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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Changed Man and Other Tales, by Thomas Hardy
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: A Changed Man and Other Tales
+
+Author: Thomas Hardy
+
+Release Date: November 2, 2004  [eBook #3058]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHANGED MAN AND OTHER TALES***
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1920 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+A CHANGED MAN AND OTHER TALES
+
+
+Contents:
+
+Prefatory Note
+A Changed Man
+The Waiting Supper
+Alicia's Diary
+The Grave by the Handpost
+Enter a Dragoon
+A Tryst at an Ancient Earthwork
+What the Shepherd Saw
+A Committee Man of 'The Terror'
+Master John Horseleigh, Knight
+The Duke's Reappearance
+A Mere Interlude
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+I reprint in this volume, for what they may be worth, a dozen minor
+novels that have been published in the periodical press at various dates
+in the past, in order to render them accessible to readers who desire to
+have them in the complete series issued by my publishers.  For aid in
+reclaiming some of the narratives I express my thanks to the proprietors
+and editors of the newspapers and magazines in whose pages they first
+appeared.
+
+T. H.
+August 1913.
+
+
+
+
+A CHANGED MAN
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The person who, next to the actors themselves, chanced to know most of
+their story, lived just below 'Top o' Town' (as the spot was called) in
+an old substantially-built house, distinguished among its neighbours by
+having an oriel window on the first floor, whence could be obtained a
+raking view of the High Street, west and east, the former including
+Laura's dwelling, the end of the Town Avenue hard by (in which were
+played the odd pranks hereafter to be mentioned), the Port-Bredy road
+rising westwards, and the turning that led to the cavalry barracks where
+the Captain was quartered.  Looking eastward down the town from the same
+favoured gazebo, the long perspective of houses declined and dwindled
+till they merged in the highway across the moor.  The white riband of
+road disappeared over Grey's Bridge a quarter of a mile off, to plunge
+into innumerable rustic windings, shy shades, and solitary undulations up
+hill and down dale for one hundred and twenty miles till it exhibited
+itself at Hyde Park Corner as a smooth bland surface in touch with a busy
+and fashionable world.
+
+To the barracks aforesaid had recently arrived the ---th Hussars, a
+regiment new to the locality.  Almost before any acquaintance with its
+members had been made by the townspeople, a report spread that they were
+a 'crack' body of men, and had brought a splendid band.  For some reason
+or other the town had not been used as the headquarters of cavalry for
+many years, the various troops stationed there having consisted of casual
+detachments only; so that it was with a sense of honour that
+everybody--even the small furniture-broker from whom the married troopers
+hired tables and chairs--received the news of their crack quality.
+
+In those days the Hussar regiments still wore over the left shoulder that
+attractive attachment, or frilled half-coat, hanging loosely behind like
+the wounded wing of a bird, which was called the pelisse, though it was
+known among the troopers themselves as a 'sling-jacket.'  It added
+amazingly to their picturesqueness in women's eyes, and, indeed, in the
+eyes of men also.
+
+The burgher who lived in the house with the oriel window sat during a
+great many hours of the day in that projection, for he was an invalid,
+and time hung heavily on his hands unless he maintained a constant
+interest in proceedings without.  Not more than a week after the arrival
+of the Hussars his ears were assailed by the shout of one schoolboy to
+another in the street below.
+
+'Have 'ee heard this about the Hussars?  They are haunted!  Yes--a ghost
+troubles 'em; he has followed 'em about the world for years.'
+
+A haunted regiment: that was a new idea for either invalid or stalwart.
+The listener in the oriel came to the conclusion that there were some
+lively characters among the ---th Hussars.
+
+He made Captain Maumbry's acquaintance in an informal manner at an
+afternoon tea to which he went in a wheeled chair--one of the very rare
+outings that the state of his health permitted.  Maumbry showed himself
+to be a handsome man of twenty-eight or thirty, with an attractive hint
+of wickedness in his manner that was sure to make him adorable with good
+young women.  The large dark eyes that lit his pale face expressed this
+wickedness strongly, though such was the adaptability of their rays that
+one could think they might have expressed sadness or seriousness just as
+readily, if he had had a mind for such.
+
+An old and deaf lady who was present asked Captain Maumbry bluntly:
+'What's this we hear about you?  They say your regiment is haunted.'
+
+The Captain's face assumed an aspect of grave, even sad, concern.  'Yes,'
+he replied, 'it is too true.'
+
+Some younger ladies smiled till they saw how serious he looked, when they
+looked serious likewise.
+
+'Really?' said the old lady.
+
+'Yes.  We naturally don't wish to say much about it.'
+
+'No, no; of course not.  But--how haunted?'
+
+'Well; the--thing, as I'll call it, follows us.  In country quarters or
+town, abroad or at home, it's just the same.'
+
+'How do you account for it?'
+
+'H'm.'  Maumbry lowered his voice.  'Some crime committed by certain of
+our regiment in past years, we suppose.'
+
+'Dear me . . . How very horrid, and singular!'
+
+'But, as I said, we don't speak of it much.'
+
+'No . . . no.'
+
+When the Hussar was gone, a young lady, disclosing a long-suppressed
+interest, asked if the ghost had been seen by any of the town.
+
+The lawyer's son, who always had the latest borough news, said that,
+though it was seldom seen by any one but the Hussars themselves, more
+than one townsman and woman had already set eyes on it, to his or her
+terror.  The phantom mostly appeared very late at night, under the dense
+trees of the town-avenue nearest the barracks.  It was about ten feet
+high; its teeth chattered with a dry naked sound, as if they were those
+of a skeleton; and its hip-bones could be heard grating in their sockets.
+
+During the darkest weeks of winter several timid persons were seriously
+frightened by the object answering to this cheerful description, and the
+police began to look into the matter.  Whereupon the appearances grew
+less frequent, and some of the Boys of the regiment thankfully stated
+that they had not been so free from ghostly visitation for years as they
+had become since their arrival in Casterbridge.
+
+This playing at ghosts was the most innocent of the amusements indulged
+in by the choice young spirits who inhabited the lichened, red-brick
+building at the top of the town bearing 'W.D.' and a broad arrow on its
+quoins.  Far more serious escapades--levities relating to love, wine,
+cards, betting--were talked of, with no doubt more or less of
+exaggeration.  That the Hussars, Captain Maumbry included, were the cause
+of bitter tears to several young women of the town and country is
+unquestionably true, despite the fact that the gaieties of the young men
+wore a more staring colour in this old-fashioned place than they would
+have done in a large and modern city.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Regularly once a week they rode out in marching order.
+
+Returning up the town on one of these occasions, the romantic pelisse
+flapping behind each horseman's shoulder in the soft south-west wind,
+Captain Maumbry glanced up at the oriel.  A mutual nod was exchanged
+between him and the person who sat there reading.  The reader and a
+friend in the room with him followed the troop with their eyes all the
+way up the street, till, when the soldiers were opposite the house in
+which Laura lived, that young lady became discernible in the balcony.
+
+'They are engaged to be married, I hear,' said the friend.
+
+'Who--Maumbry and Laura?  Never--so soon?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'He'll never marry.  Several girls have been mentioned in connection with
+his name.  I am sorry for Laura.'
+
+'Oh, but you needn't be.  They are excellently matched.'
+
+'She's only one more.'
+
+'She's one more, and more still.  She has regularly caught him.  She is a
+born player of the game of hearts, and she knew how to beat him in his
+own practices.  If there is one woman in the town who has any chance of
+holding her own and marrying him, she is that woman.'
+
+This was true, as it turned out.  By natural proclivity Laura had from
+the first entered heart and soul into military romance as exhibited in
+the plots and characters of those living exponents of it who came under
+her notice.  From her earliest young womanhood civilians, however
+promising, had no chance of winning her interest if the meanest warrior
+were within the horizon.  It may be that the position of her uncle's
+house (which was her home) at the corner of West Street nearest the
+barracks, the daily passing of the troops, the constant blowing of
+trumpet-calls a furlong from her windows, coupled with the fact that she
+knew nothing of the inner realities of military life, and hence idealized
+it, had also helped her mind's original bias for thinking men-at-arms the
+only ones worthy of a woman's heart.
+
+Captain Maumbry was a typical prize; one whom all surrounding maidens had
+coveted, ached for, angled for, wept for, had by her judicious management
+become subdued to her purpose; and in addition to the pleasure of
+marrying the man she loved, Laura had the joy of feeling herself hated by
+the mothers of all the marriageable girls of the neighbourhood.
+
+The man in the oriel went to the wedding; not as a guest, for at this
+time he was but slightly acquainted with the parties; but mainly because
+the church was close to his house; partly, too, for a reason which moved
+many others to be spectators of the ceremony; a subconsciousness that,
+though the couple might be happy in their experiences, there was
+sufficient possibility of their being otherwise to colour the musings of
+an onlooker with a pleasing pathos of conjecture.  He could on occasion
+do a pretty stroke of rhyming in those days, and he beguiled the time of
+waiting by pencilling on a blank page of his prayer-book a few lines
+which, though kept private then, may be given here:-
+
+   AT A HASTY WEDDING
+
+   (Triolet)
+
+   If hours be years the twain are blest,
+      For now they solace swift desire
+   By lifelong ties that tether zest
+      If hours be years.  The twain are blest
+   Do eastern suns slope never west,
+      Nor pallid ashes follow fire.
+   If hours be years the twain are blest
+      For now they solace swift desire.
+
+As if, however, to falsify all prophecies, the couple seemed to find in
+marriage the secret of perpetuating the intoxication of a courtship
+which, on Maumbry's side at least, had opened without serious intent.
+During the winter following they were the most popular pair in and about
+Casterbridge--nay in South Wessex itself.  No smart dinner in the country
+houses of the younger and gayer families within driving distance of the
+borough was complete without their lively presence; Mrs. Maumbry was the
+blithest of the whirling figures at the county ball; and when followed
+that inevitable incident of garrison-town life, an amateur dramatic
+entertainment, it was just the same.  The acting was for the benefit of
+such and such an excellent charity--nobody cared what, provided the play
+were played--and both Captain Maumbry and his wife were in the piece,
+having been in fact, by mutual consent, the originators of the
+performance.  And so with laughter, and thoughtlessness, and movement,
+all went merrily.  There was a little backwardness in the bill-paying of
+the couple; but in justice to them it must be added that sooner or later
+all owings were paid.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+At the chapel-of-ease attended by the troops there arose above the edge
+of the pulpit one Sunday an unknown face.  This was the face of a new
+curate.  He placed upon the desk, not the familiar sermon book, but
+merely a Bible.  The person who tells these things was not present at
+that service, but he soon learnt that the young curate was nothing less
+than a great surprise to his congregation; a mixed one always, for though
+the Hussars occupied the body of the building, its nooks and corners were
+crammed with civilians, whom, up to the present, even the least
+uncharitable would have described as being attracted thither less by the
+services than by the soldiery.
+
+Now there arose a second reason for squeezing into an already overcrowded
+church.  The persuasive and gentle eloquence of Mr. Sainway operated like
+a charm upon those accustomed only to the higher and dryer styles of
+preaching, and for a time the other churches of the town were thinned of
+their sitters.
+
+At this point in the nineteenth century the sermon was the sole reason
+for churchgoing amongst a vast body of religious people.  The liturgy was
+a formal preliminary, which, like the Royal proclamation in a court of
+assize, had to be got through before the real interest began; and on
+reaching home the question was simply: Who preached, and how did he
+handle his subject?  Even had an archbishop officiated in the service
+proper nobody would have cared much about what was said or sung.  People
+who had formerly attended in the morning only began to go in the evening,
+and even to the special addresses in the afternoon.
+
+One day when Captain Maumbry entered his wife's drawing-room, filled with
+hired furniture, she thought he was somebody else, for he had not come
+upstairs humming the most catching air afloat in musical circles or in
+his usual careless way.
+
+'What's the matter, Jack?' she said without looking up from a note she
+was writing.
+
+'Well--not much, that I know.'
+
+'O, but there is,' she murmured as she wrote.
+
+'Why--this cursed new lath in a sheet--I mean the new parson!  He wants
+us to stop the band-playing on Sunday afternoons.'
+
+Laura looked up aghast.
+
+'Why, it is the one thing that enables the few rational beings hereabouts
+to keep alive from Saturday to Monday!'
+
+'He says all the town flock to the music and don't come to the service,
+and that the pieces played are profane, or mundane, or inane, or
+something--not what ought to be played on Sunday.  Of course 'tis
+Lautmann who settles those things.'
+
+Lautmann was the bandmaster.
+
+The barrack-green on Sunday afternoons had, indeed, become the promenade
+of a great many townspeople cheerfully inclined, many even of those who
+attended in the morning at Mr. Sainway's service; and little boys who
+ought to have been listening to the curate's afternoon lecture were too
+often seen rolling upon the grass and making faces behind the more
+dignified listeners.
+
+Laura heard no more about the matter, however, for two or three weeks,
+when suddenly remembering it she asked her husband if any further
+objections had been raised.
+
+'O--Mr. Sainway.  I forgot to tell you.  I've made his acquaintance.  He
+is not a bad sort of man.'
+
+Laura asked if either Maumbry or some others of the officers did not give
+the presumptuous curate a good setting down for his interference.
+
+'O well--we've forgotten that.  He's a stunning preacher, they tell me.'
+
+The acquaintance developed apparently, for the Captain said to her a
+little later on, 'There's a good deal in Sainway's argument about having
+no band on Sunday afternoons.  After all, it is close to his church.  But
+he doesn't press his objections unduly.'
+
+'I am surprised to hear you defend him!'
+
+'It was only a passing thought of mine.  We naturally don't wish to
+offend the inhabitants of the town if they don't like it.'
+
+'But they do.'
+
+The invalid in the oriel never clearly gathered the details of progress
+in this conflict of lay and clerical opinion; but so it was that, to the
+disappointment of musicians, the grief of out-walking lovers, and the
+regret of the junior population of the town and country round, the band-
+playing on Sunday afternoons ceased in Casterbridge barrack-square.
+
+By this time the Maumbrys had frequently listened to the preaching of the
+gentle if narrow-minded curate; for these light-natured, hit-or-miss,
+rackety people went to church like others for respectability's sake.  None
+so orthodox as your unmitigated worldling.  A more remarkable event was
+the sight to the man in the window of Captain Maumbry and Mr. Sainway
+walking down the High Street in earnest conversation.  On his mentioning
+this fact to a caller he was assured that it was a matter of common talk
+that they were always together.
+
+The observer would soon have learnt this with his own eyes if he had not
+been told.  They began to pass together nearly every day.  Hitherto Mrs.
+Maumbry, in fashionable walking clothes, had usually been her husband's
+companion; but this was less frequent now.  The close and singular
+friendship between the two men went on for nearly a year, when Mr.
+Sainway was presented to a living in a densely-populated town in the
+midland counties.  He bade the parishioners of his old place a reluctant
+farewell and departed, the touching sermon he preached on the occasion
+being published by the local printer.  Everybody was sorry to lose him;
+and it was with genuine grief that his Casterbridge congregation learnt
+later on that soon after his induction to his benefice, during some
+bitter weather, he had fallen seriously ill of inflammation of the lungs,
+of which he eventually died.
+
+We now get below the surface of things.  Of all who had known the dead
+curate, none grieved for him like the man who on his first arrival had
+called him a 'lath in a sheet.'  Mrs. Maumbry had never greatly
+sympathized with the impressive parson; indeed, she had been secretly
+glad that he had gone away to better himself.  He had considerably
+diminished the pleasures of a woman by whom the joys of earth and good
+company had been appreciated to the full.  Sorry for her husband in his
+loss of a friend who had been none of hers, she was yet quite unprepared
+for the sequel.
+
+'There is something that I have wanted to tell you lately, dear,' he said
+one morning at breakfast with hesitation.  'Have you guessed what it is?'
+
+She had guessed nothing.
+
+'That I think of retiring from the army.'
+
+'What!'
+
+'I have thought more and more of Sainway since his death, and of what he
+used to say to me so earnestly.  And I feel certain I shall be right in
+obeying a call within me to give up this fighting trade and enter the
+Church.'
+
+'What--be a parson?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'But what should I do?'
+
+'Be a parson's wife.'
+
+'Never!' she affirmed.
+
+'But how can you help it?'
+
+'I'll run away rather!' she said vehemently;
+
+'No, you mustn't,' Maumbry replied, in the tone he used when his mind was
+made up.  'You'll get accustomed to the idea, for I am constrained to
+carry it out, though it is against my worldly interests.  I am forced on
+by a Hand outside me to tread in the steps of Sainway.'
+
+'Jack,' she asked, with calm pallor and round eyes; 'do you mean to say
+seriously that you are arranging to be a curate instead of a soldier?'
+
+'I might say a curate is a soldier--of the church militant; but I don't
+want to offend you with doctrine.  I distinctly say, yes.'
+
+Late one evening, a little time onward, he caught her sitting by the dim
+firelight in her room.  She did not know he had entered; and he found her
+weeping.  'What are you crying about, poor dearest?' he said.
+
+She started.  'Because of what you have told me!'  The Captain grew very
+unhappy; but he was undeterred.
+
+In due time the town learnt, to its intense surprise, that Captain
+Maumbry had retired from the ---th Hussars and gone to Fountall
+Theological College to prepare for the ministry.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+'O, the pity of it!  Such a dashing soldier--so popular--such an
+acquisition to the town--the soul of social life here!  And now! . . .
+One should not speak ill of the dead, but that dreadful Mr. Sainway--it
+was too cruel of him!'
+
+This is a summary of what was said when Captain, now the Reverend, John
+Maumbry was enabled by circumstances to indulge his heart's desire of
+returning to the scene of his former exploits in the capacity of a
+minister of the Gospel.  A low-lying district of the town, which at that
+date was crowded with impoverished cottagers, was crying for a curate,
+and Mr. Maumbry generously offered himself as one willing to undertake
+labours that were certain to produce little result, and no thanks,
+credit, or emolument.
+
+Let the truth be told about him as a clergyman; he proved to be anything
+but a brilliant success.  Painstaking, single-minded, deeply in earnest
+as all could see, his delivery was laboured, his sermons were dull to
+listen to, and alas, too, too long.  Even the dispassionate judges who
+sat by the hour in the bar-parlour of the White Hart--an inn standing at
+the dividing line between the poor quarter aforesaid and the fashionable
+quarter of Maumbry's former triumphs, and hence affording a position of
+strict impartiality--agreed in substance with the young ladies to the
+westward, though their views were somewhat more tersely expressed:
+'Surely, God A'mighty spwiled a good sojer to make a bad pa'son when He
+shifted Cap'n Ma'mbry into a sarpless!'
+
+The latter knew that such things were said, but he pursued his daily'
+labours in and out of the hovels with serene unconcern.
+
+It was about this time that the invalid in the oriel became more than a
+mere bowing acquaintance of Mrs. Maumbry's.  She had returned to the town
+with her husband, and was living with him in a little house in the centre
+of his circle of ministration, when by some means she became one of the
+invalid's visitors.  After a general conversation while sitting in his
+room with a friend of both, an incident led up to the matter that still
+rankled deeply in her soul.  Her face was now paler and thinner than it
+had been; even more attractive, her disappointments having inscribed
+themselves as meek thoughtfulness on a look that was once a little
+frivolous.  The two ladies had called to be allowed to use the window for
+observing the departure of the Hussars, who were leaving for barracks
+much nearer to London.
+
+The troopers turned the corner of Barrack Road into the top of High
+Street, headed by their band playing 'The girl I left behind me' (which
+was formerly always the tune for such times, though it is now nearly
+disused).  They came and passed the oriel, where an officer or two,
+looking up and discovering Mrs. Maumbry, saluted her, whose eyes filled
+with tears as the notes of the band waned away.  Before the little group
+had recovered from that sense of the romantic which such spectacles
+impart, Mr. Maumbry came along the pavement.  He probably had bidden his
+former brethren-in-arms a farewell at the top of the street, for he
+walked from that direction in his rather shabby clerical clothes, and
+with a basket on his arm which seemed to hold some purchases he had been
+making for his poorer parishioners.  Unlike the soldiers he went along
+quite unconscious of his appearance or of the scene around.
+
+The contrast was too much for Laura.  With lips that now quivered, she
+asked the invalid what he thought of the change that had come to her.
+
+It was difficult to answer, and with a wilfulness that was too strong in
+her she repeated the question.
+
+'Do you think,' she added, 'that a woman's husband has a right to do such
+a thing, even if he does feel a certain call to it?'
+
+Her listener sympathized too largely with both of them to be anything but
+unsatisfactory in his reply.  Laura gazed longingly out of the window
+towards the thin dusty line of Hussars, now smalling towards the
+Mellstock Ridge.  'I,' she said, 'who should have been in their van on
+the way to London, am doomed to fester in a hole in Durnover Lane!'
+
+Many events had passed and many rumours had been current concerning her
+before the invalid saw her again after her leave-taking that day.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Casterbridge had known many military and civil episodes; many happy
+times, and times less happy; and now came the time of her visitation.  The
+scourge of cholera had been laid on the suffering country, and the low-
+lying purlieus of this ancient borough had more than their share of the
+infliction.  Mixen Lane, in the Durnover quarter, and in Maumbry's
+parish, was where the blow fell most heavily.  Yet there was a certain
+mercy in its choice of a date, for Maumbry was the man for such an hour.
+
+The spread of the epidemic was so rapid that many left the town and took
+lodgings in the villages and farms.  Mr. Maumbry's house was close to the
+most infected street, and he himself was occupied morn, noon, and night
+in endeavours to stamp out the plague and in alleviating the sufferings
+of the victims.  So, as a matter of ordinary precaution, he decided to
+isolate his wife somewhere away from him for a while.
+
+She suggested a village by the sea, near Budmouth Regis, and lodgings
+were obtained for her at Creston, a spot divided from the Casterbridge
+valley by a high ridge that gave it quite another atmosphere, though it
+lay no more than six miles off.
+
+Thither she went.  While she was rusticating in this place of safety, and
+her husband was slaving in the slums, she struck up an acquaintance with
+a lieutenant in the ---st Foot, a Mr. Vannicock, who was stationed with
+his regiment at the Budmouth infantry barracks.  As Laura frequently sat
+on the shelving beach, watching each thin wave slide up to her, and
+hearing, without heeding, its gnaw at the pebbles in its retreat, he
+often took a walk that way.
+
+The acquaintance grew and ripened.  Her situation, her history, her
+beauty, her age--a year or two above his own--all tended to make an
+impression on the young man's heart, and a reckless flirtation was soon
+in blithe progress upon that lonely shore.
+
+It was said by her detractors afterwards that she had chosen her lodging
+to be near this gentleman, but there is reason to believe that she had
+never seen him till her arrival there.  Just now Casterbridge was so
+deeply occupied with its own sad affairs--a daily burying of the dead and
+destruction of contaminated clothes and bedding--that it had little
+inclination to promulgate such gossip as may have reached its ears on the
+pair.  Nobody long considered Laura in the tragic cloud which overhung
+all.
+
+Meanwhile, on the Budmouth side of the hill the very mood of men was in
+contrast.  The visitation there had been slight and much earlier, and
+normal occupations and pastimes had been resumed.  Mr. Maumbry had
+arranged to see Laura twice a week in the open air, that she might run no
+risk from him; and, having heard nothing of the faint rumour, he met her
+as usual one dry and windy afternoon on the summit of the dividing hill,
+near where the high road from town to town crosses the old Ridge-way at
+right angles.
+
+He waved his hand, and smiled as she approached, shouting to her: 'We
+will keep this wall between us, dear.'  (Walls formed the field-fences
+here.)  'You mustn't be endangered.  It won't be for long, with God's
+help!'
+
+'I will do as you tell me, Jack.  But you are running too much risk
+yourself, aren't you?  I get little news of you; but I fancy you are.'
+
+'Not more than others.'
+
+Thus somewhat formally they talked, an insulating wind beating the wall
+between them like a mill-weir.
+
+'But you wanted to ask me something?' he added.
+
+'Yes.  You know we are trying in Budmouth to raise some money for your
+sufferers; and the way we have thought of is by a dramatic performance.
+They want me to take a part.'
+
+His face saddened.  'I have known so much of that sort of thing, and all
+that accompanies it!  I wish you had thought of some other way.'
+
+She said lightly that she was afraid it was all settled.  'You object to
+my taking a part, then?  Of course--'
+
+He told her that he did not like to say he positively objected.  He
+wished they had chosen an oratorio, or lecture, or anything more in
+keeping with the necessity it was to relieve.
+
+'But,' said she impatiently, 'people won't come to oratorios or lectures!
+They will crowd to comedies and farces.'
+
+'Well, I cannot dictate to Budmouth how it shall earn the money it is
+going to give us.  Who is getting up this performance?'
+
+'The boys of the ---st.'
+
+'Ah, yes; our old game!' replied Mr. Maumbry.  'The grief of Casterbridge
+is the excuse for their frivolity.  Candidly, dear Laura, I wish you
+wouldn't play in it.  But I don't forbid you to.  I leave the whole to
+your judgment.'
+
+The interview ended, and they went their ways northward and southward.
+Time disclosed to all concerned that Mrs. Maumbry played in the comedy as
+the heroine, the lover's part being taken by Mr. Vannicock.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Thus was helped on an event which the conduct of the mutually-attracted
+ones had been generating for some time.
+
+It is unnecessary to give details.  The ---st Foot left for Bristol, and
+this precipitated their action.  After a week of hesitation she agreed to
+leave her home at Creston and meet Vannicock on the ridge hard by, and to
+accompany him to Bath, where he had secured lodgings for her, so that she
+would be only about a dozen miles from his quarters.
+
+Accordingly, on the evening chosen, she laid on her dressing-table a note
+for her husband, running thus:-
+
+   DEAR JACK--I am unable to endure this life any longer, and I have
+   resolved to put an end to it.  I told you I should run away if you
+   persisted in being a clergyman, and now I am doing it.  One cannot
+   help one's nature.  I have resolved to throw in my lot with Mr.
+   Vannicock, and I hope rather than expect you will forgive me.--L.
+
+Then, with hardly a scrap of luggage, she went, ascending to the ridge in
+the dusk of early evening.  Almost on the very spot where her husband had
+stood at their last tryst she beheld the outline of Vannicock, who had
+come all the way from Bristol to fetch her.
+
+'I don't like meeting here--it is so unlucky!' she cried to him.  'For
+God's sake let us have a place of our own.  Go back to the milestone, and
+I'll come on.'
+
+He went back to the milestone that stands on the north slope of the
+ridge, where the old and new roads diverge, and she joined him there.
+
+She was taciturn and sorrowful when he asked her why she would not meet
+him on the top.  At last she inquired how they were going to travel.
+
+He explained that he proposed to walk to Mellstock Hill, on the other
+side of Casterbridge, where a fly was waiting to take them by a cross-cut
+into the Ivell Road, and onward to that town.  The Bristol railway was
+open to Ivell.
+
+This plan they followed, and walked briskly through the dull gloom till
+they neared Casterbridge, which place they avoided by turning to the
+right at the Roman Amphitheatre and bearing round to Durnover Cross.
+Thence the way was solitary and open across the moor to the hill whereon
+the Ivell fly awaited them.
+
+'I have noticed for some time,' she said, 'a lurid glare over the
+Durnover end of the town.  It seems to come from somewhere about Mixen
+Lane.'
+
+'The lamps,' he suggested.
+
+'There's not a lamp as big as a rushlight in the whole lane.  It is where
+the cholera is worst.'
+
+By Standfast Corner, a little beyond the Cross, they suddenly obtained an
+end view of the lane.  Large bonfires were burning in the middle of the
+way, with a view to purifying the air; and from the wretched tenements
+with which the lane was lined in those days persons were bringing out
+bedding and clothing.  Some was thrown into the fires, the rest placed in
+wheel-barrows and wheeled into the moor directly in the track of the
+fugitives.
+
+They followed on, and came up to where a vast copper was set in the open
+air.  Here the linen was boiled and disinfected.  By the light of the
+lanterns Laura discovered that her husband was standing by the copper,
+and that it was he who unloaded the barrow and immersed its contents.  The
+night was so calm and muggy that the conversation by the copper reached
+her ears.
+
+'Are there many more loads to-night?'
+
+'There's the clothes o' they that died this afternoon, sir.  But that
+might bide till to-morrow, for you must be tired out.'
+
+'We'll do it at once, for I can't ask anybody else to undertake it.
+Overturn that load on the grass and fetch the rest.'
+
+The man did so and went off with the barrow.  Maumbry paused for a moment
+to wipe his face, and resumed his homely drudgery amid this squalid and
+reeking scene, pressing down and stirring the contents of the copper with
+what looked like an old rolling-pin.  The steam therefrom, laden with
+death, travelled in a low trail across the meadow.
+
+Laura spoke suddenly: 'I won't go to-night after all.  He is so tired,
+and I must help him.  I didn't know things were so bad as this!'
+
+Vannicock's arm dropped from her waist, where it had been resting as they
+walked.  'Will you leave?' she asked.
+
+'I will if you say I must.  But I'd rather help too.'  There was no
+expostulation in his tone.
+
+Laura had gone forward.  'Jack,' she said, 'I am come to help!'
+
+The weary curate turned and held up the lantern.  'O--what, is it you,
+Laura?' he asked in surprise.  'Why did you come into this?  You had
+better go back--the risk is great.'
+
+'But I want to help you, Jack.  Please let me help!  I didn't come by
+myself--Mr. Vannicock kept me company.  He will make himself useful too,
+if he's not gone on.  Mr. Vannicock!'
+
+The young lieutenant came forward reluctantly.  Mr. Maumbry spoke
+formally to him, adding as he resumed his labour, 'I thought the ---st
+Foot had gone to Bristol.'
+
+'We have.  But I have run down again for a few things.'
+
+The two newcomers began to assist, Vannicock placing on the ground the
+small bag containing Laura's toilet articles that he had been carrying.
+The barrowman soon returned with another load, and all continued work for
+nearly a half-hour, when a coachman came out from the shadows to the
+north.
+
+'Beg pardon, sir,' he whispered to Vannicock, 'but I've waited so long on
+Mellstock hill that at last I drove down to the turnpike; and seeing the
+light here, I ran on to find out what had happened.'
+
+Lieutenant Vannicock told him to wait a few minutes, and the last barrow-
+load was got through.  Mr. Maumbry stretched himself and breathed
+heavily, saying, 'There; we can do no more.'
+
+As if from the relaxation of effort he seemed to be seized with violent
+pain.  He pressed his hands to his sides and bent forward.
+
+'Ah!  I think it has got hold of me at last,' he said with difficulty.  'I
+must try to get home.  Let Mr. Vannicock take you back, Laura.'
+
+He walked a few steps, they helping him, but was obliged to sink down on
+the grass.
+
+'I am--afraid--you'll have to send for a hurdle, or shutter, or
+something,' he went on feebly, 'or try to get me into the barrow.'
+
+But Vannicock had called to the driver of the fly, and they waited until
+it was brought on from the turnpike hard by.  Mr. Maumbry was placed
+therein.  Laura entered with him, and they drove to his humble residence
+near the Cross, where he was got upstairs.
+
+Vannicock stood outside by the empty fly awhile, but Laura did not
+reappear.  He thereupon entered the fly and told the driver to take him
+back to Ivell.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Mr. Maumbry had over-exerted himself in the relief of the suffering poor,
+and fell a victim--one of the last--to the pestilence which had carried
+off so many.  Two days later he lay in his coffin.
+
+Laura was in the room below.  A servant brought in some letters, and she
+glanced them over.  One was the note from herself to Maumbry, informing
+him that she was unable to endure life with him any longer and was about
+to elope with Vannicock.  Having read the letter she took it upstairs to
+where the dead man was, and slipped it into his coffin.  The next day she
+buried him.
+
+She was now free.
+
+She shut up his house at Durnover Cross and returned to her lodgings at
+Creston.  Soon she had a letter from Vannicock, and six weeks after her
+husband's death her lover came to see her.
+
+'I forgot to give you back this--that night,' he said presently, handing
+her the little bag she had taken as her whole luggage when leaving.
+
+Laura received it and absently shook it out.  There fell upon the carpet
+her brush, comb, slippers, nightdress, and other simple necessaries for a
+journey.  They had an intolerably ghastly look now, and she tried to
+cover them.
+
+'I can now,' he said, 'ask you to belong to me legally--when a proper
+interval has gone--instead of as we meant.'
+
+There was languor in his utterance, hinting at a possibility that it was
+perfunctorily made.  Laura picked up her articles, answering that he
+certainly could so ask her--she was free.  Yet not her expression either
+could be called an ardent response.  Then she blinked more and more
+quickly and put her handkerchief to her face.  She was weeping violently.
+
+He did not move or try to comfort her in any way.  What had come between
+them?  No living person.  They had been lovers.  There was now no
+material obstacle whatever to their union.  But there was the insistent
+shadow of that unconscious one; the thin figure of him, moving to and fro
+in front of the ghastly furnace in the gloom of Durnover Moor.
+
+Yet Vannicock called upon Laura when he was in the neighbourhood, which
+was not often; but in two years, as if on purpose to further the marriage
+which everybody was expecting, the ---st Foot returned to Budmouth Regis.
+
+Thereupon the two could not help encountering each other at times.  But
+whether because the obstacle had been the source of the love, or from a
+sense of error, and because Mrs. Maumbry bore a less attractive look as a
+widow than before, their feelings seemed to decline from their former
+incandescence to a mere tepid civility.  What domestic issues supervened
+in Vannicock's further story the man in the oriel never knew; but Mrs.
+Maumbry lived and died a widow.
+
+1900.
+
+
+
+
+THE WAITING SUPPER
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Whoever had perceived the yeoman standing on Squire Everard's lawn in the
+dusk of that October evening fifty years ago, might have said at first
+sight that he was loitering there from idle curiosity.  For a large five-
+light window of the manor-house in front of him was unshuttered and
+uncurtained, so that the illuminated room within could be scanned almost
+to its four corners.  Obviously nobody was ever expected to be in this
+part of the grounds after nightfall.
+
+The apartment thus swept by an eye from without was occupied by two
+persons; they were sitting over dessert, the tablecloth having been
+removed in the old-fashioned way.  The fruits were local, consisting of
+apples, pears, nuts, and such other products of the summer as might be
+presumed to grow on the estate.  There was strong ale and rum on the
+table, and but little wine.  Moreover, the appointments of the dining-
+room were simple and homely even for the date, betokening a countrified
+household of the smaller gentry, without much wealth or ambition--formerly
+a numerous class, but now in great part ousted by the territorial
+landlords.
+
+One of the two sitters was a young lady in white muslin, who listened
+somewhat impatiently to the remarks of her companion, an elderly,
+rubicund personage, whom the merest stranger could have pronounced to be
+her father.  The watcher evinced no signs of moving, and it became
+evident that affairs were not so simple as they first had seemed.  The
+tall farmer was in fact no accidental spectator, and he stood by
+premeditation close to the trunk of a tree, so that had any traveller
+passed along the road without the park gate, or even round the lawn to
+the door, that person would scarce have noticed the other,
+notwithstanding that the gate was quite near at hand, and the park little
+larger than a paddock.  There was still light enough in the western
+heaven to brighten faintly one side of the man's face, and to show
+against the trunk of the tree behind the admirable cut of his profile;
+also to reveal that the front of the manor-house, small though it seemed,
+was solidly built of stone in that never-to-be-surpassed style for the
+English country residence--the mullioned and transomed Elizabethan.
+
+The lawn, although neglected, was still as level as a bowling-green--which
+indeed it might once have served for; and the blades of grass before the
+window were raked by the candle-shine, which stretched over them so far
+as to touch the yeoman's face in front.
+
+Within the dining-room there were also, with one of the twain, the same
+signs of a hidden purpose that marked the farmer.  The young lady's mind
+was straying as clearly into the shadows as that of the loiterer was
+fixed upon the room--nay, it could be said that she was quite conscious
+of his presence outside.  Impatience caused her foot to beat silently on
+the carpet, and she more than once rose to leave the table.  This
+proceeding was checked by her father, who would put his hand upon her
+shoulder and unceremoniously press her down into her chair, till he
+should have concluded his observations.  Her replies were brief enough,
+and there was factitiousness in her smiles of assent to his views.  A
+small iron casement between two of the mullions was open, and some
+occasional words of the dialogue were audible without.
+
+'As for drains--how can I put in drains?  The pipes don't cost much,
+that's true; but the labour in sinking the trenches is ruination.  And
+then the gates--they should be hung to stone posts, otherwise there's no
+keeping them up through harvest.'  The Squire's voice was strongly toned
+with the local accent, so that he said 'drains' and 'geats' like the
+rustics on his estate.
+
+The landscape without grew darker, and the young man's figure seemed to
+be absorbed into the trunk of the tree.  The small stars filled in
+between the larger, the nebulae between the small stars, the trees quite
+lost their voice; and if there was still a sound, it was from the cascade
+of a stream which stretched along under the trees that bounded the lawn
+on its northern side.
+
+At last the young girl did get to her feet and secure her retreat.  'I
+have something to do, papa,' she said.  'I shall not be in the drawing-
+room just yet.'
+
+'Very well,' replied he.  'Then I won't hurry.'  And closing the door
+behind her, he drew his decanters together and settled down in his chair.
+
+Three minutes after that a woman's shape emerged from the drawing-room
+window, and passing through a wall-door to the entrance front, came
+across the grass.  She kept well clear of the dining-room window, but
+enough of its light fell on her to show, escaping from the dark-hooded
+cloak that she wore, stray verges of the same light dress which had
+figured but recently at the dinner-table.  The hood was contracted tight
+about her face with a drawing-string, making her countenance small and
+baby-like, and lovelier even than before.
+
+Without hesitation she brushed across the grass to the tree under which
+the young man stood concealed.  The moment she had reached him he
+enclosed her form with his arm.  The meeting and embrace, though by no
+means formal, were yet not passionate; the whole proceeding was that of
+persons who had repeated the act so often as to be unconscious of its
+performance.  She turned within his arm, and faced in the same direction
+with himself, which was towards the window; and thus they stood without
+speaking, the back of her head leaning against his shoulder.  For a while
+each seemed to be thinking his and her diverse thoughts.
+
+'You have kept me waiting a long time, dear Christine,' he said at last.
+'I wanted to speak to you particularly, or I should not have stayed.  How
+came you to be dining at this time o' night?'
+
+'Father has been out all day, and dinner was put back till six.  I know I
+have kept you; but Nicholas, how can I help it sometimes, if I am not to
+run any risk?  My poor father insists upon my listening to all he has to
+say; since my brother left he has had nobody else to listen to him; and
+to-night he was particularly tedious on his usual topics--draining, and
+tenant-farmers, and the village people.  I must take daddy to London; he
+gets so narrow always staying here.'
+
+'And what did you say to it all?'
+
+'Well, I took the part of the tenant-farmers, of course, as the beloved
+of one should in duty do.'  There followed a little break or gasp,
+implying a strangled sigh.
+
+'You are sorry you have encouraged that beloving one?'
+
+'O no, Nicholas . . . What is it you want to see me for particularly?'
+
+'I know you are sorry, as time goes on, and everything is at a dead-lock,
+with no prospect of change, and your rural swain loses his freshness!
+Only think, this secret understanding between us has lasted near three
+year, ever since you was a little over sixteen.'
+
+'Yes; it has been a long time.'
+
+'And I an untamed, uncultivated man, who has never seen London, and knows
+nothing about society at all.'
+
+'Not uncultivated, dear Nicholas.  Untravelled, socially unpractised, if
+you will,' she said, smiling.  'Well, I did sigh; but not because I
+regret being your promised one.  What I do sometimes regret is that the
+scheme, which my meetings with you are but a part of, has not been
+carried out completely.  You said, Nicholas, that if I consented to swear
+to keep faith with you, you would go away and travel, and see nations,
+and peoples, and cities, and take a professor with you, and study books
+and art, simultaneously with your study of men and manners; and then come
+back at the end of two years, when I should find that my father would by
+no means be indisposed to accept you as a son-in-law.  You said your
+reason for wishing to get my promise before starting was that your mind
+would then be more at rest when you were far away, and so could give
+itself more completely to knowledge than if you went as my unaccepted
+lover only, fuming with anxiety as to how I should be when you came back.
+I saw how reasonable that was; and solemnly swore myself to you in
+consequence.  But instead of going to see the world you stay on and on
+here to see me.'
+
+'And you don't want me to see you?'
+
+'Yes--no--it is not that.  It is that I have latterly felt frightened at
+what I am doing when not in your actual presence.  It seems so wicked not
+to tell my father that I have a lover close at hand, within touch and
+view of both of us; whereas if you were absent my conduct would not seem
+quite so treacherous.  The realities would not stare at one so.  You
+would be a pleasant dream to me, which I should be free to indulge in
+without reproach of my conscience; I should live in hopeful expectation
+of your returning fully qualified to boldly claim me of my father.  There,
+I have been terribly frank, I know.'
+
+He in his turn had lapsed into gloomy breathings now.  'I did plan it as
+you state,' he answered.  'I did mean to go away the moment I had your
+promise.  But, dear Christine, I did not foresee two or three things.  I
+did not know what a lot of pain it would cost to tear myself from you.
+And I did not know that my stingy uncle--heaven forgive me calling him
+so!--would so flatly refuse to advance me money for my purpose--the
+scheme of travelling with a first-rate tutor costing a formidable sum o'
+money.  You have no idea what it would cost!'
+
+'But I have said that I'll find the money.'
+
+'Ah, there,' he returned, 'you have hit a sore place.  To speak truly,
+dear, I would rather stay unpolished a hundred years than take your
+money.'
+
+'But why?  Men continually use the money of the women they marry.'
+
+'Yes; but not till afterwards.  No man would like to touch your money at
+present, and I should feel very mean if I were to do so in present
+circumstances.  That brings me to what I was going to propose.  But
+no--upon the whole I will not propose it now.'
+
+'Ah!  I would guarantee expenses, and you won't let me!  The money is my
+personal possession: it comes to me from my late grandfather, and not
+from my father at all.'
+
+He laughed forcedly and pressed her hand.  'There are more reasons why I
+cannot tear myself away,' he added.  'What would become of my uncle's
+farming?  Six hundred acres in this parish, and five hundred in the
+next--a constant traipsing from one farm to the other; he can't be in two
+places at once.  Still, that might be got over if it were not for the
+other matters.  Besides, dear, I still should be a little uneasy, even
+though I have your promise, lest somebody should snap you up away from
+me.'
+
+'Ah, you should have thought of that before.  Otherwise I have committed
+myself for nothing.'
+
+'I should have thought of it,' he answered gravely.  'But I did not.
+There lies my fault, I admit it freely.  Ah, if you would only commit
+yourself a little more, I might at least get over that difficulty!  But I
+won't ask you.  You have no idea how much you are to me still; you could
+not argue so coolly if you had.  What property belongs to you I hate the
+very sound of; it is you I care for.  I wish you hadn't a farthing in the
+world but what I could earn for you!'
+
+'I don't altogether wish that,' she murmured.
+
+'I wish it, because it would have made what I was going to propose much
+easier to do than it is now.  Indeed I will not propose it, although I
+came on purpose, after what you have said in your frankness.'
+
+'Nonsense, Nic.  Come, tell me.  How can you be so touchy?'
+
+'Look at this then, Christine dear.'  He drew from his breast-pocket a
+sheet of paper and unfolded it, when it was observable that a seal
+dangled from the bottom.
+
+'What is it?'  She held the paper sideways, so that what there was of
+window-light fell on its surface.  'I can only read the Old English
+letters--why--our names!  Surely it is not a marriage-licence?'
+
+'It is.'
+
+She trembled.  'O Nic! how could you do this--and without telling me!'
+
+'Why should I have thought I must tell you?  You had not spoken "frankly"
+then as you have now.  We have been all to each other more than these two
+years, and I thought I would propose that we marry privately, and that I
+then leave you on the instant.  I would have taken my travelling-bag to
+church, and you would have gone home alone.  I should not have started on
+my adventures in the brilliant manner of our original plan, but should
+have roughed it a little at first; my great gain would have been that the
+absolute possession of you would have enabled me to work with spirit and
+purpose, such as nothing else could do.  But I dare not ask you now--so
+frank as you have been.'
+
+She did not answer.  The document he had produced gave such unexpected
+substantiality to the venture with which she had so long toyed as a vague
+dream merely, that she was, in truth, frightened a little.  'I--don't
+know about it!' she said.
+
+'Perhaps not.  Ah, my little lady, you are wearying of me!'
+
+'No, Nic,' responded she, creeping closer.  'I am not.  Upon my word, and
+truth, and honour, I am not, Nic.'
+
+'A mere tiller of the soil, as I should be called,' he continued, without
+heeding her.  'And you--well, a daughter of one of the--I won't say
+oldest families, because that's absurd, all families are the same age--one
+of the longest chronicled families about here, whose name is actually the
+name of the place.'
+
+'That's not much, I am sorry to say!  My poor brother--but I won't speak
+of that . . . Well,' she murmured mischievously, after a pause, 'you
+certainly would not need to be uneasy if I were to do this that you want
+me to do.  You would have me safe enough in your trap then; I couldn't
+get away!'
+
+'That's just it!' he said vehemently.  'It is a trap--you feel it so, and
+that though you wouldn't be able to get away from me you might
+particularly wish to!  Ah, if I had asked you two years ago you would
+have agreed instantly.  But I thought I was bound to wait for the
+proposal to come from you as the superior!'
+
+'Now you are angry, and take seriously what I meant purely in fun.  You
+don't know me even yet!  To show you that you have not been mistaken in
+me, I do propose to carry out this licence.  I'll marry you, dear
+Nicholas, to-morrow morning.'
+
+'Ah, Christine!  I am afraid I have stung you on to this, so that I
+cannot--'
+
+'No, no, no!' she hastily rejoined; and there was something in her tone
+which suggested that she had been put upon her mettle and would not
+flinch.  'Take me whilst I am in the humour.  What church is the licence
+for?'
+
+'That I've not looked to see--why our parish church here, of course.  Ah,
+then we cannot use it!  We dare not be married here.'
+
+'We do dare,' said she.  'And we will too, if you'll be there.'
+
+'If I'll be there!'
+
+They speedily came to an agreement that he should be in the church-porch
+at ten minutes to eight on the following morning, awaiting her; and that,
+immediately after the conclusion of the service which would make them
+one, Nicholas should set out on his long-deferred educational tour,
+towards the cost of which she was resolving to bring a substantial
+subscription with her to church.  Then, slipping from him, she went
+indoors by the way she had come, and Nicholas bent his steps homewards.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Instead of leaving the spot by the gate, he flung himself over the fence,
+and pursued a direction towards the river under the trees.  And it was
+now, in his lonely progress, that he showed for the first time outwardly
+that he was not altogether unworthy of her.  He wore long water-boots
+reaching above his knees, and, instead of making a circuit to find a
+bridge by which he might cross the Froom--the river aforesaid--he made
+straight for the point whence proceeded the low roar that was at this
+hour the only evidence of the stream's existence.  He speedily stood on
+the verge of the waterfall which caused the noise, and stepping into the
+water at the top of the fall, waded through with the sure tread of one
+who knew every inch of his footing, even though the canopy of trees
+rendered the darkness almost absolute, and a false step would have
+precipitated him into the pool beneath.  Soon reaching the boundary of
+the grounds, he continued in the same direct line to traverse the
+alluvial valley, full of brooks and tributaries to the main stream--in
+former times quite impassable, and impassable in winter now.  Sometimes
+he would cross a deep gully on a plank not wider than the hand; at
+another time he ploughed his way through beds of spear-grass, where at a
+few feet to the right or left he might have been sucked down into a
+morass.  At last he reached firm land on the other side of this watery
+tract, and came to his house on the rise behind--Elsenford--an ordinary
+farmstead, from the back of which rose indistinct breathings, belchings,
+and snortings, the rattle of halters, and other familiar features of an
+agriculturist's home.
+
+While Nicholas Long was packing his bag in an upper room of this
+dwelling, Miss Christine Everard sat at a desk in her own chamber at
+Froom-Everard manor-house, looking with pale fixed countenance at the
+candles.
+
+'I ought--I must now!' she whispered to herself.  'I should not have
+begun it if I had not meant to carry it through!  It runs in the blood of
+us, I suppose.'  She alluded to a fact unknown to her lover, the
+clandestine marriage of an aunt under circumstances somewhat similar to
+the present.  In a few minutes she had penned the following note:-
+
+   October 13, 183-.
+
+   DEAR MR. BEALAND--Can you make it convenient to yourself to meet me at
+   the Church to-morrow morning at eight?  I name the early hour because
+   it would suit me better than later on in the day.  You will find me in
+   the chancel, if you can come.  An answer yes or no by the bearer of
+   this will be sufficient.
+
+   CHRISTINE EVERARD.
+
+She sent the note to the rector immediately, waiting at a small side-door
+of the house till she heard the servant's footsteps returning along the
+lane, when she went round and met him in the passage.  The rector had
+taken the trouble to write a line, and answered that he would meet her
+with pleasure.
+
+A dripping fog which ushered in the next morning was highly favourable to
+the scheme of the pair.  At that time of the century Froom-Everard House
+had not been altered and enlarged; the public lane passed close under its
+walls; and there was a door opening directly from one of the old
+parlours--the south parlour, as it was called--into the lane which led to
+the village.  Christine came out this way, and after following the lane
+for a short distance entered upon a path within a belt of plantation, by
+which the church could be reached privately.  She even avoided the
+churchyard gate, walking along to a place where the turf without the low
+wall rose into a mound, enabling her to mount upon the coping and spring
+down inside.  She crossed the wet graves, and so glided round to the
+door.  He was there, with his bag in his hand.  He kissed her with a sort
+of surprise, as if he had expected that at the last moment her heart
+would fail her.
+
+Though it had not failed her, there was, nevertheless, no great ardour in
+Christine's bearing--merely the momentum of an antecedent impulse.  They
+went up the aisle together, the bottle-green glass of the old lead
+quarries admitting but little light at that hour, and under such an
+atmosphere.  They stood by the altar-rail in silence, Christine's skirt
+visibly quivering at each beat of her heart.
+
+Presently a quick step ground upon the gravel, and Mr. Bealand came round
+by the front.  He was a quiet bachelor, courteous towards Christine, and
+not at first recognizing in Nicholas a neighbouring yeoman (for he lived
+aloofly in the next parish), advanced to her without revealing any
+surprise at her unusual request.   But in truth he was surprised, the
+keen interest taken by many country young women at the present day in
+church decoration and festivals being then unknown.
+
+'Good morning,' he said; and repeated the same words to Nicholas more
+mechanically.
+
+'Good morning,' she replied gravely.  'Mr. Bealand, I have a serious
+reason for asking you to meet me--us, I may say.  We wish you to marry
+us.'
+
+The rector's gaze hardened to fixity, rather between than upon either of
+them, and he neither moved nor replied for some time.
+
+'Ah!' he said at last.
+
+'And we are quite ready.'
+
+'I had no idea--'
+
+'It has been kept rather private,' she said calmly.
+
+'Where are your witnesses?'
+
+'They are outside in the meadow, sir.  I can call them in a moment,' said
+Nicholas.
+
+'Oh--I see it is--Mr. Nicholas Long,' said Mr. Bealand, and turning again
+to Christine, 'Does your father know of this?'
+
+'Is it necessary that I should answer that question, Mr. Bealand?'
+
+'I am afraid it is--highly necessary.'
+
+Christine began to look concerned.
+
+'Where is the licence?' the rector asked; 'since there have been no
+banns.'
+
+Nicholas produced it, Mr. Bealand read it, an operation which occupied
+him several minutes--or at least he made it appear so; till Christine
+said impatiently, 'We are quite ready, Mr. Bealand.  Will you proceed?
+Mr. Long has to take a journey of a great many miles to-day.'
+
+'And you?'
+
+'No.  I remain.'
+
+Mr. Bealand assumed firmness.  'There is something wrong in this,' he
+said.  'I cannot marry you without your father's presence.'
+
+'But have you a right to refuse us?' interposed Nicholas.  'I believe we
+are in a position to demand your fulfilment of our request.'
+
+'No, you are not!  Is Miss Everard of age?  I think not.  I think she is
+months from being so.  Eh, Miss Everard?'
+
+'Am I bound to tell that?'
+
+'Certainly.  At any rate you are bound to write it.  Meanwhile I refuse
+to solemnize the service.  And let me entreat you two young people to do
+nothing so rash as this, even if by going to some strange church, you may
+do so without discovery.  The tragedy of marriage--'
+
+'Tragedy?'
+
+'Certainly.  It is full of crises and catastrophes, and ends with the
+death of one of the actors.  The tragedy of marriage, as I was saying, is
+one I shall not be a party to your beginning with such light hearts, and
+I shall feel bound to put your father on his guard, Miss Everard.  Think
+better of it, I entreat you!  Remember the proverb, "Marry in haste and
+repent at leisure."'
+
+Christine, spurred by opposition, almost stormed at him.  Nicholas
+implored; but nothing would turn that obstinate rector.  She sat down and
+reflected.  By-and-by she confronted Mr. Bealand.
+
+'Our marriage is not to be this morning, I see,' she said.  'Now grant me
+one favour, and in return I'll promise you to do nothing rashly.  Do not
+tell my father a word of what has happened here.'
+
+'I agree--if you undertake not to elope.'
+
+She looked at Nicholas, and he looked at her.  'Do you wish me to elope,
+Nic?' she asked.
+
+'No,' he said.
+
+So the compact was made, and they left the church singly, Nicholas
+remaining till the last, and closing the door.  On his way home, carrying
+the well-packed bag which was just now to go no further, the two men who
+were mending water-carriers in the meadows approached the hedge, as if
+they had been on the alert all the time.
+
+'You said you mid want us for zummat, sir?'
