A Changed Man and Other Tales: Ch. 5: Enter A Dragoon

Ch. 5: Enter A Dragoon

I lately had a melancholy experience (said the gentleman who is
answerable for the truth of this story). It was that of going over a
doomed house with whose outside aspect I had long been familiar--a house,
that is, which by reason of age and dilapidation was to be pulled down
during the following week. Some of the thatch, brown and rotten as the
gills of old mushrooms, had, indeed, been removed before I walked over
the building. Seeing that it was only a very small house--which is
usually called a 'cottage-residence'--situated in a remote hamlet, and
that it was not more than a hundred years old, if so much, I was led to
think in my progress through the hollow rooms, with their cracked walls
and sloping floors, what an exceptional number of abrupt family incidents
had taken place therein--to reckon only those which had come to my own
knowledge. And no doubt there were many more of which I had never heard.

It stood at the top of a garden stretching down to the lane or street
that ran through a hermit-group of dwellings in Mellstock parish. From a
green gate at the lower entrance, over which the thorn hedge had been
shaped to an arch by constant clippings, a gravel path ascended between
the box edges of once trim raspberry, strawberry, and vegetable plots,
towards the front door. This was in colour an ancient and bleached green
that could be rubbed off with the finger, and it bore a small
long-featured brass knocker covered with verdigris in its crevices. For
some years before this eve of demolition the homestead had degenerated,
and been divided into two tenements to serve as cottages for farm
labourers; but in its prime it had indisputable claim to be considered
neat, pretty, and genteel.

The variety of incidents above alluded to was mainly owing to the nature
of the tenure, whereby the place had been occupied by families not quite
of the kind customary in such spots--people whose circumstances,
position, or antecedents were more or less of a critical happy-go-lucky
cast. And of these residents the family whose term comprised the story I
wish to relate was that of Mr. Jacob Paddock the market-gardener, who
dwelt there for some years with his wife and grown-up daughter.

I

An evident commotion was agitating the premises, which jerked busy sounds
across the front plot, resembling those of a disturbed hive. If a member
of the household appeared at the door it was with a countenance of
abstraction and concern.

Evening began to bend over the scene; and the other inhabitants of the
hamlet came out to draw water, their common well being in the public road
opposite the garden and house of the Paddocks. Having wound up their
bucketsfull respectively they lingered, and spoke significantly together.
From their words any casual listener might have gathered information of
what had occurred.

The woodman who lived nearest the site of the story told most of the
tale. Selina, the daughter of the Paddocks opposite, had been surprised
that afternoon by receiving a letter from her once intended husband, then
a corporal, but now a sergeant-major of dragoons, whom she had hitherto
supposed to be one of the slain in the Battle of the Alma two or three
years before.

'She picked up wi'en against her father's wish, as we know, and before he
got his stripes,' their informant continued. 'Not but that the man was
as hearty a feller as you'd meet this side o' London. But Jacob, you
see, wished her to do better, and one can understand it. However, she
was determined to stick to him at that time; and for what happened she
was not much to blame, so near as they were to matrimony when the war
broke out and spoiled all.'

'Even the very pig had been killed for the wedding,' said a woman, 'and
the barrel o' beer ordered in. O, the man meant honourable enough. But
to be off in two days to fight in a foreign country--'twas natural of her
father to say they should wait till he got back.'

'And he never came,' murmured one in the shade.

'The war ended but her man never turned up again. She was not sure he
was killed, but was too proud, or too timid, to go and hunt for him.'

'One reason why her father forgave her when he found out how matters
stood was, as he said plain at the time, that he liked the man, and could
see that he meant to act straight. So the old folks made the best of
what they couldn't mend, and kept her there with 'em, when some wouldn't.
Time has proved seemingly that he did mean to act straight, now that he
has writ to her that he's coming. She'd have stuck to him all through
the time, 'tis my belief; if t'other hadn't come along.'

'At the time of the courtship,' resumed the woodman, 'the regiment was
quartered in Casterbridge Barracks, and he and she got acquainted by his
calling to buy a penn'orth of rathe-ripes off that tree yonder in her
father's orchard--though 'twas said he seed her over hedge as well as the
apples. He declared 'twas a kind of apple he much fancied; and he called
for a penn'orth every day till the tree was cleared. It ended in his
calling for her.'

''Twas a thousand pities they didn't jine up at once and ha' done wi' it.

