Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (690 page)

The narrator’s manner and tone had the stamp of truth, and his story made a great impression on all around.  ‘And do you know where your brother is at the present time?’ asked the magistrate.

‘I do not.  I have never seen him since I closed this door.’

‘I can testify to that, for we’ve been between ye ever since,’ said the constable.

‘Where does he think to fly to? — what is his occupation?’

‘He’s a watch-and-clock-maker, sir.’

‘‘A said ‘a was a wheelwright — a wicked rogue,’ said the constable.

‘The wheels of clocks and watches he meant, no doubt,’ said Shepherd Fennel.  ‘I thought his hands were palish for’s trade.’

‘Well, it appears to me that nothing can be gained by retaining this poor man in custody,’ said the magistrate; ‘your business lies with the other, unquestionably.’

And so the little man was released off-hand; but he looked nothing the less sad on that account, it being beyond the power of magistrate or constable to raze out the written troubles in his brain, for they concerned another whom he regarded with more solicitude than himself.  When this was done, and the man had gone his way, the night was found to be so far advanced that it was deemed useless to renew the search before the next morning.

Next day, accordingly, the quest for the clever sheep-stealer became general and keen, to all appearance at least.  But the intended punishment was cruelly disproportioned to the transgression, and the sympathy of a great many country-folk in that district was strongly on the side of the fugitive.  Moreover, his marvellous coolness and daring in hob-and-nobbing with the hangman, under the unprecedented circumstances of the shepherd’s party, won their admiration.  So that it may be questioned if all those who ostensibly made themselves so busy in exploring woods and fields and lanes were quite so thorough when it came to the private examination of their own lofts and outhouses.  Stories were afloat of a mysterious figure being occasionally seen in some old overgrown trackway or other, remote from turnpike roads; but when a search was instituted in any of these suspected quarters nobody was found.  Thus the days and weeks passed without tidings.

In brief; the bass-voiced man of the chimney-corner was never recaptured.  Some said that he went across the sea, others that he did not, but buried himself in the depths of a populous city.  At any rate, the gentleman in cinder-gray never did his morning’s work at Casterbridge, nor met anywhere at all, for business purposes, the genial comrade with whom he had passed an hour of relaxation in the lonely house on the coomb.

The grass has long been green on the graves of Shepherd Fennel and his frugal wife; the guests who made up the christening party have mainly followed their entertainers to the tomb; the baby in whose honour they all had met is a matron in the sere and yellow leaf.  But the arrival of the three strangers at the shepherd’s that night, and the details connected therewith, is a story as well known as ever in the country about Higher Crowstairs.

March 1883.

THE WITHERED ARM

CHAPTER I — A LORN MILKMAID

It was an eighty-cow dairy, and the troop of milkers, regular and supernumerary, were all at work; for, though the time of year was as yet but early April, the feed lay entirely in water-meadows, and the cows were ‘in full pail.’  The hour was about six in the evening, and three-fourths of the large, red, rectangular animals having been finished off, there was opportunity for a little conversation.

‘He do bring home his bride to-morrow, I hear.  They’ve come as far as Anglebury to-day.’

The voice seemed to proceed from the belly of the cow called Cherry, but the speaker was a milking-woman, whose face was buried in the flank of that motionless beast.

‘Hav’ anybody seen her?’ said another.

There was a negative response from the first.  ‘Though they say she’s a rosy-cheeked, tisty-tosty little body enough,’ she added; and as the milkmaid spoke she turned her face so that she could glance past her cow’s tail to the other side of the barton, where a thin, fading woman of thirty milked somewhat apart from the rest.

‘Years younger than he, they say,’ continued the second, with also a glance of reflectiveness in the same direction.

‘How old do you call him, then?’

‘Thirty or so.’

‘More like forty,’ broke in an old milkman near, in a long white pinafore or ‘wropper,’ and with the brim of his hat tied down, so that he looked like a woman.  ‘‘A was born before our Great Weir was builded, and I hadn’t man’s wages when I laved water there.’

The discussion waxed so warm that the purr of the milk-streams became jerky, till a voice from another cow’s belly cried with authority, ‘Now then, what the Turk do it matter to us about Farmer Lodge’s age, or Farmer Lodge’s new mis’ess?  I shall have to pay him nine pound a year for the rent of every one of these milchers, whatever his age or hers.  Get on with your work, or ‘twill be dark afore we have done.  The evening is pinking in a’ready.’  This speaker was the dairyman himself; by whom the milkmaids and men were employed.

