you. I am sure she would accept you as a husband at the proper time,
and I think you ought to give her the opportunity. You inquire in an
old note if I am sorry that I showed temper (which it wasn't) that
night when I heard you talking to her. No, Charles, I am not sorry at
all for what I said then. - Yours sincerely, SALLY HALL.'
Thus set in train, the transfer of Darton's heart back to its original
quarters proceeded by mere lapse of time. In the following July, Darton
went to his friend Japheth to ask him at last to fulfil the bridal office
which had been in abeyance since the previous January twelvemonths.
'With all my heart, man o' constancy!' said Dairyman Johns warmly. 'I've
lost most of my genteel fair complexion haymaking this hot weather, 'tis
true, but I'll do your business as well as them that look better. There
be scents and good hair-oil in the world yet, thank God, and they'll take
off the roughest o' my edge. I'll compliment her. "Better late than
never, Sally Hall," I'll say.'
'It is not Sally,' said Darton hurriedly. 'It is young Mrs. Hall.'
Japheth's face, as soon as he really comprehended, became a picture of
reproachful dismay. 'Not Sally?' he said. 'Why not Sally? I can't
believe it! Young Mrs. Hall! Well, well - where's your wisdom?'
Darton shortly explained particulars; but Johns would not be reconciled.
'She was a woman worth having if ever woman was,' he cried. 'And now to
let her go!'
'But I suppose I can marry where I like,' said Darton.
'H'm,' replied the dairyman, lifting his eyebrows expressively. 'This
don't become you, Charles - it really do not. If I had done such a thing
you would have sworn I was a curst no'thern fool to be drawn off the
scent by such a red-herring doll-oll-oll.'
Farmer Darton responded in such sharp terms to this laconic opinion that
the two friends finally parted in a way they had never parted before.
Johns was to be no groomsman to Darton after all. He had flatly
declined. Darton went off sorry, and even unhappy, particularly as
Japheth was about to leave that side of the county, so that the words
which had divided them were not likely to be explained away or softened
down.
A short time after the interview Darton was united to Helena at a simple
matter-of fact wedding; and she and her little girl joined the boy who
had already grown to look on Darton's house as home.
For some months the farmer experienced an unprecedented happiness and
satisfaction. There had been a flaw in his life, and it was as neatly
mended as was humanly possible. But after a season the stream of events
followed less clearly, and there were shades in his reveries. Helena was
a fragile woman, of little staying power, physically or morally, and
since the time that he had originally known her - eight or ten years
before - she had been severely tried. She had loved herself out, in
short, and was now occasionally given to moping. Sometimes she spoke
regretfully of the gentilities of her early life, and instead of
comparing her present state with her condition as the wife of the unlucky
Hall, she mused rather on what it had been before she took the first
fatal step of clandestinely marrying him. She did not care to please
such people as those with whom she was thrown as a thriving farmer's
wife. She allowed the pretty trifles of agricultural domesticity to
glide by her as sorry details, and had it not been for the children
Darton's house would have seemed but little brighter than it had been
before.
This led to occasional unpleasantness, until Darton sometimes declared to
himself that such endeavours as his to rectify early deviations of the
heart by harking back to the old point mostly failed of success. 'Perhaps
Johns was right,' he would say. 'I should have gone on with Sally.
Better go with the tide and make the best of its course than stem it at
the risk of a capsize.' But he kept these unmelodious thoughts to
himself, and was outwardly considerate and kind.
This somewhat barren tract of his life had extended to less than a year
and a half when his ponderings were cut short by the loss of the woman
they concerned. When she was in her grave he thought better of her than
when she had been alive; the farm was a worse place without her than with
her, after all. No woman short of divine could have gone through such an
experience as hers with her first husband without becoming a little
soured. Her stagnant sympathies, her sometimes unreasonable manner, had
covered a heart frank and well meaning, and originally hopeful and warm.
She left him a tiny red infant in white wrappings. To make life as easy
as possible to this touching object became at once his care.
As this child learnt to walk and talk Darton learnt to see feasibility in
a scheme which pleased him. Revolving the experiment which he had
hitherto made upon life, he fancied he had gained wisdom from his
mistakes and caution from his miscarriages.
