing else wi' 'em nowadays but getting young men and leading 'em astray." "pooh, father! you just repeat what all the common world says; that's all you do." "the world's a very sensible feller on things in jineral, dick; very sensible indeed." dick looked into the distance at a vast expanse of mortgaged estate. "i wish i was as rich as a squire when he's as poor as a crow," he murmured; "i'd soon ask fancy something." "i wish so too, wi' all my heart, sonny; that i do. well, mind what beest about, that's all." smart moved on a step or two. "supposing now, father,--we-hey, smart!--i did think a little about her, and i had a chance, which i ha'n't; don't you think she's a very good sort of--of--one?" "ay, good; she's good enough. when you've made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand--she's as good as any other; they be all alike in the groundwork; 'tis only in the flourishes there's a difference. she's good enough; but i can't see what the nation a young feller like you--wi' a comfortable house and home, and father and mother to take care o' thee, and who sent 'ee to a school so good that 'twas hardly fair to the other children--should want to go hollering after a young woman for, when she's quietly making a husband in her pocket, and not troubled by chick nor chiel, to make a poverty-stric' wife and family of her, and neither hat, cap, wig, nor waistcoat to set 'em up with: be drowned if i can see it, and that's the long and the short o't, my sonny." dick looked at smart's ears, then up the hill; but no reason was suggested by any object that met his gaze. "for about the same reason that you did, father, i suppose." "dang it, my sonny, thou'st got me there!" and the tranter gave vent to a grim admiration, with the mien of a man who was too magnanimous not to appreciate artistically a slight rap on the knuckles, even if they were his own. "whether or no," said dick, "i asked her a thing going along the road." "come to that, is it? turk! won't thy mother be in a taking! well, she's ready, i don't doubt?" "i didn't ask her anything about having me; and if you'll let me speak, i'll tell 'ee what i want to know. i just said, did she care about me?" "piph-ph-ph!" "and then she said nothing for a quarter of a mile, and then she said she didn't know. now, what i want to know is, what was the meaning of that speech?" the latter words were spoken resolutely, as if he didn't care for the ridicule of all the fathers in creation. "the meaning of that speech is," the tranter replied deliberately, "that the meaning is meant to be rather hid at present. well, dick, as an honest father to thee, i don't pretend to deny what you d'know well enough; that is, that her father being rather better in the pocket than we, i should welcome her ready enough if it must be somebody." "but what d'ye think she really did mean?" said the unsatisfied dick. "i'm afeard i am not o' much account in guessing, especially as i was not there when she said it, and seeing that your mother was the only 'ooman i ever cam' into such close quarters as that with." "and what did mother say to you when you asked her?" said dick musingly. "i don't see that that will help 'ee." "the principle is the same." "well--ay: what did she say? let's see. i was oiling my working-day boots without taking 'em off, and wi' my head hanging down, when she just brushed on by the garden hatch like a flittering leaf. 'ann,' i said, says i, and then,--but, dick i'm afeard 'twill be no help to thee; for we were such a rum couple, your mother and i, leastways one half was, that is myself--and your mother's charms was more in the manner than the material." "never mind! 'ann,' said you." "'ann,' said i, as i was saying . . . 'ann,' i said to her when i was oiling my working-day boots wi' my head hanging down, 'woot hae me?' . . . what came next i can't quite call up at this distance o' time. perhaps your mother would know,--she's got a better memory for her little triumphs than i. however, the long and the short o' the story is that we were married somehow, as i found afterwards. 'twas on white tuesday,--mellstock club walked the same day, every man two and two, and a fine day 'twas,--hot as fire,--how the sun did strike down upon my back going to church! i well can mind what a bath o' sweating i was in, body and soul! but fance will ha' thee, dick--she won't walk with another chap--no such good luck." "i don't know about that," said dick, whipping at smart's flank in a fanciful way, which, as smart knew, meant nothing in connection with going on. "there's pa'son maybold, too--that's all against me." "what about he? she's never been stuffing into thy innocent heart that he's in hove with her? lord, the vanity o' maidens!" "no, no. but he called, and she looked at him in such a way, and at me in such a way--quite different the ways were,--and as i was coming off, there was he hanging up her birdcage." "well, why shouldn't the man hang up her bird-cage? turk seize it all, what's that got to do wi' it? dick, that thou beest a white-lyvered chap i don't say, but if thou beestn't as mad as a cappel-faced bull, let me smile no more." "o, ay." "and what's think now, dick?" "i don't know." "here's another pretty kettle o' fish for thee. who d'ye think's the bitter weed in our being turned out? did our party tell 'ee?" "no. why, pa'son maybold, i suppose." "shiner,--because he's in love with thy young woman, and d'want to see her young figure sitting up at that queer instrument, and her young fingers rum-strumming upon the keys." a sharp ado of sweet and bitter was going on in dick during this communication from his father. "shiner's a fool!--no, that's not it; i don't believe any such thing, father. why, shiner would never take a bold step like that, unless she'd been a little made up to, and had taken it kindly. pooh!" "who's to say she didn't?" "i do." "the more fool you." "why, father of me?" "has she ever done more to thee?" "no." "then she has done as much to he--rot 'em! now, dick, this is how a maid is. she'll swear she's dying for thee, and she is dying for thee, and she will die for thee; but she'll fling a look over t'other shoulder at another young feller, though never leaving off dying for thee just the same." "she's not dying for me, and so she didn't fling a look at him." "but she may be dying for him, for she looked at thee." "i don't know what to make of it at all," said dick gloomily. "all i can make of it is," the tranter said, raising his whip, arranging his different joints and muscles, and motioning to the horse to move on, "that if you can't read a maid's mind by her motions, nature d'seem to say thou'st ought to be a bachelor. clk, clk! smiler!" and the tranter moved on. dick held smart's rein firmly, and the whole concern of horse, cart, and man remained rooted in the lane. how long this condition would have lasted is unknown, had not dick's thoughts, after adding up numerous items of misery, gradually wandered round to the fact that as something must be done, it could not be done by staying there all night. reaching home he went up to his bedroom, shut the door as if he were going to be seen no more in this life, and taking a sheet of paper and uncorking the ink-bottle, he began a letter. the dignity of the writer's mind was so powerfully apparent in every line of this effusion that it obscured the logical sequence of facts and intentions to an appreciable degree; and it was not at all clear to a reader whether he there and then left off loving miss fancy day; whether he had never loved her seriously, and never meant to; whether he had been dying up to the present moment, and now intended to get well again; or whether he had hitherto been in good health, and intended to die for her forthwith. he put this letter in an envelope, sealed it up, directed it in a stern handwriting of straight dashes--easy flourishes being rigorously excluded. he walked with it in his pocket down the lane in strides not an inch less than three feet long. reaching her gate he put on a resolute expression--then put it off again, turned back homeward, tore up his letter, and sat down. that letter was altogether in a wrong tone--that he must own. a heartless man-of-the-world tone was what the juncture required. that he rather wanted her, and rather did not want her--the latter for choice; but that as a member of society he didn't mind making a query in jaunty terms, which could only be answered in the same way: did she mean anything by her bearing towards him, or did she not? this letter was considered so satisfactory in every way that, being put into the hands of a little boy, and the order given that he was to run with it to the school, he was told in addition not to look behind him if dick called after him to bring it back, but to run along with it just the same. having taken this precaution against vacillation, dick watched his messenger down the road, and turned into the house whistling an air in such ghastly jerks and starts, that whistling seemed to be the act the very furthest removed from that which was instinctive in such a youth. the letter was left as ordered: the next morning came and passed--and no answer. the next. the next. friday night came. dick resolved that if no answer or sign were given by her the next day, on sunday he would meet her face to face, and have it all out by word of mouth. "dick," said his father, coming in from the garden at that moment--in each hand a hive of bees tied in a cloth to prevent their egress--"i think you'd better take these two swarms of bees to mrs. maybold's to- morrow, instead o' me, and i'll go wi' smiler and the wagon." it was a relief; for mrs. maybold, the vicar's mother, who had just taken into her head a fancy for keeping bees (pleasantly disguised under the pretence of its being an economical wish to produce her own honey), lived near the watering-place of budmouth-regis, ten miles off, and the business of transporting the hives thither would occupy the whole day, and to some extent annihilate the vacant time between this evening and the coming sunday. the best spring-cart was washed throughout, the axles oiled, and the bees placed therein for the journey. part the third--summer chapter i: driving out of budmouth an easy bend of neck and graceful set of head; full and wavy bundles of dark-brown hair; light fall of little feet; pretty devices on the skirt of the dress; clear deep eyes; in short, a bunch of sweets: it was fancy! dick's heart went round to her with a rush. the scene was the corner of mary street in budmouth-regis, near the king's statue, at which point the white angle of the last house in the row cut perpendicularly an embayed and nearly motionless expanse of salt water projected from the outer ocean--to-day lit in bright tones of green and opal. dick and smart had just emerged from the street, and there on the right, against the brilliant sheet of liquid colour, stood fancy day; and she turned and recognized him. dick suspended his thoughts of the letter and wonder at how she came there by driving close to the chains of the esplanade--incontinently displacing two chairmen, who had just come to life for the summer in new clean shirts and revivified clothes, and being almost displaced in turn by a rigid boy rattling along with a baker's cart, and looking neither to the right nor the left. he asked if she were going to mellstock that night. "yes, i'm waiting for the carrier," she replied, seeming, too, to suspend thoughts of the letter. "now i can drive you home nicely, and you save half an hour. will ye come with me?" as fancy's power to will anything seemed to have departed in some mysterious manner at that moment, dick settled the matter by getting out and assisting her into the vehicle without another word. the temporary flush upon her cheek changed to a lesser hue, which was permanent, and at length their eyes met; there was present between them a certain feeling of embarrassment, which arises at such moments when all the instinctive acts dictated by the position have been performed. dick, being engaged with the reins, thought less of this awkwardness than did fancy, who had nothing to do but to feel his presence, and to be more and more conscious of the fact, that by accepting a seat beside him in this way she succumbed to the tone of his note. smart jogged along, and dick jogged, and the helpless fancy necessarily jogged, too; and she felt that she was in a measure captured and made a prisoner. "i am so much obliged to you for your company, miss day," he observed, as they drove past the two semicircular bays of the old royal hotel, where his majesty king george the third had many a time attended the balls of the burgesses. to miss day, crediting him with the same consciousness of mastery--a consciousness of which he was perfectly innocent--this remark sounded like a magnanimous intention to soothe her, the captive. "i didn't come for the pleasure of obliging you with my company," she said. the answer had an unexpected manner of incivility in it that must have been rather surprising to young dewy. at the same time it may be observed, that when a young woman returns a rude answer to a young man's civil remark, her heart is in a state which argues rather hopefully for his case than otherwise. there was silence between them till they had left the sea-front and passed about twenty of the trees that ornamented the road leading up out of the town towards casterbridge and mellstock. "though i didn't come for that purpose either, i would have done it," said dick at the twenty-first tree. "now, mr. dewy, no flirtation, because it's wrong, and i don't wish it." dick seated himself afresh just as he had been sitting before, arranged his looks very emphatically, and cleared his throat. "really, anybody would think you had met me on business and were just going to commence," said the lady intractably. "yes, they would." "why, you never have, to be sure!" this was a shaky beginning. he chopped round, and said cheerily, as a man who had resolved never to spoil his jollity by loving one of womankind-- "well, how are you getting on, miss day, at the present time? gaily, i don't doubt for a moment." "i am not gay, dick; you know that." "gaily doesn't mean decked in gay dresses." "i didn't suppose gaily was gaily dressed. mighty me, what a scholar you've grown!" "lots of things have happened to you this spring, i see." "what have you seen?" "o, nothing; i've heard, i mean!" "what have you heard?" "the name of a pretty man, with brass studs and a copper ring and a tin watch-chain, a little mixed up with your own. that's all." "that's a very unkind picture of mr. shiner, for that's who you mean! the studs are gold, as you know, and it's a real silver chain; the ring i can't conscientiously defend, and he only wore it once." "he might have worn it a hundred times without showing it half so much." "well, he's nothing to me," she serenely observed. "not any more than i am?" "now, mr. dewy," said fancy severely, "certainly he isn't any more to me than you are!" "not so much?" she looked aside to consider the precise compass of that question. "that i can't exactly answer," she replied with soft archness. as they were going rather slowly, another spring-cart, containing a farmer, farmer's wife, and farmer's man, jogged past them; and the farmer's wife and farmer's man eyed the couple very curiously. the farmer never looked up from the horse's tail. "why can't you exactly answer?" said dick, quickening smart a little, and jogging on just behind the farmer and farmer's wife and man. as no answer came, and as their eyes had nothing else to do, they both contemplated the picture presented in front, and noticed how the farmer's wife sat flattened between the two men, who bulged over each end of the seat to give her room, till they almost sat upon their respective wheels; and they looked too at the farmer's wife's silk mantle, inflating itself between her shoulders like a balloon and sinking flat again, at each jog of the horse. the farmer's wife, feeling their eyes sticking into her back, looked over her shoulder. dick dropped ten yards further behind. "fancy, why can't you answer?" he repeated. "because how much you are to me depends upon how much i am to you," said she in low tones. "everything," said dick, putting his hand towards hers, and casting emphatic eyes upon the upper curve of her cheek. "now, richard dewy, no touching me! i didn't say in what way your thinking of me affected the question--perhaps inversely, don't you see? no touching, sir! look; goodness me, don't, dick!" the cause of her sudden start was the unpleasant appearance over dick's right shoulder of an empty timber-wagon and four journeymen-carpenters reclining in lazy postures inside it, their eyes directed upwards at various oblique angles into the surrounding world, the chief object of their existence being apparently to criticize to the very backbone and marrow every animate object that came within the compass of their vision. this difficulty of dick's was overcome by trotting on till the wagon and carpenters were beginning to look rather misty by reason of a film of dust that accompanied their wagon-wheels, and rose around their heads like a fog. "say you love me, fancy." "no, dick, certainly not; 'tisn't time to do that yet." "why, fancy?" "'miss day' is better at present--don't mind my saying so; and i ought not to have called you dick." "nonsense! when you know that i would do anything on earth for your love. why, you make any one think that loving is a thing that can be done and undone, and put on and put off at a mere whim." "no, no, i don't," she said gently; "but there are things which tell me i ought not to give way to much thinking about you, even if--" "but you want to, don't you? yes, say you do; it is best to be truthful. whatever they may say about a woman's right to conceal where her love lies, and pretend it doesn't exist, and things like that, it is not best; i do know it, fancy. and an honest woman in that, as well as in all her daily concerns, shines most brightly, and is thought most of in the long- run." "well then, perhaps, dick, i do love you a little," she whispered tenderly; "but i wish you wouldn't say any more now." "i won't say any more now, then, if you don't like it, dear. but you do love me a little, don't you?" "now you ought not to want me to keep saying things twice; i can't say any more now, and you must be content with what you have." "i may at any rate call you fancy? there's no harm in that." "yes, you may." "and you'll not call me mr. dewy any more?" "very well." chapter ii: further along the road dick's spirits having risen in the course of these admissions of his sweetheart, he now touched smart with the whip; and on smart's neck, not far behind his ears. smart, who had been lost in thought for some time, never dreaming that dick could reach so far with a whip which, on this particular journey, had never been extended further than his flank, tossed his head, and scampered along with exceeding briskness, which was very pleasant to the young couple behind him till, turning a bend in the road, they came instantly upon the farmer, farmer's man, and farmer's wife with the flapping mantle, all jogging on just the same as ever. "bother those people! here we are upon them again." "well, of course. they have as much right to the road as we." "yes, but it is provoking to be overlooked so. i like a road all to myself. look what a lumbering affair theirs is!" the wheels of the farmer's cart, just at that moment, jogged into a depression running across the road, giving the cart a twist, whereupon all three nodded to the left, and on coming out of it all three nodded to the right, and went on jerking their backs in and out as usual. "we'll pass them when the road gets wider." when an opportunity seemed to offer itself for carrying this intention into effect, they heard light flying wheels behind, and on their quartering there whizzed along past them a brand-new gig, so brightly polished that the spokes of the wheels sent forth a continual quivering light at one point in their circle, and all the panels glared like mirrors in dick and fancy's eyes. the driver, and owner as it appeared, was really a handsome man; his companion was shiner. both turned round as they passed dick and fancy, and stared with bold admiration in her face till they were obliged to attend to the operation of passing the farmer. dick glanced for an instant at fancy while she was undergoing their scrutiny; then returned to his driving with rather a sad countenance. "why are you so silent?" she said, after a while, with real concern. "nothing." "yes, it is, dick. i couldn't help those people passing." "i know that." "you look offended with me. what have i done?" "i can't tell without offending you." "better out." "well," said dick, who seemed longing to tell, even at the risk of offending her, "i was thinking how different you in love are from me in love. whilst those men were staring, you dismissed me from your thoughts altogether, and--" "you can't offend me further now; tell all!" "and showed upon your face a pleased sense of being attractive to 'em." "don't be silly, dick! you know very well i didn't." dick shook his head sceptically, and smiled. "dick, i always believe flattery if possible--and it was possible then. now there's an open confession of weakness. but i showed no consciousness of it." dick, perceiving by her look that she would adhere to her statement, charitably forbore saying anything that could make her prevaricate. the sight of shiner, too, had recalled another branch of the subject to his mind; that which had been his greatest trouble till her company and words had obscured its probability. "by the way, fancy, do you know why our quire is to be dismissed?" "no: except that it is mr. maybold's wish for me to play the organ." "do you know how it came to be his wish?" "that i don't." "mr. shiner, being churchwarden, has persuaded the vicar; who, however, was willing enough before. shiner, i know, is crazy to see you playing every sunday; i suppose he'll turn over your music, for the organ will be close to his pew. but--i know you have never encouraged him?" "never once!" said fancy emphatically, and with eyes full of earnest truth. "i don't like him indeed, and i never heard of his doing this before! i have always felt that i should like to play in a church, but i never wished to turn you and your choir out; and i never even said that i could play till i was asked. you don't think for a moment that i did, surely, do you?" "i know you didn't, dear." "or that i care the least morsel of a bit for him?" "i know you don't." the distance between budmouth and mellstock was ten or eleven miles, and there being a good inn, 'the ship,' four miles out of budmouth, with a mast and cross-trees in front, dick's custom in driving thither was to divide the journey into three stages by resting at this inn going and coming, and not troubling the budmouth stables at all, whenever his visit to the town was a mere call and deposit, as to-day. fancy was ushered into a little tea-room, and dick went to the stables to see to the feeding of smart. in face of the significant twitches of feature that were visible in the ostler and labouring men idling around, dick endeavoured to look unconscious of the fact that there was any sentiment between him and fancy beyond a tranter's desire to carry a passenger home. he presently entered the inn and opened the door of fancy's room. "dick, do you know, it has struck me that it is rather awkward, my being here alone with you like this. i don't think you had better come in with me." "that's rather unpleasant, dear." "yes, it is, and i wanted you to have some tea as well as myself too, because you must be tired." "well, let me have some with you, then. i was denied once before, if you recollect, fancy." "yes, yes, never mind! and it seems unfriendly of me now, but i don't know what to do." "it shall be as you say, then." dick began to retreat with a dissatisfied wrinkling of face, and a farewell glance at the cosy tea- tray. "but you don't see how it is, dick, when you speak like that," she said, with more earnestness than she had ever shown before. "you do know, that even if i care very much for you, i must remember that i have a difficult position to maintain. the vicar would not like me, as his schoolmistress, to indulge in a tete-a-tete anywhere with anybody." "but i am not any body!" exclaimed dick. "no, no, i mean with a young man;" and she added softly, "unless i were really engaged to be married to him." "is that all? then, dearest, dearest, why we'll be engaged at once, to be sure we will, and down i sit! there it is, as easy as a glove!" "ah! but suppose i won't! and, goodness me, what have i done!" she faltered, getting very red. "positively, it seems as if i meant you to say that!" "let's do it! i mean get engaged," said dick. "now, fancy, will you be my wife?" "do you know, dick, it was rather unkind of you to say what you did coming along the road," she remarked, as if she had not heard the latter part of his speech; though an acute observer might have noticed about her breast, as the word 'wife' fell from dick's lips, a soft silent escape of breaths, with very short rests between each. "what did i say?" "about my trying to look attractive to those men in the gig." "you couldn't help looking so, whether you tried or no. and, fancy, you do care for me?" "yes." "very much?" "yes." "and you'll be my own wife?" her heart quickened, adding to and withdrawing from her cheek varying tones of red to match each varying thought. dick looked expectantly at the ripe tint of her delicate mouth, waiting for what was coming forth. "yes--if father will let me." dick drew himself close to her, compressing his lips and pouting them out, as if he were about to whistle the softest melody known. "o no!" said fancy solemnly. the modest dick drew back a little. "dick, dick, kiss me and let me go instantly!--here's somebody coming!" she whisperingly exclaimed. * * * half an hour afterwards dick emerged from the inn, and if fancy's lips had been real cherries probably dick's would have appeared deeply stained. the landlord was standing in the yard. "heu-heu! hay-hay, master dewy! ho-ho!" he laughed, letting the laugh slip out gently and by degrees that it might make little noise in its exit, and smiting dick under the fifth rib at the same time. "this will never do, upon my life, master dewy! calling for tay for a feymel passenger, and then going in and sitting down and having some too, and biding such a fine long time!" "but surely you know?" said dick, with great apparent surprise. "yes, yes! ha-ha!" smiting the landlord under the ribs in return. "why, what? yes, yes; ha-ha!" "you know, of course!" "yes, of course! but--that is--i don't." "why about--between that young lady and me?" nodding to the window of the room that fancy occupied. "no; not i!" said the innkeeper, bringing his eyes into circles. "and you don't!" "not a word, i'll take my oath!" "but you laughed when i laughed." "ay, that was me sympathy; so did you when i laughed!" "really, you don't know? goodness--not knowing that!" "i'll take my oath i don't!" "o yes," said dick, with frigid rhetoric of pitying astonishment, "we're engaged to be married, you see, and i naturally look after her." "of course, of course! i didn't know that, and i hope ye'll excuse any little freedom of mine, mr. dewy. but it is a very odd thing; i was talking to your father very intimate about family matters only last friday in the world, and who should come in but keeper day, and we all then fell a-talking o' family matters; but neither one o' them said a mortal word about it; knowen me too so many years, and i at your father's own wedding. 'tisn't what i should have expected from an old neighbour!" "well, to say the truth, we hadn't told father of the engagement at that time; in fact, 'twasn't settled." "ah! the business was done sunday. yes, yes, sunday's the courting day. heu-heu!" "no, 'twasn't done sunday in particular." "after school-hours this week? well, a very good time, a very proper good time." "o no, 'twasn't done then." "coming along the road to-day then, i suppose?" "not at all; i wouldn't think of getting engaged in a dog-cart." "dammy--might as well have said at once, the when be blowed! anyhow, 'tis a fine day, and i hope next time you'll come as one." fancy was duly brought out and assisted into the vehicle, and the newly affianced youth and maiden passed up the steep hill to the ridgeway, and vanished in the direction of mellstock. chapter iii: a confession it was a morning of the latter summer-time; a morning of lingering dews, when the grass is never dry in the shade. fuchsias and dahlias were laden till eleven o'clock with small drops and dashes of water, changing the colour of their sparkle at every movement of the air; and elsewhere hanging on twigs like small silver fruit. the threads of garden spiders appeared thick and polished. in the dry and sunny places, dozens of long- legged crane-flies whizzed off the grass at every step the passer took. fancy day and her friend susan dewy the tranter's daughter, were in such a spot as this, pulling down a bough laden with early apples. three months had elapsed since dick and fancy had journeyed together from budmouth, and the course of their love had run on vigorously during the whole time. there had been just enough difficulty attending its development, and just enough finesse required in keeping it private, to lend the passion an ever-increasing freshness on fancy's part, whilst, whether from these accessories or not, dick's heart had been at all times as fond as could be desired. but there was a cloud on fancy's horizon now. "she is so well off--better than any of us," susan dewy was saying. "her father farms five hundred acres, and she might marry a doctor or curate or anything of that kind if she contrived a little." "i don't think dick ought to have gone to that gipsy-party at all when he knew i couldn't go," replied fancy uneasily. "he didn't know that you would not be there till it was too late to refuse the invitation," said susan. "and what was she like? tell me." "well, she was rather pretty, i must own." "tell straight on about her, can't you! come, do, susan. how many times did you say he danced with her?" "once." "twice, i think you said?" "indeed i'm sure i didn't." "well, and he wanted to again, i expect." "no; i don't think he did. she wanted to dance with him again bad enough, i know. everybody does with dick, because he's so handsome and such a clever courter." "o, i wish!--how did you say she wore her hair?" "in long curls,--and her hair is light, and it curls without being put in paper: that's how it is she's so attractive." "she's trying to get him away! yes, yes, she is! and through keeping this miserable school i mustn't wear my hair in curls! but i will; i don't care if i leave the school and go home, i will wear my curls! look, susan, do! is her hair as soft and long as this?" fancy pulled from its coil under her hat a twine of her own hair, and stretched it down her shoulder to show its length, looking at susan to catch her opinion from her eyes. "it is about the same length as that, i think," said miss dewy. fancy paused hopelessly. "i wish mine was lighter, like hers!" she continued mournfully. "but hers isn't so soft, is it? tell me, now." "i don't know." fancy abstractedly extended her vision to survey a yellow butterfly and a red-and-black butterfly that were flitting along in company, and then became aware that dick was advancing up the garden. "susan, here's dick coming; i suppose that's because we've been talking about him." "well, then, i shall go indoors now--you won't want me;" and susan turned practically and walked off. enter the single-minded dick, whose only fault at the gipsying, or picnic, had been that of loving fancy too exclusively, and depriving himself of the innocent pleasure the gathering might have afforded him, by sighing regretfully at her absence,--who had danced with the rival in sheer despair of ever being able to get through that stale, flat, and unprofitable afternoon in any other way; but this she would not believe. fancy had settled her plan of emotion. to reproach dick? o no, no. "i am in great trouble," said she, taking what was intended to be a hopelessly melancholy survey of a few small apples lying under the tree; yet a critical ear might have noticed in her voice a tentative tone as to the effect of the words upon dick when she uttered them. "what are you in trouble about? tell me of it," said dick earnestly. "darling, i will share it with 'ee and help 'ee." "no, no: you can't! nobody can!" "why not? you don't deserve it, whatever it is. tell me, dear." "o, it isn't what you think! it is dreadful: my own sin!" "sin, fancy! as if you could sin! i know it can't be." "'tis, 'tis!" said the young lady, in a pretty little frenzy of sorrow. "i have done wrong, and i don't like to tell it! nobody will forgive me, nobody! and you above all will not! . . . i have allowed myself to--to--fl--" "what,--not flirt!" he said, controlling his emotion as it were by a sudden pressure inward from his surface. "and you said only the day before yesterday that you hadn't flirted in your life!" "yes, i did; and that was a wicked story! i have let another love me, and--" "good g--! well, i'll forgive you,--yes, if you couldn't help it,--yes, i will!" said the now dismal dick. "did you encourage him?" "o,--i don't know,--yes--no. o, i think so!" "who was it?" a pause. "tell me!" "mr. shiner." after a silence that was only disturbed by the fall of an apple, a long- checked sigh from dick, and a sob from fancy, he said with real austerity-- "tell it all;--every word!" "he looked at me, and i looked at him, and he said, 'will you let me show you how to catch bullfinches down here by the stream?' and i--wanted to know very much--i did so long to have a bullfinch! i couldn't help that and i said, 'yes!' and then he said, 'come here.' and i went with him down to the lovely river, and then he said to me, 'look and see how i do it, and then you'll know: i put this birdlime round this twig, and then i go here,' he said, 'and hide away under a bush; and presently clever mister bird comes and perches upon the twig, and flaps his wings, and you've got him before you can say jack'--something; o, o, o, i forget what!" "jack sprat," mournfully suggested dick through the cloud of his misery. "no, not jack sprat," she sobbed. "then 'twas jack robinson!" he said, with the emphasis of a man who had resolved to discover every iota of the truth, or die. "yes, that was it! and then i put my hand upon the rail of the bridge to get across, and--that's all." "well, that isn't much, either," said dick critically, and more cheerfully. "not that i see what business shiner has to take upon himself to teach you anything. but it seems--it do seem there must have been more than that to set you up in such a dreadful taking?" he looked into fancy's eyes. misery of miseries!--guilt was written there still. "now, fancy, you've not told me all!" said dick, rather sternly for a quiet young man. "o, don't speak so cruelly! i am afraid to tell now! if you hadn't been harsh, i was going on to tell all; now i can't!" "come, dear fancy, tell: come. i'll forgive; i must,--by heaven and earth, i must, whether i will or no; i love you so!" "well, when i put my hand on the bridge, he touched it--" "a scamp!" said dick, grinding an imaginary human frame to powder. "and then he looked at me, and at last he said, 'are you in love with dick dewy?' and i said, 'perhaps i am!' and then he said, 'i wish you weren't then, for i want to marry you, with all my soul.'" "there's a villain now! want to marry you!" and dick quivered with the bitterness of satirical laughter. then suddenly remembering that he might be reckoning without his host: "unless, to be sure, you are willing to have him,--perhaps you are," he said, with the wretched indifference of a castaway. "no, indeed i am not!" she said, her sobs just beginning to take a favourable turn towards cure. "well, then," said dick, coming a little to his senses, "you've been stretching it very much in giving such a dreadful beginning to such a mere nothing. and i know what you've done it for,--just because of that gipsy-party!" he turned away from her and took five paces decisively, as if he were tired of an ungrateful country, including herself. "you did it to make me jealous, and i won't stand it!" he flung the words to her over his shoulder and then stalked on, apparently very anxious to walk to the remotest of the colonies that very minute. "o, o, o, dick--dick!" she cried, trotting after him like a pet lamb, and really seriously alarmed at last, "you'll kill me! my impulses are bad--miserably wicked,--and i can't help it; forgive me, dick! and i love you always; and those times when you look silly and don't seem quite good enough for me,--just the same, i do, dick! and there is something more serious, though not concerning that walk with him." "well, what is it?" said dick, altering his mind about walking to the colonies; in fact, passing to the other extreme, and standing so rooted to the road that he was apparently not even going home. "why this," she said, drying the beginning of a new flood of tears she had been going to shed, "this is the serious part. father has told mr. shiner that he would like him for a son-in-law, if he could get me;--that he has his right hearty consent to come courting me!" chapter iv: an arrangement "that is serious," said dick, more intellectually than he had spoken for a long time. the truth was that geoffrey knew nothing about his daughter's continued walks and meetings with dick. when a hint that there were symptoms of an attachment between them had first reached geoffrey's ears, he stated so emphatically that he must think the matter over before any such thing could be allowed that, rather unwisely on dick's part, whatever it might have been on the lady's, the lovers were careful to be seen together no more in public; and geoffrey, forgetting the report, did not think over the matter at all. so mr. shiner resumed his old position in geoffrey's brain by mere flux of time. even shiner began to believe that dick existed for fancy no more,--though that remarkably easy-going man had taken no active steps on his own account as yet. "and father has not only told mr. shiner that," continued fancy, "but he has written me a letter, to say he should wish me to encourage mr. shiner, if 'twas convenient!" "i must start off and see your father at once!" said dick, taking two or three vehement steps to the south, recollecting that mr. day lived to the north, and coming back again. "i think we had better see him together. not tell him what you come for, or anything of the kind, until he likes you, and so win his brain through his heart, which is always the way to manage people. i mean in this way: i am going home on saturday week to help them in the honey-taking. you might come there to me, have something to eat and drink, and let him guess what your coming signifies, without saying it in so many words." "we'll do it, dearest. but i shall ask him for you, flat and plain; not wait for his guessing." and the lover then stepped close to her, and attempted to give her one little kiss on the cheek, his lips alighting, however, on an outlying tract of her back hair by reason of an impulse that had caused her to turn her head with a jerk. "yes, and i'll put on my second-best suit and a clean shirt and collar, and black my boots as if 'twas a sunday. 'twill have a good appearance, you see, and that's a great deal to start with." "you won't wear that old waistcoat, will you, dick?" "bless you, no! why i--" "i didn't mean to be personal, dear dick," she said, fearing she had hurt his feelings. "'tis a very nice waistcoat, but what i meant was, that though it is an excellent waistcoat for a settled-down man, it is not quite one for" (she waited, and a blush expanded over her face, and then she went on again)--"for going courting in." "no, i'll wear my best winter one, with the leather lining, that mother made. it is a beautiful, handsome waistcoat inside, yes, as ever anybody saw. in fact, only the other day, i unbuttoned it to show a chap that very lining, and he said it was the strongest, handsomest lining you could wish to see on the king's waistcoat himself." "i don't quite know what to wear," she said, as if her habitual indifference alone to dress had kept back so important a subject till now. "why, that blue frock you wore last week." "doesn't set well round the neck. i couldn't wear that." "but i shan't care." "no, you won't mind." "well, then it's all right. because you only care how you look to me, do you, dear? i only dress for you, that's certain." "yes, but you see i couldn't appear in it again very well." "any strange gentleman you mid meet in your journey might notice the set of it, i suppose. fancy, men in love don't think so much about how they look to other women." it is difficult to say whether a tone of playful banter or of gentle reproach prevailed in the speech. "well then, dick," she said, with good-humoured frankness, "i'll own it. i shouldn't like a stranger to see me dressed badly, even though i am in love. 'tis our nature, i suppose." "you perfect woman!" "yes; if you lay the stress on 'woman,'" she murmured, looking at a group of hollyhocks in flower, round which a crowd of butterflies had gathered like female idlers round a bonnet-shop. "but about the dress. why not wear the one you wore at our party?" "that sets well, but a girl of the name of bet tallor, who lives near our house, has had one made almost like it (only in pattern, though of miserably cheap stuff), and i couldn't wear it on that account. dear me, i am afraid i can't go now." "o yes, you must; i know you will!" said dick, with dismay. "why not wear what you've got on?" "what! this old one! after all, i think that by wearing my gray one saturday, i can make the blue one do for sunday. yes, i will. a hat or a bonnet, which shall it be? which do i look best in?" "well, i think the bonnet is nicest, more quiet and matronly." "what's the objection to the hat? does it make me look old?" "o no; the hat is well enough; but it makes you look rather too--you won't mind me saying it, dear?" "not at all, for i shall wear the bonnet." "--rather too coquettish and flirty for an engaged young woman." she reflected a minute. "yes; yes. still, after all, the hat would do best; hats are best, you see. yes, i must wear the hat, dear dicky, because i ought to wear a hat, you know." part the fourth--autumn chapter i: going nutting dick, dressed in his 'second-best' suit, burst into fancy's sitting-room with a glow of pleasure on his face. it was two o'clock on friday, the day before her contemplated visit to her father, and for some reason connected with cleaning the school the children had been given this friday afternoon for pastime, in addition to the usual saturday. "fancy! it happens just right that it is a leisure half day with you. smart is lame in his near-foot-afore, and so, as i can't do anything, i've made a holiday afternoon of it, and am come for you to go nutting with me!" she was sitting by the parlour window, with a blue frock lying across her lap and scissors in her hand. "go nutting! yes. but i'm afraid i can't go for an hour or so." "why not? 'tis the only spare afternoon we may both have together for weeks." "this dress of mine, that i am going to wear on sunday at yalbury;--i find it fits so badly that i must alter it a little, after all. i told the dressmaker to make it by a pattern i gave her at the time; instead of that, she did it her own way, and made me look a perfect fright." "how long will you be?" he inquired, looking rather disappointed. "not long. do wait and talk to me; come, do, dear." dick sat down. the talking progressed very favourably, amid the snipping and sewing, till about half-past two, at which time his conversation began to be varied by a slight tapping upon his toe with a walking-stick he had cut from the hedge as he came along. fancy talked and answered him, but sometimes the answers were so negligently given, that it was evident her thoughts lay for the greater part in her lap with the blue dress. the clock struck three. dick arose from his seat, walked round the room with his hands behind him, examined all the furniture, then sounded a few notes on the harmonium, then looked inside all the books he could find, then smoothed fancy's head with his hand. still the snipping and sewing went on. the clock struck four. dick fidgeted about, yawned privately; counted the knots in the table, yawned publicly; counted the flies on the ceiling, yawned horribly; went into the kitchen and scullery, and so thoroughly studied the principle upon which the pump was constructed that he could have delivered a lecture on the subject. stepping back to fancy, and finding still that she had not done, he went into her garden and looked at her cabbages and potatoes, and reminded himself that they seemed to him to wear a decidedly feminine aspect; then pulled up several weeds, and came in again. the clock struck five, and still the snipping and sewing went on. dick attempted to kill a fly, peeled all the rind off his walking-stick, then threw the stick into the scullery because it was spoilt, produced hideous discords from the harmonium, and accidentally overturned a vase of flowers, the water from which ran in a rill across the table and dribbled to the floor, where it formed a lake, the shape of which, after the lapse of a few minutes, he began to modify considerably with his foot, till it was like a map of england and wales. "well, dick, you needn't have made quite such a mess." "well, i needn't, i suppose." he walked up to the blue dress, and looked at it with a rigid gaze. then an idea seemed to cross his brain. "fancy." "yes." "i thought you said you were going to wear your gray gown all day to-morrow on your trip to yalbury, and in the evening too, when i shall be with you, and ask your father for you?" "so i am." "and the blue one only on sunday?" "and the blue one sunday." "well, dear, i sha'n't be at yalbury sunday to see it." "no, but i shall walk to longpuddle church in the afternoon with father, and such lots of people will be looking at me there, you know; and it did set so badly round the neck." "i never noticed it, and 'tis like nobody else would." "they might." "then why not wear the gray one on sunday as well? 'tis as pretty as the blue one." "i might make the gray one do, certainly. but it isn't so good; it didn't cost half so much as this one, and besides, it would be the same i wore saturday." "then wear the striped one, dear." "i might." "or the dark one." "yes, i might; but i want to wear a fresh one they haven't seen." "i see, i see," said dick, in a voice in which the tones of love were decidedly inconvenienced by a considerable emphasis, his thoughts meanwhile running as follows: "i, the man she loves best in the world, as she says, am to understand that my poor half-holiday is to be lost, because she wants to wear on sunday a gown there is not the slightest necessity for wearing, simply, in fact, to appear more striking than usual in the eyes of longpuddle young men; and i not there, either." "then there are three dresses good enough for my eyes, but neither is good enough for the youths of longpuddle," he said. "no, not that exactly, dick. still, you see, i do want--to look pretty to them--there, that's honest! but i sha'n't be much longer." "how much?" "a quarter of an hour." "very well; i'll come in in a quarter of an hour." "why go away?" "i mid as well." he went out, walked down the road, and sat upon a gate. here he meditated and meditated, and the more he meditated the more decidedly did he begin to fume, and the more positive was he that his time had been scandalously trifled with by miss fancy day--that, so far from being the simple girl who had never had a sweetheart before, as she had solemnly assured him time after time, she was, if not a flirt, a woman who had had no end of admirers; a girl most certainly too anxious about her frocks; a girl, whose feelings, though warm, were not deep; a girl who cared a great deal too much how she appeared in the eyes of other men. "what she loves best in the world," he thought, with an incipient spice of his father's grimness, "is her hair and complexion. what she loves next best, her gowns and hats; what she loves next best, myself, perhaps!" suffering great anguish at this disloyalty in himself and harshness to his darling, yet disposed to persevere in it, a horribly cruel thought crossed his mind. he would not call for her, as he had promised, at the end of a quarter of an hour! yes, it would be a punishment she well deserved. although the best part of the afternoon had been wasted he would go nutting as he had intended, and go by himself. he leaped over the gate, and pushed up the lane for nearly two miles, till a winding path called snail-creep sloped up a hill and entered a hazel copse by a hole like a rabbit's burrow. in he plunged, vanished among the bushes, and in a short time there was no sign of his existence upon earth, save an occasional rustling of boughs and snapping of twigs in divers points of grey's wood. never man nutted as dick nutted that afternoon. he worked like a galley slave. half-hour after half-hour passed away, and still he gathered without ceasing. at last, when the sun had set, and bunches of nuts could not be distinguished from the leaves which nourished them, he shouldered his bag, containing quite two pecks of the finest produce of the wood, about as much use to him as two pecks of stones from the road, strolled down the woodland track, crossed the highway and entered the homeward lane, whistling as he went. probably, miss fancy day never before or after stood so low in mr. dewy's opinion as on that afternoon. in fact, it is just possible that a few more blue dresses on the longpuddle young men's account would have clarified dick's brain entirely, and made him once more a free man. but venus had planned other developments, at any rate for the present. cuckoo-lane, the way he pursued, passed over a ridge which rose keenly against the sky about fifty yards in his van. here, upon the bright after-glow about the horizon, was now visible an irregular shape, which at first he conceived to be a bough standing a little beyond the line of its neighbours. then it seemed to move, and, as he advanced still further, there was no doubt that it was a living being sitting in the bank, head bowed on hand. the grassy margin entirely prevented his footsteps from being heard, and it was not till he was close that the figure recognized him. up it sprang, and he was face to face with fancy. "dick, dick! o, is it you, dick!" "yes, fancy," said dick, in a rather repentant tone, and lowering his nuts. she ran up to him, flung her parasol on the grass, put her little head against his breast, and then there began a narrative, disjointed by such a hysterical weeping as was never surpassed for intensity in the whole history of love. "o dick," she sobbed out, "where have you been away from me? o, i have suffered agony, and thought you would never come any more! 'tis cruel, dick; no 'tisn't, it is justice! i've been walking miles and miles up and down grey's wood, trying to find you, till i was wearied and worn out, and i could walk no further, and had come back this far! o dick, directly you were gone, i thought i had offended you and i put down the dress; 'tisn't finished now, and i never will finish, it, and i'll wear an old one sunday! yes, dick, i will, because i don't care what i wear when you are not by my side--ha, you think i do, but i don't!--and i ran after you, and i saw you go up snail-creep and not look back once, and then you plunged in, and i after you; but i was too far behind. o, i did wish the horrid bushes had been cut down, so that i could see your dear shape again! and then i called out to you, and nobody answered, and i was afraid to call very loud, lest anybody else should hear me. then i kept wandering and wandering about, and it was dreadful misery, dick. and then i shut my eyes and fell to picturing you looking at some other woman, very pretty and nice, but with no affection or truth in her at all, and then imagined you saying to yourself, 'ah, she's as good as fancy, for fancy told me a story, and was a flirt, and cared for herself more than me, so now i'll have this one for my sweetheart.' o, you won't, will you, dick, for i do love you so!" it is scarcely necessary to add that dick renounced his freedom there and then, and kissed her ten times over, and promised that no pretty woman of the kind alluded to should ever engross his thoughts; in short, that though he had been vexed with her, all such vexation was past, and that henceforth and for ever it was simply fancy or death for him. and then they set about proceeding homewards, very slowly on account of fancy's weariness, she leaning upon his shoulder, and in addition receiving support from his arm round her waist; though she had sufficiently recovered from her desperate condition to sing to him, 'why are you wandering here, i pray?' during the latter part of their walk. nor is it necessary to describe in detail how the bag of nuts was quite forgotten until three days later, when it was found among the brambles and restored empty to mrs. dewy, her initials being marked thereon in red cotton; and how she puzzled herself till her head ached upon the question of how on earth her meal-bag could have got into cuckoo-lane. chapter ii: honey-taking, and afterwards saturday evening saw dick dewy journeying on foot to yalbury wood, according to the arrangement with fancy. the landscape being concave, at the going down of the sun everything suddenly assumed a uniform robe of shade. the evening advanced from sunset to dusk long before dick's arrival, and his progress during the latter portion of his walk through the trees was indicated by the flutter of terrified birds that had been roosting over the path. and in crossing the glades, masses of hot dry air, that had been formed on the hills during the day, greeted his cheeks alternately with clouds of damp night air from the valleys. he reached the keeper-steward's house, where the grass-plot and the garden in front appeared light and pale against the unbroken darkness of the grove from which he had emerged, and paused at the garden gate. he had scarcely been there a minute when he beheld a sort of procession advancing from the door in his front. it consisted first of enoch the trapper, carrying a spade on his shoulder and a lantern dangling in his hand; then came mrs. day, the light of the lantern revealing that she bore in her arms curious objects about a foot long, in the form of latin crosses (made of lath and brown paper dipped in brimstone--called matches by bee-masters); next came miss day, with a shawl thrown over her head; and behind all, in the gloom, mr. frederic shiner. dick, in his consternation at finding shiner present, was at a loss how to proceed, and retired under a tree to collect his thoughts. "here i be, enoch," said a voice; and the procession advancing farther, the lantern's rays illuminated the figure of geoffrey, awaiting their arrival beside a row of bee-hives, in front of the path. taking the spade from enoch, he proceeded to dig two holes in the earth beside the hives, the others standing round in a circle, except mrs. day, who deposited her matches in the fork of an apple-tree and returned to the house. the party remaining were now lit up in front by the lantern in their midst, their shadows radiating each way upon the garden-plot like the spokes of a wheel. an apparent embarrassment of fancy at the presence of shiner caused a silence in the assembly, during which the preliminaries of execution were arranged, the matches fixed, the stake kindled, the two hives placed over the two holes, and the earth stopped round the edges. geoffrey then stood erect, and rather more, to straighten his backbone after the digging. "they were a peculiar family," said mr. shiner, regarding the hives reflectively. geoffrey nodded. "those holes will be the grave of thousands!" said fancy. "i think 'tis rather a cruel thing to do." her father shook his head. "no," he said, tapping the hives to shake the dead bees from their cells, "if you suffocate 'em this way, they only die once: if you fumigate 'em in the new way, they come to life again, and die o' starvation; so the pangs o' death be twice upon 'em." "i incline to fancy's notion," said mr. shiner, laughing lightly. "the proper way to take honey, so that the bees be neither starved nor murdered, is a puzzling matter," said the keeper steadily. "i should like never to take it from them," said fancy. "but 'tis the money," said enoch musingly. "for without money man is a shadder!" the lantern-light had disturbed many bees that had escaped from hives destroyed some days earlier, and, demoralized by affliction, were now getting a living as marauders about the doors of other hives. several flew round the head and neck of geoffrey; then darted upon him with an irritated bizz. enoch threw down the lantern, and ran off and pushed his head into a currant bush; fancy scudded up the path; and mr. shiner floundered away helter-skelter among the cabbages. geoffrey stood his ground, unmoved and firm as a rock. fancy was the first to return, followed by enoch picking up the lantern. mr. shiner still remained invisible. "have the craters stung ye?" said enoch to geoffrey. "no, not much--on'y a little here and there," he said with leisurely solemnity, shaking one bee out of his shirt sleeve, pulling another from among his hair, and two or three more from his neck. the rest looked on during this proceeding with a complacent sense of being out of it,--much as a european nation in a state of internal commotion is watched by its neighbours. "are those all of them, father?" said fancy, when geoffrey had pulled away five. "almost all,--though i feel one or two more sticking into my shoulder and side. ah! there's another just begun again upon my backbone. you lively young mortals, how did you get inside there? however, they can't sting me many times more, poor things, for they must be getting weak. they mid as well stay in me till bedtime now, i suppose." as he himself was the only person affected by this arrangement, it seemed satisfactory enough; and after a noise of feet kicking against cabbages in a blundering progress among them, the voice of mr. shiner was heard from the darkness in that direction. "is all quite safe again?" no answer being returned to this query, he apparently assumed that he might venture forth, and gradually drew near the lantern again. the hives were now removed from their position over the holes, one being handed to enoch to carry indoors, and one being taken by geoffrey himself. "bring hither the lantern, fancy: the spade can bide." geoffrey and enoch then went towards the house, leaving shiner and fancy standing side by side on the garden-plot. "allow me," said shiner, stooping for the lantern and seizing it at the same time with fancy. "i can carry it," said fancy, religiously repressing all inclination to trifle. she had thoroughly considered that subject after the tearful explanation of the bird-catching adventure to dick, and had decided that it would be dishonest in her, as an engaged young woman, to trifle with men's eyes and hands any more. finding that shiner still retained his hold of the lantern, she relinquished it, and he, having found her retaining it, also let go. the lantern fell, and was extinguished. fancy moved on. "where is the path?" said mr. shiner. "here," said fancy. "your eyes will get used to the dark in a minute or two." "till that time will ye lend me your hand?" fancy gave him the extreme tips of her fingers, and they stepped from the plot into the path. "you don't accept attentions very freely." "it depends upon who offers them." "a fellow like me, for instance." a dead silence. "well, what do you say, missie?" "it then depends upon how they are offered." "not wildly, and yet not careless-like; not purposely, and yet not by chance; not too quick nor yet too slow." "how then?" said fancy. "coolly and practically," he said. "how would that kind of love be taken?" "not anxiously, and yet not indifferently; neither blushing nor pale; nor religiously nor yet quite wickedly." "well, how?" "not at all." * * * * * geoffrey day's storehouse at the back of his dwelling was hung with bunches of dried horehound, mint, and sage; brown-paper bags of thyme and lavender; and long ropes of clean onions. on shelves were spread large red and yellow apples, and choice selections of early potatoes for seed next year;--vulgar crowds of commoner kind lying beneath in heaps. a few empty beehives were clustered around a nail in one corner, under which stood two or three barrels of new cider of the first crop, each bubbling and squirting forth from the yet open bunghole. fancy was now kneeling beside the two inverted hives, one of which rested against her lap, for convenience in operating upon the contents. she thrust her sleeves above her elbows, and inserted her small pink hand edgewise between each white lobe of honeycomb, performing the act so adroitly and gently as not to unseal a single cell. then cracking the piece off at the crown of the hive by a slight backward and forward movement, she lifted each portion as it was loosened into a large blue platter, placed on a bench at her side. "bother these little mortals!" said geoffrey, who was holding the light to her, and giving his back an uneasy twist. "i really think i may as well go indoors and take 'em out, poor things! for they won't let me alone. there's two a stinging wi' all their might now. i'm sure i wonder their strength can last so long." "all right, friend; i'll hold the candle whilst you are gone," said mr. shiner, leisurely taking the light, and allowing geoffrey to depart, which he did with his usual long paces. he could hardly have gone round to the house-door when other footsteps were heard approaching the outbuilding; the tip of a finger appeared in the hole through which the wood latch was lifted, and dick dewy came in, having been all this time walking up and down the wood, vainly waiting for shiner's departure. fancy looked up and welcomed him rather confusedly. shiner grasped the candlestick more firmly, and, lest doing this in silence should not imply to dick with sufficient force that he was quite at home and cool, he sang invincibly-- "'king arthur he had three sons.'" "father here?" said dick. "indoors, i think," said fancy, looking pleasantly at him. dick surveyed the scene, and did not seem inclined to hurry off just at that moment. shiner went on singing-- "'the miller was drown'd in his pond, the weaver was hung in his yarn, and the d--- ran away with the little tail-or, with the broadcloth under his arm.'" "that's a terrible crippled rhyme, if that's your rhyme!" said dick, with a grain of superciliousness in his tone. "it's no use your complaining to me about the rhyme!" said mr. shiner. "you must go to the man that made it." fancy by this time had acquired confidence. "taste a bit, mr. dewy," she said, holding up to him a small circular piece of honeycomb that had been the last in the row of layers, remaining still on her knees and flinging back her head to look in his face; "and then i'll taste a bit too." "and i, if you please," said mr. shiner. nevertheless the farmer looked superior, as if he could even now hardly join the trifling from very importance of station; and after receiving the honeycomb from fancy, he turned it over in his hand till the cells began to be crushed, and the liquid honey ran down from his fingers in a thin string. suddenly a faint cry from fancy caused them to gaze at her. "what's the matter, dear?" said dick. "it is nothing, but o-o! a bee has stung the inside of my lip! he was in one of the cells i was eating!" "we must keep down the swelling, or it may be serious!" said shiner, stepping up and kneeling beside her. "let me see it." "no, no!" "just let me see it," said dick, kneeling on the other side: and after some hesitation she pressed down her lip with one finger to show the place. "o, i hope 'twill soon be better! i don't mind a sting in ordinary places, but it is so bad upon your lip," she added with tears in her eyes, and writhing a little from the pain. shiner held the light above his head and pushed his face close to fancy's, as if the lip had been shown exclusively to himself, upon which dick pushed closer, as if shiner were not there at all. "it is swelling," said dick to her right aspect. "it isn't swelling," said shiner to her left aspect. "is it dangerous on the lip?" cried fancy. "i know it is dangerous on the tongue." "o no, not dangerous!" answered dick. "rather dangerous," had answered shiner simultaneously. "i must try to bear it!" said fancy, turning again to the hives. "hartshorn-and-oil is a good thing to put to it, miss day," said shiner with great concern. "sweet-oil-and-hartshorn i've found to be a good thing to cure stings, miss day," said dick with greater concern. "we have some mixed indoors; would you kindly run and get it for me?" she said. now, whether by inadvertence, or whether by mischievous intention, the individuality of the you was so carelessly denoted that both dick and shiner sprang to their feet like twin acrobats, and marched abreast to the door; both seized the latch and lifted it, and continued marching on, shoulder to shoulder, in the same manner to the dwelling-house. not only so, but entering the room, they marched as before straight up to mrs. day's chair, letting the door in the oak partition slam so forcibly, that the rows of pewter on the dresser rang like a bell. "mrs. day, fancy has stung her lip, and wants you to give me the hartshorn, please," said mr. shiner, very close to mrs. day's face. "o, mrs. day, fancy has asked me to bring out the hartshorn, please, because she has stung her lip!" said dick, a little closer to mrs. day's face. "well, men alive! that's no reason why you should eat me, i suppose!" said mrs. day, drawing back. she searched in the corner-cupboard, produced the bottle, and began to dust the cork, the rim, and every other part very carefully, dick's hand and shiner's hand waiting side by side. "which is head man?" said mrs. day. "now, don't come mumbudgeting so close again. which is head man?" neither spoke; and the bottle was inclined towards shiner. shiner, as a high-class man, would not look in the least triumphant, and turned to go off with it as geoffrey came downstairs after the search in his linen for concealed bees. "o--that you, master dewy?" dick assured the keeper that it was; and the young man then determined upon a bold stroke for the attainment of his end, forgetting that the worst of bold strokes is the disastrous consequences they involve if they fail. "i've come on purpose to speak to you very particular, mr. day," he said, with a crushing emphasis intended for the ears of mr. shiner, who was vanishing round the door-post at that moment. "well, i've been forced to go upstairs and unrind myself, and shake some bees out o' me" said geoffrey, walking slowly towards the open door, and standing on the threshold. "the young rascals got into my shirt and wouldn't be quiet nohow." dick followed him to the door. "i've come to speak a word to you," he repeated, looking out at the pale mist creeping up from the gloom of the valley. "you may perhaps guess what it is about." the keeper lowered his hands into the depths of his pockets, twirled his eyes, balanced himself on his toes, looked as perpendicularly downward as if his glance were a plumb-line, then horizontally, collecting together the cracks that lay about his face till they were all in the neighbourhood of his eyes. "maybe i don't know," he replied. dick said nothing; and the stillness was disturbed only by some small bird that was being killed by an owl in the adjoining wood, whose cry passed into the silence without mingling with it. "i've left my hat up in chammer," said geoffrey; "wait while i step up and get en." "i'll be in the garden," said dick. he went round by a side wicket into the garden, and geoffrey went upstairs. it was the custom in mellstock and its vicinity to discuss matters of pleasure and ordinary business inside the house, and to reserve the garden for very important affairs: a custom which, as is supposed, originated in the desirability of getting away at such times from the other members of the family when there was only one room for living in, though it was now quite as frequently practised by those who suffered from no such limitation to the size of their domiciles. the head-keeper's form appeared in the dusky garden, and dick walked towards him. the elder paused and leant over the rail of a piggery that stood on the left of the path, upon which dick did the same; and they both contemplated a whitish shadowy shape that was moving about and grunting among the straw of the interior. "i've come to ask for fancy," said dick. "i'd as lief you hadn't." "why should that be, mr. day?" "because it makes me say that you've come to ask what ye be'n't likely to have. have ye come for anything else?" "nothing." "then i'll just tell 'ee you've come on a very foolish errand. d'ye know what her mother was?" "no." "a teacher in a landed family's nursery, who was foolish enough to marry the keeper of the same establishment; for i was only a keeper then, though now i've a dozen other irons in the fire as steward here for my lord, what with the timber sales and the yearly fellings, and the gravel and sand sales and one thing and 'tother. however, d'ye think fancy picked up her good manners, the smooth turn of her tongue, her musical notes, and her knowledge of books, in a homely hole like this?" "no." "d'ye know where?" "no." "well, when i went a-wandering after her mother's death, she lived with her aunt, who kept a boarding-school, till her aunt married lawyer green--a man as sharp as a needle--and the school was broke up. did ye know that then she went to the training-school, and that her name stood first among the queen's scholars of her year?" "i've heard so." "and that when she sat for her certificate as government teacher, she had the highest of the first class?" "yes." "well, and do ye know what i live in such a miserly way for when i've got enough to do without it, and why i make her work as a schoolmistress instead of living here?" "no." "that if any gentleman, who sees her to be his equal in polish, should want to marry her, and she want to marry him, he sha'n't be superior to her in pocket. now do ye think after this that you be good enough for her?" "no." "then good-night t'ee, master dewy." "good-night, mr. day." modest dick's reply had faltered upon his tongue, and he turned away wondering at his presumption in asking for a woman whom he had seen from the beginning to be so superior to him. chapter iii: fancy in the rain the next scene is a tempestuous afternoon in the following month, and fancy day is discovered walking from her father's home towards mellstock. a single vast gray cloud covered the country, from which the small rain and mist had just begun to blow down in wavy sheets, alternately thick and thin. the trees of the fields and plantations writhed like miserable men as the air wound its way swiftly among them: the lowest portions of their trunks, that had hardly ever been known to move, were visibly rocked by the fiercer gusts, distressing the mind by its painful unwontedness, as when a strong man is seen to shed tears. low-hanging boughs went up and down; high and erect boughs went to and fro; the blasts being so irregular, and divided into so many cross-currents, that neighbouring branches of the same tree swept the skies in independent motions, crossed each other, or became entangled. across the open spaces flew flocks of green and yellowish leaves, which, after travelling a long distance from their parent trees, reached the ground, and lay there with their under-sides upward. as the rain and wind increased, and fancy's bonnet-ribbons leapt more and more snappishly against her chin, she paused on entering mellstock lane to consider her latitude, and the distance to a place of shelter. the nearest house was elizabeth endorfield's, in higher mellstock, whose cottage and garden stood not far from the junction of that hamlet with the road she followed. fancy hastened onward, and in five minutes entered a gate, which shed upon her toes a flood of water-drops as she opened it. "come in, chiel!" a voice exclaimed, before fancy had knocked: a promptness that would have surprised her had she not known that mrs. endorfield was an exceedingly and exceptionally sharp woman in the use of her eyes and ears. fancy went in and sat down. elizabeth was paring potatoes for her husband's supper. scrape, scrape, scrape; then a toss, and splash went a potato into a bucket of water. now, as fancy listlessly noted these proceedings of the dame, she began to reconsider an old subject that lay uppermost in her heart. since the interview between her father and dick, the days had been melancholy days for her. geoffrey's firm opposition to the notion of dick as a son-in- law was more than she had expected. she had frequently seen her lover since that time, it is true, and had loved him more for the opposition than she would have otherwise dreamt of doing--which was a happiness of a certain kind. yet, though love is thus an end in itself, it must be believed to be the means to another end if it is to assume the rosy hues of an unalloyed pleasure. and such a belief fancy and dick were emphatically denied just now. elizabeth endorfield had a repute among women which was in its nature something between distinction and notoriety. it was founded on the following items of character. she was shrewd and penetrating; her house stood in a lonely place; she never went to church; she wore a red cloak; she always retained her bonnet indoors and she had a pointed chin. thus far her attributes were distinctly satanic; and those who looked no further called her, in plain terms, a witch. but she was not gaunt, nor ugly in the upper part of her face, nor particularly strange in manner; so that, when her more intimate acquaintances spoke of her the term was softened, and she became simply a deep body, who was as long-headed as she was high. it may be stated that elizabeth belonged to a class of suspects who were gradually losing their mysterious characteristics under the administration of the young vicar; though, during the long reign of mr. grinham, the parish of mellstock had proved extremely favourable to the growth of witches. while fancy was revolving all this in her mind, and putting it to herself whether it was worth while to tell her troubles to elizabeth, and ask her advice in getting out of them, the witch spoke. "you be down--proper down," she said suddenly, dropping another potato into the bucket. fancy took no notice. "about your young man." fancy reddened. elizabeth seemed to be watching her thoughts. really, one would almost think she must have the powers people ascribed to her. "father not in the humour for't, hey?" another potato was finished and flung in. "ah, i know about it. little birds tell me things that people don't dream of my knowing." fancy was desperate about dick, and here was a chance--o, such a wicked chance--of getting help; and what was goodness beside love! "i wish you'd tell me how to put him in the humour for it?" she said. "that i could soon do," said the witch quietly. "really? o, do; anyhow--i don't care--so that it is done! how could i do it, mrs. endorfield?" "nothing so mighty wonderful in it." "well, but how?" "by witchery, of course!" said elizabeth. "no!" said fancy. "'tis, i assure ye. didn't you ever hear i was a witch?" "well," hesitated fancy, "i have heard you called so." "and you believed it?" "i can't say that i did exactly believe it, for 'tis very horrible and wicked; but, o, how i do wish it was possible for you to be one!" "so i am. and i'll tell you how to bewitch your father to let you marry dick dewy." "will it hurt him, poor thing?" "hurt who?" "father." "no; the charm is worked by common sense, and the spell can only be broke by your acting stupidly." fancy looked rather perplexed, and elizabeth went on: "this fear of lizz--whatever 'tis-- by great and small; she makes pretence to common sense, and that's all. "you must do it like this." the witch laid down her knife and potato, and then poured into fancy's ear a long and detailed list of directions, glancing up from the corner of her eye into fancy's face with an expression of sinister humour. fancy's face brightened, clouded, rose and sank, as the narrative proceeded. "there," said elizabeth at length, stooping for the knife and another potato, "do that, and you'll have him by-long and by-late, my dear." "and do it i will!" said fancy. she then turned her attention to the external world once more. the rain continued as usual, but the wind had abated considerably during the discourse. judging that it was now possible to keep an umbrella erect, she pulled her hood again over her bonnet, bade the witch good-bye, and went her way. chapter iv: the spell mrs. endorfield's advice was duly followed. "i be proper sorry that your daughter isn't so well as she might be," said a mellstock man to geoffrey one morning. "but is there anything in it?" said geoffrey uneasily, as he shifted his hat to the right. "i can't understand the report. she didn't complain to me a bit when i saw her." "no appetite at all, they say." geoffrey crossed to mellstock and called at the school that afternoon. fancy welcomed him as usual, and asked him to stay and take tea with her. "i be'n't much for tea, this time o' day," he said, but stayed. during the meal he watched her narrowly. and to his great consternation discovered the following unprecedented change in the healthy girl--that she cut herself only a diaphanous slice of bread-and-butter, and, laying it on her plate, passed the meal-time in breaking it into pieces, but eating no more than about one-tenth of the slice. geoffrey hoped she would say something about dick, and finish up by weeping, as she had done after the decision against him a few days subsequent to the interview in the garden. but nothing was said, and in due time geoffrey departed again for yalbury wood. "'tis to be hoped poor miss fancy will be able to keep on her school," said geoffrey's man enoch to geoffrey the following week, as they were shovelling up ant-hills in the wood. geoffrey stuck in the shovel, swept seven or eight ants from his sleeve, and killed another that was prowling round his ear, then looked perpendicularly into the earth as usual, waiting for enoch to say more. "well, why shouldn't she?" said the keeper at last. "the baker told me yesterday," continued enoch, shaking out another emmet that had run merrily up his thigh, "that the bread he've left at that there school-house this last month would starve any mouse in the three creations; that 'twould so! and afterwards i had a pint o' small down at morrs's, and there i heard more." "what might that ha' been?" "that she used to have a pound o' the best rolled butter a week, regular as clockwork, from dairyman viney's for herself, as well as just so much salted for the helping girl, and the 'ooman she calls in; but now the same quantity d'last her three weeks, and then 'tis thoughted she throws it away sour." "finish doing the emmets, and carry the bag home-along." the keeper resumed his gun, tucked it under his arm, and went on without whistling to the dogs, who however followed, with a bearing meant to imply that they did not expect any such attentions when their master was reflecting. on saturday morning a note came from fancy. he was not to trouble about sending her the couple of rabbits, as was intended, because she feared she should not want them. later in the day geoffrey went to casterbridge and called upon the butcher who served fancy with fresh meat, which was put down to her father's account. "i've called to pay up our little bill, neighbour haylock, and you can gie me the chiel's account at the same time." mr. haylock turned round three quarters of a circle in the midst of a heap of joints, altered the expression of his face from meat to money, went into a little office consisting only of a door and a window, looked very vigorously into a book which possessed length but no breadth; and then, seizing a piece of paper and scribbling thereupon, handed the bill. probably it was the first time in the history of commercial transactions that the quality of shortness in a butcher's bill was a cause of tribulation to the debtor. "why, this isn't all she've had in a whole month!" said geoffrey. "every mossel," said the butcher--"(now, dan, take that leg and shoulder to mrs. white's, and this eleven pound here to mr. martin's)--you've been treating her to smaller joints lately, to my thinking, mr. day?" "only two or three little scram rabbits this last week, as i am alive--i wish i had!" "well, my wife said to me--(dan! not too much, not too much on that tray at a time; better go twice)--my wife said to me as she posted up the books: she says, 'miss day must have been affronted this summer during that hot muggy weather that spolit so much for us; for depend upon't,' she says, 'she've been trying john grimmett unknown to us: see her account else.' 'tis little, of course, at the best of times, being only for one, but now 'tis next kin to nothing." "i'll inquire," said geoffrey despondingly. he returned by way of mellstock, and called upon fancy, in fulfilment of a promise. it being saturday, the children were enjoying a holiday, and on entering the residence fancy was nowhere to be seen. nan, the charwoman, was sweeping the kitchen. "where's my da'ter?" said the keeper. "well, you see she was tired with the week's teaching, and this morning she said, 'nan, i sha'n't get up till the evening.' you see, mr. day, if people don't eat, they can't work; and as she've gie'd up eating, she must gie up working." "have ye carried up any dinner to her?" "no; she don't want any. there, we all know that such things don't come without good reason--not that i wish to say anything about a broken heart, or anything of the kind." geoffrey's own heart felt inconveniently large just then. he went to the staircase and ascended to his daughter's door. "fancy!" "come in, father." to see a person in bed from any cause whatever, on a fine afternoon, is depressing enough; and here was his only child fancy, not only in bed, but looking very pale. geoffrey was visibly disturbed. "fancy, i didn't expect to see thee here, chiel," he said. "what's the matter?" "i'm not well, father." "how's that?" "because i think of things." "what things can you have to think o' so mortal much?" "you know, father." "you think i've been cruel to thee in saying that that penniless dick o' thine sha'n't marry thee, i suppose?" no answer. "well, you know, fancy, i do it for the best, and he isn't good enough for thee. you know that well enough." here he again looked at her as she lay. "well, fancy, i can't let my only chiel die; and if you can't live without en, you must ha' en, i suppose." "o, i don't want him like that; all against your will, and everything so disobedient!" sighed the invalid. "no, no, 'tisn't against my will. my wish is, now i d'see how 'tis hurten thee to live without en, that he shall marry thee as soon as we've considered a little. that's my wish flat and plain, fancy. there, never cry, my little maid! you ought to ha' cried afore; no need o' crying now 'tis all over. well, howsoever, try to step over and see me and mother- law to-morrow, and ha' a bit of dinner wi' us." "and--dick too?" "ay, dick too, 'far's i know." "and when do you think you'll have considered, father, and he may marry me?" she coaxed. "well, there, say next midsummer; that's not a day too long to wait." on leaving the school geoffrey went to the tranter's. old william opened the door. "is your grandson dick in 'ithin, william?" "no, not just now, mr. day. though he've been at home a good deal lately." "o, how's that?" "what wi' one thing, and what wi' t'other, he's all in a mope, as might be said. don't seem the feller he used to. ay, 'a will sit studding and thinking as if 'a were going to turn chapel-member, and then do nothing but traypse and wamble about. used to be such a chatty boy, too, dick did; and now 'a don't speak at all. but won't ye step inside? reuben will be home soon, 'a b'lieve." "no, thank you, i can't stay now. will ye just ask dick if he'll do me the kindness to step over to yalbury to-morrow with my da'ter fancy, if she's well enough? i don't like her to come by herself, now she's not so terrible topping in health." "so i've heard. ay, sure, i'll tell him without fail." chapter v: after gaining her point the visit to geoffrey passed off as delightfully as a visit might have been expected to pass off when it was the first day of smooth experience in a hitherto obstructed love-course. and then came a series of several happy days, of the same undisturbed serenity. dick could court her when he chose; stay away when he chose,--which was never; walk with her by winding streams and waterfalls and autumn scenery till dews and twilight sent them home. and thus they drew near the day of the harvest thanksgiving, which was also the time chosen for opening the organ in mellstock church. it chanced that dick on that very day was called away from mellstock. a young acquaintance had died of consumption at charmley, a neighbouring village, on the previous monday, and dick, in fulfilment of a long-standing promise, was to assist in carrying him to the grave. when on tuesday, dick went towards the school to acquaint fancy with the fact, it is difficult to say whether his own disappointment at being denied the sight of her triumphant debut as organist, was greater than his vexation that his pet should on this great occasion be deprived of the pleasure of his presence. however, the intelligence was communicated. she bore it as she best could, not without many expressions of regret, and convictions that her performance would be nothing to her now. just before eleven o'clock on sunday he set out upon his sad errand. the funeral was to be immediately after the morning service, and as there were four good miles to walk, driving being inconvenient, it became necessary to start comparatively early. half an hour later would certainly have answered his purpose quite as well, yet at the last moment nothing would content his ardent mind but that he must go a mile out of his way in the direction of the school, in the hope of getting a glimpse of his love as she started for church. striking, therefore, into the lane towards the school, instead of across the ewelease direct to charmley, he arrived opposite her door as his goddess emerged. if ever a woman looked a divinity, fancy day appeared one that morning as she floated down those school steps, in the form of a nebulous collection of colours inclining to blue. with an audacity unparalleled in the whole history of village-school-mistresses at this date--partly owing, no doubt, to papa's respectable accumulation of cash, which rendered her profession not altogether one of necessity--she had actually donned a hat and feather, and lowered her hitherto plainly looped-up hair, which now fell about her shoulders in a profusion of curls. poor dick was astonished: he had never seen her look so distractingly beautiful before, save on christmas-eve, when her hair was in the same luxuriant condition of freedom. but his first burst of delighted surprise was followed by less comfortable feelings, as soon as his brain recovered its power to think. fancy had blushed;--was it with confusion? she had also involuntarily pressed back her curls. she had not expected him. "fancy, you didn't know me for a moment in my funeral clothes, did you?" "good-morning, dick--no, really, i didn't know you for an instant in such a sad suit." he looked again at the gay tresses and hat. "you've never dressed so charming before, dearest." "i like to hear you praise me in that way, dick," she said, smiling archly. "it is meat and drink to a woman. do i look nice really?" "fie! you know it. did you remember,--i mean didn't you remember about my going away to-day?" "well, yes, i did, dick; but, you know, i wanted to look well;--forgive me." "yes, darling; yes, of course,--there's nothing to forgive. no, i was only thinking that when we talked on tuesday and wednesday and thursday and friday about my absence to-day, and i was so sorry for it, you said, fancy, so were you sorry, and almost cried, and said it would be no pleasure to you to be the attraction of the church to-day, since i could not be there." "my dear one, neither will it be so much pleasure to me . . . but i do take a little delight in my life, i suppose," she pouted. "apart from mine?" she looked at him with perplexed eyes. "i know you are vexed with me, dick, and it is because the first sunday i have curls and a hat and feather since i have been here happens to be the very day you are away and won't be with me. yes, say it is, for that is it! and you think that all this week i ought to have remembered you wouldn't be here to- day, and not have cared to be better dressed than usual. yes, you do, dick, and it is rather unkind!" "no, no," said dick earnestly and simply, "i didn't think so badly of you as that. i only thought that--if you had been going away, i shouldn't have tried new attractions for the eyes of other people. but then of course you and i are different, naturally." "well, perhaps we are." "whatever will the vicar say, fancy?" "i don't fear what he says in the least!" she answered proudly. "but he won't say anything of the sort you think. no, no." "he can hardly have conscience to, indeed." "now come, you say, dick, that you quite forgive me, for i must go," she said with sudden gaiety, and skipped backwards into the porch. "come here, sir;--say you forgive me, and then you shall kiss me;--you never have yet when i have worn curls, you know. yes, just where you want to so much,--yes, you may!" dick followed her into the inner corner, where he was probably not slow in availing himself of the privilege offered. "now that's a treat for you, isn't it?" she continued. "good-bye, or i shall be late. come and see me to-morrow: you'll be tired to-night." thus they parted, and fancy proceeded to the church. the organ stood on one side of the chancel, close to and under the immediate eye of the vicar when he was in the pulpit, and also in full view of the congregation. here she sat down, for the first time in such a conspicuous position, her seat having previously been in a remote spot in the aisle. "good heavens--disgraceful! curls and a hat and feather!" said the daughters of the small gentry, who had either only curly hair without a hat and feather, or a hat and feather without curly hair. "a bonnet for church always," said sober matrons. that mr. maybold was conscious of her presence close beside him during the sermon; that he was not at all angry at her development of costume; that he admired her, she perceived. but she did not see that he loved her during that sermon-time as he had never loved a woman before; that her proximity was a strange delight to him; and that he gloried in her musical success that morning in a spirit quite beyond a mere cleric's glory at the inauguration of a new order of things. the old choir, with humbled hearts, no longer took their seats in the gallery as heretofore (which was now given up to the school-children who were not singers, and a pupil-teacher), but were scattered about with their wives in different parts of the church. having nothing to do with conducting the service for almost the first time in their lives, they all felt awkward, out of place, abashed, and inconvenienced by their hands. the tranter had proposed that they should stay away to-day and go nutting, but grandfather william would not hear of such a thing for a moment. "no," he replied reproachfully, and quoted a verse: "though this has come upon us, let not our hearts be turned back, or our steps go out of the way." so they stood and watched the curls of hair trailing down the back of the successful rival, and the waving of her feather, as she swayed her head. after a few timid notes and uncertain touches her playing became markedly correct, and towards the end full and free. but, whether from prejudice or unbiassed judgment, the venerable body of musicians could not help thinking that the simpler notes they had been wont to bring forth were more in keeping with the simplicity of their old church than the crowded chords and interludes it was her pleasure to produce. chapter vi: into temptation the day was done, and fancy was again in the school-house. about five o'clock it began to rain, and in rather a dull frame of mind she wandered into the schoolroom, for want of something better to do. she was thinking--of her lover dick dewy? not precisely. of how weary she was of living alone: how unbearable it would be to return to yalbury under the rule of her strange-tempered step-mother; that it was far better to be married to anybody than do that; that eight or nine long months had yet to be lived through ere the wedding could take place. at the side of the room were high windows of ham-hill stone, upon either sill of which she could sit by first mounting a desk and using it as a footstool. as the evening advanced here she perched herself, as was her custom on such wet and gloomy occasions, put on a light shawl and bonnet, opened the window, and looked out at the rain. the window overlooked a field called the grove, and it was the position from which she used to survey the crown of dick's passing hat in the early days of their acquaintance and meetings. not a living soul was now visible anywhere; the rain kept all people indoors who were not forced abroad by necessity, and necessity was less importunate on sundays than during the week. sitting here and thinking again--of her lover, or of the sensation she had created at church that day?--well, it is unknown--thinking and thinking she saw a dark masculine figure arising into distinctness at the further end of the grove--a man without an umbrella. nearer and nearer he came, and she perceived that he was in deep mourning, and then that it was dick. yes, in the fondness and foolishness of his young heart, after walking four miles, in a drizzling rain without overcoat or umbrella, and in face of a remark from his love that he was not to come because he would be tired, he had made it his business to wander this mile out of his way again, from sheer wish of spending ten minutes in her presence. "o dick, how wet you are!" she said, as he drew up under the window. "why, your coat shines as if it had been varnished, and your hat--my goodness, there's a streaming hat!" "o, i don't mind, darling!" said dick cheerfully. "wet never hurts me, though i am rather sorry for my best clothes. however, it couldn't be helped; we lent all the umbrellas to the women. i don't know when i shall get mine back!" "and look, there's a nasty patch of something just on your shoulder." "ah, that's japanning; it rubbed off the clamps of poor jack's coffin when we lowered him from our shoulders upon the bier! i don't care about that, for 'twas the last deed i could do for him; and 'tis hard if you can't afford a coat for an old friend." fancy put her hand to her mouth for half a minute. underneath the palm of that little hand there existed for that half-minute a little yawn. "dick, i don't like you to stand there in the wet. and you mustn't sit down. go home and change your things. don't stay another minute." "one kiss after coming so far," he pleaded. "if i can reach, then." he looked rather disappointed at not being invited round to the door. she twisted from her seated position and bent herself downwards, but not even by standing on the plinth was it possible for dick to get his lips into contact with hers as she held them. by great exertion she might have reached a little lower; but then she would have exposed her head to the rain. "never mind, dick; kiss my hand," she said, flinging it down to him. "now, good-bye." "good-bye." he walked slowly away, turning and turning again to look at her till he was out of sight. during the retreat she said to herself, almost involuntarily, and still conscious of that morning's triumph--"i like dick, and i love him; but how plain and sorry a man looks in the rain, with no umbrella, and wet through!" as he vanished, she made as if to descend from her seat; but glancing in the other direction she saw another form coming along the same track. it was also that of a man. he, too, was in black from top to toe; but he carried an umbrella. he drew nearer, and the direction of the rain caused him so to slant his umbrella that from her height above the ground his head was invisible, as she was also to him. he passed in due time directly beneath her, and in looking down upon the exterior of his umbrella her feminine eyes perceived it to be of superior silk--less common at that date than since--and of elegant make. he reached the entrance to the building, and fancy suddenly lost sight of him. instead of pursuing the roadway as dick had done he had turned sharply round into her own porch. she jumped to the floor, hastily flung off her shawl and bonnet, smoothed and patted her hair till the curls hung in passable condition, and listened. no knock. nearly a minute passed, and still there was no knock. then there arose a soft series of raps, no louder than the tapping of a distant woodpecker, and barely distinct enough to reach her ears. she composed herself and flung open the door. in the porch stood mr. maybold. there was a warm flush upon his face, and a bright flash in his eyes, which made him look handsomer than she had ever seen him before. "good-evening, miss day." "good-evening, mr. maybold," she said, in a strange state of mind. she had noticed, beyond the ardent hue of his face, that his voice had a singular tremor in it, and that his hand shook like an aspen leaf when he laid his umbrella in the corner of the porch. without another word being spoken by either, he came into the schoolroom, shut the door, and moved close to her. once inside, the expression of his face was no more discernible, by reason of the increasing dusk of evening. "i want to speak to you," he then said; "seriously--on a perhaps unexpected subject, but one which is all the world to me--i don't know what it may be to you, miss day." no reply. "fancy, i have come to ask you if you will be my wife?" as a person who has been idly amusing himself with rolling a snowball might start at finding he had set in motion an avalanche, so did fancy start at these words from the vicar. and in the dead silence which followed them, the breathings of the man and of the woman could be distinctly and separately heard; and there was this difference between them--his respirations gradually grew quieter and less rapid after the enunciation, hers, from having been low and regular, increased in quickness and force, till she almost panted. "i cannot, i cannot, mr. maybold--i cannot! don't ask me!" she said. "don't answer in a hurry!" he entreated. "and do listen to me. this is no sudden feeling on my part. i have loved you for more than six months! perhaps my late interest in teaching the children here has not been so single-minded as it seemed. you will understand my motive--like me better, perhaps, for honestly telling you that i have struggled against my emotion continually, because i have thought that it was not well for me to love you! but i resolved to struggle no longer; i have examined the feeling; and the love i bear you is as genuine as that i could bear any woman! i see your great charm; i respect your natural talents, and the refinement they have brought into your nature--they are quite enough, and more than enough for me! they are equal to anything ever required of the mistress of a quiet parsonage-house--the place in which i shall pass my days, wherever it may be situated. o fancy, i have watched you, criticized you even severely, brought my feelings to the light of judgment, and still have found them rational, and such as any man might have expected to be inspired with by a woman like you! so there is nothing hurried, secret, or untoward in my desire to do this. fancy, will you marry me?" no answer was returned. "don't refuse; don't," he implored. "it would be foolish of you--i mean cruel! of course we would not live here, fancy. i have had for a long time the offer of an exchange of livings with a friend in yorkshire, but i have hitherto refused on account of my mother. there we would go. your musical powers shall be still further developed; you shall have whatever pianoforte you like; you shall have anything, fancy, anything to make you happy--pony-carriage, flowers, birds, pleasant society; yes, you have enough in you for any society, after a few months of travel with me! will you, fancy, marry me?" another pause ensued, varied only by the surging of the rain against the window-panes, and then fancy spoke, in a faint and broken voice. "yes, i will," she said. "god bless you, my own!" he advanced quickly, and put his arm out to embrace her. she drew back hastily. "no no, not now!" she said in an agitated whisper. "there are things;--but the temptation is, o, too strong, and i can't resist it; i can't tell you now, but i must tell you! don't, please, don't come near me now! i want to think, i can scarcely get myself used to the idea of what i have promised yet." the next minute she turned to a desk, buried her face in her hands, and burst into a hysterical fit of weeping. "o, leave me to myself!" she sobbed; "leave me! o, leave me!" "don't be distressed; don't, dearest!" it was with visible difficulty that he restrained himself from approaching her. "you shall tell me at your leisure what it is that grieves you so; i am happy--beyond all measure happy!--at having your simple promise." "and do go and leave me now!" "but i must not, in justice to you, leave for a minute, until you are yourself again." "there then," she said, controlling her emotion, and standing up; "i am not disturbed now." he reluctantly moved towards the door. "good-bye!" he murmured tenderly. "i'll come to-morrow about this time." chapter vii: second thoughts the next morning the vicar rose early. the first thing he did was to write a long and careful letter to his friend in yorkshire. then, eating a little breakfast, he crossed the meadows in the direction of casterbridge, bearing his letter in his pocket, that he might post it at the town office, and obviate the loss of one day in its transmission that would have resulted had he left it for the foot-post through the village. it was a foggy morning, and the trees shed in noisy water-drops the moisture they had collected from the thick air, an acorn occasionally falling from its cup to the ground, in company with the drippings. in the meads, sheets of spiders'-web, almost opaque with wet, hung in folds over the fences, and the falling leaves appeared in every variety of brown, green, and yellow hue. a low and merry whistling was heard on the highway he was approaching, then the light footsteps of a man going in the same direction as himself. on reaching the junction of his path with the road, the vicar beheld dick dewy's open and cheerful face. dick lifted his hat, and the vicar came out into the highway that dick was pursuing. "good-morning, dewy. how well you are looking!" said mr. maybold. "yes, sir, i am well--quite well! i am going to casterbridge now, to get smart's collar; we left it there saturday to be repaired." "i am going to casterbridge, so we'll walk together," the vicar said. dick gave a hop with one foot to put himself in step with mr. maybold, who proceeded: "i fancy i didn't see you at church yesterday, dewy. or were you behind the pier?" "no; i went to charmley. poor john dunford chose me to be one of his bearers a long time before he died, and yesterday was the funeral. of course i couldn't refuse, though i should have liked particularly to have been at home as 'twas the day of the new music." "yes, you should have been. the musical portion of the service was successful--very successful indeed; and what is more to the purpose, no ill-feeling whatever was evinced by any of the members of the old choir. they joined in the singing with the greatest good-will." "'twas natural enough that i should want to be there, i suppose," said dick, smiling a private smile; "considering who the organ-player was." at this the vicar reddened a little, and said, "yes, yes," though not at all comprehending dick's true meaning, who, as he received no further reply, continued hesitatingly, and with another smile denoting his pride as a lover-- "i suppose you know what i mean, sir? you've heard about me and--miss day?" the red in maybold's countenance went away: he turned and looked dick in the face. "no," he said constrainedly, "i've heard nothing whatever about you and miss day." "why, she's my sweetheart, and we are going to be married next midsummer. we are keeping it rather close just at present, because 'tis a good many months to wait; but it is her father's wish that we don't marry before, and of course we must submit. but the time 'ill soon slip along." "yes, the time will soon slip along--time glides away every day--yes." maybold said these words, but he had no idea of what they were. he was conscious of a cold and sickly thrill throughout him; and all he reasoned was this that the young creature whose graces had intoxicated him into making the most imprudent resolution of his life, was less an angel than a woman. "you see, sir," continued the ingenuous dick, "'twill be better in one sense. i shall by that time be the regular manager of a branch o' father's business, which has very much increased lately, and business, which we think of starting elsewhere. it has very much increased lately, and we expect next year to keep a' extra couple of horses. we've already our eye on one--brown as a berry, neck like a rainbow, fifteen hands, and not a gray hair in her--offered us at twenty-five want a crown. and to kip pace with the times i have had some cards prented and i beg leave to hand you one, sir." "certainly," said the vicar, mechanically taking the card that dick offered him. "i turn in here by grey's bridge," said dick. "i suppose you go straight on and up town?" "yes." "good-morning, sir." "good-morning, dewy." maybold stood still upon the bridge, holding the card as it had been put into his hand, and dick's footsteps died away towards durnover mill. the vicar's first voluntary action was to read the card:-- dewy and son, tranters and hauliers, mellstock. nb.--furniture, coals, potatoes, live and dead stock, removed to any distance on the shortest notice. mr. maybold leant over the parapet of the bridge and looked into the river. he saw--without heeding--how the water came rapidly from beneath the arches, glided down a little steep, then spread itself over a pool in which dace, trout, and minnows sported at ease among the long green locks of weed that lay heaving and sinking with their roots towards the current. at the end of ten minutes spent leaning thus, he drew from his pocket the letter to his friend, tore it deliberately into such minute fragments that scarcely two syllables remained in juxtaposition, and sent the whole handful of shreds fluttering into the water. here he watched them eddy, dart, and turn, as they were carried downwards towards the ocean and gradually disappeared from his view. finally he moved off, and pursued his way at a rapid pace back again to mellstock vicarage. nerving himself by a long and intense effort, he sat down in his study and wrote as follows: "dear miss day,--the meaning of your words, 'the temptation is too strong,' of your sadness and your tears, has been brought home to me by an accident. i know to-day what i did not know yesterday--that you are not a free woman. "why did you not tell me--why didn't you? did you suppose i knew? no. had i known, my conduct in coming to you as i did would have been reprehensible. "but i don't chide you! perhaps no blame attaches to you--i can't tell. fancy, though my opinion of you is assailed and disturbed in a way which cannot be expressed, i love you still, and my word to you holds good yet. but will you, in justice to an honest man who relies upon your word to him, consider whether, under the circumstances, you can honourably forsake him?--yours ever sincerely, "arthur maybold." he rang the bell. "tell charles to take these copybooks and this note to the school at once." the maid took the parcel and the letter, and in a few minutes a boy was seen to leave the vicarage gate, with the one under his arm, and the other in his hand. the vicar sat with his hand to his brow, watching the lad as he descended church lane and entered the waterside path which intervened between that spot and the school. here he was met by another boy, and after a free salutation and pugilistic frisk had passed between the two, the second boy came on his way to the vicarage, and the other vanished out of sight. the boy came to the door, and a note for mr. maybold was brought in. he knew the writing. opening the envelope with an unsteady hand, he read the subjoined words: "dear mr. maybold,--i have been thinking seriously and sadly through the whole of the night of the question you put to me last evening and of my answer. that answer, as an honest woman, i had no right to give. "it is my nature--perhaps all women's--to love refinement of mind and manners; but even more than this, to be ever fascinated with the idea of surroundings more elegant and pleasing than those which have been customary. and you praised me, and praise is life to me. it was alone my sensations at these things which prompted my reply. ambition and vanity they would be called; perhaps they are so. "after this explanation i hope you will generously allow me to withdraw the answer i too hastily gave. "and one more request. to keep the meeting of last night, and all that passed between us there, for ever a secret. were it to become known, it would utterly blight the happiness of a trusting and generous man, whom i love still, and shall love always.--yours sincerely, "fancy day. the last written communication that ever passed from the vicar to fancy, was a note containing these words only: "tell him everything; it is best. he will forgive you." part the fifth: conclusion chapter i: 'the knot there's no untying' the last day of the story is dated just subsequent to that point in the development of the seasons when country people go to bed among nearly naked trees, are lulled to sleep by a fall of rain, and awake next morning among green ones; when the landscape appears embarrassed with the sudden weight and brilliancy of its leaves; when the night-jar comes and strikes up for the summer his tune of one note; when the apple-trees have bloomed, and the roads and orchard-grass become spotted with fallen petals; when the faces of the delicate flowers are darkened, and their heads weighed down, by the throng of honey-bees, which increase their humming till humming is too mild a term for the all-pervading sound; and when cuckoos, blackbirds, and sparrows, that have hitherto been merry and respectful neighbours, become noisy and persistent intimates. the exterior of geoffrey day's house in yalbury wood appeared exactly as was usual at that season, but a frantic barking of the dogs at the back told of unwonted movements somewhere within. inside the door the eyes beheld a gathering, which was a rarity indeed for the dwelling of the solitary wood-steward and keeper. about the room were sitting and standing, in various gnarled attitudes, our old acquaintance, grandfathers james and william, the tranter, mr. penny, two or three children, including jimmy and charley, besides three or four country ladies and gentlemen from a greater distance who do not require any distinction by name. geoffrey was seen and heard stamping about the outhouse and among the bushes of the garden, attending to details of daily routine before the proper time arrived for their performance, in order that they might be off his hands for the day. he appeared with his shirt-sleeves rolled up; his best new nether garments, in which he had arrayed himself that morning, being temporarily disguised under a weekday apron whilst these proceedings were in operation. he occasionally glanced at the hives in passing, to see if his wife's bees were swarming, ultimately rolling down his shirt-sleeves and going indoors, talking to tranter dewy whilst buttoning the wristbands, to save time; next going upstairs for his best waistcoat, and coming down again to make another remark whilst buttoning that, during the time looking fixedly in the tranter's face as if he were a looking-glass. the furniture had undergone attenuation to an alarming extent, every duplicate piece having been removed, including the clock by thomas wood; ezekiel saunders being at last left sole referee in matters of time. fancy was stationary upstairs, receiving her layers of clothes and adornments, and answering by short fragments of laughter which had more fidgetiness than mirth in them, remarks that were made from time to time by mrs. dewy and mrs. penny, who were assisting her at the toilet, mrs. day having pleaded a queerness in her head as a reason for shutting herself up in an inner bedroom for the whole morning. mrs. penny appeared with nine corkscrew curls on each side of her temples, and a back comb stuck upon her crown like a castle on a steep. the conversation just now going on was concerning the banns, the last publication of which had been on the sunday previous. "and how did they sound?" fancy subtly inquired. "very beautiful indeed," said mrs. penny. "i never heard any sound better." "but how?" "o, so natural and elegant, didn't they, reuben!" she cried, through the chinks of the unceiled floor, to the tranter downstairs. "what's that?" said the tranter, looking up inquiringly at the floor above him for an answer. "didn't dick and fancy sound well when they were called home in church last sunday?" came downwards again in mrs. penny's voice. "ay, that they did, my sonnies!--especially the first time. there was a terrible whispering piece of work in the congregation, wasn't there, neighbour penny?" said the tranter, taking up the thread of conversation on his own account and, in order to be heard in the room above, speaking very loud to mr. penny, who sat at the distance of three feet from him, or rather less. "i never can mind seeing such a whispering as there was," said mr. penny, also loudly, to the room above. "and such sorrowful envy on the maidens' faces; really, i never did see such envy as there was!" fancy's lineaments varied in innumerable little flushes, and her heart palpitated innumerable little tremors of pleasure. "but perhaps," she said, with assumed indifference, "it was only because no religion was going on just then?" "o, no; nothing to do with that. 'twas because of your high standing in the parish. it was just as if they had one and all caught dick kissing and coling ye to death, wasn't it, mrs. dewy?" "ay; that 'twas." "how people will talk about one's doings!" fancy exclaimed. "well, if you make songs about yourself, my dear, you can't blame other people for singing 'em." "mercy me! how shall i go through it?" said the young lady again, but merely to those in the bedroom, with a breathing of a kind between a sigh and a pant, round shining eyes, and warm face. "o, you'll get through it well enough, child," said mrs. dewy placidly. "the edge of the performance is took off at the calling home; and when once you get up to the chancel end o' the church, you feel as saucy as you please. i'm sure i felt as brave as a sodger all through the deed--though of course i dropped my face and looked modest, as was becoming to a maid. mind you do that, fancy." "and i walked into the church as quiet as a lamb, i'm sure," subjoined mrs. penny. "there, you see penny is such a little small man. but certainly, i was flurried in the inside o' me. well, thinks i, 'tis to be, and here goes! and do you do the same: say, ''tis to be, and here goes!'" "is there such wonderful virtue in ''tis to be, and here goes!'" inquired fancy. "wonderful! 'twill carry a body through it all from wedding to churching, if you only let it out with spirit enough." "very well, then," said fancy, blushing. "'tis to be, and here goes!" "that's a girl for a husband!" said mrs. dewy. "i do hope he'll come in time!" continued the bride-elect, inventing a new cause of affright, now that the other was demolished. "'twould be a thousand pities if he didn't come, now you be so brave," said mrs. penny. grandfather james, having overheard some of these remarks, said downstairs with mischievous loudness-- "i've known some would-be weddings when the men didn't come." "they've happened not to come, before now, certainly," said mr. penny, cleaning one of the glasses of his spectacles. "o, do hear what they are saying downstairs," whispered fancy. "hush, hush!" she listened. "they have, haven't they, geoffrey?" continued grandfather james, as geoffrey entered. "have what?" said geoffrey. "the men have been known not to come." "that they have," said the keeper. "ay; i've knowed times when the wedding had to be put off through his not appearing, being tired of the woman. and another case i knowed was when the man was catched in a man-trap crossing oaker's wood, and the three months had run out before he got well, and the banns had to be published over again." "how horrible!" said fancy. "they only say it on purpose to tease 'ee, my dear," said mrs. dewy. "'tis quite sad to think what wretched shifts poor maids have been put to," came again from downstairs. "ye should hear clerk wilkins, my brother-law, tell his experiences in marrying couples these last thirty year: sometimes one thing, sometimes another--'tis quite heart-rending--enough to make your hair stand on end." "those things don't happen very often, i know," said fancy, with smouldering uneasiness. "well, really 'tis time dick was here," said the tranter. "don't keep on at me so, grandfather james and mr. dewy, and all you down there!" fancy broke out, unable to endure any longer. "i am sure i shall die, or do something, if you do!" "never you hearken to these old chaps, miss day!" cried nat callcome, the best man, who had just entered, and threw his voice upward through the chinks of the floor as the others had done. "'tis all right; dick's coming on like a wild feller; he'll be here in a minute. the hive o' bees his mother gie'd en for his new garden swarmed jist as he was starting, and he said, 'i can't afford to lose a stock o' bees; no, that i can't, though i fain would; and fancy wouldn't wish it on any account.' so he jist stopped to ting to 'em and shake 'em." "a genuine wise man," said geoffrey. "to be sure, what a day's work we had yesterday!" mr. callcome continued, lowering his voice as if it were not necessary any longer to include those in the room above among his audience, and selecting a remote corner of his best clean handkerchief for wiping his face. "to be sure!" "things so heavy, i suppose," said geoffrey, as if reading through the chimney-window from the far end of the vista. "ay," said nat, looking round the room at points from which furniture had been removed. "and so awkward to carry, too. 'twas ath'art and across dick's garden; in and out dick's door; up and down dick's stairs; round and round dick's chammers till legs were worn to stumps: and dick is so particular, too. and the stores of victuals and drink that lad has laid in: why, 'tis enough for noah's ark! i'm sure i never wish to see a choicer half-dozen of hams than he's got there in his chimley; and the cider i tasted was a very pretty drop, indeed;--none could desire a prettier cider." "they be for the love and the stalled ox both. ah, the greedy martels!" said grandfather james. "well, may-be they be. surely," says i, "that couple between 'em have heaped up so much furniture and victuals, that anybody would think they were going to take hold the big end of married life first, and begin wi' a grown-up family. ah, what a bath of heat we two chaps were in, to be sure, a-getting that furniture in order!" "i do so wish the room below was ceiled," said fancy, as the dressing went on; "we can hear all they say and do down there." "hark! who's that?" exclaimed a small pupil-teacher, who also assisted this morning, to her great delight. she ran half-way down the stairs, and peeped round the banister. "o, you should, you should, you should!" she exclaimed, scrambling up to the room again. "what?" said fancy. "see the bridesmaids! they've just a come! 'tis wonderful, really! 'tis wonderful how muslin can be brought to it. there, they don't look a bit like themselves, but like some very rich sisters o' theirs that nobody knew they had!" "make 'em come up to me, make 'em come up!" cried fancy ecstatically; and the four damsels appointed, namely, miss susan dewy, miss bessie dewy, miss vashti sniff, and miss mercy onmey, surged upstairs, and floated along the passage. "i wish dick would come!" was again the burden of fancy. the same instant a small twig and flower from the creeper outside the door flew in at the open window, and a masculine voice said, "ready, fancy dearest?" "there he is, he is!" cried fancy, tittering spasmodically, and breathing as it were for the first time that morning. the bridesmaids crowded to the window and turned their heads in the direction pointed out, at which motion eight earrings all swung as one:--not looking at dick because they particularly wanted to see him, but with an important sense of their duty as obedient ministers of the will of that apotheosised being--the bride. "he looks very taking!" said miss vashti sniff, a young lady who blushed cream-colour and wore yellow bonnet ribbons. dick was advancing to the door in a painfully new coat of shining cloth, primrose-coloured waistcoat, hat of the same painful style of newness, and with an extra quantity of whiskers shaved off his face, and hair cut to an unwonted shortness in honour of the occasion. "now, i'll run down," said fancy, looking at herself over her shoulder in the glass, and flitting off. "o dick!" she exclaimed, "i am so glad you are come! i knew you would, of course, but i thought, oh if you shouldn't!" "not come, fancy! het or wet, blow or snow, here come i to-day! why, what's possessing your little soul? you never used to mind such things a bit." "ah, mr. dick, i hadn't hoisted my colours and committed myself then!" said fancy. "'tis a pity i can't marry the whole five of ye!" said dick, surveying them all round. "heh-heh-heh!" laughed the four bridesmaids, and fancy privately touched dick and smoothed him down behind his shoulder, as if to assure herself that he was there in flesh and blood as her own property. "well, whoever would have thought such a thing?" said dick, taking off his hat, sinking into a chair, and turning to the elder members of the company. the latter arranged their eyes and lips to signify that in their opinion nobody could have thought such a thing, whatever it was. "that my bees should ha' swarmed just then, of all times and seasons!" continued dick, throwing a comprehensive glance like a net over the whole auditory. "and 'tis a fine swarm, too: i haven't seen such a fine swarm for these ten years." "a' excellent sign," said mrs. penny, from the depths of experience. "a' excellent sign." "i am glad everything seems so right," said fancy with a breath of relief. "and so am i," said the four bridesmaids with much sympathy. "well, bees can't be put off," observed the inharmonious grandfather james. "marrying a woman is a thing you can do at any moment; but a swarm o' bees won't come for the asking." dick fanned himself with his hat. "i can't think," he said thoughtfully, "whatever 'twas i did to offend mr. maybold, a man i like so much too. he rather took to me when he came first, and used to say he should like to see me married, and that he'd marry me, whether the young woman i chose lived in his parish or no. i just hinted to him of it when i put in the banns, but he didn't seem to take kindly to the notion now, and so i said no more. i wonder how it was." "i wonder!" said fancy, looking into vacancy with those beautiful eyes of hers--too refined and beautiful for a tranter's wife; but, perhaps, not too good. "altered his mind, as folks will, i suppose," said the tranter. "well, my sonnies, there'll be a good strong party looking at us to-day as we go along." "and the body of the church," said geoffrey, "will be lined with females, and a row of young fellers' heads, as far down as the eyes, will be noticed just above the sills of the chancel-winders." "ay, you've been through it twice," said reuben, "and well mid know." "i can put up with it for once," said dick, "or twice either, or a dozen times." "o dick!" said fancy reproachfully. "why, dear, that's nothing,--only just a bit of a flourish. you be as nervous as a cat to-day." "and then, of course, when 'tis all over," continued the tranter, "we shall march two and two round the parish." "yes, sure," said mr. penny: "two and two: every man hitched up to his woman, 'a b'lieve." "i never can make a show of myself in that way!" said fancy, looking at dick to ascertain if he could. "i'm agreed to anything you and the company like, my dear!" said mr. richard dewy heartily. "why, we did when we were married, didn't we, ann?" said the tranter; "and so do everybody, my sonnies." "and so did we," said fancy's father. "and so did penny and i," said mrs. penny: "i wore my best bath clogs, i remember, and penny was cross because it made me look so tall." "and so did father and mother," said miss mercy onmey. "and i mean to, come next christmas!" said nat the groomsman vigorously, and looking towards the person of miss vashti sniff. "respectable people don't nowadays," said fancy. "still, since poor mother did, i will." "ay," resumed the tranter, "'twas on a white tuesday when i committed it. mellstock club walked the same day, and we new-married folk went a-gaying round the parish behind 'em. everybody used to wear something white at whitsuntide in them days. my sonnies, i've got the very white trousers that i wore, at home in box now. ha'n't i, ann?" "you had till i cut 'em up for jimmy," said mrs. dewy. "and we ought, by rights, after doing this parish, to go round higher and lower mellstock, and call at viney's, and so work our way hither again across he'th," said mr. penny, recovering scent of the matter in hand. "dairyman viney is a very respectable man, and so is farmer kex, and we ought to show ourselves to them." "true," said the tranter, "we ought to go round mellstock to do the thing well. we shall form a very striking object walking along in rotation, good-now, neighbours?" "that we shall: a proper pretty sight for the nation," said mrs. penny. "hullo!" said the tranter, suddenly catching sight of a singular human figure standing in the doorway, and wearing a long smock-frock of pillow- case cut and of snowy whiteness. "why, leaf! whatever dost thou do here?" "i've come to know if so be i can come to the wedding--hee-hee!" said leaf in a voice of timidity. "now, leaf," said the tranter reproachfully, "you know we don't want 'ee here to-day: we've got no room for ye, leaf." "thomas leaf, thomas leaf, fie upon ye for prying!" said old william. "i know i've got no head, but i thought, if i washed and put on a clane shirt and smock-frock, i might just call," said leaf, turning away disappointed and trembling. "poor feller!" said the tranter, turning to geoffrey. "suppose we must let en come? his looks are rather against en, and he is terrible silly; but 'a have never been in jail, and 'a won't do no harm." leaf looked with gratitude at the tranter for these praises, and then anxiously at geoffrey, to see what effect they would have in helping his cause. "ay, let en come," said geoffrey decisively. "leaf, th'rt welcome, 'st know;" and leaf accordingly remained. they were now all ready for leaving the house, and began to form a procession in the following order: fancy and her father, dick and susan dewy, nat callcome and vashti sniff, ted waywood and mercy onmey, and jimmy and bessie dewy. these formed the executive, and all appeared in strict wedding attire. then came the tranter and mrs. dewy, and last of all mr. and mrs. penny;--the tranter conspicuous by his enormous gloves, size eleven and three-quarters, which appeared at a distance like boxing gloves bleached, and sat rather awkwardly upon his brown hands; this hall- mark of respectability having been set upon himself to-day (by fancy's special request) for the first time in his life. "the proper way is for the bridesmaids to walk together," suggested fancy. "what? 'twas always young man and young woman, arm in crook, in my time!" said geoffrey, astounded. "and in mine!" said the tranter. "and in ours!" said mr. and mrs. penny. "never heard o' such a thing as woman and woman!" said old william; who, with grandfather james and mrs. day, was to stay at home. "whichever way you and the company like, my dear!" said dick, who, being on the point of securing his right to fancy, seemed willing to renounce all other rights in the world with the greatest pleasure. the decision was left to fancy. "well, i think i'd rather have it the way mother had it," she said, and the couples moved along under the trees, every man to his maid. "ah!" said grandfather james to grandfather william as they retired, "i wonder which she thinks most about, dick or her wedding raiment!" "well, 'tis their nature," said grandfather william. "remember the words of the prophet jeremiah: 'can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire?'" now among dark perpendicular firs, like the shafted columns of a cathedral; now through a hazel copse, matted with primroses and wild hyacinths; now under broad beeches in bright young leaves they threaded their way into the high road over yalbury hill, which dipped at that point directly into the village of geoffrey day's parish; and in the space of a quarter of an hour fancy found herself to be mrs. richard dewy, though, much to her surprise, feeling no other than fancy day still. on the circuitous return walk through the lanes and fields, amid much chattering and laughter, especially when they came to stiles, dick discerned a brown spot far up a turnip field. "why, 'tis enoch!" he said to fancy. "i thought i missed him at the house this morning. how is it he's left you?" "he drank too much cider, and it got into his head, and they put him in weatherbury stocks for it. father was obliged to get somebody else for a day or two, and enoch hasn't had anything to do with the woods since." "we might ask him to call down to-night. stocks are nothing for once, considering 'tis our wedding day." the bridal party was ordered to halt. "eno-o-o-o-ch!" cried dick at the top of his voice. "y-a-a-a-a-a-as!" said enoch from the distance. "d'ye know who i be-e-e-e-e-e?" "no-o-o-o-o-o-o!" "dick dew-w-w-w-wy!" "o-h-h-h-h-h!" "just a-ma-a-a-a-a-arried!" "o-h-h-h-h-h!" "this is my wife, fa-a-a-a-a-ancy!" (holding her up to enoch's view as if she had been a nosegay.) "o-h-h-h-h-h!" "will ye come across to the party to-ni-i-i-i-i-i-ight!" "ca-a-a-a-a-an't!" "why n-o-o-o-o-ot?" "don't work for the family no-o-o-o-ow!" "not nice of master enoch," said dick, as they resumed their walk. "you mustn't blame en," said geoffrey; "the man's not hisself now; he's in his morning frame of mind. when he's had a gallon o' cider or ale, or a pint or two of mead, the man's well enough, and his manners be as good as anybody's in the kingdom." chapter ii: under the greenwood tree the point in yalbury wood which abutted on the end of geoffrey day's premises was closed with an ancient tree, horizontally of enormous extent, though having no great pretensions to height. many hundreds of birds had been born amidst the boughs of this single tree; tribes of rabbits and hares had nibbled at its bark from year to year; quaint tufts of fungi had sprung from the cavities of its forks; and countless families of moles and earthworms had crept about its roots. beneath and beyond its shade spread a carefully-tended grass-plot, its purpose being to supply a healthy exercise-ground for young chickens and pheasants; the hens, their mothers, being enclosed in coops placed upon the same green flooring. all these encumbrances were now removed, and as the afternoon advanced, the guests gathered on the spot, where music, dancing, and the singing of songs went forward with great spirit throughout the evening. the propriety of every one was intense by reason of the influence of fancy, who, as an additional precaution in this direction, had strictly charged her father and the tranter to carefully avoid saying 'thee' and 'thou' in their conversation, on the plea that those ancient words sounded so very humiliating to persons of newer taste; also that they were never to be seen drawing the back of the hand across the mouth after drinking--a local english custom of extraordinary antiquity, but stated by fancy to be decidedly dying out among the better classes of society. in addition to the local musicians present, a man who had a thorough knowledge of the tambourine was invited from the village of tantrum clangley,--a place long celebrated for the skill of its inhabitants as performers on instruments of percussion. these important members of the assembly were relegated to a height of two or three feet from the ground, upon a temporary erection of planks supported by barrels. whilst the dancing progressed the older persons sat in a group under the trunk of the tree,--the space being allotted to them somewhat grudgingly by the young ones, who were greedy of pirouetting room,--and fortified by a table against the heels of the dancers. here the gaffers and gammers, whose dancing days were over, told stories of great impressiveness, and at intervals surveyed the advancing and retiring couples from the same retreat, as people on shore might be supposed to survey a naval engagement in the bay beyond; returning again to their tales when the pause was over. those of the whirling throng, who, during the rests between each figure, turned their eyes in the direction of these seated ones, were only able to discover, on account of the music and bustle, that a very striking circumstance was in course of narration--denoted by an emphatic sweep of the hand, snapping of the fingers, close of the lips, and fixed look into the centre of the listener's eye for the space of a quarter of a minute, which raised in that listener such a reciprocating working of face as to sometimes make the distant dancers half wish to know what such an interesting tale could refer to. fancy caused her looks to wear as much matronly expression as was obtainable out of six hours' experience as a wife, in order that the contrast between her own state of life and that of the unmarried young women present might be duly impressed upon the company: occasionally stealing glances of admiration at her left hand, but this quite privately; for her ostensible bearing concerning the matter was intended to show that, though she undoubtedly occupied the most wondrous position in the eyes of the world that had ever been attained, she was almost unconscious of the circumstance, and that the somewhat prominent position in which that wonderfully-emblazoned left hand was continually found to be placed, when handing cups and saucers, knives, forks, and glasses, was quite the result of accident. as to wishing to excite envy in the bosoms of her maiden companions, by the exhibition of the shining ring, every one was to know it was quite foreign to the dignity of such an experienced married woman. dick's imagination in the meantime was far less capable of drawing so much wontedness from his new condition. he had been for two or three hours trying to feel himself merely a newly- married man, but had been able to get no further in the attempt than to realize that he was dick dewy, the tranter's son, at a party given by lord wessex's head man-in-charge, on the outlying yalbury estate, dancing and chatting with fancy day. five country dances, including 'haste to the wedding,' two reels, and three fragments of horn-pipes, brought them to the time for supper, which, on account of the dampness of the grass from the immaturity of the summer season, was spread indoors. at the conclusion of the meal dick went out to put the horse in; and fancy, with the elder half of the four bridesmaids, retired upstairs to dress for the journey to dick's new cottage near mellstock. "how long will you be putting on your bonnet, fancy?" dick inquired at the foot of the staircase. being now a man of business and married, he was strong on the importance of time, and doubled the emphasis of his words in conversing, and added vigour to his nods. "only a minute." "how long is that?" "well, dear, five." "ah, sonnies!" said the tranter, as dick retired, "'tis a talent of the female race that low numbers should stand for high, more especially in matters of waiting, matters of age, and matters of money." "true, true, upon my body," said geoffrey. "ye spak with feeling, geoffrey, seemingly." "anybody that d'know my experience might guess that." "what's she doing now, geoffrey?" "claning out all the upstairs drawers and cupboards, and dusting the second-best chainey--a thing that's only done once a year. 'if there's work to be done i must do it,' says she, 'wedding or no.'" "'tis my belief she's a very good woman at bottom." "she's terrible deep, then." mrs. penny turned round. "well, 'tis humps and hollers with the best of us; but still and for all that, dick and fancy stand as fair a chance of having a bit of sunsheen as any married pair in the land." "ay, there's no gainsaying it." mrs. dewy came up, talking to one person and looking at another. "happy, yes," she said. "'tis always so when a couple is so exactly in tune with one another as dick and she." "when they be'n't too poor to have time to sing," said grandfather james. "i tell ye, neighbours, when the pinch comes," said the tranter: "when the oldest daughter's boots be only a size less than her mother's, and the rest o' the flock close behind her. a sharp time for a man that, my sonnies; a very sharp time! chanticleer's comb is a-cut then, 'a believe." "that's about the form o't," said mr. penny. "that'll put the stuns upon a man, when you must measure mother and daughter's lasts to tell 'em apart." "you've no cause to complain, reuben, of such a close-coming flock," said mrs. dewy; "for ours was a straggling lot enough, god knows!" "i d'know it, i d'know it," said the tranter. "you be a well-enough woman, ann." mrs. dewy put her mouth in the form of a smile, and put it back again without smiling. "and if they come together, they go together," said mrs. penny, whose family had been the reverse of the tranter's; "and a little money will make either fate tolerable. and money can be made by our young couple, i know." "yes, that it can!" said the impulsive voice of leaf, who had hitherto humbly admired the proceedings from a corner. "it can be done--all that's wanted is a few pounds to begin with. that's all! i know a story about it!" "let's hear thy story, leaf," said the tranter. "i never knew you were clever enough to tell a story. silence, all of ye! mr. leaf will tell a story." "tell your story, thomas leaf," said grandfather william in the tone of a schoolmaster. "once," said the delighted leaf, in an uncertain voice, "there was a man who lived in a house! well, this man went thinking and thinking night and day. at last, he said to himself, as i might, 'if i had only ten pound, i'd make a fortune.' at last by hook or by crook, behold he got the ten pounds!" "only think of that!" said nat callcome satirically. "silence!" said the tranter. "well, now comes the interesting part of the story! in a little time he made that ten pounds twenty. then a little time after that he doubled it, and made it forty. well, he went on, and a good while after that he made it eighty, and on to a hundred. well, by-and-by he made it two hundred! well, you'd never believe it, but--he went on and made it four hundred! he went on, and what did he do? why, he made it eight hundred! yes, he did," continued leaf, in the highest pitch of excitement, bringing down his fist upon his knee with such force that he quivered with the pain; "yes, and he went on and made it a thousand!" "hear, hear!" said the tranter. "better than the history of england, my sonnies!" "thank you for your story, thomas leaf," said grandfather william; and then leaf gradually sank into nothingness again. amid a medley of laughter, old shoes, and elder-wine, dick and his bride took their departure, side by side in the excellent new spring-cart which the young tranter now possessed. the moon was just over the full, rendering any light from lamps or their own beauties quite unnecessary to the pair. they drove slowly along yalbury bottom, where the road passed between two copses. dick was talking to his companion. "fancy," he said, "why we are so happy is because there is such full confidence between us. ever since that time you confessed to that little flirtation with shiner by the river (which was really no flirtation at all), i have thought how artless and good you must be to tell me o' such a trifling thing, and to be so frightened about it as you were. it has won me to tell you my every deed and word since then. we'll have no secrets from each other, darling, will we ever?--no secret at all." "none from to-day," said fancy. "hark! what's that?" from a neighbouring thicket was suddenly heard to issue in a loud, musical, and liquid voice-- "tippiwit! swe-e-et! ki-ki-ki! come hither, come hither, come hither!" "o, 'tis the nightingale," murmured she, and thought of a secret she would never tell. footnotes: { } this, a local expression, must be a corruption of something less questionable. the trumpet-major john loveday a soldier in the war with buonaparte and robert his brother first mate in the merchant service a tale by thomas hardy with a map of wessex macmillan and co., limited st. martin's street, london copyright _first edition_ ( _vols._) . _new edition_ ( _vol._) _and reprints_ - _new edition and reprints_ - _first published by macmillan and co._, _crown_ _vo_, . _reprinted_ , , _pocket edition_ . _reprinted_ , , , , , preface the present tale is founded more largely on testimony--oral and written--than any other in this series. the external incidents which direct its course are mostly an unexaggerated reproduction of the recollections of old persons well known to the author in childhood, but now long dead, who were eye-witnesses of those scenes. if wholly transcribed their recollections would have filled a volume thrice the length of 'the trumpet-major.' down to the middle of this century, and later, there were not wanting, in the neighbourhood of the places more or less clearly indicated herein, casual relics of the circumstances amid which the action moves--our preparations for defence against the threatened invasion of england by buonaparte. an outhouse door riddled with bullet-holes, which had been extemporized by a solitary man as a target for firelock practice when the landing was hourly expected, a heap of bricks and clods on a beacon-hill, which had formed the chimney and walls of the hut occupied by the beacon- keeper, worm-eaten shafts and iron heads of pikes for the use of those who had no better weapons, ridges on the down thrown up during the encampment, fragments of volunteer uniform, and other such lingering remains, brought to my imagination in early childhood the state of affairs at the date of the war more vividly than volumes of history could have done. those who have attempted to construct a coherent narrative of past times from the fragmentary information furnished by survivors, are aware of the difficulty of ascertaining the true sequence of events indiscriminately recalled. for this purpose the newspapers of the date were indispensable. of other documents consulted i may mention, for the satisfaction of those who love a true story, that the 'address to all ranks and descriptions of englishmen' was transcribed from an original copy in a local museum; that the hieroglyphic portrait of napoleon existed as a print down to the present day in an old woman's cottage near 'overcombe;' that the particulars of the king's doings at his favourite watering-place were augmented by details from records of the time. the drilling scene of the local militia received some additions from an account given in so grave a work as gifford's 'history of the wars of the french revolution' (london, ). but on reference to the history i find i was mistaken in supposing the account to be advanced as authentic, or to refer to rural england. however, it does in a large degree accord with the local traditions of such scenes that i have heard recounted, times without number, and the system of drill was tested by reference to the army regulations of , and other military handbooks. almost the whole narrative of the supposed landing of the french in the bay is from oral relation as aforesaid. other proofs of the veracity of this chronicle have escaped my recollection. t. h. _october_ . i. what was seen from the window overlooking the down in the days of high-waisted and muslin-gowned women, when the vast amount of soldiering going on in the country was a cause of much trembling to the sex, there lived in a village near the wessex coast two ladies of good report, though unfortunately of limited means. the elder was a mrs. martha garland, a landscape-painter's widow, and the other was her only daughter anne. anne was fair, very fair, in a poetical sense; but in complexion she was of that particular tint between blonde and brunette which is inconveniently left without a name. her eyes were honest and inquiring, her mouth cleanly cut and yet not classical, the middle point of her upper lip scarcely descending so far as it should have done by rights, so that at the merest pleasant thought, not to mention a smile, portions of two or three white teeth were uncovered whether she would or not. some people said that this was very attractive. she was graceful and slender, and, though but little above five feet in height, could draw herself up to look tall. in her manner, in her comings and goings, in her 'i'll do this,' or 'i'll do that,' she combined dignity with sweetness as no other girl could do; and any impressionable stranger youths who passed by were led to yearn for a windfall of speech from her, and to see at the same time that they would not get it. in short, beneath all that was charming and simple in this young woman there lurked a real firmness, unperceived at first, as the speck of colour lurks unperceived in the heart of the palest parsley flower. she wore a white handkerchief to cover her white neck, and a cap on her head with a pink ribbon round it, tied in a bow at the front. she had a great variety of these cap-ribbons, the young men being fond of sending them to her as presents until they fell definitely in love with a special sweetheart elsewhere, when they left off doing so. between the border of her cap and her forehead were ranged a row of round brown curls, like swallows' nests under eaves. she lived with her widowed mother in a portion of an ancient building formerly a manor-house, but now a mill, which, being too large for his own requirements, the miller had found it convenient to divide and appropriate in part to these highly respectable tenants. in this dwelling mrs. garland's and anne's ears were soothed morning, noon, and night by the music of the mill, the wheels and cogs of which, being of wood, produced notes that might have borne in their minds a remote resemblance to the wooden tones of the stopped diapason in an organ. occasionally, when the miller was bolting, there was added to these continuous sounds the cheerful clicking of the hopper, which did not deprive them of rest except when it was kept going all night; and over and above all this they had the pleasure of knowing that there crept in through every crevice, door, and window of their dwelling, however tightly closed, a subtle mist of superfine flour from the grinding room, quite invisible, but making its presence known in the course of time by giving a pallid and ghostly look to the best furniture. the miller frequently apologized to his tenants for the intrusion of this insidious dry fog; but the widow was of a friendly and thankful nature, and she said that she did not mind it at all, being as it was, not nasty dirt, but the blessed staff of life. by good-humour of this sort, and in other ways, mrs. garland acknowledged her friendship for her neighbour, with whom anne and herself associated to an extent which she never could have anticipated when, tempted by the lowness of the rent, they first removed thither after her husband's death from a larger house at the other end of the village. those who have lived in remote places where there is what is called no society will comprehend the gradual levelling of distinctions that went on in this case at some sacrifice of gentility on the part of one household. the widow was sometimes sorry to find with what readiness anne caught up some dialect-word or accent from the miller and his friends; but he was so good and true-hearted a man, and she so easy-minded, unambitious a woman, that she would not make life a solitude for fastidious reasons. more than all, she had good ground for thinking that the miller secretly admired her, and this added a piquancy to the situation. * * * * * on a fine summer morning, when the leaves were warm under the sun, and the more industrious bees abroad, diving into every blue and red cup that could possibly be considered a flower, anne was sitting at the back window of her mother's portion of the house, measuring out lengths of worsted for a fringed rug that she was making, which lay, about three- quarters finished, beside her. the work, though chromatically brilliant, was tedious: a hearth-rug was a thing which nobody worked at from morning to night; it was taken up and put down; it was in the chair, on the floor, across the hand-rail, under the bed, kicked here, kicked there, rolled away in the closet, brought out again, and so on more capriciously perhaps than any other home-made article. nobody was expected to finish a rug within a calculable period, and the wools of the beginning became faded and historical before the end was reached. a sense of this inherent nature of worsted-work rather than idleness led anne to look rather frequently from the open casement. immediately before her was the large, smooth millpond, over-full, and intruding into the hedge and into the road. the water, with its flowing leaves and spots of froth, was stealing away, like time, under the dark arch, to tumble over the great slimy wheel within. on the other side of the mill-pond was an open place called the cross, because it was three- quarters of one, two lanes and a cattle-drive meeting there. it was the general rendezvous and arena of the surrounding village. behind this a steep slope rose high into the sky, merging in a wide and open down, now littered with sheep newly shorn. the upland by its height completely sheltered the mill and village from north winds, making summers of springs, reducing winters to autumn temperatures, and permitting myrtle to flourish in the open air. the heaviness of noon pervaded the scene, and under its influence the sheep had ceased to feed. nobody was standing at the cross, the few inhabitants being indoors at their dinner. no human being was on the down, and no human eye or interest but anne's seemed to be concerned with it. the bees still worked on, and the butterflies did not rest from roving, their smallness seeming to shield them from the stagnating effect that this turning moment of day had on larger creatures. otherwise all was still. the girl glanced at the down and the sheep for no particular reason; the steep margin of turf and daisies rising above the roofs, chimneys, apple- trees, and church tower of the hamlet around her, bounded the view from her position, and it was necessary to look somewhere when she raised her head. while thus engaged in working and stopping her attention was attracted by the sudden rising and running away of the sheep squatted on the down; and there succeeded sounds of a heavy tramping over the hard sod which the sheep had quitted, the tramp being accompanied by a metallic jingle. turning her eyes further she beheld two cavalry soldiers on bulky grey chargers, armed and accoutred throughout, ascending the down at a point to the left where the incline was comparatively easy. the burnished chains, buckles, and plates of their trappings shone like little looking-glasses, and the blue, red, and white about them was unsubdued by weather or wear. the two troopers rode proudly on, as if nothing less than crowns and empires ever concerned their magnificent minds. they reached that part of the down which lay just in front of her, where they came to a halt. in another minute there appeared behind them a group containing some half- dozen more of the same sort. these came on, halted, and dismounted likewise. two of the soldiers then walked some distance onward together, when one stood still, the other advancing further, and stretching a white line of tape between them. two more of the men marched to another outlying point, where they made marks in the ground. thus they walked about and took distances, obviously according to some preconcerted scheme. at the end of this systematic proceeding one solitary horseman--a commissioned officer, if his uniform could be judged rightly at that distance--rode up the down, went over the ground, looked at what the others had done, and seemed to think that it was good. and then the girl heard yet louder tramps and clankings, and she beheld rising from where the others had risen a whole column of cavalry in marching order. at a distance behind these came a cloud of dust enveloping more and more troops, their arms and accoutrements reflecting the sun through the haze in faint flashes, stars, and streaks of light. the whole body approached slowly towards the plateau at the top of the down. anne threw down her work, and letting her eyes remain on the nearing masses of cavalry, the worsteds getting entangled as they would, said, 'mother, mother; come here! here's such a fine sight! what does it mean? what can they be going to do up there?' the mother thus invoked ran upstairs and came forward to the window. she was a woman of sanguine mouth and eye, unheroic manner, and pleasant general appearance; a little more tarnished as to surface, but not much worse in contour than the girl herself. widow garland's thoughts were those of the period. 'can it be the french,' she said, arranging herself for the extremest form of consternation. 'can that arch-enemy of mankind have landed at last?' it should be stated that at this time there were two arch-enemies of mankind--satan as usual, and buonaparte, who had sprung up and eclipsed his elder rival altogether. mrs. garland alluded, of course, to the junior gentleman. 'it cannot be he,' said anne. 'ah! there's simon burden, the man who watches at the beacon. he'll know!' she waved her hand to an aged form of the same colour as the road, who had just appeared beyond the mill-pond, and who, though active, was bowed to that degree which almost reproaches a feeling observer for standing upright. the arrival of the soldiery had drawn him out from his drop of drink at the 'duke of york' as it had attracted anne. at her call he crossed the mill-bridge, and came towards the window. anne inquired of him what it all meant; but simon burden, without answering, continued to move on with parted gums, staring at the cavalry on his own private account with a concern that people often show about temporal phenomena when such matters can affect them but a short time longer. 'you'll walk into the millpond!' said anne. 'what are they doing? you were a soldier many years ago, and ought to know.' 'don't ask me, mis'ess anne,' said the military relic, depositing his body against the wall one limb at a time. 'i were only in the foot, ye know, and never had a clear understanding of horses. ay, i be a old man, and of no judgment now.' some additional pressure, however, caused him to search further in his worm-eaten magazine of ideas, and he found that he did know in a dim irresponsible way. the soldiers must have come there to camp: those men they had seen first were the markers: they had come on before the rest to measure out the ground. he who had accompanied them was the quartermaster. 'and so you see they have got all the lines marked out by the time the regiment have come up,' he added. 'and then they will--well-a-deary! who'd ha' supposed that overcombe would see such a day as this!' 'and then they will--' 'then-- ah, it's gone from me again!' said simon. 'o, and then they will raise their tents, you know, and picket their horses. that was it; so it was.' by this time the column of horse had ascended into full view, and they formed a lively spectacle as they rode along the high ground in marching order, backed by the pale blue sky, and lit by the southerly sun. their uniform was bright and attractive; white buckskin pantaloons, three-quarter boots, scarlet shakos set off with lace, mustachios waxed to a needle point; and above all, those richly ornamented blue jackets mantled with the historic pelisse--that fascination to women, and encumbrance to the wearers themselves. ''tis the york hussars!' said simon burden, brightening like a dying ember fanned. 'foreigners to a man, and enrolled long since my time. but as good hearty comrades, they say, as you'll find in the king's service.' 'here are more and different ones,' said mrs. garland. other troops had, during the last few minutes, been ascending the down at a remoter point, and now drew near. these were of different weight and build from the others; lighter men, in helmet hats, with white plumes. 'i don't know which i like best,' said anne. 'these, i think, after all.' simon, who had been looking hard at the latter, now said that they were the --th dragoons. 'all englishmen they,' said the old man. 'they lay at budmouth barracks a few years ago.' 'they did. i remember it,' said mrs. garland. 'and lots of the chaps about here 'listed at the time,' said simon. 'i can call to mind that there was--ah, 'tis gone from me again! however, all that's of little account now.' the dragoons passed in front of the lookers-on as the others had done, and their gay plumes, which had hung lazily during the ascent, swung to northward as they reached the top, showing that on the summit a fresh breeze blew. 'but look across there,' said anne. there had entered upon the down from another direction several battalions of foot, in white kerseymere breeches and cloth gaiters. they seemed to be weary from a long march, the original black of their gaiters and boots being whity- brown with dust. presently came regimental waggons, and the private canteen carts which followed at the end of a convoy. the space in front of the mill-pond was now occupied by nearly all the inhabitants of the village, who had turned out in alarm, and remained for pleasure, their eyes lighted up with interest in what they saw; for trappings and regimentals, war horses and men, in towns an attraction, were here almost a sublimity. the troops filed to their lines, dismounted, and in quick time took off their accoutrements, rolled up their sheep-skins, picketed and unbitted their horses, and made ready to erect the tents as soon as they could be taken from the waggons and brought forward. when this was done, at a given signal the canvases flew up from the sod; and thenceforth every man had a place in which to lay his head. though nobody seemed to be looking on but the few at the window and in the village street, there were, as a matter of fact, many eyes converging upon that military arrival in its high and conspicuous position, not to mention the glances of birds and other wild creatures. men in distant gardens, women in orchards and at cottage-doors, shepherds on remote hills, turnip-hoers in blue-green enclosures miles away, captains with spy-glasses out at sea, were regarding the picture keenly. those three or four thousand men of one machine-like movement, some of them swashbucklers by nature; others, doubtless, of a quiet shop-keeping disposition who had inadvertently got into uniform--all of them had arrived from nobody knew where, and hence were matter of great curiosity. they seemed to the mere eye to belong to a different order of beings from those who inhabited the valleys below. apparently unconscious and careless of what all the world was doing elsewhere, they remained picturesquely engrossed in the business of making themselves a habitation on the isolated spot which they had chosen. mrs. garland was of a festive and sanguine turn of mind, a woman soon set up and soon set down, and the coming of the regiments quite excited her. she thought there was reason for putting on her best cap, thought that perhaps there was not; that she would hurry on the dinner and go out in the afternoon; then that she would, after all, do nothing unusual, nor show any silly excitements whatever, since they were unbecoming in a mother and a widow. thus circumscribing her intentions till she was toned down to an ordinary person of forty, mrs. garland accompanied her daughter downstairs to dine, saying, 'presently we will call on miller loveday, and hear what he thinks of it all.' ii. somebody knocks and comes in miller loveday was the representative of an ancient family of corn-grinders whose history is lost in the mists of antiquity. his ancestral line was contemporaneous with that of de ros, howard, and de la zouche; but, owing to some trifling deficiency in the possessions of the house of loveday, the individual names and intermarriages of its members were not recorded during the middle ages, and thus their private lives in any given century were uncertain. but it was known that the family had formed matrimonial alliances with farmers not so very small, and once with a gentleman-tanner, who had for many years purchased after their death the horses of the most aristocratic persons in the county--fiery steeds that earlier in their career had been valued at many hundred guineas. it was also ascertained that mr. loveday's great-grandparents had been eight in number, and his great-great-grandparents sixteen, every one of whom reached to years of discretion: at every stage backwards his sires and gammers thus doubled and doubled till they became a vast body of gothic ladies and gentlemen of the rank known as ceorls or villeins, full of importance to the country at large, and ramifying throughout the unwritten history of england. his immediate father had greatly improved the value of their residence by building a new chimney, and setting up an additional pair of millstones. overcombe mill presented at one end the appearance of a hard-worked house slipping into the river, and at the other of an idle, genteel place, half- cloaked with creepers at this time of the year, and having no visible connexion with flour. it had hips instead of gables, giving it a round- shouldered look, four chimneys with no smoke coming out of them, two zigzag cracks in the wall, several open windows, with a looking-glass here and there inside, showing its warped back to the passer-by; snowy dimity curtains waving in the draught; two mill doors, one above the other, the upper enabling a person to step out upon nothing at a height of ten feet from the ground; a gaping arch vomiting the river, and a lean, long-nosed fellow looking out from the mill doorway, who was the hired grinder, except when a bulging fifteen stone man occupied the same place, namely, the miller himself. behind the mill door, and invisible to the mere wayfarer who did not visit the family, were chalked addition and subtraction sums, many of them originally done wrong, and the figures half rubbed out and corrected, noughts being turned into nines, and ones into twos. these were the miller's private calculations. there were also chalked in the same place rows and rows of strokes like open palings, representing the calculations of the grinder, who in his youthful ciphering studies had not gone so far as arabic figures. in the court in front were two worn-out millstones, made useful again by being let in level with the ground. here people stood to smoke and consider things in muddy weather; and cats slept on the clean surfaces when it was hot. in the large stubbard-tree at the corner of the garden was erected a pole of larch fir, which the miller had bought with others at a sale of small timber in damer's wood one christmas week. it rose from the upper boughs of the tree to about the height of a fisherman's mast, and on the top was a vane in the form of a sailor with his arm stretched out. when the sun shone upon this figure it could be seen that the greater part of his countenance was gone, and the paint washed from his body so far as to reveal that he had been a soldier in red before he became a sailor in blue. the image had, in fact, been john, one of our coming characters, and was then turned into robert, another of them. this revolving piece of statuary could not, however, be relied on as a vane, owing to the neighbouring hill, which formed variable currents in the wind. the leafy and quieter wing of the mill-house was the part occupied by mrs. garland and her daughter, who made up in summer-time for the narrowness of their quarters by overflowing into the garden on stools and chairs. the parlour or dining-room had a stone floor--a fact which the widow sought to disguise by double carpeting, lest the standing of anne and herself should be lowered in the public eye. here now the mid-day meal went lightly and mincingly on, as it does where there is no greedy carnivorous man to keep the dishes about, and was hanging on the close when somebody entered the passage as far as the chink of the parlour door, and tapped. this proceeding was probably adopted to kindly avoid giving trouble to susan, the neighbour's pink daughter, who helped at mrs. garland's in the mornings, but was at that moment particularly occupied in standing on the water-butt and gazing at the soldiers, with an inhaling position of the mouth and circular eyes. there was a flutter in the little dining-room--the sensitiveness of habitual solitude makes hearts beat for preternaturally small reasons--and a guessing as to who the visitor might be. it was some military gentleman from the camp perhaps? no; that was impossible. it was the parson? no; he would not come at dinner-time. it was the well-informed man who travelled with drapery and the best birmingham earrings? not at all; his time was not till thursday at three. before they could think further the visitor moved forward another step, and the diners got a glimpse of him through the same friendly chink that had afforded him a view of the garland dinner-table. 'o! it is only loveday.' this approximation to nobody was the miller above mentioned, a hale man of fifty-five or sixty--hale all through, as many were in those days, and not merely veneered with purple by exhilarating victuals and drinks, though the latter were not at all despised by him. his face was indeed rather pale than otherwise, for he had just come from the mill. it was capable of immense changes of expression: mobility was its essence, a roll of flesh forming a buttress to his nose on each side, and a deep ravine lying between his lower lip and the tumulus represented by his chin. these fleshy lumps moved stealthily, as if of their own accord, whenever his fancy was tickled. his eyes having lighted on the table-cloth, plates, and viands, he found himself in a position which had a sensible awkwardness for a modest man who always liked to enter only at seasonable times the presence of a girl of such pleasantly soft ways as anne garland, she who could make apples seem like peaches, and throw over her shillings the glamour of guineas when she paid him for flour. 'dinner is over, neighbour loveday; please come in,' said the widow, seeing his case. the miller said something about coming in presently; but anne pressed him to stay, with a tender motion of her lip as it played on the verge of a solicitous smile without quite lapsing into one--her habitual manner when speaking. loveday took off his low-crowned hat and advanced. he had not come about pigs or fowls this time. 'you have been looking out, like the rest o' us, no doubt, mrs. garland, at the mampus of soldiers that have come upon the down? well, one of the horse regiments is the --th dragoons, my son john's regiment, you know.' the announcement, though it interested them, did not create such an effect as the father of john had seemed to anticipate; but anne, who liked to say pleasant things, replied, 'the dragoons looked nicer than the foot, or the german cavalry either.' 'they are a handsome body of men,' said the miller in a disinterested voice. 'faith! i didn't know they were coming, though it may be in the newspaper all the time. but old derriman keeps it so long that we never know things till they be in everybody's mouth.' this derriman was a squireen living near, who was chiefly distinguished in the present warlike time by having a nephew in the yeomanry. 'we were told that the yeomanry went along the turnpike road yesterday,' said anne; 'and they say that they were a pretty sight, and quite soldierly.' 'ah! well--they be not regulars,' said miller loveday, keeping back harsher criticism as uncalled for. but inflamed by the arrival of the dragoons, which had been the exciting cause of his call, his mind would not go to yeomanry. 'john has not been home these five years,' he said. 'and what rank does he hold now?' said the widow. 'he's trumpet-major, ma'am; and a good musician.' the miller, who was a good father, went on to explain that john had seen some service, too. he had enlisted when the regiment was lying in this neighbourhood, more than eleven years before, which put his father out of temper with him, as he had wished him to follow on at the mill. but as the lad had enlisted seriously, and as he had often said that he would be a soldier, the miller had thought that he would let jack take his chance in the profession of his choice. loveday had two sons, and the second was now brought into the conversation by a remark of anne's that neither of them seemed to care for the miller's business. 'no,' said loveday in a less buoyant tone. 'robert, you see, must needs go to sea.' 'he is much younger than his brother?' said mrs. garland. about four years, the miller told her. his soldier son was two-and-thirty, and bob was twenty-eight. when bob returned from his present voyage, he was to be persuaded to stay and assist as grinder in the mill, and go to sea no more. 'a sailor-miller!' said anne. 'o, he knows as much about mill business as i do,' said loveday; 'he was intended for it, you know, like john. but, bless me!' he continued, 'i am before my story. i'm come more particularly to ask you, ma'am, and you, anne my honey, if you will join me and a few friends at a leetle homely supper that i shall gi'e to please the chap now he's come? i can do no less than have a bit of a randy, as the saying is, now that he's here safe and sound.' mrs. garland wanted to catch her daughter's eye; she was in some doubt about her answer. but anne's eye was not to be caught, for she hated hints, nods, and calculations of any kind in matters which should be regulated by impulse; and the matron replied, 'if so be 'tis possible, we'll be there. you will tell us the day?' he would, as soon as he had seen son john. ''twill be rather untidy, you know, owing to my having no womenfolks in the house; and my man david is a poor dunder-headed feller for getting up a feast. poor chap! his sight is bad, that's true, and he's very good at making the beds, and oiling the legs of the chairs and other furniture, or i should have got rid of him years ago.' 'you should have a woman to attend to the house, loveday,' said the widow. 'yes, i should, but--. well, 'tis a fine day, neighbours. hark! i fancy i hear the noise of pots and pans up at the camp, or my ears deceive me. poor fellows, they must be hungry! good day t'ye, ma'am.' and the miller went away. all that afternoon overcombe continued in a ferment of interest in the military investment, which brought the excitement of an invasion without the strife. there were great discussions on the merits and appearance of the soldiery. the event opened up, to the girls unbounded possibilities of adoring and being adored, and to the young men an embarrassment of dashing acquaintances which quite superseded falling in love. thirteen of these lads incontinently stated within the space of a quarter of an hour that there was nothing in the world like going for a soldier. the young women stated little, but perhaps thought the more; though, in justice, they glanced round towards the encampment from the corners of their blue and brown eyes in the most demure and modest manner that could be desired. in the evening the village was lively with soldiers' wives; a tree full of starlings would not have rivalled the chatter that was going on. these ladies were very brilliantly dressed, with more regard for colour than for material. purple, red, and blue bonnets were numerous, with bunches of cocks' feathers; and one had on an arcadian hat of green sarcenet, turned up in front to show her cap underneath. it had once belonged to an officer's lady, and was not so much stained, except where the occasional storms of rain, incidental to a military life, had caused the green to run and stagnate in curious watermarks like peninsulas and islands. some of the prettiest of these butterfly wives had been fortunate enough to get lodgings in the cottages, and were thus spared the necessity of living in huts and tents on the down. those who had not been so fortunate were not rendered more amiable by the success of their sisters-in-arms, and called them names which brought forth retorts and rejoinders; till the end of these alternative remarks seemed dependent upon the close of the day. one of these new arrivals, who had a rosy nose and a slight thickness of voice, which, as anne said, she couldn't help, poor thing, seemed to have seen so much of the world, and to have been in so many campaigns, that anne would have liked to take her into their own house, so as to acquire some of that practical knowledge of the history of england which the lady possessed, and which could not be got from books. but the narrowness of mrs. garland's rooms absolutely forbade this, and the houseless treasury of experience was obliged to look for quarters elsewhere. that night anne retired early to bed. the events of the day, cheerful as they were in themselves, had been unusual enough to give her a slight headache. before getting into bed she went to the window, and lifted the white curtains that hung across it. the moon was shining, though not as yet into the valley, but just peeping above the ridge of the down, where the white cones of the encampment were softly touched by its light. the quarter-guard and foremost tents showed themselves prominently; but the body of the camp, the officers' tents, kitchens, canteen, and appurtenances in the rear were blotted out by the ground, because of its height above her. she could discern the forms of one or two sentries moving to and fro across the disc of the moon at intervals. she could hear the frequent shuffling and tossing of the horses tied to the pickets; and in the other direction the miles-long voice of the sea, whispering a louder note at those points of its length where hampered in its ebb and flow by some jutting promontory or group of boulders. louder sounds suddenly broke this approach to silence; they came from the camp of dragoons, were taken up further to the right by the camp of the hanoverians, and further on still by the body of infantry. it was tattoo. feeling no desire to sleep, she listened yet longer, looked at charles's wain swinging over the church tower, and the moon ascending higher and higher over the right-hand streets of tents, where, instead of parade and bustle, there was nothing going on but snores and dreams, the tired soldiers lying by this time under their proper canvases, radiating like spokes from the pole of each tent. at last anne gave up thinking, and retired like the rest. the night wore on, and, except the occasional 'all's well' of the sentries, no voice was heard in the camp or in the village below. iii. the mill becomes an important centre of operations the next morning miss garland awoke with an impression that something more than usual was going on, and she recognized as soon as she could clearly reason that the proceedings, whatever they might be, lay not far away from her bedroom window. the sounds were chiefly those of pickaxes and shovels. anne got up, and, lifting the corner of the curtain about an inch, peeped out. a number of soldiers were busily engaged in making a zigzag path down the incline from the camp to the river-head at the back of the house, and judging from the quantity of work already got through they must have begun very early. squads of men were working at several equidistant points in the proposed pathway, and by the time that anne had dressed herself each section of the length had been connected with those above and below it, so that a continuous and easy track was formed from the crest of the down to the bottom of the steep. the down rested on a bed of solid chalk, and the surface exposed by the roadmakers formed a white ribbon, serpenting from top to bottom. then the relays of working soldiers all disappeared, and, not long after, a troop of dragoons in watering order rode forward at the top and began to wind down the new path. they came lower and closer, and at last were immediately beneath her window, gathering themselves up on the space by the mill-pond. a number of the horses entered it at the shallow part, drinking and splashing and tossing about. perhaps as many as thirty, half of them with riders on their backs, were in the water at one time; the thirsty animals drank, stamped, flounced, and drank again, letting the clear, cool water dribble luxuriously from their mouths. miller loveday was looking on from over his garden hedge, and many admiring villagers were gathered around. gazing up higher, anne saw other troops descending by the new road from the camp, those which had already been to the pond making room for these by withdrawing along the village lane and returning to the top by a circuitous route. suddenly the miller exclaimed, as in fulfilment of expectation, 'ah, john, my boy; good morning!' and the reply of 'morning, father,' came from a well-mounted soldier near him, who did not, however, form one of the watering party. anne could not see his face very clearly, but she had no doubt that this was john loveday. there were tones in the voice which reminded her of old times, those of her very infancy, when johnny loveday had been top boy in the village school, and had wanted to learn painting of her father. the deeps and shallows of the mill-pond being better known to him than to any other man in the camp, he had apparently come down on that account, and was cautioning some of the horsemen against riding too far in towards the mill-head. since her childhood and his enlistment anne had seen him only once, and then but casually, when he was home on a short furlough. his figure was not much changed from what it had been; but the many sunrises and sunsets which had passed since that day, developing her from a comparative child to womanhood, had abstracted some of his angularities, reddened his skin, and given him a foreign look. it was interesting to see what years of training and service had done for this man. few would have supposed that the white and the blue coats of miller and soldier covered the forms of father and son. before the last troop of dragoons rode off they were welcomed in a body by miller loveday, who still stood in his outer garden, this being a plot lying below the mill-tail, and stretching to the water-side. it was just the time of year when cherries are ripe, and hang in clusters under their dark leaves. while the troopers loitered on their horses, and chatted to the miller across the stream, he gathered bunches of the fruit, and held them up over the garden hedge for the acceptance of anybody who would have them; whereupon the soldiers rode into the water to where it had washed holes in the garden bank, and, reining their horses there, caught the cherries in their forage-caps, or received bunches of them on the ends of their switches, with the dignified laugh that became martial men when stooping to slightly boyish amusement. it was a cheerful, careless, unpremeditated half-hour, which returned like the scent of a flower to the memories of some of those who enjoyed it, even at a distance of many years after, when they lay wounded and weak in foreign lands. then dragoons and horses wheeled off as the others had done; and troops of the german legion next came down and entered in panoramic procession the space below anne's eyes, as if on purpose to gratify her. these were notable by their mustachios, and queues wound tightly with brown ribbon to the level of their broad shoulder-blades. they were charmed, as the others had been, by the head and neck of miss garland in the little square window overlooking the scene of operations, and saluted her with devoted foreign civility, and in such overwhelming numbers that the modest girl suddenly withdrew herself into the room, and had a private blush between the chest of drawers and the washing-stand. when she came downstairs her mother said, 'i have been thinking what i ought to wear to miller loveday's to-night.' 'to miller loveday's?' said anne. 'yes. the party is to-night. he has been in here this morning to tell me that he has seen his son, and they have fixed this evening.' 'do you think we ought to go, mother?' said anne slowly, and looking at the smaller features of the window-flowers. 'why not?' said mrs. garland. 'he will only have men there except ourselves, will he? and shall we be right to go alone among 'em?' anne had not recovered from the ardent gaze of the gallant york hussars, whose voices reached her even now in converse with loveday. 'la, anne, how proud you are!' said widow garland. 'why, isn't he our nearest neighbour and our landlord? and don't he always fetch our faggots from the wood, and keep us in vegetables for next to nothing?' 'that's true,' said anne. 'well, we can't be distant with the man. and if the enemy land next autumn, as everybody says they will, we shall have quite to depend upon the miller's waggon and horses. he's our only friend.' 'yes, so he is,' said anne. 'and you had better go, mother; and i'll stay at home. they will be all men; and i don't like going.' mrs. garland reflected. 'well, if you don't want to go, i don't,' she said. 'perhaps, as you are growing up, it would be better to stay at home this time. your father was a professional man, certainly.' having spoken as a mother, she sighed as a woman. 'why do you sigh, mother?' 'you are so prim and stiff about everything.' 'very well--we'll go.' 'o no--i am not sure that we ought. i did not promise, and there will be no trouble in keeping away.' anne apparently did not feel certain of her own opinion, and, instead of supporting or contradicting, looked thoughtfully down, and abstractedly brought her hands together on her bosom, till her fingers met tip to tip. as the day advanced the young woman and her mother became aware that great preparations were in progress in the miller's wing of the house. the partitioning between the lovedays and the garlands was not very thorough, consisting in many cases of a simple screwing up of the doors in the dividing walls; and thus when the mill began any new performances they proclaimed themselves at once in the more private dwelling. the smell of miller loveday's pipe came down mrs. garland's chimney of an evening with the greatest regularity. every time that he poked his fire they knew from the vehemence or deliberateness of the blows the precise state of his mind; and when he wound his clock on sunday nights the whirr of that monitor reminded the widow to wind hers. this transit of noises was most perfect where loveday's lobby adjoined mrs. garland's pantry; and anne, who was occupied for some time in the latter apartment, enjoyed the privilege of hearing the visitors arrive and of catching stray sounds and words without the connecting phrases that made them entertaining, to judge from the laughter they evoked. the arrivals passed through the house and went into the garden, where they had tea in a large summer-house, an occasional blink of bright colour, through the foliage, being all that was visible of the assembly from mrs. garland's windows. when it grew dusk they all could be heard coming indoors to finish the evening in the parlour. then there was an intensified continuation of the above-mentioned signs of enjoyment, talkings and haw-haws, runnings upstairs and runnings down, a slamming of doors and a clinking of cups and glasses; till the proudest adjoining tenant without friends on his own side of the partition might have been tempted to wish for entrance to that merry dwelling, if only to know the cause of these fluctuations of hilarity, and to see if the guests were really so numerous, and the observations so very amusing as they seemed. the stagnation of life on the garland side of the party-wall began to have a very gloomy effect by the contrast. when, about half-past nine o'clock, one of these tantalizing bursts of gaiety had resounded for a longer time than usual, anne said, 'i believe, mother, that you are wishing you had gone.' 'i own to feeling that it would have been very cheerful if we had joined in,' said mrs. garland, in a hankering tone. 'i was rather too nice in listening to you and not going. the parson never calls upon us except in his spiritual capacity. old derriman is hardly genteel; and there's nobody left to speak to. lonely people must accept what company they can get.' 'or do without it altogether.' 'that's not natural, anne; and i am surprised to hear a young woman like you say such a thing. nature will not be stifled in that way. . . .' (song and powerful chorus heard through partition.) 'i declare the room on the other side of the wall seems quite a paradise compared with this.' 'mother, you are quite a girl,' said anne in slightly superior accents. 'go in and join them by all means.' 'o no--not now,' said her mother, resignedly shaking her head. 'it is too late now. we ought to have taken advantage of the invitation. they would look hard at me as a poor mortal who had no real business there, and the miller would say, with his broad smile, "ah, you be obliged to come round."' while the sociable and unaspiring mrs. garland continued thus to pass the evening in two places, her body in her own house and her mind in the miller's, somebody knocked at the door, and directly after the elder loveday himself was admitted to the room. he was dressed in a suit between grand and gay, which he used for such occasions as the present, and his blue coat, yellow and red waistcoat with the three lower buttons unfastened, steel-buckled shoes and speckled stockings, became him very well in mrs. martha garland's eyes. 'your servant, ma'am,' said the miller, adopting as a matter of propriety the raised standard of politeness required by his higher costume. 'now, begging your pardon, i can't hae this. 'tis unnatural that you two ladies should be biding here and we under the same roof making merry without ye. your husband, poor man--lovely picters that a' would make to be sure--would have been in with us long ago if he had been in your place. i can take no nay from ye, upon my honour. you and maidy anne must come in, if it be only for half-an-hour. john and his friends have got passes till twelve o'clock to-night, and, saving a few of our own village folk, the lowest visitor present is a very genteel german corporal. if you should hae any misgivings on the score of respectability, ma'am, we'll pack off the underbred ones into the back kitchen.' widow garland and anne looked yes at each other after this appeal. 'we'll follow you in a few minutes,' said the elder, smiling; and she rose with anne to go upstairs. 'no, i'll wait for ye,' said the miller doggedly; 'or perhaps you'll alter your mind again.' while the mother and daughter were upstairs dressing, and saying laughingly to each other, 'well, we must go now,' as if they hadn't wished to go all the evening, other steps were heard in the passage; and the miller cried from below, 'your pardon, mrs. garland; but my son john has come to help fetch ye. shall i ask him in till ye be ready?' 'certainly; i shall be down in a minute,' screamed anne's mother in a slanting voice towards the staircase. when she descended, the outline of the trumpet-major appeared half-way down the passage. 'this is john,' said the miller simply. 'john, you can mind mrs. martha garland very well?' 'very well, indeed,' said the dragoon, coming in a little further. 'i should have called to see her last time, but i was only home a week. how is your little girl, ma'am?' mrs. garland said anne was quite well. 'she is grown-up now. she will be down in a moment.' there was a slight noise of military heels without the door, at which the trumpet-major went and put his head outside, and said, 'all right--coming in a minute,' when voices in the darkness replied, 'no hurry.' 'more friends?' said mrs. garland. 'o, it is only buck and jones come to fetch me,' said the soldier. 'shall i ask 'em in a minute, mrs garland, ma'am?' 'o yes,' said the lady; and the two interesting forms of trumpeter buck and saddler-sergeant jones then came forward in the most friendly manner; whereupon other steps were heard without, and it was discovered that sergeant-master-tailor brett and farrier-extraordinary johnson were outside, having come to fetch messrs. buck and jones, as buck and jones had come to fetch the trumpet-major. as there seemed a possibility of mrs. garland's small passage being choked up with human figures personally unknown to her, she was relieved to hear anne coming downstairs. 'here's my little girl,' said mrs. garland, and the trumpet-major looked with a sort of awe upon the muslin apparition who came forward, and stood quite dumb before her. anne recognized him as the trooper she had seen from her window, and welcomed him kindly. there was something in his honest face which made her feel instantly at home with him. at this frankness of manner loveday--who was not a ladies' man--blushed, and made some alteration in his bodily posture, began a sentence which had no end, and showed quite a boy's embarrassment. recovering himself, he politely offered his arm, which anne took with a very pretty grace. he conducted her through his comrades, who glued themselves perpendicularly to the wall to let her pass, and then they went out of the door, her mother following with the miller, and supported by the body of troopers, the latter walking with the usual cavalry gait, as if their thighs were rather too long for them. thus they crossed the threshold of the mill- house and up the passage, the paving of which was worn into a gutter by the ebb and flow of feet that had been going on there ever since tudor times. iv. who were present at the miller's little entertainment when the group entered the presence of the company a lull in the conversation was caused by the sight of new visitors, and (of course) by the charm of anne's appearance; until the old men, who had daughters of their own, perceiving that she was only a half-formed girl, resumed their tales and toss-potting with unconcern. miller loveday had fraternized with half the soldiers in the camp since their arrival, and the effect of this upon his party was striking--both chromatically and otherwise. those among the guests who first attracted the eye were the sergeants and sergeant-majors of loveday's regiment, fine hearty men, who sat facing the candles, entirely resigned to physical comfort. then there were other non-commissioned officers, a german, two hungarians, and a swede, from the foreign hussars--young men with a look of sadness on their faces, as if they did not much like serving so far from home. all of them spoke english fairly well. old age was represented by simon burden the pensioner, and the shady side of fifty by corporal tullidge, his friend and neighbour, who was hard of hearing, and sat with his hat on over a red cotton handkerchief that was wound several times round his head. these two veterans were employed as watchers at the neighbouring beacon, which had lately been erected by the lord-lieutenant for firing whenever the descent on the coast should be made. they lived in a little hut on the hill, close by the heap of faggots; but to-night they had found deputies to watch in their stead. on a lower plane of experience and qualifications came neighbour james comfort, of the volunteers, a soldier by courtesy, but a blacksmith by rights; also william tremlett and anthony cripplestraw, of the local forces. the two latter men of war were dressed merely as villagers, and looked upon the regulars from a humble position in the background. the remainder of the party was made up of a neighbouring dairyman or two, and their wives, invited by the miller, as anne was glad to see, that she and her mother should not be the only women there. the elder loveday apologized in a whisper to mrs. garland for the presence of the inferior villagers. 'but as they are learning to be brave defenders of their home and country, ma'am, as fast as they can master the drill, and have worked for me off and on these many years, i've asked 'em in, and thought you'd excuse it.' 'certainly, miller loveday,' said the widow. 'and the same of old burden and tullidge. they have served well and long in the foot, and even now have a hard time of it up at the beacon in wet weather. so after giving them a meal in the kitchen i just asked 'em in to hear the singing. they faithfully promise that as soon as ever the gunboats appear in view, and they have fired the beacon, to run down here first, in case we shouldn't see it. 'tis worth while to be friendly with 'em, you see, though their tempers be queer.' 'quite worth while, miller,' said she. anne was rather embarrassed by the presence of the regular military in such force, and at first confined her words to the dairymen's wives she was acquainted with, and to the two old soldiers of the parish. 'why didn't ye speak to me afore, chiel?' said one of these, corporal tullidge, the elderly man with the hat, while she was talking to old simon burden. 'i met ye in the lane yesterday,' he added reproachfully, 'but ye didn't notice me at all.' 'i am very sorry for it,' she said; but, being afraid to shout in such a company, the effect of her remark upon the corporal was as if she had not spoken at all. 'you was coming along with yer head full of some high notions or other no doubt,' continued the uncompromising corporal in the same loud voice. 'ah, 'tis the young bucks that get all the notice nowadays, and old folks are quite forgot! i can mind well enough how young bob loveday used to lie in wait for ye.' anne blushed deeply, and stopped his too excursive discourse by hastily saying that she always respected old folks like him. the corporal thought she inquired why he always kept his hat on, and answered that it was because his head was injured at valenciennes, in july, ninety-three. 'we were trying to bomb down the tower, and a piece of the shell struck me. i was no more nor less than a dead man for two days. if it hadn't a been for that and my smashed arm i should have come home none the worse for my five-and-twenty years' service.' 'you have got a silver plate let into yer head, haven't ye, corpel?' said anthony cripplestraw, who had drawn near. 'i have heard that the way they morticed yer skull was a beautiful piece of workmanship. perhaps the young woman would like to see the place? 'tis a curious sight, mis'ess anne; you don't see such a wownd every day.' 'no, thank you,' said anne hurriedly, dreading, as did all the young people of overcombe, the spectacle of the corporal uncovered. he had never been seen in public without the hat and the handkerchief since his return in ninety-four; and strange stories were told of the ghastliness of his appearance bare-headed, a little boy who had accidentally beheld him going to bed in that state having been frightened into fits. 'well, if the young woman don't want to see yer head, maybe she'd like to hear yer arm?' continued cripplestraw, earnest to please her. 'hey?' said the corporal. 'your arm hurt too?' cried anne. 'knocked to a pummy at the same time as my head,' said tullidge dispassionately. 'rattle yer arm, corpel, and show her,' said cripplestraw. 'yes, sure,' said the corporal, raising the limb slowly, as if the glory of exhibition had lost some of its novelty, though he was willing to oblige. twisting it mercilessly about with his right hand he produced a crunching among the bones at every motion, cripplestraw seeming to derive great satisfaction from the ghastly sound. 'how very shocking!' said anne, painfully anxious for him to leave off. 'o, it don't hurt him, bless ye. do it, corpel?' said cripplestraw. 'not a bit,' said the corporal, still working his arm with great energy. 'there's no life in the bones at all. no life in 'em, i tell her, corpel!' 'none at all.' 'they be as loose as a bag of ninepins,' explained cripplestraw in continuation. 'you can feel 'em quite plain, mis'ess anne. if ye would like to, he'll undo his sleeve in a minute to oblege ye?' 'o no, no, please not! i quite understand,' said the young woman. 'do she want to hear or see any more, or don't she?' the corporal inquired, with a sense that his time was getting wasted. anne explained that she did not on any account; and managed to escape from the corner. v. the song and the stranger the trumpet-major now contrived to place himself near her, anne's presence having evidently been a great pleasure to him since the moment of his first seeing her. she was quite at her ease with him, and asked him if he thought that buonaparte would really come during the summer, and many other questions which the gallant dragoon could not answer, but which he nevertheless liked to be asked. william tremlett, who had not enjoyed a sound night's rest since the first consul's menace had become known, pricked up his ears at sound of this subject, and inquired if anybody had seen the terrible flat-bottomed boats that the enemy were to cross in. 'my brother robert saw several of them paddling about the shore the last time he passed the straits of dover,' said the trumpet-major; and he further startled the company by informing them that there were supposed to be more than fifteen hundred of these boats, and that they would carry a hundred men apiece. so that a descent of one hundred and fifty thousand men might be expected any day as soon as boney had brought his plans to bear. 'lord ha' mercy upon us!' said william tremlett. 'the night-time is when they will try it, if they try it at all,' said old tullidge, in the tone of one whose watch at the beacon must, in the nature of things, have given him comprehensive views of the situation. 'it is my belief that the point they will choose for making the shore is just over there,' and he nodded with indifference towards a section of the coast at a hideous nearness to the house in which they were assembled, whereupon fencible tremlett, and cripplestraw of the locals, tried to show no signs of trepidation. 'when d'ye think 'twill be?' said volunteer comfort, the blacksmith. 'i can't answer to a day,' said the corporal, 'but it will certainly be in a down-channel tide; and instead of pulling hard against it, he'll let his boats drift, and that will bring 'em right into budmouth bay. 'twill be a beautiful stroke of war, if so be 'tis quietly done!' 'beautiful,' said cripplestraw, moving inside his clothes. 'but how if we should be all abed, corpel? you can't expect a man to be brave in his shirt, especially we locals, that have only got so far as shoulder fire- locks.' 'he's not coming this summer. he'll never come at all,' said a tall sergeant-major decisively. loveday the soldier was too much engaged in attending upon anne and her mother to join in these surmises, bestirring himself to get the ladies some of the best liquor the house afforded, which had, as a matter of fact, crossed the channel as privately as buonaparte wished his army to do, and had been landed on a dark night over the cliff. after this he asked anne to sing, but though she had a very pretty voice in private performances of that nature, she declined to oblige him; turning the subject by making a hesitating inquiry about his brother robert, whom he had mentioned just before. 'robert is as well as ever, thank you, miss garland,' he said. 'he is now mate of the brig pewit--rather young for such a command; but the owner puts great trust in him.' the trumpet-major added, deepening his thoughts to a profounder view of the person discussed, 'bob is in love.' anne looked conscious, and listened attentively; but loveday did not go on. 'much?' she asked. 'i can't exactly say. and the strange part of it is that he never tells us who the woman is. nobody knows at all.' 'he will tell, of course?' said anne, in the remote tone of a person with whose sex such matters had no connexion whatever. loveday shook his head, and the tete-a-tete was put an end to by a burst of singing from one of the sergeants, who was followed at the end of his song by others, each giving a ditty in his turn; the singer standing up in front of the table, stretching his chin well into the air, as though to abstract every possible wrinkle from his throat, and then plunging into the melody. when this was over one of the foreign hussars--the genteel german of miller loveday's description, who called himself a hungarian, and in reality belonged to no definite country--performed at trumpet-major loveday's request the series of wild motions that he denominated his national dance, that anne might see what it was like. miss garland was the flower of the whole company; the soldiers one and all, foreign and english, seemed to be quite charmed by her presence, as indeed they well might be, considering how seldom they came into the society of such as she. anne and her mother were just thinking of retiring to their own dwelling when sergeant stanner of the --th foot, who was recruiting at budmouth, began a satirical song:-- when law'-yers strive' to heal' a breach', and par-sons prac'-tise what' they preach'; then lit'-tle bo-ney he'll pounce down', and march' his men' on lon'-don town'! chorus.--rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lo'-rum, rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lay. when jus'-ti-ces' hold e'qual scales', and rogues' are on'-ly found' in jails'; then lit'tle bo'-ney he'll pounce down', and march' his men' on lon'-don town'! chorus.--rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lo'-rum, rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lay. when rich' men find' their wealth' a curse', and fill' there-with' the poor' man's purse'; then lit'-tle bo'-ney he'll pounce down', and march' his men' on lon'-don town'! chorus.--rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lo'-rum, rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lay. poor stanner! in spite of his satire, he fell at the bloody battle of albuera a few years after this pleasantly spent summer at the georgian watering-place, being mortally wounded and trampled down by a french hussar when the brigade was deploying into line under beresford. while miller loveday was saying 'well done, mr. stanner!' at the close of the thirteenth stanza, which seemed to be the last, and mr. stanner was modestly expressing his regret that he could do no better, a stentorian voice was heard outside the window shutter repeating, rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lo'-rum, rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lay. the company was silent in a moment at this reinforcement, and only the military tried not to look surprised. while all wondered who the singer could be somebody entered the porch; the door opened, and in came a young man, about the size and weight of the farnese hercules, in the uniform of the yeomanry cavalry. ''tis young squire derriman, old mr. derriman's nephew,' murmured voices in the background. without waiting to address anybody, or apparently seeing who were gathered there, the colossal man waved his cap above his head and went on in tones that shook the window-panes:-- when hus'-bands with' their wives' agree'. and maids' won't wed' from mod'-es-ty', then lit'-tle bo'-ney he'll pounce down', and march' his men' on lon'-don town'! chorus.--rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lo'-rum, rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lay. it was a verse which had been omitted by the gallant stanner, out of respect to the ladies. the new-comer was red-haired and of florid complexion, and seemed full of a conviction that his whim of entering must be their pleasure, which for the moment it was. 'no ceremony, good men all,' he said; 'i was passing by, and my ear was caught by the singing. i like singing; 'tis warming and cheering, and shall not be put down. i should like to hear anybody say otherwise.' 'welcome, master derriman,' said the miller, filling a glass and handing it to the yeoman. 'come all the way from quarters, then? i hardly knowed ye in your soldier's clothes. you'd look more natural with a spud in your hand, sir. i shouldn't ha' known ye at all if i hadn't heard that you were called out.' 'more natural with a spud!--have a care, miller,' said the young giant, the fire of his complexion increasing to scarlet. 'i don't mean anger, but--but--a soldier's honour, you know!' the military in the background laughed a little, and the yeoman then for the first time discovered that there were more regulars present than one. he looked momentarily disconcerted, but expanded again to full assurance. 'right, right, master derriman, no offence--'twas only my joke,' said the genial miller. 'everybody's a soldier nowadays. drink a drap o' this cordial, and don't mind words.' the young man drank without the least reluctance, and said, 'yes, miller, i am called out. 'tis ticklish times for us soldiers now; we hold our lives in our hands--what are those fellows grinning at behind the table?--i say, we do!' 'staying with your uncle at the farm for a day or two, mr. derriman?' 'no, no; as i told you, six mile off. billeted at casterbridge. but i have to call and see the old, old--' 'gentleman?' 'gentleman!--no, skinflint. he lives upon the sweepings of the barton; ha, ha!' and the speaker's regular white teeth showed themselves like snow in a dutch cabbage. 'well, well, the profession of arms makes a man proof against all that. i take things as i find 'em.' 'quite right, master derriman. another drop?' 'no, no. i'll take no more than is good for me--no man should; so don't tempt me.' the yeoman then saw anne, and by an unconscious gravitation went towards her and the other women, flinging a remark to john loveday in passing. 'ah, loveday! i heard you were come; in short, i come o' purpose to see you. glad to see you enjoying yourself at home again.' the trumpet-major replied civilly, though not without grimness, for he seemed hardly to like derriman's motion towards anne. 'widow garland's daughter!--yes, 'tis! surely. you remember me? i have been here before. festus derriman, yeomanry cavalry.' anne gave a little curtsey. 'i know your name is festus--that's all.' 'yes, 'tis well known--especially latterly.' he dropped his voice to confidence pitch. 'i suppose your friends here are disturbed by my coming in, as they don't seem to talk much? i don't mean to interrupt the party; but i often find that people are put out by my coming among 'em, especially when i've got my regimentals on.' 'la! and are they?' 'yes; 'tis the way i have.' he further lowered his tone, as if they had been old friends, though in reality he had only seen her three or four times. 'and how did you come to be here? dash my wig, i don't like to see a nice young lady like you in this company. you should come to some of our yeomanry sprees in casterbridge or shottsford-forum. o, but the girls do come! the yeomanry are respected men, men of good substantial families, many farming their own land; and every one among us rides his own charger, which is more than these cussed fellows do.' he nodded towards the dragoons. 'hush, hush! why, these are friends and neighbours of miller loveday, and he is a great friend of ours--our best friend,' said anne with great emphasis, and reddening at the sense of injustice to their host. 'what are you thinking of, talking like that? it is ungenerous in you.' 'ha, ha! i've affronted you. isn't that it, fair angel, fair--what do you call it?--fair vestal? ah, well! would you was safe in my own house! but honour must be minded now, not courting. rollicum-rorum, tol-lol- lorum. pardon me, my sweet, i like ye! it may be a come down for me, owning land; but i do like ye.' 'sir, please be quiet,' said anne, distressed. 'i will, i will. well, corporal tullidge, how's your head?' he said, going towards the other end of the room, and leaving anne to herself. the company had again recovered its liveliness, and it was a long time before the bouncing rufus who had joined them could find heart to tear himself away from their society and good liquors, although he had had quite enough of the latter before he entered. the natives received him at his own valuation, and the soldiers of the camp, who sat beyond the table, smiled behind their pipes at his remarks, with a pleasant twinkle of the eye which approached the satirical, john loveday being not the least conspicuous in this bearing. but he and his friends were too courteous on such an occasion as the present to challenge the young man's large remarks, and readily permitted him to set them right on the details of camping and other military routine, about which the troopers seemed willing to let persons hold any opinion whatever, provided that they themselves were not obliged to give attention to it; showing, strangely enough, that if there was one subject more than another which never interested their minds, it was the art of war. to them the art of enjoying good company in overcombe mill, the details of the miller's household, the swarming of his bees, the number of his chickens, and the fatness of his pigs, were matters of infinitely greater concern. the present writer, to whom this party has been described times out of number by members of the loveday family and other aged people now passed away, can never enter the old living-room of overcombe mill without beholding the genial scene through the mists of the seventy or eighty years that intervene between then and now. first and brightest to the eye are the dozen candles, scattered about regardless of expense, and kept well snuffed by the miller, who walks round the room at intervals of five minutes, snuffers in hand, and nips each wick with great precision, and with something of an executioner's grim look upon his face as he closes the snuffers upon the neck of the candle. next to the candle-light show the red and blue coats and white breeches of the soldiers--nearly twenty of them in all besides the ponderous derriman--the head of the latter, and, indeed, the heads of all who are standing up, being in dangerous proximity to the black beams of the ceiling. there is not one among them who would attach any meaning to 'vittoria,' or gather from the syllables 'waterloo' the remotest idea of his own glory or death. next appears the correct and innocent anne, little thinking what things time has in store for her at no great distance off. she looks at derriman with a half-uneasy smile as he clanks hither and thither, and hopes he will not single her out again to hold a private dialogue with--which, however, he does, irresistibly attracted by the white muslin figure. she must, of course, look a little gracious again now, lest his mood should turn from sentimental to quarrelsome--no impossible contingency with the yeoman-soldier, as her quick perception had noted. 'well, well; this idling won't do for me, folks,' he at last said, to anne's relief. 'i ought not to have come in, by rights; but i heard you enjoying yourselves, and thought it might be worth while to see what you were up to; i have several miles to go before bedtime;' and stretching his arms, lifting his chin, and shaking his head, to eradicate any unseemly curve or wrinkle from his person, the yeoman wished them an off- hand good-night, and departed. 'you should have teased him a little more, father,' said the trumpet-major drily. 'you could soon have made him as crabbed as a bear.' 'i didn't want to provoke the chap--'twasn't worth while. he came in friendly enough,' said the gentle miller without looking up. 'i don't think he was overmuch friendly,' said john. ''tis as well to be neighbourly with folks, if they be not quite onbearable,' his father genially replied, as he took off his coat to go and draw more ale--this periodical stripping to the shirt-sleeves being necessitated by the narrowness of the cellar and the smeary effect of its numerous cobwebs upon best clothes. some of the guests then spoke of fess derriman as not such a bad young man if you took him right and humoured him; others said that he was nobody's enemy but his own; and the elder ladies mentioned in a tone of interest that he was likely to come into a deal of money at his uncle's death. the person who did not praise was the one who knew him best, who had known him as a boy years ago, when he had lived nearer to overcombe than he did at present. this unappreciative person was the trumpet-major. vi. old mr. derriman of oxwell hall at this time in the history of overcombe one solitary newspaper occasionally found its way into the village. it was lent by the postmaster at budmouth (who, in some mysterious way, got it for nothing through his connexion with the mail) to mr. derriman at the hall, by whom it was handed on to mrs. garland when it was not more than a fortnight old. whoever remembers anything about the old farmer-squire will, of course, know well enough that this delightful privilege of reading history in long columns was not accorded to the widow garland for nothing. it was by such ingenuous means that he paid her for her daughter's occasional services in reading aloud to him and making out his accounts, in which matters the farmer, whose guineas were reported to touch five figures--some said more--was not expert. mrs. martha garland, as a respectable widow, occupied a twilight rank between the benighted villagers and the well-informed gentry, and kindly made herself useful to the former as letter-writer and reader, and general translator from the printing tongue. it was not without satisfaction that she stood at her door of an evening, newspaper in hand, with three or four cottagers standing round, and poured down their open throats any paragraph that she might choose to select from the stirring ones of the period. when she had done with the sheet mrs. garland passed it on to the miller, the miller to the grinder, and the grinder to the grinder's boy, in whose hands it became subdivided into half pages, quarter pages, and irregular triangles, and ended its career as a paper cap, a flagon bung, or a wrapper for his bread and cheese. notwithstanding his compact with mrs. garland, old mr. derriman kept the paper so long, and was so chary of wasting his man's time on a merely intellectual errand, that unless she sent for the journal it seldom reached her hands. anne was always her messenger. the arrival of the soldiers led mrs. garland to despatch her daughter for it the day after the party; and away she went in her hat and pelisse, in a direction at right angles to that of the encampment on the hill. walking across the fields for the distance of a mile or two, she came out upon the high-road by a wicket-gate. on the other side of the way was the entrance to what at first sight looked like a neglected meadow, the gate being a rotten one, without a bottom rail, and broken-down palings lying on each side. the dry hard mud of the opening was marked with several horse and cow tracks, that had been half obliterated by fifty score sheep tracks, surcharged with the tracks of a man and a dog. beyond this geological record appeared a carriage-road, nearly grown over with grass, which anne followed. it descended by a gentle slope, dived under dark-rinded elm and chestnut trees, and conducted her on till the hiss of a waterfall and the sound of the sea became audible, when it took a bend round a swamp of fresh watercress and brooklime that had once been a fish pond. here the grey, weather-worn front of a building edged from behind the trees. it was oxwell hall, once the seat of a family now extinct, and of late years used as a farmhouse. benjamin derriman, who owned the crumbling place, had originally been only the occupier and tenant-farmer of the fields around. his wife had brought him a small fortune, and during the growth of their only son there had been a partition of the oxwell estate, giving the farmer, now a widower, the opportunity of acquiring the building and a small portion of the land attached on exceptionally low terms. but two years after the purchase the boy died, and derriman's existence was paralyzed forthwith. it was said that since that event he had devised the house and fields to a distant female relative, to keep them out of the hands of his detested nephew; but this was not certainly known. the hall was as interesting as mansions in a state of declension usually are, as the excellent county history showed. that popular work in folio contained an old plate dedicated to the last scion of the original owners, from which drawing it appeared that in , the date of publication, the windows were covered with little scratches like black flashes of lightning; that a horn of hard smoke came out of each of the twelve chimneys; that a lady and a lap-dog stood on the lawn in a strenuously walking position; and a substantial cloud and nine flying birds of no known species hung over the trees to the north-east. the rambling and neglected dwelling had all the romantic excellencies and practical drawbacks which such mildewed places share in common with caves, mountains, wildernesses, glens, and other homes of poesy that people of taste wish to live and die in. mustard and cress could have been raised on the inner plaster of the dewy walls at any height not exceeding three feet from the floor; and mushrooms of the most refined and thin-stemmed kinds grew up through the chinks of the larder paving. as for the outside, nature, in the ample time that had been given her, had so mingled her filings and effacements with the marks of human wear and tear upon the house, that it was often hard to say in which of the two or if in both, any particular obliteration had its origin. the keenness was gone from the mouldings of the doorways, but whether worn out by the rubbing past of innumerable people's shoulders, and the moving of their heavy furniture, or by time in a grander and more abstract form, did not appear. the iron stanchions inside the window-panes were eaten away to the size of wires at the bottom where they entered the stone, the condensed breathings of generations having settled there in pools and rusted them. the panes themselves had either lost their shine altogether or become iridescent as a peacock's tail. in the middle of the porch was a vertical sun-dial, whose gnomon swayed loosely about when the wind blew, and cast its shadow hither and thither, as much as to say, 'here's your fine model dial; here's any time for any man; i am an old dial; and shiftiness is the best policy.' anne passed under the arched gateway which screened the main front; over it was the porter's lodge, reached by a spiral staircase. across the archway was fixed a row of wooden hurdles, one of which anne opened and closed behind her. their necessity was apparent as soon as she got inside. the quadrangle of the ancient pile was a bed of mud and manure, inhabited by calves, geese, ducks, and sow pigs surprisingly large, with young ones surprisingly small. in the groined porch some heifers were amusing themselves by stretching up their necks and licking the carved stone capitals that supported the vaulting. anne went on to a second and open door, across which was another hurdle to keep the live stock from absolute community with the inmates. there being no knocker, she knocked by means of a short stick which was laid against the post for that purpose; but nobody attending, she entered the passage, and tried an inner door. a slight noise was heard inside, the door opened about an inch, and a strip of decayed face, including the eye and some forehead wrinkles, appeared within the crevice. 'please i have come for the paper,' said anne. 'o, is it you, dear anne?' whined the inmate, opening the door a little further. 'i could hardly get to the door to open it, i am so weak.' the speaker was a wizened old gentleman, in a coat the colour of his farmyard, breeches of the same hue, unbuttoned at the knees, revealing a bit of leg above his stocking and a dazzlingly white shirt-frill to compensate for this untidiness below. the edge of his skull round his eye-sockets was visible through the skin, and he had a mouth whose corners made towards the back of his head on the slightest provocation. he walked with great apparent difficulty back into the room, anne following him. 'well, you can have the paper if you want it; but you never give me much time to see what's in en! here's the paper.' he held it out, but before she could take it he drew it back again, saying, 'i have not had my share o' the paper by a good deal, what with my weak sight, and people coming so soon for en. i am a poor put-upon soul; but my "duty of man" will be left to me when the newspaper is gone.' and he sank into his chair with an air of exhaustion. anne said that she did not wish to take the paper if he had not done with it, and that she was really later in the week than usual, owing to the soldiers. 'soldiers, yes--rot the soldiers! and now hedges will be broke, and hens' nests robbed, and sucking-pigs stole, and i don't know what all. who's to pay for't, sure? i reckon that because the soldiers be come you don't mean to be kind enough to read to me what i hadn't time to read myself.' she would read if he wished, she said; she was in no hurry. and sitting herself down she unfolded the paper. '"dinner at carlton house"?' 'no, faith. 'tis nothing to i.' '"defence of the country"?' 'ye may read that if ye will. i hope there will be no billeting in this parish, or any wild work of that sort; for what would a poor old lamiger like myself do with soldiers in his house, and nothing to feed 'em with?' anne began reading, and continued at her task nearly ten minutes, when she was interrupted by the appearance in the quadrangular slough without of a large figure in the uniform of the yeomanry cavalry. 'what do you see out there?' said the farmer with a start, as she paused and slowly blushed. 'a soldier--one of the yeomanry,' said anne, not quite at her ease. 'scrounch it all--'tis my nephew!' exclaimed the old man, his face turning to a phosphoric pallor, and his body twitching with innumerable alarms as he formed upon his face a gasping smile of joy, with which to welcome the new-coming relative. 'read on, prithee, miss garland.' before she had read far the visitor straddled over the door-hurdle into the passage and entered the room. 'well, nunc, how do you feel?' said the giant, shaking hands with the farmer in the manner of one violently ringing a hand-bell. 'glad to see you.' 'bad and weakish, festus,' replied the other, his person responding passively to the rapid vibrations imparted. 'o, be tender, please--a little softer, there's a dear nephew! my arm is no more than a cobweb.' 'ah, poor soul!' 'yes, i am not much more than a skeleton, and can't bear rough usage.' 'sorry to hear that; but i'll bear your affliction in mind. why, you are all in a tremble, uncle benjy!' ''tis because i am so gratified,' said the old man. 'i always get all in a tremble when i am taken by surprise by a beloved relation.' 'ah, that's it!' said the yeoman, bringing his hand down on the back of his uncle's chair with a loud smack, at which uncle benjy nervously sprang three inches from his seat and dropped into it again. 'ask your pardon for frightening ye, uncle. 'tis how we do in the army, and i forgot your nerves. you have scarcely expected to see me, i dare say, but here i am.' 'i am glad to see ye. you are not going to stay long, perhaps?' 'quite the contrary. i am going to stay ever so long!' 'o i see! i am so glad, dear festus. ever so long, did ye say?' 'yes, _ever_ so long,' said the young gentleman, sitting on the slope of the bureau and stretching out his legs as props. 'i am going to make this quite my own home whenever i am off duty, as long as we stay out. and after that, when the campaign is over in the autumn, i shall come here, and live with you like your own son, and help manage your land and your farm, you know, and make you a comfortable old man.' 'ah! how you do please me!' said the farmer, with a horrified smile, and grasping the arms of his chair to sustain himself. 'yes; i have been meaning to come a long time, as i knew you'd like to have me, uncle benjy; and 'tisn't in my heart to refuse you.' 'you always was kind that way!' 'yes; i always was. but i ought to tell you at once, not to disappoint you, that i shan't be here always--all day, that is, because of my military duties as a cavalry man.' 'o, not always? that's a pity!' exclaimed the farmer with a cheerful eye. 'i knew you'd say so. and i shan't be able to sleep here at night sometimes, for the same reason.' 'not sleep here o' nights?' said the old gentleman, still more relieved. 'you ought to sleep here--you certainly ought; in short, you must. but you can't!' 'not while we are with the colours. but directly that's over--the very next day--i'll stay here all day, and all night too, to oblige you, since you ask me so very kindly.' 'th-thank ye, that will be very nice!' said uncle benjy. 'yes, i knew 'twould relieve ye.' and he kindly stroked his uncle's head, the old man expressing his enjoyment at the affectionate token by a death's-head grimace. 'i should have called to see you the other night when i passed through here,' festus continued; 'but it was so late that i couldn't come so far out of my way. you won't think it unkind?' 'not at all, if you _couldn't_. i never shall think it unkind if you really _can't_ come, you know, festy.' there was a few minutes' pause, and as the nephew said nothing uncle benjy went on: 'i wish i had a little present for ye. but as ill-luck would have it we have lost a deal of stock this year, and i have had to pay away so much.' 'poor old man--i know you have. shall i lend you a seven-shilling piece, uncle benjy?' 'ha, ha!--you must have your joke; well, i'll think o' that. and so they expect buonaparty to choose this very part of the coast for his landing, hey? and that the yeomanry be to stand in front as the forlorn hope?' 'who says so?' asked the florid son of mars, losing a little redness. 'the newspaper-man.' 'o, there's nothing in that,' said festus bravely. 'the gover'ment thought it possible at one time; but they don't know.' festus turned himself as he talked, and now said abruptly: 'ah, who's this? why, 'tis our little anne!' he had not noticed her till this moment, the young woman having at his entry kept her face over the newspaper, and then got away to the back part of the room. 'and are you and your mother always going to stay down there in the mill-house watching the little fishes, miss anne?' she said that it was uncertain, in a tone of truthful precision which the question was hardly worth, looking forcedly at him as she spoke. but she blushed fitfully, in her arms and hands as much as in her face. not that she was overpowered by the great boots, formidable spurs, and other fierce appliances of his person, as he imagined; simply she had not been prepared to meet him there. 'i hope you will, i am sure, for my own good,' said he, letting his eyes linger on the round of her cheek. anne became a little more dignified, and her look showed reserve. but the yeoman on perceiving this went on talking to her in so civil a way that he irresistibly amused her, though she tried to conceal all feeling. at a brighter remark of his than usual her mouth moved, her upper lip playing uncertainly over her white teeth; it would stay still--no, it would withdraw a little way in a smile; then it would flutter down again; and so it wavered like a butterfly in a tender desire to be pleased and smiling, and yet to be also sedate and composed; to show him that she did not want compliments, and yet that she was not so cold as to wish to repress any genuine feeling he might be anxious to utter. 'shall you want any more reading, mr. derriman?' said she, interrupting the younger man in his remarks. 'if not, i'll go homeward.' 'don't let me hinder you longer,' said festus. 'i'm off in a minute or two, when your man has cleaned my boots.' 'ye don't hinder us, nephew. she must have the paper: 'tis the day for her to have 'n. she might read a little more, as i have had so little profit out o' en hitherto. well, why don't ye speak? will ye, or won't ye, my dear?' 'not to two,' she said. 'ho, ho! damn it, i must go then, i suppose,' said festus, laughing; and unable to get a further glance from her he left the room and clanked into the back yard, where he saw a man; holding up his hand he cried, 'anthony cripplestraw!' cripplestraw came up in a trot, moved a lock of his hair and replaced it, and said, 'yes, maister derriman.' he was old mr. derriman's odd hand in the yard and garden, and like his employer had no great pretensions to manly beauty, owing to a limpness of backbone and speciality of mouth, which opened on one side only, giving him a triangular smile. 'well, cripplestraw, how is it to-day?' said festus, with socially-superior heartiness. 'middlin', considering, maister derriman. and how's yerself?' 'fairish. well, now, see and clean these military boots of mine. i'll cock my foot up on this bench. this pigsty of my uncle's is not fit for a soldier to come into.' 'yes, maister derriman, i will. no, 'tis not fit, maister derriman.' 'what stock has uncle lost this year, cripplestraw?' 'well, let's see, sir. i can call to mind that we've lost three chickens, a tom-pigeon, and a weakly sucking-pig, one of a fare of ten. i can't think of no more, maister derriman.' 'h'm, not a large quantity of cattle. the old rascal!' 'no, 'tis not a large quantity. old what did you say, sir?' 'o nothing. he's within there.' festus flung his forehead in the direction of a right line towards the inner apartment. 'he's a regular sniche one.' 'hee, hee; fie, fie, master derriman!' said cripplestraw, shaking his head in delighted censure. 'gentlefolks shouldn't talk so. and an officer, mr. derriman! 'tis the duty of all cavalry gentlemen to bear in mind that their blood is a knowed thing in the country, and not to speak ill o't.' 'he's close-fisted.' 'well, maister, he is--i own he is a little. 'tis the nater of some old venerable gentlemen to be so. we'll hope he'll treat ye well in yer fortune, sir.' 'hope he will. do people talk about me here, cripplestraw?' asked the yeoman, as the other continued busy with his boots. 'well, yes, sir; they do off and on, you know. they says you be as fine a piece of calvery flesh and bones as was ever growed on fallow-ground; in short, all owns that you be a fine fellow, sir. i wish i wasn't no more afraid of the french than you be; but being in the locals, maister derriman, i assure ye i dream of having to defend my country every night; and i don't like the dream at all.' 'you should take it careless, cripplestraw, as i do; and 'twould soon come natural to you not to mind it at all. well, a fine fellow is not everything, you know. o no. there's as good as i in the army, and even better.' 'and they say that when you fall this summer, you'll die like a man.' 'when i fall?' 'yes, sure, maister derriman. poor soul o' thee! i shan't forget 'ee as you lie mouldering in yer soldier's grave.' 'hey?' said the warrior uneasily. 'what makes 'em think i am going to fall?' 'well, sir, by all accounts the yeomanry will be put in front.' 'front! that's what my uncle has been saying.' 'yes, and by all accounts 'tis true. and naterelly they'll be mowed down like grass; and you among 'em, poor young galliant officer!' 'look here, cripplestraw. this is a reg'lar foolish report. how can yeomanry be put in front? nobody's put in front. we yeomanry have nothing to do with buonaparte's landing. we shall be away in a safe place, guarding the possessions and jewels. now, can you see, cripplestraw, any way at all that the yeomanry can be put in front? do you think they really can?' 'well, maister, i am afraid i do,' said the cheering cripplestraw. 'and i know a great warrior like you is only too glad o' the chance. 'twill be a great thing for ye, death and glory! in short, i hope from my heart you will be, and i say so very often to folk--in fact, i pray at night for't.' 'o! cuss you! you needn't pray about it.' 'no, maister derriman, i won't.' 'of course my sword will do its duty. that's enough. and now be off with ye.' festus gloomily returned to his uncle's room and found that anne was just leaving. he was inclined to follow her at once, but as she gave him no opportunity for doing this he went to the window, and remained tapping his fingers against the shutter while she crossed the yard. 'well, nephy, you are not gone yet?' said the farmer, looking dubiously at festus from under one eyelid. 'you see how i am. not by any means better, you see; so i can't entertain 'ee as well as i would.' 'you can't, nunc, you can't. i don't think you are worse--if i do, dash my wig. but you'll have plenty of opportunities to make me welcome when you are better. if you are not so brisk inwardly as you was, why not try change of air? this is a dull, damp hole.' ''tis, festus; and i am thinking of moving.' 'ah, where to?' said festus, with surprise and interest. 'up into the garret in the north corner. there is no fireplace in the room; but i shan't want that, poor soul o' me.' ''tis not moving far.' ''tis not. but i have not a soul belonging to me within ten mile; and you know very well that i couldn't afford to go to lodgings that i had to pay for.' 'i know it--i know it, uncle benjy! well, don't be disturbed. i'll come and manage for you as soon as ever this boney alarm is over; but when a man's country calls he must obey, if he is a man.' 'a splendid spirit!' said uncle benjy, with much admiration on the surface of his countenance. 'i never had it. how could it have got into the boy?' 'from my mother's side, perhaps.' 'perhaps so. well, take care of yourself, nephy,' said the farmer, waving his hand impressively. 'take care! in these warlike times your spirit may carry ye into the arms of the enemy; and you are the last of the family. you should think of this, and not let your bravery carry ye away.' 'don't be disturbed, uncle; i'll control myself,' said festus, betrayed into self-complacency against his will. 'at least i'll do what i can, but nature will out sometimes. well, i'm off.' he began humming 'brighton camp,' and, promising to come again soon, retired with assurance, each yard of his retreat adding private joyousness to his uncle's form. when the bulky young man had disappeared through the porter's lodge, uncle benjy showed preternatural activity for one in his invalid state, jumping up quickly without his stick, at the same time opening and shutting his mouth quite silently like a thirsty frog, which was his way of expressing mirth. he ran upstairs as quick as an old squirrel, and went to a dormer window which commanded a view of the grounds beyond the gate, and the footpath that stretched across them to the village. 'yes, yes!' he said in a suppressed scream, dancing up and down, 'he's after her: she've hit en!' for there appeared upon the path the figure of anne garland, and, hastening on at some little distance behind her, the swaggering shape of festus. she became conscious of his approach, and moved more quickly. he moved more quickly still, and overtook her. she turned as if in answer to a call from him, and he walked on beside her, till they were out of sight. the old man then played upon an imaginary fiddle for about half a minute; and, suddenly discontinuing these signs of pleasure, went downstairs again. vii. how they talked in the pastures 'you often come this way?' said festus to anne rather before he had overtaken her. 'i come for the newspaper and other things,' she said, perplexed by a doubt whether he were there by accident or design. they moved on in silence, festus beating the grass with his switch in a masterful way. 'did you speak, mis'ess anne?' he asked. 'no,' said anne. 'ten thousand pardons. i thought you did. now don't let me drive you out of the path. i can walk among the high grass and giltycups--they will not yellow my stockings as they will yours. well, what do you think of a lot of soldiers coming to the neighbourhood in this way?' 'i think it is very lively, and a great change,' she said with demure seriousness. 'perhaps you don't like us warriors as a body?' anne smiled without replying. 'why, you are laughing!' said the yeoman, looking searchingly at her and blushing like a little fire. 'what do you see to laugh at?' 'did i laugh?' said anne, a little scared at his sudden mortification. 'why, yes; you know you did, you young sneerer,' he said like a cross baby. 'you are laughing at me--that's who you are laughing at! i should like to know what you would do without such as me if the french were to drop in upon ye any night?' 'would you help to beat them off?' said she. 'can you ask such a question? what are we for? but you don't think anything of soldiers.' o yes, she liked soldiers, she said, especially when they came home from the wars, covered with glory; though when she thought what doings had won them that glory she did not like them quite so well. the gallant and appeased yeoman said he supposed her to mean chopping off heads, blowing out brains, and that kind of business, and thought it quite right that a tender-hearted thing like her should feel a little horrified. but as for him, he should not mind such another blenheim this summer as the army had fought a hundred years ago, or whenever it was--dash his wig if he should mind it at all. 'hullo! now you are laughing again; yes, i saw you!' and the choleric festus turned his blue eyes and flushed face upon her as though he would read her through. anne strove valiantly to look calmly back; but her eyes could not face his, and they fell. 'you did laugh!' he repeated. 'it was only a tiny little one,' she murmured. 'ah--i knew you did!' thundered he. 'now what was it you laughed at?' 'i only--thought that you were--merely in the yeomanry,' she murmured slily. 'and what of that?' 'and the yeomanry only seem farmers that have lost their senses.' 'yes, yes! i knew you meant some jeering o' that sort, mistress anne. but i suppose 'tis the way of women, and i take no notice. i'll confess that some of us are no great things: but i know how to draw a sword, don't i?--say i don't just to provoke me.' 'i am sure you do,' said anne sweetly. 'if a frenchman came up to you, mr. derriman, would you take him on the hip, or on the thigh?' 'now you are flattering!' he said, his white teeth uncovering themselves in a smile. 'well, of course i should draw my sword--no, i mean my sword would be already drawn; and i should put spurs to my horse--charger, as we call it in the army; and i should ride up to him and say--no, i shouldn't say anything, of course--men never waste words in battle; i should take him with the third guard, low point, and then coming back to the second guard--' 'but that would be taking care of yourself--not hitting at him.' 'how can you say that!' he cried, the beams upon his face turning to a lurid cloud in a moment. 'how can you understand military terms who've never had a sword in your life? i shouldn't take him with the sword at all.' he went on with eager sulkiness, 'i should take him with my pistol. i should pull off my right glove, and throw back my goat-skin; then i should open my priming-pan, prime, and cast about--no, i shouldn't, that's wrong; i should draw my right pistol, and as soon as loaded, seize the weapon by the butt; then at the word "cock your pistol" i should--' 'then there is plenty of time to give such words of command in the heat of battle?' said anne innocently. 'no!' said the yeoman, his face again in flames. 'why, of course i am only telling you what _would_ be the word of command _if_--there now! you la--' 'i didn't; 'pon my word i didn't!' 'no, i don't think you did; it was my mistake. well, then i come smartly to present, looking well along the barrel--along the barrel--and fire. of course i know well enough how to engage the enemy! but i expect my old uncle has been setting you against me.' 'he has not said a word,' replied anne; 'though i have heard of you, of course.' 'what have you heard? nothing good, i dare say. it makes my blood boil within me!' 'o, nothing bad,' said she assuringly. 'just a word now and then.' 'now, come, tell me, there's a dear. i don't like to be crossed. it shall be a sacred secret between us. come, now!' anne was embarrassed, and her smile was uncomfortable. 'i shall not tell you,' she said at last. 'there it is again!' said the yeoman, throwing himself into a despair. 'i shall soon begin to believe that my name is not worth sixpence about here!' 'i tell you 'twas nothing against you,' repeated anne. 'that means it might have been for me,' said festus, in a mollified tone. 'well, though, to speak the truth, i have a good many faults, some people will praise me, i suppose. 'twas praise?' 'it was.' 'well, i am not much at farming, and i am not much in company, and i am not much at figures, but perhaps i must own, since it is forced upon me, that i can show as fine a soldier's figure on the esplanade as any man of the cavalry.' 'you can,' said anne; for though her flesh crept in mortal terror of his irascibility, she could not resist the fearful pleasure of leading him on. 'you look very well; and some say, you are--' 'what? well, they say i am good-looking. i don't make myself, so 'tis no praise. hullo! what are you looking across there for?' 'only at a bird that i saw fly out of that tree,' said anne. 'what? only at a bird, do you say?' he heaved out in a voice of thunder. 'i see your shoulders a-shaking, young madam. now don't you provoke me with that laughing! by god, it won't do!' 'then go away!' said anne, changed from mirthfulness to irritation by his rough manner. 'i don't want your company, you great bragging thing! you are so touchy there's no bearing with you. go away!' 'no, no, anne; i am wrong to speak to you so. i give you free liberty to say what you will to me. say i am not a bit of a soldier, or anything! abuse me--do now, there's a dear. i'm scum, i'm froth, i'm dirt before the besom--yes!' 'i have nothing to say, sir. stay where you are till i am out of this field.' 'well, there's such command in your looks that i ha'n't heart to go against you. you will come this way to-morrow at the same time? now, don't be uncivil.' she was too generous not to forgive him, but the short little lip murmured that she did not think it at all likely she should come that way to-morrow. 'then sunday?' he said. 'not sunday,' said she. 'then monday--tuesday--wednesday, surely?' he went on experimentally. she answered that she should probably not see him on either day, and, cutting short the argument, went through the wicket into the other field. festus paused, looking after her; and when he could no longer see her slight figure he swept away his deliberations, began singing, and turned off in the other direction. viii. anne makes a circuit of the camp when anne was crossing the last field, she saw approaching her an old woman with wrinkled cheeks, who surveyed the earth and its inhabitants through the medium of brass-rimmed spectacles. shaking her head at anne till the glasses shone like two moons, she said, 'ah, ah; i zeed ye! if i had only kept on my short ones that i use for reading the collect and gospel i shouldn't have zeed ye; but thinks i, i be going out o' doors, and i'll put on my long ones, little thinking what they'd show me. ay, i can tell folk at any distance with these--'tis a beautiful pair for out o' doors; though my short ones be best for close work, such as darning, and catching fleas, that's true.' 'what have you seen, granny seamore?' said anne. 'fie, fie, miss nancy! you know,' said granny seamore, shaking her head still. 'but he's a fine young feller, and will have all his uncle's money when 'a's gone.' anne said nothing to this, and looking ahead with a smile passed granny seamore by. festus, the subject of the remark, was at this time about three-and-twenty, a fine fellow as to feet and inches, and of a remarkably warm tone in skin and hair. symptoms of beard and whiskers had appeared upon him at a very early age, owing to his persistent use of the razor before there was any necessity for its operation. the brave boy had scraped unseen in the out-house, in the cellar, in the wood-shed, in the stable, in the unused parlour, in the cow-stalls, in the barn, and wherever he could set up his triangular bit of looking-glass without observation, or extemporize a mirror by sticking up his hat on the outside of a window-pane. the result now was that, did he neglect to use the instrument he once had trifled with, a fine rust broke out upon his countenance on the first day, a golden lichen on the second, and a fiery stubble on the third to a degree which admitted of no further postponement. his disposition divided naturally into two, the boastful and the cantankerous. when festus put on the big pot, as it is classically called, he was quite blinded ipso facto to the diverting effect of that mood and manner upon others; but when disposed to be envious or quarrelsome he was rather shrewd than otherwise, and could do some pretty strokes of satire. he was both liked and abused by the girls who knew him, and though they were pleased by his attentions, they never failed to ridicule him behind his back. in his cups (he knew those vessels, though only twenty-three) he first became noisy, then excessively friendly, and then invariably nagging. during childhood he had made himself renowned for his pleasant habit of pouncing down upon boys smaller and poorer than himself, and knocking their birds' nests out of their hands, or overturning their little carts of apples, or pouring water down their backs; but his conduct became singularly the reverse of aggressive the moment the little boys' mothers ran out to him, brandishing brooms, frying-pans, skimmers, and whatever else they could lay hands on by way of weapons. he then fled and hid behind bushes, under faggots, or in pits till they had gone away; and on one such occasion was known to creep into a badger's hole quite out of sight, maintaining that post with great firmness and resolution for two or three hours. he had brought more vulgar exclamations upon the tongues of respectable parents in his native parish than any other boy of his time. when other youngsters snowballed him he ran into a place of shelter, where he kneaded snowballs of his own, with a stone inside, and used these formidable missiles in returning their pleasantry. sometimes he got fearfully beaten by boys his own age, when he would roar most lustily, but fight on in the midst of his tears, blood, and cries. he was early in love, and had at the time of the story suffered from the ravages of that passion thirteen distinct times. he could not love lightly and gaily; his love was earnest, cross-tempered, and even savage. it was a positive agony to him to be ridiculed by the object of his affections, and such conduct drove him into a frenzy if persisted in. he was a torment to those who behaved humbly towards him, cynical with those who denied his superiority, and a very nice fellow towards those who had the courage to ill-use him. this stalwart gentleman and anne garland did not cross each other's paths again for a week. then her mother began as before about the newspaper, and, though anne did not much like the errand, she agreed to go for it on mrs. garland pressing her with unusual anxiety. why her mother was so persistent on so small a matter quite puzzled the girl; but she put on her hat and started. as she had expected, festus appeared at a stile over which she sometimes went for shortness' sake, and showed by his manner that he awaited her. when she saw this she kept straight on, as if she would not enter the park at all. 'surely this is your way?' said festus. 'i was thinking of going round by the road,' she said. 'why is that?' she paused, as if she were not inclined to say. 'i go that way when the grass is wet,' she returned at last. 'it is not wet now,' he persisted; 'the sun has been shining on it these nine hours.' the fact was that the way by the path was less open than by the road, and festus wished to walk with her uninterrupted. 'but, of course, it is nothing to me what you do.' he flung himself from the stile and walked away towards the house. anne, supposing him really indifferent, took the same way, upon which he turned his head and waited for her with a proud smile. 'i cannot go with you,' she said decisively. 'nonsense, you foolish girl! i must walk along with you down to the corner.' 'no, please, mr. derriman; we might be seen.' 'now, now--that's shyness!' he said jocosely. 'no; you know i cannot let you.' 'but i must.' 'but i do not allow it.' 'allow it or not, i will.' 'then you are unkind, and i must submit,' she said, her eyes brimming with tears. 'ho, ho; what a shame of me! my wig, i won't do any such thing for the world,' said the repentant yeoman. 'haw, haw; why, i thought your "go away" meant "come on," as it does with so many of the women i meet, especially in these clothes. who was to know you were so confoundedly serious?' as he did not go anne stood still and said nothing. 'i see you have a deal more caution and a deal less good-nature than i ever thought you had,' he continued emphatically. 'no, sir; it is not any planned manner of mine at all,' she said earnestly. 'but you will see, i am sure, that i could not go down to the hall with you without putting myself in a wrong light.' 'yes; that's it, that's it. i am only a fellow in the yeomanry cavalry--a plain soldier, i may say; and we know what women think of such: that they are a bad lot--men you mustn't speak to for fear of losing your character--chaps you avoid in the roads--chaps that come into a house like oxen, daub the stairs wi' their boots, stain the furniture wi' their drink, talk rubbish to the servants, abuse all that's holy and righteous, and are only saved from being carried off by old nick because they are wanted for boney.' 'indeed, i didn't know you were thought so bad of as that,' said she simply. 'what! don't my uncle complain to you of me? you are a favourite of that handsome, nice old gaffer's, i know.' 'never.' 'well, what do we think of our nice trumpet-major, hey?' anne closed her mouth up tight, built it up, in fact, to show that no answer was coming to that question. 'o now, come, seriously, loveday is a good fellow, and so is his father.' 'i don't know.' 'what a close little rogue you are! there is no getting anything out of you. i believe you would say "i don't know," to every mortal question, so very discreet as you are. upon my heart, there are some women who would say "i don't know," to "will ye marry me?"' the brightness upon anne's cheek and in her eyes during this remark showed that there was a fair quantity of life and warmth beneath the discretion he complained of. having spoken thus, he drew aside that she might pass, and bowed very low. anne formally inclined herself and went on. she had been at vexation point all the time that he was present, from a haunting sense that he would not have spoken to her so freely had she been a young woman with thriving male relatives to keep forward admirers in check. but she had been struck, now as at their previous meeting, with the power she possessed of working him up either to irritation or to complacency at will; and this consciousness of being able to play upon him as upon an instrument disposed her to a humorous considerateness, and made her tolerate even while she rebuffed him. when anne got to the hall the farmer, as usual, insisted upon her reading what he had been unable to get through, and held the paper tightly in his skinny hand till she had agreed. he sent her to a hard chair that she could not possibly injure to the extent of a pennyworth by sitting in it a twelvemonth, and watched her from the outer angle of his near eye while she bent over the paper. his look might have been suggested by the sight that he had witnessed from his window on the last occasion of her visit, for it partook of the nature of concern. the old man was afraid of his nephew, physically and morally, and he began to regard anne as a fellow- sufferer under the same despot. after this sly and curious gaze at her he withdrew his eye again, so that when she casually lifted her own there was nothing visible but his keen bluish profile as before. when the reading was about half-way through, the door behind them opened, and footsteps crossed the threshold. the farmer diminished perceptibly in his chair, and looked fearful, but pretended to be absorbed in the reading, and quite unconscious of an intruder. anne felt the presence of the swashing festus, and stopped her reading. 'please go on, miss anne,' he said, 'i am not going to speak a word.' he withdrew to the mantelpiece and leaned against it at his ease. 'go on, do ye, maidy anne,' said uncle benjy, keeping down his tremblings by a great effort to half their natural extent. anne's voice became much lower now that there were two listeners, and her modesty shrank somewhat from exposing to festus the appreciative modulations which an intelligent interest in the subject drew from her when unembarrassed. but she still went on that he might not suppose her to be disconcerted, though the ensuing ten minutes was one of disquietude. she knew that the bothering yeoman's eyes were travelling over her from his position behind, creeping over her shoulders, up to her head, and across her arms and hands. old benjy on his part knew the same thing, and after sundry endeavours to peep at his nephew from the corner of his eye, he could bear the situation no longer. 'do ye want to say anything to me, nephew?' he quaked. 'no, uncle, thank ye,' said festus heartily. 'i like to stay here, thinking of you and looking at your back hair.' the nervous old man writhed under this vivisection, and anne read on; till, to the relief of both, the gallant fellow grew tired of his amusement and went out of the room. anne soon finished her paragraph and rose to go, determined never to come again as long as festus haunted the precincts. her face grew warmer as she thought that he would be sure to waylay her on her journey home to-day. on this account, when she left the house, instead of going in the customary direction, she bolted round to the further side, through the bushes, along under the kitchen-garden wall, and through a door leading into a rutted cart-track, which had been a pleasant gravelled drive when the fine old hall was in its prosperity. once out of sight of the windows she ran with all her might till she had quitted the park by a route directly opposite to that towards her home. why she was so seriously bent upon doing this she could hardly tell but the instinct to run was irresistible. it was necessary now to clamber over the down to the left of the camp, and make a complete circuit round the latter--infantry, cavalry, sutlers, and all--descending to her house on the other side. this tremendous walk she performed at a rapid rate, never once turning her head, and avoiding every beaten track to keep clear of the knots of soldiers taking a walk. when she at last got down to the levels again she paused to fetch breath, and murmured, 'why did i take so much trouble? he would not, after all, have hurt me.' as she neared the mill an erect figure with a blue body and white thighs descended before her from the down towards the village, and went past the mill to a stile beyond, over which she usually returned to her house. here he lingered. on coming nearer anne discovered this person to be trumpet-major loveday; and not wishing to meet anybody just now anne passed quickly on, and entered the house by the garden door. 'my dear anne, what a time you have been gone!' said her mother. 'yes, i have been round by another road.' 'why did you do that?' anne looked thoughtful and reticent, for her reason was almost too silly a one to confess. 'well, i wanted to avoid a person who is very busy trying to meet me--that's all,' she said. her mother glanced out of the window. 'and there he is, i suppose,' she said, as john loveday, tired of looking for anne at the stile, passed the house on his way to his father's door. he could not help casting his eyes towards their window, and, seeing them, he smiled. anne's reluctance to mention festus was such that she did not correct her mother's error, and the dame went on: 'well, you are quite right, my dear. be friendly with him, but no more at present. i have heard of your other affair, and think it is a very wise choice. i am sure you have my best wishes in it, and i only hope it will come to a point.' 'what's that?' said the astonished anne. 'you and mr. festus derriman, dear. you need not mind me; i have known it for several days. old granny seamore called here saturday, and told me she saw him coming home with you across park close last week, when you went for the newspaper; so i thought i'd send you again to-day, and give you another chance.' 'then you didn't want the paper--and it was only for that!' 'he's a very fine young fellow; he looks a thorough woman's protector.' 'he may look it,' said anne. 'he has given up the freehold farm his father held at pitstock, and lives in independence on what the land brings him. and when farmer derriman dies, he'll have all the old man's, for certain. he'll be worth ten thousand pounds, if a penny, in money, besides sixteen horses, cart and hack, a fifty-cow dairy, and at least five hundred sheep.' anne turned away, and instead of informing her mother that she had been running like a doe to escape the interesting heir-presumptive alluded to, merely said 'mother, i don't like this at all.' ix. anne is kindly fetched by the trumpet-major after this, anne would on no account walk in the direction of the hall for fear of another encounter with young derriman. in the course of a few days it was told in the village that the old farmer had actually gone for a week's holiday and change of air to the royal watering-place near at hand, at the instance of his nephew festus. this was a wonderful thing to hear of uncle benjy, who had not slept outside the walls of oxwell hall for many a long year before; and anne well imagined what extraordinary pressure must have been put upon him to induce him to take such a step. she pictured his unhappiness at the bustling watering-place, and hoped no harm would come to him. she spent much of her time indoors or in the garden, hearing little of the camp movements beyond the periodical ta-ta-ta-taa of the trumpeters sounding their various ingenious calls for watch-setting, stables, feed, boot-and-saddle, parade, and so on, which made her think how clever her friend the trumpet-major must be to teach his pupils to play those pretty little tunes so well. on the third morning after uncle benjy's departure, she was disturbed as usual while dressing by the tramp of the troops down the slope to the mill-pond, and during the now familiar stamping and splashing which followed there sounded upon the glass of the window a slight smack, which might have been caused by a whip or switch. she listened more particularly, and it was repeated. as john loveday was the only dragoon likely to be aware that she slept in that particular apartment, she imagined the signal to come from him, though wondering that he should venture upon such a freak of familiarity. wrapping herself up in a red cloak, she went to the window, gently drew up a corner of the curtain, and peeped out, as she had done many times before. nobody who was not quite close beneath her window could see her face; but as it happened, somebody was close. the soldiers whose floundering anne had heard were not loveday's dragoons, but a troop of the york hussars, quite oblivious of her existence. they had passed on out of the water, and instead of them there sat festus derriman alone on his horse, and in plain clothes, the water reaching up to the animal's belly, and festus' heels elevated over the saddle to keep them out of the stream, which threatened to wash rider and horse into the deep mill-head just below. it was plainly he who had struck her lattice, for in a moment he looked up, and their eyes met. festus laughed loudly, and slapped her window again; and just at that moment the dragoons began prancing down the slope in review order. she could not but wait a minute or two to see them pass. while doing so she was suddenly led to draw back, drop the corner of the curtain, and blush privately in her room. she had not only been seen by festus derriman, but by john loveday, who, riding along with his trumpet slung up behind him, had looked over his shoulder at the phenomenon of derriman beneath anne's bedroom window and seemed quite astounded at the sight. she was quite vexed at the conjunction of incidents, and went no more to the window till the dragoons had ridden far away and she had heard festus's horse laboriously wade on to dry land. when she looked out there was nobody left but miller loveday, who usually stood in the garden at this time of the morning to say a word or two to the soldiers, of whom he already knew so many, and was in a fair way of knowing many more, from the liberality with which he handed round mugs of cheering liquor whenever parties of them walked that way. in the afternoon of this day anne walked to a christening party at a neighbour's in the adjoining parish of springham, intending to walk home again before it got dark; but there was a slight fall of rain towards evening, and she was pressed by the people of the house to stay over the night. with some hesitation she accepted their hospitality; but at ten o'clock, when they were thinking of going to bed, they were startled by a smart rap at the door, and on it being unbolted a man's form was seen in the shadows outside. 'is miss garland here?' the visitor inquired, at which anne suspended her breath. 'yes,' said anne's entertainer, warily. 'her mother is very anxious to know what's become of her. she promised to come home.' to her great relief anne recognized the voice as john loveday's, and not festus derriman's. 'yes, i did, mr. loveday,' said she, coming forward; 'but it rained, and i thought my mother would guess where i was.' loveday said with diffidence that it had not rained anything to speak of at the camp, or at the mill, so that her mother was rather alarmed. 'and she asked you to come for me?' anne inquired. this was a question which the trumpet-major had been dreading during the whole of his walk thither. 'well, she didn't exactly ask me,' he said rather lamely, but still in a manner to show that mrs. garland had indirectly signified such to be her wish. in reality mrs. garland had not addressed him at all on the subject. she had merely spoken to his father on finding that her daughter did not return, and received an assurance from the miller that the precious girl was doubtless quite safe. john heard of this inquiry, and, having a pass that evening, resolved to relieve mrs. garland's mind on his own responsibility. ever since his morning view of festus under her window he had been on thorns of anxiety, and his thrilling hope now was that she would walk back with him. he shifted his foot nervously as he made the bold request. anne felt at once that she would go. there was nobody in the world whose care she would more readily be under than the trumpet-major's in a case like the present. he was their nearest neighbour's son, and she had liked his single-minded ingenuousness from the first moment of his return home. when they had started on their walk, anne said in a practical way, to show that there was no sentiment whatever in her acceptance of his company, 'mother was much alarmed about me, perhaps?' 'yes; she was uneasy,' he said; and then was compelled by conscience to make a clean breast of it. 'i know she was uneasy, because my father said so. but i did not see her myself. the truth is, she doesn't know i am come.' anne now saw how the matter stood; but she was not offended with him. what woman could have been? they walked on in silence, the respectful trumpet-major keeping a yard off on her right as precisely as if that measure had been fixed between them. she had a great feeling of civility toward him this evening, and spoke again. 'i often hear your trumpeters blowing the calls. they do it beautifully, i think.' 'pretty fair; they might do better,' said he, as one too well-mannered to make much of an accomplishment in which he had a hand. 'and you taught them how to do it?' 'yes, i taught them.' 'it must require wonderful practice to get them into the way of beginning and finishing so exactly at one time. it is like one throat doing it all. how came you to be a trumpeter, mr. loveday?' 'well, i took to it naturally when i was a little boy,' said he, betrayed into quite a gushing state by her delightful interest. 'i used to make trumpets of paper, eldersticks, eltrot stems, and even stinging-nettle stalks, you know. then father set me to keep the birds off that little barley-ground of his, and gave me an old horn to frighten 'em with. i learnt to blow that horn so that you could hear me for miles and miles. then he bought me a clarionet, and when i could play that i borrowed a serpent, and i learned to play a tolerable bass. so when i 'listed i was picked out for training as trumpeter at once.' 'of course you were.' 'sometimes, however, i wish i had never joined the army. my father gave me a very fair education, and your father showed me how to draw horses--on a slate, i mean. yes, i ought to have done more than i have.' 'what, did you know my father?' she asked with new interest. 'o yes, for years. you were a little mite of a thing then; and you used to cry when we big boys looked at you, and made pig's eyes at you, which we did sometimes. many and many a time have i stood by your poor father while he worked. ah, you don't remember much about him; but i do!' anne remained thoughtful; and the moon broke from behind the clouds, lighting up the wet foliage with a twinkling brightness, and lending to each of the trumpet-major's buttons and spurs a little ray of its own. they had come to oxwell park gate, and he said, 'do you like going across, or round by the lane?' 'we may as well go by the nearest road,' said anne. they entered the park, following the half-obliterated drive till they came almost opposite the hall, when they entered a footpath leading on to the village. while hereabout they heard a shout, or chorus of exclamation, apparently from within the walls of the dark buildings near them. 'what was that?' said anne. 'i don't know,' said her companion. 'i'll go and see.' he went round the intervening swamp of watercress and brooklime which had once been the fish-pond, crossed by a culvert the trickling brook that still flowed that way, and advanced to the wall of the house. boisterous noises were resounding from within, and he was tempted to go round the corner, where the low windows were, and look through a chink into the room whence the sounds proceeded. it was the room in which the owner dined--traditionally called the great parlour--and within it sat about a dozen young men of the yeomanry cavalry, one of them being festus. they were drinking, laughing, singing, thumping their fists on the tables, and enjoying themselves in the very perfection of confusion. the candles, blown by the breeze from the partly opened window, had guttered into coffin handles and shrouds, and, choked by their long black wicks for want of snuffing, gave out a smoky yellow light. one of the young men might possibly have been in a maudlin state, for he had his arm round the neck of his next neighbour. another was making an incoherent speech to which nobody was listening. some of their faces were red, some were sallow; some were sleepy, some wide awake. the only one among them who appeared in his usual frame of mind was festus, whose huge, burly form rose at the head of the table, enjoying with a serene and triumphant aspect the difference between his own condition and that of his neighbours. while the trumpet-major looked, a young woman, niece of anthony cripplestraw, and one of uncle benjy's servants, was called in by one of the crew, and much against her will a fiddle was placed in her hands, from which they made her produce discordant screeches. the absence of uncle benjy had, in fact, been contrived by young derriman that he might make use of the hall on his own account. cripplestraw had been left in charge, and festus had found no difficulty in forcing from that dependent the keys of whatever he required. john loveday turned his eyes from the scene to the neighbouring moonlit path, where anne still stood waiting. then he looked into the room, then at anne again. it was an opportunity of advancing his own cause with her by exposing festus, for whom he began to entertain hostile feelings of no mean force. 'no; i can't do it,' he said. ''tis underhand. let things take their chance.' he moved away, and then perceived that anne, tired of waiting, had crossed the stream, and almost come up with him. 'what is the noise about?' she said. 'there's company in the house,' said loveday. 'company? farmer derriman is not at home,' said anne, and went on to the window whence the rays of light leaked out, the trumpet-major standing where he was. he saw her face enter the beam of candlelight, stay there for a moment, and quickly withdraw. she came back to him at once. 'let us go on,' she said. loveday imagined from her tone that she must have an interest in derriman, and said sadly, 'you blame me for going across to the window, and leading you to follow me.' 'not a bit,' said anne, seeing his mistake as to the state of her heart, and being rather angry with him for it. 'i think it was most natural, considering the noise.' silence again. 'derriman is sober as a judge,' said loveday, as they turned to go. 'it was only the others who were noisy.' 'whether he is sober or not is nothing whatever to me,' said anne. 'of course not. i know it,' said the trumpet-major, in accents expressing unhappiness at her somewhat curt tone, and some doubt of her assurance. before they had emerged from the shadow of the hall some persons were seen moving along the road. loveday was for going on just the same; but anne, from a shy feeling that it was as well not to be seen walking alone with a man who was not her lover, said-- 'mr. loveday, let us wait here a minute till they have passed.' on nearer view the group was seen to comprise a man on a piebald horse, and another man walking beside him. when they were opposite the house they halted, and the rider dismounted, whereupon a dispute between him and the other man ensued, apparently on a question of money. ''tis old mr. derriman come home!' said anne. 'he has hired that horse from the bathing-machine to bring him. only fancy!' before they had gone many steps further the farmer and his companion had ended their dispute, and the latter mounted the horse and cantered away, uncle benjy coming on to the house at a nimble pace. as soon as he observed loveday and anne, he fell into a feebler gait; when they came up he recognized anne. 'and you have torn yourself away from king george's esplanade so soon, farmer derriman?' said she. 'yes, faith! i couldn't bide at such a ruination place,' said the farmer. 'your hand in your pocket every minute of the day. 'tis a shilling for this, half-a-crown for that; if you only eat one egg, or even a poor windfall of an apple, you've got to pay; and a bunch o' radishes is a halfpenny, and a quart o' cider a good tuppence three-farthings at lowest reckoning. nothing without paying! i couldn't even get a ride homeward upon that screw without the man wanting a shilling for it, when my weight didn't take a penny out of the beast. i've saved a penn'orth or so of shoeleather to be sure; but the saddle was so rough wi' patches that 'a took twopence out of the seat of my best breeches. king george hev' ruined the town for other folks. more than that, my nephew promised to come there to-morrow to see me, and if i had stayed i must have treated en. hey--what's that?' it was a shout from within the walls of the building, and loveday said-- 'your nephew is here, and has company.' 'my nephew _here_?' gasped the old man. 'good folks, will you come up to the door with me? i mean--hee--hee--just for company! dear me, i thought my house was as quiet as a church?' they went back to the window, and the farmer looked in, his mouth falling apart to a greater width at the corners than in the middle, and his fingers assuming a state of radiation. ''tis my best silver tankards they've got, that i've never used! o! 'tis my strong beer! 'tis eight candles guttering away, when i've used nothing but twenties myself for the last half-year!' 'you didn't know he was here, then?' said loveday. 'o no!' said the farmer, shaking his head half-way. 'nothing's known to poor i! there's my best rummers jingling as careless as if 'twas tin cups; and my table scratched, and my chairs wrenched out of joint. see how they tilt 'em on the two back legs--and that's ruin to a chair! ah! when i be gone he won't find another old man to make such work with, and provide goods for his breaking, and house-room and drink for his tear- brass set!' 'comrades and fellow-soldiers,' said festus to the hot farmers and yeomen he entertained within, 'as we have vowed to brave danger and death together, so we'll share the couch of peace. you shall sleep here to- night, for it is getting late. my scram blue-vinnied gallicrow of an uncle takes care that there shan't be much comfort in the house, but you can curl up on the furniture if beds run short. as for my sleep, it won't be much. i'm melancholy! a woman has, i may say, got my heart in her pocket, and i have hers in mine. she's not much--to other folk, i mean--but she is to me. the little thing came in my way, and conquered me. i fancy that simple girl! i ought to have looked higher--i know it; what of that? 'tis a fate that may happen to the greatest men.' 'whash her name?' said one of the warriors, whose head occasionally drooped upon his epaulettes, and whose eyes fell together in the casual manner characteristic of the tired soldier. (it was really farmer stubb, of duddle hole.) 'her name? well, 'tis spelt, a, n--but, by gad, i won't give ye her name here in company. she don't live a hundred miles off, however, and she wears the prettiest cap-ribbons you ever saw. well, well, 'tis weakness! she has little, and i have much; but i do adore that girl, in spite of myself!' 'let's go on,' said anne. 'prithee stand by an old man till he's got into his house!' implored uncle benjy. 'i only ask ye to bide within call. stand back under the trees, and i'll do my poor best to give no trouble.' 'i'll stand by you for half-an-hour, sir,' said loveday. 'after that i must bolt to camp.' 'very well; bide back there under the trees,' said uncle benjy. 'i don't want to spite 'em?' 'you'll wait a few minutes, just to see if he gets in?' said the trumpet- major to anne as they retired from the old man. 'i want to get home,' said anne anxiously. when they had quite receded behind the tree-trunks and he stood alone, uncle benjy, to their surprise, set up a loud shout, altogether beyond the imagined power of his lungs. 'man a-lost! man a-lost!' he cried, repeating the exclamation several times; and then ran and hid himself behind a corner of the building. soon the door opened, and festus and his guests came tumbling out upon the green. ''tis our duty to help folks in distress,' said festus. 'man a-lost, where are you?' ''twas across there,' said one of his friends. 'no! 'twas here,' said another. meanwhile uncle benjy, coming from his hiding-place, had scampered with the quickness of a boy up to the door they had quitted, and slipped in. in a moment the door flew together, and anne heard him bolting and barring it inside. the revellers, however, did not notice this, and came on towards the spot where the trumpet-major and anne were standing. 'here's succour at hand, friends,' said festus. 'we are all king's men; do not fear us.' 'thank you,' said loveday; 'so are we.' he explained in two words that they were not the distressed traveller who had cried out, and turned to go on. ''tis she! my life, 'tis she said festus, now first recognizing anne. 'fair anne, i will not part from you till i see you safe at your own dear door.' 'she's in my hands,' said loveday civilly, though not without firmness, 'so it is not required, thank you.' 'man, had i but my sword--' 'come,' said loveday, 'i don't want to quarrel. let's put it to her. whichever of us she likes best, he shall take her home. miss anne, which?' anne would much rather have gone home alone, but seeing the remainder of the yeomanry party staggering up she thought it best to secure a protector of some kind. how to choose one without offending the other and provoking a quarrel was the difficulty. 'you must both walk home with me,' she adroitly said, 'one on one side, and one on the other. and if you are not quite civil to one another all the time, i'll never speak to either of you again.' they agreed to the terms, and the other yeomen arriving at this time said they would go also as rearguard. 'very well,' said anne. 'now go and get your hats, and don't be long.' 'ah, yes; our hats,' said the yeomanry, whose heads were so hot that they had forgotten their nakedness till then. 'you'll wait till we've got 'em--we won't be a moment,' said festus eagerly. anne and loveday said yes, and festus ran back to the house, followed by all his band. 'now let's run and leave 'em,' said anne, when they were out of hearing. 'but we've promised to wait!' said the trumpet-major in surprise. 'promised to wait!' said anne indignantly. 'as if one ought to keep such a promise to drunken men as that. you can do as you like, i shall go.' 'it is hardly fair to leave the chaps,' said loveday reluctantly, and looking back at them. but she heard no more, and flitting off under the trees, was soon lost to his sight. festus and the rest had by this time reached uncle benjy's door, which they were discomfited and astonished to find closed. they began to knock, and then to kick at the venerable timber, till the old man's head, crowned with a tasselled nightcap, appeared at an upper window, followed by his shoulders, with apparently nothing on but his shirt, though it was in truth a sheet thrown over his coat. 'fie, fie upon ye all for making such a hullaballoo at a weak old man's door,' he said, yawning. 'what's in ye to rouse honest folks at this time o' night?' 'hang me--why--it's uncle benjy! haw--haw--haw?' said festus. 'nunc, why how the devil's this? 'tis i--festus--wanting to come in.' 'o no, no, my clever man, whoever you be!' said uncle benjy in a tone of incredulous integrity. 'my nephew, dear boy, is miles away at quarters, and sound asleep by this time, as becomes a good soldier. that story won't do to-night, my man, not at all.' 'upon my soul 'tis i,' said festus. 'not to-night, my man; not to-night! anthony, bring my blunderbuss,' said the farmer, turning and addressing nobody inside the room. 'let's break in the window-shutters,' said one of the others. 'my wig, and we will!' said festus. 'what a trick of the old man!' 'get some big stones,' said the yeomen, searching under the wall. 'no; forbear, forbear,' said festus, beginning to be frightened at the spirit he had raised. 'i forget; we should drive him into fits, for he's subject to 'em, and then perhaps 'twould be manslaughter. comrades, we must march! no, we'll lie in the barn. i'll see into this, take my word for 't. our honour is at stake. now let's back to see my beauty home.' 'we can't, as we hav'n't got our hats,' said one of his fellow-troopers--in domestic life jacob noakes, of muckleford farm. 'no more we can,' said festus, in a melancholy tone. 'but i must go to her and tell her the reason. she pulls me in spite of all.' 'she's gone. i saw her flee across park while we were knocking at the door,' said another of the yeomanry. 'gone!' said festus, grinding his teeth and putting himself into a rigid shape. 'then 'tis my enemy--he has tempted her away with him! but i am a rich man, and he's poor, and rides the king's horse while i ride my own. could i but find that fellow, that regular, that common man, i would--' 'yes?' said the trumpet-major, coming up behind him. 'i,'--said festus, starting round,--'i would seize him by the hand and say, "guard her; if you are my friend, guard her from all harm!"' 'a good speech. and i will, too,' said loveday heartily. 'and now for shelter,' said festus to his companions. they then unceremoniously left loveday, without wishing him good-night, and proceeded towards the barn. he crossed the park and ascended the down to the camp, grieved that he had given anne cause of complaint, and fancying that she held him of slight account beside his wealthier rival. x. the match-making virtues of a double garden anne was so flurried by the military incidents attending her return home that she was almost afraid to venture alone outside her mother's premises. moreover, the numerous soldiers, regular and otherwise, that haunted overcombe and its neighbourhood, were getting better acquainted with the villagers, and the result was that they were always standing at garden gates, walking in the orchards, or sitting gossiping just within cottage doors, with the bowls of their tobacco-pipes thrust outside for politeness' sake, that they might not defile the air of the household. being gentlemen of a gallant and most affectionate nature, they naturally turned their heads and smiled if a pretty girl passed by, which was rather disconcerting to the latter if she were unused to society. every belle in the village soon had a lover, and when the belles were all allotted those who scarcely deserved that title had their turn, many of the soldiers being not at all particular about half-an-inch of nose more or less, a trifling deficiency of teeth, or a larger crop of freckles than is customary in the saxon race. thus, with one and another, courtship began to be practised in overcombe on rather a large scale, and the dispossessed young men who had been born in the place were left to take their walks alone, where, instead of studying the works of nature, they meditated gross outrages on the brave men who had been so good as to visit their village. anne watched these romantic proceedings from her window with much interest, and when she saw how triumphantly other handsome girls of the neighbourhood walked by on the gorgeous arms of lieutenant knockheelmann, cornet flitzenhart, and captain klaspenkissen, of the thrilling york hussars, who swore the most picturesque foreign oaths, and had a wonderful sort of estate or property called the vaterland in their country across the sea, she was filled with a sense of her own loneliness. it made her think of things which she tried to forget, and to look into a little drawer at something soft and brown that lay in a curl there, wrapped in paper. at last she could bear it no longer, and went downstairs. 'where are you going?' said mrs. garland. 'to see the folks, because i am so gloomy!' 'certainly not at present, anne.' 'why not, mother?' said anne, blushing with an indefinite sense of being very wicked. 'because you must not. i have been going to tell you several times not to go into the street at this time of day. why not walk in the morning? there's young mr. derriman would be glad to--' 'don't mention him, mother, don't!' 'well then, dear, walk in the garden.' so poor anne, who really had not the slightest wish to throw her heart away upon a soldier, but merely wanted to displace old thoughts by new, turned into the inner garden from day to day, and passed a good many hours there, the pleasant birds singing to her, and the delightful butterflies alighting on her hat, and the horrid ants running up her stockings. this garden was undivided from loveday's, the two having originally been the single garden of the whole house. it was a quaint old place, enclosed by a thorn hedge so shapely and dense from incessant clipping that the mill-boy could walk along the top without sinking in--a feat which he often performed as a means of filling out his day's work. the soil within was of that intense fat blackness which is only seen after a century of constant cultivation. the paths were grassed over, so that people came and went upon them without being heard. the grass harboured slugs, and on this account the miller was going to replace it by gravel as soon as he had time; but as he had said this for thirty years without doing it, the grass and the slugs seemed likely to remain. the miller's man attended to mrs. garland's piece of the garden as well as to the larger portion, digging, planting, and weeding indifferently in both, the miller observing with reason that it was not worth while for a helpless widow lady to hire a man for her little plot when his man, working alongside, could tend it without much addition to his labour. the two households were on this account even more closely united in the garden than within the mill. out there they were almost one family, and they talked from plot to plot with a zest and animation which mrs. garland could never have anticipated when she first removed thither after her husband's death. the lower half of the garden, farthest from the road, was the most snug and sheltered part of this snug and sheltered enclosure, and it was well watered as the land of lot. three small brooks, about a yard wide, ran with a tinkling sound from side to side between the plots, crossing the path under wood slabs laid as bridges, and passing out of the garden through little tunnels in the hedge. the brooks were so far overhung at their brinks by grass and garden produce that, had it not been for their perpetual babbling, few would have noticed that they were there. this was where anne liked best to linger when her excursions became restricted to her own premises; and in a spot of the garden not far removed the trumpet-major loved to linger also. having by virtue of his office no stable duty to perform, he came down from the camp to the mill almost every day; and anne, finding that he adroitly walked and sat in his father's portion of the garden whenever she did so in the other half, could not help smiling and speaking to him. so his epaulettes and blue jacket, and anne's yellow gipsy hat, were often seen in different parts of the garden at the same time; but he never intruded into her part of the enclosure, nor did she into loveday's. she always spoke to him when she saw him there, and he replied in deep, firm accents across the gooseberry bushes, or through the tall rows of flowering peas, as the case might be. he thus gave her accounts at fifteen paces of his experiences in camp, in quarters, in flanders, and elsewhere; of the difference between line and column, of forced marches, billeting, and such-like, together with his hopes of promotion. anne listened at first indifferently; but knowing no one else so good-natured and experienced, she grew interested in him as in a brother. by degrees his gold lace, buckles, and spurs lost all their strangeness and were as familiar to her as her own clothes. at last mrs. garland noticed this growing friendship, and began to despair of her motherly scheme of uniting anne to the moneyed festus. why she could not take prompt steps to check interference with her plans arose partly from her nature, which was the reverse of managing, and partly from a new emotional circumstance with which she found it difficult to reckon. the near neighbourhood that had produced the friendship of anne for john loveday was slowly effecting a warmer liking between her mother and his father. thus the month of july passed. the troop horses came with the regularity of clockwork twice a day down to drink under her window, and, as the weather grew hotter, kicked up their heels and shook their heads furiously under the maddening sting of the dun-fly. the green leaves in the garden became of a darker dye, the gooseberries ripened, and the three brooks were reduced to half their winter volume. at length the earnest trumpet-major obtained mrs. garland's consent to take her and her daughter to the camp, which they had not yet viewed from any closer point than their own windows. so one afternoon they went, the miller being one of the party. the villagers were by this time driving a roaring trade with the soldiers, who purchased of them every description of garden produce, milk, butter, and eggs at liberal prices. the figures of these rural sutlers could be seen creeping up the slopes, laden like bees, to a spot in the rear of the camp, where there was a kind of market- place on the greensward. mrs. garland, anne, and the miller were conducted from one place to another, and on to the quarter where the soldiers' wives lived who had not been able to get lodgings in the cottages near. the most sheltered place had been chosen for them, and snug huts had been built for their use by their husbands, of clods, hurdles, a little thatch, or whatever they could lay hands on. the trumpet-major conducted his friends thence to the large barn which had been appropriated as a hospital, and to the cottage with its windows bricked up, that was used as the magazine; then they inspected the lines of shining dark horses (each representing the then high figure of two-and-twenty guineas purchase money), standing patiently at the ropes which stretched from one picket-post to another, a bank being thrown up in front of them as a protection at night. they passed on to the tents of the german legion, a well-grown and rather dandy set of men, with a poetical look about their faces which rendered them interesting to feminine eyes. hanoverians, saxons, prussians, swedes, hungarians, and other foreigners were numbered in their ranks. they were cleaning arms, which they leant carefully against a rail when the work was complete. on their return they passed the mess-house, a temporary wooden building with a brick chimney. as anne and her companions went by, a group of three or four of the hussars were standing at the door talking to a dashing young man, who was expatiating on the qualities of a horse that one was inclined to buy. anne recognized festus derriman in the seller, and cripplestraw was trotting the animal up and down. as soon as she caught the yeoman's eye he came forward, making some friendly remark to the miller, and then turning to miss garland, who kept her eyes steadily fixed on the distant landscape till he got so near that it was impossible to do so longer. festus looked from anne to the trumpet-major, and from the trumpet-major back to anne, with a dark expression of face, as if he suspected that there might be a tender understanding between them. 'are you offended with me?' he said to her in a low voice of repressed resentment. 'no,' said anne. 'when are you coming to the hall again?' 'never, perhaps.' 'nonsense, anne,' said mrs. garland, who had come near, and smiled pleasantly on festus. 'you can go at any time, as usual.' 'let her come with me now, mrs. garland; i should be pleased to walk along with her. my man can lead home the horse.' 'thank you, but i shall not come,' said miss anne coldly. the widow looked unhappily in her daughter's face, distressed between her desire that anne should encourage festus, and her wish to consult anne's own feelings. 'leave her alone, leave her alone,' said festus, his gaze blackening. 'now i think of it i am glad she can't come with me, for i am engaged;' and he stalked away. anne moved on with her mother, young loveday silently following, and they began to descend the hill. 'well, where's mr. loveday?' asked mrs. garland. 'father's behind,' said john. mrs. garland looked behind her solicitously; and the miller, who had been waiting for the event, beckoned to her. 'i'll overtake you in a minute,' she said to the younger pair, and went back, her colour, for some unaccountable reason, rising as she did so. the miller and she then came on slowly together, conversing in very low tones, and when they got to the bottom they stood still. loveday and anne waited for them, saying but little to each other, for the rencounter with festus had damped the spirits of both. at last the widow's private talk with miller loveday came to an end, and she hastened onward, the miller going in another direction to meet a man on business. when she reached the trumpet-major and anne she was looking very bright and rather flurried, and seemed sorry when loveday said that he must leave them and return to the camp. they parted in their usual friendly manner, and anne and her mother were left to walk the few remaining yards alone. 'there, i've settled it,' said mrs. garland. 'anne, what are you thinking about? i have settled in my mind that it is all right.' 'what's all right?' said anne. 'that you do not care for derriman, and mean to encourage john loveday. what's all the world so long as folks are happy! child, don't take any notice of what i have said about festus, and don't meet him any more.' 'what a weathercock you are, mother! why should you say that just now?' 'it is easy to call me a weathercock,' said the matron, putting on the look of a good woman; 'but i have reasoned it out, and at last, thank god, i have got over my ambition. the lovedays are our true and only friends, and mr. festus derriman, with all his money, is nothing to us at all.' 'but,' said anne, 'what has made you change all of a sudden from what you have said before?' 'my feelings and my reason, which i am thankful for!' anne knew that her mother's sentiments were naturally so versatile that they could not be depended on for two days together; but it did not occur to her for the moment that a change had been helped on in the present case by a romantic talk between mrs. garland and the miller. but mrs. garland could not keep the secret long. she chatted gaily as she walked, and before they had entered the house she said, 'what do you think mr loveday has been saying to me, dear anne?' anne did not know at all. 'why, he has asked me to marry him.' xi. our people are affected by the presence of royalty to explain the miller's sudden proposal it is only necessary to go back to that moment when anne, festus, and mrs. garland were talking together on the down. john loveday had fallen behind so as not to interfere with a meeting in which he was decidedly superfluous; and his father, who guessed the trumpet-major's secret, watched his face as he stood. john's face was sad, and his eyes followed mrs. garland's encouraging manner to festus in a way which plainly said that every parting of her lips was tribulation to him. the miller loved his son as much as any miller or private gentleman could do, and he was pained to see john's gloom at such a trivial circumstance. so what did he resolve but to help john there and then by precipitating a matter which, had he himself been the only person concerned, he would have delayed for another six months. he had long liked the society of his impulsive, tractable neighbour, mrs. garland; had mentally taken her up and pondered her in connexion with the question whether it would not be for the happiness of both if she were to share his home, even though she was a little his superior in antecedents and knowledge. in fact he loved her; not tragically, but to a very creditable extent for his years; that is, next to his sons, bob and john, though he knew very well of that ploughed-ground appearance near the corners of her once handsome eyes, and that the little depression in her right cheek was not the lingering dimple it was poetically assumed to be, but a result of the abstraction of some worn-out nether millstones within the cheek by rootle, the budmouth man, who lived by such practices on the heads of the elderly. but what of that, when he had lost two to each one of hers, and exceeded her in age by some eight years! to do john a service, then, he quickened his designs, and put the question to her while they were standing under the eyes of the younger pair. mrs. garland, though she had been interested in the miller for a long time, and had for a moment now and then thought on this question as far as, 'suppose he should, 'if he were to,' and so on, had never thought much further; and she was really taken by surprise when the question came. she answered without affectation that she would think over the proposal; and thus they parted. her mother's infirmity of purpose set anne thinking, and she was suddenly filled with a conviction that in such a case she ought to have some purpose herself. mrs. garland's complacency at the miller's offer had, in truth, amazed her. while her mother had held up her head, and recommended festus, it had seemed a very pretty thing to rebel; but the pressure being removed an awful sense of her own responsibility took possession of her mind. as there was no longer anybody to be wise or ambitious for her, surely she should be wise and ambitious for herself, discountenance her mother's attachment, and encourage festus in his addresses, for her own and her mother's good. there had been a time when a loveday thrilled her own heart; but that was long ago, before she had thought of position or differences. to wake into cold daylight like this, when and because her mother had gone into the land of romance, was dreadful and new to her, and like an increase of years without living them. but it was easier to think that she ought to marry the yeoman than to take steps for doing it; and she went on living just as before, only with a little more thoughtfulness in her eyes. two days after the visit to the camp, when she was again in the garden, soldier loveday said to her, at a distance of five rows of beans and a parsley-bed-- 'you have heard the news, miss garland?' 'no,' said anne, without looking up from a book she was reading. 'the king is coming to-morrow.' 'the king?' she looked up then. 'yes; to gloucester lodge; and he will pass this way. he can't arrive till long past the middle of the night, if what they say is true, that he is timed to change horses at woodyates inn--between mid and south wessex--at twelve o'clock,' continued loveday, encouraged by her interest to cut off the parsley-bed from the distance between them. miller loveday came round the corner of the house. 'have ye heard about the king coming, miss maidy anne?' he said. anne said that she had just heard of it; and the trumpet-major, who hardly welcomed his father at such a moment, explained what he knew of the matter. 'and you will go with your regiment to meet 'en, i suppose?' said old loveday. young loveday said that the men of the german legion were to perform that duty. and turning half from his father, and half towards anne, he added, in a tentative tone, that he thought he might get leave for the night, if anybody would like to be taken to the top of the ridgeway over which the royal party must pass. anne, knowing by this time of the budding hope in the gallant dragoon's mind, and not wishing to encourage it, said, 'i don't want to go.' the miller looked disappointed as well as john. 'your mother might like to?' 'yes, i am going indoors, and i'll ask her if you wish me to,' said she. she went indoors and rather coldly told her mother of the proposal. mrs. garland, though she had determined not to answer the miller's question on matrimony just yet, was quite ready for this jaunt, and in spite of anne she sailed off at once to the garden to hear more about it. when she re- entered, she said-- 'anne, i have not seen the king or the king's horses for these many years; and i am going.' 'ah, it is well to be you, mother,' said anne, in an elderly tone. 'then you won't come with us?' said mrs. garland, rather rebuffed. 'i have very different things to think of,' said her daughter with virtuous emphasis, 'than going to see sights at that time of night.' mrs. garland was sorry, but resolved to adhere to the arrangement. the night came on; and it having gone abroad that the king would pass by the road, many of the villagers went out to see the procession. when the two lovedays and mrs. garland were gone, anne bolted the door for security, and sat down to think again on her grave responsibilities in the choice of a husband, now that her natural guardian could no longer be trusted. a knock came to the door. anne's instinct was at once to be silent, that the comer might think the family had retired. the knocking person, however, was not to be easily persuaded. he had in fact seen rays of light over the top of the shutter, and, unable to get an answer, went on to the door of the mill, which was still going, the miller sometimes grinding all night when busy. the grinder accompanied the stranger to mrs. garland's door. 'the daughter is certainly at home, sir,' said the grinder. 'i'll go round to t'other side, and see if she's there, master derriman.' 'i want to take her out to see the king,' said festus. anne had started at the sound of the voice. no opportunity could have been better for carrying out her new convictions on the disposal of her hand. but in her mortal dislike of festus, anne forgot her principles, and her idea of keeping herself above the lovedays. tossing on her hat and blowing out the candle, she slipped out at the back door, and hastily followed in the direction that her mother and the rest had taken. she overtook them as they were beginning to climb the hill. 'what! you have altered your mind after all?' said the widow. 'how came you to do that, my dear?' 'i thought i might as well come,' said anne. 'to be sure you did,' said the miller heartily. 'a good deal better than biding at home there.' john said nothing, though she could almost see through the gloom how glad he was that she had altered her mind. when they reached the ridge over which the highway stretched they found many of their neighbours who had got there before them idling on the grass border between the roadway and the hedge, enjoying a sort of midnight picnic, which it was easy to do, the air being still and dry. some carriages were also standing near, though most people of the district who possessed four wheels, or even two, had driven into the town to await the king there. from this height could be seen in the distance the position of the watering-place, an additional number of lanterns, lamps, and candles having been lighted to- night by the loyal burghers to grace the royal entry, if it should occur before dawn. mrs. garland touched anne's elbow several times as they walked, and the young woman at last understood that this was meant as a hint to her to take the trumpet-major's arm, which its owner was rather suggesting than offering to her. anne wondered what infatuation was possessing her mother, declined to take the arm, and contrived to get in front with the miller, who mostly kept in the van to guide the others' footsteps. the trumpet-major was left with mrs. garland, and anne's encouraging pursuit of them induced him to say a few words to the former. 'by your leave, ma'am, i'll speak to you on something that concerns my mind very much indeed?' 'certainly.' 'it is my wish to be allowed to pay my addresses to your daughter.' 'i thought you meant that,' said mrs. garland simply. 'and you'll not object?' 'i shall leave it to her. i don't think she will agree, even if i do.' the soldier sighed, and seemed helpless. 'well, i can but ask her,' he said. the spot on which they had finally chosen to wait for the king was by a field gate, whence the white road could be seen for a long distance northwards by day, and some little distance now. they lingered and lingered, but no king came to break the silence of that beautiful summer night. as half-hour after half-hour glided by, and nobody came, anne began to get weary; she knew why her mother did not propose to go back, and regretted the reason. she would have proposed it herself, but that mrs. garland seemed so cheerful, and as wide awake as at noonday, so that it was almost a cruelty to disturb her. the trumpet-major at last made up his mind, and tried to draw anne into a private conversation. the feeling which a week ago had been a vague and piquant aspiration, was to-day altogether too lively for the reasoning of this warm-hearted soldier to regulate. so he persevered in his intention to catch her alone, and at last, in spite of her manoeuvres to the contrary, he succeeded. the miller and mrs. garland had walked about fifty yards further on, and anne and himself were left standing by the gate. but the gallant musician's soul was so much disturbed by tender vibrations and by the sense of his presumption that he could not begin; and it may be questioned if he would ever have broached the subject at all, had not a distant church clock opportunely assisted him by striking the hour of three. the trumpet-major heaved a breath of relief. 'that clock strikes in g sharp,' he said. 'indeed--g sharp?' said anne civilly. 'yes. 'tis a fine-toned bell. i used to notice that note when i was a boy.' 'did you--the very same?' 'yes; and since then i had a wager about that bell with the bandmaster of the north wessex militia. he said the note was g; i said it wasn't. when we found it g sharp we didn't know how to settle it.' 'it is not a deep note for a clock.' 'o no! the finest tenor bell about here is the bell of peter's, casterbridge--in e flat. tum-m-m-m--that's the note--tum-m-m-m.' the trumpet-major sounded from far down his throat what he considered to be e flat, with a parenthetic sense of luxury unquenchable even by his present distraction. 'shall we go on to where my mother is?' said anne, less impressed by the beauty of the note than the trumpet-major himself was. 'in one minute,' he said tremulously. 'talking of music--i fear you don't think the rank of a trumpet-major much to compare with your own?' 'i do. i think a trumpet-major a very respectable man.' 'i am glad to hear you say that. it is given out by the king's command that trumpet-majors are to be considered respectable.' 'indeed! then i am, by chance, more loyal than i thought for.' 'i get a good deal a year extra to the trumpeters, because of my position.' 'that's very nice.' 'and i am not supposed ever to drink with the trumpeters who serve beneath me.' 'naturally.' 'and, by the orders of the war office, i am to exert over them (that's the government word) exert over them full authority; and if any one behaves towards me with the least impropriety, or neglects my orders, he is to be confined and reported.' 'it is really a dignified post,' she said, with, however, a reserve of enthusiasm which was not altogether encouraging. 'and of course some day i shall,' stammered the dragoon--'shall be in rather a better position than i am at present.' 'i am glad to hear it, mr. loveday.' 'and in short, mistress anne,' continued john loveday bravely and desperately, 'may i pay court to you in the hope that--no, no, don't go away!--you haven't heard yet--that you may make me the happiest of men; not yet, but when peace is proclaimed and all is smooth and easy again? i can't put it any better, though there's more to be explained.' 'this is most awkward,' said anne, evidently with pain. 'i cannot possibly agree; believe me, mr. loveday, i cannot.' 'but there's more than this. you would be surprised to see what snug rooms the married trumpet- and sergeant-majors have in quarters.' 'barracks are not all; consider camp and war.' 'that brings me to my strong point!' exclaimed the soldier hopefully. 'my father is better off than most non-commissioned officers' fathers; and there's always a home for you at his house in any emergency. i can tell you privately that he has enough to keep us both, and if you wouldn't hear of barracks, well, peace once established, i'd live at home as a miller and farmer--next door to your own mother.' 'my mother would be sure to object,' expostulated anne. 'no; she leaves it all to you.' 'what! you have asked her?' said anne, with surprise. 'yes. i thought it would not be honourable to act otherwise.' 'that's very good of you,' said anne, her face warming with a generous sense of his straightforwardness. 'but my mother is so entirely ignorant of a soldier's life, and the life of a soldier's wife--she is so simple in all such matters, that i cannot listen to you any more readily for what she may say.' 'then it is all over for me,' said the poor trumpet-major, wiping his face and putting away his handkerchief with an air of finality. anne was silent. any woman who has ever tried will know without explanation what an unpalatable task it is to dismiss, even when she does not love him, a man who has all the natural and moral qualities she would desire, and only fails in the social. would-be lovers are not so numerous, even with the best women, that the sacrifice of one can be felt as other than a good thing wasted, in a world where there are few good things. 'you are not angry, miss garland?' said he, finding that she did not speak. 'o no. don't let us say anything more about this now.' and she moved on. when she drew near to the miller and her mother she perceived that they were engaged in a conversation of that peculiar kind which is all the more full and communicative from the fact of definitive words being few. in short, here the game was succeeding which with herself had failed. it was pretty clear from the symptoms, marks, tokens, telegraphs, and general byplay between widower and widow, that miller loveday must have again said to mrs. garland some such thing as he had said before, with what result this time she did not know. as the situation was delicate, anne halted awhile apart from them. the trumpet-major, quite ignorant of how his cause was entered into by the white-coated man in the distance (for his father had not yet told him of his designs upon mrs. garland), did not advance, but stood still by the gate, as though he were attending a princess, waiting till he should be called up. thus they lingered, and the day began to break. mrs. garland and the miller took no heed of the time, and what it was bringing to earth and sky, so occupied were they with themselves; but anne in her place and the trumpet-major in his, each in private thought of no bright kind, watched the gradual glory of the east through all its tones and changes. the world of birds and insects got lively, the blue and the yellow and the gold of loveday's uniform again became distinct; the sun bored its way upward, the fields, the trees, and the distant landscape kindled to flame, and the trumpet-major, backed by a lilac shadow as tall as a steeple, blazed in the rays like a very god of war. it was half-past three o'clock. a short time after, a rattle of horses and wheels reached their ears from the quarter in which they gazed, and there appeared upon the white line of road a moving mass, which presently ascended the hill and drew near. then there arose a huzza from the few knots of watchers gathered there, and they cried, 'long live king jarge!' the cortege passed abreast. it consisted of three travelling-carriages, escorted by a detachment of the german legion. anne was told to look in the first carriage--a post-chariot drawn by four horses--for the king and queen, and was rewarded by seeing a profile reminding her of the current coin of the realm; but as the party had been travelling all night, and the spectators here gathered were few, none of the royal family looked out of the carriage windows. it was said that the two elder princesses were in the same carriage, but they remained invisible. the next vehicle, a coach and four, contained more princesses, and the third some of their attendants. 'thank god, i have seen my king!' said mrs. garland, when they had all gone by. nobody else expressed any thankfulness, for most of them had expected a more pompous procession than the bucolic tastes of the king cared to indulge in; and one old man said grimly that that sight of dusty old leather coaches was not worth waiting for. anne looked hither and thither in the bright rays of the day, each of her eyes having a little sun in it, which gave her glance a peculiar golden fire, and kindled the brown curls grouped over her forehead to a yellow brilliancy, and made single hairs, blown astray by the night, look like lacquered wires. she was wondering if festus were anywhere near, but she could not see him. before they left the ridge they turned their attention towards the royal watering-place, which was visible at this place only as a portion of the sea-shore, from which the night-mist was rolling slowly back. the sea beyond was still wrapped in summer fog, the ships in the roads showing through it as black spiders suspended in the air. while they looked and walked a white jet of smoke burst from a spot which the miller knew to be the battery in front of the king's residence, and then the report of guns reached their ears. this announcement was answered by a salute from the castle of the adjoining isle, and the ships in the neighbouring anchorage. all the bells in the town began ringing. the king and his family had arrived. xii. how everybody great and small climbed to the top of the downs as the days went on, echoes of the life and bustle of the town reached the ears of the quiet people in overcombe hollow--exciting and moving those unimportant natives as a ground-swell moves the weeds in a cave. travelling-carriages of all kinds and colours climbed and descended the road that led towards the seaside borough. some contained those personages of the king's suite who had not kept pace with him in his journey from windsor; others were the coaches of aristocracy, big and little, whom news of the king's arrival drew thither for their own pleasure: so that the highway, as seen from the hills about overcombe, appeared like an ant-walk--a constant succession of dark spots creeping along its surface at nearly uniform rates of progress, and all in one direction. the traffic and intelligence between camp and town passed in a measure over the villagers' heads. it being summer time the miller was much occupied with business, and the trumpet-major was too constantly engaged in marching between the camp and gloucester lodge with the rest of the dragoons to bring his friends any news for some days. at last he sent a message that there was to be a review on the downs by the king, and that it was fixed for the day following. this information soon spread through the village and country round, and next morning the whole population of overcombe--except two or three very old men and women, a few babies and their nurses, a cripple, and corporal tullidge--ascended the slope with the crowds from afar, and awaited the events of the day. the miller wore his best coat on this occasion, which meant a good deal. an overcombe man in those days would have a best coat, and keep it as a best coat half his life. the miller's had seen five and twenty summers chiefly through the chinks of a clothes-box, and was not at all shabby as yet, though getting singular. but that could not be helped; common coats and best coats were distinct species, and never interchangeable. living so near the scene of the review he walked up the hill, accompanied by mrs. garland and anne as usual. it was a clear day, with little wind stirring, and the view from the downs, one of the most extensive in the county, was unclouded. the eye of any observer who cared for such things swept over the wave-washed town, and the bay beyond, and the isle, with its pebble bank, lying on the sea to the left of these, like a great crouching animal tethered to the mainland. on the extreme east of the marine horizon, st. aldhelm's head closed the scene, the sea to the southward of that point glaring like a mirror under the sun. inland could be seen badbury rings, where a beacon had been recently erected; and nearer, rainbarrow, on egdon heath, where another stood: farther to the left bulbarrow, where there was yet another. not far from this came nettlecombe tout; to the west, dogberry hill, and black'on near to the foreground, the beacon thereon being built of furze faggots thatched with straw, and standing on the spot where the monument now raises its head. at nine o'clock the troops marched upon the ground--some from the camps in the vicinity, and some from quarters in the different towns round about. the approaches to the down were blocked with carriages of all descriptions, ages, and colours, and with pedestrians of every class. at ten the royal personages were said to be drawing near, and soon after the king, accompanied by the dukes of cambridge and cumberland, and a couple of generals, appeared on horseback, wearing a round hat turned up at the side, with a cockade and military feather. (sensation among the crowd.) then the queen and three of the princesses entered the field in a great coach drawn by six beautiful cream-coloured horses. another coach, with four horses of the same sort, brought the two remaining princesses. (confused acclamations, 'there's king jarge!' 'that's queen sharlett!' 'princess 'lizabeth!' 'princesses sophiar and meelyer!' etc., from the surrounding spectators.) anne and her party were fortunate enough to secure a position on the top of one of the barrows which rose here and there on the down; and the miller having gallantly constructed a little cairn of flints, he placed the two women thereon, by which means they were enabled to see over the heads, horses, and coaches of the multitudes below and around. at the march-past the miller's eye, which had been wandering about for the purpose, discovered his son in his place by the trumpeters, who had moved forwards in two ranks, and were sounding the march. 'that's john!' he cried to the widow. 'his trumpet-sling is of two colours, d'ye see; and the others be plain.' mrs. garland too saw him now, and enthusiastically admired him from her hands upwards, and anne silently did the same. but before the young woman's eyes had quite left the trumpet-major they fell upon the figure of yeoman festus riding with his troop, and keeping his face at a medium between haughtiness and mere bravery. he certainly looked as soldierly as any of his own corps, and felt more soldierly than half-a-dozen, as anybody could see by observing him. anne got behind the miller, in case festus should discover her, and, regardless of his monarch, rush upon her in a rage with, 'why the devil did you run away from me that night--hey, madam?' but she resolved to think no more of him just now, and to stick to loveday, who was her mother's friend. in this she was helped by the stirring tones which burst from the latter gentleman and his subordinates from time to time. 'well,' said the miller complacently, 'there's few of more consequence in a regiment than a trumpeter. he's the chap that tells 'em what to do, after all. hey, mrs. garland?' 'so he is, miller,' said she. 'they could no more do without jack and his men than they could without generals.' 'indeed they could not,' said mrs. garland again, in a tone of pleasant agreement with any one in great britain or ireland. it was said that the line that day was three miles long, reaching from the high ground on the right of where the people stood to the turnpike road on the left. after the review came a sham fight, during which action the crowd dispersed more widely over the downs, enabling widow garland to get still clearer glimpses of the king, and his handsome charger, and the head of the queen, and the elbows and shoulders of the princesses in the carriages, and fractional parts of general garth and the duke of cumberland; which sights gave her great gratification. she tugged at her daughter at every opportunity, exclaiming, 'now you can see his feather!' 'there's her hat!' 'there's her majesty's india muslin shawl!' in a minor form of ecstasy, that made the miller think her more girlish and animated than her daughter anne. in those military manoeuvres the miller followed the fortunes of one man; anne garland of two. the spectators, who, unlike our party, had no personal interest in the soldiery, saw only troops and battalions in the concrete, straight lines of red, straight lines of blue, white lines formed of innumerable knee-breeches, black lines formed of many gaiters, coming and going in kaleidoscopic change. who thought of every point in the line as an isolated man, each dwelling all to himself in the hermitage of his own mind? one person did, a young man far removed from the barrow where the garlands and miller loveday stood. the natural expression of his face was somewhat obscured by the bronzing effects of rough weather, but the lines of his mouth showed that affectionate impulses were strong within him--perhaps stronger than judgment well could regulate. he wore a blue jacket with little brass buttons, and was plainly a seafaring man. meanwhile, in the part of the plain where rose the tumulus on which the miller had established himself, a broad-brimmed tradesman was elbowing his way along. he saw mr. loveday from the base of the barrow, and beckoned to attract his attention. loveday went halfway down, and the other came up as near as he could. 'miller,' said the man, 'a letter has been lying at the post-office for you for the last three days. if i had known that i should see ye here i'd have brought it along with me.' the miller thanked him for the news, and they parted, loveday returning to the summit. 'what a very strange thing!' he said to mrs. garland, who had looked inquiringly at his face, now very grave. 'that was budmouth postmaster, and he says there's a letter for me. ah, i now call to mind that there _was_ a letter in the candle three days ago this very night--a large red one; but foolish-like i thought nothing o't. who _can_ that letter be from?' a letter at this time was such an event for hamleteers, even of the miller's respectable standing, that loveday thenceforward was thrown into a fit of abstraction which prevented his seeing any more of the sham fight, or the people, or the king. mrs. garland imbibed some of his concern, and suggested that the letter might come from his son robert. 'i should naturally have thought that,' said miller loveday; 'but he wrote to me only two months ago, and his brother john heard from him within the last four weeks, when he was just about starting on another voyage. if you'll pardon me, mrs. garland, ma'am, i'll see if there's any overcombe man here who is going to budmouth to-day, so that i may get the letter by night-time. i cannot possibly go myself.' so mr. loveday left them for awhile; and as they were so near home mrs. garland did not wait on the barrow for him to come back, but walked about with anne a little time, until they should be disposed to trot down the slope to their own door. they listened to a man who was offering one guinea to receive ten in case buonaparte should be killed in three months, and to other entertainments of that nature, which at this time were not rare. once during their peregrination the eyes of the sailor before-mentioned fell upon anne; but he glanced over her and passed her unheedingly by. loveday the elder was at this time on the other side of the line, looking for a messenger to the town. at twelve o'clock the review was over, and the king and his family left the hill. the troops then cleared off the field, the spectators followed, and by one o'clock the downs were again bare. they still spread their grassy surface to the sun as on that beautiful morning not, historically speaking, so very long ago; but the king and his fifteen thousand armed men, the horses, the bands of music, the princesses, the cream-coloured teams--the gorgeous centre-piece, in short, to which the downs were but the mere mount or margin--how entirely have they all passed and gone!--lying scattered about the world as military and other dust, some at talavera, albuera, salamanca, vittoria, toulouse, and waterloo; some in home churchyards; and a few small handfuls in royal vaults. in the afternoon john loveday, lightened of his trumpet and trappings, appeared at the old mill-house door, and beheld anne standing at hers. 'i saw you, miss garland,' said the soldier gaily. 'where was i?' said she, smiling. 'on the top of the big mound--to the right of the king.' 'and i saw you; lots of times,' she rejoined. loveday seemed pleased. 'did you really take the trouble to find me? that was very good of you.' 'her eyes followed you everywhere,' said mrs. garland from an upper window. 'of course i looked at the dragoons most,' said anne, disconcerted. 'and when i looked at them my eyes naturally fell upon the trumpets. i looked at the dragoons generally, no more.' she did not mean to show any vexation to the trumpet-major, but he fancied otherwise, and stood repressed. the situation was relieved by the arrival of the miller, still looking serious. 'i am very much concerned, john; i did not go to the review for nothing. there's a letter a-waiting for me at budmouth, and i must get it before bedtime, or i shan't sleep a wink.' 'i'll go, of course,' said john; 'and perhaps miss garland would like to see what's doing there to-day? everybody is gone or going; the road is like a fair.' he spoke pleadingly, but anne was not won to assent. 'you can drive in the gig; 'twill do blossom good,' said the miller. 'let david drive miss garland,' said the trumpet-major, not wishing to coerce her; 'i would just as soon walk.' anne joyfully welcomed this arrangement, and a time was fixed for the start. xiii. the conversation in the crowd in the afternoon they drove off, john loveday being nowhere visible. all along the road they passed and were overtaken by vehicles of all descriptions going in the same direction; among them the extraordinary machines which had been invented for the conveyance of troops to any point of the coast on which the enemy should land; they consisted of four boards placed across a sort of trolly, thirty men of the volunteer companies riding on each. the popular georgian watering-place was in a paroxysm of gaiety. the town was quite overpowered by the country round, much to the town's delight and profit. the fear of invasion was such that six frigates lay in the roads to ensure the safety of the royal family, and from the regiments of horse and foot quartered at the barracks, or encamped on the hills round about, a picket of a thousand men mounted guard every day in front of gloucester lodge, where the king resided. when anne and her attendant reached this point, which they did on foot, stabling the horse on the outskirts of the town, it was about six o'clock. the king was on the esplanade, and the soldiers were just marching past to mount guard. the band formed in front of the king, and all the officers saluted as they went by. anne now felt herself close to and looking into the stream of recorded history, within whose banks the littlest things are great, and outside which she and the general bulk of the human race were content to live on as an unreckoned, unheeded superfluity. when she turned from her interested gaze at this scene, there stood john loveday. she had had a presentiment that he would turn up in this mysterious way. it was marvellous that he could have got there so quickly; but there he was--not looking at the king, or at the crowd, but waiting for the turn of her head. 'trumpet-major, i didn't see you,' said anne demurely. 'how is it that your regiment is not marching past?' 'we take it by turns, and it is not our turn,' said loveday. she wanted to know then if they were afraid that the king would be carried off by the first consul. yes, loveday told her; and his majesty was rather venturesome. a day or two before he had gone so far to sea that he was nearly caught by some of the enemy's cruisers. 'he is anxious to fight boney single-handed,' he said. 'what a good, brave king!' said anne. loveday seemed anxious to come to more personal matters. 'will you let me take you round to the other side, where you can see better?' he asked. 'the queen and the princesses are at the window.' anne passively assented. 'david, wait here for me,' she said; 'i shall be back again in a few minutes.' the trumpet-major then led her off triumphantly, and they skirted the crowd and came round on the side towards the sands. he told her everything he could think of, military and civil, to which anne returned pretty syllables and parenthetic words about the colour of the sea and the curl of the foam--a way of speaking that moved the soldier's heart even more than long and direct speeches would have done. 'and that other thing i asked you?' he ventured to say at last. 'we won't speak of it.' 'you don't dislike me?' 'o no!' she said, gazing at the bathing-machines, digging children, and other common objects of the seashore, as if her interest lay there rather than with him. 'but i am not worthy of the daughter of a genteel professional man--that's what you mean?' 'there's something more than worthiness required in such cases, you know,' she said, still without calling her mind away from surrounding scenes. 'ah, there are the queen and princesses at the window!' 'something more?' 'well, since you will make me speak, i mean the woman ought to love the man.' the trumpet-major seemed to be less concerned about this than about her supposed superiority. 'if it were all right on that point, would you mind the other?' he asked, like a man who knows he is too persistent, yet who cannot be still. 'how can i say, when i don't know? what a pretty chip hat the elder princess wears?' her companion's general disappointment extended over him almost to his lace and his plume. 'your mother said, you know, miss anne--' 'yes, that's the worst of it,' she said. 'let us go back to david; i have seen all i want to see, mr. loveday.' the mass of the people had by this time noticed the queen and princesses at the window, and raised a cheer, to which the ladies waved their embroidered handkerchiefs. anne went back towards the pavement with her trumpet-major, whom all the girls envied her, so fine-looking a soldier was he; and not only for that, but because it was well known that he was not a soldier from necessity, but from patriotism, his father having repeatedly offered to set him up in business: his artistic taste in preferring a horse and uniform to a dirty, rumbling flour-mill was admired by all. she, too, had a very nice appearance in her best clothes as she walked along--the sarcenet hat, muslin shawl, and tight-sleeved gown being of the newest overcombe fashion, that was only about a year old in the adjoining town, and in london three or four. she could not be harsh to loveday and dismiss him curtly, for his musical pursuits had refined him, educated him, and made him quite poetical. to-day he had been particularly well-mannered and tender; so, instead of answering, 'never speak to me like this again,' she merely put him off with a 'let us go back to david.' when they reached the place where they had left him david was gone. anne was now positively vexed. 'what _shall_ i do?' she said. 'he's only gone to drink the king's health,' said loveday, who had privately given david the money for performing that operation. 'depend upon it, he'll be back soon.' 'will you go and find him?' said she, with intense propriety in her looks and tone. 'i will,' said loveday reluctantly; and he went. anne stood still. she could now escape her gallant friend, for, although the distance was long, it was not impossible to walk home. on the other hand, loveday was a good and sincere fellow, for whom she had almost a brotherly feeling, and she shrank from such a trick. while she stood and mused, scarcely heeding the music, the marching of the soldiers, the king, the dukes, the brilliant staff, the attendants, and the happy groups of people, her eyes fell upon the ground. before her she saw a flower lying--a crimson sweet-william--fresh and uninjured. an instinctive wish to save it from destruction by the passengers' feet led her to pick it up; and then, moved by a sudden self- consciousness, she looked around. she was standing before an inn, and from an upper window festus derriman was leaning with two or three kindred spirits of his cut and kind. he nodded eagerly, and signified to her that he had thrown the flower. what should she do? to throw it away would seem stupid, and to keep it was awkward. she held it between her finger and thumb, twirled it round on its axis and twirled it back again, regarding and yet not examining it. just then she saw the trumpet-major coming back. 'i can't find david anywhere,' he said; and his heart was not sorry as he said it. anne was still holding out the sweet-william as if about to drop it, and, scarcely knowing what she did under the distressing sense that she was watched, she offered the flower to loveday. his face brightened with pleasure as he took it. 'thank you, indeed,' he said. then anne saw what a misleading blunder she had committed towards loveday in playing to the yeoman. perhaps she had sown the seeds of a quarrel. 'it was not my sweet-william,' she said hastily; 'it was lying on the ground. i don't mean anything by giving it to you.' 'but i'll keep it all the same,' said the innocent soldier, as if he knew a good deal about womankind; and he put the flower carefully inside his jacket, between his white waistcoat and his heart. festus, seeing this, enlarged himself wrathfully, got hot in the face, rose to his feet, and glared down upon them like a turnip-lantern. 'let us go away,' said anne timorously. 'i'll see you safe to your own door, depend upon me,' said loveday. 'but--i had near forgot--there's father's letter, that he's so anxiously waiting for! will you come with me to the post-office? then i'll take you straight home.' anne, expecting festus to pounce down every minute, was glad to be off anywhere; so she accepted the suggestion, and they went along the parade together. loveday set this down as a proof of anne's relenting. thus in joyful spirits he entered the office, paid the postage, and received the letter. 'it is from bob, after all!' he said. 'father told me to read it at once, in case of bad news. ask your pardon for keeping you a moment.' he broke the seal and read, anne standing silently by. 'he is coming home _to be married_,' said the trumpet-major, without looking up. anne did not answer. the blood swept impetuously up her face at his words, and as suddenly went away again, leaving her rather paler than before. she disguised her agitation and then overcame it, loveday observing nothing of this emotional performance. 'as far as i can understand he will be here saturday,' he said. 'indeed!' said anne quite calmly. 'and who is he going to marry?' 'that i don't know,' said john, turning the letter about. 'the woman is a stranger.' at this moment the miller entered the office hastily. 'come, john,' he cried, 'i have been waiting and waiting for that there letter till i was nigh crazy!' john briefly explained the news, and when his father had recovered from his astonishment, taken off his hat, and wiped the exact line where his forehead joined his hair, he walked with anne up the street, leaving john to return alone. the miller was so absorbed in his mental perspective of bob's marriage, that he saw nothing of the gaieties they passed through; and anne seemed also so much impressed by the same intelligence, that she crossed before the inn occupied by festus without showing a recollection of his presence there. xiv. later in the evening of the same day when they reached home the sun was going down. it had already been noised abroad that miller loveday had received a letter, and, his cart having been heard coming up the lane, the population of overcombe drew down towards the mill as soon as he had gone indoors--a sudden flash of brightness from the window showing that he had struck such an early light as nothing but the immediate deciphering of literature could require. letters were matters of public moment, and everybody in the parish had an interest in the reading of those rare documents; so that when the miller had placed the candle, slanted himself, and called in mrs. garland to have her opinion on the meaning of any hieroglyphics that he might encounter in his course, he found that he was to be additionally assisted by the opinions of the other neighbours, whose persons appeared in the doorway, partly covering each other like a hand of cards, yet each showing a large enough piece of himself for identification. to pass the time while they were arranging themselves, the miller adopted his usual way of filling up casual intervals, that of snuffing the candle. 'we heard you had got a letter, maister loveday,' they said. 'yes; "southampton, the twelfth of august, dear father,"' said loveday; and they were as silent as relations at the reading of a will. anne, for whom the letter had a singular fascination, came in with her mother and sat down. bob stated in his own way that having, since landing, taken into consideration his father's wish that he should renounce a seafaring life and become a partner in the mill, he had decided to agree to the proposal; and with that object in view he would return to overcombe in three days from the time of writing. he then said incidentally that since his voyage he had been in lodgings at southampton, and during that time had become acquainted with a lovely and virtuous young maiden, in whom he found the exact qualities necessary to his happiness. having known this lady for the full space of a fortnight he had had ample opportunities of studying her character, and, being struck with the recollection that, if there was one thing more than another necessary in a mill which had no mistress, it was somebody who could play that part with grace and dignity, he had asked miss matilda johnson to be his wife. in her kindness she, though sacrificing far better prospects, had agreed; and he could not but regard it as a happy chance that he should have found at the nick of time such a woman to adorn his home, whose innocence was as stunning as her beauty. without much ado, therefore, he and she had arranged to be married at once, and at overcombe, that his father might not be deprived of the pleasures of the wedding feast. she had kindly consented to follow him by land in the course of a few days, and to live in the house as their guest for the week or so previous to the ceremony. ''tis a proper good letter,' said mrs. comfort from the background. 'i never heerd true love better put out of hand in my life; and they seem 'nation fond of one another.' 'he haven't knowed her such a very long time,' said job mitchell dubiously. 'that's nothing,' said esther beach. 'nater will find her way, very rapid when the time's come for't. well, 'tis good news for ye, miller.' 'yes, sure, i hope 'tis,' said loveday, without, however, showing any great hurry to burst into the frantic form of fatherly joy which the event should naturally have produced, seeming more disposed to let off his feelings by examining thoroughly into the fibres of the letter-paper. 'i was five years a-courting my wife,' he presently remarked. 'but folks were slower about everything in them days. well, since she's coming we must make her welcome. did any of ye catch by my reading which day it is he means? what with making out the penmanship, my mind was drawn off from the sense here and there.' 'he says in three days,' said mrs. garland. 'the date of the letter will fix it.' on examination it was found that the day appointed was the one nearly expired; at which the miller jumped up and said, 'then he'll be here before bedtime. i didn't gather till now that he was coming afore saturday. why, he may drop in this very minute!' he had scarcely spoken when footsteps were heard coming along the front, and they presently halted at the door. loveday pushed through the neighbours and rushed out; and, seeing in the passage a form which obscured the declining light, the miller seized hold of him, saying, 'o my dear bob; then you are come!' 'scrounch it all, miller, don't quite pull my poor shoulder out of joint! whatever is the matter?' said the new-comer, trying to release himself from loveday's grasp of affection. it was uncle benjy. 'thought 'twas my son!' faltered the miller, sinking back upon the toes of the neighbours who had closely followed him into the entry. 'well, come in, mr. derriman, and make yerself at home. why, you haven't been here for years! whatever has made you come now, sir, of all times in the world?' 'is he in there with ye?' whispered the farmer with misgiving. 'who?' 'my nephew, after that maid that he's so mighty smit with?' 'o no; he never calls here.' farmer derriman breathed a breath of relief. 'well, i've called to tell ye,' he said, 'that there's more news of the french. we shall have 'em here this month as sure as a gun. the gunboats be all ready--near two thousand of 'em--and the whole army is at boulogne. and, miller, i know ye to be an honest man.' loveday did not say nay. 'neighbour loveday, i know ye to be an honest man,' repeated the old squireen. 'can i speak to ye alone?' as the house was full, loveday took him into the garden, all the while upon tenter-hooks, not lest buonaparte should appear in their midst, but lest bob should come whilst he was not there to receive him. when they had got into a corner uncle benjy said, 'miller, what with the french, and what with my nephew festus, i assure ye my life is nothing but wherrit from morning to night. miller loveday, you are an honest man.' loveday nodded. 'well, i've come to ask a favour--to ask if you will take charge of my few poor title-deeds and documents and suchlike, while i am away from home next week, lest anything should befall me, and they should be stole away by boney or festus, and i should have nothing left in the wide world? i can trust neither banks nor lawyers in these terrible times; and i am come to you.' loveday after some hesitation agreed to take care of anything that derriman should bring, whereupon the farmer said he would call with the parchments and papers alluded to in the course of a week. derriman then went away by the garden gate, mounted his pony, which had been tethered outside, and rode on till his form was lost in the shades. the miller rejoined his friends, and found that in the meantime john had arrived. john informed the company that after parting from his father and anne he had rambled to the harbour, and discovered the pewit by the quay. on inquiry he had learnt that she came in at eleven o'clock, and that bob had gone ashore. 'we'll go and meet him,' said the miller. ''tis still light out of doors.' so, as the dew rose from the meads and formed fleeces in the hollows, loveday and his friends and neighbours strolled out, and loitered by the stiles which hampered the footpath from overcombe to the high road at intervals of a hundred yards. john loveday, being obliged to return to camp, was unable to accompany them, but widow garland thought proper to fall in with the procession. when she had put on her bonnet she called to her daughter. anne said from upstairs that she was coming in a minute; and her mother walked on without her. what was anne doing? having hastily unlocked a receptacle for emotional objects of small size, she took thence the little folded paper with which we have already become acquainted, and, striking a light from her private tinder-box, she held the paper, and curl of hair it contained, in the candle till they were burnt. then she put on her hat and followed her mother and the rest of them across the moist grey fields, cheerfully singing in an undertone as she went, to assure herself of her indifference to circumstances. xv. 'captain' bob loveday of the merchant service while loveday and his neighbours were thus rambling forth, full of expectancy, some of them, including anne in the rear, heard the crackling of light wheels along the curved lane to which the path was the chord. at once anne thought, 'perhaps that's he, and we are missing him.' but recent events were not of a kind to induce her to say anything; and the others of the company did not reflect on the sound. had they gone across to the hedge which hid the lane, and looked through it, they would have seen a light cart driven by a boy, beside whom was seated a seafaring man, apparently of good standing in the merchant service, with his feet outside on the shaft. the vehicle went over the main bridge, turned in upon the other bridge at the tail of the mill, and halted by the door. the sailor alighted, showing himself to be a well- shaped, active, and fine young man, with a bright eye, an anonymous nose, and of such a rich complexion by exposure to ripening suns that he might have been some connexion of the foreigner who calls his likeness the portrait of a gentleman in galleries of the old masters. yet in spite of this, and though bob loveday had been all over the world from cape horn to pekin, and from india's coral strand to the white sea, the most conspicuous of all the marks that he had brought back with him was an increased resemblance to his mother, who had lain all the time beneath overcombe church wall. captain loveday tried the house door; finding this locked he went to the mill door: this was locked also, the mill being stopped for the night. 'they are not at home,' he said to the boy. 'but never mind that. just help to unload the things and then i'll pay you, and you can drive off home.' the cart was unloaded, and the boy was dismissed, thanking the sailor profusely for the payment rendered. then bob loveday, finding that he had still some leisure on his hands, looked musingly east, west, north, south, and nadir; after which he bestirred himself by carrying his goods, article by article, round to the back door, out of the way of casual passers. this done, he walked round the mill in a more regardful attitude, and surveyed its familiar features one by one--the panes of the grinding-room, now as heretofore clouded with flour as with stale hoar- frost; the meal lodged in the corners of the window-sills, forming a soil in which lichens grew without ever getting any bigger, as they had done since his smallest infancy; the mosses on the plinth towards the river, reaching as high as the capillary power of the walls would fetch up moisture for their nourishment, and the penned mill-pond, now as ever on the point of overflowing into the garden. everything was the same. when he had had enough of this it occurred to loveday that he might get into the house in spite of the locked doors; and by entering the garden, placing a pole from the fork of an apple-tree to the window-sill of a bedroom on that side, and climbing across like a barbary ape, he entered the window and stepped down inside. there was something anomalous in being close to the familiar furniture without having first seen his father, and its silent, impassive shine was not cheering; it was as if his relations were all dead, and only their tables and chests of drawers left to greet him. he went downstairs and seated himself in the dark parlour. finding this place, too, rather solitary, and the tick of the invisible clock preternaturally loud, he unearthed the tinder-box, obtained a light, and set about making the house comfortable for his father's return, divining that the miller had gone out to meet him by the wrong road. robert's interest in this work increased as he proceeded, and he bustled round and round the kitchen as lightly as a girl. david, the indoor factotum, having lost himself among the quart pots of budmouth, there had been nobody left here to prepare supper, and bob had it all to himself. in a short time a fire blazed up the chimney, a tablecloth was found, the plates were clapped down, and a search made for what provisions the house afforded, which, in addition to various meats, included some fresh eggs of the elongated shape that produces cockerels when hatched, and had been set aside on that account for putting under the next broody hen. a more reckless cracking of eggs than that which now went on had never been known in overcombe since the last large christening; and as loveday gashed one on the side, another at the end, another longways, and another diagonally, he acquired adroitness by practice, and at last made every son of a hen of them fall into two hemispheres as neatly as if it opened by a hinge. from eggs he proceeded to ham, and from ham to kidneys, the result being a brilliant fry. not to be tempted to fall to before his father came back, the returned navigator emptied the whole into a dish, laid a plate over the top, his coat over the plate, and his hat over his coat. thus completely stopping in the appetizing smell, he sat down to await events. he was relieved from the tediousness of doing this by hearing voices outside; and in a minute his father entered. 'glad to welcome ye home, father,' said bob. 'and supper is just ready.' 'lard, lard--why, captain bob's here!' said mrs. garland. 'and we've been out waiting to meet thee!' said the miller, as he entered the room, followed by representatives of the houses of cripplestraw, comfort, mitchell, beach, and snooks, together with some small beginnings of fencible tremlett's posterity. in the rear came david, and quite in the vanishing-point of the composition, anne the fair. 'i drove over; and so was forced to come by the road,' said bob. 'and we went across the fields, thinking you'd walk,' said his father. 'i should have been here this morning; but not so much as a wheelbarrow could i get for my traps; everything was gone to the review. so i went too, thinking i might meet you there. i was then obliged to return to the harbour for the luggage.' then there was a welcoming of captain bob by pulling out his arms like drawers and shutting them again, smacking him on the back as if he were choking, holding him at arm's length as if he were of too large type to read close. all which persecution bob bore with a wide, genial smile that was shaken into fragments and scattered promiscuously among the spectators. 'get a chair for 'n!' said the miller to david, whom they had met in the fields and found to have got nothing worse by his absence than a slight slant in his walk. 'never mind--i am not tired--i have been here ever so long,' said bob. 'and i--' but the chair having been placed behind him, and a smart touch in the hollow of a person's knee by the edge of that piece of furniture having a tendency to make the person sit without further argument, bob sank down dumb, and the others drew up other chairs at a convenient nearness for easy analytic vision and the subtler forms of good fellowship. the miller went about saying, 'david, the nine best glasses from the corner cupboard!'--'david, the corkscrew!'--'david, whisk the tail of thy smock-frock round the inside of these quart pots afore you draw drink in 'em--they be an inch thick in dust!'--'david, lower that chimney-crook a couple of notches that the flame may touch the bottom of the kettle, and light three more of the largest candles!'--'if you can't get the cork out of the jar, david, bore a hole in the tub of hollands that's buried under the scroff in the fuel-house; d'ye hear?--dan brown left en there yesterday as a return for the little porker i gied en.' when they had all had a thimbleful round, and the superfluous neighbours had reluctantly departed, one by one, the inmates gave their minds to the supper, which david had begun to serve up. 'what be you rolling back the tablecloth for, david?' said the miller. 'maister bob have put down one of the under sheets by mistake, and i thought you might not like it, sir, as there's ladies present!' 'faith, 'twas the first thing that came to hand,' said robert. 'it seemed a tablecloth to me.' 'never mind--don't pull off the things now he's laid 'em down--let it bide,' said the miller. 'but where's widow garland and maidy anne?' 'they were here but a minute ago,' said david. 'depend upon it they have slinked off 'cause they be shy.' the miller at once went round to ask them to come back and sup with him; and while he was gone david told bob in confidence what an excellent place he had for an old man. 'yes, cap'n bob, as i suppose i must call ye; i've worked for yer father these eight-and-thirty years, and we have always got on very well together. trusts me with all the keys, lends me his sleeve-waistcoat, and leaves the house entirely to me. widow garland next door, too, is just the same with me, and treats me as if i was her own child.' 'she must have married young to make you that, david.' 'yes, yes--i'm years older than she. 'tis only my common way of speaking.' mrs. garland would not come in to supper, and the meal proceeded without her, bob recommending to his father the dish he had cooked, in the manner of a householder to a stranger just come. the miller was anxious to know more about his son's plans for the future, but would not for the present interrupt his eating, looking up from his own plate to appreciate bob's travelled way of putting english victuals out of sight, as he would have looked at a mill on improved principles. david had only just got the table clear, and set the plates in a row under the bakehouse table for the cats to lick, when the door was hastily opened, and mrs. garland came in, looking concerned. 'i have been waiting to hear the plates removed to tell you how frightened we are at something we hear at the back-door. it seems like robbers muttering; but when i look out there's nobody there!' 'this must be seen to,' said the miller, rising promptly. 'david, light the middle-sized lantern. i'll go and search the garden.' 'and i'll go too,' said his son, taking up a cudgel. 'lucky i've come home just in time!' they went out stealthily, followed by the widow and anne, who had been afraid to stay alone in the house under the circumstances. no sooner were they beyond the door when, sure enough, there was the muttering almost close at hand, and low upon the ground, as from persons lying down in hiding. 'bless my heart!' said bob, striking his head as though it were some enemy's: 'why, 'tis my luggage. i'd quite forgot it!' 'what!' asked his father. 'my luggage. really, if it hadn't been for mrs. garland it would have stayed there all night, and they, poor things! would have been starved. i've got all sorts of articles for ye. you go inside, and i'll bring 'em in. 'tis parrots that you hear a muttering, mrs. garland. you needn't be afraid any more.' 'parrots?' said the miller. 'well, i'm glad 'tis no worse. but how couldst forget so, bob?' the packages were taken in by david and bob, and the first unfastened were three, wrapped in cloths, which being stripped off revealed three cages, with a gorgeous parrot in each. 'this one is for you, father, to hang up outside the door, and amuse us,' said bob. 'he'll talk very well, but he's sleepy to-night. this other one i brought along for any neighbour that would like to have him. his colours are not so bright; but 'tis a good bird. if you would like to have him you are welcome to him,' he said, turning to anne, who had been tempted forward by the birds. 'you have hardly spoken yet, miss anne, but i recollect you very well. how much taller you have got, to be sure!' anne said she was much obliged, but did not know what she could do with such a present. mrs. garland accepted it for her, and the sailor went on--'now this other bird i hardly know what to do with; but i dare say he'll come in for something or other.' 'he is by far the prettiest,' said the widow. 'i would rather have it than the other, if you don't mind.' 'yes,' said bob, with embarrassment. 'but the fact is, that bird will hardly do for ye, ma'am. he's a hard swearer, to tell the truth; and i am afraid he's too old to be broken of it.' 'how dreadful!' said mrs. garland. 'we could keep him in the mill,' suggested the miller. 'it won't matter about the grinder hearing him, for he can't learn to cuss worse than he do already!' 'the grinder shall have him, then,' said bob. 'the one i have given you, ma'am, has no harm in him at all. you might take him to church o' sundays as far as that goes.' the sailor now untied a small wooden box about a foot square, perforated with holes. 'here are two marmosets,' he continued. 'you can't see them to-night; but they are beauties--the tufted sort.' 'what's a marmoset?' said the miller. 'o, a little kind of monkey. they bite strangers rather hard, but you'll soon get used to 'em.' 'they are wrapped up in something, i declare,' said mrs. garland, peeping in through a chink. 'yes, that's my flannel shirt,' said bob apologetically. 'they suffer terribly from cold in this climate, poor things! and i had nothing better to give them. well, now, in this next box i've got things of different sorts.' the latter was a regular seaman's chest, and out of it he produced shells of many sizes and colours, carved ivories, queer little caskets, gorgeous feathers, and several silk handkerchiefs, which articles were spread out upon all the available tables and chairs till the house began to look like a bazaar. 'what a lovely shawl!' exclaimed widow garland, in her interest forestalling the regular exhibition by looking into the box at what was coming. 'o yes,' said the mate, pulling out a couple of the most bewitching shawls that eyes ever saw. 'one of these i am going to give to that young lady i am shortly to be married to, you know, mrs. garland. has father told you about it? matilda johnson, of southampton, that's her name.' 'yes, we know all about it,' said the widow. 'well, i shall give one of these shawls to her--because, of course, i ought to.' 'of course,' said she. 'but the other one i've got no use for at all; and,' he continued, looking round, 'will you have it, miss anne? you refused the parrot, and you ought not to refuse this.' 'thank you,' said anne calmly, but much distressed; 'but really i don't want it, and couldn't take it.' 'but do have it!' said bob in hurt tones, mrs. garland being all the while on tenter-hooks lest anne should persist in her absurd refusal. 'why, there's another reason why you ought to!' said he, his face lighting up with recollections. 'it never came into my head till this moment that i used to be your beau in a humble sort of way. faith, so i did, and we used to meet at places sometimes, didn't we--that is, when you were not too proud; and once i gave you, or somebody else, a bit of my hair in fun.' 'it was somebody else,' said anne quickly. 'ah, perhaps it was,' said bob innocently. 'but it was you i used to meet, or try to, i am sure. well, i've never thought of that boyish time for years till this minute! i am sure you ought to accept some one gift, dear, out of compliment to those old times!' anne drew back and shook her head, for she would not trust her voice. 'well, mrs. garland, then you shall have it,' said bob, tossing the shawl to that ready receiver. 'if you don't, upon my life i will throw it out to the first beggar i see. now, here's a parcel of cap ribbons of the splendidest sort i could get. have these--do, anne!' 'yes, do,' said mrs. garland. 'i promised them to matilda,' continued bob; 'but i am sure she won't want 'em, as she has got some of her own: and i would as soon see them upon your head, my dear, as upon hers.' 'i think you had better keep them for your bride if you have promised them to her,' said mrs. garland mildly. 'it wasn't exactly a promise. i just said, "til, there's some cap ribbons in my box, if you would like to have them." but she's got enough things already for any bride in creation. anne, now you shall have 'em--upon my soul you shall--or i'll fling them down the mill-tail!' anne had meant to be perfectly firm in refusing everything, for reasons obvious even to that poor waif, the meanest capacity; but when it came to this point she was absolutely compelled to give in, and reluctantly received the cap ribbons in her arms, blushing fitfully, and with her lip trembling in a motion which she tried to exhibit as a smile. 'what would tilly say if she knew!' said the miller slily. 'yes, indeed--and it is wrong of him!' anne instantly cried, tears running down her face as she threw the parcel of ribbons on the floor. 'you'd better bestow your gifts where you bestow your l--l--love, mr. loveday--that's what i say!' and anne turned her back and went away. 'i'll take them for her,' said mrs. garland, quickly picking up the parcel. 'now that's a pity,' said bob, looking regretfully after anne. 'i didn't remember that she was a quick-tempered sort of girl at all. tell her, mrs. garland, that i ask her pardon. but of course i didn't know she was too proud to accept a little present--how should i? upon my life if it wasn't for matilda i'd--well, that can't be, of course.' 'what's this?' said mrs. garland, touching with her foot a large package that had been laid down by bob unseen. 'that's a bit of baccy for myself,' said robert meekly. the examination of presents at last ended, and the two families parted for the night. when they were alone, mrs. garland said to anne, 'what a close girl you are! i am sure i never knew that bob loveday and you had walked together: you must have been mere children.' 'o yes--so we were,' said anne, now quite recovered. 'it was when we first came here, about a year after father died. we did not walk together in any regular way. you know i have never thought the lovedays high enough for me. it was only just--nothing at all, and i had almost forgotten it.' it is to be hoped that somebody's sins were forgiven her that night before she went to bed. when bob and his father were left alone, the miller said, 'well, robert, about this young woman of thine--matilda what's her name?' 'yes, father--matilda johnson. i was just going to tell ye about her.' the miller nodded, and sipped his mug. 'well, she is an excellent body,' continued bob; 'that can truly be said--a real charmer, you know--a nice good comely young woman, a miracle of genteel breeding, you know, and all that. she can throw her hair into the nicest curls, and she's got splendid gowns and headclothes. in short, you might call her a land mermaid. she'll make such a first-rate wife as there never was.' 'no doubt she will,' said the miller; 'for i have never known thee wanting in sense in a jineral way.' he turned his cup round on its axis till the handle had travelled a complete circle. 'how long did you say in your letter that you had known her?' 'a fortnight.' 'not _very_ long.' 'it don't sound long, 'tis true; and 'twas really longer--'twas fifteen days and a quarter. but hang it, father, i could see in the twinkling of an eye that the girl would do. i know a woman well enough when i see her--i ought to, indeed, having been so much about the world. now, for instance, there's widow garland and her daughter. the girl is a nice little thing; but the old woman--o no!' bob shook his head. 'what of her?' said his father, slightly shifting in his chair. 'well, she's, she's--i mean, i should never have chose her, you know. she's of a nice disposition, and young for a widow with a grown-up daughter; but if all the men had been like me she would never have had a husband. i like her in some respects; but she's a style of beauty i don't care for.' 'o, if 'tis only looks you are thinking of,' said the miller, much relieved, 'there's nothing to be said, of course. though there's many a duchess worse-looking, if it comes to argument, as you would find, my son,' he added, with a sense of having been mollified too soon. the mate's thoughts were elsewhere by this time. 'as to my marrying matilda, thinks i, here's one of the very genteelest sort, and i may as well do the job at once. so i chose her. she's a dear girl; there's nobody like her, search where you will.' 'how many did you choose her out from?' inquired his father. 'well, she was the only young woman i happened to know in southampton, that's true. but what of that? it would have been all the same if i had known a hundred.' 'her father is in business near the docks, i suppose?' 'well, no. in short, i didn't see her father.' 'her mother?' 'her mother? no, i didn't. i think her mother is dead; but she has got a very rich aunt living at melchester. i didn't see her aunt, because there wasn't time to go; but of course we shall know her when we are married.' 'yes, yes, of course,' said the miller, trying to feel quite satisfied. 'and she will soon be here?' 'ay, she's coming soon,' said bob. 'she has gone to this aunt's at melchester to get her things packed, and suchlike, or she would have come with me. i am going to meet the coach at the king's arms, casterbridge, on sunday, at one o'clock. to show what a capital sort of wife she'll be, i may tell you that she wanted to come by the mercury, because 'tis a little cheaper than the other. but i said, "for once in your life do it well, and come by the royal mail, and i'll pay." i can have the pony and trap to fetch her, i suppose, as 'tis too far for her to walk?' 'of course you can, bob, or anything else. and i'll do all i can to give you a good wedding feast.' xvi. they make ready for the illustrious stranger preparations for matilda's welcome, and for the event which was to follow, at once occupied the attention of the mill. the miller and his man had but dim notions of housewifery on any large scale; so the great wedding cleaning was kindly supervised by mrs. garland, bob being mostly away during the day with his brother, the trumpet-major, on various errands, one of which was to buy paint and varnish for the gig that matilda was to be fetched in, which he had determined to decorate with his own hands. by the widow's direction the old familiar incrustation of shining dirt, imprinted along the back of the settle by the heads of countless jolly sitters, was scrubbed and scraped away; the brown circle round the nail whereon the miller hung his hat, stained by the brim in wet weather, was whitened over; the tawny smudges of bygone shoulders in the passage were removed without regard to a certain genial and historical value which they had acquired. the face of the clock, coated with verdigris as thick as a diachylon plaister, was rubbed till the figures emerged into day; while, inside the case of the same chronometer, the cobwebs that formed triangular hammocks, which the pendulum could hardly wade through, were cleared away at one swoop. mrs. garland also assisted at the invasion of worm-eaten cupboards, where layers of ancient smells lingered on in the stagnant air, and recalled to the reflective nose the many good things that had been kept there. the upper floors were scrubbed with such abundance of water that the old-established death-watches, wood-lice, and flour-worms were all drowned, the suds trickling down into the room below in so lively and novel a manner as to convey the romantic notion that the miller lived in a cave with dripping stalactites. they moved what had never been moved before--the oak coffer, containing the miller's wardrobe--a tremendous weight, what with its locks, hinges, nails, dirt, framework, and the hard stratification of old jackets, waistcoats, and knee-breeches at the bottom, never disturbed since the miller's wife died, and half pulverized by the moths, whose flattened skeletons lay amid the mass in thousands. 'it fairly makes my back open and shut!' said loveday, as, in obedience to mrs. garland's direction, he lifted one corner, the grinder and david assisting at the others. 'all together: speak when ye be going to heave. now!' the pot covers and skimmers were brought to such a state that, on examining them, the beholder was not conscious of utensils, but of his own face in a condition of hideous elasticity. the broken clock-line was mended, the kettles rocked, the creeper nailed up, and a new handle put to the warming-pan. the large household lantern was cleaned out, after three years of uninterrupted accumulation, the operation yielding a conglomerate of candle-snuffs, candle-ends, remains of matches, lamp-black, and eleven ounces and a half of good grease--invaluable as dubbing for skitty boots and ointment for cart-wheels. everybody said that the mill residence had not been so thoroughly scoured for twenty years. the miller and david looked on with a sort of awe tempered by gratitude, tacitly admitting by their gaze that this was beyond what they had ever thought of. mrs. garland supervised all with disinterested benevolence. it would never have done, she said, for his future daughter-in-law to see the house in its original state. she would have taken a dislike to him, and perhaps to bob likewise. 'why don't ye come and live here with me, and then you would be able to see to it at all times?' said the miller as she bustled about again. to which she answered that she was considering the matter, and might in good time. he had previously informed her that his plan was to put bob and his wife in the part of the house that she, mrs. garland, occupied, as soon as she chose to enter his, which relieved her of any fear of being incommoded by matilda. the cooking for the wedding festivities was on a proportionate scale of thoroughness. they killed the four supernumerary chickens that had just begun to crow, and the little curly-tailed barrow pig, in preference to the sow; not having been put up fattening for more than five weeks it was excellent small meat, and therefore more delicate and likely to suit a town-bred lady's taste than the large one, which, having reached the weight of fourteen score, might have been a little gross to a cultured palate. there were also provided a cold chine, stuffed veal, and two pigeon pies. also thirty rings of black-pot, a dozen of white-pot, and ten knots of tender and well-washed chitterlings, cooked plain in case she should like a change. as additional reserves there were sweetbreads, and five milts, sewed up at one side in the form of a chrysalis, and stuffed with thyme, sage, parsley, mint, groats, rice, milk, chopped egg, and other ingredients. they were afterwards roasted before a slow fire, and eaten hot. the business of chopping so many herbs for the various stuffings was found to be aching work for women; and david, the miller, the grinder, and the grinder's boy being fully occupied in their proper branches, and bob being very busy painting the gig and touching up the harness, loveday called in a friendly dragoon of john's regiment who was passing by, and he, being a muscular man, willingly chopped all the afternoon for a quart of strong, judiciously administered, and all other victuals found, taking off his jacket and gloves, rolling up his shirt-sleeves and unfastening his collar in an honourable and energetic way. all windfalls and maggot-cored codlins were excluded from the apple pies; and as there was no known dish large enough for the purpose, the puddings were stirred up in the milking-pail, and boiled in the three-legged bell- metal crock, of great weight and antiquity, which every travelling tinker for the previous thirty years had tapped with his stick, coveted, made a bid for, and often attempted to steal. in the liquor line loveday laid in an ample barrel of casterbridge 'strong beer.' this renowned drink--now almost as much a thing of the past as falstaff's favourite beverage--was not only well calculated to win the hearts of soldiers blown dry and dusty by residence in tents on a hill-top, but of any wayfarer whatever in that land. it was of the most beautiful colour that the eye of an artist in beer could desire; full in body, yet brisk as a volcano; piquant, yet without a twang; luminous as an autumn sunset; free from streakiness of taste; but, finally, rather heady. the masses worshipped it, the minor gentry loved it more than wine, and by the most illustrious county families it was not despised. anybody brought up for being drunk and disorderly in the streets of its natal borough, had only to prove that he was a stranger to the place and its liquor to be honourably dismissed by the magistrates, as one overtaken in a fault that no man could guard against who entered the town unawares. in addition, mr. loveday also tapped a hogshead of fine cider that he had had mellowing in the house for several months, having bought it of an honest down-country man, who did not colour, for any special occasion like the present. it had been pressed from fruit judiciously chosen by an old hand--horner and cleeves apple for the body, a few tom-putts for colour, and just a dash of old five-corners for sparkle--a selection originally made to please the palate of a well-known temperate earl who was a regular cider-drinker, and lived to be eighty-eight. on the morning of the sunday appointed for her coming captain bob loveday set out to meet his bride. he had been all the week engaged in painting the gig, assisted by his brother at odd times, and it now appeared of a gorgeous yellow, with blue streaks, and tassels at the corners, and red wheels outlined with a darker shade. he put in the pony at half-past eleven, anne looking at him from the door as he packed himself into the vehicle and drove off. there may be young women who look out at young men driving to meet their brides as anne looked at captain bob, and yet are quite indifferent to the circumstances; but they are not often met with. so much dust had been raised on the highway by traffic resulting from the presence of the court at the town further on, that brambles hanging from the fence, and giving a friendly scratch to the wanderer's face, were dingy as church cobwebs; and the grass on the margin had assumed a paper- shaving hue. bob's father had wished him to take david, lest, from want of recent experience at the whip, he should meet with any mishap; but, picturing to himself the awkwardness of three in such circumstances, bob would not hear of this; and nothing more serious happened to his driving than that the wheel-marks formed two serpentine lines along the road during the first mile or two, before he had got his hand in, and that the horse shied at a milestone, a piece of paper, a sleeping tramp, and a wheelbarrow, just to make use of the opportunity of being in bad hands. he entered casterbridge between twelve and one, and, putting up at the old greyhound, walked on to the bow. here, rather dusty on the ledges of his clothes, he stood and waited while the people in their best summer dresses poured out of the three churches round him. when they had all gone, and a smell of cinders and gravy had spread down the ancient high- street, and the pie-dishes from adjacent bakehouses had all travelled past, he saw the mail coach rise above the arch of grey's bridge, a quarter of a mile distant, surmounted by swaying knobs, which proved to be the heads of the outside travellers. 'that's the way for a man's bride to come to him,' said robert to himself with a feeling of poetry; and as the horn sounded and the horses clattered up the street he walked down to the inn. the knot of hostlers and inn-servants had gathered, the horses were dragged from the vehicle, and the passengers for casterbridge began to descend. captain bob eyed them over, looked inside, looked outside again; to his disappointment matilda was not there, nor her boxes, nor anything that was hers. neither coachman nor guard had seen or heard of such a person at melchester; and bob walked slowly away. depressed by forebodings to an extent which took away nearly a third of his appetite, he sat down in the parlour of the old greyhound to a slice from the family joint of the landlord. this gentleman, who dined in his shirt-sleeves, partly because it was august, and partly from a sense that they would not be so fit for public view further on in the week, suggested that bob should wait till three or four that afternoon, when the road-waggon would arrive, as the lost lady might have preferred that mode of conveyance; and when bob appeared rather hurt at the suggestion, the landlord's wife assured him, as a woman who knew good life, that many genteel persons travelled in that way during the present high price of provisions. loveday, who knew little of travelling by land, readily accepted her assurance and resolved to wait. wandering up and down the pavement, or leaning against some hot wall between the waggon-office and the corner of the street above, he passed the time away. it was a still, sunny, drowsy afternoon, and scarcely a soul was visible in the length and breadth of the street. the office was not far from all saints' church, and the church-windows being open, he could hear the afternoon service from where he lingered as distinctly as if he had been one of the congregation. thus he was mentally conducted through the psalms, through the first and second lessons, through the burst of fiddles and clarionets which announced the evening-hymn, and well into the sermon, before any signs of the waggon could be seen upon the london road. the afternoon sermons at this church being of a dry and metaphysical nature at that date, it was by a special providence that the waggon-office was placed near the ancient fabric, so that whenever the sunday waggon was late, which it always was in hot weather, in cold weather, in wet weather, and in weather of almost every other sort, the rattle, dismounting, and swearing outside completely drowned the parson's voice within, and sustained the flagging interest of the congregation at precisely the right moment. no sooner did the charity children begin to writhe on their benches, and adult snores grow audible, than the waggon arrived. captain loveday felt a kind of sinking in his poetry at the possibility of her for whom they had made such preparations being in the slow, unwieldy vehicle which crunched its way towards him; but he would not give in to the weakness. neither would he walk down the street to meet the waggon, lest she should not be there. at last the broad wheels drew up against the kerb, the waggoner with his white smock-frock, and whip as long as a fishing-line, descended from the pony on which he rode alongside, and the six broad-chested horses backed from their collars and shook themselves. in another moment something showed forth, and he knew that matilda was there. bob felt three cheers rise within him as she stepped down; but it being sunday he did not utter them. in dress, miss johnson passed his expectations--a green and white gown, with long, tight sleeves, a green silk handkerchief round her neck and crossed in front, a green parasol, and green gloves. it was strange enough to see this verdant caterpillar turn out of a road-waggon, and gracefully shake herself free from the bits of straw and fluff which would usually gather on the raiment of the grandest travellers by that vehicle. 'but, my dear matilda,' said bob, when he had kissed her three times with much publicity--the practical step he had determined on seeming to demand that these things should no longer be done in a corner--'my dear matilda, why didn't you come by the coach, having the money for't and all?' 'that's my scrimping!' said matilda in a delightful gush. 'i know you won't be offended when you know i did it to save against a rainy day!' bob, of course, was not offended, though the glory of meeting her had been less; and even if vexation were possible, it would have been out of place to say so. still, he would have experienced no little surprise had he learnt the real reason of his matilda's change of plan. that angel had, in short, so wildly spent bob's and her own money in the adornment of her person before setting out, that she found herself without a sufficient margin for her fare by coach, and had scrimped from sheer necessity. 'well, i have got the trap out at the greyhound,' said bob. 'i don't know whether it will hold your luggage and us too; but it looked more respectable than the waggon on a sunday, and if there's not room for the boxes i can walk alongside.' 'i think there will be room,' said miss johnson mildly. and it was soon very evident that she spoke the truth; for when her property was deposited on the pavement, it consisted of a trunk about eighteen inches long, and nothing more. 'o--that's all!' said captain loveday, surprised. 'that's all,' said the young woman assuringly. 'i didn't want to give trouble, you know, and what i have besides i have left at my aunt's.' 'yes, of course,' he answered readily. 'and as it's no bigger, i can carry it in my hand to the inn, and so it will be no trouble at all.' he caught up the little box, and they went side by side to the greyhound; and in ten minutes they were trotting up the southern road. bob did not hurry the horse, there being many things to say and hear, for which the present situation was admirably suited. the sun shone occasionally into matilda's face as they drove on, its rays picking out all her features to a great nicety. her eyes would have been called brown, but they were really eel-colour, like many other nice brown eyes; they were well-shaped and rather bright, though they had more of a broad shine than a sparkle. she had a firm, sufficient nose, which seemed to say of itself that it was good as noses go. she had rather a picturesque way of wrapping her upper in her lower lip, so that the red of the latter showed strongly. whenever she gazed against the sun towards the distant hills, she brought into her forehead, without knowing it, three short vertical lines--not there at other times--giving her for the moment rather a hard look. and in turning her head round to a far angle, to stare at something or other that he pointed out, the drawn flesh of her neck became a mass of lines. but bob did not look at these things, which, of course, were of no significance; for had she not told him, when they compared ages, that she was a little over two-and-twenty? as nature was hardly invented at this early point of the century, bob's matilda could not say much about the glamour of the hills, or the shimmering of the foliage, or the wealth of glory in the distant sea, as she would doubtless have done had she lived later on; but she did her best to be interesting, asking bob about matters of social interest in the neighbourhood, to which she seemed quite a stranger. 'is your watering-place a large city?' she inquired when they mounted the hill where the overcombe folk had waited for the king. 'bless you, my dear--no! 'twould be nothing if it wasn't for the royal family, and the lords and ladies, and the regiments of soldiers, and the frigates, and the king's messengers, and the actors and actresses, and the games that go on.' at the words 'actors and actresses,' the innocent young thing pricked up her ears. 'does elliston pay as good salaries this summer as in--?' 'o, you know about it then? i thought--' 'o no, no! i have heard of budmouth--read in the papers, you know, dear robert, about the doings there, and the actors and actresses, you know.' 'yes, yes, i see. well, i have been away from england a long time, and don't know much about the theatre in the town; but i'll take you there some day. would it be a treat to you?' 'o, an amazing treat!' said miss johnson, with an ecstasy in which a close observer might have discovered a tinge of ghastliness. 'you've never been into one perhaps, dear?' 'n--never,' said matilda flatly. 'whatever do i see yonder--a row of white things on the down?' 'yes, that's a part of the encampment above overcombe. lots of soldiers are encamped about here; those are the white tops of their tents.' he pointed to a wing of the camp that had become visible. matilda was much interested. 'it will make it very lively for us,' he added, 'especially as john is there.' she thought so too, and thus they chatted on. xvii. two fainting fits and a bewilderment meanwhile miller loveday was expecting the pair with interest; and about five o'clock, after repeated outlooks, he saw two specks the size of caraway seeds on the far line of ridge where the sunlit white of the road met the blue of the sky. then the remainder parts of bob and his lady became visible, and then the whole vehicle, end on, and he heard the dry rattle of the wheels on the dusty road. miller loveday's plan, as far as he had formed any, was that robert and his wife should live with him in the millhouse until mrs. garland made up her mind to join him there; in which event her present house would be made over to the young couple. upon all grounds, he wished to welcome becomingly the woman of his son's choice, and came forward promptly as they drew up at the door. 'what a lovely place you've got here!' said miss johnson, when the miller had received her from the captain. 'a real stream of water, a real mill- wheel, and real fowls, and everything!' 'yes, 'tis real enough,' said loveday, looking at the river with balanced sentiments; 'and so you will say when you've lived here a bit as mis'ess, and had the trouble of claning the furniture.' at this miss johnson looked modest, and continued to do so till anne, not knowing they were there, came round the corner of the house, with her prayer-book in her hand, having just arrived from church. bob turned and smiled to her, at which miss johnson looked glum. how long she would have remained in that phase is unknown, for just then her ears were assailed by a loud bass note from the other side, causing her to jump round. 'o la! what dreadful thing is it?' she exclaimed, and beheld a cow of loveday's, of the name of crumpler, standing close to her shoulder. it being about milking-time, she had come to look up david and hasten on the operation. 'o, what a horrid bull!--it did frighten me so. i hope i shan't faint,' said matilda. the miller immediately used the formula which has been uttered by the proprietors of live stock ever since noah's time. 