+
+'All right--never mind,' he answered through the hedge.  'I did not
+require you after all.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+At a manor not far away there lived a queer and primitive couple who had
+lately been blessed with a son and heir.  The christening took place
+during the week under notice, and this had been followed by a feast to
+the parishioners.  Christine's father, one of the same generation and
+kind, had been asked to drive over and assist in the entertainment, and
+Christine, as a matter of course, accompanied him.
+
+When they reached Athelhall, as the house was called, they found the
+usually quiet nook a lively spectacle.  Tables had been spread in the
+apartment which lent its name to the whole building--the hall
+proper--covered with a fine open-timbered roof, whose braces, purlins,
+and rafters made a brown thicket of oak overhead.  Here tenantry of all
+ages sat with their wives and families, and the servants were assisted in
+their ministrations by the sons and daughters of the owner's friends and
+neighbours.  Christine lent a hand among the rest.
+
+She was holding a plate in each hand towards a huge brown platter of
+baked rice-pudding, from which a footman was scooping a large spoonful,
+when a voice reached her ear over her shoulder: 'Allow me to hold them
+for you.'
+
+Christine turned, and recognized in the speaker the nephew of the
+entertainer, a young man from London, whom she had already met on two or
+three occasions.
+
+She accepted the proffered help, and from that moment, whenever he passed
+her in their marchings to and fro during the remainder of the serving, he
+smiled acquaintance.  When their work was done, he improved the few words
+into a conversation.  He plainly had been attracted by her fairness.
+
+Bellston was a self-assured young man, not particularly good-looking,
+with more colour in his skin than even Nicholas had.  He had flushed a
+little in attracting her notice, though the flush had nothing of
+nervousness in it--the air with which it was accompanied making it
+curiously suggestive of a flush of anger; and even when he laughed it was
+difficult to banish that fancy.
+
+The late autumn sunlight streamed in through the window panes upon the
+heads and shoulders of the venerable patriarchs of the hamlet, and upon
+the middle-aged, and upon the young; upon men and women who had played
+out, or were to play, tragedies or tragi-comedies in that nook of
+civilization not less great, essentially, than those which, enacted on
+more central arenas, fix the attention of the world.  One of the party
+was a cousin of Nicholas Long's, who sat with her husband and children.
+
+To make himself as locally harmonious as possible, Mr. Bellston remarked
+to his companion on the scene--'It does one's heart good,' he said, 'to
+see these simple peasants enjoying themselves.'
+
+'O Mr. Bellston!' exclaimed Christine; 'don't be too sure about that word
+"simple"!  You little think what they see and meditate!  Their reasonings
+and emotions are as complicated as ours.'
+
+She spoke with a vehemence which would have been hardly present in her
+words but for her own relation to Nicholas.  The sense of that produced
+in her a nameless depression thenceforward.  The young man, however,
+still followed her up.
+
+'I am glad to hear you say it,' he returned warmly.  'I was merely
+attuning myself to your mood, as I thought.  The real truth is that I
+know more of the Parthians, and Medes, and dwellers in Mesopotamia--almost
+of any people, indeed--than of the English rustics.  Travel and
+exploration are my profession, not the study of the British peasantry.'
+
+Travel.  There was sufficient coincidence between his declaration and the
+course she had urged upon her lover, to lend Bellston's account of
+himself a certain interest in Christine's ears.  He might perhaps be able
+to tell her something that would be useful to Nicholas, if their dream
+were carried out.  A door opened from the hall into the garden, and she
+somehow found herself outside, chatting with Mr. Bellston on this topic,
+till she thought that upon the whole she liked the young man.  The garden
+being his uncle's, he took her round it with an air of proprietorship;
+and they went on amongst the Michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums, and
+through a door to the fruit-garden.  A green-house was open, and he went
+in and cut her a bunch of grapes.
+
+'How daring of you!  They are your uncle's.'
+
+'O, he don't mind--I do anything here.  A rough old buffer, isn't he?'
+
+She was thinking of her Nic, and felt that, by comparison with her
+present acquaintance, the farmer more than held his own as a fine and
+intelligent fellow; but the harmony with her own existence in little
+things, which she found here, imparted an alien tinge to Nicholas just
+now.  The latter, idealized by moonlight, or a thousand miles of
+distance, was altogether a more romantic object for a woman's dream than
+this smart new-lacquered man; but in the sun of afternoon, and amid a
+surrounding company, Mr. Bellston was a very tolerable companion.
+
+When they re-entered the hall, Bellston entreated her to come with him up
+a spiral stair in the thickness of the wall, leading to a passage and
+gallery whence they could look down upon the scene below.  The people had
+finished their feast, the newly-christened baby had been exhibited, and a
+few words having been spoken to them they began, amid a racketing of
+forms, to make for the greensward without, Nicholas's cousin and cousin's
+wife and cousin's children among the rest.  While they were filing out, a
+voice was heard calling--'Hullo!--here, Jim; where are you?' said
+Bellston's uncle.  The young man descended, Christine following at
+leisure.
+
+'Now will ye be a good fellow,' the Squire continued, 'and set them going
+outside in some dance or other that they know?  I'm dog-tired, and I want
+to have a yew words with Mr. Everard before we join 'em--hey, Everard?
+They are shy till somebody starts 'em; afterwards they'll keep gwine
+brisk enough.'
+
+'Ay, that they wool,' said Squire Everard.
+
+They followed to the lawn; and here it proved that James Bellston was as
+shy, or rather as averse, as any of the tenantry themselves, to acting
+the part of fugleman.  Only the parish people had been at the feast, but
+outlying neighbours had now strolled in for a dance.
+
+'They want "Speed the Plough,"' said Bellston, coming up breathless.  'It
+must be a country dance, I suppose?  Now, Miss Everard, do have pity upon
+me.  I am supposed to lead off; but really I know no more about speeding
+the plough than a child just born!  Would you take one of the
+villagers?--just to start them, my uncle says.  Suppose you take that
+handsome young farmer over there--I don't know his name, but I dare say
+you do--and I'll come on with one of the dairyman's daughters as a second
+couple.'
+
+Christine turned in the direction signified, and changed colour--though
+in the shade nobody noticed it, 'Oh, yes--I know him,' she said coolly.
+'He is from near our own place--Mr. Nicholas Long.'
+
+'That's capital--then you can easily make him stand as first couple with
+you.  Now I must pick up mine.'
+
+'I--I think I'll dance with you, Mr. Bellston,' she said with some
+trepidation.  'Because, you see,' she explained eagerly, 'I know the
+figure and you don't--so that I can help you; while Nicholas Long, I
+know, is familiar with the figure, and that will make two couples who
+know it--which is necessary, at least.'
+
+Bellston showed his gratification by one of his angry-pleasant flushes--he
+had hardly dared to ask for what she proffered freely; and having
+requested Nicholas to take the dairyman's daughter, led Christine to her
+place, Long promptly stepping up second with his charge.  There were grim
+silent depths in Nic's character; a small deedy spark in his eye, as it
+caught Christine's, was all that showed his consciousness of her.  Then
+the fiddlers began--the celebrated Mellstock fiddlers who, given free
+stripping, could play from sunset to dawn without turning a hair.  The
+couples wheeled and swung, Nicholas taking Christine's hand in the course
+of business with the figure, when she waited for him to give it a little
+squeeze; but he did not.
+
+Christine had the greatest difficulty in steering her partner through the
+maze, on account of his self-will, and when at last they reached the
+bottom of the long line, she was breathless with her hard labour..
+Resting here, she watched Nic and his lady; and, though she had decidedly
+cooled off in these later months, began to admire him anew.  Nobody knew
+these dances like him, after all, or could do anything of this sort so
+well.  His performance with the dairyman's daughter so won upon her, that
+when 'Speed the Plough' was over she contrived to speak to him.
+
+'Nic, you are to dance with me next time.'
+
+He said he would, and presently asked her in a formal public manner,
+lifting his hat gallantly.  She showed a little backwardness, which he
+quite understood, and allowed him to lead her to the top, a row of
+enormous length appearing below them as if by magic as soon as they had
+taken their places.  Truly the Squire was right when he said that they
+only wanted starting.
+
+'What is it to be?' whispered Nicholas.
+
+She turned to the band.  'The Honeymoon,' she said.
+
+And then they trod the delightful last-century measure of that name,
+which if it had been ever danced better, was never danced with more zest.
+The perfect responsiveness which their tender acquaintance threw into the
+motions of Nicholas and his partner lent to their gyrations the fine
+adjustment of two interacting parts of a single machine.  The excitement
+of the movement carried Christine back to the time--the unreflecting
+passionate time, about two years before--when she and Nic had been
+incipient lovers only; and it made her forget the carking anxieties, the
+vision of social breakers ahead, that had begun to take the gilding off
+her position now.  Nicholas, on his part, had never ceased to be a lover;
+no personal worries had as yet made him conscious of any staleness,
+flatness, or unprofitableness in his admiration of Christine.
+
+'Not quite so wildly, Nic,' she whispered.  'I don't object personally;
+but they'll notice us.  How came you here?'
+
+'I heard that you had driven over; and I set out--on purpose for this.'
+
+'What--you have walked?'
+
+'Yes.  If I had waited for one of uncle's horses I should have been too
+late.'
+
+'Five miles here and five back--ten miles on foot--merely to dance!'
+
+'With you.  What made you think of this old "Honeymoon" thing?'
+
+'O! it came into my head when I saw you, as what would have been a
+reality with us if you had not been stupid about that licence, and had
+got it for a distant church.'
+
+'Shall we try again?'
+
+'No--I don't know.  I'll think it over.'
+
+The villagers admired their grace and skill, as the dancers themselves
+perceived; but they did not know what accompanied that admiration in one
+spot, at least.
+
+'People who wonder they can foot it so featly together should know what
+some others think,' a waterman was saying to his neighbour.  'Then their
+wonder would be less.'
+
+His comrade asked for information.
+
+'Well--really I hardly believe it--but 'tis said they be man and wife.
+Yes, sure--went to church and did the job a'most afore 'twas light one
+morning.  But mind, not a word of this; for 'twould be the loss of a
+winter's work to me if I had spread such a report and it were not true.'
+
+When the dance had ended she rejoined her own section of the company.  Her
+father and Mr. Bellston the elder had now come out from the house, and
+were smoking in the background.  Presently she found that her father was
+at her elbow.
+
+'Christine, don't dance too often with young Long--as a mere matter of
+prudence, I mean, as volk might think it odd, he being one of our own
+neighbouring farmers.  I should not mention this to 'ee if he were an
+ordinary young fellow; but being superior to the rest it behoves you to
+be careful.'
+
+'Exactly, papa,' said Christine.
+
+But the revived sense that she was deceiving him threw a damp over her
+spirits.  'But, after all,' she said to herself, 'he is a young man of
+Elsenford, handsome, able, and the soul of honour; and I am a young woman
+of the adjoining parish, who have been constantly thrown into
+communication with him.  Is it not, by nature's rule, the most proper
+thing in the world that I should marry him, and is it not an absurd
+conventional regulation which says that such a union would be wrong?'
+
+It may be concluded that the strength of Christine's large-minded
+argument was rather an evidence of weakness than of strength in the
+passion it concerned, which had required neither argument nor reasoning
+of any kind for its maintenance when full and flush in its early days.
+
+When driving home in the dark with her father she sank into pensive
+silence.  She was thinking of Nicholas having to trudge on foot all those
+miles back after his exertions on the sward.  Mr. Everard, arousing
+himself from a nap, said suddenly, 'I have something to mention to 'ee,
+by George--so I have, Chris!  You probably know what it is?'
+
+She expressed ignorance, wondering if her father had discovered anything
+of her secret.
+
+'Well, according to him you know it.  But I will tell 'ee.  Perhaps you
+noticed young Jim Bellston walking me off down the lawn with him?--whether
+or no, we walked together a good while; and he informed me that he wanted
+to pay his addresses to 'ee.  I naturally said that it depended upon
+yourself; and he replied that you were willing enough; you had given him
+particular encouragement--showing your preference for him by specially
+choosing him for your partner--hey?  "In that case," says I, "go on and
+conquer--settle it with her--I have no objection."  The poor fellow was
+very grateful, and in short, there we left the matter.  He'll propose to-
+morrow.'
+
+She saw now to her dismay what James Bellston had read as encouragement.
+'He has mistaken me altogether,' she said.  'I had no idea of such a
+thing.'
+
+'What, you won't have him?'
+
+'Indeed, I cannot!'
+
+'Chrissy,' said Mr. Everard with emphasis, 'there's noobody whom I should
+so like you to marry as that young man.  He's a thoroughly clever fellow,
+and fairly well provided for.  He's travelled all over the temperate
+zone; but he says that directly he marries he's going to give up all
+that, and be a regular stay-at-home.  You would be nowhere safer than in
+his hands.'
+
+'It is true,' she answered.  'He is a highly desirable match, and I
+should be well provided for, and probably very safe in his hands.'
+
+'Then don't be skittish, and stand-to.'
+
+She had spoken from her conscience and understanding, and not to please
+her father.  As a reflecting woman she believed that such a marriage
+would be a wise one.  In great things Nicholas was closest to her nature;
+in little things Bellston seemed immeasurably nearer than Nic; and life
+was made up of little things.
+
+Altogether the firmament looked black for Nicholas Long, notwithstanding
+her half-hour's ardour for him when she saw him dancing with the
+dairyman's daughter.  Most great passions, movements, and
+beliefs--individual and national--burst during their decline into a
+temporary irradiation, which rivals their original splendour; and then
+they speedily become extinct.  Perhaps the dance had given the last flare-
+up to Christine's love.  It seemed to have improvidently consumed for its
+immediate purpose all her ardour forwards, so that for the future there
+was nothing left but frigidity.
+
+Nicholas had certainly been very foolish about that licence!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+This laxity of emotional tone was further increased by an incident, when,
+two days later, she kept an appointment with Nicholas in the Sallows.  The
+Sallows was an extension of shrubberies and plantations along the banks
+of the Froom, accessible from the lawn of Froom-Everard House only,
+except by wading through the river at the waterfall or elsewhere.  Near
+the brink was a thicket of box in which a trunk lay prostrate; this had
+been once or twice their trysting-place, though it was by no means a safe
+one; and it was here she sat awaiting him now.
+
+The noise of the stream muffled any sound of footsteps, and it was before
+she was aware of his approach that she looked up and saw him wading
+across at the top of the waterfall.
+
+Noontide lights and dwarfed shadows always banished the romantic aspect
+of her love for Nicholas.  Moreover, something new had occurred to
+disturb her; and if ever she had regretted giving way to a tenderness for
+him--which perhaps she had not done with any distinctness--she regretted
+it now.  Yet in the bottom of their hearts those two were excellently
+paired, the very twin halves of a perfect whole; and their love was pure.
+But at this hour surfaces showed garishly, and obscured the depths.
+Probably her regret appeared in her face.
+
+He walked up to her without speaking, the water running from his boots;
+and, taking one of her hands in each of his own, looked narrowly into her
+eyes.
+
+'Have you thought it over?'
+
+'What?'
+
+'Whether we shall try again; you remember saying you would at the dance?'
+
+'Oh, I had forgotten that!'
+
+'You are sorry we tried at all!' he said accusingly.
+
+'I am not so sorry for the fact as for the rumours,' she said.
+
+'Ah! rumours?'
+
+'They say we are already married.'
+
+'Who?'
+
+'I cannot tell exactly.  I heard some whispering to that effect.  Somebody
+in the village told one of the servants, I believe.  This man said that
+he was crossing the churchyard early on that unfortunate foggy morning,
+and heard voices in the chancel, and peeped through the window as well as
+the dim panes would let him; and there he saw you and me and Mr. Bealand,
+and so on; but thinking his surmises would be dangerous knowledge, he
+hastened on.  And so the story got afloat.  Then your aunt, too--'
+
+'Good Lord!--what has she done?'
+
+The story was, told her, and she said proudly, "O yes, it is true enough.
+I have seen the licence.  But it is not to be known yet."'
+
+'Seen the licence?  How the--'
+
+'Accidentally, I believe, when your coat was hanging somewhere.'
+
+The information, coupled with the infelicitous word 'proudly,' caused
+Nicholas to flush with mortification.  He knew that it was in his aunt's
+nature to make a brag of that sort; but worse than the brag was the fact
+that this was the first occasion on which Christine had deigned to show
+her consciousness that such a marriage would be a source of pride to his
+relatives--the only two he had in the world.
+
+'You are sorry, then, even to be thought my wife, much less to be it.'  He
+dropped her hand, which fell lifelessly.
+
+'It is not sorry exactly, dear Nic.  But I feel uncomfortable and vexed,
+that after screwing up my courage, my fidelity, to the point of going to
+church, you should have so muddled--managed the matter that it has ended
+in neither one thing nor the other.  How can I meet acquaintances, when I
+don't know what they are thinking of me?'
+
+'Then, dear Christine, let us mend the muddle.  I'll go away for a few
+days and get another licence, and you can come to me.'
+
+She shrank from this perceptibly.  'I cannot screw myself up to it a
+second time,' she said.  'I am sure I cannot!  Besides, I promised Mr.
+Bealand.  And yet how can I continue to see you after such a rumour?  We
+shall be watched now, for certain.'
+
+'Then don't see me.'
+
+'I fear I must not for the present.  Altogether--'
+
+'What?'
+
+'I am very depressed.'
+
+These views were not very inspiriting to Nicholas, as he construed them.
+It may indeed have been possible that he construed them wrongly, and
+should have insisted upon her making the rumour true.  Unfortunately,
+too, he had come to her in a hurry through brambles and briars, water and
+weed, and the shaggy wildness which hung about his appearance at this
+fine and correct time of day lent an impracticability to the look of him.
+
+'You blame me--you repent your courses--you repent that you ever, ever
+owned anything to me!'
+
+'No, Nicholas, I do not repent that,' she returned gently, though with
+firmness.  'But I think that you ought not to have got that licence
+without asking me first; and I also think that you ought to have known
+how it would be if you lived on here in your present position, and made
+no effort to better it.  I can bear whatever comes, for social ruin is
+not personal ruin or even personal disgrace.  But as a sensible,
+new-risen poet says, whom I have been reading this morning:-
+
+   The world and its ways have a certain worth:
+   And to press a point while these oppose
+   Were simple policy.  Better wait.
+
+As soon as you had got my promise, Nic, you should have gone away--yes--and
+made a name, and come back to claim me.  That was my silly girlish dream
+about my hero.'
+
+'Perhaps I can do as much yet!  And would you have indeed liked better to
+live away from me for family reasons, than to run a risk in seeing me for
+affection's sake?  O what a cold heart it has grown!  If I had been a
+prince, and you a dairymaid, I'd have stood by you in the face of the
+world!'
+
+She shook her head.  'Ah--you don't know what society is--you don't
+know.'
+
+'Perhaps not.  Who was that strange gentleman of about seven-and-twenty I
+saw at Mr. Bellston's christening feast?'
+
+'Oh--that was his nephew James.  Now he is a man who has seen an unusual
+extent of the world for his age.  He is a great traveller, you know.'
+
+'Indeed.'
+
+'In fact an explorer.  He is very entertaining.'
+
+'No doubt.'
+
+Nicholas received no shock of jealousy from her announcement.  He knew
+her so well that he could see she was not in the least in love with
+Bellston.  But he asked if Bellston were going to continue his
+explorations.
+
+'Not if he settles in life.  Otherwise he will, I suppose.'
+
+'Perhaps I could be a great explorer, too, if I tried.'
+
+'You could, I am sure.'
+
+They sat apart, and not together; each looking afar off at vague objects,
+and not in each other's eyes.  Thus the sad autumn afternoon waned, while
+the waterfall hissed sarcastically of the inevitableness of the
+unpleasant.  Very different this from the time when they had first met
+there.
+
+The nook was most picturesque; but it looked horridly common and stupid
+now.  Their sentiment had set a colour hardly less visible than a
+material one on surrounding objects, as sentiment must where life is but
+thought.  Nicholas was as devoted as ever to the fair Christine; but
+unhappily he too had moods and humours, and the division between them was
+not closed.
+
+She had no sooner got indoors and sat down to her work-table than her
+father entered the drawing-room.
+
+She handed him his newspaper; he took it without a word, went and stood
+on the hearthrug, and flung the paper on the floor.
+
+'Christine, what's the meaning of this terrible story?  I was just on my
+way to look at the register.'
+
+She looked at him without speech.
+
+'You have married--Nicholas Long?'
+
+'No, father.'
+
+'No?  Can you say no in the face of such facts as I have been put in
+possession of?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'But--the note you wrote to the rector--and the going to church?'
+
+She briefly explained that their attempt had failed.
+
+'Ah!  Then this is what that dancing meant, was it?  By ---, it makes me
+---.  How long has this been going on, may I ask?'
+
+'This what?'
+
+'What, indeed!  Why, making him your beau.  Now listen to me.  All's well
+that ends well; from this day, madam, this moment, he is to be nothing
+more to you.  You are not to see him.  Cut him adrift instantly!  I only
+wish his volk were on my farm--out they should go, or I would know the
+reason why.  However, you are to write him a letter to this effect at
+once.'
+
+'How can I cut him adrift?'
+
+'Why not?  You must, my good maid!'
+
+'Well, though I have not actually married him, I have solemnly sworn to
+be his wife when he comes home from abroad to claim me.  It would be
+gross perjury not to fulfil my promise.  Besides, no woman can go to
+church with a man to deliberately solemnize matrimony, and refuse him
+afterwards, if he does nothing wrong meanwhile.'
+
+The uttered sound of her strong conviction seemed to kindle in Christine
+a livelier perception of all its bearings than she had known while it had
+lain unformulated in her mind.  For when she had done speaking she fell
+down on her knees before her father, covered her face, and said, 'Please,
+please forgive me, papa!  How could I do it without letting you know!  I
+don't know, I don't know!'
+
+When she looked up she found that, in the turmoil of his mind, her father
+was moving about the room.  'You are within an ace of ruining yourself,
+ruining me, ruining us all!' he said.  'You are nearly as bad as your
+brother, begad!'
+
+'Perhaps I am--yes--perhaps I am!'
+
+'That I should father such a harum-scarum brood!'
+
+'It is very bad; but Nicholas--'
+
+'He's a scoundrel!'
+
+'He is not a scoundrel!' cried she, turning quickly.  'He's as good and
+worthy as you or I, or anybody bearing our name, or any nobleman in the
+kingdom, if you come to that!  Only--only'--she could not continue the
+argument on those lines.  'Now, father, listen!' she sobbed; 'if you
+taunt me I'll go off and join him at his farm this very day, and marry
+him to-morrow, that's what I'll do!'
+
+'I don't taant ye!'
+
+'I wish to avoid unseemliness as much as you.'
+
+She went away.  When she came back a quarter of an hour later, thinking
+to find the room empty, he was standing there as before, never having
+apparently moved.  His manner had quite changed.  He seemed to take a
+resigned and entirely different view of circumstances.
+
+'Christine, here's a paragraph in the paper hinting at a secret wedding,
+and I'm blazed if it don't point to you.  Well, since this was to happen,
+I'll bear it, and not complain.  All volk have crosses, and this is one
+of mine.  Now, this is what I've got to say--I feel that you must carry
+out this attempt at marrying Nicholas Long.  Faith, you must!  The rumour
+will become a scandal if you don't--that's my view.  I have tried to look
+at the brightest side of the case.  Nicholas Long is a young man superior
+to most of his class, and fairly presentable.  And he's not poor--at
+least his uncle is not.  I believe the old muddler could buy me up any
+day.  However, a farmer's wife you must be, as far as I can see.  As
+you've made your bed, so ye must lie.  Parents propose, and ungrateful
+children dispose.  You shall marry him, and immediately.'
+
+Christine hardly knew what to make of this.  'He is quite willing to
+wait, and so am I.  We can wait for two or three years, and then he will
+be as worthy as--'
+
+'You must marry him.  And the sooner the better, if 'tis to be done at
+all . . . And yet I did wish you could have been Jim Bellston's wife.  I
+did wish it!  But no.'
+
+'I, too, wished it and do still, in one sense,' she returned gently.  His
+moderation had won her out of her defiant mood, and she was willing to
+reason with him.
+
+'You do?' he said surprised.
+
+'I see that in a worldly sense my conduct with Mr. Long may be considered
+a mistake.'
+
+'H'm--I am glad to hear that--after my death you may see it more clearly
+still; and you won't have long to wait, to my reckoning.'
+
+She fell into bitter repentance, and kissed him in her anguish.  'Don't
+say that!' she cried.  'Tell me what to do?'
+
+'If you'll leave me for an hour or two I'll think.  Drive to the market
+and back--the carriage is at the door--and I'll try to collect my senses.
+Dinner can be put back till you return.'
+
+In a few minutes she was dressed, and the carriage bore her up the hill
+which divided the village and manor from the market-town.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+A quarter of an hour brought her into the High Street, and for want of a
+more important errand she called at the harness-maker's for a dog-collar
+that she required.
+
+It happened to be market-day, and Nicholas, having postponed the
+engagements which called him thither to keep the appointment with her in
+the Sallows, rushed off at the end of the afternoon to attend to them as
+well as he could.  Arriving thus in a great hurry on account of the
+lateness of the hour, he still retained the wild, amphibious appearance
+which had marked him when he came up from the meadows to her side--an
+exceptional condition of things which had scarcely ever before occurred.
+When she crossed the pavement from the shop door, the shopman bowing and
+escorting her to the carriage, Nicholas chanced to be standing at the
+road-waggon office, talking to the master of the waggons.  There were a
+good many people about, and those near paused and looked at her transit,
+in the full stroke of the level October sun, which went under the brims
+of their hats, and pierced through their button-holes.  From the group
+she heard murmured the words: 'Mrs. Nicholas Long.'
+
+The unexpected remark, not without distinct satire in its tone, took her
+so greatly by surprise that she was confounded.  Nicholas was by this
+time nearer, though coming against the sun he had not yet perceived her.
+Influenced by her father's lecture, she felt angry with him for being
+there and causing this awkwardness.  Her notice of him was therefore
+slight, supercilious perhaps, slurred over; and her vexation at his
+presence showed distinctly in her face as she sat down in her seat.
+Instead of catching his waiting eye, she positively turned her head away.
+
+A moment after she was sorry she had treated him so; but he was gone.
+
+Reaching home she found on her dressing-table a note from her father.  The
+statement was brief:
+
+   I have considered and am of the same opinion.  You must marry him.  He
+   can leave home at once and travel as proposed.  I have written to him
+   to this effect.  I don't want any victuals, so don't wait dinner for
+   me.
+
+Nicholas was the wrong kind of man to be blind to his Christine's
+mortification, though he did not know its entire cause.  He had lately
+foreseen something of this sort as possible.
+
+'It serves me right,' he thought, as he trotted homeward.  'It was
+absurd--wicked of me to lead her on so.  The sacrifice would have been
+too great--too cruel!'  And yet, though he thus took her part, he flushed
+with indignation every time he said to himself, 'She is ashamed of me!'
+
+On the ridge which overlooked Froom-Everard he met a neighbour of his--a
+stock-dealer--in his gig, and they drew rein and exchanged a few words.  A
+part of the dealer's conversation had much meaning for Nicholas.
+
+'I've had occasion to call on Squire Everard,' the former said; 'but he
+couldn't see me on account of being quite knocked up at some bad news he
+has heard.'
+
+Nicholas rode on past Froom-Everard to Elsenford Farm, pondering.  He had
+new and startling matter for thought as soon as he got there.  The
+Squire's note had arrived.  At first he could not credit its import; then
+he saw further, took in the tone of the letter, saw the writer's contempt
+behind the words, and understood that the letter was written as by a man
+hemmed into a corner.  Christine was defiantly--insultingly--hurled at
+his head.  He was accepted because he was so despised.
+
+And yet with what respect he had treated her and hers!  Now he was
+reminded of what an agricultural friend had said years ago, seeing the
+eyes of Nicholas fixed on Christine as on an angel when she passed:
+'Better a little fire to warm 'ee than a great one to burn 'ee.  No good
+can come of throwing your heart there.'  He went into the mead, sat down,
+and asked himself four questions:
+
+1.  How could she live near her acquaintance as his wife, even in his
+absence, without suffering martyrdom from the stings of their contempt?
+
+2.  Would not this entail total estrangement between Christine and her
+family also, and her own consequent misery?
+
+3.  Must not such isolation extinguish her affection for him?
+
+4.  Supposing that her father rigged them out as colonists and sent them
+off to America, was not the effect of such exile upon one of her gentle
+nurture likely to be as the last?
+
+In short, whatever they should embark in together would be cruelty to
+her, and his death would be a relief.  It would, indeed, in one aspect be
+a relief to her now, if she were so ashamed of him as she had appeared to
+be that day.  Were he dead, this little episode with him would fade away
+like a dream.
+
+Mr. Everard was a good-hearted man at bottom, but to take his enraged
+offer seriously was impossible.  Obviously it was hotly made in his first
+bitterness at what he had heard.  The least thing that he could do would
+be to go away and never trouble her more.  To travel and learn and come
+back in two years, as mapped out in their first sanguine scheme, required
+a staunch heart on her side, if the necessary expenditure of time and
+money were to be afterwards justified; and it were folly to calculate on
+that when he had seen to-day that her heart was failing her already.  To
+travel and disappear and not be heard of for many years would be a far
+more independent stroke, and it would leave her entirely unfettered.
+Perhaps he might rival in this kind the accomplished Mr. Bellston, of
+whose journeyings he had heard so much.
+
+He sat and sat, and the fog rose out of the river, enveloping him like a
+fleece; first his feet and knees, then his arms and body, and finally
+submerging his head.  When he had come to a decision he went up again
+into the homestead.  He would be independent, if he died for it, and he
+would free Christine.  Exile was the only course.  The first step was to
+inform his uncle of his determination.
+
+Two days later Nicholas was on the same spot in the mead, at almost the
+same hour of eve.  But there was no fog now; a blusterous autumn wind had
+ousted the still, golden days and misty nights; and he was going, full of
+purpose, in the opposite direction.  When he had last entered the mead he
+was an inhabitant of the Froom valley; in forty-eight hours he had
+severed himself from that spot as completely as if he had never belonged
+to it.  All that appertained to him in the Froom valley now was
+circumscribed by the portmanteau in his hand.
+
+In making his preparations for departure he had unconsciously held a
+faint, foolish hope that she would communicate with him and make up their
+estrangement in some soft womanly way.  But she had given no signal, and
+it was too evident to him that her latest mood had grown to be her fixed
+one, proving how well founded had been his impulse to set her free.
+
+He entered the Sallows, found his way in the dark to the garden-door of
+the house, slipped under it a note to tell her of his departure, and
+explaining its true reason to be a consciousness of her growing feeling
+that he was an encumbrance and a humiliation.  Of the direction of his
+journey and of the date of his return he said nothing.
+
+His course now took him into the high road, which he pursued for some
+miles in a north-easterly direction, still spinning the thread of sad
+inferences, and asking himself why he should ever return.  At daybreak he
+stood on the hill above Shottsford-Forum, and awaited a coach which
+passed about this time along that highway towards Melchester and London.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Some fifteen years after the date of the foregoing incidents, a man who
+had dwelt in far countries, and viewed many cities, arrived at Roy-Town,
+a roadside hamlet on the old western turnpike road, not five miles from
+Froom-Everard, and put up at the Buck's Head, an isolated inn at that
+spot.  He was still barely of middle age, but it could be seen that a
+haze of grey was settling upon the locks of his hair, and that his face
+had lost colour and curve, as if by exposure to bleaching climates and
+strange atmospheres, or from ailments incidental thereto.  He seemed to
+observe little around him, by reason of the intrusion of his musings upon
+the scene.  In truth Nicholas Long was just now the creature of old hopes
+and fears consequent upon his arrival--this man who once had not cared if
+his name were blotted out from that district.  The evening light showed
+wistful lines which he could not smooth away by the worldling's gloss of
+nonchalance that he had learnt to fling over his face.
+
+The Buck's Head was a somewhat unusual place for a man of this sort to
+choose as a house of sojourn in preference to some Casterbridge inn four
+miles further on.  Before he left home it had been a lively old tavern at
+which High-flyers, and Heralds, and Tally-hoes had changed horses on
+their stages up and down the country; but now the house was rather
+cavernous and chilly, the stable-roofs were hollow-backed, the landlord
+was asthmatic, and the traffic gone.
+
+He arrived in the afternoon, and when he had sent back the fly and was
+having a nondescript meal, he put a question to the waiting-maid with a
+mien of indifference.
+
+'Squire Everard, of Froom-Everard Manor, has been dead some years, I
+believe?'
+
+She replied in the affirmative.
+
+'And are any of the family left there still?'
+
+'O no, bless you, sir!  They sold the place years ago--Squire Everard's
+son did--and went away.  I've never heard where they went to.  They came
+quite to nothing.'
+
+'Never heard anything of the young lady--the Squire's daughter?'
+
+'No.  You see 'twas before I came to these parts.'
+
+When the waitress left the room, Nicholas pushed aside his plate and
+gazed out of the window.  He was not going over into the Froom Valley
+altogether on Christine's account, but she had greatly animated his
+motive in coming that way.  Anyhow he would push on there now that he was
+so near, and not ask questions here where he was liable to be wrongly
+informed.  The fundamental inquiry he had not ventured to make--whether
+Christine had married before the family went away.  He had abstained
+because of an absurd dread of extinguishing hopeful surmise.  That the
+Everards had left their old home was bad enough intelligence for one day.
+
+Rising from the table he put on his hat and went out, ascending towards
+the upland which divided this district from his native vale.  The first
+familiar feature that met his eye was a little spot on the distant sky--a
+clump of trees standing on a barrow which surmounted a yet more remote
+upland--a point where, in his childhood, he had believed people could
+stand and see America.  He reached the further verge of the plateau on
+which he had entered.  Ah, there was the valley--a greenish-grey stretch
+of colour--still looking placid and serene, as though it had not much
+missed him.  If Christine was no longer there, why should he pause over
+it this evening?  His uncle and aunt were dead, and to-morrow would be
+soon enough to inquire for remoter relatives.  Thus, disinclined to go
+further, he turned to retrace his way to the inn.
+
+In the backward path he now perceived the figure of a woman, who had been
+walking at a distance behind him; and as she drew nearer he began to be
+startled.  Surely, despite the variations introduced into that figure by
+changing years, its ground-lines were those of Christine?
+
+Nicholas had been sentimental enough to write to Christine immediately on
+landing at Southampton a day or two before this, addressing his letter at
+a venture to the old house, and merely telling her that he planned to
+reach the Roy-Town inn on the present afternoon.  The news of the
+scattering of the Everards had dissipated his hope of hearing of her; but
+here she was.
+
+So they met--there, alone, on the open down by a pond, just as if the
+meeting had been carefully arranged.
+
+She threw up her veil.  She was still beautiful, though the years had
+touched her; a little more matronly--much more homely.  Or was it only
+that he was much less homely now--a man of the world--the sense of
+homeliness being relative?  Her face had grown to be pre-eminently of the
+sort that would be called interesting.  Her habiliments were of a demure
+and sober cast, though she was one who had used to dress so airily and so
+gaily.  Years had laid on a few shadows too in this.
+
+'I received your letter,' she said, when the momentary embarrassment of
+their first approach had passed.  'And I thought I would walk across the
+hills to-day, as it was fine.  I have just called at the inn, and they
+told me you were out.  I was now on my way homeward.'
+
+He hardly listened to this, though he intently gazed at her.  'Christine,'
+he said, 'one word.  Are you free?'
+
+'I--I am in a certain sense,' she replied, colouring.
+
+The announcement had a magical effect.  The intervening time between past
+and present closed up for him, and moved by an impulse which he had
+combated for fifteen years, he seized her two hands and drew her towards
+him.
+
+She started back, and became almost a mere acquaintance.  'I have to tell
+you,' she gasped, 'that I have--been married.'
+
+Nicholas's rose-coloured dream was immediately toned down to a greyish
+tinge.
+
+'I did not marry till many years after you had left,' she continued in
+the humble tones of one confessing to a crime.  'Oh Nic,' she cried
+reproachfully, 'how could you stay away so long?'
+
+'Whom did you marry?'
+
+'Mr. Bellston.'
+
+'I--ought to have expected it.'  He was going to add, 'And is he dead?'
+but he checked himself.  Her dress unmistakably suggested widowhood; and
+she had said she was free.
+
+'I must now hasten home,' said she.  'I felt that, considering my
+shortcomings at our parting so many years ago, I owed you the initiative
+now.'
+
+'There is some of your old generosity in that.  I'll walk with you, if I
+may.  Where are you living, Christine?'
+
+'In the same house, but not on the old conditions.  I have part of it on
+lease; the farmer now tenanting the premises found the whole more than he
+wanted, and the owner allowed me to keep what rooms I chose.  I am poor
+now, you know, Nicholas, and almost friendless.  My brother sold the
+Froom-Everard estate when it came to him, and the person who bought it
+turned our home into a farmhouse.  Till my father's death my husband and
+I lived in the manor-house with him, so that I have never lived away from
+the spot.'
+
+She was poor.  That, and the change of name, sufficiently accounted for
+the inn-servant's ignorance of her continued existence within the walls
+of her old home.
+
+It was growing dusk, and he still walked with her.  A woman's head arose
+from the declivity before them, and as she drew nearer, Christine asked
+him to go back.
+
+'This is the wife of the farmer who shares the house,' she said.  'She is
+accustomed to come out and meet me whenever I walk far and am benighted.
+I am obliged to walk everywhere now.'
+
+The farmer's wife, seeing that Christine was not alone, paused in her
+advance, and Nicholas said, 'Dear Christine, if you are obliged to do
+these things, I am not, and what wealth I can command you may command
+likewise.  They say rolling stones gather no moss; but they gather dross
+sometimes.  I was one of the pioneers to the gold-fields, you know, and
+made a sufficient fortune there for my wants.  What is more, I kept it.
+When I had done this I was coming home, but hearing of my uncle's death I
+changed my plan, travelled, speculated, and increased my fortune.  Now,
+before we part: you remember you stood with me at the altar once, and
+therefore I speak with less preparation than I should otherwise use.
+Before we part then I ask, shall another again intrude between us?  Or
+shall we complete the union we began?'
+
+She trembled--just as she had done at that very minute of standing with
+him in the church, to which he had recalled her mind.  'I will not enter
+into that now, dear Nicholas,' she replied.  'There will be more to talk
+of and consider first--more to explain, which it would have spoiled this
+meeting to have entered into now.'
+
+'Yes, yes; but--'
+
+'Further than the brief answer I first gave, Nic, don't press me
+to-night.  I still have the old affection for you, or I should not have
+sought you.  Let that suffice for the moment.'
+
+'Very well, dear one.  And when shall I call to see you?'
+
+'I will write and fix an hour.  I will tell you everything of my history
+then.'
+
+And thus they parted, Nicholas feeling that he had not come here
+fruitlessly.  When she and her companion were out of sight he retraced
+his steps to Roy-Town, where he made himself as comfortable as he could
+in the deserted old inn of his boyhood's days.  He missed her
+companionship this evening more than he had done at any time during the
+whole fifteen years; and it was as though instead of separation there had
+been constant communion with her throughout that period.  The tones of
+her voice had stirred his heart in a nook which had lain stagnant ever
+since he last heard them.  They recalled the woman to whom he had once
+lifted his eyes as to a goddess.  Her announcement that she had been
+another's came as a little shock to him, and he did not now lift his eyes
+to her in precisely the same way as he had lifted them at first.  But he
+forgave her for marrying Bellston; what could he expect after fifteen
+years?
+
+He slept at Roy-Town that night, and in the morning there was a short
+note from her, repeating more emphatically her statement of the previous
+evening--that she wished to inform him clearly of her circumstances, and
+to calmly consider with him the position in which she was placed.  Would
+he call upon her on Sunday afternoon, when she was sure to be alone?
+
+'Nic,' she wrote on, 'what a cosmopolite you are!  I expected to find my
+old yeoman still; but I was quite awed in the presence of such a citizen
+of the world.  Did I seem rusty and unpractised?  Ah--you seemed so once
+to me!'
+
+Tender playful words; the old Christine was in them.  She said Sunday
+afternoon, and it was now only Saturday morning.  He wished she had said
+to-day; that short revival of her image had vitalized to sudden heat
+feelings that had almost been stilled.  Whatever she might have to
+explain as to her position--and it was awkwardly narrowed, no doubt--he
+could not give her up.  Miss Everard or Mrs. Bellston, what mattered
+it?--she was the same Christine.
+
+He did not go outside the inn all Saturday.  He had no wish to see or do
+anything but to await the coming interview.  So he smoked, and read the
+local newspaper of the previous week, and stowed himself in the chimney-
+corner.  In the evening he felt that he could remain indoors no longer,
+and the moon being near the full, he started from the inn on foot in the
+same direction as that of yesterday, with the view of contemplating the
+old village and its precincts, and hovering round her house under the
+cloak of night.
+
+With a stout stick in his hand he climbed over the five miles of upland
+in a comparatively short space of time.  Nicholas had seen many strange
+lands and trodden many strange ways since he last walked that path, but
+as he trudged he seemed wonderfully like his old self, and had not the
+slightest difficulty in finding the way.  In descending to the meads the
+streams perplexed him a little, some of the old foot-bridges having been
+removed; but he ultimately got across the larger water-courses, and
+pushed on to the village, avoiding her residence for the moment, lest she
+should encounter him, and think he had not respected the time of her
+appointment.
+
+He found his way to the churchyard, and first ascertained where lay the
+two relations he had left alive at his departure; then he observed the
+gravestones of other inhabitants with whom he had been well acquainted,
+till by degrees he seemed to be in the society of all the elder Froom-
+Everard population, as he had known the place.  Side by side as they had
+lived in his day here were they now.  They had moved house in mass.
+
+But no tomb of Mr. Bellston was visible, though, as he had lived at the
+manor-house, it would have been natural to find it here.  In truth
+Nicholas was more anxious to discover that than anything, being curious
+to know how long he had been dead.  Seeing from the glimmer of a light in
+the church that somebody was there cleaning for Sunday he entered, and
+looked round upon the walls as well as he could.  But there was no
+monument to her husband, though one had been erected to the Squire.
+
+Nicholas addressed the young man who was sweeping.  'I don't see any
+monument or tomb to the late Mr. Bellston?'
+
+'O no, sir; you won't see that,' said the young man drily.
+
+'Why, pray?'
+
+'Because he's not buried here.  He's not Christian-buried anywhere, as
+far as we know.  In short, perhaps he's not buried at all; and between
+ourselves, perhaps he's alive.'
+
+Nicholas sank an inch shorter.  'Ah,' he answered.
+
+'Then you don't know the peculiar circumstances, sir?'
+
+'I am a stranger here--as to late years.'
+
+'Mr. Bellston was a traveller--an explorer--it was his calling; you may
+have heard his name as such?'
+
+'I remember.'  Nicholas recalled the fact that this very bent of Mr.
+Bellston's was the incentive to his own roaming.
+
+'Well, when he married he came and lived here with his wife and his
+wife's father, and said he would travel no more.  But after a time he got
+weary of biding quiet here, and weary of her--he was not a good husband
+to the young lady by any means--and he betook himself again to his old
+trick of roving--with her money.  Away he went, quite out of the realm of
+human foot, into the bowels of Asia, and never was heard of more.  He was
+murdered, it is said, but nobody knows; though as that was nine years ago
+he's dead enough in principle, if not in corporation.  His widow lives
+quite humble, for between her husband and her brother she's left in very
+lean pasturage.'
+
+Nicholas went back to the Buck's Head without hovering round her
+dwelling.  This then was the explanation which she had wanted to make.
+Not dead, but missing.  How could he have expected that the first fair
+promise of happiness held out to him would remain untarnished?  She had
+said that she was free; and legally she was free, no doubt.  Moreover,
+from her tone and manner he felt himself justified in concluding that she
+would be willing to run the risk of a union with him, in the
+improbability of her husband's existence.  Even if that husband lived,
+his return was not a likely event, to judge from his character.  A man
+who could spend her money on his own personal adventures would not be
+anxious to disturb her poverty after such a lapse of time.
+
+Well, the prospect was not so unclouded as it had seemed.  But could he,
+even now, give up Christine?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Two months more brought the year nearly to a close, and found Nicholas
+Long tenant of a spacious house in the market-town nearest to
+Froom-Everard.  A man of means, genial character, and a bachelor, he was
+an object of great interest to his neighbours, and to his neighbours'
+wives and daughters.  But he took little note of this, and had made it
+his business to go twice a week, no matter what the weather, to the now
+farmhouse at Froom-Everard, a wing of which had been retained as the
+refuge of Christine.  He always walked, to give no trouble in putting up
+a horse to a housekeeper whose staff was limited.
+
+The two had put their heads together on the situation, had gone to a
+solicitor, had balanced possibilities, and had resolved to make the
+plunge of matrimony.  'Nothing venture, nothing have,' Christine had
+said, with some of her old audacity.
+
+With almost gratuitous honesty they had let their intentions be widely
+known.  Christine, it is true, had rather shrunk from publicity at first;
+but Nicholas argued that their boldness in this respect would have good
+results.  With his friends he held that there was not the slightest
+probability of her being other than a widow, and a challenge to the
+missing man now, followed by no response, would stultify any unpleasant
+remarks which might be thrown at her after their union.  To this end a
+paragraph was inserted in the Wessex papers, announcing that their
+marriage was proposed to be celebrated on such and such a day in
+December.
+
+His periodic walks along the south side of the valley to visit her were
+among the happiest experiences of his life.  The yellow leaves falling
+around him in the foreground, the well-watered meads on the left hand,
+and the woman he loved awaiting him at the back of the scene, promised a
+future of much serenity, as far as human judgment could foresee.  On
+arriving, he would sit with her in the 'parlour' of the wing she
+retained, her general sitting-room, where the only relics of her early
+surroundings were an old clock from the other end of the house, and her
+own piano.  Before it was quite dark they would stand, hand in hand,
+looking out of the window across the flat turf to the dark clump of trees
+which hid further view from their eyes.
+
+'Do you wish you were still mistress here, dear?' he once said.
+
+'Not at all,' said she cheerfully.  'I have a good enough room, and a
+good enough fire, and a good enough friend.  Besides, my latter days as
+mistress of the house were not happy ones, and they spoilt the place for
+me.  It was a punishment for my faithlessness.  Nic, you do forgive me?
+Really you do?'
+
+The twenty-third of December, the eve of the wedding-day, had arrived at
+last in the train of such uneventful ones as these.  Nicholas had
+arranged to visit her that day a little later than usual, and see that
+everything was ready with her for the morrow's event and her removal to
+his house; for he had begun to look after her domestic affairs, and to
+lighten as much as possible the duties of her housekeeping.
+
+He was to come to an early supper, which she had arranged to take the
+place of a wedding-breakfast next day--the latter not being feasible in
+her present situation.  An hour or so after dark the wife of the farmer
+who lived in the other part of the house entered Christine's parlour to
+lay the cloth.
+
+'What with getting the ham skinned, and the black-puddings hotted up,'
+she said, 'it will take me all my time before he's here, if I begin this
+minute.'
+
+'I'll lay the table myself,' said Christine, jumping up.  'Do you attend
+to the cooking.'
+
+'Thank you, ma'am.  And perhaps 'tis no matter, seeing that it is the
+last night you'll have to do such work.  I knew this sort of life
+wouldn't last long for 'ee, being born to better things.'
+
+'It has lasted rather long, Mrs. Wake.  And if he had not found me out it
+would have lasted all my days.'
+
+'But he did find you out.'
+
+'He did.  And I'll lay the cloth immediately.'
+
+Mrs. Wake went back to the kitchen, and Christine began to bustle about.
+She greatly enjoyed preparing this table for Nicholas and herself with
+her own hands.  She took artistic pleasure in adjusting each article to
+its position, as if half an inch error were a point of high importance.
+Finally she placed the two candles where they were to stand, and sat down
+by the fire.
+
+Mrs. Wake re-entered and regarded the effect.  'Why not have another
+candle or two, ma'am?' she said.  ''Twould make it livelier.  Say four.'
+
+'Very well,' said Christine, and four candles were lighted.  'Really,'
+she added, surveying them, 'I have been now so long accustomed to little
+economies that they look quite extravagant.'
+
+'Ah, you'll soon think nothing of forty in his grand new house!  Shall I
+bring in supper directly he comes, ma'am?'
+
+'No, not for half an hour; and, Mrs. Wake, you and Betsy are busy in the
+kitchen, I know; so when he knocks don't disturb yourselves; I can let
+him in.'
+
+She was again left alone, and, as it still wanted some time to Nicholas's
+appointment, she stood by the fire, looking at herself in the glass over
+the mantel.  Reflectively raising a lock of her hair just above her
+temple she uncovered a small scar.  That scar had a history.  The
+terrible temper of her late husband--those sudden moods of irascibility
+which had made even his friendly excitements look like anger--had once
+caused him to set that mark upon her with the bezel of a ring he wore.  He
+declared that the whole thing was an accident.  She was a woman, and kept
+her own opinion.
+
+Christine then turned her back to the glass and scanned the table and the
+candles, shining one at each corner like types of the four Evangelists,
+and thought they looked too assuming--too confident.  She glanced up at
+the clock, which stood also in this room, there not being space enough
+for it in the passage.  It was nearly seven, and she expected Nicholas at
+half-past.  She liked the company of this venerable article in her lonely
+life: its tickings and whizzings were a sort of conversation.  It now
+began to strike the hour.  At the end something grated slightly.  Then,
+without any warning, the clock slowly inclined forward and fell at full
+length upon the floor.
+
+The crash brought the farmer's wife rushing into the room.  Christine had
+well-nigh sprung out of her shoes.  Mrs. Wake's enquiry what had happened
+was answered by the evidence of her own eyes.
+
+'How did it occur?' she said.
+
+'I cannot say; it was not firmly fixed, I suppose.  Dear me, how sorry I
+am!  My dear father's hall-clock!  And now I suppose it is ruined.'
+
+Assisted by Mrs. Wake, she lifted the clock.  Every inch of glass was, of
+course, shattered, but very little harm besides appeared to be done.  They
+propped it up temporarily, though it would not go again.
+
+Christine had soon recovered her composure, but she saw that Mrs. Wake
+was gloomy.  'What does it mean, Mrs. Wake?' she said.  'Is it ominous?'
+
+'It is a sign of a violent death in the family.'
+
+'Don't talk of it.  I don't believe such things; and don't mention it to
+Mr. Long when he comes.  He's not in the family yet, you know.'
+
+'O no, it cannot refer to him,' said Mrs. Wake musingly.
+
+'Some remote cousin, perhaps,' observed Christine, no less willing to
+humour her than to get rid of a shapeless dread which the incident had
+caused in her own mind.  'And--supper is almost ready, Mrs. Wake?'
+
+'In three-quarters of an hour.'
+
+Mrs. Wake left the room, and Christine sat on.  Though it still wanted
+fifteen minutes to the hour at which Nicholas had promised to be there,
+she began to grow impatient.  After the accustomed ticking the dead
+silence was oppressive.  But she had not to wait so long as she had
+expected; steps were heard approaching the door, and there was a knock.
+
+Christine was already there to open it.  The entrance had no lamp, but it
+was not particularly dark out of doors.  She could see the outline of a
+man, and cried cheerfully, 'You are early; it is very good of you.'
+
+'I beg pardon.  It is not Mr. Bellston himself--only a messenger with his
+bag and great-coat.  But he will be here soon.'
+
+The voice was not the voice of Nicholas, and the intelligence was
+strange.  'I--I don't understand.  Mr. Bellston?' she faintly replied.
+
+'Yes, ma'am.  A gentleman--a stranger to me--gave me these things at
+Casterbridge station to bring on here, and told me to say that Mr.
+Bellston had arrived there, and is detained for half-an-hour, but will be
+here in the course of the evening.'
+
+She sank into a chair.  The porter put a small battered portmanteau on
+the floor, the coat on a chair, and looking into the room at the spread
+table said, 'If you are disappointed, ma'am, that your husband (as I
+s'pose he is) is not come, I can assure you he'll soon be here.  He's
+stopped to get a shave, to my thinking, seeing he wanted it.  What he
+said was that I could tell you he had heard the news in Ireland, and
+would have come sooner, his hand being forced; but was hindered crossing
+by the weather, having took passage in a sailing vessel.  What news he
+meant he didn't say.'
+
+'Ah, yes,' she faltered.  It was plain that the man knew nothing of her
+intended re-marriage.
+
+Mechanically rising and giving him a shilling, she answered to his 'good-
+night,' and he withdrew, the beat of his footsteps lessening in the
+distance.  She was alone; but in what a solitude.
+
+Christine stood in the middle of the hall, just as the man had left her,
+in the gloomy silence of the stopped clock within the adjoining room,
+till she aroused herself, and turning to the portmanteau and great-coat
+brought them to the light of the candles, and examined them.  The
+portmanteau bore painted upon it the initials 'J. B.' in white
+letters--the well-known initials of her husband.
+
+She examined the great-coat.  In the breast-pocket was an empty spirit
+flask, which she firmly fancied she recognized as the one she had filled
+many times for him when he was living at home with her.
+
+She turned desultorily hither and thither, until she heard another tread
+without, and there came a second knocking at the door.  She did not
+respond to it; and Nicholas--for it was he--thinking that he was not
+heard by reason of a concentration on to-morrow's proceedings, opened the
+door softly, and came on to the door of her room, which stood unclosed,
+just as it had been left by the Casterbridge porter.
+
+Nicholas uttered a blithe greeting, cast his eye round the parlour, which
+with its tall candles, blazing fire, snow-white cloth, and
+prettily-spread table, formed a cheerful spectacle enough for a man who
+had been walking in the dark for an hour.
+
+'My bride--almost, at last!' he cried, encircling her with his arms.
