Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (842 page)

“Ha, ha! Yes! On what night did it come?”

Mrs. Lodge considered, and said it would be a fortnight ago on the morrow.

“When I awoke I could not remember where I was,” she added, ‘till the clock striking two reminded me.”

She had named the night and the hour of Rhoda’s spectral encounter, and Brook felt like a guilty thing. The artless disclosure startled her; she did not reason on the freaks of coincidence; and all the scenery of that ghastly night returned with double vividness to her mind.

“Oh, can it be,” she said to herself, when her visitor had departed, “that I exercise a malignant power over people against my own will?” She knew that she had been slyly called a witch since her fall; but never having understood why that particular stigma had been attached to her, it had passed disregarded. Could this be the explanation, and had such things as this ever happened before?

IV

A SUGGESTION

The summer drew on, and Rhoda Brook almost dreaded to meet Mrs. Lodge again, notwithstanding that her feeling for the young wife amounted wellnigh to affection. Something in her own individuality seemed to convict Rhoda of crime. Yet a fatality sometimes would direct the steps of the latter to the outskirts of Holmstoke whenever she left her house for any other purpose than her daily work; and hence it happened that their next encounter was out-of-doors. Rhoda could not avoid the subject which had so mystified her, and after the first few words she stammered: “I hope your — arm is well again, ma’am?” She had perceived with consternation that Gertrude Lodge carried her left arm stiffly.

“No, it is not quite well. Indeed, it is no better at all; it is rather worse. It pails me dreadfully sometimes.”

“Perhaps you had better go to a doctor, ma’am.”

She replied that she had already seen a doctor. Her husband had insisted upon her going to one. But the surgeon had not seemed to understand the afflicted limb at all; he had told her to bathe it in hot water, and she had bathed it, but the treatment had done no good.

“Will you let me see it?” said the milkwoman.

Mrs. Lodge pushed up her sleeve and disclosed the place, which was a few inches above the wrist. As soon as Rhoda Brook saw it she could hardly preserve her composure. There was nothing of the nature of a wound, but the arm at that point had a shriveled look, and the outline of the four fingers appeared more distinct than at the former time. Moreover, she fancied that they were imprinted in precisely the relative position of her clutch upon the arm in the trance; the first finger toward Gertrude’s wrist, and the fourth toward her elbow.

What the impress resembled seemed to have struck Gertrude herself since their last meeting. “It looks almost like finger-marks,” she said; adding, with a faint laugh: “My husband says it is as if some witch, or the devil himself, had taken hold of me there and blasted the flesh.”

Rhoda shivered. “That’s fancy,” she said, hurriedly. “I wouldn’t mind it, if I were you.”

“I shouldn’t so much mind it,” said the younger, with hesitation, “if — if I hadn’t a notion that it makes my husband — dislike me — no, love me less. Men think so much of personal appearance.”

“Some do — he for one.”

“Yes; and he was very proud of mine, at first.”

“Keep your arm covered from his sight.”

“Ah, he knows the disfigurement is there!” She tried to hide the tears that filled her eyes.

“Well, ma’am, I earnestly hope it will go away soon.”

And so the milkwoman’s mind was chained anew to the subject by a horrid sort of spell as she returned home. The sense of having been guilty of an act of malignity increased, affect as she might to ridicule her superstition. In her secret heart Rhoda did not altogether object to a slight diminution of her successor’s beauty, by whatever means it had come about; but she did not wish to inflict upon her physical pain. For though this pretty young woman had rendered impossible any reparation which Lodge might have made Rhoda for his past conduct, everything like resentment at the unconscious usurpation had quite passed away from the elder’s mind.

If the sweet and kindly Gertrude Lodge only knew of the scene in the bedchamber, what would she think? Not to inform her of it seemed treachery in the presence of her friendliness; but tell she could not of her own accord, neither could she devise a remedy.

She mused upon the matter the greater part of the night; and the next day, after the morning milking, set out to obtain another glimpse of Gertrude Lodge if she could, being held to her by a grewsome fascination. By watching the house from a distance the milkmaid was presently able to discern the farmer’s wife in a ride she was taking alone — probably to join her husband in some distant field. Mrs. Lodge perceived her, and cantered in her direction.