What the scheme was needs no penetration to discover. Once more he had
opportunity to recast and rectify his ill-wrought situations by returning
to Sally Hall, who still lived quietly on under her mother's roof at
Hintock. Helena had been a woman to lend pathos and refinement to a
home; Sally was the woman to brighten it. She would not, as Helena did,
despise the rural simplicities of a farmer's fireside. Moreover, she had
a pre-eminent qualification for Darton's household; no other woman could
make so desirable a mother to her brother's two children and Darton's one
as Sally - while Darton, now that Helena had gone, was a more promising
husband for Sally than he had ever been when liable to reminders from an
uncured sentimental wound.
Darton was not a man to act rapidly, and the working out of his
reparative designs might have been delayed for some time. But there came
a winter evening precisely like the one which had darkened over that
former ride to Hintock, and he asked himself why he should postpone
longer, when the very landscape called for a repetition of that attempt.
He told his man to saddle the mare, booted and spurred himself with a
younger horseman's nicety, kissed the two youngest children, and rode
off. To make the journey a complete parallel to the first, he would fain
have had his old acquaintance Japheth Johns with him. But Johns, alas!
was missing. His removal to the other side of the county had left
unrepaired the breach which had arisen between him and Darton; and though
Darton had forgiven him a hundred times, as Johns had probably forgiven
Darton, the effort of reunion in present circumstances was one not likely
to be made.
He screwed himself up to as cheerful a pitch as he could without his
former crony, and became content with his own thoughts as he rode,
instead of the words of a companion. The sun went down; the boughs
appeared scratched in like an etching against the sky; old crooked men
with faggots at their backs said 'Good-night, sir,' and Darton replied
'Good-night' right heartily.
By the time he reached the forking roads it was getting as dark as it had
been on the occasion when Johns climbed the directing-post. Darton made
no mistake this time. 'Nor shall I be able to mistake, thank Heaven,
when I arrive,' he murmured. It gave him peculiar satisfaction to think
that the proposed marriage, like his first, was of the nature of setting
in order things long awry, and not a momentary freak of fancy.
Nothing hindered the smoothness of his journey, which seemed not half its
former length. Though dark, it was only between five and six o'clock
when the bulky chimneys of Mrs. Hall's residence appeared in view behind
the sycamore-tree. On second thoughts he retreated and put up at the ale-
house as in former time; and when he had plumed himself before the inn
mirror, called for something to drink, and smoothed out the incipient
wrinkles of care, he walked on to the Knap with a quick step.
CHAPTER V
That evening Sally was making 'pinners' for the milkers, who were now
increased by two, for her mother and herself no longer joined in milking
the cows themselves. But upon the whole there was little change in the
household economy, and not much in its appearance, beyond such minor
particulars as that the crack over the window, which had been a hundred
years coming, was a trifle wider; that the beams were a shade blacker;
that the influence of modernism had supplanted the open chimney corner by
a grate; that Rebekah, who had worn a cap when she had plenty of hair,
had left it off now she had scarce any, because it was reported that caps
were not fashionable; and that Sally's face had naturally assumed a more
womanly and experienced cast.
Mrs. Hall was actually lifting coals with the tongs, as she had used to
do.
'Five years ago this very night, if I am not mistaken - ' she said, laying
on an ember.
'Not this very night - though 'twas one night this week,' said the correct
Sally.
'Well, 'tis near enough. Five years ago Mr. Darton came to marry you,
and my poor boy Phil came home to die.' She sighed. 'Ah, Sally,' she
presently said, 'if you had managed well Mr. Darton would have had you,
Helena or none.'
'Don't be sentimental about that, mother,' begged Sally. 'I didn't care
to manage well in such a case. Though I liked him, I wasn't so anxious.
I would never have married the man in the midst of such a hitch as that
was,' she added with decision; 'and I don't think I would if he were to
ask me now.'
'I am not sure about that, unless you have another in your eye.'
'I wouldn't; and I'll tell you why. I could hardly marry him for love at
this time o' day. And as we've quite enough to live on if we give up the
dairy to-morrow, I should have no need to marry for any meaner reason . .
. I am quite happy enough as I am, and there's an end of it.'