+
+Instead of responding, her figure became limp, frigid, heavy; her head
+fell back, and he found that she had fainted.
+
+It was natural, he thought.  She had had many little worrying matters to
+attend to, and but slight assistance.  He ought to have seen more
+effectually to her affairs; the closeness of the event had over-excited
+her.  Nicholas kissed her unconscious face--more than once, little
+thinking what news it was that had changed its aspect.  Loth to call Mrs.
+Wake, he carried Christine to a couch and laid her down.  This had the
+effect of reviving her.  Nicholas bent and whispered in her ear, 'Lie
+quiet, dearest, no hurry; and dream, dream, dream of happy days.  It is
+only I.  You will soon be better.'  He held her by the hand.
+
+'No, no, no!' she said, with a stare.  'O, how can this be?'
+
+Nicholas was alarmed and perplexed, but the disclosure was not long
+delayed.  When she had sat up, and by degrees made the stunning event
+known to him, he stood as if transfixed.
+
+'Ah--is it so?' said he.  Then, becoming quite meek, 'And why was he so
+cruel as to--delay his return till now?'
+
+She dutifully recited the explanation her husband had given her through
+the messenger; but her mechanical manner of telling it showed how much
+she doubted its truth.  It was too unlikely that his arrival at such a
+dramatic moment should not be a contrived surprise, quite of a piece with
+his previous dealings towards her.
+
+'But perhaps it may be true--and he may have become kind now--not as he
+used to be,' she faltered.  'Yes, perhaps, Nicholas, he is an altered
+man--we'll hope he is.  I suppose I ought not to have listened to my
+legal advisers, and assumed his death so surely!  Anyhow, I am roughly
+received back into--the right way!'
+
+Nicholas burst out bitterly: 'O what too, too honest fools we were!--to
+so court daylight upon our intention by putting that announcement in the
+papers!  Why could we not have married privately, and gone away, so that
+he would never have known what had become of you, even if he had
+returned?  Christine, he has done it to . . . But I'll say no more.  Of
+course we--might fly now.'
+
+'No, no; we might not,' said she hastily.
+
+'Very well.  But this is hard to bear!  "When I looked for good then evil
+came unto me, and when I waited for light there came darkness."  So once
+said a sorely tried man in the land of Uz, and so say I now! . . . I
+wonder if he is almost here at this moment?'
+
+She told him she supposed Bellston was approaching by the path across the
+fields, having sent on his great-coat, which he would not want walking.
+
+'And is this meal laid for him, or for me?'
+
+'It was laid for you.'
+
+'And it will be eaten by him?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Christine, are you sure that he is come, or have you been sleeping over
+the fire and dreaming it?'
+
+She pointed anew to the portmanteau with the initials 'J. B.,' and to the
+coat beside it.
+
+'Well, good-bye--good-bye!  Curse that parson for not marrying us fifteen
+years ago!'
+
+It is unnecessary to dwell further upon that parting.  There are scenes
+wherein the words spoken do not even approximate to the level of the
+mental communion between the actors.  Suffice it to say that part they
+did, and quickly; and Nicholas, more dead than alive, went out of the
+house homewards.
+
+Why had he ever come back?  During his absence he had not cared for
+Christine as he cared now.  If he had been younger he might have felt
+tempted to descend into the meads instead of keeping along their edge.
+The Froom was down there, and he knew of quiet pools in that stream to
+which death would come easily.  But he was too old to put an end to
+himself for such a reason as love; and another thought, too, kept him
+from seriously contemplating any desperate act.  His affection for her
+was strongly protective, and in the event of her requiring a friend's
+support in future troubles there was none but himself left in the world
+to afford it.  So he walked on.
+
+Meanwhile Christine had resigned herself to circumstances.  A resolve to
+continue worthy of her history and of her family lent her heroism and
+dignity.  She called Mrs. Wake, and explained to that worthy woman as
+much of what had occurred as she deemed necessary.  Mrs. Wake was too
+amazed to reply; she retreated slowly, her lips parted; till at the door
+she said with a dry mouth, 'And the beautiful supper, ma'am?'
+
+'Serve it when he comes.'
+
+'When Mr. Bellston--yes, ma'am, I will.'  She still stood gazing, as if
+she could hardly take in the order.
+
+'That will do, Mrs. Wake.  I am much obliged to you for all your
+kindness.'  And Christine was left alone again, and then she wept.
+
+She sat down and waited.  That awful silence of the stopped clock began
+anew, but she did not mind it now.  She was listening for a footfall in a
+state of mental tensity which almost took away from her the power of
+motion.  It seemed to her that the natural interval for her husband's
+journey thither must have expired; but she was not sure, and waited on.
+
+Mrs. Wake again came in.  'You have not rung for supper--'
+
+'He is not yet come, Mrs. Wake.  If you want to go to bed, bring in the
+supper and set it on the table.  It will be nearly as good cold.  Leave
+the door unbarred.'
+
+Mrs. Wake did as was suggested, made up the fire, and went away.  Shortly
+afterwards Christine heard her retire to her chamber.  But Christine
+still sat on, and still her husband postponed his entry.
+
+She aroused herself once or twice to freshen the fire, but was ignorant
+how the night was going.  Her watch was upstairs and she did not make the
+effort to go up to consult it.  In her seat she continued; and still the
+supper waited, and still he did not come.
+
+At length she was so nearly persuaded that the arrival of his things must
+have been a dream after all, that she again went over to them, felt them,
+and examined them.  His they unquestionably were; and their forwarding by
+the porter had been quite natural.  She sighed and sat down again.
+
+Presently she fell into a doze, and when she again became conscious she
+found that the four candles had burnt into their sockets and gone out.
+The fire still emitted a feeble shine.  Christine did not take the
+trouble to get more candles, but stirred the fire and sat on.
+
+After a long period she heard a creaking of the chamber floor and stairs
+at the other end of the house, and knew that the farmer's family were
+getting up.  By-and-by Mrs. Wake entered the room, candle in hand,
+bouncing open the door in her morning manner, obviously without any
+expectation of finding a person there.
+
+'Lord-a-mercy!  What, sitting here again, ma'am?'
+
+'Yes, I am sitting here still.'
+
+'You've been there ever since last night?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Then--'
+
+'He's not come.'
+
+'Well, he won't come at this time o' morning,' said the farmer's wife.
+'Do 'ee get on to bed, ma'am.  You must be shrammed to death!'
+
+It occurred to Christine now that possibly her husband had thought better
+of obtruding himself upon her company within an hour of revealing his
+existence to her, and had decided to pay a more formal visit next day.
+She therefore adopted Mrs. Wake's suggestion and retired.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Nicholas had gone straight home, neither speaking to nor seeing a soul.
+From that hour a change seemed to come over him.  He had ever possessed a
+full share of self-consciousness; he had been readily piqued, had shown
+an unusual dread of being personally obtrusive.  But now his sense of
+self, as an individual provoking opinion, appeared to leave him.  When,
+therefore, after a day or two of seclusion, he came forth again, and the
+few acquaintances he had formed in the town condoled with him on what had
+happened, and pitied his haggard looks, he did not shrink from their
+regard as he would have done formerly, but took their sympathy as it
+would have been accepted by a child.
+
+It reached his ears that Bellston had not appeared on the evening of his
+arrival at any hotel in the town or neighbourhood, or entered his wife's
+house at all.  'That's a part of his cruelty,' thought Nicholas.  And
+when two or three days had passed, and still no account came to him of
+Bellston having joined her, he ventured to set out for Froom-Everard.
+
+Christine was so shaken that she was obliged to receive him as she lay on
+a sofa, beside the square table which was to have borne their evening
+feast.  She fixed her eyes wistfully upon him, and smiled a sad smile.
+
+'He has not come?' said Nicholas under his breath.
+
+'He has not.'
+
+Then Nicholas sat beside her, and they talked on general topics merely
+like saddened old friends.  But they could not keep away the subject of
+Bellston, their voices dropping as it forced its way in.  Christine, no
+less than Nicholas, knowing her husband's character, inferred that,
+having stopped her game, as he would have phrased it, he was taking
+things leisurely, and, finding nothing very attractive in her limited
+mode of living, was meaning to return to her only when he had nothing
+better to do.
+
+The bolt which laid low their hopes had struck so recently that they
+could hardly look each other in the face when speaking that day.  But
+when a week or two had passed, and all the horizon still remained as
+vacant of Bellston as before, Nicholas and she could talk of the event
+with calm wonderment.  Why had he come, to go again like this?
+
+And then there set in a period of resigned surmise, during which
+
+   So like, so very like, was day to day,
+
+that to tell of one of them is to tell of all.  Nicholas would arrive
+between three and four in the afternoon, a faint trepidation influencing
+his walk as he neared her door.  He would knock; she would always reply
+in person, having watched for him from the window.  Then he would
+whisper--'He has not come?'
+
+'He has not,' she would say.
+
+Nicholas would enter then, and she being ready bonneted, they would walk
+into the Sallows together as far as to the spot which they had frequently
+made their place of appointment in their youthful days.  A plank bridge,
+which Bellston had caused to be thrown over the stream during his
+residence with her in the manor-house, was now again removed, and all was
+just the same as in Nicholas's time, when he had been accustomed to wade
+across on the edge of the cascade and come up to her like a merman from
+the deep.  Here on the felled trunk, which still lay rotting in its old
+place, they would now sit, gazing at the descending sheet of water, with
+its never-ending sarcastic hiss at their baffled attempts to make
+themselves one flesh.  Returning to the house they would sit down
+together to tea, after which, and the confidential chat that accompanied
+it, he walked home by the declining light.  This proceeding became as
+periodic as an astronomical recurrence.  Twice a week he came--all
+through that winter, all through the spring following, through the
+summer, through the autumn, the next winter, the next year, and the next,
+till an appreciable span of human life had passed by.  Bellston still
+tarried.
+
+Years and years Nic walked that way, at this interval of three days, from
+his house in the neighbouring town; and in every instance the aforesaid
+order of things was customary; and still on his arrival the form of words
+went on--'He has not come?'
+
+'He has not.'
+
+So they grew older.  The dim shape of that third one stood continually
+between them; they could not displace it; neither, on the other hand,
+could it effectually part them.  They were in close communion, yet not
+indissolubly united; lovers, yet never growing cured of love.  By the
+time that the fifth year of Nic's visiting had arrived, on about the five-
+hundredth occasion of his presence at her tea-table, he noticed that the
+bleaching process which had begun upon his own locks was also spreading
+to hers.  He told her so, and they laughed.  Yet she was in good health:
+a condition of suspense, which would have half-killed a man, had been
+endured by her without complaint, and even with composure.
+
+One day, when these years of abeyance had numbered seven, they had
+strolled as usual as far as the waterfall, whose faint roar formed a sort
+of calling voice sufficient in the circumstances to direct their
+listlessness.  Pausing there, he looked up at her face and said, 'Why
+should we not try again, Christine?  We are legally at liberty to do so
+now.  Nothing venture nothing have.'
+
+But she would not.  Perhaps a little primness of idea was by this time
+ousting the native daring of Christine.  'What he has done once he can do
+twice,' she said.  'He is not dead, and if we were to marry he would say
+we had "forced his hand," as he said before, and duly reappear.'
+
+Some years after, when Christine was about fifty, and Nicholas
+fifty-three, a new trouble of a minor kind arrived.  He found an
+inconvenience in traversing the distance between their two houses,
+particularly in damp weather, the years he had spent in trying climates
+abroad having sown the seeds of rheumatism, which made a journey
+undesirable on inclement days, even in a carriage.  He told her of this
+new difficulty, as he did of everything.
+
+'If you could live nearer,' suggested she.
+
+Unluckily there was no house near.  But Nicholas, though not a
+millionaire, was a man of means; he obtained a small piece of ground on
+lease at the nearest spot to her home that it could be so obtained, which
+was on the opposite brink of the Froom, this river forming the boundary
+of the Froom-Everard manor; and here he built a cottage large enough for
+his wants.  This took time, and when he got into it he found its
+situation a great comfort to him.  He was not more than five hundred
+yards from her now, and gained a new pleasure in feeling that all sounds
+which greeted his ears, in the day or in the night, also fell upon
+hers--the caw of a particular rook, the voice of a neighbouring
+nightingale, the whistle of a local breeze, or the purl of the fall in
+the meadows, whose rush was a material rendering of Time's ceaseless
+scour over themselves, wearing them away without uniting them.
+
+Christine's missing husband was taking shape as a myth among the
+surrounding residents; but he was still believed in as corporeally
+imminent by Christine herself, and also, in a milder degree, by Nicholas.
+For a curious unconsciousness of the long lapse of time since his
+revelation of himself seemed to affect the pair.  There had been no
+passing events to serve as chronological milestones, and the evening on
+which she had kept supper waiting for him still loomed out with startling
+nearness in their retrospects.
+
+In the seventeenth pensive year of this their parallel march towards the
+common bourne, a labourer came in a hurry one day to Nicholas's house and
+brought strange tidings.  The present owner of Froom-Everard--a
+non-resident--had been improving his property in sundry ways, and one of
+these was by dredging the stream which, in the course of years, had
+become choked with mud and weeds in its passage through the Sallows.  The
+process necessitated a reconstruction of the waterfall.  When the river
+had been pumped dry for this purpose, the skeleton of a man had been
+found jammed among the piles supporting the edge of the fall.  Every
+particle of his flesh and clothing had been eaten by fishes or abraded to
+nothing by the water, but the relics of a gold watch remained, and on the
+inside of the case was engraved the name of the maker of her husband's
+watch, which she well remembered.
+
+Nicholas, deeply agitated, hastened down to the place and examined the
+remains attentively, afterwards going across to Christine, and breaking
+the discovery to her.  She would not come to view the skeleton, which lay
+extended on the grass, not a finger or toe-bone missing, so neatly had
+the aquatic operators done their work.  Conjecture was directed to the
+question how Bellston had got there; and conjecture alone could give an
+explanation.
+
+It was supposed that, on his way to call upon her, he had taken a short
+cut through the grounds, with which he was naturally very familiar, and
+coming to the fall under the trees had expected to find there the plank
+which, during his occupancy of the premises with Christine and her
+father, he had placed there for crossing into the meads on the other side
+instead of wading across as Nicholas had done.  Before discovering its
+removal he had probably overbalanced himself, and was thus precipitated
+into the cascade, the piles beneath the descending current wedging him
+between them like the prongs of a pitchfork, and effectually preventing
+the rising of his body, over which the weeds grew.  Such was the
+reasonable supposition concerning the discovery; but proof was never
+forthcoming.
+
+'To think,' said Nicholas, when the remains had been decently interred,
+and he was again sitting with Christine--though not beside the
+waterfall--'to think how we visited him!  How we sat over him, hours and
+hours, gazing at him, bewailing our fate, when all the time he was
+ironically hissing at us from the spot, in an unknown tongue, that we
+could marry if we chose!'
+
+She echoed the sentiment with a sigh.
+
+'I have strange fancies,' she said.  'I suppose it must have been my
+husband who came back, and not some other man.'
+
+Nicholas felt that there was little doubt.  'Besides--the skeleton,' he
+said.
+
+'Yes . . . If it could not have been another person's--but no, of course
+it was he.'
+
+'You might have married me on the day we had fixed, and there would have
+been no impediment.  You would now have been seventeen years my wife, and
+we might have had tall sons and daughters.'
+
+'It might have been so,' she murmured.
+
+'Well--is it still better late than never?'
+
+The question was one which had become complicated by the increasing years
+of each.  Their wills were somewhat enfeebled now, their hearts sickened
+of tender enterprise by hope too long deferred.  Having postponed the
+consideration of their course till a year after the interment of
+Bellston, each seemed less disposed than formerly to take it up again.
+
+'Is it worth while, after so many years?' she said to him.  'We are
+fairly happy as we are--perhaps happier than we should be in any other
+relation, seeing what old people we have grown.  The weight is gone from
+our lives; the shadow no longer divides us: then let us be joyful
+together as we are, dearest Nic, in the days of our vanity; and
+
+   With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.'
+
+He fell in with these views of hers to some extent.  But occasionally he
+ventured to urge her to reconsider the case, though he spoke not with the
+fervour of his earlier years.
+
+Autumn, 1887.
+
+
+
+
+ALICIA'S DIARY
+
+
+CHAPTER I.--SHE MISSES HER SISTER
+
+
+July 7.--I wander about the house in a mood of unutterable sadness, for
+my dear sister Caroline has left home to-day with my mother, and I shall
+not see them again for several weeks.  They have accepted a long-standing
+invitation to visit some old friends of ours, the Marlets, who live at
+Versailles for cheapness--my mother thinking that it will be for the good
+of Caroline to see a little of France and Paris.  But I don't quite like
+her going.  I fear she may lose some of that childlike simplicity and
+gentleness which so characterize her, and have been nourished by the
+seclusion of our life here.  Her solicitude about her pony before
+starting was quite touching, and she made me promise to visit it daily,
+and see that it came to no harm.
+
+Caroline gone abroad, and I left here!  It is the reverse of an ordinary
+situation, for good or ill-luck has mostly ordained that I should be the
+absent one.  Mother will be quite tired out by the young enthusiasm of
+Caroline.  She will demand to be taken everywhere--to Paris continually,
+of course; to all the stock shrines of history's devotees; to palaces and
+prisons; to kings' tombs and queens' tombs; to cemeteries and picture-
+galleries, and royal hunting forests.  My poor mother, having gone over
+most of this ground many times before, will perhaps not find the
+perambulation so exhilarating as will Caroline herself.  I wish I could
+have gone with them.  I would not have minded having my legs walked off
+to please Caroline.  But this regret is absurd: I could not, of course,
+leave my father with not a soul in the house to attend to the calls of
+the parishioners or to pour out his tea.
+
+July 15.--A letter from Caroline to-day.  It is very strange that she
+tells me nothing which I expected her to tell--only trivial details.  She
+seems dazzled by the brilliancy of Paris--which no doubt appears still
+more brilliant to her from the fact of her only being able to obtain
+occasional glimpses of it.  She would see that Paris, too, has a seamy
+side if you live there.  I was not aware that the Marlets knew so many
+people.  If, as mother has said, they went to reside at Versailles for
+reasons of economy, they will not effect much in that direction while
+they make a practice of entertaining all the acquaintances who happen to
+be in their neighbourhood.  They do not confine their hospitalities to
+English people, either.  I wonder who this M. de la Feste is, in whom
+Caroline says my mother is so much interested.
+
+July 18.--Another letter from Caroline.  I have learnt from this epistle,
+that M. Charles de la Feste is 'only one of the many friends of the
+Marlets'; that though a Frenchman by birth, and now again temporarily at
+Versailles, he has lived in England many many years; that he is a
+talented landscape and marine painter, and has exhibited at the Salon,
+and I think in London.  His style and subjects are considered somewhat
+peculiar in Paris--rather English than Continental.  I have not as yet
+learnt his age, or his condition, married or single.  From the tone and
+nature of her remarks about him he sometimes seems to be a middle-aged
+family man, sometimes quite the reverse.  From his nomadic habits I
+should say the latter is the most likely.  He has travelled and seen a
+great deal, she tells me, and knows more about English literature than
+she knows herself.
+
+July 21.--Letter from Caroline.  Query: Is 'a friend of ours and the
+Marlets,' of whom she now anonymously and mysteriously speaks, the same
+personage as the 'M. de la Feste' of her former letters?  He must be the
+same, I think, from his pursuits.  If so, whence this sudden change of
+tone? . . . I have been lost in thought for at least a quarter of an hour
+since writing the preceding sentence.  Suppose my dear sister is falling
+in love with this young man--there is no longer any doubt about his age;
+what a very awkward, risky thing for her!  I do hope that my mother has
+an eye on these proceedings.  But, then, poor mother never sees the drift
+of anything: she is in truth less of a mother to Caroline than I am.  If
+I were there, how jealously I would watch him, and ascertain his designs!
+
+I am of a stronger nature than Caroline.  How I have supported her in the
+past through her little troubles and great griefs!  Is she agitated at
+the presence of this, to her, new and strange feeling?  But I am assuming
+her to be desperately in love, when I have no proof of anything of the
+kind.  He may be merely a casual friend, of whom I shall hear no more.
+
+July 24.--Then he is a bachelor, as I suspected.  'If M. de la Feste ever
+marries he will,' etc.  So she writes.  They are getting into close
+quarters, obviously.  Also, 'Something to keep my hair smooth, which M.
+de la Feste told me he had found useful for the tips of his moustache.'
+Very naively related this; and with how much unconsciousness of the
+intimacy between them that the remark reveals!  But my mother--what can
+she be doing?  Does she know of this?  And if so, why does she not allude
+to it in her letters to my father? . . . I have been to look at
+Caroline's pony, in obedience to her reiterated request that I would not
+miss a day in seeing that she was well cared for.  Anxious as Caroline
+was about this pony of hers before starting, she now never mentioned the
+poor animal once in her letters.  The image of her pet suffers from
+displacement.
+
+August 3.--Caroline's forgetfulness of her pony has naturally enough
+extended to me, her sister.  It is ten days since she last wrote, and but
+for a note from my mother I should not know if she were dead or alive.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.--NEWS INTERESTING AND SERIOUS
+
+
+August 5.--A cloud of letters.  A letter from Caroline, another from
+mother; also one from each to my father.
+
+The probability to which all the intelligence from my sister has pointed
+of late turns out to be a fact.  There is an engagement, or almost an
+engagement, announced between my dear Caroline and M. de la Feste--to
+Caroline's sublime happiness, and my mother's entire satisfaction; as
+well as to that of the Marlets.  They and my mother seem to know all
+about the young man--which is more than I do, though a little extended
+information about him, considering that I am Caroline's elder sister,
+would not have been amiss.  I half feel with my father, who is much
+surprised, and, I am sure, not altogether satisfied, that he should not
+have been consulted at all before matters reached such a definite stage,
+though he is too amiable to say so openly.  I don't quite say that a good
+thing should have been hindered for the sake of our opinion, if it is a
+good thing; but the announcement comes very suddenly.  It must have been
+foreseen by my mother for some time that this upshot was probable, and
+Caroline might have told me more distinctly that M. de la Feste was her
+lover, instead of alluding so mysteriously to him as only a friend of the
+Marlets, and lately dropping his name altogether.  My father, without
+exactly objecting to him as a Frenchman, 'wishes he were of English or
+some other reasonable nationality for one's son-in-law,' but I tell him
+that the demarcations of races, kingdoms, and creeds, are wearing down
+every day, that patriotism is a sort of vice, and that the character of
+the individual is all we need think about in this case.  I wonder if, in
+the event of their marriage, he will continue to live at Versailles, or
+if he will come to England.
+
+August 7.--A supplemental letter from Caroline, answering, by
+anticipation, some of the aforesaid queries.  She tells me that
+'Charles,' though he makes Versailles his present home, is by no means
+bound by his profession to continue there; that he will live just where
+she wishes, provided it be not too far from some centre of thought, art,
+and civilization.  My mother and herself both think that the marriage
+should not take place till next year.  He exhibits landscapes and canal
+scenery every year, she says; so I suppose he is popular, and that his
+income is sufficient to keep them in comfort.  If not, I do not see why
+my father could not settle something more on them than he had intended,
+and diminish by a little what he had proposed for me, whilst it was
+imagined that I should be the first to stand in need of such.
+
+'Of engaging manner, attractive appearance, and virtuous character,' is
+the reply I receive from her in answer to my request for a personal
+description.  That is vague enough, and I would rather have had one
+definite fact of complexion, voice, deed, or opinion.  But of course she
+has no eye now for material qualities; she cannot see him as he is.  She
+sees him irradiated with glories such as never appertained and never will
+appertain to any man, foreign, English, or Colonial.  To think that
+Caroline, two years my junior, and so childlike as to be five years my
+junior in nature, should be engaged to be married before me.  But that is
+what happens in families more often than we are apt to remember.
+
+August 16.--Interesting news to-day.  Charles, she says, has pleaded that
+their marriage may just as well be this year as next; and he seems to
+have nearly converted my mother to the same way of thinking.  I do not
+myself see any reason for delay, beyond the standing one of my father
+having as yet had no opportunity of forming an opinion upon the man, the
+time, or anything.  However, he takes his lot very quietly, and they are
+coming home to talk the question over with us; Caroline having decided
+not to make any positive arrangements for this change of state till she
+has seen me.  Subject to my own and my father's approval, she says, they
+are inclined to settle the date of the wedding for November, three months
+from the present time, that it shall take place here in the village, that
+I, of course, shall be bridesmaid, and many other particulars.  She draws
+an artless picture of the probable effect upon the minds of the villagers
+of this romantic performance in the chancel of our old church, in which
+she is to be chief actor--the foreign gentleman dropping down like a god
+from the skies, picking her up, and triumphantly carrying her off.  Her
+only grief will be separation from me, but this is to be assuaged by my
+going and staying with her for long months at a time.  This simple
+prattle is very sweet to me, my dear sister, but I cannot help feeling
+sad at the occasion of it.  In the nature of things it is obvious that I
+shall never be to you again what I hitherto have been: your guide,
+counsellor, and most familiar friend.
+
+M. de la Feste does certainly seem to be all that one could desire as
+protector to a sensitive fragile child like Caroline, and for that I am
+thankful.  Still, I must remember that I see him as yet only through her
+eyes.  For her sake I am intensely anxious to meet him, and scrutinise
+him through and through, and learn what the man is really made of who is
+to have such a treasure in his keeping.  The engagement has certainly
+been formed a little precipitately; I quite agree with my father in that:
+still, good and happy marriages have been made in a hurry before now, and
+mother seems well satisfied.
+
+August 20.--A terrible announcement came this morning; and we are in deep
+trouble.  I have been quite unable to steady my thoughts on anything to-
+day till now--half-past eleven at night--and I only attempt writing these
+notes because I am too restless to remain idle, and there is nothing but
+waiting and waiting left for me to do.  Mother has been taken dangerously
+ill at Versailles: they were within a day or two of starting; but all
+thought of leaving must now be postponed, for she cannot possibly be
+moved in her present state.  I don't like the sound of haemorrhage at all
+in a woman of her full habit, and Caroline and the Marlets have not
+exaggerated their accounts I am certain.  On the receipt of the letter my
+father instantly decided to go to her, and I have been occupied all day
+in getting him off, for as he calculates on being absent several days,
+there have been many matters for him to arrange before setting out--the
+chief being to find some one who will do duty for him next Sunday--a
+quest of no small difficulty at such short notice; but at last poor old
+feeble Mr. Dugdale has agreed to attempt it, with Mr. Highman, the
+Scripture reader, to assist him in the lessons.
+
+I fain would have gone with my father to escape the irksome anxiety of
+awaiting her; but somebody had to stay, and I could best be spared.
+George has driven him to the station to meet the last train by which he
+will catch the midnight boat, and reach Havre some time in the morning.
+He hates the sea, and a night passage in particular.  I hope he will get
+there without mishap of any kind; but I feel anxious for him, stay-at-
+home as he is, and unable to cope with any difficulty.  Such an errand,
+too; the journey will be sad enough at best.  I almost think I ought to
+have been the one to go to her.
+
+August 21.--I nearly fell asleep of heaviness of spirit last night over
+my writing.  My father must have reached Paris by this time; and now here
+comes a letter . . .
+
+Later.--The letter was to express an earnest hope that my father had set
+out.  My poor mother is sinking, they fear.  What will become of
+Caroline?  O, how I wish I could see mother; why could not both have
+gone?
+
+Later.--I get up from my chair, and walk from window to window, and then
+come and write a line.  I cannot even divine how poor Caroline's marriage
+is to be carried out if mother dies.  I pray that father may have got
+there in time to talk to her and receive some directions from her about
+Caroline and M. de la Feste--a man whom neither my father nor I have
+seen.  I, who might be useful in this emergency, am doomed to stay here,
+waiting in suspense.
+
+August 23.--A letter from my father containing the sad news that my
+mother's spirit has flown.  Poor little Caroline is heart-broken--she was
+always more my mother's pet than I was.  It is some comfort to know that
+my father arrived in time to hear from her own lips her strongly
+expressed wish that Caroline's marriage should be solemnized as soon as
+possible.  M. de la Feste seems to have been a great favourite of my dear
+mother's; and I suppose it now becomes almost a sacred duty of my father
+to accept him as a son-in-law without criticism.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.--HER GLOOM LIGHTENS A LITTLE
+
+
+September 10.--I have inserted nothing in my diary for more than a
+fortnight.  Events have been altogether too sad for me to have the spirit
+to put them on paper.  And yet there comes a time when the act of
+recording one's trouble is recognized as a welcome method of dwelling
+upon it . . .
+
+My dear mother has been brought home and buried here in the parish.  It
+was not so much her own wish that this should be done as my father's, who
+particularly desired that she should lie in the family vault beside his
+first wife.  I saw them side by side before the vault was closed--two
+women beloved by one man.  As I stood, and Caroline by my side, I fell
+into a sort of dream, and had an odd fancy that Caroline and I might be
+also beloved of one, and lie like these together--an impossibility, of
+course, being sisters.  When I awoke from my reverie Caroline took my
+hand and said it was time to leave.
+
+September 14.--The wedding is indefinitely postponed.  Caroline is like a
+girl awakening in the middle of a somnambulistic experience, and does not
+realize where she is, or how she stands.  She walks about silently, and I
+cannot tell her thoughts, as I used to do.  It was her own doing to write
+to M. de la Feste and tell him that the wedding could not possibly take
+place this autumn as originally planned.  There is something depressing
+in this long postponement if she is to marry him at all; and yet I do not
+see how it could be avoided.
+
+October 20.--I have had so much to occupy me in consoling Caroline that I
+have been continually overlooking my diary.  Her life was much nearer to
+my mother's than mine was.  She has never, as I, lived away from home
+long enough to become self-dependent, and hence in her first loss, and
+all that it involved, she drooped like a rain-beaten lily.  But she is of
+a nature whose wounds soon heal, even though they may be deep, and the
+supreme poignancy of her sorrow has already passed.
+
+My father is of opinion that the wedding should not be delayed too long.
+While at Versailles he made the acquaintance of M. de la Feste, and
+though they had but a short and hurried communion with each other, he was
+much impressed by M. de la Feste's disposition and conduct, and is
+strongly in favour of his suit.  It is odd that Caroline's betrothed
+should influence in his favour all who come near him.  His portrait,
+which dear Caroline has shown me, exhibits him to be of a physique that
+partly accounts for this: but there must be something more than mere
+appearance, and it is probably some sort of glamour or fascinating
+power--the quality which prevented Caroline from describing him to me
+with any accuracy of detail.  At the same time, I see from the photograph
+that his face and head are remarkably well formed; and though the
+contours of his mouth are hidden by his moustache, his arched brows show
+well the romantic disposition of a true lover and painter of Nature.  I
+think that the owner of such a face as this must be tender and
+sympathetic and true.
+
+October 30.--As my sister's grief for her mother becomes more and more
+calmed, her love for M. de la Feste begins to reassume its former
+absorbing command of her.  She thinks of him incessantly, and writes
+whole treatises to him by way of letters.  Her blank disappointment at
+his announcement of his inability to pay us a visit quite so soon as he
+had promised, was quite tragic.  I, too, am disappointed, for I wanted to
+see and estimate him.  But having arranged to go to Holland to seize some
+aerial effects for his pictures, which are only to be obtained at this
+time of the autumn, he is obliged to postpone his journey this way, which
+is now to be made early in the new year.  I think myself that he ought to
+have come at all sacrifices, considering Caroline's recent loss, the sad
+postponement of what she was looking forward to, and her single-minded
+affection for him.  Still, who knows; his professional success is
+important.  Moreover, she is cheerful, and hopeful, and the delay will
+soon be overpast.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.--SHE BEHOLDS THE ATTRACTIVE STRANGER
+
+
+February 16.--We have had such a dull life here all the winter that I
+have found nothing important enough to set down, and broke off my journal
+accordingly.  I resume it now to make an entry on the subject of dear
+Caroline's future.  It seems that she was too grieved, immediately after
+the loss of our mother, to answer definitely the question of M. de la
+Feste how long the postponement was to be; then, afterwards, it was
+agreed that the matter should be discussed on his autumn visit; but as he
+did not come, it has remained in abeyance till this week, when Caroline,
+with the greatest simplicity and confidence, has written to him without
+any further pressure on his part, and told him that she is quite ready to
+fix the time, and will do so as soon as he arrives to see her.  She is a
+little frightened now, lest it should seem forward in her to have revived
+the subject of her own accord; but she may assume that his question has
+been waiting on for an answer ever since, and that she has, therefore,
+acted only within her promise.  In truth, the secret at the bottom of it
+all is that she is somewhat saddened because he has not latterly reminded
+her of the pause in their affairs--that, in short, his original
+impatience to possess her is not now found to animate him so obviously.  I
+suppose that he loves her as much as ever; indeed, I am sure he must do
+so, seeing how lovable she is.  It is mostly thus with all men when women
+are out of their sight; they grow negligent.  Caroline must have
+patience, and remember that a man of his genius has many and important
+calls upon his time.  In justice to her I must add that she does remember
+it fairly well, and has as much patience as any girl ever had in the
+circumstances.  He hopes to come at the beginning of April at latest.
+Well, when he comes we shall see him.
+
+April 5.--I think that what M. de la Feste writes is reasonable enough,
+though Caroline looks heart-sick about it.  It is hardly worth while for
+him to cross all the way to England and back just now, while the sea is
+so turbulent, seeing that he will be obliged, in any event, to come in
+May, when he has to be in London for professional purposes, at which time
+he can take us easily on his way both coming and going.  When Caroline
+becomes his wife she will be more practical, no doubt; but she is such a
+child as yet that there is no contenting her with reasons.  However, the
+time will pass quickly, there being so much to do in preparing a
+trousseau for her, which must now be put in hand in order that we may
+have plenty of leisure to get it ready.  On no account must Caroline be
+married in half-mourning; I am sure that mother, could she know, would
+not wish it, and it is odd that Caroline should be so intractably
+persistent on this point, when she is usually so yielding.
+
+April 30.--This month has flown on swallow's wings.  We are in a great
+state of excitement--I as much as she--I cannot quite tell why.  He is
+really coming in ten days, he says.
+
+May 9.  Four p.m.--I am so agitated I can scarcely write, and yet am
+particularly impelled to do so before leaving my room.  It is the
+unexpected shape of an expected event which has caused my absurd
+excitement, which proves me almost as much a school-girl as Caroline.
+
+M. de la Feste was not, as we understood, to have come till to-morrow;
+but he is here--just arrived.  All household directions have devolved
+upon me, for my father, not thinking M. de la Feste would appear before
+us for another four-and-twenty hours, left home before post time to
+attend a distant consecration; and hence Caroline and I were in no small
+excitement when Charles's letter was opened, and we read that he had been
+unexpectedly favoured in the dispatch of his studio work, and would
+follow his letter in a few hours.  We sent the covered carriage to meet
+the train indicated, and waited like two newly strung harps for the first
+sound of the returning wheels.  At last we heard them on the gravel; and
+the question arose who was to receive him.  It was, strictly speaking, my
+duty; but I felt timid; I could not help shirking it, and insisted that
+Caroline should go down.  She did not, however, go near the door as she
+usually does when anybody is expected, but waited palpitating in the
+drawing-room.  He little thought when he saw the silent hall, and the
+apparently deserted house, how that house was at the very same moment
+alive and throbbing with interest under the surface.  I stood at the back
+of the upper landing, where nobody could see me from downstairs, and
+heard him walk across the hall--a lighter step than my father's--and
+heard him then go into the drawing-room, and the servant shut the door
+behind him and go away.
+
+What a pretty lover's meeting they must have had in there all to
+themselves!  Caroline's sweet face looking up from her black gown--how it
+must have touched him.  I know she wept very much, for I heard her; and
+her eyes will be red afterwards, and no wonder, poor dear, though she is
+no doubt happy.  I can imagine what she is telling him while I write
+this--her fears lest anything should have happened to prevent his coming
+after all--gentle, smiling reproaches for his long delay; and things of
+that sort.  His two portmanteaus are at this moment crossing the landing
+on the way to his room.  I wonder if I ought to go down.
+
+A little later.--I have seen him!  It was not at all in the way that I
+intended to encounter him, and I am vexed.  Just after his portmanteaus
+were brought up I went out from my room to descend, when, at the moment
+of stepping towards the first stair, my eyes were caught by an object in
+the hall below, and I paused for an instant, till I saw that it was a
+bundle of canvas and sticks, composing a sketching tent and easel.  At
+the same nick of time the drawing-room door opened and the affianced pair
+came out.  They were saying they would go into the garden; and he waited
+a moment while she put on her hat.  My idea was to let them pass on
+without seeing me, since they seemed not to want my company, but I had
+got too far on the landing to retreat; he looked up, and stood staring at
+me--engrossed to a dream-like fixity.  Thereupon I, too, instead of
+advancing as I ought to have done, stood moonstruck and awkward, and
+before I could gather my weak senses sufficiently to descend, she had
+called him, and they went out by the garden door together.  I then
+thought of following them, but have changed my mind, and come here to jot
+down these few lines.  It is all I am fit for . . .
+
+He is even more handsome than I expected.  I was right in feeling he must
+have an attraction beyond that of form: it appeared even in that
+momentary glance.  How happy Caroline ought to be.  But I must, of
+course, go down to be ready with tea in the drawing-room by the time they
+come indoors.
+
+11 p.m.--I have made the acquaintance of M. de la Feste; and I seem to be
+another woman from the effect of it.  I cannot describe why this should
+be so, but conversation with him seems to expand the view, and open the
+heart, and raise one as upon stilts to wider prospects.  He has a good
+intellectual forehead, perfect eyebrows, dark hair and eyes, an animated
+manner, and a persuasive voice.  His voice is soft in quality--too soft
+for a man, perhaps; and yet on second thoughts I would not have it less
+so.  We have been talking of his art: I had no notion that art demanded
+such sacrifices or such tender devotion; or that there were two roads for
+choice within its precincts, the road of vulgar money-making, and the
+road of high aims and consequent inappreciation for many long years by
+the public.  That he has adopted the latter need not be said to those who
+understand him.  It is a blessing for Caroline that she has been chosen
+by such a man, and she ought not to lament at postponements and delays,
+since they have arisen unavoidably.  Whether he finds hers a sufficiently
+rich nature, intellectually and emotionally, for his own, I know not, but
+he seems occasionally to be disappointed at her simple views of things.
+Does he really feel such love for her at this moment as he no doubt
+believes himself to be feeling, and as he no doubt hopes to feel for the
+remainder of his life towards her?
+
+It was a curious thing he told me when we were left for a few minutes
+alone; that Caroline had alluded so slightly to me in her conversation
+and letters that he had not realized my presence in the house here at
+all.  But, of course, it was only natural that she should write and talk
+most about herself.  I suppose it was on account of the fact of his being
+taken in some measure unawares, that I caught him on two or three
+occasions regarding me fixedly in a way that disquieted me somewhat,
+having been lately in so little society; till my glance aroused him from
+his reverie, and he looked elsewhere in some confusion.  It was fortunate
+that he did so, and thus failed to notice my own.  It shows that he, too,
+is not particularly a society person.
+
+May 10.--Have had another interesting conversation with M. de la Feste on
+schools of landscape painting in the drawing-room after dinner this
+evening--my father having fallen asleep, and left nobody but Caroline and
+myself for Charles to talk to.  I did not mean to say so much to him, and
+had taken a volume of Modern Painters from the bookcase to occupy myself
+with, while leaving the two lovers to themselves; but he would include me
+in his audience, and I was obliged to lay the book aside.  However, I
+insisted on keeping Caroline in the conversation, though her views on
+pictorial art were only too charmingly crude and primitive.
+
+To-morrow, if fine, we are all three going to Wherryborne Wood, where
+Charles will give us practical illustrations of the principles of
+coloring that he has enumerated to-night.  I am determined not to occupy
+his attention to the exclusion of Caroline, and my plan is that when we
+are in the dense part of the wood I will lag behind, and slip away, and
+leave them to return by themselves.  I suppose the reason of his
+attentiveness to me lies in his simply wishing to win the good opinion of
+one who is so closely united to Caroline, and so likely to influence her
+good opinion of him.
+
+May 11.  Late.--I cannot sleep, and in desperation have lit my candle and
+taken up my pen.  My restlessness is occasioned by what has occurred to-
+day, which at first I did not mean to write down, or trust to any heart
+but my own.  We went to Wherryborne Wood--Caroline, Charles and I, as we
+had intended--and walked all three along the green track through the
+midst, Charles in the middle between Caroline and myself.  Presently I
+found that, as usual, he and I were the only talkers, Caroline amusing
+herself by observing birds and squirrels as she walked docilely alongside
+her betrothed.  Having noticed this I dropped behind at the first
+opportunity and slipped among the trees, in a direction in which I knew I
+should find another path that would take me home.  Upon this track I by
+and by emerged, and walked along it in silent thought till, at a bend, I
+suddenly encountered M. de la Feste standing stock still and smiling
+thoughtfully at me.
+
+'Where is Caroline?' said I.
+
+'Only a little way off,' says he.  'When we missed you from behind us we
+thought you might have mistaken the direction we had followed, so she has
+gone one way to find you and I have come this way.'
+
+We then went back to find Caroline, but could not discover her anywhere,
+and the upshot was that he and I were wandering about the woods alone for
+more than an hour.  On reaching home we found she had given us up after
+searching a little while, and arrived there some time before.  I should
+not be so disturbed by the incident if I had not perceived that, during
+her absence from us, he did not make any earnest effort to rediscover
+her; and in answer to my repeated expressions of wonder as to whither she
+could have wandered he only said, 'Oh, she's quite safe; she told me she
+knew the way home from any part of this wood.  Let us go on with our
+talk.  I assure you I value this privilege of being with one I so much
+admire more than you imagine;' and other things of that kind.  I was so
+foolish as to show a little perturbation--I cannot tell why I did not
+control myself; and I think he noticed that I was not cool.  Caroline
+has, with her simple good faith, thought nothing of the occurrence; yet
+altogether I am not satisfied.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.--HER SITUATION IS A TRYING ONE
+
+
+May 15.--The more I think of it day after day, the more convinced I am
+that my suspicions are true.  He is too interested in me--well, in plain
+words, loves me; or, not to degrade that phrase, has a wild passion for
+me; and his affection for Caroline is that towards a sister only.  That
+is the distressing truth; how it has come about I cannot tell, and it
+wears upon me.
+
+A hundred little circumstances have revealed this to me, and the longer I
+dwell upon it the more agitating does the consideration become.  Heaven
+only can help me out of the terrible difficulty in which this places me.
+I have done nothing to encourage him to be faithless to her.  I have
+studiously kept out of his way; have persistently refused to be a third
+in their interviews.  Yet all to no purpose.  Some fatality has seemed to
+rule, ever since he came to the house, that this disastrous inversion of
+things should arise.  If I had only foreseen the possibility of it before
+he arrived, how gladly would I have departed on some visit or other to
+the meanest friend to hinder such an apparent treachery.  But I blindly
+welcomed him--indeed, made myself particularly agreeable to him for her
+sake.
+
+There is no possibility of my suspicions being wrong; not until they have
+reached absolute certainty have I dared even to admit the truth to
+myself.  His conduct to-day would have proved them true had I entertained
+no previous apprehensions.  Some photographs of myself came for me by
+post, and they were handed round at the breakfast table and criticised.  I
+put them temporarily on a side table, and did not remember them until an
+hour afterwards when I was in my own room.  On going to fetch them I
+discovered him standing at the table with his back towards the door
+bending over the photographs, one of which he raised to his lips.
+
+The witnessing this act so frightened me that I crept away to escape
+observation.  It was the climax to a series of slight and significant
+actions all tending to the same conclusion.  The question for me now is,
+what am I to do?  To go away is what first occurs to me, but what reason
+can I give Caroline and my father for such a step; besides, it might
+precipitate some sort of catastrophe by driving Charles to desperation.
+For the present, therefore, I have decided that I can only wait, though
+his contiguity is strangely disturbing to me now, and I hardly retain
+strength of mind to encounter him.  How will the distressing complication
+end?
+
+May 19.--And so it has come!  My mere avoidance of him has precipitated
+the worst issue--a declaration.  I had occasion to go into the kitchen
+garden to gather some of the double ragged-robins which grew in a corner
+there.  Almost as soon as I had entered I heard footsteps without.  The
+door opened and shut, and I turned to behold him just inside it.  As the
+garden is closed by four walls and the gardener was absent, the spot
+ensured absolute privacy.  He came along the path by the asparagus-bed,
+and overtook me.
+
+'You know why I come, Alicia?' said he, in a tremulous voice.
+
+I said nothing, and hung my head, for by his tone I did know.
+
+'Yes,' he went on, 'it is you I love; my sentiment towards your sister is
+one of affection too, but protective, tutelary affection--no more.  Say
+what you will I cannot help it.  I mistook my feeling for her, and I know
+how much I am to blame for my want of self-knowledge.  I have fought
+against this discovery night and day; but it cannot be concealed.  Why
+did I ever see you, since I could not see you till I had committed
+myself?  At the moment my eyes beheld you on that day of my arrival, I
+said, "This is the woman for whom my manhood has waited."  Ever since an
+unaccountable fascination has riveted my heart to you.  Answer one word!'
+
+'O, M. de la Feste!' I burst out.  What I said more I cannot remember,
+but I suppose that the misery I was in showed pretty plainly, for he
+said, 'Something must be done to let her know; perhaps I have mistaken
+her affection, too; but all depends upon what you feel.'
+
+'I cannot tell what I feel,' said I, 'except that this seems terrible
+treachery; and every moment that I stay with you here makes it worse! .  .
+.  Try to keep faith with her--her young heart is tender; believe me
+there is no mistake in the quality of her love for you.  Would there
+were!  This would kill her if she knew it!'
+
+He sighed heavily.  'She ought never to be my wife,' he said.  'Leaving
+my own happiness out of the question, it would be a cruelty to her to
+unite her to me.'
+
+I said I could not hear such words from him, and begged him in tears to
+go away; he obeyed, and I heard the garden door shut behind him.  What is
+to be the end of the announcement, and the fate of Caroline?
+
+May 20.--I put a good deal on paper yesterday, and yet not all.  I was,
+in truth, hoping against hope, against conviction, against too conscious
+self-judgment.  I scarcely dare own the truth now, yet it relieves my
+aching heart to set it down.  Yes, I love him--that is the dreadful fact,
+and I can no longer parry, evade, or deny it to myself though to the rest
+of the world it can never be owned.  I love Caroline's betrothed, and he
+loves me.  It is no yesterday's passion, cultivated by our converse; it
+came at first sight, independently of my will; and my talk with him
+yesterday made rather against it than for it, but, alas, did not quench
+it.  God forgive us both for this terrible treachery.
+
+May 25.--All is vague; our courses shapeless.  He comes and goes, being
+occupied, ostensibly at least, with sketching in his tent in the wood.
+Whether he and she see each other privately I cannot tell, but I rather
+think they do not; that she sadly awaits him, and he does not appear.  Not
+a sign from him that my repulse has done him any good, or that he will
+endeavour to keep faith with her.  O, if I only had the compulsion of a
+god, and the self-sacrifice of a martyr!
+
+May 31.--It has all ended--or rather this act of the sad drama has
+ended--in nothing.  He has left us.  No day for the fulfilment of the
+engagement with Caroline is named, my father not being the man to press
+any one on such a matter, or, indeed, to interfere in any way.  We two
+girls are, in fact, quite defenceless in a case of this kind; lovers may
+come when they choose, and desert when they choose; poor father is too
+urbane to utter a word of remonstrance or inquiry.  Moreover, as the
+approved of my dead mother, M. de la Feste has a sort of autocratic power
+with my father, who holds it unkind to her memory to have an opinion
+about him.  I, feeling it my duty, asked M. de la Feste at the last
+moment about the engagement, in a voice I could not keep firm.
+
+'Since the death of your mother all has been indefinite--all!' he said
+gloomily.  That was the whole.  Possibly, Wherryborne Rectory may see him
+no more.
+
+June 7 .--M. de la Feste has written--one letter to her, one to me.  Hers
+could not have been very warm, for she did not brighten on reading it.
+Mine was an ordinary note of friendship, filling an ordinary sheet of
+paper, which I handed over to Caroline when I had finished looking it
+through.  But there was a scrap of paper in the bottom of the envelope,
+which I dared not show any one.  This scrap is his real letter: I scanned
+it alone in my room, trembling, hot and cold by turns.  He tells me he is
+very wretched; that he deplores what has happened, but was helpless.  Why
+did I let him see me, if only to make him faithless.  Alas, alas!
+
+June 21 .--My dear Caroline has lost appetite, spirits, health.  Hope
+deferred maketh the heart sick.  His letters to her grow colder--if
+indeed he has written more than one.  He has refrained from writing again
+to me--he knows it is no use.  Altogether the situation that he and she
+and I are in is melancholy in the extreme.  Why are human hearts so
+perverse?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.--HER INGENUITY INSTIGATES HER
+
+
+September 19.--Three months of anxious care--till at length I have taken
+the extreme step of writing to him.  Our chief distress has been caused
+by the state of poor Caroline, who, after sinking by degrees into such
+extreme weakness as to make it doubtful if she can ever recover full
+vigour, has to-day been taken much worse.  Her position is very critical.
+The doctor says plainly that she is dying of a broken heart--and that
+even the removal of the cause may not now restore her.  Ought I to have
+written to Charles sooner?  But how could I when she forbade me?  It was
+her pride only which instigated her, and I should not have obeyed.
+
+Sept. 26.--Charles has arrived and has seen her.  He is shocked,
+conscience-stricken, remorseful.  I have told him that he can do no good
+beyond cheering her by his presence.  I do not know what he thinks of
+proposing to her if she gets better, but he says little to her at
+present: indeed he dares not: his words agitate her dangerously.
+
+Sept. 28.--After a struggle between duty and selfishness, such as I pray
+to Heaven I may never have to undergo again, I have asked him for pity's
+sake to make her his wife, here and now, as she lies.  I said to him that
+the poor child would not trouble him long; and such a solemnization would
+soothe her last hours as nothing else could do.  He said that he would
+willingly do so, and had thought of it himself; but for one forbidding
+reason: in the event of her death as his wife he can never marry me, her
+sister, according to our laws.  I started at his words.  He went on: 'On
+the other hand, if I were sure that immediate marriage with me would save
+her life, I would not refuse, for possibly I might after a while, and out
+of sight of you, make myself fairly content with one of so sweet a
+disposition as hers; but if, as is probable, neither my marrying her nor
+any other act can avail to save her life, by so doing I lose both her and
+you.'  I could not answer him.
+
+Sept. 29.--He continued firm in his reasons for refusal till this
+morning, and then I became possessed with an idea, which I at once
+propounded to him.  It was that he should at least consent to a form of
+marriage with Caroline, in consideration of her love; a form which need
+not be a legal union, but one which would satisfy her sick and enfeebled
+soul.  Such things have been done, and the sentiment of feeling herself
+his would inexpressibly comfort her mind, I am sure.  Then, if she is
+taken from us, I should not have lost the power of becoming his lawful
+wife at some future day, if it indeed should be deemed expedient; if, on
+the other hand, she lives, he can on her recovery inform her of the
+incompleteness of their marriage contract, the ceremony can be repeated,
+and I can, and I am sure willingly would, avoid troubling them with my
+presence till grey hairs and wrinkles make his unfortunate passion for me
+a thing of the past.  I put all this before him; but he demurred.
+
+Sept. 30.--I have urged him again.  He says he will consider.  It is no
+time to mince matters, and as a further inducement I have offered to
+enter into a solemn engagement to marry him myself a year after her
+death.
+
+Sept. 30.  Later.--An agitating interview.  He says he will agree to
+whatever I propose, the three possibilities and our contingent acts being
+recorded as follows: First, in the event of dear Caroline being taken
+from us, I marry him on the expiration of a year: Second, in the forlorn
+chance of her recovery I take upon myself the responsibility of
+explaining to Caroline the true nature of the ceremony he has gone
+through with her, that it was done at my suggestion to make her happy at
+once, before a special licence could be obtained, and that a public
+ceremony at church is awaiting her: Third, in the unlikely event of her
+cooling, and refusing to repeat the ceremony with him, I leave England,
+join him abroad, and there wed him, agreeing not to live in England again
+till Caroline has either married another or regards her attachment to
+Charles as a bygone matter.  I have thought over these conditions, and
+have agreed to them all as they stand.
+
+11 p.m.--I do not much like this scheme, after all.  For one thing, I
+have just sounded my father on it before parting with him for the night,
+my impression having been that he would see no objection.  But he says he
+could on no account countenance any such unreal proceeding; however good
+our intentions, and even though the poor girl were dying, it would not be
+right.  So I sadly seek my pillow.
+
+October 1.--I am sure my father is wrong in his view.  Why is it not
+right, if it would be balm to Caroline's wounded soul, and if a real
+ceremony is absolutely refused by Charles--moreover is hardly practicable
+in the difficulty of getting a special licence, if he were agreed?  My
+father does not know, or will not believe, that Caroline's attachment has
+been the cause of her hopeless condition.  But that it is so, and that
+the form of words would give her inexpressible happiness, I know well;
+for I whispered tentatively in her ear on such marriages, and the effect
+was great.  Henceforth my father cannot be taken into confidence on the
+subject of Caroline.  He does not understand her.
+
+12 o'clock noon.--I have taken advantage of my father's absence to-day to
+confide my secret notion to a thoughtful young man, who called here this
+morning to speak to my father.  He is the Mr. Theophilus Higham, of whom
+I have already had occasion to speak--a Scripture reader in the next
+town, and is soon going to be ordained.  I told him the pitiable case,
+and my remedy.  He says ardently that he will assist me--would do
+anything for me (he is, in truth, an admirer of mine); he sees no wrong
+in such an act of charity.  He is coming again to the house this
+afternoon before my father returns, to carry out the idea.  I have spoken
+to Charles, who promises to be ready.  I must now break the news to
+Caroline.
