Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (782 page)

Lizzy soon ascended a small mound, which Stockdale at the same time adroitly-skirted on the left; and a dull monotonous roar burst upon his ear. The hillock was about fifty yards from the top of the cliffs, and by day it apparently commanded a full view of the bay. There was light enough in the sky to show her disguised figure against it when she reached the top, where she paused, and afterward sat down. Stockdale, not wishing on any account to alarm her at this moment, yet desirous of being near her, sank upon his hands and knees, crept a little higher up, and there stayed still.

The wind was chilly, the ground damp, and his position one in which he did not care to remain long. However, before he had decided to leave it, the young man heard voices behind him. What they signified he did not know; but, fearing that Lizzy was in danger, he was about to run forward and warn her that she might be seen, when she crept to the shelter of a little bush which maintained a precarious existence in that exposed spot; and her form was absorbed in its dark and stunted outline as she had become part of it. She had evidently heard the men as well as he. They passed near him, talking in loud and careless tones, which could be heard above the uninterrupted washings of the sea, and which suggested that they were not engaged in any business at their own risk. This proved to be the fact; some of their words floated across to him, and caused him to forget at once the coldness of his situation.

“What’s the vessel?”

“A lugger, about fifty tons.”

“From Cherbourg, I suppose?”

“Yes, a b’lieve”.

“But it don’t all belong to Owlett?”

“Oh no. He’s only got a share. There’s another or two in it — a farmer and such-like, but the names I don’t know.”

The voices died away, and the heads and shoulders of the men diminished toward the cliff, and dropped out of sight.

“My darling has been tempted to buy a share by that unbeliever Owlett,” groaned the minister, his honest affection for Lizzy having quickened to its intensest point during these moments of risk to her person and name. “That’s why she’s here,” he said to himself. “Oh, it will be the ruin of her.”

His perturbation was interrupted by the sudden bursting out of a bright and increasing light from the spot where Lizzy was in hiding. A few seconds later, and before it had reached the height of a blaze, he heard her rush past him down the hollow like a stone from a sling, in the direction of home. The light now flared high and wide, and showed its position clearly. She had kindled a bough of furze and stuck it into the bush under which she had been crouching; the wind fanned the flame, which crackled fiercely, and threatened to consume the bush as well as the bough. Stockdale paused just long enough to notice thus much, and then followed rapidly the route taken by the young woman. His intention was to overtake her, and reveal himself as a friend; but run as he would he could see nothing of her. Thus he flew across the open country about Holworth, twisting his legs and ankles in unexpected fissures and descents, till, on coming to the gate between the downs and the road, he was forced to pause to get breath. There was no audible movement either in front or behind him, and he now concluded that she had not outrun him, but that, hearing him at her heels, and believing him one of the excise party, she had hidden herself somewhere on the way, and let him pass by.

He went on at a more leisurely pace toward the village. On reaching the house he found his surmise to be correct, for the gate was on the latch, and the door unfastened, just as he had left them. Stockdale closed the door behind him, and waited silently in the passage. In about-ten minutes he heard the same light footstep that he had heard in going out; it paused at the gate, which opened and shut softly, and then the door-latch was lifted and Lizzy came in.

Stockdale went forward and said at once, “Lizzy, don’t be frightened. I have been waiting up for you.”

She started, though she had recognized the voice. “It is Mr. Stockdale, isn’t it?” she said.

“Yes,” he answered, becoming angry now that she was safe indoors, and not alarmed. “And a nice game I’ve found you out in tonight. You are in man’s clothes, and I am ashamed of you!”

Lizzy could hardly find a voice to answer this unexpected reproach.

“I am only partly in man’s clothes,” she faltered, shrinking back to the wall. “It is only his great-coat and hat and breeches that I’ve got on, which is no harm, as he was my own husband; and I do it only because a cloak blows about so, and you can’t use your arms. I have got my own dress under just the same — it is only tucked in. Will you go away upstairs and let me pass? I didn’t want you to see me at such a time as this.”