Now it was not long after this dialogue that there came a mild rap at the
door, and in a moment there entered Rebekah, looking as though a ghost
had arrived. The fact was that that accomplished skimmer and churner
(now a resident in the house) had overheard the desultory observations
between mother and daughter, and on opening the door to Mr. Darton
thought the coincidence must have a grisly meaning in it. Mrs. Hall
welcomed the farmer with warm surprise, as did Sally, and for a moment
they rather wanted words.
'Can you push up the chimney-crook for me, Mr Darton? the notches hitch,'
said the matron. He did it, and the homely little act bridged over the
awkward consciousness that he had been a stranger for four years.
Mrs. Hall soon saw what he had come for, and left the principals together
while she went to prepare him a late tea, smiling at Sally's recent hasty
assertions of indifference, when she saw how civil Sally was. When tea
was ready she joined them. She fancied that Darton did not look so
confident as when he had arrived; but Sally was quite light-hearted, and
the meal passed pleasantly.
About seven he took his leave of them. Mrs. Hall went as far as the door
to light him down the slope. On the doorstep he said frankly - 'I came to
ask your daughter to marry me; chose the night and everything, with an
eye to a favourable answer. But she won't.'
'Then she's a very ungrateful girl!' emphatically said Mrs. Hall.
Darton paused to shape his sentence, and asked, 'I - I suppose there's
nobody else more favoured?'
'I can't say that there is, or that there isn't,' answered Mrs. Hall.
'She's private in some things. I'm on your side, however, Mr. Darton,
and I'll talk to her.'
'Thank 'ee, thank 'ee!' said the farmer in a gayer accent; and with this
assurance the not very satisfactory visit came to an end. Darton
descended the roots of the sycamore, the light was withdrawn, and the
door closed. At the bottom of the slope he nearly ran against a man
about to ascend.
'Can a jack-o'-lent believe his few senses on such a dark night, or can't
he?' exclaimed one whose utterance Darton recognized in a moment, despite
its unexpectedness. 'I dare not swear he can, though I fain would!' The
speaker was Johns.
Darton said he was glad of this opportunity, bad as it was, of putting an
end to the silence of years, and asked the dairyman what he was
travelling that way for.
Japheth showed the old jovial confidence in a moment. 'I'm going to see
your - relations - as they always seem to me,' he said - 'Mrs. Hall and
Sally. Well, Charles, the fact is I find the natural barbarousness of
man is much increased by a bachelor life, and, as your leavings were
always good enough for me, I'm trying civilization here.' He nodded
towards the house.
'Not with Sally - to marry her?' said Darton, feeling something like a
rill of ice water between his shoulders.
'Yes, by the help of Providence and my personal charms. And I think I
shall get her. I am this road every week - my present dairy is only four
miles off, you know, and I see her through the window. 'Tis rather odd
that I was going to speak practical to-night to her for the first time.
You've just called?'
'Yes, for a short while. But she didn't say a word about you.'
'A good sign, a good sign. Now that decides me. I'll swing the mallet
and get her answer this very night as I planned.'
A few more remarks, and Darton, wishing his friend joy of Sally in a
slightly hollow tone of jocularity, bade him good-bye. Johns promised to
write particulars, and ascended, and was lost in the shade of the house
and tree. A rectangle of light appeared when Johns was admitted, and all
was dark again.
'Happy Japheth!' said Darton. 'This then is the explanation!'
He determined to return home that night. In a quarter of an hour he
passed out of the village, and the next day went about his swede-lifting
and storing as if nothing had occurred.
He waited and waited to hear from Johns whether the wedding-day was
fixed: but no letter came. He learnt not a single particular till,
meeting Johns one day at a horse-auction, Darton exclaimed
genially - rather more genially than he felt - 'When is the joyful day to
be?'
To his great surprise a reciprocity of gladness was not conspicuous in
Johns. 'Not at all,' he said, in a very subdued tone. ''Tis a bad job;
she won't have me.'
Darton held his breath till he said with treacherous solicitude, 'Try
again - 'tis coyness.'
'O no,' said Johns decisively. 'There's been none of that. We talked it
over dozens of times in the most fair and square way. She tells me
plainly, I don't suit her. 'Twould be simply annoying her to ask her
again. Ah, Charles, you threw a prize away when you let her slip five
years ago.'
'I did - I did,' said Darton.
