Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (734 page)

‘No, I don’t think ‘tis mine!’ cried Ned hoarsely, as he looked up from his hands.  ‘But she is mine, all the same!  Ha’n’t I nussed her?  Ha’n’t I fed her and teached her?  Ha’n’t I played wi’ her?  O, little Carry — gone with that rogue — gone!’

‘You ha’n’t lost your mis’ess, anyhow,’ they said to console him.  ‘She’s throwed up the sperrits, and she is feeling better, and she’s more to ‘ee than a child that isn’t yours.’

‘She isn’t!  She’s not so particular much to me, especially now she’s lost the little maid!  But Carry’s everything!’

‘Well, ver’ like you’ll find her to-morrow.’

‘Ah — but shall I?  Yet he
can’t
hurt her — surely he can’t!  Well — how’s Car’line now?  I am ready.  Is the cart here?’

She was lifted into the vehicle, and they sadly lumbered on toward Stickleford.  Next day she was calmer; but the fits were still upon her; and her will seemed shattered.  For the child she appeared to show singularly little anxiety, though Ned was nearly distracted.  It was nevertheless quite expected that the impish Mop would restore the lost one after a freak of a day or two; but time went on, and neither he nor she could be heard of, and Hipcroft murmured that perhaps he was exercising upon her some unholy musical charm, as he had done upon Car’line herself.  Weeks passed, and still they could obtain no clue either to the fiddler’s whereabouts or the girl’s; and how he could have induced her to go with him remained a mystery.

Then Ned, who had obtained only temporary employment in the neighbourhood, took a sudden hatred toward his native district, and a rumour reaching his ears through the police that a somewhat similar man and child had been seen at a fair near London, he playing a violin, she dancing on stilts, a new interest in the capital took possession of Hipcroft with an intensity which would scarcely allow him time to pack before returning thither.

He did not, however, find the lost one, though he made it the entire business of his over-hours to stand about in by-streets in the hope of discovering her, and would start up in the night, saying, ‘That rascal’s torturing her to maintain him!’  To which his wife would answer peevishly, ‘Don’t ‘ee raft yourself so, Ned!  You prevent my getting a bit o’ rest!  He won’t hurt her!’ and fall asleep again.

That Carry and her father had emigrated to America was the general opinion; Mop, no doubt, finding the girl a highly desirable companion when he had trained her to keep him by her earnings as a dancer.  There, for that matter, they may be performing in some capacity now, though he must be an old scamp verging on threescore-and-ten, and she a woman of four-and-forty.

May 1893,

A TRADITION OF EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FOUR

The widely discussed possibility of an invasion of England through a Channel tunnel has more than once recalled old Solomon Selby’s story to my mind.

The occasion on which I numbered myself among his audience was one evening when he was sitting in the yawning chimney-corner of the inn-kitchen, with some others who had gathered there, and I entered for shelter from the rain.  Withdrawing the stem of his pipe from the dental notch in which it habitually rested, he leaned back in the recess behind him and smiled into the fire.  The smile was neither mirthful nor sad, not precisely humorous nor altogether thoughtful.  We who knew him recognized it in a moment: it was his narrative smile.  Breaking off our few desultory remarks we drew up closer, and he thus began: —

‘My father, as you mid know, was a shepherd all his life, and lived out by the Cove four miles yonder, where I was born and lived likewise, till I moved here shortly afore I was married.  The cottage that first knew me stood on the top of the down, near the sea; there was no house within a mile and a half of it; it was built o’ purpose for the farm-shepherd, and had no other use.  They tell me that it is now pulled down, but that you can see where it stood by the mounds of earth and a few broken bricks that are still lying about.  It was a bleak and dreary place in winter-time, but in summer it was well enough, though the garden never came to much, because we could not get up a good shelter for the vegetables and currant bushes; and where there is much wind they don’t thrive.