'she won't hurt ye. hoosh, crumpler! she's as timid as a mouse, ma'am.' but as crumpler persisted in making another terrific inquiry for david, matilda could not help closing her eyes and saying, 'o, i shall be gored to death!' her head falling back upon bob's shoulder, which--seeing the urgent circumstances, and knowing her delicate nature--he had providentially placed in a position to catch her. anne garland, who had been standing at the corner of the house, not knowing whether to go back or come on, at this felt her womanly sympathies aroused. she ran and dipped her handkerchief into the splashing mill-tail, and with it damped matilda's face. but as her eyes still remained closed, bob, to increase the effect, took the handkerchief from anne and wrung it out on the bridge of matilda's nose, whence it ran over the rest of her face in a stream. 'o, captain loveday!' said anne, 'the water is running over her green silk handkerchief, and into her pretty reticule!' 'there--if i didn't think so!' exclaimed matilda, opening her eyes, starting up, and promptly pulling out her own handkerchief, with which she wiped away the drops, and an unimportant trifle of her complexion, assisted by anne, who, in spite of her background of antagonistic emotions, could not help being interested. 'that's right!' said the miller, his spirits reviving with the revival of matilda. 'the lady is not used to country life; are you, ma'am?' 'i am not,' replied the sufferer. 'all is so strange about here!' suddenly there spread into the firmament, from the direction of the down:-- 'ra, ta, ta! ta-ta-ta-ta-ta! ra, ta, ta!' 'o dear, dear! more hideous country sounds, i suppose?' she inquired, with another start. 'o no,' said the miller cheerfully. ''tis only my son john's trumpeter chaps at the camp of dragoons just above us, a-blowing mess, or feed, or picket, or some other of their vagaries. john will be much pleased to tell you the meaning on't when he comes down. he's trumpet-major, as you may know, ma'am.' 'o yes; you mean captain loveday's brother. dear bob has mentioned him.' 'if you come round to widow garland's side of the house, you can see the camp,' said the miller. 'don't force her; she's tired with her long journey,' said mrs. garland humanely, the widow having come out in the general wish to see captain bob's choice. indeed, they all behaved towards her as if she were a tender exotic, which their crude country manners might seriously injure. she went into the house, accompanied by mrs. garland and her daughter; though before leaving bob she managed to whisper in his ear, 'don't tell them i came by waggon, will you, dear?'--a request which was quite needless, for bob had long ago determined to keep that a dead secret; not because it was an uncommon mode of travel, but simply that it was hardly the usual conveyance for a gorgeous lady to her bridal. as the men had a feeling that they would be superfluous indoors just at present, the miller assisted david in taking the horse round to the stables, bob following, and leaving matilda to the women. indoors, miss johnson admired everything: the new parrots and marmosets, the black beams of the ceiling, the double-corner cupboard with the glass doors, through which gleamed the remainders of sundry china sets acquired by bob's mother in her housekeeping--two-handled sugar-basins, no-handled tea-cups, a tea-pot like a pagoda, and a cream-jug in the form of a spotted cow. this sociability in their visitor was returned by mrs. garland and anne; and miss johnson's pleasing habit of partly dying whenever she heard any unusual bark or bellow added to her piquancy in their eyes. but conversation, as such, was naturally at first of a nervous, tentative kind, in which, as in the works of some minor poets, the sense was considerably led by the sound. 'you get the sea-breezes here, no doubt?' 'o yes, dear; when the wind is that way.' 'do you like windy weather?' 'yes; though not now, for it blows down the young apples.' 'apples are plentiful, it seems. you country-folk call st. swithin's their christening day, if it rains?' 'yes, dear. ah me! i have not been to a christening for these many years; the baby's name was george, i remember--after the king.' 'i hear that king george is still staying at the town here. i _hope_ he'll stay till i have seen him!' 'he'll wait till the corn turns yellow; he always does.' 'how _very_ fashionable yellow is getting for gloves just now!' 'yes. some persons wear them to the elbow, i hear.' 'do they? i was not aware of that. i struck my elbow last week so hard against the door of my aunt's mansion that i feel the ache now.' before they were quite overwhelmed by the interest of this discourse, the miller and bob came in. in truth, mrs. garland found the office in which he had placed her--that of introducing a strange woman to a house which was not the widow's own--a rather awkward one, and yet almost a necessity. there was no woman belonging to the house except that wondrous compendium of usefulness, the intermittent maid-servant, whom loveday had, for appearances, borrowed from mrs. garland, and mrs. garland was in the habit of borrowing from the girl's mother. and as for the demi-woman david, he had been informed as peremptorily as pharaoh's baker that the office of housemaid and bedmaker was taken from him, and would be given to this girl till the wedding was over, and bob's wife took the management into her own hands. they all sat down to high tea, anne and her mother included, and the captain sitting next to miss johnson. anne had put a brave face upon the matter--outwardly, at least--and seemed in a fair way of subduing any lingering sentiment which bob's return had revived. during the evening, and while they still sat over the meal, john came down on a hurried visit, as he had promised, ostensibly on purpose to be introduced to his intended sister-in-law, but much more to get a word and a smile from his beloved anne. before they saw him, they heard the trumpet-major's smart step coming round the corner of the house, and in a moment his form darkened the door. as it was sunday, he appeared in his full-dress laced coat, white waistcoat and breeches, and towering plume, the latter of which he instantly lowered, as much from necessity as good manners, the beam in the mill-house ceiling having a tendency to smash and ruin all such head-gear without warning. 'john, we've been hoping you would come down,' said the miller, 'and so we have kept the tay about on purpose. draw up, and speak to mrs. matilda johnson. . . . ma'am, this is robert's brother.' 'your humble servant, ma'am,' said the trumpet-major gallantly. as it was getting dusk in the low, small-paned room, he instinctively moved towards miss johnson as he spoke, who sat with her back to the window. he had no sooner noticed her features than his helmet nearly fell from his hand; his face became suddenly fixed, and his natural complexion took itself off, leaving a greenish yellow in its stead. the young person, on her part, had no sooner looked closely at him than she said weakly, 'robert's brother!' and changed colour yet more rapidly than the soldier had done. the faintness, previously half counterfeit, seized on her now in real earnest. 'i don't feel well,' she said, suddenly rising by an effort. 'this warm day has quite upset me!' there was a regular collapse of the tea-party, like that of the hamlet play scene. bob seized his sweetheart and carried her upstairs, the miller exclaiming, 'ah, she's terribly worn by the journey! i thought she was when i saw her nearly go off at the blare of the cow. no woman would have been frightened at that if she'd been up to her natural strength.' 'that, and being so very shy of men, too, must have made john's handsome regimentals quite overpowering to her, poor thing,' added mrs. garland, following the catastrophic young lady upstairs, whose indisposition was this time beyond question. and yet, by some perversity of the heart, she was as eager now to make light of her faintness as she had been to make much of it two or three hours ago. the miller and john stood like straight sticks in the room the others had quitted, john's face being hastily turned towards a caricature of buonaparte on the wall that he had not seen more than a hundred and fifty times before. 'come, sit down and have a dish of tea, anyhow,' said his father at last. 'she'll soon be right again, no doubt.' 'thanks; i don't want any tea,' said john quickly. and, indeed, he did not, for he was in one gigantic ache from head to foot. the light had been too dim for anybody to notice his amazement; and not knowing where to vent it, the trumpet-major said he was going out for a minute. he hastened to the bakehouse; but david being there, he went to the pantry; but the maid being there, he went to the cart-shed; but a couple of tramps being there, he went behind a row of french beans in the garden, where he let off an ejaculation the most pious that he had uttered that sabbath day: 'heaven! what's to be done!' and then he walked wildly about the paths of the dusky garden, where the trickling of the brooks seemed loud by comparison with the stillness around; treading recklessly on the cracking snails that had come forth to feed, and entangling his spurs in the long grass till the rowels were choked with its blades. presently he heard another person approaching, and his brother's shape appeared between the stubbard tree and the hedge. 'o, is it you?' said the mate. 'yes. i am--taking a little air.' 'she is getting round nicely again; and as i am not wanted indoors just now, i am going into the village to call upon a friend or two i have not been able to speak to as yet.' john took his brother bob's hand. bob rather wondered why. 'all right, old boy,' he said. 'going into the village? you'll be back again, i suppose, before it gets very late?' 'o yes,' said captain bob cheerfully, and passed out of the garden. john allowed his eyes to follow his brother till his shape could not be seen, and then he turned and again walked up and down. xviii. the night after the arrival john continued his sad and heavy pace till walking seemed too old and worn-out a way of showing sorrow so new, and he leant himself against the fork of an apple-tree like a log. there the trumpet-major remained for a considerable time, his face turned towards the house, whose ancient, many- chimneyed outline rose against the darkened sky, and just shut out from his view the camp above. but faint noises coming thence from horses restless at the pickets, and from visitors taking their leave, recalled its existence, and reminded him that, in consequence of matilda's arrival, he had obtained leave for the night--a fact which, owing to the startling emotions that followed his entry, he had not yet mentioned to his friends. while abstractedly considering how he could best use that privilege under the new circumstances which had arisen, he heard farmer derriman drive up to the front door and hold a conversation with his father. the old man had at last apparently brought the tin box of private papers that he wished the miller to take charge of during derriman's absence; and it being a calm night, john could hear, though he little heeded, uncle benjy's reiterated supplications to loveday to keep it safe from fire and thieves. then uncle benjy left, and john's father went upstairs to deposit the box in a place of security, the whole proceeding reaching john's preoccupied comprehension merely as voices during sleep. the next thing was the appearance of a light in the bedroom which had been assigned to matilda johnson. this effectually aroused the trumpet- major, and with a stealthiness unusual in him he went indoors. no light was in the lower rooms, his father, mrs. garland, and anne having gone out on the bridge to look at the new moon. john went upstairs on tip- toe, and along the uneven passage till he came to her door. it was standing ajar, a band of candlelight shining across the passage and up the opposite wall. as soon as he entered the radiance he saw her. she was standing before the looking-glass, apparently lost in thought, her fingers being clasped behind her head in abstraction, and the light falling full upon her face. 'i must speak to you,' said the trumpet-major. she started, turned and grew paler than before; and then, as if moved by a sudden impulse, she swung the door wide open, and, coming out, said quite collectedly and with apparent pleasantness, 'o yes; you are my bob's brother! i didn't, for a moment, recognize you.' 'but you do now?' 'as bob's brother.' 'you have not seen me before?' 'i have not,' she answered, with a face as impassible as talleyrand's. 'good god!' 'i have not!' she repeated. 'nor any of the --th dragoons? captain jolly, for instance?' 'no.' 'you mistake. i'll remind you of particulars,' he said drily. and he did remind her at some length. 'never!' she said desperately. but she had miscalculated her staying powers, and her adversary's character. five minutes after that she was in tears, and the conversation had resolved itself into words, which, on the soldier's part, were of the nature of commands, tempered by pity, and were a mere series of entreaties on hers. the whole scene did not last ten minutes. when it was over, the trumpet- major walked from the doorway where they had been standing, and brushed moisture from his eyes. reaching a dark lumber-room, he stood still there to calm himself, and then descended by a flemish-ladder to the bakehouse, instead of by the front stairs. he found that the others, including bob, had gathered in the parlour during his absence and lighted the candles. miss johnson, having sent down some time before john re-entered the house to say that she would prefer to keep her room that evening, was not expected to join them, and on this account bob showed less than his customary liveliness. the miller wishing to keep up his son's spirits, expressed his regret that, it being sunday night, they could have no songs to make the evening cheerful; when mrs. garland proposed that they should sing psalms which, by choosing lively tunes and not thinking of the words, would be almost as good as ballads. this they did, the trumpet-major appearing to join in with the rest; but as a matter of fact no sound came from his moving lips. his mind was in such a state that he derived no pleasure even from anne garland's presence, though he held a corner of the same book with her, and was treated in a winsome way which it was not her usual practice to indulge in. she saw that his mind was clouded, and, far from guessing the reason why, was doing her best to clear it. at length the garlands found that it was the hour for them to leave, and john loveday at the same time wished his father and bob good-night, and went as far as mrs. garland's door with her. he had said not a word to show that he was free to remain out of camp, for the reason that there was painful work to be done, which it would be best to do in secret and alone. he lingered near the house till its reflected window-lights ceased to glimmer upon the mill-pond, and all within the dwelling was dark and still. then he entered the garden and waited there till the back door opened, and a woman's figure timorously came forward. john loveday at once went up to her, and they began to talk in low yet dissentient tones. they had conversed about ten minutes, and were parting as if they had come to some painful arrangement, miss johnson sobbing bitterly, when a head stealthily arose above the dense hedgerow, and in a moment a shout burst from its owner. 'thieves! thieves!--my tin box!--thieves! thieves!' matilda vanished into the house, and john loveday hastened to the hedge. 'for heaven's sake, hold your tongue, mr. derriman!' he exclaimed. 'my tin box!' said uncle benjy. 'o, only the trumpet-major!' 'your box is safe enough, i assure you. it was only'--here the trumpet- major gave vent to an artificial laugh--'only a sly bit of courting, you know.' 'ha, ha, i see!' said the relieved old squireen. 'courting miss anne! then you've ousted my nephew, trumpet-major! well, so much the better. as for myself, the truth on't is that i haven't been able to go to bed easy, for thinking that possibly your father might not take care of what i put under his charge; and at last i thought i would just step over and see if all was safe here before i turned in. and when i saw your two shapes my poor nerves magnified ye to housebreakers, and boneys, and i don't know what all.' 'you have alarmed the house,' said the trumpet-major, hearing the clicking of flint and steel in his father's bedroom, followed in a moment by the rise of a light in the window of the same apartment. 'you have got me into difficulty,' he added gloomily, as his father opened the casement. 'i am sorry for that,' said uncle benjy. 'but step back; i'll put it all right again.' 'what, for heaven's sake, is the matter?' said the miller, his tasselled nightcap appearing in the opening. 'nothing, nothing!' said the farmer. 'i was uneasy about my few bonds and documents, and i walked this way, miller, before going to bed, as i start from home to-morrow morning. when i came down by your garden-hedge, i thought i saw thieves, but it turned out to be--to be--' here a lump of earth from the trumpet-major's hand struck uncle benjy in the back as a reminder. 'to be--the bough of a cherry-tree a-waving in the wind. good-night.' 'no thieves are like to try my house,' said miller loveday. 'now don't you come alarming us like this again, farmer, or you shall keep your box yourself, begging your pardon for saying so. good-night t' ye!' 'miller, will ye just look, since i am here--just look and see if the box is all right? there's a good man! i am old, you know, and my poor remains are not what my original self was. look and see if it is where you put it, there's a good, kind man.' 'very well,' said the miller good-humouredly. 'neighbour loveday! on second thoughts i will take my box home again, after all, if you don't mind. you won't deem it ill of me? i have no suspicion, of course; but now i think on't there's rivalry between my nephew and your son; and if festus should take it into his head to set your house on fire in his enmity, 'twould be bad for my deeds and documents. no offence, miller, but i'll take the box, if you don't mind.' 'faith! i don't mind,' said loveday. 'but your nephew had better think twice before he lets his enmity take that colour.' receding from the window, he took the candle to a back part of the room and soon reappeared with the tin box. 'i won't trouble ye to dress,' said derriman considerately; 'let en down by anything you have at hand.' the box was lowered by a cord, and the old man clasped it in his arms. 'thank ye!' he said with heartfelt gratitude. 'good-night!' the miller replied and closed the window, and the light went out. 'there, now i hope you are satisfied, sir?' said the trumpet-major. 'quite, quite!' said derriman; and, leaning on his walking-stick, he pursued his lonely way. that night anne lay awake in her bed, musing on the traits of the new friend who had come to her neighbour's house. she would not be critical, it was ungenerous and wrong; but she could not help thinking of what interested her. and were there, she silently asked, in miss johnson's mind and person such rare qualities as placed that lady altogether beyond comparison with herself? o yes, there must be; for had not captain bob singled out matilda from among all other women, herself included? of course, with his world-wide experience, he knew best. when the moon had set, and only the summer stars threw their light into the great damp garden, she fancied that she heard voices in that direction. perhaps they were the voices of bob and matilda taking a lover's walk before retiring. if so, how sleepy they would be next day, and how absurd it was of matilda to pretend she was tired! ruminating in this way, and saying to herself that she hoped they would be happy, anne fell asleep. xix. miss johnson's behaviour causes no little surprise partly from the excitement of having his matilda under the paternal roof, bob rose next morning as early as his father and the grinder, and, when the big wheel began to patter and the little ones to mumble in response, went to sun himself outside the mill-front, among the fowls of brown and speckled kinds which haunted that spot, and the ducks that came up from the mill-tail. standing on the worn-out mill-stone inlaid in the gravel, he talked with his father on various improvements of the premises, and on the proposed arrangements for his permanent residence there, with an enjoyment that was half based upon this prospect of the future, and half on the penetrating warmth of the sun to his back and shoulders. then the different troops of horses began their morning scramble down to the mill- pond, and, after making it very muddy round the edge, ascended the slope again. the bustle of the camp grew more and more audible, and presently david came to say that breakfast was ready. 'is miss johnson downstairs?' said the miller; and bob listened for the answer, looking at a blue sentinel aloft on the down. 'not yet, maister,' said the excellent david. 'we'll wait till she's down,' said loveday. 'when she is, let us know.' david went indoors again, and loveday and bob continued their morning survey by ascending into the mysterious quivering recesses of the mill, and holding a discussion over a second pair of burr-stones, which had to be re-dressed before they could be used again. this and similar things occupied nearly twenty minutes, and, looking from the window, the elder of the two was reminded of the time of day by seeing mrs. garland's table- cloth fluttering from her back door over the heads of a flock of pigeons that had alighted for the crumbs. 'i suppose david can't find us,' he said, with a sense of hunger that was not altogether strange to bob. he put out his head and shouted. 'the lady is not down yet,' said his man in reply. 'no hurry, no hurry,' said the miller, with cheerful emptiness. 'bob, to pass the time we'll look into the garden.' 'she'll get up sooner than this, you know, when she's signed articles and got a berth here,' bob observed apologetically. 'yes, yes,' said loveday; and they descended into the garden. here they turned over sundry flat stones and killed the slugs sheltered beneath them from the coming heat of the day, talking of slugs in all their branches--of the brown and the black, of the tough and the tender, of the reason why there were so many in the garden that year, of the coming time when the grass-walks harbouring them were to be taken up and gravel laid, and of the relatively exterminatory merits of a pair of scissors and the heel of the shoe. at last the miller said, 'well, really, bob, i'm hungry; we must begin without her.' they were about to go in, when david appeared with haste in his motions, his eyes wider vertically than crosswise, and his cheeks nearly all gone. 'maister, i've been to call her; and as 'a didn't speak i rapped, and as 'a didn't answer i kicked, and not being latched the door opened, and--she's gone!' bob went off like a swallow towards the house, and the miller followed like the rather heavy man that he was. that miss matilda was not in her room, or a scrap of anything belonging to her, was soon apparent. they searched every place in which she could possibly hide or squeeze herself, every place in which she could not, but found nothing at all. captain bob was quite wild with astonishment and grief. when he was quite sure that she was nowhere in his father's house, he ran into mrs. garland's, and telling them the story so hastily that they hardly understood the particulars, he went on towards comfort's house, intending to raise the alarm there, and also at mitchell's, beach's, cripplestraw's, the parson's, the clerk's, the camp of dragoons, of hussars, and so on through the whole county. but he paused, and thought it would be hardly expedient to publish his discomfiture in such a way. if matilda had left the house for any freakish reason he would not care to look for her, and if her deed had a tragic intent she would keep aloof from camp and village. in his trouble he thought of anne. she was a nice girl and could be trusted. to her he went, and found her in a state of excitement and anxiety which equalled his own. ''tis so lonely to cruise for her all by myself!' said bob disconsolately, his forehead all in wrinkles, 'and i've thought you would come with me and cheer the way?' 'where shall we search?' said anne. 'o, in the holes of rivers, you know, and down wells, and in quarries, and over cliffs, and like that. your eyes might catch the loom of any bit of a shawl or bonnet that i should overlook, and it would do me a real service. please do come!' so anne took pity upon him, and put on her hat and went, the miller and david having gone off in another direction. they examined the ditches of fields, bob going round by one fence and anne by the other, till they met at the opposite side. then they peeped under culverts, into outhouses, and down old wells and quarries, till the theory of a tragical end had nearly spent its force in bob's mind, and he began to think that matilda had simply run away. however, they still walked on, though by this time the sun was hot and anne would gladly have sat down. 'now, didn't you think highly of her, miss garland?' he inquired, as the search began to languish. 'o yes,' said anne, 'very highly.' 'she was really beautiful; no nonsense about her looks, was there?' 'none. her beauty was thoroughly ripe--not too young. we should all have got to love her. what can have possessed her to go away?' 'i don't know, and, upon my life, i shall soon be drove to say i don't care!' replied the mate despairingly. 'let me pilot ye down over those stones,' he added, as anne began to descend a rugged quarry. he stepped forward, leapt down, and turned to her. she gave him her hand and sprang down. before he relinquished his hold, captain bob raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them. 'o, captain loveday!' cried anne, snatching away her hand in genuine dismay, while a tear rose unexpectedly to each eye. 'i never heard of such a thing! i won't go an inch further with you, sir; it is too barefaced!' and she turned and ran off. 'upon my life i didn't mean it!' said the repentant captain, hastening after. 'i do love her best--indeed i do--and i don't love you at all! i am not so fickle as that! i merely just for the moment admired you as a sweet little craft, and that's how i came to do it. you know, miss garland,' he continued earnestly, and still running after, ''tis like this: when you come ashore after having been shut up in a ship for eighteen months, women-folks seem so new and nice that you can't help liking them, one and all in a body; and so your heart is apt to get scattered and to yaw a bit; but of course i think of poor matilda most, and shall always stick to her.' he heaved a sigh of tremendous magnitude, to show beyond the possibility of doubt that his heart was still in the place that honour required. 'i am glad to hear that--of course i am very glad!' said she, with quick petulance, keeping her face turned from him. 'and i hope we shall find her, and that the wedding will not be put off, and that you'll both be happy. but i won't look for her any more! no; i don't care to look for her--and my head aches. i am going home!' 'and so am i,' said robert promptly. 'no, no; go on looking for her, of course--all the afternoon, and all night. i am sure you will, if you love her.' 'o yes; i mean to. still, i ought to convoy you home first?' 'no, you ought not; and i shall not accept your company. good-morning, sir!' and she went off over one of the stone stiles with which the spot abounded, leaving the friendly sailor standing in the field. he sighed again, and, observing the camp not far off, thought he would go to his brother john and ask him his opinion on the sorrowful case. on reaching the tents he found that john was not at liberty just at that time, being engaged in practising the trumpeters; and leaving word that he wished the trumpet-major to come down to the mill as soon as possible, bob went back again. ''tis no good looking for her,' he said gloomily. 'she liked me well enough, but when she came here and saw the house, and the place, and the old horse, and the plain furniture, she was disappointed to find us all so homely, and felt she didn't care to marry into such a family!' his father and david had returned with no news. 'yes, 'tis as i've been thinking, father,' bob said. 'we weren't good enough for her, and she went away in scorn!' 'well, that can't be helped,' said the miller. 'what we be, we be, and have been for generations. to my mind she seemed glad enough to get hold of us!' 'yes, yes--for the moment--because of the flowers, and birds, and what's pretty in the place,' said bob tragically. 'but you don't know, father--how should you know, who have hardly been out of overcombe in your life?--you don't know what delicate feelings are in a real refined woman's mind. any little vulgar action unreaves their nerves like a marline-spike. now i wonder if you did anything to disgust her?' 'faith! not that i know of,' said loveday, reflecting. 'i didn't say a single thing that i should naturally have said, on purpose to give no offence.' 'you was always very homely, you know, father.' 'yes; so i was,' said the miller meekly. 'i wonder what it could have been,' bob continued, wandering about restlessly. 'you didn't go drinking out of the big mug with your mouth full, or wipe your lips with your sleeve?' 'that i'll swear i didn't!' said the miller firmly. 'thinks i, there's no knowing what i may do to shock her, so i'll take my solid victuals in the bakehouse, and only a crumb and a drop in her company for manners.' 'you could do no more than that, certainly,' said bob gently. 'if my manners be good enough for well-brought-up people like the garlands, they be good enough for her,' continued the miller, with a sense of injustice. 'that's true. then it must have been david. david, come here! how did you behave before that lady? now, mind you speak the truth!' 'yes, mr. captain robert,' said david earnestly. 'i assure ye she was served like a royal queen. the best silver spoons wez put down, and yer poor grandfer's silver tanket, as you seed, and the feather cushion for her to sit on--' 'now i've got it!' said bob decisively, bringing down his hand upon the window-sill. 'her bed was hard!--and there's nothing shocks a true lady like that. the bed in that room always was as hard as the rock of gibraltar!' 'no, captain bob! the beds were changed--wasn't they maister? we put the goose bed in her room, and the flock one, that used to be there, in yours.' 'yes, we did,' corroborated the miller. 'david and i changed 'em with our own hands, because they were too heavy for the women to move.' 'sure i didn't know i had the flock bed,' murmured bob. 'i slept on, little thinking what i was going to wake to. well, well, she's gone; and search as i will i shall never find another like her! she was too good for me. she must have carried her box with her own hands, poor girl. as far as that goes, i could overtake her even now, i dare say; but i won't entreat her against her will--not i.' miller loveday and david, feeling themselves to be rather a desecration in the presence of bob's sacred emotions, managed to edge off by degrees, the former burying himself in the most floury recesses of the mill, his invariable resource when perturbed, the rumbling having a soothing effect upon the nerves of those properly trained to its music. bob was so impatient that, after going up to her room to assure himself once more that she had not undressed, but had only lain down on the outside of the bed, he went out of the house to meet john, and waited on the sunny slope of the down till his brother appeared. john looked so brave and shapely and warlike that, even in bob's present distress, he could not but feel an honest and affectionate pride at owning such a relative. yet he fancied that john did not come along with the same swinging step he had shown yesterday; and when the trumpet-major got nearer he looked anxiously at the mate and waited for him to speak first. 'you know our great trouble, john?' said robert, gazing stoically into his brother's eyes. 'come and sit down, and tell me all about it,' answered the trumpet-major, showing no surprise. they went towards a slight ravine, where it was easier to sit down than on the flat ground, and here john reclined among the grasshoppers, pointing to his brother to do the same. 'but do you know what it is?' said robert. 'has anybody told ye?' 'i do know,' said john. 'she's gone; and i am thankful!' 'what!' said bob, rising to his knees in amazement. 'i'm at the bottom of it,' said the trumpet-major slowly. 'you, john?' 'yes; and if you will listen i'll tell you all. do you remember what happened when i came into the room last night? why, she turned colour and nearly fainted away. that was because she knew me.' bob stared at his brother with a face of pain and distrust. 'for once, bob, i must say something that will hurt thee a good deal,' continued john. 'she was not a woman who could possibly be your wife--and so she's gone.' 'you sent her off?' 'well, i did.' 'john!--tell me right through--tell me!' 'perhaps i had better,' said the trumpet-major, his blue eyes resting on the far distant sea, that seemed to rise like a wall as high as the hill they sat upon. and then he told a tale of miss johnson and the --th dragoons which wrung his heart as much in the telling as it did bob's to hear, and which showed that john had been temporarily cruel to be ultimately kind. even bob, excited as he was, could discern from john's manner of speaking what a terrible undertaking that night's business had been for him. to justify the course he had adopted the dictates of duty must have been imperative; but the trumpet-major, with a becoming reticence which his brother at the time was naturally unable to appreciate, scarcely dwelt distinctly enough upon the compelling cause of his conduct. it would, indeed, have been hard for any man, much less so modest a one as john, to do himself justice in that remarkable relation, when the listener was the lady's lover; and it is no wonder that robert rose to his feet and put a greater distance between himself and john. 'and what time was it?' he asked in a hard, suppressed voice. 'it was just before one o'clock.' 'how could you help her to go away?' 'i had a pass. i carried her box to the coach-office. she was to follow at dawn.' 'but she had no money.' 'yes, she had; i took particular care of that.' john did not add, as he might have done, that he had given her, in his pity, all the money he possessed, and at present had only eighteen-pence in the world. 'well, it is over, bob; so sit ye down, and talk with me of old times,' he added. 'ah, jack, it is well enough for you to speak like that,' said the disquieted sailor; 'but i can't help feeling that it is a cruel thing you have done. after all, she would have been snug enough for me. would i had never found out this about her! john, why did you interfere? you had no right to overhaul my affairs like this. why didn't you tell me fairly all you knew, and let me do as i chose? you have turned her out of the house, and it's a shame! if she had only come to me! why didn't she?' 'because she knew it was best to do otherwise.' 'well, i shall go after her,' said bob firmly. 'you can do as you like,' said john; 'but i would advise you strongly to leave matters where they are.' 'i won't leave matters where they are,' said bob impetuously. 'you have made me miserable, and all for nothing. i tell you she was good enough for me; and as long as i knew nothing about what you say of her history, what difference would it have made to me? never was there a young woman who was better company; and she loved a merry song as i do myself. yes, i'll follow her.' 'o, bob,' said john; 'i hardly expected this!' 'that's because you didn't know your man. can i ask you to do me one kindness? i don't suppose i can. can i ask you not to say a word against her to any of them at home?' 'certainly. the very reason why i got her to go off silently, as she has done, was because nothing should be said against her here, and no scandal should be heard of.' 'that may be; but i'm off after her. marry that girl i will.' 'you'll be sorry.' 'that we shall see,' replied robert with determination; and he went away rapidly towards the mill. the trumpet-major had no heart to follow--no good could possibly come of further opposition; and there on the down he remained like a graven image till bob had vanished from his sight into the mill. bob entered his father's only to leave word that he was going on a renewed search for matilda, and to pack up a few necessaries for his journey. ten minutes later he came out again with a bundle in his hand, and john saw him go diagonally across the lower fields towards the high- road. 'and this is all the good i have done!' said john, musingly readjusting his stock where it cut his neck, and descending towards the mill. xx. how they lessened the effect of the calamity meanwhile anne garland had gone home, and, being weary with her ramble in search of matilda, sat silent in a corner of the room. her mother was passing the time in giving utterance to every conceivable surmise on the cause of miss johnson's disappearance that the human mind could frame, to which anne returned monosyllabic answers, the result, not of indifference, but of intense preoccupation. presently loveday, the father, came to the door; her mother vanished with him, and they remained closeted together a long time. anne went into the garden and seated herself beneath the branching tree whose boughs had sheltered her during so many hours of her residence here. her attention was fixed more upon the miller's wing of the irregular building before her than upon that occupied by her mother, for she could not help expecting every moment to see some one run out with a wild face and announce some awful clearing up of the mystery. every sound set her on the alert, and hearing the tread of a horse in the lane she looked round eagerly. gazing at her over the hedge was festus derriman, mounted on such an incredibly tall animal that he could see to her very feet over the thick and broad thorn fence. she no sooner recognized him than she withdrew her glance; but as his eyes were fixed steadily upon her this was a futile manoeuvre. 'i saw you look round!' he exclaimed crossly. 'what have i done to make you behave like that? come, miss garland, be fair. 'tis no use to turn your back upon me.' as she did not turn he went on--'well, now, this is enough to provoke a saint. now i tell you what, miss garland; here i'll stay till you do turn round, if 'tis all the afternoon. you know my temper--what i say i mean.' he seated himself firmly in the saddle, plucked some leaves from the hedge, and began humming a song, to show how absolutely indifferent he was to the flight of time. 'what have you come for, that you are so anxious to see me?' inquired anne, when at last he had wearied her patience, rising and facing him with the added independence which came from a sense of the hedge between them. 'there, i knew you would turn round!' he said, his hot angry face invaded by a smile in which his teeth showed like white hemmed in by red at chess. 'what do you want, mr. derriman?' said she. '"what do you want, mr. derriman?"--now listen to that! is that my encouragement?' anne bowed superciliously, and moved away. 'i have just heard news that explains all that,' said the giant, eyeing her movements with somnolent irascibility. 'my uncle has been letting things out. he was here late last night, and he saw you.' 'indeed he didn't,' said anne. 'o, now! he saw trumpet-major loveday courting somebody like you in that garden walk; and when he came you ran indoors.' 'it is not true, and i wish to hear no more.' 'upon my life, he said so! how can you do it, miss garland, when i, who have enough money to buy up all the lovedays, would gladly come to terms with ye? what a simpleton you must be, to pass me over for him! there, now you are angry because i said simpleton!--i didn't mean simpleton, i meant misguided--misguided rosebud! that's it--run off,' he continued in a raised voice, as anne made towards the garden door. 'but i'll have you yet. much reason you have to be too proud to stay with me. but it won't last long; i shall marry you, madam, if i choose, as you'll see.' when he was quite gone, and anne had calmed down from the not altogether unrelished fear and excitement that he always caused her, she returned to her seat under the tree, and began to wonder what festus derriman's story meant, which, from the earnestness of his tone, did not seem like a pure invention. it suddenly flashed upon her mind that she herself had heard voices in the garden, and that the persons seen by farmer derriman, of whose visit and reclamation of his box the miller had told her, might have been matilda and john loveday. she further recalled the strange agitation of miss johnson on the preceding evening, and that it occurred just at the entry of the dragoon, till by degrees suspicion amounted to conviction that he knew more than any one else supposed of that lady's disappearance. it was just at this time that the trumpet-major descended to the mill after his talk with his brother on the down. as fate would have it, instead of entering the house he turned aside to the garden and walked down that pleasant enclosure, to learn if he were likely to find in the other half of it the woman he loved so well. yes, there she was, sitting on the seat of logs that he had repaired for her, under the apple-tree; but she was not facing in his direction. he walked with a noisier tread, he coughed, he shook a bough, he did everything, in short, but the one thing that festus did in the same circumstances--call out to her. he would not have ventured on that for the world. any of his signs would have been sufficient to attract her a day or two earlier; now she would not turn. at last, in his fond anxiety, he did what he had never done before without an invitation, and crossed over into mrs. garland's half of the garden, till he stood before her. when she could not escape him she arose, and, saying 'good afternoon, trumpet-major,' in a glacial manner unusual with her, walked away to another part of the garden. loveday, quite at a loss, had not the strength of mind to persevere further. he had a vague apprehension that some imperfect knowledge of the previous night's unhappy business had reached her; and, unable to remedy the evil without telling more than he dared, he went into the mill, where his father still was, looking doleful enough, what with his concern at events and the extra quantity of flour upon his face through sticking so closely to business that day. 'well, john; bob has told you all, of course? a queer, strange, perplexing thing, isn't it? i can't make it out at all. there must be something wrong in the woman, or it couldn't have happened. i haven't been so upset for years.' 'nor have i. i wouldn't it should have happened for all i own in the world,' said the dragoon. 'have you spoke to anne garland to-day--or has anybody been talking to her?' 'festus derriman rode by half-an-hour ago, and talked to her over the hedge.' john guessed the rest, and, after standing on the threshold in silence awhile, walked away towards the camp. all this time his brother robert had been hastening along in pursuit of the woman who had withdrawn from the scene to avoid the exposure and complete overthrow which would have resulted had she remained. as the distance lengthened between himself and the mill, bob was conscious of some cooling down of the excitement that had prompted him to set out; but he did not pause in his walk till he had reached the head of the river which fed the mill-stream. here, for some indefinite reason, he allowed his eyes to be attracted by the bubbling spring whose waters never failed or lessened, and he stopped as if to look longer at the scene; it was really because his mind was so absorbed by john's story. the sun was warm, the spot was a pleasant one, and he deposited his bundle and sat down. by degrees, as he reflected, first on john's view and then on his own, his convictions became unsettled; till at length he was so balanced between the impulse to go on and the impulse to go back, that a puff of wind either way would have been well-nigh sufficient to decide for him. when he allowed john's story to repeat itself in his ears, the reasonableness and good sense of his advice seemed beyond question. when, on the other hand, he thought of his poor matilda's eyes, and her, to him, pleasant ways, their charming arrangements to marry, and her probable willingness still, he could hardly bring himself to do otherwise than follow on the road at the top of his speed. this strife of thought was so well maintained that sitting and standing, he remained on the borders of the spring till the shadows had stretched out eastwards, and the chance of overtaking matilda had grown considerably less. still he did not positively go towards home. at last he took a guinea from his pocket, and resolved to put the question to the hazard. 'heads i go; tails i don't.' the piece of gold spun in the air and came down heads. 'no, i won't go, after all,' he said. 'i won't be steered by accidents any more.' he picked up his bundle and switch, and retraced his steps towards overcombe mill, knocking down the brambles and nettles as he went with gloomy and indifferent blows. when he got within sight of the house he beheld david in the road. 'all right--all right again, captain!', shouted that retainer. 'a wedding after all! hurrah!' 'ah--she's back again?' cried bob, seizing david, ecstatically, and dancing round with him. 'no--but it's all the same! it is of no consequence at all, and no harm will be done! maister and mrs. garland have made up a match, and mean to marry at once, that the wedding victuals may not be wasted! they felt 'twould be a thousand pities to let such good things get blue-vinnied for want of a ceremony to use 'em upon, and at last they have thought of this.' 'victuals--i don't care for the victuals!' bitterly cried bob, in a tone of far higher thought. 'how you disappoint me!' and he went slowly towards the house. his father appeared in the opening of the mill-door, looking more cheerful than when they had parted. 'what, robert, you've been after her?' he said. 'faith, then, i wouldn't have followed her if i had been as sure as you were that she went away in scorn of us. since you told me that, i have not looked for her at all.' 'i was wrong, father,' bob replied gravely, throwing down his bundle and stick. 'matilda, i find, has not gone away in scorn of us; she has gone away for other reasons. i followed her some way; but i have come back again. she may go.' 'why is she gone?' said the astonished miller. bob had intended, for matilda's sake, to give no reason to a living soul for her departure. but he could not treat his father thus reservedly; and he told. 'she has made great fools of us,' said the miller deliberately; 'and she might have made us greater ones. bob, i thought th' hadst more sense.' 'well, don't say anything against her, father,' implored bob. ''twas a sorry haul, and there's an end on't. let her down quietly, and keep the secret. you promise that?' 'i do.' loveday the elder remained thinking awhile, and then went on--'well, what i was going to say is this: i've hit upon a plan to get out of the awkward corner she has put us in. what you'll think of it i can't say.' 'david has just given me the heads.' 'and do it hurt your feelings, my son, at such a time?' 'no--i'll bring myself to bear it, anyhow! why should i object to other people's happiness because i have lost my own?' said bob, with saintly self-sacrifice in his air. 'well said!' answered the miller heartily. 'but you may be sure that there will be no unseemly rejoicing, to disturb ye in your present frame of mind. all the morning i felt more ashamed than i cared to own at the thought of how the neighbours, great and small, would laugh at what they would call your folly, when they knew what had happened; so i resolved to take this step to stave it off, if so be 'twas possible. and when i saw mrs. garland i knew i had done right. she pitied me so much for having had the house cleaned in vain, and laid in provisions to waste, that it put her into the humour to agree. we mean to do it right off at once, afore the pies and cakes get mouldy and the blackpot stale. 'twas a good thought of mine and hers, and i am glad 'tis settled,' he concluded cheerfully. 'poor matilda!' murmured bob. 'there--i was afraid 'twould hurt thy feelings,' said the miller, with self-reproach: 'making preparations for thy wedding, and using them for my own!' 'no,' said bob heroically; 'it shall not. it will be a great comfort in my sorrow to feel that the splendid grub, and the ale, and your stunning new suit of clothes, and the great table-cloths you've bought, will be just as useful now as if i had married myself. poor matilda! but you won't expect me to join in--you hardly can. i can sheer off that day very easily, you know.' 'nonsense, bob!' said the miller reproachfully. 'i couldn't stand it--i should break down.' 'deuce take me if i would have asked her, then, if i had known 'twas going to drive thee out of the house! now, come, bob, i'll find a way of arranging it and sobering it down, so that it shall be as melancholy as you can require--in short, just like a funeral, if thou'lt promise to stay?' 'very well,' said the afflicted one. 'on that condition i'll stay.' xxi. 'upon the hill he turned' having entered into this solemn compact with his son, the elder loveday's next action was to go to mrs. garland, and ask her how the toning down of the wedding had best be done. 'it is plain enough that to make merry just now would be slighting bob's feelings, as if we didn't care who was not married, so long as we were,' he said. 'but then, what's to be done about the victuals?' 'give a dinner to the poor folk,' she suggested. 'we can get everything used up that way.' 'that's true' said the miller. 'there's enough of 'em in these times to carry off any extras whatsoever.' 'and it will save bob's feelings wonderfully. and they won't know that the dinner was got for another sort of wedding and another sort of guests; so you'll have their good-will for nothing.' the miller smiled at the subtlety of the view. 'that can hardly be called fair,' he said. 'still, i did mean some of it for them, for the friends we meant to ask would not have cleared all.' upon the whole the idea pleased him well, particularly when he noticed the forlorn look of his sailor son as he walked about the place, and pictured the inevitably jarring effect of fiddles and tambourines upon bob's shattered nerves at such a crisis, even if the notes of the former were dulled by the application of a mute, and bob shut up in a distant bedroom--a plan which had at first occurred to him. he therefore told bob that the surcharged larder was to be emptied by the charitable process above alluded to, and hoped he would not mind making himself useful in such a good and gloomy work. bob readily fell in with the scheme, and it was at once put in hand and the tables spread. the alacrity with which the substituted wedding was carried out, seemed to show that the worthy pair of neighbours would have joined themselves into one long ago, had there previously occurred any domestic incident dictating such a step as an apposite expedient, apart from their personal wish to marry. the appointed morning came, and the service quietly took place at the cheerful hour of ten, in the face of a triangular congregation, of which the base was the front pew, and the apex the west door. mrs. garland dressed herself in the muslin shawl like queen charlotte's, that bob had brought home, and her best plum-coloured gown, beneath which peeped out her shoes with red rosettes. anne was present, but she considerately toned herself down, so as not to too seriously damage her mother's appearance. at moments during the ceremony she had a distressing sense that she ought not to be born, and was glad to get home again. the interest excited in the village, though real, was hardly enough to bring a serious blush to the face of coyness. neighbours' minds had become so saturated by the abundance of showy military and regal incident lately vouchsafed to them, that the wedding of middle-aged civilians was of small account, excepting in so far that it solved the question whether or not mrs. garland would consider herself too genteel to mate with a grinder of corn. in the evening, loveday's heart was made glad by seeing the baked and boiled in rapid process of consumption by the kitchenful of people assembled for that purpose. three-quarters of an hour were sufficient to banish for ever his fears as to spoilt food. the provisions being the cause of the assembly, and not its consequence, it had been determined to get all that would not keep consumed on that day, even if highways and hedges had to be searched for operators. and, in addition to the poor and needy, every cottager's daughter known to the miller was invited, and told to bring her lover from camp--an expedient which, for letting daylight into the inside of full platters, was among the most happy ever known. while mr. and mrs. loveday, anne, and bob were standing in the parlour, discussing the progress of the entertainment in the next room, john, who had not been down all day, entered the house and looked in upon them through the open door. 'how's this, john? why didn't you come before?' 'had to see the captain, and--other duties,' said the trumpet-major, in a tone which showed no great zeal for explanations. 'well, come in, however,' continued the miller, as his son remained with his hand on the door-post, surveying them reflectively. 'i cannot stay long,' said john, advancing. 'the route is come, and we are going away.' 'going away! where to?' 'to exonbury.' 'when?' 'friday morning.' 'all of you?' 'yes; some to-morrow and some next day. the king goes next week.' 'i am sorry for this,' said the miller, not expressing half his sorrow by the simple utterance. 'i wish you could have been here to-day, since this is the case,' he added, looking at the horizon through the window. mrs. loveday also expressed her regret, which seemed to remind the trumpet-major of the event of the day, and he went to her and tried to say something befitting the occasion. anne had not said that she was either sorry or glad, but john loveday fancied that she had looked rather relieved than otherwise when she heard his news. his conversation with bob on the down made bob's manner, too, remarkably cool, notwithstanding that he had after all followed his brother's advice, which it was as yet too soon after the event for him to rightly value. john did not know why the sailor had come back, never supposing that it was because he had thought better of going, and said to him privately, 'you didn't overtake her?' 'i didn't try to,' said bob. 'and you are not going to?' 'no; i shall let her drift.' 'i am glad indeed, bob; you have been wise,' said john heartily. bob, however, still loved matilda too well to be other than dissatisfied with john and the event that he had precipitated, which the elder brother only too promptly perceived; and it made his stay that evening of short duration. before leaving he said with some hesitation to his father, including anne and her mother by his glance, 'do you think to come up and see us off?' the miller answered for them all, and said that of course they would come. 'but you'll step down again between now and then?' he inquired. 'i'll try to.' he added after a pause, 'in case i should not, remember that revalley will sound at half past five; we shall leave about eight. next summer, perhaps, we shall come and camp here again.' 'i hope so,' said his father and mrs. loveday. there was something in john's manner which indicated to anne that he scarcely intended to come down again; but the others did not notice it, and she said nothing. he departed a few minutes later, in the dusk of the august evening, leaving anne still in doubt as to the meaning of his private meeting with miss johnson. john loveday had been going to tell them that on the last night, by an especial privilege, it would be in his power to come and stay with them until eleven o'clock, but at the moment of leaving he abandoned the intention. anne's attitude had chilled him, and made him anxious to be off. he utilized the spare hours of that last night in another way. this was by coming down from the outskirts of the camp in the evening, and seating himself near the brink of the mill-pond as soon as it was quite dark; where he watched the lights in the different windows till one appeared in anne's bedroom, and she herself came forward to shut the casement, with the candle in her hand. the light shone out upon the broad and deep mill-head, illuminating to a distinct individuality every moth and gnat that entered the quivering chain of radiance stretching across the water towards him, and every bubble or atom of froth that floated into its width. she stood for some time looking out, little thinking what the darkness concealed on the other side of that wide stream; till at length she closed the casement, drew the curtains, and retreated into the room. presently the light went out, upon which john loveday returned to camp and lay down in his tent. the next morning was dull and windy, and the trumpets of the --th sounded reveille for the last time on overcombe down. knowing that the dragoons were going away, anne had slept heedfully, and was at once awakened by the smart notes. she looked out of the window, to find that the miller was already astir, his white form being visible at the end of his garden, where he stood motionless, watching the preparations. anne also looked on as well as she could through the dim grey gloom, and soon she saw the blue smoke from the cooks' fires creeping fitfully along the ground, instead of rising in vertical columns, as it had done during the fine weather season. then the men began to carry their bedding to the waggons, and others to throw all refuse into the trenches, till the down was lively as an ant-hill. anne did not want to see john loveday again, but hearing the household astir, she began to dress at leisure, looking out at the camp the while. when the soldiers had breakfasted, she saw them selling and giving away their superfluous crockery to the natives who had clustered round; and then they pulled down and cleared away the temporary kitchens which they had constructed when they came. a tapping of tent-pegs and wriggling of picket-posts followed, and soon the cones of white canvas, now almost become a component part of the landscape, fell to the ground. at this moment the miller came indoors and asked at the foot of the stairs if anybody was going up the hill with him. anne felt that, in spite of the cloud hanging over john in her mind, it would ill become the present moment not to see him off, and she went downstairs to her mother, who was already there, though bob was nowhere to be seen. each took an arm of the miller, and thus climbed to the top of the hill. by this time the men and horses were at the place of assembly, and, shortly after the mill-party reached level ground, the troops slowly began to move forward. when the trumpet-major, half buried in his uniform, arms, and horse-furniture, drew near to the spot where the lovedays were waiting to see him pass, his father turned anxiously to anne and said, 'you will shake hands with john?' anne faintly replied 'yes,' and allowed the miller to take her forward on his arm to the trackway, so as to be close to the flank of the approaching column. it came up, many people on each side grasping the hands of the troopers in bidding them farewell; and as soon as john loveday saw the members of his father's household, he stretched down his hand across his right pistol for the same performance. the miller gave his, then mrs. loveday gave hers, and then the hand of the trumpet-major was extended towards anne. but as the horse did not absolutely stop, it was a somewhat awkward performance for a young woman to undertake, and, more on that account than on any other, anne drew back, and the gallant trooper passed by without receiving her adieu. anne's heart reproached her for a moment; and then she thought that, after all, he was not going off to immediate battle, and that she would in all probability see him again at no distant date, when she hoped that the mystery of his conduct would be explained. her thoughts were interrupted by a voice at her elbow: 'thank heaven, he's gone! now there's a chance for me.' she turned, and festus derriman was standing by her. 'there's no chance for you,' she said indignantly. 'why not?' 'because there's another left!' the words had slipped out quite unintentionally, and she blushed quickly. she would have given anything to be able to recall them; but he had heard, and said, 'who?' anne went forward to the miller to avoid replying, and festus caught her no more. 'has anybody been hanging about overcombe mill except loveday's son the soldier?' he asked of a comrade. 'his son the sailor,' was the reply. 'o--his son the sailor,' said festus slowly. 'damn his son the sailor!' xxii. the two households united at this particular moment the object of festus derriman's fulmination was assuredly not dangerous as a rival. bob, after abstractedly watching the soldiers from the front of the house till they were out of sight, had gone within doors and seated himself in the mill-parlour, where his father found him, his elbows resting on the table and his forehead on his hands, his eyes being fixed upon a document that lay open before him. 'what art perusing, bob, with such a long face?' bob sighed, and then mrs. loveday and anne entered. ''tis only a state- paper that i fondly thought i should have a use for,' he said gloomily. and, looking down as before, he cleared his voice, as if moved inwardly to go on, and began to read in feeling tones from what proved to be his nullified marriage licence:-- '"timothy titus philemon, by permission bishop of bristol: to our well- beloved robert loveday, of the parish of overcombe, bachelor; and matilda johnson, of the same parish, spinster. greeting."' here anne sighed, but contrived to keep down her sigh to a mere nothing. 'beautiful language, isn't it!' said bob. 'i was never greeted like that afore!' 'yes; i have often thought it very excellent language myself,' said mrs. loveday. 'come to that, the old gentleman will greet thee like it again any day for a couple of guineas,' said the miller. 'that's not the point, father! you never could see the real meaning of these things. . . . well, then he goes on: "whereas ye are, as it is alleged, determined to enter into the holy estate of matrimony--" but why should i read on? it all means nothing now--nothing, and the splendid words are all wasted upon air. it seems as if i had been hailed by some venerable hoary prophet, and had turned away, put the helm hard up, and wouldn't hear.' nobody replied, feeling probably that sympathy could not meet the case, and bob went on reading the rest of it to himself, occasionally heaving a breath like the wind in a ship's shrouds. 'i wouldn't set my mind so much upon her, if i was thee,' said his father at last. 'why not?' 'well, folk might call thee a fool, and say thy brains were turning to water.' bob was apparently much struck by this thought, and, instead of continuing the discourse further, he carefully folded up the licence, went out, and walked up and down the garden. it was startlingly apt what his father had said; and, worse than that, what people would call him might be true, and the liquefaction of his brains turn out to be no fable. by degrees he became much concerned, and the more he examined himself by this new light the more clearly did he perceive that he was in a very bad way. on reflection he remembered that since miss johnson's departure his appetite had decreased amazingly. he had eaten in meat no more than fourteen or fifteen ounces a day, but one-third of a quartern pudding on an average, in vegetables only a small heap of potatoes and half a york cabbage, and no gravy whatever; which, considering the usual appetite of a seaman for fresh food at the end of a long voyage, was no small index of the depression of his mind. then he had waked once every night, and on one occasion twice. while dressing each morning since the gloomy day he had not whistled more than seven bars of a hornpipe without stopping and falling into thought of a most painful kind; and he had told none but absolutely true stories of foreign parts to the neighbouring villagers when they saluted and clustered about him, as usual, for anything he chose to pour forth--except that story of the whale whose eye was about as large as the round pond in derriman's ewe-lease--which was like tempting fate to set a seal for ever upon his tongue as a traveller. all this enervation, mental and physical, had been produced by matilda's departure. he also considered what he had lost of the rational amusements of manhood during these unfortunate days. he might have gone to the neighbouring fashionable resort every afternoon, stood before gloucester lodge till the king and queen came out, held his hat in his hand, and enjoyed their majesties' smiles at his homage all for nothing--watched the picket-mounting, heard the different bands strike up, observed the staff; and, above all, have seen the pretty town girls go trip-trip-trip along the esplanade, deliberately fixing their innocent eyes on the distant sea, the grey cliffs, and the sky, and accidentally on the soldiers and himself. 'i'll raze out her image,' he said. 'she shall make a fool of me no more.' and his resolve resulted in conduct which had elements of real greatness. he went back to his father, whom he found in the mill-loft. ''tis true, father, what you say,' he observed: 'my brains will turn to bilge-water if i think of her much longer. by the oath of a--navigator, i wish i could sigh less and laugh more! she's gone--why can't i let her go, and be happy? but how begin?' 'take it careless, my son,' said the miller, 'and lay yourself out to enjoy snacks and cordials.' 'ah--that's a thought!' said bob. 'baccy is good for't. so is sperrits. though i don't advise thee to drink neat.' 'baccy--i'd almost forgot it!' said captain loveday. he went to his room, hastily untied the package of tobacco that he had brought home, and began to make use of it in his own way, calling to david for a bottle of the old household mead that had lain in the cellar these eleven years. he was discovered by his father three-quarters of an hour later as a half-invisible object behind a cloud of smoke. the miller drew a breath of relief. 'why, bob,' he said, 'i thought the house was a-fire!' 'i'm smoking rather fast to drown my reflections, father. 'tis no use to chaw.' to tempt his attenuated appetite the unhappy mate made david cook an omelet and bake a seed-cake, the latter so richly compounded that it opened to the knife like a freckled buttercup. with the same object he stuck night-lines into the banks of the mill-pond, and drew up next morning a family of fat eels, some of which were skinned and prepared for his breakfast. they were his favourite fish, but such had been his condition that, until the moment of making this effort, he had quite forgotten their existence at his father's back-door. in a few days bob loveday had considerably improved in tone and vigour. one other obvious remedy for his dejection was to indulge in the society of miss garland, love being so much more effectually got rid of by displacement than by attempted annihilation. but loveday's belief that he had offended her beyond forgiveness, and his ever-present sense of her as a woman who by education and antecedents was fitted to adorn a higher sphere than his own, effectually kept him from going near her for a long time, notwithstanding that they were inmates of one house. the reserve was, however, in some degree broken by the appearance one morning, later in the season, of the point of a saw through the partition which divided anne's room from the loveday half of the house. though she dined and supped with her mother and the loveday family, miss garland had still continued to occupy her old apartments, because she found it more convenient there to pursue her hobbies of wool-work and of copying her father's old pictures. the division wall had not as yet been broken down. as the saw worked its way downwards under her astonished gaze anne jumped up from her drawing; and presently the temporary canvasing and papering which had sealed up the old door of communication was cut completely through. the door burst open, and bob stood revealed on the other side, with the saw in his hand. 'i beg your ladyship's pardon,' he said, taking off the hat he had been working in, as his handsome face expanded into a smile. 'i didn't know this door opened into your private room.' 'indeed, captain loveday!' 'i am pulling down the division on principle, as we are now one family. but i really thought the door opened into your passage.' 'it don't matter; i can get another room.' 'not at all. father wouldn't let me turn you out. i'll close it up again.' but anne was so interested in the novelty of a new doorway that she walked through it, and found herself in a dark low passage which she had never seen before. 'it leads to the mill,' said bob. 'would you like to go in and see it at work? but perhaps you have already.' 'only into the ground floor.' 'come all over it. i am practising as grinder, you know, to help my father.' she followed him along the dark passage, in the side of which he opened a little trap, when she saw a great slimy cavern, where the long arms of the mill-wheel flung themselves slowly and distractedly round, and splashing water-drops caught the little light that strayed into the gloomy place, turning it into stars and flashes. a cold mist-laden puff of air came into their faces, and the roar from within made it necessary for anne to shout as she said, 'it is dismal! let us go on.' bob shut the trap, the roar ceased, and they went on to the inner part of the mill, where the air was warm and nutty, and pervaded by a fog of flour. then they ascended the stairs, and saw the stones lumbering round and round, and the yellow corn running down through the hopper. they climbed yet further to the top stage, where the wheat lay in bins, and where long rays like feelers stretched in from the sun through the little window, got nearly lost among cobwebs and timber, and completed their course by marking the opposite wall with a glowing patch of gold. in his earnestness as an exhibitor bob opened the bolter, which was spinning rapidly round, the result being that a dense cloud of flour rolled out in their faces, reminding anne that her complexion was probably much paler by this time than when she had entered the mill. she thanked her companion for his trouble, and said she would now go down. he followed her with the same deference as hitherto, and with a sudden and increasing sense that of all cures for his former unhappy passion this would have been the nicest, the easiest, and the most effectual, if he had only been fortunate enough to keep her upon easy terms. but miss garland showed no disposition to go further than accept his services as a guide; she descended to the open air, shook the flour from her like a bird, and went on into the garden amid the september sunshine, whose rays lay level across the blue haze which the earth gave forth. the gnats were dancing up and down in airy companies, the nasturtium flowers shone out in groups from the dark hedge over which they climbed, and the mellow smell of the decline of summer was exhaled by everything. bob followed her as far as the gate, looked after her, thought of her as the same girl who had half encouraged him years ago, when she seemed so superior to him; though now they were almost equal she apparently thought him beneath her. it was with a new sense of pleasure that his mind flew to the fact that she was now an inmate of his father's house. his obsequious bearing was continued during the next week. in the busy hours of the day they seldom met, but they regularly encountered each other at meals, and these cheerful occasions began to have an interest for him quite irrespective of dishes and cups. when anne entered and took her seat she was always loudly hailed by miller loveday as he whetted his knife; but from bob she condescended to accept no such familiar greeting, and they often sat down together as if each had a blind eye in the direction of the other. bob sometimes told serious and correct stories about sea-captains, pilots, boatswains, mates, able seamen, and other curious fauna of the marine world; but these were directly addressed to his father and mrs. loveday, anne being included at the clinching-point by a glance only. he sometimes opened bottles of sweet cider for her, and then she thanked him; but even this did not lead to her encouraging his chat. one day when anne was paring an apple she was left at table with the young man. 'i have made something for you,' he said. she looked all over the table; nothing was there save the ordinary remnants. 'o i don't mean that it is here; it is out by the bridge at the mill-head.' he arose, and anne followed with curiosity in her eyes, and with her firm little mouth pouted up to a puzzled shape. on reaching the mossy mill- head she found that he had fixed in the keen damp draught which always prevailed over the wheel an aeolian harp of large size. at present the strings were partly covered with a cloth. he lifted it, and the wires began to emit a weird harmony which mingled curiously with the plashing of the wheel. 'i made it on purpose for you, miss garland,' he said. she thanked him very warmly, for she had never seen anything like such an instrument before, and it interested her. 'it was very thoughtful of you to make it,' she added. 'how came you to think of such a thing?' 'o i don't know exactly,' he replied, as if he did not care to be questioned on the point. 'i have never made one in my life till now.' every night after this, during the mournful gales of autumn, the strange mixed music of water, wind, and strings met her ear, swelling and sinking with an almost supernatural cadence. the character of the instrument was far enough removed from anything she had hitherto seen of bob's hobbies; so that she marvelled pleasantly at the new depths of poetry this contrivance revealed as existent in that young seaman's nature, and allowed her emotions to flow out yet a little further in the old direction, notwithstanding her late severe resolve to bar them back. one breezy night, when the mill was kept going into the small hours, and the wind was exactly in the direction of the water-current, the music so mingled with her dreams as to wake her: it seemed to rhythmically set itself to the words, 'remember me! think of me!' she was much impressed; the sounds were almost too touching; and she spoke to bob the next morning on the subject. 'how strange it is that you should have thought of fixing that harp where the water gushes!' she gently observed. 'it affects me almost painfully at night. you are poetical, captain bob. but it is too--too sad!' 'i will take it away,' said captain bob promptly. 'it certainly is too sad; i thought so myself. i myself was kept awake by it one night.' 'how came you to think of making such a peculiar thing?' 'well,' said bob, 'it is hardly worth saying why. it is not a good place for such a queer noisy machine; and i'll take it away.' 'on second thoughts,' said anne, 'i should like it to remain a little longer, because it sets me thinking.' 'of me?' he asked with earnest frankness. anne's colour rose fast. 'well, yes,' she said, trying to infuse much plain matter-of-fact into her voice. 'of course i am led to think of the person who invented it.' bob seemed unaccountably embarrassed, and the subject was not pursued. about half-an-hour later he came to her again, with something of an uneasy look. 'there was a little matter i didn't tell you just now, miss garland,' he said. 'about that harp thing, i mean. i did make it, certainly, but it was my brother john who asked me to do it, just before he went away. john is very musical, as you know, and he said it would interest you; but as he didn't ask me to tell, i did not. perhaps i ought to have, and not have taken the credit to myself.' 'o, it is nothing!' said anne quickly. 'it is a very incomplete instrument after all, and it will be just as well for you to take it away as you first proposed.' he said that he would, but he forgot to do it that day; and the following night there was a high wind, and the harp cried and moaned so movingly that anne, whose window was quite near, could hardly bear the sound with its new associations. john loveday was present to her mind all night as an ill-used man; and yet she could not own that she had ill-used him. the harp was removed next day. bob, feeling that his credit for originality was damaged in her eyes, by way of recovering it set himself to paint the summer-house which anne frequented, and when he came out he assured her that it was quite his own idea. 'it wanted doing, certainly,' she said, in a neutral tone. 'it is just about troublesome.' 'yes; you can't quite reach up. that's because you are not very tall; is it not, captain loveday?' 'you never used to say things like that.' 'o, i don't mean that you are much less than tall! shall i hold the paint for you, to save your stepping down?' 'thank you, if you would.' she took the paint-pot, and stood looking at the brush as it moved up and down in his hand. 'i hope i shall not sprinkle your fingers,' he observed as he dipped. 'o, that would not matter! you do it very well.' 'i am glad to hear that you think so.' 'but perhaps not quite so much art is demanded to paint a summer-house as to paint a picture?' thinking that, as a painter's daughter, and a person of education superior to his own, she spoke with a flavour of sarcasm, he felt humbled and said-- 'you did not use to talk like that to me.' 'i was perhaps too young then to take any pleasure in giving pain,' she observed daringly. 'does it give you pleasure?' anne nodded. 'i like to give pain to people who have given pain to me,' she said smartly, without removing her eyes from the green liquid in her hand. 'i ask your pardon for that.' 'i didn't say i meant you--though i did mean you.' bob looked and looked at her side face till he was bewitched into putting down his brush. 'it was that stupid forgetting of 'ee for a time!' he exclaimed. 'well, i hadn't seen you for so very long--consider how many years! o, dear anne!' he said, advancing to take her hand, 'how well we knew one another when we were children! you was a queen to me then; and so you are now, and always.' possibly anne was thrilled pleasantly enough at having brought the truant village lad to her feet again; but he was not to find the situation so easy as he imagined, and her hand was not to be taken yet. 'very pretty!' she said, laughing. 'and only six weeks since miss johnson left.' 'zounds, don't say anything about that!' implored bob. 'i swear that i never--never deliberately loved her--for a long time together, that is; it was a sudden sort of thing, you know. but towards you--i have more or less honoured and respectfully loved you, off and on, all my life. there, that's true.' anne retorted quickly-- 'i am willing, off and on, to believe you, captain robert. but i don't see any good in your making these solemn declarations.' 'give me leave to explain, dear miss garland. it is to get you to be pleased to renew an old promise--made years ago--that you'll think o' me.' 'not a word of any promise will i repeat.' 'well, well, i won't urge 'ee to-day. only let me beg of you to get over the quite wrong notion you have of me; and it shall be my whole endeavour to fetch your gracious favour.' anne turned away from him and entered the house, whither in the course of a quarter of an hour he followed her, knocking at her door, and asking to be let in. she said she was busy; whereupon he went away, to come back again in a short time and receive the same answer. 'i have finished painting the summer-house for you,' he said through the door. 'i cannot come to see it. i shall be engaged till supper-time.' she heard him breathe a heavy sigh and withdraw, murmuring something about his bad luck in being cut away from the starn like this. but it was not over yet. when supper-time came and they sat down together, she took upon herself to reprove him for what he had said to her in the garden. bob made his forehead express despair. 'now, i beg you this one thing,' he said. 'just let me know your whole mind. then i shall have a chance to confess my faults and mend them, or clear my conduct to your satisfaction.' she answered with quickness, but not loud enough to be heard by the old people at the other end of the table--'then, captain loveday, i will tell you one thing, one fault, that perhaps would have been more proper to my character than to yours. you are too easily impressed by new faces, and that gives me a _bad opinion_ of you--yes, a _bad opinion_.' 'o, that's it!' said bob slowly, looking at her with the intense respect of a pupil for a master, her words being spoken in a manner so precisely between jest and earnest that he was in some doubt how they were to be received. 'impressed by new faces. it is wrong, certainly, of me.' the popping of a cork, and the pouring out of strong beer by the miller with a view to giving it a head, were apparently distractions sufficient to excuse her in not attending further to him; and during the remainder of the sitting her gentle chiding seemed to be sinking seriously into his mind. perhaps her own heart ached to see how silent he was; but she had always meant to punish him. day after day for two or three weeks she preserved the same demeanour, with a self-control which did justice to her character. and, on his part, considering what he had to put up with--how she eluded him, snapped him off, refused to come out when he called her, refused to see him when he wanted to enter the little parlour which she had now appropriated to her private use, his patience testified strongly to his good-humour. xxiii. military preparations on an extended scale christmas had passed. dreary winter with dark evenings had given place to more dreary winter with light evenings. rapid thaws had ended in rain, rain in wind, wind in dust. showery days had come--the season of pink dawns and white sunsets; and people hoped that the march weather was over. the chief incident that concerned the household at the mill was that the miller, following the example of all his neighbours, had become a volunteer, and duly appeared twice a week in a red, long-tailed military coat, pipe-clayed breeches, black cloth gaiters, a heel-balled helmet- hat, with a tuft of green wool, and epaulettes of the same colour and material. bob still remained neutral. not being able to decide whether to enrol himself as a sea-fencible, a local militia-man, or a volunteer, he simply went on dancing attendance upon anne. mrs. loveday had become awake to the fact that the pair of young people stood in a curious attitude towards each other; but as they were never seen with their heads together, and scarcely ever sat even in the same room, she could not be sure what their movements meant. strangely enough (or perhaps naturally enough), since entering the loveday family herself, she had gradually grown to think less favourably of anne doing the same thing, and reverted to her original idea of encouraging festus; this more particularly because he had of late shown such perseverance in haunting the precincts of the mill, presumably with the intention of lighting upon the young girl. but the weather had kept her mostly indoors. one afternoon it was raining in torrents. such leaves as there were on trees at this time of year--those of the laurel and other evergreens--staggered beneath the hard blows of the drops which fell upon them, and afterwards could be seen trickling down the stems beneath and silently entering the ground. the surface of the mill-pond leapt up in a thousand spirts under the same downfall, and clucked like a hen in the rat-holes along the banks as it undulated under the wind. the only dry spot visible from the front windows of the mill-house was the inside of a small shed, on the opposite side of the courtyard. while mrs. loveday was noticing the threads of rain descending across its interior shade, festus derriman walked up and entered it for shelter, which, owing to the lumber within, it but scantily afforded to a man who would have been a match for one of frederick william's patagonians. it was an excellent opportunity for helping on her scheme. anne was in the back room, and by asking him in till the rain was over she would bring him face to face with her daughter, whom, as the days went on, she increasingly wished to marry other than a loveday, now that the romance of her own alliance with the millet had in some respects worn off. she was better provided for than before; she was not unhappy; but the plain fact was that she had married beneath her. she beckoned to festus through the window-pane; he instantly complied with her signal, having in fact placed himself there on purpose to be noticed; for he knew that miss garland would not be out-of-doors on such a day. 'good afternoon, mrs. loveday,' said festus on entering. 'there now--if i didn't think that's how it would be!' his voice had suddenly warmed to anger, for he had seen a door close in the back part of the room, a lithe figure having previously slipped through. mrs. loveday turned, observed that anne was gone, and said, 'what is it?' as if she did not know. 'o, nothing, nothing!' said festus crossly. 'you know well enough what it is, ma'am; only you make pretence otherwise. but i'll bring her to book yet. you shall drop your haughty airs, my charmer! she little thinks i have kept an account of 'em all.' 'but you must treat her politely, sir,' said mrs. loveday, secretly pleased at these signs of uncontrollable affection. 'don't tell me of politeness or generosity, ma'am! she is more than a match for me. she regularly gets over me. i have passed by this house five-and-fifty times since last martinmas, and this is all my reward for't!' 'but you will stay till the rain is over, sir?' 'no. i don't mind rain. i'm off again. she's got somebody else in her eye!' and the yeoman went out, slamming the door. meanwhile the slippery object of his hopes had gone along the dark passage, passed the trap which opened on the wheel, and through the door into the mill, where she was met by bob, who looked up from the flour- shoot inquiringly and said, 'you want me, miss garland?' 'o no,' said she. 'i only want to be allowed to stand here a few minutes.' he looked at her to know if she meant it, and finding that she did, returned to his post. when the mill had rumbled on a little longer he came back. 'bob,' she said, when she saw him move, 'remember that you are at work, and have no time to stand close to me.' he bowed and went to his original post again, anne watching from the window till festus should leave. the mill rumbled on as before, and at last bob came to her for the third time. 'now, bob--' she began. 'on my honour, 'tis only to ask a question. will you walk with me to church next sunday afternoon?' 'perhaps i will,' she said. but at this moment the yeoman left the house, and anne, to escape further parley, returned to the dwelling by the way she had come. sunday afternoon arrived, and the family was standing at the door waiting for the church bells to begin. from that side of the house they could see southward across a paddock to the rising ground further ahead, where there grew a large elm-tree, beneath whose boughs footpaths crossed in different directions, like meridians at the pole. the tree was old, and in summer the grass beneath it was quite trodden away by the feet of the many trysters and idlers who haunted the spot. the tree formed a conspicuous object in the surrounding landscape. while they looked, a foot soldier in red uniform and white breeches came along one of the paths, and stopping beneath the elm, took from his pocket a paper, which he proceeded to nail up by the four corners to the trunk. he drew back, looked at it, and went on his way. bob got his glass from indoors and levelled it at the placard, but after looking for a long time he could make out nothing but a lion and a unicorn at the top. anne, who was ready for church, moved away from the door, though it was yet early, and showed her intention of going by way of the elm. the paper had been so impressively nailed up that she was curious to read it even at this theological time. bob took the opportunity of following, and reminded her of her promise. 'then walk behind me not at all close,' she said. 'yes,' he replied, immediately dropping behind. the ludicrous humility of his manner led her to add playfully over her shoulder, 'it serves you right, you know.' 'i deserve anything, but i must take the liberty to say that i hope my behaviour about matil--, in forgetting you awhile, will not make ye wish to keep me _always_ behind?' she replied confidentially, 'why i am so earnest not to be seen with you is that i may appear to people to be independent of you. knowing what i do of your weaknesses i can do no otherwise. you must be schooled into--' 'o, anne,' sighed bob, 'you hit me hard--too hard! if ever i do win you i am sure i shall have fairly earned you.' 'you are not what you once seemed to be,' she returned softly. 'i don't quite like to let myself love you.' the last words were not very audible, and as bob was behind he caught nothing of them, nor did he see how sentimental she had become all of a sudden. they walked the rest of the way in silence, and coming to the tree read as follows:-- address to all ranks and descriptions of englishmen. friends and countrymen,--the french are now assembling the largest force that ever was prepared to invade this kingdom, with the professed purpose of effecting our complete ruin and destruction. they do not disguise their intentions, as they have often done to other countries; but openly boast that they will come over in such numbers as cannot be resisted. wherever the french have lately appeared they have spared neither rich nor poor, old nor young; but like a destructive pestilence have laid waste and destroyed every thing that before was fair and flourishing. on this occasion no man's service is compelled, but you are invited voluntarily to come forward in defence of everything that is dear to you, by entering your names on the lists which are sent to the tything- man of every parish, and engaging to act either as _associated volunteers bearing arms_, _as pioneers and labourers_, or as _drivers of waggons_. as associated volunteers you will be called out only once a week, unless the actual landing of the enemy should render your further services necessary. as pioneers or labourers you will be employed in breaking up roads to hinder the enemy's advance. those who have pickaxes, spades, shovels, bill-hooks, or other working implements, are desired to mention them to the constable or tything- man of their parish, in order that they may be entered on the lists opposite their homes, to be used if necessary. . . . it is thought desirable to give you this explanation, that you may not be ignorant of the duties to which you may be called. but if the love of true liberty and honest fame has not ceased to animate the hearts of englishmen, pay, though necessary, will be the least part of your reward. you will find your best recompense in having done your duty to your king and country by driving back or destroying your old and implacable enemy, envious of your freedom and happiness, and therefore seeking to destroy them; in having protected your wives and children from death, or worse than death, which will follow the success of such inveterate foes. rouse, therefore, and unite as one man in the best of causes! united we may defy the world to conquer us; but victory will never belong to those who are slothful and unprepared. { } 'i must go and join at once!' said bob. anne turned to him, all the playfulness gone from her face. 'i wish we lived in the north of england, bob, so as to be further away from where he'll land!' she murmured uneasily. 'where we are would be paradise to me, if you would only make it so.' 'it is not right to talk so lightly at such a serious time,' she thoughtfully returned, going on towards the church. on drawing near, they saw through the boughs of a clump of intervening trees, still leafless, but bursting into buds of amber hue, a glittering which seemed to be reflected from points of steel. in a few moments they heard above the tender chiming of the church bells the loud voice of a man giving words of command, at which all the metallic points suddenly shifted like the bristles of a porcupine, and glistened anew. ''tis the drilling,' said loveday. 'they drill now between the services, you know, because they can't get the men together so readily in the week. it makes me feel that i ought to be doing more than i am!' when they had passed round the belt of trees, the company of recruits became visible, consisting of the able-bodied inhabitants of the hamlets thereabout, more or less known to bob and anne. they were assembled on the green plot outside the churchyard-gate, dressed in their common clothes, and the sergeant who had been putting them through their drill was the man who nailed up the proclamation. he was now engaged in untying a canvas money-bag, from which he drew forth a handful of shillings, giving one to each man in payment for his attendance. 'men, i dismissed ye too soon--parade, parade again, i say,' he cried. 'my watch is fast, i find. there's another twenty minutes afore the worship of god commences. now all of you that ha'n't got firelocks, fall in at the lower end. eyes right and dress!' as every man was anxious to see how the rest stood, those at the end of the line pressed forward for that purpose, till the line assumed the form of a bow. 'look at ye now! why, you are all a crooking in! dress, dress!' they dressed forthwith; but impelled by the same motive they soon resumed their former figure, and so they were despairingly permitted to remain. 'now, i hope you'll have a little patience,' said the sergeant, as he stood in the centre of the arc, 'and pay strict attention to the word of command, just exactly as i give it out to ye; and if i should go wrong, i shall be much obliged to any friend who'll put me right again, for i have only been in the army three weeks myself, and we are all liable to mistakes.' 'so we be, so we be,' said the line heartily. ''tention, the whole, then. poise fawlocks! very well done!' 'please, what must we do that haven't got no firelocks!' said the lower end of the line in a helpless voice. 'now, was ever such a question! why, you must do nothing at all, but think _how_ you'd poise 'em _if_ you had 'em. you middle men, that are armed with hurdle-sticks and cabbage-stumps just to make-believe, must of course use 'em as if they were the real thing. now then, cock fawlocks! present! fire! (pretend to, i mean, and the same time throw yer imagination into the field o' battle.) very good--very good indeed; except that some of you were a _little_ too soon, and the rest a _little_ too late.' 'please, sergeant, can i fall out, as i am master-player in the choir, and my bass-viol strings won't stand at this time o' year, unless they be screwed up a little before the passon comes in?' 'how can you think of such trifles as churchgoing at such a time as this, when your own native country is on the point of invasion?' said the sergeant sternly. 'and, as you know, the drill ends three minutes afore church begins, and that's the law, and it wants a quarter of an hour yet. now, at the word _prime_, shake the powder (supposing you've got it) into the priming-pan, three last fingers behind the rammer; then shut your pans, drawing your right arm nimble-like towards your body. i ought to have told ye before this, that at _hand your katridge_, seize it and bring it with a quick motion to your mouth, bite the top well off, and don't swaller so much of the powder as to make ye hawk and spet instead of attending to your drill. what's that man a-saying of in the rear rank?' 'please, sir, 'tis anthony cripplestraw, wanting to know how he's to bite off his katridge, when he haven't a tooth left in 's head?' 'man! why, what's your genius for war? hold it up to your right-hand man's mouth, to be sure, and let him nip it off for ye. well, what have you to say, private tremlett? don't ye understand english?' 'ask yer pardon, sergeant; but what must we infantry of the awkward squad do if boney comes afore we get our firelocks?' 'take a pike, like the rest of the incapables. you'll find a store of them ready in the corner of the church tower. now then--shoulder--r--r--r--' 'there, they be tinging in the passon!' exclaimed david, miller loveday's man, who also formed one of the company, as the bells changed from chiming all three together to a quick beating of one. the whole line drew a breath of relief, threw down their arms, and began running off. 'well, then, i must dismiss ye,' said the sergeant. 'come back--come back! next drill is tuesday afternoon at four. and, mind, if your masters won't let ye leave work soon enough, tell me, and i'll write a line to gover'ment! 'tention! to the right--left wheel, i mean--no, no--right wheel. mar--r--r--rch!' some wheeled to the right and some to the left, and some obliging men, including cripplestraw, tried to wheel both ways. 'stop, stop; try again! 'cruits and comrades, unfortunately when i'm in a hurry i can never remember my right hand from my left, and never could as a boy. you must excuse me, please. practice makes perfect, as the saying is; and, much as i've learnt since i 'listed, we always find something new. now then, right wheel! march! halt! stand at ease! dismiss! i think that's the order o't, but i'll look in the gover'ment book afore tuesday.' { } many of the company who had been drilled preferred to go off and spend their shillings instead of entering the church; but anne and captain bob passed in. even the interior of the sacred edifice was affected by the agitation of the times. the religion of the country had, in fact, changed from love of god to hatred of napoleon buonaparte; and, as if to remind the devout of this alteration, the pikes for the pikemen (all those accepted men who were not otherwise armed) were kept in the church of each parish. there, against the wall, they always stood--a whole sheaf of them, formed of new ash stems, with a spike driven in at one end, the stick being preserved from splitting by a ferule. and there they remained, year after year, in the corner of the aisle, till they were removed and placed under the gallery stairs, and thence ultimately to the belfry, where they grew black, rusty, and worm-eaten, and were gradually stolen and carried off by sextons, parish clerks, whitewashers, window-menders, and other church servants for use at home as rake-stems, benefit-club staves, and pick-handles, in which degraded situations they may still occasionally be found. but in their new and shining state they had a terror for anne, whose eyes were involuntarily drawn towards them as she sat at bob's side during the service, filling her with bloody visions of their possible use not far from the very spot on which they were now assembled. the sermon, too, was on the subject of patriotism; so that when they came out she began to harp uneasily upon the probability of their all being driven from their homes. bob assured her that with the sixty thousand regulars, the militia reserve of a hundred and twenty thousand, and the three hundred thousand volunteers, there was not much to fear. 'but i sometimes have a fear that poor john will be killed,' he continued after a pause. 'he is sure to be among the first that will have to face the invaders, and the trumpeters get picked off.' 'there is the same chance for him as for the others,' said anne. 'yes--yes--the same chance, such as it is. you have never liked john since that affair of matilda johnson, have you?' 'why?' she quickly asked. 'well,' said bob timidly, 'as it is a ticklish time for him, would it not be worth while to make up any differences before the crash comes?' 'i have nothing to make up,' said anne, with some distress. she still fully believed the trumpet-major to have smuggled away miss johnson because of his own interest in that lady, which must have made his professions to herself a mere pastime; but that very conduct had in it the curious advantage to herself of setting bob free. 'since john has been gone,' continued her companion, 'i have found out more of his meaning, and of what he really had to do with that woman's flight. did you know that he had anything to do with it?' 'yes.' 'that he got her to go away?' she looked at bob with surprise. he was not exasperated with john, and yet he knew so much as this. 'yes,' she said; 'what did it mean?' he did not explain to her then; but the possibility of john's death, which had been newly brought home to him by the military events of the day, determined him to get poor john's character cleared. reproaching himself for letting her remain so long with a mistaken idea of him, bob went to his father as soon as they got home, and begged him to get mrs. loveday to tell anne the true reason of john's objection to miss johnson as a sister-in-law. 'she thinks it is because they were old lovers new met, and that he wants to marry her,' he exclaimed to his father in conclusion. 'then _that's_ the meaning of the split between miss nancy and jack,' said the miller. 'what, were they any more than common friends?' asked bob uneasily. 'not on her side, perhaps.' 'well, we must do it,' replied bob, painfully conscious that common justice to john might bring them into hazardous rivalry, yet determined to be fair. 'tell it all to mrs. loveday, and get her to tell anne.' xxiv. a letter, a visitor, and a tin box the result of the explanation upon anne was bitter self-reproach. she was so sorry at having wronged the kindly soldier that next morning she went by herself to the down, and stood exactly where his tent had covered the sod on which he had lain so many nights, thinking what sadness he must have suffered because of her at the time of packing up and going away. after that she wiped from her eyes the tears of pity which had come there, descended to the house, and wrote an impulsive letter to him, in which occurred the following passages, indiscreet enough under the circumstances:-- 'i find all justice, all rectitude, on your side, john; and all impertinence, all inconsiderateness, on mine. i am so much convinced of your honour in the whole transaction, that i shall for the future mistrust myself in everything. and if it be possible, whenever i differ from you on any point i shall take an hour's time for consideration before i say that i differ. if i have lost your friendship, i have only myself to thank for it; but i sincerely hope that you can forgive.' after writing this she went to the garden, where bob was shearing the spring grass from the paths. 'what is john's direction?' she said, holding the sealed letter in her hand. 'exonbury barracks,' bob faltered, his countenance sinking. she thanked him and went indoors. when he came in, later in the day, he passed the door of her empty sitting-room and saw the letter on the mantelpiece. he disliked the sight of it. hearing voices in the other room, he entered and found anne and her mother there, talking to cripplestraw, who had just come in with a message from squire derriman, requesting miss garland, as she valued the peace of mind of an old and troubled man, to go at once and see him. 'i cannot go,' she said, not liking the risk that such a visit involved. an hour later cripplestraw shambled again into the passage, on the same errand. 'maister's very poorly, and he hopes that you'll come, mis'ess anne. he wants to see 'ee very particular about the french.' anne would have gone in a moment, but for the fear that some one besides the farmer might encounter her, and she answered as before. another hour passed, and the wheels of a vehicle were heard. cripplestraw had come for the third time, with a horse and gig; he was dressed in his best clothes, and brought with him on this occasion a basket containing raisins, almonds, oranges, and sweet cakes. offering them to her as a gift from the old farmer, he repeated his request for her to accompany him, the gig and best mare having been sent as an additional inducement. 'i believe the old gentleman is in love with you, anne,' said her mother. 'why couldn't he drive down himself to see me?' anne inquired of cripplestraw. 'he wants you at the house, please.' 'is mr. festus with him?' 'no; he's away to budmouth.' 'i'll go,' said she. 'and i may come and meet you?' said bob. 'there's my letter--what shall i do about that?' she said, instead of answering him. 'take my letter to the post-office, and you may come,' she added. he said yes and went out, cripplestraw retreating to the door till she should be ready. 'what letter is it?' said her mother. 'only one to john,' said anne. 'i have asked him to forgive my suspicions. i could do no less.' 'do you want to marry _him_?' asked mrs. loveday bluntly. 'mother!' 'well; he will take that letter as an encouragement. can't you see that he will, you foolish girl?' anne did see instantly. 'of course!' she said. 'tell robert that he need not go.' she went to her room to secure the letter. it was gone from the mantelpiece, and on inquiry it was found that the miller, seeing it there, had sent david with it to budmouth hours ago. anne said nothing, and set out for oxwell hall with cripplestraw. 'william,' said mrs. loveday to the miller when anne was gone and bob had resumed his work in the garden, 'did you get that letter sent off on purpose?' 'well, i did. i wanted to make sure of it. john likes her, and now 'twill be made up; and why shouldn't he marry her? i'll start him in business, if so be she'll have him.' 'but she is likely to marry festus derriman.' 'i don't want her to marry anybody but john,' said the miller doggedly. 'not if she is in love with bob, and has been for years, and he with her?' asked his wife triumphantly. 'in love with bob, and he with her?' repeated loveday. 'certainly,' said she, going off and leaving him to his reflections. when anne reached the hall she found old mr. derriman in his customary chair. his complexion was more ashen, but his movement in rising at her entrance, putting a chair and shutting the door behind her, were much the same as usual. 'thank god you've come, my dear girl,' he said earnestly. 'ah, you don't trip across to read to me now! why did ye cost me so much to fetch you? fie! a horse and gig, and a man's time in going three times. and what i sent ye cost a good deal in budmouth market, now everything is so dear there, and 'twould have cost more if i hadn't bought the raisins and oranges some months ago, when they were cheaper. i tell you this because we are old friends, and i have nobody else to tell my troubles to. but i don't begrudge anything to ye since you've come.' 'i am not much pleased to come, even now,' said she. 'what can make you so seriously anxious to see me?' 'well, you be a good girl and true; and i've been thinking that of all people of the next generation that i can trust, you are the best. 'tis my bonds and my title-deeds, such as they be, and the leases, you know, and a few guineas in packets, and more than these, my will, that i have to speak about. now do ye come this way.' 'o, such things as those!' she returned, with surprise. 'i don't understand those things at all.' 'there's nothing to understand. 'tis just this. the french will be here within two months; that's certain. i have it on the best authority, that the army at boulogne is ready, the boats equipped, the plans laid, and the first consul only waits for a tide. heaven knows what will become o' the men o' these parts! but most likely the women will he spared. now i'll show 'ee.' he led her across the hall to a stone staircase of semi-circular plan, which conducted to the cellars. 'down here?' she said. 'yes; i must trouble ye to come down here. i have thought and thought who is the woman that can best keep a secret for six months, and i say, "anne garland." you won't be married before then?' 'o no!' murmured the young woman. 'i wouldn't expect ye to keep a close tongue after such a thing as that. but it will not be necessary.' when they reached the bottom of the steps he struck a light from a tinder- box, and unlocked the middle one of three doors which appeared in the whitewashed wall opposite. the rays of the candle fell upon the vault and sides of a long low cellar, littered with decayed woodwork from other parts of the hall, among the rest stair-balusters, carved finials, tracery panels, and wainscoting. but what most attracted her eye was a small flagstone turned up in the middle of the floor, a heap of earth beside it, and a measuring-tape. derriman went to the corner of the cellar, and pulled out a clamped box from under the straw. 'you be rather heavy, my dear, eh?' he said, affectionately addressing the box as he lifted it. 'but you are going to be put in a safe place, you know, or that rascal will get hold of ye, and carry ye off and ruin me.' he then with some difficulty lowered the box into the hole, raked in the earth upon it, and lowered the flagstone, which he was a long time in fixing to his satisfaction. miss garland, who was romantically interested, helped him to brush away the fragments of loose earth; and when he had scattered over the floor a little of the straw that lay about, they again ascended to upper air. 'is this all, sir?' said anne. 'just a moment longer, honey. will you come into the great parlour?' she followed him thither. 'if anything happens to me while the fighting is going on--it may be on these very fields--you will know what to do,' he resumed. 'but first please sit down again, there's a dear, whilst i write what's in my head. see, there's the best paper, and a new quill that i've afforded myself for't.' 'what a strange business! i don't think i much like it, mr. derriman,' she said, seating herself. he had by this time begun to write, and murmured as he wrote-- '"twenty-three and a half from n.w. sixteen and three-quarters from n.e."--there, that's all. now i seal it up and give it to you to keep safe till i ask ye for it, or you hear of my being trampled down by the enemy.' 'what does it mean?' she asked, as she received the paper. 'clk! ha! ha! why, that's the distance of the box from the two corners of the cellar. i measured it before you came. and, my honey, to make all sure, if the french soldiery are after ye, tell your mother the meaning on't, or any other friend, in case they should put ye to death, and the secret be lost. but that i am sure i hope they won't do, though your pretty face will be a sad bait to the soldiers. i often have wished you was my daughter, honey; and yet in these times the less cares a man has the better, so i am glad you bain't. shall my man drive you home?' 'no, no,' she said, much depressed by the words he had uttered. 'i can find my way. you need not trouble to come down.' 'then take care of the paper. and if you outlive me, you'll find i have not forgot you.' xxv. festus shows his love festus derriman had remained in the royal watering-place all that day, his horse being sick at stables; but, wishing to coax or bully from his uncle a remount for the coming summer, he set off on foot for oxwell early in the evening. when he drew near to the village, or rather to the hall, which was a mile from the village, he overtook a slim, quick-eyed woman, sauntering along at a leisurely pace. she was fashionably dressed in a green spencer, with 'mameluke' sleeves, and wore a velvet spanish hat and feather. 'good afternoon t'ye, ma'am,' said festus, throwing a sword-and-pistol air into his greeting. 'you are out for a walk?' 'i _am_ out for a walk, captain,' said the lady, who had criticized him from the crevice of her eye, without seeming to do much more than continue her demure look forward, and gave the title as a sop to his apparent character. 'from the town?--i'd swear it, ma'am; 'pon my honour i would!' 'yes, i am from the town, sir,' said she. 'ah, you are a visitor! i know every one of the regular inhabitants; we soldiers are in and out there continually. festus derriman, yeomanry cavalry, you know. the fact is, the watering-place is under our charge; the folks will be quite dependent upon us for their deliverance in the coming struggle. we hold our lives in our hands, and theirs, i may say, in our pockets. what made you come here, ma'am, at such a critical time?' 'i don't see that it is such a critical time?' 'but it is, though; and so you'd say if you was as much mixed up with the military affairs of the nation as some of us.' the lady smiled. 'the king is coming this year, anyhow,' said she. 'never!' said festus firmly. 'ah, you are one of the attendants at court perhaps, come on ahead to get the king's chambers ready, in case boney should not land?' 'no,' she said; 'i am connected with the theatre, though not just at the present moment. i have been out of luck for the last year or two; but i have fetched up again. i join the company when they arrive for the season.' festus surveyed her with interest. 'faith! and is it so? well, ma'am, what part do you play?' 'i am mostly the leading lady--the heroine,' she said, drawing herself up with dignity. 'i'll come and have a look at ye if all's well, and the landing is put off--hang me if i don't!--hullo, hullo, what do i see?' his eyes were stretched towards a distant field, which anne garland was at that moment hastily crossing, on her way from the hall to overcombe. 'i must be off. good-day to ye, dear creature!' he exclaimed, hurrying forward. the lady said, 'o, you droll monster!' as she smiled and watched him stride ahead. festus bounded on over the hedge, across the intervening patch of green, and into the field which anne was still crossing. in a moment or two she looked back, and seeing the well-known herculean figure of the yeoman behind her felt rather alarmed, though she determined to show no difference in her outward carriage. but to maintain her natural gait was beyond her powers. she spasmodically quickened her pace; fruitlessly, however, for he gained upon her, and when within a few strides of her exclaimed, 'well, my darling!' anne started off at a run. festus was already out of breath, and soon found that he was not likely to overtake her. on she went, without turning her head, till an unusual noise behind compelled her to look round. his face was in the act of falling back; he swerved on one side, and dropped like a log upon a convenient hedgerow-bank which bordered the path. there he lay quite still. anne was somewhat alarmed; and after standing at gaze for two or three minutes, drew nearer to him, a step and a half at a time, wondering and doubting, as a meek ewe draws near to some strolling vagabond who flings himself on the grass near the flock. 'he is in a swoon!' she murmured. her heart beat quickly, and she looked around. nobody was in sight; she advanced a step nearer still and observed him again. apparently his face was turning to a livid hue, and his breathing had become obstructed. ''tis not a swoon; 'tis apoplexy!' she said, in deep distress. 'i ought to untie his neck.' but she was afraid to do this, and only drew a little closer still. miss garland was now within three feet of him, whereupon the senseless man, who could hold his breath no longer, sprang to his feet and darted at her, saying, 'ha! ha! a scheme for a kiss!' she felt his arm slipping round her neck; but, twirling about with amazing dexterity, she wriggled from his embrace and ran away along the field. the force with which she had extricated herself was sufficient to throw festus upon the grass, and by the time that he got upon his legs again she was many yards off. uttering a word which was not exactly a blessing, he immediately gave chase; and thus they ran till anne entered a meadow divided down the middle by a brook about six feet wide. a narrow plank was thrown loosely across at the point where the path traversed this stream, and when anne reached it she at once scampered over. at the other side she turned her head to gather the probabilities of the situation, which were that festus derriman would overtake her even now. by a sudden forethought she stooped, seized the end of the plank, and endeavoured to drag it away from the opposite bank. but the weight was too great for her to do more than slightly move it, and with a desperate sigh she ran on again, having lost many valuable seconds. but her attempt, though ineffectual in dragging it down, had been enough to unsettle the little bridge; and when derriman reached the middle, which he did half a minute later, the plank turned over on its edge, tilting him bodily into the river. the water was not remarkably deep, but as the yeoman fell flat on his stomach he was completely immersed; and it was some time before he could drag himself out. when he arose, dripping on the bank, and looked around, anne had vanished from the mead. then festus's eyes glowed like carbuncles, and he gave voice to fearful imprecations, shaking his fist in the soft summer air towards anne, in a way that was terrible for any maiden to behold. wading back through the stream, he walked along its bank with a heavy tread, the water running from his coat-tails, wrists, and the tips of his ears, in silvery dribbles, that sparkled pleasantly in the sun. thus he hastened away, and went round by a by-path to the hall. meanwhile the author of his troubles was rapidly drawing nearer to the mill, and soon, to her inexpressible delight, she saw bob coming to meet her. she had heard the flounce, and, feeling more secure from her pursuer, had dropped her pace to a quick walk. no sooner did she reach bob than, overcome by the excitement of the moment, she flung herself into his arms. bob instantly enclosed her in an embrace so very thorough that there was no possible danger of her falling, whatever degree of exhaustion might have given rise to her somewhat unexpected action; and in this attitude they silently remained, till it was borne in upon anne that the present was the first time in her life that she had ever been in such a position. her face then burnt like a sunset, and she did not know how to look up at him. feeling at length quite safe, she suddenly resolved not to give way to her first impulse to tell him the whole of what had happened, lest there should be a dreadful quarrel and fight between bob and the yeoman, and great difficulties caused in the loveday family on her account, the miller having important wheat transactions with the derrimans. 'you seem frightened, dearest anne,' said bob tenderly. 'yes,' she replied. 'i saw a man i did not like the look of, and he was inclined to follow me. but, worse than that, i am troubled about the french. o bob! i am afraid you will be killed, and my mother, and john, and your father, and all of us hunted down!' 'now i have told you, dear little heart, that it cannot be. we shall drive 'em into the sea after a battle or two, even if they land, which i don't believe they will. we've got ninety sail of the line, and though it is rather unfortunate that we should have declared war against spain at this ticklish time, there's enough for all.' and bob went into elaborate statistics of the navy, army, militia, and volunteers, to prolong the time of holding her. when he had done speaking he drew rather a heavy sigh. 'what's the matter, bob?' 'i haven't been yet to offer myself as a sea-fencible, and i ought to have done it long ago.' 'you are only one. surely they can do without you?' bob shook his head. she arose from her restful position, her eye catching his with a shamefaced expression of having given way at last. loveday drew from his pocket a paper, and said, as they slowly walked on, 'here's something to make us brave and patriotic. i bought it in budmouth. isn't it a stirring picture?' it was a hieroglyphic profile of napoleon. the hat represented a maimed french eagle; the face was ingeniously made up of human carcases, knotted and writhing together in such directions as to form a physiognomy; a band, or stock, shaped to resemble the english channel, encircled his throat, and seemed to choke him; his epaulette was a hand tearing a cobweb that represented the treaty of peace with england; and his ear was a woman crouching over a dying child. { } 'it is dreadful!' said anne. 'i don't like to see it.' she had recovered from her emotion, and walked along beside him with a grave, subdued face. bob did not like to assume the privileges of an accepted lover and draw her hand through his arm; for, conscious that she naturally belonged to a politer grade than his own, he feared lest her exhibition of tenderness were an impulse which cooler moments might regret. a perfect paul-and-virginia life had not absolutely set in for him as yet, and it was not to be hastened by force. when they had passed over the bridge into the mill-front they saw the miller standing at the door with a face of concern. 'since you have been gone,' he said, 'a government man has been here, and to all the houses, taking down the numbers of the women and children, and their ages and the number of horses and waggons that can be mustered, in case they have to retreat inland, out of the way of the invading army.' the little family gathered themselves together, all feeling the crisis more seriously than they liked to express. mrs. loveday thought how ridiculous a thing social ambition was in such a conjuncture as this, and vowed that she would leave anne to love where she would. anne, too, forgot the little peculiarities of speech and manner in bob and his father, which sometimes jarred for a moment upon her more refined sense, and was thankful for their love and protection in this looming trouble. on going upstairs she remembered the paper which farmer derriman had given her, and searched in her bosom for it. she could not find it there. 'i must have left it on the table,' she said to herself. it did not matter; she remembered every word. she took a pen and wrote a duplicate, which she put safely away. but anne was wrong. she had, after all, placed the paper where she supposed, and there it ought to have been. but in escaping from festus, when he feigned apoplexy, it had fallen out upon the grass. five minutes after that event, when pursuer and pursued were two or three fields ahead, the gaily-dressed woman whom the yeoman had overtaken, peeped cautiously through the stile into the corner of the field which had been the scene of the scramble; and seeing the paper she climbed over, secured it, loosened the wafer without tearing the sheet, and read the memorandum within. unable to make anything of its meaning, the saunterer put it in her pocket, and, dismissing the matter from her mind, went on by the by- path which led to the back of the mill. here, behind the hedge, she stood and surveyed the old building for some time, after which she meditatively turned, and retraced her steps towards the royal watering- place. xxvi. the alarm the night which followed was historic and memorable. mrs. loveday was awakened by the boom of a distant gun: she told the miller, and they listened awhile. the sound was not repeated, but such was the state of their feelings that mr. loveday went to bob's room and asked if he had heard it. bob was wide awake, looking out of the window; he had heard the ominous sound, and was inclined to investigate the matter. while the father and son were dressing they fancied that a glare seemed to be rising in the sky in the direction of the beacon hill. not wishing to alarm anne and her mother, the miller assured them that bob and himself were merely going out of doors to inquire into the cause of the report, after which they plunged into the gloom together. a few steps' progress opened up more of the sky, which, as they had thought, was indeed irradiated by a lurid light; but whether it came from the beacon or from a more distant point they were unable to clearly tell. they pushed on rapidly towards higher ground. their excitement was merely of a piece with that of all men at this critical juncture. everywhere expectation was at fever heat. for the last year or two only five-and-twenty miles of shallow water had divided quiet english homesteads from an enemy's army of a hundred and fifty thousand men. we had taken the matter lightly enough, eating and drinking as in the days of noe, and singing satires without end. we punned on buonaparte and his gunboats, chalked his effigy on stage-coaches, and published the same in prints. still, between these bursts of hilarity, it was sometimes recollected that england was the only european country which had not succumbed to the mighty little man who was less than human in feeling, and more than human in will; that our spirit for resistance was greater than our strength; and that the channel was often calm. boats built of wood which was greenly growing in its native forest three days before it was bent as wales to their sides, were ridiculous enough; but they might be, after all, sufficient for a single trip between two visible shores. the english watched buonaparte in these preparations, and buonaparte watched the english. at the distance of boulogne details were lost, but we were impressed on fine days by the novel sight of a huge army moving and twinkling like a school of mackerel under the rays of the sun. the regular way of passing an afternoon in the coast towns was to stroll up to the signal posts and chat with the lieutenant on duty there about the latest inimical object seen at sea. about once a week there appeared in the newspapers either a paragraph concerning some adventurous english gentleman who had sailed out in a pleasure-boat till he lay near enough to boulogne to see buonaparte standing on the heights among his marshals; or else some lines about a mysterious stranger with a foreign accent, who, after collecting a vast deal of information on our resources, had hired a boat at a southern port, and vanished with it towards france before his intention could be divined. in forecasting his grand venture, buonaparte postulated the help of providence to a remarkable degree. just at the hour when his troops were on board the flat-bottomed boats and ready to sail, there was to be a great fog, that should spread a vast obscurity over the length and breadth of the channel, and keep the english blind to events on the other side. the fog was to last twenty-four hours, after which it might clear away. a dead calm was to prevail simultaneously with the fog, with the twofold object of affording the boats easy transit and dooming our ships to lie motionless. thirdly, there was to be a spring tide, which should combine its manoeuvres with those of the fog and calm. among the many thousands of minor englishmen whose lives were affected by these tremendous designs may be numbered our old acquaintance corporal tullidge, who sported the crushed arm, and poor old simon burden, the dazed veteran who had fought at minden. instead of sitting snugly in the settle of the old ship, in the village adjoining overcombe, they were obliged to keep watch on the hill. they made themselves as comfortable as was possible in the circumstances, dwelling in a hut of clods and turf, with a brick chimney for cooking. here they observed the nightly progress of the moon and stars, grew familiar with the heaving of moles, the dancing of rabbits on the hillocks, the distant hoot of owls, the bark of foxes from woods further inland; but saw not a sign of the enemy. as, night after night, they walked round the two ricks which it was their duty to fire at a signal--one being of furze for a quick flame, the other of turf, for a long, slow radiance--they thought and talked of old times, and drank patriotically from a large wood flagon that was filled every day. bob and his father soon became aware that the light was from the beacon. by the time that they reached the top it was one mass of towering flame, from which the sparks fell on the green herbage like a fiery dew; the forms of the two old men being seen passing and repassing in the midst of it. the lovedays, who came up on the smoky side, regarded the scene for a moment, and then emerged into the light. 'who goes there?' said corporal tullidge, shouldering a pike with his sound arm. 'o, 'tis neighbour loveday!' 'did you get your signal to fire it from the east?' said the miller hastily. 'no; from abbotsea beach.' 'but you are not to go by a coast signal!' 'chok' it all, wasn't the lord-lieutenant's direction, whenever you see rainbarrow's beacon burn to the nor'east'ard, or haggardon to the nor'west'ard, or the actual presence of the enemy on the shore?' 'but is he here?' 'no doubt o't! the beach light is only just gone down, and simon heard the guns even better than i.' 'hark, hark! i hear 'em!' said bob. they listened with parted lips, the night wind blowing through simon burden's few teeth as through the ruins of stonehenge. from far down on the lower levels came the noise of wheels and the tramp of horses upon the turnpike road. 'well, there must be something in it,' said miller loveday gravely. 'bob, we'll go home and make the women-folk safe, and then i'll don my soldier's clothes and be off. god knows where our company will assemble!' they hastened down the hill, and on getting into the road waited and listened again. travellers began to come up and pass them in vehicles of all descriptions. it was difficult to attract their attention in the dim light, but by standing on the top of a wall which fenced the road bob was at last seen. 'what's the matter?' he cried to a butcher who was flying past in his cart, his wife sitting behind him without a bonnet. 'the french have landed!' said the man, without drawing rein. 'where?' shouted bob. 'in west bay; and all budmouth is in uproar!' replied the voice, now faint in the distance. bob and his father hastened on till they reached their own house. as they had expected, anne and her mother, in common with most of the people, were both dressed, and stood at the door bonneted and shawled, listening to the traffic on the neighbouring highway, mrs. loveday having secured what money and small valuables they possessed in a huge pocket which extended all round her waist, and added considerably to her weight and diameter. ''tis true enough,' said the miller: 'he's come! you and anne and the maid must be off to cousin jim's at king's-bere, and when you get there you must do as they do. i must assemble with the company.' 'and i?' said bob. 'thou'st better run to the church, and take a pike before they be all gone.' the horse was put into the gig, and mrs. loveday, anne, and the servant- maid were hastily packed into the vehicle, the latter taking the reins; david's duties as a fighting-man forbidding all thought of his domestic offices now. then the silver tankard, teapot, pair of candlesticks like ionic columns, and other articles too large to be pocketed were thrown into a basket and put up behind. then came the leave-taking, which was as sad as it was hurried. bob kissed anne, and there was no affectation in her receiving that mark of affection as she said through her tears, 'god bless you!' at last they moved off in the dim light of dawn, neither of the three women knowing which road they were to take, but trusting to chance to find it. as soon as they were out of sight bob went off for a pike, and his father, first new-flinting his firelock, proceeded to don his uniform, pipe-claying his breeches with such cursory haste as to bespatter his black gaiters with the same ornamental compound. finding when he was ready that no bugle had as yet sounded, he went with david to the cart- house, dragged out the waggon, and put therein some of the most useful and easily-handled goods, in case there might be an opportunity for conveying them away. by the time this was done and the waggon pushed back and locked in, bob had returned with his weapon, somewhat mortified at being doomed to this low form of defence. the miller gave his son a parting grasp of the hand, and arranged to meet him at king's-bere at the first opportunity if the news were true; if happily false, here at their own house. 'bother it all!' he exclaimed, looking at his stock of flints. 'what?' said bob. 'i've got no ammunition: not a blessed round!' 'then what's the use of going?' asked his son. the miller paused. 'o, i'll go,' he said. 'perhaps somebody will lend me a little if i get into a hot corner?' 'lend ye a little! father, you was always so simple!' said bob reproachfully. 'well--i can bagnet a few, anyhow,' said the miller. the bugle had been blown ere this, and loveday the father disappeared towards the place of assembly, his empty cartridge-box behind him. bob seized a brace of loaded pistols which he had brought home from the ship, and, armed with these and a pike, he locked the door and sallied out again towards the turnpike road. by this time the yeomanry of the district were also on the move, and among them festus derriman, who was sleeping at his uncle's, and had been awakened by cripplestraw. about the time when bob and his father were descending from the beacon the stalwart yeoman was standing in the stable- yard adjusting his straps, while cripplestraw saddled the horse. festus clanked up and down, looked gloomily at the beacon, heard the retreating carts and carriages, and called cripplestraw to him, who came from the stable leading the horse at the same moment that uncle benjy peeped unobserved from a mullioned window above their heads, the distant light of the beacon fire touching up his features to the complexion of an old brass clock-face. 'i think that before i start, cripplestraw,' said festus, whose lurid visage was undergoing a bleaching process curious to look upon, 'you shall go on to budmouth, and make a bold inquiry whether the cowardly enemy is on shore as yet, or only looming in the bay.' 'i'd go in a moment, sir,' said the other, 'if i hadn't my bad leg again. i should have joined my company afore this; but they said at last drill that i was too old. so i shall wait up in the hay-loft for tidings as soon as i have packed you off, poor gentleman!' 'do such alarms as these, cripplestraw, ever happen without foundation? buonaparte is a wretch, a miserable wretch, and this may be only a false alarm to disappoint such as me?' 'o no, sir; o no!' 'but sometimes there are false alarms?' 'well, sir, yes. there was a pretended sally o' gunboats last year.' 'and was there nothing else pretended--something more like this, for instance?' cripplestraw shook his head. 'i notice yer modesty, mr. festus, in making light of things. but there never was, sir. you may depend upon it he's come. thank god, my duty as a local don't require me to go to the front, but only the valiant men like my master. ah, if boney could only see 'ee now, sir, he'd know too well there is nothing to be got from such a determined skilful officer but blows and musket-balls!' 'yes, yes. cripplestraw, if i ride off to budmouth and meet 'em, all my training will be lost. no skill is required as a forlorn hope.' 'true; that's a point, sir. you would outshine 'em all, and be picked off at the very beginning as a too-dangerous brave man.' 'but if i stay here and urge on the faint-hearted ones, or get up into the turret-stair by that gateway, and pop at the invaders through the loophole, i shouldn't be so completely wasted, should i?' 'you would not, mr. derriman. but, as you was going to say next, the fire in yer veins won't let ye do that. you are valiant; very good: you don't want to husband yer valiance at home. the arg'ment is plain.' 'if my birth had been more obscure,' murmured the yeoman, 'and i had only been in the militia, for instance, or among the humble pikemen, so much wouldn't have been expected of me--of my fiery nature. cripplestraw, is there a drop of brandy to be got at in the house? i don't feel very well.' 'dear nephew,' said the old gentleman from above, whom neither of the others had as yet noticed, 'i haven't any spirits opened--so unfortunate! but there's a beautiful barrel of crab-apple cider in draught; and there's some cold tea from last night.' 'what, is he listening?' said festus, staring up. 'now i warrant how glad he is to see me forced to go--called out of bed without breakfast, and he quite safe, and sure to escape because he's an old man!--cripplestraw, i like being in the yeomanry cavalry; but i wish i hadn't been in the ranks; i wish i had been only the surgeon, to stay in the rear while the bodies are brought back to him--i mean, i should have thrown my heart at such a time as this more into the labour of restoring wounded men and joining their shattered limbs together--u-u-ugh!--more than i can into causing the wounds--i am too humane, cripplestraw, for the ranks!' 'yes, yes,' said his companion, depressing his spirits to a kindred level. 'and yet, such is fate, that, instead of joining men's limbs together, you'll have to get your own joined--poor young sojer!--all through having such a warlike soul.' 'yes,' murmured festus, and paused. 'you can't think how strange i feel here, cripplestraw,' he continued, laying his hand upon the centre buttons of his waistcoat. 'how i do wish i was only the surgeon!' he slowly mounted, and uncle benjy, in the meantime, sang to himself as he looked on, '_twen-ty-three and half from n.w._ _six-teen and three- quar-ters from n.e._' 'what's that old mummy singing?' said festus savagely. 'only a hymn for preservation from our enemies, dear nephew,' meekly replied the farmer, who had heard the remark. '_twen-ty-three and half from n.w_.' festus allowed his horse to move on a few paces, and then turned again, as if struck by a happy invention. 'cripplestraw,' he began, with an artificial laugh, 'i am obliged to confess, after all--i must see her! 'tisn't nature that makes me draw back--'tis love. i must go and look for her.' 'a woman, sir?' 'i didn't want to confess it; but 'tis a woman. strange that i should be drawn so entirely against my natural wish to rush at 'em!' cripplestraw, seeing which way the wind blew, found it advisable to blow in harmony. 'ah, now at last i see, sir! spite that few men live that be worthy to command ye; spite that you could rush on, marshal the troops to victory, as i may say; but then--what of it? there's the unhappy fate of being smit with the eyes of a woman, and you are unmanned! maister derriman, who is himself, when he's got a woman round his neck like a millstone?' 'it is something like that.' 'i feel the case. be you valiant?--i know, of course, the words being a matter of form--be you valiant, i ask? yes, of course. then don't you waste it in the open field. hoard it up, i say, sir, for a higher class of war--the defence of yer adorable lady. think what you owe her at this terrible time! now, maister derriman, once more i ask ye to cast off that first haughty wish to rush to budmouth, and to go where your mis'ess is defenceless and alone.' 'i will, cripplestraw, now you put it like that!' 'thank ye, thank ye heartily, maister derriman. go now and hide with her.' 'but can i? now, hang flattery!--can a man hide without a stain? of course i would not hide in any mean sense; no, not i!' 'if you be in love, 'tis plain you may, since it is not your own life, but another's, that you are concerned for, and you only save your own because it can't be helped.' ''tis true, cripplestraw, in a sense. but will it be understood that way? will they see it as a brave hiding?' 'now, sir, if you had not been in love i own to ye that hiding would look queer, but being to save the tears, groans, fits, swowndings, and perhaps death of a comely young woman, yer principle is good; you honourably retreat because you be too gallant to advance. this sounds strange, ye may say, sir; but it is plain enough to less fiery minds.' festus did for a moment try to uncover his teeth in a natural smile, but it died away. 'cripplestraw, you flatter me; or do you mean it? well, there's truth in it. i am more gallant in going to her than in marching to the shore. but we cannot be too careful about our good names, we soldiers. i must not be seen. i'm off.' cripplestraw opened the hurdle which closed the arch under the portico gateway, and festus passed under, uncle benjamin singing, _twen-ty-three and a half from n.w._ with a sort of sublime ecstasy, feeling, as festus had observed, that his money was safe, and that the french would not personally molest an old man in such a ragged, mildewed coat as that he wore, which he had taken the precaution to borrow from a scarecrow in one of his fields for the purpose. festus rode on full of his intention to seek out anne, and under cover of protecting her retreat accompany her to king's-bere, where he knew the lovedays had relatives. in the lane he met granny seamore, who, having packed up all her possessions in a small basket, was placidly retreating to the mountains till all should be over. 'well, granny, have ye seen the french?' asked festus. 'no,' she said, looking up at him through her brazen spectacles. 'if i had i shouldn't ha' seed thee!' 'faugh!' replied the yeoman, and rode on. just as he reached the old road, which he had intended merely to cross and avoid, his countenance fell. some troops of regulars, who appeared to be dragoons, were rattling along the road. festus hastened towards an opposite gate, so as to get within the field before they should see him; but, as ill-luck would have it, as soon as he got inside, a party of six or seven of his own yeomanry troop were straggling across the same field and making for the spot where he was. the dragoons passed without seeing him; but when he turned out into the road again it was impossible to retreat towards overcombe village because of the yeomen. so he rode straight on, and heard them coming at his heels. there was no other gate, and the highway soon became as straight as a bowstring. unable thus to turn without meeting them, and caught like an eel in a water-pipe, festus drew nearer and nearer to the fateful shore. but he did not relinquish hope. just ahead there were cross-roads, and he might have a chance of slipping down one of them without being seen. on reaching the spot he found that he was not alone. a horseman had come up the right-hand lane and drawn rein. it was an officer of the german legion, and seeing festus he held up his hand. festus rode up to him and saluted. 'it ist false report!' said the officer. festus was a man again. he felt that nothing was too much for him. the officer, after some explanation of the cause of alarm, said that he was going across to the road which led by the moor, to stop the troops and volunteers converging from that direction, upon which festus offered to give information along the casterbridge road. the german crossed over, and was soon out of sight in the lane, while festus turned back upon the way by which he had come. the party of yeomanry cavalry was rapidly drawing near, and he soon recognized among them the excited voices of stubb of duddle hole, noakes of muckleford, and other comrades of his orgies at the hall. it was a magnificent opportunity, and festus drew his sword. when they were within speaking distance he reined round his charger's head to budmouth and shouted, 'on, comrades, on! i am waiting for you. you have been a long time getting up with me, seeing the glorious nature of our deeds to-day!' 'well said, derriman, well said!' replied the foremost of the riders. 'have you heard anything new?' 'only that he's here with his tens of thousands, and that we are to ride to meet him sword in hand as soon as we have assembled in the town ahead here.' 'o lord!' said noakes, with a slight falling of the lower jaw. 'the man who quails now is unworthy of the name of yeoman,' said festus, still keeping ahead of the other troopers and holding up his sword to the sun. 'o noakes, fie, fie! you begin to look pale, man.' 'faith, perhaps you'd look pale,' said noakes, with an envious glance upon festus's daring manner, 'if you had a wife and family depending upon ye!' 'i'll take three frog-eating frenchmen single-handed!' rejoined derriman, still flourishing his sword. 'they have as good swords as you; as you will soon find,' said another of the yeomen. 'if they were three times armed,' said festus--'ay, thrice three times--i would attempt 'em three to one. how do you feel now, my old friend stubb?' (turning to another of the warriors.) 'o, friend stubb! no bouncing health to our lady-loves in oxwell hall this summer as last. eh, brownjohn?' 'i am afraid not,' said brownjohn gloomily. 'no rattling dinners at stacie's hotel, and the king below with his staff. no wrenching off door-knockers and sending 'em to the bakehouse in a pie that nobody calls for. weeks of cut-and-thrust work rather!' 'i suppose so.' 'fight how we may we shan't get rid of the cursed tyrant before autumn, and many thousand brave men will lie low before it's done,' remarked a young yeoman with a calm face, who meant to do his duty without much talking. 'no grinning matches at mai-dun castle this summer,' festus resumed; 'no thread-the-needle at greenhill fair, and going into shows and driving the showman crazy with cock-a-doodle-doo!' 'i suppose not.' 'does it make you seem just a trifle uncomfortable, noakes? keep up your spirits, old comrade. come, forward! we are only ambling on like so many donkey-women. we have to get into budmouth, join the rest of the troop, and then march along the coast west'ard, as i imagine. at this rate we shan't be well into the thick of battle before twelve o'clock. spur on, comrades. no dancing on the green, lockham, this year in the moonlight! you was tender upon that girl; gad, what will become o' her in the struggle?' 'come, come, derriman,' expostulated lockham--'this is all very well, but i don't care for 't. i am as ready to fight as any man, but--' 'perhaps when you get into battle, derriman, and see what it's like, your courage will cool down a little,' added noakes on the same side, but with secret admiration of festus's reckless bravery. 'i shall be bayoneted first,' said festus. 'now let's rally, and on!' since festus was determined to spur on wildly, the rest of the yeomen did not like to seem behindhand, and they rapidly approached the town. had they been calm enough to reflect, they might have observed that for the last half-hour no carts or carriages had met them on the way, as they had done further back. it was not till the troopers reached the turnpike that they learnt what festus had known a quarter of an hour before. at the intelligence derriman sheathed his sword with a sigh; and the party soon fell in with comrades who had arrived there before them, whereupon the source and details of the alarm were boisterously discussed. 'what, didn't you know of the mistake till now?' asked one of these of the new-comers. 'why, when i was dropping over the hill by the cross- roads i looked back and saw that man talking to the messenger, and he must have told him the truth.' the speaker pointed to festus. they turned their indignant eyes full upon him. that he had sported with their deepest feelings, while knowing the rumour to be baseless, was soon apparent to all. 'beat him black and blue with the flat of our blades!' shouted two or three, turning their horses' heads to drop back upon derriman, in which move they were followed by most of the party. but festus, foreseeing danger from the unexpected revelation, had already judiciously placed a few intervening yards between himself and his fellow- yeomen, and now, clapping spurs to his horse, rattled like thunder and lightning up the road homeward. his ready flight added hotness to their pursuit, and as he rode and looked fearfully over his shoulder he could see them following with enraged faces and drawn swords, a position which they kept up for a distance of more than a mile. then he had the satisfaction of seeing them drop off one by one, and soon he and his panting charger remained alone on the highway. xxvii. danger to anne he stopped and reflected how to turn this rebuff to advantage. baulked in his project of entering the watering-place and enjoying congratulations upon his patriotic bearing during the advance, he sulkily considered that he might be able to make some use of his enforced retirement by riding to overcombe and glorifying himself in the eyes of miss garland before the truth should have reached that hamlet. having thus decided he spurred on in a better mood. by this time the volunteers were on the march, and as derriman ascended the road he met the overcombe company, in which trudged miller loveday shoulder to shoulder with the other substantial householders of the place and its neighbourhood, duly equipped with pouches, cross-belts, firelocks, flint-boxes, pickers, worms, magazines, priming-horns, heel- ball, and pomatum. there was nothing to be gained by further suppression of the truth, and briefly informing them that the danger was not so immediate as had been supposed, festus galloped on. at the end of another mile he met a large number of pikemen, including bob loveday, whom the yeoman resolved to sound upon the whereabouts of anne. the circumstances were such as to lead bob to speak more frankly than he might have done on reflection, and he told festus the direction in which the women had been sent. then festus informed the group that the report of invasion was false, upon which they all turned to go homeward with greatly relieved spirits. bob walked beside derriman's horse for some distance. loveday had instantly made up his mind to go and look for the women, and ease their anxiety by letting them know the good news as soon as possible. but he said nothing of this to festus during their return together; nor did festus tell bob that he also had resolved to seek them out, and by anticipating every one else in that enterprise, make of it a glorious opportunity for bringing miss garland to her senses about him. he still resented the ducking that he had received at her hands, and was not disposed to let that insult pass without obtaining some sort of sweet revenge. as soon as they had parted festus cantered on over the hill, meeting on his way the longpuddle volunteers, sixty rank and file, under captain cunningham; the casterbridge company, ninety strong (known as the 'consideration company' in those days), under captain strickland; and others--all with anxious faces and covered with dust. just passing the word to them and leaving them at halt, he proceeded rapidly onward in the direction of king's-bere. nobody appeared on the road for some time, till after a ride of several miles he met a stray corporal of volunteers, who told festus in answer to his inquiry that he had certainly passed no gig full of women of the kind described. believing that he had missed them by following the highway, derriman turned back into a lane along which they might have chosen to journey for privacy's sake, notwithstanding the badness and uncertainty of its track. arriving again within five miles of overcombe, he at length heard tidings of the wandering vehicle and its precious burden, which, like the ark when sent away from the country of the philistines, had apparently been left to the instincts of the beast that drew it. a labouring man, just at daybreak, had seen the helpless party going slowly up a distant drive, which he pointed out. no sooner had festus parted from this informant than he beheld bob approaching, mounted on the miller's second and heavier horse. bob looked rather surprised, and festus felt his coming glory in danger. 'they went down that lane,' he said, signifying precisely the opposite direction to the true one. 'i, too, have been on the look-out for missing friends.' as festus was riding back there was no reason to doubt his information, and loveday rode on as misdirected. immediately that he was out of sight festus reversed his course, and followed the track which anne and her companions were last seen to pursue. this road had been ascended by the gig in question nearly two hours before the present moment. molly, the servant, held the reins, mrs. loveday sat beside her, and anne behind. their progress was but slow, owing partly to molly's want of skill, and partly to the steepness of the road, which here passed over downs of some extent, and was rarely or never mended. it was an anxious morning for them all, and the beauties of the early summer day fell upon unheeding eyes. they were too anxious even for conjecture, and each sat thinking her own thoughts, occasionally glancing westward, or stopping the horse to listen to sounds from more frequented roads along which other parties were retreating. once, while they listened and gazed thus, they saw a glittering in the distance, and heard the tramp of many horses. it was a large body of cavalry going in the direction of the king's watering-place, the same regiment of dragoons, in fact, which festus had seen further on in its course. the women in the gig had no doubt that these men were marching at once to engage the enemy. by way of varying the monotony of the journey molly occasionally burst into tears of horror, believing buonaparte to be in countenance and habits precisely what the caricatures represented him. mrs. loveday endeavoured to establish cheerfulness by assuring her companions of the natural civility of the french nation, with whom unprotected women were safe from injury, unless through the casual excesses of soldiery beyond control. this was poor consolation to anne, whose mind was more occupied with bob than with herself, and a miserable fear that she would never again see him alive so paled her face and saddened her gaze forward, that at last her mother said, 'who was you thinking of, my dear?' anne's only reply was a look at her mother, with which a tear mingled. molly whipped the horse, by which she quickened his pace for five yards, when he again fell into the perverse slowness that showed how fully conscious he was of being the master-mind and chief personage of the four. whenever there was a pool of water by the road he turned aside to drink a mouthful, and remained there his own time in spite of molly's tug at the reins and futile fly-flapping on his rump. they were now in the chalk district, where there were no hedges, and a rough attempt at mending the way had been made by throwing down huge lumps of that glaring material in heaps, without troubling to spread it or break them abroad. the jolting here was most distressing, and seemed about to snap the springs. 'how that wheel do wamble,' said molly at last. she had scarcely spoken when the wheel came off, and all three were precipitated over it into the road. fortunately the horse stood still, and they began to gather themselves up. the only one of the three who had suffered in the least from the fall was anne, and she was only conscious of a severe shaking which had half stupefied her for the time. the wheel lay flat in the road, so that there was no possibility of driving further in their present plight. they looked around for help. the only friendly object near was a lonely cottage, from its situation evidently the home of a shepherd. the horse was unharnessed and tied to the back of the gig, and the three women went across to the house. on getting close they found that the shutters of all the lower windows were closed, but on trying the door it opened to the hand. nobody was within; the house appeared to have been abandoned in some confusion, and the probability was that the shepherd had fled on hearing the alarm. anne now said that she felt the effects of her fall too severely to be able to go any further just then, and it was agreed that she should be left there while mrs. loveday and molly went on for assistance, the elder lady deeming molly too young and vacant- minded to be trusted to go alone. molly suggested taking the horse, as the distance might be great, each of them sitting alternately on his back while the other led him by the head. this they did, anne watching them vanish down the white and lumpy road. she then looked round the room, as well as she could do so by the light from the open door. it was plain, from the shutters being closed, that the shepherd had left his house before daylight, the candle and extinguisher on the table pointing to the same conclusion. here she remained, her eyes occasionally sweeping the bare, sunny expanse of down, that was only relieved from absolute emptiness by the overturned gig hard by. the sheep seemed to have gone away, and scarcely a bird flew across to disturb the solitude. anne had risen early that morning, and leaning back in the withy chair, which she had placed by the door, she soon fell into an uneasy doze, from which she was awakened by the distant tramp of a horse. feeling much recovered from the effects of the overturn, she eagerly rose and looked out. the horse was not miller loveday's, but a powerful bay, bearing a man in full yeomanry uniform. anne did not wait to recognize further; instantly re-entering the house, she shut the door and bolted it. in the dark she sat and listened: not a sound. at the end of ten minutes, thinking that the rider if he were not festus had carelessly passed by, or that if he were festus he had not seen her, she crept softly upstairs and peeped out of the window. excepting the spot of shade, formed by the gig as before, the down was quite bare. she then opened the casement and stretched out her neck. 'ha, young madam! there you are! i knew 'ee! now you are caught!' came like a clap of thunder from a point three or four feet beneath her, and turning down her frightened eyes she beheld festus derriman lurking close to the wall. his attention had first been attracted by her shutting the door of the cottage; then by the overturned gig; and after making sure, by examining the vehicle, that he was not mistaken in her identity, he had dismounted, led his horse round to the side, and crept up to entrap her. anne started back into the room, and remained still as a stone. festus went on--'come, you must trust to me. the french have landed. i have been trying to meet with you every hour since that confounded trick you played me. you threw me into the water. faith, it was well for you i didn't catch ye then! i should have taken a revenge in a better way than i shall now. i mean to have that kiss of ye. come, miss nancy; do you hear?--'tis no use for you to lurk inside there. you'll have to turn out as soon as boney comes over the hill--are you going to open the door, i say, and speak to me in a civil way? what do you think i am, then, that you should barricade yourself against me as if i was a wild beast or frenchman? open the door, or put out your head, or do something; or 'pon my soul i'll break in the door!' it occurred to anne at this point of the tirade that the best policy would be to temporize till somebody should return, and she put out her head and face, now grown somewhat pale. 'that's better,' said festus. 'now i can talk to you. come, my dear, will you open the door? why should you be afraid of me?' 'i am not altogether afraid of you; i am safe from the french here,' said anne, not very truthfully, and anxiously casting her eyes over the vacant down. 'then let me tell you that the alarm is false, and that no landing has been attempted. now will you open the door and let me in? i am tired. i have been on horseback ever since daylight, and have come to bring you the good tidings.' anne looked as if she doubted the news. 'come,' said festus. 'no, i cannot let you in,' she murmured, after a pause. 'dash my wig, then,' he cried, his face flaming up, 'i'll find a way to get in! now, don't you provoke me! you don't know what i am capable of. i ask you again, will you open the door?' 'why do you wish it?' she said faintly. 'i have told you i want to sit down; and i want to ask you a question.' 'you can ask me from where you are.' 'i cannot ask you properly. it is about a serious matter: whether you will accept my heart and hand. i am not going to throw myself at your feet; but i ask you to do your duty as a woman, namely, give your solemn word to take my name as soon as the war is over and i have time to attend to you. i scorn to ask it of a haughty hussy who will only speak to me through a window; however, i put it to you for the last time, madam.' there was no sign on the down of anybody's return, and she said, 'i'll think of it, sir.' 'you have thought of it long enough; i want to know. will you or won't you?' 'very well; i think i will.' and then she felt that she might be buying personal safety too dearly by shuffling thus, since he would spread the report that she had accepted him, and cause endless complication. 'no,' she said, 'i have changed my mind. i cannot accept you, mr. derriman.' 'that's how you play with me!' he exclaimed, stamping. '"yes," one moment; "no," the next. come, you don't know what you refuse. that old hall is my uncle's own, and he has nobody else to leave it to. as soon as he's dead i shall throw up farming and start as a squire. and now,' he added with a bitter sneer, 'what a fool you are to hang back from such a chance!' 'thank you, i don't value it,' said anne. 'because you hate him who would make it yours?' 'it may not lie in your power to do that.' 'what--has the old fellow been telling you his affairs?' 'no.' 'then why do you mistrust me? now, after this will you open the door, and show that you treat me as a friend if you won't accept me as a lover? i only want to sit and talk to you.' anne thought she would trust him; it seemed almost impossible that he could harm her. she retired from the window and went downstairs. when her hand was upon the bolt of the door, her mind misgave her. instead of withdrawing it she remained in silence where she was, and he began again-- 'are you going to unfasten it?' anne did not speak. 'now, dash my wig, i will get at you! you've tried me beyond endurance. one kiss would have been enough that day in the mead; now i'll have forty, whether you will or no!' he flung himself against the door; but as it was bolted, and had in addition a great wooden bar across it, this produced no effect. he was silent for a moment, and then the terrified girl heard him attempt the shuttered window. she ran upstairs and again scanned the down. the yellow gig still lay in the blazing sunshine, and the horse of festus stood by the corner of the garden--nothing else was to be seen. at this moment there came to her ear the noise of a sword drawn from its scabbard; and, peeping over the window-sill, she saw her tormentor drive his sword between the joints of the shutters, in an attempt to rip them open. the sword snapped off in his hand. with an imprecation he pulled out the piece, and returned the two halves to the scabbard. 'ha! ha!' he cried, catching sight of the top of her head. ''tis only a joke, you know; but i'll get in all the same. all for a kiss! but never mind, we'll do it yet!' he spoke in an affectedly light tone, as if ashamed of his previous resentful temper; but she could see by the livid back of his neck that he was brimful of suppressed passion. 'only a jest, you know,' he went on. 'how are we going to do it now? why, in this way. i go and get a ladder, and enter at the upper window where my love is. and there's the ladder lying under that corn-rick in the first enclosed field. back in two minutes, dear!' he ran off, and was lost to her view. xxviii. anne does wonders anne fearfully surveyed her position. the upper windows of the cottage were of flimsiest lead-work, and to keep him out would be hopeless. she felt that not a moment was to be lost in getting away. running downstairs she opened the door, and then it occurred to her terrified understanding that there would be no chance of escaping him by flight afoot across such an extensive down, since he might mount his horse and easily ride after her. the animal still remained tethered at the corner of the garden; if she could release him and frighten him away before festus returned, there would not be quite such odds against her. she accordingly unhooked the horse by reaching over the bank, and then, pulling off her muslin neckerchief, flapped it in his eyes to startle him. but the gallant steed did not move or flinch; she tried again, and he seemed rather pleased than otherwise. at this moment she heard a cry from the cottage, and turning, beheld her adversary approaching round the corner of the building. 'i thought i should tole out the mouse by that trick!' cried festus exultingly. instead of going for a ladder, he had simply hidden himself at the back to tempt her down. poor anne was now desperate. the bank on which she stood was level with the horse's back, and the creature seemed quiet as a lamb. with a determination of which she was capable in emergencies, she seized the rein, flung herself upon the sheepskin, and held on by the mane. the amazed charger lifted his head, sniffed, wrenched his ears hither and thither, and started off at a frightful speed across the down. 'o, my heart and limbs!' said festus under his breath, as, thoroughly alarmed, he gazed after her. 'she on champion! she'll break her neck, and i shall be tried for manslaughter, and disgrace will be brought upon the name of derriman!' champion continued to go at a stretch-gallop, but he did nothing worse. had he plunged or reared, derriman's fears might have been verified, and anne have come with deadly force to the ground. but the course was good, and in the horse's speed lay a comparative security. she was scarcely shaken in her precarious half-horizontal position, though she was awed to see the grass, loose stones, and other objects pass her eyes like strokes whenever she opened them, which was only just for a second at intervals of half a minute; and to feel how wildly the stirrups swung, and that what struck her knee was the bucket of the carbine, and that it was a pistol-holster which hurt her arm. they quickly cleared the down, and anne became conscious that the course of the horse was homeward. as soon as the ground began to rise towards the outer belt of upland which lay between her and the coast, champion, now panting and reeking with moisture, lessened his speed in sheer weariness, and proceeded at a rapid jolting trot. anne felt that she could not hold on half so well; the gallop had been child's play compared with this. they were in a lane, ascending to a ridge, and she made up her mind for a fall. over the ridge rose an animated spot, higher and higher; it turned out to be the upper part of a man, and the man to be a soldier. such was anne's attitude that she only got an occasional glimpse of him; and, though she feared that he might be a frenchman, she feared the horse more than the enemy, as she had feared festus more than the horse. anne had energy enough left to cry, 'stop him; stop him!' as the soldier drew near. he, astonished at the sight of a military horse with a bundle of drapery across his back, had already placed himself in the middle of the lane, and he now held out his arms till his figure assumed the form of a latin cross planted in the roadway. champion drew near, swerved, and stood still almost suddenly, a check sufficient to send anne slipping down his flank to the ground. the timely friend stepped forward and helped her to her feet, when she saw that he was john loveday. 'are you hurt?' he said hastily, having turned quite pale at seeing her fall. 'o no; not a bit,' said anne, gathering herself up with forced briskness, to make light of the misadventure. 'but how did you get in such a place?' 'there, he's gone!' she exclaimed, instead of replying, as champion swept round john loveday and cantered off triumphantly in the direction of oxwell, a performance which she followed with her eyes. 'but how did you come upon his back, and whose horse is it?' 'i will tell you.' 'well?' 'i--cannot tell you.' john looked steadily at her, saying nothing. 'how did you come here?' she asked. 'is it true that the french have not landed at all?' 'quite true; the alarm was groundless. i'll tell you all about it. you look very tired. you had better sit down a few minutes. let us sit on this bank.' he helped her to the slope indicated, and continued, still as if his thoughts were more occupied with the mystery of her recent situation than with what he was saying: 'we arrived at budmouth barracks this morning, and are to lie there all the summer. i could not write to tell father we were coming. it was not because of any rumour of the french, for we knew nothing of that till we met the people on the road, and the colonel said in a moment the news was false. buonaparte is not even at boulogne just now. i was anxious to know how you had borne the fright, so i hastened to overcombe at once, as soon as i could get out of barracks.' anne, who had not been at all responsive to his discourse, now swayed heavily against him, and looking quickly down he found that she had silently fainted. to support her in his arms was of course the impulse of a moment. there was no water to be had, and he could think of nothing else but to hold her tenderly till she came round again. certainly he desired nothing more. again he asked himself, what did it all mean? he waited, looking down upon her tired eyelids, and at the row of lashes lying upon each cheek, whose natural roundness showed itself in singular perfection now that the customary pink had given place to a pale luminousness caught from the surrounding atmosphere. the dumpy ringlets about her forehead and behind her poll, which were usually as tight as springs, had been partially uncoiled by the wildness of her ride, and hung in split locks over her forehead and neck. john, who, during the long months of his absence, had lived only to meet her again, was in a state of ecstatic reverence, and bending down he gently kissed her. anne was just becoming conscious. 'o, mr. derriman, never, never!' she murmured, sweeping her face with her hand. 'i thought he was at the bottom of it,' said john. anne opened her eyes, and started back from him. 'what is it?' she said wildly. 'you are ill, my dear miss garland,' replied john in trembling anxiety, and taking her hand. 'i am not ill, i am wearied out!' she said. 'can't we walk on? how far are we from overcombe?' 'about a mile. but tell me, somebody has been hurting you--frightening you. i know who it was; it was derriman, and that was his horse. now do you tell me all.' anne reflected. 'then if i tell you,' she said, 'will you discuss with me what i had better do, and not for the present let my mother and your father know? i don't want to alarm them, and i must not let my affairs interrupt the business connexion between the mill and the hall that has gone on for so many years.' the trumpet-major promised, and anne told the adventure. his brow reddened as she went on, and when she had done she said, 'now you are angry. don't do anything dreadful, will you? remember that this festus will most likely succeed his uncle at oxwell, in spite of present appearances, and if bob succeeds at the mill there should be no enmity between them.' 'that's true. i won't tell bob. leave him to me. where is derriman now? on his way home, i suppose. when i have seen you into the house i will deal with him--quite quietly, so that he shall say nothing about it.' 'yes, appeal to him, do! perhaps he will be better then.' they walked on together, loveday seeming to experience much quiet bliss. 'i came to look for you,' he said, 'because of that dear, sweet letter you wrote.' 'yes, i did write you a letter,' she admitted, with misgiving, now beginning to see her mistake. 'it was because i was sorry i had blamed you.' 'i am almost glad you did blame me,' said john cheerfully, 'since, if you had not, the letter would not have come. i have read it fifty times a day.' this put anne into an unhappy mood, and they proceeded without much further talk till the mill chimneys were visible below them. john then said that he would leave her to go in by herself. 'ah, you are going back to get into some danger on my account?' 'i can't get into much danger with such a fellow as he, can i?' said john, smiling. 'well, no,' she answered, with a sudden carelessness of tone. it was indispensable that he should be undeceived, and to begin the process by taking an affectedly light view of his personal risks was perhaps as good a way to do it as any. where friendliness was construed as love, an assumed indifference was the necessary expression for friendliness. so she let him go; and, bidding him hasten back as soon as he could, went down the hill, while john's feet retraced the upland. the trumpet-major spent the whole afternoon and evening in that long and difficult search for festus derriman. crossing the down at the end of the second hour he met molly and mrs. loveday. the gig had been repaired, they had learnt the groundlessness of the alarm, and they would have been proceeding happily enough but for their anxiety about anne. john told them shortly that she had got a lift home, and proceeded on his way. the worthy object of his search had in the meantime been plodding homeward on foot, sulky at the loss of his charger, encumbered with his sword, belts, high boots, and uniform, and in his own discomfiture careless whether anne garland's life had been endangered or not. at length derriman reached a place where the road ran between high banks, one of which he mounted and paced along as a change from the hard trackway. ahead of him he saw an old man sitting down, with eyes fixed on the dust of the road, as if resting and meditating at one and the same time. being pretty sure that he recognized his uncle in that venerable figure, festus came forward stealthily, till he was immediately above the old man's back. the latter was clothed in faded nankeen breeches, speckled stockings, a drab hat, and a coat which had once been light blue, but from exposure as a scarecrow had assumed the complexion and fibre of a dried pudding-cloth. the farmer was, in fact, returning to the hall, which he had left in the morning some time later than his nephew, to seek an asylum in a hollow tree about two miles off. the tree was so situated as to command a view of the building, and uncle benjy had managed to clamber up inside this natural fortification high enough to watch his residence through a hole in the bark, till, gathering from the words of occasional passers-by that the alarm was at least premature, he had ventured into daylight again. he was now engaged in abstractedly tracing a diagram in the dust with his walking-stick, and muttered words to himself aloud. presently he arose and went on his way without turning round. festus was curious enough to descend and look at the marks. they represented an oblong, with two semi- diagonals, and a little square in the middle. upon the diagonals were the figures and , and on each side of the parallelogram stood a letter signifying the point of the compass. 'what crazy thing is running in his head now?' said festus to himself, with supercilious pity, recollecting that the farmer had been singing those very numbers earlier in the morning. being able to make nothing of it, he lengthened his strides, and treading on tiptoe overtook his relative, saluting him by scratching his back like a hen. the startled old farmer danced round like a top, and gasping, said, as he perceived his nephew, 'what, festy! not thrown from your horse and killed, then, after all!' 'no, nunc. what made ye think that?' 'champion passed me about an hour ago, when i was in hiding--poor timid soul of me, for i had nothing to lose by the french coming--and he looked awful with the stirrups dangling and the saddle empty. 'tis a gloomy sight, festy, to see a horse cantering without a rider, and i thought you had been--feared you had been thrown off and killed as dead as a nit.' 'bless your dear old heart for being so anxious! and what pretty picture were you drawing just now with your walking-stick!' 'o, that! that is only a way i have of amusing myself. it showed how the french might have advanced to the attack, you know. such trifles fill the head of a weak old man like me.' 'or the place where something is hid away--money, for instance?' 'festy,' said the farmer reproachfully, 'you always know i use the old glove in the bedroom cupboard for any guinea or two i possess.' 'of course i do,' said festus ironically. they had now reached a lonely inn about a mile and a half from the hall, and, the farmer not responding to his nephew's kind invitation to come in and treat him, festus entered alone. he was dusty, draggled, and weary, and he remained at the tavern long. the trumpet-major, in the meantime, having searched the roads in vain, heard in the course of the evening of the yeoman's arrival at this place, and that he would probably be found there still. he accordingly approached the door, reaching it just as the dusk of evening changed to darkness. there was no light in the passage, but john pushed on at hazard, inquired for derriman, and was told that he would be found in the back parlour alone. when loveday first entered the apartment he was unable to see anything, but following the guidance of a vigorous snoring, he came to the settle, upon which festus lay asleep, his position being faintly signified by the shine of his buttons and other parts of his uniform. john laid his hand upon the reclining figure and shook him, and by degrees derriman stopped his snore and sat up. 'who are you?' he said, in the accents of a man who has been drinking hard. 'is it you, dear anne? let me kiss you; yes, i will.' 'shut your mouth, you pitiful blockhead; i'll teach you genteeler manners than to persecute a young woman in that way!' and taking festus by the ear, he gave it a good pull. festus broke out with an oath, and struck a vague blow in the air with his fist; whereupon the trumpet-major dealt him a box on the right ear, and a similar one on the left to artistically balance the first. festus jumped up and used his fists wildly, but without any definite result. 'want to fight, do ye, eh?' said john. 'nonsense! you can't fight, you great baby, and never could. you are only fit to be smacked!' and he dealt festus a specimen of the same on the cheek with the palm of his hand. 'no, sir, no! o, you are loveday, the young man she's going to be married to, i suppose? dash me, i didn't want to hurt her, sir.' 'yes, my name is loveday; and you'll know where to find me, since we can't finish this to-night. pistols or swords, whichever you like, my boy. take that, and that, so that you may not forget to call upon me!' and again he smacked the yeoman's ears and cheeks. 'do you know what it is for, eh?' 'no, mr. loveday, sir--yes, i mean, i do.' 'what is it for, then? i shall keep smacking until you tell me. gad! if you weren't drunk, i'd half kill you here to-night.' 'it is because i served her badly. damned if i care! i'll do it again, and be hanged to 'ee! where's my horse champion? tell me that,' and he hit at the trumpet-major. john parried this attack, and taking him firmly by the collar, pushed him down into the seat, saying, 'here i hold 'ee till you beg pardon for your doings to-day. do you want any more of it, do you?' and he shook the yeoman to a sort of jelly. 'i do beg pardon--no, i don't. i say this, that you shall not take such liberties with old squire derriman's nephew, you dirty miller's son, you flour-worm, you smut in the corn! i'll call you out to-morrow morning, and have my revenge.' 'of course you will; that's what i came for.' and pushing him back into the corner of the settle, loveday went out of the house, feeling considerable satisfaction at having got himself into the beginning of as nice a quarrel about anne garland as the most jealous lover could desire. but of one feature in this curious adventure he had not the least notion--that festus derriman, misled by the darkness, the fumes of his potations, and the constant sight of anne and bob together, never once supposed his assailant to be any other man than bob, believing the trumpet-major miles away. there was a moon during the early part of john's walk home, but when he had arrived within a mile of overcombe the sky clouded over, and rain suddenly began to fall with some violence. near him was a wooden granary on tall stone staddles, and perceiving that the rain was only a thunderstorm which would soon pass away, he ascended the steps and entered the doorway, where he stood watching the half-obscured moon through the streaming rain. presently, to his surprise, he beheld a female figure running forward with great rapidity, not towards the granary for shelter, but towards open ground. what could she be running for in that direction? the answer came in the appearance of his brother bob from that quarter, seated on the back of his father's heavy horse. as soon as the woman met him, bob dismounted and caught her in his arms. they stood locked together, the rain beating into their unconscious forms, and the horse looking on. the trumpet-major fell back inside the granary, and threw himself on a heap of empty sacks which lay in the corner: he had recognized the woman to be anne. here he reclined in a stupor till he was aroused by the sound of voices under him, the voices of anne and his brother, who, having at last discovered that they were getting wet, had taken shelter under the granary floor. 'i have been home,' said she. 'mother and molly have both got back long ago. we were all anxious about you, and i came out to look for you. o, bob, i am so glad to see you again!' john might have heard every word of the conversation, which was continued in the same strain for a long time; but he stopped his ears, and would not. still they remained, and still was he determined that they should not see him. with the conserved hope of more than half a year dashed away in a moment, he could yet feel that the cruelty of a protest would be even greater than its inutility. it was absolutely by his own contrivance that the situation had been shaped. bob, left to himself, would long ere this have been the husband of another woman. the rain decreased, and the lovers went on. john looked after them as they strolled, aqua-tinted by the weak moon and mist. bob had thrust one of his arms through the rein of the horse, and the other was round anne's waist. when they were lost behind the declivity the trumpet-major came out, and walked homeward even more slowly than they. as he went on, his face put off its complexion of despair for one of serene resolve. for the first time in his dealings with friends he entered upon a course of counterfeiting, set his features to conceal his thought, and instructed his tongue to do likewise. he threw fictitiousness into his very gait, even now, when there was nobody to see him, and struck at stems of wild parsley with his regimental switch as he had used to do when soldiering was new to him, and life in general a charming experience. thus cloaking his sickly thought, he descended to the mill as the others had done before him, occasionally looking down upon the wet road to notice how close anne's little tracks were to bob's all the way along, and how precisely a curve in his course was followed by a curve in hers. but after this he erected his head and walked so smartly up to the front door that his spurs rang through the court. they had all reached home, but before any of them could speak he cried gaily, 'ah, bob, i have been thinking of you! by god, how are you, my boy? no french cut-throats after all, you see. here we are, well and happy together again.' 'a good providence has watched over us,' said mrs. loveday cheerfully. 'yes, in all times and places we are in god's hand.' 'so we be, so we be!' said the miller, who still shone in all the fierceness of uniform. 'well, now we'll ha'e a drop o' drink.' 'there's none,' said david, coming forward with a drawn face. 'what!' said the miller. 'afore i went to church for a pike to defend my native country from boney, i pulled out the spigots of all the barrels, maister; for, thinks i--damn him!--since we can't drink it ourselves, he shan't have it, nor none of his men.' 'but you shouldn't have done it till you was sure he'd come!' said the miller, aghast. 'chok' it all, i was sure!' said david. 'i'd sooner see churches fall than good drink wasted; but how was i to know better?' 'well, well; what with one thing and another this day will cost me a pretty penny!' said loveday, bustling off to the cellar, which he found to be several inches deep in stagnant liquor. 'john, how can i welcome 'ee?' he continued hopelessly, on his return to the room. 'only go and see what he's done!' 'i've ladled up a drap wi' a spoon, trumpet-major,' said david. ''tisn't bad drinking, though it do taste a little of the floor, that's true.' john said that he did not require anything at all; and then they all sat down to supper, and were very temperately gay with a drop of mild elder- wine which mrs. loveday found in the bottom of a jar. the trumpet-major, adhering to the part he meant to play, gave humorous accounts of his adventures since he had last sat there. he told them that the season was to be a very lively one--that the royal family was coming, as usual, and many other interesting things; so that when he left them to return to barracks few would have supposed the british army to contain a lighter- hearted man. anne was the only one who doubted the reality of this behaviour. when she had gone up to her bedroom she stood for some time looking at the wick of the candle as if it were a painful object, the expression of her face being shaped by the conviction that john's afternoon words when he helped her out of the way of champion were not in accordance with his words to-night, and that the dimly-realized kiss during her faintness was no imaginary one. but in the blissful circumstances of having bob at hand again she took optimist views, and persuaded herself that john would soon begin to see her in the light of a sister. xxix. a dissembler to cursory view, john loveday seemed to accomplish this with amazing ease. whenever he came from barracks to overcombe, which was once or twice a week, he related news of all sorts to her and bob with infinite zest, and made the time as happy a one as had ever been known at the mill, save for himself alone. he said nothing of festus, except so far as to inform anne that he had expected to see him and been disappointed. on the evening after the king's arrival at his seaside residence john appeared again, staying to supper and describing the royal entry, the many tasteful illuminations and transparencies which had been exhibited, the quantities of tallow candles burnt for that purpose, and the swarms of aristocracy who had followed the king thither. when supper was over bob went outside the house to shut the shutters, which had, as was often the case, been left open some time after lights were kindled within. john still sat at the table when his brother approached the window, though the others had risen and retired. bob was struck by seeing through the pane how john's face had changed. throughout the supper-time he had been talking to anne in the gay tone habitual with him now, which gave greater strangeness to the gloom of his present appearance. he remained in thought for a moment, took a letter from his breast-pocket, opened it, and, with a tender smile at his weakness, kissed the writing before restoring it to its place. the letter was one that anne had written to him at exonbury. bob stood perplexed; and then a suspicion crossed his mind that john, from brotherly goodness, might be feigning a satisfaction with recent events which he did not feel. bob now made a noise with the shutters, at which the trumpet-major rose and went out, bob at once following him. 'jack,' said the sailor ingenuously, 'i'm terribly sorry that i've done wrong.' 'how?' asked his brother. 'in courting our little anne. well, you see, john, she was in the same house with me, and somehow or other i made myself her beau. but i have been thinking that perhaps you had the first claim on her, and if so, jack, i'll make way for 'ee. i--i don't care for her much, you know--not so very much, and can give her up very well. it is nothing serious between us at all. yes, john, you try to get her; i can look elsewhere.' bob never knew how much he loved anne till he found himself making this speech of renunciation. 'o bob, you are mistaken!' said the trumpet-major, who was not deceived. 'when i first saw her i admired her, and i admire her now, and like her. i like her so well that i shall be glad to see you marry her.' 'but,' replied bob, with hesitation, 'i thought i saw you looking very sad, as if you were in love; i saw you take out a letter, in short. that's what it was disturbed me and made me come to you.' 'o, i see your mistake!' said john, laughing forcedly. at this minute mrs. loveday and the miller, who were taking a twilight walk in the garden, strolled round near to where the brothers stood. she talked volubly on events in budmouth, as most people did at this time. 'and they tell me that the theatre has been painted up afresh,' she was saying, 'and that the actors have come for the season, with the most lovely actresses that ever were seen.' when they had passed by john continued, 'i _am_ in love, bob; but--not with anne.' 'ah! who is it then?' said the mate hopefully. 'one of the actresses at the theatre,' john replied, with a concoctive look at the vanishing forms of mr. and mrs. loveday. 'she is a very lovely woman, you know. but we won't say anything more about it--it dashes a man so.' 'o, one of the actresses!' said bob, with open mouth. 'but don't you say anything about it!' continued the trumpet-major heartily. 'i don't want it known.' 'no, no--i won't, of course. may i not know her name?' 'no, not now, bob. i cannot tell 'ee,' john answered, and with truth, for loveday did not know the name of any actress in the world. when his brother had gone, captain bob hastened off in a state of great animation to anne, whom he found on the top of a neighbouring hillock which the daylight had scarcely as yet deserted. 'you have been a long time coming, sir,' said she, in sprightly tones of reproach. 'yes, dearest; and you'll be glad to hear why. i've found out the whole mystery--yes--why he's queer, and everything.' anne looked startled. 'he's up to the gunnel in love! we must try to help him on in it, or i fear he'll go melancholy-mad like.' 'we help him?' she asked faintly. 'he's lost his heart to one of the play-actresses at budmouth, and i think she slights him.' 'o, i am so glad!' she exclaimed. 'glad that his venture don't prosper?' 'o no; glad he's so sensible. how long is it since that alarm of the french?' 'six weeks, honey. why do you ask?' 'men can forget in six weeks, can't they, bob?' the impression that john had really kissed her still remained. 'well, some men might,' observed bob judicially. '_i_ couldn't. perhaps john might. i couldn't forget _you_ in twenty times as long. do you know, anne, i half thought it was you john cared about; and it was a weight off my heart when he said he didn't.' 'did he say he didn't?' 'yes. he assured me himself that the only person in the hold of his heart was this lovely play-actress, and nobody else.' 'how i should like to see her!' 'yes. so should i.' 'i would rather it had been one of our own neighbours' girls, whose birth and breeding we know of; but still, if that is his taste, i hope it will end well for him. how very quick he has been! i certainly wish we could see her.' 'i don't know so much as her name. he is very close, and wouldn't tell a thing about her.' 'couldn't we get him to go to the theatre with us? and then we could watch him, and easily find out the right one. then we would learn if she is a good young woman; and if she is, could we not ask her here, and so make it smoother for him? he has been very gay lately; that means budding love: and sometimes between his gaieties he has had melancholy moments; that means there's difficulty.' bob thought her plan a good one, and resolved to put it in practice on the first available evening. anne was very curious as to whether john did really cherish a new passion, the story having quite surprised her. possibly it was true; six weeks had passed since john had shown a single symptom of the old attachment, and what could not that space of time effect in the heart of a soldier whose very profession it was to leave girls behind him? after this john loveday did not come to see them for nearly a month, a neglect which was set down by bob as an additional proof that his brother's affections were no longer exclusively centred in his old home. when at last he did arrive, and the theatre-going was mentioned to him, the flush of consciousness which anne expected to see upon his face was unaccountably absent. 'yes, bob; i should very well like to go to the theatre,' he replied heartily. 'who is going besides?' 'only anne,' bob told him, and then it seemed to occur to the trumpet- major that something had been expected of him. he rose and said privately to bob with some confusion, 'o yes, of course we'll go. as i am connected with one of the--in short i can get you in for nothing, you know. at least let me manage everything.' 'yes, yes. i wonder you didn't propose to take us before, jack, and let us have a good look at her.' 'i ought to have. you shall go on a king's night. you won't want me to point her out, bob; i have my reasons at present for asking it?' 'we'll be content with guessing,' said his brother. when the gallant john was gone, anne observed, 'bob, how he is changed! i watched him. he showed no feeling, even when you burst upon him suddenly with the subject nearest his heart.' 'it must be because his suit don't fay,' said captain bob. xxx. at the theatre royal in two or three days a message arrived asking them to attend at the theatre on the coming evening, with the added request that they would dress in their gayest clothes, to do justice to the places taken. accordingly, in the course of the afternoon they drove off, bob having clothed himself in a splendid suit, recently purchased as an attempt to bring himself nearer to anne's style when they appeared in public together. as finished off by this dashing and really fashionable attire, he was the perfection of a beau in the dog-days; pantaloons and boots of the newest make; yards and yards of muslin wound round his neck, forming a sort of asylum for the lower part of his face; two fancy waistcoats, and coat-buttons like circular shaving glasses. the absurd extreme of female fashion, which was to wear muslin dresses in january, was at this time equalled by that of the men, who wore clothes enough in august to melt them. nobody would have guessed from bob's presentation now that he had ever been aloft on a dark night in the atlantic, or knew the hundred ingenuities that could be performed with a rope's end and a marline-spike as well as his mother tongue. it was a day of days. anne wore her celebrated celestial blue pelisse, her leghorn hat, and her muslin dress with the waist under the arms; the latter being decorated with excellent honiton lace bought of the woman who travelled from that place to overcombe and its neighbourhood with a basketful of her own manufacture, and a cushion on which she worked by the wayside. john met the lovers at the inn outside the town, and after stabling the horse they entered the town together, the trumpet-major informing them that the watering-place had never been so full before, that the court, the prince of wales, and everybody of consequence was there, and that an attic could scarcely be got for money. the king had gone for a cruise in his yacht, and they would be in time to see him land. then drums and fifes were heard, and in a minute or two they saw sergeant stanner advancing along the street with a firm countenance, fiery poll, and rigid staring eyes, in front of his recruiting-party. the sergeant's sword was drawn, and at intervals of two or three inches along its shining blade were impaled fluttering one-pound notes, to express the lavish bounty that was offered. he gave a stern, suppressed nod of friendship to our people, and passed by. next they came up to a waggon, bowered over with leaves and flowers, so that the men inside could hardly be seen. 'come to see the king, hip-hip hurrah!' cried a voice within, and turning they saw through the leaves the nose and face of cripplestraw. the waggon contained all derriman's workpeople. 'is your master here?' said john. 'no, trumpet-major, sir. but young maister is coming to fetch us at nine o'clock, in case we should be too blind to drive home.' 'o! where is he now?' 'never mind,' said anne impatiently, at which the trumpet-major obediently moved on. by the time they reached the pier it was six o'clock; the royal yacht was returning; a fact announced by the ships in the harbour firing a salute. the king came ashore with his hat in his hand, and returned the salutations of the well-dressed crowd in his old indiscriminate fashion. while this cheering and waving of handkerchiefs was going on anne stood between the two brothers, who protectingly joined their hands behind her back, as if she were a delicate piece of statuary that a push might damage. soon the king had passed, and receiving the military salutes of the piquet, joined the queen and princesses at gloucester lodge, the homely house of red brick in which he unostentatiously resided. as there was yet some little time before the theatre would open, they strayed upon the velvet sands, and listened to the songs of the sailors, one of whom extemporized for the occasion:-- 'portland road the king aboard, the king aboard! portland road the king aboard, we weighed and sailed from portland road!' { } when they had looked on awhile at the combats at single-stick which were in progress hard by, and seen the sum of five guineas handed over to the modest gentleman who had broken most heads, they returned to gloucester lodge, whence the king and other members of his family now reappeared, and drove, at a slow trot, round to the theatre in carriages drawn by the hanoverian white horses that were so well known in the town at this date. when anne and bob entered the theatre they found that john had taken excellent places, and concluded that he had got them for nothing through the influence of the lady of his choice. as a matter of fact he had paid full prices for those two seats, like any other outsider, and even then had a difficulty in getting them, it being a king's night. when they were settled he himself retired to an obscure part of the pit, from which the stage was scarcely visible. 'we can see beautifully,' said bob, in an aristocratic voice, as he took a delicate pinch of snuff, and drew out the magnificent pocket-handkerchief brought home from the east for such occasions. 'but i am afraid poor john can't see at all.' 'but we can see him,' replied anne, 'and notice by his face which of them it is he is so charmed with. the light of that corner candle falls right upon his cheek.' by this time the king had appeared in his place, which was overhung by a canopy of crimson satin fringed with gold. about twenty places were occupied by the royal family and suite; and beyond them was a crowd of powdered and glittering personages of fashion, completely filling the centre of the little building; though the king so frequently patronized the local stage during these years that the crush was not inconvenient. the curtain rose and the play began. to-night it was one of colman's, who at this time enjoyed great popularity, and mr. bannister supported the leading character. anne, with her hand privately clasped in bob's, and looking as if she did not know it, partly watched the piece and partly the face of the impressionable john who had so soon transferred his affections elsewhere. she had not long to wait. when a certain one of the subordinate ladies of the comedy entered on the stage the trumpet- major in his corner not only looked conscious, but started and gazed with parted lips. 'this must be the one,' whispered anne quickly. 'see, he is agitated!' she turned to bob, but at the same moment his hand convulsively closed upon hers as he, too, strangely fixed his eyes upon the newly-entered lady. 'what is it?' anne looked from one to the other without regarding the stage at all. her answer came in the voice of the actress who now spoke for the first time. the accents were those of miss matilda johnson. one thought rushed into both their minds on the instant, and bob was the first to utter it. 'what--is she the woman of his choice after all?' 'if so, it is a dreadful thing!' murmured anne. but, as may be imagined, the unfortunate john was as much surprised by this rencounter as the other two. until this moment he had been in utter ignorance of the theatrical company and all that pertained to it. moreover, much as he knew of miss johnson, he was not aware that she had ever been trained in her youth as an actress, and that after lapsing into straits and difficulties for a couple of years she had been so fortunate as to again procure an engagement here. the trumpet-major, though not prominently seated, had been seen by matilda already, who had observed still more plainly her old betrothed and anne in the other part of the house. john was not concerned on his own account at being face to face with her, but at the extraordinary suspicion that this conjuncture must revive in the minds of his best beloved friends. after some moments of pained reflection he tapped his knee. 'gad, i won't explain; it shall go as it is!' he said. 'let them think her mine. better that than the truth, after all.' had personal prominence in the scene been at this moment proportioned to intentness of feeling, the whole audience, regal and otherwise, would have faded into an indistinct mist of background, leaving as the sole emergent and telling figures bob and anne at one point, the trumpet-major on the left hand, and matilda at the opposite corner of the stage. but fortunately the deadlock of awkward suspense into which all four had fallen was terminated by an accident. a messenger entered the king's box with despatches. there was an instant pause in the performance. the despatch-box being opened the king read for a few moments with great interest, the eyes of the whole house, including those of anne garland, being anxiously fixed upon his face; for terrible events fell as unexpectedly as thunderbolts at this critical time of our history. the king at length beckoned to lord ---, who was immediately behind him, the play was again stopped, and the contents of the despatch were publicly communicated to the audience. sir robert calder, cruising off finisterre, had come in sight of villeneuve, and made the signal for action, which, though checked by the weather, had resulted in the capture of two spanish line-of-battle ships, and the retreat of villeneuve into ferrol. the news was received with truly national feeling, if noise might be taken as an index of patriotism. 'rule britannia' was called for and sung by the whole house. but the importance of the event was far from being recognized at this time; and bob loveday, as he sat there and heard it, had very little conception how it would bear upon his destiny. this parenthetic excitement diverted for a few minutes the eyes of bob and anne from the trumpet-major; and when the play proceeded, and they looked back to his corner, he was gone. 'he's just slipped round to talk to her behind the scenes,' said bob knowingly. 'shall we go too, and tease him for a sly dog?' 'no, i would rather not.' 'shall we go home, then?' 'not unless her presence is too much for you?' 'o--not at all. we'll stay here. ah, there she is again.' they sat on, and listened to matilda's speeches which she delivered with such delightful coolness that they soon began to considerably interest one of the party. 'well, what a nerve the young woman has!' he said at last in tones of admiration, and gazing at miss johnson with all his might. 'after all, jack's taste is not so bad. she's really deuced clever.' 'bob, i'll go home if you wish to,' said anne quickly. 'o no--let us see how she fleets herself off that bit of a scrape she's playing at now. well, what a hand she is at it, to be sure!' anne said no more, but waited on, supremely uncomfortable, and almost tearful. she began to feel that she did not like life particularly well; it was too complicated: she saw nothing of the scene, and only longed to get away, and to get bob away with her. at last the curtain fell on the final act, and then began the farce of 'no song no supper.' matilda did not appear in this piece, and anne again inquired if they should go home. this time bob agreed, and taking her under his care with redoubled affection, to make up for the species of coma which had seized upon his heart for a time, he quietly accompanied her out of the house. when they emerged upon the esplanade, the august moon was shining across the sea from the direction of st. aldhelm's head. bob unconsciously loitered, and turned towards the pier. reaching the end of the promenade they surveyed the quivering waters in silence for some time, until a long dark line shot from behind the promontory of the nothe, and swept forward into the harbour. 'what boat is that?' said anne. 'it seems to be some frigate lying in the roads,' said bob carelessly, as he brought anne round with a gentle pressure of his arm and bent his steps towards the homeward end of the town. meanwhile, miss johnson, having finished her duties for that evening, rapidly changed her dress, and went out likewise. the prominent position which anne and captain bob had occupied side by side in the theatre, left her no alternative but to suppose that the situation was arranged by bob as a species of defiance to herself; and her heart, such as it was, became proportionately embittered against him. in spite of the rise in her fortunes, miss johnson still remembered--and always would remember--her humiliating departure from overcombe; and it had been to her even a more grievous thing that bob had acquiesced in his brother's ruling than that john had determined it. at the time of setting out she was sustained by a firm faith that bob would follow her, and nullify his brother's scheme; but though she waited bob never came. she passed along by the houses facing the sea, and scanned the shore, the footway, and the open road close to her, which, illuminated by the slanting moon to a great brightness, sparkled with minute facets of crystallized salts from the water sprinkled there during the day. the promenaders at the further edge appeared in dark profiles; and beyond them was the grey sea, parted into two masses by the tapering braid of moonlight across the waves. two forms crossed this line at a startling nearness to her; she marked them at once as anne and bob loveday. they were walking slowly, and in the earnestness of their discourse were oblivious of the presence of any human beings save themselves. matilda stood motionless till they had passed. 'how i love them!' she said, treading the initial step of her walk onwards with a vehemence that walking did not demand. 'so do i--especially one,' said a voice at her elbow; and a man wheeled round her, and looked in her face, which had been fully exposed to the moon. 'you--who are you?' she asked. 'don't you remember, ma'am? we walked some way together towards overcombe earlier in the summer.' matilda looked more closely, and perceived that the speaker was derriman, in plain clothes. he continued, 'you are one of the ladies of the theatre, i know. may i ask why you said in such a queer way that you loved that couple?' 'in a queer way?' 'well, as if you hated them.' 'i don't mind your knowing that i have good reason to hate them. you do too, it seems?' 'that man,' said festus savagely, 'came to me one night about that very woman; insulted me before i could put myself on my guard, and ran away before i could come up with him and avenge myself. the woman tricks me at every turn! i want to part 'em.' 'then why don't you? there's a splendid opportunity. do you see that soldier walking along? he's a marine; he looks into the gallery of the theatre every night: and he's in connexion with the press-gang that came ashore just now from the frigate lying in portland roads. they are often here for men.' 'yes. our boatmen dread 'em.' 'well, we have only to tell him that loveday is a seaman to be clear of him this very night.' 'done!' said festus. 'take my arm and come this way.' they walked across to the footway. 'fine night, sergeant.' 'it is, sir.' 'looking for hands, i suppose?' 'it is not to be known, sir. we don't begin till half past ten.' 'it is a pity you don't begin now. i could show 'ee excellent game.' 'what, that little nest of fellows at the "old rooms" in cove row? i have just heard of 'em.' 'no--come here.' festus, with miss johnson on his arm, led the sergeant quickly along the parade, and by the time they reached the narrows the lovers, who walked but slowly, were visible in front of them. 'there's your man,' he said. 'that buck in pantaloons and half-boots--a looking like a squire?' 'twelve months ago he was mate of the brig pewit; but his father has made money, and keeps him at home.' 'faith, now you tell of it, there's a hint of sea legs about him. what's the young beau's name?' 'don't tell!' whispered matilda, impulsively clutching festus's arm. but festus had already said, 'robert loveday, son of the miller at overcombe. you may find several likely fellows in that neighbourhood.' the marine said that he would bear it in mind, and they left him. 'i wish you had not told,' said matilda tearfully. 'she's the worst!' 'dash my eyes now; listen to that! why, you chicken-hearted old stager, you was as well agreed as i. come now; hasn't he used you badly?' matilda's acrimony returned. 'i was down on my luck, or he wouldn't have had the chance!' she said. 'well, then, let things be.' xxxi. midnight visitors miss garland and loveday walked leisurely to the inn and called for horse- and-gig. while the hostler was bringing it round, the landlord, who knew bob and his family well, spoke to him quietly in the passage. 'is this then because you want to throw dust in the eyes of the black diamond chaps?' (with an admiring glance at bob's costume). 'the black diamond?' said bob; and anne turned pale. 'she hove in sight just after dark, and at nine o'clock a boat having more than a dozen marines on board, with cloaks on, rowed into harbour.' bob reflected. 'then there'll be a press to-night; depend upon it,' he said. 'they won't know you, will they, bob?' said anne anxiously. 'they certainly won't know him for a seaman now,' remarked the landlord, laughing, and again surveying bob up and down. 'but if i was you two, i should drive home-along straight and quiet; and be very busy in the mill all to-morrow, mr. loveday.' they drove away; and when they had got onward out of the town, anne strained her eyes wistfully towards portland. its dark contour, lying like a whale on the sea, was just perceptible in the gloom as the background to half-a-dozen ships' lights nearer at hand. 'they can't make you go, now you are a gentleman tradesman, can they?' she asked. 'if they want me they can have me, dearest. i have often said i ought to volunteer.' 'and not care about me at all?' 'it is just that that keeps me at home. i won't leave you if i can help it.' 'it cannot make such a vast difference to the country whether one man goes or stays! but if you want to go you had better, and not mind us at all!' bob put a period to her speech by a mark of affection to which history affords many parallels in every age. she said no more about the black diamond; but whenever they ascended a hill she turned her head to look at the lights in portland roads, and the grey expanse of intervening sea. though captain bob had stated that he did not wish to volunteer, and would not leave her if he could help it, the remark required some qualification. that anne was charming and loving enough to chain him anywhere was true; but he had begun to find the mill-work terribly irksome at times. often during the last month, when standing among the rumbling cogs in his new miller's suit, which ill became him, he had yawned, thought wistfully of the old pea-jacket, and the waters of the deep blue sea. his dread of displeasing his father by showing anything of this change of sentiment was great; yet he might have braved it but for knowing that his marriage with anne, which he hoped might take place the next year, was dependent entirely upon his adherence to the mill business. even were his father indifferent, mrs. loveday would never intrust her only daughter to the hands of a husband who would be away from home five-sixths of his time. but though, apart from anne, he was not averse to seafaring in itself, to be smuggled thither by the machinery of a press-gang was intolerable; and the process of seizing, stunning, pinioning, and carrying off unwilling hands was one which bob as a man had always determined to hold out against to the utmost of his power. hence, as they went towards home, he frequently listened for sounds behind him, but hearing none he assured his sweetheart that they were safe for that night at least. the mill was still going when they arrived, though old mr. loveday was not to be seen; he had retired as soon as he heard the horse's hoofs in the lane, leaving bob to watch the grinding till three o'clock; when the elder would rise, and bob withdraw to bed--a frequent arrangement between them since bob had taken the place of grinder. having reached the privacy of her own room, anne threw open the window, for she had not the slightest intention of going to bed just yet. the tale of the black diamond had disturbed her by a slow, insidious process that was worse than sudden fright. her window looked into the court before the house, now wrapped in the shadow of the trees and the hill; and she leaned upon its sill listening intently. she could have heard any strange sound distinctly enough in one direction; but in the other all low noises were absorbed in the patter of the mill, and the rush of water down the race. however, what she heard came from the hitherto silent side, and was intelligible in a moment as being the footsteps of men. she tried to think they were some late stragglers from budmouth. alas! no; the tramp was too regular for that of villagers. she hastily turned, extinguished the candle, and listened again. as they were on the main road there was, after all, every probability that the party would pass the bridge which gave access to the mill court without turning in upon it, or even noticing that such an entrance existed. in this again she was disappointed: they crossed into the front without a pause. the pulsations of her heart became a turmoil now, for why should these men, if they were the press-gang, and strangers to the locality, have supposed that a sailor was to be found here, the younger of the two millers loveday being never seen now in any garb which could suggest that he was other than a miller pure, like his father? one of the men spoke. 'i am not sure that we are in the right place,' he said. 'this is a mill, anyhow,' said another. 'there's lots about here.' 'then come this way a moment with your light.' two of the group went towards the cart-house on the opposite side of the yard, and when they reached it a dark lantern was opened, the rays being directed upon the front of the miller's waggon. '"loveday and son, overcombe mill,"' continued the man, reading from the waggon. '"son," you see, is lately painted in. that's our man.' he moved to turn off the light, but before he had done so it flashed over the forms of the speakers, and revealed a sergeant, a naval officer, and a file of marines. anne waited to see no more. when bob stayed up to grind, as he was doing to-night, he often sat in his room instead of remaining all the time in the mill; and this room was an isolated chamber over the bakehouse, which could not be reached without going downstairs and ascending the step-ladder that served for his staircase. anne descended in the dark, clambered up the ladder, and saw that light strayed through the chink below the door. his window faced towards the garden, and hence the light could not as yet have been seen by the press-gang. 'bob, dear bob!' she said, through the keyhole. 'put out your light, and run out of the back-door!' 'why?' said bob, leisurely knocking the ashes from the pipe he had been smoking. 'the press-gang!' 'they have come? by god! who can have blown upon me? all right, dearest. i'm game.' anne, scarcely knowing what she did, descended the ladder and ran to the back-door, hastily unbolting it to save bob's time, and gently opening it in readiness for him. she had no sooner done this than she felt hands laid upon her shoulder from without, and a voice exclaiming, 'that's how we doos it--quite an obleeging young man!' though the hands held her rather roughly, anne did not mind for herself, and turning she cried desperately, in tones intended to reach bob's ears: 'they are at the back-door; try the front!' but inexperienced miss garland little knew the shrewd habits of the gentlemen she had to deal with, who, well used to this sort of pastime, had already posted themselves at every outlet from the premises. 'bring the lantern,' shouted the fellow who held her. 'why--'tis a girl! i half thought so--here is a way in,' he continued to his comrades, hastening to the foot of the ladder which led to bob's room. 'what d'ye want?' said bob, quietly opening the door, and showing himself still radiant in the full dress that he had worn with such effect at the theatre royal, which he had been about to change for his mill suit when anne gave the alarm. 'this gentleman can't be the right one,' observed a marine, rather impressed by bob's appearance. 'yes, yes; that's the man,' said the sergeant. 'now take it quietly, my young cock-o'-wax. you look as if you meant to, and 'tis wise of ye.' 'where are you going to take me?' said bob. 'only aboard the black diamond. if you choose to take the bounty and come voluntarily, you'll be allowed to go ashore whenever your ship's in port. if you don't, and we've got to pinion ye, you will not have your liberty at all. as you must come, willy-nilly, you'll do the first if you've any brains whatever.' bob's temper began to rise. 'don't you talk so large, about your pinioning, my man. when i've settled--' 'now or never, young blow-hard,' interrupted his informant. 'come, what jabber is this going on?' said the lieutenant, stepping forward. 'bring your man.' one of the marines set foot on the ladder, but at the same moment a shoe from bob's hand hit the lantern with well-aimed directness, knocking it clean out of the grasp of the man who held it. in spite of the darkness they began to scramble up the ladder. bob thereupon shut the door, which being but of slight construction, was as he knew only a momentary defence. but it gained him time enough to open the window, gather up his legs upon the sill, and spring across into the apple-tree growing without. he alighted without much hurt beyond a few scratches from the boughs, a shower of falling apples testifying to the force of his leap. 'here he is!' shouted several below who had seen bob's figure flying like a raven's across the sky. there was stillness for a moment in the tree. then the fugitive made haste to climb out upon a low-hanging branch towards the garden, at which the men beneath all rushed in that direction to catch him as he dropped, saying, 'you may as well come down, old boy. 'twas a spry jump, and we give ye credit for 't.' the latter movement of loveday had been a mere feint. partly hidden by the leaves he glided back to the other part of the tree, from whence it was easy to jump upon a thatch-covered out-house. this intention they did not appear to suspect, which gave him the opportunity of sliding down the slope and entering the back door of the mill. 'he's here, he's here!' the men exclaimed, running back from the tree. by this time they had obtained another light, and pursued him closely along the back quarters of the mill. bob had entered the lower room, seized hold of the chain by which the flour-sacks were hoisted from story to story by connexion with the mill-wheel, and pulled the rope that hung alongside for the purpose of throwing it into gear. the foremost pursuers arrived just in time to see captain bob's legs and shoe-buckles vanishing through the trap-door in the joists overhead, his person having been whirled up by the machinery like any bag of flour, and the trap falling to behind him. 'he's gone up by the hoist!' said the sergeant, running up the ladder in the corner to the next floor, and elevating the light just in time to see bob's suspended figure ascending in the same way through the same sort of trap into the second floor. the second trap also fell together behind him, and he was lost to view as before. it was more difficult to follow now; there was only a flimsy little ladder, and the men ascended cautiously. when they stepped out upon the loft it was empty. 'he must ha' let go here,' said one of the marines, who knew more about mills than the others. 'if he had held fast a moment longer, he would have been dashed against that beam.' they looked up. the hook by which bob had held on had ascended to the roof, and was winding round the cylinder. nothing was visible elsewhere but boarded divisions like the stalls of a stable, on each side of the stage they stood upon, these compartments being more or less heaped up with wheat and barley in the grain. 'perhaps he's buried himself in the corn.' the whole crew jumped into the corn-bins, and stirred about their yellow contents; but neither arm, leg, nor coat-tail was uncovered. they removed sacks, peeped among the rafters of the roof, but to no purpose. the lieutenant began to fume at the loss of time. 'what cursed fools to let the man go! why, look here, what's this?' he had opened the door by which sacks were taken in from waggons without, and dangling from the cat-head projecting above it was the rope used in lifting them. 'there's the way he went down,' the officer continued. 'the man's gone.' amidst mumblings and curses the gang descended the pair of ladders and came into the open air; but captain bob was nowhere to be seen. when they reached the front door of the house the miller was standing on the threshold, half dressed. 'your son is a clever fellow, miller,' said the lieutenant; 'but it would have been much better for him if he had come quiet.' 'that's a matter of opinion,' said loveday. 'i have no doubt that he's in the house.' 'he may be; and he may not.' 'do you know where he is?' 'i do not; and if i did i shouldn't tell.' 'naturally.' 'i heard steps beating up the road, sir,' said the sergeant. they turned from the door, and leaving four of the marines to keep watch round the house, the remainder of the party marched into the lane as far as where the other road branched off. while they were pausing to decide which course to take, one of the soldiers held up the light. a black object was discernible upon the ground before them, and they found it to be a hat--the hat of bob loveday. 'we are on the track,' cried the sergeant, deciding for this direction. they tore on rapidly, and the footsteps previously heard became audible again, increasing in clearness, which told that they gained upon the fugitive, who in another five minutes stopped and turned. the rays of the candle fell upon anne. 'what do you want?' she said, showing her frightened face. they made no reply, but wheeled round and left her. she sank down on the bank to rest, having done all she could. it was she who had taken down bob's hat from a nail, and dropped it at the turning with the view of misleading them till he should have got clear off. xxxii. deliverance but anne garland was too anxious to remain long away from the centre of operations. when she got back she found that the press-gang were standing in the court discussing their next move. 'waste no more time here,' the lieutenant said. 'two more villages to visit to-night, and the nearest three miles off. there's nobody else in this place, and we can't come back again.' when they were moving away, one of the private marines, who had kept his eye on anne, and noticed her distress, contrived to say in a whisper as he passed her, 'we are coming back again as soon as it begins to get light; that's only said to deceive 'ee. keep your young man out of the way.' they went as they had come; and the little household then met together, mrs. loveday having by this time dressed herself and come down. a long and anxious discussion followed. 'somebody must have told upon the chap,' loveday remarked. 'how should they have found him out else, now he's been home from sea this twelvemonth?' anne then mentioned what the friendly marine had told her; and fearing lest bob was in the house, and would be discovered there when daylight came, they searched and called for him everywhere. 'what clothes has he got on?' said the miller. 'his lovely new suit,' said his wife. 'i warrant it is quite spoiled!' 'he's got no hat,' said anne. 'well,' said loveday, 'you two go and lie down now and i'll bide up; and as soon as he comes in, which he'll do most likely in the course of the night, i'll let him know that they are coming again.' anne and mrs. loveday went to their bedrooms, and the miller entered the mill as if he were simply staying up to grind. but he continually left the flour-shoot to go outside and walk round; each time he could see no living being near the spot. anne meanwhile had lain down dressed upon her bed, the window still open, her ears intent upon the sound of footsteps and dreading the reappearance of daylight and the gang's return. three or four times during the night she descended to the mill to inquire of her stepfather if bob had shown himself; but the answer was always in the negative. at length the curtains of her bed began to reveal their pattern, the brass handles of the drawers gleamed forth, and day dawned. while the light was yet no more than a suffusion of pallor, she arose, put on her hat, and determined to explore the surrounding premises before the men arrived. emerging into the raw loneliness of the daybreak, she went upon the bridge and looked up and down the road. it was as she had left it, empty, and the solitude was rendered yet more insistent by the silence of the mill-wheel, which was now stopped, the miller having given up expecting bob and retired to bed about three o'clock. the footprints of the marines still remained in the dust on the bridge, all the heel-marks towards the house, showing that the party had not as yet returned. while she lingered she heard a slight noise in the other direction, and, turning, saw a woman approaching. the woman came up quickly, and, to her amazement, anne recognized matilda. her walk was convulsive, face pale, almost haggard, and the cold light of the morning invested it with all the ghostliness of death. she had plainly walked all the way from budmouth, for her shoes were covered with dust. 'has the press-gang been here?' she gasped. 'if not they are coming!' 'they have been.' 'and got him--i am too late!' 'no; they are coming back again. why did you--' 'i came to try to save him. can we save him? where is he?' anne looked the woman in the face, and it was impossible to doubt that she was in earnest. 'i don't know,' she answered. 'i am trying to find him before they come.' 'will you not let me help you?' cried the repentant matilda. without either objecting or assenting anne turned and led the way to the back part of the homestead. matilda, too, had suffered that night. from the moment of parting with festus derriman a sentiment of revulsion from the act to which she had been a party set in and increased, till at length it reached an intensity of remorse which she could not passively bear. she had risen before day and hastened thitherward to know the worst, and if possible hinder consequences that she had been the first to set in train. after going hither and thither in the adjoining field, anne entered the garden. the walks were bathed in grey dew, and as she passed observantly along them it appeared as if they had been brushed by some foot at a much earlier hour. at the end of the garden, bushes of broom, laurel, and yew formed a constantly encroaching shrubbery, that had come there almost by chance, and was never trimmed. behind these bushes was a garden-seat, and upon it lay bob sound asleep. the ends of his hair were clotted with damp, and there was a foggy film upon the mirror-like buttons of his coat, and upon the buckles of his shoes. his bunch of new gold seals was dimmed by the same insidious dampness; his shirt-frill and muslin neckcloth were limp as seaweed. it was plain that he had been there a long time. anne shook him, but he did not awake, his breathing being slow and stertorous. 'bob, wake; 'tis your own anne!' she said, with innocent earnestness; and then, fearfully turning her head, she saw that matilda was close behind her. 'you needn't mind me,' said matilda bitterly. 'i am on your side now. shake him again.' anne shook him again, but he slept on. then she noticed that his forehead bore the mark of a heavy wound. 'i fancy i hear something!' said her companion, starting forward and endeavouring to wake bob herself. 'he is stunned, or drugged!' she said; 'there is no rousing him.' anne raised her head and listened. from the direction of the eastern road came the sound of a steady tramp. 'they are coming back!' she said, clasping her hands. 'they will take him, ill as he is! he won't open his eyes--no, it is no use! o, what shall we do?' matilda did not reply, but running to the end of the seat on which bob lay, tried its weight in her arms. 'it is not too heavy,' she said. 'you take that end, and i'll take this. we'll carry him away to some place of hiding.' anne instantly seized the other end, and they proceeded with their burden at a slow pace to the lower garden-gate, which they reached as the tread of the press-gang resounded over the bridge that gave access to the mill court, now hidden from view by the hedge and the trees of the garden. 'we will go down inside this field,' said anne faintly. 'no!' said the other; 'they will see our foot-tracks in the dew. we must go into the road.' 'it is the very road they will come down when they leave the mill.' 'it cannot be helped; it is neck or nothing with us now.' so they emerged upon the road, and staggered along without speaking, occasionally resting for a moment to ease their arms; then shaking him to arouse him, and finding it useless, seizing the seat again. when they had gone about two hundred yards matilda betrayed signs of exhaustion, and she asked, 'is there no shelter near?' 'when we get to that little field of corn,' said anne. 'it is so very far. surely there is some place near?' she pointed to a few scrubby bushes overhanging a little stream, which passed under the road near this point. 'they are not thick enough,' said anne. 'let us take him under the bridge,' said matilda. 'i can go no further.' entering the opening by which cattle descended to drink, they waded into the weedy water, which here rose a few inches above their ankles. to ascend the stream, stoop under the arch, and reach the centre of the roadway, was the work of a few minutes. 'if they look under the arch we are lost,' murmured anne. 'there is no parapet to the bridge, and they may pass over without heeding.' they waited, their heads almost in contact with the reeking arch, and their feet encircled by the stream, which was at its summer lowness now. for some minutes they could hear nothing but the babble of the water over their ankles, and round the legs of the seat on which bob slumbered, the sounds being reflected in a musical tinkle from the hollow sides of the arch. anne's anxiety now was lest he should not continue sleeping till the search was over, but start up with his habitual imprudence, and scorning such means of safety, rush out into their arms. a quarter of an hour dragged by, and then indications reached their ears that the re-examination of the mill had begun and ended. the well-known tramp drew nearer, and reverberated through the ground over their heads, where its volume signified to the listeners that the party had been largely augmented by pressed men since the night preceding. the gang passed the arch, and the noise regularly diminished, as if no man among them had thought of looking aside for a moment. matilda broke the silence. 'i wonder if they have left a watch behind?' she said doubtfully. 'i will go and see,' said anne. 'wait till i return.' 'no; i can do no more. when you come back i shall be gone. i ask one thing of you. if all goes well with you and him, and he marries you--don't be alarmed; my plans lie elsewhere--when you are his wife tell him who helped to carry him away. but don't mention my name to the rest of your family, either now or at any time.' anne regarded the speaker for a moment, and promised; after which she waded out from the archway. matilda stood looking at bob for a moment, as if preparing to go, till moved by some impulse she bent and lightly kissed him once. 'how can you!' cried anne reproachfully. when leaving the mouth of the arch she had bent back and seen the act. matilda flushed. 'you jealous baby!' she said scornfully. anne hesitated for a moment, then went out from the water, and hastened towards the mill. she entered by the garden, and, seeing no one, advanced and peeped in at the window. her mother and mr. loveday were sitting within as usual. 'are they all gone?' said anne softly. 'yes. they did not trouble us much, beyond going into every room, and searching about the garden, where they saw steps. they have been lucky to-night; they have caught fifteen or twenty men at places further on; so the loss of bob was no hurt to their feelings. i wonder where in the world the poor fellow is!' 'i will show you,' said anne. and explaining in a few words what had happened, she was promptly followed by david and loveday along the road. she lifted her dress and entered the arch with some anxiety on account of matilda; but the actress was gone, and bob lay on the seat as she had left him. bob was brought out, and water thrown upon his face; but though he moved he did not rouse himself until some time after he had been borne into the house. here he opened his eyes, and saw them standing round, and gathered a little consciousness. 'you are all right, my boy!' said his father. 'what hev happened to ye? where did ye get that terrible blow?' 'ah--i can mind now,' murmured bob, with a stupefied gaze around. 'i fell in slipping down the topsail halyard--the rope, that is, was too short--and i fell upon my head. and then i went away. when i came back i thought i wouldn't disturb ye: so i lay down out there, to sleep out the watch; but the pain in my head was so great that i couldn't get to sleep; so i picked some of the poppy-heads in the border, which i once heard was a good thing for sending folks to sleep when they are in pain. so i munched up all i could find, and dropped off quite nicely.' 'i wondered who had picked 'em!' said molly. 'i noticed they were gone.' 'why, you might never have woke again!' said mrs. loveday, holding up her hands. 'how is your head now?' 'i hardly know,' replied the young man, putting his hand to his forehead and beginning to doze again. 'where be those fellows that boarded us? with this--smooth water and--fine breeze we ought to get away from 'em. haul in--the larboard braces, and--bring her to the wind.' 'you are at home, dear bob,' said anne, bending over him, 'and the men are gone.' 'come along upstairs: th' beest hardly awake now,' said his father and bob was assisted to bed. xxxiii. a discovery turns the scale in four-and-twenty hours bob had recovered. but though physically himself again, he was not at all sure of his position as a patriot. he had that practical knowledge of seamanship of which the country stood much in need, and it was humiliating to find that impressment seemed to be necessary to teach him to use it for her advantage. many neighbouring young men, less fortunate than himself, had been pressed and taken; and their absence seemed a reproach to him. he went away by himself into the mill-roof, and, surrounded by the corn-heaps, gave vent to self-condemnation. 'certainly, i am no man to lie here so long for the pleasure of sighting that young girl forty times a day, and letting her sight me--bless her eyes!--till i must needs want a press-gang to teach me what i've forgot. and is it then all over with me as a british sailor? we'll see.' when he was thrown under the influence of anne's eyes again, which were more tantalizingly beautiful than ever just now (so it seemed to him), his intention of offering his services to the government would wax weaker, and he would put off his final decision till the next day. anne saw these fluctuations of his mind between love and patriotism, and being terrified by what she had heard of sea-fights, used the utmost art of which she was capable to seduce him from his forming purpose. she came to him in the mill, wearing the very prettiest of her morning jackets--the one that only just passed the waist, and was laced so tastefully round the collar and bosom. then she would appear in her new hat, with a bouquet of primroses on one side; and on the following sunday she walked before him in lemon-coloured boots, so that her feet looked like a pair of yellow-hammers flitting under her dress. but dress was the least of the means she adopted for chaining him down. she talked more tenderly than ever; asked him to begin small undertakings in the garden on her account; she sang about the house, that the place might seem cheerful when he came in. this singing for a purpose required great effort on her part, leaving her afterwards very sad. when bob asked her what was the matter, she would say, 'nothing; only i am thinking how you will grieve your father, and cross his purposes, if you carry out your unkind notion of going to sea, and forsaking your place in the mill.' 'yes,' bob would say uneasily. 'it will trouble him, i know.' being also quite aware how it would trouble her, he would again postpone, and thus another week passed away. all this time john had not come once to the mill. it appeared as if miss johnson absorbed all his time and thoughts. bob was often seen chuckling over the circumstance. 'a sly rascal!' he said. 'pretending on the day she came to be married that she was not good enough for me, when it was only that he wanted her for himself. how he could have persuaded her to go away is beyond me to say!' anne could not contest this belief of her lover's, and remained silent; but there had more than once occurred to her mind a doubt of its probability. yet she had only abandoned her opinion that john had schemed for matilda, to embrace the opposite error; that, finding he had wronged the young lady, he had pitied and grown to love her. 'and yet jack, when he was a boy, was the simplest fellow alive,' resumed bob. 'by george, though, i should have been hot against him for such a trick, if in losing her i hadn't found a better! but she'll never come down to him in the world: she has high notions now. i am afraid he's doomed to sigh in vain!' though bob regretted this possibility, the feeling was not reciprocated by anne. it was true that she knew nothing of matilda's temporary treachery, and that she disbelieved the story of her lack of virtue; but she did not like the woman. 'perhaps it will not matter if he is doomed to sigh in vain,' she said. 'but i owe him no ill-will. i have profited by his doings, incomprehensible as they are.' and she bent her fair eyes on bob and smiled. bob looked dubious. 'he thinks he has affronted me, now i have seen through him, and that i shall be against meeting him. but, of course, i am not so touchy. i can stand a practical joke, as can any man who has been afloat. i'll call and see him, and tell him so.' before he started, bob bethought him of something which would still further prove to the misapprehending john that he was entirely forgiven. he went to his room, and took from his chest a packet containing a lock of miss johnson's hair, which she had given him during their brief acquaintance, and which till now he had quite forgotten. when, at starting, he wished anne goodbye, it was accompanied by such a beaming face, that she knew he was full of an idea, and asked what it might be that pleased him so. 'why, this,' he said, smacking his breast-pocket. 'a lock of hair that matilda gave me.' anne sank back with parted lips. 'i am going to give it to jack--he'll jump for joy to get it! and it will show him how willing i am to give her up to him, fine piece as she is.' 'will you see her to-day, bob?' anne asked with an uncertain smile. 'o no--unless it is by accident.' on reaching the outskirts of the town he went straight to the barracks, and was lucky enough to find john in his room, at the left-hand corner of the quadrangle. john was glad to see him; but to bob's surprise he showed no immediate contrition, and thus afforded no room for the brotherly speech of forgiveness which bob had been going to deliver. as the trumpet-major did not open the subject, bob felt it desirable to begin himself. 'i have brought ye something that you will value, jack,' he said, as they sat at the window, overlooking the large square barrack-yard. 'i have got no further use for it, and you should have had it before if it had entered my head.' 'thank you, bob; what is it?' said john, looking absently at an awkward squad of young men who were drilling in the enclosure. ''tis a young woman's lock of hair.' 'ah!' said john, quite recovering from his abstraction, and slightly flushing. could bob and anne have quarrelled? bob drew the paper from his pocket, and opened it. 'black!' said john. 'yes--black enough.' 'whose?' 'why, matilda's.' 'o, matilda's!' 'whose did you think then?' instead of replying, the trumpet-major's face became as red as sunset, and he turned to the window to hide his confusion. bob was silent, and then he, too, looked into the court. at length he arose, walked to his brother, and laid his hand upon his shoulder. 'jack,' he said, in an altered voice, 'you are a good fellow. now i see it all.' 'o no--that's nothing,' said john hastily. 'you've been pretending that you care for this woman that i mightn't blame myself for heaving you out from the other--which is what i've done without knowing it.' 'what does it matter?' 'but it does matter! i've been making you unhappy all these weeks and weeks through my thoughtlessness. they seemed to think at home, you know, john, that you had grown not to care for her; or i wouldn't have done it for all the world!' 'you stick to her, bob, and never mind me. she belongs to you. she loves you. i have no claim upon her, and she thinks nothing about me.' 'she likes you, john, thoroughly well; so does everybody; and if i hadn't come home, putting my foot in it-- that coming home of mine has been a regular blight upon the family! i ought never to have stayed. the sea is my home, and why couldn't i bide there?' the trumpet-major drew bob's discourse off the subject as soon as he could, and bob, after some unconsidered replies and remarks, seemed willing to avoid it for the present. he did not ask john to accompany him home, as he had intended; and on leaving the barracks turned southward and entered the town to wander about till he could decide what to do. it was the rd of september, but the king's watering-place still retained its summer aspect. the royal bathing-machine had been drawn out just as bob reached gloucester buildings, and he waited a minute, in the lack of other distraction, to look on. immediately that the king's machine had entered the water a group of florid men with fiddles, violoncellos, a trombone, and a drum, came forward, packed themselves into another machine that was in waiting, and were drawn out into the waves in the king's rear. all that was to be heard for a few minutes were the slow pulsations of the sea; and then a deafening noise burst from the interior of the second machine with power enough to split the boards asunder; it was the condensed mass of musicians inside, striking up the strains of 'god save the king,' as his majesty's head rose from the water. bob took off his hat and waited till the end of the performance, which, intended as a pleasant surprise to george iii. by the loyal burghers, was possibly in the watery circumstances tolerated rather than desired by that dripping monarch. { } loveday then passed on to the harbour, where he remained awhile, looking at the busy scene of loading and unloading craft and swabbing the decks of yachts; at the boats and barges rubbing against the quay wall, and at the houses of the merchants, some ancient structures of solid stone, others green-shuttered with heavy wooden bow-windows which appeared as if about to drop into the harbour by their own weight. all these things he gazed upon, and thought of one thing--that he had caused great misery to his brother john. the town clock struck, and bob retraced his steps till he again approached the esplanade and gloucester lodge, where the morning sun blazed in upon the house fronts, and not a spot of shade seemed to be attainable. a huzzaing attracted his attention, and he observed that a number of people had gathered before the king's residence, where a brown curricle had stopped, out of which stepped a hale man in the prime of life, wearing a blue uniform, gilt epaulettes, cocked hat, and sword, who crossed the pavement and went in. bob went up and joined the group. 'what's going on?' he said. 'captain hardy,' replied a bystander. 'what of him?' 'just gone in--waiting to see the king.' 'but the captain is in the west indies?' 'no. the fleet is come home; they can't find the french anywhere.' 'will they go and look for them again?' asked bob. 'o yes. nelson is determined to find 'em. as soon as he's refitted he'll put to sea again. ah, here's the king coming in.' bob was so interested in what he had just heard that he scarcely noticed the arrival of the king, and a body of attendant gentlemen. he went on thinking of his new knowledge; captain hardy was come. he was doubtless staying with his family at their small manor-house at pos'ham, a few miles from overcombe, where he usually spent the intervals between his different cruises. loveday returned to the mill without further delay; and shortly explaining that john was very well, and would come soon, went on to talk of the arrival of nelson's captain. 'and is he come at last?' said the miller, throwing his thoughts years backward. 'well can i mind when he first left home to go on board the helena as midshipman!' 'that's not much to remember. i can remember it too,' said mrs. loveday. ''tis more than twenty years ago anyhow. and more than that, i can mind when he was born; i was a lad, serving my 'prenticeship at the time. he has been in this house often and often when 'a was young. when he came home after his first voyage he stayed about here a long time, and used to look in at the mill whenever he went past. "what will you be next, sir?" said mother to him one day as he stood with his back to the doorpost. "a lieutenant, dame loveday," says he. "and what next?" says she. "a commander." "and next?" "next, post-captain." "and then?" "then it will be almost time to die." i'd warrant that he'd mind it to this very day if you were to ask him.' bob heard all this with a manner of preoccupation, and soon retired to the mill. thence he went to his room by the back passage, and taking his old seafaring garments from a dark closet in the wall conveyed them to the loft at the top of the mill, where he occupied the remaining spare moments of the day in brushing the mildew from their folds, and hanging each article by the window to get aired. in the evening he returned to the loft, and dressing himself in the old salt suit, went out of the house unobserved by anybody, and ascended the road towards captain hardy's native village and present temporary home. the shadeless downs were now brown with the droughts of the passing summer, and few living things met his view, the natural rotundity of the elevation being only occasionally disturbed by the presence of a barrow, a thorn-bush, or a piece of dry wall which remained from some attempted enclosure. by the time that he reached the village it was dark, and the larger stars had begun to shine when he walked up to the door of the old- fashioned house which was the family residence of this branch of the south-wessex hardys. 'will the captain allow me to wait on him to-night?' inquired loveday, explaining who and what he was. the servant went away for a few minutes, and then told bob that he might see the captain in the morning. 'if that's the case, i'll come again,' replied bob, quite cheerful that failure was not absolute. he had left the door but a few steps when he was called back and asked if he had walked all the way from overcombe mill on purpose. loveday replied modestly that he had done so. 'then will you come in?' he followed the speaker into a small study or office, and in a minute or two captain hardy entered. the captain at this time was a bachelor of thirty-five, rather stout in build, with light eyes, bushy eyebrows, a square broad face, plenty of chin, and a mouth whose corners played between humour and grimness. he surveyed loveday from top to toe. 'robert loveday, sir, son of the miller at overcombe,' said bob, making a low bow. 'ah! i remember your father, loveday,' the gallant seaman replied. 'well, what do you want to say to me?' seeing that bob found it rather difficult to begin, he leant leisurely against the mantelpiece, and went on, 'is your father well and hearty? i have not seen him for many, many years.' 'quite well, thank 'ee.' 'you used to have a brother in the army, i think? what was his name--john? a very fine fellow, if i recollect.' 'yes, cap'n; he's there still.' 'and you are in the merchant-service?' 'late first mate of the brig pewit.' 'how is it you're not on board a man-of-war?' 'ay, sir, that's the thing i've come about,' said bob, recovering confidence. 'i should have been, but 'tis womankind has hampered me. i've waited and waited on at home because of a young woman--lady, i might have said, for she's sprung from a higher class of society than i. her father was a landscape painter--maybe you've heard of him, sir? the name is garland.' 'he painted that view of our village here,' said captain hardy, looking towards a dark little picture in the corner of the room. bob looked, and went on, as if to the picture, 'well, sir, i have found that-- however, the press-gang came a week or two ago, and didn't get hold of me. i didn't care to go aboard as a pressed man.' 'there has been a severe impressment. it is of course a disagreeable necessity, but it can't be helped.' 'since then, sir, something has happened that makes me wish they had found me, and i have come to-night to ask if i could enter on board your ship the victory.' the captain shook his head severely, and presently observed: 'i am glad to find that you think of entering the service, loveday; smart men are badly wanted. but it will not be in your power to choose your ship.' 'well, well, sir; then i must take my chance elsewhere,' said bob, his face indicating the disappointment he would not fully express. ''twas only that i felt i would much rather serve under you than anybody else, my father and all of us being known to ye, captain hardy, and our families belonging to the same parts.' captain hardy took bob's altitude more carefully. 'are you a good practical seaman?' he asked musingly. 'ay, sir; i believe i am.' 'active? fond of skylarking?' 'well, i don't know about the last. i think i can say i am active enough. i could walk the yard-arm, if required, cross from mast to mast by the stays, and do what most fellows do who call themselves spry.' the captain then put some questions about the details of navigation, which loveday, having luckily been used to square rigs, answered satisfactorily. 'as to reefing topsails,' he added, 'if i don't do it like a flash of lightning, i can do it so that they will stand blowing weather. the pewit was not a dull vessel, and when we were convoyed home from lisbon, she could keep well in sight of the frigate scudding at a distance, by putting on full sail. we had enough hands aboard to reef topsails man-o'-war fashion, which is a rare thing in these days, sir, now that able seamen are so scarce on trading craft. and i hear that men from square-rigged vessels are liked much the best in the navy, as being more ready for use? so that i shouldn't be altogether so raw,' said bob earnestly, 'if i could enter on your ship, sir. still, if i can't, i can't.' 'i might ask for you, loveday,' said the captain thoughtfully, 'and so get you there that way. in short, i think i may say i will ask for you. so consider it settled.' 'my thanks to you, sir,' said loveday. 'you are aware that the victory is a smart ship, and that cleanliness and order are, of necessity, more strictly insisted upon there than in some others?' 'sir, i quite see it.' 'well, i hope you will do your duty as well on a line-of-battle ship as you did when mate of the brig, for it is a duty that may be serious.' bob replied that it should be his one endeavour; and receiving a few instructions for getting on board the guard-ship, and being conveyed to portsmouth, he turned to go away. 'you'll have a stiff walk before you fetch overcombe mill this dark night, loveday,' concluded the captain, peering out of the window. 'i'll send you in a glass of grog to help 'ee on your way.' the captain then left bob to himself, and when he had drunk the grog that was brought in he started homeward, with a heart not exactly light, but large with a patriotic cheerfulness, which had not diminished when, after walking so fast in his excitement as to be beaded with perspiration, he entered his father's door. they were all sitting up for him, and at his approach anxiously raised their sleepy eyes, for it was nearly eleven o'clock. 'there; i knew he'd not be much longer!' cried anne, jumping up and laughing, in her relief. 'they have been thinking you were very strange and silent to-day, bob; you were not, were you?' 'what's the matter, bob?' said the miller; for bob's countenance was sublimed by his recent interview, like that of a priest just come from the penetralia of the temple. 'he's in his mate's clothes, just as when he came home!' observed mrs. loveday. they all saw now that he had something to tell. 'i am going away,' he said when he had sat down. 'i am going to enter on board a man-of-war, and perhaps it will be the victory.' 'going?' said anne faintly. 'now, don't you mind it, there's a dear,' he went on solemnly, taking her hand in his own. 'and you, father, don't you begin to take it to heart' (the miller was looking grave). 'the press-gang has been here, and though i showed them that i was a free man, i am going to show everybody that i can do my duty.' neither of the other three answered, anne and the miller having their eyes bent upon the ground, and the former trying to repress her tears. 'now don't you grieve, either of you,' he continued; 'nor vex yourselves that this has happened. please not to be angry with me, father, for deserting you and the mill, where you want me, for i _must go_. for these three years we and the rest of the country have been in fear of the enemy; trade has been hindered; poor folk made hungry; and many rich folk made poor. there must be a deliverance, and it must be done by sea. i have seen captain hardy, and i shall serve under him if so be i can.' 'captain hardy?' 'yes. i have been to his house at pos'ham, where he's staying with his sisters; walked there and back, and i wouldn't have missed it for fifty guineas. i hardly thought he would see me; but he did see me. and he hasn't forgot you.' bob then opened his tale in order, relating graphically the conversation to which he had been a party, and they listened with breathless attention. 'well, if you must go, you must,' said the miller with emotion; 'but i think it somewhat hard that, of my two sons, neither one of 'em can be got to stay and help me in my business as i get old.' 'don't trouble and vex about it,' said mrs. loveday soothingly. 'they are both instruments in the hands of providence, chosen to chastise that corsican ogre, and do what they can for the country in these trying years.' 'that's just the shape of it, mrs. loveday,' said bob. 'and he'll come back soon,' she continued, turning to anne. 'and then he'll tell us all he has seen, and the glory that he's won, and how he has helped to sweep that scourge buonaparty off the earth.' 'when be you going, bob?' his father inquired. 'to-morrow, if i can. i shall call at the barracks and tell john as i go by. when i get to portsmouth--' a burst of sobs in quick succession interrupted his words; they came from anne, who till that moment had been sitting as before with her hand in that of bob, and apparently quite calm. mrs. loveday jumped up, but before she could say anything to soothe the agitated girl she had calmed herself with the same singular suddenness that had marked her giving way. 'i don't mind bob's going,' she said. 'i think he ought to go. don't suppose, bob, that i want you to stay!' after this she left the apartment, and went into the little side room where she and her mother usually worked. in a few moments bob followed her. when he came back he was in a very sad and emotional mood. anybody could see that there had been a parting of profound anguish to both. 'she is not coming back to-night,' he said. 'you will see her to-morrow before you go?' said her mother. 'i may or i may not,' he replied. 'father and mrs. loveday, do you go to bed now. i have got to look over my things and get ready; and it will take me some little time. if you should hear noises you will know it is only myself moving about.' when bob was left alone he suddenly became brisk, and set himself to overhaul his clothes and other possessions in a business-like manner. by the time that his chest was packed, such things as he meant to leave at home folded into cupboards, and what was useless destroyed, it was past two o'clock. then he went to bed, so softly that only the creak of one weak stair revealed his passage upward. at the moment that he passed anne's chamber-door her mother was bending over her as she lay in bed, and saying to her, 'won't you see him in the morning?' 'no, no,' said anne. 'i would rather not see him! i have said that i may. but i shall not. i cannot see him again!' when the family got up next day bob had vanished. it was his way to disappear like this, to avoid affecting scenes at parting. by the time that they had sat down to a gloomy breakfast, bob was in the boat of a budmouth waterman, who pulled him alongside the guardship in the roads, where he laid hold of the man-rope, mounted, and disappeared from external view. in the course of the day the ship moved off, set her royals, and made sail for portsmouth, with five hundred new hands for the service on board, consisting partly of pressed men and partly of volunteers, among the latter being robert loveday. xxxiv. a speck on the sea in parting from john, who accompanied him to the quay, bob had said: 'now, jack, these be my last words to you: i give her up. i go away on purpose, and i shall be away a long time. if in that time she should list over towards ye ever so little, mind you take her. you have more right to her than i. you chose her when my mind was elsewhere, and you best deserve her; for i have never known you forget one woman, while i've forgot a dozen. take her then, if she will come, and god bless both of ye.' another person besides john saw bob go. that was derriman, who was standing by a bollard a little further up the quay. he did not repress his satisfaction at the sight. john looked towards him with an open gaze of contempt; for the cuffs administered to the yeoman at the inn had not, so far as the trumpet-major was aware, produced any desire to avenge that insult, john being, of course, quite ignorant that festus had erroneously retaliated upon bob, in his peculiar though scarcely soldierly way. finding that he did not even now approach him, john went on his way, and thought over his intention of preserving intact the love between anne and his brother. he was surprised when he next went to the mill to find how glad they all were to see him. from the moment of bob's return to the bosom of the deep anne had had no existence on land; people might have looked at her human body and said she had flitted thence. the sea and all that belonged to the sea was her daily thought and her nightly dream. she had the whole two-and-thirty winds under her eye, each passing gale that ushered in returning autumn being mentally registered; and she acquired a precise knowledge of the direction in which portsmouth, brest, ferrol, cadiz, and other such likely places lay. instead of saying her own familiar prayers at night she substituted, with some confusion of thought, the forms of prayer to be used at sea. john at once noticed her lorn, abstracted looks, pitied her,--how much he pitied her!--and asked when they were alone if there was anything he could do. 'there are two things,' she said, with almost childish eagerness in her tired eyes. 'they shall be done.' 'the first is to find out if captain hardy has gone back to his ship; and the other is--o if you will do it, john!--to get me newspapers whenever possible.' after this duologue john was absent for a space of three hours, and they thought he had gone back to barracks. he entered, however, at the end of that time, took off his forage-cap, and wiped his forehead. 'you look tired, john,' said his father. 'o no.' he went through the house till he had found anne garland. 'i have only done one of those things,' he said to her. 'what, already! i didn't hope for or mean to-day.' 'captain hardy is gone from pos'ham. he left some days ago. we shall soon hear that the fleet has sailed.' 'you have been all the way to pos'ham on purpose? how good of you!' 'well, i was anxious to know myself when bob is likely to leave. i expect now that we shall soon hear from him.' two days later he came again. he brought a newspaper, and what was better, a letter for anne, franked by the first lieutenant of the victory. 'then he's aboard her,' said anne, as she eagerly took the letter. it was short, but as much as she could expect in the circumstances, and informed them that the captain had been as good as his word, and had gratified bob's earnest wish to serve under him. the ship, with admiral lord nelson on board, and accompanied by the frigate euryalus, was to sail in two days for plymouth, where they would be joined by others, and thence proceed to the coast of spain. anne lay awake that night thinking of the victory, and of those who floated in her. to the best of anne's calculation that ship of war would, during the next twenty-four hours, pass within a few miles of where she herself then lay. next to seeing bob, the thing that would give her more pleasure than any other in the world was to see the vessel that contained him--his floating city, his sole dependence in battle and storm--upon whose safety from winds and enemies hung all her hope. the morrow was market-day at the seaport, and in this she saw her opportunity. a carrier went from overcombe at six o'clock thither, and having to do a little shopping for herself she gave it as a reason for her intended day's absence, and took a place in the van. when she reached the town it was still early morning, but the borough was already in the zenith of its daily bustle and show. the king was always out-of- doors by six o'clock, and such cock-crow hours at gloucester lodge produced an equally forward stir among the population. she alighted, and passed down the esplanade, as fully thronged by persons of fashion at this time of mist and level sunlight as a watering-place in the present day is at four in the afternoon. dashing bucks and beaux in cocked hats, black feathers, ruffles, and frills, stared at her as she hurried along; the beach was swarming with bathing women, wearing waistbands that bore the national refrain, 'god save the king,' in gilt letters; the shops were all open, and sergeant stanner, with his sword-stuck bank-notes and heroic gaze, was beating up at two guineas and a crown, the crown to drink his majesty's health. she soon finished her shopping, and then, crossing over into the old town, pursued her way along the coast-road to portland. at the end of an hour she had been rowed across the fleet (which then lacked the convenience of a bridge), and reached the base of portland hill. the steep incline before her was dotted with houses, showing the pleasant peculiarity of one man's doorstep being behind his neighbour's chimney, and slabs of stone as the common material for walls, roof, floor, pig- sty, stable-manger, door-scraper, and garden-stile. anne gained the summit, and followed along the central track over the huge lump of freestone which forms the peninsula, the wide sea prospect extending as she went on. weary with her journey, she approached the extreme southerly peak of rock, and gazed from the cliff at portland bill, or beal, as it was in those days more correctly called. the wild, herbless, weather-worn promontory was quite a solitude, and, saving the one old lighthouse about fifty yards up the slope, scarce a mark was visible to show that humanity had ever been near the spot. anne found herself a seat on a stone, and swept with her eyes the tremulous expanse of water around her that seemed to utter a ceaseless unintelligible incantation. out of the three hundred and sixty degrees of her complete horizon two hundred and fifty were covered by waves, the coup d'oeil including the area of troubled waters known as the race, where two seas met to effect the destruction of such vessels as could not be mastered by one. she counted the craft within her view: there were five; no, there were only four; no, there were seven, some of the specks having resolved themselves into two. they were all small coasters, and kept well within sight of land. anne sank into a reverie. then she heard a slight noise on her left hand, and turning beheld an old sailor, who had approached with a glass. he was levelling it over the sea in a direction to the south-east, and somewhat removed from that in which her own eyes had been wandering. anne moved a few steps thitherward, so as to unclose to her view a deeper sweep on that side, and by this discovered a ship of far larger size than any which had yet dotted the main before her. its sails were for the most part new and clean, and in comparison with its rapid progress before the wind the small brigs and ketches seemed standing still. upon this striking object the old man's glass was bent. 'what do you see, sailor?' she asked. 'almost nothing,' he answered. 'my sight is so gone off lately that things, one and all, be but a november mist to me. and yet i fain would see to-day. i am looking for the victory.' 'why,' she said quickly. 'i have a son aboard her. he's one of three from these parts. there's the captain, there's my son ned, and there's young loveday of overcombe--he that lately joined.' 'shall i look for you?' said anne, after a pause. 'certainly, mis'ess, if so be you please.' anne took the glass, and he supported it by his arm. 'it is a large ship,' she said, 'with three masts, three rows of guns along the side, and all her sails set.' 'i guessed as much.' 'there is a little flag in front--over her bowsprit.' 'the jack.' 'and there's a large one flying at her stern.' 'the ensign.' 'and a white one on her fore-topmast.' 'that's the admiral's flag, the flag of my lord nelson. what is her figure-head, my dear?' 'a coat-of-arms, supported on this side by a sailor.' her companion nodded with satisfaction. 'on the other side of that figure-head is a marine.' 'she is twisting round in a curious way, and her sails sink in like old cheeks, and she shivers like a leaf upon a tree.' 'she is in stays, for the larboard tack. i can see what she's been doing. she's been re'ching close in to avoid the flood tide, as the wind is to the sou'-west, and she's bound down; but as soon as the ebb made, d'ye see, they made sail to the west'ard. captain hardy may be depended upon for that; he knows every current about here, being a native.' 'and now i can see the other side; it is a soldier where a sailor was before. you are _sure_ it is the victory?' 'i am sure.' after this a frigate came into view--the euryalus--sailing in the same direction. anne sat down, and her eyes never left the ships. 'tell me more about the victory,' she said. 'she is the best sailer in the service, and she carries a hundred guns. the heaviest be on the lower deck, the next size on the middle deck, the next on the main and upper decks. my son ned's place is on the lower deck, because he's short, and they put the short men below.' bob, though not tall, was not likely to be specially selected for shortness. she pictured him on the upper deck, in his snow-white trousers and jacket of navy blue, looking perhaps towards the very point of land where she then was. the great silent ship, with her population of blue-jackets, marines, officers, captain, and the admiral who was not to return alive, passed like a phantom the meridian of the bill. sometimes her aspect was that of a large white bat, sometimes that of a grey one. in the course of time the watching girl saw that the ship had passed her nearest point; the breadth of her sails diminished by foreshortening, till she assumed the form of an egg on end. after this something seemed to twinkle, and anne, who had previously withdrawn from the old sailor, went back to him, and looked again through the glass. the twinkling was the light falling upon the cabin windows of the ship's stern. she explained it to the old man. 'then we see now what the enemy have seen but once. that was in seventy- nine, when she sighted the french and spanish fleet off scilly, and she retreated because she feared a landing. well, 'tis a brave ship and she carries brave men!' anne's tender bosom heaved, but she said nothing, and again became absorbed in contemplation. the victory was fast dropping away. she was on the horizon, and soon appeared hull down. that seemed to be like the beginning of a greater end than her present vanishing. anne garland could not stay by the sailor any longer, and went about a stone's-throw off, where she was hidden by the inequality of the cliff from his view. the vessel was now exactly end on, and stood out in the direction of the start, her width having contracted to the proportion of a feather. she sat down again, and mechanically took out some biscuits that she had brought, foreseeing that her waiting might be long. but she could not eat one of them; eating seemed to jar with the mental tenseness of the moment; and her undeviating gaze continued to follow the lessened ship with the fidelity of a balanced needle to a magnetic stone, all else in her being motionless. the courses of the victory were absorbed into the main, then her topsails went, and then her top-gallants. she was now no more than a dead fly's wing on a sheet of spider's web; and even this fragment diminished. anne could hardly bear to see the end, and yet she resolved not to flinch. the admiral's flag sank behind the watery line, and in a minute the very truck of the last topmast stole away. the victory was gone. anne's lip quivered as she murmured, without removing her wet eyes from the vacant and solemn horizon, '"they that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters--"' '"these see the works of the lord, and his wonders in the deep,"' was returned by a man's voice from behind her. looking round quickly, she saw a soldier standing there; and the grave eyes of john loveday bent on her. ''tis what i was thinking,' she said, trying to be composed. 'you were saying it,' he answered gently. 'was i?--i did not know it. . . . how came you here?' she presently added. 'i have been behind you a good while; but you never turned round.' 'i was deeply occupied,' she said in an undertone. 'yes--i too came to see him pass. i heard this morning that lord nelson had embarked, and i knew at once that they would sail immediately. the victory and euryalus are to join the rest of the fleet at plymouth. there was a great crowd of people assembled to see the admiral off; they cheered him and the ship as she dropped down. he took his coffin on board with him, they say.' 'his coffin!' said anne, turning deadly pale. 'something terrible, then, is meant by that! o, why _would_ bob go in that ship? doomed to destruction from the very beginning like this!' 'it was his determination to sail under captain hardy, and under no one else,' said john. 'there may be hot work; but we must hope for the best.' and observing how wretched she looked, he added, 'but won't you let me help you back? if you can walk as far as hope cove it will be enough. a lerret is going from there across the bay homeward to the harbour in the course of an hour; it belongs to a man i know, and they can take one passenger, i am sure.' she turned her back upon the channel, and by his help soon reached the place indicated. the boat was lying there as he had said. she found it to belong to the old man who had been with her at the bill, and was in charge of his two younger sons. the trumpet-major helped her into it over the slippery blocks of stone, one of the young men spread his jacket for her to sit on, and as soon as they pulled from shore john climbed up the blue-grey cliff, and disappeared over the top, to return to the mainland by road. anne was in the town by three o'clock. the trip in the stern of the lerret had quite refreshed her, with the help of the biscuits, which she had at last been able to eat. the van from the port to overcombe did not start till four o'clock, and feeling no further interest in the gaieties of the place, she strolled on past the king's house to the outskirts, her mind settling down again upon the possibly sad fate of the victory when she found herself alone. she did not hurry on; and finding that even now there wanted another half-hour to the carrier's time, she turned into a little lane to escape the inspection of the numerous passers-by. here all was quite lonely and still, and she sat down under a willow-tree, absently regarding the landscape, which had begun to put on the rich tones of declining summer, but which to her was as hollow and faded as a theatre by day. she could hold out no longer; burying her face in her hands, she wept without restraint. some yards behind her was a little spring of water, having a stone margin round it to prevent the cattle from treading in the sides and filling it up with dirt. while she wept, two elderly gentlemen entered unperceived upon the scene, and walked on to the spring's brink. here they paused and looked in, afterwards moving round it, and then stooping as if to smell or taste its waters. the spring was, in fact, a sulphurous one, then recently discovered by a physician who lived in the neighbourhood; and it was beginning to attract some attention, having by common report contributed to effect such wonderful cures as almost passed belief. after a considerable discussion, apparently on how the pool might be improved for better use, one of the two elderly gentlemen turned away, leaving the other still probing the spring with his cane. the first stranger, who wore a blue coat with gilt buttons, came on in the direction of anne garland, and seeing her sad posture went quickly up to her, and said abruptly, 'what is the matter?' anne, who in her grief had observed nothing of the gentlemen's presence, withdrew her handkerchief from her eyes and started to her feet. she instantly recognised her interrogator as the king. 'what, what, crying?' his majesty inquired kindly. 'how is this!' 'i--have seen a dear friend go away, sir,' she faltered, with downcast eyes. 'ah--partings are sad--very sad--for us all. you must hope your friend will return soon. where is he or she gone?' 'i don't know, your majesty.' 'don't know--how is that?' 'he is a sailor on board the victory.' 'then he has reason to be proud,' said the king with interest. 'he is your brother?' anne tried to explain what he was, but could not, and blushed with painful heat. 'well, well, well; what is his name?' in spite of anne's confusion and low spirits, her womanly shrewdness told her at once that no harm could be done by revealing bob's name; and she answered, 'his name is robert loveday, sir.' 'loveday--a good name. i shall not forget it. now dry your cheeks, and don't cry any more. loveday--robert loveday.' anne curtseyed, the king smiled good-humouredly, and turned to rejoin his companion, who was afterwards heard to be dr. ---, the physician in attendance at gloucester lodge. this gentleman had in the meantime filled a small phial with the medicinal water, which he carefully placed in his pocket; and on the king coming up they retired together and disappeared. thereupon anne, now thoroughly aroused, followed the same way with a gingerly tread, just in time to see them get into a carriage which was in waiting at the turning of the lane. she quite forgot the carrier, and everything else in connexion with riding home. flying along the road rapidly and unconsciously, when she awoke to a sense of her whereabouts she was so near to overcombe as to make the carrier not worth waiting for. she had been borne up in this hasty spurt at the end of a weary day by visions of bob promoted to the rank of admiral, or something equally wonderful, by the king's special command, the chief result of the promotion being, in her arrangement of the piece, that he would stay at home and go to sea no more. but she was not a girl who indulged in extravagant fancies long, and before she reached home she thought that the king had probably forgotten her by that time, and her troubles, and her lover's name. xxxv. a sailor enters the remaining fortnight of the month of september passed away, with a general decline from the summer's excitements. the royal family left the watering-place the first week in october, the german legion with their artillery about the same time. the dragoons still remained at the barracks just out of the town, and john loveday brought to anne every newspaper that he could lay hands on, especially such as contained any fragment of shipping news. this threw them much together; and at these times john was often awkward and confused, on account of the unwonted stress of concealing his great love for her. her interests had grandly developed from the limits of overcombe and the town life hard by, to an extensiveness truly european. during the whole month of october, however, not a single grain of information reached her, or anybody else, concerning nelson and his blockading squadron off cadiz. there were the customary bad jokes about buonaparte, especially when it was found that the whole french army had turned its back upon boulogne and set out for the rhine. then came accounts of his march through germany and into austria; but not a word about the victory. at the beginning of autumn john brought news which fearfully depressed her. the austrian general mack had capitulated with his whole army. then were revived the old misgivings as to invasion. 'instead of having to cope with him weary with waiting, we shall have to encounter this man fresh from the fields of victory,' ran the newspaper article. but the week which had led off with such a dreary piping was to end in another key. on the very day when mack's army was piling arms at the feet of its conqueror, a blow had been struck by bob loveday and his comrades which eternally shattered the enemy's force by sea. four days after the receipt of the austrian news corporal tullidge ran into the miller's house to inform him that on the previous monday, at eleven in the morning, the pickle schooner, lieutenant lapenotiere, had arrived at falmouth with despatches from the fleet; that the stage-coaches on the highway through wessex to london were chalked with the words 'great victory!' 'glorious triumph!' and so on; and that all the country people were wild to know particulars. on friday afternoon john arrived with authentic news of the battle off cape trafalgar, and the death of nelson. captain hardy was alive, though his escape had been narrow enough, his shoe-buckle having been carried away by a shot. it was feared that the victory had been the scene of the heaviest slaughter among all the ships engaged, but as yet no returns of killed and wounded had been issued, beyond a rough list of the numbers in some of the ships. the suspense of the little household in overcombe mill was great in the extreme. john came thither daily for more than a week; but no further particulars reached england till the end of that time, and then only the meagre intelligence that there had been a gale immediately after the battle, and that many of the prizes had been lost. anne said little to all these things, and preserved a superstratum of calmness on her countenance; but some inner voice seemed to whisper to her that bob was no more. miller loveday drove to pos'ham several times to learn if the captain's sisters had received any more definite tidings than these flying reports; but that family had heard nothing which could in any way relieve the miller's anxiety. when at last, at the end of november, there appeared a final and revised list of killed and wounded as issued by admiral collingwood, it was a useless sheet to the lovedays. to their great pain it contained no names but those of officers, the friends of ordinary seamen and marines being in those good old days left to discover their losses as best they might. anne's conviction of her loss increased with the darkening of the early winter time. bob was not a cautious man who would avoid needless exposure, and a hundred and fifty of the victory's crew had been disabled or slain. anybody who had looked into her room at this time would have seen that her favourite reading was the office for the burial of the dead at sea, beginning 'we therefore commit his body to the deep.' in these first days of december several of the victorious fleet came into port; but not the victory. many supposed that that noble ship, disabled by the battle, had gone to the bottom in the subsequent tempestuous weather; and the belief was persevered in till it was told in the town and port that she had been seen passing up the channel. two days later the victory arrived at portsmouth. then letters from survivors began to appear in the public prints which john so regularly brought to anne; but though he watched the mails with unceasing vigilance there was never a letter from bob. it sometimes crossed john's mind that his brother might still be alive and well, and that in his wish to abide by his expressed intention of giving up anne and home life he was deliberately lax in writing. if so, bob was carrying out the idea too thoughtlessly by half, as could be seen by watching the effects of suspense upon the fair face of the victim, and the anxiety of the rest of the family. it was a clear day in december. the first slight snow of the season had been sifted over the earth, and one side of the apple-tree branches in the miller's garden was touched with white, though a few leaves were still lingering on the tops of the younger trees. a short sailor of the royal navy, who was not bob, nor anything like him, crossed the mill court and came to the door. the miller hastened out and brought him into the room, where john, mrs. loveday, and anne garland were all present. 'i'm from aboard the victory,' said the sailor. 'my name's jim cornick. and your lad is alive and well.' they breathed rather than spoke their thankfulness and relief, the miller's eyes being moist as he turned aside to calm himself; while anne, having first jumped up wildly from her seat, sank back again under the almost insupportable joy that trembled through her limbs to her utmost finger. 'i've come from spithead to pos'ham,' the sailor continued, 'and now i am going on to father at budmouth.' 'ah!--i know your father,' cried the trumpet-major, 'old james cornick.' it was the man who had brought anne in his lerret from portland bill. 'and bob hasn't got a scratch?' said the miller. 'not a scratch,' said cornick. loveday then bustled off to draw the visitor something to drink. anne garland, with a glowing blush on her face, had gone to the back part of the room, where she was the very embodiment of sweet content as she slightly swayed herself without speaking. a little tide of happiness seemed to ebb and flow through her in listening to the sailor's words, moving her figure with it. the seaman and john went on conversing. 'bob had a good deal to do with barricading the hawse-holes afore we were in action, and the adm'l and cap'n both were very much pleased at how 'twas done. when the adm'l went up the quarter-deck ladder, cap'n hardy said a word or two to bob, but what it was i don't know, for i was quartered at a gun some ways off. however, bob saw the adm'l stagger when 'a was wownded, and was one of the men who carried him to the cockpit. after that he and some other lads jumped aboard the french ship, and i believe they was in her when she struck her flag. what 'a did next i can't say, for the wind had dropped, and the smoke was like a cloud. but 'a got a good deal talked about; and they say there's promotion in store for'n.' at this point in the story jim cornick stopped to drink, and a low unconscious humming came from anne in her distant corner; the faint melody continued more or less when the conversation between the sailor and the lovedays was renewed. 'we heard afore that the victory was near knocked to pieces,' said the miller. 'knocked to pieces? you'd say so if so be you could see her! gad, her sides be battered like an old penny piece; the shot be still sticking in her wales, and her sails be like so many clap-nets: we have run all the way home under jury topmasts; and as for her decks, you may swab wi' hot water, and you may swab wi' cold, but there's the blood-stains, and there they'll bide. . . . the cap'n had a narrow escape, like many o' the rest--a shot shaved his ankle like a razor. you should have seen that man's face in the het o' battle, his features were as if they'd been cast in steel.' 'we rather expected a letter from bob before this.' 'well,' said jim cornick, with a smile of toleration, 'you must make allowances. the truth o't is, he's engaged just now at portsmouth, like a good many of the rest from our ship. . . . 'tis a very nice young woman that he's a courting of, and i make no doubt that she'll be an excellent wife for him.' 'ah!' said mrs. loveday, in a warning tone. 'courting--wife?' said the miller. they instinctively looked towards anne. anne had started as if shaken by an invisible hand, and a thick mist of doubt seemed to obscure the intelligence of her eyes. this was but for two or three moments. very pale, she arose and went right up to the seaman. john gently tried to intercept her, but she passed him by. 'do you speak of robert loveday as courting a wife?' she asked, without the least betrayal of emotion. 'i didn't see you, miss,' replied cornick, turning. 'yes, your brother hev' his eye on a wife, and he deserves one. i hope you don't mind?' 'not in the least,' she said, with a stage laugh. 'i am interested, naturally. and what is she?' 'a very nice young master-baker's daughter, honey. a very wise choice of the young man's.' 'is she fair or dark?' 'her hair is rather light.' 'i like light hair; and her name?' 'her name is caroline. but can it be that my story hurts ye? if so--' 'yes, yes,' said john, interposing anxiously. 'we don't care for more just at this moment.' 'we _do_ care for more!' said anne vehemently. 'tell it all, sailor. that is a very pretty name, caroline. when are they going to be married?' 'i don't know as how the day is settled,' answered jim, even now scarcely conscious of the devastation he was causing in one fair breast. 'but from the rate the courting is scudding along at, i should say it won't be long first.' 'if you see him when you go back, give him my best wishes,' she lightly said, as she moved away. 'and,' she added, with solemn bitterness, 'say that i am glad to hear he is making such good use of the first days of his escape from the valley of the shadow of death!' she went away, expressing indifference by audibly singing in the distance-- 'shall we go dance the round, the round, the round, shall we go dance the round?' 'your sister is lively at the news,' observed jim cornick. 'yes,' murmured john gloomily, as he gnawed his lower lip and kept his eyes fixed on the fire. 'well,' continued the man from the victory, 'i won't say that your brother's intended ha'n't got some ballast, which is very lucky for'n, as he might have picked up with a girl without a single copper nail. to be sure there was a time we had when we got into port! it was open house for us all!' and after mentally regarding the scene for a few seconds jim emptied his cup and rose to go. the miller was saying some last words to him outside the house, anne's voice had hardly ceased singing upstairs, john was standing by the fireplace, and mrs. loveday was crossing the room to join her daughter, whose manner had given her some uneasiness, when a noise came from above the ceiling, as of some heavy body falling. mrs. loveday rushed to the staircase, saying, 'ah, i feared something!' and she was followed by john. when they entered anne's room, which they both did almost at one moment, they found her lying insensible upon the floor. the trumpet-major, his lips tightly closed, lifted her in his arms, and laid her upon the bed; after which he went back to the door to give room to her mother, who was bending over the girl with some hartshorn. presently mrs. loveday looked up and said to him, 'she is only in a faint, john, and her colour is coming back. now leave her to me; i will be downstairs in a few minutes, and tell you how she is.' john left the room. when he gained the lower apartment his father was standing by the chimney-piece, the sailor having gone. the trumpet-major went up to the fire, and, grasping the edge of the high chimney-shelf, stood silent. 'did i hear a noise when i went out?' asked the elder, in a tone of misgiving. 'yes, you did,' said john. 'it was she, but her mother says she is better now. father,' he added impetuously, 'bob is a worthless blockhead! if there had been any good in him he would have been drowned years ago!' 'john, john--not too fast,' said the miller. 'that's a hard thing to say of your brother, and you ought to be ashamed of it.' 'well, he tries me more than i can bear. good god! what can a man be made of to go on as he does? why didn't he come home; or if he couldn't get leave why didn't he write? 'tis scandalous of him to serve a woman like that!' 'gently, gently. the chap hev done his duty as a sailor; and though there might have been something between him and anne, her mother, in talking it over with me, has said many times that she couldn't think of their marrying till bob had settled down in business with me. folks that gain victories must have a little liberty allowed 'em. look at the admiral himself, for that matter.' john continued looking at the red coals, till hearing mrs. loveday's foot on the staircase, he went to meet her. 'she is better,' said mrs. loveday; 'but she won't come down again to- day.' could john have heard what the poor girl was moaning to herself at that moment as she lay writhing on the bed, he would have doubted her mother's assurance. 'if he had been dead i could have borne it, but this i cannot bear!' xxxvi. derriman sees chances meanwhile sailor cornick had gone on his way as far as the forking roads, where he met festus derriman on foot. the latter, attracted by the seaman's dress, and by seeing him come from the mill, at once accosted him. jim, with the greatest readiness, fell into conversation, and told the same story as that he had related at the mill. 'bob loveday going to be married?' repeated festus. 'you all seem struck of a heap wi' that.' 'no; i never heard news that pleased me more.' when cornick was gone, festus, instead of passing straight on, halted on the little bridge and meditated. bob, being now interested elsewhere, would probably not resent the siege of anne's heart by another; there could, at any rate, be no further possibility of that looming duel which had troubled the yeoman's mind ever since his horse-play on anne at the house on the down. to march into the mill and propose to mrs. loveday for anne before john's interest could revive in her was, to this hero's thinking, excellent discretion. the day had already begun to darken when he entered, and the cheerful fire shone red upon the floor and walls. mrs. loveday received him alone, and asked him to take a seat by the chimney-corner, a little of the old hankering for him as a son-in-law having permanently remained with her. 'your servant, mrs. loveday,' he said, 'and i will tell you at once what i come for. you will say that i take time by the forelock when i inform you that it is to push on my long-wished-for alliance wi' your daughter, as i believe she is now a free woman again.' 'thank you, mr. derriman,' said the mother placably. 'but she is ill at present. i'll mention it to her when she is better.' 'ask her to alter her cruel, cruel resolves against me, on the score of--of my consuming passion for her. in short,' continued festus, dropping his parlour language in his warmth, 'i'll tell thee what, dame loveday, i want the maid, and must have her.' mrs. loveday replied that that was very plain speaking. 'well, 'tis. but bob has given her up. he never meant to marry her. i'll tell you, mrs. loveday, what i have never told a soul before. i was standing upon budmouth quay on that very day in last september that bob set sail, and i heard him say to his brother john that he gave your daughter up.' 'then it was very unmannerly of him to trifle with her so,' said mrs. loveday warmly. 'who did he give her up to?' festus replied with hesitation, 'he gave her up to john.' 'to john? how could he give her up to a man already over head and ears in love with that actress woman?' 'o? you surprise me. which actress is it?' 'that miss johnson. anne tells me that he loves her hopelessly.' festus arose. miss johnson seemed suddenly to acquire high value as a sweetheart at this announcement. he had himself felt a nameless attractiveness in her, and john had done likewise. john crossed his path in all possible ways. before the yeoman had replied somebody opened the door, and the firelight shone upon the uniform of the person they discussed. festus nodded on recognizing him, wished mrs. loveday good evening, and went out precipitately. 'so bob told you he meant to break off with my anne when he went away?' mrs. loveday remarked to the trumpet-major. 'i wish i had known of it before.' john appeared disturbed at the sudden charge. he murmured that he could not deny it, and then hastily turned from her and followed derriman, whom he saw before him on the bridge. 'derriman!' he shouted. festus started and looked round. 'well, trumpet-major,' he said blandly. 'when will you have sense enough to mind your own business, and not come here telling things you have heard by sneaking behind people's backs?' demanded john hotly. 'if you can't learn in any other way, i shall have to pull your ears again, as i did the other day!' '_you_ pull my ears? how can you tell that lie, when you know 'twas somebody else pulled 'em?' 'o no, no. i pulled your ears, and thrashed you in a mild way.' 'you'll swear to it? surely 'twas another man?' 'it was in the parlour at the public-house; you were almost in the dark.' and john added a few details as to the particular blows, which amounted to proof itself. 'then i heartily ask your pardon for saying 'twas a lie!' cried festus, advancing with extended hand and a genial smile. 'sure, if i had known _'twas_ you, i wouldn't have insulted you by denying it.' 'that was why you didn't challenge me, then?' 'that was it! i wouldn't for the world have hurt your nice sense of honour by letting 'ee go unchallenged, if i had known! and now, you see, unfortunately i can't mend the mistake. so long a time has passed since it happened that the heat of my temper is gone off. i couldn't oblige 'ee, try how i might, for i am not a man, trumpet-major, that can butcher in cold blood--no, not i, nor you neither, from what i know of 'ee. so, willy-nilly, we must fain let it pass, eh?' 'we must, i suppose,' said john, smiling grimly. 'who did you think i was, then, that night when i boxed you all round?' 'no, don't press me,' replied the yeoman. 'i can't reveal; it would be disgracing myself to show how very wide of the truth the mockery of wine was able to lead my senses. we will let it be buried in eternal mixens of forgetfulness.' 'as you wish,' said the trumpet-major loftily. 'but if you ever _should_ think you knew it was me, why, you know where to find me?' and loveday walked away. the instant that he was gone festus shook his fist at the evening star, which happened to lie in the same direction as that taken by the dragoon. 'now for my revenge! duels? lifelong disgrace to me if ever i fight with a man of blood below my own! there are other remedies for upper- class souls!. . . matilda--that's my way.' festus strode along till he reached the hall, where cripplestraw appeared gazing at him from under the arch of the porter's lodge. derriman dashed open the entrance-hurdle with such violence that the whole row of them fell flat in the mud. 'mercy, maister festus!' said cripplestraw. '"surely," i says to myself when i see ye a-coming, "surely maister festus is fuming like that because there's no chance of the enemy coming this year after all."' 'cr-r-ripplestraw! i have been wounded to the heart,' replied derriman, with a lurid brow. 'and the man yet lives, and you wants yer horse-pistols instantly? certainly, maister f---' 'no, cripplestraw, not my pistols, but my new-cut clothes, my heavy gold seals, my silver-topped cane, and my buckles that cost more money than he ever saw! yes, i must tell somebody, and i'll tell you, because there's no other fool near. he loves her heart and soul. he's poor; she's tip- top genteel, and not rich. i am rich, by comparison. i'll court the pretty play-actress, and win her before his eyes.' 'play-actress, maister derriman?' 'yes. i saw her this very day, met her by accident, and spoke to her. she's still in the town--perhaps because of him. i can meet her at any hour of the day-- but i don't mean to marry her; not i. i will court her for my pastime, and to annoy him. it will be all the more death to him that i don't want her. then perhaps he will say to me, "you have taken my one ewe lamb"--meaning that i am the king, and he's the poor man, as in the church verse; and he'll beg for mercy when 'tis too late--unless, meanwhile, i shall have tired of my new toy. saddle the horse, cripplestraw, to-morrow at ten.' full of this resolve to scourge john loveday to the quick through his passion for miss johnson, festus came out booted and spurred at the time appointed, and set off on his morning ride. miss johnson's theatrical engagement having long ago terminated, she would have left the royal watering-place with the rest of the visitors had not matrimonial hopes detained her there. these had nothing whatever to do with john loveday, as may be imagined, but with a stout, staid boat- builder in cove row by the quay, who had shown much interest in her impersonations. unfortunately this substantial man had not been quite so attentive since the end of the season as his previous manner led her to expect; and it was a great pleasure to the lady to see mr. derriman leaning over the harbour bridge with his eyes fixed upon her as she came towards it after a stroll past her elderly wooer's house. 'od take it, ma'am, you didn't tell me when i saw you last that the tooting man with the blue jacket and lace was yours devoted?' began festus. 'who do you mean?' in matilda's ever-changing emotional interests, john loveday was a stale and unprofitable personality. 'why, that trumpet-major man.' 'o! what of him?' 'come; he loves you, and you know it, ma'am.' she knew, at any rate, how to take the current when it served. so she glanced at festus, folded her lips meaningly, and nodded. 'i've come to cut him out.' she shook her head, it being unsafe to speak till she knew a little more of the subject. 'what!' said festus, reddening, 'do you mean to say that you think of him seriously--you, who might look so much higher?' 'constant dropping will wear away a stone; and you should only hear his pleading! his handsome face is impressive, and his manners are--o, so genteel! i am not rich; i am, in short, a poor lady of decayed family, who has nothing to boast of but my blood and ancestors, and they won't find a body in food and clothing!--i hold the world but as the world, derrimanio--a stage where every man must play a part, and mine a sad one!' she dropped her eyes thoughtfully and sighed. 'we will talk of this,' said festus, much affected. 'let us walk to the look-out.' she made no objection, and said, as they turned that way, 'mr. derriman, a long time ago i found something belonging to you; but i have never yet remembered to return it.' and she drew from her bosom the paper which anne had dropped in the meadow when eluding the grasp of festus on that summer day. 'zounds, i smell fresh meat!' cried festus when he had looked it over. ''tis in my uncle's writing, and 'tis what i heard him singing on the day the french didn't come, and afterwards saw him marking in the road. 'tis something he's got hid away. give me the paper, there's a dear; 'tis worth sterling gold!' 'halves, then?' said matilda tenderly. 'gad, yes--anything!' replied festus, blazing into a smile, for she had looked up in her best new manner at the possibility that he might be worth the winning. they went up the steps to the summit of the cliff, and dwindled over it against the sky. xxxvii. reaction there was no letter from bob, though december had passed, and the new year was two weeks old. his movements were, however, pretty accurately registered in the papers, which john still brought, but which anne no longer read. during the second week in december the victory sailed for sheerness, and on the th of the following january the public funeral of lord nelson took place in st. paul's. then there came a meagre line addressed to the family in general. bob's new portsmouth attachment was not mentioned, but he told them he had been one of the eight-and-forty seamen who walked two-and-two in the funeral procession, and that captain hardy had borne the banner of emblems on the same occasion. the crew was soon to be paid off at chatham, when he thought of returning to portsmouth for a few days to see a valued friend. after that he should come home. but the spring advanced without bringing him, and john watched anne garland's desolation with augmenting desire to do something towards consoling her. the old feelings, so religiously held in check, were stimulated to rebelliousness, though they did not show themselves in any direct manner as yet. the miller, in the meantime, who seldom interfered in such matters, was observed to look meaningly at anne and the trumpet-major from day to day; and by-and-by he spoke privately to john. his words were short and to the point: anne was very melancholy; she had thought too much of bob. now 'twas plain that they had lost him for many years to come. well; he had always felt that of the two he would rather john married her. now john might settle down there, and succeed where bob had failed. 'so if you could get her, my sonny, to think less of him and more of thyself, it would be a good thing for all.' an inward excitement had risen in john; but he suppressed it and said firmly-- 'fairness to bob before everything!' 'he hev forgot her, and there's an end on't.' 'she's not forgot him.' 'well, well; think it over.' this discourse was the cause of his penning a letter to his brother. he begged for a distinct statement whether, as john at first supposed, bob's verbal renunciation of anne on the quay had been only a momentary ebullition of friendship, which it would be cruel to take literally; or whether, as seemed now, it had passed from a hasty resolve to a standing purpose, persevered in for his own pleasure, with not a care for the result on poor anne. john waited anxiously for the answer, but no answer came; and the silence seemed even more significant than a letter of assurance could have been of his absolution from further support to a claim which bob himself had so clearly renounced. thus it happened that paternal pressure, brotherly indifference, and his own released impulse operated in one delightful direction, and the trumpet-major once more approached anne as in the old time. but it was not till she had been left to herself for a full five months, and the blue-bells and ragged-robins of the following year were again making themselves common to the rambling eye, that he directly addressed her. she was tying up a group of tall flowering plants in the garden: she knew that he was behind her, but she did not turn. she had subsided into a placid dignity which enabled her when watched to perform any little action with seeming composure--very different from the flutter of her inexperienced days. 'are you never going to turn round?' he at length asked good-humouredly. she then did turn, and looked at him for a moment without speaking; a certain suspicion looming in her eyes, as if suggested by his perceptible want of ease. 'how like summer it is getting to feel, is it not?' she said. john admitted that it was getting to feel like summer: and, bending his gaze upon her with an earnestness which no longer left any doubt of his subject, went on to ask-- 'have you ever in these last weeks thought of how it used to be between us?' she replied quickly, 'o, john, you shouldn't begin that again. i am almost another woman now!' 'well, that's all the more reason why i should, isn't it?' anne looked thoughtfully to the other end of the garden, faintly shaking her head; 'i don't quite see it like that,' she returned. 'you feel yourself quite free, don't you?' '_quite_ free!' she said instantly, and with proud distinctness; her eyes fell, and she repeated more slowly, 'quite free.' then her thoughts seemed to fly from herself to him. 'but you are not?' 'i am not?' 'miss johnson!' 'o--that woman! you know as well as i that was all make-up, and that i never for a moment thought of her.' 'i had an idea you were acting; but i wasn't sure.' 'well, that's nothing now. anne, i want to relieve your life; to cheer you in some way; to make some amends for my brother's bad conduct. if you cannot love me, liking will be well enough. i have thought over every side of it so many times--for months have i been thinking it over--and i am at last sure that i do right to put it to you in this way. that i don't wrong bob i am quite convinced. as far as he is concerned we be both free. had i not been sure of that i would never have spoken. father wants me to take on the mill, and it will please him if you can give me one little hope; it will make the house go on altogether better if you can think o' me.' 'you are generous and good, john,' she said, as a big round tear bowled helter-skelter down her face and hat-strings. 'i am not that; i fear i am quite the opposite,' he said, without looking at her. 'it would be all gain to me-- but you have not answered my question.' she lifted her eyes. 'john, i cannot!' she said, with a cheerless smile. 'positively i cannot. will you make me a promise?' 'what is it?' 'i want you to promise first-- yes, it is dreadfully unreasonable,' she added, in a mild distress. 'but do promise!' john by this time seemed to have a feeling that it was all up with him for the present. 'i promise,' he said listlessly. 'it is that you won't speak to me about this for _ever_ so long,' she returned, with emphatic kindliness. 'very good,' he replied; 'very good. dear anne, you don't think i have been unmanly or unfair in starting this anew?' anne looked into his face without a smile. 'you have been perfectly natural,' she murmured. 'and so i think have i.' john, mournfully: 'you will not avoid me for this, or be afraid of me? i will not break my word. i will not worry you any more.' 'thank you, john. you need not have said worry; it isn't that.' 'well, i am very blind and stupid. i have been hurting your heart all the time without knowing it. it is my fate, i suppose. men who love women the very best always blunder and give more pain than those who love them less.' anne laid one of her hands on the other as she softly replied, looking down at them, 'no one loves me as well as you, john; nobody in the world is so worthy to be loved; and yet i cannot anyhow love you rightly.' and lifting her eyes, 'but i do so feel for you that i will try as hard as i can to think about you.' 'well, that is something,' he said, smiling. 'you say i must not speak about it again for ever so long; how long?' 'now that's not fair,' anne retorted, going down the garden, and leaving him alone. about a week passed. then one afternoon the miller walked up to anne indoors, a weighty topic being expressed in his tread. 'i was so glad, my honey,' he began, with a knowing smile, 'to see that from the mill-window last week.' he flung a nod in the direction of the garden. anne innocently inquired what it could be. 'jack and you in the garden together,' he continued laying his hand gently on her shoulder and stroking it. 'it would so please me, my dear little girl, if you could get to like him better than that weathercock, master bob.' anne shook her head; not in forcible negation, but to imply a kind of neutrality. 'can't you? come now,' said the miller. she threw back her head with a little laugh of grievance. 'how you all beset me!' she expostulated. 'it makes me feel very wicked in not obeying you, and being faithful--faithful to--' but she could not trust that side of the subject to words. 'why would it please you so much?' she asked. 'john is as steady and staunch a fellow as ever blowed a trumpet. i've always thought you might do better with him than with bob. now i've a plan for taking him into the mill, and letting him have a comfortable time o't after his long knocking about; but so much depends upon you that i must bide a bit till i see what your pleasure is about the poor fellow. mind, my dear, i don't want to force ye; i only just ask ye.' anne meditatively regarded the miller from under her shady eyelids, the fingers of one hand playing a silent tattoo on her bosom. 'i don't know what to say to you,' she answered brusquely, and went away. but these discourses were not without their effect upon the extremely conscientious mind of anne. they were, moreover, much helped by an incident which took place one evening in the autumn of this year, when john came to tea. anne was sitting on a low stool in front of the fire, her hands clasped across her knee. john loveday had just seated himself on a chair close behind her, and mrs. loveday was in the act of filling the teapot from the kettle which hung in the chimney exactly above anne. the kettle slipped forward suddenly, whereupon john jumped from the chair and put his own two hands over anne's just in time to shield them, and the precious knee she clasped, from the jet of scalding water which had directed itself upon that point. the accidental overflow was instantly checked by mrs. loveday; but what had come was received by the devoted trumpet-major on the back of his hands. anne, who had hardly been aware that he was behind her, started up like a person awakened from a trance. 'what have you done to yourself, poor john, to keep it off me!' she cried, looking at his hands. john reddened emotionally at her words, 'it is a bit of a scald, that's all,' he replied, drawing a finger across the back of one hand, and bringing off the skin by the touch. 'you are scalded painfully, and i not at all!' she gazed into his kind face as she had never gazed there before, and when mrs. loveday came back with oil and other liniments for the wound anne would let nobody dress it but herself. it seemed as if her coyness had all gone, and when she had done all that lay in her power she still sat by him. at his departure she said what she had never said to him in her life before: 'come again soon!' in short, that impulsive act of devotion, the last of a series of the same tenor, had been the added drop which finally turned the wheel. john's character deeply impressed her. his determined steadfastness to his lode star won her admiration, the more especially as that star was herself. she began to wonder more and more how she could have so persistently held out against his advances before bob came home to renew girlish memories which had by that time got considerably weakened. could she not, after all, please the miller, and try to listen to john? by so doing she would make a worthy man happy, the only sacrifice being at worst that of her unworthy self, whose future was no longer valuable. 'as for bob, the woman is to be pitied who loves him,' she reflected indignantly, and persuaded herself that, whoever the woman might be, she was not anne garland. after this there was something of recklessness and something of pleasantry in the young girl's manner of making herself an example of the triumph of pride and common sense over memory and sentiment. her attitude had been epitomized in her defiant singing at the time she learnt that bob was not leal and true. john, as was inevitable, came again almost immediately, drawn thither by the sun of her first smile on him, and the words which had accompanied it. and now instead of going off to her little pursuits upstairs, downstairs, across the room, in the corner, or to any place except where he happened to be, as had been her custom hitherto, she remained seated near him, returning interesting answers to his general remarks, and at every opportunity letting him know that at last he had found favour in her eyes. the day was fine, and they went out of doors, where anne endeavoured to seat herself on the sloping stone of the window-sill. 'how good you have become lately,' said john, standing over her and smiling in the sunlight which blazed against the wall. 'i fancy you have stayed at home this afternoon on my account.' 'perhaps i have,' she said gaily-- '"do whatever we may for him, dame, we cannot do too much! for he's one that has guarded our land." 'and he has done more than that: he has saved me from a dreadful scalding. the back of your hand will not be well for a long time, john, will it?' he held out his hand to regard its condition, and the next natural thing was to take hers. there was a glow upon his face when he did it: his star was at last on a fair way towards the zenith after its long and weary declination. the least penetrating eye could have perceived that anne had resolved to let him woo, possibly in her temerity to let him win. whatever silent sorrow might be locked up in her, it was by this time thrust a long way down from the light. 'i want you to go somewhere with me if you will,' he said, still holding her hand. 'yes? where is it?' he pointed to a distant hill-side which, hitherto green, had within the last few days begun to show scratches of white on its face. 'up there,' he said. 'i see little figures of men moving about. what are they doing?' 'cutting out a huge picture of the king on horseback in the earth of the hill. the king's head is to be as big as our mill-pond and his body as big as this garden; he and the horse will cover more than an acre. when shall we go?' 'whenever you please,' said she. 'john!' cried mrs. loveday from the front door. 'here's a friend come for you.' john went round, and found his trusty lieutenant, trumpeter buck, waiting for him. a letter had come to the barracks for john in his absence, and the trumpeter, who was going for a walk, had brought it along with him. buck then entered the mill to discuss, if possible, a mug of last year's mead with the miller; and john proceeded to read his letter, anne being still round the corner where he had left her. when he had read a few words he turned as pale as a sheet, but he did not move, and perused the writing to the end. afterwards he laid his elbow against the wall, and put his palm to his head, thinking with painful intentness. then he took himself vigorously in hand, as it were, and gradually became natural again. when he parted from anne to go home with buck she noticed nothing different in him. in barracks that evening he read the letter again. it was from bob; and the agitating contents were these:-- 'dear john,--i have drifted off from writing till the present time because i have not been clear about my feelings; but i have discovered them at last, and can say beyond doubt that i mean to be faithful to my dearest anne after all. the fact is, john, i've got into a bit of a scrape, and i've a secret to tell you about it (which must go no further on any account). on landing last autumn i fell in with a young woman, and we got rather warm as folks do; in short, we liked one another well enough for a while. but i have got into shoal water with her, and have found her to be a terrible take-in. nothing in her at all--no sense, no niceness, all tantrums and empty noise, john, though she seemed monstrous clever at first. so my heart comes back to its old anchorage. i hope my return to faithfulness will make no difference to you. but as you showed by your looks at our parting that you should not accept my offer to give her up--made in too much haste, as i have since found--i feel that you won't mind that i have returned to the path of honour. i dare not write to anne as yet, and please do not let her know a word about the other young woman, or there will be the devil to pay. i shall come home and make all things right, please god. in the meantime i should take it as a kindness, john, if you would keep a brotherly eye upon anne, and guide her mind back to me. i shall die of sorrow if anybody sets her against me, for my hopes are getting bound up in her again quite strong. hoping you are jovial, as times go, i am,--your affectionate brother, robert.' when the cold daylight fell upon john's face, as he dressed himself next morning, the incipient yesterday's wrinkle in his forehead had become permanently graven there. he had resolved, for the sake of that only brother whom he had nursed as a baby, instructed as a child, and protected and loved always, to pause in his procedure for the present, and at least do nothing to hinder bob's restoration to favour, if a genuine, even though temporarily smothered, love for anne should still hold possession of him. but having arranged to take her to see the excavated figure of the king, he started for overcombe during the day, as if nothing had occurred to check the smooth course of his love. xxxviii. a delicate situation 'i am ready to go,' said anne, as soon as he arrived. he paused as if taken aback by her readiness, and replied with much uncertainty, 'would it--wouldn't it be better to put it off till there is less sun?' the very slightest symptom of surprise arose in her as she rejoined, 'but the weather may change; or had we better not go at all?' 'o no!--it was only a thought. we will start at once.' and along the vale they went, john keeping himself about a yard from her right hand. when the third field had been crossed they came upon half-a- dozen little boys at play. 'why don't he clasp her to his side, like a man?' said the biggest and rudest boy. 'why don't he clasp her to his side, like a man?' echoed all the rude smaller boys in a chorus. the trumpet-major turned, and, after some running, succeeded in smacking two of them with his switch, returning to anne breathless. 'i am ashamed they should have insulted you so,' he said, blushing for her. 'they said no harm, poor boys,' she replied reproachfully. poor john was dumb with perception. the gentle hint upon which he would have eagerly spoken only one short day ago was now like fire to his wound. they presently came to some stepping-stones across a brook. john crossed first without turning his head, and anne, just lifting the skirt of her dress, crossed behind him. when they had reached the other side a village girl and a young shepherd approached the brink to cross. anne stopped and watched them. the shepherd took a hand of the young girl in each of his own, and walked backward over the stones, facing her, and keeping her upright by his grasp, both of them laughing as they went. 'what are you staying for, miss garland?' asked john. 'i was only thinking how happy they are,' she said quietly; and withdrawing her eyes from the tender pair, she turned and followed him, not knowing that the seeming sound of a passing bumble-bee was a suppressed groan from john. when they reached the hill they found forty navvies at work removing the dark sod so as to lay bare the chalk beneath. the equestrian figure that their shovels were forming was scarcely intelligible to john and anne now they were close, and after pacing from the horse's head down his breast to his hoof, back by way of the king's bridle-arm, past the bridge of his nose, and into his cocked-hat, anne said that she had had enough of it, and stepped out of the chalk clearing upon the grass. the trumpet-major had remained all the time in a melancholy attitude within the rowel of his majesty's right spur. 'my shoes are caked with chalk,' she said as they walked downwards again; and she drew back her dress to look at them. 'how can i get some of it cleared off?' 'if you was to wipe them in the long grass there,' said john, pointing to a spot where the blades were rank and dense, 'some of it would come off.' having said this, he walked on with religious firmness. anne raked her little feet on the right side, on the left side, over the toe, and behind the heel; but the tenacious chalk held its own. panting with her exertion, she gave it up, and at length overtook him. 'i hope it is right now?' he said, looking gingerly over his shoulder. 'no, indeed!' said she. 'i wanted some assistance--some one to steady me. it is so hard to stand on one foot and wipe the other without support. i was in danger of toppling over, and so gave it up.' 'merciful stars, what an opportunity!' thought the poor fellow while she waited for him to offer help. but his lips remained closed, and she went on with a pouting smile-- 'you seem in such a hurry! why are you in such a hurry? after all the fine things you have said about--about caring so much for me, and all that, you won't stop for anything!' it was too much for john. 'upon my heart and life, my dea--' he began. here bob's letter crackled warningly in his waistcoat pocket as he laid his hand asseveratingly upon his breast, and he became suddenly scaled up to dumbness and gloom as before. when they reached home anne sank upon a stool outside the door, fatigued with her excursion. her first act was to try to pull off her shoe--it was a difficult matter; but john stood beating with his switch the leaves of the creeper on the wall. 'mother--david--molly, or somebody--do come and help me pull off these dirty shoes!' she cried aloud at last. 'nobody helps me in anything!' 'i am very sorry,' said john, coming towards her with incredible slowness and an air of unutterable depression. 'o, i can do without _you_. david is best,' she returned, as the old man approached and removed the obnoxious shoes in a trice. anne was amazed at this sudden change from devotion to crass indifference. on entering her room she flew to the glass, almost expecting to learn that some extraordinary change had come over her pretty countenance, rendering her intolerable for evermore. but it was, if anything, fresher than usual, on account of the exercise. 'well!' she said retrospectively. for the first time since their acqaintance she had this week encouraged him; and for the first time he had shown that encouragement was useless. 'but perhaps he does not clearly understand,' she added serenely. when he next came it was, to her surprise, to bring her newspapers, now for some time discontinued. as soon as she saw them she said, 'i do not care for newspapers.' 'the shipping news is very full and long to-day, though the print is rather small.' 'i take no further interest in the shipping news,' she replied with cold dignity. she was sitting by the window, inside the table, and hence when, in spite of her negations, he deliberately unfolded the paper and began to read about the royal navy she could hardly rise and go away. with a stoical mien he read on to the end of the report, bringing out the name of bob's ship with tremendous force. 'no,' she said at last, 'i'll hear no more! let me read to you.' the trumpet-major sat down. anne turned to the military news, delivering every detail with much apparent enthusiasm. 'that's the subject _i_ like!' she said fervently. 'but--but bob is in the navy now, and will most likely rise to be an officer. and then--' 'what is there like the army?' she interrupted. 'there is no smartness about sailors. they waddle like ducks, and they only fight stupid battles that no one can form any idea of. there is no science nor stratagem in sea-fights--nothing more than what you see when two rams run their heads together in a field to knock each other down. but in military battles there is such art, and such splendour, and the men are so smart, particularly the horse-soldiers. o, i shall never forget what gallant men you all seemed when you came and pitched your tents on the downs! i like the cavalry better than anything i know; and the dragoons the best of the cavalry--and the trumpeters the best of the dragoons!' 'o, if it had but come a little sooner!' moaned john within him. he replied as soon as he could regain self-command, 'i am glad bob is in the navy at last--he is so much more fitted for that than the merchant-service--so brave by nature, ready for any daring deed. i have heard ever so much more about his doings on board the victory. captain hardy took special notice that when he--' 'i don't want to know anything more about it,' said anne impatiently; 'of course sailors fight; there's nothing else to do in a ship, since you can't run away! you may as well fight and be killed as be killed not fighting.' 'still it is his character to be careless of himself where the honour of his country is concerned,' john pleaded. 'if you had only known him as a boy you would own it. he would always risk his own life to save anybody else's. once when a cottage was afire up the lane he rushed in for a baby, although he was only a boy himself, and he had the narrowest escape. we have got his hat now with the hole burnt in it. shall i get it and show it to you?' 'no--i don't wish it. it has nothing to do with me.' but as he persisted in his course towards the door, she added, 'ah! you are leaving because i am in your way. you want to be alone while you read the paper--i will go at once. i did not see that i was interrupting you.' and she rose as if to retreat. 'no, no! i would rather be interrupted by _you_ than--o, miss garland, excuse me! i'll just speak to father in the mill, now i am here.' it is scarcely necessary to state that anne (whose unquestionable gentility amid somewhat homely surroundings has been many times insisted on in the course of this history) was usually the reverse of a woman with a coming-on disposition; but, whether from pique at his manner, or from wilful adherence to a course rashly resolved on, or from coquettish maliciousness in reaction from long depression, or from any other thing,--so it was that she would not let him go. 'trumpet-major,' she said, recalling him. 'yes?' he replied timidly. 'the bow of my cap-ribbon has come untied, has it not?' she turned and fixed her bewitching glance upon him. the bow was just over her forehead, or, more precisely, at the point where the organ of comparison merges in that of benevolence, according to the phrenological theory of gall. john, thus brought to, endeavoured to look at the bow in a skimming, duck-and-drake fashion, so as to avoid dipping his own glance as far as to the plane of his interrogator's eyes. 'it is untied,' he said, drawing back a little. she came nearer, and asked, 'will you tie it for me, please?' as there was no help for it, he nerved himself and assented. as her head only reached to his fourth button she necessarily looked up for his convenience, and john began fumbling at the bow. try as he would it was impossible to touch the ribbon without getting his finger tips mixed with the curls of her forehead. 'your hand shakes--ah! you have been walking fast,' she said. 'yes--yes.' 'have you almost done it?' she inquiringly directed her gaze upward through his fingers. 'no--not yet,' he faltered in a warm sweat of emotion, his heart going like a flail. 'then be quick, please.' 'yes, i will, miss garland! b-b-bob is a very good fel--' 'not that man's name to me!' she interrupted. john was silent instantly, and nothing was to be heard but the rustling of the ribbon; till his hands once more blundered among the curls, and then touched her forehead. 'o good god!' ejaculated the trumpet-major in a whisper, turning away hastily to the corner-cupboard, and resting his face upon his hand. 'what's the matter, john?' said she. 'i can't do it!' 'what?' 'tie your cap-ribbon.' 'why not?' 'because you are so--because i am clumsy, and never could tie a bow.' 'you are clumsy indeed,' answered anne, and went away. after this she felt injured, for it seemed to show that he rated her happiness as of meaner value than bob's; since he had persisted in his idea of giving bob another chance when she had implied that it was her wish to do otherwise. could miss johnson have anything to do with his firmness? an opportunity of testing him in this direction occurred some days later. she had been up the village, and met john at the mill-door. 'have you heard the news? matilda johnson is going to be married to young derriman.' anne stood with her back to the sun, and as he faced her, his features were searchingly exhibited. there was no change whatever in them, unless it were that a certain light of interest kindled by her question turned to complete and blank indifference. 'well, as times go, it is not a bad match for her,' he said, with a phlegm which was hardly that of a lover. john on his part was beginning to find these temptations almost more than he could bear. but being quartered so near to his father's house it was unnatural not to visit him, especially when at any moment the regiment might be ordered abroad, and a separation of years ensue; and as long as he went there he could not help seeing her. the year changed from green to gold, and from gold to grey, but little change came over the house of loveday. during the last twelve months bob had been occasionally heard of as upholding his country's honour in denmark, the west indies, gibraltar, malta, and other places about the globe, till the family received a short letter stating that he had arrived again at portsmouth. at portsmouth bob seemed disposed to remain, for though some time elapsed without further intelligence, the gallant seaman never appeared at overcombe. then on a sudden john learnt that bob's long-talked-of promotion for signal services rendered was to be an accomplished fact. the trumpet-major at once walked off to overcombe, and reached the village in the early afternoon. not one of the family was in the house at the moment, and john strolled onwards over the hill towards casterbridge, without much thought of direction till, lifting his eyes, he beheld anne garland wandering about with a little basket upon her arm. at first john blushed with delight at the sweet vision; but, recalled by his conscience, the blush of delight was at once mangled and slain. he looked for a means of retreat. but the field was open, and a soldier was a conspicuous object: there was no escaping her. 'it was kind of you to come,' she said, with an inviting smile. 'it was quite by accident,' he answered, with an indifferent laugh. 'i thought you was at home.' anne blushed and said nothing, and they rambled on together. in the middle of the field rose a fragment of stone wall in the form of a gable, known as faringdon ruin; and when they had reached it john paused and politely asked her if she were not a little tired with walking so far. no particular reply was returned by the young lady, but they both stopped, and anne seated herself on a stone, which had fallen from the ruin to the ground. 'a church once stood here,' observed john in a matter-of-fact tone. 'yes, i have often shaped it out in my mind,' she returned. 'here where i sit must have been the altar.' 'true; this standing bit of wall was the chancel end.' anne had been adding up her little studies of the trumpet-major's character, and was surprised to find how the brightness of that character increased in her eyes with each examination. a kindly and gentle sensation was again aroused in her. here was a neglected heroic man, who, loving her to distraction, deliberately doomed himself to pensive shade to avoid even the appearance of standing in a brother's way. 'if the altar stood here, hundreds of people have been made man and wife just there, in past times,' she said, with calm deliberateness, throwing a little stone on a spot about a yard westward. john annihilated another tender burst and replied, 'yes, this field used to be a village. my grandfather could call to mind when there were houses here. but the squire pulled 'em down, because poor folk were an eyesore to him.' 'do you know, john, what you once asked me to do?' she continued, not accepting the digression, and turning her eyes upon him. 'in what sort of way?' 'in the matter of my future life, and yours.' 'i am afraid i don't.' 'john loveday!' he turned his back upon her for a moment, that she might not see his face. 'ah--i do remember,' he said at last, in a dry, small, repressed voice. 'well--need i say more? isn't it sufficient?' 'it would be sufficient,' answered the unhappy man. 'but--' she looked up with a reproachful smile, and shook her head. 'that summer,' she went on, 'you asked me ten times if you asked me once. i am older now; much more of a woman, you know; and my opinion is changed about some people; especially about one.' 'o anne, anne!' he burst out as, racked between honour and desire, he snatched up her hand. the next moment it fell heavily to her lap. he had absolutely relinquished it half-way to his lips. 'i have been thinking lately,' he said, with preternaturally sudden calmness, 'that men of the military profession ought not to m--ought to be like st. paul, i mean.' 'fie, john; pretending religion!' she said sternly. 'it isn't that at all. _it's bob_!' 'yes!' cried the miserable trumpet-major. 'i have had a letter from him to-day.' he pulled out a sheet of paper from his breast. 'that's it! he's promoted--he's a lieutenant, and appointed to a sloop that only cruises on our own coast, so that he'll be at home on leave half his time--he'll be a gentleman some day, and worthy of you!' he threw the letter into her lap, and drew back to the other side of the gable-wall. anne jumped up from her seat, flung away the letter without looking at it, and went hastily on. john did not attempt to overtake her. picking up the letter, he followed in her wake at a distance of a hundred yards. but, though anne had withdrawn from his presence thus precipitately, she never thought more highly of him in her life than she did five minutes afterwards, when the excitement of the moment had passed. she saw it all quite clearly; and his self-sacrifice impressed her so much that the effect was just the reverse of what he had been aiming to produce. the more he pleaded for bob, the more her perverse generosity pleaded for john. to-day the crisis had come--with what results she had not foreseen. as soon as the trumpet-major reached the nearest pen-and-ink he flung himself into a seat and wrote wildly to bob:-- 'dear robert,--i write these few lines to let you know that if you want anne garland you must come at once--you must come instantly, and post-haste--_or she will be gone_! somebody else wants her, and she wants him! it is your last chance, in the opinion of-- 'your faithful brother and well-wisher, 'john. 'p.s.--glad to hear of your promotion. tell me the day and i'll meet the coach.' xxxix. bob loveday struts up and down one night, about a week later, two men were walking in the dark along the turnpike road towards overcombe, one of them with a bag in his hand. 'now,' said the taller of the two, the squareness of whose shoulders signified that he wore epaulettes, 'now you must do the best you can for yourself, bob. i have done all i can; but th'hast thy work cut out, i can tell thee.' 'i wouldn't have run such a risk for the world,' said the other, in a tone of ingenuous contrition. 'but thou'st see, jack, i didn't think there was any danger, knowing you was taking care of her, and keeping my place warm for me. i didn't hurry myself, that's true; but, thinks i, if i get this promotion i am promised i shall naturally have leave, and then i'll go and see 'em all. gad, i shouldn't have been here now but for your letter!' 'you little think what risks you've run,' said his brother. 'however, try to make up for lost time.' 'all right. and whatever you do, jack, don't say a word about this other girl. hang the girl!--i was a great fool, i know; still, it is over now, and i am come to my senses. i suppose anne never caught a capful of wind from that quarter?' 'she knows all about it,' said john seriously. 'knows? by george, then, i'm ruined!' said bob, standing stock-still in the road as if he meant to remain there all night. 'that's what i meant by saying it would be a hard battle for 'ee,' returned john, with the same quietness as before. bob sighed and moved on. 'i don't deserve that woman!' he cried passionately, thumping his three upper ribs with his fist. 'i've thought as much myself,' observed john, with a dryness which was almost bitter. 'but it depends on how thou'st behave in future.' 'john,' said bob, taking his brother's hand, 'i'll be a new man. i solemnly swear by that eternal milestone staring at me there that i'll never look at another woman with the thought of marrying her whilst that darling is free--no, not if she be a mermaiden of light! it's a lucky thing that i'm slipped in on the quarterdeck! it may help me with her--hey?' 'it may with her mother; i don't think it will make much difference with anne. still, it is a good thing; and i hope that some day you'll command a big ship.' bob shook his head. 'officers are scarce; but i'm afraid my luck won't carry me so far as that.' 'did she ever tell you that she mentioned your name to the king?' the seaman stood still again. 'never!' he said. 'how did such a thing as that happen, in heaven's name?' john described in detail, and they walked on, lost in conjecture. as soon as they entered the house the returned officer of the navy was welcomed with acclamation by his father and david, with mild approval by mrs. loveday, and by anne not at all--that discreet maiden having carefully retired to her own room some time earlier in the evening. bob did not dare to ask for her in any positive manner; he just inquired about her health, and that was all. 'why, what's the matter with thy face, my son?' said the miller, staring. 'david, show a light here.' and a candle was thrust against bob's cheek, where there appeared a jagged streak like the geological remains of a lobster. 'o--that's where that rascally frenchman's grenade busted and hit me from the redoubtable, you know, as i told 'ee in my letter.' 'not a word!' 'what, didn't i tell 'ee? ah, no; i meant to, but i forgot it.' 'and here's a sort of dint in yer forehead too; what do that mean, my dear boy?' said the miller, putting his finger in a chasm in bob's skull. 'that was done in the indies. yes, that was rather a troublesome chop--a cutlass did it. i should have told 'ee, but i found 'twould make my letter so long that i put it off, and put it off; and at last thought it wasn't worth while.' john soon rose to take his departure. 'it's all up with me and her, you see,' said bob to him outside the door. 'she's not even going to see me.' 'wait a little,' said the trumpet-major. it was easy enough on the night of the arrival, in the midst of excitement, when blood was warm, for anne to be resolute in her avoidance of bob loveday. but in the morning determination is apt to grow invertebrate; rules of pugnacity are less easily acted up to, and a feeling of live and let live takes possession of the gentle soul. anne had not meant even to sit down to the same breakfast-table with bob; but when the rest were assembled, and had got some way through the substantial repast which was served at this hour in the miller's house, anne entered. she came silently as a phantom, her eyes cast down, her cheeks pale. it was a good long walk from the door to the table, and bob made a full inspection of her as she came up to a chair at the remotest corner, in the direct rays of the morning light, where she dumbly sat herself down. it was altogether different from how she had expected. here was she, who had done nothing, feeling all the embarrassment; and bob, who had done the wrong, feeling apparently quite at ease. 'you'll speak to bob, won't you, honey?' said the miller after a silence. to meet bob like this after an absence seemed irregular in his eyes. 'if he wish me to,' she replied, so addressing the miller that no part, scrap, or outlying beam whatever of her glance passed near the subject of her remark. 'he's a lieutenant, you know, dear,' said her mother on the same side; 'and he's been dreadfully wounded.' 'oh?' said anne, turning a little towards the false one; at which bob felt it to be time for him to put in a spoke for himself. 'i am glad to see you,' he said contritely; 'and how do you do?' 'very well, thank you.' he extended his hand. she allowed him to take hers, but only to the extent of a niggardly inch or so. at the same moment she glanced up at him, when their eyes met, and hers were again withdrawn. the hitch between the two younger members of the household tended to make the breakfast a dull one. bob was so depressed by her unforgiving manner that he could not throw that sparkle into his stories which their substance naturally required; and when the meal was over, and they went about their different businesses, the pair resembled the two dromios in seldom or never being, thanks to anne's subtle contrivances, both in the same room at the same time. this kind of performance repeated itself during several days. at last, after dogging her hither and thither, leaning with a wrinkled forehead against doorposts, taking an oblique view into the room where she happened to be, picking up worsted balls and getting no thanks, placing a splinter from the victory, several bullets from the redoubtable, a strip of the flag, and other interesting relics, carefully labelled, upon her table, and hearing no more about them than if they had been pebbles from the nearest brook, he hit upon a new plan. to avoid him she frequently sat upstairs in a window overlooking the garden. lieutenant loveday carefully dressed himself in a new uniform, which he had caused to be sent some days before, to dazzle admiring friends, but which he had never as yet put on in public or mentioned to a soul. when arrayed he entered the sunny garden, and there walked slowly up and down as he had seen nelson and captain hardy do on the quarter-deck; but keeping his right shoulder, on which his one epaulette was fixed, as much towards anne's window as possible. but she made no sign, though there was not the least question that she saw him. at the end of half-an-hour he went in, took off his clothes, and gave himself up to doubt and the best tobacco. he repeated the programme on the next afternoon, and on the next, never saying a word within doors about his doings or his notice. meanwhile the results in anne's chamber were not uninteresting. she had been looking out on the first day, and was duly amazed to see a naval officer in full uniform promenading in the path. finding it to be bob, she left the window with a sense that the scene was not for her; then, from mere curiosity, peeped out from behind the curtain. well, he was a pretty spectacle, she admitted, relieved as his figure was by a dense mass of sunny, close-trimmed hedge, over which nasturtiums climbed in wild luxuriance; and if she could care for him one bit, which she couldn't, his form would have been a delightful study, surpassing in interest even its splendour on the memorable day of their visit to the town theatre. she called her mother; mrs. loveday came promptly. 'o, it is nothing,' said anne indifferently; 'only that bob has got his uniform.' mrs. loveday peeped out, and raised her hands with delight. 'and he has not said a word to us about it! what a lovely epaulette! i must call his father.' 'no, indeed. as i take no interest in him i shall not let people come into my room to admire him.' 'well, you called me,' said her mother. 'it was because i thought you liked fine clothes. it is what i don't care for.' notwithstanding this assertion she again looked out at bob the next afternoon when his footsteps rustled on the gravel, and studied his appearance under all the varying angles of the sunlight, as if fine clothes and uniforms were not altogether a matter of indifference. he certainly was a splendid, gentlemanly, and gallant sailor from end to end of him; but then, what were a dashing presentment, a naval rank, and telling scars, if a man was fickle-hearted? however, she peeped on till the fourth day, and then she did not peep. the window was open, she looked right out, and bob knew that he had got a rise to his bait at last. he touched his hat to her, keeping his right shoulder forwards, and said, 'good-day, miss garland,' with a smile. anne replied, 'good-day,' with funereal seriousness; and the acquaintance thus revived led to the interchange of a few words at supper-time, at which mrs. loveday nodded with satisfaction. but anne took especial care that he should never meet her alone, and to insure this her ingenuity was in constant exercise. there were so many nooks and windings on the miller's rambling premises that she could never be sure he would not turn up within a foot of her, particularly as his thin shoes were almost noiseless. one fine afternoon she accompanied molly in search of elderberries for making the family wine which was drunk by mrs. loveday, anne, and anybody who could not stand the rougher and stronger liquors provided by the miller. after walking rather a long distance over the down they came to a grassy hollow, where elder-bushes in knots of twos and threes rose from an uneven bank and hung their heads towards the south, black and heavy with bunches of fruit. the charm of fruit-gathering to girls is enhanced in the case of elderberries by the inoffensive softness of the leaves, boughs, and bark, which makes getting into the branches easy and pleasant to the most indifferent climbers. anne and molly had soon gathered a basketful, and sending the servant home with it, anne remained in the bush picking and throwing down bunch by bunch upon the grass. she was so absorbed in her occupation of pulling the twigs towards her, and the rustling of their leaves so filled her ears, that it was a great surprise when, on turning her head, she perceived a similar movement to her own among the boughs of the adjoining bush. at first she thought they were disturbed by being partly in contact with the boughs of her bush; but in a moment robert loveday's face peered from them, at a distance of about a yard from her own. anne uttered a little indignant 'well!' recovered herself, and went on plucking. bob thereupon went on plucking likewise. 'i am picking elderberries for your mother,' said the lieutenant at last, humbly. 'so i see.' 'and i happen to have come to the next bush to yours.' 'so i see; but not the reason why.' anne was now in the westernmost branches of the bush, and bob had leant across into the eastern branches of his. in gathering he swayed towards her, back again, forward again. 'i beg pardon,' he said, when a further swing than usual had taken him almost in contact with her. 'then why do you do it?' 'the wind rocks the bough, and the bough rocks me.' she expressed by a look her opinion of this statement in the face of the gentlest breeze; and bob pursued: 'i am afraid the berries will stain your pretty hands.' 'i wear gloves.' 'ah, that's a plan i should never have thought of. can i help you?' 'not at all.' 'you are offended: that's what that means.' 'no,' she said. 'then will you shake hands?' anne hesitated; then slowly stretched out her hand, which he took at once. 'that will do,' she said, finding that he did not relinquish it immediately. but as he still held it, she pulled, the effect of which was to draw bob's swaying person, bough and all, towards her, and herself towards him. 'i am afraid to let go your hand,' said that officer, 'for if i do your spar will fly back, and you will be thrown upon the deck with great violence.' 'i wish you to let me go!' he accordingly did, and she flew back, but did not by any means fall. 'it reminds me of the times when i used to be aloft clinging to a yard not much bigger than this tree-stem, in the mid-atlantic, and thinking about you. i could see you in my fancy as plain as i see you now.' 'me, or some other woman!' retorted anne haughtily. 'no!' declared bob, shaking the bush for emphasis, 'i'll protest that i did not think of anybody but you all the time we were dropping down channel, all the time we were off cadiz, all the time through battles and bombardments. i seemed to see you in the smoke, and, thinks i, if i go to davy's locker, what will she do?' 'you didn't think that when you landed after trafalgar.' 'well, now,' said the lieutenant in a reasoning tone; 'that was a curious thing. you'll hardly believe it, maybe; but when a man is away from the woman he loves best in the port--world, i mean--he can have a sort of temporary feeling for another without disturbing the old one, which flows along under the same as ever.' 'i can't believe it, and won't,' said anne firmly. molly now appeared with the empty basket, and when it had been filled from the heap on the grass, anne went home with her, bidding loveday a frigid adieu. the same evening, when bob was absent, the miller proposed that they should all three go to an upper window of the house, to get a distant view of some rockets and illuminations which were to be exhibited in the town and harbour in honour of the king, who had returned this year as usual. they accordingly went upstairs to an empty attic, placed chairs against the window, and put out the light; anne sitting in the middle, her mother close by, and the miller behind, smoking. no sign of any pyrotechnic display was visible over the port as yet, and mrs. loveday passed the time by talking to the miller, who replied in monosyllables. while this was going on anne fancied that she heard some one approach, and presently felt sure that bob was drawing near her in the surrounding darkness; but as the other two had noticed nothing she said not a word. all at once the swarthy expanse of southward sky was broken by the blaze of several rockets simultaneously ascending from different ships in the roads. at the very same moment a warm mysterious hand slipped round her own, and gave it a gentle squeeze. 'o dear!' said anne, with a sudden start away. 'how nervous you are, child, to be startled by fireworks so far off,' said mrs. loveday. 'i never saw rockets before,' murmured anne, recovering from her surprise. mrs. loveday presently spoke again. 'i wonder what has become of bob?' anne did not reply, being much exercised in trying to get her hand away from the one that imprisoned it; and whatever the miller thought he kept to himself, because it disturbed his smoking to speak. another batch of rockets went up. 'o i never!' said anne, in a half-suppressed tone, springing in her chair. a second hand had with the rise of the rockets leapt round her waist. 'poor girl, you certainly must have change of scene at this rate,' said mrs. loveday. 'i suppose i must,' murmured the dutiful daughter. for some minutes nothing further occurred to disturb anne's serenity. then a slow, quiet 'a-hem' came from the obscurity of the apartment. 'what, bob? how long have you been there?' inquired mrs. loveday. 'not long,' said the lieutenant coolly. 'i heard you were all here, and crept up quietly, not to disturb ye.' 'why don't you wear heels to your shoes like christian people, and not creep about so like a cat?' 'well, it keeps your floors clean to go slip-shod.' 'that's true.' meanwhile anne was gently but firmly trying to pull bob's arm from her waist, her distressful difficulty being that in freeing her waist she enslaved her hand, and in getting her hand free she enslaved her waist. finding the struggle a futile one, owing to the invisibility of her antagonist, and her wish to keep its nature secret from the other two, she arose, and saying that she did not care to see any more, felt her way downstairs. bob followed, leaving loveday and his wife to themselves. 'dear anne,' he began, when he had got down, and saw her in the candle- light of the large room. but she adroitly passed out at the other door, at which he took a candle and followed her to the small room. 'dear anne, do let me speak,' he repeated, as soon as the rays revealed her figure. but she passed into the bakehouse before he could say more; whereupon he perseveringly did the same. looking round for her here he perceived her at the end of the room, where there were no means of exit whatever. 'dear anne,' he began again, setting down the candle, 'you must try to forgive me; really you must. i love you the best of anybody in the wide, wide world. try to forgive me; come!' and he imploringly took her hand. anne's bosom began to surge and fall like a small tide, her eyes remaining fixed upon the floor; till, when loveday ventured to draw her slightly towards him, she burst out crying. 'i don't like you, bob; i don't!' she suddenly exclaimed between her sobs. 'i did once, but i don't now--i can't, i can't; you have been very cruel to me!' she violently turned away, weeping. 'i have, i have been terribly bad, i know,' answered bob, conscience-stricken by her grief. 'but--if you could only forgive me--i promise that i'll never do anything to grieve 'ee again. do you forgive me, anne?' anne's only reply was crying and shaking her head. 'let's make it up. come, say we have made it up, dear.' she withdrew her hand, and still keeping her eyes buried in her handkerchief, said 'no.' 'very well, then!' exclaimed bob, with sudden determination. 'now i know my doom! and whatever you hear of as happening to me, mind this, you cruel girl, that it is all your causing!' saying this he strode with a hasty tread across the room into the passage and out at the door, slamming it loudly behind him. anne suddenly looked up from her handkerchief, and stared with round wet eyes and parted lips at the door by which he had gone. having remained with suspended breath in this attitude for a few seconds she turned round, bent her head upon the table, and burst out weeping anew with thrice the violence of the former time. it really seemed now as if her grief would overwhelm her, all the emotions which had been suppressed, bottled up, and concealed since bob's return having made themselves a sluice at last. but such things have their end; and left to herself in the large, vacant, old apartment, she grew quieter, and at last calm. at length she took the candle and ascended to her bedroom, where she bathed her eyes and looked in the glass to see if she had made herself a dreadful object. it was not so bad as she had expected, and she went downstairs again. nobody was there, and, sitting down, she wondered what bob had really meant by his words. it was too dreadful to think that he intended to go straight away to sea without seeing her again, and frightened at what she had done she waited anxiously for his return. xl. a call on business her suspense was interrupted by a very gentle tapping at the door, and then the rustle of a hand over its surface, as if searching for the latch in the dark. the door opened a few inches, and the alabaster face of uncle benjy appeared in the slit. 'o, squire derriman, you frighten me!' 'all alone?' he asked in a whisper. 'my mother and mr. loveday are somewhere about the house.' 'that will do,' he said, coming forward. 'i be wherrited out of my life, and i have thought of you again--you yourself, dear anne, and not the miller. if you will only take this and lock it up for a few days till i can find another good place for it--if you only would!' and he breathlessly deposited the tin box on the table. 'what, obliged to dig it up from the cellar?' 'ay; my nephew hath a scent of the place--how, i don't know! but he and a young woman he's met with are searching everywhere. i worked like a wire- drawer to get it up and away while they were scraping in the next cellar. now where could ye put it, dear? 'tis only a few documents, and my will, and such like, you know. poor soul o' me, i'm worn out with running and fright!' 'i'll put it here till i can think of a better place,' said anne, lifting the box. 'dear me, how heavy it is!' 'yes, yes,' said uncle benjy hastily; 'the box is iron, you see. however, take care of it, because i am going to make it worth your while. ah, you are a good girl, anne. i wish you was mine!' anne looked at uncle benjy. she had known for some time that she possessed all the affection he had to bestow. 'why do you wish that?' she said simply. 'now don't ye argue with me. where d'ye put the coffer?' 'here,' said anne, going to the window-seat, which rose as a flap, disclosing a boxed receptacle beneath, as in many old houses. ''tis very well for the present,' he said dubiously, and they dropped the coffer in, anne locking down the seat, and giving him the key. 'now i don't want ye to be on my side for nothing,' he went on. 'i never did now, did i? this is for you.' he handed her a little packet of paper, which anne turned over and looked at curiously. 'i always meant to do it,' continued uncle benjy, gazing at the packet as it lay in her hand, and sighing. 'come, open it, my dear; i always meant to do it!' she opened it and found twenty new guineas snugly packed within. 'yes, they are for you. i always meant to do it!' he said, sighing again. 'but you owe me nothing!' returned anne, holding them out. 'don't say it!' cried uncle benjy, covering his eyes. 'put 'em away. . . . well, if you _don't_ want 'em--but put 'em away, dear anne; they are for you, because you have kept my counsel. good-night t'ye. yes, they are for you.' he went a few steps, and turning back added anxiously, 'you won't spend 'em in clothes, or waste 'em in fairings, or ornaments of any kind, my dear girl?' 'i will not,' said anne. 'i wish you would have them.' 'no, no,' said uncle benjy, rushing off to escape their shine. but he had got no further than the passage when he returned again. 'and you won't lend 'em to anybody, or put 'em into the bank--for no bank is safe in these troublous times?. . . if i was you i'd keep them _exactly_ as they be, and not spend 'em on any account. shall i lock them into my box for ye?' 'certainly,' said she; and the farmer rapidly unlocked the window-bench, opened the box, and locked them in. ''tis much the best plan,' he said with great satisfaction as he returned the keys to his pocket. 'there they will always be safe, you see, and you won't be exposed to temptation.' when the old man had been gone a few minutes, the miller and his wife came in, quite unconscious of all that had passed. anne's anxiety about bob was again uppermost now, and she spoke but meagrely of old derriman's visit, and nothing of what he had left. she would fain have asked them if they knew where bob was, but that she did not wish to inform them of the rupture. she was forced to admit to herself that she had somewhat tried his patience, and that impulsive men had been known to do dark things with themselves at such times. they sat down to supper, the clock ticked rapidly on, and at length the miller said, 'bob is later than usual. where can he be?' as they both looked at her, she could no longer keep the secret. 'it is my fault,' she cried; 'i have driven him away! what shall i do?' the nature of the quarrel was at once guessed, and her two elders said no more. anne rose and went to the front door, where she listened for every sound with a palpitating heart. then she went in; then she went out: and on one occasion she heard the miller say, 'i wonder what hath passed between bob and anne. i hope the chap will come home.' just about this time light footsteps were heard without, and bob bounced into the passage. anne, who stood back in the dark while he passed, followed him into the room, where her mother and the miller were on the point of retiring to bed, candle in hand. 'i have kept ye up, i fear,' began bob cheerily, and apparently without the faintest recollection of his tragic exit from the house. 'but the truth on't is, i met with fess derriman at the "duke of york" as i went from here, and there we have been playing put ever since, not noticing how the time was going. i haven't had a good chat with the fellow for years and years, and really he is an out and out good comrade--a regular hearty! poor fellow, he's been very badly used. i never heard the rights of the story till now; but it seems that old uncle of his treats him shamefully. he has been hiding away his money, so that poor fess might not have a farthing, till at last the young man has turned, like any other worm, and is now determined to ferret out what he has done with it. the poor young chap hadn't a farthing of ready money till i lent him a couple of guineas--a thing i never did more willingly in my life. but the man was very honourable. "no; no," says he, "don't let me deprive ye." he's going to marry, and what may you think he is going to do it for?' 'for love, i hope,' said anne's mother. 'for money, i suppose, since he's so short,' said the miller. 'no,' said bob, 'for _spite_. he has been badly served--deuced badly served--by a woman. i never heard of a more heartless case in my life. the poor chap wouldn't mention names, but it seems this young woman has trifled with him in all manner of cruel ways--pushed him into the river, tried to steal his horse when he was called out to defend his country--in short, served him rascally. so i gave him the two guineas and said, "now let's drink to the hussy's downfall!"' 'o!' said anne, having approached behind him. bob turned and saw her, and at the same moment mr. and mrs. loveday discreetly retired by the other door. 'is it peace?' he asked tenderly. 'o yes,' she anxiously replied. 'i--didn't mean to make you think i had no heart.' at this bob inclined his countenance towards hers. 'no,' she said, smiling through two incipient tears as she drew back. 'you are to show good behaviour for six months, and you must promise not to frighten me again by running off when i--show you how badly you have served me.' 'i am yours obedient--in anything,' cried bob. 'but am i pardoned?' youth is foolish; and does a woman often let her reasoning in favour of the worthier stand in the way of her perverse desire for the less worthy at such times as these? she murmured some soft words, ending with 'do you repent?' it would be superfluous to transcribe bob's answer. footsteps were heard without. 'o begad; i forgot!' said bob. 'he's waiting out there for a light.' 'who?' 'my friend derriman.' 'but, bob, i have to explain.' but festus had by this time entered the lobby, and anne, with a hasty 'get rid of him at once!' vanished upstairs. here she waited and waited, but festus did not seem inclined to depart; and at last, foreboding some collision of interests from bob's new friendship for this man, she crept into a storeroom which was over the apartment into which loveday and festus had gone. by looking through a knot-hole in the floor it was easy to command a view of the room beneath, this being unceiled, with moulded beams and rafters. festus had sat down on the hollow window-bench, and was continuing the statement of his wrongs. 'if he only knew what he was sitting upon,' she thought apprehensively, 'how easily he could tear up the flap, lock and all, with his strong arm, and seize upon poor uncle benjy's possessions!' but he did not appear to know, unless he were acting, which was just possible. after a while he rose, and going to the table lifted the candle to light his pipe. at the moment when the flame began diving into the bowl the door noiselessly opened and a figure slipped across the room to the window-bench, hastily unlocked it, withdrew the box, and beat a retreat. anne in a moment recognized the ghostly intruder as festus derriman's uncle. before he could get out of the room festus set down the candle and turned. 'what--uncle benjy--haw, haw! here at this time of night?' uncle benjy's eyes grew paralyzed, and his mouth opened and shut like a frog's in a drought, the action producing no sound. 'what have we got here--a tin box--the box of boxes? why, i'll carry it for 'ee, uncle!--i am going home.' 'n-no-no, thanky, festus: it is n-n-not heavy at all, thanky,' gasped the squireen. 'o but i must,' said festus, pulling at the box. 'don't let him have it, bob!' screamed the excited anne through the hole in the floor. 'no, don't let him!' cried the uncle. ''tis a plot--there's a woman at the window waiting to help him!' anne's eyes flew to the window, and she saw matilda's face pressed against the pane. bob, though he did not know whence anne's command proceeded obeyed with alacrity, pulled the box from the two relatives, and placed it on the table beside him. 'now, look here, hearties; what's the meaning o' this?' he said. 'he's trying to rob me of all i possess!' cried the old man. 'my heart- strings seem as if they were going crack, crack, crack!' at this instant the miller in his shirt-sleeves entered the room, having got thus far in his undressing when he heard the noise. bob and festus turned to him to explain; and when the latter had had his say bob added, 'well, all i know is that this box'--here he stretched out his hand to lay it upon the lid for emphasis. but as nothing but thin air met his fingers where the box had been, he turned, and found that the box was gone, uncle benjy having vanished also. festus, with an imprecation, hastened to the door, but though the night was not dark farmer derriman and his burden were nowhere to be seen. on the bridge festus joined a shadowy female form, and they went along the road together, followed for some distance by bob, lest they should meet with and harm the old man. but the precaution was unnecessary: nowhere on the road was there any sign of farmer derriman, or of the box that belonged to him. when bob re-entered the house anne and mrs. loveday had joined the miller downstairs, and then for the first time he learnt who had been the heroine of festus's lamentable story, with many other particulars of that yeoman's history which he had never before known. bob swore that he would not speak to the traitor again, and the family retired. the escape of old mr. derriman from the annoyances of his nephew not only held good for that night, but for next day, and for ever. just after dawn on the following morning a labouring man, who was going to his work, saw the old farmer and landowner leaning over a rail in a mead near his house, apparently engaged in contemplating the water of a brook before him. drawing near, the man spoke, but uncle benjy did not reply. his head was hanging strangely, his body being supported in its erect position entirely by the rail that passed under each arm. on after-examination it was found that uncle benjy's poor withered heart had cracked and stopped its beating from damages inflicted on it by the excitements of his life, and of the previous night in particular. the unconscious carcass was little more than a light empty husk, dry and fleshless as that of a dead heron found on a moor in january. but the tin box was not discovered with or near him. it was searched for all the week, and all the month. the mill-pond was dragged, quarries were examined, woods were threaded, rewards were offered; but in vain. at length one day in the spring, when the mill-house was about to be cleaned throughout, the chimney-board of anne's bedroom, concealing a yawning fire-place, had to be taken down. in the chasm behind it stood the missing deed-box of farmer derriman. many were the conjectures as to how it had got there. then anne remembered that on going to bed on the night of the collision between festus and his uncle in the room below, she had seen mud on the carpet of her room, and the miller remembered that he had seen footprints on the back staircase. the solution of the mystery seemed to be that the late uncle benjy, instead of running off from the house with his box, had doubled on getting out of the front door, entered at the back, deposited his box in anne's chamber where it was found, and then leisurely pursued his way home at the heels of festus, intending to tell anne of his trick the next day--an intention that was for ever frustrated by the stroke of death. mr. derriman's solicitor was a casterbridge man, and anne placed the box in his hands. uncle benjy's will was discovered within; and by this testament anne's queer old friend appointed her sole executrix of his said will, and, more than that, gave and bequeathed to the same young lady all his real and personal estate, with the solitary exception of five small freehold houses in a back street in budmouth, which were devised to his nephew festus, as a sufficient property to maintain him decently, without affording any margin for extravagances. oxwell hall, with its muddy quadrangle, archways, mullioned windows, cracked battlements, and weed-grown garden, passed with the rest into the hands of anne. xli. john marches into the night during this exciting time john loveday seldom or never appeared at the mill. with the recall of bob, in which he had been sole agent, his mission seemed to be complete. one mid-day, before anne had made any change in her manner of living on account of her unexpected acquisition, lieutenant bob came in rather suddenly. he had been to budmouth, and announced to the arrested senses of the family that the --th dragoons were ordered to join sir arthur wellesley in the peninsula. these tidings produced a great impression on the household. john had been so long in the neighbourhood, either at camp or in barracks, that they had almost forgotten the possibility of his being sent away; and they now began to reflect upon the singular infrequency of his calls since his brother's return. there was not much time, however, for reflection, if they wished to make the most of john's farewell visit, which was to be paid the same evening, the departure of the regiment being fixed for next day. a hurried valedictory supper was prepared during the afternoon, and shortly afterwards john arrived. he seemed to be more thoughtful and a trifle paler than of old, but beyond these traces, which might have been due to the natural wear and tear of time, he showed no signs of gloom. on his way through the town that morning a curious little incident had occurred to him. he was walking past one of the churches when a wedding-party came forth, the bride and bridegroom being matilda and festus derriman. at sight of the trumpet-major the yeoman had glared triumphantly; matilda, on her part, had winked at him slily, as much as to say--. but what she meant heaven knows: the trumpet-major did not trouble himself to think, and passed on without returning the mark of confidence with which she had favoured him. soon after john's arrival at the mill several of his friends dropped in for the same purpose of bidding adieu. they were mostly the men who had been entertained there on the occasion of the regiment's advent on the down, when anne and her mother were coaxed in to grace the party by their superior presence; and their well-trained, gallant manners were such as to make them interesting visitors now as at all times. for it was a period when romance had not so greatly faded out of military life as it has done in these days of short service, heterogeneous mixing, and transient campaigns; when the esprit de corps was strong, and long experience stamped noteworthy professional characteristics even on rank and file; while the miller's visitors had the additional advantage of being picked men. they could not stay so long to-night as on that earlier and more cheerful occasion, and the final adieus were spoken at an early hour. it was no mere playing at departure, as when they had gone to exonbury barracks, and there was a warm and prolonged shaking of hands all round. 'you'll wish the poor fellows good-bye?' said bob to anne, who had not come forward for that purpose like the rest. 'they are going away, and would like to have your good word.' she then shyly advanced, and every man felt that he must make some pretty speech as he shook her by the hand. 'good-bye! may you remember us as long as it makes ye happy, and forget us as soon as it makes ye sad,' said sergeant brett. 'good-night! health, wealth, and long life to ye!' said sergeant-major wills, taking her hand from brett. 'i trust to meet ye again as the wife of a worthy man,' said trumpeter buck. 'we'll drink your health throughout the campaign, and so good-bye t'ye,' said saddler-sergeant jones, raising her hand to his lips. three others followed with similar remarks, to each of which anne blushingly replied as well as she could, wishing them a prosperous voyage, easy conquest, and a speedy return. but, alas, for that! battles and skirmishes, advances and retreats, fevers and fatigues, told hard on anne's gallant friends in the coming time. of the seven upon whom these wishes were bestowed, five, including the trumpet-major, were dead men within the few following years, and their bones left to moulder in the land of their campaigns. john lingered behind. when the others were outside, expressing a final farewell to his father, bob, and mrs. loveday, he came to anne, who remained within. 'but i thought you were going to look in again before leaving?' she said gently. 'no; i find i cannot. good-bye!' 'john,' said anne, holding his right hand in both hers, 'i must tell you something. you were wise in not taking me at my word that day. i was greatly mistaken about myself. gratitude is not love, though i wanted to make it so for the time. you don't call me thoughtless for what i did?' 'my dear anne,' cried john, with more gaiety than truthfulness, 'don't let yourself be troubled! what happens is for the best. soldiers love here to-day and there to-morrow. who knows that you won't hear of my attentions to some spanish maid before a month is gone by? 'tis the way of us, you know; a soldier's heart is not worth a week's purchase--ha, ha! goodbye, good-bye!' anne felt the expediency of his manner, received the affectation as real, and smiled her reply, not knowing that the adieu was for evermore. then with a tear in his eye he went out of the door, where he bade farewell to the miller, mrs. loveday, and bob, who said at parting, 'it's all right, jack, my dear fellow. after a coaxing that would have been enough to win three ordinary englishwomen, five french, and ten mulotters, she has to- day agreed to bestow her hand upon me at the end of six months. good-bye, jack, good-bye!' the candle held by his father shed its waving light upon john's face and uniform as with a farewell smile he turned on the doorstone, backed by the black night; and in another moment he had plunged into the darkness, the ring of his smart step dying away upon the bridge as he joined his companions-in-arms, and went off to blow his trumpet till silenced for ever upon one of the bloody battle-fields of spain. footnotes: { } _vide_ preface. { } _vide_ preface. { } _vide_ preface. { } _vide_ preface. { } _vide_ preface. transcribed from the macmillan and co. edition by david price, email ccx @coventry.ac.uk wessex tales contents: preface an imaginative woman the three strangers the withered arm fellow-townsmen interlopers at the knap the distracted preacher preface an apology is perhaps needed for the neglect of contrast which is shown by presenting two consecutive stories of hangmen in such a small collection as the following. but in the neighbourhood of county-towns tales of executions used to form a large proportion of the local traditions; and though never personally acquainted with any chief operator at such scenes, the writer of these pages had as a boy the privilege of being on speaking terms with a man who applied for the office, and who sank into an incurable melancholy because he failed to get it, some slight mitigation of his grief being to dwell upon striking episodes in the lives of those happier ones who had held it with success and renown. his tale of disappointment used to cause some wonder why his ambition should have taken such an unfortunate form, but its nobleness was never questioned. in those days, too, there was still living an old woman who, for the cure of some eating disease, had been taken in her youth to have her 'blood turned' by a convict's corpse, in the manner described in 'the withered arm.' since writing this story some years ago i have been reminded by an aged friend who knew 'rhoda brook' that, in relating her dream, my forgetfulness has weakened the facts our of which the tale grew. in reality it was while lying down on a hot afternoon that the incubus oppressed her and she flung it off, with the results upon the body of the original as described. to my mind the occurrence of such a vision in the daytime is more impressive than if it had happened in a midnight dream. readers are therefore asked to correct the misrelation, which affords an instance of how our imperfect memories insensibly formalize the fresh originality of living fact--from whose shape they slowly depart, as machine-made castings depart by degrees from the sharp hand-work of the mould. among the many devices for concealing smuggled goods in caves and pits of the earth, that of planting an apple-tree in a tray or box which was placed over the mouth of the pit is, i believe, unique, and it is detailed in one of the tales precisely as described by an old carrier of 'tubs'--a man who was afterwards in my father's employ for over thirty years. i never gathered from his reminiscences what means were adopted for lifting the tree, which, with its roots, earth, and receptacle, must have been of considerable weight. there is no doubt, however, that the thing was done through many years. my informant often spoke, too, of the horribly suffocating sensation produced by the pair of spirit-tubs slung upon the chest and back, after stumbling with the burden of them for several miles inland over a rough country and in darkness. he said that though years of his youth and young manhood were spent in this irregular business, his profits from the same, taken all together, did not average the wages he might have earned in a steady employment, whilst the fatigues and risks were excessive. i may add that the first story in the series turns upon a physical possibility that may attach to women of imaginative temperament, and that is well supported by the experiences of medical men and other observers of such manifestations. t. h. april . an imaginative woman when william marchmill had finished his inquiries for lodgings at a well- known watering-place in upper wessex, he returned to the hotel to find his wife. she, with the children, had rambled along the shore, and marchmill followed in the direction indicated by the military-looking hall-porter 'by jove, how far you've gone! i am quite out of breath,' marchmill said, rather impatiently, when he came up with his wife, who was reading as she walked, the three children being considerably further ahead with the nurse. mrs. marchmill started out of the reverie into which the book had thrown her. 'yes,' she said, 'you've been such a long time. i was tired of staying in that dreary hotel. but i am sorry if you have wanted me, will?' 'well, i have had trouble to suit myself. when you see the airy and comfortable rooms heard of, you find they are stuffy and uncomfortable. will you come and see if what i've fixed on will do? there is not much room, i am afraid; hut i can light on nothing better. the town is rather full.' the pair left the children and nurse to continue their ramble, and went back together. in age well-balanced, in personal appearance fairly matched, and in domestic requirements conformable, in temper this couple differed, though even here they did not often clash, he being equable, if not lymphatic, and she decidedly nervous and sanguine. it was to their tastes and fancies, those smallest, greatest particulars, that no common denominator could be applied. marchmill considered his wife's likes and inclinations somewhat silly; she considered his sordid and material. the husband's business was that of a gunmaker in a thriving city northwards, and his soul was in that business always; the lady was best characterized by that superannuated phrase of elegance 'a votary of the muse.' an impressionable, palpitating creature was ella, shrinking humanely from detailed knowledge of her husband's trade whenever she reflected that everything he manufactured had for its purpose the destruction of life. she could only recover her equanimity by assuring herself that some, at least, of his weapons were sooner or later used for the extermination of horrid vermin and animals almost as cruel to their inferiors in species as human beings were to theirs. she had never antecedently regarded this occupation of his as any objection to having him for a husband. indeed, the necessity of getting life-leased at all cost, a cardinal virtue which all good mothers teach, kept her from thinking of it at all till she had closed with william, had passed the honeymoon, and reached the reflecting stage. then, like a person who has stumbled upon some object in the dark, she wondered what she had got; mentally walked round it, estimated it; whether it were rare or common; contained gold, silver, or lead; were a clog or a pedestal, everything to her or nothing. she came to some vague conclusions, and since then had kept her heart alive by pitying her proprietor's obtuseness and want of refinement, pitying herself, and letting off her delicate and ethereal emotions in imaginative occupations, day-dreams, and night-sighs, which perhaps would not much have disturbed william if he had known of them. her figure was small, elegant, and slight in build, tripping, or rather bounding, in movement. she was dark-eyed, and had that marvellously bright and liquid sparkle in each pupil which characterizes persons of ella's cast of soul, and is too often a cause of heartache to the possessor's male friends, ultimately sometimes to herself. her husband was a tall, long-featured man, with a brown beard; he had a pondering regard; and was, it must be added, usually kind and tolerant to her. he spoke in squarely shaped sentences, and was supremely satisfied with a condition of sublunary things which made weapons a necessity. husband and wife walked till they had reached the house they were in search of, which stood in a terrace facing the sea, and was fronted by a small garden of wind-proof and salt-proof evergreens, stone steps leading up to the porch. it had its number in the row, but, being rather larger than the rest, was in addition sedulously distinguished as coburg house by its landlady, though everybody else called it 'thirteen, new parade.' the spot was bright and lively now; but in winter it became necessary to place sandbags against the door, and to stuff up the keyhole against the wind and rain, which had worn the paint so thin that the priming and knotting showed through. the householder, who bad been watching for the gentleman's return, met them in the passage, and showed the rooms. she informed them that she was a professional man's widow, left in needy circumstances by the rather sudden death of her husband, and she spoke anxiously of the conveniences of the establishment. mrs. marchmill said that she liked the situation and the house; but, it being small, there would not be accommodation enough, unless she could have all the rooms. the landlady mused with an air of disappointment. she wanted the visitors to be her tenants very badly, she said, with obvious honesty. but unfortunately two of the rooms were occupied permanently by a bachelor gentleman. he did not pay season prices, it was true; but as he kept on his apartments all the year round, and was an extremely nice and interesting young man, who gave no trouble, she did not like to turn him out for a month's 'let,' even at a high figure. 'perhaps, however,' she added, 'he might offer to go for a time.' they would not hear of this, and went back to the hotel, intending to proceed to the agent's to inquire further. hardly had they sat down to tea when the landlady called. her gentleman, she said, had been so obliging as to offer to give up his rooms for three or four weeks rather than drive the new-comers away. 'it is very kind, but we won't inconvenience him in that way,' said the marchmills. 'o, it won't inconvenience him, i assure you!' said the landlady eloquently. 'you see, he's a different sort of young man from most--dreamy, solitary, rather melancholy--and he cares more to be here when the south-westerly gales are beating against the door, and the sea washes over the parade, and there's not a soul in the place, than he does now in the season. he'd just as soon be where, in fact, he's going temporarily, to a little cottage on the island opposite, for a change.' she hoped therefore that they would come. the marchmill family accordingly took possession of the house next day, and it seemed to suit them very well. after luncheon mr. marchmill strolled out towards the pier, and mrs. marchmill, having despatched the children to their outdoor amusements on the sands, settled herself in more completely, examining this and that article, and testing the reflecting powers of the mirror in the wardrobe door. in the small back sitting-room, which had been the young bachelor's, she found furniture of a more personal nature than in the rest. shabby books, of correct rather than rare editions, were piled up in a queerly reserved manner in corners, as if the previous occupant had not conceived the possibility that any incoming person of the season's bringing could care to look inside them. the landlady hovered on the threshold to rectify anything that mrs. marchmill might not find to her satisfaction. 