A Changed Man and Other Tales

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'But, dear Alicia,' he went on, 'I was more impressed by the affection of
your apology to her than by anything else. And do you know that now the
conditions have arisen which give me liberty to consider you my
affianced?' I had been expecting this, but yet was not prepared. I
stammered out that we would not discuss it then.

'Why not?' said he. 'Do you know that we may marry here and now? She
has cast off both you and me.'

'It cannot be,' said I, firmly. 'She has not been fairly asked to be
your wife in fact--to repeat the service lawfully; and until that has
been done it would be grievous sin in me to accept you.'

I had not noticed where the gondoliers were rowing us. I suppose he had
given them some direction unheard by me, for as I resigned myself in
despairing indolence to the motion of the gondola, I perceived that it
was taking us up the Canal, and, turning into a side opening near the
Palazzo Grimani, drew up at some steps near the end of a large church.

'Where are we?' said I.

'It is the Church of the Frari,' he replied. 'We might be married there.
At any rate, let us go inside, and grow calm, and decide what to do.'

When we had entered I found that whether a place to marry in or not, it
was one to depress. The word which Venice speaks most
constantly--decay--was in a sense accentuated here. The whole large
fabric itself seemed sinking into an earth which was not solid enough to
bear it. Cobwebbed cracks zigzagged the walls, and similar webs clouded
the window-panes. A sickly-sweet smell pervaded the aisles. After
walking about with him a little while in embarrassing silences, divided
only by his cursory explanations of the monuments and other objects, and
almost fearing he might produce a marriage licence, I went to a door in
the south transept which opened into the sacristy.

I glanced through it, towards the small altar at the upper end. The
place was empty save of one figure; and she was kneeling here in front of
the beautiful altarpiece by Bellini. Beautiful though it was she seemed
not to see it. She was weeping and praying as though her heart was
broken. She was my sister Caroline. I beckoned to Charles, and he came
to my side, and looked through the door with me.

'Speak to her,' said I. 'She will forgive you.'

I gently pushed him through the doorway, and went back into the transept,
down the nave, and onward to the west door. There I saw my father, to
whom I spoke. He answered severely that, having first obtained
comfortable quarters in a pension on the Grand Canal, he had gone back to
the hotel on the Riva degli Schiavoni to find me; but that I was not
there. He was now waiting for Caroline, to accompany her back to the
pension, at which she had requested to be left to herself as much as
possible till she could regain some composure.

I told him that it was useless to dwell on what was past, that I no doubt
had erred, that the remedy lay in the future and their marriage. In this
he quite agreed with me, and on my informing him that M. de la Feste was
at that moment with Caroline in the sacristy, he assented to my proposal
that we should leave them to themselves, and return together to await
them at the pension, where he had also engaged a room for me. This we
did, and going up to the chamber he had chosen for me, which overlooked
the Canal, I leant from the window to watch for the gondola that should
contain Charles and my sister.

They were not long in coming. I recognized them by the colour of her
sunshade as soon as they turned the bend on my right hand. They were
side by side of necessity, but there was no conversation between them,
and I thought that she looked flushed and he pale. When they were rowed
in to the steps of our house he handed her up. I fancied she might have
refused his assistance, but she did not. Soon I heard her pass my door,
and wishing to know the result of their interview I went downstairs,
seeing that the gondola had not put off with him. He was turning from
the door, but not towards the water, intending apparently to walk home by
way of the calle which led into the Via 22 Marzo.

'Has she forgiven you?' said I.

'I have not asked her,' he said.

'But you are bound to do so,' I told him.

He paused, and then said, 'Alicia, let us understand each other. Do you
mean to tell me, once for all, that if your sister is willing to become
my wife you absolutely make way for her, and will not entertain any
thought of what I suggested to you any more?'

'I do tell you so,' said I with dry lips. 'You belong to her--how can I
do otherwise?'

'Yes; it is so; it is purely a question of honour,' he returned. 'Very
well then, honour shall be my word, and not my love. I will put the
question to her frankly; if she says yes, the marriage shall be. But not
here. It shall be at your own house in England.'

'When?' said I.

'I will accompany her there,' he replied, 'and it shall be within a week
of her return. I have nothing to gain by delay. But I will not answer
for the consequences.'

