Among the few features of agricultural
England which retain an appearance but little modified
by the lapse of centuries, may be reckoned the high,
grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases, as they
are indifferently called, that fill a large area of
certain counties in the south and south-west.
If any mark of human occupation is met with hereon,
it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage
of some shepherd.
Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage
stood on such a down, and may possibly be standing
there now. In spite of its loneliness, however,
the spot, by actual measurement, was not more than
five miles from a county-town. Yet that affected
it little. Five miles of irregular upland, during
the long inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows,
rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough
to isolate a Timon or a Nebuchadnezzar; much less,
in fair weather, to please that less repellent tribe,
the poets, philosophers, artists, and others who ’conceive
and meditate of pleasant things.’
Some old earthen camp or barrow, some
clump of trees, at least some starved fragment of
ancient hedge is usually taken advantage of in the
erection of these forlorn dwellings. But, in
the present case, such a kind of shelter had been
disregarded. Higher Crowstairs, as the house
was called, stood quite detached and undefended.
The only reason for its precise situation seemed
to be the crossing of two footpaths at right angles
hard by, which may have crossed there and thus for
a good five hundred years. Hence the house was
exposed to the elements on all sides. But, though
the wind up here blew unmistakably when it did blow,
and the rain hit hard whenever it fell, the various
weathers of the winter season were not quite so formidable
on the coomb as they were imagined to be by dwellers
on low ground. The raw rimes were not so pernicious
as in the hollows, and the frosts were scarcely so
severe. When the shepherd and his family who
tenanted the house were pitied for their sufferings
from the exposure, they said that upon the whole they
were less inconvenienced by ‘wuzzes and flames’
(hoarses and phlegms) than when they had lived by
the stream of a snug neighbouring valley.
The night of March 28, 182-, was precisely
one of the nights that were wont to call forth these
expressions of commiseration. The level rainstorm
smote walls, slopes, and hedges like the clothyard
shafts of Senlac and Crecy. Such sheep and outdoor
animals as had no shelter stood with their buttocks
to the winds; while the tails of little birds trying
to roost on some scraggy thorn were blown inside-out
like umbrellas. The gable-end of the cottage
was stained with wet, and the eavesdroppings flapped
against the wall. Yet never was commiseration
for the shepherd more misplaced. For that cheerful
rustic was entertaining a large party in glorification
of the christening of his second girl.
The guests had arrived before the
rain began to fall, and they were all now assembled
in the chief or living room of the dwelling.
A glance into the apartment at eight o’clock
on this eventful evening would have resulted in the
opinion that it was as cosy and comfortable a nook
as could be wished for in boisterous weather.
The calling of its inhabitant was proclaimed by a
number of highly-polished sheep-crooks without stems
that were hung ornamentally over the fireplace, the
curl of each shining crook varying from the antiquated
type engraved in the patriarchal pictures of old family
Bibles to the most approved fashion of the last local
sheep-fair. The room was lighted by half-a-dozen
candles, having wicks only a trifle smaller than the
grease which enveloped them, in candlesticks that
were never used but at high-days, holy-days, and family
feasts. The lights were scattered about the room,
two of them standing on the chimney-piece. This
position of candles was in itself significant.
Candles on the chimney-piece always meant a party.
On the hearth, in front of a back-brand
to give substance, blazed a fire of thorns, that crackled
‘like the laughter of the fool.’
Nineteen persons were gathered here.
Of these, five women, wearing gowns of various bright
hues, sat in chairs along the wall; girls shy and not
shy filled the window-bench; four men, including Charley
Jake the hedge-carpenter, Elijah New the parish-clerk,
and John Pitcher, a neighbouring dairyman, the shepherd’s
father-in-law, lolled in the settle; a young man and
maid, who were blushing over tentative pourparlers
on a life-companionship, sat beneath the corner-cupboard;
and an elderly engaged man of fifty or upward moved
restlessly about from spots where his betrothed was
not to the spot where she was. Enjoyment was
pretty general, and so much the more prevailed in
being unhampered by conventional restrictions.
Absolute confidence in each other’s good opinion
begat perfect ease, while the finishing stroke of manner,
amounting to a truly princely serenity, was lent to
the majority by the absence of any expression or trait
denoting that they wished to get on in the world,
enlarge their minds, or do any eclipsing thing whatever which
nowadays so generally nips the bloom and bonhomie of
all except the two extremes of the social scale.
Shepherd Fennel had married well,
his wife being a dairyman’s daughter from a
vale at a distance, who brought fifty guineas in her
pocket and kept them there, till they should
be required for ministering to the needs of a coming
family. This frugal woman had been somewhat exercised
as to the character that should be given to the gathering.
A sit-still party had its advantages; but an undisturbed
position of ease in chairs and settles was apt to
lead on the men to such an unconscionable deal of
toping that they would sometimes fairly drink the house
dry. A dancing-party was the alternative; but
this, while avoiding the foregoing objection on the
score of good drink, had a counterbalancing disadvantage
in the matter of good victuals, the ravenous appetites
engendered by the exercise causing immense havoc in
the buttery. Shepherdess Fennel fell back upon
the intermediate plan of mingling short dances with
short periods of talk and singing, so as to hinder
any ungovernable rage in either. But this scheme
was entirely confined to her own gentle mind:
the shepherd himself was in the mood to exhibit the
most reckless phases of hospitality.
