Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (786 page)

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 off yourself and know your way about as well by night as by day, and have hair-breadth 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. Oh, 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 mantel-piece, 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 practiced 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 afterward 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, forced gayety, 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-by!”

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 into the gray morning light, to which was to carry him away, that he saw 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 Mynton Wesleyans.

One day, two years after the parting, Stockdale, now settled in a midland town, came into Nether-Mynton by carrier in the original way. Jogging along in the van that afternoon, he had put questions to the driver, and the answers that he received interested, the minister deeply. The result of them was that he went without the least hesitation to the door of his former lodging. It was about six o’clock in the evening, and the same time of year as when he had left; now, too, the ground was damp and glistening, the west was bright, and Lizzy’s snowdrops were raising their heads in the border under the wall.

Lizzy must have caught sight of him from the window, for by the time that he reached the door she was there holding it open; and then, as if she had not sufficiently considered her act of coming out, she drew herself back, saying, with some constraint: “Mr. Stockdale!”

“You knew it was,” said Stockdale, taking her hand. “I wrote to say I should call.”

“Yes, but you did not say when,” she answered.

“I did not. I was not quite sure when my business would lead me to these parts.” “You only came because business brought you near?”

“Well, that is the fact; but I have often thought I should like to come on purpose to see you. But what’s all this that has happened? I told you how it would be, Lizzy, and you would not listen to me.”

“I would not,” she said, sadly. “But I had been brought up to that life, and it was second nature to me. However, it is all over now. The officers have blood-money for taking a man dead or alive, and the trade is going to nothing. We were hunted down like rats.”

“Owlett is quite gone, I hear?”

“Yes, he is in America. We had a dreadful struggle that last time, when they tried to take him. It is a perfect miracle that he lived through and it is a wonder that I was not killed. I was shot in the hand. It was not by aim; the shot was really meant for my cousin; but I was behind, looking on as usual, and the bullet came to me. It bled terribly, but I got home without fainting, and it healed after a time. You know how he suffered?”

“No,” said Stockdale. “I only heard that he just escaped with his life.”

“He was shot in the back, but a rib turned the ball. He was badly hurt. We would not let him be took. The men carried him all night across the meads to Bere, and hid him in a barn, dressing his wound as well as they could, till he was so far recovered as to be able to get about. He had gied up his mill for some time, and at last he got to Bristol, and took a passage to America, and he’s settled in Wisconsin. “

“What do you think of smuggling now?” said the minister, gravely.

“I own that we were wrong,” said she. “But I have suffered for it. I am very poor now, and my mother has been dead these twelve months. But won’t you come in, Mr. Stockdale?”

Stockdale went in; and it is to be presumed that they came to an understanding, for a fortnight later there was a sale of Lizzy’s furniture, and after that a wedding at a chapel in a neighbouring town.

He took her away from her old haunts to the home that he had made for himself in his native county, where she studied her duties as a minister’s wife with praiseworthy assiduity. It is said that in after-years she wrote an excellent tract called “Render unto Caesar; or, The Repentant Villagers,” in which her own experience was anonymously used as the introductory story. Stockdale got it printed, after making some corrections, and putting in a few powerful sentences of his own; and many hundreds of copies were distributed by the couple in the course of their married life.

THE END.

Fellow Townsmen

I

The shepherd on the east hill could shout out lambing intelligence to the shepherd on the west hill, over the intervening town chimneys, with out great inconvenience to his voice, so nearly did the steep pastures encroach upon the burghers’’ back-yards. And at night it was possible to stand in the very midst of the town and hear from their native paddocks on the lower levels of greensward the mild lowing of the farmers’ heifers, and the profound, warm blowings of breath in which those creatures indulge. But the community which had jammed itself in the valley thus flanked formed a veritable town, with a real mayor and corporation, and a staple manufacture.

During a certain damp evening five-and-thirty years ago, before the twilight was far advanced, a pedestrian of professional appearance carrying a small bag in his hand and an elevated umbrella, was descending one of these hills by the turnpike-road when he was overtaken by a phaeton.

“Holloa, Downe! is that you?” said the driver of the vehicle, a young man of pale and refined appearance. “Jump up here with me, and ride down to your door. “

The other turned a plump, cheery rather self-indulgent face over his shoulder toward the hailer.

“Oh, good evening, Mr. Barnet! thanks,” he said, and mounted beside his acquaintance.

They were fellow-burgesses of the town which lay beneath them, but though old and very good friends, they were differently circumstanced. Barnet was a richer man than the struggling young lawyer Downe — a fact which was to some extent perceptible in Downe’s manner toward his companion, though nothing of it ever showed in Barnet’s manner toward the solicitor. Barnet’s position in the town was none of his own making; his father had been a very successful flax merchant in the same place, where the trade was still carried on as briskly as the small capacities of its quarters would allow. Having acquired a fair fortune, old Mr. Barnet had retired from business, bringing up his son as a gentleman-burgher, and, it must be added, as a well-educated, liberal-minded young man.

“How is Mrs. Barnet?” asked Downe.

“Mrs. Barnet was very well when I left home,” the other answered, constrainedly, exchanging his meditative regard of the horse for one of self-consciousness.

Mr. Downe seemed to regret his inquiry, and immediately took up another thread of conversation. He congratulated his friend on his election as a councilman; he though the had not seen him since that event took place; Mrs. Downe had meant to call and congratulate Mrs. Barnet, but he feared that she had failed to do so as yet.

Barnet seemed hampered in his replies. “We should have been glad to see you. I — my wife would welcome Mrs. Downe at any time, as you know.... Yes, I am a member of the corporation — rather an inexperienced member, some of them say. It is quite true; and I should have declined the honour as premature — having other things on my hands just now, too — if it had not been pressed upon me so very heartily.”

“There is one thing you have on your hands which I can never quite see the necessity for,” said Downe, with good-humored freedom.

“What the deuce do you want to build that new mansion for, when you have already got such an excellent house as the one you live in?”

Barnet’s face acquired a warmer shade of colour; but as the question had been idly asked by the solicitor while regarding the surrounding flocks and fields, he answered after a moment, with no apparent embarrassment.

“Well, we wanted to get out of the town, you know; the house I am living in is rather old and inconvenient.”

Mr. Downe declared that he had chosen a pretty site for the new building. They would be able to see for miles and miles from the windows. Was he going to give it a name? he supposed so.

Barnet thought not. There was no other house near that was likely to be mistaken for it. And he did not care for a name.

“But I think it has a name!” Downe observed. “I went past — when was it? – this morning; and I saw something — ‘Chateau Ringdale,’ I think it was, stuck up on a board!”

“It was an idea she — we had for a short time,” said Barnet, hastily. “But we have decided finally to do without a name — at any rate, such a name as that. It must have been a week ago that you saw it. It was taken down last Saturday. Upon that matter I am firm!” he added, grimly.

Downe murmured in an unconvinced tone that he thought he had seen it yesterday.