'Well; better late than never, if so be he'll have her now. But, Lord,
she'd that faith in 'en that she'd no more belief that he was alive, when
a' didn't come, than that the undermost man in our churchyard was alive.
She'd never have thought of another but for that--O no!'

''Tis awkward, altogether, for her now.'

'Still she hadn't married wi' the new man. Though to be sure she would
have committed it next week, even the licence being got, they say, for
she'd have no banns this time, the first being so unfortunate.'

'Perhaps the sergeant-major will think he's released, and go as he came.'

'O, not as I reckon. Soldiers bain't particular, and she's a tidy piece
o' furniture still. What will happen is that she'll have her soldier,
and break off with the master-wheelwright, licence or no--daze me if she
won't.'

In the progress of these desultory conjectures the form of another
neighbour arose in the gloom. She nodded to the people at the well, who
replied 'G'd night, Mrs. Stone,' as she passed through Mr. Paddock's gate
towards his door. She was an intimate friend of the latter's household,
and the group followed her with their eyes up the path and past the
windows, which were now lighted up by candles inside.

II

Mrs. Stone paused at the door, knocked, and was admitted by Selina's
mother, who took her visitor at once into the parlour on the left hand,
where a table was partly spread for supper. On the 'beaufet' against the
wall stood probably the only object which would have attracted the eye of
a local stranger in an otherwise ordinarily furnished room, a great plum-
cake guarded as if it were a curiosity by a glass shade of the kind seen
in museums--square, with a wooden back like those enclosing stuffed
specimens of rare feather or fur. This was the mummy of the cake
intended in earlier days for the wedding-feast of Selina and the soldier,
which had been religiously and lovingly preserved by the former as a
testimony to her intentional respectability in spite of an untoward
subsequent circumstance, which will be mentioned. This relic was now as
dry as a brick, and seemed to belong to a pre-existent civilization. Till
quite recently, Selina had been in the habit of pausing before it daily,
and recalling the accident whose consequences had thrown a shadow over
her life ever since--that of which the water-drawers had spoken--the
sudden news one morning that the Route had come for the ---th Dragoons,
two days only being the interval before departure; the hurried
consultation as to what should be done, the second time of asking being
past but not the third; and the decision that it would be unwise to
solemnize matrimony in such haphazard circumstances, even if it were
possible, which was doubtful.

Before the fire the young woman in question was now seated on a low
stool, in the stillness of reverie, and a toddling boy played about the
floor around her.

'Ah, Mrs. Stone!' said Selina, rising slowly. 'How kind of you to come
in. You'll bide to supper? Mother has told you the strange news, of
course?'

'No. But I heard it outside, that is, that you'd had a letter from Mr.
Clark--Sergeant-Major Clark, as they say he is now--and that he's coming
to make it up with 'ee.'

'Yes; coming to-night--all the way from the north of England where he's
quartered. I don't know whether I'm happy or--frightened at it. Of
course I always believed that if he was alive he'd come and keep his
solemn vow to me. But when it is printed that a man is killed--what can
you think?'

'It was printed?'

'Why, yes. After the Battle of the Alma the book of the names of the
killed and wounded was nailed up against Casterbridge Town Hall door.
'Twas on a Saturday, and I walked there o' purpose to read and see for
myself; for I'd heard that his name was down. There was a crowd of
people round the book, looking for the names of relations; and I can mind
that when they saw me they made way for me--knowing that we'd been just
going to be married--and that, as you may say, I belonged to him. Well,
I reached up my arm, and turned over the farrels of the book, and under
the "killed" I read his surname, but instead of "John" they'd printed
"James," and I thought 'twas a mistake, and that it must be he. Who
could have guessed there were two nearly of one name in one regiment.'

'Well--he's coming to finish the wedding of 'ee as may be said; so never
mind, my dear. All's well that ends well.'

'That's what he seems to say. But then he has not heard yet about Mr.
Miller; and that's what rather terrifies me. Luckily my marriage with
him next week was to have been by licence, and not banns, as in John's
case; and it was not so well known on that account. Still, I don't know
what to think.'

'Everything seems to come just 'twixt cup and lip with 'ee, don't it now,
Miss Paddock. Two weddings broke off--'tis odd! How came you to accept
Mr. Miller, my dear?'

'He's been so good and faithful! Not minding about the child at all; for
he knew the rights of the story. He's dearly fond o' Johnny, you
know--just as if 'twere his own--isn't he, my duck? Do Mr. Miller love
you or don't he?'