The fiddler was a boy of those parts,
about twelve years of age, who had a wonderful dexterity
in jigs and reels, though his fingers were so small
and short as to necessitate a constant shifting for
the high notes, from which he scrambled back to the
first position with sounds not of unmixed purity of
tone. At seven the shrill tweedle-dee of this
youngster had begun, accompanied by a booming ground-bass
from Elijah New, the parish-clerk, who had thoughtfully
brought with him his favourite musical instrument,
the serpent. Dancing was instantaneous, Mrs.
Fennel privately enjoining the players on no account
to let the dance exceed the length of a quarter of
an hour.
But Elijah and the boy, in the excitement
of their position, quite forgot the injunction.
Moreover, Oliver Giles, a man of seventeen, one of
the dancers, who was enamoured of his partner, a fair
girl of thirty-three rolling years, had recklessly
handed a new crown-piece to the musicians, as a bribe
to keep going as long as they had muscle and wind.
Mrs. Fennel, seeing the steam begin to generate on
the countenances of her guests, crossed over and touched
the fiddler’s elbow and put her hand on the
serpent’s mouth. But they took no notice,
and fearing she might lose her character of genial
hostess if she were to interfere too markedly, she
retired and sat down helpless. And so the dance
whizzed on with cumulative fury, the performers moving
in their planet-like courses, direct and retrograde,
from apogee to perigee, till the hand of the well-kicked
clock at the bottom of the room had travelled over
the circumference of an hour.
While these cheerful events were in
course of enactment within Fennel’s pastoral
dwelling, an incident having considerable bearing on
the party had occurred in the gloomy night without.
Mrs. Fennel’s concern about the growing fierceness
of the dance corresponded in point of time with the
ascent of a human figure to the solitary hill of Higher
Crowstairs from the direction of the distant town.
This personage strode on through the rain without
a pause, following the little-worn path which, further
on in its course, skirted the shepherd’s cottage.
It was nearly the time of full moon,
and on this account, though the sky was lined with
a uniform sheet of dripping cloud, ordinary objects
out of doors were readily visible. The sad wan
light revealed the lonely pedestrian to be a man of
supple frame; his gait suggested that he had somewhat
passed the period of perfect and instinctive agility,
though not so far as to be otherwise than rapid of
motion when occasion required. At a rough guess,
he might have been about forty years of age.
He appeared tall, but a recruiting sergeant, or other
person accustomed to the judging of men’s heights
by the eye, would have discerned that this was chiefly
owing to his gauntness, and that he was not more than
five-feet-eight or nine.
Notwithstanding the regularity of
his tread, there was caution in it, as in that of
one who mentally feels his way; and despite the fact
that it was not a black coat nor a dark garment of
any sort that he wore, there was something about him
which suggested that he naturally belonged to the
black-coated tribes of men. His clothes were
of fustian, and his boots hobnailed, yet in his progress
he showed not the mud-accustomed bearing of hobnailed
and fustianed peasantry.
By the time that he had arrived abreast
of the shepherd’s premises the rain came down,
or rather came along, with yet more determined violence.
The outskirts of the little settlement partially broke
the force of wind and rain, and this induced him to
stand still. The most salient of the shepherd’s
domestic erections was an empty sty at the forward
corner of his hedgeless garden, for in these latitudes
the principle of masking the homelier features of
your establishment by a conventional frontage was
unknown. The traveller’s eye was attracted
to this small building by the pallid shine of the
wet slates that covered it. He turned aside,
and, finding it empty, stood under the pent-roof for
shelter.
While he stood, the boom of the serpent
within the adjacent house, and the lesser strains
of the fiddler, reached the spot as an accompaniment
to the surging hiss of the flying rain on the sod,
its louder beating on the cabbage-leaves of the garden,
on the eight or ten beehives just discernible by the
path, and its dripping from the eaves into a row of
buckets and pans that had been placed under the walls
of the cottage. For at Higher Crowstairs, as
at all such elevated domiciles, the grand difficulty
of housekeeping was an insufficiency of water; and
a casual rainfall was utilized by turning out, as
catchers, every utensil that the house contained.
Some queer stories might be told of the contrivances
for economy in suds and dish-waters that are absolutely
necessitated in upland habitations during the droughts
of summer. But at this season there were no
such exigencies; a mere acceptance of what the skies
bestowed was sufficient for an abundant store.
At last the notes of the serpent ceased
and the house was silent. This cessation of
activity aroused the solitary pedestrian from the reverie
into which he had lapsed, and, emerging from the shed,
with an apparently new intention, he walked up the
path to the house-door. Arrived here, his first
act was to kneel down on a large stone beside the row
of vessels, and to drink a copious draught from one
of them. Having quenched his thirst he rose
and lifted his hand to knock, but paused with his
eye upon the panel. Since the dark surface of
the wood revealed absolutely nothing, it was evident
that he must be mentally looking through the door,
as if he wished to measure thereby all the possibilities
that a house of this sort might include, and how they
might bear upon the question of his entry.
In his indecision he turned and surveyed
the scene around. Not a soul was anywhere visible.