Nothing more was said publicly about Farmer Lodge’s wedding, but the first woman murmured under her cow to her next neighbour, ‘‘Tis hard for
she
,’ signifying the thin worn milkmaid aforesaid.

‘O no,’ said the second.  ‘He ha’n’t spoke to Rhoda Brook for years.’

When the milking was done they washed their pails and hung them on a many-forked stand made of the peeled limb of an oak-tree, set upright in the earth, and resembling a colossal antlered horn.  The majority then dispersed in various directions homeward.  The thin woman who had not spoken was joined by a boy of twelve or thereabout, and the twain went away up the field also.

Their course lay apart from that of the others, to a lonely spot high above the water-meads, and not far from the border of Egdon Heath, whose dark countenance was visible in the distance as they drew nigh to their home.

‘They’ve just been saying down in barton that your father brings his young wife home from Anglebury to-morrow,’ the woman observed.  ‘I shall want to send you for a few things to market, and you’ll be pretty sure to meet ‘em.’

‘Yes, mother,’ said the boy.  ‘Is father married then?’

‘Yes . . . You can give her a look, and tell me what’s she’s like, if you do see her.’

‘Yes, mother.’

‘If she’s dark or fair, and if she’s tall — as tall as I.  And if she seems like a woman who has ever worked for a living, or one that has been always well off, and has never done anything, and shows marks of the lady on her, as I expect she do.’

‘Yes.’

They crept up the hill in the twilight, and entered the cottage.  It was built of mud-walls, the surface of which had been washed by many rains into channels and depressions that left none of the original flat face visible; while here and there in the thatch above a rafter showed like a bone protruding through the skin.

She was kneeling down in the chimney-corner, before two pieces of turf laid together with the heather inwards, blowing at the red-hot ashes with her breath till the turves flamed.  The radiance lit her pale cheek, and made her dark eyes, that had once been handsome, seem handsome anew.  ‘Yes,’ she resumed, ‘see if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or are milker’s hands like mine.’

The boy again promised, inattentively this time, his mother not observing that he was cutting a notch with his pocket-knife in the beech-backed chair.

CHAPTER II — THE YOUNG WIFE

The road from Anglebury to Holmstoke is in general level; but there is one place where a sharp ascent breaks its monotony.  Farmers homeward-bound from the former market-town, who trot all the rest of the way, walk their horses up this short incline.

The next evening, while the sun was yet bright, a handsome new gig, with a lemon-coloured body and red wheels, was spinning westward along the level highway at the heels of a powerful mare.  The driver was a yeoman in the prime of life, cleanly shaven like an actor, his face being toned to that bluish-vermilion hue which so often graces a thriving farmer’s features when returning home after successful dealings in the town.  Beside him sat a woman, many years his junior — almost, indeed, a girl.  Her face too was fresh in colour, but it was of a totally different quality — soft and evanescent, like the light under a heap of rose-petals.

Few people travelled this way, for it was not a main road; and the long white riband of gravel that stretched before them was empty, save of one small scarce-moving speck, which presently resolved itself into the figure of boy, who was creeping on at a snail’s pace, and continually looking behind him — the heavy bundle he carried being some excuse for, if not the reason of, his dilatoriness.  When the bouncing gig-party slowed at the bottom of the incline above mentioned, the pedestrian was only a few yards in front.  Supporting the large bundle by putting one hand on his hip, he turned and looked straight at the farmer’s wife as though he would read her through and through, pacing along abreast of the horse.

The low sun was full in her face, rendering every feature, shade, and contour distinct, from the curve of her little nostril to the colour of her eyes.  The farmer, though he seemed annoyed at the boy’s persistent presence, did not order him to get out of the way; and thus the lad preceded them, his hard gaze never leaving her, till they reached the top of the ascent, when the farmer trotted on with relief in his lineaments — having taken no outward notice of the boy whatever.

‘How that poor lad stared at me!’ said the young wife.

‘Yes, dear; I saw that he did.’

‘He is one of the village, I suppose?’

‘One of the neighbourhood.  I think he lives with his mother a mile or two off.’

‘He knows who we are, no doubt?’

‘O yes.  You must expect to be stared at just at first, my pretty Gertrude.’