'What do you mean?' said I. He made no reply, went away, and I came back
to my room.



CHAPTER IX.--SHE WITNESSES THE END


April 20. Milan, 10.30 p.m.--We are thus far on our way homeward. I,
being decidedly de trop, travel apart from the rest as much as I can.
Having dined at the hotel here, I went out by myself; regardless of the
proprieties, for I could not stay in. I walked at a leisurely pace along
the Via Allesandro Manzoni till my eye was caught by the grand Galleria
Vittorio Emanuele, and I entered under the high glass arcades till I
reached the central octagon, where I sat down on one of a group of chairs
placed there. Becoming accustomed to the stream of promenaders, I soon
observed, seated on the chairs opposite, Caroline and Charles. This was
the first occasion on which I had seen them en tete-a-tete since my
conversation with him. She soon caught sight of me; averted her eyes;
then, apparently abandoning herself to an impulse, she jumped up from her
seat and came across to me. We had not spoken to each other since the
meeting in Venice.

'Alicia,' she said, sitting down by my side, 'Charles asks me to forgive
you, and I do forgive you.'

I pressed her hand, with tears in my eyes, and said, 'And do you forgive
him?'

'Yes,' said she, shyly.

'And what's the result?' said I.

'We are to be married directly we reach home.'

This was almost the whole of our conversation; she walked home with me,
Charles following a little way behind, though she kept turning her head,
as if anxious that he should overtake us. 'Honour and not love' seemed
to ring in my ears. So matters stand. Caroline is again happy.

April 25.--We have reached home, Charles with us. Events are now moving
in silent speed, almost with velocity, indeed; and I sometimes feel
oppressed by the strange and preternatural ease which seems to accompany
their flow. Charles is staying at the neighbouring town; he is only
waiting for the marriage licence; when obtained he is to come here, be
quietly married to her, and carry her off. It is rather resignation than
content which sits on his face; but he has not spoken a word more to me
on the burning subject, or deviated one hair's breadth from the course he
laid down. They may be happy in time to come: I hope so. But I cannot
shake off depression.

May 6.--Eve of the wedding. Caroline is serenely happy, though not
blithe. But there is nothing to excite anxiety about her. I wish I
could say the same of him. He comes and goes like a ghost, and yet
nobody seems to observe this strangeness in his mien.

I could not help being here for the ceremony; but my absence would have
resulted in less disquiet on his part, I believe. However, I may be
wrong in attributing causes: my father simply says that Charles and
Caroline have as good a chance of being happy as other people. Well, to-
morrow settles all.

May 7.--They are married: we have just returned from church. Charles
looked so pale this morning that my father asked him if he was ill. He
said, 'No: only a slight headache;' and we started for the church.

There was no hitch or hindrance; and the thing is done.

4 p.m.--They ought to have set out on their journey by this time; but
there is an unaccountable delay. Charles went out half-an-hour ago, and
has not yet returned. Caroline is waiting in the hall; but I am
dreadfully afraid they will miss the train. I suppose the trifling
hindrance is of no account; and yet I am full of misgivings . . .

Sept. 14.--Four months have passed; only four months! It seems like
years. Can it be that only seventeen weeks ago I set on this paper the
fact of their marriage? I am now an aged woman by comparison!

On that never to be forgotten day we waited and waited, and Charles did
not return. At six o'clock, when poor little Caroline had gone back to
her room in a state of suspense impossible to describe, a man who worked
in the water-meadows came to the house and asked for my father. He had
an interview with him in the study. My father then rang his bell, and
sent for me. I went down; and I then learnt the fatal news. Charles was
no more. The waterman had been going to shut down the hatches of a weir
in the meads when he saw a hat on the edge of the pool below, floating
round and round in the eddy, and looking into the pool saw something
strange at the bottom. He knew what it meant, and lowering the hatches
so that the water was still, could distinctly see the body. It is
needless to write particulars that were in the newspapers at the time.
Charles was brought to the house, but he was dead.