The garden-path stretched downward from his feet,
gleaming like the track of a snail; the roof of the
little well (mostly dry), the well-cover, the top
rail of the garden-gate, were varnished with the same
dull liquid glaze; while, far away in the vale, a faint
whiteness of more than usual extent showed that the
rivers were high in the meads. Beyond all this
winked a few bleared lamplights through the beating
drops lights that denoted the situation
of the county-town from which he had appeared to come.
The absence of all notes of life in that direction
seemed to clinch his intentions, and he knocked at
the door.
Within, a desultory chat had taken
the place of movement and musical sound. The
hedge-carpenter was suggesting a song to the company,
which nobody just then was inclined to undertake,
so that the knock afforded a not unwelcome diversion.
‘Walk in!’ said the shepherd promptly.
The latch clicked upward, and out
of the night our pedestrian appeared upon the door-mat.
The shepherd arose, snuffed two of the nearest candles,
and turned to look at him.
Their light disclosed that the stranger
was dark in complexion and not unprepossessing as
to feature. His hat, which for a moment he did
not remove, hung low over his eyes, without concealing
that they were large, open, and determined, moving
with a flash rather than a glance round the room.
He seemed pleased with his survey, and, baring his
shaggy head, said, in a rich deep voice, ’The
rain is so heavy, friends, that I ask leave to come
in and rest awhile.’
‘To be sure, stranger,’
said the shepherd. ’And faith, you’ve
been lucky in choosing your time, for we are having
a bit of a fling for a glad cause though,
to be sure, a man could hardly wish that glad cause
to happen more than once a year.’
‘Nor less,’ spoke up a
woman. ’For ’tis best to get your
family over and done with, as soon as you can, so
as to be all the earlier out of the fag o’t.’
‘And what may be this glad cause?’ asked
the stranger.
‘A birth and christening,’ said the shepherd.
The stranger hoped his host might
not be made unhappy either by too many or too few
of such episodes, and being invited by a gesture to
a pull at the mug, he readily acquiesced. His
manner, which, before entering, had been so dubious,
was now altogether that of a careless and candid man.
‘Late to be traipsing athwart
this coomb hey?’ said the engaged
man of fifty.
’Late it is, master, as you
say. I’ll take a seat in the chimney-corner,
if you have nothing to urge against it, ma’am;
for I am a little moist on the side that was next
the rain.’
Mrs. Shepherd Fennel assented, and
made room for the self-invited comer, who, having
got completely inside the chimney-corner, stretched
out his legs and his arms with the expansiveness of
a person quite at home.
‘Yes, I am rather cracked in
the vamp,’ he said freely, seeing that the eyes
of the shepherd’s wife fell upon his boots, ’and
I am not well fitted either. I have had some
rough times lately, and have been forced to pick up
what I can get in the way of wearing, but I must find
a suit better fit for working-days when I reach home.’
‘One of hereabouts?’ she inquired.
‘Not quite that further up the country.’
’I thought so. And so
be I; and by your tongue you come from my neighbourhood.’
‘But you would hardly have heard
of me,’ he said quickly. ’My time
would be long before yours, ma’am, you see.’
This testimony to the youthfulness
of his hostess had the effect of stopping her cross-examination.
‘There is only one thing more
wanted to make me happy,’ continued the new-comer.
’And that is a little baccy, which I am sorry
to say I am out of.’
‘I’ll fill your pipe,’ said the
shepherd.
‘I must ask you to lend me a pipe likewise.’
’A smoker, and no pipe about ‘ee?’
‘I have dropped it somewhere on the road.’
The shepherd filled and handed him
a new clay pipe, saying, as he did so, ‘Hand
me your baccy-box I’ll fill that too,
now I am about it.’
The man went through the movement of searching his
pockets.
‘Lost that too?’ said his entertainer,
with some surprise.
‘I am afraid so,’ said
the man with some confusion. ’Give it to
me in a screw of paper.’ Lighting his
pipe at the candle with a suction that drew the whole
flame into the bowl, he resettled himself in the corner
and bent his looks upon the faint steam from his damp
legs, as if he wished to say no more.
Meanwhile the general body of guests
had been taking little notice of this visitor by reason
of an absorbing discussion in which they were engaged
with the band about a tune for the next dance.
The matter being settled, they were about to stand
up when an interruption came in the shape of another
knock at the door.
At sound of the same the man in the
chimney-corner took up the poker and began stirring
the brands as if doing it thoroughly were the one aim
of his existence; and a second time the shepherd said,
‘Walk in!’ In a moment another man stood
upon the straw-woven door-mat. He too was a
stranger.
This individual was one of a type
radically different from the first. There was
more of the commonplace in his manner, and a certain
jovial cosmopolitanism sat upon his features.
He was several years older than the first arrival,
his hair being slightly frosted, his eyebrows bristly,
and his whiskers cut back from his cheeks. His
face was rather full and flabby, and yet it was not
altogether a face without power. A few grog-blossoms
marked the neighbourhood of his nose. He flung
back his long drab greatcoat, revealing that beneath
it he wore a suit of cinder-gray shade throughout,
large heavy seals, of some metal or other that would
take a polish, dangling from his fob as his only personal
ornament. Shaking the water-drops from his low-crowned
glazed hat, he said, ’I must ask for a few minutes’
shelter, comrades, or I shall be wetted to my skin
before I get to Casterbridge.’