'i'll make this my own little room,' said the latter, 'because the books are here. by the way, the person who has left seems to have a good many. he won't mind my reading some of them, mrs. hooper, i hope?' 'o dear no, ma'am. yes, he has a good many. you see, he is in the literary line himself somewhat. he is a poet--yes, really a poet--and he has a little income of his own, which is enough to write verses on, but not enough for cutting a figure, even if he cared to.' 'a poet! o, i did not know that.' mrs. marchmill opened one of the books, and saw the owner's name written on the title-page. 'dear me!' she continued; 'i know his name very well--robert trewe--of course i do; and his writings! and it is his rooms we have taken, and him we have turned out of his home?' ella marchmill, sitting down alone a few minutes later, thought with interested surprise of robert trewe. her own latter history will best explain that interest. herself the only daughter of a struggling man of letters, she had during the last year or two taken to writing poems, in an endeavour to find a congenial channel in which to let flow her painfully embayed emotions, whose former limpidity and sparkle seemed departing in the stagnation caused by the routine of a practical household and the gloom of bearing children to a commonplace father. these poems, subscribed with a masculine pseudonym, had appeared in various obscure magazines, and in two cases in rather prominent ones. in the second of the latter the page which bore her effusion at the bottom, in smallish print, bore at the top, in large print, a few verses on the same subject by this very man, robert trewe. both of them had, in fact, been struck by a tragic incident reported in the daily papers, and had used it simultaneously as an inspiration, the editor remarking in a note upon the coincidence, and that the excellence of both poems prompted him to give them together. after that event ella, otherwise 'john ivy,' had watched with much attention the appearance anywhere in print of verse bearing the signature of robert trewe, who, with a man's unsusceptibility on the question of sex, had never once thought of passing himself off as a woman. to be sure, mrs. marchmill had satisfied herself with a sort of reason for doing the contrary in her case; that nobody might believe in her inspiration if they found that the sentiments came from a pushing tradesman's wife, from the mother of three children by a matter-of-fact small-arms manufacturer. trewe's verse contrasted with that of the rank and file of recent minor poets in being impassioned rather than ingenious, luxuriant rather than finished. neither symboliste nor decadent, he was a pessimist in so far as that character applies to a man who looks at the worst contingencies as well as the best in the human condition. being little attracted by excellences of form and rhythm apart from content, he sometimes, when feeling outran his artistic speed, perpetrated sonnets in the loosely rhymed elizabethan fashion, which every right-minded reviewer said he ought not to have done. with sad and hopeless envy, ella marchmill had often and often scanned the rival poet's work, so much stronger as it always was than her own feeble lines. she had imitated him, and her inability to touch his level would send her into fits of despondency. months passed away thus, till she observed from the publishers' list that trewe had collected his fugitive pieces into a volume, which was duly issued, and was much or little praised according to chance, and had a sale quite sufficient to pay for the printing. this step onward had suggested to john ivy the idea of collecting her pieces also, or at any rate of making up a book of her rhymes by adding many in manuscript to the few that had seen the light, for she had been able to get no great number into print. a ruinous charge was made for costs of publication; a few reviews noticed her poor little volume; but nobody talked of it, nobody bought it, and it fell dead in a fortnight--if it had ever been alive. the author's thoughts were diverted to another groove just then by the discovery that she was going to have a third child, and the collapse of her poetical venture had perhaps less effect upon her mind than it might have done if she had been domestically unoccupied. her husband had paid the publisher's bill with the doctor's, and there it all had ended for the time. but, though less than a poet of her century, ella was more than a mere multiplier of her kind, and latterly she had begun to feel the old afflatus once more. and now by an odd conjunction she found herself in the rooms of robert trewe. she thoughtfully rose from her chair and searched the apartment with the interest of a fellow-tradesman. yes, the volume of his own verse was among the rest. though quite familiar with its contents, she read it here as if it spoke aloud to her, then called up mrs. hooper, the landlady, for some trivial service, and inquired again about the young man. 'well, i'm sure you'd be interested in him, ma'am, if you could see him, only he's so shy that i don't suppose you will.' mrs. hooper seemed nothing loth to minister to her tenant's curiosity about her predecessor. 'lived here long? yes, nearly two years. he keeps on his rooms even when he's not here: the soft air of this place suits his chest, and he likes to be able to come back at any time. he is mostly writing or reading, and doesn't see many people, though, for the matter of that, he is such a good, kind young fellow that folks would only be too glad to be friendly with him if they knew him. you don't meet kind-hearted people every day.' 'ah, he's kind-hearted . . . and good.' 'yes; he'll oblige me in anything if i ask him. "mr. trewe," i say to him sometimes, "you are rather out of spirits." "well, i am, mrs. hooper," he'll say, "though i don't know how you should find it out." "why not take a little change?" i ask. then in a day or two he'll say that he will take a trip to paris, or norway, or somewhere; and i assure you he comes back all the better for it.' 'ah, indeed! his is a sensitive nature, no doubt.' 'yes. still he's odd in some things. once when he had finished a poem of his composition late at night he walked up and down the room rehearsing it; and the floors being so thin--jerry-built houses, you know, though i say it myself--he kept me awake up above him till i wished him further . . . but we get on very well.' this was but the beginning of a series of conversations about the rising poet as the days went on. on one of these occasions mrs. hooper drew ella's attention to what she had not noticed before: minute scribblings in pencil on the wall-paper behind the curtains at the head of the bed. 'o! let me look,' said mrs. marchmill, unable to conceal a rush of tender curiosity as she bent her pretty face close to the wall. 'these,' said mrs. hooper, with the manner of a woman who knew things, 'are the very beginnings and first thoughts of his verses. he has tried to rub most of them out, but you can read them still. my belief is that he wakes up in the night, you know, with some rhyme in his head, and jots it down there on the wall lest he should forget it by the morning. some of these very lines you see here i have seen afterwards in print in the magazines. some are newer; indeed, i have not seen that one before. it must have been done only a few days ago.' 'o yes! . . . ' ella marchmill flushed without knowing why, and suddenly wished her companion would go away, now that the information was imparted. an indescribable consciousness of personal interest rather than literary made her anxious to read the inscription alone; and she accordingly waited till she could do so, with a sense that a great store of emotion would be enjoyed in the act. perhaps because the sea was choppy outside the island, ella's husband found it much pleasanter to go sailing and steaming about without his wife, who was a bad sailor, than with her. he did not disdain to go thus alone on board the steamboats of the cheap-trippers, where there was dancing by moonlight, and where the couples would come suddenly down with a lurch into each other's arms; for, as he blandly told her, the company was too mixed for him to take her amid such scenes. thus, while this thriving manufacturer got a great deal of change and sea-air out of his sojourn here, the life, external at least, of ella was monotonous enough, and mainly consisted in passing a certain number of hours each day in bathing and walking up and down a stretch of shore. but the poetic impulse having again waxed strong, she was possessed by an inner flame which left her hardly conscious of what was proceeding around her. she had read till she knew by heart trewe's last little volume of verses, and spent a great deal of time in vainly attempting to rival some of them, till, in her failure, she burst into tears. the personal element in the magnetic attraction exercised by this circumambient, unapproachable master of hers was so much stronger than the intellectual and abstract that she could not understand it. to be sure, she was surrounded noon and night by his customary environment, which literally whispered of him to her at every moment; but he was a man she had never seen, and that all that moved her was the instinct to specialize a waiting emotion on the first fit thing that came to hand did not, of course, suggest itself to ella. in the natural way of passion under the too practical conditions which civilization has devised for its fruition, her husband's love for her had not survived, except in the form of fitful friendship, any more than, or even so much as, her own for him; and, being a woman of very living ardours, that required sustenance of some sort, they were beginning to feed on this chancing material, which was, indeed, of a quality far better than chance usually offers. one day the children had been playing hide-and-seek in a closet, whence, in their excitement, they pulled out some clothing. mrs. hooper explained that it belonged to mr. trewe, and hung it up in the closet again. possessed of her fantasy, ella went later in the afternoon, when nobody was in that part of the house, opened the closet, unhitched one of the articles, a mackintosh, and put it on, with the waterproof cap belonging to it. 'the mantle of elijah!' she said. 'would it might inspire me to rival him, glorious genius that he is!' her eyes always grew wet when she thought like that, and she turned to look at herself in the glass. his heart had beat inside that coat, and his brain had worked under that hat at levels of thought she would never reach. the consciousness of her weakness beside him made her feel quite sick. before she had got the things off her the door opened, and her husband entered the room. 'what the devil--' she blushed, and removed them 'i found them in the closet here,' she said, 'and put them on in a freak. what have i else to do? you are always away!' 'always away? well . . . ' that evening she had a further talk with the landlady, who might herself have nourished a half-tender regard for the poet, so ready was she to discourse ardently about him. 'you are interested in mr. trewe, i know, ma'am,' she said; 'and he has just sent to say that he is going to call to-morrow afternoon to look up some books of his that he wants, if i'll be in, and he may select them from your room?' 'o yes!' 'you could very well meet mr trewe then, if you'd like to be in the way!' she promised with secret delight, and went to bed musing of him. next morning her husband observed: 'i've been thinking of what you said, ell: that i have gone about a good deal and left you without much to amuse you. perhaps it's true. to-day, as there's not much sea, i'll take you with me on board the yacht.' for the first time in her experience of such an offer ella was not glad. but she accepted it for the moment. the time for setting out drew near, and she went to get ready. she stood reflecting. the longing to see the poet she was now distinctly in love with overpowered all other considerations. 'i don't want to go,' she said to herself. 'i can't bear to be away! and i won't go.' she told her husband that she had changed her mind about wishing to sail. he was indifferent, and went his way. for the rest of the day the house was quiet, the children having gone out upon the sands. the blinds waved in the sunshine to the soft, steady stroke of the sea beyond the wall; and the notes of the green silesian band, a troop of foreign gentlemen hired for the season, had drawn almost all the residents and promenaders away from the vicinity of coburg house. a knock was audible at the door. mrs. marchmill did not hear any servant go to answer it, and she became impatient. the books were in the room where she sat; but nobody came up. she rang the bell. 'there is some person waiting at the door,' she said. 'o no, ma'am! he's gone long ago. i answered it.' mrs. hooper came in herself. 'so disappointing!' she said. 'mr. trewe not coming after all!' 'but i heard him knock, i fancy!' 'no; that was somebody inquiring for lodgings who came to the wrong house. i forgot to tell you that mr. trewe sent a note just before lunch to say i needn't get any tea for him, as he should not require the books, and wouldn't come to select them.' ella was miserable, and for a long time could not even re-read his mournful ballad on 'severed lives,' so aching was her erratic little heart, and so tearful her eyes. when the children came in with wet stockings, and ran up to her to tell her of their adventures, she could not feel that she cared about them half as much as usual. * * * * * 'mrs. hooper, have you a photograph of--the gentleman who lived here?' she was getting to be curiously shy in mentioning his name. 'why, yes. it's in the ornamental frame on the mantelpiece in your own bedroom, ma'am.' 'no; the royal duke and duchess are in that.' 'yes, so they are; but he's behind them. he belongs rightly to that frame, which i bought on purpose; but as he went away he said: "cover me up from those strangers that are coming, for god's sake. i don't want them staring at me, and i am sure they won't want me staring at them." so i slipped in the duke and duchess temporarily in front of him, as they had no frame, and royalties are more suitable for letting furnished than a private young man. if you take 'em out you'll see him under. lord, ma'am, he wouldn't mind if he knew it! he didn't think the next tenant would be such an attractive lady as you, or he wouldn't have thought of hiding himself; perhaps.' 'is he handsome?' she asked timidly. 'i call him so. some, perhaps, wouldn't.' 'should i?' she asked, with eagerness. 'i think you would, though some would say he's more striking than handsome; a large-eyed thoughtful fellow, you know, with a very electric flash in his eye when he looks round quickly, such as you'd expect a poet to be who doesn't get his living by it.' 'how old is he?' 'several years older than yourself, ma'am; about thirty-one or two, i think.' ella was, as a matter of fact, a few months over thirty herself; but she did not look nearly so much. though so immature in nature, she was entering on that tract of life in which emotional women begin to suspect that last love may be stronger than first love; and she would soon, alas, enter on the still more melancholy tract when at least the vainer ones of her sex shrink from receiving a male visitor otherwise than with their backs to the window or the blinds half down. she reflected on mrs. hooper's remark, and said no more about age. just then a telegram was brought up. it came from her husband, who had gone down the channel as far as budmouth with his friends in the yacht, and would not be able to get back till next day. after her light dinner ella idled about the shore with the children till dusk, thinking of the yet uncovered photograph in her room, with a serene sense of something ecstatic to come. for, with the subtle luxuriousness of fancy in which this young woman was an adept, on learning that her husband was to be absent that night she had refrained from incontinently rushing upstairs and opening the picture-frame, preferring to reserve the inspection till she could be alone, and a more romantic tinge be imparted to the occasion by silence, candles, solemn sea and stars outside, than was afforded by the garish afternoon sunlight. the children had been sent to bed, and ella soon followed, though it was not yet ten o'clock. to gratify her passionate curiosity she now made her preparations, first getting rid of superfluous garments and putting on her dressing-gown, then arranging a chair in front of the table and reading several pages of trewe's tenderest utterances. then she fetched the portrait-frame to the light, opened the back, took out the likeness, and set it up before her. it was a striking countenance to look upon. the poet wore a luxuriant black moustache and imperial, and a slouched hat which shaded the forehead. the large dark eyes, described by the landlady, showed an unlimited capacity for misery; they looked out from beneath well-shaped brows as if they were reading the universe in the microcosm of the confronter's face, and were not altogether overjoyed at what the spectacle portended. ella murmured in her lowest, richest, tenderest tone: 'and it's you who've so cruelly eclipsed me these many times!' as she gazed long at the portrait she fell into thought, till her eyes filled with tears, and she touched the cardboard with her lips. then she laughed with a nervous lightness, and wiped her eyes. she thought how wicked she was, a woman having a husband and three children, to let her mind stray to a stranger in this unconscionable manner. no, he was not a stranger! she knew his thoughts and feelings as well as she knew her own; they were, in fact, the self-same thoughts and feelings as hers, which her husband distinctly lacked; perhaps luckily for himself; considering that he had to provide for family expenses. 'he's nearer my real self, he's more intimate with the real me than will is, after all, even though i've never seen him,' she said. she laid his book and picture on the table at the bedside, and when she was reclining on the pillow she re-read those of robert trewe's verses which she had marked from time to time as most touching and true. putting these aside, she set up the photograph on its edge upon the coverlet, and contemplated it as she lay. then she scanned again by the light of the candle the half-obliterated pencillings on the wall-paper beside her head. there they were--phrases, couplets, bouts-rimes, beginnings and middles of lines, ideas in the rough, like shelley's scraps, and the least of them so intense, so sweet, so palpitating, that it seemed as if his very breath, warm and loving, fanned her cheeks from those walls, walls that had surrounded his head times and times as they surrounded her own now. he must often have put up his hand so--with the pencil in it. yes, the writing was sideways, as it would be if executed by one who extended his arm thus. these inscribed shapes of the poet's world, 'forms more real than living man, nurslings of immortality,' were, no doubt, the thoughts and spirit-strivings which had come to him in the dead of night, when he could let himself go and have no fear of the frost of criticism. no doubt they had often been written up hastily by the light of the moon, the rays of the lamp, in the blue-grey dawn, in full daylight perhaps never. and now her hair was dragging where his arm had lain when he secured the fugitive fancies; she was sleeping on a poet's lips, immersed in the very essence of him, permeated by his spirit as by an ether. while she was dreaming the minutes away thus, a footstep came upon the stairs, and in a moment she heard her husband's heavy step on the landing immediately without. 'ell, where are you?' what possessed her she could not have described, but, with an instinctive objection to let her husband know what she had been doing, she slipped the photograph under the pillow just as he flung open the door, with the air of a man who had dined not badly. 'o, i beg pardon,' said william marchmill. 'have you a headache? i am afraid i have disturbed you.' 'no, i've not got a headache,' said she. 'how is it you've come?' 'well, we found we could get back in very good time after all, and i didn't want to make another day of it, because of going somewhere else to- morrow.' 'shall i come down again?' 'o no. i'm as tired as a dog. i've had a good feed, and i shall turn in straight off. i want to get out at six o'clock to-morrow if i can . . . i shan't disturb you by my getting up; it will be long before you are awake.' and he came forward into the room. while her eyes followed his movements, ella softly pushed the photograph further out of sight. 'sure you're not ill?' he asked, bending over her. 'no, only wicked!' 'never mind that.' and he stooped and kissed her. next morning marchmill was called at six o'clock; and in waking and yawning she heard him muttering to himself: 'what the deuce is this that's been crackling under me so?' imagining her asleep he searched round him and withdrew something. through her half-opened eyes she perceived it to be mr. trewe. 'well, i'm damned!' her husband exclaimed. 'what, dear?' said she. 'o, you are awake? ha! ha!' 'what do you mean?' 'some bloke's photograph--a friend of our landlady's, i suppose. i wonder how it came here; whisked off the table by accident perhaps when they were making the bed.' 'i was looking at it yesterday, and it must have dropped in then.' 'o, he's a friend of yours? bless his picturesque heart!' ella's loyalty to the object of her admiration could not endure to hear him ridiculed. 'he's a clever man!' she said, with a tremor in her gentle voice which she herself felt to be absurdly uncalled for. 'he is a rising poet--the gentleman who occupied two of these rooms before we came, though i've never seen him.' 'how do you know, if you've never seen him?' 'mrs. hooper told me when she showed me the photograph.' 'o; well, i must up and be off. i shall be home rather early. sorry i can't take you to-day, dear. mind the children don't go getting drowned.' that day mrs. marchmill inquired if mr. trewe were likely to call at any other time. 'yes,' said mrs. hooper. 'he's coming this day week to stay with a friend near here till you leave. he'll be sure to call.' marchmill did return quite early in the afternoon; and, opening some letters which had arrived in his absence, declared suddenly that he and his family would have to leave a week earlier than they had expected to do--in short, in three days. 'surely we can stay a week longer?' she pleaded. 'i like it here.' 'i don't. it is getting rather slow.' 'then you might leave me and the children!' 'how perverse you are, ell! what's the use? and have to come to fetch you! no: we'll all return together; and we'll make out our time in north wales or brighton a little later on. besides, you've three days longer yet.' it seemed to be her doom not to meet the man for whose rival talent she had a despairing admiration, and to whose person she was now absolutely attached. yet she determined to make a last effort; and having gathered from her landlady that trewe was living in a lonely spot not far from the fashionable town on the island opposite, she crossed over in the packet from the neighbouring pier the following afternoon. what a useless journey it was! ella knew but vaguely where the house stood, and when she fancied she had found it, and ventured to inquire of a pedestrian if he lived there, the answer returned by the man was that he did not know. and if he did live there, how could she call upon him? some women might have the assurance to do it, but she had not. how crazy he would think her. she might have asked him to call upon her, perhaps; but she had not the courage for that, either. she lingered mournfully about the picturesque seaside eminence till it was time to return to the town and enter the steamer for recrossing, reaching home for dinner without having been greatly missed. at the last moment, unexpectedly enough, her husband said that he should have no objection to letting her and the children stay on till the end of the week, since she wished to do so, if she felt herself able to get home without him. she concealed the pleasure this extension of time gave her; and marchmill went off the next morning alone. but the week passed, and trewe did not call. on saturday morning the remaining members of the marchmill family departed from the place which had been productive of so much fervour in her. the dreary, dreary train; the sun shining in moted beams upon the hot cushions; the dusty permanent way; the mean rows of wire--these things were her accompaniment: while out of the window the deep blue sea- levels disappeared from her gaze, and with them her poet's home. heavy- hearted, she tried to read, and wept instead. mr. marchmill was in a thriving way of business, and he and his family lived in a large new house, which stood in rather extensive grounds a few miles outside the city wherein he carried on his trade. ella's life was lonely here, as the suburban life is apt to be, particularly at certain seasons; and she had ample time to indulge her taste for lyric and elegiac composition. she had hardly got back when she encountered a piece by robert trewe in the new number of her favourite magazine, which must have been written almost immediately before her visit to solentsea, for it contained the very couplet she had seen pencilled on the wallpaper by the bed, and mrs. hooper had declared to be recent. ella could resist no longer, but seizing a pen impulsively, wrote to him as a brother-poet, using the name of john ivy, congratulating him in her letter on his triumphant executions in metre and rhythm of thoughts that moved his soul, as compared with her own brow-beaten efforts in the same pathetic trade. to this address there came a response in a few days, little as she had dared to hope for it--a civil and brief note, in which the young poet stated that, though he was not well acquainted with mr. ivy's verse, he recalled the name as being one he had seen attached to some very promising pieces; that he was glad to gain mr. ivy's acquaintance by letter, and should certainly look with much interest for his productions in the future. there must have been something juvenile or timid in her own epistle, as one ostensibly coming from a man, she declared to herself; for trewe quite adopted the tone of an elder and superior in this reply. but what did it matter? he had replied; he had written to her with his own hand from that very room she knew so well, for he was now back again in his quarters. the correspondence thus begun was continued for two months or more, ella marchmill sending him from time to time some that she considered to be the best of her pieces, which he very kindly accepted, though he did not say he sedulously read them, nor did he send her any of his own in return. ella would have been more hurt at this than she was if she had not known that trewe laboured under the impression that she was one of his own sex. yet the situation was unsatisfactory. a flattering little voice told her that, were he only to see her, matters would be otherwise. no doubt she would have helped on this by making a frank confession of womanhood, to begin with, if something had not happened, to her delight, to render it unnecessary. a friend of her husband's, the editor of the most important newspaper in the city and county, who was dining with them one day, observed during their conversation about the poet that his (the editor's) brother the landscape-painter was a friend of mr. trewe's, and that the two men were at that very moment in wales together. ella was slightly acquainted with the editor's brother. the next morning down she sat and wrote, inviting him to stay at her house for a short time on his way back, and requesting him to bring with him, if practicable, his companion mr. trewe, whose acquaintance she was anxious to make. the answer arrived after some few days. her correspondent and his friend trewe would have much satisfaction in accepting her invitation on their way southward, which would be on such and such a day in the following week. ella was blithe and buoyant. her scheme had succeeded; her beloved though as yet unseen one was coming. "behold, he standeth behind our wall; he looked forth at the windows, showing himself through the lattice," she thought ecstatically. "and, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land." but it was necessary to consider the details of lodging and feeding him. this she did most solicitously, and awaited the pregnant day and hour. it was about five in the afternoon when she heard a ring at the door and the editor's brother's voice in the hall. poetess as she was, or as she thought herself, she had not been too sublime that day to dress with infinite trouble in a fashionable robe of rich material, having a faint resemblance to the chiton of the greeks, a style just then in vogue among ladies of an artistic and romantic turn, which had been obtained by ella of her bond street dressmaker when she was last in london. her visitor entered the drawing-room. she looked towards his rear; nobody else came through the door. where, in the name of the god of love, was robert trewe? 'o, i'm sorry,' said the painter, after their introductory words had been spoken. 'trewe is a curious fellow, you know, mrs. marchmill. he said he'd come; then he said he couldn't. he's rather dusty. we've been doing a few miles with knapsacks, you know; and he wanted to get on home.' 'he--he's not coming?' 'he's not; and he asked me to make his apologies.' 'when did you p-p-part from him?' she asked, her nether lip starting off quivering so much that it was like a tremolo-stop opened in her speech. she longed to run away from this dreadful bore and cry her eyes out. 'just now, in the turnpike road yonder there.' 'what! he has actually gone past my gates?' 'yes. when we got to them--handsome gates they are, too, the finest bit of modern wrought-iron work i have seen--when we came to them we stopped, talking there a little while, and then he wished me good-bye and went on. the truth is, he's a little bit depressed just now, and doesn't want to see anybody. he's a very good fellow, and a warm friend, but a little uncertain and gloomy sometimes; he thinks too much of things. his poetry is rather too erotic and passionate, you know, for some tastes; and he has just come in for a terrible slating from the --- review that was published yesterday; he saw a copy of it at the station by accident. perhaps you've read it?' 'no.' 'so much the better. o, it is not worth thinking of; just one of those articles written to order, to please the narrow-minded set of subscribers upon whom the circulation depends. but he's upset by it. he says it is the misrepresentation that hurts him so; that, though he can stand a fair attack, he can't stand lies that he's powerless to refute and stop from spreading. that's just trewe's weak point. he lives so much by himself that these things affect him much more than they would if he were in the bustle of fashionable or commercial life. so he wouldn't come here, making the excuse that it all looked so new and monied--if you'll pardon--' 'but--he must have known--there was sympathy here! has he never said anything about getting letters from this address?' 'yes, yes, he has, from john ivy--perhaps a relative of yours, he thought, visiting here at the time?' 'did he--like ivy, did he say?' 'well, i don't know that he took any great interest in ivy.' 'or in his poems?' 'or in his poems--so far as i know, that is.' robert trewe took no interest in her house, in her poems, or in their writer. as soon as she could get away she went into the nursery and tried to let off her emotion by unnecessarily kissing the children, till she had a sudden sense of disgust at being reminded how plain-looking they were, like their father. the obtuse and single-minded landscape-painter never once perceived from her conversation that it was only trewe she wanted, and not himself. he made the best of his visit, seeming to enjoy the society of ella's husband, who also took a great fancy to him, and showed him everywhere about the neighbourhood, neither of them noticing ella's mood. the painter had been gone only a day or two when, while sitting upstairs alone one morning, she glanced over the london paper just arrived, and read the following paragraph:- 'suicide of a poet 'mr. robert trewe, who has been favourably known for some years as one of our rising lyrists, committed suicide at his lodgings at solentsea on saturday evening last by shooting himself in the right temple with a revolver. readers hardly need to be reminded that mr. trewe has recently attracted the attention of a much wider public than had hitherto known him, by his new volume of verse, mostly of an impassioned kind, entitled "lyrics to a woman unknown," which has been already favourably noticed in these pages for the extraordinary gamut of feeling it traverses, and which has been made the subject of a severe, if not ferocious, criticism in the --- review. it is supposed, though not certainly known, that the article may have partially conduced to the sad act, as a copy of the review in question was found on his writing-table; and he has been observed to be in a somewhat depressed state of mind since the critique appeared.' then came the report of the inquest, at which the following letter was read, it having been addressed to a friend at a distance:- 'dear -,--before these lines reach your hands i shall be delivered from the inconveniences of seeing, hearing, and knowing more of the things around me. i will not trouble you by giving my reasons for the step i have taken, though i can assure you they were sound and logical. perhaps had i been blessed with a mother, or a sister, or a female friend of another sort tenderly devoted to me, i might have thought it worth while to continue my present existence. i have long dreamt of such an unattainable creature, as you know, and she, this undiscoverable, elusive one, inspired my last volume; the imaginary woman alone, for, in spite of what has been said in some quarters, there is no real woman behind the title. she has continued to the last unrevealed, unmet, unwon. i think it desirable to mention this in order that no blame may attach to any real woman as having been the cause of my decease by cruel or cavalier treatment of me. tell my landlady that i am sorry to have caused her this unpleasantness; but my occupancy of the rooms will soon be forgotten. there are ample funds in my name at the bank to pay all expenses. r. trewe.' ella sat for a while as if stunned, then rushed into the adjoining chamber and flung herself upon her face on the bed. her grief and distraction shook her to pieces; and she lay in this frenzy of sorrow for more than an hour. broken words came every now and then from her quivering lips: 'o, if he had only known of me--known of me--me! . . . o, if i had only once met him--only once; and put my hand upon his hot forehead--kissed him--let him know how i loved him--that i would have suffered shame and scorn, would have lived and died, for him! perhaps it would have saved his dear life! . . . but no--it was not allowed! god is a jealous god; and that happiness was not for him and me!' all possibilities were over; the meeting was stultified. yet it was almost visible to her in her fantasy even now, though it could never be substantiated - 'the hour which might have been, yet might not be, which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore, yet whereof life was barren.' * * * * * she wrote to the landlady at solentsea in the third person, in as subdued a style as she could command, enclosing a postal order for a sovereign, and informing mrs. hooper that mrs. marchmill had seen in the papers the sad account of the poet's death, and having been, as mrs. hooper was aware, much interested in mr. trewe during her stay at coburg house, she would be obliged if mrs. hooper could obtain a small portion of his hair before his coffin was closed down, and send it her as a memorial of him, as also the photograph that was in the frame. by the return-post a letter arrived containing what had been requested. ella wept over the portrait and secured it in her private drawer; the lock of hair she tied with white ribbon and put in her bosom, whence she drew it and kissed it every now and then in some unobserved nook. 'what's the matter?' said her husband, looking up from his newspaper on one of these occasions. 'crying over something? a lock of hair? whose is it?' 'he's dead!' she murmured. 'who?' 'i don't want to tell you, will, just now, unless you insist!' she said, a sob hanging heavy in her voice. 'o, all right.' 'do you mind my refusing? i will tell you some day.' 'it doesn't matter in the least, of course.' he walked away whistling a few bars of no tune in particular; and when he had got down to his factory in the city the subject came into marchmill's head again. he, too, was aware that a suicide had taken place recently at the house they had occupied at solentsea. having seen the volume of poems in his wife's hand of late, and heard fragments of the landlady's conversation about trewe when they were her tenants, he all at once said to himself; 'why of course it's he! how the devil did she get to know him? what sly animals women are!' then he placidly dismissed the matter, and went on with his daily affairs. by this time ella at home had come to a determination. mrs. hooper, in sending the hair and photograph, had informed her of the day of the funeral; and as the morning and noon wore on an overpowering wish to know where they were laying him took possession of the sympathetic woman. caring very little now what her husband or any one else might think of her eccentricities; she wrote marchmill a brief note, stating that she was called away for the afternoon and evening, but would return on the following morning. this she left on his desk, and having given the same information to the servants, went out of the house on foot. when mr. marchmill reached home early in the afternoon the servants looked anxious. the nurse took him privately aside, and hinted that her mistress's sadness during the past few days had been such that she feared she had gone out to drown herself. marchmill reflected. upon the whole he thought that she had not done that. without saying whither he was bound he also started off, telling them not to sit up for him. he drove to the railway-station, and took a ticket for solentsea. it was dark when he reached the place, though he had come by a fast train, and he knew that if his wife had preceded him thither it could only have been by a slower train, arriving not a great while before his own. the season at solentsea was now past: the parade was gloomy, and the flys were few and cheap. he asked the way to the cemetery, and soon reached it. the gate was locked, but the keeper let him in, declaring, however, that there was nobody within the precincts. although it was not late, the autumnal darkness had now become intense; and he found some difficulty in keeping to the serpentine path which led to the quarter where, as the man had told him, the one or two interments for the day had taken place. he stepped upon the grass, and, stumbling over some pegs, stooped now and then to discern if possible a figure against the sky. he could see none; but lighting on a spot where the soil was trodden, beheld a crouching object beside a newly made grave. she heard him, and sprang up. 'ell, how silly this is!' he said indignantly. 'running away from home--i never heard such a thing! of course i am not jealous of this unfortunate man; but it is too ridiculous that you, a married woman with three children and a fourth coming, should go losing your head like this over a dead lover! . . . do you know you were locked in? you might not have been able to get out all night.' she did not answer. 'i hope it didn't go far between you and him, for your own sake.' 'don't insult me, will.' 'mind, i won't have any more of this sort of thing; do you hear?' 'very well,' she said. he drew her arm within his own, and conducted her out of the cemetery. it was impossible to get back that night; and not wishing to be recognized in their present sorry condition, he took her to a miserable little coffee-house close to the station, whence they departed early in the morning, travelling almost without speaking, under the sense that it was one of those dreary situations occurring in married life which words could not mend, and reaching their own door at noon. the months passed, and neither of the twain ever ventured to start a conversation upon this episode. ella seemed to be only too frequently in a sad and listless mood, which might almost have been called pining. the time was approaching when she would have to undergo the stress of childbirth for a fourth time, and that apparently did not tend to raise her spirits. 'i don't think i shall get over it this time!' she said one day. 'pooh! what childish foreboding! why shouldn't it be as well now as ever?' she shook her head. 'i feel almost sure i am going to die; and i should be glad, if it were not for nelly, and frank, and tiny.' 'and me!' 'you'll soon find somebody to fill my place,' she murmured, with a sad smile. 'and you'll have a perfect right to; i assure you of that.' 'ell, you are not thinking still about that--poetical friend of yours?' she neither admitted nor denied the charge. 'i am not going to get over my illness this time,' she reiterated. 'something tells me i shan't.' this view of things was rather a bad beginning, as it usually is; and, in fact, six weeks later, in the month of may, she was lying in her room, pulseless and bloodless, with hardly strength enough left to follow up one feeble breath with another, the infant for whose unnecessary life she was slowly parting with her own being fat and well. just before her death she spoke to marchmill softly:- 'will, i want to confess to you the entire circumstances of that--about you know what--that time we visited solentsea. i can't tell what possessed me--how i could forget you so, my husband! but i had got into a morbid state: i thought you had been unkind; that you had neglected me; that you weren't up to my intellectual level, while he was, and far above it. i wanted a fuller appreciator, perhaps, rather than another lover--' she could get no further then for very exhaustion; and she went off in sudden collapse a few hours later, without having said anything more to her husband on the subject of her love for the poet. william marchmill, in truth, like most husbands of several years' standing, was little disturbed by retrospective jealousies, and had not shown the least anxiety to press her for confessions concerning a man dead and gone beyond any power of inconveniencing him more. but when she had been buried a couple of years it chanced one day that, in turning over some forgotten papers that he wished to destroy before his second wife entered the house, he lighted on a lock of hair in an envelope, with the photograph of the deceased poet, a date being written on the back in his late wife's hand. it was that of the time they spent at solentsea. marchmill looked long and musingly at the hair and portrait, for something struck him. fetching the little boy who had been the death of his mother, now a noisy toddler, he took him on his knee, held the lock of hair against the child's head, and set up the photograph on the table behind, so that he could closely compare the features each countenance presented. there were undoubtedly strong traces of resemblance; the dreamy and peculiar expression of the poet's face sat, as the transmitted idea, upon the child's, and the hair was of the same hue. 'i'm damned if i didn't think so!' murmured marchmill. 'then she did play me false with that fellow at the lodgings! let me see: the dates--the second week in august . . . the third week in may . . . yes . . . yes . . . get away, you poor little brat! you are nothing to me!' . the three strangers among the few features of agricultural england which retain an appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries, may be reckoned the high, grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases, as they are indifferently called, that fill a large area of certain counties in the south and south- west. if any mark of human occupation is met with hereon, it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage of some shepherd. fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may possibly be standing there now. in spite of its loneliness, however, the spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five miles from a county- town. yet that affected it little. five miles of irregular upland, during the long inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows, rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a timon or a nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to please that less repellent tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists, and others who 'conceive and meditate of pleasant things.' some old earthen camp or barrow, some clump of trees, at least some starved fragment of ancient hedge is usually taken advantage of in the erection of these forlorn dwellings. but, in the present case, such a kind of shelter had been disregarded. higher crowstairs, as the house was called, stood quite detached and undefended. the only reason for its precise situation seemed to be the crossing of two footpaths at right angles hard by, which may have crossed there and thus for a good five hundred years. hence the house was exposed to the elements on all sides. but, though the wind up here blew unmistakably when it did blow, and the rain hit hard whenever it fell, the various weathers of the winter season were not quite so formidable on the coomb as they were imagined to be by dwellers on low ground. the raw rimes were not so pernicious as in the hollows, and the frosts were scarcely so severe. when the shepherd and his family who tenanted the house were pitied for their sufferings from the exposure, they said that upon the whole they were less inconvenienced by 'wuzzes and flames' (hoarses and phlegms) than when they had lived by the stream of a snug neighbouring valley. the night of march , -, was precisely one of the nights that were wont to call forth these expressions of commiseration. the level rainstorm smote walls, slopes, and hedges like the clothyard shafts of senlac and crecy. such sheep and outdoor animals as had no shelter stood with their buttocks to the winds; while the tails of little birds trying to roost on some scraggy thorn were blown inside-out like umbrellas. the gable-end of the cottage was stained with wet, and the eavesdroppings flapped against the wall. yet never was commiseration for the shepherd more misplaced. for that cheerful rustic was entertaining a large party in glorification of the christening of his second girl. the guests had arrived before the rain began to fall, and they were all now assembled in the chief or living room of the dwelling. a glance into the apartment at eight o'clock on this eventful evening would have resulted in the opinion that it was as cosy and comfortable a nook as could be wished for in boisterous weather. the calling of its inhabitant was proclaimed by a number of highly-polished sheep-crooks without stems that were hung ornamentally over the fireplace, the curl of each shining crook varying from the antiquated type engraved in the patriarchal pictures of old family bibles to the most approved fashion of the last local sheep-fair. the room was lighted by half-a-dozen candles, having wicks only a trifle smaller than the grease which enveloped them, in candlesticks that were never used but at high-days, holy-days, and family feasts. the lights were scattered about the room, two of them standing on the chimney-piece. this position of candles was in itself significant. candles on the chimney-piece always meant a party. on the hearth, in front of a back-brand to give substance, blazed a fire of thorns, that crackled 'like the laughter of the fool.' nineteen persons were gathered here. of these, five women, wearing gowns of various bright hues, sat in chairs along the wall; girls shy and not shy filled the window-bench; four men, including charley jake the hedge- carpenter, elijah new the parish-clerk, and john pitcher, a neighbouring dairyman, the shepherd's father-in-law, lolled in the settle; a young man and maid, who were blushing over tentative pourparlers on a life-companionship, sat beneath the corner-cupboard; and an elderly engaged man of fifty or upward moved restlessly about from spots where his betrothed was not to the spot where she was. enjoyment was pretty general, and so much the more prevailed in being unhampered by conventional restrictions. absolute confidence in each other's good opinion begat perfect ease, while the finishing stroke of manner, amounting to a truly princely serenity, was lent to the majority by the absence of any expression or trait denoting that they wished to get on in the world, enlarge their minds, or do any eclipsing thing whatever--which nowadays so generally nips the bloom and bonhomie of all except the two extremes of the social scale. shepherd fennel had married well, his wife being a dairyman's daughter from a vale at a distance, who brought fifty guineas in her pocket--and kept them there, till they should be required for ministering to the needs of a coming family. this frugal woman had been somewhat exercised as to the character that should be given to the gathering. a sit-still party had its advantages; but an undisturbed position of ease in chairs and settles was apt to lead on the men to such an unconscionable deal of toping that they would sometimes fairly drink the house dry. a dancing- party was the alternative; but this, while avoiding the foregoing objection on the score of good drink, had a counterbalancing disadvantage in the matter of good victuals, the ravenous appetites engendered by the exercise causing immense havoc in the buttery. shepherdess fennel fell back upon the intermediate plan of mingling short dances with short periods of talk and singing, so as to hinder any ungovernable rage in either. but this scheme was entirely confined to her own gentle mind: the shepherd himself was in the mood to exhibit the most reckless phases of hospitality. the fiddler was a boy of those parts, about twelve years of age, who had a wonderful dexterity in jigs and reels, though his fingers were so small and short as to necessitate a constant shifting for the high notes, from which he scrambled back to the first position with sounds not of unmixed purity of tone. at seven the shrill tweedle-dee of this youngster had begun, accompanied by a booming ground-bass from elijah new, the parish- clerk, who had thoughtfully brought with him his favourite musical instrument, the serpent. dancing was instantaneous, mrs. fennel privately enjoining the players on no account to let the dance exceed the length of a quarter of an hour. but elijah and the boy, in the excitement of their position, quite forgot the injunction. moreover, oliver giles, a man of seventeen, one of the dancers, who was enamoured of his partner, a fair girl of thirty-three rolling years, had recklessly handed a new crown-piece to the musicians, as a bribe to keep going as long as they had muscle and wind. mrs. fennel, seeing the steam begin to generate on the countenances of her guests, crossed over and touched the fiddler's elbow and put her hand on the serpent's mouth. but they took no notice, and fearing she might lose her character of genial hostess if she were to interfere too markedly, she retired and sat down helpless. and so the dance whizzed on with cumulative fury, the performers moving in their planet-like courses, direct and retrograde, from apogee to perigee, till the hand of the well- kicked clock at the bottom of the room had travelled over the circumference of an hour. while these cheerful events were in course of enactment within fennel's pastoral dwelling, an incident having considerable bearing on the party had occurred in the gloomy night without. mrs. fennel's concern about the growing fierceness of the dance corresponded in point of time with the ascent of a human figure to the solitary hill of higher crowstairs from the direction of the distant town. this personage strode on through the rain without a pause, following the little-worn path which, further on in its course, skirted the shepherd's cottage. it was nearly the time of full moon, and on this account, though the sky was lined with a uniform sheet of dripping cloud, ordinary objects out of doors were readily visible. the sad wan light revealed the lonely pedestrian to be a man of supple frame; his gait suggested that he had somewhat passed the period of perfect and instinctive agility, though not so far as to be otherwise than rapid of motion when occasion required. at a rough guess, he might have been about forty years of age. he appeared tall, but a recruiting sergeant, or other person accustomed to the judging of men's heights by the eye, would have discerned that this was chiefly owing to his gauntness, and that he was not more than five-feet- eight or nine. notwithstanding the regularity of his tread, there was caution in it, as in that of one who mentally feels his way; and despite the fact that it was not a black coat nor a dark garment of any sort that he wore, there was something about him which suggested that he naturally belonged to the black-coated tribes of men. his clothes were of fustian, and his boots hobnailed, yet in his progress he showed not the mud-accustomed bearing of hobnailed and fustianed peasantry. by the time that he had arrived abreast of the shepherd's premises the rain came down, or rather came along, with yet more determined violence. the outskirts of the little settlement partially broke the force of wind and rain, and this induced him to stand still. the most salient of the shepherd's domestic erections was an empty sty at the forward corner of his hedgeless garden, for in these latitudes the principle of masking the homelier features of your establishment by a conventional frontage was unknown. the traveller's eye was attracted to this small building by the pallid shine of the wet slates that covered it. he turned aside, and, finding it empty, stood under the pent-roof for shelter. while he stood, the boom of the serpent within the adjacent house, and the lesser strains of the fiddler, reached the spot as an accompaniment to the surging hiss of the flying rain on the sod, its louder beating on the cabbage-leaves of the garden, on the eight or ten beehives just discernible by the path, and its dripping from the eaves into a row of buckets and pans that had been placed under the walls of the cottage. for at higher crowstairs, as at all such elevated domiciles, the grand difficulty of housekeeping was an insufficiency of water; and a casual rainfall was utilized by turning out, as catchers, every utensil that the house contained. some queer stories might be told of the contrivances for economy in suds and dish-waters that are absolutely necessitated in upland habitations during the droughts of summer. but at this season there were no such exigencies; a mere acceptance of what the skies bestowed was sufficient for an abundant store. at last the notes of the serpent ceased and the house was silent. this cessation of activity aroused the solitary pedestrian from the reverie into which he had lapsed, and, emerging from the shed, with an apparently new intention, he walked up the path to the house-door. arrived here, his first act was to kneel down on a large stone beside the row of vessels, and to drink a copious draught from one of them. having quenched his thirst he rose and lifted his hand to knock, but paused with his eye upon the panel. since the dark surface of the wood revealed absolutely nothing, it was evident that he must be mentally looking through the door, as if he wished to measure thereby all the possibilities that a house of this sort might include, and how they might bear upon the question of his entry. in his indecision he turned and surveyed the scene around. not a soul was anywhere visible. the garden-path stretched downward from his feet, gleaming like the track of a snail; the roof of the little well (mostly dry), the well-cover, the top rail of the garden-gate, were varnished with the same dull liquid glaze; while, far away in the vale, a faint whiteness of more than usual extent showed that the rivers were high in the meads. beyond all this winked a few bleared lamplights through the beating drops--lights that denoted the situation of the county-town from which he had appeared to come. the absence of all notes of life in that direction seemed to clinch his intentions, and he knocked at the door. within, a desultory chat had taken the place of movement and musical sound. the hedge-carpenter was suggesting a song to the company, which nobody just then was inclined to undertake, so that the knock afforded a not unwelcome diversion. 'walk in!' said the shepherd promptly. the latch clicked upward, and out of the night our pedestrian appeared upon the door-mat. the shepherd arose, snuffed two of the nearest candles, and turned to look at him. their light disclosed that the stranger was dark in complexion and not unprepossessing as to feature. his hat, which for a moment he did not remove, hung low over his eyes, without concealing that they were large, open, and determined, moving with a flash rather than a glance round the room. he seemed pleased with his survey, and, baring his shaggy head, said, in a rich deep voice, 'the rain is so heavy, friends, that i ask leave to come in and rest awhile.' 'to be sure, stranger,' said the shepherd. 'and faith, you've been lucky in choosing your time, for we are having a bit of a fling for a glad cause--though, to be sure, a man could hardly wish that glad cause to happen more than once a year.' 'nor less,' spoke up a woman. 'for 'tis best to get your family over and done with, as soon as you can, so as to be all the earlier out of the fag o't.' 'and what may be this glad cause?' asked the stranger. 'a birth and christening,' said the shepherd. the stranger hoped his host might not be made unhappy either by too many or too few of such episodes, and being invited by a gesture to a pull at the mug, he readily acquiesced. his manner, which, before entering, had been so dubious, was now altogether that of a careless and candid man. 'late to be traipsing athwart this coomb--hey?' said the engaged man of fifty. 'late it is, master, as you say.--i'll take a seat in the chimney-corner, if you have nothing to urge against it, ma'am; for i am a little moist on the side that was next the rain.' mrs. shepherd fennel assented, and made room for the self-invited comer, who, having got completely inside the chimney-corner, stretched out his legs and his arms with the expansiveness of a person quite at home. 'yes, i am rather cracked in the vamp,' he said freely, seeing that the eyes of the shepherd's wife fell upon his boots, 'and i am not well fitted either. i have had some rough times lately, and have been forced to pick up what i can get in the way of wearing, but i must find a suit better fit for working-days when i reach home.' 'one of hereabouts?' she inquired. 'not quite that--further up the country.' 'i thought so. and so be i; and by your tongue you come from my neighbourhood.' 'but you would hardly have heard of me,' he said quickly. 'my time would be long before yours, ma'am, you see.' this testimony to the youthfulness of his hostess had the effect of stopping her cross-examination. 'there is only one thing more wanted to make me happy,' continued the new- comer. 'and that is a little baccy, which i am sorry to say i am out of.' 'i'll fill your pipe,' said the shepherd. 'i must ask you to lend me a pipe likewise.' 'a smoker, and no pipe about 'ee?' 'i have dropped it somewhere on the road.' the shepherd filled and handed him a new clay pipe, saying, as he did so, 'hand me your baccy-box--i'll fill that too, now i am about it.' the man went through the movement of searching his pockets. 'lost that too?' said his entertainer, with some surprise. 'i am afraid so,' said the man with some confusion. 'give it to me in a screw of paper.' lighting his pipe at the candle with a suction that drew the whole flame into the bowl, he resettled himself in the corner and bent his looks upon the faint steam from his damp legs, as if he wished to say no more. meanwhile the general body of guests had been taking little notice of this visitor by reason of an absorbing discussion in which they were engaged with the band about a tune for the next dance. the matter being settled, they were about to stand up when an interruption came in the shape of another knock at the door. at sound of the same the man in the chimney-corner took up the poker and began stirring the brands as if doing it thoroughly were the one aim of his existence; and a second time the shepherd said, 'walk in!' in a moment another man stood upon the straw-woven door-mat. he too was a stranger. this individual was one of a type radically different from the first. there was more of the commonplace in his manner, and a certain jovial cosmopolitanism sat upon his features. he was several years older than the first arrival, his hair being slightly frosted, his eyebrows bristly, and his whiskers cut back from his cheeks. his face was rather full and flabby, and yet it was not altogether a face without power. a few grog- blossoms marked the neighbourhood of his nose. he flung back his long drab greatcoat, revealing that beneath it he wore a suit of cinder-gray shade throughout, large heavy seals, of some metal or other that would take a polish, dangling from his fob as his only personal ornament. shaking the water-drops from his low-crowned glazed hat, he said, 'i must ask for a few minutes' shelter, comrades, or i shall be wetted to my skin before i get to casterbridge.' 'make yourself at home, master,' said the shepherd, perhaps a trifle less heartily than on the first occasion. not that fennel had the least tinge of niggardliness in his composition; but the room was far from large, spare chairs were not numerous, and damp companions were not altogether desirable at close quarters for the women and girls in their bright-coloured gowns. however, the second comer, after taking off his greatcoat, and hanging his hat on a nail in one of the ceiling-beams as if he had been specially invited to put it there, advanced and sat down at the table. this had been pushed so closely into the chimney-corner, to give all available room to the dancers, that its inner edge grazed the elbow of the man who had ensconced himself by the fire; and thus the two strangers were brought into close companionship. they nodded to each other by way of breaking the ice of unacquaintance, and the first stranger handed his neighbour the family mug--a huge vessel of brown ware, having its upper edge worn away like a threshold by the rub of whole generations of thirsty lips that had gone the way of all flesh, and bearing the following inscription burnt upon its rotund side in yellow letters there is no fun untill i cum. the other man, nothing loth, raised the mug to his lips, and drank on, and on, and on--till a curious blueness overspread the countenance of the shepherd's wife, who had regarded with no little surprise the first stranger's free offer to the second of what did not belong to him to dispense. 'i knew it!' said the toper to the shepherd with much satisfaction. 'when i walked up your garden before coming in, and saw the hives all of a row, i said to myself; "where there's bees there's honey, and where there's honey there's mead." but mead of such a truly comfortable sort as this i really didn't expect to meet in my older days.' he took yet another pull at the mug, till it assumed an ominous elevation. 'glad you enjoy it!' said the shepherd warmly. 'it is goodish mead,' assented mrs. fennel, with an absence of enthusiasm which seemed to say that it was possible to buy praise for one's cellar at too heavy a price. 'it is trouble enough to make--and really i hardly think we shall make any more. for honey sells well, and we ourselves can make shift with a drop o' small mead and metheglin for common use from the comb-washings.' 'o, but you'll never have the heart!' reproachfully cried the stranger in cinder-gray, after taking up the mug a third time and setting it down empty. 'i love mead, when 'tis old like this, as i love to go to church o' sundays, or to relieve the needy any day of the week.' 'ha, ha, ha!' said the man in the chimney-corner, who, in spite of the taciturnity induced by the pipe of tobacco, could not or would not refrain from this slight testimony to his comrade's humour. now the old mead of those days, brewed of the purest first-year or maiden honey, four pounds to the gallon--with its due complement of white of eggs, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, rosemary, yeast, and processes of working, bottling, and cellaring--tasted remarkably strong; but it did not taste so strong as it actually was. hence, presently, the stranger in cinder-gray at the table, moved by its creeping influence, unbuttoned his waistcoat, threw himself back in his chair, spread his legs, and made his presence felt in various ways. 'well, well, as i say,' he resumed, 'i am going to casterbridge, and to casterbridge i must go. i should have been almost there by this time; but the rain drove me into your dwelling, and i'm not sorry for it.' 'you don't live in casterbridge?' said the shepherd. 'not as yet; though i shortly mean to move there.' 'going to set up in trade, perhaps?' 'no, no,' said the shepherd's wife. 'it is easy to see that the gentleman is rich, and don't want to work at anything.' the cinder-gray stranger paused, as if to consider whether he would accept that definition of himself. he presently rejected it by answering, 'rich is not quite the word for me, dame. i do work, and i must work. and even if i only get to casterbridge by midnight i must begin work there at eight to-morrow morning. yes, het or wet, blow or snow, famine or sword, my day's work to-morrow must be done.' 'poor man! then, in spite o' seeming, you be worse off than we?' replied the shepherd's wife. ''tis the nature of my trade, men and maidens. 'tis the nature of my trade more than my poverty . . . but really and truly i must up and off, or i shan't get a lodging in the town.' however, the speaker did not move, and directly added, 'there's time for one more draught of friendship before i go; and i'd perform it at once if the mug were not dry.' 'here's a mug o' small,' said mrs. fennel. 'small, we call it, though to be sure 'tis only the first wash o' the combs.' 'no,' said the stranger disdainfully. 'i won't spoil your first kindness by partaking o' your second.' 'certainly not,' broke in fennel. 'we don't increase and multiply every day, and i'll fill the mug again.' he went away to the dark place under the stairs where the barrel stood. the shepherdess followed him. 'why should you do this?' she said reproachfully, as soon as they were alone. 'he's emptied it once, though it held enough for ten people; and now he's not contented wi' the small, but must needs call for more o' the strong! and a stranger unbeknown to any of us. for my part, i don't like the look o' the man at all.' 'but he's in the house, my honey; and 'tis a wet night, and a christening. daze it, what's a cup of mead more or less? there'll be plenty more next bee-burning.' 'very well--this time, then,' she answered, looking wistfully at the barrel. 'but what is the man's calling, and where is he one of; that he should come in and join us like this?' 'i don't know. i'll ask him again.' the catastrophe of having the mug drained dry at one pull by the stranger in cinder-gray was effectually guarded against this time by mrs. fennel. she poured out his allowance in a small cup, keeping the large one at a discreet distance from him. when he had tossed off his portion the shepherd renewed his inquiry about the stranger's occupation. the latter did not immediately reply, and the man in the chimney-corner, with sudden demonstrativeness, said, 'anybody may know my trade--i'm a wheelwright.' 'a very good trade for these parts,' said the shepherd. 'and anybody may know mine--if they've the sense to find it out,' said the stranger in cinder-gray. 'you may generally tell what a man is by his claws,' observed the hedge- carpenter, looking at his own hands. 'my fingers be as full of thorns as an old pin-cushion is of pins.' the hands of the man in the chimney-corner instinctively sought the shade, and he gazed into the fire as he resumed his pipe. the man at the table took up the hedge-carpenter's remark, and added smartly, 'true; but the oddity of my trade is that, instead of setting a mark upon me, it sets a mark upon my customers.' no observation being offered by anybody in elucidation of this enigma, the shepherd's wife once more called for a song. the same obstacles presented themselves as at the former time--one had no voice, another had forgotten the first verse. the stranger at the table, whose soul had now risen to a good working temperature, relieved the difficulty by exclaiming that, to start the company, he would sing himself. thrusting one thumb into the arm-hole of his waistcoat, he waved the other hand in the air, and, with an extemporizing gaze at the shining sheep-crooks above the mantelpiece, began:- 'o my trade it is the rarest one, simple shepherds all - my trade is a sight to see; for my customers i tie, and take them up on high, and waft 'em to a far countree!' the room was silent when he had finished the verse--with one exception, that of the man in the chimney-corner, who, at the singer's word, 'chorus! 'joined him in a deep bass voice of musical relish - 'and waft 'em to a far countree!' oliver giles, john pitcher the dairyman, the parish-clerk, the engaged man of fifty, the row of young women against the wall, seemed lost in thought not of the gayest kind. the shepherd looked meditatively on the ground, the shepherdess gazed keenly at the singer, and with some suspicion; she was doubting whether this stranger were merely singing an old song from recollection, or was composing one there and then for the occasion. all were as perplexed at the obscure revelation as the guests at belshazzar's feast, except the man in the chimney-corner, who quietly said, 'second verse, stranger,' and smoked on. the singer thoroughly moistened himself from his lips inwards, and went on with the next stanza as requested:- 'my tools are but common ones, simple shepherds all - my tools are no sight to see: a little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing, are implements enough for me!' shepherd fennel glanced round. there was no longer any doubt that the stranger was answering his question rhythmically. the guests one and all started back with suppressed exclamations. the young woman engaged to the man of fifty fainted half-way, and would have proceeded, but finding him wanting in alacrity for catching her she sat down trembling. 'o, he's the--!' whispered the people in the background, mentioning the name of an ominous public officer. 'he's come to do it! 'tis to be at casterbridge jail to-morrow--the man for sheep-stealing--the poor clock- maker we heard of; who used to live away at shottsford and had no work to do--timothy summers, whose family were a-starving, and so he went out of shottsford by the high-road, and took a sheep in open daylight, defying the farmer and the farmer's wife and the farmer's lad, and every man jack among 'em. he' (and they nodded towards the stranger of the deadly trade) 'is come from up the country to do it because there's not enough to do in his own county-town, and he's got the place here now our own county man's dead; he's going to live in the same cottage under the prison wall.' the stranger in cinder-gray took no notice of this whispered string of observations, but again wetted his lips. seeing that his friend in the chimney-corner was the only one who reciprocated his joviality in any way, he held out his cup towards that appreciative comrade, who also held out his own. they clinked together, the eyes of the rest of the room hanging upon the singer's actions. he parted his lips for the third verse; but at that moment another knock was audible upon the door. this time the knock was faint and hesitating. the company seemed scared; the shepherd looked with consternation towards the entrance, and it was with some effort that he resisted his alarmed wife's deprecatory glance, and uttered for the third time the welcoming words, 'walk in!' the door was gently opened, and another man stood upon the mat. he, like those who had preceded him, was a stranger. this time it was a short, small personage, of fair complexion, and dressed in a decent suit of dark clothes. 'can you tell me the way to--?' he began: when, gazing round the room to observe the nature of the company amongst whom he had fallen, his eyes lighted on the stranger in cinder-gray. it was just at the instant when the latter, who had thrown his mind into his song with such a will that he scarcely heeded the interruption, silenced all whispers and inquiries by bursting into his third verse:- 'to-morrow is my working day, simple shepherds all - to-morrow is a working day for me: for the farmer's sheep is slain, and the lad who did it ta'en, and on his soul may god ha' merc-y!' the stranger in the chimney-corner, waving cups with the singer so heartily that his mead splashed over on the hearth, repeated in his bass voice as before:- 'and on his soul may god ha' merc-y!' all this time the third stranger had been standing in the doorway. finding now that he did not come forward or go on speaking, the guests particularly regarded him. they noticed to their surprise that he stood before them the picture of abject terror--his knees trembling, his hand shaking so violently that the door-latch by which he supported himself rattled audibly: his white lips were parted, and his eyes fixed on the merry officer of justice in the middle of the room. a moment more and he had turned, closed the door, and fled. 'what a man can it be?' said the shepherd. the rest, between the awfulness of their late discovery and the odd conduct of this third visitor, looked as if they knew not what to think, and said nothing. instinctively they withdrew further and further from the grim gentleman in their midst, whom some of them seemed to take for the prince of darkness himself; till they formed a remote circle, an empty space of floor being left between them and him - ' . . . circulus, cujus centrum diabolus.' the room was so silent--though there were more than twenty people in it--that nothing could be heard but the patter of the rain against the window-shutters, accompanied by the occasional hiss of a stray drop that fell down the chimney into the fire, and the steady puffing of the man in the corner, who had now resumed his pipe of long clay. the stillness was unexpectedly broken. the distant sound of a gun reverberated through the air--apparently from the direction of the county- town. 'be jiggered!' cried the stranger who had sung the song, jumping up. 'what does that mean?' asked several. 'a prisoner escaped from the jail--that's what it means.' all listened. the sound was repeated, and none of them spoke but the man in the chimney-corner, who said quietly, 'i've often been told that in this county they fire a gun at such times; but i never heard it till now.' 'i wonder if it is my man?' murmured the personage in cinder-gray. 'surely it is!' said the shepherd involuntarily. 'and surely we've zeed him! that little man who looked in at the door by now, and quivered like a leaf when he zeed ye and heard your song!' 'his teeth chattered, and the breath went out of his body,' said the dairyman. 'and his heart seemed to sink within him like a stone,' said oliver giles. 'and he bolted as if he'd been shot at,' said the hedge-carpenter. 'true--his teeth chattered, and his heart seemed to sink; and he bolted as if he'd been shot at,' slowly summed up the man in the chimney-corner. 'i didn't notice it,' remarked the hangman. 'we were all a-wondering what made him run off in such a fright,' faltered one of the women against the wall, 'and now 'tis explained!' the firing of the alarm-gun went on at intervals, low and sullenly, and their suspicions became a certainty. the sinister gentleman in cinder- gray roused himself. 'is there a constable here?' he asked, in thick tones. 'if so, let him step forward.' the engaged man of fifty stepped quavering out from the wall, his betrothed beginning to sob on the back of the chair. 'you are a sworn constable?' 'i be, sir.' 'then pursue the criminal at once, with assistance, and bring him back here. he can't have gone far.' 'i will, sir, i will--when i've got my staff. i'll go home and get it, and come sharp here, and start in a body.' 'staff!--never mind your staff; the man'll be gone!' 'but i can't do nothing without my staff--can i, william, and john, and charles jake? no; for there's the king's royal crown a painted on en in yaller and gold, and the lion and the unicorn, so as when i raise en up and hit my prisoner, 'tis made a lawful blow thereby. i wouldn't 'tempt to take up a man without my staff--no, not i. if i hadn't the law to gie me courage, why, instead o' my taking up him he might take up me!' 'now, i'm a king's man myself; and can give you authority enough for this,' said the formidable officer in gray. 'now then, all of ye, be ready. have ye any lanterns?' 'yes--have ye any lanterns?--i demand it!' said the constable. 'and the rest of you able-bodied--' 'able-bodied men--yes--the rest of ye!' said the constable. 'have you some good stout staves and pitch-forks--' 'staves and pitchforks--in the name o' the law! and take 'em in yer hands and go in quest, and do as we in authority tell ye!' thus aroused, the men prepared to give chase. the evidence was, indeed, though circumstantial, so convincing, that but little argument was needed to show the shepherd's guests that after what they had seen it would look very much like connivance if they did not instantly pursue the unhappy third stranger, who could not as yet have gone more than a few hundred yards over such uneven country. a shepherd is always well provided with lanterns; and, lighting these hastily, and with hurdle-staves in their hands, they poured out of the door, taking a direction along the crest of the hill, away from the town, the rain having fortunately a little abated. disturbed by the noise, or possibly by unpleasant dreams of her baptism, the child who had been christened began to cry heart-brokenly in the room overhead. these notes of grief came down through the chinks of the floor to the ears of the women below, who jumped up one by one, and seemed glad of the excuse to ascend and comfort the baby, for the incidents of the last half-hour greatly oppressed them. thus in the space of two or three minutes the room on the ground-floor was deserted quite. but it was not for long. hardly had the sound of footsteps died away when a man returned round the corner of the house from the direction the pursuers had taken. peeping in at the door, and seeing nobody there, he entered leisurely. it was the stranger of the chimney-corner, who had gone out with the rest. the motive of his return was shown by his helping himself to a cut piece of skimmer-cake that lay on a ledge beside where he had sat, and which he had apparently forgotten to take with him. he also poured out half a cup more mead from the quantity that remained, ravenously eating and drinking these as he stood. he had not finished when another figure came in just as quietly--his friend in cinder-gray. 'o--you here?' said the latter, smiling. 'i thought you had gone to help in the capture.' and this speaker also revealed the object of his return by looking solicitously round for the fascinating mug of old mead. 'and i thought you had gone,' said the other, continuing his skimmer-cake with some effort. 'well, on second thoughts, i felt there were enough without me,' said the first confidentially, 'and such a night as it is, too. besides, 'tis the business o' the government to take care of its criminals--not mine.' 'true; so it is. and i felt as you did, that there were enough without me.' 'i don't want to break my limbs running over the humps and hollows of this wild country.' 'nor i neither, between you and me.' 'these shepherd-people are used to it--simple-minded souls, you know, stirred up to anything in a moment. they'll have him ready for me before the morning, and no trouble to me at all.' 'they'll have him, and we shall have saved ourselves all labour in the matter.' 'true, true. well, my way is to casterbridge; and 'tis as much as my legs will do to take me that far. going the same way?' 'no, i am sorry to say! i have to get home over there' (he nodded indefinitely to the right), 'and i feel as you do, that it is quite enough for my legs to do before bedtime.' the other had by this time finished the mead in the mug, after which, shaking hands heartily at the door, and wishing each other well, they went their several ways. in the meantime the company of pursuers had reached the end of the hog's- back elevation which dominated this part of the down. they had decided on no particular plan of action; and, finding that the man of the baleful trade was no longer in their company, they seemed quite unable to form any such plan now. they descended in all directions down the hill, and straightway several of the party fell into the snare set by nature for all misguided midnight ramblers over this part of the cretaceous formation. the 'lanchets,' or flint slopes, which belted the escarpment at intervals of a dozen yards, took the less cautious ones unawares, and losing their footing on the rubbly steep they slid sharply downwards, the lanterns rolling from their hands to the bottom, and there lying on their sides till the horn was scorched through. when they had again gathered themselves together, the shepherd, as the man who knew the country best, took the lead, and guided them round these treacherous inclines. the lanterns, which seemed rather to dazzle their eyes and warn the fugitive than to assist them in the exploration, were extinguished, due silence was observed; and in this more rational order they plunged into the vale. it was a grassy, briery, moist defile, affording some shelter to any person who had sought it; but the party perambulated it in vain, and ascended on the other side. here they wandered apart, and after an interval closed together again to report progress. at the second time of closing in they found themselves near a lonely ash, the single tree on this part of the coomb, probably sown there by a passing bird some fifty years before. and here, standing a little to one side of the trunk, as motionless as the trunk itself; appeared the man they were in quest of; his outline being well defined against the sky beyond. the band noiselessly drew up and faced him. 'your money or your life!' said the constable sternly to the still figure. 'no, no,' whispered john pitcher. ''tisn't our side ought to say that. that's the doctrine of vagabonds like him, and we be on the side of the law.' 'well, well,' replied the constable impatiently; 'i must say something, mustn't i? and if you had all the weight o' this undertaking upon your mind, perhaps you'd say the wrong thing too!--prisoner at the bar, surrender, in the name of the father--the crown, i mane!' the man under the tree seemed now to notice them for the first time, and, giving them no opportunity whatever for exhibiting their courage, he strolled slowly towards them. he was, indeed, the little man, the third stranger; but his trepidation had in a great measure gone. 'well, travellers,' he said, 'did i hear ye speak to me?' 'you did: you've got to come and be our prisoner at once!' said the constable. 'we arrest 'ee on the charge of not biding in casterbridge jail in a decent proper manner to be hung to-morrow morning. neighbours, do your duty, and seize the culpet!' on hearing the charge, the man seemed enlightened, and, saying not another word, resigned himself with preternatural civility to the search- party, who, with their staves in their hands, surrounded him on all sides, and marched him back towards the shepherd's cottage. it was eleven o'clock by the time they arrived. the light shining from the open door, a sound of men's voices within, proclaimed to them as they approached the house that some new events had arisen in their absence. on entering they discovered the shepherd's living room to be invaded by two officers from casterbridge jail, and a well-known magistrate who lived at the nearest country-seat, intelligence of the escape having become generally circulated. 'gentlemen,' said the constable, 'i have brought back your man--not without risk and danger; but every one must do his duty! he is inside this circle of able-bodied persons, who have lent me useful aid, considering their ignorance of crown work. men, bring forward your prisoner!' and the third stranger was led to the light. 'who is this?' said one of the officials. 'the man,' said the constable. 'certainly not,' said the turnkey; and the first corroborated his statement. 'but how can it be otherwise?' asked the constable. 'or why was he so terrified at sight o' the singing instrument of the law who sat there?' here he related the strange behaviour of the third stranger on entering the house during the hangman's song. 'can't understand it,' said the officer coolly. 'all i know is that it is not the condemned man. he's quite a different character from this one; a gauntish fellow, with dark hair and eyes, rather good-looking, and with a musical bass voice that if you heard it once you'd never mistake as long as you lived.' 'why, souls--'twas the man in the chimney-corner!' 'hey--what?' said the magistrate, coming forward after inquiring particulars from the shepherd in the background. 'haven't you got the man after all?' 'well, sir,' said the constable, 'he's the man we were in search of, that's true; and yet he's not the man we were in search of. for the man we were in search of was not the man we wanted, sir, if you understand my everyday way; for 'twas the man in the chimney-corner!' 'a pretty kettle of fish altogether!' said the magistrate. 'you had better start for the other man at once.' the prisoner now spoke for the first time. the mention of the man in the chimney-corner seemed to have moved him as nothing else could do. 'sir,' he said, stepping forward to the magistrate, 'take no more trouble about me. the time is come when i may as well speak. i have done nothing; my crime is that the condemned man is my brother. early this afternoon i left home at shottsford to tramp it all the way to casterbridge jail to bid him farewell. i was benighted, and called here to rest and ask the way. when i opened the door i saw before me the very man, my brother, that i thought to see in the condemned cell at casterbridge. he was in this chimney-corner; and jammed close to him, so that he could not have got out if he had tried, was the executioner who'd come to take his life, singing a song about it and not knowing that it was his victim who was close by, joining in to save appearances. my brother looked a glance of agony at me, and i knew he meant, "don't reveal what you see; my life depends on it." i was so terror-struck that i could hardly stand, and, not knowing what i did, i turned and hurried away.' the narrator's manner and tone had the stamp of truth, and his story made a great impression on all around. 'and do you know where your brother is at the present time?' asked the magistrate. 'i do not. i have never seen him since i closed this door.' 'i can testify to that, for we've been between ye ever since,' said the constable. 'where does he think to fly to?--what is his occupation?' 'he's a watch-and-clock-maker, sir.' ''a said 'a was a wheelwright--a wicked rogue,' said the constable. 'the wheels of clocks and watches he meant, no doubt,' said shepherd fennel. 'i thought his hands were palish for's trade.' 'well, it appears to me that nothing can be gained by retaining this poor man in custody,' said the magistrate; 'your business lies with the other, unquestionably.' and so the little man was released off-hand; but he looked nothing the less sad on that account, it being beyond the power of magistrate or constable to raze out the written troubles in his brain, for they concerned another whom he regarded with more solicitude than himself. when this was done, and the man had gone his way, the night was found to be so far advanced that it was deemed useless to renew the search before the next morning. next day, accordingly, the quest for the clever sheep-stealer became general and keen, to all appearance at least. but the intended punishment was cruelly disproportioned to the transgression, and the sympathy of a great many country-folk in that district was strongly on the side of the fugitive. moreover, his marvellous coolness and daring in hob-and-nobbing with the hangman, under the unprecedented circumstances of the shepherd's party, won their admiration. so that it may be questioned if all those who ostensibly made themselves so busy in exploring woods and fields and lanes were quite so thorough when it came to the private examination of their own lofts and outhouses. stories were afloat of a mysterious figure being occasionally seen in some old overgrown trackway or other, remote from turnpike roads; but when a search was instituted in any of these suspected quarters nobody was found. thus the days and weeks passed without tidings. in brief; the bass-voiced man of the chimney-corner was never recaptured. some said that he went across the sea, others that he did not, but buried himself in the depths of a populous city. at any rate, the gentleman in cinder-gray never did his morning's work at casterbridge, nor met anywhere at all, for business purposes, the genial comrade with whom he had passed an hour of relaxation in the lonely house on the coomb. the grass has long been green on the graves of shepherd fennel and his frugal wife; the guests who made up the christening party have mainly followed their entertainers to the tomb; the baby in whose honour they all had met is a matron in the sere and yellow leaf. but the arrival of the three strangers at the shepherd's that night, and the details connected therewith, is a story as well known as ever in the country about higher crowstairs. march . the withered arm chapter i--a lorn milkmaid it was an eighty-cow dairy, and the troop of milkers, regular and supernumerary, were all at work; for, though the time of year was as yet but early april, the feed lay entirely in water-meadows, and the cows were 'in full pail.' the hour was about six in the evening, and three- fourths of the large, red, rectangular animals having been finished off, there was opportunity for a little conversation. 'he do bring home his bride to-morrow, i hear. they've come as far as anglebury to-day.' the voice seemed to proceed from the belly of the cow called cherry, but the speaker was a milking-woman, whose face was buried in the flank of that motionless beast. 'hav' anybody seen her?' said another. there was a negative response from the first. 'though they say she's a rosy-cheeked, tisty-tosty little body enough,' she added; and as the milkmaid spoke she turned her face so that she could glance past her cow's tail to the other side of the barton, where a thin, fading woman of thirty milked somewhat apart from the rest. 'years younger than he, they say,' continued the second, with also a glance of reflectiveness in the same direction. 'how old do you call him, then?' 'thirty or so.' 'more like forty,' broke in an old milkman near, in a long white pinafore or 'wropper,' and with the brim of his hat tied down, so that he looked like a woman. ''a was born before our great weir was builded, and i hadn't man's wages when i laved water there.' the discussion waxed so warm that the purr of the milk-streams became jerky, till a voice from another cow's belly cried with authority, 'now then, what the turk do it matter to us about farmer lodge's age, or farmer lodge's new mis'ess? i shall have to pay him nine pound a year for the rent of every one of these milchers, whatever his age or hers. get on with your work, or 'twill be dark afore we have done. the evening is pinking in a'ready.' this speaker was the dairyman himself; by whom the milkmaids and men were employed. nothing more was said publicly about farmer lodge's wedding, but the first woman murmured under her cow to her next neighbour, ''tis hard for she,' signifying the thin worn milkmaid aforesaid. 'o no,' said the second. 'he ha'n't spoke to rhoda brook for years.' when the milking was done they washed their pails and hung them on a many- forked stand made of the peeled limb of an oak-tree, set upright in the earth, and resembling a colossal antlered horn. the majority then dispersed in various directions homeward. the thin woman who had not spoken was joined by a boy of twelve or thereabout, and the twain went away up the field also. their course lay apart from that of the others, to a lonely spot high above the water-meads, and not far from the border of egdon heath, whose dark countenance was visible in the distance as they drew nigh to their home. 'they've just been saying down in barton that your father brings his young wife home from anglebury to-morrow,' the woman observed. 'i shall want to send you for a few things to market, and you'll be pretty sure to meet 'em.' 'yes, mother,' said the boy. 'is father married then?' 'yes . . . you can give her a look, and tell me what's she's like, if you do see her.' 'yes, mother.' 'if she's dark or fair, and if she's tall--as tall as i. and if she seems like a woman who has ever worked for a living, or one that has been always well off, and has never done anything, and shows marks of the lady on her, as i expect she do.' 'yes.' they crept up the hill in the twilight, and entered the cottage. it was built of mud-walls, the surface of which had been washed by many rains into channels and depressions that left none of the original flat face visible; while here and there in the thatch above a rafter showed like a bone protruding through the skin. she was kneeling down in the chimney-corner, before two pieces of turf laid together with the heather inwards, blowing at the red-hot ashes with her breath till the turves flamed. the radiance lit her pale cheek, and made her dark eyes, that had once been handsome, seem handsome anew. 'yes,' she resumed, 'see if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or are milker's hands like mine.' the boy again promised, inattentively this time, his mother not observing that he was cutting a notch with his pocket-knife in the beech-backed chair. chapter ii--the young wife the road from anglebury to holmstoke is in general level; but there is one place where a sharp ascent breaks its monotony. farmers homeward- bound from the former market-town, who trot all the rest of the way, walk their horses up this short incline. the next evening, while the sun was yet bright, a handsome new gig, with a lemon-coloured body and red wheels, was spinning westward along the level highway at the heels of a powerful mare. the driver was a yeoman in the prime of life, cleanly shaven like an actor, his face being toned to that bluish-vermilion hue which so often graces a thriving farmer's features when returning home after successful dealings in the town. beside him sat a woman, many years his junior--almost, indeed, a girl. her face too was fresh in colour, but it was of a totally different quality--soft and evanescent, like the light under a heap of rose-petals. few people travelled this way, for it was not a main road; and the long white riband of gravel that stretched before them was empty, save of one small scarce-moving speck, which presently resolved itself into the figure of boy, who was creeping on at a snail's pace, and continually looking behind him--the heavy bundle he carried being some excuse for, if not the reason of, his dilatoriness. when the bouncing gig-party slowed at the bottom of the incline above mentioned, the pedestrian was only a few yards in front. supporting the large bundle by putting one hand on his hip, he turned and looked straight at the farmer's wife as though he would read her through and through, pacing along abreast of the horse. the low sun was full in her face, rendering every feature, shade, and contour distinct, from the curve of her little nostril to the colour of her eyes. the farmer, though he seemed annoyed at the boy's persistent presence, did not order him to get out of the way; and thus the lad preceded them, his hard gaze never leaving her, till they reached the top of the ascent, when the farmer trotted on with relief in his lineaments--having taken no outward notice of the boy whatever. 'how that poor lad stared at me!' said the young wife. 'yes, dear; i saw that he did.' 'he is one of the village, i suppose?' 'one of the neighbourhood. i think he lives with his mother a mile or two off.' 'he knows who we are, no doubt?' 'o yes. you must expect to be stared at just at first, my pretty gertrude.' 'i do,--though i think the poor boy may have looked at us in the hope we might relieve him of his heavy load, rather than from curiosity.' 'o no,' said her husband off-handedly. 'these country lads will carry a hundredweight once they get it on their backs; besides his pack had more size than weight in it. now, then, another mile and i shall be able to show you our house in the distance--if it is not too dark before we get there.' the wheels spun round, and particles flew from their periphery as before, till a white house of ample dimensions revealed itself, with farm-buildings and ricks at the back. meanwhile the boy had quickened his pace, and turning up a by-lane some mile and half short of the white farmstead, ascended towards the leaner pastures, and so on to the cottage of his mother. she had reached home after her day's milking at the outlying dairy, and was washing cabbage at the doorway in the declining light. 'hold up the net a moment,' she said, without preface, as the boy came up. he flung down his bundle, held the edge of the cabbage-net, and as she filled its meshes with the dripping leaves she went on, 'well, did you see her?' 'yes; quite plain.' 'is she ladylike?' 'yes; and more. a lady complete.' 'is she young?' 'well, she's growed up, and her ways be quite a woman's.' 'of course. what colour is her hair and face?' 'her hair is lightish, and her face as comely as a live doll's.' 'her eyes, then, are not dark like mine?' 'no--of a bluish turn, and her mouth is very nice and red; and when she smiles, her teeth show white.' 'is she tall?' said the woman sharply. 'i couldn't see. she was sitting down.' 'then do you go to holmstoke church to-morrow morning: she's sure to be there. go early and notice her walking in, and come home and tell me if she's taller than i.' 'very well, mother. but why don't you go and see for yourself?' 'i go to see her! i wouldn't look up at her if she were to pass my window this instant. she was with mr. lodge, of course. what did he say or do?' 'just the same as usual.' 'took no notice of you?' 'none.' next day the mother put a clean shirt on the boy, and started him off for holmstoke church. he reached the ancient little pile when the door was just being opened, and he was the first to enter. taking his seat by the font, he watched all the parishioners file in. the well-to-do farmer lodge came nearly last; and his young wife, who accompanied him, walked up the aisle with the shyness natural to a modest woman who had appeared thus for the first time. as all other eyes were fixed upon her, the youth's stare was not noticed now. when he reached home his mother said, 'well?' before he had entered the room. 'she is not tall. she is rather short,' he replied. 'ah!' said his mother, with satisfaction. 'but she's very pretty--very. in fact, she's lovely.' the youthful freshness of the yeoman's wife had evidently made an impression even on the somewhat hard nature of the boy. 'that's all i want to hear,' said his mother quickly. 'now, spread the table-cloth. the hare you caught is very tender; but mind that nobody catches you.--you've never told me what sort of hands she had.' 'i have never seen 'em. she never took off her gloves.' 'what did she wear this morning?' 'a white bonnet and a silver-coloured gownd. it whewed and whistled so loud when it rubbed against the pews that the lady coloured up more than ever for very shame at the noise, and pulled it in to keep it from touching; but when she pushed into her seat, it whewed more than ever. mr. lodge, he seemed pleased, and his waistcoat stuck out, and his great golden seals hung like a lord's; but she seemed to wish her noisy gownd anywhere but on her.' 'not she! however, that will do now.' these descriptions of the newly-married couple were continued from time to time by the boy at his mother's request, after any chance encounter he had had with them. but rhoda brook, though she might easily have seen young mrs. lodge for herself by walking a couple of miles, would never attempt an excursion towards the quarter where the farmhouse lay. neither did she, at the daily milking in the dairyman's yard on lodge's outlying second farm, ever speak on the subject of the recent marriage. the dairyman, who rented the cows of lodge, and knew perfectly the tall milkmaid's history, with manly kindliness always kept the gossip in the cow-barton from annoying rhoda. but the atmosphere thereabout was full of the subject during the first days of mrs. lodge's arrival; and from her boy's description and the casual words of the other milkers, rhoda brook could raise a mental image of the unconscious mrs lodge that was realistic as a photograph. chapter iii--a vision one night, two or three weeks after the bridal return, when the boy was gone to bed, rhoda sat a long time over the turf ashes that she had raked out in front of her to extinguish them. she contemplated so intently the new wife, as presented to her in her mind's eye over the embers, that she forgot the lapse of time. at last, wearied with her day's work, she too retired. but the figure which had occupied her so much during this and the previous days was not to be banished at night. for the first time gertrude lodge visited the supplanted woman in her dreams. rhoda brook dreamed--since her assertion that she really saw, before falling asleep, was not to be believed--that the young wife, in the pale silk dress and white bonnet, but with features shockingly distorted, and wrinkled as by age, was sitting upon her chest as she lay. the pressure of mrs. lodge's person grew heavier; the blue eyes peered cruelly into her face; and then the figure thrust forward its left hand mockingly, so as to make the wedding-ring it wore glitter in rhoda's eyes. maddened mentally, and nearly suffocated by pressure, the sleeper struggled; the incubus, still regarding her, withdrew to the foot of the bed, only, however, to come forward by degrees, resume her seat, and flash her left hand as before. gasping for breath, rhoda, in a last desperate effort, swung out her right hand, seized the confronting spectre by its obtrusive left arm, and whirled it backward to the floor, starting up herself as she did so with a low cry. 'o, merciful heaven!' she cried, sitting on the edge of the bed in a cold sweat; 'that was not a dream--she was here!' she could feel her antagonist's arm within her grasp even now--the very flesh and bone of it, as it seemed. she looked on the floor whither she had whirled the spectre, but there was nothing to be seen. rhoda brook slept no more that night, and when she went milking at the next dawn they noticed how pale and haggard she looked. the milk that she drew quivered into the pail; her hand had not calmed even yet, and still retained the feel of the arm. she came home to breakfast as wearily as if it had been suppertime. 'what was that noise in your chimmer, mother, last night?' said her son. 'you fell off the bed, surely?' 'did you hear anything fall? at what time?' 'just when the clock struck two.' she could not explain, and when the meal was done went silently about her household work, the boy assisting her, for he hated going afield on the farms, and she indulged his reluctance. between eleven and twelve the garden-gate clicked, and she lifted her eyes to the window. at the bottom of the garden, within the gate, stood the woman of her vision. rhoda seemed transfixed. 'ah, she said she would come!' exclaimed the boy, also observing her. 'said so--when? how does she know us?' 'i have seen and spoken to her. i talked to her yesterday.' 'i told you,' said the mother, flushing indignantly, 'never to speak to anybody in that house, or go near the place.' 'i did not speak to her till she spoke to me. and i did not go near the place. i met her in the road.' 'what did you tell her?' 'nothing. she said, "are you the poor boy who had to bring the heavy load from market?" and she looked at my boots, and said they would not keep my feet dry if it came on wet, because they were so cracked. i told her i lived with my mother, and we had enough to do to keep ourselves, and that's how it was; and she said then, "i'll come and bring you some better boots, and see your mother." she gives away things to other folks in the meads besides us.' mrs. lodge was by this time close to the door--not in her silk, as rhoda had seen her in the bed-chamber, but in a morning hat, and gown of common light material, which became her better than silk. on her arm she carried a basket. the impression remaining from the night's experience was still strong. brook had almost expected to see the wrinkles, the scorn, and the cruelty on her visitor's face. she would have escaped an interview, had escape been possible. there was, however, no backdoor to the cottage, and in an instant the boy had lifted the latch to mrs. lodge's gentle knock. 'i see i have come to the right house,' said she, glancing at the lad, and smiling. 'but i was not sure till you opened the door.' the figure and action were those of the phantom; but her voice was so indescribably sweet, her glance so winning, her smile so tender, so unlike that of rhoda's midnight visitant, that the latter could hardly believe the evidence of her senses. she was truly glad that she had not hidden away in sheer aversion, as she had been inclined to do. in her basket mrs. lodge brought the pair of boots that she had promised to the boy, and other useful articles. at these proofs of a kindly feeling towards her and hers rhoda's heart reproached her bitterly. this innocent young thing should have her blessing and not her curse. when she left them a light seemed gone from the dwelling. two days later she came again to know if the boots fitted; and less than a fortnight after that paid rhoda another call. on this occasion the boy was absent. 'i walk a good deal,' said mrs. lodge, 'and your house is the nearest outside our own parish. i hope you are well. you don't look quite well.' rhoda said she was well enough; and, indeed, though the paler of the two, there was more of the strength that endures in her well-defined features and large frame, than in the soft-cheeked young woman before her. the conversation became quite confidential as regarded their powers and weaknesses; and when mrs. lodge was leaving, rhoda said, 'i hope you will find this air agree with you, ma'am, and not suffer from the damp of the water-meads.' the younger one replied that there was not much doubt of it, her general health being usually good. 'though, now you remind me,' she added, 'i have one little ailment which puzzles me. it is nothing serious, but i cannot make it out.' she uncovered her left hand and arm; and their outline confronted rhoda's gaze as the exact original of the limb she had beheld and seized in her dream. upon the pink round surface of the arm were faint marks of an unhealthy colour, as if produced by a rough grasp. rhoda's eyes became riveted on the discolorations; she fancied that she discerned in them the shape of her own four fingers. 'how did it happen?' she said mechanically. 'i cannot tell,' replied mrs. lodge, shaking her head. 'one night when i was sound asleep, dreaming i was away in some strange place, a pain suddenly shot into my arm there, and was so keen as to awaken me. i must have struck it in the daytime, i suppose, though i don't remember doing so.' she added, laughing, 'i tell my dear husband that it looks just as if he had flown into a rage and struck me there. o, i daresay it will soon disappear.' 'ha, ha! yes . . . on what night did it come?' mrs. lodge considered, and said it would be a fortnight ago on the morrow. 'when i awoke i could not remember where i was,' she added, 'till the clock striking two reminded me.' she had named the night and the hour of rhoda's spectral encounter, and brook felt like a guilty thing. the artless disclosure startled her; she did not reason on the freaks of coincidence; and all the scenery of that ghastly night returned with double vividness to her mind. 'o, can it be,' she said to herself, when her visitor had departed, 'that i exercise a malignant power over people against my own will?' she knew that she had been slily called a witch since her fall; but never having understood why that particular stigma had been attached to her, it had passed disregarded. could this be the explanation, and had such things as this ever happened before? chapter iv--a suggestion the summer drew on, and rhoda brook almost dreaded to meet mrs. lodge again, notwithstanding that her feeling for the young wife amounted well- nigh to affection. something in her own individuality seemed to convict rhoda of crime. yet a fatality sometimes would direct the steps of the latter to the outskirts of holmstoke whenever she left her house for any other purpose than her daily work; and hence it happened that their next encounter was out of doors. rhoda could not avoid the subject which had so mystified her, and after the first few words she stammered, 'i hope your--arm is well again, ma'am?' she had perceived with consternation that gertrude lodge carried her left arm stiffly. 'no; it is not quite well. indeed it is no better at all; it is rather worse. it pains me dreadfully sometimes.' 'perhaps you had better go to a doctor, ma'am.' she replied that she had already seen a doctor. her husband had insisted upon her going to one. but the surgeon had not seemed to understand the afflicted limb at all; he had told her to bathe it in hot water, and she had bathed it, but the treatment had done no good. 'will you let me see it?' said the milkwoman. mrs. lodge pushed up her sleeve and disclosed the place, which was a few inches above the wrist. as soon as rhoda brook saw it, she could hardly preserve her composure. there was nothing of the nature of a wound, but the arm at that point had a shrivelled look, and the outline of the four fingers appeared more distinct than at the former time. moreover, she fancied that they were imprinted in precisely the relative position of her clutch upon the arm in the trance; the first finger towards gertrude's wrist, and the fourth towards her elbow. what the impress resembled seemed to have struck gertrude herself since their last meeting. 'it looks almost like finger-marks,' she said; adding with a faint laugh, 'my husband says it is as if some witch, or the devil himself, had taken hold of me there, and blasted the flesh.' rhoda shivered. 'that's fancy,' she said hurriedly. 'i wouldn't mind it, if i were you.' 'i shouldn't so much mind it,' said the younger, with hesitation, 'if--if i hadn't a notion that it makes my husband--dislike me--no, love me less. men think so much of personal appearance.' 'some do--he for one.' 'yes; and he was very proud of mine, at first.' 'keep your arm covered from his sight.' 'ah--he knows the disfigurement is there!' she tried to hide the tears that filled her eyes. 'well, ma'am, i earnestly hope it will go away soon.' and so the milkwoman's mind was chained anew to the subject by a horrid sort of spell as she returned home. the sense of having been guilty of an act of malignity increased, affect as she might to ridicule her superstition. in her secret heart rhoda did not altogether object to a slight diminution of her successor's beauty, by whatever means it had come about; but she did not wish to inflict upon her physical pain. for though this pretty young woman had rendered impossible any reparation which lodge might have made rhoda for his past conduct, everything like resentment at the unconscious usurpation had quite passed away from the elder's mind. if the sweet and kindly gertrude lodge only knew of the scene in the bed- chamber, what would she think? not to inform her of it seemed treachery in the presence of her friendliness; but tell she could not of her own accord--neither could she devise a remedy. she mused upon the matter the greater part of the night; and the next day, after the morning milking, set out to obtain another glimpse of gertrude lodge if she could, being held to her by a gruesome fascination. by watching the house from a distance the milkmaid was presently able to discern the farmer's wife in a ride she was taking alone--probably to join her husband in some distant field. mrs. lodge perceived her, and cantered in her direction. 'good morning, rhoda!' gertrude said, when she had come up. 'i was going to call.' rhoda noticed that mrs. lodge held the reins with some difficulty. 'i hope--the bad arm,' said rhoda. 'they tell me there is possibly one way by which i might be able to find out the cause, and so perhaps the cure, of it,' replied the other anxiously. 'it is by going to some clever man over in egdon heath. they did not know if he was still alive--and i cannot remember his name at this moment; but they said that you knew more of his movements than anybody else hereabout, and could tell me if he were still to be consulted. dear me--what was his name? but you know.' 'not conjuror trendle?' said her thin companion, turning pale. 'trendle--yes. is he alive?' 'i believe so,' said rhoda, with reluctance. 'why do you call him conjuror?' 'well--they say--they used to say he was a--he had powers other folks have not.' 'o, how could my people be so superstitious as to recommend a man of that sort! i thought they meant some medical man. i shall think no more of him.' rhoda looked relieved, and mrs. lodge rode on. the milkwoman had inwardly seen, from the moment she heard of her having been mentioned as a reference for this man, that there must exist a sarcastic feeling among the work-folk that a sorceress would know the whereabouts of the exorcist. they suspected her, then. a short time ago this would have given no concern to a woman of her common-sense. but she had a haunting reason to be superstitious now; and she had been seized with sudden dread that this conjuror trendle might name her as the malignant influence which was blasting the fair person of gertrude, and so lead her friend to hate her for ever, and to treat her as some fiend in human shape. but all was not over. two days after, a shadow intruded into the window- pattern thrown on rhoda brook's floor by the afternoon sun. the woman opened the door at once, almost breathlessly. 'are you alone?' said gertrude. she seemed to be no less harassed and anxious than brook herself. 'yes,' said rhoda. 'the place on my arm seems worse, and troubles me!' the young farmer's wife went on. 'it is so mysterious! i do hope it will not be an incurable wound. i have again been thinking of what they said about conjuror trendle. i don't really believe in such men, but i should not mind just visiting him, from curiosity--though on no account must my husband know. is it far to where he lives?' 'yes--five miles,' said rhoda backwardly. 'in the heart of egdon.' 'well, i should have to walk. could not you go with me to show me the way--say to-morrow afternoon?' 'o, not i--that is,' the milkwoman murmured, with a start of dismay. again the dread seized her that something to do with her fierce act in the dream might be revealed, and her character in the eyes of the most useful friend she had ever had be ruined irretrievably. mrs. lodge urged, and rhoda finally assented, though with much misgiving. sad as the journey would be to her, she could not conscientiously stand in the way of a possible remedy for her patron's strange affliction. it was agreed that, to escape suspicion of their mystic intent, they should meet at the edge of the heath at the corner of a plantation which was visible from the spot where they now stood. chapter v--conjuror trendle by the next afternoon rhoda would have done anything to escape this inquiry. but she had promised to go. moreover, there was a horrid fascination at times in becoming instrumental in throwing such possible light on her own character as would reveal her to be something greater in the occult world than she had ever herself suspected. she started just before the time of day mentioned between them, and half- an-hour's brisk walking brought her to the south-eastern extension of the egdon tract of country, where the fir plantation was. a slight figure, cloaked and veiled, was already there. rhoda recognized, almost with a shudder, that mrs. lodge bore her left arm in a sling. they hardly spoke to each other, and immediately set out on their climb into the interior of this solemn country, which stood high above the rich alluvial soil they had left half-an-hour before. it was a long walk; thick clouds made the atmosphere dark, though it was as yet only early afternoon; and the wind howled dismally over the hills of the heath--not improbably the same heath which had witnessed the agony of the wessex king ina, presented to after-ages as lear. gertrude lodge talked most, rhoda replying with monosyllabic preoccupation. she had a strange dislike to walking on the side of her companion where hung the afflicted arm, moving round to the other when inadvertently near it. much heather had been brushed by their feet when they descended upon a cart-track, beside which stood the house of the man they sought. he did not profess his remedial practices openly, or care anything about their continuance, his direct interests being those of a dealer in furze, turf, 'sharp sand,' and other local products. indeed, he affected not to believe largely in his own powers, and when warts that had been shown him for cure miraculously disappeared--which it must be owned they infallibly did--he would say lightly, 'o, i only drink a glass of grog upon 'em--perhaps it's all chance,' and immediately turn the subject. he was at home when they arrived, having in fact seen them descending into his valley. he was a gray-bearded man, with a reddish face, and he looked singularly at rhoda the first moment he beheld her. mrs. lodge told him her errand; and then with words of self-disparagement he examined her arm. 'medicine can't cure it,' he said promptly. ''tis the work of an enemy.' rhoda shrank into herself, and drew back. 'an enemy? what enemy?' asked mrs. lodge. he shook his head. 'that's best known to yourself,' he said. 'if you like, i can show the person to you, though i shall not myself know who it is. i can do no more; and don't wish to do that.' she pressed him; on which he told rhoda to wait outside where she stood, and took mrs. lodge into the room. it opened immediately from the door; and, as the latter remained ajar, rhoda brook could see the proceedings without taking part in them. he brought a tumbler from the dresser, nearly filled it with water, and fetching an egg, prepared it in some private way; after which he broke it on the edge of the glass, so that the white went in and the yolk remained. as it was getting gloomy, he took the glass and its contents to the window, and told gertrude to watch them closely. they leant over the table together, and the milkwoman could see the opaline hue of the egg-fluid changing form as it sank in the water, but she was not near enough to define the shape that it assumed. 'do you catch the likeness of any face or figure as you look?' demanded the conjuror of the young woman. she murmured a reply, in tones so low as to be inaudible to rhoda, and continued to gaze intently into the glass. rhoda turned, and walked a few steps away. when mrs. lodge came out, and her face was met by the light, it appeared exceedingly pale--as pale as rhoda's--against the sad dun shades of the upland's garniture. trendle shut the door behind her, and they at once started homeward together. but rhoda perceived that her companion had quite changed. 'did he charge much?' she asked tentatively. 'o no--nothing. he would not take a farthing,' said gertrude. 'and what did you see?' inquired rhoda. 'nothing i--care to speak of.' the constraint in her manner was remarkable; her face was so rigid as to wear an oldened aspect, faintly suggestive of the face in rhoda's bed-chamber. 'was it you who first proposed coming here?' mrs. lodge suddenly inquired, after a long pause. 'how very odd, if you did!' 'no. but i am not sorry we have come, all things considered,' she replied. for the first time a sense of triumph possessed her, and she did not altogether deplore that the young thing at her side should learn that their lives had been antagonized by other influences than their own. the subject was no more alluded to during the long and dreary walk home. but in some way or other a story was whispered about the many-dairied lowland that winter that mrs. lodge's gradual loss of the use of her left arm was owing to her being 'overlooked' by rhoda brook. the latter kept her own counsel about the incubus, but her face grew sadder and thinner; and in the spring she and her boy disappeared from the neighbourhood of holmstoke. chapter vi--a second attempt half-a-dozen years passed away, and mr. and mrs. lodge's married experience sank into prosiness, and worse. the farmer was usually gloomy and silent: the woman whom he had wooed for her grace and beauty was contorted and disfigured in the left limb; moreover, she had brought him no child, which rendered it likely that he would be the last of a family who had occupied that valley for some two hundred years. he thought of rhoda brook and her son; and feared this might be a judgment from heaven upon him. the once blithe-hearted and enlightened gertrude was changing into an irritable, superstitious woman, whose whole time was given to experimenting upon her ailment with every quack remedy she came across. she was honestly attached to her husband, and was ever secretly hoping against hope to win back his heart again by regaining some at least of her personal beauty. hence it arose that her closet was lined with bottles, packets, and ointment-pots of every description--nay, bunches of mystic herbs, charms, and books of necromancy, which in her schoolgirl time she would have ridiculed as folly. 'damned if you won't poison yourself with these apothecary messes and witch mixtures some time or other,' said her husband, when his eye chanced to fall upon the multitudinous array. she did not reply, but turned her sad, soft glance upon him in such heart- swollen reproach that he looked sorry for his words, and added, 'i only meant it for your good, you know, gertrude.' 'i'll clear out the whole lot, and destroy them,' said she huskily, 'and try such remedies no more!' 'you want somebody to cheer you,' he observed. 'i once thought of adopting a boy; but he is too old now. and he is gone away i don't know where.' she guessed to whom he alluded; for rhoda brook's story had in the course of years become known to her; though not a word had ever passed between her husband and herself on the subject. neither had she ever spoken to him of her visit to conjuror trendle, and of what was revealed to her, or she thought was revealed to her, by that solitary heath-man. she was now five-and-twenty; but she seemed older. 'six years of marriage, and only a few months of love,' she sometimes whispered to herself. and then she thought of the apparent cause, and said, with a tragic glance at her withering limb, 'if i could only again be as i was when he first saw me!' she obediently destroyed her nostrums and charms; but there remained a hankering wish to try something else--some other sort of cure altogether. she had never revisited trendle since she had been conducted to the house of the solitary by rhoda against her will; but it now suddenly occurred to gertrude that she would, in a last desperate effort at deliverance from this seeming curse, again seek out the man, if he yet lived. he was entitled to a certain credence, for the indistinct form he had raised in the glass had undoubtedly resembled the only woman in the world who--as she now knew, though not then--could have a reason for bearing her ill- will. the visit should be paid. this time she went alone, though she nearly got lost on the heath, and roamed a considerable distance out of her way. trendle's house was reached at last, however: he was not indoors, and instead of waiting at the cottage, she went to where his bent figure was pointed out to her at work a long way off. trendle remembered her, and laying down the handful of furze-roots which he was gathering and throwing into a heap, he offered to accompany her in her homeward direction, as the distance was considerable and the days were short. so they walked together, his head bowed nearly to the earth, and his form of a colour with it. 'you can send away warts and other excrescences i know,' she said; 'why can't you send away this?' and the arm was uncovered. 'you think too much of my powers!' said trendle; 'and i am old and weak now, too. no, no; it is too much for me to attempt in my own person. what have ye tried?' she named to him some of the hundred medicaments and counterspells which she had adopted from time to time. he shook his head. 'some were good enough,' he said approvingly; 'but not many of them for such as this. this is of the nature of a blight, not of the nature of a wound; and if you ever do throw it off; it will be all at once.' 'if i only could!' 'there is only one chance of doing it known to me. it has never failed in kindred afflictions,--that i can declare. but it is hard to carry out, and especially for a woman.' 'tell me!' said she. 'you must touch with the limb the neck of a man who's been hanged.' she started a little at the image he had raised. 'before he's cold--just after he's cut down,' continued the conjuror impassively. 'how can that do good?' 'it will turn the blood and change the constitution. but, as i say, to do it is hard. you must get into jail, and wait for him when he's brought off the gallows. lots have done it, though perhaps not such pretty women as you. i used to send dozens for skin complaints. but that was in former times. the last i sent was in ' --near twenty years ago.' he had no more to tell her; and, when he had put her into a straight track homeward, turned and left her, refusing all money as at first. chapter vii--a ride the communication sank deep into gertrude's mind. her nature was rather a timid one; and probably of all remedies that the white wizard could have suggested there was not one which would have filled her with so much aversion as this, not to speak of the immense obstacles in the way of its adoption. casterbridge, the county-town, was a dozen or fifteen miles off; and though in those days, when men were executed for horse-stealing, arson, and burglary, an assize seldom passed without a hanging, it was not likely that she could get access to the body of the criminal unaided. and the fear of her husband's anger made her reluctant to breathe a word of trendle's suggestion to him or to anybody about him. she did nothing for months, and patiently bore her disfigurement as before. but her woman's nature, craving for renewed love, through the medium of renewed beauty (she was but twenty-five), was ever stimulating her to try what, at any rate, could hardly do her any harm. 'what came by a spell will go by a spell surely,' she would say. whenever her imagination pictured the act she shrank in terror from the possibility of it: then the words of the conjuror, 'it will turn your blood,' were seen to be capable of a scientific no less than a ghastly interpretation; the mastering desire returned, and urged her on again. there was at this time but one county paper, and that her husband only occasionally borrowed. but old-fashioned days had old-fashioned means, and news was extensively conveyed by word of mouth from market to market, or from fair to fair, so that, whenever such an event as an execution was about to take place, few within a radius of twenty miles were ignorant of the coming sight; and, so far as holmstoke was concerned, some enthusiasts had been known to walk all the way to casterbridge and back in one day, solely to witness the spectacle. the next assizes were in march; and when gertrude lodge heard that they had been held, she inquired stealthily at the inn as to the result, as soon as she could find opportunity. she was, however, too late. the time at which the sentences were to be carried out had arrived, and to make the journey and obtain admission at such short notice required at least her husband's assistance. she dared not tell him, for she had found by delicate experiment that these smouldering village beliefs made him furious if mentioned, partly because he half entertained them himself. it was therefore necessary to wait for another opportunity. her determination received a fillip from learning that two epileptic children had attended from this very village of holmstoke many years before with beneficial results, though the experiment had been strongly condemned by the neighbouring clergy. april, may, june, passed; and it is no overstatement to say that by the end of the last-named month gertrude well-nigh longed for the death of a fellow-creature. instead of her formal prayers each night, her unconscious prayer was, 'o lord, hang some guilty or innocent person soon!' this time she made earlier inquiries, and was altogether more systematic in her proceedings. moreover, the season was summer, between the haymaking and the harvest, and in the leisure thus afforded him her husband had been holiday-taking away from home. the assizes were in july, and she went to the inn as before. there was to be one execution--only one--for arson. her greatest problem was not how to get to casterbridge, but what means she should adopt for obtaining admission to the jail. though access for such purposes had formerly never been denied, the custom had fallen into desuetude; and in contemplating her possible difficulties, she was again almost driven to fall back upon her husband. but, on sounding him about the assizes, he was so uncommunicative, so more than usually cold, that she did not proceed, and decided that whatever she did she would do alone. fortune, obdurate hitherto, showed her unexpected favour. on the thursday before the saturday fixed for the execution, lodge remarked to her that he was going away from home for another day or two on business at a fair, and that he was sorry he could not take her with him. she exhibited on this occasion so much readiness to stay at home that he looked at her in surprise. time had been when she would have shown deep disappointment at the loss of such a jaunt. however, he lapsed into his usual taciturnity, and on the day named left holmstoke. it was now her turn. she at first had thought of driving, but on reflection held that driving would not do, since it would necessitate her keeping to the turnpike-road, and so increase by tenfold the risk of her ghastly errand being found out. she decided to ride, and avoid the beaten track, notwithstanding that in her husband's stables there was no animal just at present which by any stretch of imagination could be considered a lady's mount, in spite of his promise before marriage to always keep a mare for her. he had, however, many cart-horses, fine ones of their kind; and among the rest was a serviceable creature, an equine amazon, with a back as broad as a sofa, on which gertrude had occasionally taken an airing when unwell. this horse she chose. on friday afternoon one of the men brought it round. she was dressed, and before going down looked at her shrivelled arm. 'ah!' she said to it, 'if it had not been for you this terrible ordeal would have been saved me!' when strapping up the bundle in which she carried a few articles of clothing, she took occasion to say to the servant, 'i take these in case i should not get back to-night from the person i am going to visit. don't be alarmed if i am not in by ten, and close up the house as usual. i shall be at home to-morrow for certain.' she meant then to privately tell her husband: the deed accomplished was not like the deed projected. he would almost certainly forgive her. and then the pretty palpitating gertrude lodge went from her husband's homestead; but though her goal was casterbridge she did not take the direct route thither through stickleford. her cunning course at first was in precisely the opposite direction. as soon as she was out of sight, however, she turned to the left, by a road which led into egdon, and on entering the heath wheeled round, and set out in the true course, due westerly. a more private way down the county could not be imagined; and as to direction, she had merely to keep her horse's head to a point a little to the right of the sun. she knew that she would light upon a furze-cutter or cottager of some sort from time to time, from whom she might correct her bearing. though the date was comparatively recent, egdon was much less fragmentary in character than now. the attempts--successful and otherwise--at cultivation on the lower slopes, which intrude and break up the original heath into small detached heaths, had not been carried far; enclosure acts had not taken effect, and the banks and fences which now exclude the cattle of those villagers who formerly enjoyed rights of commonage thereon, and the carts of those who had turbary privileges which kept them in firing all the year round, were not erected. gertrude, therefore, rode along with no other obstacles than the prickly furze bushes, the mats of heather, the white water-courses, and the natural steeps and declivities of the ground. her horse was sure, if heavy-footed and slow, and though a draught animal, was easy-paced; had it been otherwise, she was not a woman who could have ventured to ride over such a bit of country with a half-dead arm. it was therefore nearly eight o'clock when she drew rein to breathe the mare on the last outlying high point of heath-land towards casterbridge, previous to leaving egdon for the cultivated valleys. she halted before a pool called rushy-pond, flanked by the ends of two hedges; a railing ran through the centre of the pond, dividing it in half. over the railing she saw the low green country; over the green trees the roofs of the town; over the roofs a white flat facade, denoting the entrance to the county jail. on the roof of this front specks were moving about; they seemed to be workmen erecting something. her flesh crept. she descended slowly, and was soon amid corn-fields and pastures. in another half-hour, when it was almost dusk, gertrude reached the white hart, the first inn of the town on that side. little surprise was excited by her arrival; farmers' wives rode on horseback then more than they do now; though, for that matter, mrs. lodge was not imagined to be a wife at all; the innkeeper supposed her some harum-skarum young woman who had come to attend 'hang-fair' next day. neither her husband nor herself ever dealt in casterbridge market, so that she was unknown. while dismounting she beheld a crowd of boys standing at the door of a harness-maker's shop just above the inn, looking inside it with deep interest. 'what is going on there?' she asked of the ostler. 'making the rope for to-morrow.' she throbbed responsively, and contracted her arm. ''tis sold by the inch afterwards,' the man continued. 'i could get you a bit, miss, for nothing, if you'd like?' she hastily repudiated any such wish, all the more from a curious creeping feeling that the condemned wretch's destiny was becoming interwoven with her own; and having engaged a room for the night, sat down to think. up to this time she had formed but the vaguest notions about her means of obtaining access to the prison. the words of the cunning-man returned to her mind. he had implied that she should use her beauty, impaired though it was, as a pass-key. in her inexperience she knew little about jail functionaries; she had heard of a high-sheriff and an under-sheriff; but dimly only. she knew, however, that there must be a hangman, and to the hangman she determined to apply. chapter viii--a water-side hermit at this date, and for several years after, there was a hangman to almost every jail. gertrude found, on inquiry, that the casterbridge official dwelt in a lonely cottage by a deep slow river flowing under the cliff on which the prison buildings were situate--the stream being the self-same one, though she did not know it, which watered the stickleford and holmstoke meads lower down in its course. having changed her dress, and before she had eaten or drunk--for she could not take her ease till she had ascertained some particulars--gertrude pursued her way by a path along the water-side to the cottage indicated. passing thus the outskirts of the jail, she discerned on the level roof over the gateway three rectangular lines against the sky, where the specks had been moving in her distant view; she recognized what the erection was, and passed quickly on. another hundred yards brought her to the executioner's house, which a boy pointed out it stood close to the same stream, and was hard by a weir, the waters of which emitted a steady roar. while she stood hesitating the door opened, and an old man came forth shading a candle with one hand. locking the door on the outside, he turned to a flight of wooden steps fixed against the end of the cottage, and began to ascend them, this being evidently the staircase to his bedroom. gertrude hastened forward, but by the time she reached the foot of the ladder he was at the top. she called to him loudly enough to be heard above the roar of the weir; he looked down and said, 'what d'ye want here?' 'to speak to you a minute.' the candle-light, such as it was, fell upon her imploring, pale, upturned face, and davies (as the hangman was called) backed down the ladder. 'i was just going to bed,' he said; '"early to bed and early to rise," but i don't mind stopping a minute for such a one as you. come into house.' he reopened the door, and preceded her to the room within. the implements of his daily work, which was that of a jobbing gardener, stood in a corner, and seeing probably that she looked rural, he said, 'if you want me to undertake country work i can't come, for i never leave casterbridge for gentle nor simple--not i. my real calling is officer of justice,' he added formally. 'yes, yes! that's it. to-morrow!' 'ah! i thought so. well, what's the matter about that? 'tis no use to come here about the knot--folks do come continually, but i tell 'em one knot is as merciful as another if ye keep it under the ear. is the unfortunate man a relation; or, i should say, perhaps' (looking at her dress) 'a person who's been in your employ?' 'no. what time is the execution?' 'the same as usual--twelve o'clock, or as soon after as the london mail- coach gets in. we always wait for that, in case of a reprieve.' 'o--a reprieve--i hope not!' she said involuntarily, 'well,--hee, hee!--as a matter of business, so do i! but still, if ever a young fellow deserved to be let off, this one does; only just turned eighteen, and only present by chance when the rick was fired. howsomever, there's not much risk of it, as they are obliged to make an example of him, there having been so much destruction of property that way lately.' 'i mean,' she explained, 'that i want to touch him for a charm, a cure of an affliction, by the advice of a man who has proved the virtue of the remedy.' 'o yes, miss! now i understand. i've had such people come in past years. but it didn't strike me that you looked of a sort to require blood-turning. what's the complaint? the wrong kind for this, i'll be bound.' 'my arm.' she reluctantly showed the withered skin. 'ah--'tis all a-scram!' said the hangman, examining it. 'yes,' said she. 'well,' he continued, with interest, 'that is the class o' subject, i'm bound to admit! i like the look of the place; it is truly as suitable for the cure as any i ever saw. 'twas a knowing-man that sent 'ee, whoever he was.' 'you can contrive for me all that's necessary?' she said breathlessly. 'you should really have gone to the governor of the jail, and your doctor with 'ee, and given your name and address--that's how it used to be done, if i recollect. still, perhaps, i can manage it for a trifling fee.' 'o, thank you! i would rather do it this way, as i should like it kept private.' 'lover not to know, eh?' 'no--husband.' 'aha! very well. i'll get ee' a touch of the corpse.' 'where is it now?' she said, shuddering. 'it?--he, you mean; he's living yet. just inside that little small winder up there in the glum.' he signified the jail on the cliff above. she thought of her husband and her friends. 'yes, of course,' she said; 'and how am i to proceed?' he took her to the door. 'now, do you be waiting at the little wicket in the wall, that you'll find up there in the lane, not later than one o'clock. i will open it from the inside, as i shan't come home to dinner till he's cut down. good-night. be punctual; and if you don't want anybody to know 'ee, wear a veil. ah--once i had such a daughter as you!' she went away, and climbed the path above, to assure herself that she would be able to find the wicket next day. its outline was soon visible to her--a narrow opening in the outer wall of the prison precincts. the steep was so great that, having reached the wicket, she stopped a moment to breathe; and, looking back upon the water-side cot, saw the hangman again ascending his outdoor staircase. he entered the loft or chamber to which it led, and in a few minutes extinguished his light. the town clock struck ten, and she returned to the white hart as she had come. chapter ix--a rencounter it was one o'clock on saturday. gertrude lodge, having been admitted to the jail as above described, was sitting in a waiting-room within the second gate, which stood under a classic archway of ashlar, then comparatively modern, and bearing the inscription, 'covnty jail: .' this had been the facade she saw from the heath the day before. near at hand was a passage to the roof on which the gallows stood. the town was thronged, and the market suspended; but gertrude had seen scarcely a soul. having kept her room till the hour of the appointment, she had proceeded to the spot by a way which avoided the open space below the cliff where the spectators had gathered; but she could, even now, hear the multitudinous babble of their voices, out of which rose at intervals the hoarse croak of a single voice uttering the words, 'last dying speech and confession!' there had been no reprieve, and the execution was over; but the crowd still waited to see the body taken down. soon the persistent girl heard a trampling overhead, then a hand beckoned to her, and, following directions, she went out and crossed the inner paved court beyond the gatehouse, her knees trembling so that she could scarcely walk. one of her arms was out of its sleeve, and only covered by her shawl. on the spot at which she had now arrived were two trestles, and before she could think of their purpose she heard heavy feet descending stairs somewhere at her back. turn her head she would not, or could not, and, rigid in this position, she was conscious of a rough coffin passing her shoulder, borne by four men. it was open, and in it lay the body of a young man, wearing the smockfrock of a rustic, and fustian breeches. the corpse had been thrown into the coffin so hastily that the skirt of the smockfrock was hanging over. the burden was temporarily deposited on the trestles. by this time the young woman's state was such that a gray mist seemed to float before her eyes, on account of which, and the veil she wore, she could scarcely discern anything: it was as though she had nearly died, but was held up by a sort of galvanism. 'now!' said a voice close at hand, and she was just conscious that the word had been addressed to her. by a last strenuous effort she advanced, at the same time hearing persons approaching behind her. she bared her poor curst arm; and davies, uncovering the face of the corpse, took gertrude's hand, and held it so that her arm lay across the dead man's neck, upon a line the colour of an unripe blackberry, which surrounded it. gertrude shrieked: 'the turn o' the blood,' predicted by the conjuror, had taken place. but at that moment a second shriek rent the air of the enclosure: it was not gertrude's, and its effect upon her was to make her start round. immediately behind her stood rhoda brook, her face drawn, and her eyes red with weeping. behind rhoda stood gertrude's own husband; his countenance lined, his eyes dim, but without a tear. 'd-n you! what are you doing here?' he said hoarsely. 'hussy--to come between us and our child now!' cried rhoda. 'this is the meaning of what satan showed me in the vision! you are like her at last!' and clutching the bare arm of the younger woman, she pulled her unresistingly back against the wall. immediately brook had loosened her hold the fragile young gertrude slid down against the feet of her husband. when he lifted her up she was unconscious. the mere sight of the twain had been enough to suggest to her that the dead young man was rhoda's son. at that time the relatives of an executed convict had the privilege of claiming the body for burial, if they chose to do so; and it was for this purpose that lodge was awaiting the inquest with rhoda. he had been summoned by her as soon as the young man was taken in the crime, and at different times since; and he had attended in court during the trial. this was the 'holiday' he had been indulging in of late. the two wretched parents had wished to avoid exposure; and hence had come themselves for the body, a waggon and sheet for its conveyance and covering being in waiting outside. gertrude's case was so serious that it was deemed advisable to call to her the surgeon who was at hand. she was taken out of the jail into the town; but she never reached home alive. her delicate vitality, sapped perhaps by the paralyzed arm, collapsed under the double shock that followed the severe strain, physical and mental, to which she had subjected herself during the previous twenty-four hours. her blood had been 'turned' indeed--too far. her death took place in the town three days after. her husband was never seen in casterbridge again; once only in the old market-place at anglebury, which he had so much frequented, and very seldom in public anywhere. burdened at first with moodiness and remorse, he eventually changed for the better, and appeared as a chastened and thoughtful man. soon after attending the funeral of his poor young wife he took steps towards giving up the farms in holmstoke and the adjoining parish, and, having sold every head of his stock, he went away to port- bredy, at the other end of the county, living there in solitary lodgings till his death two years later of a painless decline. it was then found that he had bequeathed the whole of his not inconsiderable property to a reformatory for boys, subject to the payment of a small annuity to rhoda brook, if she could be found to claim it. for some time she could not be found; but eventually she reappeared in her old parish,--absolutely refusing, however, to have anything to do with the provision made for her. her monotonous milking at the dairy was resumed, and followed for many long years, till her form became bent, and her once abundant dark hair white and worn away at the forehead--perhaps by long pressure against the cows. here, sometimes, those who knew her experiences would stand and observe her, and wonder what sombre thoughts were beating inside that impassive, wrinkled brow, to the rhythm of the alternating milk-streams. ('blackwood's magazine,' january .) fellow-townsmen chapter i the shepherd on the east hill could shout out lambing intelligence to the shepherd on the west hill, over the intervening town chimneys, without great inconvenience to his voice, so nearly did the steep pastures encroach upon the burghers' backyards. and at night it was possible to stand in the very midst of the town and hear from their native paddocks on the lower levels of greensward the mild lowing of the farmer's heifers, and the profound, warm blowings of breath in which those creatures indulge. but the community which had jammed itself in the valley thus flanked formed a veritable town, with a real mayor and corporation, and a staple manufacture. during a certain damp evening five-and-thirty years ago, before the twilight was far advanced, a pedestrian of professional appearance, carrying a small bag in his hand and an elevated umbrella, was descending one of these hills by the turnpike road when he was overtaken by a phaeton. 'hullo, downe--is that you?' said the driver of the vehicle, a young man of pale and refined appearance. 'jump up here with me, and ride down to your door.' the other turned a plump, cheery, rather self-indulgent face over his shoulder towards the hailer. 'o, good evening, mr. barnet--thanks,' he said, and mounted beside his acquaintance. they were fellow-burgesses of the town which lay beneath them, but though old and very good friends, they were differently circumstanced. barnet was a richer man than the struggling young lawyer downe, a fact which was to some extent perceptible in downe's manner towards his companion, though nothing of it ever showed in barnet's manner towards the solicitor. barnet's position in the town was none of his own making; his father had been a very successful flax-merchant in the same place, where the trade was still carried on as briskly as the small capacities of its quarters would allow. having acquired a fair fortune, old mr. barnet had retired from business, bringing up his son as a gentleman-burgher, and, it must be added, as a well-educated, liberal-minded young man. 'how is mrs. barnet?' asked downe. 'mrs. barnet was very well when i left home,' the other answered constrainedly, exchanging his meditative regard of the horse for one of self-consciousness. mr. downe seemed to regret his inquiry, and immediately took up another thread of conversation. he congratulated his friend on his election as a council-man; he thought he had not seen him since that event took place; mrs. downe had meant to call and congratulate mrs. barnet, but he feared that she had failed to do so as yet. barnet seemed hampered in his replies. 'we should have been glad to see you. i--my wife would welcome mrs. downe at any time, as you know . . . yes, i am a member of the corporation--rather an inexperienced member, some of them say. it is quite true; and i should have declined the honour as premature--having other things on my hands just now, too--if it had not been pressed upon me so very heartily.' 'there is one thing you have on your hands which i can never quite see the necessity for,' said downe, with good-humoured freedom. 'what the deuce do you want to build that new mansion for, when you have already got such an excellent house as the one you live in?' barnet's face acquired a warmer shade of colour; but as the question had been idly asked by the solicitor while regarding the surrounding flocks and fields, he answered after a moment with no apparent embarrassment - 'well, we wanted to get out of the town, you know: the house i am living in is rather old and inconvenient.' mr. downe declared that he had chosen a pretty site for the new building. they would be able to see for miles and miles from the windows. was he going to give it a name? he supposed so. barnet thought not. there was no other house near that was likely to be mistaken for it. and he did not care for a name. 'but i think it has a name!' downe observed: 'i went past--when was it?--this morning; and i saw something,--"chateau ringdale," i think it was, stuck up on a board!' 'it was an idea she--we had for a short time,' said barnet hastily. 'but we have decided finally to do without a name--at any rate such a name as that. it must have been a week ago that you saw it. it was taken down last saturday . . . upon that matter i am firm!' he added grimly. downe murmured in an unconvinced tone that he thought he had seen it yesterday. talking thus they drove into the town. the street was unusually still for the hour of seven in the evening; an increasing drizzle had prevailed since the afternoon, and now formed a gauze across the yellow lamps, and trickled with a gentle rattle down the heavy roofs of stone tile, that bent the house-ridges hollow-backed with its weight, and in some instances caused the walls to bulge outwards in the upper story. their route took them past the little town-hall, the black-bull hotel, and onward to the junction of a small street on the right, consisting of a row of those two-and-two windowed brick residences of no particular age, which are exactly alike wherever found, except in the people they contain. 'wait--i'll drive you up to your door,' said barnet, when downe prepared to alight at the corner. he thereupon turned into the narrow street, when the faces of three little girls could be discerned close to the panes of a lighted window a few yards ahead, surmounted by that of a young matron, the gaze of all four being directed eagerly up the empty street. 'you are a fortunate fellow, downe,' barnet continued, as mother and children disappeared from the window to run to the door. 'you must be happy if any man is. i would give a hundred such houses as my new one to have a home like yours.' 'well--yes, we get along pretty comfortably,' replied downe complacently. 'that house, downe, is none of my ordering,' barnet broke out, revealing a bitterness hitherto suppressed, and checking the horse a moment to finish his speech before delivering up his passenger. 'the house i have already is good enough for me, as you supposed. it is my own freehold; it was built by my grandfather, and is stout enough for a castle. my father was born there, lived there, and died there. i was born there, and have always lived there; yet i must needs build a new one.' 'why do you?' said downe. 'why do i? to preserve peace in the household. i do anything for that; but i don't succeed. i was firm in resisting "chateau ringdale," however; not that i would not have put up with the absurdity of the name, but it was too much to have your house christened after lord ringdale, because your wife once had a fancy for him. if you only knew everything, you would think all attempt at reconciliation hopeless. in your happy home you have had no such experiences; and god forbid that you ever should. see, here they are all ready to receive you!' 'of course! and so will your wife be waiting to receive you,' said downe. 'take my word for it she will! and with a dinner prepared for you far better than mine.' 'i hope so,' barnet replied dubiously. he moved on to downe's door, which the solicitor's family had already opened. downe descended, but being encumbered with his bag and umbrella, his foot slipped, and he fell upon his knees in the gutter. 'o, my dear charles!' said his wife, running down the steps; and, quite ignoring the presence of barnet, she seized hold of her husband, pulled him to his feet, and kissed him, exclaiming, 'i hope you are not hurt, darling!' the children crowded round, chiming in piteously, 'poor papa!' 'he's all right,' said barnet, perceiving that downe was only a little muddy, and looking more at the wife than at the husband. almost at any other time--certainly during his fastidious bachelor years--he would have thought her a too demonstrative woman; but those recent circumstances of his own life to which he had just alluded made mrs. downe's solicitude so affecting that his eye grew damp as he witnessed it. bidding the lawyer and his family good-night he left them, and drove slowly into the main street towards his own house. the heart of barnet was sufficiently impressionable to be influenced by downe's parting prophecy that he might not be so unwelcome home as he imagined: the dreary night might, at least on this one occasion, make downe's forecast true. hence it was in a suspense that he could hardly have believed possible that he halted at his door. on entering his wife was nowhere to be seen, and he inquired for her. the servant informed him that her mistress had the dressmaker with her, and would be engaged for some time. 'dressmaker at this time of day!' 'she dined early, sir, and hopes you will excuse her joining you this evening.' 'but she knew i was coming to-night?' 'o yes, sir.' 'go up and tell her i am come.' the servant did so; but the mistress of the house merely transmitted her former words. barnet said nothing more, and presently sat down to his lonely meal, which was eaten abstractedly, the domestic scene he had lately witnessed still impressing him by its contrast with the situation here. his mind fell back into past years upon a certain pleasing and gentle being whose face would loom out of their shades at such times as these. barnet turned in his chair, and looked with unfocused eyes in a direction southward from where he sat, as if he saw not the room but a long way beyond. 'i wonder if she lives there still!' he said. chapter ii he rose with a sudden rebelliousness, put on his hat and coat, and went out of the house, pursuing his way along the glistening pavement while eight o'clock was striking from st. mary's tower, and the apprentices and shopmen were slamming up the shutters from end to end of the town. in two minutes only those shops which could boast of no attendant save the master or the mistress remained with open eyes. these were ever somewhat less prompt to exclude customers than the others: for their owners' ears the closing hour had scarcely the cheerfulness that it possessed for the hired servants of the rest. yet the night being dreary the delay was not for long, and their windows, too, blinked together one by one. during this time barnet had proceeded with decided step in a direction at right angles to the broad main thoroughfare of the town, by a long street leading due southward. here, though his family had no more to do with the flax manufacture, his own name occasionally greeted him on gates and warehouses, being used allusively by small rising tradesmen as a recommendation, in such words as 'smith, from barnet & co.'--'robinson, late manager at barnet's.' the sight led him to reflect upon his father's busy life, and he questioned if it had not been far happier than his own. the houses along the road became fewer, and presently open ground appeared between them on either side, the track on the right hand rising to a higher level till it merged in a knoll. on the summit a row of builders' scaffold-poles probed the indistinct sky like spears, and at their bases could be discerned the lower courses of a building lately begun. barnet slackened his pace and stood for a few moments without leaving the centre of the road, apparently not much interested in the sight, till suddenly his eye was caught by a post in the fore part of the ground bearing a white board at the top. he went to the rails, vaulted over, and walked in far enough to discern painted upon the board 'chateau ringdale.' a dismal irony seemed to lie in the words, and its effect was to irritate him. downe, then, had spoken truly. he stuck his umbrella into the sod, and seized the post with both hands, as if intending to loosen and throw it down. then, like one bewildered by an opposition which would exist none the less though its manifestations were removed, he allowed his arms to sink to his side. 'let it be,' he said to himself. 'i have declared there shall be peace--if possible.' taking up his umbrella he quietly left the enclosure, and went on his way, still keeping his back to the town. he had advanced with more decision since passing the new building, and soon a hoarse murmur rose upon the gloom; it was the sound of the sea. the road led to the harbour, at a distance of a mile from the town, from which the trade of the district was fed. after seeing the obnoxious name-board barnet had forgotten to open his umbrella, and the rain tapped smartly on his hat, and occasionally stroked his face as he went on. though the lamps were still continued at the roadside, they stood at wider intervals than before, and the pavement had given place to common road. every time he came to a lamp an increasing shine made itself visible upon his shoulders, till at last they quite glistened with wet. the murmur from the shore grew stronger, but it was still some distance off when he paused before one of the smallest of the detached houses by the wayside, standing in its own garden, the latter being divided from the road by a row of wooden palings. scrutinizing the spot to ensure that he was not mistaken, he opened the gate and gently knocked at the cottage door. when he had patiently waited minutes enough to lead any man in ordinary cases to knock again, the door was heard to open, though it was impossible to see by whose hand, there being no light in the passage. barnet said at random, 'does miss savile live here?' a youthful voice assured him that she did live there, and by a sudden afterthought asked him to come in. it would soon get a light, it said: but the night being wet, mother had not thought it worth while to trim the passage lamp. 'don't trouble yourself to get a light for me,' said barnet hastily; 'it is not necessary at all. which is miss savile's sitting-room?' the young person, whose white pinafore could just be discerned, signified a door in the side of the passage, and barnet went forward at the same moment, so that no light should fall upon his face. on entering the room he closed the door behind him, pausing till he heard the retreating footsteps of the child. he found himself in an apartment which was simply and neatly, though not poorly furnished; everything, from the miniature chiffonnier to the shining little daguerreotype which formed the central ornament of the mantelpiece, being in scrupulous order. the picture was enclosed by a frame of embroidered card-board--evidently the work of feminine hands--and it was the portrait of a thin faced, elderly lieutenant in the navy. from behind the lamp on the table a female form now rose into view, that of a young girl, and a resemblance between her and the portrait was early discoverable. she had been so absorbed in some occupation on the other side of the lamp as to have barely found time to realize her visitor's presence. they both remained standing for a few seconds without speaking. the face that confronted barnet had a beautiful outline; the raffaelesque oval of its contour was remarkable for an english countenance, and that countenance housed in a remote country-road to an unheard-of harbour. but her features did not do justice to this splendid beginning: nature had recollected that she was not in italy; and the young lady's lineaments, though not so inconsistent as to make her plain, would have been accepted rather as pleasing than as correct. the preoccupied expression which, like images on the retina, remained with her for a moment after the state that caused it had ceased, now changed into a reserved, half-proud, and slightly indignant look, in which the blood diffused itself quickly across her cheek, and additional brightness broke the shade of her rather heavy eyes. 'i know i have no business here,' he said, answering the look. 'but i had a great wish to see you, and inquire how you were. you can give your hand to me, seeing how often i have held it in past days?' 'i would rather forget than remember all that, mr. barnet,' she answered, as she coldly complied with the request. 'when i think of the circumstances of our last meeting, i can hardly consider it kind of you to allude to such a thing as our past--or, indeed, to come here at all.' 'there was no harm in it surely? i don't trouble you often, lucy.' 'i have not had the honour of a visit from you for a very long time, certainly, and i did not expect it now,' she said, with the same stiffness in her air. 'i hope mrs. barnet is very well?' 'yes, yes!' he impatiently returned. 'at least i suppose so--though i only speak from inference!' 'but she is your wife, sir,' said the young girl tremulously. the unwonted tones of a man's voice in that feminine chamber had startled a canary that was roosting in its cage by the window; the bird awoke hastily, and fluttered against the bars. she went and stilled it by laying her face against the cage and murmuring a coaxing sound. it might partly have been done to still herself. 'i didn't come to talk of mrs. barnet,' he pursued; 'i came to talk of you, of yourself alone; to inquire how you are getting on since your great loss.' and he turned towards the portrait of her father. 'i am getting on fairly well, thank you.' the force of her utterance was scarcely borne out by her look; but barnet courteously reproached himself for not having guessed a thing so natural; and to dissipate all embarrassment, added, as he bent over the table, 'what were you doing when i came?--painting flowers, and by candlelight?' 'o no,' she said, 'not painting them--only sketching the outlines. i do that at night to save time--i have to get three dozen done by the end of the month.' barnet looked as if he regretted it deeply. 'you will wear your poor eyes out,' he said, with more sentiment than he had hitherto shown. 'you ought not to do it. there was a time when i should have said you must not. well--i almost wish i had never seen light with my own eyes when i think of that!' 'is this a time or place for recalling such matters?' she asked, with dignity. 'you used to have a gentlemanly respect for me, and for yourself. don't speak any more as you have spoken, and don't come again. i cannot think that this visit is serious, or was closely considered by you.' 'considered: well, i came to see you as an old and good friend--not to mince matters, to visit a woman i loved. don't be angry! i could not help doing it, so many things brought you into my mind . . . this evening i fell in with an acquaintance, and when i saw how happy he was with his wife and family welcoming him home, though with only one-tenth of my income and chances, and thought what might have been in my case, it fairly broke down my discretion, and off i came here. now i am here i feel that i am wrong to some extent. but the feeling that i should like to see you, and talk of those we used to know in common, was very strong.' 'before that can be the case a little more time must pass,' said miss savile quietly; 'a time long enough for me to regard with some calmness what at present i remember far too impatiently--though it may be you almost forget it. indeed you must have forgotten it long before you acted as you did.' her voice grew stronger and more vivacious as she added: 'but i am doing my best to forget it too, and i know i shall succeed from the progress i have made already!' she had remained standing till now, when she turned and sat down, facing half away from him. barnet watched her moodily. 'yes, it is only what i deserve,' he said. 'ambition pricked me on--no, it was not ambition, it was wrongheadedness! had i but reflected . . . ' he broke out vehemently: 'but always remember this, lucy: if you had written to me only one little line after that misunderstanding, i declare i should have come back to you. that ruined me!' he slowly walked as far as the little room would allow him to go, and remained with his eyes on the skirting. 'but, mr. barnet, how could i write to you? there was no opening for my doing so.' 'then there ought to have been,' said barnet, turning. 'that was my fault!' 'well, i don't know anything about that; but as there had been nothing said by me which required any explanation by letter, i did not send one. everything was so indefinite, and feeling your position to be so much wealthier than mine, i fancied i might have mistaken your meaning. and when i heard of the other lady--a woman of whose family even you might be proud--i thought how foolish i had been, and said nothing.' 'then i suppose it was destiny--accident--i don't know what, that separated us, dear lucy. anyhow you were the woman i ought to have made my wife--and i let you slip, like the foolish man that i was!' 'o, mr. barnet,' she said, almost in tears, 'don't revive the subject to me; i am the wrong one to console you--think, sir,--you should not be here--it would be so bad for me if it were known!' 'it would--it would, indeed,' he said hastily. 'i am not right in doing this, and i won't do it again.' 'it is a very common folly of human nature, you know, to think the course you did not adopt must have been the best,' she continued, with gentle solicitude, as she followed him to the door of the room. 'and you don't know that i should have accepted you, even if you had asked me to be your wife.' at this his eye met hers, and she dropped her gaze. she knew that her voice belied her. there was a silence till she looked up to add, in a voice of soothing playfulness, 'my family was so much poorer than yours, even before i lost my dear father, that--perhaps your companions would have made it unpleasant for us on account of my deficiencies.' 'your disposition would soon have won them round,' said barnet. she archly expostulated: 'now, never mind my disposition; try to make it up with your wife! those are my commands to you. and now you are to leave me at once.' 'i will. i must make the best of it all, i suppose,' he replied, more cheerfully than he had as yet spoken. 'but i shall never again meet with such a dear girl as you!' and he suddenly opened the door, and left her alone. when his glance again fell on the lamps that were sparsely ranged along the dreary level road, his eyes were in a state which showed straw- like motes of light radiating from each flame into the surrounding air. on the other side of the way barnet observed a man under an umbrella, walking parallel with himself. presently this man left the footway, and gradually converged on barnet's course. the latter then saw that it was charlson, a surgeon of the town, who owed him money. charlson was a man not without ability; yet he did not prosper. sundry circumstances stood in his way as a medical practitioner: he was needy; he was not a coddle; he gossiped with men instead of with women; he had married a stranger instead of one of the town young ladies; and he was given to conversational buffoonery. moreover, his look was quite erroneous. those only proper features in the family doctor, the quiet eye, and the thin straight passionless lips which never curl in public either for laughter or for scorn, were not his; he had a full-curved mouth, and a bold black eye that made timid people nervous. his companions were what in old times would have been called boon companions--an expression which, though of irreproachable root, suggests fraternization carried to the point of unscrupulousness. all this was against him in the little town of his adoption. charlson had been in difficulties, and to oblige him barnet had put his name to a bill; and, as he had expected, was called upon to meet it when it fell due. it had been only a matter of fifty pounds, which barnet could well afford to lose, and he bore no ill-will to the thriftless surgeon on account of it. but charlson had a little too much brazen indifferentism in his composition to be altogether a desirable acquaintance. 'i hope to be able to make that little bill-business right with you in the course of three weeks, mr. barnet,' said charlson with hail-fellow friendliness. barnet replied good-naturedly that there was no hurry. this particular three weeks had moved on in advance of charlson's present with the precision of a shadow for some considerable time. 'i've had a dream,' charlson continued. barnet knew from his tone that the surgeon was going to begin his characteristic nonsense, and did not encourage him. 'i've had a dream,' repeated charlson, who required no encouragement. 'i dreamed that a gentleman, who has been very kind to me, married a haughty lady in haste, before he had quite forgotten a nice little girl he knew before, and that one wet evening, like the present, as i was walking up the harbour-road, i saw him come out of that dear little girl's present abode.' barnet glanced towards the speaker. the rays from a neighbouring lamp struck through the drizzle under charlson's umbrella, so as just to illumine his face against the shade behind, and show that his eye was turned up under the outer corner of its lid, whence it leered with impish jocoseness as he thrust his tongue into his cheek. 'come,' said barnet gravely, 'we'll have no more of that.' 'no, no--of course not,' charlson hastily answered, seeing that his humour had carried him too far, as it had done many times before. he was profuse in his apologies, but barnet did not reply. of one thing he was certain--that scandal was a plant of quick root, and that he was bound to obey lucy's injunction for lucy's own sake. chapter iii he did so, to the letter; and though, as the crocus followed the snowdrop and the daffodil the crocus in lucy's garden, the harbour-road was a not unpleasant place to walk in, barnet's feet never trod its stones, much less approached her door. he avoided a saunter that way as he would have avoided a dangerous dram, and took his airings a long distance northward, among severely square and brown ploughed fields, where no other townsman came. sometimes he went round by the lower lanes of the borough, where the rope-walks stretched in which his family formerly had share, and looked at the rope-makers walking backwards, overhung by apple-trees and bushes, and intruded on by cows and calves, as if trade had established itself there at considerable inconvenience to nature. one morning, when the sun was so warm as to raise a steam from the south- eastern slopes of those flanking hills that looked so lovely above the old roofs, but made every low-chimneyed house in the town as smoky as tophet, barnet glanced from the windows of the town-council room for lack of interest in what was proceeding within. several members of the corporation were present, but there was not much business doing, and in a few minutes downe came leisurely across to him, saying that he seldom saw barnet now. barnet owned that he was not often present. downe looked at the crimson curtain which hung down beside the panes, reflecting its hot hues into their faces, and then out of the window. at that moment there passed along the street a tall commanding lady, in whom the solicitor recognized barnet's wife. barnet had done the same thing, and turned away. 'it will be all right some day,' said downe, with cheering sympathy. 'you have heard, then, of her last outbreak?' downe depressed his cheerfulness to its very reverse in a moment. 'no, i have not heard of anything serious,' he said, with as long a face as one naturally round could be turned into at short notice. 'i only hear vague reports of such things.' 'you may think it will be all right,' said barnet drily. 'but i have a different opinion . . . no, downe, we must look the thing in the face. not poppy nor mandragora--however, how are your wife and children?' downe said that they were all well, thanks; they were out that morning somewhere; he was just looking to see if they were walking that way. ah, there they were, just coming down the street; and downe pointed to the figures of two children with a nursemaid, and a lady walking behind them. 'you will come out and speak to her?' he asked. 'not this morning. the fact is i don't care to speak to anybody just now.' 'you are too sensitive, mr. barnet. at school i remember you used to get as red as a rose if anybody uttered a word that hurt your feelings.' barnet mused. 'yes,' he admitted, 'there is a grain of truth in that. it is because of that i often try to make peace at home. life would be tolerable then at any rate, even if not particularly bright.' 'i have thought more than once of proposing a little plan to you,' said downe with some hesitation. 'i don't know whether it will meet your views, but take it or leave it, as you choose. in fact, it was my wife who suggested it: that she would be very glad to call on mrs. barnet and get into her confidence. she seems to think that mrs. barnet is rather alone in the town, and without advisers. her impression is that your wife will listen to reason. emily has a wonderful way of winning the hearts of people of her own sex.' 'and of the other sex too, i think. she is a charming woman, and you were a lucky fellow to find her.' 'well, perhaps i was,' simpered downe, trying to wear an aspect of being the last man in the world to feel pride. 'however, she will be likely to find out what ruffles mrs. barnet. perhaps it is some misunderstanding, you know--something that she is too proud to ask you to explain, or some little thing in your conduct that irritates her because she does not fully comprehend you. the truth is, emily would have been more ready to make advances if she had been quite sure of her fitness for mrs. barnet's society, who has of course been accustomed to london people of good position, which made emily fearful of intruding.' barnet expressed his warmest thanks for the well-intentioned proposition. there was reason in mrs. downe's fear--that he owned. 'but do let her call,' he said. 'there is no woman in england i would so soon trust on such an errand. i am afraid there will not be any brilliant result; still i shall take it as the kindest and nicest thing if she will try it, and not be frightened at a repulse.' when barnet and downe had parted, the former went to the town savings- bank, of which he was a trustee, and endeavoured to forget his troubles in the contemplation of low sums of money, and figures in a network of red and blue lines. he sat and watched the working-people making their deposits, to which at intervals he signed his name. before he left in the afternoon downe put his head inside the door. 'emily has seen mrs. barnet,' he said, in a low voice. 'she has got mrs. barnet's promise to take her for a drive down to the shore to-morrow, if it is fine. good afternoon!' barnet shook downe by the hand without speaking, and downe went away. chapter iv the next day was as fine as the arrangement could possibly require. as the sun passed the meridian and declined westward, the tall shadows from the scaffold-poles of barnet's rising residence streaked the ground as far as to the middle of the highway. barnet himself was there inspecting the progress of the works for the first time during several weeks. a building in an old-fashioned town five-and-thirty years ago did not, as in the modern fashion, rise from the sod like a booth at a fair. the foundations and lower courses were put in and allowed to settle for many weeks before the superstructure was built up, and a whole summer of drying was hardly sufficient to do justice to the important issues involved. barnet stood within a window-niche which had as yet received no frame, and thence looked down a slope into the road. the wheels of a chaise were heard, and then his handsome xantippe, in the company of mrs. downe, drove past on their way to the shore. they were driving slowly; there was a pleasing light in mrs. downe's face, which seemed faintly to reflect itself upon the countenance of her companion--that politesse du coeur which was so natural to her having possibly begun already to work results. but whatever the situation, barnet resolved not to interfere, or do anything to hazard the promise of the day. he might well afford to trust the issue to another when he could never direct it but to ill himself. his wife's clenched rein-hand in its lemon-coloured glove, her stiff erect figure, clad in velvet and lace, and her boldly-outlined face, passed on, exhibiting their owner as one fixed for ever above the level of her companion--socially by her early breeding, and materially by her higher cushion. barnet decided to allow them a proper time to themselves, and then stroll down to the shore and drive them home. after lingering on at the house for another hour he started with this intention. a few hundred yards below 'chateau ringdale' stood the cottage in which the late lieutenant's daughter had her lodging. barnet had not been so far that way for a long time, and as he approached the forbidden ground a curious warmth passed into him, which led him to perceive that, unless he were careful, he might have to fight the battle with himself about lucy over again. a tenth of his present excuse would, however, have justified him in travelling by that road to-day. he came opposite the dwelling, and turned his eyes for a momentary glance into the little garden that stretched from the palings to the door. lucy was in the enclosure; she was walking and stooping to gather some flowers, possibly for the purpose of painting them, for she moved about quickly, as if anxious to save time. she did not see him; he might have passed unnoticed; but a sensation which was not in strict unison with his previous sentiments that day led him to pause in his walk and watch her. she went nimbly round and round the beds of anemones, tulips, jonquils, polyanthuses, and other old-fashioned flowers, looking a very charming figure in her half-mourning bonnet, and with an incomplete nosegay in her left hand. raising herself to pull down a lilac blossom she observed him. 'mr. barnet!' she said, innocently smiling. 'why, i have been thinking of you many times since mrs. barnet went by in the pony-carriage, and now here you are!' 'yes, lucy,' he said. then she seemed to recall particulars of their last meeting, and he believed that she flushed, though it might have been only the fancy of his own supersensitivenesss. 'i am going to the harbour,' he added. 'are you?' lucy remarked simply. 'a great many people begin to go there now the summer is drawing on.' her face had come more into his view as she spoke, and he noticed how much thinner and paler it was than when he had seen it last. 'lucy, how weary you look! tell me, can i help you?' he was going to cry out.--'if i do,' he thought, 'it will be the ruin of us both!' he merely said that the afternoon was fine, and went on his way. as he went a sudden blast of air came over the hill as if in contradiction to his words, and spoilt the previous quiet of the scene. the wind had already shifted violently, and now smelt of the sea. the harbour-road soon began to justify its name. a gap appeared in the rampart of hills which shut out the sea, and on the left of the opening rose a vertical cliff, coloured a burning orange by the sunlight, the companion cliff on the right being livid in shade. between these cliffs, like the libyan bay which sheltered the shipwrecked trojans, was a little haven, seemingly a beginning made by nature herself of a perfect harbour, which appealed to the passer-by as only requiring a little human industry to finish it and make it famous, the ground on each side as far back as the daisied slopes that bounded the interior valley being a mere layer of blown sand. but the port-bredy burgesses a mile inland had, in the course of ten centuries, responded many times to that mute appeal, with the result that the tides had invariably choked up their works with sand and shingle as soon as completed. there were but few houses here: a rough pier, a few boats, some stores, an inn, a residence or two, a ketch unloading in the harbour, were the chief features of the settlement. on the open ground by the shore stood his wife's pony-carriage, empty, the boy in attendance holding the horse. when barnet drew nearer, he saw an indigo-coloured spot moving swiftly along beneath the radiant base of the eastern cliff, which proved to be a man in a jersey, running with all his might. he held up his hand to barnet, as it seemed, and they approached each other. the man was local, but a stranger to him. 'what is it, my man?' said barnet. 'a terrible calamity!' the boatman hastily explained. two ladies had been capsized in a boat--they were mrs. downe and mrs. barnet of the old town; they had driven down there that afternoon--they had alighted, and it was so fine, that, after walking about a little while, they had been tempted to go out for a short sail round the cliff. just as they were putting in to the shore, the wind shifted with a sudden gust, the boat listed over, and it was thought they were both drowned. how it could have happened was beyond his mind to fathom, for john green knew how to sail a boat as well as any man there. 'which is the way to the place?' said barnet. it was just round the cliff. 'run to the carriage and tell the boy to bring it to the place as soon as you can. then go to the harbour inn and tell them to ride to town for a doctor. have they been got out of the water?' 'one lady has.' 'which?' 'mrs. barnet. mrs. downe, it is feared, has fleeted out to sea.' barnet ran on to that part of the shore which the cliff had hitherto obscured from his view, and there discerned, a long way ahead, a group of fishermen standing. as soon as he came up one or two recognized him, and, not liking to meet his eye, turned aside with misgiving. he went amidst them and saw a small sailing-boat lying draggled at the water's edge; and, on the sloping shingle beside it, a soaked and sandy woman's form in the velvet dress and yellow gloves of his wife. chapter v all had been done that could be done. mrs. barnet was in her own house under medical hands, but the result was still uncertain. barnet had acted as if devotion to his wife were the dominant passion of his existence. there had been much to decide--whether to attempt restoration of the apparently lifeless body as it lay on the shore--whether to carry her to the harbour inn--whether to drive with her at once to his own house. the first course, with no skilled help or appliances near at hand, had seemed hopeless. the second course would have occupied nearly as much time as a drive to the town, owing to the intervening ridges of shingle, and the necessity of crossing the harbour by boat to get to the house, added to which much time must have elapsed before a doctor could have arrived down there. by bringing her home in the carriage some precious moments had slipped by; but she had been laid in her own bed in seven minutes, a doctor called to her side, and every possible restorative brought to bear upon her. at what a tearing pace he had driven up that road, through the yellow evening sunlight, the shadows flapping irksomely into his eyes as each wayside object rushed past between him and the west! tired workmen with their baskets at their backs had turned on their homeward journey to wonder at his speed. halfway between the shore and port-bredy town he had met charlson, who had been the first surgeon to hear of the accident. he was accompanied by his assistant in a gig. barnet had sent on the latter to the coast in case that downe's poor wife should by that time have been reclaimed from the waves, and had brought charlson back with him to the house. barnet's presence was not needed here, and he felt it to be his next duty to set off at once and find downe, that no other than himself might break the news to him. he was quite sure that no chance had been lost for mrs. downe by his leaving the shore. by the time that mrs. barnet had been laid in the carriage, a much larger group had assembled to lend assistance in finding her friend, rendering his own help superfluous. but the duty of breaking the news was made doubly painful by the circumstance that the catastrophe which had befallen mrs. downe was solely the result of her own and her husband's loving-kindness towards himself. he found downe in his office. when the solicitor comprehended the intelligence he turned pale, stood up, and remained for a moment perfectly still, as if bereft of his faculties; then his shoulders heaved, he pulled out his handkerchief and began to cry like a child. his sobs might have been heard in the next room. he seemed to have no idea of going to the shore, or of doing anything; but when barnet took him gently by the hand and proposed to start at once, he quietly acquiesced, neither uttering any further word nor making any effort to repress his tears. barnet accompanied him to the shore, where, finding that no trace had as yet been seen of mrs. downe, and that his stay would be of no avail, he left downe with his friends and the young doctor, and once more hastened back to his own house. at the door he met charlson. 'well!' barnet said. 'i have just come down,' said the doctor; 'we have done everything, but without result. i sympathize with you in your bereavement.' barnet did not much appreciate charlson's sympathy, which sounded to his ears as something of a mockery from the lips of a man who knew what charlson knew about their domestic relations. indeed there seemed an odd spark in charlson's full black eye as he said the words; but that might have been imaginary. 'and, mr. barnet,' charlson resumed, 'that little matter between us--i hope to settle it finally in three weeks at least.' 'never mind that now,' said barnet abruptly. he directed the surgeon to go to the harbour in case his services might even now be necessary there: and himself entered the house. the servants were coming from his wife's chamber, looking helplessly at each other and at him. he passed them by and entered the room, where he stood mutely regarding the bed for a few minutes, after which he walked into his own dressing-room adjoining, and there paced up and down. in a minute or two he noticed what a strange and total silence had come over the upper part of the house; his own movements, muffled as they were by the carpet, seemed noisy, and his thoughts to disturb the air like articulate utterances. his eye glanced through the window. far down the road to the harbour a roof detained his gaze: out of it rose a red chimney, and out of the red chimney a curl of smoke, as from a fire newly kindled. he had often seen such a sight before. in that house lived lucy savile; and the smoke was from the fire which was regularly lighted at this time to make her tea. after that he went back to the bedroom, and stood there some time regarding his wife's silent form. she was a woman some years older than himself, but had not by any means overpassed the maturity of good looks and vigour. her passionate features, well-defined, firm, and statuesque in life, were doubly so now: her mouth and brow, beneath her purplish black hair, showed only too clearly that the turbulency of character which had made a bear-garden of his house had been no temporary phase of her existence. while he reflected, he suddenly said to himself, i wonder if all has been done? the thought was led up to by his having fancied that his wife's features lacked in its complete form the expression which he had been accustomed to associate with the faces of those whose spirits have fled for ever. the effacement of life was not so marked but that, entering uninformed, he might have supposed her sleeping. her complexion was that seen in the numerous faded portraits by sir joshua reynolds; it was pallid in comparison with life, but there was visible on a close inspection the remnant of what had once been a flush; the keeping between the cheeks and the hollows of the face being thus preserved, although positive colour was gone. long orange rays of evening sun stole in through chinks in the blind, striking on the large mirror, and being thence reflected upon the crimson hangings and woodwork of the heavy bedstead, so that the general tone of light was remarkably warm; and it was probable that something might be due to this circumstance. still the fact impressed him as strange. charlson had been gone more than a quarter of an hour: could it be possible that he had left too soon, and that his attempts to restore her had operated so sluggishly as only now to have made themselves felt? barnet laid his hand upon her chest, and fancied that ever and anon a faint flutter of palpitation, gentle as that of a butterfly's wing, disturbed the stillness there--ceasing for a time, then struggling to go on, then breaking down in weakness and ceasing again. barnet's mother had been an active practitioner of the healing art among her poorer neighbours, and her inspirations had all been derived from an octavo volume of domestic medicine, which at this moment was lying, as it had lain for many years, on a shelf in barnet's dressing-room. he hastily fetched it, and there read under the head 'drowning:'- 'exertions for the recovery of any person who has not been immersed for a longer period than half-an-hour should be continued for at least four hours, as there have been many cases in which returning life has made itself visible even after a longer interval. 'should, however, a weak action of any of the organs show itself when the case seems almost hopeless, our efforts must be redoubled; the feeble spark in this case requires to be solicited; it will certainly disappear under a relaxation of labour.' barnet looked at his watch; it was now barely two hours and a half from the time when he had first heard of the accident. he threw aside the book and turned quickly to reach a stimulant which had previously been used. pulling up the blind for more light, his eye glanced out of the window. there he saw that red chimney still smoking cheerily, and that roof, and through the roof that somebody. his mechanical movements stopped, his hand remained on the blind-cord, and he seemed to become breathless, as if he had suddenly found himself treading a high rope. while he stood a sparrow lighted on the windowsill, saw him, and flew away. next a man and a dog walked over one of the green hills which bulged above the roofs of the town. but barnet took no notice. we may wonder what were the exact images that passed through his mind during those minutes of gazing upon lucy savile's house, the sparrow, the man and the dog, and lucy savile's house again. there are honest men who will not admit to their thoughts, even as idle hypotheses, views of the future that assume as done a deed which they would recoil from doing; and there are other honest men for whom morality ends at the surface of their own heads, who will deliberate what the first will not so much as suppose. barnet had a wife whose pretence distracted his home; she now lay as in death; by merely doing nothing--by letting the intelligence which had gone forth to the world lie undisturbed--he would effect such a deliverance for himself as he had never hoped for, and open up an opportunity of which till now he had never dreamed. whether the conjuncture had arisen through any unscrupulous, ill-considered impulse of charlson to help out of a strait the friend who was so kind as never to press him for what was due could not be told; there was nothing to prove it; and it was a question which could never be asked. the triangular situation--himself--his wife--lucy savile--was the one clear thing. from barnet's actions we may infer that he supposed such and such a result, for a moment, but did not deliberate. he withdrew his hazel eyes from the scene without, calmly turned, rang the bell for assistance, and vigorously exerted himself to learn if life still lingered in that motionless frame. in a short time another surgeon was in attendance; and then barnet's surmise proved to be true. the slow life timidly heaved again; but much care and patience were needed to catch and retain it, and a considerable period elapsed before it could be said with certainty that mrs. barnet lived. when this was the case, and there was no further room for doubt, barnet left the chamber. the blue evening smoke from lucy's chimney had died down to an imperceptible stream, and as he walked about downstairs he murmured to himself, 'my wife was dead, and she is alive again.' it was not so with downe. after three hours' immersion his wife's body had been recovered, life, of course, being quite extinct. barnet on descending, went straight to his friend's house, and there learned the result. downe was helpless in his wild grief, occasionally even hysterical. barnet said little, but finding that some guiding hand was necessary in the sorrow-stricken household, took upon him to supervise and manage till downe should be in a state of mind to do so for himself. chapter vi one september evening, four months later, when mrs. barnet was in perfect health, and mrs. downe but a weakening memory, an errand-boy paused to rest himself in front of mr. barnet's old house, depositing his basket on one of the window-sills. the street was not yet lighted, but there were lights in the house, and at intervals a flitting shadow fell upon the blind at his elbow. words also were audible from the same apartment, and they seemed to be those of persons in violent altercation. but the boy could not gather their purport, and he went on his way. ten minutes afterwards the door of barnet's house opened, and a tall closely-veiled lady in a travelling-dress came out and descended the freestone steps. the servant stood in the doorway watching her as she went with a measured tread down the street. when she had been out of sight for some minutes barnet appeared at the door from within. 'did your mistress leave word where she was going?' he asked. 'no, sir.' 'is the carriage ordered to meet her anywhere?' 'no, sir.' 'did she take a latch-key?' 'no, sir.' barnet went in again, sat down in his chair, and leaned back. then in solitude and silence he brooded over the bitter emotions that filled his heart. it was for this that he had gratuitously restored her to life, and made his union with another impossible! the evening drew on, and nobody came to disturb him. at bedtime he told the servants to retire, that he would sit up for mrs. barnet himself; and when they were gone he leaned his head upon his hand and mused for hours. the clock struck one, two; still his wife came not, and, with impatience added to depression, he went from room to room till another weary hour had passed. this was not altogether a new experience for barnet; but she had never before so prolonged her absence. at last he sat down again and fell asleep. he awoke at six o'clock to find that she had not returned. in searching about the rooms he discovered that she had taken a case of jewels which had been hers before her marriage. at eight a note was brought him; it was from his wife, in which she stated that she had gone by the coach to the house of a distant relative near london, and expressed a wish that certain boxes, articles of clothing, and so on, might be sent to her forthwith. the note was brought to him by a waiter at the black-bull hotel, and had been written by mrs. barnet immediately before she took her place in the stage. by the evening this order was carried out, and barnet, with a sense of relief, walked out into the town. a fair had been held during the day, and the large clear moon which rose over the most prominent hill flung its light upon the booths and standings that still remained in the street, mixing its rays curiously with those from the flaring naphtha lamps. the town was full of country-people who had come in to enjoy themselves, and on this account barnet strolled through the streets unobserved. with a certain recklessness he made for the harbour-road, and presently found himself by the shore, where he walked on till he came to the spot near which his friend the kindly mrs. downe had lost her life, and his own wife's life had been preserved. a tremulous pathway of bright moonshine now stretched over the water which had engulfed them, and not a living soul was near. here he ruminated on their characters, and next on the young girl in whom he now took a more sensitive interest than at the time when he had been free to marry her. nothing, so far as he was aware, had ever appeared in his own conduct to show that such an interest existed. he had made it a point of the utmost strictness to hinder that feeling from influencing in the faintest degree his attitude towards his wife; and this was made all the more easy for him by the small demand mrs. barnet made upon his attentions, for which she ever evinced the greatest contempt; thus unwittingly giving him the satisfaction of knowing that their severance owed nothing to jealousy, or, indeed, to any personal behaviour of his at all. her concern was not with him or his feelings, as she frequently told him; but that she had, in a moment of weakness, thrown herself away upon a common burgher when she might have aimed at, and possibly brought down, a peer of the realm. her frequent depreciation of barnet in these terms had at times been so intense that he was sorely tempted to retaliate on her egotism by owning that he loved at the same low level on which he lived; but prudence had prevailed, for which he was now thankful. something seemed to sound upon the shingle behind him over and above the raking of the wave. he looked round, and a slight girlish shape appeared quite close to him, he could not see her face because it was in the direction of the moon. 'mr. barnet?' the rambler said, in timid surprise. the voice was the voice of lucy savile. 'yes,' said barnet. 'how can i repay you for this pleasure?' 'i only came because the night was so clear. i am now on my way home.' 'i am glad we have met. i want to know if you will let me do something for you, to give me an occupation, as an idle man? i am sure i ought to help you, for i know you are almost without friends.' she hesitated. 'why should you tell me that?' she said. 'in the hope that you will be frank with me.' 'i am not altogether without friends here. but i am going to make a little change in my life--to go out as a teacher of freehand drawing and practical perspective, of course i mean on a comparatively humble scale, because i have not been specially educated for that profession. but i am sure i shall like it much.' 'you have an opening?' 'i have not exactly got it, but i have advertised for one.' 'lucy, you must let me help you!' 'not at all.' 'you need not think it would compromise you, or that i am indifferent to delicacy. i bear in mind how we stand. it is very unlikely that you will succeed as teacher of the class you mention, so let me do something of a different kind for you. say what you would like, and it shall be done.' 'no; if i can't be a drawing-mistress or governess, or something of that sort, i shall go to india and join my brother.' 'i wish i could go abroad, anywhere, everywhere with you, lucy, and leave this place and its associations for ever!' she played with the end of her bonnet-string, and hastily turned aside. 'don't ever touch upon that kind of topic again,' she said, with a quick severity not free from anger. 'it simply makes it impossible for me to see you, much less receive any guidance from you. no, thank you, mr. barnet; you can do nothing for me at present; and as i suppose my uncertainty will end in my leaving for india, i fear you never will. if ever i think you can do anything, i will take the trouble to ask you. till then, good-bye.' the tone of her latter words was equivocal, and while he remained in doubt whether a gentle irony was or was not inwrought with their sound, she swept lightly round and left him alone. he saw her form get smaller and smaller along the damp belt of sea-sand between ebb and flood; and when she had vanished round the cliff into the harbour-road, he himself followed in the same direction. that her hopes from an advertisement should be the single thread which held lucy savile in england was too much for barnet. on reaching the town he went straight to the residence of downe, now a widower with four children. the young motherless brood had been sent to bed about a quarter of an hour earlier, and when barnet entered he found downe sitting alone. it was the same room as that from which the family had been looking out for downe at the beginning of the year, when downe had slipped into the gutter and his wife had been so enviably tender towards him. the old neatness had gone from the house; articles lay in places which could show no reason for their presence, as if momentarily deposited there some months ago, and forgotten ever since; there were no flowers; things were jumbled together on the furniture which should have been in cupboards; and the place in general had that stagnant, unrenovated air which usually pervades the maimed home of the widower. downe soon renewed his customary full-worded lament over his wife, and even when he had worked himself up to tears, went on volubly, as if a listener were a luxury to be enjoyed whenever he could be caught. 'she was a treasure beyond compare, mr. barnet! i shall never see such another. nobody now to nurse me--nobody to console me in those daily troubles, you know, barnet, which make consolation so necessary to a nature like mine. it would be unbecoming to repine, for her spirit's home was elsewhere--the tender light in her eyes always showed it; but it is a long dreary time that i have before me, and nobody else can ever fill the void left in my heart by her loss--nobody--nobody!' and downe wiped his eyes again. 'she was a good woman in the highest sense,' gravely answered barnet, who, though downe's words drew genuine compassion from his heart, could not help feeling that a tender reticence would have been a finer tribute to mrs. downe's really sterling virtues than such a second-class lament as this. 'i have something to show you,' downe resumed, producing from a drawer a sheet of paper on which was an elaborate design for a canopied tomb. 'this has been sent me by the architect, but it is not exactly what i want.' 'you have got jones to do it, i see, the man who is carrying out my house,' said barnet, as he glanced at the signature to the drawing. 'yes, but it is not quite what i want. i want something more striking--more like a tomb i have seen in st. paul's cathedral. nothing less will do justice to my feelings, and how far short of them that will fall!' barnet privately thought the design a sufficiently imposing one as it stood, even extravagantly ornate; but, feeling that he had no right to criticize, he said gently, 'downe, should you not live more in your children's lives at the present time, and soften the sharpness of regret for your own past by thinking of their future?' 'yes, yes; but what can i do more?' asked downe, wrinkling his forehead hopelessly. it was with anxious slowness that barnet produced his reply--the secret object of his visit to-night. 'did you not say one day that you ought by rights to get a governess for the children?' downe admitted that he had said so, but that he could not see his way to it. 'the kind of woman i should like to have,' he said, 'would be rather beyond my means. no; i think i shall send them to school in the town when they are old enough to go out alone.' 'now, i know of something better than that. the late lieutenant savile's daughter, lucy, wants to do something for herself in the way of teaching. she would be inexpensive, and would answer your purpose as well as anybody for six or twelve months. she would probably come daily if you were to ask her, and so your housekeeping arrangements would not be much affected.' 'i thought she had gone away,' said the solicitor, musing. 'where does she live?' barnet told him, and added that, if downe should think of her as suitable, he would do well to call as soon as possible, or she might be on the wing. 'if you do see her,' he said, 'it would be advisable not to mention my name. she is rather stiff in her ideas of me, and it might prejudice her against a course if she knew that i recommended it.' downe promised to give the subject his consideration, and nothing more was said about it just then. but when barnet rose to go, which was not till nearly bedtime, he reminded downe of the suggestion and went up the street to his own solitary home with a sense of satisfaction at his promising diplomacy in a charitable cause. chapter vii the walls of his new house were carried up nearly to their full height. by a curious though not infrequent reaction, barnet's feelings about that unnecessary structure had undergone a change; he took considerable interest in its progress as a long-neglected thing, his wife before her departure having grown quite weary of it as a hobby. moreover, it was an excellent distraction for a man in the unhappy position of having to live in a provincial town with nothing to do. he was probably the first of his line who had ever passed a day without toil, and perhaps something like an inherited instinct disqualifies such men for a life of pleasant inaction, such as lies in the power of those whose leisure is not a personal accident, but a vast historical accretion which has become part of their natures. thus barnet got into a way of spending many of his leisure hours on the site of the new building, and he might have been seen on most days at this time trying the temper of the mortar by punching the joints with his stick, looking at the grain of a floor-board, and meditating where it grew, or picturing under what circumstances the last fire would be kindled in the at present sootless chimneys. one day when thus occupied he saw three children pass by in the company of a fair young woman, whose sudden appearance caused him to flush perceptibly. 'ah, she is there,' he thought. 'that's a blessed thing.' casting an interested glance over the rising building and the busy workmen, lucy savile and the little downes passed by; and after that time it became a regular though almost unconscious custom of barnet to stand in the half-completed house and look from the ungarnished windows at the governess as she tripped towards the sea-shore with her young charges, which she was in the habit of doing on most fine afternoons. it was on one of these occasions, when he had been loitering on the first-floor landing, near the hole left for the staircase, not yet erected, that there appeared above the edge of the floor a little hat, followed by a little head. barnet withdrew through a doorway, and the child came to the top of the ladder, stepping on to the floor and crying to her sisters and miss savile to follow. another head rose above the floor, and another, and then lucy herself came into view. the troop ran hither and thither through the empty, shaving-strewn rooms, and barnet came forward. lucy uttered a small exclamation: she was very sorry that she had intruded; she had not the least idea that mr. barnet was there: the children had come up, and she had followed. barnet replied that he was only too glad to see them there. 'and now, let me show you the rooms,' he said. she passively assented, and he took her round. there was not much to show in such a bare skeleton of a house, but he made the most of it, and explained the different ornamental fittings that were soon to be fixed here and there. lucy made but few remarks in reply, though she seemed pleased with her visit, and stole away down the ladder, followed by her companions. after this the new residence became yet more of a hobby for barnet. downe's children did not forget their first visit, and when the windows were glazed, and the handsome staircase spread its broad low steps into the hall, they came again, prancing in unwearied succession through every room from ground-floor to attics, while lucy stood waiting for them at the door. barnet, who rarely missed a day in coming to inspect progress, stepped out from the drawing-room. 'i could not keep them out,' she said, with an apologetic blush. 'i tried to do so very much: but they are rather wilful, and we are directed to walk this way for the sea air.' 'do let them make the house their regular playground, and you yours,' said barnet. 'there is no better place for children to romp and take their exercise in than an empty house, particularly in muddy or damp weather such as we shall get a good deal of now; and this place will not be furnished for a long long time--perhaps never. i am not at all decided about it.' 'o, but it must!' replied lucy, looking round at the hall. 'the rooms are excellent, twice as high as ours; and the views from the windows are so lovely.' 'i daresay, i daresay,' he said absently. 'will all the furniture be new?' she asked. 'all the furniture be new--that's a thing i have not thought of. in fact i only come here and look on. my father's house would have been large enough for me, but another person had a voice in the matter, and it was settled that we should build. however, the place grows upon me; its recent associations are cheerful, and i am getting to like it fast.' a certain uneasiness in lucy's manner showed that the conversation was taking too personal a turn for her. 'still, as modern tastes develop, people require more room to gratify them in,' she said, withdrawing to call the children; and serenely bidding him good afternoon she went on her way. barnet's life at this period was singularly lonely, and yet he was happier than he could have expected. his wife's estrangement and absence, which promised to be permanent, left him free as a boy in his movements, and the solitary walks that he took gave him ample opportunity for chastened reflection on what might have been his lot if he had only shown wisdom enough to claim lucy savile when there was no bar between their lives, and she was to be had for the asking. he would occasionally call at the house of his friend downe; but there was scarcely enough in common between their two natures to make them more than friends of that excellent sort whose personal knowledge of each other's history and character is always in excess of intimacy, whereby they are not so likely to be severed by a clash of sentiment as in cases where intimacy springs up in excess of knowledge. lucy was never visible at these times, being either engaged in the school-room, or in taking an airing out of doors; but, knowing that she was now comfortable, and had given up the, to him, depressing idea of going off to the other side of the globe, he was quite content. the new house had so far progressed that the gardeners were beginning to grass down the front. during an afternoon which he was passing in marking the curve for the carriage-drive, he beheld her coming in boldly towards him from the road. hitherto barnet had only caught her on the premises by stealth; and this advance seemed to show that at last her reserve had broken down. a smile gained strength upon her face as she approached, and it was quite radiant when she came up, and said, without a trace of embarrassment, 'i find i owe you a hundred thanks--and it comes to me quite as a surprise! it was through your kindness that i was engaged by mr. downe. believe me, mr. barnet, i did not know it until yesterday, or i should have thanked you long and long ago!' 'i had offended you--just a trifle--at the time, i think?' said barnet, smiling, 'and it was best that you should not know.' 'yes, yes,' she returned hastily. 'don't allude to that; it is past and over, and we will let it be. the house is finished almost, is it not? how beautiful it will look when the evergreens are grown! do you call the style palladian, mr. barnet?' 'i--really don't quite know what it is. yes, it must be palladian, certainly. but i'll ask jones, the architect; for, to tell the truth, i had not thought much about the style: i had nothing to do with choosing it, i am sorry to say.' she would not let him harp on this gloomy refrain, and talked on bright matters till she said, producing a small roll of paper which he had noticed in her hand all the while, 'mr. downe wished me to bring you this revised drawing of the late mrs. downe's tomb, which the architect has just sent him. he would like you to look it over.' the children came up with their hoops, and she went off with them down the harbour-road as usual. barnet had been glad to get those words of thanks; he had been thinking for many months that he would like her to know of his share in finding her a home such as it was; and what he could not do for himself, downe had now kindly done for him. he returned to his desolate house with a lighter tread; though in reason he hardly knew why his tread should be light. on examining the drawing, barnet found that, instead of the vast altar- tomb and canopy downe had determined on at their last meeting, it was to be a more modest memorial even than had been suggested by the architect; a coped tomb of good solid construction, with no useless elaboration at all. barnet was truly glad to see that downe had come to reason of his own accord; and he returned the drawing with a note of approval. he followed up the house-work as before, and as he walked up and down the rooms, occasionally gazing from the windows over the bulging green hills and the quiet harbour that lay between them, he murmured words and fragments of words, which, if listened to, would have revealed all the secrets of his existence. whatever his reason in going there, lucy did not call again: the walk to the shore seemed to be abandoned: he must have thought it as well for both that it should be so, for he did not go anywhere out of his accustomed ways to endeavour to discover her. chapter viii the winter and the spring had passed, and the house was complete. it was a fine morning in the early part of june, and barnet, though not in the habit of rising early, had taken a long walk before breakfast; returning by way of the new building. a sufficiently exciting cause of his restlessness to-day might have been the intelligence which had reached him the night before, that lucy savile was going to india after all, and notwithstanding the representations of her friends that such a journey was unadvisable in many ways for an unpractised girl, unless some more definite advantage lay at the end of it than she could show to be the case. barnet's walk up the slope to the building betrayed that he was in a dissatisfied mood. he hardly saw that the dewy time of day lent an unusual freshness to the bushes and trees which had so recently put on their summer habit of heavy leafage, and made his newly-laid lawn look as well established as an old manorial meadow. the house had been so adroitly placed between six tall elms which were growing on the site beforehand, that they seemed like real ancestral trees; and the rooks, young and old, cawed melodiously to their visitor. the door was not locked, and he entered. no workmen appeared to be present, and he walked from sunny window to sunny window of the empty rooms, with a sense of seclusion which might have been very pleasant but for the antecedent knowledge that his almost paternal care of lucy savile was to be thrown away by her wilfulness. footsteps echoed through an adjoining room; and bending his eyes in that direction, he perceived mr. jones, the architect. he had come to look over the building before giving the contractor his final certificate. they walked over the house together. everything was finished except the papering: there were the latest improvements of the period in bell-hanging, ventilating, smoke- jacks, fire-grates, and french windows. the business was soon ended, and jones, having directed barnet's attention to a roll of wall-paper patterns which lay on a bench for his choice, was leaving to keep another engagement, when barnet said, 'is the tomb finished yet for mrs. downe?' 'well--yes: it is at last,' said the architect, coming back and speaking as if he were in a mood to make a confidence. 'i have had no end of trouble in the matter, and, to tell the truth, i am heartily glad it is over.' barnet expressed his surprise. 'i thought poor downe had given up those extravagant notions of his? then he has gone back to the altar and canopy after all? well, he is to be excused, poor fellow!' 'o no--he has not at all gone back to them--quite the reverse,' jones hastened to say. 'he has so reduced design after design, that the whole thing has been nothing but waste labour for me; till in the end it has become a common headstone, which a mason put up in half a day.' 'a common headstone?' said barnet. 'yes. i held out for some time for the addition of a footstone at least. but he said, "o no--he couldn't afford it."' 'ah, well--his family is growing up, poor fellow, and his expenses are getting serious.' 'yes, exactly,' said jones, as if the subject were none of his. and again directing barnet's attention to the wall-papers, the bustling architect left him to keep some other engagement. 'a common headstone,' murmured barnet, left again to himself. he mused a minute or two, and next began looking over and selecting from the patterns; but had not long been engaged in the work when he heard another footstep on the gravel without, and somebody enter the open porch. barnet went to the door--it was his manservant in search of him. 'i have been trying for some time to find you, sir,' he said. 'this letter has come by the post, and it is marked immediate. and there's this one from mr. downe, who called just now wanting to see you.' he searched his pocket for the second. barnet took the first letter--it had a black border, and bore the london postmark. it was not in his wife's handwriting, or in that of any person he knew; but conjecture soon ceased as he read the page, wherein he was briefly informed that mrs. barnet had died suddenly on the previous day, at the furnished villa she had occupied near london. barnet looked vaguely round the empty hall, at the blank walls, out of the doorway. drawing a long palpitating breath, and with eyes downcast, he turned and climbed the stairs slowly, like a man who doubted their stability. the fact of his wife having, as it were, died once already, and lived on again, had entirely dislodged the possibility of her actual death from his conjecture. he went to the landing, leant over the balusters, and after a reverie, of whose duration he had but the faintest notion, turned to the window and stretched his gaze to the cottage further down the road, which was visible from his landing, and from which lucy still walked to the solicitor's house by a cross path. the faint words that came from his moving lips were simply, 'at last!' then, almost involuntarily, barnet fell down on his knees and murmured some incoherent words of thanksgiving. surely his virtue in restoring his wife to life had been rewarded! but, as if the impulse struck uneasily on his conscience, he quickly rose, brushed the dust from his trousers and set himself to think of his next movements. he could not start for london for some hours; and as he had no preparations to make that could not be made in half-an-hour, he mechanically descended and resumed his occupation of turning over the wall-papers. they had all got brighter for him, those papers. it was all changed--who would sit in the rooms that they were to line? he went on to muse upon lucy's conduct in so frequently coming to the house with the children; her occasional blush in speaking to him; her evident interest in him. what woman can in the long run avoid being interested in a man whom she knows to be devoted to her? if human solicitation could ever effect anything, there should be no going to india for lucy now. all the papers previously chosen seemed wrong in their shades, and he began from the beginning to choose again. while entering on the task he heard a forced 'ahem!' from without the porch, evidently uttered to attract his attention, and footsteps again advancing to the door. his man, whom he had quite forgotten in his mental turmoil, was still waiting there. 'i beg your pardon, sir,' the man said from round the doorway; 'but here's the note from mr. downe that you didn't take. he called just after you went out, and as he couldn't wait, he wrote this on your study- table.' he handed in the letter--no black-bordered one now, but a practical-looking note in the well-known writing of the solicitor. 'dear barnet'--it ran--'perhaps you will be prepared for the information i am about to give--that lucy savile and myself are going to be married this morning. i have hitherto said nothing as to my intention to any of my friends, for reasons which i am sure you will fully appreciate. the crisis has been brought about by her expressing her intention to join her brother in india. i then discovered that i could not do without her. 'it is to be quite a private wedding; but it is my particular wish that you come down here quietly at ten, and go to church with us; it will add greatly to the pleasure i shall experience in the ceremony, and, i believe, to lucy's also. i have called on you very early to make the request, in the belief that i should find you at home; but you are beforehand with me in your early rising.--yours sincerely, c. downe.' 'need i wait, sir?' said the servant after a dead silence. 'that will do, william. no answer,' said barnet calmly. when the man had gone barnet re-read the letter. turning eventually to the wall-papers, which he had been at such pains to select, he deliberately tore them into halves and quarters, and threw them into the empty fireplace. then he went out of the house; locked the door, and stood in the front awhile. instead of returning into the town, he went down the harbour-road and thoughtfully lingered about by the sea, near the spot where the body of downe's late wife had been found and brought ashore. barnet was a man with a rich capacity for misery, and there is no doubt that he exercised it to its fullest extent now. the events that had, as it were, dashed themselves together into one half-hour of this day showed that curious refinement of cruelty in their arrangement which often proceeds from the bosom of the whimsical god at other times known as blind circumstance. that his few minutes of hope, between the reading of the first and second letters, had carried him to extraordinary heights of rapture was proved by the immensity of his suffering now. the sun blazing into his face would have shown a close watcher that a horizontal line, which he had never noticed before, but which was never to be gone thereafter, was somehow gradually forming itself in the smooth of his forehead. his eyes, of a light hazel, had a curious look which can only be described by the word bruised; the sorrow that looked from them being largely mixed with the surprise of a man taken unawares. the secondary particulars of his present position, too, were odd enough, though for some time they appeared to engage little of his attention. not a soul in the town knew, as yet, of his wife's death; and he almost owed downe the kindness of not publishing it till the day was over: the conjuncture, taken with that which had accompanied the death of mrs. downe, being so singular as to be quite sufficient to darken the pleasure of the impressionable solicitor to a cruel extent, if made known to him. but as barnet could not set out on his journey to london, where his wife lay, for some hours (there being at this date no railway within a distance of many miles), no great reason existed why he should leave the town. impulse in all its forms characterized barnet, and when he heard the distant clock strike the hour of ten his feet began to carry him up the harbour-road with the manner of a man who must do something to bring himself to life. he passed lucy savile's old house, his own new one, and came in view of the church. now he gave a perceptible start, and his mechanical condition went away. before the church-gate were a couple of carriages, and barnet then could perceive that the marriage between downe and lucy was at that moment being solemnized within. a feeling of sudden, proud self-confidence, an indocile wish to walk unmoved in spite of grim environments, plainly possessed him, and when he reached the wicket-gate he turned in without apparent effort. pacing up the paved footway he entered the church and stood for a while in the nave passage. a group of people was standing round the vestry door; barnet advanced through these and stepped into the vestry. there they were, busily signing their names. seeing downe about to look round, barnet averted his somewhat disturbed face for a second or two; when he turned again front to front he was calm and quite smiling; it was a creditable triumph over himself, and deserved to be remembered in his native town. he greeted downe heartily, offering his congratulations. it seemed as if barnet expected a half-guilty look upon lucy's face; but no, save the natural flush and flurry engendered by the service just performed, there was nothing whatever in her bearing which showed a disturbed mind: her gray-brown eyes carried in them now as at other times the well-known expression of common-sensed rectitude which never went so far as to touch on hardness. she shook hands with him, and downe said warmly, 'i wish you could have come sooner: i called on purpose to ask you. you'll drive back with us now?' 'no, no,' said barnet; 'i am not at all prepared; but i thought i would look in upon you for a moment, even though i had not time to go home and dress. i'll stand back and see you pass out, and observe the effect of the spectacle upon myself as one of the public.' then lucy and her husband laughed, and barnet laughed and retired; and the quiet little party went gliding down the nave and towards the porch, lucy's new silk dress sweeping with a smart rustle round the base-mouldings of the ancient font, and downe's little daughters following in a state of round-eyed interest in their position, and that of lucy, their teacher and friend. so downe was comforted after his emily's death, which had taken place twelve months, two weeks, and three days before that time. when the two flys had driven off and the spectators had vanished, barnet followed to the door, and went out into the sun. he took no more trouble to preserve a spruce exterior; his step was unequal, hesitating, almost convulsive; and the slight changes of colour which went on in his face seemed refracted from some inward flame. in the churchyard he became pale as a summer cloud, and finding it not easy to proceed he sat down on one of the tombstones and supported his head with his hand. hard by was a sexton filling up a grave which he had not found time to finish on the previous evening. observing barnet, he went up to him, and recognizing him, said, 'shall i help you home, sir?' 'o no, thank you,' said barnet, rousing himself and standing up. the sexton returned to his grave, followed by barnet, who, after watching him awhile, stepped into the grave, now nearly filled, and helped to tread in the earth. the sexton apparently thought his conduct a little singular, but he made no observation, and when the grave was full, barnet suddenly stopped, looked far away, and with a decided step proceeded to the gate and vanished. the sexton rested on his shovel and looked after him for a few moments, and then began banking up the mound. in those short minutes of treading in the dead man barnet had formed a design, but what it was the inhabitants of that town did not for some long time imagine. he went home, wrote several letters of business, called on his lawyer, an old man of the same place who had been the legal adviser of barnet's father before him, and during the evening overhauled a large quantity of letters and other documents in his possession. by eleven o'clock the heap of papers in and before barnet's grate had reached formidable dimensions, and he began to burn them. this, owing to their quantity, it was not so easy to do as he had expected, and he sat long into the night to complete the task. the next morning barnet departed for london, leaving a note for downe to inform him of mrs. barnet's sudden death, and that he was gone to bury her; but when a thrice-sufficient time for that purpose had elapsed, he was not seen again in his accustomed walks, or in his new house, or in his old one. he was gone for good, nobody knew whither. it was soon discovered that he had empowered his lawyer to dispose of all his property, real and personal, in the borough, and pay in the proceeds to the account of an unknown person at one of the large london banks. the person was by some supposed to be himself under an assumed name; but few, if any, had certain knowledge of that fact. the elegant new residence was sold with the rest of his possessions; and its purchaser was no other than downe, now a thriving man in the borough, and one whose growing family and new wife required more roomy accommodation than was afforded by the little house up the narrow side street. barnet's old habitation was bought by the trustees of the congregational baptist body in that town, who pulled down the time-honoured dwelling and built a new chapel on its site. by the time the last hour of that, to barnet, eventful year had chimed, every vestige of him had disappeared from the precincts of his native place, and the name became extinct in the borough of port-bredy, after having been a living force therein for more than two hundred years. chapter ix twenty-one years and six months do not pass without setting a mark even upon durable stone and triple brass; upon humanity such a period works nothing less than transformation. in barnet's old birthplace vivacious young children with bones like india-rubber had grown up to be stable men and women, men and women had dried in the skin, stiffened, withered, and sunk into decrepitude; while selections from every class had been consigned to the outlying cemetery. of inorganic differences the greatest was that a railway had invaded the town, tying it on to a main line at a junction a dozen miles off. barnet's house on the harbour-road, once so insistently new, had acquired a respectable mellowness, with ivy, virginia creepers, lichens, damp patches, and even constitutional infirmities of its own like its elder fellows. its architecture, once so very improved and modern, had already become stale in style, without having reached the dignity of being old-fashioned. trees about the harbour-road had increased in circumference or disappeared under the saw; while the church had had such a tremendous practical joke played upon it by some facetious restorer or other as to be scarce recognizable by its dearest old friends. during this long interval george barnet had never once been seen or heard of in the town of his fathers. it was the evening of a market-day, and some half-dozen middle-aged farmers and dairymen were lounging round the bar of the black-bull hotel, occasionally dropping a remark to each other, and less frequently to the two barmaids who stood within the pewter-topped counter in a perfunctory attitude of attention, these latter sighing and making a private observation to one another at odd intervals, on more interesting experiences than the present. 'days get shorter,' said one of the dairymen, as he looked towards the street, and noticed that the lamp-lighter was passing by. the farmers merely acknowledged by their countenances the propriety of this remark, and finding that nobody else spoke, one of the barmaids said 'yes,' in a tone of painful duty. 'come fair-day we shall have to light up before we start for home-along.' 'that's true,' his neighbour conceded, with a gaze of blankness. 'and after that we shan't see much further difference all's winter.' the rest were not unwilling to go even so far as this. the barmaid sighed again, and raised one of her hands from the counter on which they rested to scratch the smallest surface of her face with the smallest of her fingers. she looked towards the door, and presently remarked, 'i think i hear the 'bus coming in from station.' the eyes of the dairymen and farmers turned to the glass door dividing the hall from the porch, and in a minute or two the omnibus drew up outside. then there was a lumbering down of luggage, and then a man came into the hall, followed by a porter with a portmanteau on his poll, which he deposited on a bench. the stranger was an elderly person, with curly ashen white hair, a deeply- creviced outer corner to each eyelid, and a countenance baked by innumerable suns to the colour of terra-cotta, its hue and that of his hair contrasting like heat and cold respectively. he walked meditatively and gently, like one who was fearful of disturbing his own mental equilibrium. but whatever lay at the bottom of his breast had evidently made him so accustomed to its situation there that it caused him little practical inconvenience. he paused in silence while, with his dubious eyes fixed on the barmaids, he seemed to consider himself. in a moment or two he addressed them, and asked to be accommodated for the night. as he waited he looked curiously round the hall, but said nothing. as soon as invited he disappeared up the staircase, preceded by a chambermaid and candle, and followed by a lad with his trunk. not a soul had recognized him. a quarter of an hour later, when the farmers and dairymen had driven off to their homesteads in the country, he came downstairs, took a biscuit and one glass of wine, and walked out into the town, where the radiance from the shop-windows had grown so in volume of late years as to flood with cheerfulness every standing cart, barrow, stall, and idler that occupied the wayside, whether shabby or genteel. his chief interest at present seemed to lie in the names painted over the shop-fronts and on door-ways, as far as they were visible; these now differed to an ominous extent from what they had been one-and-twenty years before. the traveller passed on till he came to the bookseller's, where he looked in through the glass door. a fresh-faced young man was standing behind the counter, otherwise the shop was empty. the gray-haired observer entered, asked for some periodical by way of paying for admission, and with his elbow on the counter began to turn over the pages he had bought, though that he read nothing was obvious. at length he said, 'is old mr. watkins still alive?' in a voice which had a curious youthful cadence in it even now. 'my father is dead, sir,' said the young man. 'ah, i am sorry to hear it,' said the stranger. 'but it is so many years since i last visited this town that i could hardly expect it should be otherwise.' after a short silence he continued--'and is the firm of barnet, browse, and company still in existence?--they used to be large flax-merchants and twine-spinners here?' 'the firm is still going on, sir, but they have dropped the name of barnet. i believe that was a sort of fancy name--at least, i never knew of any living barnet. 'tis now browse and co.' 'and does andrew jones still keep on as architect?' 'he's dead, sir.' 'and the vicar of st. mary's--mr. melrose?' 'he's been dead a great many years.' 'dear me!' he paused yet longer, and cleared his voice. 'is mr. downe, the solicitor, still in practice?' 'no, sir, he's dead. he died about seven years ago.' here it was a longer silence still; and an attentive observer would have noticed that the paper in the stranger's hand increased its imperceptible tremor to a visible shake. that gray-haired gentleman noticed it himself, and rested the paper on the counter. 'is mrs. downe still alive?' he asked, closing his lips firmly as soon as the words were out of his mouth, and dropping his eyes. 'yes, sir, she's alive and well. she's living at the old place.' 'in east street?' 'o no; at chateau ringdale. i believe it has been in the family for some generations.' 'she lives with her children, perhaps?' 'no; she has no children of her own. there were some miss downes; i think they were mr. downe's daughters by a former wife; but they are married and living in other parts of the town. mrs. downe lives alone.' 'quite alone?' 'yes, sir; quite alone.' the newly-arrived gentleman went back to the hotel and dined; after which he made some change in his dress, shaved back his beard to the fashion that had prevailed twenty years earlier, when he was young and interesting, and once more emerging, bent his steps in the direction of the harbour-road. just before getting to the point where the pavement ceased and the houses isolated themselves, he overtook a shambling, stooping, unshaven man, who at first sight appeared like a professional tramp, his shoulders having a perceptible greasiness as they passed under the gaslight. each pedestrian momentarily turned and regarded the other, and the tramp-like gentleman started back. 'good--why--is that mr. barnet? 'tis mr. barnet, surely!' 'yes; and you are charlson?' 'yes--ah--you notice my appearance. the fates have rather ill-used me. by-the-bye, that fifty pounds. i never paid it, did i? . . . but i was not ungrateful!' here the stooping man laid one hand emphatically on the palm of the other. 'i gave you a chance, mr. george barnet, which many men would have thought full value received--the chance to marry your lucy. as far as the world was concerned, your wife was a drowned woman, hey?' 'heaven forbid all that, charlson!' 'well, well, 'twas a wrong way of showing gratitude, i suppose. and now a drop of something to drink for old acquaintance' sake! and mr. barnet, she's again free--there's a chance now if you care for it--ha, ha!' and the speaker pushed his tongue into his hollow cheek and slanted his eye in the old fashion. 'i know all,' said barnet quickly; and slipping a small present into the hands of the needy, saddening man, he stepped ahead and was soon in the outskirts of the town. he reached the harbour-road, and paused before the entrance to a well- known house. it was so highly bosomed in trees and shrubs planted since the erection of the building that one would scarcely have recognized the spot as that which had been a mere neglected slope till chosen as a site for a dwelling. he opened the swing-gate, closed it noiselessly, and gently moved into the semicircular drive, which remained exactly as it had been marked out by barnet on the morning when lucy savile ran in to thank him for procuring her the post of governess to downe's children. but the growth of trees and bushes which revealed itself at every step was beyond all expectation; sun-proof and moon-proof bowers vaulted the walks, and the walls of the house were uniformly bearded with creeping plants as high as the first-floor windows. after lingering for a few minutes in the dusk of the bending boughs, the visitor rang the door-bell, and on the servant appearing, he announced himself as 'an old friend of mrs. downe's.' the hall was lighted, but not brightly, the gas being turned low, as if visitors were rare. there was a stagnation in the dwelling; it seemed to be waiting. could it really be waiting for him? the partitions which had been probed by barnet's walking-stick when the mortar was green, were now quite brown with the antiquity of their varnish, and the ornamental woodwork of the staircase, which had glistened with a pale yellow newness when first erected, was now of a rich wine-colour. during the servant's absence the following colloquy could be dimly heard through the nearly closed door of the drawing-room. 'he didn't give his name?' 'he only said "an old friend," ma'am.' 'what kind of gentleman is he?' 'a staidish gentleman, with gray hair.' the voice of the second speaker seemed to affect the listener greatly. after a pause, the lady said, 'very well, i will see him.' and the stranger was shown in face to face with the lucy who had once been lucy savile. the round cheek of that formerly young lady had, of course, alarmingly flattened its curve in her modern representative; a pervasive grayness overspread her once dark brown hair, like morning rime on heather. the parting down the middle was wide and jagged; once it had been a thin white line, a narrow crevice between two high banks of shade. but there was still enough left to form a handsome knob behind, and some curls beneath inwrought with a few hairs like silver wires were very becoming. in her eyes the only modification was that their originally mild rectitude of expression had become a little more stringent than heretofore. yet she was still girlish--a girl who had been gratuitously weighted by destiny with a burden of five-and-forty years instead of her proper twenty. 'lucy, don't you know me?' he said, when the servant had closed the door. 'i knew you the instant i saw you!' she returned cheerfully. 'i don't know why, but i always thought you would come back to your old town again.' she gave him her hand, and then they sat down. 'they said you were dead,' continued lucy, 'but i never thought so. we should have heard of it for certain if you had been.' 'it is a very long time since we met.' 'yes; what you must have seen, mr. barnet, in all these roving years, in comparison with what i have seen in this quiet place!' her face grew more serious. 'you know my husband has been dead a long time? i am a lonely old woman now, considering what i have been; though mr. downe's daughters--all married--manage to keep me pretty cheerful.' 'and i am a lonely old man, and have been any time these twenty years.' 'but where have you kept yourself? and why did you go off so mysteriously?' 'well, lucy, i have kept myself a little in america, and a little in australia, a little in india, a little at the cape, and so on; i have not stayed in any place for a long time, as it seems to me, and yet more than twenty years have flown. but when people get to my age two years go like one!--your second question, why did i go away so mysteriously, is surely not necessary. you guessed why, didn't you?' 'no, i never once guessed,' she said simply; 'nor did charles, nor did anybody as far as i know.' 'well, indeed! now think it over again, and then look at me, and say if you can't guess?' she looked him in the face with an inquiring smile. 'surely not because of me?' she said, pausing at the commencement of surprise. barnet nodded, and smiled again; but his smile was sadder than hers. 'because i married charles?' she asked. 'yes; solely because you married him on the day i was free to ask you to marry me. my wife died four-and-twenty hours before you went to church with downe. the fixing of my journey at that particular moment was because of her funeral; but once away i knew i should have no inducement to come back, and took my steps accordingly.' her face assumed an aspect of gentle reflection, and she looked up and down his form with great interest in her eyes. 'i never thought of it!' she said. 'i knew, of course, that you had once implied some warmth of feeling towards me, but i concluded that it passed off. and i have always been under the impression that your wife was alive at the time of my marriage. was it not stupid of me!--but you will have some tea or something? i have never dined late, you know, since my husband's death. i have got into the way of making a regular meal of tea. you will have some tea with me, will you not?' the travelled man assented quite readily, and tea was brought in. they sat and chatted over the meal, regardless of the flying hour. 'well, well!' said barnet presently, as for the first time he leisurely surveyed the room; 'how like it all is, and yet how different! just where your piano stands was a board on a couple of trestles, bearing the patterns of wall-papers, when i was last here. i was choosing them--standing in this way, as it might be. then my servant came in at the door, and handed me a note, so. it was from downe, and announced that you were just going to be married to him. i chose no more wall-papers--tore up all those i had selected, and left the house. i never entered it again till now.' 'ah, at last i understand it all,' she murmured. they had both risen and gone to the fireplace. the mantel came almost on a level with her shoulder, which gently rested against it, and barnet laid his hand upon the shelf close beside her shoulder. 'lucy,' he said, 'better late than never. will you marry me now?' she started back, and the surprise which was so obvious in her wrought even greater surprise in him that it should be so. it was difficult to believe that she had been quite blind to the situation, and yet all reason and common sense went to prove that she was not acting. 'you take me quite unawares by such a question!' she said, with a forced laugh of uneasiness. it was the first time she had shown any embarrassment at all. 'why,' she added, 'i couldn't marry you for the world.' 'not after all this! why not?' 'it is--i would--i really think i may say it--i would upon the whole rather marry you, mr. barnet, than any other man i have ever met, if i ever dreamed of marriage again. but i don't dream of it--it is quite out of my thoughts; i have not the least intention of marrying again.' 'but--on my account--couldn't you alter your plans a little? come!' 'dear mr. barnet,' she said with a little flutter, 'i would on your account if on anybody's in existence. but you don't know in the least what it is you are asking--such an impracticable thing--i won't say ridiculous, of course, because i see that you are really in earnest, and earnestness is never ridiculous to my mind.' 'well, yes,' said barnet more slowly, dropping her hand, which he had taken at the moment of pleading, 'i am in earnest. the resolve, two months ago, at the cape, to come back once more was, it is true, rather sudden, and as i see now, not well considered. but i am in earnest in asking.' 'and i in declining. with all good feeling and all kindness, let me say that i am quite opposed to the idea of marrying a second time.' 'well, no harm has been done,' he answered, with the same subdued and tender humorousness that he had shown on such occasions in early life. 'if you really won't accept me, i must put up with it, i suppose.' his eye fell on the clock as he spoke. 'had you any notion that it was so late?' he asked. 'how absorbed i have been!' she accompanied him to the hall, helped him to put on his overcoat, and let him out of the house herself. 'good-night,' said barnet, on the doorstep, as the lamp shone in his face. 'you are not offended with me?' 'certainly not. nor you with me?' 'i'll consider whether i am or not,' he pleasantly replied. 'good-night.' she watched him safely through the gate; and when his footsteps had died away upon the road, closed the door softly and returned to the room. here the modest widow long pondered his speeches, with eyes dropped to an unusually low level. barnet's urbanity under the blow of her refusal greatly impressed her. after having his long period of probation rendered useless by her decision, he had shown no anger, and had philosophically taken her words as if he deserved no better ones. it was very gentlemanly of him, certainly; it was more than gentlemanly; it was heroic and grand. the more she meditated, the more she questioned the virtue of her conduct in checking him so peremptorily; and went to her bedroom in a mood of dissatisfaction. on looking in the glass she was reminded that there was not so much remaining of her former beauty as to make his frank declaration an impulsive natural homage to her cheeks and eyes; it must undoubtedly have arisen from an old staunch feeling of his, deserving tenderest consideration. she recalled to her mind with much pleasure that he had told her he was staying at the black-bull hotel; so that if, after waiting a day or two, he should not, in his modesty, call again, she might then send him a nice little note. to alter her views for the present was far from her intention; but she would allow herself to be induced to reconsider the case, as any generous woman ought to do. the morrow came and passed, and mr. barnet did not drop in. at every knock, light youthful hues flew across her cheek; and she was abstracted in the presence of her other visitors. in the evening she walked about the house, not knowing what to do with herself; the conditions of existence seemed totally different from those which ruled only four-and- twenty short hours ago. what had been at first a tantalizing elusive sentiment was getting acclimatized within her as a definite hope, and her person was so informed by that emotion that she might almost have stood as its emblematical representative by the time the clock struck ten. in short, an interest in barnet precisely resembling that of her early youth led her present heart to belie her yesterday's words to him, and she longed to see him again. the next day she walked out early, thinking she might meet him in the street. the growing beauty of her romance absorbed her, and she went from the street to the fields, and from the fields to the shore, without any consciousness of distance, till reminded by her weariness that she could go no further. he had nowhere appeared. in the evening she took a step which under the circumstances seemed justifiable; she wrote a note to him at the hotel, inviting him to tea with her at six precisely, and signing her note 'lucy.' in a quarter of an hour the messenger came back. mr. barnet had left the hotel early in the morning of the day before, but he had stated that he would probably return in the course of the week. the note was sent back, to be given to him immediately on his arrival. there was no sign from the inn that this desired event had occurred, either on the next day or the day following. on both nights she had been restless, and had scarcely slept half-an-hour. on the saturday, putting off all diffidence, lucy went herself to the black-bull, and questioned the staff closely. mr. barnet had cursorily remarked when leaving that he might return on the thursday or friday, but they were directed not to reserve a room for him unless he should write. he had left no address. lucy sorrowfully took back her note went home, and resolved to wait. she did wait--years and years--but barnet never reappeared. april . interlopers at the knap chapter i the north road from casterbridge is tedious and lonely, especially in winter-time. along a part of its course it connects with long-ash lane, a monotonous track without a village or hamlet for many miles, and with very seldom a turning. unapprized wayfarers who are too old, or too young, or in other respects too weak for the distance to be traversed, but who, nevertheless, have to walk it, say, as they look wistfully ahead, 'once at the top of that hill, and i must surely see the end of long-ash lane!' but they reach the hilltop, and long-ash lane stretches in front as mercilessly as before. some few years ago a certain farmer was riding through this lane in the gloom of a winter evening. the farmer's friend, a dairyman, was riding beside him. a few paces in the rear rode the farmer's man. all three were well horsed on strong, round-barrelled cobs; and to be well horsed was to be in better spirits about long-ash lane than poor pedestrians could attain to during its passage. but the farmer did not talk much to his friend as he rode along. the enterprise which had brought him there filled his mind; for in truth it was important. not altogether so important was it, perhaps, when estimated by its value to society at large; but if the true measure of a deed be proportionate to the space it occupies in the heart of him who undertakes it, farmer charles darton's business to-night could hold its own with the business of kings. he was a large farmer. his turnover, as it is called, was probably thirty thousand pounds a year. he had a great many draught horses, a great many milch cows, and of sheep a multitude. this comfortable position was, however, none of his own making. it had been created by his father, a man of a very different stamp from the present representative of the line. darton, the father, had been a one-idea'd character, with a buttoned-up pocket and a chink-like eye brimming with commercial subtlety. in darton the son, this trade subtlety had become transmuted into emotional, and the harshness had disappeared; he would have been called a sad man but for his constant care not to divide himself from lively friends by piping notes out of harmony with theirs. contemplative, he allowed his mind to be a quiet meeting-place for memories and hopes. so that, naturally enough, since succeeding to the agricultural calling, and up to his present age of thirty-two, he had neither advanced nor receded as a capitalist--a stationary result which did not agitate one of his unambitious, unstrategic nature, since he had all that he desired. the motive of his expedition to-night showed the same absence of anxious regard for number one. the party rode on in the slow, safe trot proper to night-time and bad roads, farmer darton's head jigging rather unromantically up and down against the sky, and his motions being repeated with bolder emphasis by his friend japheth johns; while those of the latter were travestied in jerks still less softened by art in the person of the lad who attended them. a pair of whitish objects hung one on each side of the latter, bumping against him at each step, and still further spoiling the grace of his seat. on close inspection they might have been perceived to be open rush baskets--one containing a turkey, and the other some bottles of wine. 'd'ye feel ye can meet your fate like a man, neighbour darton?' asked johns, breaking a silence which had lasted while five-and-twenty hedgerow trees had glided by. mr. darton with a half-laugh murmured, 'ay--call it my fate! hanging and wiving go by destiny.' and then they were silent again. the darkness thickened rapidly, at intervals shutting down on the land in a perceptible flap, like the wave of a wing. the customary close of day was accelerated by a simultaneous blurring of the air. with the fall of night had come a mist just damp enough to incommode, but not sufficient to saturate them. countrymen as they were--born, as may be said, with only an open door between them and the four seasons--they regarded the mist but as an added obscuration, and ignored its humid quality. they were travelling in a direction that was enlivened by no modern current of traffic, the place of darton's pilgrimage being an old-fashioned village--one of the hintocks (several villages of that name, with a distinctive prefix or affix, lying thereabout)--where the people make the best cider and cider-wine in all wessex, and where the dunghills smell of pomace instead of stable refuse as elsewhere. the lane was sometimes so narrow that the brambles of the hedge, which hung forward like anglers' rods over a stream, scratched their hats and curry- combed their whiskers as they passed. yet this neglected lane had been a highway to queen elizabeth's subjects and the cavalcades of the past. its day was over now, and its history as a national artery done for ever. 'why i have decided to marry her,' resumed darton (in a measured musical voice of confidence which revealed a good deal of his composition), as he glanced round to see that the lad was not too near, 'is not only that i like her, but that i can do no better, even from a fairly practical point of view. that i might ha' looked higher is possibly true, though it is really all nonsense. i have had experience enough in looking above me. "no more superior women for me," said i--you know when. sally is a comely, independent, simple character, with no make-up about her, who'll think me as much a superior to her as i used to think--you know who i mean--was to me.' 'ay,' said johns. 'however, i shouldn't call sally hall simple. primary, because no sally is; secondary, because if some could be, this one wouldn't. 'tis a wrong denomination to apply to a woman, charles, and affects me, as your best man, like cold water. 'tis like recommending a stage play by saying there's neither murder, villainy, nor harm of any sort in it, when that's what you've paid your half-crown to see.' 'well; may your opinion do you good. mine's a different one.' and turning the conversation from the philosophical to the practical, darton expressed a hope that the said sally had received what he'd sent on by the carrier that day. johns wanted to know what that was. 'it is a dress,' said darton. 'not exactly a wedding-dress; though she may use it as one if she likes. it is rather serviceable than showy--suitable for the winter weather.' 'good,' said johns. 'serviceable is a wise word in a bridegroom. i commend ye, charles.' 'for,' said darton, 'why should a woman dress up like a rope-dancer because she's going to do the most solemn deed of her life except dying?' 'faith, why? but she will, because she will, i suppose,' said dairyman johns. 'h'm,' said darton. the lane they followed had been nearly straight for several miles, but it now took a turn, and winding uncertainly for some distance forked into two. by night country roads are apt to reveal ungainly qualities which pass without observation during day; and though darton had travelled this way before, he had not done so frequently, sally having been wooed at the house of a relative near his own. he never remembered seeing at this spot a pair of alternative ways looking so equally probable as these two did now. johns rode on a few steps. 'don't be out of heart, sonny,' he cried. 'here's a handpost. enoch--come and climm this post, and tell us the way.' the lad dismounted, and jumped into the hedge where the post stood under a tree. 'unstrap the baskets, or you'll smash up that wine!' cried darton, as the young man began spasmodically to climb the post, baskets and all. 'was there ever less head in a brainless world?' said johns. 'here, simple nocky, i'll do it.' he leapt off, and with much puffing climbed the post, striking a match when he reached the top, and moving the light along the arm, the lad standing and gazing at the spectacle. 'i have faced tantalization these twenty years with a temper as mild as milk!' said japheth; 'but such things as this don't come short of devilry!' and flinging the match away, he slipped down to the ground. 'what's the matter?' asked darton. 'not a letter, sacred or heathen--not so much as would tell us the way to the great fireplace--ever i should sin to say it! either the moss and mildew have eat away the words, or we have arrived in a land where the natyves have lost the art o' writing, and should ha' brought our compass like christopher columbus.' 'let us take the straightest road,' said darton placidly; 'i shan't be sorry to get there--'tis a tiresome ride. i would have driven if i had known.' 'nor i neither, sir,' said enoch. 'these straps plough my shoulder like a zull. if 'tis much further to your lady's home, maister darton, i shall ask to be let carry half of these good things in my innerds--hee, hee!' 'don't you be such a reforming radical, enoch,' said johns sternly. 'here, i'll take the turkey.' this being done, they went forward by the right-hand lane, which ascended a hill, the left winding away under a plantation. the pit-a-pat of their horses' hoofs lessened up the slope; and the ironical directing-post stood in solitude as before, holding out its blank arms to the raw breeze, which brought a snore from the wood as if skrymir the giant were sleeping there. chapter ii three miles to the left of the travellers, along the road they had not followed, rose an old house with mullioned windows of ham-hill stone, and chimneys of lavish solidity. it stood at the top of a slope beside king's-hintock village-street; and immediately in front of it grew a large sycamore-tree, whose bared roots formed a convenient staircase from the road below to the front door of the dwelling. its situation gave the house what little distinctive name it possessed, namely, 'the knap.' some forty yards off a brook dribbled past, which, for its size, made a great deal of noise. at the back was a dairy barton, accessible for vehicles and live-stock by a side 'drong.' thus much only of the character of the homestead could be divined out of doors at this shady evening-time. but within there was plenty of light to see by, as plenty was construed at hintock. beside a tudor fireplace, whose moulded four-centred arch was nearly hidden by a figured blue-cloth blower, were seated two women--mother and daughter--mrs. hall, and sarah, or sally; for this was a part of the world where the latter modification had not as yet been effaced as a vulgarity by the march of intellect. the owner of the name was the young woman by whose means mr. darton proposed to put an end to his bachelor condition on the approaching day. the mother's bereavement had been so long ago as not to leave much mark of its occurrence upon her now, either in face or clothes. she had resumed the mob-cap of her early married life, enlivening its whiteness by a few rose-du-barry ribbons. sally required no such aids to pinkness. roseate good-nature lit up her gaze; her features showed curves of decision and judgment; and she might have been regarded without much mistake as a warm-hearted, quick-spirited, handsome girl. she did most of the talking, her mother listening with a half-absent air, as she picked up fragments of red-hot wood ember with the tongs, and piled them upon the brands. but the number of speeches that passed was very small in proportion to the meanings exchanged. long experience together often enabled them to see the course of thought in each other's minds without a word being spoken. behind them, in the centre of the room, the table was spread for supper, certain whiffs of air laden with fat vapours, which ever and anon entered from the kitchen, denoting its preparation there. 'the new gown he was going to send you stays about on the way like himself,' sally's mother was saying. 'yes, not finished, i daresay,' cried sally independently. 'lord, i shouldn't be amazed if it didn't come at all! young men make such kind promises when they are near you, and forget 'em when they go away. but he doesn't intend it as a wedding-gown--he gives it to me merely as a gown to wear when i like--a travelling-dress is what it would be called by some. come rathe or come late it don't much matter, as i have a dress of my own to fall back upon. but what time is it?' she went to the family clock and opened the glass, for the hour was not otherwise discernible by night, and indeed at all times was rather a thing to be investigated than beheld, so much more wall than window was there in the apartment. 'it is nearly eight,' said she. 'eight o'clock, and neither dress nor man,' said mrs. hall. 'mother, if you think to tantalize me by talking like that, you are much mistaken! let him be as late as he will--or stay away altogether--i don't care,' said sally. but a tender, minute quaver in the negation showed that there was something forced in that statement. mrs. hall perceived it, and drily observed that she was not so sure about sally not caring. 'but perhaps you don't care so much as i do, after all,' she said. 'for i see what you don't, that it is a good and flourishing match for you; a very honourable offer in mr. darton. and i think i see a kind husband in him. so pray god 'twill go smooth, and wind up well.' sally would not listen to misgivings. of course it would go smoothly, she asserted. 'how you are up and down, mother!' she went on. 'at this moment, whatever hinders him, we are not so anxious to see him as he is to be here, and his thought runs on before him, and settles down upon us like the star in the east. hark!' she exclaimed, with a breath of relief, her eyes sparkling. 'i heard something. yes--here they are!' the next moment her mother's slower ear also distinguished the familiar reverberation occasioned by footsteps clambering up the roots of the sycamore. 'yes it sounds like them at last,' she said. 'well, it is not so very late after all, considering the distance.' the footfall ceased, and they arose, expecting a knock. they began to think it might have been, after all, some neighbouring villager under bacchic influence, giving the centre of the road a wide berth, when their doubts were dispelled by the new-comer's entry into the passage. the door of the room was gently opened, and there appeared, not the pair of travellers with whom we have already made acquaintance, but a pale-faced man in the garb of extreme poverty--almost in rags. 'o, it's a tramp--gracious me!' said sally, starting back. his cheeks and eye-orbits were deep concaves--rather, it might be, from natural weakness of constitution than irregular living, though there were indications that he had led no careful life. he gazed at the two women fixedly for a moment: then with an abashed, humiliated demeanour, dropped his glance to the floor, and sank into a chair without uttering a word. sally was in advance of her mother, who had remained standing by the fire. she now tried to discern the visitor across the candles. 'why--mother,' said sally faintly, turning back to mrs. hall. 'it is phil, from australia!' mrs. hall started, and grew pale, and a fit of coughing seized the man with the ragged clothes. 'to come home like this!' she said. 'o, philip--are you ill?' 'no, no, mother,' replied he impatiently, as soon as he could speak. 'but for god's sake how do you come here--and just now too?' 'well, i am here,' said the man. 'how it is i hardly know. i've come home, mother, because i was driven to it. things were against me out there, and went from bad to worse.' 'then why didn't you let us know?--you've not writ a line for the last two or three years.' the son admitted sadly that he had not. he said that he had hoped and thought he might fetch up again, and be able to send good news. then he had been obliged to abandon that hope, and had finally come home from sheer necessity--previously to making a new start. 'yes, things are very bad with me,' he repeated, perceiving their commiserating glances at his clothes. they brought him nearer the fire, took his hat from his thin hand, which was so small and smooth as to show that his attempts to fetch up again had not been in a manual direction. his mother resumed her inquiries, and dubiously asked if he had chosen to come that particular night for any special reason. for no reason, he told her. his arrival had been quite at random. then philip hall looked round the room, and saw for the first time that the table was laid somewhat luxuriously, and for a larger number than themselves; and that an air of festivity pervaded their dress. he asked quickly what was going on. 'sally is going to be married in a day or two,' replied the mother; and she explained how mr. darton, sally's intended husband, was coming there that night with the groomsman, mr. johns, and other details. 'we thought it must be their step when we heard you,' said mrs. hall. the needy wanderer looked again on the floor. 'i see--i see,' he murmured. 'why, indeed, should i have come to-night? such folk as i are not wanted here at these times, naturally. and i have no business here--spoiling other people's happiness.' 'phil,' said his mother, with a tear in her eye, but with a thinness of lip and severity of manner which were presumably not more than past events justified; 'since you speak like that to me, i'll speak honestly to you. for these three years you have taken no thought for us. you left home with a good supply of money, and strength and education, and you ought to have made good use of it all. but you come back like a beggar; and that you come in a very awkward time for us cannot be denied. your return to-night may do us much harm. but mind--you are welcome to this home as long as it is mine. i don't wish to turn you adrift. we will make the best of a bad job; and i hope you are not seriously ill?' 'o no. i have only this infernal cough.' she looked at him anxiously. 'i think you had better go to bed at once,' she said. 'well--i shall be out of the way there,' said the son wearily. 'having ruined myself, don't let me ruin you by being seen in these togs, for heaven's sake. who do you say sally is going to be married to--a farmer darton?' 'yes--a gentleman-farmer--quite a wealthy man. far better in station than she could have expected. it is a good thing, altogether.' 'well done, little sal!' said her brother, brightening and looking up at her with a smile. 'i ought to have written; but perhaps i have thought of you all the more. but let me get out of sight. i would rather go and jump into the river than be seen here. but have you anything i can drink? i am confoundedly thirsty with my long tramp.' 'yes, yes, we will bring something upstairs to you,' said sally, with grief in her face. 'ay, that will do nicely. but, sally and mother--' he stopped, and they waited. 'mother, i have not told you all,' he resumed slowly, still looking on the floor between his knees. 'sad as what you see of me is, there's worse behind.' his mother gazed upon him in grieved suspense, and sally went and leant upon the bureau, listening for every sound, and sighing. suddenly she turned round, saying, 'let them come, i don't care! philip, tell the worst, and take your time.' 'well, then,' said the unhappy phil, 'i am not the only one in this mess. would to heaven i were! but--' 'o, phil!' 'i have a wife as destitute as i.' 'a wife?' said his mother. 'unhappily!' 'a wife! yes, that is the way with sons!' 'and besides--' said he. 'besides! o, philip, surely--' 'i have two little children.' 'wife and children!' whispered mrs. hall, sinking down confounded. 'poor little things!' said sally involuntarily. his mother turned again to him. 'i suppose these helpless beings are left in australia?' 'no. they are in england.' 'well, i can only hope you've left them in a respectable place.' 'i have not left them at all. they are here--within a few yards of us. in short, they are in the stable.' 'where?' 'in the stable. i did not like to bring them indoors till i had seen you, mother, and broken the bad news a bit to you. they were very tired, and are resting out there on some straw.' mrs. hall's fortitude visibly broke down. she had been brought up not without refinement, and was even more moved by such a collapse of genteel aims as this than a substantial dairyman's widow would in ordinary have been moved. 'well, it must be borne,' she said, in a low voice, with her hands tightly joined. 'a starving son, a starving wife, starving children! let it be. but why is this come to us now, to-day, to-night? could no other misfortune happen to helpless women than this, which will quite upset my poor girl's chance of a happy life? why have you done us this wrong, philip? what respectable man will come here, and marry open- eyed into a family of vagabonds?' 'nonsense, mother!' said sally vehemently, while her face flushed. 'charley isn't the man to desert me. but if he should be, and won't marry me because phil's come, let him go and marry elsewhere. i won't be ashamed of my own flesh and blood for any man in england--not i!' and then sally turned away and burst into tears. 'wait till you are twenty years older and you will tell a different tale,' replied her mother. the son stood up. 'mother,' he said bitterly, 'as i have come, so i will go. all i ask of you is that you will allow me and mine to lie in your stable to-night. i give you my word that we'll be gone by break of day, and trouble you no further!' mrs. hall, the mother, changed at that. 'o no,' she answered hastily; 'never shall it be said that i sent any of my own family from my door. bring 'em in, philip, or take me out to them.' 'we will put 'em all into the large bedroom,' said sally, brightening, 'and make up a large fire. let's go and help them in, and call rebekah.' (rebekah was the woman who assisted at the dairy and housework; she lived in a cottage hard by with her husband, who attended to the cows.) sally went to fetch a lantern from the back-kitchen, but her brother said, 'you won't want a light. i lit the lantern that was hanging there.' 'what must we call your wife?' asked mrs. hall. 'helena,' said philip. with shawls over their heads they proceeded towards the back door. 'one minute before you go,' interrupted philip. 'i--i haven't confessed all.' 'then heaven help us!' said mrs. hall, pushing to the door and clasping her hands in calm despair. 'we passed through evershead as we came,' he continued, 'and i just looked in at the "sow-and-acorn" to see if old mike still kept on there as usual. the carrier had come in from sherton abbas at that moment, and guessing that i was bound for this place--for i think he knew me--he asked me to bring on a dressmaker's parcel for sally that was marked "immediate." my wife had walked on with the children. 'twas a flimsy parcel, and the paper was torn, and i found on looking at it that it was a thick warm gown. i didn't wish you to see poor helena in a shabby state. i was ashamed that you should--'twas not what she was born to. i untied the parcel in the road, took it on to her where she was waiting in the lower barn, and told her i had managed to get it for her, and that she was to ask no question. she, poor thing, must have supposed i obtained it on trust, through having reached a place where i was known, for she put it on gladly enough. she has it on now. sally has other gowns, i daresay.' sally looked at her mother, speechless. 'you have others, i daresay!' repeated phil, with a sick man's impatience. 'i thought to myself, "better sally cry than helena freeze." well, is the dress of great consequence? 'twas nothing very ornamental, as far as i could see.' 'no--no; not of consequence,' returned sally sadly, adding in a gentle voice, 'you will not mind if i lend her another instead of that one, will you?' philip's agitation at the confession had brought on another attack of the cough, which seemed to shake him to pieces. he was so obviously unfit to sit in a chair that they helped him upstairs at once; and having hastily given him a cordial and kindled the bedroom fire, they descended to fetch their unhappy new relations. chapter iii it was with strange feelings that the girl and her mother, lately so cheerful, passed out of the back door into the open air of the barton, laden with hay scents and the herby breath of cows. a fine sleet had begun to fall, and they trotted across the yard quickly. the stable-door was open; a light shone from it--from the lantern which always hung there, and which philip had lighted, as he said. softly nearing the door, mrs. hall pronounced the name 'helena!' there was no answer for the moment. looking in she was taken by surprise. two people appeared before her. for one, instead of the drabbish woman she had expected, mrs. hall saw a pale, dark-eyed, ladylike creature, whose personality ruled her attire rather than was ruled by it. she was in a new and handsome gown, of course, and an old bonnet. she was standing up, agitated; her hand was held by her companion--none else than sally's affianced, farmer charles darton, upon whose fine figure the pale stranger's eyes were fixed, as his were fixed upon her. his other hand held the rein of his horse, which was standing saddled as if just led in. at sight of mrs. hall they both turned, looking at her in a way neither quite conscious nor unconscious, and without seeming to recollect that words were necessary as a solution to the scene. in another moment sally entered also, when mr. darton dropped his companion's hand, led the horse aside, and came to greet his betrothed and mrs. hall. 'ah!' he said, smiling--with something like forced composure--'this is a roundabout way of arriving, you will say, my dear mrs. hall. but we lost our way, which made us late. i saw a light here, and led in my horse at once--my friend johns and my man have gone back to the little inn with theirs, not to crowd you too much. no sooner had i entered than i saw that this lady had taken temporary shelter here--and found i was intruding.' 'she is my daughter-in-law,' said mrs. hall calmly. 'my son, too, is in the house, but he has gone to bed unwell.' sally had stood staring wonderingly at the scene until this moment, hardly recognizing darton's shake of the hand. the spell that bound her was broken by her perceiving the two little children seated on a heap of hay. she suddenly went forward, spoke to them, and took one on her arm and the other in her hand. 'and two children?' said mr. darton, showing thus that he had not been there long enough as yet to understand the situation. 'my grandchildren,' said mrs. hall, with as much affected ease as before. philip hall's wife, in spite of this interruption to her first rencounter, seemed scarcely so much affected by it as to feel any one's presence in addition to mr. darton's. however, arousing herself by a quick reflection, she threw a sudden critical glance of her sad eyes upon mrs. hall; and, apparently finding her satisfactory, advanced to her in a meek initiative. then sally and the stranger spoke some friendly words to each other, and sally went on with the children into the house. mrs. hall and helena followed, and mr. darton followed these, looking at helena's dress and outline, and listening to her voice like a man in a dream. by the time the others reached the house sally had already gone upstairs with the tired children. she rapped against the wall for rebekah to come in and help to attend to them, rebekah's house being a little 'spit-and- dab' cabin leaning against the substantial stone-work of mrs. hall's taller erection. when she came a bed was made up for the little ones, and some supper given to them. on descending the stairs after seeing this done sally went to the sitting-room. young mrs. hall entered it just in advance of her, having in the interim retired with her mother-in- law to take off her bonnet, and otherwise make herself presentable. hence it was evident that no further communication could have passed between her and mr. darton since their brief interview in the stable. mr. japheth johns now opportunely arrived, and broke up the restraint of the company, after a few orthodox meteorological commentaries had passed between him and mrs. hall by way of introduction. they at once sat down to supper, the present of wine and turkey not being produced for consumption to-night, lest the premature display of those gifts should seem to throw doubt on mrs. hall's capacities as a provider. 'drink hearty, mr. johns--drink hearty,' said that matron magnanimously. 'such as it is there's plenty of. but perhaps cider-wine is not to your taste?--though there's body in it.' 'quite the contrairy, ma'am--quite the contrairy,' said the dairyman. 'for though i inherit the malt-liquor principle from my father, i am a cider-drinker on my mother's side. she came from these parts, you know. and there's this to be said for't--'tis a more peaceful liquor, and don't lie about a man like your hotter drinks. with care, one may live on it a twelvemonth without knocking down a neighbour, or getting a black eye from an old acquaintance.' the general conversation thus begun was continued briskly, though it was in the main restricted to mrs. hall and japheth, who in truth required but little help from anybody. there being slight call upon sally's tongue, she had ample leisure to do what her heart most desired, namely, watch her intended husband and her sister-in-law with a view of elucidating the strange momentary scene in which her mother and herself had surprised them in the stable. if that scene meant anything, it meant, at least, that they had met before. that there had been no time for explanations sally could see, for their manner was still one of suppressed amazement at each other's presence there. darton's eyes, too, fell continually on the gown worn by helena as if this were an added riddle to his perplexity; though to sally it was the one feature in the case which was no mystery. he seemed to feel that fate had impishly changed his vis-a-vis in the lover's jig he was about to foot; that while the gown had been expected to enclose a sally, a helena's face looked out from the bodice; that some long-lost hand met his own from the sleeves. sally could see that whatever helena might know of darton, she knew nothing of how the dress entered into his embarrassment. and at moments the young girl would have persuaded herself that darton's looks at her sister-in-law were entirely the fruit of the clothes query. but surely at other times a more extensive range of speculation and sentiment was expressed by her lover's eye than that which the changed dress would account for. sally's independence made her one of the least jealous of women. but there was something in the relations of these two visitors which ought to be explained. japheth johns continued to converse in his well-known style, interspersing his talk with some private reflections on the position of darton and sally, which, though the sparkle in his eye showed them to be highly entertaining to himself, were apparently not quite communicable to the company. at last he withdrew for the night, going off to the roadside inn half-a-mile back, whither darton promised to follow him in a few minutes. half-an-hour passed, and then mr. darton also rose to leave, sally and her sister-in-law simultaneously wishing him good-night as they retired upstairs to their rooms. but on his arriving at the front door with mrs. hall a sharp shower of rain began to come down, when the widow suggested that he should return to the fire-side till the storm ceased. darton accepted her proposal, but insisted that, as it was getting late, and she was obviously tired, she should not sit up on his account, since he could let himself out of the house, and would quite enjoy smoking a pipe by the hearth alone. mrs. hall assented; and darton was left by himself. he spread his knees to the brands, lit up his tobacco as he had said, and sat gazing into the fire, and at the notches of the chimney- crook which hung above. an occasional drop of rain rolled down the chimney with a hiss, and still he smoked on; but not like a man whose mind was at rest. in the long run, however, despite his meditations, early hours afield and a long ride in the open air produced their natural result. he began to doze. how long he remained in this half-unconscious state he did not know. he suddenly opened his eyes. the back-brand had burnt itself in two, and ceased to flame; the light which he had placed on the mantelpiece had nearly gone out. but in spite of these deficiencies there was a light in the apartment, and it came from elsewhere. turning his head he saw philip hall's wife standing at the entrance of the room with a bed-candle in one hand, a small brass tea-kettle in the other, and his gown, as it certainly seemed, still upon her. 'helena!' said darton, starting up. her countenance expressed dismay, and her first words were an apology. 'i--did not know you were here, mr. darton,' she said, while a blush flashed to her cheek. 'i thought every one had retired--i was coming to make a little water boil; my husband seems to be worse. but perhaps the kitchen fire can be lighted up again.' 'don't go on my account. by all means put it on here as you intended,' said darton. 'allow me to help you.' he went forward to take the kettle from her hand, but she did not allow him, and placed it on the fire herself. they stood some way apart, one on each side of the fireplace, waiting till the water should boil, the candle on the mantel between them, and helena with her eyes on the kettle. darton was the first to break the silence. 'shall i call sally?' he said. 'o no,' she quickly returned. 'we have given trouble enough already. we have no right here. but we are the sport of fate, and were obliged to come.' 'no right here!' said he in surprise. 'none. i can't explain it now,' answered helena. 'this kettle is very slow.' there was another pause; the proverbial dilatoriness of watched pots was never more clearly exemplified. helena's face was of that sort which seems to ask for assistance without the owner's knowledge--the very antipodes of sally's, which was self-reliance expressed. darton's eyes travelled from the kettle to helena's face, then back to the kettle, then to the face for rather a longer time. 'so i am not to know anything of the mystery that has distracted me all the evening?' he said. 'how is it that a woman, who refused me because (as i supposed) my position was not good enough for her taste, is found to be the wife of a man who certainly seems to be worse off than i?' 'he had the prior claim,' said she. 'what! you knew him at that time?' 'yes, yes! please say no more,' she implored. 'whatever my errors, i have paid for them during the last five years!' the heart of darton was subject to sudden overflowings. he was kind to a fault. 'i am sorry from my soul,' he said, involuntarily approaching her. helena withdrew a step or two, at which he became conscious of his movement, and quickly took his former place. here he stood without speaking, and the little kettle began to sing. 'well, you might have been my wife if you had chosen,' he said at last. 'but that's all past and gone. however, if you are in any trouble or poverty i shall be glad to be of service, and as your relation by marriage i shall have a right to be. does your uncle know of your distress?' 'my uncle is dead. he left me without a farthing. and now we have two children to maintain.' 'what, left you nothing? how could he be so cruel as that?' 'i disgraced myself in his eyes.' 'now,' said darton earnestly, 'let me take care of the children, at least while you are so unsettled. you belong to another, so i cannot take care of you.' 'yes you can,' said a voice; and suddenly a third figure stood beside them. it was sally. 'you can, since you seem to wish to?' she repeated. 'she no longer belongs to another . . . my poor brother is dead!' her face was red, her eyes sparkled, and all the woman came to the front. 'i have heard it!' she went on to him passionately. 'you can protect her now as well as the children!' she turned then to her agitated sister-in- law. 'i heard something,' said sally (in a gentle murmur, differing much from her previous passionate words), 'and i went into his room. it must have been the moment you left. he went off so quickly, and weakly, and it was so unexpected, that i couldn't leave even to call you.' darton was just able to gather from the confused discourse which followed that, during his sleep by the fire, this brother whom he had never seen had become worse; and that during helena's absence for water the end had unexpectedly come. the two young women hastened upstairs, and he was again left alone. * * * * * after standing there a short time he went to the front door and looked out; till, softly closing it behind him, he advanced and stood under the large sycamore-tree. the stars were flickering coldly, and the dampness which had just descended upon the earth in rain now sent up a chill from it. darton was in a strange position, and he felt it. the unexpected appearance, in deep poverty, of helena--a young lady, daughter of a deceased naval officer, who had been brought up by her uncle, a solicitor, and had refused darton in marriage years ago--the passionate, almost angry demeanour of sally at discovering them, the abrupt announcement that helena was a widow; all this coming together was a conjuncture difficult to cope with in a moment, and made him question whether he ought to leave the house or offer assistance. but for sally's manner he would unhesitatingly have done the latter. he was still standing under the tree when the door in front of him opened, and mrs. hall came out. she went round to the garden-gate at the side without seeing him. darton followed her, intending to speak. pausing outside, as if in thought, she proceeded to a spot where the sun came earliest in spring-time, and where the north wind never blew; it was where the row of beehives stood under the wall. discerning her object, he waited till she had accomplished it. it was the universal custom thereabout to wake the bees by tapping at their hives whenever a death occurred in the household, under the belief that if this were not done the bees themselves would pine away and perish during the ensuing year. as soon as an interior buzzing responded to her tap at the first hive mrs. hall went on to the second, and thus passed down the row. as soon as she came back he met her. 'what can i do in this trouble, mrs. hall?' he said. 'o--nothing, thank you, nothing,' she said in a tearful voice, now just perceiving him. 'we have called rebekah and her husband, and they will do everything necessary.' she told him in a few words the particulars of her son's arrival, broken in health--indeed, at death's very door, though they did not suspect it--and suggested, as the result of a conversation between her and her daughter, that the wedding should be postponed. 'yes, of course,' said darton. 'i think now to go straight to the inn and tell johns what has happened.' it was not till after he had shaken hands with her that he turned hesitatingly and added, 'will you tell the mother of his children that, as they are now left fatherless, i shall be glad to take the eldest of them, if it would be any convenience to her and to you?' mrs. hall promised that her son's widow should he told of the offer, and they parted. he retired down the rooty slope and disappeared in the direction of the inn, where he informed johns of the circumstances. meanwhile mrs. hall had entered the house, sally was downstairs in the sitting-room alone, and her mother explained to her that darton had readily assented to the postponement. 'no doubt he has,' said sally, with sad emphasis. 'it is not put off for a week, or a month, or a year. i shall never marry him, and she will!' chapter iv time passed, and the household on the knap became again serene under the composing influences of daily routine. a desultory, very desultory correspondence, dragged on between sally hall and darton, who, not quite knowing how to take her petulant words on the night of her brother's death, had continued passive thus long. helena and her children remained at the dairy-house, almost of necessity, and darton therefore deemed it advisable to stay away. one day, seven months later on, when mr. darton was as usual at his farm, twenty miles from hintock, a note reached him from helena. she thanked him for his kind offer about her children, which her mother-in-law had duly communicated, and stated that she would be glad to accept it as regarded the eldest, the boy. helena had, in truth, good need to do so, for her uncle had left her penniless, and all application to some relatives in the north had failed. there was, besides, as she said, no good school near hintock to which she could send the child. on a fine summer day the boy came. he was accompanied half-way by sally and his mother--to the 'white horse,' at chalk newton--where he was handed over to darton's bailiff in a shining spring-cart, who met them there. he was entered as a day-scholar at a popular school at casterbridge, three or four miles from darton's, having first been taught by darton to ride a forest-pony, on which he cantered to and from the aforesaid fount of knowledge, and (as darton hoped) brought away a promising headful of the same at each diurnal expedition. the thoughtful taciturnity into which darton had latterly fallen was quite dissipated by the presence of this boy. when the christmas holidays came it was arranged that he should spend them with his mother. the journey was, for some reason or other, performed in two stages, as at his coming, except that darton in person took the place of the bailiff, and that the boy and himself rode on horseback. reaching the renowned 'white horse,' darton inquired if miss and young mrs. hall were there to meet little philip (as they had agreed to be). he was answered by the appearance of helena alone at the door. 'at the last moment sally would not come,' she faltered. that meeting practically settled the point towards which these long-severed persons were converging. but nothing was broached about it for some time yet. sally hall had, in fact, imparted the first decisive motion to events by refusing to accompany helena. she soon gave them a second move by writing the following note '[private.] 'dear charles,--living here so long and intimately with helena, i have naturally learnt her history, especially that of it which refers to you. i am sure she would accept you as a husband at the proper time, and i think you ought to give her the opportunity. you inquire in an old note if i am sorry that i showed temper (which it wasn't) that night when i heard you talking to her. no, charles, i am not sorry at all for what i said then.--yours sincerely, sally hall.' thus set in train, the transfer of darton's heart back to its original quarters proceeded by mere lapse of time. in the following july, darton went to his friend japheth to ask him at last to fulfil the bridal office which had been in abeyance since the previous january twelvemonths. 'with all my heart, man o' constancy!' said dairyman johns warmly. 'i've lost most of my genteel fair complexion haymaking this hot weather, 'tis true, but i'll do your business as well as them that look better. there be scents and good hair-oil in the world yet, thank god, and they'll take off the roughest o' my edge. i'll compliment her. "better late than never, sally hall," i'll say.' 'it is not sally,' said darton hurriedly. 'it is young mrs. hall.' japheth's face, as soon as he really comprehended, became a picture of reproachful dismay. 'not sally?' he said. 'why not sally? i can't believe it! young mrs. hall! well, well--where's your wisdom?' darton shortly explained particulars; but johns would not be reconciled. 'she was a woman worth having if ever woman was,' he cried. 'and now to let her go!' 'but i suppose i can marry where i like,' said darton. 'h'm,' replied the dairyman, lifting his eyebrows expressively. 'this don't become you, charles--it really do not. if i had done such a thing you would have sworn i was a curst no'thern fool to be drawn off the scent by such a red-herring doll-oll-oll.' farmer darton responded in such sharp terms to this laconic opinion that the two friends finally parted in a way they had never parted before. johns was to be no groomsman to darton after all. he had flatly declined. darton went off sorry, and even unhappy, particularly as japheth was about to leave that side of the county, so that the words which had divided them were not likely to be explained away or softened down. a short time after the interview darton was united to helena at a simple matter-of fact wedding; and she and her little girl joined the boy who had already grown to look on darton's house as home. for some months the farmer experienced an unprecedented happiness and satisfaction. there had been a flaw in his life, and it was as neatly mended as was humanly possible. but after a season the stream of events followed less clearly, and there were shades in his reveries. helena was a fragile woman, of little staying power, physically or morally, and since the time that he had originally known her--eight or ten years before--she had been severely tried. she had loved herself out, in short, and was now occasionally given to moping. sometimes she spoke regretfully of the gentilities of her early life, and instead of comparing her present state with her condition as the wife of the unlucky hall, she mused rather on what it had been before she took the first fatal step of clandestinely marrying him. she did not care to please such people as those with whom she was thrown as a thriving farmer's wife. she allowed the pretty trifles of agricultural domesticity to glide by her as sorry details, and had it not been for the children darton's house would have seemed but little brighter than it had been before. this led to occasional unpleasantness, until darton sometimes declared to himself that such endeavours as his to rectify early deviations of the heart by harking back to the old point mostly failed of success. 'perhaps johns was right,' he would say. 'i should have gone on with sally. better go with the tide and make the best of its course than stem it at the risk of a capsize.' but he kept these unmelodious thoughts to himself, and was outwardly considerate and kind. this somewhat barren tract of his life had extended to less than a year and a half when his ponderings were cut short by the loss of the woman they concerned. when she was in her grave he thought better of her than when she had been alive; the farm was a worse place without her than with her, after all. no woman short of divine could have gone through such an experience as hers with her first husband without becoming a little soured. her stagnant sympathies, her sometimes unreasonable manner, had covered a heart frank and well meaning, and originally hopeful and warm. she left him a tiny red infant in white wrappings. to make life as easy as possible to this touching object became at once his care. as this child learnt to walk and talk darton learnt to see feasibility in a scheme which pleased him. revolving the experiment which he had hitherto made upon life, he fancied he had gained wisdom from his mistakes and caution from his miscarriages. what the scheme was needs no penetration to discover. once more he had opportunity to recast and rectify his ill-wrought situations by returning to sally hall, who still lived quietly on under her mother's roof at hintock. helena had been a woman to lend pathos and refinement to a home; sally was the woman to brighten it. she would not, as helena did, despise the rural simplicities of a farmer's fireside. moreover, she had a pre-eminent qualification for darton's household; no other woman could make so desirable a mother to her brother's two children and darton's one as sally--while darton, now that helena had gone, was a more promising husband for sally than he had ever been when liable to reminders from an uncured sentimental wound. darton was not a man to act rapidly, and the working out of his reparative designs might have been delayed for some time. but there came a winter evening precisely like the one which had darkened over that former ride to hintock, and he asked himself why he should postpone longer, when the very landscape called for a repetition of that attempt. he told his man to saddle the mare, booted and spurred himself with a younger horseman's nicety, kissed the two youngest children, and rode off. to make the journey a complete parallel to the first, he would fain have had his old acquaintance japheth johns with him. but johns, alas! was missing. his removal to the other side of the county had left unrepaired the breach which had arisen between him and darton; and though darton had forgiven him a hundred times, as johns had probably forgiven darton, the effort of reunion in present circumstances was one not likely to be made. he screwed himself up to as cheerful a pitch as he could without his former crony, and became content with his own thoughts as he rode, instead of the words of a companion. the sun went down; the boughs appeared scratched in like an etching against the sky; old crooked men with faggots at their backs said 'good-night, sir,' and darton replied 'good-night' right heartily. by the time he reached the forking roads it was getting as dark as it had been on the occasion when johns climbed the directing-post. darton made no mistake this time. 'nor shall i be able to mistake, thank heaven, when i arrive,' he murmured. it gave him peculiar satisfaction to think that the proposed marriage, like his first, was of the nature of setting in order things long awry, and not a momentary freak of fancy. nothing hindered the smoothness of his journey, which seemed not half its former length. though dark, it was only between five and six o'clock when the bulky chimneys of mrs. hall's residence appeared in view behind the sycamore-tree. on second thoughts he retreated and put up at the ale- house as in former time; and when he had plumed himself before the inn mirror, called for something to drink, and smoothed out the incipient wrinkles of care, he walked on to the knap with a quick step. chapter v that evening sally was making 'pinners' for the milkers, who were now increased by two, for her mother and herself no longer joined in milking the cows themselves. but upon the whole there was little change in the household economy, and not much in its appearance, beyond such minor particulars as that the crack over the window, which had been a hundred years coming, was a trifle wider; that the beams were a shade blacker; that the influence of modernism had supplanted the open chimney corner by a grate; that rebekah, who had worn a cap when she had plenty of hair, had left it off now she had scarce any, because it was reported that caps were not fashionable; and that sally's face had naturally assumed a more womanly and experienced cast. mrs. hall was actually lifting coals with the tongs, as she had used to do. 'five years ago this very night, if i am not mistaken--' she said, laying on an ember. 'not this very night--though 'twas one night this week,' said the correct sally. 'well, 'tis near enough. five years ago mr. darton came to marry you, and my poor boy phil came home to die.' she sighed. 'ah, sally,' she presently said, 'if you had managed well mr. darton would have had you, helena or none.' 'don't be sentimental about that, mother,' begged sally. 'i didn't care to manage well in such a case. though i liked him, i wasn't so anxious. i would never have married the man in the midst of such a hitch as that was,' she added with decision; 'and i don't think i would if he were to ask me now.' 'i am not sure about that, unless you have another in your eye.' 'i wouldn't; and i'll tell you why. i could hardly marry him for love at this time o' day. and as we've quite enough to live on if we give up the dairy to-morrow, i should have no need to marry for any meaner reason . . . i am quite happy enough as i am, and there's an end of it.' now it was not long after this dialogue that there came a mild rap at the door, and in a moment there entered rebekah, looking as though a ghost had arrived. the fact was that that accomplished skimmer and churner (now a resident in the house) had overheard the desultory observations between mother and daughter, and on opening the door to mr. darton thought the coincidence must have a grisly meaning in it. mrs. hall welcomed the farmer with warm surprise, as did sally, and for a moment they rather wanted words. 'can you push up the chimney-crook for me, mr darton? the notches hitch,' said the matron. he did it, and the homely little act bridged over the awkward consciousness that he had been a stranger for four years. mrs. hall soon saw what he had come for, and left the principals together while she went to prepare him a late tea, smiling at sally's recent hasty assertions of indifference, when she saw how civil sally was. when tea was ready she joined them. she fancied that darton did not look so confident as when he had arrived; but sally was quite light-hearted, and the meal passed pleasantly. about seven he took his leave of them. mrs. hall went as far as the door to light him down the slope. on the doorstep he said frankly--'i came to ask your daughter to marry me; chose the night and everything, with an eye to a favourable answer. but she won't.' 'then she's a very ungrateful girl!' emphatically said mrs. hall. darton paused to shape his sentence, and asked, 'i--i suppose there's nobody else more favoured?' 'i can't say that there is, or that there isn't,' answered mrs. hall. 'she's private in some things. i'm on your side, however, mr. darton, and i'll talk to her.' 'thank 'ee, thank 'ee!' said the farmer in a gayer accent; and with this assurance the not very satisfactory visit came to an end. darton descended the roots of the sycamore, the light was withdrawn, and the door closed. at the bottom of the slope he nearly ran against a man about to ascend. 'can a jack-o'-lent believe his few senses on such a dark night, or can't he?' exclaimed one whose utterance darton recognized in a moment, despite its unexpectedness. 'i dare not swear he can, though i fain would!' the speaker was johns. darton said he was glad of this opportunity, bad as it was, of putting an end to the silence of years, and asked the dairyman what he was travelling that way for. japheth showed the old jovial confidence in a moment. 'i'm going to see your--relations--as they always seem to me,' he said--'mrs. hall and sally. well, charles, the fact is i find the natural barbarousness of man is much increased by a bachelor life, and, as your leavings were always good enough for me, i'm trying civilization here.' he nodded towards the house. 'not with sally--to marry her?' said darton, feeling something like a rill of ice water between his shoulders. 'yes, by the help of providence and my personal charms. and i think i shall get her. i am this road every week--my present dairy is only four miles off, you know, and i see her through the window. 'tis rather odd that i was going to speak practical to-night to her for the first time. you've just called?' 'yes, for a short while. but she didn't say a word about you.' 'a good sign, a good sign. now that decides me. i'll swing the mallet and get her answer this very night as i planned.' a few more remarks, and darton, wishing his friend joy of sally in a slightly hollow tone of jocularity, bade him good-bye. johns promised to write particulars, and ascended, and was lost in the shade of the house and tree. a rectangle of light appeared when johns was admitted, and all was dark again. 'happy japheth!' said darton. 'this then is the explanation!' he determined to return home that night. in a quarter of an hour he passed out of the village, and the next day went about his swede-lifting and storing as if nothing had occurred. he waited and waited to hear from johns whether the wedding-day was fixed: but no letter came. he learnt not a single particular till, meeting johns one day at a horse-auction, darton exclaimed genially--rather more genially than he felt--'when is the joyful day to be?' to his great surprise a reciprocity of gladness was not conspicuous in johns. 'not at all,' he said, in a very subdued tone. ''tis a bad job; she won't have me.' darton held his breath till he said with treacherous solicitude, 'try again--'tis coyness.' 'o no,' said johns decisively. 'there's been none of that. we talked it over dozens of times in the most fair and square way. she tells me plainly, i don't suit her. 'twould be simply annoying her to ask her again. ah, charles, you threw a prize away when you let her slip five years ago.' 'i did--i did,' said darton. he returned from that auction with a new set of feelings in play. he had certainly made a surprising mistake in thinking johns his successful rival. it really seemed as if he might hope for sally after all. this time, being rather pressed by business, darton had recourse to pen- and-ink, and wrote her as manly and straightforward a proposal as any woman could wish to receive. the reply came promptly:- 'dear mr. darton,--i am as sensible as any woman can be of the goodness that leads you to make me this offer a second time. better women than i would be proud of the honour, for when i read your nice long speeches on mangold-wurzel, and such like topics, at the casterbridge farmers' club, i do feel it an honour, i assure you. but my answer is just the same as before. i will not try to explain what, in truth, i cannot explain--my reasons; i will simply say that i must decline to be married to you. with good wishes as in former times, i am, your faithful friend, 'sally hall.' darton dropped the letter hopelessly. beyond the negative, there was just a possibility of sarcasm in it--'nice long speeches on mangold-wurzel' had a suspicious sound. however, sarcasm or none, there was the answer, and he had to be content. he proceeded to seek relief in a business which at this time engrossed much of his attention--that of clearing up a curious mistake just current in the county, that he had been nearly ruined by the recent failure of a local bank. a farmer named darton had lost heavily, and the similarity of name had probably led to the error. belief in it was so persistent that it demanded several days of letter-writing to set matters straight, and persuade the world that he was as solvent as ever he had been in his life. he had hardly concluded this worrying task when, to his delight, another letter arrived in the handwriting of sally. darton tore it open; it was very short. 'dear mr. darton,--we have been so alarmed these last few days by the report that you were ruined by the stoppage of --'s bank, that, now it is contradicted i hasten, by my mother's wish, to say how truly glad we are to find there is no foundation for the report. after your kindness to my poor brother's children, i can do no less than write at such a moment. we had a letter from each of them a few days ago.--your faithful friend, 'sally hall.' 'mercenary little woman!' said darton to himself with a smile. 'then that was the secret of her refusal this time--she thought i was ruined.' now, such was darton, that as hours went on he could not help feeling too generously towards sally to condemn her in this. what did he want in a wife? he asked himself. love and integrity. what next? worldly wisdom. and was there really more than worldly wisdom in her refusal to go aboard a sinking ship? she now knew it was otherwise. 'begad,' he said, 'i'll try her again.' the fact was he had so set his heart upon sally, and sally alone, that nothing was to be allowed to baulk him; and his reasoning was purely formal. anniversaries having been unpropitious, he waited on till a bright day late in may--a day when all animate nature was fancying, in its trusting, foolish way, that it was going to bask out of doors for evermore. as he rode through long-ash lane it was scarce recognizable as the track of his two winter journeys. no mistake could be made now, even with his eyes shut. the cuckoo's note was at its best, between april tentativeness and midsummer decrepitude, and the reptiles in the sun behaved as winningly as kittens on a hearth. though afternoon, and about the same time as on the last occasion, it was broad day and sunshine when he entered hintock, and the details of the knap dairy-house were visible far up the road. he saw sally in the garden, and was set vibrating. he had first intended to go on to the inn; but 'no,' he said; 'i'll tie my horse to the garden- gate. if all goes well it can soon be taken round: if not, i mount and ride away' the tall shade of the horseman darkened the room in which mrs. hall sat, and made her start, for he had ridden by a side path to the top of the slope, where riders seldom came. in a few seconds he was in the garden with sally. five--ay, three minutes--did the business at the back of that row of bees. though spring had come, and heavenly blue consecrated the scene, darton succeeded not. 'no,' said sally firmly. 'i will never, never marry you, mr. darton. i would have done it once; but now i never can.' 'but!'--implored mr. darton. and with a burst of real eloquence he went on to declare all sorts of things that he would do for her. he would drive her to see her mother every week--take her to london--settle so much money upon her--heaven knows what he did not promise, suggest, and tempt her with. but it availed nothing. she interposed with a stout negative, which closed the course of his argument like an iron gate across a highway. darton paused. 'then,' said he simply, 'you hadn't heard of my supposed failure when you declined last time?' 'i had not,' she said. 'but if i had 'twould have been all the same.' 'and 'tis not because of any soreness from my slighting you years ago?' 'no. that soreness is long past.' 'ah--then you despise me, sally?' 'no,' she slowly answered. 'i don't altogether despise you. i don't think you quite such a hero as i once did--that's all. the truth is, i am happy enough as i am; and i don't mean to marry at all. now, may i ask a favour, sir?' she spoke with an ineffable charm, which, whenever he thought of it, made him curse his loss of her as long as he lived. 'to any extent.' 'please do not put this question to me any more. friends as long as you like, but lovers and married never.' 'i never will,' said darton. 'not if i live a hundred years.' and he never did. that he had worn out his welcome in her heart was only too plain. when his step-children had grown up, and were placed out in life, all communication between darton and the hall family ceased. it was only by chance that, years after, he learnt that sally, notwithstanding the solicitations her attractions drew down upon her, had refused several offers of marriage, and steadily adhered to her purpose of leading a single life may . the distracted preacher chapter i--how his cold was cured something delayed the arrival of the wesleyan minister, and a young man came temporarily in his stead. it was on the thirteenth of january - that mr. stockdale, the young man in question, made his humble entry into the village, unknown, and almost unseen. but when those of the inhabitants who styled themselves of his connection became acquainted with him, they were rather pleased with the substitute than otherwise, though he had scarcely as yet acquired ballast of character sufficient to steady the consciences of the hundred-and-forty methodists of pure blood who, at this time, lived in nether-moynton, and to give in addition supplementary support to the mixed race which went to church in the morning and chapel in the evening, or when there was a tea--as many as a hundred-and-ten people more, all told, and including the parish-clerk in the winter-time, when it was too dark for the vicar to observe who passed up the street at seven o'clock--which, to be just to him, he was never anxious to do. it was owing to this overlapping of creeds that the celebrated population- puzzle arose among the denser gentry of the district around nether-moynton: how could it be that a parish containing fifteen score of strong full-grown episcopalians, and nearly thirteen score of well-matured dissenters, numbered barely two-and-twenty score adults in all? the young man being personally interesting, those with whom he came in contact were content to waive for a while the graver question of his sufficiency. it is said that at this time of his life his eyes were affectionate, though without a ray of levity; that his hair was curly, and his figure tall; that he was, in short, a very lovable youth, who won upon his female hearers as soon as they saw and heard him, and caused them to say, 'why didn't we know of this before he came, that we might have gied him a warmer welcome!' the fact was that, knowing him to be only provisionally selected, and expecting nothing remarkable in his person or doctrine, they and the rest of his flock in nether-moynton had felt almost as indifferent about his advent as if they had been the soundest church-going parishioners in the country, and he their true and appointed parson. thus when stockdale set foot in the place nobody had secured a lodging for him, and though his journey had given him a bad cold in the head, he was forced to attend to that business himself. on inquiry he learnt that the only possible accommodation in the village would be found at the house of one mrs. lizzy newberry, at the upper end of the street. it was a youth who gave this information, and stockdale asked him who mrs. newberry might be. the boy said that she was a widow-woman, who had got no husband, because he was dead. mr. newberry, he added, had been a well-to-do man enough, as the saying was, and a farmer; but he had gone off in a decline. as regarded mrs. newberry's serious side, stockdale gathered that she was one of the trimmers who went to church and chapel both. 'i'll go there,' said stockdale, feeling that, in the absence of purely sectarian lodgings, he could do no better. 'she's a little particular, and won't hae gover'ment folks, or curates, or the pa'son's friends, or such like,' said the lad dubiously. 'ah, that may be a promising sign: i'll call. or no; just you go up and ask first if she can find room for me. i have to see one or two persons on another matter. you will find me down at the carrier's.' in a quarter of an hour the lad came back, and said that mrs. newberry would have no objection to accommodate him, whereupon stockdale called at the house. it stood within a garden-hedge, and seemed to be roomy and comfortable. he saw an elderly woman, with whom he made arrangements to come the same night, since there was no inn in the place, and he wished to house himself as soon as possible; the village being a local centre from which he was to radiate at once to the different small chapels in the neighbourhood. he forthwith sent his luggage to mrs. newberry's from the carrier's, where he had taken shelter, and in the evening walked up to his temporary home. as he now lived there, stockdale felt it unnecessary to knock at the door; and entering quietly he had the pleasure of hearing footsteps scudding away like mice into the back quarters. he advanced to the parlour, as the front room was called, though its stone floor was scarcely disguised by the carpet, which only over-laid the trodden areas, leaving sandy deserts under the bulging mouldings of the table-legs, playing with brass furniture. but the room looked snug and cheerful. the firelight shone out brightly, trembling on the knobs and handles, and lurking in great strength on the under surface of the chimney-piece. a deep arm-chair, covered with horsehair, and studded with a countless throng of brass nails, was pulled up on one side of the fireplace. the tea-things were on the table, the teapot cover was open, and a little hand-bell had been laid at that precise point towards which a person seated in the great chair might be expected instinctively to stretch his hand. stockdale sat down, not objecting to his experience of the room thus far, and began his residence by tinkling the bell. a little girl crept in at the summons, and made tea for him. her name, she said, was marther sarer, and she lived out there, nodding towards the road and village generally. before stockdale had got far with his meal, a tap sounded on the door behind him, and on his telling the inquirer to come in, a rustle of garments caused him to turn his head. he saw before him a fine and extremely well-made young woman, with dark hair, a wide, sensible, beautiful forehead, eyes that warmed him before he knew it, and a mouth that was in itself a picture to all appreciative souls. 'can i get you anything else for tea?' she said, coming forward a step or two, an expression of liveliness on her features, and her hand waving the door by its edge. 'nothing, thank you,' said stockdale, thinking less of what he replied than of what might be her relation to the household. 'you are quite sure?' said the young woman, apparently aware that he had not considered his answer. he conscientiously examined the tea-things, and found them all there. 'quite sure, miss newberry,' he said. 'it is mrs. newberry,' she said. 'lizzy newberry, i used to be lizzy simpkins.' 'o, i beg your pardon, mrs. newberry.' and before he had occasion to say more she left the room. stockdale remained in some doubt till martha sarah came to clear the table. 'whose house is this, my little woman,' said he. 'mrs. lizzy newberry's, sir.' 'then mrs. newberry is not the old lady i saw this afternoon?' 'no. that's mrs. newberry's mother. it was mrs. newberry who comed in to you just by now, because she wanted to see if you was good-looking.' later in the evening, when stockdale was about to begin supper, she came again. 'i have come myself, mr. stockdale,' she said. the minister stood up in acknowledgment of the honour. 'i am afraid little marther might not make you understand. what will you have for supper?--there's cold rabbit, and there's a ham uncut.' stockdale said he could get on nicely with those viands, and supper was laid. he had no more than cut a slice when tap-tap came to the door again. the minister had already learnt that this particular rhythm in taps denoted the fingers of his enkindling landlady, and the doomed young fellow buried his first mouthful under a look of receptive blandness. 'we have a chicken in the house, mr. stockdale--i quite forgot to mention it just now. perhaps you would like marther sarer to bring it up?' stockdale had advanced far enough in the art of being a young man to say that he did not want the chicken, unless she brought it up herself; but when it was uttered he blushed at the daring gallantry of the speech, perhaps a shade too strong for a serious man and a minister. in three minutes the chicken appeared, but, to his great surprise, only in the hands of martha sarah. stockdale was disappointed, which perhaps it was intended that he should be. he had finished supper, and was not in the least anticipating mrs. newberry again that night, when she tapped and entered as before. stockdale's gratified look told that she had lost nothing by not appearing when expected. it happened that the cold in the head from which the young man suffered had increased with the approach of night, and before she had spoken he was seized with a violent fit of sneezing which he could not anyhow repress. mrs. newberry looked full of pity. 'your cold is very bad to-night, mr. stockdale.' stockdale replied that it was rather troublesome. 'and i've a good mind'--she added archly, looking at the cheerless glass of water on the table, which the abstemious minister was going to drink. 'yes, mrs. newberry?' 'i've a good mind that you should have something more likely to cure it than that cold stuff.' 'well,' said stockdale, looking down at the glass, 'as there is no inn here, and nothing better to be got in the village, of course it will do.' to this she replied, 'there is something better, not far off, though not in the house. i really think you must try it, or you may be ill. yes, mr. stockdale, you shall.' she held up her finger, seeing that he was about to speak. 'don't ask what it is; wait, and you shall see.' lizzy went away, and stockdale waited in a pleasant mood. presently she returned with her bonnet and cloak on, saying, 'i am so sorry, but you must help me to get it. mother has gone to bed. will you wrap yourself up, and come this way, and please bring that cup with you?' stockdale, a lonely young fellow, who had for weeks felt a great craving for somebody on whom to throw away superfluous interest, and even tenderness, was not sorry to join her; and followed his guide through the back door, across the garden, to the bottom, where the boundary was a wall. this wall was low, and beyond it stockdale discerned in the night shades several grey headstones, and the outlines of the church roof and tower. 'it is easy to get up this way,' she said, stepping upon a bank which abutted on the wall; then putting her foot on the top of the stonework, and descending a spring inside, where the ground was much higher, as is the manner of graveyards to be. stockdale did the same, and followed her in the dusk across the irregular ground till they came to the tower door, which, when they had entered, she softly closed behind them. 'you can keep a secret?' she said, in a musical voice. 'like an iron chest!' said he fervently. then from under her cloak she produced a small lighted lantern, which the minister had not noticed that she carried at all. the light showed them to be close to the singing-gallery stairs, under which lay a heap of lumber of all sorts, but consisting mostly of decayed framework, pews, panels, and pieces of flooring, that from time to time had been removed from their original fixings in the body of the edifice and replaced by new. 'perhaps you will drag some of those boards aside?' she said, holding the lantern over her head to light him better. 'or will you take the lantern while i move them?' 'i can manage it,' said the young man, and acting as she ordered, he uncovered, to his surprise, a row of little barrels bound with wood hoops, each barrel being about as large as the nave of a heavy waggon- wheel. when they were laid open lizzy fixed her eyes on him, as if she wondered what he would say. 'you know what they are?' she asked, finding that he did not speak. 'yes, barrels,' said stockdale simply. he was an inland man, the son of highly respectable parents, and brought up with a single eye to the ministry; and the sight suggested nothing beyond the fact that such articles were there. 'you are quite right, they are barrels,' she said, in an emphatic tone of candour that was not without a touch of irony. stockdale looked at her with an eye of sudden misgiving. 'not smugglers' liquor?' he said. 'yes,' said she. 'they are tubs of spirit that have accidentally come over in the dark from france.' in nether-moynton and its vicinity at this date people always smiled at the sort of sin called in the outside world illicit trading; and these little kegs of gin and brandy were as well known to the inhabitants as turnips. so that stockdale's innocent ignorance, and his look of alarm when he guessed the sinister mystery, seemed to strike lizzy first as ludicrous, and then as very awkward for the good impression that she wished to produce upon him. 'smuggling is carried on here by some of the people,' she said in a gentle, apologetic voice. 'it has been their practice for generations, and they think it no harm. now, will you roll out one of the tubs?' 'what to do with it?' said the minister. 'to draw a little from it to cure your cold,' she answered. 'it is so 'nation strong that it drives away that sort of thing in a jiffy. o, it is all right about our taking it. i may have what i like; the owner of the tubs says so. i ought to have had some in the house, and then i shouldn't ha' been put to this trouble; but i drink none myself, and so i often forget to keep it indoors.' 'you are allowed to help yourself, i suppose, that you may not inform where their hiding-place is?' 'well, no; not that particularly; but i may take any if i want it. so help yourself.' 'i will, to oblige you, since you have a right to it,' murmured the minister; and though he was not quite satisfied with his part in the performance, he rolled one of the 'tubs' out from the corner into the middle of the tower floor. 'how do you wish me to get it out--with a gimlet, i suppose?' 'no, i'll show you,' said his interesting companion; and she held up with her other hand a shoemaker's awl and a hammer. 'you must never do these things with a gimlet, because the wood-dust gets in; and when the buyers pour out the brandy that would tell them that the tub had been broached. an awl makes no dust, and the hole nearly closes up again. now tap one of the hoops forward.' stockdale took the hammer and did so. 'now make the hole in the part that was covered by the hoop.' he made the hole as directed. 'it won't run out,' he said. 'o yes it will,' said she. 'take the tub between your knees, and squeeze the heads; and i'll hold the cup.' stockdale obeyed; and the pressure taking effect upon the tub, which seemed, to be thin, the spirit spirted out in a stream. when the cup was full he ceased pressing, and the flow immediately stopped. 'now we must fill up the keg with water,' said lizzy, 'or it will cluck like forty hens when it is handled, and show that 'tis not full.' 'but they tell you you may take it?' 'yes, the smugglers: but the buyers must not know that the smugglers have been kind to me at their expense.' 'i see,' said stockdale doubtfully. 'i much question the honesty of this proceeding.' by her direction he held the tub with the hole upwards, and while he went through the process of alternately pressing and ceasing to press, she produced a bottle of water, from which she took mouthfuls, conveying each to the keg by putting her pretty lips to the hole, where it was sucked in at each recovery of the cask from pressure. when it was again full he plugged the hole, knocked the hoop down to its place, and buried the tub in the lumber as before. 'aren't the smugglers afraid that you will tell?' he asked, as they recrossed the churchyard. 'o no; they are not afraid of that. i couldn't do such a thing.' 'they have put you into a very awkward corner,' said stockdale emphatically. 'you must, of course, as an honest person, sometimes feel that it is your duty to inform--really you must.' 'well, i have never particularly felt it as a duty; and, besides, my first husband--' she stopped, and there was some confusion in her voice. stockdale was so honest and unsophisticated that he did not at once discern why she paused: but at last he did perceive that the words were a slip, and that no woman would have uttered 'first husband' by accident unless she had thought pretty frequently of a second. he felt for her confusion, and allowed her time to recover and proceed. 'my husband,' she said, in a self-corrected tone, 'used to know of their doings, and so did my father, and kept the secret. i cannot inform, in fact, against anybody.' 'i see the hardness of it,' he continued, like a man who looked far into the moral of things. 'and it is very cruel that you should be tossed and tantalized between your memories and your conscience. i do hope, mrs. newberry, that you will soon see your way out of this unpleasant position.' 'well, i don't just now,' she murmured. by this time they had passed over the wall and entered the house, where she brought him a glass and hot water, and left him to his own reflections. he looked after her vanishing form, asking himself whether he, as a respectable man, and a minister, and a shining light, even though as yet only of the halfpenny-candle sort, were quite justified in doing this thing. a sneeze settled the question; and he found that when the fiery liquor was lowered by the addition of twice or thrice the quantity of water, it was one of the prettiest cures for a cold in the head that he had ever known, particularly at this chilly time of the year. stockdale sat in the deep chair about twenty minutes sipping and meditating, till he at length took warmer views of things, and longed for the morrow, when he would see mrs. newberry again. he then felt that, though chronologically at a short distance, it would in an emotional sense be very long before to-morrow came, and walked restlessly round the room. his eye was attracted by a framed and glazed sampler in which a running ornament of fir-trees and peacocks surrounded the following pretty bit of sentiment:- 'rose-leaves smell when roses thrive, here's my work while i'm alive; rose-leaves smell when shrunk and shed, here's my work when i am dead. 'lizzy simpkins. fear god. honour the king. 'aged years. ''tis hers,' he said to himself. 'heavens, how i like that name!' before he had done thinking that no other name from abigail to zenobia would have suited his young landlady so well, tap-tap came again upon the door; and the minister started as her face appeared yet another time, looking so disinterested that the most ingenious would have refrained from asserting that she had come to affect his feelings by her seductive eyes. 'would you like a fire in your room, mr. stockdale, on account of your cold?' the minister, being still a little pricked in the conscience for countenancing her in watering the spirits, saw here a way to self-chastisement. 'no, i thank you,' he said firmly; 'it is not necessary. i have never been used to one in my life, and it would be giving way to luxury too far.' 'then i won't insist,' she said, and disconcerted him by vanishing instantly. wondering if she was vexed by his refusal, he wished that he had chosen to have a fire, even though it should have scorched him out of bed and endangered his self-discipline for a dozen days. however, he consoled himself with what was in truth a rare consolation for a budding lover, that he was under the same roof with lizzy; her guest, in fact, to take a poetical view of the term lodger; and that he would certainly see her on the morrow. the morrow came, and stockdale rose early, his cold quite gone. he had never in his life so longed for the breakfast hour as he did that day, and punctually at eight o'clock, after a short walk, to reconnoitre the premises, he re-entered the door of his dwelling. breakfast passed, and martha sarah attended, but nobody came voluntarily as on the night before to inquire if there were other wants which he had not mentioned, and which she would attempt to gratify. he was disappointed, and went out, hoping to see her at dinner. dinner time came; he sat down to the meal, finished it, lingered on for a whole hour, although two new teachers were at that moment waiting at the chapel-door to speak to him by appointment. it was useless to wait longer, and he slowly went his way down the lane, cheered by the thought that, after all, he would see her in the evening, and perhaps engage again in the delightful tub-broaching in the neighbouring church tower, which proceeding he resolved to render more moral by steadfastly insisting that no water should be introduced to fill up, though the tub should cluck like all the hens in christendom. but nothing could disguise the fact that it was a queer business; and his countenance fell when he thought how much more his mind was interested in that matter than in his serious duties. however, compunction vanished with the decline of day. night came, and his tea and supper; but no lizzy newberry, and no sweet temptations. at last the minister could bear it no longer, and said to his quaint little attendant, 'where is mrs. newberry to-day?' judiciously handing a penny as he spoke. 'she's busy,' said martha. 'anything serious happened?' he asked, handing another penny, and revealing yet additional pennies in the background. 'o no--nothing at all!' said she, with breathless confidence. 'nothing ever happens to her. she's only biding upstairs in bed because 'tis her way sometimes.' being a young man of some honour, he would not question further, and assuming that lizzy must have a bad headache, or other slight ailment, in spite of what the girl had said, he went to bed dissatisfied, not even setting eyes on old mrs. simpkins. 'i said last night that i should see her to-morrow,' he reflected; 'but that was not to be!' next day he had better fortune, or worse, meeting her at the foot of the stairs in the morning, and being favoured by a visit or two from her during the day--once for the purpose of making kindly inquiries about his comfort, as on the first evening, and at another time to place a bunch of winter-violets on his table, with a promise to renew them when they drooped. on these occasions there was something in her smile which showed how conscious she was of the effect she produced, though it must be said that it was rather a humorous than a designing consciousness, and savoured more of pride than of vanity. as for stockdale, he clearly perceived that he possessed unlimited capacity for backsliding, and wished that tutelary saints were not denied to dissenters. he set a watch upon his tongue and eyes for the space of one hour and a half, after which he found it was useless to struggle further, and gave himself up to the situation. 'the other minister will be here in a month,' he said to himself when sitting over the fire. 'then i shall be off, and she will distract my mind no more! . . . and then, shall i go on living by myself for ever? no; when my two years of probation are finished, i shall have a furnished house to live in, with a varnished door and a brass knocker; and i'll march straight back to her, and ask her flat, as soon as the last plate is on the dresser! thus a titillating fortnight was passed by young stockdale, during which time things proceeded much as such matters have done ever since the beginning of history. he saw the object of attachment several times one day, did not see her at all the next, met her when he least expected to do so, missed her when hints and signs as to where she should be at a given hour almost amounted to an appointment. this mild coquetry was perhaps fair enough under the circumstances of their being so closely lodged, and stockdale put up with it as philosophically as he was able. being in her own house, she could, after vexing him or disappointing him of her presence, easily win him back by suddenly surrounding him with those little attentions which her position as his landlady put it in her power to bestow. when he had waited indoors half the day to see her, and on finding that she would not be seen, had gone off in a huff to the dreariest and dampest walk he could discover, she would restore equilibrium in the evening with 'mr. stockdale, i have fancied you must feel draught o' nights from your bedroom window, and so i have been putting up thicker curtains this afternoon while you were out;' or, 'i noticed that you sneezed twice again this morning, mr. stockdale. depend upon it that cold is hanging about you yet; i am sure it is--i have thought of it continually; and you must let me make a posset for you.' sometimes in coming home he found his sitting-room rearranged, chairs placed where the table had stood, and the table ornamented with the few fresh flowers and leaves that could be obtained at this season, so as to add a novelty to the room. at times she would be standing on a chair outside the house, trying to nail up a branch of the monthly rose which the winter wind had blown down; and of course he stepped forward to assist her, when their hands got mixed in passing the shreds and nails. thus they became friends again after a disagreement. she would utter on these occasions some pretty and deprecatory remark on the necessity of her troubling him anew; and he would straightway say that he would do a hundred times as much for her if she should so require. chapter ii--how he saw two other men matters being in this advancing state, stockdale was rather surprised one cloudy evening, while sitting in his room, at hearing her speak in low tones of expostulation to some one at the door. it was nearly dark, but the shutters were not yet closed, nor the candles lighted; and stockdale was tempted to stretch his head towards the window. he saw outside the door a young man in clothes of a whitish colour, and upon reflection judged their wearer to be the well-built and rather handsome miller who lived below. the miller's voice was alternately low and firm, and sometimes it reached the level of positive entreaty; but what the words were stockdale could in no way hear. before the colloquy had ended, the minister's attention was attracted by a second incident. opposite lizzy's home grew a clump of laurels, forming a thick and permanent shade. one of the laurel boughs now quivered against the light background of sky, and in a moment the head of a man peered out, and remained still. he seemed to be also much interested in the conversation at the door, and was plainly lingering there to watch and listen. had stockdale stood in any other relation to lizzy than that of a lover, he might have gone out and investigated the meaning of this: but being as yet but an unprivileged ally, he did nothing more than stand up and show himself against the firelight, whereupon the listener disappeared, and lizzy and the miller spoke in lower tones. stockdale was made so uneasy by the circumstance, that as soon as the miller was gone, he said, 'mrs. newberry, are you aware that you were watched just now, and your conversation heard?' 'when?' she said. 'when you were talking to that miller. a man was looking from the laurel- tree as jealously as if he could have eaten you.' she showed more concern than the trifling event seemed to demand, and he added, 'perhaps you were talking of things you did not wish to be overheard?' 'i was talking only on business,' she said. 'lizzy, be frank!' said the young man. 'if it was only on business, why should anybody wish to listen to you?' she looked curiously at him. 'what else do you think it could be, then?' 'well--the only talk between a young woman and man that is likely to amuse an eavesdropper.' 'ah yes,' she said, smiling in spite of her preoccupation. 'well, my cousin owlett has spoken to me about matrimony, every now and then, that's true; but he was not speaking of it then. i wish he had been speaking of it, with all my heart. it would have been much less serious for me.' 'o mrs. newberry!' 'it would. not that i should ha' chimed in with him, of course. i wish it for other reasons. i am glad, mr. stockdale, that you have told me of that listener. it is a timely warning, and i must see my cousin again.' 'but don't go away till i have spoken,' said the minister. 'i'll out with it at once, and make no more ado. let it be yes or no between us, lizzy; please do!' and he held out his hand, in which she freely allowed her own to rest, but without speaking. 'you mean yes by that?' he asked, after waiting a while. 'you may be my sweetheart, if you will.' 'why not say at once you will wait for me until i have a house and can come back to marry you.' 'because i am thinking--thinking of something else,' she said with embarrassment. 'it all comes upon me at once, and i must settle one thing at a time.' 'at any rate, dear lizzy, you can assure me that the miller shall not be allowed to speak to you except on business? you have never directly encouraged him?' she parried the question by saying, 'you see, he and his party have been in the habit of leaving things on my premises sometimes, and as i have not denied him, it makes him rather forward.' 'things--what things?' 'tubs--they are called things here.' 'but why don't you deny him, my dear lizzy?' 'i cannot well.' 'you are too timid. it is unfair of him to impose so upon you, and get your good name into danger by his smuggling tricks. promise me that the next time he wants to leave his tubs here you will let me roll them into the street?' she shook her head. 'i would not venture to offend the neighbours so much as that,' said she, 'or do anything that would be so likely to put poor owlett into the hands of the excisemen.' stockdale sighed, and said that he thought hers a mistaken generosity when it extended to assisting those who cheated the king of his dues. 'at any rate, you will let me make him keep his distance as your lover, and tell him flatly that you are not for him?' 'please not, at present,' she said. 'i don't wish to offend my old neighbours. it is not only owlett who is concerned.' 'this is too bad,' said stockdale impatiently. 'on my honour, i won't encourage him as my lover,' lizzy answered earnestly. 'a reasonable man will be satisfied with that.' 'well, so i am,' said stockdale, his countenance clearing. chapter iii--the mysterious greatcoat stockdale now began to notice more particularly a feature in the life of his fair landlady, which he had casually observed but scarcely ever thought of before. it was that she was markedly irregular in her hours of rising. for a week or two she would be tolerably punctual, reaching the ground-floor within a few minutes of half-past seven. then suddenly she would not be visible till twelve at noon, perhaps for three or four days in succession; and twice he had certain proof that she did not leave her room till half-past three in the afternoon. the second time that this extreme lateness came under his notice was on a day when he had particularly wished to consult with her about his future movements; and he concluded, as he always had done, that she had a cold, headache, or other ailment, unless she had kept herself invisible to avoid meeting and talking to him, which he could hardly believe. the former supposition was disproved, however, by her innocently saying, some days later, when they were speaking on a question of health, that she had never had a moment's heaviness, headache, or illness of any kind since the previous january twelvemonth. 'i am glad to hear it,' said he. 'i thought quite otherwise.' 'what, do i look sickly?' she asked, turning up her face to show the impossibility of his gazing on it and holding such a belief for a moment. 'not at all; i merely thought so from your being sometimes obliged to keep your room through the best part of the day.' 'o, as for that--it means nothing,' she murmured, with a look which some might have called cold, and which was the worst look that he liked to see upon her. 'it is pure sleepiness, mr. stockdale.' 'never!' 'it is, i tell you. when i stay in my room till half-past three in the afternoon, you may always be sure that i slept soundly till three, or i shouldn't have stayed there.' 'it is dreadful,' said stockdale, thinking of the disastrous effects of such indulgence upon the household of a minister, should it become a habit of everyday occurrence. 'but then,' she said, divining his good and prescient thoughts, 'it only happens when i stay awake all night. i don't go to sleep till five or six in the morning sometimes.' 'ah, that's another matter,' said stockdale. 'sleeplessness to such an alarming extent is real illness. have you spoken to a doctor?' 'o no--there is no need for doing that--it is all natural to me.' and she went away without further remark. stockdale might have waited a long time to know the real cause of her sleeplessness, had it not happened that one dark night he was sitting in his bedroom jotting down notes for a sermon, which occupied him perfunctorily for a considerable time after the other members of the household had retired. he did not get to bed till one o'clock. before he had fallen asleep he heard a knocking at the front door, first rather timidly performed, and then louder. nobody answered it, and the person knocked again. as the house still remained undisturbed, stockdale got out of bed, went to his window, which overlooked the door, and opening it, asked who was there. a young woman's voice replied that susan wallis was there, and that she had come to ask if mrs. newberry could give her some mustard to make a plaster with, as her father was taken very ill on the chest. the minister, having neither bell nor servant, was compelled to act in person. 'i will call mrs. newberry,' he said. partly dressing himself; he went along the passage and tapped at lizzy's door. she did not answer, and, thinking of her erratic habits in the matter of sleep, he thumped the door persistently, when he discovered, by its moving ajar under his knocking, that it had only been gently pushed to. as there was now a sufficient entry for the voice, he knocked no longer, but said in firm tones, 'mrs. newberry, you are wanted.' the room was quite silent; not a breathing, not a rustle, came from any part of it. stockdale now sent a positive shout through the open space of the door: 'mrs. newberry!'--still no answer, or movement of any kind within. then he heard sounds from the opposite room, that of lizzy's mother, as if she had been aroused by his uproar though lizzy had not, and was dressing herself hastily. stockdale softly closed the younger woman's door and went on to the other, which was opened by mrs. simpkins before he could reach it. she was in her ordinary clothes, and had a light in her hand. 'what's the person calling about?' she said in alarm. stockdale told the girl's errand, adding seriously, 'i cannot wake mrs. newberry.' 'it is no matter,' said her mother. 'i can let the girl have what she wants as well as my daughter.' and she came out of the room and went downstairs. stockdale retired towards his own apartment, saying, however, to mrs. simpkins from the landing, as if on second thoughts, 'i suppose there is nothing the matter with mrs. newberry, that i could not wake her?' 'o no,' said the old lady hastily. 'nothing at all.' still the minister was not satisfied. 'will you go in and see?' he said. 'i should be much more at ease.' mrs. simpkins returned up the staircase, went to her daughter's room, and came out again almost instantly. 'there is nothing at all the matter with lizzy,' she said; and descended again to attend to the applicant, who, having seen the light, had remained quiet during this interval. stockdale went into his room and lay down as before. he heard lizzy's mother open the front door, admit the girl, and then the murmured discourse of both as they went to the store-cupboard for the medicament required. the girl departed, the door was fastened, mrs. simpkins came upstairs, and the house was again in silence. still the minister did not fall asleep. he could not get rid of a singular suspicion, which was all the more harassing in being, if true, the most unaccountable thing within his experience. that lizzy newberry was in her bedroom when he made such a clamour at the door he could not possibly convince himself; notwithstanding that he had heard her come upstairs at the usual time, go into her chamber, and shut herself up in the usual way. yet all reason was so much against her being elsewhere, that he was constrained to go back again to the unlikely theory of a heavy sleep, though he had heard neither breath nor movement during a shouting and knocking loud enough to rouse the seven sleepers. before coming to any positive conclusion he fell asleep himself, and did not awake till day. he saw nothing of mrs. newberry in the morning, before he went out to meet the rising sun, as he liked to do when the weather was fine; but as this was by no means unusual, he took no notice of it. at breakfast-time he knew that she was not far off by hearing her in the kitchen, and though he saw nothing of her person, that back apartment being rigorously closed against his eyes, she seemed to be talking, ordering, and bustling about among the pots and skimmers in so ordinary a manner, that there was no reason for his wasting more time in fruitless surmise. the minister suffered from these distractions, and his extemporized sermons were not improved thereby. already he often said romans for corinthians in the pulpit, and gave out hymns in strange cramped metres, that hitherto had always been skipped, because the congregation could not raise a tune to fit them. he fully resolved that as soon as his few weeks of stay approached their end he would cut the matter short, and commit himself by proposing a definite engagement, repenting at leisure if necessary. with this end in view, he suggested to her on the evening after her mysterious sleep that they should take a walk together just before dark, the latter part of the proposition being introduced that they might return home unseen. she consented to go; and away they went over a stile, to a shrouded footpath suited for the occasion. but, in spite of attempts on both sides, they were unable to infuse much spirit into the ramble. she looked rather paler than usual, and sometimes turned her head away. 'lizzy,' said stockdale reproachfully, when they had walked in silence a long distance. 'yes,' said she. 'you yawned--much my company is to you!' he put it in that way, but he was really wondering whether her yawn could possibly have more to do with physical weariness from the night before than mental weariness of that present moment. lizzy apologized, and owned that she was rather tired, which gave him an opening for a direct question on the point; but his modesty would not allow him to put it to her; and he uncomfortably resolved to wait. the month of february passed with alternations of mud and frost, rain and sleet, east winds and north-westerly gales. the hollow places in the ploughed fields showed themselves as pools of water, which had settled there from the higher levels, and had not yet found time to soak away. the birds began to get lively, and a single thrush came just before sunset each evening, and sang hopefully on the large elm-tree which stood nearest to mrs. newberry's house. cold blasts and brittle earth had given place to an oozing dampness more unpleasant in itself than frost; but it suggested coming spring, and its unpleasantness was of a bearable kind. stockdale had been going to bring about a practical understanding with lizzy at least half-a-dozen times; but, what with the mystery of her apparent absence on the night of the neighbour's call, and her curious way of lying in bed at unaccountable times, he felt a check within him whenever he wanted to speak out. thus they still lived on as indefinitely affianced lovers, each of whom hardly acknowledged the other's claim to the name of chosen one. stockdale persuaded himself that his hesitation was owing to the postponement of the ordained minister's arrival, and the consequent delay in his own departure, which did away with all necessity for haste in his courtship; but perhaps it was only that his discretion was reasserting itself, and telling him that he had better get clearer ideas of lizzy before arranging for the grand contract of his life with her. she, on her part, always seemed ready to be urged further on that question than he had hitherto attempted to go; but she was none the less independent, and to a degree which would have kept from flagging the passion of a far more mutable man. on the evening of the first of march he went casually into his bedroom about dusk, and noticed lying on a chair a greatcoat, hat, and breeches. having no recollection of leaving any clothes of his own in that spot, he went and examined them as well as he could in the twilight, and found that they did not belong to him. he paused for a moment to consider how they might have got there. he was the only man living in the house; and yet these were not his garments, unless he had made a mistake. no, they were not his. he called up martha sarah. 'how did these things come in my room?' he said, flinging the objectionable articles to the floor. martha said that mrs. newberry had given them to her to brush, and that she had brought them up there thinking they must be mr. stockdale's, as there was no other gentleman a-lodging there. 'of course you did,' said stockdale. 'now take them down to your mis'ess, and say they are some clothes i have found here and know nothing about.' as the door was left open he heard the conversation downstairs. 'how stupid!' said mrs. newberry, in a tone of confusion. 'why, marther sarer, i did not tell you to take 'em to mr. stockdale's room?' 'i thought they must be his as they was so muddy,' said martha humbly. 'you should have left 'em on the clothes-horse,' said the young mistress severely; and she came upstairs with the garments on her arm, quickly passed stockdale's room, and threw them forcibly into a closet at the end of a passage. with this the incident ended, and the house was silent again. there would have been nothing remarkable in finding such clothes in a widow's house had they been clean; or moth-eaten, or creased, or mouldy from long lying by; but that they should be splashed with recent mud bothered stockdale a good deal. when a young pastor is in the aspen stage of attachment, and open to agitation at the merest trifles, a really substantial incongruity of this complexion is a disturbing thing. however, nothing further occurred at that time; but he became watchful, and given to conjecture, and was unable to forget the circumstance. one morning, on looking from his window, he saw mrs. newberry herself brushing the tails of a long drab greatcoat, which, if he mistook not, was the very same garment as the one that had adorned the chair of his room. it was densely splashed up to the hollow of the back with neighbouring nether-moynton mud, to judge by its colour, the spots being distinctly visible to him in the sunlight. the previous day or two having been wet, the inference was irresistible that the wearer had quite recently been walking some considerable distance about the lanes and fields. stockdale opened the window and looked out, and mrs. newberry turned her head. her face became slowly red; she never had looked prettier, or more incomprehensible, he waved his hand affectionately, and said good-morning; she answered with embarrassment, having ceased her occupation on the instant that she saw him, and rolled up the coat half- cleaned. stockdale shut the window. some simple explanation of her proceeding was doubtless within the bounds of possibility; but he himself could not think of one; and he wished that she had placed the matter beyond conjecture by voluntarily saying something about it there and then. but, though lizzy had not offered an explanation at the moment, the subject was brought forward by her at the next time of their meeting. she was chatting to him concerning some other event, and remarked that it happened about the time when she was dusting some old clothes that had belonged to her poor husband. 'you keep them clean out of respect to his memory?' said stockdale tentatively. 'i air and dust them sometimes,' she said, with the most charming innocence in the world. 'do dead men come out of their graves and walk in mud?' murmured the minister, in a cold sweat at the deception that she was practising. 'what did you say?' asked lizzy. 'nothing, nothing,' said he mournfully. 'mere words--a phrase that will do for my sermon next sunday.' it was too plain that lizzy was unaware that he had seen actual pedestrian splashes upon the skirts of the tell- tale overcoat, and that she imagined him to believe it had come direct from some chest or drawer. the aspect of the case was now considerably darker. stockdale was so much depressed by it that he did not challenge her explanation, or threaten to go off as a missionary to benighted islanders, or reproach her in any way whatever. he simply parted from her when she had done talking, and lived on in perplexity, till by degrees his natural manner became sad and constrained. chapter iv--at the time of the new moon the following thursday was changeable, damp, and gloomy; and the night threatened to be windy and unpleasant. stockdale had gone away to knollsea in the morning, to be present at some commemoration service there, and on his return he was met by the attractive lizzy in the passage. whether influenced by the tide of cheerfulness which had attended him that day, or by the drive through the open air, or whether from a natural disposition to let bygones alone, he allowed himself to be fascinated into forgetfulness of the greatcoat incident, and upon the whole passed a pleasant evening; not so much in her society as within sound of her voice, as she sat talking in the back parlour to her mother, till the latter went to bed. shortly after this mrs. newberry retired, and then stockdale prepared to go upstairs himself. but before he left the room he remained standing by the dying embers awhile, thinking long of one thing and another; and was only aroused by the flickering of his candle in the socket as it suddenly declined and went out. knowing that there were a tinder-box, matches, and another candle in his bedroom, he felt his way upstairs without a light. on reaching his chamber he laid his hand on every possible ledge and corner for the tinderbox, but for a long time in vain. discovering it at length, stockdale produced a spark, and was kindling the brimstone, when he fancied that he heard a movement in the passage. he blew harder at the lint, the match flared up, and looking by aid of the blue light through the door, which had been standing open all this time, he was surprised to see a male figure vanishing round the top of the staircase with the evident intention of escaping unobserved. the personage wore the clothes which lizzy had been brushing, and something in the outline and gait suggested to the minister that the wearer was lizzy herself. but he was not sure of this; and, greatly excited, stockdale determined to investigate the mystery, and to adopt his own way for doing it. he blew out the match without lighting the candle, went into the passage, and proceeded on tiptoe towards lizzy's room. a faint grey square of light in the direction of the chamber-window as he approached told him that the door was open, and at once suggested that the occupant was gone. he turned and brought down his fist upon the handrail of the staircase: 'it was she; in her late husband's coat and hat!' somewhat relieved to find that there was no intruder in the case, yet none the less surprised, the minister crept down the stairs, softly put on his boots, overcoat, and hat, and tried the front door. it was fastened as usual: he went to the back door, found this unlocked, and emerged into the garden. the night was mild and moonless, and rain had lately been falling, though for the present it had ceased. there was a sudden dropping from the trees and bushes every now and then, as each passing wind shook their boughs. among these sounds stockdale heard the faint fall of feet upon the road outside, and he guessed from the step that it was lizzy's. he followed the sound, and, helped by the circumstance of the wind blowing from the direction in which the pedestrian moved, he got nearly close to her, and kept there, without risk of being overheard. while he thus followed her up the street or lane, as it might indifferently be called, there being more hedge than houses on either side, a figure came forward to her from one of the cottage doors. lizzy stopped; the minister stepped upon the grass and stopped also. 'is that mrs. newberry?' said the man who had come out, whose voice stockdale recognized as that of one of the most devout members of his congregation. 'it is,' said lizzy. 'i be quite ready--i've been here this quarter-hour.' 'ah, john,' said she, 'i have bad news; there is danger to-night for our venture.' 'and d'ye tell o't! i dreamed there might be.' 'yes,' she said hurriedly; 'and you must go at once round to where the chaps are waiting, and tell them they will not be wanted till to-morrow night at the same time. i go to burn the lugger off.' 'i will,' he said; and instantly went off through a gate, lizzy continuing her way. on she tripped at a quickening pace till the lane turned into the turnpike-road, which she crossed, and got into the track for ringsworth. here she ascended the hill without the least hesitation, passed the lonely hamlet of holworth, and went down the vale on the other side. stockdale had never taken any extensive walks in this direction, but he was aware that if she persisted in her course much longer she would draw near to the coast, which was here between two and three miles distant from nether-moynton; and as it had been about a quarter-past eleven o'clock when they set out, her intention seemed to be to reach the shore about midnight. lizzy soon ascended a small mound, which stockdale at the same time adroitly skirted on the left; and a dull monotonous roar burst upon his ear. the hillock was about fifty yards from the top of the cliffs, and by day it apparently commanded a full view of the bay. there was light enough in the sky to show her disguised figure against it when she reached the top, where she paused, and afterwards sat down. stockdale, not wishing on any account to alarm her at this moment, yet desirous of being near her, sank upon his hands and knees, crept a little higher up, and there stayed still. the wind was chilly, the ground damp, and his position one in which he did not care to remain long. however, before he had decided to leave it, the young man heard voices behind him. what they signified he did not know; but, fearing that lizzy was in danger, he was about to run forward and warn her that she might be seen, when she crept to the shelter of a little bush which maintained a precarious existence in that exposed spot; and her form was absorbed in its dark and stunted outline as if she had become part of it. she had evidently heard the men as well as he. they passed near him, talking in loud and careless tones, which could be heard above the uninterrupted washings of the sea, and which suggested that they were not engaged in any business at their own risk. this proved to be the fact: some of their words floated across to him, and caused him to forget at once the coldness of his situation. 'what's the vessel?' 'a lugger, about fifty tons.' 'from cherbourg, i suppose?' 'yes, 'a b'lieve.' 'but it don't all belong to owlett?' 'o no. he's only got a share. there's another or two in it--a farmer and such like, but the names i don't know.' the voices died away, and the heads and shoulders of the men diminished towards the cliff, and dropped out of sight. 'my darling has been tempted to buy a share by that unbeliever owlett,' groaned the minister, his honest affection for lizzy having quickened to its intensest point during these moments of risk to her person and name. 'that's why she's here,' he said to himself. 'o, it will be the ruin of her!' his perturbation was interrupted by the sudden bursting out of a bright and increasing light from the spot where lizzy was in hiding. a few seconds later, and before it had reached the height of a blaze, he heard her rush past him down the hollow like a stone from a sling, in the direction of home. the light now flared high and wide, and showed its position clearly. she had kindled a bough of furze and stuck it into the bush under which she had been crouching; the wind fanned the flame, which crackled fiercely, and threatened to consume the bush as well as the bough. stockdale paused just long enough to notice thus much, and then followed rapidly the route taken by the young woman. his intention was to overtake her, and reveal himself as a friend; but run as he would he could see nothing of her. thus he flew across the open country about holworth, twisting his legs and ankles in unexpected fissures and descents, till, on coming to the gate between the downs and the road, he was forced to pause to get breath. there was no audible movement either in front or behind him, and he now concluded that she had not outrun him, but that, hearing him at her heels, and believing him one of the excise party, she had hidden herself somewhere on the way, and let him pass by. he went on at a more leisurely pace towards the village. on reaching the house he found his surmise to be correct, for the gate was on the latch, and the door unfastened, just as he had left them. stockdale closed the door behind him, and waited silently in the passage. in about ten minutes he heard the same light footstep that he had heard in going out; it paused at the gate, which opened and shut softly, and then the door- latch was lifted, and lizzy came in. stockdale went forward and said at once, 'lizzy, don't be frightened. i have been waiting up for you.' she started, though she had recognized the voice. 'it is mr. stockdale, isn't it?' she said. 'yes,' he answered, becoming angry now that she was safe indoors, and not alarmed. 'and a nice game i've found you out in to-night. you are in man's clothes, and i am ashamed of you!' lizzy could hardly find a voice to answer this unexpected reproach. 'i am only partly in man's clothes,' she faltered, shrinking back to the wall. 'it is only his greatcoat and hat and breeches that i've got on, which is no harm, as he was my own husband; and i do it only because a cloak blows about so, and you can't use your arms. i have got my own dress under just the same--it is only tucked in! will you go away upstairs and let me pass? i didn't want you to see me at such a time as this!' 'but i have a right to see you! how do you think there can be anything between us now?' lizzy was silent. 'you are a smuggler,' he continued sadly. 'i have only a share in the run,' she said. 'that makes no difference. whatever did you engage in such a trade as that for, and keep it such a secret from me all this time?' 'i don't do it always. i only do it in winter-time when 'tis new moon.' 'well, i suppose that's because it can't be done anywhen else . . . you have regularly upset me, lizzy.' 'i am sorry for that,' lizzy meekly replied. 'well now,' said he more tenderly, 'no harm is done as yet. won't you for the sake of me give up this blamable and dangerous practice altogether?' 'i must do my best to save this run,' said she, getting rather husky in the throat. 'i don't want to give you up--you know that; but i don't want to lose my venture. i don't know what to do now! why i have kept it so secret from you is that i was afraid you would be angry if you knew.' 'i should think so! i suppose if i had married you without finding this out you'd have gone on with it just the same?' 'i don't know. i did not think so far ahead. i only went to-night to burn the folks off, because we found that the excisemen knew where the tubs were to be landed.' 'it is a pretty mess to be in altogether, is this,' said the distracted young minister. 'well, what will you do now?' lizzy slowly murmured the particulars of their plan, the chief of which were that they meant to try their luck at some other point of the shore the next night; that three landing-places were always agreed upon before the run was attempted, with the understanding that, if the vessel was 'burnt off' from the first point, which was ringsworth, as it had been by her to-night, the crew should attempt to make the second, which was lulstead cove, on the second night; and if there, too, danger threatened, they should on the third night try the third place, which was behind a headland further west. 'suppose the officers hinder them landing there too?' he said, his attention to this interesting programme displacing for a moment his concern at her share in it. 'then we shan't try anywhere else all this dark--that's what we call the time between moon and moon--and perhaps they'll string the tubs to a stray-line, and sink 'em a little-ways from shore, and take the bearings; and then when they have a chance they'll go to creep for 'em.' 'what's that?' 'o, they'll go out in a boat and drag a creeper--that's a grapnel--along the bottom till it catch hold of the stray-line.' the minister stood thinking; and there was no sound within doors but the tick of the clock on the stairs, and the quick breathing of lizzy, partly from her walk and partly from agitation, as she stood close to the wall, not in such complete darkness but that he could discern against its whitewashed surface the greatcoat and broad hat which covered her. 'lizzy, all this is very wrong,' he said. 'don't you remember the lesson of the tribute-money? "render unto caesar the things that are caesar's." surely you have heard that read times enough in your growing up?' 'he's dead,' she pouted. 'but the spirit of the text is in force just the same.' 'my father did it, and so did my grandfather, and almost everybody in nether-moynton lives by it, and life would be so dull if it wasn't for that, that i should not care to live at all.' 'i am nothing to live for, of course,' he replied bitterly. 'you would not think it worth while to give up this wild business and live for me alone?' 'i have never looked at it like that.' 'and you won't promise and wait till i am ready?' 'i cannot give you my word to-night.' and, looking thoughtfully down, she gradually moved and moved away, going into the adjoining room, and closing the door between them. she remained there in the dark till he was tired of waiting, and had gone up to his own chamber. poor stockdale was dreadfully depressed all the next day by the discoveries of the night before. lizzy was unmistakably a fascinating young woman, but as a minister's wife she was hardly to be contemplated. 'if i had only stuck to father's little grocery business, instead of going in for the ministry, she would have suited me beautifully!' he said sadly, until he remembered that in that case he would never have come from his distant home to nether-moynton, and never have known her. the estrangement between them was not complete, but it was sufficient to keep them out of each other's company. once during the day he met her in the garden-path, and said, turning a reproachful eye upon her, 'do you promise, lizzy?' but she did not reply. the evening drew on, and he knew well enough that lizzy would repeat her excursion at night--her half- offended manner had shown that she had not the slightest intention of altering her plans at present. he did not wish to repeat his own share of the adventure; but, act as he would, his uneasiness on her account increased with the decline of day. supposing that an accident should befall her, he would never forgive himself for not being there to help, much as he disliked the idea of seeming to countenance such unlawful escapades. chapter v--how they went to lulstead cove as he had expected, she left the house at the same hour at night, this time passing his door without stealth, as if she knew very well that he would be watching, and were resolved to brave his displeasure. he was quite ready, opened the door quickly, and reached the back door almost as soon as she. 'then you will go, lizzy?' he said as he stood on the step beside her, who now again appeared as a little man with a face altogether unsuited to his clothes. 'i must,' she said, repressed by his stern manner. 'then i shall go too,' said he. 'and i am sure you will enjoy it!' she exclaimed in more buoyant tones. 'everybody does who tries it.' 'god forbid that i should!' he said. 'but i must look after you.' they opened the wicket and went up the road abreast of each other, but at some distance apart, scarcely a word passing between them. the evening was rather less favourable to smuggling enterprise than the last had been, the wind being lower, and the sky somewhat clear towards the north. 'it is rather lighter,' said stockdale. ''tis, unfortunately,' said she. 'but it is only from those few stars over there. the moon was new to-day at four o'clock, and i expected clouds. i hope we shall be able to do it this dark, for when we have to sink 'em for long it makes the stuff taste bleachy, and folks don't like it so well.' her course was different from that of the preceding night, branching off to the left over lord's barrow as soon as they had got out of the lane and crossed the highway. by the time they reached chaldon down, stockdale, who had been in perplexed thought as to what he should say to her, decided that he would not attempt expostulation now, while she was excited by the adventure, but wait till it was over, and endeavour to keep her from such practices in future. it occurred to him once or twice, as they rambled on, that should they be surprised by the excisemen, his situation would be more awkward than hers, for it would be difficult to prove his true motive in coming to the spot; but the risk was a slight consideration beside his wish to be with her. they now arrived at a ravine which lay on the outskirts of chaldon, a village two miles on their way towards the point of the shore they sought. lizzy broke the silence this time: 'i have to wait here to meet the carriers. i don't know if they have come yet. as i told you, we go to lulstead cove to-night, and it is two miles further than ringsworth.' it turned out that the men had already come; for while she spoke two or three dozen heads broke the line of the slope, and a company of them at once descended from the bushes where they had been lying in wait. these carriers were men whom lizzy and other proprietors regularly employed to bring the tubs from the boat to a hiding-place inland. they were all young fellows of nether-moynton, chaldon, and the neighbourhood, quiet and inoffensive persons, who simply engaged to carry the cargo for lizzy and her cousin owlett, as they would have engaged in any other labour for which they were fairly well paid. at a word from her they closed in together. 'you had better take it now,' she said to them; and handed to each a packet. it contained six shillings, their remuneration for the night's undertaking, which was paid beforehand without reference to success or failure; but, besides this, they had the privilege of selling as agents when the run was successfully made. as soon as it was done, she said to them, 'the place is the old one near lulstead cove;' the men till that moment not having been told whither they were bound, for obvious reasons. 'owlett will meet you there,' added lizzy. 'i shall follow behind, to see that we are not watched.' the carriers went on, and stockdale and mrs. newberry followed at a distance of a stone's throw. 'what do these men do by day?' he said. 'twelve or fourteen of them are labouring men. some are brickmakers, some carpenters, some shoe-makers, some thatchers. they are all known to me very well. nine of 'em are of your own congregation.' 'i can't help that,' said stockdale. 'o, i know you can't. i only told you. the others are more church-inclined, because they supply the pa'son with all the spirits he requires, and they don't wish to show unfriendliness to a customer.' 'how do you choose 'em?' said stockdale. 'we choose 'em for their closeness, and because they are strong and surefooted, and able to carry a heavy load a long way without being tired.' stockdale sighed as she enumerated each particular, for it proved how far involved in the business a woman must be who was so well acquainted with its conditions and needs. and yet he felt more tenderly towards her at this moment than he had felt all the foregoing day. perhaps it was that her experienced manner and hold indifference stirred his admiration in spite of himself. 'take my arm, lizzy,' he murmured. 'i don't want it,' she said. 'besides, we may never be to each other again what we once have been.' 'that depends upon you,' said he, and they went on again as before. the hired carriers paced along over chaldon down with as little hesitation as if it had been day, avoiding the cart-way, and leaving the village of east chaldon on the left, so as to reach the crest of the hill at a lonely trackless place not far from the ancient earthwork called round pound. an hour's brisk walking brought them within sound of the sea, not many hundred yards from lulstead cove. here they paused, and lizzy and stockdale came up with them, when they went on together to the verge of the cliff. one of the men now produced an iron bar, which he drove firmly into the soil a yard from the edge, and attached to it a rope that he had uncoiled from his body. they all began to descend, partly stepping, partly sliding down the incline, as the rope slipped through their hands. 'you will not go to the bottom, lizzy?' said stockdale anxiously. 'no. i stay here to watch,' she said. 'owlett is down there.' the men remained quite silent when they reached the shore; and the next thing audible to the two at the top was the dip of heavy oars, and the dashing of waves against a boat's bow. in a moment the keel gently touched the shingle, and stockdale heard the footsteps of the thirty-six carriers running forwards over the pebbles towards the point of landing. there was a sousing in the water as of a brood of ducks plunging in, showing that the men had not been particular about keeping their legs, or even their waists, dry from the brine: but it was impossible to see what they were doing, and in a few minutes the shingle was trampled again. the iron bar sustaining the rope, on which stockdale's hand rested, began to swerve a little, and the carriers one by one appeared climbing up the sloping cliff; dripping audibly as they came, and sustaining themselves by the guide-rope. each man on reaching the top was seen to be carrying a pair of tubs, one on his back and one on his chest, the two being slung together by cords passing round the chine hoops, and resting on the carrier's shoulders. some of the stronger men carried three by putting an extra one on the top behind, but the customary load was a pair, these being quite weighty enough to give their bearer the sensation of having chest and backbone in contact after a walk of four or five miles. 'where is owlett?' said lizzy to one of them. 'he will not come up this way,' said the carrier. 'he's to bide on shore till we be safe off.' then, without waiting for the rest, the foremost men plunged across the down; and, when the last had ascended, lizzy pulled up the rope, wound it round her arm, wriggled the bar from the sod, and turned to follow the carriers. 'you are very anxious about owlett's safety,' said the minister. 'was there ever such a man!' said lizzy. 'why, isn't he my cousin?' 'yes. well, it is a bad night's work,' said stockdale heavily. 'but i'll carry the bar and rope for you.' 'thank god, the tubs have got so far all right,' said she. stockdale shook his head, and, taking the bar, walked by her side towards the downs; and the moan of the sea was heard no more. 'is this what you meant the other day when you spoke of having business with owlett?' the young man asked. 'this is it,' she replied. 'i never see him on any other matter.' 'a partnership of that kind with a young man is very odd.' 'it was begun by my father and his, who were brother-laws.' her companion could not blind himself to the fact that where tastes and pursuits were so akin as lizzy's and owlett's, and where risks were shared, as with them, in every undertaking, there would be a peculiar appropriateness in her answering owlett's standing question on matrimony in the affirmative. this did not soothe stockdale, its tendency being rather to stimulate in him an effort to make the pair as inappropriate as possible, and win her away from this nocturnal crew to correctness of conduct and a minister's parlour in some far-removed inland county. they had been walking near enough to the file of carriers for stockdale to perceive that, when they got into the road to the village, they split up into two companies of unequal size, each of which made off in a direction of its own. one company, the smaller of the two, went towards the church, and by the time that lizzy and stockdale reached their own house these men had scaled the churchyard wall, and were proceeding noiselessly over the grass within. 'i see that owlett has arranged for one batch to be put in the church again,' observed lizzy. 'do you remember my taking you there the first night you came?' 'yes, of course,' said stockdale. 'no wonder you had permission to broach the tubs--they were his, i suppose?' 'no, they were not--they were mine; i had permission from myself. the day after that they went several miles inland in a waggon-load of manure, and sold very well.' at this moment the group of men who had made off to the left some time before began leaping one by one from the hedge opposite lizzy's house, and the first man, who had no tubs upon his shoulders, came forward. 'mrs. newberry, isn't it?' he said hastily. 'yes, jim,' said she. 'what's the matter?' 'i find that we can't put any in badger's clump to-night, lizzy,' said owlett. 'the place is watched. we must sling the apple-tree in the orchet if there's time. we can't put any more under the church lumber than i have sent on there, and my mixen hev already more in en than is safe.' 'very well,' she said. 'be quick about it--that's all. what can i do?' 'nothing at all, please. ah, it is the minister!