'Iss! An' I love Mr. Miller,' said the toddler.

'Well, you see, Mrs. Stone, he said he'd make me a comfortable home; and
thinking 'twould be a good thing for Johnny, Mr. Miller being so much
better off than me, I agreed at last, just as a widow might--which is
what I have always felt myself; ever since I saw what I thought was
John's name printed there. I hope John will forgive me!'

'So he will forgive 'ee, since 'twas no manner of wrong to him. He ought
to have sent 'ee a line, saying 'twas another man.'

Selina's mother entered. 'We've not known of this an hour, Mrs. Stone,'
she said. 'The letter was brought up from Lower Mellstock Post-office by
one of the school children, only this afternoon. Mr. Miller was coming
here this very night to settle about the wedding doings. Hark! Is that
your father? Or is it Mr. Miller already come?'

The footsteps entered the porch; there was a brushing on the mat, and the
door of the room sprung back to disclose a rubicund man about thirty
years of age, of thriving master-mechanic appearance and obviously
comfortable temper. On seeing the child, and before taking any notice
whatever of the elders, the comer made a noise like the crowing of a cock
and flapped his arms as if they were wings, a method of entry which had
the unqualified admiration of Johnny.

'Yes--it is he,' said Selina constrainedly advancing.

'What--were you all talking about me, my dear?' said the genial young man
when he had finished his crowing and resumed human manners. 'Why what's
the matter,' he went on. 'You look struck all of a heap.' Mr. Miller
spread an aspect of concern over his own face, and drew a chair up to the
fire.

'O mother, would you tell Mr. Miller, if he don't know?'

'Mister Miller! and going to be married in six days!' he interposed.

'Ah--he don't know it yet!' murmured Mrs. Paddock.

'Know what?'

'Well--John Clark--now Sergeant-Major Clark--wasn't shot at Alma after
all. 'Twas another of almost the same name.'

'Now that's interesting! There were several cases like that.'

'And he's home again; and he's coming here to-night to see her.'

'Whatever shall I say, that he may not be offended with what I've done?'
interposed Selina.

'But why should it matter if he be?'

'O! I must agree to be his wife if he forgives me--of course I must.'

'Must! But why not say nay, Selina, even if he do forgive 'ee?'

'O no! How can I without being wicked? You were very very kind, Mr.
Miller, to ask me to have you; no other man would have done it after what
had happened; and I agreed, even though I did not feel half so warm as I
ought. Yet it was entirely owing to my believing him in the grave, as I
knew that if he were not he would carry out his promise; and this shows
that I was right in trusting him.'

'Yes . . . He must be a goodish sort of fellow,' said Mr. Miller, for a
moment so impressed with the excellently faithful conduct of the sergeant-
major of dragoons that he disregarded its effect upon his own position.
He sighed slowly and added, 'Well, Selina, 'tis for you to say. I love
you, and I love the boy; and there's my chimney-corner and sticks o'
furniture ready for 'ee both.'

'Yes, I know! But I mustn't hear it any more now,' murmured Selina
quickly. 'John will be here soon. I hope he'll see how it all was when
I tell him. If so be I could have written it to him it would have been
better.'

'You think he doesn't know a single word about our having been on the
brink o't. But perhaps it's the other way--he's heard of it and that may
have brought him.

'Ah--perhaps he has!' she said brightening. 'And already forgives me.'

'If not, speak out straight and fair, and tell him exactly how it fell
out. If he's a man he'll see it.'

'O he's a man true enough. But I really do think I shan't have to tell
him at all, since you've put it to me that way!'

As it was now Johnny's bedtime he was carried upstairs, and when Selina
came down again her mother observed with some anxiety, 'I fancy Mr. Clark
must be here soon if he's coming; and that being so, perhaps Mr. Miller
wouldn't mind--wishing us good-night! since you are so determined to
stick to your sergeant-major.' A little bitterness bubbled amid the
closing words. 'It would be less awkward, Mr. Miller not being here--if
he will allow me to say it.'

'To be sure; to be sure,' the master-wheelwright exclaimed with instant
conviction, rising alertly from his chair. 'Lord bless my soul,' he
said, taking up his hat and stick, 'and we to have been married in six
days! But Selina--you're right. You do belong to the child's father
since he's alive. I'll try to make the best of it.'