He returned from that auction with a new set of feelings in play. He had
certainly made a surprising mistake in thinking Johns his successful
rival. It really seemed as if he might hope for Sally after all.
This time, being rather pressed by business, Darton had recourse to pen-
and-ink, and wrote her as manly and straightforward a proposal as any
woman could wish to receive. The reply came promptly:-
'DEAR MR. DARTON, - I am as sensible as any woman can be of the
goodness that leads you to make me this offer a second time. Better
women than I would be proud of the honour, for when I read your nice
long speeches on mangold-wurzel, and such like topics, at the
Casterbridge Farmers' Club, I do feel it an honour, I assure you. But
my answer is just the same as before. I will not try to explain what,
in truth, I cannot explain - my reasons; I will simply say that I must
decline to be married to you. With good wishes as in former times, I
am, your faithful friend,
'SALLY HALL.'
Darton dropped the letter hopelessly. Beyond the negative, there was
just a possibility of sarcasm in it - 'nice long speeches on
mangold-wurzel' had a suspicious sound. However, sarcasm or none, there
was the answer, and he had to be content.
He proceeded to seek relief in a business which at this time engrossed
much of his attention - that of clearing up a curious mistake just current
in the county, that he had been nearly ruined by the recent failure of a
local bank. A farmer named Darton had lost heavily, and the similarity
of name had probably led to the error. Belief in it was so persistent
that it demanded several days of letter-writing to set matters straight,
and persuade the world that he was as solvent as ever he had been in his
life. He had hardly concluded this worrying task when, to his delight,
another letter arrived in the handwriting of Sally.
Darton tore it open; it was very short.
'DEAR MR. DARTON, - We have been so alarmed these last few days by the
report that you were ruined by the stoppage of - 's Bank, that, now it
is contradicted I hasten, by my mother's wish, to say how truly glad
we are to find there is no foundation for the report. After your
kindness to my poor brother's children, I can do no less than write at
such a moment. We had a letter from each of them a few days ago. - Your
faithful friend,
'SALLY HALL.'
'Mercenary little woman!' said Darton to himself with a smile. 'Then
that was the secret of her refusal this time - she thought I was ruined.'
Now, such was Darton, that as hours went on he could not help feeling too
generously towards Sally to condemn her in this. What did he want in a
wife? he asked himself. Love and integrity. What next? Worldly wisdom.
And was there really more than worldly wisdom in her refusal to go aboard
a sinking ship? She now knew it was otherwise. 'Begad,' he said, 'I'll
try her again.'
The fact was he had so set his heart upon Sally, and Sally alone, that
nothing was to be allowed to baulk him; and his reasoning was purely
formal.
Anniversaries having been unpropitious, he waited on till a bright day
late in May - a day when all animate nature was fancying, in its trusting,
foolish way, that it was going to bask out of doors for evermore. As he
rode through Long-Ash Lane it was scarce recognizable as the track of his
two winter journeys. No mistake could be made now, even with his eyes
shut. The cuckoo's note was at its best, between April tentativeness and
midsummer decrepitude, and the reptiles in the sun behaved as winningly
as kittens on a hearth. Though afternoon, and about the same time as on
the last occasion, it was broad day and sunshine when he entered Hintock,
and the details of the Knap dairy-house were visible far up the road. He
saw Sally in the garden, and was set vibrating. He had first intended to
go on to the inn; but 'No,' he said; 'I'll tie my horse to the garden-
gate. If all goes well it can soon be taken round: if not, I mount and
ride away'
The tall shade of the horseman darkened the room in which Mrs. Hall sat,
and made her start, for he had ridden by a side path to the top of the
slope, where riders seldom came. In a few seconds he was in the garden
with Sally.
Five - ay, three minutes - did the business at the back of that row of
bees. Though spring had come, and heavenly blue consecrated the scene,
Darton succeeded not. 'No,' said Sally firmly. 'I will never, never
marry you, Mr. Darton. I would have done it once; but now I never can.'
'But!' - implored Mr. Darton. And with a burst of real eloquence he went
on to declare all sorts of things that he would do for her. He would
drive her to see her mother every week - take her to London - settle so
much money upon her - Heaven knows what he did not promise, suggest, and
tempt her with. But it availed nothing. She interposed with a stout
negative, which closed the course of his argument like an iron gate
across a highway. Darton paused.
