Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (742 page)

‘Winter found his way back to his mother’s as he had come, and being dog-tired, crept upstairs to bed, hiding the box till he could destroy its contents.  The next morning early he set about doing this, and carried it to the linhay at the back of his mother’s dwelling.  Here by the hearth he opened the box, and began burning one by one the letters that had cost him so much labour to write and shame to think of, meaning to return the box to Harriet, after repairing the slight damage he had caused it by opening it without a key, with a note — the last she would ever receive from him — telling her triumphantly that in refusing to return what he had asked for she had calculated too surely upon his submission to her whims.

‘But on removing the last letter from the box he received a shock; for underneath it, at the very bottom, lay money — several golden guineas — ”Doubtless Harriet’s pocket-money,” he said to himself; though it was not, but Mrs. Palmley’s.  Before he had got over his qualms at this discovery he heard footsteps coming through the house-passage to where he was.  In haste he pushed the box and what was in it under some brushwood which lay in the linhay; but Jack had been already seen.  Two constables entered the out-house, and seized him as he knelt before the fireplace, securing the work-box and all it contained at the same moment.  They had come to apprehend him on a charge of breaking into the dwelling-house of Mrs. Palmley on the night preceding; and almost before the lad knew what had happened to him they were leading him along the lane that connects that end of the village with this turnpike-road, and along they marched him between ‘em all the way to Casterbridge jail.

‘Jack’s act amounted to night burglary — though he had never thought of it — and burglary was felony, and a capital offence in those days.  His figure had been seen by some one against the bright wall as he came away from Mrs. Palmley’s back window, and the box and money were found in his possession, while the evidence of the broken bureau-lock and tinkered window-pane was more than enough for circumstantial detail.  Whether his protestation that he went only for his letters, which he believed to be wrongfully kept from him, would have availed him anything if supported by other evidence I do not know; but the one person who could have borne it out was Harriet, and she acted entirely under the sway of her aunt.  That aunt was deadly towards Jack Winter.  Mrs. Palmley’s time had come.  Here was her revenge upon the woman who had first won away her lover, and next ruined and deprived her of her heart’s treasure — her little son.  When the assize week drew on, and Jack had to stand his trial, Harriet did not appear in the case at all, which was allowed to take its course, Mrs. Palmley testifying to the general facts of the burglary.  Whether Harriet would have come forward if Jack had appealed to her is not known; possibly she would have done it for pity’s sake; but Jack was too proud to ask a single favour of a girl who had jilted him; and he let her alone.  The trial was a short one, and the death sentence was passed.

‘The day o’ young Jack’s execution was a cold dusty Saturday in March.  He was so boyish and slim that they were obliged in mercy to hang him in the heaviest fetters kept in the jail, lest his heft should not break his neck, and they weighed so upon him that he could hardly drag himself up to the drop.  At that time the gover’ment was not strict about burying the body of an executed person within the precincts of the prison, and at the earnest prayer of his poor mother his body was allowed to be brought home.  All the parish waited at their cottage doors in the evening for its arrival: I remember how, as a very little girl, I stood by my mother’s side.  About eight o’clock, as we hearkened on our door-stones in the cold bright starlight, we could hear the faint crackle of a waggon from the direction of the turnpike-road.  The noise was lost as the waggon dropped into a hollow, then it was plain again as it lumbered down the next long incline, and presently it entered Longpuddle.  The coffin was laid in the belfry for the night, and the next day, Sunday, between the services, we buried him.  A funeral sermon was preached the same afternoon, the text chosen being, “He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.” . . . Yes, they were cruel times!

‘As for Harriet, she and her lover were married in due time; but by all account her life was no jocund one.  She and her good-man found that they could not live comfortably at Longpuddle, by reason of her connection with Jack’s misfortunes, and they settled in a distant town, and were no more heard of by us; Mrs. Palmley, too, found it advisable to join ‘em shortly after.  The dark-eyed, gaunt old Mrs. Winter, remembered by the emigrant gentleman here, was, as you will have foreseen, the Mrs. Winter of this story; and I can well call to mind how lonely she was, how afraid the children were of her, and how she kept herself as a stranger among us, though she lived so long.’

* * * * *

‘Longpuddle has had her sad experiences as well as her sunny ones,’ said Mr. Lackland.

