Life's Little Ironies

‘“It may have been done to escape paying,” said the boat-owner. “But they didn’t look like people who would do that.”

‘James Hardcome knew that he could found no hope on such a reason as that. But now, remembering what had been casually discussed between Steve and himself about their wives from time to time, he admitted for the first time the possibility that their old tenderness had been revived by their face-to-face position more strongly than either had anticipated at starting – the excursion having been so obviously undertaken for the pleasure of the performance only, – and that they had landed at some steps he knew of further down toward the pier, to be longer alone together.

‘Still he disliked to harbour the thought, and would not mention its existence to his companion. He merely said to her, “Let us walk further on.”

‘They did so, and lingered between the boat-stage and the pier till Stephen Hardcome’s wife was uneasy, and was obliged to accept James’s offered arm. Thus the night advanced. Emily was presently so worn out by fatigue that James felt it necessary to conduct her home; there was, too, a remote chance that the truants had landed in the harbour on the other side of the town, or elsewhere, and hastened home in some unexpected way, in the belief that their consorts would not have waited so long.

‘However, he left a direction in the town that a lookout should be kept, though this was arranged privately, the bare possibility of an elopement being enough to make him reticent; and, full of misgivings, the two remaining ones hastened to catch the last train out of Budmouth-Regis; and when they got to Casterbridge drove back to Upper Longpuddle.’

‘Along this very road as we do now,’ remarked the parish clerk.

‘To be sure – along this very road,’ said the curate. ‘However, Stephen and Olive were not at their homes; neither had entered the village since leaving it in the morning. Emily and James Hardcome went to their respective dwellings to snatch a hasty night’s rest, and at daylight the next morning they drove again to Casterbridge and entered the Budmouth train, the line being just opened.

‘Nothing had been heard of the couple there during this brief absence. In the course of a few hours some young men testified to having seen such a man and woman rowing in a frail hired craft, the head of the boat kept straight to sea; they had sat looking in each other’s faces as if they were in a dream, with no consciousness of what they were doing, or whither they were steering. It was not till late that day that more tidings reached James’s ears. The boat had been found drifting bottom upward a long way from land. In the evening the sea rose somewhat, and a cry spread through the town that two bodies were cast ashore in Lullstead Bay, several miles to the eastward. They were brought to Budmouth, and inspection revealed them to be the missing pair. It was said that they had been found tightly locked in each other’s arms, his lips upon hers, their features still wrapt in the same calm and dream-like repose which had been observed in their demeanour as they had glided along.

‘Neither James nor Emily questioned the original motives of the unfortunate man and woman in putting to sea. They were both above suspicion as to intention. Whatever their mutual feelings might have led them on to, underhand behaviour was foreign to the nature of either. Conjecture pictured that they might have fallen into tender reverie while gazing each into a pair of eyes that had formerly flashed for him and her alone, and, unwilling to avow what their mutual sentiments were, they had continued thus, oblivious of time and space, till darkness suddenly overtook them far from land. But nothing was truly known. It had been their destiny to die thus. The two halves, intended by Nature to make the perfect whole, had failed in that result during their lives, though “in their death they were not divided.” Their bodies were brought home, and buried on one day. I remember that, on looking round the churchyard while reading the service, I observed nearly all the parish at their funeral.’

‘It was so, sir,’ said the clerk.

‘The remaining two,’ continued the curate (whose voice had grown husky while relating the lovers’ sad fate), ‘were a more thoughtful and far-seeing, though less romantic, couple than the first. They were now mutually bereft of a companion, and found themselves by this accident in a position to fulfil their destiny according to Nature’s plan and their own original and calmly-formed intention. James Hardcome took Emily to wife in the course of a year and a half; and the marriage proved in every respect a happy one. I solemnized the service, Hardcome having told me, when he came to give notice of the proposed wedding, the story of his first wife’s loss almost word for word as I have told it to you.’

‘And are they living in Longpuddle still?’ asked the new-comer.

‘O no, sir,’ interposed the clerk. ‘James has been dead these dozen years, and his mis’ess about six or seven. They had no children. William Privett used to be their odd man till he died.’

‘Ah – William Privett! He dead too? – dear me!’ said the other. ‘All passed away!’