‘Of all the years of my growing up the ones that bide clearest in my mind were eighteen hundred and three, four, and five.  This was for two reasons: I had just then grown to an age when a child’s eyes and ears take in and note down everything about him, and there was more at that date to bear in mind than there ever has been since with me.  It was, as I need hardly tell ye, the time after the first peace, when Bonaparte was scheming his descent upon England.  He had crossed the great Alp mountains, fought in Egypt, drubbed the Turks, the Austrians, and the Proossians, and now thought he’d have a slap at us.  On the other side of the Channel, scarce out of sight and hail of a man standing on our English shore, the French army of a hundred and sixty thousand men and fifteen thousand horses had been brought together from all parts, and were drilling every day.  Bonaparte had been three years a-making his preparations; and to ferry these soldiers and cannon and horses across he had contrived a couple of thousand flat-bottomed boats.  These boats were small things, but wonderfully built.  A good few of ‘em were so made as to have a little stable on board each for the two horses that were to haul the cannon carried at the stern.  To get in order all these, and other things required, he had assembled there five or six thousand fellows that worked at trades — carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, saddlers, and what not.  O ‘twas a curious time!

‘Every morning Neighbour Boney would muster his multitude of soldiers on the beach, draw ‘em up in line, practise ‘em in the manoeuvre of embarking, horses and all, till they could do it without a single hitch.  My father drove a flock of ewes up into Sussex that year, and as he went along the drover’s track over the high downs thereabout he could see this drilling actually going on — the accoutrements of the rank and file glittering in the sun like silver.  It was thought and always said by my uncle Job, sergeant of foot (who used to know all about these matters), that Bonaparte meant to cross with oars on a calm night.  The grand query with us was, Where would my gentleman land?  Many of the common people thought it would be at Dover; others, who knew how unlikely it was that any skilful general would make a business of landing just where he was expected, said he’d go either east into the River Thames, or west’ard to some convenient place, most likely one of the little bays inside the Isle of Portland, between the Beal and St. Alban’s Head — and for choice the three-quarter-round Cove, screened from every mortal eye, that seemed made o’ purpose, out by where we lived, and which I’ve climmed up with two tubs of brandy across my shoulders on scores o’ dark nights in my younger days.  Some had heard that a part o’ the French fleet would sail right round Scotland, and come up the Channel to a suitable haven.  However, there was much doubt upon the matter; and no wonder, for after-years proved that Bonaparte himself could hardly make up his mind upon that great and very particular point, where to land.  His uncertainty came about in this wise, that he could get no news as to where and how our troops lay in waiting, and that his knowledge of possible places where flat-bottomed boats might be quietly run ashore, and the men they brought marshalled in order, was dim to the last degree.  Being flat-bottomed, they didn’t require a harbour for unshipping their cargo of men, but a good shelving beach away from sight, and with a fair open road toward London.  How the question posed that great Corsican tyrant (as we used to call him), what pains he took to settle it, and, above all, what a risk he ran on one particular night in trying to do so, were known only to one man here and there; and certainly to no maker of newspapers or printer of books, or my account o’t would not have had so many heads shaken over it as it has by gentry who only believe what they see in printed lines.

‘The flocks my father had charge of fed all about the downs near our house, overlooking the sea and shore each way for miles.  In winter and early spring father was up a deal at nights, watching and tending the lambing.  Often he’d go to bed early, and turn out at twelve or one; and on the other hand, he’d sometimes stay up till twelve or one, and then turn in to bed.  As soon as I was old enough I used to help him, mostly in the way of keeping an eye upon the ewes while he was gone home to rest.  This is what I was doing in a particular month in either the year four or five — I can’t certainly fix which, but it was long before I was took away from the sheepkeeping to be bound prentice to a trade.  Every night at that time I was at the fold, about half a mile, or it may be a little more, from our cottage, and no living thing at all with me but the ewes and young lambs.  Afeard?  No; I was never afeard of being alone at these times; for I had been reared in such an out-step place that the lack o’ human beings at night made me less fearful than the sight of ‘em.  Directly I saw a man’s shape after dark in a lonely place I was frightened out of my senses.

