Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (828 page)

        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 wrapt 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 canonly 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.

Alicia’s Diary

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.