'Then,' said he simply, 'you hadn't heard of my supposed failure when you
declined last time?'
'I had not,' she said. 'But if I had 'twould have been all the same.'
'And 'tis not because of any soreness from my slighting you years ago?'
'No. That soreness is long past.'
'Ah - then you despise me, Sally?'
'No,' she slowly answered. 'I don't altogether despise you. I don't
think you quite such a hero as I once did - that's all. The truth is, I
am happy enough as I am; and I don't mean to marry at all. Now, may I
ask a favour, sir?' She spoke with an ineffable charm, which, whenever
he thought of it, made him curse his loss of her as long as he lived.
'To any extent.'
'Please do not put this question to me any more. Friends as long as you
like, but lovers and married never.'
'I never will,' said Darton. 'Not if I live a hundred years.'
And he never did. That he had worn out his welcome in her heart was only
too plain.
When his step-children had grown up, and were placed out in life, all
communication between Darton and the Hall family ceased. It was only by
chance that, years after, he learnt that Sally, notwithstanding the
solicitations her attractions drew down upon her, had refused several
offers of marriage, and steadily adhered to her purpose of leading a
single life
May 1884.
THE DISTRACTED PREACHER
CHAPTER I - HOW HIS COLD WAS CURED
Something delayed the arrival of the Wesleyan minister, and a young man
came temporarily in his stead. It was on the thirteenth of January 183-
that Mr. Stockdale, the young man in question, made his humble entry into
the village, unknown, and almost unseen. But when those of the
inhabitants who styled themselves of his connection became acquainted
with him, they were rather pleased with the substitute than otherwise,
though he had scarcely as yet acquired ballast of character sufficient to
steady the consciences of the hundred-and-forty Methodists of pure blood
who, at this time, lived in Nether-Moynton, and to give in addition
supplementary support to the mixed race which went to church in the
morning and chapel in the evening, or when there was a tea - as many as a
hundred-and-ten people more, all told, and including the parish-clerk in
the winter-time, when it was too dark for the vicar to observe who passed
up the street at seven o'clock - which, to be just to him, he was never
anxious to do.
It was owing to this overlapping of creeds that the celebrated population-
puzzle arose among the denser gentry of the district around
Nether-Moynton: how could it be that a parish containing fifteen score of
strong full-grown Episcopalians, and nearly thirteen score of
well-matured Dissenters, numbered barely two-and-twenty score adults in
all?
The young man being personally interesting, those with whom he came in
contact were content to waive for a while the graver question of his
sufficiency. It is said that at this time of his life his eyes were
affectionate, though without a ray of levity; that his hair was curly,
and his figure tall; that he was, in short, a very lovable youth, who won
upon his female hearers as soon as they saw and heard him, and caused
them to say, 'Why didn't we know of this before he came, that we might
have gied him a warmer welcome!'
The fact was that, knowing him to be only provisionally selected, and
expecting nothing remarkable in his person or doctrine, they and the rest
of his flock in Nether-Moynton had felt almost as indifferent about his
advent as if they had been the soundest church-going parishioners in the
country, and he their true and appointed parson. Thus when Stockdale set
foot in the place nobody had secured a lodging for him, and though his
journey had given him a bad cold in the head, he was forced to attend to
that business himself. On inquiry he learnt that the only possible
accommodation in the village would be found at the house of one Mrs.
Lizzy Newberry, at the upper end of the street.
It was a youth who gave this information, and Stockdale asked him who
Mrs. Newberry might be.
The boy said that she was a widow-woman, who had got no husband, because
he was dead. Mr. Newberry, he added, had been a well-to-do man enough,
as the saying was, and a farmer; but he had gone off in a decline. As
regarded Mrs. Newberry's serious side, Stockdale gathered that she was
one of the trimmers who went to church and chapel both.
'I'll go there,' said Stockdale, feeling that, in the absence of purely
sectarian lodgings, he could do no better.
'She's a little particular, and won't hae gover'ment folks, or curates,
or the pa'son's friends, or such like,' said the lad dubiously.
'Ah, that may be a promising sign: I'll call. Or no; just you go up and
ask first if she can find room for me. I have to see one or two persons
on another matter. You will find me down at the carrier's.'