We all feared for Caroline; and she suffered much; but strange to say,
her suffering was purely of the nature of deep grief which found relief
in sobbing and tears. It came out at the inquest that Charles had been
accustomed to cross the meads to give an occasional half-crown to an old
man who lived on the opposite hill, who had once been a landscape painter
in an humble way till he lost his eyesight; and it was assumed that he
had gone thither for the same purpose to-day, and to bid him farewell. On
this information the coroner's jury found that his death had been caused
by misadventure; and everybody believes to this hour that he was drowned
while crossing the weir to relieve the old man. Except one: she believes
in no accident. After the stunning effect of the first news, I thought
it strange that he should have chosen to go on such an errand at the last
moment, and to go personally, when there was so little time to spare,
since any gift could have been so easily sent by another hand. Further
reflection has convinced me that this step out of life was as much a part
of the day's plan as was the wedding in the church hard by. They were
the two halves of his complete intention when he gave me on the Grand
Canal that assurance which I shall never forget: 'Very well, then; honour
shall be my word, not love. If she says "Yes," the marriage shall be.'

I do not know why I should have made this entry at this particular time;
but it has occurred to me to do it--to complete, in a measure, that part
of my desultory chronicle which relates to the love-story of my sister
and Charles. She lives on meekly in her grief; and will probably outlive
it; while I--but never mind me.



CHAPTER X.--SHE ADDS A NOTE LONG AFTER


Five-years later.--I have lighted upon this old diary, which it has
interested me to look over, containing, as it does, records of the time
when life shone more warmly in my eye than it does now. I am impelled to
add one sentence to round off its record of the past. About a year ago
my sister Caroline, after a persistent wooing, accepted the hand and
heart of Theophilus Higham, once the blushing young Scripture reader who
assisted at the substitute for a marriage I planned, and now the fully-
ordained curate of the next parish. His penitence for the part he played
ended in love. We have all now made atonement for our sins against her:
may she be deceived no more.

1887.




THE GRAVE BY THE HANDPOST


I never pass through Chalk-Newton without turning to regard the
neighbouring upland, at a point where a lane crosses the lone straight
highway dividing this from the next parish; a sight which does not fail
to recall the event that once happened there; and, though it may seem
superfluous, at this date, to disinter more memories of village history,
the whispers of that spot may claim to be preserved.

It was on a dark, yet mild and exceptionally dry evening at Christmas-
time (according to the testimony of William Dewy of Mellstock, Michael
Mail, and others), that the choir of Chalk-Newton--a large parish situate
about half-way between the towns of Ivel and Casterbridge, and now a
railway station--left their homes just before midnight to repeat their
annual harmonies under the windows of the local population. The band of
instrumentalists and singers was one of the largest in the county; and,
unlike the smaller and finer Mellstock string-band, which eschewed all
but the catgut, it included brass and reed performers at full Sunday
services, and reached all across the west gallery.

On this night there were two or three violins, two 'cellos, a tenor viol,
double bass, hautboy, clarionets, serpent, and seven singers. It was,
however, not the choir's labours, but what its members chanced to
witness, that particularly marked the occasion.

They had pursued their rounds for many years without meeting with any
incident of an unusual kind, but to-night, according to the assertions of
several, there prevailed, to begin with, an exceptionally solemn and
thoughtful mood among two or three of the oldest in the band, as if they
were thinking they might be joined by the phantoms of dead friends who
had been of their number in earlier years, and now were mute in the
churchyard under flattening mounds--friends who had shown greater zest
for melody in their time than was shown in this; or that some past voice
of a semi-transparent figure might quaver from some bedroom-window its
acknowledgment of their nocturnal greeting, instead of a familiar living
neighbour. Whether this were fact or fancy, the younger members of the
choir met together with their customary thoughtlessness and buoyancy.
When they had gathered by the stone stump of the cross in the middle of
the village, near the White Horse Inn, which they made their starting
point, some one observed that they were full early, that it was not yet
twelve o'clock. The local waits of those days mostly refrained from
sounding a note before Christmas morning had astronomically arrived, and
not caring to return to their beer, they decided to begin with some
outlying cottages in Sidlinch Lane, where the people had no clocks, and
would not know whether it were night or morning. In that direction they
accordingly went; and as they ascended to higher ground their attention
was attracted by a light beyond the houses, quite at the top of the lane.