Before the generous Miller had got further there came a knock to the door
accompanied by the noise of wheels.

'I thought I heard something driving up!' said Mrs Paddock.

They heard Mr. Paddock, who had been smoking in the room opposite, rise
and go to the door, and in a moment a voice familiar enough to Selina was
audibly saying, 'At last I am here again--not without many interruptions!
How is it with 'ee, Mr. Paddock? And how is she? Thought never to see
me again, I suppose?'

A step with a clink of spurs in it struck upon the entry floor.

'Danged if I bain't catched!' murmured Mr. Miller, forgetting company-
speech. 'Never mind--I may as well meet him here as elsewhere; and I
should like to see the chap, and make friends with en, as he seems one o'
the right sort.' He returned to the fireplace just as the sergeant-major
was ushered in.

III

He was a good specimen of the long-service soldier of those days; a not
unhandsome man, with a certain undemonstrative dignity, which some might
have said to be partly owing to the stiffness of his uniform about his
neck, the high stock being still worn. He was much stouter than when
Selina had parted from him. Although she had not meant to be
demonstrative she ran across to him directly she saw him, and he held her
in his arms and kissed her.

Then in much agitation she whispered something to him, at which he seemed
to be much surprised.

'He's just put to bed,' she continued. 'You can go up and see him. I
knew you'd come if you were alive! But I had quite gi'd you up for dead.
You've been home in England ever since the war ended?'

'Yes, dear.'

'Why didn't you come sooner?'

'That's just what I ask myself! Why was I such a sappy as not to hurry
here the first day I set foot on shore! Well, who'd have thought it--you
are as pretty as ever!'

He relinquished her to peep upstairs a little way, where, by looking
through the ballusters, he could see Johnny's cot just within an open
door. On his stepping down again Mr. Miller was preparing to depart.

'Now, what's this? I am sorry to see anybody going the moment I've
come,' expostulated the sergeant-major. 'I thought we might make an
evening of it. There's a nine gallon cask o' "Phoenix" beer outside in
the trap, and a ham, and half a rawmil' cheese; for I thought you might
be short o' forage in a lonely place like this; and it struck me we might
like to ask in a neighbour or two. But perhaps it would be taking a
liberty?'

'O no, not at all,' said Mr. Paddock, who was now in the room, in a
judicial measured manner. 'Very thoughtful of 'ee, only 'twas not
necessary, for we had just laid in an extry stock of eatables and
drinkables in preparation for the coming event.'

''Twas very kind, upon my heart,' said the soldier, 'to think me worth
such a jocund preparation, since you could only have got my letter this
morning.'

Selina gazed at her father to stop him, and exchanged embarrassed glances
with Miller. Contrary to her hopes Sergeant-Major Clark plainly did not
know that the preparations referred to were for something quite other
than his own visit.

The movement of the horse outside, and the impatient tapping of a whip-
handle upon the vehicle reminded them that Clark's driver was still in
waiting. The provisions were brought into the house, and the cart
dismissed. Miller, with very little pressure indeed, accepted an
invitation to supper, and a few neighbours were induced to come in to
make up a cheerful party.

During the laying of the meal, and throughout its continuance, Selina,
who sat beside her first intended husband, tried frequently to break the
news to him of her engagement to the other--now terminated so suddenly,
and so happily for her heart, and her sense of womanly virtue. But the
talk ran entirely upon the late war; and though fortified by half a horn
of the strong ale brought by the sergeant-major she decided that she
might have a better opportunity when supper was over of revealing the
situation to him in private.

Having supped, Clark leaned back at ease in his chair and looked around.
'We used sometimes to have a dance in that other room after supper,
Selina dear, I recollect. We used to clear out all the furniture into
this room before beginning. Have you kept up such goings on?'

'No, not at all!' said his sweetheart, sadly.

'We were not unlikely to revive it in a few days,' said Mr. Paddock.
'But, howsomever, there's seemingly many a slip, as the saying is.'

'Yes, I'll tell John all about that by and by!' interposed Selina; at
which, perceiving that the secret which he did not like keeping was to be
kept even yet, her father held his tongue with some show of testiness.