‘Make yourself at home, master,’
said the shepherd, perhaps a trifle less heartily
than on the first occasion. Not that Fennel had
the least tinge of niggardliness in his composition;
but the room was far from large, spare chairs were
not numerous, and damp companions were not altogether
desirable at close quarters for the women and girls
in their bright-coloured gowns.
However, the second comer, after taking
off his greatcoat, and hanging his hat on a nail in
one of the ceiling-beams as if he had been specially
invited to put it there, advanced and sat down at the
table. This had been pushed so closely into
the chimney-corner, to give all available room to
the dancers, that its inner edge grazed the elbow of
the man who had ensconced himself by the fire; and
thus the two strangers were brought into close companionship.
They nodded to each other by way of breaking the
ice of unacquaintance, and the first stranger handed
his neighbour the family mug a huge vessel
of brown ware, having its upper edge worn away like
a threshold by the rub of whole generations of thirsty
lips that had gone the way of all flesh, and bearing
the following inscription burnt upon its rotund side
in yellow letters
THERE IS NO FUN
UNTiLL i CUM.
The other man, nothing loth, raised
the mug to his lips, and drank on, and on, and on till
a curious blueness overspread the countenance of the
shepherd’s wife, who had regarded with no little
surprise the first stranger’s free offer to
the second of what did not belong to him to dispense.
‘I knew it!’ said the
toper to the shepherd with much satisfaction.
’When I walked up your garden before coming
in, and saw the hives all of a row, I said to myself;
“Where there’s bees there’s honey,
and where there’s honey there’s mead.”
But mead of such a truly comfortable sort as this
I really didn’t expect to meet in my older days.’
He took yet another pull at the mug, till it assumed
an ominous elevation.
‘Glad you enjoy it!’ said the shepherd
warmly.
‘It is goodish mead,’
assented Mrs. Fennel, with an absence of enthusiasm
which seemed to say that it was possible to buy praise
for one’s cellar at too heavy a price.
’It is trouble enough to make and
really I hardly think we shall make any more.
For honey sells well, and we ourselves can make shift
with a drop o’ small mead and metheglin for common
use from the comb-washings.’
‘O, but you’ll never have
the heart!’ reproachfully cried the stranger
in cinder-gray, after taking up the mug a third time
and setting it down empty. ’I love mead,
when ’tis old like this, as I love to go to church
o’ Sundays, or to relieve the needy any day of
the week.’
‘Ha, ha, ha!’ said the
man in the chimney-corner, who, in spite of the taciturnity
induced by the pipe of tobacco, could not or would
not refrain from this slight testimony to his comrade’s
humour.
Now the old mead of those days, brewed
of the purest first-year or maiden honey, four pounds
to the gallon with its due complement of
white of eggs, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, rosemary,
yeast, and processes of working, bottling, and cellaring tasted
remarkably strong; but it did not taste so strong
as it actually was. Hence, presently, the stranger
in cinder-gray at the table, moved by its creeping
influence, unbuttoned his waistcoat, threw himself
back in his chair, spread his legs, and made his presence
felt in various ways.
‘Well, well, as I say,’
he resumed, ’I am going to Casterbridge, and
to Casterbridge I must go. I should have been
almost there by this time; but the rain drove me into
your dwelling, and I’m not sorry for it.’
‘You don’t live in Casterbridge?’
said the shepherd.
‘Not as yet; though I shortly mean to move there.’
‘Going to set up in trade, perhaps?’
‘No, no,’ said the shepherd’s
wife. ’It is easy to see that the gentleman
is rich, and don’t want to work at anything.’
The cinder-gray stranger paused, as
if to consider whether he would accept that definition
of himself. He presently rejected it by answering,
’Rich is not quite the word for me, dame.
I do work, and I must work. And even if I only
get to Casterbridge by midnight I must begin work
there at eight to-morrow morning. Yes, het or
wet, blow or snow, famine or sword, my day’s
work to-morrow must be done.’
‘Poor man! Then, in spite
o’ seeming, you be worse off than we?’
replied the shepherd’s wife.
’’Tis the nature of my
trade, men and maidens. ’Tis the nature
of my trade more than my poverty . . . But really
and truly I must up and off, or I shan’t get
a lodging in the town.’ However, the speaker
did not move, and directly added, ’There’s
time for one more draught of friendship before I go;
and I’d perform it at once if the mug were not
dry.’
‘Here’s a mug o’
small,’ said Mrs. Fennel. ’Small,
we call it, though to be sure ‘tis only the
first wash o’ the combs.’
‘No,’ said the stranger
disdainfully. ’I won’t spoil your
first kindness by partaking o’ your second.’
‘Certainly not,’ broke
in Fennel. ’We don’t increase and
multiply every day, and I’ll fill the mug again.’
He went away to the dark place under the stairs where
the barrel stood. The shepherdess followed him.
‘Why should you do this?’
she said reproachfully, as soon as they were alone.
’He’s emptied it once, though it held
enough for ten people; and now he’s not contented
wi’ the small, but must needs call for more o’
the strong! And a stranger unbeknown to any
of us. For my part, I don’t like the look
o’ the man at all.’