--you two that can't do anything had better get indoors and not be zeed.' while owlett thus conversed, in a tone so full of contraband anxiety and so free from lover's jealousy, the men who followed him had been descending one by one from the hedge; and it unfortunately happened that when the hindmost took his leap, the cord slipped which sustained his tubs: the result was that both the kegs fell into the road, one of them being stove in by the blow. ''od drown it all!' said owlett, rushing back. 'it is worth a good deal, i suppose?' said stockdale. 'o no--about two guineas and half to us now,' said lizzy excitedly. 'it isn't that--it is the smell! it is so blazing strong before it has been lowered by water, that it smells dreadfully when spilt in the road like that! i do hope latimer won't pass by till it is gone off.' owlett and one or two others picked up the burst tub and began to scrape and trample over the spot, to disperse the liquor as much as possible; and then they all entered the gate of owlett's orchard, which adjoined lizzy's garden on the right. stockdale did not care to follow them, for several on recognizing him had looked wonderingly at his presence, though they said nothing. lizzy left his side and went to the bottom of the garden, looking over the hedge into the orchard, where the men could be dimly seen bustling about, and apparently hiding the tubs. all was done noiselessly, and without a light; and when it was over they dispersed in different directions, those who had taken their cargoes to the church having already gone off to their homes. lizzy returned to the garden-gate, over which stockdale was still abstractedly leaning. 'it is all finished: i am going indoors now,' she said gently. 'i will leave the door ajar for you.' 'o no--you needn't,' said stockdale; 'i am coming too.' but before either of them had moved, the faint clatter of horses' hoofs broke upon the ear, and it seemed to come from the point where the track across the down joined the hard road. 'they are just too late!' cried lizzy exultingly. 'who?' said stockdale. 'latimer, the riding-officer, and some assistant of his. we had better go indoors.' they entered the house, and lizzy bolted the door. 'please don't get a light, mr. stockdale,' she said. 'of course i will not,' said he. 'i thought you might be on the side of the king,' said lizzy, with faintest sarcasm. 'i am,' said stockdale. 'but, lizzy newberry, i love you, and you know it perfectly well; and you ought to know, if you do not, what i have suffered in my conscience on your account these last few days!' 'i guess very well,' she said hurriedly. 'yet i don't see why. ah, you are better than i!' the trotting of the horses seemed to have again died away, and the pair of listeners touched each other's fingers in the cold 'good-night' of those whom something seriously divided. they were on the landing, but before they had taken three steps apart, the tramp of the horsemen suddenly revived, almost close to the house. lizzy turned to the staircase window, opened the casement about an inch, and put her face close to the aperture. 'yes, one of 'em is latimer,' she whispered. 'he always rides a white horse. one would think it was the last colour for a man in that line.' stockdale looked, and saw the white shape of the animal as it passed by; but before the riders had gone another ten yards, latimer reined in his horse, and said something to his companion which neither stockdale nor lizzy could hear. its drift was, however, soon made evident, for the other man stopped also; and sharply turning the horses' heads they cautiously retraced their steps. when they were again opposite mrs. newberry's garden, latimer dismounted, and the man on the dark horse did the same. lizzy and stockdale, intently listening and observing the proceedings, naturally put their heads as close as possible to the slit formed by the slightly opened casement; and thus it occurred that at last their cheeks came positively into contact. they went on listening, as if they did not know of the singular incident which had happened to their faces, and the pressure of each to each rather increased than lessened with the lapse of time. they could hear the excisemen sniffing the air like hounds as they paced slowly along. when they reached the spot where the tub had burst, both stopped on the instant. 'ay, ay, 'tis quite strong here,' said the second officer. 'shall we knock at the door?' 'well, no,' said latimer. 'maybe this is only a trick to put us off the scent. they wouldn't kick up this stink anywhere near their hiding-place. i have known such things before.' 'anyhow, the things, or some of 'em, must have been brought this way,' said the other. 'yes,' said latimer musingly. 'unless 'tis all done to tole us the wrong way. i have a mind that we go home for to-night without saying a word, and come the first thing in the morning with more hands. i know they have storages about here, but we can do nothing by this owl's light. we will look round the parish and see if everybody is in bed, john; and if all is quiet, we will do as i say.' they went on, and the two inside the window could hear them passing leisurely through the whole village, the street of which curved round at the bottom and entered the turnpike road at another junction. this way the excisemen followed, and the amble of their horses died quite away. 'what will you do?' said stockdale, withdrawing from his position. she knew that he alluded to the coming search by the officers, to divert her attention from their own tender incident by the casement, which he wished to be passed over as a thing rather dreamt of than done. 'o, nothing,' she replied, with as much coolness as she could command under her disappointment at his manner. 'we often have such storms as this. you would not be frightened if you knew what fools they are. fancy riding o' horseback through the place: of course they will hear and see nobody while they make that noise; but they are always afraid to get off, in case some of our fellows should burst out upon 'em, and tie them up to the gate-post, as they have done before now. good-night, mr. stockdale.' she closed the window and went to her room, where a tear fell from her eyes; and that not because of the alertness of the riding-officers. chapter vi--the great search at nether-moynton stockdale was so excited by the events of the evening, and the dilemma that he was placed in between conscience and love, that he did not sleep, or even doze, but remained as broadly awake as at noonday. as soon as the grey light began to touch ever so faintly the whiter objects in his bedroom he arose, dressed himself, and went downstairs into the road. the village was already astir. several of the carriers had heard the well-known tramp of latimer's horse while they were undressing in the dark that night, and had already communicated with each other and owlett on the subject. the only doubt seemed to be about the safety of those tubs which had been left under the church gallery-stairs, and after a short discussion at the corner of the mill, it was agreed that these should be removed before it got lighter, and hidden in the middle of a double hedge bordering the adjoining field. however, before anything could be carried into effect, the footsteps of many men were heard coming down the lane from the highway. 'damn it, here they be,' said owlett, who, having already drawn the hatch and started his mill for the day, stood stolidly at the mill-door covered with flour, as if the interest of his whole soul was bound up in the shaking walls around him. the two or three with whom he had been talking dispersed to their usual work, and when the excise officers, and the formidable body of men they had hired, reached the village cross, between the mill and mrs. newberry's house, the village wore the natural aspect of a place beginning its morning labours. 'now,' said latimer to his associates, who numbered thirteen men in all, 'what i know is that the things are somewhere in this here place. we have got the day before us, and 'tis hard if we can't light upon 'em and get 'em to budmouth custom-house before night. first we will try the fuel-houses, and then we'll work our way into the chimmers, and then to the ricks and stables, and so creep round. you have nothing but your noses to guide ye, mind, so use 'em to-day if you never did in your lives before.' then the search began. owlett, during the early part, watched from his mill-window, lizzy from the door of her house, with the greatest self- possession. a farmer down below, who also had a share in the run, rode about with one eye on his fields and the other on latimer and his myrmidons, prepared to put them off the scent if he should be asked a question. stockdale, who was no smuggler at all, felt more anxiety than the worst of them, and went about his studies with a heavy heart, coming frequently to the door to ask lizzy some question or other on the consequences to her of the tubs being found. 'the consequences,' she said quietly, 'are simply that i shall lose 'em. as i have none in the house or garden, they can't touch me personally.' 'but you have some in the orchard?' 'owlett rents that of me, and he lends it to others. so it will be hard to say who put any tubs there if they should be found.' there was never such a tremendous sniffing known as that which took place in nether-moynton parish and its vicinity this day. all was done methodically, and mostly on hands and knees. at different hours of the day they had different plans. from daybreak to breakfast-time the officers used their sense of smell in a direct and straightforward manner only, pausing nowhere but at such places as the tubs might be supposed to be secreted in at that very moment, pending their removal on the following night. among the places tested and examined were hollow trees cupboards culverts potato-graves clock-cases hedgerows fuel-houses chimney-flues faggot-ricks bedrooms rainwater-butts haystacks apple-lofts pigsties coppers and ovens. after breakfast they recommenced with renewed vigour, taking a new line; that is to say, directing their attention to clothes that might be supposed to have come in contact with the tubs in their removal from the shore, such garments being usually tainted with the spirit, owing to its oozing between the staves. they now sniffed at - smock-frocks smiths' and shoemakers' aprons old shirts and waistcoats knee-naps and hedging-gloves coats and hats tarpaulins breeches and leggings market-cloaks women's shawls and gowns scarecrows and as soon as the mid-day meal was over, they pushed their search into places where the spirits might have been thrown away in alarm:- horse-ponds mixens sinks in yards stable-drains wet ditches road-scrapings, and cinder-heaps cesspools back-door gutters. but still these indefatigable excisemen discovered nothing more than the original tell-tale smell in the road opposite lizzy's house, which even yet had not passed off. 'i'll tell ye what it is, men,' said latimer, about three o'clock in the afternoon, 'we must begin over again. find them tubs i will.' the men, who had been hired for the day, looked at their hands and knees, muddy with creeping on all fours so frequently, and rubbed their noses, as if they had almost had enough of it; for the quantity of bad air which had passed into each one's nostril had rendered it nearly as insensible as a flue. however, after a moment's hesitation, they prepared to start anew, except three, whose power of smell had quite succumbed under the excessive wear and tear of the day. by this time not a male villager was to be seen in the parish. owlett was not at his mill, the farmers were not in their fields, the parson was not in his garden, the smith had left his forge, and the wheelwright's shop was silent. 'where the divil are the folk gone?' said latimer, waking up to the fact of their absence, and looking round. 'i'll have 'em up for this! why don't they come and help us? there's not a man about the place but the methodist parson, and he's an old woman. i demand assistance in the king's name!' 'we must find the jineral public afore we can demand that,' said his lieutenant. 'well, well, we shall do better without 'em,' said latimer, who changed his moods at a moment's notice. 'but there's great cause of suspicion in this silence and this keeping out of sight, and i'll bear it in mind. now we will go across to owlett's orchard, and see what we can find there.' stockdale, who heard this discussion from the garden-gate, over which he had been leaning, was rather alarmed, and thought it a mistake of the villagers to keep so completely out of the way. he himself, like the excisemen, had been wondering for the last half-hour what could have become of them. some labourers were of necessity engaged in distant fields, but the master-workmen should have been at home; though one and all, after just showing themselves at their shops, had apparently gone off for the day. he went in to lizzy, who sat at a back window sewing, and said, 'lizzy, where are the men?' lizzy laughed. 'where they mostly are when they're run so hard as this.' she cast her eyes to heaven. 'up there,' she said. stockdale looked up. 'what--on the top of the church tower?' he asked, seeing the direction of her glance. 'yes.' 'well, i expect they will soon have to come down,' said he gravely. 'i have been listening to the officers, and they are going to search the orchard over again, and then every nook in the church.' lizzy looked alarmed for the first time. 'will you go and tell our folk?' she said. 'they ought to be let know.' seeing his conscience struggling within him like a boiling pot, she added, 'no, never mind, i'll go myself.' she went out, descended the garden, and climbed over the churchyard wall at the same time that the preventive-men were ascending the road to the orchard. stockdale could do no less than follow her. by the time that she reached the tower entrance he was at her side, and they entered together. nether-moynton church-tower was, as in many villages, without a turret, and the only way to the top was by going up to the singers' gallery, and thence ascending by a ladder to a square trap-door in the floor of the bell-loft, above which a permanent ladder was fixed, passing through the bells to a hole in the roof. when lizzy and stockdale reached the gallery and looked up, nothing but the trap-door and the five holes for the bell-ropes appeared. the ladder was gone. 'there's no getting up,' said stockdale. 'o yes, there is,' said she. 'there's an eye looking at us at this moment through a knot-hole in that trap-door.' and as she spoke the trap opened, and the dark line of the ladder was seen descending against the white-washed wall. when it touched the bottom lizzy dragged it to its place, and said, 'if you'll go up, i'll follow.' the young man ascended, and presently found himself among consecrated bells for the first time in his life, nonconformity having been in the stockdale blood for some generations. he eyed them uneasily, and looked round for lizzy. owlett stood here, holding the top of the ladder. 'what, be you really one of us?' said the miller. 'it seems so,' said stockdale sadly. 'he's not,' said lizzy, who overheard. 'he's neither for nor against us. he'll do us no harm.' she stepped up beside them, and then they went on to the next stage, which, when they had clambered over the dusty bell-carriages, was of easy ascent, leading towards the hole through which the pale sky appeared, and into the open air. owlett remained behind for a moment, to pull up the lower ladder. 'keep down your heads,' said a voice, as soon as they set foot on the flat. stockdale here beheld all the missing parishioners, lying on their stomachs on the tower roof, except a few who, elevated on their hands and knees, were peeping through the embrasures of the parapet. stockdale did the same, and saw the village lying like a map below him, over which moved the figures of the excisemen, each foreshortened to a crablike object, the crown of his hat forming a circular disc in the centre of him. some of the men had turned their heads when the young preacher's figure arose among them. 'what, mr. stockdale?' said matt grey, in a tone of surprise. 'i'd as lief that it hadn't been,' said jim clarke. 'if the pa'son should see him a trespassing here in his tower, 'twould be none the better for we, seeing how 'a do hate chapel-members. he'd never buy a tub of us again, and he's as good a customer as we have got this side o' warm'll.' 'where is the pa'son?' said lizzy. 'in his house, to be sure, that he mid see nothing of what's going on--where all good folks ought to be, and this young man likewise.' 'well, he has brought some news,' said lizzy. 'they are going to search the orchet and church; can we do anything if they should find?' 'yes,' said her cousin owlett. 'that's what we've been talking o', and we have settled our line. well, be dazed!' the exclamation was caused by his perceiving that some of the searchers, having got into the orchard, and begun stooping and creeping hither and thither, were pausing in the middle, where a tree smaller than the rest was growing. they drew closer, and bent lower than ever upon the ground. 'o, my tubs!' said lizzy faintly, as she peered through the parapet at them. 'they have got 'em, 'a b'lieve,' said owlett. the interest in the movements of the officers was so keen that not a single eye was looking in any other direction; but at that moment a shout from the church beneath them attracted the attention of the smugglers, as it did also of the party in the orchard, who sprang to their feet and went towards the churchyard wall. at the same time those of the government men who had entered the church unperceived by the smugglers cried aloud, 'here be some of 'em at last.' the smugglers remained in a blank silence, uncertain whether 'some of 'em' meant tubs or men; but again peeping cautiously over the edge of the tower they learnt that tubs were the things descried; and soon these fated articles were brought one by one into the middle of the churchyard from their hiding-place under the gallery-stairs. 'they are going to put 'em on hinton's vault till they find the rest!' said lizzy hopelessly. the excisemen had, in fact, begun to pile up the tubs on a large stone slab which was fixed there; and when all were brought out from the tower, two or three of the men were left standing by them, the rest of the party again proceeding to the orchard. the interest of the smugglers in the next manoeuvres of their enemies became painfully intense. only about thirty tubs had been secreted in the lumber of the tower, but seventy were hidden in the orchard, making up all that they had brought ashore as yet, the remainder of the cargo having been tied to a sinker and dropped overboard for another night's operations. the excisemen, having re-entered the orchard, acted as if they were positive that here lay hidden the rest of the tubs, which they were determined to find before nightfall. they spread themselves out round the field, and advancing on all fours as before, went anew round every apple-tree in the enclosure. the young tree in the middle again led them to pause, and at length the whole company gathered there in a way which signified that a second chain of reasoning had led to the same results as the first. when they had examined the sod hereabouts for some minutes, one of the men rose, ran to a disused porch of the church where tools were kept, and returned with the sexton's pickaxe and shovel, with which they set to work. 'are they really buried there?' said the minister, for the grass was so green and uninjured that it was difficult to believe it had been disturbed. the smugglers were too interested to reply, and presently they saw, to their chagrin, the officers stand several on each side of the tree; and, stooping and applying their hands to the soil, they bodily lifted the tree and the turf around it. the apple-tree now showed itself to be growing in a shallow box, with handles for lifting at each of the four sides. under the site of the tree a square hole was revealed, and an exciseman went and looked down. 'it is all up now,' said owlett quietly. 'and now all of ye get down before they notice we are here; and be ready for our next move. i had better bide here till dark, or they may take me on suspicion, as 'tis on my ground. i'll be with ye as soon as daylight begins to pink in.' 'and i?' said lizzy. 'you please look to the linch-pins and screws; then go indoors and know nothing at all. the chaps will do the rest.' the ladder was replaced, and all but owlett descended, the men passing off one by one at the back of the church, and vanishing on their respective errands. lizzy walked boldly along the street, followed closely by the minister. 'you are going indoors, mrs. newberry?' he said. she knew from the words 'mrs. newberry' that the division between them had widened yet another degree. 'i am not going home,' she said. 'i have a little thing to do before i go in. martha sarah will get your tea.' 'o, i don't mean on that account,' said stockdale. 'what can you have to do further in this unhallowed affair?' 'only a little,' she said. 'what is that? i'll go with you.' 'no, i shall go by myself. will you please go indoors? i shall be there in less than an hour.' 'you are not going to run any danger, lizzy?' said the young man, his tenderness reasserting itself. 'none whatever--worth mentioning,' answered she, and went down towards the cross. stockdale entered the garden gate, and stood behind it looking on. the excisemen were still busy in the orchard, and at last he was tempted to enter, and watch their proceedings. when he came closer he found that the secret cellar, of whose existence he had been totally unaware, was formed by timbers placed across from side to side about a foot under the ground, and grassed over. the excisemen looked up at stockdale's fair and downy countenance, and evidently thinking him above suspicion, went on with their work again. as soon as all the tubs were taken out, they began tearing up the turf; pulling out the timbers, and breaking in the sides, till the cellar was wholly dismantled and shapeless, the apple-tree lying with its roots high to the air. but the hole which had in its time held so much contraband merchandize was never completely filled up, either then or afterwards, a depression in the greensward marking the spot to this day. chapter vii--the walk to warm'ell cross and afterwards as the goods had all to be carried to budmouth that night, the excisemen's next object was to find horses and carts for the journey, and they went about the village for that purpose. latimer strode hither and thither with a lump of chalk in his hand, marking broad-arrows so vigorously on every vehicle and set of harness that he came across, that it seemed as if he would chalk broad-arrows on the very hedges and roads. the owner of every conveyance so marked was bound to give it up for government purposes. stockdale, who had had enough of the scene, turned indoors thoughtful and depressed. lizzy was already there, having come in at the back, though she had not yet taken off her bonnet. she looked tired, and her mood was not much brighter than his own. they had but little to say to each other; and the minister went away and attempted to read; but at this he could not succeed, and he shook the little bell for tea. lizzy herself brought in the tray, the girl having run off into the village during the afternoon, too full of excitement at the proceedings to remember her state of life. however, almost before the sad lovers had said anything to each other, martha came in in a steaming state. 'o, there's such a stoor, mrs. newberry and mr. stockdale! the king's excisemen can't get the carts ready nohow at all! they pulled thomas ballam's, and william rogers's, and stephen sprake's carts into the road, and off came the wheels, and down fell the carts; and they found there was no linch-pins in the arms; and then they tried samuel shane's waggon, and found that the screws were gone from he, and at last they looked at the dairyman's cart, and he's got none neither! they have gone now to the blacksmith's to get some made, but he's nowhere to be found!' stockdale looked at lizzy, who blushed very slightly, and went out of the room, followed by martha sarah. but before they had got through the passage there was a rap at the front door, and stockdale recognized latimer's voice addressing mrs. newberry, who had turned back. 'for god's sake, mrs. newberry, have you seen hardman the blacksmith up this way? if we could get hold of him, we'd e'en a'most drag him by the hair of his head to his anvil, where he ought to be.' 'he's an idle man, mr. latimer,' said lizzy archly. 'what do you want him for?' 'why, there isn't a horse in the place that has got more than three shoes on, and some have only two. the waggon-wheels be without strakes, and there's no linch-pins to the carts. what with that, and the bother about every set of harness being out of order, we shan't be off before nightfall--upon my soul we shan't. 'tis a rough lot, mrs. newberry, that you've got about you here; but they'll play at this game once too often, mark my words they will! there's not a man in the parish that don't deserve to be whipped.' it happened that hardman was at that moment a little further up the lane, smoking his pipe behind a holly-bush. when latimer had done speaking he went on in this direction, and hardman, hearing the exciseman's steps, found curiosity too strong for prudence. he peeped out from the bush at the very moment that latimer's glance was on it. there was nothing left for him to do but to come forward with unconcern. 'i've been looking for you for the last hour!' said latimer with a glare in his eye. 'sorry to hear that,' said hardman. 'i've been out for a stroll, to look for more hid tubs, to deliver 'em up to gover'ment.' 'o yes, hardman, we know it,' said latimer, with withering sarcasm. 'we know that you'll deliver 'em up to gover'ment. we know that all the parish is helping us, and have been all day! now you please walk along with me down to your shop, and kindly let me hire ye in the king's name.' they went down the lane together; and presently there resounded from the smithy the ring of a hammer not very briskly swung. however, the carts and horses were got into some sort of travelling condition, but it was not until after the clock had struck six, when the muddy roads were glistening under the horizontal light of the fading day. the smuggled tubs were soon packed into the vehicles, and latimer, with three of his assistants, drove slowly out of the village in the direction of the port of budmouth, some considerable number of miles distant, the other excisemen being left to watch for the remainder of the cargo, which they knew to have been sunk somewhere between ringsworth and lulstead cove, and to unearth owlett, the only person clearly implicated by the discovery of the cave. women and children stood at the doors as the carts, each chalked with the government pitchfork, passed in the increasing twilight; and as they stood they looked at the confiscated property with a melancholy expression that told only too plainly the relation which they bore to the trade. 'well, lizzy,' said stockdale, when the crackle of the wheels had nearly died away. 'this is a fit finish to your adventure. i am truly thankful that you have got off without suspicion, and the loss only of the liquor. will you sit down and let me talk to you?' 'by and by,' she said. 'but i must go out now.' 'not to that horrid shore again?' he said blankly. 'no, not there. i am only going to see the end of this day's business.' he did not answer to this, and she moved towards the door slowly, as if waiting for him to say something more. 'you don't offer to come with me,' she added at last. 'i suppose that's because you hate me after all this?' 'can you say it, lizzy, when you know i only want to save you from such practices? come with you of course i will, if it is only to take care of you. but why will you go out again?' 'because i cannot rest indoors. something is happening, and i must know what. now, come!' and they went into the dusk together. when they reached the turnpike-road she turned to the right, and he soon perceived that they were following the direction of the excisemen and their load. he had given her his arm, and every now and then she suddenly pulled it back, to signify that he was to halt a moment and listen. they had walked rather quickly along the first quarter of a mile, and on the second or third time of standing still she said, 'i hear them ahead--don't you?' 'yes,' he said; 'i hear the wheels. but what of that?' 'i only want to know if they get clear away from the neighbourhood.' 'ah,' said he, a light breaking upon him. 'something desperate is to be attempted!--and now i remember there was not a man about the village when we left.' 'hark!' she murmured. the noise of the cartwheels had stopped, and given place to another sort of sound. ''tis a scuffle!' said stockdale. 'there'll be murder! lizzy, let go my arm; i am going on. on my conscience, i must not stay here and do nothing!' 'there'll be no murder, and not even a broken head,' she said. 'our men are thirty to four of them: no harm will be done at all.' 'then there is an attack!' exclaimed stockdale; 'and you knew it was to be. why should you side with men who break the laws like this?' 'why should you side with men who take from country traders what they have honestly bought wi' their own money in france?' said she firmly. 'they are not honestly bought,' said he. 'they are,' she contradicted. 'i and owlett and the others paid thirty shillings for every one of the tubs before they were put on board at cherbourg, and if a king who is nothing to us sends his people to steal our property, we have a right to steal it back again.' stockdale did not stop to argue the matter, but went quickly in the direction of the noise, lizzy keeping at his side. 'don't you interfere, will you, dear richard?' she said anxiously, as they drew near. 'don't let us go any closer: 'tis at warm'ell cross where they are seizing 'em. you can do no good, and you may meet with a hard blow!' 'let us see first what is going on,' he said. but before they had got much further the noise of the cartwheels began again; and stockdale soon found that they were coming towards him. in another minute the three carts came up, and stockdale and lizzy stood in the ditch to let them pass. instead of being conducted by four men, as had happened when they went out of the village, the horses and carts were now accompanied by a body of from twenty to thirty, all of whom, as stockdale perceived to his astonishment, had blackened faces. among them walked six or eight huge female figures, whom, from their wide strides, stockdale guessed to be men in disguise. as soon as the party discerned lizzy and her companion four or five fell back, and when the carts had passed, came close to the pair. 'there is no walking up this way for the present,' said one of the gaunt women, who wore curls a foot long, dangling down the sides of her face, in the fashion of the time. stockdale recognized this lady's voice as owlett's. 'why not?' said stockdale. 'this is the public highway.' 'now look here, youngster,' said owlett. 'o, 'tis the methodist parson!--what, and mrs. newberry! well, you'd better not go up that way, lizzy. they've all run off, and folks have got their own again.' the miller then hastened on and joined his comrades. stockdale and lizzy also turned back. 'i wish all this hadn't been forced upon us,' she said regretfully. 'but if those excisemen had got off with the tubs, half the people in the parish would have been in want for the next month or two.' stockdale was not paying much attention to her words, and he said, 'i don't think i can go back like this. those four poor excisemen may be murdered for all i know.' 'murdered!' said lizzy impatiently. 'we don't do murder here.' 'well, i shall go as far as warm'ell cross to see,' said stockdale decisively; and, without wishing her safe home or anything else, the minister turned back. lizzy stood looking at him till his form was absorbed in the shades; and then, with sadness, she went in the direction of nether-moynton. the road was lonely, and after nightfall at this time of the year there was often not a passer for hours. stockdale pursued his way without hearing a sound beyond that of his own footsteps; and in due time he passed beneath the trees of the plantation which surrounded the warm'ell cross-road. before he had reached the point of intersection he heard voices from the thicket. 'hoi-hoi-hoi! help, help!' the voices were not at all feeble or despairing, but they were unmistakably anxious. stockdale had no weapon, and before plunging into the pitchy darkness of the plantation he pulled a stake from the hedge, to use in case of need. when he got among the trees he shouted--'what's the matter--where are you?' 'here,' answered the voices; and, pushing through the brambles in that direction, he came near the objects of his search. 'why don't you come forward?' said stockdale. 'we be tied to the trees!' 'who are you?' 'poor will latimer the exciseman!' said one plaintively. 'just come and cut these cords, there's a good man. we were afraid nobody would pass by to-night.' stockdale soon loosened them, upon which they stretched their limbs and stood at their ease. 'the rascals!' said latimer, getting now into a rage, though he had seemed quite meek when stockdale first came up. ''tis the same set of fellows. i know they were moynton chaps to a man.' 'but we can't swear to 'em,' said another. 'not one of 'em spoke.' 'what are you going to do?' said stockdale. 'i'd fain go back to moynton, and have at 'em again!' said latimer. 'so would we!' said his comrades. 'fight till we die!' said latimer. 'we will, we will!' said his men. 'but,' said latimer, more frigidly, as they came out of the plantation, 'we don't know that these chaps with black faces were moynton men? and proof is a hard thing.' 'so it is,' said the rest. 'and therefore we won't do nothing at all,' said latimer, with complete dispassionateness. 'for my part, i'd sooner be them than we. the clitches of my arms are burning like fire from the cords those two strapping women tied round 'em. my opinion is, now i have had time to think o't, that you may serve your gover'ment at too high a price. for these two nights and days i have not had an hour's rest; and, please god, here's for home-along.' the other officers agreed heartily to this course; and, thanking stockdale for his timely assistance, they parted from him at the cross, taking themselves the western road, and stockdale going back to nether- moynton. during that walk the minister was lost in reverie of the most painful kind. as soon as he got into the house, and before entering his own rooms, he advanced to the door of the little back parlour in which lizzy usually sat with her mother. he found her there alone. stockdale went forward, and, like a man in a dream, looked down upon the table that stood between him and the young woman, who had her bonnet and cloak still on. as he did not speak, she looked up from her chair at him, with misgiving in her eye. 'where are they gone?' he then said listlessly. 'who?--i don't know. i have seen nothing of them since. i came straight in here.' 'if your men can manage to get off with those tubs, it will be a great profit to you, i suppose?' 'a share will be mine, a share my cousin owlett's, a share to each of the two farmers, and a share divided amongst the men who helped us.' 'and you still think,' he went on slowly, 'that you will not give this business up?' lizzy rose, and put her hand upon his shoulder. 'don't ask that,' she whispered. 'you don't know what you are asking. i must tell you, though i meant not to do it. what i make by that trade is all i have to keep my mother and myself with.' he was astonished. 'i did not dream of such a thing,' he said. 'i would rather have swept the streets, had i been you. what is money compared with a clear conscience?' 'my conscience is clear. i know my mother, but the king i have never seen. his dues are nothing to me. but it is a great deal to me that my mother and i should live.' 'marry me, and promise to give it up. i will keep your mother.' 'it is good of you,' she said, trembling a little. 'let me think of it by myself. i would rather not answer now.' she reserved her answer till the next day, and came into his room with a solemn face. 'i cannot do what you wished!' she said passionately. 'it is too much to ask. my whole life ha' been passed in this way.' her words and manner showed that before entering she had been struggling with herself in private, and that the contention had been strong. stockdale turned pale, but he spoke quietly. 'then, lizzy, we must part. i cannot go against my principles in this matter, and i cannot make my profession a mockery. you know how i love you, and what i would do for you; but this one thing i cannot do.' 'but why should you belong to that profession?' she burst out. 'i have got this large house; why can't you marry me, and live here with us, and not be a methodist preacher any more? i assure you, richard, it is no harm, and i wish you could only see it as i do! we only carry it on in winter: in summer it is never done at all. it stirs up one's dull life at this time o' the year, and gives excitement, which i have got so used to now that i should hardly know how to do 'ithout it. at nights, when the wind blows, instead of being dull and stupid, and not noticing whether it do blow or not, your mind is afield, even if you are not afield yourself; and you are wondering how the chaps are getting on; and you walk up and down the room, and look out o' window, and then you go out yourself, and know your way about as well by night as by day, and have hairbreadth escapes from old latimer and his fellows, who are too stupid ever to really frighten us, and only make us a bit nimble.' 'he frightened you a little last night, anyhow: and i would advise you to drop it before it is worse.' she shook her head. 'no, i must go on as i have begun. i was born to it. it is in my blood, and i can't be cured. o, richard, you cannot think what a hard thing you have asked, and how sharp you try me when you put me between this and my love for 'ee!' stockdale was leaning with his elbow on the mantelpiece, his hands over his eyes. 'we ought never to have met, lizzy,' he said. 'it was an ill day for us! i little thought there was anything so hopeless and impossible in our engagement as this. well, it is too late now to regret consequences in this way. i have had the happiness of seeing you and knowing you at least.' 'you dissent from church, and i dissent from state,' she said. 'and i don't see why we are not well matched.' he smiled sadly, while lizzy remained looking down, her eyes beginning to overflow. that was an unhappy evening for both of them, and the days that followed were unhappy days. both she and he went mechanically about their employments, and his depression was marked in the village by more than one of his denomination with whom he came in contact. but lizzy, who passed her days indoors, was unsuspected of being the cause: for it was generally understood that a quiet engagement to marry existed between her and her cousin owlett, and had existed for some time. thus uncertainly the week passed on; till one morning stockdale said to her: 'i have had a letter, lizzy. i must call you that till i am gone.' 'gone?' said she blankly. 'yes,' he said. 'i am going from this place. i felt it would be better for us both that i should not stay after what has happened. in fact, i couldn't stay here, and look on you from day to day, without becoming weak and faltering in my course. i have just heard of an arrangement by which the other minister can arrive here in about a week; and let me go elsewhere.' that he had all this time continued so firmly fixed in his resolution came upon her as a grievous surprise. 'you never loved me!' she said bitterly. 'i might say the same,' he returned; 'but i will not. grant me one favour. come and hear my last sermon on the day before i go.' lizzy, who was a church-goer on sunday mornings, frequently attended stockdale's chapel in the evening with the rest of the double-minded; and she promised. it became known that stockdale was going to leave, and a good many people outside his own sect were sorry to hear it. the intervening days flew rapidly away, and on the evening of the sunday which preceded the morning of his departure lizzy sat in the chapel to hear him for the last time. the little building was full to overflowing, and he took up the subject which all had expected, that of the contraband trade so extensively practised among them. his hearers, in laying his words to their own hearts, did not perceive that they were most particularly directed against lizzy, till the sermon waxed warm, and stockdale nearly broke down with emotion. in truth his own earnestness, and her sad eyes looking up at him, were too much for the young man's equanimity. he hardly knew how he ended. he saw lizzy, as through a mist, turn and go away with the rest of the congregation; and shortly afterwards followed her home. she invited him to supper, and they sat down alone, her mother having, as was usual with her on sunday nights, gone to bed early. 'we will part friends, won't we?' said lizzy, with forced gaiety, and never alluding to the sermon: a reticence which rather disappointed him. 'we will,' he said, with a forced smile on his part; and they sat down. it was the first meal that they had ever shared together in their lives, and probably the last that they would so share. when it was over, and the indifferent conversation could no longer be continued, he arose and took her hand. 'lizzy,' he said, 'do you say we must part--do you?' 'you do,' she said solemnly. 'i can say no more.' 'nor i,' said he. 'if that is your answer, good-bye!' stockdale bent over her and kissed her, and she involuntarily returned his kiss. 'i shall go early,' he said hurriedly. 'i shall not see you again.' and he did leave early. he fancied, when stepping forth into the grey morning light, to mount the van which was to carry him away, that he saw a face between the parted curtains of lizzy's window, but the light was faint, and the panes glistened with wet; so he could not be sure. stockdale mounted the vehicle, and was gone; and on the following sunday the new minister preached in the chapel of the moynton wesleyans. one day, two years after the parting, stockdale, now settled in a midland town, came into nether-moynton by carrier in the original way. jogging along in the van that afternoon he had put questions to the driver, and the answers that he received interested the minister deeply. the result of them was that he went without the least hesitation to the door of his former lodging. it was about six o'clock in the evening, and the same time of year as when he had left; now, too, the ground was damp and glistening, the west was bright, and lizzy's snowdrops were raising their heads in the border under the wall. lizzy must have caught sight of him from the window, for by the time that he reached the door she was there holding it open: and then, as if she had not sufficiently considered her act of coming out, she drew herself back, saying with some constraint, 'mr. stockdale!' 'you knew it was,' said stockdale, taking her hand. 'i wrote to say i should call.' 'yes, but you did not say when,' she answered. 'i did not. i was not quite sure when my business would lead me to these parts.' 'you only came because business brought you near?' 'well, that is the fact; but i have often thought i should like to come on purpose to see you . . . but what's all this that has happened? i told you how it would be, lizzy, and you would not listen to me.' 'i would not,' she said sadly. 'but i had been brought up to that life; and it was second nature to me. however, it is all over now. the officers have blood-money for taking a man dead or alive, and the trade is going to nothing. we were hunted down like rats.' 'owlett is quite gone, i hear.' 'yes. he is in america. we had a dreadful struggle that last time, when they tried to take him. it is a perfect miracle that he lived through it; and it is a wonder that i was not killed. i was shot in the hand. it was not by aim; the shot was really meant for my cousin; but i was behind, looking on as usual, and the bullet came to me. it bled terribly, but i got home without fainting; and it healed after a time. you know how he suffered?' 'no,' said stockdale. 'i only heard that he just escaped with his life.' 'he was shot in the back; but a rib turned the ball. he was badly hurt. we would not let him be took. the men carried him all night across the meads to kingsbere, and hid him in a barn, dressing his wound as well as they could, till he was so far recovered as to be able to get about. he had gied up his mill for some time; and at last he got to bristol, and took a passage to america, and he's settled in wisconsin.' 'what do you think of smuggling now?' said the minister gravely. 'i own that we were wrong,' said she. 'but i have suffered for it. i am very poor now, and my mother has been dead these twelve months . . . but won't you come in, mr. stockdale?' stockdale went in; and it is to be supposed that they came to an understanding; for a fortnight later there was a sale of lizzy's furniture, and after that a wedding at a chapel in a neighbouring town. he took her away from her old haunts to the home that he had made for himself in his native county, where she studied her duties as a minister's wife with praiseworthy assiduity. it is said that in after years she wrote an excellent tract called render unto caesar; or, the repentant villagers, in which her own experience was anonymously used as the introductory story. stockdale got it printed, after making some corrections, and putting in a few powerful sentences of his own; and many hundreds of copies were distributed by the couple in the course of their married life. april . transcribed from the macmillan and co. edition by david price, email ccx @coventry.ac.uk a changed man and other tales contents: prefatory note a changed man the waiting supper alicia's diary the grave by the handpost enter a dragoon a tryst at an ancient earthwork what the shepherd saw a committee man of 'the terror' master john horseleigh, knight the duke's reappearance a mere interlude prefatory note i reprint in this volume, for what they may be worth, a dozen minor novels that have been published in the periodical press at various dates in the past, in order to render them accessible to readers who desire to have them in the complete series issued by my publishers. for aid in reclaiming some of the narratives i express my thanks to the proprietors and editors of the newspapers and magazines in whose pages they first appeared. t. h. august . a changed man chapter i the person who, next to the actors themselves, chanced to know most of their story, lived just below 'top o' town' (as the spot was called) in an old substantially-built house, distinguished among its neighbours by having an oriel window on the first floor, whence could be obtained a raking view of the high street, west and east, the former including laura's dwelling, the end of the town avenue hard by (in which were played the odd pranks hereafter to be mentioned), the port-bredy road rising westwards, and the turning that led to the cavalry barracks where the captain was quartered. looking eastward down the town from the same favoured gazebo, the long perspective of houses declined and dwindled till they merged in the highway across the moor. the white riband of road disappeared over grey's bridge a quarter of a mile off, to plunge into innumerable rustic windings, shy shades, and solitary undulations up hill and down dale for one hundred and twenty miles till it exhibited itself at hyde park corner as a smooth bland surface in touch with a busy and fashionable world. to the barracks aforesaid had recently arrived the ---th hussars, a regiment new to the locality. almost before any acquaintance with its members had been made by the townspeople, a report spread that they were a 'crack' body of men, and had brought a splendid band. for some reason or other the town had not been used as the headquarters of cavalry for many years, the various troops stationed there having consisted of casual detachments only; so that it was with a sense of honour that everybody--even the small furniture-broker from whom the married troopers hired tables and chairs--received the news of their crack quality. in those days the hussar regiments still wore over the left shoulder that attractive attachment, or frilled half-coat, hanging loosely behind like the wounded wing of a bird, which was called the pelisse, though it was known among the troopers themselves as a 'sling-jacket.' it added amazingly to their picturesqueness in women's eyes, and, indeed, in the eyes of men also. the burgher who lived in the house with the oriel window sat during a great many hours of the day in that projection, for he was an invalid, and time hung heavily on his hands unless he maintained a constant interest in proceedings without. not more than a week after the arrival of the hussars his ears were assailed by the shout of one schoolboy to another in the street below. 'have 'ee heard this about the hussars? they are haunted! yes--a ghost troubles 'em; he has followed 'em about the world for years.' a haunted regiment: that was a new idea for either invalid or stalwart. the listener in the oriel came to the conclusion that there were some lively characters among the ---th hussars. he made captain maumbry's acquaintance in an informal manner at an afternoon tea to which he went in a wheeled chair--one of the very rare outings that the state of his health permitted. maumbry showed himself to be a handsome man of twenty-eight or thirty, with an attractive hint of wickedness in his manner that was sure to make him adorable with good young women. the large dark eyes that lit his pale face expressed this wickedness strongly, though such was the adaptability of their rays that one could think they might have expressed sadness or seriousness just as readily, if he had had a mind for such. an old and deaf lady who was present asked captain maumbry bluntly: 'what's this we hear about you? they say your regiment is haunted.' the captain's face assumed an aspect of grave, even sad, concern. 'yes,' he replied, 'it is too true.' some younger ladies smiled till they saw how serious he looked, when they looked serious likewise. 'really?' said the old lady. 'yes. we naturally don't wish to say much about it.' 'no, no; of course not. but--how haunted?' 'well; the--thing, as i'll call it, follows us. in country quarters or town, abroad or at home, it's just the same.' 'how do you account for it?' 'h'm.' maumbry lowered his voice. 'some crime committed by certain of our regiment in past years, we suppose.' 'dear me . . . how very horrid, and singular!' 'but, as i said, we don't speak of it much.' 'no . . . no.' when the hussar was gone, a young lady, disclosing a long-suppressed interest, asked if the ghost had been seen by any of the town. the lawyer's son, who always had the latest borough news, said that, though it was seldom seen by any one but the hussars themselves, more than one townsman and woman had already set eyes on it, to his or her terror. the phantom mostly appeared very late at night, under the dense trees of the town-avenue nearest the barracks. it was about ten feet high; its teeth chattered with a dry naked sound, as if they were those of a skeleton; and its hip-bones could be heard grating in their sockets. during the darkest weeks of winter several timid persons were seriously frightened by the object answering to this cheerful description, and the police began to look into the matter. whereupon the appearances grew less frequent, and some of the boys of the regiment thankfully stated that they had not been so free from ghostly visitation for years as they had become since their arrival in casterbridge. this playing at ghosts was the most innocent of the amusements indulged in by the choice young spirits who inhabited the lichened, red-brick building at the top of the town bearing 'w.d.' and a broad arrow on its quoins. far more serious escapades--levities relating to love, wine, cards, betting--were talked of, with no doubt more or less of exaggeration. that the hussars, captain maumbry included, were the cause of bitter tears to several young women of the town and country is unquestionably true, despite the fact that the gaieties of the young men wore a more staring colour in this old-fashioned place than they would have done in a large and modern city. chapter ii regularly once a week they rode out in marching order. returning up the town on one of these occasions, the romantic pelisse flapping behind each horseman's shoulder in the soft south-west wind, captain maumbry glanced up at the oriel. a mutual nod was exchanged between him and the person who sat there reading. the reader and a friend in the room with him followed the troop with their eyes all the way up the street, till, when the soldiers were opposite the house in which laura lived, that young lady became discernible in the balcony. 'they are engaged to be married, i hear,' said the friend. 'who--maumbry and laura? never--so soon?' 'yes.' 'he'll never marry. several girls have been mentioned in connection with his name. i am sorry for laura.' 'oh, but you needn't be. they are excellently matched.' 'she's only one more.' 'she's one more, and more still. she has regularly caught him. she is a born player of the game of hearts, and she knew how to beat him in his own practices. if there is one woman in the town who has any chance of holding her own and marrying him, she is that woman.' this was true, as it turned out. by natural proclivity laura had from the first entered heart and soul into military romance as exhibited in the plots and characters of those living exponents of it who came under her notice. from her earliest young womanhood civilians, however promising, had no chance of winning her interest if the meanest warrior were within the horizon. it may be that the position of her uncle's house (which was her home) at the corner of west street nearest the barracks, the daily passing of the troops, the constant blowing of trumpet-calls a furlong from her windows, coupled with the fact that she knew nothing of the inner realities of military life, and hence idealized it, had also helped her mind's original bias for thinking men-at-arms the only ones worthy of a woman's heart. captain maumbry was a typical prize; one whom all surrounding maidens had coveted, ached for, angled for, wept for, had by her judicious management become subdued to her purpose; and in addition to the pleasure of marrying the man she loved, laura had the joy of feeling herself hated by the mothers of all the marriageable girls of the neighbourhood. the man in the oriel went to the wedding; not as a guest, for at this time he was but slightly acquainted with the parties; but mainly because the church was close to his house; partly, too, for a reason which moved many others to be spectators of the ceremony; a subconsciousness that, though the couple might be happy in their experiences, there was sufficient possibility of their being otherwise to colour the musings of an onlooker with a pleasing pathos of conjecture. he could on occasion do a pretty stroke of rhyming in those days, and he beguiled the time of waiting by pencilling on a blank page of his prayer-book a few lines which, though kept private then, may be given here:- at a hasty wedding (triolet) if hours be years the twain are blest, for now they solace swift desire by lifelong ties that tether zest if hours be years. the twain are blest do eastern suns slope never west, nor pallid ashes follow fire. if hours be years the twain are blest for now they solace swift desire. as if, however, to falsify all prophecies, the couple seemed to find in marriage the secret of perpetuating the intoxication of a courtship which, on maumbry's side at least, had opened without serious intent. during the winter following they were the most popular pair in and about casterbridge--nay in south wessex itself. no smart dinner in the country houses of the younger and gayer families within driving distance of the borough was complete without their lively presence; mrs. maumbry was the blithest of the whirling figures at the county ball; and when followed that inevitable incident of garrison-town life, an amateur dramatic entertainment, it was just the same. the acting was for the benefit of such and such an excellent charity--nobody cared what, provided the play were played--and both captain maumbry and his wife were in the piece, having been in fact, by mutual consent, the originators of the performance. and so with laughter, and thoughtlessness, and movement, all went merrily. there was a little backwardness in the bill-paying of the couple; but in justice to them it must be added that sooner or later all owings were paid. chapter iii at the chapel-of-ease attended by the troops there arose above the edge of the pulpit one sunday an unknown face. this was the face of a new curate. he placed upon the desk, not the familiar sermon book, but merely a bible. the person who tells these things was not present at that service, but he soon learnt that the young curate was nothing less than a great surprise to his congregation; a mixed one always, for though the hussars occupied the body of the building, its nooks and corners were crammed with civilians, whom, up to the present, even the least uncharitable would have described as being attracted thither less by the services than by the soldiery. now there arose a second reason for squeezing into an already overcrowded church. the persuasive and gentle eloquence of mr. sainway operated like a charm upon those accustomed only to the higher and dryer styles of preaching, and for a time the other churches of the town were thinned of their sitters. at this point in the nineteenth century the sermon was the sole reason for churchgoing amongst a vast body of religious people. the liturgy was a formal preliminary, which, like the royal proclamation in a court of assize, had to be got through before the real interest began; and on reaching home the question was simply: who preached, and how did he handle his subject? even had an archbishop officiated in the service proper nobody would have cared much about what was said or sung. people who had formerly attended in the morning only began to go in the evening, and even to the special addresses in the afternoon. one day when captain maumbry entered his wife's drawing-room, filled with hired furniture, she thought he was somebody else, for he had not come upstairs humming the most catching air afloat in musical circles or in his usual careless way. 'what's the matter, jack?' she said without looking up from a note she was writing. 'well--not much, that i know.' 'o, but there is,' she murmured as she wrote. 'why--this cursed new lath in a sheet--i mean the new parson! he wants us to stop the band-playing on sunday afternoons.' laura looked up aghast. 'why, it is the one thing that enables the few rational beings hereabouts to keep alive from saturday to monday!' 'he says all the town flock to the music and don't come to the service, and that the pieces played are profane, or mundane, or inane, or something--not what ought to be played on sunday. of course 'tis lautmann who settles those things.' lautmann was the bandmaster. the barrack-green on sunday afternoons had, indeed, become the promenade of a great many townspeople cheerfully inclined, many even of those who attended in the morning at mr. sainway's service; and little boys who ought to have been listening to the curate's afternoon lecture were too often seen rolling upon the grass and making faces behind the more dignified listeners. laura heard no more about the matter, however, for two or three weeks, when suddenly remembering it she asked her husband if any further objections had been raised. 'o--mr. sainway. i forgot to tell you. i've made his acquaintance. he is not a bad sort of man.' laura asked if either maumbry or some others of the officers did not give the presumptuous curate a good setting down for his interference. 'o well--we've forgotten that. he's a stunning preacher, they tell me.' the acquaintance developed apparently, for the captain said to her a little later on, 'there's a good deal in sainway's argument about having no band on sunday afternoons. after all, it is close to his church. but he doesn't press his objections unduly.' 'i am surprised to hear you defend him!' 'it was only a passing thought of mine. we naturally don't wish to offend the inhabitants of the town if they don't like it.' 'but they do.' the invalid in the oriel never clearly gathered the details of progress in this conflict of lay and clerical opinion; but so it was that, to the disappointment of musicians, the grief of out-walking lovers, and the regret of the junior population of the town and country round, the band- playing on sunday afternoons ceased in casterbridge barrack-square. by this time the maumbrys had frequently listened to the preaching of the gentle if narrow-minded curate; for these light-natured, hit-or-miss, rackety people went to church like others for respectability's sake. none so orthodox as your unmitigated worldling. a more remarkable event was the sight to the man in the window of captain maumbry and mr. sainway walking down the high street in earnest conversation. on his mentioning this fact to a caller he was assured that it was a matter of common talk that they were always together. the observer would soon have learnt this with his own eyes if he had not been told. they began to pass together nearly every day. hitherto mrs. maumbry, in fashionable walking clothes, had usually been her husband's companion; but this was less frequent now. the close and singular friendship between the two men went on for nearly a year, when mr. sainway was presented to a living in a densely-populated town in the midland counties. he bade the parishioners of his old place a reluctant farewell and departed, the touching sermon he preached on the occasion being published by the local printer. everybody was sorry to lose him; and it was with genuine grief that his casterbridge congregation learnt later on that soon after his induction to his benefice, during some bitter weather, he had fallen seriously ill of inflammation of the lungs, of which he eventually died. we now get below the surface of things. of all who had known the dead curate, none grieved for him like the man who on his first arrival had called him a 'lath in a sheet.' mrs. maumbry had never greatly sympathized with the impressive parson; indeed, she had been secretly glad that he had gone away to better himself. he had considerably diminished the pleasures of a woman by whom the joys of earth and good company had been appreciated to the full. sorry for her husband in his loss of a friend who had been none of hers, she was yet quite unprepared for the sequel. 'there is something that i have wanted to tell you lately, dear,' he said one morning at breakfast with hesitation. 'have you guessed what it is?' she had guessed nothing. 'that i think of retiring from the army.' 'what!' 'i have thought more and more of sainway since his death, and of what he used to say to me so earnestly. and i feel certain i shall be right in obeying a call within me to give up this fighting trade and enter the church.' 'what--be a parson?' 'yes.' 'but what should i do?' 'be a parson's wife.' 'never!' she affirmed. 'but how can you help it?' 'i'll run away rather!' she said vehemently; 'no, you mustn't,' maumbry replied, in the tone he used when his mind was made up. 'you'll get accustomed to the idea, for i am constrained to carry it out, though it is against my worldly interests. i am forced on by a hand outside me to tread in the steps of sainway.' 'jack,' she asked, with calm pallor and round eyes; 'do you mean to say seriously that you are arranging to be a curate instead of a soldier?' 'i might say a curate is a soldier--of the church militant; but i don't want to offend you with doctrine. i distinctly say, yes.' late one evening, a little time onward, he caught her sitting by the dim firelight in her room. she did not know he had entered; and he found her weeping. 'what are you crying about, poor dearest?' he said. she started. 'because of what you have told me!' the captain grew very unhappy; but he was undeterred. in due time the town learnt, to its intense surprise, that captain maumbry had retired from the ---th hussars and gone to fountall theological college to prepare for the ministry. chapter iv 'o, the pity of it! such a dashing soldier--so popular--such an acquisition to the town--the soul of social life here! and now! . . . one should not speak ill of the dead, but that dreadful mr. sainway--it was too cruel of him!' this is a summary of what was said when captain, now the reverend, john maumbry was enabled by circumstances to indulge his heart's desire of returning to the scene of his former exploits in the capacity of a minister of the gospel. a low-lying district of the town, which at that date was crowded with impoverished cottagers, was crying for a curate, and mr. maumbry generously offered himself as one willing to undertake labours that were certain to produce little result, and no thanks, credit, or emolument. let the truth be told about him as a clergyman; he proved to be anything but a brilliant success. painstaking, single-minded, deeply in earnest as all could see, his delivery was laboured, his sermons were dull to listen to, and alas, too, too long. even the dispassionate judges who sat by the hour in the bar-parlour of the white hart--an inn standing at the dividing line between the poor quarter aforesaid and the fashionable quarter of maumbry's former triumphs, and hence affording a position of strict impartiality--agreed in substance with the young ladies to the westward, though their views were somewhat more tersely expressed: 'surely, god a'mighty spwiled a good sojer to make a bad pa'son when he shifted cap'n ma'mbry into a sarpless!' the latter knew that such things were said, but he pursued his daily' labours in and out of the hovels with serene unconcern. it was about this time that the invalid in the oriel became more than a mere bowing acquaintance of mrs. maumbry's. she had returned to the town with her husband, and was living with him in a little house in the centre of his circle of ministration, when by some means she became one of the invalid's visitors. after a general conversation while sitting in his room with a friend of both, an incident led up to the matter that still rankled deeply in her soul. her face was now paler and thinner than it had been; even more attractive, her disappointments having inscribed themselves as meek thoughtfulness on a look that was once a little frivolous. the two ladies had called to be allowed to use the window for observing the departure of the hussars, who were leaving for barracks much nearer to london. the troopers turned the corner of barrack road into the top of high street, headed by their band playing 'the girl i left behind me' (which was formerly always the tune for such times, though it is now nearly disused). they came and passed the oriel, where an officer or two, looking up and discovering mrs. maumbry, saluted her, whose eyes filled with tears as the notes of the band waned away. before the little group had recovered from that sense of the romantic which such spectacles impart, mr. maumbry came along the pavement. he probably had bidden his former brethren-in-arms a farewell at the top of the street, for he walked from that direction in his rather shabby clerical clothes, and with a basket on his arm which seemed to hold some purchases he had been making for his poorer parishioners. unlike the soldiers he went along quite unconscious of his appearance or of the scene around. the contrast was too much for laura. with lips that now quivered, she asked the invalid what he thought of the change that had come to her. it was difficult to answer, and with a wilfulness that was too strong in her she repeated the question. 'do you think,' she added, 'that a woman's husband has a right to do such a thing, even if he does feel a certain call to it?' her listener sympathized too largely with both of them to be anything but unsatisfactory in his reply. laura gazed longingly out of the window towards the thin dusty line of hussars, now smalling towards the mellstock ridge. 'i,' she said, 'who should have been in their van on the way to london, am doomed to fester in a hole in durnover lane!' many events had passed and many rumours had been current concerning her before the invalid saw her again after her leave-taking that day. chapter v casterbridge had known many military and civil episodes; many happy times, and times less happy; and now came the time of her visitation. the scourge of cholera had been laid on the suffering country, and the low- lying purlieus of this ancient borough had more than their share of the infliction. mixen lane, in the durnover quarter, and in maumbry's parish, was where the blow fell most heavily. yet there was a certain mercy in its choice of a date, for maumbry was the man for such an hour. the spread of the epidemic was so rapid that many left the town and took lodgings in the villages and farms. mr. maumbry's house was close to the most infected street, and he himself was occupied morn, noon, and night in endeavours to stamp out the plague and in alleviating the sufferings of the victims. so, as a matter of ordinary precaution, he decided to isolate his wife somewhere away from him for a while. she suggested a village by the sea, near budmouth regis, and lodgings were obtained for her at creston, a spot divided from the casterbridge valley by a high ridge that gave it quite another atmosphere, though it lay no more than six miles off. thither she went. while she was rusticating in this place of safety, and her husband was slaving in the slums, she struck up an acquaintance with a lieutenant in the ---st foot, a mr. vannicock, who was stationed with his regiment at the budmouth infantry barracks. as laura frequently sat on the shelving beach, watching each thin wave slide up to her, and hearing, without heeding, its gnaw at the pebbles in its retreat, he often took a walk that way. the acquaintance grew and ripened. her situation, her history, her beauty, her age--a year or two above his own--all tended to make an impression on the young man's heart, and a reckless flirtation was soon in blithe progress upon that lonely shore. it was said by her detractors afterwards that she had chosen her lodging to be near this gentleman, but there is reason to believe that she had never seen him till her arrival there. just now casterbridge was so deeply occupied with its own sad affairs--a daily burying of the dead and destruction of contaminated clothes and bedding--that it had little inclination to promulgate such gossip as may have reached its ears on the pair. nobody long considered laura in the tragic cloud which overhung all. meanwhile, on the budmouth side of the hill the very mood of men was in contrast. the visitation there had been slight and much earlier, and normal occupations and pastimes had been resumed. mr. maumbry had arranged to see laura twice a week in the open air, that she might run no risk from him; and, having heard nothing of the faint rumour, he met her as usual one dry and windy afternoon on the summit of the dividing hill, near where the high road from town to town crosses the old ridge-way at right angles. he waved his hand, and smiled as she approached, shouting to her: 'we will keep this wall between us, dear.' (walls formed the field-fences here.) 'you mustn't be endangered. it won't be for long, with god's help!' 'i will do as you tell me, jack. but you are running too much risk yourself, aren't you? i get little news of you; but i fancy you are.' 'not more than others.' thus somewhat formally they talked, an insulating wind beating the wall between them like a mill-weir. 'but you wanted to ask me something?' he added. 'yes. you know we are trying in budmouth to raise some money for your sufferers; and the way we have thought of is by a dramatic performance. they want me to take a part.' his face saddened. 'i have known so much of that sort of thing, and all that accompanies it! i wish you had thought of some other way.' she said lightly that she was afraid it was all settled. 'you object to my taking a part, then? of course--' he told her that he did not like to say he positively objected. he wished they had chosen an oratorio, or lecture, or anything more in keeping with the necessity it was to relieve. 'but,' said she impatiently, 'people won't come to oratorios or lectures! they will crowd to comedies and farces.' 'well, i cannot dictate to budmouth how it shall earn the money it is going to give us. who is getting up this performance?' 'the boys of the ---st.' 'ah, yes; our old game!' replied mr. maumbry. 'the grief of casterbridge is the excuse for their frivolity. candidly, dear laura, i wish you wouldn't play in it. but i don't forbid you to. i leave the whole to your judgment.' the interview ended, and they went their ways northward and southward. time disclosed to all concerned that mrs. maumbry played in the comedy as the heroine, the lover's part being taken by mr. vannicock. chapter vi thus was helped on an event which the conduct of the mutually-attracted ones had been generating for some time. it is unnecessary to give details. the ---st foot left for bristol, and this precipitated their action. after a week of hesitation she agreed to leave her home at creston and meet vannicock on the ridge hard by, and to accompany him to bath, where he had secured lodgings for her, so that she would be only about a dozen miles from his quarters. accordingly, on the evening chosen, she laid on her dressing-table a note for her husband, running thus:- dear jack--i am unable to endure this life any longer, and i have resolved to put an end to it. i told you i should run away if you persisted in being a clergyman, and now i am doing it. one cannot help one's nature. i have resolved to throw in my lot with mr. vannicock, and i hope rather than expect you will forgive me.--l. then, with hardly a scrap of luggage, she went, ascending to the ridge in the dusk of early evening. almost on the very spot where her husband had stood at their last tryst she beheld the outline of vannicock, who had come all the way from bristol to fetch her. 'i don't like meeting here--it is so unlucky!' she cried to him. 'for god's sake let us have a place of our own. go back to the milestone, and i'll come on.' he went back to the milestone that stands on the north slope of the ridge, where the old and new roads diverge, and she joined him there. she was taciturn and sorrowful when he asked her why she would not meet him on the top. at last she inquired how they were going to travel. he explained that he proposed to walk to mellstock hill, on the other side of casterbridge, where a fly was waiting to take them by a cross-cut into the ivell road, and onward to that town. the bristol railway was open to ivell. this plan they followed, and walked briskly through the dull gloom till they neared casterbridge, which place they avoided by turning to the right at the roman amphitheatre and bearing round to durnover cross. thence the way was solitary and open across the moor to the hill whereon the ivell fly awaited them. 'i have noticed for some time,' she said, 'a lurid glare over the durnover end of the town. it seems to come from somewhere about mixen lane.' 'the lamps,' he suggested. 'there's not a lamp as big as a rushlight in the whole lane. it is where the cholera is worst.' by standfast corner, a little beyond the cross, they suddenly obtained an end view of the lane. large bonfires were burning in the middle of the way, with a view to purifying the air; and from the wretched tenements with which the lane was lined in those days persons were bringing out bedding and clothing. some was thrown into the fires, the rest placed in wheel-barrows and wheeled into the moor directly in the track of the fugitives. they followed on, and came up to where a vast copper was set in the open air. here the linen was boiled and disinfected. by the light of the lanterns laura discovered that her husband was standing by the copper, and that it was he who unloaded the barrow and immersed its contents. the night was so calm and muggy that the conversation by the copper reached her ears. 'are there many more loads to-night?' 'there's the clothes o' they that died this afternoon, sir. but that might bide till to-morrow, for you must be tired out.' 'we'll do it at once, for i can't ask anybody else to undertake it. overturn that load on the grass and fetch the rest.' the man did so and went off with the barrow. maumbry paused for a moment to wipe his face, and resumed his homely drudgery amid this squalid and reeking scene, pressing down and stirring the contents of the copper with what looked like an old rolling-pin. the steam therefrom, laden with death, travelled in a low trail across the meadow. laura spoke suddenly: 'i won't go to-night after all. he is so tired, and i must help him. i didn't know things were so bad as this!' vannicock's arm dropped from her waist, where it had been resting as they walked. 'will you leave?' she asked. 'i will if you say i must. but i'd rather help too.' there was no expostulation in his tone. laura had gone forward. 'jack,' she said, 'i am come to help!' the weary curate turned and held up the lantern. 'o--what, is it you, laura?' he asked in surprise. 'why did you come into this? you had better go back--the risk is great.' 'but i want to help you, jack. please let me help! i didn't come by myself--mr. vannicock kept me company. he will make himself useful too, if he's not gone on. mr. vannicock!' the young lieutenant came forward reluctantly. mr. maumbry spoke formally to him, adding as he resumed his labour, 'i thought the ---st foot had gone to bristol.' 'we have. but i have run down again for a few things.' the two newcomers began to assist, vannicock placing on the ground the small bag containing laura's toilet articles that he had been carrying. the barrowman soon returned with another load, and all continued work for nearly a half-hour, when a coachman came out from the shadows to the north. 'beg pardon, sir,' he whispered to vannicock, 'but i've waited so long on mellstock hill that at last i drove down to the turnpike; and seeing the light here, i ran on to find out what had happened.' lieutenant vannicock told him to wait a few minutes, and the last barrow- load was got through. mr. maumbry stretched himself and breathed heavily, saying, 'there; we can do no more.' as if from the relaxation of effort he seemed to be seized with violent pain. he pressed his hands to his sides and bent forward. 'ah! i think it has got hold of me at last,' he said with difficulty. 'i must try to get home. let mr. vannicock take you back, laura.' he walked a few steps, they helping him, but was obliged to sink down on the grass. 'i am--afraid--you'll have to send for a hurdle, or shutter, or something,' he went on feebly, 'or try to get me into the barrow.' but vannicock had called to the driver of the fly, and they waited until it was brought on from the turnpike hard by. mr. maumbry was placed therein. laura entered with him, and they drove to his humble residence near the cross, where he was got upstairs. vannicock stood outside by the empty fly awhile, but laura did not reappear. he thereupon entered the fly and told the driver to take him back to ivell. chapter vii mr. maumbry had over-exerted himself in the relief of the suffering poor, and fell a victim--one of the last--to the pestilence which had carried off so many. two days later he lay in his coffin. laura was in the room below. a servant brought in some letters, and she glanced them over. one was the note from herself to maumbry, informing him that she was unable to endure life with him any longer and was about to elope with vannicock. having read the letter she took it upstairs to where the dead man was, and slipped it into his coffin. the next day she buried him. she was now free. she shut up his house at durnover cross and returned to her lodgings at creston. soon she had a letter from vannicock, and six weeks after her husband's death her lover came to see her. 'i forgot to give you back this--that night,' he said presently, handing her the little bag she had taken as her whole luggage when leaving. laura received it and absently shook it out. there fell upon the carpet her brush, comb, slippers, nightdress, and other simple necessaries for a journey. they had an intolerably ghastly look now, and she tried to cover them. 'i can now,' he said, 'ask you to belong to me legally--when a proper interval has gone--instead of as we meant.' there was languor in his utterance, hinting at a possibility that it was perfunctorily made. laura picked up her articles, answering that he certainly could so ask her--she was free. yet not her expression either could be called an ardent response. then she blinked more and more quickly and put her handkerchief to her face. she was weeping violently. he did not move or try to comfort her in any way. what had come between them? no living person. they had been lovers. there was now no material obstacle whatever to their union. but there was the insistent shadow of that unconscious one; the thin figure of him, moving to and fro in front of the ghastly furnace in the gloom of durnover moor. yet vannicock called upon laura when he was in the neighbourhood, which was not often; but in two years, as if on purpose to further the marriage which everybody was expecting, the ---st foot returned to budmouth regis. thereupon the two could not help encountering each other at times. but whether because the obstacle had been the source of the love, or from a sense of error, and because mrs. maumbry bore a less attractive look as a widow than before, their feelings seemed to decline from their former incandescence to a mere tepid civility. what domestic issues supervened in vannicock's further story the man in the oriel never knew; but mrs. maumbry lived and died a widow. . the waiting supper chapter i whoever had perceived the yeoman standing on squire everard's lawn in the dusk of that october evening fifty years ago, might have said at first sight that he was loitering there from idle curiosity. for a large five- light window of the manor-house in front of him was unshuttered and uncurtained, so that the illuminated room within could be scanned almost to its four corners. obviously nobody was ever expected to be in this part of the grounds after nightfall. the apartment thus swept by an eye from without was occupied by two persons; they were sitting over dessert, the tablecloth having been removed in the old-fashioned way. the fruits were local, consisting of apples, pears, nuts, and such other products of the summer as might be presumed to grow on the estate. there was strong ale and rum on the table, and but little wine. moreover, the appointments of the dining- room were simple and homely even for the date, betokening a countrified household of the smaller gentry, without much wealth or ambition--formerly a numerous class, but now in great part ousted by the territorial landlords. one of the two sitters was a young lady in white muslin, who listened somewhat impatiently to the remarks of her companion, an elderly, rubicund personage, whom the merest stranger could have pronounced to be her father. the watcher evinced no signs of moving, and it became evident that affairs were not so simple as they first had seemed. the tall farmer was in fact no accidental spectator, and he stood by premeditation close to the trunk of a tree, so that had any traveller passed along the road without the park gate, or even round the lawn to the door, that person would scarce have noticed the other, notwithstanding that the gate was quite near at hand, and the park little larger than a paddock. there was still light enough in the western heaven to brighten faintly one side of the man's face, and to show against the trunk of the tree behind the admirable cut of his profile; also to reveal that the front of the manor-house, small though it seemed, was solidly built of stone in that never-to-be-surpassed style for the english country residence--the mullioned and transomed elizabethan. the lawn, although neglected, was still as level as a bowling-green--which indeed it might once have served for; and the blades of grass before the window were raked by the candle-shine, which stretched over them so far as to touch the yeoman's face in front. within the dining-room there were also, with one of the twain, the same signs of a hidden purpose that marked the farmer. the young lady's mind was straying as clearly into the shadows as that of the loiterer was fixed upon the room--nay, it could be said that she was quite conscious of his presence outside. impatience caused her foot to beat silently on the carpet, and she more than once rose to leave the table. this proceeding was checked by her father, who would put his hand upon her shoulder and unceremoniously press her down into her chair, till he should have concluded his observations. her replies were brief enough, and there was factitiousness in her smiles of assent to his views. a small iron casement between two of the mullions was open, and some occasional words of the dialogue were audible without. 'as for drains--how can i put in drains? the pipes don't cost much, that's true; but the labour in sinking the trenches is ruination. and then the gates--they should be hung to stone posts, otherwise there's no keeping them up through harvest.' the squire's voice was strongly toned with the local accent, so that he said 'drains' and 'geats' like the rustics on his estate. the landscape without grew darker, and the young man's figure seemed to be absorbed into the trunk of the tree. the small stars filled in between the larger, the nebulae between the small stars, the trees quite lost their voice; and if there was still a sound, it was from the cascade of a stream which stretched along under the trees that bounded the lawn on its northern side. at last the young girl did get to her feet and secure her retreat. 'i have something to do, papa,' she said. 'i shall not be in the drawing- room just yet.' 'very well,' replied he. 'then i won't hurry.' and closing the door behind her, he drew his decanters together and settled down in his chair. three minutes after that a woman's shape emerged from the drawing-room window, and passing through a wall-door to the entrance front, came across the grass. she kept well clear of the dining-room window, but enough of its light fell on her to show, escaping from the dark-hooded cloak that she wore, stray verges of the same light dress which had figured but recently at the dinner-table. the hood was contracted tight about her face with a drawing-string, making her countenance small and baby-like, and lovelier even than before. without hesitation she brushed across the grass to the tree under which the young man stood concealed. the moment she had reached him he enclosed her form with his arm. the meeting and embrace, though by no means formal, were yet not passionate; the whole proceeding was that of persons who had repeated the act so often as to be unconscious of its performance. she turned within his arm, and faced in the same direction with himself, which was towards the window; and thus they stood without speaking, the back of her head leaning against his shoulder. for a while each seemed to be thinking his and her diverse thoughts. 'you have kept me waiting a long time, dear christine,' he said at last. 'i wanted to speak to you particularly, or i should not have stayed. how came you to be dining at this time o' night?' 'father has been out all day, and dinner was put back till six. i know i have kept you; but nicholas, how can i help it sometimes, if i am not to run any risk? my poor father insists upon my listening to all he has to say; since my brother left he has had nobody else to listen to him; and to-night he was particularly tedious on his usual topics--draining, and tenant-farmers, and the village people. i must take daddy to london; he gets so narrow always staying here.' 'and what did you say to it all?' 'well, i took the part of the tenant-farmers, of course, as the beloved of one should in duty do.' there followed a little break or gasp, implying a strangled sigh. 'you are sorry you have encouraged that beloving one?' 'o no, nicholas . . . what is it you want to see me for particularly?' 'i know you are sorry, as time goes on, and everything is at a dead-lock, with no prospect of change, and your rural swain loses his freshness! only think, this secret understanding between us has lasted near three year, ever since you was a little over sixteen.' 'yes; it has been a long time.' 'and i an untamed, uncultivated man, who has never seen london, and knows nothing about society at all.' 'not uncultivated, dear nicholas. untravelled, socially unpractised, if you will,' she said, smiling. 'well, i did sigh; but not because i regret being your promised one. what i do sometimes regret is that the scheme, which my meetings with you are but a part of, has not been carried out completely. you said, nicholas, that if i consented to swear to keep faith with you, you would go away and travel, and see nations, and peoples, and cities, and take a professor with you, and study books and art, simultaneously with your study of men and manners; and then come back at the end of two years, when i should find that my father would by no means be indisposed to accept you as a son-in-law. you said your reason for wishing to get my promise before starting was that your mind would then be more at rest when you were far away, and so could give itself more completely to knowledge than if you went as my unaccepted lover only, fuming with anxiety as to how i should be when you came back. i saw how reasonable that was; and solemnly swore myself to you in consequence. but instead of going to see the world you stay on and on here to see me.' 'and you don't want me to see you?' 'yes--no--it is not that. it is that i have latterly felt frightened at what i am doing when not in your actual presence. it seems so wicked not to tell my father that i have a lover close at hand, within touch and view of both of us; whereas if you were absent my conduct would not seem quite so treacherous. the realities would not stare at one so. you would be a pleasant dream to me, which i should be free to indulge in without reproach of my conscience; i should live in hopeful expectation of your returning fully qualified to boldly claim me of my father. there, i have been terribly frank, i know.' he in his turn had lapsed into gloomy breathings now. 'i did plan it as you state,' he answered. 'i did mean to go away the moment i had your promise. but, dear christine, i did not foresee two or three things. i did not know what a lot of pain it would cost to tear myself from you. and i did not know that my stingy uncle--heaven forgive me calling him so!--would so flatly refuse to advance me money for my purpose--the scheme of travelling with a first-rate tutor costing a formidable sum o' money. you have no idea what it would cost!' 'but i have said that i'll find the money.' 'ah, there,' he returned, 'you have hit a sore place. to speak truly, dear, i would rather stay unpolished a hundred years than take your money.' 'but why? men continually use the money of the women they marry.' 'yes; but not till afterwards. no man would like to touch your money at present, and i should feel very mean if i were to do so in present circumstances. that brings me to what i was going to propose. but no--upon the whole i will not propose it now.' 'ah! i would guarantee expenses, and you won't let me! the money is my personal possession: it comes to me from my late grandfather, and not from my father at all.' he laughed forcedly and pressed her hand. 'there are more reasons why i cannot tear myself away,' he added. 'what would become of my uncle's farming? six hundred acres in this parish, and five hundred in the next--a constant traipsing from one farm to the other; he can't be in two places at once. still, that might be got over if it were not for the other matters. besides, dear, i still should be a little uneasy, even though i have your promise, lest somebody should snap you up away from me.' 'ah, you should have thought of that before. otherwise i have committed myself for nothing.' 'i should have thought of it,' he answered gravely. 'but i did not. there lies my fault, i admit it freely. ah, if you would only commit yourself a little more, i might at least get over that difficulty! but i won't ask you. you have no idea how much you are to me still; you could not argue so coolly if you had. what property belongs to you i hate the very sound of; it is you i care for. i wish you hadn't a farthing in the world but what i could earn for you!' 'i don't altogether wish that,' she murmured. 'i wish it, because it would have made what i was going to propose much easier to do than it is now. indeed i will not propose it, although i came on purpose, after what you have said in your frankness.' 'nonsense, nic. come, tell me. how can you be so touchy?' 'look at this then, christine dear.' he drew from his breast-pocket a sheet of paper and unfolded it, when it was observable that a seal dangled from the bottom. 'what is it?' she held the paper sideways, so that what there was of window-light fell on its surface. 'i can only read the old english letters--why--our names! surely it is not a marriage-licence?' 'it is.' she trembled. 'o nic! how could you do this--and without telling me!' 'why should i have thought i must tell you? you had not spoken "frankly" then as you have now. we have been all to each other more than these two years, and i thought i would propose that we marry privately, and that i then leave you on the instant. i would have taken my travelling-bag to church, and you would have gone home alone. i should not have started on my adventures in the brilliant manner of our original plan, but should have roughed it a little at first; my great gain would have been that the absolute possession of you would have enabled me to work with spirit and purpose, such as nothing else could do. but i dare not ask you now--so frank as you have been.' she did not answer. the document he had produced gave such unexpected substantiality to the venture with which she had so long toyed as a vague dream merely, that she was, in truth, frightened a little. 'i--don't know about it!' she said. 'perhaps not. ah, my little lady, you are wearying of me!' 'no, nic,' responded she, creeping closer. 'i am not. upon my word, and truth, and honour, i am not, nic.' 'a mere tiller of the soil, as i should be called,' he continued, without heeding her. 'and you--well, a daughter of one of the--i won't say oldest families, because that's absurd, all families are the same age--one of the longest chronicled families about here, whose name is actually the name of the place.' 'that's not much, i am sorry to say! my poor brother--but i won't speak of that . . . well,' she murmured mischievously, after a pause, 'you certainly would not need to be uneasy if i were to do this that you want me to do. you would have me safe enough in your trap then; i couldn't get away!' 'that's just it!' he said vehemently. 'it is a trap--you feel it so, and that though you wouldn't be able to get away from me you might particularly wish to! ah, if i had asked you two years ago you would have agreed instantly. but i thought i was bound to wait for the proposal to come from you as the superior!' 'now you are angry, and take seriously what i meant purely in fun. you don't know me even yet! to show you that you have not been mistaken in me, i do propose to carry out this licence. i'll marry you, dear nicholas, to-morrow morning.' 'ah, christine! i am afraid i have stung you on to this, so that i cannot--' 'no, no, no!' she hastily rejoined; and there was something in her tone which suggested that she had been put upon her mettle and would not flinch. 'take me whilst i am in the humour. what church is the licence for?' 'that i've not looked to see--why our parish church here, of course. ah, then we cannot use it! we dare not be married here.' 'we do dare,' said she. 'and we will too, if you'll be there.' 'if i'll be there!' they speedily came to an agreement that he should be in the church-porch at ten minutes to eight on the following morning, awaiting her; and that, immediately after the conclusion of the service which would make them one, nicholas should set out on his long-deferred educational tour, towards the cost of which she was resolving to bring a substantial subscription with her to church. then, slipping from him, she went indoors by the way she had come, and nicholas bent his steps homewards. chapter ii instead of leaving the spot by the gate, he flung himself over the fence, and pursued a direction towards the river under the trees. and it was now, in his lonely progress, that he showed for the first time outwardly that he was not altogether unworthy of her. he wore long water-boots reaching above his knees, and, instead of making a circuit to find a bridge by which he might cross the froom--the river aforesaid--he made straight for the point whence proceeded the low roar that was at this hour the only evidence of the stream's existence. he speedily stood on the verge of the waterfall which caused the noise, and stepping into the water at the top of the fall, waded through with the sure tread of one who knew every inch of his footing, even though the canopy of trees rendered the darkness almost absolute, and a false step would have precipitated him into the pool beneath. soon reaching the boundary of the grounds, he continued in the same direct line to traverse the alluvial valley, full of brooks and tributaries to the main stream--in former times quite impassable, and impassable in winter now. sometimes he would cross a deep gully on a plank not wider than the hand; at another time he ploughed his way through beds of spear-grass, where at a few feet to the right or left he might have been sucked down into a morass. at last he reached firm land on the other side of this watery tract, and came to his house on the rise behind--elsenford--an ordinary farmstead, from the back of which rose indistinct breathings, belchings, and snortings, the rattle of halters, and other familiar features of an agriculturist's home. while nicholas long was packing his bag in an upper room of this dwelling, miss christine everard sat at a desk in her own chamber at froom-everard manor-house, looking with pale fixed countenance at the candles. 'i ought--i must now!' she whispered to herself. 'i should not have begun it if i had not meant to carry it through! it runs in the blood of us, i suppose.' she alluded to a fact unknown to her lover, the clandestine marriage of an aunt under circumstances somewhat similar to the present. in a few minutes she had penned the following note:- october , -. dear mr. bealand--can you make it convenient to yourself to meet me at the church to-morrow morning at eight? i name the early hour because it would suit me better than later on in the day. you will find me in the chancel, if you can come. an answer yes or no by the bearer of this will be sufficient. christine everard. she sent the note to the rector immediately, waiting at a small side-door of the house till she heard the servant's footsteps returning along the lane, when she went round and met him in the passage. the rector had taken the trouble to write a line, and answered that he would meet her with pleasure. a dripping fog which ushered in the next morning was highly favourable to the scheme of the pair. at that time of the century froom-everard house had not been altered and enlarged; the public lane passed close under its walls; and there was a door opening directly from one of the old parlours--the south parlour, as it was called--into the lane which led to the village. christine came out this way, and after following the lane for a short distance entered upon a path within a belt of plantation, by which the church could be reached privately. she even avoided the churchyard gate, walking along to a place where the turf without the low wall rose into a mound, enabling her to mount upon the coping and spring down inside. she crossed the wet graves, and so glided round to the door. he was there, with his bag in his hand. he kissed her with a sort of surprise, as if he had expected that at the last moment her heart would fail her. though it had not failed her, there was, nevertheless, no great ardour in christine's bearing--merely the momentum of an antecedent impulse. they went up the aisle together, the bottle-green glass of the old lead quarries admitting but little light at that hour, and under such an atmosphere. they stood by the altar-rail in silence, christine's skirt visibly quivering at each beat of her heart. presently a quick step ground upon the gravel, and mr. bealand came round by the front. he was a quiet bachelor, courteous towards christine, and not at first recognizing in nicholas a neighbouring yeoman (for he lived aloofly in the next parish), advanced to her without revealing any surprise at her unusual request. but in truth he was surprised, the keen interest taken by many country young women at the present day in church decoration and festivals being then unknown. 'good morning,' he said; and repeated the same words to nicholas more mechanically. 'good morning,' she replied gravely. 'mr. bealand, i have a serious reason for asking you to meet me--us, i may say. we wish you to marry us.' the rector's gaze hardened to fixity, rather between than upon either of them, and he neither moved nor replied for some time. 'ah!' he said at last. 'and we are quite ready.' 'i had no idea--' 'it has been kept rather private,' she said calmly. 'where are your witnesses?' 'they are outside in the meadow, sir. i can call them in a moment,' said nicholas. 'oh--i see it is--mr. nicholas long,' said mr. bealand, and turning again to christine, 'does your father know of this?' 'is it necessary that i should answer that question, mr. bealand?' 'i am afraid it is--highly necessary.' christine began to look concerned. 'where is the licence?' the rector asked; 'since there have been no banns.' nicholas produced it, mr. bealand read it, an operation which occupied him several minutes--or at least he made it appear so; till christine said impatiently, 'we are quite ready, mr. bealand. will you proceed? mr. long has to take a journey of a great many miles to-day.' 'and you?' 'no. i remain.' mr. bealand assumed firmness. 'there is something wrong in this,' he said. 'i cannot marry you without your father's presence.' 'but have you a right to refuse us?' interposed nicholas. 'i believe we are in a position to demand your fulfilment of our request.' 'no, you are not! is miss everard of age? i think not. i think she is months from being so. eh, miss everard?' 'am i bound to tell that?' 'certainly. at any rate you are bound to write it. meanwhile i refuse to solemnize the service. and let me entreat you two young people to do nothing so rash as this, even if by going to some strange church, you may do so without discovery. the tragedy of marriage--' 'tragedy?' 'certainly. it is full of crises and catastrophes, and ends with the death of one of the actors. the tragedy of marriage, as i was saying, is one i shall not be a party to your beginning with such light hearts, and i shall feel bound to put your father on his guard, miss everard. think better of it, i entreat you! remember the proverb, "marry in haste and repent at leisure."' christine, spurred by opposition, almost stormed at him. nicholas implored; but nothing would turn that obstinate rector. she sat down and reflected. by-and-by she confronted mr. bealand. 'our marriage is not to be this morning, i see,' she said. 'now grant me one favour, and in return i'll promise you to do nothing rashly. do not tell my father a word of what has happened here.' 'i agree--if you undertake not to elope.' she looked at nicholas, and he looked at her. 'do you wish me to elope, nic?' she asked. 'no,' he said. so the compact was made, and they left the church singly, nicholas remaining till the last, and closing the door. on his way home, carrying the well-packed bag which was just now to go no further, the two men who were mending water-carriers in the meadows approached the hedge, as if they had been on the alert all the time. 'you said you mid want us for zummat, sir?' 'all right--never mind,' he answered through the hedge. 'i did not require you after all.' chapter iii at a manor not far away there lived a queer and primitive couple who had lately been blessed with a son and heir. the christening took place during the week under notice, and this had been followed by a feast to the parishioners. christine's father, one of the same generation and kind, had been asked to drive over and assist in the entertainment, and christine, as a matter of course, accompanied him. when they reached athelhall, as the house was called, they found the usually quiet nook a lively spectacle. tables had been spread in the apartment which lent its name to the whole building--the hall proper--covered with a fine open-timbered roof, whose braces, purlins, and rafters made a brown thicket of oak overhead. here tenantry of all ages sat with their wives and families, and the servants were assisted in their ministrations by the sons and daughters of the owner's friends and neighbours. christine lent a hand among the rest. she was holding a plate in each hand towards a huge brown platter of baked rice-pudding, from which a footman was scooping a large spoonful, when a voice reached her ear over her shoulder: 'allow me to hold them for you.' christine turned, and recognized in the speaker the nephew of the entertainer, a young man from london, whom she had already met on two or three occasions. she accepted the proffered help, and from that moment, whenever he passed her in their marchings to and fro during the remainder of the serving, he smiled acquaintance. when their work was done, he improved the few words into a conversation. he plainly had been attracted by her fairness. bellston was a self-assured young man, not particularly good-looking, with more colour in his skin than even nicholas had. he had flushed a little in attracting her notice, though the flush had nothing of nervousness in it--the air with which it was accompanied making it curiously suggestive of a flush of anger; and even when he laughed it was difficult to banish that fancy. the late autumn sunlight streamed in through the window panes upon the heads and shoulders of the venerable patriarchs of the hamlet, and upon the middle-aged, and upon the young; upon men and women who had played out, or were to play, tragedies or tragi-comedies in that nook of civilization not less great, essentially, than those which, enacted on more central arenas, fix the attention of the world. one of the party was a cousin of nicholas long's, who sat with her husband and children. to make himself as locally harmonious as possible, mr. bellston remarked to his companion on the scene--'it does one's heart good,' he said, 'to see these simple peasants enjoying themselves.' 'o mr. bellston!' exclaimed christine; 'don't be too sure about that word "simple"! you little think what they see and meditate! their reasonings and emotions are as complicated as ours.' she spoke with a vehemence which would have been hardly present in her words but for her own relation to nicholas. the sense of that produced in her a nameless depression thenceforward. the young man, however, still followed her up. 'i am glad to hear you say it,' he returned warmly. 'i was merely attuning myself to your mood, as i thought. the real truth is that i know more of the parthians, and medes, and dwellers in mesopotamia--almost of any people, indeed--than of the english rustics. travel and exploration are my profession, not the study of the british peasantry.' travel. there was sufficient coincidence between his declaration and the course she had urged upon her lover, to lend bellston's account of himself a certain interest in christine's ears. he might perhaps be able to tell her something that would be useful to nicholas, if their dream were carried out. a door opened from the hall into the garden, and she somehow found herself outside, chatting with mr. bellston on this topic, till she thought that upon the whole she liked the young man. the garden being his uncle's, he took her round it with an air of proprietorship; and they went on amongst the michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums, and through a door to the fruit-garden. a green-house was open, and he went in and cut her a bunch of grapes. 'how daring of you! they are your uncle's.' 'o, he don't mind--i do anything here. a rough old buffer, isn't he?' she was thinking of her nic, and felt that, by comparison with her present acquaintance, the farmer more than held his own as a fine and intelligent fellow; but the harmony with her own existence in little things, which she found here, imparted an alien tinge to nicholas just now. the latter, idealized by moonlight, or a thousand miles of distance, was altogether a more romantic object for a woman's dream than this smart new-lacquered man; but in the sun of afternoon, and amid a surrounding company, mr. bellston was a very tolerable companion. when they re-entered the hall, bellston entreated her to come with him up a spiral stair in the thickness of the wall, leading to a passage and gallery whence they could look down upon the scene below. the people had finished their feast, the newly-christened baby had been exhibited, and a few words having been spoken to them they began, amid a racketing of forms, to make for the greensward without, nicholas's cousin and cousin's wife and cousin's children among the rest. while they were filing out, a voice was heard calling--'hullo!--here, jim; where are you?' said bellston's uncle. the young man descended, christine following at leisure. 'now will ye be a good fellow,' the squire continued, 'and set them going outside in some dance or other that they know? i'm dog-tired, and i want to have a yew words with mr. everard before we join 'em--hey, everard? they are shy till somebody starts 'em; afterwards they'll keep gwine brisk enough.' 'ay, that they wool,' said squire everard. they followed to the lawn; and here it proved that james bellston was as shy, or rather as averse, as any of the tenantry themselves, to acting the part of fugleman. only the parish people had been at the feast, but outlying neighbours had now strolled in for a dance. 'they want "speed the plough,"' said bellston, coming up breathless. 'it must be a country dance, i suppose? now, miss everard, do have pity upon me. i am supposed to lead off; but really i know no more about speeding the plough than a child just born! would you take one of the villagers?--just to start them, my uncle says. suppose you take that handsome young farmer over there--i don't know his name, but i dare say you do--and i'll come on with one of the dairyman's daughters as a second couple.' christine turned in the direction signified, and changed colour--though in the shade nobody noticed it, 'oh, yes--i know him,' she said coolly. 'he is from near our own place--mr. nicholas long.' 'that's capital--then you can easily make him stand as first couple with you. now i must pick up mine.' 'i--i think i'll dance with you, mr. bellston,' she said with some trepidation. 'because, you see,' she explained eagerly, 'i know the figure and you don't--so that i can help you; while nicholas long, i know, is familiar with the figure, and that will make two couples who know it--which is necessary, at least.' bellston showed his gratification by one of his angry-pleasant flushes--he had hardly dared to ask for what she proffered freely; and having requested nicholas to take the dairyman's daughter, led christine to her place, long promptly stepping up second with his charge. there were grim silent depths in nic's character; a small deedy spark in his eye, as it caught christine's, was all that showed his consciousness of her. then the fiddlers began--the celebrated mellstock fiddlers who, given free stripping, could play from sunset to dawn without turning a hair. the couples wheeled and swung, nicholas taking christine's hand in the course of business with the figure, when she waited for him to give it a little squeeze; but he did not. christine had the greatest difficulty in steering her partner through the maze, on account of his self-will, and when at last they reached the bottom of the long line, she was breathless with her hard labour.. resting here, she watched nic and his lady; and, though she had decidedly cooled off in these later months, began to admire him anew. nobody knew these dances like him, after all, or could do anything of this sort so well. his performance with the dairyman's daughter so won upon her, that when 'speed the plough' was over she contrived to speak to him. 'nic, you are to dance with me next time.' he said he would, and presently asked her in a formal public manner, lifting his hat gallantly. she showed a little backwardness, which he quite understood, and allowed him to lead her to the top, a row of enormous length appearing below them as if by magic as soon as they had taken their places. truly the squire was right when he said that they only wanted starting. 'what is it to be?' whispered nicholas. she turned to the band. 'the honeymoon,' she said. and then they trod the delightful last-century measure of that name, which if it had been ever danced better, was never danced with more zest. the perfect responsiveness which their tender acquaintance threw into the motions of nicholas and his partner lent to their gyrations the fine adjustment of two interacting parts of a single machine. the excitement of the movement carried christine back to the time--the unreflecting passionate time, about two years before--when she and nic had been incipient lovers only; and it made her forget the carking anxieties, the vision of social breakers ahead, that had begun to take the gilding off her position now. nicholas, on his part, had never ceased to be a lover; no personal worries had as yet made him conscious of any staleness, flatness, or unprofitableness in his admiration of christine. 'not quite so wildly, nic,' she whispered. 'i don't object personally; but they'll notice us. how came you here?' 'i heard that you had driven over; and i set out--on purpose for this.' 'what--you have walked?' 'yes. if i had waited for one of uncle's horses i should have been too late.' 'five miles here and five back--ten miles on foot--merely to dance!' 'with you. what made you think of this old "honeymoon" thing?' 'o! it came into my head when i saw you, as what would have been a reality with us if you had not been stupid about that licence, and had got it for a distant church.' 'shall we try again?' 'no--i don't know. i'll think it over.' the villagers admired their grace and skill, as the dancers themselves perceived; but they did not know what accompanied that admiration in one spot, at least. 'people who wonder they can foot it so featly together should know what some others think,' a waterman was saying to his neighbour. 'then their wonder would be less.' his comrade asked for information. 'well--really i hardly believe it--but 'tis said they be man and wife. yes, sure--went to church and did the job a'most afore 'twas light one morning. but mind, not a word of this; for 'twould be the loss of a winter's work to me if i had spread such a report and it were not true.' when the dance had ended she rejoined her own section of the company. her father and mr. bellston the elder had now come out from the house, and were smoking in the background. presently she found that her father was at her elbow. 'christine, don't dance too often with young long--as a mere matter of prudence, i mean, as volk might think it odd, he being one of our own neighbouring farmers. i should not mention this to 'ee if he were an ordinary young fellow; but being superior to the rest it behoves you to be careful.' 'exactly, papa,' said christine. but the revived sense that she was deceiving him threw a damp over her spirits. 'but, after all,' she said to herself, 'he is a young man of elsenford, handsome, able, and the soul of honour; and i am a young woman of the adjoining parish, who have been constantly thrown into communication with him. is it not, by nature's rule, the most proper thing in the world that i should marry him, and is it not an absurd conventional regulation which says that such a union would be wrong?' it may be concluded that the strength of christine's large-minded argument was rather an evidence of weakness than of strength in the passion it concerned, which had required neither argument nor reasoning of any kind for its maintenance when full and flush in its early days. when driving home in the dark with her father she sank into pensive silence. she was thinking of nicholas having to trudge on foot all those miles back after his exertions on the sward. mr. everard, arousing himself from a nap, said suddenly, 'i have something to mention to 'ee, by george--so i have, chris! you probably know what it is?' she expressed ignorance, wondering if her father had discovered anything of her secret. 'well, according to him you know it. but i will tell 'ee. perhaps you noticed young jim bellston walking me off down the lawn with him?--whether or no, we walked together a good while; and he informed me that he wanted to pay his addresses to 'ee. i naturally said that it depended upon yourself; and he replied that you were willing enough; you had given him particular encouragement--showing your preference for him by specially choosing him for your partner--hey? "in that case," says i, "go on and conquer--settle it with her--i have no objection." the poor fellow was very grateful, and in short, there we left the matter. he'll propose to- morrow.' she saw now to her dismay what james bellston had read as encouragement. 'he has mistaken me altogether,' she said. 'i had no idea of such a thing.' 'what, you won't have him?' 'indeed, i cannot!' 'chrissy,' said mr. everard with emphasis, 'there's noobody whom i should so like you to marry as that young man. he's a thoroughly clever fellow, and fairly well provided for. he's travelled all over the temperate zone; but he says that directly he marries he's going to give up all that, and be a regular stay-at-home. you would be nowhere safer than in his hands.' 'it is true,' she answered. 'he is a highly desirable match, and i should be well provided for, and probably very safe in his hands.' 'then don't be skittish, and stand-to.' she had spoken from her conscience and understanding, and not to please her father. as a reflecting woman she believed that such a marriage would be a wise one. in great things nicholas was closest to her nature; in little things bellston seemed immeasurably nearer than nic; and life was made up of little things. altogether the firmament looked black for nicholas long, notwithstanding her half-hour's ardour for him when she saw him dancing with the dairyman's daughter. most great passions, movements, and beliefs--individual and national--burst during their decline into a temporary irradiation, which rivals their original splendour; and then they speedily become extinct. perhaps the dance had given the last flare- up to christine's love. it seemed to have improvidently consumed for its immediate purpose all her ardour forwards, so that for the future there was nothing left but frigidity. nicholas had certainly been very foolish about that licence! chapter iv this laxity of emotional tone was further increased by an incident, when, two days later, she kept an appointment with nicholas in the sallows. the sallows was an extension of shrubberies and plantations along the banks of the froom, accessible from the lawn of froom-everard house only, except by wading through the river at the waterfall or elsewhere. near the brink was a thicket of box in which a trunk lay prostrate; this had been once or twice their trysting-place, though it was by no means a safe one; and it was here she sat awaiting him now. the noise of the stream muffled any sound of footsteps, and it was before she was aware of his approach that she looked up and saw him wading across at the top of the waterfall. noontide lights and dwarfed shadows always banished the romantic aspect of her love for nicholas. moreover, something new had occurred to disturb her; and if ever she had regretted giving way to a tenderness for him--which perhaps she had not done with any distinctness--she regretted it now. yet in the bottom of their hearts those two were excellently paired, the very twin halves of a perfect whole; and their love was pure. but at this hour surfaces showed garishly, and obscured the depths. probably her regret appeared in her face. he walked up to her without speaking, the water running from his boots; and, taking one of her hands in each of his own, looked narrowly into her eyes. 'have you thought it over?' 'what?' 'whether we shall try again; you remember saying you would at the dance?' 'oh, i had forgotten that!' 'you are sorry we tried at all!' he said accusingly. 'i am not so sorry for the fact as for the rumours,' she said. 'ah! rumours?' 'they say we are already married.' 'who?' 'i cannot tell exactly. i heard some whispering to that effect. somebody in the village told one of the servants, i believe. this man said that he was crossing the churchyard early on that unfortunate foggy morning, and heard voices in the chancel, and peeped through the window as well as the dim panes would let him; and there he saw you and me and mr. bealand, and so on; but thinking his surmises would be dangerous knowledge, he hastened on. and so the story got afloat. then your aunt, too--' 'good lord!--what has she done?' the story was, told her, and she said proudly, "o yes, it is true enough. i have seen the licence. but it is not to be known yet."' 'seen the licence? how the--' 'accidentally, i believe, when your coat was hanging somewhere.' the information, coupled with the infelicitous word 'proudly,' caused nicholas to flush with mortification. he knew that it was in his aunt's nature to make a brag of that sort; but worse than the brag was the fact that this was the first occasion on which christine had deigned to show her consciousness that such a marriage would be a source of pride to his relatives--the only two he had in the world. 'you are sorry, then, even to be thought my wife, much less to be it.' he dropped her hand, which fell lifelessly. 'it is not sorry exactly, dear nic. but i feel uncomfortable and vexed, that after screwing up my courage, my fidelity, to the point of going to church, you should have so muddled--managed the matter that it has ended in neither one thing nor the other. how can i meet acquaintances, when i don't know what they are thinking of me?' 'then, dear christine, let us mend the muddle. i'll go away for a few days and get another licence, and you can come to me.' she shrank from this perceptibly. 'i cannot screw myself up to it a second time,' she said. 'i am sure i cannot! besides, i promised mr. bealand. and yet how can i continue to see you after such a rumour? we shall be watched now, for certain.' 'then don't see me.' 'i fear i must not for the present. altogether--' 'what?' 'i am very depressed.' these views were not very inspiriting to nicholas, as he construed them. it may indeed have been possible that he construed them wrongly, and should have insisted upon her making the rumour true. unfortunately, too, he had come to her in a hurry through brambles and briars, water and weed, and the shaggy wildness which hung about his appearance at this fine and correct time of day lent an impracticability to the look of him. 'you blame me--you repent your courses--you repent that you ever, ever owned anything to me!' 'no, nicholas, i do not repent that,' she returned gently, though with firmness. 'but i think that you ought not to have got that licence without asking me first; and i also think that you ought to have known how it would be if you lived on here in your present position, and made no effort to better it. i can bear whatever comes, for social ruin is not personal ruin or even personal disgrace. but as a sensible, new-risen poet says, whom i have been reading this morning:- the world and its ways have a certain worth: and to press a point while these oppose were simple policy. better wait. as soon as you had got my promise, nic, you should have gone away--yes--and made a name, and come back to claim me. that was my silly girlish dream about my hero.' 'perhaps i can do as much yet! and would you have indeed liked better to live away from me for family reasons, than to run a risk in seeing me for affection's sake? o what a cold heart it has grown! if i had been a prince, and you a dairymaid, i'd have stood by you in the face of the world!' she shook her head. 'ah--you don't know what society is--you don't know.' 'perhaps not. who was that strange gentleman of about seven-and-twenty i saw at mr. bellston's christening feast?' 'oh--that was his nephew james. now he is a man who has seen an unusual extent of the world for his age. he is a great traveller, you know.' 'indeed.' 'in fact an explorer. he is very entertaining.' 'no doubt.' nicholas received no shock of jealousy from her announcement. he knew her so well that he could see she was not in the least in love with bellston. but he asked if bellston were going to continue his explorations. 'not if he settles in life. otherwise he will, i suppose.' 'perhaps i could be a great explorer, too, if i tried.' 'you could, i am sure.' they sat apart, and not together; each looking afar off at vague objects, and not in each other's eyes. thus the sad autumn afternoon waned, while the waterfall hissed sarcastically of the inevitableness of the unpleasant. very different this from the time when they had first met there. the nook was most picturesque; but it looked horridly common and stupid now. their sentiment had set a colour hardly less visible than a material one on surrounding objects, as sentiment must where life is but thought. nicholas was as devoted as ever to the fair christine; but unhappily he too had moods and humours, and the division between them was not closed. she had no sooner got indoors and sat down to her work-table than her father entered the drawing-room. she handed him his newspaper; he took it without a word, went and stood on the hearthrug, and flung the paper on the floor. 'christine, what's the meaning of this terrible story? i was just on my way to look at the register.' she looked at him without speech. 'you have married--nicholas long?' 'no, father.' 'no? can you say no in the face of such facts as i have been put in possession of?' 'yes.' 'but--the note you wrote to the rector--and the going to church?' she briefly explained that their attempt had failed. 'ah! then this is what that dancing meant, was it? by ---, it makes me ---. how long has this been going on, may i ask?' 'this what?' 'what, indeed! why, making him your beau. now listen to me. all's well that ends well; from this day, madam, this moment, he is to be nothing more to you. you are not to see him. cut him adrift instantly! i only wish his volk were on my farm--out they should go, or i would know the reason why. however, you are to write him a letter to this effect at once.' 'how can i cut him adrift?' 'why not? you must, my good maid!' 'well, though i have not actually married him, i have solemnly sworn to be his wife when he comes home from abroad to claim me. it would be gross perjury not to fulfil my promise. besides, no woman can go to church with a man to deliberately solemnize matrimony, and refuse him afterwards, if he does nothing wrong meanwhile.' the uttered sound of her strong conviction seemed to kindle in christine a livelier perception of all its bearings than she had known while it had lain unformulated in her mind. for when she had done speaking she fell down on her knees before her father, covered her face, and said, 'please, please forgive me, papa! how could i do it without letting you know! i don't know, i don't know!' when she looked up she found that, in the turmoil of his mind, her father was moving about the room. 'you are within an ace of ruining yourself, ruining me, ruining us all!' he said. 'you are nearly as bad as your brother, begad!' 'perhaps i am--yes--perhaps i am!' 'that i should father such a harum-scarum brood!' 'it is very bad; but nicholas--' 'he's a scoundrel!' 'he is not a scoundrel!' cried she, turning quickly. 'he's as good and worthy as you or i, or anybody bearing our name, or any nobleman in the kingdom, if you come to that! only--only'--she could not continue the argument on those lines. 'now, father, listen!' she sobbed; 'if you taunt me i'll go off and join him at his farm this very day, and marry him to-morrow, that's what i'll do!' 'i don't taant ye!' 'i wish to avoid unseemliness as much as you.' she went away. when she came back a quarter of an hour later, thinking to find the room empty, he was standing there as before, never having apparently moved. his manner had quite changed. he seemed to take a resigned and entirely different view of circumstances. 'christine, here's a paragraph in the paper hinting at a secret wedding, and i'm blazed if it don't point to you. well, since this was to happen, i'll bear it, and not complain. all volk have crosses, and this is one of mine. now, this is what i've got to say--i feel that you must carry out this attempt at marrying nicholas long. faith, you must! the rumour will become a scandal if you don't--that's my view. i have tried to look at the brightest side of the case. nicholas long is a young man superior to most of his class, and fairly presentable. and he's not poor--at least his uncle is not. i believe the old muddler could buy me up any day. however, a farmer's wife you must be, as far as i can see. as you've made your bed, so ye must lie. parents propose, and ungrateful children dispose. you shall marry him, and immediately.' christine hardly knew what to make of this. 'he is quite willing to wait, and so am i. we can wait for two or three years, and then he will be as worthy as--' 'you must marry him. and the sooner the better, if 'tis to be done at all . . . and yet i did wish you could have been jim bellston's wife. i did wish it! but no.' 'i, too, wished it and do still, in one sense,' she returned gently. his moderation had won her out of her defiant mood, and she was willing to reason with him. 'you do?' he said surprised. 'i see that in a worldly sense my conduct with mr. long may be considered a mistake.' 'h'm--i am glad to hear that--after my death you may see it more clearly still; and you won't have long to wait, to my reckoning.' she fell into bitter repentance, and kissed him in her anguish. 'don't say that!' she cried. 'tell me what to do?' 'if you'll leave me for an hour or two i'll think. drive to the market and back--the carriage is at the door--and i'll try to collect my senses. dinner can be put back till you return.' in a few minutes she was dressed, and the carriage bore her up the hill which divided the village and manor from the market-town. chapter v a quarter of an hour brought her into the high street, and for want of a more important errand she called at the harness-maker's for a dog-collar that she required. it happened to be market-day, and nicholas, having postponed the engagements which called him thither to keep the appointment with her in the sallows, rushed off at the end of the afternoon to attend to them as well as he could. arriving thus in a great hurry on account of the lateness of the hour, he still retained the wild, amphibious appearance which had marked him when he came up from the meadows to her side--an exceptional condition of things which had scarcely ever before occurred. when she crossed the pavement from the shop door, the shopman bowing and escorting her to the carriage, nicholas chanced to be standing at the road-waggon office, talking to the master of the waggons. there were a good many people about, and those near paused and looked at her transit, in the full stroke of the level october sun, which went under the brims of their hats, and pierced through their button-holes. from the group she heard murmured the words: 'mrs. nicholas long.' the unexpected remark, not without distinct satire in its tone, took her so greatly by surprise that she was confounded. nicholas was by this time nearer, though coming against the sun he had not yet perceived her. influenced by her father's lecture, she felt angry with him for being there and causing this awkwardness. her notice of him was therefore slight, supercilious perhaps, slurred over; and her vexation at his presence showed distinctly in her face as she sat down in her seat. instead of catching his waiting eye, she positively turned her head away. a moment after she was sorry she had treated him so; but he was gone. reaching home she found on her dressing-table a note from her father. the statement was brief: i have considered and am of the same opinion. you must marry him. he can leave home at once and travel as proposed. i have written to him to this effect. i don't want any victuals, so don't wait dinner for me. nicholas was the wrong kind of man to be blind to his christine's mortification, though he did not know its entire cause. he had lately foreseen something of this sort as possible. 'it serves me right,' he thought, as he trotted homeward. 'it was absurd--wicked of me to lead her on so. the sacrifice would have been too great--too cruel!' and yet, though he thus took her part, he flushed with indignation every time he said to himself, 'she is ashamed of me!' on the ridge which overlooked froom-everard he met a neighbour of his--a stock-dealer--in his gig, and they drew rein and exchanged a few words. a part of the dealer's conversation had much meaning for nicholas. 'i've had occasion to call on squire everard,' the former said; 'but he couldn't see me on account of being quite knocked up at some bad news he has heard.' nicholas rode on past froom-everard to elsenford farm, pondering. he had new and startling matter for thought as soon as he got there. the squire's note had arrived. at first he could not credit its import; then he saw further, took in the tone of the letter, saw the writer's contempt behind the words, and understood that the letter was written as by a man hemmed into a corner. christine was defiantly--insultingly--hurled at his head. he was accepted because he was so despised. and yet with what respect he had treated her and hers! now he was reminded of what an agricultural friend had said years ago, seeing the eyes of nicholas fixed on christine as on an angel when she passed: 'better a little fire to warm 'ee than a great one to burn 'ee. no good can come of throwing your heart there.' he went into the mead, sat down, and asked himself four questions: . how could she live near her acquaintance as his wife, even in his absence, without suffering martyrdom from the stings of their contempt? . would not this entail total estrangement between christine and her family also, and her own consequent misery? . must not such isolation extinguish her affection for him? . supposing that her father rigged them out as colonists and sent them off to america, was not the effect of such exile upon one of her gentle nurture likely to be as the last? in short, whatever they should embark in together would be cruelty to her, and his death would be a relief. it would, indeed, in one aspect be a relief to her now, if she were so ashamed of him as she had appeared to be that day. were he dead, this little episode with him would fade away like a dream. mr. everard was a good-hearted man at bottom, but to take his enraged offer seriously was impossible. obviously it was hotly made in his first bitterness at what he had heard. the least thing that he could do would be to go away and never trouble her more. to travel and learn and come back in two years, as mapped out in their first sanguine scheme, required a staunch heart on her side, if the necessary expenditure of time and money were to be afterwards justified; and it were folly to calculate on that when he had seen to-day that her heart was failing her already. to travel and disappear and not be heard of for many years would be a far more independent stroke, and it would leave her entirely unfettered. perhaps he might rival in this kind the accomplished mr. bellston, of whose journeyings he had heard so much. he sat and sat, and the fog rose out of the river, enveloping him like a fleece; first his feet and knees, then his arms and body, and finally submerging his head. when he had come to a decision he went up again into the homestead. he would be independent, if he died for it, and he would free christine. exile was the only course. the first step was to inform his uncle of his determination. two days later nicholas was on the same spot in the mead, at almost the same hour of eve. but there was no fog now; a blusterous autumn wind had ousted the still, golden days and misty nights; and he was going, full of purpose, in the opposite direction. when he had last entered the mead he was an inhabitant of the froom valley; in forty-eight hours he had severed himself from that spot as completely as if he had never belonged to it. all that appertained to him in the froom valley now was circumscribed by the portmanteau in his hand. in making his preparations for departure he had unconsciously held a faint, foolish hope that she would communicate with him and make up their estrangement in some soft womanly way. but she had given no signal, and it was too evident to him that her latest mood had grown to be her fixed one, proving how well founded had been his impulse to set her free. he entered the sallows, found his way in the dark to the garden-door of the house, slipped under it a note to tell her of his departure, and explaining its true reason to be a consciousness of her growing feeling that he was an encumbrance and a humiliation. of the direction of his journey and of the date of his return he said nothing. his course now took him into the high road, which he pursued for some miles in a north-easterly direction, still spinning the thread of sad inferences, and asking himself why he should ever return. at daybreak he stood on the hill above shottsford-forum, and awaited a coach which passed about this time along that highway towards melchester and london. chapter vi some fifteen years after the date of the foregoing incidents, a man who had dwelt in far countries, and viewed many cities, arrived at roy-town, a roadside hamlet on the old western turnpike road, not five miles from froom-everard, and put up at the buck's head, an isolated inn at that spot. he was still barely of middle age, but it could be seen that a haze of grey was settling upon the locks of his hair, and that his face had lost colour and curve, as if by exposure to bleaching climates and strange atmospheres, or from ailments incidental thereto. he seemed to observe little around him, by reason of the intrusion of his musings upon the scene. in truth nicholas long was just now the creature of old hopes and fears consequent upon his arrival--this man who once had not cared if his name were blotted out from that district. the evening light showed wistful lines which he could not smooth away by the worldling's gloss of nonchalance that he had learnt to fling over his face. the buck's head was a somewhat unusual place for a man of this sort to choose as a house of sojourn in preference to some casterbridge inn four miles further on. before he left home it had been a lively old tavern at which high-flyers, and heralds, and tally-hoes had changed horses on their stages up and down the country; but now the house was rather cavernous and chilly, the stable-roofs were hollow-backed, the landlord was asthmatic, and the traffic gone. he arrived in the afternoon, and when he had sent back the fly and was having a nondescript meal, he put a question to the waiting-maid with a mien of indifference. 'squire everard, of froom-everard manor, has been dead some years, i believe?' she replied in the affirmative. 'and are any of the family left there still?' 'o no, bless you, sir! they sold the place years ago--squire everard's son did--and went away. i've never heard where they went to. they came quite to nothing.' 'never heard anything of the young lady--the squire's daughter?' 'no. you see 'twas before i came to these parts.' when the waitress left the room, nicholas pushed aside his plate and gazed out of the window. he was not going over into the froom valley altogether on christine's account, but she had greatly animated his motive in coming that way. anyhow he would push on there now that he was so near, and not ask questions here where he was liable to be wrongly informed. the fundamental inquiry he had not ventured to make--whether christine had married before the family went away. he had abstained because of an absurd dread of extinguishing hopeful surmise. that the everards had left their old home was bad enough intelligence for one day. rising from the table he put on his hat and went out, ascending towards the upland which divided this district from his native vale. the first familiar feature that met his eye was a little spot on the distant sky--a clump of trees standing on a barrow which surmounted a yet more remote upland--a point where, in his childhood, he had believed people could stand and see america. he reached the further verge of the plateau on which he had entered. ah, there was the valley--a greenish-grey stretch of colour--still looking placid and serene, as though it had not much missed him. if christine was no longer there, why should he pause over it this evening? his uncle and aunt were dead, and to-morrow would be soon enough to inquire for remoter relatives. thus, disinclined to go further, he turned to retrace his way to the inn. in the backward path he now perceived the figure of a woman, who had been walking at a distance behind him; and as she drew nearer he began to be startled. surely, despite the variations introduced into that figure by changing years, its ground-lines were those of christine? nicholas had been sentimental enough to write to christine immediately on landing at southampton a day or two before this, addressing his letter at a venture to the old house, and merely telling her that he planned to reach the roy-town inn on the present afternoon. the news of the scattering of the everards had dissipated his hope of hearing of her; but here she was. so they met--there, alone, on the open down by a pond, just as if the meeting had been carefully arranged. she threw up her veil. she was still beautiful, though the years had touched her; a little more matronly--much more homely. or was it only that he was much less homely now--a man of the world--the sense of homeliness being relative? her face had grown to be pre-eminently of the sort that would be called interesting. her habiliments were of a demure and sober cast, though she was one who had used to dress so airily and so gaily. years had laid on a few shadows too in this. 'i received your letter,' she said, when the momentary embarrassment of their first approach had passed. 'and i thought i would walk across the hills to-day, as it was fine. i have just called at the inn, and they told me you were out. i was now on my way homeward.' he hardly listened to this, though he intently gazed at her. 'christine,' he said, 'one word. are you free?' 'i--i am in a certain sense,' she replied, colouring. the announcement had a magical effect. the intervening time between past and present closed up for him, and moved by an impulse which he had combated for fifteen years, he seized her two hands and drew her towards him. she started back, and became almost a mere acquaintance. 'i have to tell you,' she gasped, 'that i have--been married.' nicholas's rose-coloured dream was immediately toned down to a greyish tinge. 'i did not marry till many years after you had left,' she continued in the humble tones of one confessing to a crime. 'oh nic,' she cried reproachfully, 'how could you stay away so long?' 'whom did you marry?' 'mr. bellston.' 'i--ought to have expected it.' he was going to add, 'and is he dead?' but he checked himself. her dress unmistakably suggested widowhood; and she had said she was free. 'i must now hasten home,' said she. 'i felt that, considering my shortcomings at our parting so many years ago, i owed you the initiative now.' 'there is some of your old generosity in that. i'll walk with you, if i may. where are you living, christine?' 'in the same house, but not on the old conditions. i have part of it on lease; the farmer now tenanting the premises found the whole more than he wanted, and the owner allowed me to keep what rooms i chose. i am poor now, you know, nicholas, and almost friendless. my brother sold the froom-everard estate when it came to him, and the person who bought it turned our home into a farmhouse. till my father's death my husband and i lived in the manor-house with him, so that i have never lived away from the spot.' she was poor. that, and the change of name, sufficiently accounted for the inn-servant's ignorance of her continued existence within the walls of her old home. it was growing dusk, and he still walked with her. a woman's head arose from the declivity before them, and as she drew nearer, christine asked him to go back. 'this is the wife of the farmer who shares the house,' she said. 'she is accustomed to come out and meet me whenever i walk far and am benighted. i am obliged to walk everywhere now.' the farmer's wife, seeing that christine was not alone, paused in her advance, and nicholas said, 'dear christine, if you are obliged to do these things, i am not, and what wealth i can command you may command likewise. they say rolling stones gather no moss; but they gather dross sometimes. i was one of the pioneers to the gold-fields, you know, and made a sufficient fortune there for my wants. what is more, i kept it. when i had done this i was coming home, but hearing of my uncle's death i changed my plan, travelled, speculated, and increased my fortune. now, before we part: you remember you stood with me at the altar once, and therefore i speak with less preparation than i should otherwise use. before we part then i ask, shall another again intrude between us? or shall we complete the union we began?' she trembled--just as she had done at that very minute of standing with him in the church, to which he had recalled her mind. 'i will not enter into that now, dear nicholas,' she replied. 'there will be more to talk of and consider first--more to explain, which it would have spoiled this meeting to have entered into now.' 'yes, yes; but--' 'further than the brief answer i first gave, nic, don't press me to-night. i still have the old affection for you, or i should not have sought you. let that suffice for the moment.' 'very well, dear one. and when shall i call to see you?' 'i will write and fix an hour. i will tell you everything of my history then.' and thus they parted, nicholas feeling that he had not come here fruitlessly. when she and her companion were out of sight he retraced his steps to roy-town, where he made himself as comfortable as he could in the deserted old inn of his boyhood's days. he missed her companionship this evening more than he had done at any time during the whole fifteen years; and it was as though instead of separation there had been constant communion with her throughout that period. the tones of her voice had stirred his heart in a nook which had lain stagnant ever since he last heard them. they recalled the woman to whom he had once lifted his eyes as to a goddess. her announcement that she had been another's came as a little shock to him, and he did not now lift his eyes to her in precisely the same way as he had lifted them at first. but he forgave her for marrying bellston; what could he expect after fifteen years? he slept at roy-town that night, and in the morning there was a short note from her, repeating more emphatically her statement of the previous evening--that she wished to inform him clearly of her circumstances, and to calmly consider with him the position in which she was placed. would he call upon her on sunday afternoon, when she was sure to be alone? 'nic,' she wrote on, 'what a cosmopolite you are! i expected to find my old yeoman still; but i was quite awed in the presence of such a citizen of the world. did i seem rusty and unpractised? ah--you seemed so once to me!' tender playful words; the old christine was in them. she said sunday afternoon, and it was now only saturday morning. he wished she had said to-day; that short revival of her image had vitalized to sudden heat feelings that had almost been stilled. whatever she might have to explain as to her position--and it was awkwardly narrowed, no doubt--he could not give her up. miss everard or mrs. bellston, what mattered it?--she was the same christine. he did not go outside the inn all saturday. he had no wish to see or do anything but to await the coming interview. so he smoked, and read the local newspaper of the previous week, and stowed himself in the chimney- corner. in the evening he felt that he could remain indoors no longer, and the moon being near the full, he started from the inn on foot in the same direction as that of yesterday, with the view of contemplating the old village and its precincts, and hovering round her house under the cloak of night. with a stout stick in his hand he climbed over the five miles of upland in a comparatively short space of time. nicholas had seen many strange lands and trodden many strange ways since he last walked that path, but as he trudged he seemed wonderfully like his old self, and had not the slightest difficulty in finding the way. in descending to the meads the streams perplexed him a little, some of the old foot-bridges having been removed; but he ultimately got across the larger water-courses, and pushed on to the village, avoiding her residence for the moment, lest she should encounter him, and think he had not respected the time of her appointment. he found his way to the churchyard, and first ascertained where lay the two relations he had left alive at his departure; then he observed the gravestones of other inhabitants with whom he had been well acquainted, till by degrees he seemed to be in the society of all the elder froom- everard population, as he had known the place. side by side as they had lived in his day here were they now. they had moved house in mass. but no tomb of mr. bellston was visible, though, as he had lived at the manor-house, it would have been natural to find it here. in truth nicholas was more anxious to discover that than anything, being curious to know how long he had been dead. seeing from the glimmer of a light in the church that somebody was there cleaning for sunday he entered, and looked round upon the walls as well as he could. but there was no monument to her husband, though one had been erected to the squire. nicholas addressed the young man who was sweeping. 'i don't see any monument or tomb to the late mr. bellston?' 'o no, sir; you won't see that,' said the young man drily. 'why, pray?' 'because he's not buried here. he's not christian-buried anywhere, as far as we know. in short, perhaps he's not buried at all; and between ourselves, perhaps he's alive.' nicholas sank an inch shorter. 'ah,' he answered. 'then you don't know the peculiar circumstances, sir?' 'i am a stranger here--as to late years.' 'mr. bellston was a traveller--an explorer--it was his calling; you may have heard his name as such?' 'i remember.' nicholas recalled the fact that this very bent of mr. bellston's was the incentive to his own roaming. 'well, when he married he came and lived here with his wife and his wife's father, and said he would travel no more. but after a time he got weary of biding quiet here, and weary of her--he was not a good husband to the young lady by any means--and he betook himself again to his old trick of roving--with her money. away he went, quite out of the realm of human foot, into the bowels of asia, and never was heard of more. he was murdered, it is said, but nobody knows; though as that was nine years ago he's dead enough in principle, if not in corporation. his widow lives quite humble, for between her husband and her brother she's left in very lean pasturage.' nicholas went back to the buck's head without hovering round her dwelling. this then was the explanation which she had wanted to make. not dead, but missing. how could he have expected that the first fair promise of happiness held out to him would remain untarnished? she had said that she was free; and legally she was free, no doubt. moreover, from her tone and manner he felt himself justified in concluding that she would be willing to run the risk of a union with him, in the improbability of her husband's existence. even if that husband lived, his return was not a likely event, to judge from his character. a man who could spend her money on his own personal adventures would not be anxious to disturb her poverty after such a lapse of time. well, the prospect was not so unclouded as it had seemed. but could he, even now, give up christine? chapter vii two months more brought the year nearly to a close, and found nicholas long tenant of a spacious house in the market-town nearest to froom-everard. a man of means, genial character, and a bachelor, he was an object of great interest to his neighbours, and to his neighbours' wives and daughters. but he took little note of this, and had made it his business to go twice a week, no matter what the weather, to the now farmhouse at froom-everard, a wing of which had been retained as the refuge of christine. he always walked, to give no trouble in putting up a horse to a housekeeper whose staff was limited. the two had put their heads together on the situation, had gone to a solicitor, had balanced possibilities, and had resolved to make the plunge of matrimony. 'nothing venture, nothing have,' christine had said, with some of her old audacity. with almost gratuitous honesty they had let their intentions be widely known. christine, it is true, had rather shrunk from publicity at first; but nicholas argued that their boldness in this respect would have good results. with his friends he held that there was not the slightest probability of her being other than a widow, and a challenge to the missing man now, followed by no response, would stultify any unpleasant remarks which might be thrown at her after their union. to this end a paragraph was inserted in the wessex papers, announcing that their marriage was proposed to be celebrated on such and such a day in december. his periodic walks along the south side of the valley to visit her were among the happiest experiences of his life. the yellow leaves falling around him in the foreground, the well-watered meads on the left hand, and the woman he loved awaiting him at the back of the scene, promised a future of much serenity, as far as human judgment could foresee. on arriving, he would sit with her in the 'parlour' of the wing she retained, her general sitting-room, where the only relics of her early surroundings were an old clock from the other end of the house, and her own piano. before it was quite dark they would stand, hand in hand, looking out of the window across the flat turf to the dark clump of trees which hid further view from their eyes. 'do you wish you were still mistress here, dear?' he once said. 'not at all,' said she cheerfully. 'i have a good enough room, and a good enough fire, and a good enough friend. besides, my latter days as mistress of the house were not happy ones, and they spoilt the place for me. it was a punishment for my faithlessness. nic, you do forgive me? really you do?' the twenty-third of december, the eve of the wedding-day, had arrived at last in the train of such uneventful ones as these. nicholas had arranged to visit her that day a little later than usual, and see that everything was ready with her for the morrow's event and her removal to his house; for he had begun to look after her domestic affairs, and to lighten as much as possible the duties of her housekeeping. he was to come to an early supper, which she had arranged to take the place of a wedding-breakfast next day--the latter not being feasible in her present situation. an hour or so after dark the wife of the farmer who lived in the other part of the house entered christine's parlour to lay the cloth. 'what with getting the ham skinned, and the black-puddings hotted up,' she said, 'it will take me all my time before he's here, if i begin this minute.' 'i'll lay the table myself,' said christine, jumping up. 'do you attend to the cooking.' 'thank you, ma'am. and perhaps 'tis no matter, seeing that it is the last night you'll have to do such work. i knew this sort of life wouldn't last long for 'ee, being born to better things.' 'it has lasted rather long, mrs. wake. and if he had not found me out it would have lasted all my days.' 'but he did find you out.' 'he did. and i'll lay the cloth immediately.' mrs. wake went back to the kitchen, and christine began to bustle about. she greatly enjoyed preparing this table for nicholas and herself with her own hands. she took artistic pleasure in adjusting each article to its position, as if half an inch error were a point of high importance. finally she placed the two candles where they were to stand, and sat down by the fire. mrs. wake re-entered and regarded the effect. 'why not have another candle or two, ma'am?' she said. ''twould make it livelier. say four.' 'very well,' said christine, and four candles were lighted. 'really,' she added, surveying them, 'i have been now so long accustomed to little economies that they look quite extravagant.' 'ah, you'll soon think nothing of forty in his grand new house! shall i bring in supper directly he comes, ma'am?' 'no, not for half an hour; and, mrs. wake, you and betsy are busy in the kitchen, i know; so when he knocks don't disturb yourselves; i can let him in.' she was again left alone, and, as it still wanted some time to nicholas's appointment, she stood by the fire, looking at herself in the glass over the mantel. reflectively raising a lock of her hair just above her temple she uncovered a small scar. that scar had a history. the terrible temper of her late husband--those sudden moods of irascibility which had made even his friendly excitements look like anger--had once caused him to set that mark upon her with the bezel of a ring he wore. he declared that the whole thing was an accident. she was a woman, and kept her own opinion. christine then turned her back to the glass and scanned the table and the candles, shining one at each corner like types of the four evangelists, and thought they looked too assuming--too confident. she glanced up at the clock, which stood also in this room, there not being space enough for it in the passage. it was nearly seven, and she expected nicholas at half-past. she liked the company of this venerable article in her lonely life: its tickings and whizzings were a sort of conversation. it now began to strike the hour. at the end something grated slightly. then, without any warning, the clock slowly inclined forward and fell at full length upon the floor. the crash brought the farmer's wife rushing into the room. christine had well-nigh sprung out of her shoes. mrs. wake's enquiry what had happened was answered by the evidence of her own eyes. 'how did it occur?' she said. 'i cannot say; it was not firmly fixed, i suppose. dear me, how sorry i am! my dear father's hall-clock! and now i suppose it is ruined.' assisted by mrs. wake, she lifted the clock. every inch of glass was, of course, shattered, but very little harm besides appeared to be done. they propped it up temporarily, though it would not go again. christine had soon recovered her composure, but she saw that mrs. wake was gloomy. 'what does it mean, mrs. wake?' she said. 'is it ominous?' 'it is a sign of a violent death in the family.' 'don't talk of it. i don't believe such things; and don't mention it to mr. long when he comes. he's not in the family yet, you know.' 'o no, it cannot refer to him,' said mrs. wake musingly. 'some remote cousin, perhaps,' observed christine, no less willing to humour her than to get rid of a shapeless dread which the incident had caused in her own mind. 'and--supper is almost ready, mrs. wake?' 'in three-quarters of an hour.' mrs. wake left the room, and christine sat on. though it still wanted fifteen minutes to the hour at which nicholas had promised to be there, she began to grow impatient. after the accustomed ticking the dead silence was oppressive. but she had not to wait so long as she had expected; steps were heard approaching the door, and there was a knock. christine was already there to open it. the entrance had no lamp, but it was not particularly dark out of doors. she could see the outline of a man, and cried cheerfully, 'you are early; it is very good of you.' 'i beg pardon. it is not mr. bellston himself--only a messenger with his bag and great-coat. but he will be here soon.' the voice was not the voice of nicholas, and the intelligence was strange. 'i--i don't understand. mr. bellston?' she faintly replied. 'yes, ma'am. a gentleman--a stranger to me--gave me these things at casterbridge station to bring on here, and told me to say that mr. bellston had arrived there, and is detained for half-an-hour, but will be here in the course of the evening.' she sank into a chair. the porter put a small battered portmanteau on the floor, the coat on a chair, and looking into the room at the spread table said, 'if you are disappointed, ma'am, that your husband (as i s'pose he is) is not come, i can assure you he'll soon be here. he's stopped to get a shave, to my thinking, seeing he wanted it. what he said was that i could tell you he had heard the news in ireland, and would have come sooner, his hand being forced; but was hindered crossing by the weather, having took passage in a sailing vessel. what news he meant he didn't say.' 'ah, yes,' she faltered. it was plain that the man knew nothing of her intended re-marriage. mechanically rising and giving him a shilling, she answered to his 'good- night,' and he withdrew, the beat of his footsteps lessening in the distance. she was alone; but in what a solitude. christine stood in the middle of the hall, just as the man had left her, in the gloomy silence of the stopped clock within the adjoining room, till she aroused herself, and turning to the portmanteau and great-coat brought them to the light of the candles, and examined them. the portmanteau bore painted upon it the initials 'j. b.' in white letters--the well-known initials of her husband. she examined the great-coat. in the breast-pocket was an empty spirit flask, which she firmly fancied she recognized as the one she had filled many times for him when he was living at home with her. she turned desultorily hither and thither, until she heard another tread without, and there came a second knocking at the door. she did not respond to it; and nicholas--for it was he--thinking that he was not heard by reason of a concentration on to-morrow's proceedings, opened the door softly, and came on to the door of her room, which stood unclosed, just as it had been left by the casterbridge porter. nicholas uttered a blithe greeting, cast his eye round the parlour, which with its tall candles, blazing fire, snow-white cloth, and prettily-spread table, formed a cheerful spectacle enough for a man who had been walking in the dark for an hour. 'my bride--almost, at last!' he cried, encircling her with his arms. instead of responding, her figure became limp, frigid, heavy; her head fell back, and he found that she had fainted. it was natural, he thought. she had had many little worrying matters to attend to, and but slight assistance. he ought to have seen more effectually to her affairs; the closeness of the event had over-excited her. nicholas kissed her unconscious face--more than once, little thinking what news it was that had changed its aspect. loth to call mrs. wake, he carried christine to a couch and laid her down. this had the effect of reviving her. nicholas bent and whispered in her ear, 'lie quiet, dearest, no hurry; and dream, dream, dream of happy days. it is only i. you will soon be better.' he held her by the hand. 'no, no, no!' she said, with a stare. 'o, how can this be?' nicholas was alarmed and perplexed, but the disclosure was not long delayed. when she had sat up, and by degrees made the stunning event known to him, he stood as if transfixed. 'ah--is it so?' said he. then, becoming quite meek, 'and why was he so cruel as to--delay his return till now?' she dutifully recited the explanation her husband had given her through the messenger; but her mechanical manner of telling it showed how much she doubted its truth. it was too unlikely that his arrival at such a dramatic moment should not be a contrived surprise, quite of a piece with his previous dealings towards her. 'but perhaps it may be true--and he may have become kind now--not as he used to be,' she faltered. 'yes, perhaps, nicholas, he is an altered man--we'll hope he is. i suppose i ought not to have listened to my legal advisers, and assumed his death so surely! anyhow, i am roughly received back into--the right way!' nicholas burst out bitterly: 'o what too, too honest fools we were!--to so court daylight upon our intention by putting that announcement in the papers! why could we not have married privately, and gone away, so that he would never have known what had become of you, even if he had returned? christine, he has done it to . . . but i'll say no more. of course we--might fly now.' 'no, no; we might not,' said she hastily. 'very well. but this is hard to bear! "when i looked for good then evil came unto me, and when i waited for light there came darkness." so once said a sorely tried man in the land of uz, and so say i now! . . . i wonder if he is almost here at this moment?' she told him she supposed bellston was approaching by the path across the fields, having sent on his great-coat, which he would not want walking. 'and is this meal laid for him, or for me?' 'it was laid for you.' 'and it will be eaten by him?' 'yes.' 'christine, are you sure that he is come, or have you been sleeping over the fire and dreaming it?' she pointed anew to the portmanteau with the initials 'j. b.,' and to the coat beside it. 'well, good-bye--good-bye! curse that parson for not marrying us fifteen years ago!' it is unnecessary to dwell further upon that parting. there are scenes wherein the words spoken do not even approximate to the level of the mental communion between the actors. suffice it to say that part they did, and quickly; and nicholas, more dead than alive, went out of the house homewards. why had he ever come back? during his absence he had not cared for christine as he cared now. if he had been younger he might have felt tempted to descend into the meads instead of keeping along their edge. the froom was down there, and he knew of quiet pools in that stream to which death would come easily. but he was too old to put an end to himself for such a reason as love; and another thought, too, kept him from seriously contemplating any desperate act. his affection for her was strongly protective, and in the event of her requiring a friend's support in future troubles there was none but himself left in the world to afford it. so he walked on. meanwhile christine had resigned herself to circumstances. a resolve to continue worthy of her history and of her family lent her heroism and dignity. she called mrs. wake, and explained to that worthy woman as much of what had occurred as she deemed necessary. mrs. wake was too amazed to reply; she retreated slowly, her lips parted; till at the door she said with a dry mouth, 'and the beautiful supper, ma'am?' 'serve it when he comes.' 'when mr. bellston--yes, ma'am, i will.' she still stood gazing, as if she could hardly take in the order. 'that will do, mrs. wake. i am much obliged to you for all your kindness.' and christine was left alone again, and then she wept. she sat down and waited. that awful silence of the stopped clock began anew, but she did not mind it now. she was listening for a footfall in a state of mental tensity which almost took away from her the power of motion. it seemed to her that the natural interval for her husband's journey thither must have expired; but she was not sure, and waited on. mrs. wake again came in. 'you have not rung for supper--' 'he is not yet come, mrs. wake. if you want to go to bed, bring in the supper and set it on the table. it will be nearly as good cold. leave the door unbarred.' mrs. wake did as was suggested, made up the fire, and went away. shortly afterwards christine heard her retire to her chamber. but christine still sat on, and still her husband postponed his entry. she aroused herself once or twice to freshen the fire, but was ignorant how the night was going. her watch was upstairs and she did not make the effort to go up to consult it. in her seat she continued; and still the supper waited, and still he did not come. at length she was so nearly persuaded that the arrival of his things must have been a dream after all, that she again went over to them, felt them, and examined them. his they unquestionably were; and their forwarding by the porter had been quite natural. she sighed and sat down again. presently she fell into a doze, and when she again became conscious she found that the four candles had burnt into their sockets and gone out. the fire still emitted a feeble shine. christine did not take the trouble to get more candles, but stirred the fire and sat on. after a long period she heard a creaking of the chamber floor and stairs at the other end of the house, and knew that the farmer's family were getting up. by-and-by mrs. wake entered the room, candle in hand, bouncing open the door in her morning manner, obviously without any expectation of finding a person there. 'lord-a-mercy! what, sitting here again, ma'am?' 'yes, i am sitting here still.' 'you've been there ever since last night?' 'yes.' 'then--' 'he's not come.' 'well, he won't come at this time o' morning,' said the farmer's wife. 'do 'ee get on to bed, ma'am. you must be shrammed to death!' it occurred to christine now that possibly her husband had thought better of obtruding himself upon her company within an hour of revealing his existence to her, and had decided to pay a more formal visit next day. she therefore adopted mrs. wake's suggestion and retired. chapter viii nicholas had gone straight home, neither speaking to nor seeing a soul. from that hour a change seemed to come over him. he had ever possessed a full share of self-consciousness; he had been readily piqued, had shown an unusual dread of being personally obtrusive. but now his sense of self, as an individual provoking opinion, appeared to leave him. when, therefore, after a day or two of seclusion, he came forth again, and the few acquaintances he had formed in the town condoled with him on what had happened, and pitied his haggard looks, he did not shrink from their regard as he would have done formerly, but took their sympathy as it would have been accepted by a child. it reached his ears that bellston had not appeared on the evening of his arrival at any hotel in the town or neighbourhood, or entered his wife's house at all. 'that's a part of his cruelty,' thought nicholas. and when two or three days had passed, and still no account came to him of bellston having joined her, he ventured to set out for froom-everard. christine was so shaken that she was obliged to receive him as she lay on a sofa, beside the square table which was to have borne their evening feast. she fixed her eyes wistfully upon him, and smiled a sad smile. 'he has not come?' said nicholas under his breath. 'he has not.' then nicholas sat beside her, and they talked on general topics merely like saddened old friends. but they could not keep away the subject of bellston, their voices dropping as it forced its way in. christine, no less than nicholas, knowing her husband's character, inferred that, having stopped her game, as he would have phrased it, he was taking things leisurely, and, finding nothing very attractive in her limited mode of living, was meaning to return to her only when he had nothing better to do. the bolt which laid low their hopes had struck so recently that they could hardly look each other in the face when speaking that day. but when a week or two had passed, and all the horizon still remained as vacant of bellston as before, nicholas and she could talk of the event with calm wonderment. why had he come, to go again like this? and then there set in a period of resigned surmise, during which so like, so very like, was day to day, that to tell of one of them is to tell of all. nicholas would arrive between three and four in the afternoon, a faint trepidation influencing his walk as he neared her door. he would knock; she would always reply in person, having watched for him from the window. then he would whisper--'he has not come?' 'he has not,' she would say. nicholas would enter then, and she being ready bonneted, they would walk into the sallows together as far as to the spot which they had frequently made their place of appointment in their youthful days. a plank bridge, which bellston had caused to be thrown over the stream during his residence with her in the manor-house, was now again removed, and all was just the same as in nicholas's time, when he had been accustomed to wade across on the edge of the cascade and come up to her like a merman from the deep. here on the felled trunk, which still lay rotting in its old place, they would now sit, gazing at the descending sheet of water, with its never-ending sarcastic hiss at their baffled attempts to make themselves one flesh. returning to the house they would sit down together to tea, after which, and the confidential chat that accompanied it, he walked home by the declining light. this proceeding became as periodic as an astronomical recurrence. twice a week he came--all through that winter, all through the spring following, through the summer, through the autumn, the next winter, the next year, and the next, till an appreciable span of human life had passed by. bellston still tarried. years and years nic walked that way, at this interval of three days, from his house in the neighbouring town; and in every instance the aforesaid order of things was customary; and still on his arrival the form of words went on--'he has not come?' 'he has not.' so they grew older. the dim shape of that third one stood continually between them; they could not displace it; neither, on the other hand, could it effectually part them. they were in close communion, yet not indissolubly united; lovers, yet never growing cured of love. by the time that the fifth year of nic's visiting had arrived, on about the five- hundredth occasion of his presence at her tea-table, he noticed that the bleaching process which had begun upon his own locks was also spreading to hers. he told her so, and they laughed. yet she was in good health: a condition of suspense, which would have half-killed a man, had been endured by her without complaint, and even with composure. one day, when these years of abeyance had numbered seven, they had strolled as usual as far as the waterfall, whose faint roar formed a sort of calling voice sufficient in the circumstances to direct their listlessness. pausing there, he looked up at her face and said, 'why should we not try again, christine? we are legally at liberty to do so now. nothing venture nothing have.' but she would not. perhaps a little primness of idea was by this time ousting the native daring of christine. 'what he has done once he can do twice,' she said. 'he is not dead, and if we were to marry he would say we had "forced his hand," as he said before, and duly reappear.' some years after, when christine was about fifty, and nicholas fifty-three, a new trouble of a minor kind arrived. he found an inconvenience in traversing the distance between their two houses, particularly in damp weather, the years he had spent in trying climates abroad having sown the seeds of rheumatism, which made a journey undesirable on inclement days, even in a carriage. he told her of this new difficulty, as he did of everything. 'if you could live nearer,' suggested she. unluckily there was no house near. but nicholas, though not a millionaire, was a man of means; he obtained a small piece of ground on lease at the nearest spot to her home that it could be so obtained, which was on the opposite brink of the froom, this river forming the boundary of the froom-everard manor; and here he built a cottage large enough for his wants. this took time, and when he got into it he found its situation a great comfort to him. he was not more than five hundred yards from her now, and gained a new pleasure in feeling that all sounds which greeted his ears, in the day or in the night, also fell upon hers--the caw of a particular rook, the voice of a neighbouring nightingale, the whistle of a local breeze, or the purl of the fall in the meadows, whose rush was a material rendering of time's ceaseless scour over themselves, wearing them away without uniting them. christine's missing husband was taking shape as a myth among the surrounding residents; but he was still believed in as corporeally imminent by christine herself, and also, in a milder degree, by nicholas. for a curious unconsciousness of the long lapse of time since his revelation of himself seemed to affect the pair. there had been no passing events to serve as chronological milestones, and the evening on which she had kept supper waiting for him still loomed out with startling nearness in their retrospects. in the seventeenth pensive year of this their parallel march towards the common bourne, a labourer came in a hurry one day to nicholas's house and brought strange tidings. the present owner of froom-everard--a non-resident--had been improving his property in sundry ways, and one of these was by dredging the stream which, in the course of years, had become choked with mud and weeds in its passage through the sallows. the process necessitated a reconstruction of the waterfall. when the river had been pumped dry for this purpose, the skeleton of a man had been found jammed among the piles supporting the edge of the fall. every particle of his flesh and clothing had been eaten by fishes or abraded to nothing by the water, but the relics of a gold watch remained, and on the inside of the case was engraved the name of the maker of her husband's watch, which she well remembered. nicholas, deeply agitated, hastened down to the place and examined the remains attentively, afterwards going across to christine, and breaking the discovery to her. she would not come to view the skeleton, which lay extended on the grass, not a finger or toe-bone missing, so neatly had the aquatic operators done their work. conjecture was directed to the question how bellston had got there; and conjecture alone could give an explanation. it was supposed that, on his way to call upon her, he had taken a short cut through the grounds, with which he was naturally very familiar, and coming to the fall under the trees had expected to find there the plank which, during his occupancy of the premises with christine and her father, he had placed there for crossing into the meads on the other side instead of wading across as nicholas had done. before discovering its removal he had probably overbalanced himself, and was thus precipitated into the cascade, the piles beneath the descending current wedging him between them like the prongs of a pitchfork, and effectually preventing the rising of his body, over which the weeds grew. such was the reasonable supposition concerning the discovery; but proof was never forthcoming. 'to think,' said nicholas, when the remains had been decently interred, and he was again sitting with christine--though not beside the waterfall--'to think how we visited him! how we sat over him, hours and hours, gazing at him, bewailing our fate, when all the time he was ironically hissing at us from the spot, in an unknown tongue, that we could marry if we chose!' she echoed the sentiment with a sigh. 'i have strange fancies,' she said. 'i suppose it must have been my husband who came back, and not some other man.' nicholas felt that there was little doubt. 'besides--the skeleton,' he said. 'yes . . . if it could not have been another person's--but no, of course it was he.' 'you might have married me on the day we had fixed, and there would have been no impediment. you would now have been seventeen years my wife, and we might have had tall sons and daughters.' 'it might have been so,' she murmured. 'well--is it still better late than never?' the question was one which had become complicated by the increasing years of each. their wills were somewhat enfeebled now, their hearts sickened of tender enterprise by hope too long deferred. having postponed the consideration of their course till a year after the interment of bellston, each seemed less disposed than formerly to take it up again. 'is it worth while, after so many years?' she said to him. 'we are fairly happy as we are--perhaps happier than we should be in any other relation, seeing what old people we have grown. the weight is gone from our lives; the shadow no longer divides us: then let us be joyful together as we are, dearest nic, in the days of our vanity; and with mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.' he fell in with these views of hers to some extent. but occasionally he ventured to urge her to reconsider the case, though he spoke not with the fervour of his earlier years. autumn, . alicia's diary chapter i.--she misses her sister july .--i wander about the house in a mood of unutterable sadness, for my dear sister caroline has left home to-day with my mother, and i shall not see them again for several weeks. they have accepted a long-standing invitation to visit some old friends of ours, the marlets, who live at versailles for cheapness--my mother thinking that it will be for the good of caroline to see a little of france and paris. but i don't quite like her going. i fear she may lose some of that childlike simplicity and gentleness which so characterize her, and have been nourished by the seclusion of our life here. her solicitude about her pony before starting was quite touching, and she made me promise to visit it daily, and see that it came to no harm. caroline gone abroad, and i left here! it is the reverse of an ordinary situation, for good or ill-luck has mostly ordained that i should be the absent one. mother will be quite tired out by the young enthusiasm of caroline. she will demand to be taken everywhere--to paris continually, of course; to all the stock shrines of history's devotees; to palaces and prisons; to kings' tombs and queens' tombs; to cemeteries and picture- galleries, and royal hunting forests. my poor mother, having gone over most of this ground many times before, will perhaps not find the perambulation so exhilarating as will caroline herself. i wish i could have gone with them. i would not have minded having my legs walked off to please caroline. but this regret is absurd: i could not, of course, leave my father with not a soul in the house to attend to the calls of the parishioners or to pour out his tea. july .--a letter from caroline to-day. it is very strange that she tells me nothing which i expected her to tell--only trivial details. she seems dazzled by the brilliancy of paris--which no doubt appears still more brilliant to her from the fact of her only being able to obtain occasional glimpses of it. she would see that paris, too, has a seamy side if you live there. i was not aware that the marlets knew so many people. if, as mother has said, they went to reside at versailles for reasons of economy, they will not effect much in that direction while they make a practice of entertaining all the acquaintances who happen to be in their neighbourhood. they do not confine their hospitalities to english people, either. i wonder who this m. de la feste is, in whom caroline says my mother is so much interested. july .--another letter from caroline. i have learnt from this epistle, that m. charles de la feste is 'only one of the many friends of the marlets'; that though a frenchman by birth, and now again temporarily at versailles, he has lived in england many many years; that he is a talented landscape and marine painter, and has exhibited at the salon, and i think in london. his style and subjects are considered somewhat peculiar in paris--rather english than continental. i have not as yet learnt his age, or his condition, married or single. from the tone and nature of her remarks about him he sometimes seems to be a middle-aged family man, sometimes quite the reverse. from his nomadic habits i should say the latter is the most likely. he has travelled and seen a great deal, she tells me, and knows more about english literature than she knows herself. july .--letter from caroline. query: is 'a friend of ours and the marlets,' of whom she now anonymously and mysteriously speaks, the same personage as the 'm. de la feste' of her former letters? he must be the same, i think, from his pursuits. if so, whence this sudden change of tone? . . . i have been lost in thought for at least a quarter of an hour since writing the preceding sentence. suppose my dear sister is falling in love with this young man--there is no longer any doubt about his age; what a very awkward, risky thing for her! i do hope that my mother has an eye on these proceedings. but, then, poor mother never sees the drift of anything: she is in truth less of a mother to caroline than i am. if i were there, how jealously i would watch him, and ascertain his designs! i am of a stronger nature than caroline. how i have supported her in the past through her little troubles and great griefs! is she agitated at the presence of this, to her, new and strange feeling? but i am assuming her to be desperately in love, when i have no proof of anything of the kind. he may be merely a casual friend, of whom i shall hear no more. july .--then he is a bachelor, as i suspected. 'if m. de la feste ever marries he will,' etc. so she writes. they are getting into close quarters, obviously. also, 'something to keep my hair smooth, which m. de la feste told me he had found useful for the tips of his moustache.' very naively related this; and with how much unconsciousness of the intimacy between them that the remark reveals! but my mother--what can she be doing? does she know of this? and if so, why does she not allude to it in her letters to my father? . . . i have been to look at caroline's pony, in obedience to her reiterated request that i would not miss a day in seeing that she was well cared for. anxious as caroline was about this pony of hers before starting, she now never mentioned the poor animal once in her letters. the image of her pet suffers from displacement. august .--caroline's forgetfulness of her pony has naturally enough extended to me, her sister. it is ten days since she last wrote, and but for a note from my mother i should not know if she were dead or alive. chapter ii.--news interesting and serious august .--a cloud of letters. a letter from caroline, another from mother; also one from each to my father. the probability to which all the intelligence from my sister has pointed of late turns out to be a fact. there is an engagement, or almost an engagement, announced between my dear caroline and m. de la feste--to caroline's sublime happiness, and my mother's entire satisfaction; as well as to that of the marlets. they and my mother seem to know all about the young man--which is more than i do, though a little extended information about him, considering that i am caroline's elder sister, would not have been amiss. i half feel with my father, who is much surprised, and, i am sure, not altogether satisfied, that he should not have been consulted at all before matters reached such a definite stage, though he is too amiable to say so openly. i don't quite say that a good thing should have been hindered for the sake of our opinion, if it is a good thing; but the announcement comes very suddenly. it must have been foreseen by my mother for some time that this upshot was probable, and caroline might have told me more distinctly that m. de la feste was her lover, instead of alluding so mysteriously to him as only a friend of the marlets, and lately dropping his name altogether. my father, without exactly objecting to him as a frenchman, 'wishes he were of english or some other reasonable nationality for one's son-in-law,' but i tell him that the demarcations of races, kingdoms, and creeds, are wearing down every day, that patriotism is a sort of vice, and that the character of the individual is all we need think about in this case. i wonder if, in the event of their marriage, he will continue to live at versailles, or if he will come to england. august .--a supplemental letter from caroline, answering, by anticipation, some of the aforesaid queries. she tells me that 'charles,' though he makes versailles his present home, is by no means bound by his profession to continue there; that he will live just where she wishes, provided it be not too far from some centre of thought, art, and civilization. my mother and herself both think that the marriage should not take place till next year. he exhibits landscapes and canal scenery every year, she says; so i suppose he is popular, and that his income is sufficient to keep them in comfort. if not, i do not see why my father could not settle something more on them than he had intended, and diminish by a little what he had proposed for me, whilst it was imagined that i should be the first to stand in need of such. 'of engaging manner, attractive appearance, and virtuous character,' is the reply i receive from her in answer to my request for a personal description. that is vague enough, and i would rather have had one definite fact of complexion, voice, deed, or opinion. but of course she has no eye now for material qualities; she cannot see him as he is. she sees him irradiated with glories such as never appertained and never will appertain to any man, foreign, english, or colonial. to think that caroline, two years my junior, and so childlike as to be five years my junior in nature, should be engaged to be married before me. but that is what happens in families more often than we are apt to remember. august .--interesting news to-day. charles, she says, has pleaded that their marriage may just as well be this year as next; and he seems to have nearly converted my mother to the same way of thinking. i do not myself see any reason for delay, beyond the standing one of my father having as yet had no opportunity of forming an opinion upon the man, the time, or anything. however, he takes his lot very quietly, and they are coming home to talk the question over with us; caroline having decided not to make any positive arrangements for this change of state till she has seen me. subject to my own and my father's approval, she says, they are inclined to settle the date of the wedding for november, three months from the present time, that it shall take place here in the village, that i, of course, shall be bridesmaid, and many other particulars. she draws an artless picture of the probable effect upon the minds of the villagers of this romantic performance in the chancel of our old church, in which she is to be chief actor--the foreign gentleman dropping down like a god from the skies, picking her up, and triumphantly carrying her off. her only grief will be separation from me, but this is to be assuaged by my going and staying with her for long months at a time. this simple prattle is very sweet to me, my dear sister, but i cannot help feeling sad at the occasion of it. in the nature of things it is obvious that i shall never be to you again what i hitherto have been: your guide, counsellor, and most familiar friend. m. de la feste does certainly seem to be all that one could desire as protector to a sensitive fragile child like caroline, and for that i am thankful. still, i must remember that i see him as yet only through her eyes. for her sake i am intensely anxious to meet him, and scrutinise him through and through, and learn what the man is really made of who is to have such a treasure in his keeping. the engagement has certainly been formed a little precipitately; i quite agree with my father in that: still, good and happy marriages have been made in a hurry before now, and mother seems well satisfied. august .--a terrible announcement came this morning; and we are in deep trouble. i have been quite unable to steady my thoughts on anything to- day till now--half-past eleven at night--and i only attempt writing these notes because i am too restless to remain idle, and there is nothing but waiting and waiting left for me to do. mother has been taken dangerously ill at versailles: they were within a day or two of starting; but all thought of leaving must now be postponed, for she cannot possibly be moved in her present state. i don't like the sound of haemorrhage at all in a woman of her full habit, and caroline and the marlets have not exaggerated their accounts i am certain. on the receipt of the letter my father instantly decided to go to her, and i have been occupied all day in getting him off, for as he calculates on being absent several days, there have been many matters for him to arrange before setting out--the chief being to find some one who will do duty for him next sunday--a quest of no small difficulty at such short notice; but at last poor old feeble mr. dugdale has agreed to attempt it, with mr. highman, the scripture reader, to assist him in the lessons. i fain would have gone with my father to escape the irksome anxiety of awaiting her; but somebody had to stay, and i could best be spared. george has driven him to the station to meet the last train by which he will catch the midnight boat, and reach havre some time in the morning. he hates the sea, and a night passage in particular. i hope he will get there without mishap of any kind; but i feel anxious for him, stay-at- home as he is, and unable to cope with any difficulty. such an errand, too; the journey will be sad enough at best. i almost think i ought to have been the one to go to her. august .--i nearly fell asleep of heaviness of spirit last night over my writing. my father must have reached paris by this time; and now here comes a letter . . . later.--the letter was to express an earnest hope that my father had set out. my poor mother is sinking, they fear. what will become of caroline? o, how i wish i could see mother; why could not both have gone? later.--i get up from my chair, and walk from window to window, and then come and write a line. i cannot even divine how poor caroline's marriage is to be carried out if mother dies. i pray that father may have got there in time to talk to her and receive some directions from her about caroline and m. de la feste--a man whom neither my father nor i have seen. i, who might be useful in this emergency, am doomed to stay here, waiting in suspense. august .--a letter from my father containing the sad news that my mother's spirit has flown. poor little caroline is heart-broken--she was always more my mother's pet than i was. it is some comfort to know that my father arrived in time to hear from her own lips her strongly expressed wish that caroline's marriage should be solemnized as soon as possible. m. de la feste seems to have been a great favourite of my dear mother's; and i suppose it now becomes almost a sacred duty of my father to accept him as a son-in-law without criticism. chapter iii.--her gloom lightens a little september .--i have inserted nothing in my diary for more than a fortnight. events have been altogether too sad for me to have the spirit to put them on paper. and yet there comes a time when the act of recording one's trouble is recognized as a welcome method of dwelling upon it . . . my dear mother has been brought home and buried here in the parish. it was not so much her own wish that this should be done as my father's, who particularly desired that she should lie in the family vault beside his first wife. i saw them side by side before the vault was closed--two women beloved by one man. as i stood, and caroline by my side, i fell into a sort of dream, and had an odd fancy that caroline and i might be also beloved of one, and lie like these together--an impossibility, of course, being sisters. when i awoke from my reverie caroline took my hand and said it was time to leave. september .--the wedding is indefinitely postponed. caroline is like a girl awakening in the middle of a somnambulistic experience, and does not realize where she is, or how she stands. she walks about silently, and i cannot tell her thoughts, as i used to do. it was her own doing to write to m. de la feste and tell him that the wedding could not possibly take place this autumn as originally planned. there is something depressing in this long postponement if she is to marry him at all; and yet i do not see how it could be avoided. october .--i have had so much to occupy me in consoling caroline that i have been continually overlooking my diary. her life was much nearer to my mother's than mine was. she has never, as i, lived away from home long enough to become self-dependent, and hence in her first loss, and all that it involved, she drooped like a rain-beaten lily. but she is of a nature whose wounds soon heal, even though they may be deep, and the supreme poignancy of her sorrow has already passed. my father is of opinion that the wedding should not be delayed too long. while at versailles he made the acquaintance of m. de la feste, and though they had but a short and hurried communion with each other, he was much impressed by m. de la feste's disposition and conduct, and is strongly in favour of his suit. it is odd that caroline's betrothed should influence in his favour all who come near him. his portrait, which dear caroline has shown me, exhibits him to be of a physique that partly accounts for this: but there must be something more than mere appearance, and it is probably some sort of glamour or fascinating power--the quality which prevented caroline from describing him to me with any accuracy of detail. at the same time, i see from the photograph that his face and head are remarkably well formed; and though the contours of his mouth are hidden by his moustache, his arched brows show well the romantic disposition of a true lover and painter of nature. i think that the owner of such a face as this must be tender and sympathetic and true. october .--as my sister's grief for her mother becomes more and more calmed, her love for m. de la feste begins to reassume its former absorbing command of her. she thinks of him incessantly, and writes whole treatises to him by way of letters. her blank disappointment at his announcement of his inability to pay us a visit quite so soon as he had promised, was quite tragic. i, too, am disappointed, for i wanted to see and estimate him. but having arranged to go to holland to seize some aerial effects for his pictures, which are only to be obtained at this time of the autumn, he is obliged to postpone his journey this way, which is now to be made early in the new year. i think myself that he ought to have come at all sacrifices, considering caroline's recent loss, the sad postponement of what she was looking forward to, and her single-minded affection for him. still, who knows; his professional success is important. moreover, she is cheerful, and hopeful, and the delay will soon be overpast. chapter iv.--she beholds the attractive stranger february .--we have had such a dull life here all the winter that i have found nothing important enough to set down, and broke off my journal accordingly. i resume it now to make an entry on the subject of dear caroline's future. it seems that she was too grieved, immediately after the loss of our mother, to answer definitely the question of m. de la feste how long the postponement was to be; then, afterwards, it was agreed that the matter should be discussed on his autumn visit; but as he did not come, it has remained in abeyance till this week, when caroline, with the greatest simplicity and confidence, has written to him without any further pressure on his part, and told him that she is quite ready to fix the time, and will do so as soon as he arrives to see her. she is a little frightened now, lest it should seem forward in her to have revived the subject of her own accord; but she may assume that his question has been waiting on for an answer ever since, and that she has, therefore, acted only within her promise. in truth, the secret at the bottom of it all is that she is somewhat saddened because he has not latterly reminded her of the pause in their affairs--that, in short, his original impatience to possess her is not now found to animate him so obviously. i suppose that he loves her as much as ever; indeed, i am sure he must do so, seeing how lovable she is. it is mostly thus with all men when women are out of their sight; they grow negligent. caroline must have patience, and remember that a man of his genius has many and important calls upon his time. in justice to her i must add that she does remember it fairly well, and has as much patience as any girl ever had in the circumstances. he hopes to come at the beginning of april at latest. well, when he comes we shall see him. april .--i think that what m. de la feste writes is reasonable enough, though caroline looks heart-sick about it. it is hardly worth while for him to cross all the way to england and back just now, while the sea is so turbulent, seeing that he will be obliged, in any event, to come in may, when he has to be in london for professional purposes, at which time he can take us easily on his way both coming and going. when caroline becomes his wife she will be more practical, no doubt; but she is such a child as yet that there is no contenting her with reasons. however, the time will pass quickly, there being so much to do in preparing a trousseau for her, which must now be put in hand in order that we may have plenty of leisure to get it ready. on no account must caroline be married in half-mourning; i am sure that mother, could she know, would not wish it, and it is odd that caroline should be so intractably persistent on this point, when she is usually so yielding. april .--this month has flown on swallow's wings. we are in a great state of excitement--i as much as she--i cannot quite tell why. he is really coming in ten days, he says. may . four p.m.--i am so agitated i can scarcely write, and yet am particularly impelled to do so before leaving my room. it is the unexpected shape of an expected event which has caused my absurd excitement, which proves me almost as much a school-girl as caroline. m. de la feste was not, as we understood, to have come till to-morrow; but he is here--just arrived. all household directions have devolved upon me, for my father, not thinking m. de la feste would appear before us for another four-and-twenty hours, left home before post time to attend a distant consecration; and hence caroline and i were in no small excitement when charles's letter was opened, and we read that he had been unexpectedly favoured in the dispatch of his studio work, and would follow his letter in a few hours. we sent the covered carriage to meet the train indicated, and waited like two newly strung harps for the first sound of the returning wheels. at last we heard them on the gravel; and the question arose who was to receive him. it was, strictly speaking, my duty; but i felt timid; i could not help shirking it, and insisted that caroline should go down. she did not, however, go near the door as she usually does when anybody is expected, but waited palpitating in the drawing-room. he little thought when he saw the silent hall, and the apparently deserted house, how that house was at the very same moment alive and throbbing with interest under the surface. i stood at the back of the upper landing, where nobody could see me from downstairs, and heard him walk across the hall--a lighter step than my father's--and heard him then go into the drawing-room, and the servant shut the door behind him and go away. what a pretty lover's meeting they must have had in there all to themselves! caroline's sweet face looking up from her black gown--how it must have touched him. i know she wept very much, for i heard her; and her eyes will be red afterwards, and no wonder, poor dear, though she is no doubt happy. i can imagine what she is telling him while i write this--her fears lest anything should have happened to prevent his coming after all--gentle, smiling reproaches for his long delay; and things of that sort. his two portmanteaus are at this moment crossing the landing on the way to his room. i wonder if i ought to go down. a little later.--i have seen him! it was not at all in the way that i intended to encounter him, and i am vexed. just after his portmanteaus were brought up i went out from my room to descend, when, at the moment of stepping towards the first stair, my eyes were caught by an object in the hall below, and i paused for an instant, till i saw that it was a bundle of canvas and sticks, composing a sketching tent and easel. at the same nick of time the drawing-room door opened and the affianced pair came out. they were saying they would go into the garden; and he waited a moment while she put on her hat. my idea was to let them pass on without seeing me, since they seemed not to want my company, but i had got too far on the landing to retreat; he looked up, and stood staring at me--engrossed to a dream-like fixity. thereupon i, too, instead of advancing as i ought to have done, stood moonstruck and awkward, and before i could gather my weak senses sufficiently to descend, she had called him, and they went out by the garden door together. i then thought of following them, but have changed my mind, and come here to jot down these few lines. it is all i am fit for . . . he is even more handsome than i expected. i was right in feeling he must have an attraction beyond that of form: it appeared even in that momentary glance. how happy caroline ought to be. but i must, of course, go down to be ready with tea in the drawing-room by the time they come indoors. p.m.--i have made the acquaintance of m. de la feste; and i seem to be another woman from the effect of it. i cannot describe why this should be so, but conversation with him seems to expand the view, and open the heart, and raise one as upon stilts to wider prospects. he has a good intellectual forehead, perfect eyebrows, dark hair and eyes, an animated manner, and a persuasive voice. his voice is soft in quality--too soft for a man, perhaps; and yet on second thoughts i would not have it less so. we have been talking of his art: i had no notion that art demanded such sacrifices or such tender devotion; or that there were two roads for choice within its precincts, the road of vulgar money-making, and the road of high aims and consequent inappreciation for many long years by the public. that he has adopted the latter need not be said to those who understand him. it is a blessing for caroline that she has been chosen by such a man, and she ought not to lament at postponements and delays, since they have arisen unavoidably. whether he finds hers a sufficiently rich nature, intellectually and emotionally, for his own, i know not, but he seems occasionally to be disappointed at her simple views of things. does he really feel such love for her at this moment as he no doubt believes himself to be feeling, and as he no doubt hopes to feel for the remainder of his life towards her? it was a curious thing he told me when we were left for a few minutes alone; that caroline had alluded so slightly to me in her conversation and letters that he had not realized my presence in the house here at all. but, of course, it was only natural that she should write and talk most about herself. i suppose it was on account of the fact of his being taken in some measure unawares, that i caught him on two or three occasions regarding me fixedly in a way that disquieted me somewhat, having been lately in so little society; till my glance aroused him from his reverie, and he looked elsewhere in some confusion. it was fortunate that he did so, and thus failed to notice my own. it shows that he, too, is not particularly a society person. may .--have had another interesting conversation with m. de la feste on schools of landscape painting in the drawing-room after dinner this evening--my father having fallen asleep, and left nobody but caroline and myself for charles to talk to. i did not mean to say so much to him, and had taken a volume of modern painters from the bookcase to occupy myself with, while leaving the two lovers to themselves; but he would include me in his audience, and i was obliged to lay the book aside. however, i insisted on keeping caroline in the conversation, though her views on pictorial art were only too charmingly crude and primitive. to-morrow, if fine, we are all three going to wherryborne wood, where charles will give us practical illustrations of the principles of coloring that he has enumerated to-night. i am determined not to occupy his attention to the exclusion of caroline, and my plan is that when we are in the dense part of the wood i will lag behind, and slip away, and leave them to return by themselves. i suppose the reason of his attentiveness to me lies in his simply wishing to win the good opinion of one who is so closely united to caroline, and so likely to influence her good opinion of him. may . late.--i cannot sleep, and in desperation have lit my candle and taken up my pen. my restlessness is occasioned by what has occurred to- day, which at first i did not mean to write down, or trust to any heart but my own. we went to wherryborne wood--caroline, charles and i, as we had intended--and walked all three along the green track through the midst, charles in the middle between caroline and myself. presently i found that, as usual, he and i were the only talkers, caroline amusing herself by observing birds and squirrels as she walked docilely alongside her betrothed. having noticed this i dropped behind at the first opportunity and slipped among the trees, in a direction in which i knew i should find another path that would take me home. upon this track i by and by emerged, and walked along it in silent thought till, at a bend, i suddenly encountered m. de la feste standing stock still and smiling thoughtfully at me. 'where is caroline?' said i. 'only a little way off,' says he. 'when we missed you from behind us we thought you might have mistaken the direction we had followed, so she has gone one way to find you and i have come this way.' we then went back to find caroline, but could not discover her anywhere, and the upshot was that he and i were wandering about the woods alone for more than an hour. on reaching home we found she had given us up after searching a little while, and arrived there some time before. i should not be so disturbed by the incident if i had not perceived that, during her absence from us, he did not make any earnest effort to rediscover her; and in answer to my repeated expressions of wonder as to whither she could have wandered he only said, 'oh, she's quite safe; she told me she knew the way home from any part of this wood. let us go on with our talk. i assure you i value this privilege of being with one i so much admire more than you imagine;' and other things of that kind. i was so foolish as to show a little perturbation--i cannot tell why i did not control myself; and i think he noticed that i was not cool. caroline has, with her simple good faith, thought nothing of the occurrence; yet altogether i am not satisfied. chapter v.--her situation is a trying one may .--the more i think of it day after day, the more convinced i am that my suspicions are true. he is too interested in me--well, in plain words, loves me; or, not to degrade that phrase, has a wild passion for me; and his affection for caroline is that towards a sister only. that is the distressing truth; how it has come about i cannot tell, and it wears upon me. a hundred little circumstances have revealed this to me, and the longer i dwell upon it the more agitating does the consideration become. heaven only can help me out of the terrible difficulty in which this places me. i have done nothing to encourage him to be faithless to her. i have studiously kept out of his way; have persistently refused to be a third in their interviews. yet all to no purpose. some fatality has seemed to rule, ever since he came to the house, that this disastrous inversion of things should arise. if i had only foreseen the possibility of it before he arrived, how gladly would i have departed on some visit or other to the meanest friend to hinder such an apparent treachery. but i blindly welcomed him--indeed, made myself particularly agreeable to him for her sake. there is no possibility of my suspicions being wrong; not until they have reached absolute certainty have i dared even to admit the truth to myself. his conduct to-day would have proved them true had i entertained no previous apprehensions. some photographs of myself came for me by post, and they were handed round at the breakfast table and criticised. i put them temporarily on a side table, and did not remember them until an hour afterwards when i was in my own room. on going to fetch them i discovered him standing at the table with his back towards the door bending over the photographs, one of which he raised to his lips. the witnessing this act so frightened me that i crept away to escape observation. it was the climax to a series of slight and significant actions all tending to the same conclusion. the question for me now is, what am i to do? to go away is what first occurs to me, but what reason can i give caroline and my father for such a step; besides, it might precipitate some sort of catastrophe by driving charles to desperation. for the present, therefore, i have decided that i can only wait, though his contiguity is strangely disturbing to me now, and i hardly retain strength of mind to encounter him. how will the distressing complication end? may .--and so it has come! my mere avoidance of him has precipitated the worst issue--a declaration. i had occasion to go into the kitchen garden to gather some of the double ragged-robins which grew in a corner there. almost as soon as i had entered i heard footsteps without. the door opened and shut, and i turned to behold him just inside it. as the garden is closed by four walls and the gardener was absent, the spot ensured absolute privacy. he came along the path by the asparagus-bed, and overtook me. 'you know why i come, alicia?' said he, in a tremulous voice. i said nothing, and hung my head, for by his tone i did know. 'yes,' he went on, 'it is you i love; my sentiment towards your sister is one of affection too, but protective, tutelary affection--no more. say what you will i cannot help it. i mistook my feeling for her, and i know how much i am to blame for my want of self-knowledge. i have fought against this discovery night and day; but it cannot be concealed. why did i ever see you, since i could not see you till i had committed myself? at the moment my eyes beheld you on that day of my arrival, i said, "this is the woman for whom my manhood has waited." ever since an unaccountable fascination has riveted my heart to you. answer one word!' 'o, m. de la feste!' i burst out. what i said more i cannot remember, but i suppose that the misery i was in showed pretty plainly, for he said, 'something must be done to let her know; perhaps i have mistaken her affection, too; but all depends upon what you feel.' 'i cannot tell what i feel,' said i, 'except that this seems terrible treachery; and every moment that i stay with you here makes it worse! . . . try to keep faith with her--her young heart is tender; believe me there is no mistake in the quality of her love for you. would there were! this would kill her if she knew it!' he sighed heavily. 'she ought never to be my wife,' he said. 'leaving my own happiness out of the question, it would be a cruelty to her to unite her to me.' i said i could not hear such words from him, and begged him in tears to go away; he obeyed, and i heard the garden door shut behind him. what is to be the end of the announcement, and the fate of caroline? may .--i put a good deal on paper yesterday, and yet not all. i was, in truth, hoping against hope, against conviction, against too conscious self-judgment. i scarcely dare own the truth now, yet it relieves my aching heart to set it down. yes, i love him--that is the dreadful fact, and i can no longer parry, evade, or deny it to myself though to the rest of the world it can never be owned. i love caroline's betrothed, and he loves me. it is no yesterday's passion, cultivated by our converse; it came at first sight, independently of my will; and my talk with him yesterday made rather against it than for it, but, alas, did not quench it. god forgive us both for this terrible treachery. may .--all is vague; our courses shapeless. he comes and goes, being occupied, ostensibly at least, with sketching in his tent in the wood. whether he and she see each other privately i cannot tell, but i rather think they do not; that she sadly awaits him, and he does not appear. not a sign from him that my repulse has done him any good, or that he will endeavour to keep faith with her. o, if i only had the compulsion of a god, and the self-sacrifice of a martyr! may .--it has all ended--or rather this act of the sad drama has ended--in nothing. he has left us. no day for the fulfilment of the engagement with caroline is named, my father not being the man to press any one on such a matter, or, indeed, to interfere in any way. we two girls are, in fact, quite defenceless in a case of this kind; lovers may come when they choose, and desert when they choose; poor father is too urbane to utter a word of remonstrance or inquiry. moreover, as the approved of my dead mother, m. de la feste has a sort of autocratic power with my father, who holds it unkind to her memory to have an opinion about him. i, feeling it my duty, asked m. de la feste at the last moment about the engagement, in a voice i could not keep firm. 'since the death of your mother all has been indefinite--all!' he said gloomily. that was the whole. possibly, wherryborne rectory may see him no more. june .--m. de la feste has written--one letter to her, one to me. hers could not have been very warm, for she did not brighten on reading it. mine was an ordinary note of friendship, filling an ordinary sheet of paper, which i handed over to caroline when i had finished looking it through. but there was a scrap of paper in the bottom of the envelope, which i dared not show any one. this scrap is his real letter: i scanned it alone in my room, trembling, hot and cold by turns. he tells me he is very wretched; that he deplores what has happened, but was helpless. why did i let him see me, if only to make him faithless. alas, alas! june .--my dear caroline has lost appetite, spirits, health. hope deferred maketh the heart sick. his letters to her grow colder--if indeed he has written more than one. he has refrained from writing again to me--he knows it is no use. altogether the situation that he and she and i are in is melancholy in the extreme. why are human hearts so perverse? chapter vi.--her ingenuity instigates her september .--three months of anxious care--till at length i have taken the extreme step of writing to him. our chief distress has been caused by the state of poor caroline, who, after sinking by degrees into such extreme weakness as to make it doubtful if she can ever recover full vigour, has to-day been taken much worse. her position is very critical. the doctor says plainly that she is dying of a broken heart--and that even the removal of the cause may not now restore her. ought i to have written to charles sooner? but how could i when she forbade me? it was her pride only which instigated her, and i should not have obeyed. sept. .--charles has arrived and has seen her. he is shocked, conscience-stricken, remorseful. i have told him that he can do no good beyond cheering her by his presence. i do not know what he thinks of proposing to her if she gets better, but he says little to her at present: indeed he dares not: his words agitate her dangerously. sept. .--after a struggle between duty and selfishness, such as i pray to heaven i may never have to undergo again, i have asked him for pity's sake to make her his wife, here and now, as she lies. i said to him that the poor child would not trouble him long; and such a solemnization would soothe her last hours as nothing else could do. he said that he would willingly do so, and had thought of it himself; but for one forbidding reason: in the event of her death as his wife he can never marry me, her sister, according to our laws. i started at his words. he went on: 'on the other hand, if i were sure that immediate marriage with me would save her life, i would not refuse, for possibly i might after a while, and out of sight of you, make myself fairly content with one of so sweet a disposition as hers; but if, as is probable, neither my marrying her nor any other act can avail to save her life, by so doing i lose both her and you.' i could not answer him. sept. .--he continued firm in his reasons for refusal till this morning, and then i became possessed with an idea, which i at once propounded to him. it was that he should at least consent to a form of marriage with caroline, in consideration of her love; a form which need not be a legal union, but one which would satisfy her sick and enfeebled soul. such things have been done, and the sentiment of feeling herself his would inexpressibly comfort her mind, i am sure. then, if she is taken from us, i should not have lost the power of becoming his lawful wife at some future day, if it indeed should be deemed expedient; if, on the other hand, she lives, he can on her recovery inform her of the incompleteness of their marriage contract, the ceremony can be repeated, and i can, and i am sure willingly would, avoid troubling them with my presence till grey hairs and wrinkles make his unfortunate passion for me a thing of the past. i put all this before him; but he demurred. sept. .--i have urged him again. he says he will consider. it is no time to mince matters, and as a further inducement i have offered to enter into a solemn engagement to marry him myself a year after her death. sept. . later.--an agitating interview. he says he will agree to whatever i propose, the three possibilities and our contingent acts being recorded as follows: first, in the event of dear caroline being taken from us, i marry him on the expiration of a year: second, in the forlorn chance of her recovery i take upon myself the responsibility of explaining to caroline the true nature of the ceremony he has gone through with her, that it was done at my suggestion to make her happy at once, before a special licence could be obtained, and that a public ceremony at church is awaiting her: third, in the unlikely event of her cooling, and refusing to repeat the ceremony with him, i leave england, join him abroad, and there wed him, agreeing not to live in england again till caroline has either married another or regards her attachment to charles as a bygone matter. i have thought over these conditions, and have agreed to them all as they stand. p.m.--i do not much like this scheme, after all. for one thing, i have just sounded my father on it before parting with him for the night, my impression having been that he would see no objection. but he says he could on no account countenance any such unreal proceeding; however good our intentions, and even though the poor girl were dying, it would not be right. so i sadly seek my pillow. october .--i am sure my father is wrong in his view. why is it not right, if it would be balm to caroline's wounded soul, and if a real ceremony is absolutely refused by charles--moreover is hardly practicable in the difficulty of getting a special licence, if he were agreed? my father does not know, or will not believe, that caroline's attachment has been the cause of her hopeless condition. but that it is so, and that the form of words would give her inexpressible happiness, i know well; for i whispered tentatively in her ear on such marriages, and the effect was great. henceforth my father cannot be taken into confidence on the subject of caroline. he does not understand her. o'clock noon.--i have taken advantage of my father's absence to-day to confide my secret notion to a thoughtful young man, who called here this morning to speak to my father. he is the mr. theophilus higham, of whom i have already had occasion to speak--a scripture reader in the next town, and is soon going to be ordained. i told him the pitiable case, and my remedy. he says ardently that he will assist me--would do anything for me (he is, in truth, an admirer of mine); he sees no wrong in such an act of charity. he is coming again to the house this afternoon before my father returns, to carry out the idea. i have spoken to charles, who promises to be ready. i must now break the news to caroline. o'clock p.m.--i have been in too much excitement till now to set down the result. we have accomplished our plan; and though i feel like a guilty sinner, i am glad. my father, of course, is not to be informed as yet. caroline has had a seraphic expression upon her wasted, transparent face ever since. i should hardly be surprised if it really saved her life even now, and rendered a legitimate union necessary between them. in that case my father can be informed of the whole proceeding, and in the face of such wonderful success cannot disapprove. meanwhile poor charles has not lost the possibility of taking unworthy me to fill her place should she--. but i cannot contemplate that alternative unmoved, and will not write it. charles left for the south of europe immediately after the ceremony. he was in a high-strung, throbbing, almost wild state of mind at first, but grew calmer under my exhortations. i had to pay the penalty of receiving a farewell kiss from him, which i much regret, considering its meaning; but he took me so unexpectedly, and in a moment was gone. oct. .--she certainly is better, and even when she found that charles had been suddenly obliged to leave, she received the news quite cheerfully. the doctor says that her apparent improvement may be delusive; but i think our impressing upon her the necessity of keeping what has occurred a secret from papa, and everybody, helps to give her a zest for life. oct. .--she is still mending. i am glad to have saved her--my only sister--if i have done so; though i shall now never become charles's wife. chapter vii.--a surprise awaits her feb. .--writing has been absolutely impossible for a long while; but i now reach a stage at which it seems possible to jot down a line. caroline's recovery, extending over four months, has been very engrossing; at first slow, latterly rapid. but a fearful complication of affairs attends it! o what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive! charles has written reproachfully to me from venice, where he is. he says how can he fulfil in the real what he has enacted in the counterfeit, while he still loves me? yet how, on the other hand, can he leave it unfulfilled? all this time i have not told her, and up to this minute she believes that he has indeed taken her for better, for worse, till death them do part. it is a harassing position for me, and all three. in the awful approach of death, one's judgment loses its balance, and we do anything to meet the exigencies of the moment, with a single eye to the one who excites our sympathy, and from whom we seem on the brink of being separated for ever. had he really married her at that time all would be settled now. but he took too much thought; she might have died, and then he had his reason. if indeed it had turned out so, i should now be perhaps a sad woman; but not a tempest-tossed one . . . the possibility of his claiming me after all is what lies at the root of my agitation. everything hangs by a thread. suppose i tell her the marriage was a mockery; suppose she is indignant with me and with him for the deception--and then? otherwise, suppose she is not indignant but forgives all; he is bound to marry her; and honour constrains me to urge him thereto, in spite of what he protests, and to smooth the way to this issue by my method of informing her. i have meant to tell her the last month--ever since she has been strong enough to bear such tidings; but i have been without the power--the moral force. surely i must write, and get him to come and assist me. march .--she continually wonders why he does not come, the five months of his enforced absence having expired; and still more she wonders why he does not write oftener. his last letter was cold, she says, and she fears he regrets his marriage, which he may only have celebrated with her for pity's sake, thinking she was sure to die. it makes one's heart bleed to hear her hovering thus so near the truth, and yet never discerning its actual shape. a minor trouble besets me, too, in the person of the young scripture reader, whose conscience pricks him for the part he played. surely i am punished, if ever woman were, for a too ingenious perversion of her better judgment! april .--she is practically well. the faint pink revives in her cheek, though it is not quite so full as heretofore. but she still wonders what she can have done to offend 'her dear husband,' and i have been obliged to tell the smallest part of the truth--an unimportant fragment of the whole, in fact, i said that i feared for the moment he might regret the precipitancy of the act, which her illness caused, his affairs not having been quite sufficiently advanced for marriage just then, though he will doubtless come to her as soon as he has a home ready. meanwhile i have written to him, peremptorily, to come and relieve me in this awful dilemma. he will find no note of love in that. april .--to my alarm the letter i lately addressed to him at venice, where he is staying, as well as the last one she sent him, have received no reply. she thinks he is ill. i do not quite think that, but i wish we could hear from him. perhaps the peremptoriness of my words had offended him; it grieves me to think it possible. i offend him! but too much of this. i must tell her the truth, or she may in her ignorance commit herself to some course or other that may be ruinously compromising. she said plaintively just now that if he could see her, and know how occupied with him and him alone is her every waking hour, she is sure he would forgive her the wicked presumption of becoming his wife. very sweet all that, and touching. i could not conceal my tears. april .--the house is in confusion; my father is angry and distressed, and i am distracted. caroline has disappeared--gone away secretly. i cannot help thinking that i know where she is gone to. how guilty i seem, and how innocent she! o that i had told her before now! o'clock.--no trace of her as yet. we find also that the little waiting- maid we have here in training has disappeared with caroline, and there is not much doubt that caroline, fearing to travel alone, has induced this girl to go with her as companion. i am almost sure she has started in desperation to find him, and that venice is her goal. why should she run away, if not to join her husband, as she thinks him? now that i consider, there have been indications of this wish in her for days, as in birds of passage there lurk signs of their incipient intention; and yet i did not think she would have taken such an extreme step, unaided, and without consulting me. i can only jot down the bare facts--i have no time for reflections. but fancy caroline travelling across the continent of europe with a chit of a girl, who will be more of a charge than an assistance! they will be a mark for every marauder who encounters them. evening: o'clock.--yes, it is as i surmised. she has gone to join him. a note posted by her in budmouth regis at daybreak has reached me this afternoon--thanks to the fortunate chance of one of the servants calling for letters in town to-day, or i should not have got it until to-morrow. she merely asserts her determination of going to him, and has started privately, that nothing may hinder her; stating nothing about her route. that such a gentle thing should suddenly become so calmly resolute quite surprises me. alas, he may have left venice--she may not find him for weeks--may not at all. my father, on learning the facts, bade me at once have everything ready by nine this evening, in time to drive to the train that meets the night steam-boat. this i have done, and there being an hour to spare before we start, i relieve the suspense of waiting by taking up my pen. he says overtake her we must, and calls charles the hardest of names. he believes, of course, that she is merely an infatuated girl rushing off to meet her lover; and how can the wretched i tell him that she is more, and in a sense better than that--yet not sufficiently more and better to make this flight to charles anything but a still greater danger to her than a mere lover's impulse. we shall go by way of paris, and we think we may overtake her there. i hear my father walking restlessly up and down the hall, and can write no more. chapter viii.--she travels in pursuit april . evening, paris, hotel ---.--there is no overtaking her at this place; but she has been here, as i thought, no other hotel in paris being known to her. we go on to-morrow morning. april . venice.--a morning of adventures and emotions which leave me sick and weary, and yet unable to sleep, though i have lain down on the sofa of my room for more than an hour in the attempt. i therefore make up my diary to date in a hurried fashion, for the sake of the riddance it affords to ideas which otherwise remain suspended hotly in the brain. we arrived here this morning in broad sunlight, which lit up the sea-girt buildings as we approached so that they seemed like a city of cork floating raft-like on the smooth, blue deep. but i only glanced from the carriage window at the lovely scene, and we were soon across the intervening water and inside the railway station. when we got to the front steps the row of black gondolas and the shouts of the gondoliers so bewildered my father that he was understood to require two gondolas instead of one with two oars, and so i found him in one and myself in another. we got this righted after a while, and were rowed at once to the hotel on the riva degli schiavoni where m. de la feste had been staying when we last heard from him, the way being down the grand canal for some distance, under the rialto, and then by narrow canals which eventually brought us under the bridge of sighs--harmonious to our moods!--and out again into open water. the scene was purity itself as to colour, but it was cruel that i should behold it for the first time under such circumstances. as soon as i entered the hotel, which is an old-fashioned place, like most places here, where people are taken en pension as well as the ordinary way, i rushed to the framed list of visitors hanging in the hall, and in a moment i saw charles's name upon it among the rest. but she was our chief thought. i turned to the hall porter, and--knowing that she would have travelled as 'madame de la feste'--i asked for her under that name, without my father hearing. (he, poor soul, was making confused inquiries outside the door about 'an english lady,' as if there were not a score of english ladies at hand.) 'she has just come,' said the porter. 'madame came by the very early train this morning, when monsieur was asleep, and she requested us not to disturb him. she is now in her room.' whether caroline had seen us from the window, or overheard me, i do not know, but at that moment i heard footsteps on the bare marble stairs, and she appeared in person descending. 'caroline!' i exclaimed, 'why have you done this?' and rushed up to her. she did not answer; but looked down to hide her emotion, which she conquered after the lapse of a few seconds, putting on a practical tone that belied her. 'i am just going to my husband,' she said. 'i have not yet seen him. i have not been here long.' she condescended to give no further reason for her movements, and made as if to move on. i implored her to come into a private room where i could speak to her in confidence, but she objected. however, the dining-room, close at hand, was quite empty at this hour, and i got her inside and closed the door. i do not know how i began my explanation, or how i ended it, but i told her briefly and brokenly enough that the marriage was not real. 'not real?' she said vacantly. 'it is not,' said i. 'you will find that it is all as i say.' she could not believe my meaning even then. 'not his wife?' she cried. 'it is impossible. what am i, then?' i added more details, and reiterated the reason for my conduct as well as i could; but heaven knows how very difficult i found it to feel a jot more justification for it in my own mind than she did in hers. the revulsion of feeling, as soon as she really comprehended all, was most distressing. after her grief had in some measure spent itself she turned against both him and me. 'why should have i been deceived like this?' she demanded, with a bitter haughtiness of which i had not deemed such a tractable creature capable. 'do you suppose that anything could justify such an imposition? what, o what a snare you have spread for me!' i murmured, 'your life seemed to require it,' but she did not hear me. she sank down in a chair, covered her face, and then my father came in. 'o, here you are!' he said. 'i could not find you. and caroline!' 'and were you, papa, a party to this strange deed of kindness?' 'to what?' said he. then out it all came, and for the first time he was made acquainted with the fact that the scheme for soothing her illness, which i had sounded him upon, had been really carried out. in a moment he sided with caroline. my repeated assurance that my motive was good availed less than nothing. in a minute or two caroline arose and went abruptly out of the room, and my father followed her, leaving me alone to my reflections. i was so bent upon finding charles immediately that i did not notice whither they went. the servants told me that m. de la feste was just outside smoking, and one of them went to look for him, i following; but before we had gone many steps he came out of the hotel behind me. i expected him to be amazed; but he showed no surprise at seeing me, though he showed another kind of feeling to an extent which dismayed me. i may have revealed something similar; but i struggled hard against all emotion, and as soon as i could i told him she had come. he simply said 'yes' in a low voice. 'you know it, charles?' said i. 'i have just learnt it,' he said. 'o, charles,' i went on, 'having delayed completing your marriage with her till now, i fear--it has become a serious position for us. why did you not reply to our letters?' 'i was purposing to reply in person: i did not know how to address her on the point--how to address you. but what has become of her?' 'she has gone off with my father,' said i; 'indignant with you, and scorning me.' he was silent: and i suggested that we should follow them, pointing out the direction which i fancied their gondola had taken. as the one we got into was doubly manned we soon came in view of their two figures ahead of us, while they were not likely to observe us, our boat having the 'felze' on, while theirs was uncovered. they shot into a narrow canal just beyond the giardino reale, and by the time we were floating up between its slimy walls we saw them getting out of their gondola at the steps which lead up near the end of the via marzo. when we reached the same spot they were walking up and down the via in consultation. getting out he stood on the lower steps watching them. i watched him. he seemed to fall into a reverie. 'will you not go and speak to her?' said i at length. he assented, and went forward. still he did not hasten to join them, but, screened by a projecting window, observed their musing converse. at last he looked back at me; whereupon i pointed forward, and he in obedience stepped out, and met them face to face. caroline flushed hot, bowed haughtily to him, turned away, and taking my father's arm violently, led him off before he had had time to use his own judgment. they disappeared into a narrow calle, or alley, leading to the back of the buildings on the grand canal. m. de la feste came slowly back; as he stepped in beside me i realized my position so vividly that my heart might almost have been heard to beat. the third condition had arisen--the least expected by either of us. she had refused him; he was free to claim me. we returned in the boat together. he seemed quite absorbed till we had turned the angle into the grand canal, when he broke the silence. 'she spoke very bitterly to you in the salle-a-manger,' he said. 'i do not think she was quite warranted in speaking so to you, who had nursed her so tenderly.' 'o, but i think she was,' i answered. 'it was there i told her what had been done; she did not know till then.' 'she was very dignified--very striking,' he murmured. 'you were more.' 'but how do you know what passed between us,' said i. he then told me that he had seen and heard all. the dining-room was divided by folding- doors from an inner portion, and he had been sitting in the latter part when we entered the outer, so that our words were distinctly audible. 'but, dear alicia,' he went on, 'i was more impressed by the affection of your apology to her than by anything else. and do you know that now the conditions have arisen which give me liberty to consider you my affianced?' i had been expecting this, but yet was not prepared. i stammered out that we would not discuss it then. 'why not?' said he. 'do you know that we may marry here and now? she has cast off both you and me.' 'it cannot be,' said i, firmly. 'she has not been fairly asked to be your wife in fact--to repeat the service lawfully; and until that has been done it would be grievous sin in me to accept you.' i had not noticed where the gondoliers were rowing us. i suppose he had given them some direction unheard by me, for as i resigned myself in despairing indolence to the motion of the gondola, i perceived that it was taking us up the canal, and, turning into a side opening near the palazzo grimani, drew up at some steps near the end of a large church. 'where are we?' said i. 'it is the church of the frari,' he replied. 'we might be married there. at any rate, let us go inside, and grow calm, and decide what to do.' when we had entered i found that whether a place to marry in or not, it was one to depress. the word which venice speaks most constantly--decay--was in a sense accentuated here. the whole large fabric itself seemed sinking into an earth which was not solid enough to bear it. cobwebbed cracks zigzagged the walls, and similar webs clouded the window-panes. a sickly-sweet smell pervaded the aisles. after walking about with him a little while in embarrassing silences, divided only by his cursory explanations of the monuments and other objects, and almost fearing he might produce a marriage licence, i went to a door in the south transept which opened into the sacristy. i glanced through it, towards the small altar at the upper end. the place was empty save of one figure; and she was kneeling here in front of the beautiful altarpiece by bellini. beautiful though it was she seemed not to see it. she was weeping and praying as though her heart was broken. she was my sister caroline. i beckoned to charles, and he came to my side, and looked through the door with me. 'speak to her,' said i. 'she will forgive you.' i gently pushed him through the doorway, and went back into the transept, down the nave, and onward to the west door. there i saw my father, to whom i spoke. he answered severely that, having first obtained comfortable quarters in a pension on the grand canal, he had gone back to the hotel on the riva degli schiavoni to find me; but that i was not there. he was now waiting for caroline, to accompany her back to the pension, at which she had requested to be left to herself as much as possible till she could regain some composure. i told him that it was useless to dwell on what was past, that i no doubt had erred, that the remedy lay in the future and their marriage. in this he quite agreed with me, and on my informing him that m. de la feste was at that moment with caroline in the sacristy, he assented to my proposal that we should leave them to themselves, and return together to await them at the pension, where he had also engaged a room for me. this we did, and going up to the chamber he had chosen for me, which overlooked the canal, i leant from the window to watch for the gondola that should contain charles and my sister. they were not long in coming. i recognized them by the colour of her sunshade as soon as they turned the bend on my right hand. they were side by side of necessity, but there was no conversation between them, and i thought that she looked flushed and he pale. when they were rowed in to the steps of our house he handed her up. i fancied she might have refused his assistance, but she did not. soon i heard her pass my door, and wishing to know the result of their interview i went downstairs, seeing that the gondola had not put off with him. he was turning from the door, but not towards the water, intending apparently to walk home by way of the calle which led into the via marzo. 'has she forgiven you?' said i. 'i have not asked her,' he said. 'but you are bound to do so,' i told him. he paused, and then said, 'alicia, let us understand each other. do you mean to tell me, once for all, that if your sister is willing to become my wife you absolutely make way for her, and will not entertain any thought of what i suggested to you any more?' 'i do tell you so,' said i with dry lips. 'you belong to her--how can i do otherwise?' 'yes; it is so; it is purely a question of honour,' he returned. 'very well then, honour shall be my word, and not my love. i will put the question to her frankly; if she says yes, the marriage shall be. but not here. it shall be at your own house in england.' 'when?' said i. 'i will accompany her there,' he replied, 'and it shall be within a week of her return. i have nothing to gain by delay. but i will not answer for the consequences.' 'what do you mean?' said i. he made no reply, went away, and i came back to my room. chapter ix.--she witnesses the end april . milan, . p.m.--we are thus far on our way homeward. i, being decidedly de trop, travel apart from the rest as much as i can. having dined at the hotel here, i went out by myself; regardless of the proprieties, for i could not stay in. i walked at a leisurely pace along the via allesandro manzoni till my eye was caught by the grand galleria vittorio emanuele, and i entered under the high glass arcades till i reached the central octagon, where i sat down on one of a group of chairs placed there. becoming accustomed to the stream of promenaders, i soon observed, seated on the chairs opposite, caroline and charles. this was the first occasion on which i had seen them en tete-a-tete since my conversation with him. she soon caught sight of me; averted her eyes; then, apparently abandoning herself to an impulse, she jumped up from her seat and came across to me. we had not spoken to each other since the meeting in venice. 'alicia,' she said, sitting down by my side, 'charles asks me to forgive you, and i do forgive you.' i pressed her hand, with tears in my eyes, and said, 'and do you forgive him?' 'yes,' said she, shyly. 'and what's the result?' said i. 'we are to be married directly we reach home.' this was almost the whole of our conversation; she walked home with me, charles following a little way behind, though she kept turning her head, as if anxious that he should overtake us. 'honour and not love' seemed to ring in my ears. so matters stand. caroline is again happy. april .--we have reached home, charles with us. events are now moving in silent speed, almost with velocity, indeed; and i sometimes feel oppressed by the strange and preternatural ease which seems to accompany their flow. charles is staying at the neighbouring town; he is only waiting for the marriage licence; when obtained he is to come here, be quietly married to her, and carry her off. it is rather resignation than content which sits on his face; but he has not spoken a word more to me on the burning subject, or deviated one hair's breadth from the course he laid down. they may be happy in time to come: i hope so. but i cannot shake off depression. may .--eve of the wedding. caroline is serenely happy, though not blithe. but there is nothing to excite anxiety about her. i wish i could say the same of him. he comes and goes like a ghost, and yet nobody seems to observe this strangeness in his mien. i could not help being here for the ceremony; but my absence would have resulted in less disquiet on his part, i believe. however, i may be wrong in attributing causes: my father simply says that charles and caroline have as good a chance of being happy as other people. well, to- morrow settles all. may .--they are married: we have just returned from church. charles looked so pale this morning that my father asked him if he was ill. he said, 'no: only a slight headache;' and we started for the church. there was no hitch or hindrance; and the thing is done. p.m.--they ought to have set out on their journey by this time; but there is an unaccountable delay. charles went out half-an-hour ago, and has not yet returned. caroline is waiting in the hall; but i am dreadfully afraid they will miss the train. i suppose the trifling hindrance is of no account; and yet i am full of misgivings . . . sept. .--four months have passed; only four months! it seems like years. can it be that only seventeen weeks ago i set on this paper the fact of their marriage? i am now an aged woman by comparison! on that never to be forgotten day we waited and waited, and charles did not return. at six o'clock, when poor little caroline had gone back to her room in a state of suspense impossible to describe, a man who worked in the water-meadows came to the house and asked for my father. he had an interview with him in the study. my father then rang his bell, and sent for me. i went down; and i then learnt the fatal news. charles was no more. the waterman had been going to shut down the hatches of a weir in the meads when he saw a hat on the edge of the pool below, floating round and round in the eddy, and looking into the pool saw something strange at the bottom. he knew what it meant, and lowering the hatches so that the water was still, could distinctly see the body. it is needless to write particulars that were in the newspapers at the time. charles was brought to the house, but he was dead. we all feared for caroline; and she suffered much; but strange to say, her suffering was purely of the nature of deep grief which found relief in sobbing and tears. it came out at the inquest that charles had been accustomed to cross the meads to give an occasional half-crown to an old man who lived on the opposite hill, who had once been a landscape painter in an humble way till he lost his eyesight; and it was assumed that he had gone thither for the same purpose to-day, and to bid him farewell. on this information the coroner's jury found that his death had been caused by misadventure; and everybody believes to this hour that he was drowned while crossing the weir to relieve the old man. except one: she believes in no accident. after the stunning effect of the first news, i thought it strange that he should have chosen to go on such an errand at the last moment, and to go personally, when there was so little time to spare, since any gift could have been so easily sent by another hand. further reflection has convinced me that this step out of life was as much a part of the day's plan as was the wedding in the church hard by. they were the two halves of his complete intention when he gave me on the grand canal that assurance which i shall never forget: 'very well, then; honour shall be my word, not love. if she says "yes," the marriage shall be.' i do not know why i should have made this entry at this particular time; but it has occurred to me to do it--to complete, in a measure, that part of my desultory chronicle which relates to the love-story of my sister and charles. she lives on meekly in her grief; and will probably outlive it; while i--but never mind me. chapter x.--she adds a note long after five-years later.--i have lighted upon this old diary, which it has interested me to look over, containing, as it does, records of the time when life shone more warmly in my eye than it does now. i am impelled to add one sentence to round off its record of the past. about a year ago my sister caroline, after a persistent wooing, accepted the hand and heart of theophilus higham, once the blushing young scripture reader who assisted at the substitute for a marriage i planned, and now the fully- ordained curate of the next parish. his penitence for the part he played ended in love. we have all now made atonement for our sins against her: may she be deceived no more. . the grave by the handpost i never pass through chalk-newton without turning to regard the neighbouring upland, at a point where a lane crosses the lone straight highway dividing this from the next parish; a sight which does not fail to recall the event that once happened there; and, though it may seem superfluous, at this date, to disinter more memories of village history, the whispers of that spot may claim to be preserved. it was on a dark, yet mild and exceptionally dry evening at christmas- time (according to the testimony of william dewy of mellstock, michael mail, and others), that the choir of chalk-newton--a large parish situate about half-way between the towns of ivel and casterbridge, and now a railway station--left their homes just before midnight to repeat their annual harmonies under the windows of the local population. the band of instrumentalists and singers was one of the largest in the county; and, unlike the smaller and finer mellstock string-band, which eschewed all but the catgut, it included brass and reed performers at full sunday services, and reached all across the west gallery. on this night there were two or three violins, two 'cellos, a tenor viol, double bass, hautboy, clarionets, serpent, and seven singers. it was, however, not the choir's labours, but what its members chanced to witness, that particularly marked the occasion. they had pursued their rounds for many years without meeting with any incident of an unusual kind, but to-night, according to the assertions of several, there prevailed, to begin with, an exceptionally solemn and thoughtful mood among two or three of the oldest in the band, as if they were thinking they might be joined by the phantoms of dead friends who had been of their number in earlier years, and now were mute in the churchyard under flattening mounds--friends who had shown greater zest for melody in their time than was shown in this; or that some past voice of a semi-transparent figure might quaver from some bedroom-window its acknowledgment of their nocturnal greeting, instead of a familiar living neighbour. whether this were fact or fancy, the younger members of the choir met together with their customary thoughtlessness and buoyancy. when they had gathered by the stone stump of the cross in the middle of the village, near the white horse inn, which they made their starting point, some one observed that they were full early, that it was not yet twelve o'clock. the local waits of those days mostly refrained from sounding a note before christmas morning had astronomically arrived, and not caring to return to their beer, they decided to begin with some outlying cottages in sidlinch lane, where the people had no clocks, and would not know whether it were night or morning. in that direction they accordingly went; and as they ascended to higher ground their attention was attracted by a light beyond the houses, quite at the top of the lane. the road from chalk-newton to broad sidlinch is about two miles long and in the middle of its course, where it passes over the ridge dividing the two villages, it crosses at right angles, as has been stated, the lonely monotonous old highway known as long ash lane, which runs, straight as a surveyor's line, many miles north and south of this spot, on the foundation of a roman road, and has often been mentioned in these narratives. though now quite deserted and grass-grown, at the beginning of the century it was well kept and frequented by traffic. the glimmering light appeared to come from the precise point where the roads intersected. 'i think i know what that mid mean!' one of the group remarked. they stood a few moments, discussing the probability of the light having origin in an event of which rumours had reached them, and resolved to go up the hill. approaching the high land their conjectures were strengthened. long ash lane cut athwart them, right and left; and they saw that at the junction of the four ways, under the hand-post, a grave was dug, into which, as the choir drew nigh, a corpse had just been thrown by the four sidlinch men employed for the purpose. the cart and horse which had brought the body thither stood silently by. the singers and musicians from chalk-newton halted, and looked on while the gravediggers shovelled in and trod down the earth, till, the hole being filled, the latter threw their spades into the cart, and prepared to depart. 'who mid ye be a-burying there?' asked lot swanhills in a raised voice. 'not the sergeant?' the sidlinch men had been so deeply engrossed in their task that they had not noticed the lanterns of the chalk-newton choir till now. 'what--be you the newton carol-singers?' returned the representatives of sidlinch. 'ay, sure. can it be that it is old sergeant holway you've a-buried there?' ''tis so. you've heard about it, then?' the choir knew no particulars--only that he had shot himself in his apple- closet on the previous sunday. 'nobody seem'th to know what 'a did it for, 'a b'lieve? leastwise, we don't know at chalk-newton,' continued lot. 'o yes. it all came out at the inquest.' the singers drew close, and the sidlinch men, pausing to rest after their labours, told the story. 'it was all owing to that son of his, poor old man. it broke his heart.' 'but the son is a soldier, surely; now with his regiment in the east indies?' 'ay. and it have been rough with the army over there lately. 'twas a pity his father persuaded him to go. but luke shouldn't have twyted the sergeant o't, since 'a did it for the best.' the circumstances, in brief, were these: the sergeant who had come to this lamentable end, father of the young soldier who had gone with his regiment to the east, had been singularly comfortable in his military experiences, these having ended long before the outbreak of the great war with france. on his discharge, after duly serving his time, he had returned to his native village, and married, and taken kindly to domestic life. but the war in which england next involved herself had cost him many frettings that age and infirmity prevented him from being ever again an active unit of the army. when his only son grew to young manhood, and the question arose of his going out in life, the lad expressed his wish to be a mechanic. but his father advised enthusiastically for the army. 'trade is coming to nothing in these days,' he said. 'and if the war with the french lasts, as it will, trade will be still worse. the army, luke--that's the thing for 'ee. 'twas the making of me, and 'twill be the making of you. i hadn't half such a chance as you'll have in these splendid hotter times.' luke demurred, for he was a home-keeping, peace-loving youth. but, putting respectful trust in his father's judgment, he at length gave way, and enlisted in the ---d foot. in the course of a few weeks he was sent out to india to his regiment, which had distinguished itself in the east under general wellesley. but luke was unlucky. news came home indirectly that he lay sick out there; and then on one recent day when his father was out walking, the old man had received tidings that a letter awaited him at casterbridge. the sergeant sent a special messenger the whole nine miles, and the letter was paid for and brought home; but though, as he had guessed, it came from luke, its contents were of an unexpected tenor. the letter had been written during a time of deep depression. luke said that his life was a burden and a slavery, and bitterly reproached his father for advising him to embark on a career for which he felt unsuited. he found himself suffering fatigues and illnesses without gaining glory, and engaged in a cause which he did not understand or appreciate. if it had not been for his father's bad advice he, luke, would now have been working comfortably at a trade in the village that he had never wished to leave. after reading the letter the sergeant advanced a few steps till he was quite out of sight of everybody, and then sat down on the bank by the wayside. when he arose half-an-hour later he looked withered and broken, and from that day his natural spirits left him. wounded to the quick by his son's sarcastic stings, he indulged in liquor more and more frequently. his wife had died some years before this date, and the sergeant lived alone in the house which had been hers. one morning in the december under notice the report of a gun had been heard on his premises, and on entering the neighbours found him in a dying state. he had shot himself with an old firelock that he used for scaring birds; and from what he had said the day before, and the arrangements he had made for his decease, there was no doubt that his end had been deliberately planned, as a consequence of the despondency into which he had been thrown by his son's letter. the coroner's jury returned a verdict of felo de se. 'here's his son's letter,' said one of the sidlinch men. ''twas found in his father's pocket. you can see by the state o't how many times he read it over. howsomever, the lord's will be done, since it must, whether or no.' the grave was filled up and levelled, no mound being shaped over it. the sidlinch men then bade the chalk-newton choir good-night, and departed with the cart in which they had brought the sergeant's body to the hill. when their tread had died away from the ear, and the wind swept over the isolated grave with its customary siffle of indifference, lot swanhills turned and spoke to old richard toller, the hautboy player. ''tis hard upon a man, and he a wold sojer, to serve en so, richard. not that the sergeant was ever in a battle bigger than would go into a half- acre paddock, that's true. still, his soul ought to hae as good a chance as another man's, all the same, hey?' richard replied that he was quite of the same opinion. 'what d'ye say to lifting up a carrel over his grave, as 'tis christmas, and no hurry to begin down in parish, and 'twouldn't take up ten minutes, and not a soul up here to say us nay, or know anything about it?' lot nodded assent. 'the man ought to hae his chances,' he repeated. 'ye may as well spet upon his grave, for all the good we shall do en by what we lift up, now he's got so far,' said notton, the clarionet man and professed sceptic of the choir. 'but i'm agreed if the rest be.' they thereupon placed themselves in a semicircle by the newly stirred earth, and roused the dull air with the well-known number sixteen of their collection, which lot gave out as being the one he thought best suited to the occasion and the mood he comes' the pri'-soners to' re-lease', in sa'-tan's bon'-dage held'. 'jown it--we've never played to a dead man afore,' said ezra cattstock, when, having concluded the last verse, they stood reflecting for a breath or two. 'but it do seem more merciful than to go away and leave en, as they t'other fellers have done.' 'now backalong to newton, and by the time we get overright the pa'son's 'twill be half after twelve,' said the leader. they had not, however, done more than gather up their instruments when the wind brought to their notice the noise of a vehicle rapidly driven up the same lane from sidlinch which the gravediggers had lately retraced. to avoid being run over when moving on, they waited till the benighted traveller, whoever he might be, should pass them where they stood in the wider area of the cross. in half a minute the light of the lanterns fell upon a hired fly, drawn by a steaming and jaded horse. it reached the hand-post, when a voice from the inside cried, 'stop here!' the driver pulled rein. the carriage door was opened from within, and there leapt out a private soldier in the uniform of some line regiment. he looked around, and was apparently surprised to see the musicians standing there. 'have you buried a man here?' he asked. 'no. we bain't sidlinch folk, thank god; we be newton choir. though a man is just buried here, that's true; and we've raised a carrel over the poor mortal's natomy. what--do my eyes see before me young luke holway, that went wi' his regiment to the east indies, or do i see his spirit straight from the battlefield? be you the son that wrote the letter--' 'don't--don't ask me. the funeral is over, then?' 'there wer no funeral, in a christen manner of speaking. but's buried, sure enough. you must have met the men going back in the empty cart.' 'like a dog in a ditch, and all through me!' he remained silent, looking at the grave, and they could not help pitying him. 'my friends,' he said, 'i understand better now. you have, i suppose, in neighbourly charity, sung peace to his soul? i thank you, from my heart, for your kind pity. yes; i am sergeant holway's miserable son--i'm the son who has brought about his father's death, as truly as if i had done it with my own hand!' 'no, no. don't ye take on so, young man. he'd been naturally low for a good while, off and on, so we hear.' 'we were out in the east when i wrote to him. everything had seemed to go wrong with me. just after my letter had gone we were ordered home. that's how it is you see me here. as soon as we got into barracks at casterbridge i heard o' this . . . damn me! i'll dare to follow my father, and make away with myself, too. it is the only thing left to do!' 'don't ye be rash, luke holway, i say again; but try to make amends by your future life. and maybe your father will smile a smile down from heaven upon 'ee for 't.' he shook his head. 'i don't know about that!' he answered bitterly. 'try and be worthy of your father at his best. 'tis not too late.' 'd'ye think not? i fancy it is! . . . well, i'll turn it over. thank you for your good counsel. i'll live for one thing, at any rate. i'll move father's body to a decent christian churchyard, if i do it with my own hands. i can't save his life, but i can give him an honourable grave. he shan't lie in this accursed place!' 'ay, as our pa'son says, 'tis a barbarous custom they keep up at sidlinch, and ought to be done away wi'. the man a' old soldier, too. you see, our pa'son is not like yours at sidlinch.' 'he says it is barbarous, does he? so it is!' cried the soldier. 'now hearken, my friends.' then he proceeded to inquire if they would increase his indebtedness to them by undertaking the removal, privately, of the body of the suicide to the churchyard, not of sidlinch, a parish he now hated, but of chalk-newton. he would give them all he possessed to do it. lot asked ezra cattstock what he thought of it. cattstock, the 'cello player, who was also the sexton, demurred, and advised the young soldier to sound the rector about it first. 'mid be he would object, and yet 'a mid'nt. the pa'son o' sidlinch is a hard man, i own ye, and 'a said if folk will kill theirselves in hot blood they must take the consequences. but ours don't think like that at all, and might allow it.' 'what's his name?' 'the honourable and reverent mr. oldham, brother to lord wessex. but you needn't be afeard o' en on that account. he'll talk to 'ee like a common man, if so be you haven't had enough drink to gie 'ee bad breath.' 'o, the same as formerly. i'll ask him. thank you. and that duty done--' 'what then?' 'there's war in spain. i hear our next move is there. i'll try to show myself to be what my father wished me. i don't suppose i shall--but i'll try in my feeble way. that much i swear--here over his body. so help me god.' luke smacked his palm against the white hand-post with such force that it shook. 'yes, there's war in spain; and another chance for me to be worthy of father.' so the matter ended that night. that the private acted in one thing as he had vowed to do soon became apparent, for during the christmas week the rector came into the churchyard when cattstock was there, and asked him to find a spot that would be suitable for the purpose of such an interment, adding that he had slightly known the late sergeant, and was not aware of any law which forbade him to assent to the removal, the letter of the rule having been observed. but as he did not wish to seem moved by opposition to his neighbour at sidlinch, he had stipulated that the act of charity should be carried out at night, and as privately as possible, and that the grave should be in an obscure part of the enclosure. 'you had better see the young man about it at once,' added the rector. but before ezra had done anything luke came down to his house. his furlough had been cut short, owing to new developments of the war in the peninsula, and being obliged to go back to his regiment immediately, he was compelled to leave the exhumation and reinterment to his friends. everything was paid for, and he implored them all to see it carried out forthwith. with this the soldier left. the next day ezra, on thinking the matter over, again went across to the rectory, struck with sudden misgiving. he had remembered that the sergeant had been buried without a coffin, and he was not sure that a stake had not been driven through him. the business would be more troublesome than they had at first supposed. 'yes, indeed!' murmured the rector. 'i am afraid it is not feasible after all.' the next event was the arrival of a headstone by carrier from the nearest town; to be left at mr. ezra cattstock's; all expenses paid. the sexton and the carrier deposited the stone in the former's outhouse; and ezra, left alone, put on his spectacles and read the brief and simple inscription:- here lyeth the body of samuel holway, late sergeant in his majesty's ---d regiment of foot, who departed this life december the th, -. erected by l. h. 'i am not worthy to be called thy son.' ezra again called at the riverside rectory. 'the stone is come, sir. but i'm afeard we can't do it nohow.' 'i should like to oblige him,' said the gentlemanly old incumbent. 'and i would forego all fees willingly. still, if you and the others don't think you can carry it out, i am in doubt what to say.' well, sir; i've made inquiry of a sidlinch woman as to his burial, and what i thought seems true. they buried en wi' a new six-foot hurdle-saul drough's body, from the sheep-pen up in north ewelease though they won't own to it now. and the question is, is the moving worth while, considering the awkwardness?' 'have you heard anything more of the young man?' ezra had only heard that he had embarked that week for spain with the rest of the regiment. 'and if he's as desperate as 'a seemed, we shall never see him here in england again.' 'it is an awkward case,' said the rector. ezra talked it over with the choir; one of whom suggested that the stone might be erected at the crossroads. this was regarded as impracticable. another said that it might be set up in the churchyard without removing the body; but this was seen to be dishonest. so nothing was done. the headstone remained in ezra's outhouse till, growing tired of seeing it there, he put it away among the bushes at the bottom of his garden. the subject was sometimes revived among them, but it always ended with: 'considering how 'a was buried, we can hardly make a job o't.' there was always the consciousness that luke would never come back, an impression strengthened by the disasters which were rumoured to have befallen the army in spain. this tended to make their inertness permanent. the headstone grew green as it lay on its back under ezra's bushes; then a tree by the river was blown down, and, falling across the stone, cracked it in three pieces. ultimately the pieces became buried in the leaves and mould. luke had not been born a chalk-newton man, and he had no relations left in sidlinch, so that no tidings of him reached either village throughout the war. but after waterloo and the fall of napoleon there arrived at sidlinch one day an english sergeant-major covered with stripes and, as it turned out, rich in glory. foreign service had so totally changed luke holway that it was not until he told his name that the inhabitants recognized him as the sergeant's only son. he had served with unswerving effectiveness through the peninsular campaigns under wellington; had fought at busaco, fuentes d'onore, ciudad rodrigo, badajoz, salamanca, vittoria, quatre bras, and waterloo; and had now returned to enjoy a more than earned pension and repose in his native district. he hardly stayed in sidlinch longer than to take a meal on his arrival. the same evening he started on foot over the hill to chalk-newton, passing the hand-post, and saying as he glanced at the spot, 'thank god: he's not there!' nightfall was approaching when he reached the latter village; but he made straight for the churchyard. on his entering it there remained light enough to discern the headstones by, and these he narrowly scanned. but though he searched the front part by the road, and the back part by the river, what he sought he could not find--the grave of sergeant holway, and a memorial bearing the inscription: 'i am not worthy to be called thy son.' he left the churchyard and made inquiries. the honourable and reverend old rector was dead, and so were many of the choir; but by degrees the sergeant-major learnt that his father still lay at the cross-roads in long ash lane. luke pursued his way moodily homewards, to do which, in the natural course, he would be compelled to repass the spot, there being no other road between the two villages. but he could not now go by that place, vociferous with reproaches in his father's tones; and he got over the hedge and wandered deviously through the ploughed fields to avoid the scene. through many a fight and fatigue luke had been sustained by the thought that he was restoring the family honour and making noble amends. yet his father lay still in degradation. it was rather a sentiment than a fact that his father's body had been made to suffer for his own misdeeds; but to his super-sensitiveness it seemed that his efforts to retrieve his character and to propitiate the shade of the insulted one had ended in failure. he endeavoured, however, to shake off his lethargy, and, not liking the associations of sidlinch, hired a small cottage at chalk-newton which had long been empty. here he lived alone, becoming quite a hermit, and allowing no woman to enter the house. the christmas after taking up his abode herein he was sitting in the chimney corner by himself, when he heard faint notes in the distance, and soon a melody burst forth immediately outside his own window, it came from the carol-singers, as usual; and though many of the old hands, ezra and lot included, had gone to their rest, the same old carols were still played out of the same old books. there resounded through the sergeant- major's window-shutters the familiar lines that the deceased choir had rendered over his father's grave:- he comes' the pri'-soners to' re-lease', in sa'-tan's bon'-dage held'. when they had finished they went on to another house, leaving him to silence and loneliness as before. the candle wanted snuffing, but he did not snuff it, and he sat on till it had burnt down into the socket and made waves of shadow on the ceiling. the christmas cheerfulness of next morning was broken at breakfast-time by tragic intelligence which went down the village like wind. sergeant- major holway had been found shot through the head by his own hand at the cross-roads in long ash lane where his father lay buried. on the table in the cottage he had left a piece of paper, on which he had written his wish that he might be buried at the cross beside his father. but the paper was accidentally swept to the floor, and overlooked till after his funeral, which took place in the ordinary way in the churchyard. christmas . enter a dragoon i lately had a melancholy experience (said the gentleman who is answerable for the truth of this story). it was that of going over a doomed house with whose outside aspect i had long been familiar--a house, that is, which by reason of age and dilapidation was to be pulled down during the following week. some of the thatch, brown and rotten as the gills of old mushrooms, had, indeed, been removed before i walked over the building. seeing that it was only a very small house--which is usually called a 'cottage-residence'--situated in a remote hamlet, and that it was not more than a hundred years old, if so much, i was led to think in my progress through the hollow rooms, with their cracked walls and sloping floors, what an exceptional number of abrupt family incidents had taken place therein--to reckon only those which had come to my own knowledge. and no doubt there were many more of which i had never heard. it stood at the top of a garden stretching down to the lane or street that ran through a hermit-group of dwellings in mellstock parish. from a green gate at the lower entrance, over which the thorn hedge had been shaped to an arch by constant clippings, a gravel path ascended between the box edges of once trim raspberry, strawberry, and vegetable plots, towards the front door. this was in colour an ancient and bleached green that could be rubbed off with the finger, and it bore a small long-featured brass knocker covered with verdigris in its crevices. for some years before this eve of demolition the homestead had degenerated, and been divided into two tenements to serve as cottages for farm labourers; but in its prime it had indisputable claim to be considered neat, pretty, and genteel. the variety of incidents above alluded to was mainly owing to the nature of the tenure, whereby the place had been occupied by families not quite of the kind customary in such spots--people whose circumstances, position, or antecedents were more or less of a critical happy-go-lucky cast. and of these residents the family whose term comprised the story i wish to relate was that of mr. jacob paddock the market-gardener, who dwelt there for some years with his wife and grown-up daughter. i an evident commotion was agitating the premises, which jerked busy sounds across the front plot, resembling those of a disturbed hive. if a member of the household appeared at the door it was with a countenance of abstraction and concern. evening began to bend over the scene; and the other inhabitants of the hamlet came out to draw water, their common well being in the public road opposite the garden and house of the paddocks. having wound up their bucketsfull respectively they lingered, and spoke significantly together. from their words any casual listener might have gathered information of what had occurred. the woodman who lived nearest the site of the story told most of the tale. selina, the daughter of the paddocks opposite, had been surprised that afternoon by receiving a letter from her once intended husband, then a corporal, but now a sergeant-major of dragoons, whom she had hitherto supposed to be one of the slain in the battle of the alma two or three years before. 'she picked up wi'en against her father's wish, as we know, and before he got his stripes,' their informant continued. 'not but that the man was as hearty a feller as you'd meet this side o' london. but jacob, you see, wished her to do better, and one can understand it. however, she was determined to stick to him at that time; and for what happened she was not much to blame, so near as they were to matrimony when the war broke out and spoiled all.' 'even the very pig had been killed for the wedding,' said a woman, 'and the barrel o' beer ordered in. o, the man meant honourable enough. but to be off in two days to fight in a foreign country--'twas natural of her father to say they should wait till he got back.' 'and he never came,' murmured one in the shade. 'the war ended but her man never turned up again. she was not sure he was killed, but was too proud, or too timid, to go and hunt for him.' 'one reason why her father forgave her when he found out how matters stood was, as he said plain at the time, that he liked the man, and could see that he meant to act straight. so the old folks made the best of what they couldn't mend, and kept her there with 'em, when some wouldn't. time has proved seemingly that he did mean to act straight, now that he has writ to her that he's coming. she'd have stuck to him all through the time, 'tis my belief; if t'other hadn't come along.' 'at the time of the courtship,' resumed the woodman, 'the regiment was quartered in casterbridge barracks, and he and she got acquainted by his calling to buy a penn'orth of rathe-ripes off that tree yonder in her father's orchard--though 'twas said he seed her over hedge as well as the apples. he declared 'twas a kind of apple he much fancied; and he called for a penn'orth every day till the tree was cleared. it ended in his calling for her.' ''twas a thousand pities they didn't jine up at once and ha' done wi' it. 'well; better late than never, if so be he'll have her now. but, lord, she'd that faith in 'en that she'd no more belief that he was alive, when a' didn't come, than that the undermost man in our churchyard was alive. she'd never have thought of another but for that--o no!' ''tis awkward, altogether, for her now.' 'still she hadn't married wi' the new man. though to be sure she would have committed it next week, even the licence being got, they say, for she'd have no banns this time, the first being so unfortunate.' 'perhaps the sergeant-major will think he's released, and go as he came.' 'o, not as i reckon. soldiers bain't particular, and she's a tidy piece o' furniture still. what will happen is that she'll have her soldier, and break off with the master-wheelwright, licence or no--daze me if she won't.' in the progress of these desultory conjectures the form of another neighbour arose in the gloom. she nodded to the people at the well, who replied 'g'd night, mrs. stone,' as she passed through mr. paddock's gate towards his door. she was an intimate friend of the latter's household, and the group followed her with their eyes up the path and past the windows, which were now lighted up by candles inside. ii mrs. stone paused at the door, knocked, and was admitted by selina's mother, who took her visitor at once into the parlour on the left hand, where a table was partly spread for supper. on the 'beaufet' against the wall stood probably the only object which would have attracted the eye of a local stranger in an otherwise ordinarily furnished room, a great plum- cake guarded as if it were a curiosity by a glass shade of the kind seen in museums--square, with a wooden back like those enclosing stuffed specimens of rare feather or fur. this was the mummy of the cake intended in earlier days for the wedding-feast of selina and the soldier, which had been religiously and lovingly preserved by the former as a testimony to her intentional respectability in spite of an untoward subsequent circumstance, which will be mentioned. this relic was now as dry as a brick, and seemed to belong to a pre-existent civilization. till quite recently, selina had been in the habit of pausing before it daily, and recalling the accident whose consequences had thrown a shadow over her life ever since--that of which the water-drawers had spoken--the sudden news one morning that the route had come for the ---th dragoons, two days only being the interval before departure; the hurried consultation as to what should be done, the second time of asking being past but not the third; and the decision that it would be unwise to solemnize matrimony in such haphazard circumstances, even if it were possible, which was doubtful. before the fire the young woman in question was now seated on a low stool, in the stillness of reverie, and a toddling boy played about the floor around her. 'ah, mrs. stone!' said selina, rising slowly. 'how kind of you to come in. you'll bide to supper? mother has told you the strange news, of course?' 'no. but i heard it outside, that is, that you'd had a letter from mr. clark--sergeant-major clark, as they say he is now--and that he's coming to make it up with 'ee.' 'yes; coming to-night--all the way from the north of england where he's quartered. i don't know whether i'm happy or--frightened at it. of course i always believed that if he was alive he'd come and keep his solemn vow to me. but when it is printed that a man is killed--what can you think?' 'it was printed?' 'why, yes. after the battle of the alma the book of the names of the killed and wounded was nailed up against casterbridge town hall door. 'twas on a saturday, and i walked there o' purpose to read and see for myself; for i'd heard that his name was down. there was a crowd of people round the book, looking for the names of relations; and i can mind that when they saw me they made way for me--knowing that we'd been just going to be married--and that, as you may say, i belonged to him. well, i reached up my arm, and turned over the farrels of the book, and under the "killed" i read his surname, but instead of "john" they'd printed "james," and i thought 'twas a mistake, and that it must be he. who could have guessed there were two nearly of one name in one regiment.' 'well--he's coming to finish the wedding of 'ee as may be said; so never mind, my dear. all's well that ends well.' 'that's what he seems to say. but then he has not heard yet about mr. miller; and that's what rather terrifies me. luckily my marriage with him next week was to have been by licence, and not banns, as in john's case; and it was not so well known on that account. still, i don't know what to think.' 'everything seems to come just 'twixt cup and lip with 'ee, don't it now, miss paddock. two weddings broke off--'tis odd! how came you to accept mr. miller, my dear?' 'he's been so good and faithful! not minding about the child at all; for he knew the rights of the story. he's dearly fond o' johnny, you know--just as if 'twere his own--isn't he, my duck? do mr. miller love you or don't he?' 'iss! an' i love mr. miller,' said the toddler. 'well, you see, mrs. stone, he said he'd make me a comfortable home; and thinking 'twould be a good thing for johnny, mr. miller being so much better off than me, i agreed at last, just as a widow might--which is what i have always felt myself; ever since i saw what i thought was john's name printed there. i hope john will forgive me!' 'so he will forgive 'ee, since 'twas no manner of wrong to him. he ought to have sent 'ee a line, saying 'twas another man.' selina's mother entered. 'we've not known of this an hour, mrs. stone,' she said. 'the letter was brought up from lower mellstock post-office by one of the school children, only this afternoon. mr. miller was coming here this very night to settle about the wedding doings. hark! is that your father? or is it mr. miller already come?' the footsteps entered the porch; there was a brushing on the mat, and the door of the room sprung back to disclose a rubicund man about thirty years of age, of thriving master-mechanic appearance and obviously comfortable temper. on seeing the child, and before taking any notice whatever of the elders, the comer made a noise like the crowing of a cock and flapped his arms as if they were wings, a method of entry which had the unqualified admiration of johnny. 'yes--it is he,' said selina constrainedly advancing. 'what--were you all talking about me, my dear?' said the genial young man when he had finished his crowing and resumed human manners. 'why what's the matter,' he went on. 'you look struck all of a heap.' mr. miller spread an aspect of concern over his own face, and drew a chair up to the fire. 'o mother, would you tell mr. miller, if he don't know?' 'mister miller! and going to be married in six days!' he interposed. 'ah--he don't know it yet!' murmured mrs. paddock. 'know what?' 'well--john clark--now sergeant-major clark--wasn't shot at alma after all. 'twas another of almost the same name.' 'now that's interesting! there were several cases like that.' 'and he's home again; and he's coming here to-night to see her.' 'whatever shall i say, that he may not be offended with what i've done?' interposed selina. 'but why should it matter if he be?' 'o! i must agree to be his wife if he forgives me--of course i must.' 'must! but why not say nay, selina, even if he do forgive 'ee?' 'o no! how can i without being wicked? you were very very kind, mr. miller, to ask me to have you; no other man would have done it after what had happened; and i agreed, even though i did not feel half so warm as i ought. yet it was entirely owing to my believing him in the grave, as i knew that if he were not he would carry out his promise; and this shows that i was right in trusting him.' 'yes . . . he must be a goodish sort of fellow,' said mr. miller, for a moment so impressed with the excellently faithful conduct of the sergeant- major of dragoons that he disregarded its effect upon his own position. he sighed slowly and added, 'well, selina, 'tis for you to say. i love you, and i love the boy; and there's my chimney-corner and sticks o' furniture ready for 'ee both.' 'yes, i know! but i mustn't hear it any more now,' murmured selina quickly. 'john will be here soon. i hope he'll see how it all was when i tell him. if so be i could have written it to him it would have been better.' 'you think he doesn't know a single word about our having been on the brink o't. but perhaps it's the other way--he's heard of it and that may have brought him. 'ah--perhaps he has!' she said brightening. 'and already forgives me.' 'if not, speak out straight and fair, and tell him exactly how it fell out. if he's a man he'll see it.' 'o he's a man true enough. but i really do think i shan't have to tell him at all, since you've put it to me that way!' as it was now johnny's bedtime he was carried upstairs, and when selina came down again her mother observed with some anxiety, 'i fancy mr. clark must be here soon if he's coming; and that being so, perhaps mr. miller wouldn't mind--wishing us good-night! since you are so determined to stick to your sergeant-major.' a little bitterness bubbled amid the closing words. 'it would be less awkward, mr. miller not being here--if he will allow me to say it.' 'to be sure; to be sure,' the master-wheelwright exclaimed with instant conviction, rising alertly from his chair. 'lord bless my soul,' he said, taking up his hat and stick, 'and we to have been married in six days! but selina--you're right. you do belong to the child's father since he's alive. i'll try to make the best of it.' before the generous miller had got further there came a knock to the door accompanied by the noise of wheels. 'i thought i heard something driving up!' said mrs paddock. they heard mr. paddock, who had been smoking in the room opposite, rise and go to the door, and in a moment a voice familiar enough to selina was audibly saying, 'at last i am here again--not without many interruptions! how is it with 'ee, mr. paddock? and how is she? thought never to see me again, i suppose?' a step with a clink of spurs in it struck upon the entry floor. 'danged if i bain't catched!' murmured mr. miller, forgetting company- speech. 'never mind--i may as well meet him here as elsewhere; and i should like to see the chap, and make friends with en, as he seems one o' the right sort.' he returned to the fireplace just as the sergeant-major was ushered in. iii he was a good specimen of the long-service soldier of those days; a not unhandsome man, with a certain undemonstrative dignity, which some might have said to be partly owing to the stiffness of his uniform about his neck, the high stock being still worn. he was much stouter than when selina had parted from him. although she had not meant to be demonstrative she ran across to him directly she saw him, and he held her in his arms and kissed her. then in much agitation she whispered something to him, at which he seemed to be much surprised. 'he's just put to bed,' she continued. 'you can go up and see him. i knew you'd come if you were alive! but i had quite gi'd you up for dead. you've been home in england ever since the war ended?' 'yes, dear.' 'why didn't you come sooner?' 'that's just what i ask myself! why was i such a sappy as not to hurry here the first day i set foot on shore! well, who'd have thought it--you are as pretty as ever!' he relinquished her to peep upstairs a little way, where, by looking through the ballusters, he could see johnny's cot just within an open door. on his stepping down again mr. miller was preparing to depart. 'now, what's this? i am sorry to see anybody going the moment i've come,' expostulated the sergeant-major. 'i thought we might make an evening of it. there's a nine gallon cask o' "phoenix" beer outside in the trap, and a ham, and half a rawmil' cheese; for i thought you might be short o' forage in a lonely place like this; and it struck me we might like to ask in a neighbour or two. but perhaps it would be taking a liberty?' 'o no, not at all,' said mr. paddock, who was now in the room, in a judicial measured manner. 'very thoughtful of 'ee, only 'twas not necessary, for we had just laid in an extry stock of eatables and drinkables in preparation for the coming event.' ''twas very kind, upon my heart,' said the soldier, 'to think me worth such a jocund preparation, since you could only have got my letter this morning.' selina gazed at her father to stop him, and exchanged embarrassed glances with miller. contrary to her hopes sergeant-major clark plainly did not know that the preparations referred to were for something quite other than his own visit. the movement of the horse outside, and the impatient tapping of a whip- handle upon the vehicle reminded them that clark's driver was still in waiting. the provisions were brought into the house, and the cart dismissed. miller, with very little pressure indeed, accepted an invitation to supper, and a few neighbours were induced to come in to make up a cheerful party. during the laying of the meal, and throughout its continuance, selina, who sat beside her first intended husband, tried frequently to break the news to him of her engagement to the other--now terminated so suddenly, and so happily for her heart, and her sense of womanly virtue. but the talk ran entirely upon the late war; and though fortified by half a horn of the strong ale brought by the sergeant-major she decided that she might have a better opportunity when supper was over of revealing the situation to him in private. having supped, clark leaned back at ease in his chair and looked around. 'we used sometimes to have a dance in that other room after supper, selina dear, i recollect. we used to clear out all the furniture into this room before beginning. have you kept up such goings on?' 'no, not at all!' said his sweetheart, sadly. 'we were not unlikely to revive it in a few days,' said mr. paddock. 'but, howsomever, there's seemingly many a slip, as the saying is.' 'yes, i'll tell john all about that by and by!' interposed selina; at which, perceiving that the secret which he did not like keeping was to be kept even yet, her father held his tongue with some show of testiness. the subject of a dance having been broached, to put the thought in practice was the feeling of all. soon after the tables and chairs were borne from the opposite room to this by zealous hands, and two of the villagers sent home for a fiddle and tambourine, when the majority began to tread a measure well known in that secluded vale. selina naturally danced with the sergeant-major, not altogether to her father's satisfaction, and to the real uneasiness of her mother, both of whom would have preferred a postponement of festivities till the rashly anticipated relationship between their daughter and clark in the past had been made fact by the church's ordinances. they did not, however, express a positive objection, mr. paddock remembering, with self-reproach, that it was owing to his original strongly expressed disapproval of selina's being a soldier's wife that the wedding had been delayed, and finally hindered--with worse consequences than were expected; and ever since the misadventure brought about by his government he had allowed events to steer their own courses. 'my tails will surely catch in your spurs, john!' murmured the daughter of the house, as she whirled around upon his arm with the rapt soul and look of a somnambulist. 'i didn't know we should dance, or i would have put on my other frock.' 'i'll take care, my love. we've danced here before. do you think your father objects to me now? i've risen in rank. i fancy he's still a little against me.' 'he has repented, times enough.' 'and so have i! if i had married you then 'twould have saved many a misfortune. i have sometimes thought it might have been possible to rush the ceremony through somehow before i left; though we were only in the second asking, were we? and even if i had come back straight here when we returned from the crimea, and married you then, how much happier i should have been!' 'dear john, to say that! why didn't you?' 'o--dilatoriness and want of thought, and a fear of facing your father after so long. i was in hospital a great while, you know. but how familiar the place seems again! what's that i saw on the beaufet in the other room? it never used to be there. a sort of withered corpse of a cake--not an old bride-cake surely?' 'yes, john, ours. 'tis the very one that was made for our wedding three years ago.' 'sakes alive! why, time shuts up together, and all between then and now seems not to have been! what became of that wedding-gown that they were making in this room, i remember--a bluish, whitish, frothy thing?' 'i have that too.' 'really! . . . why, selina--' 'yes!' 'why not put it on now?' 'wouldn't it seem--. and yet, o how i should like to! it would remind them all, if we told them what it was, how we really meant to be married on that bygone day!' her eyes were again laden with wet. 'yes . . . the pity that we didn't--the pity!' moody mournfulness seemed to hold silent awhile one not naturally taciturn. 'well--will you?' he said. 'i will--the next dance, if mother don't mind.' accordingly, just before the next figure was formed, selina disappeared, and speedily came downstairs in a creased and box-worn, but still airy and pretty, muslin gown, which was indeed the very one that had been meant to grace her as a bride three years before. 'it is dreadfully old-fashioned,' she apologized. 'not at all. what a grand thought of mine! now, let's to't again.' she explained to some of them, as he led her to the second dance, what the frock had been meant for, and that she had put it on at his request. and again athwart and around the room they went. 'you seem the bride!' he said. 'but i couldn't wear this gown to be married in now!' she replied, ecstatically, 'or i shouldn't have put it on and made it dusty. it is really too old-fashioned, and so folded and fretted out, you can't think. that was with my taking it out so many times to look at. i have never put it on--never--till now!' 'selina, i am thinking of giving up the army. will you emigrate with me to new zealand? i've an uncle out there doing well, and he'd soon help me to making a larger income. the english army is glorious, but it ain't altogether enriching.' 'of course, anywhere that you decide upon. is it healthy there for johnny?' 'a lovely climate. and i shall never be happy in england . . . aha!' he concluded again, with a bitterness of unexpected strength, 'would to heaven i had come straight back here!' as the dance brought round one neighbour after another the re-united pair were thrown into juxtaposition with bob heartall among the rest who had been called in; one whose chronic expression was that he carried inside him a joke on the point of bursting with its own vastness. he took occasion now to let out a little of its quality, shaking his head at selina as he addressed her in an undertone-- 'this is a bit of a topper to the bridegroom, ho ho! 'twill teach en the liberty you'll expect when you've married en!' 'what does he mean by a "topper,"' the sergeant-major asked, who, not being of local extraction, despised the venerable local language, and also seemed to suppose 'bridegroom' to be an anticipatory name for himself. 'i only hope i shall never be worse treated than you've treated me to-night!' selina looked frightened. 'he didn't mean you, dear,' she said as they moved on. 'we thought perhaps you knew what had happened, owing to your coming just at this time. had you--heard anything about--what i intended?' 'not a breath--how should i--away up in yorkshire? it was by the merest accident that i came just at this date to make peace with you for my delay.' 'i was engaged to be married to mr. bartholomew miller. that's what it is! i would have let 'ee know by letter, but there was no time, only hearing from 'ee this afternoon . . . you won't desert me for it, will you, john? because, as you know, i quite supposed you dead, and--and--' her eyes were full of tears of trepidation, and he might have felt a sob heaving within her. iv the soldier was silent during two or three double bars of the tune. 'when were you to have been married to the said mr. bartholomew miller?' he inquired. 'quite soon.' 'how soon?' 'next week--o yes--just the same as it was with you and me. there's a strange fate of interruption hanging over me, i sometimes think! he had bought the licence, which i preferred so that it mightn't be like--ours. but it made no difference to the fate of it.' 'had bought the licence! the devil!' 'don't be angry, dear john. i didn't know!' 'no, no, i'm not angry.' 'it was so kind of him, considering!' 'yes . . . i see, of course, how natural your action was--never thinking of seeing me any more! is it the mr. miller who is in this dance?' 'yes.' clark glanced round upon bartholomew and was silent again, for some little while, and she stole a look at him, to find that he seemed changed. 'john, you look ill!' she almost sobbed. ''tisn't me, is it?' 'o dear, no. though i hadn't, somehow, expected it. i can't find fault with you for a moment--and i don't . . . this is a deuce of a long dance, don't you think? we've been at it twenty minutes if a second, and the figure doesn't allow one much rest. i'm quite out of breath.' 'they like them so dreadfully long here. shall we drop out? or i'll stop the fiddler.' 'o no, no, i think i can finish. but although i look healthy enough i have never been so strong as i formerly was, since that long illness i had in the hospital at scutari.' 'and i knew nothing about it!' 'you couldn't, dear, as i didn't write. what a fool i have been altogether!' he gave a twitch, as of one in pain. 'i won't dance again when this one is over. the fact is i have travelled a long way to-day, and it seems to have knocked me up a bit.' there could be no doubt that the sergeant-major was unwell, and selina made herself miserable by still believing that her story was the cause of his ailment. suddenly he said in a changed voice, and she perceived that he was paler than ever: 'i must sit down.' letting go her waist he went quickly to the other room. she followed, and found him in the nearest chair, his face bent down upon his hands and arms, which were resting on the table. 'what's the matter?' said her father, who sat there dozing by the fire. 'john isn't well . . . we are going to new zealand when we are married, father. a lovely country! john, would you like something to drink?' 'a drop o' that schiedam of old owlett's, that's under stairs, perhaps,' suggested her father. 'not that nowadays 'tis much better than licensed liquor.' 'john,' she said, putting her face close to his and pressing his arm. 'will you have a drop of spirits or something?' he did not reply, and selina observed that his ear and the side of his face were quite white. convinced that his illness was serious, a growing dismay seized hold of her. the dance ended; her mother came in, and learning what had happened, looked narrowly at the sergeant-major. 'we must not let him lie like that, lift him up,' she said. 'let him rest in the window-bench on some cushions.' they unfolded his arms and hands as they lay clasped upon the table, and on lifting his head found his features to bear the very impress of death itself. bartholomew miller, who had now come in, assisted mr. paddock to make a comfortable couch in the window-seat, where they stretched out clark upon his back. still he seemed unconscious. 'we must get a doctor,' said selina. 'o, my dear john, how is it you be taken like this?' 'my impression is that he's dead!' murmured mr. paddock. 'he don't breathe enough to move a tomtit's feather.' there were plenty to volunteer to go for a doctor, but as it would be at least an hour before he could get there the case seemed somewhat hopeless. the dancing-party ended as unceremoniously as it had begun; but the guests lingered round the premises till the doctor should arrive. when he did come the sergeant-major's extremities were already cold, and there was no doubt that death had overtaken him almost at the moment that he had sat down. the medical practitioner quite refused to accept the unhappy selina's theory that her revelation had in any way induced clark's sudden collapse. both he and the coroner afterwards, who found the immediate cause to be heart-failure, held that such a supposition was unwarranted by facts. they asserted that a long day's journey, a hurried drive, and then an exhausting dance, were sufficient for such a result upon a heart enfeebled by fatty degeneration after the privations of a crimean winter and other trying experiences, the coincidence of the sad event with any disclosure of hers being a pure accident. this conclusion, however, did not dislodge selina's opinion that the shock of her statement had been the immediate stroke which had felled a constitution so undermined. v at this date the casterbridge barracks were cavalry quarters, their adaptation to artillery having been effected some years later. it had been owing to the fact that the ---th dragoons, in which john clark had served, happened to be lying there that selina made his acquaintance. at the time of his death the barracks were occupied by the scots greys, but when the pathetic circumstances of the sergeant-major's end became known in the town the officers of the greys offered the services of their fine reed and brass band, that he might have a funeral marked by due military honours. his body was accordingly removed to the barracks, and carried thence to the churchyard in the durnover quarter on the following afternoon, one of the greys' most ancient and docile chargers being blacked up to represent clark's horse on the occasion. everybody pitied selina, whose story was well known. she followed the corpse as the only mourner, clark having been without relations in this part of the country, and a communication with his regiment having brought none from a distance. she sat in a little shabby brown-black mourning carriage, squeezing herself up in a corner to be as much as possible out of sight during the slow and dramatic march through the town to the tune from saul. when the interment had taken place, the volleys been fired, and the return journey begun, it was with something like a shock that she found the military escort to be moving at a quick march to the lively strains of 'off she goes!' as if all care for the sergeant-major was expected to be ended with the late discharge of the carbines. it was, by chance, the very tune to which they had been footing when he died, and unable to bear its notes, she hastily told her driver to drop behind. the band and military party diminished up the high street, and selina turned over swan bridge and homeward to mellstock. then recommenced for her a life whose incidents were precisely of a suit with those which had preceded the soldier's return; but how different in her appreciation of them! her narrow miss of the recovered respectability they had hoped for from that tardy event worked upon her parents as an irritant, and after the first week or two of her mourning her life with them grew almost insupportable. she had impulsively taken to herself the weeds of a widow, for such she seemed to herself to be, and clothed little johnny in sables likewise. this assumption of a moral relationship to the deceased, which she asserted to be only not a legal one by two most unexpected accidents, led the old people to indulge in sarcasm at her expense whenever they beheld her attire, though all the while it cost them more pain to utter than it gave her to hear it. having become accustomed by her residence at home to the business carried on by her father, she surprised them one day by going off with the child to chalk-newton, in the direction of the town of ivell, and opening a miniature fruit and vegetable shop, attending ivell market with her produce. her business grew somewhat larger, and it was soon sufficient to enable her to support herself and the boy in comfort. she called herself 'mrs. john clark' from the day of leaving home, and painted the name on her signboard--no man forbidding her. by degrees the pain of her state was forgotten in her new circumstances, and getting to be generally accepted as the widow of a sergeant-major of dragoons--an assumption which her modest and mournful demeanour seemed to substantiate--her life became a placid one, her mind being nourished by the melancholy luxury of dreaming what might have been her future in new zealand with john, if he had only lived to take her there. her only travels now were a journey to ivell on market-days, and once a fortnight to the churchyard in which clark lay, there to tend, with johnny's assistance, as widows are wont to do, the flowers she had planted upon his grave. on a day about eighteen months after his unexpected decease, selina was surprised in her lodging over her little shop by a visit from bartholomew miller. he had called on her once or twice before, on which occasions he had used without a word of comment the name by which she was known. 'i've come this time,' he said, 'less because i was in this direction than to ask you, mrs. clark, what you mid well guess. i've come o' purpose, in short.' she smiled. ''tis to ask me again to marry you?' 'yes, of course. you see, his coming back for 'ee proved what i always believed of 'ee, though others didn't. there's nobody but would be glad to welcome you to our parish again, now you've showed your independence and acted up to your trust in his promise. well, my dear, will you come?' 'i'd rather bide as mrs. clark, i think,' she answered. 'i am not ashamed of my position at all; for i am john's widow in the eyes of heaven.' 'i quite agree--that's why i've come. still, you won't like to be always straining at this shop-keeping and market-standing; and 'twould be better for johnny if you had nothing to do but tend him.' he here touched the only weak spot in selina's resistance to his proposal--the good of the boy. to promote that there were other men she might have married offhand without loving them if they had asked her to; but though she had known the worthy speaker from her youth, she could not for the moment fancy herself happy as mrs. miller. he paused awhile. 'i ought to tell 'ee, mrs. clark,' he said by and by, 'that marrying is getting to be a pressing question with me. not on my own account at all. the truth is, that mother is growing old, and i am away from home a good deal, so that it is almost necessary there should be another person in the house with her besides me. that's the practical consideration which forces me to think of taking a wife, apart from my wish to take you; and you know there's nobody in the world i care for so much.' she said something about there being far better women than she, and other natural commonplaces; but assured him she was most grateful to him for feeling what he felt, as indeed she sincerely was. however, selina would not consent to be the useful third person in his comfortable home--at any rate just then. he went away, after taking tea with her, without discerning much hope for him in her good-bye. vi after that evening she saw and heard nothing of him for a great while. her fortnightly journeys to the sergeant-major's grave were continued, whenever weather did not hinder them; and mr. miller must have known, she thought, of this custom of hers. but though the churchyard was not nearly so far from his homestead as was her shop at chalk-newton, he never appeared in the accidental way that lovers use. an explanation was forthcoming in the shape of a letter from her mother, who casually mentioned that mr. bartholomew miller had gone away to the other side of shottsford-forum to be married to a thriving dairyman's daughter that he knew there. his chief motive, it was reported, had been less one of love than a wish to provide a companion for his aged mother. selina was practical enough to know that she had lost a good and possibly the only opportunity of settling in life after what had happened, and for a moment she regretted her independence. but she became calm on reflection, and to fortify herself in her course started that afternoon to tend the sergeant-major's grave, in which she took the same sober pleasure as at first. on reaching the churchyard and turning the corner towards the spot as usual, she was surprised to perceive another woman, also apparently a respectable widow, and with a tiny boy by her side, bending over clark's turf, and spudding up with the point of her umbrella some ivy-roots that selina had reverently planted there to form an evergreen mantle over the mound. 'what are you digging up my ivy for!' cried selina, rushing forward so excitedly that johnny tumbled over a grave with the force of the tug she gave his hand in her sudden start. 'your ivy?' said the respectable woman. 'why yes! i planted it there--on my husband's grave.' 'your husband's!' 'yes. the late sergeant-major clark. anyhow, as good as my husband, for he was just going to be.' 'indeed. but who may be my husband, if not he? i am the only mrs. john clark, widow of the late sergeant-major of dragoons, and this is his only son and heir.' 'how can that be?' faltered selina, her throat seeming to stick together as she just began to perceive its possibility. 'he had been--going to marry me twice--and we were going to new zealand.' 'ah!--i remember about you,' returned the legitimate widow calmly and not unkindly. 'you must be selina; he spoke of you now and then, and said that his relations with you would always be a weight on his conscience. well; the history of my life with him is soon told. when he came back from the crimea he became acquainted with me at my home in the north, and we were married within a month of first knowing each other. unfortunately, after living together a few months, we could not agree; and after a particularly sharp quarrel, in which, perhaps, i was most in the wrong--as i don't mind owning here by his graveside--he went away from me, declaring he would buy his discharge and emigrate to new zealand, and never come back to me any more. the next thing i heard was that he had died suddenly at mellstock at some low carouse; and as he had left me in such anger to live no more with me, i wouldn't come down to his funeral, or do anything in relation to him. 'twas temper, i know, but that was the fact. even if we had parted friends it would have been a serious expense to travel three hundred miles to get there, for one who wasn't left so very well off . . . i am sorry i pulled up your ivy-roots; but that common sort of ivy is considered a weed in my part of the country.' december . a tryst at an ancient earth work at one's every step forward it rises higher against the south sky, with an obtrusive personality that compels the senses to regard it and consider. the eyes may bend in another direction, but never without the consciousness of its heavy, high-shouldered presence at its point of vantage. across the intervening levels the gale races in a straight line from the fort, as if breathed out of it hitherward. with the shifting of the clouds the faces of the steeps vary in colour and in shade, broad lights appearing where mist and vagueness had prevailed, dissolving in their turn into melancholy gray, which spreads over and eclipses the luminous bluffs. in this so-thought immutable spectacle all is change. out of the invisible marine region on the other side birds soar suddenly into the air, and hang over the summits of the heights with the indifference of long familiarity. their forms are white against the tawny concave of cloud, and the curves they exhibit in their floating signify that they are sea-gulls which have journeyed inland from expected stress of weather. as the birds rise behind the fort, so do the clouds rise behind the birds, almost as it seems, stroking with their bagging bosoms the uppermost flyers. the profile of the whole stupendous ruin, as seen at a distance of a mile eastward, is cleanly cut as that of a marble inlay. it is varied with protuberances, which from hereabouts have the animal aspect of warts, wens, knuckles, and hips. it may indeed be likened to an enormous many- limbed organism of an antediluvian time--partaking of the cephalopod in shape--lying lifeless, and covered with a thin green cloth, which hides its substance, while revealing its contour. this dull green mantle of herbage stretches down towards the levels, where the ploughs have essayed for centuries to creep up near and yet nearer to the base of the castle, but have always stopped short before reaching it. the furrows of these environing attempts show themselves distinctly, bending to the incline as they trench upon it; mounting in steeper curves, till the steepness baffles them, and their parallel threads show like the striae of waves pausing on the curl. the peculiar place of which these are some of the features is 'mai-dun,' 'the castle of the great hill,' said to be the dunium of ptolemy, the capital of the durotriges, which eventually came into roman occupation, and was finally deserted on their withdrawal from the island. * * * * * the evening is followed by a night on which an invisible moon bestows a subdued, yet pervasive light--without radiance, as without blackness. from the spot whereon i am ensconced in a cottage, a mile away, the fort has now ceased to be visible; yet, as by day, to anybody whose thoughts have been engaged with it and its barbarous grandeurs of past time the form asserts its existence behind the night gauzes as persistently as if it had a voice. moreover, the south-west wind continues to feed the intervening arable flats with vapours brought directly from its sides. the midnight hour for which there has been occasion to wait at length arrives, and i journey towards the stronghold in obedience to a request urged earlier in the day. it concerns an appointment, which i rather regret my decision to keep now that night is come. the route thither is hedgeless and treeless--i need not add deserted. the moonlight is sufficient to disclose the pale riband-like surface of the way as it trails along between the expanses of darker fallow. though the road passes near the fortress it does not conduct directly to its fronts. as the place is without an inhabitant, so it is without a trackway. so presently leaving the macadamized road to pursue its course elsewhither, i step off upon the fallow, and plod stumblingly across it. the castle looms out off the shade by degrees, like a thing waking up and asking what i want there. it is now so enlarged by nearness that its whole shape cannot be taken in at one view. the ploughed ground ends as the rise sharpens, the sloping basement of grass begins, and i climb upward to invade mai-dun. impressive by day as this largest ancient-british work in the kingdom undoubtedly is, its impressiveness is increased now. after standing still and spending a few minutes in adding its age to its size, and its size to its solitude, it becomes appallingly mournful in its growing closeness. a squally wind blows in the face with an impact which proclaims that the vapours of the air sail low to-night. the slope that i so laboriously clamber up the wind skips sportively down. its track can be discerned even in this light by the undulations of the withered grass-bents--the only produce of this upland summit except moss. four minutes of ascent, and a vantage-ground of some sort is gained. it is only the crest of the outer rampart. immediately within this a chasm gapes; its bottom is imperceptible, but the counterscarp slopes not too steeply to admit of a sliding descent if cautiously performed. the shady bottom, dank and chilly, is thus gained, and reveals itself as a kind of winding lane, wide enough for a waggon to pass along, floored with rank herbage, and trending away, right and left, into obscurity, between the concentric walls of earth. the towering closeness of these on each hand, their impenetrability, and their ponderousness, are felt as a physical pressure. the way is now up the second of them, which stands steeper and higher than the first. to turn aside, as did christian's companion, from such a hill difficulty, is the more natural tendency; but the way to the interior is upward. there is, of course, an entrance to the fortress; but that lies far off on the other side. it might possibly have been the wiser course to seek for easier ingress there. however, being here, i ascend the second acclivity. the grass stems--the grey beard of the hill--sway in a mass close to my stooping face. the dead heads of these various grasses--fescues, fox-tails, and ryes--bob and twitch as if pulled by a string underground. from a few thistles a whistling proceeds; and even the moss speaks, in its humble way, under the stress of the blast. that the summit of the second line of defence has been gained is suddenly made known by a contrasting wind from a new quarter, coming over with the curve of a cascade. these novel gusts raise a sound from the whole camp or castle, playing upon it bodily as upon a harp. it is with some difficulty that a foothold can be preserved under their sweep. looking aloft for a moment i perceive that the sky is much more overcast than it has been hitherto, and in a few instants a dead lull in what is now a gale ensues with almost preternatural abruptness. i take advantage of this to sidle down the second counterscarp, but by the time the ditch is reached the lull reveals itself to be but the precursor of a storm. it begins with a heave of the whole atmosphere, like the sigh of a weary strong man on turning to re-commence unusual exertion, just as i stand here in the second fosse. that which now radiates from the sky upon the scene is not so much light as vaporous phosphorescence. the wind, quickening, abandons the natural direction it has pursued on the open upland, and takes the course of the gorge's length, rushing along therein helter-skelter, and carrying thick rain upon its back. the rain is followed by hailstones which fly through the defile in battalions--rolling, hopping, ricochetting, snapping, clattering down the shelving banks in an undefinable haze of confusion. the earthen sides of the fosse seem to quiver under the drenching onset, though it is practically no more to them than the blows of thor upon the giant of jotun-land. it is impossible to proceed further till the storm somewhat abates, and i draw up behind a spur of the inner scarp, where possibly a barricade stood two thousand years ago; and thus await events. * * * * * the roar of the storm can be heard travelling the complete circuit of the castle--a measured mile--coming round at intervals like a circumambulating column of infantry. doubtless such a column has passed this way in its time, but the only columns which enter in these latter days are the columns of sheep and oxen that are sometimes seen here now; while the only semblance of heroic voices heard are the utterances of such, and of the many winds which make their passage through the ravines. the expected lightning radiates round, and a rumbling as from its subterranean vaults--if there are any--fills the castle. the lightning repeats itself, and, coming after the aforesaid thoughts of martial men, it bears a fanciful resemblance to swords moving in combat. it has the very brassy hue of the ancient weapons that here were used. the so sudden entry upon the scene of this metallic flame is as the entry of a presiding exhibitor who unrolls the maps, uncurtains the pictures, unlocks the cabinets, and effects a transformation by merely exposing the materials of his science, unintelligibly cloaked till then. the abrupt configuration of the bluffs and mounds is now for the first time clearly revealed--mounds whereon, doubtless, spears and shields have frequently lain while their owners loosened their sandals and yawned and stretched their arms in the sun. for the first time, too, a glimpse is obtainable of the true entrance used by its occupants of old, some way ahead. there, where all passage has seemed to be inviolably barred by an almost vertical facade, the ramparts are found to overlap each other like loosely clasped fingers, between which a zigzag path may be followed--a cunning construction that puzzles the uninformed eye. but its cunning, even where not obscured by dilapidation, is now wasted on the solitary forms of a few wild badgers, rabbits, and hares. men must have often gone out by those gates in the morning to battle with the roman legions under vespasian; some to return no more, others to come back at evening, bringing with them the noise of their heroic deeds. but not a page, not a stone, has preserved their fame. * * * * * acoustic perceptions multiply to-night. we can almost hear the stream of years that have borne those deeds away from us. strange articulations seem to float on the air from that point, the gateway, where the animation in past times must frequently have concentrated itself at hours of coming and going, and general excitement. there arises an ineradicable fancy that they are human voices; if so, they must be the lingering air-borne vibrations of conversations uttered at least fifteen hundred years ago. the attention is attracted from mere nebulous imaginings about yonder spot by a real moving of something close at hand. i recognize by the now moderate flashes of lightning, which are sheet- like and nearly continuous, that it is the gradual elevation of a small mound of earth. at first no larger than a man's fist it reaches the dimensions of a hat, then sinks a little and is still. it is but the heaving of a mole who chooses such weather as this to work in from some instinct that there will be nobody abroad to molest him. as the fine earth lifts and lifts and falls loosely aside fragments of burnt clay roll out of it--clay that once formed part of cups or other vessels used by the inhabitants of the fortress. the violence of the storm has been counterbalanced by its transitoriness. from being immersed in well-nigh solid media of cloud and hail shot with lightning, i find myself uncovered of the humid investiture and left bare to the mild gaze of the moon, which sparkles now on every wet grass-blade and frond of moss. but i am not yet inside the fort, and the delayed ascent of the third and last escarpment is now made. it is steeper than either. the first was a surface to walk up, the second to stagger up, the third can only be ascended on the hands and toes. on the summit obtrudes the first evidence which has been met with in these precincts that the time is really the nineteenth century; it is in the form of a white notice-board on a post, and the wording can just be discerned by the rays of the setting moon: caution.--any person found removing relics, skeletons, stones, pottery, tiles, or other material from this earthwork, or cutting up the ground, will be prosecuted as the law directs. here one observes a difference underfoot from what has gone before: scraps of roman tile and stone chippings protrude through the grass in meagre quantity, but sufficient to suggest that masonry stood on the spot. before the eye stretches under the moonlight the interior of the fort. so open and so large is it as to be practically an upland plateau, and yet its area lies wholly within the walls of what may be designated as one building. it is a long-violated retreat; all its corner-stones, plinths, and architraves were carried away to build neighbouring villages even before mediaeval or modern history began. many a block which once may have helped to form a bastion here rests now in broken and diminished shape as part of the chimney-corner of some shepherd's cottage within the distant horizon, and the corner-stones of this heathen altar may form the base-course of some adjoining village church. yet the very bareness of these inner courts and wards, their condition of mere pasturage, protects what remains of them as no defences could do. nothing is left visible that the hands can seize on or the weather overturn, and a permanence of general outline at least results, which no other condition could ensure. the position of the castle on this isolated hill bespeaks deliberate and strategic choice exercised by some remote mind capable of prospective reasoning to a far extent. the natural configuration of the surrounding country and its bearing upon such a stronghold were obviously long considered and viewed mentally before its extensive design was carried into execution. who was the man that said, 'let it be built here!'--not on that hill yonder, or on that ridge behind, but on this best spot of all? whether he were some great one of the belgae, or of the durotriges, or the travelling engineer of britain's united tribes, must for ever remain time's secret; his form cannot be realized, nor his countenance, nor the tongue that he spoke, when he set down his foot with a thud and said, 'let it be here!' within the innermost enclosure, though it is so wide that at a superficial glance the beholder has only a sense of standing on a breezy down, the solitude is rendered yet more solitary by the knowledge that between the benighted sojourner herein and all kindred humanity are those three concentric walls of earth which no being would think of scaling on such a night as this, even were he to hear the most pathetic cries issuing hence that could be uttered by a spectre-chased soul. i reach a central mound or platform--the crown and axis of the whole structure. the view from here by day must be of almost limitless extent. on this raised floor, dais, or rostrum, harps have probably twanged more or less tuneful notes in celebration of daring, strength, or cruelty; of worship, superstition, love, birth, and death; of simple loving-kindness perhaps never. many a time must the king or leader have directed his keen eyes hence across the open lands towards the ancient road, the icening way, still visible in the distance, on the watch for armed companies approaching either to succour or to attack. i am startled by a voice pronouncing my name. past and present have become so confusedly mingled under the associations of the spot that for a time it has escaped my memory that this mound was the place agreed on for the aforesaid appointment. i turn and behold my friend. he stands with a dark lantern in his hand and a spade and light pickaxe over his shoulder. he expresses both delight and surprise that i have come. i tell him i had set out before the bad weather began. he, to whom neither weather, darkness, nor difficulty seems to have any relation or significance, so entirely is his soul wrapped up in his own deep intentions, asks me to take the lantern and accompany him. i take it and walk by his side. he is a man about sixty, small in figure, with grey old-fashioned whiskers cut to the shape of a pair of crumb-brushes. he is entirely in black broadcloth--or rather, at present, black and brown, for he is bespattered with mud from his heels to the crown of his low hat. he has no consciousness of this--no sense of anything but his purpose, his ardour for which causes his eyes to shine like those of a lynx, and gives his motions, all the elasticity of an athlete's. 'nobody to interrupt us at this time of night!' he chuckles with fierce enjoyment. we retreat a little way and find a sort of angle, an elevation in the sod, a suggested squareness amid the mass of irregularities around. here, he tells me, if anywhere, the king's house stood. three months of measurement and calculation have confirmed him in this conclusion. he requests me now to open the lantern, which i do, and the light streams out upon the wet sod. at last divining his proceedings i say that i had no idea, in keeping the tryst, that he was going to do more at such an unusual time than meet me for a meditative ramble through the stronghold. i ask him why, having a practicable object, he should have minded interruptions and not have chosen the day? he informs me, quietly pointing to his spade, that it was because his purpose is to dig, then signifying with a grim nod the gaunt notice-post against the sky beyond. i inquire why, as a professed and well-known antiquary with capital letters at the tail of his name, he did not obtain the necessary authority, considering the stringent penalties for this sort of thing; and he chuckles fiercely again with suppressed delight, and says, 'because they wouldn't have given it!' he at once begins cutting up the sod, and, as he takes the pickaxe to follow on with, assures me that, penalty or no penalty, honest men or marauders, he is sure of one thing, that we shall not be disturbed at our work till after dawn. i remember to have heard of men who, in their enthusiasm for some special science, art, or hobby, have quite lost the moral sense which would restrain them from indulging it illegitimately; and i conjecture that here, at last, is an instance of such an one. he probably guesses the way my thoughts travel, for he stands up and solemnly asserts that he has a distinctly justifiable intention in this matter; namely, to uncover, to search, to verify a theory or displace it, and to cover up again. he means to take away nothing--not a grain of sand. in this he says he sees no such monstrous sin. i inquire if this is really a promise to me? he repeats that it is a promise, and resumes digging. my contribution to the labour is that of directing the light constantly upon the hole. when he has reached something more than a foot deep he digs more cautiously, saying that, be it much or little there, it will not lie far below the surface; such things never are deep. a few minutes later the point of the pickaxe clicks upon a stony substance. he draws the implement out as feelingly as if it had entered a man's body. taking up the spade he shovels with care, and a surface, level as an altar, is presently disclosed. his eyes flash anew; he pulls handfuls of grass and mops the surface clean, finally rubbing it with his handkerchief. grasping the lantern from my hand he holds it close to the ground, when the rays reveal a complete mosaic--a pavement of minute tesserae of many colours, of intricate pattern, a work of much art, of much time, and of much industry. he exclaims in a shout that he knew it always--that it is not a celtic stronghold exclusively, but also a roman; the former people having probably contributed little more than the original framework which the latter took and adapted till it became the present imposing structure. i ask, what if it is roman? a great deal, according to him. that it proves all the world to be wrong in this great argument, and himself alone to be right! can i wait while he digs further? i agree--reluctantly; but he does not notice my reluctance. at an adjoining spot he begins flourishing the tools anew with the skill of a navvy, this venerable scholar with letters after his name. sometimes he falls on his knees, burrowing with his hands in the manner of a hare, and where his old-fashioned broadcloth touches the sides of the hole it gets plastered with the damp earth. he continually murmurs to himself how important, how very important, this discovery is! he draws out an object; we wash it in the same primitive way by rubbing it with the wet grass, and it proves to be a semi-transparent bottle of iridescent beauty, the sight of which draws groans of luxurious sensibility from the digger. further and further search brings out a piece of a weapon. it is strange indeed that by merely peeling off a wrapper of modern accumulations we have lowered ourselves into an ancient world. finally a skeleton is uncovered, fairly perfect. he lays it out on the grass, bone to its bone. my friend says the man must have fallen fighting here, as this is no place of burial. he turns again to the trench, scrapes, feels, till from a corner he draws out a heavy lump--a small image four or five inches high. we clean it as before. it is a statuette, apparently of gold, or, more probably, of bronze-gilt--a figure of mercury, obviously, its head being surmounted with the petasus or winged hat, the usual accessory of that deity. further inspection reveals the workmanship to be of good finish and detail, and, preserved by the limy earth, to be as fresh in every line as on the day it left the hands of its artificer. we seem to be standing in the roman forum and not on a hill in wessex. intent upon this truly valuable relic of the old empire of which even this remote spot was a component part, we do not notice what is going on in the present world till reminded of it by the sudden renewal of the storm. looking up i perceive that the wide extinguisher of cloud has again settled down upon the fortress-town, as if resting upon the edge of the inner rampart, and shutting out the moon. i turn my back to the tempest, still directing the light across the hole. my companion digs on unconcernedly; he is living two thousand years ago, and despises things of the moment as dreams. but at last he is fairly beaten, and standing up beside me looks round on what he has done. the rays of the lantern pass over the trench to the tall skeleton stretched upon the grass on the other side. the beating rain has washed the bones clean and smooth, and the forehead, cheek-bones, and two-and-thirty teeth of the skull glisten in the candle-shine as they lie. this storm, like the first, is of the nature of a squall, and it ends as abruptly as the other. we dig no further. my friend says that it is enough--he has proved his point. he turns to replace the bones in the trench and covers them. but they fall to pieces under his touch: the air has disintegrated them, and he can only sweep in the fragments. the next act of his plan is more than difficult, but is carried out. the treasures are inhumed again in their respective holes: they are not ours. each deposition seems to cost him a twinge; and at one moment i fancied i saw him slip his hand into his coat pocket. 'we must re-bury them all,' say i. 'o yes,' he answers with integrity. 'i was wiping my hand.' the beauties of the tesselated floor of the governor's house are once again consigned to darkness; the trench is filled up; the sod laid smoothly down; he wipes the perspiration from his forehead with the same handkerchief he had used to mop the skeleton and tesserae clean; and we make for the eastern gate of the fortress. dawn bursts upon us suddenly as we reach the opening. it comes by the lifting and thinning of the clouds that way till we are bathed in a pink light. the direction of his homeward journey is not the same as mine, and we part under the outer slope. walking along quickly to restore warmth i muse upon my eccentric friend, and cannot help asking myself this question: did he really replace the gilded image of the god mercurius with the rest of the treasures? he seemed to do so; and yet i could not testify to the fact. probably, however, he was as good as his word. * * * it was thus i spoke to myself, and so the adventure ended. but one thing remains to be told, and that is concerned with seven years after. among the effects of my friend, at that time just deceased, was found, carefully preserved, a gilt statuette representing mercury, labelled 'debased roman.' no record was attached to explain how it came into his possession. the figure was bequeathed to the casterbridge museum. detroit post, march . what the shepherd saw: a tale of four moonlight nights the genial justice of the peace--now, alas, no more--who made himself responsible for the facts of this story, used to begin in the good old- fashioned way with a bright moonlight night and a mysterious figure, an excellent stroke for an opening, even to this day, if well followed up. the christmas moon (he would say) was showing her cold face to the upland, the upland reflecting the radiance in frost-sparkles so minute as only to be discernible by an eye near at hand. this eye, he said, was the eye of a shepherd lad, young for his occupation, who stood within a wheeled hut of the kind commonly in use among sheep-keepers during the early lambing season, and was abstractedly looking through the loophole at the scene without. the spot was called lambing corner, and it was a sheltered portion of that wide expanse of rough pastureland known as the marlbury downs, which you directly traverse when following the turnpike-road across mid-wessex from london, through aldbrickham, in the direction of bath and bristol. here, where the hut stood, the land was high and dry, open, except to the north, and commanding an undulating view for miles. on the north side grew a tall belt of coarse furze, with enormous stalks, a clump of the same standing detached in front of the general mass. the clump was hollow, and the interior had been ingeniously taken advantage of as a position for the before-mentioned hut, which was thus completely screened from winds, and almost invisible, except through the narrow approach. but the furze twigs had been cut away from the two little windows of the hut, that the occupier might keep his eye on his sheep. in the rear, the shelter afforded by the belt of furze bushes was artificially improved by an inclosure of upright stakes, interwoven with boughs of the same prickly vegetation, and within the inclosure lay a renowned marlbury-down breeding flock of eight hundred ewes. to the south, in the direction of the young shepherd's idle gaze, there rose one conspicuous object above the uniform moonlit plateau, and only one. it was a druidical trilithon, consisting of three oblong stones in the form of a doorway, two on end, and one across as a lintel. each stone had been worn, scratched, washed, nibbled, split, and otherwise attacked by ten thousand different weathers; but now the blocks looked shapely and little the worse for wear, so beautifully were they silvered over by the light of the moon. the ruin was locally called the devil's door. an old shepherd presently entered the hut from the direction of the ewes, and looked around in the gloom. 'be ye sleepy?' he asked in cross accents of the boy. the lad replied rather timidly in the negative. 'then,' said the shepherd, 'i'll get me home-along, and rest for a few hours. there's nothing to be done here now as i can see. the ewes can want no more tending till daybreak--'tis beyond the bounds of reason that they can. but as the order is that one of us must bide, i'll leave 'ee, d'ye hear. you can sleep by day, and i can't. and you can be down to my house in ten minutes if anything should happen. i can't afford 'ee candle; but, as 'tis christmas week, and the time that folks have hollerdays, you can enjoy yerself by falling asleep a bit in the chair instead of biding awake all the time. but mind, not longer at once than while the shade of the devil's door moves a couple of spans, for you must keep an eye upon the ewes.' the boy made no definite reply, and the old man, stirring the fire in the stove with his crook-stem, closed the door upon his companion and vanished. as this had been more or less the course of events every night since the season's lambing had set in, the boy was not at all surprised at the charge, and amused himself for some time by lighting straws at the stove. he then went out to the ewes and new-born lambs, re-entered, sat down, and finally fell asleep. this was his customary manner of performing his watch, for though special permission for naps had this week been accorded, he had, as a matter of fact, done the same thing on every preceding night, sleeping often till awakened by a smack on the shoulder at three or four in the morning from the crook-stem of the old man. it might have been about eleven o'clock when he awoke. he was so surprised at awaking without, apparently, being called or struck, that on second thoughts he assumed that somebody must have called him in spite of appearances, and looked out of the hut window towards the sheep. they all lay as quiet as when he had visited them, very little bleating being audible, and no human soul disturbing the scene. he next looked from the opposite window, and here the case was different. the frost-facets glistened under the moon as before; an occasional furze bush showed as a dark spot on the same; and in the foreground stood the ghostly form of the trilithon. but in front of the trilithon stood a man. that he was not the shepherd or any one of the farm labourers was apparent in a moment's observation,--his dress being a dark suit, and his figure of slender build and graceful carriage. he walked backwards and forwards in front of the trilithon. the shepherd lad had hardly done speculating on the strangeness of the unknown's presence here at such an hour, when he saw a second figure crossing the open sward towards the locality of the trilithon and furze- clump that screened the hut. this second personage was a woman; and immediately on sight of her the male stranger hastened forward, meeting her just in front of the hut window. before she seemed to be aware of his intention he clasped her in his arms. the lady released herself and drew back with some dignity. 'you have come, harriet--bless you for it!' he exclaimed, fervently. 'but not for this,' she answered, in offended accents. and then, more good-naturedly, 'i have come, fred, because you entreated me so! what can have been the object of your writing such a letter? i feared i might be doing you grievous ill by staying away. how did you come here?' 'i walked all the way from my father's.' 'well, what is it? how have you lived since we last met?' 'but roughly; you might have known that without asking. i have seen many lands and many faces since i last walked these downs, but i have only thought of you.' 'is it only to tell me this that you have summoned me so strangely?' a passing breeze blew away the murmur of the reply and several succeeding sentences, till the man's voice again became audible in the words, 'harriet--truth between us two! i have heard that the duke does not treat you too well.' 'he is warm-tempered, but he is a good husband.' 'he speaks roughly to you, and sometimes even threatens to lock you out of doors.' 'only once, fred! on my honour, only once. the duke is a fairly good husband, i repeat. but you deserve punishment for this night's trick of drawing me out. what does it mean?' 'harriet, dearest, is this fair or honest? is it not notorious that your life with him is a sad one--that, in spite of the sweetness of your temper, the sourness of his embitters your days. i have come to know if i can help you. you are a duchess, and i am fred ogbourne; but it is not impossible that i may be able to help you . . . by god! the sweetness of that tongue ought to keep him civil, especially when there is added to it the sweetness of that face!' 'captain ogbourne!' she exclaimed, with an emphasis of playful fear. 'how can such a comrade of my youth behave to me as you do? don't speak so, and stare at me so! is this really all you have to say? i see i ought not to have come. 'twas thoughtlessly done.' another breeze broke the thread of discourse for a time. 'very well. i perceive you are dead and lost to me,' he could next be heard to say, '"captain ogbourne" proves that. as i once loved you i love you now, harriet, without one jot of abatement; but you are not the woman you were--you once were honest towards me; and now you conceal your heart in made-up speeches. let it be: i can never see you again.' 'you need not say that in such a tragedy tone, you silly. you may see me in an ordinary way--why should you not? but, of course, not in such a way as this. i should not have come now, if it had not happened that the duke is away from home, so that there is nobody to check my erratic impulses.' 'when does he return?' 'the day after to-morrow, or the day after that.' 'then meet me again to-morrow night.' 'no, fred, i cannot.' 'if you cannot to-morrow night, you can the night after; one of the two before he comes please bestow on me. now, your hand upon it! to-morrow or next night you will see me to bid me farewell!' he seized the duchess's hand. 'no, but fred--let go my hand! what do you mean by holding me so? if it be love to forget all respect to a woman's present position in thinking of her past, then yours may be so, frederick. it is not kind and gentle of you to induce me to come to this place for pity of you, and then to hold me tight here.' 'but see me once more! i have come two thousand miles to ask it.' 'o, i must not! there will be slanders--heaven knows what! i cannot meet you. for the sake of old times don't ask it.' 'then own two things to me; that you did love me once, and that your husband is unkind to you often enough now to make you think of the time when you cared for me.' 'yes--i own them both,' she answered faintly. 'but owning such as that tells against me; and i swear the inference is not true.' 'don't say that; for you have come--let me think the reason of your coming what i like to think it. it can do you no harm. come once more!' he still held her hand and waist. 'very well, then,' she said. 'thus far you shall persuade me. i will meet you to-morrow night or the night after. now, let me go.' he released her, and they parted. the duchess ran rapidly down the hill towards the outlying mansion of shakeforest towers, and when he had watched her out of sight, he turned and strode off in the opposite direction. all then was silent and empty as before. yet it was only for a moment. when they had quite departed, another shape appeared upon the scene. he came from behind the trilithon. he was a man of stouter build than the first, and wore the boots and spurs of a horseman. two things were at once obvious from this phenomenon: that he had watched the interview between the captain and the duchess; and that, though he probably had seen every movement of the couple, including the embrace, he had been too remote to hear the reluctant words of the lady's conversation--or, indeed, any words at all--so that the meeting must have exhibited itself to his eye as the assignation of a pair of well-agreed lovers. but it was necessary that several years should elapse before the shepherd-boy was old enough to reason out this. the third individual stood still for a moment, as if deep in meditation. he crossed over to where the lady and gentleman had stood, and looked at the ground; then he too turned and went away in a third direction, as widely divergent as possible from those taken by the two interlocutors. his course was towards the highway; and a few minutes afterwards the trot of a horse might have been heard upon its frosty surface, lessening till it died away upon the ear. the boy remained in the hut, confronting the trilithon as if he expected yet more actors on the scene, but nobody else appeared. how long he stood with his little face against the loophole he hardly knew; but he was rudely awakened from his reverie by a punch in his back, and in the feel of it he familiarly recognized the stem of the old shepherd's crook. 'blame thy young eyes and limbs, bill mills--now you have let the fire out, and you know i want it kept in! i thought something would go wrong with 'ee up here, and i couldn't bide in bed no more than thistledown on the wind, that i could not! well, what's happened, fie upon 'ee?' 'nothing.' 'ewes all as i left 'em?' 'yes.' 'any lambs want bringing in?' 'no.' the shepherd relit the fire, and went out among the sheep with a lantern, for the moon was getting low. soon he came in again. 'blame it all--thou'st say that nothing have happened; when one ewe have twinned and is like to go off, and another is dying for want of half an eye of looking to! i told 'ee, bill mills, if anything went wrong to come down and call me; and this is how you have done it.' 'you said i could go to sleep for a hollerday, and i did.' 'don't you speak to your betters like that, young man, or you'll come to the gallows-tree! you didn't sleep all the time, or you wouldn't have been peeping out of that there hole! now you can go home, and be up here again by breakfast-time. i be an old man, and there's old men that deserve well of the world; but no i--must rest how i can!' the elder shepherd then lay down inside the hut, and the boy went down the hill to the hamlet where he dwelt. second night when the next night drew on the actions of the boy were almost enough to show that he was thinking of the meeting he had witnessed, and of the promise wrung from the lady that she would come there again. as far as the sheep-tending arrangements were concerned, to-night was but a repetition of the foregoing one. between ten and eleven o'clock the old shepherd withdrew as usual for what sleep at home he might chance to get without interruption, making up the other necessary hours of rest at some time during the day; the boy was left alone. the frost was the same as on the night before, except perhaps that it was a little more severe. the moon shone as usual, except that it was three- quarters of an hour later in its course; and the boy's condition was much the same, except that he felt no sleepiness whatever. he felt, too, rather afraid; but upon the whole he preferred witnessing an assignation of strangers to running the risk of being discovered absent by the old shepherd. it was before the distant clock of shakeforest towers had struck eleven that he observed the opening of the second act of this midnight drama. it consisted in the appearance of neither lover nor duchess, but of the third figure--the stout man, booted and spurred--who came up from the easterly direction in which he had retreated the night before. he walked once round the trilithon, and next advanced towards the clump concealing the hut, the moonlight shining full upon his face and revealing him to be the duke. fear seized upon the shepherd-boy: the duke was jove himself to the rural population, whom to offend was starvation, homelessness, and death, and whom to look at was to be mentally scathed and dumbfoundered. he closed the stove, so that not a spark of light appeared, and hastily buried himself in the straw that lay in a corner. the duke came close to the clump of furze and stood by the spot where his wife and the captain had held their dialogue; he examined the furze as if searching for a hiding-place, and in doing so discovered the hut. the latter he walked round and then looked inside; finding it to all seeming empty, he entered, closing the door behind him and taking his place at the little circular window against which the boy's face had been pressed just before. the duke had not adopted his measures too rapidly, if his object were concealment. almost as soon as he had stationed himself there eleven o'clock struck, and the slender young man who had previously graced the scene promptly reappeared from the north quarter of the down. the spot of assignation having, by the accident of his running forward on the foregoing night, removed itself from the devil's door to the clump of furze, he instinctively came thither, and waited for the duchess where he had met her before. but a fearful surprise was in store for him to-night, as well as for the trembling juvenile. at his appearance the duke breathed more and more quickly, his breathings being distinctly audible to the crouching boy. the young man had hardly paused when the alert nobleman softly opened the door of the hut, and, stepping round the furze, came full upon captain fred. 'you have dishonoured her, and you shall die the death you deserve!' came to the shepherd's ears, in a harsh, hollow whisper through the boarding of the hut. the apathetic and taciturn boy was excited enough to run the risk of rising and looking from the window, but he could see nothing for the intervening furze boughs, both the men having gone round to the side. what took place in the few following moments he never exactly knew. he discerned portion of a shadow in quick muscular movement; then there was the fall of something on the grass; then there was stillness. two or three minutes later the duke became visible round the corner of the hut, dragging by the collar the now inert body of the second man. the duke dragged him across the open space towards the trilithon. behind this ruin was a hollow, irregular spot, overgrown with furze and stunted thorns, and riddled by the old holes of badgers, its former inhabitants, who had now died out or departed. the duke vanished into this depression with his burden, reappearing after the lapse of a few seconds. when he came forth he dragged nothing behind him. he returned to the side of the hut, cleansed something on the grass, and again put himself on the watch, though not as before, inside the hut, but without, on the shady side. 'now for the second!' he said. it was plain, even to the unsophisticated boy, that he now awaited the other person of the appointment--his wife, the duchess--for what purpose it was terrible to think. he seemed to be a man of such determined temper that he would scarcely hesitate in carrying out a course of revenge to the bitter end. moreover--though it was what the shepherd did not perceive--this was all the more probable, in that the moody duke was labouring under the exaggerated impression which the sight of the meeting in dumb show had conveyed. the jealous watcher waited long, but he waited in vain. from within the hut the boy could hear his occasional exclamations of surprise, as if he were almost disappointed at the failure of his assumption that his guilty duchess would surely keep the tryst. sometimes he stepped from the shade of the furze into the moonlight, and held up his watch to learn the time. about half-past eleven he seemed to give up expecting her. he then went a second time to the hollow behind the trilithon, remaining there nearly a quarter of an hour. from this place he proceeded quickly over a shoulder of the declivity, a little to the left, presently returning on horseback, which proved that his horse had been tethered in some secret place down there. crossing anew the down between the hut and the trilithon, and scanning the precincts as if finally to assure himself that she had not come, he rode slowly downwards in the direction of shakeforest towers. the juvenile shepherd thought of what lay in the hollow yonder; and no fear of the crook-stem of his superior officer was potent enough to detain him longer on that hill alone. any live company, even the most terrible, was better than the company of the dead; so, running with the speed of a hare in the direction pursued by the horseman, he overtook the revengeful duke at the second descent (where the great western road crossed before you came to the old park entrance on that side--now closed up and the lodge cleared away, though at the time it was wondered why, being considered the most convenient gate of all). once within the sound of the horse's footsteps, bill mills felt comparatively comfortable; for, though in awe of the duke because of his position, he had no moral repugnance to his companionship on account of the grisly deed he had committed, considering that powerful nobleman to have a right to do what he chose on his own lands. the duke rode steadily on beneath his ancestral trees, the hoofs of his horse sending up a smart sound now that he had reached the hard road of the drive, and soon drew near the front door of his house, surmounted by parapets with square-cut battlements that cast a notched shade upon the gravelled terrace. these outlines were quite familiar to little bill mills, though nothing within their boundary had ever been seen by him. when the rider approached the mansion a small turret door was quickly opened and a woman came out. as soon as she saw the horseman's outlines she ran forward into the moonlight to meet him. 'ah dear--and are you come?' she said. 'i heard hero's tread just when you rode over the hill, and i knew it in a moment. i would have come further if i had been aware--' 'glad to see me, eh?' 'how can you ask that?' 'well; it is a lovely night for meetings.' 'yes, it is a lovely night.' the duke dismounted and stood by her side. 'why should you have been listening at this time of night, and yet not expecting me?' he asked. 'why, indeed! there is a strange story attached to that, which i must tell you at once. but why did you come a night sooner than you said you would come? i am rather sorry--i really am!' (shaking her head playfully) 'for as a surprise to you i had ordered a bonfire to be built, which was to be lighted on your arrival to-morrow; and now it is wasted. you can see the outline of it just out there.' the duke looked across to a spot of rising glade, and saw the faggots in a heap. he then bent his eyes with a bland and puzzled air on the ground, 'what is this strange story you have to tell me that kept you awake?' he murmured. 'it is this--and it is really rather serious. my cousin fred ogbourne--captain ogbourne as he is now--was in his boyhood a great admirer of mine, as i think i have told you, though i was six years his senior. in strict truth, he was absurdly fond of me.' 'you have never told me of that before.' 'then it was your sister i told--yes, it was. well, you know i have not seen him for many years, and naturally i had quite forgotten his admiration of me in old times. but guess my surprise when the day before yesterday, i received a mysterious note bearing no address, and found on opening it that it came from him. the contents frightened me out of my wits. he had returned from canada to his father's house, and conjured me by all he could think of to meet him at once. but i think i can repeat the exact words, though i will show it to you when we get indoors. "my dear cousin harriet," the note said, "after this long absence you will be surprised at my sudden reappearance, and more by what i am going to ask. but if my life and future are of any concern to you at all, i beg that you will grant my request. what i require of you, is, dear harriet, that you meet me about eleven to-night by the druid stones on marlbury downs, about a mile or more from your house. i cannot say more, except to entreat you to come. i will explain all when you are there. the one thing is, i want to see you. come alone. believe me, i would not ask this if my happiness did not hang upon it--god knows how entirely! i am too agitated to say more--yours. fred." 'that was all of it. now, of course i ought have gone, as it turned out, but that i did not think of then. i remembered his impetuous temper, and feared that something grievous was impending over his head, while he had not a friend in the world to help him, or any one except myself to whom he would care to make his trouble known. so i wrapped myself up and went to marlbury downs at the time he had named. don't you think i was courageous?' 'very.' 'when i got there--but shall we not walk on; it is getting cold?' the duke, however, did not move. 'when i got there he came, of course, as a full grown man and officer, and not as the lad that i had known him. when i saw him i was sorry i had come. i can hardly tell you how he behaved. what he wanted i don't know even now; it seemed to be no more than the mere meeting with me. he held me by the hand and waist--o so tight--and would not let me go till i had promised to meet him again. his manner was so strange and passionate that i was afraid of him in such a lonely place, and i promised to come. then i escaped--then i ran home--and that's all. when the time drew on this evening for the appointment--which, of course, i never intended to keep, i felt uneasy, lest when he found i meant to disappoint him he would come on to the house; and that's why i could not sleep. but you are so silent!' 'i have had a long journey.' 'then let us get into the house. why did you come alone and unattended like this?' 'it was my humour.' after a moment's silence, during which they moved on, she said, 'i have thought of something which i hardly like to suggest to you. he said that if i failed to come to-night he would wait again to-morrow night. now, shall we to-morrow night go to the hill together--just to see if he is there; and if he is, read him a lesson on his foolishness in nourishing this old passion, and sending for me so oddly, instead of coming to the house?' 'why should we see if he's there?' said her husband moodily. 'because i think we ought to do something in it. poor fred! he would listen to you if you reasoned with him, and set our positions in their true light before him. it would be no more than christian kindness to a man who unquestionably is very miserable from some cause or other. his head seems quite turned.' by this time they had reached the door, rung the bell, and waited. all the house seemed to be asleep; but soon a man came to them, the horse was taken away, and the duke and duchess went in. third night there was no help for it. bill mills was obliged to stay on duty, in the old shepherd's absence, this evening as before, or give up his post and living. he thought as bravely as he could of what lay behind the devil's door, but with no great success, and was therefore in a measure relieved, even if awe-stricken, when he saw the forms of the duke and duchess strolling across the frosted greensward. the duchess was a few yards in front of her husband and tripped on lightly. 'i tell you he has not thought it worth while to come again!' the duke insisted, as he stood still, reluctant to walk further. 'he is more likely to come and wait all night; and it would be harsh treatment to let him do it a second time.' 'he is not here; so turn and come home.' 'he seems not to be here, certainly; i wonder if anything has happened to him. if it has, i shall never forgive myself!' the duke, uneasily, 'o, no. he has some other engagement.' 'that is very unlikely.' 'or perhaps he has found the distance too far.' 'nor is that probable.' 'then he may have thought better of it.' 'yes, he may have thought better of it; if, indeed, he is not here all the time--somewhere in the hollow behind the devil's door. let us go and see; it will serve him right to surprise him.' 'o, he's not there.' 'he may be lying very quiet because of you,' she said archly. 'o, no--not because of me!' 'come, then. i declare, dearest, you lag like an unwilling schoolboy to- night, and there's no responsiveness in you! you are jealous of that poor lad, and it is quite absurd of you.' 'i'll come! i'll come! say no more, harriet!' and they crossed over the green. wondering what they would do, the young shepherd left the hut, and doubled behind the belt of furze, intending to stand near the trilithon unperceived. but, in crossing the few yards of open ground he was for a moment exposed to view. 'ah, i see him at last!' said the duchess. 'see him!' said the duke. 'where?' 'by the devil's door; don't you notice a figure there? ah, my poor lover- cousin, won't you catch it now?' and she laughed half-pityingly. 'but what's the matter?' she asked, turning to her husband. 'it is not he!' said the duke hoarsely. 'it can't be he!' 'no, it is not he. it is too small for him. it is a boy.' 'ah, i thought so! boy, come here.' the youthful shepherd advanced with apprehension. 'what are you doing here?' 'keeping sheep, your grace.' 'ah, you know me! do you keep sheep here every night?' 'off and on, my lord duke.' 'and what have you seen here to-night or last night?' inquired the duchess. 'any person waiting or walking about?' the boy was silent. 'he has seen nothing,' interrupted her husband, his eyes so forbiddingly fixed on the boy that they seemed to shine like points of fire. 'come, let us go. the air is too keen to stand in long.' when they were gone the boy retreated to the hut and sheep, less fearful now than at first--familiarity with the situation having gradually overpowered his thoughts of the buried man. but he was not to be left alone long. when an interval had elapsed of about sufficient length for walking to and from shakeforest towers, there appeared from that direction the heavy form of the duke. he now came alone. the nobleman, on his part, seemed to have eyes no less sharp than the boy's, for he instantly recognized the latter among the ewes, and came straight towards him. 'are you the shepherd lad i spoke to a short time ago?' 'i be, my lord duke.' 'now listen to me. her grace asked you what you had seen this last night or two up here, and you made no reply. i now ask the same thing, and you need not be afraid to answer. have you seen anything strange these nights you have been watching here?' 'my lord duke, i be a poor heedless boy, and what i see i don't bear in mind.' 'i ask you again,' said the duke, coming nearer, 'have you seen anything strange these nights you have been watching here?' 'o, my lord duke! i be but the under-shepherd boy, and my father he was but your humble grace's hedger, and my mother only the cinder-woman in the back-yard! i fall asleep when left alone, and i see nothing at all!' the duke grasped the boy by the shoulder, and, directly impending over him, stared down into his face, 'did you see anything strange done here last night, i say?' 'o, my lord duke, have mercy, and don't stab me!' cried the shepherd, falling on his knees. 'i have never seen you walking here, or riding here, or lying-in-wait for a man, or dragging a heavy load!' 'h'm!' said his interrogator, grimly, relaxing his hold. 'it is well to know that you have never seen those things. now, which would you rather--see me do those things now, or keep a secret all your life?' 'keep a secret, my lord duke!' 'sure you are able?' 'o, your grace, try me!' 'very well. and now, how do you like sheep-keeping?' 'not at all. 'tis lonely work for them that think of spirits, and i'm badly used.' 'i believe you. you are too young for it. i must do something to make you more comfortable. you shall change this smock-frock for a real cloth jacket, and your thick boots for polished shoes. and you shall be taught what you have never yet heard of; and be put to school, and have bats and balls for the holidays, and be made a man of. but you must never say you have been a shepherd boy, and watched on the hills at night, for shepherd boys are not liked in good company. 'trust me, my lord duke.' 'the very moment you forget yourself, and speak of your shepherd days--this year, next year, in school, out of school, or riding in your carriage twenty years hence--at that moment my help will be withdrawn, and smash down you come to shepherding forthwith. you have parents, i think you say?' 'a widowed mother only, my lord duke.' 'i'll provide for her, and make a comfortable woman of her, until you speak of--what?' 'of my shepherd days, and what i saw here.' 'good. if you do speak of it?' 'smash down she comes to widowing forthwith!' 'that's well--very well. but it's not enough. come here.' he took the boy across to the trilithon, and made him kneel down. 'now, this was once a holy place,' resumed the duke. 'an altar stood here, erected to a venerable family of gods, who were known and talked of long before the god we know now. so that an oath sworn here is doubly an oath. say this after me: "may all the host above--angels and archangels, and principalities and powers--punish me; may i be tormented wherever i am--in the house or in the garden, in the fields or in the roads, in church or in chapel, at home or abroad, on land or at sea; may i be afflicted in eating and in drinking, in growing up and in growing old, in living and dying, inwardly and outwardly, and for always, if i ever speak of my life as a shepherd boy, or of what i have seen done on this marlbury down. so be it, and so let it be. amen and amen." now kiss the stone.' the trembling boy repeated the words, and kissed the stone, as desired. the duke led him off by the hand. that night the junior shepherd slept in shakeforest towers, and the next day he was sent away for tuition to a remote village. thence he went to a preparatory establishment, and in due course to a public school. fourth night on a winter evening many years subsequent to the above-mentioned occurrences, the ci-devant shepherd sat in a well-furnished office in the north wing of shakeforest towers in the guise of an ordinary educated man of business. he appeared at this time as a person of thirty-eight or forty, though actually he was several years younger. a worn and restless glance of the eye now and then, when he lifted his head to search for some letter or paper which had been mislaid, seemed to denote that his was not a mind so thoroughly at ease as his surroundings might have led an observer to expect. his pallor, too, was remarkable for a countryman. he was professedly engaged in writing, but he shaped not word. he had sat there only a few minutes, when, laying down his pen and pushing back his chair, he rested a hand uneasily on each of the chair-arms and looked on the floor. soon he arose and left the room. his course was along a passage which ended in a central octagonal hall; crossing this he knocked at a door. a faint, though deep, voice told him to come in. the room he entered was the library, and it was tenanted by a single person only--his patron the duke. during this long interval of years the duke had lost all his heaviness of build. he was, indeed, almost a skeleton; his white hair was thin, and his hands were nearly transparent. 'oh--mills?' he murmured. 'sit down. what is it?' 'nothing new, your grace. nobody to speak of has written, and nobody has called.' 'ah--what then? you look concerned.' 'old times have come to life, owing to something waking them.' 'old times be cursed--which old times are they?' 'that christmas week twenty-two years ago, when the late duchess's cousin frederick implored her to meet him on marlbury downs. i saw the meeting--it was just such a night as this--and i, as you know, saw more. she met him once, but not the second time.' 'mills, shall i recall some words to you--the words of an oath taken on that hill by a shepherd-boy?' 'it is unnecessary. he has strenuously kept that oath and promise. since that night no sound of his shepherd life has crossed his lips--even to yourself. but do you wish to hear more, or do you not, your grace?' 'i wish to hear no more,' said the duke sullenly. 'very well; let it be so. but a time seems coming--may be quite near at hand--when, in spite of my lips, that episode will allow itself to go undivulged no longer.' 'i wish to hear no more!' repeated the duke. 'you need be under no fear of treachery from me,' said the steward, somewhat bitterly. 'i am a man to whom you have been kind--no patron could have been kinder. you have clothed and educated me; have installed me here; and i am not unmindful. but what of it--has your grace gained much by my stanchness? i think not. there was great excitement about captain ogbourne's disappearance, but i spoke not a word. and his body has never been found. for twenty-two years i have wondered what you did with him. now i know. a circumstance that occurred this afternoon recalled the time to me most forcibly. to make it certain to myself that all was not a dream, i went up there with a spade; i searched, and saw enough to know that something decays there in a closed badger's hole.' 'mills, do you think the duchess guessed?' 'she never did, i am sure, to the day of her death.' 'did you leave all as you found it on the hill?' 'i did.' 'what made you think of going up there this particular afternoon?' 'what your grace says you don't wish to be told.' the duke was silent; and the stillness of the evening was so marked that there reached their ears from the outer air the sound of a tolling bell. 'what is that bell tolling for?' asked the nobleman. 'for what i came to tell you of, your grace.' 'you torment me it is your way!' said the duke querulously. 'who's dead in the village?' 'the oldest man--the old shepherd.' 'dead at last--how old is he?' 'ninety-four.' 'and i am only seventy. i have four-and-twenty years to the good!' 'i served under that old man when i kept sheep on marlbury downs. and he was on the hill that second night, when i first exchanged words with your grace. he was on the hill all the time; but i did not know he was there--nor did you.' 'ah!' said the duke, starting up. 'go on--i yield the point--you may tell!' 'i heard this afternoon that he was at the point of death. it was that which set me thinking of that past time--and induced me to search on the hill for what i have told you. coming back i heard that he wished to see the vicar to confess to him a secret he had kept for more than twenty years--"out of respect to my lord the duke"--something that he had seen committed on marlbury downs when returning to the flock on a december night twenty-two years ago. i have thought it over. he had left me in charge that evening; but he was in the habit of coming back suddenly, lest i should have fallen asleep. that night i saw nothing of him, though he had promised to return. he must have returned, and--found reason to keep in hiding. it is all plain. the next thing is that the vicar went to him two hours ago. further than that i have not heard.' 'it is quite enough. i will see the vicar at daybreak to-morrow.' 'what to do?' 'stop his tongue for four-and-twenty years--till i am dead at ninety-four, like the shepherd.' 'your grace--while you impose silence on me, i will not speak, even though nay neck should pay the penalty. i promised to be yours, and i am yours. but is this persistence of any avail?' 'i'll stop his tongue, i say!' cried the duke with some of his old rugged force. 'now, you go home to bed, mills, and leave me to manage him.' the interview ended, and the steward withdrew. the night, as he had said, was just such an one as the night of twenty-two years before, and the events of the evening destroyed in him all regard for the season as one of cheerfulness and goodwill. he went off to his own house on the further verge of the park, where he led a lonely life, scarcely calling any man friend. at eleven he prepared to retire to bed--but did not retire. he sat down and reflected. twelve o'clock struck; he looked out at the colourless moon, and, prompted by he knew not what, put on his hat and emerged into the air. here william mills strolled on and on, till he reached the top of marlbury downs, a spot he had not visited at this hour of the night during the whole score-and-odd years. he placed himself, as nearly as he could guess, on the spot where the shepherd's hut had stood. no lambing was in progress there now, and the old shepherd who had used him so roughly had ceased from his labours that very day. but the trilithon stood up white as ever; and, crossing the intervening sward, the steward fancifully placed his mouth against the stone. restless and self-reproachful as he was, he could not resist a smile as he thought of the terrifying oath of compact, sealed by a kiss upon the stones of a pagan temple. but he had kept his word, rather as a promise than as a formal vow, with much worldly advantage to himself, though not much happiness; till increase of years had bred reactionary feelings which led him to receive the news of to-night with emotions akin to relief. while leaning against the devil's door and thinking on these things, he became conscious that he was not the only inhabitant of the down. a figure in white was moving across his front with long, noiseless strides. mills stood motionless, and when the form drew quite near he perceived it to be that of the duke himself in his nightshirt--apparently walking in his sleep. not to alarm the old man, mills clung close to the shadow of the stone. the duke went straight on into the hollow. there he knelt down, and began scratching the earth with his hands like a badger. after a few minutes he arose, sighed heavily, and retraced his steps as he had come. fearing that he might harm himself, yet unwilling to arouse him, the steward followed noiselessly. the duke kept on his path unerringly, entered the park, and made for the house, where he let himself in by a window that stood open--the one probably by which he had come out. mills softly closed the window behind his patron, and then retired homeward to await the revelations of the morning, deeming it unnecessary to alarm the house. however, he felt uneasy during the remainder of the night, no less on account of the duke's personal condition than because of that which was imminent next day. early in the morning he called at shakeforest towers. the blinds were down, and there was something singular upon the porter's face when he opened the door. the steward inquired for the duke. the man's voice was subdued as he replied: 'sir, i am sorry to say that his grace is dead! he left his room some time in the night, and wandered about nobody knows where. on returning to the upper floor he lost his balance and fell downstairs.' the steward told the tale of the down before the vicar had spoken. mills had always intended to do so after the death of the duke. the consequences to himself he underwent cheerfully; but his life was not prolonged. he died, a farmer at the cape, when still somewhat under forty-nine years of age. the splendid marlbury breeding flock is as renowned as ever, and, to the eye, seems the same in every particular that it was in earlier times; but the animals which composed it on the occasion of the events gathered from the justice are divided by many ovine generations from its members now. lambing corner has long since ceased to be used for lambing purposes, though the name still lingers on as the appellation of the spot. this abandonment of site may be partly owing to the removal of the high furze bushes which lent such convenient shelter at that date. partly, too, it may be due to another circumstance. for it is said by present shepherds in that district that during the nights of christmas week flitting shapes are seen in the open space around the trilithon, together with the gleam of a weapon, and the shadow of a man dragging a burden into the hollow. but of these things there is no certain testimony. christmas . a committee-man of 'the terror' we had been talking of the georgian glories of our old-fashioned watering- place, which now, with its substantial russet-red and dun brick buildings in the style of the year eighteen hundred, looks like one side of a soho or bloomsbury street transported to the shore, and draws a smile from the modern tourist who has no eye for solidity of build. the writer, quite a youth, was present merely as a listener. the conversation proceeded from general subjects to particular, until old mrs. h--, whose memory was as perfect at eighty as it had ever been in her life, interested us all by the obvious fidelity with which she repeated a story many times related to her by her mother when our aged friend was a girl--a domestic drama much affecting the life of an acquaintance of her said parent, one mademoiselle v--, a teacher of french. the incidents occurred in the town during the heyday of its fortunes, at the time of our brief peace with france in - . 'i wrote it down in the shape of a story some years ago, just after my mother's death,' said mrs. h--. 'it is locked up in my desk there now.' 'read it!' said we. 'no,' said she; 'the light is bad, and i can remember it well enough, word for word, flourishes and all.' we could not be choosers in the circumstances, and she began. * * * * * 'there are two in it, of course, the man and the woman, and it was on an evening in september that she first got to know him. there had not been such a grand gathering on the esplanade all the season. his majesty king george the third was present, with all the princesses and royal dukes, while upwards of three hundred of the general nobility and other persons of distinction were also in the town at the time. carriages and other conveyances were arriving every minute from london and elsewhere; and when among the rest a shabby stage-coach came in by a by-route along the coast from havenpool, and drew up at a second-rate tavern, it attracted comparatively little notice. 'from this dusty vehicle a man alighted, left his small quantity of luggage temporarily at the office, and walked along the street as if to look for lodgings. 