‘I do, — though I think the poor boy may have looked at us in the hope we might relieve him of his heavy load, rather than from curiosity.’

‘O no,’ said her husband off-handedly.  ‘These country lads will carry a hundredweight once they get it on their backs; besides his pack had more size than weight in it.  Now, then, another mile and I shall be able to show you our house in the distance — if it is not too dark before we get there.’  The wheels spun round, and particles flew from their periphery as before, till a white house of ample dimensions revealed itself, with farm-buildings and ricks at the back.

Meanwhile the boy had quickened his pace, and turning up a by-lane some mile and half short of the white farmstead, ascended towards the leaner pastures, and so on to the cottage of his mother.

She had reached home after her day’s milking at the outlying dairy, and was washing cabbage at the doorway in the declining light.  ‘Hold up the net a moment,’ she said, without preface, as the boy came up.

He flung down his bundle, held the edge of the cabbage-net, and as she filled its meshes with the dripping leaves she went on, ‘Well, did you see her?’

‘Yes; quite plain.’

‘Is she ladylike?’

‘Yes; and more.  A lady complete.’

‘Is she young?’

‘Well, she’s growed up, and her ways be quite a woman’s.’

‘Of course.  What colour is her hair and face?’

‘Her hair is lightish, and her face as comely as a live doll’s.’

‘Her eyes, then, are not dark like mine?’

‘No — of a bluish turn, and her mouth is very nice and red; and when she smiles, her teeth show white.’

‘Is she tall?’ said the woman sharply.

‘I couldn’t see.  She was sitting down.’

‘Then do you go to Holmstoke church to-morrow morning: she’s sure to be there.  Go early and notice her walking in, and come home and tell me if she’s taller than I.’

‘Very well, mother.  But why don’t you go and see for yourself?’

‘I
go to see her!  I wouldn’t look up at her if she were to pass my window this instant.  She was with Mr. Lodge, of course.  What did he say or do?’

‘Just the same as usual.’

‘Took no notice of you?’

‘None.’

Next day the mother put a clean shirt on the boy, and started him off for Holmstoke church.  He reached the ancient little pile when the door was just being opened, and he was the first to enter.  Taking his seat by the font, he watched all the parishioners file in.  The well-to-do Farmer Lodge came nearly last; and his young wife, who accompanied him, walked up the aisle with the shyness natural to a modest woman who had appeared thus for the first time.  As all other eyes were fixed upon her, the youth’s stare was not noticed now.

When he reached home his mother said, ‘Well?’ before he had entered the room.

‘She is not tall.  She is rather short,’ he replied.

‘Ah!’ said his mother, with satisfaction.

‘But she’s very pretty — very.  In fact, she’s lovely.’

The youthful freshness of the yeoman’s wife had evidently made an impression even on the somewhat hard nature of the boy.

‘That’s all I want to hear,’ said his mother quickly.  ‘Now, spread the table-cloth.  The hare you caught is very tender; but mind that nobody catches you. — You’ve never told me what sort of hands she had.’

‘I have never seen ‘em.  She never took off her gloves.’

‘What did she wear this morning?’

‘A white bonnet and a silver-coloured gownd.  It whewed and whistled so loud when it rubbed against the pews that the lady coloured up more than ever for very shame at the noise, and pulled it in to keep it from touching; but when she pushed into her seat, it whewed more than ever.  Mr. Lodge, he seemed pleased, and his waistcoat stuck out, and his great golden seals hung like a lord’s; but she seemed to wish her noisy gownd anywhere but on her.’

‘Not she!  However, that will do now.’

These descriptions of the newly-married couple were continued from time to time by the boy at his mother’s request, after any chance encounter he had had with them.  But Rhoda Brook, though she might easily have seen young Mrs. Lodge for herself by walking a couple of miles, would never attempt an excursion towards the quarter where the farmhouse lay.  Neither did she, at the daily milking in the dairyman’s yard on Lodge’s outlying second farm, ever speak on the subject of the recent marriage.  The dairyman, who rented the cows of Lodge, and knew perfectly the tall milkmaid’s history, with manly kindliness always kept the gossip in the cow-barton from annoying Rhoda.  But the atmosphere thereabout was full of the subject during the first days of Mrs. Lodge’s arrival; and from her boy’s description and the casual words of the other milkers, Rhoda Brook could raise a mental image of the unconscious Mrs Lodge that was realistic as a photograph.