’But he’s in the house,
my honey; and ’tis a wet night, and a christening.
Daze it, what’s a cup of mead more or less?
There’ll be plenty more next bee-burning.’
‘Very well this time,
then,’ she answered, looking wistfully at the
barrel. ’But what is the man’s calling,
and where is he one of; that he should come in and
join us like this?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll ask him
again.’
The catastrophe of having the mug
drained dry at one pull by the stranger in cinder-gray
was effectually guarded against this time by Mrs. Fennel.
She poured out his allowance in a small cup, keeping
the large one at a discreet distance from him.
When he had tossed off his portion the shepherd renewed
his inquiry about the stranger’s occupation.
The latter did not immediately reply,
and the man in the chimney-corner, with sudden demonstrativeness,
said, ’Anybody may know my trade I’m
a wheelwright.’
‘A very good trade for these parts,’ said
the shepherd.
‘And anybody may know mine if
they’ve the sense to find it out,’ said
the stranger in cinder-gray.
‘You may generally tell what
a man is by his claws,’ observed the hedge-carpenter,
looking at his own hands. ’My fingers be
as full of thorns as an old pin-cushion is of pins.’
The hands of the man in the chimney-corner
instinctively sought the shade, and he gazed into
the fire as he resumed his pipe. The man at the
table took up the hedge-carpenter’s remark, and
added smartly, ’True; but the oddity of my trade
is that, instead of setting a mark upon me, it sets
a mark upon my customers.’
No observation being offered by anybody
in elucidation of this enigma, the shepherd’s
wife once more called for a song. The same obstacles
presented themselves as at the former time one
had no voice, another had forgotten the first verse.
The stranger at the table, whose soul had now risen
to a good working temperature, relieved the difficulty
by exclaiming that, to start the company, he would
sing himself. Thrusting one thumb into the arm-hole
of his waistcoat, he waved the other hand in the air,
and, with an extemporizing gaze at the shining sheep-crooks
above the mantelpiece, began:-
’O my trade it is the rarest
one,
Simple shepherds all
My trade is a sight to see;
For my customers I tie, and take them up on high,
And waft ’em to a far countree!’
The room was silent when he had finished the verse with one
exception, that of the man in the chimney-corner, who, at the singers word,
Chorus! joined him in a deep bass voice of musical relish
’And waft ’em to a far
countree!’
Oliver Giles, John Pitcher the dairyman,
the parish-clerk, the engaged man of fifty, the row
of young women against the wall, seemed lost in thought
not of the gayest kind. The shepherd looked meditatively
on the ground, the shepherdess gazed keenly at the
singer, and with some suspicion; she was doubting
whether this stranger were merely singing an old song
from recollection, or was composing one there and then
for the occasion. All were as perplexed at the
obscure revelation as the guests at Belshazzar’s
Feast, except the man in the chimney-corner, who quietly
said, ‘Second verse, stranger,’ and smoked
on.
The singer thoroughly moistened himself
from his lips inwards, and went on with the next stanza
as requested:-
’My tools are but common
ones,
Simple shepherds all
My tools are no sight to see:
A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing,
Are implements enough for me!’
Shepherd Fennel glanced round.
There was no longer any doubt that the stranger was
answering his question rhythmically. The guests
one and all started back with suppressed exclamations.
The young woman engaged to the man of fifty fainted
half-way, and would have proceeded, but finding him
wanting in alacrity for catching her she sat down trembling.
‘O, he’s the!’
whispered the people in the background, mentioning
the name of an ominous public officer. ’He’s
come to do it! ’Tis to be at Casterbridge
jail to-morrow the man for sheep-stealing the
poor clock-maker we heard of; who used to live away
at Shottsford and had no work to do Timothy
Summers, whose family were a-starving, and so he went
out of Shottsford by the high-road, and took a sheep
in open daylight, defying the farmer and the farmer’s
wife and the farmer’s lad, and every man jack
among ’em. He’ (and they nodded towards
the stranger of the deadly trade) ’is come from
up the country to do it because there’s not enough
to do in his own county-town, and he’s got the
place here now our own county man’s dead; he’s
going to live in the same cottage under the prison
wall.’
The stranger in cinder-gray took no
notice of this whispered string of observations, but
again wetted his lips. Seeing that his friend
in the chimney-corner was the only one who reciprocated
his joviality in any way, he held out his cup towards
that appreciative comrade, who also held out his own.
They clinked together, the eyes of the rest of the
room hanging upon the singer’s actions.
He parted his lips for the third verse; but at that
moment another knock was audible upon the door.
This time the knock was faint and hesitating.
The company seemed scared; the shepherd
looked with consternation towards the entrance, and
it was with some effort that he resisted his alarmed
wife’s deprecatory glance, and uttered for the
third time the welcoming words, ‘Walk in!’
The door was gently opened, and another
man stood upon the mat. He, like those who had
preceded him, was a stranger. This time it was
a short, small personage, of fair complexion, and
dressed in a decent suit of dark clothes.
‘Can you tell me the way to?’
he began: when, gazing round the room to observe
the nature of the company amongst whom he had fallen,
his eyes lighted on the stranger in cinder-gray.