'he was about forty-five--possibly fifty--and wore a long coat of faded superfine cloth, with a heavy collar, and a hunched-up neckcloth. he seemed to desire obscurity. 'but the display appeared presently to strike him, and he asked of a rustic he met in the street what was going on; his accent being that of one to whom english pronunciation was difficult. 'the countryman looked at him with a slight surprise, and said, "king jarge is here and his royal cwort." 'the stranger inquired if they were going to stay long. '"don't know, sir. same as they always do, i suppose." '"how long is that?" '"till some time in october. they've come here every summer since eighty- nine." 'the stranger moved onward down st. thomas street, and approached the bridge over the harbour backwater, that then, as now, connected the old town with the more modern portion. the spot was swept with the rays of a low sun, which lit up the harbour lengthwise, and shone under the brim of the man's hat and into his eyes as he looked westward. against the radiance figures were crossing in the opposite direction to his own; among them this lady of my mother's later acquaintance, mademoiselle v--. she was the daughter of a good old french family, and at that date a pale woman, twenty-eight or thirty years of age, tall and elegant in figure, but plainly dressed and wearing that evening (she said) a small muslin shawl crossed over the bosom in the fashion of the time, and tied behind. 'at sight of his face, which, as she used to tell us, was unusually distinct in the peering sunlight, she could not help giving a little shriek of horror, for a terrible reason connected with her history, and after walking a few steps further, she sank down against the parapet of the bridge in a fainting fit. 'in his preoccupation the foreign gentleman had hardly noticed her, but her strange collapse immediately attracted his attention. he quickly crossed the carriageway, picked her up, and carried her into the first shop adjoining the bridge, explaining that she was a lady who had been taken ill outside. 'she soon revived; but, clearly much puzzled, her helper perceived that she still had a dread of him which was sufficient to hinder her complete recovery of self-command. she spoke in a quick and nervous way to the shopkeeper, asking him to call a coach. 'this the shopkeeper did, mademoiselle v--- and the stranger remaining in constrained silence while he was gone. the coach came up, and giving the man the address, she entered it and drove away. '"who is that lady?" said the newly arrived gentleman. '"she's of your nation, as i should make bold to suppose," said the shopkeeper. and he told the other that she was mademoiselle v--, governess at general newbold's, in the same town. '"you have many foreigners here?" the stranger inquired. '"yes, though mostly hanoverians. but since the peace they are learning french a good deal in genteel society, and french instructors are rather in demand." '"yes, i teach it," said the visitor. "i am looking for a tutorship in an academy." 'the information given by the burgess to the frenchman seemed to explain to the latter nothing of his countrywoman's conduct--which, indeed, was the case--and he left the shop, taking his course again over the bridge and along the south quay to the old rooms inn, where he engaged a bedchamber. 'thoughts of the woman who had betrayed such agitation at sight of him lingered naturally enough with the newcomer. though, as i stated, not much less than thirty years of age, mademoiselle v--, one of his own nation, and of highly refined and delicate appearance, had kindled a singular interest in the middle-aged gentleman's breast, and her large dark eyes, as they had opened and shrunk from him, exhibited a pathetic beauty to which hardly any man could have been insensible. 'the next day, having written some letters, he went out and made known at the office of the town "guide" and of the newspaper, that a teacher of french and calligraphy had arrived, leaving a card at the bookseller's to the same effect. he then walked on aimlessly, but at length inquired the way to general newbold's. at the door, without giving his name, he asked to see mademoiselle v--, and was shown into a little back parlour, where she came to him with a gaze of surprise. '"my god! why do you intrude here, monsieur?" she gasped in french as soon as she saw his face. '"you were taken ill yesterday. i helped you. you might have been run over if i had not picked you up. it was an act of simple humanity certainly; but i thought i might come to ask if you had recovered?" 'she had turned aside, and had scarcely heard a word of his speech. "i hate you, infamous man!" she said. "i cannot bear your helping me. go away!" '"but you are a stranger to me." '"i know you too well!" '"you have the advantage then, mademoiselle. i am a newcomer here. i never have seen you before to my knowledge; and i certainly do not, could not, hate you." '"are you not monsieur b--?" 'he flinched. "i am--in paris," he said. "but here i am monsieur g--." '"that is trivial. you are the man i say you are." '"how did you know my real name, mademoiselle?" '"i saw you in years gone by, when you did not see me. you were formerly member of the committee of public safety, under the convention." "i was." '"you guillotined my father, my brother, my uncle--all my family, nearly, and broke my mother's heart. they had done nothing but keep silence. their sentiments were only guessed. their headless corpses were thrown indiscriminately into the ditch of the mousseaux cemetery, and destroyed with lime." 'he nodded. '"you left me without a friend, and here i am now, alone in a foreign land." '"i am sorry for you," said be. "sorry for the consequence, not for the intent. what i did was a matter of conscience, and, from a point of view indiscernible by you, i did right. i profited not a farthing. but i shall not argue this. you have the satisfaction of seeing me here an exile also, in poverty, betrayed by comrades, as friendless as yourself." '"it is no satisfaction to me, monsieur." '"well, things done cannot be altered. now the question: are you quite recovered?" '"not from dislike and dread of you--otherwise, yes." '"good morning, mademoiselle." '"good morning." 'they did not meet again till one evening at the theatre (which my mother's friend was with great difficulty induced to frequent, to perfect herself in english pronunciation, the idea she entertained at that time being to become a teacher of english in her own country later on). she found him sitting next to her, and it made her pale and restless. '"you are still afraid of me?" '"i am. o cannot you understand!" 'he signified the affirmative. '"i follow the play with difficulty," he said, presently. '"so do i--now," said she. 'he regarded her long, and she was conscious of his look; and while she kept her eyes on the stage they filled with tears. still she would not move, and the tears ran visibly down her cheek, though the play was a merry one, being no other than mr. sheridan's comedy of "the rivals," with mr. s. kemble as captain absolute. he saw her distress, and that her mind was elsewhere; and abruptly rising from his seat at candle-snuffing time he left the theatre. 'though he lived in the old town, and she in the new, they frequently saw each other at a distance. one of these occasions was when she was on the north side of the harbour, by the ferry, waiting for the boat to take her across. he was standing by cove row, on the quay opposite. instead of entering the boat when it arrived she stepped back from the quay; but looking to see if he remained she beheld him pointing with his finger to the ferry-boat. '"enter!" he said, in a voice loud enough to reach her. 'mademoiselle v--- stood still. '"enter!" he said, and, as she did not move, he repeated the word a third time. 'she had really been going to cross, and now approached and stepped down into the boat. though she did not raise her eyes she knew that he was watching her over. at the landing steps she saw from under the brim of her hat a hand stretched down. the steps were steep and slippery. '"no, monsieur," she said. "unless, indeed, you believe in god, and repent of your evil past!" '"i am sorry you were made to suffer. but i only believe in the god called reason, and i do not repent. i was the instrument of a national principle. your friends were not sacrificed for any ends of mine." 'she thereupon withheld her hand, and clambered up unassisted. he went on, ascending the look-out hill, and disappearing over the brow. her way was in the same direction, her errand being to bring home the two young girls under her charge, who had gone to the cliff for an airing. when she joined them at the top she saw his solitary figure at the further edge, standing motionless against the sea. all the while that she remained with her pupils he stood without turning, as if looking at the frigates in the roadstead, but more probably in meditation, unconscious where he was. in leaving the spot one of the children threw away half a sponge-biscuit that she had been eating. passing near it he stooped, picked it up carefully, and put it in his pocket. 'mademoiselle v--- came homeward, asking herself, "can he be starving?" 'from that day he was invisible for so long a time that she thought he had gone away altogether. but one evening a note came to her, and she opened it trembling. '"i am here ill," it said, "and, as you know, alone. there are one or two little things i want done, in case my death should occur,--and i should prefer not to ask the people here, if it could be avoided. have you enough of the gift of charity to come and carry out my wishes before it is too late?" 'now so it was that, since seeing him possess himself of the broken cake, she had insensibly begun to feel something that was more than curiosity, though perhaps less than anxiety, about this fellow-countryman of hers; and it was not in her nervous and sensitive heart to resist his appeal. she found his lodging (to which he had removed from the old rooms inn for economy) to be a room over a shop, half-way up the steep and narrow street of the old town, to which the fashionable visitors seldom penetrated. with some misgiving she entered the house, and was admitted to the chamber where he lay. '"you are too good, too good," he murmured. and presently, "you need not shut the door. you will feel safer, and they will not understand what we say." '"are you in want, monsieur? can i give you--" '"no, no. i merely want you to do a trifling thing or two that i have not strength enough to do myself. nobody in the town but you knows who i really am--unless you have told?" '"i have not told . . . i thought you might have acted from principle in those sad days, even--" '"you are kind to concede that much. however, to the present. i was able to destroy my few papers before i became so weak . . . but in the drawer there you will find some pieces of linen clothing--only two or three--marked with initials that may be recognized. will you rip them out with a penknife?" 'she searched as bidden, found the garments, cut out the stitches of the lettering, and replaced the linen as before. a promise to post, in the event of his death, a letter he put in her hand, completed all that he required of her. 'he thanked her. "i think you seem sorry for me," he murmured. "and i am surprised. you are sorry?" 'she evaded the question. "do you repent and believe?" she asked. '"no." 'contrary to her expectations and his own he recovered, though very slowly; and her manner grew more distant thenceforward, though his influence upon her was deeper than she knew. weeks passed away, and the month of may arrived. one day at this time she met him walking slowly along the beach to the northward. '"you know the news?" he said. '"you mean of the rupture between france and england again?" '"yes; and the feeling of antagonism is stronger than it was in the last war, owing to bonaparte's high-handed arrest of the innocent english who were travelling in our country for pleasure. i feel that the war will be long and bitter; and that my wish to live unknown in england will be frustrated. see here." 'he took from his pocket a piece of the single newspaper which circulated in the county in those days, and she read-- "the magistrates acting under the alien act have been requested to direct a very scrutinizing eye to the academies in our towns and other places, in which french tutors are employed, and to all of that nationality who profess to be teachers in this country. many of them are known to be inveterate enemies and traitors to the nation among whose people they have found a livelihood and a home." 'he continued: "i have observed since the declaration of war a marked difference in the conduct of the rougher class of people here towards me. if a great battle were to occur--as it soon will, no doubt--feeling would grow to a pitch that would make it impossible for me, a disguised man of no known occupation, to stay here. with you, whose duties and antecedents are known, it may be less difficult, but still unpleasant. now i propose this. you have probably seen how my deep sympathy with you has quickened to a warm feeling; and what i say is, will you agree to give me a title to protect you by honouring me with your hand? i am older than you, it is true, but as husband and wife we can leave england together, and make the whole world our country. though i would propose quebec, in canada, as the place which offers the best promise of a home." '"my god! you surprise me!" said she. '"but you accept my proposal?" '"no, no!" '"and yet i think you will, mademoiselle, some day!" '"i think not." '"i won't distress you further now." '"much thanks . . . i am glad to see you looking better, monsieur; i mean you are looking better." '"ah, yes. i am improving. i walk in the sun every day." 'and almost every day she saw him--sometimes nodding stiffly only, sometimes exchanging formal civilities. "you are not gone yet," she said on one of these occasions. '"no. at present i don't think of going without you." '"but you find it uncomfortable here?" '"somewhat. so when will you have pity on me?" 'she shook her head and went on her way. yet she was a little moved. "he did it on principle," she would murmur. "he had no animosity towards them, and profited nothing!" 'she wondered how he lived. it was evident that he could not be so poor as she had thought; his pretended poverty might be to escape notice. she could not tell, but she knew that she was dangerously interested in him. 'and he still mended, till his thin, pale face became more full and firm. as he mended she had to meet that request of his, advanced with even stronger insistency. 'the arrival of the king and court for the season as usual brought matters to a climax for these two lonely exiles and fellow country-people. the king's awkward preference for a part of the coast in such dangerous proximity to france made it necessary that a strict military vigilance should be exercised to guard the royal residents. half- a-dozen frigates were every night posted in a line across the bay, and two lines of sentinels, one at the water's edge and another behind the esplanade, occupied the whole sea-front after eight every night. the watering-place was growing an inconvenient residence even for mademoiselle v--- herself, her friendship for this strange french tutor and writing-master who never had any pupils having been observed by many who slightly knew her. the general's wife, whose dependent she was, repeatedly warned her against the acquaintance; while the hanoverian and other soldiers of the foreign legion, who had discovered the nationality of her friend, were more aggressive than the english military gallants who made it their business to notice her. 'in this tense state of affairs her answers became more agitated. "o heaven, how can i marry you!" she would say. '"you will; surely you will!" he answered again. "i don't leave without you. and i shall soon be interrogated before the magistrates if i stay here; probably imprisoned. you will come?" 'she felt her defences breaking down. contrary to all reason and sense of family honour she was, by some abnormal craving, inclining to a tenderness for him that was founded on its opposite. sometimes her warm sentiments burnt lower than at others, and then the enormity of her conduct showed itself in more staring hues. 'shortly after this he came with a resigned look on his face. "it is as i expected," he said. "i have received a hint to go. in good sooth, i am no bonapartist--i am no enemy to england; but the presence of the king made it impossible for a foreigner with no visible occupation, and who may be a spy, to remain at large in the town. the authorities are civil, but firm. they are no more than reasonable. good. i must go. you must come also." 'she did not speak. but she nodded assent, her eyes drooping. 'on her way back to the house on the esplanade she said to herself, "i am glad, i am glad! i could not do otherwise. it is rendering good for evil!" but she knew how she mocked herself in this, and that the moral principle had not operated one jot in her acceptance of him. in truth she had not realized till now the full presence of the emotion which had unconsciously grown up in her for this lonely and severe man, who, in her tradition, was vengeance and irreligion personified. he seemed to absorb her whole nature, and, absorbing, to control it. 'a day or two before the one fixed for the wedding there chanced to come to her a letter from the only acquaintance of her own sex and country she possessed in england, one to whom she had sent intelligence of her approaching marriage, without mentioning with whom. this friend's misfortunes had been somewhat similar to her own, which fact had been one cause of their intimacy; her friend's sister, a nun of the abbey of montmartre, having perished on the scaffold at the hands of the same comite de salut public which had numbered mademoiselle v--'s affianced among its members. the writer had felt her position much again of late, since the renewal of the war, she said; and the letter wound up with a fresh denunciation of the authors of their mutual bereavement and subsequent troubles. 'coming just then, its contents produced upon mademoiselle v--- the effect of a pail of water upon a somnambulist. what had she been doing in betrothing herself to this man! was she not making herself a parricide after the event? at this crisis in her feelings her lover called. he beheld her trembling, and, in reply to his question, she told him of her scruples with impulsive candour. 'she had not intended to do this, but his attitude of tender command coerced her into frankness. thereupon he exhibited an agitation never before apparent in him. he said, "but all that is past. you are the symbol of charity, and we are pledged to let bygones be." 'his words soothed her for the moment, but she was sadly silent, and he went away. 'that night she saw (as she firmly believed to the end of her life) a divinely sent vision. a procession of her lost relatives--father, brother, uncle, cousin--seemed to cross her chamber between her bed and the window, and when she endeavoured to trace their features she perceived them to be headless, and that she had recognized them by their familiar clothes only. in the morning she could not shake off the effects of this appearance on her nerves. all that day she saw nothing of her wooer, he being occupied in making arrangements for their departure. it grew towards evening--the marriage eve; but, in spite of his re-assuring visit, her sense of family duty waxed stronger now that she was left alone. yet, she asked herself, how could she, alone and unprotected, go at this eleventh hour and reassert to an affianced husband that she could not and would not marry him while admitting at the same time that she loved him? the situation dismayed her. she had relinquished her post as governess, and was staying temporarily in a room near the coach-office, where she expected him to call in the morning to carry out the business of their union and departure. 'wisely or foolishly, mademoiselle v--- came to a resolution: that her only safety lay in flight. his contiguity influenced her too sensibly; she could not reason. so packing up her few possessions and placing on the table the small sum she owed, she went out privately, secured a last available seat in the london coach, and, almost before she had fully weighed her action, she was rolling out of the town in the dusk of the september evening. 'having taken this startling step she began to reflect upon her reasons. he had been one of that tragic committee the sound of whose name was a horror to the civilized world; yet he had been only one of several members, and, it seemed, not the most active. he had marked down names on principle, had felt no personal enmity against his victims, and had enriched himself not a sou out of the office he had held. nothing could change the past. meanwhile he loved her, and her heart inclined to as much of him as she could detach from that past. why not, as he had suggested, bury memories, and inaugurate a new era by this union? in other words, why not indulge her tenderness, since its nullification could do no good. 'thus she held self-communion in her seat in the coach, passing through casterbridge, and shottsford, and on to the white hart at melchester, at which place the whole fabric of her recent intentions crumbled down. better be staunch having got so far; let things take their course, and marry boldly the man who had so impressed her. how great he was; how small was she! and she had presumed to judge him! abandoning her place in the coach with the precipitancy that had characterized her taking it, she waited till the vehicle had driven off, something in the departing shapes of the outside passengers against the starlit sky giving her a start, as she afterwards remembered. presently the down coach, "the morning herald," entered the city, and she hastily obtained a place on the top. '"i'll be firm--i'll be his--if it cost me my immortal soul!" she said. and with troubled breathings she journeyed back over the road she had just traced. 'she reached our royal watering-place by the time the day broke, and her first aim was to get back to the hired room in which her last few days had been spent. when the landlady appeared at the door in response to mademoiselle v--'s nervous summons, she explained her sudden departure and return as best she could; and no objection being offered to her re- engagement of the room for one day longer she ascended to the chamber and sat down panting. she was back once more, and her wild tergiversations were a secret from him whom alone they concerned. 'a sealed letter was on the mantelpiece. "yes, it is directed to you, mademoiselle," said the woman who had followed her. "but we were wondering what to do with it. a town messenger brought it after you had gone last night." 'when the landlady had left, mademoiselle v--- opened the letter and read-- "my dear and honoured friend.--you have been throughout our acquaintance absolutely candid concerning your misgivings. but i have been reserved concerning mine. that is the difference between us. you probably have not guessed that every qualm you have felt on the subject of our marriage has been paralleled in my heart to the full. thus it happened that your involuntary outburst of remorse yesterday, though mechanically deprecated by me in your presence, was a last item in my own doubts on the wisdom of our union, giving them a force that i could no longer withstand. i came home; and, on reflection, much as i honour and adore you, i decide to set you free. "as one whose life has been devoted, and i may say sacrificed, to the cause of liberty, i cannot allow your judgment (probably a permanent one) to be fettered beyond release by a feeling which may be transient only. "it would be no less than excruciating to both that i should announce this decision to you by word of mouth. i have therefore taken the less painful course of writing. before you receive this i shall have left the town by the evening coach for london, on reaching which city my movements will be revealed to none. "regard me, mademoiselle, as dead, and accept my renewed assurances of respect, remembrance, and affection." 'when she had recovered from her shock of surprise and grief, she remembered that at the starting of the coach out of melchester before dawn, the shape of a figure among the outside passengers against the starlit sky had caused her a momentary start, from its resemblance to that of her friend. knowing nothing of each other's intentions, and screened from each other by the darkness, they had left the town by the same conveyance. "he, the greater, persevered; i, the smaller, returned!" she said. 'recovering from her stupor, mademoiselle v--- bethought herself again of her employer, mrs. newbold, whom recent events had estranged. to that lady she went with a full heart, and explained everything. mrs. newbold kept to herself her opinion of the episode, and reinstalled the deserted bride in her old position as governess to the family. 'a governess she remained to the end of her days. after the final peace with france she became acquainted with my mother, to whom by degrees she imparted these experiences of hers. as her hair grew white, and her features pinched, mademoiselle v--- would wonder what nook of the world contained her lover, if he lived, and if by any chance she might see him again. but when, some time in the 'twenties, death came to her, at no great age, that outline against the stars of the morning remained as the last glimpse she ever obtained of her family's foe and her once affianced husband.' . master john horseleigh, knight in the earliest and mustiest volume of the havenpool marriage registers (said the thin-faced gentleman) this entry may still be read by any one curious enough to decipher the crabbed handwriting of the date. i took a copy of it when i was last there; and it runs thus (he had opened his pocket-book, and now read aloud the extract; afterwards handing round the book to us, wherein we saw transcribed the following)-- mastr john horseleigh, knyght, of the p'ysshe of clyffton was maryd to edith the wyffe late off john stocker, m'chawnte of havenpool the xiiij daje of december be p'vylegge gevyn by our sup'me hedd of the chyrche of ingelonde kynge henry the viii th . now, if you turn to the long and elaborate pedigree of the ancient family of the horseleighs of clyfton horseleigh, you will find no mention whatever of this alliance, notwithstanding the privilege given by the sovereign and head of the church; the said sir john being therein chronicled as marrying, at a date apparently earlier than the above, the daughter and heiress of richard phelipson, of montislope, in nether wessex, a lady who outlived him, of which marriage there were issue two daughters and a son, who succeeded him in his estates. how are we to account for these, as it would seem, contemporaneous wives? a strange local tradition only can help us, and this can be briefly told. one evening in the autumn of the year or , a young sailor, whose christian name was roger, but whose surname is not known, landed at his native place of havenpool, on the south wessex coast, after a voyage in the newfoundland trade, then newly sprung into existence. he returned in the ship primrose with a cargo of 'trayne oyle brought home from the new founde lande,' to quote from the town records of the date. during his absence of two summers and a winter, which made up the term of a newfoundland 'spell,' many unlooked-for changes had occurred within the quiet little seaport, some of which closely affected roger the sailor. at the time of his departure his only sister edith had become the bride of one stocker, a respectable townsman, and part owner of the brig in which roger had sailed; and it was to the house of this couple, his only relatives, that the young man directed his steps. on trying the door in quay street he found it locked, and then observed that the windows were boarded up. inquiring of a bystander, he learnt for the first time of the death of his brother-in-law, though that event had taken place nearly eighteen months before. 'and my sister edith?' asked roger. 'she's married again--as they do say, and hath been so these twelve months. i don't vouch for the truth o't, though if she isn't she ought to be.' roger's face grew dark. he was a man with a considerable reserve of strong passion, and he asked his informant what he meant by speaking thus. the man explained that shortly after the young woman's bereavement a stranger had come to the port. he had seen her moping on the quay, had been attracted by her youth and loneliness, and in an extraordinarily brief wooing had completely fascinated her--had carried her off, and, as was reported, had married her. though he had come by water, he was supposed to live no very great distance off by land. they were last heard of at oozewood, in upper wessex, at the house of one wall, a timber- merchant, where, he believed, she still had a lodging, though her husband, if he were lawfully that much, was but an occasional visitor to the place. 'the stranger?' asked roger. 'did you see him? what manner of man was he?' 'i liked him not,' said the other. 'he seemed of that kind that hath something to conceal, and as he walked with her he ever and anon turned his head and gazed behind him, as if he much feared an unwelcome pursuer. but, faith,' continued he, 'it may have been the man's anxiety only. yet did i not like him.' 'was he older than my sister?' roger asked. 'ay--much older; from a dozen to a score of years older. a man of some position, maybe, playing an amorous game for the pleasure of the hour. who knoweth but that he have a wife already? many have done the thing hereabouts of late.' having paid a visit to the graves of his relatives, the sailor next day went along the straight road which, then a lane, now a highway, conducted to the curious little inland town named by the havenpool man. it is unnecessary to describe oozewood on the south-avon. it has a railway at the present day; but thirty years of steam traffic past its precincts have hardly modified its original features. surrounded by a sort of fresh-water lagoon, dividing it from meadows and coppice, its ancient thatch and timber houses have barely made way even in the front street for the ubiquitous modern brick and slate. it neither increases nor diminishes in size; it is difficult to say what the inhabitants find to do, for, though trades in woodware are still carried on, there cannot be enough of this class of work nowadays to maintain all the householders, the forests around having been so greatly thinned and curtailed. at the time of this tradition the forests were dense, artificers in wood abounded, and the timber trade was brisk. every house in the town, without exception, was of oak framework, filled in with plaster, and covered with thatch, the chimney being the only brick portion of the structure. inquiry soon brought roger the sailor to the door of wall, the timber-dealer referred to, but it was some time before he was able to gain admission to the lodging of his sister, the people having plainly received directions not to welcome strangers. she was sitting in an upper room on one of the lath-backed, willow-bottomed 'shepherd's' chairs, made on the spot then as to this day, and as they were probably made there in the days of the heptarchy. in her lap was an infant, which she had been suckling, though now it had fallen asleep; so had the young mother herself for a few minutes, under the drowsing effects of solitude. hearing footsteps on the stairs, she awoke, started up with a glad cry, and ran to the door, opening which she met her brother on the threshold. 'o, this is merry; i didn't expect 'ee!' she said. 'ah, roger--i thought it was john.' her tones fell to disappointment. the sailor kissed her, looked at her sternly for a few moments, and pointing to the infant, said, 'you mean the father of this?' 'yes, my husband,' said edith. 'i hope so,' he answered. 'why, roger, i'm married--of a truth am i!' she cried. 'shame upon 'ee, if true! if not true, worse. master stocker was an honest man, and ye should have respected his memory longer. where is thy husband?' 'he comes often. i thought it was he now. our marriage has to be kept secret for a while--it was done privily for certain reasons; but we was married at church like honest folk--afore god we were, roger, six months after poor stocker's death.' ''twas too soon,' said roger. 'i was living in a house alone; i had nowhere to go to. you were far over sea in the new found land, and john took me and brought me here.' 'how often doth he come?' says roger again. 'once or twice weekly,' says she. 'i wish th' 'dst waited till i returned, dear edy,' he said. 'it mid be you are a wife--i hope so. but, if so, why this mystery? why this mean and cramped lodging in this lonely copse-circled town? of what standing is your husband, and of where?' 'he is of gentle breeding--his name is john. i am not free to tell his family-name. he is said to be of london, for safety' sake; but he really lives in the county next adjoining this.' 'where in the next county?' 'i do not know. he has preferred not to tell me, that i may not have the secret forced from me, to his and my hurt, by bringing the marriage to the ears of his kinsfolk and friends.' her brother's face flushed. 'our people have been honest townsmen, well- reputed for long; why should you readily take such humbling from a sojourner of whom th' 'st know nothing?' they remained in constrained converse till her quick ear caught a sound, for which she might have been waiting--a horse's footfall. 'it is john!' said she. 'this is his night--saturday.' 'don't be frightened lest he should find me here!' said roger. 'i am on the point of leaving. i wish not to be a third party. say nothing at all about my visit, if it will incommode you so to do. i will see thee before i go afloat again.' speaking thus he left the room, and descending the staircase let himself out by the front door, thinking he might obtain a glimpse of the approaching horseman. but that traveller had in the meantime gone stealthily round to the back of the homestead, and peering along the pinion-end of the house roger discerned him unbridling and haltering his horse with his own hands in the shed there. roger retired to the neighbouring inn called the black lamb, and meditated. this mysterious method of approach determined him, after all, not to leave the place till he had ascertained more definite facts of his sister's position--whether she were the deluded victim of the stranger or the wife she obviously believed herself to be. having eaten some supper, he left the inn, it being now about eleven o'clock. he first looked into the shed, and, finding the horse still standing there, waited irresolutely near the door of his sister's lodging. half an hour elapsed, and, while thinking he would climb into a loft hard by for a night's rest, there seemed to be a movement within the shutters of the sitting-room that his sister occupied. roger hid himself behind a faggot- stack near the back door, rightly divining that his sister's visitor would emerge by the way he had entered. the door opened, and the candle she held in her hand lighted for a moment the stranger's form, showing it to be that of a tall and handsome personage, about forty years of age, and apparently of a superior position in life. edith was assisting him to cloak himself, which being done he took leave of her with a kiss and left the house. from the door she watched him bridle and saddle his horse, and having mounted and waved an adieu to her as she stood candle in hand, he turned out of the yard and rode away. the horse which bore him was, or seemed to be, a little lame, and roger fancied from this that the rider's journey was not likely to be a long one. being light of foot he followed apace, having no great difficulty on such a still night in keeping within earshot some few miles, the horseman pausing more than once. in this pursuit roger discovered the rider to choose bridle-tracks and open commons in preference to any high road. the distance soon began to prove a more trying one than he had bargained for; and when out of breath and in some despair of being able to ascertain the man's identity, he perceived an ass standing in the starlight under a hayrick, from which the animal was helping itself to periodic mouthfuls. the story goes that roger caught the ass, mounted, and again resumed the trail of the unconscious horseman, which feat may have been possible to a nautical young fellow, though one can hardly understand how a sailor would ride such an animal without bridle or saddle, and strange to his hands, unless the creature were extraordinarily docile. this question, however, is immaterial. suffice it to say that at dawn the following morning roger beheld his sister's lover or husband entering the gates of a large and well-timbered park on the south-western verge of the white hart forest (as it was then called), now known to everybody as the vale of blackmoor. thereupon the sailor discarded his steed, and finding for himself an obscurer entrance to the same park a little further on, he crossed the grass to reconnoitre. he presently perceived amid the trees before him a mansion which, new to himself, was one of the best known in the county at that time. of this fine manorial residence hardly a trace now remains; but a manuscript dated some years later than the events we are regarding describes it in terms from which the imagination may construct a singularly clear and vivid picture. this record presents it as consisting of 'a faire yellow freestone building, partly two and partly three storeys; a faire halle and parlour, both waynscotted; a faire dyning roome and withdrawing roome, and many good lodgings; a kitchen adjoyninge backwarde to one end of the dwelling-house, with a faire passage from it into the halle, parlour, and dyninge roome, and sellars adjoyninge. 'in the front of the house a square greene court, and a curious gatehouse with lodgings in it, standing with the front of the house to the south; in a large outer court three stables, a coach-house, a large barne, and a stable for oxen and kyne, and all houses necessary. 'without the gatehouse, paled in, a large square greene, in which standeth a faire chappell; of the south-east side of the greene court, towards the river, a large garden. 'of the south-west side of the greene court is a large bowling greene, with fower mounted walks about it, all walled about with a batteled wall, and sett with all sorts of fruit; and out of it into the feildes there are large walks under many tall elmes orderly planted.' then follows a description of the orchards and gardens; the servants' offices, brewhouse, bakehouse, dairy, pigeon-houses, and corn-mill; the river and its abundance of fish; the warren, the coppices, the walks; ending thus-- 'and all the country north of the house, open champaign, sandy feildes, very dry and pleasant for all kindes of recreation, huntinge, and hawkinge, and profitble for tillage . . . the house hath a large prospect east, south, and west, over a very large and pleasant vale . . . is seated from the good markett towns of sherton abbas three miles, and ivel a mile, that plentifully yield all manner of provision; and within twelve miles of the south sea.' it was on the grass before this seductive and picturesque structure that the sailor stood at gaze under the elms in the dim dawn of sunday morning, and saw to his surprise his sister's lover and horse vanish within the court of the building. perplexed and weary, roger slowly retreated, more than ever convinced that something was wrong in his sister's position. he crossed the bowling green to the avenue of elms, and, bent on further research, was about to climb into one of these, when, looking below, he saw a heap of hay apparently for horses or deer. into this he crept, and, having eaten a crust of bread which he had hastily thrust into his pocket at the inn, he curled up and fell asleep, the hay forming a comfortable bed, and quite covering him over. he slept soundly and long, and was awakened by the sound of a bell. on peering from the hay he found the time had advanced to full day; the sun was shining brightly. the bell was that of the 'faire chappell' on the green outside the gatehouse, and it was calling to matins. presently the priest crossed the green to a little side-door in the chancel, and then from the gateway of the mansion emerged the household, the tall man whom roger had seen with his sister on the previous night, on his arm being a portly dame, and, running beside the pair, two little girls and a boy. these all entered the chapel, and the bell having ceased and the environs become clear, the sailor crept out from his hiding. he sauntered towards the chapel, the opening words of the service being audible within. while standing by the porch he saw a belated servitor approaching from the kitchen-court to attend the service also. roger carelessly accosted him, and asked, as an idle wanderer, the name of the family he had just seen cross over from the mansion. 'od zounds! if ye modden be a stranger here in very truth, goodman. that wer sir john and his dame, and his children elizabeth, mary, and john.' 'i be from foreign parts. sir john what d'ye call'n?' 'master john horseleigh, knight, who had a'most as much lond by inheritance of his mother as 'a had by his father, and likewise some by his wife. why, bain't his arms dree goolden horses' heads, and idden his lady the daughter of master richard phelipson, of montislope, in nether wessex, known to us all?' 'it mid be so, and yet it mid not. however, th' 'lt miss thy prayers for such an honest knight's welfare, and i have to traipse seaward many miles.' he went onward, and as he walked continued saying to himself, 'now to that poor wronged fool edy. the fond thing! i thought it; 'twas too quick--she was ever amorous. what's to become of her! god wot! how be i going to face her with the news, and how be i to hold it from her? to bring this disgrace on my father's honoured name, a double-tongued knave!' he turned and shook his fist at the chapel and all in it, and resumed his way. perhaps it was owing to the perplexity of his mind that, instead of returning by the direct road towards his sister's obscure lodging in the next county, he followed the highway to casterbridge, some fifteen miles off, where he remained drinking hard all that afternoon and evening, and where he lay that and two or three succeeding nights, wandering thence along the anglebury road to some village that way, and lying the friday night after at his native place of havenpool. the sight of the familiar objects there seems to have stirred him anew to action, and the next morning he was observed pursuing the way to oozewood that he had followed on the saturday previous, reckoning, no doubt, that saturday night would, as before, be a time for finding sir john with his sister again. he delayed to reach the place till just before sunset. his sister was walking in the meadows at the foot of the garden, with a nursemaid who carried the baby, and she looked up pensively when he approached. anxiety as to her position had already told upon her once rosy cheeks and lucid eyes. but concern for herself and child was displaced for the moment by her regard of roger's worn and haggard face. 'why--you are sick, roger--you are tired! where have you been these many days? why not keep me company a bit--my husband is much away? and we have hardly spoke at all of dear father and of your voyage to the new land. why did you go away so suddenly? there is a spare chamber at my lodging.' 'come indoors,' he said. 'we'll talk now--talk a good deal. as for him [nodding to the child], better heave him into the river; better for him and you!' she forced a laugh, as if she tried to see a good joke in the remark, and they went silently indoors. 'a miserable hole!' said roger, looking round the room. 'nay, but 'tis very pretty!' 'not after what i've seen. did he marry 'ee at church in orderly fashion?' 'he did sure--at our church at havenpool.' 'but in a privy way?' 'ay--because of his friends--it was at night-time.' 'ede, ye fond one--for all that he's not thy husband! th' 'rt not his wife; and the child is a bastard. he hath a wife and children of his own rank, and bearing his name; and that's sir john horseleigh, of clyfton horseleigh, and not plain jack, as you think him, and your lawful husband. the sacrament of marriage is no safeguard nowadays. the king's new-made headship of the church hath led men to practise these tricks lightly.' she had turned white. 'that's not true, roger!' she said. 'you are in liquor, my brother, and you know not what you say! your seafaring years have taught 'ee bad things!' 'edith--i've seen them; wife and family--all. how canst--' they were sitting in the gathered darkness, and at that moment steps were heard without. 'go out this way,' she said. 'it is my husband. he must not see thee in this mood. get away till to-morrow, roger, as you care for me.' she pushed her brother through a door leading to the back stairs, and almost as soon as it was closed her visitor entered. roger, however, did not retreat down the stairs; he stood and looked through the bobbin-hole. if the visitor turned out to be sir john, he had determined to confront him. it was the knight. she had struck a light on his entry, and he kissed the child, and took edith tenderly by the shoulders, looking into her face. 'something's gone awry wi' my dear!' he said. 'what is it? what's the matter?' 'o, jack!' she cried. 'i have heard such a fearsome rumour--what doth it mean? he who told me is my best friend. he must be deceived! but who deceived him, and why? jack, i was just told that you had a wife living when you married me, and have her still!' 'a wife?--h'm.' 'yes, and children. say no, say no!' 'by god! i have no lawful wife but you; and as for children, many or few, they are all bastards, save this one alone!' 'and that you be sir john horseleigh of clyfton?' 'i mid be. i have never said so to 'ee.' 'but sir john is known to have a lady, and issue of her!' the knight looked down. 'how did thy mind get filled with such as this?' he asked. 'one of my kindred came.' 'a traitor! why should he mar our life? ah! you said you had a brother at sea--where is he now?' 'here!' came from close behind him. and flinging open the door, roger faced the intruder. 'liar!' he said, 'to call thyself her husband!' sir john fired up, and made a rush at the sailor, who seized him by the collar, and in the wrestle they both fell, roger under. but in a few seconds he contrived to extricate his right arm, and drawing from his belt a knife which he wore attached to a cord round his neck he opened it with his teeth, and struck it into the breast of sir john stretched above him. edith had during these moments run into the next room to place the child in safety, and when she came back the knight was relaxing his hold on roger's throat. he rolled over upon his back and groaned. the only witness of the scene save the three concerned was the nursemaid, who had brought in the child on its father's arrival. she stated afterwards that nobody suspected sir john had received his death wound; yet it was so, though he did not die for a long while, meaning thereby an hour or two; that mistress edith continually endeavoured to staunch the blood, calling her brother roger a wretch, and ordering him to get himself gone; on which order he acted, after a gloomy pause, by opening the window, and letting himself down by the sill to the ground. it was then that sir john, in difficult accents, made his dying declaration to the nurse and edith, and, later, the apothecary; which was to this purport, that the dame horseleigh who passed as his wife at clyfton, and who had borne him three children, was in truth and deed, though unconsciously, the wife of another man. sir john had married her several years before, in the face of the whole county, as the widow of one decimus strong, who had disappeared shortly after her union with him, having adventured to the north to join the revolt of the nobles, and on that revolt being quelled retreated across the sea. two years ago, having discovered this man to be still living in france, and not wishing to disturb the mind and happiness of her who believed herself his wife, yet wishing for legitimate issue, sir john had informed the king of the facts, who had encouraged him to wed honestly, though secretly, the young merchant's widow at havenpool; she being, therefore, his lawful wife, and she only. that to avoid all scandal and hubbub he had purposed to let things remain as they were till fair opportunity should arise of making the true case known with least pain to all parties concerned, but that, having been thus suspected and attacked by his own brother-in-law, his zest for such schemes and for all things had died out in him, and he only wished to commend his soul to god. that night, while the owls were hooting from the forest that encircled the sleeping townlet, and the south-avon was gurgling through the wooden piles of the bridge, sir john died there in the arms of his wife. she concealed nothing of the cause of her husband's death save the subject of the quarrel, which she felt it would be premature to announce just then, and until proof of her status should be forthcoming. but before a month had passed, it happened, to her inexpressible sorrow, that the child of this clandestine union fell sick and died. from that hour all interest in the name and fame of the horseleighs forsook the younger of the twain who called themselves wives of sir john, and, being careless about her own fame, she took no steps to assert her claims, her legal position having, indeed, grown hateful to her in her horror at the tragedy. and sir william byrt, the curate who had married her to her husband, being an old man and feeble, was not disinclined to leave the embers unstirred of such a fiery matter as this, and to assist her in letting established things stand. therefore, edith retired with the nurse, her only companion and friend, to her native town, where she lived in absolute obscurity till her death in middle age. her brother was never seen again in england. a strangely corroborative sequel to the story remains to be told. shortly after the death of sir john horseleigh, a soldier of fortune returned from the continent, called on dame horseleigh the fictitious, living in widowed state at clyfton horseleigh, and, after a singularly brief courtship, married her. the tradition at havenpool and elsewhere has ever been that this man was already her husband, decimus strong, who remarried her for appearance' sake only. the illegitimate son of this lady by sir john succeeded to the estates and honours, and his son after him, there being nobody on the alert to investigate their pretensions. little difference would it have made to the present generation, however, had there been such a one, for the family in all its branches, lawful and unlawful, has been extinct these many score years, the last representative but one being killed at the siege of sherton castle, while attacking in the service of the parliament, and the other being outlawed later in the same century for a debt of ten pounds, and dying in the county jail. the mansion house and its appurtenances were, as i have previously stated, destroyed, excepting one small wing, which now forms part of a farmhouse, and is visible as you pass along the railway from casterbridge to ivel. the outline of the old bowling-green is also distinctly to be seen. this, then, is the reason why the only lawful marriage of sir john, as recorded in the obscure register at havenpool, does not appear in the pedigree of the house of horseleigh. spring . the duke's reappearance--a family tradition according to the kinsman who told me the story, christopher swetman's house, on the outskirts of king's-hintock village, was in those days larger and better kept than when, many years later, it was sold to the lord of the manor adjoining; after having been in the swetman family, as one may say, since the conquest. some people would have it to be that the thing happened at the house opposite, belonging to one childs, with whose family the swetmans afterwards intermarried. but that it was at the original homestead of the swetmans can be shown in various ways; chiefly by the unbroken traditions of the family, and indirectly by the evidence of the walls themselves, which are the only ones thereabout with windows mullioned in the elizabethan manner, and plainly of a date anterior to the event; while those of the other house might well have been erected fifty or eighty years later, and probably were; since the choice of swetman's house by the fugitive was doubtless dictated by no other circumstance than its then suitable loneliness. it was a cloudy july morning just before dawn, the hour of two having been struck by swetman's one-handed clock on the stairs, that is still preserved in the family. christopher heard the strokes from his chamber, immediately at the top of the staircase, and overlooking the front of the house. he did not wonder that he was sleepless. the rumours and excitements which had latterly stirred the neighbourhood, to the effect that the rightful king of england had landed from holland, at a port only eighteen miles to the south-west of swetman's house, were enough to make wakeful and anxious even a contented yeoman like him. some of the villagers, intoxicated by the news, had thrown down their scythes, and rushed to the ranks of the invader. christopher swetman had weighed both sides of the question, and had remained at home. now as he lay thinking of these and other things he fancied that he could hear the footfall of a man on the road leading up to his house--a byway, which led scarce anywhere else; and therefore a tread was at any time more apt to startle the inmates of the homestead than if it had stood in a thoroughfare. the footfall came opposite the gate, and stopped there. one minute, two minutes passed, and the pedestrian did not proceed. christopher swetman got out of bed, and opened the casement. 'hoi! who's there?' cries he. 'a friend,' came from the darkness. 'and what mid ye want at this time o' night?' says swetman. 'shelter. i've lost my way.' 'what's thy name?' there came no answer. 'be ye one of king monmouth's men?' 'he that asks no questions will hear no lies from me. i am a stranger; and i am spent, and hungered. can you let me lie with you to-night?' swetman was generous to people in trouble, and his house was roomy. 'wait a bit,' he said, 'and i'll come down and have a look at thee, anyhow.' he struck a light, put on his clothes, and descended, taking his horn- lantern from a nail in the passage, and lighting it before opening the door. the rays fell on the form of a tall, dark man in cavalry accoutrements and wearing a sword. he was pale with fatigue and covered with mud, though the weather was dry. 'prithee take no heed of my appearance,' said the stranger. 'but let me in.' that his visitor was in sore distress admitted of no doubt, and the yeoman's natural humanity assisted the other's sad importunity and gentle voice. swetman took him in, not without a suspicion that this man represented in some way monmouth's cause, to which he was not unfriendly in his secret heart. at his earnest request the new-comer was given a suit of the yeoman's old clothes in exchange for his own, which, with his sword, were hidden in a closet in swetman's chamber; food was then put before him and a lodging provided for him in a room at the back. here he slept till quite late in the morning, which was sunday, the sixth of july, and when he came down in the garments that he had borrowed he met the household with a melancholy smile. besides swetman himself, there were only his two daughters, grace and leonard (the latter was, oddly enough, a woman's name here), and both had been enjoined to secrecy. they asked no questions and received no information; though the stranger regarded their fair countenances with an interest almost too deep. having partaken of their usual breakfast of ham and cider he professed weariness and retired to the chamber whence he had come. in a couple of hours or thereabout he came down again, the two young women having now gone off to morning service. seeing christopher bustling about the house without assistance, he asked if he could do anything to aid his host. as he seemed anxious to hide all differences and appear as one of themselves, swetman set him to get vegetables from the garden and fetch water from buttock's spring in the dip near the house (though the spring was not called by that name till years after, by the way). 'and what can i do next?' says the stranger when these services had been performed. his meekness and docility struck christopher much, and won upon him. 'since you be minded to,' says the latter, 'you can take down the dishes and spread the table for dinner. take a pewter plate for thyself, but the trenchers will do for we.' but the other would not, and took a trencher likewise, in doing which he spoke of the two girls and remarked how comely they were. this quietude was put an end to by a stir out of doors, which was sufficient to draw swetman's attention to it, and he went out. farm hands who had gone off and joined the duke on his arrival had begun to come in with news that a midnight battle had been fought on the moors to the north, the duke's men, who had attacked, being entirely worsted; the duke himself, with one or two lords and other friends, had fled, no one knew whither. 'there has been a battle,' says swetman, on coming indoors after these tidings, and looking earnestly at the stranger. 'may the victory be to the rightful in the end, whatever the issue now,' says the other, with a sorrowful sigh. 'dost really know nothing about it?' said christopher. 'i could have sworn you was one from that very battle!' 'i was here before three o' the clock this morning; and these men have only arrived now.' 'true,' said the yeoman. 'but still, i think--' 'do not press your question,' the stranger urged. 'i am in a strait, and can refuse a helper nothing; such inquiry is, therefore, unfair.' 'true again,' said swetman, and held his tongue. the daughters of the house returned from church, where the service had been hurried by reason of the excitement. to their father's questioning if they had spoken of him who sojourned there they replied that they had said never a word; which, indeed, was true, as events proved. he bade them serve the dinner; and, as the visitor had withdrawn since the news of the battle, prepared to take a platter to him upstairs. but he preferred to come down and dine with the family. during the afternoon more fugitives passed through the village, but christopher swetman, his visitor, and his family kept indoors. in the evening, however, swetman came out from his gate, and, harkening in silence to these tidings and more, wondered what might be in store for him for his last night's work. he returned homeward by a path across the mead that skirted his own orchard. passing here, he heard the voice of his daughter leonard expostulating inside the hedge, her words being: 'don't ye, sir; don't! i prithee let me go!' 'why, sweetheart?' 'because i've a-promised another!' peeping through, as he could not help doing, he saw the girl struggling in the arms of the stranger, who was attempting to kiss her; but finding her resistance to be genuine, and her distress unfeigned, he reluctantly let her go. swetman's face grew dark, for his girls were more to him than himself. he hastened on, meditating moodily all the way. he entered the gate, and made straight for the orchard. when he reached it his daughter had disappeared, but the stranger was still standing there. 'sir!' said the yeoman, his anger having in no wise abated, 'i've seen what has happened! i have taken 'ee into my house, at some jeopardy to myself; and, whoever you be, the least i expected of 'ee was to treat the maidens with a seemly respect. you have not done it, and i no longer trust you. i am the more watchful over them in that they are motherless; and i must ask 'ee to go after dark this night!' the stranger seemed dazed at discovering what his impulse had brought down upon his head, and his pale face grew paler. he did not reply for a time. when he did speak his soft voice was thick with feeling. 'sir,' says he, 'i own that i am in the wrong, if you take the matter gravely. we do not what we would but what we must. though i have not injured your daughter as a woman, i have been treacherous to her as a hostess and friend in need. i'll go, as you say; i can do no less. i shall doubtless find a refuge elsewhere.' they walked towards the house in silence, where swetman insisted that his guest should have supper before departing. by the time this was eaten it was dusk and the stranger announced that he was ready. they went upstairs to where the garments and sword lay hidden, till the departing one said that on further thought he would ask another favour: that he should be allowed to retain the clothes he wore, and that his host would keep the others and the sword till he, the speaker, should come or send for them. 'as you will,' said swetman. 'the gain is on my side; for those clouts were but kept to dress a scarecrow next fall.' 'they suit my case,' said the stranger sadly. 'however much they may misfit me, they do not misfit my sorry fortune now!' 'nay, then,' said christopher relenting, 'i was too hasty. sh'lt bide!' but the other would not, saying that it was better that things should take their course. notwithstanding that swetman importuned him, he only added, 'if i never come again, do with my belongings as you list. in the pocket you will find a gold snuff-box, and in the snuff-box fifty gold pieces.' 'but keep 'em for thy use, man!' said the yeoman. 'no,' says the parting guest; 'they are foreign pieces and would harm me if i were taken. do as i bid thee. put away these things again and take especial charge of the sword. it belonged to my father's father and i value it much. but something more common becomes me now.' saying which, he took, as he went downstairs, one of the ash sticks used by swetman himself for walking with. the yeoman lighted him out to the garden hatch, where he disappeared through clammers gate by the road that crosses king's-hintock park to evershead. christopher returned to the upstairs chamber, and sat down on his bed reflecting. then he examined the things left behind, and surely enough in one of the pockets the gold snuff-box was revealed, containing the fifty gold pieces as stated by the fugitive. the yeoman next looked at the sword which its owner had stated to have belonged to his grandfather. it was two-edged, so that he almost feared to handle it. on the blade was inscribed the words 'andrea ferara,' and among the many fine chasings were a rose and crown, the plume of the prince of wales, and two portraits; portraits of a man and a woman, the man's having the face of the first king charles, and the woman's, apparently, that of his queen. swetman, much awed and surprised, returned the articles to the closet, and went downstairs pondering. of his surmise he said nothing to his daughters, merely declaring to them that the gentleman was gone; and never revealing that he had been an eye-witness of the unpleasant scene in the orchard that was the immediate cause of the departure. nothing occurred in hintock during the week that followed, beyond the fitful arrival of more decided tidings concerning the utter defeat of the duke's army and his own disappearance at an early stage of the battle. then it was told that monmouth was taken, not in his own clothes but in the disguise of a countryman. he had been sent to london, and was confined in the tower. the possibility that his guest had been no other than the duke made swetman unspeakably sorry now; his heart smote him at the thought that, acting so harshly for such a small breach of good faith, he might have been the means of forwarding the unhappy fugitive's capture. on the girls coming up to him he said, 'get away with ye, wenches: i fear you have been the ruin of an unfortunate man!' on the tuesday night following, when the yeoman was sleeping as usual in his chamber, he was, he said, conscious of the entry of some one. opening his eyes, he beheld by the light of the moon, which shone upon the front of his house, the figure of a man who seemed to be the stranger moving from the door towards the closet. he was dressed somewhat differently now, but the face was quite that of his late guest in its tragical pensiveness, as was also the tallness of his figure. he neared the closet; and, feeling his visitor to be within his rights, christopher refrained from stirring. the personage turned his large haggard eyes upon the bed where swetman lay, and then withdrew from their hiding the articles that belonged to him, again giving a hard gaze at christopher as he went noiselessly out of the chamber with his properties on his arm. his retreat down the stairs was just audible, and also his departure by the side door, through which entrance or exit was easy to those who knew the place. nothing further happened, and towards morning swetman slept. to avoid all risk he said not a word to the girls of the visit of the night, and certainly not to any one outside the house; for it was dangerous at that time to avow anything. among the killed in opposing the recent rising had been a younger brother of the lord of the manor, who lived at king's-hintock court hard by. seeing the latter ride past in mourning clothes next day, swetman ventured to condole with him. 'he'd no business there!' answered the other. his words and manner showed the bitterness that was mingled with his regret. 'but say no more of him. you know what has happened since, i suppose?' 'i know that they say monmouth is taken, sir thomas, but i can't think it true,' answered swetman. 'o zounds! 'tis true enough,' cried the knight, 'and that's not all. the duke was executed on tower hill two days ago.' 'd'ye say it verily?' says swetman. 'and a very hard death he had, worse luck for 'n,' said sir thomas. 'well, 'tis over for him and over for my brother. but not for the rest. there'll be searchings and siftings down here anon; and happy is the man who has had nothing to do with this matter!' now swetman had hardly heard the latter words, so much was he confounded by the strangeness of the tidings that the duke had come to his death on the previous tuesday. for it had been only the night before this present day of friday that he had seen his former guest, whom he had ceased to doubt could be other than the duke, come into his chamber and fetch away his accoutrements as he had promised. 'it couldn't have been a vision,' said christopher to himself when the knight had ridden on. 'but i'll go straight and see if the things be in the closet still; and thus i shall surely learn if 'twere a vision or no.' to the closet he went, which he had not looked into since the stranger's departure. and searching behind the articles placed to conceal the things hidden, he found that, as he had never doubted, they were gone. when the rumour spread abroad in the west that the man beheaded in the tower was not indeed the duke, but one of his officers taken after the battle, and that the duke had been assisted to escape out of the country, swetman found in it an explanation of what so deeply mystified him. that his visitor might have been a friend of the duke's, whom the duke had asked to fetch the things in a last request, swetman would never admit. his belief in the rumour that monmouth lived, like that of thousands of others, continued to the end of his days. * * * * * such, briefly, concluded my kinsman, is the tradition which has been handed down in christopher swetman's family for the last two hundred years. a mere interlude chapter i the traveller in school-books, who vouched in dryest tones for the fidelity to fact of the following narrative, used to add a ring of truth to it by opening with a nicety of criticism on the heroine's personality. people were wrong, he declared, when they surmised that baptista trewthen was a young woman with scarcely emotions or character. there was nothing in her to love, and nothing to hate--so ran the general opinion. that she showed few positive qualities was true. the colours and tones which changing events paint on the faces of active womankind were looked for in vain upon hers. but still waters run deep; and no crisis had come in the years of her early maidenhood to demonstrate what lay hidden within her, like metal in a mine. she was the daughter of a small farmer in st. maria's, one of the isles of lyonesse beyond off-wessex, who had spent a large sum, as there understood, on her education, by sending her to the mainland for two years. at nineteen she was entered at the training college for teachers, and at twenty-one nominated to a school in the country, near tor-upon- sea, whither she proceeded after the christmas examination and holidays. the months passed by from winter to spring and summer, and baptista applied herself to her new duties as best she could, till an uneventful year had elapsed. then an air of abstraction pervaded her bearing as she walked to and fro, twice a day, and she showed the traits of a person who had something on her mind. a widow, by name mrs. wace, in whose house baptista trewthen had been provided with a sitting-room and bedroom till the school-house should be built, noticed this change in her youthful tenant's manner, and at last ventured to press her with a few questions. 'it has nothing to do with the place, nor with you,' said miss trewthen. 'then it is the salary?' 'no, nor the salary.' 'then it is something you have heard from home, my dear.' baptista was silent for a few moments. 'it is mr. heddegan,' she murmured. 'him they used to call david heddegan before he got his money.' 'and who is the mr. heddegan they used to call david?' 'an old bachelor at giant's town, st. maria's, with no relations whatever, who lives about a stone's throw from father's. when i was a child he used to take me on his knee and say he'd marry me some day. now i am a woman the jest has turned earnest, and he is anxious to do it. and father and mother says i can't do better than have him.' 'he's well off?' 'yes--he's the richest man we know--as a friend and neighbour.' 'how much older did you say he was than yourself?' 'i didn't say. twenty years at least.' 'and an unpleasant man in the bargain perhaps?' 'no--he's not unpleasant.' 'well, child, all i can say is that i'd resist any such engagement if it's not palatable to 'ee. you are comfortable here, in my little house, i hope. all the parish like 'ee: and i've never been so cheerful, since my poor husband left me to wear his wings, as i've been with 'ee as my lodger.' the schoolmistress assured her landlady that she could return the sentiment. 'but here comes my perplexity,' she said. 'i don't like keeping school. ah, you are surprised--you didn't suspect it. that's because i've concealed my feeling. well, i simply hate school. i don't care for children--they are unpleasant, troublesome little things, whom nothing would delight so much as to hear that you had fallen down dead. yet i would even put up with them if it was not for the inspector. for three months before his visit i didn't sleep soundly. and the committee of council are always changing the code, so that you don't know what to teach, and what to leave untaught. i think father and mother are right. they say i shall never excel as a schoolmistress if i dislike the work so, and that therefore i ought to get settled by marrying mr. heddegan. between us two, i like him better than school; but i don't like him quite so much as to wish to marry him.' these conversations, once begun, were continued from day to day; till at length the young girl's elderly friend and landlady threw in her opinion on the side of miss trewthen's parents. all things considered, she declared, the uncertainty of the school, the labour, baptista's natural dislike for teaching, it would be as well to take what fate offered, and make the best of matters by wedding her father's old neighbour and prosperous friend. the easter holidays came round, and baptista went to spend them as usual in her native isle, going by train into off-wessex and crossing by packet from pen-zephyr. when she returned in the middle of april her face wore a more settled aspect. 'well?' said the expectant mrs. wace. 'i have agreed to have him as my husband,' said baptista, in an off-hand way. 'heaven knows if it will be for the best or not. but i have agreed to do it, and so the matter is settled.' mrs. wace commended her; but baptista did not care to dwell on the subject; so that allusion to it was very infrequent between them. nevertheless, among other things, she repeated to the widow from time to time in monosyllabic remarks that the wedding was really impending; that it was arranged for the summer, and that she had given notice of leaving the school at the august holidays. later on she announced more specifically that her marriage was to take place immediately after her return home at the beginning of the month aforesaid. she now corresponded regularly with mr. heddegan. her letters from him were seen, at least on the outside, and in part within, by mrs. wace. had she read more of their interiors than the occasional sentences shown her by baptista she would have perceived that the scratchy, rusty handwriting of miss trewthen's betrothed conveyed little more matter than details of their future housekeeping, and his preparations for the same, with innumerable 'my dears' sprinkled in disconnectedly, to show the depth of his affection without the inconveniences of syntax. chapter ii it was the end of july--dry, too dry, even for the season, the delicate green herbs and vegetables that grew in this favoured end of the kingdom tasting rather of the watering-pot than of the pure fresh moisture from the skies. baptista's boxes were packed, and one saturday morning she departed by a waggonette to the station, and thence by train to pen-zephyr, from which port she was, as usual, to cross the water immediately to her home, and become mr. heddegan's wife on the wednesday of the week following. she might have returned a week sooner. but though the wedding day had loomed so near, and the banns were out, she delayed her departure till this last moment, saying it was not necessary for her to be at home long beforehand. as mr. heddegan was older than herself, she said, she was to be married in her ordinary summer bonnet and grey silk frock, and there were no preparations to make that had not been amply made by her parents and intended husband. in due time, after a hot and tedious journey, she reached pen-zephyr. she here obtained some refreshment, and then went towards the pier, where she learnt to her surprise that the little steamboat plying between the town and the islands had left at eleven o'clock; the usual hour of departure in the afternoon having been forestalled in consequence of the fogs which had for a few days prevailed towards evening, making twilight navigation dangerous. this being saturday, there was now no other boat till tuesday, and it became obvious that here she would have to remain for the three days, unless her friends should think fit to rig out one of the island' sailing- boats and come to fetch her--a not very likely contingency, the sea distance being nearly forty miles. baptista, however, had been detained in pen-zephyr on more than one occasion before, either on account of bad weather or some such reason as the present, and she was therefore not in any personal alarm. but, as she was to be married on the following wednesday, the delay was certainly inconvenient to a more than ordinary degree, since it would leave less than a day's interval between her arrival and the wedding ceremony. apart from this awkwardness she did not much mind the accident. it was indeed curious to see how little she minded. perhaps it would not be too much to say that, although she was going to do the critical deed of her life quite willingly, she experienced an indefinable relief at the postponement of her meeting with heddegan. but her manner after making discovery of the hindrance was quiet and subdued, even to passivity itself; as was instanced by her having, at the moment of receiving information that the steamer had sailed, replied 'oh,' so coolly to the porter with her luggage, that he was almost disappointed at her lack of disappointment. the question now was, should she return again to mrs. wace, in the village of lower wessex, or wait in the town at which she had arrived. she would have preferred to go back, but the distance was too great; moreover, having left the place for good, and somewhat dramatically, to become a bride, a return, even for so short a space, would have been a trifle humiliating. leaving, then, her boxes at the station, her next anxiety was to secure a respectable, or rather genteel, lodging in the popular seaside resort confronting her. to this end she looked about the town, in which, though she had passed through it half-a-dozen times, she was practically a stranger. baptista found a room to suit her over a fruiterer's shop; where she made herself at home, and set herself in order after her journey. an early cup of tea having revived her spirits she walked out to reconnoitre. being a schoolmistress she avoided looking at the schools, and having a sort of trade connection with books, she avoided looking at the booksellers; but wearying of the other shops she inspected the churches; not that for her own part she cared much about ecclesiastical edifices; but tourists looked at them, and so would she--a proceeding for which no one would have credited her with any great originality, such, for instance, as that she subsequently showed herself to possess. the churches soon oppressed her. she tried the museum, but came out because it seemed lonely and tedious. yet the town and the walks in this land of strawberries, these headquarters of early english flowers and fruit, were then, as always, attractive. from the more picturesque streets she went to the town gardens, and the pier, and the harbour, and looked at the men at work there, loading and unloading as in the time of the phoenicians. 'not baptista? yes, baptista it is!' the words were uttered behind her. turning round she gave a start, and became confused, even agitated, for a moment. then she said in her usual undemonstrative manner, 'o--is it really you, charles?' without speaking again at once, and with a half-smile, the new-comer glanced her over. there was much criticism, and some resentment--even temper--in his eye. 'i am going home,' continued she. 'but i have missed the boat.' he scarcely seemed to take in the meaning of this explanation, in the intensity of his critical survey. 'teaching still? what a fine schoolmistress you make, baptista, i warrant!' he said with a slight flavour of sarcasm, which was not lost upon her. 'i know i am nothing to brag of,' she replied. 'that's why i have given up.' 'o--given up? you astonish me.' 'i hate the profession.' 'perhaps that's because i am in it.' 'o no, it isn't. but i am going to enter on another life altogether. i am going to be married next week to mr. david heddegan.' the young man--fortified as he was by a natural cynical pride and passionateness--winced at this unexpected reply, notwithstanding. 'who is mr. david heddegan?' he asked, as indifferently as lay in his power. she informed him the bearer of the name was a general merchant of giant's town, st. maria's island--her father's nearest neighbour and oldest friend. 'then we shan't see anything more of you on the mainland?' inquired the schoolmaster. 'o, i don't know about that,' said miss trewthen. 'here endeth the career of the belle of the boarding-school your father was foolish enough to send you to. a "general merchant's" wife in the lyonesse isles. will you sell pounds of soap and pennyworths of tin tacks, or whole bars of saponaceous matter, and great tenpenny nails?' 'he's not in such a small way as that!' she almost pleaded. 'he owns ships, though they are rather little ones!' 'o, well, it is much the same. come, let us walk on; it is tedious to stand still. i thought you would be a failure in education,' he continued, when she obeyed him and strolled ahead. 'you never showed power that way. you remind me much of some of those women who think they are sure to be great actresses if they go on the stage, because they have a pretty face, and forget that what we require is acting. but you found your mistake, didn't you?' 'don't taunt me, charles.' it was noticeable that the young schoolmaster's tone caused her no anger or retaliatory passion; far otherwise: there was a tear in her eye. 'how is it you are at pen-zephyr?' she inquired. 'i don't taunt you. i speak the truth, purely in a friendly way, as i should to any one i wished well. though for that matter i might have some excuse even for taunting you. such a terrible hurry as you've been in. i hate a woman who is in such a hurry.' 'how do you mean that?' 'why--to be somebody's wife or other--anything's wife rather than nobody's. you couldn't wait for me, o, no. well, thank god, i'm cured of all that!' 'how merciless you are!' she said bitterly. 'wait for you? what does that mean, charley? you never showed--anything to wait for--anything special towards me.' 'o come, baptista dear; come!' 'what i mean is, nothing definite,' she expostulated. 'i suppose you liked me a little; but it seemed to me to be only a pastime on your part, and that you never meant to make an honourable engagement of it.' 'there, that's just it! you girls expect a man to mean business at the first look. no man when he first becomes interested in a woman has any definite scheme of engagement to marry her in his mind, unless he is meaning a vulgar mercenary marriage. however, i did at last mean an honourable engagement, as you call it, come to that.' 'but you never said so, and an indefinite courtship soon injures a woman's position and credit, sooner than you think.' 'baptista, i solemnly declare that in six months i should have asked you to marry me.' she walked along in silence, looking on the ground, and appearing very uncomfortable. presently he said, 'would you have waited for me if you had known?' to this she whispered in a sorrowful whisper, 'yes!' they went still farther in silence--passing along one of the beautiful walks on the outskirts of the town, yet not observant of scene or situation. her shoulder and his were close together, and he clasped his fingers round the small of her arm--quite lightly, and without any attempt at impetus; yet the act seemed to say, 'now i hold you, and my will must be yours.' recurring to a previous question of hers he said, 'i have merely run down here for a day or two from school near trufal, before going off to the north for the rest of my holiday. i have seen my relations at redrutin quite lately, so i am not going there this time. how little i thought of meeting you! how very different the circumstances would have been if, instead of parting again as we must in half-an-hour or so, possibly for ever, you had been now just going off with me, as my wife, on our honeymoon trip. ha--ha--well--so humorous is life!' she stopped suddenly. 'i must go back now--this is altogether too painful, charley! it is not at all a kind mood you are in to-day.' 'i don't want to pain you--you know i do not,' he said more gently. 'only it just exasperates me--this you are going to do. i wish you would not.' 'what?' 'marry him. there, now i have showed you my true sentiments.' 'i must do it now,' said she. 'why?' he asked, dropping the off-hand masterful tone he had hitherto spoken in, and becoming earnest; still holding her arm, however, as if she were his chattel to be taken up or put down at will. 'it is never too late to break off a marriage that's distasteful to you. now i'll say one thing; and it is truth: i wish you would marry me instead of him, even now, at the last moment, though you have served me so badly.' 'o, it is not possible to think of that!' she answered hastily, shaking her head. 'when i get home all will be prepared--it is ready even now--the things for the party, the furniture, mr. heddegan's new suit, and everything. i should require the courage of a tropical lion to go home there and say i wouldn't carry out my promise!' 'then go, in heaven's name! but there would be no necessity for you to go home and face them in that way. if we were to marry, it would have to be at once, instantly; or not at all. i should think your affection not worth the having unless you agreed to come back with me to trufal this evening, where we could be married by licence on monday morning. and then no mr. david heddegan or anybody else could get you away from me.' 'i must go home by the tuesday boat,' she faltered. 'what would they think if i did not come?' 'you could go home by that boat just the same. all the difference would be that i should go with you. you could leave me on the quay, where i'd have a smoke, while you went and saw your father and mother privately; you could then tell them what you had done, and that i was waiting not far off; that i was a school-master in a fairly good position, and a young man you had known when you were at the training college. then i would come boldly forward; and they would see that it could not be altered, and so you wouldn't suffer a lifelong misery by being the wife of a wretched old gaffer you don't like at all. now, honestly; you do like me best, don't you, baptista?' 'yes.' 'then we will do as i say.' she did not pronounce a clear affirmative. but that she consented to the novel proposition at some moment or other of that walk was apparent by what occurred a little later. chapter iii an enterprise of such pith required, indeed, less talking than consideration. the first thing they did in carrying it out was to return to the railway station, where baptista took from her luggage a small trunk of immediate necessaries which she would in any case have required after missing the boat. that same afternoon they travelled up the line to trufal. charles stow (as his name was), despite his disdainful indifference to things, was very careful of appearances, and made the journey independently of her though in the same train. he told her where she could get board and lodgings in the city; and with merely a distant nod to her of a provisional kind, went off to his own quarters, and to see about the licence. on sunday she saw him in the morning across the nave of the pro-cathedral. in the afternoon they walked together in the fields, where he told her that the licence would be ready next day, and would be available the day after, when the ceremony could be performed as early after eight o'clock as they should choose. his courtship, thus renewed after an interval of two years, was as impetuous, violent even, as it was short. the next day came and passed, and the final arrangements were made. their agreement was to get the ceremony over as soon as they possibly could the next morning, so as to go on to pen-zephyr at once, and reach that place in time for the boat's departure the same day. it was in obedience to baptista's earnest request that stow consented thus to make the whole journey to lyonesse by land and water at one heat, and not break it at pen-zephyr; she seemed to be oppressed with a dread of lingering anywhere, this great first act of disobedience to her parents once accomplished, with the weight on her mind that her home had to be convulsed by the disclosure of it. to face her difficulties over the water immediately she had created them was, however, a course more desired by baptista than by her lover; though for once he gave way. the next morning was bright and warm as those which had preceded it. by six o'clock it seemed nearly noon, as is often the case in that part of england in the summer season. by nine they were husband and wife. they packed up and departed by the earliest train after the service; and on the way discussed at length what she should say on meeting her parents, charley dictating the turn of each phrase. in her anxiety they had travelled so early that when they reached pen-zephyr they found there were nearly two hours on their hands before the steamer's time of sailing. baptista was extremely reluctant to be seen promenading the streets of the watering-place with her husband till, as above stated, the household at giant's town should know the unexpected course of events from her own lips; and it was just possible, if not likely, that some lyonessian might be prowling about there, or even have come across the sea to look for her. to meet any one to whom she was known, and to have to reply to awkward questions about the strange young man at her side before her well- framed announcement had been delivered at proper time and place, was a thing she could not contemplate with equanimity. so, instead of looking at the shops and harbour, they went along the coast a little way. the heat of the morning was by this time intense. they clambered up on some cliffs, and while sitting there, looking around at st. michael's mount and other objects, charles said to her that he thought he would run down to the beach at their feet, and take just one plunge into the sea. baptista did not much like the idea of being left alone; it was gloomy, she said. but he assured her he would not be gone more than a quarter of an hour at the outside, and she passively assented. down he went, disappeared, appeared again, and looked back. then he again proceeded, and vanished, till, as a small waxen object, she saw him emerge from the nook that had screened him, cross the white fringe of foam, and walk into the undulating mass of blue. once in the water he seemed less inclined to hurry than before; he remained a long time; and, unable either to appreciate his skill or criticize his want of it at that distance, she withdrew her eyes from the spot, and gazed at the still outline of st. michael's--now beautifully toned in grey. her anxiety for the hour of departure, and to cope at once with the approaching incidents that she would have to manipulate as best she could, sent her into a reverie. it was now tuesday; she would reach home in the evening--a very late time they would say; but, as the delay was a pure accident, they would deem her marriage to mr. heddegan to-morrow still practicable. then charles would have to be produced from the background. it was a terrible undertaking to think of, and she almost regretted her temerity in wedding so hastily that morning. the rage of her father would be so crushing; the reproaches of her mother so bitter; and perhaps charles would answer hotly, and perhaps cause estrangement till death. there had obviously been no alarm about her at st. maria's, or somebody would have sailed across to inquire for her. she had, in a letter written at the beginning of the week, spoken of the hour at which she intended to leave her country schoolhouse; and from this her friends had probably perceived that by such timing she would run a risk of losing the saturday boat. she had missed it, and as a consequence sat here on the shore as mrs. charles stow. this brought her to the present, and she turned from the outline of st. michael's mount to look about for her husband's form. he was, as far as she could discover, no longer in the sea. then he was dressing. by moving a few steps she could see where his clothes lay. but charles was not beside them. baptista looked back again at the water in bewilderment, as if her senses were the victim of some sleight of hand. not a speck or spot resembling a man's head or face showed anywhere. by this time she was alarmed, and her alarm intensified when she perceived a little beyond the scene of her husband's bathing a small area of water, the quality of whose surface differed from that of the surrounding expanse as the coarse vegetation of some foul patch in a mead differs from the fine green of the remainder. elsewhere it looked flexuous, here it looked vermiculated and lumpy, and her marine experiences suggested to her in a moment that two currents met and caused a turmoil at this place. she descended as hastily as her trembling limbs would allow. the way down was terribly long, and before reaching the heap of clothes it occurred to her that, after all, it would be best to run first for help. hastening along in a lateral direction she proceeded inland till she met a man, and soon afterwards two others. to them she exclaimed, 'i think a gentleman who was bathing is in some danger. i cannot see him as i could. will you please run and help him, at once, if you will be so kind?' she did not think of turning to show them the exact spot, indicating it vaguely by the direction of her hand, and still going on her way with the idea of gaining more assistance. when she deemed, in her faintness, that she had carried the alarm far enough, she faced about and dragged herself back again. before reaching the now dreaded spot she met one of the men. 'we can see nothing at all, miss,' he declared. having gained the beach, she found the tide in, and no sign of charley's clothes. the other men whom she had besought to come had disappeared, it must have been in some other direction, for she had not met them going away. they, finding nothing, had probably thought her alarm a mere conjecture, and given up the quest. baptista sank down upon the stones near at hand. where charley had undressed was now sea. there could not be the least doubt that he was drowned, and his body sucked under by the current; while his clothes, lying within high-water mark, had probably been carried away by the rising tide. she remained in a stupor for some minutes, till a strange sensation succeeded the aforesaid perceptions, mystifying her intelligence, and leaving her physically almost inert. with his personal disappearance, the last three days of her life with him seemed to be swallowed up, also his image, in her mind's eye, waned curiously, receded far away, grew stranger and stranger, less and less real. their meeting and marriage had been so sudden, unpremeditated, adventurous, that she could hardly believe that she had played her part in such a reckless drama. of all the few hours of her life with charles, the portion that most insisted in coming back to memory was their fortuitous encounter on the previous saturday, and those bitter reprimands with which he had begun the attack, as it might be called, which had piqued her to an unexpected consummation. a sort of cruelty, an imperiousness, even in his warmth, had characterized charles stow. as a lover he had ever been a bit of a tyrant; and it might pretty truly have been said that he had stung her into marriage with him at last. still more alien from her life did these reflections operate to make him; and then they would be chased away by an interval of passionate weeping and mad regret. finally, there returned upon the confused mind of the young wife the recollection that she was on her way homeward, and that the packet would sail in three-quarters of an hour. except the parasol in her hand, all she possessed was at the station awaiting her onward journey. she looked in that direction; and, entering one of those undemonstrative phases so common with her, walked quietly on. at first she made straight for the railway; but suddenly turning she went to a shop and wrote an anonymous line announcing his death by drowning to the only person she had ever heard charles mention as a relative. posting this stealthily, and with a fearful look around her, she seemed to acquire a terror of the late events, pursuing her way to the station as if followed by a spectre. when she got to the office she asked for the luggage that she had left there on the saturday as well as the trunk left on the morning just lapsed. all were put in the boat, and she herself followed. quickly as these things had been done, the whole proceeding, nevertheless, had been almost automatic on baptista's part, ere she had come to any definite conclusion on her course. just before the bell rang she heard a conversation on the pier, which removed the last shade of doubt from her mind, if any had existed, that she was charles stow's widow. the sentences were but fragmentary, but she could easily piece them out. 'a man drowned--swam out too far--was a stranger to the place--people in boat--saw him go down--couldn't get there in time.' the news was little more definite than this as yet; though it may as well be stated once for all that the statement was true. charley, with the over-confidence of his nature, had ventured out too far for his strength, and succumbed in the absence of assistance, his lifeless body being at that moment suspended in the transparent mid-depths of the bay. his clothes, however, had merely been gently lifted by the rising tide, and floated into a nook hard by, where they lay out of sight of the passers- by till a day or two after. chapter iv in ten minutes they were steaming out of the harbour for their voyage of four or five hours, at whose ending she would have to tell her strange story. as pen-zephyr and all its environing scenes disappeared behind mousehole and st. clement's isle, baptista's ephemeral, meteor-like husband impressed her yet more as a fantasy. she was still in such a trance-like state that she had been an hour on the little packet-boat before she became aware of the agitating fact that mr. heddegan was on board with her. involuntarily she slipped from her left hand the symbol of her wifehood. 'hee-hee! well, the truth is, i wouldn't interrupt 'ee. "i reckon she don't see me, or won't see me," i said, "and what's the hurry? she'll see enough o' me soon!" i hope ye be well, mee deer?' he was a hale, well-conditioned man of about five and fifty, of the complexion common to those whose lives are passed on the bluffs and beaches of an ocean isle. he extended the four quarters of his face in a genial smile, and his hand for a grasp of the same magnitude. she gave her own in surprised docility, and he continued: 'i couldn't help coming across to meet 'ee. what an unfortunate thing you missing the boat and not coming saturday! they meant to have warned 'ee that the time was changed, but forgot it at the last moment. the truth is that i should have informed 'ee myself; but i was that busy finishing up a job last week, so as to have this week free, that i trusted to your father for attending to these little things. however, so plain and quiet as it is all to be, it really do not matter so much as it might otherwise have done, and i hope ye haven't been greatly put out. now, if you'd sooner that i should not be seen talking to 'ee--if 'ee feel shy at all before strangers--just say. i'll leave 'ee to yourself till we get home.' 'thank you much. i am indeed a little tired, mr. heddegan.' he nodded urbane acquiescence, strolled away immediately, and minutely inspected the surface of the funnel, till some female passengers of giant's town tittered at what they must have thought a rebuff--for the approaching wedding was known to many on st. maria's island, though to nobody elsewhere. baptista coloured at their satire, and called him back, and forced herself to commune with him in at least a mechanically friendly manner. the opening event had been thus different from her expectation, and she had adumbrated no act to meet it. taken aback she passively allowed circumstances to pilot her along; and so the voyage was made. it was near dusk when they touched the pier of giant's town, where several friends and neighbours stood awaiting them. her father had a lantern in his hand. her mother, too, was there, reproachfully glad that the delay had at last ended so simply. mrs. trewthen and her daughter went together along the giant's walk, or promenade, to the house, rather in advance of her husband and mr. heddegan, who talked in loud tones which reached the women over their shoulders. some would have called mrs. trewthen a good mother; but though well meaning she was maladroit, and her intentions missed their mark. this might have been partly attributable to the slight deafness from which she suffered. now, as usual, the chief utterances came from her lips. 'ah, yes, i'm so glad, my child, that you've got over safe. it is all ready, and everything so well arranged, that nothing but misfortune could hinder you settling as, with god's grace, becomes 'ee. close to your mother's door a'most, 'twill be a great blessing, i'm sure; and i was very glad to find from your letters that you'd held your word sacred. that's right--make your word your bond always. mrs. wace seems to be a sensible woman. i hope the lord will do for her as he's doing for you no long time hence. and how did 'ee get over the terrible journey from tor- upon-sea to pen-zephyr? once you'd done with the railway, of course, you seemed quite at home. well, baptista, conduct yourself seemly, and all will be well.' thus admonished, baptista entered the house, her father and mr. heddegan immediately at her back. her mother had been so didactic that she had felt herself absolutely unable to broach the subjects in the centre of her mind. the familiar room, with the dark ceiling, the well-spread table, the old chairs, had never before spoken so eloquently of the times ere she knew or had heard of charley stow. she went upstairs to take off her things, her mother remaining below to complete the disposition of the supper, and attend to the preparation of to-morrow's meal, altogether composing such an array of pies, from pies of fish to pies of turnips, as was never heard of outside the western duchy. baptista, once alone, sat down and did nothing; and was called before she had taken off her bonnet. 'i'm coming,' she cried, jumping up, and speedily disapparelling herself, brushed her hair with a few touches and went down. two or three of mr. heddegan's and her father's friends had dropped in, and expressed their sympathy for the delay she had been subjected to. the meal was a most merry one except to baptista. she had desired privacy, and there was none; and to break the news was already a greater difficulty than it had been at first. everything around her, animate and inanimate, great and small, insisted that she had come home to be married; and she could not get a chance to say nay. one or two people sang songs, as overtures to the melody of the morrow, till at length bedtime came, and they all withdrew, her mother having retired a little earlier. when baptista found herself again alone in her bedroom the case stood as before: she had come home with much to say, and she had said nothing. it was now growing clear even to herself that charles being dead, she had not determination sufficient within her to break tidings which, had he been alive, would have imperatively announced themselves. and thus with the stroke of midnight came the turning of the scale; her story should remain untold. it was not that upon the whole she thought it best not to attempt to tell it; but that she could not undertake so explosive a matter. to stop the wedding now would cause a convulsion in giant's town little short of volcanic. weakened, tired, and terrified as she had been by the day's adventures, she could not make herself the author of such a catastrophe. but how refuse heddegan without telling? it really seemed to her as if her marriage with mr. heddegan were about to take place as if nothing had intervened. morning came. the events of the previous days were cut off from her present existence by scene and sentiment more completely than ever. charles stow had grown to be a special being of whom, owing to his character, she entertained rather fearful than loving memory. baptista could hear when she awoke that her parents were already moving about downstairs. but she did not rise till her mother's rather rough voice resounded up the staircase as it had done on the preceding evening. 'baptista! come, time to be stirring! the man will be here, by heaven's blessing, in three-quarters of an hour. he has looked in already for a minute or two--and says he's going to the church to see if things be well forward.' baptista arose, looked out of the window, and took the easy course. when she emerged from the regions above she was arrayed in her new silk frock and best stockings, wearing a linen jacket over the former for breakfasting, and her common slippers over the latter, not to spoil the new ones on the rough precincts of the dwelling. it is unnecessary to dwell at any great length on this part of the morning's proceedings. she revealed nothing; and married heddegan, as she had given her word to do, on that appointed august day. chapter v mr. heddegan forgave the coldness of his bride's manner during and after the wedding ceremony, full well aware that there had been considerable reluctance on her part to acquiesce in this neighbourly arrangement, and, as a philosopher of long standing, holding that whatever baptista's attitude now, the conditions would probably be much the same six months hence as those which ruled among other married couples. an absolutely unexpected shock was given to baptista's listless mind about an hour after the wedding service. they had nearly finished the mid-day dinner when the now husband said to her father, 'we think of starting about two. and the breeze being so fair we shall bring up inside pen-zephyr new pier about six at least.' 'what--are we going to pen-zephyr?' said baptista. 'i don't know anything of it.' 'didn't you tell her?' asked her father of heddegan. it transpired that, owing to the delay in her arrival, this proposal too, among other things, had in the hurry not been mentioned to her, except some time ago as a general suggestion that they would go somewhere. heddegan had imagined that any trip would be pleasant, and one to the mainland the pleasantest of all. she looked so distressed at the announcement that her husband willingly offered to give it up, though he had not had a holiday off the island for a whole year. then she pondered on the inconvenience of staying at giant's town, where all the inhabitants were bonded, by the circumstances of their situation, into a sort of family party, which permitted and encouraged on such occasions as these oral criticism that was apt to disturb the equanimity of newly married girls, and would especially worry baptista in her strange situation. hence, unexpectedly, she agreed not to disorganize her husband's plans for the wedding jaunt, and it was settled that, as originally intended, they should proceed in a neighbour's sailing boat to the metropolis of the district. in this way they arrived at pen-zephyr without difficulty or mishap. bidding adieu to jenkin and his man, who had sailed them over, they strolled arm in arm off the pier, baptista silent, cold, and obedient. heddegan had arranged to take her as far as plymouth before their return, but to go no further than where they had landed that day. their first business was to find an inn; and in this they had unexpected difficulty, since for some reason or other--possibly the fine weather--many of the nearest at hand were full of tourists and commercial travellers. he led her on till he reached a tavern which, though comparatively unpretending, stood in as attractive a spot as any in the town; and this, somewhat to their surprise after their previous experience, they found apparently empty. the considerate old man, thinking that baptista was educated to artistic notions, though he himself was deficient in them, had decided that it was most desirable to have, on such an occasion as the present, an apartment with 'a good view' (the expression being one he had often heard in use among tourists); and he therefore asked for a favourite room on the first floor, from which a bow-window protruded, for the express purpose of affording such an outlook. the landlady, after some hesitation, said she was sorry that particular apartment was engaged; the next one, however, or any other in the house, was unoccupied. 'the gentleman who has the best one will give it up to-morrow, and then you can change into it,' she added, as mr. heddegan hesitated about taking the adjoining and less commanding one. 'we shall be gone to-morrow, and shan't want it,' he said. wishing not to lose customers, the landlady earnestly continued that since he was bent on having the best room, perhaps the other gentleman would not object to move at once into the one they despised, since, though nothing could be seen from the window, the room was equally large. 'well, if he doesn't care for a view,' said mr. heddegan, with the air of a highly artistic man who did. 'o no--i am sure he doesn't,' she said. 'i can promise that you shall have the room you want. if you would not object to go for a walk for half an hour, i could have it ready, and your things in it, and a nice tea laid in the bow-window by the time you come back?' this proposal was deemed satisfactory by the fussy old tradesman, and they went out. baptista nervously conducted him in an opposite direction to her walk of the former day in other company, showing on her wan face, had he observed it, how much she was beginning to regret her sacrificial step for mending matters that morning. she took advantage of a moment when her husband's back was turned to inquire casually in a shop if anything had been heard of the gentleman who was sucked down in the eddy while bathing. the shopman said, 'yes, his body has been washed ashore,' and had just handed baptista a newspaper on which she discerned the heading, 'a schoolmaster drowned while bathing,' when her husband turned to join her. she might have pursued the subject without raising suspicion; but it was more than flesh and blood could do, and completing a small purchase almost ran out of the shop. 'what is your terrible hurry, mee deer?' said heddegan, hastening after. 'i don't know--i don't want to stay in shops,' she gasped. 'and we won't,' he said. 'they are suffocating this weather. let's go back and have some tay!' they found the much desired apartment awaiting their entry. it was a sort of combination bed and sitting-room, and the table was prettily spread with high tea in the bow-window, a bunch of flowers in the midst, and a best-parlour chair on each side. here they shared the meal by the ruddy light of the vanishing sun. but though the view had been engaged, regardless of expense, exclusively for baptista's pleasure, she did not direct any keen attention out of the window. her gaze as often fell on the floor and walls of the room as elsewhere, and on the table as much as on either, beholding nothing at all. but there was a change. opposite her seat was the door, upon which her eyes presently became riveted like those of a little bird upon a snake. for, on a peg at the back of the door, there hung a hat; such a hat--surely, from its peculiar make, the actual hat--that had been worn by charles. conviction grew to certainty when she saw a railway ticket sticking up from the band. charles had put the ticket there--she had noticed the act. her teeth almost chattered; she murmured something incoherent. her husband jumped up and said, 'you are not well! what is it? what shall i get 'ee?' 'smelling salts!' she said, quickly and desperately; 'at that chemist's shop you were in just now.' he jumped up like the anxious old man that he was, caught up his own hat from a back table, and without observing the other hastened out and downstairs. left alone she gazed and gazed at the back of the door, then spasmodically rang the bell. an honest-looking country maid-servant appeared in response. 'a hat!' murmured baptista, pointing with her finger. 'it does not belong to us.' 'o yes, i'll take it away,' said the young woman with some hurry. 'it belongs to the other gentleman.' she spoke with a certain awkwardness, and took the hat out of the room. baptista had recovered her outward composure. 'the other gentleman?' she said. 'where is the other gentleman?' 'he's in the next room, ma'am. he removed out of this to oblige 'ee.' 'how can you say so? i should hear him if he were there,' said baptista, sufficiently recovered to argue down an apparent untruth. 'he's there,' said the girl, hardily. 'then it is strange that he makes no noise,' said mrs. heddegan, convicting the girl of falsity by a look. 'he makes no noise; but it is not strange,' said the servant. all at once a dread took possession of the bride's heart, like a cold hand laid thereon; for it flashed upon her that there was a possibility of reconciling the girl's statement with her own knowledge of facts. 'why does he make no noise?' she weakly said. the waiting-maid was silent, and looked at her questioner. 'if i tell you, ma'am, you won't tell missis?' she whispered. baptista promised. 'because he's a-lying dead!' said the girl. 'he's the schoolmaster that was drownded yesterday.' 'o!' said the bride, covering her eyes. 'then he was in this room till just now?' 'yes,' said the maid, thinking the young lady's agitation natural enough. 'and i told missis that i thought she oughtn't to have done it, because i don't hold it right to keep visitors so much in the dark where death's concerned; but she said the gentleman didn't die of anything infectious; she was a poor, honest, innkeeper's wife, she says, who had to get her living by making hay while the sun sheened. and owing to the drownded gentleman being brought here, she said, it kept so many people away that we were empty, though all the other houses were full. so when your good man set his mind upon the room, and she would have lost good paying folk if he'd not had it, it wasn't to be supposed, she said, that she'd let anything stand in the way. ye won't say that i've told ye, please, m'm? all the linen has been changed, and as the inquest won't be till to-morrow, after you are gone, she thought you wouldn't know a word of it, being strangers here.' the returning footsteps of her husband broke off further narration. baptista waved her hand, for she could not speak. the waiting-maid quickly withdrew, and mr. heddegan entered with the smelling salts and other nostrums. 'any better?' he questioned. 'i don't like the hotel,' she exclaimed, almost simultaneously. 'i can't bear it--it doesn't suit me!' 'is that all that's the matter?' he returned pettishly (this being the first time of his showing such a mood). 'upon my heart and life such trifling is trying to any man's temper, baptista! sending me about from here to yond, and then when i come back saying 'ee don't like the place that i have sunk so much money and words to get for 'ee. 'od dang it all, 'tis enough to--but i won't say any more at present, mee deer, though it is just too much to expect to turn out of the house now. we shan't get another quiet place at this time of the evening--every other inn in the town is bustling with rackety folk of one sort and t'other, while here 'tis as quiet as the grave--the country, i would say. so bide still, d'ye hear, and to-morrow we shall be out of the town altogether--as early as you like.' the obstinacy of age had, in short, overmastered its complaisance, and the young woman said no more. the simple course of telling him that in the adjoining room lay a corpse which had lately occupied their own might, it would have seemed, have been an effectual one without further disclosure, but to allude to that subject, however it was disguised, was more than heddegan's young wife had strength for. horror broke her down. in the contingency one thing only presented itself to her paralyzed regard--that here she was doomed to abide, in a hideous contiguity to the dead husband and the living, and her conjecture did, in fact, bear itself out. that night she lay between the two men she had married--heddegan on the one hand, and on the other through the partition against which the bed stood, charles stow. chapter vi kindly time had withdrawn the foregoing event three days from the present of baptista heddegan. it was ten o'clock in the morning; she had been ill, not in an ordinary or definite sense, but in a state of cold stupefaction, from which it was difficult to arouse her so much as to say a few sentences. when questioned she had replied that she was pretty well. their trip, as such, had been something of a failure. they had gone on as far as falmouth, but here he had given way to her entreaties to return home. this they could not very well do without repassing through pen- zephyr, at which place they had now again arrived. in the train she had seen a weekly local paper, and read there a paragraph detailing the inquest on charles. it was added that the funeral was to take place at his native town of redrutin on friday. after reading this she had shown no reluctance to enter the fatal neighbourhood of the tragedy, only stipulating that they should take their rest at a different lodging from the first; and now comparatively braced up and calm--indeed a cooler creature altogether than when last in the town, she said to david that she wanted to walk out for a while, as they had plenty of time on their hands. 'to a shop as usual, i suppose, mee deer?' 'partly for shopping,' she said. 'and it will be best for you, dear, to stay in after trotting about so much, and have a good rest while i am gone.' he assented; and baptista sallied forth. as she had stated, her first visit was made to a shop, a draper's. without the exercise of much choice she purchased a black bonnet and veil, also a black stuff gown; a black mantle she already wore. these articles were made up into a parcel which, in spite of the saleswoman's offers, her customer said she would take with her. bearing it on her arm she turned to the railway, and at the station got a ticket for redrutin. thus it appeared that, on her recovery from the paralyzed mood of the former day, while she had resolved not to blast utterly the happiness of her present husband by revealing the history of the departed one, she had also determined to indulge a certain odd, inconsequent, feminine sentiment of decency, to the small extent to which it could do no harm to any person. at redrutin she emerged from the railway carriage in the black attire purchased at the shop, having during the transit made the change in the empty compartment she had chosen. the other clothes were now in the bandbox and parcel. leaving these at the cloak-room she proceeded onward, and after a wary survey reached the side of a hill whence a view of the burial ground could be obtained. it was now a little before two o'clock. while baptista waited a funeral procession ascended the road. baptista hastened across, and by the time the procession entered the cemetery gates she had unobtrusively joined it. in addition to the schoolmaster's own relatives (not a few), the paragraph in the newspapers of his death by drowning had drawn together many neighbours, acquaintances, and onlookers. among them she passed unnoticed, and with a quiet step pursued the winding path to the chapel, and afterwards thence to the grave. when all was over, and the relatives and idlers had withdrawn, she stepped to the edge of the chasm. from beneath her mantle she drew a little bunch of forget-me-nots, and dropped them in upon the coffin. in a few minutes she also turned and went away from the cemetery. by five o'clock she was again in pen-zephyr. 'you have been a mortal long time!' said her husband, crossly. 'i allowed you an hour at most, mee deer.' 'it occupied me longer,' said she. 'well--i reckon it is wasting words to complain. hang it, ye look so tired and wisht that i can't find heart to say what i would!' 'i am--weary and wisht, david; i am. we can get home to-morrow for certain, i hope?' 'we can. and please god we will!' said mr. heddegan heartily, as if he too were weary of his brief honeymoon. 'i must be into business again on monday morning at latest.' they left by the next morning steamer, and in the afternoon took up their residence in their own house at giant's town. the hour that she reached the island it was as if a material weight had been removed from baptista's shoulders. her husband attributed the change to the influence of the local breezes after the hot-house atmosphere of the mainland. however that might be, settled here, a few doors from her mother's dwelling, she recovered in no very long time much of her customary bearing, which was never very demonstrative. she accepted her position calmly, and faintly smiled when her neighbours learned to call her mrs. heddegan, and said she seemed likely to become the leader of fashion in giant's town. her husband was a man who had made considerably more money by trade than her father had done: and perhaps the greater profusion of surroundings at her command than she had heretofore been mistress of, was not without an effect upon her. one week, two weeks, three weeks passed; and, being pre- eminently a young woman who allowed things to drift, she did nothing whatever either to disclose or conceal traces of her first marriage; or to learn if there existed possibilities--which there undoubtedly did--by which that hasty contract might become revealed to those about her at any unexpected moment. while yet within the first month of her marriage, and on an evening just before sunset, baptista was standing within her garden adjoining the house, when she saw passing along the road a personage clad in a greasy black coat and battered tall hat, which, common enough in the slums of a city, had an odd appearance in st. maria's. the tramp, as he seemed to be, marked her at once--bonnetless and unwrapped as she was her features were plainly recognizable--and with an air of friendly surprise came and leant over the wall. 'what! don't you know me?' said he. she had some dim recollection of his face, but said that she was not acquainted with him. 'why, your witness to be sure, ma'am. don't you mind the man that was mending the church-window when you and your intended husband walked up to be made one; and the clerk called me down from the ladder, and i came and did my part by writing my name and occupation?' baptista glanced quickly around; her husband was out of earshot. that would have been of less importance but for the fact that the wedding witnessed by this personage had not been the wedding with mr. heddegan, but the one on the day previous. 'i've had a misfortune since then, that's pulled me under,' continued her friend. 'but don't let me damp yer wedded joy by naming the particulars. yes, i've seen changes since; though 'tis but a short time ago--let me see, only a month next week, i think; for 'twere the first or second day in august.' 'yes--that's when it was,' said another man, a sailor, who had come up with a pipe in his mouth, and felt it necessary to join in (baptista having receded to escape further speech). 'for that was the first time i set foot in giant's town; and her husband took her to him the same day.' a dialogue then proceeded between the two men outside the wall, which baptista could not help hearing. 'ay, i signed the book that made her one flesh,' repeated the decayed glazier. 'where's her goodman?' 'about the premises somewhere; but you don't see 'em together much,' replied the sailor in an undertone. 'you see, he's older than she.' 'older? i should never have thought it from my own observation,' said the glazier. 'he was a remarkably handsome man.' 'handsome? well, there he is--we can see for ourselves.' david heddegan had, indeed, just shown himself at the upper end of the garden; and the glazier, looking in bewilderment from the husband to the wife, saw the latter turn pale. now that decayed glazier was a far-seeing and cunning man--too far-seeing and cunning to allow himself to thrive by simple and straightforward means--and he held his peace, till he could read more plainly the meaning of this riddle, merely adding carelessly, 'well--marriage do alter a man, 'tis true. i should never ha' knowed him!' he then stared oddly at the disconcerted baptista, and moving on to where he could again address her, asked her to do him a good turn, since he once had done the same for her. understanding that he meant money, she handed him some, at which he thanked her, and instantly went away. chapter vii she had escaped exposure on this occasion; but the incident had been an awkward one, and should have suggested to baptista that sooner or later the secret must leak out. as it was, she suspected that at any rate she had not heard the last of the glazier. in a day or two, when her husband had gone to the old town on the other side of the island, there came a gentle tap at the door, and the worthy witness of her first marriage made his appearance a second time. 'it took me hours to get to the bottom of the mystery--hours!' he said with a gaze of deep confederacy which offended her pride very deeply. 'but thanks to a good intellect i've done it. now, ma'am, i'm not a man to tell tales, even when a tale would be so good as this. but i'm going back to the mainland again, and a little assistance would be as rain on thirsty ground.' 'i helped you two days ago,' began baptista. 'yes--but what was that, my good lady? not enough to pay my passage to pen-zephyr. i came over on your account, for i thought there was a mystery somewhere. now i must go back on my own. mind this--'twould be very awkward for you if your old man were to know. he's a queer temper, though he may be fond.' she knew as well as her visitor how awkward it would be; and the hush- money she paid was heavy that day. she had, however, the satisfaction of watching the man to the steamer, and seeing him diminish out of sight. but baptista perceived that the system into which she had been led of purchasing silence thus was one fatal to her peace of mind, particularly if it had to be continued. hearing no more from the glazier she hoped the difficulty was past. but another week only had gone by, when, as she was pacing the giant's walk (the name given to the promenade), she met the same personage in the company of a fat woman carrying a bundle. 'this is the lady, my dear,' he said to his companion. 'this, ma'am, is my wife. we've come to settle in the town for a time, if so be we can find room.' 'that you won't do,' said she. 'nobody can live here who is not privileged.' 'i am privileged,' said the glazier, 'by my trade.' baptista went on, but in the afternoon she received a visit from the man's wife. this honest woman began to depict, in forcible colours, the necessity for keeping up the concealment. 'i will intercede with my husband, ma'am,' she said. 'he's a true man if rightly managed; and i'll beg him to consider your position. 'tis a very nice house you've got here,' she added, glancing round, 'and well worth a little sacrifice to keep it.' the unlucky baptista staved off the danger on this third occasion as she had done on the previous two. but she formed a resolve that, if the attack were once more to be repeated she would face a revelation--worse though that must now be than before she had attempted to purchase silence by bribes. her tormentors, never believing her capable of acting upon such an intention, came again; but she shut the door in their faces. they retreated, muttering something; but she went to the back of the house, where david heddegan was. she looked at him, unconscious of all. the case was serious; she knew that well; and all the more serious in that she liked him better now than she had done at first. yet, as she herself began to see, the secret was one that was sure to disclose itself. her name and charles's stood indelibly written in the registers; and though a month only had passed as yet it was a wonder that his clandestine union with her had not already been discovered by his friends. thus spurring herself to the inevitable, she spoke to heddegan. 'david, come indoors. i have something to tell you.' he hardly regarded her at first. she had discerned that during the last week or two he had seemed preoccupied, as if some private business harassed him. she repeated her request. he replied with a sigh, 'yes, certainly, mee deer.' when they had reached the sitting-room and shut the door she repeated, faintly, 'david, i have something to tell you--a sort of tragedy i have concealed. you will hate me for having so far deceived you; but perhaps my telling you voluntarily will make you think a little better of me than you would do otherwise.' 'tragedy?' he said, awakening to interest. 'much you can know about tragedies, mee deer, that have been in the world so short a time!' she saw that he suspected nothing, and it made her task the harder. but on she went steadily. 'it is about something that happened before we were married,' she said. 'indeed!' 'not a very long time before--a short time. and it is about a lover,' she faltered. 'i don't much mind that,' he said mildly. 'in truth, i was in hopes 'twas more.' 'in hopes!' 'well, yes.' this screwed her up to the necessary effort. 'i met my old sweetheart. he scorned me, chid me, dared me, and i went and married him. we were coming straight here to tell you all what we had done; but he was drowned; and i thought i would say nothing about him: and i married you, david, for the sake of peace and quietness. i've tried to keep it from you, but have found i cannot. there--that's the substance of it, and you can never, never forgive me, i am sure!' she spoke desperately. but the old man, instead of turning black or blue, or slaying her in his indignation, jumped up from his chair, and began to caper around the room in quite an ecstatic emotion. 'o, happy thing! how well it falls out!' he exclaimed, snapping his, fingers over his head. 'ha-ha--the knot is cut--i see a way out of my trouble--ha-ha!' she looked at him without uttering a sound, till, as he still continued smiling joyfully, she said, 'o--what do you mean! is it done to torment me?' 'no--no! o, mee deer, your story helps me out of the most heart-aching quandary a poor man ever found himself in! you see, it is this--i've got a tragedy, too; and unless you had had one to tell, i could never have seen my way to tell mine!' 'what is yours--what is it?' she asked, with altogether a new view of things. 'well--it is a bouncer; mine is a bouncer!' said he, looking on the ground and wiping his eyes. 'not worse than mine?' 'well--that depends upon how you look at it. yours had to do with the past alone; and i don't mind it. you see, we've been married a month, and it don't jar upon me as it would if we'd only been married a day or two. now mine refers to past, present, and future; so that--' 'past, present, and future!' she murmured. 'it never occurred to me that you had a tragedy, too.' 'but i have!' he said, shaking his head. 'in fact, four.' 'then tell 'em!' cried the young woman. 'i will--i will. but be considerate, i beg 'ee, mee deer. well--i wasn't a bachelor when i married 'ee, any more than you were a spinster. just as you was a widow-woman, i was a widow-man. 'ah!' said she, with some surprise. 'but is that all?--then we are nicely balanced,' she added, relieved. 'no--it is not all. there's the point. i am not only a widower.' 'o, david!' 'i am a widower with four tragedies--that is to say, four strapping girls--the eldest taller than you. don't 'ee look so struck--dumb-like! it fell out in this way. i knew the poor woman, their mother, in pen- zephyr for some years; and--to cut a long story short--i privately married her at last, just before she died. i kept the matter secret, but it is getting known among the people here by degrees. i've long felt for the children--that it is my duty to have them here, and do something for them. i have not had courage to break it to 'ee, but i've seen lately that it would soon come to your ears, and that hev worried me.' 'are they educated?' said the ex-schoolmistress. 'no. i am sorry to say they have been much neglected; in truth, they can hardly read. and so i thought that by marrying a young schoolmistress i should get some one in the house who could teach 'em, and bring 'em into genteel condition, all for nothing. you see, they are growed up too tall to be sent to school.' 'o, mercy!' she almost moaned. 'four great girls to teach the rudiments to, and have always in the house with me spelling over their books; and i hate teaching, it kills me. i am bitterly punished--i am, i am!' 'you'll get used to 'em, mee deer, and the balance of secrets--mine against yours--will comfort your heart with a sense of justice. i could send for 'em this week very well--and i will! in faith, i could send this very day. baptista, you have relieved me of all my difficulty!' thus the interview ended, so far as this matter was concerned. baptista was too stupefied to say more, and when she went away to her room she wept from very mortification at mr. heddegan's duplicity. education, the one thing she abhorred; the shame of it to delude a young wife so! the next meal came round. as they sat, baptista would not suffer her eyes to turn towards him. he did not attempt to intrude upon her reserve, but every now and then looked under the table and chuckled with satisfaction at the aspect of affairs. 'how very well matched we be!' he said, comfortably. next day, when the steamer came in, baptista saw her husband rush down to meet it; and soon after there appeared at her door four tall, hipless, shoulderless girls, dwindling in height and size from the eldest to the youngest, like a row of pan pipes; at the head of them standing heddegan. he smiled pleasantly through the grey fringe of his whiskers and beard, and turning to the girls said, 'now come forrard, and shake hands properly with your stepmother.' thus she made their acquaintance, and he went out, leaving them together. on examination the poor girls turned out to be not only plain-looking, which she could have forgiven, but to have such a lamentably meagre intellectual equipment as to be hopelessly inadequate as companions. even the eldest, almost her own age, could only read with difficulty words of two syllables; and taste in dress was beyond their comprehension. in the long vista of future years she saw nothing but dreary drudgery at her detested old trade without prospect of reward. she went about quite despairing during the next few days--an unpromising, unfortunate mood for a woman who had not been married six weeks. from her parents she concealed everything. they had been amongst the few acquaintances of heddegan who knew nothing of his secret, and were indignant enough when they saw such a ready-made household foisted upon their only child. but she would not support them in their remonstrances. 'no, you don't yet know all,' she said. thus baptista had sense enough to see the retributive fairness of this issue. for some time, whenever conversation arose between her and heddegan, which was not often, she always said, 'i am miserable, and you know it. yet i don't wish things to be otherwise.' but one day when he asked, 'how do you like 'em now?' her answer was unexpected. 'much better than i did,' she said, quietly. 'i may like them very much some day.' this was the beginning of a serener season for the chastened spirit of baptista heddegan. she had, in truth, discovered, underneath the crust of uncouthness and meagre articulation which was due to their troglodytean existence, that her unwelcomed daughters had natures that were unselfish almost to sublimity. the harsh discipline accorded to their young lives before their mother's wrong had been righted, had operated less to crush them than to lift them above all personal ambition. they considered the world and its contents in a purely objective way, and their own lot seemed only to affect them as that of certain human beings among the rest, whose troubles they knew rather than suffered. this was such an entirely new way of regarding life to a woman of baptista's nature, that her attention, from being first arrested by it, became deeply interested. by imperceptible pulses her heart expanded in sympathy with theirs. the sentences of her tragi-comedy, her life, confused till now, became clearer daily. that in humanity, as exemplified by these girls, there was nothing to dislike, but infinitely much to pity, she learnt with the lapse of each week in their company. she grew to like the girls of unpromising exterior, and from liking she got to love them; till they formed an unexpected point of junction between her own and her husband's interests, generating a sterling friendship at least, between a pair in whose existence there had threatened to be neither friendship nor love. october, . this etext was prepared from the macmillan edition by les bowler. two on a tower by thomas hardy. 'ah, my heart! her eyes and she have taught thee new astrology. howe'er love's native hours were set, whatever starry synod met, 'tis in the mercy of her eye, if poor love shall live or die.' crashaw: _love's horoscope_. with a map of wessex. macmillan and co., limited st. martin's street, london copyright _first published by macmillan and co._, _crown_ _vo,_ _reprinted_ , , , _pocket edition_ . _reprinted_ , , , , , , _wessex edition_ (_ vo_) _reprinted_ printed in great britain preface. this slightly-built romance was the outcome of a wish to set the emotional history of two infinitesimal lives against the stupendous background of the stellar universe, and to impart to readers the sentiment that of these contrasting magnitudes the smaller might be the greater to them as men. but, on the publication of the book people seemed to be less struck with these high aims of the author than with their own opinion, first, that the novel was an 'improper' one in its morals, and, secondly, that it was intended to be a satire on the established church of this country. i was made to suffer in consequence from several eminent pens. that, however, was thirteen years ago, and, in respect of the first opinion, i venture to think that those who care to read the story now will be quite astonished at the scrupulous propriety observed therein on the relations of the sexes; for though there may be frivolous, and even grotesque touches on occasion, there is hardly a single caress in the book outside legal matrimony, or what was intended so to be. as for the second opinion, it is sufficient to draw attention, as i did at the time, to the fact that the bishop is every inch a gentleman, and that the parish priest who figures in the narrative is one of its most estimable characters. however, the pages must speak for themselves. some few readers, i trust--to take a serious view--will be reminded by this imperfect story, in a manner not unprofitable to the growth of the social sympathies, of the pathos, misery, long-suffering, and divine tenderness which in real life frequently accompany the passion of such a woman as viviette for a lover several years her junior. the scene of the action was suggested by two real spots in the part of the country specified, each of which has a column standing upon it. certain surrounding peculiarities have been imported into the narrative from both sites. t. h. _july_ . two on a tower. i on an early winter afternoon, clear but not cold, when the vegetable world was a weird multitude of skeletons through whose ribs the sun shone freely, a gleaming landau came to a pause on the crest of a hill in wessex. the spot was where the old melchester road, which the carriage had hitherto followed, was joined by a drive that led round into a park at no great distance off. the footman alighted, and went to the occupant of the carriage, a lady about eight- or nine-and-twenty. she was looking through the opening afforded by a field-gate at the undulating stretch of country beyond. in pursuance of some remark from her the servant looked in the same direction. the central feature of the middle distance, as they beheld it, was a circular isolated hill, of no great elevation, which placed itself in strong chromatic contrast with a wide acreage of surrounding arable by being covered with fir-trees. the trees were all of one size and age, so that their tips assumed the precise curve of the hill they grew upon. this pine-clad protuberance was yet further marked out from the general landscape by having on its summit a tower in the form of a classical column, which, though partly immersed in the plantation, rose above the tree-tops to a considerable height. upon this object the eyes of lady and servant were bent. 'then there is no road leading near it?' she asked. 'nothing nearer than where we are now, my lady.' 'then drive home,' she said after a moment. and the carriage rolled on its way. a few days later, the same lady, in the same carriage, passed that spot again. her eyes, as before, turned to the distant tower. 'nobbs,' she said to the coachman, 'could you find your way home through that field, so as to get near the outskirts of the plantation where the column is?' the coachman regarded the field. 'well, my lady,' he observed, 'in dry weather we might drive in there by inching and pinching, and so get across by five-and-twenty acres, all being well. but the ground is so heavy after these rains that perhaps it would hardly be safe to try it now.' 'perhaps not,' she assented indifferently. 'remember it, will you, at a drier time?' and again the carriage sped along the road, the lady's eyes resting on the segmental hill, the blue trees that muffled it, and the column that formed its apex, till they were out of sight. a long time elapsed before that lady drove over the hill again. it was february; the soil was now unquestionably dry, the weather and scene being in other respects much as they had been before. the familiar shape of the column seemed to remind her that at last an opportunity for a close inspection had arrived. giving her directions she saw the gate opened, and after a little manoeuvring the carriage swayed slowly into the uneven field. although the pillar stood upon the hereditary estate of her husband the lady had never visited it, owing to its insulation by this well-nigh impracticable ground. the drive to the base of the hill was tedious and jerky, and on reaching it she alighted, directing that the carriage should be driven back empty over the clods, to wait for her on the nearest edge of the field. she then ascended beneath the trees on foot. the column now showed itself as a much more important erection than it had appeared from the road, or the park, or the windows of welland house, her residence hard by, whence she had surveyed it hundreds of times without ever feeling a sufficient interest in its details to investigate them. the column had been erected in the last century, as a substantial memorial of her husband's great-grandfather, a respectable officer who had fallen in the american war, and the reason of her lack of interest was partly owing to her relations with this husband, of which more anon. it was little beyond the sheer desire for something to do--the chronic desire of her curiously lonely life--that had brought her here now. she was in a mood to welcome anything that would in some measure disperse an almost killing _ennui_. she would have welcomed even a misfortune. she had heard that from the summit of the pillar four counties could be seen. whatever pleasurable effect was to be derived from looking into four counties she resolved to enjoy to-day. the fir-shrouded hill-top was (according to some antiquaries) an old roman camp,--if it were not (as others insisted) an old british castle, or (as the rest swore) an old saxon field of witenagemote,--with remains of an outer and an inner vallum, a winding path leading up between their overlapping ends by an easy ascent. the spikelets from the trees formed a soft carpet over the route, and occasionally a brake of brambles barred the interspaces of the trunks. soon she stood immediately at the foot of the column. it had been built in the tuscan order of classic architecture, and was really a tower, being hollow with steps inside. the gloom and solitude which prevailed round the base were remarkable. the sob of the environing trees was here expressively manifest; and moved by the light breeze their thin straight stems rocked in seconds, like inverted pendulums; while some boughs and twigs rubbed the pillar's sides, or occasionally clicked in catching each other. below the level of their summits the masonry was lichen-stained and mildewed, for the sun never pierced that moaning cloud of blue-black vegetation. pads of moss grew in the joints of the stone-work, and here and there shade-loving insects had engraved on the mortar patterns of no human style or meaning; but curious and suggestive. above the trees the case was different: the pillar rose into the sky a bright and cheerful thing, unimpeded, clean, and flushed with the sunlight. the spot was seldom visited by a pedestrian, except perhaps in the shooting season. the rarity of human intrusion was evidenced by the mazes of rabbit-runs, the feathers of shy birds, the exuviæ of reptiles; as also by the well-worn paths of squirrels down the sides of trunks, and thence horizontally away. the fact of the plantation being an island in the midst of an arable plain sufficiently accounted for this lack of visitors. few unaccustomed to such places can be aware of the insulating effect of ploughed ground, when no necessity compels people to traverse it. this rotund hill of trees and brambles, standing in the centre of a ploughed field of some ninety or a hundred acres, was probably visited less frequently than a rock would have been visited in a lake of equal extent. she walked round the column to the other side, where she found the door through which the interior was reached. the paint, if it had ever had any, was all washed from the wood, and down the decaying surface of the boards liquid rust from the nails and hinges had run in red stains. over the door was a stone tablet, bearing, apparently, letters or words; but the inscription, whatever it was, had been smoothed over with a plaster of lichen. here stood this aspiring piece of masonry, erected as the most conspicuous and ineffaceable reminder of a man that could be thought of; and yet the whole aspect of the memorial betokened forgetfulness. probably not a dozen people within the district knew the name of the person commemorated, while perhaps not a soul remembered whether the column were hollow or solid, whether with or without a tablet explaining its date and purpose. she herself had lived within a mile of it for the last five years, and had never come near it till now. she hesitated to ascend alone, but finding that the door was not fastened she pushed it open with her foot, and entered. a scrap of writing-paper lay within, and arrested her attention by its freshness. some human being, then, knew the spot, despite her surmises. but as the paper had nothing on it no clue was afforded; yet feeling herself the proprietor of the column and of all around it her self-assertiveness was sufficient to lead her on. the staircase was lighted by slits in the wall, and there was no difficulty in reaching the top, the steps being quite unworn. the trap-door leading on to the roof was open, and on looking through it an interesting spectacle met her eye. a youth was sitting on a stool in the centre of the lead flat which formed the summit of the column, his eye being applied to the end of a large telescope that stood before him on a tripod. this sort of presence was unexpected, and the lady started back into the shade of the opening. the only effect produced upon him by her footfall was an impatient wave of the hand, which he did without removing his eye from the instrument, as if to forbid her to interrupt him. pausing where she stood the lady examined the aspect of the individual who thus made himself so completely at home on a building which she deemed her unquestioned property. he was a youth who might properly have been characterized by a word the judicious chronicler would not readily use in such a connexion, preferring to reserve it for raising images of the opposite sex. whether because no deep felicity is likely to arise from the condition, or from any other reason, to say in these days that a youth is beautiful is not to award him that amount of credit which the expression would have carried with it if he had lived in the times of the classical dictionary. so much, indeed, is the reverse the case that the assertion creates an awkwardness in saying anything more about him. the beautiful youth usually verges so perilously on the incipient coxcomb, who is about to become the lothario or juan among the neighbouring maidens, that, for the due understanding of our present young man, his sublime innocence of any thought concerning his own material aspect, or that of others, is most fervently asserted, and must be as fervently believed. such as he was, there the lad sat. the sun shone full in his face, and on his head he wore a black velvet skull-cap, leaving to view below it a curly margin of very light shining hair, which accorded well with the flush upon his cheek. he had such a complexion as that with which raffaelle enriches the countenance of the youthful son of zacharias,--a complexion which, though clear, is far enough removed from virgin delicacy, and suggests plenty of sun and wind as its accompaniment. his features were sufficiently straight in the contours to correct the beholder's first impression that the head was the head of a girl. beside him stood a little oak table, and in front was the telescope. his visitor had ample time to make these observations; and she may have done so all the more keenly through being herself of a totally opposite type. her hair was black as midnight, her eyes had no less deep a shade, and her complexion showed the richness demanded as a support to these decided features. as she continued to look at the pretty fellow before her, apparently so far abstracted into some speculative world as scarcely to know a real one, a warmer wave of her warm temperament glowed visibly through her, and a qualified observer might from this have hazarded a guess that there was romance blood in her veins. but even the interest attaching to the youth could not arrest her attention for ever, and as he made no further signs of moving his eye from the instrument she broke the silence with-- 'what do you see?--something happening somewhere?' 'yes, quite a catastrophe!' he automatically murmured, without moving round. 'what?' 'a cyclone in the sun.' the lady paused, as if to consider the weight of that event in the scale of terrene life. 'will it make any difference to us here?' she asked. the young man by this time seemed to be awakened to the consciousness that somebody unusual was talking to him; he turned, and started. 'i beg your pardon,' he said. 'i thought it was my relative come to look after me! she often comes about this time.' he continued to look at her and forget the sun, just such a reciprocity of influence as might have been expected between a dark lady and a flaxen- haired youth making itself apparent in the faces of each. 'don't let me interrupt your observations,' said she. 'ah, no,' said he, again applying his eye; whereupon his face lost the animation which her presence had lent it, and became immutable as that of a bust, though superadding to the serenity of repose the sensitiveness of life. the expression that settled on him was one of awe. not unaptly might it have been said that he was worshipping the sun. among the various intensities of that worship which have prevailed since the first intelligent being saw the luminary decline westward, as the young man now beheld it doing, his was not the weakest. he was engaged in what may be called a very chastened or schooled form of that first and most natural of adorations. 'but would you like to see it?' he recommenced. 'it is an event that is witnessed only about once in two or three years, though it may occur often enough.' she assented, and looked through the shaded eyepiece, and saw a whirling mass, in the centre of which the blazing globe seemed to be laid bare to its core. it was a peep into a maelstrom of fire, taking place where nobody had ever been or ever would be. 'it is the strangest thing i ever beheld,' she said. then he looked again; till wondering who her companion could be she asked, 'are you often here?' 'every night when it is not cloudy, and often in the day.' 'ah, night, of course. the heavens must be beautiful from this point.' 'they are rather more than that.' 'indeed! have you entirely taken possession of this column?' 'entirely.' 'but it is my column,' she said, with smiling asperity. 'then are you lady constantine, wife of the absent sir blount constantine?' 'i am lady constantine.' 'ah, then i agree that it is your ladyship's. but will you allow me to rent it of you for a time, lady constantine?' 'you have taken it, whether i allow it or not. however, in the interests of science it is advisable that you continue your tenancy. nobody knows you are here, i suppose?' 'hardly anybody.' he then took her down a few steps into the interior, and showed her some ingenious contrivances for stowing articles away. 'nobody ever comes near the column,--or, as it's called here, rings-hill speer,' he continued; 'and when i first came up it nobody had been here for thirty or forty years. the staircase was choked with daws' nests and feathers, but i cleared them out.' 'i understood the column was always kept locked?' 'yes, it has been so. when it was built, in , the key was given to my great-grandfather, to keep by him in case visitors should happen to want it. he lived just down there where i live now.' he denoted by a nod a little dell lying immediately beyond the ploughed land which environed them. 'he kept it in his bureau, and as the bureau descended to my grandfather, my mother, and myself, the key descended with it. after the first thirty or forty years, nobody ever asked for it. one day i saw it, lying rusty in its niche, and, finding that it belonged to this column, i took it and came up. i stayed here till it was dark, and the stars came out, and that night i resolved to be an astronomer. i came back here from school several months ago, and i mean to be an astronomer still.' he lowered his voice, and added: 'i aim at nothing less than the dignity and office of astronomer royal, if i live. perhaps i shall not live.' 'i don't see why you should suppose that,' said she. 'how long are you going to make this your observatory?' 'about a year longer--till i have obtained a practical familiarity with the heavens. ah, if i only had a good equatorial!' 'what is that?' 'a proper instrument for my pursuit. but time is short, and science is infinite,--how infinite only those who study astronomy fully realize,--and perhaps i shall be worn out before i make my mark.' she seemed to be greatly struck by the odd mixture in him of scientific earnestness and melancholy mistrust of all things human. perhaps it was owing to the nature of his studies. 'you are often on this tower alone at night?' she said. 'yes; at this time of the year particularly, and while there is no moon. i observe from seven or eight till about two in the morning, with a view to my great work on variable stars. but with such a telescope as this--well, i must put up with it!' 'can you see saturn's ring and jupiter's moons?' he said drily that he could manage to do that, not without some contempt for the state of her knowledge. 'i have never seen any planet or star through a telescope.' 'if you will come the first clear night, lady constantine, i will show you any number. i mean, at your express wish; not otherwise.' 'i should like to come, and possibly may at some time. these stars that vary so much--sometimes evening stars, sometimes morning stars, sometimes in the east, and sometimes in the west--have always interested me.' 'ah--now there is a reason for your not coming. your ignorance of the realities of astronomy is so satisfactory that i will not disturb it except at your serious request.' 'but i wish to be enlightened.' 'let me caution you against it.' 'is enlightenment on the subject, then, so terrible?' 'yes, indeed.' she laughingly declared that nothing could have so piqued her curiosity as his statement, and turned to descend. he helped her down the stairs and through the briers. he would have gone further and crossed the open corn-land with her, but she preferred to go alone. he then retraced his way to the top of the column, but, instead of looking longer at the sun, watched her diminishing towards the distant fence, behind which waited the carriage. when in the midst of the field, a dark spot on an area of brown, there crossed her path a moving figure, whom it was as difficult to distinguish from the earth he trod as the caterpillar from its leaf, by reason of the excellent match between his clothes and the clods. he was one of a dying-out generation who retained the principle, nearly unlearnt now, that a man's habiliments should be in harmony with his environment. lady constantine and this figure halted beside each other for some minutes; then they went on their several ways. the brown person was a labouring man known to the world of welland as haymoss (the encrusted form of the word amos, to adopt the phrase of philologists). the reason of the halt had been some inquiries addressed to him by lady constantine. 'who is that--amos fry, i think?' she had asked. 'yes my lady,' said haymoss; 'a homely barley driller, born under the eaves of your ladyship's outbuildings, in a manner of speaking,--though your ladyship was neither born nor 'tempted at that time.' 'who lives in the old house behind the plantation?' 'old gammer martin, my lady, and her grandson.' 'he has neither father nor mother, then?' 'not a single one, my lady.' 'where was he educated?' 'at warborne,--a place where they draw up young gam'sters' brains like rhubarb under a ninepenny pan, my lady, excusing my common way. they hit so much larning into en that 'a could talk like the day of pentecost; which is a wonderful thing for a simple boy, and his mother only the plainest ciphering woman in the world. warborne grammar school--that's where 'twas 'a went to. his father, the reverent pa'son st. cleeve, made a terrible bruckle hit in 's marrying, in the sight of the high. he were the curate here, my lady, for a length o' time.' 'oh, curate,' said lady constantine. 'it was before i knew the village.' 'ay, long and merry ago! and he married farmer martin's daughter--giles martin, a limberish man, who used to go rather bad upon his lags, if you can mind. i knowed the man well enough; who should know en better! the maid was a poor windling thing, and, though a playward piece o' flesh when he married her, 'a socked and sighed, and went out like a snoff! yes, my lady. well, when pa'son st. cleeve married this homespun woman the toppermost folk wouldn't speak to his wife. then he dropped a cuss or two, and said he'd no longer get his living by curing their twopenny souls o' such d--- nonsense as that (excusing my common way), and he took to farming straightway, and then 'a dropped down dead in a nor'-west thunderstorm; it being said--hee-hee!--that master god was in tantrums wi'en for leaving his service,--hee-hee! i give the story as i heard it, my lady, but be dazed if i believe in such trumpery about folks in the sky, nor anything else that's said on 'em, good or bad. well, swithin, the boy, was sent to the grammar school, as i say for; but what with having two stations of life in his blood he's good for nothing, my lady. he mopes about--sometimes here, and sometimes there; nobody troubles about en.' lady constantine thanked her informant, and proceeded onward. to her, as a woman, the most curious feature in the afternoon's incident was that this lad, of striking beauty, scientific attainments, and cultivated bearing, should be linked, on the maternal side, with a local agricultural family through his father's matrimonial eccentricity. a more attractive feature in the case was that the same youth, so capable of being ruined by flattery, blandishment, pleasure, even gross prosperity, should be at present living on in a primitive eden of unconsciousness, with aims towards whose accomplishment a caliban shape would have been as effective as his own. ii swithin st. cleeve lingered on at his post, until the more sanguine birds of the plantation, already recovering from their midwinter anxieties, piped a short evening hymn to the vanishing sun. the landscape was gently concave; with the exception of tower and hill there were no points on which late rays might linger; and hence the dish- shaped ninety acres of tilled land assumed a uniform hue of shade quite suddenly. the one or two stars that appeared were quickly clouded over, and it was soon obvious that there would be no sweeping the heavens that night. after tying a piece of tarpaulin, which had once seen service on his maternal grandfather's farm, over all the apparatus around him, he went down the stairs in the dark, and locked the door. with the key in his pocket he descended through the underwood on the side of the slope opposite to that trodden by lady constantine, and crossed the field in a line mathematically straight, and in a manner that left no traces, by keeping in the same furrow all the way on tiptoe. in a few minutes he reached a little dell, which occurred quite unexpectedly on the other side of the field-fence, and descended to a venerable thatched house, whose enormous roof, broken up by dormers as big as haycocks, could be seen even in the twilight. over the white walls, built of chalk in the lump, outlines of creepers formed dark patterns, as if drawn in charcoal. inside the house his maternal grandmother was sitting by a wood fire. before it stood a pipkin, in which something was evidently kept warm. an eight-legged oak table in the middle of the room was laid for a meal. this woman of eighty, in a large mob cap, under which she wore a little cap to keep the other clean, retained faculties but little blunted. she was gazing into the flames, with her hands upon her knees, quietly re- enacting in her brain certain of the long chain of episodes, pathetic, tragical, and humorous, which had constituted the parish history for the last sixty years. on swithin's entry she looked up at him in a sideway direction. 'you should not have waited for me, granny,' he said. ''tis of no account, my child. i've had a nap while sitting here. yes, i've had a nap, and went straight up into my old country again, as usual. the place was as natural as when i left it,--e'en just threescore years ago! all the folks and my old aunt were there, as when i was a child,--yet i suppose if i were really to set out and go there, hardly a soul would be left alive to say to me, dog how art! but tell hannah to stir her stumps and serve supper--though i'd fain do it myself, the poor old soul is getting so unhandy!' hannah revealed herself to be much nimbler and several years younger than granny, though of this the latter seemed to be oblivious. when the meal was nearly over mrs. martin produced the contents of the mysterious vessel by the fire, saying that she had caused it to be brought in from the back kitchen, because hannah was hardly to be trusted with such things, she was becoming so childish. 'what is it, then?' said swithin. 'oh, one of your special puddings.' at sight of it, however, he added reproachfully, 'now, granny!' instead of being round, it was in shape an irregular boulder that had been exposed to the weather for centuries--a little scrap pared off here, and a little piece broken away there; the general aim being, nevertheless, to avoid destroying the symmetry of the pudding while taking as much as possible of its substance. 'the fact is,' added swithin, 'the pudding is half gone!' 'i've only sliced off the merest paring once or twice, to taste if it was well done!' pleaded granny martin, with wounded feelings. 'i said to hannah when she took it up, "put it here to keep it warm, as there's a better fire than in the back kitchen."' 'well, i am not going to eat any of it!' said swithin decisively, as he rose from the table, pushed away his chair, and went up-stairs; the 'other station of life that was in his blood,' and which had been brought out by the grammar school, probably stimulating him. 'ah, the world is an ungrateful place! 'twas a pity i didn't take my poor name off this earthly calendar and creep under ground sixty long years ago, instead of leaving my own county to come here!' mourned old mrs. martin. 'but i told his mother how 'twould be--marrying so many notches above her. the child was sure to chaw high, like his father!' when swithin had been up-stairs a minute or two however, he altered his mind, and coming down again ate all the pudding, with the aspect of a person undertaking a deed of great magnanimity. the relish with which he did so restored the unison that knew no more serious interruptions than such as this. 'mr. torkingham has been here this afternoon,' said his grandmother; 'and he wants me to let him meet some of the choir here to-night for practice. they who live at this end of the parish won't go to his house to try over the tunes, because 'tis so far, they say, and so 'tis, poor men. so he's going to see what coming to them will do. he asks if you would like to join.' 'i would if i had not so much to do.' 'but it is cloudy to-night.' 'yes; but i have calculations without end, granny. now, don't you tell him i'm in the house, will you? and then he'll not ask for me.' 'but if he should, must i then tell a lie, lord forgive me?' 'no, you can say i'm up-stairs; he must think what he likes. not a word about the astronomy to any of them, whatever you do. i should be called a visionary, and all sorts.' 'so thou beest, child. why can't ye do something that's of use?' at the sound of footsteps swithin beat a hasty retreat up-stairs, where he struck a light, and revealed a table covered with books and papers, while round the walls hung star-maps, and other diagrams illustrative of celestial phenomena. in a corner stood a huge pasteboard tube, which a close inspection would have shown to be intended for a telescope. swithin hung a thick cloth over the window, in addition to the curtains, and sat down to his papers. on the ceiling was a black stain of smoke, and under this he placed his lamp, evidencing that the midnight oil was consumed on that precise spot very often. meanwhile there had entered to the room below a personage who, to judge from her voice and the quick pit-pat of her feet, was a maiden young and blithe. mrs. martin welcomed her by the title of miss tabitha lark, and inquired what wind had brought her that way; to which the visitor replied that she had come for the singing. 'sit ye down, then,' said granny. 'and do you still go to the house to read to my lady?' 'yes, i go and read, mrs. martin; but as to getting my lady to hearken, that's more than a team of six horses could force her to do.' the girl had a remarkably smart and fluent utterance, which was probably a cause, or a consequence, of her vocation. ''tis the same story, then?' said grandmother martin. 'yes. eaten out with listlessness. she's neither sick nor sorry, but how dull and dreary she is, only herself can tell. when i get there in the morning, there she is sitting up in bed, for my lady don't care to get up; and then she makes me bring this book and that book, till the bed is heaped up with immense volumes that half bury her, making her look, as she leans upon her elbow, like the stoning of stephen. she yawns; then she looks towards the tall glass; then she looks out at the weather, mooning her great black eyes, and fixing them on the sky as if they stuck there, while my tongue goes flick-flack along, a hundred and fifty words a minute; then she looks at the clock; then she asks me what i've been reading.' 'ah, poor soul!' said granny. 'no doubt she says in the morning, "would god it were evening," and in the evening, "would god it were morning," like the disobedient woman in deuteronomy.' swithin, in the room overhead, had suspended his calculations, for the duologue interested him. there now crunched heavier steps outside the door, and his grandmother could be heard greeting sundry local representatives of the bass and tenor voice, who lent a cheerful and well- known personality to the names sammy blore, nat chapman, hezekiah biles, and haymoss fry (the latter being one with whom the reader has already a distant acquaintance); besides these came small producers of treble, who had not yet developed into such distinctive units of society as to require particularizing. 'is the good man come?' asked nat chapman. 'no,--i see we be here afore him. and how is it with aged women to-night, mrs. martin?' 'tedious traipsing enough with this one, nat. sit ye down. well, little freddy, you don't wish in the morning that 'twere evening, and at evening that 'twere morning again, do you, freddy, trust ye for it?' 'now, who might wish such a thing as that, mrs martin?--nobody in this parish?' asked sammy blore curiously. 'my lady is always wishing it,' spoke up miss tabitha lark. 'oh, she! nobody can be answerable for the wishes of that onnatural tribe of mankind. not but that the woman's heart-strings is tried in many aggravating ways.' 'ah, poor woman!' said granny. 'the state she finds herself in--neither maid, wife, nor widow, as you may say--is not the primest form of life for keeping in good spirits. how long is it since she has heard from sir blount, tabitha?' 'two years and more,' said the young woman. 'he went into one side of africa, as it might be, three st. martin's days back. i can mind it, because 'twas my birthday. and he meant to come out the other side. but he didn't. he has never come out at all.' 'for all the world like losing a rat in a barley-mow,' said hezekiah. 'he's lost, though you know where he is.' his comrades nodded. 'ay, my lady is a walking weariness. i seed her yawn just at the very moment when the fox was halloaed away by lornton copse, and the hounds runned en all but past her carriage wheels. if i were she i'd see a little life; though there's no fair, club-walking, nor feast to speak of, till easter week,--that's true.' 'she dares not. she's under solemn oath to do no such thing.' 'be cust if i would keep any such oath! but here's the pa'son, if my ears don't deceive me.' there was a noise of horse's hoofs without, a stumbling against the door- scraper, a tethering to the window-shutter, a creaking of the door on its hinges, and a voice which swithin recognized as mr. torkingham's. he greeted each of the previous arrivals by name, and stated that he was glad to see them all so punctually assembled. 'ay, sir,' said haymoss fry. ''tis only my jints that have kept me from assembling myself long ago. i'd assemble upon the top of welland steeple, if 'tweren't for my jints. i assure ye, pa'son tarkenham, that in the clitch o' my knees, where the rain used to come through when i was cutting clots for the new lawn, in old my lady's time, 'tis as if rats wez gnawing, every now and then. when a feller's young he's too small in the brain to see how soon a constitution can be squandered, worse luck!' 'true,' said biles, to fill the time while the parson was engaged in finding the psalms. 'a man's a fool till he's forty. often have i thought, when hay-pitching, and the small of my back seeming no stouter than a harnet's, "the devil send that i had but the making of labouring men for a twelvemonth!" i'd gie every man jack two good backbones, even if the alteration was as wrong as forgery.' 'four,--four backbones,' said haymoss, decisively. 'yes, four,' threw in sammy blore, with additional weight of experience. 'for you want one in front for breast-ploughing and such like, one at the right side for ground-dressing, and one at the left side for turning mixens.' 'well; then next i'd move every man's wyndpipe a good span away from his glutchpipe, so that at harvest time he could fetch breath in 's drinking, without being choked and strangled as he is now. thinks i, when i feel the victuals going--' 'now, we'll begin,' interrupted mr. torkingham, his mind returning to this world again on concluding his search for a hymn. thereupon the racket of chair-legs on the floor signified that they were settling into their seats,--a disturbance which swithin took advantage of by going on tiptoe across the floor above, and putting sheets of paper over knot-holes in the boarding at points where carpet was lacking, that his lamp-light might not shine down. the absence of a ceiling beneath rendered his position virtually that of one suspended in the same apartment. the parson announced the tune, and his voice burst forth with 'onward, christian soldiers!' in notes of rigid cheerfulness. in this start, however, he was joined only by the girls and boys, the men furnishing but an accompaniment of ahas and hems. mr. torkingham stopped, and sammy blore spoke,-- 'beg your pardon, sir,--if you'll deal mild with us a moment. what with the wind and walking, my throat's as rough as a grater; and not knowing you were going to hit up that minute, i hadn't hawked, and i don't think hezzy and nat had, either,--had ye, souls?' 'i hadn't got thorough ready, that's true,' said hezekiah. 'quite right of you, then, to speak,' said mr. torkingham. 'don't mind explaining; we are here for practice. now clear your throats, then, and at it again.' there was a noise as of atmospheric hoes and scrapers, and the bass contingent at last got under way with a time of its own: 'honwerd, christen sojers!' 'ah, that's where we are so defective--the pronunciation,' interrupted the parson. 'now repeat after me: "on-ward, christ-ian, sol-diers."' the choir repeated like an exaggerative echo: 'on-wed, chris-ting, sol- jaws!' 'better!' said the parson, in the strenuously sanguine tones of a man who got his living by discovering a bright side in things where it was not very perceptible to other people. 'but it should not be given with quite so extreme an accent; or we may be called affected by other parishes. and, nathaniel chapman, there's a jauntiness in your manner of singing which is not quite becoming. why don't you sing more earnestly?' 'my conscience won't let me, sir. they say every man for himself: but, thank god, i'm not so mean as to lessen old fokes' chances by being earnest at my time o' life, and they so much nearer the need o't.' 'it's bad reasoning, nat, i fear. now, perhaps we had better sol-fa the tune. eyes on your books, please. sol-sol! fa-fa! mi--' 'i can't sing like that, not i!' said sammy blore, with condemnatory astonishment. 'i can sing genuine music, like f and g; but not anything so much out of the order of nater as that.' 'perhaps you've brought the wrong book, sir?' chimed in haymoss, kindly. 'i've knowed music early in life and late,--in short, ever since luke sneap broke his new fiddle-bow in the wedding psalm, when pa'son wilton brought home his bride (you can mind the time, sammy?--when we sung "his wife, like a fair fertile vine, her lovely fruit shall bring," when the young woman turned as red as a rose, not knowing 'twas coming). i've knowed music ever since then, i say, sir, and never heard the like o' that. every martel note had his name of a, b, c, at that time.' 'yes, yes, men; but this is a more recent system!' 'still, you can't alter a old-established note that's a or b by nater,' rejoined haymoss, with yet deeper conviction that mr. torkingham was getting off his head. 'now sound a, neighbour sammy, and let's have a slap at christen sojers again, and show the pa'son the true way!' sammy produced a private tuning-fork, black and grimy, which, being about seventy years of age, and wrought before pianoforte builders had sent up the pitch to make their instruments brilliant, was nearly a note flatter than the parson's. while an argument as to the true pitch was in progress, there came a knocking without. 'somebody's at the door!' said a little treble girl. 'thought i heard a knock before!' said the relieved choir. the latch was lifted, and a man asked from the darkness, 'is mr. torkingham here?' 'yes, mills. what do you want?' it was the parson's man. 'oh, if you please,' said mills, showing an advanced margin of himself round the door, 'lady constantine wants to see you very particular, sir, and could you call on her after dinner, if you ben't engaged with poor fokes? she's just had a letter,--so they say,--and it's about that, i believe.' finding, on looking at his watch, that it was necessary to start at once if he meant to see her that night, the parson cut short the practising, and, naming another night for meeting, he withdrew. all the singers assisted him on to his cob, and watched him till he disappeared over the edge of the bottom. iii mr. torkingham trotted briskly onward to his house, a distance of about a mile, each cottage, as it revealed its half-buried position by its single light, appearing like a one-eyed night creature watching him from an ambush. leaving his horse at the parsonage he performed the remainder of the journey on foot, crossing the park towards welland house by a stile and path, till he struck into the drive near the north door of the mansion. this drive, it may be remarked, was also the common highway to the lower village, and hence lady constantine's residence and park, as is occasionally the case with old-fashioned manors, possessed none of the exclusiveness found in some aristocratic settlements. the parishioners looked upon the park avenue as their natural thoroughfare, particularly for christenings, weddings, and funerals, which passed the squire's mansion with due considerations as to the scenic effect of the same from the manor windows. hence the house of constantine, when going out from its breakfast, had been continually crossed on the doorstep for the last two hundred years by the houses of hodge and giles in full cry to dinner. at present these collisions were but too infrequent, for though the villagers passed the north front door as regularly as ever, they seldom met a constantine. only one was there to be met, and she had no zest for outings before noon. the long, low front of the great house, as it was called by the parish, stretching from end to end of the terrace, was in darkness as the vicar slackened his pace before it, and only the distant fall of water disturbed the stillness of the manorial precincts. on gaining admittance he found lady constantine waiting to receive him. she wore a heavy dress of velvet and lace, and being the only person in the spacious apartment she looked small and isolated. in her left hand she held a letter and a couple of at-home cards. the soft dark eyes which she raised to him as he entered--large, and melancholy by circumstance far more than by quality--were the natural indices of a warm and affectionate, perhaps slightly voluptuous temperament, languishing for want of something to do, cherish, or suffer for. mr. torkingham seated himself. his boots, which had seemed elegant in the farm-house, appeared rather clumsy here, and his coat, that was a model of tailoring when he stood amid the choir, now exhibited decidedly strained relations with his limbs. three years had passed since his induction to the living of welland, but he had never as yet found means to establish that reciprocity with lady constantine which usually grows up, in the course of time, between parsonage and manor-house,--unless, indeed, either side should surprise the other by showing respectively a weakness for awkward modern ideas on landownership, or on church formulas, which had not been the case here. the present meeting, however, seemed likely to initiate such a reciprocity. there was an appearance of confidence on lady constantine's face; she said she was so very glad that he had come, and looking down at the letter in her hand was on the point of pulling it from its envelope; but she did not. after a moment she went on more quickly: 'i wanted your advice, or rather your opinion, on a serious matter,--on a point of conscience.' saying which she laid down the letter and looked at the cards. it might have been apparent to a more penetrating eye than the vicar's that lady constantine, either from timidity, misgiving, or reconviction, had swerved from her intended communication, or perhaps decided to begin at the other end. the parson, who had been expecting a question on some local business or intelligence, at the tenor of her words altered his face to the higher branch of his profession. 'i hope i may find myself of service, on that or any other question,' he said gently. 'i hope so. you may possibly be aware, mr. torkingham, that my husband, sir blount constantine, was, not to mince matters, a mistaken--somewhat jealous man. yet you may hardly have discerned it in the short time you knew him.' 'i had some little knowledge of sir blount's character in that respect.' 'well, on this account my married life with him was not of the most comfortable kind.' (lady constantine's voice dropped to a more pathetic note.) 'i am sure i gave him no cause for suspicion; though had i known his disposition sooner i should hardly have dared to marry him. but his jealousy and doubt of me were not so strong as to divert him from a purpose of his,--a mania for african lion-hunting, which he dignified by calling it a scheme of geographical discovery; for he was inordinately anxious to make a name for himself in that field. it was the one passion that was stronger than his mistrust of me. before going away he sat down with me in this room, and read me a lecture, which resulted in a very rash offer on my part. when i tell it to you, you will find that it provides a key to all that is unusual in my life here. he bade me consider what my position would be when he was gone; hoped that i should remember what was due to him,--that i would not so behave towards other men as to bring the name of constantine into suspicion; and charged me to avoid levity of conduct in attending any ball, rout, or dinner to which i might be invited. i, in some contempt for his low opinion of me, volunteered, there and then, to live like a cloistered nun during his absence; to go into no society whatever,--scarce even to a neighbour's dinner-party; and demanded bitterly if that would satisfy him. he said yes, held me to my word, and gave me no loophole for retracting it. the inevitable fruits of precipitancy have resulted to me: my life has become a burden. i get such invitations as these' (holding up the cards), 'but i so invariably refuse them that they are getting very rare. . . . i ask you, can i honestly break that promise to my husband?' mr. torkingham seemed embarrassed. 'if you promised sir blount constantine to live in solitude till he comes back, you are, it seems to me, bound by that promise. i fear that the wish to be released from your engagement is to some extent a reason why it should be kept. but your own conscience would surely be the best guide, lady constantine?' 'my conscience is quite bewildered with its responsibilities,' she continued, with a sigh. 'yet it certainly does sometimes say to me that--that i ought to keep my word. very well; i must go on as i am going, i suppose.' 'if you respect a vow, i think you must respect your own,' said the parson, acquiring some further firmness. 'had it been wrung from you by compulsion, moral or physical, it would have been open to you to break it. but as you proposed a vow when your husband only required a good intention, i think you ought to adhere to it; or what is the pride worth that led you to offer it?' 'very well,' she said, with resignation. 'but it was quite a work of supererogation on my part.' 'that you proposed it in a supererogatory spirit does not lessen your obligation, having once put yourself under that obligation. st. paul, in his epistle to the hebrews, says, "an oath for confirmation is an end of all strife." and you will readily recall the words of ecclesiastes, "pay that which thou hast vowed. better is it that thou shouldest not vow than that thou shouldest vow and not pay." why not write to sir blount, tell him the inconvenience of such a bond, and ask him to release you?' 'no; never will i. the expression of such a desire would, in his mind, be a sufficient reason for disallowing it. i'll keep my word.' mr. torkingham rose to leave. after she had held out her hand to him, when he had crossed the room, and was within two steps of the door, she said, 'mr. torkingham.' he stopped. 'what i have told you is only the least part of what i sent for you to tell you.' mr. torkingham walked back to her side. 'what is the rest of it, then?' he asked, with grave surprise. 'it is a true revelation, as far as it goes; but there is something more. i have received this letter, and i wanted to say--something.' 'then say it now, my dear lady.' 'no,' she answered, with a look of utter inability. 'i cannot speak of it now! some other time. don't stay. please consider this conversation as private. good-night.' iv it was a bright starlight night, a week or ten days later. there had been several such nights since the occasion of lady constantine's promise to swithin st. cleeve to come and study astronomical phenomena on the rings-hill column; but she had not gone there. this evening she sat at a window, the blind of which had not been drawn down. her elbow rested on a little table, and her cheek on her hand. her eyes were attracted by the brightness of the planet jupiter, as he rode in the ecliptic opposite, beaming down upon her as if desirous of notice. beneath the planet could be still discerned the dark edges of the park landscape against the sky. as one of its features, though nearly screened by the trees which had been planted to shut out the fallow tracts of the estate, rose the upper part of the column. it was hardly visible now, even if visible at all; yet lady constantine knew from daytime experience its exact bearing from the window at which she leaned. the knowledge that there it still was, despite its rapid envelopment by the shades, led her lonely mind to her late meeting on its summit with the young astronomer, and to her promise to honour him with a visit for learning some secrets about the scintillating bodies overhead. the curious juxtaposition of youthful ardour and old despair that she had found in the lad would have made him interesting to a woman of perception, apart from his fair hair and early-christian face. but such is the heightening touch of memory that his beauty was probably richer in her imagination than in the real. it was a moot point to consider whether the temptations that would be brought to bear upon him in his course would exceed the staying power of his nature. had he been a wealthy youth he would have seemed one to tremble for. in spite of his attractive ambitions and gentlemanly bearing, she thought it would possibly be better for him if he never became known outside his lonely tower,--forgetting that he had received such intellectual enlargement as would probably make his continuance in welland seem, in his own eye, a slight upon his father's branch of his family, whose social standing had been, only a few years earlier, but little removed from her own. suddenly she flung a cloak about her and went out on the terrace. she passed down the steps to the lower lawn, through the door to the open park, and there stood still. the tower was now discernible. as the words in which a thought is expressed develop a further thought, so did the fact of her having got so far influence her to go further. a person who had casually observed her gait would have thought it irregular; and the lessenings and increasings of speed with which she proceeded in the direction of the pillar could be accounted for only by a motive much more disturbing than an intention to look through a telescope. thus she went on, till, leaving the park, she crossed the turnpike-road, and entered the large field, in the middle of which the fir-clad hill stood like mont st. michel in its bay. the stars were so bright as distinctly to show her the place, and now she could see a faint light at the top of the column, which rose like a shadowy finger pointing to the upper constellations. there was no wind, in a human sense; but a steady stertorous breathing from the fir-trees showed that, now as always, there was movement in apparent stagnation. nothing but an absolute vacuum could paralyze their utterance. the door of the tower was shut. it was something more than the freakishness which is engendered by a sickening monotony that had led lady constantine thus far, and hence she made no ado about admitting herself. three years ago, when her every action was a thing of propriety, she had known of no possible purpose which could have led her abroad in a manner such as this. she ascended the tower noiselessly. on raising her head above the hatchway she beheld swithin bending over a scroll of paper which lay on the little table beside him. the small lantern that illuminated it showed also that he was warmly wrapped up in a coat and thick cap, behind him standing the telescope on its frame. what was he doing? she looked over his shoulder upon the paper, and saw figures and signs. when he had jotted down something he went to the telescope again. 'what are you doing to-night?' she said in a low voice. swithin started, and turned. the faint lamp-light was sufficient to reveal her face to him. 'tedious work, lady constantine,' he answered, without betraying much surprise. 'doing my best to watch phenomenal stars, as i may call them.' 'you said you would show me the heavens if i could come on a starlight night. i have come.' swithin, as a preliminary, swept round the telescope to jupiter, and exhibited to her the glory of that orb. then he directed the instrument to the less bright shape of saturn. 'here,' he said, warming up to the subject, 'we see a world which is to my mind by far the most wonderful in the solar system. think of streams of satellites or meteors racing round and round the planet like a fly- wheel, so close together as to seem solid matter!' he entered further and further into the subject, his ideas gathering momentum as he went on, like his pet heavenly bodies. when he paused for breath she said, in tones very different from his own, 'i ought now to tell you that, though i am interested in the stars, they were not what i came to see you about. . . . i first thought of disclosing the matter to mr. torkingham; but i altered my mind, and decided on you.' she spoke in so low a voice that he might not have heard her. at all events, abstracted by his grand theme, he did not heed her. he continued,-- 'well, we will get outside the solar system altogether,--leave the whole group of sun, primary and secondary planets quite behind us in our flight, as a bird might leave its bush and sweep into the whole forest. now what do you see, lady constantine?' he levelled the achromatic at sirius. she said that she saw a bright star, though it only seemed a point of light now as before. 'that's because it is so distant that no magnifying will bring its size up to zero. though called a fixed star, it is, like all fixed stars, moving with inconceivable velocity; but no magnifying will show that velocity as anything but rest.' and thus they talked on about sirius, and then about other stars . . . in the scrowl of all those beasts, and fish, and fowl, with which, like indian plantations, the learned stock the constellations, till he asked her how many stars she thought were visible to them at that moment. she looked around over the magnificent stretch of sky that their high position unfolded. 'oh, thousands, hundreds of thousands,' she said absently. 'no. there are only about three thousand. now, how many do you think are brought within sight by the help of a powerful telescope?' 'i won't guess.' 'twenty millions. so that, whatever the stars were made for, they were not made to please our eyes. it is just the same in everything; nothing is made for man.' 'is it that notion which makes you so sad for your age?' she asked, with almost maternal solicitude. 'i think astronomy is a bad study for you. it makes you feel human insignificance too plainly.' 'perhaps it does. however,' he added more cheerfully, 'though i feel the study to be one almost tragic in its quality, i hope to be the new copernicus. what he was to the solar system i aim to be to the systems beyond.' then, by means of the instrument at hand, they travelled together from the earth to uranus and the mysterious outskirts of the solar system; from the solar system to a star in the swan, the nearest fixed star in the northern sky; from the star in the swan to remoter stars; thence to the remotest visible; till the ghastly chasm which they had bridged by a fragile line of sight was realized by lady constantine. 'we are now traversing distances beside which the immense line stretching from the earth to the sun is but an invisible point,' said the youth. 'when, just now, we had reached a planet whose remoteness is a hundred times the remoteness of the sun from the earth, we were only a two thousandth part of the journey to the spot at which we have optically arrived now.' 'oh, pray don't; it overpowers me!' she replied, not without seriousness. 'it makes me feel that it is not worth while to live; it quite annihilates me.' 'if it annihilates your ladyship to roam over these yawning spaces just once, think how it must annihilate me to be, as it were, in constant suspension amid them night after night.' 'yes. . . . it was not really this subject that i came to see you upon, mr. st. cleeve,' she began a second time. 'it was a personal matter.' 'i am listening, lady constantine.' 'i will tell it you. yet no,--not this moment. let us finish this grand subject first; it dwarfs mine.' it would have been difficult to judge from her accents whether she were afraid to broach her own matter, or really interested in his. or a certain youthful pride that he evidenced at being the elucidator of such a large theme, and at having drawn her there to hear and observe it, may have inclined her to indulge him for kindness' sake. thereupon he took exception to her use of the word 'grand' as descriptive of the actual universe: 'the imaginary picture of the sky as the concavity of a dome whose base extends from horizon to horizon of our earth is grand, simply grand, and i wish i had never got beyond looking at it in that way. but the actual sky is a horror.' 'a new view of our old friends, the stars,' she said, smiling up at them. 'but such an obviously true one!' said the young man. 'you would hardly think, at first, that horrid monsters lie up there waiting to be discovered by any moderately penetrating mind--monsters to which those of the oceans bear no sort of comparison.' 'what monsters may they be?' 'impersonal monsters, namely, immensities. until a person has thought out the stars and their inter-spaces, he has hardly learnt that there are things much more terrible than monsters of shape, namely, monsters of magnitude without known shape. such monsters are the voids and waste places of the sky. look, for instance, at those pieces of darkness in the milky way,' he went on, pointing with his finger to where the galaxy stretched across over their heads with the luminousness of a frosted web. 'you see that dark opening in it near the swan? there is a still more remarkable one south of the equator, called the coal sack, as a sort of nickname that has a farcical force from its very inadequacy. in these our sight plunges quite beyond any twinkler we have yet visited. those are deep wells for the human mind to let itself down into, leave alone the human body! and think of the side caverns and secondary abysses to right and left as you pass on!' lady constantine was heedful and silent. he tried to give her yet another idea of the size of the universe; never was there a more ardent endeavour to bring down the immeasurable to human comprehension! by figures of speech and apt comparisons he took her mind into leading-strings, compelling her to follow him into wildernesses of which she had never in her life even realized the existence. 'there is a size at which dignity begins,' he exclaimed; 'further on there is a size at which grandeur begins; further on there is a size at which solemnity begins; further on, a size at which awfulness begins; further on, a size at which ghastliness begins. that size faintly approaches the size of the stellar universe. so am i not right in saying that those minds who exert their imaginative powers to bury themselves in the depths of that universe merely strain their faculties to gain a new horror?' standing, as she stood, in the presence of the stellar universe, under the very eyes of the constellations, lady constantine apprehended something of the earnest youth's argument. 'and to add a new weirdness to what the sky possesses in its size and formlessness, there is involved the quality of decay. for all the wonder of these everlasting stars, eternal spheres, and what not, they are not everlasting, they are not eternal; they burn out like candles. you see that dying one in the body of the greater bear? two centuries ago it was as bright as the others. the senses may become terrified by plunging among them as they are, but there is a pitifulness even in their glory. imagine them all extinguished, and your mind feeling its way through a heaven of total darkness, occasionally striking against the black, invisible cinders of those stars. . . . if you are cheerful, and wish to remain so, leave the study of astronomy alone. of all the sciences, it alone deserves the character of the terrible.' 'i am not altogether cheerful.' 'then if, on the other hand, you are restless and anxious about the future, study astronomy at once. your troubles will be reduced amazingly. but your study will reduce them in a singular way, by reducing the importance of everything. so that the science is still terrible, even as a panacea. it is quite impossible to think at all adequately of the sky--of what the sky substantially is, without feeling it as a juxtaposed nightmare. it is better--far better--for men to forget the universe than to bear it clearly in mind! . . . but you say the universe was not really what you came to see me about. what was it, may i ask, lady constantine?' she mused, and sighed, and turned to him with something pathetic in her. 'the immensity of the subject you have engaged me on has completely crushed my subject out of me! yours is celestial; mine lamentably human! and the less must give way to the greater.' 'but is it, in a human sense, and apart from macrocosmic magnitudes, important?' he inquired, at last attracted by her manner; for he began to perceive, in spite of his prepossession, that she had really something on her mind. 'it is as important as personal troubles usually are.' notwithstanding her preconceived notion of coming to swithin as employer to dependant, as _chatelaine_ to page, she was falling into confidential intercourse with him. his vast and romantic endeavours lent him a personal force and charm which she could not but apprehend. in the presence of the immensities that his young mind had, as it were, brought down from above to hers, they became unconsciously equal. there was, moreover, an inborn liking in lady constantine to dwell less on her permanent position as a county lady than on her passing emotions as a woman. 'i will postpone the matter i came to charge you with,' she resumed, smiling. 'i must reconsider it. now i will return.' 'allow me to show you out through the trees and across the fields?' she said neither a distinct yes nor no; and, descending the tower, they threaded the firs and crossed the ploughed field. by an odd coincidence he remarked, when they drew near the great house-- 'you may possibly be interested in knowing, lady constantine, that that medium-sized star you see over there, low down in the south, is precisely over sir blount constantine's head in the middle of africa.' 'how very strange that you should have said so!' she answered. 'you have broached for me the very subject i had come to speak of.' 'on a domestic matter?' he said, with surprise. 'yes. what a small matter it seems now, after our astronomical stupendousness! and yet on my way to you it so far transcended the ordinary matters of my life as the subject you have led me up to transcends this. but,' with a little laugh, 'i will endeavour to sink down to such ephemeral trivialities as human tragedy, and explain, since i have come. the point is, i want a helper: no woman ever wanted one more. for days i have wanted a trusty friend who could go on a secret errand for me. it is necessary that my messenger should be educated, should be intelligent, should be silent as the grave. do you give me your solemn promise as to the last point, if i confide in you?' 'most emphatically, lady constantine.' 'your right hand upon the compact.' he gave his hand, and raised hers to his lips. in addition to his respect for her as the lady of the manor, there was the admiration of twenty years for twenty-eight or nine in such relations. 'i trust you,' she said. 'now, beyond the above conditions, it was specially necessary that my agent should have known sir blount constantine well by sight when he was at home. for the errand is concerning my husband; i am much disturbed at what i have heard about him.' 'i am indeed sorry to know it.' 'there are only two people in the parish who fulfil all the conditions,--mr. torkingham, and yourself. i sent for mr. torkingham, and he came. i could not tell him. i felt at the last moment that he wouldn't do. i have come to you because i think you will do. this is it: my husband has led me and all the world to believe that he is in africa, hunting lions. i have had a mysterious letter informing me that he has been seen in london, in very peculiar circumstances. the truth of this i want ascertained. will you go on the journey?' 'personally, i would go to the end of the world for you, lady constantine; but--' 'no buts!' 'how can i leave?' 'why not?' 'i am preparing a work on variable stars. there is one of these which i have exceptionally observed for several months, and on this my great theory is mainly based. it has been hitherto called irregular; but i have detected a periodicity in its so-called irregularities which, if proved, would add some very valuable facts to those known on this subject, one of the most interesting, perplexing, and suggestive in the whole field of astronomy. now, to clinch my theory, there should be a sudden variation this week,--or at latest next week,--and i have to watch every night not to let it pass. you see my reason for declining, lady constantine.' 'young men are always so selfish!' she said. 'it might ruin the whole of my year's labour if i leave now!' returned the youth, greatly hurt. 'could you not wait a fortnight longer?' 'no,--no. don't think that i have asked you, pray. i have no wish to inconvenience you.' 'lady constantine, don't be angry with me! will you do this,--watch the star for me while i am gone? if you are prepared to do it effectually, i will go.' 'will it be much trouble?' 'it will be some trouble. you would have to come here every clear evening about nine. if the sky were not clear, then you would have to come at four in the morning, should the clouds have dispersed.' 'could not the telescope be brought to my house?' swithin shook his head. 'perhaps you did not observe its real size,--that it was fixed to a frame- work? i could not afford to buy an equatorial, and i have been obliged to rig up an apparatus of my own devising, so as to make it in some measure answer the purpose of an equatorial. it _could_ be moved, but i would rather not touch it.' 'well, i'll go to the telescope,' she went on, with an emphasis that was not wholly playful. 'you are the most ungallant youth i ever met with; but i suppose i must set that down to science. yes, i'll go to the tower at nine every night.' 'and alone? i should prefer to keep my pursuits there unknown.' 'and alone,' she answered, quite overborne by his inflexibility. 'you will not miss the morning observation, if it should be necessary?' 'i have given my word.' 'and i give mine. i suppose i ought not to have been so exacting!' he spoke with that sudden emotional sense of his own insignificance which made these alternations of mood possible. 'i will go anywhere--do anything for you--this moment--to-morrow or at any time. but you must return with me to the tower, and let me show you the observing process.' they retraced their steps, the tender hoar-frost taking the imprint of their feet, while two stars in the twins looked down upon their two persons through the trees, as if those two persons could bear some sort of comparison with them. on the tower the instructions were given. when all was over, and he was again conducting her to the great house she said-- 'when can you start?' 'now,' said swithin. 'so much the better. you shall go up by the night mail.' v on the third morning after the young man's departure lady constantine opened the post-bag anxiously. though she had risen before four o'clock, and crossed to the tower through the gray half-light when every blade and twig were furred with rime, she felt no languor. expectation could banish at cock-crow the eye-heaviness which apathy had been unable to disperse all the day long. there was, as she had hoped, a letter from swithin st. cleeve. 'dear lady constantine,--i have quite succeeded in my mission, and shall return to-morrow at p.m. i hope you have not failed in the observations. watching the star through an opera-glass sunday night, i fancied some change had taken place, but i could not make myself sure. your memoranda for that night i await with impatience. please don't neglect to write down _at the moment_, all remarkable appearances both as to colour and intensity; and be very exact as to time, which correct in the way i showed you.--i am, dear lady constantine, yours most faithfully, swithin st. cleeve.' not another word in the letter about his errand; his mind ran on nothing but this astronomical subject. he had succeeded in his mission, and yet he did not even say yes or no to the great question,--whether or not her husband was masquerading in london at the address she had given. 'was ever anything so provoking!' she cried. however, the time was not long to wait. his way homeward would lie within a stone's-throw of the manor-house, and though for certain reasons she had forbidden him to call at the late hour of his arrival, she could easily intercept him in the avenue. at twenty minutes past ten she went out into the drive, and stood in the dark. seven minutes later she heard his footstep, and saw his outline in the slit of light between the avenue- trees. he had a valise in one hand, a great-coat on his arm, and under his arm a parcel which seemed to be very precious, from the manner in which he held it. 'lady constantine?' he asked softly. 'yes,' she said, in her excitement holding out both her hands, though he had plainly not expected her to offer one. 'did you watch the star?' 'i'll tell you everything in detail; but, pray, your errand first!' 'yes, it's all right. did you watch every night, not missing one?' 'i forgot to go--twice,' she murmured contritely. 'oh, lady constantine!' he cried in dismay. 'how could you serve me so! what shall i do?' 'please forgive me! indeed, i could not help it. i had watched and watched, and nothing happened; and somehow my vigilance relaxed when i found nothing was likely to take place in the star.' 'but the very circumstance of it not having happened, made it all the more likely every day.' 'have you--seen--' she began imploringly. swithin sighed, lowered his thoughts to sublunary things, and told briefly the story of his journey. sir blount constantine was not in london at the address which had been anonymously sent her. it was a mistake of identity. the person who had been seen there swithin had sought out. he resembled sir blount strongly; but he was a stranger. 'how can i reward you!' she exclaimed, when he had done. 'in no way but by giving me your good wishes in what i am going to tell you on my own account.' he spoke in tones of mysterious exultation. 'this parcel is going to make my fame!' 'what is it?' 'a huge object-glass for the great telescope i am so busy about! such a magnificent aid to science has never entered this county before, you may depend.' he produced from under his arm the carefully cuddled-up package, which was in shape a round flat disk, like a dinner-plate, tied in paper. proceeding to explain his plans to her more fully, he walked with her towards the door by which she had emerged. it was a little side wicket through a wall dividing the open park from the garden terraces. here for a moment he placed his valise and parcel on the coping of the stone balustrade, till he had bidden her farewell. then he turned, and in laying hold of his bag by the dim light pushed the parcel over the parapet. it fell smash upon the paved walk ten or a dozen feet beneath. 'oh, good heavens!' he cried in anguish. 'what?' 'my object-glass broken!' 'is it of much value?' 'it cost all i possess!' he ran round by the steps to the lower lawn, lady constantine following, as he continued, 'it is a magnificent eight-inch first quality object lens! i took advantage of my journey to london to get it! i have been six weeks making the tube of milled board; and as i had not enough money by twelve pounds for the lens, i borrowed it of my grandmother out of her last annuity payment. what can be, can be done!' 'perhaps it is not broken.' he felt on the ground, found the parcel, and shook it. a clicking noise issued from inside. swithin smote his forehead with his hand, and walked up and down like a mad fellow. 'my telescope! i have waited nine months for this lens. now the possibility of setting up a really powerful instrument is over! it is too cruel--how could it happen! . . . lady constantine, i am ashamed of myself,--before you. oh, but, lady constantine, if you only knew what it is to a person engaged in science to have the means of clinching a theory snatched away at the last moment! it is i against the world; and when the world has accidents on its side in addition to its natural strength, what chance for me!' the young astronomer leant against the wall, and was silent. his misery was of an intensity and kind with that of palissy, in these struggles with an adverse fate. 'don't mind it,--pray don't!' said lady constantine. 'it is dreadfully unfortunate! you have my whole sympathy. can it be mended?' 'mended,--no, no!' 'cannot you do with your present one a little longer?' 'it is altogether inferior, cheap, and bad!' 'i'll get you another,--yes, indeed, i will! allow me to get you another as soon as possible. i'll do anything to assist you out of your trouble; for i am most anxious to see you famous. i know you will be a great astronomer, in spite of this mishap! come, say i may get a new one.' swithin took her hand. he could not trust himself to speak. * * * * * some days later a little box of peculiar kind came to the great house. it was addressed to lady constantine, 'with great care.' she had it partly opened and taken to her own little writing-room; and after lunch, when she had dressed for walking, she took from the box a paper parcel like the one which had met with the accident. this she hid under her mantle, as if she had stolen it; and, going out slowly across the lawn, passed through the little door before spoken of, and was soon hastening in the direction of the rings-hill column. there was a bright sun overhead on that afternoon of early spring, and its rays shed an unusual warmth on south-west aspects, though shady places still retained the look and feel of winter. rooks were already beginning to build new nests or to mend up old ones, and clamorously called in neighbours to give opinions on difficulties in their architecture. lady constantine swerved once from her path, as if she had decided to go to the homestead where swithin lived; but on second thoughts she bent her steps to the column. drawing near it she looked up; but by reason of the height of the parapet nobody could be seen thereon who did not stand on tiptoe. she thought, however, that her young friend might possibly see her, if he were there, and come down; and that he was there she soon ascertained by finding the door unlocked, and the key inside. no movement, however, reached her ears from above, and she began to ascend. meanwhile affairs at the top of the column had progressed as follows. the afternoon being exceptionally fine, swithin had ascended about two o'clock, and, seating himself at the little table which he had constructed on the spot, he began reading over his notes and examining some astronomical journals that had reached him in the morning. the sun blazed into the hollow roof-space as into a tub, and the sides kept out every breeze. though the month was february below it was may in the abacus of the column. this state of the atmosphere, and the fact that on the previous night he had pursued his observations till past two o'clock, produced in him at the end of half an hour an overpowering inclination to sleep. spreading on the lead-work a thick rug which he kept up there, he flung himself down against the parapet, and was soon in a state of unconsciousness. it was about ten minutes afterwards that a soft rustle of silken clothes came up the spiral staircase, and, hesitating onwards, reached the orifice, where appeared the form of lady constantine. she did not at first perceive that he was present, and stood still to reconnoitre. her eye glanced over his telescope, now wrapped up, his table and papers, his observing-chair, and his contrivances for making the best of a deficiency of instruments. all was warm, sunny, and silent, except that a solitary bee, which had somehow got within the hollow of the abacus, was singing round inquiringly, unable to discern that ascent was the only mode of escape. in another moment she beheld the astronomer, lying in the sun like a sailor in the main-top. lady constantine coughed slightly; he did not awake. she then entered, and, drawing the parcel from beneath her cloak, placed it on the table. after this she waited, looking for a long time at his sleeping face, which had a very interesting appearance. she seemed reluctant to leave, yet wanted resolution to wake him; and, pencilling his name on the parcel, she withdrew to the staircase, where the brushing of her dress decreased to silence as she receded round and round on her way to the base. swithin still slept on, and presently the rustle began again in the far- down interior of the column. the door could be heard closing, and the rustle came nearer, showing that she had shut herself in,--no doubt to lessen the risk of an accidental surprise by any roaming villager. when lady constantine reappeared at the top, and saw the parcel still untouched and swithin asleep as before, she exhibited some disappointment; but she did not retreat. looking again at him, her eyes became so sentimentally fixed on his face that it seemed as if she could not withdraw them. there lay, in the shape of an antinous, no _amoroso_, no gallant, but a guileless philosopher. his parted lips were lips which spoke, not of love, but of millions of miles; those were eyes which habitually gazed, not into the depths of other eyes, but into other worlds. within his temples dwelt thoughts, not of woman's looks, but of stellar aspects and the configuration of constellations. thus, to his physical attractiveness was added the attractiveness of mental inaccessibility. the ennobling influence of scientific pursuits was demonstrated by the speculative purity which expressed itself in his eyes whenever he looked at her in speaking, and in the childlike faults of manner which arose from his obtuseness to their difference of sex. he had never, since becoming a man, looked even so low as to the level of a lady constantine. his heaven at present was truly in the skies, and not in that only other place where they say it can be found, in the eyes of some daughter of eve. would any circe or calypso--and if so, what one?--ever check this pale-haired scientist's nocturnal sailings into the interminable spaces overhead, and hurl all his mighty calculations on cosmic force and stellar fire into limbo? oh, the pity of it, if such should be the case! she became much absorbed in these very womanly reflections; and at last lady constantine sighed, perhaps she herself did not exactly know why. then a very soft expression lighted on her lips and eyes, and she looked at one jump ten years more youthful than before--quite a girl in aspect, younger than he. on the table lay his implements; among them a pair of scissors, which, to judge from the shreds around, had been used in cutting curves in thick paper for some calculating process. what whim, agitation, or attraction prompted the impulse, nobody knows; but she took the scissors, and, bending over the sleeping youth, cut off one of the curls, or rather crooks,--for they hardly reached a curl,--into which each lock of his hair chose to twist itself in the last inch of its length. the hair fell upon the rug. she picked it up quickly, returned the scissors to the table, and, as if her dignity had suddenly become ashamed of her fantasies, hastened through the door, and descended the staircase. vi when his nap had naturally exhausted itself swithin awoke. he awoke without any surprise, for he not unfrequently gave to sleep in the day- time what he had stolen from it in the night watches. the first object that met his eyes was the parcel on the table, and, seeing his name inscribed thereon, he made no scruple to open it. the sun flashed upon a lens of surprising magnitude, polished to such a smoothness that the eye could scarcely meet its reflections. here was a crystal in whose depths were to be seen more wonders than had been revealed by the crystals of all the cagliostros. swithin, hot with joyousness, took this treasure to his telescope manufactory at the homestead; then he started off for the great house. on gaining its precincts he felt shy of calling, never having received any hint or permission to do so; while lady constantine's mysterious manner of leaving the parcel seemed to demand a like mysteriousness in his approaches to her. all the afternoon he lingered about uncertainly, in the hope of intercepting her on her return from a drive, occasionally walking with an indifferent lounge across glades commanded by the windows, that if she were in-doors she might know he was near. but she did not show herself during the daylight. still impressed by her playful secrecy he carried on the same idea after dark, by returning to the house and passing through the garden door on to the lawn front, where he sat on the parapet that breasted the terrace. now she frequently came out here for a melancholy saunter after dinner, and to-night was such an occasion. swithin went forward, and met her at nearly the spot where he had dropped the lens some nights earlier. 'i have come to see you, lady constantine. how did the glass get on my table?' she laughed as lightly as a girl; that he had come to her in this way was plainly no offence thus far. 'perhaps it was dropped from the clouds by a bird,' she said. 'why should you be so good to me?' he cried. 'one good turn deserves another,' answered she. 'dear lady constantine! whatever discoveries result from this shall be ascribed to you as much as to me. where should i have been without your gift?' 'you would possibly have accomplished your purpose just the same, and have been so much the nobler for your struggle against ill-luck. i hope that now you will be able to proceed with your large telescope as if nothing had happened.' 'o yes, i will, certainly. i am afraid i showed too much feeling, the reverse of stoical, when the accident occurred. that was not very noble of me.' 'there is nothing unnatural in such feeling at your age. when you are older you will smile at such moods, and at the mishaps that gave rise to them.' 'ah, i perceive you think me weak in the extreme,' he said, with just a shade of pique. 'but you will never realize that an incident which filled but a degree in the circle of your thoughts covered the whole circumference of mine. no person can see exactly what and where another's horizon is.' they soon parted, and she re-entered the house, where she sat reflecting for some time, till she seemed to fear that she had wounded his feelings. she awoke in the night, and thought and thought on the same thing, till she had worked herself into a feverish fret about it. when it was morning she looked across at the tower, and sitting down, impulsively wrote the following note:-- 'dear mr. st. cleeve,--i cannot allow you to remain under the impression that i despised your scientific endeavours in speaking as i did last night. i think you were too sensitive to my remark. but perhaps you were agitated with the labours of the day, and i fear that watching so late at night must make you very weary. if i can help you again, please let me know. i never realized the grandeur of astronomy till you showed me how to do so. also let me know about the new telescope. come and see me at any time. after your great kindness in being my messenger i can never do enough for you. i wish you had a mother or sister, and pity your loneliness! i am lonely too.--yours truly, viviette constantine.' she was so anxious that he should get this letter the same day that she ran across to the column with it during the morning, preferring to be her own emissary in so curious a case. the door, as she had expected, was locked; and, slipping the letter under it, she went home again. during lunch her ardour in the cause of swithin's hurt feelings cooled down, till she exclaimed to herself, as she sat at her lonely table, 'what could have possessed me to write in that way!' after lunch she went faster to the tower than she had gone in the early morning, and peeped eagerly into the chink under the door. she could discern no letter, and, on trying the latch, found that the door would open. the letter was gone, swithin having obviously arrived in the interval. she blushed a blush which seemed to say, 'i am getting foolishly interested in this young man.' she had, in short, in her own opinion, somewhat overstepped the bounds of dignity. her instincts did not square well with the formalities of her existence, and she walked home despondently. had a concert, bazaar, lecture, or dorcas meeting required the patronage and support of lady constantine at this juncture, the circumstance would probably have been sufficient to divert her mind from swithin st. cleeve and astronomy for some little time. but as none of these incidents were within the range of expectation--welland house and parish lying far from large towns and watering-places--the void in her outer life continued, and with it the void in her life within. the youth had not answered her letter; neither had he called upon her in response to the invitation she had regretted, with the rest of the epistle, as being somewhat too warmly informal for black and white. to speak tenderly to him was one thing, to write another--that was her feeling immediately after the event; but his counter-move of silence and avoidance, though probably the result of pure unconsciousness on his part, completely dispersed such self-considerations now. her eyes never fell upon the rings-hill column without a solicitous wonder arising as to what he was doing. a true woman, she would assume the remotest possibility to be the most likely contingency, if the possibility had the recommendation of being tragical; and she now feared that something was wrong with swithin st. cleeve. yet there was not the least doubt that he had become so immersed in the business of the new telescope as to forget everything else. on sunday, between the services, she walked to little welland, chiefly for the sake of giving a run to a house-dog, a large st. bernard, of whom she was fond. the distance was but short; and she returned along a narrow lane, divided from the river by a hedge, through whose leafless twigs the ripples flashed silver lights into her eyes. here she discovered swithin, leaning over a gate, his eyes bent upon the stream. the dog first attracted his attention; then he heard her, and turned round. she had never seen him looking so despondent. 'you have never called, though i invited you,' said lady constantine. 'my great telescope won't work!' he replied lugubriously. 'i am sorry for that. so it has made you quite forget me?' 'ah, yes; you wrote me a very kind letter, which i ought to have answered. well, i _did_ forget, lady constantine. my new telescope won't work, and i don't know what to do about it at all!' 'can i assist you any further?' 'no, i fear not. besides, you have assisted me already.' 'what would really help you out of all your difficulties? something would, surely?' he shook his head. 'there must be some solution to them?' 'o yes,' he replied, with a hypothetical gaze into the stream; '_some_ solution of course--an equatorial, for instance.' 'what's that?' 'briefly, an impossibility. it is a splendid instrument, with an object lens of, say, eight or nine inches aperture, mounted with its axis parallel to the earth's axis, and fitted up with graduated circles for denoting right ascensions and declinations; besides having special eye- pieces, a finder, and all sorts of appliances--clock-work to make the telescope follow the motion in right ascension--i cannot tell you half the conveniences. ah, an equatorial is a thing indeed!' 'an equatorial is the one instrument required to make you quite happy?' 'well, yes.' 'i'll see what i can do.' 'but, lady constantine,' cried the amazed astronomer, 'an equatorial such as i describe costs as much as two grand pianos!' she was rather staggered at this news; but she rallied gallantly, and said, 'never mind. i'll make inquiries.' 'but it could not be put on the tower without people seeing it! it would have to be fixed to the masonry. and there must be a dome of some kind to keep off the rain. a tarpaulin might do.' lady constantine reflected. 'it would be a great business, i see,' she said. 'though as far as the fixing and roofing go, i would of course consent to your doing what you liked with the old column. my workmen could fix it, could they not?' 'o yes. but what would sir blount say, if he came home and saw the goings on?' lady constantine turned aside to hide a sudden displacement of blood from her cheek. 'ah--my husband!' she whispered. . . . 'i am just now going to church,' she added in a repressed and hurried tone. 'i will think of this matter.' in church it was with lady constantine as with the lord angelo of vienna in a similar situation--heaven had her empty words only, and her invention heard not her tongue. she soon recovered from the momentary consternation into which she had fallen at swithin's abrupt query. the possibility of that young astronomer becoming a renowned scientist by her aid was a thought which gave her secret pleasure. the course of rendering him instant material help began to have a great fascination for her; it was a new and unexpected channel for her cribbed and confined emotions. with experiences so much wider than his, lady constantine saw that the chances were perhaps a million to one against swithin st. cleeve ever being astronomer royal, or astronomer extraordinary of any sort; yet the remaining chance in his favour was one of those possibilities which, to a woman of bounding intellect and venturesome fancy, are pleasanter to dwell on than likely issues that have no savour of high speculation in them. the equatorial question was a great one; and she had caught such a large spark from his enthusiasm that she could think of nothing so piquant as how to obtain the important instrument. when tabitha lark arrived at the great house next day, instead of finding lady constantine in bed, as formerly, she discovered her in the library, poring over what astronomical works she had been able to unearth from the worm-eaten shelves. as these publications were, for a science of such rapid development, somewhat venerable, there was not much help of a practical kind to be gained from them. nevertheless, the equatorial retained a hold upon her fancy, till she became as eager to see one on the rings-hill column as swithin himself. the upshot of it was that lady constantine sent a messenger that evening to welland bottom, where the homestead of swithin's grandmother was situated, requesting the young man's presence at the house at twelve o'clock next day. he hurriedly returned an obedient reply, and the promise was enough to lend great freshness to her manner next morning, instead of the leaden air which was too frequent with her before the sun reached the meridian, and sometimes after. swithin had, in fact, arisen as an attractive little intervention between herself and despair. vii a fog defaced all the trees of the park that morning, the white atmosphere adhered to the ground like a fungoid growth from it, and made the turfed undulations look slimy and raw. but lady constantine settled down in her chair to await the coming of the late curate's son with a serenity which the vast blanks outside could neither baffle nor destroy. at two minutes to twelve the door-bell rang, and a look overspread the lady's face that was neither maternal, sisterly, nor amorous; but partook in an indescribable manner of all three kinds. the door was flung open and the young man was ushered in, the fog still clinging to his hair, in which she could discern a little notch where she had nipped off the curl. a speechlessness that socially was a defect in him was to her view a piquant attribute just now. he looked somewhat alarmed. 'lady constantine, have i done anything, that you have sent--?' he began breathlessly, as he gazed in her face, with parted lips. 'o no, of course not! i have decided to do something,--nothing more,' she smilingly said, holding out her hand, which he rather gingerly touched. 'don't look so concerned. who makes equatorials?' this remark was like the drawing of a weir-hatch and she was speedily inundated with all she wished to know concerning astronomical opticians. when he had imparted the particulars he waited, manifestly burning to know whither these inquiries tended. 'i am not going to buy you one,' she said gently. he looked as if he would faint. 'certainly not. i do not wish it. i--could not have accepted it,' faltered the young man. 'but i am going to buy one for _myself_. i lack a hobby, and i shall choose astronomy. i shall fix my equatorial on the column.' swithin brightened up. 'and i shall let you have the use of it whenever you choose. in brief, swithin st. cleeve shall be lady constantine's astronomer royal; and she--and she--' 'shall be his queen.' the words came not much the worse for being uttered only in the tone of one anxious to complete a tardy sentence. 'well, that's what i have decided to do,' resumed lady constantine. 'i will write to these opticians at once.' there seemed to be no more for him to do than to thank her for the privilege, whenever it should be available, which he promptly did, and then made as if to go. but lady constantine detained him with, 'have you ever seen my library?' 'no; never.' 'you don't say you would like to see it.' 'but i should.' 'it is the third door on the right. you can find your way in, and you can stay there as long as you like.' swithin then left the morning-room for the apartment designated, and amused himself in that 'soul of the house,' as cicero defined it, till he heard the lunch bell sounding from the turret, when he came down from the library steps, and thought it time to go home. but at that moment a servant entered to inquire whether he would or would not prefer to have his lunch brought in to him there; upon his replying in the affirmative a large tray arrived on the stomach of a footman, and swithin was greatly surprised to see a whole pheasant placed at his disposal. having breakfasted at eight that morning, and having been much in the open air afterwards, the adonis-astronomer's appetite assumed grand proportions. how much of that pheasant he might consistently eat without hurting his dear patroness lady constantine's feelings, when he could readily eat it all, was a problem in which the reasonableness of a larger and larger quantity argued itself inversely as a smaller and smaller quantity remained. when, at length, he had finally decided on a terminal point in the body of the bird, the door was gently opened. 'oh, you have not finished?' came to him over his shoulder, in a considerate voice. 'o yes, thank you, lady constantine,' he said, jumping up. 'why did you prefer to lunch in this awkward, dusty place?' 'i thought--it would be better,' said swithin simply. 'there is fruit in the other room, if you like to come. but perhaps you would rather not?' 'o yes, i should much like to,' said swithin, walking over his napkin, and following her as she led the way to the adjoining apartment. here, while she asked him what he had been reading, he modestly ventured on an apple, in whose flavour he recognized the familiar taste of old friends robbed from her husband's orchards in his childhood, long before lady constantine's advent on the scene. she supposed he had confined his search to his own sublime subject, astronomy? swithin suddenly became older to the eye, as his thoughts reverted to the topic thus reintroduced. 'yes,' he informed her. 'i seldom read any other subject. in these days the secret of productive study is to avoid well.' 'did you find any good treatises?' 'none. the theories in your books are almost as obsolete as the ptolemaic system. only fancy, that magnificent cyclopædia, leather-bound, and stamped, and gilt, and wide margined, and bearing the blazon of your house in magnificent colours, says that the twinkling of the stars is probably caused by heavenly bodies passing in front of them in their revolutions.' 'and is it not so? that was what i learned when i was a girl.' the modern eudoxus now rose above the embarrassing horizon of lady constantine's great house, magnificent furniture, and awe-inspiring footman. he became quite natural, all his self-consciousness fled, and his eye spoke into hers no less than his lips to her ears, as he said, 'how such a theory can have lingered on to this day beats conjecture! francois arago, as long as forty or fifty years ago, conclusively established the fact that scintillation is the simplest thing in the world,--merely a matter of atmosphere. but i won't speak of this to you now. the comparative absence of scintillation in warm countries was noticed by humboldt. then, again, the scintillations vary. no star flaps his wings like sirius when he lies low! he flashes out emeralds and rubies, amethystine flames and sapphirine colours, in a manner quite marvellous to behold, and this is only _one_ star! so, too, do arcturus, and capella, and lesser luminaries. . . . but i tire you with this subject?' 'on the contrary, you speak so beautifully that i could listen all day.' the astronomer threw a searching glance upon her for a moment; but there was no satire in the warm soft eyes which met his own with a luxurious contemplative interest. 'say some more of it to me,' she continued, in a voice not far removed from coaxing. after some hesitation the subject returned again to his lips, and he said some more--indeed, much more; lady constantine often throwing in an appreciative remark or question, often meditatively regarding him, in pursuance of ideas not exactly based on his words, and letting him go on as he would. before he left the house the new astronomical project was set in train. the top of the column was to be roofed in, to form a proper observatory; and on the ground that he knew better than any one else how this was to be carried out, she requested him to give precise directions on the point, and to superintend the whole. a wooden cabin was to be erected at the foot of the tower, to provide better accommodation for casual visitors to the observatory than the spiral staircase and lead-flat afforded. as this cabin would be completely buried in the dense fir foliage which enveloped the lower part of the column and its pedestal, it would be no disfigurement to the general appearance. finally, a path was to be made across the surrounding fallow, by which she might easily approach the scene of her new study. when he was gone she wrote to the firm of opticians concerning the equatorial for whose reception all this was designed. the undertaking was soon in full progress; and by degrees it became the talk of the hamlets round that lady constantine had given up melancholy for astronomy, to the great advantage of all who came in contact with her. one morning, when tabitha lark had come as usual to read, lady constantine chanced to be in a quarter of the house to which she seldom wandered; and while here she heard her maid talking confidentially to tabitha in the adjoining room on the curious and sudden interest which lady constantine had acquired in the moon and stars. 'they do say all sorts of trumpery,' observed the handmaid. 'they say--though 'tis little better than mischief, to be sure--that it isn't the moon, and it isn't the stars, and it isn't the plannards, that my lady cares for, but for the pretty lad who draws 'em down from the sky to please her; and being a married example, and what with sin and shame knocking at every poor maid's door afore you can say, "hands off, my dear," to the civilest young man, she ought to set a better pattern.' lady constantine's face flamed up vividly. 'if sir blount were to come back all of a sudden--oh, my!' lady constantine grew cold as ice. 'there's nothing in it,' said tabitha scornfully. 'i could prove it any day.' 'well, i wish i had half her chance!' sighed the lady's maid. and no more was said on the subject then. tabitha's remark showed that the suspicion was quite in embryo as yet. nevertheless, saying nothing to reveal what she had overheard, immediately after the reading lady constantine flew like a bird to where she knew that swithin might be found. he was in the plantation, setting up little sticks to mark where the wooden cabin was to stand. she called him to a remote place under the funereal trees. 'i have altered my mind,' she said. 'i can have nothing to do with this matter.' 'indeed?' said swithin, surprised. 'astronomy is not my hobby any longer. and you are not my astronomer royal.' 'o lady constantine!' cried the youth, aghast. 'why, the work is begun! i thought the equatorial was ordered.' she dropped her voice, though a jericho shout would not have been overheard: 'of course astronomy is my hobby privately, and you are to be my astronomer royal, and i still furnish the observatory; but not to the outer world. there is a reason against my indulgence in such scientific fancies openly; and the project must be arranged in this wise. the whole enterprise is yours: you rent the tower of me: you build the cabin: you get the equatorial. i simply give permission, since you desire it. the path that was to be made from the hill to the park is not to be thought of. there is to be no communication between the house and the column. the equatorial will arrive addressed to you, and its cost i will pay through you. my name must not appear, and i vanish entirely from the undertaking. . . . this blind is necessary,' she added, sighing. 'good- bye!' 'but you _do_ take as much interest as before, and it _will_ be yours just the same?' he said, walking after her. he scarcely comprehended the subterfuge, and was absolutely blind as to its reason. 'can you doubt it? but i dare not do it openly.' with this she went away; and in due time there circulated through the parish an assertion that it was a mistake to suppose lady constantine had anything to do with swithin st. cleeve or his star-gazing schemes. she had merely allowed him to rent the tower of her for use as his observatory, and to put some temporary fixtures on it for that purpose. after this lady constantine lapsed into her former life of loneliness; and by these prompt measures the ghost of a rumour which had barely started into existence was speedily laid to rest. it had probably originated in her own dwelling, and had gone but little further. yet, despite her self-control, a certain north window of the great house, that commanded an uninterrupted view of the upper ten feet of the column, revealed her to be somewhat frequently gazing from it at a rotundity which had begun to appear on the summit. to those with whom she came in contact she sometimes addressed such remarks as, 'is young mr. st. cleeve getting on with his observatory? i hope he will fix his instruments without damaging the column, which is so interesting to us as being in memory of my dear husband's great-grandfather--a truly brave man.' on one occasion her building-steward ventured to suggest to her that, sir blount having deputed to her the power to grant short leases in his absence, she should have a distinctive agreement with swithin, as between landlord and tenant, with a stringent clause against his driving nails into the stonework of such an historical memorial. she replied that she did not wish to be severe on the last representative of such old and respected parishioners as st. cleeve's mother's family had been, and of such a well-descended family as his father's; so that it would only be necessary for the steward to keep an eye on mr. st. cleeve's doings. further, when a letter arrived at the great house from hilton and pimm's, the opticians, with information that the equatorial was ready and packed, and that a man would be sent with it to fix it, she replied to that firm to the effect that their letter should have been addressed to mr. st. cleeve, the local astronomer, on whose behalf she had made the inquiries; that she had nothing more to do with the matter; that he would receive the instrument and pay the bill,--her guarantee being given for the latter performance. viii lady constantine then had the pleasure of beholding a waggon, laden with packing-cases, moving across the field towards the pillar; and not many days later swithin, who had never come to the great house since the luncheon, met her in a path which he knew to be one of her promenades. 'the equatorial is fixed, and the man gone,' he said, half in doubt as to his speech, for her commands to him not to recognize her agency or patronage still puzzled him. 'i respectfully wish--you could come and see it, lady constantine.' 'i would rather not; i cannot.' 'saturn is lovely; jupiter is simply sublime; i can see double stars in the lion and in the virgin, where i had seen only a single one before. it is all i required to set me going!' 'i'll come. but--you need say nothing about my visit. i cannot come to- night, but i will some time this week. yet only this once, to try the instrument. afterwards you must be content to pursue your studies alone.' swithin seemed but little affected at this announcement. 'hilton and pimm's man handed me the bill,' he continued. 'how much is it?' he told her. 'and the man who has built the hut and dome, and done the other fixing, has sent in his.' he named this amount also. 'very well. they shall be settled with. my debts must be paid with my money, which you shall have at once,--in cash, since a cheque would hardly do. come to the house for it this evening. but no, no--you must not come openly; such is the world. come to the window--the window that is exactly in a line with the long snowdrop bed, in the south front--at eight to-night, and i will give you what is necessary.' 'certainly, lady constantine,' said the young man. at eight that evening accordingly, swithin entered like a spectre upon the terrace to seek out the spot she had designated. the equatorial had so entirely absorbed his thoughts that he did not trouble himself seriously to conjecture the why and wherefore of her secrecy. if he casually thought of it, he set it down in a general way to an intensely generous wish on her part not to lessen his influence among the poorer inhabitants by making him appear the object of patronage. while he stood by the long snowdrop bed, which looked up at him like a nether milky way, the french casement of the window opposite softly opened, and a hand bordered by a glimmer of lace was stretched forth, from which he received a crisp little parcel,--bank-notes, apparently. he knew the hand, and held it long enough to press it to his lips, the only form which had ever occurred to him of expressing his gratitude to her without the incumbrance of clumsy words, a vehicle at the best of times but rudely suited to such delicate merchandise. the hand was hastily withdrawn, as if the treatment had been unexpected. then seemingly moved by second thoughts she bent forward and said, 'is the night good for observations?' 'perfect.' she paused. 'then i'll come to-night,' she at last said. 'it makes no difference to me, after all. wait just one moment.' he waited, and she presently emerged, muffled up like a nun; whereupon they left the terrace and struck across the park together. very little was said by either till they were crossing the fallow, when he asked if his arm would help her. she did not take the offered support just then; but when they were ascending the prehistoric earthwork, under the heavy gloom of the fir-trees, she seized it, as if rather influenced by the oppressive solitude than by fatigue. thus they reached the foot of the column, ten thousand spirits in prison seeming to gasp their griefs from the funereal boughs overhead, and a few twigs scratching the pillar with the drag of impish claws as tenacious as those figuring in st. anthony's temptation. 'how intensely dark it is just here!' she whispered. 'i wonder you can keep in the path. many ancient britons lie buried there doubtless.' he led her round to the other side, where, feeling his way with his hands, he suddenly left her, appearing a moment after with a light. 'what place is this?' she exclaimed. 'this is the new wood cabin,' said he. she could just discern the outline of a little house, not unlike a bathing-machine without wheels. 'i have kept lights ready here,' he went on, 'as i thought you might come any evening, and possibly bring company.' 'don't criticize me for coming alone,' she exclaimed with sensitive promptness. 'there are social reasons for what i do of which you know nothing.' 'perhaps it is much to my discredit that i don't know.' 'not at all. you are all the better for it. heaven forbid that i should enlighten you. well, i see this is the hut. but i am more curious to go to the top of the tower, and make discoveries.' he brought a little lantern from the cabin, and lighted her up the winding staircase to the temple of that sublime mystery on whose threshold he stood as priest. the top of the column was quite changed. the tub-shaped space within the parapet, formerly open to the air and sun, was now arched over by a light dome of lath-work covered with felt. but this dome was not fixed. at the line where its base descended to the parapet there were half a dozen iron balls, precisely like cannon-shot, standing loosely in a groove, and on these the dome rested its whole weight. in the side of the dome was a slit, through which the wind blew and the north star beamed, and towards it the end of the great telescope was directed. this latter magnificent object, with its circles, axes, and handles complete, was securely fixed in the middle of the floor. 'but you can only see one part of the sky through that slit,' said she. the astronomer stretched out his arm, and the whole dome turned horizontally round, running on the balls with a rumble like thunder. instead of the star polaris, which had first been peeping in through the slit, there now appeared the countenances of castor and pollux. swithin then manipulated the equatorial, and put it through its capabilities in like manner. she was enchanted; being rather excitable she even clapped her hands just once. she turned to him: 'now are you happy?' 'but it is all _yours_, lady constantine.' 'at this moment. but that's a defect which can soon be remedied. when is your birthday?' 'next month,--the seventh.' 'then it shall all be yours,--a birthday present.' the young man protested; it was too much. 'no, you must accept it all,--equatorial, dome stand, hut, and everything that has been put here for this astronomical purpose. the possession of these apparatus would only compromise me. already they are reputed to be yours, and they must be made yours. there is no help for it. if ever' (here her voice lost some firmness),--'if ever you go away from me,--from this place, i mean,--and marry, and settle in a new home elsewhere for good, and forget me, you must take these things, equatorial and all, and never tell your wife or anybody how they came to be yours.' 'i wish i could do something more for you!' exclaimed the much-moved astronomer. 'if you could but share my fame,--supposing i get any, which i may die before doing,--it would be a little compensation. as to my going away and marrying, i certainly shall not. i may go away, but i shall never marry.' 'why not?' 'a beloved science is enough wife for me,--combined, perhaps, with a little warm friendship with one of kindred pursuits.' 'who is the friend of kindred pursuits?' 'yourself i should like it to be.' 'you would have to become a woman before i could be that, publicly; or i a man,' she replied, with dry melancholy. 'why i a woman, or you a man, dear lady constantine?' 'i cannot explain. no; you must keep your fame and your science all to yourself, and i must keep my--troubles.' swithin, to divert her from melancholy--not knowing that in the expression of her melancholy thus and now she found much pleasure,--changed the subject by asking if they should take some observations. 'yes; the scenery is well hung to-night,' she said looking out upon the heavens. then they proceeded to scan the sky, roving from planet to star, from single stars to double stars, from double to coloured stars, in the cursory manner of the merely curious. they plunged down to that at other times invisible multitude in the back rows of the celestial theatre: remote layers of constellations whose shapes were new and singular; pretty twinklers which for infinite ages had spent their beams without calling forth from a single earthly poet a single line, or being able to bestow a ray of comfort on a single benighted traveller. 'and to think,' said lady constantine, 'that the whole race of shepherds, since the beginning of the world,--even those immortal shepherds who watched near bethlehem,--should have gone into their graves without knowing that for one star that lighted them in their labours, there were a hundred as good behind trying to do so! . . . i have a feeling for this instrument not unlike the awe i should feel in the presence of a great magician in whom i really believed. its powers are so enormous, and weird, and fantastical, that i should have a personal fear in being with it alone. music drew an angel down, said the poet: but what is that to drawing down worlds!' 'i often experience a kind of fear of the sky after sitting in the observing-chair a long time,' he answered. 'and when i walk home afterwards i also fear it, for what i know is there, but cannot see, as one naturally fears the presence of a vast formless something that only reveals a very little of itself. that's partly what i meant by saying that magnitude, which up to a certain point has grandeur, has beyond it ghastliness.' thus the interest of their sidereal observations led them on, till the knowledge that scarce any other human vision was travelling within a hundred million miles of their own gave them such a sense of the isolation of that faculty as almost to be a sense of isolation in respect of their whole personality, causing a shudder at its absoluteness. at night, when human discords and harmonies are hushed, in a general sense, for the greater part of twelve hours, there is nothing to moderate the blow with which the infinitely great, the stellar universe, strikes down upon the infinitely little, the mind of the beholder; and this was the case now. having got closer to immensity than their fellow-creatures, they saw at once its beauty and its frightfulness. they more and more felt the contrast between their own tiny magnitudes and those among which they had recklessly plunged, till they were oppressed with the presence of a vastness they could not cope with even as an idea, and which hung about them like a nightmare. he stood by her while she observed; she by him when they changed places. once that swithin's emancipation from a trammelling body had been effected by the telescope, and he was well away in space, she felt her influence over him diminishing to nothing. he was quite unconscious of his terrestrial neighbourings, and of herself as one of them. it still further reduced her towards unvarnished simplicity in her manner to him. the silence was broken only by the ticking of the clock-work which gave diurnal motion to the instrument. the stars moved on, the end of the telescope followed, but their tongues stood still. to expect that he was ever voluntarily going to end the pause by speech was apparently futile. she laid her hand upon his arm. he started, withdrew his eye from the telescope, and brought himself back to the earth by a visible--almost painful--effort. 'do come out of it,' she coaxed, with a softness in her voice which any man but unpractised swithin would have felt to be exquisite. 'i feel that i have been so foolish as to put in your hands an instrument to effect my own annihilation. not a word have you spoken for the last ten minutes.' 'i have been mentally getting on with my great theory. i hope soon to be able to publish it to the world. what, are you going? i will walk with you, lady constantine. when will you come again?' 'when your great theory is published to the world.' ix lady constantine, if narrowly observed at this time, would have seemed to be deeply troubled in conscience, and particularly after the interview above described. ash wednesday occurred in the calendar a few days later, and she went to morning service with a look of genuine contrition on her emotional and yearning countenance. besides herself the congregation consisted only of the parson, clerk, school-children, and three old people living on alms, who sat under the reading-desk; and thus, when mr. torkingham blazed forth the denunciatory sentences of the commination, nearly the whole force of them seemed to descend upon her own shoulders. looking across the empty pews she saw through the one or two clear panes of the window opposite a youthful figure in the churchyard, and the very feeling against which she had tried to pray returned again irresistibly. when she came out and had crossed into the private walk, swithin came forward to speak to her. this was a most unusual circumstance, and argued a matter of importance. 'i have made an amazing discovery in connexion with the variable stars,' he exclaimed. 'it will excite the whole astronomical world, and the world outside but little less. i had long suspected the true secret of their variability; but it was by the merest chance on earth that i hit upon a proof of my guess. your equatorial has done it, my good, kind lady constantine, and our fame is established for ever!' he sprang into the air, and waved his hat in his triumph. 'oh, i am so glad--so rejoiced!' she cried. 'what is it? but don't stop to tell me. publish it at once in some paper; nail your name to it, or somebody will seize the idea and appropriate it,--forestall you in some way. it will be adams and leverrier over again.' 'if i may walk with you i will explain the nature of the discovery. it accounts for the occasional green tint of castor, and every difficulty. i said i would be the copernicus of the stellar system, and i have begun to be. yet who knows?' 'now don't be so up and down! i shall not understand your explanation, and i would rather not know it. i shall reveal it if it is very grand. women, you know, are not safe depositaries of such valuable secrets. you may walk with me a little way, with great pleasure. then go and write your account, so as to insure your ownership of the discovery. . . . but how you have watched!' she cried, in a sudden accession of anxiety, as she turned to look more closely at him. 'the orbits of your eyes are leaden, and your eyelids are red and heavy. don't do it--pray don't. you will be ill, and break down.' 'i have, it is true, been up a little late this last week,' he said cheerfully. 'in fact, i couldn't tear myself away from the equatorial; it is such a wonderful possession that it keeps me there till daylight. but what does that matter, now i have made the discovery?' 'ah, it _does_ matter! now, promise me--i insist--that you will not commit such imprudences again; for what should i do if my astronomer royal were to die?' she laughed, but far too apprehensively to be effective as a display of levity. they parted, and he went home to write out his paper. he promised to call as soon as his discovery was in print. then they waited for the result. it is impossible to describe the tremulous state of lady constantine during the interval. the warm interest she took in swithin st. cleeve--many would have said dangerously warm interest--made his hopes her hopes; and though she sometimes admitted to herself that great allowance was requisite for the overweening confidence of youth in the future, she permitted herself to be blinded to probabilities for the pleasure of sharing his dreams. it seemed not unreasonable to suppose the present hour to be the beginning of realization to her darling wish that this young man should become famous. he had worked hard, and why should he not be famous early? his very simplicity in mundane affairs afforded a strong presumption that in things celestial he might be wise. to obtain support for this hypothesis she had only to think over the lives of many eminent astronomers. she waited feverishly for the flourish of trumpets from afar, by which she expected the announcement of his discovery to be greeted. knowing that immediate intelligence of the outburst would be brought to her by himself, she watched from the windows of the great house each morning for a sight of his figure hastening down the glade. but he did not come. a long array of wet days passed their dreary shapes before her, and made the waiting still more tedious. on one of these occasions she ran across to the tower, at the risk of a severe cold. the door was locked. two days after she went again. the door was locked still. but this was only to be expected in such weather. yet she would have gone on to his house, had there not been one reason too many against such precipitancy. as astronomer and astronomer there was no harm in their meetings; but as woman and man she feared them. ten days passed without a sight of him; ten blurred and dreary days, during which the whole landscape dripped like a mop; the park trees swabbed the gravel from the drive, while the sky was a zinc-coloured archi-vault of immovable cloud. it seemed as if the whole science of astronomy had never been real, and that the heavenly bodies, with their motions, were as theoretical as the lines and circles of a bygone mathematical problem. she could content herself no longer with fruitless visits to the column, and when the rain had a little abated she walked to the nearest hamlet, and in a conversation with the first old woman she met contrived to lead up to the subject of swithin st. cleeve by talking about his grandmother. 'ah, poor old heart; 'tis a bad time for her, my lady!' exclaimed the dame. 'what?' 'her grandson is dying; and such a gentleman through and through!' 'what! . . . oh, it has something to do with that dreadful discovery!' 'discovery, my lady?' she left the old woman with an evasive answer, and with a breaking heart crept along the road. tears brimmed into her eyes as she walked, and by the time that she was out of sight sobs burst forth tumultuously. 'i am too fond of him!' she moaned; 'but i can't help it; and i don't care if it's wrong,--i don't care!' without further considerations as to who beheld her doings she instinctively went straight towards mrs. martin's. seeing a man coming she calmed herself sufficiently to ask him through her dropped veil how poor mr. st. cleeve was that day. but she only got the same reply: 'they say he is dying, my lady.' when swithin had parted from lady constantine, on the previous ash-wednesday, he had gone straight to the homestead and prepared his account of 'a new astronomical discovery.' it was written perhaps in too glowing a rhetoric for the true scientific tone of mind; but there was no doubt that his assertion met with a most startling aptness all the difficulties which had accompanied the received theories on the phenomena attending those changeable suns of marvellous systems so far away. it accounted for the nebulous mist that surrounds some of them at their weakest time; in short, took up a position of probability which has never yet been successfully assailed. the papers were written in triplicate, and carefully sealed up with blue wax. one copy was directed to greenwich, another to the royal society, another to a prominent astronomer. a brief statement of the essence of the discovery was also prepared for the leading daily paper. he considered these documents, embodying as they did two years of his constant thought, reading, and observation, too important to be entrusted for posting to the hands of a messenger; too important to be sent to the sub-post-office at hand. though the day was wet, dripping wet, he went on foot with them to a chief office, five miles off, and registered them. quite exhausted by the walk, after his long night-work, wet through, yet sustained by the sense of a great achievement, he called at a bookseller's for the astronomical periodicals to which he subscribed; then, resting for a short time at an inn, he plodded his way homewards, reading his papers as he went, and planning how to enjoy a repose on his laurels of a week or more. on he strolled through the rain, holding the umbrella vertically over the exposed page to keep it dry while he read. suddenly his eye was struck by an article. it was the review of a pamphlet by an american astronomer, in which the author announced a conclusive discovery with regard to variable stars. the discovery was precisely the discovery of swithin st. cleeve. another man had forestalled his fame by a period of about six weeks. then the youth found that the goddess philosophy, to whom he had vowed to dedicate his whole life, would not in return support him through a single hour of despair. in truth, the impishness of circumstance was newer to him than it would have been to a philosopher of threescore-and-ten. in a wild wish for annihilation he flung himself down on a patch of heather that lay a little removed from the road, and in this humid bed remained motionless, while time passed by unheeded. at last, from sheer misery and weariness, he fell asleep. the march rain pelted him mercilessly, the beaded moisture from the heavily charged locks of heath penetrated him through back and sides, and clotted his hair to unsightly tags and tufts. when he awoke it was dark. he thought of his grandmother, and of her possible alarm at missing him. on attempting to rise, he found that he could hardly bend his joints, and that his clothes were as heavy as lead from saturation. his teeth chattering and his knees trembling he pursued his way home, where his appearance excited great concern. he was obliged at once to retire to bed, and the next day he was delirious from the chill. it was about ten days after this unhappy occurrence that lady constantine learnt the news, as above described, and hastened along to the homestead in that state of anguish in which the heart is no longer under the control of the judgment, and self-abandonment even to error, verges on heroism. on reaching the house in welland bottom the door was opened to her by old hannah, who wore an assiduously sorrowful look; and lady constantine was shown into the large room,--so wide that the beams bent in the middle,--where she took her seat in one of a methodic range of chairs, beneath a portrait of the reverend mr. st. cleeve, her astronomer's erratic father. the eight unwatered dying plants, in the row of eight flower-pots, denoted that there was something wrong in the house. mrs. martin came downstairs fretting, her wonder at beholding lady constantine not altogether displacing the previous mood of grief. 'here's a pretty kettle of fish, my lady!' she exclaimed. lady constantine said, 'hush!' and pointed inquiringly upward. 'he is not overhead, my lady,' replied swithin's grandmother. 'his bedroom is at the back of the house.' 'how is he now?' 'he is better, just at this moment; and we are more hopeful. but he changes so.' 'may i go up? i know he would like to see me.' her presence having been made known to the sufferer, she was conducted upstairs to swithin's room. the way thither was through the large chamber he had used as a study and for the manufacture of optical instruments. there lay the large pasteboard telescope, that had been just such a failure as crusoe's large boat; there were his diagrams, maps, globes, and celestial apparatus of various sorts. the absence of the worker, through illness or death is sufficient to touch the prosiest workshop and tools with the hues of pathos, and it was with a swelling bosom that lady constantine passed through this arena of his youthful activities to the little chamber where he lay. old mrs. martin sat down by the window, and lady constantine bent over swithin. 'don't speak to me!' she whispered. 'it will weaken you; it will excite you. if you do speak, it must be very softly.' she took his hand, and one irrepressible tear fell upon it. 'nothing will excite me now, lady constantine,' he said; 'not even your goodness in coming. my last excitement was when i lost the battle. . . . do you know that my discovery has been forestalled? it is that that's killing me.' 'but you are going to recover; you are better, they say. is it so?' 'i think i am, to-day. but who can be sure?' 'the poor boy was so upset at finding that his labour had been thrown away,' said his grandmother, 'that he lay down in the rain, and chilled his life out.' 'how could you do it?' lady constantine whispered. 'o, how could you think so much of renown, and so little of me? why, for every discovery made there are ten behind that await making. to commit suicide like this, as if there were nobody in the world to care for you!' 'it was done in my haste, and i am very, very sorry for it! i beg both you and all my few friends never, never to forgive me! it would kill me with self-reproach if you were to pardon my rashness!' at this moment the doctor was announced, and mrs. martin went downstairs to receive him. lady constantine thought she would remain to hear his report, and for this purpose withdrew, and sat down in a nook of the adjoining work-room of swithin, the doctor meeting her as he passed through it into the sick chamber. he was there a torturingly long time; but at length he came out to the room she waited in, and crossed it on his way downstairs. she rose and followed him to the stairhead. 'how is he?' she anxiously asked. 'will he get over it?' the doctor, not knowing the depth of her interest in the patient, spoke with the blunt candour natural towards a comparatively indifferent inquirer. 'no, lady constantine,' he replied; 'there's a change for the worse.' and he retired down the stairs. scarcely knowing what she did lady constantine ran back to swithin's side, flung herself upon the bed and in a paroxysm of sorrow kissed him. x the placid inhabitants of the parish of welland, including warbling waggoners, lone shepherds, ploughmen, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the gardener at the great house, the steward and agent, the parson, clerk, and so on, were hourly expecting the announcement of st. cleeve's death. the sexton had been going to see his brother-in-law, nine miles distant, but promptly postponed the visit for a few days, that there might be the regular professional hand present to toll the bell in a note of due fulness and solemnity; an attempt by a deputy, on a previous occasion of his absence, having degenerated into a miserable stammering clang that was a disgrace to the parish. but swithin st. cleeve did not decease, a fact of which, indeed, the habituated reader will have been well aware ever since the rain came down upon the young man in the ninth chapter, and led to his alarming illness. though, for that matter, so many maimed histories are hourly enacting themselves in this dun-coloured world as to lend almost a priority of interest to narratives concerning those 'who lay great bases for eternity which prove more short than waste or ruining.' how it arose that he did not die was in this wise; and his example affords another instance of that reflex rule of the vassal soul over the sovereign body, which, operating so wonderfully in elastic natures, and more or less in all, originally gave rise to the legend that supremacy lay on the other side. the evening of the day after the tender, despairing, farewell kiss of lady constantine, when he was a little less weak than during her visit, he lay with his face to the window. he lay alone, quiet and resigned. he had been thinking, sometimes of her and other friends, but chiefly of his lost discovery. although nearly unconscious at the time, he had yet been aware of that kiss, as the delicate flush which followed it upon his cheek would have told; but he had attached little importance to it as between woman and man. had he been dying of love instead of wet weather, perhaps the impulsive act of that handsome lady would have been seized on as a proof that his love was returned. as it was her kiss seemed but the evidence of a naturally demonstrative kindliness, felt towards him chiefly because he was believed to be leaving her for ever. the reds of sunset passed, and dusk drew on. old hannah came upstairs to pull down the blinds and as she advanced to the window he said to her, in a faint voice, 'well, hannah, what news to-day?' 'oh, nothing, sir,' hannah replied, looking out of the window with sad apathy, 'only that there's a comet, they say.' 'a what?' said the dying astronomer, starting up on his elbow. 'a comet--that's all, master swithin,' repeated hannah, in a lower voice, fearing she had done harm in some way. 'well, tell me, tell me!' cried swithin. 'is it gambart's? is it charles the fifth's, or halley's, or faye's, or whose?' 'hush!' said she, thinking st. cleeve slightly delirious again. ''tis god a'mighty's, of course. i haven't seed en myself, but they say he's getting bigger every night, and that he'll be the biggest one known for fifty years when he's full growed. there, you must not talk any more now, or i'll go away.' here was an amazing event, little noise as it had made in the happening. of all phenomena that he had longed to witness during his short astronomical career, those appertaining to comets had excited him most. that the magnificent comet of would not return again for thirty centuries had been quite a permanent regret with him. and now, when the bottomless abyss of death seemed yawning beneath his feet, one of these much-desired apparitions, as large, apparently, as any of its tribe, had chosen to show itself. 'o, if i could but live to see that comet through my equatorial!' he cried. compared with comets, variable stars, which he had hitherto made his study, were, from their remoteness, uninteresting. they were to the former as the celebrities of ujiji or unyamwesi to the celebrities of his own country. members of the solar system, these dazzling and perplexing rangers, the fascination of all astronomers, rendered themselves still more fascinating by the sinister suspicion attaching to them of being possibly the ultimate destroyers of the human race. in his physical prostration st. cleeve wept bitterly at not being hale and strong enough to welcome with proper honour the present specimen of these desirable visitors. the strenuous wish to live and behold the new phenomenon, supplanting the utter weariness of existence that he had heretofore experienced, gave him a new vitality. the crisis passed; there was a turn for the better; and after that he rapidly mended. the comet had in all probability saved his life. the limitless and complex wonders of the sky resumed their old power over his imagination; the possibilities of that unfathomable blue ocean were endless. finer feats than ever he would perform were to be achieved in its investigation. what lady constantine had said, that for one discovery made ten awaited making, was strikingly verified by the sudden appearance of this splendid marvel. the windows of st. cleeve's bedroom faced the west, and nothing would satisfy him but that his bed should be so pulled round as to give him a view of the low sky, in which the as yet minute tadpole of fire was recognizable. the mere sight of it seemed to lend him sufficient resolution to complete his own cure forthwith. his only fear now was lest, from some unexpected cause or other, the comet would vanish before he could get to the observatory on rings-hill speer. in his fervour to begin observing he directed that an old telescope, which he had used in his first celestial attempts, should be tied at one end to the bed-post, and at the other fixed near his eye as he reclined. equipped only with this rough improvisation he began to take notes. lady constantine was forgotten, till one day, suddenly, wondering if she knew of the important phenomenon, he revolved in his mind whether as a fellow- student and sincere friend of his she ought not to be sent for, and instructed in the use of the equatorial. but though the image of lady constantine, in spite of her kindness and unmistakably warm heart, had been obscured in his mind by the heavenly body, she had not so readily forgotten him. too shy to repeat her visit after so nearly betraying her secret, she yet, every day, by the most ingenious and subtle means that could be devised by a woman who feared for herself, but could not refrain from tampering with danger, ascertained the state of her young friend's health. on hearing of the turn in his condition she rejoiced on his account, and became yet more despondent on her own. if he had died she might have mused on him as her dear departed saint without much sin: but his return to life was a delight that bewildered and dismayed. one evening a little later on he was sitting at his bedroom window as usual, waiting for a sufficient decline of light to reveal the comet's form, when he beheld, crossing the field contiguous to the house, a figure which he knew to be hers. he thought she must be coming to see him on the great comet question, to discuss which with so delightful and kind a comrade was an expectation full of pleasure. hence he keenly observed her approach, till something happened that surprised him. when, at the descent of the hill, she had reached the stile that admitted to mrs. martin's garden, lady constantine stood quite still for a minute or more, her gaze bent on the ground. instead of coming on to the house she went heavily and slowly back, almost as if in pain; and then at length, quickening her pace, she was soon out of sight. she appeared in the path no more that day. xi why had lady constantine stopped and turned? a misgiving had taken sudden possession of her. her true sentiment towards st. cleeve was too recognizable by herself to be tolerated. that she had a legitimate interest in him as a young astronomer was true; that her sympathy on account of his severe illness had been natural and commendable was also true. but the superfluous feeling was what filled her with trepidation. superfluities have been defined as things you cannot do without, and this particular emotion, that came not within her rightful measure, was in danger of becoming just such a superfluity with her. in short, she felt there and then that to see st. cleeve again would be an impropriety; and by a violent effort she retreated from his precincts, as he had observed. she resolved to ennoble her conduct from that moment of her life onwards. she would exercise kind patronage towards swithin without once indulging herself with his company. inexpressibly dear to her deserted heart he was becoming, but for the future he should at least be hidden from her eyes. to speak plainly, it was growing a serious question whether, if he were not hidden from her eyes, she would not soon be plunging across the ragged boundary which divides the permissible from the forbidden. by the time that she had drawn near home the sun was going down. the heavy, many-chevroned church, now subdued by violet shadow except where its upper courses caught the western stroke of flame-colour, stood close to her grounds, as in many other parishes, though the village of which it formerly was the nucleus had become quite depopulated: its cottages had been demolished to enlarge the park, leaving the old building to stand there alone, like a standard without an army. it was friday night, and she heard the organist practising voluntaries within. the hour, the notes, the even-song of the birds, and her own previous emotions, combined to influence her devotionally. she entered, turning to the right and passing under the chancel arch, where she sat down and viewed the whole empty length, east and west. the semi-norman arches of the nave, with their multitudinous notchings, were still visible by the light from the tower window, but the lower portion of the building was in obscurity, except where the feeble glimmer from the candle of the organist spread a glow-worm radiance around. the player, who was miss tabitha lark, continued without intermission to produce her wandering sounds, unconscious of any one's presence except that of the youthful blower at her side. the rays from the organist's candle illuminated but one small fragment of the chancel outside the precincts of the instrument, and that was the portion of the eastern wall whereon the ten commandments were inscribed. the gilt letters shone sternly into lady constantine's eyes; and she, being as impressionable as a turtle-dove, watched a certain one of those commandments on the second table, till its thunder broke her spirit with blank contrition. she knelt down, and did her utmost to eradicate those impulses towards st. cleeve which were inconsistent with her position as the wife of an absent man, though not unnatural in her as his victim. she knelt till she seemed scarcely to belong to the time she lived in, which lost the magnitude that the nearness of its perspective lent it on ordinary occasions, and took its actual rank in the long line of other centuries. having once got out of herself, seen herself from afar off, she was calmer, and went on to register a magnanimous vow. she would look about for some maiden fit and likely to make st. cleeve happy; and this girl she would endow with what money she could afford, that the natural result of their apposition should do him no worldly harm. the interest of her, lady constantine's, life should be in watching the development of love between swithin and the ideal maiden. the very painfulness of the scheme to her susceptible heart made it pleasing to her conscience; and she wondered that she had not before this time thought of a stratagem which united the possibility of benefiting the astronomer with the advantage of guarding against peril to both swithin and herself. by providing for him a suitable helpmate she would preclude the dangerous awakening in him of sentiments reciprocating her own. arrived at a point of exquisite misery through this heroic intention, lady constantine's tears moistened the books upon which her forehead was bowed. and as she heard her feverish heart throb against the desk, she firmly believed the wearing impulses of that heart would put an end to her sad life, and momentarily recalled the banished image of st. cleeve to apostrophise him in thoughts that paraphrased the quaint lines of heine's _lieb' liebchen_:-- 'dear my love, press thy hand to my breast, and tell if thou tracest the knocks in that narrow cell; a carpenter dwells there; cunning is he, and slyly he's shaping a coffin for me!' lady constantine was disturbed by a break in the organist's meandering practice, and raising her head she saw a person standing by the player. it was mr. torkingham, and what he said was distinctly audible. he was inquiring for herself. 'i thought i saw lady constantine walk this way,' he rejoined to tabitha's negative. 'i am very anxious indeed to meet with her.' she went forward. 'i am here,' she said. 'don't stop playing, miss lark. what is it, mr. torkingham?' tabitha thereupon resumed her playing, and mr. torkingham joined lady constantine. 'i have some very serious intelligence to break to your ladyship,' he said. 'but--i will not interrupt you here.' (he had seen her rise from her knees to come to him.) 'i will call at the house the first moment you can receive me after reaching home.' 'no, tell me here,' she said, seating herself. he came close, and placed his hand on the poppy-head of the seat. 'i have received a communication,' he resumed haltingly, 'in which i am requested to prepare you for the contents of a letter that you will receive to-morrow morning.' 'i am quite ready.' 'the subject is briefly this, lady constantine: that you have been a widow for more than eighteen months.' 'dead!' 'yes. sir blount was attacked by dysentery and malarious fever, on the banks of the zouga in south africa, so long ago as last october twelvemonths, and it carried him off. of the three men who were with him, two succumbed to the same illness, a hundred miles further on; while the third, retracing his steps into a healthier district, remained there with a native tribe, and took no pains to make the circumstances known. it seems to be only by the mere accident of his having told some third party that we know of the matter now. this is all i can tell you at present.' she was greatly agitated for a few moments; and the table of the law opposite, which now seemed to appertain to another dispensation, glistened indistinctly upon a vision still obscured by the old tears. 'shall i conduct you home?' asked the parson. 'no thank you,' said lady constantine. 'i would rather go alone.' xii on the afternoon of the next day mr. torkingham, who occasionally dropped in to see st. cleeve, called again as usual; after duly remarking on the state of the weather, congratulating him on his sure though slow improvement, and answering his inquiries about the comet, he said, 'you have heard, i suppose, of what has happened to lady constantine?' 'no! nothing serious?' 'yes, it is serious.' the parson informed him of the death of sir blount, and of the accidents which had hindered all knowledge of the same,--accidents favoured by the estrangement of the pair and the cessation of correspondence between them for some time. his listener received the news with the concern of a friend, lady constantine's aspect in his eyes depending but little on her condition matrimonially. 'there was no attempt to bring him home when he died?' 'o no. the climate necessitates instant burial. we shall have more particulars in a day or two, doubtless.' 'poor lady constantine,--so good and so sensitive as she is! i suppose she is quite prostrated by the bad news.' 'well, she is rather serious,--not prostrated. the household is going into mourning.' 'ah, no, she would not be quite prostrated,' murmured swithin, recollecting himself. 'he was unkind to her in many ways. do you think she will go away from welland?' that the vicar could not tell. but he feared that sir blount's affairs had been in a seriously involved condition, which might necessitate many and unexpected changes. time showed that mr. torkingham's surmises were correct. during the long weeks of early summer, through which the young man still lay imprisoned, if not within his own chamber, within the limits of the house and garden, news reached him that sir blount's mismanagement and eccentric behaviour were resulting in serious consequences to lady constantine; nothing less, indeed, than her almost complete impoverishment. his personalty was swallowed up in paying his debts, and the welland estate was so heavily charged with annuities to his distant relatives that only a mere pittance was left for her. she was reducing the establishment to the narrowest compass compatible with decent gentility. the horses were sold one by one; the carriages also; the greater part of the house was shut up, and she resided in the smallest rooms. all that was allowed to remain of her former contingent of male servants were an odd man and a boy. instead of using a carriage she now drove about in a donkey-chair, the said boy walking in front to clear the way and keep the animal in motion; while she wore, so his informants reported, not an ordinary widow's cap or bonnet, but something even plainer, the black material being drawn tightly round her face, giving her features a small, demure, devout cast, very pleasing to the eye. 'now, what's the most curious thing in this, mr. san cleeve,' said sammy blore, who, in calling to inquire after swithin's health, had imparted some of the above particulars, 'is that my lady seems not to mind being a pore woman half so much as we do at seeing her so. 'tis a wonderful gift, mr. san cleeve, wonderful, to be able to guide yerself, and not let loose yer soul in blasting at such a misfortune. i should go and drink neat regular, as soon as i had swallered my breakfast, till my innerds was burnt out like a' old copper, if it had happened to me; but my lady's plan is best. though i only guess how one feels in such losses, to be sure, for i never had nothing to lose.' meanwhile the observatory was not forgotten; nor that visitant of singular shape and habits which had appeared in the sky from no one knew whence, trailing its luminous streamer, and proceeding on its way in the face of a wondering world, till it should choose to vanish as suddenly as it had come. when, about a month after the above dialogue took place, swithin was allowed to go about as usual, his first pilgrimage was to the rings-hill speer. here he studied at leisure what he had come to see. on his return to the homestead, just after sunset, he found his grandmother and hannah in a state of great concern. the former was looking out for him against the evening light, her face showing itself worn and rutted, like an old highway, by the passing of many days. her information was that in his absence lady constantine had called in her driving-chair, to inquire for him. her ladyship had wished to observe the comet through the great telescope, but had found the door locked when she applied at the tower. would he kindly leave the door unfastened to- morrow, she had asked, that she might be able to go to the column on the following evening for the same purpose? she did not require him to attend. during the next day he sent hannah with the key to welland house, not caring to leave the tower open. as evening advanced and the comet grew distinct, he doubted if lady constantine could handle the telescope alone with any pleasure or profit to herself. unable, as a devotee to science, to rest under this misgiving, he crossed the field in the furrow that he had used ever since the corn was sown, and entered the plantation. his unpractised mind never once guessed that her stipulations against his coming might have existed along with a perverse hope that he would come. on ascending he found her already there. she sat in the observing-chair: the warm light from the west, which flowed in through the opening of the dome, brightened her face, and her face only, her robes of sable lawn rendering the remainder of her figure almost invisible. 'you have come!' she said with shy pleasure. 'i did not require you. but never mind.' she extended her hand cordially to him. before speaking he looked at her with a great new interest in his eye. it was the first time that he had seen her thus, and she was altered in more than dress. a soberly-sweet expression sat on her face. it was of a rare and peculiar shade--something that he had never seen before in woman. 'have you nothing to say?' she continued. 'your footsteps were audible to me from the very bottom, and i knew they were yours. you look almost restored.' 'i am almost restored,' he replied, respectfully pressing her hand. 'a reason for living arose, and i lived.' 'what reason?' she inquired, with a rapid blush. he pointed to the rocket-like object in the western sky. 'oh, you mean the comet. well, you will never make a courtier! you know, of course, what has happened to me; that i have no longer a husband--have had none for a year and a half. have you also heard that i am now quite a poor woman? tell me what you think of it.' 'i have thought very little of it since i heard that you seemed to mind poverty but little. there is even this good in it, that i may now be able to show you some little kindness for all those you have done me, my dear lady.' 'unless for economy's sake, i go and live abroad, at dinan, versailles, or boulogne.' swithin, who had never thought of such a contingency, was earnest in his regrets; without, however, showing more than a sincere friend's disappointment. 'i did not say it was absolutely necessary,' she continued. 'i have, in fact, grown so homely and home-loving, i am so interested in the place and the people here, that, in spite of advice, i have almost determined not to let the house; but to continue the less business-like but pleasanter alternative of living humbly in a part of it, and shutting up the rest.' 'your love of astronomy is getting as strong as mine!' he said ardently. 'you could not tear yourself away from the observatory!' 'you might have supposed me capable of a little human feeling as well as scientific, in connection with the observatory.' 'dear lady constantine, by admitting that your astronomer has also a part of your interest--' 'ah, you did not find it out without my telling!' she said, with a playfulness which was scarcely playful, a new accession of pinkness being visible in her face. 'i diminish myself in your esteem by reminding you.' 'you might do anything in this world without diminishing yourself in my esteem, after the goodness you have shown. and more than that, no misrepresentation, no rumour, no damning appearance whatever would ever shake my loyalty to you.' 'but you put a very matter-of-fact construction on my motives sometimes. you see me in such a hard light that i have to drop hints in quite a manoeuvring manner to let you know i am as sympathetic as other people. i sometimes think you would rather have me die than have your equatorial stolen. confess that your admiration for me was based on my house and position in the county! now i am shorn of all that glory, such as it was, and am a widow, and am poorer than my tenants, and can no longer buy telescopes, and am unable, from the narrowness of my circumstances, to mix in circles that people formerly said i adorned, i fear i have lost the little hold i once had over you.' 'you are as unjust now as you have been generous hitherto,' said st. cleeve, with tears in his eyes at the gentle banter of the lady, which he, poor innocent, read as her real opinions. seizing her hand he continued, in tones between reproach and anger, 'i swear to you that i have but two devotions, two thoughts, two hopes, and two blessings in this world, and that one of them is yourself!' 'and the other?' 'the pursuit of astronomy.' 'and astronomy stands first.' 'i have never ordinated two such dissimilar ideas. and why should you deplore your altered circumstances, my dear lady? your widowhood, if i may take the liberty to speak on such a subject, is, though i suppose a sadness, not perhaps an unmixed evil. for though your pecuniary troubles have been discovered to the world and yourself by it, your happiness in marriage was, as you have confided to me, not great; and you are now left free as a bird to follow your own hobbies.' 'i wonder you recognize that.' 'but perhaps,' he added, with a sigh of regret, 'you will again fall a prey to some man, some uninteresting country squire or other, and be lost to the scientific world after all.' 'if i fall a prey to any man, it will not be to a country squire. but don't go on with this, for heaven's sake! you may think what you like in silence.' 'we are forgetting the comet,' said st. cleeve. he turned, and set the instrument in order for observation, and wheeled round the dome. while she was looking at the nucleus of the fiery plume, that now filled so large a space of the sky as completely to dominate it, swithin dropped his gaze upon the field, and beheld in the dying light a number of labourers crossing directly towards the column. 'what do you see?' lady constantine asked, without ceasing to observe the comet. 'some of the work-folk are coming this way. i know what they are coming for,--i promised to let them look at the comet through the glass.' 'they must not come up here,' she said decisively. 'they shall await your time.' 'i have a special reason for wishing them not to see me here. if you ask why, i can tell you. they mistakenly suspect my interest to be less in astronomy than in the astronomer, and they must have no showing for such a wild notion. what can you do to keep them out?' 'i'll lock the door,' said swithin. 'they will then think i am away.' he ran down the staircase, and she could hear him hastily turning the key. lady constantine sighed. 'what weakness, what weakness!' she said to herself. 'that envied power of self-control, where is it? that power of concealment which a woman should have--where? to run such risks, to come here alone,--oh, if it were known! but i was always so,--always!' she jumped up, and followed him downstairs. xiii he was standing immediately inside the door at the bottom, though it was so dark she could hardly see him. the villagers were audibly talking just without. 'he's sure to come, rathe or late,' resounded up the spiral in the vocal note of hezzy biles. 'he wouldn't let such a fine show as the comet makes to-night go by without peeping at it,--not master cleeve! did ye bring along the flagon, haymoss? then we'll sit down inside his little board-house here, and wait. he'll come afore bed-time. why, his spy- glass will stretch out that there comet as long as welland lane!' 'i'd as soon miss the great peep-show that comes every year to greenhill fair as a sight of such a immortal spectacle as this!' said amos fry. '"immortal spectacle,"--where did ye get that choice mossel, haymoss?' inquired sammy blore. 'well, well, the lord save good scholars--and take just a bit o' care of them that bain't! as 'tis so dark in the hut, suppose we draw out the bench into the front here, souls?' the bench was accordingly brought forth, and in order to have a back to lean against, they placed it exactly across the door into the spiral staircase. 'now, have ye got any backy? if ye haven't, i have,' continued sammy blore. a striking of matches followed, and the speaker concluded comfortably, 'now we shall do very well.' 'and what do this comet mean?' asked haymoss. 'that some great tumult is going to happen, or that we shall die of a famine?' 'famine--no!' said nat chapman. 'that only touches such as we, and the lord only consarns himself with born gentlemen. it isn't to be supposed that a strange fiery lantern like that would be lighted up for folks with ten or a dozen shillings a week and their gristing, and a load o' thorn faggots when we can get 'em. if 'tis a token that he's getting hot about the ways of anybody in this parish, 'tis about my lady constantine's, since she is the only one of a figure worth such a hint.' 'as for her income,--that she's now lost.' 'ah, well; i don't take in all i hear.' lady constantine drew close to st. cleeve's side, and whispered, trembling, 'do you think they will wait long? or can we get out?' swithin felt the awkwardness of the situation. the men had placed the bench close to the door, which, owing to the stairs within, opened outwards; so that at the first push by the pair inside to release themselves the bench must have gone over, and sent the smokers sprawling on their faces. he whispered to her to ascend the column and wait till he came. 'and have the dead man left her nothing? hey? and have he carried his inheritance into's grave? and will his skeleton lie warm on account o't? hee-hee!' said haymoss. ''tis all swallered up,' observed hezzy biles. 'his goings-on made her miserable till 'a died, and if i were the woman i'd have my randys now. he ought to have bequeathed to her our young gent, mr. st. cleeve, as some sort of amends. i'd up and marry en, if i were she; since her downfall has brought 'em quite near together, and made him as good as she in rank, as he was afore in bone and breeding.' 'd'ye think she will?' asked sammy blore. 'or is she meaning to enter upon a virgin life for the rest of her days?' 'i don't want to be unreverent to her ladyship; but i really don't think she is meaning any such waste of a christian carcase. i say she's rather meaning to commit flat matrimony wi' somebody or other, and one young gentleman in particular.' 'but the young man himself?' 'planned, cut out, and finished for the delight of 'ooman!' 'yet he must be willing.' 'that would soon come. if they get up this tower ruling plannards together much longer, their plannards will soon rule them together, in my way o' thinking. if she've a disposition towards the knot, she can soon teach him.' 'true, true, and lawfully. what before mid ha' been a wrong desire is now a holy wish!' the scales fell from swithin st. cleeve's eyes as he heard the words of his neighbours. how suddenly the truth dawned upon him; how it bewildered him, till he scarcely knew where he was; how he recalled the full force of what he had only half apprehended at earlier times, particularly of that sweet kiss she had impressed on his lips when she supposed him dying,--these vivid realizations are difficult to tell in slow verbiage. he could remain there no longer, and with an electrified heart he retreated up the spiral. he found lady constantine half way to the top, standing by a loop-hole; and when she spoke he discovered that she was almost in tears. 'are they gone?' she asked. 'i fear they will not go yet,' he replied, with a nervous fluctuation of manner that had never before appeared in his bearing towards her. 'what shall i do?' she asked. 'i ought not to be here; nobody knows that i am out of the house. oh, this is a mistake! i must go home somehow.' 'did you hear what they were saying?' 'no,' said she. 'what is the matter? surely you are disturbed? what did they say?' 'it would be the exaggeration of frankness in me to tell you.' 'is it what a woman ought not to be made acquainted with?' 'it is, in this case. it is so new and so indescribable an idea to me--that'--he leant against the concave wall, quite tremulous with strange incipient sentiments. 'what sort of an idea?' she asked gently. 'it is--an awakening. in thinking of the heaven above, i did not perceive--the--' 'earth beneath?' 'the better heaven beneath. pray, dear lady constantine, give me your hand for a moment.' she seemed startled, and the hand was not given. 'i am so anxious to get home,' she repeated. 'i did not mean to stay here more than five minutes!' 'i fear i am much to blame for this accident,' he said. 'i ought not to have intruded here. but don't grieve! i will arrange for your escape, somehow. be good enough to follow me down.' they redescended, and, whispering to lady constantine to remain a few stairs behind, he began to rattle and unlock the door. the men precipitately removed their bench, and swithin stepped out, the light of the summer night being still enough to enable them to distinguish him. 'well, hezekiah, and samuel, and nat, how are you?' he said boldly. 'well, sir, 'tis much as before wi' me,' replied nat. 'one hour a week wi' god a'mighty and the rest with the devil, as a chap may say. and really, now yer poor father's gone, i'd as lief that that sunday hour should pass like the rest; for pa'son tarkenham do tease a feller's conscience that much, that church is no hollerday at all to the limbs, as it was in yer reverent father's time! but we've been waiting here, mr. san cleeve, supposing ye had not come.' 'i have been staying at the top, and fastened the door not to be disturbed. now i am sorry to disappoint you, but i have another engagement this evening, so that it would be inconvenient to admit you. to-morrow evening, or any evening but this, i will show you the comet and any stars you like.' they readily agreed to come the next night, and prepared to depart. but what with the flagon, and the pipes, and the final observations, getting away was a matter of time. meanwhile a cloud, which nobody had noticed, arose from the north overhead, and large drops of rain began to fall so rapidly that the conclave entered the hut till it should be over. st. cleeve strolled off under the firs. the next moment there was a rustling through the trees at another point, and a man and woman appeared. the woman took shelter under a tree, and the man, bearing wraps and umbrellas, came forward. 'my lady's man and maid,' said sammy. 'is her ladyship here?' asked the man. 'no. i reckon her ladyship keeps more kissable company,' replied nat chapman. 'pack o' stuff!' said blore. 'not here? well, to be sure! we can't find her anywhere in the wide house! i've been sent to look for her with these overclothes and umbrella. i've suffered horse-flesh traipsing up and down, and can't find her nowhere. lord, lord, where can she be, and two months' wages owing to me!' 'why so anxious, anthony green, as i think yer name is shaped? you be not a married man?' said hezzy. ''tis what they call me, neighbours, whether or no.' 'but surely you was a bachelor chap by late, afore her ladyship got rid of the regular servants and took ye?' 'i were; but that's past!' 'and how came ye to bow yer head to 't, anthony? 'tis what you never was inclined to. you was by no means a doting man in my time.' 'well, had i been left to my own free choice, 'tis as like as not i should ha' shunned forming such kindred, being at that time a poor day man, or weekly, at my highest luck in hiring. but 'tis wearing work to hold out against the custom of the country, and the woman wanting ye to stand by her and save her from unborn shame; so, since common usage would have it, i let myself be carried away by opinion, and took her. though she's never once thanked me for covering her confusion, that's true! but, 'tis the way of the lost when safe, and i don't complain. here she is, just behind, under the tree, if you'd like to see her?--a very nice homespun woman to look at, too, for all her few weather-stains. . . . well, well, where can my lady be? and i the trusty jineral man--'tis more than my place is worth to lose her! come forward, christiana, and talk nicely to the work-folk.' while the woman was talking the rain increased so much that they all retreated further into the hut. st. cleeve, who had impatiently stood a little way off, now saw his opportunity, and, putting in his head, said, 'the rain beats in; you had better shut the door. i must ascend and close up the dome.' slamming the door upon them without ceremony he quickly went to lady constantine in the column, and telling her they could now pass the villagers unseen he gave her his arm. thus he conducted her across the front of the hut into the shadows of the firs. 'i will run to the house and harness your little carriage myself,' he said tenderly. 'i will then take you home in it.' 'no; please don't leave me alone under these dismal trees!' neither would she hear of his getting her any wraps; and, opening her little sunshade to keep the rain out of her face, she walked with him across the insulating field, after which the trees of the park afforded her a sufficient shelter to reach home without much damage. swithin was too greatly affected by what he had overheard to speak much to her on the way, and protected her as if she had been a shorn lamb. after a farewell which had more meaning than sound in it, he hastened back to rings-hill speer. the work-folk were still in the hut, and, by dint of friendly converse and a sip at the flagon, had so cheered mr. and mrs. anthony green that they neither thought nor cared what had become of lady constantine. st. cleeve's sudden sense of new relations with that sweet patroness had taken away in one half-hour his natural ingenuousness. henceforth he could act a part. 'i have made all secure at the top,' he said, putting his head into the hut. 'i am now going home. when the rain stops, lock this door and bring the key to my house.' xiv the laboured resistance which lady constantine's judgment had offered to her rebellious affection ere she learnt that she was a widow, now passed into a bashfulness that rendered her almost as unstable of mood as before. but she was one of that mettle--fervid, cordial, and spontaneous--who had not the heart to spoil a passion; and her affairs having gone to rack and ruin by no fault of her own she was left to a painfully narrowed existence which lent even something of rationality to her attachment. thus it was that her tender and unambitious soul found comfort in her reverses. as for st. cleeve, the tardiness of his awakening was the natural result of inexperience combined with devotion to a hobby. but, like a spring bud hard in bursting, the delay was compensated by after speed. at once breathlessly recognizing in this fellow-watcher of the skies a woman who loved him, in addition to the patroness and friend, he truly translated the nearly forgotten kiss she had given him in her moment of despair. lady constantine, in being eight or nine years his senior, was an object even better calculated to nourish a youth's first passion than a girl of his own age, superiority of experience and ripeness of emotion exercising the same peculiar fascination over him as over other young men in their first ventures in this kind. the alchemy which thus transmuted an abstracted astronomer into an eager lover--and, must it be said, spoilt a promising young physicist to produce a common-place inamorato--may be almost described as working its change in one short night. next morning he was so fascinated with the novel sensation that he wanted to rush off at once to lady constantine, and say, 'i love you true!' in the intensest tones of his mental condition, to register his assertion in her heart before any of those accidents which 'creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,' should occur to hinder him. but his embarrassment at standing in a new position towards her would not allow him to present himself at her door in any such hurry. he waited on, as helplessly as a girl, for a chance of encountering her. but though she had tacitly agreed to see him on any reasonable occasion, lady constantine did not put herself in his way. she even kept herself out of his way. now that for the first time he had learnt to feel a strong impatience for their meeting, her shyness for the first time led her to delay it. but given two people living in one parish, who long from the depths of their hearts to be in each other's company, what resolves of modesty, policy, pride, or apprehension will keep them for any length of time apart? one afternoon he was watching the sun from his tower, half echoing the greek astronomer's wish that he might be set close to that luminary for the wonder of beholding it in all its glory, under the slight penalty of being consumed the next instant. he glanced over the high-road between the field and the park (which sublunary features now too often distracted his attention from his telescope), and saw her passing along that way. she was seated in the donkey-carriage that had now taken the place of her landau, the white animal looking no larger than a cat at that distance. the buttoned boy, who represented both coachman and footman, walked alongside the animal's head at a solemn pace; the dog stalked at the distance of a yard behind the vehicle, without indulging in a single gambol; and the whole turn-out resembled in dignity a dwarfed state procession. here was an opportunity but for two obstructions: the boy, who might be curious; and the dog, who might bark and attract the attention of any labourers or servants near. yet the risk was to be run, and, knowing that she would soon turn up a certain shady lane at right angles to the road she had followed, he ran hastily down the staircase, crossed the barley (which now covered the field) by the path not more than a foot wide that he had trodden for himself, and got into the lane at the other end. by slowly walking along in the direction of the turnpike-road he soon had the satisfaction of seeing her coming. to his surprise he also had the satisfaction of perceiving that neither boy nor dog was in her company. they both blushed as they approached, she from sex, he from inexperience. one thing she seemed to see in a moment, that in the interval of her absence st. cleeve had become a man; and as he greeted her with this new and maturer light in his eyes she could not hide her embarrassment, or meet their fire. 'i have just sent my page across to the column with your book on cometary nuclei,' she said softly; 'that you might not have to come to the house for it. i did not know i should meet you here.' 'didn't you wish me to come to the house for it?' 'i did not, frankly. you know why, do you not?' 'yes, i know. well, my longing is at rest. i have met you again. but are you unwell, that you drive out in this chair?' 'no; i walked out this morning, and am a little tired.' 'i have been looking for you night and day. why do you turn your face aside? you used not to be so.' her hand rested on the side of the chair, and he took it. 'do you know that since we last met, i have been thinking of you--daring to think of you--as i never thought of you before?' 'yes, i know it.' 'how did you know?' 'i saw it in your face when you came up.' 'well, i suppose i ought not to think of you so. and yet, had i not learned to, i should never fully have felt how gentle and sweet you are. only think of my loss if i had lived and died without seeing more in you than in astronomy! but i shall never leave off doing so now. when you talk i shall love your understanding; when you are silent i shall love your face. but how shall i know that you care to be so much to me?' her manner was disturbed as she recognized the impending self-surrender, which she knew not how to resist, and was not altogether at ease in welcoming. 'o, lady constantine,' he continued, bending over her, 'give me some proof more than mere seeming and inference, which are all i have at present, that you don't think this i tell you of presumption in me! i have been unable to do anything since i last saw you for pondering uncertainly on this. some proof, or little sign, that we are one in heart!' a blush settled again on her face; and half in effort, half in spontaneity, she put her finger on her cheek. he almost devotionally kissed the spot. 'does that suffice?' she asked, scarcely giving her words voice. 'yes; i am convinced.' 'then that must be the end. let me drive on; the boy will be back again soon.' she spoke hastily, and looked askance to hide the heat of her cheek. 'no; the tower door is open, and he will go to the top, and waste his time in looking through the telescope.' 'then you should rush back, for he will do some damage.' 'no; he may do what he likes, tinker and spoil the instrument, destroy my papers,--anything, so that he will stay there and leave us alone.' she glanced up with a species of pained pleasure. 'you never used to feel like that!' she said, and there was keen self- reproach in her voice. 'you were once so devoted to your science that the thought of an intruder into your temple would have driven you wild. now you don't care; and who is to blame? ah, not you, not you!' the animal ambled on with her, and he, leaning on the side of the little vehicle, kept her company. 'well, don't let us think of that,' he said. 'i offer myself and all my energies, frankly and entirely, to you, my dear, dear lady, whose i shall be always! but my words in telling you this will only injure my meaning instead of emphasize it. in expressing, even to myself, my thoughts of you, i find that i fall into phrases which, as a critic, i should hitherto have heartily despised for their commonness. what's the use of saying, for instance, as i have just said, that i give myself entirely to you, and shall be yours always,--that you have my devotion, my highest homage? those words have been used so frequently in a flippant manner that honest use of them is not distinguishable from the unreal.' he turned to her, and added, smiling, 'your eyes are to be my stars for the future.' 'yes, i know it,--i know it, and all you would say! i dreaded even while i hoped for this, my dear young friend,' she replied, her eyes being full of tears. 'i am injuring you; who knows that i am not ruining your future,--i who ought to know better? nothing can come of this, nothing must,--and i am only wasting your time. why have i drawn you off from a grand celestial study to study poor lonely me? say you will never despise me, when you get older, for this episode in our lives. but you will,--i know you will! all men do, when they have been attracted in their unsuspecting youth, as i have attracted you. i ought to have kept my resolve.' 'what was that?' 'to bear anything rather than draw you from your high purpose; to be like the noble citizen of old greece, who, attending a sacrifice, let himself be burnt to the bone by a coal that jumped into his sleeve rather than disturb the sacred ceremony.' 'but can i not study and love both?' 'i hope so,--i earnestly hope so. but you'll be the first if you do, and i am the responsible one if you do not.' 'you speak as if i were quite a child, and you immensely older. why, how old do you think i am? i am twenty.' 'you seem younger. well, that's so much the better. twenty sounds strong and firm. how old do you think i am?' 'i have never thought of considering.' he innocently turned to scrutinize her face. she winced a little. but the instinct was premature. time had taken no liberties with her features as yet; nor had trouble very roughly handled her. 'i will tell you,' she replied, speaking almost with physical pain, yet as if determination should carry her through. 'i am eight-and-twenty--nearly--i mean a little more, a few months more. am i not a fearful deal older than you?' 'at first it seems a great deal,' he answered, musing. 'but it doesn't seem much when one gets used to it.' 'nonsense!' she exclaimed. 'it _is_ a good deal.' 'very well, then, sweetest lady constantine, let it be,' he said gently. 'you should not let it be! a polite man would have flatly contradicted me. . . . o i am ashamed of this!' she added a moment after, with a subdued, sad look upon the ground. 'i am speaking by the card of the outer world, which i have left behind utterly; no such lip service is known in your sphere. i care nothing for those things, really; but that which is called the eve in us will out sometimes. well, we will forget that now, as we must, at no very distant date, forget all the rest of this.' he walked beside her thoughtfully awhile, with his eyes also bent on the road. 'why must we forget it all?' he inquired. 'it is only an interlude.' 'an interlude! it is no interlude to me. o how can you talk so lightly of this, lady constantine? and yet, if i were to go away from here, i might, perhaps, soon reduce it to an interlude! yes,' he resumed impulsively, 'i will go away. love dies, and it is just as well to strangle it in its birth; it can only die once! i'll go.' 'no, no!' she said, looking up apprehensively. 'i misled you. it is no interlude to me,--it is tragical. i only meant that from a worldly point of view it is an interlude, which we should try to forget. but the world is not all. you will not go away?' but he continued drearily, 'yes, yes, i see it all; you have enlightened me. it will be hurting your prospects even more than mine, if i stay. now sir blount is dead, you are free again,--may marry where you will, but for this fancy of ours. i'll leave welland before harm comes of my staying.' 'don't decide to do a thing so rash!' she begged, seizing his hand, and looking miserable at the effect of her words. 'i shall have nobody left in the world to care for! and now i have given you the great telescope, and lent you the column, it would be ungrateful to go away! i was wrong; believe me that i did not mean that it was a mere interlude to _me_. o if you only knew how very, very far it is from that! it is my doubt of the result to you that makes me speak so slightingly.' they were now approaching cross-roads, and casually looking up they beheld, thirty or forty yards beyond the crossing, mr. torkingham, who was leaning over a gate, his back being towards them. as yet he had not recognized their approach. the master-passion had already supplanted st. cleeve's natural ingenuousness by subtlety. 'would it be well for us to meet mr. torkingham just now?' he began. 'certainly not,' she said hastily, and pulling the rein she instantly drove down the right-hand road. 'i cannot meet anybody!' she murmured. 'would it not be better that you leave me now?--not for my pleasure, but that there may arise no distressing tales about us before we know--how to act in this--this'--(she smiled faintly at him) 'heartaching extremity!' they were passing under a huge oak-tree, whose limbs, irregular with shoulders, knuckles, and elbows, stretched horizontally over the lane in a manner recalling absalom's death. a slight rustling was perceptible amid the leafage as they drew out from beneath it, and turning up his eyes swithin saw that very buttoned page whose advent they had dreaded, looking down with interest at them from a perch not much higher than a yard above their heads. he had a bunch of oak-apples in one hand, plainly the object of his climb, and was furtively watching lady constantine with the hope that she might not see him. but that she had already done, though she did not reveal it, and, fearing that the latter words of their conversation had been overheard, they spoke not till they had passed the next turning. she stretched out her hand to his. 'this must not go on,' she said imploringly. 'my anxiety as to what may be said of such methods of meeting makes me too unhappy. see what has happened!' she could not help smiling. 'out of the frying-pan into the fire! after meanly turning to avoid the parson we have rushed into a worse publicity. it is too humiliating to have to avoid people, and lowers both you and me. the only remedy is not to meet.' 'very well,' said swithin, with a sigh. 'so it shall be.' and with smiles that might more truly have been tears they parted there and then. xv the summer passed away, and autumn, with its infinite suite of tints, came creeping on. darker grew the evenings, tearfuller the moonlights, and heavier the dews. meanwhile the comet had waxed to its largest dimensions,--so large that not only the nucleus but a portion of the tail had been visible in broad day. it was now on the wane, though every night the equatorial still afforded an opportunity of observing the singular object which would soon disappear altogether from the heavens for perhaps thousands of years. but the astronomer of the rings-hill speer was no longer a match for his celestial materials. scientifically he had become but a dim vapour of himself; the lover had come into him like an armed man, and cast out the student, and his intellectual situation was growing a life-and-death matter. the resolve of the pair had been so far kept: they had not seen each other in private for three months. but on one day in october he ventured to write a note to her:-- 'i can do nothing! i have ceased to study, ceased to observe. the equatorial is useless to me. this affection i have for you absorbs my life, and outweighs my intentions. the power to labour in this grandest of fields has left me. i struggle against the weakness till i think of the cause, and then i bless her. but the very desperation of my circumstances has suggested a remedy; and this i would inform you of at once. 'can you come to me, since i must not come to you? i will wait to- morrow night at the edge of the plantation by which you would enter to the column. i will not detain you; my plan can be told in ten words.' the night after posting this missive to her he waited at the spot mentioned. it was a melancholy evening for coming abroad. a blusterous wind had risen during the day, and still continued to increase. yet he stood watchful in the darkness, and was ultimately rewarded by discerning a shady muffled shape that embodied itself from the field, accompanied by the scratching of silk over stubble. there was no longer any disguise as to the nature of their meeting. it was a lover's assignation, pure and simple; and boldly realizing it as such he clasped her in his arms. 'i cannot bear this any longer!' he exclaimed. 'three months since i saw you alone! only a glimpse of you in church, or a bow from the distance, in all that time! what a fearful struggle this keeping apart has been!' 'yet i would have had strength to persist, since it seemed best,' she murmured when she could speak, 'had not your words on your condition so alarmed and saddened me. this inability of yours to work, or study, or observe,--it is terrible! so terrible a sting is it to my conscience that your hint about a remedy has brought me instantly.' 'yet i don't altogether mind it, since it is you, my dear, who have displaced the work; and yet the loss of time nearly distracts me, when i have neither the power to work nor the delight of your company.' 'but your remedy! o, i cannot help guessing it! yes; you are going away!' 'let us ascend the column; we can speak more at ease there. then i will explain all. i would not ask you to climb so high but the hut is not yet furnished.' he entered the cabin at the foot, and having lighted a small lantern, conducted her up the hollow staircase to the top, where he closed the slides of the dome to keep out the wind, and placed the observing-chair for her. 'i can stay only five minutes,' she said, without sitting down. 'you said it was important that you should see me, and i have come. i assure you it is at a great risk. if i am seen here at this time i am ruined for ever. but what would i not do for you? o swithin, your remedy--is it to go away? there is no other; and yet i dread that like death!' 'i can tell you in a moment, but i must begin at the beginning. all this ruinous idleness and distraction is caused by the misery of our not being able to meet with freedom. the fear that something may snatch you from me keeps me in a state of perpetual apprehension.' 'it is too true also of me! i dread that some accident may happen, and waste my days in meeting the trouble half-way.' 'so our lives go on, and our labours stand still. now for the remedy. dear lady constantine, allow me to marry you.' she started, and the wind without shook the building, sending up a yet intenser moan from the firs. 'i mean, marry you quite privately. let it make no difference whatever to our outward lives for years, for i know that in my present position you could not possibly acknowledge me as husband publicly. but by marrying at once we secure the certainty that we cannot be divided by accident, coaxing, or artifice; and, at ease on that point, i shall embrace my studies with the old vigour, and you yours.' lady constantine was so agitated at the unexpected boldness of such a proposal from one hitherto so boyish and deferential that she sank into the observing-chair, her intention to remain for only a few minutes being quite forgotten. she covered her face with her hands. 'no, no, i dare not!' she whispered. 'but is there a single thing else left to do?' he pleaded, kneeling down beside her, less in supplication than in abandonment. 'what else can we do?' 'wait till you are famous.' 'but i cannot be famous unless i strive, and this distracting condition prevents all striving!' 'could you not strive on if i--gave you a promise, a solemn promise, to be yours when your name is fairly well known?' st. cleeve breathed heavily. 'it will be a long, weary time,' he said. 'and even with your promise i shall work but half-heartedly. every hour of study will be interrupted with "suppose this or this happens;" "suppose somebody persuades her to break her promise;" worse still, "suppose some rival maligns me, and so seduces her away." no, lady constantine, dearest, best as you are, that element of distraction would still remain, and where that is, no sustained energy is possible. many erroneous things have been written and said by the sages, but never did they float a greater fallacy than that love serves as a stimulus to win the loved one by patient toil.' 'i cannot argue with you,' she said weakly. 'my only possible other chance would lie in going away,' he resumed after a moment's reflection, with his eyes on the lantern flame, which waved and smoked in the currents of air that leaked into the dome from the fierce wind-stream without. 'if i might take away the equatorial, supposing it possible that i could find some suitable place for observing in the southern hemisphere,--say, at the cape,--i _might_ be able to apply myself to serious work again, after the lapse of a little time. the southern constellations offer a less exhausted field for investigation. i wonder if i might!' 'you mean,' she answered uneasily, 'that you might apply yourself to work when your recollection of me began to fade, and my life to become a matter of indifference to you? . . yes, go! no,--i cannot bear it! the remedy is worse than the disease. i cannot let you go away!' 'then how can you refuse the only condition on which i can stay, without ruin to my purpose and scandal to your name? dearest, agree to my proposal, as you love both me and yourself!' he waited, while the fir-trees rubbed and prodded the base of the tower, and the wind roared around and shook it; but she could not find words to reply. 'would to god,' he burst out, 'that i might perish here, like winstanley in his lighthouse! then the difficulty would be solved for you.' 'you are so wrong, so very wrong, in saying so!' she exclaimed passionately. 'you may doubt my wisdom, pity my short-sightedness; but there is one thing you do know,--that i love you dearly!' 'you do,--i know it!' he said, softened in a moment. 'but it seems such a simple remedy for the difficulty that i cannot see how you can mind adopting it, if you care so much for me as i do for you.' 'should we live . . . just as we are, exactly, . . . supposing i agreed?' she faintly inquired. 'yes, that is my idea.' 'quite privately, you say. how could--the marriage be quite private?' 'i would go away to london and get a license. then you could come to me, and return again immediately after the ceremony. i could return at leisure and not a soul in the world would know what had taken place. think, dearest, with what a free conscience you could then assist me in my efforts to plumb these deeps above us! any feeling that you may now have against clandestine meetings as such would then be removed, and our hearts would be at rest.' there was a certain scientific practicability even in his love-making, and it here came out excellently. but she sat on with suspended breath, her heart wildly beating, while he waited in open-mouthed expectation. each was swayed by the emotion within them, much as the candle-flame was swayed by the tempest without. it was the most critical evening of their lives. the pale rays of the little lantern fell upon her beautiful face, snugly and neatly bound in by her black bonnet; but not a beam of the lantern leaked out into the night to suggest to any watchful eye that human life at its highest excitement was beating within the dark and isolated tower; for the dome had no windows, and every shutter that afforded an opening for the telescope was hermetically closed. predilections and misgivings so equally strove within her still youthful breast that she could not utter a word; her intention wheeled this way and that like the balance of a watch. his unexpected proposition had brought about the smartest encounter of inclination with prudence, of impulse with reserve, that she had ever known. of all the reasons that she had expected him to give for his urgent request to see her this evening, an offer of marriage was probably the last. whether or not she had ever amused herself with hypothetical fancies on such a subject,--and it was only natural that she should vaguely have done so,--the courage in her _protégé_ coolly to advance it, without a hint from herself that such a proposal would be tolerated, showed her that there was more in his character than she had reckoned on: and the discovery almost frightened her. the humour, attitude, and tenor of her attachment had been of quite an unpremeditated quality, unsuggestive of any such audacious solution to their distresses as this. 'i repeat my question, dearest,' he said, after her long pause. 'shall it be done? or shall i exile myself, and study as best i can, in some distant country, out of sight and sound?' 'are those the only alternatives? yes, yes; i suppose they are!' she waited yet another moment, bent over his kneeling figure, and kissed his forehead. 'yes; it shall be done,' she whispered. 'i will marry you.' 'my angel, i am content!' he drew her yielding form to his heart, and her head sank upon his shoulder, as he pressed his two lips continuously upon hers. to such had the study of celestial physics brought them in the space of eight months, one week, and a few odd days. 'i am weaker than you,--far the weaker,' she went on, her tears falling. 'rather than lose you out of my sight i will marry without stipulation or condition. but--i put it to your kindness--grant me one little request.' he instantly assented. 'it is that, in consideration of my peculiar position in this county,--o, you can't understand it!--you will not put an end to the absolute secrecy of our relationship without my full assent. also, that you will never come to welland house without first discussing with me the advisability of the visit, accepting my opinion on the point. there, see how a timid woman tries to fence herself in!' 'my dear lady-love, neither of those two high-handed courses should i have taken, even had you not stipulated against them. the very essence of our marriage plan is that those two conditions are kept. i see as well as you do, even more than you do, how important it is that for the present,--ay, for a long time hence--i should still be but the curate's lonely son, unattached to anybody or anything, with no object of interest but his science; and you the recluse lady of the manor, to whom he is only an acquaintance.' 'see what deceits love sows in honest minds!' 'it would be a humiliation to you at present that i could not bear if a marriage between us were made public; an inconvenience without any compensating advantage.' 'i am so glad you assume it without my setting it before you! now i know you are not only good and true, but politic and trustworthy.' 'well, then, here is our covenant. my lady swears to marry me; i, in return for such great courtesy, swear never to compromise her by intruding at welland house, and to keep the marriage concealed till i have won a position worthy of her.' 'or till i request it to be made known,' she added, possibly foreseeing a contingency which had not occurred to him. 'or till you request it,' he repeated. 'it is agreed,' murmured lady constantine, xvi after this there only remained to be settled between them the practical details of the project. these were that he should leave home in a couple of days, and take lodgings either in the distant city of bath or in a convenient suburb of london, till a sufficient time should have elapsed to satisfy legal requirements; that on a fine morning at the end of this time she should hie away to the same place, and be met at the station by st. cleeve, armed with the marriage license; whence they should at once proceed to the church fixed upon for the ceremony; returning home independently in the course of the next two or three days. while these tactics were under discussion the two-and-thirty winds of heaven continued, as before, to beat about the tower, though their onsets appeared to be somewhat lessening in force. himself now calmed and satisfied, swithin, as is the wont of humanity, took serener views of nature's crushing mechanics without, and said, 'the wind doesn't seem disposed to put the tragic period to our hopes and fears that i spoke of in my momentary despair.' 'the disposition of the wind is as vicious as ever,' she answered, looking into his face with pausing thoughts on, perhaps, other subjects than that discussed. 'it is your mood of viewing it that has changed. "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."' and, as if flatly to stultify swithin's assumption, a circular hurricane, exceeding in violence any that had preceded it, seized hold upon rings- hill speer at that moment with the determination of a conscious agent. the first sensation of a resulting catastrophe was conveyed to their intelligence by the flapping of the candle-flame against the lantern-glass; then the wind, which hitherto they had heard rather than felt, rubbed past them like a fugitive. swithin beheld around and above him, in place of the concavity of the dome, the open heaven, with its racing clouds, remote horizon, and intermittent gleam of stars. the dome that had covered the tower had been whirled off bodily; and they heard it descend crashing upon the trees. finding himself untouched swithin stretched out his arms towards lady constantine, whose apparel had been seized by the spinning air, nearly lifting her off her legs. she, too, was as yet unharmed. each held the other for a moment, when, fearing that something further would happen, they took shelter in the staircase. 'dearest, what an escape!' he said, still holding her. 'what is the accident?' she asked. 'has the whole top really gone?' 'the dome has been blown off the roof.' as soon as it was practicable he relit the extinguished lantern, and they emerged again upon the leads, where the extent of the disaster became at once apparent. saving the absence of the enclosing hemisphere all remained the same. the dome, being constructed of wood, was light by comparison with the rest of the structure, and the wheels which allowed it horizontal, or, as swithin expressed it, azimuth motion, denied it a firm hold upon the walls; so that it had been lifted off them like a cover from a pot. the equatorial stood in the midst as it had stood before. having executed its grotesque purpose the wind sank to comparative mildness. swithin took advantage of this lull by covering up the instruments with cloths, after which the betrothed couple prepared to go downstairs. but the events of the night had not yet fully disclosed themselves. at this moment there was a sound of footsteps and a knocking at the door below. 'it can't be for me!' said lady constantine. 'i retired to my room before leaving the house, and told them on no account to disturb me.' she remained at the top while swithin went down the spiral. in the gloom he beheld hannah. 'o master swithin, can ye come home! the wind have blowed down the chimley that don't smoke, and the pinning-end with it; and the old ancient house, that have been in your family so long as the memory of man, is naked to the world! it is a mercy that your grammer were not killed, sitting by the hearth, poor old soul, and soon to walk wi' god,--for 'a 's getting wambling on her pins, mr. swithin, as aged folks do. as i say, 'a was all but murdered by the elements, and doing no more harm than the babes in the wood, nor speaking one harmful word. and the fire and smoke were blowed all across house like a chapter in revelation; and your poor reverent father's features scorched to flakes, looking like the vilest ruffian, and the gilt frame spoiled! every flitch, every eye- piece, and every chine is buried under the walling; and i fed them pigs with my own hands, master swithin, little thinking they would come to this end. do ye collect yourself, mr. swithin, and come at once!' 'i will,--i will. i'll follow you in a moment. do you hasten back again and assist.' when hannah had departed the young man ran up to lady constantine, to whom he explained the accident. after sympathizing with old mrs. martin lady constantine added, 'i thought something would occur to mar our scheme!' 'i am not quite sure of that yet.' on a short consideration with him, she agreed to wait at the top of the tower till he could come back and inform her if the accident were really so serious as to interfere with his plan for departure. he then left her, and there she sat in the dark, alone, looking over the parapet, and straining her eyes in the direction of the homestead. at first all was obscurity; but when he had been gone about ten minutes lights began to move to and fro in the hollow where the house stood, and shouts occasionally mingled with the wind, which retained some violence yet, playing over the trees beneath her as on the strings of a lyre. but not a bough of them was visible, a cloak of blackness covering everything netherward; while overhead the windy sky looked down with a strange and disguised face, the three or four stars that alone were visible being so dissociated by clouds that she knew not which they were. under any other circumstances lady constantine might have felt a nameless fear in thus sitting aloft on a lonely column, with a forest groaning under her feet, and palaeolithic dead men feeding its roots; but the recent passionate decision stirred her pulses to an intensity beside which the ordinary tremors of feminine existence asserted themselves in vain. the apocalyptic effect of the scene surrounding her was, indeed, not inharmonious, and afforded an appropriate background to her intentions. after what seemed to her an interminable space of time, quick steps in the staircase became audible above the roar of the firs, and in a few instants st. cleeve again stood beside her. the case of the homestead was serious. hannah's account had not been exaggerated in substance: the gable end of the house was open to the garden; the joists, left without support, had dropped, and with them the upper floor. by the help of some labourers, who lived near, and lady constantine's man anthony, who was passing at the time, the homestead had been propped up, and protected for the night by some rickcloths; but swithin felt that it would be selfish in the highest degree to leave two lonely old women to themselves at this juncture. 'in short,' he concluded despondently, 'i cannot go to stay in bath or london just now; perhaps not for another fortnight!' 'never mind,' she said. 'a fortnight hence will do as well.' 'and i have these for you,' he continued. 'your man green was passing my grandmother's on his way back from warborne, where he had been, he says, for any letters that had come for you by the evening post. as he stayed to assist the other men i told him i would go on to your house with the letters he had brought. of course i did not tell him i should see you here.' 'thank you. of course not. now i'll return at once.' in descending the column her eye fell upon the superscription of one of the letters, and she opened and glanced over it by the lantern light. she seemed startled, and, musing, said, 'the postponement of our--intention must be, i fear, for a long time. i find that after the end of this month i cannot leave home safely, even for a day.' perceiving that he was about to ask why, she added, 'i will not trouble you with the reason now; it would only harass you. it is only a family business, and cannot be helped.' 'then we cannot be married till--god knows when!' said swithin blankly. 'i cannot leave home till after the next week or two; you cannot leave home unless within that time. so what are we to do?' 'i do not know.' 'my dear, dear one, don't let us be beaten like this! don't let a well- considered plan be overthrown by a mere accident! here's a remedy. do _you_ go and stay the requisite time in the parish we are to be married in, instead of me. when my grandmother is again well housed i can come to you, instead of you to me, as we first said. then it can be done within the time.' reluctantly, shyly, and yet with a certain gladness of heart, she gave way to his proposal that they should change places in the programme. there was much that she did not like in it, she said. it seemed to her as if she were taking the initiative by going and attending to the preliminaries. it was the man's part to do that, in her opinion, and was usually undertaken by him. 'but,' argued swithin, 'there are cases in which the woman does give the notices, and so on; that is to say, when the man is absolutely hindered from doing so; and ours is such a case. the seeming is nothing; i know the truth, and what does it matter? you do not refuse--retract your word to be my wife, because, to avoid a sickening delay, the formalities require you to attend to them in place of me?' she did not refuse, she said. in short she agreed to his entreaty. they had, in truth, gone so far in their dream of union that there was no drawing back now. whichever of them was forced by circumstances to be the protagonist in the enterprise, the thing must be done. their intention to become husband and wife, at first halting and timorous, had accumulated momentum with the lapse of hours, till it now bore down every obstacle in its course. 'since you beg me to,--since there is no alternative between my going and a long postponement,' she said, as they stood in the dark porch of welland house before parting,--'since i am to go first, and seem to be the pioneer in this adventure, promise me, swithin, promise your viviette, that in years to come, when perhaps you may not love me so warmly as you do now--' 'that will never be.' 'well, hoping it will not, but supposing it should, promise me that you will never reproach me as the one who took the initiative when it should have been yourself, forgetting that it was at your request; promise that you will never say i showed immodest readiness to do so, or anything which may imply your obliviousness of the fact that i act in obedience to necessity and your earnest prayer.' need it be said that he promised never to reproach her with that or any other thing as long as they should live? the few details of the reversed arrangement were soon settled, bath being the place finally decided on. then, with a warm audacity which events had encouraged, he pressed her to his breast, and she silently entered the house. he returned to the homestead, there to attend to the unexpected duties of repairing the havoc wrought by the gale. * * * * * that night, in the solitude of her chamber, lady constantine reopened and read the subjoined letter--one of those handed to her by st. cleeve:-- "--- street, piccadilly, october , --. 'dear viviette,--you will be surprised to learn that i am in england, and that i am again out of harness--unless you should have seen the latter in the papers. rio janeiro may do for monkeys, but it won't do for me. having resigned the appointment i have returned here, as a preliminary step to finding another vent for my energies; in other words, another milch cow for my sustenance. i knew nothing whatever of your husband's death till two days ago; so that any letter from you on the subject, at the time it became known, must have miscarried. hypocrisy at such a moment is worse than useless, and i therefore do not condole with you, particularly as the event, though new to a banished man like me, occurred so long since. you are better without him, viviette, and are now just the limb for doing something for yourself, notwithstanding the threadbare state in which you seem to have been cast upon the world. you are still young, and, as i imagine (unless you have vastly altered since i beheld you), good-looking: therefore make up your mind to retrieve your position by a match with one of the local celebrities; and you would do well to begin drawing neighbouring covers at once. a genial squire, with more weight than wit, more realty than weight, and more personalty than realty (considering the circumstances), would be best for you. you might make a position for us both by some such alliance; for, to tell the truth, i have had but in-and-out luck so far. i shall be with you in little more than a fortnight, when we will talk over the matter seriously, if you don't object.--your affectionate brother, louis.' it was this allusion to her brother's coming visit which had caught her eye in the tower staircase, and led to a modification in the wedding arrangement. having read the letter through once lady constantine flung it aside with an impatient little stamp that shook the decaying old floor and casement. its contents produced perturbation, misgiving, but not retreat. the deep glow of enchantment shed by the idea of a private union with her beautiful young lover killed the pale light of cold reasoning from an indifferently good relative. 'oh, no,' she murmured, as she sat, covering her face with her hand. 'not for wealth untold could i give him up now!' no argument, short of apollo in person from the clouds, would have influenced her. she made her preparations for departure as if nothing had intervened. xvii in her days of prosperity lady constantine had often gone to the city of bath, either frivolously, for shopping purposes, or musico-religiously, to attend choir festivals in the abbey; so there was nothing surprising in her reverting to an old practice. that the journey might appear to be of a somewhat similar nature she took with her the servant who had been accustomed to accompany her on former occasions, though the woman, having now left her service, and settled in the village as the wife of anthony green, with a young child on her hands, could with some difficulty leave home. lady constantine overcame the anxious mother's scruples by providing that young green should be well cared for; and knowing that she could count upon this woman's fidelity, if upon anybody's, in case of an accident (for it was chiefly lady constantine's exertions that had made an honest wife of mrs. green), she departed for a fortnight's absence. the next day found mistress and maid settled in lodgings in an old plum- coloured brick street, which a hundred years ago could boast of rank and fashion among its residents, though now the broad fan-light over each broad door admitted the sun to the halls of a lodging-house keeper only. the lamp-posts were still those that had done duty with oil lights; and rheumatic old coachmen and postilions, that once had driven and ridden gloriously from london to land's end, ornamented with their bent persons and bow legs the pavement in front of the chief inn, in the sorry hope of earning sixpence to keep body and soul together. 'we are kept well informed on the time o' day, my lady,' said mrs. green, as she pulled down the blinds in lady constantine's room on the evening of their arrival. 'there's a church exactly at the back of us, and i hear every hour strike.' lady constantine said she had noticed that there was a church quite near. 'well, it is better to have that at the back than other folks' winders. and if your ladyship wants to go there it won't be far to walk.' 'that's what occurred to me,' said lady constantine, '_if_ i should want to go.' during the ensuing days she felt to the utmost the tediousness of waiting merely that time might pass. not a soul knew her there, and she knew not a soul, a circumstance which, while it added to her sense of secrecy, intensified her solitude. occasionally she went to a shop, with green as her companion. though there were purchases to be made, they were by no means of a pressing nature, and but poorly filled up the vacancies of those strange, speculative days,--days surrounded by a shade of fear, yet poetized by sweet expectation. on the thirteenth day she told green that she was going to take a walk, and leaving the house she passed by the obscurest streets to the abbey. after wandering about beneath the aisles till her courage was screwed to its highest, she went out at the other side, and, looking timidly round to see if anybody followed, walked on till she came to a certain door, which she reached just at the moment when her heart began to sink to its very lowest, rendering all the screwing up in vain. whether it was because the month was october, or from any other reason, the deserted aspect of the quarter in general sat especially on this building. moreover the pavement was up, and heaps of stone and gravel obstructed the footway. nobody was coming, nobody was going, in that thoroughfare; she appeared to be the single one of the human race bent upon marriage business, which seemed to have been unanimously abandoned by all the rest of the world as proven folly. but she thought of swithin, his blonde hair, ardent eyes, and eloquent lips, and was carried onward by the very reflection. entering the surrogate's room lady constantine managed, at the last juncture, to state her errand in tones so collected as to startle even herself to which her listener replied also as if the whole thing were the most natural in the world. when it came to the affirmation that she had lived fifteen days in the parish, she said with dismay-- 'o no! i thought the fifteen days meant the interval of residence before the marriage takes place. i have lived here only thirteen days and a half. now i must come again!' 'ah--well--i think you need not be so particular,' said the surrogate. 'as a matter of fact, though the letter of the law requires fifteen days' residence, many people make five sufficient. the provision is inserted, as you doubtless are aware, to hinder runaway marriages as much as possible, and secret unions, and other such objectionable practices. you need not come again.' that evening lady constantine wrote to swithin st. cleeve the last letter of the fortnight:-- 'my dearest,--do come to me as soon as you can. by a sort of favouring blunder i have been able to shorten the time of waiting by a day. come at once, for i am almost broken down with apprehension. it seems rather rash at moments, all this, and i wish you were here to reassure me. i did not know i should feel so alarmed. i am frightened at every footstep, and dread lest anybody who knows me should accost me, and find out why i am here. i sometimes wonder how i could have agreed to come and enact your part, but i did not realize how trying it would be. you ought not to have asked me, swithin; upon my word, it was too cruel of you, and i will punish you for it when you come! but i won't upbraid. i hope the homestead is repaired that has cost me all this sacrifice of modesty. if it were anybody in the world but _you_ in question i would rush home, without waiting here for the end of it,--i really think i would! but, dearest, no. i must show my strength now, or let it be for ever hid. the barriers of ceremony are broken down between us, and it is for the best that i am here.' and yet, at no point of this trying prelude need lady constantine have feared for her strength. deeds in this connexion demand the particular kind of courage that such perfervid women are endowed with, the courage of their emotions, in which young men are often lamentably deficient. her fear was, in truth, the fear of being discovered in an unwonted position; not of the act itself. and though her letter was in its way a true exposition of her feeling, had it been necessary to go through the whole legal process over again she would have been found equal to the emergency. it had been for some days a point of anxiety with her what to do with green during the morning of the wedding. chance unexpectedly helped her in this difficulty. the day before the purchase of the license green came to lady constantine with a letter in her hand from her husband anthony, her face as long as a fiddle. 'i hope there's nothing the matter?' said lady constantine. 'the child's took bad, my lady!' said mrs. green, with suspended floods of water in her eyes. 'i love the child better than i shall love all them that's coming put together; for he's been a good boy to his mother ever since twelve weeks afore he was born! 'twas he, a tender deary, that made anthony marry me, and thereby turned hisself from a little calamity to a little blessing! for, as you know, the man were a backward man in the church part o' matrimony, my lady; though he'll do anything when he's forced a bit by his manly feelings. and now to lose the child--hoo-hoo-hoo! what shall i doo!' 'well, you want to go home at once, i suppose?' mrs. green explained, between her sobs, that such was her desire; and though this was a day or two sooner than her mistress had wished to be left alone she consented to green's departure. so during the afternoon her woman went off, with directions to prepare for lady constantine's return in two or three days. but as the exact day of her return was uncertain no carriage was to be sent to the station to meet her, her intention being to hire one from the hotel. lady constantine was now left in utter solitude to await her lover's arrival. xviii a more beautiful october morning than that of the next day never beamed into the welland valleys. the yearly dissolution of leafage was setting in apace. the foliage of the park trees rapidly resolved itself into the multitude of complexions which mark the subtle grades of decay, reflecting wet lights of such innumerable hues that it was a wonder to think their beauties only a repetition of scenes that had been exhibited there on scores of previous octobers, and had been allowed to pass away without a single dirge from the imperturbable beings who walked among them. far in the shadows semi-opaque screens of blue haze made mysteries of the commonest gravel-pit, dingle, or recess. the wooden cabin at the foot of rings-hill speer had been furnished by swithin as a sitting and sleeping apartment, some little while before this time; for he had found it highly convenient, during night observations at the top of the column, to remain on the spot all night, not to disturb his grandmother by passing in and out of the house, and to save himself the labour of incessantly crossing the field. he would much have liked to tell her the secret, and, had it been his own to tell, would probably have done so; but sharing it with an objector who knew not his grandmother's affection so well as he did himself, there was no alternative to holding his tongue. the more effectually to guard it he decided to sleep at the cabin during the two or three nights previous to his departure, leaving word at the homestead that in a day or two he was going on an excursion. it was very necessary to start early. long before the great eye of the sun was lifted high enough to glance into the welland valley, st. cleeve arose from his bed in the cabin and prepared to depart, cooking his breakfast upon a little stove in the corner. the young rabbits, littered during the foregoing summer, watched his preparations through the open door from the grey dawn without, as he bustled, half dressed, in and out under the boughs, and among the blackberries and brambles that grew around. it was a strange place for a bridegroom to perform his toilet in, but, considering the unconventional nature of the marriage, a not inappropriate one. what events had been enacted in that earthen camp since it was first thrown up, nobody could say; but the primitive simplicity of the young man's preparations accorded well with the prehistoric spot on which they were made. embedded under his feet were possibly even now rude trinkets that had been worn at bridal ceremonies of the early inhabitants. little signified those ceremonies to-day, or the happiness or otherwise of the contracting parties. that his own rite, nevertheless, signified much, was the inconsequent reasoning of swithin, as it is of many another bridegroom besides; and he, like the rest, went on with his preparations in that mood which sees in his stale repetition the wondrous possibilities of an untried move. then through the wet cobwebs, that hung like movable diaphragms on each blade and bough, he pushed his way down to the furrow which led from the secluded fir-tree island to the wide world beyond the field. he was not a stranger to enterprise, and still less to the contemplation of enterprise; but an enterprise such as this he had never even outlined. that his dear lady was troubled at the situation he had placed her in by not going himself on that errand, he could see from her letter; but, believing an immediate marriage with her to be the true way of restoring to both that equanimity necessary to serene philosophy, he held it of little account how the marriage was brought about, and happily began his journey towards her place of sojourn. he passed through a little copse before leaving the parish, the smoke from newly lit fires rising like the stems of blue trees out of the few cottage chimneys. here he heard a quick, familiar footstep in the path ahead of him, and, turning the corner of the bushes, confronted the foot- post on his way to welland. in answer to st. cleeve's inquiry if there was anything for himself the postman handed out one letter, and proceeded on his route. swithin opened and read the letter as he walked, till it brought him to a standstill by the importance of its contents. they were enough to agitate a more phlegmatic youth than he. he leant over the wicket which came in his path, and endeavoured to comprehend the sense of the whole. the large long envelope contained, first, a letter from a solicitor in a northern town, informing him that his paternal great-uncle, who had recently returned from the cape (whither he had gone in an attempt to repair a broken constitution), was now dead and buried. this great-uncle's name was like a new creation to swithin. he had held no communication with the young man's branch of the family for innumerable years,--never, in fact, since the marriage of swithin's father with the simple daughter of welland farm. he had been a bachelor to the end of his life, and had amassed a fairly good professional fortune by a long and extensive medical practice in the smoky, dreary, manufacturing town in which he had lived and died. swithin had always been taught to think of him as the embodiment of all that was unpleasant in man. he was narrow, sarcastic, and shrewd to unseemliness. that very shrewdness had enabled him, without much professional profundity, to establish his large and lucrative connexion, which lay almost entirely among a class who neither looked nor cared for drawing-room courtesies. however, what dr. st. cleeve had been as a practitioner matters little. he was now dead, and the bulk of his property had been left to persons with whom this story has nothing to do. but swithin was informed that out of it there was a bequest of pounds a year to himself,--payment of which was to begin with his twenty-first year, and continue for his life, unless he should marry before reaching the age of twenty-five. in the latter precocious and objectionable event his annuity would be forfeited. the accompanying letter, said the solicitor, would explain all. this, the second letter, was from his uncle to himself, written about a month before the former's death, and deposited with his will, to be forwarded to his nephew when that event should have taken place. swithin read, with the solemnity that such posthumous epistles inspire, the following words from one who, during life, had never once addressed him:-- 'dear nephew,--you will doubtless experience some astonishment at receiving a communication from one whom you have never personally known, and who, when this comes into your hands, will be beyond the reach of your knowledge. perhaps i am the loser by this life-long mutual ignorance. perhaps i am much to blame for it; perhaps not. but such reflections are profitless at this date: i have written with quite other views than to work up a sentimental regret on such an amazingly remote hypothesis as that the fact of a particular pair of people not meeting, among the millions of other pairs of people who have never met, is a great calamity either to the world in general or to themselves. 'the occasion of my addressing you is briefly this: nine months ago a report casually reached me that your scientific studies were pursued by you with great ability, and that you were a young man of some promise as an astronomer. my own scientific proclivities rendered the report more interesting than it might otherwise have been to me; and it came upon me quite as a surprise that any issue of your father's marriage should have so much in him, or you might have seen more of me in former years than you are ever likely to do now. my health had then begun to fail, and i was starting for the cape, or i should have come myself to inquire into your condition and prospects. i did not return till six months later, and as my health had not improved i sent a trusty friend to examine into your life, pursuits, and circumstances, without your own knowledge, and to report his observations to me. this he did. through him i learnt, of favourable news:-- '( ) that you worked assiduously at the science of astronomy. '( ) that everything was auspicious in the career you had chosen. 'of unfavourable news:-- '( ) that the small income at your command, even when eked out by the sum to which you would be entitled on your grandmother's death and the freehold of the homestead, would be inadequate to support you becomingly as a scientific man, whose lines of work were of a nature not calculated to produce emoluments for many years, if ever. '( ) that there was something in your path worse than narrow means, and that that something was a _woman_. 'to save you, if possible, from ruin on these heads, i take the preventive measures detailed below. 'the chief step is, as my solicitor will have informed you, that, at the age of twenty-five, the sum of pounds a year be settled on you for life, provided you have not married before reaching that age;--a yearly gift of an equal sum to be also provisionally made to you in the interim--and, vice versa, that if you do marry before reaching the age of twenty-five you will receive nothing from the date of the marriage. 'one object of my bequest is that you may have resources sufficient to enable you to travel and study the southern constellations. when at the cape, after hearing of your pursuits, i was much struck with the importance of those constellations to an astronomer just pushing into notice. there is more to be made of the southern hemisphere than ever has been made of it yet; the mine is not so thoroughly worked as the northern, and thither your studies should tend. 'the only other preventive step in my power is that of exhortation, at which i am not an adept. nevertheless, i say to you, swithin st. cleeve, don't make a fool of yourself, as your father did. if your studies are to be worth anything, believe me, they must be carried on without the help of a woman. avoid her, and every one of the sex, if you mean to achieve any worthy thing. eschew all of that sort for many a year yet. moreover, i say, the lady of your acquaintance avoid in particular. i have heard nothing against her moral character hitherto; i have no doubt it has been excellent. she may have many good qualities, both of heart and of mind. but she has, in addition to her original disqualification as a companion for you (that is, that of sex), these two serious drawbacks: she is much older than yourself--' '_much_ older!' said swithin resentfully. '--and she is so impoverished that the title she derives from her late husband is a positive objection. beyond this, frankly, i don't think well of her. i don't think well of any woman who dotes upon a man younger than herself. to care to be the first fancy of a young fellow like you shows no great common sense in her. if she were worth her salt she would have too much pride to be intimate with a youth in your unassured position, to say no worse. she is old enough to know that a _liaison_ with her may, and almost certainly would, be your ruin; and, on the other hand, that a marriage would be preposterous,--unless she is a complete goose, and in that case there is even more reason for avoiding her than if she were in her few senses. 'a woman of honourable feeling, nephew, would be careful to do nothing to hinder you in your career, as this putting of herself in your way most certainly will. yet i hear that she professes a great anxiety on this same future of yours as a physicist. the best way in which she can show the reality of her anxiety is by leaving you to yourself. perhaps she persuades herself that she is doing you no harm. well, let her have the benefit of the possible belief; but depend upon it that in truth she gives the lie to her conscience by maintaining such a transparent fallacy. women's brains are not formed for assisting at any profound science: they lack the power to see things except in the concrete. she'll blab your most secret plans and theories to every one of her acquaintance--' 'she's got none!' said swithin, beginning to get warm. '--and make them appear ridiculous by announcing them before they are matured. if you attempt to study with a woman, you'll be ruled by her to entertain fancies instead of theories, air-castles instead of intentions, qualms instead of opinions, sickly prepossessions instead of reasoned conclusions. your wide heaven of study, young man, will soon reduce itself to the miserable narrow expanse of her face, and your myriad of stars to her two trumpery eyes. 'a woman waking a young man's passions just at a moment when he is endeavouring to shine intellectually, is doing little less than committing a crime. 'like a certain philosopher i would, upon my soul, have all young men from eighteen to twenty-five kept under barrels; seeing how often, in the lack of some such sequestering process, the woman sits down before each as his destiny, and too frequently enervates his purpose, till he abandons the most promising course ever conceived! 'but no more. i now leave your fate in your own hands. your well- wishing relative, 'jocelyn st. cleeve, _doctor in medicine_.' as coming from a bachelor and hardened misogynist of seventy-two, the opinions herein contained were nothing remarkable: but their practical result in restricting the sudden endowment of swithin's researches by conditions which turned the favour into a harassment was, at this unique moment, discomfiting and distracting in the highest degree. sensational, however, as the letter was, the passionate intention of the day was not hazarded for more than a few minutes thereby. the truth was, the caution and bribe came too late, too unexpectedly, to be of influence. they were the sort of thing which required fermentation to render them effective. had st. cleeve received the exhortation a month earlier; had he been able to run over in his mind, at every wakeful hour of thirty consecutive nights, a private catechism on the possibilities opened up by this annuity, there is no telling what might have been the stress of such a web of perplexity upon him, a young man whose love for celestial physics was second to none. but to have held before him, at the last moment, the picture of a future advantage that he had never once thought of, or discounted for present staying power, it affected him about as much as the view of horizons shown by sheet-lightning. he saw an immense prospect; it went, and the world was as before. he caught the train at warborne, and moved rapidly towards bath; not precisely in the same key as when he had dressed in the hut at dawn, but, as regarded the mechanical part of the journey, as unhesitatingly as before. and with the change of scene even his gloom left him; his bosom's lord sat lightly in his throne. st. cleeve was not sufficiently in mind of poetical literature to remember that wise poets are accustomed to read that lightness of bosom inversely. swithin thought it an omen of good fortune; and as thinking is causing in not a few such cases, he was perhaps, in spite of poets, right. xix at the station lady constantine appeared, standing expectant; he saw her face from the window of the carriage long before she saw him. he no sooner saw her than he was satisfied to his heart's content with his prize. if his great-uncle had offered him from the grave a kingdom instead of her, he would not have accepted it. swithin jumped out, and nature never painted in a woman's face more devotion than appeared in my lady's at that moment. to both the situation seemed like a beautiful allegory, not to be examined too closely, lest its defects of correspondence with real life should be apparent. they almost feared to shake hands in public, so much depended upon their passing that morning without molestation. a fly was called and they drove away. 'take this,' she said, handing him a folded paper. 'it belongs to you rather than to me.' at crossings, and other occasional pauses, pedestrians turned their faces and looked at the pair (for no reason but that, among so many, there were naturally a few of the sort who have eyes to note what incidents come in their way as they plod on); but the two in the vehicle could not but fear that these innocent beholders had special detective designs on them. 'you look so dreadfully young!' she said with humorous fretfulness, as they drove along (swithin's cheeks being amazingly fresh from the morning air). 'do try to appear a little haggard, that the parson mayn't ask us awkward questions!' nothing further happened, and they were set down opposite a shop about fifty yards from the church door, at five minutes to eleven. 'we will dismiss the fly,' she said. 'it will only attract idlers.' on turning the corner and reaching the church they found the door ajar; but the building contained only two persons, a man and a woman,--the clerk and his wife, as they learnt. swithin asked when the clergyman would arrive. the clerk looked at his watch, and said, 'at just on eleven o'clock.' 'he ought to be here,' said swithin. 'yes,' replied the clerk, as the hour struck. 'the fact is, sir, he is a deppity, and apt to be rather wandering in his wits as regards time and such like, which hev stood in the way of the man's getting a benefit. but no doubt he'll come.' 'the regular incumbent is away, then?' 'he's gone for his bare pa'son's fortnight,--that's all; and we was forced to put up with a weak-talented man or none. the best men goes into the brewing, or into the shipping now-a-days, you see, sir; doctrines being rather shaddery at present, and your money's worth not sure in our line. so we church officers be left poorly provided with men for odd jobs. i'll tell ye what, sir; i think i'd better run round to the gentleman's lodgings, and try to find him?' 'pray do,' said lady constantine. the clerk left the church; his wife busied herself with dusting at the further end, and swithin and viviette were left to themselves. the imagination travels so rapidly, and a woman's forethought is so assumptive, that the clerk's departure had no sooner doomed them to inaction than it was borne in upon lady constantine's mind that she would not become the wife of swithin st. cleeve, either to-day or on any other day. her divinations were continually misleading her, she knew: but a hitch at the moment of marriage surely had a meaning in it. 'ah,--the marriage is not to be!' she said to herself. 'this is a fatality.' it was twenty minutes past, and no parson had arrived. swithin took her hand. 'if it cannot be to-day, it can be to-morrow,' he whispered. 'i cannot say,' she answered. 'something tells me _no_.' it was almost impossible that she could know anything of the deterrent force exercised on swithin by his dead uncle that morning. yet her manner tallied so curiously well with such knowledge that he was struck by it, and remained silent. 'you have a black tie,' she continued, looking at him. 'yes,' replied swithin. 'i bought it on my way here.' 'why could it not have been less sombre in colour?' 'my great-uncle is dead.' 'you had a great-uncle? you never told me.' 'i never saw him in my life. i have only heard about him since his death.' he spoke in as quiet and measured a way as he could, but his heart was sinking. she would go on questioning; he could not tell her an untruth. she would discover particulars of that great-uncle's provision for him, which he, swithin, was throwing away for her sake, and she would refuse to be his for his own sake. his conclusion at this moment was precisely what hers had been five minutes sooner: they were never to be husband and wife. but she did not continue her questions, for the simplest of all reasons: hasty footsteps were audible in the entrance, and the parson was seen coming up the aisle, the clerk behind him wiping the beads of perspiration from his face. the somewhat sorry clerical specimen shook hands with them, and entered the vestry; and the clerk came up and opened the book. 'the poor gentleman's memory is a bit topsy-turvy,' whispered the latter. 'he had got it in his mind that 'twere a funeral, and i found him wandering about the cemetery a-looking for us. however, all's well as ends well.' and the clerk wiped his forehead again. 'how ill-omened!' murmured viviette. but the parson came out robed at this moment, and the clerk put on his ecclesiastical countenance and looked in his book. lady constantine's momentary languor passed; her blood resumed its courses with a new spring. the grave utterances of the church then rolled out upon the palpitating pair, and no couple ever joined their whispers thereto with more fervency than they. lady constantine (as she continued to be called by the outside world, though she liked to think herself the mrs. st. cleeve that she legally was) had told green that she might be expected at welland in a day, or two, or three, as circumstances should dictate. though the time of return was thus left open it was deemed advisable, by both swithin and herself, that her journey back should not be deferred after the next day, in case any suspicions might be aroused. as for st. cleeve, his comings and goings were of no consequence. it was seldom known whether he was at home or abroad, by reason of his frequent seclusion at the column. late in the afternoon of the next day he accompanied her to the bath station, intending himself to remain in that city till the following morning. but when a man or youth has such a tender article on his hands as a thirty-hour bride it is hardly in the power of his strongest reason to set her down at a railway, and send her off like a superfluous portmanteau. hence the experiment of parting so soon after their union proved excruciatingly severe to these. the evening was dull; the breeze of autumn crept fitfully through every slit and aperture in the town; not a soul in the world seemed to notice or care about anything they did. lady constantine sighed; and there was no resisting it,--he could not leave her thus. he decided to get into the train with her, and keep her company for at least a few stations on her way. it drew on to be a dark night, and, seeing that there was no serious risk after all, he prolonged his journey with her so far as to the junction at which the branch line to warborne forked off. here it was necessary to wait a few minutes, before either he could go back or she could go on. they wandered outside the station doorway into the gloom of the road, and there agreed to part. while she yet stood holding his arm a phaeton sped towards the station- entrance, where, in ascending the slope to the door, the horse suddenly jibbed. the gentleman who was driving, being either impatient, or possessed with a theory that all jibbers may be started by severe whipping, applied the lash; as a result of it, the horse thrust round the carriage to where they stood, and the end of the driver's sweeping whip cut across lady constantine's face with such severity as to cause her an involuntary cry. swithin turned her round to the lamplight, and discerned a streak of blood on her cheek. by this time the gentleman who had done the mischief, with many words of regret, had given the reins to his man and dismounted. 'i will go to the waiting-room for a moment,' whispered viviette hurriedly; and, loosing her hand from his arm, she pulled down her veil and vanished inside the building. the stranger came forward and raised his hat. he was a slightly built and apparently town-bred man of twenty-eight or thirty; his manner of address was at once careless and conciliatory. 'i am greatly concerned at what i have done,' he said. 'i sincerely trust that your wife'--but observing the youthfulness of swithin, he withdrew the word suggested by the manner of swithin towards lady constantine--'i trust the young lady was not seriously cut?' 'i trust not,' said swithin, with some vexation. 'where did the lash touch her?' 'straight down her cheek.' 'do let me go to her, and learn how she is, and humbly apologize.' 'i'll inquire.' he went to the ladies' room, in which viviette had taken refuge. she met him at the door, her handkerchief to her cheek, and swithin explained that the driver of the phaeton had sent to make inquiries. 'i cannot see him!' she whispered. 'he is my brother louis! he is, no doubt, going on by the train to my house. don't let him recognize me! we must wait till he is gone.' swithin thereupon went out again, and told the young man that the cut on her face was not serious, but that she could not see him; after which they parted. st. cleeve then heard him ask for a ticket for warborne, which confirmed lady constantine's view that he was going on to her house. when the branch train had moved off swithin returned to his bride, who waited in a trembling state within. on being informed that he had departed she showed herself much relieved. 'where does your brother come from?' said swithin. 'from london, immediately. rio before that. he has a friend or two in this neighbourhood, and visits here occasionally. i have seldom or never spoken to you of him, because of his long absence.' 'is he going to settle near you?' 'no, nor anywhere, i fear. he is, or rather was, in the diplomatic service. he was first a clerk in the foreign office, and was afterwards appointed attaché at rio janeiro. but he has resigned the appointment. i wish he had not.' swithin asked why he resigned. 'he complained of the banishment, and the climate, and everything that people complain of who are determined to be dissatisfied,--though, poor fellow, there is some ground for his complaints. perhaps some people would say that he is idle. but he is scarcely that; he is rather restless than idle, so that he never persists in anything. yet if a subject takes his fancy he will follow it up with exemplary patience till something diverts him.' 'he is not kind to you, is he, dearest?' 'why do you think that?' 'your manner seems to say so.' 'well, he may not always be kind. but look at my face; does the mark show?' a streak, straight as a meridian, was visible down her cheek. the blood had been brought almost to the surface, but was not quite through, that which had originally appeared thereon having possibly come from the horse. it signified that to-morrow the red line would be a black one. swithin informed her that her brother had taken a ticket for warborne, and she at once perceived that he was going on to visit her at welland, though from his letter she had not expected him so soon by a few days. 'meanwhile,' continued swithin, 'you can now get home only by the late train, having missed that one.' 'but, swithin, don't you see my new trouble? if i go to welland house to- night, and find my brother just arrived there, and he sees this cut on my face, which i suppose you described to him--' 'i did.' 'he will know i was the lady with you!' 'whom he called my wife. i wonder why we look husband and wife already!' 'then what am i to do? for the ensuing three or four days i bear in my face a clue to his discovery of our secret.' 'then you must not be seen. we must stay at an inn here.' 'o no!' she said timidly. 'it is too near home to be quite safe. we might not be known; but _if_ we were!' 'we can't go back to bath now. i'll tell you, dear viviette, what we must do. we'll go on to warborne in separate carriages; we'll meet outside the station; thence we'll walk to the column in the dark, and i'll keep you a captive in the cabin till the scar has disappeared.' as there was nothing which better recommended itself this course was decided on; and after taking from her trunk the articles that might be required for an incarceration of two or three days they left the said trunk at the cloak-room, and went on by the last train, which reached warborne about ten o'clock. it was only necessary for lady constantine to cover her face with the thick veil that she had provided for this escapade, to walk out of the station without fear of recognition. st. cleeve came forth from another compartment, and they did not rejoin each other till they had reached a shadowy bend in the old turnpike road, beyond the irradiation of the warborne lamplight. the walk to welland was long. it was the walk which swithin had taken in the rain when he had learnt the fatal forestalment of his stellar discovery; but now he was moved by a less desperate mood, and blamed neither god nor man. they were not pressed for time, and passed along the silent, lonely way with that sense rather of predestination than of choice in their proceedings which the presence of night sometimes imparts. reaching the park gate, they found it open, and from this they inferred that her brother louis had arrived. leaving the house and park on their right they traced the highway yet a little further, and, plunging through the stubble of the opposite field, drew near the isolated earthwork bearing the plantation and tower, which together rose like a flattened dome and lantern from the lighter-hued plain of stubble. it was far too dark to distinguish firs from other trees by the eye alone, but the peculiar dialect of sylvan language which the piny multitude used would have been enough to proclaim their class at any time. in the lovers' stealthy progress up the slopes a dry stick here and there snapped beneath their feet, seeming like a shot of alarm. on being unlocked the hut was found precisely as swithin had left it two days before. lady constantine was thoroughly wearied, and sat down, while he gathered a handful of twigs and spikelets from the masses strewn without and lit a small fire, first taking the precaution to blind the little window and relock the door. lady constantine looked curiously around by the light of the blaze. the hut was small as the prophet's chamber provided by the shunammite: in one corner stood the stove, with a little table and chair, a small cupboard hard by, a pitcher of water, a rack overhead, with various articles, including a kettle and a gridiron; while the remaining three or four feet at the other end of the room was fitted out as a dormitory, for swithin's use during late observations in the tower overhead. 'it is not much of a palace to offer you,' he remarked, smiling. 'but at any rate, it is a refuge.' the cheerful firelight dispersed in some measure lady constantine's anxieties. 'if we only had something to eat!' she said. 'dear me,' cried st. cleeve, blankly. 'that's a thing i never thought of.' 'nor i, till now,' she replied. he reflected with misgiving. 'beyond a small loaf of bread in the cupboard i have nothing. however, just outside the door there are lots of those little rabbits, about the size of rats, that the keepers call runners. and they are as tame as possible. but i fear i could not catch one now. yet, dear viviette, wait a minute; i'll try. you must not be starved.' he softly let himself out, and was gone some time. when he reappeared, he produced, not a rabbit, but four sparrows and a thrush. 'i could do nothing in the way of a rabbit without setting a wire,' he said. 'but i have managed to get these by knowing where they roost.' he showed her how to prepare the birds, and, having set her to roast them by the fire, departed with the pitcher, to replenish it at the brook which flowed near the homestead in the neighbouring bottom. 'they are all asleep at my grandmother's,' he informed her when he re- entered, panting, with the dripping pitcher. 'they imagine me to be a hundred miles off.' the birds were now ready, and the table was spread. with this fare, eked out by dry toast from the loaf, and moistened with cups of water from the pitcher, to which swithin added a little wine from the flask he had carried on his journey, they were forced to be content for their supper. xx when lady constantine awoke the next morning swithin was nowhere to be seen. before she was quite ready for breakfast she heard the key turn in the door, and felt startled, till she remembered that the comer could hardly be anybody but he. he brought a basket with provisions, an extra cup-and-saucer, and so on. in a short space of time the kettle began singing on the stove, and the morning meal was ready. the sweet resinous air from the firs blew in upon them as they sat at breakfast; the birds hopped round the door (which, somewhat riskily, they ventured to keep open); and at their elbow rose the lank column into an upper realm of sunlight, which only reached the cabin in fitful darts and flashes through the trees. 'i could be happy here for ever,' said she, clasping his hand. 'i wish i could never see my great gloomy house again, since i am not rich enough to throw it open, and live there as i ought to do. poverty of this sort is not unpleasant at any rate. what are you thinking of?' 'i am thinking about my outing this morning. on reaching my grandmother's she was only a little surprised to see me. i was obliged to breakfast there, or appear to do so, to divert suspicion; and this food is supposed to be wanted for my dinner and supper. there will of course be no difficulty in my obtaining an ample supply for any length of time, as i can take what i like from the buttery without observation. but as i looked in my grandmother's face this morning, and saw her looking affectionately in mine, and thought how she had never concealed anything from me, and had always had my welfare at heart, i felt--that i should like to tell her what we have done.' 'o no,--please not, swithin!' she exclaimed piteously. 'very well,' he answered. 