“Good-morning, Rhoda!” Gertrude said, when she had come up, “I was going to call.”

Rhoda noticed that Mrs. Lodge held the reins with some difficulty.

“I hope — the bad arm,” said Rhoda.

“They tell me there is possibly one way by which I might be able to find out the cause, and so perhaps the cure of it,” replied the other, anxiously. “It is by going to some clever man over in Egdon Heath. They did not know if he was still alive — and I cannot remember his name at this moment; but they said that you knew more of his movements than anybody else hereabout, and could tell me if he were still to be consulted. Dear me — what was his name? But you know.”

“Not Conjurer Trendle?” said her thin companion, turning pale.

“Trendle — yes, Is he alive?”

“I believe so,” said Rhoda, with reluctance.

“Why do you call him conjurer?”

“Well — they say — they used to say he was a — he had powers that other folks have not.”

“Oh, how could my People be so superstitious as to recommend a man of that sort! I thought they meant some medical man. I shall think no more of him.”

Rhoda looked relieved, and Mrs. Lodge rode on. The milkwoman had inwardly seen, from the moment she heard of her having been mentioned as a reference for this man, that there must exist a sarcastic feeling among the workfolk that a sorceress would know the whereabouts of the exorcist. They suspected her, then. A short time ago this would have given no concern to a woman of her common sense. But she had a haunting reason to be superstitious, now; and she had been seized with sudden dread that this Conjurer Trendle might name her, as the malignant influence which was blasting the fair person of Gertrude, and so lead her friend to hate her forever, and to treat her as some fiend in human shape.

But all was not over. Two days after, a shadow intruded into the window-pattern thrown on Rhoda Brook’s floor by the afternoon sun. The woman opened the door at once, almost breathlessly.

“Are you alone?” said Gertrude. She seemed to be no less harassed and anxious than Brook herself.

“Yes,” said Rhoda.

“The place on my arm seems worse, and troubles me!” the farmer’s young wife went on. “It is so mysterious! I do hope it will not be a permanent blemish. I have again been thinking of what they said about Conjurer Trendle. I don’t really believe in such men, but I should not mind just visiting him, from curiosity — though on no account must my husband know. Is it far to where he lives?”

“Yes — five miles,” said Rhoda, backwardly. “In the heart of Egdon.”

“Well, I should have to walk. Could not you go with me to show me the way — say to-morrow afternoon?”

“Oh, not I — that is,” the milkwoman murmured, with a start of dismay. Again the dread seized her that something to do with her act in the dream might be revealed, and her character in the eyes of the most useful friend she had ever had be ruined irretrievably.

Mrs. Lodge urged, and Rhoda finally assented, though with much misgiving. Sad as the journey would be to her, she could not conscientiously stand in the way of a possible remedy for her patron’s strange affliction. It was agreed that, to escape suspicion of their mystic intent, they should meet at the edge of the heath, at the corner of a plantation which was visible from the spot where they now stood.

V

CONJURER TRENDLE

By the next afternoon Rhoda would have done anything to escape this inquiry. But she had promised to go. Moreover, there was a horrid fascination at times in becoming instrumental in throwing such possible light on her own character as would reveal her to be something greater in the occult world than she had ever herself suspected.

She started just before the time of day mentioned between them, and half an hour’s brisk walking brought her to the southeastern extension of the Egdon tract of country, where the fir plantation was. A slight figure, cloaked and veiled, was already there. Rhoda recognized, almost with a shudder, that Mrs. Lodge bore her left arm in a sling.

They hardly spoke to each other, and immediately set out on their climb into the interior of this solemn country, which stood high above the rich alluvial soil they had left half an hour before. It was a long walk; thick clouds made the atmosphere dark, though it was as yet only early afternoon; and the wind howled dismally over the hills of the heath — not improbably the same heath which had witnessed the agony of the Wessex King Ina, presented to after-ages as Lear. Gertrude Lodge talked most, Rhoda replying with monosyllabic preoccupation. She had a strange dislike to walking on the side of her companion where hung the afflicted arm, moving round to the other when inadvertently near it. Much heather had been brushed by their feet when they descended upon a

cart-track, beside which stood the house of the man they sought.