The road from Chalk-Newton to Broad Sidlinch is about two miles long and
in the middle of its course, where it passes over the ridge dividing the
two villages, it crosses at right angles, as has been stated, the lonely
monotonous old highway known as Long Ash Lane, which runs, straight as a
surveyor's line, many miles north and south of this spot, on the
foundation of a Roman road, and has often been mentioned in these
narratives. Though now quite deserted and grass-grown, at the beginning
of the century it was well kept and frequented by traffic. The
glimmering light appeared to come from the precise point where the roads
intersected.

'I think I know what that mid mean!' one of the group remarked.

They stood a few moments, discussing the probability of the light having
origin in an event of which rumours had reached them, and resolved to go
up the hill.

Approaching the high land their conjectures were strengthened. Long Ash
Lane cut athwart them, right and left; and they saw that at the junction
of the four ways, under the hand-post, a grave was dug, into which, as
the choir drew nigh, a corpse had just been thrown by the four Sidlinch
men employed for the purpose. The cart and horse which had brought the
body thither stood silently by.

The singers and musicians from Chalk-Newton halted, and looked on while
the gravediggers shovelled in and trod down the earth, till, the hole
being filled, the latter threw their spades into the cart, and prepared
to depart.

'Who mid ye be a-burying there?' asked Lot Swanhills in a raised voice.
'Not the sergeant?'

The Sidlinch men had been so deeply engrossed in their task that they had
not noticed the lanterns of the Chalk-Newton choir till now.

'What--be you the Newton carol-singers?' returned the representatives of
Sidlinch.

'Ay, sure. Can it be that it is old Sergeant Holway you've a-buried
there?'

''Tis so. You've heard about it, then?'

The choir knew no particulars--only that he had shot himself in his apple-
closet on the previous Sunday. 'Nobody seem'th to know what 'a did it
for, 'a b'lieve? Leastwise, we don't know at Chalk-Newton,' continued
Lot.

'O yes. It all came out at the inquest.'

The singers drew close, and the Sidlinch men, pausing to rest after their
labours, told the story. 'It was all owing to that son of his, poor old
man. It broke his heart.'

'But the son is a soldier, surely; now with his regiment in the East
Indies?'

'Ay. And it have been rough with the army over there lately. 'Twas a
pity his father persuaded him to go. But Luke shouldn't have twyted the
sergeant o't, since 'a did it for the best.'

The circumstances, in brief, were these: The sergeant who had come to
this lamentable end, father of the young soldier who had gone with his
regiment to the East, had been singularly comfortable in his military
experiences, these having ended long before the outbreak of the great war
with France. On his discharge, after duly serving his time, he had
returned to his native village, and married, and taken kindly to domestic
life. But the war in which England next involved herself had cost him
many frettings that age and infirmity prevented him from being ever again
an active unit of the army. When his only son grew to young manhood, and
the question arose of his going out in life, the lad expressed his wish
to be a mechanic. But his father advised enthusiastically for the army.

'Trade is coming to nothing in these days,' he said. 'And if the war
with the French lasts, as it will, trade will be still worse. The army,
Luke--that's the thing for 'ee. 'Twas the making of me, and 'twill be
the making of you. I hadn't half such a chance as you'll have in these
splendid hotter times.'

Luke demurred, for he was a home-keeping, peace-loving youth. But,
putting respectful trust in his father's judgment, he at length gave way,
and enlisted in the ---d Foot. In the course of a few weeks he was sent
out to India to his regiment, which had distinguished itself in the East
under General Wellesley.

But Luke was unlucky. News came home indirectly that he lay sick out
there; and then on one recent day when his father was out walking, the
old man had received tidings that a letter awaited him at Casterbridge.
The sergeant sent a special messenger the whole nine miles, and the
letter was paid for and brought home; but though, as he had guessed, it
came from Luke, its contents were of an unexpected tenor.

The letter had been written during a time of deep depression. Luke said
that his life was a burden and a slavery, and bitterly reproached his
father for advising him to embark on a career for which he felt unsuited.
He found himself suffering fatigues and illnesses without gaining glory,
and engaged in a cause which he did not understand or appreciate. If it
had not been for his father's bad advice he, Luke, would now have been
working comfortably at a trade in the village that he had never wished to
leave.

After reading the letter the sergeant advanced a few steps till he was
quite out of sight of everybody, and then sat down on the bank by the
wayside.