'on no consideration will i do so without your consent.' and no more was said on the matter. the morning was passed in applying wet rag and other remedies to the purple line on viviette's cheek; and in the afternoon they set up the equatorial under the replaced dome, to have it in order for night observations. the evening was clear, dry, and remarkably cold by comparison with the daytime weather. after a frugal supper they replenished the stove with charcoal from the homestead, which they also burnt during the day,--an idea of viviette's, that the smoke from a wood fire might not be seen more frequently than was consistent with the occasional occupation of the cabin by swithin, as heretofore. at eight o'clock she insisted upon his ascending the tower for observations, in strict pursuance of the idea on which their marriage had been based, namely, that of restoring regularity to his studies. the sky had a new and startling beauty that night. a broad, fluctuating, semicircular arch of vivid white light spanned the northern quarter of the heavens, reaching from the horizon to the star eta in the greater bear. it was the aurora borealis, just risen up for the winter season out of the freezing seas of the north, where every autumn vapour was now undergoing rapid congelation. 'o, let us sit and look at it!' she said; and they turned their backs upon the equatorial and the southern glories of the heavens to this new beauty in a quarter which they seldom contemplated. the lustre of the fixed stars was diminished to a sort of blueness. little by little the arch grew higher against the dark void, like the form of the spirit-maiden in the shades of glenfinlas, till its crown drew near the zenith, and threw a tissue over the whole waggon and horses of the great northern constellation. brilliant shafts radiated from the convexity of the arch, coming and going silently. the temperature fell, and lady constantine drew her wrap more closely around her. 'we'll go down,' said swithin. 'the cabin is beautifully warm. why should we try to observe to-night? indeed, we cannot; the aurora light overpowers everything.' 'very well. to-morrow night there will be no interruption. i shall be gone.' 'you leave me to-morrow, viviette?' 'yes; to-morrow morning.' the truth was that, with the progress of the hours and days, the conviction had been borne in upon viviette more and more forcibly that not for kingdoms and principalities could she afford to risk the discovery of her presence here by any living soul. 'but let me see your face, dearest,' he said. 'i don't think it will be safe for you to meet your brother yet.' as it was too dark to see her face on the summit where they sat they descended the winding staircase, and in the cabin swithin examined the damaged cheek. the line, though so far attenuated as not to be observable by any one but a close observer, had not quite disappeared. but in consequence of her reiterated and almost tearful anxiety to go, and as there was a strong probability that her brother had left the house, swithin decided to call at welland next morning, and reconnoitre with a view to her return. locking her in he crossed the dewy stubble into the park. the house was silent and deserted; and only one tall stalk of smoke ascended from the chimneys. notwithstanding that the hour was nearly nine he knocked at the door. 'is lady constantine at home?' asked swithin, with a disingenuousness now habitual, yet unknown to him six months before. 'no, mr. st. cleeve; my lady has not returned from bath. we expect her every day.' 'nobody staying in the house?' 'my lady's brother has been here; but he is gone on to budmouth. he will come again in two or three weeks, i understand.' this was enough. swithin said he would call again, and returned to the cabin, where, waking viviette, who was not by nature an early riser, he waited on the column till she was ready to breakfast. when this had been shared they prepared to start. a long walk was before them. warborne station lay five miles distant, and the next station above that nine miles. they were bound for the latter; their plan being that she should there take the train to the junction where the whip accident had occurred, claim her luggage, and return with it to warborne, as if from bath. the morning was cool and the walk not wearisome. when once they had left behind the stubble-field of their environment and the parish of welland, they sauntered on comfortably, lady constantine's spirits rising as she withdrew further from danger. they parted by a little brook, about half a mile from the station; swithin to return to welland by the way he had come. lady constantine telegraphed from the junction to warborne for a carriage to be in readiness to meet her on her arrival; and then, waiting for the down train, she travelled smoothly home, reaching welland house about five minutes sooner than swithin reached the column hard by, after footing it all the way from where they had parted. xxi from that day forward their life resumed its old channel in general outward aspect. perhaps the most remarkable feature in their exploit was its comparative effectiveness as an expedient for the end designed,--that of restoring calm assiduity to the study of astronomy. swithin took up his old position as the lonely philosopher at the column, and lady constantine lapsed back to immured existence at the house, with apparently not a friend in the parish. the enforced narrowness of life which her limited resources necessitated was now an additional safeguard against the discovery of her relations with st. cleeve. her neighbours seldom troubled her; as much, it must be owned, from a tacit understanding that she was not in a position to return invitations as from any selfish coldness engendered by her want of wealth. at the first meeting of the secretly united pair after their short honeymoon they were compelled to behave as strangers to each other. it occurred in the only part of welland which deserved the name of a village street, and all the labourers were returning to their midday meal, with those of their wives who assisted at outdoor work. before the eyes of this innocent though quite untrustworthy group, swithin and his viviette could only shake hands in passing, though she contrived to say to him in an undertone, 'my brother does not return yet for some time. he has gone to paris. i will be on the lawn this evening, if you can come.' it was a fluttered smile that she bestowed on him, and there was no doubt that every fibre of her heart vibrated afresh at meeting, with such reserve, one who stood in his close relation to her. the shades of night fell early now, and swithin was at the spot of appointment about the time that he knew her dinner would be over. it was just where they had met at the beginning of the year, but many changes had resulted since then. the flower-beds that had used to be so neatly edged were now jagged and leafy; black stars appeared on the pale surface of the gravel walks, denoting tufts of grass that grew unmolested there. lady constantine's external affairs wore just that aspect which suggests that new blood may be advantageously introduced into the line; and new blood had been introduced, in good sooth,--with what social result remained to be seen. she silently entered on the scene from the same window which had given her passage in months gone by. they met with a concerted embrace, and st. cleeve spoke his greeting in whispers. 'we are quite safe, dearest,' said she. 'but the servants?' 'my meagre staff consists of only two women and the boy; and they are away in the other wing. i thought you would like to see the inside of my house, after showing me the inside of yours. so we will walk through it instead of staying out here.' she let him in through the casement, and they strolled forward softly, swithin with some curiosity, never before having gone beyond the library and adjoining room. the whole western side of the house was at this time shut up, her life being confined to two or three small rooms in the south- east corner. the great apartments through which they now whisperingly walked wore already that funereal aspect that comes from disuse and inattention. triangular cobwebs already formed little hammocks for the dust in corners of the wainscot, and a close smell of wood and leather, seasoned with mouse-droppings, pervaded the atmosphere. so seldom was the solitude of these chambers intruded on by human feet that more than once a mouse stood and looked the twain in the face from the arm of a sofa, or the top of a cabinet, without any great fear. swithin had no residential ambition whatever, but he was interested in the place. 'will the house ever be thrown open to gaiety, as it was in old times?' said he. 'not unless you make a fortune,' she replied laughingly. 'it is mine for my life, as you know; but the estate is so terribly saddled with annuities to sir blount's distant relatives, one of whom will succeed me here, that i have practically no more than my own little private income to exist on.' 'and are you bound to occupy the house?' 'not bound to. but i must not let it on lease.' 'and was there any stipulation in the event of your re-marriage?' 'it was not mentioned.' 'it is satisfactory to find that you lose nothing by marrying me, at all events, dear viviette.' 'i hope you lose nothing either--at least, of consequence.' 'what have i to lose?' 'i meant your liberty. suppose you become a popular physicist (popularity seems cooling towards art and coquetting with science now-a- days), and a better chance offers, and one who would make you a newer and brighter wife than i am comes in your way. will you never regret this? will you never despise me?' swithin answered by a kiss, and they again went on; proceeding like a couple of burglars, lest they should draw the attention of the cook or green. in one of the upper rooms his eyes were attracted by an old chamber organ, which had once been lent for use in the church. he mentioned his recollection of the same, which led her to say, 'that reminds me of something. there is to be a confirmation in our parish in the spring, and you once told me that you had never been confirmed. what shocking neglect! why was it?' 'i hardly know. the confusion resulting from my father's death caused it to be forgotten, i suppose.' 'now, dear swithin, you will do this to please me,--be confirmed on the present occasion?' 'since i have done without the virtue of it so long, might i not do without it altogether?' 'no, no!' she said earnestly. 'i do wish it, indeed. i am made unhappy when i think you don't care about such serious matters. without the church to cling to, what have we?' 'each other. but seriously, i should be inverting the established order of spiritual things; people ought to be confirmed before they are married.' 'that's really of minor consequence. now, don't think slightingly of what so many good men have laid down as necessary to be done. and, dear swithin, i somehow feel that a certain levity which has perhaps shown itself in our treatment of the sacrament of marriage--by making a clandestine adventure of what is, after all, a solemn rite--would be well atoned for by a due seriousness in other points of religious observance. this opportunity should therefore not be passed over. i thought of it all last night; and you are a parson's son, remember, and he would have insisted on it if he had been alive. in short, swithin, do be a good boy, and observe the church's ordinances.' lady constantine, by virtue of her temperament, was necessarily either lover or _dévote_, and she vibrated so gracefully between these two conditions that nobody who had known the circumstances could have condemned her inconsistencies. to be led into difficulties by those mastering emotions of hers, to aim at escape by turning round and seizing the apparatus of religion--which could only rightly be worked by the very emotions already bestowed elsewhere--it was, after all, but nature's well- meaning attempt to preserve the honour of her daughter's conscience in the trying quandary to which the conditions of sex had given rise. as viviette could not be confirmed herself, and as communion sunday was a long way off, she urged swithin thus. 'and the new bishop is such a good man,' she continued. 'i used to have a slight acquaintance with him when he was a parish priest.' 'very well, dearest. to please you i'll be confirmed. my grandmother, too, will be delighted, no doubt.' they continued their ramble: lady constantine first advancing into rooms with the candle, to assure herself that all was empty, and then calling him forward in a whisper. the stillness was broken only by these whispers, or by the occasional crack of a floor-board beneath their tread. at last they sat down, and, shading the candle with a screen, she showed him the faded contents of this and that drawer or cabinet, or the wardrobe of some member of the family who had died young early in the century, when muslin reigned supreme, when waists were close to arm-pits, and muffs as large as smugglers' tubs. these researches among habilimental hulls and husks, whose human kernels had long ago perished, went on for about half an hour; when the companions were startled by a loud ringing at the front-door bell. xxii lady constantine flung down the old-fashioned lacework, whose beauties she had been pointing out to swithin, and exclaimed, 'who can it be? not louis, surely?' they listened. an arrival was such a phenomenon at this unfrequented mansion, and particularly a late arrival, that no servant was on the alert to respond to the call; and the visitor rang again, more loudly than before. sounds of the tardy opening and shutting of a passage-door from the kitchen quarter then reached their ears, and viviette went into the corridor to hearken more attentively. in a few minutes she returned to the wardrobe-room in which she had left swithin. 'yes; it is my brother!' she said with difficult composure. 'i just caught his voice. he has no doubt come back from paris to stay. this is a rather vexatious, indolent way he has, never to write to prepare me!' 'i can easily go away,' said swithin. by this time, however, her brother had been shown into the house, and the footsteps of the page were audible, coming in search of lady constantine. 'if you will wait there a moment,' she said, directing st. cleeve into a bedchamber which adjoined; 'you will be quite safe from interruption, and i will quickly come back.' taking the light she left him. swithin waited in darkness. not more than ten minutes had passed when a whisper in her voice came through the keyhole. he opened the door. 'yes; he is come to stay!' she said. 'he is at supper now.' 'very well; don't be flurried, dearest. shall i stay too, as we planned?' 'o, swithin, i fear not!' she replied anxiously. 'you see how it is. to- night we have broken the arrangement that you should never come here; and this is the result. will it offend you if--i ask you to leave?' 'not in the least. upon the whole, i prefer the comfort of my little cabin and homestead to the gauntness and alarms of this place.' 'there, now, i fear you are offended!' she said, a tear collecting in her eye. 'i wish i was going back with you to the cabin! how happy we were, those three days of our stay there! but it is better, perhaps, just now, that you should leave me. yes, these rooms are oppressive. they require a large household to make them cheerful. . . . yet, swithin,' she added, after reflection, 'i will not request you to go. do as you think best. i will light a night-light, and leave you here to consider. for myself, i must go downstairs to my brother at once, or he'll wonder what i am doing.' she kindled the little light, and again retreated, closing the door upon him. swithin stood and waited some time; till he considered that upon the whole it would be preferable to leave. with this intention he emerged and went softly along the dark passage towards the extreme end, where there was a little crooked staircase that would conduct him down to a disused side door. descending this stair he duly arrived at the other side of the house, facing the quarter whence the wind blew, and here he was surprised to catch the noise of rain beating against the windows. it was a state of weather which fully accounted for the visitor's impatient ringing. st. cleeve was in a minor kind of dilemma. the rain reminded him that his hat and great-coat had been left downstairs, in the front part of the house; and though he might have gone home without either in ordinary weather it was not a pleasant feat in the pelting winter rain. retracing his steps to viviette's room he took the light, and opened a closet-door that he had seen ajar on his way down. within the closet hung various articles of apparel, upholstery lumber of all kinds filling the back part. swithin thought he might find here a cloak of hers to throw round him, but finally took down from a peg a more suitable garment, the only one of the sort that was there. it was an old moth-eaten great-coat, heavily trimmed with fur; and in removing it a companion cap of sealskin was disclosed. 'whose can they be?' he thought, and a gloomy answer suggested itself. 'pooh,' he then said (summoning the scientific side of his nature), 'matter is matter, and mental association only a delusion.' putting on the garments he returned the light to lady constantine's bedroom, and again prepared to depart as before. scarcely, however, had he regained the corridor a second time, when he heard a light footstep--seemingly viviette's--again on the front landing. wondering what she wanted with him further he waited, taking the precaution to step into the closet till sure it was she. the figure came onward, bent to the keyhole of the bedroom door, and whispered (supposing him still inside), 'swithin, on second thoughts i think you may stay with safety.' having no further doubt of her personality he came out with thoughtless abruptness from the closet behind her, and looking round suddenly she beheld his shadowy fur-clad outline. at once she raised her hands in horror, as if to protect herself from him; she uttered a shriek, and turned shudderingly to the wall, covering her face. swithin would have picked her up in a moment, but by this time he could hear footsteps rushing upstairs, in response to her cry. in consternation, and with a view of not compromising her, he effected his retreat as fast as possible, reaching the bend of the corridor just as her brother louis appeared with a light at the other extremity. 'what's the matter, for heaven's sake, viviette?' said louis. 'my husband!' she involuntarily exclaimed. 'what nonsense!' 'o yes, it is nonsense,' she added, with an effort. 'it was nothing.' 'but what was the cause of your cry?' she had by this time recovered her reason and judgment. 'o, it was a trick of the imagination,' she said, with a faint laugh. 'i live so much alone that i get superstitious--and--i thought for the moment i saw an apparition.' 'of your late husband?' 'yes. but it was nothing; it was the outline of the--tall clock and the chair behind. would you mind going down, and leaving me to go into my room for a moment?' she entered the bedroom, and her brother went downstairs. swithin thought it best to leave well alone, and going noiselessly out of the house plodded through the rain homeward. it was plain that agitations of one sort and another had so weakened viviette's nerves as to lay her open to every impression. that the clothes he had borrowed were some cast-off garments of the late sir blount had occurred to st. cleeve in taking them; but in the moment of returning to her side he had forgotten this, and the shape they gave to his figure had obviously been a reminder of too sudden a sort for her. musing thus he walked along as if he were still, as before, the lonely student, dissociated from all mankind, and with no shadow of right or interest in welland house or its mistress. the great-coat and cap were unpleasant companions; but swithin having been reared, or having reared himself, in the scientific school of thought, would not give way to his sense of their weirdness. to do so would have been treason to his own beliefs and aims. when nearly home, at a point where his track converged on another path, there approached him from the latter a group of indistinct forms. the tones of their speech revealed them to be hezzy biles, nat chapman, fry, and other labourers. swithin was about to say a word to them, till recollecting his disguise he deemed it advisable to hold his tongue, lest his attire should tell a too dangerous tale as to where he had come from. by degrees they drew closer, their walk being in the same direction. 'good-night, strainger,' said nat. the stranger did not reply. all of them paced on abreast of him, and he could perceive in the gloom that their faces were turned inquiringly upon his form. then a whisper passed from one to another of them; then chapman, who was the boldest, dropped immediately behind his heels, and followed there for some distance, taking close observations of his outline, after which the men grouped again and whispered. thinking it best to let them pass on swithin slackened his pace, and they went ahead of him, apparently without much reluctance. there was no doubt that they had been impressed by the clothes he wore; and having no wish to provoke similar comments from his grandmother and hannah, swithin took the precaution, on arriving at welland bottom, to enter the homestead by the outhouse. here he deposited the cap and coat in secure hiding, afterwards going round to the front and opening the door in the usual way. in the entry he met hannah, who said-- 'only to hear what have been seed to-night, mr. swithin! the work-folk have dropped in to tell us!' in the kitchen were the men who had outstripped him on the road. their countenances, instead of wearing the usual knotty irregularities, had a smoothed-out expression of blank concern. swithin's entrance was unobtrusive and quiet, as if he had merely come down from his study upstairs, and they only noticed him by enlarging their gaze, so as to include him in the audience. 'we was in a deep talk at the moment,' continued blore, 'and natty had just brought up that story about old jeremiah paddock's crossing the park one night at one o'clock in the morning, and seeing sir blount a-shutting my lady out-o'-doors; and we was saying that it seemed a true return that he should perish in a foreign land; when we happened to look up, and there was sir blount a-walking along.' 'did it overtake you, or did you overtake it?' whispered hannah sepulchrally. 'i don't say 'twas _it_,' returned sammy. 'god forbid that i should drag in a resurrection word about what perhaps was still solid manhood, and has to die! but he, or it, closed in upon us, as 'twere.' 'yes, closed in upon us!' said haymoss. 'and i said "good-night, strainger,"' added chapman. 'yes, "good-night, strainger,"--that wez yer words, natty. i support ye in it.' 'and then he closed in upon us still more.' 'we closed in upon he, rather,' said chapman. 'well, well; 'tis the same thing in such matters! and the form was sir blount's. my nostrils told me, for--there, 'a smelled. yes, i could smell'n, being to leeward.' 'lord, lord, what unwholesome scandal's this about the ghost of a respectable gentleman?' said mrs. martin, who had entered from the sitting-room. 'now, wait, ma'am. i don't say 'twere a low smell, mind ye. 'twere a high smell, a sort of gamey flaviour, calling to mind venison and hare, just as you'd expect of a great squire,--not like a poor man's 'natomy, at all; and that was what strengthened my faith that 'twas sir blount.' ('the skins that old coat was made of,' ruminated swithin.) 'well, well; i've not held out against the figure o' starvation these five-and-twenty year, on nine shillings a week, to be afeard of a walking vapour, sweet or savoury,' said hezzy. 'so here's home-along.' 'bide a bit longer, and i'm going too,' continued fry. 'well, when i found 'twas sir blount my spet dried up within my mouth; for neither hedge nor bush were there for refuge against any foul spring 'a might have made at us.' ''twas very curious; but we had likewise a-mentioned his name just afore, in talking of the confirmation that's shortly coming on,' said hezzy. 'is there soon to be a confirmation?' 'yes. in this parish--the first time in welland church for twenty years. as i say, i had told 'em that he was confirmed the same year that i went up to have it done, as i have very good cause to mind. when we went to be examined, the pa'son said to me, "rehearse the articles of thy belief." mr. blount (as he was then) was nighest me, and he whispered, "women and wine." "women and wine," says i to the pa'son: and for that i was sent back till next confirmation, sir blount never owning that he was the rascal.' 'confirmation was a sight different at that time,' mused biles. 'the bishops didn't lay it on so strong then as they do now. now-a-days, yer bishop gies both hands to every jack-rag and tom-straw that drops the knee afore him; but 'twas six chaps to one blessing when we was boys. the bishop o' that time would stretch out his palms and run his fingers over our row of crowns as off-hand as a bank gentleman telling money. the great lords of the church in them days wasn't particular to a soul or two more or less; and, for my part, i think living was easier for 't.' 'the new bishop, i hear, is a bachelor-man; or a widow gentleman is it?' asked mrs. martin. 'bachelor, i believe, ma'am. mr. san cleeve, making so bold, you've never faced him yet, i think?' mrs. martin shook her head. 'no; it was a piece of neglect. i hardly know how it happened,' she said. 'i am going to, this time,' said swithin, and turned the chat to other matters. xxiii swithin could not sleep that night for thinking of his viviette. nothing told so significantly of the conduct of her first husband towards the poor lady as the abiding dread of him which was revealed in her by any sudden revival of his image or memory. but for that consideration her almost childlike terror at swithin's inadvertent disguise would have been ludicrous. he waited anxiously through several following days for an opportunity of seeing her, but none was afforded. her brother's presence in the house sufficiently accounted for this. at length he ventured to write a note, requesting her to signal to him in a way she had done once or twice before,--by pulling down a blind in a particular window of the house, one of the few visible from the top of the rings-hill column; this to be done on any evening when she could see him after dinner on the terrace. when he had levelled the glass at that window for five successive nights he beheld the blind in the position suggested. three hours later, quite in the dusk, he repaired to the place of appointment. 'my brother is away this evening,' she explained, 'and that's why i can come out. he is only gone for a few hours, nor is he likely to go for longer just yet. he keeps himself a good deal in my company, which has made it unsafe for me to venture near you.' 'has he any suspicion?' 'none, apparently. but he rather depresses me.' 'how, viviette?' swithin feared, from her manner, that this was something serious. 'i would rather not tell.' 'but--well, never mind.' 'yes, swithin, i will tell you. there should be no secrets between us. he urges upon me the necessity of marrying, day after day.' 'for money and position, of course.' 'yes. but i take no notice. i let him go on.' 'really, this is sad!' said the young man. 'i must work harder than ever, or you will never be able to own me.' 'o yes, in good time!' she cheeringly replied. 'i shall be very glad to have you always near me. i felt the gloom of our position keenly when i was obliged to disappear that night, without assuring you it was only i who stood there. why were you so frightened at those old clothes i borrowed?' 'don't ask,--don't ask!' she said, burying her face on his shoulder. 'i don't want to speak of that. there was something so ghastly and so uncanny in your putting on such garments that i wish you had been more thoughtful, and had left them alone.' he assured her that he did not stop to consider whose they were. 'by the way, they must be sent back,' he said. 'no; i never wish to see them again! i cannot help feeling that your putting them on was ominous.' 'nothing is ominous in serene philosophy,' he said, kissing her. 'things are either causes, or they are not causes. when can you see me again?' in such wise the hour passed away. the evening was typical of others which followed it at irregular intervals through the winter. and during the intenser months of the season frequent falls of snow lengthened, even more than other difficulties had done, the periods of isolation between the pair. swithin adhered with all the more strictness to the letter of his promise not to intrude into the house, from his sense of her powerlessness to compel him to keep out should he choose to rebel. a student of the greatest forces in nature, he had, like many others of his sort, no personal force to speak of in a social point of view, mainly because he took no interest in human ranks and formulas; and hence he was as docile as a child in her hands wherever matters of that kind were concerned. her brother wintered at welland; but whether because his experience of tropic climes had unfitted him for the brumal rigours of britain, or for some other reason, he seldom showed himself out of doors, and swithin caught but passing glimpses of him. now and then viviette's impulsive affection would overcome her sense of risk, and she would press swithin to call on her at all costs. this he would by no means do. it was obvious to his more logical mind that the secrecy to which they had bound themselves must be kept in its fulness, or might as well be abandoned altogether. he was now sadly exercised on the subject of his uncle's will. there had as yet been no pressing reasons for a full and candid reply to the solicitor who had communicated with him, owing to the fact that the payments were not to begin till swithin was one-and-twenty; but time was going on, and something definite would have to be done soon. to own to his marriage and consequent disqualification for the bequest was easy in itself; but it involved telling at least one man what both viviette and himself had great reluctance in telling anybody. moreover he wished viviette to know nothing of his loss in making her his wife. all he could think of doing for the present was to write a postponing letter to his uncle's lawyer, and wait events. the one comfort of this dreary winter-time was his perception of a returning ability to work with the regularity and much of the spirit of earlier days. * * * * * one bright night in april there was an eclipse of the moon, and mr. torkingham, by arrangement, brought to the observatory several labouring men and boys, to whom he had promised a sight of the phenomenon through the telescope. the coming confirmation, fixed for may, was again talked of; and st. cleeve learnt from the parson that the bishop had arranged to stay the night at the vicarage, and was to be invited to a grand luncheon at welland house immediately after the ordinance. this seemed like a going back into life again as regarded the mistress of that house; and st. cleeve was a little surprised that, in his communications with viviette, she had mentioned no such probability. the next day he walked round the mansion, wondering how in its present state any entertainment could be given therein. he found that the shutters had been opened, which had restored an unexpected liveliness to the aspect of the windows. two men were putting a chimney-pot on one of the chimney-stacks, and two more were scraping green mould from the front wall. he made no inquiries on that occasion. three days later he strolled thitherward again. now a great cleaning of window-panes was going on, hezzy biles and sammy blore being the operators, for which purpose their services must have been borrowed from the neighbouring farmer. hezzy dashed water at the glass with a force that threatened to break it in, the broad face of sammy being discernible inside, smiling at the onset. in addition to these, anthony green and another were weeding the gravel walks, and putting fresh plants into the flower-beds. neither of these reasonable operations was a great undertaking, singly looked at; but the life viviette had latterly led and the mood in which she had hitherto regarded the premises, rendered it somewhat significant. swithin, however, was rather curious than concerned at the proceedings, and returned to his tower with feelings of interest not entirely confined to the worlds overhead. lady constantine may or may not have seen him from the house; but the same evening, which was fine and dry, while he was occupying himself in the observatory with cleaning the eye-pieces of the equatorial, skull-cap on head, observing-jacket on, and in other ways primed for sweeping, the customary stealthy step on the winding staircase brought her form in due course into the rays of the bull's-eye lantern. the meeting was all the more pleasant to him from being unexpected, and he at once lit up a larger lamp in honour of the occasion. 'it is but a hasty visit,' she said when, after putting up her mouth to be kissed, she had seated herself in the low chair used for observations, panting a little with the labour of ascent. 'but i hope to be able to come more freely soon. my brother is still living on with me. yes, he is going to stay until the confirmation is over. after the confirmation he will certainly leave. so good it is of you, dear, to please me by agreeing to the ceremony. the bishop, you know, is going to lunch with us. it is a wonder he has promised to come, for he is a man averse to society, and mostly keeps entirely with the clergy on these confirmation tours, or circuits, or whatever they call them. but mr. torkingham's house is so very small, and mine is so close at hand, that this arrangement to relieve him of the fuss of one meal, at least, naturally suggested itself; and the bishop has fallen in with it very readily. how are you getting on with your observations? have you not wanted me dreadfully, to write down notes?' 'well, i have been obliged to do without you, whether or no. see here,--how much i have done.' and he showed her a book ruled in columns, headed 'object,' 'right ascension,' 'declination,' 'features,' 'remarks,' and so on. she looked over this and other things, but her mind speedily winged its way back to the confirmation. 'it is so new to me,' she said, 'to have persons coming to the house, that i feel rather anxious. i hope the luncheon will be a success.' 'you know the bishop?' said swithin. 'i have not seen him for many years. i knew him when i was quite a girl, and he held the little living of puddle-sub-mixen, near us; but after that time, and ever since i have lived here, i have seen nothing of him. there has been no confirmation in this village, they say, for twenty years. the other bishop used to make the young men and women go to warborne; he wouldn't take the trouble to come to such an out-of-the-way parish as ours.' 'this cleaning and preparation that i observe going on must be rather a tax upon you?' 'my brother louis sees to it, and, what is more, bears the expense.' 'your brother?' said swithin, with surprise. 'well, he insisted on doing so,' she replied, in a hesitating, despondent tone. 'he has been active in the whole matter, and was the first to suggest the invitation. i should not have thought of it.' 'well, i will hold aloof till it is all over.' 'thanks, dearest, for your considerateness. i wish it was not still advisable! but i shall see you on the day, and watch my own philosopher all through the service from the corner of my pew! . . . i hope you are well prepared for the rite, swithin?' she added, turning tenderly to him. 'it would perhaps be advisable for you to give up this astronomy till the confirmation is over, in order to devote your attention exclusively to that more serious matter.' 'more serious! well, i will do the best i can. i am sorry to see that you are less interested in astronomy than you used to be, viviette.' 'no; it is only that these preparations for the bishop unsettle my mind from study. now put on your other coat and hat, and come with me a little way.' xxiv the morning of the confirmation was come. it was mid-may time, bringing with it weather not, perhaps, quite so blooming as that assumed to be natural to the month by the joyous poets of three hundred years ago; but a very tolerable, well-wearing may, that the average rustic would willingly have compounded for in lieu of mays occasionally fairer, but usually more foul. among the larger shrubs and flowers which composed the outworks of the welland gardens, the lilac, the laburnum, and the guelder-rose hung out their respective colours of purple, yellow, and white; whilst within these, belted round from every disturbing gale, rose the columbine, the peony, the larkspur, and the solomon's seal. the animate things that moved amid this scene of colour were plodding bees, gadding butterflies, and numerous sauntering young feminine candidates for the impending confirmation, who, having gaily bedecked themselves for the ceremony, were enjoying their own appearance by walking about in twos and threes till it was time to start. swithin st. cleeve, whose preparations were somewhat simpler than those of the village belles, waited till his grandmother and hannah had set out, and then, locking the door, followed towards the distant church. on reaching the churchyard gate he met mr. torkingham, who shook hands with him in the manner of a man with several irons in the fire, and telling swithin where to sit, disappeared to hunt up some candidates who had not yet made themselves visible. casting his eyes round for viviette, and seeing nothing of her, swithin went on to the church porch, and looked in. from the north side of the nave smiled a host of girls, gaily uniform in dress, age, and a temporary repression of their natural tendency to 'skip like a hare over the meshes of good counsel.' their white muslin dresses, their round white caps, from beneath whose borders hair-knots and curls of various shades of brown escaped upon their low shoulders, as if against their will, lighted up the dark pews and grey stone-work to an unwonted warmth and life. on the south side were the young men and boys,--heavy, angular, and massive, as indeed was rather necessary, considering what they would have to bear at the hands of wind and weather before they returned to that mouldy nave for the last time. over the heads of all these he could see into the chancel to the square pew on the north side, which was attached to welland house. there he discerned lady constantine already arrived, her brother louis sitting by her side. swithin entered and seated himself at the end of a bench, and she, who had been on the watch, at once showed by subtle signs her consciousness of the presence of the young man who had reversed the ordained sequence of the church services on her account. she appeared in black attire, though not strictly in mourning, a touch of red in her bonnet setting off the richness of her complexion without making her gay. handsomest woman in the church she decidedly was; and yet a disinterested spectator who had known all the circumstances would probably have felt that, the future considered, swithin's more natural mate would have been one of the muslin- clad maidens who were to be presented to the bishop with him that day. when the bishop had arrived and gone into the chancel, and blown his nose, the congregation were sufficiently impressed by his presence to leave off looking at one another. the right reverend cuthbert helmsdale, d.d., ninety-fourth occupant of the episcopal throne of the diocese, revealed himself to be a personage of dark complexion, whose darkness was thrown still further into prominence by the lawn protuberances that now rose upon his two shoulders like the eastern and western hemispheres. in stature he seemed to be tall and imposing, but something of this aspect may have been derived from his robes. the service was, as usual, of a length which severely tried the tarrying powers of the young people assembled; and it was not till the youth of all the other parishes had gone up that the turn came for the welland bevy. swithin and some older ones were nearly the last. when, at the heels of mr. torkingham, he passed lady constantine's pew, he lifted his eyes from the red lining of that gentleman's hood sufficiently high to catch hers. she was abstracted, tearful, regarding him with all the rapt mingling of religion, love, fervour, and hope which such women can feel at such times, and which men know nothing of. how fervidly she watched the bishop place his hand on her beloved youth's head; how she saw the great episcopal ring glistening in the sun among swithin's brown curls; how she waited to hear if dr. helmsdale uttered the form 'this thy child' which he used for the younger ones, or 'this thy servant' which he used for those older; and how, when he said, 'this thy _child_,' she felt a prick of conscience, like a person who had entrapped an innocent youth into marriage for her own gratification, till she remembered that she had raised his social position thereby,--all this could only have been told in its entirety by herself. as for swithin, he felt ashamed of his own utter lack of the high enthusiasm which beamed so eloquently from her eyes. when he passed her again, on the return journey from the bishop to his seat, her face was warm with a blush which her brother might have observed had he regarded her. whether he had observed it or not, as soon as st. cleeve had sat himself down again louis glanville turned and looked hard at the young astronomer. this was the first time that st. cleeve and viviette's brother had been face to face in a distinct light, their first meeting having occurred in the dusk of a railway-station. swithin was not in the habit of noticing people's features; he scarcely ever observed any detail of physiognomy in his friends, a generalization from their whole aspect forming his idea of them; and he now only noted a young man of perhaps thirty, who lolled a good deal, and in whose small dark eyes seemed to be concentrated the activity that the rest of his frame decidedly lacked. this gentleman's eyes were henceforward, to the end of the service, continually fixed upon swithin; but as this was their natural direction, from the position of his seat, there was no great strangeness in the circumstance. swithin wanted to say to viviette, 'now i hope you are pleased; i have conformed to your ideas of my duty, leaving my fitness out of consideration;' but as he could only see her bonnet and forehead it was not possible even to look the intelligence. he turned to his left hand, where the organ stood, with miss tabitha lark seated behind it. it being now sermon-time the youthful blower had fallen asleep over the handle of his bellows, and tabitha pulled out her handkerchief intending to flap him awake with it. with the handkerchief tumbled out a whole family of unexpected articles: a silver thimble; a photograph; a little purse; a scent-bottle; some loose halfpence; nine green gooseberries; a key. they rolled to swithin's feet, and, passively obeying his first instinct, he picked up as many of the articles as he could find, and handed them to her amid the smiles of the neighbours. tabitha was half-dead with humiliation at such an event, happening under the very eyes of the bishop on this glorious occasion; she turned pale as a sheet, and could hardly keep her seat. fearing she might faint, swithin, who had genuinely sympathized, bent over and whispered encouragingly, 'don't mind it, tabitha. shall i take you out into the air?' she declined his offer, and presently the sermon came to an end. swithin lingered behind the rest of the congregation sufficiently long to see lady constantine, accompanied by her brother, the bishop, the bishop's chaplain, mr. torkingham, and several other clergy and ladies, enter to the grand luncheon by the door which admitted from the churchyard to the lawn of welland house; the whole group talking with a vivacity all the more intense, as it seemed, from the recent two hours' enforced repression of their social qualities within the adjoining building. the young man stood till he was left quite alone in the churchyard, and then went slowly homeward over the hill, perhaps a trifle depressed at the impossibility of being near viviette in this her one day of gaiety, and joining in the conversation of those who surrounded her. not that he felt much jealousy of her situation, as his wife, in comparison with his own. he had so clearly understood from the beginning that, in the event of marriage, their outward lives were to run on as before, that to rebel now would have been unmanly in himself and cruel to her, by adding to embarrassments that were great enough already. his momentary doubt was of his own strength to achieve sufficiently high things to render him, in relation to her, other than a patronized young favourite, whom she had married at an immense sacrifice of position. now, at twenty, he was doomed to isolation even from a wife; could it be that at, say thirty, he would be welcomed everywhere? but with motion through the sun and air his mood assumed a lighter complexion, and on reaching home he remembered with interest that venus was in a favourable aspect for observation that afternoon. xxv meanwhile the interior of welland house was rattling with the progress of the ecclesiastical luncheon. the bishop, who sat at lady constantine's side, seemed enchanted with her company, and from the beginning she engrossed his attention almost entirely. the truth was that the circumstance of her not having her whole soul centred on the success of the repast and the pleasure of bishop helmsdale, imparted to her, in a great measure, the mood to ensure both. her brother louis it was who had laid out the plan of entertaining the bishop, to which she had assented but indifferently. she was secretly bound to another, on whose career she had staked all her happiness. having thus other interests she evinced to-day the ease of one who hazards nothing, and there was no sign of that preoccupation with housewifely contingencies which so often makes the hostess hardly recognizable as the charming woman who graced a friend's home the day before. in marrying swithin lady constantine had played her card,--recklessly, impulsively, ruinously, perhaps; but she had played it; it could not be withdrawn; and she took this morning's luncheon as an episode that could result in nothing to her beyond the day's entertainment. hence, by that power of indirectness to accomplish in an hour what strenuous aiming will not effect in a life-time, she fascinated the bishop to an unprecedented degree. a bachelor, he rejoiced in the commanding period of life that stretches between the time of waning impulse and the time of incipient dotage, when a woman can reach the male heart neither by awakening a young man's passion nor an old man's infatuation. he must be made to admire, or he can be made to do nothing. unintentionally that is how viviette operated on her guest. lady constantine, to external view, was in a position to desire many things, and of a sort to desire them. she was obviously, by nature, impulsive to indiscretion. but instead of exhibiting activities to correspond, recently gratified affection lent to her manner just now a sweet serenity, a truly christian contentment, which it puzzled the learned bishop exceedingly to find in a warm young widow, and increased his interest in her every moment. thus matters stood when the conversation veered round to the morning's confirmation. 'that was a singularly engaging young man who came up among mr. torkingham's candidates,' said the bishop to her somewhat abruptly. but abruptness does not catch a woman without her wit. 'which one?' she said innocently. 'that youth with the "corn-coloured" hair, as a poet of the new school would call it, who sat just at the side of the organ. do you know who he is?' in answering viviette showed a little nervousness, for the first time that day. 'o yes. he is the son of an unfortunate gentleman who was formerly curate here,--a mr. st. cleeve.' 'i never saw a handsomer young man in my life,' said the bishop. lady constantine blushed. 'there was a lack of self-consciousness, too, in his manner of presenting himself, which very much won me. a mr. st. cleeve, do you say? a curate's son? his father must have been st. cleeve of all angels, whom i knew. how comes he to be staying on here? what is he doing?' mr. torkingham, who kept one ear on the bishop all the lunch-time, finding that lady constantine was not ready with an answer, hastened to reply: 'your lordship is right. his father was an all angels' man. the youth is rather to be pitied.' 'he was a man of talent,' affirmed the bishop. 'but i quite lost sight of him.' 'he was curate to the late vicar,' resumed the parson, 'and was much liked by the parish: but, being erratic in his tastes and tendencies, he rashly contracted a marriage with the daughter of a farmer, and then quarrelled with the local gentry for not taking up his wife. this lad was an only child. there was enough money to educate him, and he is sufficiently well provided for to be independent of the world so long as he is content to live here with great economy. but of course this gives him few opportunities of bettering himself.' 'yes, naturally,' replied the bishop of melchester. 'better have been left entirely dependent on himself. these half-incomes do men little good, unless they happen to be either weaklings or geniuses.' lady constantine would have given the world to say, 'he is a genius, and the hope of my life;' but it would have been decidedly risky, and in another moment was unnecessary, for mr. torkingham said, 'there is a certain genius in this young man, i sometimes think.' 'well, he really looks quite out of the common,' said the bishop. 'youthful genius is sometimes disappointing,' observed viviette, not believing it in the least. 'yes,' said the bishop. 'though it depends, lady constantine, on what you understand by disappointing. it may produce nothing visible to the world's eye, and yet may complete its development within to a very perfect degree. objective achievements, though the only ones which are counted, are not the only ones that exist and have value; and i for one should be sorry to assert that, because a man of genius dies as unknown to the world as when he was born, he therefore was an instance of wasted material.' objective achievements were, however, those that lady constantine had a weakness for in the present case, and she asked her more experienced guest if he thought early development of a special talent a good sign in youth. the bishop thought it well that a particular bent should not show itself too early, lest disgust should result. 'still,' argued lady constantine rather firmly (for she felt this opinion of the bishop's to be one throwing doubt on swithin), 'sustained fruition is compatible with early bias. tycho brahe showed quite a passion for the solar system when he was but a youth, and so did kepler; and james ferguson had a surprising knowledge of the stars by the time he was eleven or twelve.' 'yes; sustained fruition,' conceded the bishop (rather liking the words), 'is certainly compatible with early bias. fenelon preached at fourteen.' 'he--mr. st. cleeve--is not in the church,' said lady constantine. 'he is a scientific young man, my lord,' explained mr. torkingham. 'an astronomer,' she added, with suppressed pride. 'an astronomer! really, that makes him still more interesting than being handsome and the son of a man i knew. how and where does he study astronomy?' 'he has a beautiful observatory. he has made use of an old column that was erected on this manor to the memory of one of the constantines. it has been very ingeniously adapted for his purpose, and he does very good work there. i believe he occasionally sends up a paper to the royal society, or greenwich, or somewhere, and to astronomical periodicals.' 'i should have had no idea, from his boyish look, that he had advanced so far,' the bishop answered. 'and yet i saw on his face that within there was a book worth studying. his is a career i should very much like to watch.' a thrill of pleasure chased through lady constantine's heart at this praise of her chosen one. it was an unwitting compliment to her taste and discernment in singling him out for her own, despite its temporary inexpediency. her brother louis now spoke. 'i fancy he is as interested in one of his fellow-creatures as in the science of astronomy,' observed the cynic dryly. 'in whom?' said lady constantine quickly. 'in the fair maiden who sat at the organ,--a pretty girl, rather. i noticed a sort of by-play going on between them occasionally, during the sermon, which meant mating, if i am not mistaken.' 'she!' said lady constantine. 'she is only a village girl, a dairyman's daughter,--tabitha lark, who used to come to read to me.' 'she may be a savage, for all that i know: but there is something between those two young people, nevertheless.' the bishop looked as if he had allowed his interest in a stranger to carry him too far, and mr. torkingham was horrified at the irreverent and easy familiarity of louis glanville's talk in the presence of a consecrated bishop. as for viviette, her tongue lost all its volubility. she felt quite faint at heart, and hardly knew how to control herself. 'i have never noticed anything of the sort,' said mr. torkingham. 'it would be a matter for regret,' said the bishop, 'if he should follow his father in forming an attachment that would be a hindrance to him in any honourable career; though perhaps an early marriage, intrinsically considered, would not be bad for him. a youth who looks as if he had come straight from old greece may be exposed to many temptations, should he go out into the world without a friend or counsellor to guide him.' despite her sudden jealousy viviette's eyes grew moist at the picture of her innocent swithin going into the world without a friend or counsellor. but she was sick in soul and disquieted still by louis's dreadful remarks, who, unbeliever as he was in human virtue, could have no reason whatever for representing swithin as engaged in a private love affair if such were not his honest impression. she was so absorbed during the remainder of the luncheon that she did not even observe the kindly light that her presence was shedding on the right reverend ecclesiastic by her side. he reflected it back in tones duly mellowed by his position; the minor clergy caught up the rays thereof, and so the gentle influence played down the table. the company soon departed when luncheon was over, and the remainder of the day passed in quietness, the bishop being occupied in his room at the vicarage with writing letters or a sermon. having a long journey before him the next day he had expressed a wish to be housed for the night without ceremony, and would have dined alone with mr. torkingham but that, by a happy thought, lady constantine and her brother were asked to join them. however, when louis crossed the churchyard and entered the vicarage drawing-room at seven o'clock, his sister was not in his company. she was, he said, suffering from a slight headache, and much regretted that she was on that account unable to come. at this intelligence the social sparkle disappeared from the bishop's eye, and he sat down to table, endeavouring to mould into the form of episcopal serenity an expression which was really one of common human disappointment. in his simple statement louis glanville had by no means expressed all the circumstances which accompanied his sister's refusal, at the last moment, to dine at her neighbour's house. louis had strongly urged her to bear up against her slight indisposition--if it were that, and not disinclination--and come along with him on just this one occasion, perhaps a more important episode in her life than she was aware of. viviette thereupon knew quite well that he alluded to the favourable impression she was producing on the bishop, notwithstanding that neither of them mentioned the bishop's name. but she did not give way, though the argument waxed strong between them; and louis left her in no very amiable mood, saying, 'i don't believe you have any more headache than i have, viviette. it is some provoking whim of yours--nothing more.' in this there was a substratum of truth. when her brother had left her, and she had seen him from the window entering the vicarage gate, viviette seemed to be much relieved, and sat down in her bedroom till the evening grew dark, and only the lights shining through the trees from the parsonage dining-room revealed to the eye where that dwelling stood. then she arose, and putting on the cloak she had used so many times before for the same purpose, she locked her bedroom door (to be supposed within, in case of the accidental approach of a servant), and let herself privately out of the house. lady constantine paused for a moment under the vicarage windows, till she could sufficiently well hear the voices of the diners to be sure that they were actually within, and then went on her way, which was towards the rings-hill column. she appeared a mere spot, hardly distinguishable from the grass, as she crossed the open ground, and soon became absorbed in the black mass of the fir plantation. meanwhile the conversation at mr. torkingham's dinner-table was not of a highly exhilarating quality. the parson, in long self-communing during the afternoon, had decided that the diocesan synod, whose annual session at melchester had occurred in the month previous, would afford a solid and unimpeachable subject to launch during the meal, whenever conversation flagged; and that it would be one likely to win the respect of his spiritual chieftain for himself as the introducer. accordingly, in the further belief that you could not have too much of a good thing, mr. torkingham not only acted upon his idea, but at every pause rallied to the synod point with unbroken firmness. everything which had been discussed at that last session--such as the introduction of the lay element into the councils of the church, the reconstitution of the ecclesiastical courts, church patronage, the tithe question--was revived by mr. torkingham, and the excellent remarks which the bishop had made in his addresses on those subjects were quoted back to him. as for bishop helmsdale himself, his instincts seemed to be to allude in a debonair spirit to the incidents of the past day--to the flowers in lady constantine's beds, the date of her house--perhaps with a view of hearing a little more about their owner from louis, who would very readily have followed the bishop's lead had the parson allowed him room. but this mr. torkingham seldom did, and about half-past nine they prepared to separate. louis glanville had risen from the table, and was standing by the window, looking out upon the sky, and privately yawning, the topics discussed having been hardly in his line. 'a fine night,' he said at last. 'i suppose our young astronomer is hard at work now,' said the bishop, following the direction of louis's glance towards the clear sky. 'yes,' said the parson; 'he is very assiduous whenever the nights are good for observation. i have occasionally joined him in his tower, and looked through his telescope with great benefit to my ideas of celestial phenomena. i have not seen what he has been doing lately.' 'suppose we stroll that way?' said louis. 'would you be interested in seeing the observatory, bishop?' 'i am quite willing to go,' said the bishop, 'if the distance is not too great. i should not be at all averse to making the acquaintance of so exceptional a young man as this mr. st. cleeve seems to be; and i have never seen the inside of an observatory in my life.' the intention was no sooner formed than it was carried out, mr. torkingham leading the way. xxvi half an hour before this time swithin st. cleeve had been sitting in his cabin at the base of the column, working out some figures from observations taken on preceding nights, with a view to a theory that he had in his head on the motions of certain so-called fixed stars. the evening being a little chilly a small fire was burning in the stove, and this and the shaded lamp before him lent a remarkably cosy air to the chamber. he was awakened from his reveries by a scratching at the window- pane like that of the point of an ivy leaf, which he knew to be really caused by the tip of his sweetheart-wife's forefinger. he rose and opened the door to admit her, not without astonishment as to how she had been able to get away from her friends. 'dearest viv, why, what's the matter?' he said, perceiving that her face, as the lamplight fell on it, was sad, and even stormy. 'i thought i would run across to see you. i have heard something so--so--to your discredit, and i know it can't be true! i know you are constancy itself; but your constancy produces strange effects in people's eyes!' 'good heavens! nobody has found us out--' 'no, no--it is not that. you know, swithin, that i am always sincere, and willing to own if i am to blame in anything. now will you prove to me that you are the same by owning some fault to me?' 'yes, dear, indeed; directly i can think of one worth owning.' 'i wonder one does not rush upon your tongue in a moment!' 'i confess that i am sufficiently a pharisee not to experience that spontaneity.' 'swithin, don't speak so affectedly, when you know so well what i mean! is it nothing to you that, after all our vows for life, you have thought it right to--flirt with a village girl?' 'o viviette!' interrupted swithin, taking her hand, which was hot and trembling. 'you who are full of noble and generous feelings, and regard me with devoted tenderness that has never been surpassed by woman,--how can you be so greatly at fault? _i_ flirt, viviette? by thinking that you injure yourself in my eyes. why, i am so far from doing so that i continually pull myself up for watching you too jealously, as to-day, when i have been dreading the effect upon you of other company in my absence, and thinking that you rather shut the gates against me when you have big-wigs to entertain.' 'do you, swithin?' she cried. it was evident that the honest tone of his words was having a great effect in clearing away the clouds. she added with an uncertain smile, 'but how can i believe that, after what was seen to-day? my brother, not knowing in the least that i had an iota of interest in you, told me that he witnessed the signs of an attachment between you and tabitha lark in church, this morning.' 'ah!' cried swithin, with a burst of laughter. 'now i know what you mean, and what has caused this misunderstanding! how good of you, viviette, to come at once and have it out with me, instead of brooding over it with dark imaginings, and thinking bitter things of me, as many women would have done!' he succinctly told the whole story of his little adventure with tabitha that morning; and the sky was clear on both sides. 'when shall i be able to claim you,' he added, 'and put an end to all such painful accidents as these?' she partially sighed. her perception of what the outside world was made of, latterly somewhat obscured by solitude and her lover's company, had been revived to-day by her entertainment of the bishop, clergymen, and, more particularly, clergymen's wives; and it did not diminish her sense of the difficulties in swithin's path to see anew how little was thought of the greatest gifts, mental and spiritual, if they were not backed up by substantial temporalities. however, the pair made the best of their future that circumstances permitted, and the interview was at length drawing to a close when there came, without the slightest forewarning, a smart rat-tat-tat upon the little door. 'o i am lost!' said viviette, seizing his arm. 'why was i so incautious?' 'it is nobody of consequence,' whispered swithin assuringly. 'somebody from my grandmother, probably, to know when i am coming home.' they were unperceived so far, for the only window which gave light to the hut was screened by a curtain. at that moment they heard the sound of their visitors' voices, and, with a consternation as great as her own, swithin discerned the tones of mr. torkingham and the bishop of melchester. 'where shall i get? what shall i do?' said the poor lady, clasping her hands. swithin looked around the cabin, and a very little look was required to take in all its resources. at one end, as previously explained, were a table, stove, chair, cupboard, and so on; while the other was completely occupied by a diminutive arabian bedstead, hung with curtains of pink-and- white chintz. on the inside of the bed there was a narrow channel, about a foot wide, between it and the wall of the hut. into this cramped retreat viviette slid herself, and stood trembling behind the curtains. by this time the knock had been repeated more loudly, the light through the window-blind unhappily revealing the presence of some inmate. swithin threw open the door, and mr. torkingham introduced his visitors. the bishop shook hands with the young man, told him he had known his father, and at swithin's invitation, weak as it was, entered the cabin, the vicar and louis glanville remaining on the threshold, not to inconveniently crowd the limited space within. bishop helmsdale looked benignantly around the apartment, and said, 'quite a settlement in the backwoods--quite: far enough from the world to afford the votary of science the seclusion he needs, and not so far as to limit his resources. a hermit might apparently live here in as much solitude as in a primeval forest.' 'his lordship has been good enough to express an interest in your studies,' said mr. torkingham to st. cleeve. 'and we have come to ask you to let us see the observatory.' 'with great pleasure,' stammered swithin. 'where is the observatory?' inquired the bishop, peering round again. 'the staircase is just outside this door,' swithin answered. 'i am at your lordship's service, and will show you up at once.' 'and this is your little bed, for use when you work late,' said the bishop. 'yes; i am afraid it is rather untidy,' swithin apologized. 'and here are your books,' the bishop continued, turning to the table and the shaded lamp. 'you take an observation at the top, i presume, and come down here to record your observations.' the young man explained his precise processes as well as his state of mind would let him, and while he was doing so mr. torkingham and louis waited patiently without, looking sometimes into the night, and sometimes through the door at the interlocutors, and listening to their scientific converse. when all had been exhibited here below, swithin lit his lantern, and, inviting his visitors to follow, led the way up the column, experiencing no small sense of relief as soon as he heard the footsteps of all three tramping on the stairs behind him. he knew very well that, once they were inside the spiral, viviette was out of danger, her knowledge of the locality enabling her to find her way with perfect safety through the plantation, and into the park home. at the top he uncovered his equatorial, and, for the first time at ease, explained to them its beauties, and revealed by its help the glories of those stars that were eligible for inspection. the bishop spoke as intelligently as could be expected on a topic not peculiarly his own; but, somehow, he seemed rather more abstracted in manner now than when he had arrived. swithin thought that perhaps the long clamber up the stairs, coming after a hard day's work, had taken his spontaneity out of him, and mr. torkingham was afraid that his lordship was getting bored. but this did not appear to be the case; for though he said little he stayed on some time longer, examining the construction of the dome after relinquishing the telescope; while occasionally swithin caught the eyes of the bishop fixed hard on him. 'perhaps he sees some likeness of my father in me,' the young man thought; and the party making ready to leave at this time he conducted them to the bottom of the tower. swithin was not prepared for what followed their descent. all were standing at the foot of the staircase. the astronomer, lantern in hand, offered to show them the way out of the plantation, to which mr. torkingham replied that he knew the way very well, and would not trouble his young friend. he strode forward with the words, and louis followed him, after waiting a moment and finding that the bishop would not take the precedence. the latter and swithin were thus left together for one moment, whereupon the bishop turned. 'mr. st. cleeve,' he said in a strange voice, 'i should like to speak to you privately, before i leave, to-morrow morning. can you meet me--let me see--in the churchyard, at half-past ten o'clock?' 'o yes, my lord, certainly,' said swithin. and before he had recovered from his surprise the bishop had joined the others in the shades of the plantation. swithin immediately opened the door of the hut, and scanned the nook behind the bed. as he had expected his bird had flown. xxvii all night the astronomer's mind was on the stretch with curiosity as to what the bishop could wish to say to him. a dozen conjectures entered his brain, to be abandoned in turn as unlikely. that which finally seemed the most plausible was that the bishop, having become interested in his pursuits, and entertaining friendly recollections of his father, was going to ask if he could do anything to help him on in the profession he had chosen. should this be the case, thought the suddenly sanguine youth, it would seem like an encouragement to that spirit of firmness which had led him to reject his late uncle's offer because it involved the renunciation of lady constantine. at last he fell asleep; and when he awoke it was so late that the hour was ready to solve what conjecture could not. after a hurried breakfast he paced across the fields, entering the churchyard by the south gate precisely at the appointed minute. the inclosure was well adapted for a private interview, being bounded by bushes of laurel and alder nearly on all sides. he looked round; the bishop was not there, nor any living creature save himself. swithin sat down upon a tombstone to await bishop helmsdale's arrival. while he sat he fancied he could hear voices in conversation not far off, and further attention convinced him that they came from lady constantine's lawn, which was divided from the churchyard by a high wall and shrubbery only. as the bishop still delayed his coming, though the time was nearly eleven, and as the lady whose sweet voice mingled with those heard from the lawn was his personal property, swithin became exceedingly curious to learn what was going on within that screened promenade. a way of doing so occurred to him. the key was in the church door; he opened it, entered, and ascended to the ringers' loft in the west tower. at the back of this was a window commanding a full view of viviette's garden front. the flowers were all in gayest bloom, and the creepers on the walls of the house were bursting into tufts of young green. a broad gravel-walk ran from end to end of the facade, terminating in a large conservatory. in the walk were three people pacing up and down. lady constantine's was the central figure, her brother being on one side of her, and on the other a stately form in a corded shovel-hat of glossy beaver and black breeches. this was the bishop. viviette carried over her shoulder a sunshade lined with red, which she twirled idly. they were laughing and chatting gaily, and when the group approached the churchyard many of their remarks entered the silence of the church tower through the ventilator of the window. the conversation was general, yet interesting enough to swithin. at length louis stepped upon the grass and picked up something that had lain there, which turned out to be a bowl: throwing it forward he took a second, and bowled it towards the first, or jack. the bishop, who seemed to be in a sprightly mood, followed suit, and bowled one in a curve towards the jack, turning and speaking to lady constantine as he concluded the feat. as she had not left the gravelled terrace he raised his voice, so that the words reached swithin distinctly. 'do you follow us?' he asked gaily. 'i am not skilful,' she said. 'i always bowl narrow.' the bishop meditatively paused. 'this moment reminds one of the scene in _richard the second_,' he said. 'i mean the duke of york's garden, where the queen and her two ladies play, and the queen says-- "what sport shall we devise here in this garden, to drive away the heavy thought of care?" to which her lady answers, "madam, we'll play at bowls."' 'that's an unfortunate quotation for you,' said lady constantine; 'for if i don't forget, the queen declines, saying, "twill make me think the world is full of rubs, and that my fortune runs against the bias."' 'then i cite _mal a propos_. but it is an interesting old game, and might have been played at that very date on this very green.' the bishop lazily bowled another, and while he was doing it viviette's glance rose by accident to the church tower window, where she recognized swithin's face. her surprise was only momentary; and waiting till both her companions' backs were turned she smiled and blew him a kiss. in another minute she had another opportunity, and blew him another; afterwards blowing him one a third time. her blowings were put a stop to by the bishop and louis throwing down the bowls and rejoining her in the path, the house clock at the moment striking half-past eleven. 'this is a fine way of keeping an engagement,' said swithin to himself. 'i have waited an hour while you indulge in those trifles!' he fumed, turned, and behold somebody was at his elbow: tabitha lark. swithin started, and said, 'how did you come here, tabitha?' 'in the course of my calling, mr. st. cleeve,' said the smiling girl. 'i come to practise on the organ. when i entered i saw you up here through the tower arch, and i crept up to see what you were looking at. the bishop is a striking man, is he not?' 'yes, rather,' said swithin. 'i think he is much devoted to lady constantine, and i am glad of it. aren't you?' 'o yes--very,' said swithin, wondering if tabitha had seen the tender little salutes between lady constantine and himself. 'i don't think she cares much for him,' added tabitha judicially. 'or, even if she does, she could be got away from him in no time by a younger man.' 'pooh, that's nothing,' said swithin impatiently. tabitha then remarked that her blower had not come to time, and that she must go to look for him; upon which she descended the stairs, and left swithin again alone. a few minutes later the bishop suddenly looked at his watch, lady constantine having withdrawn towards the house. apparently apologizing to louis the bishop came down the terrace, and through the door into the churchyard. swithin hastened downstairs and joined him in the path under the sunny wall of the aisle. their glances met, and it was with some consternation that swithin beheld the change that a few short minutes had wrought in that episcopal countenance. on the lawn with lady constantine the rays of an almost perpetual smile had brightened his dark aspect like flowers in a shady place: now the smile was gone as completely as yesterday; the lines of his face were firm; his dark eyes and whiskers were overspread with gravity; and, as he gazed upon swithin from the repose of his stable figure it was like an evangelized king of spades come to have it out with the knave of hearts. * * * * * to return for a moment to louis glanville. he had been somewhat struck with the abruptness of the bishop's departure, and more particularly by the circumstance that he had gone away by the private door into the churchyard instead of by the regular exit on the other side. true, great men were known to suffer from absence of mind, and bishop helmsdale, having a dim sense that he had entered by that door yesterday, might have unconsciously turned thitherward now. louis, upon the whole, thought little of the matter, and being now left quite alone on the lawn, he seated himself in an arbour and began smoking. the arbour was situated against the churchyard wall. the atmosphere was as still as the air of a hot-house; only fourteen inches of brickwork divided louis from the scene of the bishop's interview with st. cleeve, and as voices on the lawn had been audible to swithin in the churchyard, voices in the churchyard could be heard without difficulty from that close corner of the lawn. no sooner had louis lit a cigar than the dialogue began. 'ah, you are here, st. cleeve,' said the bishop, hardly replying to swithin's good morning. 'i fear i am a little late. well, my request to you to meet me may have seemed somewhat unusual, seeing that we were strangers till a few hours ago.' 'i don't mind that, if your lordship wishes to see me.' 'i thought it best to see you regarding your confirmation yesterday; and my reason for taking a more active step with you than i should otherwise have done is that i have some interest in you through having known your father when we were undergraduates. his rooms were on the same staircase with mine at all angels, and we were friendly till time and affairs separated us even more completely than usually happens. however, about your presenting yourself for confirmation.' (the bishop's voice grew stern.) 'if i had known yesterday morning what i knew twelve hours later, i wouldn't have confirmed you at all.' 'indeed, my lord!' 'yes, i say it, and i mean it. i visited your observatory last night.' 'you did, my lord.' 'in inspecting it i noticed something which i may truly describe as extraordinary. i have had young men present themselves to me who turned out to be notoriously unfit, either from giddiness, from being profane or intemperate, or from some bad quality or other. but i never remember a case which equalled the cool culpability of this. while infringing the first principles of social decorum you might at least have respected the ordinance sufficiently to have stayed away from it altogether. now i have sent for you here to see if a last entreaty and a direct appeal to your sense of manly uprightness will have any effect in inducing you to change your course of life.' the voice of swithin in his next remark showed how tremendously this attack of the bishop had told upon his feelings. louis, of course, did not know the reason why the words should have affected him precisely as they did; to any one in the secret the double embarrassment arising from misapprehended ethics and inability to set matters right, because his word of secrecy to another was inviolable, would have accounted for the young man's emotion sufficiently well. 'i am very sorry your lordship should have seen anything objectionable,' said swithin. 'may i ask what it was?' 'you know what it was. something in your chamber, which forced me to the above conclusions. i disguised my feelings of sorrow at the time for obvious reasons, but i never in my whole life was so shocked!' 'at what, my lord?' 'at what i saw.' 'pardon me, bishop helmsdale, but you said just now that we are strangers; so what you saw in my cabin concerns me only.' 'there i contradict you. twenty-four hours ago that remark would have been plausible enough; but by presenting yourself for confirmation at my hands you have invited my investigation into your principles.' swithin sighed. 'i admit it,' he said. 'and what do i find them?' 'you say reprehensible. but you might at least let me hear the proof!' 'i can do more, sir. i can let you see it!' there was a pause. louis glanville was so highly interested that he stood upon the seat of the arbour, and looked through the leafage over the wall. the bishop had produced an article from his pocket. 'what is it?' said swithin, laboriously scrutinizing the thing. 'why, don't you see?' said the bishop, holding it out between his finger and thumb in swithin's face. 'a bracelet,--a coral bracelet. i found the wanton object on the bed in your cabin! and of the sex of the owner there can be no doubt. more than that, she was concealed behind the curtains, for i saw them move.' in the decision of his opinion the bishop threw the coral bracelet down on a tombstone. 'nobody was in my room, my lord, who had not a perfect right to be there,' said the younger man. 'well, well, that's a matter of assertion. now don't get into a passion, and say to me in your haste what you'll repent of saying afterwards.' 'i am not in a passion, i assure your lordship. i am too sad for passion.' 'very well; that's a hopeful sign. now i would ask you, as one man of another, do you think that to come to me, the bishop of this large and important diocese, as you came yesterday, and pretend to be something that you are not, is quite upright conduct, leave alone religious? think it over. we may never meet again. but bear in mind what your bishop and spiritual head says to you, and see if you cannot mend before it is too late.' swithin was meek as moses, but he tried to appear sturdy. 'my lord, i am in a difficult position,' he said mournfully; 'how difficult, nobody but myself can tell. i cannot explain; there are insuperable reasons against it. but will you take my word of assurance that i am not so bad as i seem? some day i will prove it. till then i only ask you to suspend your judgment on me.' the bishop shook his head incredulously and went towards the vicarage, as if he had lost his hearing. swithin followed him with his eyes, and louis followed the direction of swithin's. before the bishop had reached the vicarage entrance lady constantine crossed in front of him. she had a basket on her arm, and was, in fact, going to visit some of the poorer cottages. who could believe the bishop now to be the same man that he had been a moment before? the darkness left his face as if he had come out of a cave; his look was all sweetness, and shine, and gaiety, as he again greeted viviette. xxviii the conversation which arose between the bishop and lady constantine was of that lively and reproductive kind which cannot be ended during any reasonable halt of two people going in opposite directions. he turned, and walked with her along the laurel-screened lane that bordered the churchyard, till their voices died away in the distance. swithin then aroused himself from his thoughtful regard of them, and went out of the churchyard by another gate. seeing himself now to be left alone on the scene, louis glanville descended from his post of observation in the arbour. he came through the private doorway, and on to that spot among the graves where the bishop and st. cleeve had conversed. on the tombstone still lay the coral bracelet which dr. helmsdale had flung down there in his indignation; for the agitated, introspective mood into which swithin had been thrown had banished from his mind all thought of securing the trinket and putting it in his pocket. louis picked up the little red scandal-breeding thing, and while walking on with it in his hand he observed tabitha lark approaching the church, in company with the young blower whom she had gone in search of to inspire her organ-practising within. louis immediately put together, with that rare diplomatic keenness of which he was proud, the little scene he had witnessed between tabitha and swithin during the confirmation, and the bishop's stern statement as to where he had found the bracelet. he had no longer any doubt that it belonged to her. 'poor girl!' he said to himself, and sang in an undertone-- 'tra deri, dera, l'histoire n'est pas nouvelle!' when she drew nearer louis called her by name. she sent the boy into the church, and came forward, blushing at having been called by so fine a gentleman. louis held out the bracelet. 'here is something i have found, or somebody else has found,' he said to her. 'i won't state where. put it away, and say no more about it. i will not mention it either. now go on into the church where you are going, and may heaven have mercy on your soul, my dear.' 'thank you, sir,' said tabitha, with some perplexity, yet inclined to be pleased, and only recognizing in the situation the fact that lady constantine's humorous brother was making her a present. 'you are much obliged to me?' 'o yes!' 'well, miss lark, i've discovered a secret, you see.' 'what may that be, mr. glanville?' 'that you are in love.' 'i don't admit it, sir. who told you so?' 'nobody. only i put two and two together. now take my advice. beware of lovers! they are a bad lot, and bring young women to tears.' 'some do, i dare say. but some don't.' 'and you think that in your particular case the latter alternative will hold good? we generally think we shall be lucky ourselves, though all the world before us, in the same situation, have been otherwise.' 'o yes, or we should die outright of despair.' 'well, i don't think you will be lucky in your case.' 'please how do you know so much, since my case has not yet arrived?' asked tabitha, tossing her head a little disdainfully, but less than she might have done if he had not obtained a charter for his discourse by giving her the bracelet. 'fie, tabitha!' 'i tell you it has not arrived!' she said, with some anger. 'i have not got a lover, and everybody knows i haven't, and it's an insinuating thing for you to say so!' louis laughed, thinking how natural it was that a girl should so emphatically deny circumstances that would not bear curious inquiry. 'why, of course i meant myself,' he said soothingly. 'so, then, you will not accept me?' 'i didn't know you meant yourself,' she replied. 'but i won't accept you. and i think you ought not to jest on such subjects.' 'well, perhaps not. however, don't let the bishop see your bracelet, and all will be well. but mind, lovers are deceivers.' tabitha laughed, and they parted, the girl entering the church. she had been feeling almost certain that, having accidentally found the bracelet somewhere, he had presented it in a whim to her as the first girl he met. yet now she began to have momentary doubts whether he had not been labouring under a mistake, and had imagined her to be the owner. the bracelet was not valuable; it was, in fact, a mere toy,--the pair of which this was one being a little present made to lady constantine by swithin on the day of their marriage; and she had not worn them with sufficient frequency out of doors for tabitha to recognize either as positively her ladyship's. but when, out of sight of the blower, the girl momentarily tried it on, in a corner by the organ, it seemed to her that the ornament was possibly lady constantine's. now that the pink beads shone before her eyes on her own arm she remembered having seen a bracelet with just such an effect gracing the wrist of lady constantine upon one occasion. a temporary self-surrender to the sophism that if mr. louis glanville chose to give away anything belonging to his sister, she, tabitha, had a right to take it without question, was soon checked by a resolve to carry the tempting strings of coral to her ladyship that evening, and inquire the truth about them. this decided on she slipped the bracelet into her pocket, and played her voluntaries with a light heart. * * * * * bishop helmsdale did not tear himself away from welland till about two o'clock that afternoon, which was three hours later than he had intended to leave. it was with a feeling of relief that swithin, looking from the top of the tower, saw the carriage drive out from the vicarage into the turnpike road, and whirl the right reverend gentleman again towards warborne. the coast being now clear of him swithin meditated how to see viviette, and explain what had happened. with this in view he waited where he was till evening came on. meanwhile lady constantine and her brother dined by themselves at welland house. they had not met since the morning, and as soon as they were left alone louis said, 'you have done very well so far; but you might have been a little warmer.' 'done well?' she asked, with surprise. 'yes, with the bishop. the difficult question is how to follow up our advantage. how are you to keep yourself in sight of him?' 'heavens, louis! you don't seriously mean that the bishop of melchester has any feelings for me other than friendly?' 'viviette, this is affectation. you know he has as well as i do.' she sighed. 'yes,' she said. 'i own i had a suspicion of the same thing. what a misfortune!' 'a misfortune? surely the world is turned upside down! you will drive me to despair about our future if you see things so awry. exert yourself to do something, so as to make of this accident a stepping-stone to higher things. the gentleman will give us the slip if we don't pursue the friendship at once.' 'i cannot have you talk like this,' she cried impatiently. 'i have no more thought of the bishop than i have of the pope. i would much rather not have had him here to lunch at all. you said it would be necessary to do it, and an opportunity, and i thought it my duty to show some hospitality when he was coming so near, mr. torkingham's house being so small. but of course i understood that the opportunity would be one for you in getting to know him, your prospects being so indefinite at present; not one for me.' 'if you don't follow up this chance of being spiritual queen of melchester, you will never have another of being anything. mind this, viviette: you are not so young as you were. you are getting on to be a middle-aged woman, and your black hair is precisely of the sort which time quickly turns grey. you must make up your mind to grizzled bachelors or widowers. young marriageable men won't look at you; or if they do just now, in a year or two more they'll despise you as an antiquated party.' lady constantine perceptibly paled. 'young men what?' she asked. 'say that again.' 'i said it was no use to think of young men; they won't look at you much longer; or if they do, it will be to look away again very quickly.' 'you imply that if i were to marry a man younger than myself he would speedily acquire a contempt for me? how much younger must a man be than his wife--to get that feeling for her?' she was resting her elbow on the chair as she faintly spoke the words, and covered her eyes with her hand. 'an exceedingly small number of years,' said louis drily. 'now the bishop is at least fifteen years older than you, and on that account, no less than on others, is an excellent match. you would be head of the church in this diocese: what more can you require after these years of miserable obscurity? in addition, you would escape that minor thorn in the flesh of bishops' wives, of being only "mrs." while their husbands are peers.' she was not listening; his previous observation still detained her thoughts. 'louis,' she said, 'in the case of a woman marrying a man much younger than herself, does he get to dislike her, even if there has been a social advantage to him in the union?' 'yes,--not a whit less. ask any person of experience. but what of that? let's talk of our own affairs. you say you have no thought of the bishop. and yet if he had stayed here another day or two he would have proposed to you straight off.' 'seriously, louis, i could not accept him.' 'why not?' 'i don't love him.' 'oh, oh, i like those words!' cried louis, throwing himself back in his chair and looking at the ceiling in satirical enjoyment. 'a woman who at two-and-twenty married for convenience, at thirty talks of not marrying without love; the rule of inverse, that is, in which more requires less, and less requires more. as your only brother, older than yourself, and more experienced, i insist that you encourage the bishop.' 'don't quarrel with me, louis!' she said piteously. 'we don't know that he thinks anything of me,--we only guess.' 'i know it,--and you shall hear how i know. i am of a curious and conjectural nature, as you are aware. last night, when everybody had gone to bed, i stepped out for a five minutes' smoke on the lawn, and walked down to where you get near the vicarage windows. while i was there in the dark one of them opened, and bishop helmsdale leant out. the illuminated oblong of your window shone him full in the face between the trees, and presently your shadow crossed it. he waved his hand, and murmured some tender words, though what they were exactly i could not hear.' 'what a vague, imaginary story,--as if he could know my shadow! besides, a man of the bishop's dignity wouldn't have done such a thing. when i knew him as a younger man he was not at all romantic, and he's not likely to have grown so now.' 'that's just what he is likely to have done. no lover is so extreme a specimen of the species as an old lover. come, viviette, no more of this fencing. i have entered into the project heart and soul--so much that i have postponed my departure till the matter is well under way.' 'louis--my dear louis--you will bring me into some disagreeable position!' said she, clasping her hands. 'i do entreat you not to interfere or do anything rash about me. the step is impossible. i have something to tell you some day. i must live on, and endure--' 'everything except this penury,' replied louis, unmoved. 'come, i have begun the campaign by inviting bishop helmsdale, and i'll take the responsibility of carrying it on. all i ask of you is not to make a ninny of yourself. come, give me your promise!' 'no, i cannot,--i don't know how to! i only know one thing,--that i am in no hurry--' '"no hurry" be hanged! agree, like a good sister, to charm the bishop.' 'i must consider!' she replied, with perturbed evasiveness. it being a fine evening louis went out of the house to enjoy his cigar in the shrubbery. on reaching his favourite seat he found he had left his cigar-case behind him; he immediately returned for it. when he approached the window by which he had emerged he saw swithin st. cleeve standing there in the dusk, talking to viviette inside. st. cleeve's back was towards louis, but, whether at a signal from her or by accident, he quickly turned and recognized glanville; whereupon raising his hat to lady constantine the young man passed along the terrace-walk and out by the churchyard door. louis rejoined his sister. 'i didn't know you allowed your lawn to be a public thoroughfare for the parish,' he said. 'i am not exclusive, especially since i have been so poor,' replied she. 'then do you let everybody pass this way, or only that illustrious youth because he is so good-looking?' 'i have no strict rule in the case. mr. st. cleeve is an acquaintance of mine, and he can certainly come here if he chooses.' her colour rose somewhat, and she spoke warmly. louis was too cautious a bird to reveal to her what had suddenly dawned upon his mind--that his sister, in common with the (to his thinking) unhappy tabitha lark, had been foolish enough to get interested in this phenomenon of the parish, this scientific adonis. but he resolved to cure at once her tender feeling, if it existed, by letting out a secret which would inflame her dignity against the weakness. 'a good-looking young man,' he said, with his eyes where swithin had vanished. 'but not so good as he looks. in fact a regular young sinner.' 'what do you mean?' 'oh, only a little feature i discovered in st. cleeve's history. but i suppose he has a right to sow his wild oats as well as other young men.' 'tell me what you allude to,--do, louis.' 'it is hardly fit that i should. however, the case is amusing enough. i was sitting in the arbour to-day, and was an unwilling listener to the oddest interview i ever heard of. our friend the bishop discovered, when we visited the observatory last night, that our astronomer was not alone in his seclusion. a lady shared his romantic cabin with him; and finding this, the bishop naturally enough felt that the ordinance of confirmation had been profaned. so his lordship sent for master swithin this morning, and meeting him in the churchyard read him such an excommunicating lecture as i warrant he won't forget in his lifetime. ha-ha-ha! 'twas very good,--very.' he watched her face narrowly while he spoke with such seeming carelessness. instead of the agitation of jealousy that he had expected to be aroused by this hint of another woman in the case, there was a curious expression, more like embarrassment than anything else which might have been fairly attributed to the subject. 'can it be that i am mistaken?' he asked himself. the possibility that he might be mistaken restored louis to good-humour, and lights having been brought he sat with his sister for some time, talking with purpose of swithin's low rank on one side, and the sordid struggles that might be in store for him. st. cleeve being in the unhappy case of deriving his existence through two channels of society, it resulted that he seemed to belong to either this or that according to the altitude of the beholder. louis threw the light entirely on swithin's agricultural side, bringing out old mrs. martin and her connexions and her ways of life with luminous distinctness, till lady constantine became greatly depressed. she, in her hopefulness, had almost forgotten, latterly, that the bucolic element, so incisively represented by messrs. hezzy biles, haymoss fry, sammy blore, and the rest entered into his condition at all; to her he had been the son of his academic father alone. but she would not reveal the depression to which she had been subjected by this resuscitation of the homely half of poor swithin, presently putting an end to the subject by walking hither and thither about the room. 'what have you lost?' said louis, observing her movements. 'nothing of consequence,--a bracelet.' 'coral?' he inquired calmly. 'yes. how did you know it was coral? you have never seen it, have you?' he was about to make answer; but the amazed enlightenment which her announcement had produced in him through knowing where the bishop had found such an article, led him to reconsider himself. then, like an astute man, by no means sure of the dimensions of the intrigue he might be uncovering, he said carelessly, 'i found such a one in the churchyard to-day. but i thought it appeared to be of no great rarity, and i gave it to one of the village girls who was passing by.' 'did she take it? who was she?' said the unsuspecting viviette. 'really, i don't remember. i suppose it is of no consequence?' 'o no; its value is nothing, comparatively. it was only one of a pair such as young girls wear.' lady constantine could not add that, in spite of this, she herself valued it as being swithin's present, and the best he could afford. panic-struck by his ruminations, although revealing nothing by his manner, louis soon after went up to his room, professedly to write letters. he gave vent to a low whistle when he was out of hearing. he of course remembered perfectly well to whom he had given the corals, and resolved to seek out tabitha the next morning to ascertain whether she could possibly have owned such a trinket as well as his sister,--which at present he very greatly doubted, though fervently hoping that she might. xxix the effect upon swithin of the interview with the bishop had been a very marked one. he felt that he had good ground for resenting that dignitary's tone in haughtily assuming that all must be sinful which at the first blush appeared to be so, and in narrowly refusing a young man the benefit of a single doubt. swithin's assurance that he would be able to explain all some day had been taken in contemptuous incredulity. 'he may be as virtuous as his prototype timothy; but he's an opinionated old fogey all the same,' said st. cleeve petulantly. yet, on the other hand, swithin's nature was so fresh and ingenuous, notwithstanding that recent affairs had somewhat denaturalized him, that for a man in the bishop's position to think him immoral was almost as overwhelming as if he had actually been so, and at moments he could scarcely bear existence under so gross a suspicion. what was his union with lady constantine worth to him when, by reason of it, he was thought a reprobate by almost the only man who had professed to take an interest in him? certainly, by contrast with his air-built image of himself as a worthy astronomer, received by all the world, and the envied husband of viviette, the present imputation was humiliating. the glorious light of this tender and refined passion seemed to have become debased to burlesque hues by pure accident, and his aesthetic no less than his ethic taste was offended by such an anti-climax. he who had soared amid the remotest grandeurs of nature had been taken to task on a rudimentary question of morals, which had never been a question with him at all. this was what the exigencies of an awkward attachment had brought him to; but he blamed the circumstances, and not for one moment lady constantine. having now set his heart against a longer concealment he was disposed to think that an excellent way of beginning a revelation of their marriage would be by writing a confidential letter to the bishop, detailing the whole case. but it was impossible to do this on his own responsibility. he still recognized the understanding entered into with viviette, before the marriage, to be as binding as ever,--that the initiative in disclosing their union should come from her. yet he hardly doubted that she would take that initiative when he told her of his extraordinary reprimand in the churchyard. this was what he had come to do when louis saw him standing at the window. but before he had said half-a-dozen words to viviette she motioned him to go on, which he mechanically did, ere he could sufficiently collect his thoughts on its advisability or otherwise. he did not, however, go far. while louis and his sister were discussing him in the drawing-room he lingered musing in the churchyard, hoping that she might be able to escape and join him in the consultation he so earnestly desired. she at last found opportunity to do this. as soon as louis had left the room and shut himself in upstairs she ran out by the window in the direction swithin had taken. when her footsteps began crunching on the gravel he came forward from the churchyard door. they embraced each other in haste, and then, in a few short panting words, she explained to him that her brother had heard and witnessed the interview on that spot between himself and the bishop, and had told her the substance of the bishop's accusation, not knowing she was the woman in the cabin. 'and what i cannot understand is this,' she added; 'how did the bishop discover that the person behind the bed-curtains was a woman and not a man?' swithin explained that the bishop had found the bracelet on the bed, and had brought it to him in the churchyard. 'o swithin, what do you say? found the coral bracelet? what did you do with it?' swithin clapped his hand to his pocket. 'dear me! i recollect--i left it where it lay on reuben heath's tombstone.' 'oh, my dear, dear swithin!' she cried miserably. 'you have compromised me by your forgetfulness. i have claimed the article as mine. my brother did not tell me that the bishop brought it from the cabin. what can i, can i do, that neither the bishop nor my brother may conclude _i_ was the woman there?' 'but if we announce our marriage--' 'even as your wife, the position was too undignified--too i don't know what--for me ever to admit that i was there! right or wrong, i must declare the bracelet was not mine. such an escapade--why, it would make me ridiculous in the county; and anything rather than that!' 'i was in hope that you would agree to let our marriage be known,' said swithin, with some disappointment. 'i thought that these circumstances would make the reason for doing so doubly strong.' 'yes. but there are, alas, reasons against it still stronger! let me have my way.' 'certainly, dearest. i promised that before you agreed to be mine. my reputation--what is it! perhaps i shall be dead and forgotten before the next transit of venus!' she soothed him tenderly, but could not tell him why she felt the reasons against any announcement as yet to be stronger than those in favour of it. how could she, when her feeling had been cautiously fed and developed by her brother louis's unvarnished exhibition of swithin's material position in the eyes of the world?--that of a young man, the scion of a family of farmers recently her tenants, living at the homestead with his grandmother, mrs. martin. to soften her refusal she said in declaring it, 'one concession, swithin, i certainly will make. i will see you oftener. i will come to the cabin and tower frequently; and will contrive, too, that you come to the house occasionally. during the last winter we passed whole weeks without meeting; don't let us allow that to happen again.' 'very well, dearest,' said swithin good-humouredly. 'i don't care so terribly much for the old man's opinion of me, after all. for the present, then, let things be as they are.' nevertheless, the youth felt her refusal more than he owned; but the unequal temperament of swithin's age, so soon depressed on his own account, was also soon to recover on hers, and it was with almost a child's forgetfulness of the past that he took her view of the case. when he was gone she hastily re-entered the house. her brother had not reappeared from upstairs; but she was informed that tabitha lark was waiting to see her, if her ladyship would pardon the said tabitha for coming so late. lady constantine made no objection, and saw the young girl at once. when lady constantine entered the waiting-room behold, in tabitha's outstretched hand lay the coral ornament which had been causing viviette so much anxiety. 'i guessed, on second thoughts, that it was yours, my lady,' said tabitha, with rather a frightened face; 'and so i have brought it back.' 'but how did you come by it, tabitha?' 'mr. glanville gave it to me; he must have thought it was mine. i took it, fancying at the moment that he handed it to me because i happened to come by first after he had found it.' lady constantine saw how the situation might be improved so as to effect her deliverance from this troublesome little web of evidence. 'oh, you can keep it,' she said brightly. 'it was very good of you to bring it back. but keep it for your very own. take mr. glanville at his word, and don't explain. and, tabitha, divide the strands into two bracelets; there are enough of them to make a pair.' the next morning, in pursuance of his resolution, louis wandered round the grounds till he saw the girl for whom he was waiting enter the church. he accosted her over the wall. but, puzzling to view, a coral bracelet blushed on each of her young arms, for she had promptly carried out the suggestion of lady constantine. 'you are wearing it, i see, tabitha, with the other,' he murmured. 'then you mean to keep it?' 'yes, i mean to keep it.' 'you are sure it is not lady constantine's? i find she has one like it.' 'quite sure. but you had better take it to her, sir, and ask her,' said the saucy girl. 'oh, no; that's not necessary,' replied louis, considerably shaken in his convictions. when louis met his sister, a short time after, he did not catch her, as he had intended to do, by saying suddenly, 'i have found your bracelet. i know who has got it.' 'you cannot have found it,' she replied quietly, 'for i have discovered that it was never lost,' and stretching out both her hands she revealed one on each, viviette having performed the same operation with her remaining bracelet that she had advised tabitha to do with the other. louis was mystified, but by no means convinced. in spite of this attempt to hoodwink him his mind returned to the subject every hour of the day. there was no doubt that either tabitha or viviette had been with swithin in the cabin. he recapitulated every case that had occurred during his visit to welland in which his sister's manner had been of a colour to justify the suspicion that it was she. there was that strange incident in the corridor, when she had screamed at what she described to be a shadowy resemblance to her late husband; how very improbable that this fancy should have been the only cause of her agitation! then he had noticed, during swithin's confirmation, a blush upon her cheek when he passed her on his way to the bishop, and the fervour in her glance during the few moments of the imposition of hands. then he suddenly recalled the night at the railway station, when the accident with the whip took place, and how, when he reached welland house an hour later, he had found no viviette there. running thus from incident to incident he increased his suspicions without being able to cull from the circumstances anything amounting to evidence; but evidence he now determined to acquire without saying a word to any one. his plan was of a cruel kind: to set a trap into which the pair would blindly walk if any secret understanding existed between them of the nature he suspected. xxx louis began his stratagem by calling at the tower one afternoon, as if on the impulse of the moment. after a friendly chat with swithin, whom he found there (having watched him enter), louis invited the young man to dine the same evening at the house, that he might have an opportunity of showing him some interesting old scientific works in folio, which, according to louis's account, he had stumbled on in the library. louis set no great bait for st. cleeve in this statement, for old science was not old art which, having perfected itself, has died and left its secret hidden in its remains. but swithin was a responsive fellow, and readily agreed to come; being, moreover, always glad of a chance of meeting viviette _en famille_. he hoped to tell her of a scheme that had lately suggested itself to him as likely to benefit them both: that he should go away for a while, and endeavour to raise sufficient funds to visit the great observatories of europe, with an eye to a post in one of them. hitherto the only bar to the plan had been the exceeding narrowness of his income, which, though sufficient for his present life, was absolutely inadequate to the requirements of a travelling astronomer. meanwhile louis glanville had returned to the house and told his sister in the most innocent manner that he had been in the company of st. cleeve that afternoon, getting a few wrinkles on astronomy; that they had grown so friendly over the fascinating subject as to leave him no alternative but to invite st. cleeve to dine at welland the same evening, with a view to certain researches in the library afterwards. 'i could quite make allowances for any youthful errors into which he may have been betrayed,' louis continued sententiously, 'since, for a scientist, he is really admirable. no doubt the bishop's caution will not be lost upon him; and as for his birth and connexions,--those he can't help.' lady constantine showed such alacrity in adopting the idea of having swithin to dinner, and she ignored his 'youthful errors' so completely, as almost to betray herself. in fulfilment of her promise to see him oftener she had been intending to run across to swithin on that identical evening. now the trouble would be saved in a very delightful way, by the exercise of a little hospitality which viviette herself would not have dared to suggest. dinner-time came and with it swithin, exhibiting rather a blushing and nervous manner that was, unfortunately, more likely to betray their cause than was viviette's own more practised bearing. throughout the meal louis sat like a spider in the corner of his web, observing them narrowly, and at moments flinging out an artful thread here and there, with a view to their entanglement. but they underwent the ordeal marvellously well. perhaps the actual tie between them, through being so much closer and of so much more practical a nature than even their critic supposed it, was in itself a protection against their exhibiting that ultra-reciprocity of manner which, if they had been merely lovers, might have betrayed them. after dinner the trio duly adjourned to the library as had been planned, and the volumes were brought forth by louis with the zest of a bibliophilist. swithin had seen most of them before, and thought but little of them; but the pleasure of staying in the house made him welcome any reason for doing so, and he willingly looked at whatever was put before him, from bertius's ptolemy to rees's cyclopædia. the evening thus passed away, and it began to grow late. swithin who, among other things, had planned to go to greenwich next day to view the royal observatory, would every now and then start up and prepare to leave for home, when glanville would unearth some other volume and so detain him yet another half-hour. 'by george!' he said, looking at the clock when swithin was at last really about to depart. 'i didn't know it was so late. why not stay here to-night, st. cleeve? it is very dark, and the way to your place is an awkward cross-cut over the fields.' 'it would not inconvenience us at all, mr. st. cleeve, if you would care to stay,' said lady constantine. 'i am afraid--the fact is, i wanted to take an observation at twenty minutes past two,' began swithin. 'oh, now, never mind your observation,' said louis. 'that's only an excuse. do that to-morrow night. now you will stay. it is settled. viviette, say he must stay, and we'll have another hour of these charming intellectual researches.' viviette obeyed with delightful ease. 'do stay, mr st. cleeve!' she said sweetly. 'well, in truth i can do without the observation,' replied the young man, as he gave way. 'it is not of the greatest consequence.' thus it was arranged; but the researches among the tomes were not prolonged to the extent that louis had suggested. in three-quarters of an hour from that time they had all retired to their respective rooms; lady constantine's being on one side of the west corridor, swithin's opposite, and louis's at the further end. had a person followed louis when he withdrew, that watcher would have discovered, on peeping through the key-hole of his door, that he was engaged in one of the oddest of occupations for such a man,--sweeping down from the ceiling, by means of a walking-cane, a long cobweb which lingered on high in the corner. keeping it stretched upon the cane he gently opened the door, and set the candle in such a position on the mat that the light shone down the corridor. thus guided by its rays he passed out slipperless, till he reached the door of st. cleeve's room, where he applied the dangling spider's thread in such a manner that it stretched across like a tight-rope from jamb to jamb, barring, in its fragile way, entrance and egress. the operation completed he retired again, and, extinguishing his light, went through his bedroom window out upon the flat roof of the portico to which it gave access. here louis made himself comfortable in his chair and smoking-cap, enjoying the fragrance of a cigar for something like half-an-hour. his position commanded a view of the two windows of lady constantine's room, and from these a dim light shone continuously. having the window partly open at his back, and the door of his room also scarcely closed, his ear retained a fair command of any noises that might be made. in due time faint movements became audible; whereupon, returning to his room, he re-entered the corridor and listened intently. all was silent again, and darkness reigned from end to end. glanville, however, groped his way along the passage till he again reached swithin's door, where he examined, by the light of a wax-match he had brought, the condition of the spider's thread. it was gone; somebody had carried it off bodily, as samson carried off the pin and the web. in other words, a person had passed through the door. still holding the faint wax-light in his hand louis turned to the door of lady constantine's chamber, where he observed first that, though it was pushed together so as to appear fastened to cursory view, the door was not really closed by about a quarter of an inch. he dropped his light and extinguished it with his foot. listening, he heard a voice within,--viviette's voice, in a subdued murmur, though speaking earnestly. without any hesitation louis then returned to swithin's door, opened it, and walked in. the starlight from without was sufficient, now that his eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, to reveal that the room was unoccupied, and that nothing therein had been disturbed. with a heavy tread louis came forth, walked loudly across the corridor, knocked at lady constantine's door, and called 'viviette!' she heard him instantly, replying 'yes' in startled tones. immediately afterwards she opened her door, and confronted him in her dressing-gown, with a light in her hand. 'what is the matter, louis?' she said. 'i am greatly alarmed. our visitor is missing.' 'missing? what, mr. st. cleeve?' 'yes. i was sitting up to finish a cigar, when i thought i heard a noise in this direction. on coming to his room i find he is not there.' 'good heaven! i wonder what has happened!' she exclaimed, in apparently intense alarm. 'i wonder,' said glanville grimly. 'suppose he is a somnambulist! if so, he may have gone out and broken his neck. i have never heard that he is one, but they say that sleeping in strange places disturbs the minds of people who are given to that sort of thing, and provokes them to it.' 'unfortunately for your theory his bed has not been touched.' 'oh, what then can it be?' her brother looked her full in the face. 'viviette!' he said sternly. she seemed puzzled. 'well?' she replied, in simple tones. 'i heard voices in your room,' he continued. 'voices?' 'a voice,--yours.' 'yes, you may have done so. it was mine.' 'a listener is required for a speaker.' 'true, louis.' 'well, to whom were you speaking?' 'god.' 'viviette! i am ashamed of you.' 'i was saying my prayers.' 'prayers--to god! to st. swithin, rather!' 'what do you mean, louis?' she asked, flushing up warm, and drawing back from him. 'it was a form of prayer i use, particularly when i am in trouble. it was recommended to me by the bishop, and mr. torkingham commends it very highly.' 'on your honour, if you have any,' he said bitterly, 'whom have you there in your room?' 'no human being.' 'flatly, i don't believe you.' she gave a dignified little bow, and, waving her hand into the apartment, said, 'very well; then search and see.' louis entered, and glanced round the room, behind the curtains, under the bed, out of the window--a view from which showed that escape thence would have been impossible,--everywhere, in short, capable or incapable of affording a retreat to humanity; but discovered nobody. all he observed was that a light stood on the low table by her bedside; that on the bed lay an open prayer-book, the counterpane being unpressed, except into a little pit beside the prayer book, apparently where her head had rested in kneeling. 'but where is st. cleeve?' he said, turning in bewilderment from these evidences of innocent devotion. 'where can he be?' she chimed in, with real distress. 'i should so much like to know. look about for him. i am quite uneasy!' 'i will, on one condition: that you own that you love him.' 'why should you force me to that?' she murmured. 'it would be no such wonder if i did.' 'come, you do.' 'well, i do.' 'now i'll look for him.' louis took a light, and turned away, astonished that she had not indignantly resented his intrusion and the nature of his questioning. at this moment a slight noise was heard on the staircase, and they could see a figure rising step by step, and coming forward against the long lights of the staircase window. it was swithin, in his ordinary dress, and carrying his boots in his hand. when he beheld them standing there so motionless, he looked rather disconcerted, but came on towards his room. lady constantine was too agitated to speak, but louis said, 'i am glad to see you again. hearing a noise, a few minutes ago, i came out to learn what it could be. i found you absent, and we have been very much alarmed.' 'i am very sorry,' said swithin, with contrition. 'i owe you a hundred apologies: but the truth is that on entering my bedroom i found the sky remarkably clear, and though i told you that the observation i was to make was of no great consequence, on thinking it over alone i felt it ought not to be allowed to pass; so i was tempted to run across to the observatory, and make it, as i had hoped, without disturbing anybody. if i had known that i should alarm you i would not have done it for the world.' swithin spoke very earnestly to louis, and did not observe the tender reproach in viviette's eyes when he showed by his tale his decided notion that the prime use of dark nights lay in their furtherance of practical astronomy. everything being now satisfactorily explained the three retired to their several chambers, and louis heard no more noises that night, or rather morning; his attempts to solve the mystery of viviette's life here and her relations with st. cleeve having thus far resulted chiefly in perplexity. true, an admission had been wrung from her; and even without such an admission it was clear that she had a tender feeling for swithin. how to extinguish that romantic folly it now became his object to consider. xxxi swithin's midnight excursion to the tower in the cause of science led him to oversleep himself, and when the brother and sister met at breakfast in the morning he did not appear. 'don't disturb him,--don't disturb him,' said louis laconically. 'hullo, viviette, what are you reading there that makes you flame up so?' she was glancing over a letter that she had just opened, and at his words looked up with misgiving. the incident of the previous night left her in great doubt as to what her bearing towards him ought to be. she had made no show of resenting his conduct at the time, from a momentary supposition that he must know all her secret; and afterwards, finding that he did not know it, it seemed too late to affect indignation at his suspicions. so she preserved a quiet neutrality. even had she resolved on an artificial part she might have forgotten to play it at this instant, the letter being of a kind to banish previous considerations. 'it is a letter from bishop helmsdale,' she faltered. 'well done! i hope for your sake it is an offer.' 'that's just what it is.' 'no,--surely?' said louis, beginning a laugh of surprise. 'yes,' she returned indifferently. 'you can read it, if you like.' 'i don't wish to pry into a communication of that sort.' 'oh, you may read it,' she said, tossing the letter across to him. louis thereupon read as under:-- 'the palace, melchester, _june_ , --. 'my dear lady constantine,--during the two or three weeks that have elapsed since i experienced the great pleasure of renewing my acquaintance with you, the varied agitation of my feelings has clearly proved that my only course is to address you by letter, and at once. whether the subject of my communication be acceptable to you or not, i can at least assure you that to suppress it would be far less natural, and upon the whole less advisable, than to speak out frankly, even if afterwards i hold my peace for ever. 'the great change in my experience during the past year or two--the change, that is, which has resulted from my advancement to a bishopric--has frequently suggested to me, of late, that a discontinuance in my domestic life of the solitude of past years was a question which ought to be seriously contemplated. but whether i should ever have contemplated it without the great good fortune of my meeting with you is doubtful. however, the thing has been considered at last, and without more ado i candidly ask if you would be willing to give up your life at welland, and relieve my household loneliness here by becoming my wife. 'i am far from desiring to force a hurried decision on your part, and will wait your good pleasure patiently, should you feel any uncertainty at the moment as to the step. i am quite disqualified, by habits and experience, for the delightful procedure of urging my suit in the ardent terms which would be so appropriate towards such a lady, and so expressive of my inmost feeling. in truth, a prosy cleric of five-and-forty wants encouragement to make him eloquent. of this, however, i can assure you: that if admiration, esteem, and devotion can compensate in any way for the lack of those qualities which might be found to burn with more outward brightness in a younger man, those it is in my power to bestow for the term of my earthly life. your steady adherence to church principles and your interest in ecclesiastical polity (as was shown by your bright questioning on those subjects during our morning walk round your grounds) have indicated strongly to me the grace and appropriateness with which you would fill the position of a bishop's wife, and how greatly you would add to his reputation, should you be disposed to honour him with your hand. formerly there have been times when i was of opinion--and you will rightly appreciate my candour in owning it--that a wife was an impediment to a bishop's due activities; but constant observation has convinced me that, far from this being the truth, a meet consort infuses life into episcopal influence and teaching. 'should you reply in the affirmative i will at once come to see you, and with your permission will, among other things, show you a few plain, practical rules which i have interested myself in drawing up for our future guidance. should you refuse to change your condition on my account, your decision will, as i need hardly say, be a great blow to me. in any event, i could not do less than i have done, after giving the subject my full consideration. even if there be a slight deficiency of warmth on your part, my earnest hope is that a mind comprehensive as yours will perceive the immense power for good that you might exercise in the position in which a union with me would place you, and allow that perception to weigh in determining your answer. 'i remain, my dear lady constantine, with the highest respect and affection,--yours always, 'c. melchester.' 'well, you will not have the foolhardiness to decline, now that the question has actually been popped, i should hope,' said louis, when he had done reading. 'certainly i shall,' she replied. 'you will really be such a flat, viviette?' 'you speak without much compliment. i have not the least idea of accepting him.' 'surely you will not let your infatuation for that young fellow carry you so far, after my acquainting you with the shady side of his character? you call yourself a religious woman, say your prayers out loud, follow up the revived methods in church practice, and what not; and yet you can think with partiality of a person who, far from having any religion in him, breaks the most elementary commandments in the decalogue.' 'i cannot agree with you,' she said, turning her face askance, for she knew not how much of her brother's language was sincere, and how much assumed, the extent of his discoveries with regard to her secret ties being a mystery. at moments she was disposed to declare the whole truth, and have done with it. but she hesitated, and left the words unsaid; and louis continued his breakfast in silence. when he had finished, and she had eaten little or nothing, he asked once more, 'how do you intend to answer that letter? here you are, the poorest woman in the county, abandoned by people who used to be glad to know you, and leading a life as dismal and dreary as a nun's, when an opportunity is offered you of leaping at once into a leading position in this part of england. bishops are given to hospitality; you would be welcomed everywhere. in short, your answer must be yes.' 'and yet it will be no,' she said, in a low voice. she had at length learnt, from the tone of her brother's latter remarks, that at any rate he had no knowledge of her actual marriage, whatever indirect ties he might suspect her guilty of. louis could restrain himself no longer at her answer. 'then conduct your affairs your own way. i know you to be leading a life that won't bear investigation, and i'm hanged if i'll stay here any longer!' saying which, glanville jerked back his chair, and strode out of the room. in less than a quarter of an hour, and before she had moved a step from the table, she heard him leaving the house. xxxii what to do she could not tell. the step which swithin had entreated her to take, objectionable and premature as it had seemed in a county aspect, would at all events have saved her from this dilemma. had she allowed him to tell the bishop his simple story in its fulness, who could say but that that divine might have generously bridled his own impulses, entered into the case with sympathy, and forwarded with zest their designs for the future, owing to his interest of old in swithin's father, and in the naturally attractive features of the young man's career. a puff of wind from the open window, wafting the bishop's letter to the floor, aroused her from her reverie. with a sigh she stooped and picked it up, glanced at it again; then arose, and with the deliberateness of inevitable action wrote her reply:-- 'welland house, _june_ , --. 'my dear bishop of melchester,--i confess to you that your letter, so gracious and flattering as it is, has taken your friend somewhat unawares. the least i can do in return for its contents is to reply as quickly as possible. 'there is no one in the world who esteems your high qualities more than myself, or who has greater faith in your ability to adorn the episcopal seat that you have been called on to fill. but to your question i can give only one reply, and that is an unqualified negative. to state this unavoidable decision distresses me, without affectation; and i trust you will believe that, though i decline the distinction of becoming your wife, i shall never cease to interest myself in all that pertains to you and your office; and shall feel the keenest regret if this refusal should operate to prevent a lifelong friendship between us.--i am, my dear bishop of melchester, ever sincerely yours, 'viviette constantine.' a sudden revulsion from the subterfuge of writing as if she were still a widow, wrought in her mind a feeling of dissatisfaction with the whole scheme of concealment; and pushing aside the letter she allowed it to remain unfolded and unaddressed. in a few minutes she heard swithin approaching, when she put the letter out of the way and turned to receive him. swithin entered quietly, and looked round the room. seeing with unexpected pleasure that she was there alone, he came over and kissed her. her discomposure at some foregone event was soon obvious. 'has my staying caused you any trouble?' he asked in a whisper. 'where is your brother this morning?' she smiled through her perplexity as she took his hand. 'the oddest things happen to me, dear swithin,' she said. 'do you wish particularly to know what has happened now?' 'yes, if you don't mind telling me.' 'i do mind telling you. but i must. among other things i am resolving to give way to your representations,--in part, at least. it will be best to tell the bishop everything, and my brother, if not other people.' 'i am truly glad to hear it, viviette,' said he cheerfully. 'i have felt for a long time that honesty is the best policy.' 'i at any rate feel it now. but it is a policy that requires a great deal of courage!' 'it certainly requires some courage,--i should not say a great deal; and indeed, as far as i am concerned, it demands less courage to speak out than to hold my tongue.' 'but, you silly boy, you don't know what has happened. the bishop has made me an offer of marriage.' 'good gracious, what an impertinent old man! what have you done about it, dearest?' 'well, i have hardly accepted him,' she replied, laughing. 'it is this event which has suggested to me that i should make my refusal a reason for confiding our situation to him.' 'what would you have done if you had not been already appropriated?' 'that's an inscrutable mystery. he is a worthy man; but he has very pronounced views about his own position, and some other undesirable qualities. still, who knows? you must bless your stars that you have secured me. now let us consider how to draw up our confession to him. i wish i had listened to you at first, and allowed you to take him into our confidence before his declaration arrived. he may possibly resent the concealment now. however, this cannot be helped.' 'i tell you what, viviette,' said swithin, after a thoughtful pause, 'if the bishop is such an earthly sort of man as this, a man who goes falling in love, and wanting to marry you, and so on, i am not disposed to confess anything to him at all. i fancied him altogether different from that.' 'but he's none the worse for it, dear.' 'i think he is--to lecture me and love you, all in one breath!' 'still, that's only a passing phase; and you first proposed making a confidant of him.' 'i did. . . . very well. then we are to tell nobody but the bishop?' 'and my brother louis. i must tell him; it is unavoidable. he suspects me in a way i could never have credited of him!' swithin, as was before stated, had arranged to start for greenwich that morning, permission having been accorded him by the astronomer-royal to view the observatory; and their final decision was that, as he could not afford time to sit down with her, and write to the bishop in collaboration, each should, during the day, compose a well-considered letter, disclosing their position from his and her own point of view; lady constantine leading up to her confession by her refusal of the bishop's hand. it was necessary that she should know what swithin contemplated saying, that her statements might precisely harmonize. he ultimately agreed to send her his letter by the next morning's post, when, having read it, she would in due course despatch it with her own. as soon as he had breakfasted swithin went his way, promising to return from greenwich by the end of the week. viviette passed the remainder of that long summer day, during which her young husband was receding towards the capital, in an almost motionless state. at some instants she felt exultant at the idea of announcing her marriage and defying general opinion. at another her heart misgave her, and she was tormented by a fear lest swithin should some day accuse her of having hampered his deliberately-shaped plan of life by her intrusive romanticism. that was often the trick of men who had sealed by marriage, in their inexperienced youth, a love for those whom their maturer judgment would have rejected as too obviously disproportionate in years. however, it was now too late for these lugubrious thoughts; and, bracing herself, she began to frame the new reply to bishop helmsdale--the plain, unvarnished tale that was to supplant the undivulging answer first written. she was engaged on this difficult problem till daylight faded in the west, and the broad-faced moon edged upwards, like a plate of old gold, over the elms towards the village. by that time swithin had reached greenwich; her brother had gone she knew not whither; and she and loneliness dwelt solely, as before, within the walls of welland house. at this hour of sunset and moonrise the new parlourmaid entered, to inform her that mr. cecil's head clerk, from warborne, particularly wished to see her. mr. cecil was her solicitor, and she knew of nothing whatever that required his intervention just at present. but he would not have sent at this time of day without excellent reasons, and she directed that the young man might be shown in where she was. on his entry the first thing she noticed was that in his hand he carried a newspaper. 'in case you should not have seen this evening's paper, lady constantine, mr. cecil has directed me to bring it to you at once, on account of what appears there in relation to your ladyship. he has only just seen it himself.' 'what is it? how does it concern me?' 'i will point it out.' 'read it yourself to me. though i am afraid there's not enough light.' 'i can see very well here,' said the lawyer's clerk stepping to the window. folding back the paper he read:-- '"news from south africa. '"cape town, _may_ (_via_ plymouth).--a correspondent of the _cape chronicle_ states that he has interviewed an englishman just arrived from the interior, and learns from him that a considerable misapprehension exists in england concerning the death of the traveller and hunter, sir blount constantine--"' 'o, he's living! my husband is alive,' she cried, sinking down in nearly a fainting condition. 'no, my lady. sir blount is dead enough, i am sorry to say.' 'dead, did you say?' 'certainly, lady constantine; there is no doubt of it.' she sat up, and her intense relief almost made itself perceptible like a fresh atmosphere in the room. 'yes. then what did you come for?' she asked calmly. 'that sir blount has died is unquestionable,' replied the lawyer's clerk gently. 'but there has been some mistake about the date of his death.' 'he died of malarious fever on the banks of the zouga, october , --.' 'no; he only lay ill there a long time it seems. it was a companion who died at that date. but i'll read the account to your ladyship, with your permission:-- '"the decease of this somewhat eccentric wanderer did not occur at the time hitherto supposed, but only in last december. the following is the account of the englishman alluded to, given as nearly as possible in his own words: during the illness of sir blount and his friend by the zouga, three of the servants went away, taking with them a portion of his clothing and effects; and it must be they who spread the report of his death at this time. after his companion's death he mended, and when he was strong enough he and i travelled on to a healthier district. i urged him not to delay his return to england; but he was much against going back there again, and became so rough in his manner towards me that we parted company at the first opportunity i could find. i joined a party of white traders returning to the west coast. i stayed here among the portuguese for many months. i then found that an english travelling party were going to explore a district adjoining that which i had formerly traversed with sir blount. they said they would be glad of my services, and i joined them. when we had crossed the territory to the south of ulunda, and drew near to marzambo, i heard tidings of a man living there whom i suspected to be sir blount, although he was not known by that name. being so near i was induced to seek him out, and found that he was indeed the same. he had dropped his old name altogether, and had married a native princess--"' 'married a native princess!' said lady constantine. 'that's what it says, my lady,--"married a native princess according to the rites of the tribe, and was living very happily with her. he told me he should never return to england again. he also told me that having seen this princess just after i had left him, he had been attracted by her, and had thereupon decided to reside with her in that country, as being a land which afforded him greater happiness than he could hope to attain elsewhere. he asked me to stay with him, instead of going on with my party, and not reveal his real title to any of them. after some hesitation i did stay, and was not uncomfortable at first. but i soon found that sir blount drank much harder now than when i had known him, and that he was at times very greatly depressed in mind at his position. one morning in the middle of december last i heard a shot from his dwelling. his wife rushed frantically past me as i hastened to the spot, and when i entered i found that he had put an end to himself with his revolver. his princess was broken-hearted all that day. when we had buried him i discovered in his house a little box directed to his solicitors at warborne, in england, and a note for myself, saying that i had better get the first chance of returning that offered, and requesting me to take the box with me. it is supposed to contain papers and articles for friends in england who have deemed him dead for some time."' the clerk stopped his reading, and there was a silence. 'the middle of last december,' she at length said, in a whisper. 'has the box arrived yet?' 'not yet, my lady. we have no further proof of anything. as soon as the package comes to hand you shall know of it immediately.' such was the clerk's mission; and, leaving the paper with her, he withdrew. the intelligence amounted to thus much: that, sir blount having been alive till at least six weeks after her marriage with swithin st. cleeve, swithin st. cleeve was not her husband in the eye of the law; that she would have to consider how her marriage with the latter might be instantly repeated, to establish herself legally as that young man's wife. xxxiii next morning viviette received a visit from mr. cecil himself. he informed her that the box spoken of by the servant had arrived quite unexpectedly just after the departure of his clerk on the previous evening. there had not been sufficient time for him to thoroughly examine it as yet, but he had seen enough to enable him to state that it contained letters, dated memoranda in sir blount's handwriting, notes referring to events which had happened later than his supposed death, and other irrefragable proofs that the account in the newspapers was correct as to the main fact--the comparatively recent date of sir blount's decease. she looked up, and spoke with the irresponsible helplessness of a child. 'on reviewing the circumstances, i cannot think how i could have allowed myself to believe the first tidings!' she said. 'everybody else believed them, and why should you not have done so?' said the lawyer. 'how came the will to be permitted to be proved, as there could, after all, have been no complete evidence?' she asked. 'if i had been the executrix i would not have attempted it! as i was not, i know very little about how the business was pushed through. in a very unseemly way, i think.' 'well, no,' said mr. cecil, feeling himself morally called upon to defend legal procedure from such imputations. 'it was done in the usual way in all cases where the proof of death is only presumptive. the evidence, such as it was, was laid before the court by the applicants, your husband's cousins; and the servants who had been with him deposed to his death with a particularity that was deemed sufficient. their error was, not that somebody died--for somebody did die at the time affirmed--but that they mistook one person for another; the person who died being not sir blount constantine. the court was of opinion that the evidence led up to a reasonable inference that the deceased was actually sir blount, and probate was granted on the strength of it. as there was a doubt about the exact day of the month, the applicants were allowed to swear that he died on or after the date last given of his existence--which, in spite of their error then, has really come true, now, of course.' 'they little think what they have done to me by being so ready to swear!' she murmured. mr. cecil, supposing her to allude only to the pecuniary straits in which she had been prematurely placed by the will taking effect a year before its due time, said, 'true. it has been to your ladyship's loss, and to their gain. but they will make ample restitution, no doubt: and all will be wound up satisfactorily.' lady constantine was far from explaining that this was not her meaning; and, after some further conversation of a purely technical nature, mr. cecil left her presence. when she was again unencumbered with the necessity of exhibiting a proper bearing, the sense that she had greatly suffered in pocket by the undue haste of the executors weighed upon her mind with a pressure quite inappreciable beside the greater gravity of her personal position. what was her position as legatee to her situation as a woman? her face crimsoned with a flush which she was almost ashamed to show to the daylight, as she hastily penned the following note to swithin at greenwich--certainly one of the most informal documents she had ever written. 'welland, _thursday_. 'o swithin, my dear swithin, what i have to tell you is so sad and so humiliating that i can hardly write it--and yet i must. though we are dearer to each other than all the world besides, and as firmly united as if we were one, i am not legally your wife! sir blount did not die till some time after we in england supposed. the service must be repeated instantly. i have not been able to sleep all night. i feel so frightened and ashamed that i can scarcely arrange my thoughts. the newspapers sent with this will explain, if you have not seen particulars. do come to me as soon as you can, that we may consult on what to do. burn this at once. 'your viviette.' when the note was despatched she remembered that there was another hardly less important question to be answered--the proposal of the bishop for her hand. his communication had sunk into nothingness beside the momentous news that had so greatly distressed her. the two replies lay before her--the one she had first written, simply declining to become dr. helmsdale's wife, without giving reasons; the second, which she had elaborated with so much care on the previous day, relating in confidential detail the history of her love for swithin, their secret marriage, and their hopes for the future; asking his advice on what their procedure should be to escape the strictures of a censorious world. it was the letter she had barely finished writing when mr. cecil's clerk announced news tantamount to a declaration that she was no wife at all. this epistle she now destroyed--and with the less reluctance in knowing that swithin had been somewhat averse to the confession as soon as he found that bishop helmsdale was also a victim to tender sentiment concerning her. the first, in which, at the time of writing, the _suppressio veri_ was too strong for her conscience, had now become an honest letter, and sadly folding it she sent the missive on its way. the sense of her undefinable position kept her from much repose on the second night also; but the following morning brought an unexpected letter from swithin, written about the same hour as hers to him, and it comforted her much. he had seen the account in the papers almost as soon as it had come to her knowledge, and sent this line to reassure her in the perturbation she must naturally feel. she was not to be alarmed at all. they two were husband and wife in moral intent and antecedent belief, and the legal flaw which accident had so curiously uncovered could be mended in half-an- hour. he would return on saturday night at latest, but as the hour would probably be far advanced, he would ask her to meet him by slipping out of the house to the tower any time during service on sunday morning, when there would be few persons about likely to observe them. meanwhile he might provisionally state that their best course in the emergency would be, instead of confessing to anybody that there had already been a solemnization of marriage between them, to arrange their re-marriage in as open a manner as possible--as if it were the just-reached climax of a sudden affection, instead of a harking back to an old departure--prefacing it by a public announcement in the usual way. this plan of approaching their second union with all the show and circumstance of a new thing, recommended itself to her strongly, but for one objection--that by such a course the wedding could not, without appearing like an act of unseemly haste, take place so quickly as she desired for her own moral satisfaction. it might take place somewhat early, say in the course of a month or two, without bringing down upon her the charge of levity; for sir blount, a notoriously unkind husband, had been out of her sight four years, and in his grave nearly one. but what she naturally desired was that there should be no more delay than was positively necessary for obtaining a new license--two or three days at longest; and in view of this celerity it was next to impossible to make due preparation for a wedding of ordinary publicity, performed in her own church, from her own house, with a feast and amusements for the villagers, a tea for the school children, a bonfire, and other of those proclamatory accessories which, by meeting wonder half-way, deprive it of much of its intensity. it must be admitted, too, that she even now shrank from the shock of surprise that would inevitably be caused by her openly taking for husband such a mere youth of no position as swithin still appeared, notwithstanding that in years he was by this time within a trifle of one-and-twenty. the straightforward course had, nevertheless, so much to recommend it, so well avoided the disadvantage of future revelation which a private repetition of the ceremony would entail, that assuming she could depend upon swithin, as she knew she could do, good sense counselled its serious consideration. she became more composed at her queer situation: hour after hour passed, and the first spasmodic impulse of womanly decorum--not to let the sun go down upon her present improper state--was quite controllable. she could regard the strange contingency that had arisen with something like philosophy. the day slipped by: she thought of the awkwardness of the accident rather than of its humiliation; and, loving swithin now in a far calmer spirit than at that past date when they had rushed into each other's arms and vowed to be one for the first time, she ever and anon caught herself reflecting, 'were it not that for my honour's sake i must re-marry him, i should perhaps be a nobler woman in not allowing him to encumber his bright future by a union with me at all.' this thought, at first artificially raised, as little more than a mental exercise, became by stages a genuine conviction; and while her heart enforced, her reason regretted the necessity of abstaining from self-sacrifice--the being obliged, despite his curious escape from the first attempt, to lime swithin's young wings again solely for her credit's sake. however, the deed had to be done; swithin was to be made legally hers. selfishness in a conjuncture of this sort was excusable, and even obligatory. taking brighter views, she hoped that upon the whole this yoking of the young fellow with her, a portionless woman and his senior, would not greatly endanger his career. in such a mood night overtook her, and she went to bed conjecturing that swithin had by this time arrived in the parish, was perhaps even at that moment passing homeward beneath her walls, and that in less than twelve hours she would have met him, have ventilated the secret which oppressed her, and have satisfactorily arranged with him the details of their reunion. xxxiv sunday morning came, and complicated her previous emotions by bringing a new and unexpected shock to mingle with them. the postman had delivered among other things an illustrated newspaper, sent by a hand she did not recognize; and on opening the cover the sheet that met her eyes filled her with a horror which she could not express. the print was one which drew largely on its imagination for its engravings, and it already contained an illustration of the death of sir blount constantine. in this work of art he was represented as standing with his pistol to his mouth, his brains being in process of flying up to the roof of his chamber, and his native princess rushing terror-stricken away to a remote position in the thicket of palms which neighboured the dwelling. the crude realism of the picture, possibly harmless enough in its effect upon others, overpowered and sickened her. by a curious fascination she would look at it again and again, till every line of the engraver's performance seemed really a transcript from what had happened before his eyes. with such details fresh in her thoughts she was going out of the door to make arrangements for confirming, by repetition, her marriage with another. no interval was available for serious reflection on the tragedy, or for allowing the softening effects of time to operate in her mind. it was as though her first husband had died that moment, and she was keeping an appointment with another in the presence of his corpse. so revived was the actuality of sir blount's recent life and death by this incident, that the distress of her personal relations with swithin was the single force in the world which could have coerced her into abandoning to him the interval she would fain have set apart for getting over these new and painful impressions. self-pity for ill-usage afforded her good reasons for ceasing to love sir blount; but he was yet too closely intertwined with her past life to be destructible on the instant as a memory. but there was no choice of occasions for her now, and she steadily waited for the church bells to cease chiming. at last all was silent; the surrounding cottagers had gathered themselves within the walls of the adjacent building. tabitha lark's first voluntary then droned from the tower window, and lady constantine left the garden in which she had been loitering, and went towards rings-hill speer. the sense of her situation obscured the morning prospect. the country was unusually silent under the intensifying sun, the songless season of birds having just set in. choosing her path amid the efts that were basking upon the outer slopes of the plantation she wound her way up the tree-shrouded camp to the wooden cabin in the centre. the door was ajar, but on entering she found the place empty. the tower door was also partly open; and listening at the foot of the stairs she heard swithin above, shifting the telescope and wheeling round the rumbling dome, apparently in preparation for the next nocturnal reconnoitre. there was no doubt that he would descend in a minute or two to look for her, and not wishing to interrupt him till he was ready she re-entered the cabin, where she patiently seated herself among the books and papers that lay scattered about. she did as she had often done before when waiting there for him; that is, she occupied her moments in turning over the papers and examining the progress of his labours. the notes were mostly astronomical, of course, and she had managed to keep sufficiently abreast of him to catch the meaning of a good many of these. the litter on the table, however, was somewhat more marked this morning than usual, as if it had been hurriedly overhauled. among the rest of the sheets lay an open note, and, in the entire confidence that existed between them, she glanced over and read it as a matter of course. it was a most business-like communication, and beyond the address and date contained only the following words:-- 'dear sir,--we beg leave to draw your attention to a letter we addressed to you on the th ult., to which we have not yet been favoured with a reply. as the time for payment of the first moiety of the six hundred pounds per annum settled on you by your late uncle is now at hand, we should be obliged by your giving directions as to where and in what manner the money is to be handed over to you, and shall also be glad to receive any other definite instructions from you with regard to the future.--we are, dear sir, yours faithfully, hanner and rawles.' 'swithin st. cleeve, esq.' an income of six hundred a year for swithin, whom she had hitherto understood to be possessed of an annuity of eighty pounds at the outside, with no prospect of increasing the sum but by hard work! what could this communication mean? he whose custom and delight it was to tell her all his heart, had breathed not a syllable of this matter to her, though it met the very difficulty towards which their discussions invariably tended--how to secure for him a competency that should enable him to establish his pursuits on a wider basis, and throw himself into more direct communion with the scientific world. quite bewildered by the lack of any explanation she rose from her seat, and with the note in her hand ascended the winding tower-steps. reaching the upper aperture she perceived him under the dome, moving musingly about as if he had never been absent an hour, his light hair frilling out from under the edge of his velvet skull-cap as it was always wont to do. no question of marriage seemed to be disturbing the mind of this juvenile husband of hers. the _primum mobile_ of his gravitation was apparently the equatorial telescope which she had given him, and which he was carefully adjusting by means of screws and clamps. hearing her movements he turned his head. 'o here you are, my dear viviette! i was just beginning to expect you,' he exclaimed, coming forward. 'i ought to have been looking out for you, but i have found a little defect here in the instrument, and i wanted to set it right before evening comes on. as a rule it is not a good thing to tinker your glasses; but i have found that the diffraction-rings are not perfect circles. i learnt at greenwich how to correct them--so kind they have been to me there!--and so i have been loosening the screws and gently shifting the glass, till i think that i have at last made the illumination equal all round. i have so much to tell you about my visit; one thing is, that the astronomical world is getting quite excited about the coming transit of venus. there is to be a regular expedition fitted out. how i should like to join it!' he spoke enthusiastically, and with eyes sparkling at the mental image of the said expedition; and as it was rather gloomy in the dome he rolled it round on its axis, till the shuttered slit for the telescope directly faced the morning sun, which thereupon flooded the concave interior, touching the bright metal-work of the equatorial, and lighting up her pale, troubled face. 'but swithin!' she faltered; 'my letter to you--our marriage!' 'o yes, this marriage question,' he added. 'i had not forgotten it, dear viviette--or at least only for a few minutes.' 'can you forget it, swithin, for a moment? o how can you!' she said reproachfully. 'it is such a distressing thing. it drives away all my rest!' 'forgotten is not the word i should have used,' he apologized. 'temporarily dismissed it from my mind, is all i meant. the simple fact is, that the vastness of the field of astronomy reduces every terrestrial thing to atomic dimensions. do not trouble, dearest. the remedy is quite easy, as i stated in my letter. we can now be married in a prosy public way. yes, early or late--next week, next month, six months hence--just as you choose. say the word when, and i will obey.' the absence of all anxiety or consternation from his face contrasted strangely with hers, which at last he saw, and, looking at the writing she held, inquired-- 'but what paper have you in your hand?' 'a letter which to me is actually inexplicable,' said she, her curiosity returning to the letter, and overriding for the instant her immediate concerns. 'what does this income of six hundred a year mean? why have you never told me about it, dear swithin? or does it not refer to you?' he looked at the note, flushed slightly, and was absolutely unable to begin his reply at once. 'i did not mean you to see that, viviette,' he murmured. 'why not?' 'i thought you had better not, as it does not concern me further now. the solicitors are labouring under a mistake in supposing that it does. i have to write at once and inform them that the annuity is not mine to receive.' 'what a strange mystery in your life!' she said, forcing a perplexed smile. 'something to balance the tragedy in mine. i am absolutely in the dark as to your past history, it seems. and yet i had thought you told me everything.' 'i could not tell you that, viviette, because it would have endangered our relations--though not in the way you may suppose. you would have reproved me. you, who are so generous and noble, would have forbidden me to do what i did; and i was determined not to be forbidden.' 'to do what?' 'to marry you.' 'why should i have forbidden?' 'must i tell--what i would not?' he said, placing his hands upon her arms, and looking somewhat sadly at her. 'well, perhaps as it has come to this you ought to know all, since it can make no possible difference to my intentions now. we are one for ever--legal blunders notwithstanding; for happily they are quickly reparable--and this question of a devise from my uncle jocelyn only concerned me when i was a single man.' thereupon, with obviously no consideration of the possibilities that were reopened of the nullity of their marriage contract, he related in detail, and not without misgiving for having concealed them so long, the events that had occurred on the morning of their wedding-day; how he had met the postman on his way to warborne after dressing in the cabin, and how he had received from him the letter his dead uncle had confided to his family lawyers, informing him of the annuity, and of the important request attached--that he should remain unmarried until his five-and-twentieth year; how in comparison with the possession of her dear self he had reckoned the income as nought, abandoned all idea of it there and then, and had come on to the wedding as if nothing had happened to interrupt for a moment the working out of their plan; how he had scarcely thought with any closeness of the circumstances of the case since, until reminded of them by this note she had seen, and a previous one of a like sort received from the same solicitors. 'o swithin! swithin!' she cried, bursting into tears as she realized it all, and sinking on the observing-chair; 'i have ruined you! yes, i have ruined you!' the young man was dismayed by her unexpected grief, and endeavoured to soothe her; but she seemed touched by a poignant remorse which would not be comforted. 'and now,' she continued, as soon as she could speak, 'when you are once more free, and in a position--actually in a position to claim the annuity that would be the making of you, i am compelled to come to you, and beseech you to undo yourself again, merely to save me!' 'not to save you, viviette, but to bless me. you do not ask me to re- marry; it is not a question of alternatives at all; it is my straight course. i do not dream of doing otherwise. i should be wretched if you thought for one moment i could entertain the idea of doing otherwise.' but the more he said the worse he made the matter. it was a state of affairs that would not bear discussion at all, and the unsophisticated view he took of his course seemed to increase her responsibility. 'why did your uncle attach such a cruel condition to his bounty?' she cried bitterly. 'o, he little thinks how hard he hits me from the grave--me, who have never done him wrong; and you, too! swithin, are you sure that he makes that condition indispensable? perhaps he meant that you should not marry beneath you; perhaps he did not mean to object in such a case as your marrying (forgive me for saying it) a little above you.' 'there is no doubt that he did not contemplate a case which has led to such happiness as this has done,' the youth murmured with hesitation; for though he scarcely remembered a word of his uncle's letter of advice, he had a dim apprehension that it was couched in terms alluding specifically to lady constantine. 'are you sure you cannot retain the money, and be my lawful husband too?' she asked piteously. 'o, what a wrong i am doing you! i did not dream that it could be as bad as this. i knew i was wasting your time by letting you love me, and hampering your projects; but i thought there were compensating advantages. this wrecking of your future at my hands i did not contemplate. you are sure there is no escape? have you his letter with the conditions, or the will? let me see the letter in which he expresses his wishes.' 'i assure you it is all as i say,' he pensively returned. 'even if i were not legally bound by the conditions i should be morally.' 'but how does he put it? how does he justify himself in making such a harsh restriction? do let me see the letter, swithin. i shall think it a want of confidence if you do not. i may discover some way out of the difficulty if you let me look at the papers. eccentric wills can be evaded in all sorts of ways.' still he hesitated. 'i would rather you did not see the papers,' he said. but she persisted as only a fond woman can. her conviction was that she who, as a woman many years his senior, should have shown her love for him by guiding him straight into the paths he aimed at, had blocked his attempted career for her own happiness. this made her more intent than ever to find out a device by which, while she still retained him, he might also retain the life-interest under his uncle's will. her entreaties were at length too potent for his resistance. accompanying her downstairs to the cabin, he opened the desk from which the other papers had been taken, and against his better judgment handed her the ominous communication of jocelyn st. cleeve which lay in the envelope just as it had been received three-quarters of a year earlier. 'don't read it now,' he said. 'don't spoil our meeting by entering into a subject which is virtually past and done with. take it with you, and look it over at your leisure--merely as an old curiosity, remember, and not as a still operative document. i have almost forgotten what the contents are, beyond the general advice and stipulation that i was to remain a bachelor.' 'at any rate,' she rejoined, 'do not reply to the note i have seen from the solicitors till i have read this also.' he promised. 'but now about our public wedding,' he said. 'like certain royal personages, we shall have had the religious rite and the civil contract performed on independent occasions. will you fix the day? when is it to be? and shall it take place at a registrar's office, since there is no necessity for having the sacred part over again?' 'i'll think,' replied she. 'i'll think it over.' 'and let me know as soon as you can how you decide to proceed.' 'i will write to-morrow, or come. i do not know what to say now. i cannot forget how i am wronging you. this is almost more than i can bear!' to divert her mind he began talking about greenwich observatory, and the great instruments therein, and how he had been received by the astronomers, and the details of the expedition to observe the transit of venus, together with many other subjects of the sort, to which she had not power to lend her attention. 'i must reach home before the people are out of church,' she at length said wearily. 'i wish nobody to know i have been out this morning.' and forbidding swithin to cross into the open in her company she left him on the edge of the isolated plantation, which had latterly known her tread so well. xxxv lady constantine crossed the field and the park beyond, and found on passing the church that the congregation was still within. there was no hurry for getting indoors, the open windows enabling her to hear that mr. torkingham had only just given out his text. so instead of entering the house she went through the garden-door to the old bowling-green, and sat down in the arbour that louis had occupied when he overheard the interview between swithin and the bishop. not until then did she find courage to draw out the letter and papers relating to the bequest, which swithin in a critical moment had handed to her. had he been ever so little older he would not have placed that unconsidered confidence in viviette which had led him to give way to her curiosity. but the influence over him which eight or nine outnumbering years lent her was immensely increased by her higher position and wider experiences, and he had yielded the point, as he yielded all social points; while the same conditions exempted him from any deep consciousness that it was his duty to protect her even from herself. the preamble of dr. st. cleeve's letter, in which he referred to his pleasure at hearing of the young man's promise as an astronomer, disturbed her not at all--indeed, somewhat prepossessed her in favour of the old gentleman who had written it. the first item of what he called 'unfavourable news,' namely, the allusion to the inadequacy of swithin's income to the wants of a scientific man, whose lines of work were not calculated to produce pecuniary emolument for many years, deepened the cast of her face to concern. she reached the second item of the so-called unfavourable news; and her face flushed as she read how the doctor had learnt 'that there was something in your path worse than narrow means, and that something is a woman.' 'to save you, if possible, from ruin on these heads,' she read on, 'i take the preventive measures entailed below.' and then followed the announcement of the pounds a year settled on the youth for life, on the single condition that he remained unmarried till the age of twenty-five--just as swithin had explained to her. she next learnt that the bequest was for a definite object--that he might have resources sufficient to enable him to travel in an inexpensive way, and begin a study of the southern constellations, which, according to the shrewd old man's judgment, were a mine not so thoroughly worked as the northern, and therefore to be recommended. this was followed by some sentences which hit her in the face like a switch:-- 'the only other preventive step in my power is that of exhortation. . . . swithin st. cleeve, don't make a fool of yourself, as your father did. if your studies are to be worth anything, believe me they must be carried on without the help of a woman. avoid her, and every one of the sex, if you mean to achieve any worthy thing. eschew all of that sort for many a year yet. moreover, i say, the lady of your acquaintance avoid in particular. . . . she has, in addition to her original disqualification as a companion for you (that is, that of sex), these two special drawbacks: she is much older than yourself--' lady constantine's indignant flush forsook her, and pale despair succeeded in its stead. alas, it was true. handsome, and in her prime, she might be; but she was too old for swithin! 'and she is so impoverished. . . . beyond this, frankly, i don't think well of her. i don't think well of any woman who dotes upon a man younger than herself. . . . to care to be the first fancy of a young fellow like you shows no great common sense in her. if she were worth her salt she would have too much pride to be intimate with a youth in your unassured position, to say no more.' (viviette's face by this time tingled hot again.) 'she is old enough to know that a liaison with her may, and almost certainly would, be your ruin; and, on the other hand, that a marriage would be preposterous--unless she is a complete fool; and in that case there is even more reason for avoiding her than if she were in her few senses. 'a woman of honourable feeling, nephew, would be careful to do nothing to hinder you in your career, as this putting of herself in your way most certainly will. yet i hear that she professes a great anxiety on this same future of yours as a physicist. the best way in which she can show the reality of her anxiety is by leaving you to yourself.' leaving him to himself! she paled again, as if chilled by a conviction that in this the old man was right. 'she'll blab your most secret plans and theories to every one of her acquaintance, and make you appear ridiculous by announcing them before they are matured. if you attempt to study with a woman, you'll be ruled by her to entertain fancies instead of theories, air-castles instead of intentions, qualms instead of opinions, sickly prepossessions instead of reasoned conclusions. . . . 'an experienced woman waking a young man's passions just at a moment when he is endeavouring to shine intellectually, is doing little less than committing a crime.' * * * * * thus much the letter; and it was enough for her, indeed. the flushes of indignation which had passed over her, as she gathered this man's opinion of herself, combined with flushes of grief and shame when she considered that swithin--her dear swithin--was perfectly acquainted with this cynical view of her nature; that, reject it as he might, and as he unquestionably did, such thoughts of her had been implanted in him, and lay in him. stifled as they were, they lay in him like seeds too deep for germination, which accident might some day bring near the surface and aerate into life. the humiliation of such a possibility was almost too much to endure; the mortification--she had known nothing like it till now. but this was not all. there succeeded a feeling in comparison with which resentment and mortification were happy moods--a miserable conviction that this old man who spoke from the grave was not altogether wrong in his speaking; that he was only half wrong; that he was, perhaps, virtually right. only those persons who are by nature affected with that ready esteem for others' positions which induces an undervaluing of their own, fully experience the deep smart of such convictions against self--the wish for annihilation that is engendered in the moment of despair, at feeling that at length we, our best and firmest friend, cease to believe in our cause. viviette could hear the people coming out of church on the other side of the garden wall. their footsteps and their cheerful voices died away; the bell rang for lunch; and she went in. but her life during that morning and afternoon was wholly introspective. knowing the full circumstances of his situation as she knew them now--as she had never before known them--ought she to make herself the legal wife of swithin st. cleeve, and so secure her own honour at any price to him? such was the formidable question which lady constantine propounded to her startled understanding. as a subjectively honest woman alone, beginning her charity at home, there was no doubt that she ought. save thyself was sound old testament doctrine, and not altogether discountenanced in the new. but was there a line of conduct which transcended mere self-preservation? and would it not be an excellent thing to put it in practice now? that she had wronged st. cleeve by marrying him--that she would wrong him infinitely more by completing the marriage--there was, in her opinion, no doubt. she in her experience had sought out him in his inexperience, and had led him like a child. she remembered--as if it had been her fault, though it was in fact only her misfortune--that she had been the one to go for the license and take up residence in the parish in which they were wedded. he was now just one-and-twenty. without her, he had all the world before him, six hundred a year, and leave to cut as straight a road to fame as he should choose: with her, this story was negatived. no money from his uncle; no power of advancement; but a bondage with a woman whose disparity of years, though immaterial just now, would operate in the future as a wet blanket upon his social ambitions; and that content with life as it was which she had noticed more than once in him latterly, a content imperilling his scientific spirit by abstracting his zeal for progress. it was impossible, in short, to blind herself to the inference that marriage with her had not benefited him. matters might improve in the future; but to take upon herself the whole liability of swithin's life, as she would do by depriving him of the help his uncle had offered, was a fearful responsibility. how could she, an unendowed woman, replace such assistance? his recent visit to greenwich, which had momentarily revived that zest for his pursuit that was now less constant than heretofore, should by rights be supplemented by other such expeditions. it would be true benevolence not to deprive him of means to continue them, so as to keep his ardour alive, regardless of the cost to herself. it could be done. by the extraordinary favour of a unique accident she had now an opportunity of redeeming swithin's seriously compromised future, and restoring him to a state no worse than his first. his annuity could be enjoyed by him, his travels undertaken, his studies pursued, his high vocation initiated, by one little sacrifice--that of herself. she only had to refuse to legalize their marriage, to part from him for ever, and all would be well with him thenceforward. the pain to him would after all be but slight, whatever it might be to his wretched viviette. the ineptness of retaining him at her side lay not only in the fact itself of injury to him, but in the likelihood of his living to see it as such, and reproaching her for selfishness in not letting him go in this unprecedented opportunity for correcting a move proved to be false. he wished to examine the southern heavens--perhaps his uncle's letter was the father of the wish--and there was no telling what good might not result to mankind at large from his exploits there. why should she, to save her narrow honour, waste the wide promise of his ability? that in immolating herself by refusing him, and leaving him free to work wonders for the good of his fellow-creatures, she would in all probability add to the sum of human felicity, consoled her by its breadth as an idea even while it tortured her by making herself the scapegoat or single unit on whom the evil would fall. ought a possibly large number, swithin included, to remain unbenefited because the one individual to whom his release would be an injury chanced to be herself? love between man and woman, which in homer, moses, and other early exhibitors of life, is mere desire, had for centuries past so far broadened as to include sympathy and friendship; surely it should in this advanced stage of the world include benevolence also. if so, it was her duty to set her young man free. thus she laboured, with a generosity more worthy even than its object, to sink her love for her own decorum in devotion to the world in general, and to swithin in particular. to counsel her activities by her understanding, rather than by her emotions as usual, was hard work for a tender woman; but she strove hard, and made advance. the self-centred attitude natural to one in her situation was becoming displaced by the sympathetic attitude, which, though it had to be artificially fostered at first, gave her, by degrees, a certain sweet sense that she was rising above self-love. that maternal element which had from time to time evinced itself in her affection for the youth, and was imparted by her superior ripeness in experience and years, appeared now again, as she drew nearer the resolve not to secure propriety in her own social condition at the expense of this youth's earthly utility. unexpectedly grand fruits are sometimes forced forth by harsh pruning. the illiberal letter of swithin's uncle was suggesting to lady constantine an altruism whose thoroughness would probably have amazed that queer old gentleman into a withdrawal of the conditions that had induced it. to love st. cleeve so far better than herself as this was to surpass the love of women as conventionally understood, and as mostly existing. before, however, clinching her decision by any definite step she worried her little brain by devising every kind of ingenious scheme, in the hope of lighting on one that might show her how that decision could be avoided with the same good result. but to secure for him the advantages offered, and to retain him likewise; reflection only showed it to be impossible. yet to let him go _for ever_ was more than she could endure, and at length she jumped at an idea which promised some sort of improvement on that design. she would propose that reunion should not be entirely abandoned, but simply postponed--namely, till after his twenty-fifth birthday--when he might be her husband without, at any rate, the loss to him of the income. by this time he would approximate to a man's full judgment, and that painful aspect of her as one who had deluded his raw immaturity would have passed for ever. the plan somewhat appeased her disquieted honour. to let a marriage sink into abeyance for four or five years was not to nullify it; and though she would leave it to him to move its substantiation at the end of that time, without present stipulations, she had not much doubt upon the issue. the clock struck five. this silent mental debate had occupied her whole afternoon. perhaps it would not have ended now but for an unexpected incident--the entry of her brother louis. he came into the room where she was sitting, or rather writhing, and after a few words to explain how he had got there and about the mistake in the date of sir blount's death, he walked up close to her. his next remarks were apologetic in form, but in essence they were bitterness itself. 'viviette,' he said, 'i am sorry for my hasty words to you when i last left this house. i readily withdraw them. my suspicions took a wrong direction. i think now that i know the truth. you have been even madder than i supposed!' 'in what way?' she asked distantly. 'i lately thought that unhappy young man was only your too-favoured lover.' 'you thought wrong: he is not.' 'he is not--i believe you--for he is more. i now am persuaded that he is your lawful husband. can you deny it!' 'i can.' 'on your sacred word!' 'on my sacred word he is not that either.' 'thank heaven for that assurance!' said louis, exhaling a breath of relief. 'i was not so positive as i pretended to be--but i wanted to know the truth of this mystery. since you are not fettered to him in that way i care nothing.' louis turned away; and that afforded her an opportunity for leaving the room. those few words were the last grains that had turned the balance, and settled her doom. she would let swithin go. all the voices in her world seemed to clamour for that consummation. the morning's mortification, the afternoon's benevolence, and the evening's instincts of evasion had joined to carry the point. accordingly she sat down, and wrote to swithin a summary of the thoughts above detailed. 'we shall separate,' she concluded. 'you to obey your uncle's orders and explore the southern skies; i to wait as one who can implicitly trust you. do not see me again till the years have expired. you will find me still the same. i am your wife through all time; the letter of the law is not needed to reassert it at present; while the absence of the letter secures your fortune.' nothing can express what it cost lady constantine to marshal her arguments; but she did it, and vanquished self-comfort by a sense of the general expediency. it may unhesitatingly be affirmed that the only ignoble reason which might have dictated such a step was non-existent; that is to say, a serious decline in her affection. tenderly she had loved the youth at first, and tenderly she loved him now, as time and her after-conduct proved. women the most delicate get used to strange moral situations. eve probably regained her normal sweet composure about a week after the fall. on first learning of her anomalous position lady constantine had blushed hot, and her pure instincts had prompted her to legalize her marriage without a moment's delay. heaven and earth were to be moved at once to effect it. day after day had passed; her union had remained unsecured, and the idea of its nullity had gradually ceased to be strange to her; till it became of little account beside her bold resolve for the young man's sake. xxxvi the immediate effect upon st. cleeve of the receipt of her well-reasoned argument for retrocession was, naturally, a bitter attack upon himself for having been guilty of such cruel carelessness as to leave in her way the lawyer's letter that had first made her aware of his uncle's provision for him. immature as he was, he could realize viviette's position sufficiently well to perceive what the poor lady must suffer at having suddenly thrust upon her the responsibility of repairing her own situation as a wife by ruining his as a legatee. true, it was by the purest inadvertence that his pending sacrifice of means had been discovered; but he should have taken special pains to render such a mishap impossible. if on the first occasion, when a revelation might have been made with impunity, he would not put it in the power of her good nature to relieve his position by refusing him, he should have shown double care not to do so now, when she could not exercise that benevolence without the loss of honour. with a young man's inattention to issues he had not considered how sharp her feelings as a woman must be in this contingency. it had seemed the easiest thing in the world to remedy the defect in their marriage, and therefore nothing to be anxious about. and in his innocence of any thought of appropriating the bequest by taking advantage of the loophole in his matrimonial bond, he undervalued the importance of concealing the existence of that bequest. the looming fear of unhappiness between them revived in swithin the warm emotions of their earlier acquaintance. almost before the sun had set he hastened to welland house in search of her. the air was disturbed by stiff summer blasts, productive of windfalls and premature descents of leafage. it was an hour when unripe apples shower down in orchards, and unbrowned chestnuts descend in their husks upon the park glades. there was no help for it this afternoon but to call upon her in a direct manner, regardless of suspicions. he was thunderstruck when, while waiting in the full expectation of being admitted to her presence, the answer brought back to him was that she was unable to see him. this had never happened before in the whole course of their acquaintance. but he knew what it meant, and turned away with a vague disquietude. he did not know that lady constantine was just above his head, listening to his movements with the liveliest emotions, and, while praying for him to go, longing for him to insist on seeing her and spoil all. but the faintest symptom being always sufficient to convince him of having blundered, he unwittingly took her at her word, and went rapidly away. however, he called again the next day, and she, having gained strength by one victory over herself, was enabled to repeat her refusal with greater ease. knowing this to be the only course by which her point could be maintained, she clung to it with strenuous and religious pertinacity. thus immured and self-controlling she passed a week. her brother, though he did not live in the house (preferring the nearest watering-place at this time of the year), was continually coming there; and one day he happened to be present when she denied herself to swithin for the third time. louis, who did not observe the tears in her eyes, was astonished and delighted: she was coming to her senses at last. believing now that there had been nothing more between them than a too-plainly shown partiality on her part, he expressed his commendation of her conduct to her face. at this, instead of owning to its advantage also, her tears burst forth outright. not knowing what to make of this, louis said-- 'well, i am simply upholding you in your course.' 'yes, yes; i know it!' she cried. 'and it is my deliberately chosen course. i wish he--swithin st. cleeve--would go on his travels at once, and leave the place! six hundred a year has been left him for travel and study of the southern constellations; and i wish he would use it. you might represent the advantage to him of the course if you cared to.' louis thought he could do no better than let swithin know this as soon as possible. accordingly when st. cleeve was writing in the hut the next day he heard the crackle of footsteps over the fir-needles outside, and jumped up, supposing them to be hers; but, to his disappointment, it was her brother who appeared at the door. 'excuse my invading the hermitage, st. cleeve,' he said in his careless way, 'but i have heard from my sister of your good fortune.' 'my good fortune?' 'yes, in having an opportunity for roving; and with a traveller's conceit i couldn't help coming to give you the benefit of my experience. when do you start?' 'i have not formed any plan as yet. indeed, i had not quite been thinking of going.' louis stared. 'not going? then i may have been misinformed. what i have heard is that a good uncle has kindly bequeathed you a sufficient income to make a second isaac newton of you, if you only use it as he directs.' swithin breathed quickly, but said nothing. 'if you have not decided so to make use of it, let me implore you, as your friend, and one nearly old enough to be your father, to decide at once. such a chance does not happen to a scientific youth once in a century.' 'thank you for your good advice--for it is good in itself, i know,' said swithin, in a low voice. 'but has lady constantine spoken of it at all?' 'she thinks as i do.' 'she has spoken to you on the subject?' 'certainly. more than that; it is at her request--though i did not intend to say so--that i come to speak to you about it now.' 'frankly and plainly,' said swithin, his voice trembling with a compound of scientific and amatory emotion that defies definition, 'does she say seriously that she wishes me to go?' 'she does.' 'then go i will,' replied swithin firmly. 'i have been fortunate enough to interest some leading astronomers, including the astronomer royal; and in a letter received this morning i learn that the use of the cape observatory has been offered me for any southern observations i may wish to make. this offer i will accept. will you kindly let lady constantine know this, since she is interested in my welfare?' louis promised, and when he was gone swithin looked blankly at his own situation, as if he could scarcely believe in its reality. her letter to him, then, had been deliberately written; she meant him to go. but he was determined that none of those misunderstandings which ruin the happiness of lovers should be allowed to operate in the present case. he would see her, if he slept under her walls all night to do it, and would hear the order to depart from her own lips. this unexpected stand she was making for his interests was winning his admiration to such a degree as to be in danger of defeating the very cause it was meant to subserve. a woman like this was not to be forsaken in a hurry. he wrote two lines, and left the note at the house with his own hand. 'the cabin, rings-hill, _july_ _th_. 'dearest viviette,--if you insist, i will go. but letter-writing will not do. i must have the command from your own two lips, otherwise i shall not stir. i am here every evening at seven. can you come?--s.' this note, as fate would have it, reached her hands in the single hour of that week when she was in a mood to comply with his request, just when moved by a reactionary emotion after dismissing swithin. she went upstairs to the window that had so long served purposes of this kind, and signalled 'yes.' st. cleeve soon saw the answer she had given and watched her approach from the tower as the sunset drew on. the vivid circumstances of his life at this date led him ever to remember the external scenes in which they were set. it was an evening of exceptional irradiations, and the west heaven gleamed like a foundry of all metals common and rare. the clouds were broken into a thousand fragments, and the margin of every fragment shone. foreseeing the disadvantage and pain to her of maintaining a resolve under the pressure of a meeting, he vowed not to urge her by word or sign; to put the question plainly and calmly, and to discuss it on a reasonable basis only, like the philosophers they assumed themselves to be. but this intention was scarcely adhered to in all its integrity. she duly appeared on the edge of the field, flooded with the metallic radiance that marked the close of this day; whereupon he quickly descended the steps, and met her at the cabin door. they entered it together. as the evening grew darker and darker he listened to her reasoning, which was precisely a repetition of that already sent him by letter, and by degrees accepted her decision, since she would not revoke it. time came for them to say good-bye, and then-- 'he turn'd and saw the terror in her eyes, that yearn'd upon him, shining in such wise as a star midway in the midnight fix'd.' it was the misery of her own condition that showed forth, hitherto obscured by her ardour for ameliorating his. they closed together, and kissed each other as though the emotion of their whole year-and-half's acquaintance had settled down upon that moment. 'i won't go away from you!' said swithin huskily. 'why did you propose it for an instant?' thus the nearly ended interview was again prolonged, and viviette yielded to all the passion of her first union with him. time, however, was merciless, and the hour approached midnight, and she was compelled to depart. swithin walked with her towards the house, as he had walked many times before, believing that all was now smooth again between them, and caring, it must be owned, very little for his fame as an expositor of the southern constellations just then. when they reached the silent house he said what he had not ventured to say before, 'fix the day--you have decided that it is to be soon, and that i am not to go?' but youthful swithin was far, very far, from being up to the fond subtlety of viviette this evening. 'i cannot decide here,' she said gently, releasing herself from his arm; 'i will speak to you from the window. wait for me.' she vanished; and he waited. it was a long time before the window opened, and he was not aware that, with her customary complication of feeling, she had knelt for some time inside the room before looking out. 'well?' said he. 'it cannot be,' she answered. 'i cannot ruin you. but the day after you are five-and-twenty our marriage shall be confirmed, if you choose.' 'o, my viviette, how is this!' he cried. 'swithin, i have not altered. but i feared for my powers, and could not tell you whilst i stood by your side. i ought not to have given way as i did to-night. take the bequest, and go. you are too young--to be fettered--i should have thought of it! do not communicate with me for at least a year: it is imperative. do not tell me your plans. if we part, we do part. i have vowed a vow not to further obstruct the course you had decided on before you knew me and my puling ways; and by heaven's help i'll keep that vow. . . . now go. these are the parting words of your own viviette!' swithin, who was stable as a giant in all that appertained to nature and life outside humanity, was a mere pupil in domestic matters. he was quite awed by her firmness, and looked vacantly at her for a time, till she closed the window. then he mechanically turned, and went, as she had commanded. xxxvii a week had passed away. it had been a time of cloudy mental weather to swithin and viviette, but the only noteworthy fact about it was that what had been planned to happen therein had actually taken place. swithin had gone from welland, and would shortly go from england. she became aware of it by a note that he posted to her on his way through warborne. there was much evidence of haste in the note, and something of reserve. the latter she could not understand, but it might have been obvious enough if she had considered. on the morning of his departure he had sat on the edge of his bed, the sunlight streaming through the early mist, the house-martens scratching the back of the ceiling over his head as they scrambled out from the roof for their day's gnat-chasing, the thrushes cracking snails on the garden stones outside with the noisiness of little smiths at work on little anvils. the sun, in sending its rods of yellow fire into his room, sent, as he suddenly thought, mental illumination with it. for the first time, as he sat there, it had crossed his mind that viviette might have reasons for this separation which he knew not of. there might be family reasons--mysterious blood necessities which are said to rule members of old musty-mansioned families, and are unknown to other classes of society--and they may have been just now brought before her by her brother louis on the condition that they were religiously concealed. the idea that some family skeleton, like those he had read of in memoirs, had been unearthed by louis, and held before her terrified understanding as a matter which rendered swithin's departure, and the neutralization of the marriage, no less indispensable to them than it was an advantage to himself, seemed a very plausible one to swithin just now. viviette might have taken louis into her confidence at last, for the sake of his brotherly advice. swithin knew that of her own heart she would never wish to get rid of him; but coerced by louis, might she not have grown to entertain views of its expediency? events made such a supposition on st. cleeve's part as natural as it was inaccurate, and, conjoined with his own excitement at the thought of seeing a new heaven overhead, influenced him to write but the briefest and most hurried final note to her, in which he fully obeyed her sensitive request that he would omit all reference to his plans. these at the last moment had been modified to fall in with the winter expedition formerly mentioned, to observe the transit of venus at a remote southern station. the business being done, and himself fairly plunged into the preliminaries of an important scientific pilgrimage, swithin acquired that lightness of heart which most young men feel in forsaking old love for new adventure, no matter how charming may be the girl they leave behind them. moreover, in the present case, the man was endowed with that schoolboy temperament which does not see, or at least consider with much curiosity, the effect of a given scheme upon others than himself. the bearing upon lady constantine of what was an undoubted predicament for any woman, was forgotten in his feeling that she had done a very handsome and noble thing for him, and that he was therefore bound in honour to make the most of it. his going had resulted in anything but lightness of heart for her. her sad fancy could, indeed, indulge in dreams of her yellow-haired laddie without that formerly besetting fear that those dreams would prompt her to actions likely to distract and weight him. she was wretched on her own account, relieved on his. she no longer stood in the way of his advancement, and that was enough. for herself she could live in retirement, visit the wood, the old camp, the column, and, like oenone, think of the life they had led there-- 'mournful oenone, wandering forlorn of paris, once her playmate on the hills,' leaving it entirely to his goodness whether he would come and claim her in the future, or desert her for ever. she was diverted for a time from these sad performances by a letter which reached her from bishop helmsdale. to see his handwriting again on an envelope, after thinking so anxiously of making a father-confessor of him, started her out of her equanimity. she speedily regained it, however, when she read his note. 'the palace, melchester, _july_ , --. 'my dear lady constantine,--i am shocked and grieved that, in the strange dispensation of things here below, my offer of marriage should have reached you almost simultaneously with the intelligence that your widowhood had been of several months less duration than you and i, and the world, had supposed. i can quite understand that, viewed from any side, the news must have shaken and disturbed you; and your unequivocal refusal to entertain any thought of a new alliance at such a moment was, of course, intelligible, natural, and praiseworthy. at present i will say no more beyond expressing a hope that you will accept my assurances that i was quite ignorant of the news at the hour of writing, and a sincere desire that in due time, and as soon as you have recovered your equanimity, i may be allowed to renew my proposal.--i am, my dear lady constantine, yours ever sincerely, c. melchester.' she laid the letter aside, and thought no more about it, beyond a momentary meditation on the errors into which people fall in reasoning from actions to motives. louis, who was now again with her, became in due course acquainted with the contents of the letter, and was satisfied with the promising position in which matters seemingly stood all round. lady constantine went her mournful ways as she had planned to do, her chief resort being the familiar column, where she experienced the unutterable melancholy of seeing two carpenters dismantle the dome of its felt covering, detach its ribs, and clear away the enclosure at the top till everything stood as it had stood before swithin had been known to the place. the equatorial had already been packed in a box, to be in readiness if he should send for it from abroad. the cabin, too, was in course of demolition, such having been his directions, acquiesced in by her, before he started. yet she could not bear the idea that these structures, so germane to the events of their romance, should be removed as if removed for ever. going to the men she bade them store up the materials intact, that they might be re-erected if desired. she had the junctions of the timbers marked with figures, the boards numbered, and the different sets of screws tied up in independent papers for identification. she did not hear the remarks of the workmen when she had gone, to the effect that the young man would as soon think of buying a halter for himself as come back and spy at the moon from rings-hill speer, after seeing the glories of other nations and the gold and jewels that were found there, or she might have been more unhappy than she was. on returning from one of these walks to the column a curious circumstance occurred. it was evening, and she was coming as usual down through the sighing plantation, choosing her way between the ramparts of the camp towards the outlet giving upon the field, when suddenly in a dusky vista among the fir-trunks she saw, or thought she saw, a golden-haired, toddling child. the child moved a step or two, and vanished behind a tree. lady constantine, fearing it had lost its way, went quickly to the spot, searched, and called aloud. but no child could she perceive or hear anywhere around. she returned to where she had stood when first beholding it, and looked in the same direction, but nothing reappeared. the only object at all resembling a little boy or girl was the upper tuft of a bunch of fern, which had prematurely yellowed to about the colour of a fair child's hair, and waved occasionally in the breeze. this, however, did not sufficiently explain the phenomenon, and she returned to make inquiries of the man whom she had left at work, removing the last traces of swithin's cabin. but he had gone with her departure and the approach of night. feeling an indescribable dread she retraced her steps, and hastened homeward doubting, yet half believing, what she had seemed to see, and wondering if her imagination had played her some trick. the tranquil mournfulness of her night of solitude terminated in a most unexpected manner. the morning after the above-mentioned incident lady constantine, after meditating a while, arose with a strange personal conviction that bore curiously on the aforesaid hallucination. she realized a condition of things that she had never anticipated, and for a moment the discovery of her state so overwhelmed her that she thought she must die outright. in her terror she said she had sown the wind to reap the whirlwind. then the instinct of self-preservation flamed up in her like a fire. her altruism in subjecting her self-love to benevolence, and letting swithin go away from her, was demolished by the new necessity, as if it had been a gossamer web. there was no resisting or evading the spontaneous plan of action which matured in her mind in five minutes. where was swithin? how could he be got at instantly?--that was her ruling thought. she searched about the room for his last short note, hoping, yet doubting, that its contents were more explicit on his intended movements than the few meagre syllables which alone she could call to mind. she could not find the letter in her room, and came downstairs to louis as pale as a ghost. he looked up at her, and with some concern said, 'what's the matter?' 'i am searching everywhere for a letter--a note from mr. st. cleeve--just a few words telling me when the _occidental_ sails, that i think he goes in.' 'why do you want that unimportant document?' 'it is of the utmost importance that i should know whether he has actually sailed or not!' said she in agonized tones. 'where _can_ that letter be?' louis knew where that letter was, for having seen it on her desk he had, without reading it, torn it up and thrown it into the waste-paper basket, thinking the less that remained to remind her of the young philosopher the better. 'i destroyed it,' he said. 'o louis! why did you?' she cried. 'i am going to follow him; i think it best to do so; and i want to know if he is gone--and now the date is lost!' 'going to run after st. cleeve? absurd!' 'yes, i am!' she said with vehement firmness. 'i must see him; i want to speak to him as soon as possible.' 'good lord, viviette! are you mad?' 'o what was the date of that ship! but it cannot be helped. i start at once for southampton. i have made up my mind to do it. he was going to his uncle's solicitors in the north first; then he was coming back to southampton. he cannot have sailed yet.' 'i believe he has sailed,' muttered louis sullenly. she did not wait to argue with him, but returned upstairs, where she rang to tell green to be ready with the pony to drive her to warborne station in a quarter of an hour. xxxviii viviette's determination to hamper swithin no longer had led her, as has been shown, to balk any weak impulse to entreat his return, by forbidding him to furnish her with his foreign address. his ready disposition, his fear that there might be other reasons behind, made him obey her only too literally. thus, to her terror and dismay, she had placed a gratuitous difficulty in the way of her present endeavour. she was ready before green, and urged on that factotum so wildly as to leave him no time to change his corduroys and 'skitty-boots' in which he had been gardening; he therefore turned himself into a coachman as far down as his waist merely--clapping on his proper coat, hat, and waistcoat, and wrapping a rug over his horticultural half below. in this compromise he appeared at the door, mounted, and reins in hand. seeing how sad and determined viviette was, louis pitied her so far as to put nothing in the way of her starting, though he forbore to help her. he thought her conduct sentimental foolery, the outcome of mistaken pity and 'such a kind of gain-giving as would trouble a woman;' and he decided that it would be better to let this mood burn itself out than to keep it smouldering by obstruction. 'do you remember the date of his sailing?' she said finally, as the pony- carriage turned to drive off. 'he sails on the th, that is, to-day. but it may not be till late in the evening.' with this she started, and reached warborne in time for the up-train. how much longer than it really is a long journey can seem to be, was fully learnt by the unhappy viviette that day. the changeful procession of country seats past which she was dragged, the names and memories of their owners, had no points of interest for her now. she reached southampton about midday, and drove straight to the docks. on approaching the gates she was met by a crowd of people and vehicles coming out--men, women, children, porters, police, cabs, and carts. the occidental had just sailed. the adverse intelligence came upon her with such odds after her morning's tension that she could scarcely crawl back to the cab which had brought her. but this was not a time to succumb. as she had no luggage she dismissed the man, and, without any real consciousness of what she was doing, crept away and sat down on a pile of merchandise. after long thinking her case assumed a more hopeful complexion. much might probably be done towards communicating with him in the time at her command. the obvious step to this end, which she should have thought of sooner, would be to go to his grandmother in welland bottom, and there obtain his itinerary in detail--no doubt well known to mrs. martin. there was no leisure for her to consider longer if she would be home again that night; and returning to the railway she waited on a seat without eating or drinking till a train was ready to take her back. by the time she again stood in warborne the sun rested his chin upon the meadows, and enveloped the distant outline of the rings-hill column in his humid rays. hiring an empty fly that chanced to be at the station she was driven through the little town onward to welland, which she approached about eight o'clock. at her request the man set her down at the entrance to the park, and when he was out of sight, instead of pursuing her way to the house, she went along the high road in the direction of mrs. martin's. dusk was drawing on, and the bats were wheeling over the green basin called welland bottom by the time she arrived; and had any other errand instigated her call she would have postponed it till the morrow. nobody responded to her knock, but she could hear footsteps going hither and thither upstairs, and dull noises as of articles moved from their places. she knocked again and again, and ultimately the door was opened by hannah as usual. 'i could make nobody hear,' said lady constantine, who was so weary she could scarcely stand. 'i am very sorry, my lady,' said hannah, slightly awed on beholding her visitor. 'but we was a putting poor mr. swithin's room to rights, now that he is, as a woman may say, dead and buried to us; so we didn't hear your ladyship. i'll call mrs. martin at once. she is up in the room that used to be his work-room.' here hannah's voice implied moist eyes, and lady constantine's instantly overflowed. 'no, i'll go up to her,' said viviette; and almost in advance of hannah she passed up the shrunken ash stairs. the ebbing light was not enough to reveal to mrs. martin's aged gaze the personality of her visitor, till hannah explained. 'i'll get a light, my lady,' said she. 'no, i would rather not. what are you doing, mrs. martin?' 'well, the poor misguided boy is gone--and he's gone for good to me! i am a woman of over four-score years, my lady constantine; my junketting days are over, and whether 'tis feasting or whether 'tis sorrowing in the land will soon be nothing to me. but his life may be long and active, and for the sake of him i care for what i shall never see, and wish to make pleasant what i shall never enjoy. i am setting his room in order, as the place will be his own freehold when i am gone, so that when he comes back he may find all his poor jim-cracks and trangleys as he left 'em, and not feel that i have betrayed his trust.' mrs. martin's voice revealed that she had burst into such few tears as were left her, and then hannah began crying likewise; whereupon lady constantine, whose heart had been bursting all day (and who, indeed, considering her coming trouble, had reason enough for tears), broke into bitterer sobs than either--sobs of absolute pain, that could no longer be concealed. hannah was the first to discover that lady constantine was weeping with them; and her feelings being probably the least intense among the three she instantly controlled herself. 'refrain yourself, my dear woman, refrain!' she said hastily to mrs. martin; 'don't ye see how it do raft my lady?' and turning to viviette she whispered, 'her years be so great, your ladyship, that perhaps ye'll excuse her for busting out afore ye? we know when the mind is dim, my lady, there's not the manners there should be; but decayed people can't help it, poor old soul!' 'hannah, that will do now. perhaps lady constantine would like to speak to me alone,' said mrs. martin. and when hannah had retreated mrs. martin continued: 'such a charge as she is, my lady, on account of her great age! you'll pardon her biding here as if she were one of the family. i put up with such things because of her long service, and we know that years lead to childishness.' 'what are you doing? can i help you?' viviette asked, as mrs. martin, after speaking, turned to lift some large article. 'oh, 'tis only the skeleton of a telescope that's got no works in his inside,' said swithin's grandmother, seizing the huge pasteboard tube that swithin had made, and abandoned because he could get no lenses to suit it. 'i am going to hang it up to these hooks, and there it will bide till he comes again.' lady constantine took one end, and the tube was hung up against the whitewashed wall by strings that the old woman had tied round it. 'here's all his equinoctial lines, and his topics of capricorn, and i don't know what besides,' mrs. martin continued, pointing to some charcoal scratches on the wall. 'i shall never rub 'em out; no, though 'tis such untidiness as i was never brought up to, i shall never rub 'em out.' 'where has swithin gone to first?' asked viviette anxiously. 'where does he say you are to write to him?' 'nowhere yet, my lady. he's gone traipsing all over europe and america, and then to the south pacific ocean about this transit of venus that's going to be done there. he is to write to us first--god knows when!--for he said that if we didn't hear from him for six months we were not to be gallied at all.' at this intelligence, so much worse than she had expected, lady constantine stood mute, sank down, and would have fallen to the floor if there had not been a chair behind her. controlling herself by a strenuous effort, she disguised her despair and asked vacantly: 'from america to the south pacific--transit of venus?' (swithin's arrangement to accompany the expedition had been made at the last moment, and therefore she had not as yet been informed.) 'yes, to a lone island, i believe.' 'yes, a lone islant, my lady!' echoed hannah, who had crept in and made herself one of the family again, in spite of mrs. martin. 'he is going to meet the english and american astronomers there at the end of the year. after that he will most likely go on to the cape.' 'but before the end of the year--what places did he tell you of visiting?' 'let me collect myself; he is going to the observatory of cambridge, united states, to meet some gentlemen there, and spy through the great refractor. then there's the observatory of chicago; and i think he has a letter to make him beknown to a gentleman in the observatory at marseilles--and he wants to go to vienna--and poulkowa, too, he means to take in his way--there being great instruments and a lot of astronomers at each place.' 'does he take europe or america first?' she asked faintly, for the account seemed hopeless. mrs. martin could not tell till she had heard from swithin. it depended upon what he had decided to do on the day of his leaving england. lady constantine bade the old people good-bye, and dragged her weary limbs homeward. the fatuousness of forethought had seldom been evinced more ironically. had she done nothing to hinder him, he would have kept up an unreserved communication with her, and all might have been well. for that night she could undertake nothing further, and she waited for the next day. then at once she wrote two letters to swithin, directing one to marseilles observatory, one to the observatory of cambridge, u.s., as being the only two spots on the face of the globe at which they were likely to intercept him. each letter stated to him the urgent reasons which existed for his return, and contained a passionately regretful intimation that the annuity on which his hopes depended must of necessity be sacrificed by the completion of their original contract without delay. but letter conveyance was too slow a process to satisfy her. to send an epitome of her epistles by telegraph was, after all, indispensable. such an imploring sentence as she desired to address to him it would be hazardous to despatch from warborne, and she took a dreary journey to a strange town on purpose to send it from an office at which she was unknown. there she handed in her message, addressing it to the port of arrival of the occidental, and again returned home. she waited; and there being no return telegram, the inference was that he had somehow missed hers. for an answer to either of her letters she would have to wait long enough to allow him time to reach one of the observatories--a tedious while. then she considered the weakness, the stultifying nature of her attempt at recall. events mocked her on all sides. by the favour of an accident, and by her own immense exertions against her instincts, swithin had been restored to the rightful heritage that he had nearly forfeited on her account. he had just started off to utilize it; when she, without a moment's warning, was asking him again to cast it away. she had set a certain machinery in motion--to stop it before it had revolved once. a horrid apprehension possessed her. it had been easy for swithin to give up what he had never known the advantages of keeping; but having once begun to enjoy his possession would he give it up now? could he be depended on for such self-sacrifice? before leaving, he would have done anything at her request; but the _mollia tempora fandi_ had now passed. suppose there arrived no reply from him for the next three months; and that when his answer came he were to inform her that, having now fully acquiesced in her original decision, he found the life he was leading so profitable as to be unable to abandon it, even to please her; that he was very sorry, but having embarked on this course by her advice he meant to adhere to it by his own. there was, indeed, every probability that, moving about as he was doing, and cautioned as he had been by her very self against listening to her too readily, she would receive no reply of any sort from him for three or perhaps four months. this would be on the eve of the transit; and what likelihood was there that a young man, full of ardour for that spectacle, would forego it at the last moment to return to a humdrum domesticity with a woman who was no longer a novelty? if she could only leave him to his career, and save her own situation also! but at that moment the proposition seemed as impossible as to construct a triangle of two straight lines. in her walk home, pervaded by these hopeless views, she passed near the dark and deserted tower. night in that solitary place, which would have caused her some uneasiness in her years of blitheness, had no terrors for her now. she went up the winding path, and, the door being unlocked, felt her way to the top. the open sky greeted her as in times previous to the dome-and-equatorial period; but there was not a star to suggest to her in which direction swithin had gone. the absence of the dome suggested a way out of her difficulties. a leap in the dark, and all would be over. but she had not reached that stage of action as yet, and the thought was dismissed as quickly as it had come. the new consideration which at present occupied her mind was whether she could have the courage to leave swithin to himself, as in the original plan, and singly meet her impending trial, despising the shame, till he should return at five-and-twenty and claim her? yet was this assumption of his return so very safe? how altered things would be at that time! at twenty-five he would still be young and handsome; she would be three-and- thirty, fading to middle-age and homeliness, from a junior's point of view. a fear sharp as a frost settled down upon her, that in any such scheme as this she would be building upon the sand. she hardly knew how she reached home that night. entering by the lawn door she saw a red coal in the direction of the arbour. louis was smoking there, and he came forward. he had not seen her since the morning and was naturally anxious about her. she blessed the chance which enveloped her in night and lessened the weight of the encounter one half by depriving him of vision. 'did you accomplish your object?' he asked. 'no,' said she. 'how was that?' 'he has sailed.' 'a very good thing for both, i say. i believe you would have married him, if you could have overtaken him.' 'that would i!' she said. 'good god!' 'i would marry a tinker for that matter; i have reasons for being any man's wife,' she said recklessly, 'only i should prefer to drown myself.' louis held his breath, and stood rigid at the meaning her words conveyed. 'but louis, you don't know all!' cried viviette. 'i am not so bad as you think; mine has been folly--not vice. i thought i had married him--and then i found i had not; the marriage was invalid--sir blount was alive! and now swithin has gone away, and will not come back for my calling! how can he? his fortune is left him on condition that he forms no legal tie. o will he--will he, come again?' 'never, if that's the position of affairs,' said louis firmly, after a pause. 'what then shall i do?' said viviette. louis escaped the formidable difficulty of replying by pretending to continue his havannah; and she, bowed down to dust by what she had revealed, crept from him into the house. louis's cigar went out in his hand as he stood looking intently at the ground. xxxix louis got up the next morning with an idea in his head. he had dressed for a journey, and breakfasted hastily. before he had started viviette came downstairs. louis, who was now greatly disturbed about her, went up to his sister and took her hand. '_aux grands maux les grands remedes_,' he said, gravely. 'i have a plan.' 'i have a dozen!' said she. 'you have?' 'yes. but what are they worth? and yet there must--there _must_ be a way!' 'viviette,' said louis, 'promise that you will wait till i come home to- night, before you do anything.' her distracted eyes showed slight comprehension of his request as she said 'yes.' an hour after that time louis entered the train at warborne, and was speedily crossing a country of ragged woodland, which, though intruded on by the plough at places, remained largely intact from prehistoric times, and still abounded with yews of gigantic growth and oaks tufted with mistletoe. it was the route to melchester. on setting foot in that city he took the cathedral spire as his guide, the place being strange to him; and went on till he reached the archway dividing melchester sacred from melchester secular. thence he threaded his course into the precincts of the damp and venerable close, level as a bowling-green, and beloved of rooks, who from their elm perches on high threatened any unwary gazer with the mishap of tobit. at the corner of this reposeful spot stood the episcopal palace. louis entered the gates, rang the bell, and looked around. here the trees and rooks seemed older, if possible, than those in the close behind him. everything was dignified, and he felt himself like punchinello in the king's chambers. verily in the present case glanville was not a man to stick at trifles any more than his illustrious prototype; and on the servant bringing a message that his lordship would see him at once, louis marched boldly in. through an old dark corridor, roofed with old dark beams, the servant led the way to the heavily-moulded door of the bishop's room. dr. helmsdale was there, and welcomed louis with considerable stateliness. but his condescension was tempered with a curious anxiety, and even with nervousness. he asked in pointed tones after the health of lady constantine; if louis had brought an answer to the letter he had addressed to her a day or two earlier; and if the contents of the letter, or of the previous one, were known to him. 'i have brought no answer from her,' said louis. 'but the contents of your letter have been made known to me.' since entering the building louis had more than once felt some hesitation, and it might now, with a favouring manner from his entertainer, have operated to deter him from going further with his intention. but the bishop had personal weaknesses that were fatal to sympathy for more than a moment. 'then i may speak in confidence to you as her nearest relative,' said the prelate, 'and explain that i am now in a position with regard to lady constantine which, in view of the important office i hold, i should not have cared to place myself in unless i had felt quite sure of not being refused by her. and hence it is a great grief, and some mortification to me, that i was refused--owing, of course, to the fact that i unwittingly risked making my proposal at the very moment when she was under the influence of those strange tidings, and therefore not herself, and scarcely able to judge what was best for her.' the bishop's words disclosed a mind whose sensitive fear of danger to its own dignity hindered it from criticism elsewhere. things might have been worse for louis's puck-like idea of mis-mating his hermia with this demetrius. throwing a strong colour of earnestness into his mien he replied: 'bishop, viviette is my only sister; i am her only brother and friend. i am alarmed for her health and state of mind. hence i have come to consult you on this very matter that you have broached. i come absolutely without her knowledge, and i hope unconventionality may be excused in me on the score of my anxiety for her.' 'certainly. i trust that the prospect opened up by my proposal, combined with this other news, has not proved too much for her?' 'my sister is distracted and distressed, bishop helmsdale. she wants comfort.' 'not distressed by my letter?' said the bishop, turning red. 'has it lowered me in her estimation?' 'on the contrary; while your disinterested offer was uppermost in her mind she was a different woman. it is this other matter that oppresses her. the result upon her of the recent discovery with regard to the late sir blount constantine is peculiar. to say that he ill-used her in his lifetime is to understate a truth. he has been dead now a considerable period; but this revival of his memory operates as a sort of terror upon her. images of the manner of sir blount's death are with her night and day, intensified by a hideous picture of the supposed scene, which was cruelly sent her. she dreads being alone. nothing will restore my poor viviette to her former cheerfulness but a distraction--a hope--a new prospect.' 'that is precisely what acceptance of my offer would afford.' 'precisely,' said louis, with great respect. 'but how to get her to avail herself of it, after once refusing you, is the difficulty, and my earnest problem.' 'then we are quite at one.' 'we are. and it is to promote our wishes that i am come; since she will do nothing of herself.' 'then you can give me no hope of a reply to my second communication?' 'none whatever--by letter,' said louis. 'her impression plainly is that she cannot encourage your lordship. yet, in the face of all this reticence, the secret is that she loves you warmly.' 'can you indeed assure me of that? indeed, indeed!' said the good bishop musingly. 'then i must try to see her. i begin to feel--to feel strongly--that a course which would seem premature and unbecoming in other cases would be true and proper conduct in this. her unhappy dilemmas--her unwonted position--yes, yes--i see it all! i can afford to have some little misconstruction put upon my motives. i will go and see her immediately. her past has been a cruel one; she wants sympathy; and with heaven's help i'll give it.' 'i think the remedy lies that way,' said louis gently. 'some words came from her one night which seemed to show it. i was standing on the terrace: i heard somebody sigh in the dark, and found that it was she. i asked her what was the matter, and gently pressed her on this subject of boldly and promptly contracting a new marriage as a means of dispersing the horrors of the old. her answer implied that she would have no objection to do it, and to do it at once, provided she could remain externally passive in the matter, that she would tacitly yield, in fact, to pressure, but would not meet solicitation half-way. now, bishop helmsdale, you see what has prompted me. on the one hand is a dignitary of high position and integrity, to say no more, who is anxious to save her from the gloom of her situation; on the other is this sister, who will not make known to you her willingness to be saved--partly from apathy, partly from a fear that she may be thought forward in responding favourably at so early a moment, partly also, perhaps, from a modest sense that there would be some sacrifice on your part in allying yourself with a woman of her secluded and sad experience.' 'o, there is no sacrifice! quite otherwise. i care greatly for this alliance, mr. glanville. your sister is very dear to me. moreover, the advantages her mind would derive from the enlarged field of activity that the position of a bishop's wife would afford, are palpable. i am induced to think that an early settlement of the question--an immediate coming to the point--which might be called too early in the majority of cases, would be a right and considerate tenderness here. my only dread is that she should think an immediate following up of the subject premature. and the risk of a rebuff a second time is one which, as you must perceive, it would be highly unbecoming in me to run.' 'i think the risk would be small, if your lordship would approach her frankly. write she will not, i am assured; and knowing that, and having her interest at heart, i was induced to come to you and make this candid statement in reply to your communication. her late husband having been virtually dead these four or five years, believed dead two years, and actually dead nearly one, no reproach could attach to her if she were to contract another union to-morrow.' 'i agree with you, mr. glanville,' said the bishop warmly. 'i will think this over. her motive in not replying i can quite understand: your motive in coming i can also understand and appreciate in a brother. if i feel convinced that it would be a seemly and expedient thing i will come to welland to-morrow.' the point to which louis had brought the bishop being so satisfactory, he feared to endanger it by another word. he went away almost hurriedly, and at once left the precincts of the cathedral, lest another encounter with dr. helmsdale should lead the latter to take a new and slower view of his duties as viviette's suitor. he reached welland by dinner-time, and came upon viviette in the same pensive mood in which he had left her. it seemed she had hardly moved since. 'have you discovered swithin st. cleeve's address?' she said, without looking up at him. 'no,' said louis. then she broke out with indescribable anguish: 'but you asked me to wait till this evening; and i have waited through the long day, in the belief that your words meant something, and that you would bring good tidings! and now i find your words meant nothing, and you have _not_ brought good tidings!' louis could not decide for a moment what to say to this. should he venture to give her thoughts a new course by a revelation of his design? no: it would be better to prolong her despair yet another night, and spring relief upon her suddenly, that she might jump at it and commit herself without an interval for reflection on certain aspects of the proceeding. nothing, accordingly, did he say; and conjecturing that she would be hardly likely to take any desperate step that night, he left her to herself. his anxiety at this crisis continued to be great. everything depended on the result of the bishop's self-communion. would he or would he not come the next day? perhaps instead of his important presence there would appear a letter postponing the visit indefinitely. if so, all would be lost. louis's suspense kept him awake, and he was not alone in his sleeplessness. through the night he heard his sister walking up and down, in a state which betokened that for every pang of grief she had disclosed, twice as many had remained unspoken. he almost feared that she might seek to end her existence by violence, so unreasonably sudden were her moods; and he lay and longed for the day. it was morning. she came down the same as usual, and asked if there had arrived any telegram or letter; but there was neither. louis avoided her, knowing that nothing he could say just then would do her any good. no communication had reached him from the bishop, and that looked well. by one ruse and another, as the day went on, he led her away from contemplating the remote possibility of hearing from swithin, and induced her to look at the worst contingency as her probable fate. it seemed as if she really made up her mind to this, for by the afternoon she was apathetic, like a woman who neither hoped nor feared. and then a fly drove up to the door. louis, who had been standing in the hall the greater part of that day, glanced out through a private window, and went to viviette. 'the bishop has called,' he said. 'be ready to see him.' 'the bishop of melchester?' said viviette, bewildered. 'yes. i asked him to come. he comes for an answer to his letters.' 'an answer--to--his--letters?' she murmured. 'an immediate reply of yes or no.' her face showed the workings of her mind. how entirely an answer of assent, at once acted on for better or for worse, would clear the spectre from her path, there needed no tongue to tell. it would, moreover, accomplish that end without involving the impoverishment of swithin--the inevitable result if she had adopted the legitimate road out of her trouble. hitherto there had seemed to her dismayed mind, unenlightened as to any course save one of honesty, no possible achievement of _both_ her desires--the saving of swithin and the saving of herself. but behold, here was a way! a tempter had shown it to her. it involved a great wrong, which to her had quite obscured its feasibility. but she perceived now that it was indeed a way. nature was forcing her hand at this game; and to what will not nature compel her weaker victims, in extremes? louis left her to think it out. when he reached the drawing-room dr. helmsdale was standing there with the air of a man too good for his destiny--which, to be just to him, was not far from the truth this time. 'have you broken my message to her?' asked the bishop sonorously. 'not your message; your visit,' said louis. 'i leave the rest in your lordship's hands. i have done all i can for her.' she was in her own small room to-day; and, feeling that it must be a bold stroke or none, he led the bishop across the hall till he reached her apartment and opened the door; but instead of following he shut it behind his visitor. then glanville passed an anxious time. he walked from the foot of the staircase to the star of old swords and pikes on the wall; from these to the stags' horns; thence down the corridor as far as the door, where he could hear murmuring inside, but not its import. the longer they remained closeted the more excited did he become. that she had not peremptorily negatived the proposal at the outset was a strong sign of its success. it showed that she had admitted argument; and the worthy bishop had a pleader on his side whom he knew little of. the very weather seemed to favour dr. helmsdale in his suit. a blusterous wind had blown up from the west, howling in the smokeless chimneys, and suggesting to the feminine mind storms at sea, a tossing ocean, and the hopeless inaccessibility of all astronomers and men on the other side of the same. the bishop had entered viviette's room at ten minutes past three. the long hand of the hall clock lay level at forty-five minutes past when the knob of the door moved, and he came out. louis met him where the passage joined the hall. dr. helmsdale was decidedly in an emotional state, his face being slightly flushed. louis looked his anxious inquiry without speaking it. 'she accepts me,' said the bishop in a low voice. 'and the wedding is to be soon. her long solitude and sufferings justify haste. what you said was true. sheer weariness and distraction have driven her to me. she was quite passive at last, and agreed to anything i proposed--such is the persuasive force of trained logical reasoning! a good and wise woman, she perceived what a true shelter from sadness was offered in me, and was not the one to despise heaven's gift.' xl the silence of swithin was to be accounted for by the circumstance that neither to the mediterranean nor to america had he in the first place directed his steps. feeling himself absolutely free he had, on arriving at southampton, decided to make straight for the cape, and hence had not gone aboard the occidental at all. his object was to leave his heavier luggage there, examine the capabilities of the spot for his purpose, find out the necessity or otherwise of shipping over his own equatorial, and then cross to america as soon as there was a good opportunity. here he might inquire the movements of the transit expedition to the south pacific, and join it at such a point as might be convenient. thus, though wrong in her premisses, viviette had intuitively decided with sad precision. there was, as a matter of fact, a great possibility of her not being able to communicate with him for several months, notwithstanding that he might possibly communicate with her. this excursive time was an awakening for swithin. to altered circumstances inevitably followed altered views. that such changes should have a marked effect upon a young man who had made neither grand tour nor petty one--who had, in short, scarcely been away from home in his life--was nothing more than natural. new ideas struggled to disclose themselves and with the addition of strange twinklers to his southern horizon came an absorbed attention that way, and a corresponding forgetfulness of what lay to the north behind his back, whether human or celestial. whoever may deplore it few will wonder that viviette, who till then had stood high in his heaven, if she had not dominated it, sank, like the north star, lower and lower with his retreat southward. master of a large advance of his first year's income in circular notes, he perhaps too readily forgot that the mere act of honour, but for her self-suppression, would have rendered him penniless. meanwhile, to come back and claim her at the specified time, four years thence, if she should not object to be claimed, was as much a part of his programme as were the exploits abroad and elsewhere that were to prelude it. the very thoroughness of his intention for that advanced date inclined him all the more readily to shelve the subject now. her unhappy caution to him not to write too soon was a comfortable license in his present state of tension about sublime scientific things, which knew not woman, nor her sacrifices, nor her fears. in truth he was not only too young in years, but too literal, direct, and uncompromising in nature to understand such a woman as lady constantine; and she suffered for that limitation in him as it had been antecedently probable that she would do. he stayed but a little time at cape town on this his first reconnoitring journey; and on that account wrote to no one from the place. on leaving he found there remained some weeks on his hands before he wished to cross to america; and feeling an irrepressible desire for further studies in navigation on shipboard, and under clear skies, he took the steamer for melbourne; returning thence in due time, and pursuing his journey to america, where he landed at boston. having at last had enough of great circles and other nautical reckonings, and taking no interest in men or cities, this indefatigable scrutineer of the universe went immediately on to cambridge; and there, by the help of an introduction he had brought from england, he revelled for a time in the glories of the gigantic refractor (which he was permitted to use on occasion), and in the pleasures of intercourse with the scientific group around. this brought him on to the time of starting with the transit expedition, when he and his kind became lost to the eye of civilization behind the horizon of the pacific ocean. to speak of their doings on this pilgrimage, of ingress and egress, of tangent and parallax, of external and internal contact, would avail nothing. is it not all written in the chronicles of the astronomical society? more to the point will it be to mention that viviette's letter to cambridge had been returned long before he reached that place, while her missive to marseilles was, of course, misdirected altogether. on arriving in america, uncertain of an address in that country at which he would stay long, swithin wrote his first letter to his grandmother; and in this he ordered that all communications should be sent to await him at cape town, as the only safe spot for finding him, sooner or later. the equatorial he also directed to be forwarded to the same place. at this time, too, he ventured to break viviette's commands, and address a letter to her, not knowing of the strange results that had followed his absence from home. it was february. the transit was over, the scientific company had broken up, and swithin had steamed towards the cape to take up his permanent abode there, with a view to his great task of surveying, charting and theorizing on those exceptional features in the southern skies which had been but partially treated by the younger herschel. having entered table bay and landed on the quay, he called at once at the post-office. two letters were handed him, and he found from the date that they had been waiting there for some time. one of these epistles, which had a weather-worn look as regarded the ink, and was in old-fashioned penmanship, he knew to be from his grandmother. he opened it before he had as much as glanced at the superscription of the second. besides immaterial portions, it contained the following:-- 'j reckon you know by now of our main news this fall, but lest you should not have heard of it j send the exact thing snipped out of the newspaper. nobody expected her to do it quite so soon; but it is said hereabout that my lord bishop and my lady had been drawing nigh to an understanding before the glum tidings of sir blount's taking of his own life reached her; and the account of this wicked deed was so sore afflicting to her mind, and made her poor heart so timid and low, that in charity to my lady her few friends agreed on urging her to let the bishop go on paying his court as before, notwithstanding she had not been a widow-woman near so long as was thought. this, as it turned out, she was willing to do; and when my lord asked her she told him she would marry him at once or never. that's as j was told, and j had it from those that know.' the cutting from the newspaper was an ordinary announcement of marriage between the bishop of melchester and lady constantine. swithin was so astounded at the intelligence of what for the nonce seemed viviette's wanton fickleness that he quite omitted to look at the second letter; and remembered nothing about it till an hour afterwards, when sitting in his own room at the hotel. it was in her handwriting, but so altered that its superscription had not arrested his eye. it had no beginning, or date; but its contents soon acquainted him with her motive for the precipitate act. the few concluding sentences are all that it will be necessary to quote here:-- 'there was no way out of it, even if i could have found you, without infringing one of the conditions i had previously laid down. the long desire of my heart has been not to impoverish you or mar your career. the new desire was to save myself and, still more, another yet unborn. . . . i have done a desperate thing. yet for myself i could do no better, and for you no less. i would have sacrificed my single self to honesty, but i was not alone concerned. what woman has a right to blight a coming life to preserve her personal integrity? . . . the one bright spot is that it saves you and your endowment from further catastrophes, and preserves you to the pleasant paths of scientific fame. i no longer lie like a log across your path, which is now as open as on the day before you saw me, and ere i encouraged you to win me. alas, swithin, i ought to have known better. the folly was great, and the suffering be upon my head! i ought not to have consented to that last interview: all was well till then! . . . well, i have borne much, and am not unprepared. as for you, swithin, by simply pressing straight on your triumph is assured. do not communicate with me in any way--not even in answer to this. do not think of me. do not see me ever any more.--your unhappy 'viviette.' swithin's heart swelled within him in sudden pity for her, first; then he blanched with a horrified sense of what she had done, and at his own relation to the deed. he felt like an awakened somnambulist who should find that he had been accessory to a tragedy during his unconsciousness. she had loosened the knot of her difficulties by cutting it unscrupulously through and through. the big tidings rather dazed than crushed him, his predominant feeling being soon again one of keenest sorrow and sympathy. yet one thing was obvious; he could do nothing--absolutely nothing. the event which he now heard of for the first time had taken place five long months ago. he reflected, and regretted--and mechanically went on with his preparations for settling down to work under the shadow of table mountain. he was as one who suddenly finds the world a stranger place than he thought; but is excluded by age, temperament, and situation from being much more than an astonished spectator of its strangeness. * * * * * the royal observatory was about a mile out of the town, and hither he repaired as soon as he had established himself in lodgings. he had decided, on his first visit to the cape, that it would be highly advantageous to him if he could supplement the occasional use of the large instruments here by the use at his own house of his own equatorial, and had accordingly given directions that it might be sent over from england. the precious possession now arrived; and although the sight of it--of the brasses on which her hand had often rested, of the eyepiece through which her dark eyes had beamed--engendered some decidedly bitter regrets in him for a time, he could not long afford to give to the past the days that were meant for the future. unable to get a room convenient for a private observatory he resolved at last to fix the instrument on a solid pillar in the garden; and several days were spent in accommodating it to its new position. in this latitude there was no necessity for economizing clear nights as he had been obliged to do on the old tower at welland. there it had happened more than once, that after waiting idle through days and nights of cloudy weather, viviette would fix her time for meeting him at an hour when at last he had an opportunity of seeing the sky; so that in giving to her the golden moments of cloudlessness he was losing his chance with the orbs above. those features which usually attract the eye of the visitor to a new latitude are the novel forms of human and vegetable life, and other such sublunary things. but the young man glanced slightingly at these; the changes overhead had all his attention. the old subject was imprinted there, but in a new type. here was a heaven, fixed and ancient as the northern; yet it had never appeared above the welland hills since they were heaved up from beneath. here was an unalterable circumpolar region; but the polar patterns stereotyped in history and legend--without which it had almost seemed that a polar sky could not exist--had never been seen therein. st. cleeve, as was natural, began by cursory surveys, which were not likely to be of much utility to the world or to himself. he wasted several weeks--indeed above two months--in a comparatively idle survey of southern novelties; in the mere luxury of looking at stellar objects whose wonders were known, recounted, and classified, long before his own personality had been heard of. with a child's simple delight he allowed his instrument to rove, evening after evening, from the gorgeous glitter of canopus to the hazy clouds of magellan. before he had well finished this optical prelude there floated over to him from the other side of the equator the postscript to the epistle of his lost viviette. it came in the vehicle of a common newspaper, under the head of 'births:'-- 'april th, --, at the palace, melchester, the wife of the bishop of melchester, of a son.' xli three years passed away, and swithin still remained at the cape, quietly pursuing the work that had brought him there. his memoranda of observations had accumulated to a wheelbarrow load, and he was beginning to shape them into a treatise which should possess some scientific utility. he had gauged the southern skies with greater results than even he himself had anticipated. those unfamiliar constellations which, to the casual beholder, are at most a new arrangement of ordinary points of light, were to this professed astronomer, as to his brethren, a far greater matter. it was below the surface that his material lay. there, in regions revealed only to the instrumental observer, were suns of hybrid kind--fire- fogs, floating nuclei, globes that flew in groups like swarms of bees, and other extraordinary sights--which, when decomposed by swithin's equatorial, turned out to be the beginning of a new series of phenomena instead of the end of an old one. there were gloomy deserts in those southern skies such as the north shows scarcely an example of; sites set apart for the position of suns which for some unfathomable reason were left uncreated, their places remaining ever since conspicuous by their emptiness. the inspection of these chasms brought him a second pulsation of that old horror which he had used to describe to viviette as produced in him by bottomlessness in the north heaven. the ghostly finger of limitless vacancy touched him now on the other side. infinite deeps in the north stellar region had a homely familiarity about them, when compared with infinite deeps in the region of the south pole. this was an even more unknown tract of the unknown. space here, being less the historic haunt of human thought than overhead at home, seemed to be pervaded with a more lonely loneliness. were there given on paper to these astronomical exercitations of st. cleeve a space proportionable to that occupied by his year with viviette at welland, this narrative would treble its length; but not a single additional glimpse would be afforded of swithin in his relations with old emotions. in these experiments with tubes and glasses, important as they were to human intellect, there was little food for the sympathetic instincts which create the changes in a life. that which is the foreground and measuring base of one perspective draught may be the vanishing-point of another perspective draught, while yet they are both draughts of the same thing. swithin's doings and discoveries in the southern sidereal system were, no doubt, incidents of the highest importance to him; and yet from an intersocial point of view they served but the humble purpose of killing time, while other doings, more nearly allied to his heart than to his understanding, developed themselves at home. in the intervals between his professional occupations he took walks over the sand-flats near, or among the farms which were gradually overspreading the country in the vicinity of cape town. he grew familiar with the outline of table mountain, and the fleecy 'devil's table-cloth' which used to settle on its top when the wind was south-east. on these promenades he would more particularly think of viviette, and of that curious pathetic chapter in his life with her which seemed to have wound itself up and ended for ever. those scenes were rapidly receding into distance, and the intensity of his sentiment regarding them had proportionately abated. he felt that there had been something wrong therein, and yet he could not exactly define the boundary of the wrong. viviette's sad and amazing sequel to that chapter had still a fearful, catastrophic aspect in his eyes; but instead of musing over it and its bearings he shunned the subject, as we shun by night the shady scene of a disaster, and keep to the open road. he sometimes contemplated her apart from the past--leading her life in the cathedral close at melchester; and wondered how often she looked south and thought of where he was. on one of these afternoon walks in the neighbourhood of the royal observatory he turned and gazed towards the signal-post on the lion's rump. this was a high promontory to the north-west of table mountain, and overlooked table bay. before his eyes had left the scene the signal was suddenly hoisted on the staff. it announced that a mail steamer had appeared in view over the sea. in the course of an hour he retraced his steps, as he had often done on such occasions, and strolled leisurely across the intervening mile and a half till he arrived at the post-office door. there was no letter from england for him; but there was a newspaper, addressed in the seventeenth century handwriting of his grandmother, who, in spite of her great age, still retained a steady hold on life. he turned away disappointed, and resumed his walk into the country, opening the paper as he went along. a cross in black ink attracted his attention; and it was opposite a name among the 'deaths.' his blood ran icily as he discerned the words 'the palace, melchester.' but it was not she. her husband, the bishop of melchester, had, after a short illness, departed this life at the comparatively early age of fifty years. all the enactments of the bygone days at welland now started up like an awakened army from the ground. but a few months were wanting to the time when he would be of an age to marry without sacrificing the annuity which formed his means of subsistence. it was a point in his life that had had no meaning or interest for him since his separation from viviette, for women were now no more to him than the inhabitants of jupiter. but the whirligig of time having again set viviette free, the aspect of home altered, and conjecture as to her future found room to work anew. but beyond the simple fact that she was a widow he for some time gained not an atom of intelligence concerning her. there was no one of whom he could inquire but his grandmother, and she could tell him nothing about a lady who dwelt far away at melchester. several months slipped by thus; and no feeling within him rose to sufficient strength to force him out of a passive attitude. then by the merest chance his granny stated in one of her rambling epistles that lady constantine was coming to live again at welland in the old house, with her child, now a little boy between three and four years of age. swithin, however, lived on as before. but by the following autumn a change became necessary for the young man himself. his work at the cape was done. his uncle's wishes that he should study there had been more than observed. the materials for his great treatise were collected, and it now only remained for him to arrange, digest, and publish them, for which purpose a return to england was indispensable. so the equatorial was unscrewed, and the stand taken down; the astronomer's barrow-load of precious memoranda, and rolls upon rolls of diagrams, representing three years of continuous labour, were safely packed; and swithin departed for good and all from the shores of cape town. he had long before informed his grandmother of the date at which she might expect him; and in a reply from her, which reached him just previous to sailing, she casually mentioned that she frequently saw lady constantine; that on the last occasion her ladyship had shown great interest in the information that swithin was coming home, and had inquired the time of his return. * * * * * on a late summer day swithin stepped from the train at warborne, and, directing his baggage to be sent on after him, set out on foot for old welland once again. it seemed but the day after his departure, so little had the scene changed. true, there was that change which is always the first to arrest attention in places that are conventionally called unchanging--a higher and broader vegetation at every familiar corner than at the former time. he had not gone a mile when he saw walking before him a clergyman whose form, after consideration, he recognized, in spite of a novel whiteness in that part of his hair that showed below the brim of his hat. swithin walked much faster than this gentleman, and soon was at his side. 'mr. torkingham! i knew it was,' said swithin. mr. torkingham was slower in recognizing the astronomer, but in a moment had greeted him with a warm shake of the hand. 'i have been to the station on purpose to meet you!' cried mr. torkingham, 'and was returning with the idea that you had not come. i am your grandmother's emissary. she could not come herself, and as she was anxious, and nobody else could be spared, i came for her.' then they walked on together. the parson told swithin all about his grandmother, the parish, and his endeavours to enlighten it; and in due course said, 'you are no doubt aware that lady constantine is living again at welland?' swithin said he had heard as much, and added, what was far within the truth, that the news of the bishop's death had been a great surprise to him. 'yes,' said mr. torkingham, with nine thoughts to one word. 'one might have prophesied, to look at him, that melchester would not lack a bishop for the next forty years. yes; pale death knocks at the cottages of the poor and the palaces of kings with an impartial foot!' 'was he a particularly good man?' asked swithin. 'he was not a ken or a heber. to speak candidly, he had his faults, of which arrogance was not the least. but who is perfect?' swithin, somehow, felt relieved to hear that the bishop was not a perfect man. 'his poor wife, i fear, had not a great deal more happiness with him than with her first husband. but one might almost have foreseen it; the marriage was hasty--the result of a red-hot caprice, hardly becoming in a man of his position; and it betokened a want of temperate discretion which soon showed itself in other ways. that's all there was to be said against him, and now it's all over, and things have settled again into their old course. but the bishop's widow is not the lady constantine of former days. no; put it as you will, she is not the same. there seems to be a nameless something on her mind--a trouble--a rooted melancholy, which no man's ministry can reach. formerly she was a woman whose confidence it was easy to gain; but neither religion nor philosophy avails with her now. beyond that, her life is strangely like what it was when you were with us.' conversing thus they pursued the turnpike road till their conversation was interrupted by a crying voice on their left. they looked, and perceived that a child, in getting over an adjoining stile, had fallen on his face. mr. torkingham and swithin both hastened up to help the sufferer, who was a lovely little fellow with flaxen hair, which spread out in a frill of curls from beneath a quaint, close-fitting velvet cap that he wore. swithin picked him up, while mr. torkingham wiped the sand from his lips and nose, and administered a few words of consolation, together with a few sweet-meats, which, somewhat to swithin's surprise, the parson produced as if by magic from his pocket. one half the comfort rendered would have sufficed to soothe such a disposition as the child's. he ceased crying and ran away in delight to his unconscious nurse, who was reaching up for blackberries at a hedge some way off. 'you know who he is, of course?' said mr. torkingham, as they resumed their journey. 'no,' said swithin. 'oh, i thought you did. yet how should you? it is lady constantine's boy--her only child. his fond mother little thinks he is so far away from home.' 'dear me!--lady constantine's--ah, how interesting!' swithin paused abstractedly for a moment, then stepped back again to the stile, while he stood watching the little boy out of sight. 'i can never venture out of doors now without sweets in my pocket,' continued the good-natured vicar: 'and the result is that i meet that young man more frequently on my rounds than any other of my parishioners.' st. cleeve was silent, and they turned into welland lane, where their paths presently diverged, and swithin was left to pursue his way alone. he might have accompanied the vicar yet further, and gone straight to welland house; but it would have been difficult to do so then without provoking inquiry. it was easy to go there now: by a cross path he could be at the mansion almost as soon as by the direct road. and yet swithin did not turn; he felt an indescribable reluctance to see viviette. he could not exactly say why. true, before he knew how the land lay it might be awkward to attempt to call: and this was a sufficient excuse for postponement. in this mood he went on, following the direct way to his grandmother's homestead. he reached the garden-gate, and, looking into the bosky basin where the old house stood, saw a graceful female form moving before the porch, bidding adieu to some one within the door. he wondered what creature of that mould his grandmother could know, and went forward with some hesitation. at his approach the apparition turned, and he beheld, developed into blushing womanhood, one who had once been known to him as the village maiden tabitha lark. seeing swithin, and apparently from an instinct that her presence would not be desirable just then, she moved quickly round into the garden. the returned traveller entered the house, where he found awaiting him poor old mrs. martin, to whose earthly course death stood rather as the asymptote than as the end. she was perceptibly smaller in form than when he had left her, and she could see less distinctly. a rather affecting greeting followed, in which his grandmother murmured the words of israel: '"now let me die, since i have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive."' the form of hannah had disappeared from the kitchen, that ancient servant having been gathered to her fathers about six months before, her place being filled by a young girl who knew not joseph. they presently chatted with much cheerfulness, and his grandmother said, 'have you heard what a wonderful young woman miss lark has become?--a mere fleet-footed, slittering maid when you were last home.' st. cleeve had not heard, but he had partly seen, and he was informed that tabitha had left welland shortly after his own departure, and had studied music with great success in london, where she had resided ever since till quite recently; that she played at concerts, oratorios--had, in short, joined the phalanx of wonderful women who had resolved to eclipse masculine genius altogether, and humiliate the brutal sex to the dust. 'she is only in the garden,' added his grandmother. 'why don't ye go out and speak to her?' swithin was nothing loth, and strolled out under the apple-trees, where he arrived just in time to prevent miss lark from going off by the back gate. there was not much difficulty in breaking the ice between them, and they began to chat with vivacity. now all these proceedings occupied time, for somehow it was very charming to talk to miss lark; and by degrees st. cleeve informed tabitha of his great undertaking, and of the voluminous notes he had amassed, which would require so much rearrangement and recopying by an amanuensis as to absolutely appal him. he greatly feared he should not get one careful enough for such scientific matter; whereupon tabitha said she would be delighted to do it for him. then blushing, and declaring suddenly that it had grown quite late, she left him and the garden for her relation's house hard by. swithin, no less than tabitha, had been surprised by the disappearance of the sun behind the hill; and the question now arose whether it would be advisable to call upon viviette that night. there was little doubt that she knew of his coming; but more than that he could not predicate; and being entirely ignorant of whom she had around her, entirely in the dark as to her present feelings towards him, he thought it would be better to defer his visit until the next day. walking round to the front of the house he beheld the well-known agriculturists hezzy biles, haymoss fry, and some others of the same old school, passing the gate homeward from their work with bundles of wood at their backs. swithin saluted them over the top rail. 'well! do my eyes and ears--' began hezzy; and then, balancing his faggot on end against the hedge, he came forward, the others following. 'says i to myself as soon as i heerd his voice,' hezzy continued (addressing swithin as if he were a disinterested spectator and not himself), 'please god i'll pitch my nitch, and go across and speak to en.' 'i knowed in a winking 'twas some great navigator that i see a standing there,' said haymoss. 'but whe'r 'twere a sort of nabob, or a diment- digger, or a lion-hunter, i couldn't so much as guess till i heerd en speak.' 'and what changes have come over welland since i was last at home?' asked swithin. 'well, mr. san cleeve,' hezzy replied, 'when you've said that a few stripling boys and maidens have busted into blooth, and a few married women have plimmed and chimped (my lady among 'em), why, you've said anighst all, mr. san cleeve.' the conversation thus began was continued on divers matters till they were all enveloped in total darkness, when his old acquaintances shouldered their faggots again and proceeded on their way. now that he was actually within her coasts again swithin felt a little more strongly the influence of the past and viviette than he had been accustomed to do for the last two or three years. during the night he felt half sorry that he had not marched off to the great house to see her, regardless of the time of day. if she really nourished for him any particle of her old affection it had been the cruellest thing not to call. a few questions that he put concerning her to his grandmother elicited that lady constantine had no friends about her--not even her brother--and that her health had not been so good since her return from melchester as formerly. still, this proved nothing as to the state of her heart, and as she had kept a dead silence since the bishop's death it was quite possible that she would meet him with that cold repressive tone and manner which experienced women know so well how to put on when they wish to intimate to the long-lost lover that old episodes are to be taken as forgotten. the next morning he prepared to call, if only on the ground of old acquaintance, for swithin was too straightforward to ascertain anything indirectly. it was rather too early for this purpose when he went out from his grandmother's garden-gate, after breakfast, and he waited in the garden. while he lingered his eye fell on rings-hill speer. it appeared dark, for a moment, against the blue sky behind it; then the fleeting cloud which shadowed it passed on, and the face of the column brightened into such luminousness that the sky behind sank to the complexion of a dark foil. 'surely somebody is on the column,' he said to himself, after gazing at it awhile. instead of going straight to the great house he deviated through the insulating field, now sown with turnips, which surrounded the plantation on rings-hill. by the time that he plunged under the trees he was still more certain that somebody was on the tower. he crept up to the base with proprietary curiosity, for the spot seemed again like his own. the path still remained much as formerly, but the nook in which the cabin had stood was covered with undergrowth. swithin entered the door of the tower, ascended the staircase about half-way on tip-toe, and listened, for he did not wish to intrude on the top if any stranger were there. the hollow spiral, as he knew from old experience, would bring down to his ears the slightest sound from above; and it now revealed to him the words of a duologue in progress at the summit of the tower. 'mother, what shall i do?' a child's voice said. 'shall i sing?' the mother seemed to assent, for the child began-- 'the robin has fled from the wood to the snug habitation of man.' this performance apparently attracted but little attention from the child's companion, for the young voice suggested, as a new form of entertainment, 'shall i say my prayers?' 'yes,' replied one whom swithin had begun to recognize. 'who shall i pray for?' no answer. 'who shall i pray for?' 'pray for father.' 'but he is gone to heaven?' a sigh from viviette was distinctly audible. 'you made a mistake, didn't you, mother?' continued the little one. 'i must have. the strangest mistake a woman ever made!' nothing more was said, and swithin ascended, words from above indicating to him that his footsteps were heard. in another half-minute he rose through the hatchway. a lady in black was sitting in the sun, and the boy with the flaxen hair whom he had seen yesterday was at her feet. 'viviette!' he said. 'swithin!--at last!' she cried. the words died upon her lips, and from very faintness she bent her head. for instead of rushing forward to her he had stood still; and there appeared upon his face a look which there was no mistaking. yes; he was shocked at her worn and faded aspect. the image he had mentally carried out with him to the cape he had brought home again as that of the woman he was now to rejoin. but another woman sat before him, and not the original viviette. her cheeks had lost for ever that firm contour which had been drawn by the vigorous hand of youth, and the masses of hair that were once darkness visible had become touched here and there by a faint grey haze, like the via lactea in a midnight sky. yet to those who had eyes to understand as well as to see, the chastened pensiveness of her once handsome features revealed more promising material beneath than ever her youth had done. but swithin was hopelessly her junior. unhappily for her he had now just arrived at an age whose canon of faith it is that the silly period of woman's life is her only period of beauty. viviette saw it all, and knew that time had at last brought about his revenges. she had tremblingly watched and waited without sleep, ever since swithin had re-entered welland, and it was for this. swithin came forward, and took her by the hand, which she passively allowed him to do. 'swithin, you don't love me,' she said simply. 'o viviette!' 'you don't love me,' she repeated. 'don't say it!' 'yes, but i will! you have a right not to love me. you did once. but now i am an old woman, and you are still a young man; so how can you love me? i do not expect it. it is kind and charitable of you to come and see me here.' 'i have come all the way from the cape,' he faltered, for her insistence took all power out of him to deny in mere politeness what she said. 'yes; you have come from the cape; but not for me,' she answered. 'it would be absurd if you had come for me. you have come because your work there is finished. . . . i like to sit here with my little boy--it is a pleasant spot. it was once something to us, was it not? but that was long ago. you scarcely knew me for the same woman, did you?' 'knew you--yes, of course i knew you!' 'you looked as if you did not. but you must not be surprised at me. i belong to an earlier generation than you, remember.' thus, in sheer bitterness of spirit did she inflict wounds on herself by exaggerating the difference in their years. but she had nevertheless spoken truly. sympathize with her as he might, and as he unquestionably did, he loved her no longer. but why had she expected otherwise? 'o woman,' might a prophet have said to her, 'great is thy faith if thou believest a junior lover's love will last five years!' 'i shall be glad to know through your grandmother how you are getting on,' she said meekly. 'but now i would much rather that we part. yes; do not question me. i would rather that we part. good-bye.' hardly knowing what he did he touched her hand, and obeyed. he was a scientist, and took words literally. there is something in the inexorably simple logic of such men which partakes of the cruelty of the natural laws that are their study. he entered the tower-steps, and mechanically descended; and it was not till he got half-way down that he thought she could not mean what she had said. before leaving cape town he had made up his mind on this one point; that if she were willing to marry him, marry her he would without let or hindrance. that much he morally owed her, and was not the man to demur. and though the swithin who had returned was not quite the swithin who had gone away, though he could not now love her with the sort of love he had once bestowed; he believed that all her conduct had been dictated by the purest benevolence to him, by that charity which 'seeketh not her own.' hence he did not flinch from a wish to deal with loving-kindness towards her--a sentiment perhaps in the long-run more to be prized than lover's love. her manner had caught him unawares; but now recovering himself he turned back determinedly. bursting out upon the roof he clasped her in his arms, and kissed her several times. 'viviette, viviette,' he said, 'i have come to marry you!' she uttered a shriek--a shriek of amazed joy--such as never was heard on that tower before or since--and fell in his arms, clasping his neck. there she lay heavily. not to disturb her he sat down in her seat, still holding her fast. their little son, who had stood with round conjectural eyes throughout the meeting, now came close; and presently looking up to swithin said-- 'mother has gone to sleep.' swithin looked down, and started. her tight clasp had loosened. a wave of whiteness, like that of marble which had never seen the sun, crept up from her neck, and travelled upwards and onwards over her cheek, lips, eyelids, forehead, temples, its margin banishing back the live pink till the latter had entirely disappeared. seeing that something was wrong, yet not understanding what, the little boy began to cry; but in his concentration swithin hardly heard it. 'viviette--viviette!' he said. the child cried with still deeper grief, and, after a momentary hesitation, pushed his hand into swithin's for protection. 'hush, hush! my child,' said swithin distractedly. 'i'll take care of you! o viviette!' he exclaimed again, pressing her face to his. but she did not reply. 'what can this be?' he asked himself. he would not then answer according to his fear. he looked up for help. nobody appeared in sight but tabitha lark, who was skirting the field with a bounding tread--the single bright spot of colour and animation within the wide horizon. when he looked down again his fear deepened to certainty. it was no longer a mere surmise that help was vain. sudden joy after despair had touched an over-strained heart too smartly. viviette was dead. the bishop was avenged. transcribed from the macmillan and co. edition by david price, email ccx @pglaf.org life's little ironies a set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled a few crusted characters by thomas hardy with a map of wessex macmillan and co., limited st. martin's street, london copyright _first collected edition_ . _new edition and reprints_ - _first published by macmillan & co._, _crown_ _ov_, . _reprinted_ , _pockets edition_ , , , , (_twice_), _wessex edition_ contents the son's veto for conscience' sake a tragedy of two ambitions on the western circuit to please his wife the melancholy hussar of the german legion a tradition of eighteen hundred and four a few crusted characters the son's veto chapter i to the eyes of a man viewing it from behind, the nut-brown hair was a wonder and a mystery. under the black beaver hat, surmounted by its tuft of black feathers, the long locks, braided and twisted and coiled like the rushes of a basket, composed a rare, if somewhat barbaric, example of ingenious art. one could understand such weavings and coilings being wrought to last intact for a year, or even a calendar month; but that they should be all demolished regularly at bedtime, after a single day of permanence, seemed a reckless waste of successful fabrication. and she had done it all herself, poor thing. she had no maid, and it was almost the only accomplishment she could boast of. hence the unstinted pains. she was a young invalid lady--not so very much of an invalid--sitting in a wheeled chair, which had been pulled up in the front part of a green enclosure, close to a bandstand, where a concert was going on, during a warm june afternoon. it had place in one of the minor parks or private gardens that are to be found in the suburbs of london, and was the effort of a local association to raise money for some charity. there are worlds within worlds in the great city, and though nobody outside the immediate district had ever heard of the charity, or the band, or the garden, the enclosure was filled with an interested audience sufficiently informed on all these. as the strains proceeded many of the listeners observed the chaired lady, whose back hair, by reason of her prominent position, so challenged inspection. her face was not easily discernible, but the aforesaid cunning tress-weavings, the white ear and poll, and the curve of a cheek which was neither flaccid nor sallow, were signals that led to the expectation of good beauty in front. such expectations are not infrequently disappointed as soon as the disclosure comes; and in the present case, when the lady, by a turn of the head, at length revealed herself, she was not so handsome as the people behind her had supposed, and even hoped--they did not know why. for one thing (alas! the commonness of this complaint), she was less young than they had fancied her to be. yet attractive her face unquestionably was, and not at all sickly. the revelation of its details came each time she turned to talk to a boy of twelve or thirteen who stood beside her, and the shape of whose hat and jacket implied that he belonged to a well-known public school. the immediate bystanders could hear that he called her 'mother.' when the end of the recital was reached, and the audience withdrew, many chose to find their way out by passing at her elbow. almost all turned their heads to take a full and near look at the interesting woman, who remained stationary in the chair till the way should be clear enough for her to be wheeled out without obstruction. as if she expected their glances, and did not mind gratifying their curiosity, she met the eyes of several of her observers by lifting her own, showing these to be soft, brown, and affectionate orbs, a little plaintive in their regard. she was conducted out of the gardens, and passed along the pavement till she disappeared from view, the schoolboy walking beside her. to inquiries made by some persons who watched her away, the answer came that she was the second wife of the incumbent of a neighbouring parish, and that she was lame. she was generally believed to be a woman with a story--an innocent one, but a story of some sort or other. in conversing with her on their way home the boy who walked at her elbow said that he hoped his father had not missed them. 'he have been so comfortable these last few hours that i am sure he cannot have missed us,' she replied. '_has_, dear mother--not _have_!' exclaimed the public-school boy, with an impatient fastidiousness that was almost harsh. 'surely you know that by this time!' his mother hastily adopted the correction, and did not resent his making it, or retaliate, as she might well have done, by bidding him to wipe that crumby mouth of his, whose condition had been caused by surreptitious attempts to eat a piece of cake without taking it out of the pocket wherein it lay concealed. after this the pretty woman and the boy went onward in silence. that question of grammar bore upon her history, and she fell into reverie, of a somewhat sad kind to all appearance. it might have been assumed that she was wondering if she had done wisely in shaping her life as she had shaped it, to bring out such a result as this. in a remote nook in north wessex, forty miles from london, near the thriving county-town of aldbrickham, there stood a pretty village with its church and parsonage, which she knew well enough, but her son had never seen. it was her native village, gaymead, and the first event bearing upon her present situation had occurred at that place when she was only a girl of nineteen. how well she remembered it, that first act in her little tragi-comedy, the death of her reverend husband's first wife. it happened on a spring evening, and she who now and for many years had filled that first wife's place was then parlour-maid in the parson's house. when everything had been done that could be done, and the death was announced, she had gone out in the dusk to visit her parents, who were living in the same village, to tell them the sad news. as she opened the white swing-gate and looked towards the trees which rose westward, shutting out the pale light of the evening sky, she discerned, without much surprise, the figure of a man standing in the hedge, though she roguishly exclaimed as a matter of form, 'oh, sam, how you frightened me!' he was a young gardener of her acquaintance. she told him the particulars of the late event, and they stood silent, these two young people, in that elevated, calmly philosophic mind which is engendered when a tragedy has happened close at hand, and has not happened to the philosophers themselves. but it had its bearing upon their relations. 'and will you stay on now at the vicarage, just the same?' asked he. she had hardly thought of that. 'oh, yes--i suppose!' she said. 'everything will be just as usual, i imagine?' he walked beside her towards her mother's. presently his arm stole round her waist. she gently removed it; but he placed it there again, and she yielded the point. 'you see, dear sophy, you don't know that you'll stay on; you may want a home; and i shall be ready to offer one some day, though i may not be ready just yet. 'why, sam, how can you be so fast! i've never even said i liked 'ee; and it is all your own doing, coming after me!' 'still, it is nonsense to say i am not to have a try at you like the rest.' he stooped to kiss her a farewell, for they had reached her mother's door. 'no, sam; you sha'n't!' she cried, putting her hand over his mouth. 'you ought to be more serious on such a night as this.' and she bade him adieu without allowing him to kiss her or to come indoors. the vicar just left a widower was at this time a man about forty years of age, of good family, and childless. he had led a secluded existence in this college living, partly because there were no resident landowners; and his loss now intensified his habit of withdrawal from outward observation. he was still less seen than heretofore, kept himself still less in time with the rhythm and racket of the movements called progress in the world without. for many months after his wife's decease the economy of his household remained as before; the cook, the housemaid, the parlour-maid, and the man out-of-doors performed their duties or left them undone, just as nature prompted them--the vicar knew not which. it was then represented to him that his servants seemed to have nothing to do in his small family of one. he was struck with the truth of this representation, and decided to cut down his establishment. but he was forestalled by sophy, the parlour-maid, who said one evening that she wished to leave him. 'and why?' said the parson. 'sam hobson has asked me to marry him, sir.' 'well--do you want to marry?' 'not much. but it would be a home for me. and we have heard that one of us will have to leave.' a day or two after she said: 'i don't want to leave just yet, sir, if you don't wish it. sam and i have quarrelled.' he looked up at her. he had hardly ever observed her before, though he had been frequently conscious of her soft presence in the room. what a kitten-like, flexuous, tender creature she was! she was the only one of the servants with whom he came into immediate and continuous relation. what should he do if sophy were gone? sophy did not go, but one of the others did, and things went on quietly again. when mr. twycott, the vicar, was ill, sophy brought up his meals to him, and she had no sooner left the room one day than he heard a noise on the stairs. she had slipped down with the tray, and so twisted her foot that she could not stand. the village surgeon was called in; the vicar got better, but sophy was incapacitated for a long time; and she was informed that she must never again walk much or engage in any occupation which required her to stand long on her feet. as soon as she was comparatively well she spoke to him alone. since she was forbidden to walk and bustle about, and, indeed, could not do so, it became her duty to leave. she could very well work at something sitting down, and she had an aunt a seamstress. the parson had been very greatly moved by what she had suffered on his account, and he exclaimed, 'no, sophy; lame or not lame, i cannot let you go. you must never leave me again!' he came close to her, and, though she could never exactly tell how it happened, she became conscious of his lips upon her cheek. he then asked her to marry him. sophy did not exactly love him, but she had a respect for him which almost amounted to veneration. even if she had wished to get away from him she hardly dared refuse a personage so reverend and august in her eyes, and she assented forthwith to be his wife. thus it happened that one fine morning, when the doors of the church were naturally open for ventilation, and the singing birds fluttered in and alighted on the tie-beams of the roof, there was a marriage-service at the communion-rails, which hardly a soul knew of. the parson and a neighbouring curate had entered at one door, and sophy at another, followed by two necessary persons, whereupon in a short time there emerged a newly-made husband and wife. mr. twycott knew perfectly well that he had committed social suicide by this step, despite sophy's spotless character, and he had taken his measures accordingly. an exchange of livings had been arranged with an acquaintance who was incumbent of a church in the south of london, and as soon as possible the couple removed thither, abandoning their pretty country home, with trees and shrubs and glebe, for a narrow, dusty house in a long, straight street, and their fine peal of bells for the wretchedest one-tongued clangour that ever tortured mortal ears. it was all on her account. they were, however, away from every one who had known her former position; and also under less observation from without than they would have had to put up with in any country parish. sophy the woman was as charming a partner as a man could possess, though sophy the lady had her deficiencies. she showed a natural aptitude for little domestic refinements, so far as related to things and manners; but in what is called culture she was less intuitive. she had now been married more than fourteen years, and her husband had taken much trouble with her education; but she still held confused ideas on the use of 'was' and 'were,' which did not beget a respect for her among the few acquaintances she made. her great grief in this relation was that her only child, on whose education no expense had been and would be spared, was now old enough to perceive these deficiencies in his mother, and not only to see them but to feel irritated at their existence. thus she lived on in the city, and wasted hours in braiding her beautiful hair, till her once apple cheeks waned to pink of the very faintest. her foot had never regained its natural strength after the accident, and she was mostly obliged to avoid walking altogether. her husband had grown to like london for its freedom and its domestic privacy; but he was twenty years his sophy's senior, and had latterly been seized with a serious illness. on this day, however, he had seemed to be well enough to justify her accompanying her son randolph to the concert. chapter ii the next time we get a glimpse of her is when she appears in the mournful attire of a widow. mr. twycott had never rallied, and now lay in a well-packed cemetery to the south of the great city, where, if all the dead it contained had stood erect and alive, not one would have known him or recognized his name. the boy had dutifully followed him to the grave, and was now again at school. throughout these changes sophy had been treated like the child she was in nature though not in years. she was left with no control over anything that had been her husband's beyond her modest personal income. in his anxiety lest her inexperience should be overreached he had safeguarded with trustees all he possibly could. the completion of the boy's course at the public school, to be followed in due time by oxford and ordination, had been all previsioned and arranged, and she really had nothing to occupy her in the world but to eat and drink, and make a business of indolence, and go on weaving and coiling the nut-brown hair, merely keeping a home open for the son whenever he came to her during vacations. foreseeing his probable decease long years before her, her husband in his lifetime had purchased for her use a semi-detached villa in the same long, straight road whereon the church and parsonage faced, which was to be hers as long as she chose to live in it. here she now resided, looking out upon the fragment of lawn in front, and through the railings at the ever-flowing traffic; or, bending forward over the window-sill on the first floor, stretching her eyes far up and down the vista of sooty trees, hazy air, and drab house-facades, along which echoed the noises common to a suburban main thoroughfare. somehow, her boy, with his aristocratic school-knowledge, his grammars, and his aversions, was losing those wide infantine sympathies, extending as far as to the sun and moon themselves, with which he, like other children, had been born, and which his mother, a child of nature herself, had loved in him; he was reducing their compass to a population of a few thousand wealthy and titled people, the mere veneer of a thousand million or so of others who did not interest him at all. he drifted further and further away from her. sophy's _milieu_ being a suburb of minor tradesmen and under-clerks, and her almost only companions the two servants of her own house, it was not surprising that after her husband's death she soon lost the little artificial tastes she had acquired from him, and became--in her son's eyes--a mother whose mistakes and origin it was his painful lot as a gentleman to blush for. as yet he was far from being man enough--if he ever would be--to rate these sins of hers at their true infinitesimal value beside the yearning fondness that welled up and remained penned in her heart till it should be more fully accepted by him, or by some other person or thing. if he had lived at home with her he would have had all of it; but he seemed to require so very little in present circumstances, and it remained stored. her life became insupportably dreary; she could not take walks, and had no interest in going for drives, or, indeed, in travelling anywhere. nearly two years passed without an event, and still she looked on that suburban road, thinking of the village in which she had been born, and whither she would have gone back--o how gladly!--even to work in the fields. taking no exercise, she often could not sleep, and would rise in the night or early morning and look out upon the then vacant thoroughfare, where the lamps stood like sentinels waiting for some procession to go by. an approximation to such a procession was indeed made early every morning about one o'clock, when the country vehicles passed up with loads of vegetables for covent garden market. she often saw them creeping along at this silent and dusky hour--waggon after waggon, bearing green bastions of cabbages nodding to their fall, yet never falling, walls of baskets enclosing masses of beans and peas, pyramids of snow-white turnips, swaying howdahs of mixed produce--creeping along behind aged night-horses, who seemed ever patiently wondering between their hollow coughs why they had always to work at that still hour when all other sentient creatures were privileged to rest. wrapped in a cloak, it was soothing to watch and sympathize with them when depression and nervousness hindered sleep, and to see how the fresh green-stuff brightened to life as it came opposite the lamp, and how the sweating animals steamed and shone with their miles of travel. they had an interest, almost a charm, for sophy, these semirural people and vehicles moving in an urban atmosphere, leading a life quite distinct from that of the daytime toilers on the same road. one morning a man who accompanied a waggon-load of potatoes gazed rather hard at the house-fronts as he passed, and with a curious emotion she thought his form was familiar to her. she looked out for him again. his being an old-fashioned conveyance, with a yellow front, it was easily recognizable, and on the third night after she saw it a second time. the man alongside was, as she had fancied, sam hobson, formerly gardener at gaymead, who would at one time have married her. she had occasionally thought of him, and wondered if life in a cottage with him would not have been a happier lot than the life she had accepted. she had not thought of him passionately, but her now dismal situation lent an interest to his resurrection--a tender interest which it is impossible to exaggerate. she went back to bed, and began thinking. when did these market-gardeners, who travelled up to town so regularly at one or two in the morning, come back? she dimly recollected seeing their empty waggons, hardly noticeable amid the ordinary day-traffic, passing down at some hour before noon. it was only april, but that morning, after breakfast, she had the window opened, and sat looking out, the feeble sun shining full upon her. she affected to sew, but her eyes never left the street. between ten and eleven the desired waggon, now unladen, reappeared on its return journey. but sam was not looking round him then, and drove on in a reverie. 'sam!' cried she. turning with a start, his face lighted up. he called to him a little boy to hold the horse, alighted, and came and stood under her window. 'i can't come down easily, sam, or i would!' she said. 'did you know i lived here?' 'well, mrs. twycott, i knew you lived along here somewhere. i have often looked out for 'ee.' he briefly explained his own presence on the scene. he had long since given up his gardening in the village near aldbrickham, and was now manager at a market-gardener's on the south side of london, it being part of his duty to go up to covent garden with waggon-loads of produce two or three times a week. in answer to her curious inquiry, he admitted that he had come to this particular district because he had seen in the aldbrickham paper, a year or two before, the announcement of the death in south london of the aforetime vicar of gaymead, which had revived an interest in her dwelling-place that he could not extinguish, leading him to hover about the locality till his present post had been secured. they spoke of their native village in dear old north wessex, the spots in which they had played together as children. she tried to feel that she was a dignified personage now, that she must not be too confidential with sam. but she could not keep it up, and the tears hanging in her eyes were indicated in her voice. 'you are not happy, mrs. twycott, i'm afraid?' he said. 'o, of course not! i lost my husband only the year before last.' 'ah! i meant in another way. you'd like to be home again?' 'this is my home--for life. the house belongs to me. but i understand'--she let it out then. 'yes, sam. i long for home--_our_ home! i _should_ like to be there, and never leave it, and die there.' but she remembered herself. 'that's only a momentary feeling. i have a son, you know, a dear boy. he's at school now.' 'somewhere handy, i suppose? i see there's lots on 'em along this road.' 'o no! not in one of these wretched holes! at a public school--one of the most distinguished in england.' 'chok' it all! of course! i forget, ma'am, that you've been a lady for so many years.' 'no, i am not a lady,' she said sadly. 'i never shall be. but he's a gentleman, and that--makes it--o how difficult for me!' chapter iii the acquaintance thus oddly reopened proceeded apace. she often looked out to get a few words with him, by night or by day. her sorrow was that she could not accompany her one old friend on foot a little way, and talk more freely than she could do while he paused before the house. one night, at the beginning of june, when she was again on the watch after an absence of some days from the window, he entered the gate and said softly, 'now, wouldn't some air do you good? i've only half a load this morning. why not ride up to covent garden with me? there's a nice seat on the cabbages, where i've spread a sack. you can be home again in a cab before anybody is up.' she refused at first, and then, trembling with excitement, hastily finished her dressing, and wrapped herself up in cloak and veil, afterwards sidling downstairs by the aid of the handrail, in a way she could adopt on an emergency. when she had opened the door she found sam on the step, and he lifted her bodily on his strong arm across the little forecourt into his vehicle. not a soul was visible or audible in the infinite length of the straight, flat highway, with its ever-waiting lamps converging to points in each direction. the air was fresh as country air at this hour, and the stars shone, except to the north-eastward, where there was a whitish light--the dawn. sam carefully placed her in the seat, and drove on. they talked as they had talked in old days, sam pulling himself up now and then, when he thought himself too familiar. more than once she said with misgiving that she wondered if she ought to have indulged in the freak. 'but i am so lonely in my house,' she added, 'and this makes me so happy!' 'you must come again, dear mrs. twycott. there is no time o' day for taking the air like this.' it grew lighter and lighter. the sparrows became busy in the streets, and the city waxed denser around them. when they approached the river it was day, and on the bridge they beheld the full blaze of morning sunlight in the direction of st. paul's, the river glistening towards it, and not a craft stirring. near covent garden he put her into a cab, and they parted, looking into each other's faces like the very old friends they were. she reached home without adventure, limped to the door, and let herself in with her latch- key unseen. the air and sam's presence had revived her: her cheeks were quite pink--almost beautiful. she had something to live for in addition to her son. a woman of pure instincts, she knew there had been nothing really wrong in the journey, but supposed it conventionally to be very wrong indeed. soon, however, she gave way to the temptation of going with him again, and on this occasion their conversation was distinctly tender, and sam said he never should forget her, notwithstanding that she had served him rather badly at one time. after much hesitation he told her of a plan it was in his power to carry out, and one he should like to take in hand, since he did not care for london work: it was to set up as a master greengrocer down at aldbrickham, the county-town of their native place. he knew of an opening--a shop kept by aged people who wished to retire. 'and why don't you do it, then, sam?' she asked with a slight heartsinking. 'because i'm not sure if--you'd join me. i know you wouldn't--couldn't! such a lady as ye've been so long, you couldn't be a wife to a man like me.' 'i hardly suppose i could!' she assented, also frightened at the idea. 'if you could,' he said eagerly, 'you'd on'y have to sit in the back parlour and look through the glass partition when i was away sometimes--just to keep an eye on things. the lameness wouldn't hinder that . . . i'd keep you as genteel as ever i could, dear sophy--if i might think of it!' he pleaded. 'sam, i'll be frank,' she said, putting her hand on his. 'if it were only myself i would do it, and gladly, though everything i possess would be lost to me by marrying again.' 'i don't mind that! it's more independent.' 'that's good of you, dear, dear sam. but there's something else. i have a son . . . i almost fancy when i am miserable sometimes that he is not really mine, but one i hold in trust for my late husband. he seems to belong so little to me personally, so entirely to his dead father. he is so much educated and i so little that i do not feel dignified enough to be his mother . . . well, he would have to be told.' 'yes. unquestionably.' sam saw her thought and her fear. 'still, you can do as you like, sophy--mrs. twycott,' he added. 'it is not you who are the child, but he.' 'ah, you don't know! sam, if i could, i would marry you, some day. but you must wait a while, and let me think.' it was enough for him, and he was blithe at their parting. not so she. to tell randolph seemed impossible. she could wait till he had gone up to oxford, when what she did would affect his life but little. but would he ever tolerate the idea? and if not, could she defy him? she had not told him a word when the yearly cricket-match came on at lord's between the public schools, though sam had already gone back to aldbrickham. mrs. twycott felt stronger than usual: she went to the match with randolph, and was able to leave her chair and walk about occasionally. the bright idea occurred to her that she could casually broach the subject while moving round among the spectators, when the boy's spirits were high with interest in the game, and he would weigh domestic matters as feathers in the scale beside the day's victory. they promenaded under the lurid july sun, this pair, so wide apart, yet so near, and sophy saw the large proportion of boys like her own, in their broad white collars and dwarf hats, and all around the rows of great coaches under which was jumbled the _debris_ of luxurious luncheons; bones, pie-crusts, champagne-bottles, glasses, plates, napkins, and the family silver; while on the coaches sat the proud fathers and mothers; but never a poor mother like her. if randolph had not appertained to these, had not centred all his interests in them, had not cared exclusively for the class they belonged to, how happy would things have been! a great huzza at some small performance with the bat burst from the multitude of relatives, and randolph jumped wildly into the air to see what had happened. sophy fetched up the sentence that had been already shaped; but she could not get it out. the occasion was, perhaps, an inopportune one. the contrast between her story and the display of fashion to which randolph had grown to regard himself as akin would be fatal. she awaited a better time. it was on an evening when they were alone in their plain suburban residence, where life was not blue but brown, that she ultimately broke silence, qualifying her announcement of a probable second marriage by assuring him that it would not take place for a long time to come, when he would be living quite independently of her. the boy thought the idea a very reasonable one, and asked if she had chosen anybody? she hesitated; and he seemed to have a misgiving. he hoped his stepfather would be a gentleman? he said. 'not what you call a gentleman,' she answered timidly. 'he'll be much as i was before i knew your father;' and by degrees she acquainted him with the whole. the youth's face remained fixed for a moment; then he flushed, leant on the table, and burst into passionate tears. his mother went up to him, kissed all of his face that she could get at, and patted his back as if he were still the baby he once had been, crying herself the while. when he had somewhat recovered from his paroxysm he went hastily to his own room and fastened the door. parleyings were attempted through the keyhole, outside which she waited and listened. it was long before he would reply, and when he did it was to say sternly at her from within: 'i am ashamed of you! it will ruin me! a miserable boor! a churl! a clown! it will degrade me in the eyes of all the gentlemen of england!' 'say no more--perhaps i am wrong! i will struggle against it!' she cried miserably. before randolph left her that summer a letter arrived from sam to inform her that he had been unexpectedly fortunate in obtaining the shop. he was in possession; it was the largest in the town, combining fruit with vegetables, and he thought it would form a home worthy even of her some day. might he not run up to town to see her? she met him by stealth, and said he must still wait for her final answer. the autumn dragged on, and when randolph was home at christmas for the holidays she broached the matter again. but the young gentleman was inexorable. it was dropped for months; renewed again; abandoned under his repugnance; again attempted; and thus the gentle creature reasoned and pleaded till four or five long years had passed. then the faithful sam revived his suit with some peremptoriness. sophy's son, now an undergraduate, was down from oxford one easter, when she again opened the subject. as soon as he was ordained, she argued, he would have a home of his own, wherein she, with her bad grammar and her ignorance, would be an encumbrance to him. better obliterate her as much as possible. he showed a more manly anger now, but would not agree. she on her side was more persistent, and he had doubts whether she could be trusted in his absence. but by indignation and contempt for her taste he completely maintained his ascendency; and finally taking her before a little cross and altar that he had erected in his bedroom for his private devotions, there bade her kneel, and swear that she would not wed samuel hobson without his consent. 'i owe this to my father!' he said. the poor woman swore, thinking he would soften as soon as he was ordained and in full swing of clerical work. but he did not. his education had by this time sufficiently ousted his humanity to keep him quite firm; though his mother might have led an idyllic life with her faithful fruiterer and greengrocer, and nobody have been anything the worse in the world. her lameness became more confirmed as time went on, and she seldom or never left the house in the long southern thoroughfare, where she seemed to be pining her heart away. 'why mayn't i say to sam that i'll marry him? why mayn't i?' she would murmur plaintively to herself when nobody was near. some four years after this date a middle-aged man was standing at the door of the largest fruiterer's shop in aldbrickham. he was the proprietor, but to-day, instead of his usual business attire, he wore a neat suit of black; and his window was partly shuttered. from the railway-station a funeral procession was seen approaching: it passed his door and went out of the town towards the village of gaymead. the man, whose eyes were wet, held his hat in his hand as the vehicles moved by; while from the mourning coach a young smooth-shaven priest in a high waistcoat looked black as a cloud at the shop keeper standing there. _december_ . for conscience' sake chapter i whether the utilitarian or the intuitive theory of the moral sense be upheld, it is beyond question that there are a few subtle-souled persons with whom the absolute gratuitousness of an act of reparation is an inducement to perform it; while exhortation as to its necessity would breed excuses for leaving it undone. the case of mr. millborne and mrs. frankland particularly illustrated this, and perhaps something more. there were few figures better known to the local crossing-sweeper than mr. millborne's, in his daily comings and goings along a familiar and quiet london street, where he lived inside the door marked eleven, though not as householder. in age he was fifty at least, and his habits were as regular as those of a person can be who has no occupation but the study of how to keep himself employed. he turned almost always to the right on getting to the end of his street, then he went onward down bond street to his club, whence he returned by precisely the same course about six o'clock, on foot; or, if he went to dine, later on in a cab. he was known to be a man of some means, though apparently not wealthy. being a bachelor he seemed to prefer his present mode of living as a lodger in mrs. towney's best rooms, with the use of furniture which he had bought ten times over in rent during his tenancy, to having a house of his own. none among his acquaintance tried to know him well, for his manner and moods did not excite curiosity or deep friendship. he was not a man who seemed to have anything on his mind, anything to conceal, anything to impart. from his casual remarks it was generally understood that he was country-born, a native of some place in wessex; that he had come to london as a young man in a banking-house, and had risen to a post of responsibility; when, by the death of his father, who had been fortunate in his investments, the son succeeded to an income which led him to retire from a business life somewhat early. one evening, when he had been unwell for several days, doctor bindon came in, after dinner, from the adjoining medical quarter, and smoked with him over the fire. the patient's ailment was not such as to require much thought, and they talked together on indifferent subjects. 'i am a lonely man, bindon--a lonely man,' millborne took occasion to say, shaking his head gloomily. 'you don't know such loneliness as mine . . . and the older i get the more i am dissatisfied with myself. and to- day i have been, through an accident, more than usually haunted by what, above all other events of my life, causes that dissatisfaction--the recollection of an unfulfilled promise made twenty years ago. in ordinary affairs i have always been considered a man of my word and perhaps it is on that account that a particular vow i once made, and did not keep, comes back to me with a magnitude out of all proportion (i daresay) to its real gravity, especially at this time of day. you know the discomfort caused at night by the half-sleeping sense that a door or window has been left unfastened, or in the day by the remembrance of unanswered letters. so does that promise haunt me from time to time, and has done to-day particularly.' there was a pause, and they smoked on. millborne's eyes, though fixed on the fire, were really regarding attentively a town in the west of england. 'yes,' he continued, 'i have never quite forgotten it, though during the busy years of my life it was shelved and buried under the pressure of my pursuits. and, as i say, to-day in particular, an incident in the law- report of a somewhat similar kind has brought it back again vividly. however, what it was i can tell you in a few words, though no doubt you, as a man of the world, will smile at the thinness of my skin when you hear it . . . i came up to town at one-and-twenty, from toneborough, in outer wessex, where i was born, and where, before i left, i had won the heart of a young woman of my own age. i promised her marriage, took advantage of my promise, and--am a bachelor.' 'the old story.' the other nodded. 'i left the place, and thought at the time i had done a very clever thing in getting so easily out of an entanglement. but i have lived long enough for that promise to return to bother me--to be honest, not altogether as a pricking of the conscience, but as a dissatisfaction with myself as a specimen of the heap of flesh called humanity. if i were to ask you to lend me fifty pounds, which i would repay you next midsummer, and i did not repay you, i should consider myself a shabby sort of fellow, especially if you wanted the money badly. yet i promised that girl just as distinctly; and then coolly broke my word, as if doing so were rather smart conduct than a mean action, for which the poor victim herself, encumbered with a child, and not i, had really to pay the penalty, in spite of certain pecuniary aid that was given. there, that's the retrospective trouble that i am always unearthing; and you may hardly believe that though so many years have elapsed, and it is all gone by and done with, and she must be getting on for an old woman now, as i am for an old man, it really often destroys my sense of self-respect still.' 'o, i can understand it. all depends upon the temperament. thousands of men would have forgotten all about it; so would you, perhaps, if you had married and had a family. did she ever marry?' 'i don't think so. o no--she never did. she left toneborough, and later on appeared under another name at exonbury, in the next county, where she was not known. it is very seldom that i go down into that part of the country, but in passing through exonbury, on one occasion, i learnt that she was quite a settled resident there, as a teacher of music, or something of the kind. that much i casually heard when i was there two or three years ago. but i have never set eyes on her since our original acquaintance, and should not know her if i met her.' 'did the child live?' asked the doctor. 'for several years, certainly,' replied his friend. 'i cannot say if she is living now. it was a little girl. she might be married by this time as far as years go.' 'and the mother--was she a decent, worthy young woman?' 'o yes; a sensible, quiet girl, neither attractive nor unattractive to the ordinary observer; simply commonplace. her position at the time of our acquaintance was not so good as mine. my father was a solicitor, as i think i have told you. she was a young girl in a music-shop; and it was represented to me that it would be beneath my position to marry her. hence the result.' 'well, all i can say is that after twenty years it is probably too late to think of mending such a matter. it has doubtless by this time mended itself. you had better dismiss it from your mind as an evil past your control. of course, if mother and daughter are alive, or either, you might settle something upon them, if you were inclined, and had it to spare.' 'well, i haven't much to spare; and i have relations in narrow circumstances--perhaps narrower than theirs. but that is not the point. were i ever so rich i feel i could not rectify the past by money. i did not promise to enrich her. on the contrary, i told her it would probably be dire poverty for both of us. but i did promise to make her my wife.' 'then find her and do it,' said the doctor jocularly as he rose to leave. 'ah, bindon. that, of course, is the obvious jest. but i haven't the slightest desire for marriage; i am quite content to live as i have lived. i am a bachelor by nature, and instinct, and habit, and everything. besides, though i respect her still (for she was not an atom to blame), i haven't any shadow of love for her. in my mind she exists as one of those women you think well of, but find uninteresting. it would be purely with the idea of putting wrong right that i should hunt her up, and propose to do it off-hand.' 'you don't think of it seriously?' said his surprised friend. 'i sometimes think that i would, if it were practicable; simply, as i say, to recover my sense of being a man of honour.' 'i wish you luck in the enterprise,' said doctor bindon. 'you'll soon be out of that chair, and then you can put your impulse to the test. but--after twenty years of silence--i should say, don't!' chapter ii the doctor's advice remained counterpoised, in millborne's mind, by the aforesaid mood of seriousness and sense of principle, approximating often to religious sentiment, which had been evolving itself in his breast for months, and even years. the feeling, however, had no immediate effect upon mr. millborne's actions. he soon got over his trifling illness, and was vexed with himself for having, in a moment of impulse, confided such a case of conscience to anybody. but the force which had prompted it, though latent, remained with him and ultimately grew stronger. the upshot was that about four months after the date of his illness and disclosure, millborne found himself on a mild spring morning at paddington station, in a train that was starting for the west. his many intermittent thoughts on his broken promise from time to time, in those hours when loneliness brought him face to face with his own personality, had at last resulted in this course. the decisive stimulus had been given when, a day or two earlier, on looking into a post-office directory, he learnt that the woman he had not met for twenty years was still living on at exonbury under the name she had assumed when, a year or two after her disappearance from her native town and his, she had returned from abroad as a young widow with a child, and taken up her residence at the former city. her condition was apparently but little changed, and her daughter seemed to be with her, their names standing in the directory as 'mrs. leonora frankland and miss frankland, teachers of music and dancing.' mr. millborne reached exonbury in the afternoon, and his first business, before even taking his luggage into the town, was to find the house occupied by the teachers. standing in a central and open place it was not difficult to discover, a well-burnished brass doorplate bearing their names prominently. he hesitated to enter without further knowledge, and ultimately took lodgings over a toyshop opposite, securing a sitting-room which faced a similar drawing or sitting-room at the franklands', where the dancing lessons were given. installed here he was enabled to make indirectly, and without suspicion, inquiries and observations on the character of the ladies over the way, which he did with much deliberateness. he learnt that the widow, mrs. frankland, with her one daughter, frances, was of cheerful and excellent repute, energetic and painstaking with her pupils, of whom she had a good many, and in whose tuition her daughter assisted her. she was quite a recognized townswoman, and though the dancing branch of her profession was perhaps a trifle worldly, she was really a serious-minded lady who, being obliged to live by what she knew how to teach, balanced matters by lending a hand at charitable bazaars, assisting at sacred concerts, and giving musical recitations in aid of funds for bewildering happy savages, and other such enthusiasms of this enlightened country. her daughter was one of the foremost of the bevy of young women who decorated the churches at easter and christmas, was organist in one of those edifices, and had subscribed to the testimonial of a silver broth-basin that was presented to the reverend mr. walker as a token of gratitude for his faithful and arduous intonations of six months as sub-precentor in the cathedral. altogether mother and daughter appeared to be a typical and innocent pair among the genteel citizens of exonbury. as a natural and simple way of advertising their profession they allowed the windows of the music-room to be a little open, so that you had the pleasure of hearing all along the street at any hour between sunrise and sunset fragmentary gems of classical music as interpreted by the young people of twelve or fourteen who took lessons there. but it was said that mrs. frankland made most of her income by letting out pianos on hire, and by selling them as agent for the makers. the report pleased millborne; it was highly creditable, and far better than he had hoped. he was curious to get a view of the two women who led such blameless lives. he had not long to wait to gain a glimpse of leonora. it was when she was standing on her own doorstep, opening her parasol, on the morning after his arrival. she was thin, though not gaunt; and a good, well-wearing, thoughtful face had taken the place of the one which had temporarily attracted him in the days of his nonage. she wore black, and it became her in her character of widow. the daughter next appeared; she was a smoothed and rounded copy of her mother, with the same decision in her mien that leonora had, and a bounding gait in which he traced a faint resemblance to his own at her age. for the first time he absolutely made up his mind to call on them. but his antecedent step was to send leonora a note the next morning, stating his proposal to visit her, and suggesting the evening as the time, because she seemed to be so greatly occupied in her professional capacity during the day. he purposely worded his note in such a form as not to require an answer from her which would be possibly awkward to write. no answer came. naturally he should not have been surprised at this; and yet he felt a little checked, even though she had only refrained from volunteering a reply that was not demanded. at eight, the hour fixed by himself, he crossed over and was passively admitted by the servant. mrs. frankland, as she called herself, received him in the large music-and-dancing room on the first-floor front, and not in any private little parlour as he had expected. this cast a distressingly business-like colour over their first meeting after so many years of severance. the woman he had wronged stood before him, well-dressed, even to his metropolitan eyes, and her manner as she came up to him was dignified even to hardness. she certainly was not glad to see him. but what could he expect after a neglect of twenty years! 'how do you do, mr. millborne?' she said cheerfully, as to any chance caller. 'i am obliged to receive you here because my daughter has a friend downstairs.' 'your daughter--and mine.' 'ah--yes, yes,' she replied hastily, as if the addition had escaped her memory. 'but perhaps the less said about that the better, in fairness to me. you will consider me a widow, please.' 'certainly, leonora . . . ' he could not get on, her manner was so cold and indifferent. the expected scene of sad reproach, subdued to delicacy by the run of years, was absent altogether. he was obliged to come to the point without preamble. 'you are quite free, leonora--i mean as to marriage? there is nobody who has your promise, or--' 'o yes; quite free, mr. millborne,' she said, somewhat surprised. 'then i will tell you why i have come. twenty years ago i promised to make you my wife; and i am here to fulfil that promise. heaven forgive my tardiness!' her surprise was increased, but she was not agitated. she seemed to become gloomy, disapproving. 'i could not entertain such an idea at this time of life,' she said after a moment or two. 'it would complicate matters too greatly. i have a very fair income, and require no help of any sort. i have no wish to marry . . . what could have induced you to come on such an errand now? it seems quite extraordinary, if i may say so!' 'it must--i daresay it does,' millborne replied vaguely; 'and i must tell you that impulse--i mean in the sense of passion--has little to do with it. i wish to marry you, leonora; i much desire to marry you. but it is an affair of conscience, a case of fulfilment. i promised you, and it was dishonourable of me to go away. i want to remove that sense of dishonour before i die. no doubt we might get to love each other as warmly as we did in old times?' she dubiously shook her head. 'i appreciate your motives, mr. millborne; but you must consider my position; and you will see that, short of the personal wish to marry, which i don't feel, there is no reason why i should change my state, even though by so doing i should ease your conscience. my position in this town is a respected one; i have built it up by my own hard labours, and, in short, i don't wish to alter it. my daughter, too, is just on the verge of an engagement to be married, to a young man who will make her an excellent husband. it will be in every way a desirable match for her. he is downstairs now.' 'does she know--anything about me?' 'o no, no; god forbid! her father is dead and buried to her. so that, you see, things are going on smoothly, and i don't want to disturb their progress.' he nodded. 'very well,' he said, and rose to go. at the door, however, he came back again. 'still, leonora,' he urged, 'i have come on purpose; and i don't see what disturbance would be caused. you would simply marry an old friend. won't you reconsider? it is no more than right that we should be united, remembering the girl.' she shook her head, and patted with her foot nervously. 'well, i won't detain you,' he added. 'i shall not be leaving exonbury yet. you will allow me to see you again?' 'yes; i don't mind,' she said reluctantly. the obstacles he had encountered, though they did not reanimate his dead passion for leonora, did certainly make it appear indispensable to his peace of mind to overcome her coldness. he called frequently. the first meeting with the daughter was a trying ordeal, though he did not feel drawn towards her as he had expected to be; she did not excite his sympathies. her mother confided to frances the errand of 'her old friend,' which was viewed by the daughter with strong disfavour. his desire being thus uncongenial to both, for a long time millborne made not the least impression upon mrs. frankland. his attentions pestered her rather than pleased her. he was surprised at her firmness, and it was only when he hinted at moral reasons for their union that she was ever shaken. 'strictly speaking,' he would say, 'we ought, as honest persons, to marry; and that's the truth of it, leonora.' 'i have looked at it in that light,' she said quickly. 'it struck me at the very first. but i don't see the force of the argument. i totally deny that after this interval of time i am bound to marry you for honour's sake. i would have married you, as you know well enough, at the proper time. but what is the use of remedies now?' they were standing at the window. a scantly-whiskered young man, in clerical attire, called at the door below. leonora flushed with interest. 'who is he?' said mr. millborne. 'my frances's lover. i am so sorry--she is not at home! ah! they have told him where she is, and he has gone to find her . . . i hope that suit will prosper, at any rate!' 'why shouldn't it?' 'well, he cannot marry yet; and frances sees but little of him now he has left exonbury. he was formerly doing duty here, but now he is curate of st. john's, ivell, fifty miles up the line. there is a tacit agreement between them, but--there have been friends of his who object, because of our vocation. however, he sees the absurdity of such an objection as that, and is not influenced by it.' 'your marriage with me would help the match, instead of hindering it, as you have said.' 'do you think it would?' 'it certainly would, by taking you out of this business altogether.' by chance he had found the way to move her somewhat, and he followed it up. this view was imparted to mrs. frankland's daughter, and it led her to soften her opposition. millborne, who had given up his lodging in exonbury, journeyed to and fro regularly, till at last he overcame her negations, and she expressed a reluctant assent. they were married at the nearest church; and the goodwill--whatever that was--of the music-and-dancing connection was sold to a successor only too ready to jump into the place, the millbornes having decided to live in london. chapter iii millborne was a householder in his old district, though not in his old street, and mrs. millborne and their daughter had turned themselves into londoners. frances was well reconciled to the removal by her lover's satisfaction at the change. it suited him better to travel from ivell a hundred miles to see her in london, where he frequently had other engagements, than fifty in the opposite direction where nothing but herself required his presence. so here they were, furnished up to the attics, in one of the small but popular streets of the west district, in a house whose front, till lately of the complexion of a chimney-sweep, had been scraped to show to the surprised wayfarer the bright yellow and red brick that had lain lurking beneath the soot of fifty years. the social lift that the two women had derived from the alliance was considerable; but when the exhilaration which accompanies a first residence in london, the sensation of standing on a pivot of the world, had passed, their lives promised to be somewhat duller than when, at despised exonbury, they had enjoyed a nodding acquaintance with three- fourths of the town. mr. millborne did not criticise his wife; he could not. whatever defects of hardness and acidity his original treatment and the lapse of years might have developed in her, his sense of a realized idea, of a re-established self-satisfaction, was always thrown into the scale on her side, and out-weighed all objections. it was about a month after their settlement in town that the household decided to spend a week at a watering-place in the isle of wight, and while there the reverend percival cope (the young curate aforesaid) came to see them, frances in particular. no formal engagement of the young pair had been announced as yet, but it was clear that their mutual understanding could not end in anything but marriage without grievous disappointment to one of the parties at least. not that frances was sentimental. she was rather of the imperious sort, indeed; and, to say all, the young girl had not fulfilled her father's expectations of her. but he hoped and worked for her welfare as sincerely as any father could do. mr. cope was introduced to the new head of the family, and stayed with them in the island two or three days. on the last day of his visit they decided to venture on a two hours' sail in one of the small yachts which lay there for hire. the trip had not progressed far before all, except the curate, found that sailing in a breeze did not quite agree with them; but as he seemed to enjoy the experience, the other three bore their condition as well as they could without grimace or complaint, till the young man, observing their discomfort, gave immediate directions to tack about. on the way back to port they sat silent, facing each other. nausea in such circumstances, like midnight watching, fatigue, trouble, fright, has this marked effect upon the countenance, that it often brings out strongly the divergences of the individual from the norm of his race, accentuating superficial peculiarities to radical distinctions. unexpected physiognomies will uncover themselves at these times in well- known faces; the aspect becomes invested with the spectral presence of entombed and forgotten ancestors; and family lineaments of special or exclusive cast, which in ordinary moments are masked by a stereotyped expression and mien, start up with crude insistence to the view. frances, sitting beside her mother's husband, with mr. cope opposite, was naturally enough much regarded by the curate during the tedious sail home; at first with sympathetic smiles. then, as the middle-aged father and his child grew each gray-faced, as the pretty blush of frances disintegrated into spotty stains, and the soft rotundities of her features diverged from their familiar and reposeful beauty into elemental lines, cope was gradually struck with the resemblance between a pair in their discomfort who in their ease presented nothing to the eye in common. mr. millborne and frances in their indisposition were strangely, startlingly alike. the inexplicable fact absorbed cope's attention quite. he forgot to smile at frances, to hold her hand; and when they touched the shore he remained sitting for some moments like a man in a trance. as they went homeward, and recovered their complexions and contours, the similarities one by one disappeared, and frances and mr. millborne were again masked by the commonplace differences of sex and age. it was as if, during the voyage, a mysterious veil had been lifted, temporarily revealing a strange pantomime of the past. during the evening he said to her casually: 'is your step-father a cousin of your mother, dear frances?' 'oh, no,' said she. 'there is no relationship. he was only an old friend of hers. why did you suppose such a thing?' he did not explain, and the next morning started to resume his duties at ivell. cope was an honest young fellow, and shrewd withal. at home in his quiet rooms in st. peter's street, ivell, he pondered long and unpleasantly on the revelations of the cruise. the tale it told was distinct enough, and for the first time his position was an uncomfortable one. he had met the franklands at exonbury as parishioners, had been attracted by frances, and had floated thus far into an engagement which was indefinite only because of his inability to marry just yet. the franklands' past had apparently contained mysteries, and it did not coincide with his judgment to marry into a family whose mystery was of the sort suggested. so he sat and sighed, between his reluctance to lose frances and his natural dislike of forming a connection with people whose antecedents would not bear the strictest investigation. a passionate lover of the old-fashioned sort might possibly never have halted to weigh these doubts; but though he was in the church cope's affections were fastidious--distinctly tempered with the alloys of the century's decadence. he delayed writing to frances for some while, simply because he could not tune himself up to enthusiasm when worried by suspicions of such a kind. meanwhile the millbornes had returned to london, and frances was growing anxious. in talking to her mother of cope she had innocently alluded to his curious inquiry if her mother and her step-father were connected by any tie of cousinship. mrs. millborne made her repeat the words. frances did so, and watched with inquisitive eyes their effect upon her elder. 'what is there so startling in his inquiry then?' she asked. 'can it have anything to do with his not writing to me?' her mother flinched, but did not inform her, and frances also was now drawn within the atmosphere of suspicion. that night when standing by chance outside the chamber of her parents she heard for the first time their voices engaged in a sharp altercation. the apple of discord had, indeed, been dropped into the house of the millbornes. the scene within the chamber-door was mrs. millborne standing before her dressing-table, looking across to her husband in the dressing-room adjoining, where he was sitting down, his eyes fixed on the floor. 'why did you come and disturb my life a second time?' she harshly asked. 'why did you pester me with your conscience, till i was driven to accept you to get rid of your importunity? frances and i were doing well: the one desire of my life was that she should marry that good young man. and now the match is broken off by your cruel interference! why did you show yourself in my world again, and raise this scandal upon my hard-won respectability--won by such weary years of labour as none will ever know!' she bent her face upon the table and wept passionately. there was no reply from mr. millborne. frances lay awake nearly all that night, and when at breakfast-time the next morning still no letter appeared from mr. cope, she entreated her mother to go to ivell and see if the young man were ill. mrs. millborne went, returning the same day. frances, anxious and haggard, met her at the station. was all well? her mother could not say it was; though he was not ill. one thing she had found out, that it was a mistake to hunt up a man when his inclinations were to hold aloof. returning with her mother in the cab frances insisted upon knowing what the mystery was which plainly had alienated her lover. the precise words which had been spoken at the interview with him that day at ivell mrs. millborne could not be induced to repeat; but thus far she admitted, that the estrangement was fundamentally owing to mr. millborne having sought her out and married her. 'and why did he seek you out--and why were you obliged to marry him?' asked the distressed girl. then the evidences pieced themselves together in her acute mind, and, her colour gradually rising, she asked her mother if what they pointed to was indeed the fact. her mother admitted that it was. a flush of mortification succeeded to the flush of shame upon the young woman's face. how could a scrupulously correct clergyman and lover like mr. cope ask her to be his wife after this discovery of her irregular birth? she covered her eyes with her hands in a silent despair. in the presence of mr. millborne they at first suppressed their anguish. but by and by their feelings got the better of them, and when he was asleep in his chair after dinner mrs. millborne's irritation broke out. the embittered frances joined her in reproaching the man who had come as the spectre to their intended feast of hymen, and turned its promise to ghastly failure. 'why were you so weak, mother, as to admit such an enemy to your house--one so obviously your evil genius--much less accept him as a husband, after so long? if you had only told me all, i could have advised you better! but i suppose i have no right to reproach him, bitter as i feel, and even though he has blighted my life for ever!' 'frances, i did hold out; i saw it was a mistake to have any more to say to a man who had been such an unmitigated curse to me! but he would not listen; he kept on about his conscience and mine, till i was bewildered, and said yes! . . . bringing us away from a quiet town where we were known and respected--what an ill-considered thing it was! o the content of those days! we had society there, people in our own position, who did not expect more of us than we expected of them. here, where there is so much, there is nothing! he said london society was so bright and brilliant that it would be like a new world. it may be to those who are in it; but what is that to us two lonely women; we only see it flashing past! . . . o the fool, the fool that i was!' now millborne was not so soundly asleep as to prevent his hearing these animadversions that were almost execrations, and many more of the same sort. as there was no peace for him at home, he went again to his club, where, since his reunion with leonora, he had seldom if ever been seen. but the shadow of the troubles in his household interfered with his comfort here also; he could not, as formerly, settle down into his favourite chair with the evening paper, reposeful in the celibate's sense that where he was his world's centre had its fixture. his world was now an ellipse, with a dual centrality, of which his own was not the major. the young curate of ivell still held aloof, tantalizing frances by his elusiveness. plainly he was waiting upon events. millborne bore the reproaches of his wife and daughter almost in silence; but by degrees he grew meditative, as if revolving a new idea. the bitter cry about blighting their existence at length became so impassioned that one day millborne calmly proposed to return again to the country; not necessarily to exonbury, but, if they were willing, to a little old manor-house which he had found was to be let, standing a mile from mr. cope's town of ivell. they were surprised, and, despite their view of him as the bringer of ill, were disposed to accede. 'though i suppose,' said mrs. millborne to him, 'it will end in mr. cope's asking you flatly about the past, and your being compelled to tell him; which may dash all my hopes for frances. she gets more and more like you every day, particularly when she is in a bad temper. people will see you together, and notice it; and i don't know what may come of it!' 'i don't think they will see us together,' he said; but he entered into no argument when she insisted otherwise. the removal was eventually resolved on; the town-house was disposed of; and again came the invasion by furniture-men and vans, till all the movables and servants were whisked away. he sent his wife and daughter to an hotel while this was going on, taking two or three journeys himself to ivell to superintend the refixing, and the improvement of the grounds. when all was done he returned to them in town. the house was ready for their reception, he told them, and there only remained the journey. he accompanied them and their personal luggage to the station only, having, he said, to remain in town a short time on business with his lawyer. they went, dubious and discontented--for the much-loved cope had made no sign. 'if we were going down to live here alone,' said mrs millborne to her daughter in the train; 'and there was no intrusive tell-tale presence! . . . but let it be!' the house was a lovely little place in a grove of elms, and they liked it much. the first person to call upon them as new residents was mr. cope. he was delighted to find that they had come so near, and (though he did not say this) meant to live in such excellent style. he had not, however, resumed the manner of a lover. 'your father spoils all!' murmured mrs. millborne. but three days later she received a letter from her husband, which caused her no small degree of astonishment. it was written from boulogne. it began with a long explanation of settlements of his property, in which he had been engaged since their departure. the chief feature in the business was that mrs. millborne found herself the absolute owner of a comfortable sum in personal estate, and frances of a life-interest in a larger sum, the principal to be afterwards divided amongst her children if she had any. the remainder of his letter ran as hereunder:-- 'i have learnt that there are some derelictions of duty which cannot be blotted out by tardy accomplishment. our evil actions do not remain isolated in the past, waiting only to be reversed: like locomotive plants they spread and re-root, till to destroy the original stem has no material effect in killing them. i made a mistake in searching you out; i admit it; whatever the remedy may be in such cases it is not marriage, and the best thing for you and me is that you do not see me more. you had better not seek me, for you will not be likely to find me: you are well provided for, and we may do ourselves more harm than good by meeting again. 'f. m.' millborne, in short, disappeared from that day forward. but a searching inquiry would have revealed that, soon after the millbornes went to ivell, an englishman, who did not give the name of millborne, took up his residence in brussels; a man who might have been recognized by mrs. millborne if she had met him. one afternoon in the ensuing summer, when this gentleman was looking over the english papers, he saw the announcement of miss frances frankland's marriage. she had become the reverend mrs. cope. 'thank god!' said the gentleman. but his momentary satisfaction was far from being happiness. as he formerly had been weighted with a bad conscience, so now was he burdened with the heavy thought which oppressed antigone, that by honourable observance of a rite he had obtained for himself the reward of dishonourable laxity. occasionally he had to be helped to his lodgings by his servant from the _cercle_ he frequented, through having imbibed a little too much liquor to be able to take care of himself. but he was harmless, and even when he had been drinking said little. _march_ . a tragedy of two ambitions chapter i the shouts of the village-boys came in at the window, accompanied by broken laughter from loungers at the inn-door; but the brothers halborough worked on. they were sitting in a bedroom of the master-millwright's house, engaged in the untutored reading of greek and latin. it was no tale of homeric blows and knocks, argonautic voyaging, or theban family woe that inflamed their imaginations and spurred them onward. they were plodding away at the greek testament, immersed in a chapter of the idiomatic and difficult epistle to the hebrews. the dog-day sun in its decline reached the low ceiling with slanting sides, and the shadows of the great goat's-willow swayed and interchanged upon the walls like a spectral army manoeuvring. the open casement which admitted the remoter sounds now brought the voice of some one close at hand. it was their sister, a pretty girl of fourteen, who stood in the court below. 'i can see the tops of your heads! what's the use of staying up there? i like you not to go out with the street-boys; but do come and play with me!' they treated her as an inadequate interlocutor, and put her off with some slight word. she went away disappointed. presently there was a dull noise of heavy footsteps at the side of the house, and one of the brothers sat up. 'i fancy i hear him coming,' he murmured, his eyes on the window. a man in the light drab clothes of an old-fashioned country tradesman approached from round the corner, reeling as he came. the elder son flushed with anger, rose from his books, and descended the stairs. the younger sat on, till, after the lapse of a few minutes, his brother re- entered the room. 'did rosa see him?' 'no.' 'nor anybody?' 'no.' 'what have you done with him?' 'he's in the straw-shed. i got him in with some trouble, and he has fallen asleep. i thought this would be the explanation of his absence! no stones dressed for miller kench, the great wheel of the saw-mills waiting for new float-boards, even the poor folk not able to get their waggons wheeled.' 'what _is_ the use of poring over this!' said the younger, shutting up donnegan's _lexicon_ with a slap. 'o if we had only been able to keep mother's nine hundred pounds, what we could have done!' 'how well she had estimated the sum necessary! four hundred and fifty each, she thought. and i have no doubt that we could have done it on that, with care.' this loss of the nine hundred pounds was the sharp thorn of their crown. it was a sum which their mother had amassed with great exertion and self- denial, by adding to a chance legacy such other small amounts as she could lay hands on from time to time; and she had intended with the hoard to indulge the dear wish of her heart--that of sending her sons, joshua and cornelius, to one of the universities, having been informed that from four hundred to four hundred and fifty each might carry them through their terms with such great economy as she knew she could trust them to practise. but she had died a year or two before this time, worn out by too keen a strain towards these ends; and the money, coming unreservedly into the hands of their father, had been nearly dissipated. with its exhaustion went all opportunity and hope of a university degree for the sons. 'it drives me mad when i think of it,' said joshua, the elder. 'and here we work and work in our own bungling way, and the utmost we can hope for is a term of years as national schoolmasters, and possible admission to a theological college, and ordination as despised licentiates.' the anger of the elder was reflected as simple sadness in the face of the other. 'we can preach the gospel as well without a hood on our surplices as with one,' he said with feeble consolation. 'preach the gospel--true,' said joshua with a slight pursing of mouth. 'but we can't rise!' 'let us make the best of it, and grind on.' the other was silent, and they drearily bent over their books again. the cause of all this gloom, the millwright halborough, now snoring in the shed, had been a thriving master-machinist, notwithstanding his free and careless disposition, till a taste for a more than adequate quantity of strong liquor took hold of him; since when his habits had interfered with his business sadly. already millers went elsewhere for their gear, and only one set of hands was now kept going, though there were formerly two. already he found a difficulty in meeting his men at the week's end, and though they had been reduced in number there was barely enough work to do for those who remained. the sun dropped lower and vanished, the shouts of the village children ceased to resound, darkness cloaked the students' bedroom, and all the scene outwardly breathed peace. none knew of the fevered youthful ambitions that throbbed in two breasts within the quiet creeper-covered walls of the millwright's house. in a few months the brothers left the village of their birth to enter themselves as students in a training college for schoolmasters; first having placed their young sister rosa under as efficient a tuition at a fashionable watering-place as the means at their disposal could command. chapter ii a man in semi-clerical dress was walking along the road which led from the railway-station into a provincial town. as he walked he read persistently, only looking up once now and then to see that he was keeping on the foot track and to avoid other passengers. at those moments, whoever had known the former students at the millwright's would have perceived that one of them, joshua halborough, was the peripatetic reader here. what had been simple force in the youth's face was energized judgment in the man's. his character was gradually writing itself out in his countenance. that he was watching his own career with deeper and deeper interest, that he continually 'heard his days before him,' and cared to hear little else, might have been hazarded from what was seen there. his ambitions were, in truth, passionate, yet controlled; so that the germs of many more plans than ever blossomed to maturity had place in him; and forward visions were kept purposely in twilight, to avoid distraction. events so far had been encouraging. shortly after assuming the mastership of his first school he had obtained an introduction to the bishop of a diocese far from his native county, who had looked upon him as a promising young man and taken him in hand. he was now in the second year of his residence at the theological college of the cathedral-town, and would soon be presented for ordination. he entered the town, turned into a back street, and then into a yard, keeping his book before him till he set foot under the arch of the latter place. round the arch was written 'national school,' and the stonework of the jambs was worn away as nothing but boys and the waves of ocean will wear it. he was soon amid the sing-song accents of the scholars. his brother cornelius, who was the schoolmaster here, laid down the pointer with which he was directing attention to the capes of europe, and came forward. 'that's his brother jos!' whispered one of the sixth standard boys. 'he's going to be a pa'son, he's now at college.' 'corney is going to be one too, when he's saved enough money,' said another. after greeting his brother, whom he had not seen for several months, the junior began to explain his system of teaching geography. but halborough the elder took no interest in the subject. 'how about your own studies?' he asked. 'did you get the books i sent?' cornelius had received them, and he related what he was doing. 'mind you work in the morning. what time do you get up?' the younger replied: 'half-past five.' 'half-past four is not a minute too soon this time of the year. there is no time like the morning for construing. i don't know why, but when i feel even too dreary to read a novel i can translate--there is something mechanical about it i suppose. now, cornelius, you are rather behindhand, and have some heavy reading before you if you mean to get out of this next christmas.' 'i am afraid i have.' 'we must soon sound the bishop. i am sure you will get a title without difficulty when he has heard all. the sub-dean, the principal of my college, says that the best plan will be for you to come there when his lordship is present at an examination, and he'll get you a personal interview with him. mind you make a good impression upon him. i found in my case that that was everything and doctrine almost nothing. you'll do for a deacon, corney, if not for a priest.' the younger remained thoughtful. 'have you heard from rosa lately?' he asked; 'i had a letter this morning.' 'yes. the little minx writes rather too often. she is homesick--though brussels must be an attractive place enough. but she must make the most of her time over there. i thought a year would be enough for her, after that high-class school at sandbourne, but i have decided to give her two, and make a good job of it, expensive as the establishment is.' their two rather harsh faces had softened directly they began to speak of their sister, whom they loved more ambitiously than they loved themselves. 'but where is the money to come from, joshua?' 'i have already got it.' he looked round, and finding that some boys were near withdrew a few steps. 'i have borrowed it at five per cent. from the farmer who used to occupy the farm next our field. you remember him.' 'but about paying him?' 'i shall pay him by degrees out of my stipend. no, cornelius, it was no use to do the thing by halves. she promises to be a most attractive, not to say beautiful, girl. i have seen that for years; and if her face is not her fortune, her face and her brains together will be, if i observe and contrive aright. that she should be, every inch of her, an accomplished and refined woman, was indispensable for the fulfilment of her destiny, and for moving onwards and upwards with us; and she'll do it, you will see. i'd half starve myself rather than take her away from that school now.' they looked round the school they were in. to cornelius it was natural and familiar enough, but to joshua, with his limited human sympathies, who had just dropped in from a superior sort of place, the sight jarred unpleasantly, as being that of something he had left behind. 'i shall be glad when you are out of this,' he said, 'and in your pulpit, and well through your first sermon.' 'you may as well say inducted into my fat living, while you are about it.' 'ah, well--don't think lightly of the church. there's a fine work for any man of energy in the church, as you'll find,' he said fervidly. 'torrents of infidelity to be stemmed, new views of old subjects to be expounded, truths in spirit to be substituted for truths in the letter . . . ' he lapsed into reverie with the vision of his career, persuading himself that it was ardour for christianity which spurred him on, and not pride of place. he had shouldered a body of doctrine, and was prepared to defend it tooth and nail, solely for the honour and glory that warriors win. 'if the church is elastic, and stretches to the shape of the time, she'll last, i suppose,' said cornelius. 'if not--. only think, i bought a copy of paley's _evidences_, best edition, broad margins, excellent preservation, at a bookstall the other day for--ninepence; and i thought that at this rate christianity must be in rather a bad way.' 'no, no!' said the other almost, angrily. 'it only shows that such defences are no longer necessary. men's eyes can see the truth without extraneous assistance. besides, we are in for christianity, and must stick to her whether or no. i am just now going right through pusey's _library of the fathers_.' 'you'll be a bishop, joshua, before you have done!' 'ah!' said the other bitterly, shaking his head. 'perhaps i might have been--i might have been! but where is my d.d. or ll.d.; and how be a bishop without that kind of appendage? archbishop tillotson was the son of a sowerby clothier, but he was sent to clare college. to hail oxford or cambridge as _alma mater_ is not for me--for us! my god! when i think of what we should have been--what fair promise has been blighted by that cursed, worthless--' 'hush, hush! . . . but i feel it, too, as much as you. i have seen it more forcibly lately. you would have obtained your degree long before this time--possibly fellowship--and i should have been on my way to mine.' 'don't talk of it,' said the other. 'we must do the best we can.' they looked out of the window sadly, through the dusty panes, so high up that only the sky was visible. by degrees the haunting trouble loomed again, and cornelius broke the silence with a whisper: 'he has called on me!' the living pulses died on joshua's face, which grew arid as a clinker. 'when was that?' he asked quickly. 'last week.' 'how did he get here--so many miles?' 'came by railway. he came to ask for money.' 'ah!' 'he says he will call on you.' joshua replied resignedly. the theme of their conversation spoilt his buoyancy for that afternoon. he returned in the evening, cornelius accompanying him to the station; but he did not read in the train which took him back to the fountall theological college, as he had done on the way out. that ineradicable trouble still remained as a squalid spot in the expanse of his life. he sat with the other students in the cathedral choir next day; and the recollection of the trouble obscured the purple splendour thrown by the panes upon the floor. it was afternoon. all was as still in the close as a cathedral-green can be between the sunday services, and the incessant cawing of the rooks was the only sound. joshua halborough had finished his ascetic lunch, and had gone into the library, where he stood for a few moments looking out of the large window facing the green. he saw walking slowly across it a man in a fustian coat and a battered white hat with a much-ruffled nap, having upon his arm a tall gipsy-woman wearing long brass earrings. the man was staring quizzically at the west front of the cathedral, and halborough recognized in him the form and features of his father. who the woman was he knew not. almost as soon as joshua became conscious of these things, the sub-dean, who was also the principal of the college, and of whom the young man stood in more awe than of the bishop himself, emerged from the gate and entered a path across the close. the pair met the dignitary, and to joshua's horror his father turned and addressed the sub-dean. what passed between them he could not tell. but as he stood in a cold sweat he saw his father place his hand familiarly on the sub-dean's shoulder; the shrinking response of the latter, and his quick withdrawal, told his feeling. the woman seemed to say nothing, but when the sub-dean had passed by they came on towards the college gate. halborough flew along the corridor and out at a side door, so as to intercept them before they could reach the front entrance, for which they were making. he caught them behind a clump of laurel. 'by jerry, here's the very chap! well, you're a fine fellow, jos, never to send your father as much as a twist o' baccy on such an occasion, and to leave him to travel all these miles to find ye out!' 'first, who is this?' said joshua halborough with pale dignity, waving his hand towards the buxom woman with the great earrings. 'dammy, the mis'ess! your step-mother! didn't you know i'd married? she helped me home from market one night, and we came to terms, and struck the bargain. didn't we, selinar?' 'oi, by the great lord an' we did!' simpered the lady. 'well, what sort of a place is this you are living in?' asked the millwright. 'a kind of house-of-correction, apparently?' joshua listened abstractedly, his features set to resignation. sick at heart he was going to ask them if they were in want of any necessary, any meal, when his father cut him short by saying, 'why, we've called to ask ye to come round and take pot-luck with us at the cock-and-bottle, where we've put up for the day, on our way to see mis'ess's friends at binegar fair, where they'll be lying under canvas for a night or two. as for the victuals at the cock i can't testify to 'em at all; but for the drink, they've the rarest drop of old tom that i've tasted for many a year.' 'thanks; but i am a teetotaller; and i have lunched,' said joshua, who could fully believe his father's testimony to the gin, from the odour of his breath. 'you see we have to observe regular habits here; and i couldn't be seen at the cock-and-bottle just now.' 'o dammy, then don't come, your reverence. perhaps you won't mind standing treat for those who can be seen there?' 'not a penny,' said the younger firmly. 'you've had enough already.' 'thank you for nothing. by the bye, who was that spindle-legged, shoe- buckled parson feller we met by now? he seemed to think we should poison him!' joshua remarked coldly that it was the principal of his college, guardedly inquiring, 'did you tell him whom you were come to see?' his father did not reply. he and his strapping gipsy wife--if she were his wife--stayed no longer, and disappeared in the direction of the high street. joshua halborough went back to the library. determined as was his nature, he wept hot tears upon the books, and was immeasurably more wretched that afternoon than the unwelcome millwright. in the evening he sat down and wrote a letter to his brother, in which, after stating what had happened, and expatiating upon this new disgrace in the gipsy wife, he propounded a plan for raising money sufficient to induce the couple to emigrate to canada. 'it is our only chance,' he said. 'the case as it stands is maddening. for a successful painter, sculptor, musician, author, who takes society by storm, it is no drawback, it is sometimes even a romantic recommendation, to hail from outcasts and profligates. but for a clergyman of the church of england! cornelius, it is fatal! to succeed in the church, people must believe in you, first of all, as a gentleman, secondly as a man of means, thirdly as a scholar, fourthly as a preacher, fifthly, perhaps, as a christian,--but always first as a gentleman, with all their heart and soul and strength. i would have faced the fact of being a small machinist's son, and have taken my chance, if he'd been in any sense respectable and decent. the essence of christianity is humility, and by the help of god i would have brazened it out. but this terrible vagabondage and disreputable connection! if he does not accept my terms and leave the country, it will extinguish us and kill me. for how can we live, and relinquish our high aim, and bring down our dear sister rosa to the level of a gipsy's step-daughter?' chapter iii there was excitement in the parish of narrobourne one day. the congregation had just come out from morning service, and the whole conversation was of the new curate, mr. halborough, who had officiated for the first time, in the absence of the rector. never before had the feeling of the villagers approached a level which could be called excitement on such a matter as this. the droning which had been the rule in that quiet old place for a century seemed ended at last. they repeated the text to each other as a refrain: 'o lord, be thou my helper!' not within living memory till to-day had the subject of the sermon formed the topic of conversation from the church door to church-yard gate, to the exclusion of personal remarks on those who had been present, and on the week's news in general. the thrilling periods of the preacher hung about their minds all that day. the parish being steeped in indifferentism, it happened that when the youths and maidens, middle-aged and old people, who had attended church that morning, recurred as by a fascination to what halborough had said, they did so more or less indirectly, and even with the subterfuge of a light laugh that was not real, so great was their shyness under the novelty of their sensations. what was more curious than that these unconventional villagers should have been excited by a preacher of a new school after forty years of familiarity with the old hand who had had charge of their souls, was the effect of halborough's address upon the occupants of the manor-house pew, including the owner of the estate. these thought they knew how to discount the mere sensational sermon, how to minimize flash oratory to its bare proportions; but they had yielded like the rest of the assembly to the charm of the newcomer. mr. fellmer, the landowner, was a young widower, whose mother, still in the prime of life, had returned to her old position in the family mansion since the death of her son's wife in the year after her marriage, at the birth of a fragile little girl. from the date of his loss to the present time, fellmer had led an inactive existence in the seclusion of the parish; a lack of motive seemed to leave him listless. he had gladly reinstated his mother in the gloomy house, and his main occupation now lay in stewarding his estate, which was not large. mrs. fellmer, who had sat beside him under halborough this morning, was a cheerful, straightforward woman, who did her marketing and her alms-giving in person, was fond of old-fashioned flowers, and walked about the village on very wet days visiting the parishioners. these, the only two great ones of narrobourne, were impressed by joshua's eloquence as much as the cottagers. halborough had been briefly introduced to them on his arrival some days before, and, their interest being kindled, they waited a few moments till he came out of the vestry, to walk down the churchyard-path with him. mrs. fellmer spoke warmly of the sermon, of the good fortune of the parish in his advent, and hoped he had found comfortable quarters. halborough, faintly flushing, said that he had obtained very fair lodgings in the roomy house of a farmer, whom he named. she feared he would find it very lonely, especially in the evenings, and hoped they would see a good deal of him. when would he dine with them? could he not come that day--it must be so dull for him the first sunday evening in country lodgings? halborough replied that it would give him much pleasure, but that he feared he must decline. 'i am not altogether alone,' he said. 'my sister, who has just returned from brussels, and who felt, as you do, that i should be rather dismal by myself, has accompanied me hither to stay a few days till she has put my rooms in order and set me going. she was too fatigued to come to church, and is waiting for me now at the farm.' 'oh, but bring your sister--that will be still better! i shall be delighted to know her. how i wish i had been aware! do tell her, please, that we had no idea of her presence.' halborough assured mrs. fellmer that he would certainly bear the message; but as to her coming he was not so sure. the real truth was, however, that the matter would be decided by him, rosa having an almost filial respect for his wishes. but he was uncertain as to the state of her wardrobe, and had determined that she should not enter the manor-house at a disadvantage that evening, when there would probably be plenty of opportunities in the future of her doing so becomingly. he walked to the farm in long strides. this, then, was the outcome of his first morning's work as curate here. things had gone fairly well with him. he had been ordained; he was in a comfortable parish, where he would exercise almost sole supervision, the rector being infirm. he had made a deep impression at starting, and the absence of a hood seemed to have done him no harm. moreover, by considerable persuasion and payment, his father and the dark woman had been shipped off to canada, where they were not likely to interfere greatly with his interests. rosa came out to meet him. 'ah! you should have gone to church like a good girl,' he said. 'yes--i wished i had afterwards. but i do so hate church as a rule that even your preaching was underestimated in my mind. it was too bad of me!' the girl who spoke thus playfully was fair, tall, and sylph-like, in a muslin dress, and with just the coquettish _desinvolture_ which an english girl brings home from abroad, and loses again after a few months of native life. joshua was the reverse of playful; the world was too important a concern for him to indulge in light moods. he told her in decided, practical phraseology of the invitation. 'now, rosa, we must go--that's settled--if you've a dress that can be made fit to wear all on the hop like this. you didn't, of course, think of bringing an evening dress to such an out-of-the-way place?' but rosa had come from the wrong city to be caught napping in those matters. 'yes, i did,' said she. 'one never knows what may turn up.' 'well done! then off we go at seven.' the evening drew on, and at dusk they started on foot, rosa pulling up the edge of her skirt under her cloak out of the way of the dews, so that it formed a great wind-bag all round her, and carrying her satin shoes under her arm. joshua would not let her wait till she got indoors before changing them, as she proposed, but insisted on her performing that operation under a tree, so that they might enter as if they had not walked. he was nervously formal about such trifles, while rosa took the whole proceeding--walk, dressing, dinner, and all--as a pastime. to joshua it was a serious step in life. a more unexpected kind of person for a curate's sister was never presented at a dinner. the surprise of mrs. fellmer was unconcealed. she had looked forward to a dorcas, or martha, or rhoda at the outside, and a shade of misgiving crossed her face. it was possible that, had the young lady accompanied her brother to church, there would have been no dining at narrobourne house that day. not so with the young widower, her son. he resembled a sleeper who had awaked in a summer noon expecting to find it only dawn. he could scarcely help stretching his arms and yawning in their faces, so strong was his sense of being suddenly aroused to an unforeseen thing. when they had sat down to table he at first talked to rosa somewhat with the air of a ruler in the land; but the woman lurking in the acquaintance soon brought him to his level, and the girl from brussels saw him looking at her mouth, her hands, her contour, as if he could not quite comprehend how they got created: then he dropped into the more satisfactory stage which discerns no particulars. he talked but little; she said much. the homeliness of the fellmers, to her view, though they were regarded with such awe down here, quite disembarrassed her. the squire had become so unpractised, had dropped so far into the shade during the last year or so of his life, that he had almost forgotten what the world contained till this evening reminded him. his mother, after her first moments of doubt, appeared to think that he must be left to his own guidance, and gave her attention to joshua. with all his foresight and doggedness of aim, the result of that dinner exceeded halborough's expectations. in weaving his ambitions he had viewed his sister rosa as a slight, bright thing to be helped into notice by his abilities; but it now began to dawn upon him that the physical gifts of nature to her might do more for them both than nature's intellectual gifts to himself. while he was patiently boring the tunnel rosa seemed about to fly over the mountain. he wrote the next day to his brother, now occupying his own old rooms in the theological college, telling him exultingly of the unanticipated _debut_ of rosa at the manor-house. the next post brought him a reply of congratulation, dashed with the counteracting intelligence that his father did not like canada--that his wife had deserted him, which made him feel so dreary that he thought of returning home. in his recent satisfaction at his own successes joshua halborough had well-nigh forgotten his chronic trouble--latterly screened by distance. but it now returned upon him; he saw more in this brief announcement than his brother seemed to see. it was the cloud no bigger than a man's hand. chapter iv the following december, a day or two before christmas, mrs. fellmer and her son were walking up and down the broad gravel path which bordered the east front of the house. till within the last half-hour the morning had been a drizzling one, and they had just emerged for a short turn before luncheon. 'you see, dear mother,' the son was saying, 'it is the peculiarity of my position which makes her appear to me in such a desirable light. when you consider how i have been crippled at starting, how my life has been maimed; that i feel anything like publicity distasteful, that i have ye no political ambition, and that my chief aim and hope lie in the education of the little thing annie has left me, you must see how desirable a wife like miss halborough would be, to prevent my becoming a mere vegetable.' 'if you adore her, i suppose you must have her!' replied his mother with dry indirectness. 'but you'll find that she will not be content to live on here as you do, giving her whole mind to a young child.' 'that's just where we differ. her very disqualification, that of being a nobody, as you call it, is her recommendation in my eyes. her lack of influential connections limits her ambition. from what i know of her, a life in this place is all that she would wish for. she would never care to go outside the park-gates if it were necessary to stay within.' 'being in love with her, albert, and meaning to marry her, you invent your practical reasons to make the case respectable. well, do as you will; i have no authority over you, so why should you consult me? you mean to propose on this very occasion, no doubt. don't you, now?' 'by no means. i am merely revolving the idea in my mind. if on further acquaintance she turns out to be as good as she has hitherto seemed--well, i shall see. admit, now, that you like her.' 'i readily admit it. she is very captivating at first sight. but as a stepmother to your child! you seem mighty anxious, albert, to get rid of me!' 'not at all. and i am not so reckless as you think. i don't make up my mind in a hurry. but the thought having occurred to me, i mention it to you at once, mother. if you dislike it, say so.' 'i don't say anything. i will try to make the best of it if you are determined. when does she come?' 'to-morrow.' all this time there were great preparations in train at the curate's, who was now a householder. rosa, whose two or three weeks' stay on two occasions earlier in the year had so affected the squire, was coming again, and at the same time her younger brother cornelius, to make up a family party. rosa, who journeyed from the midlands, could not arrive till late in the evening, but cornelius was to get there in the afternoon, joshua going out to meet him in his walk across the fields from the railway. everything being ready in joshua's modest abode he started on his way, his heart buoyant and thankful, if ever it was in his life. he was of such good report himself that his brother's path into holy orders promised to be unexpectedly easy; and he longed to compare experiences with him, even though there was on hand a more exciting matter still. from his youth he had held that, in old-fashioned country places, the church conferred social prestige up to a certain point at a cheaper price than any other profession or pursuit; and events seemed to be proving him right. he had walked about half an hour when he saw cornelius coming along the path; and in a few minutes the two brothers met. the experiences of cornelius had been less immediately interesting than those of joshua, but his personal position was satisfactory, and there was nothing to account for the singularly subdued manner that he exhibited, which at first joshua set down to the fatigue of over-study; and he proceeded to the subject of rosa's arrival in the evening, and the probable consequences of this her third visit. 'before next easter she'll be his wife, my boy,' said joshua with grave exultation. cornelius shook his head. 'she comes too late!' he returned. 'what do you mean?' 'look here.' he produced the fountall paper, and placed his finger on a paragraph, which joshua read. it appeared under the report of petty sessions, and was a commonplace case of disorderly conduct, in which a man was sent to prison for seven days for breaking windows in that town. 'well?' said joshua. 'it happened during an evening that i was in the street; and the offender is our father.' 'not--how--i sent him more money on his promising to stay in canada?' 'he is home, safe enough.' cornelius in the same gloomy tone gave the remainder of his information. he had witnessed the scene, unobserved of his father, and had heard him say that he was on his way to see his daughter, who was going to marry a rich gentleman. the only good fortune attending the untoward incident was that the millwright's name had been printed as joshua alborough. 'beaten! we are to be beaten on the eve of our expected victory!' said the elder brother. 'how did he guess that rosa was likely to marry? good heaven cornelius, you seem doomed to bring bad news always, do you not!' 'i do,' said cornelius. 'poor rosa!' it was almost in tears, so great was their heart-sickness and shame, that the brothers walked the remainder of the way to joshua's dwelling. in the evening they set out to meet rosa, bringing her to the village in a fly; and when she had come into the house, and was sitting down with them, they almost forgot their secret anxiety in contemplating her, who knew nothing about it. next day the fellmers came, and the two or three days after that were a lively time. that the squire was yielding to his impulses--making up his mind--there could be no doubt. on sunday cornelius read the lessons, and joshua preached. mrs. fellmer was quite maternal towards rosa, and it appeared that she had decided to welcome the inevitable with a good grace. the pretty girl was to spend yet another afternoon with the elder lady, superintending some parish treat at the house in observance of christmas, and afterwards to stay on to dinner, her brothers to fetch her in the evening. they were also invited to dine, but they could not accept owing to an engagement. the engagement was of a sombre sort. they were going to meet their father, who would that day be released from fountall gaol, and try to persuade him to keep away from narrobourne. every exertion was to be made to get him back to canada, to his old home in the midlands--anywhere, so that he would not impinge disastrously upon their courses, and blast their sister's prospects of the auspicious marriage which was just then hanging in the balance. as soon as rosa had been fetched away by her friends at the manor-house her brothers started on their expedition, without waiting for dinner or tea. cornelius, to whom the millwright always addressed his letters when he wrote any, drew from his pocket and re-read as he walked the curt note which had led to this journey being undertaken; it was despatched by their father the night before, immediately upon his liberation, and stated that he was setting out for narrobourne at the moment of writing; that having no money he would be obliged to walk all the way; that he calculated on passing through the intervening town of ivell about six on the following day, where he should sup at the castle inn, and where he hoped they would meet him with a carriage-and-pair, or some other such conveyance, that he might not disgrace them by arriving like a tramp. 'that sounds as if he gave a thought to our position,' said cornelius. joshua knew the satire that lurked in the paternal words, and said nothing. silence prevailed during the greater part of their journey. the lamps were lighted in ivell when they entered the streets, and cornelius, who was quite unknown in this neighbourhood, and who, moreover, was not in clerical attire, decided that he should be the one to call at the castle inn. here, in answer to his inquiry under the darkness of the archway, they told him that such a man as he had described left the house about a quarter of an hour earlier, after making a meal in the kitchen- settle. he was rather the worse for liquor. 'then,' said joshua, when cornelius joined him outside with this intelligence, 'we must have met and passed him! and now that i think of it, we did meet some one who was unsteady in his gait, under the trees on the other side of hendford hill, where it was too dark to see him.' they rapidly retraced their steps; but for a long stretch of the way home could discern nobody. when, however, they had gone about three-quarters of the distance, they became conscious of an irregular footfall in front of them, and could see a whitish figure in the gloom. they followed dubiously. the figure met another wayfarer--the single one that had been encountered upon this lonely road--and they distinctly heard him ask the way to narrobourne. the stranger replied--what was quite true--that the nearest way was by turning in at the stile by the next bridge, and following the footpath which branched thence across the meadows. when the brothers reached the stile they also entered the path, but did not overtake the subject of their worry till they had crossed two or three meads, and the lights from narrobourne manor-house were visible before them through the trees. their father was no longer walking; he was seated against the wet bank of an adjoining hedge. observing their forms he shouted, 'i'm going to narrobourne; who may you be?' they went up to him, and revealed themselves, reminding him of the plan which he had himself proposed in his note, that they should meet him at ivell. 'by jerry, i'd forgot it!' he said. 'well, what do you want me to do?' his tone was distinctly quarrelsome. a long conversation followed, which became embittered at the first hint from them that he should not come to the village. the millwright drew a quart bottle from his pocket, and challenged them to drink if they meant friendly and called themselves men. neither of the two had touched alcohol for years, but for once they thought it best to accept, so as not to needlessly provoke him. 'what's in it?' said joshua. 'a drop of weak gin-and-water. it won't hurt ye. drin' from the bottle.' joshua did so, and his father pushed up the bottom of the vessel so as to make him swallow a good deal in spite of himself. it went down into his stomach like molten lead. 'ha, ha, that's right!' said old halborough. 'but 'twas raw spirit--ha, ha!' 'why should you take me in so!' said joshua, losing his self-command, try as he would to keep calm. 'because you took me in, my lad, in banishing me to that cursed country under pretence that it was for my good. you were a pair of hypocrites to say so. it was done to get rid of me--no more nor less. but, by jerry, i'm a match for ye now! i'll spoil your souls for preaching. my daughter is going to be married to the squire here. i've heard the news--i saw it in a paper!' 'it is premature--' 'i know it is true; and i'm her father, and i shall give her away, or there'll be a hell of a row, i can assure ye! is that where the gennleman lives?' joshua halborough writhed in impotent despair. fellmer had not yet positively declared himself, his mother was hardly won round; a scene with their father in the parish would demolish as fair a palace of hopes as was ever builded. the millwright rose. 'if that's where the squire lives i'm going to call. just arrived from canady with her fortune--ha, ha! i wish no harm to the gennleman, and the gennleman will wish no harm to me. but i like to take my place in the family, and stand upon my rights, and lower people's pride!' 'you've succeeded already! where's that woman you took with you--' 'woman! she was my wife as lawful as the constitution--a sight more lawful than your mother was till some time after you were born!' joshua had for many years before heard whispers that his father had cajoled his mother in their early acquaintance, and had made somewhat tardy amends; but never from his father's lips till now. it was the last stroke, and he could not bear it. he sank back against the hedge. 'it is over!' he said. 'he ruins us all!' the millwright moved on, waving his stick triumphantly, and the two brothers stood still. they could see his drab figure stalking along the path, and over his head the lights from the conservatory of narrobourne house, inside which albert fellmer might possibly be sitting with rosa at that moment, holding her hand, and asking her to share his home with him. the staggering whitey-brown form, advancing to put a blot on all this, had been diminishing in the shade; and now suddenly disappeared beside a weir. there was the noise of a flounce in the water. 'he has fallen in!' said cornelius, starting forward to run for the place at which his father had vanished. joshua, awaking from the stupefied reverie into which he had sunk, rushed to the other's side before he had taken ten steps. 'stop, stop, what are you thinking of?' he whispered hoarsely, grasping cornelius's arm. 'pulling him out!' 'yes, yes--so am i. but--wait a moment--' 'but, joshua!' 'her life and happiness, you know--cornelius--and your reputation and mine--and our chance of rising together, all three--' he clutched his brother's arm to the bone; and as they stood breathless the splashing and floundering in the weir continued; over it they saw the hopeful lights from the manor-house conservatory winking through the trees as their bare branches waved to and fro. the floundering and splashing grew weaker, and they could hear gurgling words: 'help--i'm drownded! rosie--rosie!' 'we'll go--we must save him. o joshua!' 'yes, yes! we must!' still they did not move, but waited, holding each other, each thinking the same thought. weights of lead seemed to be affixed to their feet, which would no longer obey their wills. the mead became silent. over it they fancied they could see figures moving in the conservatory. the air up there seemed to emit gentle kisses. cornelius started forward at last, and joshua almost simultaneously. two or three minutes brought them to the brink of the stream. at first they could see nothing in the water, though it was not so deep nor the night so dark but that their father's light kerseymere coat would have been visible if he had lain at the bottom. joshua looked this way and that. 'he has drifted into the culvert,' he said. below the foot-bridge of the weir the stream suddenly narrowed to half its width, to pass under a barrel arch or culvert constructed for waggons to cross into the middle of the mead in haymaking time. it being at present the season of high water the arch was full to the crown, against which the ripples clucked every now and then. at this point he had just caught sight of a pale object slipping under. in a moment it was gone. they went to the lower end, but nothing emerged. for a long time they tried at both ends to effect some communication with the interior, but to no purpose. 'we ought to have come sooner!' said the conscience-stricken cornelius, when they were quite exhausted, and dripping wet. 'i suppose we ought,' replied joshua heavily. he perceived his father's walking-stick on the bank; hastily picking it up he stuck it into the mud among the sedge. then they went on. 'shall we--say anything about this accident?' whispered cornelius as they approached the door of joshua's house. 'what's the use? it can do no good. we must wait until he is found.' they went indoors and changed their clothes; after which they started for the manor-house, reaching it about ten o'clock. besides their sister there were only three guests; an adjoining landowner and his wife, and the infirm old rector. rosa, although she had parted from them so recently, grasped their hands in an ecstatic, brimming, joyful manner, as if she had not seen them for years. 'you look pale,' she said. the brothers answered that they had had a long walk, and were somewhat tired. everybody in the room seemed charged full with some sort of interesting knowledge: the squire's neighbour and his wife looked wisely around; and fellmer himself played the part of host with a preoccupied bearing which approached fervour. they left at eleven, not accepting the carriage offered, the distance being so short and the roads dry. the squire came rather farther into the dark with them than he need have done, and wished rosa good-night in a mysterious manner, slightly apart from the rest. when they were walking along joshua said, with desperate attempt at joviality, 'rosa, what's going on?' 'o, i--' she began between a gasp and a bound. 