In a quarter of an hour the lad came back, and said that Mrs. Newberry
would have no objection to accommodate him, whereupon Stockdale called at
the house.
It stood within a garden-hedge, and seemed to be roomy and comfortable.
He saw an elderly woman, with whom he made arrangements to come the same
night, since there was no inn in the place, and he wished to house
himself as soon as possible; the village being a local centre from which
he was to radiate at once to the different small chapels in the
neighbourhood. He forthwith sent his luggage to Mrs. Newberry's from the
carrier's, where he had taken shelter, and in the evening walked up to
his temporary home.
As he now lived there, Stockdale felt it unnecessary to knock at the
door; and entering quietly he had the pleasure of hearing footsteps
scudding away like mice into the back quarters. He advanced to the
parlour, as the front room was called, though its stone floor was
scarcely disguised by the carpet, which only over-laid the trodden areas,
leaving sandy deserts under the bulging mouldings of the table-legs,
playing with brass furniture. But the room looked snug and cheerful. The
firelight shone out brightly, trembling on the knobs and handles, and
lurking in great strength on the under surface of the chimney-piece. A
deep arm-chair, covered with horsehair, and studded with a countless
throng of brass nails, was pulled up on one side of the fireplace. The
tea-things were on the table, the teapot cover was open, and a little
hand-bell had been laid at that precise point towards which a person
seated in the great chair might be expected instinctively to stretch his
hand.
Stockdale sat down, not objecting to his experience of the room thus far,
and began his residence by tinkling the bell. A little girl crept in at
the summons, and made tea for him. Her name, she said, was Marther
Sarer, and she lived out there, nodding towards the road and village
generally. Before Stockdale had got far with his meal, a tap sounded on
the door behind him, and on his telling the inquirer to come in, a rustle
of garments caused him to turn his head. He saw before him a fine and
extremely well-made young woman, with dark hair, a wide, sensible,
beautiful forehead, eyes that warmed him before he knew it, and a mouth
that was in itself a picture to all appreciative souls.
'Can I get you anything else for tea?' she said, coming forward a step or
two, an expression of liveliness on her features, and her hand waving the
door by its edge.
'Nothing, thank you,' said Stockdale, thinking less of what he replied
than of what might be her relation to the household.
'You are quite sure?' said the young woman, apparently aware that he had
not considered his answer.
He conscientiously examined the tea-things, and found them all there.
'Quite sure, Miss Newberry,' he said.
'It is Mrs. Newberry,' she said. 'Lizzy Newberry, I used to be Lizzy
Simpkins.'
'O, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Newberry.' And before he had occasion to say
more she left the room.
Stockdale remained in some doubt till Martha Sarah came to clear the
table. 'Whose house is this, my little woman,' said he.
'Mrs. Lizzy Newberry's, sir.'
'Then Mrs. Newberry is not the old lady I saw this afternoon?'
'No. That's Mrs. Newberry's mother. It was Mrs. Newberry who comed in
to you just by now, because she wanted to see if you was good-looking.'
Later in the evening, when Stockdale was about to begin supper, she came
again. 'I have come myself, Mr. Stockdale,' she said. The minister
stood up in acknowledgment of the honour. 'I am afraid little Marther
might not make you understand. What will you have for supper? - there's
cold rabbit, and there's a ham uncut.'
Stockdale said he could get on nicely with those viands, and supper was
laid. He had no more than cut a slice when tap-tap came to the door
again. The minister had already learnt that this particular rhythm in
taps denoted the fingers of his enkindling landlady, and the doomed young
fellow buried his first mouthful under a look of receptive blandness.
'We have a chicken in the house, Mr. Stockdale - I quite forgot to mention
it just now. Perhaps you would like Marther Sarer to bring it up?'
Stockdale had advanced far enough in the art of being a young man to say
that he did not want the chicken, unless she brought it up herself; but
when it was uttered he blushed at the daring gallantry of the speech,
perhaps a shade too strong for a serious man and a minister. In three
minutes the chicken appeared, but, to his great surprise, only in the
hands of Martha Sarah. Stockdale was disappointed, which perhaps it was
intended that he should be.
He had finished supper, and was not in the least anticipating Mrs.
Newberry again that night, when she tapped and entered as before.