+
+11 o'clock p.m.--I have been in too much excitement till now to set down
+the result.  We have accomplished our plan; and though I feel like a
+guilty sinner, I am glad.  My father, of course, is not to be informed as
+yet.  Caroline has had a seraphic expression upon her wasted, transparent
+face ever since.  I should hardly be surprised if it really saved her
+life even now, and rendered a legitimate union necessary between them.  In
+that case my father can be informed of the whole proceeding, and in the
+face of such wonderful success cannot disapprove.  Meanwhile poor Charles
+has not lost the possibility of taking unworthy me to fill her place
+should she--.  But I cannot contemplate that alternative unmoved, and
+will not write it.  Charles left for the South of Europe immediately
+after the ceremony.  He was in a high-strung, throbbing, almost wild
+state of mind at first, but grew calmer under my exhortations.  I had to
+pay the penalty of receiving a farewell kiss from him, which I much
+regret, considering its meaning; but he took me so unexpectedly, and in a
+moment was gone.
+
+Oct. 6.--She certainly is better, and even when she found that Charles
+had been suddenly obliged to leave, she received the news quite
+cheerfully.  The doctor says that her apparent improvement may be
+delusive; but I think our impressing upon her the necessity of keeping
+what has occurred a secret from papa, and everybody, helps to give her a
+zest for life.
+
+Oct. 8.--She is still mending.  I am glad to have saved her--my only
+sister--if I have done so; though I shall now never become Charles's
+wife.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.--A SURPRISE AWAITS HER
+
+
+Feb. 5.--Writing has been absolutely impossible for a long while; but I
+now reach a stage at which it seems possible to jot down a line.
+Caroline's recovery, extending over four months, has been very
+engrossing; at first slow, latterly rapid.  But a fearful complication of
+affairs attends it!
+
+   O what a tangled web we weave
+   When first we practise to deceive!
+
+Charles has written reproachfully to me from Venice, where he is.  He
+says how can he fulfil in the real what he has enacted in the
+counterfeit, while he still loves me?  Yet how, on the other hand, can he
+leave it unfulfilled?  All this time I have not told her, and up to this
+minute she believes that he has indeed taken her for better, for worse,
+till death them do part.  It is a harassing position for me, and all
+three.  In the awful approach of death, one's judgment loses its balance,
+and we do anything to meet the exigencies of the moment, with a single
+eye to the one who excites our sympathy, and from whom we seem on the
+brink of being separated for ever.
+
+Had he really married her at that time all would be settled now.  But he
+took too much thought; she might have died, and then he had his reason.
+If indeed it had turned out so, I should now be perhaps a sad woman; but
+not a tempest-tossed one . . . The possibility of his claiming me after
+all is what lies at the root of my agitation.  Everything hangs by a
+thread.  Suppose I tell her the marriage was a mockery; suppose she is
+indignant with me and with him for the deception--and then?  Otherwise,
+suppose she is not indignant but forgives all; he is bound to marry her;
+and honour constrains me to urge him thereto, in spite of what he
+protests, and to smooth the way to this issue by my method of informing
+her.  I have meant to tell her the last month--ever since she has been
+strong enough to bear such tidings; but I have been without the power--the
+moral force.  Surely I must write, and get him to come and assist me.
+
+March 14.--She continually wonders why he does not come, the five months
+of his enforced absence having expired; and still more she wonders why he
+does not write oftener.  His last letter was cold, she says, and she
+fears he regrets his marriage, which he may only have celebrated with her
+for pity's sake, thinking she was sure to die.  It makes one's heart
+bleed to hear her hovering thus so near the truth, and yet never
+discerning its actual shape.
+
+A minor trouble besets me, too, in the person of the young Scripture
+reader, whose conscience pricks him for the part he played.  Surely I am
+punished, if ever woman were, for a too ingenious perversion of her
+better judgment!
+
+April 2.--She is practically well.  The faint pink revives in her cheek,
+though it is not quite so full as heretofore.  But she still wonders what
+she can have done to offend 'her dear husband,' and I have been obliged
+to tell the smallest part of the truth--an unimportant fragment of the
+whole, in fact, I said that I feared for the moment he might regret the
+precipitancy of the act, which her illness caused, his affairs not having
+been quite sufficiently advanced for marriage just then, though he will
+doubtless come to her as soon as he has a home ready.  Meanwhile I have
+written to him, peremptorily, to come and relieve me in this awful
+dilemma.  He will find no note of love in that.
+
+April 10.--To my alarm the letter I lately addressed to him at Venice,
+where he is staying, as well as the last one she sent him, have received
+no reply.  She thinks he is ill.  I do not quite think that, but I wish
+we could hear from him.  Perhaps the peremptoriness of my words had
+offended him; it grieves me to think it possible.  I offend him!  But too
+much of this.  I must tell her the truth, or she may in her ignorance
+commit herself to some course or other that may be ruinously
+compromising.  She said plaintively just now that if he could see her,
+and know how occupied with him and him alone is her every waking hour,
+she is sure he would forgive her the wicked presumption of becoming his
+wife.  Very sweet all that, and touching.  I could not conceal my tears.
+
+April 15.--The house is in confusion; my father is angry and distressed,
+and I am distracted.  Caroline has disappeared--gone away secretly.  I
+cannot help thinking that I know where she is gone to.  How guilty I
+seem, and how innocent she!  O that I had told her before now!
+
+1 o'clock.--No trace of her as yet.  We find also that the little waiting-
+maid we have here in training has disappeared with Caroline, and there is
+not much doubt that Caroline, fearing to travel alone, has induced this
+girl to go with her as companion.  I am almost sure she has started in
+desperation to find him, and that Venice is her goal.  Why should she run
+away, if not to join her husband, as she thinks him?  Now that I
+consider, there have been indications of this wish in her for days, as in
+birds of passage there lurk signs of their incipient intention; and yet I
+did not think she would have taken such an extreme step, unaided, and
+without consulting me.  I can only jot down the bare facts--I have no
+time for reflections.  But fancy Caroline travelling across the continent
+of Europe with a chit of a girl, who will be more of a charge than an
+assistance!  They will be a mark for every marauder who encounters them.
+
+Evening: 8 o'clock.--Yes, it is as I surmised.  She has gone to join him.
+A note posted by her in Budmouth Regis at daybreak has reached me this
+afternoon--thanks to the fortunate chance of one of the servants calling
+for letters in town to-day, or I should not have got it until to-morrow.
+She merely asserts her determination of going to him, and has started
+privately, that nothing may hinder her; stating nothing about her route.
+That such a gentle thing should suddenly become so calmly resolute quite
+surprises me.  Alas, he may have left Venice--she may not find him for
+weeks--may not at all.
+
+My father, on learning the facts, bade me at once have everything ready
+by nine this evening, in time to drive to the train that meets the night
+steam-boat.  This I have done, and there being an hour to spare before we
+start, I relieve the suspense of waiting by taking up my pen.  He says
+overtake her we must, and calls Charles the hardest of names.  He
+believes, of course, that she is merely an infatuated girl rushing off to
+meet her lover; and how can the wretched I tell him that she is more, and
+in a sense better than that--yet not sufficiently more and better to make
+this flight to Charles anything but a still greater danger to her than a
+mere lover's impulse.  We shall go by way of Paris, and we think we may
+overtake her there.  I hear my father walking restlessly up and down the
+hall, and can write no more.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.--SHE TRAVELS IN PURSUIT
+
+
+April 16.  Evening, Paris, Hotel ---.--There is no overtaking her at this
+place; but she has been here, as I thought, no other hotel in Paris being
+known to her.  We go on to-morrow morning.
+
+April 18.  Venice.--A morning of adventures and emotions which leave me
+sick and weary, and yet unable to sleep, though I have lain down on the
+sofa of my room for more than an hour in the attempt.  I therefore make
+up my diary to date in a hurried fashion, for the sake of the riddance it
+affords to ideas which otherwise remain suspended hotly in the brain.
+
+We arrived here this morning in broad sunlight, which lit up the sea-girt
+buildings as we approached so that they seemed like a city of cork
+floating raft-like on the smooth, blue deep.  But I only glanced from the
+carriage window at the lovely scene, and we were soon across the
+intervening water and inside the railway station.  When we got to the
+front steps the row of black gondolas and the shouts of the gondoliers so
+bewildered my father that he was understood to require two gondolas
+instead of one with two oars, and so I found him in one and myself in
+another.  We got this righted after a while, and were rowed at once to
+the hotel on the Riva degli Schiavoni where M. de la Feste had been
+staying when we last heard from him, the way being down the Grand Canal
+for some distance, under the Rialto, and then by narrow canals which
+eventually brought us under the Bridge of Sighs--harmonious to our
+moods!--and out again into open water.  The scene was purity itself as to
+colour, but it was cruel that I should behold it for the first time under
+such circumstances.
+
+As soon as I entered the hotel, which is an old-fashioned place, like
+most places here, where people are taken en pension as well as the
+ordinary way, I rushed to the framed list of visitors hanging in the
+hall, and in a moment I saw Charles's name upon it among the rest.  But
+she was our chief thought.  I turned to the hall porter, and--knowing
+that she would have travelled as 'Madame de la Feste'--I asked for her
+under that name, without my father hearing.  (He, poor soul, was making
+confused inquiries outside the door about 'an English lady,' as if there
+were not a score of English ladies at hand.)
+
+'She has just come,' said the porter.  'Madame came by the very early
+train this morning, when Monsieur was asleep, and she requested us not to
+disturb him.  She is now in her room.'
+
+Whether Caroline had seen us from the window, or overheard me, I do not
+know, but at that moment I heard footsteps on the bare marble stairs, and
+she appeared in person descending.
+
+'Caroline!' I exclaimed, 'why have you done this?' and rushed up to her.
+
+She did not answer; but looked down to hide her emotion, which she
+conquered after the lapse of a few seconds, putting on a practical tone
+that belied her.
+
+'I am just going to my husband,' she said.  'I have not yet seen him.  I
+have not been here long.'  She condescended to give no further reason for
+her movements, and made as if to move on.  I implored her to come into a
+private room where I could speak to her in confidence, but she objected.
+However, the dining-room, close at hand, was quite empty at this hour,
+and I got her inside and closed the door.  I do not know how I began my
+explanation, or how I ended it, but I told her briefly and brokenly
+enough that the marriage was not real.
+
+'Not real?' she said vacantly.
+
+'It is not,' said I.  'You will find that it is all as I say.'
+
+She could not believe my meaning even then.  'Not his wife?' she cried.
+'It is impossible.  What am I, then?'
+
+I added more details, and reiterated the reason for my conduct as well as
+I could; but Heaven knows how very difficult I found it to feel a jot
+more justification for it in my own mind than she did in hers.
+
+The revulsion of feeling, as soon as she really comprehended all, was
+most distressing.  After her grief had in some measure spent itself she
+turned against both him and me.
+
+'Why should have I been deceived like this?' she demanded, with a bitter
+haughtiness of which I had not deemed such a tractable creature capable.
+'Do you suppose that anything could justify such an imposition?  What, O
+what a snare you have spread for me!'
+
+I murmured, 'Your life seemed to require it,' but she did not hear me.
+She sank down in a chair, covered her face, and then my father came in.
+'O, here you are!' he said.  'I could not find you.  And Caroline!'
+
+'And were you, papa, a party to this strange deed of kindness?'
+
+'To what?' said he.
+
+Then out it all came, and for the first time he was made acquainted with
+the fact that the scheme for soothing her illness, which I had sounded
+him upon, had been really carried out.  In a moment he sided with
+Caroline.  My repeated assurance that my motive was good availed less
+than nothing.  In a minute or two Caroline arose and went abruptly out of
+the room, and my father followed her, leaving me alone to my reflections.
+
+I was so bent upon finding Charles immediately that I did not notice
+whither they went.  The servants told me that M. de la Feste was just
+outside smoking, and one of them went to look for him, I following; but
+before we had gone many steps he came out of the hotel behind me.  I
+expected him to be amazed; but he showed no surprise at seeing me, though
+he showed another kind of feeling to an extent which dismayed me.  I may
+have revealed something similar; but I struggled hard against all
+emotion, and as soon as I could I told him she had come.  He simply said
+'Yes' in a low voice.
+
+'You know it, Charles?' said I.
+
+'I have just learnt it,' he said.
+
+'O, Charles,' I went on, 'having delayed completing your marriage with
+her till now, I fear--it has become a serious position for us.  Why did
+you not reply to our letters?'
+
+'I was purposing to reply in person: I did not know how to address her on
+the point--how to address you.  But what has become of her?'
+
+'She has gone off with my father,' said I; 'indignant with you, and
+scorning me.'
+
+He was silent: and I suggested that we should follow them, pointing out
+the direction which I fancied their gondola had taken.  As the one we got
+into was doubly manned we soon came in view of their two figures ahead of
+us, while they were not likely to observe us, our boat having the 'felze'
+on, while theirs was uncovered.  They shot into a narrow canal just
+beyond the Giardino Reale, and by the time we were floating up between
+its slimy walls we saw them getting out of their gondola at the steps
+which lead up near the end of the Via 22 Marzo.  When we reached the same
+spot they were walking up and down the Via in consultation.  Getting out
+he stood on the lower steps watching them.  I watched him.  He seemed to
+fall into a reverie.
+
+'Will you not go and speak to her?' said I at length.
+
+He assented, and went forward.  Still he did not hasten to join them,
+but, screened by a projecting window, observed their musing converse.  At
+last he looked back at me; whereupon I pointed forward, and he in
+obedience stepped out, and met them face to face.  Caroline flushed hot,
+bowed haughtily to him, turned away, and taking my father's arm
+violently, led him off before he had had time to use his own judgment.
+They disappeared into a narrow calle, or alley, leading to the back of
+the buildings on the Grand Canal.
+
+M. de la Feste came slowly back; as he stepped in beside me I realized my
+position so vividly that my heart might almost have been heard to beat.
+The third condition had arisen--the least expected by either of us.  She
+had refused him; he was free to claim me.
+
+We returned in the boat together.  He seemed quite absorbed till we had
+turned the angle into the Grand Canal, when he broke the silence.  'She
+spoke very bitterly to you in the salle-a-manger,' he said.  'I do not
+think she was quite warranted in speaking so to you, who had nursed her
+so tenderly.'
+
+'O, but I think she was,' I answered.  'It was there I told her what had
+been done; she did not know till then.'
+
+'She was very dignified--very striking,' he murmured.  'You were more.'
+
+'But how do you know what passed between us,' said I.  He then told me
+that he had seen and heard all.  The dining-room was divided by folding-
+doors from an inner portion, and he had been sitting in the latter part
+when we entered the outer, so that our words were distinctly audible.
+
+'But, dear Alicia,' he went on, 'I was more impressed by the affection of
+your apology to her than by anything else.  And do you know that now the
+conditions have arisen which give me liberty to consider you my
+affianced?'  I had been expecting this, but yet was not prepared.  I
+stammered out that we would not discuss it then.
+
+'Why not?' said he.  'Do you know that we may marry here and now?  She
+has cast off both you and me.'
+
+'It cannot be,' said I, firmly.  'She has not been fairly asked to be
+your wife in fact--to repeat the service lawfully; and until that has
+been done it would be grievous sin in me to accept you.'
+
+I had not noticed where the gondoliers were rowing us.  I suppose he had
+given them some direction unheard by me, for as I resigned myself in
+despairing indolence to the motion of the gondola, I perceived that it
+was taking us up the Canal, and, turning into a side opening near the
+Palazzo Grimani, drew up at some steps near the end of a large church.
+
+'Where are we?' said I.
+
+'It is the Church of the Frari,' he replied.  'We might be married there.
+At any rate, let us go inside, and grow calm, and decide what to do.'
+
+When we had entered I found that whether a place to marry in or not, it
+was one to depress.  The word which Venice speaks most
+constantly--decay--was in a sense accentuated here.  The whole large
+fabric itself seemed sinking into an earth which was not solid enough to
+bear it.  Cobwebbed cracks zigzagged the walls, and similar webs clouded
+the window-panes.  A sickly-sweet smell pervaded the aisles.  After
+walking about with him a little while in embarrassing silences, divided
+only by his cursory explanations of the monuments and other objects, and
+almost fearing he might produce a marriage licence, I went to a door in
+the south transept which opened into the sacristy.
+
+I glanced through it, towards the small altar at the upper end.  The
+place was empty save of one figure; and she was kneeling here in front of
+the beautiful altarpiece by Bellini.  Beautiful though it was she seemed
+not to see it.  She was weeping and praying as though her heart was
+broken.  She was my sister Caroline.  I beckoned to Charles, and he came
+to my side, and looked through the door with me.
+
+'Speak to her,' said I.  'She will forgive you.'
+
+I gently pushed him through the doorway, and went back into the transept,
+down the nave, and onward to the west door.  There I saw my father, to
+whom I spoke.  He answered severely that, having first obtained
+comfortable quarters in a pension on the Grand Canal, he had gone back to
+the hotel on the Riva degli Schiavoni to find me; but that I was not
+there.  He was now waiting for Caroline, to accompany her back to the
+pension, at which she had requested to be left to herself as much as
+possible till she could regain some composure.
+
+I told him that it was useless to dwell on what was past, that I no doubt
+had erred, that the remedy lay in the future and their marriage.  In this
+he quite agreed with me, and on my informing him that M. de la Feste was
+at that moment with Caroline in the sacristy, he assented to my proposal
+that we should leave them to themselves, and return together to await
+them at the pension, where he had also engaged a room for me.  This we
+did, and going up to the chamber he had chosen for me, which overlooked
+the Canal, I leant from the window to watch for the gondola that should
+contain Charles and my sister.
+
+They were not long in coming.  I recognized them by the colour of her
+sunshade as soon as they turned the bend on my right hand.  They were
+side by side of necessity, but there was no conversation between them,
+and I thought that she looked flushed and he pale.  When they were rowed
+in to the steps of our house he handed her up.  I fancied she might have
+refused his assistance, but she did not.  Soon I heard her pass my door,
+and wishing to know the result of their interview I went downstairs,
+seeing that the gondola had not put off with him.  He was turning from
+the door, but not towards the water, intending apparently to walk home by
+way of the calle which led into the Via 22 Marzo.
+
+'Has she forgiven you?' said I.
+
+'I have not asked her,' he said.
+
+'But you are bound to do so,' I told him.
+
+He paused, and then said, 'Alicia, let us understand each other.  Do you
+mean to tell me, once for all, that if your sister is willing to become
+my wife you absolutely make way for her, and will not entertain any
+thought of what I suggested to you any more?'
+
+'I do tell you so,' said I with dry lips.  'You belong to her--how can I
+do otherwise?'
+
+'Yes; it is so; it is purely a question of honour,' he returned.  'Very
+well then, honour shall be my word, and not my love.  I will put the
+question to her frankly; if she says yes, the marriage shall be.  But not
+here.  It shall be at your own house in England.'
+
+'When?' said I.
+
+'I will accompany her there,' he replied, 'and it shall be within a week
+of her return.  I have nothing to gain by delay.  But I will not answer
+for the consequences.'
+
+'What do you mean?' said I.  He made no reply, went away, and I came back
+to my room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.--SHE WITNESSES THE END
+
+
+April 20.  Milan, 10.30 p.m.--We are thus far on our way homeward.  I,
+being decidedly de trop, travel apart from the rest as much as I can.
+Having dined at the hotel here, I went out by myself; regardless of the
+proprieties, for I could not stay in.  I walked at a leisurely pace along
+the Via Allesandro Manzoni till my eye was caught by the grand Galleria
+Vittorio Emanuele, and I entered under the high glass arcades till I
+reached the central octagon, where I sat down on one of a group of chairs
+placed there.  Becoming accustomed to the stream of promenaders, I soon
+observed, seated on the chairs opposite, Caroline and Charles.  This was
+the first occasion on which I had seen them en tete-a-tete since my
+conversation with him.  She soon caught sight of me; averted her eyes;
+then, apparently abandoning herself to an impulse, she jumped up from her
+seat and came across to me.  We had not spoken to each other since the
+meeting in Venice.
+
+'Alicia,' she said, sitting down by my side, 'Charles asks me to forgive
+you, and I do forgive you.'
+
+I pressed her hand, with tears in my eyes, and said, 'And do you forgive
+him?'
+
+'Yes,' said she, shyly.
+
+'And what's the result?' said I.
+
+'We are to be married directly we reach home.'
+
+This was almost the whole of our conversation; she walked home with me,
+Charles following a little way behind, though she kept turning her head,
+as if anxious that he should overtake us.  'Honour and not love' seemed
+to ring in my ears.  So matters stand.  Caroline is again happy.
+
+April 25.--We have reached home, Charles with us.  Events are now moving
+in silent speed, almost with velocity, indeed; and I sometimes feel
+oppressed by the strange and preternatural ease which seems to accompany
+their flow.  Charles is staying at the neighbouring town; he is only
+waiting for the marriage licence; when obtained he is to come here, be
+quietly married to her, and carry her off.  It is rather resignation than
+content which sits on his face; but he has not spoken a word more to me
+on the burning subject, or deviated one hair's breadth from the course he
+laid down.  They may be happy in time to come: I hope so.  But I cannot
+shake off depression.
+
+May 6.--Eve of the wedding.  Caroline is serenely happy, though not
+blithe.  But there is nothing to excite anxiety about her.  I wish I
+could say the same of him.  He comes and goes like a ghost, and yet
+nobody seems to observe this strangeness in his mien.
+
+I could not help being here for the ceremony; but my absence would have
+resulted in less disquiet on his part, I believe.  However, I may be
+wrong in attributing causes: my father simply says that Charles and
+Caroline have as good a chance of being happy as other people.  Well, to-
+morrow settles all.
+
+May 7.--They are married: we have just returned from church.  Charles
+looked so pale this morning that my father asked him if he was ill.  He
+said, 'No: only a slight headache;' and we started for the church.
+
+There was no hitch or hindrance; and the thing is done.
+
+4 p.m.--They ought to have set out on their journey by this time; but
+there is an unaccountable delay.  Charles went out half-an-hour ago, and
+has not yet returned.  Caroline is waiting in the hall; but I am
+dreadfully afraid they will miss the train.  I suppose the trifling
+hindrance is of no account; and yet I am full of misgivings . . .
+
+Sept. 14.--Four months have passed; only four months!  It seems like
+years.  Can it be that only seventeen weeks ago I set on this paper the
+fact of their marriage?  I am now an aged woman by comparison!
+
+On that never to be forgotten day we waited and waited, and Charles did
+not return.  At six o'clock, when poor little Caroline had gone back to
+her room in a state of suspense impossible to describe, a man who worked
+in the water-meadows came to the house and asked for my father.  He had
+an interview with him in the study.  My father then rang his bell, and
+sent for me.  I went down; and I then learnt the fatal news.  Charles was
+no more.  The waterman had been going to shut down the hatches of a weir
+in the meads when he saw a hat on the edge of the pool below, floating
+round and round in the eddy, and looking into the pool saw something
+strange at the bottom.  He knew what it meant, and lowering the hatches
+so that the water was still, could distinctly see the body.  It is
+needless to write particulars that were in the newspapers at the time.
+Charles was brought to the house, but he was dead.
+
+We all feared for Caroline; and she suffered much; but strange to say,
+her suffering was purely of the nature of deep grief which found relief
+in sobbing and tears.  It came out at the inquest that Charles had been
+accustomed to cross the meads to give an occasional half-crown to an old
+man who lived on the opposite hill, who had once been a landscape painter
+in an humble way till he lost his eyesight; and it was assumed that he
+had gone thither for the same purpose to-day, and to bid him farewell.  On
+this information the coroner's jury found that his death had been caused
+by misadventure; and everybody believes to this hour that he was drowned
+while crossing the weir to relieve the old man.  Except one: she believes
+in no accident.  After the stunning effect of the first news, I thought
+it strange that he should have chosen to go on such an errand at the last
+moment, and to go personally, when there was so little time to spare,
+since any gift could have been so easily sent by another hand.  Further
+reflection has convinced me that this step out of life was as much a part
+of the day's plan as was the wedding in the church hard by.   They were
+the two halves of his complete intention when he gave me on the Grand
+Canal that assurance which I shall never forget: 'Very well, then; honour
+shall be my word, not love.  If she says "Yes," the marriage shall be.'
+
+I do not know why I should have made this entry at this particular time;
+but it has occurred to me to do it--to complete, in a measure, that part
+of my desultory chronicle which relates to the love-story of my sister
+and Charles.  She lives on meekly in her grief; and will probably outlive
+it; while I--but never mind me.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.--SHE ADDS A NOTE LONG AFTER
+
+
+Five-years later.--I have lighted upon this old diary, which it has
+interested me to look over, containing, as it does, records of the time
+when life shone more warmly in my eye than it does now.  I am impelled to
+add one sentence to round off its record of the past.  About a year ago
+my sister Caroline, after a persistent wooing, accepted the hand and
+heart of Theophilus Higham, once the blushing young Scripture reader who
+assisted at the substitute for a marriage I planned, and now the fully-
+ordained curate of the next parish.  His penitence for the part he played
+ended in love.  We have all now made atonement for our sins against her:
+may she be deceived no more.
+
+1887.
+
+
+
+
+THE GRAVE BY THE HANDPOST
+
+
+I never pass through Chalk-Newton without turning to regard the
+neighbouring upland, at a point where a lane crosses the lone straight
+highway dividing this from the next parish; a sight which does not fail
+to recall the event that once happened there; and, though it may seem
+superfluous, at this date, to disinter more memories of village history,
+the whispers of that spot may claim to be preserved.
+
+It was on a dark, yet mild and exceptionally dry evening at Christmas-
+time (according to the testimony of William Dewy of Mellstock, Michael
+Mail, and others), that the choir of Chalk-Newton--a large parish situate
+about half-way between the towns of Ivel and Casterbridge, and now a
+railway station--left their homes just before midnight to repeat their
+annual harmonies under the windows of the local population.  The band of
+instrumentalists and singers was one of the largest in the county; and,
+unlike the smaller and finer Mellstock string-band, which eschewed all
+but the catgut, it included brass and reed performers at full Sunday
+services, and reached all across the west gallery.
+
+On this night there were two or three violins, two 'cellos, a tenor viol,
+double bass, hautboy, clarionets, serpent, and seven singers.  It was,
+however, not the choir's labours, but what its members chanced to
+witness, that particularly marked the occasion.
+
+They had pursued their rounds for many years without meeting with any
+incident of an unusual kind, but to-night, according to the assertions of
+several, there prevailed, to begin with, an exceptionally solemn and
+thoughtful mood among two or three of the oldest in the band, as if they
+were thinking they might be joined by the phantoms of dead friends who
+had been of their number in earlier years, and now were mute in the
+churchyard under flattening mounds--friends who had shown greater zest
+for melody in their time than was shown in this; or that some past voice
+of a semi-transparent figure might quaver from some bedroom-window its
+acknowledgment of their nocturnal greeting, instead of a familiar living
+neighbour.  Whether this were fact or fancy, the younger members of the
+choir met together with their customary thoughtlessness and buoyancy.
+When they had gathered by the stone stump of the cross in the middle of
+the village, near the White Horse Inn, which they made their starting
+point, some one observed that they were full early, that it was not yet
+twelve o'clock.  The local waits of those days mostly refrained from
+sounding a note before Christmas morning had astronomically arrived, and
+not caring to return to their beer, they decided to begin with some
+outlying cottages in Sidlinch Lane, where the people had no clocks, and
+would not know whether it were night or morning.  In that direction they
+accordingly went; and as they ascended to higher ground their attention
+was attracted by a light beyond the houses, quite at the top of the lane.
+
+The road from Chalk-Newton to Broad Sidlinch is about two miles long and
+in the middle of its course, where it passes over the ridge dividing the
+two villages, it crosses at right angles, as has been stated, the lonely
+monotonous old highway known as Long Ash Lane, which runs, straight as a
+surveyor's line, many miles north and south of this spot, on the
+foundation of a Roman road, and has often been mentioned in these
+narratives.  Though now quite deserted and grass-grown, at the beginning
+of the century it was well kept and frequented by traffic.  The
+glimmering light appeared to come from the precise point where the roads
+intersected.
+
+'I think I know what that mid mean!' one of the group remarked.
+
+They stood a few moments, discussing the probability of the light having
+origin in an event of which rumours had reached them, and resolved to go
+up the hill.
+
+Approaching the high land their conjectures were strengthened.  Long Ash
+Lane cut athwart them, right and left; and they saw that at the junction
+of the four ways, under the hand-post, a grave was dug, into which, as
+the choir drew nigh, a corpse had just been thrown by the four Sidlinch
+men employed for the purpose.  The cart and horse which had brought the
+body thither stood silently by.
+
+The singers and musicians from Chalk-Newton halted, and looked on while
+the gravediggers shovelled in and trod down the earth, till, the hole
+being filled, the latter threw their spades into the cart, and prepared
+to depart.
+
+'Who mid ye be a-burying there?' asked Lot Swanhills in a raised voice.
+'Not the sergeant?'
+
+The Sidlinch men had been so deeply engrossed in their task that they had
+not noticed the lanterns of the Chalk-Newton choir till now.
+
+'What--be you the Newton carol-singers?' returned the representatives of
+Sidlinch.
+
+'Ay, sure.  Can it be that it is old Sergeant Holway you've a-buried
+there?'
+
+''Tis so.  You've heard about it, then?'
+
+The choir knew no particulars--only that he had shot himself in his apple-
+closet on the previous Sunday.  'Nobody seem'th to know what 'a did it
+for, 'a b'lieve?  Leastwise, we don't know at Chalk-Newton,' continued
+Lot.
+
+'O yes.  It all came out at the inquest.'
+
+The singers drew close, and the Sidlinch men, pausing to rest after their
+labours, told the story.  'It was all owing to that son of his, poor old
+man.  It broke his heart.'
+
+'But the son is a soldier, surely; now with his regiment in the East
+Indies?'
+
+'Ay.  And it have been rough with the army over there lately.  'Twas a
+pity his father persuaded him to go.  But Luke shouldn't have twyted the
+sergeant o't, since 'a did it for the best.'
+
+The circumstances, in brief, were these: The sergeant who had come to
+this lamentable end, father of the young soldier who had gone with his
+regiment to the East, had been singularly comfortable in his military
+experiences, these having ended long before the outbreak of the great war
+with France.  On his discharge, after duly serving his time, he had
+returned to his native village, and married, and taken kindly to domestic
+life.  But the war in which England next involved herself had cost him
+many frettings that age and infirmity prevented him from being ever again
+an active unit of the army.  When his only son grew to young manhood, and
+the question arose of his going out in life, the lad expressed his wish
+to be a mechanic.  But his father advised enthusiastically for the army.
+
+'Trade is coming to nothing in these days,' he said.  'And if the war
+with the French lasts, as it will, trade will be still worse.  The army,
+Luke--that's the thing for 'ee.  'Twas the making of me, and 'twill be
+the making of you.  I hadn't half such a chance as you'll have in these
+splendid hotter times.'
+
+Luke demurred, for he was a home-keeping, peace-loving youth.  But,
+putting respectful trust in his father's judgment, he at length gave way,
+and enlisted in the ---d Foot.  In the course of a few weeks he was sent
+out to India to his regiment, which had distinguished itself in the East
+under General Wellesley.
+
+But Luke was unlucky.  News came home indirectly that he lay sick out
+there; and then on one recent day when his father was out walking, the
+old man had received tidings that a letter awaited him at Casterbridge.
+The sergeant sent a special messenger the whole nine miles, and the
+letter was paid for and brought home; but though, as he had guessed, it
+came from Luke, its contents were of an unexpected tenor.
+
+The letter had been written during a time of deep depression.  Luke said
+that his life was a burden and a slavery, and bitterly reproached his
+father for advising him to embark on a career for which he felt unsuited.
+He found himself suffering fatigues and illnesses without gaining glory,
+and engaged in a cause which he did not understand or appreciate.  If it
+had not been for his father's bad advice he, Luke, would now have been
+working comfortably at a trade in the village that he had never wished to
+leave.
+
+After reading the letter the sergeant advanced a few steps till he was
+quite out of sight of everybody, and then sat down on the bank by the
+wayside.
+
+When he arose half-an-hour later he looked withered and broken, and from
+that day his natural spirits left him.  Wounded to the quick by his son's
+sarcastic stings, he indulged in liquor more and more frequently.  His
+wife had died some years before this date, and the sergeant lived alone
+in the house which had been hers.  One morning in the December under
+notice the report of a gun had been heard on his premises, and on
+entering the neighbours found him in a dying state.  He had shot himself
+with an old firelock that he used for scaring birds; and from what he had
+said the day before, and the arrangements he had made for his decease,
+there was no doubt that his end had been deliberately planned, as a
+consequence of the despondency into which he had been thrown by his son's
+letter.  The coroner's jury returned a verdict of felo de se.
+
+'Here's his son's letter,' said one of the Sidlinch men.  ''Twas found in
+his father's pocket.  You can see by the state o't how many times he read
+it over.  Howsomever, the Lord's will be done, since it must, whether or
+no.'
+
+The grave was filled up and levelled, no mound being shaped over it.  The
+Sidlinch men then bade the Chalk-Newton choir good-night, and departed
+with the cart in which they had brought the sergeant's body to the hill.
+When their tread had died away from the ear, and the wind swept over the
+isolated grave with its customary siffle of indifference, Lot Swanhills
+turned and spoke to old Richard Toller, the hautboy player.
+
+''Tis hard upon a man, and he a wold sojer, to serve en so, Richard.  Not
+that the sergeant was ever in a battle bigger than would go into a half-
+acre paddock, that's true.  Still, his soul ought to hae as good a chance
+as another man's, all the same, hey?'
+
+Richard replied that he was quite of the same opinion.  'What d'ye say to
+lifting up a carrel over his grave, as 'tis Christmas, and no hurry to
+begin down in parish, and 'twouldn't take up ten minutes, and not a soul
+up here to say us nay, or know anything about it?'
+
+Lot nodded assent.  'The man ought to hae his chances,' he repeated.
+
+'Ye may as well spet upon his grave, for all the good we shall do en by
+what we lift up, now he's got so far,' said Notton, the clarionet man and
+professed sceptic of the choir.  'But I'm agreed if the rest be.'
+
+They thereupon placed themselves in a semicircle by the newly stirred
+earth, and roused the dull air with the well-known Number Sixteen of
+their collection, which Lot gave out as being the one he thought best
+suited to the occasion and the mood
+
+   He comes' the pri'-soners to' re-lease',
+   In Sa'-tan's bon'-dage held'.
+
+'Jown it--we've never played to a dead man afore,' said Ezra Cattstock,
+when, having concluded the last verse, they stood reflecting for a breath
+or two.  'But it do seem more merciful than to go away and leave en, as
+they t'other fellers have done.'
+
+'Now backalong to Newton, and by the time we get overright the pa'son's
+'twill be half after twelve,' said the leader.
+
+They had not, however, done more than gather up their instruments when
+the wind brought to their notice the noise of a vehicle rapidly driven up
+the same lane from Sidlinch which the gravediggers had lately retraced.
+To avoid being run over when moving on, they waited till the benighted
+traveller, whoever he might be, should pass them where they stood in the
+wider area of the Cross.
+
+In half a minute the light of the lanterns fell upon a hired fly, drawn
+by a steaming and jaded horse.  It reached the hand-post, when a voice
+from the inside cried, 'Stop here!'  The driver pulled rein.  The
+carriage door was opened from within, and there leapt out a private
+soldier in the uniform of some line regiment.  He looked around, and was
+apparently surprised to see the musicians standing there.
+
+'Have you buried a man here?' he asked.
+
+'No.  We bain't Sidlinch folk, thank God; we be Newton choir.  Though a
+man is just buried here, that's true; and we've raised a carrel over the
+poor mortal's natomy.  What--do my eyes see before me young Luke Holway,
+that went wi' his regiment to the East Indies, or do I see his spirit
+straight from the battlefield?  Be you the son that wrote the letter--'
+
+'Don't--don't ask me.  The funeral is over, then?'
+
+'There wer no funeral, in a Christen manner of speaking.  But's buried,
+sure enough.  You must have met the men going back in the empty cart.'
+
+'Like a dog in a ditch, and all through me!'
+
+He remained silent, looking at the grave, and they could not help pitying
+him.  'My friends,' he said, 'I understand better now.  You have, I
+suppose, in neighbourly charity, sung peace to his soul?  I thank you,
+from my heart, for your kind pity.  Yes; I am Sergeant Holway's miserable
+son--I'm the son who has brought about his father's death, as truly as if
+I had done it with my own hand!'
+
+'No, no.  Don't ye take on so, young man.  He'd been naturally low for a
+good while, off and on, so we hear.'
+
+'We were out in the East when I wrote to him.  Everything had seemed to
+go wrong with me.  Just after my letter had gone we were ordered home.
+That's how it is you see me here.  As soon as we got into barracks at
+Casterbridge I heard o' this . . . Damn me!  I'll dare to follow my
+father, and make away with myself, too.  It is the only thing left to
+do!'
+
+'Don't ye be rash, Luke Holway, I say again; but try to make amends by
+your future life.  And maybe your father will smile a smile down from
+heaven upon 'ee for 't.'
+
+He shook his head.  'I don't know about that!' he answered bitterly.
+
+'Try and be worthy of your father at his best.  'Tis not too late.'
+
+'D'ye think not?  I fancy it is! . . . Well, I'll turn it over.  Thank
+you for your good counsel.  I'll live for one thing, at any rate.  I'll
+move father's body to a decent Christian churchyard, if I do it with my
+own hands.  I can't save his life, but I can give him an honourable
+grave.  He shan't lie in this accursed place!'
+
+'Ay, as our pa'son says, 'tis a barbarous custom they keep up at
+Sidlinch, and ought to be done away wi'.  The man a' old soldier, too.
+You see, our pa'son is not like yours at Sidlinch.'
+
+'He says it is barbarous, does he?  So it is!' cried the soldier.  'Now
+hearken, my friends.'  Then he proceeded to inquire if they would
+increase his indebtedness to them by undertaking the removal, privately,
+of the body of the suicide to the churchyard, not of Sidlinch, a parish
+he now hated, but of Chalk-Newton.  He would give them all he possessed
+to do it.
+
+Lot asked Ezra Cattstock what he thought of it.
+
+Cattstock, the 'cello player, who was also the sexton, demurred, and
+advised the young soldier to sound the rector about it first.  'Mid be he
+would object, and yet 'a mid'nt.  The pa'son o' Sidlinch is a hard man, I
+own ye, and 'a said if folk will kill theirselves in hot blood they must
+take the consequences.  But ours don't think like that at all, and might
+allow it.'
+
+'What's his name?'
+
+'The honourable and reverent Mr. Oldham, brother to Lord Wessex.  But you
+needn't be afeard o' en on that account.  He'll talk to 'ee like a common
+man, if so be you haven't had enough drink to gie 'ee bad breath.'
+
+'O, the same as formerly.  I'll ask him.  Thank you.  And that duty
+done--'
+
+'What then?'
+
+'There's war in Spain.  I hear our next move is there.  I'll try to show
+myself to be what my father wished me.  I don't suppose I shall--but I'll
+try in my feeble way.  That much I swear--here over his body.  So help me
+God.'
+
+Luke smacked his palm against the white hand-post with such force that it
+shook.  'Yes, there's war in Spain; and another chance for me to be
+worthy of father.'
+
+So the matter ended that night.  That the private acted in one thing as
+he had vowed to do soon became apparent, for during the Christmas week
+the rector came into the churchyard when Cattstock was there, and asked
+him to find a spot that would be suitable for the purpose of such an
+interment, adding that he had slightly known the late sergeant, and was
+not aware of any law which forbade him to assent to the removal, the
+letter of the rule having been observed.  But as he did not wish to seem
+moved by opposition to his neighbour at Sidlinch, he had stipulated that
+the act of charity should be carried out at night, and as privately as
+possible, and that the grave should be in an obscure part of the
+enclosure.  'You had better see the young man about it at once,' added
+the rector.
+
+But before Ezra had done anything Luke came down to his house.  His
+furlough had been cut short, owing to new developments of the war in the
+Peninsula, and being obliged to go back to his regiment immediately, he
+was compelled to leave the exhumation and reinterment to his friends.
+Everything was paid for, and he implored them all to see it carried out
+forthwith.
+
+With this the soldier left.  The next day Ezra, on thinking the matter
+over, again went across to the rectory, struck with sudden misgiving.  He
+had remembered that the sergeant had been buried without a coffin, and he
+was not sure that a stake had not been driven through him.  The business
+would be more troublesome than they had at first supposed.
+
+'Yes, indeed!' murmured the rector.  'I am afraid it is not feasible
+after all.'
+
+The next event was the arrival of a headstone by carrier from the nearest
+town; to be left at Mr. Ezra Cattstock's; all expenses paid.  The sexton
+and the carrier deposited the stone in the former's outhouse; and Ezra,
+left alone, put on his spectacles and read the brief and simple
+inscription:-
+
+   HERE LYETH THE BODY OF SAMUEL HOLWAY, LATE SERGEANT IN HIS MAJESTY'S
+   ---D REGIMENT OF FOOT, WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE DECEMBER THE 20TH, 180-.
+   ERECTED BY L. H.
+   'I AM NOT WORTHY TO BE CALLED THY SON.'
+
+Ezra again called at the riverside rectory.  'The stone is come, sir.  But
+I'm afeard we can't do it nohow.'
+
+'I should like to oblige him,' said the gentlemanly old incumbent.  'And
+I would forego all fees willingly.  Still, if you and the others don't
+think you can carry it out, I am in doubt what to say.'
+
+Well, sir; I've made inquiry of a Sidlinch woman as to his burial, and
+what I thought seems true.  They buried en wi' a new six-foot hurdle-saul
+drough's body, from the sheep-pen up in North Ewelease though they won't
+own to it now.  And the question is, Is the moving worth while,
+considering the awkwardness?'
+
+'Have you heard anything more of the young man?'
+
+Ezra had only heard that he had embarked that week for Spain with the
+rest of the regiment.  'And if he's as desperate as 'a seemed, we shall
+never see him here in England again.'
+
+'It is an awkward case,' said the rector.
+
+Ezra talked it over with the choir; one of whom suggested that the stone
+might be erected at the crossroads.  This was regarded as impracticable.
+Another said that it might be set up in the churchyard without removing
+the body; but this was seen to be dishonest.  So nothing was done.
+
+The headstone remained in Ezra's outhouse till, growing tired of seeing
+it there, he put it away among the bushes at the bottom of his garden.
+The subject was sometimes revived among them, but it always ended with:
+'Considering how 'a was buried, we can hardly make a job o't.'
+
+There was always the consciousness that Luke would never come back, an
+impression strengthened by the disasters which were rumoured to have
+befallen the army in Spain.  This tended to make their inertness
+permanent.  The headstone grew green as it lay on its back under Ezra's
+bushes; then a tree by the river was blown down, and, falling across the
+stone, cracked it in three pieces.  Ultimately the pieces became buried
+in the leaves and mould.
+
+Luke had not been born a Chalk-Newton man, and he had no relations left
+in Sidlinch, so that no tidings of him reached either village throughout
+the war.  But after Waterloo and the fall of Napoleon there arrived at
+Sidlinch one day an English sergeant-major covered with stripes and, as
+it turned out, rich in glory.  Foreign service had so totally changed
+Luke Holway that it was not until he told his name that the inhabitants
+recognized him as the sergeant's only son.
+
+He had served with unswerving effectiveness through the Peninsular
+campaigns under Wellington; had fought at Busaco, Fuentes d'Onore, Ciudad
+Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vittoria, Quatre Bras, and Waterloo; and had
+now returned to enjoy a more than earned pension and repose in his native
+district.
+
+He hardly stayed in Sidlinch longer than to take a meal on his arrival.
+The same evening he started on foot over the hill to Chalk-Newton,
+passing the hand-post, and saying as he glanced at the spot, 'Thank God:
+he's not there!'  Nightfall was approaching when he reached the latter
+village; but he made straight for the churchyard.  On his entering it
+there remained light enough to discern the headstones by, and these he
+narrowly scanned.  But though he searched the front part by the road, and
+the back part by the river, what he sought he could not find--the grave
+of Sergeant Holway, and a memorial bearing the inscription: 'I AM NOT
+WORTHY TO BE CALLED THY SON.'
+
+He left the churchyard and made inquiries.  The honourable and reverend
+old rector was dead, and so were many of the choir; but by degrees the
+sergeant-major learnt that his father still lay at the cross-roads in
+Long Ash Lane.
+
+Luke pursued his way moodily homewards, to do which, in the natural
+course, he would be compelled to repass the spot, there being no other
+road between the two villages.  But he could not now go by that place,
+vociferous with reproaches in his father's tones; and he got over the
+hedge and wandered deviously through the ploughed fields to avoid the
+scene.  Through many a fight and fatigue Luke had been sustained by the
+thought that he was restoring the family honour and making noble amends.
+Yet his father lay still in degradation.  It was rather a sentiment than
+a fact that his father's body had been made to suffer for his own
+misdeeds; but to his super-sensitiveness it seemed that his efforts to
+retrieve his character and to propitiate the shade of the insulted one
+had ended in failure.
+
+He endeavoured, however, to shake off his lethargy, and, not liking the
+associations of Sidlinch, hired a small cottage at Chalk-Newton which had
+long been empty.  Here he lived alone, becoming quite a hermit, and
+allowing no woman to enter the house.
+
+The Christmas after taking up his abode herein he was sitting in the
+chimney corner by himself, when he heard faint notes in the distance, and
+soon a melody burst forth immediately outside his own window, it came
+from the carol-singers, as usual; and though many of the old hands, Ezra
+and Lot included, had gone to their rest, the same old carols were still
+played out of the same old books.  There resounded through the sergeant-
+major's window-shutters the familiar lines that the deceased choir had
+rendered over his father's grave:-
+
+   He comes' the pri'-soners to' re-lease',
+   In Sa'-tan's bon'-dage held'.
+
+When they had finished they went on to another house, leaving him to
+silence and loneliness as before.
+
+The candle wanted snuffing, but he did not snuff it, and he sat on till
+it had burnt down into the socket and made waves of shadow on the
+ceiling.
+
+The Christmas cheerfulness of next morning was broken at breakfast-time
+by tragic intelligence which went down the village like wind.  Sergeant-
+Major Holway had been found shot through the head by his own hand at the
+cross-roads in Long Ash Lane where his father lay buried.
+
+On the table in the cottage he had left a piece of paper, on which he had
+written his wish that he might be buried at the Cross beside his father.
+But the paper was accidentally swept to the floor, and overlooked till
+after his funeral, which took place in the ordinary way in the
+churchyard.
+
+Christmas 1897.
+
+
+
+
+ENTER A DRAGOON
+
+
+I lately had a melancholy experience (said the gentleman who is
+answerable for the truth of this story).  It was that of going over a
+doomed house with whose outside aspect I had long been familiar--a house,
+that is, which by reason of age and dilapidation was to be pulled down
+during the following week.  Some of the thatch, brown and rotten as the
+gills of old mushrooms, had, indeed, been removed before I walked over
+the building.  Seeing that it was only a very small house--which is
+usually called a 'cottage-residence'--situated in a remote hamlet, and
+that it was not more than a hundred years old, if so much, I was led to
+think in my progress through the hollow rooms, with their cracked walls
+and sloping floors, what an exceptional number of abrupt family incidents
+had taken place therein--to reckon only those which had come to my own
+knowledge.  And no doubt there were many more of which I had never heard.
+
+It stood at the top of a garden stretching down to the lane or street
+that ran through a hermit-group of dwellings in Mellstock parish.  From a
+green gate at the lower entrance, over which the thorn hedge had been
+shaped to an arch by constant clippings, a gravel path ascended between
+the box edges of once trim raspberry, strawberry, and vegetable plots,
+towards the front door.  This was in colour an ancient and bleached green
+that could be rubbed off with the finger, and it bore a small
+long-featured brass knocker covered with verdigris in its crevices.  For
+some years before this eve of demolition the homestead had degenerated,
+and been divided into two tenements to serve as cottages for farm
+labourers; but in its prime it had indisputable claim to be considered
+neat, pretty, and genteel.
+
+The variety of incidents above alluded to was mainly owing to the nature
+of the tenure, whereby the place had been occupied by families not quite
+of the kind customary in such spots--people whose circumstances,
+position, or antecedents were more or less of a critical happy-go-lucky
+cast.  And of these residents the family whose term comprised the story I
+wish to relate was that of Mr. Jacob Paddock the market-gardener, who
+dwelt there for some years with his wife and grown-up daughter.
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+An evident commotion was agitating the premises, which jerked busy sounds
+across the front plot, resembling those of a disturbed hive.  If a member
+of the household appeared at the door it was with a countenance of
+abstraction and concern.
+
+Evening began to bend over the scene; and the other inhabitants of the
+hamlet came out to draw water, their common well being in the public road
+opposite the garden and house of the Paddocks.  Having wound up their
+bucketsfull respectively they lingered, and spoke significantly together.
+From their words any casual listener might have gathered information of
+what had occurred.
+
+The woodman who lived nearest the site of the story told most of the
+tale.  Selina, the daughter of the Paddocks opposite, had been surprised
+that afternoon by receiving a letter from her once intended husband, then
+a corporal, but now a sergeant-major of dragoons, whom she had hitherto
+supposed to be one of the slain in the Battle of the Alma two or three
+years before.
+
+'She picked up wi'en against her father's wish, as we know, and before he
+got his stripes,' their informant continued.  'Not but that the man was
+as hearty a feller as you'd meet this side o' London.  But Jacob, you
+see, wished her to do better, and one can understand it.  However, she
+was determined to stick to him at that time; and for what happened she
+was not much to blame, so near as they were to matrimony when the war
+broke out and spoiled all.'
+
+'Even the very pig had been killed for the wedding,' said a woman, 'and
+the barrel o' beer ordered in.  O, the man meant honourable enough.  But
+to be off in two days to fight in a foreign country--'twas natural of her
+father to say they should wait till he got back.'
+
+'And he never came,' murmured one in the shade.
+
+'The war ended but her man never turned up again.  She was not sure he
+was killed, but was too proud, or too timid, to go and hunt for him.'
+
+'One reason why her father forgave her when he found out how matters
+stood was, as he said plain at the time, that he liked the man, and could
+see that he meant to act straight.  So the old folks made the best of
+what they couldn't mend, and kept her there with 'em, when some wouldn't.
+Time has proved seemingly that he did mean to act straight, now that he
+has writ to her that he's coming.  She'd have stuck to him all through
+the time, 'tis my belief; if t'other hadn't come along.'
+
+'At the time of the courtship,' resumed the woodman, 'the regiment was
+quartered in Casterbridge Barracks, and he and she got acquainted by his
+calling to buy a penn'orth of rathe-ripes off that tree yonder in her
+father's orchard--though 'twas said he seed her over hedge as well as the
+apples.  He declared 'twas a kind of apple he much fancied; and he called
+for a penn'orth every day till the tree was cleared.  It ended in his
+calling for her.'
+
+''Twas a thousand pities they didn't jine up at once and ha' done wi' it.
+
+'Well; better late than never, if so be he'll have her now.  But, Lord,
+she'd that faith in 'en that she'd no more belief that he was alive, when
+a' didn't come, than that the undermost man in our churchyard was alive.
+She'd never have thought of another but for that--O no!'
+
+''Tis awkward, altogether, for her now.'
+
+'Still she hadn't married wi' the new man.  Though to be sure she would
+have committed it next week, even the licence being got, they say, for
+she'd have no banns this time, the first being so unfortunate.'
+
+'Perhaps the sergeant-major will think he's released, and go as he came.'
+
+'O, not as I reckon.  Soldiers bain't particular, and she's a tidy piece
+o' furniture still.  What will happen is that she'll have her soldier,
+and break off with the master-wheelwright, licence or no--daze me if she
+won't.'
+
+In the progress of these desultory conjectures the form of another
+neighbour arose in the gloom.  She nodded to the people at the well, who
+replied 'G'd night, Mrs. Stone,' as she passed through Mr. Paddock's gate
+towards his door.  She was an intimate friend of the latter's household,
+and the group followed her with their eyes up the path and past the
+windows, which were now lighted up by candles inside.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Mrs. Stone paused at the door, knocked, and was admitted by Selina's
+mother, who took her visitor at once into the parlour on the left hand,
+where a table was partly spread for supper.  On the 'beaufet' against the
+wall stood probably the only object which would have attracted the eye of
+a local stranger in an otherwise ordinarily furnished room, a great plum-
+cake guarded as if it were a curiosity by a glass shade of the kind seen
+in museums--square, with a wooden back like those enclosing stuffed
+specimens of rare feather or fur.  This was the mummy of the cake
+intended in earlier days for the wedding-feast of Selina and the soldier,
+which had been religiously and lovingly preserved by the former as a
+testimony to her intentional respectability in spite of an untoward
+subsequent circumstance, which will be mentioned.  This relic was now as
+dry as a brick, and seemed to belong to a pre-existent civilization.  Till
+quite recently, Selina had been in the habit of pausing before it daily,
+and recalling the accident whose consequences had thrown a shadow over
+her life ever since--that of which the water-drawers had spoken--the
+sudden news one morning that the Route had come for the ---th Dragoons,
+two days only being the interval before departure; the hurried
+consultation as to what should be done, the second time of asking being
+past but not the third; and the decision that it would be unwise to
+solemnize matrimony in such haphazard circumstances, even if it were
+possible, which was doubtful.
+
+Before the fire the young woman in question was now seated on a low
+stool, in the stillness of reverie, and a toddling boy played about the
+floor around her.