‘One day in that month we were surprised by a visit from my uncle Job, the sergeant in the Sixty-first foot, then in camp on the downs above King George’s watering-place, several miles to the west yonder.  Uncle Job dropped in about dusk, and went up with my father to the fold for an hour or two.  Then he came home, had a drop to drink from the tub of sperrits that the smugglers kept us in for housing their liquor when they’d made a run, and for burning ‘em off when there was danger.  After that he stretched himself out on the settle to sleep.  I went to bed: at one o’clock father came home, and waking me to go and take his place, according to custom, went to bed himself.  On my way out of the house I passed Uncle Job on the settle.  He opened his eyes, and upon my telling him where I was going he said it was a shame that such a youngster as I should go up there all alone; and when he had fastened up his stock and waist-belt he set off along with me, taking a drop from the sperrit-tub in a little flat bottle that stood in the corner-cupboard.

‘By and by we drew up to the fold, saw that all was right, and then, to keep ourselves warm, curled up in a heap of straw that lay inside the thatched hurdles we had set up to break the stroke of the wind when there was any.  To-night, however, there was none.  It was one of those very still nights when, if you stand on the high hills anywhere within two or three miles of the sea, you can hear the rise and fall of the tide along the shore, coming and going every few moments like a sort of great snore of the sleeping world.  Over the lower ground there was a bit of a mist, but on the hill where we lay the air was clear, and the moon, then in her last quarter, flung a fairly good light on the grass and scattered straw.

‘While we lay there Uncle Job amused me by telling me strange stories of the wars he had served in and the wownds he had got.  He had already fought the French in the Low Countries, and hoped to fight ‘em again.  His stories lasted so long that at last I was hardly sure that I was not a soldier myself, and had seen such service as he told of.  The wonders of his tales quite bewildered my mind, till I fell asleep and dreamed of battle, smoke, and flying soldiers, all of a kind with the doings he had been bringing up to me.

‘How long my nap lasted I am not prepared to say.  But some faint sounds over and above the rustle of the ewes in the straw, the bleat of the lambs, and the tinkle of the sheep-bell brought me to my waking senses.  Uncle Job was still beside me; but he too had fallen asleep.  I looked out from the straw, and saw what it was that had aroused me.  Two men, in boat-cloaks, cocked hats, and swords, stood by the hurdles about twenty yards off.

‘I turned my ear thitherward to catch what they were saying, but though I heard every word o’t, not one did I understand.  They spoke in a tongue that was not ours — in French, as I afterward found.  But if I could not gain the meaning of a word, I was shrewd boy enough to find out a deal of the talkers’ business.  By the light o’ the moon I could see that one of ‘em carried a roll of paper in his hand, while every moment he spoke quick to his comrade, and pointed right and left with the other hand to spots along the shore.  There was no doubt that he was explaining to the second gentleman the shapes and features of the coast.  What happened soon after made this still clearer to me.

‘All this time I had not waked Uncle Job, but now I began to be afeared that they might light upon us, because uncle breathed so heavily through’s nose.  I put my mouth to his ear and whispered, “Uncle Job.”

‘“What is it, my boy?” he said, just as if he hadn’t been asleep at all.

‘“Hush!” says I.  “Two French generals — ”

‘“French?” says he.

‘“Yes,” says I.  “Come to see where to land their army!”

‘I pointed ‘em out; but I could say no more, for the pair were coming at that moment much nearer to where we lay.  As soon as they got as near as eight or ten yards, the officer with a roll in his hand stooped down to a slanting hurdle, unfastened his roll upon it, and spread it out.  Then suddenly he sprung a dark lantern open on the paper, and showed it to be a map.

‘“What be they looking at?” I whispered to Uncle Job.

‘“A chart of the Channel,” says the sergeant (knowing about such things).

‘The other French officer now stooped likewise, and over the map they had a long consultation, as they pointed here and there on the paper, and then hither and thither at places along the shore beneath us.  I noticed that the manner of one officer was very respectful toward the other, who seemed much his superior, the second in rank calling him by a sort of title that I did not know the sense of.  The head one, on the other hand, was quite familiar with his friend, and more than once clapped him on the shoulder.

‘Uncle Job had watched as well as I, but though the map had been in the lantern-light, their faces had always been in shade.  But when they rose from stooping over the chart the light flashed upward, and fell smart upon one of ‘em’s features.  No sooner had this happened than Uncle Job gasped, and sank down as if he’d been in a fit.