Stockdale's gratified look told that she had lost nothing by not
appearing when expected. It happened that the cold in the head from
which the young man suffered had increased with the approach of night,
and before she had spoken he was seized with a violent fit of sneezing
which he could not anyhow repress.
Mrs. Newberry looked full of pity. 'Your cold is very bad to-night, Mr.
Stockdale.'
Stockdale replied that it was rather troublesome.
'And I've a good mind' - she added archly, looking at the cheerless glass
of water on the table, which the abstemious minister was going to drink.
'Yes, Mrs. Newberry?'
'I've a good mind that you should have something more likely to cure it
than that cold stuff.'
'Well,' said Stockdale, looking down at the glass, 'as there is no inn
here, and nothing better to be got in the village, of course it will do.'
To this she replied, 'There is something better, not far off, though not
in the house. I really think you must try it, or you may be ill. Yes,
Mr. Stockdale, you shall.' She held up her finger, seeing that he was
about to speak. 'Don't ask what it is; wait, and you shall see.'
Lizzy went away, and Stockdale waited in a pleasant mood. Presently she
returned with her bonnet and cloak on, saying, 'I am so sorry, but you
must help me to get it. Mother has gone to bed. Will you wrap yourself
up, and come this way, and please bring that cup with you?'
Stockdale, a lonely young fellow, who had for weeks felt a great craving
for somebody on whom to throw away superfluous interest, and even
tenderness, was not sorry to join her; and followed his guide through the
back door, across the garden, to the bottom, where the boundary was a
wall. This wall was low, and beyond it Stockdale discerned in the night
shades several grey headstones, and the outlines of the church roof and
tower.
'It is easy to get up this way,' she said, stepping upon a bank which
abutted on the wall; then putting her foot on the top of the stonework,
and descending a spring inside, where the ground was much higher, as is
the manner of graveyards to be. Stockdale did the same, and followed her
in the dusk across the irregular ground till they came to the tower door,
which, when they had entered, she softly closed behind them.
'You can keep a secret?' she said, in a musical voice.
'Like an iron chest!' said he fervently.
Then from under her cloak she produced a small lighted lantern, which the
minister had not noticed that she carried at all. The light showed them
to be close to the singing-gallery stairs, under which lay a heap of
lumber of all sorts, but consisting mostly of decayed framework, pews,
panels, and pieces of flooring, that from time to time had been removed
from their original fixings in the body of the edifice and replaced by
new.
'Perhaps you will drag some of those boards aside?' she said, holding the
lantern over her head to light him better. 'Or will you take the lantern
while I move them?'
'I can manage it,' said the young man, and acting as she ordered, he
uncovered, to his surprise, a row of little barrels bound with wood
hoops, each barrel being about as large as the nave of a heavy waggon-
wheel.
When they were laid open Lizzy fixed her eyes on him, as if she wondered
what he would say.
'You know what they are?' she asked, finding that he did not speak.
'Yes, barrels,' said Stockdale simply. He was an inland man, the son of
highly respectable parents, and brought up with a single eye to the
ministry; and the sight suggested nothing beyond the fact that such
articles were there.
'You are quite right, they are barrels,' she said, in an emphatic tone of
candour that was not without a touch of irony.
Stockdale looked at her with an eye of sudden misgiving. 'Not smugglers'
liquor?' he said.
'Yes,' said she. 'They are tubs of spirit that have accidentally come
over in the dark from France.'
In Nether-Moynton and its vicinity at this date people always smiled at
the sort of sin called in the outside world illicit trading; and these
little kegs of gin and brandy were as well known to the inhabitants as
turnips. So that Stockdale's innocent ignorance, and his look of alarm
when he guessed the sinister mystery, seemed to strike Lizzy first as
ludicrous, and then as very awkward for the good impression that she
wished to produce upon him.
'Smuggling is carried on here by some of the people,' she said in a
gentle, apologetic voice. 'It has been their practice for generations,
and they think it no harm. Now, will you roll out one of the tubs?'
'What to do with it?' said the minister.
'To draw a little from it to cure your cold,' she answered. 'It is so
'nation strong that it drives away that sort of thing in a jiffy. O, it
is all right about our taking it. I may have what I like; the owner of
the tubs says so. I ought to have had some in the house, and then I
shouldn't ha' been put to this trouble; but I drink none myself, and so I
often forget to keep it indoors.'