+
+'Ah, Mrs. Stone!' said Selina, rising slowly.  'How kind of you to come
+in.  You'll bide to supper?  Mother has told you the strange news, of
+course?'
+
+'No.  But I heard it outside, that is, that you'd had a letter from Mr.
+Clark--Sergeant-Major Clark, as they say he is now--and that he's coming
+to make it up with 'ee.'
+
+'Yes; coming to-night--all the way from the north of England where he's
+quartered.  I don't know whether I'm happy or--frightened at it.  Of
+course I always believed that if he was alive he'd come and keep his
+solemn vow to me.  But when it is printed that a man is killed--what can
+you think?'
+
+'It was printed?'
+
+'Why, yes.  After the Battle of the Alma the book of the names of the
+killed and wounded was nailed up against Casterbridge Town Hall door.
+'Twas on a Saturday, and I walked there o' purpose to read and see for
+myself; for I'd heard that his name was down.  There was a crowd of
+people round the book, looking for the names of relations; and I can mind
+that when they saw me they made way for me--knowing that we'd been just
+going to be married--and that, as you may say, I belonged to him.  Well,
+I reached up my arm, and turned over the farrels of the book, and under
+the "killed" I read his surname, but instead of "John" they'd printed
+"James," and I thought 'twas a mistake, and that it must be he.  Who
+could have guessed there were two nearly of one name in one regiment.'
+
+'Well--he's coming to finish the wedding of 'ee as may be said; so never
+mind, my dear.  All's well that ends well.'
+
+'That's what he seems to say.  But then he has not heard yet about Mr.
+Miller; and that's what rather terrifies me.  Luckily my marriage with
+him next week was to have been by licence, and not banns, as in John's
+case; and it was not so well known on that account.  Still, I don't know
+what to think.'
+
+'Everything seems to come just 'twixt cup and lip with 'ee, don't it now,
+Miss Paddock.  Two weddings broke off--'tis odd!  How came you to accept
+Mr. Miller, my dear?'
+
+'He's been so good and faithful!  Not minding about the child at all; for
+he knew the rights of the story.  He's dearly fond o' Johnny, you
+know--just as if 'twere his own--isn't he, my duck?  Do Mr. Miller love
+you or don't he?'
+
+'Iss!  An' I love Mr. Miller,' said the toddler.
+
+'Well, you see, Mrs. Stone, he said he'd make me a comfortable home; and
+thinking 'twould be a good thing for Johnny, Mr. Miller being so much
+better off than me, I agreed at last, just as a widow might--which is
+what I have always felt myself; ever since I saw what I thought was
+John's name printed there.  I hope John will forgive me!'
+
+'So he will forgive 'ee, since 'twas no manner of wrong to him.  He ought
+to have sent 'ee a line, saying 'twas another man.'
+
+Selina's mother entered.  'We've not known of this an hour, Mrs. Stone,'
+she said.  'The letter was brought up from Lower Mellstock Post-office by
+one of the school children, only this afternoon.  Mr. Miller was coming
+here this very night to settle about the wedding doings.  Hark!  Is that
+your father?  Or is it Mr. Miller already come?'
+
+The footsteps entered the porch; there was a brushing on the mat, and the
+door of the room sprung back to disclose a rubicund man about thirty
+years of age, of thriving master-mechanic appearance and obviously
+comfortable temper.  On seeing the child, and before taking any notice
+whatever of the elders, the comer made a noise like the crowing of a cock
+and flapped his arms as if they were wings, a method of entry which had
+the unqualified admiration of Johnny.
+
+'Yes--it is he,' said Selina constrainedly advancing.
+
+'What--were you all talking about me, my dear?' said the genial young man
+when he had finished his crowing and resumed human manners.  'Why what's
+the matter,' he went on.  'You look struck all of a heap.'  Mr. Miller
+spread an aspect of concern over his own face, and drew a chair up to the
+fire.
+
+'O mother, would you tell Mr. Miller, if he don't know?'
+
+'Mister Miller! and going to be married in six days!' he interposed.
+
+'Ah--he don't know it yet!' murmured Mrs. Paddock.
+
+'Know what?'
+
+'Well--John Clark--now Sergeant-Major Clark--wasn't shot at Alma after
+all.  'Twas another of almost the same name.'
+
+'Now that's interesting!  There were several cases like that.'
+
+'And he's home again; and he's coming here to-night to see her.'
+
+'Whatever shall I say, that he may not be offended with what I've done?'
+interposed Selina.
+
+'But why should it matter if he be?'
+
+'O!  I must agree to be his wife if he forgives me--of course I must.'
+
+'Must!  But why not say nay, Selina, even if he do forgive 'ee?'
+
+'O no!  How can I without being wicked?  You were very very kind, Mr.
+Miller, to ask me to have you; no other man would have done it after what
+had happened; and I agreed, even though I did not feel half so warm as I
+ought.  Yet it was entirely owing to my believing him in the grave, as I
+knew that if he were not he would carry out his promise; and this shows
+that I was right in trusting him.'
+
+'Yes . . . He must be a goodish sort of fellow,' said Mr. Miller, for a
+moment so impressed with the excellently faithful conduct of the sergeant-
+major of dragoons that he disregarded its effect upon his own position.
+He sighed slowly and added, 'Well, Selina, 'tis for you to say.  I love
+you, and I love the boy; and there's my chimney-corner and sticks o'
+furniture ready for 'ee both.'
+
+'Yes, I know!  But I mustn't hear it any more now,' murmured Selina
+quickly.  'John will be here soon.  I hope he'll see how it all was when
+I tell him.  If so be I could have written it to him it would have been
+better.'
+
+'You think he doesn't know a single word about our having been on the
+brink o't.  But perhaps it's the other way--he's heard of it and that may
+have brought him.
+
+'Ah--perhaps he has!' she said brightening.  'And already forgives me.'
+
+'If not, speak out straight and fair, and tell him exactly how it fell
+out.  If he's a man he'll see it.'
+
+'O he's a man true enough.  But I really do think I shan't have to tell
+him at all, since you've put it to me that way!'
+
+As it was now Johnny's bedtime he was carried upstairs, and when Selina
+came down again her mother observed with some anxiety, 'I fancy Mr. Clark
+must be here soon if he's coming; and that being so, perhaps Mr. Miller
+wouldn't mind--wishing us good-night! since you are so determined to
+stick to your sergeant-major.'  A little bitterness bubbled amid the
+closing words.  'It would be less awkward, Mr. Miller not being here--if
+he will allow me to say it.'
+
+'To be sure; to be sure,' the master-wheelwright exclaimed with instant
+conviction, rising alertly from his chair.  'Lord bless my soul,' he
+said, taking up his hat and stick, 'and we to have been married in six
+days!  But Selina--you're right.  You do belong to the child's father
+since he's alive.  I'll try to make the best of it.'
+
+Before the generous Miller had got further there came a knock to the door
+accompanied by the noise of wheels.
+
+'I thought I heard something driving up!' said Mrs Paddock.
+
+They heard Mr. Paddock, who had been smoking in the room opposite, rise
+and go to the door, and in a moment a voice familiar enough to Selina was
+audibly saying, 'At last I am here again--not without many interruptions!
+How is it with 'ee, Mr. Paddock?  And how is she?  Thought never to see
+me again, I suppose?'
+
+A step with a clink of spurs in it struck upon the entry floor.
+
+'Danged if I bain't catched!' murmured Mr. Miller, forgetting company-
+speech.  'Never mind--I may as well meet him here as elsewhere; and I
+should like to see the chap, and make friends with en, as he seems one o'
+the right sort.'  He returned to the fireplace just as the sergeant-major
+was ushered in.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+He was a good specimen of the long-service soldier of those days; a not
+unhandsome man, with a certain undemonstrative dignity, which some might
+have said to be partly owing to the stiffness of his uniform about his
+neck, the high stock being still worn.  He was much stouter than when
+Selina had parted from him.  Although she had not meant to be
+demonstrative she ran across to him directly she saw him, and he held her
+in his arms and kissed her.
+
+Then in much agitation she whispered something to him, at which he seemed
+to be much surprised.
+
+'He's just put to bed,' she continued.  'You can go up and see him.  I
+knew you'd come if you were alive!  But I had quite gi'd you up for dead.
+You've been home in England ever since the war ended?'
+
+'Yes, dear.'
+
+'Why didn't you come sooner?'
+
+'That's just what I ask myself!  Why was I such a sappy as not to hurry
+here the first day I set foot on shore!  Well, who'd have thought it--you
+are as pretty as ever!'
+
+He relinquished her to peep upstairs a little way, where, by looking
+through the ballusters, he could see Johnny's cot just within an open
+door.  On his stepping down again Mr. Miller was preparing to depart.
+
+'Now, what's this?  I am sorry to see anybody going the moment I've
+come,' expostulated the sergeant-major.  'I thought we might make an
+evening of it.  There's a nine gallon cask o' "Phoenix" beer outside in
+the trap, and a ham, and half a rawmil' cheese; for I thought you might
+be short o' forage in a lonely place like this; and it struck me we might
+like to ask in a neighbour or two.  But perhaps it would be taking a
+liberty?'
+
+'O no, not at all,' said Mr. Paddock, who was now in the room, in a
+judicial measured manner.  'Very thoughtful of 'ee, only 'twas not
+necessary, for we had just laid in an extry stock of eatables and
+drinkables in preparation for the coming event.'
+
+''Twas very kind, upon my heart,' said the soldier, 'to think me worth
+such a jocund preparation, since you could only have got my letter this
+morning.'
+
+Selina gazed at her father to stop him, and exchanged embarrassed glances
+with Miller.  Contrary to her hopes Sergeant-Major Clark plainly did not
+know that the preparations referred to were for something quite other
+than his own visit.
+
+The movement of the horse outside, and the impatient tapping of a whip-
+handle upon the vehicle reminded them that Clark's driver was still in
+waiting.  The provisions were brought into the house, and the cart
+dismissed.  Miller, with very little pressure indeed, accepted an
+invitation to supper, and a few neighbours were induced to come in to
+make up a cheerful party.
+
+During the laying of the meal, and throughout its continuance, Selina,
+who sat beside her first intended husband, tried frequently to break the
+news to him of her engagement to the other--now terminated so suddenly,
+and so happily for her heart, and her sense of womanly virtue.  But the
+talk ran entirely upon the late war; and though fortified by half a horn
+of the strong ale brought by the sergeant-major she decided that she
+might have a better opportunity when supper was over of revealing the
+situation to him in private.
+
+Having supped, Clark leaned back at ease in his chair and looked around.
+'We used sometimes to have a dance in that other room after supper,
+Selina dear, I recollect.  We used to clear out all the furniture into
+this room before beginning.  Have you kept up such goings on?'
+
+'No, not at all!' said his sweetheart, sadly.
+
+'We were not unlikely to revive it in a few days,' said Mr. Paddock.
+'But, howsomever, there's seemingly many a slip, as the saying is.'
+
+'Yes, I'll tell John all about that by and by!' interposed Selina; at
+which, perceiving that the secret which he did not like keeping was to be
+kept even yet, her father held his tongue with some show of testiness.
+
+The subject of a dance having been broached, to put the thought in
+practice was the feeling of all.  Soon after the tables and chairs were
+borne from the opposite room to this by zealous hands, and two of the
+villagers sent home for a fiddle and tambourine, when the majority began
+to tread a measure well known in that secluded vale.  Selina naturally
+danced with the sergeant-major, not altogether to her father's
+satisfaction, and to the real uneasiness of her mother, both of whom
+would have preferred a postponement of festivities till the rashly
+anticipated relationship between their daughter and Clark in the past had
+been made fact by the church's ordinances.  They did not, however,
+express a positive objection, Mr. Paddock remembering, with
+self-reproach, that it was owing to his original strongly expressed
+disapproval of Selina's being a soldier's wife that the wedding had been
+delayed, and finally hindered--with worse consequences than were
+expected; and ever since the misadventure brought about by his government
+he had allowed events to steer their own courses.
+
+'My tails will surely catch in your spurs, John!' murmured the daughter
+of the house, as she whirled around upon his arm with the rapt soul and
+look of a somnambulist.  'I didn't know we should dance, or I would have
+put on my other frock.'
+
+'I'll take care, my love.  We've danced here before.  Do you think your
+father objects to me now?  I've risen in rank.  I fancy he's still a
+little against me.'
+
+'He has repented, times enough.'
+
+'And so have I!  If I had married you then 'twould have saved many a
+misfortune.  I have sometimes thought it might have been possible to rush
+the ceremony through somehow before I left; though we were only in the
+second asking, were we?  And even if I had come back straight here when
+we returned from the Crimea, and married you then, how much happier I
+should have been!'
+
+'Dear John, to say that!  Why didn't you?'
+
+'O--dilatoriness and want of thought, and a fear of facing your father
+after so long.  I was in hospital a great while, you know.  But how
+familiar the place seems again!  What's that I saw on the beaufet in the
+other room?  It never used to be there.  A sort of withered corpse of a
+cake--not an old bride-cake surely?'
+
+'Yes, John, ours.  'Tis the very one that was made for our wedding three
+years ago.'
+
+'Sakes alive!  Why, time shuts up together, and all between then and now
+seems not to have been!  What became of that wedding-gown that they were
+making in this room, I remember--a bluish, whitish, frothy thing?'
+
+'I have that too.'
+
+'Really! . . . Why, Selina--'
+
+'Yes!'
+
+'Why not put it on now?'
+
+'Wouldn't it seem--.  And yet, O how I should like to!  It would remind
+them all, if we told them what it was, how we really meant to be married
+on that bygone day!'  Her eyes were again laden with wet.
+
+'Yes . . . The pity that we didn't--the pity!'  Moody mournfulness seemed
+to hold silent awhile one not naturally taciturn.  'Well--will you?' he
+said.
+
+'I will--the next dance, if mother don't mind.'
+
+Accordingly, just before the next figure was formed, Selina disappeared,
+and speedily came downstairs in a creased and box-worn, but still airy
+and pretty, muslin gown, which was indeed the very one that had been
+meant to grace her as a bride three years before.
+
+'It is dreadfully old-fashioned,' she apologized.
+
+'Not at all.  What a grand thought of mine!  Now, let's to't again.'
+
+She explained to some of them, as he led her to the second dance, what
+the frock had been meant for, and that she had put it on at his request.
+And again athwart and around the room they went.
+
+'You seem the bride!' he said.
+
+'But I couldn't wear this gown to be married in now!' she replied,
+ecstatically, 'or I shouldn't have put it on and made it dusty.  It is
+really too old-fashioned, and so folded and fretted out, you can't think.
+That was with my taking it out so many times to look at.  I have never
+put it on--never--till now!'
+
+'Selina, I am thinking of giving up the army.  Will you emigrate with me
+to New Zealand?  I've an uncle out there doing well, and he'd soon help
+me to making a larger income.  The English army is glorious, but it ain't
+altogether enriching.'
+
+'Of course, anywhere that you decide upon.  Is it healthy there for
+Johnny?'
+
+'A lovely climate.  And I shall never be happy in England . . . Aha!' he
+concluded again, with a bitterness of unexpected strength, 'would to
+Heaven I had come straight back here!'
+
+As the dance brought round one neighbour after another the re-united pair
+were thrown into juxtaposition with Bob Heartall among the rest who had
+been called in; one whose chronic expression was that he carried inside
+him a joke on the point of bursting with its own vastness.  He took
+occasion now to let out a little of its quality, shaking his head at
+Selina as he addressed her in an undertone--
+
+'This is a bit of a topper to the bridegroom, ho ho!  'Twill teach en the
+liberty you'll expect when you've married en!'
+
+'What does he mean by a "topper,"' the sergeant-major asked, who, not
+being of local extraction, despised the venerable local language, and
+also seemed to suppose 'bridegroom' to be an anticipatory name for
+himself.  'I only hope I shall never be worse treated than you've treated
+me to-night!'
+
+Selina looked frightened.  'He didn't mean you, dear,' she said as they
+moved on.  'We thought perhaps you knew what had happened, owing to your
+coming just at this time.  Had you--heard anything about--what I
+intended?'
+
+'Not a breath--how should I--away up in Yorkshire?  It was by the merest
+accident that I came just at this date to make peace with you for my
+delay.'
+
+'I was engaged to be married to Mr. Bartholomew Miller.  That's what it
+is!  I would have let 'ee know by letter, but there was no time, only
+hearing from 'ee this afternoon . . . You won't desert me for it, will
+you, John?  Because, as you know, I quite supposed you dead, and--and--'
+Her eyes were full of tears of trepidation, and he might have felt a sob
+heaving within her.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The soldier was silent during two or three double bars of the tune.  'When
+were you to have been married to the said Mr. Bartholomew Miller?' he
+inquired.
+
+'Quite soon.'
+
+'How soon?'
+
+'Next week--O yes--just the same as it was with you and me.  There's a
+strange fate of interruption hanging over me, I sometimes think!  He had
+bought the licence, which I preferred so that it mightn't be like--ours.
+But it made no difference to the fate of it.'
+
+'Had bought the licence!  The devil!'
+
+'Don't be angry, dear John.  I didn't know!'
+
+'No, no, I'm not angry.'
+
+'It was so kind of him, considering!'
+
+'Yes . . . I see, of course, how natural your action was--never thinking
+of seeing me any more!  Is it the Mr. Miller who is in this dance?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+Clark glanced round upon Bartholomew and was silent again, for some
+little while, and she stole a look at him, to find that he seemed
+changed.  'John, you look ill!' she almost sobbed.  ''Tisn't me, is it?'
+
+'O dear, no.  Though I hadn't, somehow, expected it.  I can't find fault
+with you for a moment--and I don't . . . This is a deuce of a long dance,
+don't you think?  We've been at it twenty minutes if a second, and the
+figure doesn't allow one much rest.  I'm quite out of breath.'
+
+'They like them so dreadfully long here.  Shall we drop out?  Or I'll
+stop the fiddler.'
+
+'O no, no, I think I can finish.  But although I look healthy enough I
+have never been so strong as I formerly was, since that long illness I
+had in the hospital at Scutari.'
+
+'And I knew nothing about it!'
+
+'You couldn't, dear, as I didn't write.  What a fool I have been
+altogether!'  He gave a twitch, as of one in pain.  'I won't dance again
+when this one is over.  The fact is I have travelled a long way to-day,
+and it seems to have knocked me up a bit.'
+
+There could be no doubt that the sergeant-major was unwell, and Selina
+made herself miserable by still believing that her story was the cause of
+his ailment.  Suddenly he said in a changed voice, and she perceived that
+he was paler than ever: 'I must sit down.'
+
+Letting go her waist he went quickly to the other room.  She followed,
+and found him in the nearest chair, his face bent down upon his hands and
+arms, which were resting on the table.
+
+'What's the matter?' said her father, who sat there dozing by the fire.
+
+'John isn't well . . . We are going to New Zealand when we are married,
+father.  A lovely country!  John, would you like something to drink?'
+
+'A drop o' that Schiedam of old Owlett's, that's under stairs, perhaps,'
+suggested her father.  'Not that nowadays 'tis much better than licensed
+liquor.'
+
+'John,' she said, putting her face close to his and pressing his arm.
+'Will you have a drop of spirits or something?'
+
+He did not reply, and Selina observed that his ear and the side of his
+face were quite white.  Convinced that his illness was serious, a growing
+dismay seized hold of her.  The dance ended; her mother came in, and
+learning what had happened, looked narrowly at the sergeant-major.
+
+'We must not let him lie like that, lift him up,' she said.  'Let him
+rest in the window-bench on some cushions.'
+
+They unfolded his arms and hands as they lay clasped upon the table, and
+on lifting his head found his features to bear the very impress of death
+itself.  Bartholomew Miller, who had now come in, assisted Mr. Paddock to
+make a comfortable couch in the window-seat, where they stretched out
+Clark upon his back.
+
+Still he seemed unconscious.  'We must get a doctor,' said Selina.  'O,
+my dear John, how is it you be taken like this?'
+
+'My impression is that he's dead!' murmured Mr. Paddock.  'He don't
+breathe enough to move a tomtit's feather.'
+
+There were plenty to volunteer to go for a doctor, but as it would be at
+least an hour before he could get there the case seemed somewhat
+hopeless.  The dancing-party ended as unceremoniously as it had begun;
+but the guests lingered round the premises till the doctor should arrive.
+When he did come the sergeant-major's extremities were already cold, and
+there was no doubt that death had overtaken him almost at the moment that
+he had sat down.
+
+The medical practitioner quite refused to accept the unhappy Selina's
+theory that her revelation had in any way induced Clark's sudden
+collapse.  Both he and the coroner afterwards, who found the immediate
+cause to be heart-failure, held that such a supposition was unwarranted
+by facts.  They asserted that a long day's journey, a hurried drive, and
+then an exhausting dance, were sufficient for such a result upon a heart
+enfeebled by fatty degeneration after the privations of a Crimean winter
+and other trying experiences, the coincidence of the sad event with any
+disclosure of hers being a pure accident.
+
+This conclusion, however, did not dislodge Selina's opinion that the
+shock of her statement had been the immediate stroke which had felled a
+constitution so undermined.
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+At this date the Casterbridge Barracks were cavalry quarters, their
+adaptation to artillery having been effected some years later.  It had
+been owing to the fact that the ---th Dragoons, in which John Clark had
+served, happened to be lying there that Selina made his acquaintance.  At
+the time of his death the barracks were occupied by the Scots Greys, but
+when the pathetic circumstances of the sergeant-major's end became known
+in the town the officers of the Greys offered the services of their fine
+reed and brass band, that he might have a funeral marked by due military
+honours.  His body was accordingly removed to the barracks, and carried
+thence to the churchyard in the Durnover quarter on the following
+afternoon, one of the Greys' most ancient and docile chargers being
+blacked up to represent Clark's horse on the occasion.
+
+Everybody pitied Selina, whose story was well known.  She followed the
+corpse as the only mourner, Clark having been without relations in this
+part of the country, and a communication with his regiment having brought
+none from a distance.  She sat in a little shabby brown-black mourning
+carriage, squeezing herself up in a corner to be as much as possible out
+of sight during the slow and dramatic march through the town to the tune
+from Saul.  When the interment had taken place, the volleys been fired,
+and the return journey begun, it was with something like a shock that she
+found the military escort to be moving at a quick march to the lively
+strains of 'Off she goes!' as if all care for the sergeant-major was
+expected to be ended with the late discharge of the carbines.  It was, by
+chance, the very tune to which they had been footing when he died, and
+unable to bear its notes, she hastily told her driver to drop behind.  The
+band and military party diminished up the High Street, and Selina turned
+over Swan bridge and homeward to Mellstock.
+
+Then recommenced for her a life whose incidents were precisely of a suit
+with those which had preceded the soldier's return; but how different in
+her appreciation of them!  Her narrow miss of the recovered
+respectability they had hoped for from that tardy event worked upon her
+parents as an irritant, and after the first week or two of her mourning
+her life with them grew almost insupportable.  She had impulsively taken
+to herself the weeds of a widow, for such she seemed to herself to be,
+and clothed little Johnny in sables likewise.  This assumption of a moral
+relationship to the deceased, which she asserted to be only not a legal
+one by two most unexpected accidents, led the old people to indulge in
+sarcasm at her expense whenever they beheld her attire, though all the
+while it cost them more pain to utter than it gave her to hear it.  Having
+become accustomed by her residence at home to the business carried on by
+her father, she surprised them one day by going off with the child to
+Chalk-Newton, in the direction of the town of Ivell, and opening a
+miniature fruit and vegetable shop, attending Ivell market with her
+produce.  Her business grew somewhat larger, and it was soon sufficient
+to enable her to support herself and the boy in comfort.  She called
+herself 'Mrs. John Clark' from the day of leaving home, and painted the
+name on her signboard--no man forbidding her.
+
+By degrees the pain of her state was forgotten in her new circumstances,
+and getting to be generally accepted as the widow of a sergeant-major of
+dragoons--an assumption which her modest and mournful demeanour seemed to
+substantiate--her life became a placid one, her mind being nourished by
+the melancholy luxury of dreaming what might have been her future in New
+Zealand with John, if he had only lived to take her there.  Her only
+travels now were a journey to Ivell on market-days, and once a fortnight
+to the churchyard in which Clark lay, there to tend, with Johnny's
+assistance, as widows are wont to do, the flowers she had planted upon
+his grave.
+
+On a day about eighteen months after his unexpected decease, Selina was
+surprised in her lodging over her little shop by a visit from Bartholomew
+Miller.  He had called on her once or twice before, on which occasions he
+had used without a word of comment the name by which she was known.
+
+'I've come this time,' he said, 'less because I was in this direction
+than to ask you, Mrs. Clark, what you mid well guess.  I've come o'
+purpose, in short.'
+
+She smiled.
+
+''Tis to ask me again to marry you?'
+
+'Yes, of course.  You see, his coming back for 'ee proved what I always
+believed of 'ee, though others didn't.  There's nobody but would be glad
+to welcome you to our parish again, now you've showed your independence
+and acted up to your trust in his promise.  Well, my dear, will you
+come?'
+
+'I'd rather bide as Mrs. Clark, I think,' she answered.  'I am not
+ashamed of my position at all; for I am John's widow in the eyes of
+Heaven.'
+
+'I quite agree--that's why I've come.  Still, you won't like to be always
+straining at this shop-keeping and market-standing; and 'twould be better
+for Johnny if you had nothing to do but tend him.'
+
+He here touched the only weak spot in Selina's resistance to his
+proposal--the good of the boy.  To promote that there were other men she
+might have married offhand without loving them if they had asked her to;
+but though she had known the worthy speaker from her youth, she could not
+for the moment fancy herself happy as Mrs. Miller.
+
+He paused awhile.  'I ought to tell 'ee, Mrs. Clark,' he said by and by,
+'that marrying is getting to be a pressing question with me.  Not on my
+own account at all.  The truth is, that mother is growing old, and I am
+away from home a good deal, so that it is almost necessary there should
+be another person in the house with her besides me.  That's the practical
+consideration which forces me to think of taking a wife, apart from my
+wish to take you; and you know there's nobody in the world I care for so
+much.'
+
+She said something about there being far better women than she, and other
+natural commonplaces; but assured him she was most grateful to him for
+feeling what he felt, as indeed she sincerely was.  However, Selina would
+not consent to be the useful third person in his comfortable home--at any
+rate just then.  He went away, after taking tea with her, without
+discerning much hope for him in her good-bye.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+After that evening she saw and heard nothing of him for a great while.
+Her fortnightly journeys to the sergeant-major's grave were continued,
+whenever weather did not hinder them; and Mr. Miller must have known, she
+thought, of this custom of hers.  But though the churchyard was not
+nearly so far from his homestead as was her shop at Chalk-Newton, he
+never appeared in the accidental way that lovers use.
+
+An explanation was forthcoming in the shape of a letter from her mother,
+who casually mentioned that Mr. Bartholomew Miller had gone away to the
+other side of Shottsford-Forum to be married to a thriving dairyman's
+daughter that he knew there.  His chief motive, it was reported, had been
+less one of love than a wish to provide a companion for his aged mother.
+
+Selina was practical enough to know that she had lost a good and possibly
+the only opportunity of settling in life after what had happened, and for
+a moment she regretted her independence.  But she became calm on
+reflection, and to fortify herself in her course started that afternoon
+to tend the sergeant-major's grave, in which she took the same sober
+pleasure as at first.
+
+On reaching the churchyard and turning the corner towards the spot as
+usual, she was surprised to perceive another woman, also apparently a
+respectable widow, and with a tiny boy by her side, bending over Clark's
+turf, and spudding up with the point of her umbrella some ivy-roots that
+Selina had reverently planted there to form an evergreen mantle over the
+mound.
+
+'What are you digging up my ivy for!' cried Selina, rushing forward so
+excitedly that Johnny tumbled over a grave with the force of the tug she
+gave his hand in her sudden start.
+
+'Your ivy?' said the respectable woman.
+
+'Why yes!  I planted it there--on my husband's grave.'
+
+'Your husband's!'
+
+'Yes.  The late Sergeant-Major Clark.  Anyhow, as good as my husband, for
+he was just going to be.'
+
+'Indeed.  But who may be my husband, if not he?  I am the only Mrs. John
+Clark, widow of the late Sergeant-Major of Dragoons, and this is his only
+son and heir.'
+
+'How can that be?' faltered Selina, her throat seeming to stick together
+as she just began to perceive its possibility.  'He had been--going to
+marry me twice--and we were going to New Zealand.'
+
+'Ah!--I remember about you,' returned the legitimate widow calmly and not
+unkindly.  'You must be Selina; he spoke of you now and then, and said
+that his relations with you would always be a weight on his conscience.
+Well; the history of my life with him is soon told.  When he came back
+from the Crimea he became acquainted with me at my home in the north, and
+we were married within a month of first knowing each other.
+Unfortunately, after living together a few months, we could not agree;
+and after a particularly sharp quarrel, in which, perhaps, I was most in
+the wrong--as I don't mind owning here by his graveside--he went away
+from me, declaring he would buy his discharge and emigrate to New
+Zealand, and never come back to me any more.  The next thing I heard was
+that he had died suddenly at Mellstock at some low carouse; and as he had
+left me in such anger to live no more with me, I wouldn't come down to
+his funeral, or do anything in relation to him.  'Twas temper, I know,
+but that was the fact.  Even if we had parted friends it would have been
+a serious expense to travel three hundred miles to get there, for one who
+wasn't left so very well off . . . I am sorry I pulled up your ivy-roots;
+but that common sort of ivy is considered a weed in my part of the
+country.'
+
+December 1899.
+
+
+
+
+A TRYST AT AN ANCIENT EARTH WORK
+
+
+At one's every step forward it rises higher against the south sky, with
+an obtrusive personality that compels the senses to regard it and
+consider.  The eyes may bend in another direction, but never without the
+consciousness of its heavy, high-shouldered presence at its point of
+vantage.  Across the intervening levels the gale races in a straight line
+from the fort, as if breathed out of it hitherward.  With the shifting of
+the clouds the faces of the steeps vary in colour and in shade, broad
+lights appearing where mist and vagueness had prevailed, dissolving in
+their turn into melancholy gray, which spreads over and eclipses the
+luminous bluffs.  In this so-thought immutable spectacle all is change.
+
+Out of the invisible marine region on the other side birds soar suddenly
+into the air, and hang over the summits of the heights with the
+indifference of long familiarity.  Their forms are white against the
+tawny concave of cloud, and the curves they exhibit in their floating
+signify that they are sea-gulls which have journeyed inland from expected
+stress of weather.  As the birds rise behind the fort, so do the clouds
+rise behind the birds, almost as it seems, stroking with their bagging
+bosoms the uppermost flyers.
+
+The profile of the whole stupendous ruin, as seen at a distance of a mile
+eastward, is cleanly cut as that of a marble inlay.  It is varied with
+protuberances, which from hereabouts have the animal aspect of warts,
+wens, knuckles, and hips.  It may indeed be likened to an enormous many-
+limbed organism of an antediluvian time--partaking of the cephalopod in
+shape--lying lifeless, and covered with a thin green cloth, which hides
+its substance, while revealing its contour.  This dull green mantle of
+herbage stretches down towards the levels, where the ploughs have essayed
+for centuries to creep up near and yet nearer to the base of the castle,
+but have always stopped short before reaching it.  The furrows of these
+environing attempts show themselves distinctly, bending to the incline as
+they trench upon it; mounting in steeper curves, till the steepness
+baffles them, and their parallel threads show like the striae of waves
+pausing on the curl.  The peculiar place of which these are some of the
+features is 'Mai-Dun,' 'The Castle of the Great Hill,' said to be the
+Dunium of Ptolemy, the capital of the Durotriges, which eventually came
+into Roman occupation, and was finally deserted on their withdrawal from
+the island.
+
+* * * * *
+
+The evening is followed by a night on which an invisible moon bestows a
+subdued, yet pervasive light--without radiance, as without blackness.
+From the spot whereon I am ensconced in a cottage, a mile away, the fort
+has now ceased to be visible; yet, as by day, to anybody whose thoughts
+have been engaged with it and its barbarous grandeurs of past time the
+form asserts its existence behind the night gauzes as persistently as if
+it had a voice.  Moreover, the south-west wind continues to feed the
+intervening arable flats with vapours brought directly from its sides.
+
+The midnight hour for which there has been occasion to wait at length
+arrives, and I journey towards the stronghold in obedience to a request
+urged earlier in the day.  It concerns an appointment, which I rather
+regret my decision to keep now that night is come.  The route thither is
+hedgeless and treeless--I need not add deserted.  The moonlight is
+sufficient to disclose the pale riband-like surface of the way as it
+trails along between the expanses of darker fallow.  Though the road
+passes near the fortress it does not conduct directly to its fronts.  As
+the place is without an inhabitant, so it is without a trackway.  So
+presently leaving the macadamized road to pursue its course elsewhither,
+I step off upon the fallow, and plod stumblingly across it.  The castle
+looms out off the shade by degrees, like a thing waking up and asking
+what I want there.  It is now so enlarged by nearness that its whole
+shape cannot be taken in at one view.  The ploughed ground ends as the
+rise sharpens, the sloping basement of grass begins, and I climb upward
+to invade Mai-Dun.
+
+Impressive by day as this largest Ancient-British work in the kingdom
+undoubtedly is, its impressiveness is increased now.  After standing
+still and spending a few minutes in adding its age to its size, and its
+size to its solitude, it becomes appallingly mournful in its growing
+closeness.  A squally wind blows in the face with an impact which
+proclaims that the vapours of the air sail low to-night.  The slope that
+I so laboriously clamber up the wind skips sportively down.  Its track
+can be discerned even in this light by the undulations of the withered
+grass-bents--the only produce of this upland summit except moss.  Four
+minutes of ascent, and a vantage-ground of some sort is gained.  It is
+only the crest of the outer rampart.  Immediately within this a chasm
+gapes; its bottom is imperceptible, but the counterscarp slopes not too
+steeply to admit of a sliding descent if cautiously performed.  The shady
+bottom, dank and chilly, is thus gained, and reveals itself as a kind of
+winding lane, wide enough for a waggon to pass along, floored with rank
+herbage, and trending away, right and left, into obscurity, between the
+concentric walls of earth.  The towering closeness of these on each hand,
+their impenetrability, and their ponderousness, are felt as a physical
+pressure.  The way is now up the second of them, which stands steeper and
+higher than the first.  To turn aside, as did Christian's companion, from
+such a Hill Difficulty, is the more natural tendency; but the way to the
+interior is upward.  There is, of course, an entrance to the fortress;
+but that lies far off on the other side.  It might possibly have been the
+wiser course to seek for easier ingress there.
+
+However, being here, I ascend the second acclivity.  The grass stems--the
+grey beard of the hill--sway in a mass close to my stooping face.  The
+dead heads of these various grasses--fescues, fox-tails, and ryes--bob
+and twitch as if pulled by a string underground.  From a few thistles a
+whistling proceeds; and even the moss speaks, in its humble way, under
+the stress of the blast.
+
+That the summit of the second line of defence has been gained is suddenly
+made known by a contrasting wind from a new quarter, coming over with the
+curve of a cascade.  These novel gusts raise a sound from the whole camp
+or castle, playing upon it bodily as upon a harp.  It is with some
+difficulty that a foothold can be preserved under their sweep.  Looking
+aloft for a moment I perceive that the sky is much more overcast than it
+has been hitherto, and in a few instants a dead lull in what is now a
+gale ensues with almost preternatural abruptness.  I take advantage of
+this to sidle down the second counterscarp, but by the time the ditch is
+reached the lull reveals itself to be but the precursor of a storm.  It
+begins with a heave of the whole atmosphere, like the sigh of a weary
+strong man on turning to re-commence unusual exertion, just as I stand
+here in the second fosse.  That which now radiates from the sky upon the
+scene is not so much light as vaporous phosphorescence.
+
+The wind, quickening, abandons the natural direction it has pursued on
+the open upland, and takes the course of the gorge's length, rushing
+along therein helter-skelter, and carrying thick rain upon its back.  The
+rain is followed by hailstones which fly through the defile in
+battalions--rolling, hopping, ricochetting, snapping, clattering down the
+shelving banks in an undefinable haze of confusion.  The earthen sides of
+the fosse seem to quiver under the drenching onset, though it is
+practically no more to them than the blows of Thor upon the giant of
+Jotun-land.  It is impossible to proceed further till the storm somewhat
+abates, and I draw up behind a spur of the inner scarp, where possibly a
+barricade stood two thousand years ago; and thus await events.
+
+* * * * *
+
+The roar of the storm can be heard travelling the complete circuit of the
+castle--a measured mile--coming round at intervals like a
+circumambulating column of infantry.  Doubtless such a column has passed
+this way in its time, but the only columns which enter in these latter
+days are the columns of sheep and oxen that are sometimes seen here now;
+while the only semblance of heroic voices heard are the utterances of
+such, and of the many winds which make their passage through the ravines.
+
+The expected lightning radiates round, and a rumbling as from its
+subterranean vaults--if there are any--fills the castle.  The lightning
+repeats itself, and, coming after the aforesaid thoughts of martial men,
+it bears a fanciful resemblance to swords moving in combat.  It has the
+very brassy hue of the ancient weapons that here were used.  The so
+sudden entry upon the scene of this metallic flame is as the entry of a
+presiding exhibitor who unrolls the maps, uncurtains the pictures,
+unlocks the cabinets, and effects a transformation by merely exposing the
+materials of his science, unintelligibly cloaked till then.  The abrupt
+configuration of the bluffs and mounds is now for the first time clearly
+revealed--mounds whereon, doubtless, spears and shields have frequently
+lain while their owners loosened their sandals and yawned and stretched
+their arms in the sun.  For the first time, too, a glimpse is obtainable
+of the true entrance used by its occupants of old, some way ahead.
+
+There, where all passage has seemed to be inviolably barred by an almost
+vertical facade, the ramparts are found to overlap each other like
+loosely clasped fingers, between which a zigzag path may be followed--a
+cunning construction that puzzles the uninformed eye.  But its cunning,
+even where not obscured by dilapidation, is now wasted on the solitary
+forms of a few wild badgers, rabbits, and hares.  Men must have often
+gone out by those gates in the morning to battle with the Roman legions
+under Vespasian; some to return no more, others to come back at evening,
+bringing with them the noise of their heroic deeds.  But not a page, not
+a stone, has preserved their fame.
+
+* * * * *
+
+Acoustic perceptions multiply to-night.  We can almost hear the stream of
+years that have borne those deeds away from us.  Strange articulations
+seem to float on the air from that point, the gateway, where the
+animation in past times must frequently have concentrated itself at hours
+of coming and going, and general excitement.  There arises an
+ineradicable fancy that they are human voices; if so, they must be the
+lingering air-borne vibrations of conversations uttered at least fifteen
+hundred years ago.  The attention is attracted from mere nebulous
+imaginings about yonder spot by a real moving of something close at hand.
+
+I recognize by the now moderate flashes of lightning, which are sheet-
+like and nearly continuous, that it is the gradual elevation of a small
+mound of earth.  At first no larger than a man's fist it reaches the
+dimensions of a hat, then sinks a little and is still.  It is but the
+heaving of a mole who chooses such weather as this to work in from some
+instinct that there will be nobody abroad to molest him.  As the fine
+earth lifts and lifts and falls loosely aside fragments of burnt clay
+roll out of it--clay that once formed part of cups or other vessels used
+by the inhabitants of the fortress.
+
+The violence of the storm has been counterbalanced by its transitoriness.
+From being immersed in well-nigh solid media of cloud and hail shot with
+lightning, I find myself uncovered of the humid investiture and left bare
+to the mild gaze of the moon, which sparkles now on every wet grass-blade
+and frond of moss.
+
+But I am not yet inside the fort, and the delayed ascent of the third and
+last escarpment is now made.  It is steeper than either.  The first was a
+surface to walk up, the second to stagger up, the third can only be
+ascended on the hands and toes.  On the summit obtrudes the first
+evidence which has been met with in these precincts that the time is
+really the nineteenth century; it is in the form of a white notice-board
+on a post, and the wording can just be discerned by the rays of the
+setting moon:
+
+CAUTION.--Any Person found removing Relics, Skeletons, Stones, Pottery,
+Tiles, or other Material from this Earthwork, or cutting up the Ground,
+will be Prosecuted as the Law directs.
+
+Here one observes a difference underfoot from what has gone before:
+scraps of Roman tile and stone chippings protrude through the grass in
+meagre quantity, but sufficient to suggest that masonry stood on the
+spot.  Before the eye stretches under the moonlight the interior of the
+fort.  So open and so large is it as to be practically an upland plateau,
+and yet its area lies wholly within the walls of what may be designated
+as one building.  It is a long-violated retreat; all its corner-stones,
+plinths, and architraves were carried away to build neighbouring villages
+even before mediaeval or modern history began.  Many a block which once
+may have helped to form a bastion here rests now in broken and diminished
+shape as part of the chimney-corner of some shepherd's cottage within the
+distant horizon, and the corner-stones of this heathen altar may form the
+base-course of some adjoining village church.
+
+Yet the very bareness of these inner courts and wards, their condition of
+mere pasturage, protects what remains of them as no defences could do.
+Nothing is left visible that the hands can seize on or the weather
+overturn, and a permanence of general outline at least results, which no
+other condition could ensure.
+
+The position of the castle on this isolated hill bespeaks deliberate and
+strategic choice exercised by some remote mind capable of prospective
+reasoning to a far extent.  The natural configuration of the surrounding
+country and its bearing upon such a stronghold were obviously long
+considered and viewed mentally before its extensive design was carried
+into execution.  Who was the man that said, 'Let it be built here!'--not
+on that hill yonder, or on that ridge behind, but on this best spot of
+all?  Whether he were some great one of the Belgae, or of the Durotriges,
+or the travelling engineer of Britain's united tribes, must for ever
+remain time's secret; his form cannot be realized, nor his countenance,
+nor the tongue that he spoke, when he set down his foot with a thud and
+said, 'Let it be here!'
+
+Within the innermost enclosure, though it is so wide that at a
+superficial glance the beholder has only a sense of standing on a breezy
+down, the solitude is rendered yet more solitary by the knowledge that
+between the benighted sojourner herein and all kindred humanity are those
+three concentric walls of earth which no being would think of scaling on
+such a night as this, even were he to hear the most pathetic cries
+issuing hence that could be uttered by a spectre-chased soul.  I reach a
+central mound or platform--the crown and axis of the whole structure.  The
+view from here by day must be of almost limitless extent.  On this raised
+floor, dais, or rostrum, harps have probably twanged more or less tuneful
+notes in celebration of daring, strength, or cruelty; of worship,
+superstition, love, birth, and death; of simple loving-kindness perhaps
+never.  Many a time must the king or leader have directed his keen eyes
+hence across the open lands towards the ancient road, the Icening Way,
+still visible in the distance, on the watch for armed companies
+approaching either to succour or to attack.
+
+I am startled by a voice pronouncing my name.  Past and present have
+become so confusedly mingled under the associations of the spot that for
+a time it has escaped my memory that this mound was the place agreed on
+for the aforesaid appointment.  I turn and behold my friend.  He stands
+with a dark lantern in his hand and a spade and light pickaxe over his
+shoulder.  He expresses both delight and surprise that I have come.  I
+tell him I had set out before the bad weather began.
+
+He, to whom neither weather, darkness, nor difficulty seems to have any
+relation or significance, so entirely is his soul wrapped up in his own
+deep intentions, asks me to take the lantern and accompany him.  I take
+it and walk by his side.  He is a man about sixty, small in figure, with
+grey old-fashioned whiskers cut to the shape of a pair of crumb-brushes.
+He is entirely in black broadcloth--or rather, at present, black and
+brown, for he is bespattered with mud from his heels to the crown of his
+low hat.  He has no consciousness of this--no sense of anything but his
+purpose, his ardour for which causes his eyes to shine like those of a
+lynx, and gives his motions, all the elasticity of an athlete's.
+
+'Nobody to interrupt us at this time of night!' he chuckles with fierce
+enjoyment.
+
+We retreat a little way and find a sort of angle, an elevation in the
+sod, a suggested squareness amid the mass of irregularities around.  Here,
+he tells me, if anywhere, the king's house stood.  Three months of
+measurement and calculation have confirmed him in this conclusion.
+
+He requests me now to open the lantern, which I do, and the light streams
+out upon the wet sod.  At last divining his proceedings I say that I had
+no idea, in keeping the tryst, that he was going to do more at such an
+unusual time than meet me for a meditative ramble through the stronghold.
+I ask him why, having a practicable object, he should have minded
+interruptions and not have chosen the day?  He informs me, quietly
+pointing to his spade, that it was because his purpose is to dig, then
+signifying with a grim nod the gaunt notice-post against the sky beyond.
+I inquire why, as a professed and well-known antiquary with capital
+letters at the tail of his name, he did not obtain the necessary
+authority, considering the stringent penalties for this sort of thing;
+and he chuckles fiercely again with suppressed delight, and says,
+'Because they wouldn't have given it!'
+
+He at once begins cutting up the sod, and, as he takes the pickaxe to
+follow on with, assures me that, penalty or no penalty, honest men or
+marauders, he is sure of one thing, that we shall not be disturbed at our
+work till after dawn.
+
+I remember to have heard of men who, in their enthusiasm for some special
+science, art, or hobby, have quite lost the moral sense which would
+restrain them from indulging it illegitimately; and I conjecture that
+here, at last, is an instance of such an one.  He probably guesses the
+way my thoughts travel, for he stands up and solemnly asserts that he has
+a distinctly justifiable intention in this matter; namely, to uncover, to
+search, to verify a theory or displace it, and to cover up again.  He
+means to take away nothing--not a grain of sand.  In this he says he sees
+no such monstrous sin.  I inquire if this is really a promise to me?  He
+repeats that it is a promise, and resumes digging.  My contribution to
+the labour is that of directing the light constantly upon the hole.  When
+he has reached something more than a foot deep he digs more cautiously,
+saying that, be it much or little there, it will not lie far below the
+surface; such things never are deep.  A few minutes later the point of
+the pickaxe clicks upon a stony substance.  He draws the implement out as
+feelingly as if it had entered a man's body.  Taking up the spade he
+shovels with care, and a surface, level as an altar, is presently
+disclosed.  His eyes flash anew; he pulls handfuls of grass and mops the
+surface clean, finally rubbing it with his handkerchief.  Grasping the
+lantern from my hand he holds it close to the ground, when the rays
+reveal a complete mosaic--a pavement of minute tesserae of many colours,
+of intricate pattern, a work of much art, of much time, and of much
+industry.  He exclaims in a shout that he knew it always--that it is not
+a Celtic stronghold exclusively, but also a Roman; the former people
+having probably contributed little more than the original framework which
+the latter took and adapted till it became the present imposing
+structure.
+
+I ask, What if it is Roman?
+
+A great deal, according to him.  That it proves all the world to be wrong
+in this great argument, and himself alone to be right!  Can I wait while
+he digs further?
+
+I agree--reluctantly; but he does not notice my reluctance.  At an
+adjoining spot he begins flourishing the tools anew with the skill of a
+navvy, this venerable scholar with letters after his name.  Sometimes he
+falls on his knees, burrowing with his hands in the manner of a hare, and
+where his old-fashioned broadcloth touches the sides of the hole it gets
+plastered with the damp earth.  He continually murmurs to himself how
+important, how very important, this discovery is!  He draws out an
+object; we wash it in the same primitive way by rubbing it with the wet
+grass, and it proves to be a semi-transparent bottle of iridescent
+beauty, the sight of which draws groans of luxurious sensibility from the
+digger.  Further and further search brings out a piece of a weapon.  It
+is strange indeed that by merely peeling off a wrapper of modern
+accumulations we have lowered ourselves into an ancient world.  Finally a
+skeleton is uncovered, fairly perfect.  He lays it out on the grass, bone
+to its bone.
+
+My friend says the man must have fallen fighting here, as this is no
+place of burial.  He turns again to the trench, scrapes, feels, till from
+a corner he draws out a heavy lump--a small image four or five inches
+high. We clean it as before.  It is a statuette, apparently of gold, or,
+more probably, of bronze-gilt--a figure of Mercury, obviously, its head
+being surmounted with the petasus or winged hat, the usual accessory of
+that deity.  Further inspection reveals the workmanship to be of good
+finish and detail, and, preserved by the limy earth, to be as fresh in
+every line as on the day it left the hands of its artificer.
+
+We seem to be standing in the Roman Forum and not on a hill in Wessex.
+Intent upon this truly valuable relic of the old empire of which even
+this remote spot was a component part, we do not notice what is going on
+in the present world till reminded of it by the sudden renewal of the
+storm.  Looking up I perceive that the wide extinguisher of cloud has
+again settled down upon the fortress-town, as if resting upon the edge of
+the inner rampart, and shutting out the moon.  I turn my back to the
+tempest, still directing the light across the hole.  My companion digs on
+unconcernedly; he is living two thousand years ago, and despises things
+of the moment as dreams.  But at last he is fairly beaten, and standing
+up beside me looks round on what he has done.  The rays of the lantern
+pass over the trench to the tall skeleton stretched upon the grass on the
+other side.  The beating rain has washed the bones clean and smooth, and
+the forehead, cheek-bones, and two-and-thirty teeth of the skull glisten
+in the candle-shine as they lie.
+
+This storm, like the first, is of the nature of a squall, and it ends as
+abruptly as the other.  We dig no further.  My friend says that it is
+enough--he has proved his point.  He turns to replace the bones in the
+trench and covers them.  But they fall to pieces under his touch: the air
+has disintegrated them, and he can only sweep in the fragments.  The next
+act of his plan is more than difficult, but is carried out.  The
+treasures are inhumed again in their respective holes: they are not ours.
+Each deposition seems to cost him a twinge; and at one moment I fancied I
+saw him slip his hand into his coat pocket.
+
+'We must re-bury them all,' say I.
+
+'O yes,' he answers with integrity.  'I was wiping my hand.'
+
+The beauties of the tesselated floor of the governor's house are once
+again consigned to darkness; the trench is filled up; the sod laid
+smoothly down; he wipes the perspiration from his forehead with the same
+handkerchief he had used to mop the skeleton and tesserae clean; and we
+make for the eastern gate of the fortress.
+
+Dawn bursts upon us suddenly as we reach the opening.  It comes by the
+lifting and thinning of the clouds that way till we are bathed in a pink
+light.  The direction of his homeward journey is not the same as mine,
+and we part under the outer slope.
+
+Walking along quickly to restore warmth I muse upon my eccentric friend,
+and cannot help asking myself this question: Did he really replace the
+gilded image of the god Mercurius with the rest of the treasures?  He
+seemed to do so; and yet I could not testify to the fact.  Probably,
+however, he was as good as his word.
+
+* * *
+
+It was thus I spoke to myself, and so the adventure ended.  But one thing
+remains to be told, and that is concerned with seven years after.  Among
+the effects of my friend, at that time just deceased, was found,
+carefully preserved, a gilt statuette representing Mercury, labelled
+'Debased Roman.'  No record was attached to explain how it came into his
+possession.  The figure was bequeathed to the Casterbridge Museum.
+
+Detroit Post,
+
+March 1885.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT THE SHEPHERD SAW: A TALE OF FOUR MOONLIGHT NIGHTS
+
+
+The genial Justice of the Peace--now, alas, no more--who made himself
+responsible for the facts of this story, used to begin in the good old-
+fashioned way with a bright moonlight night and a mysterious figure, an
+excellent stroke for an opening, even to this day, if well followed up.
+
+The Christmas moon (he would say) was showing her cold face to the
+upland, the upland reflecting the radiance in frost-sparkles so minute as
+only to be discernible by an eye near at hand.  This eye, he said, was
+the eye of a shepherd lad, young for his occupation, who stood within a
+wheeled hut of the kind commonly in use among sheep-keepers during the
+early lambing season, and was abstractedly looking through the loophole
+at the scene without.
+
+The spot was called Lambing Corner, and it was a sheltered portion of
+that wide expanse of rough pastureland known as the Marlbury Downs, which
+you directly traverse when following the turnpike-road across Mid-Wessex
+from London, through Aldbrickham, in the direction of Bath and Bristol.
+Here, where the hut stood, the land was high and dry, open, except to the
+north, and commanding an undulating view for miles.  On the north side
+grew a tall belt of coarse furze, with enormous stalks, a clump of the
+same standing detached in front of the general mass.  The clump was
+hollow, and the interior had been ingeniously taken advantage of as a
+position for the before-mentioned hut, which was thus completely screened
+from winds, and almost invisible, except through the narrow approach.  But
+the furze twigs had been cut away from the two little windows of the hut,
+that the occupier might keep his eye on his sheep.
+
+In the rear, the shelter afforded by the belt of furze bushes was
+artificially improved by an inclosure of upright stakes, interwoven with
+boughs of the same prickly vegetation, and within the inclosure lay a
+renowned Marlbury-Down breeding flock of eight hundred ewes.
+
+To the south, in the direction of the young shepherd's idle gaze, there
+rose one conspicuous object above the uniform moonlit plateau, and only
+one.  It was a Druidical trilithon, consisting of three oblong stones in
+the form of a doorway, two on end, and one across as a lintel.  Each
+stone had been worn, scratched, washed, nibbled, split, and otherwise
+attacked by ten thousand different weathers; but now the blocks looked
+shapely and little the worse for wear, so beautifully were they silvered
+over by the light of the moon.  The ruin was locally called the Devil's
+Door.
+
+An old shepherd presently entered the hut from the direction of the ewes,
+and looked around in the gloom.  'Be ye sleepy?' he asked in cross
+accents of the boy.
+
+The lad replied rather timidly in the negative.