It was just at the instant when the latter, who had
thrown his mind into his song with such a will that
he scarcely heeded the interruption, silenced all whispers
and inquiries by bursting into his third verse:-
’To-morrow is my working
day,
Simple shepherds all
To-morrow is a working day for me:
For the farmer’s sheep is slain, and the
lad who did it ta’en,
And on his soul may God ha’ merc-y!’
The stranger in the chimney-corner,
waving cups with the singer so heartily that his mead
splashed over on the hearth, repeated in his bass
voice as before:-
‘And on his soul may God ha’
merc-y!’
All this time the third stranger had
been standing in the doorway. Finding now that
he did not come forward or go on speaking, the guests
particularly regarded him. They noticed to their
surprise that he stood before them the picture of
abject terror his knees trembling, his hand
shaking so violently that the door-latch by which he
supported himself rattled audibly: his white
lips were parted, and his eyes fixed on the merry
officer of justice in the middle of the room.
A moment more and he had turned, closed the door,
and fled.
‘What a man can it be?’ said the shepherd.
The rest, between the awfulness of their late discovery and
the odd conduct of this third visitor, looked as if they knew not what to think,
and said nothing. Instinctively they withdrew further and further from the grim
gentleman in their midst, whom some of them seemed to take for the Prince of
Darkness himself; till they formed a remote circle, an empty space of floor
being left between them and him
’ . . . circulus, cujus
centrum diabolus.’
The room was so silent though
there were more than twenty people in it that
nothing could be heard but the patter of the rain against
the window-shutters, accompanied by the occasional
hiss of a stray drop that fell down the chimney into
the fire, and the steady puffing of the man in the
corner, who had now resumed his pipe of long clay.
The stillness was unexpectedly broken.
The distant sound of a gun reverberated through the
air apparently from the direction of the
county-town.
‘Be jiggered!’ cried the
stranger who had sung the song, jumping up.
‘What does that mean?’ asked several.
‘A prisoner escaped from the jail that’s
what it means.’
All listened. The sound was
repeated, and none of them spoke but the man in the
chimney-corner, who said quietly, ’I’ve
often been told that in this county they fire a gun
at such times; but I never heard it till now.’
‘I wonder if it is my man?’ murmured the
personage in cinder-gray.
‘Surely it is!’ said the
shepherd involuntarily. ’And surely we’ve
zeed him! That little man who looked in at the
door by now, and quivered like a leaf when he zeed
ye and heard your song!’
‘His teeth chattered, and the
breath went out of his body,’ said the dairyman.
‘And his heart seemed to sink
within him like a stone,’ said Oliver Giles.
‘And he bolted as if he’d
been shot at,’ said the hedge-carpenter.
’True his teeth chattered,
and his heart seemed to sink; and he bolted as if
he’d been shot at,’ slowly summed up the
man in the chimney-corner.
‘I didn’t notice it,’ remarked the
hangman.
‘We were all a-wondering what
made him run off in such a fright,’ faltered
one of the women against the wall, ’and now ‘tis
explained!’
The firing of the alarm-gun went on
at intervals, low and sullenly, and their suspicions
became a certainty. The sinister gentleman in
cinder-gray roused himself. ‘Is there
a constable here?’ he asked, in thick tones.
‘If so, let him step forward.’
The engaged man of fifty stepped quavering
out from the wall, his betrothed beginning to sob
on the back of the chair.
‘You are a sworn constable?’
‘I be, sir.’
’Then pursue the criminal at
once, with assistance, and bring him back here.
He can’t have gone far.’
’I will, sir, I will when
I’ve got my staff. I’ll go home and
get it, and come sharp here, and start in a body.’
‘Staff! never mind your staff; the
man’ll be gone!’
’But I can’t do nothing
without my staff can I, William, and John,
and Charles Jake? No; for there’s the
king’s royal crown a painted on en in yaller
and gold, and the lion and the unicorn, so as when
I raise en up and hit my prisoner, ’tis made
a lawful blow thereby. I wouldn’t ’tempt
to take up a man without my staff no, not
I. If I hadn’t the law to gie me courage, why,
instead o’ my taking up him he might take up
me!’
’Now, I’m a king’s
man myself; and can give you authority enough for
this,’ said the formidable officer in gray.
’Now then, all of ye, be ready. Have
ye any lanterns?’
‘Yes have ye any
lanterns? I demand it!’ said the constable.
‘And the rest of you able-bodied ’
‘Able-bodied men yes the
rest of ye!’ said the constable.
‘Have you some good stout staves and pitch-forks ’
‘Staves and pitchforks in
the name o’ the law! And take ’em
in yer hands and go in quest, and do as we in authority
tell ye!’
Thus aroused, the men prepared to
give chase. The evidence was, indeed, though
circumstantial, so convincing, that but little argument
was needed to show the shepherd’s guests that
after what they had seen it would look very much like
connivance if they did not instantly pursue the unhappy
third stranger, who could not as yet have gone more
than a few hundred yards over such uneven country.
A shepherd is always well provided
with lanterns; and, lighting these hastily, and with
hurdle-staves in their hands, they poured out of the
door, taking a direction along the crest of the hill,
away from the town, the rain having fortunately a
little abated.
