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 buckets full 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'
'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 license 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, license 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 no
was 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
'It was printed?'
'Why, yes. After
the
'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
schoolchildren, 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
'Now that's
interesting! There were several cases like that.'
'And he's home again; and he's coming here tonight 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
'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
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,
'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
'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
'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 a thwart 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
'Of
course, anywhere that you decide upon. Is it healthy there for Johnny?'
'A
lovely climate. And I shall never be happy in
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
'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
a license, 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.'
'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
'A drop o' that
'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
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
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
'Ah!—l 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
December 1899.