‘Yes, sir. William was much older than I. He’d ha’ been over eighty if he had lived till now.’

‘There was something very strange about William’s death – very strange indeed!’ sighed a melancholy man in the back of the van. It was the seedsman’s father, who had hitherto kept silence.

‘And what might that have been?’ asked Mr. Lackland.

THE SUPERSTITIOUS MAN’S STORY

‘William, as you may know, was a curious, silent man; you could feel when he came near ’ee; and if he was in the house or anywhere behind your back without your seeing him, there seemed to be something clammy in the air, as if a cellar door was opened close by your elbow. Well, one Sunday, at a time that William was in very good health to all appearance, the bell that was ringing for church went very heavy all of a sudden; the sexton, who told me o’t, said he’d not known the bell go so heavy in his hand for years – it was just as if the gudgeons wanted oiling. That was on the Sunday, as I say. During the week after, it chanced that William’s wife was staying up late one night to finish her ironing, she doing the washing for Mr. and Mrs. Hardcome. Her husband had finished his supper and gone to bed as usual some hour or two before. While she ironed she heard him coming down stairs; he stopped to put on his boots at the stair-foot, where he always left them, and then came on into the living-room where she was ironing, passing through it towards the door, this being the only way from the staircase to the outside of the house. No word was said on either side, William not being a man given to much speaking, and his wife being occupied with her work. He went out and closed the door behind him. As her husband had now and then gone out in this way at night before when unwell, or unable to sleep for want of a pipe, she took no particular notice, and continued at her ironing. This she finished shortly after, and as he had not come in she waited awhile for him, putting away the irons and things, and preparing the table for his breakfast in the morning. Still he did not return, but supposing him not far off, and wanting to get to bed herself, tired as she was, she left the door unbarred and went to the stairs, after writing on the back of the door with chalk: Mind and do the door (because he was a forgetful man).

‘To her great surprise, and I might say alarm, on reaching the foot of the stairs his boots were standing there as they always stood when he had gone to rest; going up to their chamber she found him in bed sleeping as sound as a rock. How he could have got back again without her seeing or hearing him was beyond her comprehension. It could only have been by passing behind her very quietly while she was bumping with the iron. But this notion did not satisfy her: it was surely impossible that she should not have seen him come in through a room so small. She could not unravel the mystery, and felt very queer and uncomfortable about it. However, she would not disturb him to question him then, and went to bed herself.

‘He rose and left for his work very early the next morning, before she was awake, and she waited his return to breakfast with much anxiety for an explanation, for thinking over the matter by daylight made it seem only the more startling. When he came in to the meal he said, before she could put her question, “What’s the meaning of them words chalked on the door?”

‘She told him, and asked him about his going out the night before. William declared that he had never left the bedroom after entering it, having in fact undressed, lain down, and fallen asleep directly, never once waking till the clock struck five, and he rose up to go to his labour.

‘Betty Privett was as certain in her own mind that he did go out as she was of her own existence, and was little less certain that he did not return. She felt too disturbed to argue with him, and let the subject drop as though she must have been mistaken. When she was walking down Longpuddle street later in the day she met Jim Weedle’s daughter Nancy, and said, “Well, Nancy, you do look sleepy to-day!”

‘“Yes, Mrs. Privett,” says Nancy. “Now don’t tell anybody, but I don’t mind letting you know what the reason o’t is. Last night, being Old Midsummer Eve, some of us went to church porch, and didn’t get home till near one.”

‘“Did ye?” says Mrs. Privett. “Old Midsummer yesterday was it? Faith I didn’t think whe’r ’twas Midsummer or Michaelmas; I’d too much work to do.”

‘“Yes. And we were frightened enough, I can tell ’ee, by what we saw.”

‘“What did ye see?”

‘(You may not remember, sir, having gone off to foreign parts so young, that on Midsummer Night it is believed hereabout that the faint shapes of all the folk in the parish who are going to be at death’s door within the year can be seen entering the church. Those who get over their illness come out again after a while; those that are doomed to die do not return.)

‘“What did you see?” asked William’s wife.

‘“Well,” says Nancy, backwardly – “we needn’t tell what we saw, or who we saw.”

‘“You saw my husband,” says Betty Privett, in a quiet way.