+
+'Then,' said the shepherd, 'I'll get me home-along, and rest for a few
+hours.  There's nothing to be done here now as I can see.  The ewes can
+want no more tending till daybreak--'tis beyond the bounds of reason that
+they can.  But as the order is that one of us must bide, I'll leave 'ee,
+d'ye hear.  You can sleep by day, and I can't.  And you can be down to my
+house in ten minutes if anything should happen.  I can't afford 'ee
+candle; but, as 'tis Christmas week, and the time that folks have
+hollerdays, you can enjoy yerself by falling asleep a bit in the chair
+instead of biding awake all the time.  But mind, not longer at once than
+while the shade of the Devil's Door moves a couple of spans, for you must
+keep an eye upon the ewes.'
+
+The boy made no definite reply, and the old man, stirring the fire in the
+stove with his crook-stem, closed the door upon his companion and
+vanished.
+
+As this had been more or less the course of events every night since the
+season's lambing had set in, the boy was not at all surprised at the
+charge, and amused himself for some time by lighting straws at the stove.
+He then went out to the ewes and new-born lambs, re-entered, sat down,
+and finally fell asleep.  This was his customary manner of performing his
+watch, for though special permission for naps had this week been
+accorded, he had, as a matter of fact, done the same thing on every
+preceding night, sleeping often till awakened by a smack on the shoulder
+at three or four in the morning from the crook-stem of the old man.
+
+It might have been about eleven o'clock when he awoke.  He was so
+surprised at awaking without, apparently, being called or struck, that on
+second thoughts he assumed that somebody must have called him in spite of
+appearances, and looked out of the hut window towards the sheep.  They
+all lay as quiet as when he had visited them, very little bleating being
+audible, and no human soul disturbing the scene.  He next looked from the
+opposite window, and here the case was different.  The frost-facets
+glistened under the moon as before; an occasional furze bush showed as a
+dark spot on the same; and in the foreground stood the ghostly form of
+the trilithon.  But in front of the trilithon stood a man.
+
+That he was not the shepherd or any one of the farm labourers was
+apparent in a moment's observation,--his dress being a dark suit, and his
+figure of slender build and graceful carriage.  He walked backwards and
+forwards in front of the trilithon.
+
+The shepherd lad had hardly done speculating on the strangeness of the
+unknown's presence here at such an hour, when he saw a second figure
+crossing the open sward towards the locality of the trilithon and furze-
+clump that screened the hut.  This second personage was a woman; and
+immediately on sight of her the male stranger hastened forward, meeting
+her just in front of the hut window.  Before she seemed to be aware of
+his intention he clasped her in his arms.
+
+The lady released herself and drew back with some dignity.
+
+'You have come, Harriet--bless you for it!' he exclaimed, fervently.
+
+'But not for this,' she answered, in offended accents.  And then, more
+good-naturedly, 'I have come, Fred, because you entreated me so!  What
+can have been the object of your writing such a letter?  I feared I might
+be doing you grievous ill by staying away.  How did you come here?'
+
+'I walked all the way from my father's.'
+
+'Well, what is it?  How have you lived since we last met?'
+
+'But roughly; you might have known that without asking.  I have seen many
+lands and many faces since I last walked these downs, but I have only
+thought of you.'
+
+'Is it only to tell me this that you have summoned me so strangely?'
+
+A passing breeze blew away the murmur of the reply and several succeeding
+sentences, till the man's voice again became audible in the words,
+'Harriet--truth between us two!  I have heard that the Duke does not
+treat you too well.'
+
+'He is warm-tempered, but he is a good husband.'
+
+'He speaks roughly to you, and sometimes even threatens to lock you out
+of doors.'
+
+'Only once, Fred!  On my honour, only once.  The Duke is a fairly good
+husband, I repeat.  But you deserve punishment for this night's trick of
+drawing me out.  What does it mean?'
+
+'Harriet, dearest, is this fair or honest?  Is it not notorious that your
+life with him is a sad one--that, in spite of the sweetness of your
+temper, the sourness of his embitters your days.  I have come to know if
+I can help you.  You are a Duchess, and I am Fred Ogbourne; but it is not
+impossible that I may be able to help you . . . By God! the sweetness of
+that tongue ought to keep him civil, especially when there is added to it
+the sweetness of that face!'
+
+'Captain Ogbourne!' she exclaimed, with an emphasis of playful fear.  'How
+can such a comrade of my youth behave to me as you do?  Don't speak so,
+and stare at me so!  Is this really all you have to say?  I see I ought
+not to have come.  'Twas thoughtlessly done.'
+
+Another breeze broke the thread of discourse for a time.
+
+'Very well.  I perceive you are dead and lost to me,' he could next be
+heard to say, '"Captain Ogbourne" proves that.  As I once loved you I
+love you now, Harriet, without one jot of abatement; but you are not the
+woman you were--you once were honest towards me; and now you conceal your
+heart in made-up speeches.  Let it be: I can never see you again.'
+
+'You need not say that in such a tragedy tone, you silly.  You may see me
+in an ordinary way--why should you not?  But, of course, not in such a
+way as this.  I should not have come now, if it had not happened that the
+Duke is away from home, so that there is nobody to check my erratic
+impulses.'
+
+'When does he return?'
+
+'The day after to-morrow, or the day after that.'
+
+'Then meet me again to-morrow night.'
+
+'No, Fred, I cannot.'
+
+'If you cannot to-morrow night, you can the night after; one of the two
+before he comes please bestow on me.  Now, your hand upon it!  To-morrow
+or next night you will see me to bid me farewell!'  He seized the
+Duchess's hand.
+
+'No, but Fred--let go my hand!  What do you mean by holding me so?  If it
+be love to forget all respect to a woman's present position in thinking
+of her past, then yours may be so, Frederick.  It is not kind and gentle
+of you to induce me to come to this place for pity of you, and then to
+hold me tight here.'
+
+'But see me once more!  I have come two thousand miles to ask it.'
+
+'O, I must not!  There will be slanders--Heaven knows what!  I cannot
+meet you.  For the sake of old times don't ask it.'
+
+'Then own two things to me; that you did love me once, and that your
+husband is unkind to you often enough now to make you think of the time
+when you cared for me.'
+
+'Yes--I own them both,' she answered faintly.  'But owning such as that
+tells against me; and I swear the inference is not true.'
+
+'Don't say that; for you have come--let me think the reason of your
+coming what I like to think it.  It can do you no harm.  Come once more!'
+
+He still held her hand and waist.  'Very well, then,' she said.  'Thus
+far you shall persuade me.  I will meet you to-morrow night or the night
+after.  Now, let me go.'
+
+He released her, and they parted.  The Duchess ran rapidly down the hill
+towards the outlying mansion of Shakeforest Towers, and when he had
+watched her out of sight, he turned and strode off in the opposite
+direction.  All then was silent and empty as before.
+
+Yet it was only for a moment.  When they had quite departed, another
+shape appeared upon the scene.  He came from behind the trilithon.  He
+was a man of stouter build than the first, and wore the boots and spurs
+of a horseman.  Two things were at once obvious from this phenomenon:
+that he had watched the interview between the Captain and the Duchess;
+and that, though he probably had seen every movement of the couple,
+including the embrace, he had been too remote to hear the reluctant words
+of the lady's conversation--or, indeed, any words at all--so that the
+meeting must have exhibited itself to his eye as the assignation of a
+pair of well-agreed lovers.  But it was necessary that several years
+should elapse before the shepherd-boy was old enough to reason out this.
+
+The third individual stood still for a moment, as if deep in meditation.
+He crossed over to where the lady and gentleman had stood, and looked at
+the ground; then he too turned and went away in a third direction, as
+widely divergent as possible from those taken by the two interlocutors.
+His course was towards the highway; and a few minutes afterwards the trot
+of a horse might have been heard upon its frosty surface, lessening till
+it died away upon the ear.
+
+The boy remained in the hut, confronting the trilithon as if he expected
+yet more actors on the scene, but nobody else appeared.  How long he
+stood with his little face against the loophole he hardly knew; but he
+was rudely awakened from his reverie by a punch in his back, and in the
+feel of it he familiarly recognized the stem of the old shepherd's crook.
+
+'Blame thy young eyes and limbs, Bill Mills--now you have let the fire
+out, and you know I want it kept in!  I thought something would go wrong
+with 'ee up here, and I couldn't bide in bed no more than thistledown on
+the wind, that I could not!  Well, what's happened, fie upon 'ee?'
+
+'Nothing.'
+
+'Ewes all as I left 'em?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Any lambs want bringing in?'
+
+'No.'
+
+The shepherd relit the fire, and went out among the sheep with a lantern,
+for the moon was getting low.  Soon he came in again.
+
+'Blame it all--thou'st say that nothing have happened; when one ewe have
+twinned and is like to go off, and another is dying for want of half an
+eye of looking to!  I told 'ee, Bill Mills, if anything went wrong to
+come down and call me; and this is how you have done it.'
+
+'You said I could go to sleep for a hollerday, and I did.'
+
+'Don't you speak to your betters like that, young man, or you'll come to
+the gallows-tree!  You didn't sleep all the time, or you wouldn't have
+been peeping out of that there hole!  Now you can go home, and be up here
+again by breakfast-time.  I be an old man, and there's old men that
+deserve well of the world; but no I--must rest how I can!'
+
+The elder shepherd then lay down inside the hut, and the boy went down
+the hill to the hamlet where he dwelt.
+
+
+
+SECOND NIGHT
+
+
+When the next night drew on the actions of the boy were almost enough to
+show that he was thinking of the meeting he had witnessed, and of the
+promise wrung from the lady that she would come there again.  As far as
+the sheep-tending arrangements were concerned, to-night was but a
+repetition of the foregoing one.  Between ten and eleven o'clock the old
+shepherd withdrew as usual for what sleep at home he might chance to get
+without interruption, making up the other necessary hours of rest at some
+time during the day; the boy was left alone.
+
+The frost was the same as on the night before, except perhaps that it was
+a little more severe.  The moon shone as usual, except that it was three-
+quarters of an hour later in its course; and the boy's condition was much
+the same, except that he felt no sleepiness whatever.  He felt, too,
+rather afraid; but upon the whole he preferred witnessing an assignation
+of strangers to running the risk of being discovered absent by the old
+shepherd.
+
+It was before the distant clock of Shakeforest Towers had struck eleven
+that he observed the opening of the second act of this midnight drama.  It
+consisted in the appearance of neither lover nor Duchess, but of the
+third figure--the stout man, booted and spurred--who came up from the
+easterly direction in which he had retreated the night before.  He walked
+once round the trilithon, and next advanced towards the clump concealing
+the hut, the moonlight shining full upon his face and revealing him to be
+the Duke.  Fear seized upon the shepherd-boy: the Duke was Jove himself
+to the rural population, whom to offend was starvation, homelessness, and
+death, and whom to look at was to be mentally scathed and dumbfoundered.
+He closed the stove, so that not a spark of light appeared, and hastily
+buried himself in the straw that lay in a corner.
+
+The Duke came close to the clump of furze and stood by the spot where his
+wife and the Captain had held their dialogue; he examined the furze as if
+searching for a hiding-place, and in doing so discovered the hut.  The
+latter he walked round and then looked inside; finding it to all seeming
+empty, he entered, closing the door behind him and taking his place at
+the little circular window against which the boy's face had been pressed
+just before.
+
+The Duke had not adopted his measures too rapidly, if his object were
+concealment.  Almost as soon as he had stationed himself there eleven
+o'clock struck, and the slender young man who had previously graced the
+scene promptly reappeared from the north quarter of the down.  The spot
+of assignation having, by the accident of his running forward on the
+foregoing night, removed itself from the Devil's Door to the clump of
+furze, he instinctively came thither, and waited for the Duchess where he
+had met her before.
+
+But a fearful surprise was in store for him to-night, as well as for the
+trembling juvenile.  At his appearance the Duke breathed more and more
+quickly, his breathings being distinctly audible to the crouching boy.
+The young man had hardly paused when the alert nobleman softly opened the
+door of the hut, and, stepping round the furze, came full upon Captain
+Fred.
+
+'You have dishonoured her, and you shall die the death you deserve!' came
+to the shepherd's ears, in a harsh, hollow whisper through the boarding
+of the hut.
+
+The apathetic and taciturn boy was excited enough to run the risk of
+rising and looking from the window, but he could see nothing for the
+intervening furze boughs, both the men having gone round to the side.
+What took place in the few following moments he never exactly knew.  He
+discerned portion of a shadow in quick muscular movement; then there was
+the fall of something on the grass; then there was stillness.
+
+Two or three minutes later the Duke became visible round the corner of
+the hut, dragging by the collar the now inert body of the second man.  The
+Duke dragged him across the open space towards the trilithon.  Behind
+this ruin was a hollow, irregular spot, overgrown with furze and stunted
+thorns, and riddled by the old holes of badgers, its former inhabitants,
+who had now died out or departed.  The Duke vanished into this depression
+with his burden, reappearing after the lapse of a few seconds.  When he
+came forth he dragged nothing behind him.
+
+He returned to the side of the hut, cleansed something on the grass, and
+again put himself on the watch, though not as before, inside the hut, but
+without, on the shady side.  'Now for the second!' he said.
+
+It was plain, even to the unsophisticated boy, that he now awaited the
+other person of the appointment--his wife, the Duchess--for what purpose
+it was terrible to think.  He seemed to be a man of such determined
+temper that he would scarcely hesitate in carrying out a course of
+revenge to the bitter end.  Moreover--though it was what the shepherd did
+not perceive--this was all the more probable, in that the moody Duke was
+labouring under the exaggerated impression which the sight of the meeting
+in dumb show had conveyed.
+
+The jealous watcher waited long, but he waited in vain.  From within the
+hut the boy could hear his occasional exclamations of surprise, as if he
+were almost disappointed at the failure of his assumption that his guilty
+Duchess would surely keep the tryst.  Sometimes he stepped from the shade
+of the furze into the moonlight, and held up his watch to learn the time.
+
+About half-past eleven he seemed to give up expecting her.  He then went
+a second time to the hollow behind the trilithon, remaining there nearly
+a quarter of an hour.  From this place he proceeded quickly over a
+shoulder of the declivity, a little to the left, presently returning on
+horseback, which proved that his horse had been tethered in some secret
+place down there.  Crossing anew the down between the hut and the
+trilithon, and scanning the precincts as if finally to assure himself
+that she had not come, he rode slowly downwards in the direction of
+Shakeforest Towers.
+
+The juvenile shepherd thought of what lay in the hollow yonder; and no
+fear of the crook-stem of his superior officer was potent enough to
+detain him longer on that hill alone.  Any live company, even the most
+terrible, was better than the company of the dead; so, running with the
+speed of a hare in the direction pursued by the horseman, he overtook the
+revengeful Duke at the second descent (where the great western road
+crossed before you came to the old park entrance on that side--now closed
+up and the lodge cleared away, though at the time it was wondered why,
+being considered the most convenient gate of all).
+
+Once within the sound of the horse's footsteps, Bill Mills felt
+comparatively comfortable; for, though in awe of the Duke because of his
+position, he had no moral repugnance to his companionship on account of
+the grisly deed he had committed, considering that powerful nobleman to
+have a right to do what he chose on his own lands.  The Duke rode
+steadily on beneath his ancestral trees, the hoofs of his horse sending
+up a smart sound now that he had reached the hard road of the drive, and
+soon drew near the front door of his house, surmounted by parapets with
+square-cut battlements that cast a notched shade upon the gravelled
+terrace.  These outlines were quite familiar to little Bill Mills, though
+nothing within their boundary had ever been seen by him.
+
+When the rider approached the mansion a small turret door was quickly
+opened and a woman came out.  As soon as she saw the horseman's outlines
+she ran forward into the moonlight to meet him.
+
+'Ah dear--and are you come?' she said.  'I heard Hero's tread just when
+you rode over the hill, and I knew it in a moment.  I would have come
+further if I had been aware--'
+
+'Glad to see me, eh?'
+
+'How can you ask that?'
+
+'Well; it is a lovely night for meetings.'
+
+'Yes, it is a lovely night.'
+
+The Duke dismounted and stood by her side.  'Why should you have been
+listening at this time of night, and yet not expecting me?' he asked.
+
+'Why, indeed!  There is a strange story attached to that, which I must
+tell you at once.  But why did you come a night sooner than you said you
+would come?  I am rather sorry--I really am!' (shaking her head
+playfully) 'for as a surprise to you I had ordered a bonfire to be built,
+which was to be lighted on your arrival to-morrow; and now it is wasted.
+You can see the outline of it just out there.'
+
+The Duke looked across to a spot of rising glade, and saw the faggots in
+a heap.  He then bent his eyes with a bland and puzzled air on the
+ground, 'What is this strange story you have to tell me that kept you
+awake?' he murmured.
+
+'It is this--and it is really rather serious.  My cousin Fred
+Ogbourne--Captain Ogbourne as he is now--was in his boyhood a great
+admirer of mine, as I think I have told you, though I was six years his
+senior.  In strict truth, he was absurdly fond of me.'
+
+'You have never told me of that before.'
+
+'Then it was your sister I told--yes, it was.  Well, you know I have not
+seen him for many years, and naturally I had quite forgotten his
+admiration of me in old times.  But guess my surprise when the day before
+yesterday, I received a mysterious note bearing no address, and found on
+opening it that it came from him.  The contents frightened me out of my
+wits.  He had returned from Canada to his father's house, and conjured me
+by all he could think of to meet him at once.  But I think I can repeat
+the exact words, though I will show it to you when we get indoors.
+
+   "MY DEAR COUSIN HARRIET," the note said, "After this long absence you
+   will be surprised at my sudden reappearance, and more by what I am
+   going to ask.  But if my life and future are of any concern to you at
+   all, I beg that you will grant my request.  What I require of you, is,
+   dear Harriet, that you meet me about eleven to-night by the Druid
+   stones on Marlbury Downs, about a mile or more from your house.  I
+   cannot say more, except to entreat you to come.  I will explain all
+   when you are there.  The one thing is, I want to see you.  Come alone.
+   Believe me, I would not ask this if my happiness did not hang upon
+   it--God knows how entirely!  I am too agitated to say more--Yours.
+   FRED."
+
+'That was all of it.  Now, of course I ought have gone, as it turned out,
+but that I did not think of then.  I remembered his impetuous temper, and
+feared that something grievous was impending over his head, while he had
+not a friend in the world to help him, or any one except myself to whom
+he would care to make his trouble known.  So I wrapped myself up and went
+to Marlbury Downs at the time he had named.  Don't you think I was
+courageous?'
+
+'Very.'
+
+'When I got there--but shall we not walk on; it is getting cold?'  The
+Duke, however, did not move.  'When I got there he came, of course, as a
+full grown man and officer, and not as the lad that I had known him.  When
+I saw him I was sorry I had come.  I can hardly tell you how he behaved.
+What he wanted I don't know even now; it seemed to be no more than the
+mere meeting with me.  He held me by the hand and waist--O so tight--and
+would not let me go till I had promised to meet him again.  His manner
+was so strange and passionate that I was afraid of him in such a lonely
+place, and I promised to come.  Then I escaped--then I ran home--and
+that's all.  When the time drew on this evening for the
+appointment--which, of course, I never intended to keep, I felt uneasy,
+lest when he found I meant to disappoint him he would come on to the
+house; and that's why I could not sleep.  But you are so silent!'
+
+'I have had a long journey.'
+
+'Then let us get into the house.  Why did you come alone and unattended
+like this?'
+
+'It was my humour.'
+
+After a moment's silence, during which they moved on, she said, 'I have
+thought of something which I hardly like to suggest to you.  He said that
+if I failed to come to-night he would wait again to-morrow night.  Now,
+shall we to-morrow night go to the hill together--just to see if he is
+there; and if he is, read him a lesson on his foolishness in nourishing
+this old passion, and sending for me so oddly, instead of coming to the
+house?'
+
+'Why should we see if he's there?' said her husband moodily.
+
+'Because I think we ought to do something in it.  Poor Fred!  He would
+listen to you if you reasoned with him, and set our positions in their
+true light before him.  It would be no more than Christian kindness to a
+man who unquestionably is very miserable from some cause or other.  His
+head seems quite turned.'
+
+By this time they had reached the door, rung the bell, and waited.  All
+the house seemed to be asleep; but soon a man came to them, the horse was
+taken away, and the Duke and Duchess went in.
+
+
+
+THIRD NIGHT
+
+
+There was no help for it.  Bill Mills was obliged to stay on duty, in the
+old shepherd's absence, this evening as before, or give up his post and
+living.  He thought as bravely as he could of what lay behind the Devil's
+Door, but with no great success, and was therefore in a measure relieved,
+even if awe-stricken, when he saw the forms of the Duke and Duchess
+strolling across the frosted greensward.  The Duchess was a few yards in
+front of her husband and tripped on lightly.
+
+'I tell you he has not thought it worth while to come again!' the Duke
+insisted, as he stood still, reluctant to walk further.
+
+'He is more likely to come and wait all night; and it would be harsh
+treatment to let him do it a second time.'
+
+'He is not here; so turn and come home.'
+
+'He seems not to be here, certainly; I wonder if anything has happened to
+him.  If it has, I shall never forgive myself!'
+
+The Duke, uneasily, 'O, no.  He has some other engagement.'
+
+'That is very unlikely.'
+
+'Or perhaps he has found the distance too far.'
+
+'Nor is that probable.'
+
+'Then he may have thought better of it.'
+
+'Yes, he may have thought better of it; if, indeed, he is not here all
+the time--somewhere in the hollow behind the Devil's Door.  Let us go and
+see; it will serve him right to surprise him.'
+
+'O, he's not there.'
+
+'He may be lying very quiet because of you,' she said archly.
+
+'O, no--not because of me!'
+
+'Come, then.  I declare, dearest, you lag like an unwilling schoolboy to-
+night, and there's no responsiveness in you!  You are jealous of that
+poor lad, and it is quite absurd of you.'
+
+'I'll come!  I'll come!  Say no more, Harriet!'  And they crossed over
+the green.
+
+Wondering what they would do, the young shepherd left the hut, and
+doubled behind the belt of furze, intending to stand near the trilithon
+unperceived.  But, in crossing the few yards of open ground he was for a
+moment exposed to view.
+
+'Ah, I see him at last!' said the Duchess.
+
+'See him!' said the Duke.  'Where?'
+
+'By the Devil's Door; don't you notice a figure there?  Ah, my poor lover-
+cousin, won't you catch it now?'  And she laughed half-pityingly.  'But
+what's the matter?' she asked, turning to her husband.
+
+'It is not he!' said the Duke hoarsely.  'It can't be he!'
+
+'No, it is not he.  It is too small for him.  It is a boy.'
+
+'Ah, I thought so!  Boy, come here.'
+
+The youthful shepherd advanced with apprehension.
+
+'What are you doing here?'
+
+'Keeping sheep, your Grace.'
+
+'Ah, you know me!  Do you keep sheep here every night?'
+
+'Off and on, my Lord Duke.'
+
+'And what have you seen here to-night or last night?' inquired the
+Duchess.  'Any person waiting or walking about?'
+
+The boy was silent.
+
+'He has seen nothing,' interrupted her husband, his eyes so forbiddingly
+fixed on the boy that they seemed to shine like points of fire.  'Come,
+let us go.  The air is too keen to stand in long.'
+
+When they were gone the boy retreated to the hut and sheep, less fearful
+now than at first--familiarity with the situation having gradually
+overpowered his thoughts of the buried man.  But he was not to be left
+alone long.  When an interval had elapsed of about sufficient length for
+walking to and from Shakeforest Towers, there appeared from that
+direction the heavy form of the Duke.  He now came alone.
+
+The nobleman, on his part, seemed to have eyes no less sharp than the
+boy's, for he instantly recognized the latter among the ewes, and came
+straight towards him.
+
+'Are you the shepherd lad I spoke to a short time ago?'
+
+'I be, my Lord Duke.'
+
+'Now listen to me.  Her Grace asked you what you had seen this last night
+or two up here, and you made no reply.  I now ask the same thing, and you
+need not be afraid to answer.  Have you seen anything strange these
+nights you have been watching here?'
+
+'My Lord Duke, I be a poor heedless boy, and what I see I don't bear in
+mind.'
+
+'I ask you again,' said the Duke, coming nearer, 'have you seen anything
+strange these nights you have been watching here?'
+
+'O, my Lord Duke!  I be but the under-shepherd boy, and my father he was
+but your humble Grace's hedger, and my mother only the cinder-woman in
+the back-yard!  I fall asleep when left alone, and I see nothing at all!'
+
+The Duke grasped the boy by the shoulder, and, directly impending over
+him, stared down into his face, 'Did you see anything strange done here
+last night, I say?'
+
+'O, my Lord Duke, have mercy, and don't stab me!' cried the shepherd,
+falling on his knees.  'I have never seen you walking here, or riding
+here, or lying-in-wait for a man, or dragging a heavy load!'
+
+'H'm!' said his interrogator, grimly, relaxing his hold.  'It is well to
+know that you have never seen those things.  Now, which would you
+rather--see me do those things now, or keep a secret all your life?'
+
+'Keep a secret, my Lord Duke!'
+
+'Sure you are able?'
+
+'O, your Grace, try me!'
+
+'Very well.  And now, how do you like sheep-keeping?'
+
+'Not at all.  'Tis lonely work for them that think of spirits, and I'm
+badly used.'
+
+'I believe you.  You are too young for it.  I must do something to make
+you more comfortable.  You shall change this smock-frock for a real cloth
+jacket, and your thick boots for polished shoes.  And you shall be taught
+what you have never yet heard of; and be put to school, and have bats and
+balls for the holidays, and be made a man of.  But you must never say you
+have been a shepherd boy, and watched on the hills at night, for shepherd
+boys are not liked in good company.
+
+'Trust me, my Lord Duke.'
+
+'The very moment you forget yourself, and speak of your shepherd
+days--this year, next year, in school, out of school, or riding in your
+carriage twenty years hence--at that moment my help will be withdrawn,
+and smash down you come to shepherding forthwith.  You have parents, I
+think you say?'
+
+'A widowed mother only, my Lord Duke.'
+
+'I'll provide for her, and make a comfortable woman of her, until you
+speak of--what?'
+
+'Of my shepherd days, and what I saw here.'
+
+'Good.  If you do speak of it?'
+
+'Smash down she comes to widowing forthwith!'
+
+'That's well--very well.  But it's not enough.  Come here.'  He took the
+boy across to the trilithon, and made him kneel down.
+
+'Now, this was once a holy place,' resumed the Duke.  'An altar stood
+here, erected to a venerable family of gods, who were known and talked of
+long before the God we know now.  So that an oath sworn here is doubly an
+oath.  Say this after me: "May all the host above--angels and archangels,
+and principalities and powers--punish me; may I be tormented wherever I
+am--in the house or in the garden, in the fields or in the roads, in
+church or in chapel, at home or abroad, on land or at sea; may I be
+afflicted in eating and in drinking, in growing up and in growing old, in
+living and dying, inwardly and outwardly, and for always, if I ever speak
+of my life as a shepherd boy, or of what I have seen done on this
+Marlbury Down.  So be it, and so let it be.  Amen and amen."  Now kiss
+the stone.'
+
+The trembling boy repeated the words, and kissed the stone, as desired.
+
+The Duke led him off by the hand.  That night the junior shepherd slept
+in Shakeforest Towers, and the next day he was sent away for tuition to a
+remote village.  Thence he went to a preparatory establishment, and in
+due course to a public school.
+
+
+
+FOURTH NIGHT
+
+
+On a winter evening many years subsequent to the above-mentioned
+occurrences, the ci-devant shepherd sat in a well-furnished office in the
+north wing of Shakeforest Towers in the guise of an ordinary educated man
+of business.  He appeared at this time as a person of thirty-eight or
+forty, though actually he was several years younger.  A worn and restless
+glance of the eye now and then, when he lifted his head to search for
+some letter or paper which had been mislaid, seemed to denote that his
+was not a mind so thoroughly at ease as his surroundings might have led
+an observer to expect.
+
+His pallor, too, was remarkable for a countryman.  He was professedly
+engaged in writing, but he shaped not word.  He had sat there only a few
+minutes, when, laying down his pen and pushing back his chair, he rested
+a hand uneasily on each of the chair-arms and looked on the floor.
+
+Soon he arose and left the room.  His course was along a passage which
+ended in a central octagonal hall; crossing this he knocked at a door.  A
+faint, though deep, voice told him to come in.  The room he entered was
+the library, and it was tenanted by a single person only--his patron the
+Duke.
+
+During this long interval of years the Duke had lost all his heaviness of
+build.  He was, indeed, almost a skeleton; his white hair was thin, and
+his hands were nearly transparent.  'Oh--Mills?' he murmured.  'Sit down.
+What is it?'
+
+'Nothing new, your Grace.  Nobody to speak of has written, and nobody has
+called.'
+
+'Ah--what then?  You look concerned.'
+
+'Old times have come to life, owing to something waking them.'
+
+'Old times be cursed--which old times are they?'
+
+'That Christmas week twenty-two years ago, when the late Duchess's cousin
+Frederick implored her to meet him on Marlbury Downs.  I saw the
+meeting--it was just such a night as this--and I, as you know, saw more.
+She met him once, but not the second time.'
+
+'Mills, shall I recall some words to you--the words of an oath taken on
+that hill by a shepherd-boy?'
+
+'It is unnecessary.  He has strenuously kept that oath and promise.  Since
+that night no sound of his shepherd life has crossed his lips--even to
+yourself.  But do you wish to hear more, or do you not, your Grace?'
+
+'I wish to hear no more,' said the Duke sullenly.
+
+'Very well; let it be so.  But a time seems coming--may be quite near at
+hand--when, in spite of my lips, that episode will allow itself to go
+undivulged no longer.'
+
+'I wish to hear no more!' repeated the Duke.
+
+'You need be under no fear of treachery from me,' said the steward,
+somewhat bitterly.  'I am a man to whom you have been kind--no patron
+could have been kinder.  You have clothed and educated me; have installed
+me here; and I am not unmindful.  But what of it--has your Grace gained
+much by my stanchness?  I think not.  There was great excitement about
+Captain Ogbourne's disappearance, but I spoke not a word.  And his body
+has never been found.  For twenty-two years I have wondered what you did
+with him.  Now I know.  A circumstance that occurred this afternoon
+recalled the time to me most forcibly.  To make it certain to myself that
+all was not a dream, I went up there with a spade; I searched, and saw
+enough to know that something decays there in a closed badger's hole.'
+
+'Mills, do you think the Duchess guessed?'
+
+'She never did, I am sure, to the day of her death.'
+
+'Did you leave all as you found it on the hill?'
+
+'I did.'
+
+'What made you think of going up there this particular afternoon?'
+
+'What your Grace says you don't wish to be told.'
+
+The Duke was silent; and the stillness of the evening was so marked that
+there reached their ears from the outer air the sound of a tolling bell.
+
+'What is that bell tolling for?' asked the nobleman.
+
+'For what I came to tell you of, your Grace.'
+
+'You torment me it is your way!' said the Duke querulously.  'Who's dead
+in the village?'
+
+'The oldest man--the old shepherd.'
+
+'Dead at last--how old is he?'
+
+'Ninety-four.'
+
+'And I am only seventy.  I have four-and-twenty years to the good!'
+
+'I served under that old man when I kept sheep on Marlbury Downs.  And he
+was on the hill that second night, when I first exchanged words with your
+Grace.  He was on the hill all the time; but I did not know he was
+there--nor did you.'
+
+'Ah!' said the Duke, starting up.  'Go on--I yield the point--you may
+tell!'
+
+'I heard this afternoon that he was at the point of death.  It was that
+which set me thinking of that past time--and induced me to search on the
+hill for what I have told you.  Coming back I heard that he wished to see
+the Vicar to confess to him a secret he had kept for more than twenty
+years--"out of respect to my Lord the Duke"--something that he had seen
+committed on Marlbury Downs when returning to the flock on a December
+night twenty-two years ago.  I have thought it over.  He had left me in
+charge that evening; but he was in the habit of coming back suddenly,
+lest I should have fallen asleep.  That night I saw nothing of him,
+though he had promised to return.  He must have returned, and--found
+reason to keep in hiding.  It is all plain.  The next thing is that the
+Vicar went to him two hours ago.  Further than that I have not heard.'
+
+'It is quite enough.  I will see the Vicar at daybreak to-morrow.'
+
+'What to do?'
+
+'Stop his tongue for four-and-twenty years--till I am dead at
+ninety-four, like the shepherd.'
+
+'Your Grace--while you impose silence on me, I will not speak, even
+though nay neck should pay the penalty.  I promised to be yours, and I am
+yours.  But is this persistence of any avail?'
+
+'I'll stop his tongue, I say!' cried the Duke with some of his old rugged
+force.  'Now, you go home to bed, Mills, and leave me to manage him.'
+
+The interview ended, and the steward withdrew.  The night, as he had
+said, was just such an one as the night of twenty-two years before, and
+the events of the evening destroyed in him all regard for the season as
+one of cheerfulness and goodwill.  He went off to his own house on the
+further verge of the park, where he led a lonely life, scarcely calling
+any man friend.  At eleven he prepared to retire to bed--but did not
+retire.  He sat down and reflected.  Twelve o'clock struck; he looked out
+at the colourless moon, and, prompted by he knew not what, put on his hat
+and emerged into the air.  Here William Mills strolled on and on, till he
+reached the top of Marlbury Downs, a spot he had not visited at this hour
+of the night during the whole score-and-odd years.
+
+He placed himself, as nearly as he could guess, on the spot where the
+shepherd's hut had stood.  No lambing was in progress there now, and the
+old shepherd who had used him so roughly had ceased from his labours that
+very day.  But the trilithon stood up white as ever; and, crossing the
+intervening sward, the steward fancifully placed his mouth against the
+stone.  Restless and self-reproachful as he was, he could not resist a
+smile as he thought of the terrifying oath of compact, sealed by a kiss
+upon the stones of a Pagan temple.  But he had kept his word, rather as a
+promise than as a formal vow, with much worldly advantage to himself,
+though not much happiness; till increase of years had bred reactionary
+feelings which led him to receive the news of to-night with emotions akin
+to relief.
+
+While leaning against the Devil's Door and thinking on these things, he
+became conscious that he was not the only inhabitant of the down.  A
+figure in white was moving across his front with long, noiseless strides.
+Mills stood motionless, and when the form drew quite near he perceived it
+to be that of the Duke himself in his nightshirt--apparently walking in
+his sleep.  Not to alarm the old man, Mills clung close to the shadow of
+the stone.  The Duke went straight on into the hollow.  There he knelt
+down, and began scratching the earth with his hands like a badger.  After
+a few minutes he arose, sighed heavily, and retraced his steps as he had
+come.
+
+Fearing that he might harm himself, yet unwilling to arouse him, the
+steward followed noiselessly.  The Duke kept on his path unerringly,
+entered the park, and made for the house, where he let himself in by a
+window that stood open--the one probably by which he had come out.  Mills
+softly closed the window behind his patron, and then retired homeward to
+await the revelations of the morning, deeming it unnecessary to alarm the
+house.
+
+However, he felt uneasy during the remainder of the night, no less on
+account of the Duke's personal condition than because of that which was
+imminent next day.  Early in the morning he called at Shakeforest Towers.
+The blinds were down, and there was something singular upon the porter's
+face when he opened the door.  The steward inquired for the Duke.
+
+The man's voice was subdued as he replied: 'Sir, I am sorry to say that
+his Grace is dead!  He left his room some time in the night, and wandered
+about nobody knows where.  On returning to the upper floor he lost his
+balance and fell downstairs.'
+
+The steward told the tale of the Down before the Vicar had spoken.  Mills
+had always intended to do so after the death of the Duke.  The
+consequences to himself he underwent cheerfully; but his life was not
+prolonged.  He died, a farmer at the Cape, when still somewhat under
+forty-nine years of age.
+
+The splendid Marlbury breeding flock is as renowned as ever, and, to the
+eye, seems the same in every particular that it was in earlier times; but
+the animals which composed it on the occasion of the events gathered from
+the Justice are divided by many ovine generations from its members now.
+Lambing Corner has long since ceased to be used for lambing purposes,
+though the name still lingers on as the appellation of the spot.  This
+abandonment of site may be partly owing to the removal of the high furze
+bushes which lent such convenient shelter at that date.  Partly, too, it
+may be due to another circumstance.  For it is said by present shepherds
+in that district that during the nights of Christmas week flitting shapes
+are seen in the open space around the trilithon, together with the gleam
+of a weapon, and the shadow of a man dragging a burden into the hollow.
+But of these things there is no certain testimony.
+
+Christmas 1881.
+
+
+
+
+A COMMITTEE-MAN OF 'THE TERROR'
+
+
+We had been talking of the Georgian glories of our old-fashioned watering-
+place, which now, with its substantial russet-red and dun brick buildings
+in the style of the year eighteen hundred, looks like one side of a Soho
+or Bloomsbury Street transported to the shore, and draws a smile from the
+modern tourist who has no eye for solidity of build.  The writer, quite a
+youth, was present merely as a listener.  The conversation proceeded from
+general subjects to particular, until old Mrs. H--, whose memory was as
+perfect at eighty as it had ever been in her life, interested us all by
+the obvious fidelity with which she repeated a story many times related
+to her by her mother when our aged friend was a girl--a domestic drama
+much affecting the life of an acquaintance of her said parent, one
+Mademoiselle V--, a teacher of French.  The incidents occurred in the
+town during the heyday of its fortunes, at the time of our brief peace
+with France in 1802-3.
+
+'I wrote it down in the shape of a story some years ago, just after my
+mother's death,' said Mrs. H--.  'It is locked up in my desk there now.'
+
+'Read it!' said we.
+
+'No,' said she; 'the light is bad, and I can remember it well enough,
+word for word, flourishes and all.'  We could not be choosers in the
+circumstances, and she began.
+
+* * * * *
+
+'There are two in it, of course, the man and the woman, and it was on an
+evening in September that she first got to know him.  There had not been
+such a grand gathering on the Esplanade all the season.  His Majesty King
+George the Third was present, with all the princesses and royal dukes,
+while upwards of three hundred of the general nobility and other persons
+of distinction were also in the town at the time.  Carriages and other
+conveyances were arriving every minute from London and elsewhere; and
+when among the rest a shabby stage-coach came in by a by-route along the
+coast from Havenpool, and drew up at a second-rate tavern, it attracted
+comparatively little notice.
+
+'From this dusty vehicle a man alighted, left his small quantity of
+luggage temporarily at the office, and walked along the street as if to
+look for lodgings.
+
+'He was about forty-five--possibly fifty--and wore a long coat of faded
+superfine cloth, with a heavy collar, and a hunched-up neckcloth.  He
+seemed to desire obscurity.
+
+'But the display appeared presently to strike him, and he asked of a
+rustic he met in the street what was going on; his accent being that of
+one to whom English pronunciation was difficult.
+
+'The countryman looked at him with a slight surprise, and said, "King
+Jarge is here and his royal Cwort."
+
+'The stranger inquired if they were going to stay long.
+
+'"Don't know, Sir.  Same as they always do, I suppose."
+
+'"How long is that?"
+
+'"Till some time in October.  They've come here every summer since eighty-
+nine."
+
+'The stranger moved onward down St. Thomas Street, and approached the
+bridge over the harbour backwater, that then, as now, connected the old
+town with the more modern portion.  The spot was swept with the rays of a
+low sun, which lit up the harbour lengthwise, and shone under the brim of
+the man's hat and into his eyes as he looked westward.  Against the
+radiance figures were crossing in the opposite direction to his own;
+among them this lady of my mother's later acquaintance, Mademoiselle V--.
+She was the daughter of a good old French family, and at that date a pale
+woman, twenty-eight or thirty years of age, tall and elegant in figure,
+but plainly dressed and wearing that evening (she said) a small muslin
+shawl crossed over the bosom in the fashion of the time, and tied behind.
+
+'At sight of his face, which, as she used to tell us, was unusually
+distinct in the peering sunlight, she could not help giving a little
+shriek of horror, for a terrible reason connected with her history, and
+after walking a few steps further, she sank down against the parapet of
+the bridge in a fainting fit.
+
+'In his preoccupation the foreign gentleman had hardly noticed her, but
+her strange collapse immediately attracted his attention.  He quickly
+crossed the carriageway, picked her up, and carried her into the first
+shop adjoining the bridge, explaining that she was a lady who had been
+taken ill outside.
+
+'She soon revived; but, clearly much puzzled, her helper perceived that
+she still had a dread of him which was sufficient to hinder her complete
+recovery of self-command.  She spoke in a quick and nervous way to the
+shopkeeper, asking him to call a coach.
+
+'This the shopkeeper did, Mademoiselle V--- and the stranger remaining in
+constrained silence while he was gone.  The coach came up, and giving the
+man the address, she entered it and drove away.
+
+'"Who is that lady?" said the newly arrived gentleman.
+
+'"She's of your nation, as I should make bold to suppose," said the
+shopkeeper.  And he told the other that she was Mademoiselle V--,
+governess at General Newbold's, in the same town.
+
+'"You have many foreigners here?" the stranger inquired.
+
+'"Yes, though mostly Hanoverians.  But since the peace they are learning
+French a good deal in genteel society, and French instructors are rather
+in demand."
+
+'"Yes, I teach it," said the visitor.  "I am looking for a tutorship in
+an academy."
+
+'The information given by the burgess to the Frenchman seemed to explain
+to the latter nothing of his countrywoman's conduct--which, indeed, was
+the case--and he left the shop, taking his course again over the bridge
+and along the south quay to the Old Rooms Inn, where he engaged a
+bedchamber.
+
+'Thoughts of the woman who had betrayed such agitation at sight of him
+lingered naturally enough with the newcomer.  Though, as I stated, not
+much less than thirty years of age, Mademoiselle V--, one of his own
+nation, and of highly refined and delicate appearance, had kindled a
+singular interest in the middle-aged gentleman's breast, and her large
+dark eyes, as they had opened and shrunk from him, exhibited a pathetic
+beauty to which hardly any man could have been insensible.
+
+'The next day, having written some letters, he went out and made known at
+the office of the town "Guide" and of the newspaper, that a teacher of
+French and calligraphy had arrived, leaving a card at the bookseller's to
+the same effect.  He then walked on aimlessly, but at length inquired the
+way to General Newbold's.  At the door, without giving his name, he asked
+to see Mademoiselle V--, and was shown into a little back parlour, where
+she came to him with a gaze of surprise.
+
+'"My God!  Why do you intrude here, Monsieur?" she gasped in French as
+soon as she saw his face.
+
+'"You were taken ill yesterday.  I helped you.  You might have been run
+over if I had not picked you up.  It was an act of simple humanity
+certainly; but I thought I might come to ask if you had recovered?"
+
+'She had turned aside, and had scarcely heard a word of his speech.  "I
+hate you, infamous man!" she said.  "I cannot bear your helping me.  Go
+away!"
+
+'"But you are a stranger to me."
+
+'"I know you too well!"
+
+'"You have the advantage then, Mademoiselle.  I am a newcomer here.  I
+never have seen you before to my knowledge; and I certainly do not, could
+not, hate you."
+
+'"Are you not Monsieur B--?"
+
+'He flinched.  "I am--in Paris," he said.  "But here I am Monsieur G--."
+
+'"That is trivial.  You are the man I say you are."
+
+'"How did you know my real name, Mademoiselle?"
+
+'"I saw you in years gone by, when you did not see me.  You were formerly
+Member of the Committee of Public Safety, under the Convention."
+
+"I was."
+
+'"You guillotined my father, my brother, my uncle--all my family, nearly,
+and broke my mother's heart.  They had done nothing but keep silence.
+Their sentiments were only guessed.  Their headless corpses were thrown
+indiscriminately into the ditch of the Mousseaux Cemetery, and destroyed
+with lime."
+
+'He nodded.
+
+'"You left me without a friend, and here I am now, alone in a foreign
+land."
+
+'"I am sorry for you," said be.  "Sorry for the consequence, not for the
+intent.  What I did was a matter of conscience, and, from a point of view
+indiscernible by you, I did right.  I profited not a farthing.  But I
+shall not argue this.  You have the satisfaction of seeing me here an
+exile also, in poverty, betrayed by comrades, as friendless as yourself."
+
+'"It is no satisfaction to me, Monsieur."
+
+'"Well, things done cannot be altered.  Now the question: are you quite
+recovered?"
+
+'"Not from dislike and dread of you--otherwise, yes."
+
+'"Good morning, Mademoiselle."
+
+'"Good morning."
+
+'They did not meet again till one evening at the theatre (which my
+mother's friend was with great difficulty induced to frequent, to perfect
+herself in English pronunciation, the idea she entertained at that time
+being to become a teacher of English in her own country later on).  She
+found him sitting next to her, and it made her pale and restless.
+
+'"You are still afraid of me?"
+
+'"I am.  O cannot you understand!"
+
+'He signified the affirmative.
+
+'"I follow the play with difficulty," he said, presently.
+
+'"So do I--now," said she.
+
+'He regarded her long, and she was conscious of his look; and while she
+kept her eyes on the stage they filled with tears.  Still she would not
+move, and the tears ran visibly down her cheek, though the play was a
+merry one, being no other than Mr. Sheridan's comedy of "The Rivals,"
+with Mr. S. Kemble as Captain Absolute.  He saw her distress, and that
+her mind was elsewhere; and abruptly rising from his seat at
+candle-snuffing time he left the theatre.
+
+'Though he lived in the old town, and she in the new, they frequently saw
+each other at a distance.  One of these occasions was when she was on the
+north side of the harbour, by the ferry, waiting for the boat to take her
+across.  He was standing by Cove Row, on the quay opposite.  Instead of
+entering the boat when it arrived she stepped back from the quay; but
+looking to see if he remained she beheld him pointing with his finger to
+the ferry-boat.
+
+'"Enter!" he said, in a voice loud enough to reach her.
+
+'Mademoiselle V--- stood still.
+
+'"Enter!" he said, and, as she did not move, he repeated the word a third
+time.
+
+'She had really been going to cross, and now approached and stepped down
+into the boat.  Though she did not raise her eyes she knew that he was
+watching her over.  At the landing steps she saw from under the brim of
+her hat a hand stretched down.  The steps were steep and slippery.
+
+'"No, Monsieur," she said.  "Unless, indeed, you believe in God, and
+repent of your evil past!"
+
+'"I am sorry you were made to suffer.  But I only believe in the god
+called Reason, and I do not repent.  I was the instrument of a national
+principle.  Your friends were not sacrificed for any ends of mine."
+
+'She thereupon withheld her hand, and clambered up unassisted.  He went
+on, ascending the Look-out Hill, and disappearing over the brow.  Her way
+was in the same direction, her errand being to bring home the two young
+girls under her charge, who had gone to the cliff for an airing.  When
+she joined them at the top she saw his solitary figure at the further
+edge, standing motionless against the sea.  All the while that she
+remained with her pupils he stood without turning, as if looking at the
+frigates in the roadstead, but more probably in meditation, unconscious
+where he was.  In leaving the spot one of the children threw away half a
+sponge-biscuit that she had been eating.  Passing near it he stooped,
+picked it up carefully, and put it in his pocket.
+
+'Mademoiselle V--- came homeward, asking herself, "Can he be starving?"
+
+'From that day he was invisible for so long a time that she thought he
+had gone away altogether.  But one evening a note came to her, and she
+opened it trembling.
+
+   '"I am here ill," it said, "and, as you know, alone.  There are one or
+   two little things I want done, in case my death should occur,--and I
+   should prefer not to ask the people here, if it could be avoided.  Have
+   you enough of the gift of charity to come and carry out my wishes
+   before it is too late?"
+
+'Now so it was that, since seeing him possess himself of the broken cake,
+she had insensibly begun to feel something that was more than curiosity,
+though perhaps less than anxiety, about this fellow-countryman of hers;
+and it was not in her nervous and sensitive heart to resist his appeal.
+She found his lodging (to which he had removed from the Old Rooms inn for
+economy) to be a room over a shop, half-way up the steep and narrow
+street of the old town, to which the fashionable visitors seldom
+penetrated.  With some misgiving she entered the house, and was admitted
+to the chamber where he lay.
+
+'"You are too good, too good," he murmured.  And presently, "You need not
+shut the door.  You will feel safer, and they will not understand what we
+say."
+
+'"Are you in want, Monsieur?  Can I give you--"
+
+'"No, no.  I merely want you to do a trifling thing or two that I have
+not strength enough to do myself.  Nobody in the town but you knows who I
+really am--unless you have told?"
+
+'"I have not told . . . I thought you might have acted from principle in
+those sad days, even--"
+
+'"You are kind to concede that much.  However, to the present.  I was
+able to destroy my few papers before I became so weak . . . But in the
+drawer there you will find some pieces of linen clothing--only two or
+three--marked with initials that may be recognized.  Will you rip them
+out with a penknife?"
+
+'She searched as bidden, found the garments, cut out the stitches of the
+lettering, and replaced the linen as before.  A promise to post, in the
+event of his death, a letter he put in her hand, completed all that he
+required of her.
+
+'He thanked her.  "I think you seem sorry for me," he murmured.  "And I
+am surprised.  You are sorry?"
+
+'She evaded the question.  "Do you repent and believe?" she asked.
+
+'"No."
+
+'Contrary to her expectations and his own he recovered, though very
+slowly; and her manner grew more distant thenceforward, though his
+influence upon her was deeper than she knew.  Weeks passed away, and the
+month of May arrived.  One day at this time she met him walking slowly
+along the beach to the northward.
+
+'"You know the news?" he said.
+
+'"You mean of the rupture between France and England again?"
+
+'"Yes; and the feeling of antagonism is stronger than it was in the last
+war, owing to Bonaparte's high-handed arrest of the innocent English who
+were travelling in our country for pleasure.  I feel that the war will be
+long and bitter; and that my wish to live unknown in England will be
+frustrated.  See here."
+
+'He took from his pocket a piece of the single newspaper which circulated
+in the county in those days, and she read--
+
+   "The magistrates acting under the Alien Act have been requested to
+   direct a very scrutinizing eye to the Academies in our towns and other
+   places, in which French tutors are employed, and to all of that
+   nationality who profess to be teachers in this country.  Many of them
+   are known to be inveterate Enemies and Traitors to the nation among
+   whose people they have found a livelihood and a home."
+
+'He continued: "I have observed since the declaration of war a marked
+difference in the conduct of the rougher class of people here towards me.
+If a great battle were to occur--as it soon will, no doubt--feeling would
+grow to a pitch that would make it impossible for me, a disguised man of
+no known occupation, to stay here.  With you, whose duties and
+antecedents are known, it may be less difficult, but still unpleasant.
+Now I propose this.  You have probably seen how my deep sympathy with you
+has quickened to a warm feeling; and what I say is, will you agree to
+give me a title to protect you by honouring me with your hand?  I am
+older than you, it is true, but as husband and wife we can leave England
+together, and make the whole world our country.  Though I would propose
+Quebec, in Canada, as the place which offers the best promise of a home."
+
+'"My God!  You surprise me!" said she.
+
+'"But you accept my proposal?"
+
+'"No, no!"
+
+'"And yet I think you will, Mademoiselle, some day!"
+
+'"I think not."
+
+'"I won't distress you further now."
+
+'"Much thanks . . . I am glad to see you looking better, Monsieur; I mean
+you are looking better."
+
+'"Ah, yes.  I am improving.  I walk in the sun every day."
+
+'And almost every day she saw him--sometimes nodding stiffly only,
+sometimes exchanging formal civilities.  "You are not gone yet," she said
+on one of these occasions.
+
+'"No.  At present I don't think of going without you."
+
+'"But you find it uncomfortable here?"
+
+'"Somewhat.  So when will you have pity on me?"
+
+'She shook her head and went on her way.  Yet she was a little moved.  "He
+did it on principle," she would murmur.  "He had no animosity towards
+them, and profited nothing!"
+
+'She wondered how he lived.  It was evident that he could not be so poor
+as she had thought; his pretended poverty might be to escape notice.  She
+could not tell, but she knew that she was dangerously interested in him.
+
+'And he still mended, till his thin, pale face became more full and firm.
+As he mended she had to meet that request of his, advanced with even
+stronger insistency.
+
+'The arrival of the King and Court for the season as usual brought
+matters to a climax for these two lonely exiles and fellow
+country-people.  The King's awkward preference for a part of the coast in
+such dangerous proximity to France made it necessary that a strict
+military vigilance should be exercised to guard the royal residents.  Half-
+a-dozen frigates were every night posted in a line across the bay, and
+two lines of sentinels, one at the water's edge and another behind the
+Esplanade, occupied the whole sea-front after eight every night.  The
+watering-place was growing an inconvenient residence even for
+Mademoiselle V--- herself, her friendship for this strange French tutor
+and writing-master who never had any pupils having been observed by many
+who slightly knew her.  The General's wife, whose dependent she was,
+repeatedly warned her against the acquaintance; while the Hanoverian and
+other soldiers of the Foreign Legion, who had discovered the nationality
+of her friend, were more aggressive than the English military gallants
+who made it their business to notice her.
+
+'In this tense state of affairs her answers became more agitated.  "O
+Heaven, how can I marry you!" she would say.
+
+'"You will; surely you will!" he answered again.  "I don't leave without
+you.  And I shall soon be interrogated before the magistrates if I stay
+here; probably imprisoned.  You will come?"
+
+'She felt her defences breaking down.  Contrary to all reason and sense
+of family honour she was, by some abnormal craving, inclining to a
+tenderness for him that was founded on its opposite.  Sometimes her warm
+sentiments burnt lower than at others, and then the enormity of her
+conduct showed itself in more staring hues.
+
+'Shortly after this he came with a resigned look on his face.  "It is as
+I expected," he said.  "I have received a hint to go.  In good sooth, I
+am no Bonapartist--I am no enemy to England; but the presence of the King
+made it impossible for a foreigner with no visible occupation, and who
+may be a spy, to remain at large in the town.  The authorities are civil,
+but firm.  They are no more than reasonable.  Good.  I must go.  You must
+come also."
+
+'She did not speak.  But she nodded assent, her eyes drooping.