‘Yes, yes.  But I am thankful to say not many like that, though good and bad have lived among us.’

‘There was Georgy Crookhill — he was one of the shady sort, as I have reason to know,’ observed the registrar, with the manner of a man who would like to have his say also.

‘I used to hear what he was as a boy at school.’

‘Well, as he began so he went on.  It never got so far as a hanging matter with him, to be sure; but he had some narrow escapes of penal servitude; and once it was a case of the biter bit.’

INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF MR. GEORGE CROOKHILL

‘One day,’ the registrar continued, ‘Georgy was ambling out of Melchester on a miserable screw, the fair being just over, when he saw in front of him a fine-looking young farmer riding out of the town in the same direction.  He was mounted on a good strong handsome animal, worth fifty guineas if worth a crown.  When they were going up Bissett Hill, Georgy made it his business to overtake the young farmer.  They passed the time o’ day to one another; Georgy spoke of the state of the roads, and jogged alongside the well-mounted stranger in very friendly conversation.  The farmer had not been inclined to say much to Georgy at first, but by degrees he grew quite affable too — as friendly as Georgy was toward him.  He told Crookhill that he had been doing business at Melchester fair, and was going on as far as Shottsford-Forum that night, so as to reach Casterbridge market the next day.  When they came to Woodyates Inn they stopped to bait their horses, and agreed to drink together; with this they got more friendly than ever, and on they went again.  Before they had nearly reached Shottsford it came on to rain, and as they were now passing through the village of Trantridge, and it was quite dark, Georgy persuaded the young farmer to go no further that night; the rain would most likely give them a chill.  For his part he had heard that the little inn here was comfortable, and he meant to stay.  At last the young farmer agreed to put up there also; and they dismounted, and entered, and had a good supper together, and talked over their affairs like men who had known and proved each other a long time.  When it was the hour for retiring they went upstairs to a double-bedded room which Georgy Crookhill had asked the landlord to let them share, so sociable were they.

‘Before they fell asleep they talked across the room about one thing and another, running from this to that till the conversation turned upon disguises, and changing clothes for particular ends.  The farmer told Georgy that he had often heard tales of people doing it; but Crookhill professed to be very ignorant of all such tricks; and soon the young farmer sank into slumber.

‘Early in the morning, while the tall young farmer was still asleep (I tell the story as ‘twas told me), honest Georgy crept out of his bed by stealth, and dressed himself in the farmer’s clothes, in the pockets of the said clothes being the farmer’s money.  Now though Georgy particularly wanted the farmer’s nice clothes and nice horse, owing to a little transaction at the fair which made it desirable that he should not be too easily recognized, his desires had their bounds: he did not wish to take his young friend’s money, at any rate more of it than was necessary for paying his bill.  This he abstracted, and leaving the farmer’s purse containing the rest on the bedroom table, went downstairs.  The inn folks had not particularly noticed the faces of their customers, and the one or two who were up at this hour had no thought but that Georgy was the farmer; so when he had paid the bill very liberally, and said he must be off, no objection was made to his getting the farmer’s horse saddled for himself; and he rode away upon it as if it were his own.

‘About half an hour after the young farmer awoke, and looking across the room saw that his friend Georgy had gone away in clothes which didn’t belong to him, and had kindly left for himself the seedy ones worn by Georgy.  At this he sat up in a deep thought for some time, instead of hastening to give an alarm.  “The money, the money is gone,” he said to himself, “and that’s bad.  But so are the clothes.”

‘He then looked upon the table and saw that the money, or most of it, had been left behind.

‘“Ha, ha, ha!” he cried, and began to dance about the room.  “Ha, ha, ha!” he said again, and made beautiful smiles to himself in the shaving glass and in the brass candlestick; and then swung about his arms for all the world as if he were going through the sword exercise.

‘When he had dressed himself in Georgy’s clothes and gone downstairs, he did not seem to mind at all that they took him for the other; and even when he saw that he had been left a bad horse for a good one, he was not inclined to cry out.  They told him his friend had paid the bill, at which he seemed much pleased, and without waiting for breakfast he mounted Georgy’s horse and rode away likewise, choosing the nearest by-lane in preference to the high-road, without knowing that Georgy had chosen that by-lane also.