The subject of a dance having been broached, to put the thought in
practice was the feeling of all. Soon after the tables and chairs were
borne from the opposite room to this by zealous hands, and two of the
villagers sent home for a fiddle and tambourine, when the majority began
to tread a measure well known in that secluded vale. Selina naturally
danced with the sergeant-major, not altogether to her father's
satisfaction, and to the real uneasiness of her mother, both of whom
would have preferred a postponement of festivities till the rashly
anticipated relationship between their daughter and Clark in the past had
been made fact by the church's ordinances. They did not, however,
express a positive objection, Mr. Paddock remembering, with
self-reproach, that it was owing to his original strongly expressed
disapproval of Selina's being a soldier's wife that the wedding had been
delayed, and finally hindered--with worse consequences than were
expected; and ever since the misadventure brought about by his government
he had allowed events to steer their own courses.

'My tails will surely catch in your spurs, John!' murmured the daughter
of the house, as she whirled around upon his arm with the rapt soul and
look of a somnambulist. 'I didn't know we should dance, or I would have
put on my other frock.'

'I'll take care, my love. We've danced here before. Do you think your
father objects to me now? I've risen in rank. I fancy he's still a
little against me.'

'He has repented, times enough.'

'And so have I! If I had married you then 'twould have saved many a
misfortune. I have sometimes thought it might have been possible to rush
the ceremony through somehow before I left; though we were only in the
second asking, were we? And even if I had come back straight here when
we returned from the Crimea, and married you then, how much happier I
should have been!'

'Dear John, to say that! Why didn't you?'

'O--dilatoriness and want of thought, and a fear of facing your father
after so long. I was in hospital a great while, you know. But how
familiar the place seems again! What's that I saw on the beaufet in the
other room? It never used to be there. A sort of withered corpse of a
cake--not an old bride-cake surely?'

'Yes, John, ours. 'Tis the very one that was made for our wedding three
years ago.'

'Sakes alive! Why, time shuts up together, and all between then and now
seems not to have been! What became of that wedding-gown that they were
making in this room, I remember--a bluish, whitish, frothy thing?'

'I have that too.'

'Really! . . . Why, Selina--'

'Yes!'

'Why not put it on now?'

'Wouldn't it seem--. And yet, O how I should like to! It would remind
them all, if we told them what it was, how we really meant to be married
on that bygone day!' Her eyes were again laden with wet.

'Yes . . . The pity that we didn't--the pity!' Moody mournfulness seemed
to hold silent awhile one not naturally taciturn. 'Well--will you?' he
said.

'I will--the next dance, if mother don't mind.'

Accordingly, just before the next figure was formed, Selina disappeared,
and speedily came downstairs in a creased and box-worn, but still airy
and pretty, muslin gown, which was indeed the very one that had been
meant to grace her as a bride three years before.

'It is dreadfully old-fashioned,' she apologized.

'Not at all. What a grand thought of mine! Now, let's to't again.'

She explained to some of them, as he led her to the second dance, what
the frock had been meant for, and that she had put it on at his request.
And again athwart and around the room they went.

'You seem the bride!' he said.

'But I couldn't wear this gown to be married in now!' she replied,
ecstatically, 'or I shouldn't have put it on and made it dusty. It is
really too old-fashioned, and so folded and fretted out, you can't think.
That was with my taking it out so many times to look at. I have never
put it on--never--till now!'

'Selina, I am thinking of giving up the army. Will you emigrate with me
to New Zealand? I've an uncle out there doing well, and he'd soon help
me to making a larger income. The English army is glorious, but it ain't
altogether enriching.'

'Of course, anywhere that you decide upon. Is it healthy there for
Johnny?'

'A lovely climate. And I shall never be happy in England . . . Aha!' he
concluded again, with a bitterness of unexpected strength, 'would to
Heaven I had come straight back here!'

As the dance brought round one neighbour after another the re-united pair
were thrown into juxtaposition with Bob Heartall among the rest who had
been called in; one whose chronic expression was that he carried inside
him a joke on the point of bursting with its own vastness. He took
occasion now to let out a little of its quality, shaking his head at
Selina as he addressed her in an undertone--

'This is a bit of a topper to the bridegroom, ho ho! 'Twill teach en the
liberty you'll expect when you've married en!'

'What does he mean by a "topper,"' the sergeant-major asked, who, not
being of local extraction, despised the venerable local language, and
also seemed to suppose 'bridegroom' to be an anticipatory name for
himself. 'I only hope I shall never be worse treated than you've treated
me to-night!'

Selina looked frightened. 'He didn't mean you, dear,' she said as they
moved on. 'We thought perhaps you knew what had happened, owing to your
coming just at this time. Had you--heard anything about--what I
intended?'