'he--' 'never mind--if it disturbs you.' she was so excited that she could not speak connectedly at first, the practised air which she had brought home with her having disappeared. calming herself she added, 'i am not disturbed, and nothing has happened. only he said he wanted to ask me _something_, some day; and i said never mind that now. he hasn't asked yet, and is coining to speak to you about it. he would have done so to-night, only i asked him not to be in a hurry. but he will come to-morrow, i am sure!' chapter v it was summer-time, six months later, and mowers and haymakers were at work in the meads. the manor-house, being opposite them, frequently formed a peg for conversation during these operations; and the doings of the squire, and the squire's young wife, the curate's sister--who was at present the admired of most of them, and the interest of all--met with their due amount of criticism. rosa was happy, if ever woman could be said to be so. she had not learnt the fate of her father, and sometimes wondered--perhaps with a sense of relief--why he did not write to her from his supposed home in canada. her brother joshua had been presented to a living in a small town, shortly after her marriage, and cornelius had thereupon succeeded to the vacant curacy of narrobourne. these two had awaited in deep suspense the discovery of their father's body; and yet the discovery had not been made. every day they expected a man or a boy to run up from the meads with the intelligence; but he had never come. days had accumulated to weeks and months; the wedding had come and gone: joshua had tolled and read himself in at his new parish; and never a shout of amazement over the millwright's remains. but now, in june, when they were mowing the meads, the hatches had to be drawn and the water let out of its channels for the convenience of the mowers. it was thus that the discovery was made. a man, stooping low with his scythe, caught a view of the culvert lengthwise, and saw something entangled in the recently bared weeds of its bed. a day or two after there was an inquest; but the body was unrecognizable. fish and flood had been busy with the millwright; he had no watch or marked article which could be identified; and a verdict of the accidental drowning of a person unknown settled the matter. as the body was found in narrobourne parish, there it had to be buried. cornelius wrote to joshua, begging him to come and read the service, or to send some one; he himself could not do it. rather than let in a stranger joshua came, and silently scanned the coroner's order handed him by the undertaker:-- 'i, henry giles, coroner for the mid-division of outer wessex, do hereby order the burial of the body now shown to the inquest jury as the body of an adult male person unknown . . . ,' etc. joshua halborough got through the service in some way, and rejoined his brother cornelius at his house. neither accepted an invitation to lunch at their sister's; they wished to discuss parish matters together. in the afternoon she came down, though they had already called on her, and had not expected to see her again. her bright eyes, brown hair, flowery bonnet, lemon-coloured gloves, and flush beauty, were like an irradiation into the apartment, which they in their gloom could hardly bear. 'i forgot to tell you,' she said, 'of a curious thing which happened to me a month or two before my marriage--something which i have thought may have had a connection with the accident to the poor man you have buried to-day. it was on that evening i was at the manor-house waiting for you to fetch me; i was in the winter-garden with albert, and we were sitting silent together, when we fancied we heard a cry. we opened the door, and while albert ran to fetch his hat, leaving me standing there, the cry was repeated, and my excited senses made me think i heard my own name. when albert came back all was silent, and we decided that it was only a drunken shout, and not a cry for help. we both forgot the incident, and it never has occurred to me till since the funeral to-day that it might have been this stranger's cry. the name of course was only fancy, or he might have had a wife or child with a name something like mine, poor man!' when she was gone the brothers were silent till cornelius said, 'now mark this, joshua. sooner or later she'll know.' 'how?' 'from one of us. do you think human hearts are iron-cased safes, that you suppose we can keep this secret for ever?' 'yes, i think they are, sometimes,' said joshua. 'no. it will out. we shall tell.' 'what, and ruin her--kill her? disgrace her children, and pull down the whole auspicious house of fellmer about our ears? no! may i--drown where he was drowned before i do it! never, never. surely you can say the same, cornelius!' cornelius seemed fortified, and no more was said. for a long time after that day he did not see joshua, and before the next year was out a son and heir was born to the fellmers. the villagers rang the three bells every evening for a week and more, and were made merry by mr. fellmer's ale; and when the christening came on joshua paid narrobourne another visit. among all the people who assembled on that day the brother clergymen were the least interested. their minds were haunted by a spirit in kerseymere in the evening they walked together in the fields. 'she's all right,' said joshua. 'but here are you doing journey-work, cornelius, and likely to continue at it till the end of the day, as far as i can see. i, too, with my petty living--what am i after all? . . . to tell the truth, the church is a poor forlorn hope for people without influence, particularly when their enthusiasm begins to flag. a social regenerator has a better chance outside, where he is unhampered by dogma and tradition. as for me, i would rather have gone on mending mills, with my crust of bread and liberty.' almost automatically they had bent their steps along the margin of the river; they now paused. they were standing on the brink of the well-known weir. there were the hatches, there was the culvert; they could see the pebbly bed of the stream through the pellucid water. the notes of the church-bells were audible, still jangled by the enthusiastic villagers. 'why see--it was there i hid his walking-stick!' said joshua, looking towards the sedge. the next moment, during a passing breeze, something flashed white on the spot to which the attention of cornelius was drawn. from the sedge rose a straight little silver-poplar, and it was the leaves of this sapling which caused the flicker of whiteness. 'his walking-stick has grown!' joshua added. 'it was a rough one--cut from the hedge, i remember.' at every puff of wind the tree turned white, till they could not bear to look at it; and they walked away. 'i see him every night,' cornelius murmured . . . 'ah, we read our _hebrews_ to little account, jos! [greek text]. to have endured the cross, despising the shame--there lay greatness! but now i often feel that i should like to put an end to trouble here in this self-same spot.' 'i have thought of it myself,' said joshua. 'perhaps we shall, some day,' murmured his brother. 'perhaps,' said joshua moodily. with that contingency to consider in the silence of their nights and days they bent their steps homewards. _december_ . on the western circuit chapter i the man who played the disturbing part in the two quiet lives hereafter depicted--no great man, in any sense, by the way--first had knowledge of them on an october evening, in the city of melchester. he had been standing in the close, vainly endeavouring to gain amid the darkness a glimpse of the most homogeneous pile of mediaeval architecture in england, which towered and tapered from the damp and level sward in front of him. while he stood the presence of the cathedral walls was revealed rather by the ear than by the eyes; he could not see them, but they reflected sharply a roar of sound which entered the close by a street leading from the city square, and, falling upon the building, was flung back upon him. he postponed till the morrow his attempt to examine the deserted edifice, and turned his attention to the noise. it was compounded of steam barrel- organs, the clanging of gongs, the ringing of hand-bells, the clack of rattles, and the undistinguishable shouts of men. a lurid light hung in the air in the direction of the tumult. thitherward he went, passing under the arched gateway, along a straight street, and into the square. he might have searched europe over for a greater contrast between juxtaposed scenes. the spectacle was that of the eighth chasm of the inferno as to colour and flame, and, as to mirth, a development of the homeric heaven. a smoky glare, of the complexion of brass-filings, ascended from the fiery tongues of innumerable naphtha lamps affixed to booths, stalls, and other temporary erections which crowded the spacious market-square. in front of this irradiation scores of human figures, more or less in profile, were darting athwart and across, up, down, and around, like gnats against a sunset. their motions were so rhythmical that they seemed to be moved by machinery. and it presently appeared that they were moved by machinery indeed; the figures being those of the patrons of swings, see-saws, flying-leaps, above all of the three steam roundabouts which occupied the centre of the position. it was from the latter that the din of steam- organs came. throbbing humanity in full light was, on second thoughts, better than architecture in the dark. the young man, lighting a short pipe, and putting his hat on one side and one hand in his pocket, to throw himself into harmony with his new environment, drew near to the largest and most patronized of the steam circuses, as the roundabouts were called by their owners. this was one of brilliant finish, and it was now in full revolution. the musical instrument around which and to whose tones the riders revolved, directed its trumpet-mouths of brass upon the young man, and the long plate-glass mirrors set at angles, which revolved with the machine, flashed the gyrating personages and hobby horses kaleidoscopically into his eyes. it could now be seen that he was unlike the majority of the crowd. a gentlemanly young fellow, one of the species found in large towns only, and london particularly, built on delicate lines, well, though not fashionably dressed, he appeared to belong to the professional class; he had nothing square or practical about his look, much that was curvilinear and sensuous. indeed, some would have called him a man not altogether typical of the middle-class male of a century wherein sordid ambition is the master-passion that seems to be taking the time-honoured place of love. the revolving figures passed before his eyes with an unexpected and quiet grace in a throng whose natural movements did not suggest gracefulness or quietude as a rule. by some contrivance there was imparted to each of the hobby-horses a motion which was really the triumph and perfection of roundabout inventiveness--a galloping rise and fall, so timed that, of each pair of steeds, one was on the spring while the other was on the pitch. the riders were quite fascinated by these equine undulations in this most delightful holiday-game of our times. there were riders as young as six, and as old as sixty years, with every age between. at first it was difficult to catch a personality, but by and by the observer's eyes centred on the prettiest girl out of the several pretty ones revolving. it was not that one with the light frock and light hat whom he had been at first attracted by; no, it was the one with the black cape, grey skirt, light gloves and--no, not even she, but the one behind her; she with the crimson skirt, dark jacket, brown hat and brown gloves. unmistakably that was the prettiest girl. having finally selected her, this idle spectator studied her as well as he was able during each of her brief transits across his visual field. she was absolutely unconscious of everything save the act of riding: her features were rapt in an ecstatic dreaminess; for the moment she did not know her age or her history or her lineaments, much less her troubles. he himself was full of vague latter-day glooms and popular melancholies, and it was a refreshing sensation to behold this young thing then and there, absolutely as happy as if she were in a paradise. dreading the moment when the inexorable stoker, grimily lurking behind the glittering rococo-work, should decide that this set of riders had had their pennyworth, and bring the whole concern of steam-engine, horses, mirrors, trumpets, drums, cymbals, and such-like to pause and silence, he waited for her every reappearance, glancing indifferently over the intervening forms, including the two plainer girls, the old woman and child, the two youngsters, the newly-married couple, the old man with a clay pipe, the sparkish youth with a ring, the young ladies in the chariot, the pair of journeyman-carpenters, and others, till his select country beauty followed on again in her place. he had never seen a fairer product of nature, and at each round she made a deeper mark in his sentiments. the stoppage then came, and the sighs of the riders were audible. he moved round to the place at which he reckoned she would alight; but she retained her seat. the empty saddles began to refill, and she plainly was deciding to have another turn. the young man drew up to the side of her steed, and pleasantly asked her if she had enjoyed her ride. 'o yes!' she said, with dancing eyes. 'it has been quite unlike anything i have ever felt in my life before!' it was not difficult to fall into conversation with her. unreserved--too unreserved--by nature, she was not experienced enough to be reserved by art, and after a little coaxing she answered his remarks readily. she had come to live in melchester from a village on the great plain, and this was the first time that she had ever seen a steam-circus; she could not understand how such wonderful machines were made. she had come to the city on the invitation of mrs. harnham, who had taken her into her household to train her as a servant, if she showed any aptitude. mrs. harnham was a young lady who before she married had been miss edith white, living in the country near the speaker's cottage; she was now very kind to her through knowing her in childhood so well. she was even taking the trouble to educate her. mrs. harnham was the only friend she had in the world, and being without children had wished to have her near her in preference to anybody else, though she had only lately come; allowed her to do almost as she liked, and to have a holiday whenever she asked for it. the husband of this kind young lady was a rich wine-merchant of the town, but mrs. harnham did not care much about him. in the daytime you could see the house from where they were talking. she, the speaker, liked melchester better than the lonely country, and she was going to have a new hat for next sunday that was to cost fifteen and ninepence. then she inquired of her acquaintance where he lived, and he told her in london, that ancient and smoky city, where everybody lived who lived at all, and died because they could not live there. he came into wessex two or three times a year for professional reasons; he had arrived from wintoncester yesterday, and was going on into the next county in a day or two. for one thing he did like the country better than the town, and it was because it contained such girls as herself. then the pleasure-machine started again, and, to the light-hearted girl, the figure of the handsome young man, the market-square with its lights and crowd, the houses beyond, and the world at large, began moving round as before, countermoving in the revolving mirrors on her right hand, she being as it were the fixed point in an undulating, dazzling, lurid universe, in which loomed forward most prominently of all the form of her late interlocutor. each time that she approached the half of her orbit that lay nearest him they gazed at each other with smiles, and with that unmistakable expression which means so little at the moment, yet so often leads up to passion, heart-ache, union, disunion, devotion, overpopulation, drudgery, content, resignation, despair. when the horses slowed anew he stepped to her side and proposed another heat. 'hang the expense for once,' he said. 'i'll pay!' she laughed till the tears came. 'why do you laugh, dear?' said he. 'because--you are so genteel that you must have plenty of money, and only say that for fun!' she returned. 'ha-ha!' laughed the young man in unison, and gallantly producing his money she was enabled to whirl on again. as he stood smiling there in the motley crowd, with his pipe in his hand, and clad in the rough pea-jacket and wideawake that he had put on for his stroll, who would have supposed him to be charles bradford raye, esquire, stuff-gownsman, educated at wintoncester, called to the bar at lincoln's- inn, now going the western circuit, merely detained in melchester by a small arbitration after his brethren had moved on to the next county-town? chapter ii the square was overlooked from its remoter corner by the house of which the young girl had spoken, a dignified residence of considerable size, having several windows on each floor. inside one of these, on the first floor, the apartment being a large drawing-room, sat a lady, in appearance from twenty-eight to thirty years of age. the blinds were still undrawn, and the lady was absently surveying the weird scene without, her cheek resting on her hand. the room was unlit from within, but enough of the glare from the market-place entered it to reveal the lady's face. she was what is called an interesting creature rather than a handsome woman; dark-eyed, thoughtful, and with sensitive lips. a man sauntered into the room from behind and came forward. 'o, edith, i didn't see you,' he said. 'why are you sitting here in the dark?' 'i am looking at the fair,' replied the lady in a languid voice. 'oh? horrid nuisance every year! i wish it could be put a stop to' 'i like it.' 'h'm. there's no accounting for taste.' for a moment he gazed from the window with her, for politeness sake, and then went out again. in a few minutes she rang. 'hasn't anna come in?' asked mrs. harnham. 'no m'm.' 'she ought to be in by this time. i meant her to go for ten minutes only.' 'shall i go and look for her, m'm?' said the house-maid alertly. 'no. it is not necessary: she is a good girl and will come soon.' however, when the servant had gone mrs. harnham arose, went up to her room, cloaked and bonneted herself, and proceeded downstairs, where she found her husband. 'i want to see the fair,' she said; 'and i am going to look for anna. i have made myself responsible for her, and must see she comes to no harm. she ought to be indoors. will you come with me?' 'oh, she's all right. i saw her on one of those whirligig things, talking to her young man as i came in. but i'll go if you wish, though i'd rather go a hundred miles the other way.' 'then please do so. i shall come to no harm alone.' she left the house and entered the crowd which thronged the market-place, where she soon discovered anna, seated on the revolving horse. as soon as it stopped mrs. harnham advanced and said severely, 'anna, how can you be such a wild girl? you were only to be out for ten minutes.' anna looked blank, and the young man, who had dropped into the background, came to her assistance. 'please don't blame her,' he said politely. 'it is my fault that she has stayed. she looked so graceful on the horse that i induced her to go round again. i assure you that she has been quite safe.' 'in that case i'll leave her in your hands,' said mrs. harnham, turning to retrace her steps. but this for the moment it was not so easy to do. something had attracted the crowd to a spot in their rear, and the wine-merchant's wife, caught by its sway, found herself pressed against anna's acquaintance without power to move away. their faces were within a few inches of each other, his breath fanned her cheek as well as anna's. they could do no other than smile at the accident; but neither spoke, and each waited passively. mrs. harnham then felt a man's hand clasping her fingers, and from the look of consciousness on the young fellow's face she knew the hand to be his: she also knew that from the position of the girl he had no other thought than that the imprisoned hand was anna's. what prompted her to refrain from undeceiving him she could hardly tell. not content with holding the hand, he playfully slipped two of his fingers inside her glove, against her palm. thus matters continued till the pressure lessened; but several minutes passed before the crowd thinned sufficiently to allow mrs. harnham to withdraw. 'how did they get to know each other, i wonder?' she mused as she retreated. 'anna is really very forward--and he very wicked and nice.' she was so gently stirred with the stranger's manner and voice, with the tenderness of his idle touch, that instead of re-entering the house she turned back again and observed the pair from a screened nook. really she argued (being little less impulsive than anna herself) it was very excusable in anna to encourage him, however she might have contrived to make his acquaintance; he was so gentlemanly, so fascinating, had such beautiful eyes. the thought that he was several years her junior produced a reasonless sigh. at length the couple turned from the roundabout towards the door of mrs. harnham's house, and the young man could be heard saying that he would accompany her home. anna, then, had found a lover, apparently a very devoted one. mrs. harnham was quite interested in him. when they drew near the door of the wine-merchant's house, a comparatively deserted spot by this time, they stood invisible for a little while in the shadow of a wall, where they separated, anna going on to the entrance, and her acquaintance returning across the square. 'anna,' said mrs. harnham, coming up. 'i've been looking at you! that young man kissed you at parting i am almost sure.' 'well,' stammered anna; 'he said, if i didn't mind--it would do me no harm, and, and, him a great deal of good!' 'ah, i thought so! and he was a stranger till to-night?' 'yes ma'am.' 'yet i warrant you told him your name and every thing about yourself?' 'he asked me.' 'but he didn't tell you his?' 'yes ma'am, he did!' cried anna victoriously. 'it is charles bradford, of london.' 'well, if he's respectable, of course i've nothing to say against your knowing him,' remarked her mistress, prepossessed, in spite of general principles, in the young man's favour. 'but i must reconsider all that, if he attempts to renew your acquaintance. a country-bred girl like you, who has never lived in melchester till this month, who had hardly ever seen a black-coated man till you came here, to be so sharp as to capture a young londoner like him!' 'i didn't capture him. i didn't do anything,' said anna, in confusion. when she was indoors and alone mrs. harnham thought what a well-bred and chivalrous young man anna's companion had seemed. there had been a magic in his wooing touch of her hand; and she wondered how he had come to be attracted by the girl. the next morning the emotional edith harnham went to the usual week-day service in melchester cathedral. in crossing the close through the fog she again perceived him who had interested her the previous evening, gazing up thoughtfully at the high-piled architecture of the nave: and as soon as she had taken her seat he entered and sat down in a stall opposite hers. he did not particularly heed her; but mrs. harnham was continually occupying her eyes with him, and wondered more than ever what had attracted him in her unfledged maid-servant. the mistress was almost as unaccustomed as the maiden herself to the end-of-the-age young man, or she might have wondered less. raye, having looked about him awhile, left abruptly, without regard to the service that was proceeding; and mrs. harnham--lonely, impressionable creature that she was--took no further interest in praising the lord. she wished she had married a london man who knew the subtleties of love-making as they were evidently known to him who had mistakenly caressed her hand. chapter iii the calendar at melchester had been light, occupying the court only a few hours; and the assizes at casterbridge, the next county-town on the western circuit, having no business for raye, he had not gone thither. at the next town after that they did not open till the following monday, trials to begin on tuesday morning. in the natural order of things raye would have arrived at the latter place on monday afternoon; but it was not till the middle of wednesday that his gown and grey wig, curled in tiers, in the best fashion of assyrian bas-reliefs, were seen blowing and bobbing behind him as he hastily walked up the high street from his lodgings. but though he entered the assize building there was nothing for him to do, and sitting at the blue baize table in the well of the court, he mended pens with a mind far away from the case in progress. thoughts of unpremeditated conduct, of which a week earlier he would not have believed himself capable, threw him into a mood of dissatisfied depression. he had contrived to see again the pretty rural maiden anna, the day after the fair, had walked out of the city with her to the earthworks of old melchester, and feeling a violent fancy for her, had remained in melchester all sunday, monday, and tuesday; by persuasion obtaining walks and meetings with the girl six or seven times during the interval; had in brief won her, body and soul. he supposed it must have been owing to the seclusion in which he had lived of late in town that he had given way so unrestrainedly to a passion for an artless creature whose inexperience had, from the first, led her to place herself unreservedly in his hands. much he deplored trifling with her feelings for the sake of a passing desire; and he could only hope that she might not live to suffer on his account. she had begged him to come to her again; entreated him; wept. he had promised that he would do so, and he meant to carry out that promise. he could not desert her now. awkward as such unintentional connections were, the interspace of a hundred miles--which to a girl of her limited capabilities was like a thousand--would effectually hinder this summer fancy from greatly encumbering his life; while thought of her simple love might do him the negative good of keeping him from idle pleasures in town when he wished to work hard. his circuit journeys would take him to melchester three or four times a year; and then he could always see her. the pseudonym, or rather partial name, that he had given her as his before knowing how far the acquaintance was going to carry him, had been spoken on the spur of the moment, without any ulterior intention whatever. he had not afterwards disturbed anna's error, but on leaving her he had felt bound to give her an address at a stationer's not far from his chambers, at which she might write to him under the initials 'c. b.' in due time raye returned to his london abode, having called at melchester on his way and spent a few additional hours with his fascinating child of nature. in town he lived monotonously every day. often he and his rooms were enclosed by a tawny fog from all the world besides, and when he lighted the gas to read or write by, his situation seemed so unnatural that he would look into the fire and think of that trusting girl at melchester again and again. often, oppressed by absurd fondness for her, he would enter the dim religious nave of the law courts by the north door, elbow other juniors habited like himself, and like him unretained; edge himself into this or that crowded court where a sensational case was going on, just as if he were in it, though the police officers at the door knew as well as he knew himself that he had no more concern with the business in hand than the patient idlers at the gallery-door outside, who had waited to enter since eight in the morning because, like him, they belonged to the classes that live on expectation. but he would do these things to no purpose, and think how greatly the characters in such scenes contrasted with the pink and breezy anna. an unexpected feature in that peasant maiden's conduct was that she had not as yet written to him, though he had told her she might do so if she wished. surely a young creature had never before been so reticent in such circumstances. at length he sent her a brief line, positively requesting her to write. there was no answer by the return post, but the day after a letter in a neat feminine hand, and bearing the melchester post-mark, was handed to him by the stationer. the fact alone of its arrival was sufficient to satisfy his imaginative sentiment. he was not anxious to open the epistle, and in truth did not begin to read it for nearly half-an-hour, anticipating readily its terms of passionate retrospect and tender adjuration. when at last he turned his feet to the fireplace and unfolded the sheet, he was surprised and pleased to find that neither extravagance nor vulgarity was there. it was the most charming little missive he had ever received from woman. to be sure the language was simple and the ideas were slight; but it was so self-possessed; so purely that of a young girl who felt her womanhood to be enough for her dignity that he read it through twice. four sides were filled, and a few lines written across, after the fashion of former days; the paper, too, was common, and not of the latest shade and surface. but what of those things? he had received letters from women who were fairly called ladies, but never so sensible, so human a letter as this. he could not single out any one sentence and say it was at all remarkable or clever; the _ensemble_ of the letter it was which won him; and beyond the one request that he would write or come to her again soon there was nothing to show her sense of a claim upon him. to write again and develop a correspondence was the last thing raye would have preconceived as his conduct in such a situation; yet he did send a short, encouraging line or two, signed with his pseudonym, in which he asked for another letter, and cheeringly promised that he would try to see her again on some near day, and would never forget how much they had been to each other during their short acquaintance. chapter iv to return now to the moment at which anna, at melchester, had received raye's letter. it had been put into her own hand by the postman on his morning rounds. she flushed down to her neck on receipt of it, and turned it over and over. 'it is mine?' she said. 'why, yes, can't you see it is?' said the postman, smiling as he guessed the nature of the document and the cause of the confusion. 'o yes, of course!' replied anna, looking at the letter, forcedly tittering, and blushing still more. her look of embarrassment did not leave her with the postman's departure. she opened the envelope, kissed its contents, put away the letter in her pocket, and remained musing till her eyes filled with tears. a few minutes later she carried up a cup of tea to mrs. harnham in her bed-chamber. anna's mistress looked at her, and said: 'how dismal you seem this morning, anna. what's the matter?' 'i'm not dismal, i'm glad; only i--' she stopped to stifle a sob. 'well?' 'i've got a letter--and what good is it to me, if i can't read a word in it!' 'why, i'll read it, child, if necessary.' 'but this is from somebody--i don't want anybody to read it but myself!' anna murmured. 'i shall not tell anybody. is it from that young man?' 'i think so.' anna slowly produced the letter, saying: 'then will you read it to me, ma'am?' this was the secret of anna's embarrassment and flutterings. she could neither read nor write. she had grown up under the care of an aunt by marriage, at one of the lonely hamlets on the great mid-wessex plain where, even in days of national education, there had been no school within a distance of two miles. her aunt was an ignorant woman; there had been nobody to investigate anna's circumstances, nobody to care about her learning the rudiments; though, as often in such cases, she had been well fed and clothed and not unkindly treated. since she had come to live at melchester with mrs. harnham, the latter, who took a kindly interest in the girl, had taught her to speak correctly, in which accomplishment anna showed considerable readiness, as is not unusual with the illiterate; and soon became quite fluent in the use of her mistress's phraseology. mrs. harnham also insisted upon her getting a spelling and copy book, and beginning to practise in these. anna was slower in this branch of her education, and meanwhile here was the letter. edith harnham's large dark eyes expressed some interest in the contents, though, in her character of mere interpreter, she threw into her tone as much as she could of mechanical passiveness. she read the short epistle on to its concluding sentence, which idly requested anna to send him a tender answer. 'now--you'll do it for me, won't you, dear mistress?' said anna eagerly. 'and you'll do it as well as ever you can, please? because i couldn't bear him to think i am not able to do it myself. i should sink into the earth with shame if he knew that!' from some words in the letter mrs. harnham was led to ask questions, and the answers she received confirmed her suspicions. deep concern filled edith's heart at perceiving how the girl had committed her happiness to the issue of this new-sprung attachment. she blamed herself for not interfering in a flirtation which had resulted so seriously for the poor little creature in her charge; though at the time of seeing the pair together she had a feeling that it was hardly within her province to nip young affection in the bud. however, what was done could not be undone, and it behoved her now, as anna's only protector, to help her as much as she could. to anna's eager request that she, mrs. harnham, should compose and write the answer to this young london man's letter, she felt bound to accede, to keep alive his attachment to the girl if possible; though in other circumstances she might have suggested the cook as an amanuensis. a tender reply was thereupon concocted, and set down in edith harnham's hand. this letter it had been which raye had received and delighted in. written in the presence of anna it certainly was, and on anna's humble note-paper, and in a measure indited by the young girl; but the life, the spirit, the individuality, were edith harnham's. 'won't you at least put your name yourself?' she said. 'you can manage to write that by this time?' 'no, no,' said anna, shrinking back. 'i should do it so bad. he'd be ashamed of me, and never see me again!' the note, so prettily requesting another from him, had, as we have seen, power enough in its pages to bring one. he declared it to be such a pleasure to hear from her that she must write every week. the same process of manufacture was accordingly repeated by anna and her mistress, and continued for several weeks in succession; each letter being penned and suggested by edith, the girl standing by; the answer read and commented on by edith, anna standing by and listening again. late on a winter evening, after the dispatch of the sixth letter, mrs. harnham was sitting alone by the remains of her fire. her husband had retired to bed, and she had fallen into that fixity of musing which takes no count of hour or temperature. the state of mind had been brought about in edith by a strange thing which she had done that day. for the first time since raye's visit anna had gone to stay over a night or two with her cottage friends on the plain, and in her absence had arrived, out of its time, a letter from raye. to this edith had replied on her own responsibility, from the depths of her own heart, without waiting for her maid's collaboration. the luxury of writing to him what would be known to no consciousness but his was great, and she had indulged herself therein. why was it a luxury? edith harnham led a lonely life. influenced by the belief of the british parent that a bad marriage with its aversions is better than free womanhood with its interests, dignity, and leisure, she had consented to marry the elderly wine-merchant as a _pis aller_, at the age of seven-and- twenty--some three years before this date--to find afterwards that she had made a mistake. that contract had left her still a woman whose deeper nature had never been stirred. she was now clearly realizing that she had become possessed to the bottom of her soul with the image of a man to whom she was hardly so much as a name. from the first he had attracted her by his looks and voice; by his tender touch; and, with these as generators, the writing of letter after letter and the reading of their soft answers had insensibly developed on her side an emotion which fanned his; till there had resulted a magnetic reciprocity between the correspondents, notwithstanding that one of them wrote in a character not her own. that he had been able to seduce another woman in two days was his crowning though unrecognized fascination for her as the she-animal. they were her own impassioned and pent-up ideas--lowered to monosyllabic phraseology in order to keep up the disguise--that edith put into letters signed with another name, much to the shallow anna's delight, who, unassisted, could not for the world have conceived such pretty fancies for winning him, even had she been able to write them. edith found that it was these, her own foisted-in sentiments, to which the young barrister mainly responded. the few sentences occasionally added from anna's own lips made apparently no impression upon him. the letter-writing in her absence anna never discovered; but on her return the next morning she declared she wished to see her lover about something at once, and begged mrs. harnham to ask him to come. there was a strange anxiety in her manner which did not escape mrs. harnham, and ultimately resolved itself into a flood of tears. sinking down at edith's knees, she made confession that the result of her relations with her lover it would soon become necessary to disclose. edith harnham was generous enough to be very far from inclined to cast anna adrift at this conjuncture. no true woman ever is so inclined from her own personal point of view, however prompt she may be in taking such steps to safeguard those dear to her. although she had written to raye so short a time previously, she instantly penned another anna-note hinting clearly though delicately the state of affairs. raye replied by a hasty line to say how much he was affected by her news: he felt that he must run down to see her almost immediately. but a week later the girl came to her mistress's room with another note, which on being read informed her that after all he could not find time for the journey. anna was broken with grief; but by mrs. harnham's counsel strictly refrained from hurling at him the reproaches and bitterness customary from young women so situated. one thing was imperative: to keep the young man's romantic interest in her alive. rather therefore did edith, in the name of her _protegee_, request him on no account to be distressed about the looming event, and not to inconvenience himself to hasten down. she desired above everything to be no weight upon him in his career, no clog upon his high activities. she had wished him to know what had befallen: he was to dismiss it again from his mind. only he must write tenderly as ever, and when he should come again on the spring circuit it would be soon enough to discuss what had better be done. it may well be supposed that anna's own feelings had not been quite in accord with these generous expressions; but the mistress's judgment had ruled, and anna had acquiesced. 'all i want is that _niceness_ you can so well put into your letters, my dear, dear mistress, and that i can't for the life o' me make up out of my own head; though i mean the same thing and feel it exactly when you've written it down!' when the letter had been sent off, and edith harnham was left alone, she bowed herself on the back of her chair and wept. 'i wish it was mine--i wish it was!' she murmured. 'yet how can i say such a wicked thing!' chapter v the letter moved raye considerably when it reached him. the intelligence itself had affected him less than her unexpected manner of treating him in relation to it. the absence of any word of reproach, the devotion to his interests, the self-sacrifice apparent in every line, all made up a nobility of character that he had never dreamt of finding in womankind. 'god forgive me!' he said tremulously. 'i have been a wicked wretch. i did not know she was such a treasure as this!' he reassured her instantly; declaring that he would not of course desert her, that he would provide a home for her somewhere. meanwhile she was to stay where she was as long as her mistress would allow her. but a misfortune supervened in this direction. whether an inkling of anna's circumstances reached the knowledge of mrs. harnham's husband or not cannot be said, but the girl was compelled, in spite of edith's entreaties, to leave the house. by her own choice she decided to go back for a while to the cottage on the plain. this arrangement led to a consultation as to how the correspondence should be carried on; and in the girl's inability to continue personally what had been begun in her name, and in the difficulty of their acting in concert as heretofore, she requested mrs. harnham--the only well-to-do friend she had in the world--to receive the letters and reply to them off-hand, sending them on afterwards to herself on the plain, where she might at least get some neighbour to read them to her, if a trustworthy one could be met with. anna and her box then departed for the plain. thus it befel that edith harnham found herself in the strange position of having to correspond, under no supervision by the real woman, with a man not her husband, in terms which were virtually those of a wife, concerning a condition that was not edith's at all; the man being one for whom, mainly through the sympathies involved in playing this part, she secretly cherished a predilection, subtle and imaginative truly, but strong and absorbing. she opened each letter, read it as if intended for herself, and replied from the promptings of her own heart and no other. throughout this correspondence, carried on in the girl's absence, the high-strung edith harnham lived in the ecstasy of fancy; the vicarious intimacy engendered such a flow of passionateness as was never exceeded. for conscience' sake edith at first sent on each of his letters to anna, and even rough copies of her replies; but later on these so-called copies were much abridged, and many letters on both sides were not sent on at all. though selfish, and, superficially at least, infested with the self-indulgent vices of artificial society, there was a substratum of honesty and fairness in raye's character. he had really a tender regard for the country girl, and it grew more tender than ever when he found her apparently capable of expressing the deepest sensibilities in the simplest words. he meditated, he wavered; and finally resolved to consult his sister, a maiden lady much older than himself, of lively sympathies and good intent. in making this confidence he showed her some of the letters. 'she seems fairly educated,' miss raye observed. 'and bright in ideas. she expresses herself with a taste that must be innate.' 'yes. she writes very prettily, doesn't she, thanks to these elementary schools?' 'one is drawn out towards her, in spite of one's self, poor thing.' the upshot of the discussion was that though he had not been directly advised to do it, raye wrote, in his real name, what he would never have decided to write on his own responsibility; namely that he could not live without her, and would come down in the spring and shelve her looming difficulty by marrying her. this bold acceptance of the situation was made known to anna by mrs. harnham driving out immediately to the cottage on the plain. anna jumped for joy like a little child. and poor, crude directions for answering appropriately were given to edith harnham, who on her return to the city carried them out with warm intensification. 'o!' she groaned, as she threw down the pen. 'anna--poor good little fool--hasn't intelligence enough to appreciate him! how should she? while i--don't bear his child!' it was now february. the correspondence had continued altogether for four months; and the next letter from raye contained incidentally a statement of his position and prospects. he said that in offering to wed her he had, at first, contemplated the step of retiring from a profession which hitherto had brought him very slight emolument, and which, to speak plainly, he had thought might be difficult of practice after his union with her. but the unexpected mines of brightness and warmth that her letters had disclosed to be lurking in her sweet nature had led him to abandon that somewhat sad prospect. he felt sure that, with her powers of development, after a little private training in the social forms of london under his supervision, and a little help from a governess if necessary, she would make as good a professional man's wife as could be desired, even if he should rise to the woolsack. many a lord chancellor's wife had been less intuitively a lady than she had shown herself to be in her lines to him. 'o--poor fellow, poor fellow!' mourned edith harnham. her distress now raged as high as her infatuation. it was she who had wrought him to this pitch--to a marriage which meant his ruin; yet she could not, in mercy to her maid, do anything to hinder his plan. anna was coming to melchester that week, but she could hardly show the girl this last reply from the young man; it told too much of the second individuality that had usurped the place of the first. anna came, and her mistress took her into her own room for privacy. anna began by saying with some anxiety that she was glad the wedding was so near. 'o anna!' replied mrs. harnham. 'i think we must tell him all--that i have been doing your writing for you?--lest he should not know it till after you become his wife, and it might lead to dissension and recriminations--' 'o mis'ess, dear mis'ess--please don't tell him now!' cried anna in distress. 'if you were to do it, perhaps he would not marry me; and what should i do then? it would be terrible what would come to me! and i am getting on with my writing, too. i have brought with me the copybook you were so good as to give me, and i practise every day, and though it is so, so hard, i shall do it well at last, i believe, if i keep on trying.' edith looked at the copybook. the copies had been set by herself, and such progress as the girl had made was in the way of grotesque facsimile of her mistress's hand. but even if edith's flowing caligraphy were reproduced the inspiration would be another thing. 'you do it so beautifully,' continued anna, 'and say all that i want to say so much better than i could say it, that i do hope you won't leave me in the lurch just now!' 'very well,' replied the other. 'but i--but i thought i ought not to go on!' 'why?' her strong desire to confide her sentiments led edith to answer truly: 'because of its effect upon me.' 'but it _can't_ have any!' 'why, child?' 'because you are married already!' said anna with lucid simplicity. 'of course it can't,' said her mistress hastily; yet glad, despite her conscience, that two or three outpourings still remained to her. 'but you must concentrate your attention on writing your name as i write it here.' chapter vi soon raye wrote about the wedding. having decided to make the best of what he feared was a piece of romantic folly, he had acquired more zest for the grand experiment. he wished the ceremony to be in london, for greater privacy. edith harnham would have preferred it at melchester; anna was passive. his reasoning prevailed, and mrs. harnham threw herself with mournful zeal into the preparations for anna's departure. in a last desperate feeling that she must at every hazard be in at the death of her dream, and see once again the man who by a species of telepathy had exercised such an influence on her, she offered to go up with anna and be with her through the ceremony--'to see the end of her,' as her mistress put it with forced gaiety; an offer which the girl gratefully accepted; for she had no other friend capable of playing the part of companion and witness, in the presence of a gentlemanly bridegroom, in such a way as not to hasten an opinion that he had made an irremediable social blunder. it was a muddy morning in march when raye alighted from a four-wheel cab at the door of a registry-office in the s.w. district of london, and carefully handed down anna and her companion mrs. harnham. anna looked attractive in the somewhat fashionable clothes which mrs. harnham had helped her to buy, though not quite so attractive as, an innocent child, she had appeared in her country gown on the back of the wooden horse at melchester fair. mrs. harnham had come up this morning by an early train, and a young man--a friend of raye's--having met them at the door, all four entered the registry-office together. till an hour before this time raye had never known the wine-merchant's wife, except at that first casual encounter, and in the flutter of the performance before them he had little opportunity for more than a brief acquaintance. the contract of marriage at a registry is soon got through; but somehow, during its progress, raye discovered a strange and secret gravitation between himself and anna's friend. the formalities of the wedding--or rather ratification of a previous union--being concluded, the four went in one cab to raye's lodgings, newly taken in a new suburb in preference to a house, the rent of which he could ill afford just then. here anna cut the little cake which raye had bought at a pastrycook's on his way home from lincoln's inn the night before. but she did not do much besides. raye's friend was obliged to depart almost immediately, and when he had left the only ones virtually present were edith and raye who exchanged ideas with much animation. the conversation was indeed theirs only, anna being as a domestic animal who humbly heard but understood not. raye seemed startled in awakening to this fact, and began to feel dissatisfied with her inadequacy. at last, more disappointed than he cared to own, he said, 'mrs. harnham, my darling is so flurried that she doesn't know what she is doing or saying. i see that after this event a little quietude will be necessary before she gives tongue to that tender philosophy which she used to treat me to in her letters.' they had planned to start early that afternoon for knollsea, to spend the few opening days of their married life there, and as the hour for departure was drawing near raye asked his wife if she would go to the writing-desk in the next room and scribble a little note to his sister, who had been unable to attend through indisposition, informing her that the ceremony was over, thanking her for her little present, and hoping to know her well now that she was the writer's sister as well as charles's. 'say it in the pretty poetical way you know so well how to adopt,' he added, 'for i want you particularly to win her, and both of you to be dear friends.' anna looked uneasy, but departed to her task, raye remaining to talk to their guest. anna was a long while absent, and her husband suddenly rose and went to her. he found her still bending over the writing-table, with tears brimming up in her eyes; and he looked down upon the sheet of note-paper with some interest, to discover with what tact she had expressed her good-will in the delicate circumstances. to his surprise she had progressed but a few lines, in the characters and spelling of a child of eight, and with the ideas of a goose. 'anna,' he said, staring; 'what's this?' 'it only means--that i can't do it any better!' she answered, through her tears. 'eh? nonsense!' 'i can't!' she insisted, with miserable, sobbing hardihood. 'i--i--didn't write those letters, charles! i only told _her_ what to write! and not always that! but i am learning, o so fast, my dear, dear husband! and you'll forgive me, won't you, for not telling you before?' she slid to her knees, abjectly clasped his waist and laid her face against him. he stood a few moments, raised her, abruptly turned, and shut the door upon her, rejoining edith in the drawing-room. she saw that something untoward had been discovered, and their eyes remained fixed on each other. 'do i guess rightly?' he asked, with wan quietude. '_you_ were her scribe through all this?' 'it was necessary,' said edith. 'did she dictate every word you ever wrote to me?' 'not every word.' 'in fact, very little?' 'very little.' 'you wrote a great part of those pages every week from your own conceptions, though in her name!' 'yes.' 'perhaps you wrote many of the letters when you were alone, without communication with her?' 'i did.' he turned to the bookcase, and leant with his hand over his face; and edith, seeing his distress, became white as a sheet. 'you have deceived me--ruined me!' he murmured. 'o, don't say it!' she cried in her anguish, jumping up and putting her hand on his shoulder. 'i can't bear that!' 'delighting me deceptively! why did you do it--_why_ did you!' 'i began doing it in kindness to her! how could i do otherwise than try to save such a simple girl from misery? but i admit that i continued it for pleasure to myself.' raye looked up. 'why did it give you pleasure?' he asked. 'i must not tell,' said she. he continued to regard her, and saw that her lips suddenly began to quiver under his scrutiny, and her eyes to fill and droop. she started aside, and said that she must go to the station to catch the return train: could a cab be called immediately? but raye went up to her, and took her unresisting hand. 'well, to think of such a thing as this!' he said. 'why, you and i are friends--lovers--devoted lovers--by correspondence!' 'yes; i suppose.' 'more.' 'more?' 'plainly more. it is no use blinking that. legally i have married her--god help us both!--in soul and spirit i have married you, and no other woman in the world!' 'hush!' 'but i will not hush! why should you try to disguise the full truth, when you have already owned half of it? yes, it is between you and me that the bond is--not between me and her! now i'll say no more. but, o my cruel one, i think i have one claim upon you!' she did not say what, and he drew her towards him, and bent over her. 'if it was all pure invention in those letters,' he said emphatically, 'give me your cheek only. if you meant what you said, let it be lips. it is for the first and last time, remember!' she put up her mouth, and he kissed her long. 'you forgive me?' she said crying. 'yes.' 'but you are ruined!' 'what matter!' he said shrugging his shoulders. 'it serves me right!' she withdrew, wiped her eyes, entered and bade good-bye to anna, who had not expected her to go so soon, and was still wrestling with the letter. raye followed edith downstairs, and in three minutes she was in a hansom driving to the waterloo station. he went back to his wife. 'never mind the letter, anna, to-day,' he said gently. 'put on your things. we, too, must be off shortly.' the simple girl, upheld by the sense that she was indeed married, showed her delight at finding that he was as kind as ever after the disclosure. she did not know that before his eyes he beheld as it were a galley, in which he, the fastidious urban, was chained to work for the remainder of his life, with her, the unlettered peasant, chained to his side. edith travelled back to melchester that day with a face that showed the very stupor of grief; her lips still tingling from the desperate pressure of his kiss. the end of her impassioned dream had come. when at dusk she reached the melchester station her husband was there to meet her, but in his perfunctoriness and her preoccupation they did not see each other, and she went out of the station alone. she walked mechanically homewards without calling a fly. entering, she could not bear the silence of the house, and went up in the dark to where anna had slept, where she remained thinking awhile. she then returned to the drawing-room, and not knowing what she did, crouched down upon the floor. 'i have ruined him!' she kept repeating. 'i have ruined him; because i would not deal treacherously towards her!' in the course of half an hour a figure opened the door of the apartment. 'ah--who's that?' she said, starting up, for it was dark. 'your husband--who should it be?' said the worthy merchant. 'ah--my husband!--i forgot i had a husband!' she whispered to herself. 'i missed you at the station,' he continued. 'did you see anna safely tied up? i hope so, for 'twas time.' 'yes--anna is married.' simultaneously with edith's journey home anna and her husband were sitting at the opposite windows of a second-class carriage which sped along to knollsea. in his hand was a pocket-book full of creased sheets closely written over. unfolding them one after another he read them in silence, and sighed. 'what are you doing, dear charles?' she said timidly from the other window, and drew nearer to him as if he were a god. 'reading over all those sweet letters to me signed "anna,"' he replied with dreary resignation. _autumn_ . to please his wife chapter i the interior of st. james's church, in havenpool town, was slowly darkening under the close clouds of a winter afternoon. it was sunday: service had just ended, the face of the parson in the pulpit was buried in his hands, and the congregation, with a cheerful sigh of release, were rising from their knees to depart. for the moment the stillness was so complete that the surging of the sea could be heard outside the harbour-bar. then it was broken by the footsteps of the clerk going towards the west door to open it in the usual manner for the exit of the assembly. before, however, he had reached the doorway, the latch was lifted from without, and the dark figure of a man in a sailor's garb appeared against the light. the clerk stepped aside, the sailor closed the door gently behind him, and advanced up the nave till he stood at the chancel-step. the parson looked up from the private little prayer which, after so many for the parish, he quite fairly took for himself; rose to his feet, and stared at the intruder. 'i beg your pardon, sir,' said the sailor, addressing the minister in a voice distinctly audible to all the congregation. 'i have come here to offer thanks for my narrow escape from shipwreck. i am given to understand that it is a proper thing to do, if you have no objection?' the parson, after a moment's pause, said hesitatingly, 'i have no objection; certainly. it is usual to mention any such wish before service, so that the proper words may be used in the general thanksgiving. but, if you wish, we can read from the form for use after a storm at sea.' 'ay, sure; i ain't particular,' said the sailor. the clerk thereupon directed the sailor to the page in the prayer-book where the collect of thanksgiving would be found, and the rector began reading it, the sailor kneeling where he stood, and repeating it after him word by word in a distinct voice. the people, who had remained agape and motionless at the proceeding, mechanically knelt down likewise; but they continued to regard the isolated form of the sailor who, in the precise middle of the chancel-step, remained fixed on his knees, facing the east, his hat beside him, his hands joined, and he quite unconscious of his appearance in their regard. when his thanksgiving had come to an end he rose; the people rose also, and all went out of church together. as soon as the sailor emerged, so that the remaining daylight fell upon his face, old inhabitants began to recognize him as no other than shadrach jolliffe, a young man who had not been seen at havenpool for several years. a son of the town, his parents had died when he was quite young, on which account he had early gone to sea, in the newfoundland trade. he talked with this and that townsman as he walked, informing them that, since leaving his native place years before, he had become captain and owner of a small coasting-ketch, which had providentially been saved from the gale as well as himself. presently he drew near to two girls who were going out of the churchyard in front of him; they had been sitting in the nave at his entry, and had watched his doings with deep interest, afterwards discussing him as they moved out of church together. one was a slight and gentle creature, the other a tall, large-framed, deliberative girl. captain jolliffe regarded the loose curls of their hair, their backs and shoulders, down to their heels, for some time. 'who may them two maids be?' he whispered to his neighbour. 'the little one is emily hanning; the tall one joanna phippard.' 'ah! i recollect 'em now, to be sure.' he advanced to their elbow, and genially stole a gaze at them. 'emily, you don't know me?' said the sailor, turning his beaming brown eyes on her. 'i think i do, mr. jolliffe,' said emily shyly. the other girl looked straight at him with her dark eyes. 'the face of miss joanna i don't call to mind so well,' he continued. 'but i know her beginnings and kindred.' they walked and talked together, jolliffe narrating particulars of his late narrow escape, till they reached the corner of sloop lane, in which emily hanning dwelt, when, with a nod and smile, she left them. soon the sailor parted also from joanna, and, having no especial errand or appointment, turned back towards emily's house. she lived with her father, who called himself an accountant, the daughter, however, keeping a little stationery-shop as a supplemental provision for the gaps of his somewhat uncertain business. on entering jolliffe found father and daughter about to begin tea. 'o, i didn't know it was tea-time,' he said. 'ay, i'll have a cup with much pleasure.' he remained to tea and long afterwards, telling more tales of his seafaring life. several neighbours called to listen, and were asked to come in. somehow emily hanning lost her heart to the sailor that sunday night, and in the course of a week or two there was a tender understanding between them. one moonlight evening in the next month shadrach was ascending out of the town by the long straight road eastward, to an elevated suburb where the more fashionable houses stood--if anything near this ancient port could be called fashionable--when he saw a figure before him whom, from her manner of glancing back, he took to be emily. but, on coming up, he found she was joanna phippard. he gave a gallant greeting, and walked beside her. 'go along,' she said, 'or emily will be jealous!' he seemed not to like the suggestion, and remained. what was said and what was done on that walk never could be clearly recollected by shadrach; but in some way or other joanna contrived to wean him away from her gentler and younger rival. from that week onwards, jolliffe was seen more and more in the wake of joanna phippard and less in the company of emily; and it was soon rumoured about the quay that old jolliffe's son, who had come home from sea, was going to be married to the former young woman, to the great disappointment of the latter. just after this report had gone about, joanna dressed herself for a walk one morning, and started for emily's house in the little cross-street. intelligence of the deep sorrow of her friend on account of the loss of shadrach had reached her ears also, and her conscience reproached her for winning him away. joanna was not altogether satisfied with the sailor. she liked his attentions, and she coveted the dignity of matrimony; but she had never been deeply in love with jolliffe. for one thing, she was ambitious, and socially his position was hardly so good as her own, and there was always the chance of an attractive woman mating considerably above her. it had long been in her mind that she would not strongly object to give him back again to emily if her friend felt so very badly about him. to this end she had written a letter of renunciation to shadrach, which letter she carried in her hand, intending to send it if personal observation of emily convinced her that her friend was suffering. joanna entered sloop lane and stepped down into the stationery-shop, which was below the pavement level. emily's father was never at home at this hour of the day, and it seemed as though emily were not at home either, for the visitor could make nobody hear. customers came so seldom hither that a five minutes' absence of the proprietor counted for little. joanna waited in the little shop, where emily had tastefully set out--as women can--articles in themselves of slight value, so as to obscure the meagreness of the stock-in-trade; till she saw a figure pausing without the window apparently absorbed in the contemplation of the sixpenny books, packets of paper, and prints hung on a string. it was captain shadrach jolliffe, peering in to ascertain if emily were there alone. moved by an impulse of reluctance to meet him in a spot which breathed of emily, joanna slipped through the door that communicated with the parlour at the back. she had frequently done so before, for in her friendship with emily she had the freedom of the house without ceremony. jolliffe entered the shop. through the thin blind which screened the glass partition she could see that he was disappointed at not finding emily there. he was about to go out again, when emily's form darkened the doorway, hastening home from some errand. at sight of jolliffe she started back as if she would have gone out again. 'don't run away, emily; don't!' said he. 'what can make ye afraid?' 'i'm not afraid, captain jolliffe. only--only i saw you all of a sudden, and--it made me jump!' her voice showed that her heart had jumped even more than the rest of her. 'i just called as i was passing,' he said. 'for some paper?' she hastened behind the counter. 'no, no, emily; why do ye get behind there? why not stay by me? you seem to hate me.' 'i don't hate you. how can i?' 'then come out, so that we can talk like christians.' emily obeyed with a fitful laugh, till she stood again beside him in the open part of the shop. 'there's a dear,' he said. 'you mustn't say that, captain jolliffe; because the words belong to somebody else.' 'ah! i know what you mean. but, emily, upon my life i didn't know till this morning that you cared one bit about me, or i should not have done as i have done. i have the best of feelings for joanna, but i know that from the beginning she hasn't cared for me more than in a friendly way; and i see now the one i ought to have asked to be my wife. you know, emily, when a man comes home from sea after a long voyage he's as blind as a bat--he can't see who's who in women. they are all alike to him, beautiful creatures, and he takes the first that comes easy, without thinking if she loves him, or if he might not soon love another better than her. from the first i inclined to you most, but you were so backward and shy that i thought you didn't want me to bother 'ee, and so i went to joanna.' 'don't say any more, mr. jolliffe, don't!' said she, choking. 'you are going to marry joanna next month, and it is wrong to--to--' 'o, emily, my darling!' he cried, and clasped her little figure in his arms before she was aware. joanna, behind the curtain, turned pale, tried to withdraw her eyes, but could not. 'it is only you i love as a man ought to love the woman he is going to marry; and i know this from what joanna has said, that she will willingly let me off! she wants to marry higher i know, and only said "yes" to me out of kindness. a fine, tall girl like her isn't the sort for a plain sailor's wife: you be the best suited for that.' he kissed her and kissed her again, her flexible form quivering in the agitation of his embrace. 'i wonder--are you sure--joanna is going to break off with you? o, are you sure? because--' 'i know she would not wish to make us miserable. she will release me.' 'o, i hope--i hope she will! don't stay any longer, captain jolliffe!' he lingered, however, till a customer came for a penny stick of sealing- wax, and then he withdrew. green envy had overspread joanna at the scene. she looked about for a way of escape. to get out without emily's knowledge of her visit was indispensable. she crept from the parlour into the passage, and thence to the front door of the house, where she let herself noiselessly into the street. the sight of that caress had reversed all her resolutions. she could not let shadrach go. reaching home she burnt the letter, and told her mother that if captain jolliffe called she was too unwell to see him. shadrach, however, did not call. he sent her a note expressing in simple language the state of his feelings; and asked to be allowed to take advantage of the hints she had given him that her affection, too, was little more than friendly, by cancelling the engagement. looking out upon the harbour and the island beyond he waited and waited in his lodgings for an answer that did not come. the suspense grew to be so intolerable that after dark he went up the high street. he could not resist calling at joanna's to learn his fate. her mother said her daughter was too unwell to see him, and to his questioning admitted that it was in consequence of a letter received from himself; which had distressed her deeply. 'you know what it was about, perhaps, mrs. phippard?' he said. mrs. phippard owned that she did, adding that it put them in a very painful position. thereupon shadrach, fearing that he had been guilty of an enormity, explained that if his letter had pained joanna it must be owing to a misunderstanding, since he had thought it would be a relief to her. if otherwise, he would hold himself bound by his word, and she was to think of the letter as never having been written. next morning he received an oral message from the young woman, asking him to fetch her home from a meeting that evening. this he did, and while walking from the town hall to her door, with her hand in his arm, she said: 'it is all the same as before between us, isn't it, shadrach? your letter was sent in mistake?' 'it is all the same as before,' he answered, 'if you say it must be.' 'i wish it to be,' she murmured, with hard lineaments, as she thought of emily. shadrach was a religious and scrupulous man, who respected his word as his life. shortly afterwards the wedding took place, jolliffe having conveyed to emily as gently as possible the error he had fallen into when estimating joanna's mood as one of indifference. chapter ii a month after the marriage joanna's mother died, and the couple were obliged to turn their attention to very practical matters. now that she was left without a parent, joanna could not bear the notion of her husband going to sea again, but the question was, what could he do at home? they finally decided to take on a grocer's shop in high street, the goodwill and stock of which were waiting to be disposed of at that time. shadrach knew nothing of shopkeeping, and joanna very little, but they hoped to learn. to the management of this grocery business they now devoted all their energies, and continued to conduct it for many succeeding years, without great success. two sons were born to them, whom their mother loved to idolatry, although she had never passionately loved her husband; and she lavished upon them all her forethought and care. but the shop did not thrive, and the large dreams she had entertained of her sons' education and career became attenuated in the face of realities. their schooling was of the plainest, but, being by the sea, they grew alert in all such nautical arts and enterprises as were attractive to their age. the great interest of the jolliffes' married life, outside their own immediate household, had lain in the marriage of emily. by one of those odd chances which lead those that lurk in unexpected corners to be discovered, while the obvious are passed by, the gentle girl had been seen and loved by a thriving merchant of the town, a widower, some years older than herself, though still in the prime of life. at first emily had declared that she never, never could marry any one; but mr. lester had quietly persevered, and had at last won her reluctant assent. two children also were the fruits of this union, and, as they grew and prospered, emily declared that she had never supposed that she could live to be so happy. the worthy merchant's home, one of those large, substantial brick mansions frequently jammed up in old-fashioned towns, faced directly on the high street, nearly opposite to the grocery shop of the jolliffes, and it now became the pain of joanna to behold the woman whose place she had usurped out of pure covetousness, looking down from her position of comparative wealth upon the humble shop-window with its dusty sugar-loaves, heaps of raisins, and canisters of tea, over which it was her own lot to preside. the business having so dwindled, joanna was obliged to serve in the shop herself; and it galled and mortified her that emily lester, sitting in her large drawing-room over the way, could witness her own dancings up and down behind the counter at the beck and call of wretched twopenny customers, whose patronage she was driven to welcome gladly: persons to whom she was compelled to be civil in the street, while emily was bounding along with her children and her governess, and conversing with the genteelest people of the town and neighbourhood. this was what she had gained by not letting shadrach jolliffe, whom she had so faintly loved, carry his affection elsewhere. shadrach was a good and honest man, and he had been faithful to her in heart and in deed. time had clipped the wings of his love for emily in his devotion to the mother of his boys: he had quite lived down that impulsive earlier fancy, and emily had become in his regard nothing more than a friend. it was the same with emily's feelings for him. possibly, had she found the least cause for jealousy, joanna would almost have been better satisfied. it was in the absolute acquiescence of emily and shadrach in the results she herself had contrived that her discontent found nourishment. shadrach was not endowed with the narrow shrewdness necessary for developing a retail business in the face of many competitors. did a customer inquire if the grocer could really recommend the wondrous substitute for eggs which a persevering bagman had forced into his stock, he would answer that 'when you did not put eggs into a pudding it was difficult to taste them there'; and when he was asked if his 'real mocha coffee' was real mocha, he would say grimly, 'as understood in small shops.' one summer day, when the big brick house opposite was reflecting the oppressive sun's heat into the shop, and nobody was present but husband and wife, joanna looked across at emily's door, where a wealthy visitor's carriage had drawn up. traces of patronage had been visible in emily's manner of late. 'shadrach, the truth is, you are not a business-man,' his wife sadly murmured. 'you were not brought up to shopkeeping, and it is impossible for a man to make a fortune at an occupation he has jumped into, as you did into this.' jolliffe agreed with her, in this as in everything else. 'not that i care a rope's end about making a fortune,' he said cheerfully. 'i am happy enough, and we can rub on somehow.' she looked again at the great house through the screen of bottled pickles. 'rub on--yes,' she said bitterly. 'but see how well off emmy lester is, who used to be so poor! her boys will go to college, no doubt; and think of yours--obliged to go to the parish school!' shadrach's thoughts had flown to emily. 'nobody,' he said good-humouredly, 'ever did emily a better turn than you did, joanna, when you warned her off me and put an end to that little simpering nonsense between us, so as to leave it in her power to say "aye" to lester when he came along.' this almost maddened her. 'don't speak of bygones!' she implored, in stern sadness. 'but think, for the boys' and my sake, if not for your own, what are we to do to get richer?' 'well,' he said, becoming serious, 'to tell the truth, i have always felt myself unfit for this business, though i've never liked to say so. i seem to want more room for sprawling; a more open space to strike out in than here among friends and neighbours. i could get rich as well as any man, if i tried my own way.' 'i wish you would! what is your way?' 'to go to sea again.' she had been the very one to keep him at home, hating the semi-widowed existence of sailors' wives. but her ambition checked her instincts now, and she said: 'do you think success really lies that way?' 'i am sure it lies in no other.' 'do you want to go, shadrach?' 'not for the pleasure of it, i can tell 'ee. there's no such pleasure at sea, joanna, as i can find in my back parlour here. to speak honest, i have no love for the brine. i never had much. but if it comes to a question of a fortune for you and the lads, it is another thing. that's the only way to it for one born and bred a seafarer as i.' 'would it take long to earn?' 'well, that depends; perhaps not.' the next morning shadrach pulled from a chest of drawers the nautical jacket he had worn during the first months of his return, brushed out the moths, donned it, and walked down to the quay. the port still did a fair business in the newfoundland trade, though not so much as formerly. it was not long after this that he invested all he possessed in purchasing a part-ownership in a brig, of which he was appointed captain. a few months were passed in coast-trading, during which interval shadrach wore off the land-rust that had accumulated upon him in his grocery phase; and in the spring the brig sailed for newfoundland. joanna lived on at home with her sons, who were now growing up into strong lads, and occupying themselves in various ways about the harbour and quay. 'never mind, let them work a little,' their fond mother said to herself. 'our necessities compel it now, but when shadrach comes home they will be only seventeen and eighteen, and they shall be removed from the port, and their education thoroughly taken in hand by a tutor; and with the money they'll have they will perhaps be as near to gentlemen as emmy lester's precious two, with their algebra and their latin!' the date for shadrach's return drew near and arrived, and he did not appear. joanna was assured that there was no cause for anxiety, sailing- ships being so uncertain in their coming; which assurance proved to be well grounded, for late one wet evening, about a month after the calculated time, the ship was announced as at hand, and presently the slip-slop step of shadrach as the sailor sounded in the passage, and he entered. the boys had gone out and had missed him, and joanna was sitting alone. as soon as the first emotion of reunion between the couple had passed, jolliffe explained the delay as owing to a small speculative contract, which had produced good results. 'i was determined not to disappoint 'ee,' he said; 'and i think you'll own that i haven't!' with this he pulled out an enormous canvas bag, full and rotund as the money-bag of the giant whom jack slew, untied it, and shook the contents out into her lap as she sat in her low chair by the fire. a mass of sovereigns and guineas (there were guineas on the earth in those days) fell into her lap with a sudden thud, weighing down her gown to the floor. 'there!' said shadrach complacently. 'i told 'ee, dear, i'd do it; and have i done it or no?' somehow her face, after the first excitement of possession, did not retain its glory. 'it is a lot of gold, indeed,' she said. 'and--is this _all_?' 'all? why, dear joanna, do you know you can count to three hundred in that heap? it is a fortune!' 'yes--yes. a fortune--judged by sea; but judged by land--' however, she banished considerations of the money for the nonce. soon the boys came in, and next sunday shadrach returned thanks to god--this time by the more ordinary channel of the italics in the general thanksgiving. but a few days after, when the question of investing the money arose, he remarked that she did not seem so satisfied as he had hoped. 'well you see, shadrach,' she answered, '_we_ count by hundreds; _they_ count by thousands' (nodding towards the other side of the street). 'they have set up a carriage and pair since you left.' 'o, have they?' 'my dear shadrach, you don't know how the world moves. however, we'll do the best we can with it. but they are rich, and we are poor still!' the greater part of a year was desultorily spent. she moved sadly about the house and shop, and the boys were still occupying themselves in and around the harbour. 'joanna,' he said, one day, 'i see by your movements that it is not enough.' 'it is not enough,' said she. 'my boys will have to live by steering the ships that the lesters own; and i was once above her!' jolliffe was not an argumentative man, and he only murmured that he thought he would make another voyage. he meditated for several days, and coming home from the quay one afternoon said suddenly: 'i could do it for 'ee, dear, in one more trip, for certain, if--if--' 'do what, shadrach?' 'enable 'ee to count by thousands instead of hundreds.' 'if what?' 'if i might take the boys.' she turned pale. 'don't say that, shadrach,' she answered hastily. 'why?' 'i don't like to hear it! there's danger at sea. i want them to be something genteel, and no danger to them. i couldn't let them risk their lives at sea. o, i couldn't ever, ever!' 'very well, dear, it shan't be done.' next day, after a silence, she asked a question: 'if they were to go with you it would make a great deal of difference, i suppose, to the profit?' ''twould treble what i should get from the venture single-handed. under my eye they would be as good as two more of myself.' later on she said: 'tell me more about this.' 'well, the boys are almost as clever as master-mariners in handling a craft, upon my life! there isn't a more cranky place in the northern seas than about the sandbanks of this harbour, and they've practised here from their infancy. and they are so steady. i couldn't get their steadiness and their trustworthiness in half a dozen men twice their age.' 'and is it _very_ dangerous at sea; now, too, there are rumours of war?' she asked uneasily. 'o, well, there be risks. still . . . ' the idea grew and magnified, and the mother's heart was crushed and stifled by it. emmy was growing _too_ patronizing; it could not be borne. shadrach's wife could not help nagging him about their comparative poverty. the young men, amiable as their father, when spoken to on the subject of a voyage of enterprise, were quite willing to embark; and though they, like their father, had no great love for the sea, they became quite enthusiastic when the proposal was detailed. everything now hung upon their mother's assent. she withheld it long, but at last gave the word: the young men might accompany their father. shadrach was unusually cheerful about it: heaven had preserved him hitherto, and he had uttered his thanks. god would not forsake those who were faithful to him. all that the jolliffes possessed in the world was put into the enterprise. the grocery stock was pared down to the least that possibly could afford a bare sustenance to joanna during the absence, which was to last through the usual 'new-f'nland spell.' how she would endure the weary time she hardly knew, for the boys had been with her formerly; but she nerved herself for the trial. the ship was laden with boots and shoes, ready-made clothing, fishing- tackle, butter, cheese, cordage, sailcloth, and many other commodities; and was to bring back oil, furs, skins, fish, cranberries, and what else came to hand. but much trading to other ports was to be undertaken between the voyages out and homeward, and thereby much money made. chapter iii the brig sailed on a monday morning in spring; but joanna did not witness its departure. she could not bear the sight that she had been the means of bringing about. knowing this, her husband told her overnight that they were to sail some time before noon next day hence when, awakening at five the next morning, she heard them bustling about downstairs, she did not hasten to descend, but lay trying to nerve herself for the parting, imagining they would leave about nine, as her husband had done on his previous voyage. when she did descend she beheld words chalked upon the sloping face of the bureau; but no husband or sons. in the hastily-scrawled lines shadrach said they had gone off thus not to pain her by a leave-taking; and the sons had chalked under his words: 'good- bye, mother!' she rushed to the quay, and looked down the harbour towards the blue rim of the sea, but she could only see the masts and bulging sails of the _joanna_; no human figures. ''tis i have sent them!' she said wildly, and burst into tears. in the house the chalked 'good-bye' nearly broke her heart. but when she had re-entered the front room, and looked across at emily's, a gleam of triumph lit her thin face at her anticipated release from the thraldom of subservience. to do emily lester justice, her assumption of superiority was mainly a figment of joanna's brain. that the circumstances of the merchant's wife were more luxurious than joanna's, the former could not conceal; though whenever the two met, which was not very often now, emily endeavoured to subdue the difference by every means in her power. the first summer lapsed away; and joanna meagrely maintained herself by the shop, which now consisted of little more than a window and a counter. emily was, in truth, her only large customer; and mrs. lester's kindly readiness to buy anything and everything without questioning the quality had a sting of bitterness in it, for it was the uncritical attitude of a patron, and almost of a donor. the long dreary winter moved on; the face of the bureau had been turned to the wall to protect the chalked words of farewell, for joanna could never bring herself to rub them out; and she often glanced at them with wet eyes. emily's handsome boys came home for the christmas holidays; the university was talked of for them; and still joanna subsisted as it were with held breath, like a person submerged. only one summer more, and the 'spell' would end. towards the close of the time emily called on her quondam friend. she had heard that joanna began to feel anxious; she had received no letter from husband or sons for some months. emily's silks rustled arrogantly when, in response to joanna's almost dumb invitation, she squeezed through the opening of the counter and into the parlour behind the shop. '_you_ are all success, and _i_ am all the other way!' said joanna. 'but why do you think so?' said emily. 'they are to bring back a fortune, i hear.' 'ah! will they come? the doubt is more than a woman can bear. all three in one ship--think of that! and i have not heard of them for months!' 'but the time is not up. you should not meet misfortune half-way.' 'nothing will repay me for the grief of their absence!' 'then why did you let them go? you were doing fairly well.' 'i made them go!' she said, turning vehemently upon emily. 'and i'll tell you why! i could not bear that we should be only muddling on, and you so rich and thriving! now i have told you, and you may hate me if you will!' 'i shall never hate you, joanna.' and she proved the truth of her words afterwards. the end of autumn came, and the brig should have been in port; but nothing like the _joanna_ appeared in the channel between the sands. it was now really time to be uneasy. joanna jolliffe sat by the fire, and every gust of wind caused her a cold thrill. she had always feared and detested the sea; to her it was a treacherous, restless, slimy creature, glorying in the griefs of women. 'still,' she said, 'they _must_ come!' she recalled to her mind that shadrach had said before starting that if they returned safe and sound, with success crowning their enterprise, he would go as he had gone after his shipwreck, and kneel with his sons in the church, and offer sincere thanks for their deliverance. she went to church regularly morning and afternoon, and sat in the most forward pew, nearest the chancel-step. her eyes were mostly fixed on that step, where shadrach had knelt in the bloom of his young manhood: she knew to an inch the spot which his knees had pressed twenty winters before; his outline as he had knelt, his hat on the step beside him. god was good. surely her husband must kneel there again: a son on each side as he had said; george just here, jim just there. by long watching the spot as she worshipped it became as if she saw the three returned ones there kneeling; the two slim outlines of her boys, the more bulky form between them; their hands clasped, their heads shaped against the eastern wall. the fancy grew almost to an hallucination: she could never turn her worn eyes to the step without seeing them there. nevertheless they did not come. heaven was merciful, but it was not yet pleased to relieve her soul. this was her purgation for the sin of making them the slaves of her ambition. but it became more than purgation soon, and her mood approached despair. months had passed since the brig had been due, but it had not returned. joanna was always hearing or seeing evidences of their arrival. when on the hill behind the port, whence a view of the open channel could be obtained, she felt sure that a little speck on the horizon, breaking the eternally level waste of waters southward, was the truck of the _joana's_ mainmast. or when indoors, a shout or excitement of any kind at the corner of the town cellar, where the high street joined the quay, caused her to spring to her feet and cry: ''tis they!' but it was not. the visionary forms knelt every sunday afternoon on the chancel-step, but not the real. her shop had, as it were, eaten itself hollow. in the apathy which had resulted from her loneliness and grief she had ceased to take in the smallest supplies, and thus had sent away her last customer. in this strait emily lester tried by every means in her power to aid the afflicted woman; but she met with constant repulses. 'i don't like you! i can't bear to see you!' joanna would whisper hoarsely when emily came to her and made advances. 'but i want to help and soothe you, joanna,' emily would say. 'you are a lady, with a rich husband and fine sons! what can you want with a bereaved crone like me!' 'joanna, i want this: i want you to come and live in my house, and not stay alone in this dismal place any longer.' 'and suppose they come and don't find me at home? you wish to separate me and mine! no, i'll stay here. i don't like you, and i can't thank you, whatever kindness you do me!' however, as time went on joanna could not afford to pay the rent of the shop and house without an income. she was assured that all hope of the return of shadrach and his sons was vain, and she reluctantly consented to accept the asylum of the lesters' house. here she was allotted a room of her own on the second floor, and went and came as she chose, without contact with the family. her hair greyed and whitened, deep lines channeled her forehead, and her form grew gaunt and stooping. but she still expected the lost ones, and when she met emily on the staircase she would say morosely: 'i know why you've got me here! they'll come, and be disappointed at not finding me at home, and perhaps go away again; and then you'll be revenged for my taking shadrach away from 'ee!' emily lester bore these reproaches from the grief-stricken soul. she was sure--all the people of havenpool were sure--that shadrach and his sons could not return. for years the vessel had been given up as lost. nevertheless, when awakened at night by any noise, joanna would rise from bed and glance at the shop opposite by the light from the flickering lamp, to make sure it was not they. it was a damp and dark december night, six years after the departure of the brig _joanna_. the wind was from the sea, and brought up a fishy mist which mopped the face like moist flannel. joanna had prayed her usual prayer for the absent ones with more fervour and confidence than she had felt for months, and had fallen asleep about eleven. it must have been between one and two when she suddenly started up. she had certainly heard steps in the street, and the voices of shadrach and her sons calling at the door of the grocery shop. she sprang out of bed, and, hardly knowing what clothing she dragged on herself; hastened down emily's large and carpeted staircase, put the candle on the hall-table, unfastened the bolts and chain, and stepped into the street. the mist, blowing up the street from the quay, hindered her seeing the shop, although it was so near; but she had crossed to it in a moment. how was it? nobody stood there. the wretched woman walked wildly up and down with her bare feet--there was not a soul. she returned and knocked with all her might at the door which had once been her own--they might have been admitted for the night, unwilling to disturb her till the morning. it was not till several minutes had elapsed that the young man who now kept the shop looked out of an upper window, and saw the skeleton of something human standing below half-dressed. 'has anybody come?' asked the form. 'o, mrs. jolliffe, i didn't know it was you,' said the young man kindly, for he was aware how her baseless expectations moved her. 'no; nobody has come.' _june_ . the melancholy hussar of the german legion chapter i here stretch the downs, high and breezy and green, absolutely unchanged since those eventful days. a plough has never disturbed the turf, and the sod that was uppermost then is uppermost now. here stood the camp; here are distinct traces of the banks thrown up for the horses of the cavalry, and spots where the midden-heaps lay are still to be observed. at night, when i walk across the lonely place, it is impossible to avoid hearing, amid the scourings of the wind over the grass-bents and thistles, the old trumpet and bugle calls, the rattle of the halters; to help seeing rows of spectral tents and the _impedimenta_ of the soldiery. from within the canvases come guttural syllables of foreign tongues, and broken songs of the fatherland; for they were mainly regiments of the king's german legion that slept round the tent-poles hereabout at that time. it was nearly ninety years ago. the british uniform of the period, with its immense epaulettes, queer cocked-hat, breeches, gaiters, ponderous cartridge-box, buckled shoes, and what not, would look strange and barbarous now. ideas have changed; invention has followed invention. soldiers were monumental objects then. a divinity still hedged kings here and there; and war was considered a glorious thing. secluded old manor-houses and hamlets lie in the ravines and hollows among these hills, where a stranger had hardly ever been seen till the king chose to take the baths yearly at the sea-side watering-place a few miles to the south; as a consequence of which battalions descended in a cloud upon the open country around. is it necessary to add that the echoes of many characteristic tales, dating from that picturesque time, still linger about here in more or less fragmentary form, to be caught by the attentive ear? some of them i have repeated; most of them i have forgotten; one i have never repeated, and assuredly can never forget. phyllis told me the story with her own lips. she was then an old lady of seventy-five, and her auditor a lad of fifteen. she enjoined silence as to her share in the incident, till she should be 'dead, buried, and forgotten.' her life was prolonged twelve years after the day of her narration, and she has now been dead nearly twenty. the oblivion which in her modesty and humility she courted for herself has only partially fallen on her, with the unfortunate result of inflicting an injustice upon her memory; since such fragments of her story as got abroad at the time, and have been kept alive ever since, are precisely those which are most unfavourable to her character. it all began with the arrival of the york hussars, one of the foreign regiments above alluded to. before that day scarcely a soul had been seen near her father's house for weeks. when a noise like the brushing skirt of a visitor was heard on the doorstep, it proved to be a scudding leaf; when a carriage seemed to be nearing the door, it was her father grinding his sickle on the stone in the garden for his favourite relaxation of trimming the box-tree borders to the plots. a sound like luggage thrown down from the coach was a gun far away at sea; and what looked like a tall man by the gate at dusk was a yew bush cut into a quaint and attenuated shape. there is no such solitude in country places now as there was in those old days. yet all the while king george and his court were at his favourite sea- side resort, not more than five miles off. the daughter's seclusion was great, but beyond the seclusion of the girl lay the seclusion of the father. if her social condition was twilight, his was darkness. yet he enjoyed his darkness, while her twilight oppressed her. dr. grove had been a professional man whose taste for lonely meditation over metaphysical questions had diminished his practice till it no longer paid him to keep it going; after which he had relinquished it and hired at a nominal rent the small, dilapidated, half farm half manor-house of this obscure inland nook, to make a sufficiency of an income which in a town would have been inadequate for their maintenance. he stayed in his garden the greater part of the day, growing more and more irritable with the lapse of time, and the increasing perception that he had wasted his life in the pursuit of illusions. he saw his friends less and less frequently. phyllis became so shy that if she met a stranger anywhere in her short rambles she felt ashamed at his gaze, walked awkwardly, and blushed to her shoulders. yet phyllis was discovered even here by an admirer, and her hand most unexpectedly asked in marriage. the king, as aforesaid, was at the neighbouring town, where he had taken up his abode at gloucester lodge and his presence in the town naturally brought many county people thither. among these idlers--many of whom professed to have connections and interests with the court--was one humphrey gould, a bachelor; a personage neither young nor old; neither good-looking nor positively plain. too steady-going to be 'a buck' (as fast and unmarried men were then called), he was an approximately fashionable man of a mild type. this bachelor of thirty found his way to the village on the down: beheld phyllis; made her father's acquaintance in order to make hers; and by some means or other she sufficiently inflamed his heart to lead him in that direction almost daily; till he became engaged to marry her. as he was of an old local family, some of whose members were held in respect in the county, phyllis, in bringing him to her feet, had accomplished what was considered a brilliant move for one in her constrained position. how she had done it was not quite known to phyllis herself. in those days unequal marriages were regarded rather as a violation of the laws of nature than as a mere infringement of convention, the more modern view, and hence when phyllis, of the watering- place bourgeoisie, was chosen by such a gentlemanly fellow, it was as if she were going to be taken to heaven, though perhaps the uninformed would have seen no great difference in the respective positions of the pair, the said gould being as poor as a crow. this pecuniary condition was his excuse--probably a true one--for postponing their union, and as the winter drew nearer, and the king departed for the season, mr. humphrey gould set out for bath, promising to return to phyllis in a few weeks. the winter arrived, the date of his promise passed, yet gould postponed his coming, on the ground that he could not very easily leave his father in the city of their sojourn, the elder having no other relative near him. phyllis, though lonely in the extreme, was content. the man who had asked her in marriage was a desirable husband for her in many ways; her father highly approved of his suit; but this neglect of her was awkward, if not painful, for phyllis. love him in the true sense of the word she assured me she never did, but she had a genuine regard for him; admired a certain methodical and dogged way in which he sometimes took his pleasure; valued his knowledge of what the court was doing, had done, or was about to do; and she was not without a feeling of pride that he had chosen her when he might have exercised a more ambitious choice. but he did not come; and the spring developed. his letters were regular though formal; and it is not to be wondered that the uncertainty of her position, linked with the fact that there was not much passion in her thoughts of humphrey, bred an indescribable dreariness in the heart of phyllis grove. the spring was soon summer, and the summer brought the king; but still no humphrey gould. all this while the engagement by letter was maintained intact. at this point of time a golden radiance flashed in upon the lives of people here, and charged all youthful thought with emotional interest. this radiance was the aforesaid york hussars. chapter ii the present generation has probably but a very dim notion of the celebrated york hussars of ninety years ago. they were one of the regiments of the king's german legion, and (though they somewhat degenerated later on) their brilliant uniform, their splendid horses, and above all, their foreign air and mustachios (rare appendages then), drew crowds of admirers of both sexes wherever they went. these with other regiments had come to encamp on the downs and pastures, because of the presence of the king in the neighbouring town. the spot was high and airy, and the view extensive, commanding the isle of portland in front, and reaching to st. aldhelm's head eastward, and almost to the start on the west. phyllis, though not precisely a girl of the village, was as interested as any of them in this military investment. her father's home stood somewhat apart, and on the highest point of ground to which the lane ascended, so that it was almost level with the top of the church tower in the lower part of the parish. immediately from the outside of the garden- wall the grass spread away to a great distance, and it was crossed by a path which came close to the wall. ever since her childhood it had been phyllis's pleasure to clamber up this fence and sit on the top--a feat not so difficult as it may seem, the walls in this district being built of rubble, without mortar, so that there were plenty of crevices for small toes. she was sitting up here one day, listlessly surveying the pasture without, when her attention was arrested by a solitary figure walking along the path. it was one of the renowned german hussars, and he moved onward with his eyes on the ground, and with the manner of one who wished to escape company. his head would probably have been bent like his eyes but for his stiff neck-gear. on nearer view she perceived that his face was marked with deep sadness. without observing her, he advanced by the footpath till it brought him almost immediately under the wall. phyllis was much surprised to see a fine, tall soldier in such a mood as this. her theory of the military, and of the york hussars in particular (derived entirely from hearsay, for she had never talked to a soldier in her life), was that their hearts were as gay as their accoutrements. at this moment the hussar lifted his eyes and noticed her on her perch, the white muslin neckerchief which covered her shoulders and neck where left bare by her low gown, and her white raiment in general, showing conspicuously in the bright sunlight of this summer day. he blushed a little at the suddenness of the encounter, and without halting a moment from his pace passed on. all that day the foreigner's face haunted phyllis; its aspect was so striking, so handsome, and his eyes were so blue, and sad, and abstracted. it was perhaps only natural that on some following day at the same hour she should look over that wall again, and wait till he had passed a second time. on this occasion he was reading a letter, and at the sight of her his manner was that of one who had half expected or hoped to discover her. he almost stopped, smiled, and made a courteous salute. the end of the meeting was that they exchanged a few words. she asked him what he was reading, and he readily informed her that he was re- perusing letters from his mother in germany; he did not get them often, he said, and was forced to read the old ones a great many times. this was all that passed at the present interview, but others of the same kind followed. phyllis used to say that his english, though not good, was quite intelligible to her, so that their acquaintance was never hindered by difficulties of speech. whenever the subject became too delicate, subtle, or tender, for such words of english as were at his command, the eyes no doubt helped out the tongue, and--though this was later on--the lips helped out the eyes. in short this acquaintance, unguardedly made, and rash enough on her part, developed and ripened. like desdemona, she pitied him, and learnt his history. his name was matthaus tina, and saarbruck his native town, where his mother was still living. his age was twenty-two, and he had already risen to the grade of corporal, though he had not long been in the army. phyllis used to assert that no such refined or well-educated young man could have been found in the ranks of the purely english regiments, some of these foreign soldiers having rather the graceful manner and presence of our native officers than of our rank and file. she by degrees learnt from her foreign friend a circumstance about himself and his comrades which phyllis would least have expected of the york hussars. so far from being as gay as its uniform, the regiment was pervaded by a dreadful melancholy, a chronic home-sickness, which depressed many of the men to such an extent that they could hardly attend to their drill. the worst sufferers were the younger soldiers who had not been over here long. they hated england and english life; they took no interest whatever in king george and his island kingdom, and they only wished to be out of it and never to see it any more. their bodies were here, but their hearts and minds were always far away in their dear fatherland, of which--brave men and stoical as they were in many ways--they would speak with tears in their eyes. one of the worst of the sufferers from this home-woe, as he called it in his own tongue, was matthaus tina, whose dreamy musing nature felt the gloom of exile still more intensely from the fact that he had left a lonely mother at home with nobody to cheer her. though phyllis, touched by all this, and interested in his history, did not disdain her soldier's acquaintance, she declined (according to her own account, at least) to permit the young man to overstep the line of mere friendship for a long while--as long, indeed, as she considered herself likely to become the possession of another; though it is probable that she had lost her heart to matthaus before she was herself aware. the stone wall of necessity made anything like intimacy difficult; and he had never ventured to come, or to ask to come, inside the garden, so that all their conversation had been overtly conducted across this boundary. chapter iii but news reached the village from a friend of phyllis's father concerning mr. humphrey gould, her remarkably cool and patient betrothed. this gentleman had been heard to say in bath that he considered his overtures to miss phyllis grove to have reached only the stage of a half-understanding; and in view of his enforced absence on his father's account, who was too great an invalid now to attend to his affairs, he thought it best that there should be no definite promise as yet on either side. he was not sure, indeed, that he might not cast his eyes elsewhere. this account--though only a piece of hearsay, and as such entitled to no absolute credit--tallied so well with the infrequency of his letters and their lack of warmth, that phyllis did not doubt its truth for one moment; and from that hour she felt herself free to bestow her heart as she should choose. not so her father; he declared the whole story to be a fabrication. he had known mr. gould's family from his boyhood; and if there was one proverb which expressed the matrimonial aspect of that family well, it was 'love me little, love me long.' humphrey was an honourable man, who would not think of treating his engagement so lightly. 'do you wait in patience,' he said; 'all will be right enough in time.' from these words phyllis at first imagined that her father was in correspondence with mr. gould; and her heart sank within her; for in spite of her original intentions she had been relieved to hear that her engagement had come to nothing. but she presently learnt that her father had heard no more of humphrey gould than she herself had done; while he would not write and address her affianced directly on the subject, lest it should be deemed an imputation on that bachelor's honour. 'you want an excuse for encouraging one or other of those foreign fellows to flatter you with his unmeaning attentions,' her father exclaimed, his mood having of late been a very unkind one towards her. 'i see more than i say. don't you ever set foot outside that garden-fence without my permission. if you want to see the camp i'll take you myself some sunday afternoon.' phyllis had not the smallest intention of disobeying him in her actions, but she assumed herself to be independent with respect to her feelings. she no longer checked her fancy for the hussar, though she was far from regarding him as her lover in the serious sense in which an englishman might have been regarded as such. the young foreign soldier was almost an ideal being to her, with none of the appurtenances of an ordinary house-dweller; one who had descended she knew not whence, and would disappear she knew not whither; the subject of a fascinating dream--no more. they met continually now--mostly at dusk--during the brief interval between the going down of the sun and the minute at which the last trumpet-call summoned him to his tent. perhaps her manner had become less restrained latterly; at any rate that of the hussar was so; he had grown more tender every day, and at parting after these hurried interviews she reached down her hand from the top of the wall that he might press it. one evening he held it so long that she exclaimed, 'the wall is white, and somebody in the field may see your shape against it!' he lingered so long that night that it was with the greatest difficulty that he could run across the intervening stretch of ground and enter the camp in time. on the next occasion of his awaiting her she did not appear in her usual place at the usual hour. his disappointment was unspeakably keen; he remained staring blankly at the spot, like a man in a trance. the trumpets and tattoo sounded, and still he did not go. she had been delayed purely by an accident. when she arrived she was anxious because of the lateness of the hour, having heard as well as he the sounds denoting the closing of the camp. she implored him to leave immediately. 'no,' he said gloomily. 'i shall not go in yet--the moment you come--i have thought of your coming all day.' 'but you may be disgraced at being after time?' 'i don't mind that. i should have disappeared from the world some time ago if it had not been for two persons--my beloved, here, and my mother in saarbruck. i hate the army. i care more for a minute of your company than for all the promotion in the world.' thus he stayed and talked to her, and told her interesting details of his native place, and incidents of his childhood, till she was in a simmer of distress at his recklessness in remaining. it was only because she insisted on bidding him good-night and leaving the wall that he returned to his quarters. the next time that she saw him he was without the stripes that had adorned his sleeve. he had been broken to the level of private for his lateness that night; and as phyllis considered herself to be the cause of his disgrace her sorrow was great. but the position was now reversed; it was his turn to cheer her. 'don't grieve, meine liebliche!' he said. 'i have got a remedy for whatever comes. first, even supposing i regain my stripes, would your father allow you to marry a non-commissioned officer in the york hussars?' she flushed. this practical step had not been in her mind in relation to such an unrealistic person as he was; and a moment's reflection was enough for it. 'my father would not--certainly would not,' she answered unflinchingly. 'it cannot be thought of! my dear friend, please do forget me: i fear i am ruining you and your prospects!' 'not at all!' said he. 'you are giving this country of yours just sufficient interest to me to make me care to keep alive in it. if my dear land were here also, and my old parent, with you, i could be happy as i am, and would do my best as a soldier. but it is not so. and now listen. this is my plan. that you go with me to my own country, and be my wife there, and live there with my mother and me. i am not a hanoverian, as you know, though i entered the army as such; my country is by the saar, and is at peace with france, and if i were once in it i should be free.' 'but how get there?' she asked. phyllis had been rather amazed than shocked at his proposition. her position in her father's house was growing irksome and painful in the extreme; his parental affection seemed to be quite dried up. she was not a native of the village, like all the joyous girls around her; and in some way matthaus tina had infected her with his own passionate longing for his country, and mother, and home. 'but how?' she repeated, finding that he did not answer. 'will you buy your discharge?' 'ah, no,' he said. 'that's impossible in these times. no; i came here against my will; why should i not escape? now is the time, as we shall soon be striking camp, and i might see you no more. this is my scheme. i will ask you to meet me on the highway two miles off; on some calm night next week that may be appointed. there will be nothing unbecoming in it, or to cause you shame; you will not fly alone with me, for i will bring with me my devoted young friend christoph, an alsatian, who has lately joined the regiment, and who has agreed to assist in this enterprise. we shall have come from yonder harbour, where we shall have examined the boats, and found one suited to our purpose. christoph has already a chart of the channel, and we will then go to the harbour, and at midnight cut the boat from her moorings, and row away round the point out of sight; and by the next morning we are on the coast of france, near cherbourg. the rest is easy, for i have saved money for the land journey, and can get a change of clothes. i will write to my mother, who will meet us on the way.' he added details in reply to her inquiries, which left no doubt in phyllis's mind of the feasibility of the undertaking. but its magnitude almost appalled her; and it is questionable if she would ever have gone further in the wild adventure if, on entering the house that night, her father had not accosted her in the most significant terms. 'how about the york hussars?' he said. 'they are still at the camp; but they are soon going away, i believe.' 'it is useless for you to attempt to cloak your actions in that way. you have been meeting one of those fellows; you have been seen walking with him--foreign barbarians, not much better than the french themselves! i have made up my mind--don't speak a word till i have done, please!--i have made up my mind that you shall stay here no longer while they are on the spot. you shall go to your aunt's.' it was useless for her to protest that she had never taken a walk with any soldier or man under the sun except himself. her protestations were feeble, too, for though he was not literally correct in his assertion, he was virtually only half in error. the house of her father's sister was a prison to phyllis. she had quite recently undergone experience of its gloom; and when her father went on to direct her to pack what would be necessary for her to take, her heart died within her. in after years she never attempted to excuse her conduct during this week of agitation; but the result of her self-communing was that she decided to join in the scheme of her lover and his friend, and fly to the country which he had coloured with such lovely hues in her imagination. she always said that the one feature in his proposal which overcame her hesitation was the obvious purity and straightforwardness of his intentions. he showed himself to be so virtuous and kind; he treated her with a respect to which she had never before been accustomed; and she was braced to the obvious risks of the voyage by her confidence in him. chapter iv it was on a soft, dark evening of the following week that they engaged in the adventure. tina was to meet her at a point in the highway at which the lane to the village branched off. christoph was to go ahead of them to the harbour where the boat lay, row it round the nothe--or look-out as it was called in those days--and pick them up on the other side of the promontory, which they were to reach by crossing the harbour-bridge on foot, and climbing over the look-out hill. as soon as her father had ascended to his room she left the house, and, bundle in hand, proceeded at a trot along the lane. at such an hour not a soul was afoot anywhere in the village, and she reached the junction of the lane with the highway unobserved. here she took up her position in the obscurity formed by the angle of a fence, whence she could discern every one who approached along the turnpike-road, without being herself seen. she had not remained thus waiting for her lover longer than a minute--though from the tension of her nerves the lapse of even that short time was trying--when, instead of the expected footsteps, the stage- coach could be heard descending the hill. she knew that tina would not show himself till the road was clear, and waited impatiently for the coach to pass. nearing the corner where she was it slackened speed, and, instead of going by as usual, drew up within a few yards of her. a passenger alighted, and she heard his voice. it was humphrey gould's. he had brought a friend with him, and luggage. the luggage was deposited on the grass, and the coach went on its route to the royal watering-place. 'i wonder where that young man is with the horse and trap?' said her former admirer to his companion. 'i hope we shan't have to wait here long. i told him half-past nine o'clock precisely.' 'have you got her present safe?' 'phyllis's? o, yes. it is in this trunk. i hope it will please her.' 'of course it will. what woman would not be pleased with such a handsome peace-offering?' 'well--she deserves it. i've treated her rather badly. but she has been in my mind these last two days much more than i should care to confess to everybody. ah, well; i'll say no more about that. it cannot be that she is so bad as they make out. i am quite sure that a girl of her good wit would know better than to get entangled with any of those hanoverian soldiers. i won't believe it of her, and there's an end on't.' more words in the same strain were casually dropped as the two men waited; words which revealed to her, as by a sudden illumination, the enormity of her conduct. the conversation was at length cut off by the arrival of the man with the vehicle. the luggage was placed in it, and they mounted, and were driven on in the direction from which she had just come. phyllis was so conscience-stricken that she was at first inclined to follow them; but a moment's reflection led her to feel that it would only be bare justice to matthaus to wait till he arrived, and explain candidly that she had changed her mind--difficult as the struggle would be when she stood face to face with him. she bitterly reproached herself for having believed reports which represented humphrey gould as false to his engagement, when, from what she now heard from his own lips, she gathered that he had been living full of trust in her. but she knew well enough who had won her love. without him her life seemed a dreary prospect, yet the more she looked at his proposal the more she feared to accept it--so wild as it was, so vague, so venturesome. she had promised humphrey gould, and it was only his assumed faithlessness which had led her to treat that promise as nought. his solicitude in bringing her these gifts touched her; her promise must be kept, and esteem must take the place of love. she would preserve her self-respect. she would stay at home, and marry him, and suffer. phyllis had thus braced herself to an exceptional fortitude when, a few minutes later, the outline of matthaus tina appeared behind a field-gate, over which he lightly leapt as she stepped forward. there was no evading it, he pressed her to his breast. 'it is the first and last time!' she wildly thought as she stood encircled by his arms. how phyllis got through the terrible ordeal of that night she could never clearly recollect. she always attributed her success in carrying out her resolve to her lover's honour, for as soon as she declared to him in feeble words that she had changed her mind, and felt that she could not, dared not, fly with him, he forbore to urge her, grieved as he was at her decision. unscrupulous pressure on his part, seeing how romantically she had become attached to him, would no doubt have turned the balance in his favour. but he did nothing to tempt her unduly or unfairly. on her side, fearing for his safety, she begged him to remain. this, he declared, could not be. 'i cannot break faith with my friend,' said he. had he stood alone he would have abandoned his plan. but christoph, with the boat and compass and chart, was waiting on the shore; the tide would soon turn; his mother had been warned of his coming; go he must. many precious minutes were lost while he tarried, unable to tear himself away. phyllis held to her resolve, though it cost her many a bitter pang. at last they parted, and he went down the hill. before his footsteps had quite died away she felt a desire to behold at least his outline once more, and running noiselessly after him regained view of his diminishing figure. for one moment she was sufficiently excited to be on the point of rushing forward and linking her fate with his. but she could not. the courage which at the critical instant failed cleopatra of egypt could scarcely be expected of phyllis grove. a dark shape, similar to his own, joined him in the highway. it was christoph, his friend. she could see no more; they had hastened on in the direction of the town and harbour, four miles ahead. with a feeling akin to despair she turned and slowly pursued her way homeward. tattoo sounded in the camp; but there was no camp for her now. it was as dead as the camp of the assyrians after the passage of the destroying angel. she noiselessly entered the house, seeing nobody, and went to bed. grief, which kept her awake at first, ultimately wrapped her in a heavy sleep. the next morning her father met her at the foot of the stairs. 'mr. gould is come!' he said triumphantly. humphrey was staying at the inn, and had already called to inquire for her. he had brought her a present of a very handsome looking-glass in a frame of _repousse_ silverwork, which her father held in his hand. he had promised to call again in the course of an hour, to ask phyllis to walk with him. pretty mirrors were rarer in country-houses at that day than they are now, and the one before her won phyllis's admiration. she looked into it, saw how heavy her eyes were, and endeavoured to brighten them. she was in that wretched state of mind which leads a woman to move mechanically onward in what she conceives to be her allotted path. mr. humphrey had, in his undemonstrative way, been adhering all along to the old understanding; it was for her to do the same, and to say not a word of her own lapse. she put on her bonnet and tippet, and when he arrived at the hour named she was at the door awaiting him. chapter v phyllis thanked him for his beautiful gift; but the talking was soon entirely on humphrey's side as they walked along. he told her of the latest movements of the world of fashion--a subject which she willingly discussed to the exclusion of anything more personal--and his measured language helped to still her disquieted heart and brain. had not her own sadness been what it was she must have observed his embarrassment. at last he abruptly changed the subject. 'i am glad you are pleased with my little present,' he said. 'the truth is that i brought it to propitiate 'ee, and to get you to help me out of a mighty difficulty.' it was inconceivable to phyllis that this independent bachelor--whom she admired in some respects--could have a difficulty. 'phyllis--i'll tell you my secret at once; for i have a monstrous secret to confide before i can ask your counsel. the case is, then, that i am married: yes, i have privately married a dear young belle; and if you knew her, and i hope you will, you would say everything in her praise. but she is not quite the one that my father would have chose for me--you know the paternal idea as well as i--and i have kept it secret. there will be a terrible noise, no doubt; but i think that with your help i may get over it. if you would only do me this good turn--when i have told my father, i mean--say that you never could have married me, you know, or something of that sort--'pon my life it will help to smooth the way vastly. i am so anxious to win him round to my point of view, and not to cause any estrangement.' what phyllis replied she scarcely knew, or how she counselled him as to his unexpected situation. yet the relief that his announcement brought her was perceptible. to have confided her trouble in return was what her aching heart longed to do; and had humphrey been a woman she would instantly have poured out her tale. but to him she feared to confess; and there was a real reason for silence, till a sufficient time had elapsed to allow her lover and his comrade to get out of harm's way. as soon as she reached home again she sought a solitary place, and spent the time in half regretting that she had not gone away, and in dreaming over the meetings with matthaus tina from their beginning to their end. in his own country, amongst his own countrywomen, he would possibly soon forget her, even to her very name. her listlessness was such that she did not go out of the house for several days. there came a morning which broke in fog and mist, behind which the dawn could be discerned in greenish grey; and the outlines of the tents, and the rows of horses at the ropes. the smoke from the canteen fires drooped heavily. the spot at the bottom of the garden where she had been accustomed to climb the wall to meet matthaus, was the only inch of english ground in which she took any interest; and in spite of the disagreeable haze prevailing she walked out there till she reached the well-known corner. every blade of grass was weighted with little liquid globes, and slugs and snails had crept out upon the plots. she could hear the usual faint noises from the camp, and in the other direction the trot of farmers on the road to the town, for it was market-day. she observed that her frequent visits to this corner had quite trodden down the grass in the angle of the wall, and left marks of garden soil on the stepping-stones by which she had mounted to look over the top. seldom having gone there till dusk, she had not considered that her traces might be visible by day. perhaps it was these which had revealed her trysts to her father. while she paused in melancholy regard, she fancied that the customary sounds from the tents were changing their character. indifferent as phyllis was to camp doings now, she mounted by the steps to the old place. what she beheld at first awed and perplexed her; then she stood rigid, her fingers hooked to the wall, her eyes staring out of her head, and her face as if hardened to stone. on the open green stretching before her all the regiments in the camp were drawn up in line, in the mid-front of which two empty coffins lay on the ground. the unwonted sounds which she had noticed came from an advancing procession. it consisted of the band of the york hussars playing a dead march; next two soldiers of that regiment in a mourning coach, guarded on each side, and accompanied by two priests. behind came a crowd of rustics who had been attracted by the event. the melancholy procession marched along the front of the line, returned to the centre, and halted beside the coffins, where the two condemned men were blindfolded, and each placed kneeling on his coffin; a few minutes pause was now given, while they prayed. a firing-party of twenty-four men stood ready with levelled carbines. the commanding officer, who had his sword drawn, waved it through some cuts of the sword-exercise till he reached the downward stroke, whereat the firing-party discharged their volley. the two victims fell, one upon his face across his coffin, the other backwards. as the volley resounded there arose a shriek from the wall of dr. grove's garden, and some one fell down inside; but nobody among the spectators without noticed it at the time. the two executed hussars were matthaus tina and his friend christoph. the soldiers on guard placed the bodies in the coffins almost instantly; but the colonel of the regiment, an englishman, rode up and exclaimed in a stern voice: 'turn them out--as an example to the men!' the coffins were lifted endwise, and the dead germans flung out upon their faces on the grass. then all the regiments wheeled in sections, and marched past the spot in slow time. when the survey was over the corpses were again coffined, and borne away. meanwhile dr. grove, attracted by the noise of the volley, had rushed out into his garden, where he saw his wretched daughter lying motionless against the wall. she was taken indoors, but it was long before she recovered consciousness; and for weeks they despaired of her reason. it transpired that the luckless deserters from the york hussars had cut the boat from her moorings in the adjacent harbour, according to their plan, and, with two other comrades who were smarting under ill-treatment from their colonel, had sailed in safety across the channel. but mistaking their bearings they steered into jersey, thinking that island the french coast. here they were perceived to be deserters, and delivered up to the authorities. matthaus and christoph interceded for the other two at the court-martial, saying that it was entirely by the former's representations that these were induced to go. their sentence was accordingly commuted to flogging, the death punishment being reserved for their leaders. the visitor to the well-known old georgian watering-place, who may care to ramble to the neighbouring village under the hills, and examine the register of burials, will there find two entries in these words:-- 'matth:--tina (corpl.) in his majesty's regmt. of york hussars, and shot for desertion, was buried june th, , aged years. born in the town of sarrbruk, germany. 'christoph bless, belonging to his majesty's regmt. of york hussars, who was shot for desertion, was buried june th, , aged years. born at lothaargen, alsatia.' their graves were dug at the back of the little church, near the wall. there is no memorial to mark the spot, but phyllis pointed it out to me. while she lived she used to keep their mounds neat; but now they are overgrown with nettles, and sunk nearly flat. the older villagers, however, who know of the episode from their parents, still recollect the place where the soldiers lie. phyllis lies near. _october_ . the fiddler of the reels 'talking of exhibitions, world's fairs, and what not,' said the old gentleman, 'i would not go round the corner to see a dozen of them nowadays. the only exhibition that ever made, or ever will make, any impression upon my imagination was the first of the series, the parent of them all, and now a thing of old times--the great exhibition of , in hyde park, london. none of the younger generation can realize the sense of novelty it produced in us who were then in our prime. a noun substantive went so far as to become an adjective in honour of the occasion. it was "exhibition" hat, "exhibition" razor-strop, "exhibition" watch; nay, even "exhibition" weather, "exhibition" spirits, sweethearts, babies, wives--for the time. 'for south wessex, the year formed in many ways an extraordinary chronological frontier or transit-line, at which there occurred what one might call a precipice in time. as in a geological "fault," we had presented to us a sudden bringing of ancient and modern into absolute contact, such as probably in no other single year since the conquest was ever witnessed in this part of the country.' these observations led us onward to talk of the different personages, gentle and simple, who lived and moved within our narrow and peaceful horizon at that time; and of three people in particular, whose queer little history was oddly touched at points by the exhibition, more concerned with it than that of anybody else who dwelt in those outlying shades of the world, stickleford, mellstock, and egdon. first in prominence among these three came wat ollamoor--if that were his real name--whom the seniors in our party had known well. he was a woman's man, they said,--supremely so--externally little else. to men he was not attractive; perhaps a little repulsive at times. musician, dandy, and company-man in practice; veterinary surgeon in theory, he lodged awhile in mellstock village, coming from nobody knew where; though some said his first appearance in this neighbourhood had been as fiddle-player in a show at greenhill fair. many a worthy villager envied him his power over unsophisticated maidenhood--a power which seemed sometimes to have a touch of the weird and wizardly in it. personally he was not ill-favoured, though rather un- english, his complexion being a rich olive, his rank hair dark and rather clammy--made still clammier by secret ointments, which, when he came fresh to a party, caused him to smell like 'boys'-love' (southernwood) steeped in lamp-oil. on occasion he wore curls--a double row--running almost horizontally around his head. but as these were sometimes noticeably absent, it was concluded that they were not altogether of nature's making. by girls whose love for him had turned to hatred he had been nicknamed 'mop,' from this abundance of hair, which was long enough to rest upon his shoulders; as time passed the name more and more prevailed. his fiddling possibly had the most to do with the fascination he exercised, for, to speak fairly, it could claim for itself a most peculiar and personal quality, like that in a moving preacher. there were tones in it which bred the immediate conviction that indolence and averseness to systematic application were all that lay between 'mop' and the career of a second paganini. while playing he invariably closed his eyes; using no notes, and, as it were, allowing the violin to wander on at will into the most plaintive passages ever heard by rustic man. there was a certain lingual character in the supplicatory expressions he produced, which would well nigh have drawn an ache from the heart of a gate-post. he could make any child in the parish, who was at all sensitive to music, burst into tears in a few minutes by simply fiddling one of the old dance-tunes he almost entirely affected--country jigs, reels, and 'favourite quick steps' of the last century--some mutilated remains of which even now reappear as nameless phantoms in new quadrilles and gallops, where they are recognized only by the curious, or by such old-fashioned and far-between people as have been thrown with men like wat ollamoor in their early life. his date was a little later than that of the old mellstock quire-band which comprised the dewys, mail, and the rest--in fact, he did not rise above the horizon thereabout till those well-known musicians were disbanded as ecclesiastical functionaries. in their honest love of thoroughness they despised the new man's style. theophilus dewy (reuben the tranter's younger brother) used to say there was no 'plumness' in it--no bowing, no solidity--it was all fantastical. and probably this was true. anyhow, mop had, very obviously, never bowed a note of church- music from his birth; he never once sat in the gallery of mellstock church where the others had tuned their venerable psalmody so many hundreds of times; had never, in all likelihood, entered a church at all. all were devil's tunes in his repertory. 'he could no more play the wold hundredth to his true time than he could play the brazen serpent,' the tranter would say. (the brazen serpent was supposed in mellstock to be a musical instrument particularly hard to blow.) occasionally mop could produce the aforesaid moving effect upon the souls of grown-up persons, especially young women of fragile and responsive organization. such an one was car'line aspent. though she was already engaged to be married before she met him, car'line, of them all, was the most influenced by mop ollamoor's heart-stealing melodies, to her discomfort, nay, positive pain and ultimate injury. she was a pretty, invocating, weak-mouthed girl, whose chief defect as a companion with her sex was a tendency to peevishness now and then. at this time she was not a resident in mellstock parish where mop lodged, but lived some miles off at stickleford, farther down the river. how and where she first made acquaintance with him and his fiddling is not truly known, but the story was that it either began or was developed on one spring evening, when, in passing through lower mellstock, she chanced to pause on the bridge near his house to rest herself, and languidly leaned over the parapet. mop was standing on his door-step, as was his custom, spinning the insidious thread of semi- and demi-semi-quavers from the e string of his fiddle for the benefit of passers-by, and laughing as the tears rolled down the cheeks of the little children hanging around him. car'line pretended to be engrossed with the rippling of the stream under the arches, but in reality she was listening, as he knew. presently the aching of the heart seized her simultaneously with a wild desire to glide airily in the mazes of an infinite dance. to shake off the fascination she resolved to go on, although it would be necessary to pass him as he played. on stealthily glancing ahead at the performer, she found to her relief that his eyes were closed in abandonment to instrumentation, and she strode on boldly. but when closer her step grew timid, her tread convulsed itself more and more accordantly with the time of the melody, till she very nearly danced along. gaining another glance at him when immediately opposite, she saw that _one_ of his eyes was open, quizzing her as he smiled at her emotional state. her gait could not divest itself of its compelled capers till she had gone a long way past the house; and car'line was unable to shake off the strange infatuation for hours. after that day, whenever there was to be in the neighbourhood a dance to which she could get an invitation, and where mop ollamoor was to be the musician, car'line contrived to be present, though it sometimes involved a walk of several miles; for he did not play so often in stickleford as elsewhere. the next evidences of his influence over her were singular enough, and it would require a neurologist to fully explain them. she would be sitting quietly, any evening after dark, in the house of her father, the parish clerk, which stood in the middle of stickleford village street, this being the highroad between lower mellstock and moreford, five miles eastward. here, without a moment's warning, and in the midst of a general conversation between her father, sister, and the young man before alluded to, who devotedly wooed her in ignorance of her infatuation, she would start from her seat in the chimney-corner as if she had received a galvanic shock, and spring convulsively towards the ceiling; then she would burst into tears, and it was not till some half-hour had passed that she grew calm as usual. her father, knowing her hysterical tendencies, was always excessively anxious about this trait in his youngest girl, and feared the attack to be a species of epileptic fit. not so her sister julia. julia had found out what was the cause. at the moment before the jumping, only an exceptionally sensitive ear situated in the chimney-nook could have caught from down the flue the beat of a man's footstep along the highway without. but it was in that footfall, for which she had been waiting, that the origin of car'line's involuntary springing lay. the pedestrian was mop ollamoor, as the girl well knew; but his business that way was not to visit her; he sought another woman whom he spoke of as his intended, and who lived at moreford, two miles farther on. on one, and only one, occasion did it happen that car'line could not control her utterance; it was when her sister alone chanced to be present. 'oh--oh--oh--!' she cried. 'he's going to _her_, and not coming to _me_!' to do the fiddler justice he had not at first thought greatly of, or spoken much to, this girl of impressionable mould. but he had soon found out her secret, and could not resist a little by-play with her too easily hurt heart, as an interlude between his more serious performances at moreford. the two became well acquainted, though only by stealth, hardly a soul in stickleford except her sister, and her lover ned hipcroft, being aware of the attachment. her father disapproved of her coldness to ned; her sister, too, hoped she might get over this nervous passion for a man of whom so little was known. the ultimate result was that car'line's manly and simple wooer edward found his suit becoming practically hopeless. he was a respectable mechanic, in a far sounder position than mop the nominal horse-doctor; but when, before leaving her, ned put his flat and final question, would she marry him, then and there, now or never, it was with little expectation of obtaining more than the negative she gave him. though her father supported him and her sister supported him, he could not play the fiddle so as to draw your soul out of your body like a spider's thread, as mop did, till you felt as limp as withy- wind and yearned for something to cling to. indeed, hipcroft had not the slightest ear for music; could not sing two notes in tune, much less play them. the no he had expected and got from her, in spite of a preliminary encouragement, gave ned a new start in life. it had been uttered in such a tone of sad entreaty that he resolved to persecute her no more; she should not even be distressed by a sight of his form in the distant perspective of the street and lane. he left the place, and his natural course was to london. the railway to south wessex was in process of construction, but it was not as yet opened for traffic; and hipcroft reached the capital by a six days' trudge on foot, as many a better man had done before him. he was one of the last of the artisan class who used that now extinct method of travel to the great centres of labour, so customary then from time immemorial. in london he lived and worked regularly at his trade. more fortunate than many, his disinterested willingness recommended him from the first. during the ensuing four years he was never out of employment. he neither advanced nor receded in the modern sense; he improved as a workman, but he did not shift one jot in social position. about his love for car'line he maintained a rigid silence. no doubt he often thought of her; but being always occupied, and having no relations at stickleford, he held no communication with that part of the country, and showed no desire to return. in his quiet lodging in lambeth he moved about after working- hours with the facility of a woman, doing his own cooking, attending to his stocking-heels, and shaping himself by degrees to a life-long bachelorhood. for this conduct one is bound to advance the canonical reason that time could not efface from his heart the image of little car'line aspent--and it may be in part true; but there was also the inference that his was a nature not greatly dependent upon the ministrations of the other sex for its comforts. the fourth year of his residence as a mechanic in london was the year of the hyde-park exhibition already mentioned, and at the construction of this huge glass-house, then unexampled in the world's history, he worked daily. it was an era of great hope and activity among the nations and industries. though hipcroft was, in his small way, a central man in the movement, he plodded on with his usual outward placidity. yet for him, too, the year was destined to have its surprises, for when the bustle of getting the building ready for the opening day was past, the ceremonies had been witnessed, and people were flocking thither from all parts of the globe, he received a letter from car'line. till that day the silence of four years between himself and stickleford had never been broken. she informed her old lover, in an uncertain penmanship which suggested a trembling hand, of the trouble she had been put to in ascertaining his address, and then broached the subject which had prompted her to write. four years ago, she said with the greatest delicacy of which she was capable, she had been so foolish as to refuse him. her wilful wrong-headedness had since been a grief to her many times, and of late particularly. as for mr. ollamoor, he had been absent almost as long as ned--she did not know where. she would gladly marry ned now if he were to ask her again, and be a tender little wife to him till her life's end. a tide of warm feeling must have surged through ned hipcroft's frame on receipt of this news, if we may judge by the issue. unquestionably he loved her still, even if not to the exclusion of every other happiness. this from his car'line, she who had been dead to him these many years, alive to him again as of old, was in itself a pleasant, gratifying thing. ned had grown so resigned to, or satisfied with, his lonely lot, that he probably would not have shown much jubilation at anything. still, a certain ardour of preoccupation, after his first surprise, revealed how deeply her confession of faith in him had stirred him. measured and methodical in his ways, he did not answer the letter that day, nor the next, nor the next. he was having 'a good think.' when he did answer it, there was a great deal of sound reasoning mixed in with the unmistakable tenderness of his reply; but the tenderness itself was sufficient to reveal that he was pleased with her straightforward frankness; that the anchorage she had once obtained in his heart was renewable, if it had not been continuously firm. he told her--and as he wrote his lips twitched humorously over the few gentle words of raillery he indited among the rest of his sentences--that it was all very well for her to come round at this time of day. why wouldn't she have him when he wanted her? she had no doubt learned that he was not married, but suppose his affections had since been fixed on another? she ought to beg his pardon. still, he was not the man to forget her. but considering how he had been used, and what he had suffered, she could not quite expect him to go down to stickleford and fetch her. but if she would come to him, and say she was sorry, as was only fair; why, yes, he would marry her, knowing what a good little woman she was at the core. he added that the request for her to come to him was a less one to make than it would have been when he first left stickleford, or even a few months ago; for the new railway into south wessex was now open, and there had just begun to be run wonderfully contrived special trains, called excursion-trains, on account of the great exhibition; so that she could come up easily alone. she said in her reply how good it was of him to treat her so generously, after her hot and cold treatment of him; that though she felt frightened at the magnitude of the journey, and was never as yet in a railway-train, having only seen one pass at a distance, she embraced his offer with all her heart; and would, indeed, own to him how sorry she was, and beg his pardon, and try to be a good wife always, and make up for lost time. the remaining details of when and where were soon settled, car'line informing him, for her ready identification in the crowd, that she would be wearing 'my new sprigged-laylock cotton gown,' and ned gaily responding that, having married her the morning after her arrival, he would make a day of it by taking her to the exhibition. one early summer afternoon, accordingly, he came from his place of work, and hastened towards waterloo station to meet her. it was as wet and chilly as an english june day can occasionally be, but as he waited on the platform in the drizzle he glowed inwardly, and seemed to have something to live for again. the 'excursion-train'--an absolutely new departure in the history of travel--was still a novelty on the wessex line, and probably everywhere. crowds of people had flocked to all the stations on the way up to witness the unwonted sight of so long a train's passage, even where they did not take advantage of the opportunity it offered. the seats for the humbler class of travellers in these early experiments in steam-locomotion, were open trucks, without any protection whatever from the wind and rain; and damp weather having set in with the afternoon, the unfortunate occupants of these vehicles were, on the train drawing up at the london terminus, found to be in a pitiable condition from their long journey; blue-faced, stiff-necked, sneezing, rain-beaten, chilled to the marrow, many of the men being hatless; in fact, they resembled people who had been out all night in an open boat on a rough sea, rather than inland excursionists for pleasure. the women had in some degree protected themselves by turning up the skirts of their gowns over their heads, but as by this arrangement they were additionally exposed about the hips, they were all more or less in a sorry plight. in the bustle and crush of alighting forms of both sexes which followed the entry of the huge concatenation into the station, ned hipcroft soon discerned the slim little figure his eye was in search of, in the sprigged lilac, as described. she came up to him with a frightened smile--still pretty, though so damp, weather-beaten, and shivering from long exposure to the wind. 'o ned!' she sputtered, 'i--i--' he clasped her in his arms and kissed her, whereupon she burst into a flood of tears. 'you are wet, my poor dear! i hope you'll not get cold,' he said. and surveying her and her multifarious surrounding packages, he noticed that by the hand she led a toddling child--a little girl of three or so--whose hood was as clammy and tender face as blue as those of the other travellers. 'who is this--somebody you know?' asked ned curiously. 'yes, ned. she's mine.' 'yours?' 'yes--my own!' 'your own child?' 'yes!' 'well--as god's in--' 'ned, i didn't name it in my letter, because, you see, it would have been so hard to explain! i thought that when we met i could tell you how she happened to be born, so much better than in writing! i hope you'll excuse it this once, dear ned, and not scold me, now i've come so many, many miles!' 'this means mr. mop ollamoor, i reckon!' said hipcroft, gazing palely at them from the distance of the yard or two to which he had withdrawn with a start. car'line gasped. 'but he's been gone away for years!' she supplicated. 'and i never had a young man before! and i was so onlucky to be catched the first time, though some of the girls down there go on like anything!' ned remained in silence, pondering. 'you'll forgive me, dear ned?' she added, beginning to sob outright. 'i haven't taken 'ee in after all, because--because you can pack us back again, if you want to; though 'tis hundreds o' miles, and so wet, and night a-coming on, and i with no money!' 'what the devil can i do!' hipcroft groaned. a more pitiable picture than the pair of helpless creatures presented was never seen on a rainy day, as they stood on the great, gaunt, puddled platform, a whiff of drizzle blowing under the roof upon them now and then; the pretty attire in which they had started from stickleford in the early morning bemuddled and sodden, weariness on their faces, and fear of him in their eyes; for the child began to look as if she thought she too had done some wrong, remaining in an appalled silence till the tears rolled down her chubby cheeks. 'what's the matter, my little maid?' said ned mechanically. 'i do want to go home!' she let out, in tones that told of a bursting heart. 'and my totties be cold, an' i shan't have no bread an' butter no more!' 'i don't know what to say to it all!' declared ned, his own eye moist as he turned and walked a few steps with his head down; then regarded them again point blank. from the child escaped troubled breaths and silently welling tears. 'want some bread and butter, do 'ee?' he said, with factitious hardness. 'ye-e-s!' 'well, i daresay i can get 'ee a bit! naturally, you must want some. and you, too, for that matter, car'line.' 'i do feel a little hungered. but i can keep it off,' she murmured. 'folk shouldn't do that,' he said gruffly. . . . 'there come along!' he caught up the child, as he added, 'you must bide here to-night, anyhow, i s'pose! what can you do otherwise? i'll get 'ee some tea and victuals; and as for this job, i'm sure i don't know what to say! this is the way out.' they pursued their way, without speaking, to ned's lodgings, which were not far off. there he dried them and made them comfortable, and prepared tea; they thankfully sat down. the ready-made household of which he suddenly found himself the head imparted a cosy aspect to his room, and a paternal one to himself. presently he turned to the child and kissed her now blooming cheeks; and, looking wistfully at car'line, kissed her also. 'i don't see how i can send 'ee back all them miles,' he growled, 'now you've come all the way o' purpose to join me. but you must trust me, car'line, and show you've real faith in me. well, do you feel better now, my little woman?' the child nodded, her mouth being otherwise occupied. 'i did trust you, ned, in coming; and i shall always!' thus, without any definite agreement to forgive her, he tacitly acquiesced in the fate that heaven had sent him; and on the day of their marriage (which was not quite so soon as he had expected it could be, on account of the time necessary for banns) he took her to the exhibition when they came back from church, as he had promised. while standing near a large mirror in one of the courts devoted to furniture, car'line started, for in the glass appeared the reflection of a form exactly resembling mop ollamoor's--so exactly, that it seemed impossible to believe anybody but that artist in person to be the original. on passing round the objects which hemmed in ned, her, and the child from a direct view, no mop was to be seen. whether he were really in london or not at that time was never known; and car'line always stoutly denied that her readiness to go and meet ned in town arose from any rumour that mop had also gone thither; which denial there was no reasonable ground for doubting. and then the year glided away, and the exhibition folded itself up and became a thing of the past. the park trees that had been enclosed for six months were again exposed to the winds and storms, and the sod grew green anew. ned found that car'line resolved herself into a very good wife and companion, though she had made herself what is called cheap to him; but in that she was like another domestic article, a cheap tea-pot, which often brews better tea than a dear one. one autumn hipcroft found himself with but little work to do, and a prospect of less for the winter. both being country born and bred, they fancied they would like to live again in their natural atmosphere. it was accordingly decided between them that they should leave the pent-up london lodging, and that ned should seek out employment near his native place, his wife and her daughter staying with car'line's father during the search for occupation and an abode of their own. tinglings of pleasure pervaded car'line's spasmodic little frame as she journeyed down with ned to the place she had left two or three years before, in silence and under a cloud. to return to where she had once been despised, a smiling london wife with a distinct london accent, was a triumph which the world did not witness every day. the train did not stop at the petty roadside station that lay nearest to stickleford, and the trio went on to casterbridge. ned thought it a good opportunity to make a few preliminary inquiries for employment at workshops in the borough where he had been known; and feeling cold from her journey, and it being dry underfoot and only dusk as yet, with a moon on the point of rising, car'line and her little girl walked on toward stickleford, leaving ned to follow at a quicker pace, and pick her up at a certain half-way house, widely known as an inn. the woman and child pursued the well-remembered way comfortably enough, though they were both becoming wearied. in the course of three miles they had passed heedless-william's pond, the familiar landmark by bloom's end, and were drawing near the quiet woman inn, a lone roadside hostel on the lower verge of the egdon heath, since and for many years abolished. in stepping up towards it car'line heard more voices within than had formerly been customary at such an hour, and she learned that an auction of fat stock had been held near the spot that afternoon. the child would be the better for a rest as well as herself, she thought, and she entered. the guests and customers overflowed into the passage, and car'line had no sooner crossed the threshold than a man whom she remembered by sight came forward with glass and mug in his hands towards a friend leaning against the wall; but, seeing her, very gallantly offered her a drink of the liquor, which was gin-and-beer hot, pouring her out a tumblerful and saying, in a moment or two: 'surely, 'tis little car'line aspent that was--down at stickleford?' she assented, and, though she did not exactly want this beverage, she drank it since it was offered, and her entertainer begged her to come in farther and sit down. once within the room she found that all the persons present were seated close against the walls, and there being a chair vacant she did the same. an explanation of their position occurred the next moment. in the opposite corner stood mop, rosining his bow and looking just the same as ever. the company had cleared the middle of the room for dancing, and they were about to dance again. as she wore a veil to keep off the wind she did not think he had recognized her, or could possibly guess the identity of the child; and to her satisfied surprise she found that she could confront him quite calmly--mistress of herself in the dignity her london life had given her. before she had quite emptied her glass the dance was called, the dancers formed in two lines, the music sounded, and the figure began. then matters changed for car'line. a tremor quickened itself to life in her, and her hand so shook that she could hardly set down her glass. it was not the dance nor the dancers, but the notes of that old violin which thrilled the london wife, these having still all the witchery that she had so well known of yore, and under which she had used to lose her power of independent will. how it all came back! there was the fiddling figure against the wall; the large, oily, mop-like head of him, and beneath the mop the face with closed eyes. after the first moments of paralyzed reverie the familiar tune in the familiar rendering made her laugh and shed tears simultaneously. then a man at the bottom of the dance, whose partner had dropped away, stretched out his hand and beckoned to her to take the place. she did not want to dance; she entreated by signs to be left where she was, but she was entreating of the tune and its player rather than of the dancing man. the saltatory tendency which the fiddler and his cunning instrument had ever been able to start in her was seizing car'line just as it had done in earlier years, possibly assisted by the gin-and-beer hot. tired as she was she grasped her little girl by the hand, and plunging in at the bottom of the figure, whirled about with the rest. she found that her companions were mostly people of the neighbouring hamlets and farms--bloom's end, mellstock, lewgate, and elsewhere; and by degrees she was recognized as she convulsively danced on, wishing that mop would cease and let her heart rest from the aching he caused, and her feet also. after long and many minutes the dance ended, when she was urged to fortify herself with more gin-and-beer; which she did, feeling very weak and overpowered with hysteric emotion. she refrained from unveiling, to keep mop in ignorance of her presence, if possible. several of the guests having left, car'line hastily wiped her lips and also turned to go; but, according to the account of some who remained, at that very moment a five-handed reel was proposed, in which two or three begged her to join. she declined on the plea of being tired and having to walk to stickleford, when mop began aggressively tweedling 'my fancy-lad,' in d major, as the air to which the reel was to be footed. he must have recognized her, though she did not know it, for it was the strain of all seductive strains which she was least able to resist--the one he had played when she was leaning over the bridge at the date of their first acquaintance. car'line stepped despairingly into the middle of the room with the other four. reels were resorted to hereabouts at this time by the more robust spirits, for the reduction of superfluous energy which the ordinary figure-dances were not powerful enough to exhaust. as everybody knows, or does not know, the five reelers stood in the form of a cross, the reel being performed by each line of three alternately, the persons who successively came to the middle place dancing in both directions. car'line soon found herself in this place, the axis of the whole performance, and could not get out of it, the tune turning into the first part without giving her opportunity. and now she began to suspect that mop did know her, and was doing this on purpose, though whenever she stole a glance at him his closed eyes betokened obliviousness to everything outside his own brain. she continued to wend her way through the figure of that was formed by her course, the fiddler introducing into his notes the wild and agonizing sweetness of a living voice in one too highly wrought; its pathos running high and running low in endless variation, projecting through her nerves excruciating spasms, a sort of blissful torture. the room swam, the tune was endless; and in about a quarter of an hour the only other woman in the figure dropped out exhausted, and sank panting on a bench. the reel instantly resolved itself into a four-handed one. car'line would have given anything to leave off; but she had, or fancied she had, no power, while mop played such tunes; and thus another ten minutes slipped by, a haze of dust now clouding the candles, the floor being of stone, sanded. then another dancer fell out--one of the men--and went into the passage, in a frantic search for liquor. to turn the figure into a three-handed reel was the work of a second, mop modulating at the same time into 'the fairy dance,' as better suited to the contracted movement, and no less one of those foods of love which, as manufactured by his bow, had always intoxicated her. in a reel for three there was no rest whatever, and four or five minutes were enough to make her remaining two partners, now thoroughly blown, stamp their last bar and, like their predecessors, limp off into the next room to get something to drink. car'line, half-stifled inside her veil, was left dancing alone, the apartment now being empty of everybody save herself, mop, and their little girl. she flung up the veil, and cast her eyes upon him, as if imploring him to withdraw himself and his acoustic magnetism from the atmosphere. mop opened one of his own orbs, as though for the first time, fixed it peeringly upon her, and smiling dreamily, threw into his strains the reserve of expression which he could not afford to waste on a big and noisy dance. crowds of little chromatic subtleties, capable of drawing tears from a statue, proceeded straightway from the ancient fiddle, as if it were dying of the emotion which had been pent up within it ever since its banishment from some italian city where it first took shape and sound. there was that in the look of mop's one dark eye which said: 'you cannot leave off, dear, whether you would or no!' and it bred in her a paroxysm of desperation that defied him to tire her down. she thus continued to dance alone, defiantly as she thought, but in truth slavishly and abjectly, subject to every wave of the melody, and probed by the gimlet-like gaze of her fascinator's open eye; keeping up at the same time a feeble smile in his face, as a feint to signify it was still her own pleasure which led her on. a terrified embarrassment as to what she could say to him if she were to leave off, had its unrecognized share in keeping her going. the child, who was beginning to be distressed by the strange situation, came up and said: 'stop, mother, stop, and let's go home!' as she seized car'line's hand. suddenly car'line sank staggering to the floor; and rolling over on her face, prone she remained. mop's fiddle thereupon emitted an elfin shriek of finality; stepping quickly down from the nine-gallon beer-cask which had formed his rostrum, he went to the little girl, who disconsolately bent over her mother. the guests who had gone into the back-room for liquor and change of air, hearing something unusual, trooped back hitherward, where they endeavoured to revive poor, weak car'line by blowing her with the bellows and opening the window. ned, her husband, who had been detained in casterbridge, as aforesaid, came along the road at this juncture, and hearing excited voices through the open casement, and to his great surprise, the mention of his wife's name, he entered amid the rest upon the scene. car'line was now in convulsions, weeping violently, and for a long time nothing could be done with her. while he was sending for a cart to take her onward to stickleford hipcroft anxiously inquired how it had all happened; and then the assembly explained that a fiddler formerly known in the locality had lately revisited his old haunts, and had taken upon himself without invitation to play that evening at the inn. ned demanded the fiddler's name, and they said ollamoor. 'ah!' exclaimed ned, looking round him. 'where is he, and where--where's my little girl?' ollamoor had disappeared, and so had the child. hipcroft was in ordinary a quiet and tractable fellow, but a determination which was to be feared settled in his face now. 'blast him!' he cried. 'i'll beat his skull in for'n, if i swing for it to-morrow!' he had rushed to the poker which lay on the hearth, and hastened down the passage, the people following. outside the house, on the other side of the highway, a mass of dark heath-land rose sullenly upward to its not easily accessible interior, a ravined plateau, whereon jutted into the sky, at the distance of a couple of miles, the fir-woods of mistover backed by the yalbury coppices--a place of dantesque gloom at this hour, which would have afforded secure hiding for a battery of artillery, much less a man and a child. some other men plunged thitherward with him, and more went along the road. they were gone about twenty minutes altogether, returning without result to the inn. ned sat down in the settle, and clasped his forehead with his hands. 'well--what a fool the man is, and hev been all these years, if he thinks the child his, as a' do seem to!' they whispered. 'and everybody else knowing otherwise!' 'no, i don't think 'tis mine!' cried ned hoarsely, as he looked up from his hands. 'but she is mine, all the same! ha'n't i nussed her? ha'n't i fed her and teached her? ha'n't i played wi' her? o, little carry--gone with that rogue--gone!' 'you ha'n't lost your mis'ess, anyhow,' they said to console him. 'she's throwed up the sperrits, and she is feeling better, and she's more to 'ee than a child that isn't yours.' 'she isn't! she's not so particular much to me, especially now she's lost the little maid! but carry's everything!' 'well, ver' like you'll find her to-morrow.' 'ah--but shall i? yet he _can't_ hurt her--surely he can't! well--how's car'line now? i am ready. is the cart here?' she was lifted into the vehicle, and they sadly lumbered on toward stickleford. next day she was calmer; but the fits were still upon her; and her will seemed shattered. for the child she appeared to show singularly little anxiety, though ned was nearly distracted. it was nevertheless quite expected that the impish mop would restore the lost one after a freak of a day or two; but time went on, and neither he nor she could be heard of, and hipcroft murmured that perhaps he was exercising upon her some unholy musical charm, as he had done upon car'line herself. weeks passed, and still they could obtain no clue either to the fiddler's whereabouts or the girl's; and how he could have induced her to go with him remained a mystery. then ned, who had obtained only temporary employment in the neighbourhood, took a sudden hatred toward his native district, and a rumour reaching his ears through the police that a somewhat similar man and child had been seen at a fair near london, he playing a violin, she dancing on stilts, a new interest in the capital took possession of hipcroft with an intensity which would scarcely allow him time to pack before returning thither. he did not, however, find the lost one, though he made it the entire business of his over-hours to stand about in by-streets in the hope of discovering her, and would start up in the night, saying, 'that rascal's torturing her to maintain him!' to which his wife would answer peevishly, 'don't 'ee raft yourself so, ned! you prevent my getting a bit o' rest! he won't hurt her!' and fall asleep again. that carry and her father had emigrated to america was the general opinion; mop, no doubt, finding the girl a highly desirable companion when he had trained her to keep him by her earnings as a dancer. there, for that matter, they may be performing in some capacity now, though he must be an old scamp verging on threescore-and-ten, and she a woman of four-and-forty. may , a tradition of eighteen hundred and four the widely discussed possibility of an invasion of england through a channel tunnel has more than once recalled old solomon selby's story to my mind. the occasion on which i numbered myself among his audience was one evening when he was sitting in the yawning chimney-corner of the inn-kitchen, with some others who had gathered there, and i entered for shelter from the rain. withdrawing the stem of his pipe from the dental notch in which it habitually rested, he leaned back in the recess behind him and smiled into the fire. the smile was neither mirthful nor sad, not precisely humorous nor altogether thoughtful. we who knew him recognized it in a moment: it was his narrative smile. breaking off our few desultory remarks we drew up closer, and he thus began:-- 'my father, as you mid know, was a shepherd all his life, and lived out by the cove four miles yonder, where i was born and lived likewise, till i moved here shortly afore i was married. the cottage that first knew me stood on the top of the down, near the sea; there was no house within a mile and a half of it; it was built o' purpose for the farm-shepherd, and had no other use. they tell me that it is now pulled down, but that you can see where it stood by the mounds of earth and a few broken bricks that are still lying about. it was a bleak and dreary place in winter- time, but in summer it was well enough, though the garden never came to much, because we could not get up a good shelter for the vegetables and currant bushes; and where there is much wind they don't thrive. 'of all the years of my growing up the ones that bide clearest in my mind were eighteen hundred and three, four, and five. this was for two reasons: i had just then grown to an age when a child's eyes and ears take in and note down everything about him, and there was more at that date to bear in mind than there ever has been since with me. it was, as i need hardly tell ye, the time after the first peace, when bonaparte was scheming his descent upon england. he had crossed the great alp mountains, fought in egypt, drubbed the turks, the austrians, and the proossians, and now thought he'd have a slap at us. on the other side of the channel, scarce out of sight and hail of a man standing on our english shore, the french army of a hundred and sixty thousand men and fifteen thousand horses had been brought together from all parts, and were drilling every day. bonaparte had been three years a-making his preparations; and to ferry these soldiers and cannon and horses across he had contrived a couple of thousand flat-bottomed boats. these boats were small things, but wonderfully built. a good few of 'em were so made as to have a little stable on board each for the two horses that were to haul the cannon carried at the stern. to get in order all these, and other things required, he had assembled there five or six thousand fellows that worked at trades--carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, saddlers, and what not. o 'twas a curious time! 'every morning neighbour boney would muster his multitude of soldiers on the beach, draw 'em up in line, practise 'em in the manoeuvre of embarking, horses and all, till they could do it without a single hitch. my father drove a flock of ewes up into sussex that year, and as he went along the drover's track over the high downs thereabout he could see this drilling actually going on--the accoutrements of the rank and file glittering in the sun like silver. it was thought and always said by my uncle job, sergeant of foot (who used to know all about these matters), that bonaparte meant to cross with oars on a calm night. the grand query with us was, where would my gentleman land? many of the common people thought it would be at dover; others, who knew how unlikely it was that any skilful general would make a business of landing just where he was expected, said he'd go either east into the river thames, or west'ard to some convenient place, most likely one of the little bays inside the isle of portland, between the beal and st. alban's head--and for choice the three-quarter-round cove, screened from every mortal eye, that seemed made o' purpose, out by where we lived, and which i've climmed up with two tubs of brandy across my shoulders on scores o' dark nights in my younger days. some had heard that a part o' the french fleet would sail right round scotland, and come up the channel to a suitable haven. however, there was much doubt upon the matter; and no wonder, for after- years proved that bonaparte himself could hardly make up his mind upon that great and very particular point, where to land. his uncertainty came about in this wise, that he could get no news as to where and how our troops lay in waiting, and that his knowledge of possible places where flat-bottomed boats might be quietly run ashore, and the men they brought marshalled in order, was dim to the last degree. being flat-bottomed, they didn't require a harbour for unshipping their cargo of men, but a good shelving beach away from sight, and with a fair open road toward london. how the question posed that great corsican tyrant (as we used to call him), what pains he took to settle it, and, above all, what a risk he ran on one particular night in trying to do so, were known only to one man here and there; and certainly to no maker of newspapers or printer of books, or my account o't would not have had so many heads shaken over it as it has by gentry who only believe what they see in printed lines. 'the flocks my father had charge of fed all about the downs near our house, overlooking the sea and shore each way for miles. in winter and early spring father was up a deal at nights, watching and tending the lambing. often he'd go to bed early, and turn out at twelve or one; and on the other hand, he'd sometimes stay up till twelve or one, and then turn in to bed. as soon as i was old enough i used to help him, mostly in the way of keeping an eye upon the ewes while he was gone home to rest. this is what i was doing in a particular month in either the year four or five--i can't certainly fix which, but it was long before i was took away from the sheepkeeping to be bound prentice to a trade. every night at that time i was at the fold, about half a mile, or it may be a little more, from our cottage, and no living thing at all with me but the ewes and young lambs. afeard? no; i was never afeard of being alone at these times; for i had been reared in such an out-step place that the lack o' human beings at night made me less fearful than the sight of 'em. directly i saw a man's shape after dark in a lonely place i was frightened out of my senses. 'one day in that month we were surprised by a visit from my uncle job, the sergeant in the sixty-first foot, then in camp on the downs above king george's watering-place, several miles to the west yonder. uncle job dropped in about dusk, and went up with my father to the fold for an hour or two. then he came home, had a drop to drink from the tub of sperrits that the smugglers kept us in for housing their liquor when they'd made a run, and for burning 'em off when there was danger. after that he stretched himself out on the settle to sleep. i went to bed: at one o'clock father came home, and waking me to go and take his place, according to custom, went to bed himself. on my way out of the house i passed uncle job on the settle. he opened his eyes, and upon my telling him where i was going he said it was a shame that such a youngster as i should go up there all alone; and when he had fastened up his stock and waist-belt he set off along with me, taking a drop from the sperrit-tub in a little flat bottle that stood in the corner-cupboard. 'by and by we drew up to the fold, saw that all was right, and then, to keep ourselves warm, curled up in a heap of straw that lay inside the thatched hurdles we had set up to break the stroke of the wind when there was any. to-night, however, there was none. it was one of those very still nights when, if you stand on the high hills anywhere within two or three miles of the sea, you can hear the rise and fall of the tide along the shore, coming and going every few moments like a sort of great snore of the sleeping world. over the lower ground there was a bit of a mist, but on the hill where we lay the air was clear, and the moon, then in her last quarter, flung a fairly good light on the grass and scattered straw. 'while we lay there uncle job amused me by telling me strange stories of the wars he had served in and the wounds he had got. he had already fought the french in the low countries, and hoped to fight 'em again. his stories lasted so long that at last i was hardly sure that i was not a soldier myself, and had seen such service as he told of. the wonders of his tales quite bewildered my mind, till i fell asleep and dreamed of battle, smoke, and flying soldiers, all of a kind with the doings he had been bringing up to me. 'how long my nap lasted i am not prepared to say. but some faint sounds over and above the rustle of the ewes in the straw, the bleat of the lambs, and the tinkle of the sheep-bell brought me to my waking senses. uncle job was still beside me; but he too had fallen asleep. i looked out from the straw, and saw what it was that had aroused me. two men, in boat-cloaks, cocked hats, and swords, stood by the hurdles about twenty yards off. 'i turned my ear thitherward to catch what they were saying, but though i heard every word o't, not one did i understand. they spoke in a tongue that was not ours--in french, as i afterward found. but if i could not gain the meaning of a word, i was shrewd boy enough to find out a deal of the talkers' business. by the light o' the moon i could see that one of 'em carried a roll of paper in his hand, while every moment he spoke quick to his comrade, and pointed right and left with the other hand to spots along the shore. there was no doubt that he was explaining to the second gentleman the shapes and features of the coast. what happened soon after made this still clearer to me. 'all this time i had not waked uncle job, but now i began to be afeared that they might light upon us, because uncle breathed so heavily through's nose. i put my mouth to his ear and whispered, "uncle job." '"what is it, my boy?" he said, just as if he hadn't been asleep at all. '"hush!" says i. "two french generals--" '"french?" says he. '"yes," says i. "come to see where to land their army!" 'i pointed 'em out; but i could say no more, for the pair were coming at that moment much nearer to where we lay. as soon as they got as near as eight or ten yards, the officer with a roll in his hand stooped down to a slanting hurdle, unfastened his roll upon it, and spread it out. then suddenly he sprung a dark lantern open on the paper, and showed it to be a map. '"what be they looking at?" i whispered to uncle job. '"a chart of the channel," says the sergeant (knowing about such things). 'the other french officer now stooped likewise, and over the map they had a long consultation, as they pointed here and there on the paper, and then hither and thither at places along the shore beneath us. i noticed that the manner of one officer was very respectful toward the other, who seemed much his superior, the second in rank calling him by a sort of title that i did not know the sense of. the head one, on the other hand, was quite familiar with his friend, and more than once clapped him on the shoulder. 'uncle job had watched as well as i, but though the map had been in the lantern-light, their faces had always been in shade. but when they rose from stooping over the chart the light flashed upward, and fell smart upon one of 'em's features. no sooner had this happened than uncle job gasped, and sank down as if he'd been in a fit. '"what is it--what is it, uncle job?" said i. '"o good god!" says he, under the straw. '"what?" says i. '"boney!" he groaned out. '"who?" says i. '"bonaparty," he said. "the corsican ogre. o that i had got but my new- flinted firelock, that there man should die! but i haven't got my new- flinted firelock, and that there man must live. so lie low, as you value your life!" 'i did lie low, as you mid suppose. but i couldn't help peeping. and then i too, lad as i was, knew that it was the face of bonaparte. not know boney? i should think i did know boney. i should have known him by half the light o' that lantern. if i had seen a picture of his features once, i had seen it a hundred times. there was his bullet head, his short neck, his round yaller cheeks and chin, his gloomy face, and his great glowing eyes. he took off his hat to blow himself a bit, and there was the forelock in the middle of his forehead, as in all the draughts of him. in moving, his cloak fell a little open, and i could see for a moment his white-fronted jacket and one of his epaulets. 'but none of this lasted long. in a minute he and his general had rolled up the map, shut the lantern, and turned to go down toward the shore. 'then uncle job came to himself a bit. "slipped across in the night-time to see how to put his men ashore," he said. "the like o' that man's coolness eyes will never again see! nephew, i must act in this, and immediate, or england's lost!" 'when they were over the brow, we crope out, and went some little way to look after them. half-way down they were joined by two others, and six or seven minutes brought them to the shore. then, from behind a rock, a boat came out into the weak moonlight of the cove, and they jumped in; it put off instantly, and vanished in a few minutes between the two rocks that stand at the mouth of the cove as we all know. we climmed back to where we had been before, and i could see, a little way out, a larger vessel, though still not very large. the little boat drew up alongside, was made fast at the stern as i suppose, for the largest sailed away, and we saw no more. 'my uncle job told his officers as soon as he got back to camp; but what they thought of it i never heard--neither did he. boney's army never came, and a good job for me; for the cove below my father's house was where he meant to land, as this secret visit showed. we coast-folk should have been cut down one and all, and i should not have sat here to tell this tale.' we who listened to old selby that night have been familiar with his simple grave-stone for these ten years past. thanks to the incredulity of the age his tale has been seldom repeated. but if anything short of the direct testimony of his own eyes could persuade an auditor that bonaparte had examined these shores for himself with a view to a practicable landing-place, it would have been solomon selby's manner of narrating the adventure which befell him on the down. _christmas_ . a few crusted characters it is a saturday afternoon of blue and yellow autumn time, and the scene is the high street of a well-known market-town. a large carrier's van stands in the quadrangular fore-court of the white hart inn, upon the sides of its spacious tilt being painted, in weather-beaten letters: 'burthen, carrier to longpuddle.' these vans, so numerous hereabout, are a respectable, if somewhat lumbering, class of conveyance, much resorted to by decent travellers not overstocked with money, the better among them roughly corresponding to the old french _diligences_. the present one is timed to leave the town at four in the afternoon precisely, and it is now half-past three by the clock in the turret at the top of the street. in a few seconds errand-boys from the shops begin to arrive with packages, which they fling into the vehicle, and turn away whistling, and care for the packages no more. at twenty minutes to four an elderly woman places her basket upon the shafts, slowly mounts, takes up a seat inside, and folds her hands and her lips. she has secured her corner for the journey, though there is as yet no sign of a horse being put in, nor of a carrier. at the three-quarters, two other women arrive, in whom the first recognizes the postmistress of upper longpuddle and the registrar's wife, they recognizing her as the aged groceress of the same village. at five minutes to the hour there approach mr. profitt, the schoolmaster, in a soft felt hat, and christopher twink, the master-thatcher; and as the hour strikes there rapidly drop in the parish clerk and his wife, the seedsman and his aged father, the registrar; also mr. day, the world-ignored local landscape-painter, an elderly man who resides in his native place, and has never sold a picture outside it, though his pretensions to art have been nobly supported by his fellow- villagers, whose confidence in his genius has been as remarkable as the outer neglect of it, leading them to buy his paintings so extensively (at the price of a few shillings each, it is true) that every dwelling in the parish exhibits three or four of those admired productions on its walls. burthen, the carrier, is by this time seen bustling round the vehicle; the horses are put in, the proprietor arranges the reins and springs up into his seat as if he were used to it--which he is. 'is everybody here?' he asks preparatorily over his shoulder to the passengers within. as those who were not there did not reply in the negative the muster was assumed to be complete, and after a few hitches and hindrances the van with its human freight was got under way. it jogged on at an easy pace till it reached the bridge which formed the last outpost of the town. the carrier pulled up suddenly. 'bless my soul!' he said, 'i've forgot the curate!' all who could do so gazed from the little back window of the van, but the curate was not in sight. 'now i wonder where that there man is?' continued the carrier. 'poor man, he ought to have a living at his time of life.' 'and he ought to be punctual,' said the carrier. '"four o'clock sharp is my time for starting," i said to 'en. and he said, "i'll be there." now he's not here, and as a serious old church-minister he ought to be as good as his word. perhaps mr. flaxton knows, being in the same line of life?' he turned to the parish clerk. 'i was talking an immense deal with him, that's true, half an hour ago,' replied that ecclesiastic, as one of whom it was no erroneous supposition that he should be on intimate terms with another of the cloth. 'but he didn't say he would be late.' the discussion was cut off by the appearance round the corner of the van of rays from the curate's spectacles, followed hastily by his face and a few white whiskers, and the swinging tails of his long gaunt coat. nobody reproached him, seeing how he was reproaching himself; and he entered breathlessly and took his seat. 'now be we all here?' said the carrier again. they started a second time, and moved on till they were about three hundred yards out of the town, and had nearly reached the second bridge, behind which, as every native remembers, the road takes a turn and travellers by this highway disappear finally from the view of gazing burghers. 'well, as i'm alive!' cried the postmistress from the interior of the conveyance, peering through the little square back-window along the road townward. 'what?' said the carrier. 'a man hailing us!' another sudden stoppage. 'somebody else?' the carrier asked. 'ay, sure!' all waited silently, while those who could gaze out did so. 'now, who can that be?' burthen continued. 'i just put it to ye, neighbours, can any man keep time with such hindrances? bain't we full a'ready? who in the world can the man be?' 'he's a sort of gentleman,' said the schoolmaster, his position commanding the road more comfortably than that of his comrades. the stranger, who had been holding up his umbrella to attract their notice, was walking forward leisurely enough, now that he found, by their stopping, that it had been secured. his clothes were decidedly not of a local cut, though it was difficult to point out any particular mark of difference. in his left hand he carried a small leather travelling bag. as soon as he had overtaken the van he glanced at the inscription on its side, as if to assure himself that he had hailed the right conveyance, and asked if they had room. the carrier replied that though they were pretty well laden he supposed they could carry one more, whereupon the stranger mounted, and took the seat cleared for him within. and then the horses made another move, this time for good, and swung along with their burden of fourteen souls all told. 'you bain't one of these parts, sir?' said the carrier. 'i could tell that as far as i could see 'ee.' 'yes, i am one of these parts,' said the stranger. 'oh? h'm.' the silence which followed seemed to imply a doubt of the truth of the new-comer's assertion. 'i was speaking of upper longpuddle more particular,' continued the carrier hardily, 'and i think i know most faces of that valley.' 'i was born at longpuddle, and nursed at longpuddle, and my father and grandfather before me,' said the passenger quietly. 'why, to be sure,' said the aged groceress in the background, 'it isn't john lackland's son--never--it can't be--he who went to foreign parts five-and-thirty years ago with his wife and family? yet--what do i hear?--that's his father's voice!' 'that's the man,' replied the stranger. 'john lackland was my father, and i am john lackland's son. five-and-thirty years ago, when i was a boy of eleven, my parents emigrated across the seas, taking me and my sister with them. kytes's boy tony was the one who drove us and our belongings to casterbridge on the morning we left; and his was the last longpuddle face i saw. we sailed the same week across the ocean, and there we've been ever since, and there i've left those i went with--all three.' 'alive or dead?' 'dead,' he replied in a low voice. 'and i have come back to the old place, having nourished a thought--not a definite intention, but just a thought--that i should like to return here in a year or two, to spend the remainder of my days.' 'married man, mr. lackland?' 'no.' 'and have the world used 'ee well, sir--or rather john, knowing 'ee as a child? in these rich new countries that we hear of so much, you've got rich with the rest?' 'i am not very rich,' mr. lackland said. 'even in new countries, you know, there are failures. the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; and even if it sometimes is, you may be neither swift nor strong. however, that's enough about me. now, having answered your inquiries, you must answer mine; for being in london, i have come down here entirely to discover what longpuddle is looking like, and who are living there. that was why i preferred a seat in your van to hiring a carriage for driving across.' 'well, as for longpuddle, we rub on there much as usual. old figures have dropped out o' their frames, so to speak it, and new ones have been put in their places. you mentioned tony kytes as having been the one to drive your family and your goods to casterbridge in his father's waggon when you left. tony is, i believe, living still, but not at longpuddle. he went away and settled at lewgate, near mellstock, after his marriage. ah, tony was a sort o' man!' 'his character had hardly come out when i knew him.' 'no. but 'twas well enough, as far as that goes--except as to women. i shall never forget his courting--never!' the returned villager waited silently, and the carrier went on:-- tony kytes, the arch-deceiver 'i shall never forget tony's face. 'twas a little, round, firm, tight face, with a seam here and there left by the smallpox, but not enough to hurt his looks in a woman's eye, though he'd had it badish when he was a boy. so very serious looking and unsmiling 'a was, that young man, that it really seemed as if he couldn't laugh at all without great pain to his conscience. he looked very hard at a small speck in your eye when talking to 'ee. and there was no more sign of a whisker or beard on tony kytes's face than on the palm of my hand. he used to sing "the tailor's breeches" with a religious manner, as if it were a hymn:-- '"o the petticoats went off, and the breeches they went on!" and all the rest of the scandalous stuff. he was quite the women's favourite, and in return for their likings he loved 'em in shoals. 'but in course of time tony got fixed down to one in particular, milly richards, a nice, light, small, tender little thing; and it was soon said that they were engaged to be married. one saturday he had been to market to do business for his father, and was driving home the waggon in the afternoon. when he reached the foot of the very hill we shall be going over in ten minutes who should he see waiting for him at the top but unity sallet, a handsome girl, one of the young women he'd been very tender toward before he'd got engaged to milly. 'as soon as tony came up to her she said, "my dear tony, will you give me a lift home?" '"that i will, darling," said tony. "you don't suppose i could refuse 'ee?" 'she smiled a smile, and up she hopped, and on drove tony. '"tony," she says, in a sort of tender chide, "why did ye desert me for that other one? in what is she better than i? i should have made 'ee a finer wife, and a more loving one too. 'tisn't girls that are so easily won at first that are the best. think how long we've known each other--ever since we were children almost--now haven't we, tony?" '"yes, that we have," says tony, a-struck with the truth o't. '"and you've never seen anything in me to complain of, have ye, tony? now tell the truth to me?" '"i never have, upon my life," says tony. '"and--can you say i'm not pretty, tony? now look at me!" 'he let his eyes light upon her for a long while. "i really can't," says he. "in fact, i never knowed you was so pretty before!" '"prettier than she?" 'what tony would have said to that nobody knows, for before he could speak, what should he see ahead, over the hedge past the turning, but a feather he knew well--the feather in milly's hat--she to whom he had been thinking of putting the question as to giving out the banns that very week. '"unity," says he, as mild as he could, "here's milly coming. now i shall catch it mightily if she sees 'ee riding here with me; and if you get down she'll be turning the corner in a moment, and, seeing 'ee in the road, she'll know we've been coming on together. now, dearest unity, will ye, to avoid all unpleasantness, which i know ye can't bear any more than i, will ye lie down in the back part of the waggon, and let me cover you over with the tarpaulin till milly has passed? it will all be done in a minute. do!--and i'll think over what we've said; and perhaps i shall put a loving question to you after all, instead of to milly. 'tisn't true that it is all settled between her and me." 'well, unity sallet agreed, and lay down at the back end of the waggon, and tony covered her over, so that the waggon seemed to be empty but for the loose tarpaulin; and then he drove on to meet milly. '"my dear tony!" cries milly, looking up with a little pout at him as he came near. "how long you've been coming home! just as if i didn't live at upper longpuddle at all! and i've come to meet you as you asked me to do, and to ride back with you, and talk over our future home--since you asked me, and i promised. but i shouldn't have come else, mr. tony!" '"ay, my dear, i did ask ye--to be sure i did, now i think of it--but i had quite forgot it. to ride back with me, did you say, dear milly?" '"well, of course! what can i do else? surely you don't want me to walk, now i've come all this way?" '"o no, no! i was thinking you might be going on to town to meet your mother. i saw her there--and she looked as if she might be expecting 'ee." '"o no; she's just home. she came across the fields, and so got back before you." '"ah! i didn't know that," says tony. and there was no help for it but to take her up beside him. 'they talked on very pleasantly, and looked at the trees, and beasts, and birds, and insects, and at the ploughmen at work in the fields, till presently who should they see looking out of the upper window of a house that stood beside the road they were following, but hannah jolliver, another young beauty of the place at that time, and the very first woman that tony had fallen in love with--before milly and before unity, in fact--the one that he had almost arranged to marry instead of milly. she was a much more dashing girl than milly richards, though he'd not thought much of her of late. the house hannah was looking from was her aunt's. '"my dear milly--my coming wife, as i may call 'ee," says tony in his modest way, and not so loud that unity could overhear, "i see a young woman alooking out of window, who i think may accost me. the fact is, milly, she had a notion that i was wishing to marry her, and since she's discovered i've promised another, and a prettier than she, i'm rather afeard of her temper if she sees us together. now, milly, would you do me a favour--my coming wife, as i may say?" '"certainly, dearest tony," says she. '"then would ye creep under the empty sacks just here in the front of the waggon, and hide there out of sight till we've passed the house? she hasn't seen us yet. you see, we ought to live in peace and good-will since 'tis almost christmas, and 'twill prevent angry passions rising, which we always should do." '"i don't mind, to oblige you, tony," milly said; and though she didn't care much about doing it, she crept under, and crouched down just behind the seat, unity being snug at the other end. so they drove on till they got near the road-side cottage. hannah had soon seen him coming, and waited at the window, looking down upon him. she tossed her head a little disdainful and smiled off-hand. '"well, aren't you going to be civil enough to ask me to ride home with you!" she says, seeing that he was for driving past with a nod and a smile. '"ah, to be sure! what was i thinking of?" said tony, in a flutter. "but you seem as if you was staying at your aunt's?" '"no, i am not," she said. "don't you see i have my bonnet and jacket on? i have only called to see her on my way home. how can you be so stupid, tony?" '"in that case--ah--of course you must come along wi' me," says tony, feeling a dim sort of sweat rising up inside his clothes. and he reined in the horse, and waited till she'd come downstairs, and then helped her up beside him. he drove on again, his face as long as a face that was a round one by nature well could be. 'hannah looked round sideways into his eyes. "this is nice, isn't it, tony?" she says. "i like riding with you." 'tony looked back into her eyes. "and i with you," he said after a while. in short, having considered her, he warmed up, and the more he looked at her the more he liked her, till he couldn't for the life of him think why he had ever said a word about marriage to milly or unity while hannah jolliver was in question. so they sat a little closer and closer, their feet upon the foot-board and their shoulders touching, and tony thought over and over again how handsome hannah was. he spoke tenderer and tenderer, and called her "dear hannah" in a whisper at last. '"you've settled it with milly by this time, i suppose," said she. '"n-no, not exactly." '"what? how low you talk, tony." '"yes--i've a kind of hoarseness. i said, not exactly." '"i suppose you mean to?" '"well, as to that--" his eyes rested on her face, and hers on his. he wondered how he could have been such a fool as not to follow up hannah. "my sweet hannah!" he bursts out, taking her hand, not being really able to help it, and forgetting milly and unity, and all the world besides. "settled it? i don't think i have!" '"hark!" says hannah. '"what?" says tony, letting go her hand. '"surely i heard a sort of little screaming squeak under those sacks? why, you've been carrying corn, and there's mice in this waggon, i declare!" she began to haul up the tails of her gown. '"oh no; 'tis the axle," said tony in an assuring way. "it do go like that sometimes in dry weather." '"perhaps it was . . . well, now, to be quite honest, dear tony, do you like her better than me? because--because, although i've held off so independent, i'll own at last that i do like 'ee, tony, to tell the truth; and i wouldn't say no if you asked me--you know what." 'tony was so won over by this pretty offering mood of a girl who had been quite the reverse (hannah had a backward way with her at times, if you can mind) that he just glanced behind, and then whispered very soft, "i haven't quite promised her, and i think i can get out of it, and ask you that question you speak of." '"throw over milly?--all to marry me! how delightful!" broke out hannah, quite loud, clapping her hands. 'at this there was a real squeak--an angry, spiteful squeak, and afterward a long moan, as if something had broke its heart, and a movement of the empty sacks. '"something's there!" said hannah, starting up. '"it's nothing, really," says tony in a soothing voice, and praying inwardly for a way out of this. "i wouldn't tell 'ee at first, because i wouldn't frighten 'ee. but, hannah, i've really a couple of ferrets in a bag under there, for rabbiting, and they quarrel sometimes. i don't wish it knowed, as 'twould be called poaching. oh, they can't get out, bless ye--you are quite safe! and--and--what a fine day it is, isn't it, hannah, for this time of year? be you going to market next saturday? how is your aunt now?" and so on, says tony, to keep her from talking any more about love in milly's hearing. 'but he found his work cut out for him, and wondering again how he should get out of this ticklish business, he looked about for a chance. nearing home he saw his father in a field not far off, holding up his hand as if he wished to speak to tony. '"would you mind taking the reins a moment, hannah," he said, much relieved, "while i go and find out what father wants?" 'she consented, and away he hastened into the field, only too glad to get breathing time. he found that his father was looking at him with rather a stern eye. '"come, come, tony," says old mr. kytes, as soon as his son was alongside him, "this won't do, you know." '"what?" says tony. '"why, if you mean to marry milly richards, do it, and there's an end o't. but don't go driving about the country with jolliver's daughter and making a scandal. i won't have such things done." '"i only asked her--that is, she asked me, to ride home." '"she? why, now, if it had been milly, 'twould have been quite proper; but you and hannah jolliver going about by yourselves--" '"milly's there too, father." '"milly? where?" '"under the corn-sacks! yes, the truth is, father, i've got rather into a nunny-watch, i'm afeard! unity sallet is there too--yes, at the other end, under the tarpaulin. all three are in that waggon, and what to do with 'em i know no more than the dead! the best plan is, as i'm thinking, to speak out loud and plain to one of 'em before the rest, and that will settle it; not but what 'twill cause 'em to kick up a bit of a miff, for certain. now which would you marry, father, if you was in my place?" '"whichever of 'em did _not_ ask to ride with thee." '"that was milly, i'm bound to say, as she only mounted by my invitation. but milly--" "then stick to milly, she's the best . . . but look at that!" 'his father pointed toward the waggon. "she can't hold that horse in. you shouldn't have left the reins in her hands. run on and take the horse's head, or there'll be some accident to them maids!" 'tony's horse, in fact, in spite of hannah's tugging at the reins, had started on his way at a brisk walking pace, being very anxious to get back to the stable, for he had had a long day out. without another word tony rushed away from his father to overtake the horse. 'now of all things that could have happened to wean him from milly there was nothing so powerful as his father's recommending her. no; it could not be milly, after all. hannah must be the one, since he could not marry all three. this he thought while running after the waggon. but queer things were happening inside it. 'it was, of course, milly who had screamed under the sack-bags, being obliged to let off her bitter rage and shame in that way at what tony was saying, and never daring to show, for very pride and dread o' being laughed at, that she was in hiding. she became more and more restless, and in twisting herself about, what did she see but another woman's foot and white stocking close to her head. it quite frightened her, not knowing that unity sallet was in the waggon likewise. but after the fright was over she determined to get to the bottom of all this, and she crept and crept along the bed of the waggon, under the tarpaulin, like a snake, when lo and behold she came face to face with unity. '"well, if this isn't disgraceful!" says milly in a raging whisper to unity. '"'tis," says unity, "to see you hiding in a young man's waggon like this, and no great character belonging to either of ye!" '"mind what you are saying!" replied milly, getting louder. "i am engaged to be married to him, and haven't i a right to be here? what right have you, i should like to know? what has he been promising you? a pretty lot of nonsense, i expect! but what tony says to other women is all mere wind, and no concern to me!" '"don't you be too sure!" says unity. "he's going to have hannah, and not you, nor me either; i could hear that." 'now at these strange voices sounding from under the cloth hannah was thunderstruck a'most into a swound; and it was just at this time that the horse moved on. hannah tugged away wildly, not knowing what she was doing; and as the quarrel rose louder and louder hannah got so horrified that she let go the reins altogether. the horse went on at his own pace, and coming to the corner where we turn round to drop down the hill to lower longpuddle he turned too quick, the off wheels went up the bank, the waggon rose sideways till it was quite on edge upon the near axles, and out rolled the three maidens into the road in a heap. 'when tony came up, frightened and breathless, he was relieved enough to see that neither of his darlings was hurt, beyond a few scratches from the brambles of the hedge. but he was rather alarmed when he heard how they were going on at one another. '"don't ye quarrel, my dears--don't ye!" says he, taking off his hat out of respect to 'em. and then he would have kissed them all round, as fair and square as a man could, but they were in too much of a taking to let him, and screeched and sobbed till they was quite spent. '"now i'll speak out honest, because i ought to," says tony, as soon as he could get heard. "and this is the truth," says he. "i've asked hannah to be mine, and she is willing, and we are going to put up the banns next--" 'tony had not noticed that hannah's father was coming up behind, nor had he noticed that hannah's face was beginning to bleed from the scratch of a bramble. hannah had seen her father, and had run to him, crying worse than ever. '"my daughter is _not_ willing, sir!" says mr. jolliver hot and strong. "be you willing, hannah? i ask ye to have spirit enough to refuse him, if yer virtue is left to 'ee and you run no risk?" '"she's as sound as a bell for me, that i'll swear!" says tony, flaring up. "and so's the others, come to that, though you may think it an onusual thing in me!" '"i have spirit, and i do refuse him!" says hannah, partly because her father was there, and partly, too, in a tantrum because of the discovery, and the scratch on her face. "little did i think when i was so soft with him just now that i was talking to such a false deceiver!" '"what, you won't have me, hannah?" says tony, his jaw hanging down like a dead man's. '"never--i would sooner marry no--nobody at all!" she gasped out, though with her heart in her throat, for she would not have refused tony if he had asked her quietly, and her father had not been there, and her face had not been scratched by the bramble. and having said that, away she walked upon her father's arm, thinking and hoping he would ask her again. 'tony didn't know what to say next. milly was sobbing her heart out; but as his father had strongly recommended her he couldn't feel inclined that way. so he turned to unity. '"well, will you, unity dear, be mine?" he says. '"take her leavings? not i!" says unity. "i'd scorn it!" and away walks unity sallet likewise, though she looked back when she'd gone some way, to see if he was following her. 'so there at last were left milly and tony by themselves, she crying in watery streams, and tony looking like a tree struck by lightning. '"well, milly," he says at last, going up to her, "it do seem as if fate had ordained that it should be you and i, or nobody. and what must be must be, i suppose. hey, milly?" '"if you like, tony. you didn't really mean what you said to them?" '"not a word of it!" declares tony, bringing down his fist upon his palm. 'and then he kissed her, and put the waggon to rights, and they mounted together; and their banns were put up the very next sunday. i was not able to go to their wedding, but it was a rare party they had, by all account. everybody in longpuddle was there almost; you among the rest, i think, mr. flaxton?' the speaker turned to the parish clerk. 'i was,' said mr. flaxton. 'and that party was the cause of a very curious change in some other people's affairs; i mean in steve hardcome's and his cousin james's.' 'ah! the hardcomes,' said the stranger. 'how familiar that name is to me! what of them?' the clerk cleared his throat and began:-- the history of the hardcomes 'yes, tony's was the very best wedding-randy that ever i was at; and i've been at a good many, as you may suppose'--turning to the newly-arrived one--'having as a church-officer, the privilege to attend all christening, wedding, and funeral parties--such being our wessex custom. ''twas on a frosty night in christmas week, and among the folk invited were the said hardcomes o' climmerston--steve and james--first cousins, both of them small farmers, just entering into business on their own account. with them came, as a matter of course, their intended wives, two young women of the neighbourhood, both very pretty and sprightly maidens, and numbers of friends from abbot's-cernel, and weatherbury, and mellstock, and i don't know where--a regular houseful. 'the kitchen was cleared of furniture for dancing, and the old folk played at "put" and "all-fours" in the parlour, though at last they gave that up to join in the dance. the top of the figure was by the large front window of the room, and there were so many couples that the lower part of the figure reached through the door at the back, and into the darkness of the out-house; in fact, you couldn't see the end of the row at all, and 'twas never known exactly how long that dance was, the lowest couples being lost among the faggots and brushwood in the out-house. 'when we had danced a few hours, and the crowns of we taller men were swelling into lumps with bumping the beams of the ceiling, the first fiddler laid down his fiddle-bow, and said he should play no more, for he wished to dance. and in another hour the second fiddler laid down his, and said he wanted to dance too; so there was only the third fiddler left, and he was a' old, veteran man, very weak in the wrist. however, he managed to keep up a faltering tweedle-dee; but there being no chair in the room, and his knees being as weak as his wrists, he was obliged to sit upon as much of the little corner-table as projected beyond the corner-cupboard fixed over it, which was not a very wide seat for a man advanced in years. 'among those who danced most continually were the two engaged couples, as was natural to their situation. each pair was very well matched, and very unlike the other. james hardcome's intended was called emily darth, and both she and james were gentle, nice-minded, in-door people, fond of a quiet life. steve and his chosen, named olive pawle, were different; they were of a more bustling nature, fond of racketing about and seeing what was going on in the world. the two couples had arranged to get married on the same day, and that not long thence; tony's wedding being a sort of stimulant, as is often the case; i've noticed it professionally many times. 'they danced with such a will as only young people in that stage of courtship can dance; and it happened that as the evening wore on james had for his partner stephen's plighted one, olive, at the same time that stephen was dancing with james's emily. it was noticed that in spite o' the exchange the young men seemed to enjoy the dance no less than before. by and by they were treading another tune in the same changed order as we had noticed earlier, and though at first each one had held the other's mistress strictly at half-arm's length, lest there should be shown any objection to too close quarters by the lady's proper man, as time passed there was a little more closeness between 'em; and presently a little more closeness still. 'the later it got the more did each of the two cousins dance with the wrong young girl, and the tighter did he hold her to his side as he whirled her round; and, what was very remarkable, neither seemed to mind what the other was doing. the party began to draw towards its end, and i saw no more that night, being one of the first to leave, on account of my morning's business. but i learnt the rest of it from those that knew. 'after finishing a particularly warming dance with the changed partners, as i've mentioned, the two young men looked at one another, and in a moment or two went out into the porch together. '"james," says steve, "what were you thinking of when you were dancing with my olive?" '"well," said james, "perhaps what you were thinking of when you were dancing with my emily." '"i was thinking," said steve, with some hesitation, "that i wouldn't mind changing for good and all!" '"it was what i was feeling likewise," said james. '"i willingly agree to it, if you think we could manage it." '"so do i. but what would the girls say?" '"'tis my belief," said steve, "that they wouldn't particularly object. your emily clung as close to me as if she already belonged to me, dear girl." '"and your olive to me," says james. "i could feel her heart beating like a clock." 'well, they agreed to put it to the girls when they were all four walking home together. and they did so. when they parted that night the exchange was decided on--all having been done under the hot excitement of that evening's dancing. thus it happened that on the following sunday morning, when the people were sitting in church with mouths wide open to hear the names published as they had expected, there was no small amazement to hear them coupled the wrong way, as it seemed. the congregation whispered, and thought the parson had made a mistake; till they discovered that his reading of the names was verily the true way. as they had decided, so they were married, each one to the other's original property. 'well, the two couples lived on for a year or two ordinarily enough, till the time came when these young people began to grow a little less warm to their respective spouses, as is the rule of married life; and the two cousins wondered more and more in their hearts what had made 'em so mad at the last moment to marry crosswise as they did, when they might have married straight, as was planned by nature, and as they had fallen in love. 'twas tony's party that had done _it_, plain enough, and they half wished they had never gone there. james, being a quiet, fireside, perusing man, felt at times a wide gap between himself and olive, his wife, who loved riding and driving and out-door jaunts to a degree; while steve, who was always knocking about hither and thither, had a very domestic wife, who worked samplers, and made hearthrugs, scarcely ever wished to cross the threshold, and only drove out with him to please him. 'however, they said very little about this mismating to any of their acquaintances, though sometimes steve would look at james's wife and sigh, and james would look at steve's wife and do the same. indeed, at last the two men were frank enough towards each other not to mind mentioning it quietly to themselves, in a long-faced, sorry-smiling, whimsical sort of way, and would shake their heads together over their foolishness in upsetting a well-considered choice on the strength of an hour's fancy in the whirl and wildness of a dance. still, they were sensible and honest young fellows enough, and did their best to make shift with their lot as they had arranged it, and not to repine at what could not now be altered or mended. 'so things remained till one fine summer day they went for their yearly little outing together, as they had made it their custom to do for a long while past. this year they chose budmouth-regis as the place to spend their holiday in; and off they went in their best clothes at nine o'clock in the morning. 'when they had reached budmouth-regis they walked two and two along the shore--their new boots going squeakity-squash upon the clammy velvet sands. i can seem to see 'em now! then they looked at the ships in the harbour; and then went up to the look-out; and then had dinner at an inn; and then again walked two and two, squeakity-squash, upon the velvet sands. as evening drew on they sat on one of the public seats upon the esplanade, and listened to the band; and then they said "what shall we do next?" '"of all things," said olive (mrs. james hardcome, that is), "i should like to row in the bay! we could listen to the music from the water as well as from here, and have the fun of rowing besides." '"the very thing; so should i," says stephen, his tastes being always like hers. here the clerk turned to the curate. 'but you, sir, know the rest of the strange particulars of that strange evening of their lives better than anybody else, having had much of it from their own lips, which i had not; and perhaps you'll oblige the gentleman?' 'certainly, if it is wished,' said the curate. and he took up the clerk's tale:-- * * * * * 'stephen's wife hated the sea, except from land, and couldn't bear the thought of going into a boat. james, too, disliked the water, and said that for his part he would much sooner stay on and listen to the band in the seat they occupied, though he did not wish to stand in his wife's way if she desired a row. the end of the discussion was that james and his cousin's wife emily agreed to remain where they were sitting and enjoy the music, while they watched the other two hire a boat just beneath, and take their water-excursion of half an hour or so, till they should choose to come back and join the sitters on the esplanade; when they would all start homeward together. 'nothing could have pleased the other two restless ones better than this arrangement; and emily and james watched them go down to the boatman below and choose one of the little yellow skiffs, and walk carefully out upon the little plank that was laid on trestles to enable them to get alongside the craft. they saw stephen hand olive in, and take his seat facing her; when they were settled they waved their hands to the couple watching them, and then stephen took the pair of sculls and pulled off to the tune beat by the band, she steering through the other boats skimming about, for the sea was as smooth as glass that evening, and pleasure-seekers were rowing everywhere. '"how pretty they look moving on, don't they?" said emily to james (as i've been assured). "they both enjoy it equally. in everything their likings are the same." '"that's true," said james. '"they would have made a handsome pair if they had married," said she. '"yes," said he. "'tis a pity we should have parted 'em" '"don't talk of that, james," said she. "for better or for worse we decided to do as we did, and there's an end of it." 'they sat on after that without speaking, side by side, and the band played as before; the people strolled up and down; and stephen and olive shrank smaller and smaller as they shot straight out to sea. the two on shore used to relate how they saw stephen stop rowing a moment, and take off his coat to get at his work better; but james's wife sat quite still in the stern, holding the tiller-ropes by which she steered the boat. when they had got very small indeed she turned her head to shore. '"she is waving her handkerchief to us," said stephen's wife, who thereupon pulled out her own, and waved it as a return signal. 'the boat's course had been a little awry while mrs. james neglected her steering to wave her handkerchief to her husband and mrs. stephen; but now the light skiff went straight onward again, and they could soon see nothing more of the two figures it contained than olive's light mantle and stephen's white shirt sleeves behind. 'the two on the shore talked on. "'twas very curious--our changing partners at tony kytes's wedding," emily declared. "tony was of a fickle nature by all account, and it really seemed as if his character had infected us that night. which of you two was it that first proposed not to marry as we were engaged?" '"h'm--i can't remember at this moment," says james. "we talked it over, you know; and no sooner said than done." '"'twas the dancing," said she. "people get quite crazy sometimes in a dance." '"they do," he owned. '"james--do you think they care for one another still?" asks mrs. stephen. 'james hardcome mused and admitted that perhaps a little tender feeling might flicker up in their hearts for a moment now and then. "still, nothing of any account," he said. '"i sometimes think that olive is in steve's mind a good deal," murmurs mrs. stephen; "particularly when she pleases his fancy by riding past our window at a gallop on one of the draught-horses . . . i never could do anything of that sort; i could never get over my fear of a horse." '"and i am no horseman, though i pretend to be on her account," murmured james hardcome. "but isn't it almost time for them to turn and sweep round to the shore, as the other boating folk have done? i wonder what olive means by steering away straight to the horizon like that? she has hardly swerved from a direct line seaward since they started." '"no doubt they are talking, and don't think of where they are going," suggests stephen's wife. '"perhaps so," said james. "i didn't know steve could row like that." '"o yes," says she. "he often comes here on business, and generally has a pull round the bay." '"i can hardly see the boat or them," says james again; "and it is getting dark." 'the heedless pair afloat now formed a mere speck in the films of the coming night, which thickened apace, till it completely swallowed up their distant shapes. they had disappeared while still following the same straight course away from the world of land-livers, as if they were intending to drop over the sea-edge into space, and never return to earth again. 'the two on the shore continued to sit on, punctually abiding by their agreement to remain on the same spot till the others returned. the esplanade lamps were lit one by one, the bandsmen folded up their stands and departed, the yachts in the bay hung out their riding lights, and the little boats came back to shore one after another, their hirers walking on to the sands by the plank they had climbed to go afloat; but among these stephen and olive did not appear. '"what a time they are!" said emily. "i am getting quite chilly. i did not expect to have to sit so long in the evening air." 'thereupon james hardcome said that he did not require his overcoat, and insisted on lending it to her. 'he wrapped it round emily's shoulders. '"thank you, james," she said. "how cold olive must be in that thin jacket!" 'he said he was thinking so too. "well, they are sure to be quite close at hand by this time, though we can't see 'em. the boats are not all in yet. some of the rowers are fond of paddling along the shore to finish out their hour of hiring." '"shall we walk by the edge of the water," said she, "to see if we can discover them?" 'he assented, reminding her that they must not lose sight of the seat, lest the belated pair should return and miss them, and be vexed that they had not kept the appointment. 'they walked a sentry beat up and down the sands immediately opposite the seat; and still the others did not come. james hardcome at last went to the boatman, thinking that after all his wife and cousin might have come in under shadow of the dusk without being perceived, and might have forgotten the appointment at the bench. '"all in?" asked james. '"all but one boat," said the lessor. "i can't think where that couple is keeping to. they might run foul of something or other in the dark." 'again stephen's wife and olive's husband waited, with more and more anxiety. but no little yellow boat returned. was it possible they could have landed further down the esplanade? '"it may have been done to escape paying," said the boat-owner. "but they didn't look like people who would do that." 'james hardcome knew that he could found no hope on such a reason as that. but now, remembering what had been casually discussed between steve and himself about their wives from time to time, he admitted for the first time the possibility that their old tenderness had been revived by their face-to-face position more strongly than either had anticipated at starting--the excursion having been so obviously undertaken for the pleasure of the performance only,--and that they had landed at some steps he knew of further down toward the pier, to be longer alone together. 'still he disliked to harbour the thought, and would not mention its existence to his companion. he merely said to her, "let us walk further on." 'they did so, and lingered between the boat-stage and the pier till stephen hardcome's wife was uneasy, and was obliged to accept james's offered arm. thus the night advanced. emily was presently so worn out by fatigue that james felt it necessary to conduct her home; there was, too, a remote chance that the truants had landed in the harbour on the other side of the town, or elsewhere, and hastened home in some unexpected way, in the belief that their consorts would not have waited so long. 'however, he left a direction in the town that a lookout should be kept, though this was arranged privately, the bare possibility of an elopement being enough to make him reticent; and, full of misgivings, the two remaining ones hastened to catch the last train out of budmouth-regis; and when they got to casterbridge drove back to upper longpuddle.' 'along this very road as we do now,' remarked the parish clerk. 'to be sure--along this very road,' said the curate. 'however, stephen and olive were not at their homes; neither had entered the village since leaving it in the morning. emily and james hardcome went to their respective dwellings to snatch a hasty night's rest, and at daylight the next morning they drove again to casterbridge and entered the budmouth train, the line being just opened. 'nothing had been heard of the couple there during this brief absence. in the course of a few hours some young men testified to having seen such a man and woman rowing in a frail hired craft, the head of the boat kept straight to sea; they had sat looking in each other's faces as if they were in a dream, with no consciousness of what they were doing, or whither they were steering. it was not till late that day that more tidings reached james's ears. the boat had been found drifting bottom upward a long way from land. in the evening the sea rose somewhat, and a cry spread through the town that two bodies were cast ashore in lullstead bay, several miles to the eastward. they were brought to budmouth, and inspection revealed them to be the missing pair. it was said that they had been found tightly locked in each other's arms, his lips upon hers, their features still wrapt in the same calm and dream-like repose which had been observed in their demeanour as they had glided along. 'neither james nor emily questioned the original motives of the unfortunate man and woman in putting to sea. they were both above suspicion as to intention. whatever their mutual feelings might have led them on to, underhand behaviour was foreign to the nature of either. conjecture pictured that they might have fallen into tender reverie while gazing each into a pair of eyes that had formerly flashed for him and her alone, and, unwilling to avow what their mutual sentiments were, they had continued thus, oblivious of time and space, till darkness suddenly overtook them far from land. but nothing was truly known. it had been their destiny to die thus. the two halves, intended by nature to make the perfect whole, had failed in that result during their lives, though "in their death they were not divided." their bodies were brought home, and buried on one day. i remember that, on looking round the churchyard while reading the service, i observed nearly all the parish at their funeral.' 'it was so, sir,' said the clerk. 'the remaining two,' continued the curate (whose voice had grown husky while relating the lovers' sad fate), 'were a more thoughtful and far- seeing, though less romantic, couple than the first. they were now mutually bereft of a companion, and found themselves by this accident in a position to fulfil their destiny according to nature's plan and their own original and calmly-formed intention. james hardcome took emily to wife in the course of a year and a half; and the marriage proved in every respect a happy one. i solemnized the service, hardcome having told me, when he came to give notice of the proposed wedding, the story of his first wife's loss almost word for word as i have told it to you.' 'and are they living in longpuddle still?' asked the new-comer. 'o no, sir,' interposed the clerk. 'james has been dead these dozen years, and his mis'ess about six or seven. they had no children. william privett used to be their odd man till he died.' 'ah--william privett! he dead too?--dear me!' said the other. 'all passed away!' 'yes, sir. william was much older than i. he'd ha' been over eighty if he had lived till now.' 'there was something very strange about william's death--very strange indeed!' sighed a melancholy man in the back of the van. it was the seedsman's father, who had hitherto kept silence. 'and what might that have been?' asked mr. lackland. the superstitious man's story 'william, as you may know, was a curious, silent man; you could feel when he came near 'ee; and if he was in the house or anywhere behind your back without your seeing him, there seemed to be something clammy in the air, as if a cellar door was opened close by your elbow. well, one sunday, at a time that william was in very good health to all appearance, the bell that was ringing for church went very heavy all of a sudden; the sexton, who told me o't, said he'd not known the bell go so heavy in his hand for years--it was just as if the gudgeons wanted oiling. that was on the sunday, as i say. during the week after, it chanced that william's wife was staying up late one night to finish her ironing, she doing the washing for mr. and mrs. hardcome. her husband had finished his supper and gone to bed as usual some hour or two before. while she ironed she heard him coming down stairs; he stopped to put on his boots at the stair- foot, where he always left them, and then came on into the living-room where she was ironing, passing through it towards the door, this being the only way from the staircase to the outside of the house. no word was said on either side, william not being a man given to much speaking, and his wife being occupied with her work. he went out and closed the door behind him. as her husband had now and then gone out in this way at night before when unwell, or unable to sleep for want of a pipe, she took no particular notice, and continued at her ironing. this she finished shortly after, and as he had not come in she waited awhile for him, putting away the irons and things, and preparing the table for his breakfast in the morning. still he did not return, but supposing him not far off, and wanting to get to bed herself, tired as she was, she left the door unbarred and went to the stairs, after writing on the back of the door with chalk: _mind and do the door_ (because he was a forgetful man). 'to her great surprise, and i might say alarm, on reaching the foot of the stairs his boots were standing there as they always stood when he had gone to rest; going up to their chamber she found him in bed sleeping as sound as a rock. how he could have got back again without her seeing or hearing him was beyond her comprehension. it could only have been by passing behind her very quietly while she was bumping with the iron. but this notion did not satisfy her: it was surely impossible that she should not have seen him come in through a room so small. she could not unravel the mystery, and felt very queer and uncomfortable about it. however, she would not disturb him to question him then, and went to bed herself. 'he rose and left for his work very early the next morning, before she was awake, and she waited his return to breakfast with much anxiety for an explanation, for thinking over the matter by daylight made it seem only the more startling. when he came in to the meal he said, before she could put her question, "what's the meaning of them words chalked on the door?" 'she told him, and asked him about his going out the night before. william declared that he had never left the bedroom after entering it, having in fact undressed, lain down, and fallen asleep directly, never once waking till the clock struck five, and he rose up to go to his labour. 'betty privett was as certain in her own mind that he did go out as she was of her own existence, and was little less certain that he did not return. she felt too disturbed to argue with him, and let the subject drop as though she must have been mistaken. when she was walking down longpuddle street later in the day she met jim weedle's daughter nancy, and said, "well, nancy, you do look sleepy to-day!" '"yes, mrs. privett," says nancy. "now don't tell anybody, but i don't mind letting you know what the reason o't is. last night, being old midsummer eve, some of us went to church porch, and didn't get home till near one." '"did ye?" says mrs. privett. "old midsummer yesterday was it? faith i didn't think whe'r 'twas midsummer or michaelmas; i'd too much work to do." '"yes. and we were frightened enough, i can tell 'ee, by what we saw." '"what did ye see?" '(you may not remember, sir, having gone off to foreign parts so young, that on midsummer night it is believed hereabout that the faint shapes of all the folk in the parish who are going to be at death's door within the year can be seen entering the church. those who get over their illness come out again after a while; those that are doomed to die do not return.) '"what did you see?" asked william's wife. '"well," says nancy, backwardly--"we needn't tell what we saw, or who we saw." '"you saw my husband," says betty privett, in a quiet way. '"well, since you put it so," says nancy, hanging fire, "we--thought we did see him; but it was darkish, and we was frightened, and of course it might not have been he." '"nancy, you needn't mind letting it out, though 'tis kept back in kindness. and he didn't come out of church again: i know it as well as you." 'nancy did not answer yes or no to that, and no more was said. but three days after, william privett was mowing with john chiles in mr. hardcome's meadow, and in the heat of the day they sat down to eat their bit o' nunch under a tree, and empty their flagon. afterwards both of 'em fell asleep as they sat. john chiles was the first to wake, and as he looked towards his fellow-mower he saw one of those great white miller's-souls as we call 'em--that is to say, a miller-moth--come from william's open mouth while he slept, and fly straight away. john thought it odd enough, as william had worked in a mill for several years when he was a boy. he then looked at the sun, and found by the place o't that they had slept a long while, and as william did not wake, john called to him and said it was high time to begin work again. he took no notice, and then john went up and shook him, and found he was dead. 'now on that very day old philip hookhorn was down at longpuddle spring dipping up a pitcher of water; and as he turned away, who should he see coming down to the spring on the other side but william, looking very pale and odd. this surprised philip hookhorn very much, for years before that time william's little son--his only child--had been drowned in that spring while at play there, and this had so preyed upon william's mind that he'd never been seen near the spring afterwards, and had been known to go half a mile out of his way to avoid the place. on inquiry, it was found that william in body could not have stood by the spring, being in the mead two miles off; and it also came out that the time at which he was seen at the spring was the very time when he died.' * * * * * 'a rather melancholy story,' observed the emigrant, after a minute's silence. 'yes, yes. well, we must take ups and downs together,' said the seedsman's father. 'you don't know, mr. lackland, i suppose, what a rum start that was between andrey satchel and jane vallens and the pa'son and clerk o' scrimpton?' said the master-thatcher, a man with a spark of subdued liveliness in his eye, who had hitherto kept his attention mainly upon small objects a long way ahead, as he sat in front of the van with his feet outside. 'theirs was a queerer experience of a pa'son and clerk than some folks get, and may cheer 'ee up a little after this dampness that's been flung over yer soul.' the returned one replied that he knew nothing of the history, and should be happy to hear it, quite recollecting the personality of the man satchel. 'ah no; this andrey satchel is the son of the satchel that you knew; this one has not been married more than two or three years, and 'twas at the time o' the wedding that the accident happened that i could tell 'ee of, or anybody else here, for that matter.' 'no, no; you must tell it, neighbour, if anybody,' said several; a request in which mr. lackland joined, adding that the satchel family was one he had known well before leaving home. 'i'll just mention, as you be a stranger,' whispered the carrier to lackland, 'that christopher's stories will bear pruning.' the emigrant nodded. 'well, i can soon tell it,' said the master-thatcher, schooling himself to a tone of actuality. 'though as it has more to do with the pa'son and clerk than with andrey himself, it ought to be told by a better churchman than i.' andrey satchel and the parson and clerk 'it all arose, you must know, from andrey being fond of a drop of drink at that time--though he's a sober enough man now by all account, so much the better for him. jane, his bride, you see, was somewhat older than andrey; how much older i don't pretend to say; she was not one of our parish, and the register alone may be able to tell that. but, at any rate, her being a little ahead of her young man in mortal years, coupled with other bodily circumstances--' ('ah, poor thing!' sighed the women.) '--made her very anxious to get the thing done before he changed his mind; and 'twas with a joyful countenance (they say) that she, with andrey and his brother and sister-in-law, marched off to church one november morning as soon as 'twas day a'most, to be made one with andrey for the rest of her life. he had left our place long before it was light, and the folks that were up all waved their lanterns at him, and flung up their hats as he went. 'the church of her parish was a mile and more from the houses, and, as it was a wonderful fine day for the time of year, the plan was that as soon as they were married they would make out a holiday by driving straight off to port bredy, to see the ships and the sea and the sojers, instead of coming back to a meal at the house of the distant relation she lived wi', and moping about there all the afternoon. 'well, some folks noticed that andrey walked with rather wambling steps to church that morning; the truth o't was that his nearest neighbour's child had been christened the day before, and andrey, having stood godfather, had stayed all night keeping up the christening, for he had said to himself, "not if i live to be thousand shall i again be made a godfather one day, and a husband the next, and perhaps a father the next, and therefore i'll make the most of the blessing." so that when he started from home in the morning he had not been in bed at all. the result was, as i say, that when he and his bride-to-he walked up the church to get married, the pa'son (who was a very strict man inside the church, whatever he was outside) looked hard at andrey, and said, very sharp: '"how's this, my man? you are in liquor. and so early, too. i'm ashamed of you!" '"well, that's true, sir," says andrey. "but i can walk straight enough for practical purposes. i can walk a chalk line," he says (meaning no offence), "as well as some other folk: and--" (getting hotter)--"i reckon that if you, pa'son billy toogood, had kept up a christening all night so thoroughly as i have done, you wouldn't be able to stand at all; d--- me if you would!" 'this answer made pa'son billy--as they used to call him--rather spitish, not to say hot, for he was a warm-tempered man if provoked, and he said, very decidedly: "well, i cannot marry you in this state; and i will not! go home and get sober!" and he slapped the book together like a rat-trap. 'then the bride burst out crying as if her heart would break, for very fear that she would lose andrey after all her hard work to get him, and begged and implored the pa'son to go on with the ceremony. but no. '"i won't be a party to your solemnizing matrimony with a tipsy man," says mr. toogood. "it is not right and decent. i am sorry for you, my young woman, but you'd better go home again. i wonder how you could think of bringing him here drunk like this!" '"but if--if he don't come drunk he won't come at all, sir!" she says, through her sobs. '"i can't help that," says the pa'son; and plead as she might, it did not move him. then she tried him another way. '"well, then, if you'll go home, sir, and leave us here, and come back to the church in an hour or two, i'll undertake to say that he shall be as sober as a judge," she cries. "we'll bide here, with your permission; for if he once goes out of this here church unmarried, all van amburgh's horses won't drag him back again!" '"very well," says the parson. "i'll give you two hours, and then i'll return." '"and please, sir, lock the door, so that we can't escape!" says she. '"yes," says the parson. '"and let nobody know that we are here." 'the pa'son then took off his clane white surplice, and went away; and the others consulted upon the best means for keeping the matter a secret, which it was not a very hard thing to do, the place being so lonely, and the hour so early. the witnesses, andrey's brother and brother's wife, neither one o' which cared about andrey's marrying jane, and had come rather against their will, said they couldn't wait two hours in that hole of a place, wishing to get home to longpuddle before dinner-time. they were altogether so crusty that the clerk said there was no difficulty in their doing as they wished. they could go home as if their brother's wedding had actually taken place and the married couple had gone onward for their day's pleasure jaunt to port bredy as intended, he, the clerk, and any casual passer-by would act as witnesses when the pa'son came back. 'this was agreed to, and away andrey's relations went, nothing loath, and the clerk shut the church door and prepared to lock in the couple. the bride went up and whispered to him, with her eyes a-streaming still. '"my dear good clerk," she says, "if we bide here in the church, folk may see us through the winders, and find out what has happened; and 'twould cause such a talk and scandal that i never should get over it: and perhaps, too, dear andrey might try to get out and leave me! will ye lock us up in the tower, my dear good clerk?" she says. "i'll tole him in there if you will." 'the clerk had no objection to do this to oblige the poor young woman, and they toled andrey into the tower, and the clerk locked 'em both up straightway, and then went home, to return at the end of the two hours. 'pa'son toogood had not been long in his house after leaving the church when he saw a gentleman in pink and top-boots ride past his windows, and with a sudden flash of heat he called to mind that the hounds met that day just on the edge of his parish. the pa'son was one who dearly loved sport, and much he longed to be there. 'in short, except o' sundays and at tide-times in the week, pa'son billy was the life o' the hunt. 'tis true that he was poor, and that he rode all of a heap, and that his black mare was rat-tailed and old, and his tops older, and all over of one colour, whitey-brown, and full o' cracks. but he'd been in at the death of three thousand foxes. and--being a bachelor man--every time he went to bed in summer he used to open the bed at bottom and crawl up head foremost, to mind 'em of the coming winter and the good sport he'd have, and the foxes going to earth. and whenever there was a christening at the squire's, and he had dinner there afterwards, as he always did, he never failed to christen the chiel over again in a bottle of port wine. 'now the clerk was the parson's groom and gardener and jineral manager, and had just got back to his work in the garden when he, too, saw the hunting man pass, and presently saw lots more of 'em, noblemen and gentry, and then he saw the hounds, the huntsman, jim treadhedge, the whipper-in, and i don't know who besides. the clerk loved going to cover as frantical as the pa'son, so much so that whenever he saw or heard the pack he could no more rule his feelings than if they were the winds of heaven. he might be bedding, or he might be sowing--all was forgot. so he throws down his spade and rushes in to the pa'son, who was by this time as frantical to go as he. '"that there mare of yours, sir, do want exercise bad, very bad, this morning!" the clerk says, all of a tremble. "don't ye think i'd better trot her round the downs for an hour, sir?" '"to be sure, she does want exercise badly. i'll trot her round myself," says the parson. '"oh--you'll trot her yerself? well, there's the cob, sir. really that cob is getting oncontrollable through biding in a stable so long! if you wouldn't mind my putting on the saddle--" '"very well. take him out, certainly," says the pa'son, never caring what the clerk did so long as he himself could get off immediately. so, scrambling into his riding-boots and breeches as quick as he could, he rode off towards the meet, intending to be back in an hour. no sooner was he gone than the clerk mounted the cob, and was off after him. when the pa'son got to the meet, he found a lot of friends, and was as jolly as he could be: the hounds found a'most as soon as they threw off, and there was great excitement. so, forgetting that he had meant to go back at once, away rides the pa'son with the rest o' the hunt, all across the fallow ground that lies between lippet wood and green's copse; and as he galloped he looked behind for a moment, and there was the clerk close to his heels. '"ha, ha, clerk--you here?" he says. '"yes, sir, here be i," says t'other. '"fine exercise for the horses!" '"ay, sir--hee, hee!" says the clerk. 'so they went on and on, into green's copse, then across to higher jirton; then on across this very turnpike-road to climmerston ridge, then away towards yalbury wood: up hill and down dale, like the very wind, the clerk close to the pa'son, and the pa'son not far from the hounds. never was there a finer run knowed with that pack than they had that day; and neither pa'son nor clerk thought one word about the unmarried couple locked up in the church tower waiting to get j'ined. '"these hosses of yours, sir, will be much improved by this!" says the clerk as he rode along, just a neck behind the pa'son. "'twas a happy thought of your reverent mind to bring 'em out to-day. why, it may be frosty in a day or two, and then the poor things mid not be able to leave the stable for weeks." '"they may not, they may not, it is true. a merciful man is merciful to his beast," says the pa'son. '"hee, hee!" says the clerk, glancing sly into the pa'son's eye. '"ha, ha!" says the pa'son, a-glancing back into the clerk's. "halloo!" he shouts, as he sees the fox break cover at that moment. '"halloo!" cries the clerk. "there he goes! why, dammy, there's two foxes--" '"hush, clerk, hush! don't let me hear that word again! remember our calling." '"true, sir, true. but really, good sport do carry away a man so, that he's apt to forget his high persuasion!" and the next minute the corner of the clerk's eye shot again into the corner of the pa'son's, and the pa'son's back again to the clerk's. "hee, hee!" said the clerk. '"ha, ha!" said pa'son toogood. '"ah, sir," says the clerk again, "this is better than crying amen to your ever-and-ever on a winter's morning!" '"yes, indeed, clerk! to everything there's a season," says pa'son toogood, quite pat, for he was a learned christian man when he liked, and had chapter and ve'se at his tongue's end, as a pa'son should. 'at last, late in the day, the hunting came to an end by the fox running into a' old woman's cottage, under her table, and up the clock-case. the pa'son and clerk were among the first in at the death, their faces a-staring in at the old woman's winder, and the clock striking as he'd never been heard to strik' before. then came the question of finding their way home. 'neither the pa'son nor the clerk knowed how they were going to do this, for their beasts were wellnigh tired down to the ground. but they started back-along as well as they could, though they were so done up that they could only drag along at a' amble, and not much of that at a time. '"we shall never, never get there!" groaned mr. toogood, quite bowed down. '"never!" groans the clerk. "'tis a judgment upon us for our iniquities!" '"i fear it is," murmurs the pa'son. 'well, 'twas quite dark afore they entered the pa'sonage gate, having crept into the parish as quiet as if they'd stole a hammer, little wishing their congregation to know what they'd been up to all day long. and as they were so dog-tired, and so anxious about the horses, never once did they think of the unmarried couple. as soon as ever the horses had been stabled and fed, and the pa'son and clerk had had a bit and a sup theirselves, they went to bed. 'next morning when pa'son toogood was at breakfast, thinking of the glorious sport he'd had the day before, the clerk came in a hurry to the door and asked to see him. '"it has just come into my mind, sir, that we've forgot all about the couple that we was to have married yesterday!" 'the half-chawed victuals dropped from the pa'son's mouth as if he'd been shot. "bless my soul," says he, "so we have! how very awkward!" '"it is, sir; very. perhaps we've ruined the 'ooman!" '"ah--to be sure--i remember! she ought to have been married before." '"if anything has happened to her up in that there tower, and no doctor or nuss--" ('ah--poor thing!' sighed the women.) '"--'twill be a quarter-sessions matter for us, not to speak of the disgrace to the church!" '"good god, clerk, don't drive me wild!" says the pa'son. "why the hell didn't i marry 'em, drunk or sober!" (pa'sons used to cuss in them days like plain honest men.) "have you been to the church to see what happened to them, or inquired in the village?" '"not i, sir! it only came into my head a moment ago, and i always like to be second to you in church matters. you could have knocked me down with a sparrer's feather when i thought o't, sir; i assure 'ee you could!" 'well, the parson jumped up from his breakfast, and together they went off to the church. '"it is not at all likely that they are there now," says mr. toogood, as they went; "and indeed i hope they are not. they be pretty sure to have 'scaped and gone home." 'however, they opened the church-hatch, entered the churchyard, and looking up at the tower, there they seed a little small white face at the belfry-winder, and a little small hand waving. 'twas the bride. '"god my life, clerk," says mr. toogood, "i don't know how to face 'em!" and he sank down upon a tombstone. "how i wish i hadn't been so cussed particular!" '"yes--'twas a pity we didn't finish it when we'd begun," the clerk said. "still, since the feelings of your holy priestcraft wouldn't let ye, the couple must put up with it." '"true, clerk, true! does she look as if anything premature had took place?" '"i can't see her no lower down than her arm-pits, sir." '"well--how do her face look?" '"it do look mighty white!" '"well, we must know the worst! dear me, how the small of my back do ache from that ride yesterday! . . . but to more godly business!" 'they went on into the church, and unlocked the tower stairs, and immediately poor jane and andrey busted out like starved mice from a cupboard, andrey limp and sober enough now, and his bride pale and cold, but otherwise as usual. '"what," says the pa'son, with a great breath of relief, "you haven't been here ever since?" '"yes, we have, sir!" says the bride, sinking down upon a seat in her weakness. "not a morsel, wet or dry, have we had since! it was impossible to get out without help, and here we've stayed!" '"but why didn't you shout, good souls?" said the pa'son. '"she wouldn't let me," says andrey. '"because we were so ashamed at what had led to it," sobs jane. "we felt that if it were noised abroad it would cling to us all our lives! once or twice andrey had a good mind to toll the bell, but then he said: "no; i'll starve first. i won't bring disgrace on my name and yours, my dear." and so we waited and waited, and walked round and round; but never did you come till now!" '"to my regret!" says the parson. "now, then, we will soon get it over." '"i--i should like some victuals," said andrey, "'twould gie me courage if it is only a crust o' bread and a' onion; for i am that leery that i can feel my stomach rubbing against my backbone." '"i think we had better get it done," said the bride, a bit anxious in manner; "since we are all here convenient, too!" 'andrey gave way about the victuals, and the clerk called in a second witness who wouldn't be likely to gossip about it, and soon the knot was tied, and the bride looked smiling and calm forthwith, and andrey limper than ever. '"now," said pa'son toogood, "you two must come to my house, and have a good lining put to your insides before you go a step further." 'they were very glad of the offer, and went out of the churchyard by one path while the pa'son and clerk went out by the other, and so did not attract notice, it being still early. they entered the rectory as if they'd just come back from their trip to port bredy; and then they knocked in the victuals and drink till they could hold no more. 'it was a long while before the story of what they had gone through was known, but it was talked of in time, and they themselves laugh over it now; though what jane got for her pains was no great bargain after all. 'tis true she saved her name.' * * * * * 'was that the same andrey who went to the squire's house as one of the christmas fiddlers?' asked the seedsman. 'no, no,' replied mr. profitt, the schoolmaster. 'it was his father did that. ay, it was all owing to his being such a man for eating and drinking.' finding that he had the ear of the audience, the schoolmaster continued without delay:-- old andrey's experience as a musician 'i was one of the choir-boys at that time, and we and the players were to appear at the manor-house as usual that christmas week, to play and sing in the hall to the squire's people and visitors (among 'em being the archdeacon, lord and lady baxby, and i don't know who); afterwards going, as we always did, to have a good supper in the servants' hall. andrew knew this was the custom, and meeting us when we were starting to go, he said to us: "lord, how i should like to join in that meal of beef, and turkey, and plum-pudding, and ale, that you happy ones be going to just now! one more or less will make no difference to the squire. i am too old to pass as a singing boy, and too bearded to pass as a singing girl; can ye lend me a fiddle, neighbours, that i may come with ye as a bandsman?" 'well, we didn't like to be hard upon him, and lent him an old one, though andrew knew no more of music than the cerne giant; and armed with the instrument he walked up to the squire's house with the others of us at the time appointed, and went in boldly, his fiddle under his arm. he made himself as natural as he could in opening the music-books and moving the candles to the best points for throwing light upon the notes; and all went well till we had played and sung "while shepherds watch," and "star, arise," and "hark the glad sound." then the squire's mother, a tall gruff old lady, who was much interested in church-music, said quite unexpectedly to andrew: "my man, i see you don't play your instrument with the rest. how is that?" 'every one of the choir was ready to sink into the earth with concern at the fix andrew was in. we could see that he had fallen into a cold sweat, and how he would get out of it we did not know. '"i've had a misfortune, mem," he says, bowing as meek as a child. "coming along the road i fell down and broke my bow." '"oh, i am sorry to hear that," says she. "can't it be mended?" '"oh no, mem," says andrew. "'twas broke all to splinters." '"i'll see what i can do for you," says she. 'and then it seemed all over, and we played "rejoice, ye drowsy mortals all," in d and two sharps. but no sooner had we got through it than she says to andrew, '"i've sent up into the attic, where we have some old musical instruments, and found a bow for you." and she hands the bow to poor wretched andrew, who didn't even know which end to take hold of. "now we shall have the full accompaniment," says she. 'andrew's face looked as if it were made of rotten apple as he stood in the circle of players in front of his book; for if there was one person in the parish that everybody was afraid of, 'twas this hook-nosed old lady. however, by keeping a little behind the next man he managed to make pretence of beginning, sawing away with his bow without letting it touch the strings, so that it looked as if he were driving into the tune with heart and soul. 'tis a question if he wouldn't have got through all right if one of the squire's visitors (no other than the archdeacon) hadn't noticed that he held the fiddle upside down, the nut under his chin, and the tail-piece in his hand; and they began to crowd round him, thinking 'twas some new way of performing. 'this revealed everything; the squire's mother had andrew turned out of the house as a vile impostor, and there was great interruption to the harmony of the proceedings, the squire declaring he should have notice to leave his cottage that day fortnight. however, when we got to the servants' hall there sat andrew, who had been let in at the back door by the orders of the squire's wife, after being turned out at the front by the orders of the squire, and nothing more was heard about his leaving his cottage. but andrew never performed in public as a musician after that night; and now he's dead and gone, poor man, as we all shall be!' * * * * * 'i had quite forgotten the old choir, with their fiddles and bass-viols,' said the home-comer, musingly. 'are they still going on the same as of old?' 'bless the man!' said christopher twink, the master-thatcher; 'why, they've been done away with these twenty year. a young teetotaler plays the organ in church now, and plays it very well; though 'tis not quite such good music as in old times, because the organ is one of them that go with a winch, and the young teetotaler says he can't always throw the proper feeling into the tune without wellnigh working his arms off.' 'why did they make the change, then?' 'well, partly because of fashion, partly because the old musicians got into a sort of scrape. a terrible scrape 'twas too--wasn't it, john? i shall never forget it--never! they lost their character as officers of the church as complete as if they'd never had any character at all.' 'that was very bad for them.' 'yes.' the master-thatcher attentively regarded past times as if they lay about a mile off, and went on:-- absent-mindedness in a parish choir 'it happened on sunday after christmas--the last sunday ever they played in longpuddle church gallery, as it turned out, though they didn't know it then. as you may know, sir, the players formed a very good band--almost as good as the mellstock parish players that were led by the dewys; and that's saying a great deal. there was nicholas puddingcome, the leader, with the first fiddle; there was timothy thomas, the bass- viol man; john biles, the tenor fiddler; dan'l hornhead, with the serpent; robert dowdle, with the clarionet; and mr. nicks, with the oboe--all sound and powerful musicians, and strong-winded men--they that blowed. for that reason they were very much in demand christmas week for little reels and dancing parties; for they could turn a jig or a hornpipe out of hand as well as ever they could turn out a psalm, and perhaps better, not to speak irreverent. in short, one half-hour they could be playing a christmas carol in the squire's hall to the ladies and gentlemen, and drinking tea and coffee with 'em as modest as saints; and the next, at the tinker's arms, blazing away like wild horses with the "dashing white sergeant" to nine couple of dancers and more, and swallowing rum-and-cider hot as flame. 'well, this christmas they'd been out to one rattling randy after another every night, and had got next to no sleep at all. then came the sunday after christmas, their fatal day. 'twas so mortal cold that year that they could hardly sit in the gallery; for though the congregation down in the body of the church had a stove to keep off the frost, the players in the gallery had nothing at all. so nicholas said at morning service, when 'twas freezing an inch an hour, "please the lord i won't stand this numbing weather no longer: this afternoon we'll have something in our insides to make us warm, if it cost a king's ransom." 'so he brought a gallon of hot brandy and beer, ready mixed, to church with him in the afternoon, and by keeping the jar well wrapped up in timothy thomas's bass-viol bag it kept drinkably warm till they wanted it, which was just a thimbleful in the absolution, and another after the creed, and the remainder at the beginning o' the sermon. when they'd had the last pull they felt quite comfortable and warm, and as the sermon went on--most unfortunately for 'em it was a long one that afternoon--they fell asleep, every man jack of 'em; and there they slept on as sound as rocks. ''twas a very dark afternoon, and by the end of the sermon all you could see of the inside of the church were the pa'son's two candles alongside of him in the pulpit, and his spaking face behind 'em. the sermon being ended at last, the pa'son gie'd out the evening hymn. but no choir set about sounding up the tune, and the people began to turn their heads to learn the reason why, and then levi limpet, a boy who sat in the gallery, nudged timothy and nicholas, and said, "begin! begin!" '"hey? what?" says nicholas, starting up; and the church being so dark and his head so muddled he thought he was at the party they had played at all the night before, and away he went, bow and fiddle, at "the devil among the tailors," the favourite jig of our neighbourhood at that time. the rest of the band, being in the same state of mind and nothing doubting, followed their leader with all their strength, according to custom. they poured out that there tune till the lower bass notes of "the devil among the tailors" made the cobwebs in the roof shiver like ghosts; then nicholas, seeing nobody moved, shouted out as he scraped (in his usual commanding way at dances when the folk didn't know the figures), "top couples cross hands! and when i make the fiddle squeak at the end, every man kiss his pardner under the mistletoe!" 'the boy levi was so frightened that he bolted down the gallery stairs and out homeward like lightning. the pa'son's hair fairly stood on end when he heard the evil tune raging through the church, and thinking the choir had gone crazy he held up his hand and said: "stop, stop, stop! stop, stop! what's this?" but they didn't hear'n for the noise of their own playing, and the more he called the louder they played. 'then the folks came out of their pews, wondering down to the ground, and saying: "what do they mean by such wickedness! we shall be consumed like sodom and gomorrah!" 'then the squire came out of his pew lined wi' green baize, where lots of lords and ladies visiting at the house were worshipping along with him, and went and stood in front of the gallery, and shook his fist in the musicians' faces, saying, "what! in this reverent edifice! what!" 'and at last they heard'n through their playing, and stopped. '"never such an insulting, disgraceful thing--never!" says the squire, who couldn't rule his passion. '"never!" says the pa'son, who had come down and stood beside him. '"not if the angels of heaven," says the squire (he was a wickedish man, the squire was, though now for once he happened to be on the lord's side)--"not if the angels of heaven come down," he says, "shall one of you villanous players ever sound a note in this church again; for the insult to me, and my family, and my visitors, and god almighty, that you've a-perpetrated this afternoon!" 'then the unfortunate church band came to their senses, and remembered where they were; and 'twas a sight to see nicholas pudding come and timothy thomas and john biles creep down the gallery stairs with their fiddles under their arms, and poor dan'l hornhead with his serpent, and robert dowdle with his clarionet, all looking as little as ninepins; and out they went. the pa'son might have forgi'ed 'em when he learned the truth o't, but the squire would not. that very week he sent for a barrel- organ that would play two-and-twenty new psalm-tunes, so exact and particular that, however sinful inclined you was, you could play nothing but psalm-tunes whatsomever. he had a really respectable man to turn the winch, as i said, and the old players played no more.' * * * * * 'and, of course, my old acquaintance, the annuitant, mrs. winter, who always seemed to have something on her mind, is dead and gone?' said the home-comer, after a long silence. nobody in the van seemed to recollect the name. 'o yes, she must be dead long since: she was seventy when i as a child knew her,' he added. 'i can recollect mrs. winter very well, if nobody else can,' said the aged groceress. 'yes, she's been dead these five-and-twenty year at least. you knew what it was upon her mind, sir, that gave her that hollow-eyed look, i suppose?' 'it had something to do with a son of hers, i think i once was told. but i was too young to know particulars.' the groceress sighed as she conjured up a vision of days long past. 'yes,' she murmured, 'it had all to do with a son.' finding that the van was still in a listening mood, she spoke on:-- the winters and the palmleys 'to go back to the beginning--if one must--there were two women in the parish when i was a child, who were to a certain extent rivals in good looks. never mind particulars, but in consequence of this they were at daggers-drawn, and they did not love each other any better when one of them tempted the other's lover away from her and married him. he was a young man of the name of winter, and in due time they had a son. 'the other woman did not marry for many years: but when she was about thirty a quiet man named palmley asked her to be his wife, and she accepted him. you don't mind when the palmleys were longpuddle folk, but i do well. she had a son also, who was, of course, nine or ten years younger than the son of the first. the child proved to be of rather weak intellect, though his mother loved him as the apple of her eye. 'this woman's husband died when the child was eight years old, and left his widow and boy in poverty. her former rival, also a widow now, but fairly well provided for, offered for pity's sake to take the child as errand-boy, small as he was, her own son, jack, being hard upon seventeen. her poor neighbour could do no better than let the child go there. and to the richer woman's house little palmley straightway went. 'well, in some way or other--how, it was never exactly known--the thriving woman, mrs. winter, sent the little boy with a message to the next village one december day, much against his will. it was getting dark, and the child prayed to be allowed not to go, because he would be afraid coming home. but the mistress insisted, more out of thoughtlessness than cruelty, and the child went. on his way back he had to pass through yalbury wood, and something came out from behind a tree and frightened him into fits. the child was quite ruined by it; he became quite a drivelling idiot, and soon afterward died. 'then the other woman had nothing left to live for, and vowed vengeance against that rival who had first won away her lover, and now had been the cause of her bereavement. this last affliction was certainly not intended by her thriving acquaintance, though it must be owned that when it was done she seemed but little concerned. whatever vengeance poor mrs. palmley felt, she had no opportunity of carrying it out, and time might have softened her feelings into forgetfulness of her supposed wrongs as she dragged on her lonely life. so matters stood when, a year after the death of the child, mrs. palmley's niece, who had been born and bred in the city of exonbury, came to live with her. 'this young woman--miss harriet palmley--was a proud and handsome girl, very well brought up, and more stylish and genteel than the people of our village, as was natural, considering where she came from. she regarded herself as much above mrs. winter and her son in position as mrs. winter and her son considered themselves above poor mrs. palmley. but love is an unceremonious thing, and what in the world should happen but that young jack winter must fall wofully and wildly in love with harriet palmley almost as soon as he saw her. 'she, being better educated than he, and caring nothing for the village notion of his mother's superiority to her aunt, did not give him much encouragement. but longpuddle being no very large world, the two could not help seeing a good deal of each other while she was staying there, and, disdainful young woman as she was, she did seem to take a little pleasure in his attentions and advances. 'one day when they were picking apples together, he asked her to marry him. she had not expected anything so practical as that at so early a time, and was led by her surprise into a half-promise; at any rate she did not absolutely refuse him, and accepted some little presents that he made her. 'but he saw that her view of him was rather as a simple village lad than as a young man to look up to, and he felt that he must do something bold to secure her. so he said one day, "i am going away, to try to get into a better position than i can get here." in two or three weeks he wished her good-bye, and went away to monksbury, to superintend a farm, with a view to start as a farmer himself; and from there he wrote regularly to her, as if their marriage were an understood thing. 'now harriet liked the young man's presents and the admiration of his eyes; but on paper he was less attractive to her. her mother had been a school-mistress, and harriet had besides a natural aptitude for pen-and- ink work, in days when to be a ready writer was not such a common thing as it is now, and when actual handwriting was valued as an accomplishment in itself. jack winter's performances in the shape of love-letters quite jarred her city nerves and her finer taste, and when she answered one of them, in the lovely running hand that she took such pride in, she very strictly and loftily bade him to practise with a pen and spelling-book if he wished to please her. whether he listened to her request or not nobody knows, but his letters did not improve. he ventured to tell her in his clumsy way that if her heart were more warm towards him she would not be so nice about his handwriting and spelling; which indeed was true enough. 'well, in jack's absence the weak flame that had been set alight in harriet's heart soon sank low, and at last went out altogether. he wrote and wrote, and begged and prayed her to give a reason for her coldness; and then she told him plainly that she was town born, and he was not sufficiently well educated to please her. 'jack winter's want of pen-and-ink training did not make him less thin- skinned than others; in fact, he was terribly tender and touchy about anything. this reason that she gave for finally throwing him over grieved him, shamed him, and mortified him more than can be told in these times, the pride of that day in being able to write with beautiful flourishes, and the sorrow at not being able to do so, raging so high. jack replied to her with an angry note, and then she hit back with smart little stings, telling him how many words he had misspelt in his last letter, and declaring again that this alone was sufficient justification for any woman to put an end to an understanding with him. her husband must be a better scholar. 'he bore her rejection of him in silence, but his suffering was sharp--all the sharper in being untold. she communicated with jack no more; and as his reason for going out into the world had been only to provide a home worthy of her, he had no further object in planning such a home now that she was lost to him. he therefore gave up the farming occupation by which he had hoped to make himself a master-farmer, and left the spot to return to his mother. 'as soon as he got back to longpuddle he found that harriet had already looked wi' favour upon another lover. he was a young road-contractor, and jack could not but admit that his rival was both in manners and scholarship much ahead of him. indeed, a more sensible match for the beauty who had been dropped into the village by fate could hardly have been found than this man, who could offer her so much better a chance than jack could have done, with his uncertain future and narrow abilities for grappling with the world. the fact was so clear to him that he could hardly blame her. 'one day by accident jack saw on a scrap of paper the handwriting of harriet's new beloved. it was flowing like a stream, well spelt, the work of a man accustomed to the ink-bottle and the dictionary, of a man already called in the parish a good scholar. and then it struck all of a sudden into jack's mind what a contrast the letters of this young man must make to his own miserable old letters, and how ridiculous they must make his lines appear. he groaned and wished he had never written to her, and wondered if she had ever kept his poor performances. possibly she had kept them, for women are in the habit of doing that, he thought, and whilst they were in her hands there was always a chance of his honest, stupid love-assurances to her being joked over by harriet with her present lover, or by anybody who should accidentally uncover them. 'the nervous, moody young man could not bear the thought of it, and at length decided to ask her to return them, as was proper when engagements were broken off. he was some hours in framing, copying, and recopying the short note in which he made his request, and having finished it he sent it to her house. his messenger came back with the answer, by word of mouth, that miss palmley bade him say she should not part with what was hers, and wondered at his boldness in troubling her. 'jack was much affronted at this, and determined to go for his letters himself. he chose a time when he knew she was at home, and knocked and went in without much ceremony; for though harriet was so high and mighty, jack had small respect for her aunt, mrs. palmley, whose little child had been his boot-cleaner in earlier days. harriet was in the room, this being the first time they had met since she had jilted him. he asked for his letters with a stern and bitter look at her. 'at first she said he might have them for all that she cared, and took them out of the bureau where she kept them. then she glanced over the outside one of the packet, and suddenly altering her mind, she told him shortly that his request was a silly one, and slipped the letters into her aunt's work-box, which stood open on the table, locking it, and saying with a bantering laugh that of course she thought it best to keep 'em, since they might be useful to produce as evidence that she had good cause for declining to marry him. 'he blazed up hot. "give me those letters!" he said. "they are mine!" '"no, they are not," she replied; "they are mine." '"whos'ever they are i want them back," says he. "i don't want to be made sport of for my penmanship: you've another young man now! he has your confidence, and you pour all your tales into his ear. you'll be showing them to him!" '"perhaps," said my lady harriet, with calm coolness, like the heartless woman that she was. 'her manner so maddened him that he made a step towards the work-box, but she snatched it up, locked it in the bureau, and turned upon him triumphant. for a moment he seemed to be going to wrench the key of the bureau out of her hand; but he stopped himself, and swung round upon his heel and went away. 'when he was out-of-doors alone, and it got night, he walked about restless, and stinging with the sense of being beaten at all points by her. he could not help fancying her telling her new lover or her acquaintances of this scene with himself, and laughing with them over those poor blotted, crooked lines of his that he had been so anxious to obtain. as the evening passed on he worked himself into a dogged resolution to have them back at any price, come what might. 'at the dead of night he came out of his mother's house by the back door, and creeping through the garden hedge went along the field adjoining till he reached the back of her aunt's dwelling. the moon struck bright and flat upon the walls, 'twas said, and every shiny leaf of the creepers was like a little looking-glass in the rays. from long acquaintance jack knew the arrangement and position of everything in mrs. palmley's house as well as in his own mother's. the back window close to him was a casement with little leaded squares, as it is to this day, and was, as now, one of two lighting the sitting-room. the other, being in front, was closed up with shutters, but this back one had not even a blind, and the moonlight as it streamed in showed every article of the furniture to him outside. to the right of the room is the fireplace, as you may remember; to the left was the bureau at that time; inside the bureau was harriet's work-box, as he supposed (though it was really her aunt's), and inside the work-box were his letters. well, he took out his pocket-knife, and without noise lifted the leading of one of the panes, so that he could take out the glass, and putting his hand through the hole he unfastened the casement, and climbed in through the opening. all the household--that is to say, mrs. palmley, harriet, and the little maid- servant--were asleep. jack went straight to the bureau, so he said, hoping it might have been unfastened again--it not being kept locked in ordinary--but harriet had never unfastened it since she secured her letters there the day before. jack told afterward how he thought of her asleep upstairs, caring nothing for him, and of the way she had made sport of him and of his letters; and having advanced so far, he was not to be hindered now. by forcing the large blade of his knife under the flap of the bureau, he burst the weak lock; within was the rosewood work- box just as she had placed it in her hurry to keep it from him. there being no time to spare for getting the letters out of it then, he took it under his arm, shut the bureau, and made the best of his way out of the house, latching the casement behind him, and refixing the pane of glass in its place. 'winter found his way back to his mother's as he had come, and being dog- tired, crept upstairs to bed, hiding the box till he could destroy its contents. the next morning early he set about doing this, and carried it to the linhay at the back of his mother's dwelling. here by the hearth he opened the box, and began burning one by one the letters that had cost him so much labour to write and shame to think of, meaning to return the box to harriet, after repairing the slight damage he had caused it by opening it without a key, with a note--the last she would ever receive from him--telling her triumphantly that in refusing to return what he had asked for she had calculated too surely upon his submission to her whims. 'but on removing the last letter from the box he received a shock; for underneath it, at the very bottom, lay money--several golden guineas--"doubtless harriet's pocket-money," he said to himself; though it was not, but mrs. palmley's. before he had got over his qualms at this discovery he heard footsteps coming through the house-passage to where he was. in haste he pushed the box and what was in it under some brushwood which lay in the linhay; but jack had been already seen. two constables entered the out-house, and seized him as he knelt before the fireplace, securing the work-box and all it contained at the same moment. they had come to apprehend him on a charge of breaking into the dwelling- house of mrs. palmley on the night preceding; and almost before the lad knew what had happened to him they were leading him along the lane that connects that end of the village with this turnpike-road, and along they marched him between 'em all the way to casterbridge jail. 'jack's act amounted to night burglary--though he had never thought of it--and burglary was felony, and a capital offence in those days. his figure had been seen by some one against the bright wall as he came away from mrs. palmley's back window, and the box and money were found in his possession, while the evidence of the broken bureau-lock and tinkered window-pane was more than enough for circumstantial detail. whether his protestation that he went only for his letters, which he believed to be wrongfully kept from him, would have availed him anything if supported by other evidence i do not know; but the one person who could have borne it out was harriet, and she acted entirely under the sway of her aunt. that aunt was deadly towards jack winter. mrs. palmley's time had come. here was her revenge upon the woman who had first won away her lover, and next ruined and deprived her of her heart's treasure--her little son. when the assize week drew on, and jack had to stand his trial, harriet did not appear in the case at all, which was allowed to take its course, mrs. palmley testifying to the general facts of the burglary. whether harriet would have come forward if jack had appealed to her is not known; possibly she would have done it for pity's sake; but jack was too proud to ask a single favour of a girl who had jilted him; and he let her alone. the trial was a short one, and the death sentence was passed. 'the day o' young jack's execution was a cold dusty saturday in march. he was so boyish and slim that they were obliged in mercy to hang him in the heaviest fetters kept in the jail, lest his heft should not break his neck, and they weighed so upon him that he could hardly drag himself up to the drop. at that time the gover'ment was not strict about burying the body of an executed person within the precincts of the prison, and at the earnest prayer of his poor mother his body was allowed to be brought home. all the parish waited at their cottage doors in the evening for its arrival: i remember how, as a very little girl, i stood by my mother's side. about eight o'clock, as we hearkened on our door-stones in the cold bright starlight, we could hear the faint crackle of a waggon from the direction of the turnpike-road. the noise was lost as the waggon dropped into a hollow, then it was plain again as it lumbered down the next long incline, and presently it entered longpuddle. the coffin was laid in the belfry for the night, and the next day, sunday, between the services, we buried him. a funeral sermon was preached the same afternoon, the text chosen being, "he was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow." . . . yes, they were cruel times! 'as for harriet, she and her lover were married in due time; but by all account her life was no jocund one. she and her good-man found that they could not live comfortably at longpuddle, by reason of her connection with jack's misfortunes, and they settled in a distant town, and were no more heard of by us; mrs. palmley, too, found it advisable to join 'em shortly after. the dark-eyed, gaunt old mrs. winter, remembered by the emigrant gentleman here, was, as you will have foreseen, the mrs. winter of this story; and i can well call to mind how lonely she was, how afraid the children were of her, and how she kept herself as a stranger among us, though she lived so long.' * * * * * 'longpuddle has had her sad experiences as well as her sunny ones,' said mr. lackland. 'yes, yes. but i am thankful to say not many like that, though good and bad have lived among us.' 'there was georgy crookhill--he was one of the shady sort, as i have reason to know,' observed the registrar, with the manner of a man who would like to have his say also. 'i used to hear what he was as a boy at school.' 'well, as he began so he went on. it never got so far as a hanging matter with him, to be sure; but he had some narrow escapes of penal servitude; and once it was a case of the biter bit.' incident in the life of mr. george crookhill 'one day,' the registrar continued, 'georgy was ambling out of melchester on a miserable screw, the fair being just over, when he saw in front of him a fine-looking young farmer riding out of the town in the same direction. he was mounted on a good strong handsome animal, worth fifty guineas if worth a crown. when they were going up bissett hill, georgy made it his business to overtake the young farmer. they passed the time o' day to one another; georgy spoke of the state of the roads, and jogged alongside the well-mounted stranger in very friendly conversation. the farmer had not been inclined to say much to georgy at first, but by degrees he grew quite affable too--as friendly as georgy was toward him. he told crookhill that he had been doing business at melchester fair, and was going on as far as shottsford-forum that night, so as to reach casterbridge market the next day. when they came to woodyates inn they stopped to bait their horses, and agreed to drink together; with this they got more friendly than ever, and on they went again. before they had nearly reached shottsford it came on to rain, and as they were now passing through the village of trantridge, and it was quite dark, georgy persuaded the young farmer to go no further that night; the rain would most likely give them a chill. for his part he had heard that the little inn here was comfortable, and he meant to stay. at last the young farmer agreed to put up there also; and they dismounted, and entered, and had a good supper together, and talked over their affairs like men who had known and proved each other a long time. when it was the hour for retiring they went upstairs to a double-bedded room which georgy crookhill had asked the landlord to let them share, so sociable were they. 'before they fell asleep they talked across the room about one thing and another, running from this to that till the conversation turned upon disguises, and changing clothes for particular ends. the farmer told georgy that he had often heard tales of people doing it; but crookhill professed to be very ignorant of all such tricks; and soon the young farmer sank into slumber. 'early in the morning, while the tall young farmer was still asleep (i tell the story as 'twas told me), honest georgy crept out of his bed by stealth, and dressed himself in the farmer's clothes, in the pockets of the said clothes being the farmer's money. now though georgy particularly wanted the farmer's nice clothes and nice horse, owing to a little transaction at the fair which made it desirable that he should not be too easily recognized, his desires had their bounds: he did not wish to take his young friend's money, at any rate more of it than was necessary for paying his bill. this he abstracted, and leaving the farmer's purse containing the rest on the bedroom table, went downstairs. the inn folks had not particularly noticed the faces of their customers, and the one or two who were up at this hour had no thought but that georgy was the farmer; so when he had paid the bill very liberally, and said he must be off, no objection was made to his getting the farmer's horse saddled for himself; and he rode away upon it as if it were his own. 'about half an hour after the young farmer awoke, and looking across the room saw that his friend georgy had gone away in clothes which didn't belong to him, and had kindly left for himself the seedy ones worn by georgy. at this he sat up in a deep thought for some time, instead of hastening to give an alarm. "the money, the money is gone," he said to himself, "and that's bad. but so are the clothes." 'he then looked upon the table and saw that the money, or most of it, had been left behind. '"ha, ha, ha!" he cried, and began to dance about the room. "ha, ha, ha!" he said again, and made beautiful smiles to himself in the shaving glass and in the brass candlestick; and then swung about his arms for all the world as if he were going through the sword exercise. 'when he had dressed himself in georgy's clothes and gone downstairs, he did not seem to mind at all that they took him for the other; and even when he saw that he had been left a bad horse for a good one, he was not inclined to cry out. they told him his friend had paid the bill, at which he seemed much pleased, and without waiting for breakfast he mounted georgy's horse and rode away likewise, choosing the nearest by- lane in preference to the high-road, without knowing that georgy had chosen that by-lane also. 'he had not trotted more than two miles in the personal character of georgy crookhill when, suddenly rounding a bend that the lane made thereabout, he came upon a man struggling in the hands of two village constables. it was his friend georgy, the borrower of his clothes and horse. but so far was the young farmer from showing any alacrity in rushing forward to claim his property that he would have turned the poor beast he rode into the wood adjoining, if he had not been already perceived. '"help, help, help!" cried the constables. "assistance in the name of the crown!" 'the young farmer could do nothing but ride forward. "what's the matter?" he inquired, as coolly as he could. '"a deserter--a deserter!" said they. "one who's to be tried by court- martial and shot without parley. he deserted from the dragoons at cheltenham some days ago, and was tracked; but the search-party can't find him anywhere, and we told 'em if we met him we'd hand him on to 'em forthwith. the day after he left the barracks the rascal met a respectable farmer and made him drunk at an inn, and told him what a fine soldier he would make, and coaxed him to change clothes, to see how well a military uniform would become him. this the simple farmer did; when our deserter said that for a joke he would leave the room and go to the landlady, to see if she would know him in that dress. he never came back, and farmer jollice found himself in soldier's clothes, the money in his pockets gone, and, when he got to the stable, his horse gone too." '"a scoundrel!" says the young man in georgy's clothes. "and is this the wretched caitiff?" (pointing to georgy). '"no, no!" cries georgy, as innocent as a babe of this matter of the soldier's desertion. "he's the man! he was wearing farmer jollice's suit o' clothes, and he slept in the same room wi' me, and brought up the subject of changing clothes, which put it into my head to dress myself in his suit before he was awake. he's got on mine!" '"d'ye hear the villain?" groans the tall young man to the constables. "trying to get out of his crime by charging the first innocent man with it that he sees! no, master soldier--that won't do!" '"no, no! that won't do!" the constables chimed in. "to have the impudence to say such as that, when we caught him in the act almost! but, thank god, we've got the handcuffs on him at last." '"we have, thank god," said the tall young man. "well, i must move on. good luck to ye with your prisoner!" and off he went, as fast as his poor jade would carry him. 'the constables then, with georgy handcuffed between 'em, and leading the horse, marched off in the other direction, toward the village where they had been accosted by the escort of soldiers sent to bring the deserter back, georgy groaning: "i shall be shot, i shall be shot!" they had not gone more than a mile before they met them. '"hoi, there!" says the head constable. '"hoi, yerself!" says the corporal in charge. '"we've got your man," says the constable. '"where?" says the corporal. '"here, between us," said the constable. "only you don't recognize him out o' uniform." 'the corporal looked at georgy hard enough; then shook his head and said he was not the absconder. '"but the absconder changed clothes with farmer jollice, and took his horse; and this man has 'em, d'ye see!" '"'tis not our man," said the soldiers. "he's a tall young fellow with a mole on his right cheek, and a military bearing, which this man decidedly has not." '"i told the two officers of justice that 'twas the other!" pleaded georgy. "but they wouldn't believe me." 'and so it became clear that the missing dragoon was the tall young farmer, and not georgy crookhill--a fact which farmer jollice himself corroborated when he arrived on the scene. as georgy had only robbed the robber, his sentence was comparatively light. the deserter from the dragoons was never traced: his double shift of clothing having been of the greatest advantage to him in getting off; though he left georgy's horse behind him a few miles ahead, having found the poor creature more hindrance than aid.' * * * * * the man from abroad seemed to be less interested in the questionable characters of longpuddle and their strange adventures than in the ordinary inhabitants and the ordinary events, though his local fellow- travellers preferred the former as subjects of discussion. he now for the first time asked concerning young persons of the opposite sex--or rather those who had been young when he left his native land. his informants, adhering to their own opinion that the remarkable was better worth telling than the ordinary, would not allow him to dwell upon the simple chronicles of those who had merely come and gone. they asked him if he remembered netty sargent. 'netty sargent--i do, just remember her. she was a young woman living with her uncle when i left, if my childish recollection may be trusted.' 'that was the maid. she was a oneyer, if you like, sir. not any harm in her, you know, but up to everything. you ought to hear how she got the copyhold of her house extended. oughtn't he, mr. day?' 'he ought,' replied the world-ignored old painter. 'tell him, mr. day. nobody can do it better than you, and you know the legal part better than some of us.' day apologized, and began:-- netty sargent's copyhold 'she continued to live with her uncle, in the lonely house by the copse, just as at the time you knew her; a tall spry young woman. ah, how well one can remember her black hair and dancing eyes at that time, and her sly way of screwing up her mouth when she meant to tease ye! well, she was hardly out of short frocks before the chaps were after her, and by long and by late she was courted by a young man whom perhaps you did not know--jasper cliff was his name--and, though she might have had many a better fellow, he so greatly took her fancy that 'twas jasper or nobody for her. he was a selfish customer, always thinking less of what he was going to do than of what he was going to gain by his doings. jasper's eyes might have been fixed upon netty, but his mind was upon her uncle's house; though he was fond of her in his way--i admit that. 'this house, built by her great-great-grandfather, with its garden and little field, was copyhold--granted upon lives in the old way, and had been so granted for generations. her uncle's was the last life upon the property; so that at his death, if there was no admittance of new lives, it would all fall into the hands of the lord of the manor. but 'twas easy to admit--a slight "fine," as 'twas called, of a few pounds, was enough to entitle him to a new deed o' grant by the custom of the manor; and the lord could not hinder it. 'now there could be no better provision for his niece and only relative than a sure house over her head, and netty's uncle should have seen to the renewal in time, owing to the peculiar custom of forfeiture by the dropping of the last life before the new fine was paid; for the squire was very anxious to get hold of the house and land; and every sunday when the old man came into the church and passed the squire's pew, the squire would say, "a little weaker in his knees, a little crookeder in his back--and the readmittance not applied for: ha! ha! i shall be able to make a complete clearing of that corner of the manor some day!" ''twas extraordinary, now we look back upon it, that old sargent should have been so dilatory; yet some people are like it; and he put off calling at the squire's agent's office with the fine week after week, saying to himself, "i shall have more time next market-day than i have now." one unfortunate hindrance was that he didn't very well like jasper cliff; and as jasper kept urging netty, and netty on that account kept urging her uncle, the old man was inclined to postpone the re-liveing as long as he could, to spite the selfish young lover. at last old mr. sargent fell ill, and then jasper could bear it no longer: he produced the fine-money himself, and handed it to netty, and spoke to her plainly. '"you and your uncle ought to know better. you should press him more. there's the money. if you let the house and ground slip between ye, i won't marry; hang me if i will! for folks won't deserve a husband that can do such things." 'the worried girl took the money and went home, and told her uncle that it was no house no husband for her. old mr. sargent pooh-poohed the money, for the amount was not worth consideration, but he did now bestir himself; for he saw she was bent upon marrying jasper, and he did not wish to make her unhappy, since she was so determined. it was much to the squire's annoyance that he found sargent had moved in the matter at last; but he could not gainsay it, and the documents were prepared (for on this manor the copy-holders had writings with their holdings, though on some manors they had none). old sargent being now too feeble to go to the agent's house, the deed was to be brought to his house signed, and handed over as a receipt for the money; the counterpart to be signed by sargent, and sent back to the squire. 'the agent had promised to call on old sargent for this purpose at five o'clock, and netty put the money into her desk to have it close at hand. while doing this she heard a slight cry from her uncle, and turning round, saw that he had fallen forward in his chair. she went and lifted him, but he was unconscious; and unconscious he remained. neither medicine nor stimulants would bring him to himself. she had been told that he might possibly go off in that way, and it seemed as if the end had come. before she had started for a doctor his face and extremities grew quite cold and white, and she saw that help would be useless. he was stone-dead. 'netty's situation rose upon her distracted mind in all its seriousness. the house, garden, and field were lost--by a few hours--and with them a home for herself and her lover. she would not think so meanly of jasper as to suppose that he would adhere to the resolution declared in a moment of impatience; but she trembled, nevertheless. why could not her uncle have lived a couple of hours longer, since he had lived so long? it was now past three o'clock; at five the agent was to call, and, if all had gone well, by ten minutes past five the house and holding would have been securely hers for her own and jasper's lives, these being two of the three proposed to be added by paying the fine. how that wretched old squire would rejoice at getting the little tenancy into his hands! he did not really require it, but constitutionally hated these tiny copyholds and leaseholds and freeholds, which made islands of independence in the fair, smooth ocean of his estates. 'then an idea struck into the head of netty how to accomplish her object in spite of her uncle's negligence. it was a dull december afternoon: and the first step in her scheme--so the story goes, and i see no reason to doubt it--' ''tis true as the light,' affirmed christopher twink. 'i was just passing by.' 'the first step in her scheme was to fasten the outer door, to make sure of not being interrupted. then she set to work by placing her uncle's small, heavy oak table before the fire; then she went to her uncle's corpse, sitting in the chair as he had died--a stuffed arm-chair, on casters, and rather high in the seat, so it was told me--and wheeled the chair, uncle and all, to the table, placing him with his back toward the window, in the attitude of bending over the said oak table, which i knew as a boy as well as i know any piece of furniture in my own house. on the table she laid the large family bible open before him, and placed his forefinger on the page; and then she opened his eyelids a bit, and put on him his spectacles, so that from behind he appeared for all the world as if he were reading the scriptures. then she unfastened the door and sat down, and when it grew dark she lit a candle, and put it on the table beside her uncle's book. 'folk may well guess how the time passed with her till the agent came, and how, when his knock sounded upon the door, she nearly started out of her skin--at least that's as it was told me. netty promptly went to the door. '"i am sorry, sir," she says, under her breath; "my uncle is not so well to-night, and i'm afraid he can't see you." '"h'm!--that's a pretty tale," says the steward. "so i've come all this way about this trumpery little job for nothing!" '"o no, sir--i hope not," says netty. "i suppose the business of granting the new deed can be done just the same?" '"done? certainly not. he must pay the renewal money, and sign the parchment in my presence." 'she looked dubious. "uncle is so dreadful nervous about law business," says she, "that, as you know, he's put it off and put it off for years; and now to-day really i've feared it would verily drive him out of his mind. his poor three teeth quite chattered when i said to him that you would be here soon with the parchment writing. he always was afraid of agents, and folks that come for rent, and such-like." '"poor old fellow--i'm sorry for him. well, the thing can't be done unless i see him and witness his signature." '"suppose, sir, that you see him sign, and he don't see you looking at him? i'd soothe his nerves by saying you weren't strict about the form of witnessing, and didn't wish to come in. so that it was done in your bare presence it would be sufficient, would it not? as he's such an old, shrinking, shivering man, it would be a great considerateness on your part if that would do?" '"in my bare presence would do, of course--that's all i come for. but how can i be a witness without his seeing me?" '"why, in this way, sir; if you'll oblige me by just stepping here." she conducted him a few yards to the left, till they were opposite the parlour window. the blind had been left up purposely, and the candle- light shone out upon the garden bushes. within the agent could see, at the other end of the room, the back and side of the old man's head, and his shoulders and arm, sitting with the book and candle before him, and his spectacles on his nose, as she had placed him. '"he's reading his bible, as you see, sir," she says, quite in her meekest way. '"yes. i thought he was a careless sort of man in matters of religion?" '"he always was fond of his bible," netty assured him. "though i think he's nodding over it just at this moment however, that's natural in an old man, and unwell. now you could stand here and see him sign, couldn't you, sir, as he's such an invalid?" '"very well," said the agent, lighting a cigar. "you have ready by you the merely nominal sum you'll have to pay for the admittance, of course?" '"yes," said netty. "i'll bring it out." she fetched the cash, wrapped in paper, and handed it to him, and when he had counted it the steward took from his breast pocket the precious parchments and gave one to her to be signed. '"uncle's hand is a little paralyzed," she said. "and what with his being half asleep, too, really i don't know what sort of a signature he'll be able to make." '"doesn't matter, so that he signs." '"might i hold his hand?" '"ay, hold his hand, my young woman--that will be near enough." 'netty re-entered the house, and the agent continued smoking outside the window. now came the ticklish part of netty's performance. the steward saw her put the inkhorn--"horn," says i in my old-fashioned way--the inkstand, before her uncle, and touch his elbow as to arouse him, and speak to him, and spread out the deed; when she had pointed to show him where to sign she dipped the pen and put it into his hand. to hold his hand she artfully stepped behind him, so that the agent could only see a little bit of his head, and the hand she held; but he saw the old man's hand trace his name on the document. as soon as 'twas done she came out to the steward with the parchment in her hand, and the steward signed as witness by the light from the parlour window. then he gave her the deed signed by the squire, and left; and next morning netty told the neighbours that her uncle was dead in his bed.' 'she must have undressed him and put him there.' 'she must. oh, that girl had a nerve, i can tell ye! well, to cut a long story short, that's how she got back the house and field that were, strictly speaking, gone from her; and by getting them, got her a husband. 'every virtue has its reward, they say. netty had hers for her ingenious contrivance to gain jasper. two years after they were married he took to beating her--not hard, you know; just a smack or two, enough to set her in a temper, and let out to the neighbours what she had done to win him, and how she repented of her pains. when the old squire was dead, and his son came into the property, this confession of hers began to be whispered about. but netty was a pretty young woman, and the squire's son was a pretty young man at that time, and wider-minded than his father, having no objection to little holdings; and he never took any proceedings against her.' there was now a lull in the discourse, and soon the van descended the hill leading into the long straggling village. when the houses were reached the passengers dropped off one by one, each at his or her own door. arrived at the inn, the returned emigrant secured a bed, and having eaten a light meal, sallied forth upon the scene he had known so well in his early days. though flooded with the light of the rising moon, none of the objects wore the attractiveness in this their real presentation that had ever accompanied their images in the field of his imagination when he was more than two thousand miles removed from them. the peculiar charm attaching to an old village in an old country, as seen by the eyes of an absolute foreigner, was lowered in his case by magnified expectations from infantine memories. he walked on, looking at this chimney and that old wall, till he came to the churchyard, which he entered. the head-stones, whitened by the moon, were easily decipherable; and now for the first time lackland began to feel himself amid the village community that he had left behind him five-and-thirty years before. here, besides the sallets, the darths, the pawles, the privetts, the sargents, and others of whom he had just heard, were names he remembered even better than those: the jickses, and the crosses, and the knights, and the olds. doubtless representatives of these families, or some of them, were yet among the living; but to him they would all be as strangers. far from finding his heart ready-supplied with roots and tendrils here, he perceived that in returning to this spot it would be incumbent upon him to re-establish himself from the beginning, precisely as though he had never known the place, nor it him. time had not condescended to wait his pleasure, nor local life his greeting. the figure of mr. lackland was seen at the inn, and in the village street, and in the fields and lanes about upper longpuddle, for a few days after his arrival, and then, ghost-like, it silently disappeared. he had told some of the villagers that his immediate purpose in coming had been fulfilled by a sight of the place, and by conversation with its inhabitants: but that his ulterior purpose--of coming to spend his latter days among them--would probably never be carried out. it is now a dozen or fifteen years since his visit was paid, and his face has not again been seen. _march_ . transcribed from the macmillan and co. edition by david price, email ccx @pglaf.org a group of noble dames that is to say the first countess of wessex barbara of the hose of grebe the marchioness of stonehenge, lady mottifont squire petrick's lady the lady icenway anna, lady baxby the lady penelope the duchess of hamptonshire; and the honourable laura by thomas hardy '. . . store of ladies, whose bright eyes rain influence.'--l'allegro. with a map of wessex macmillan and co., limited st. martin's street, london copyright _first collected edition_ _new edition and reprints_ - _first published by macmillan & co._, _crown_ vo, _pocket edition_ _reprinted_ , , , , contents: preface part i--before dinner the first countess of wessex barbara of the house of grebe the marchioness of stonehenge lady mottisfont part ii--after dinner the lady icenway squire petrick's lady anna, lady baxby the lady penelope the duchess of hamptonshire the honourable laura preface the pedigrees of our county families, arranged in diagrams on the pages of county histories, mostly appear at first sight to be as barren of any touch of nature as a table of logarithms. but given a clue--the faintest tradition of what went on behind the scenes, and this dryness as of dust may be transformed into a palpitating drama. more, the careful comparison of dates alone--that of birth with marriage, of marriage with death, of one marriage, birth, or death with a kindred marriage, birth, or death--will often effect the same transformation, and anybody practised in raising images from such genealogies finds himself unconsciously filling into the framework the motives, passions, and personal qualities which would appear to be the single explanation possible of some extraordinary conjunction in times, events, and personages that occasionally marks these reticent family records. out of such pedigrees and supplementary material most of the following stories have arisen and taken shape. i would make this preface an opportunity of expressing my sense of the courtesy and kindness of several bright-eyed noble dames yet in the flesh, who, since the first publication of these tales in periodicals, six or seven years ago, have given me interesting comments and conjectures on such of the narratives as they have recognized to be connected with their own families, residences, or traditions; in which they have shown a truly philosophic absence of prejudice in their regard of those incidents whose relation has tended more distinctly to dramatize than to eulogize their ancestors. the outlines they have also given of other singular events in their family histories for use in a second "group of noble dames," will, i fear, never reach the printing-press through me; but i shall store them up in memory of my informants' good nature. t. h. _june_ . dame the first--the first countess of wessex by the local historian king's-hintock court (said the narrator, turning over his memoranda for reference)--king's-hintock court is, as we know, one of the most imposing of the mansions that overlook our beautiful blackmoor or blakemore vale. on the particular occasion of which i have to speak this building stood, as it had often stood before, in the perfect silence of a calm clear night, lighted only by the cold shine of the stars. the season was winter, in days long ago, the last century having run but little more than a third of its length. north, south, and west, not a casement was unfastened, not a curtain undrawn; eastward, one window on the upper floor was open, and a girl of twelve or thirteen was leaning over the sill. that she had not taken up the position for purposes of observation was apparent at a glance, for she kept her eyes covered with her hands. the room occupied by the girl was an inner one of a suite, to be reached only by passing through a large bedchamber adjoining. from this apartment voices in altercation were audible, everything else in the building being so still. it was to avoid listening to these voices that the girl had left her little cot, thrown a cloak round her head and shoulders, and stretched into the night air. but she could not escape the conversation, try as she would. the words reached her in all their painfulness, one sentence in masculine tones, those of her father, being repeated many times. 'i tell 'ee there shall be no such betrothal! i tell 'ee there sha'n't! a child like her!' she knew the subject of dispute to be herself. a cool feminine voice, her mother's, replied: 'have done with you, and be wise. he is willing to wait a good five or six years before the marriage takes place, and there's not a man in the county to compare with him.' 'it shall not be! he is over thirty. it is wickedness.' 'he is just thirty, and the best and finest man alive--a perfect match for her.' 'he is poor!' 'but his father and elder brothers are made much of at court--none so constantly at the palace as they; and with her fortune, who knows? he may be able to get a barony.' 'i believe you are in love with en yourself!' 'how can you insult me so, thomas! and is it not monstrous for you to talk of my wickedness when you have a like scheme in your own head? you know you have. some bumpkin of your own choosing--some petty gentleman who lives down at that outlandish place of yours, falls-park--one of your pot-companions' sons--' there was an outburst of imprecation on the part of her husband in lieu of further argument. as soon as he could utter a connected sentence he said: 'you crow and you domineer, mistress, because you are heiress-general here. you are in your own house; you are on your own land. but let me tell 'ee that if i did come here to you instead of taking you to me, it was done at the dictates of convenience merely. h---! i'm no beggar! ha'n't i a place of my own? ha'n't i an avenue as long as thine? ha'n't i beeches that will more than match thy oaks? i should have lived in my own quiet house and land, contented, if you had not called me off with your airs and graces. faith, i'll go back there; i'll not stay with thee longer! if it had not been for our betty i should have gone long ago!' after this there were no more words; but presently, hearing the sound of a door opening and shutting below, the girl again looked from the window. footsteps crunched on the gravel-walk, and a shape in a drab greatcoat, easily distinguishable as her father, withdrew from the house. he moved to the left, and she watched him diminish down the long east front till he had turned the corner and vanished. he must have gone round to the stables. she closed the window and shrank into bed, where she cried herself to sleep. this child, their only one, betty, beloved ambitiously by her mother, and with uncalculating passionateness by her father, was frequently made wretched by such episodes as this; though she was too young to care very deeply, for her own sake, whether her mother betrothed her to the gentleman discussed or not. the squire had often gone out of the house in this manner, declaring that he would never return, but he had always reappeared in the morning. the present occasion, however, was different in the issue: next day she was told that her father had ridden to his estate at falls-park early in the morning on business with his agent, and might not come back for some days. * * * * * falls-park was over twenty miles from king's-hintock court, and was altogether a more modest centre-piece to a more modest possession than the latter. but as squire dornell came in view of it that february morning, he thought that he had been a fool ever to leave it, though it was for the sake of the greatest heiress in wessex. its classic front, of the period of the second charles, derived from its regular features a dignity which the great, battlemented, heterogeneous mansion of his wife could not eclipse. altogether he was sick at heart, and the gloom which the densely-timbered park threw over the scene did not tend to remove the depression of this rubicund man of eight-and-forty, who sat so heavily upon his gelding. the child, his darling betty: there lay the root of his trouble. he was unhappy when near his wife, he was unhappy when away from his little girl; and from this dilemma there was no practicable escape. as a consequence he indulged rather freely in the pleasures of the table, became what was called a three bottle man, and, in his wife's estimation, less and less presentable to her polite friends from town. he was received by the two or three old servants who were in charge of the lonely place, where a few rooms only were kept habitable for his use or that of his friends when hunting; and during the morning he was made more comfortable by the arrival of his faithful servant tupcombe from king's-hintock. but after a day or two spent here in solitude he began to feel that he had made a mistake in coming. by leaving king's-hintock in his anger he had thrown away his best opportunity of counteracting his wife's preposterous notion of promising his poor little betty's hand to a man she had hardly seen. to protect her from such a repugnant bargain he should have remained on the spot. he felt it almost as a misfortune that the child would inherit so much wealth. she would be a mark for all the adventurers in the kingdom. had she been only the heiress to his own unassuming little place at falls, how much better would have been her chances of happiness! his wife had divined truly when she insinuated that he himself had a lover in view for this pet child. the son of a dear deceased friend of his, who lived not two miles from where the squire now was, a lad a couple of years his daughter's senior, seemed in her father's opinion the one person in the world likely to make her happy. but as to breathing such a scheme to either of the young people with the indecent haste that his wife had shown, he would not dream of it; years hence would be soon enough for that. they had already seen each other, and the squire fancied that he noticed a tenderness on the youth's part which promised well. he was strongly tempted to profit by his wife's example, and forestall her match-making by throwing the two young people together there at falls. the girl, though marriageable in the views of those days, was too young to be in love, but the lad was fifteen, and already felt an interest in her. still better than keeping watch over her at king's hintock, where she was necessarily much under her mother's influence, would it be to get the child to stay with him at falls for a time, under his exclusive control. but how accomplish this without using main force? the only possible chance was that his wife might, for appearance' sake, as she had done before, consent to betty paying him a day's visit, when he might find means of detaining her till reynard, the suitor whom his wife favoured, had gone abroad, which he was expected to do the following week. squire dornell determined to return to king's-hintock and attempt the enterprise. if he were refused, it was almost in him to pick up betty bodily and carry her off. the journey back, vague and quixotic as were his intentions, was performed with a far lighter heart than his setting forth. he would see betty, and talk to her, come what might of his plan. so he rode along the dead level which stretches between the hills skirting falls-park and those bounding the town of ivell, trotted through that borough, and out by the king's-hintock highway, till, passing the villages he entered the mile-long drive through the park to the court. the drive being open, without an avenue, the squire could discern the north front and door of the court a long way off, and was himself visible from the windows on that side; for which reason he hoped that betty might perceive him coming, as she sometimes did on his return from an outing, and run to the door or wave her handkerchief. but there was no sign. he inquired for his wife as soon as he set foot to earth. 'mistress is away. she was called to london, sir.' 'and mistress betty?' said the squire blankly. 'gone likewise, sir, for a little change. mistress has left a letter for you.' the note explained nothing, merely stating that she had posted to london on her own affairs, and had taken the child to give her a holiday. on the fly-leaf were some words from betty herself to the same effect, evidently written in a state of high jubilation at the idea of her jaunt. squire dornell murmured a few expletives, and submitted to his disappointment. how long his wife meant to stay in town she did not say; but on investigation he found that the carriage had been packed with sufficient luggage for a sojourn of two or three weeks. king's-hintock court was in consequence as gloomy as falls-park had been. he had lost all zest for hunting of late, and had hardly attended a meet that season. dornell read and re-read betty's scrawl, and hunted up some other such notes of hers to look over, this seeming to be the only pleasure there was left for him. that they were really in london he learnt in a few days by another letter from mrs. dornell, in which she explained that they hoped to be home in about a week, and that she had had no idea he was coming back to king's-hintock so soon, or she would not have gone away without telling him. squire dornell wondered if, in going or returning, it had been her plan to call at the reynards' place near melchester, through which city their journey lay. it was possible that she might do this in furtherance of her project, and the sense that his own might become the losing game was harassing. he did not know how to dispose of himself, till it occurred to him that, to get rid of his intolerable heaviness, he would invite some friends to dinner and drown his cares in grog and wine. no sooner was the carouse decided upon than he put it in hand; those invited being mostly neighbouring landholders, all smaller men than himself, members of the hunt; also the doctor from evershead, and the like--some of them rollicking blades whose presence his wife would not have countenanced had she been at home. 'when the cat's away--!' said the squire. they arrived, and there were indications in their manner that they meant to make a night of it. baxby of sherton castle was late, and they waited a quarter of an hour for him, he being one of the liveliest of dornell's friends; without whose presence no such dinner as this would be considered complete, and, it may be added, with whose presence no dinner which included both sexes could be conducted with strict propriety. he had just returned from london, and the squire was anxious to talk to him--for no definite reason; but he had lately breathed the atmosphere in which betty was. at length they heard baxby driving up to the door, whereupon the host and the rest of his guests crossed over to the dining-room. in a moment baxby came hastily in at their heels, apologizing for his lateness. 'i only came back last night, you know,' he said; 'and the truth o't is, i had as much as i could carry.' he turned to the squire. 'well, dornell--so cunning reynard has stolen your little ewe lamb? ha, ha!' 'what?' said squire dornell vacantly, across the dining-table, round which they were all standing, the cold march sunlight streaming in upon his full-clean shaven face. 'surely th'st know what all the town knows?--you've had a letter by this time?--that stephen reynard has married your betty? yes, as i'm a living man. it was a carefully-arranged thing: they parted at once, and are not to meet for five or six years. but, lord, you must know!' a thud on the floor was the only reply of the squire. they quickly turned. he had fallen down like a log behind the table, and lay motionless on the oak boards. those at hand hastily bent over him, and the whole group were in confusion. they found him to be quite unconscious, though puffing and panting like a blacksmith's bellows. his face was livid, his veins swollen, and beads of perspiration stood upon his brow. 'what's happened to him?' said several. 'an apoplectic fit,' said the doctor from evershead, gravely. he was only called in at the court for small ailments, as a rule, and felt the importance of the situation. he lifted the squire's head, loosened his cravat and clothing, and rang for the servants, who took the squire upstairs. there he lay as if in a drugged sleep. the surgeon drew a basin-full of blood from him, but it was nearly six o'clock before he came to himself. the dinner was completely disorganized, and some had gone home long ago; but two or three remained. 'bless my soul,' baxby kept repeating, 'i didn't know things had come to this pass between dornell and his lady! i thought the feast he was spreading to-day was in honour of the event, though privately kept for the present! his little maid married without his knowledge!' as soon as the squire recovered consciousness he gasped: ''tis abduction! 'tis a capital felony! he can be hung! where is baxby? i am very well now. what items have ye heard, baxby?' the bearer of the untoward news was extremely unwilling to agitate dornell further, and would say little more at first. but an hour after, when the squire had partially recovered and was sitting up, baxby told as much as he knew, the most important particular being that betty's mother was present at the marriage, and showed every mark of approval. 'everything appeared to have been done so regularly that i, of course, thought you knew all about it,' he said. 'i knew no more than the underground dead that such a step was in the wind! a child not yet thirteen! how sue hath outwitted me! did reynard go up to lon'on with 'em, d'ye know?' 'i can't say. all i know is that your lady and daughter were walking along the street, with the footman behind 'em; that they entered a jeweller's shop, where reynard was standing; and that there, in the presence o' the shopkeeper and your man, who was called in on purpose, your betty said to reynard--so the story goes: 'pon my soul i don't vouch for the truth of it--she said, "will you marry me?" or, "i want to marry you: will you have me--now or never?" she said.' 'what she said means nothing,' murmured the squire, with wet eyes. 'her mother put the words into her mouth to avoid the serious consequences that would attach to any suspicion of force. the words be not the child's: she didn't dream of marriage--how should she, poor little maid! go on.' 'well, be that as it will, they were all agreed apparently. they bought the ring on the spot, and the marriage took place at the nearest church within half-an-hour.' * * * * * a day or two later there came a letter from mrs. dornell to her husband, written before she knew of his stroke. she related the circumstances of the marriage in the gentlest manner, and gave cogent reasons and excuses for consenting to the premature union, which was now an accomplished fact indeed. she had no idea, till sudden pressure was put upon her, that the contract was expected to be carried out so soon, but being taken half unawares, she had consented, having learned that stephen reynard, now their son-in-law, was becoming a great favourite at court, and that he would in all likelihood have a title granted him before long. no harm could come to their dear daughter by this early marriage-contract, seeing that her life would be continued under their own eyes, exactly as before, for some years. in fine, she had felt that no other such fair opportunity for a good marriage with a shrewd courtier and wise man of the world, who was at the same time noted for his excellent personal qualities, was within the range of probability, owing to the rusticated lives they led at king's-hintock. hence she had yielded to stephen's solicitation, and hoped her husband would forgive her. she wrote, in short, like a woman who, having had her way as to the deed, is prepared to make any concession as to words and subsequent behaviour. all this dornell took at its true value, or rather, perhaps, at less than its true value. as his life depended upon his not getting into a passion, he controlled his perturbed emotions as well as he was able, going about the house sadly and utterly unlike his former self. he took every precaution to prevent his wife knowing of the incidents of his sudden illness, from a sense of shame at having a heart so tender; a ridiculous quality, no doubt, in her eyes, now that she had become so imbued with town ideas. but rumours of his seizure somehow reached her, and she let him know that she was about to return to nurse him. he thereupon packed up and went off to his own place at falls-park. here he lived the life of a recluse for some time. he was still too unwell to entertain company, or to ride to hounds or elsewhither; but more than this, his aversion to the faces of strangers and acquaintances, who knew by that time of the trick his wife had played him, operated to hold him aloof. nothing could influence him to censure betty for her share in the exploit. he never once believed that she had acted voluntarily. anxious to know how she was getting on, he despatched the trusty servant tupcombe to evershead village, close to king's-hintock, timing his journey so that he should reach the place under cover of dark. the emissary arrived without notice, being out of livery, and took a seat in the chimney-corner of the sow-and-acorn. the conversation of the droppers-in was always of the nine days' wonder--the recent marriage. the smoking listener learnt that mrs. dornell and the girl had returned to king's-hintock for a day or two, that reynard had set out for the continent, and that betty had since been packed off to school. she did not realize her position as reynard's child-wife--so the story went--and though somewhat awe-stricken at first by the ceremony, she had soon recovered her spirits on finding that her freedom was in no way to be interfered with. after that, formal messages began to pass between dornell and his wife, the latter being now as persistently conciliating as she was formerly masterful. but her rustic, simple, blustering husband still held personally aloof. her wish to be reconciled--to win his forgiveness for her stratagem--moreover, a genuine tenderness and desire to soothe his sorrow, which welled up in her at times, brought her at last to his door at falls-park one day. they had not met since that night of altercation, before her departure for london and his subsequent illness. she was shocked at the change in him. his face had become expressionless, as blank as that of a puppet, and what troubled her still more was that she found him living in one room, and indulging freely in stimulants, in absolute disobedience to the physician's order. the fact was obvious that he could no longer be allowed to live thus uncouthly. so she sympathized, and begged his pardon, and coaxed. but though after this date there was no longer such a complete estrangement as before, they only occasionally saw each other, dornell for the most part making falls his headquarters still. three or four years passed thus. then she came one day, with more animation in her manner, and at once moved him by the simple statement that betty's schooling had ended; she had returned, and was grieved because he was away. she had sent a message to him in these words: 'ask father to come home to his dear betty.' 'ah! then she is very unhappy!' said squire dornell. his wife was silent. ''tis that accursed marriage!' continued the squire. still his wife would not dispute with him. 'she is outside in the carriage,' said mrs. dornell gently. 'what--betty?' 'yes.' 'why didn't you tell me?' dornell rushed out, and there was the girl awaiting his forgiveness, for she supposed herself, no less than her mother, to be under his displeasure. yes, betty had left school, and had returned to king's-hintock. she was nearly seventeen, and had developed to quite a young woman. she looked not less a member of the household for her early marriage-contract, which she seemed, indeed, to have almost forgotten. it was like a dream to her; that clear cold march day, the london church, with its gorgeous pews, and green-baize linings, and the great organ in the west gallery--so different from their own little church in the shrubbery of king's-hintock court--the man of thirty, to whose face she had looked up with so much awe, and with a sense that he was rather ugly and formidable; the man whom, though they corresponded politely, she had never seen since; one to whose existence she was now so indifferent that if informed of his death, and that she would never see him more, she would merely have replied, 'indeed!' betty's passions as yet still slept. 'hast heard from thy husband lately?' said squire dornell, when they were indoors, with an ironical laugh of fondness which demanded no answer. the girl winced, and he noticed that his wife looked appealingly at him. as the conversation went on, and there were signs that dornell would express sentiments that might do harm to a position which they could not alter, mrs. dornell suggested that betty should leave the room till her father and herself had finished their private conversation; and this betty obediently did. dornell renewed his animadversions freely. 'did you see how the sound of his name frightened her?' he presently added. 'if you didn't, i did. zounds! what a future is in store for that poor little unfortunate wench o' mine! i tell 'ee, sue, 'twas not a marriage at all, in morality, and if i were a woman in such a position, i shouldn't feel it as one. she might, without a sign of sin, love a man of her choice as well now as if she were chained up to no other at all. there, that's my mind, and i can't help it. ah, sue, my man was best! he'd ha' suited her.' 'i don't believe it,' she replied incredulously. 'you should see him; then you would. he's growing up a fine fellow, i can tell 'ee.' 'hush! not so loud!' she answered, rising from her seat and going to the door of the next room, whither her daughter had betaken herself. to mrs. dornell's alarm, there sat betty in a reverie, her round eyes fixed on vacancy, musing so deeply that she did not perceive her mother's entrance. she had heard every word, and was digesting the new knowledge. her mother felt that falls-park was dangerous ground for a young girl of the susceptible age, and in betty's peculiar position, while dornell talked and reasoned thus. she called betty to her, and they took leave. the squire would not clearly promise to return and make king's-hintock court his permanent abode; but betty's presence there, as at former times, was sufficient to make him agree to pay them a visit soon. all the way home betty remained preoccupied and silent. it was too plain to her anxious mother that squire dornell's free views had been a sort of awakening to the girl. the interval before dornell redeemed his pledge to come and see them was unexpectedly short. he arrived one morning about twelve o'clock, driving his own pair of black-bays in the curricle-phaeton with yellow panels and red wheels, just as he had used to do, and his faithful old tupcombe on horseback behind. a young man sat beside the squire in the carriage, and mrs. dornell's consternation could scarcely be concealed when, abruptly entering with his companion, the squire announced him as his friend phelipson of elm-cranlynch. dornell passed on to betty in the background and tenderly kissed her. 'sting your mother's conscience, my maid!' he whispered. 'sting her conscience by pretending you are struck with phelipson, and would ha' loved him, as your old father's choice, much more than him she has forced upon 'ee.' the simple-souled speaker fondly imagined that it as entirely in obedience to this direction that betty's eyes stole interested glances at the frank and impulsive phelipson that day at dinner, and he laughed grimly within himself to see how this joke of his, as he imagined it to be, was disturbing the peace of mind of the lady of the house. 'now sue sees what a mistake she has made!' said he. mrs. dornell was verily greatly alarmed, and as soon as she could speak a word with him alone she upbraided him. 'you ought not to have brought him here. oh thomas, how could you be so thoughtless! lord, don't you see, dear, that what is done cannot be undone, and how all this foolery jeopardizes her happiness with her husband? until you interfered, and spoke in her hearing about this phelipson, she was as patient and as willing as a lamb, and looked forward to mr. reynard's return with real pleasure. since her visit to falls-park she has been monstrous close- mouthed and busy with her own thoughts. what mischief will you do? how will it end?' 'own, then, that my man was best suited to her. i only brought him to convince you.' 'yes, yes; i do admit it. but oh! do take him back again at once! don't keep him here! i fear she is even attracted by him already.' 'nonsense, sue. 'tis only a little trick to tease 'ee!' nevertheless her motherly eye was not so likely to be deceived as his, and if betty were really only playing at being love-struck that day, she played at it with the perfection of a rosalind, and would have deceived the best professors into a belief that it was no counterfeit. the squire, having obtained his victory, was quite ready to take back the too attractive youth, and early in the afternoon they set out on their return journey. a silent figure who rode behind them was as interested as dornell in that day's experiment. it was the staunch tupcombe, who, with his eyes on the squire's and young phelipson's backs, thought how well the latter would have suited betty, and how greatly the former had changed for the worse during these last two or three years. he cursed his mistress as the cause of the change. after this memorable visit to prove his point, the lives of the dornell couple flowed on quietly enough for the space of a twelvemonth, the squire for the most part remaining at falls, and betty passing and repassing between them now and then, once or twice alarming her mother by not driving home from her father's house till midnight. * * * * * the repose of king's-hintock was broken by the arrival of a special messenger. squire dornell had had an access of gout so violent as to be serious. he wished to see betty again: why had she not come for so long? mrs. dornell was extremely reluctant to take betty in that direction too frequently; but the girl was so anxious to go, her interests latterly seeming to be so entirely bound up in falls-park and its neighbourhood, that there was nothing to be done but to let her set out and accompany her. squire dornell had been impatiently awaiting her arrival. they found him very ill and irritable. it had been his habit to take powerful medicines to drive away his enemy, and they had failed in their effect on this occasion. the presence of his daughter, as usual, calmed him much, even while, as usual too, it saddened him; for he could never forget that she had disposed of herself for life in opposition to his wishes, though she had secretly assured him that she would never have consented had she been as old as she was now. as on a former occasion, his wife wished to speak to him alone about the girl's future, the time now drawing nigh at which reynard was expected to come and claim her. he would have done so already, but he had been put off by the earnest request of the young woman herself, which accorded with that of her parents, on the score of her youth. reynard had deferentially submitted to their wishes in this respect, the understanding between them having been that he would not visit her before she was eighteen, except by the mutual consent of all parties. but this could not go on much longer, and there was no doubt, from the tenor of his last letter, that he would soon take possession of her whether or no. to be out of the sound of this delicate discussion betty was accordingly sent downstairs, and they soon saw her walking away into the shrubberies, looking very pretty in her sweeping green gown, and flapping broad-brimmed hat overhung with a feather. on returning to the subject, mrs. dornell found her husband's reluctance to reply in the affirmative to reynard's letter to be as great as ever. 'she is three months short of eighteen!' he exclaimed. ''tis too soon. i won't hear of it! if i have to keep him off sword in hand, he shall not have her yet.' 'but, my dear thomas,' she expostulated, 'consider if anything should happen to you or to me, how much better it would be that she should be settled in her home with him!' 'i say it is too soon!' he argued, the veins of his forehead beginning to swell. 'if he gets her this side o' candlemas i'll challenge en--i'll take my oath on't! i'll be back to king's-hintock in two or three days, and i'll not lose sight of her day or night!' she feared to agitate him further, and gave way, assuring him, in obedience to his demand, that if reynard should write again before he got back, to fix a time for joining betty, she would put the letter in her husband's hands, and he should do as he chose. this was all that required discussion privately, and mrs. dornell went to call in betty, hoping that she had not heard her father's loud tones. she had certainly not done so this time. mrs. dornell followed the path along which she had seen betty wandering, but went a considerable distance without perceiving anything of her. the squire's wife then turned round to proceed to the other side of the house by a short cut across the grass, when, to her surprise and consternation, she beheld the object of her search sitting on the horizontal bough of a cedar, beside her being a young man, whose arm was round her waist. he moved a little, and she recognized him as young phelipson. alas, then, she was right. the so-called counterfeit love was real. what mrs. dornell called her husband at that moment, for his folly in originally throwing the young people together, it is not necessary to mention. she decided in a moment not to let the lovers know that she had seen them. she accordingly retreated, reached the front of the house by another route, and called at the top of her voice from a window, 'betty!' for the first time since her strategic marriage of the child, susan dornell doubted the wisdom of that step. her husband had, as it were, been assisted by destiny to make his objection, originally trivial, a valid one. she saw the outlines of trouble in the future. why had dornell interfered? why had he insisted upon producing his man? this, then, accounted for betty's pleading for postponement whenever the subject of her husband's return was broached; this accounted for her attachment to falls-park. possibly this very meeting that she had witnessed had been arranged by letter. perhaps the girl's thoughts would never have strayed for a moment if her father had not filled her head with ideas of repugnance to her early union, on the ground that she had been coerced into it before she knew her own mind; and she might have rushed to meet her husband with open arms on the appointed day. betty at length appeared in the distance in answer to the call, and came up pale, but looking innocent of having seen a living soul. mrs. dornell groaned in spirit at such duplicity in the child of her bosom. this was the simple creature for whose development into womanhood they had all been so tenderly waiting--a forward minx, old enough not only to have a lover, but to conceal his existence as adroitly as any woman of the world! bitterly did the squire's lady regret that stephen reynard had not been allowed to come to claim her at the time he first proposed. the two sat beside each other almost in silence on their journey back to king's-hintock. such words as were spoken came mainly from betty, and their formality indicated how much her mind and heart were occupied with other things. mrs. dornell was far too astute a mother to openly attack betty on the matter. that would be only fanning flame. the indispensable course seemed to her to be that of keeping the treacherous girl under lock and key till her husband came to take her off her mother's hands. that he would disregard dornell's opposition, and come soon, was her devout wish. it seemed, therefore, a fortunate coincidence that on her arrival at king's-hintock a letter from reynard was put into mrs. dornell's hands. it was addressed to both her and her husband, and courteously informed them that the writer had landed at bristol, and proposed to come on to king's-hintock in a few days, at last to meet and carry off his darling betty, if she and her parents saw no objection. betty had also received a letter of the same tenor. her mother had only to look at her face to see how the girl received the information. she was as pale as a sheet. 'you must do your best to welcome him this time, my dear betty,' her mother said gently. 'but--but--i--' 'you are a woman now,' added her mother severely, 'and these postponements must come to an end.' 'but my father--oh, i am sure he will not allow this! i am not ready. if he could only wait a year longer--if he could only wait a few months longer! oh, i wish--i wish my dear father were here! i will send to him instantly.' she broke off abruptly, and falling upon her mother's neck, burst into tears, saying, 'o my mother, have mercy upon me--i do not love this man, my husband!' the agonized appeal went too straight to mrs. dornell's heart for her to hear it unmoved. yet, things having come to this pass, what could she do? she was distracted, and for a moment was on betty's side. her original thought had been to write an affirmative reply to reynard, allow him to come on to king's-hintock, and keep her husband in ignorance of the whole proceeding till he should arrive from falls on some fine day after his recovery, and find everything settled, and reynard and betty living together in harmony. but the events of the day, and her daughter's sudden outburst of feeling, had overthrown this intention. betty was sure to do as she had threatened, and communicate instantly with her father, possibly attempt to fly to him. moreover, reynard's letter was addressed to mr. dornell and herself conjointly, and she could not in conscience keep it from her husband. 'i will send the letter on to your father instantly,' she replied soothingly. 'he shall act entirely as he chooses, and you know that will not be in opposition to your wishes. he would ruin you rather than thwart you. i only hope he may be well enough to bear the agitation of this news. do you agree to this?' poor betty agreed, on condition that she should actually witness the despatch of the letter. her mother had no objection to offer to this; but as soon as the horseman had cantered down the drive toward the highway, mrs. dornell's sympathy with betty's recalcitration began to die out. the girl's secret affection for young phelipson could not possibly be condoned. betty might communicate with him, might even try to reach him. ruin lay that way. stephen reynard must be speedily installed in his proper place by betty's side. she sat down and penned a private letter to reynard, which threw light upon her plan. * * * * * 'it is necessary that i should now tell you,' she said, 'what i have never mentioned before--indeed i may have signified the contrary--that her father's objection to your joining her has not as yet been overcome. as i personally wish to delay you no longer--am indeed as anxious for your arrival as you can be yourself, having the good of my daughter at heart--no course is left open to me but to assist your cause without my husband's knowledge. he, i am sorry to say, is at present ill at falls- park, but i felt it my duty to forward him your letter. he will therefore be like to reply with a peremptory command to you to go back again, for some months, whence you came, till the time he originally stipulated has expir'd. my advice is, if you get such a letter, to take no notice of it, but to come on hither as you had proposed, letting me know the day and hour (after dark, if possible) at which we may expect you. dear betty is with me, and i warrant ye that she shall be in the house when you arrive.' * * * * * mrs. dornell, having sent away this epistle unsuspected of anybody, next took steps to prevent her daughter leaving the court, avoiding if possible to excite the girl's suspicions that she was under restraint. but, as if by divination, betty had seemed to read the husband's approach in the aspect of her mother's face. 'he is coming!' exclaimed the maiden. 'not for a week,' her mother assured her. 'he is then--for certain?' 'well, yes.' betty hastily retired to her room, and would not be seen. to lock her up, and hand over the key to reynard when he should appear in the hall, was a plan charming in its simplicity, till her mother found, on trying the door of the girl's chamber softly, that betty had already locked and bolted it on the inside, and had given directions to have her meals served where she was, by leaving them on a dumb-waiter outside the door. thereupon mrs. dornell noiselessly sat down in her boudoir, which, as well as her bed-chamber, was a passage-room to the girl's apartment, and she resolved not to vacate her post night or day till her daughter's husband should appear, to which end she too arranged to breakfast, dine, and sup on the spot. it was impossible now that betty should escape without her knowledge, even if she had wished, there being no other door to the chamber, except one admitting to a small inner dressing-room inaccessible by any second way. but it was plain that the young girl had no thought of escape. her ideas ran rather in the direction of intrenchment: she was prepared to stand a siege, but scorned flight. this, at any rate, rendered her secure. as to how reynard would contrive a meeting with her coy daughter while in such a defensive humour, that, thought her mother, must be left to his own ingenuity to discover. betty had looked so wild and pale at the announcement of her husband's approaching visit, that mrs. dornell, somewhat uneasy, could not leave her to herself. she peeped through the keyhole an hour later. betty lay on the sofa, staring listlessly at the ceiling. 'you are looking ill, child,' cried her mother. 'you've not taken the air lately. come with me for a drive.' betty made no objection. soon they drove through the park towards the village, the daughter still in the strained, strung-up silence that had fallen upon her. they left the park to return by another route, and on the open road passed a cottage. betty's eye fell upon the cottage-window. within it she saw a young girl about her own age, whom she knew by sight, sitting in a chair and propped by a pillow. the girl's face was covered with scales, which glistened in the sun. she was a convalescent from smallpox--a disease whose prevalence at that period was a terror of which we at present can hardly form a conception. an idea suddenly energized betty's apathetic features. she glanced at her mother; mrs. dornell had been looking in the opposite direction. betty said that she wished to go back to the cottage for a moment to speak to a girl in whom she took an interest. mrs. dornell appeared suspicious, but observing that the cottage had no back-door, and that betty could not escape without being seen, she allowed the carriage to be stopped. betty ran back and entered the cottage, emerging again in about a minute, and resuming her seat in the carriage. as they drove on she fixed her eyes upon her mother and said, 'there, i have done it now!' her pale face was stormy, and her eyes full of waiting tears. 'what have you done?' said mrs. dornell. 'nanny priddle is sick of the smallpox, and i saw her at the window, and i went in and kissed her, so that i might take it; and now i shall have it, and he won't be able to come near me!' 'wicked girl!' cries her mother. 'oh, what am i to do! what--bring a distemper on yourself, and usurp the sacred prerogative of god, because you can't palate the man you've wedded!' the alarmed woman gave orders to drive home as rapidly as possible, and on arriving, betty, who was by this time also somewhat frightened at her own enormity, was put into a bath, and fumigated, and treated in every way that could be thought of to ward off the dreadful malady that in a rash moment she had tried to acquire. there was now a double reason for isolating the rebellious daughter and wife in her own chamber, and there she accordingly remained for the rest of the day and the days that followed; till no ill results seemed likely to arise from her wilfulness. * * * * * meanwhile the first letter from reynard, announcing to mrs. dornell and her husband jointly that he was coming in a few days, had sped on its way to falls-park. it was directed under cover to tupcombe, the confidential servant, with instructions not to put it into his master's hands till he had been refreshed by a good long sleep. tupcombe much regretted his commission, letters sent in this way always disturbing the squire; but guessing that it would be infinitely worse in the end to withhold the news than to reveal it, he chose his time, which was early the next morning, and delivered the missive. the utmost effect that mrs. dornell had anticipated from the message was a peremptory order from her husband to reynard to hold aloof a few months longer. what the squire really did was to declare that he would go himself and confront reynard at bristol, and have it out with him there by word of mouth. 'but, master,' said tupcombe, 'you can't. you cannot get out of bed.' 'you leave the room, tupcombe, and don't say "can't" before me! have jerry saddled in an hour.' the long-tried tupcombe thought his employer demented, so utterly helpless was his appearance just then, and he went out reluctantly. no sooner was he gone than the squire, with great difficulty, stretched himself over to a cabinet by the bedside, unlocked it, and took out a small bottle. it contained a gout specific, against whose use he had been repeatedly warned by his regular physician, but whose warning he now cast to the winds. he took a double dose, and waited half an hour. it seemed to produce no effect. he then poured out a treble dose, swallowed it, leant back upon his pillow, and waited. the miracle he anticipated had been worked at last. it seemed as though the second draught had not only operated with its own strength, but had kindled into power the latent forces of the first. he put away the bottle, and rang up tupcombe. less than an hour later one of the housemaids, who of course was quite aware that the squire's illness was serious, was surprised to hear a bold and decided step descending the stairs from the direction of mr. dornell's room, accompanied by the humming of a tune. she knew that the doctor had not paid a visit that morning, and that it was too heavy to be the valet or any other man-servant. looking up, she saw squire dornell fully dressed, descending toward her in his drab caped riding-coat and boots, with the swinging easy movement of his prime. her face expressed her amazement. 'what the devil beest looking at?' said the squire. 'did you never see a man walk out of his house before, wench?' resuming his humming--which was of a defiant sort--he proceeded to the library, rang the bell, asked if the horses were ready, and directed them to be brought round. ten minutes later he rode away in the direction of bristol, tupcombe behind him, trembling at what these movements might portend. they rode on through the pleasant woodlands and the monotonous straight lanes at an equal pace. the distance traversed might have been about fifteen miles when tupcombe could perceive that the squire was getting tired--as weary as he would have been after riding three times the distance ten years before. however, they reached bristol without any mishap, and put up at the squire's accustomed inn. dornell almost immediately proceeded on foot to the inn which reynard had given as his address, it being now about four o'clock. reynard had already dined--for people dined early then--and he was staying indoors. he had already received mrs. dornell's reply to his letter; but before acting upon her advice and starting for king's-hintock he made up his mind to wait another day, that betty's father might at least have time to write to him if so minded. the returned traveller much desired to obtain the squire's assent, as well as his wife's, to the proposed visit to his bride, that nothing might seem harsh or forced in his method of taking his position as one of the family. but though he anticipated some sort of objection from his father-in-law, in consequence of mrs. dornell's warning, he was surprised at the announcement of the squire in person. stephen reynard formed the completest of possible contrasts to dornell as they stood confronting each other in the best parlour of the bristol tavern. the squire, hot-tempered, gouty, impulsive, generous, reckless; the younger man, pale, tall, sedate, self-possessed--a man of the world, fully bearing out at least one couplet in his epitaph, still extant in king's-hintock church, which places in the inventory of his good qualities 'engaging manners, cultivated mind, adorn'd by letters, and in courts refin'd.' he was at this time about five-and-thirty, though careful living and an even, unemotional temperament caused him to look much younger than his years. squire dornell plunged into his errand without much ceremony or preface. 'i am your humble servant, sir,' he said. 'i have read your letter writ to my wife and myself, and considered that the best way to answer it would be to do so in person.' 'i am vastly honoured by your visit, sir,' said mr. stephen reynard, bowing. 'well, what's done can't be undone,' said dornell, 'though it was mighty early, and was no doing of mine. she's your wife; and there's an end on't. but in brief, sir, she's too young for you to claim yet; we mustn't reckon by years; we must reckon by nature. she's still a girl; 'tis onpolite of 'ee to come yet; next year will be full soon enough for you to take her to you.' now, courteous as reynard could be, he was a little obstinate when his resolution had once been formed. she had been promised him by her eighteenth birthday at latest--sooner if she were in robust health. her mother had fixed the time on her own judgment, without a word of interference on his part. he had been hanging about foreign courts till he was weary. betty was now as woman, if she would ever be one, and there was not, in his mind, the shadow of an excuse for putting him off longer. therefore, fortified as he was by the support of her mother, he blandly but firmly told the squire that he had been willing to waive his rights, out of deference to her parents, to any reasonable extent, but must now, in justice to himself and her insist on maintaining them. he therefore, since she had not come to meet him, should proceed to king's- hintock in a few days to fetch her. this announcement, in spite of the urbanity with which it was delivered, set dornell in a passion. 'oh dammy, sir; you talk about rights, you do, after stealing her away, a mere child, against my will and knowledge! if we'd begged and prayed 'ee to take her, you could say no more.' 'upon my honour, your charge is quite baseless, sir,' said his son-in- law. 'you must know by this time--or if you do not, it has been a monstrous cruel injustice to me that i should have been allowed to remain in your mind with such a stain upon my character--you must know that i used no seductiveness or temptation of any kind. her mother assented; she assented. i took them at their word. that you was really opposed to the marriage was not known to me till afterwards.' dornell professed to believe not a word of it. 'you sha'n't have her till she's dree sixes full--no maid ought to be married till she's dree sixes!--and my daughter sha'n't be treated out of nater!' so he stormed on till tupcombe, who had been alarmedly listening in the next room, entered suddenly, declaring to reynard that his master's life was in danger if the interview were prolonged, he being subject to apoplectic strokes at these crises. reynard immediately said that he would be the last to wish to injure squire dornell, and left the room, and as soon as the squire had recovered breath and equanimity, he went out of the inn, leaning on the arm of tupcombe. tupcombe was for sleeping in bristol that night, but dornell, whose energy seemed as invincible as it was sudden, insisted upon mounting and getting back as far as falls-park, to continue the journey to king's-hintock on the following day. at five they started, and took the southern road toward the mendip hills. the evening was dry and windy, and, excepting that the sun did not shine, strongly reminded tupcombe of the evening of that march month, nearly five years earlier, when news had been brought to king's-hintock court of the child betty's marriage in london--news which had produced upon dornell such a marked effect for the worse ever since, and indirectly upon the household of which he was the head. before that time the winters were lively at falls-park, as well as at king's-hintock, although the squire had ceased to make it his regular residence. hunting-guests and shooting-guests came and went, and open house was kept. tupcombe disliked the clever courtier who had put a stop to this by taking away from the squire the only treasure he valued. it grew darker with their progress along the lanes, and tupcombe discovered from mr. dornell's manner of riding that his strength was giving way; and spurring his own horse close alongside, he asked him how he felt. 'oh, bad; damn bad, tupcombe! i can hardly keep my seat. i shall never be any better, i fear! have we passed three-man-gibbet yet?' 'not yet by a long ways, sir.' 'i wish we had. i can hardly hold on.' the squire could not repress a groan now and then, and tupcombe knew he was in great pain. 'i wish i was underground--that's the place for such fools as i! i'd gladly be there if it were not for mistress betty. he's coming on to king's-hintock to-morrow--he won't put it off any longer; he'll set out and reach there to-morrow night, without stopping at falls; and he'll take her unawares, and i want to be there before him.' 'i hope you may be well enough to do it, sir. but really--' 'i _must_, tupcombe! you don't know what my trouble is; it is not so much that she is married to this man without my agreeing--for, after all, there's nothing to say against him, so far as i know; but that she don't take to him at all, seems to fear him--in fact, cares nothing about him; and if he comes forcing himself into the house upon her, why, 'twill be rank cruelty. would to the lord something would happen to prevent him!' how they reached home that night tupcombe hardly knew. the squire was in such pain that he was obliged to recline upon his horse, and tupcombe was afraid every moment lest he would fall into the road. but they did reach home at last, and mr. dornell was instantly assisted to bed. * * * * * next morning it was obvious that he could not possibly go to king's-hintock for several days at least, and there on the bed he lay, cursing his inability to proceed on an errand so personal and so delicate that no emissary could perform it. what he wished to do was to ascertain from betty's own lips if her aversion to reynard was so strong that his presence would be positively distasteful to her. were that the case, he would have borne her away bodily on the saddle behind him. but all that was hindered now, and he repeated a hundred times in tupcombe's hearing, and in that of the nurse and other servants, 'i wish to god something would happen to him!' this sentiment, reiterated by the squire as he tossed in the agony induced by the powerful drugs of the day before, entered sharply into the soul of tupcombe and of all who were attached to the house of dornell, as distinct from the house of his wife at king's-hintock. tupcombe, who was an excitable man, was hardly less disquieted by the thought of reynard's return than the squire himself was. as the week drew on, and the afternoon advanced at which reynard would in all probability be passing near falls on his way to the court, the squire's feelings became acuter, and the responsive tupcombe could hardly bear to come near him. having left him in the hands of the doctor, the former went out upon the lawn, for he could hardly breathe in the contagion of excitement caught from the employer who had virtually made him his confidant. he had lived with the dornells from his boyhood, had been born under the shadow of their walls; his whole life was annexed and welded to the life of the family in a degree which has no counterpart in these latter days. he was summoned indoors, and learnt that it had been decided to send for mrs. dornell: her husband was in great danger. there were two or three who could have acted as messenger, but dornell wished tupcombe to go, the reason showing itself when, tupcombe being ready to start, squire dornell summoned him to his chamber and leaned down so that he could whisper in his ear: 'put peggy along smart, tupcombe, and get there before him, you know--before him. this is the day he fixed. he has not passed falls cross-roads yet. if you can do that you will be able to get betty to come--d'ye see?--after her mother has started; she'll have a reason for not waiting for him. bring her by the lower road--he'll go by the upper. your business is to make 'em miss each other--d'ye see?--but that's a thing i couldn't write down.' five minutes after, tupcombe was astride the horse and on his way--the way he had followed so many times since his master, a florid young countryman, had first gone wooing to king's-hintock court. as soon as he had crossed the hills in the immediate neighbourhood of the manor, the road lay over a plain, where it ran in long straight stretches for several miles. in the best of times, when all had been gay in the united houses, that part of the road had seemed tedious. it was gloomy in the extreme now that he pursued it, at night and alone, on such an errand. he rode and brooded. if the squire were to die, he, tupcombe, would be alone in the world and friendless, for he was no favourite with mrs. dornell; and to find himself baffled, after all, in what he had set his mind on, would probably kill the squire. thinking thus, tupcombe stopped his horse every now and then, and listened for the coming husband. the time was drawing on to the moment when reynard might be expected to pass along this very route. he had watched the road well during the afternoon, and had inquired of the tavern-keepers as he came up to each, and he was convinced that the premature descent of the stranger-husband upon his young mistress had not been made by this highway as yet. besides the girl's mother, tupcombe was the only member of the household who suspected betty's tender feelings towards young phelipson, so unhappily generated on her return from school; and he could therefore imagine, even better than her fond father, what would be her emotions on the sudden announcement of reynard's advent that evening at king's-hintock court. so he rode and rode, desponding and hopeful by turns. he felt assured that, unless in the unfortunate event of the almost immediate arrival of her son-in law at his own heels, mrs. dornell would not be able to hinder betty's departure for her father's bedside. it was about nine o'clock that, having put twenty miles of country behind him, he turned in at the lodge-gate nearest to ivell and king's-hintock village, and pursued the long north drive--itself much like a turnpike road--which led thence through the park to the court. though there were so many trees in king's-hintock park, few bordered the carriage roadway; he could see it stretching ahead in the pale night light like an unrolled deal shaving. presently the irregular frontage of the house came in view, of great extent, but low, except where it rose into the outlines of a broad square tower. as tupcombe approached he rode aside upon the grass, to make sure, if possible, that he was the first comer, before letting his presence be known. the court was dark and sleepy, in no respect as if a bridegroom were about to arrive. while pausing he distinctly heard the tread of a horse upon the track behind him, and for a moment despaired of arriving in time: here, surely, was reynard! pulling up closer to the densest tree at hand he waited, and found he had retreated nothing too soon, for the second rider avoided the gravel also, and passed quite close to him. in the profile he recognized young phelipson. before tupcombe could think what to do, phelipson had gone on; but not to the door of the house. swerving to the left, he passed round to the east angle, where, as tupcombe knew, were situated betty's apartments. dismounting, he left the horse tethered to a hanging bough, and walked on to the house. suddenly his eye caught sight of an object which explained the position immediately. it was a ladder stretching from beneath the trees, which there came pretty close to the house, up to a first-floor window--one which lighted miss betty's rooms. yes, it was betty's chamber; he knew every room in the house well. the young horseman who had passed him, having evidently left his steed somewhere under the trees also, was perceptible at the top of the ladder, immediately outside betty's window. while tupcombe watched, a cloaked female figure stepped timidly over the sill, and the two cautiously descended, one before the other, the young man's arms enclosing the young woman between his grasp of the ladder, so that she could not fall. as soon as they reached the bottom, young phelipson quickly removed the ladder and hid it under the bushes. the pair disappeared; till, in a few minutes, tupcombe could discern a horse emerging from a remoter part of the umbrage. the horse carried double, the girl being on a pillion behind her lover. tupcombe hardly knew what to do or think; yet, though this was not exactly the kind of flight that had been intended, she had certainly escaped. he went back to his own animal, and rode round to the servants' door, where he delivered the letter for mrs. dornell. to leave a verbal message for betty was now impossible. the court servants desired him to stay over the night, but he would not do so, desiring to get back to the squire as soon as possible and tell what he had seen. whether he ought not to have intercepted the young people, and carried off betty himself to her father, he did not know. however, it was too late to think of that now, and without wetting his lips or swallowing a crumb, tupcombe turned his back upon king's-hintock court. it was not till he had advanced a considerable distance on his way homeward that, halting under the lantern of a roadside-inn while the horse was watered, there came a traveller from the opposite direction in a hired coach; the lantern lit the stranger's face as he passed along and dropped into the shade. tupcombe exulted for the moment, though he could hardly have justified his exultation. the belated traveller was reynard; and another had stepped in before him. you may now be willing to know of the fortunes of miss betty. left much to herself through the intervening days, she had ample time to brood over her desperate attempt at the stratagem of infection--thwarted, apparently, by her mother's promptitude. in what other way to gain time she could not think. thus drew on the day and the hour of the evening on which her husband was expected to announce himself. at some period after dark, when she could not tell, a tap at the window, twice and thrice repeated, became audible. it caused her to start up, for the only visitant in her mind was the one whose advances she had so feared as to risk health and life to repel them. she crept to the window, and heard a whisper without. 'it is i--charley,' said the voice. betty's face fired with excitement. she had latterly begun to doubt her admirer's staunchness, fancying his love to be going off in mere attentions which neither committed him nor herself very deeply. she opened the window, saying in a joyous whisper, 'oh charley; i thought you had deserted me quite!' he assured her he had not done that, and that he had a horse in waiting, if she would ride off with him. 'you must come quickly,' he said; 'for reynard's on the way!' to throw a cloak round herself was the work of a moment, and assuring herself that her door was locked against a surprise, she climbed over the window-sill and descended with him as we have seen. her mother meanwhile, having received tupcombe's note, found the news of her husband's illness so serious, as to displace her thoughts of the coming son-in-law, and she hastened to tell her daughter of the squire's dangerous condition, thinking it might be desirable to take her to her father's bedside. on trying the door of the girl's room, she found it still locked. mrs. dornell called, but there was no answer. full of misgivings, she privately fetched the old house-steward and bade him burst open the door--an order by no means easy to execute, the joinery of the court being massively constructed. however, the lock sprang open at last, and she entered betty's chamber only to find the window unfastened and the bird flown. for a moment mrs. dornell was staggered. then it occurred to her that betty might have privately obtained from tupcombe the news of her father's serious illness, and, fearing she might be kept back to meet her husband, have gone off with that obstinate and biassed servitor to falls- park. the more she thought it over the more probable did the supposition appear; and binding her own head-man to secrecy as to betty's movements, whether as she conjectured, or otherwise, mrs. dornell herself prepared to set out. she had no suspicion how seriously her husband's malady had been aggravated by his ride to bristol, and thought more of betty's affairs than of her own. that betty's husband should arrive by some other road to-night, and find neither wife nor mother-in-law to receive him, and no explanation of their absence, was possible; but never forgetting chances, mrs. dornell as she journeyed kept her eyes fixed upon the highway on the off-side, where, before she had reached the town of ivell, the hired coach containing stephen reynard flashed into the lamplight of her own carriage. mrs. dornell's coachman pulled up, in obedience to a direction she had given him at starting; the other coach was hailed, a few words passed, and reynard alighted and came to mrs. dornell's carriage-window. 'come inside,' says she. 'i want to speak privately to you. why are you so late?' 'one hindrance and another,' says he. 'i meant to be at the court by eight at latest. my gratitude for your letter. i hope--' 'you must not try to see betty yet,' said she. 'there be far other and newer reasons against your seeing her now than there were when i wrote.' the circumstances were such that mrs. dornell could not possibly conceal them entirely; nothing short of knowing some of the facts would prevent his blindly acting in a manner which might be fatal to the future. moreover, there are times when deeper intriguers than mrs. dornell feel that they must let out a few truths, if only in self-indulgence. so she told so much of recent surprises as that betty's heart had been attracted by another image than his, and that his insisting on visiting her now might drive the girl to desperation. 'betty has, in fact, rushed off to her father to avoid you,' she said. 'but if you wait she will soon forget this young man, and you will have nothing to fear.' as a woman and a mother she could go no further, and betty's desperate attempt to infect herself the week before as a means of repelling him, together with the alarming possibility that, after all, she had not gone to her father but to her lover, was not revealed. 'well,' sighed the diplomatist, in a tone unexpectedly quiet, 'such things have been known before. after all, she may prefer me to him some day, when she reflects how very differently i might have acted than i am going to act towards her. but i'll say no more about that now. i can have a bed at your house for to-night?' 'to-night, certainly. and you leave to-morrow morning early?' she spoke anxiously, for on no account did she wish him to make further discoveries. 'my husband is so seriously ill,' she continued, 'that my absence and betty's on your arrival is naturally accounted for.' he promised to leave early, and to write to her soon. 'and when i think the time is ripe,' he said, 'i'll write to her. i may have something to tell her that will bring her to graciousness.' it was about one o'clock in the morning when mrs. dornell reached falls- park. a double blow awaited her there. betty had not arrived; her flight had been elsewhither; and her stricken mother divined with whom. she ascended to the bedside of her husband, where to her concern she found that the physician had given up all hope. the squire was sinking, and his extreme weakness had almost changed his character, except in the particular that his old obstinacy sustained him in a refusal to see a clergyman. he shed tears at the least word, and sobbed at the sight of his wife. he asked for betty, and it was with a heavy heart that mrs. dornell told him that the girl had not accompanied her. 'he is not keeping her away?' 'no, no. he is going back--he is not coming to her for some time.' 'then what is detaining her--cruel, neglectful maid!' 'no, no, thomas; she is-- she could not come.' 'how's that?' somehow the solemnity of these last moments of his gave him inquisitorial power, and the too cold wife could not conceal from him the flight which had taken place from king's-hintock that night. to her amazement, the effect upon him was electrical. 'what--betty--a trump after all? hurrah! she's her father's own maid! she's game! she knew he was her father's own choice! she vowed that my man should win! well done, bet!--haw! haw! hurrah!' he had raised himself in bed by starts as he spoke, and now fell back exhausted. he never uttered another word, and died before the dawn. people said there had not been such an ungenteel death in a good county family for years. * * * * * now i will go back to the time of betty's riding off on the pillion behind her lover. they left the park by an obscure gate to the east, and presently found themselves in the lonely and solitary length of the old roman road now called long-ash lane. by this time they were rather alarmed at their own performance, for they were both young and inexperienced. hence they proceeded almost in silence till they came to a mean roadside inn which was not yet closed; when betty, who had held on to him with much misgiving all this while, felt dreadfully unwell, and said she thought she would like to get down. they accordingly dismounted from the jaded animal that had brought them, and were shown into a small dark parlour, where they stood side by side awkwardly, like the fugitives they were. a light was brought, and when they were left alone betty threw off the cloak which had enveloped her. no sooner did young phelipson see her face than he uttered an alarmed exclamation. 'why, lord, lord, you are sickening for the small-pox!' he cried. 'oh--i forgot!' faltered betty. and then she informed him that, on hearing of her husband's approach the week before, in a desperate attempt to keep him from her side, she had tried to imbibe the infection--an act which till this moment she had supposed to have been ineffectual, imagining her feverishness to be the result of her excitement. the effect of this discovery upon young phelipson was overwhelming. better-seasoned men than he would not have been proof against it, and he was only a little over her own age. 'and you've been holding on to me!' he said. 'and suppose you get worse, and we both have it, what shall we do? won't you be a fright in a month or two, poor, poor betty!' in his horror he attempted to laugh, but the laugh ended in a weakly giggle. she was more woman than girl by this time, and realized his feeling. 'what--in trying to keep off him, i keep off you?' she said miserably. 'do you hate me because i am going to be ugly and ill?' 'oh--no, no!' he said soothingly. 'but i--i am thinking if it is quite right for us to do this. you see, dear betty, if you was not married it would be different. you are not in honour married to him we've often said; still you are his by law, and you can't be mine whilst he's alive. and with this terrible sickness coming on, perhaps you had better let me take you back, and--climb in at the window again.' 'is _this_ your love?' said betty reproachfully. 'oh, if you was sickening for the plague itself, and going to be as ugly as the ooser in the church-vestry, i wouldn't--' 'no, no, you mistake, upon my soul!' but betty with a swollen heart had rewrapped herself and gone out of the door. the horse was still standing there. she mounted by the help of the upping-stock, and when he had followed her she said, 'do not come near me, charley; but please lead the horse, so that if you've not caught anything already you'll not catch it going back. after all, what keeps off you may keep off him. now onward.' he did not resist her command, and back they went by the way they had come, betty shedding bitter tears at the retribution she had already brought upon herself; for though she had reproached phelipson, she was staunch enough not to blame him in her secret heart for showing that his love was only skin-deep. the horse was stopped in the plantation, and they walked silently to the lawn, reaching the bushes wherein the ladder still lay. 'will you put it up for me?' she asked mournfully. he re-erected the ladder without a word; but when she approached to ascend he said, 'good-bye, betty!' 'good-bye!' said she; and involuntarily turned her face towards his. he hung back from imprinting the expected kiss: at which betty started as if she had received a poignant wound. she moved away so suddenly that he hardly had time to follow her up the ladder to prevent her falling. 'tell your mother to get the doctor at once!' he said anxiously. she stepped in without looking behind; he descended, withdrew the ladder, and went away. alone in her chamber, betty flung herself upon her face on the bed, and burst into shaking sobs. yet she would not admit to herself that her lover's conduct was unreasonable; only that her rash act of the previous week had been wrong. no one had heard her enter, and she was too worn out, in body and mind, to think or care about medical aid. in an hour or so she felt yet more unwell, positively ill; and nobody coming to her at the usual bedtime, she looked towards the door. marks of the lock having been forced were visible, and this made her chary of summoning a servant. she opened the door cautiously and sallied forth downstairs. in the dining-parlour, as it was called, the now sick and sorry betty was startled to see at that late hour not her mother, but a man sitting, calmly finishing his supper. there was no servant in the room. he turned, and she recognized her husband. 'where's my mamma?' she demanded without preface. 'gone to your father's. is that--' he stopped, aghast. 'yes, sir. this spotted object is your wife! i've done it because i don't want you to come near me!' he was sixteen years her senior; old enough to be compassionate. 'my poor child, you must get to bed directly! don't be afraid of me--i'll carry you upstairs, and send for a doctor instantly.' 'ah, you don't know what i am!' she cried. 'i had a lover once; but now he's gone! 'twasn't i who deserted him. he has deserted me; because i am ill he wouldn't kiss me, though i wanted him to!' 