Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (713 page)

‘Yes,’ he said; ‘I hear the wheels.  But what of that?’

‘I only want to know if they get clear away from the neighbourhood.’

‘Ah,’ said he, a light breaking upon him.  ‘Something desperate is to be attempted! — and now I remember there was not a man about the village when we left.’

‘Hark!’ she murmured.  The noise of the cartwheels had stopped, and given place to another sort of sound.

‘‘Tis a scuffle!’ said Stockdale.  ‘There’ll be murder!  Lizzy, let go my arm; I am going on.  On my conscience, I must not stay here and do nothing!’

‘There’ll be no murder, and not even a broken head,’ she said.  ‘Our men are thirty to four of them: no harm will be done at all.’

‘Then there
is
an attack!’ exclaimed Stockdale; ‘and you knew it was to be.  Why should you side with men who break the laws like this?’

‘Why should you side with men who take from country traders what they have honestly bought wi’ their own money in France?’ said she firmly.

‘They are not honestly bought,’ said he.

‘They are,’ she contradicted.  ‘I and Owlett and the others paid thirty shillings for every one of the tubs before they were put on board at Cherbourg, and if a king who is nothing to us sends his people to steal our property, we have a right to steal it back again.’

Stockdale did not stop to argue the matter, but went quickly in the direction of the noise, Lizzy keeping at his side.  ‘Don’t you interfere, will you, dear Richard?’ she said anxiously, as they drew near.  ‘Don’t let us go any closer: ‘tis at Warm’ell Cross where they are seizing ‘em.  You can do no good, and you may meet with a hard blow!’

‘Let us see first what is going on,’ he said.  But before they had got much further the noise of the cartwheels began again; and Stockdale soon found that they were coming towards him.  In another minute the three carts came up, and Stockdale and Lizzy stood in the ditch to let them pass.

Instead of being conducted by four men, as had happened when they went out of the village, the horses and carts were now accompanied by a body of from twenty to thirty, all of whom, as Stockdale perceived to his astonishment, had blackened faces.  Among them walked six or eight huge female figures, whom, from their wide strides, Stockdale guessed to be men in disguise.  As soon as the party discerned Lizzy and her companion four or five fell back, and when the carts had passed, came close to the pair.

‘There is no walking up this way for the present,’ said one of the gaunt women, who wore curls a foot long, dangling down the sides of her face, in the fashion of the time.  Stockdale recognized this lady’s voice as Owlett’s.

‘Why not?’ said Stockdale.  ‘This is the public highway.’

‘Now look here, youngster,’ said Owlett.  ‘O, ‘tis the Methodist parson! — what, and Mrs. Newberry!  Well, you’d better not go up that way, Lizzy.  They’ve all run off, and folks have got their own again.’

The miller then hastened on and joined his comrades.  Stockdale and Lizzy also turned back.  ‘I wish all this hadn’t been forced upon us,’ she said regretfully.  ‘But if those excisemen had got off with the tubs, half the people in the parish would have been in want for the next month or two.’

Stockdale was not paying much attention to her words, and he said, ‘I don’t think I can go back like this.  Those four poor excisemen may be murdered for all I know.’

‘Murdered!’ said Lizzy impatiently.  ‘We don’t do murder here.’

‘Well, I shall go as far as Warm’ell Cross to see,’ said Stockdale decisively; and, without wishing her safe home or anything else, the minister turned back.  Lizzy stood looking at him till his form was absorbed in the shades; and then, with sadness, she went in the direction of Nether-Moynton.

The road was lonely, and after nightfall at this time of the year there was often not a passer for hours.  Stockdale pursued his way without hearing a sound beyond that of his own footsteps; and in due time he passed beneath the trees of the plantation which surrounded the Warm’ell Cross-road.  Before he had reached the point of intersection he heard voices from the thicket.

‘Hoi-hoi-hoi!  Help, help!’

The voices were not at all feeble or despairing, but they were unmistakably anxious.  Stockdale had no weapon, and before plunging into the pitchy darkness of the plantation he pulled a stake from the hedge, to use in case of need.  When he got among the trees he shouted — ’What’s the matter — where are you?’

‘Here,’ answered the voices; and, pushing through the brambles in that direction, he came near the objects of his search.

‘Why don’t you come forward?’ said Stockdale.