'Not a breath--how should I--away up in Yorkshire? It was by the merest
accident that I came just at this date to make peace with you for my
delay.'

'I was engaged to be married to Mr. Bartholomew Miller. That's what it
is! I would have let 'ee know by letter, but there was no time, only
hearing from 'ee this afternoon . . . You won't desert me for it, will
you, John? Because, as you know, I quite supposed you dead, and--and--'
Her eyes were full of tears of trepidation, and he might have felt a sob
heaving within her.

IV

The soldier was silent during two or three double bars of the tune. 'When
were you to have been married to the said Mr. Bartholomew Miller?' he
inquired.

'Quite soon.'

'How soon?'

'Next week--O yes--just the same as it was with you and me. There's a
strange fate of interruption hanging over me, I sometimes think! He had
bought the licence, which I preferred so that it mightn't be like--ours.
But it made no difference to the fate of it.'

'Had bought the licence! The devil!'

'Don't be angry, dear John. I didn't know!'

'No, no, I'm not angry.'

'It was so kind of him, considering!'

'Yes . . . I see, of course, how natural your action was--never thinking
of seeing me any more! Is it the Mr. Miller who is in this dance?'

'Yes.'

Clark glanced round upon Bartholomew and was silent again, for some
little while, and she stole a look at him, to find that he seemed
changed. 'John, you look ill!' she almost sobbed. ''Tisn't me, is it?'

'O dear, no. Though I hadn't, somehow, expected it. I can't find fault
with you for a moment--and I don't . . . This is a deuce of a long dance,
don't you think? We've been at it twenty minutes if a second, and the
figure doesn't allow one much rest. I'm quite out of breath.'

'They like them so dreadfully long here. Shall we drop out? Or I'll
stop the fiddler.'

'O no, no, I think I can finish. But although I look healthy enough I
have never been so strong as I formerly was, since that long illness I
had in the hospital at Scutari.'

'And I knew nothing about it!'

'You couldn't, dear, as I didn't write. What a fool I have been
altogether!' He gave a twitch, as of one in pain. 'I won't dance again
when this one is over. The fact is I have travelled a long way to-day,
and it seems to have knocked me up a bit.'

There could be no doubt that the sergeant-major was unwell, and Selina
made herself miserable by still believing that her story was the cause of
his ailment. Suddenly he said in a changed voice, and she perceived that
he was paler than ever: 'I must sit down.'

Letting go her waist he went quickly to the other room. She followed,
and found him in the nearest chair, his face bent down upon his hands and
arms, which were resting on the table.

'What's the matter?' said her father, who sat there dozing by the fire.

'John isn't well . . . We are going to New Zealand when we are married,
father. A lovely country! John, would you like something to drink?'

'A drop o' that Schiedam of old Owlett's, that's under stairs, perhaps,'
suggested her father. 'Not that nowadays 'tis much better than licensed
liquor.'

'John,' she said, putting her face close to his and pressing his arm.
'Will you have a drop of spirits or something?'

He did not reply, and Selina observed that his ear and the side of his
face were quite white. Convinced that his illness was serious, a growing
dismay seized hold of her. The dance ended; her mother came in, and
learning what had happened, looked narrowly at the sergeant-major.

'We must not let him lie like that, lift him up,' she said. 'Let him
rest in the window-bench on some cushions.'

They unfolded his arms and hands as they lay clasped upon the table, and
on lifting his head found his features to bear the very impress of death
itself. Bartholomew Miller, who had now come in, assisted Mr. Paddock to
make a comfortable couch in the window-seat, where they stretched out
Clark upon his back.

Still he seemed unconscious. 'We must get a doctor,' said Selina. 'O,
my dear John, how is it you be taken like this?'

'My impression is that he's dead!' murmured Mr. Paddock. 'He don't
breathe enough to move a tomtit's feather.'

There were plenty to volunteer to go for a doctor, but as it would be at
least an hour before he could get there the case seemed somewhat
hopeless. The dancing-party ended as unceremoniously as it had begun;
but the guests lingered round the premises till the doctor should arrive.
When he did come the sergeant-major's extremities were already cold, and
there was no doubt that death had overtaken him almost at the moment that
he had sat down.