He did not profess his remedial practices openly, or care anything about their continuance, his direct interests being those of a dealer in furze, turf, ‘sharp sand,’ and other local products. Indeed, he affected not to believe largely in his own powers, and when warts that had been shown him for cure miraculously disappeared — which it must be owned they infallibly did — he would say lightly, “Oh, I only drink a glass of grog upon ‘em — perhaps it’s all chance,” and immediately turn the subject.

He was at home when they arrived, having, in fact, seen them descending into his valley. He was a gray-bearded man, with a reddish face, and he looked singularly at Rhoda the first moment he beheld her. Mrs. Lodge told him her errand, and then with words of self-disparagement he examined her arm.

“Medicine can’t cure it,” he said, promptly. “ ‘Tis the work of an enemy.”

Rhoda shrank into herself and drew back.

“An enemy? What enemy?” asked Mrs. Lodge.

He shook his head. “That’s best known to yourself,” he said. “If you like l can show the person to you, though I shall not myself know who it is. I can do no more, and don’t wish to do that.”

She pressed him; on which he told Rhoda to wait outside where she stood, and took Mrs. Lodge into the room. It opened immediately from the door; and, as the latter remained ajar, Rhoda Brook could see the proceedings without taking part in them. He brought a tumbler from the dresser, nearly filled it with water, and fetching an egg, prepared it in some private way; after which he broke it on the edge of the glass, so that the white went in and the yelk remained. As it was getting gloomy, he took the glass and its contents to the window, and told Gertrude to watch them closely. They leaned over the table together, and the milkwoman could see the opaline hue of the egg-fluid changing form as it sank in the water, but she was not near enough to define the shape that it assumed.

“Do you catch the likeness of any face or figure as you look?” demanded the conjurer of the young woman.

She murmured a reply, in tones so low as to be inaudible to Rhoda, and continued to gaze intently into the glass. Rhoda turned, and walked a few steps away.

When Mrs. Lodge came out, and her face was met by the light, it appeared exceedingly pale — as pale as Rhoda’s — against the sad dun shades of the upland’s garniture. Trendle shut the door behind her, and they at once started homeward

together. But Rhoda perceived that her companion had quite changed.

“Did he charge much?” she asked, tentatively.

“Oh no — nothing. He would not take a farthing,” said Gertrude.

“And what did you see?” inquired Rhoda.

“Nothing I — care to speak of.” The constraint in her manner was remarkable; her face was so rigid as to wear an oldened aspect, faintly suggestive of the face in Rhoda’s bedchamber.

“Was it you who first proposed coming here?” Mrs. Lodge suddenly inquired, after a long pause. “How very odd, if you did!”

“No. But I am not sorry we have come, all things considered,” she replied. For the first time a sense of triumph possessed her, and she did not altogether deplore that the young thing at her side should learn that their lives had been antagonized by other influences than their own.

The subject was no more alluded to during the long and dreary walk home. But in some way or other a story was whispered about the many dairied Swenn Valley that winter that Mrs. Lodge’s gradual loss of the use of her left arm was owing to her being “overlooked” by Rhoda Brook. The latter kept her own counsel about the incubus, but her face grew sadder and thinner; and in the spring she and her boy disappeared, from the neighbourhood of Holmstoke.

VI

A SECOND ATTEMPT

Half dozen years passed away, and Mr. and Mrs. Lodge’s married experience sank into prosiness, and worse. The farmer was usually gloomy and silent: the woman whom he had wooed for her grace and beauty was contorted and disfigured in the left limb; moreover, she had brought him no child, which rendered it likely that he would be the last of a family who had occupied that valley for some two hundred years. He thought of Rhoda Brook and her son, and feared this might be a judgment from Heaven upon him.

The once blithe-hearted and enlightened Gertrude was changing into an irritable, superstitious woman, whose whole time was given to experimenting upon her ailment with every quack remedy she came across. She was honestly attached to her husband, and was ever secretly hoping against hope to win back his heart again by regaining some at least of her personal beauty. Hence it arose that her closet was lined with bottles, packets, and ointment-pots of every description — nay, bunches of mystic herbs, charms, and books of necromancy, which in her school-girl time she would have