‘We be tied to the trees!’

‘Who are you?’

‘Poor Will Latimer the exciseman!’ said one plaintively.  ‘Just come and cut these cords, there’s a good man.  We were afraid nobody would pass by to-night.’

Stockdale soon loosened them, upon which they stretched their limbs and stood at their ease.

‘The rascals!’ said Latimer, getting now into a rage, though he had seemed quite meek when Stockdale first came up.  ‘‘Tis the same set of fellows.  I know they were Moynton chaps to a man.’

‘But we can’t swear to ‘em,’ said another.  ‘Not one of ‘em spoke.’

‘What are you going to do?’ said Stockdale.

‘I’d fain go back to Moynton, and have at ‘em again!’ said Latimer.

‘So would we!’ said his comrades.

‘Fight till we die!’ said Latimer.

‘We will, we will!’ said his men.

‘But,’ said Latimer, more frigidly, as they came out of the plantation, ‘we don’t
know
that these chaps with black faces were Moynton men?  And proof is a hard thing.’

‘So it is,’ said the rest.

‘And therefore we won’t do nothing at all,’ said Latimer, with complete dispassionateness.  ‘For my part, I’d sooner be them than we.  The clitches of my arms are burning like fire from the cords those two strapping women tied round ‘em.  My opinion is, now I have had time to think o’t, that you may serve your Gover’ment at too high a price.  For these two nights and days I have not had an hour’s rest; and, please God, here’s for home-along.’

The other officers agreed heartily to this course; and, thanking Stockdale for his timely assistance, they parted from him at the Cross, taking themselves the western road, and Stockdale going back to Nether-Moynton.

During that walk the minister was lost in reverie of the most painful kind.  As soon as he got into the house, and before entering his own rooms, he advanced to the door of the little back parlour in which Lizzy usually sat with her mother.  He found her there alone.  Stockdale went forward, and, like a man in a dream, looked down upon the table that stood between him and the young woman, who had her bonnet and cloak still on.  As he did not speak, she looked up from her chair at him, with misgiving in her eye.

‘Where are they gone?’ he then said listlessly.

‘Who? — I don’t know.  I have seen nothing of them since.  I came straight in here.’

‘If your men can manage to get off with those tubs, it will be a great profit to you, I suppose?’

‘A share will be mine, a share my cousin Owlett’s, a share to each of the two farmers, and a share divided amongst the men who helped us.’

‘And you still think,’ he went on slowly, ‘that you will not give this business up?’

Lizzy rose, and put her hand upon his shoulder.  ‘Don’t ask that,’ she whispered.  ‘You don’t know what you are asking.  I must tell you, though I meant not to do it.  What I make by that trade is all I have to keep my mother and myself with.’

He was astonished.  ‘I did not dream of such a thing,’ he said.  ‘I would rather have swept the streets, had I been you.  What is money compared with a clear conscience?’

‘My conscience is clear.  I know my mother, but the king I have never seen.  His dues are nothing to me.  But it is a great deal to me that my mother and I should live.’

‘Marry me, and promise to give it up.  I will keep your mother.’

‘It is good of you,’ she said, trembling a little.  ‘Let me think of it by myself.  I would rather not answer now.’

She reserved her answer till the next day, and came into his room with a solemn face.  ‘I cannot do what you wished!’ she said passionately.  ‘It is too much to ask.  My whole life ha’ been passed in this way.’  Her words and manner showed that before entering she had been struggling with herself in private, and that the contention had been strong.

Stockdale turned pale, but he spoke quietly.  ‘Then, Lizzy, we must part.  I cannot go against my principles in this matter, and I cannot make my profession a mockery.  You know how I love you, and what I would do for you; but this one thing I cannot do.’

‘But why should you belong to that profession?’ she burst out.  ‘I have got this large house; why can’t you marry me, and live here with us, and not be a Methodist preacher any more?  I assure you, Richard, it is no harm, and I wish you could only see it as I do!  We only carry it on in winter: in summer it is never done at all.  It stirs up one’s dull life at this time o’ the year, and gives excitement, which I have got so used to now that I should hardly know how to do ‘ithout it.  At nights, when the wind blows, instead of being dull and stupid, and not noticing whether it do blow or not, your mind is afield, even if you are not afield yourself; and you are wondering how the chaps are getting on; and you walk up and down the room, and look out o’ window, and then you go out yourself, and know your way about as well by night as by day, and have hairbreadth escapes from old Latimer and his fellows, who are too stupid ever to really frighten us, and only make us a bit nimble.’