The medical practitioner quite refused to accept the unhappy Selina's
theory that her revelation had in any way induced Clark's sudden
collapse. Both he and the coroner afterwards, who found the immediate
cause to be heart-failure, held that such a supposition was unwarranted
by facts. They asserted that a long day's journey, a hurried drive, and
then an exhausting dance, were sufficient for such a result upon a heart
enfeebled by fatty degeneration after the privations of a Crimean winter
and other trying experiences, the coincidence of the sad event with any
disclosure of hers being a pure accident.

This conclusion, however, did not dislodge Selina's opinion that the
shock of her statement had been the immediate stroke which had felled a
constitution so undermined.

V

At this date the Casterbridge Barracks were cavalry quarters, their
adaptation to artillery having been effected some years later. It had
been owing to the fact that the ---th Dragoons, in which John Clark had
served, happened to be lying there that Selina made his acquaintance. At
the time of his death the barracks were occupied by the Scots Greys, but
when the pathetic circumstances of the sergeant-major's end became known
in the town the officers of the Greys offered the services of their fine
reed and brass band, that he might have a funeral marked by due military
honours. His body was accordingly removed to the barracks, and carried
thence to the churchyard in the Durnover quarter on the following
afternoon, one of the Greys' most ancient and docile chargers being
blacked up to represent Clark's horse on the occasion.

Everybody pitied Selina, whose story was well known. She followed the
corpse as the only mourner, Clark having been without relations in this
part of the country, and a communication with his regiment having brought
none from a distance. She sat in a little shabby brown-black mourning
carriage, squeezing herself up in a corner to be as much as possible out
of sight during the slow and dramatic march through the town to the tune
from Saul. When the interment had taken place, the volleys been fired,
and the return journey begun, it was with something like a shock that she
found the military escort to be moving at a quick march to the lively
strains of 'Off she goes!' as if all care for the sergeant-major was
expected to be ended with the late discharge of the carbines. It was, by
chance, the very tune to which they had been footing when he died, and
unable to bear its notes, she hastily told her driver to drop behind. The
band and military party diminished up the High Street, and Selina turned
over Swan bridge and homeward to Mellstock.

Then recommenced for her a life whose incidents were precisely of a suit
with those which had preceded the soldier's return; but how different in
her appreciation of them! Her narrow miss of the recovered
respectability they had hoped for from that tardy event worked upon her
parents as an irritant, and after the first week or two of her mourning
her life with them grew almost insupportable. She had impulsively taken
to herself the weeds of a widow, for such she seemed to herself to be,
and clothed little Johnny in sables likewise. This assumption of a moral
relationship to the deceased, which she asserted to be only not a legal
one by two most unexpected accidents, led the old people to indulge in
sarcasm at her expense whenever they beheld her attire, though all the
while it cost them more pain to utter than it gave her to hear it. Having
become accustomed by her residence at home to the business carried on by
her father, she surprised them one day by going off with the child to
Chalk-Newton, in the direction of the town of Ivell, and opening a
miniature fruit and vegetable shop, attending Ivell market with her
produce. Her business grew somewhat larger, and it was soon sufficient
to enable her to support herself and the boy in comfort. She called
herself 'Mrs. John Clark' from the day of leaving home, and painted the
name on her signboard--no man forbidding her.

By degrees the pain of her state was forgotten in her new circumstances,
and getting to be generally accepted as the widow of a sergeant-major of
dragoons--an assumption which her modest and mournful demeanour seemed to
substantiate--her life became a placid one, her mind being nourished by
the melancholy luxury of dreaming what might have been her future in New
Zealand with John, if he had only lived to take her there. Her only
travels now were a journey to Ivell on market-days, and once a fortnight
to the churchyard in which Clark lay, there to tend, with Johnny's
assistance, as widows are wont to do, the flowers she had planted upon
his grave.

On a day about eighteen months after his unexpected decease, Selina was
surprised in her lodging over her little shop by a visit from Bartholomew
Miller. He had called on her once or twice before, on which occasions he
had used without a word of comment the name by which she was known.

'I've come this time,' he said, 'less because I was in this direction
than to ask you, Mrs. Clark, what you mid well guess. I've come o'
purpose, in short.'

She smiled.

''Tis to ask me again to marry you?'

'Yes, of course. You see, his coming back for 'ee proved what I always
believed of 'ee, though others didn't. There's nobody but would be glad
to welcome you to our parish again, now you've showed your independence
and acted up to your trust in his promise. Well, my dear, will you
come?'