‘“Well, since you put it so,” says Nancy, hanging fire, “we – thought we did see him; but it was darkish, and we was frightened, and of course it might not have been he.”

‘“Nancy, you needn’t mind letting it out, though ’tis kept back in kindness. And he didn’t come out of church again: I know it as well as you.”

‘Nancy did not answer yes or no to that, and no more was said. But three days after, William Privett was mowing with John Chiles in Mr. Hardcome’s meadow, and in the heat of the day they sat down to eat their bit o’ nunch under a tree, and empty their flagon. Afterwards both of ’em fell asleep as they sat. John Chiles was the first to wake, and as he looked towards his fellow-mower he saw one of those great white miller’s-souls as we call ’em – that is to say, a miller-moth – come from William’s open mouth while he slept, and fly straight away. John thought it odd enough, as William had worked in a mill for several years when he was a boy. He then looked at the sun, and found by the place o’t that they had slept a long while, and as William did not wake, John called to him and said it was high time to begin work again. He took no notice, and then John went up and shook him, and found he was dead.

‘Now on that very day old Philip Hookhorn was down at Longpuddle Spring dipping up a pitcher of water; and as he turned away, who should he see coming down to the spring on the other side but William, looking very pale and odd. This surprised Philip Hookhorn very much, for years before that time William’s little son – his only child – had been drowned in that spring while at play there, and this had so preyed upon William’s mind that he’d never been seen near the spring afterwards, and had been known to go half a mile out of his way to avoid the place. On inquiry, it was found that William in body could not have stood by the spring, being in the mead two miles off; and it also came out that the time at which he was seen at the spring was the very time when he died.’

* * * * *

‘A rather melancholy story,’ observed the emigrant, after a minute’s silence.

‘Yes, yes. Well, we must take ups and downs together,’ said the seedsman’s father.

‘You don’t know, Mr. Lackland, I suppose, what a rum start that was between Andrey Satchel and Jane Vallens and the pa’son and clerk o’ Scrimpton?’ said the master-thatcher, a man with a spark of subdued liveliness in his eye, who had hitherto kept his attention mainly upon small objects a long way ahead, as he sat in front of the van with his feet outside. ‘Theirs was a queerer experience of a pa’son and clerk than some folks get, and may cheer ’ee up a little after this dampness that’s been flung over yer soul.’

The returned one replied that he knew nothing of the history, and should be happy to hear it, quite recollecting the personality of the man Satchel.

‘Ah no; this Andrey Satchel is the son of the Satchel that you knew; this one has not been married more than two or three years, and ’twas at the time o’ the wedding that the accident happened that I could tell ’ee of, or anybody else here, for that matter.’

‘No, no; you must tell it, neighbour, if anybody,’ said several; a request in which Mr. Lackland joined, adding that the Satchel family was one he had known well before leaving home.

‘I’ll just mention, as you be a stranger,’ whispered the carrier to Lackland, ‘that Christopher’s stories will bear pruning.’

The emigrant nodded.

‘Well, I can soon tell it,’ said the master-thatcher, schooling himself to a tone of actuality. ‘Though as it has more to do with the pa’son and clerk than with Andrey himself, it ought to be told by a better churchman than I.’

ANDREY SATCHEL AND THE PARSON AND CLERK

‘It all arose, you must know, from Andrey being fond of a drop of drink at that time – though he’s a sober enough man now by all account, so much the better for him. Jane, his bride, you see, was somewhat older than Andrey; how much older I don’t pretend to say; she was not one of our parish, and the register alone may be able to tell that. But, at any rate, her being a little ahead of her young man in mortal years, coupled with other bodily circumstances – ’

(‘Ah, poor thing!’ sighed the women.)

‘ – made her very anxious to get the thing done before he changed his mind; and ’twas with a joyful countenance (they say) that she, with Andrey and his brother and sister-in-law, marched off to church one November morning as soon as ’twas day a’most, to be made one with Andrey for the rest of her life. He had left our place long before it was light, and the folks that were up all waved their lanterns at him, and flung up their hats as he went.

‘The church of her parish was a mile and more from the houses, and, as it was a wonderful fine day for the time of year, the plan was that as soon as they were married they would make out a holiday by driving straight off to Port Bredy, to see the ships and the sea and the sojers, instead of coming back to a meal at the house of the distant relation she lived wi’, and moping about there all the afternoon.