'You are allowed to help yourself, I suppose, that you may not inform
where their hiding-place is?'
'Well, no; not that particularly; but I may take any if I want it. So
help yourself.'
'I will, to oblige you, since you have a right to it,' murmured the
minister; and though he was not quite satisfied with his part in the
performance, he rolled one of the 'tubs' out from the corner into the
middle of the tower floor. 'How do you wish me to get it out - with a
gimlet, I suppose?'
'No, I'll show you,' said his interesting companion; and she held up with
her other hand a shoemaker's awl and a hammer. 'You must never do these
things with a gimlet, because the wood-dust gets in; and when the buyers
pour out the brandy that would tell them that the tub had been broached.
An awl makes no dust, and the hole nearly closes up again. Now tap one
of the hoops forward.'
Stockdale took the hammer and did so.
'Now make the hole in the part that was covered by the hoop.'
He made the hole as directed. 'It won't run out,' he said.
'O yes it will,' said she. 'Take the tub between your knees, and squeeze
the heads; and I'll hold the cup.'
Stockdale obeyed; and the pressure taking effect upon the tub, which
seemed, to be thin, the spirit spirted out in a stream. When the cup was
full he ceased pressing, and the flow immediately stopped. 'Now we must
fill up the keg with water,' said Lizzy, 'or it will cluck like forty
hens when it is handled, and show that 'tis not full.'
'But they tell you you may take it?'
'Yes, the smugglers: but the buyers must not know that the smugglers have
been kind to me at their expense.'
'I see,' said Stockdale doubtfully. 'I much question the honesty of this
proceeding.'
By her direction he held the tub with the hole upwards, and while he went
through the process of alternately pressing and ceasing to press, she
produced a bottle of water, from which she took mouthfuls, conveying each
to the keg by putting her pretty lips to the hole, where it was sucked in
at each recovery of the cask from pressure. When it was again full he
plugged the hole, knocked the hoop down to its place, and buried the tub
in the lumber as before.
'Aren't the smugglers afraid that you will tell?' he asked, as they
recrossed the churchyard.
'O no; they are not afraid of that. I couldn't do such a thing.'
'They have put you into a very awkward corner,' said Stockdale
emphatically. 'You must, of course, as an honest person, sometimes feel
that it is your duty to inform - really you must.'
'Well, I have never particularly felt it as a duty; and, besides, my
first husband - ' She stopped, and there was some confusion in her voice.
Stockdale was so honest and unsophisticated that he did not at once
discern why she paused: but at last he did perceive that the words were a
slip, and that no woman would have uttered 'first husband' by accident
unless she had thought pretty frequently of a second. He felt for her
confusion, and allowed her time to recover and proceed. 'My husband,'
she said, in a self-corrected tone, 'used to know of their doings, and so
did my father, and kept the secret. I cannot inform, in fact, against
anybody.'
'I see the hardness of it,' he continued, like a man who looked far into
the moral of things. 'And it is very cruel that you should be tossed and
tantalized between your memories and your conscience. I do hope, Mrs.
Newberry, that you will soon see your way out of this unpleasant
position.'
'Well, I don't just now,' she murmured.
By this time they had passed over the wall and entered the house, where
she brought him a glass and hot water, and left him to his own
reflections. He looked after her vanishing form, asking himself whether
he, as a respectable man, and a minister, and a shining light, even
though as yet only of the halfpenny-candle sort, were quite justified in
doing this thing. A sneeze settled the question; and he found that when
the fiery liquor was lowered by the addition of twice or thrice the
quantity of water, it was one of the prettiest cures for a cold in the
head that he had ever known, particularly at this chilly time of the
year.
Stockdale sat in the deep chair about twenty minutes sipping and
meditating, till he at length took warmer views of things, and longed for
the morrow, when he would see Mrs. Newberry again. He then felt that,
though chronologically at a short distance, it would in an emotional
sense be very long before to-morrow came, and walked restlessly round the
room. His eye was attracted by a framed and glazed sampler in which a
running ornament of fir-trees and peacocks surrounded the following
pretty bit of sentiment:-
'Rose-leaves smell when roses thrive,
Here's my work while I'm alive;
Rose-leaves smell when shrunk and shed,