“But I have a right to see you. How do you think there can be anything between us now?” Lizzy was silent.

“You are a smuggler,” he continued sadly.

“I have only a share in the run,” she said.

“That makes no difference. Whatever did you engage in such a trade as that for, and keep it such a secret from me all this time?”

“I don’t do it always. I do it only in wintertime when ‘tis new moon.”

“Well, I suppose that’s because it can’t be done anywhen else. You have regularly upset me, Lizzy.”

“I am sorry for that,” Lizzy meekly replied.

“Well now,” said he, more tenderly, “no harm is done as yet. Won’t you, for the sake of me, give up this blamable and dangerous practice altogether?”

“I must do my best to save this run,” said she, getting rather husky in the throat. “I don’t want to give you up — you know that; but I don’t want to lose my venture. I don’t know what to do now! Why I have kept it so secret from you is that I was afraid you would be angry if you knew.”

“I should think so. I suppose if I had married you without finding this out you’d have gone on with it just the same?”

“I don’t know. I did not think so far ahead. I only went to-night to burn the folks off, because we found that the excisemen knew where the tubs were to be landed.”

“It is a pretty mess to be in altogether, is this,” said the distracted young minister. “Well, what will you do now?”

Lizzy slowly murmured the particulars of their plan, the chief of which were that they meant to try their luck at some other point of the shore the next night; that three landing-places were always agreed upon before the run was attempted, with the understanding that, if the vessel was burned off from the first point, which was Ringsworth, as it had been by her to-night the crew should attempt to make the second, which was Lullstead, on the second night; and if there, too, danger threatened, they should on the third night try the third place, which was behind a headland further west.

“Suppose the officers hinder them landing there too?” he said, his attention to this interesting programme displacing for a moment his concern at her share in it.

“Then we shan’t try anywhere else all this dark — that’s what we call the time between moon and moon — and perhaps they’ll string the tubs to a stray-line, and sink ‘em a little ways from shore, and take the bearings; and then when they have a chance they’ll go to creep for ‘em.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, they’ll go out in a boat and drag a creeper — that’s a grapnel — along the bottom till it catch hold of the stray-line.”

The minister stood thinking; and there was no sound within doors but the tick of the clock on the stairs, and the quick breathing of Lizzy, partly from her walk and partly from agitation, as she stood close to the wall, not in such complete darkness but that he could discern against its whitewashed surface the great-coat and broad hat which covered her.

“Lizzy, all this is very wrong,” he said. “Don’t you remember the lesson of the tribute-money — ’Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s?’ Surely you have heard that read times enough in your growing up?”

“He’s dead,” she pouted.

“But the spirit of the text is in force just the same.”

“My father did it, and so did my grandfather, and almost everybody in Nether-Mynton lives by it; and life would be so dull if it wasn’t for that, that I should not care to live at all.”

“I am nothing to live for, of course,” he replied, bitterly. “You would not think it worth while to give up this wild business and live for me alone?”

“I have never looked at it like that.”

“And you won’t promise, and wait till I am ready?”

“I cannot give you my word to-night.” And, looking thoughtfully down, she gradually moved and moved away, going into the adjoining room and closing the door between them. She remained there in the dark till he was tired of waiting, and had gone up to his own chamber.

Poor Stockdale was dreadfully depressed all the next day by the discoveries of the night before. Lizzy was unmistakably a fascinating young woman, but as a minister’s wife she was hardly to be contemplated. “If I had only stuck to father’s little grocery business, instead of going in for the ministry, she would have suited me beautifully!” he said, sadly, until he remembered that in that case he would never have come from his distant home to Nether-Mynton, and never have known her.

The estrangement between them was not complete, but it was sufficient to keep them out of each other’s company. Once during the day he met her in the garden path, and said, turning a reproachful eye upon her, “Do you promise, Lizzy?” But she did not reply. The evening drew on, and he knew well enough that Lizzy would repeat her excursion at night — her half-offended manner had shown that she had not the slightest intention of altering her plans at present. He did not wish to repeat his own share of the adventure; but, act as he would, his uneasiness on her account increased with the decline of day. Supposing that an accident should befall her, he would never forgive himself for not being there to help, much as he disliked the idea of seeming to countenance such unlawful escapades.