‘Well, some folks noticed that Andrey walked with rather wambling steps to church that morning; the truth o’t was that his nearest neighbour’s child had been christened the day before, and Andrey, having stood godfather, had stayed all night keeping up the christening, for he had said to himself, “Not if I live to be thousand shall I again be made a godfather one day, and a husband the next, and perhaps a father the next, and therefore I’ll make the most of the blessing.” So that when he started from home in the morning he had not been in bed at all. The result was, as I say, that when he and his bride-to-he walked up the church to get married, the pa’son (who was a very strict man inside the church, whatever he was outside) looked hard at Andrey, and said, very sharp:

‘“How’s this, my man? You are in liquor. And so early, too. I’m ashamed of you!”

‘“Well, that’s true, sir,” says Andrey. “But I can walk straight enough for practical purposes. I can walk a chalk line,” he says (meaning no offence), “as well as some other folk: and – ” (getting hotter) – “I reckon that if you, Pa’son Billy Toogood, had kept up a christening all night so thoroughly as I have done, you wouldn’t be able to stand at all; d- me if you would!”

‘This answer made Pa’son Billy – as they used to call him – rather spitish, not to say hot, for he was a warm-tempered man if provoked, and he said, very decidedly: “Well, I cannot marry you in this state; and I will not! Go home and get sober!” And he slapped the book together like a rat-trap.

‘Then the bride burst out crying as if her heart would break, for very fear that she would lose Andrey after all her hard work to get him, and begged and implored the pa’son to go on with the ceremony. But no.

‘“I won’t be a party to your solemnizing matrimony with a tipsy man,” says Mr. Toogood. “It is not right and decent. I am sorry for you, my young woman, but you’d better go home again. I wonder how you could think of bringing him here drunk like this!”

‘“But if – if he don’t come drunk he won’t come at all, sir!” she says, through her sobs.

‘“I can’t help that,” says the pa’son; and plead as she might, it did not move him. Then she tried him another way.

‘“Well, then, if you’ll go home, sir, and leave us here, and come back to the church in an hour or two, I’ll undertake to say that he shall be as sober as a judge,” she cries. “We’ll bide here, with your permission; for if he once goes out of this here church unmarried, all Van Amburgh’s horses won’t drag him back again!”

‘“Very well,” says the parson. “I’ll give you two hours, and then I’ll return.”

‘“And please, sir, lock the door, so that we can’t escape!” says she.

‘“Yes,” says the parson.

‘“And let nobody know that we are here.”

‘The pa’son then took off his clane white surplice, and went away; and the others consulted upon the best means for keeping the matter a secret, which it was not a very hard thing to do, the place being so lonely, and the hour so early. The witnesses, Andrey’s brother and brother’s wife, neither one o’ which cared about Andrey’s marrying Jane, and had come rather against their will, said they couldn’t wait two hours in that hole of a place, wishing to get home to Longpuddle before dinner-time. They were altogether so crusty that the clerk said there was no difficulty in their doing as they wished. They could go home as if their brother’s wedding had actually taken place and the married couple had gone onward for their day’s pleasure jaunt to Port Bredy as intended, he, the clerk, and any casual passer-by would act as witnesses when the pa’son came back.

‘This was agreed to, and away Andrey’s relations went, nothing loath, and the clerk shut the church door and prepared to lock in the couple. The bride went up and whispered to him, with her eyes a-streaming still.

‘“My dear good clerk,” she says, “if we bide here in the church, folk may see us through the winders, and find out what has happened; and ’twould cause such a talk and scandal that I never should get over it: and perhaps, too, dear Andrey might try to get out and leave me! Will ye lock us up in the tower, my dear good clerk?” she says. “I’ll tole him in there if you will.”

‘The clerk had no objection to do this to oblige the poor young woman, and they toled Andrey into the tower, and the clerk locked ’em both up straightway, and then went home, to return at the end of the two hours.

‘Pa’son Toogood had not been long in his house after leaving the church when he saw a gentleman in pink and top-boots ride past his windows, and with a sudden flash of heat he called to mind that the hounds met that day just on the edge of his parish. The pa’son was one who dearly loved sport, and much he longed to be there.