When he arose half-an-hour later he looked withered and broken, and from
that day his natural spirits left him. Wounded to the quick by his son's
sarcastic stings, he indulged in liquor more and more frequently. His
wife had died some years before this date, and the sergeant lived alone
in the house which had been hers. One morning in the December under
notice the report of a gun had been heard on his premises, and on
entering the neighbours found him in a dying state. He had shot himself
with an old firelock that he used for scaring birds; and from what he had
said the day before, and the arrangements he had made for his decease,
there was no doubt that his end had been deliberately planned, as a
consequence of the despondency into which he had been thrown by his son's
letter. The coroner's jury returned a verdict of felo de se.

'Here's his son's letter,' said one of the Sidlinch men. ''Twas found in
his father's pocket. You can see by the state o't how many times he read
it over. Howsomever, the Lord's will be done, since it must, whether or
no.'

The grave was filled up and levelled, no mound being shaped over it. The
Sidlinch men then bade the Chalk-Newton choir good-night, and departed
with the cart in which they had brought the sergeant's body to the hill.
When their tread had died away from the ear, and the wind swept over the
isolated grave with its customary siffle of indifference, Lot Swanhills
turned and spoke to old Richard Toller, the hautboy player.

''Tis hard upon a man, and he a wold sojer, to serve en so, Richard. Not
that the sergeant was ever in a battle bigger than would go into a half-
acre paddock, that's true. Still, his soul ought to hae as good a chance
as another man's, all the same, hey?'

Richard replied that he was quite of the same opinion. 'What d'ye say to
lifting up a carrel over his grave, as 'tis Christmas, and no hurry to
begin down in parish, and 'twouldn't take up ten minutes, and not a soul
up here to say us nay, or know anything about it?'

Lot nodded assent. 'The man ought to hae his chances,' he repeated.

'Ye may as well spet upon his grave, for all the good we shall do en by
what we lift up, now he's got so far,' said Notton, the clarionet man and
professed sceptic of the choir. 'But I'm agreed if the rest be.'

They thereupon placed themselves in a semicircle by the newly stirred
earth, and roused the dull air with the well-known Number Sixteen of
their collection, which Lot gave out as being the one he thought best
suited to the occasion and the mood

He comes' the pri'-soners to' re-lease',
In Sa'-tan's bon'-dage held'.

'Jown it--we've never played to a dead man afore,' said Ezra Cattstock,
when, having concluded the last verse, they stood reflecting for a breath
or two. 'But it do seem more merciful than to go away and leave en, as
they t'other fellers have done.'

'Now backalong to Newton, and by the time we get overright the pa'son's
'twill be half after twelve,' said the leader.

They had not, however, done more than gather up their instruments when
the wind brought to their notice the noise of a vehicle rapidly driven up
the same lane from Sidlinch which the gravediggers had lately retraced.
To avoid being run over when moving on, they waited till the benighted
traveller, whoever he might be, should pass them where they stood in the
wider area of the Cross.

In half a minute the light of the lanterns fell upon a hired fly, drawn
by a steaming and jaded horse. It reached the hand-post, when a voice
from the inside cried, 'Stop here!' The driver pulled rein. The
carriage door was opened from within, and there leapt out a private
soldier in the uniform of some line regiment. He looked around, and was
apparently surprised to see the musicians standing there.

'Have you buried a man here?' he asked.

'No. We bain't Sidlinch folk, thank God; we be Newton choir. Though a
man is just buried here, that's true; and we've raised a carrel over the
poor mortal's natomy. What--do my eyes see before me young Luke Holway,
that went wi' his regiment to the East Indies, or do I see his spirit
straight from the battlefield? Be you the son that wrote the letter--'

'Don't--don't ask me. The funeral is over, then?'

'There wer no funeral, in a Christen manner of speaking. But's buried,
sure enough. You must have met the men going back in the empty cart.'

'Like a dog in a ditch, and all through me!'

He remained silent, looking at the grave, and they could not help pitying
him. 'My friends,' he said, 'I understand better now. You have, I
suppose, in neighbourly charity, sung peace to his soul? I thank you,
from my heart, for your kind pity. Yes; I am Sergeant Holway's miserable
son--I'm the son who has brought about his father's death, as truly as if
I had done it with my own hand!'