V. HOW THEY WENT TO LULLSTEAD AND BACK.

As he had expected, she left the house at the same hour at night, this time passing his door without stealth, as if she knew very well that he would be watching, and were resolved to brave his displeasure. He was quite ready, opened the door quickly, and reached the back door almost as soon as she.

“Then you will go, Lizzy?” he said, as he stood on the step beside her, who now again appeared as a little man with a face altogether unsuited to his clothes.

“I must,” she said, repressed by his stern manner.

“Then I shall go too,” said he.

“And I am sure you will enjoy it!” she exclaimed, in more buoyant tones. “Everybody does who tries it.”

“God forbid that I should,” he said. “But I must look after you.”

They opened the wicket and went up the road abreast of each other, but at some distance apart, scarcely a word passing between them. The evening was rather less favorable to smuggling enterprise than the last had been, the wind being lower, and the sky somewhat clear toward the north.

“It is rather lighter,” said Stockdale.

“ ‘Tis, unfortunately,” said she. “But it is only from those few stars over there. The moon was new to-day at four o’clock, and I expected clouds. I hope we shall be able to do it this dark, for when we have to sink ‘em for long it makes the stuff taste bleachy, and folks don’t like it so well.”

Her course was different from that of the preceding night, branching off to the left over Lord’s Barrow as soon as they had got out of the lane and crossed the highway. By the time they reached Chaldon Down, Stockdale, who had been in perplexed thought as to what he should say to her, decided that he would not attempt expostulation now, while she was excited by the adventure, but wait till it was over, and endeavor to keep her from such practices in future. It occurred to him once or twice, as they rambled on, that should they be surprised by the excisemen, his situation would be more awkward than hers, for it would be difficult to prove his true motive in coming to the spot; but the risk was a slight consideration beside his wish to be with her.

They now arrived at a ravine which lay on the outskirts of Chaldon, a village two miles on their way toward the point of the shore they sought.

Lizzy broke the silence this time: “I have to wait here to meet the carriers. I don’t know if they have come yet. As I told. you, we go to Lullstead to-night, and it is two miles further than Ringsworth.”

It turned out that the men had already come; for while she spoke two or three dozen heads broke the line of the slope, and a company of men at once descended from the bushes where they had been lying in wait. These carriers were men whom Lizzy and other proprietors regularly employed to bring the tubs from the boat to a hiding-place inland. They were young fellows of Nether-Mynton, Chaldon, and the neighbourhood, quiet and inoffensive persons, who simply engaged to carry the cargo for Lizzy and her cousin Owlett, as they would have engaged in any other labour for which they were fairly well paid.

At a word from her, they closed in together. “You had better take it now,” she said to them, and handed to each a packet. It contained six shillings, their remuneration for the night’s undertaking, which was paid beforehand without reference to success or failure; but, besides this, they had the privilege of selling as agents when the run was successfully made. As soon as it was done, she said to them, “The place is the old one at Lullstead;” the men till that moment not having been told whither they were bound, for obvious reasons. “Owlett will meet you there,” added Lizzy. “I shall, follow behind, to see that we are not watched.”

The carriers went on, and Stockdale and Mrs. Newberry followed at the distance of a stone’s throw, “What do these men do by day?” he said.

“Twelve or fourteen of them are labouring men. Some are brickmakers, some carpenters, some masons, some thatchers. They are all known to me very well. Nine of ‘em are of your own congregation.”

“I can’t help that,” said Stockdale.

“Oh, I know you can’t. I only told you. The others are more church-inclined, because they supply the pa’son with all the spirits he requires, and they don’t wish to show unfriendliness to a customer.”

“How do you choose them?” said Stockdale.