'I'd rather bide as Mrs. Clark, I think,' she answered. 'I am not
ashamed of my position at all; for I am John's widow in the eyes of
Heaven.'

'I quite agree--that's why I've come. Still, you won't like to be always
straining at this shop-keeping and market-standing; and 'twould be better
for Johnny if you had nothing to do but tend him.'

He here touched the only weak spot in Selina's resistance to his
proposal--the good of the boy. To promote that there were other men she
might have married offhand without loving them if they had asked her to;
but though she had known the worthy speaker from her youth, she could not
for the moment fancy herself happy as Mrs. Miller.

He paused awhile. 'I ought to tell 'ee, Mrs. Clark,' he said by and by,
'that marrying is getting to be a pressing question with me. Not on my
own account at all. The truth is, that mother is growing old, and I am
away from home a good deal, so that it is almost necessary there should
be another person in the house with her besides me. That's the practical
consideration which forces me to think of taking a wife, apart from my
wish to take you; and you know there's nobody in the world I care for so
much.'

She said something about there being far better women than she, and other
natural commonplaces; but assured him she was most grateful to him for
feeling what he felt, as indeed she sincerely was. However, Selina would
not consent to be the useful third person in his comfortable home--at any
rate just then. He went away, after taking tea with her, without
discerning much hope for him in her good-bye.

VI

After that evening she saw and heard nothing of him for a great while.
Her fortnightly journeys to the sergeant-major's grave were continued,
whenever weather did not hinder them; and Mr. Miller must have known, she
thought, of this custom of hers. But though the churchyard was not
nearly so far from his homestead as was her shop at Chalk-Newton, he
never appeared in the accidental way that lovers use.

An explanation was forthcoming in the shape of a letter from her mother,
who casually mentioned that Mr. Bartholomew Miller had gone away to the
other side of Shottsford-Forum to be married to a thriving dairyman's
daughter that he knew there. His chief motive, it was reported, had been
less one of love than a wish to provide a companion for his aged mother.

Selina was practical enough to know that she had lost a good and possibly
the only opportunity of settling in life after what had happened, and for
a moment she regretted her independence. But she became calm on
reflection, and to fortify herself in her course started that afternoon
to tend the sergeant-major's grave, in which she took the same sober
pleasure as at first.

On reaching the churchyard and turning the corner towards the spot as
usual, she was surprised to perceive another woman, also apparently a
respectable widow, and with a tiny boy by her side, bending over Clark's
turf, and spudding up with the point of her umbrella some ivy-roots that
Selina had reverently planted there to form an evergreen mantle over the
mound.

'What are you digging up my ivy for!' cried Selina, rushing forward so
excitedly that Johnny tumbled over a grave with the force of the tug she
gave his hand in her sudden start.

'Your ivy?' said the respectable woman.

'Why yes! I planted it there--on my husband's grave.'

'Your husband's!'

'Yes. The late Sergeant-Major Clark. Anyhow, as good as my husband, for
he was just going to be.'

'Indeed. But who may be my husband, if not he? I am the only Mrs. John
Clark, widow of the late Sergeant-Major of Dragoons, and this is his only
son and heir.'

'How can that be?' faltered Selina, her throat seeming to stick together
as she just began to perceive its possibility. 'He had been--going to
marry me twice--and we were going to New Zealand.'

'Ah!--I remember about you,' returned the legitimate widow calmly and not
unkindly. 'You must be Selina; he spoke of you now and then, and said
that his relations with you would always be a weight on his conscience.
Well; the history of my life with him is soon told. When he came back
from the Crimea he became acquainted with me at my home in the north, and
we were married within a month of first knowing each other.
Unfortunately, after living together a few months, we could not agree;
and after a particularly sharp quarrel, in which, perhaps, I was most in
the wrong--as I don't mind owning here by his graveside--he went away
from me, declaring he would buy his discharge and emigrate to New
Zealand, and never come back to me any more. The next thing I heard was
that he had died suddenly at Mellstock at some low carouse; and as he had
left me in such anger to live no more with me, I wouldn't come down to
his funeral, or do anything in relation to him. 'Twas temper, I know,
but that was the fact. Even if we had parted friends it would have been
a serious expense to travel three hundred miles to get there, for one who
wasn't left so very well off . . . I am sorry I pulled up your ivy-roots;
but that common sort of ivy is considered a weed in my part of the
country.'

December 1899.

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