‘In short, except o’ Sundays and at tide-times in the week, Pa’son Billy was the life o’ the Hunt. ’Tis true that he was poor, and that he rode all of a heap, and that his black mare was rat-tailed and old, and his tops older, and all over of one colour, whitey-brown, and full o’ cracks. But he’d been in at the death of three thousand foxes. And – being a bachelor man – every time he went to bed in summer he used to open the bed at bottom and crawl up head foremost, to mind 'em of the coming winter and the good sport he’d have, and the foxes going to earth. And whenever there was a christening at the Squire’s, and he had dinner there afterwards, as he always did, he never failed to christen the chiel over again in a bottle of port wine.

‘Now the clerk was the parson’s groom and gardener and jineral manager, and had just got back to his work in the garden when he, too, saw the hunting man pass, and presently saw lots more of ’em, noblemen and gentry, and then he saw the hounds, the huntsman, Jim Treadhedge, the whipper-in, and I don’t know who besides. The clerk loved going to cover as frantical as the pa’son, so much so that whenever he saw or heard the pack he could no more rule his feelings than if they were the winds of heaven. He might be bedding, or he might be sowing – all was forgot. So he throws down his spade and rushes in to the pa’son, who was by this time as frantical to go as he.

‘“That there mare of yours, sir, do want exercise bad, very bad, this morning!” the clerk says, all of a tremble. “Don’t ye think I’d better trot her round the downs for an hour, sir?”

‘“To be sure, she does want exercise badly. I’ll trot her round myself,” says the parson.

‘“Oh – you’ll trot her yerself? Well, there’s the cob, sir. Really that cob is getting oncontrollable through biding in a stable so long! If you wouldn’t mind my putting on the saddle – ”

‘“Very well. Take him out, certainly,” says the pa’son, never caring what the clerk did so long as he himself could get off immediately. So, scrambling into his riding-boots and breeches as quick as he could, he rode off towards the meet, intending to be back in an hour. No sooner was he gone than the clerk mounted the cob, and was off after him. When the pa’son got to the meet, he found a lot of friends, and was as jolly as he could be: the hounds found a’most as soon as they threw off, and there was great excitement. So, forgetting that he had meant to go back at once, away rides the pa’son with the rest o’ the hunt, all across the fallow ground that lies between Lippet Wood and Green’s Copse; and as he galloped he looked behind for a moment, and there was the clerk close to his heels.

‘“Ha, ha, clerk – you here?” he says.

‘“Yes, sir, here be I,” says t’other.

‘“Fine exercise for the horses!”

‘“Ay, sir – hee, hee!” says the clerk.

‘So they went on and on, into Green’s Copse, then across to Higher Jirton; then on across this very turnpike-road to Climmerston Ridge, then away towards Yalbury Wood: up hill and down dale, like the very wind, the clerk close to the pa’son, and the pa’son not far from the hounds. Never was there a finer run knowed with that pack than they had that day; and neither pa’son nor clerk thought one word about the unmarried couple locked up in the church tower waiting to get j’ined.

‘“These hosses of yours, sir, will be much improved by this!” says the clerk as he rode along, just a neck behind the pa’son. “’Twas a happy thought of your reverent mind to bring ’em out to-day. Why, it may be frosty in a day or two, and then the poor things mid not be able to leave the stable for weeks.”

‘“They may not, they may not, it is true. A merciful man is merciful to his beast,” says the pa’son.

‘“Hee, hee!” says the clerk, glancing sly into the pa’son’s eye.

‘“Ha, ha!” says the pa’son, a-glancing back into the clerk’s. “Halloo!” he shouts, as he sees the fox break cover at that moment.

‘“Halloo!” cries the clerk. “There he goes! Why, dammy, there’s two foxes – ”

‘“Hush, clerk, hush! Don’t let me hear that word again! Remember our calling.”

‘“True, sir, true. But really, good sport do carry away a man so, that he’s apt to forget his high persuasion!” And the next minute the corner of the clerk’s eye shot again into the corner of the pa’son’s, and the pa’son’s back again to the clerk’s. “Hee, hee!” said the clerk.

‘“Ha, ha!” said Pa’son Toogood.