Disturbed by the noise, or possibly
by unpleasant dreams of her baptism, the child who
had been christened began to cry heart-brokenly in
the room overhead. These notes of grief came
down through the chinks of the floor to the ears of
the women below, who jumped up one by one, and seemed
glad of the excuse to ascend and comfort the baby,
for the incidents of the last half-hour greatly oppressed
them. Thus in the space of two or three minutes
the room on the ground-floor was deserted quite.
But it was not for long. Hardly
had the sound of footsteps died away when a man returned
round the corner of the house from the direction the
pursuers had taken. Peeping in at the door, and
seeing nobody there, he entered leisurely. It
was the stranger of the chimney-corner, who had gone
out with the rest. The motive of his return was
shown by his helping himself to a cut piece of skimmer-cake
that lay on a ledge beside where he had sat, and which
he had apparently forgotten to take with him.
He also poured out half a cup more mead from the quantity
that remained, ravenously eating and drinking these
as he stood. He had not finished when another
figure came in just as quietly his friend
in cinder-gray.
‘O you here?’
said the latter, smiling. ’I thought you
had gone to help in the capture.’ And
this speaker also revealed the object of his return
by looking solicitously round for the fascinating mug
of old mead.
‘And I thought you had gone,’
said the other, continuing his skimmer-cake with some
effort.
‘Well, on second thoughts, I
felt there were enough without me,’ said the
first confidentially, ’and such a night as it
is, too. Besides, ’tis the business o’
the Government to take care of its criminals not
mine.’
’True; so it is. And I
felt as you did, that there were enough without me.’
’I don’t want to break
my limbs running over the humps and hollows of this
wild country.’
‘Nor I neither, between you and me.’
’These shepherd-people are used
to it simple-minded souls, you know, stirred
up to anything in a moment. They’ll have
him ready for me before the morning, and no trouble
to me at all.’
’They’ll have him, and
we shall have saved ourselves all labour in the matter.’
’True, true. Well, my
way is to Casterbridge; and ’tis as much as my
legs will do to take me that far. Going the same
way?’
‘No, I am sorry to say!
I have to get home over there’ (he nodded indefinitely
to the right), ’and I feel as you do, that it
is quite enough for my legs to do before bedtime.’
The other had by this time finished
the mead in the mug, after which, shaking hands heartily
at the door, and wishing each other well, they went
their several ways.
In the meantime the company of pursuers
had reached the end of the hog’s-back elevation
which dominated this part of the down. They had
decided on no particular plan of action; and, finding
that the man of the baleful trade was no longer in
their company, they seemed quite unable to form any
such plan now. They descended in all directions
down the hill, and straightway several of the party
fell into the snare set by Nature for all misguided
midnight ramblers over this part of the cretaceous
formation. The ‘lanchets,’ or flint
slopes, which belted the escarpment at intervals of
a dozen yards, took the less cautious ones unawares,
and losing their footing on the rubbly steep they
slid sharply downwards, the lanterns rolling from
their hands to the bottom, and there lying on their
sides till the horn was scorched through.
When they had again gathered themselves
together, the shepherd, as the man who knew the country
best, took the lead, and guided them round these treacherous
inclines. The lanterns, which seemed rather to
dazzle their eyes and warn the fugitive than to assist
them in the exploration, were extinguished, due silence
was observed; and in this more rational order they
plunged into the vale. It was a grassy, briery,
moist defile, affording some shelter to any person
who had sought it; but the party perambulated it in
vain, and ascended on the other side. Here they
wandered apart, and after an interval closed together
again to report progress.
At the second time of closing in they
found themselves near a lonely ash, the single tree
on this part of the coomb, probably sown there by a
passing bird some fifty years before. And here,
standing a little to one side of the trunk, as motionless
as the trunk itself; appeared the man they were in
quest of; his outline being well defined against the
sky beyond. The band noiselessly drew up and
faced him.
‘Your money or your life!’
said the constable sternly to the still figure.
‘No, no,’ whispered John
Pitcher. ’’Tisn’t our side ought
to say that. That’s the doctrine of vagabonds
like him, and we be on the side of the law.’
‘Well, well,’ replied
the constable impatiently; ’I must say something,
mustn’t I? and if you had all the weight o’
this undertaking upon your mind, perhaps you’d
say the wrong thing too! Prisoner at the
bar, surrender, in the name of the Father the
Crown, I mane!’
The man under the tree seemed now
to notice them for the first time, and, giving them
no opportunity whatever for exhibiting their courage,
he strolled slowly towards them. He was, indeed,
the little man, the third stranger; but his trepidation
had in a great measure gone.
‘Well, travellers,’ he said, ‘did
I hear ye speak to me?’
‘You did: you’ve
got to come and be our prisoner at once!’ said
the constable. ’We arrest ’ee on
the charge of not biding in Casterbridge jail in a
decent proper manner to be hung to-morrow morning.
Neighbours, do your duty, and seize the culpet!’
On hearing the charge, the man seemed
enlightened, and, saying not another word, resigned
himself with preternatural civility to the search-party,
who, with their staves in their hands, surrounded him
on all sides, and marched him back towards the shepherd’s
cottage.
It was eleven o’clock by the
time they arrived. The light shining from the
open door, a sound of men’s voices within, proclaimed
to them as they approached the house that some new
events had arisen in their absence. On entering
they discovered the shepherd’s living room to
be invaded by two officers from Casterbridge jail,
and a well-known magistrate who lived at the nearest
country-seat, intelligence of the escape having become
generally circulated.