+
+'On her way back to the house on the Esplanade she said to herself, "I am
+glad, I am glad!  I could not do otherwise.  It is rendering good for
+evil!"  But she knew how she mocked herself in this, and that the moral
+principle had not operated one jot in her acceptance of him.  In truth
+she had not realized till now the full presence of the emotion which had
+unconsciously grown up in her for this lonely and severe man, who, in her
+tradition, was vengeance and irreligion personified.  He seemed to absorb
+her whole nature, and, absorbing, to control it.
+
+'A day or two before the one fixed for the wedding there chanced to come
+to her a letter from the only acquaintance of her own sex and country she
+possessed in England, one to whom she had sent intelligence of her
+approaching marriage, without mentioning with whom.  This friend's
+misfortunes had been somewhat similar to her own, which fact had been one
+cause of their intimacy; her friend's sister, a nun of the Abbey of
+Montmartre, having perished on the scaffold at the hands of the same
+Comite de Salut Public which had numbered Mademoiselle V--'s affianced
+among its members.  The writer had felt her position much again of late,
+since the renewal of the war, she said; and the letter wound up with a
+fresh denunciation of the authors of their mutual bereavement and
+subsequent troubles.
+
+'Coming just then, its contents produced upon Mademoiselle V--- the
+effect of a pail of water upon a somnambulist.  What had she been doing
+in betrothing herself to this man!  Was she not making herself a
+parricide after the event?  At this crisis in her feelings her lover
+called.  He beheld her trembling, and, in reply to his question, she told
+him of her scruples with impulsive candour.
+
+'She had not intended to do this, but his attitude of tender command
+coerced her into frankness.  Thereupon he exhibited an agitation never
+before apparent in him.  He said, "But all that is past.  You are the
+symbol of Charity, and we are pledged to let bygones be."
+
+'His words soothed her for the moment, but she was sadly silent, and he
+went away.
+
+'That night she saw (as she firmly believed to the end of her life) a
+divinely sent vision.  A procession of her lost relatives--father,
+brother, uncle, cousin--seemed to cross her chamber between her bed and
+the window, and when she endeavoured to trace their features she
+perceived them to be headless, and that she had recognized them by their
+familiar clothes only.  In the morning she could not shake off the
+effects of this appearance on her nerves.  All that day she saw nothing
+of her wooer, he being occupied in making arrangements for their
+departure.  It grew towards evening--the marriage eve; but, in spite of
+his re-assuring visit, her sense of family duty waxed stronger now that
+she was left alone.  Yet, she asked herself, how could she, alone and
+unprotected, go at this eleventh hour and reassert to an affianced
+husband that she could not and would not marry him while admitting at the
+same time that she loved him?  The situation dismayed her.  She had
+relinquished her post as governess, and was staying temporarily in a room
+near the coach-office, where she expected him to call in the morning to
+carry out the business of their union and departure.
+
+'Wisely or foolishly, Mademoiselle V--- came to a resolution: that her
+only safety lay in flight.  His contiguity influenced her too sensibly;
+she could not reason.  So packing up her few possessions and placing on
+the table the small sum she owed, she went out privately, secured a last
+available seat in the London coach, and, almost before she had fully
+weighed her action, she was rolling out of the town in the dusk of the
+September evening.
+
+'Having taken this startling step she began to reflect upon her reasons.
+He had been one of that tragic Committee the sound of whose name was a
+horror to the civilized world; yet he had been only one of several
+members, and, it seemed, not the most active.  He had marked down names
+on principle, had felt no personal enmity against his victims, and had
+enriched himself not a sou out of the office he had held.  Nothing could
+change the past.  Meanwhile he loved her, and her heart inclined to as
+much of him as she could detach from that past.  Why not, as he had
+suggested, bury memories, and inaugurate a new era by this union?  In
+other words, why not indulge her tenderness, since its nullification
+could do no good.
+
+'Thus she held self-communion in her seat in the coach, passing through
+Casterbridge, and Shottsford, and on to the White Hart at Melchester, at
+which place the whole fabric of her recent intentions crumbled down.
+Better be staunch having got so far; let things take their course, and
+marry boldly the man who had so impressed her.  How great he was; how
+small was she!  And she had presumed to judge him!  Abandoning her place
+in the coach with the precipitancy that had characterized her taking it,
+she waited till the vehicle had driven off, something in the departing
+shapes of the outside passengers against the starlit sky giving her a
+start, as she afterwards remembered.  Presently the down coach, "The
+Morning Herald," entered the city, and she hastily obtained a place on
+the top.
+
+'"I'll be firm--I'll be his--if it cost me my immortal soul!" she said.
+And with troubled breathings she journeyed back over the road she had
+just traced.
+
+'She reached our royal watering-place by the time the day broke, and her
+first aim was to get back to the hired room in which her last few days
+had been spent.  When the landlady appeared at the door in response to
+Mademoiselle V--'s nervous summons, she explained her sudden departure
+and return as best she could; and no objection being offered to her re-
+engagement of the room for one day longer she ascended to the chamber and
+sat down panting.  She was back once more, and her wild tergiversations
+were a secret from him whom alone they concerned.
+
+'A sealed letter was on the mantelpiece.  "Yes, it is directed to you,
+Mademoiselle," said the woman who had followed her.  "But we were
+wondering what to do with it.  A town messenger brought it after you had
+gone last night."
+
+'When the landlady had left, Mademoiselle V--- opened the letter and
+read--
+
+   "MY DEAR AND HONOURED FRIEND.--You have been throughout our
+   acquaintance absolutely candid concerning your misgivings.  But I have
+   been reserved concerning mine.  That is the difference between us.  You
+   probably have not guessed that every qualm you have felt on the
+   subject of our marriage has been paralleled in my heart to the full.
+   Thus it happened that your involuntary outburst of remorse yesterday,
+   though mechanically deprecated by me in your presence, was a last item
+   in my own doubts on the wisdom of our union, giving them a force that
+   I could no longer withstand.  I came home; and, on reflection, much as
+   I honour and adore you, I decide to set you free.
+
+   "As one whose life has been devoted, and I may say sacrificed, to the
+   cause of Liberty, I cannot allow your judgment (probably a permanent
+   one) to be fettered beyond release by a feeling which may be transient
+   only.
+
+   "It would be no less than excruciating to both that I should announce
+   this decision to you by word of mouth.  I have therefore taken the
+   less painful course of writing.  Before you receive this I shall have
+   left the town by the evening coach for London, on reaching which city
+   my movements will be revealed to none.
+
+   "Regard me, Mademoiselle, as dead, and accept my renewed assurances of
+   respect, remembrance, and affection."
+
+'When she had recovered from her shock of surprise and grief, she
+remembered that at the starting of the coach out of Melchester before
+dawn, the shape of a figure among the outside passengers against the
+starlit sky had caused her a momentary start, from its resemblance to
+that of her friend.  Knowing nothing of each other's intentions, and
+screened from each other by the darkness, they had left the town by the
+same conveyance.  "He, the greater, persevered; I, the smaller,
+returned!" she said.
+
+'Recovering from her stupor, Mademoiselle V--- bethought herself again of
+her employer, Mrs. Newbold, whom recent events had estranged.  To that
+lady she went with a full heart, and explained everything.  Mrs. Newbold
+kept to herself her opinion of the episode, and reinstalled the deserted
+bride in her old position as governess to the family.
+
+'A governess she remained to the end of her days.  After the final peace
+with France she became acquainted with my mother, to whom by degrees she
+imparted these experiences of hers.  As her hair grew white, and her
+features pinched, Mademoiselle V--- would wonder what nook of the world
+contained her lover, if he lived, and if by any chance she might see him
+again.  But when, some time in the 'twenties, death came to her, at no
+great age, that outline against the stars of the morning remained as the
+last glimpse she ever obtained of her family's foe and her once affianced
+husband.'
+
+1895.
+
+
+
+
+MASTER JOHN HORSELEIGH, KNIGHT
+
+
+In the earliest and mustiest volume of the Havenpool marriage registers
+(said the thin-faced gentleman) this entry may still be read by any one
+curious enough to decipher the crabbed handwriting of the date.  I took a
+copy of it when I was last there; and it runs thus (he had opened his
+pocket-book, and now read aloud the extract; afterwards handing round the
+book to us, wherein we saw transcribed the following)--
+
+   Mastr John Horseleigh, Knyght, of the p'ysshe of Clyffton was maryd to
+   Edith the wyffe late off John Stocker, m'chawnte of Havenpool the
+   xiiij daje of December be p'vylegge gevyn by our sup'me hedd of the
+   chyrche of Ingelonde Kynge Henry the viii th 1539.
+
+Now, if you turn to the long and elaborate pedigree of the ancient family
+of the Horseleighs of Clyfton Horseleigh, you will find no mention
+whatever of this alliance, notwithstanding the privilege given by the
+Sovereign and head of the Church; the said Sir John being therein
+chronicled as marrying, at a date apparently earlier than the above, the
+daughter and heiress of Richard Phelipson, of Montislope, in Nether
+Wessex, a lady who outlived him, of which marriage there were issue two
+daughters and a son, who succeeded him in his estates.  How are we to
+account for these, as it would seem, contemporaneous wives?  A strange
+local tradition only can help us, and this can be briefly told.
+
+One evening in the autumn of the year 1540 or 1541, a young sailor, whose
+Christian name was Roger, but whose surname is not known, landed at his
+native place of Havenpool, on the South Wessex coast, after a voyage in
+the Newfoundland trade, then newly sprung into existence.  He returned in
+the ship Primrose with a cargo of 'trayne oyle brought home from the New
+Founde Lande,' to quote from the town records of the date.  During his
+absence of two summers and a winter, which made up the term of a
+Newfoundland 'spell,' many unlooked-for changes had occurred within the
+quiet little seaport, some of which closely affected Roger the sailor.  At
+the time of his departure his only sister Edith had become the bride of
+one Stocker, a respectable townsman, and part owner of the brig in which
+Roger had sailed; and it was to the house of this couple, his only
+relatives, that the young man directed his steps.  On trying the door in
+Quay Street he found it locked, and then observed that the windows were
+boarded up.  Inquiring of a bystander, he learnt for the first time of
+the death of his brother-in-law, though that event had taken place nearly
+eighteen months before.
+
+'And my sister Edith?' asked Roger.
+
+'She's married again--as they do say, and hath been so these twelve
+months.  I don't vouch for the truth o't, though if she isn't she ought
+to be.'
+
+Roger's face grew dark.  He was a man with a considerable reserve of
+strong passion, and he asked his informant what he meant by speaking
+thus.
+
+The man explained that shortly after the young woman's bereavement a
+stranger had come to the port.  He had seen her moping on the quay, had
+been attracted by her youth and loneliness, and in an extraordinarily
+brief wooing had completely fascinated her--had carried her off, and, as
+was reported, had married her.  Though he had come by water, he was
+supposed to live no very great distance off by land.  They were last
+heard of at Oozewood, in Upper Wessex, at the house of one Wall, a timber-
+merchant, where, he believed, she still had a lodging, though her
+husband, if he were lawfully that much, was but an occasional visitor to
+the place.
+
+'The stranger?' asked Roger.  'Did you see him?  What manner of man was
+he?'
+
+'I liked him not,' said the other.  'He seemed of that kind that hath
+something to conceal, and as he walked with her he ever and anon turned
+his head and gazed behind him, as if he much feared an unwelcome pursuer.
+But, faith,' continued he, 'it may have been the man's anxiety only.  Yet
+did I not like him.'
+
+'Was he older than my sister?' Roger asked.
+
+'Ay--much older; from a dozen to a score of years older.  A man of some
+position, maybe, playing an amorous game for the pleasure of the hour.
+Who knoweth but that he have a wife already?  Many have done the thing
+hereabouts of late.'
+
+Having paid a visit to the graves of his relatives, the sailor next day
+went along the straight road which, then a lane, now a highway, conducted
+to the curious little inland town named by the Havenpool man.  It is
+unnecessary to describe Oozewood on the South-Avon.  It has a railway at
+the present day; but thirty years of steam traffic past its precincts
+have hardly modified its original features.  Surrounded by a sort of
+fresh-water lagoon, dividing it from meadows and coppice, its ancient
+thatch and timber houses have barely made way even in the front street
+for the ubiquitous modern brick and slate.  It neither increases nor
+diminishes in size; it is difficult to say what the inhabitants find to
+do, for, though trades in woodware are still carried on, there cannot be
+enough of this class of work nowadays to maintain all the householders,
+the forests around having been so greatly thinned and curtailed.  At the
+time of this tradition the forests were dense, artificers in wood
+abounded, and the timber trade was brisk.  Every house in the town,
+without exception, was of oak framework, filled in with plaster, and
+covered with thatch, the chimney being the only brick portion of the
+structure.  Inquiry soon brought Roger the sailor to the door of Wall,
+the timber-dealer referred to, but it was some time before he was able to
+gain admission to the lodging of his sister, the people having plainly
+received directions not to welcome strangers.
+
+She was sitting in an upper room on one of the lath-backed,
+willow-bottomed 'shepherd's' chairs, made on the spot then as to this
+day, and as they were probably made there in the days of the Heptarchy.
+In her lap was an infant, which she had been suckling, though now it had
+fallen asleep; so had the young mother herself for a few minutes, under
+the drowsing effects of solitude.  Hearing footsteps on the stairs, she
+awoke, started up with a glad cry, and ran to the door, opening which she
+met her brother on the threshold.
+
+'O, this is merry; I didn't expect 'ee!' she said.  'Ah, Roger--I thought
+it was John.'  Her tones fell to disappointment.
+
+The sailor kissed her, looked at her sternly for a few moments, and
+pointing to the infant, said, 'You mean the father of this?'
+
+'Yes, my husband,' said Edith.
+
+'I hope so,' he answered.
+
+'Why, Roger, I'm married--of a truth am I!' she cried.
+
+'Shame upon 'ee, if true!  If not true, worse.  Master Stocker was an
+honest man, and ye should have respected his memory longer.  Where is thy
+husband?'
+
+'He comes often.  I thought it was he now.  Our marriage has to be kept
+secret for a while--it was done privily for certain reasons; but we was
+married at church like honest folk--afore God we were, Roger, six months
+after poor Stocker's death.'
+
+''Twas too soon,' said Roger.
+
+'I was living in a house alone; I had nowhere to go to.  You were far
+over sea in the New Found Land, and John took me and brought me here.'
+
+'How often doth he come?' says Roger again.
+
+'Once or twice weekly,' says she.
+
+'I wish th' 'dst waited till I returned, dear Edy,' he said.  'It mid be
+you are a wife--I hope so.  But, if so, why this mystery?  Why this mean
+and cramped lodging in this lonely copse-circled town?  Of what standing
+is your husband, and of where?'
+
+'He is of gentle breeding--his name is John.  I am not free to tell his
+family-name.  He is said to be of London, for safety' sake; but he really
+lives in the county next adjoining this.'
+
+'Where in the next county?'
+
+'I do not know.  He has preferred not to tell me, that I may not have the
+secret forced from me, to his and my hurt, by bringing the marriage to
+the ears of his kinsfolk and friends.'
+
+Her brother's face flushed.  'Our people have been honest townsmen, well-
+reputed for long; why should you readily take such humbling from a
+sojourner of whom th' 'st know nothing?'
+
+They remained in constrained converse till her quick ear caught a sound,
+for which she might have been waiting--a horse's footfall.  'It is John!'
+said she.  'This is his night--Saturday.'
+
+'Don't be frightened lest he should find me here!' said Roger.  'I am on
+the point of leaving.  I wish not to be a third party.  Say nothing at
+all about my visit, if it will incommode you so to do.  I will see thee
+before I go afloat again.'
+
+Speaking thus he left the room, and descending the staircase let himself
+out by the front door, thinking he might obtain a glimpse of the
+approaching horseman.  But that traveller had in the meantime gone
+stealthily round to the back of the homestead, and peering along the
+pinion-end of the house Roger discerned him unbridling and haltering his
+horse with his own hands in the shed there.
+
+Roger retired to the neighbouring inn called the Black Lamb, and
+meditated.  This mysterious method of approach determined him, after all,
+not to leave the place till he had ascertained more definite facts of his
+sister's position--whether she were the deluded victim of the stranger or
+the wife she obviously believed herself to be.  Having eaten some supper,
+he left the inn, it being now about eleven o'clock.  He first looked into
+the shed, and, finding the horse still standing there, waited
+irresolutely near the door of his sister's lodging.  Half an hour
+elapsed, and, while thinking he would climb into a loft hard by for a
+night's rest, there seemed to be a movement within the shutters of the
+sitting-room that his sister occupied.  Roger hid himself behind a faggot-
+stack near the back door, rightly divining that his sister's visitor
+would emerge by the way he had entered.  The door opened, and the candle
+she held in her hand lighted for a moment the stranger's form, showing it
+to be that of a tall and handsome personage, about forty years of age,
+and apparently of a superior position in life.  Edith was assisting him
+to cloak himself, which being done he took leave of her with a kiss and
+left the house.  From the door she watched him bridle and saddle his
+horse, and having mounted and waved an adieu to her as she stood candle
+in hand, he turned out of the yard and rode away.
+
+The horse which bore him was, or seemed to be, a little lame, and Roger
+fancied from this that the rider's journey was not likely to be a long
+one.  Being light of foot he followed apace, having no great difficulty
+on such a still night in keeping within earshot some few miles, the
+horseman pausing more than once.  In this pursuit Roger discovered the
+rider to choose bridle-tracks and open commons in preference to any high
+road.  The distance soon began to prove a more trying one than he had
+bargained for; and when out of breath and in some despair of being able
+to ascertain the man's identity, he perceived an ass standing in the
+starlight under a hayrick, from which the animal was helping itself to
+periodic mouthfuls.
+
+The story goes that Roger caught the ass, mounted, and again resumed the
+trail of the unconscious horseman, which feat may have been possible to a
+nautical young fellow, though one can hardly understand how a sailor
+would ride such an animal without bridle or saddle, and strange to his
+hands, unless the creature were extraordinarily docile.  This question,
+however, is immaterial.  Suffice it to say that at dawn the following
+morning Roger beheld his sister's lover or husband entering the gates of
+a large and well-timbered park on the south-western verge of the White
+Hart Forest (as it was then called), now known to everybody as the Vale
+of Blackmoor.  Thereupon the sailor discarded his steed, and finding for
+himself an obscurer entrance to the same park a little further on, he
+crossed the grass to reconnoitre.
+
+He presently perceived amid the trees before him a mansion which, new to
+himself, was one of the best known in the county at that time.  Of this
+fine manorial residence hardly a trace now remains; but a manuscript
+dated some years later than the events we are regarding describes it in
+terms from which the imagination may construct a singularly clear and
+vivid picture.  This record presents it as consisting of 'a faire yellow
+freestone building, partly two and partly three storeys; a faire halle
+and parlour, both waynscotted; a faire dyning roome and withdrawing
+roome, and many good lodgings; a kitchen adjoyninge backwarde to one end
+of the dwelling-house, with a faire passage from it into the halle,
+parlour, and dyninge roome, and sellars adjoyninge.
+
+'In the front of the house a square greene court, and a curious gatehouse
+with lodgings in it, standing with the front of the house to the south;
+in a large outer court three stables, a coach-house, a large barne, and a
+stable for oxen and kyne, and all houses necessary.
+
+'Without the gatehouse, paled in, a large square greene, in which
+standeth a faire chappell; of the south-east side of the greene court,
+towards the river, a large garden.
+
+'Of the south-west side of the greene court is a large bowling greene,
+with fower mounted walks about it, all walled about with a batteled wall,
+and sett with all sorts of fruit; and out of it into the feildes there
+are large walks under many tall elmes orderly planted.'
+
+Then follows a description of the orchards and gardens; the servants'
+offices, brewhouse, bakehouse, dairy, pigeon-houses, and corn-mill; the
+river and its abundance of fish; the warren, the coppices, the walks;
+ending thus--
+
+'And all the country north of the house, open champaign, sandy feildes,
+very dry and pleasant for all kindes of recreation, huntinge, and
+hawkinge, and profitble for tillage . . . The house hath a large prospect
+east, south, and west, over a very large and pleasant vale . . . is
+seated from the good markett towns of Sherton Abbas three miles, and Ivel
+a mile, that plentifully yield all manner of provision; and within twelve
+miles of the south sea.'
+
+It was on the grass before this seductive and picturesque structure that
+the sailor stood at gaze under the elms in the dim dawn of Sunday
+morning, and saw to his surprise his sister's lover and horse vanish
+within the court of the building.
+
+Perplexed and weary, Roger slowly retreated, more than ever convinced
+that something was wrong in his sister's position.  He crossed the
+bowling green to the avenue of elms, and, bent on further research, was
+about to climb into one of these, when, looking below, he saw a heap of
+hay apparently for horses or deer.  Into this he crept, and, having eaten
+a crust of bread which he had hastily thrust into his pocket at the inn,
+he curled up and fell asleep, the hay forming a comfortable bed, and
+quite covering him over.
+
+He slept soundly and long, and was awakened by the sound of a bell.  On
+peering from the hay he found the time had advanced to full day; the sun
+was shining brightly.  The bell was that of the 'faire chappell' on the
+green outside the gatehouse, and it was calling to matins.  Presently the
+priest crossed the green to a little side-door in the chancel, and then
+from the gateway of the mansion emerged the household, the tall man whom
+Roger had seen with his sister on the previous night, on his arm being a
+portly dame, and, running beside the pair, two little girls and a boy.
+These all entered the chapel, and the bell having ceased and the environs
+become clear, the sailor crept out from his hiding.
+
+He sauntered towards the chapel, the opening words of the service being
+audible within.  While standing by the porch he saw a belated servitor
+approaching from the kitchen-court to attend the service also.  Roger
+carelessly accosted him, and asked, as an idle wanderer, the name of the
+family he had just seen cross over from the mansion.
+
+'Od zounds! if ye modden be a stranger here in very truth, goodman.  That
+wer Sir John and his dame, and his children Elizabeth, Mary, and John.'
+
+'I be from foreign parts.  Sir John what d'ye call'n?'
+
+'Master John Horseleigh, Knight, who had a'most as much lond by
+inheritance of his mother as 'a had by his father, and likewise some by
+his wife.  Why, bain't his arms dree goolden horses' heads, and idden his
+lady the daughter of Master Richard Phelipson, of Montislope, in Nether
+Wessex, known to us all?'
+
+'It mid be so, and yet it mid not.  However, th' 'lt miss thy prayers for
+such an honest knight's welfare, and I have to traipse seaward many
+miles.'
+
+He went onward, and as he walked continued saying to himself, 'Now to
+that poor wronged fool Edy.  The fond thing!  I thought it; 'twas too
+quick--she was ever amorous.  What's to become of her!  God wot!  How be
+I going to face her with the news, and how be I to hold it from her?  To
+bring this disgrace on my father's honoured name, a double-tongued
+knave!'  He turned and shook his fist at the chapel and all in it, and
+resumed his way.
+
+Perhaps it was owing to the perplexity of his mind that, instead of
+returning by the direct road towards his sister's obscure lodging in the
+next county, he followed the highway to Casterbridge, some fifteen miles
+off, where he remained drinking hard all that afternoon and evening, and
+where he lay that and two or three succeeding nights, wandering thence
+along the Anglebury road to some village that way, and lying the Friday
+night after at his native place of Havenpool.  The sight of the familiar
+objects there seems to have stirred him anew to action, and the next
+morning he was observed pursuing the way to Oozewood that he had followed
+on the Saturday previous, reckoning, no doubt, that Saturday night would,
+as before, be a time for finding Sir John with his sister again.
+
+He delayed to reach the place till just before sunset.  His sister was
+walking in the meadows at the foot of the garden, with a nursemaid who
+carried the baby, and she looked up pensively when he approached.  Anxiety
+as to her position had already told upon her once rosy cheeks and lucid
+eyes.  But concern for herself and child was displaced for the moment by
+her regard of Roger's worn and haggard face.
+
+'Why--you are sick, Roger--you are tired!  Where have you been these many
+days?  Why not keep me company a bit--my husband is much away?  And we
+have hardly spoke at all of dear father and of your voyage to the New
+Land.  Why did you go away so suddenly?  There is a spare chamber at my
+lodging.'
+
+'Come indoors,' he said.  'We'll talk now--talk a good deal.  As for him
+[nodding to the child], better heave him into the river; better for him
+and you!'
+
+She forced a laugh, as if she tried to see a good joke in the remark, and
+they went silently indoors.
+
+'A miserable hole!' said Roger, looking round the room.
+
+'Nay, but 'tis very pretty!'
+
+'Not after what I've seen.  Did he marry 'ee at church in orderly
+fashion?'
+
+'He did sure--at our church at Havenpool.'
+
+'But in a privy way?'
+
+'Ay--because of his friends--it was at night-time.'
+
+'Ede, ye fond one--for all that he's not thy husband!  Th' 'rt not his
+wife; and the child is a bastard.  He hath a wife and children of his own
+rank, and bearing his name; and that's Sir John Horseleigh, of Clyfton
+Horseleigh, and not plain Jack, as you think him, and your lawful
+husband.  The sacrament of marriage is no safeguard nowadays.  The King's
+new-made headship of the Church hath led men to practise these tricks
+lightly.'
+
+She had turned white.  'That's not true, Roger!' she said.  'You are in
+liquor, my brother, and you know not what you say!  Your seafaring years
+have taught 'ee bad things!'
+
+'Edith--I've seen them; wife and family--all.  How canst--'
+
+They were sitting in the gathered darkness, and at that moment steps were
+heard without.  'Go out this way,' she said.  'It is my husband.  He must
+not see thee in this mood.  Get away till to-morrow, Roger, as you care
+for me.'
+
+She pushed her brother through a door leading to the back stairs, and
+almost as soon as it was closed her visitor entered.  Roger, however, did
+not retreat down the stairs; he stood and looked through the bobbin-hole.
+If the visitor turned out to be Sir John, he had determined to confront
+him.
+
+It was the knight.  She had struck a light on his entry, and he kissed
+the child, and took Edith tenderly by the shoulders, looking into her
+face.
+
+'Something's gone awry wi' my dear!' he said.  'What is it?  What's the
+matter?'
+
+'O, Jack!' she cried.  'I have heard such a fearsome rumour--what doth it
+mean?  He who told me is my best friend.  He must be deceived!  But who
+deceived him, and why?  Jack, I was just told that you had a wife living
+when you married me, and have her still!'
+
+'A wife?--H'm.'
+
+'Yes, and children.  Say no, say no!'
+
+'By God!  I have no lawful wife but you; and as for children, many or
+few, they are all bastards, save this one alone!'
+
+'And that you be Sir John Horseleigh of Clyfton?'
+
+'I mid be.  I have never said so to 'ee.'
+
+'But Sir John is known to have a lady, and issue of her!'
+
+The knight looked down.  'How did thy mind get filled with such as this?'
+he asked.
+
+'One of my kindred came.'
+
+'A traitor!  Why should he mar our life?  Ah! you said you had a brother
+at sea--where is he now?'
+
+'Here!' came from close behind him.  And flinging open the door, Roger
+faced the intruder.  'Liar!' he said, 'to call thyself her husband!'
+
+Sir John fired up, and made a rush at the sailor, who seized him by the
+collar, and in the wrestle they both fell, Roger under.  But in a few
+seconds he contrived to extricate his right arm, and drawing from his
+belt a knife which he wore attached to a cord round his neck he opened it
+with his teeth, and struck it into the breast of Sir John stretched above
+him.  Edith had during these moments run into the next room to place the
+child in safety, and when she came back the knight was relaxing his hold
+on Roger's throat.  He rolled over upon his back and groaned.
+
+The only witness of the scene save the three concerned was the nursemaid,
+who had brought in the child on its father's arrival.  She stated
+afterwards that nobody suspected Sir John had received his death wound;
+yet it was so, though he did not die for a long while, meaning thereby an
+hour or two; that Mistress Edith continually endeavoured to staunch the
+blood, calling her brother Roger a wretch, and ordering him to get
+himself gone; on which order he acted, after a gloomy pause, by opening
+the window, and letting himself down by the sill to the ground.
+
+It was then that Sir John, in difficult accents, made his dying
+declaration to the nurse and Edith, and, later, the apothecary; which was
+to this purport, that the Dame Horseleigh who passed as his wife at
+Clyfton, and who had borne him three children, was in truth and deed,
+though unconsciously, the wife of another man.  Sir John had married her
+several years before, in the face of the whole county, as the widow of
+one Decimus Strong, who had disappeared shortly after her union with him,
+having adventured to the North to join the revolt of the Nobles, and on
+that revolt being quelled retreated across the sea.  Two years ago,
+having discovered this man to be still living in France, and not wishing
+to disturb the mind and happiness of her who believed herself his wife,
+yet wishing for legitimate issue, Sir John had informed the King of the
+facts, who had encouraged him to wed honestly, though secretly, the young
+merchant's widow at Havenpool; she being, therefore, his lawful wife, and
+she only.  That to avoid all scandal and hubbub he had purposed to let
+things remain as they were till fair opportunity should arise of making
+the true case known with least pain to all parties concerned, but that,
+having been thus suspected and attacked by his own brother-in-law, his
+zest for such schemes and for all things had died out in him, and he only
+wished to commend his soul to God.
+
+That night, while the owls were hooting from the forest that encircled
+the sleeping townlet, and the South-Avon was gurgling through the wooden
+piles of the bridge, Sir John died there in the arms of his wife.  She
+concealed nothing of the cause of her husband's death save the subject of
+the quarrel, which she felt it would be premature to announce just then,
+and until proof of her status should be forthcoming.  But before a month
+had passed, it happened, to her inexpressible sorrow, that the child of
+this clandestine union fell sick and died.  From that hour all interest
+in the name and fame of the Horseleighs forsook the younger of the twain
+who called themselves wives of Sir John, and, being careless about her
+own fame, she took no steps to assert her claims, her legal position
+having, indeed, grown hateful to her in her horror at the tragedy.  And
+Sir William Byrt, the curate who had married her to her husband, being an
+old man and feeble, was not disinclined to leave the embers unstirred of
+such a fiery matter as this, and to assist her in letting established
+things stand.  Therefore, Edith retired with the nurse, her only
+companion and friend, to her native town, where she lived in absolute
+obscurity till her death in middle age.  Her brother was never seen again
+in England.
+
+A strangely corroborative sequel to the story remains to be told.  Shortly
+after the death of Sir John Horseleigh, a soldier of fortune returned
+from the Continent, called on Dame Horseleigh the fictitious, living in
+widowed state at Clyfton Horseleigh, and, after a singularly brief
+courtship, married her.  The tradition at Havenpool and elsewhere has
+ever been that this man was already her husband, Decimus Strong, who
+remarried her for appearance' sake only.
+
+The illegitimate son of this lady by Sir John succeeded to the estates
+and honours, and his son after him, there being nobody on the alert to
+investigate their pretensions.  Little difference would it have made to
+the present generation, however, had there been such a one, for the
+family in all its branches, lawful and unlawful, has been extinct these
+many score years, the last representative but one being killed at the
+siege of Sherton Castle, while attacking in the service of the
+Parliament, and the other being outlawed later in the same century for a
+debt of ten pounds, and dying in the county jail.  The mansion house and
+its appurtenances were, as I have previously stated, destroyed, excepting
+one small wing, which now forms part of a farmhouse, and is visible as
+you pass along the railway from Casterbridge to Ivel.  The outline of the
+old bowling-green is also distinctly to be seen.
+
+This, then, is the reason why the only lawful marriage of Sir John, as
+recorded in the obscure register at Havenpool, does not appear in the
+pedigree of the house of Horseleigh.
+
+Spring 1893.
+
+
+
+
+THE DUKE'S REAPPEARANCE--A FAMILY TRADITION
+
+
+According to the kinsman who told me the story, Christopher Swetman's
+house, on the outskirts of King's-Hintock village, was in those days
+larger and better kept than when, many years later, it was sold to the
+lord of the manor adjoining; after having been in the Swetman family, as
+one may say, since the Conquest.
+
+Some people would have it to be that the thing happened at the house
+opposite, belonging to one Childs, with whose family the Swetmans
+afterwards intermarried.  But that it was at the original homestead of
+the Swetmans can be shown in various ways; chiefly by the unbroken
+traditions of the family, and indirectly by the evidence of the walls
+themselves, which are the only ones thereabout with windows mullioned in
+the Elizabethan manner, and plainly of a date anterior to the event;
+while those of the other house might well have been erected fifty or
+eighty years later, and probably were; since the choice of Swetman's
+house by the fugitive was doubtless dictated by no other circumstance
+than its then suitable loneliness.
+
+It was a cloudy July morning just before dawn, the hour of two having
+been struck by Swetman's one-handed clock on the stairs, that is still
+preserved in the family.  Christopher heard the strokes from his chamber,
+immediately at the top of the staircase, and overlooking the front of the
+house.  He did not wonder that he was sleepless.  The rumours and
+excitements which had latterly stirred the neighbourhood, to the effect
+that the rightful King of England had landed from Holland, at a port only
+eighteen miles to the south-west of Swetman's house, were enough to make
+wakeful and anxious even a contented yeoman like him.  Some of the
+villagers, intoxicated by the news, had thrown down their scythes, and
+rushed to the ranks of the invader.  Christopher Swetman had weighed both
+sides of the question, and had remained at home.
+
+Now as he lay thinking of these and other things he fancied that he could
+hear the footfall of a man on the road leading up to his house--a byway,
+which led scarce anywhere else; and therefore a tread was at any time
+more apt to startle the inmates of the homestead than if it had stood in
+a thoroughfare.  The footfall came opposite the gate, and stopped there.
+One minute, two minutes passed, and the pedestrian did not proceed.
+Christopher Swetman got out of bed, and opened the casement.  'Hoi! who's
+there?' cries he.
+
+'A friend,' came from the darkness.
+
+'And what mid ye want at this time o' night?' says Swetman.
+
+'Shelter.  I've lost my way.'
+
+'What's thy name?'
+
+There came no answer.
+
+'Be ye one of King Monmouth's men?'
+
+'He that asks no questions will hear no lies from me.  I am a stranger;
+and I am spent, and hungered.  Can you let me lie with you to-night?'
+
+Swetman was generous to people in trouble, and his house was roomy.  'Wait
+a bit,' he said, 'and I'll come down and have a look at thee, anyhow.'
+
+He struck a light, put on his clothes, and descended, taking his horn-
+lantern from a nail in the passage, and lighting it before opening the
+door.  The rays fell on the form of a tall, dark man in cavalry
+accoutrements and wearing a sword.  He was pale with fatigue and covered
+with mud, though the weather was dry.
+
+'Prithee take no heed of my appearance,' said the stranger.  'But let me
+in.'
+
+That his visitor was in sore distress admitted of no doubt, and the
+yeoman's natural humanity assisted the other's sad importunity and gentle
+voice.  Swetman took him in, not without a suspicion that this man
+represented in some way Monmouth's cause, to which he was not unfriendly
+in his secret heart.  At his earnest request the new-comer was given a
+suit of the yeoman's old clothes in exchange for his own, which, with his
+sword, were hidden in a closet in Swetman's chamber; food was then put
+before him and a lodging provided for him in a room at the back.
+
+Here he slept till quite late in the morning, which was Sunday, the sixth
+of July, and when he came down in the garments that he had borrowed he
+met the household with a melancholy smile.  Besides Swetman himself,
+there were only his two daughters, Grace and Leonard (the latter was,
+oddly enough, a woman's name here), and both had been enjoined to
+secrecy.  They asked no questions and received no information; though the
+stranger regarded their fair countenances with an interest almost too
+deep.  Having partaken of their usual breakfast of ham and cider he
+professed weariness and retired to the chamber whence he had come.
+
+In a couple of hours or thereabout he came down again, the two young
+women having now gone off to morning service.  Seeing Christopher
+bustling about the house without assistance, he asked if he could do
+anything to aid his host.
+
+As he seemed anxious to hide all differences and appear as one of
+themselves, Swetman set him to get vegetables from the garden and fetch
+water from Buttock's Spring in the dip near the house (though the spring
+was not called by that name till years after, by the way).
+
+'And what can I do next?' says the stranger when these services had been
+performed.
+
+His meekness and docility struck Christopher much, and won upon him.
+'Since you be minded to,' says the latter, 'you can take down the dishes
+and spread the table for dinner.  Take a pewter plate for thyself, but
+the trenchers will do for we.'
+
+But the other would not, and took a trencher likewise, in doing which he
+spoke of the two girls and remarked how comely they were.
+
+This quietude was put an end to by a stir out of doors, which was
+sufficient to draw Swetman's attention to it, and he went out.  Farm
+hands who had gone off and joined the Duke on his arrival had begun to
+come in with news that a midnight battle had been fought on the moors to
+the north, the Duke's men, who had attacked, being entirely worsted; the
+Duke himself, with one or two lords and other friends, had fled, no one
+knew whither.
+
+'There has been a battle,' says Swetman, on coming indoors after these
+tidings, and looking earnestly at the stranger.
+
+'May the victory be to the rightful in the end, whatever the issue now,'
+says the other, with a sorrowful sigh.
+
+'Dost really know nothing about it?' said Christopher.  'I could have
+sworn you was one from that very battle!'
+
+'I was here before three o' the clock this morning; and these men have
+only arrived now.'
+
+'True,' said the yeoman.  'But still, I think--'
+
+'Do not press your question,' the stranger urged.  'I am in a strait, and
+can refuse a helper nothing; such inquiry is, therefore, unfair.'
+
+'True again,' said Swetman, and held his tongue.
+
+The daughters of the house returned from church, where the service had
+been hurried by reason of the excitement.  To their father's questioning
+if they had spoken of him who sojourned there they replied that they had
+said never a word; which, indeed, was true, as events proved.
+
+He bade them serve the dinner; and, as the visitor had withdrawn since
+the news of the battle, prepared to take a platter to him upstairs.  But
+he preferred to come down and dine with the family.
+
+During the afternoon more fugitives passed through the village, but
+Christopher Swetman, his visitor, and his family kept indoors.  In the
+evening, however, Swetman came out from his gate, and, harkening in
+silence to these tidings and more, wondered what might be in store for
+him for his last night's work.
+
+He returned homeward by a path across the mead that skirted his own
+orchard.  Passing here, he heard the voice of his daughter Leonard
+expostulating inside the hedge, her words being: 'Don't ye, sir; don't!  I
+prithee let me go!'
+
+'Why, sweetheart?'
+
+'Because I've a-promised another!'
+
+Peeping through, as he could not help doing, he saw the girl struggling
+in the arms of the stranger, who was attempting to kiss her; but finding
+her resistance to be genuine, and her distress unfeigned, he reluctantly
+let her go.
+
+Swetman's face grew dark, for his girls were more to him than himself.  He
+hastened on, meditating moodily all the way.  He entered the gate, and
+made straight for the orchard.  When he reached it his daughter had
+disappeared, but the stranger was still standing there.
+
+'Sir!' said the yeoman, his anger having in no wise abated, 'I've seen
+what has happened!  I have taken 'ee into my house, at some jeopardy to
+myself; and, whoever you be, the least I expected of 'ee was to treat the
+maidens with a seemly respect.  You have not done it, and I no longer
+trust you.  I am the more watchful over them in that they are motherless;
+and I must ask 'ee to go after dark this night!'
+
+The stranger seemed dazed at discovering what his impulse had brought
+down upon his head, and his pale face grew paler.  He did not reply for a
+time.  When he did speak his soft voice was thick with feeling.
+
+'Sir,' says he, 'I own that I am in the wrong, if you take the matter
+gravely.  We do not what we would but what we must.  Though I have not
+injured your daughter as a woman, I have been treacherous to her as a
+hostess and friend in need.  I'll go, as you say; I can do no less.  I
+shall doubtless find a refuge elsewhere.'
+
+They walked towards the house in silence, where Swetman insisted that his
+guest should have supper before departing.  By the time this was eaten it
+was dusk and the stranger announced that he was ready.
+
+They went upstairs to where the garments and sword lay hidden, till the
+departing one said that on further thought he would ask another favour:
+that he should be allowed to retain the clothes he wore, and that his
+host would keep the others and the sword till he, the speaker, should
+come or send for them.
+
+'As you will,' said Swetman.  'The gain is on my side; for those clouts
+were but kept to dress a scarecrow next fall.'
+
+'They suit my case,' said the stranger sadly.  'However much they may
+misfit me, they do not misfit my sorry fortune now!'
+
+'Nay, then,' said Christopher relenting, 'I was too hasty.  Sh'lt bide!'
+
+But the other would not, saying that it was better that things should
+take their course.  Notwithstanding that Swetman importuned him, he only
+added, 'If I never come again, do with my belongings as you list.  In the
+pocket you will find a gold snuff-box, and in the snuff-box fifty gold
+pieces.'
+
+'But keep 'em for thy use, man!' said the yeoman.
+
+'No,' says the parting guest; 'they are foreign pieces and would harm me
+if I were taken.  Do as I bid thee.  Put away these things again and take
+especial charge of the sword.  It belonged to my father's father and I
+value it much.  But something more common becomes me now.'
+
+Saying which, he took, as he went downstairs, one of the ash sticks used
+by Swetman himself for walking with.  The yeoman lighted him out to the
+garden hatch, where he disappeared through Clammers Gate by the road that
+crosses King's-Hintock Park to Evershead.
+
+Christopher returned to the upstairs chamber, and sat down on his bed
+reflecting.  Then he examined the things left behind, and surely enough
+in one of the pockets the gold snuff-box was revealed, containing the
+fifty gold pieces as stated by the fugitive.  The yeoman next looked at
+the sword which its owner had stated to have belonged to his grandfather.
+It was two-edged, so that he almost feared to handle it.  On the blade
+was inscribed the words 'ANDREA FERARA,' and among the many fine chasings
+were a rose and crown, the plume of the Prince of Wales, and two
+portraits; portraits of a man and a woman, the man's having the face of
+the first King Charles, and the woman's, apparently, that of his Queen.
+
+Swetman, much awed and surprised, returned the articles to the closet,
+and went downstairs pondering.  Of his surmise he said nothing to his
+daughters, merely declaring to them that the gentleman was gone; and
+never revealing that he had been an eye-witness of the unpleasant scene
+in the orchard that was the immediate cause of the departure.
+
+Nothing occurred in Hintock during the week that followed, beyond the
+fitful arrival of more decided tidings concerning the utter defeat of the
+Duke's army and his own disappearance at an early stage of the battle.
+Then it was told that Monmouth was taken, not in his own clothes but in
+the disguise of a countryman.  He had been sent to London, and was
+confined in the Tower.
+
+The possibility that his guest had been no other than the Duke made
+Swetman unspeakably sorry now; his heart smote him at the thought that,
+acting so harshly for such a small breach of good faith, he might have
+been the means of forwarding the unhappy fugitive's capture.  On the
+girls coming up to him he said, 'Get away with ye, wenches: I fear you
+have been the ruin of an unfortunate man!'
+
+On the Tuesday night following, when the yeoman was sleeping as usual in
+his chamber, he was, he said, conscious of the entry of some one.  Opening
+his eyes, he beheld by the light of the moon, which shone upon the front
+of his house, the figure of a man who seemed to be the stranger moving
+from the door towards the closet.  He was dressed somewhat differently
+now, but the face was quite that of his late guest in its tragical
+pensiveness, as was also the tallness of his figure.  He neared the
+closet; and, feeling his visitor to be within his rights, Christopher
+refrained from stirring.  The personage turned his large haggard eyes
+upon the bed where Swetman lay, and then withdrew from their hiding the
+articles that belonged to him, again giving a hard gaze at Christopher as
+he went noiselessly out of the chamber with his properties on his arm.
+His retreat down the stairs was just audible, and also his departure by
+the side door, through which entrance or exit was easy to those who knew
+the place.
+
+Nothing further happened, and towards morning Swetman slept.  To avoid
+all risk he said not a word to the girls of the visit of the night, and
+certainly not to any one outside the house; for it was dangerous at that
+time to avow anything.
+
+Among the killed in opposing the recent rising had been a younger brother
+of the lord of the manor, who lived at King's-Hintock Court hard by.
+Seeing the latter ride past in mourning clothes next day, Swetman
+ventured to condole with him.
+
+'He'd no business there!' answered the other.  His words and manner
+showed the bitterness that was mingled with his regret.  'But say no more
+of him.  You know what has happened since, I suppose?'
+
+'I know that they say Monmouth is taken, Sir Thomas, but I can't think it
+true,' answered Swetman.
+
+'O zounds! 'tis true enough,' cried the knight, 'and that's not all.  The
+Duke was executed on Tower Hill two days ago.'
+
+'D'ye say it verily?' says Swetman.
+
+'And a very hard death he had, worse luck for 'n,' said Sir Thomas.
+'Well, 'tis over for him and over for my brother.  But not for the rest.
+There'll be searchings and siftings down here anon; and happy is the man
+who has had nothing to do with this matter!'
+
+Now Swetman had hardly heard the latter words, so much was he confounded
+by the strangeness of the tidings that the Duke had come to his death on
+the previous Tuesday.  For it had been only the night before this present
+day of Friday that he had seen his former guest, whom he had ceased to
+doubt could be other than the Duke, come into his chamber and fetch away
+his accoutrements as he had promised.
+
+'It couldn't have been a vision,' said Christopher to himself when the
+knight had ridden on.  'But I'll go straight and see if the things be in
+the closet still; and thus I shall surely learn if 'twere a vision or
+no.'
+
+To the closet he went, which he had not looked into since the stranger's
+departure.  And searching behind the articles placed to conceal the
+things hidden, he found that, as he had never doubted, they were gone.
+
+When the rumour spread abroad in the West that the man beheaded in the
+Tower was not indeed the Duke, but one of his officers taken after the
+battle, and that the Duke had been assisted to escape out of the country,
+Swetman found in it an explanation of what so deeply mystified him.  That
+his visitor might have been a friend of the Duke's, whom the Duke had
+asked to fetch the things in a last request, Swetman would never admit.
+His belief in the rumour that Monmouth lived, like that of thousands of
+others, continued to the end of his days.
+
+* * * * *
+
+Such, briefly, concluded my kinsman, is the tradition which has been
+handed down in Christopher Swetman's family for the last two hundred
+years.
+
+
+
+
+A MERE INTERLUDE
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The traveller in school-books, who vouched in dryest tones for the
+fidelity to fact of the following narrative, used to add a ring of truth
+to it by opening with a nicety of criticism on the heroine's personality.
+People were wrong, he declared, when they surmised that Baptista Trewthen
+was a young woman with scarcely emotions or character.  There was nothing
+in her to love, and nothing to hate--so ran the general opinion.  That
+she showed few positive qualities was true.  The colours and tones which
+changing events paint on the faces of active womankind were looked for in
+vain upon hers.  But still waters run deep; and no crisis had come in the
+years of her early maidenhood to demonstrate what lay hidden within her,
+like metal in a mine.
+
+She was the daughter of a small farmer in St. Maria's, one of the Isles
+of Lyonesse beyond Off-Wessex, who had spent a large sum, as there
+understood, on her education, by sending her to the mainland for two
+years.  At nineteen she was entered at the Training College for Teachers,
+and at twenty-one nominated to a school in the country, near Tor-upon-
+Sea, whither she proceeded after the Christmas examination and holidays.
+
+The months passed by from winter to spring and summer, and Baptista
+applied herself to her new duties as best she could, till an uneventful
+year had elapsed.  Then an air of abstraction pervaded her bearing as she
+walked to and fro, twice a day, and she showed the traits of a person who
+had something on her mind.  A widow, by name Mrs. Wace, in whose house
+Baptista Trewthen had been provided with a sitting-room and bedroom till
+the school-house should be built, noticed this change in her youthful
+tenant's manner, and at last ventured to press her with a few questions.
+
+'It has nothing to do with the place, nor with you,' said Miss Trewthen.
+
+'Then it is the salary?'
+
+'No, nor the salary.'
+
+'Then it is something you have heard from home, my dear.'
+
+Baptista was silent for a few moments.  'It is Mr. Heddegan,' she
+murmured.  'Him they used to call David Heddegan before he got his
+money.'
+
+'And who is the Mr. Heddegan they used to call David?'
+
+'An old bachelor at Giant's Town, St. Maria's, with no relations
+whatever, who lives about a stone's throw from father's.  When I was a
+child he used to take me on his knee and say he'd marry me some day.  Now
+I am a woman the jest has turned earnest, and he is anxious to do it.  And
+father and mother says I can't do better than have him.'
+
+'He's well off?'
+
+'Yes--he's the richest man we know--as a friend and neighbour.'
+
+'How much older did you say he was than yourself?'
+
+'I didn't say.  Twenty years at least.'
+
+'And an unpleasant man in the bargain perhaps?'
+
+'No--he's not unpleasant.'
+
+'Well, child, all I can say is that I'd resist any such engagement if
+it's not palatable to 'ee.  You are comfortable here, in my little house,
+I hope.  All the parish like 'ee: and I've never been so cheerful, since
+my poor husband left me to wear his wings, as I've been with 'ee as my
+lodger.'
+
+The schoolmistress assured her landlady that she could return the
+sentiment.  'But here comes my perplexity,' she said.  'I don't like
+keeping school.  Ah, you are surprised--you didn't suspect it.  That's
+because I've concealed my feeling.  Well, I simply hate school.  I don't
+care for children--they are unpleasant, troublesome little things, whom
+nothing would delight so much as to hear that you had fallen down dead.
+Yet I would even put up with them if it was not for the inspector.  For
+three months before his visit I didn't sleep soundly.  And the Committee
+of Council are always changing the Code, so that you don't know what to
+teach, and what to leave untaught.  I think father and mother are right.
+They say I shall never excel as a schoolmistress if I dislike the work
+so, and that therefore I ought to get settled by marrying Mr. Heddegan.
+Between us two, I like him better than school; but I don't like him quite
+so much as to wish to marry him.'
+
+These conversations, once begun, were continued from day to day; till at
+length the young girl's elderly friend and landlady threw in her opinion
+on the side of Miss Trewthen's parents.  All things considered, she
+declared, the uncertainty of the school, the labour, Baptista's natural
+dislike for teaching, it would be as well to take what fate offered, and
+make the best of matters by wedding her father's old neighbour and
+prosperous friend.
+
+The Easter holidays came round, and Baptista went to spend them as usual
+in her native isle, going by train into Off-Wessex and crossing by packet
+from Pen-zephyr.  When she returned in the middle of April her face wore
+a more settled aspect.
+
+'Well?' said the expectant Mrs. Wace.
+
+'I have agreed to have him as my husband,' said Baptista, in an off-hand
+way.  'Heaven knows if it will be for the best or not.  But I have agreed
+to do it, and so the matter is settled.'
+
+Mrs. Wace commended her; but Baptista did not care to dwell on the
+subject; so that allusion to it was very infrequent between them.
+Nevertheless, among other things, she repeated to the widow from time to
+time in monosyllabic remarks that the wedding was really impending; that
+it was arranged for the summer, and that she had given notice of leaving
+the school at the August holidays.  Later on she announced more
+specifically that her marriage was to take place immediately after her
+return home at the beginning of the month aforesaid.
+
+She now corresponded regularly with Mr. Heddegan.  Her letters from him
+were seen, at least on the outside, and in part within, by Mrs. Wace.  Had
+she read more of their interiors than the occasional sentences shown her
+by Baptista she would have perceived that the scratchy, rusty handwriting
+of Miss Trewthen's betrothed conveyed little more matter than details of
+their future housekeeping, and his preparations for the same, with
+innumerable 'my dears' sprinkled in disconnectedly, to show the depth of
+his affection without the inconveniences of syntax.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+It was the end of July--dry, too dry, even for the season, the delicate
+green herbs and vegetables that grew in this favoured end of the kingdom
+tasting rather of the watering-pot than of the pure fresh moisture from
+the skies.  Baptista's boxes were packed, and one Saturday morning she
+departed by a waggonette to the station, and thence by train to
+Pen-zephyr, from which port she was, as usual, to cross the water
+immediately to her home, and become Mr. Heddegan's wife on the Wednesday
+of the week following.
+
+She might have returned a week sooner.  But though the wedding day had
+loomed so near, and the banns were out, she delayed her departure till
+this last moment, saying it was not necessary for her to be at home long
+beforehand.  As Mr. Heddegan was older than herself, she said, she was to
+be married in her ordinary summer bonnet and grey silk frock, and there
+were no preparations to make that had not been amply made by her parents
+and intended husband.
+
+In due time, after a hot and tedious journey, she reached Pen-zephyr.  She
+here obtained some refreshment, and then went towards the pier, where she
+learnt to her surprise that the little steamboat plying between the town
+and the islands had left at eleven o'clock; the usual hour of departure
+in the afternoon having been forestalled in consequence of the fogs which
+had for a few days prevailed towards evening, making twilight navigation
+dangerous.
+
+This being Saturday, there was now no other boat till Tuesday, and it
+became obvious that here she would have to remain for the three days,
+unless her friends should think fit to rig out one of the island' sailing-
+boats and come to fetch her--a not very likely contingency, the sea
+distance being nearly forty miles.
+
+Baptista, however, had been detained in Pen-zephyr on more than one
+occasion before, either on account of bad weather or some such reason as
+the present, and she was therefore not in any personal alarm.  But, as
+she was to be married on the following Wednesday, the delay was certainly
+inconvenient to a more than ordinary degree, since it would leave less
+than a day's interval between her arrival and the wedding ceremony.
+
+Apart from this awkwardness she did not much mind the accident.  It was
+indeed curious to see how little she minded.  Perhaps it would not be too
+much to say that, although she was going to do the critical deed of her
+life quite willingly, she experienced an indefinable relief at the
+postponement of her meeting with Heddegan.  But her manner after making
+discovery of the hindrance was quiet and subdued, even to passivity
+itself; as was instanced by her having, at the moment of receiving
+information that the steamer had sailed, replied 'Oh,' so coolly to the
+porter with her luggage, that he was almost disappointed at her lack of
+disappointment.