'wouldn't he? then he was a very poor slack-twisted sort of fellow. betty, _i've_ never kissed you since you stood beside me as my little wife, twelve years and a half old! may i kiss you now?' though betty by no means desired his kisses, she had enough of the spirit of cunigonde in schiller's ballad to test his daring. 'if you have courage to venture, yes sir!' said she. 'but you may die for it, mind!' he came up to her and imprinted a deliberate kiss full upon her mouth, saying, 'may many others follow!' she shook her head, and hastily withdrew, though secretly pleased at his hardihood. the excitement had supported her for the few minutes she had passed in his presence, and she could hardly drag herself back to her room. her husband summoned the servants, and, sending them to her assistance, went off himself for a doctor. the next morning reynard waited at the court till he had learnt from the medical man that betty's attack promised to be a very light one--or, as it was expressed, 'very fine'; and in taking his leave sent up a note to her: 'now i must be gone. i promised your mother i would not see you yet, and she may be anger'd if she finds me here. promise to see me as soon as you are well?' he was of all men then living one of the best able to cope with such an untimely situation as this. a contriving, sagacious, gentle-mannered man, a philosopher who saw that the only constant attribute of life is change, he held that, as long as she lives, there is nothing finite in the most impassioned attitude a woman may take up. in twelve months his girl-wife's recent infatuation might be as distasteful to her mind as it was now to his own. in a few years her very flesh would change--so said the scientific;--her spirit, so much more ephemeral, was capable of changing in one. betty was his, and it became a mere question of means how to effect that change. during the day mrs. dornell, having closed her husband's eyes, returned to the court. she was truly relieved to find betty there, even though on a bed of sickness. the disease ran its course, and in due time betty became convalescent, without having suffered deeply for her rashness, one little speck beneath her ear, and one beneath her chin, being all the marks she retained. the squire's body was not brought back to king's-hintock. where he was born, and where he had lived before wedding his sue, there he had wished to be buried. no sooner had she lost him than mrs. dornell, like certain other wives, though she had never shown any great affection for him while he lived, awoke suddenly to his many virtues, and zealously embraced his opinion about delaying betty's union with her husband, which she had formerly combated strenuously. 'poor man! how right he was, and how wrong was i!' eighteen was certainly the lowest age at which mr. reynard should claim her child--nay, it was too low! far too low! so desirous was she of honouring her lamented husband's sentiments in this respect, that she wrote to her son-in-law suggesting that, partly on account of betty's sorrow for her father's loss, and out of consideration for his known wishes for delay, betty should not be taken from her till her nineteenth birthday. however much or little stephen reynard might have been to blame in his marriage, the patient man now almost deserved to be pitied. first betty's skittishness; now her mother's remorseful _volte-face_: it was enough to exasperate anybody; and he wrote to the widow in a tone which led to a little coolness between those hitherto firm friends. however, knowing that he had a wife not to claim but to win, and that young phelipson had been packed off to sea by his parents, stephen was complaisant to a degree, returning to london, and holding quite aloof from betty and her mother, who remained for the present in the country. in town he had a mild visitation of the distemper he had taken from betty, and in writing to her he took care not to dwell upon its mildness. it was now that betty began to pity him for what she had inflicted upon him by the kiss, and her correspondence acquired a distinct flavour of kindness thenceforward. owing to his rebuffs, reynard had grown to be truly in love with betty in his mild, placid, durable way--in that way which perhaps, upon the whole, tends most generally to the woman's comfort under the institution of marriage, if not particularly to her ecstasy. mrs. dornell's exaggeration of her husband's wish for delay in their living together was inconvenient, but he would not openly infringe it. he wrote tenderly to betty, and soon announced that he had a little surprise in store for her. the secret was that the king had been graciously pleased to inform him privately, through a relation, that his majesty was about to offer him a barony. would she like the title to be ivell? moreover, he had reason for knowing that in a few years the dignity would be raised to that of an earl, for which creation he thought the title of wessex would be eminently suitable, considering the position of much of their property. as lady ivell, therefore, and future countess of wessex, he should beg leave to offer her his heart a third time. he did not add, as he might have added, how greatly the consideration of the enormous estates at king's-hintock and elsewhere which betty would inherit, and her children after her, had conduced to this desirable honour. whether the impending titles had really any effect upon betty's regard for him i cannot state, for she was one of those close characters who never let their minds be known upon anything. that such honour was absolutely unexpected by her from such a quarter is, however, certain; and she could not deny that stephen had shown her kindness, forbearance, even magnanimity; had forgiven her for an errant passion which he might with some reason have denounced, notwithstanding her cruel position as a child entrapped into marriage ere able to understand its bearings. her mother, in her grief and remorse for the loveless life she had led with her rough, though open-hearted, husband, made now a creed of his merest whim; and continued to insist that, out of respect to his known desire, her son-in-law should not reside with betty till the girl's father had been dead a year at least, at which time the girl would still be under nineteen. letters must suffice for stephen till then. 'it is rather long for him to wait,' betty hesitatingly said one day. 'what!' said her mother. 'from _you_? not to respect your dear father--' 'of course it is quite proper,' said betty hastily. 'i don't gainsay it. i was but thinking that--that--' in the long slow months of the stipulated interval her mother tended and trained betty carefully for her duties. fully awake now to the many virtues of her dear departed one, she, among other acts of pious devotion to his memory, rebuilt the church of king's-hintock village, and established valuable charities in all the villages of that name, as far as to little-hintock, several miles eastward. in superintending these works, particularly that of the church-building, her daughter betty was her constant companion, and the incidents of their execution were doubtless not without a soothing effect upon the young creature's heart. she had sprung from girl to woman by a sudden bound, and few would have recognized in the thoughtful face of betty now the same person who, the year before, had seemed to have absolutely no idea whatever of responsibility, moral or other. time passed thus till the squire had been nearly a year in his vault; and mrs. dornell was duly asked by letter by the patient reynard if she were willing for him to come soon. he did not wish to take betty away if her mother's sense of loneliness would be too great, but would willingly live at king's-hintock awhile with them. before the widow had replied to this communication, she one day happened to observe betty walking on the south terrace in the full sunlight, without hat or mantle, and was struck by her child's figure. mrs. dornell called her in, and said suddenly: 'have you seen your husband since the time of your poor father's death?' 'well--yes, mamma,' says betty, colouring. 'what--against my wishes and those of your dear father! i am shocked at your disobedience!' 'but my father said eighteen, ma'am, and you made it much longer--' 'why, of course--out of consideration for you! when have ye seen him?' 'well,' stammered betty, 'in the course of his letters to me he said that i belonged to him, and if nobody knew that we met it would make no difference. and that i need not hurt your feelings by telling you.' 'well?' 'so i went to casterbridge that time you went to london about five months ago--' 'and met him there? when did you come back?' 'dear mamma, it grew very late, and he said it was safer not to go back till next day, as the roads were bad; and as you were away from home--' 'i don't want to hear any more! this is your respect for your father's memory,' groaned the widow. 'when did you meet him again?' 'oh--not for more than a fortnight.' 'a fortnight! how many times have ye seen him altogether?' 'i'm sure, mamma, i've not seen him altogether a dozen times.' 'a dozen! and eighteen and a half years old barely!' 'twice we met by accident,' pleaded betty. 'once at abbot's-cernel, and another time at the red lion, melchester.' 'o thou deceitful girl!' cried mrs. dornell. 'an accident took you to the red lion whilst i was staying at the white hart! i remember--you came in at twelve o'clock at night and said you'd been to see the cathedral by the light o' the moon!' 'my ever-honoured mamma, so i had! i only went to the red lion with him afterwards.' 'oh betty, betty! that my child should have deceived me even in my widowed days!' 'but, my dearest mamma, you made me marry him!' says betty with spirit, 'and of course i've to obey him more than you now!' mrs. dornell sighed. 'all i have to say is, that you'd better get your husband to join you as soon as possible,' she remarked. 'to go on playing the maiden like this--i'm ashamed to see you!' she wrote instantly to stephen reynard: 'i wash my hands of the whole matter as between you two; though i should advise you to _openly_ join each other as soon as you can--if you wish to avoid scandal.' he came, though not till the promised title had been granted, and he could call betty archly 'my lady.' people said in after years that she and her husband were very happy. however that may be, they had a numerous family; and she became in due course first countess of wessex, as he had foretold. the little white frock in which she had been married to him at the tender age of twelve was carefully preserved among the relics at king's-hintock court, where it may still be seen by the curious--a yellowing, pathetic testimony to the small count taken of the happiness of an innocent child in the social strategy of those days, which might have led, but providentially did not lead, to great unhappiness. when the earl died betty wrote him an epitaph, in which she described him as the best of husbands, fathers, and friends, and called herself his disconsolate widow. such is woman; or rather (not to give offence by so sweeping an assertion), such was betty dornell. * * * * * it was at a meeting of one of the wessex field and antiquarian clubs that the foregoing story, partly told, partly read from a manuscript, was made to do duty for the regulation papers on deformed butterflies, fossil ox- horns, prehistoric dung-mixens, and such like, that usually occupied the more serious attention of the members. this club was of an inclusive and intersocial character; to a degree, indeed, remarkable for the part of england in which it had its being--dear, delightful wessex, whose statuesque dynasties are even now only just beginning to feel the shaking of the new and strange spirit without, like that which entered the lonely valley of ezekiel's vision and made the dry bones move: where the honest squires, tradesmen, parsons, clerks, and people still praise the lord with one voice for his best of all possible worlds. the present meeting, which was to extend over two days, had opened its proceedings at the museum of the town whose buildings and environs were to be visited by the members. lunch had ended, and the afternoon excursion had been about to be undertaken, when the rain came down in an obstinate spatter, which revealed no sign of cessation. as the members waited they grew chilly, although it was only autumn, and a fire was lighted, which threw a cheerful shine upon the varnished skulls, urns, penates, tesserae, costumes, coats of mail, weapons, and missals, animated the fossilized ichthyosaurus and iguanodon; while the dead eyes of the stuffed birds--those never-absent familiars in such collections, though murdered to extinction out of doors--flashed as they had flashed to the rising sun above the neighbouring moors on the fatal morning when the trigger was pulled which ended their little flight. it was then that the historian produced his manuscript, which he had prepared, he said, with a view to publication. his delivery of the story having concluded as aforesaid, the speaker expressed his hope that the constraint of the weather, and the paucity of more scientific papers, would excuse any inappropriateness in his subject. several members observed that a storm-bound club could not presume to be selective, and they were all very much obliged to him for such a curious chapter from the domestic histories of the county. the president looked gloomily from the window at the descending rain, and broke a short silence by saying that though the club had met, there seemed little probability of its being able to visit the objects of interest set down among the _agenda_. the treasurer observed that they had at least a roof over their heads; and they had also a second day before them. a sentimental member, leaning back in his chair, declared that he was in no hurry to go out, and that nothing would please him so much as another county story, with or without manuscript. the colonel added that the subject should be a lady, like the former, to which a gentleman known as the spark said 'hear, hear!' though these had spoken in jest, a rural dean who was present observed blandly that there was no lack of materials. many, indeed, were the legends and traditions of gentle and noble dames, renowned in times past in that part of england, whose actions and passions were now, but for men's memories, buried under the brief inscription on a tomb or an entry of dates in a dry pedigree. another member, an old surgeon, a somewhat grim though sociable personage, was quite of the speaker's opinion, and felt quite sure that the memory of the reverend gentleman must abound with such curious tales of fair dames, of their loves and hates, their joys and their misfortunes, their beauty and their fate. the parson, a trifle confused, retorted that their friend the surgeon, the son of a surgeon, seemed to him, as a man who had seen much and heard more during the long course of his own and his father's practice, the member of all others most likely to be acquainted with such lore. the bookworm, the colonel, the historian, the vice-president, the churchwarden, the two curates, the gentleman-tradesman, the sentimental member, the crimson maltster, the quiet gentleman, the man of family, the spark, and several others, quite agreed, and begged that he would recall something of the kind. the old surgeon said that, though a meeting of the mid-wessex field and antiquarian club was the last place at which he should have expected to be called upon in this way, he had no objection; and the parson said he would come next. the surgeon then reflected, and decided to relate the history of a lady named barbara, who lived towards the end of the last century, apologizing for his tale as being perhaps a little too professional. the crimson maltster winked to the spark at hearing the nature of the apology, and the surgeon began. dame the second--barbara of the house of grebe by the old surgeon it was apparently an idea, rather than a passion, that inspired lord uplandtowers' resolve to win her. nobody ever knew when he formed it, or whence he got his assurance of success in the face of her manifest dislike of him. possibly not until after that first important act of her life which i shall presently mention. his matured and cynical doggedness at the age of nineteen, when impulse mostly rules calculation, was remarkable, and might have owed its existence as much to his succession to the earldom and its accompanying local honours in childhood, as to the family character; an elevation which jerked him into maturity, so to speak, without his having known adolescence. he had only reached his twelfth year when his father, the fourth earl, died, after a course of the bath waters. nevertheless, the family character had a great deal to do with it. determination was hereditary in the bearers of that escutcheon; sometimes for good, sometimes for evil. the seats of the two families were about ten miles apart, the way between them lying along the now old, then new, turnpike-road connecting havenpool and warborne with the city of melchester: a road which, though only a branch from what was known as the great western highway, is probably, even at present, as it has been for the last hundred years, one of the finest examples of a macadamized turnpike-track that can be found in england. the mansion of the earl, as well as that of his neighbour, barbara's father, stood back about a mile from the highway, with which each was connected by an ordinary drive and lodge. it was along this particular highway that the young earl drove on a certain evening at christmastide some twenty years before the end of the last century, to attend a ball at chene manor, the home of barbara, and her parents sir john and lady grebe. sir john's was a baronetcy created a few years before the breaking out of the civil war, and his lands were even more extensive than those of lord uplandtowers himself; comprising this manor of chene, another on the coast near, half the hundred of cockdene, and well-enclosed lands in several other parishes, notably warborne and those contiguous. at this time barbara was barely seventeen, and the ball is the first occasion on which we have any tradition of lord uplandtowers attempting tender relations with her; it was early enough, god knows. an intimate friend--one of the drenkhards--is said to have dined with him that day, and lord uplandtowers had, for a wonder, communicated to his guest the secret design of his heart. 'you'll never get her--sure; you'll never get her!' this friend had said at parting. 'she's not drawn to your lordship by love: and as for thought of a good match, why, there's no more calculation in her than in a bird.' 'we'll see,' said lord uplandtowers impassively. he no doubt thought of his friend's forecast as he travelled along the highway in his chariot; but the sculptural repose of his profile against the vanishing daylight on his right hand would have shown his friend that the earl's equanimity was undisturbed. he reached the solitary wayside tavern called lornton inn--the rendezvous of many a daring poacher for operations in the adjoining forest; and he might have observed, if he had taken the trouble, a strange post-chaise standing in the halting-space before the inn. he duly sped past it, and half-an-hour after through the little town of warborne. onward, a mile farther, was the house of his entertainer. at this date it was an imposing edifice--or, rather, congeries of edifices--as extensive as the residence of the earl himself; though far less regular. one wing showed extreme antiquity, having huge chimneys, whose substructures projected from the external walls like towers; and a kitchen of vast dimensions, in which (it was said) breakfasts had been cooked for john of gaunt. whilst he was yet in the forecourt he could hear the rhythm of french horns and clarionets, the favourite instruments of those days at such entertainments. entering the long parlour, in which the dance had just been opened by lady grebe with a minuet--it being now seven o'clock, according to the tradition--he was received with a welcome befitting his rank, and looked round for barbara. she was not dancing, and seemed to be preoccupied--almost, indeed, as though she had been waiting for him. barbara at this time was a good and pretty girl, who never spoke ill of any one, and hated other pretty women the very least possible. she did not refuse him for the country-dance which followed, and soon after was his partner in a second. the evening wore on, and the horns and clarionets tootled merrily. barbara evinced towards her lover neither distinct preference nor aversion; but old eyes would have seen that she pondered something. however, after supper she pleaded a headache, and disappeared. to pass the time of her absence, lord uplandtowers went into a little room adjoining the long gallery, where some elderly ones were sitting by the fire--for he had a phlegmatic dislike of dancing for its own sake,--and, lifting the window-curtains, he looked out of the window into the park and wood, dark now as a cavern. some of the guests appeared to be leaving even so soon as this, two lights showing themselves as turning away from the door and sinking to nothing in the distance. his hostess put her head into the room to look for partners for the ladies, and lord uplandtowers came out. lady grebe informed him that barbara had not returned to the ball-room: she had gone to bed in sheer necessity. 'she has been so excited over the ball all day,' her mother continued, 'that i feared she would be worn out early . . . but sure, lord uplandtowers, you won't be leaving yet?' he said that it was near twelve o'clock, and that some had already left. 'i protest nobody has gone yet,' said lady grebe. to humour her he stayed till midnight, and then set out. he had made no progress in his suit; but he had assured himself that barbara gave no other guest the preference, and nearly everybody in the neighbourhood was there. ''tis only a matter of time,' said the calm young philosopher. the next morning he lay till near ten o'clock, and he had only just come out upon the head of the staircase when he heard hoofs upon the gravel without; in a few moments the door had been opened, and sir john grebe met him in the hall, as he set foot on the lowest stair. 'my lord--where's barbara--my daughter?' even the earl of uplandtowers could not repress amazement. 'what's the matter, my dear sir john,' says he. the news was startling, indeed. from the baronet's disjointed explanation lord uplandtowers gathered that after his own and the other guests' departure sir john and lady grebe had gone to rest without seeing any more of barbara; it being understood by them that she had retired to bed when she sent word to say that she could not join the dancers again. before then she had told her maid that she would dispense with her services for this night; and there was evidence to show that the young lady had never lain down at all, the bed remaining unpressed. circumstances seemed to prove that the deceitful girl had feigned indisposition to get an excuse for leaving the ball-room, and that she had left the house within ten minutes, presumably during the first dance after supper. 'i saw her go,' said lord uplandtowers. 'the devil you did!' says sir john. 'yes.' and he mentioned the retreating carriage-lights, and how he was assured by lady grebe that no guest had departed. 'surely that was it!' said the father. 'but she's not gone alone, d'ye know!' 'ah--who is the young man?' 'i can on'y guess. my worst fear is my most likely guess. i'll say no more. i thought--yet i would not believe--it possible that you was the sinner. would that you had been! but 'tis t'other, 'tis t'other, by g---! i must e'en up, and after 'em!' 'whom do you suspect?' sir john would not give a name, and, stultified rather than agitated, lord uplandtowers accompanied him back to chene. he again asked upon whom were the baronet's suspicions directed; and the impulsive sir john was no match for the insistence of uplandtowers. he said at length, 'i fear 'tis edmond willowes.' 'who's he?' 'a young fellow of shottsford-forum--a widow-woman's son,' the other told him, and explained that willowes's father, or grandfather, was the last of the old glass-painters in that place, where (as you may know) the art lingered on when it had died out in every other part of england. 'by g--- that's bad--mighty bad!' said lord uplandtowers, throwing himself back in the chaise in frigid despair. they despatched emissaries in all directions; one by the melchester road, another by shottsford-forum, another coastwards. but the lovers had a ten-hours' start; and it was apparent that sound judgment had been exercised in choosing as their time of flight the particular night when the movements of a strange carriage would not be noticed, either in the park or on the neighbouring highway, owing to the general press of vehicles. the chaise which had been seen waiting at lornton inn was, no doubt, the one they had escaped in; and the pair of heads which had planned so cleverly thus far had probably contrived marriage ere now. the fears of her parents were realized. a letter sent by special messenger from barbara, on the evening of that day, briefly informed them that her lover and herself were on the way to london, and before this communication reached her home they would be united as husband and wife. she had taken this extreme step because she loved her dear edmond as she could love no other man, and because she had seen closing round her the doom of marriage with lord uplandtowers, unless she put that threatened fate out of possibility by doing as she had done. she had well considered the step beforehand, and was prepared to live like any other country-townsman's wife if her father repudiated her for her action. 'd--- her!' said lord uplandtowers, as he drove homeward that night. 'd--- her for a fool!'--which shows the kind of love he bore her. well; sir john had already started in pursuit of them as a matter of duty, driving like a wild man to melchester, and thence by the direct highway to the capital. but he soon saw that he was acting to no purpose; and by and by, discovering that the marriage had actually taken place, he forebore all attempts to unearth them in the city, and returned and sat down with his lady to digest the event as best they could. to proceed against this willowes for the abduction of our heiress was, possibly, in their power; yet, when they considered the now unalterable facts, they refrained from violent retribution. some six weeks passed, during which time barbara's parents, though they keenly felt her loss, held no communication with the truant, either for reproach or condonation. they continued to think of the disgrace she had brought upon herself; for, though the young man was an honest fellow, and the son of an honest father, the latter had died so early, and his widow had had such struggles to maintain herself; that the son was very imperfectly educated. moreover, his blood was, as far as they knew, of no distinction whatever, whilst hers, through her mother, was compounded of the best juices of ancient baronial distillation, containing tinctures of maundeville, and mohun, and syward, and peverell, and culliford, and talbot, and plantagenet, and york, and lancaster, and god knows what besides, which it was a thousand pities to throw away. the father and mother sat by the fireplace that was spanned by the four- centred arch bearing the family shields on its haunches, and groaned aloud--the lady more than sir john. 'to think this should have come upon us in our old age!' said he. 'speak for yourself!' she snapped through her sobs. 'i am only one-and- forty! . . . why didn't ye ride faster and overtake 'em!' in the meantime the young married lovers, caring no more about their blood than about ditch-water, were intensely happy--happy, that is, in the descending scale which, as we all know, heaven in its wisdom has ordained for such rash cases; that is to say, the first week they were in the seventh heaven, the second in the sixth, the third week temperate, the fourth reflective, and so on; a lover's heart after possession being comparable to the earth in its geologic stages, as described to us sometimes by our worthy president; first a hot coal, then a warm one, then a cooling cinder, then chilly--the simile shall be pursued no further. the long and the short of it was that one day a letter, sealed with their daughter's own little seal, came into sir john and lady grebe's hands; and, on opening it, they found it to contain an appeal from the young couple to sir john to forgive them for what they had done, and they would fall on their naked knees and be most dutiful children for evermore. then sir john and his lady sat down again by the fireplace with the four- centred arch, and consulted, and re-read the letter. sir john grebe, if the truth must be told, loved his daughter's happiness far more, poor man, than he loved his name and lineage; he recalled to his mind all her little ways, gave vent to a sigh; and, by this time acclimatized to the idea of the marriage, said that what was done could not be undone, and that he supposed they must not be too harsh with her. perhaps barbara and her husband were in actual need; and how could they let their only child starve? a slight consolation had come to them in an unexpected manner. they had been credibly informed that an ancestor of plebeian willowes was once honoured with intermarriage with a scion of the aristocracy who had gone to the dogs. in short, such is the foolishness of distinguished parents, and sometimes of others also, that they wrote that very day to the address barbara had given them, informing her that she might return home and bring her husband with her; they would not object to see him, would not reproach her, and would endeavour to welcome both, and to discuss with them what could best be arranged for their future. in three or four days a rather shabby post-chaise drew up at the door of chene manor-house, at sound of which the tender-hearted baronet and his wife ran out as if to welcome a prince and princess of the blood. they were overjoyed to see their spoilt child return safe and sound--though she was only mrs. willowes, wife of edmond willowes of nowhere. barbara burst into penitential tears, and both husband and wife were contrite enough, as well they might be, considering that they had not a guinea to call their own. when the four had calmed themselves, and not a word of chiding had been uttered to the pair, they discussed the position soberly, young willowes sitting in the background with great modesty till invited forward by lady grebe in no frigid tone. 'how handsome he is!' she said to herself. 'i don't wonder at barbara's craze for him.' he was, indeed, one of the handsomest men who ever set his lips on a maid's. a blue coat, murrey waistcoat, and breeches of drab set off a figure that could scarcely be surpassed. he had large dark eyes, anxious now, as they glanced from barbara to her parents and tenderly back again to her; observing whom, even now in her trepidation, one could see why the _sang froid_ of lord uplandtowers had been raised to more than lukewarmness. her fair young face (according to the tale handed down by old women) looked out from under a gray conical hat, trimmed with white ostrich-feathers, and her little toes peeped from a buff petticoat worn under a puce gown. her features were not regular: they were almost infantine, as you may see from miniatures in possession of the family, her mouth showing much sensitiveness, and one could be sure that her faults would not lie on the side of bad temper unless for urgent reasons. well, they discussed their state as became them, and the desire of the young couple to gain the goodwill of those upon whom they were literally dependent for everything induced them to agree to any temporizing measure that was not too irksome. therefore, having been nearly two months united, they did not oppose sir john's proposal that he should furnish edmond willowes with funds sufficient for him to travel a year on the continent in the company of a tutor, the young man undertaking to lend himself with the utmost diligence to the tutor's instructions, till he became polished outwardly and inwardly to the degree required in the husband of such a lady as barbara. he was to apply himself to the study of languages, manners, history, society, ruins, and everything else that came under his eyes, till he should return to take his place without blushing by barbara's side. 'and by that time,' said worthy sir john, 'i'll get my little place out at yewsholt ready for you and barbara to occupy on your return. the house is small and out of the way; but it will do for a young couple for a while.' 'if 'twere no bigger than a summer-house it would do!' says barbara. 'if 'twere no bigger than a sedan-chair!' says willowes. 'and the more lonely the better.' 'we can put up with the loneliness,' said barbara, with less zest. 'some friends will come, no doubt.' all this being laid down, a travelled tutor was called in--a man of many gifts and great experience,--and on a fine morning away tutor and pupil went. a great reason urged against barbara accompanying her youthful husband was that his attentions to her would naturally be such as to prevent his zealously applying every hour of his time to learning and seeing--an argument of wise prescience, and unanswerable. regular days for letter-writing were fixed, barbara and her edmond exchanged their last kisses at the door, and the chaise swept under the archway into the drive. he wrote to her from le havre, as soon as he reached that port, which was not for seven days, on account of adverse winds; he wrote from rouen, and from paris; described to her his sight of the king and court at versailles, and the wonderful marble-work and mirrors in that palace; wrote next from lyons; then, after a comparatively long interval, from turin, narrating his fearful adventures in crossing mont cenis on mules, and how he was overtaken with a terrific snowstorm, which had well-nigh been the end of him, and his tutor, and his guides. then he wrote glowingly of italy; and barbara could see the development of her husband's mind reflected in his letters month by month; and she much admired the forethought of her father in suggesting this education for edmond. yet she sighed sometimes--her husband being no longer in evidence to fortify her in her choice of him--and timidly dreaded what mortifications might be in store for her by reason of this _mesalliance_. she went out very little; for on the one or two occasions on which she had shown herself to former friends she noticed a distinct difference in their manner, as though they should say, 'ah, my happy swain's wife; you're caught!' edmond's letters were as affectionate as ever; even more affectionate, after a while, than hers were to him. barbara observed this growing coolness in herself; and like a good and honest lady was horrified and grieved, since her only wish was to act faithfully and uprightly. it troubled her so much that she prayed for a warmer heart, and at last wrote to her husband to beg him, now that he was in the land of art, to send her his portrait, ever so small, that she might look at it all day and every day, and never for a moment forget his features. willowes was nothing loth, and replied that he would do more than she wished: he had made friends with a sculptor in pisa, who was much interested in him and his history; and he had commissioned this artist to make a bust of himself in marble, which when finished he would send her. what barbara had wanted was something immediate; but she expressed no objection to the delay; and in his next communication edmund told her that the sculptor, of his own choice, had decided to increase the bust to a full-length statue, so anxious was he to get a specimen of his skill introduced to the notice of the english aristocracy. it was progressing well, and rapidly. meanwhile, barbara's attention began to be occupied at home with yewsholt lodge, the house that her kind-hearted father was preparing for her residence when her husband returned. it was a small place on the plan of a large one--a cottage built in the form of a mansion, having a central hall with a wooden gallery running round it, and rooms no bigger than closets to follow this introduction. it stood on a slope so solitary, and surrounded by trees so dense, that the birds who inhabited the boughs sang at strange hours, as if they hardly could distinguish night from day. during the progress of repairs at this bower barbara frequently visited it. though so secluded by the dense growth, it was near the high road, and one day while looking over the fence she saw lord uplandtowers riding past. he saluted her courteously, yet with mechanical stiffness, and did not halt. barbara went home, and continued to pray that she might never cease to love her husband. after that she sickened, and did not come out of doors again for a long time. the year of education had extended to fourteen months, and the house was in order for edmond's return to take up his abode there with barbara, when, instead of the accustomed letter for her, came one to sir john grebe in the handwriting of the said tutor, informing him of a terrible catastrophe that had occurred to them at venice. mr willowes and himself had attended the theatre one night during the carnival of the preceding week, to witness the italian comedy, when, owing to the carelessness of one of the candle-snuffers, the theatre had caught fire, and been burnt to the ground. few persons had lost their lives, owing to the superhuman exertions of some of the audience in getting out the senseless sufferers; and, among them all, he who had risked his own life the most heroically was mr. willowes. in re-entering for the fifth time to save his fellow- creatures some fiery beams had fallen upon him, and he had been given up for lost. he was, however, by the blessing of providence, recovered, with the life still in him, though he was fearfully burnt; and by almost a miracle he seemed likely to survive, his constitution being wondrously sound. he was, of course, unable to write, but he was receiving the attention of several skilful surgeons. further report would be made by the next mail or by private hand. the tutor said nothing in detail of poor willowes's sufferings, but as soon as the news was broken to barbara she realized how intense they must have been, and her immediate instinct was to rush to his side, though, on consideration, the journey seemed impossible to her. her health was by no means what it had been, and to post across europe at that season of the year, or to traverse the bay of biscay in a sailing-craft, was an undertaking that would hardly be justified by the result. but she was anxious to go till, on reading to the end of the letter, her husband's tutor was found to hint very strongly against such a step if it should be contemplated, this being also the opinion of the surgeons. and though willowes's comrade refrained from giving his reasons, they disclosed themselves plainly enough in the sequel. the truth was that the worst of the wounds resulting from the fire had occurred to his head and face--that handsome face which had won her heart from her,--and both the tutor and the surgeons knew that for a sensitive young woman to see him before his wounds had healed would cause more misery to her by the shock than happiness to him by her ministrations. lady grebe blurted out what sir john and barbara had thought, but had had too much delicacy to express. 'sure, 'tis mighty hard for you, poor barbara, that the one little gift he had to justify your rash choice of him--his wonderful good looks--should be taken away like this, to leave 'ee no excuse at all for your conduct in the world's eyes . . . well, i wish you'd married t'other--that do i!' and the lady sighed. 'he'll soon get right again,' said her father soothingly. such remarks as the above were not often made; but they were frequent enough to cause barbara an uneasy sense of self-stultification. she determined to hear them no longer; and the house at yewsholt being ready and furnished, she withdrew thither with her maids, where for the first time she could feel mistress of a home that would be hers and her husband's exclusively, when he came. after long weeks willowes had recovered sufficiently to be able to write himself; and slowly and tenderly he enlightened her upon the full extent of his injuries. it was a mercy, he said, that he had not lost his sight entirely; but he was thankful to say that he still retained full vision in one eye, though the other was dark for ever. the sparing manner in which he meted out particulars of his condition told barbara how appalling had been his experience. he was grateful for her assurance that nothing could change her; but feared she did not fully realize that he was so sadly disfigured as to make it doubtful if she would recognize him. however, in spite of all, his heart was as true to her as it ever had been. barbara saw from his anxiety how much lay behind. she replied that she submitted to the decrees of fate, and would welcome him in any shape as soon as he could come. she told him of the pretty retreat in which she had taken up her abode, pending their joint occupation of it, and did not reveal how much she had sighed over the information that all his good looks were gone. still less did she say that she felt a certain strangeness in awaiting him, the weeks they had lived together having been so short by comparison with the length of his absence. slowly drew on the time when willowes found himself well enough to come home. he landed at southampton, and posted thence towards yewsholt. barbara arranged to go out to meet him as far as lornton inn--the spot between the forest and the chase at which he had waited for night on the evening of their elopement. thither she drove at the appointed hour in a little pony-chaise, presented her by her father on her birthday for her especial use in her new house; which vehicle she sent back on arriving at the inn, the plan agreed upon being that she should perform the return journey with her husband in his hired coach. there was not much accommodation for a lady at this wayside tavern; but, as it was a fine evening in early summer, she did not mind--walking about outside, and straining her eyes along the highway for the expected one. but each cloud of dust that enlarged in the distance and drew near was found to disclose a conveyance other than his post-chaise. barbara remained till the appointment was two hours passed, and then began to fear that owing to some adverse wind in the channel he was not coming that night. while waiting she was conscious of a curious trepidation that was not entirely solicitude, and did not amount to dread; her tense state of incertitude bordered both on disappointment and on relief. she had lived six or seven weeks with an imperfectly educated yet handsome husband whom now she had not seen for seventeen months, and who was so changed physically by an accident that she was assured she would hardly know him. can we wonder at her compound state of mind? but her immediate difficulty was to get away from lornton inn, for her situation was becoming embarrassing. like too many of barbara's actions, this drive had been undertaken without much reflection. expecting to wait no more than a few minutes for her husband in his post-chaise, and to enter it with him, she had not hesitated to isolate herself by sending back her own little vehicle. she now found that, being so well known in this neighbourhood, her excursion to meet her long-absent husband was exciting great interest. she was conscious that more eyes were watching her from the inn-windows than met her own gaze. barbara had decided to get home by hiring whatever kind of conveyance the tavern afforded, when, straining her eyes for the last time over the now darkening highway, she perceived yet another dust-cloud drawing near. she paused; a chariot ascended to the inn, and would have passed had not its occupant caught sight of her standing expectantly. the horses were checked on the instant. 'you here--and alone, my dear mrs. willowes?' said lord uplandtowers, whose carriage it was. she explained what had brought her into this lonely situation; and, as he was going in the direction of her own home, she accepted his offer of a seat beside him. their conversation was embarrassed and fragmentary at first; but when they had driven a mile or two she was surprised to find herself talking earnestly and warmly to him: her impulsiveness was in truth but the natural consequence of her late existence--a somewhat desolate one by reason of the strange marriage she had made; and there is no more indiscreet mood than that of a woman surprised into talk who has long been imposing upon herself a policy of reserve. therefore her ingenuous heart rose with a bound into her throat when, in response to his leading questions, or rather hints, she allowed her troubles to leak out of her. lord uplandtowers took her quite to her own door, although he had driven three miles out of his way to do so; and in handing her down she heard from him a whisper of stern reproach: 'it need not have been thus if you had listened to me!' she made no reply, and went indoors. there, as the evening wore away, she regretted more and more that she had been so friendly with lord uplandtowers. but he had launched himself upon her so unexpectedly: if she had only foreseen the meeting with him, what a careful line of conduct she would have marked out! barbara broke into a perspiration of disquiet when she thought of her unreserve, and, in self-chastisement, resolved to sit up till midnight on the bare chance of edmond's return; directing that supper should be laid for him, improbable as his arrival till the morrow was. the hours went past, and there was dead silence in and round about yewsholt lodge, except for the soughing of the trees; till, when it was near upon midnight, she heard the noise of hoofs and wheels approaching the door. knowing that it could only be her husband, barbara instantly went into the hall to meet him. yet she stood there not without a sensation of faintness, so many were the changes since their parting! and, owing to her casual encounter with lord uplandtowers, his voice and image still remained with her, excluding edmond, her husband, from the inner circle of her impressions. but she went to the door, and the next moment a figure stepped inside, of which she knew the outline, but little besides. her husband was attired in a flapping black cloak and slouched hat, appearing altogether as a foreigner, and not as the young english burgess who had left her side. when he came forward into the light of the lamp, she perceived with surprise, and almost with fright, that he wore a mask. at first she had not noticed this--there being nothing in its colour which would lead a casual observer to think he was looking on anything but a real countenance. he must have seen her start of dismay at the unexpectedness of his appearance, for he said hastily: 'i did not mean to come in to you like this--i thought you would have been in bed. how good you are, dear barbara!' he put his arm round her, but he did not attempt to kiss her. 'o edmond--it _is_ you?--it must be?' she said, with clasped hands, for though his figure and movement were almost enough to prove it, and the tones were not unlike the old tones, the enunciation was so altered as to seem that of a stranger. 'i am covered like this to hide myself from the curious eyes of the inn- servants and others,' he said, in a low voice. 'i will send back the carriage and join you in a moment.' 'you are quite alone?' 'quite. my companion stopped at southampton.' the wheels of the post-chaise rolled away as she entered the dining-room, where the supper was spread; and presently he rejoined her there. he had removed his cloak and hat, but the mask was still retained; and she could now see that it was of special make, of some flexible material like silk, coloured so as to represent flesh; it joined naturally to the front hair, and was otherwise cleverly executed. 'barbara--you look ill,' he said, removing his glove, and taking her hand. 'yes--i have been ill,' said she. 'is this pretty little house ours?' 'o--yes.' she was hardly conscious of her words, for the hand he had ungloved in order to take hers was contorted, and had one or two of its fingers missing; while through the mask she discerned the twinkle of one eye only. 'i would give anything to kiss you, dearest, now, at this moment!' he continued, with mournful passionateness. 'but i cannot--in this guise. the servants are abed, i suppose?' 'yes,' said she. 'but i can call them? you will have some supper?' he said he would have some, but that it was not necessary to call anybody at that hour. thereupon they approached the table, and sat down, facing each other. despite barbara's scared state of mind, it was forced upon her notice that her husband trembled, as if he feared the impression he was producing, or was about to produce, as much as, or more than, she. he drew nearer, and took her hand again. 'i had this mask made at venice,' he began, in evident embarrassment. 'my darling barbara--my dearest wife--do you think you--will mind when i take it off? you will not dislike me--will you?' 'o edmond, of course i shall not mind,' said she. 'what has happened to you is our misfortune; but i am prepared for it.' 'are you sure you are prepared?' 'o yes! you are my husband.' 'you really feel quite confident that nothing external can affect you?' he said again, in a voice rendered uncertain by his agitation. 'i think i am--quite,' she answered faintly. he bent his head. 'i hope, i hope you are,' he whispered. in the pause which followed, the ticking of the clock in the hall seemed to grow loud; and he turned a little aside to remove the mask. she breathlessly awaited the operation, which was one of some tediousness, watching him one moment, averting her face the next; and when it was done she shut her eyes at the hideous spectacle that was revealed. a quick spasm of horror had passed through her; but though she quailed she forced herself to regard him anew, repressing the cry that would naturally have escaped from her ashy lips. unable to look at him longer, barbara sank down on the floor beside her chair, covering her eyes. 'you cannot look at me!' he groaned in a hopeless way. 'i am too terrible an object even for you to bear! i knew it; yet i hoped against it. oh, this is a bitter fate--curse the skill of those venetian surgeons who saved me alive! . . . look up, barbara,' he continued beseechingly; 'view me completely; say you loathe me, if you do loathe me, and settle the case between us for ever!' his unhappy wife pulled herself together for a desperate strain. he was her edmond; he had done her no wrong; he had suffered. a momentary devotion to him helped her, and lifting her eyes as bidden she regarded this human remnant, this _ecorche_, a second time. but the sight was too much. she again involuntarily looked aside and shuddered. 'do you think you can get used to this?' he said. 'yes or no! can you bear such a thing of the charnel-house near you? judge for yourself; barbara. your adonis, your matchless man, has come to this!' the poor lady stood beside him motionless, save for the restlessness of her eyes. all her natural sentiments of affection and pity were driven clean out of her by a sort of panic; she had just the same sense of dismay and fearfulness that she would have had in the presence of an apparition. she could nohow fancy this to be her chosen one--the man she had loved; he was metamorphosed to a specimen of another species. 'i do not loathe you,' she said with trembling. 'but i am so horrified--so overcome! let me recover myself. will you sup now? and while you do so may i go to my room to--regain my old feeling for you? i will try, if i may leave you awhile? yes, i will try!' without waiting for an answer from him, and keeping her gaze carefully averted, the frightened woman crept to the door and out of the room. she heard him sit down to the table, as if to begin supper though, heaven knows, his appetite was slight enough after a reception which had confirmed his worst surmises. when barbara had ascended the stairs and arrived in her chamber she sank down, and buried her face in the coverlet of the bed. thus she remained for some time. the bed-chamber was over the dining- room, and presently as she knelt barbara heard willowes thrust back his chair, and rise to go into the hall. in five minutes that figure would probably come up the stairs and confront her again; it,--this new and terrible form, that was not her husband's. in the loneliness of this night, with neither maid nor friend beside her, she lost all self-control, and at the first sound of his footstep on the stairs, without so much as flinging a cloak round her, she flew from the room, ran along the gallery to the back staircase, which she descended, and, unlocking the back door, let herself out. she scarcely was aware what she had done till she found herself in the greenhouse, crouching on a flower-stand. here she remained, her great timid eyes strained through the glass upon the garden without, and her skirts gathered up, in fear of the field-mice which sometimes came there. every moment she dreaded to hear footsteps which she ought by law to have longed for, and a voice that should have been as music to her soul. but edmond willowes came not that way. the nights were getting short at this season, and soon the dawn appeared, and the first rays of the sun. by daylight she had less fear than in the dark. she thought she could meet him, and accustom herself to the spectacle. so the much-tried young woman unfastened the door of the hot-house, and went back by the way she had emerged a few hours ago. her poor husband was probably in bed and asleep, his journey having been long; and she made as little noise as possible in her entry. the house was just as she had left it, and she looked about in the hall for his cloak and hat, but she could not see them; nor did she perceive the small trunk which had been all that he brought with him, his heavier baggage having been left at southampton for the road-waggon. she summoned courage to mount the stairs; the bedroom-door was open as she had left it. she fearfully peeped round; the bed had not been pressed. perhaps he had lain down on the dining-room sofa. she descended and entered; he was not there. on the table beside his unsoiled plate lay a note, hastily written on the leaf of a pocket-book. it was something like this: 'my ever-beloved wife--the effect that my forbidding appearance has produced upon you was one which i foresaw as quite possible. i hoped against it, but foolishly so. i was aware that no _human_ love could survive such a catastrophe. i confess i thought yours _divine_; but, after so long an absence, there could not be left sufficient warmth to overcome the too natural first aversion. it was an experiment, and it has failed. i do not blame you; perhaps, even, it is better so. good- bye. i leave england for one year. you will see me again at the expiration of that time, if i live. then i will ascertain your true feeling; and, if it be against me, go away for ever. e. w.' on recovering from her surprise, barbara's remorse was such that she felt herself absolutely unforgiveable. she should have regarded him as an afflicted being, and not have been this slave to mere eyesight, like a child. to follow him and entreat him to return was her first thought. but on making inquiries she found that nobody had seen him: he had silently disappeared. more than this, to undo the scene of last night was impossible. her terror had been too plain, and he was a man unlikely to be coaxed back by her efforts to do her duty. she went and confessed to her parents all that had occurred; which, indeed, soon became known to more persons than those of her own family. the year passed, and he did not return; and it was doubted if he were alive. barbara's contrition for her unconquerable repugnance was now such that she longed to build a church-aisle, or erect a monument, and devote herself to deeds of charity for the remainder of her days. to that end she made inquiry of the excellent parson under whom she sat on sundays, at a vertical distance of twenty feet. but he could only adjust his wig and tap his snuff-box; for such was the lukewarm state of religion in those days, that not an aisle, steeple, porch, east window, ten-commandment board, lion-and-unicorn, or brass candlestick, was required anywhere at all in the neighbourhood as a votive offering from a distracted soul--the last century contrasting greatly in this respect with the happy times in which we live, when urgent appeals for contributions to such objects pour in by every morning's post, and nearly all churches have been made to look like new pennies. as the poor lady could not ease her conscience this way, she determined at least to be charitable, and soon had the satisfaction of finding her porch thronged every morning by the raggedest, idlest, most drunken, hypocritical, and worthless tramps in christendom. but human hearts are as prone to change as the leaves of the creeper on the wall, and in the course of time, hearing nothing of her husband, barbara could sit unmoved whilst her mother and friends said in her hearing, 'well, what has happened is for the best.' she began to think so herself; for even now she could not summon up that lopped and mutilated form without a shiver, though whenever her mind flew back to her early wedded days, and the man who had stood beside her then, a thrill of tenderness moved her, which if quickened by his living presence might have become strong. she was young and inexperienced, and had hardly on his late return grown out of the capricious fancies of girlhood. but he did not come again, and when she thought of his word that he would return once more, if living, and how unlikely he was to break his word, she gave him up for dead. so did her parents; so also did another person--that man of silence, of irresistible incisiveness, of still countenance, who was as awake as seven sentinels when he seemed to be as sound asleep as the figures on his family monument. lord uplandtowers, though not yet thirty, had chuckled like a caustic fogey of threescore when he heard of barbara's terror and flight at her husband's return, and of the latter's prompt departure. he felt pretty sure, however, that willowes, despite his hurt feelings, would have reappeared to claim his bright-eyed property if he had been alive at the end of the twelve months. as there was no husband to live with her, barbara had relinquished the house prepared for them by her father, and taken up her abode anew at chene manor, as in the days of her girlhood. by degrees the episode with edmond willowes seemed but a fevered dream, and as the months grew to years lord uplandtowers' friendship with the people at chene--which had somewhat cooled after barbara's elopement--revived considerably, and he again became a frequent visitor there. he could not make the most trivial alteration or improvement at knollingwood hall, where he lived, without riding off to consult with his friend sir john at chene; and thus putting himself frequently under her eyes, barbara grew accustomed to him, and talked to him as freely as to a brother. she even began to look up to him as a person of authority, judgment, and prudence; and though his severity on the bench towards poachers, smugglers, and turnip-stealers was matter of common notoriety, she trusted that much of what was said might be misrepresentation. thus they lived on till her husband's absence had stretched to years, and there could be no longer any doubt of his death. a passionless manner of renewing his addresses seemed no longer out of place in lord uplandtowers. barbara did not love him, but hers was essentially one of those sweet-pea or with-wind natures which require a twig of stouter fibre than its own to hang upon and bloom. now, too, she was older, and admitted to herself that a man whose ancestor had run scores of saracens through and through in fighting for the site of the holy sepulchre was a more desirable husband, socially considered, than one who could only claim with certainty to know that his father and grandfather were respectable burgesses. sir john took occasion to inform her that she might legally consider herself a widow; and, in brief; lord uplandtowers carried his point with her, and she married him, though he could never get her to own that she loved him as she had loved willowes. in my childhood i knew an old lady whose mother saw the wedding, and she said that when lord and lady uplandtowers drove away from her father's house in the evening it was in a coach-and-four, and that my lady was dressed in green and silver, and wore the gayest hat and feather that ever were seen; though whether it was that the green did not suit her complexion, or otherwise, the countess looked pale, and the reverse of blooming. after their marriage her husband took her to london, and she saw the gaieties of a season there; then they returned to knollingwood hall, and thus a year passed away. before their marriage her husband had seemed to care but little about her inability to love him passionately. 'only let me win you,' he had said, 'and i will submit to all that.' but now her lack of warmth seemed to irritate him, and he conducted himself towards her with a resentfulness which led to her passing many hours with him in painful silence. the heir-presumptive to the title was a remote relative, whom lord uplandtowers did not exclude from the dislike he entertained towards many persons and things besides, and he had set his mind upon a lineal successor. he blamed her much that there was no promise of this, and asked her what she was good for. on a particular day in her gloomy life a letter, addressed to her as mrs. willowes, reached lady uplandtowers from an unexpected quarter. a sculptor in pisa, knowing nothing of her second marriage, informed her that the long-delayed life-size statue of mr. willowes, which, when her husband left that city, he had been directed to retain till it was sent for, was still in his studio. as his commission had not wholly been paid, and the statue was taking up room he could ill spare, he should be glad to have the debt cleared off, and directions where to forward the figure. arriving at a time when the countess was beginning to have little secrets (of a harmless kind, it is true) from her husband, by reason of their growing estrangement, she replied to this letter without saying a word to lord uplandtowers, sending off the balance that was owing to the sculptor, and telling him to despatch the statue to her without delay. it was some weeks before it arrived at knollingwood hall, and, by a singular coincidence, during the interval she received the first absolutely conclusive tidings of her edmond's death. it had taken place years before, in a foreign land, about six months after their parting, and had been induced by the sufferings he had already undergone, coupled with much depression of spirit, which had caused him to succumb to a slight ailment. the news was sent her in a brief and formal letter from some relative of willowes's in another part of england. her grief took the form of passionate pity for his misfortunes, and of reproach to herself for never having been able to conquer her aversion to his latter image by recollection of what nature had originally made him. the sad spectacle that had gone from earth had never been her edmond at all to her. o that she could have met him as he was at first! thus barbara thought. it was only a few days later that a waggon with two horses, containing an immense packing-case, was seen at breakfast-time both by barbara and her husband to drive round to the back of the house, and by-and-by they were informed that a case labelled 'sculpture' had arrived for her ladyship. 'what can that be?' said lord uplandtowers. 'it is the statue of poor edmond, which belongs to me, but has never been sent till now,' she answered. 'where are you going to put it?' asked he. 'i have not decided,' said the countess. 'anywhere, so that it will not annoy you.' 'oh, it won't annoy me,' says he. when it had been unpacked in a back room of the house, they went to examine it. the statue was a full-length figure, in the purest carrara marble, representing edmond willowes in all his original beauty, as he had stood at parting from her when about to set out on his travels; a specimen of manhood almost perfect in every line and contour. the work had been carried out with absolute fidelity. 'phoebus-apollo, sure,' said the earl of uplandtowers, who had never seen willowes, real or represented, till now. barbara did not hear him. she was standing in a sort of trance before the first husband, as if she had no consciousness of the other husband at her side. the mutilated features of willowes had disappeared from her mind's eye; this perfect being was really the man she had loved, and not that later pitiable figure; in whom love and truth should have seen this image always, but had not done so. it was not till lord uplandtowers said roughly, 'are you going to stay here all the morning worshipping him?' that she roused herself. her husband had not till now the least suspicion that edmond willowes originally looked thus, and he thought how deep would have been his jealousy years ago if willowes had been known to him. returning to the hall in the afternoon he found his wife in the gallery, whither the statue had been brought. she was lost in reverie before it, just as in the morning. 'what are you doing?' he asked. she started and turned. 'i am looking at my husb--- my statue, to see if it is well done,' she stammered. 'why should i not?' 'there's no reason why,' he said. 'what are you going to do with the monstrous thing? it can't stand here for ever.' 'i don't wish it,' she said. 'i'll find a place.' in her boudoir there was a deep recess, and while the earl was absent from home for a few days in the following week, she hired joiners from the village, who under her directions enclosed the recess with a panelled door. into the tabernacle thus formed she had the statue placed, fastening the door with a lock, the key of which she kept in her pocket. when her husband returned he missed the statue from the gallery, and, concluding that it had been put away out of deference to his feelings, made no remark. yet at moments he noticed something on his lady's face which he had never noticed there before. he could not construe it; it was a sort of silent ecstasy, a reserved beatification. what had become of the statue he could not divine, and growing more and more curious, looked about here and there for it till, thinking of her private room, he went towards that spot. after knocking he heard the shutting of a door, and the click of a key; but when he entered his wife was sitting at work, on what was in those days called knotting. lord uplandtowers' eye fell upon the newly-painted door where the recess had formerly been. 'you have been carpentering in my absence then, barbara,' he said carelessly. 'yes, uplandtowers.' 'why did you go putting up such a tasteless enclosure as that--spoiling the handsome arch of the alcove?' 'i wanted more closet-room; and i thought that as this was my own apartment--' 'of course,' he returned. lord uplandtowers knew now where the statue of young willowes was. one night, or rather in the smallest hours of the morning, he missed the countess from his side. not being a man of nervous imaginings he fell asleep again before he had much considered the matter, and the next morning had forgotten the incident. but a few nights later the same circumstances occurred. this time he fully roused himself; but before he had moved to search for her, she entered the chamber in her dressing-gown, carrying a candle, which she extinguished as she approached, deeming him asleep. he could discover from her breathing that she was strangely moved; but not on this occasion either did he reveal that he had seen her. presently, when she had lain down, affecting to wake, he asked her some trivial questions. 'yes, _edmond_,' she replied absently. lord uplandtowers became convinced that she was in the habit of leaving the chamber in this queer way more frequently than he had observed, and he determined to watch. the next midnight he feigned deep sleep, and shortly after perceived her stealthily rise and let herself out of the room in the dark. he slipped on some clothing and followed. at the farther end of the corridor, where the clash of flint and steel would be out of the hearing of one in the bed-chamber, she struck a light. he stepped aside into an empty room till she had lit a taper and had passed on to her boudoir. in a minute or two he followed. arrived at the door of the boudoir, he beheld the door of the private recess open, and barbara within it, standing with her arms clasped tightly round the neck of her edmond, and her mouth on his. the shawl which she had thrown round her nightclothes had slipped from her shoulders, and her long white robe and pale face lent her the blanched appearance of a second statue embracing the first. between her kisses, she apostrophized it in a low murmur of infantine tenderness: 'my only love--how could i be so cruel to you, my perfect one--so good and true--i am ever faithful to you, despite my seeming infidelity! i always think of you--dream of you--during the long hours of the day, and in the night-watches! o edmond, i am always yours!' such words as these, intermingled with sobs, and streaming tears, and dishevelled hair, testified to an intensity of feeling in his wife which lord uplandtowers had not dreamed of her possessing. 'ha, ha!' says he to himself. 'this is where we evaporate--this is where my hopes of a successor in the title dissolve--ha, ha! this must be seen to, verily!' lord uplandtowers was a subtle man when once he set himself to strategy; though in the present instance he never thought of the simple stratagem of constant tenderness. nor did he enter the room and surprise his wife as a blunderer would have done, but went back to his chamber as silently as he had left it. when the countess returned thither, shaken by spent sobs and sighs, he appeared to be soundly sleeping as usual. the next day he began his countermoves by making inquiries as to the whereabouts of the tutor who had travelled with his wife's first husband; this gentleman, he found, was now master of a grammar-school at no great distance from knollingwood. at the first convenient moment lord uplandtowers went thither and obtained an interview with the said gentleman. the schoolmaster was much gratified by a visit from such an influential neighbour, and was ready to communicate anything that his lordship desired to know. after some general conversation on the school and its progress, the visitor observed that he believed the schoolmaster had once travelled a good deal with the unfortunate mr. willowes, and had been with him on the occasion of his accident. he, lord uplandtowers, was interested in knowing what had really happened at that time, and had often thought of inquiring. and then the earl not only heard by word of mouth as much as he wished to know, but, their chat becoming more intimate, the schoolmaster drew upon paper a sketch of the disfigured head, explaining with bated breath various details in the representation. 'it was very strange and terrible!' said lord uplandtowers, taking the sketch in his hand. 'neither nose nor ears!' a poor man in the town nearest to knollingwood hall, who combined the art of sign-painting with ingenious mechanical occupations, was sent for by lord uplandtowers to come to the hall on a day in that week when the countess had gone on a short visit to her parents. his employer made the man understand that the business in which his assistance was demanded was to be considered private, and money insured the observance of this request. the lock of the cupboard was picked, and the ingenious mechanic and painter, assisted by the schoolmaster's sketch, which lord uplandtowers had put in his pocket, set to work upon the god-like countenance of the statue under my lord's direction. what the fire had maimed in the original the chisel maimed in the copy. it was a fiendish disfigurement, ruthlessly carried out, and was rendered still more shocking by being tinted to the hues of life, as life had been after the wreck. six hours after, when the workman was gone, lord uplandtowers looked upon the result, and smiled grimly, and said: 'a statue should represent a man as he appeared in life, and that's as he appeared. ha! ha! but 'tis done to good purpose, and not idly.' he locked the door of the closet with a skeleton key, and went his way to fetch the countess home. that night she slept, but he kept awake. according to the tale, she murmured soft words in her dream; and he knew that the tender converse of her imaginings was held with one whom he had supplanted but in name. at the end of her dream the countess of uplandtowers awoke and arose, and then the enactment of former nights was repeated. her husband remained still and listened. two strokes sounded from the clock in the pediment without, when, leaving the chamber-door ajar, she passed along the corridor to the other end, where, as usual, she obtained a light. so deep was the silence that he could even from his bed hear her softly blowing the tinder to a glow after striking the steel. she moved on into the boudoir, and he heard, or fancied he heard, the turning of the key in the closet-door. the next moment there came from that direction a loud and prolonged shriek, which resounded to the farthest corners of the house. it was repeated, and there was the noise of a heavy fall. lord uplandtowers sprang out of bed. he hastened along the dark corridor to the door of the boudoir, which stood ajar, and, by the light of the candle within, saw his poor young countess lying in a heap in her nightdress on the floor of the closet. when he reached her side he found that she had fainted, much to the relief of his fears that matters were worse. he quickly shut up and locked in the hated image which had done the mischief; and lifted his wife in his arms, where in a few instants she opened her eyes. pressing her face to his without saying a word, he carried her back to her room, endeavouring as he went to disperse her terrors by a laugh in her ear, oddly compounded of causticity, predilection, and brutality. 'ho--ho--ho!' says he. 'frightened, dear one, hey? what a baby 'tis! only a joke, sure, barbara--a splendid joke! but a baby should not go to closets at midnight to look for the ghost of the dear departed! if it do it must expect to be terrified at his aspect--ho--ho--ho!' when she was in her bed-chamber, and had quite come to herself; though her nerves were still much shaken, he spoke to her more sternly. 'now, my lady, answer me: do you love him--eh?' 'no--no!' she faltered, shuddering, with her expanded eyes fixed on her husband. 'he is too terrible--no, no!' 'you are sure?' 'quite sure!' replied the poor broken-spirited countess. but her natural elasticity asserted itself. next morning he again inquired of her: 'do you love him now?' she quailed under his gaze, but did not reply. 'that means that you do still, by g---!' he continued. 'it means that i will not tell an untruth, and do not wish to incense my lord,' she answered, with dignity. 'then suppose we go and have another look at him?' as he spoke, he suddenly took her by the wrist, and turned as if to lead her towards the ghastly closet. 'no--no! oh--no!' she cried, and her desperate wriggle out of his hand revealed that the fright of the night had left more impression upon her delicate soul than superficially appeared. 'another dose or two, and she will be cured,' he said to himself. it was now so generally known that the earl and countess were not in accord, that he took no great trouble to disguise his deeds in relation to this matter. during the day he ordered four men with ropes and rollers to attend him in the boudoir. when they arrived, the closet was open, and the upper part of the statue tied up in canvas. he had it taken to the sleeping-chamber. what followed is more or less matter of conjecture. the story, as told to me, goes on to say that, when lady uplandtowers retired with him that night, she saw near the foot of the heavy oak four-poster, a tall dark wardrobe, which had not stood there before; but she did not ask what its presence meant. 'i have had a little whim,' he explained when they were in the dark. 'have you?' says she. 'to erect a little shrine, as it may be called.' 'a little shrine?' 'yes; to one whom we both equally adore--eh? i'll show you what it contains.' he pulled a cord which hung covered by the bed-curtains, and the doors of the wardrobe slowly opened, disclosing that the shelves within had been removed throughout, and the interior adapted to receive the ghastly figure, which stood there as it had stood in the boudoir, but with a wax- candle burning on each side of it to throw the cropped and distorted features into relief. she clutched him, uttered a low scream, and buried her head in the bedclothes. 'oh, take it away--please take it away!' she implored. 'all in good time namely, when you love me best,' he returned calmly. 'you don't quite yet--eh?' 'i don't know--i think--o uplandtowers, have mercy--i cannot bear it--o, in pity, take it away!' 'nonsense; one gets accustomed to anything. take another gaze.' in short, he allowed the doors to remain unclosed at the foot of the bed, and the wax-tapers burning; and such was the strange fascination of the grisly exhibition that a morbid curiosity took possession of the countess as she lay, and, at his repeated request, she did again look out from the coverlet, shuddered, hid her eyes, and looked again, all the while begging him to take it away, or it would drive her out of her senses. but he would not do so as yet, and the wardrobe was not locked till dawn. the scene was repeated the next night. firm in enforcing his ferocious correctives, he continued the treatment till the nerves of the poor lady were quivering in agony under the virtuous tortures inflicted by her lord, to bring her truant heart back to faithfulness. the third night, when the scene had opened as usual, and she lay staring with immense wild eyes at the horrid fascination, on a sudden she gave an unnatural laugh; she laughed more and more, staring at the image, till she literally shrieked with laughter: then there was silence, and he found her to have become insensible. he thought she had fainted, but soon saw that the event was worse: she was in an epileptic fit. he started up, dismayed by the sense that, like many other subtle personages, he had been too exacting for his own interests. such love as he was capable of, though rather a selfish gloating than a cherishing solicitude, was fanned into life on the instant. he closed the wardrobe with the pulley, clasped her in his arms, took her gently to the window, and did all he could to restore her. it was a long time before the countess came to herself, and when she did so, a considerable change seemed to have taken place in her emotions. she flung her arms around him, and with gasps of fear abjectly kissed him many times, at last bursting into tears. she had never wept in this scene before. 'you'll take it away, dearest--you will!' she begged plaintively. 'if you love me.' 'i do--oh, i do!' 'and hate him, and his memory?' 'yes--yes!' 'thoroughly?' 'i cannot endure recollection of him!' cried the poor countess slavishly. 'it fills me with shame--how could i ever be so depraved! i'll never behave badly again, uplandtowers; and you will never put the hated statue again before my eyes?' he felt that he could promise with perfect safety. 'never,' said he. 'and then i'll love you,' she returned eagerly, as if dreading lest the scourge should be applied anew. 'and i'll never, never dream of thinking a single thought that seems like faithlessness to my marriage vow.' the strange thing now was that this fictitious love wrung from her by terror took on, through mere habit of enactment, a certain quality of reality. a servile mood of attachment to the earl became distinctly visible in her contemporaneously with an actual dislike for her late husband's memory. the mood of attachment grew and continued when the statue was removed. a permanent revulsion was operant in her, which intensified as time wore on. how fright could have effected such a change of idiosyncrasy learned physicians alone can say; but i believe such cases of reactionary instinct are not unknown. the upshot was that the cure became so permanent as to be itself a new disease. she clung to him so tightly, that she would not willingly be out of his sight for a moment. she would have no sitting-room apart from his, though she could not help starting when he entered suddenly to her. her eyes were well-nigh always fixed upon him. if he drove out, she wished to go with him; his slightest civilities to other women made her frantically jealous; till at length her very fidelity became a burden to him, absorbing his time, and curtailing his liberty, and causing him to curse and swear. if he ever spoke sharply to her now, she did not revenge herself by flying off to a mental world of her own; all that affection for another, which had provided her with a resource, was now a cold black cinder. from that time the life of this scared and enervated lady--whose existence might have been developed to so much higher purpose but for the ignoble ambition of her parents and the conventions of the time--was one of obsequious amativeness towards a perverse and cruel man. little personal events came to her in quick succession--half a dozen, eight, nine, ten such events,--in brief; she bore him no less than eleven children in the eight following years, but half of them came prematurely into the world, or died a few days old; only one, a girl, attained to maturity; she in after years became the wife of the honourable mr. beltonleigh, who was created lord d'almaine, as may be remembered. there was no living son and heir. at length, completely worn out in mind and body, lady uplandtowers was taken abroad by her husband, to try the effect of a more genial climate upon her wasted frame. but nothing availed to strengthen her, and she died at florence, a few months after her arrival in italy. contrary to expectation, the earl of uplandtowers did not marry again. such affection as existed in him--strange, hard, brutal as it was--seemed untransferable, and the title, as is known, passed at his death to his nephew. perhaps it may not be so generally known that, during the enlargement of the hall for the sixth earl, while digging in the grounds for the new foundations, the broken fragments of a marble statue were unearthed. they were submitted to various antiquaries, who said that, so far as the damaged pieces would allow them to form an opinion, the statue seemed to be that of a mutilated roman satyr; or if not, an allegorical figure of death. only one or two old inhabitants guessed whose statue those fragments had composed. i should have added that, shortly after the death of the countess, an excellent sermon was preached by the dean of melchester, the subject of which, though names were not mentioned, was unquestionably suggested by the aforesaid events. he dwelt upon the folly of indulgence in sensuous love for a handsome form merely; and showed that the only rational and virtuous growths of that affection were those based upon intrinsic worth. in the case of the tender but somewhat shallow lady whose life i have related, there is no doubt that an infatuation for the person of young willowes was the chief feeling that induced her to marry him; which was the more deplorable in that his beauty, by all tradition, was the least of his recommendations, every report bearing out the inference that he must have been a man of steadfast nature, bright intelligence, and promising life. * * * * * the company thanked the old surgeon for his story, which the rural dean declared to be a far more striking one than anything he could hope to tell. an elderly member of the club, who was mostly called the bookworm, said that a woman's natural instinct of fidelity would, indeed, send back her heart to a man after his death in a truly wonderful manner sometimes--if anything occurred to put before her forcibly the original affection between them, and his original aspect in her eyes,--whatever his inferiority may have been, social or otherwise; and then a general conversation ensued upon the power that a woman has of seeing the actual in the representation, the reality in the dream--a power which (according to the sentimental member) men have no faculty of equalling. the rural dean thought that such cases as that related by the surgeon were rather an illustration of passion electrified back to life than of a latent, true affection. the story had suggested that he should try to recount to them one which he had used to hear in his youth, and which afforded an instance of the latter and better kind of feeling, his heroine being also a lady who had married beneath her, though he feared his narrative would be of a much slighter kind than the surgeon's. the club begged him to proceed, and the parson began. dame the third--the marchioness of stonehenge by the rural dean i would have you know, then, that a great many years ago there lived in a classical mansion with which i used to be familiar, standing not a hundred miles from the city of melchester, a lady whose personal charms were so rare and unparalleled that she was courted, flattered, and spoilt by almost all the young noblemen and gentlemen in that part of wessex. for a time these attentions pleased her well. but as, in the words of good robert south (whose sermons might be read much more than they are), the most passionate lover of sport, if tied to follow his hawks and hounds every day of his life, would find the pursuit the greatest torment and calamity, and would fly to the mines and galleys for his recreation, so did this lofty and beautiful lady after a while become satiated with the constant iteration of what she had in its novelty enjoyed; and by an almost natural revulsion turned her regards absolutely netherward, socially speaking. she perversely and passionately centred her affection on quite a plain-looking young man of humble birth and no position at all; though it is true that he was gentle and delicate in nature, of good address, and guileless heart. in short, he was the parish-clerk's son, acting as assistant to the land-steward of her father, the earl of avon, with the hope of becoming some day a land-steward himself. it should be said that perhaps the lady caroline (as she was called) was a little stimulated in this passion by the discovery that a young girl of the village already loved the young man fondly, and that he had paid some attentions to her, though merely of a casual and good-natured kind. since his occupation brought him frequently to the manor-house and its environs, lady caroline could make ample opportunities of seeing and speaking to him. she had, in chaucer's phrase, 'all the craft of fine loving' at her fingers' ends, and the young man, being of a readily-kindling heart, was quick to notice the tenderness in her eyes and voice. he could not at first believe in his good fortune, having no understanding of her weariness of more artificial men; but a time comes when the stupidest sees in an eye the glance of his other half; and it came to him, who was quite the reverse of dull. as he gained confidence accidental encounters led to encounters by design; till at length when they were alone together there was no reserve on the matter. they whispered tender words as other lovers do, and were as devoted a pair as ever was seen. but not a ray or symptom of this attachment was allowed to show itself to the outer world. now, as she became less and less scrupulous towards him under the influence of her affection, and he became more and more reverential under the influence of his, and they looked the situation in the face together, their condition seemed intolerable in its hopelessness. that she could ever ask to be allowed to marry him, or could hold her tongue and quietly renounce him, was equally beyond conception. they resolved upon a third course, possessing neither of the disadvantages of these two: to wed secretly, and live on in outward appearance the same as before. in this they differed from the lovers of my friend's story. not a soul in the parental mansion guessed, when lady caroline came coolly into the hall one day after a visit to her aunt, that, during that visit, her lover and herself had found an opportunity of uniting themselves till death should part them. yet such was the fact; the young woman who rode fine horses, and drove in pony-chaises, and was saluted deferentially by every one, and the young man who trudged about, and directed the tree-felling, and the laying out of fish-ponds in the park, were husband and wife. as they had planned, so they acted to the letter for the space of a month and more, clandestinely meeting when and where they best could do so; both being supremely happy and content. to be sure, towards the latter part of that month, when the first wild warmth of her love had gone off, the lady caroline sometimes wondered within herself how she, who might have chosen a peer of the realm, baronet, knight; or, if serious-minded, a bishop or judge of the more gallant sort who prefer young wives, could have brought herself to do a thing so rash as to make this marriage; particularly when, in their private meetings, she perceived that though her young husband was full of ideas, and fairly well read, they had not a single social experience in common. it was his custom to visit her after nightfall, in her own house, when he could find no opportunity for an interview elsewhere; and to further this course she would contrive to leave unfastened a window on the ground-floor overlooking the lawn, by entering which a back stair-case was accessible; so that he could climb up to her apartments, and gain audience of his lady when the house was still. one dark midnight, when he had not been able to see her during the day, he made use of this secret method, as he had done many times before; and when they had remained in company about an hour he declared that it was time for him to descend. he would have stayed longer, but that the interview had been a somewhat painful one. what she had said to him that night had much excited and angered him, for it had revealed a change in her; cold reason had come to his lofty wife; she was beginning to have more anxiety about her own position and prospects than ardour for him. whether from the agitation of this perception or not, he was seized with a spasm; he gasped, rose, and in moving towards the window for air he uttered in a short thick whisper, 'oh, my heart!' with his hand upon his chest he sank down to the floor before he had gone another step. by the time that she had relighted the candle, which had been extinguished in case any eye in the opposite grounds should witness his egress, she found that his poor heart had ceased to beat; and there rushed upon her mind what his cottage-friends had once told her, that he was liable to attacks of heart-disease, one of which, the doctor had informed them, might some day carry him off. accustomed as she was to doctoring the other parishioners, nothing that she could effect upon him in that kind made any difference whatever; and his stillness, and the increasing coldness of his feet and hands, disclosed too surely to the affrighted young woman that her husband was dead indeed. for more than an hour, however, she did not abandon her efforts to restore him; when she fully realized the fact that he was a corpse she bent over his body, distracted and bewildered as to what step she next should take. her first feelings had undoubtedly been those of passionate grief at the loss of him; her second thoughts were concern at her own position as the daughter of an earl. 'oh, why, why, my unfortunate husband, did you die in my chamber at this hour!' she said piteously to the corpse. 'why not have died in your own cottage if you would die! then nobody would ever have known of our imprudent union, and no syllable would have been breathed of how i mismated myself for love of you!' the clock in the courtyard striking the hour of one aroused lady caroline from the stupor into which she had fallen, and she stood up, and went towards the door. to awaken and tell her mother seemed her only way out of this terrible situation; yet when she put her hand on the key to unlock it she withdrew herself again. it would be impossible to call even her mother's assistance without risking a revelation to all the world through the servants; while if she could remove the body unassisted to a distance she might avert suspicion of their union even now. this thought of immunity from the social consequences of her rash act, of renewed freedom, was indubitably a relief to her, for, as has been said, the constraint and riskiness of her position had begun to tell upon the lady caroline's nerves. she braced herself for the effort, and hastily dressed herself; and then dressed him. tying his dead hands together with a handkerchief; she laid his arms round her shoulders, and bore him to the landing and down the narrow stairs. reaching the bottom by the window, she let his body slide slowly over the sill till it lay on the ground without. she then climbed over the window-sill herself, and, leaving the sash open, dragged him on to the lawn with a rustle not louder than the rustle of a broom. there she took a securer hold, and plunged with him under the trees. away from the precincts of the house she could apply herself more vigorously to her task, which was a heavy one enough for her, robust as she was; and the exertion and fright she had already undergone began to tell upon her by the time she reached the corner of a beech-plantation which intervened between the manor-house and the village. here she was so nearly exhausted that she feared she might have to leave him on the spot. but she plodded on after a while, and keeping upon the grass at every opportunity she stood at last opposite the poor young man's garden- gate, where he lived with his father, the parish-clerk. how she accomplished the end of her task lady caroline never quite knew; but, to avoid leaving traces in the road, she carried him bodily across the gravel, and laid him down at the door. perfectly aware of his ways of coming and going, she searched behind the shutter for the cottage door- key, which she placed in his cold hand. then she kissed his face for the last time, and with silent little sobs bade him farewell. lady caroline retraced her steps, and reached the mansion without hindrance; and to her great relief found the window open just as she had left it. when she had climbed in she listened attentively, fastened the window behind her, and ascending the stairs noiselessly to her room, set everything in order, and returned to bed. the next morning it was speedily echoed around that the amiable and gentle young villager had been found dead outside his father's door, which he had apparently been in the act of unlocking when he fell. the circumstances were sufficiently exceptional to justify an inquest, at which syncope from heart-disease was ascertained to be beyond doubt the explanation of his death, and no more was said about the matter then. but, after the funeral, it was rumoured that some man who had been returning late from a distant horse-fair had seen in the gloom of night a person, apparently a woman, dragging a heavy body of some sort towards the cottage-gate, which, by the light of after events, would seem to have been the corpse of the young fellow. his clothes were thereupon examined more particularly than at first, with the result that marks of friction were visible upon them here and there, precisely resembling such as would be left by dragging on the ground. our beautiful and ingenious lady caroline was now in great consternation; and began to think that, after all, it might have been better to honestly confess the truth. but having reached this stage without discovery or suspicion, she determined to make another effort towards concealment; and a bright idea struck her as a means of securing it. i think i mentioned that, before she cast eyes on the unfortunate steward's clerk, he had been the beloved of a certain village damsel, the woodman's daughter, his neighbour, to whom he had paid some attentions; and possibly he was beloved of her still. at any rate, the lady caroline's influence on the estates of her father being considerable, she resolved to seek an interview with the young girl in furtherance of her plan to save her reputation, about which she was now exceedingly anxious; for by this time, the fit being over, she began to be ashamed of her mad passion for her late husband, and almost wished she had never seen him. in the course of her parish-visiting she lighted on the young girl without much difficulty, and found her looking pale and sad, and wearing a simple black gown, which she had put on out of respect for the young man's memory, whom she had tenderly loved, though he had not loved her. 'ah, you have lost your lover, milly,' said lady caroline. the young woman could not repress her tears. 'my lady, he was not quite my lover,' she said. 'but i was his--and now he is dead i don't care to live any more!' 'can you keep a secret about him?' asks the lady; 'one in which his honour is involved--which is known to me alone, but should be known to you?' the girl readily promised, and, indeed, could be safely trusted on such a subject, so deep was her affection for the youth she mourned. 'then meet me at his grave to-night, half-an-hour after sunset, and i will tell it to you,' says the other. in the dusk of that spring evening the two shadowy figures of the young women converged upon the assistant-steward's newly-turfed mound; and at that solemn place and hour, the one of birth and beauty unfolded her tale: how she had loved him and married him secretly; how he had died in her chamber; and how, to keep her secret, she had dragged him to his own door. 'married him, my lady!' said the rustic maiden, starting back. 'i have said so,' replied lady caroline. 'but it was a mad thing, and a mistaken course. he ought to have married you. you, milly, were peculiarly his. but you lost him.' 'yes,' said the poor girl; 'and for that they laughed at me. "ha--ha, you mid love him, milly," they said; "but he will not love you!"' 'victory over such unkind jeerers would be sweet,' said lady caroline. 'you lost him in life; but you may have him in death _as if_ you had had him in life; and so turn the tables upon them.' 'how?' said the breathless girl. the young lady then unfolded her plan, which was that milly should go forward and declare that the young man had contracted a secret marriage (as he truly had done); that it was with her, milly, his sweetheart; that he had been visiting her in her cottage on the evening of his death; when, on finding he was a corpse, she had carried him to his house to prevent discovery by her parents, and that she had meant to keep the whole matter a secret till the rumours afloat had forced it from her. 'and how shall i prove this?' said the woodman's daughter, amazed at the boldness of the proposal. 'quite sufficiently. you can say, if necessary, that you were married to him at the church of st. michael, in bath city, in my name, as the first that occurred to you, to escape detection. that was where he married me. i will support you in this.' 'oh--i don't quite like--' 'if you will do so,' said the lady peremptorily, 'i will always be your father's friend and yours; if not, it will be otherwise. and i will give you my wedding-ring, which you shall wear as yours.' 'have you worn it, my lady?' 'only at night.' there was not much choice in the matter, and milly consented. then this noble lady took from her bosom the ring she had never been able openly to exhibit, and, grasping the young girl's hand, slipped it upon her finger as she stood upon her lover's grave. milly shivered, and bowed her head, saying, 'i feel as if i had become a corpse's bride!' but from that moment the maiden was heart and soul in the substitution. a blissful repose came over her spirit. it seemed to her that she had secured in death him whom in life she had vainly idolized; and she was almost content. after that the lady handed over to the young man's new wife all the little mementoes and trinkets he had given herself; even to a locket containing his hair. the next day the girl made her so-called confession, which the simple mourning she had already worn, without stating for whom, seemed to bear out; and soon the story of the little romance spread through the village and country-side, almost as far as melchester. it was a curious psychological fact that, having once made the avowal, milly seemed possessed with a spirit of ecstasy at her position. with the liberal sum of money supplied to her by lady caroline she now purchased the garb of a widow, and duly appeared at church in her weeds, her simple face looking so sweet against its margin of crape that she was almost envied her state by the other village-girls of her age. and when a woman's sorrow for her beloved can maim her young life so obviously as it had done milly's there was, in truth, little subterfuge in the case. her explanation tallied so well with the details of her lover's latter movements--those strange absences and sudden returnings, which had occasionally puzzled his friends--that nobody supposed for a moment that the second actor in these secret nuptials was other than she. the actual and whole truth would indeed have seemed a preposterous assertion beside this plausible one, by reason of the lofty demeanour of the lady caroline and the unassuming habits of the late villager. there being no inheritance in question, not a soul took the trouble to go to the city church, forty miles off, and search the registers for marriage signatures bearing out so humble a romance. in a short time milly caused a decent tombstone to be erected over her nominal husband's grave, whereon appeared the statement that it was placed there by his heartbroken widow, which, considering that the payment for it came from lady caroline and the grief from milly, was as truthful as such inscriptions usually are, and only required pluralizing to render it yet more nearly so. the impressionable and complaisant milly, in her character of widow, took delight in going to his grave every day, and indulging in sorrow which was a positive luxury to her. she placed fresh flowers on his grave, and so keen was her emotional imaginativeness that she almost believed herself to have been his wife indeed as she walked to and fro in her garb of woe. one afternoon, milly being busily engaged in this labour of love at the grave, lady caroline passed outside the churchyard wall with some of her visiting friends, who, seeing milly there, watched her actions with interest, remarked upon the pathos of the scene, and upon the intense affection the young man must have felt for such a tender creature as milly. a strange light, as of pain, shot from the lady caroline's eye, as if for the first time she begrudged to the young girl the position she had been at such pains to transfer to her; it showed that a slumbering affection for her husband still had life in lady caroline, obscured and stifled as it was by social considerations. an end was put to this smooth arrangement by the sudden appearance in the churchyard one day of the lady caroline, when milly had come there on her usual errand of laying flowers. lady caroline had been anxiously awaiting her behind the chancel, and her countenance was pale and agitated. 'milly!' she said, 'come here! i don't know how to say to you what i am going to say. i am half dead!' 'i am sorry for your ladyship,' says milly, wondering. 'give me that ring!' says the lady, snatching at the girl's left hand. milly drew it quickly away. 'i tell you give it to me!' repeated caroline, almost fiercely. 'oh--but you don't know why? i am in a grief and a trouble i did not expect!' and lady caroline whispered a few words to the girl. 'o my lady!' said the thunderstruck milly. 'what _will_ you do?' 'you must say that your statement was a wicked lie, an invention, a scandal, a deadly sin--that i told you to make it to screen me! that it was i whom he married at bath. in short, we must tell the truth, or i am ruined--body, mind, and reputation--for ever!' but there is a limit to the flexibility of gentle-souled women. milly by this time had so grown to the idea of being one flesh with this young man, of having the right to bear his name as she bore it; had so thoroughly come to regard him as her husband, to dream of him as her husband, to speak of him as her husband, that she could not relinquish him at a moment's peremptory notice. 'no, no,' she said desperately, 'i cannot, i will not give him up! your ladyship took him away from me alive, and gave him back to me only when he was dead. now i will keep him! i am truly his widow. more truly than you, my lady! for i love him and mourn for him, and call myself by his dear name, and your ladyship does neither!' 'i _do_ love him!' cries lady caroline with flashing eyes, 'and i cling to him, and won't let him go to such as you! how can i, when he is the father of this poor babe that's coming to me? i must have him back again! milly, milly, can't you pity and understand me, perverse girl that you are, and the miserable plight that i am in? oh, this precipitancy--it is the ruin of women! why did i not consider, and wait! come, give me back all that i have given you, and assure me you will support me in confessing the truth!' 'never, never!' persisted milly, with woe-begone passionateness. 'look at this headstone! look at my gown and bonnet of crape--this ring: listen to the name they call me by! my character is worth as much to me as yours is to you! after declaring my love mine, myself his, taking his name, making his death my own particular sorrow, how can i say it was not so? no such dishonour for me! i will outswear you, my lady; and i shall be believed. my story is so much the more likely that yours will be thought false. but, o please, my lady, do not drive me to this! in pity let me keep him!' the poor nominal widow exhibited such anguish at a proposal which would have been truly a bitter humiliation to her, that lady caroline was warmed to pity in spite of her own condition. 'yes, i see your position,' she answered. 'but think of mine! what can i do? without your support it would seem an invention to save me from disgrace; even if i produced the register, the love of scandal in the world is such that the multitude would slur over the fact, say it was a fabrication, and believe your story. i do not know who were the witnesses, or anything!' in a few minutes these two poor young women felt, as so many in a strait have felt before, that union was their greatest strength, even now; and they consulted calmly together. the result of their deliberations was that milly went home as usual, and lady caroline also, the latter confessing that very night to the countess her mother of the marriage, and to nobody else in the world. and, some time after, lady caroline and her mother went away to london, where a little while later still they were joined by milly, who was supposed to have left the village to proceed to a watering-place in the north for the benefit of her health, at the expense of the ladies of the manor, who had been much interested in her state of lonely and defenceless widowhood. early the next year the widow milly came home with an infant in her arms, the family at the manor house having meanwhile gone abroad. they did not return from their tour till the autumn ensuing, by which time milly and the child had again departed from the cottage of her father the woodman, milly having attained to the dignity of dwelling in a cottage of her own, many miles to the eastward of her native village; a comfortable little allowance had moreover been settled on her and the child for life, through the instrumentality of lady caroline and her mother. two or three years passed away, and the lady caroline married a nobleman--the marquis of stonehenge--considerably her senior, who had wooed her long and phlegmatically. he was not rich, but she led a placid life with him for many years, though there was no child of the marriage. meanwhile milly's boy, as the youngster was called, and as milly herself considered him, grew up, and throve wonderfully, and loved her as she deserved to be loved for her devotion to him, in whom she every day traced more distinctly the lineaments of the man who had won her girlish heart, and kept it even in the tomb. she educated him as well as she could with the limited means at her disposal, for the allowance had never been increased, lady caroline, or the marchioness of stonehenge as she now was, seeming by degrees to care little what had become of them. milly became extremely ambitious on the boy's account; she pinched herself almost of necessaries to send him to the grammar school in the town to which they retired, and at twenty he enlisted in a cavalry regiment, joining it with a deliberate intent of making the army his profession, and not in a freak of idleness. his exceptional attainments, his manly bearing, his steady conduct, speedily won him promotion, which was furthered by the serious war in which this country was at that time engaged. on his return to england after the peace he had risen to the rank of riding-master, and was soon after advanced another stage, and made quartermaster, though still a young man. his mother--his corporeal mother, that is, the marchioness of stonehenge--heard tidings of this unaided progress; it reawakened her maternal instincts, and filled her with pride. she became keenly interested in her successful soldier-son; and as she grew older much wished to see him again, particularly when, the marquis dying, she was left a solitary and childless widow. whether or not she would have gone to him of her own impulse i cannot say; but one day, when she was driving in an open carriage in the outskirts of a neighbouring town, the troops lying at the barracks hard by passed her in marching order. she eyed them narrowly, and in the finest of the horsemen recognized her son from his likeness to her first husband. this sight of him doubly intensified the motherly emotions which had lain dormant in her for so many years, and she wildly asked herself how she could so have neglected him? had she possessed the true courage of affection she would have owned to her first marriage, and have reared him as her son! what would it have mattered if she had never obtained this precious coronet of pearls and gold leaves, by comparison with the gain of having the love and protection of such a noble and worthy son? these and other sad reflections cut the gloomy and solitary lady to the heart; and she repented of her pride in disclaiming her first husband more bitterly than she had ever repented of her infatuation in marrying him. her yearning was so strong, that at length it seemed to her that she could not live without announcing herself to him as his mother. come what might, she would do it: late as it was, she would have him away from that woman whom she began to hate with the fierceness of a deserted heart, for having taken her place as the mother of her only child. she felt confidently enough that her son would only too gladly exchange a cottage-mother for one who was a peeress of the realm. being now, in her widowhood, free to come and go as she chose, without question from anybody, lady stonehenge started next day for the little town where milly yet lived, still in her robes of sable for the lost lover of her youth. 'he is _my_ son,' said the marchioness, as soon as she was alone in the cottage with milly. 'you must give him back to me, now that i am in a position in which i can defy the world's opinion. i suppose he comes to see you continually?' 'every month since he returned from the war, my lady. and sometimes he stays two or three days, and takes me about seeing sights everywhere!' she spoke with quiet triumph. 'well, you will have to give him up,' said the marchioness calmly. 'it shall not be the worse for you--you may see him when you choose. i am going to avow my first marriage, and have him with me.' 'you forget that there are two to be reckoned with, my lady. not only me, but himself.' 'that can be arranged. you don't suppose that he wouldn't--' but not wishing to insult milly by comparing their positions, she said, 'he is my own flesh and blood, not yours.' 'flesh and blood's nothing!' said milly, flashing with as much scorn as a cottager could show to a peeress, which, in this case, was not so little as may be supposed. 'but i will agree to put it to him, and let him settle it for himself.' 'that's all i require,' said lady stonehenge. 'you must ask him to come, and i will meet him here.' the soldier was written to, and the meeting took place. he was not so much astonished at the disclosure of his parentage as lady stonehenge had been led to expect, having known for years that there was a little mystery about his birth. his manner towards the marchioness, though respectful, was less warm than she could have hoped. the alternatives as to his choice of a mother were put before him. his answer amazed and stupefied her. 'no, my lady,' he said. 'thank you much, but i prefer to let things be as they have been. my father's name is mine in any case. you see, my lady, you cared little for me when i was weak and helpless; why should i come to you now i am strong? she, dear devoted soul [pointing to milly], tended me from my birth, watched over me, nursed me when i was ill, and deprived herself of many a little comfort to push me on. i cannot love another mother as i love her. she _is_ my mother, and i will always be her son!' as he spoke he put his manly arm round milly's neck, and kissed her with the tenderest affection. the agony of the poor marchioness was pitiable. 'you kill me!' she said, between her shaking sobs. 'cannot you--love--me--too?' 'no, my lady. if i must say it, you were ashamed of my poor father, who was a sincere and honest man; therefore, i am ashamed of you.' nothing would move him; and the suffering woman at last gasped, 'cannot--oh, cannot you give one kiss to me--as you did to her? it is not much--it is all i ask--all!' 'certainly,' he replied. he kissed her coldly, and the painful scene came to an end. that day was the beginning of death to the unfortunate marchioness of stonehenge. it was in the perverseness of her human heart that his denial of her should add fuel to the fire of her craving for his love. how long afterwards she lived i do not know with any exactness, but it was no great length of time. that anguish that is sharper than a serpent's tooth wore her out soon. utterly reckless of the world, its ways, and its opinions, she allowed her story to become known; and when the welcome end supervened (which, i grieve to say, she refused to lighten by the consolations of religion), a broken heart was the truest phrase in which to sum up its cause. * * * * * the rural dean having concluded, some observations upon his tale were made in due course. the sentimental member said that lady caroline's history afforded a sad instance of how an honest human affection will become shamefaced and mean under the frost of class-division and social prejudices. she probably deserved some pity; though her offspring, before he grew up to man's estate, had deserved more. there was no pathos like the pathos of childhood, when a child found itself in a world where it was not wanted, and could not understand the reason why. a tale by the speaker, further illustrating the same subject, though with different results from the last, naturally followed. dame the fourth--lady mottisfont by the sentimental member of all the romantic towns in wessex, wintoncester is probably the most convenient for meditative people to live in; since there you have a cathedral with a nave so long that it affords space in which to walk and summon your remoter moods without continually turning on your heel, or seeming to do more than take an afternoon stroll under cover from the rain or sun. in an uninterrupted course of nearly three hundred steps eastward, and again nearly three hundred steps westward amid those magnificent tombs, you can, for instance, compare in the most leisurely way the dry dustiness which ultimately pervades the persons of kings and bishops with the damper dustiness that is usually the final shape of commoners, curates, and others who take their last rest out of doors. then, if you are in love, you can, by sauntering in the chapels and behind the episcopal chantries with the bright-eyed one, so steep and mellow your ecstasy in the solemnities around, that it will assume a rarer and finer tincture, even more grateful to the understanding, if not to the senses, than that form of the emotion which arises from such companionship in spots where all is life, and growth, and fecundity. it was in this solemn place, whither they had withdrawn from the sight of relatives on one cold day in march, that sir ashley mottisfont asked in marriage, as his second wife, philippa, the gentle daughter of plain squire okehall. her life had been an obscure one thus far; while sir ashley, though not a rich man, had a certain distinction about him; so that everybody thought what a convenient, elevating, and, in a word, blessed match it would be for such a supernumerary as she. nobody thought so more than the amiable girl herself. she had been smitten with such affection for him that, when she walked the cathedral aisles at his side on the before-mentioned day, she did not know that her feet touched hard pavement; it seemed to her rather that she was floating in space. philippa was an ecstatic, heart-thumping maiden, and could not understand how she had deserved to have sent to her such an illustrious lover, such a travelled personage, such a handsome man. when he put the question, it was in no clumsy language, such as the ordinary bucolic county landlords were wont to use on like quivering occasions, but as elegantly as if he had been taught it in enfield's _speaker_. yet he hesitated a little--for he had something to add. 'my pretty philippa,' he said (she was not very pretty by the way), 'i have, you must know, a little girl dependent upon me: a little waif i found one day in a patch of wild oats [such was this worthy baronet's humour] when i was riding home: a little nameless creature, whom i wish to take care of till she is old enough to take care of herself; and to educate in a plain way. she is only fifteen months old, and is at present in the hands of a kind villager's wife in my parish. will you object to give some attention to the little thing in her helplessness?' it need hardly be said that our innocent young lady, loving him so deeply and joyfully as she did, replied that she would do all she could for the nameless child; and, shortly afterwards, the pair were married in the same cathedral that had echoed the whispers of his declaration, the officiating minister being the bishop himself; a venerable and experienced man, so well accomplished in uniting people who had a mind for that sort of experiment, that the couple, with some sense of surprise, found themselves one while they were still vaguely gazing at each other as two independent beings. after this operation they went home to deansleigh park, and made a beginning of living happily ever after. lady mottisfont, true to her promise, was always running down to the village during the following weeks to see the baby whom her husband had so mysteriously lighted on during his ride home--concerning which interesting discovery she had her own opinion; but being so extremely amiable and affectionate that she could have loved stocks and stones if there had been no living creatures to love, she uttered none of her thoughts. the little thing, who had been christened dorothy, took to lady mottisfont as if the baronet's young wife had been her mother; and at length philippa grew so fond of the child that she ventured to ask her husband if she might have dorothy in her own home, and bring her up carefully, just as if she were her own. to this he answered that, though remarks might be made thereon, he had no objection; a fact which was obvious, sir ashley seeming rather pleased than otherwise with the proposal. after this they lived quietly and uneventfully for two or three years at sir ashley mottisfont's residence in that part of england, with as near an approach to bliss as the climate of this country allows. the child had been a godsend to philippa, for there seemed no great probability of her having one of her own: and she wisely regarded the possession of dorothy as a special kindness of providence, and did not worry her mind at all as to dorothy's possible origin. being a tender and impulsive creature, she loved her husband without criticism, exhaustively and religiously, and the child not much otherwise. she watched the little foundling as if she had been her own by nature, and dorothy became a great solace to her when her husband was absent on pleasure or business; and when he came home he looked pleased to see how the two had won each other's hearts. sir ashley would kiss his wife, and his wife would kiss little dorothy, and little dorothy would kiss sir ashley, and after this triangular burst of affection lady mottisfont would say, 'dear me--i forget she is not mine!' 'what does it matter?' her husband would reply. 'providence is fore-knowing. he has sent us this one because he is not intending to send us one by any other channel.' their life was of the simplest. since his travels the baronet had taken to sporting and farming; while philippa was a pattern of domesticity. their pleasures were all local. they retired early to rest, and rose with the cart-horses and whistling waggoners. they knew the names of every bird and tree not exceptionally uncommon, and could foretell the weather almost as well as anxious farmers and old people with corns. one day sir ashley mottisfont received a letter, which he read, and musingly laid down on the table without remark. 'what is it, dearest?' asked his wife, glancing at the sheet. 'oh, it is from an old lawyer at bath whom i used to know. he reminds me of something i said to him four or five years ago--some little time before we were married--about dorothy.' 'what about her?' 'it was a casual remark i made to him, when i thought you might not take kindly to her, that if he knew a lady who was anxious to adopt a child, and could insure a good home to dorothy, he was to let me know.' 'but that was when you had nobody to take care of her,' she said quickly. 'how absurd of him to write now! does he know you are married? he must, surely.' 'oh yes!' he handed her the letter. the solicitor stated that a widow-lady of position, who did not at present wish her name to be disclosed, had lately become a client of his while taking the waters, and had mentioned to him that she would like a little girl to bring up as her own, if she could be certain of finding one of good and pleasing disposition; and, the better to insure this, she would not wish the child to be too young for judging her qualities. he had remembered sir ashley's observation to him a long while ago, and therefore brought the matter before him. it would be an excellent home for the little girl--of that he was positive--if she had not already found such a home. 'but it is absurd of the man to write so long after!' said lady mottisfont, with a lumpiness about the back of her throat as she thought how much dorothy had become to her. 'i suppose it was when you first--found her--that you told him this?' 'exactly--it was then.' he fell into thought, and neither sir ashley nor lady mottisfont took the trouble to answer the lawyer's letter; and so the matter ended for the time. one day at dinner, on their return from a short absence in town, whither they had gone to see what the world was doing, hear what it was saying, and to make themselves generally fashionable after rusticating for so long--on this occasion, i say, they learnt from some friend who had joined them at dinner that fernell hall--the manorial house of the estate next their own, which had been offered on lease by reason of the impecuniosity of its owner--had been taken for a term by a widow lady, an italian contessa, whose name i will not mention for certain reasons which may by and by appear. lady mottisfont expressed her surprise and interest at the probability of having such a neighbour. 'though, if i had been born in italy, i think i should have liked to remain there,' she said. 'she is not italian, though her husband was,' said sir ashley. 'oh, you have heard about her before now?' 'yes; they were talking of her at grey's the other evening. she is english.' and then, as her husband said no more about the lady, the friend who was dining with them told lady mottisfont that the countess's father had speculated largely in east-india stock, in which immense fortunes were being made at that time; through this his daughter had found herself enormously wealthy at his death, which had occurred only a few weeks after the death of her husband. it was supposed that the marriage of an enterprising english speculator's daughter to a poor foreign nobleman had been matter of arrangement merely. as soon as the countess's widowhood was a little further advanced she would, no doubt, be the mark of all the schemers who came near her, for she was still quite young. but at present she seemed to desire quiet, and avoided society and town. some weeks after this time sir ashley mottisfont sat looking fixedly at his lady for many moments. he said: 'it might have been better for dorothy if the countess had taken her. she is so wealthy in comparison with ourselves, and could have ushered the girl into the great world more effectually than we ever shall be able to do.' 'the contessa take dorothy?' said lady mottisfont with a start. 'what--was she the lady who wished to adopt her?' 'yes; she was staying at bath when lawyer gayton wrote to me.' 'but how do you know all this, ashley?' he showed a little hesitation. 'oh, i've seen her,' he says. 'you know, she drives to the meet sometimes, though she does not ride; and she has informed me that she was the lady who inquired of gayton.' 'you have talked to her as well as seen her, then?' 'oh yes, several times; everybody has.' 'why didn't you tell me?' says his lady. 'i had quite forgotten to call upon her. i'll go to-morrow, or soon . . . but i can't think, ashley, how you can say that it might have been better for dorothy to have gone to her; she is so much our own now that i cannot admit any such conjectures as those, even in jest.' her eyes reproached him so eloquently that sir ashley mottisfont did not answer. lady mottisfont did not hunt any more than the anglo-italian countess did; indeed, she had become so absorbed in household matters and in dorothy's wellbeing that she had no mind to waste a minute on mere enjoyments. as she had said, to talk coolly of what might have been the best destination in days past for a child to whom they had become so attached seemed quite barbarous, and she could not understand how her husband should consider the point so abstractedly; for, as will probably have been guessed, lady mottisfont long before this time, if she had not done so at the very beginning, divined sir ashley's true relation to dorothy. but the baronet's wife was so discreetly meek and mild that she never told him of her surmise, and took what heaven had sent her without cavil, her generosity in this respect having been bountifully rewarded by the new life she found in her love for the little girl. her husband recurred to the same uncomfortable subject when, a few days later, they were speaking of travelling abroad. he said that it was almost a pity, if they thought of going, that they had not fallen in with the countess's wish. that lady had told him that she had met dorothy walking with her nurse, and that she had never seen a child she liked so well. 'what--she covets her still? how impertinent of the woman!' said lady mottisfont. 'she seems to do so . . . you see, dearest philippa, the advantage to dorothy would have been that the countess would have adopted her legally, and have made her as her own daughter; while we have not done that--we are only bringing up and educating a poor child in charity.' 'but i'll adopt her fully--make her mine legally!' cried his wife in an anxious voice. 'how is it to be done?' 'h'm.' he did not inform her, but fell into thought; and, for reasons of her own, his lady was restless and uneasy. the very next day lady mottisfont drove to fernell hall to pay the neglected call upon her neighbour. the countess was at home, and received her graciously. but poor lady mottisfont's heart died within her as soon as she set eyes on her new acquaintance. such wonderful beauty, of the fully-developed kind, had never confronted her before inside the lines of a human face. she seemed to shine with every light and grace that woman can possess. her finished continental manners, her expanded mind, her ready wit, composed a study that made the other poor lady sick; for she, and latterly sir ashley himself, were rather rural in manners, and she felt abashed by new sounds and ideas from without. she hardly knew three words in any language but her own, while this divine creature, though truly english, had, apparently, whatever she wanted in the italian and french tongues to suit every impression; which was considered a great improvement to speech in those days, and, indeed, is by many considered as such in these. 'how very strange it was about the little girl!' the contessa said to lady mottisfont, in her gay tones. 'i mean, that the child the lawyer recommended should, just before then, have been adopted by you, who are now my neighbour. how is she getting on? i must come and see her.' 'do you still want her?' asks lady mottisfont suspiciously. 'oh, i should like to have her!' 'but you can't! she's mine!' said the other greedily. a drooping manner appeared in the countess from that moment. lady mottisfont, too, was in a wretched mood all the way home that day. the countess was so charming in every way that she had charmed her gentle ladyship; how should it be possible that she had failed to charm sir ashley? moreover, she had awakened a strange thought in philippa's mind. as soon as she reached home she rushed to the nursery, and there, seizing dorothy, frantically kissed her; then, holding her at arm's length, she gazed with a piercing inquisitiveness into the girl's lineaments. she sighed deeply, abandoned the wondering dorothy, and hastened away. she had seen there not only her husband's traits, which she had often beheld before, but others, of the shade, shape, and expression which characterized those of her new neighbour. then this poor lady perceived the whole perturbing sequence of things, and asked herself how she could have been such a walking piece of simplicity as not to have thought of this before. but she did not stay long upbraiding herself for her shortsightedness, so overwhelmed was she with misery at the spectacle of herself as an intruder between these. to be sure she could not have foreseen such a conjuncture; but that did not lessen her grief. the woman who had been both her husband's bliss and his backsliding had reappeared free when he was no longer so, and she evidently was dying to claim her own in the person of dorothy, who had meanwhile grown to be, to lady mottisfont, almost the only source of each day's happiness, supplying her with something to watch over, inspiring her with the sense of maternity, and so largely reflecting her husband's nature as almost to deceive her into the pleasant belief that she reflected her own also. if there was a single direction in which this devoted and virtuous lady erred, it was in the direction of over-submissiveness. when all is said and done, and the truth told, men seldom show much self-sacrifice in their conduct as lords and masters to helpless women bound to them for life, and perhaps (though i say it with all uncertainty) if she had blazed up in his face like a furze-faggot, directly he came home, she might have helped herself a little. but god knows whether this is a true supposition; at any rate she did no such thing; and waited and prayed that she might never do despite to him who, she was bound to admit, had always been tender and courteous towards her; and hoped that little dorothy might never be taken away. by degrees the two households became friendly, and very seldom did a week pass without their seeing something of each other. try as she might, and dangerous as she assumed the acquaintanceship to be, lady mottisfont could detect no fault or flaw in her new friend. it was obvious that dorothy had been the magnet which had drawn the contessa hither, and not sir ashley. such beauty, united with such understanding and brightness, philippa had never before known in one of her own sex, and she tried to think (whether she succeeded i do not know) that she did not mind the propinquity; since a woman so rich, so fair, and with such a command of suitors, could not desire to wreck the happiness of so inoffensive a person as herself. the season drew on when it was the custom for families of distinction to go off to the bath, and sir ashley mottisfont persuaded his wife to accompany him thither with dorothy. everybody of any note was there this year. from their own part of england came many that they knew; among the rest, lord and lady purbeck, the earl and countess of wessex, sir john grebe, the drenkhards, lady stourvale, the old duke of hamptonshire, the bishop of melchester, the dean of exonbury, and other lesser lights of court, pulpit, and field. thither also came the fair contessa, whom, as soon as philippa saw how much she was sought after by younger men, she could not conscientiously suspect of renewed designs upon sir ashley. but the countess had finer opportunities than ever with dorothy; for lady mottisfont was often indisposed, and even at other times could not honestly hinder an intercourse which gave bright ideas to the child. dorothy welcomed her new acquaintance with a strange and instinctive readiness that intimated the wonderful subtlety of the threads which bind flesh and flesh together. at last the crisis came: it was precipitated by an accident. dorothy and her nurse had gone out one day for an airing, leaving lady mottisfont alone indoors. while she sat gloomily thinking that in all likelihood the countess would contrive to meet the child somewhere, and exchange a few tender words with her, sir ashley mottisfont rushed in and informed her that dorothy had just had the narrowest possible escape from death. some workmen were undermining a house to pull it down for rebuilding, when, without warning, the front wall inclined slowly outwards for its fall, the nurse and child passing beneath it at the same moment. the fall was temporarily arrested by the scaffolding, while in the meantime the countess had witnessed their imminent danger from the other side of the street. springing across, she snatched dorothy from under the wall, and pulled the nurse after her, the middle of the way being barely reached before they were enveloped in the dense dust of the descending mass, though not a stone touched them. 'where is dorothy?' says the excited lady mottisfont. 'she has her--she won't let her go for a time--' 'has her? but she's _mine_--she's mine!' cries lady mottisfont. then her quick and tender eyes perceived that her husband had almost forgotten her intrusive existence in contemplating the oneness of dorothy's, the countess's, and his own: he was in a dream of exaltation which recognized nothing necessary to his well-being outside that welded circle of three lives. dorothy was at length brought home; she was much fascinated by the countess, and saw nothing tragic, but rather all that was truly delightful, in what had happened. in the evening, when the excitement was over, and dorothy was put to bed, sir ashley said, 'she has saved dorothy; and i have been asking myself what i can do for her as a slight acknowledgment of her heroism. surely we ought to let her have dorothy to bring up, since she still desires to do it? it would be so much to dorothy's advantage. we ought to look at it in that light, and not selfishly.' philippa seized his hand. 'ashley, ashley! you don't mean it--that i must lose my pretty darling--the only one i have?' she met his gaze with her piteous mouth and wet eyes so painfully strained, that he turned away his face. the next morning, before dorothy was awake, lady mottisfont stole to the girl's bedside, and sat regarding her. when dorothy opened her eyes, she fixed them for a long time upon philippa's features. 'mamma--you are not so pretty as the contessa, are you?' she said at length. 'i am not, dorothy.' 'why are you not, mamma?' 'dorothy--where would you rather live, always; with me, or with her?' the little girl looked troubled. 'i am sorry, mamma; i don't mean to be unkind; but i would rather live with her; i mean, if i might without trouble, and you did not mind, and it could be just the same to us all, you know.' 'has she ever asked you the same question?' 'never, mamma.' there lay the sting of it: the countess seemed the soul of honour and fairness in this matter, test her as she might. that afternoon lady mottisfont went to her husband with singular firmness upon her gentle face. 'ashley, we have been married nearly five years, and i have never challenged you with what i know perfectly well--the parentage of dorothy.' 'never have you, philippa dear. though i have seen that you knew from the first.' 'from the first as to her father, not as to her mother. her i did not know for some time; but i know now.' 'ah! you have discovered that too?' says he, without much surprise. 'could i help it? very well, that being so, i have thought it over; and i have spoken to dorothy. i agree to her going. i can do no less than grant to the countess her wish, after her kindness to my--your--her--child.' then this self-sacrificing woman went hastily away that he might not see that her heart was bursting; and thereupon, before they left the city, dorothy changed her mother and her home. after this, the countess went away to london for a while, taking dorothy with her; and the baronet and his wife returned to their lonely place at deansleigh park without her. to renounce dorothy in the bustle of bath was a different thing from living without her in this quiet home. one evening sir ashley missed his wife from the supper-table; her manner had been so pensive and woeful of late that he immediately became alarmed. he said nothing, but looked about outside the house narrowly, and discerned her form in the park, where recently she had been accustomed to walk alone. in its lower levels there was a pool fed by a trickling brook, and he reached this spot in time to hear a splash. running forward, he dimly perceived her light gown floating in the water. to pull her out was the work of a few instants, and bearing her indoors to her room, he undressed her, nobody in the house knowing of the incident but himself. she had not been immersed long enough to lose her senses, and soon recovered. she owned that she had done it because the contessa had taken away her child, as she persisted in calling dorothy. her husband spoke sternly to her, and impressed upon her the weakness of giving way thus, when all that had happened was for the best. she took his reproof meekly, and admitted her fault. after that she became more resigned, but he often caught her in tears over some doll, shoe, or ribbon of dorothy's, and decided to take her to the north of england for change of air and scene. this was not without its beneficial effect, corporeally no less than mentally, as later events showed, but she still evinced a preternatural sharpness of ear at the most casual mention of the child. when they reached home, the countess and dorothy were still absent from the neighbouring fernell hall, but in a month or two they returned, and a little later sir ashley mottisfont came into his wife's room full of news. 'well--would you think it, philippa! after being so desperate, too, about getting dorothy to be with her!' 'ah--what?' 'our neighbour, the countess, is going to be married again! it is to somebody she has met in london.' lady mottisfont was much surprised; she had never dreamt of such an event. the conflict for the possession of dorothy's person had obscured the possibility of it; yet what more likely, the countess being still under thirty, and so good-looking? 'what is of still more interest to us, or to you,' continued her husband, 'is a kind offer she has made. she is willing that you should have dorothy back again. seeing what a grief the loss of her has been to you, she will try to do without her.' 'it is not for that; it is not to oblige me,' said lady mottisfont quickly. 'one can see well enough what it is for!' 'well, never mind; beggars mustn't be choosers. the reason or motive is nothing to us, so that you obtain your desire.' 'i am not a beggar any longer,' said lady mottisfont, with proud mystery. 'what do you mean by that?' lady mottisfont hesitated. however, it was only too plain that she did not now jump at a restitution of one for whom some months before she had been breaking her heart. the explanation of this change of mood became apparent some little time farther on. lady mottisfont, after five years of wedded life, was expecting to become a mother, and the aspect of many things was greatly altered in her view. among the more important changes was that of no longer feeling dorothy to be absolutely indispensable to her existence. meanwhile, in view of her coming marriage, the countess decided to abandon the remainder of her term at fernell hall, and return to her pretty little house in town. but she could not do this quite so quickly as she had expected, and half a year or more elapsed before she finally quitted the neighbourhood, the interval being passed in alternations between the country and london. prior to her last departure she had an interview with sir ashley mottisfont, and it occurred three days after his wife had presented him with a son and heir. 'i wanted to speak to you,' said the countess, looking him luminously in the face, 'about the dear foundling i have adopted temporarily, and thought to have adopted permanently. but my marriage makes it too risky!' 'i thought it might be that,' he answered, regarding her steadfastly back again, and observing two tears come slowly into her eyes as she heard her own voice describe dorothy in those words. 'don't criticize me,' she said hastily; and recovering herself, went on. 'if lady mottisfont could take her back again, as i suggested, it would be better for me, and certainly no worse for dorothy. to every one but ourselves she is but a child i have taken a fancy to, and lady mottisfont coveted her so much, and was very reluctant to let her go . . . i am sure she will adopt her again?' she added anxiously. 'i will sound her afresh,' said the baronet. 'you leave dorothy behind for the present?' 'yes; although i go away, i do not give up the house for another month.' he did not speak to his wife about the proposal till some few days after, when lady mottisfont had nearly recovered, and news of the countess's marriage in london had just reached them. he had no sooner mentioned dorothy's name than lady mottisfont showed symptoms of disquietude. 'i have not acquired any dislike of dorothy,' she said, 'but i feel that there is one nearer to me now. dorothy chose the alternative of going to the countess, you must remember, when i put it to her as between the countess and myself.' 'but, my dear philippa, how can you argue thus about a child, and that child our dorothy?' 'not _ours_,' said his wife, pointing to the cot. 'ours is here.' 'what, then, philippa,' he said, surprised, 'you won't have her back, after nearly dying of grief at the loss of her?' 'i cannot argue, dear ashley. i should prefer not to have the responsibility of dorothy again. her place is filled now.' her husband sighed, and went out of the chamber. there had been a previous arrangement that dorothy should be brought to the house on a visit that day, but instead of taking her up to his wife, he did not inform lady mottisfont of the child's presence. he entertained her himself as well as he could, and accompanied her into the park, where they had a ramble together. presently he sat down on the root of an elm and took her upon his knee. 'between this husband and this baby, little dorothy, you who had two homes are left out in the cold,' he said. 'can't i go to london with my pretty mamma?' said dorothy, perceiving from his manner that there was a hitch somewhere. 'i am afraid not, my child. she only took you to live with her because she was lonely, you know.' 'then can't i stay at deansleigh park with my other mamma and you?' 'i am afraid that cannot be done either,' said he sadly. 'we have a baby in the house now.' he closed the reply by stooping down and kissing her, there being a tear in his eye. 'then nobody wants me!' said dorothy pathetically. 'oh yes, somebody wants you,' he assured her. 'where would you like to live besides?' dorothy's experiences being rather limited, she mentioned the only other place in the world that she was acquainted with, the cottage of the villager who had taken care of her before lady mottisfont had removed her to the manor house. 'yes; that's where you'll be best off and most independent,' he answered. 'and i'll come to see you, my dear girl, and bring you pretty things; and perhaps you'll be just as happy there.' nevertheless, when the change came, and dorothy was handed over to the kind cottage-woman, the poor child missed the luxurious roominess of fernell hall and deansleigh; and for a long time her little feet, which had been accustomed to carpets and oak floors, suffered from the cold of the stone flags on which it was now her lot to live and to play; while chilblains came upon her fingers with washing at the pump. but thicker shoes with nails in them somewhat remedied the cold feet, and her complaints and tears on this and other scores diminished to silence as she became inured anew to the hardships of the farm-cottage, and she grew up robust if not handsome. she was never altogether lost sight of by sir ashley, though she was deprived of the systematic education which had been devised and begun for her by lady mottisfont, as well as by her other mamma, the enthusiastic countess. the latter soon had other dorothys to think of, who occupied her time and affection as fully as lady mottisfont's were occupied by her precious boy. in the course of time the doubly-desired and doubly-rejected dorothy married, i believe, a respectable road-contractor--the same, if i mistake not, who repaired and improved the old highway running from wintoncester south-westerly through the new forest--and in the heart of this worthy man of business the poor girl found the nest which had been denied her by her own flesh and blood of higher degree. * * * * * several of the listeners wished to hear another story from the sentimental member after this, but he said that he could recall nothing else at the moment, and that it seemed to him as if his friend on the other side of the fireplace had something to say from the look of his face. the member alluded to was a respectable churchwarden, with a sly chink to one eyelid--possibly the result of an accident--and a regular attendant at the club meetings. he replied that his looks had been mainly caused by his interest in the two ladies of the last story, apparently women of strong motherly instincts, even though they were not genuinely staunch in their tenderness. the tale had brought to his mind an instance of a firmer affection of that sort on the paternal side, in a nature otherwise culpable. as for telling the story, his manner was much against him, he feared; but he would do his best, if they wished. here the president interposed with a suggestion that as it was getting late in the afternoon it would be as well to adjourn to their respective inns and lodgings for dinner, after which those who cared to do so could return and resume these curious domestic traditions for the remainder of the evening, which might otherwise prove irksome enough. the curator had told him that the room was at their service. the churchwarden, who was beginning to feel hungry himself, readily acquiesced, and the club separated for an hour and a half. then the faithful ones began to drop in again--among whom were not the president; neither came the rural dean, nor the two curates, though the colonel, and the man of family, cigars in mouth, were good enough to return, having found their hotel dreary. the museum had no regular means of illumination, and a solitary candle, less powerful than the rays of the fire, was placed on the table; also bottles and glasses, provided by some thoughtful member. the chink-eyed churchwarden, now thoroughly primed, proceeded to relate in his own terms what was in substance as follows, while many of his listeners smoked. dame the fifth--the lady icenway by the churchwarden in the reign of his most excellent majesty king george the third, defender of the faith and of the american colonies, there lived in 'a faire maner-place' (so leland called it in his day, as i have been told), in one o' the greenest bits of woodland between bristol and the city of exonbury, a young lady who resembled some aforesaid ones in having many talents and exceeding great beauty. with these gifts she combined a somewhat imperious temper and arbitrary mind, though her experience of the world was not actually so large as her conclusive manner would have led the stranger to suppose. being an orphan, she resided with her uncle, who, though he was fairly considerate as to her welfare, left her pretty much to herself. now it chanced that when this lovely young lady was about nineteen, she (being a fearless horsewoman) was riding, with only a young lad as an attendant, in one o' the woods near her uncle's house, and, in trotting along, her horse stumbled over the root of a felled tree. she slipped to the ground, not seriously hurt, and was assisted home by a gentleman who came in view at the moment of her mishap. it turned out that this gentleman, a total stranger to her, was on a visit at the house of a neighbouring landowner. he was of dutch extraction, and occasionally came to england on business or pleasure from his plantations in guiana, on the north coast of south america, where he usually resided. on this account he was naturally but little known in wessex, and was but a slight acquaintance of the gentleman at whose mansion he was a guest. however, the friendship between him and the heymeres--as the uncle and niece were named--warmed and warmed by degrees, there being but few folk o' note in the vicinity at that time, which made a newcomer, if he were at all sociable and of good credit, always sure of a welcome. a tender feeling (as it is called by the romantic) sprang up between the two young people, which ripened into intimacy. anderling, the foreign gentleman, was of an amorous temperament; and, though he endeavoured to conceal his feeling, it could be seen that miss maria heymere had impressed him rather more deeply than would be represented by a scratch upon a stone. he seemed absolutely unable to free himself from her fascination; and his inability to do so, much as he tried--evidently thinking he had not the ghost of a chance with her--gave her the pleasure of power; though she more than sympathized when she overheard him heaving his deep drawn sighs--privately to himself, as he supposed. after prolonging his visit by every conceivable excuse in his power, he summoned courage, and offered her his hand and his heart. being in no way disinclined to him, though not so fervid as he, and her uncle making no objection to the match, she consented to share his fate, for better or otherwise, in the distant colony where, as he assured her, his rice, and coffee, and maize, and timber, produced him ample means--a statement which was borne out by his friend, her uncle's neighbour. in short, a day for their marriage was fixed, earlier in the engagement than is usual or desirable between comparative strangers, by reason of the necessity he was under of returning to look after his properties. the wedding took place, and maria left her uncle's mansion with her husband, going in the first place to london, and about a fortnight after sailing with him across the great ocean for their distant home--which, however, he assured her, should not be her home for long, it being his intention to dispose of his interests in this part of the world as soon as the war was over, and he could do so advantageously; when they could come to europe, and reside in some favourite capital. as they advanced on the voyage she observed that he grew more and more constrained; and, by the time they had crossed the line, he was quite depressed, just as he had been before proposing to her. a day or two before landing at paramaribo, he embraced her in a very tearful and passionate manner, and said he wished to make a confession. it had been his misfortune, he said, to marry at quebec in early life a woman whose reputation proved to be in every way bad and scandalous. the discovery had nearly killed him; but he had ultimately separated from her, and had never seen her since. he had hoped and prayed she might be dead; but recently in london, when they were starting on this journey, he had discovered that she was still alive. at first he had decided to keep this dark intelligence from her beloved ears; but he had felt that he could not do it. all he hoped was that such a condition of things would make no difference in her feelings for him, as it need make no difference in the course of their lives. thereupon the spirit of this proud and masterful lady showed itself in violent turmoil, like the raging of a nor'-west thunderstorm--as well it might, god knows. but she was of too stout a nature to be broken down by his revelation, as many ladies of my acquaintance would have been--so far from home, and right under the line in the blaze o' the sun. of the two, indeed, he was the more wretched and shattered in spirit, for he loved her deeply, and (there being a foreign twist in his make) had been tempted to this crime by her exceeding beauty, against which he had struggled day and night, till he had no further resistance left in him. it was she who came first to a decision as to what should be done--whether a wise one i do not attempt to judge. 'i put it to you,' says she, when many useless self-reproaches and protestations on his part had been uttered--'i put it to you whether, if any manliness is left in you, you ought not to do exactly what i consider the best thing for me in this strait to which you have reduced me?' he promised to do anything in the whole world. she then requested him to allow her to return, and announce him as having died of malignant ague immediately on their arrival at paramaribo; that she should consequently appear in weeds as his widow in her native place; and that he would never molest her, or come again to that part of the world during the whole course of his life--a good reason for which would be that the legal consequences might be serious. he readily acquiesced in this, as he would have acquiesced in anything for the restitution of one he adored so deeply--even to the yielding of life itself. to put her in an immediate state of independence he gave her, in bonds and jewels, a considerable sum (for his worldly means had been in no way exaggerated); and by the next ship she sailed again for england, having travelled no farther than to paramaribo. at parting he declared it to be his intention to turn all his landed possessions into personal property, and to be a wanderer on the face of the earth in remorse for his conduct towards her. maria duly arrived in england, and immediately on landing apprised her uncle of her return, duly appearing at his house in the garb of a widow. she was commiserated by all the neighbours as soon as her story was told; but only to her uncle did she reveal the real state of affairs, and her reason for concealing it. for, though she had been innocent of wrong, maria's pride was of that grain which could not brook the least appearance of having been fooled, or deluded, or nonplussed in her worldly aims. for some time she led a quiet life with her relative, and in due course a son was born to her. she was much respected for her dignity and reserve, and the portable wealth which her temporary husband had made over to her enabled her to live in comfort in a wing of the mansion, without assistance from her uncle at all. but, knowing that she was not what she seemed to be, her life was an uneasy one, and she often said to herself: 'suppose his continued existence should become known here, and people should discern the pride of my motive in hiding my humiliation? it would be worse than if i had been frank at first, which i should have been but for the credit of this child.' such grave reflections as these occupied her with increasing force; and during their continuance she encountered a worthy man of noble birth and title--lord icenway his name--whose seat was beyond wintoncester, quite at t'other end of wessex. he being anxious to pay his addresses to her, maria willingly accepted them, though he was a plain man, older than herself; for she discerned in a re-marriage a method of fortifying her position against mortifying discoveries. in a few months their union took place, and maria lifted her head as lady icenway, and left with her husband and child for his home as aforesaid, where she was quite unknown. a justification, or a condemnation, of her step (according as you view it) was seen when, not long after, she received a note from her former husband anderling. it was a hasty and tender epistle, and perhaps it was fortunate that it arrived during the temporary absence of lord icenway. his worthless wife, said anderling, had just died in quebec; he had gone there to ascertain particulars, and had seen the unfortunate woman buried. he now was hastening to england to repair the wrong he had done his maria. he asked her to meet him at southampton, his port of arrival; which she need be in no fear of doing, as he had changed his name, and was almost absolutely unknown in europe. he would remarry her immediately, and live with her in any part of the continent, as they had originally intended, where, for the great love he still bore her, he would devote himself to her service for the rest of his days. lady icenway, self-possessed as it was her nature to be, was yet much disturbed at this news, and set off to meet him, unattended, as soon as she heard that the ship was in sight. as soon as they stood face to face she found that she still possessed all her old influence over him, though his power to fascinate her had quite departed. in his sorrow for his offence against her, he had become a man of strict religious habits, self- denying as a lenten saint, though formerly he had been a free and joyous liver. having first got him to swear to make her any amends she should choose (which he was imagining must be by a true marriage), she informed him that she had already wedded another husband, an excellent man of ancient family and possessions, who had given her a title, in which she much rejoiced. at this the countenance of the poor foreign gentleman became cold as clay, and his heart withered within him; for as it had been her beauty and bearing which had led him to sin to obtain her, so, now that her beauty was in fuller bloom, and her manner more haughty by her success, did he feel her fascination to be almost more than he could bear. nevertheless, having sworn his word, he undertook to obey her commands, which were simply a renewal of her old request--that he would depart for some foreign country, and never reveal his existence to her friends, or husband, or any person in england; never trouble her more, seeing how great a harm it would do her in the high position which she at present occupied. he bowed his head. 'and the child--our child?' he said. 'he is well,' says she. 'quite well.' with this the unhappy gentleman departed, much sadder in his heart than on his voyage to england; for it had never occurred to him that a woman who rated her honour so highly as maria had done, and who was the mother of a child of his, would have adopted such means as this for the restoration of that honour, and at so surprisingly early a date. he had fully calculated on making her his wife in law and truth, and of living in cheerful unity with her and his offspring, for whom he felt a deep and growing tenderness, though he had never once seen the child. the lady returned to her mansion beyond wintoncester, and told nothing of the interview to her noble husband, who had fortunately gone that day to do a little cocking and ratting out by weydon priors, and knew nothing of her movements. she had dismissed her poor anderling peremptorily enough; yet she would often after this look in the face of the child of her so- called widowhood, to discover what and how many traits of his father were to be seen in his lineaments. for this she had ample opportunity during the following autumn and winter months, her husband being a matter-of- fact nobleman, who spent the greater part of his time in field-sports and agriculture. one winter day, when he had started for a meet of the hounds a long way from the house--it being his custom to hunt three or four times a week at this season of the year--she had walked into the sunshine upon the terrace before the windows, where there fell at her feet some little white object that had come over a boundary wall hard by. it proved to be a tiny note wrapped round a stone. lady icenway opened it and read it, and immediately (no doubt, with a stern fixture of her queenly countenance) walked hastily along the terrace, and through the door into the shrubbery, whence the note had come. the man who had first married her stood under the bushes before her. it was plain from his appearance that something had gone wrong with him. 'you notice a change in me, my best-beloved,' he said. 'yes, maria--i have lost all the wealth i once possessed--mainly by reckless gambling in the continental hells to which you banished me. but one thing in the world remains to me--the child--and it is for him that i have intruded here. don't fear me, darling! i shall not inconvenience you long; i love you too well! but i think of the boy day and night--i cannot help it--i cannot keep my feeling for him down; and i long to see him, and speak a word to him once in my lifetime!' 'but your oath?' says she. 'you promised never to reveal by word or sign--' 'i will reveal nothing. only let me see the child. i know what i have sworn to you, cruel mistress, and i respect my oath. otherwise i might have seen him by some subterfuge. but i preferred the frank course of asking your permission.' she demurred, with the haughty severity which had grown part of her character, and which her elevation to the rank of a peeress had rather intensified than diminished. she said that she would consider, and would give him an answer the day after the next, at the same hour and place, when her husband would again be absent with his pack of hounds. the gentleman waited patiently. lady icenway, who had now no conscious love left for him, well considered the matter, and felt that it would be advisable not to push to extremes a man of so passionate a heart. on the day and hour she met him as she had promised to do. 'you shall see him,' she said, 'of course on the strict condition that you do not reveal yourself, and hence, though you see him, he must not see you, or your manner might betray you and me. i will lull him into a nap in the afternoon, and then i will come to you here, and fetch you indoors by a private way.' the unfortunate father, whose misdemeanour had recoiled upon his own head in a way he could not have foreseen, promised to adhere to her instructions, and waited in the shrubberies till the moment when she should call him. this she duly did about three o'clock that day, leading him in by a garden door, and upstairs to the nursery where the child lay. he was in his little cot, breathing calmly, his arm thrown over his head, and his silken curls crushed into the pillow. his father, now almost to be pitied, bent over him, and a tear from his eye wetted the coverlet. she held up a warning finger as he lowered his mouth to the lips of the boy. 'but oh, why not?' implored he. 'very well, then,' said she, relenting. 'but as gently as possible.' he kissed the child without waking him, turned, gave him a last look, and followed her out of the chamber, when she conducted him off the premises by the way he had come. but this remedy for his sadness of heart at being a stranger to his own son, had the effect of intensifying the malady; for while originally, not knowing or having ever seen the boy, he had loved him vaguely and imaginatively only, he now became attached to him in flesh and bone, as any parent might; and the feeling that he could at best only see his child at the rarest and most cursory moments, if at all, drove him into a state of distraction which threatened to overthrow his promise to the boy's mother to keep out of his sight. but such was his chivalrous respect for lady icenway, and his regret at having ever deceived her, that he schooled his poor heart into submission. owing to his loneliness, all the fervour of which he was capable--and that was much--flowed now in the channel of parental and marital love--for a child who did not know him, and a woman who had ceased to love him. at length this singular punishment became such a torture to the poor foreigner that he resolved to lessen it at all hazards, compatible with punctilious care for the name of the lady his former wife, to whom his attachment seemed to increase in proportion to her punitive treatment of him. at one time of his life he had taken great interest in tulip-culture, as well as gardening in general; and since the ruin of his fortunes, and his arrival in england, he had made of his knowledge a precarious income in the hot-houses of nurserymen and others. with the new idea in his head he applied himself zealously to the business, till he acquired in a few months great skill in horticulture. waiting till the noble lord, his lady's husband, had room for an under-gardener of a general sort, he offered himself for the place, and was engaged immediately by reason of his civility and intelligence, before lady icenway knew anything of the matter. much therefore did he surprise her when she found him in the conservatories of her mansion a week or two after his arrival. the punishment of instant dismissal, with which at first she haughtily threatened him, my lady thought fit, on reflection, not to enforce. while he served her thus she knew he would not harm her by a word, while, if he were expelled, chagrin might induce him to reveal in a moment of exasperation what kind treatment would assist him to conceal. so he was allowed to remain on the premises, and had for his residence a little cottage by the garden-wall which had been the domicile of some of his predecessors in the same occupation. here he lived absolutely alone, and spent much of his leisure in reading, but the greater part in watching the windows and lawns of his lady's house for glimpses of the form of the child. it was for that child's sake that he abandoned the tenets of the roman catholic church in which he had been reared, and became the most regular attendant at the services in the parish place of worship hard by, where, sitting behind the pew of my lady, my lord, and his stepson, the gardener could pensively study the traits and movements of the youngster at only a few feet distance, without suspicion or hindrance. he filled his post for more than two years with a pleasure to himself which, though mournful, was soothing, his lady never forgiving him, or allowing him to be anything more than 'the gardener' to her child, though once or twice the boy said, 'that gardener's eyes are so sad! why does he look so sadly at me?' he sunned himself in her scornfulness as if it were love, and his ears drank in her curt monosyllables as though they were rhapsodies of endearment. strangely enough, the coldness with which she treated her foreigner began to be the conduct of lord icenway towards herself. it was a matter of great anxiety to him that there should be a lineal successor to the title, yet no sign of that successor appeared. one day he complained to her quite roughly of his fate. 'all will go to that dolt of a cousin!' he cried. 'i'd sooner see my name and place at the bottom of the sea!' the lady soothed him and fell into thought, and did not recriminate. but one day, soon after, she went down to the cottage of the gardener to inquire how he was getting on, for he had been ailing of late, though, as was supposed, not seriously. though she often visited the poor, she had never entered her under-gardener's home before, and was much surprised--even grieved and dismayed--to find that he was too ill to rise from his bed. she went back to her mansion and returned with some delicate soup, that she might have a reason for seeing him. his condition was so feeble and alarming, and his face so thin, that it quite shocked her softening heart, and gazing upon him she said, 'you must get well--you must! i have been hard with you--i know it. i will not be so again.' the sick and dying man--for he was dying indeed--took her hand and pressed it to his lips. 'too late, my darling, too late!' he murmured. 'but you _must not_ die! oh, you must not!' she said. and on an impulse she bent down and whispered some words to him, blushing as she had blushed in her maiden days. he replied by a faint wan smile. 'time was! . . . but that's past!' he said, 'i must die!' and die he did, a few days later, as the sun was going down behind the garden-wall. her harshness seemed to come trebly home to her then, and she remorsefully exclaimed against herself in secret and alone. her one desire now was to erect some tribute to his memory, without its being recognized as her handiwork. in the completion of this scheme there arrived a few months later a handsome stained-glass window for the church; and when it was unpacked and in course of erection lord icenway strolled into the building with his wife. '"_erected to his memory by his grieving widow_,"' he said, reading the legend on the glass. 'i didn't know that he had a wife; i've never seen her.' 'oh yes, you must have, icenway; only you forget,' replied his lady blandly. 'but she didn't live with him, and was seldom seen visiting him, because there were differences between them; which, as is usually the case, makes her all the more sorry now.' 'and go ruining herself by this expensive ruby-and-azure glass-design.' 'she is not poor, they say.' as lord icenway grew older he became crustier and crustier, and whenever he set eyes on his wife's boy by her other husband he would burst out morosely, saying, ''tis a very odd thing, my lady, that you could oblige your first husband, and couldn't oblige me.' 'ah! if i had only thought of it sooner!' she murmured. 'what?' said he. 'nothing, dearest,' replied lady icenway. * * * * * the colonel was the first to comment upon the churchwarden's tale, by saying that the fate of the poor fellow was rather a hard one. the gentleman-tradesman could not see that his fate was at all too hard for him. he was legally nothing to her, and he had served her shamefully. if he had been really her husband it would have stood differently. the bookworm remarked that lord icenway seemed to have been a very unsuspicious man, with which view a fat member with a crimson face agreed. it was true his wife was a very close-mouthed personage, which made a difference. if she had spoken out recklessly her lord might have been suspicious enough, as in the case of that lady who lived at stapleford park in their great-grandfathers' time. though there, to be sure, considerations arose which made her husband view matters with much philosophy. a few of the members doubted the possibility of this. the crimson man, who was a retired maltster of comfortable means, _ventru_, and short in stature, cleared his throat, blew off his superfluous breath, and proceeded to give the instance before alluded to of such possibility, first apologizing for his heroine's lack of a title, it never having been his good fortune to know many of the nobility. to his style of narrative the following is only an approximation. dame the sixth--squire petrick's lady by the crimson maltster folk who are at all acquainted with the traditions of stapleford park will not need to be told that in the middle of the last century it was owned by that trump of mortgagees, timothy petrick, whose skill in gaining possession of fair estates by granting sums of money on their title-deeds has seldom if ever been equalled in our part of england. timothy was a lawyer by profession, and agent to several noblemen, by which means his special line of business became opened to him by a sort of revelation. it is said that a relative of his, a very deep thinker, who afterwards had the misfortune to be transported for life for mistaken notions on the signing of a will, taught him considerable legal lore, which he creditably resolved never to throw away for the benefit of other people, but to reserve it entirely for his own. however, i have nothing in particular to say about his early and active days, but rather of the time when, an old man, he had become the owner of vast estates by the means i have signified--among them the great manor of stapleford, on which he lived, in the splendid old mansion now pulled down; likewise estates at marlott, estates near sherton abbas, nearly all the borough of millpool, and many properties near ivell. indeed, i can't call to mind half his landed possessions, and i don't know that it matters much at this time of day, seeing that he's been dead and gone many years. it is said that when he bought an estate he would not decide to pay the price till he had walked over every single acre with his own two feet, and prodded the soil at every point with his own spud, to test its quality, which, if we regard the extent of his properties, must have been a stiff business for him. at the time i am speaking of he was a man over eighty, and his son was dead; but he had two grandsons, the eldest of whom, his namesake, was married, and was shortly expecting issue. just then the grandfather was taken ill, for death, as it seemed, considering his age. by his will the old man had created an entail (as i believe the lawyers call it), devising the whole of the estates to his elder grandson and his issue male, failing which, to his younger grandson and his issue male, failing which, to remoter relatives, who need not be mentioned now. while old timothy petrick was lying ill, his elder grandson's wife, annetta, gave birth to her expected child, who, as fortune would have it, was a son. timothy, her husband, through sprung of a scheming family, was no great schemer himself; he was the single one of the petricks then living whose heart had ever been greatly moved by sentiments which did not run in the groove of ambition; and on this account he had not married well, as the saying is; his wife having been the daughter of a family of no better beginnings than his own; that is to say, her father was a country townsman of the professional class. but she was a very pretty woman, by all accounts, and her husband had seen, courted, and married her in a high tide of infatuation, after a very short acquaintance, and with very little knowledge of her heart's history. he had never found reason to regret his choice as yet, and his anxiety for her recovery was great. she was supposed to be out of danger, and herself and the child progressing well, when there was a change for the worse, and she sank so rapidly that she was soon given over. when she felt that she was about to leave him, annetta sent for her husband, and, on his speedy entry and assurance that they were alone, she made him solemnly vow to give the child every care in any circumstances that might arise, if it should please heaven to take her. this, of course, he readily promised. then, after some hesitation, she told him that she could not die with a falsehood upon her soul, and dire deceit in her life; she must make a terrible confession to him before her lips were sealed for ever. she thereupon related an incident concerning the baby's parentage, which was not as he supposed. timothy petrick, though a quick-feeling man, was not of a sort to show nerves outwardly; and he bore himself as heroically as he possibly could do in this trying moment of his life. that same night his wife died; and while she lay dead, and before her funeral, he hastened to the bedside of his sick grandfather, and revealed to him all that had happened: the baby's birth, his wife's confession, and her death, beseeching the aged man, as he loved him, to bestir himself now, at the eleventh hour, and alter his will so as to dish the intruder. old timothy, seeing matters in the same light as his grandson, required no urging against allowing anything to stand in the way of legitimate inheritance; he executed another will, limiting the entail to timothy his grandson, for life, and his male heirs thereafter to be born; after them to his other grandson edward, and edward's heirs. thus the newly-born infant, who had been the centre of so many hopes, was cut off and scorned as none of the elect. the old mortgagee lived but a short time after this, the excitement of the discovery having told upon him considerably, and he was gathered to his fathers like the most charitable man in his neighbourhood. both wife and grandparent being buried, timothy settled down to his usual life as well as he was able, mentally satisfied that he had by prompt action defeated the consequences of such dire domestic treachery as had been shown towards him, and resolving to marry a second time as soon as he could satisfy himself in the choice of a wife. but men do not always know themselves. the embittered state of timothy petrick's mind bred in him by degrees such a hatred and mistrust of womankind that, though several specimens of high attractiveness came under his eyes, he could not bring himself to the point of proposing marriage. he dreaded to take up the position of husband a second time, discerning a trap in every petticoat, and a slough of despond in possible heirs. 'what has happened once, when all seemed so fair, may happen again,' he said to himself. 'i'll risk my name no more.' so he abstained from marriage, and overcame his wish for a lineal descendant to follow him in the ownership of stapleford. timothy had scarcely noticed the unfortunate child that his wife had borne, after arranging for a meagre fulfilment of his promise to her to take care of the boy, by having him brought up in his house. occasionally, remembering this promise, he went and glanced at the child, saw that he was doing well, gave a few special directions, and again went his solitary way. thus he and the child lived on in the stapleford mansion-house till two or three years had passed by. one day he was walking in the garden, and by some accident left his snuff-box on a bench. when he came back to find it he saw the little boy standing there; he had escaped his nurse, and was making a plaything of the box, in spite of the convulsive sneezings which the game brought in its train. then the man with the encrusted heart became interested in the little fellow's persistence in his play under such discomforts; he looked in the child's face, saw there his wife's countenance, though he did not see his own, and fell into thought on the piteousness of childhood--particularly of despised and rejected childhood, like this before him. from that hour, try as he would to counteract the feeling, the human necessity to love something or other got the better of what he had called his wisdom, and shaped itself in a tender anxiety for the youngster rupert. this name had been given him by his dying mother when, at her request, the child was baptized in her chamber, lest he should not survive for public baptism; and her husband had never thought of it as a name of any significance till, about this time, he learnt by accident that it was the name of the young marquis of christminster, son of the duke of southwesterland, for whom annetta had cherished warm feelings before her marriage. recollecting some wandering phrases in his wife's last words, which he had not understood at the time, he perceived at last that this was the person to whom she had alluded when affording him a clue to little rupert's history. he would sit in silence for hours with the child, being no great speaker at the best of times; but the boy, on his part, was too ready with his tongue for any break in discourse to arise because timothy petrick had nothing to say. after idling away his mornings in this manner, petrick would go to his own room and swear in long loud whispers, and walk up and down, calling himself the most ridiculous dolt that ever lived, and declaring that he would never go near the little fellow again; to which resolve he would adhere for the space perhaps of a day. such cases are happily not new to human nature, but there never was a case in which a man more completely befocled his former self than in this. as the child grew up, timothy's attachment to him grew deeper, till rupert became almost the sole object for which he lived. there had been enough of the family ambition latent in him for timothy petrick to feel a little envy when, some time before this date, his brother edward had been accepted by the honourable harriet mountclere, daughter of the second viscount of that name and title; but having discovered, as i have before stated, the paternity of his boy rupert to lurk in even a higher stratum of society, those envious feelings speedily dispersed. indeed, the more he reflected thereon, after his brother's aristocratic marriage, the more content did he become. his late wife took softer outline in his memory, as he thought of the lofty taste she had displayed, though only a plain burgher's daughter, and the justification for his weakness in loving the child--the justification that he had longed for--was afforded now in the knowledge that the boy was by nature, if not by name, a representative of one of the noblest houses in england. 'she was a woman of grand instincts, after all,' he said to himself proudly. 'to fix her choice upon the immediate successor in that ducal line--it was finely conceived! had he been of low blood like myself or my relations she would scarce have deserved the harsh measure that i have dealt out to her and her offspring. how much less, then, when such grovelling tastes were farthest from her soul! the man annetta loved was noble, and my boy is noble in spite of me.' the afterclap was inevitable, and it soon came. 'so far,' he reasoned, 'from cutting off this child from inheritance of my estates, as i have done, i should have rejoiced in the possession of him! he is of pure stock on one side at least, whilst in the ordinary run of affairs he would have been a commoner to the bone.' being a man, whatever his faults, of good old beliefs in the divinity of kings and those about 'em, the more he overhauled the case in this light, the more strongly did his poor wife's conduct in improving the blood and breed of the petrick family win his heart. he considered what ugly, idle, hard-drinking scamps many of his own relations had been; the miserable scriveners, usurers, and pawnbrokers that he had numbered among his forefathers, and the probability that some of their bad qualities would have come out in a merely corporeal child, to give him sorrow in his old age, turn his black hairs gray, his gray hairs white, cut down every stick of timber, and heaven knows what all, had he not, like a skilful gardener, minded his grafting and changed the sort; till at length this right-minded man fell down on his knees every night and morning and thanked god that he was not as other meanly descended fathers in such matters. it was in the peculiar disposition of the petrick family that the satisfaction which ultimately settled in timothy's breast found nourishment. the petricks had adored the nobility, and plucked them at the same time. that excellent man izaak walton's feelings about fish were much akin to those of old timothy petrick, and of his descendants in a lesser degree, concerning the landed aristocracy. to torture and to love simultaneously is a proceeding strange to reason, but possible to practice, as these instances show. hence, when timothy's brother edward said slightingly one day that timothy's son was well enough, but that he had nothing but shops and offices in his backward perspective, while his own children, should he have any, would be far different, in possessing such a mother as the honourable harriet, timothy felt a bound of triumph within him at the power he possessed of contradicting that statement if he chose. so much was he interested in his boy in this new aspect that he now began to read up chronicles of the illustrious house ennobled as the dukes of southwesterland, from their very beginning in the glories of the restoration of the blessed charles till the year of his own time. he mentally noted their gifts from royalty, grants of lands, purchases, intermarriages, plantings and buildings; more particularly their political and military achievements, which had been great, and their performances in art and letters, which had been by no means contemptible. he studied prints of the portraits of that family, and then, like a chemist watching a crystallization, began to examine young rupert's face for the unfolding of those historic curves and shades that the painters vandyke and lely had perpetuated on canvas. when the boy reached the most fascinating age of childhood, and his shouts of laughter ran through stapleford house from end to end, the remorse that oppressed timothy petrick knew no bounds. of all people in the world this rupert was the one on whom he could have wished the estates to devolve; yet rupert, by timothy's own desperate strategy at the time of his birth, had been ousted from all inheritance of them; and, since he did not mean to remarry, the manors would pass to his brother and his brother's children, who would be nothing to him, whose boasted pedigree on one side would be nothing to his rupert's. had he only left the first will of his grandfather alone! his mind ran on the wills continually, both of which were in existence, and the first, the cancelled one, in his own possession. night after night, when the servants were all abed, and the click of safety locks sounded as loud as a crash, he looked at that first will, and wished it had been the second and not the first. the crisis came at last. one night, after having enjoyed the boy's company for hours, he could no longer bear that his beloved rupert should be dispossessed, and he committed the felonious deed of altering the date of the earlier will to a fortnight later, which made its execution appear subsequent to the date of the second will already proved. he then boldly propounded the first will as the second. his brother edward submitted to what appeared to be not only incontestible fact, but a far more likely disposition of old timothy's property; for, like many others, he had been much surprised at the limitations defined in the other will, having no clue to their cause. he joined his brother timothy in setting aside the hitherto accepted document, and matters went on in their usual course, there being no dispositions in the substituted will differing from those in the other, except such as related to a future which had not yet arrived. the years moved on. rupert had not yet revealed the anxiously expected historic lineaments which should foreshadow the political abilities of the ducal family aforesaid when it happened on a certain day that timothy petrick made the acquaintance of a well-known physician of budmouth, who had been the medical adviser and friend of the late mrs. petrick's family for many years; though after annetta's marriage, and consequent removal to stapleford, he had seen no more of her, the neighbouring practitioner who attended the petricks having then become her doctor as a matter of course. timothy was impressed by the insight and knowledge disclosed in the conversation of the budmouth physician, and the acquaintance ripening to intimacy, the physician alluded to a form of hallucination to which annetta's mother and grandmother had been subject--that of believing in certain dreams as realities. he delicately inquired if timothy had ever noticed anything of the sort in his wife during her lifetime; he, the physician, had fancied that he discerned germs of the same peculiarity in annetta when he attended her in her girlhood. one explanation begat another, till the dumbfoundered timothy petrick was persuaded in his own mind that annetta's confession to him had been based on a delusion. 'you look down in the mouth?' said the doctor, pausing. 'a bit unmanned. 'tis unexpected-like,' sighed timothy. but he could hardly believe it possible; and, thinking it best to be frank with the doctor, told him the whole story which, till now, he had never related to living man, save his dying grandfather. to his surprise, the physician informed him that such a form of delusion was precisely what he would have expected from annetta's antecedents at such a physical crisis in her life. petrick prosecuted his inquiries elsewhere; and the upshot of his labours was, briefly, that a comparison of dates and places showed irrefutably that his poor wife's assertion could not possibly have foundation in fact. the young marquis of her tender passion--a highly moral and bright- minded nobleman--had gone abroad the year before annetta's marriage, and had not returned till after her death. the young girl's love for him had been a delicate ideal dream--no more. timothy went home, and the boy ran out to meet him; whereupon a strangely dismal feeling of discontent took possession of his soul. after all, then, there was nothing but plebeian blood in the veins of the heir to his name and estates; he was not to be succeeded by a noble-natured line. to be sure, rupert was his son; but that glory and halo he believed him to have inherited from the ages, outshining that of his brother's children, had departed from rupert's brow for ever; he could no longer read history in the boy's face, and centuries of domination in his eyes. his manner towards his son grew colder and colder from that day forward; and it was with bitterness of heart that he discerned the characteristic features of the petricks unfolding themselves by degrees. instead of the elegant knife-edged nose, so typical of the dukes of southwesterland, there began to appear on his face the broad nostril and hollow bridge of his grandfather timothy. no illustrious line of politicians was promised a continuator in that graying blue eye, for it was acquiring the expression of the orb of a particularly objectionable cousin of his own; and, instead of the mouth-curves which had thrilled parliamentary audiences in speeches now bound in calf in every well-ordered library, there was the bull-lip of that very uncle of his who had had the misfortune with the signature of a gentleman's will, and had been transported for life in consequence. to think how he himself, too, had sinned in this same matter of a will for this mere fleshly reproduction of a wretched old uncle whose very name he wished to forget! the boy's christian name, even, was an imposture and an irony, for it implied hereditary force and brilliancy to which he plainly would never attain. the consolation of real sonship was always left him certainly; but he could not help groaning to himself, 'why cannot a son be one's own and somebody else's likewise!' the marquis was shortly afterwards in the neighbourhood of stapleford, and timothy petrick met him, and eyed his noble countenance admiringly. the next day, when petrick was in his study, somebody knocked at the door. 'who's there?' 'rupert.' 'i'll rupert thee, you young impostor! say, only a poor commonplace petrick!' his father grunted. 'why didn't you have a voice like the marquis's i saw yesterday?' he continued, as the lad came in. 'why haven't you his looks, and a way of commanding, as if you'd done it for centuries--hey?' 'why? how can you expect it, father, when i'm not related to him?' 'ugh! then you ought to be!' growled his father. * * * * * as the narrator paused, the surgeon, the colonel, the historian, the spark, and others exclaimed that such subtle and instructive psychological studies as this (now that psychology was so much in demand) were precisely the tales they desired, as members of a scientific club, and begged the master-maltster to tell another curious mental delusion. the maltster shook his head, and feared he was not genteel enough to tell another story with a sufficiently moral tone in it to suit the club; he would prefer to leave the next to a better man. the colonel had fallen into reflection. true it was, he observed, that the more dreamy and impulsive nature of woman engendered within her erratic fancies, which often started her on strange tracks, only to abandon them in sharp revulsion at the dictates of her common sense--sometimes with ludicrous effect. events which had caused a lady's action to set in a particular direction might continue to enforce the same line of conduct, while she, like a mangle, would start on a sudden in a contrary course, and end where she began. the vice-president laughed, and applauded the colonel, adding that there surely lurked a story somewhere behind that sentiment, if he were not much mistaken. the colonel fixed his face to a good narrative pose, and went on without further preamble. dame the seventh--anna, lady baxby by the colonel it was in the time of the great civil war--if i should not rather, as a loyal subject, call it, with clarendon, the great rebellion. it was, i say, at that unhappy period of our history, that towards the autumn of a particular year, the parliament forces sat down before sherton castle with over seven thousand foot and four pieces of cannon. the castle, as we all know, was in that century owned and occupied by one of the earls of severn, and garrisoned for his assistance by a certain noble marquis who commanded the king's troops in these parts. the said earl, as well as the young lord baxby, his eldest son, were away from home just now, raising forces for the king elsewhere. but there were present in the castle, when the besiegers arrived before it, the son's fair wife lady baxby, and her servants, together with some friends and near relatives of her husband; and the defence was so good and well-considered that they anticipated no great danger. the parliamentary forces were also commanded by a noble lord--for the nobility were by no means, at this stage of the war, all on the king's side--and it had been observed during his approach in the night-time, and in the morning when the reconnoitring took place, that he appeared sad and much depressed. the truth was that, by a strange freak of destiny, it had come to pass that the stronghold he was set to reduce was the home of his own sister, whom he had tenderly loved during her maidenhood, and whom he loved now, in spite of the estrangement which had resulted from hostilities with her husband's family. he believed, too, that, notwithstanding this cruel division, she still was sincerely attached to him. his hesitation to point his ordnance at the walls was inexplicable to those who were strangers to his family history. he remained in the field on the north side of the castle (called by his name to this day because of his encampment there) till it occurred to him to send a messenger to his sister anna with a letter, in which he earnestly requested her, as she valued her life, to steal out of the place by the little gate to the south, and make away in that direction to the residence of some friends. shortly after he saw, to his great surprise, coming from the front of the castle walls a lady on horseback, with a single attendant. she rode straight forward into the field, and up the slope to where his army and tents were spread. it was not till she got quite near that he discerned her to be his sister anna; and much was he alarmed that she should have run such risk as to sally out in the face of his forces without knowledge of their proceedings, when at any moment their first discharge might have burst forth, to her own destruction in such exposure. she dismounted before she was quite close to him, and he saw that her familiar face, though pale, was not at all tearful, as it would have been in their younger days. indeed, if the particulars as handed down are to be believed, he was in a more tearful state than she, in his anxiety about her. he called her into his tent, out of the gaze of those around; for though many of the soldiers were honest and serious-minded men, he could not bear that she who had been his dear companion in childhood should be exposed to curious observation in this her great grief. when they were alone in the tent he clasped her in his arms, for he had not seen her since those happier days when, at the commencement of the war, her husband and himself had been of the same mind about the arbitrary conduct of the king, and had little dreamt that they would not go to extremes together. she was the calmest of the two, it is said, and was the first to speak connectedly. 'william, i have come to you,' said she, 'but not to save myself as you suppose. why, oh, why do you persist in supporting this disloyal cause, and grieving us so?' 'say not that,' he replied hastily. 'if truth hides at the bottom of a well, why should you suppose justice to be in high places? i am for the right at any price. anna, leave the castle; you are my sister; come away, my dear, and save thy life!' 'never!' says she. 'do you plan to carry out this attack, and level the castle indeed?' 'most certainly i do,' says he. 'what meaneth this army around us if not so?' 'then you will find the bones of your sister buried in the ruins you cause!' said she. and without another word she turned and left him. 'anna--abide with me!' he entreated. 'blood is thicker than water, and what is there in common between you and your husband now?' but she shook her head and would not hear him and hastening out, mounted her horse, and returned towards the castle as she had come. ay, many's the time when i have been riding to hounds across that field that i have thought of that scene! when she had quite gone down the field, and over the intervening ground, and round the bastion, so that he could no longer even see the tip of her mare's white tail, he was much more deeply moved by emotions concerning her and her welfare than he had been while she was before him. he wildly reproached himself that he had not detained her by force for her own good, so that, come what might, she would be under his protection and not under that of her husband, whose impulsive nature rendered him too open to instantaneous impressions and sudden changes of plan; he was now acting in this cause and now in that, and lacked the cool judgment necessary for the protection of a woman in these troubled times. her brother thought of her words again and again, and sighed, and even considered if a sister were not of more value than a principle, and if he would not have acted more naturally in throwing in his lot with hers. the delay of the besiegers in attacking the castle was said to be entirely owing to this distraction on the part of their leader, who remained on the spot attempting some indecisive operations, and parleying with the marquis, then in command, with far inferior forces, within the castle. it never occurred to him that in the meantime the young lady baxby, his sister, was in much the same mood as himself. her brother's familiar voice and eyes, much worn and fatigued by keeping the field, and by family distractions on account of this unhappy feud, rose upon her vision all the afternoon, and as day waned she grew more and more parliamentarian in her principles, though the only arguments which had addressed themselves to her were those of family ties. her husband, general lord baxby, had been expected to return all the day from his excursion into the east of the county, a message having been sent to him informing him of what had happened at home; and in the evening he arrived with reinforcements in unexpected numbers. her brother retreated before these to a hill near ivell, four or five miles off, to afford the men and himself some repose. lord baxby duly placed his forces, and there was no longer any immediate danger. by this time lady baxby's feelings were more parliamentarian than ever, and in her fancy the fagged countenance of her brother, beaten back by her husband, seemed to reproach her for heartlessness. when her husband entered her apartment, ruddy and boisterous, and full of hope, she received him but sadly; and upon his casually uttering some slighting words about her brother's withdrawal, which seemed to convey an imputation upon his courage, she resented them, and retorted that he, lord baxby himself, had been against the court-party at first, where it would be much more to his credit if he were at present, and showing her brother's consistency of opinion, instead of supporting the lying policy of the king (as she called it) for the sake of a barren principle of loyalty, which was but an empty expression when a king was not at one with his people. the dissension grew bitter between them, reaching to little less than a hot quarrel, both being quick-tempered souls. lord baxby was weary with his long day's march and other excitements, and soon retired to bed. his lady followed some time after. her husband slept profoundly, but not so she; she sat brooding by the window-slit, and lifting the curtain looked forth upon the hills without. in the silence between the footfalls of the sentinels she could hear faint sounds of her brother's camp on the distant hills, where the soldiery had hardly settled as yet into their bivouac since their evening's retreat. the first frosts of autumn had touched the grass, and shrivelled the more delicate leaves of the creepers; and she thought of william sleeping on the chilly ground, under the strain of these hardships. tears flooded her eyes as she returned to her husband's imputations upon his courage, as if there could be any doubt of lord william's courage after what he had done in the past days. lord baxby's long and reposeful breathings in his comfortable bed vexed her now, and she came to a determination on an impulse. hastily lighting a taper, she wrote on a scrap of paper: '_blood is thicker than water_, _dear william--i will come_;' and with this in her hand, she went to the door of the room, and out upon the stairs; on second thoughts turning back for a moment, to put on her husband's hat and cloak--not the one he was daily wearing--that if seen in the twilight she might at a casual glance appear as some lad or hanger- on of one of the household women; thus accoutred she descended a flight of circular stairs, at the bottom of which was a door opening upon the terrace towards the west, in the direction of her brother's position. her object was to slip out without the sentry seeing her, get to the stables, arouse one of the varlets, and send him ahead of her along the highway with the note to warn her brother of her approach, to throw in her lot with his. she was still in the shadow of the wall on the west terrace, waiting for the sentinel to be quite out of the way, when her ears were greeted by a voice, saying, from the adjoining shade-- 'here i be!' the tones were the tones of a woman. lady baxby made no reply, and stood close to the wall. 'my lord baxby,' the voice continued; and she could recognize in it the local accent of some girl from the little town of sherton, close at hand. 'i be tired of waiting, my dear lord baxby! i was afeard you would never come!' lady baxby flushed hot to her toes. 'how the wench loves him!' she said to herself, reasoning from the tones of the voice, which were plaintive and sweet and tender as a bird's. she changed from the home-hating truant to the strategic wife in one moment. 'hist!' she said. 'my lord, you told me ten o'clock, and 'tis near twelve now,' continues the other. 'how could ye keep me waiting so if you love me as you said? i should have stuck to my lover in the parliament troops if it had not been for thee, my dear lord!' there was not the least doubt that lady baxby had been mistaken for her husband by this intriguing damsel. here was a pretty underhand business! here were sly manoeuvrings! here was faithlessness! here was a precious assignation surprised in the midst! her wicked husband, whom till this very moment she had ever deemed the soul of good faith--how could he! lady baxby precipitately retreated to the door in the turret, closed it, locked it, and ascended one round of the staircase, where there was a loophole. 'i am not coming! i, lord baxby, despise ye and all your wanton tribe!' she hissed through the opening; and then crept upstairs, as firmly rooted in royalist principles as any man in the castle. her husband still slept the sleep of the weary, well-fed, and well-drunken, if not of the just; and lady baxby quickly disrobed herself without assistance--being, indeed, supposed by her woman to have retired to rest long ago. before lying down, she noiselessly locked the door and placed the key under her pillow. more than that, she got a staylace, and, creeping up to her lord, in great stealth tied the lace in a tight knot to one of his long locks of hair, attaching the other end of the lace to the bedpost; for, being tired herself now, she feared she might sleep heavily; and, if her husband should wake, this would be a delicate hint that she had discovered all. it is added that, to make assurance trebly sure, her gentle ladyship, when she had lain down to rest, held her lord's hand in her own during the whole of the night. but this is old-wives' gossip, and not corroborated. what lord baxby thought and said when he awoke the next morning, and found himself so strangely tethered, is likewise only matter of conjecture; though there is no reason to suppose that his rage was great. the extent of his culpability as regards the intrigue was this much; that, while halting at a cross-road near sherton that day, he had flirted with a pretty young woman, who seemed nothing loth, and had invited her to the castle terrace after dark--an invitation which he quite forgot on his arrival home. the subsequent relations of lord and lady baxby were not again greatly embittered by quarrels, so far as is known; though the husband's conduct in later life was occasionally eccentric, and the vicissitudes of his public career culminated in long exile. the siege of the castle was not regularly undertaken till two or three years later than the time i have been describing, when lady baxby and all the women therein, except the wife of the then governor, had been removed to safe distance. that memorable siege of fifteen days by fairfax, and the surrender of the old place on an august evening, is matter of history, and need not be told by me. * * * * * the man of family spoke approvingly across to the colonel when the club had done smiling, declaring that the story was an absolutely faithful page of history, as he had good reason to know, his own people having been engaged in that well-known scrimmage. he asked if the colonel had ever heard the equally well-authenticated, though less martial tale of a certain lady penelope, who lived in the same century, and not a score of miles from the same place? the colonel had not heard it, nor had anybody except the local historian; and the inquirer was induced to proceed forthwith. dame the eighth--the lady penelope by the man of family in going out of casterbridge by the low-lying road which eventually conducts to the town of ivell, you see on the right hand an ivied manor- house, flanked by battlemented towers, and more than usually distinguished by the size of its many mullioned windows. though still of good capacity, the building is much reduced from its original grand proportions; it has, moreover, been shorn of the fair estate which once appertained to its lord, with the exception of a few acres of park-land immediately around the mansion. this was formerly the seat of the ancient and knightly family of the drenghards, or drenkhards, now extinct in the male line, whose name, according to the local chronicles, was interpreted to mean _strenuus miles_, _vel potator_, though certain members of the family were averse to the latter signification, and a duel was fought by one of them on that account, as is well known. with this, however, we are not now concerned. in the early part of the reign of the first king james, there was visiting near this place of the drenghards a lady of noble family and extraordinary beauty. she was of the purest descent; ah, there's seldom such blood nowadays as hers! she possessed no great wealth, it was said, but was sufficiently endowed. her beauty was so perfect, and her manner so entrancing, that suitors seemed to spring out of the ground wherever she went, a sufficient cause of anxiety to the countess her mother, her only living parent. of these there were three in particular, whom neither her mother's complaints of prematurity, nor the ready raillery of the maiden herself, could effectually put off. the said gallants were a certain sir john gale, a sir william hervy, and the well-known sir george drenghard, one of the drenghard family before-mentioned. they had, curiously enough, all been equally honoured with the distinction of knighthood, and their schemes for seeing her were manifold, each fearing that one of the others would steal a march over himself. not content with calling, on every imaginable excuse, at the house of the relative with whom she sojourned, they intercepted her in rides and in walks; and if any one of them chanced to surprise another in the act of paying her marked attentions, the encounter often ended in an altercation of great violence. so heated and impassioned, indeed, would they become, that the lady hardly felt herself safe in their company at such times, notwithstanding that she was a brave and buxom damsel, not easily put out, and with a daring spirit of humour in her composition, if not of coquetry. at one of these altercations, which had place in her relative's grounds, and was unusually bitter, threatening to result in a duel, she found it necessary to assert herself. turning haughtily upon the pair of disputants, she declared that whichever should be the first to break the peace between them, no matter what the provocation, that man should never be admitted to her presence again; and thus would she effectually stultify the aggressor by making the promotion of a quarrel a distinct bar to its object. while the two knights were wearing rather a crest-fallen appearance at her reprimand, the third, never far off, came upon the scene, and she repeated her caveat to him also. seeing, then, how great was the concern of all at her peremptory mood, the lady's manner softened, and she said with a roguish smile-- 'have patience, have patience, you foolish men! only bide your time quietly, and, in faith, i will marry you all in turn!' they laughed heartily at this sally, all three together, as though they were the best of friends; at which she blushed, and showed some embarrassment, not having realized that her arch jest would have sounded so strange when uttered. the meeting which resulted thus, however, had its good effect in checking the bitterness of their rivalry; and they repeated her speech to their relatives and acquaintance with a hilarious frequency and publicity that the lady little divined, or she might have blushed and felt more embarrassment still. in the course of time the position resolved itself, and the beauteous lady penelope (as she was called) made up her mind; her choice being the eldest of the three knights, sir george drenghard, owner of the mansion aforesaid, which thereupon became her home; and her husband being a pleasant man, and his family, though not so noble, of as good repute as her own, all things seemed to show that she had reckoned wisely in honouring him with her preference. but what may lie behind the still and silent veil of the future none can foretell. in the course of a few months the husband of her choice died of his convivialities (as if, indeed, to bear out his name), and the lady penelope was left alone as mistress of his house. by this time she had apparently quite forgotten her careless declaration to her lovers collectively; but the lovers themselves had not forgotten it; and, as she would now be free to take a second one of them, sir john gale appeared at her door as early in her widowhood as it was proper and seemly to do so. she gave him little encouragement; for, of the two remaining, her best beloved was sir william, of whom, if the truth must be told, she had often thought during her short married life. but he had not yet reappeared. her heart began to be so much with him now that she contrived to convey to him, by indirect hints through his friends, that she would not be displeased by a renewal of his former attentions. sir william, however, misapprehended her gentle signalling, and from excellent, though mistaken motives of delicacy, delayed to intrude himself upon her for a long time. meanwhile sir john, now created a baronet, was unremitting, and she began to grow somewhat piqued at the backwardness of him she secretly desired to be forward. 'never mind,' her friends said jestingly to her (knowing of her humorous remark, as everybody did, that she would marry them all three if they would have patience)--'never mind; why hesitate upon the order of them? take 'em as they come.' this vexed her still more, and regretting deeply, as she had often done, that such a careless speech should ever have passed her lips, she fairly broke down under sir john's importunity, and accepted his hand. they were married on a fine spring morning, about the very time at which the unfortunate sir william discovered her preference for him, and was beginning to hasten home from a foreign court to declare his unaltered devotion to her. on his arrival in england he learnt the sad truth. if sir william suffered at her precipitancy under what she had deemed his neglect, the lady penelope herself suffered more. she had not long been the wife of sir john gale before he showed a disposition to retaliate upon her for the trouble and delay she had put him to in winning her. with increasing frequency he would tell her that, as far as he could perceive, she was an article not worth such labour as he had bestowed in obtaining it, and such snubbings as he had taken from his rivals on the same account. these and other cruel things he repeated till he made the lady weep sorely, and wellnigh broke her spirit, though she had formerly been such a mettlesome dame. by degrees it became perceptible to all her friends that her life was a very unhappy one; and the fate of the fair woman seemed yet the harder in that it was her own stately mansion, left to her sole use by her first husband, which her second had entered into and was enjoying, his being but a mean and meagre erection. but such is the flippancy of friends that when she met them, and secretly confided her grief to their ears, they would say cheerily, 'lord, never mind, my dear; there's a third to come yet!'--at which maladroit remark she would show much indignation, and tell them they should know better than to trifle on so solemn a theme. yet that the poor lady would have been only too happy to be the wife of the third, instead of sir john whom she had taken, was painfully obvious, and much she was blamed for her foolish choice by some people. sir william, however, had returned to foreign cities on learning the news of her marriage, and had never been heard of since. two or three years of suffering were passed by lady penelope as the despised and chidden wife of this man sir john, amid regrets that she had so greatly mistaken him, and sighs for one whom she thought never to see again, till it chanced that her husband fell sick of some slight ailment. one day after this, when she was sitting in his room, looking from the window upon the expanse in front, she beheld, approaching the house on foot, a form she seemed to know well. lady penelope withdrew silently from the sickroom, and descended to the hall, whence, through the doorway, she saw entering between the two round towers, which at that time flanked the gateway, sir william hervy, as she had surmised, but looking thin and travel-worn. she advanced into the courtyard to meet him. 'i was passing through casterbridge,' he said, with faltering deference, 'and i walked out to ask after your ladyship's health. i felt that i could do no less; and, of course, to pay my respects to your good husband, my heretofore acquaintance . . . but oh, penelope, th'st look sick and sorry!' 'i am heartsick, that's all,' said she. they could see in each other an emotion which neither wished to express, and they stood thus a long time with tears in their eyes. 'he does not treat 'ee well, i hear,' said sir william in a low voice. 'may god in heaven forgive him; but it is asking a great deal!' 'hush, hush!' said she hastily. 'nay, but i will speak what i may honestly say,' he answered. 'i am not under your roof, and my tongue is free. why didst not wait for me, penelope, or send to me a more overt letter? i would have travelled night and day to come!' 'too late, william; you must not ask it,' said she, endeavouring to quiet him as in old times. 'my husband just now is unwell. he will grow better in a day or two, maybe. you must call again and see him before you leave casterbridge.' as she said this their eyes met. each was thinking of her lightsome words about taking the three men in turn; each thought that two-thirds of that promise had been fulfilled. but, as if it were unpleasant to her that this recollection should have arisen, she spoke again quickly: 'come again in a day or two, when my husband will be well enough to see you.' sir william departed without entering the house, and she returned to sir john's chamber. he, rising from his pillow, said, 'to whom hast been talking, wife, in the courtyard? i heard voices there.' she hesitated, and he repeated the question more impatiently. 'i do not wish to tell you now,' said she. 'but i wooll know!' said he. then she answered, 'sir william hervy.' 'by g--- i thought as much!' cried sir john, drops of perspiration standing on his white face. 'a skulking villain! a sick man's ears are keen, my lady. i heard that they were lover-like tones, and he called 'ee by your christian name. these be your intrigues, my lady, when i am off my legs awhile!' 'on my honour,' cried she, 'you do me a wrong. i swear i did not know of his coming!' 'swear as you will,' said sir john, 'i don't believe 'ee.' and with this he taunted her, and worked himself into a greater passion, which much increased his illness. his lady sat still, brooding. there was that upon her face which had seldom been there since her marriage; and she seemed to think anew of what she had so lightly said in the days of her freedom, when her three lovers were one and all coveting her hand. 'i began at the wrong end of them,' she murmured. 'my god--that did i!' 'what?' said he. 'a trifle,' said she. 'i spoke to myself only.' it was somewhat strange that after this day, while she went about the house with even a sadder face than usual, her churlish husband grew worse; and what was more, to the surprise of all, though to the regret of few, he died a fortnight later. sir william had not called upon him as he had promised, having received a private communication from lady penelope, frankly informing him that to do so would be inadvisable, by reason of her husband's temper. now when sir john was gone, and his remains carried to his family burying- place in another part of england, the lady began in due time to wonder whither sir william had betaken himself. but she had been cured of precipitancy (if ever woman were), and was prepared to wait her whole lifetime a widow if the said sir william should not reappear. her life was now passed mostly within the walls, or in promenading between the pleasaunce and the bowling-green; and she very seldom went even so far as the high road which then skirted the grounds on the north, though it has now, and for many years, been diverted to the south side. her patience was rewarded (if love be in any case a reward); for one day, many months after her second husband's death, a messenger arrived at her gate with the intelligence that sir william hervy was again in casterbridge, and would be glad to know if it were her pleasure that he should wait upon her. it need hardly be said that permission was joyfully granted, and within two hours her lover stood before her, a more thoughtful man than formerly, but in all essential respects the same man, generous, modest to diffidence, and sincere. the reserve which womanly decorum threw over her manner was but too obviously artificial, and when he said 'the ways of providence are strange,' and added after a moment, 'and merciful likewise,' she could not conceal her agitation, and burst into tears upon his neck. 'but this is too soon,' she said, starting back. 'but no,' said he. 'you are eleven months gone in widowhood, and it is not as if sir john had been a good husband to you.' his visits grew pretty frequent now, as may well be guessed, and in a month or two he began to urge her to an early union. but she counselled a little longer delay. 'why?' said he. 'surely i have waited long! life is short; we are getting older every day, and i am the last of the three.' 'yes,' said the lady frankly. 'and that is why i would not have you hasten. our marriage may seem so strange to everybody, after my unlucky remark on that occasion we know so well, and which so many others know likewise, thanks to talebearers.' on this representation he conceded a little space, for the sake of her good name. but the destined day of their marriage at last arrived, and it was a gay time for the villagers and all concerned, and the bells in the parish church rang from noon till night. thus at last she was united to the man who had loved her the most tenderly of them all, who but for his reticence might perhaps have been the first to win her. often did he say to himself; 'how wondrous that her words should have been fulfilled! many a truth hath been spoken in jest, but never a more remarkable one!' the noble lady herself preferred not to dwell on the coincidence, a certain shyness, if not shame, crossing her fair face at any allusion thereto. but people will have their say, sensitive souls or none, and their sayings on this third occasion took a singular shape. 'surely,' they whispered, 'there is something more than chance in this . . . the death of the first was possibly natural; but what of the death of the second, who ill-used her, and whom, loving the third so desperately, she must have wished out of the way?' then they pieced together sundry trivial incidents of sir john's illness, and dwelt upon the indubitable truth that he had grown worse after her lover's unexpected visit; till a very sinister theory was built up as to the hand she may have had in sir john's premature demise. but nothing of this suspicion was said openly, for she was a lady of noble birth--nobler, indeed, than either of her husbands--and what people suspected they feared to express in formal accusation. the mansion that she occupied had been left to her for so long a time as she should choose to reside in it, and, having a regard for the spot, she had coaxed sir william to remain there. but in the end it was unfortunate; for one day, when in the full tide of his happiness, he was walking among the willows near the gardens, where he overheard a conversation between some basket-makers who were cutting the osiers for their use. in this fatal dialogue the suspicions of the neighbouring townsfolk were revealed to him for the first time. 'a cupboard close to his bed, and the key in her pocket. ah!' said one. 'and a blue phial therein--h'm!' said another. 'and spurge-laurel leaves among the hearth-ashes. oh-oh!' said a third. on his return home sir william seemed to have aged years. but he said nothing; indeed, it was a thing impossible. and from that hour a ghastly estrangement began. she could not understand it, and simply waited. one day he said, however, 'i must go abroad.' 'why?' said she. 'william, have i offended you?' 'no,' said he; 'but i must go.' she could coax little more out of him, and in itself there was nothing unnatural in his departure, for he had been a wanderer from his youth. in a few days he started off, apparently quite another man than he who had rushed to her side so devotedly a few months before. it is not known when, or how, the rumours, which were so thick in the atmosphere around her, actually reached the lady penelope's ears, but that they did reach her there is no doubt. it was impossible that they should not; the district teemed with them; they rustled in the air like night-birds of evil omen. then a reason for her husband's departure occurred to her appalled mind, and a loss of health became quickly apparent. she dwindled thin in the face, and the veins in her temples could all be distinctly traced. an inner fire seemed to be withering her away. her rings fell off her fingers, and her arms hung like the flails of the threshers, though they had till lately been so round and so elastic. she wrote to her husband repeatedly, begging him to return to her; but he, being in extreme and wretched doubt, moreover, knowing nothing of her ill-health, and never suspecting that the rumours had reached her also, deemed absence best, and postponed his return awhile, giving various good reasons for his delay. at length, however, when the lady penelope had given birth to a still- born child, her mother, the countess, addressed a letter to sir william, requesting him to come back to her if he wished to see her alive; since she was wasting away of some mysterious disease, which seemed to be rather mental than physical. it was evident that his mother-in-law knew nothing of the secret, for she lived at a distance; but sir william promptly hastened home, and stood beside the bed of his now dying wife. 'believe me, william,' she said when they were alone, 'i am innocent--innocent!' 'of what?' said he. 'heaven forbid that i should accuse you of anything!' 'but you do accuse me--silently!' she gasped. 'i could not write thereon--and ask you to hear me. it was too much, too degrading. but would that i had been less proud! they suspect me of poisoning him, william! but, oh my dear husband, i am innocent of that wicked crime! he died naturally. i loved you--too soon; but that was all!' nothing availed to save her. the worm had gnawed too far into her heart before sir william's return for anything to be remedial now; and in a few weeks she breathed her last. after her death the people spoke louder, and her conduct became a subject of public discussion. a little later on, the physician, who had attended the late sir john, heard the rumour, and came down from the place near london to which he latterly had retired, with the express purpose of calling upon sir william hervy, now staying in casterbridge. he stated that, at the request of a relative of sir john's, who wished to be assured on the matter by reason of its suddenness, he had, with the assistance of a surgeon, made a private examination of sir john's body immediately after his decease, and found that it had resulted from purely natural causes. nobody at this time had breathed a suspicion of foul play, and therefore nothing was said which might afterwards have established her innocence. it being thus placed beyond doubt that this beautiful and noble lady had been done to death by a vile scandal that was wholly unfounded, her husband was stung with a dreadful remorse at the share he had taken in her misfortunes, and left the country anew, this time never to return alive. he survived her but a few years, and his body was brought home and buried beside his wife's under the tomb which is still visible in the parish church. until lately there was a good portrait of her, in weeds for her first husband, with a cross in her hand, at the ancestral seat of her family, where she was much pitied, as she deserved to be. yet there were some severe enough to say--and these not unjust persons in other respects--that though unquestionably innocent of the crime imputed to her, she had shown an unseemly wantonness in contracting three marriages in such rapid succession; that the untrue suspicion might have been ordered by providence (who often works indirectly) as a punishment for her self-indulgence. upon that point i have no opinion to offer. * * * * * the reverend the vice-president, however, the tale being ended, offered as his opinion that her fate ought to be quite clearly recognized as a punishment. so thought the churchwarden, and also the quiet gentleman sitting near. the latter knew many other instances in point, one of which could be narrated in a few words. dame the ninth--the duchess of hamptonshire by the quiet gentleman some fifty years ago, the then duke of hamptonshire, fifth of that title, was incontestibly the head man in his county, and particularly in the neighbourhood of batton. he came of the ancient and loyal family of saxelbye, which, before its ennoblement, had numbered many knightly and ecclesiastical celebrities in its male line. it would have occupied a painstaking county historian a whole afternoon to take rubbings of the numerous effigies and heraldic devices graven to their memory on the brasses, tablets, and altar-tombs in the aisle of the parish-church. the duke himself, however, was a man little attracted by ancient chronicles in stone and metal, even when they concerned his own beginnings. he allowed his mind to linger by preference on the many graceless and unedifying pleasures which his position placed at his command. he could on occasion close the mouths of his dependents by a good bomb-like oath, and he argued doggedly with the parson on the virtues of cock-fighting and baiting the bull. this nobleman's personal appearance was somewhat impressive. his complexion was that of the copper-beech tree. his frame was stalwart, though slightly stooping. his mouth was large, and he carried an unpolished sapling as his walking-stick, except when he carried a spud for cutting up any thistle he encountered on his walks. his castle stood in the midst of a park, surrounded by dusky elms, except to the southward; and when the moon shone out, the gleaming stone facade, backed by heavy boughs, was visible from the distant high road as a white spot on the surface of darkness. though called a castle, the building was little fortified, and had been erected with greater eye to internal convenience than those crannied places of defence to which the name strictly appertains. it was a castellated mansion as regular as a chessboard on its ground-plan, ornamented with make-believe bastions and machicolations, behind which were stacks of battlemented chimneys. on still mornings, at the fire-lighting hour, when ghostly house-maids stalk the corridors, and thin streaks of light through the shutter-chinks lend startling winks and smiles to ancestors on canvas, twelve or fifteen thin stems of blue smoke sprouted upwards from these chimney-tops, and spread into a flat canopy on high. around the site stretched ten thousand acres of good, fat, unimpeachable soil, plentiful in glades and lawns wherever visible from the castle-windows, and merging in homely arable where screened from the too curious eye by ingeniously-contrived plantations. some way behind the owner of all this came the second man in the parish, the rector, the honourable and reverend mr. oldbourne, a widower, over stiff and stern for a clergyman, whose severe white neckcloth, well-kept gray hair, and right-lined face betokened none of those sympathetic traits whereon depends so much of a parson's power to do good among his fellow-creatures. the last, far-removed man of the series--altogether the neptune of these local primaries--was the curate, mr. alwyn hill. he was a handsome young deacon with curly hair, dreamy eyes--so dreamy that to look long into them was like ascending and floating among summer clouds--a complexion as fresh as a flower, and a chin absolutely beardless. though his age was about twenty-five, he looked not much over nineteen. the rector had a daughter called emmeline, of so sweet and simple a nature that her beauty was discovered, measured, and inventoried by almost everybody in that part of the country before it was suspected by herself to exist. she had been bred in comparative solitude; a rencounter with men troubled and confused her. whenever a strange visitor came to her father's house she slipped into the orchard and remained till he was gone, ridiculing her weakness in apostrophes, but unable to overcome it. her virtues lay in no resistant force of character, but in a natural inappetency for evil things, which to her were as unmeaning as joints of flesh to a herbivorous creature. her charms of person, manner, and mind, had been clear for some time to the antinous in orders, and no less so to the duke, who, though scandalously ignorant of dainty phrases, ever showing a clumsy manner towards the gentler sex, and, in short, not at all a lady's man, took fire to a degree that was wellnigh terrible at sudden sight of emmeline, a short time after she was turned seventeen. it occurred one afternoon at the corner of a shrubbery between the castle and the rectory, where the duke was standing to watch the heaving of a mole, when the fair girl brushed past at a distance of a few yards, in the full light of the sun, and without hat or bonnet. the duke went home like a man who had seen a spirit. he ascended to the picture-gallery of his castle, and there passed some time in staring at the bygone beauties of his line as if he had never before considered what an important part those specimens of womankind had played in the evolution of the saxelbye race. he dined alone, drank rather freely, and declared to himself that emmeline oldbourne must be his. meanwhile there had unfortunately arisen between the curate and this girl some sweet and secret understanding. particulars of the attachment remained unknown then and always, but it was plainly not approved of by her father. his procedure was cold, hard, and inexorable. soon the curate disappeared from the parish, almost suddenly, after bitter and hard words had been heard to pass between him and the rector one evening in the garden, intermingled with which, like the cries of the dying in the din of battle, were the beseeching sobs of a woman. not long after this it was announced that a marriage between the duke and miss oldbourne was to be solemnized at a surprisingly early date. the wedding-day came and passed; and she was a duchess. nobody seemed to think of the ousted man during the day, or else those who thought of him concealed their meditations. some of the less subservient ones were disposed to speak in a jocular manner of the august husband and wife, others to make correct and pretty speeches about them, according as their sex and nature dictated. but in the evening, the ringers in the belfry, with whom alwyn had been a favourite, eased their minds a little concerning the gentle young man, and the possible regrets of the woman he had loved. 'don't you see something wrong in it all?' said the third bell as he wiped his face. 'i know well enough where she would have liked to stable her horses to-night, when they have done their journey.' 'that is, you would know if you could tell where young mr. hill is living, which is known to none in the parish.' 'except to the lady that this ring o' grandsire triples is in honour of.' yet these friendly cottagers were at this time far from suspecting the real dimensions of emmeline's misery, nor was it clear even to those who came into much closer communion with her than they, so well had she concealed her heart-sickness. but bride and bridegroom had not long been home at the castle when the young wife's unhappiness became plainly enough perceptible. her maids and men said that she was in the habit of turning to the wainscot and shedding stupid scalding tears at a time when a right-minded lady would have been overhauling her wardrobe. she prayed earnestly in the great church-pew, where she sat lonely and insignificant as a mouse in a cell, instead of counting her rings, falling asleep, or amusing herself in silent laughter at the queer old people in the congregation, as previous beauties of the family had done in their time. she seemed to care no more for eating and drinking out of crystal and silver than from a service of earthen vessels. her head was, in truth, full of something else; and that such was the case was only too obvious to the duke, her husband. at first he would only taunt her for her folly in thinking of that milk-and-water parson; but as time went on his charges took a more positive shape. he would not believe her assurance that she had in no way communicated with her former lover, nor he with her, since their parting in the presence of her father. this led to some strange scenes between them which need not be detailed; their result was soon to take a catastrophic shape. one dark quiet evening, about two months after the marriage, a man entered the gate admitting from the highway to the park and avenue which ran up to the house. he arrived within two hundred yards of the walls, when he left the gravelled drive and drew near to the castle by a roundabout path leading into a shrubbery. here he stood still. in a few minutes the strokes of the castle-clock resounded, and then a female figure entered the same secluded nook from an opposite direction. there the two indistinct persons leapt together like a pair of dewdrops on a leaf; and then they stood apart, facing each other, the woman looking down. 'emmeline, you begged me to come, and here i am, heaven forgive me!' said the man hoarsely. 'you are going to emigrate, alwyn,' she said in broken accents. 'i have heard of it; you sail from plymouth in three days in the _western glory_?' 'yes. i can live in england no longer. life is as death to me here,' says he. 'my life is even worse--worse than death. death would not have driven me to this extremity. listen, alwyn--i have sent for you to beg to go with you, or at least to be near you--to do anything so that it be not to stay here.' 'to go away with me?' he said in a startled tone. 'yes, yes--or under your direction, or by your help in some way! don't be horrified at me--you must bear with me whilst i implore it. nothing short of cruelty would have driven me to this. i could have borne my doom in silence had i been left unmolested; but he tortures me, and i shall soon be in the grave if i cannot escape.' to his shocked inquiry how her husband tortured her, the duchess said that it was by jealousy. 'he tries to wring admissions from me concerning you,' she said, 'and will not believe that i have not communicated with you since my engagement to him was settled by my father, and i was forced to agree to it.' the poor curate said that this was the heaviest news of all. 'he has not personally ill-used you?' he asked. 'yes,' she whispered. 'what has he done?' she looked fearfully around, and said, sobbing: 'in trying to make me confess to what i have never done, he adopts plans i dare not describe for terrifying me into a weak state, so that i may own to anything! i resolved to write to you, as i had no other friend.' she added, with dreary irony, 'i thought i would give him some ground for his suspicion, so as not to disgrace his judgment.' 'do you really mean, emmeline,' he tremblingly inquired, 'that you--that you want to fly with me?' 'can you think that i would act otherwise than in earnest at such a time as this?' he was silent for a minute or more. 'you must not go with me,' he said. 'why?' 'it would be sin.' 'it _cannot_ be sin, for i have never wanted to commit sin in my life; and it isn't likely i would begin now, when i pray every day to die and be sent to heaven out of my misery!' 'but it is wrong, emmeline, all the same.' 'is it wrong to run away from the fire that scorches you?' 'it would look wrong, at any rate, in this case.' 'alwyn, alwyn, take me, i beseech you!' she burst out. 'it is not right in general, i know, but it is such an exceptional instance, this. why has such a severe strain been put upon me? i was doing no harm, injuring no one, helping many people, and expecting happiness; yet trouble came. can it be that god holds me in derision? i had no supporter--i gave way; and now my life is a burden and a shame to me . . . oh, if you only knew how much to me this request to you is--how my life is wrapped up in it, you could not deny me!' 'this is almost beyond endurance--heaven support us,' he groaned. 'emmy, you are the duchess of hamptonshire, the duke of hamptonshire's wife; you must not go with me!' 'and am i then refused?--oh, am i refused?' she cried frantically. 'alwyn, alwyn, do you say it indeed to me?' 'yes, i do, dear, tender heart! i do most sadly say it. you must not go. forgive me, for there is no alternative but refusal. though i die, though you die, we must not fly together. it is forbidden in god's law. good-bye, for always and ever!' he tore himself away, hastened from the shrubbery, and vanished among the trees. three days after this meeting and farewell, alwyn, his soft, handsome features stamped with a haggard hardness that ten years of ordinary wear and tear in the world could scarcely have produced, sailed from plymouth on a drizzling morning, in the passenger-ship _western glory_. when the land had faded behind him he mechanically endeavoured to school himself into a stoical frame of mind. his attempt, backed up by the strong moral staying power that had enabled him to resist the passionate temptation to which emmeline, in her reckless trustfulness, had exposed him, was rewarded by a certain kind of success, though the murmuring stretch of waters whereon he gazed day after day too often seemed to be articulating to him in tones of her well-remembered voice. he framed on his journey rules of conduct for reducing to mild proportions the feverish regrets which would occasionally arise and agitate him, when he indulged in visions of what might have been had he not hearkened to the whispers of conscience. he fixed his thoughts for so many hours a day on philosophical passages in the volumes he had brought with him, allowing himself now and then a few minutes' thought of emmeline, with the strict yet reluctant niggardliness of an ailing epicure proportioning the rank drinks that cause his malady. the voyage was marked by the usual incidents of a sailing-passage in those days--a storm, a calm, a man overboard, a birth, and a funeral--the latter sad event being one in which he, as the only clergyman on board, officiated, reading the service ordained for the purpose. the ship duly arrived at boston early in the month following, and thence he proceeded to providence to seek out a distant relative. after a short stay at providence he returned again to boston, and by applying himself to a serious occupation made good progress in shaking off the dreary melancholy which enveloped him even now. distracted and weakened in his beliefs by his recent experiences, he decided that he could not for a time worthily fill the office of a minister of religion, and applied for the mastership of a school. some introductions, given him before starting, were useful now, and he soon became known as a respectable scholar and gentleman to the trustees of one of the colleges. this ultimately led to his retirement from the school and installation in the college as professor of rhetoric and oratory. here and thus he lived on, exerting himself solely because of a conscientious determination to do his duty. he passed his winter evenings in turning sonnets and elegies, often giving his thoughts voice in 'lines to an unfortunate lady,' while his summer leisure at the same hour would be spent in watching the lengthening shadows from his window, and fancifully comparing them with the shades of his own life. if he walked, he mentally inquired which was the eastern quarter of the landscape, and thought of two thousand miles of water that way, and of what was beyond it. in a word he was at all spare times dreaming of her who was only a memory to him, and would probably never be more. nine years passed by, and under their wear and tear alwyn hill's face lost a great many of the attractive characteristics which had formerly distinguished it. he was kind to his pupils and affable to all who came in contact with him; but the kernel of his life, his secret, was kept as snugly shut up as though he had been dumb. in talking to his acquaintances of england and his life there, he omitted the episode of batton castle and emmeline as if it had no existence in his calendar at all. though of towering importance to himself, it had filled but a short and small fragment of time, an ephemeral season which would have been wellnigh imperceptible, even to him, at this distance, but for the incident it enshrined. one day, at this date, when cursorily glancing over an old english newspaper, he observed a paragraph which, short as it was, contained for him whole tomes of thrilling information--rung with more passion-stirring rhythm than the collected cantos of all the poets. it was an announcement of the death of the duke of hamptonshire, leaving behind him a widow, but no children. the current of alwyn's thoughts now completely changed. on looking again at the newspaper he found it to be one that was sent him long ago, and had been carelessly thrown aside. but for an accidental overhauling of the waste journals in his study he might not have known of the event for years. at this moment of reading the duke had already been dead seven months. alwyn could now no longer bind himself down to machine-made synecdoche, antithesis, and climax, being full of spontaneous specimens of all these rhetorical forms, which he dared not utter. who shall wonder that his mind luxuriated in dreams of a sweet possibility now laid open for the first time these many years? for emmeline was to him now as ever the one dear thing in all the world. the issue of his silent romancing was that he resolved to return to her at the very earliest moment. but he could not abandon his professional work on the instant. he did not get really quite free from engagements till four months later; but, though suffering throes of impatience continually, he said to himself every day: 'if she has continued to love me nine years she will love me ten; she will think the more tenderly of me when her present hours of solitude shall have done their proper work; old times will revive with the cessation of her recent experience, and every day will favour my return.' the enforced interval soon passed, and he duly arrived in england, reaching the village of batton on a certain winter day between twelve and thirteen months subsequent to the time of the duke's death. it was evening; yet such was alwyn's impatience that he could not forbear taking, this very night, one look at the castle which emmeline had entered as unhappy mistress ten years before. he threaded the park trees, gazed in passing at well-known outlines which rose against the dim sky, and was soon interested in observing that lively country-people, in parties of two and three, were walking before and behind him up the interlaced avenue to the castle gateway. knowing himself to be safe from recognition, alwyn inquired of one of these pedestrians what was going on. 'her grace gives her tenantry a ball to-night, to keep up the old custom of the duke and his father before him, which she does not wish to change.' 'indeed. has she lived here entirely alone since the duke's death?' 'quite alone. but though she doesn't receive company herself, she likes the village people to enjoy themselves, and often has 'em here.' 'kind-hearted, as always!' thought alwyn. on reaching the castle he found that the great gates at the tradesmen's entrance were thrown back against the wall as if they were never to be closed again; that the passages and rooms in that wing were brilliantly lighted up, some of the numerous candles guttering down over the green leaves which decorated them, and upon the silk dresses of the happy farmers' wives as they passed beneath, each on her husband's arm. alwyn found no difficulty in marching in along with the rest, the castle being liberty hall to-night. he stood unobserved in a corner of the large apartment where dancing was about to begin. 'her grace, though hardly out of mourning, will be sure to come down and lead off the dance with neighbour bates,' said one. 'who is neighbour bates?' asked alwyn. 'an old man she respects much--the oldest of her tenant-farmers. he was seventy-eight his last birthday.' 'ah, to be sure!' said alwyn, at his ease. 'i remember.' the dancers formed in line, and waited. a door opened at the farther end of the hall, and a lady in black silk came forth. she bowed, smiled, and proceeded to the top of the dance. 'who is that lady?' said alwyn, in a puzzled tone. 'i thought you told me that the duchess of hamptonshire--' 'that is the duchess,' said his informant. 'but there is another?' 'no; there is no other.' 'but she is not the duchess of hamptonshire--who used to--' alwyn's tongue stuck to his mouth, he could get no farther. 'what's the matter?' said his acquaintance. alwyn had retired, and was supporting himself against the wall. the wretched alwyn murmured something about a stitch in his side from walking. then the music struck up, the dance went on, and his neighbour became so interested in watching the movements of this strange duchess through its mazes as to forget alwyn for a while. it gave him an opportunity to brace himself up. he was a man who had suffered, and he could suffer again. 'how came that person to be your duchess?' he asked in a firm, distinct voice, when he had attained complete self-command. 'where is her other grace of hamptonshire? there certainly was another. i know it.' 'oh, the previous one! yes, yes. she ran away years and years ago with the young curate. mr. hill was the young man's name, if i recollect.' 'no! she never did. what do you mean by that?' he said. 'yes, she certainly ran away. she met the curate in the shrubbery about a couple of months after her marriage with the duke. there were folks who saw the meeting and heard some words of their talk. they arranged to go, and she sailed from plymouth with him a day or two afterward.' 'that's not true.' 'then 'tis the queerest lie ever told by man. her father believed and knew to his dying day that she went with him; and so did the duke, and everybody about here. ay, there was a fine upset about it at the time. the duke traced her to plymouth.' 'traced her to plymouth?' 'he traced her to plymouth, and set on his spies; and they found that she went to the shipping-office, and inquired if mr. alwyn hill had entered his name as passenger by the _western glory_; and when she found that he had, she booked herself for the same ship, but not in her real name. when the vessel had sailed a letter reached the duke from her, telling him what she had done. she never came back here again. his grace lived by himself a number of years, and married this lady only twelve months before he died.' alwyn was in a state of indescribable bewilderment. but, unmanned as he was, he called the next day on the, to him, spurious duchess of hamptonshire. at first she was alarmed at his statement, then cold, then she was won over by his condition to give confidence for confidence. she showed him a letter which had been found among the papers of the late duke, corroborating what alwyn's informant had detailed. it was from emmeline, bearing the postmarked date at which the _western glory_ sailed, and briefly stated that she had emigrated by that ship to america. alwyn applied himself body and mind to unravel the remainder of the mystery. the story repeated to him was always the same: 'she ran away with the curate.' a strangely circumstantial piece of intelligence was added to this when he had pushed his inquiries a little further. there was given him the name of a waterman at plymouth, who had come forward at the time that she was missed and sought for by her husband, and had stated that he put her on board the _western glory_ at dusk one evening before that vessel sailed. after several days of search about the alleys and quays of plymouth barbican, during which these impossible words, 'she ran off with the curate,' became branded on his brain, alwyn found this important waterman. he was positive as to the truth of his story, still remembering the incident well, and he described in detail the lady's dress, as he had long ago described it to her husband, which description corresponded in every particular with the dress worn by emmeline on the evening of their parting. before proceeding to the other side of the atlantic to continue his inquiries there, the puzzled and distracted alwyn set himself to ascertain the address of captain wheeler, who had commanded the _western glory_ in the year of alwyn's voyage out, and immediately wrote a letter to him on the subject. the only circumstances which the sailor could recollect or discover from his papers in connection with such a story were, that a woman bearing the name which alwyn had mentioned as fictitious certainly did come aboard for a voyage he made about that time; that she took a common berth among the poorest emigrants; that she died on the voyage out, at about five days' sail from plymouth; that she seemed a lady in manners and education. why she had not applied for a first-class passage, why she had no trunks, they could not guess, for though she had little money in her pocket she had that about her which would have fetched it. 'we buried her at sea,' continued the captain. 'a young parson, one of the cabin-passengers, read the burial-service over her, i remember well.' the whole scene and proceedings darted upon alwyn's recollection in a moment. it was a fine breezy morning on that long-past voyage out, and he had been told that they were running at the rate of a hundred and odd miles a day. the news went round that one of the poor young women in the other part of the vessel was ill of fever, and delirious. the tidings caused no little alarm among all the passengers, for the sanitary conditions of the ship were anything but satisfactory. shortly after this the doctor announced that she had died. then alwyn had learnt that she was laid out for burial in great haste, because of the danger that would have been incurred by delay. and next the funeral scene rose before him, and the prominent part that he had taken in that solemn ceremony. the captain had come to him, requesting him to officiate, as there was no chaplain on board. this he had agreed to do; and as the sun went down with a blaze in his face he read amidst them all assembled: 'we therefore commit her body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body when the sea shall give up her dead.' the captain also forwarded the addresses of the ship's matron and of other persons who had been engaged on board at the date. to these alwyn went in the course of time. a categorical description of the clothes of the dead truant, the colour of her hair, and other things, extinguished for ever all hope of a mistake in identity. at last, then, the course of events had become clear. on that unhappy evening when he left emmeline in the shrubbery, forbidding her to follow him because it would be a sin, she must have disobeyed. she must have followed at his heels silently through the darkness, like a poor pet animal that will not be driven back. she could have accumulated nothing for the journey more than she might have carried in her hand; and thus poorly provided she must have embarked. her intention had doubtless been to make her presence on board known to him as soon as she could muster courage to do so. thus the ten years' chapter of alwyn hill's romance wound itself up under his eyes. that the poor young woman in the steerage had been the young duchess of hamptonshire was never publicly disclosed. hill had no longer any reason for remaining in england, and soon after left its shores with no intention to return. previous to his departure he confided his story to an old friend from his native town--grandfather of the person who now relates it to you. * * * * * a few members, including the bookworm, seemed to be impressed by the quiet gentleman's tale; but the member we have called the spark--who, by the way, was getting somewhat tinged with the light of other days, and owned to eight-and-thirty--walked daintily about the room instead of sitting down by the fire with the majority and said that for his part he preferred something more lively than the last story--something in which such long-separated lovers were ultimately united. he also liked stories that were more modern in their date of action than those he had heard to- day. members immediately requested him to give them a specimen, to which the spark replied that he didn't mind, as far as that went. and though the vice-president, the man of family, the colonel, and others, looked at their watches, and said they must soon retire to their respective quarters in the hotel adjoining, they all decided to sit out the spark's story. dame the tenth--the honourable laura by the spark it was a cold and gloomy christmas eve. the mass of cloud overhead was almost impervious to such daylight as still lingered on; the snow lay several inches deep upon the ground, and the slanting downfall which still went on threatened to considerably increase its thickness before the morning. the prospect hotel, a building standing near the wild north coast of lower wessex, looked so lonely and so useless at such a time as this that a passing wayfarer would have been led to forget summer possibilities, and to wonder at the commercial courage which could invest capital, on the basis of the popular taste for the picturesque, in a country subject to such dreary phases. that the district was alive with visitors in august seemed but a dim tradition in weather so totally opposed to all that tempts mankind from home. however, there the hotel stood immovable; and the cliffs, creeks, and headlands which were the primary attractions of the spot, rising in full view on the opposite side of the valley, were now but stern angular outlines, while the townlet in front was tinged over with a grimy dirtiness rather than the pearly gray that in summer lent such beauty to its appearance. within the hotel commanding this outlook the landlord walked idly about with his hands in his pockets, not in the least expectant of a visitor, and yet unable to settle down to any occupation which should compensate in some degree for the losses that winter idleness entailed on his regular profession. so little, indeed, was anybody expected, that the coffee-room waiter--a genteel boy, whose plated buttons in summer were as close together upon the front of his short jacket as peas in a pod--now appeared in the back yard, metamorphosed into the unrecognizable shape of a rough country lad in corduroys and hobnailed boots, sweeping the snow away, and talking the local dialect in all its purity, quite oblivious of the new polite accent he had learned in the hot weather from the well- behaved visitors. the front door was closed, and, as if to express still more fully the sealed and chrysalis state of the establishment, a sand- bag was placed at the bottom to keep out the insidious snowdrift, the wind setting in directly from that quarter. the landlord, entering his own parlour, walked to the large fire which it was absolutely necessary to keep up for his comfort, no such blaze burning in the coffee-room or elsewhere, and after giving it a stir returned to a table in the lobby, whereon lay the visitors' book--now closed and pushed back against the wall. he carelessly opened it; not a name had been entered there since the th of the previous november, and that was only the name of a man who had arrived on a tricycle, who, indeed, had not been asked to enter at all. while he was engaged thus the evening grew darker; but before it was as yet too dark to distinguish objects upon the road winding round the back of the cliffs, the landlord perceived a black spot on the distant white, which speedily enlarged itself and drew near. the probabilities were that this vehicle--for a vehicle of some sort it seemed to be--would pass by and pursue its way to the nearest railway-town as others had done. but, contrary to the landlord's expectation, as he stood conning it through the yet unshuttered windows, the solitary object, on reaching the corner, turned into the hotel-front, and drove up to the door. it was a conveyance particularly unsuited to such a season and weather, being nothing more substantial than an open basket-carriage drawn by a single horse. within sat two persons, of different sexes, as could soon be discerned, in spite of their muffled attire. the man held the reins, and the lady had got some shelter from the storm by clinging close to his side. the landlord rang the hostler's bell to attract the attention of the stable-man, for the approach of the visitors had been deadened to noiselessness by the snow, and when the hostler had come to the horse's head the gentleman and lady alighted, the landlord meeting them in the hall. the male stranger was a foreign-looking individual of about eight-and- twenty. he was close-shaven, excepting a moustache, his features being good, and even handsome. the lady, who stood timidly behind him, seemed to be much younger--possibly not more than eighteen, though it was difficult to judge either of her age or appearance in her present wrappings. the gentleman expressed his wish to stay till the morning, explaining somewhat unnecessarily, considering that the house was an inn, that they had been unexpectedly benighted on their drive. such a welcome being given them as landlords can give in dull times, the latter ordered fires in the drawing and coffee-rooms, and went to the boy in the yard, who soon scrubbed himself up, dragged his disused jacket from its box, polished the buttons with his sleeve, and appeared civilized in the hall. the lady was shown into a room where she could take off her snow-damped garments, which she sent down to be dried, her companion, meanwhile, putting a couple of sovereigns on the table, as if anxious to make everything smooth and comfortable at starting, and requesting that a private sitting-room might be got ready. the landlord assured him that the best upstairs parlour--usually public--should be kept private this evening, and sent the maid to light the candles. dinner was prepared for them, and, at the gentleman's desire, served in the same apartment; where, the young lady having joined him, they were left to the rest and refreshment they seemed to need. that something was peculiar in the relations of the pair had more than once struck the landlord, though wherein that peculiarity lay it was hard to decide. but that his guest was one who paid his way readily had been proved by his conduct, and dismissing conjectures, he turned to practical affairs. about nine o'clock he re-entered the hall, and, everything being done for the day, again walked up and down, occasionally gazing through the glass door at the prospect without, to ascertain how the weather was progressing. contrary to prognostication, snow had ceased falling, and, with the rising of the moon, the sky had partially cleared, light fleeces of cloud drifting across the silvery disk. there was every sign that a frost was going to set in later on. for these reasons the distant rising road was even more distinct now between its high banks than it had been in the declining daylight. not a track or rut broke the virgin surface of the white mantle that lay along it, all marks left by the lately arrived travellers having been speedily obliterated by the flakes falling at the time. and now the landlord beheld by the light of the moon a sight very similar to that he had seen by the light of day. again a black spot was advancing down the road that margined the coast. he was in a moment or two enabled to perceive that the present vehicle moved onward at a more headlong pace than the little carriage which had preceded it; next, that it was a brougham drawn by two powerful horses; next, that this carriage, like the former one, was bound for the hotel-door. this desirable feature of resemblance caused the landlord to once more withdraw the sand- bag and advance into the porch. an old gentleman was the first to alight. he was followed by a young one, and both unhesitatingly came forward. 'has a young lady, less than nineteen years of age, recently arrived here in the company of a man some years her senior?' asked the old gentleman, in haste. 'a man cleanly shaven for the most part, having the appearance of an opera-singer, and calling himself signor smithozzi?' 'we have had arrivals lately,' said the landlord, in the tone of having had twenty at least--not caring to acknowledge the attenuated state of business that afflicted prospect hotel in winter. 'and among them can your memory recall two persons such as those i describe?--the man a sort of baritone?' 'there certainly is or was a young couple staying in the hotel; but i could not pronounce on the compass of the gentleman's voice.' 'no, no; of course not. i am quite bewildered. they arrived in a basket- carriage, altogether badly provided?' 'they came in a carriage, i believe, as most of our visitors do.' 'yes, yes. i must see them at once. pardon my want of ceremony, and show us in to where they are.' 'but, sir, you forget. suppose the lady and gentleman i mean are not the lady and gentleman you mean? it would be awkward to allow you to rush in upon them just now while they are at dinner, and might cause me to lose their future patronage.' 'true, true. they may not be the same persons. my anxiety, i perceive, makes me rash in my assumptions!' 'upon the whole, i think they must be the same, uncle quantock,' said the young man, who had not till now spoken. and turning to the landlord: 'you possibly have not such a large assemblage of visitors here, on this somewhat forbidding evening, that you quite forget how this couple arrived, and what the lady wore?' his tone of addressing the landlord had in it a quiet frigidity that was not without irony. 'ah! what she wore; that's it, james. what did she wear?' 'i don't usually take stock of my guests' clothing,' replied the landlord drily, for the ready money of the first arrival had decidedly biassed him in favour of that gentleman's cause. 'you can certainly see some of it if you want to,' he added carelessly, 'for it is drying by the kitchen fire.' before the words were half out of his mouth the old gentleman had exclaimed, 'ah!' and precipitated himself along what seemed to be the passage to the kitchen; but as this turned out to be only the entrance to a dark china-closet, he hastily emerged again, after a collision with the inn-crockery had told him of his mistake. 'i beg your pardon, i'm sure; but if you only knew my feelings (which i cannot at present explain), you would make allowances. anything i have broken i will willingly pay for.' 'don't mention it, sir,' said the landlord. and showing the way, they adjourned to the kitchen without further parley. the eldest of the party instantly seized the lady's cloak, that hung upon a clothes-horse, exclaiming: 'ah! yes, james, it is hers. i knew we were on their track.' 'yes, it is hers,' answered the nephew quietly, for he was much less excited than his companion. 'show us their room at once,' said the old man. 'william, have the lady and gentleman in the front sitting-room finished dining?' 'yes, sir, long ago,' said the hundred plated buttons. 'then show up these gentlemen to them at once. you stay here to-night, gentlemen, i presume? shall the horses be taken out?' 'feed the horses and wash their mouths. whether we stay or not depends upon circumstances,' said the placid younger man, as he followed his uncle and the waiter to the staircase. 'i think, nephew james,' said the former, as he paused with his foot on the first step--'i think we had better not be announced, but take them by surprise. she may go throwing herself out of the window, or do some equally desperate thing!' 'yes, certainly, we'll enter unannounced.' and he called back the lad who preceded them. 'i cannot sufficiently thank you, james, for so effectually aiding me in this pursuit!' exclaimed the old gentleman, taking the other by the hand. 'my increasing infirmities would have hindered my overtaking her to-night, had it not been for your timely aid.' 'i am only too happy, uncle, to have been of service to you in this or any other matter. i only wish i could have accompanied you on a pleasanter journey. however, it is advisable to go up to them at once, or they may hear us.' and they softly ascended the stairs. * * * * * on the door being opened, a room too large to be comfortable, lit by the best branch-candlesticks of the hotel, was disclosed, before the fire of which apartment the truant couple were sitting, very innocently looking over the hotel scrap-book and the album containing views of the neighbourhood. no sooner had the old man entered than the young lady--who now showed herself to be quite as young as described, and remarkably prepossessing as to features--perceptibly turned pale. when the nephew entered, she turned still paler, as if she were going to faint. the young man described as an opera-singer rose with grim civility, and placed chairs for his visitors. 'caught you, thank god!' said the old gentleman breathlessly. 'yes, worse luck, my lord!' murmured signor smithozzi, in native london- english, that distinguished alien having, in fact, first seen the light in the vicinity of the city road. 'she would have been mine to-morrow. and i think that under the peculiar circumstances it would be wiser--considering how soon the breath of scandal will tarnish a lady's fame--to let her be mine to-morrow, just the same.' 'never!' said the old man. 'here is a lady under age, without experience--child-like in her maiden innocence and virtue--whom you have plied by your vile arts, till this morning at dawn--' 'lord quantock, were i not bound to respect your gray hairs--' 'till this morning at dawn you tempted her away from her father's roof. what blame can attach to her conduct that will not, on a full explanation of the matter, be readily passed over in her and thrown entirely on you? laura, you return at once with me. i should not have arrived, after all, early enough to deliver you, if it had not been for the disinterestedness of your cousin, captain northbrook, who, on my discovering your flight this morning, offered with a promptitude for which i can never sufficiently thank him, to accompany me on my journey, as the only male relative i have near me. come, do you hear? put on your things; we are off at once.' 'i don't want to go!' pouted the young lady. 'i daresay you don't,' replied her father drily. 'but children never know what's best for them. so come along, and trust to my opinion.' laura was silent, and did not move, the opera gentleman looking helplessly into the fire, and the lady's cousin sitting meditatively calm, as the single one of the four whose position enabled him to survey the whole escapade with the cool criticism of a comparative outsider. 'i say to you, laura, as the father of a daughter under age, that you instantly come with me. what? would you compel me to use physical force to reclaim you?' 'i don't want to return!' again declared laura. 'it is your duty to return nevertheless, and at once, i inform you.' 'i don't want to!' 'now, dear laura, this is what i say: return with me and your cousin james quietly, like a good and repentant girl, and nothing will be said. nobody knows what has happened as yet, and if we start at once, we shall be home before it is light to-morrow morning. come.' 'i am not obliged to come at your bidding, father, and i would rather not!' now james, the cousin, during this dialogue might have been observed to grow somewhat restless, and even impatient. more than once he had parted his lips to speak, but second thoughts each time held him back. the moment had come, however, when he could keep silence no longer. 'come, madam!' he spoke out, 'this farce with your father has, in my opinion, gone on long enough. just make no more ado, and step downstairs with us.' she gave herself an intractable little twist, and did not reply. 'by the lord harry, laura, i won't stand this!' he said angrily. 'come, get on your things before i come and compel you. there is a kind of compulsion to which this talk is child's play. come, madam--instantly, i say!' the old nobleman turned to his nephew and said mildly: 'leave me to insist, james. it doesn't become you. i can speak to her sharply enough, if i choose.' james, however, did not heed his uncle, and went on to the troublesome young woman: 'you say you don't want to come, indeed! a pretty story to tell me, that! come, march out of the room at once, and leave that hulking fellow for me to deal with afterward. get on quickly--come!' and he advanced toward her as if to pull her by the hand. 'nay, nay,' expostulated laura's father, much surprised at his nephew's sudden demeanour. 'you take too much upon yourself. leave her to me.' 'i won't leave her to you any longer!' 'you have no right, james, to address either me or her in this way; so just hold your tongue. come, my dear.' 'i have every right!' insisted james. 'how do you make that out?' 'i have the right of a husband.' 'whose husband?' 'hers.' 'what?' 'she's my wife.' 'james!' 'well, to cut a long story short, i may say that she secretly married me, in spite of your lordship's prohibition, about three months ago. and i must add that, though she cooled down rather quickly, everything went on smoothly enough between us for some time; in spite of the awkwardness of meeting only by stealth. we were only waiting for a convenient moment to break the news to you when this idle adonis turned up, and after poisoning her mind against me, brought her into this disgrace.' here the operatic luminary, who had sat in rather an abstracted and nerveless attitude till the cousin made his declaration, fired up and cried: 'i declare before heaven that till this moment i never knew she was a wife! i found her in her father's house an unhappy girl--unhappy, as i believe, because of the loneliness and dreariness of that establishment, and the want of society, and for nothing else whatever. what this statement about her being your wife means i am quite at a loss to understand. are you indeed married to him, laura?' laura nodded from within her tearful handkerchief. 'it was because of my anomalous position in being privately married to him,' she sobbed, 'that i was unhappy at home--and--and i didn't like him so well as i did at first--and i wished i could get out of the mess i was in! and then i saw you a few times, and when you said, "we'll run off," i thought i saw a way out of it all, and then i agreed to come with you--oo-oo!' 'well! well! well! and is this true?' murmured the bewildered old nobleman, staring from james to laura, and from laura to james, as if he fancied they might be figments of the imagination. 'is this, then, james, the secret of your kindness to your old uncle in helping him to find his daughter? good heavens! what further depths of duplicity are there left for a man to learn!' 'i have married her, uncle quantock, as i said,' answered james coolly. 'the deed is done, and can't be undone by talking here.' 'where were you married?' 'at st. mary's, toneborough.' 'when?' 'on the th of september, during the time she was visiting there.' 'who married you?' 'i don't know. one of the curates--we were quite strangers to the place. so, instead of my assisting you to recover her, you may as well assist me.' 'never! never!' said lord quantock. 'madam, and sir, i beg to tell you that i wash my hands of the whole affair! if you are man and wife, as it seems you are, get reconciled as best you may. i have no more to say or do with either of you. i leave you, laura, in the hands of your husband, and much joy may you bring him; though the situation, i own, is not encouraging.' saying this, the indignant speaker pushed back his chair against the table with such force that the candlesticks rocked on their bases, and left the room. laura's wet eyes roved from one of the young men to the other, who now stood glaring face to face, and, being much frightened at their aspect, slipped out of the room after her father. him, however, she could hear going out of the front door, and, not knowing where to take shelter, she crept into the darkness of an adjoining bedroom, and there awaited events with a palpitating heart. meanwhile the two men remaining in the sitting-room drew nearer to each other, and the opera-singer broke the silence by saying, 'how could you insult me in the way you did, calling me a fellow, and accusing me of poisoning her mind toward you, when you knew very well i was as ignorant of your relation to her as an unborn babe?' 'oh yes, you were quite ignorant; i can believe that readily,' sneered laura's husband. 'i here call heaven to witness that i never knew!' 'recitativo--the rhythm excellent, and the tone well sustained. is it likely that any man could win the confidence of a young fool her age, and not get that out of her? preposterous! tell it to the most improved new pit-stalls.' 'captain northbrook, your insinuations are as despicable as your wretched person!' cried the baritone, losing all patience. and springing forward he slapped the captain in the face with the palm of his hand. northbrook flinched but slightly, and calmly using his handkerchief to learn if his nose was bleeding, said, 'i quite expected this insult, so i came prepared.' and he drew forth from a black valise which he carried in his hand a small case of pistols. the baritone started at the unexpected sight, but recovering from his surprise said, 'very well, as you will,' though perhaps his tone showed a slight want of confidence. 'now,' continued the husband, quite confidingly, 'we want no parade, no nonsense, you know. therefore we'll dispense with seconds?' the signor slightly nodded. 'do you know this part of the country well?' cousin james went on, in the same cool and still manner. 'if you don't, i do. quite at the bottom of the rocks out there, just beyond the stream which falls over them to the shore, is a smooth sandy space, not so much shut in as to be out of the moonlight; and the way down to it from this side is over steps cut in the cliff; and we can find our way down without trouble. we--we two--will find our way down; but only one of us will find his way up, you understand?' 'quite.' 'then suppose we start; the sooner it is over the better. we can order supper before we go out--supper for two; for though we are three at present--' 'three?' 'yes; you and i and she--' 'oh yes.' '--we shall be only two by and by; so that, as i say, we will order supper for two; for the lady and a gentleman. whichever comes back alive will tap at her door, and call her in to share the repast with him--she's not off the premises. but we must not alarm her now; and above all things we must not let the inn-people see us go out; it would look so odd for two to go out, and only one come in. ha! ha!' 'ha! ha! exactly.' 'are you ready?' 'oh--quite.' 'then i'll lead the way.' he went softly to the door and downstairs, ordering supper to be ready in an hour, as he had said; then making a feint of returning to the room again, he beckoned to the singer, and together they slipped out of the house by a side door. * * * * * the sky was now quite clear, and the wheelmarks of the brougham which had borne away laura's father, lord quantock, remained distinctly visible. soon the verge of the down was reached, the captain leading the way, and the baritone following silently, casting furtive glances at his companion, and beyond him at the scene ahead. in due course they arrived at the chasm in the cliff which formed the waterfall. the outlook here was wild and picturesque in the extreme, and fully justified the many praises, paintings, and photographic views to which the spot had given birth. what in summer was charmingly green and gray, was now rendered weird and fantastic by the snow. from their feet the cascade plunged downward almost vertically to a depth of eighty or a hundred feet before finally losing itself in the sand, and though the stream was but small, its impact upon jutting rocks in its descent divided it into a hundred spirts and splashes that sent up a mist into the upper air. a few marginal drippings had been frozen into icicles, but the centre flowed on unimpeded. the operatic artist looked down as he halted, but his thoughts were plainly not of the beauty of the scene. his companion with the pistols was immediately in front of him, and there was no handrail on the side of the path toward the chasm. obeying a quick impulse, he stretched out his arm, and with a superhuman thrust sent laura's husband reeling over. a whirling human shape, diminishing downward in the moon's rays farther and farther toward invisibility, a smack-smack upon the projecting ledges of rock--at first louder and heavier than that of the brook, and then scarcely to be distinguished from it--then a cessation, then the splashing of the stream as before, and the accompanying murmur of the sea, were all the incidents that disturbed the customary flow of the little waterfall. the singer waited in a fixed attitude for a few minutes, then turning, he rapidly retraced his steps over the intervening upland toward the road, and in less than a quarter of an hour was at the door of the hotel. slipping quietly in as the clock struck ten, he said to the landlord, over the bar hatchway-- 'the bill as soon as you can let me have it, including charges for the supper that was ordered, though we cannot stay to eat it, i am sorry to say.' he added with forced gaiety, 'the lady's father and cousin have thought better of intercepting the marriage, and after quarrelling with each other have gone home independently.' 'well done, sir!' said the landlord, who still sided with this customer in preference to those who had given trouble and barely paid for baiting the horses. '"love will find out the way!" as the saying is. wish you joy, sir!' signor smithozzi went upstairs, and on entering the sitting-room found that laura had crept out from the dark adjoining chamber in his absence. she looked up at him with eyes red from weeping, and with symptoms of alarm. 'what is it?--where is he?' she said apprehensively. 'captain northbrook has gone back. he says he will have no more to do with you.' 'and i am quite abandoned by them!--and they'll forget me, and nobody care about me any more!' she began to cry afresh. 'but it is the luckiest thing that could have happened. all is just as it was before they came disturbing us. but, laura, you ought to have told me about that private marriage, though it is all the same now; it will be dissolved, of course. you are a wid--virtually a widow.' 'it is no use to reproach me for what is past. what am i to do now?' 'we go at once to cliff-martin. the horse has rested thoroughly these last three hours, and he will have no difficulty in doing an additional half-dozen miles. we shall be there before twelve, and there are late taverns in the place, no doubt. there we'll sell both horse and carriage to-morrow morning; and go by the coach to downstaple. once in the train we are safe.' 'i agree to anything,' she said listlessly. in about ten minutes the horse was put in, the bill paid, the lady's dried wraps put round her, and the journey resumed. when about a mile on their way, they saw a glimmering light in advance of them. 'i wonder what that is?' said the baritone, whose manner had latterly become nervous, every sound and sight causing him to turn his head. 'it is only a turnpike,' said she. 'that light is the lamp kept burning over the door.' 'of course, of course, dearest. how stupid i am!' on reaching the gate they perceived that a man on foot had approached it, apparently by some more direct path than the roadway they pursued, and was, at the moment they drew up, standing in conversation with the gatekeeper. 'it is quite impossible that he could fall over the cliff by accident or the will of god on such a light night as this,' the pedestrian was saying. 'these two children i tell you of saw two men go along the path toward the waterfall, and ten minutes later only one of 'em came back, walking fast, like a man who wanted to get out of the way because he had done something queer. there is no manner of doubt that he pushed the other man over, and, mark me, it will soon cause a hue and cry for that man.' the candle shone in the face of the signor and showed that there had arisen upon it a film of ghastliness. laura, glancing toward him for a few moments observed it, till, the gatekeeper having mechanically swung open the gate, her companion drove through, and they were soon again enveloped in the white silence. her conductor had said to laura, just before, that he meant to inquire the way at this turnpike; but he had certainly not done so. as soon as they had gone a little farther the omission, intentional or not, began to cause them some trouble. beyond the secluded district which they now traversed ran the more frequented road, where progress would be easy, the snow being probably already beaten there to some extent by traffic; but they had not yet reached it, and having no one to guide them their journey began to appear less feasible than it had done before starting. when the little lane which they had entered ascended another hill, and seemed to wind round in a direction contrary to the expected route to cliff-martin, the question grew serious. ever since overhearing the conversation at the turnpike, laura had maintained a perfect silence, and had even shrunk somewhat away from the side of her lover. 'why don't you talk, laura,' he said with forced buoyancy, 'and suggest the way we should go?' 'oh yes, i will,' she responded, a curious fearfulness being audible in her voice. after this she uttered a few occasional sentences which seemed to persuade him that she suspected nothing. at last he drew rein, and the weary horse stood still. 'we are in a fix,' he said. she answered eagerly: 'i'll hold the reins while you run forward to the top of the ridge, and see if the road takes a favourable turn beyond. it would give the horse a few minutes' rest, and if you find out no change in the direction, we will retrace this lane, and take the other turning.' the expedient seemed a good one in the circumstances, especially when recommended by the singular eagerness of her voice; and placing the reins in her hands--a quite unnecessary precaution, considering the state of their hack--he stepped out and went forward through the snow till she could see no more of him. no sooner was he gone than laura, with a rapidity which contrasted strangely with her previous stillness, made fast the reins to the corner of the phaeton, and slipping out on the opposite side, ran back with all her might down the hill, till, coming to an opening in the fence, she scrambled through it, and plunged into the copse which bordered this portion of the lane. here she stood in hiding under one of the large bushes, clinging so closely to its umbrage as to seem but a portion of its mass, and listening intently for the faintest sound of pursuit. but nothing disturbed the stillness save the occasional slipping of gathered snow from the boughs, or the rustle of some wild animal over the crisp flake-bespattered herbage. at length, apparently convinced that her former companion was either unable to find her, or not anxious to do so, in the present strange state of affairs, she crept out from the bushes, and in less than an hour found herself again approaching the door of the prospect hotel. as she drew near, laura could see that, far from being wrapped in darkness, as she might have expected, there were ample signs that all the tenants were on the alert, lights moving about the open space in front. satisfaction was expressed in her face when she discerned that no reappearance of her baritone and his pony-carriage was causing this sensation; but it speedily gave way to grief and dismay when she saw by the lights the form of a man borne on a stretcher by two others into the porch of the hotel. 'i have caused all this,' she murmured between her quivering lips. 'he has murdered him!' running forward to the door, she hastily asked of the first person she met if the man on the stretcher was dead. 'no, miss,' said the labourer addressed, eyeing her up and down as an unexpected apparition. 'he is still alive, they say, but not sensible. he either fell or was pushed over the waterfall; 'tis thoughted he was pushed. he is the gentleman who came here just now with the old lord, and went out afterward (as is thoughted) with a stranger who had come a little earlier. anyhow, that's as i had it.' laura entered the house, and acknowledging without the least reserve that she was the injured man's wife, had soon installed herself as head nurse by the bed on which he lay. when the two surgeons who had been sent for arrived, she learned from them that his wounds were so severe as to leave but a slender hope of recovery, it being little short of miraculous that he was not killed on the spot, which his enemy had evidently reckoned to be the case. she knew who that enemy was, and shuddered. laura watched all night, but her husband knew nothing of her presence. during the next day he slightly recognized her, and in the evening was able to speak. he informed the surgeons that, as was surmised, he had been pushed over the cascade by signor smithozzi; but he communicated nothing to her who nursed him, not even replying to her remarks; he nodded courteously at any act of attention she rendered, and that was all. in a day or two it was declared that everything favoured his recovery, notwithstanding the severity of his injuries. full search was made for smithozzi, but as yet there was no intelligence of his whereabouts, though the repentant laura communicated all she knew. as far as could be judged, he had come back to the carriage after searching out the way, and finding the young lady missing, had looked about for her till he was tired; then had driven on to cliff-martin, sold the horse and carriage next morning, and disappeared, probably by one of the departing coaches which ran thence to the nearest station, the only difference from his original programme being that he had gone alone. * * * * * during the days and weeks of that long and tedious recovery, laura watched by her husband's bedside with a zeal and assiduity which would have considerably extenuated any fault save one of such magnitude as hers. that her husband did not forgive her was soon obvious. nothing that she could do in the way of smoothing pillows, easing his position, shifting bandages, or administering draughts, could win from him more than a few measured words of thankfulness, such as he would probably have uttered to any other woman on earth who had performed these particular services for him. 'dear, dear james,' she said one day, bending her face upon the bed in an excess of emotion. 'how you have suffered! it has been too cruel. i am more glad you are getting better than i can say. i have prayed for it--and i am sorry for what i have done; i am innocent of the worst, and--i hope you will not think me so very bad, james!' 'oh no. on the contrary, i shall think you very good--as a nurse,' he answered, the caustic severity of his tone being apparent through its weakness. laura let fall two or three silent tears, and said no more that day. somehow or other signor smithozzi seemed to be making good his escape. it transpired that he had not taken a passage in either of the suspected coaches, though he had certainly got out of the county; altogether, the chance of finding him was problematical. not only did captain northbrook survive his injuries, but it soon appeared that in the course of a few weeks he would find himself little if any the worse for the catastrophe. it could also be seen that laura, while secretly hoping for her husband's forgiveness for a piece of folly of which she saw the enormity more clearly every day, was in great doubt as to what her future relations with him would be. moreover, to add to the complication, whilst she, as a runaway wife, was unforgiven by her husband, she and her husband, as a runaway couple, were unforgiven by her father, who had never once communicated with either of them since his departure from the inn. but her immediate anxiety was to win the pardon of her husband, who possibly might be bearing in mind, as he lay upon his couch, the familiar words of brabantio, 'she has deceived her father, and may thee.' matters went on thus till captain northbrook was able to walk about. he then removed with his wife to quiet apartments on the south coast, and here his recovery was rapid. walking up the cliffs one day, supporting him by her arm as usual, she said to him, simply, 'james, if i go on as i am going now, and always attend to your smallest want, and never think of anything but devotion to you, will you--try to like me a little?' 'it is a thing i must carefully consider,' he said, with the same gloomy dryness which characterized all his words to her now. 'when i have considered, i will tell you.' he did not tell her that evening, though she lingered long at her routine work of making his bedroom comfortable, putting the light so that it would not shine into his eyes, seeing him fall asleep, and then retiring noiselessly to her own chamber. when they met in the morning at breakfast, and she had asked him as usual how he had passed the night, she added timidly, in the silence which followed his reply, 'have you considered?' 'no, i have not considered sufficiently to give you an answer.' laura sighed, but to no purpose; and the day wore on with intense heaviness to her, and the customary modicum of strength gained to him. the next morning she put the same question, and looked up despairingly in his face, as though her whole life hung upon his reply. 'yes, i have considered,' he said. 'ah!' 'we must part.' 'o james!' 'i cannot forgive you; no man would. enough is settled upon you to keep you in comfort, whatever your father may do. i shall sell out, and disappear from this hemisphere.' 'you have absolutely decided?' she asked miserably. 'i have nobody now to c-c-care for--' 'i have absolutely decided,' he shortly returned. 'we had better part here. you will go back to your father. there is no reason why i should accompany you, since my presence would only stand in the way of the forgiveness he will probably grant you if you appear before him alone. we will say farewell to each other in three days from this time. i have calculated on being ready to go on that day.' bowed down with trouble, she withdrew to her room, and the three days were passed by her husband in writing letters and attending to other business-matters, saying hardly a word to her the while. the morning of departure came; but before the horses had been put in to take the severed twain in different directions, out of sight of each other, possibly for ever, the postman arrived with the morning letters. there was one for the captain; none for her--there were never any for her. however, on this occasion something was enclosed for her in his, which he handed her. she read it and looked up helpless. 'my dear father--is dead!' she said. in a few moments she added, in a whisper, 'i must go to the manor to bury him . . . will you go with me, james?' he musingly looked out of the window. 'i suppose it is an awkward and melancholy undertaking for a woman alone,' he said coldly. 'well, well--my poor uncle!--yes, i'll go with you, and see you through the business.' so they went off together instead of asunder, as planned. it is unnecessary to record the details of the journey, or of the sad week which followed it at her father's house. lord quantock's seat was a fine old mansion standing in its own park, and there were plenty of opportunities for husband and wife either to avoid each other, or to get reconciled if they were so minded, which one of them was at least. captain northbrook was not present at the reading of the will. she came to him afterward, and found him packing up his papers, intending to start next morning, now that he had seen her through the turmoil occasioned by her father's death. 'he has left me everything that he could!' she said to her husband. 'james, will you forgive me now, and stay?' 'i cannot stay.' 'why not?' 'i cannot stay,' he repeated. 'but why?' 'i don't like you.' he acted up to his word. when she came downstairs the next morning she was told that he had gone. * * * * * laura bore her double bereavement as best she could. the vast mansion in which she had hitherto lived, with all its historic contents, had gone to her father's successor in the title; but her own was no unhandsome one. around lay the undulating park, studded with trees a dozen times her own age; beyond it, the wood; beyond the wood, the farms. all this fair and quiet scene was hers. she nevertheless remained a lonely, repentant, depressed being, who would have given the greater part of everything she possessed to ensure the presence and affection of that husband whose very austerity and phlegm--qualities that had formerly led to the alienation between them--seemed now to be adorable features in his character. she hoped and hoped again, but all to no purpose. captain northbrook did not alter his mind and return. he was quite a different sort of man from one who altered his mind; that she was at last despairingly forced to admit. and then she left off hoping, and settled down to a mechanical routine of existence which in some measure dulled her grief; but at the expense of all her natural animation and the sprightly wilfulness which had once charmed those who knew her, though it was perhaps all the while a factor in the production of her unhappiness. to say that her beauty quite departed as the years rolled on would be to overstate the truth. time is not a merciful master, as we all know, and he was not likely to act exceptionally in the case of a woman who had mental troubles to bear in addition to the ordinary weight of years. be this as it may, eleven other winters came and went, and laura northbrook remained the lonely mistress of house and lands without once hearing of her husband. every probability seemed to favour the assumption that he had died in some foreign land; and offers for her hand were not few as the probability verged on certainty with the long lapse of time. but the idea of remarriage seemed never to have entered her head for a moment. whether she continued to hope even now for his return could not be distinctly ascertained; at all events she lived a life unmodified in the slightest degree from that of the first six months of his absence. this twelfth year of laura's loneliness, and the thirtieth of her life drew on apace, and the season approached that had seen the unhappy adventure for which she so long had suffered. christmas promised to be rather wet than cold, and the trees on the outskirts of laura's estate dripped monotonously from day to day upon the turnpike-road which bordered them. on an afternoon in this week between three and four o'clock a hired fly might have been seen driving along the highway at this point, and on reaching the top of the hill it stopped. a gentleman of middle age alighted from the vehicle. 'you need drive no farther,' he said to the coachman. 'the rain seems to have nearly ceased. i'll stroll a little way, and return on foot to the inn by dinner-time.' the flyman touched his hat, turned the horse, and drove back as directed. when he was out of sight, the gentleman walked on, but he had not gone far before the rain again came down pitilessly, though of this the pedestrian took little heed, going leisurely onward till he reached laura's park gate, which he passed through. the clouds were thick and the days were short, so that by the time he stood in front of the mansion it was dark. in addition to this his appearance, which on alighting from the carriage had been untarnished, partook now of the character of a drenched wayfarer not too well blessed with this world's goods. he halted for no more than a moment at the front entrance, and going round to the servants' quarter, as if he had a preconceived purpose in so doing, there rang the bell. when a page came to him he inquired if they would kindly allow him to dry himself by the kitchen fire. the page retired, and after a murmured colloquy returned with the cook, who informed the wet and muddy man that though it was not her custom to admit strangers, she should have no particular objection to his drying himself; the night being so damp and gloomy. therefore the wayfarer entered and sat down by the fire. 'the owner of this house is a very rich gentleman, no doubt?' he asked, as he watched the meat turning on the spit. ''tis not a gentleman, but a lady,' said the cook. 'a widow, i presume?' 'a sort of widow. poor soul, her husband is gone abroad, and has never been heard of for many years.' 'she sees plenty of company, no doubt, to make up for his absence?' 'no, indeed--hardly a soul. service here is as bad as being in a nunnery.' in short, the wayfarer, who had at first been so coldly received, contrived by his frank and engaging manner to draw the ladies of the kitchen into a most confidential conversation, in which laura's history was minutely detailed, from the day of her husband's departure to the present. the salient feature in all their discourse was her unflagging devotion to his memory. having apparently learned all that he wanted to know--among other things that she was at this moment, as always, alone--the traveller said he was quite dry; and thanking the servants for their kindness, departed as he had come. on emerging into the darkness he did not, however, go down the avenue by which he had arrived. he simply walked round to the front door. there he rang, and the door was opened to him by a man-servant whom he had not seen during his sojourn at the other end of the house. in answer to the servant's inquiry for his name, he said ceremoniously, 'will you tell the honourable mrs. northbrook that the man she nursed many years ago, after a frightful accident, has called to thank her?' the footman retreated, and it was rather a long time before any further signs of attention were apparent. then he was shown into the drawing- room, and the door closed behind him. on the couch was laura, trembling and pale. she parted her lips and held out her hands to him, but could not speak. but he did not require speech, and in a moment they were in each other's arms. strange news circulated through that mansion and the neighbouring town on the next and following days. but the world has a way of getting used to things, and the intelligence of the return of the honourable mrs. northbrook's long-absent husband was soon received with comparative calm. a few days more brought christmas, and the forlorn home of laura northbrook blazed from basement to attic with light and cheerfulness. not that the house was overcrowded with visitors, but many were present, and the apathy of a dozen years came at length to an end. the animation which set in thus at the close of the old year did not diminish on the arrival of the new; and by the time its twelve months had likewise run the course of its predecessors, a son had been added to the dwindled line of the northbrook family. * * * * * at the conclusion of this narrative the spark was thanked, with a manner of some surprise, for nobody had credited him with a taste for tale-telling. though it had been resolved that this story should be the last, a few of the weather-bound listeners were for sitting on into the small hours over their pipes and glasses, and raking up yet more episodes of family history. but the majority murmured reasons for soon getting to their lodgings. it was quite dark without, except in the immediate neighbourhood of the feeble street-lamps, and before a few shop-windows which had been hardily kept open in spite of the obvious unlikelihood of any chance customer traversing the muddy thoroughfares at that hour. by one, by two, and by three the benighted members of the field-club rose from their seats, shook hands, made appointments, and dropped away to their respective quarters, free or hired, hoping for a fair morrow. it would probably be not until the next summer meeting, months away in the future, that the easy intercourse which now existed between them all would repeat itself. the crimson maltster, for instance, knew that on the following market-day his friends the president, the rural dean, and the bookworm would pass him in the street, if they met him, with the barest nod of civility, the president and the colonel for social reasons, the bookworm for intellectual reasons, and the rural dean for moral ones, the latter being a staunch teetotaller, dead against john barleycorn. the sentimental member knew that when, on his rambles, he met his friend the bookworm with a pocket-copy of something or other under his nose, the latter would not love his companionship as he had done to-day; and the president, the aristocrat, and the farmer knew that affairs political, sporting, domestic, or agricultural would exclude for a long time all rumination on the characters of dames gone to dust for scores of years, however beautiful and noble they may have been in their day. the last member at length departed, the attendant at the museum lowered the fire, the curator locked up the rooms, and soon there was only a single pirouetting flame on the top of a single coal to make the bones of the ichthyosaurus seem to leap, the stuffed birds to wink, and to draw a smile from the varnished skulls of vespasian's soldiery. [illustration: dorchester from the meadows] the heart of wessex described by sidney heath pictured by e. w. haslehust blackie and son limited london glasgow and bombay beautiful england _volumes ready_: oxford the english lakes canterbury shakespeare-land the thames windsor castle cambridge norwich and the broads the heart of wessex the peak district the cornish riviera dickens-land list of illustrations page dorchester from the meadows _frontispiece_ hangman's cottage, dorchester puddletown bere regis portisham weymouth and portland gateway, poxwell manor house lulworth cove wool house wareham corfe castle poole harbour from studland [illustration: _high street, dorchester._ the heart of wessex] dorchester and the neighbourhood as all the world is beginning to realize, that portion of the country immortalized by thomas hardy, in his great romances of rural life, lies in one of the most delectable regions of south-west england; and although, for the purpose of giving variety to his scenic backgrounds, mr. hardy has occasionally gone far beyond the narrow boundaries of his home county, yet for general purposes his wessex is synonymous with the county of dorset. historically considered the wessex of the novels is but partially conterminous with that wherein, after centuries of bloodshed, our saxon ancestors established their octarchy, and the novelist has explained his reasons for the adoption of the name "wessex", which did not appear in any of the novels until the publication, in , of _far from the madding crowd_. "the series of novels i projected," he writes, "being mainly of the kind called local, they seemed to require a territorial definition of some sort to lend unity to their scene. finding that the area of a single county did not afford a canvas large enough for the purpose, and that there were objections to an invented name, i disinterred the old one. the press and the public were kind enough to welcome the fanciful plan, and willingly joined me in the anachronism of imagining a wessex population living under queen victoria, a modern wessex of railways," &c. as professor windle says: "whilst peopling these scenes with the creatures of his imagination, mr. hardy has achieved a feat which he was probably far from contemplating when he first commenced his series of novels. for incidentally he has resuscitated, one may even say re-created, the old half-forgotten kingdom of wessex." although there is scarcely any portion of the county that does not figure in one or other of mr. hardy's novels or poems, yet by far the greater number of scenes lie in the portion called south dorset, around and below an imaginary line drawn from a little to the west of dorchester to poole harbour, and it is mainly with this portion of the hardy country that it is proposed to deal in this volume. like all the true beauty spots of england, increasing familiarity with these south-country landscapes deepens their ineffaceable impression as it multiplies their alluring charms; and, small as is the geographical extent of this strip of rural england, it yet fills our thoughts as it delights our eyes; and it is large enough to attract us by a thousand threads of history and romance, by a hundred beauties of rolling downs and grassy vales, and of steep chalk cliffs where the blue waters of the channel break with a splutter of spray. for miles one can wander amid such scenes in this fair wessex land, where the roses of dawn fade into the infinite azure of a cloudless sky, and the cool salt breath of the sea-borne air is an elixir of life. moreover, these soft sea breezes, that temper the dazzling heat of the summer sun, waft in their train an unfading wreath of memories of that antique civilization which existed long before the prows of the roman galleys clove the ethereal mists that fringe the dorsetian seas. mr. hardy is unique among english novelists in that he writes of ecclesiastical and domestic architecture with the eye and the knowledge of a trained architect, and one who took high honours in this profession before he abandoned it for literature. to this no doubt are due the descriptions he has given us of the homes and haunts of his heroes and heroines. occasionally we find that a house of the novels has been made up of two or more neighbouring dwellings, at other times there is some slight transposition of site or locality; but to all intents and purposes mr. hardy's wessex of romance is the dorset of reality, with regard both to its natural scenery and to the buildings that accompany it. thus it is that the novelist's architectonic settings, and his literal descriptions of natural scenery, make identification a simple task, and lend interest to numerous old houses and cottages, just as they have immortalized a thousand scenes of their author's native land. a few of mr. hardy's critics have cavilled at the insistence of the architect's point of view, just as some of his readers fail to perceive the genius that lies behind his detailed treatment of buildings; but there is little doubt that the novelist's artistic use of technical material has endowed his romances with a personal note of deep interest, and an architectural one of great value. although dorset has a host of literary associations other than those furnished by the wessex novels, and notwithstanding that william barnes sang of its charms to deaf ears as sweetly as ever burns piped of the north country, it was left to thomas hardy to reveal dorset to those who knew it not; although he was writing for a great many years before his novels began to draw people to the land of gabriel oak, tess, and ethelberta. [illustration: hangman's cottage, dorchester] as the tourist must have a centre, a starting-off place for his various excursions, the visitor to the hardy country cannot do better than make his headquarters at dorchester, the durnovaria of the romans and the "casterbridge" of the novels. alighting at either of the railway stations, for the town is well served by both the great western and the south western companies, the visitor who has learned that dorchester occupies the site of an important town of the romans will probably receive a shock at the prevailing note of modernity that confronts him on every side. it is only when one begins to understand the planning of the streets, and has visited the town's outlying earthworks of maumbury and poundbury, that the mind can realize the possibility of a roman town being buried a few feet beneath the houses that line the narrow thoroughfares. it has been said that one cannot plant a shrub in a dorchester garden without unearthing some link with the legions of imperial rome, an excusable exaggeration if we think of the vast number of treasures that have been discovered wherever the layer of surface soil has been penetrated; and there is every reason to believe that the foundations of roman dorchester lie just below the gardens, houses, and pavements of the bright and modern town. excavation in the scientific sense the town has happily been spared, but the accidental finds are of great value, as proving that the town's historic past recedes into that twilight of dreamland and myth which veils the infancy of our island in a golden haze of mystery. all around this capital of dorset lies a storied land, wherein memories of the durotriges, of the roman legions, and of the ruthless march of the saxon through the beautiful land of britain jostle with modern associations of poetry, literature, and art. proceeding along south street, as the narrow thoroughfare that connects the stations with the centre of the town is called, the first building to claim attention is the grammar school, founded in the sixteenth century by a thomas hardy, and rebuilt in the same style in . adjoining the school is "napper's mite", a small seventeenth-century almshouse with a picturesque open gallery and a clock bracket, copied from the one that adorns the old george inn at glastonbury. the almshouse clock came from the old workhouse near by when it was pulled down. farther along the street, but on the opposite side, is the antelope hotel, a jacobean building whose beauties are concealed behind nineteenth-century walls, although some interior panelling and carving remain _in situ_. just beyond the hotel the street joins the main thoroughfare of the town, and at this intersection, where four roadways diverge towards the cardinal points of the compass, historical memories and literary associations clamour for recognition. the curious stone obelisk in the centre of the near roadway, and for many years used as the town pump, marks the site of the old octagon, and was erected in , which date is carved in characteristic georgian figures on the coping stone. it also marks the site of two houses that stood close together with their upper rooms built over the street. facing us are the town hall and st. peter's church, the latter of which is conjectured by some authorities to stand on the site of a roman temple. it is a stately perpendicular building with an imposing tower and a remarkable set of gargoyles. the transition-norman door-arch of the south porch is a survival of an older church that once occupied the same spot. outside the church is roscoe mullins's lifeless-looking bronze statue of william barnes, the dorset poet, who, until his death in , was the near neighbour and literary friend of thomas hardy. the pedestal of barnes's monument bears the following verse from his poem, _culver dell and the squire_:-- "zoo now i hope this kindly feäce is gone to vind a better pleäce; but still wi' vo'k a-left behind, he'll always be a-kept in mind." within the sacred edifice are several interesting monuments, including two cross-legged effigies of the "camail" period, but neither of these is _in situ_. in the porch of this church john white, one of the four founders of salem and the virtual founder of massachusetts, lies buried. opposite the eastern end of the church is the corn exchange, where the fickle bathsheba displayed her sample bags of corn to the astonished farmers, "adopting the professional pour into the hand, holding up the grains in her narrow palm for inspection in perfect casterbridge manner". it was in a neighbouring shop that this "queen of the corn market" purchased the fatal valentine that aroused the amatory instincts of farmer boldwood; while it was but a short distance away that, a little later in the story, _far from the madding crowd_, bathsheba and her husband, sergeant troy, met the piteous figure of fanny robin on her painful journey to the casterbridge workhouse. by way of mellstock (stinsford) and durnover (fordington), boldwood came to casterbridge, where, turning into bull-stake square, he "halted before an archway of heavy stonework which was closed by an iron-studded pair of doors", and gave himself up for the murder of troy. here also came gabriel oak in search of the licence which was to procure for bathsheba "the most private, secret, plainest wedding that it is possible to have". in the _mayor of casterbridge_ the town naturally figures largely, although the opening scenes of the novel are laid at weydon priors (weyhill, hants). in casterbridge susan henchard and elizabeth-jane sought for henchard "what an old-fashioned place it seems to be!" exclaimed elizabeth-jane, "it is huddled all together; and it is shut in by a square wall of trees like a plot of garden ground with a box-edging." it is in this novel that its author gives us, in a few masterly touches, the architectural details of the town's houses, the "brick-nogging" and the "tile roofs patched with slate"; and indicates the everyday life of its inhabitants. the whole town, in fact, teems with hardy scenes and characters, and particularly with the story of the man of character who was its mayor. to casterbridge came stephen smith when he commenced that study of architecture which led to his meeting the blue-eyed elfrida. bob loveday, brother to the trumpet-major, came hither to meet his matilda; and in the courthouse raye sat when on the western circuit, after he had parted with anna at melchester (salisbury). walking down high east street the most unobservant eye could not fail to notice the beautiful distant view of the frome valley and the yellowham woods, and to note the number of the hostels on either side of the short length of street. prominent among them is the king's arms, with a spacious and noble georgian window projecting over the main portico. this window, that is at once the delight and the despair of the modern architect, gave light to the room wherein was held "the great public dinner of the gentle-people and such like leading folk--wi' the mayor in the chair". just below this still fashionable hotel is the "three mariners" with its "four-centred tudor arch over the entrance". the original inn has vanished, but the present one occupies its site. on the opposite side of the way stands the "phoenix", but risen again from her ashes since it was the scene of jenny's last dance in one of the _wessex poems_:-- "'twas christmas and the phoenix inn was lit by tapers tall, for thirty of the trooper men had vowed to give a ball, as "theirs" had done (fame handed down) when lying in the self-same town, ere buonaparte's fall". [illustration: puddletown] at the end of the street, and standing a little way back from the roadway, is the white hart, once a famous coaching inn, and one which, although somewhat modernized, still carries its emblem, a large white hart, above the main entrance. to this hostelry came sergeant troy after appearing at greenhill fair as the great cosmopolitan equestrian who played the part of "dick turpin" at the circus; and here, too, the carrier burthen conveyed the story-tellers, the "crusted characters". this inn is also mentioned in connection with gertrude lodge of _the withered arm_. although the glories of its coaching days are but memories of the past, and notwithstanding that the motorists pass so unpretentious a building for the more attractive-looking king's arms, the despised of the modern traveller has retained a portion of its old-time custom and prosperity, by reason of its being the inn at which the carriers' carts deposit their morning and take up their evening passengers. the loading of a "tranter's" cart with men, women, and children, not to mention the immense packages of millinery, garden produce, and poultry, is a fine art that could have been evolved only by centuries of experience. to watch one of these caravans from the heart of dorset disgorge its contents reminds one of nothing so much as the conjuror's hat at our first "grown-up" christmas party. how so many human beings can be squeezed into the few cubic feet left over from the merchandise is a mystery, the knowledge of which would make the fortune of an enterprising omnibus company. when meeting one of these noah's arks in the country one would think at first sight that it contained men only, although the incessant chattering that proceeds from the cavernous depths of the vehicle has a distinctly feminine note. the reason for this is that the "gaffers" occupy the front seats, where they smoke, make sarcastic and distinctly personal remarks to their stay-at-home neighbours, who gaze with envious eyes from their doorsteps, and keep a keen eye on the various crops that grow along the sides of the route. no matter what the weather, and whatever the season of the year, the men sit over the horse's tail, the gloomy interior of the vehicle, being allotted to the women and children, garden produce, and occasional live stock. the return journey affords the travellers no relief, for the "imports" of the morning journey have merely been exchanged for "exports", and so the tired but happy parties return to their secluded village homes, carrying with them a pungent odour in which beer, oranges, and pepper mints are curiously mingled. all readers of mr. hardy's novels will remember tranter dewy in _under the greenwood tree_. at the swan bridge, which crosses the frome just below the white hart, we can leave the busy thoroughfare and proceed along a pleasant and shady walk that lines the bank of the stream. on our left is the town, with the gardens of the houses coming down to the water's edge; and on our right the green luscious meadows, watered by many streams, stretch away until lost to sight in the distance. very cool and refreshing are these paths by the rippling brooks that flow around this side of the town. everyone loves running water, and there is a strange fascination about gurgling streams and swirling brooks that is difficult to define. our ancestors built their towns and directed their roads by the waterways, and for reasons other than those attached primarily to defence or commerce. masses of brambles and sedges sway over deep crystal pools, the haunt of the trout, and the peculiar reflected light from the water enhances the visionary loveliness of the glade. at the end of this walk is the hangman's cottage, a small brick building with a roof-covering of thatch. there is nothing in its present appearance to suggest the abode of the public hangman and the town scavenger. the upper floor was reached originally by an external stone stairway, the holes once occupied by the supporting stanchions still being visible. within this picturesque little dwelling gertrude lodge questioned the hangman when in search of a remedy for her "withered arm". the public executions took place on a roof over the prison gateway, and in the county museum the visitor will see two leaden weights, each of which is inscribed with the word "mercy". these gruesome objects were supplied by a tender-hearted governor to shorten the agony of a prisoner of light weight. from the hangman's cottage a delightful walk through the low-lying meadows, towards charminster, passes by wolfeton, an historic tudor house wherein thomas trenchard entertained philip of austria and joanna, after their fleet had put into weymouth harbour for shelter. it was in the grounds of this house that the lady penelope, in _a group of noble dames_, pacified the three suitors for her hand with the roguish remark: "have patience, have patience, you foolish men! only bide your time quietly, and, in faith, i will marry you all in turn!"--a remark made in jest that was afterwards fulfilled in earnest. from wolfeton the return journey can be made by way of the main road that trends in a northerly direction somewhat beyond our present limits--to maiden newton (chalk newton), the hintock country, and the blackmore vale (the vale of little dairies), all of which figure in the novels. nearing dorchester again one notices that the sidepath is raised a considerable height above the level of the roadway, being one of many such tree-planted walks that mark the site and extent of the ancient circumvallation of the town, the greater part of which is still _intra muros_. proceeding down high west street, the western counterpart of the thoroughfare we joined at the corn exchange and left at the white hart, we pass on our left the shire hall, a reminder, if such were needed, that we are in the county town. farther on is the dorset county museum, within which are exhibited the remarkable relics of celtic and roman days that have been discovered in the town and its immediate environs. nearly opposite the museum is the house (now a shop) wherein judge jeffreys was lodged when he opened his bloody assize at dorchester. the house has retained its little gallery and the greater part of its original woodwork, while several stone-mullioned windows look out on the pretty garden at the back. in glydepath road, near the shire hall, may be seen the "leering mask" that formed the keystone of the doorway arch of lucetta's house. our american cousins, who make their pilgrimage to the hardy country in ever-increasing numbers, may be glad to be reminded that it was in the environs of this dorset dorchester that john lothrop motley, the celebrated historian, made his english home, he having been born, curiously enough, in the younger dorchester of massachusetts. he died, in , at kingston russell, the home of his daughter, lady vernon harcourt, and was buried near his wife in kensal green cemetery. no visitor should leave the town without paying a brief visit to the great earthworks of maumbury rings and poundbury camp, the former of which is undergoing a series of scientific excavations by mr. st. george gray, engaged for the purpose by a joint committee of the dorset field club and the british archæological association. thomas hardy, whose dorchester home is but a short distance away, describes maumbury as "a huge circular enclosure, with a notch at opposite extremities of its diameter, north and south. it was to casterbridge what the ruined coliseum is to modern rome, and was nearly of the same magnitude." it has been estimated that the enclosure could accommodate , spectators, and over , are said to have assembled here in , when mary channing was strangled and burned, on very slight evidence, for the murder of her husband. both of these historic earthworks were nearly destroyed in the early days of railway enterprise, and poundbury was saved only at the last moment by brunel consenting to tunnel beneath instead of taking his line right through it, as he had at first intended. in the wessex novels and poems it figures as "square pummerie", the place where henchard's "merry-making" occurred. [illustration: bere regis] one of the most delightful of the numerous walks from dorchester is that which leaves the town by the two bridges near the white hart, the spot where the local high street merges imperceptibly into the great london road. journeying along this great chalk highway a fine view is obtained of the suburb of fordington, the "durnover" of _the mayor of casterbridge_. "here wheat ricks overhung the old roman street, and thrust their eaves against the church tower; green-thatched barns, with doorways as high as the gates of solomon's temple, opened directly upon the main thoroughfare.... here lived burgesses who daily walked the fallow--shepherds in an intramural squeeze." a mile or so of pleasant, if somewhat dusty, walking brings us to stinsford crossroads, where a right-hand turn leads to stinsford house, with its terraced garden, and a very pretty church, the mellstock church of _under the greenwood tree_. in this pleasing little church tranter dewy and his family attended service, and here the valiant thomas leaf listened to the sermons of "his holiness". it was at mellstock that elizabeth-jane and her mother caught their first glimpse of the town of casterbridge. from stinsford a charming walk through the park of kingston house, the knapwater house of _desperate remedies_, brings us to the junction of the roads that lead to higher and lower bockhampton respectively. we are now near a portion of the "tess" locality, for a short distance to the right stands norris mill, the "talbothays" of the novel, while the frome valley, in which it is situated, is the "vale of great dairies", the "valley in which milk and butter grew to rankness". here, too, is the western extremity of the far-famed "egdon heath", that succession of wild unenclosed moorlands that stretch in unbroken continuity from near dorchester to poole harbour; but a description of this vast heathland must be deferred for the moment, for a short walk leads to higher bockhampton, a most charming and secluded hamlet, at the farther end of which is the birthplace of the wessex novelist, a small thatched house embowered in a world of rural opulence. mr. hardy's childhood's days were impregnated with rustic peace and solitude, and the formative influences of his early environment have left their mark on his great romances. from the birthplace a most pleasant ramble over bockhampton heath leads into the yellowham woods, the "great yalbury" wood, in the depths of which fancy day resided when living in her father's cottage. here, too, as told in _far from the madding crowd_, joseph poorgrass had the experience, the re-telling of which always put this most modest of men to the blush. "once he had been working late at yalbury bottom, and had had a drop of drink, and lost his way as he was coming home along through yalbury wood.... and as he was coming along in the middle of the night, much afeared, and not able to find his way out nohow, a' cried out, 'man-a-lost! man-a-lost!' a owl in a tree happened to be crying 'whoo-whoo-whoo!' as owls do you know, shepherd, and joseph, all in a tremble, said, 'joseph poorgrass, of weatherbury, sir!'" "no, no, now, that's too much," said the timid man.... "i didn't say _sir_ ... i never said _sir_ to the bird, knowing very well that no man of a gentleman's rank would be hollerin' there at that time o' night. 'joseph poorgrass, of weatherbury,' that's every word i said, and i shouldn't ha' said that if't hadn't been for keeper day's metheglin." out on to the main road again, the same one that we left at stinsford crossroads, a short walk past the little hamlet of troy town, and we enter puddletown (strictly piddleton, from the a.s. _piddle_, a small stream), the old home of the de pydels, and the "weatherbury" of romance. occupying a prominent position facing the village square where used to stand the maypole, stocks, and hundred house, is a thatched house with a projecting window supported on columns, which architects consider to be one of the finest georgian windows in the country. this was, in the eighteenth century, the private residence of the boswells. "weatherbury" is a most interesting place, although somewhat altered since _far from the madding crowd_ was penned. the old malthouse, wherein the villagers gave such a warm welcome to gabriel oak on his taking service with bathsheba, has vanished completely, but the church, of which a proposed rebuilding of an elizabethan chancel on the lines of a larger original chancel has caused a fierce and bitter controversy in the press, has met with little molestation. it contains the athelhampton chapel, with a panelled entrance arch, in which are some remarkable monuments and brasses, the former of which include a magnificent recumbent effigy in alabaster, with a "vizored salade", and a fluted shield, commemorating a member of the martin family, who lived at the neighbouring athelhampton hall, a fine ancestral home, and the "athel hall" of the _wessex poems_. the norman font in the church is worth inspection, as also are the fifteenth-century panelled roof of spanish chestnut of the nave, and the carolean gallery where gabriel oak sang in the choir. very simple were the old services in these village churches, with the farm hands attending service on sunday afternoons as regularly as they went to work on monday mornings. now and then maybe a bucolic rustic would doze off to sleep, until his slumbers were disturbed by the beadle; and many of the old natives can remember when this ecclesiastical official would rap his long wand of office on the skull of a sleeping rustic, with a crack that echoed through the sacred edifice. in the north porch of the church sergeant troy passed the night after fanny robin's funeral. a short distance away is lower waterson, "a hoary building of the jacobean stage of classic renaissance", and the home of bathsheba everdene, where the great "shearing barn", so delightfully described by mr. hardy, may still be seen, although the novelist had in his mind's eye the far more spacious and magnificent tithe barn at abbotsbury. while at waterson it is worth while to mount waterson ridge, the scene of _time's laughingstocks_, a poem that appeared in the _fortnightly_ of august, . from puddletown through tolpuddle (one of the numerous villages to which the puddle or piddle gives name), and we are quickly at bere regis, which dr. stukeley identified with the roman _ibernium_. this is the "kingsbere" of the novels and the ancient seat of the turbervilles, a family that flourishes still in glamorgan, and of whom tess was a fictitious descendant. within the church, which has a remarkable carved roof, the gift of cardinal morton, who was born at milborne stileham, three or four miles away, are two canopied tombs of the turbervilles. half a mile to the north-east is woodbury hill, where was held the great sheep fair, the "greenhill fair" where troy performed the part of "dick turpin" at the circus. at bere the smuggler owlett was hidden after his struggle with the excise officers, and it was selected as a hiding place for the women by miller loveday, should napoleon's threatened invasion prove successful. here, too, beneath the cardinal's noble gift, yeobright's father put such power into his playing of the bass viol as to cause the windows to rattle, and "old pa'son gibbons to lift his hands in his great holy surplice as natural as if he'd been in common clothes, and seem to say to himself, 'oh for such a man in our parish!'" apart from its historical and literary associations bere regis is as charming a spot as exists in rural england, and one where the modern cultivation which demolishes the hedgerows and stubbs up the copses has not yet shown its evil presence. the old manor house of the turbervilles has vanished, with the exception of a portion that still remains in court farm; and times have changed since the old race of manorial lords and squires were laid to rest in their family vaults. here, as in most dorset villages, the ancient families have died out or, owing to agricultural depression, have been driven into bankruptcy or exile. the manor houses have fallen into decay, with the exception perhaps, as here, of a solitary wing which serves as a modern farmhouse. on the tombstones in the churchyard you may read names once honoured in the countryside, and far beyond it, names that are rapidly becoming extinct, except as what grant allen would have called "verbal fossils". [illustration: portisham] it is generally thought that the untitled landed gentry represent a longer connection with land than the nobility, whose estates have constantly been added to by purchase or inheritance. it is, however, quite otherwise; for of all the squirearchy there are very few families who can show an unbroken succession since the termination of an event so comparatively recent as the wars of the roses. true, there are a certain and a not inconsiderable number of englishmen with large landed estates who are descended from ancestors who held land sometime before them; but it will generally be found that the ancestors were yeomen. it has been estimated by an eminent authority that an analysis of modern landowners in any english county will prove that not more than a dozen descend from forbears owning acres (the minimum qualification for a great landowner) in the time of elizabeth; and that the peers, comparatively modern as the majority of them are, represent a much larger average of old families than the country squires. if possible, the return journey from bere regis to dorchester should be made by way of "egdon heath", of which we get so impressive a description in the opening chapters of _the return of the native_. if the weather be fine, what could be better than a long tramp over the moor? especially as our most lasting memories of a landscape are those we gain afoot. blue skies and green fields are things we are all familiar with; but there is assuredly nothing in the wide world that appeals to us so much as our english moorlands, and "egdon", aglow with yellow gorse, and afire with purple heather, is as fine a sight as can be offered by these southern lands that fringe the channel seas. it is not pretended, of course, that these combined dorset heathlands can rival in extent or grandeur the great devonian moorland that gives birth to the romantic river dart; but in their own peculiar way they have no rival. in _domesday_ this tract of country is called a "heathy, furzy, briary wilderness", and the antiquary leland writes of it as being "overgrown with heth and moss". mr. hardy characterizes it finely in eight words as "singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony." his description of it could have been penned only by one who was familiar with all its various moods, and whose mind had become absorbed with its mysterious and subtle influences. "ever since the beginning of vegetation its soil has worn the same antique brown dress, the natural and invariable garment of the peculiar formation.... it is unchanged and unchangeable, with a wild, weird beauty all its own.... it was a spot which returned upon the memory of those who loved it with an aspect of peculiar and kindly congruity.... twilight combined with the scenery of egdon heath to evolve a thing majestic without severity, impressive without showiness, emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity." it was among the solitudes of these moorlands, and amid the fragrant meadow-lands of dorchester, that william barnes made himself sweet imageries the livelong day; and here thomas hardy has thought out his great prose romances, and clothed them with beautiful description. certainly both of these great writers have revived much of the forgotten wealth of our language, and wander where you will in their beloved dorset homeland, by winding stream or breezy down, the shade of the dead poet and the presence of the living novelist accompany you on your way. eight miles to the south of dorchester is weymouth, backed, as seen from the landward side, by the great promontory of portland, lying like some stranded whale upon the waters. the quickest and easiest way to reach this "budmouth" of the novels is by train, but by far the more interesting way is to walk or cycle. true, the rail motor has many "halts", at which one can alight, but those who do the sights of a place between the trains miss a hundred natural beauties and a thousand healthy pleasures granted to the pedestrian and the cyclist. leaving the county town by the weymouth road, and passing the "rings" where henchard and his wife met to discuss future arrangements, the first definite turning towards the right leads to maiden castle, where rise the steep and grassy tiers of the most stupendous prehistoric earthwork we possess, and one that was in existence for centuries before it was strengthened, and, for a short period, occupied probably by the romans. a whole day is scarce sufficient in which to explore this great camp, with an area of acres, that occupies the summit of a natural hill, and where the entrenchments and fortifications are of a most elaborate character. emerging from this prehistoric fortress, camp, and cattle-station at its western extremity, a short but hilly walk leads to the charming village of upwey, nestling at the foot of a well-wooded hill where rises a spring of water, the source of the little river wey. upwey church is a very interesting one of perpendicular date. some portions of the picturesque old mill here are introduced into the _trumpet-major_, but their locality has been moved to sutton (overcombe), a few miles away. beyond the mill a sharp turn to the left joins the main road we left to reach maiden castle. here, on the old vicinal way of the romans, stands the "ship" inn, the hostel wherein dick dewy and fancy day became definitely engaged after their accidental meeting by the king's statue at budmouth. close at hand is the ridgeway, the place where the overcombe folk waited all night to see the king arrive; and where the opening scene of the first act of _the dynasts_ is laid. adjoining the ridgeway is bincombe down, with its steep, grass-covered sides rising sheer from the straggling village below. mr. hardy writes: "the eye of any observer who cared for such things swept over the wave-washed town (weymouth) and the bay beyond, and the isle, with its pebble bank, lying on the sea to the left of these, like a great crouching animal tethered to the mainland". on this hill the soldiers were encamped in readiness to repel napoleon's threatened invasion, and here came the mill party in the _trumpet-major_, to see the review, and to overhear the exclamations of the excited rustics: "there's king jarge!" "that's queen sharlett!" "princess sophiar and mellyer!" in the _melancholy hussar_ blagdon is depicted as the spot whereon tina and christoph were shot as deserters. from upwey a fine walk along the waddon valley, the scene of _the lacking sense_; past corton church, with its pre-reformation stone altar, and the jacobean farmhouse of waddon; and through the charming hamlet of coryates, leads to portisham, or po'sham, one of the most interesting of the villages that lie at the back of the chesil beach. on the outskirts of the village a little stone-roofed house, almost covered with creepers, was the home of thomas masterman hardy, the flag-captain of the _victory_, in whose arms nelson died. the house is still occupied by the descendants of the gallant seaman, one of three dorset captains at trafalgar, and many relics of their famous ancestor are preserved within the dwelling. it was to this house that bob loveday came to visit captain hardy when he thought of joining the crew of the _victory_. high above the village, on blackdown or blagdon hill, stands the hardy monument that forms a conspicuous land- and sea-mark for many miles around. portisham is one of the most charming of dorset's villages; the church having many points of interest that include a leaden roof and a very good tower; while grouped around it are old-fashioned thatched cottages, and ancient tudor houses with the heavy dripstones and massive mullions so characteristic of their era. portisham was the birthplace of sir andrew riccard, "president of the east india and turkey companies". he left an only daughter, who became successively the wife of lord kensington and lord berkeley of stratton. [illustration: weymouth and portland] just beyond portisham is abbotsbury, where are some considerable remains of a monastic building founded originally, _circa_ , for secular canons, and converted, in later days, into a noble benedictine abbey, of which the tithe barn, a very beautiful example, still exists. the little chapel perched on the summit of st. catherine's hill is an architectural gem of the perpendicular period, and one that should not be missed by anyone with antiquarian tastes. the village church is also a good piece of building, with a curious representation of the trinity let into the wall of the tower, and a fine jacobean pulpit. while here, a visit should be paid to lord ilchester's famous swannery and decoy. as we are now a good deal out of the direct-road route from dorchester to weymouth, the visitor may be advised to take the rail motor from abbotsbury to the maritime town, especially as, after passing through the waddon vale, the road leading thither is bare, treeless, and devoid of interest. weymouth has been described a thousand times, and it is not unworthy of it, lying as it does in a long curve with the whole town visible from the sea. it is artistically placed, and is a brilliant if somewhat old-fashioned jewel set amid a sea of amethyst and turquoise. modern weymouth is made up of two distinct boroughs, weymouth and melcombe regis, which were united by queen elizabeth. it is a town whose beginnings are lost in obscurity, although its early history is not of a very engrossing kind. after passing through various phases of fortune and misfortune, with a preponderance of the latter, the place was nothing but a decayed seaport until george iii and his court, coming here to reside in the closing years of the eighteenth century, instilled new life into the town, which has retained, despite the modern builder, considerable architectural remains of this period of its greatest prosperity. the shops have unfortunately been modernized, but the greater number of the old georgian rows of dwelling houses are intact. gloucester lodge, now the gloucester hotel, was the royal residence, before which "a picket of a thousand men mounted guard every day". queen charlotte's second keeper of the robes was fanny burney, who, in her _diary_, has left us a very interesting account of the court life at weymouth. with the exception of casterbridge, budmouth figures more frequently in the wessex novels than any other place, and is especially prominent in _the trumpet-major_. by the statue of king george, "wonderfully and fearfully made", dick dewy met fancy day; and the bridge over the harbour is mentioned in the _well-beloved_. bob loveday was familiar with its harbour, and his brother john knew its barracks; and here anne garland studied the latest fashions. it was on the esplanade that festus derriman cut "a fine figure of a soldier", and here jocelyn pierston was staying when he met with two incarnations of the well-beloved. in _the dynasts_, the interview between king george and pitt takes place at gloucester lodge, and in the old rooms inn across the harbour the battle of trafalgar was discussed. some four miles to the south of weymouth lies the "isle of slingers" (portland), the pleasantest way to reach which is by one of the numerous steamers that make the trip. entering an opening in the great breakwater that encloses the mighty roadstead of portland, the visitor will notice the ruins of an old castle that stand on the edge of a sandy and rapidly disappearing cliff. this is all that is left of sandsfoot castle, built in the time of henry viii, and the "right goodlie castel" of leland's day. this was the place appointed by pierston for his farewell to avice. our little craft threads her way quickly through the mighty battleships and cruisers that lie securely within this murally enclosed basin of sea, and we glide into the little harbour at the base of the mighty rock. the first aspect of the place, owing partly to the absence of trees, is stern and rather uninviting, but, for those who know it, the rocky mass of portland has many attractions. from the high land a fine view is obtained of the chesil beach, that extraordinary bank of pebbles that connects the "island" with the mainland at abbotsbury, ten miles away. farther west is bridport, the "port bredy" of the novels, and a pleasantly situated town, whose marine suburb of west bay contains a useful little harbour wherein vessels of a small tonnage can enter at high tides. six miles to the north of bridport is beaminster (emminster), the home of angel clare, whither tess made her way in the hope of obtaining news of her husband. interesting as is the rock of portland as seen from the bill or from the sandy little cove of church ope, the seaward faces of the promontory are best observed from the deck of a boat, when all the elements that go usually to form a picture on a level surface are here raised nearly to the perpendicular, and, by reflecting the sun's rays at a slight angle, produce effects as violent in their nature as they are startling in their novelty of colour. in _the souls of the slain_, the bill or beal of portland is well described: "the thick lids of night closed upon me alone at the bill of the isle by the race-- many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face-- and with darkness and silence the spirit was on me to brood and be still." from this wild spot ann garland watched the _victory_ depart with bob loveday on board. turning inland we see pennsylvania castle. this was the home of pierston, and near it is the cottage wherein avice dwelt; while, in the adjoining ope churchyard, jocelyn wooed the granddaughter of the first avice. the castle is comparatively modern, having been built by john penn in , from designs by wyatt. from numberless points on the tableland of portland many exquisite views may be obtained, some looking seaward to where the distant st. aldhelm's head marks the eastern limit of weymouth bay. inland, the prospect includes the town of weymouth, with the heights of dorset stretching into the heart of the county. away to the west the waves of the channel moan unceasingly, where chesil lifts her pebbly ridge, and golden cap, with its summit of yellow sand, marks the site of lyme regis, with its memories of charles ii, monmouth, jane austen, and mary mitford. westward, too, over an expanse of southern sea, the sun sinks behind the belt of blue, and flushes the golden glow of sky with varying hues of rose and amethyst, until the overarching heaven seems etherealized into a transparent canopy that veils the mystic radiance of some hidden glory. weymouth to poole the visitor to the hardy country will quickly realize that, in spite of railways, motor cars, and cycles, more than half of south dorset is a closed book to those who do not walk; while the beautiful coast scenery of this historic land is for the pedestrian alone. the iron road conveys the conventional tourist from an inland to a maritime town, motor cars and cycles thread the great highways, now stripped of their high and shade-giving hedges for the convenience of their mechanically propelled travellers. contrast this with a tramp over a succession of grassy downs where the salt sea-mist fills the natural amphitheatres made by the hollows in the retreating hills, and across sandy bays eaten out of the soft chalk by the ceaseless action of the sea. there is an indefinable charm in a view combining sea and cliff, hill and dale, the near orchard and the distant down, within the field of vision. [illustration: gateway, poxwell manor house] it is impossible by mere words to convey any idea of the wealth of colour exhibited along the dorset coast, where the brilliant tints of the sea-worn rocks are contrasted with hues of vivid green; for here verdure triumphs over decay, and drapes the wrecks of time with the richest vegetation. in a wide open country such as this, great clouds sweep over the hills, casting as they travel moving shadows over land and sea; so that before long we are perfectly intoxicated with the charms of the district, where idlers forget their ennui, and invalids gain strength in its invigorating air. leaving weymouth by the wareham road, and past the low-lying but picturesque marshlands of lodmoor, we arrive at preston, where the much-disturbed tessellated floor of a good roman villa may be seen for the payment of sixpence. near the roadside is a small one-arched bridge that has been claimed by some antiquaries to be of roman, and by others of norman, date. many think it to be a mediaeval pack-horse bridge. preston's sister village of sutton poyntz is the "overcombe" of _the trumpet-major_, with its millpond, which ann garland surveyed from her chamber window. "immediately before her was the large, smooth millpond, overfull, and intruding into the hedge and into the road." on the hillside at the back of the village is the gigantic figure of george iii on horseback, cut out of the chalk in . this work of art is feet in length and feet in height, and there is no better way to reach it than from sutton. should we make the ascent we can act as ann garland did on her visit here with the trumpet-major, namely, pace "from the horse's head down his breast to his hoof, back by way of the king's bridle-arm, past the bridge of his nose, and into his cocked hat", or we can follow the example of the trumpet-major, and stand, "in a melancholy attitude within the rowel of his majesty's right spur". descending the hill and passing through osmington, where nothing need detain us, we reach the village of poxwell, a name that some authors assure us is a corruption of puck's well; but it is more likely that it comes from _pochesvill_ of the _domesday_ survey. this is the "oxwell" of the novels; and the singularly picturesque jacobean house is "oxwell hall", where resided old derriman in the _trumpet-major_. apart from its literary associations this old building is well worth a visit by anyone who is interested in these old types of domestic architecture. it is one of hundreds of old manor houses in dorset, and elsewhere, that have become degraded in the social scale to the status of a farmhouse. its most pleasing and distinctive feature is the gatehouse or porter's lodge, the keystone of the gateway arch bearing the date . the lower floor of this pleasing little erection gives entrance to a beautiful walled-in garden of velvet lawns bordered by bright flower-beds. the upper room, approached by a flight of stone steps from the garden, is lighted by two small windows, one looking towards the house, the other commanding a view of the drive. this upper room is known as the "fool's chamber", the tradition being that the fool of the family was allowed a last throw at any departing guests from his coign of vantage. for the purposes of his story mr. hardy has placed the house considerably nearer to "overcombe" (sutton) than it really is. a short walk from poxwell would land us at osmington mills, on the coast, a most delightful little spot, where hot lobster teas are one of the standing dishes at the picnic inn. from here lulworth can be reached by a fine walk past ringstead bay and a long toil up the grassy shoulder of whitenose, the whole being one of the best coast walks to be found in dorset. the main road to lulworth proceeds from poxwell to warmwell cross (warm'ell cross), the place where stockdale released the excisemen who had been overtaken by the smugglers. the whole of this portion of the coast and its hinterland, figure in mr. hardy's smuggling stories, the illicit cargoes being hidden in the neighbouring church of owermoigne. near warmwell cross is warmwell house, an interesting jacobean residence that was for some time the home of john saddler, the famous cromwellian jurist, who was despoiled of all his property at the restoration. another interesting old house is that of owermoigne, the manor of which, then called ogres, or owers, was held by william le moigne "of our lord the king in capite by the service and serjeantry of being caterer in the king's kitchen, and keeper of his larder". a fine feature of the house is a range of beautiful and original thirteenth-century windows, in the solar on the first floor. this is the "nether-moynton" of _the distracted preacher_, where stands the church to which lizzy guided stockdale. a recent restoration has swept away the gallery stairs beneath which the illicit cargoes were hidden, but the tower within which the smugglers lay concealed is much as it was when described in the story. [illustration: lulworth cove] another way to reach lulworth is to take the turn by the red lion that leads through winfrith newburgh, a pretty little village, but of no particular interest save for an old manorial custom by which robert de newburgh held winfrith "by the service of giving water for the hands of our lord the king on the day of his coronation; and to have the basin and ewer for the service aforesaid". at the coronation of james ii a claim was made by the lord of the manor to perform this service, but the claim was not allowed. we find also that the tithing man of the neighbouring village of coombe keynes was obliged to do suit at winfrith court leet; and, after repeating the following incoherent lines, was mulcted in the sum of threepence:-- "with my white rod, and i am a fourth post, that threepence makes three, god bless the king, and the lord of the franchise; our weights and our measures are lawful and true. good-morrow, mr. steward; i have no more to say to you." coombe keynes is situated a mile or so to the south of wool, its chief claim to notice being the singularly beautiful pre-reformation chalice preserved within the church, a building that was extensively restored in . the chalice is one of three pieces of pre-reformation church plate that now remain in the county, although out of some three hundred parishes over one hundred have retained their elizabethan chalices, while seventy possess communion plate of the seventeenth century. the coombe keynes chalice is in excellent condition, and is surpassed in beauty only by the very similar but slightly earlier example at wylye, in wiltshire. its height is - / inches; diameter of bowl, inches; depth, inches; narrowest part of base, - / inches; widest part, - / inches. the bowl is broad and conical; the slender stem hexagonal and quite plain, with ogee moulded bands at the junctions. the knob is full sized, having six lobes spirally twisted with traceried openings, terminating in angels' heads, crowned. the date is about , if not somewhat earlier. the two other examples of pre-reformation plate in dorset are a paten at buckhorn weston, and a chalice at sturminster marshall. a short walk from winfrith, and we arrive at our destination, the romantic and justly famed lulworth cove. during the summer months this attractive little spot can be easily reached by steamer from weymouth, and for those to whom the literary associations and natural beauties of the landward route make no appeal, the short sea voyage of about an hour's duration has much to recommend it, while an ideal holiday jaunt is to make the outward journey on foot or wheel, and return by sea. who among the readers of mr. hardy's novels has not longed to visit the far-famed lulworth cove? that "small basin of sea enclosed by the cliffs", wherein troy bathed after spending the night in the porch of puddletown church. the sea entrance to the little landlocked bay requires careful navigation by reason of "the two projecting spurs of rock which formed the pillars of hercules to this miniature mediterranean". this is the "lulstead", and occasionally the "lullwind" of the wessex novels, tales, and poems, and is the scene of the napoleonic sketch in _life's little ironies_, entitled _a tradition of _. here cytherea graye met edward springrove, and here the dead bodies of stephen hardcombe and his cousin's wife were washed ashore. the prospect from the cliffs that overlook the cove is a very extensive one. to the west the bay of weymouth, with a small portion of the town, is visible, with the green heights of the down in its rear. south-west is the bold and rocky mass of portland, while to the east the eye takes in the projecting portions of the strangely contorted cliffs of the purbeck coast line, and the dangerous kimmeridge ledges, beyond which rises the high wall-like ridge of cliff that terminates in the bluff promontory of st. aldhelm's head. the village of west lulworth is rather barren of interest, and the little trade of the place seems to be confined entirely to administering to the necessities of visitors and pilgrims. sad to relate, this secluded spot, where untrammelled nature has reigned supreme for centuries, is beginning to show signs of ugly modernity, and bathing cabins are encroaching on its encircling belt of shingle. nothing, however, can vulgarize lulworth except in patches, for, modernize it how you will, it will always retain its rugged crags that tower above its sea margin, and the complex witchery of its rock-bestrewn coast. the background of millais's famous picture, "the departure of the romans" is a view of the dorset coast looking from the cliffs of lulworth towards weymouth, the standpoint being dungy, with st. oswald's bay in the foreground, and whitenose terminating the splendid lateral prospect of the cliffs. it is a singularly literal rendering of the scene. at the same time learned historians tell us that it is by no means certain that any of the roman legions left this country by way of the dorset coast. the greatest architectural attraction of the neighbourhood is lulworth castle, standing in a finely wooded park of acres. the building is in the form of a cube, and is of early jacobean date, having been built almost entirely with material from the abbey of bindon, near wool, when such was demolished at the reformation. the façade of the edifice is ornamented with heraldic shields and allegorical figures representing music and painting. in it was purchased by the weld family, who still own it. it was visited by james i and charles ii, while george iii and his family were frequent visitors during their residence at weymouth. charles x, when exiled from france in , also found asylum here, by the hospitality of mr. joseph weld. the interior of the castle may be seen on application to the lulworth estate office at wool, and it is well worth while to apply for permission, as the house contains some fine apartments and a curious set of portraits painted by giles hussey, a native of marnhull, the harmony of whose colour-scheme was corrected by a musical scale. the welds are a roman catholic family of whom the famous cardinal weld was the most prominent member. [illustration: wool house] close to the castle stands the protestant church on the south side and the catholic chapel on the north. the latter, built in by the special leave of george iii, was described by fanny burney as "a pantheon in miniature, and ornamented with immense wealth and richness. the altar is all of the finest variegated marbles, and precious stones are glittering from every angle", a description that holds good to-day. from the castle a most charming walk through a wood and down over grassy fields leads to arish mell gap, a narrow bay shut in by high grass-covered downs, and near which is situated the monastery farm, founded in , for trappist monks, by thomas weld and his son, who afterwards attained the dignity of cardinal. from lulworth the enterprising pedestrian can find an abundance of magnificent coast walks by worbarrow tout, the kimmeridge ledges, and st. aldhelm's head. the walk towards the last-named is one of the wildest solitude, the only living creatures being the white sea-birds, and the only sounds the murmur of the waves as they surge round the bleak pinnacles of rock. here and there, where the track-way turns at an angle, we catch a glimpse of vast cavernous recesses, some natural and some the work of men's hands, where ponderous masses have been riven away from the face of the cliff, and tumbled headlong into the water, where they lie amid the swirling eddies of the tide. it is impossible to describe adequately the manifold beauties of the purbeck coast line, which concentrates in itself all the elements of the bleak and the picturesque, pastoral valleys and grassy downs that end seawards in great walls of barren rock and masses of fallen cliff. some old muzzle-loading guns lying on the shore between winspit and seacombe mark the site of the wreck of the _halsewell_, an east indiaman that was driven ashore here with great loss of life on january , . while at lulworth the reader of mr. hardy's romances will not fail to visit wool, and the old manor house of the turbervilles wherein was enacted one of the most dramatic scenes in english fiction. crossing the old bridge of "five yawning arches" we stand before "wellbridge house", where tess and angel clare came to spend their honeymoon. "welcome to one of your ancestral mansions!" was the bridegroom's greeting, as his bride passed the threshold of the house. at the head of the stairway are the two panels on which are depicted the portraits of those ancestors, the sight of which caused tess to shudder. the house itself is an interesting specimen of ancient domestic architecture, from which in the gloom of the evening the phantom coach and four drives out of the gateway; but this ghostly equipage is visible only to a member or near relative of the turberville family. the house and bridge never look better or more romantic than when their masses of grey masonry loom out against the evening sky. at such times the soft murmur of the night wind through the rushes that edge the shimmering water, and a farewell gleam of sunlight through a rift in the long low clouds, seem to symbolize the spirit of tess. one of the best-known members of this old dorset family was george turberville ( - ). he was secretary to sir thomas randolf, queen elizabeth's ambassador in scotland and russia. he was the author of several books on _falconrie_ and hunting, but the one by virtue of which he ranks amongst the elizabethan poets was the _epitaphes, epigrams, songs, and sonnets_, the second edition of which was published in . contemporary with turberville were barnabe googe, thomas churchyard the soldier and poetaster, thomas phaer, the wellnigh forgotten lawyer of norwich, who translated the first nine books of the _Æneid_ into fourteen-syllable verse. other contemporaries were sir thomas chaloner, a soldier and diplomatist, who wrote both prose and verse; and arthur golding, an industrious translator of latin and french theological works. half a mile away is bindon abbey, of which the whole of the abbey church can be traced among the ruins. large portions also remain of the sacristy, chapterhouse, and calefactory. the original foundation belonged to the cistercian order, and was established in , and professor windle tells us that after it was surrendered to the king in , "its twelve bells were stolen and appropriated by the churches of wool, coombe, and fordington; a tale which is embodied in the local rhyme: "wool streams and coombe wells, fordington cuckolds stole bindon bells". two empty stone coffins, one tomb, and one broken grave slab of the abbot's remain, including one with the matrix of a brass, the margin of which has an inscription in lombardic capitals recording the interment of abbot richard de maners. here, too, is the old stone coffin described by mr. hardy: "against the north wall was the empty stone coffin of an abbot, in which every tourist with a turn for grim humour was accustomed to stretch himself. in this clare carefully laid tess." [illustration: wareham] near at hand bindon mill, with its picturesque setting, makes a charming picture, and one that is a great favourite with artists. it was here that angel clare came to learn the art of milling. a short ride in the train or a pleasant walk by road from wool leads to wareham, one of the oldest towns in dorset, and the "anglebury" of the novels, where, at the red lion, ethelberta and lady petherwin were staying when the story of _the hand of ethelberta_ opens. in the earlier editions of _the return of the native_, wareham figures as "southerton", the town from whence thomassin fled in the reddleman's cart, when the defect was discovered in the marriage licence which postponed her union with wildeve. it was at lychett (flychett), a few miles away, that sol and lord mountclere's brother stopped to change horses on their way to bar the wedding of lord mountclere and ethelberta at swanage (knollsea). wareham itself is an interesting little borough, most delightfully placed on rising ground that slopes to the river frome on the south, and to the trent or puddle on the north. these two streams flow into poole harbour, so that the boating man has an abundance of freshwater sailing, which can be varied by taking the craft around the numerous creeks and inlets of poole harbour, past the wooded isle of brownsea, and so out into the open channel beyond. for those who are fond of boating on a moderate scale this corner of poole harbour is an ideal spot; for although the experienced yachtsman may consider river sailing rather tame, he will find the adjoining harbour of poole large enough to satisfy his roving propensities, and with winds and waves of sufficient strength to test his skill to the full. wareham town has retained several links with its ancient state, which may be said to be epitomized in the earthen ramparts that enclose it on all sides but that guarded by the waters of the frome. upon and around these grassy walls the old-time inhabitants fought the danes with varying fortunes; for early in the eleventh century the town was captured by cnut, who made it his port, and to some extent his headquarters, until bought off with a grant of money. the antiquary should not fail to visit st. martin's church, a reputed saxon building, with some interesting early norman features that include a narrow chancel arch. the parish church of lady st. mary has been over-"restored", but the exquisite little side chapels of st. edward the martyr and st. thomas à becket remain unspoilt. an old stone coffin, a lead font, and two interesting cross-legged effigies are worthy of attention, as also are two inscribed pillars of stone that have been alleged to be portions of an old roman altar. of holy trinity church, hutchins, the historian of dorset, was once rector. before the silting up of poole harbour, wareham was an important port, and here in edward i came to superintend the manning of some ships for one of his numerous expeditions against the french; and in later days the profits of the salmon fishery were given by henry viii to catherine of aragon as a dowry. in the reign of the third edward the town furnished three ships and fifty-nine men for the siege of calais. mr. hardy's pre-eminence as a novelist is apt to make us forget that mrs. craik (miss mulock) was a frequent visitor here, and _agatha's husband_ is full of references to the town and the neighbourhood, and contains some delightful character sketches of its inhabitants. here also lives "orme agnus" (mr. j. c. higginbotham), at northport house close to the railway station. [illustration: corfe castle] situated halfway between wareham and swanage, and easily reached from either place, are the ruins of corfe castle, all that is left of what was, until the building was demolished by order of the parliament, one of the most powerful fortresses ever erected in europe. tradition associates corfe castle, or corfe, with the murder of "saynt edward kyng and martyr"; but certain modern antiquaries are rather suspicious of the story, and it is very doubtful if any portion of the existing masonry is of an earlier date than the conquest, although it is quite possible that so favourable a site would be chosen for its natural defensive properties long before the advent of the normans. the _saxon chronicle_, recording the murder of edward, does not mention a castle, but says the foul deed was done "at corfes geät", where stood the _domus elfridæ_. it has not inaptly been termed the "royal prison of purbeck", and the many famous personages incarcerated here include some french nobles whom king john starved to death early in the thirteenth century. here also the same monarch imprisoned his niece eleanor, together with two daughters of the scottish king, william, sent as hostages. edward ii was confined here by queen isabella and her paramour, roger mortimer. after being held by various nobles, including george, duke of clarence, of malmsey-wine celebrity, the castle was bought by sir christopher hatton from queen elizabeth, and was eventually purchased by sir john bankes, to whose descendants it still belongs. on sir john's joining charles i at york, in , lady bankes held corfe for the king, and so successful was her heroic defence, that it was only through the treachery of colonel pitman, one of the garrison, that she was forced to capitulate in , when the brave defenders were allowed to march out, bearing their arms and with their colours flying. the estates of this "brave dame mary" escaped confiscation, but she was mulcted in heavy fines, while the fortress she had so gallantly held against overwhelming odds was reduced to a mass of picturesque ruins, where wall-flowers grow in the crannies, sweetbrier twists around the base of a bastion, and ivy and honeysuckle crown a detached fragment of a ruined gateway. on every side great masses of broken masonry lie in heaps on the grass, or are seen suspended as if by magic in mid-air, a testimony to the destructive power of gun-powder and to the excellence of the mortar used by the norman builders. the ancient name of the place was corvsgate, from _ceorfan_ to cut, and referred to the natural cutting that surrounds the hill on the summit of which this magnificent fortress was erected. the little old-world village of corfe has also many architectural attractions in the way of projecting upper stories supported on columns, gabled houses, and the fine old manor house of the dackombes. the ruined castle on its scarped hill is fascinating from every point of view. whether flushed with the warm tints of sunset, veiled by opalescent haze, or looming stern and dark against a dull and stormy sky, it has always great pictorial charm, and a rugged beauty that suggests the embodiment of mediaevalism, its grandeur, pride, cruelty, arrogance, and death. in the wessex novels corfe castle appears under its ancient name of corvsgate, and it figures as such in _the hand of ethelberta_, a novel in the early editions of which it is also referred to as "coomb castle". here came ethelberta on the donkey she had hired at knollsea (swanage) on the occasion of the meeting of the imperial association, to which she had been invited by lord mountclere. "accordingly ethelberta crossed the bridge over the moat, and rode under the first archway of the outer ward.... the arrow-slits, portcullis-grooves, and staircases met her eye as familiar friends, for in her childhood she had once paid a visit to the spot." among these historic ruins and the fashionable company that had come to inspect them, ethelberta disowned her donkey, the faithful steed that had served her so well; and here lord mountclere presented her to "sir cyril and lady blandsbury; lady jane joy; also the learned dr. fore; mr. small, a talented writer, who never printed his works; the reverend mr. brook, rector; the very reverend dr. taylor, dean; and the rather reverend mr. tinkleton, nonconformist, who had slipped into the fold by chance." five miles from corfe castle is swanage, a town that is rapidly coming to the front as a fashionable watering-place. during the summer an excellent steamboat service connects it with bournemouth and weymouth, from both of which it is also easily reached by rail. the place has changed vastly since it served as a background for ethelberta's life history, the place where she retired to marry lord mountclere, with sol and the bridegroom's brother vainly endeavouring to reach "knollsea" in time to stop the ceremony. mr. hardy writes: "knollsea was a seaside village, lying snug within two headlands as between a finger and thumb. everybody in the parish who was not a boatman was a quarrier, unless he were the gentleman who owned half the property and had been a quarryman, or the other gentleman who owned the other half, and had been to sea." "the row of rotten piles" to which the steamer was moored in the days when _the hand of ethelberta_ was penned, have long since been supplemented by a substantial pier, while in place of the boatmen and quarriers the inhabitants to-day seem to depend for a living on attending to the needs of the many tourists attracted to swanage by its splendid climate and beautiful surroundings. a fine walk over ballard down not only commands some exceptional and sweeping views of the dorset and hampshire coast, but leads to studland, a charming village with an ancient norman church and a glorious little bay of golden sand, that is edged by the wide expanse of unenclosed moorland known as studland heath. the magnificent panorama from the high land above studland embraces nearly the whole of the eastern half of dorset, the far-famed isle of purbeck, and as we turn from the amphitheatre of rolling downs the eye ranges to the blue sea breaking at the base of the chalk cliffs of the isle of wight, or foaming round the near promontory of peveril point. away in a north-easterly direction the low-lying lands that edge the creeks and mudflats of poole harbour spread out like a map, and contrast their warm greens with the silvery tones of the great harbour. a brief description of poole is given in one of the short stories of _life's little ironies_, where it figures beneath the thin disguise of "havenpool". [illustration: poole harbour from studland] during the smuggling days poole, together with the majority of these south-country ports, enjoyed a very unenviable reputation, and was the home of the celebrated harry paye, or "arripay" as the spaniards who so dreaded him rendered the name, who is said to have brought into poole harbour, on one occasion, more than one hundred prizes from the ports of brittany, and "to have scoured the channel of flanders so powerfully that no ship could pass that way without being taken". poole has retained quite a number of its ancient domestic buildings, including the problematical fifteenth-century structure known as the "town cellars"; but nothing is known with regard to the purposes for which it was originally erected. some antiquaries believe it to have been connected with the guild of st. george, others hold that it was used as a manorial storehouse, wherein were deposited the goods left by the lord of the manor. michael drayton in his _polyolbion_ depicts the rivers frome and puddle as entertaining each other, "oft praising lovely poole, their best beloved bay"; and in truth poole harbour is charming at any state of the tide. it has been the haunt of the painter since the days when turner found such uncommon sources of inspiration along the shores of its wooded creeks, and counterfeit presentments of this dorset lakeland hang on the walls of many a european picture gallery. exclusive of all islands the area of this vast sea-lake is ten thousand acres, while it has been calculated that thirty-six million tons of water flow into and out of the narrow entrance at every spring tide. the sheet of water is studded with wooded islands that add not a little to its manifold charms. the most considerable of these islands are branksea or brownsea, fursey, long, round, and green islands. for the pedestrian there is a delightful walk along the edge of the water to haven point with its marconi installation, thence by way of cliff and chine to bournemouth; but the beauties of this great salt lake are only fully revealed to those who woo them from the water. by means of a motor launch, with a dinghy in tow for landing purposes, a thorough exploration can be made of such little-known spots as pergins' island, with its clumps of fir trees, hole's and lychett bays. another charming water trip is by way of that arm of the harbour where there is a confluence of three waters--the creek of middlebere; the corfe river, that debouches at wych passage house, the ancient port of corfe castle; and the upper bushey. as someone has fittingly said: "all will agree that a fairer sight than the panorama of poole and its much-fretted and freakish harbour one would have to go far to see!" the still meadows that lie around this landlocked haven are green with the growth of centuries; and over the golden corn waving freely on the upland slopes, or above the lavender fields of broadstone, the lark in summer air is singing. quietly, with clear spaces of light above them, in silver lapses under the darkening trees, the little rivers thread the fertile valleys, and the frome runs eastwards from dorchester, linking, as with a liquid thread, the far-famed county town with the equally ancient maritime port of wareham. if this land of purbeck as a whole has altered but little since the days when our norman rulers made it a happy hunting ground, its people have changed still less, and its distinctive class--the marblers or quarriers--have been practically unaffected by the tide of civilization that has affected the rest of the county in thought, dress, and customs. the working of purbeck marble is one of the oldest industries in the country, for the material was used by the romans for the lining of sepulchral cists, and in later days it was in great demand for the fashioning of effigies, monuments, pillars, and similar architectural adornments. from purbeck came the stone for some of the gates of london, for the cross at charing, for the abbeys of westminster and bindon, and for many portions of the cathedrals of exeter, salisbury, and winchester. it is a matter for regret that the early history of the purbeck quarriers is obscure, owing largely to the records of the company having been destroyed by a fire at corfe castle. it is generally agreed, however, that they are of norman descent, for certain names indicative of french origin are still very common among the natives of corfe and swanage. although the trade is a declining one, a good deal of quarrying for the rougher kinds of stone is still carried on by the "company of marblers of the isle of purbeck". no one but the son of a freeman can become a member of this ancient association, though a freeman's wife is made a freewoman on payment of a shilling--the "marriage shilling" as it is called--so that she may be able to carry on the work should she outlive her husband. one of the articles of the guild, and one that is still rigidly enforced, is that not even a day's work shall be given to a non-member. some serious disturbances have taken place when attempts have been made to introduce "outside" labour. the most important right claimed by the marblers, the right to enter on any man's land and work the stone, has not been conceded for many years. the natives assert that this concession was granted to them by royal charter, but it is doubtful if their claim could be legally enforced at the present time. the admission of apprentices is governed by a number of curious laws. a "free boy" may enter the quarries and work without being bound, and until he attains his majority he is subject to his father, to whom his wages are supposed to belong by right. it is to be hoped that the demand for the stone will continue, and that the "company of purbeck marblers" will long remain a link with the dim and distant past. while in the neighbourhood of poole the tourist should not fail to visit wimborne, with its magnificent minster, and bournemouth, which latter, although just beyond the eastern boundary of dorset, was the town (sandbourne) where was enacted almost the final scene of mr. hardy's great drama of _tess_: "this fashionable watering-place, with its eastern and its western stations, its piers, its groves of pines, its promenades, and its covered gardens, was, to angel clare, like a fairy place suddenly created by the stroke of a wand, and allowed to get a little dusty. an outlying tract of the enormous egdon waste was close at hand, yet on the very verge of that tawny piece of antiquity such a glittering novelty as this pleasure city had chosen to spring up. within the space of a mile from its outskirts every irregularity of the soil was prehistoric; every channel an undisturbed british trackway; not a sod having been turned there since the days of the cæsars. yet the exotic had grown here, suddenly as the prophet's gourd; and had drawn hither tess. by the midnight lamps he went up and down the winding ways of this new world in an old one, and could discern between the trees and against the stars the lofty roofs, chimneys, gazebos, and towers of the numerous fanciful residences of which the place was composed. it was a city of detached mansions; a mediterranean lounging-place on the english channel; and as seen now by night it seemed even more imposing than it was. the sea was near at hand, but not intrusive; it murmured, and he thought it was the pines; the pines murmured in precisely the same tones, and he thought they were the sea." space fails one to trace the boundaries of the re-created wessex any further. very rightly, very thoroughly has the novelist _par excellence_ of our day, appreciated all the nobleness and all the poetry that lies within the area of his chosen _mise en scène_. not the least of the services which mr. thomas hardy has rendered us, perhaps even to be prized more than his faithful portraying of rustic character, is his thus revivifying, and by consequence exciting the popular taste for and delight in so interesting a portion of our english homeland. nor let it be forgotten that his novels are not altogether fictitious, but are impregnated with authentic social and national history. there is truth enough in his works of fiction to make him a famous historian, omitting altogether what belongs to the proper region of romance. printed in great britain _at the villafield press, glasgow, scotland_ transcriber's note: minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. words printed in italics are marked with underlines: _italics_. the cover of this ebook was created by the transcriber and is hereby placed in the public domain.