‘He had not trotted more than two miles in the personal character of Georgy Crookhill when, suddenly rounding a bend that the lane made thereabout, he came upon a man struggling in the hands of two village constables.  It was his friend Georgy, the borrower of his clothes and horse.  But so far was the young farmer from showing any alacrity in rushing forward to claim his property that he would have turned the poor beast he rode into the wood adjoining, if he had not been already perceived.

‘“Help, help, help!” cried the constables.  “Assistance in the name of the Crown!”

‘The young farmer could do nothing but ride forward.  “What’s the matter?” he inquired, as coolly as he could.

‘“A deserter — a deserter!” said they.  “One who’s to be tried by court-martial and shot without parley.  He deserted from the Dragoons at Cheltenham some days ago, and was tracked; but the search-party can’t find him anywhere, and we told ‘em if we met him we’d hand him on to ‘em forthwith.  The day after he left the barracks the rascal met a respectable farmer and made him drunk at an inn, and told him what a fine soldier he would make, and coaxed him to change clothes, to see how well a military uniform would become him.  This the simple farmer did; when our deserter said that for a joke he would leave the room and go to the landlady, to see if she would know him in that dress.  He never came back, and Farmer Jollice found himself in soldier’s clothes, the money in his pockets gone, and, when he got to the stable, his horse gone too.”

‘“A scoundrel!” says the young man in Georgy’s clothes.  “And is this the wretched caitiff?” (pointing to Georgy).

‘“No, no!” cries Georgy, as innocent as a babe of this matter of the soldier’s desertion.  “He’s the man!  He was wearing Farmer Jollice’s suit o’ clothes, and he slept in the same room wi’ me, and brought up the subject of changing clothes, which put it into my head to dress myself in his suit before he was awake.  He’s got on mine!”

‘“D’ye hear the villain?” groans the tall young man to the constables.  “Trying to get out of his crime by charging the first innocent man with it that he sees!  No, master soldier — that won’t do!”

‘“No, no!  That won’t do!” the constables chimed in.  “To have the impudence to say such as that, when we caught him in the act almost!  But, thank God, we’ve got the handcuffs on him at last.”

‘“We have, thank God,” said the tall young man.  “Well, I must move on.  Good luck to ye with your prisoner!”  And off he went, as fast as his poor jade would carry him.

‘The constables then, with Georgy handcuffed between ‘em, and leading the horse, marched off in the other direction, toward the village where they had been accosted by the escort of soldiers sent to bring the deserter back, Georgy groaning: “I shall be shot, I shall be shot!”  They had not gone more than a mile before they met them.

‘“Hoi, there!” says the head constable.

‘“Hoi, yerself!” says the corporal in charge.

‘“We’ve got your man,” says the constable.

‘“Where?” says the corporal.

‘“Here, between us,” said the constable.  “Only you don’t recognize him out o’ uniform.”

‘The corporal looked at Georgy hard enough; then shook his head and said he was not the absconder.

‘“But the absconder changed clothes with Farmer Jollice, and took his horse; and this man has ‘em, d’ye see!”

‘“‘Tis not our man,” said the soldiers.  “He’s a tall young fellow with a mole on his right cheek, and a military bearing, which this man decidedly has not.”

‘“I told the two officers of justice that ‘twas the other!” pleaded Georgy.  “But they wouldn’t believe me.”

‘And so it became clear that the missing dragoon was the tall young farmer, and not Georgy Crookhill — a fact which Farmer Jollice himself corroborated when he arrived on the scene.  As Georgy had only robbed the robber, his sentence was comparatively light.  The deserter from the Dragoons was never traced: his double shift of clothing having been of the greatest advantage to him in getting off; though he left Georgy’s horse behind him a few miles ahead, having found the poor creature more hindrance than aid.’

* * * * *

The man from abroad seemed to be less interested in the questionable characters of Longpuddle and their strange adventures than in the ordinary inhabitants and the ordinary events, though his local fellow-travellers preferred the former as subjects of discussion.  He now for the first time asked concerning young persons of the opposite sex — or rather those who had been young when he left his native land.  His informants, adhering to their own opinion that the remarkable was better worth telling than the ordinary, would not allow him to dwell upon the simple chronicles of those who had merely come and gone.  They asked him if he remembered Netty Sargent.