‘Gentlemen,’ said the
constable, ’I have brought back your man not
without risk and danger; but every one must do his
duty! He is inside this circle of able-bodied
persons, who have lent me useful aid, considering
their ignorance of Crown work. Men, bring forward
your prisoner!’ And the third stranger was
led to the light.
‘Who is this?’ said one of the officials.
‘The man,’ said the constable.
‘Certainly not,’ said
the turnkey; and the first corroborated his statement.
‘But how can it be otherwise?’
asked the constable. ’Or why was he so
terrified at sight o’ the singing instrument
of the law who sat there?’ Here he related the
strange behaviour of the third stranger on entering
the house during the hangman’s song.
‘Can’t understand it,’
said the officer coolly. ’All I know is
that it is not the condemned man. He’s
quite a different character from this one; a gauntish
fellow, with dark hair and eyes, rather good-looking,
and with a musical bass voice that if you heard it
once you’d never mistake as long as you lived.’
‘Why, souls ’twas the man in
the chimney-corner!’
‘Hey what?’
said the magistrate, coming forward after inquiring
particulars from the shepherd in the background.
’Haven’t you got the man after all?’
‘Well, sir,’ said the
constable, ’he’s the man we were in search
of, that’s true; and yet he’s not the
man we were in search of. For the man we were
in search of was not the man we wanted, sir, if you
understand my everyday way; for ‘twas the man
in the chimney-corner!’
‘A pretty kettle of fish altogether!’
said the magistrate. ’You had better start
for the other man at once.’
The prisoner now spoke for the first
time. The mention of the man in the chimney-corner
seemed to have moved him as nothing else could do.
‘Sir,’ he said, stepping forward to the
magistrate, ’take no more trouble about me.
The time is come when I may as well speak. I
have done nothing; my crime is that the condemned
man is my brother. Early this afternoon I left
home at Shottsford to tramp it all the way to Casterbridge
jail to bid him farewell. I was benighted, and
called here to rest and ask the way. When I
opened the door I saw before me the very man, my brother,
that I thought to see in the condemned cell at Casterbridge.
He was in this chimney-corner; and jammed close to
him, so that he could not have got out if he had tried,
was the executioner who’d come to take his life,
singing a song about it and not knowing that it was
his victim who was close by, joining in to save appearances.
My brother looked a glance of agony at me, and I
knew he meant, “Don’t reveal what you see;
my life depends on it.” I was so terror-struck
that I could hardly stand, and, not knowing what I
did, I turned and hurried away.’
The narrator’s manner and tone
had the stamp of truth, and his story made a great
impression on all around. ’And do you know
where your brother is at the present time?’
asked the magistrate.
‘I do not. I have never
seen him since I closed this door.’
‘I can testify to that, for
we’ve been between ye ever since,’ said
the constable.
‘Where does he think to fly to? what
is his occupation?’
‘He’s a watch-and-clock-maker, sir.’
’’A said ‘a was a wheelwright a
wicked rogue,’ said the constable.
‘The wheels of clocks and watches
he meant, no doubt,’ said Shepherd Fennel.
‘I thought his hands were palish for’s
trade.’
’Well, it appears to me that
nothing can be gained by retaining this poor man in
custody,’ said the magistrate; ’your business
lies with the other, unquestionably.’
And so the little man was released
off-hand; but he looked nothing the less sad on that
account, it being beyond the power of magistrate or
constable to raze out the written troubles in his brain,
for they concerned another whom he regarded with more
solicitude than himself. When this was done,
and the man had gone his way, the night was found to
be so far advanced that it was deemed useless to renew
the search before the next morning.
Next day, accordingly, the quest for
the clever sheep-stealer became general and keen,
to all appearance at least. But the intended
punishment was cruelly disproportioned to the transgression,
and the sympathy of a great many country-folk in that
district was strongly on the side of the fugitive.
Moreover, his marvellous coolness and daring in hob-and-nobbing
with the hangman, under the unprecedented circumstances
of the shepherd’s party, won their admiration.
So that it may be questioned if all those who ostensibly
made themselves so busy in exploring woods and fields
and lanes were quite so thorough when it came to the
private examination of their own lofts and outhouses.
Stories were afloat of a mysterious figure being
occasionally seen in some old overgrown trackway or
other, remote from turnpike roads; but when a search
was instituted in any of these suspected quarters nobody
was found. Thus the days and weeks passed without
tidings.
In brief; the bass-voiced man of the
chimney-corner was never recaptured. Some said
that he went across the sea, others that he did not,
but buried himself in the depths of a populous city.
At any rate, the gentleman in cinder-gray never did
his morning’s work at Casterbridge, nor met
anywhere at all, for business purposes, the genial
comrade with whom he had passed an hour of relaxation
in the lonely house on the coomb.
The grass has long been green on the
graves of Shepherd Fennel and his frugal wife; the
guests who made up the christening party have mainly
followed their entertainers to the tomb; the baby in
whose honour they all had met is a matron in the sere
and yellow leaf. But the arrival of the three
strangers at the shepherd’s that night, and the
details connected therewith, is a story as well known
as ever in the country about Higher Crowstairs.
March 1883.