+
+The question now was, should she return again to Mrs. Wace, in the
+village of Lower Wessex, or wait in the town at which she had arrived.
+She would have preferred to go back, but the distance was too great;
+moreover, having left the place for good, and somewhat dramatically, to
+become a bride, a return, even for so short a space, would have been a
+trifle humiliating.
+
+Leaving, then, her boxes at the station, her next anxiety was to secure a
+respectable, or rather genteel, lodging in the popular seaside resort
+confronting her.  To this end she looked about the town, in which, though
+she had passed through it half-a-dozen times, she was practically a
+stranger.
+
+Baptista found a room to suit her over a fruiterer's shop; where she made
+herself at home, and set herself in order after her journey.  An early
+cup of tea having revived her spirits she walked out to reconnoitre.
+
+Being a schoolmistress she avoided looking at the schools, and having a
+sort of trade connection with books, she avoided looking at the
+booksellers; but wearying of the other shops she inspected the churches;
+not that for her own part she cared much about ecclesiastical edifices;
+but tourists looked at them, and so would she--a proceeding for which no
+one would have credited her with any great originality, such, for
+instance, as that she subsequently showed herself to possess.  The
+churches soon oppressed her.  She tried the Museum, but came out because
+it seemed lonely and tedious.
+
+Yet the town and the walks in this land of strawberries, these
+headquarters of early English flowers and fruit, were then, as always,
+attractive.  From the more picturesque streets she went to the town
+gardens, and the Pier, and the Harbour, and looked at the men at work
+there, loading and unloading as in the time of the Phoenicians.
+
+'Not Baptista?  Yes, Baptista it is!'
+
+The words were uttered behind her.  Turning round she gave a start, and
+became confused, even agitated, for a moment.  Then she said in her usual
+undemonstrative manner, 'O--is it really you, Charles?'
+
+Without speaking again at once, and with a half-smile, the new-comer
+glanced her over.  There was much criticism, and some resentment--even
+temper--in his eye.
+
+'I am going home,' continued she.  'But I have missed the boat.'
+
+He scarcely seemed to take in the meaning of this explanation, in the
+intensity of his critical survey.  'Teaching still?  What a fine
+schoolmistress you make, Baptista, I warrant!' he said with a slight
+flavour of sarcasm, which was not lost upon her.
+
+'I know I am nothing to brag of,' she replied.  'That's why I have given
+up.'
+
+'O--given up?  You astonish me.'
+
+'I hate the profession.'
+
+'Perhaps that's because I am in it.'
+
+'O no, it isn't.  But I am going to enter on another life altogether.  I
+am going to be married next week to Mr. David Heddegan.'
+
+The young man--fortified as he was by a natural cynical pride and
+passionateness--winced at this unexpected reply, notwithstanding.
+
+'Who is Mr. David Heddegan?' he asked, as indifferently as lay in his
+power.
+
+She informed him the bearer of the name was a general merchant of Giant's
+Town, St. Maria's island--her father's nearest neighbour and oldest
+friend.
+
+'Then we shan't see anything more of you on the mainland?' inquired the
+schoolmaster.
+
+'O, I don't know about that,' said Miss Trewthen.
+
+'Here endeth the career of the belle of the boarding-school your father
+was foolish enough to send you to.  A "general merchant's" wife in the
+Lyonesse Isles.  Will you sell pounds of soap and pennyworths of tin
+tacks, or whole bars of saponaceous matter, and great tenpenny nails?'
+
+'He's not in such a small way as that!' she almost pleaded.  'He owns
+ships, though they are rather little ones!'
+
+'O, well, it is much the same.  Come, let us walk on; it is tedious to
+stand still.  I thought you would be a failure in education,' he
+continued, when she obeyed him and strolled ahead.  'You never showed
+power that way.  You remind me much of some of those women who think they
+are sure to be great actresses if they go on the stage, because they have
+a pretty face, and forget that what we require is acting.  But you found
+your mistake, didn't you?'
+
+'Don't taunt me, Charles.'  It was noticeable that the young
+schoolmaster's tone caused her no anger or retaliatory passion; far
+otherwise: there was a tear in her eye.  'How is it you are at
+Pen-zephyr?' she inquired.
+
+'I don't taunt you.  I speak the truth, purely in a friendly way, as I
+should to any one I wished well.  Though for that matter I might have
+some excuse even for taunting you.  Such a terrible hurry as you've been
+in.  I hate a woman who is in such a hurry.'
+
+'How do you mean that?'
+
+'Why--to be somebody's wife or other--anything's wife rather than
+nobody's.  You couldn't wait for me, O, no.  Well, thank God, I'm cured
+of all that!'
+
+'How merciless you are!' she said bitterly.  'Wait for you?  What does
+that mean, Charley?  You never showed--anything to wait for--anything
+special towards me.'
+
+'O come, Baptista dear; come!'
+
+'What I mean is, nothing definite,' she expostulated.  'I suppose you
+liked me a little; but it seemed to me to be only a pastime on your part,
+and that you never meant to make an honourable engagement of it.'
+
+'There, that's just it!  You girls expect a man to mean business at the
+first look.  No man when he first becomes interested in a woman has any
+definite scheme of engagement to marry her in his mind, unless he is
+meaning a vulgar mercenary marriage.  However, I did at last mean an
+honourable engagement, as you call it, come to that.'
+
+'But you never said so, and an indefinite courtship soon injures a
+woman's position and credit, sooner than you think.'
+
+'Baptista, I solemnly declare that in six months I should have asked you
+to marry me.'
+
+She walked along in silence, looking on the ground, and appearing very
+uncomfortable.  Presently he said, 'Would you have waited for me if you
+had known?'  To this she whispered in a sorrowful whisper, 'Yes!'
+
+They went still farther in silence--passing along one of the beautiful
+walks on the outskirts of the town, yet not observant of scene or
+situation.  Her shoulder and his were close together, and he clasped his
+fingers round the small of her arm--quite lightly, and without any
+attempt at impetus; yet the act seemed to say, 'Now I hold you, and my
+will must be yours.'
+
+Recurring to a previous question of hers he said, 'I have merely run down
+here for a day or two from school near Trufal, before going off to the
+north for the rest of my holiday.  I have seen my relations at Redrutin
+quite lately, so I am not going there this time.  How little I thought of
+meeting you!  How very different the circumstances would have been if,
+instead of parting again as we must in half-an-hour or so, possibly for
+ever, you had been now just going off with me, as my wife, on our
+honeymoon trip.  Ha--ha--well--so humorous is life!'
+
+She stopped suddenly.  'I must go back now--this is altogether too
+painful, Charley!  It is not at all a kind mood you are in to-day.'
+
+'I don't want to pain you--you know I do not,' he said more gently.  'Only
+it just exasperates me--this you are going to do.  I wish you would not.'
+
+'What?'
+
+'Marry him.  There, now I have showed you my true sentiments.'
+
+'I must do it now,' said she.
+
+'Why?' he asked, dropping the off-hand masterful tone he had hitherto
+spoken in, and becoming earnest; still holding her arm, however, as if
+she were his chattel to be taken up or put down at will.  'It is never
+too late to break off a marriage that's distasteful to you.  Now I'll say
+one thing; and it is truth: I wish you would marry me instead of him,
+even now, at the last moment, though you have served me so badly.'
+
+'O, it is not possible to think of that!' she answered hastily, shaking
+her head.  'When I get home all will be prepared--it is ready even
+now--the things for the party, the furniture, Mr. Heddegan's new suit,
+and everything.  I should require the courage of a tropical lion to go
+home there and say I wouldn't carry out my promise!'
+
+'Then go, in Heaven's name!  But there would be no necessity for you to
+go home and face them in that way.  If we were to marry, it would have to
+be at once, instantly; or not at all.  I should think your affection not
+worth the having unless you agreed to come back with me to Trufal this
+evening, where we could be married by licence on Monday morning.  And
+then no Mr. David Heddegan or anybody else could get you away from me.'
+
+'I must go home by the Tuesday boat,' she faltered.  'What would they
+think if I did not come?'
+
+'You could go home by that boat just the same.  All the difference would
+be that I should go with you.  You could leave me on the quay, where I'd
+have a smoke, while you went and saw your father and mother privately;
+you could then tell them what you had done, and that I was waiting not
+far off; that I was a school-master in a fairly good position, and a
+young man you had known when you were at the Training College.  Then I
+would come boldly forward; and they would see that it could not be
+altered, and so you wouldn't suffer a lifelong misery by being the wife
+of a wretched old gaffer you don't like at all.  Now, honestly; you do
+like me best, don't you, Baptista?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Then we will do as I say.'
+
+She did not pronounce a clear affirmative.  But that she consented to the
+novel proposition at some moment or other of that walk was apparent by
+what occurred a little later.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+An enterprise of such pith required, indeed, less talking than
+consideration.  The first thing they did in carrying it out was to return
+to the railway station, where Baptista took from her luggage a small
+trunk of immediate necessaries which she would in any case have required
+after missing the boat.  That same afternoon they travelled up the line
+to Trufal.
+
+Charles Stow (as his name was), despite his disdainful indifference to
+things, was very careful of appearances, and made the journey
+independently of her though in the same train.  He told her where she
+could get board and lodgings in the city; and with merely a distant nod
+to her of a provisional kind, went off to his own quarters, and to see
+about the licence.
+
+On Sunday she saw him in the morning across the nave of the
+pro-cathedral.  In the afternoon they walked together in the fields,
+where he told her that the licence would be ready next day, and would be
+available the day after, when the ceremony could be performed as early
+after eight o'clock as they should choose.
+
+His courtship, thus renewed after an interval of two years, was as
+impetuous, violent even, as it was short.  The next day came and passed,
+and the final arrangements were made.  Their agreement was to get the
+ceremony over as soon as they possibly could the next morning, so as to
+go on to Pen-zephyr at once, and reach that place in time for the boat's
+departure the same day.  It was in obedience to Baptista's earnest
+request that Stow consented thus to make the whole journey to Lyonesse by
+land and water at one heat, and not break it at Pen-zephyr; she seemed to
+be oppressed with a dread of lingering anywhere, this great first act of
+disobedience to her parents once accomplished, with the weight on her
+mind that her home had to be convulsed by the disclosure of it.  To face
+her difficulties over the water immediately she had created them was,
+however, a course more desired by Baptista than by her lover; though for
+once he gave way.
+
+The next morning was bright and warm as those which had preceded it.  By
+six o'clock it seemed nearly noon, as is often the case in that part of
+England in the summer season.  By nine they were husband and wife.  They
+packed up and departed by the earliest train after the service; and on
+the way discussed at length what she should say on meeting her parents,
+Charley dictating the turn of each phrase.  In her anxiety they had
+travelled so early that when they reached Pen-zephyr they found there
+were nearly two hours on their hands before the steamer's time of
+sailing.
+
+Baptista was extremely reluctant to be seen promenading the streets of
+the watering-place with her husband till, as above stated, the household
+at Giant's Town should know the unexpected course of events from her own
+lips; and it was just possible, if not likely, that some Lyonessian might
+be prowling about there, or even have come across the sea to look for
+her.  To meet any one to whom she was known, and to have to reply to
+awkward questions about the strange young man at her side before her well-
+framed announcement had been delivered at proper time and place, was a
+thing she could not contemplate with equanimity.  So, instead of looking
+at the shops and harbour, they went along the coast a little way.
+
+The heat of the morning was by this time intense.  They clambered up on
+some cliffs, and while sitting there, looking around at St. Michael's
+Mount and other objects, Charles said to her that he thought he would run
+down to the beach at their feet, and take just one plunge into the sea.
+
+Baptista did not much like the idea of being left alone; it was gloomy,
+she said.  But he assured her he would not be gone more than a quarter of
+an hour at the outside, and she passively assented.
+
+Down he went, disappeared, appeared again, and looked back.  Then he
+again proceeded, and vanished, till, as a small waxen object, she saw him
+emerge from the nook that had screened him, cross the white fringe of
+foam, and walk into the undulating mass of blue.  Once in the water he
+seemed less inclined to hurry than before; he remained a long time; and,
+unable either to appreciate his skill or criticize his want of it at that
+distance, she withdrew her eyes from the spot, and gazed at the still
+outline of St. Michael's--now beautifully toned in grey.
+
+Her anxiety for the hour of departure, and to cope at once with the
+approaching incidents that she would have to manipulate as best she
+could, sent her into a reverie.  It was now Tuesday; she would reach home
+in the evening--a very late time they would say; but, as the delay was a
+pure accident, they would deem her marriage to Mr. Heddegan to-morrow
+still practicable.  Then Charles would have to be produced from the
+background.  It was a terrible undertaking to think of, and she almost
+regretted her temerity in wedding so hastily that morning.  The rage of
+her father would be so crushing; the reproaches of her mother so bitter;
+and perhaps Charles would answer hotly, and perhaps cause estrangement
+till death.  There had obviously been no alarm about her at St. Maria's,
+or somebody would have sailed across to inquire for her.  She had, in a
+letter written at the beginning of the week, spoken of the hour at which
+she intended to leave her country schoolhouse; and from this her friends
+had probably perceived that by such timing she would run a risk of losing
+the Saturday boat.  She had missed it, and as a consequence sat here on
+the shore as Mrs. Charles Stow.
+
+This brought her to the present, and she turned from the outline of St.
+Michael's Mount to look about for her husband's form.  He was, as far as
+she could discover, no longer in the sea.  Then he was dressing.  By
+moving a few steps she could see where his clothes lay.  But Charles was
+not beside them.
+
+Baptista looked back again at the water in bewilderment, as if her senses
+were the victim of some sleight of hand.  Not a speck or spot resembling
+a man's head or face showed anywhere.  By this time she was alarmed, and
+her alarm intensified when she perceived a little beyond the scene of her
+husband's bathing a small area of water, the quality of whose surface
+differed from that of the surrounding expanse as the coarse vegetation of
+some foul patch in a mead differs from the fine green of the remainder.
+Elsewhere it looked flexuous, here it looked vermiculated and lumpy, and
+her marine experiences suggested to her in a moment that two currents met
+and caused a turmoil at this place.
+
+She descended as hastily as her trembling limbs would allow.  The way
+down was terribly long, and before reaching the heap of clothes it
+occurred to her that, after all, it would be best to run first for help.
+Hastening along in a lateral direction she proceeded inland till she met
+a man, and soon afterwards two others.  To them she exclaimed, 'I think a
+gentleman who was bathing is in some danger.  I cannot see him as I
+could.  Will you please run and help him, at once, if you will be so
+kind?'
+
+She did not think of turning to show them the exact spot, indicating it
+vaguely by the direction of her hand, and still going on her way with the
+idea of gaining more assistance.  When she deemed, in her faintness, that
+she had carried the alarm far enough, she faced about and dragged herself
+back again.  Before reaching the now dreaded spot she met one of the men.
+
+'We can see nothing at all, Miss,' he declared.
+
+Having gained the beach, she found the tide in, and no sign of Charley's
+clothes.  The other men whom she had besought to come had disappeared, it
+must have been in some other direction, for she had not met them going
+away.  They, finding nothing, had probably thought her alarm a mere
+conjecture, and given up the quest.
+
+Baptista sank down upon the stones near at hand.  Where Charley had
+undressed was now sea.  There could not be the least doubt that he was
+drowned, and his body sucked under by the current; while his clothes,
+lying within high-water mark, had probably been carried away by the
+rising tide.
+
+She remained in a stupor for some minutes, till a strange sensation
+succeeded the aforesaid perceptions, mystifying her intelligence, and
+leaving her physically almost inert.  With his personal disappearance,
+the last three days of her life with him seemed to be swallowed up, also
+his image, in her mind's eye, waned curiously, receded far away, grew
+stranger and stranger, less and less real.  Their meeting and marriage
+had been so sudden, unpremeditated, adventurous, that she could hardly
+believe that she had played her part in such a reckless drama.  Of all
+the few hours of her life with Charles, the portion that most insisted in
+coming back to memory was their fortuitous encounter on the previous
+Saturday, and those bitter reprimands with which he had begun the attack,
+as it might be called, which had piqued her to an unexpected
+consummation.
+
+A sort of cruelty, an imperiousness, even in his warmth, had
+characterized Charles Stow.  As a lover he had ever been a bit of a
+tyrant; and it might pretty truly have been said that he had stung her
+into marriage with him at last.  Still more alien from her life did these
+reflections operate to make him; and then they would be chased away by an
+interval of passionate weeping and mad regret.  Finally, there returned
+upon the confused mind of the young wife the recollection that she was on
+her way homeward, and that the packet would sail in three-quarters of an
+hour.
+
+Except the parasol in her hand, all she possessed was at the station
+awaiting her onward journey.
+
+She looked in that direction; and, entering one of those undemonstrative
+phases so common with her, walked quietly on.
+
+At first she made straight for the railway; but suddenly turning she went
+to a shop and wrote an anonymous line announcing his death by drowning to
+the only person she had ever heard Charles mention as a relative.  Posting
+this stealthily, and with a fearful look around her, she seemed to
+acquire a terror of the late events, pursuing her way to the station as
+if followed by a spectre.
+
+When she got to the office she asked for the luggage that she had left
+there on the Saturday as well as the trunk left on the morning just
+lapsed.  All were put in the boat, and she herself followed.  Quickly as
+these things had been done, the whole proceeding, nevertheless, had been
+almost automatic on Baptista's part, ere she had come to any definite
+conclusion on her course.
+
+Just before the bell rang she heard a conversation on the pier, which
+removed the last shade of doubt from her mind, if any had existed, that
+she was Charles Stow's widow.  The sentences were but fragmentary, but
+she could easily piece them out.
+
+'A man drowned--swam out too far--was a stranger to the place--people in
+boat--saw him go down--couldn't get there in time.'
+
+The news was little more definite than this as yet; though it may as well
+be stated once for all that the statement was true.  Charley, with the
+over-confidence of his nature, had ventured out too far for his strength,
+and succumbed in the absence of assistance, his lifeless body being at
+that moment suspended in the transparent mid-depths of the bay.  His
+clothes, however, had merely been gently lifted by the rising tide, and
+floated into a nook hard by, where they lay out of sight of the passers-
+by till a day or two after.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+In ten minutes they were steaming out of the harbour for their voyage of
+four or five hours, at whose ending she would have to tell her strange
+story.
+
+As Pen-zephyr and all its environing scenes disappeared behind Mousehole
+and St. Clement's Isle, Baptista's ephemeral, meteor-like husband
+impressed her yet more as a fantasy.  She was still in such a trance-like
+state that she had been an hour on the little packet-boat before she
+became aware of the agitating fact that Mr. Heddegan was on board with
+her.  Involuntarily she slipped from her left hand the symbol of her
+wifehood.
+
+'Hee-hee!  Well, the truth is, I wouldn't interrupt 'ee.  "I reckon she
+don't see me, or won't see me," I said, "and what's the hurry?  She'll
+see enough o' me soon!"  I hope ye be well, mee deer?'
+
+He was a hale, well-conditioned man of about five and fifty, of the
+complexion common to those whose lives are passed on the bluffs and
+beaches of an ocean isle.  He extended the four quarters of his face in a
+genial smile, and his hand for a grasp of the same magnitude.  She gave
+her own in surprised docility, and he continued: 'I couldn't help coming
+across to meet 'ee.  What an unfortunate thing you missing the boat and
+not coming Saturday!  They meant to have warned 'ee that the time was
+changed, but forgot it at the last moment.  The truth is that I should
+have informed 'ee myself; but I was that busy finishing up a job last
+week, so as to have this week free, that I trusted to your father for
+attending to these little things.  However, so plain and quiet as it is
+all to be, it really do not matter so much as it might otherwise have
+done, and I hope ye haven't been greatly put out.  Now, if you'd sooner
+that I should not be seen talking to 'ee--if 'ee feel shy at all before
+strangers--just say.  I'll leave 'ee to yourself till we get home.'
+
+'Thank you much.  I am indeed a little tired, Mr. Heddegan.'
+
+He nodded urbane acquiescence, strolled away immediately, and minutely
+inspected the surface of the funnel, till some female passengers of
+Giant's Town tittered at what they must have thought a rebuff--for the
+approaching wedding was known to many on St. Maria's Island, though to
+nobody elsewhere.  Baptista coloured at their satire, and called him
+back, and forced herself to commune with him in at least a mechanically
+friendly manner.
+
+The opening event had been thus different from her expectation, and she
+had adumbrated no act to meet it.  Taken aback she passively allowed
+circumstances to pilot her along; and so the voyage was made.
+
+It was near dusk when they touched the pier of Giant's Town, where
+several friends and neighbours stood awaiting them.  Her father had a
+lantern in his hand.  Her mother, too, was there, reproachfully glad that
+the delay had at last ended so simply.  Mrs. Trewthen and her daughter
+went together along the Giant's Walk, or promenade, to the house, rather
+in advance of her husband and Mr. Heddegan, who talked in loud tones
+which reached the women over their shoulders.
+
+Some would have called Mrs. Trewthen a good mother; but though well
+meaning she was maladroit, and her intentions missed their mark.  This
+might have been partly attributable to the slight deafness from which she
+suffered.  Now, as usual, the chief utterances came from her lips.
+
+'Ah, yes, I'm so glad, my child, that you've got over safe.  It is all
+ready, and everything so well arranged, that nothing but misfortune could
+hinder you settling as, with God's grace, becomes 'ee.  Close to your
+mother's door a'most, 'twill be a great blessing, I'm sure; and I was
+very glad to find from your letters that you'd held your word sacred.
+That's right--make your word your bond always.  Mrs. Wace seems to be a
+sensible woman.  I hope the Lord will do for her as he's doing for you no
+long time hence.  And how did 'ee get over the terrible journey from Tor-
+upon-Sea to Pen-zephyr?  Once you'd done with the railway, of course, you
+seemed quite at home.  Well, Baptista, conduct yourself seemly, and all
+will be well.'
+
+Thus admonished, Baptista entered the house, her father and Mr. Heddegan
+immediately at her back.  Her mother had been so didactic that she had
+felt herself absolutely unable to broach the subjects in the centre of
+her mind.
+
+The familiar room, with the dark ceiling, the well-spread table, the old
+chairs, had never before spoken so eloquently of the times ere she knew
+or had heard of Charley Stow.  She went upstairs to take off her things,
+her mother remaining below to complete the disposition of the supper, and
+attend to the preparation of to-morrow's meal, altogether composing such
+an array of pies, from pies of fish to pies of turnips, as was never
+heard of outside the Western Duchy.  Baptista, once alone, sat down and
+did nothing; and was called before she had taken off her bonnet.
+
+'I'm coming,' she cried, jumping up, and speedily disapparelling herself,
+brushed her hair with a few touches and went down.
+
+Two or three of Mr. Heddegan's and her father's friends had dropped in,
+and expressed their sympathy for the delay she had been subjected to.  The
+meal was a most merry one except to Baptista.  She had desired privacy,
+and there was none; and to break the news was already a greater
+difficulty than it had been at first.  Everything around her, animate and
+inanimate, great and small, insisted that she had come home to be
+married; and she could not get a chance to say nay.
+
+One or two people sang songs, as overtures to the melody of the morrow,
+till at length bedtime came, and they all withdrew, her mother having
+retired a little earlier.  When Baptista found herself again alone in her
+bedroom the case stood as before: she had come home with much to say, and
+she had said nothing.
+
+It was now growing clear even to herself that Charles being dead, she had
+not determination sufficient within her to break tidings which, had he
+been alive, would have imperatively announced themselves.  And thus with
+the stroke of midnight came the turning of the scale; her story should
+remain untold.  It was not that upon the whole she thought it best not to
+attempt to tell it; but that she could not undertake so explosive a
+matter.  To stop the wedding now would cause a convulsion in Giant's Town
+little short of volcanic.  Weakened, tired, and terrified as she had been
+by the day's adventures, she could not make herself the author of such a
+catastrophe.  But how refuse Heddegan without telling?  It really seemed
+to her as if her marriage with Mr. Heddegan were about to take place as
+if nothing had intervened.
+
+Morning came.  The events of the previous days were cut off from her
+present existence by scene and sentiment more completely than ever.
+Charles Stow had grown to be a special being of whom, owing to his
+character, she entertained rather fearful than loving memory.  Baptista
+could hear when she awoke that her parents were already moving about
+downstairs.  But she did not rise till her mother's rather rough voice
+resounded up the staircase as it had done on the preceding evening.
+
+'Baptista!  Come, time to be stirring!  The man will be here, by heaven's
+blessing, in three-quarters of an hour.  He has looked in already for a
+minute or two--and says he's going to the church to see if things be well
+forward.'
+
+Baptista arose, looked out of the window, and took the easy course.  When
+she emerged from the regions above she was arrayed in her new silk frock
+and best stockings, wearing a linen jacket over the former for
+breakfasting, and her common slippers over the latter, not to spoil the
+new ones on the rough precincts of the dwelling.
+
+It is unnecessary to dwell at any great length on this part of the
+morning's proceedings.  She revealed nothing; and married Heddegan, as
+she had given her word to do, on that appointed August day.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Mr. Heddegan forgave the coldness of his bride's manner during and after
+the wedding ceremony, full well aware that there had been considerable
+reluctance on her part to acquiesce in this neighbourly arrangement, and,
+as a philosopher of long standing, holding that whatever Baptista's
+attitude now, the conditions would probably be much the same six months
+hence as those which ruled among other married couples.
+
+An absolutely unexpected shock was given to Baptista's listless mind
+about an hour after the wedding service.  They had nearly finished the
+mid-day dinner when the now husband said to her father, 'We think of
+starting about two.  And the breeze being so fair we shall bring up
+inside Pen-zephyr new pier about six at least.'
+
+'What--are we going to Pen-zephyr?' said Baptista.  'I don't know
+anything of it.'
+
+'Didn't you tell her?' asked her father of Heddegan.
+
+It transpired that, owing to the delay in her arrival, this proposal too,
+among other things, had in the hurry not been mentioned to her, except
+some time ago as a general suggestion that they would go somewhere.
+Heddegan had imagined that any trip would be pleasant, and one to the
+mainland the pleasantest of all.
+
+She looked so distressed at the announcement that her husband willingly
+offered to give it up, though he had not had a holiday off the island for
+a whole year.  Then she pondered on the inconvenience of staying at
+Giant's Town, where all the inhabitants were bonded, by the circumstances
+of their situation, into a sort of family party, which permitted and
+encouraged on such occasions as these oral criticism that was apt to
+disturb the equanimity of newly married girls, and would especially worry
+Baptista in her strange situation.  Hence, unexpectedly, she agreed not
+to disorganize her husband's plans for the wedding jaunt, and it was
+settled that, as originally intended, they should proceed in a
+neighbour's sailing boat to the metropolis of the district.
+
+In this way they arrived at Pen-zephyr without difficulty or mishap.
+Bidding adieu to Jenkin and his man, who had sailed them over, they
+strolled arm in arm off the pier, Baptista silent, cold, and obedient.
+Heddegan had arranged to take her as far as Plymouth before their return,
+but to go no further than where they had landed that day.  Their first
+business was to find an inn; and in this they had unexpected difficulty,
+since for some reason or other--possibly the fine weather--many of the
+nearest at hand were full of tourists and commercial travellers.  He led
+her on till he reached a tavern which, though comparatively unpretending,
+stood in as attractive a spot as any in the town; and this, somewhat to
+their surprise after their previous experience, they found apparently
+empty.  The considerate old man, thinking that Baptista was educated to
+artistic notions, though he himself was deficient in them, had decided
+that it was most desirable to have, on such an occasion as the present,
+an apartment with 'a good view' (the expression being one he had often
+heard in use among tourists); and he therefore asked for a favourite room
+on the first floor, from which a bow-window protruded, for the express
+purpose of affording such an outlook.
+
+The landlady, after some hesitation, said she was sorry that particular
+apartment was engaged; the next one, however, or any other in the house,
+was unoccupied.
+
+'The gentleman who has the best one will give it up to-morrow, and then
+you can change into it,' she added, as Mr. Heddegan hesitated about
+taking the adjoining and less commanding one.
+
+'We shall be gone to-morrow, and shan't want it,' he said.
+
+Wishing not to lose customers, the landlady earnestly continued that
+since he was bent on having the best room, perhaps the other gentleman
+would not object to move at once into the one they despised, since,
+though nothing could be seen from the window, the room was equally large.
+
+'Well, if he doesn't care for a view,' said Mr. Heddegan, with the air of
+a highly artistic man who did.
+
+'O no--I am sure he doesn't,' she said.  'I can promise that you shall
+have the room you want.  If you would not object to go for a walk for
+half an hour, I could have it ready, and your things in it, and a nice
+tea laid in the bow-window by the time you come back?'
+
+This proposal was deemed satisfactory by the fussy old tradesman, and
+they went out.  Baptista nervously conducted him in an opposite direction
+to her walk of the former day in other company, showing on her wan face,
+had he observed it, how much she was beginning to regret her sacrificial
+step for mending matters that morning.
+
+She took advantage of a moment when her husband's back was turned to
+inquire casually in a shop if anything had been heard of the gentleman
+who was sucked down in the eddy while bathing.
+
+The shopman said, 'Yes, his body has been washed ashore,' and had just
+handed Baptista a newspaper on which she discerned the heading, 'A
+Schoolmaster drowned while bathing,' when her husband turned to join her.
+She might have pursued the subject without raising suspicion; but it was
+more than flesh and blood could do, and completing a small purchase
+almost ran out of the shop.
+
+'What is your terrible hurry, mee deer?' said Heddegan, hastening after.
+
+'I don't know--I don't want to stay in shops,' she gasped.
+
+'And we won't,' he said.  'They are suffocating this weather.  Let's go
+back and have some tay!'
+
+They found the much desired apartment awaiting their entry.  It was a
+sort of combination bed and sitting-room, and the table was prettily
+spread with high tea in the bow-window, a bunch of flowers in the midst,
+and a best-parlour chair on each side.  Here they shared the meal by the
+ruddy light of the vanishing sun.  But though the view had been engaged,
+regardless of expense, exclusively for Baptista's pleasure, she did not
+direct any keen attention out of the window.  Her gaze as often fell on
+the floor and walls of the room as elsewhere, and on the table as much as
+on either, beholding nothing at all.
+
+But there was a change.  Opposite her seat was the door, upon which her
+eyes presently became riveted like those of a little bird upon a snake.
+For, on a peg at the back of the door, there hung a hat; such a
+hat--surely, from its peculiar make, the actual hat--that had been worn
+by Charles.  Conviction grew to certainty when she saw a railway ticket
+sticking up from the band.  Charles had put the ticket there--she had
+noticed the act.
+
+Her teeth almost chattered; she murmured something incoherent.  Her
+husband jumped up and said, 'You are not well!  What is it?  What shall I
+get 'ee?'
+
+'Smelling salts!' she said, quickly and desperately; 'at that chemist's
+shop you were in just now.'
+
+He jumped up like the anxious old man that he was, caught up his own hat
+from a back table, and without observing the other hastened out and
+downstairs.
+
+Left alone she gazed and gazed at the back of the door, then
+spasmodically rang the bell.  An honest-looking country maid-servant
+appeared in response.
+
+'A hat!' murmured Baptista, pointing with her finger.  'It does not
+belong to us.'
+
+'O yes, I'll take it away,' said the young woman with some hurry.  'It
+belongs to the other gentleman.'
+
+She spoke with a certain awkwardness, and took the hat out of the room.
+Baptista had recovered her outward composure.  'The other gentleman?' she
+said.  'Where is the other gentleman?'
+
+'He's in the next room, ma'am.  He removed out of this to oblige 'ee.'
+
+'How can you say so?  I should hear him if he were there,' said Baptista,
+sufficiently recovered to argue down an apparent untruth.
+
+'He's there,' said the girl, hardily.
+
+'Then it is strange that he makes no noise,' said Mrs. Heddegan,
+convicting the girl of falsity by a look.
+
+'He makes no noise; but it is not strange,' said the servant.
+
+All at once a dread took possession of the bride's heart, like a cold
+hand laid thereon; for it flashed upon her that there was a possibility
+of reconciling the girl's statement with her own knowledge of facts.
+
+'Why does he make no noise?' she weakly said.
+
+The waiting-maid was silent, and looked at her questioner.  'If I tell
+you, ma'am, you won't tell missis?' she whispered.
+
+Baptista promised.
+
+'Because he's a-lying dead!' said the girl.  'He's the schoolmaster that
+was drownded yesterday.'
+
+'O!' said the bride, covering her eyes.  'Then he was in this room till
+just now?'
+
+'Yes,' said the maid, thinking the young lady's agitation natural enough.
+'And I told missis that I thought she oughtn't to have done it, because I
+don't hold it right to keep visitors so much in the dark where death's
+concerned; but she said the gentleman didn't die of anything infectious;
+she was a poor, honest, innkeeper's wife, she says, who had to get her
+living by making hay while the sun sheened.  And owing to the drownded
+gentleman being brought here, she said, it kept so many people away that
+we were empty, though all the other houses were full.  So when your good
+man set his mind upon the room, and she would have lost good paying folk
+if he'd not had it, it wasn't to be supposed, she said, that she'd let
+anything stand in the way.  Ye won't say that I've told ye, please, m'm?
+All the linen has been changed, and as the inquest won't be till
+to-morrow, after you are gone, she thought you wouldn't know a word of
+it, being strangers here.'
+
+The returning footsteps of her husband broke off further narration.
+Baptista waved her hand, for she could not speak.  The waiting-maid
+quickly withdrew, and Mr. Heddegan entered with the smelling salts and
+other nostrums.
+
+'Any better?' he questioned.
+
+'I don't like the hotel,' she exclaimed, almost simultaneously.  'I can't
+bear it--it doesn't suit me!'
+
+'Is that all that's the matter?' he returned pettishly (this being the
+first time of his showing such a mood).  'Upon my heart and life such
+trifling is trying to any man's temper, Baptista!  Sending me about from
+here to yond, and then when I come back saying 'ee don't like the place
+that I have sunk so much money and words to get for 'ee.  'Od dang it
+all, 'tis enough to--But I won't say any more at present, mee deer,
+though it is just too much to expect to turn out of the house now.  We
+shan't get another quiet place at this time of the evening--every other
+inn in the town is bustling with rackety folk of one sort and t'other,
+while here 'tis as quiet as the grave--the country, I would say.  So bide
+still, d'ye hear, and to-morrow we shall be out of the town altogether--as
+early as you like.'
+
+The obstinacy of age had, in short, overmastered its complaisance, and
+the young woman said no more.  The simple course of telling him that in
+the adjoining room lay a corpse which had lately occupied their own
+might, it would have seemed, have been an effectual one without further
+disclosure, but to allude to that subject, however it was disguised, was
+more than Heddegan's young wife had strength for.  Horror broke her down.
+In the contingency one thing only presented itself to her paralyzed
+regard--that here she was doomed to abide, in a hideous contiguity to the
+dead husband and the living, and her conjecture did, in fact, bear itself
+out.  That night she lay between the two men she had married--Heddegan on
+the one hand, and on the other through the partition against which the
+bed stood, Charles Stow.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Kindly time had withdrawn the foregoing event three days from the present
+of Baptista Heddegan.  It was ten o'clock in the morning; she had been
+ill, not in an ordinary or definite sense, but in a state of cold
+stupefaction, from which it was difficult to arouse her so much as to say
+a few sentences.  When questioned she had replied that she was pretty
+well.
+
+Their trip, as such, had been something of a failure.  They had gone on
+as far as Falmouth, but here he had given way to her entreaties to return
+home.  This they could not very well do without repassing through Pen-
+zephyr, at which place they had now again arrived.
+
+In the train she had seen a weekly local paper, and read there a
+paragraph detailing the inquest on Charles.  It was added that the
+funeral was to take place at his native town of Redrutin on Friday.
+
+After reading this she had shown no reluctance to enter the fatal
+neighbourhood of the tragedy, only stipulating that they should take
+their rest at a different lodging from the first; and now comparatively
+braced up and calm--indeed a cooler creature altogether than when last in
+the town, she said to David that she wanted to walk out for a while, as
+they had plenty of time on their hands.
+
+'To a shop as usual, I suppose, mee deer?'
+
+'Partly for shopping,' she said.  'And it will be best for you, dear, to
+stay in after trotting about so much, and have a good rest while I am
+gone.'
+
+He assented; and Baptista sallied forth.  As she had stated, her first
+visit was made to a shop, a draper's.  Without the exercise of much
+choice she purchased a black bonnet and veil, also a black stuff gown; a
+black mantle she already wore.  These articles were made up into a parcel
+which, in spite of the saleswoman's offers, her customer said she would
+take with her.  Bearing it on her arm she turned to the railway, and at
+the station got a ticket for Redrutin.
+
+Thus it appeared that, on her recovery from the paralyzed mood of the
+former day, while she had resolved not to blast utterly the happiness of
+her present husband by revealing the history of the departed one, she had
+also determined to indulge a certain odd, inconsequent, feminine
+sentiment of decency, to the small extent to which it could do no harm to
+any person.  At Redrutin she emerged from the railway carriage in the
+black attire purchased at the shop, having during the transit made the
+change in the empty compartment she had chosen.  The other clothes were
+now in the bandbox and parcel.  Leaving these at the cloak-room she
+proceeded onward, and after a wary survey reached the side of a hill
+whence a view of the burial ground could be obtained.
+
+It was now a little before two o'clock.  While Baptista waited a funeral
+procession ascended the road.  Baptista hastened across, and by the time
+the procession entered the cemetery gates she had unobtrusively joined
+it.
+
+In addition to the schoolmaster's own relatives (not a few), the
+paragraph in the newspapers of his death by drowning had drawn together
+many neighbours, acquaintances, and onlookers.  Among them she passed
+unnoticed, and with a quiet step pursued the winding path to the chapel,
+and afterwards thence to the grave.  When all was over, and the relatives
+and idlers had withdrawn, she stepped to the edge of the chasm.  From
+beneath her mantle she drew a little bunch of forget-me-nots, and dropped
+them in upon the coffin.  In a few minutes she also turned and went away
+from the cemetery.  By five o'clock she was again in Pen-zephyr.
+
+'You have been a mortal long time!' said her husband, crossly.  'I
+allowed you an hour at most, mee deer.'
+
+'It occupied me longer,' said she.
+
+'Well--I reckon it is wasting words to complain.  Hang it, ye look so
+tired and wisht that I can't find heart to say what I would!'
+
+'I am--weary and wisht, David; I am.  We can get home to-morrow for
+certain, I hope?'
+
+'We can.  And please God we will!' said Mr. Heddegan heartily, as if he
+too were weary of his brief honeymoon.  'I must be into business again on
+Monday morning at latest.'
+
+They left by the next morning steamer, and in the afternoon took up their
+residence in their own house at Giant's Town.
+
+The hour that she reached the island it was as if a material weight had
+been removed from Baptista's shoulders.  Her husband attributed the
+change to the influence of the local breezes after the hot-house
+atmosphere of the mainland.  However that might be, settled here, a few
+doors from her mother's dwelling, she recovered in no very long time much
+of her customary bearing, which was never very demonstrative.  She
+accepted her position calmly, and faintly smiled when her neighbours
+learned to call her Mrs. Heddegan, and said she seemed likely to become
+the leader of fashion in Giant's Town.
+
+Her husband was a man who had made considerably more money by trade than
+her father had done: and perhaps the greater profusion of surroundings at
+her command than she had heretofore been mistress of, was not without an
+effect upon her.  One week, two weeks, three weeks passed; and, being pre-
+eminently a young woman who allowed things to drift, she did nothing
+whatever either to disclose or conceal traces of her first marriage; or
+to learn if there existed possibilities--which there undoubtedly did--by
+which that hasty contract might become revealed to those about her at any
+unexpected moment.
+
+While yet within the first month of her marriage, and on an evening just
+before sunset, Baptista was standing within her garden adjoining the
+house, when she saw passing along the road a personage clad in a greasy
+black coat and battered tall hat, which, common enough in the slums of a
+city, had an odd appearance in St. Maria's.  The tramp, as he seemed to
+be, marked her at once--bonnetless and unwrapped as she was her features
+were plainly recognizable--and with an air of friendly surprise came and
+leant over the wall.
+
+'What! don't you know me?' said he.
+
+She had some dim recollection of his face, but said that she was not
+acquainted with him.
+
+'Why, your witness to be sure, ma'am.  Don't you mind the man that was
+mending the church-window when you and your intended husband walked up to
+be made one; and the clerk called me down from the ladder, and I came and
+did my part by writing my name and occupation?'
+
+Baptista glanced quickly around; her husband was out of earshot.  That
+would have been of less importance but for the fact that the wedding
+witnessed by this personage had not been the wedding with Mr. Heddegan,
+but the one on the day previous.
+
+'I've had a misfortune since then, that's pulled me under,' continued her
+friend.  'But don't let me damp yer wedded joy by naming the particulars.
+Yes, I've seen changes since; though 'tis but a short time ago--let me
+see, only a month next week, I think; for 'twere the first or second day
+in August.'
+
+'Yes--that's when it was,' said another man, a sailor, who had come up
+with a pipe in his mouth, and felt it necessary to join in (Baptista
+having receded to escape further speech).  'For that was the first time I
+set foot in Giant's Town; and her husband took her to him the same day.'
+
+A dialogue then proceeded between the two men outside the wall, which
+Baptista could not help hearing.
+
+'Ay, I signed the book that made her one flesh,' repeated the decayed
+glazier.  'Where's her goodman?'
+
+'About the premises somewhere; but you don't see 'em together much,'
+replied the sailor in an undertone.  'You see, he's older than she.'
+
+'Older?  I should never have thought it from my own observation,' said
+the glazier.  'He was a remarkably handsome man.'
+
+'Handsome?  Well, there he is--we can see for ourselves.'
+
+David Heddegan had, indeed, just shown himself at the upper end of the
+garden; and the glazier, looking in bewilderment from the husband to the
+wife, saw the latter turn pale.
+
+Now that decayed glazier was a far-seeing and cunning man--too far-seeing
+and cunning to allow himself to thrive by simple and straightforward
+means--and he held his peace, till he could read more plainly the meaning
+of this riddle, merely adding carelessly, 'Well--marriage do alter a man,
+'tis true.  I should never ha' knowed him!'
+
+He then stared oddly at the disconcerted Baptista, and moving on to where
+he could again address her, asked her to do him a good turn, since he
+once had done the same for her.  Understanding that he meant money, she
+handed him some, at which he thanked her, and instantly went away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+She had escaped exposure on this occasion; but the incident had been an
+awkward one, and should have suggested to Baptista that sooner or later
+the secret must leak out.  As it was, she suspected that at any rate she
+had not heard the last of the glazier.
+
+In a day or two, when her husband had gone to the old town on the other
+side of the island, there came a gentle tap at the door, and the worthy
+witness of her first marriage made his appearance a second time.
+
+'It took me hours to get to the bottom of the mystery--hours!' he said
+with a gaze of deep confederacy which offended her pride very deeply.
+'But thanks to a good intellect I've done it.  Now, ma'am, I'm not a man
+to tell tales, even when a tale would be so good as this.  But I'm going
+back to the mainland again, and a little assistance would be as rain on
+thirsty ground.'
+
+'I helped you two days ago,' began Baptista.
+
+'Yes--but what was that, my good lady?  Not enough to pay my passage to
+Pen-zephyr.  I came over on your account, for I thought there was a
+mystery somewhere.  Now I must go back on my own.  Mind this--'twould be
+very awkward for you if your old man were to know.  He's a queer temper,
+though he may be fond.'
+
+She knew as well as her visitor how awkward it would be; and the hush-
+money she paid was heavy that day.  She had, however, the satisfaction of
+watching the man to the steamer, and seeing him diminish out of sight.
+But Baptista perceived that the system into which she had been led of
+purchasing silence thus was one fatal to her peace of mind, particularly
+if it had to be continued.
+
+Hearing no more from the glazier she hoped the difficulty was past.  But
+another week only had gone by, when, as she was pacing the Giant's Walk
+(the name given to the promenade), she met the same personage in the
+company of a fat woman carrying a bundle.
+
+'This is the lady, my dear,' he said to his companion.  'This, ma'am, is
+my wife.  We've come to settle in the town for a time, if so be we can
+find room.'
+
+'That you won't do,' said she.  'Nobody can live here who is not
+privileged.'
+
+'I am privileged,' said the glazier, 'by my trade.'
+
+Baptista went on, but in the afternoon she received a visit from the
+man's wife.  This honest woman began to depict, in forcible colours, the
+necessity for keeping up the concealment.
+
+'I will intercede with my husband, ma'am,' she said.  'He's a true man if
+rightly managed; and I'll beg him to consider your position.  'Tis a very
+nice house you've got here,' she added, glancing round, 'and well worth a
+little sacrifice to keep it.'
+
+The unlucky Baptista staved off the danger on this third occasion as she
+had done on the previous two.  But she formed a resolve that, if the
+attack were once more to be repeated she would face a revelation--worse
+though that must now be than before she had attempted to purchase silence
+by bribes.  Her tormentors, never believing her capable of acting upon
+such an intention, came again; but she shut the door in their faces.  They
+retreated, muttering something; but she went to the back of the house,
+where David Heddegan was.
+
+She looked at him, unconscious of all.  The case was serious; she knew
+that well; and all the more serious in that she liked him better now than
+she had done at first.  Yet, as she herself began to see, the secret was
+one that was sure to disclose itself.  Her name and Charles's stood
+indelibly written in the registers; and though a month only had passed as
+yet it was a wonder that his clandestine union with her had not already
+been discovered by his friends.  Thus spurring herself to the inevitable,
+she spoke to Heddegan.
+
+'David, come indoors.  I have something to tell you.'
+
+He hardly regarded her at first.  She had discerned that during the last
+week or two he had seemed preoccupied, as if some private business
+harassed him.  She repeated her request.  He replied with a sigh, 'Yes,
+certainly, mee deer.'
+
+When they had reached the sitting-room and shut the door she repeated,
+faintly, 'David, I have something to tell you--a sort of tragedy I have
+concealed.  You will hate me for having so far deceived you; but perhaps
+my telling you voluntarily will make you think a little better of me than
+you would do otherwise.'
+
+'Tragedy?' he said, awakening to interest.  'Much you can know about
+tragedies, mee deer, that have been in the world so short a time!'
+
+She saw that he suspected nothing, and it made her task the harder.  But
+on she went steadily.  'It is about something that happened before we
+were married,' she said.
+
+'Indeed!'
+
+'Not a very long time before--a short time.  And it is about a lover,'
+she faltered.
+
+'I don't much mind that,' he said mildly.  'In truth, I was in hopes
+'twas more.'
+
+'In hopes!'
+
+'Well, yes.'
+
+This screwed her up to the necessary effort.  'I met my old sweetheart.
+He scorned me, chid me, dared me, and I went and married him.  We were
+coming straight here to tell you all what we had done; but he was
+drowned; and I thought I would say nothing about him: and I married you,
+David, for the sake of peace and quietness.  I've tried to keep it from
+you, but have found I cannot.  There--that's the substance of it, and you
+can never, never forgive me, I am sure!'
+
+She spoke desperately.  But the old man, instead of turning black or
+blue, or slaying her in his indignation, jumped up from his chair, and
+began to caper around the room in quite an ecstatic emotion.
+
+'O, happy thing!  How well it falls out!' he exclaimed, snapping his,
+fingers over his head.  'Ha-ha--the knot is cut--I see a way out of my
+trouble--ha-ha!'  She looked at him without uttering a sound, till, as he
+still continued smiling joyfully, she said, 'O--what do you mean!  Is it
+done to torment me?'
+
+'No--no!  O, mee deer, your story helps me out of the most heart-aching
+quandary a poor man ever found himself in!  You see, it is this--I've got
+a tragedy, too; and unless you had had one to tell, I could never have
+seen my way to tell mine!'
+
+'What is yours--what is it?' she asked, with altogether a new view of
+things.
+
+'Well--it is a bouncer; mine is a bouncer!' said he, looking on the
+ground and wiping his eyes.
+
+'Not worse than mine?'
+
+'Well--that depends upon how you look at it.  Yours had to do with the
+past alone; and I don't mind it.  You see, we've been married a month,
+and it don't jar upon me as it would if we'd only been married a day or
+two.  Now mine refers to past, present, and future; so that--'
+
+'Past, present, and future!' she murmured.  'It never occurred to me that
+you had a tragedy, too.'
+
+'But I have!' he said, shaking his head.  'In fact, four.'
+
+'Then tell 'em!' cried the young woman.
+
+'I will--I will.  But be considerate, I beg 'ee, mee deer.  Well--I
+wasn't a bachelor when I married 'ee, any more than you were a spinster.
+Just as you was a widow-woman, I was a widow-man.
+
+'Ah!' said she, with some surprise.  'But is that all?--then we are
+nicely balanced,' she added, relieved.
+
+'No--it is not all.  There's the point.  I am not only a widower.'
+
+'O, David!'
+
+'I am a widower with four tragedies--that is to say, four strapping
+girls--the eldest taller than you.  Don't 'ee look so struck--dumb-like!
+It fell out in this way.  I knew the poor woman, their mother, in Pen-
+zephyr for some years; and--to cut a long story short--I privately
+married her at last, just before she died.  I kept the matter secret, but
+it is getting known among the people here by degrees.  I've long felt for
+the children--that it is my duty to have them here, and do something for
+them.  I have not had courage to break it to 'ee, but I've seen lately
+that it would soon come to your ears, and that hev worried me.'
+
+'Are they educated?' said the ex-schoolmistress.
+
+'No.  I am sorry to say they have been much neglected; in truth, they can
+hardly read.  And so I thought that by marrying a young schoolmistress I
+should get some one in the house who could teach 'em, and bring 'em into
+genteel condition, all for nothing.  You see, they are growed up too tall
+to be sent to school.'
+
+'O, mercy!' she almost moaned.  'Four great girls to teach the rudiments
+to, and have always in the house with me spelling over their books; and I
+hate teaching, it kills me.  I am bitterly punished--I am, I am!'
+
+'You'll get used to 'em, mee deer, and the balance of secrets--mine
+against yours--will comfort your heart with a sense of justice.  I could
+send for 'em this week very well--and I will!  In faith, I could send
+this very day.  Baptista, you have relieved me of all my difficulty!'
+
+Thus the interview ended, so far as this matter was concerned.  Baptista
+was too stupefied to say more, and when she went away to her room she
+wept from very mortification at Mr. Heddegan's duplicity.  Education, the
+one thing she abhorred; the shame of it to delude a young wife so!
+
+The next meal came round.  As they sat, Baptista would not suffer her
+eyes to turn towards him.  He did not attempt to intrude upon her
+reserve, but every now and then looked under the table and chuckled with
+satisfaction at the aspect of affairs.  'How very well matched we be!' he
+said, comfortably.
+
+Next day, when the steamer came in, Baptista saw her husband rush down to
+meet it; and soon after there appeared at her door four tall, hipless,
+shoulderless girls, dwindling in height and size from the eldest to the
+youngest, like a row of Pan pipes; at the head of them standing Heddegan.
+He smiled pleasantly through the grey fringe of his whiskers and beard,
+and turning to the girls said, 'Now come forrard, and shake hands
+properly with your stepmother.'
+
+Thus she made their acquaintance, and he went out, leaving them together.
+On examination the poor girls turned out to be not only plain-looking,
+which she could have forgiven, but to have such a lamentably meagre
+intellectual equipment as to be hopelessly inadequate as companions.  Even
+the eldest, almost her own age, could only read with difficulty words of
+two syllables; and taste in dress was beyond their comprehension.  In the
+long vista of future years she saw nothing but dreary drudgery at her
+detested old trade without prospect of reward.
+
+She went about quite despairing during the next few days--an unpromising,
+unfortunate mood for a woman who had not been married six weeks.  From
+her parents she concealed everything.  They had been amongst the few
+acquaintances of Heddegan who knew nothing of his secret, and were
+indignant enough when they saw such a ready-made household foisted upon
+their only child.  But she would not support them in their remonstrances.
+
+'No, you don't yet know all,' she said.
+
+Thus Baptista had sense enough to see the retributive fairness of this
+issue.  For some time, whenever conversation arose between her and
+Heddegan, which was not often, she always said, 'I am miserable, and you
+know it.  Yet I don't wish things to be otherwise.'
+
+But one day when he asked, 'How do you like 'em now?' her answer was
+unexpected.  'Much better than I did,' she said, quietly.  'I may like
+them very much some day.'
+
+This was the beginning of a serener season for the chastened spirit of
+Baptista Heddegan.  She had, in truth, discovered, underneath the crust
+of uncouthness and meagre articulation which was due to their
+Troglodytean existence, that her unwelcomed daughters had natures that
+were unselfish almost to sublimity.  The harsh discipline accorded to
+their young lives before their mother's wrong had been righted, had
+operated less to crush them than to lift them above all personal
+ambition.  They considered the world and its contents in a purely
+objective way, and their own lot seemed only to affect them as that of
+certain human beings among the rest, whose troubles they knew rather than
+suffered.
+
+This was such an entirely new way of regarding life to a woman of
+Baptista's nature, that her attention, from being first arrested by it,
+became deeply interested.  By imperceptible pulses her heart expanded in
+sympathy with theirs.  The sentences of her tragi-comedy, her life,
+confused till now, became clearer daily.  That in humanity, as
+exemplified by these girls, there was nothing to dislike, but infinitely
+much to pity, she learnt with the lapse of each week in their company.
+She grew to like the girls of unpromising exterior, and from liking she
+got to love them; till they formed an unexpected point of junction
+between her own and her husband's interests, generating a sterling
+friendship at least, between a pair in whose existence there had
+threatened to be neither friendship nor love.
+
+October, 1885.
+
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHANGED MAN AND OTHER TALES***
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