‘He frightened you a little last night, anyhow: and I would advise you to drop it before it is worse.’

She shook her head.  ‘No, I must go on as I have begun.  I was born to it.  It is in my blood, and I can’t be cured.  O, Richard, you cannot think what a hard thing you have asked, and how sharp you try me when you put me between this and my love for ‘ee!’

Stockdale was leaning with his elbow on the mantelpiece, his hands over his eyes.  ‘We ought never to have met, Lizzy,’ he said.  ‘It was an ill day for us!  I little thought there was anything so hopeless and impossible in our engagement as this.  Well, it is too late now to regret consequences in this way.  I have had the happiness of seeing you and knowing you at least.’

‘You dissent from Church, and I dissent from State,’ she said.  ‘And I don’t see why we are not well matched.’

He smiled sadly, while Lizzy remained looking down, her eyes beginning to overflow.

That was an unhappy evening for both of them, and the days that followed were unhappy days.  Both she and he went mechanically about their employments, and his depression was marked in the village by more than one of his denomination with whom he came in contact.  But Lizzy, who passed her days indoors, was unsuspected of being the cause: for it was generally understood that a quiet engagement to marry existed between her and her cousin Owlett, and had existed for some time.

Thus uncertainly the week passed on; till one morning Stockdale said to her: ‘I have had a letter, Lizzy.  I must call you that till I am gone.’

‘Gone?’ said she blankly.

‘Yes,’ he said.  ‘I am going from this place.  I felt it would be better for us both that I should not stay after what has happened.  In fact, I couldn’t stay here, and look on you from day to day, without becoming weak and faltering in my course.  I have just heard of an arrangement by which the other minister can arrive here in about a week; and let me go elsewhere.’

That he had all this time continued so firmly fixed in his resolution came upon her as a grievous surprise.  ‘You never loved me!’ she said bitterly.

‘I might say the same,’ he returned; ‘but I will not.  Grant me one favour.  Come and hear my last sermon on the day before I go.’

Lizzy, who was a church-goer on Sunday mornings, frequently attended Stockdale’s chapel in the evening with the rest of the double-minded; and she promised.

It became known that Stockdale was going to leave, and a good many people outside his own sect were sorry to hear it.  The intervening days flew rapidly away, and on the evening of the Sunday which preceded the morning of his departure Lizzy sat in the chapel to hear him for the last time.  The little building was full to overflowing, and he took up the subject which all had expected, that of the contraband trade so extensively practised among them.  His hearers, in laying his words to their own hearts, did not perceive that they were most particularly directed against Lizzy, till the sermon waxed warm, and Stockdale nearly broke down with emotion.  In truth his own earnestness, and her sad eyes looking up at him, were too much for the young man’s equanimity.  He hardly knew how he ended.  He saw Lizzy, as through a mist, turn and go away with the rest of the congregation; and shortly afterwards followed her home.

She invited him to supper, and they sat down alone, her mother having, as was usual with her on Sunday nights, gone to bed early.

‘We will part friends, won’t we?’ said Lizzy, with forced gaiety, and never alluding to the sermon: a reticence which rather disappointed him.

‘We will,’ he said, with a forced smile on his part; and they sat down.

It was the first meal that they had ever shared together in their lives, and probably the last that they would so share.  When it was over, and the indifferent conversation could no longer be continued, he arose and took her hand.  ‘Lizzy,’ he said, ‘do you say we must part — do you?’

‘You do,’ she said solemnly.  ‘I can say no more.’

‘Nor I,’ said he.  ‘If that is your answer, good-bye!’

Stockdale bent over her and kissed her, and she involuntarily returned his kiss.  ‘I shall go early,’ he said hurriedly.  ‘I shall not see you again.’

And he did leave early.  He fancied, when stepping forth into the grey morning light, to mount the van which was to carry him away, that he saw a face between the parted curtains of Lizzy’s window, but the light was faint, and the panes glistened with wet; so he could not be sure.  Stockdale mounted the vehicle, and was gone; and on the following Sunday the new minister preached in the chapel of the Moynton Wesleyans.