The Penguin Book of the British Short Story, Volume 1

by Philip Hensher

  The man went through the movement of searching his pockets.

  ‘Lost that too?’ said his entertainer, with some surprise.

  ‘I am afraid so,’ said the man with some confusion. ‘Give it to me in a screw of paper.’ Lighting his pipe at the candle with a suction that drew the whole flame into the bowl, he resettled himself in the corner, and bent his looks upon the faint steam from his damp legs, as if he wished to say no more.

  Meanwhile the general body of guests had been taking little notice of this visitor by reason of an absorbing discussion in which they were engaged with the band about a tune for the next dance. The matter being settled, they were about to stand up, when an interruption came in the shape of another knock at the door.

  At sound of the same the man in the chimney-corner took up the poker and began stirring the fire as if doing it thoroughly were the one aim of his existence; and a second time the shepherd said ‘Walk in!’ In a moment another man stood upon the straw-woven door-mat. He too was a stranger.

  This individual was one of a type radically different from the first. There was more of the commonplace in his manner, and a certain jovial cosmopolitanism sat upon his features. He was several years older than the first arrival, his hair being slightly frosted, his eyebrows bristly, and his whiskers cut back from his cheeks. His face was rather full and flabby, and yet it was not altogether a face without power. A few grog-blossoms marked the neighbourhood of his nose. He flung back his long drab greatcoat, revealing that beneath it he wore a suit of cinder-grey shade throughout, large heavy seals, of some metal or other that would take a polish, dangling from his fob as his only personal ornament. Shaking the water-drops from his low-crowned glazed hat, he said, ‘I must ask for a few minutes’ shelter, comrades, or I shall be wetted to my skin before I get to Casterbridge.’

  ‘Make yourself at home, master,’ said the shepherd, perhaps a trifle less heartily than on the first occasion. Not that Fennel had the least tinge of niggardliness in his composition; but the room was far from large, spare chairs were not numerous, and damp companions were not altogether desirable at close quarters for the women and girls in their bright-coloured gowns.

  However, the second comer, after taking off his greatcoat, and hanging his hat on a nail in one of the ceiling-beams as if he had been specially invited to put it there, advanced and sat down at the table. This had been pushed so closely into the chimney-corner, to give all available room to the dancers, that its inner edge grazed the elbow of the man who had ensconced himself by the fire; and thus the two strangers were brought into close companionship. They nodded to each other by way of breaking the ice of unacquaintance, and the first stranger handed his neighbour the family mug – a huge vessel of brown ware, having its upper edge worn away like a threshold by the rub of whole generations of thirsty lips that had gone the way of all flesh, and bearing the following inscription burnt upon its rotund side in yellow letters: –

  THERE is NO FUN

  UNTiLL i CUM.

  The other man, nothing loth, raised the mug to his lips, and drank on, and on, and on – till a curious blueness overspread the countenance of the shepherd’s wife, who had regarded with no little surprise the first stranger’s free offer to the second of what did not belong to him to dispense.

  ‘I knew it!’ said the toper to the shepherd with much satisfaction. ‘When I walked up your garden before coming in, and saw the hives all of a row, I said to myself, “Where there’s bees there’s honey, and where there’s honey there’s mead.” But mead of such a truly comfortable sort as this I really didn’t expect to meet in my older days.’ He took yet another pull at the mug, till it assumed an ominous elevation.

  ‘Glad you enjoy it!’ said the shepherd warmly.

  ‘It is goodish mead,’ assented Mrs Fennel with an absence of enthusiasm, which seemed to say that it was possible to buy praise for one’s cellar at too heavy a price. ‘It is trouble enough to make – and really I hardly think we shall make any more. For honey sells well, and we ourselves can make shift with a drop o’ small mead and metheglin for common use from the comb-washings.’

  ‘Oh, but you’ll never have the heart!’ reproachfully cried the stranger in cinder-grey, after taking up the mug a third time and setting it down empty. ‘I love mead, when ’tis old like this, as I love to go to church o’ Sundays, or to relieve the needy any day of the week.’

  ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ said the man in the chimney-corner, who, in spite of the taciturnity induced by the pipe of tobacco, could not or would not refrain from this slight testimony to his comrade’s humour.

  Now the old mead of those days, brewed of the purest first-year or maiden honey, four pounds to the gallon – with its due complement of white of eggs, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, rosemary, yeast, and processes of working, bottling, and cellaring – tasted remarkably strong, but it did not taste so strong as it actually was. Hence, presently, the stranger in cinder-grey at the table, moved by its creeping influence, unbuttoned his waistcoat, threw himself back in his chair, spread his legs, and made his presence felt in various ways.

  ‘Well, well, as I say,’ he resumed, ‘I am going to Casterbridge, and to Casterbridge I must go. I should have been almost there by this time; but the rain drove me into your dwelling, and I’m not sorry for it.’

  ‘You don’t live in Casterbridge?’ said the shepherd.

  ‘Not as yet; though I shortly mean to move there.’

  ‘Going to set up in trade, perhaps?’

  ‘No, no,’ said the shepherd’s wife. ‘It is easy to see that the gentleman is rich, and don’t want to work at anything.’

  The cinder-grey stranger paused, as if to consider whether he would accept that definition of himself. He presently rejected it by answering, ‘Rich is not quite the word for me, dame. I do work, and I must work. And even if I only get to Casterbridge by midnight I must begin work there at eight tomorrow morning. Yes, het or wet, blow or snow, famine or sword, my day’s work tomorrow must be done.’

  ‘Poor man! Then, in spite o’ seeming, you be worse off than we?’ replied the shepherd’s wife.

  ‘’Tis the nature of my trade, men and maidens. ’Tis the nature of my trade more than my poverty … But really and truly I must up and off, or I shan’t get a lodging in the town.’ However, the speaker did not move, and directly added, ‘There’s time for one more draught of friendship before I go; and I’d perform it at once if the mug were not dry.’

  ‘Here’s a mug o’ small,’ said Mrs Fennel. ‘Small, we call it, though to be sure ’tis only the first wash o’ the combs.’

  ‘No,’ said the stranger disdainfully. ‘I won’t spoil your first kindness by partaking o’ your second.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ broke in Fennel. ‘We don’t increase and multiply every day, and I’ll fill the mug again.’ He went away to the dark place under the stairs where the barrel stood. The shepherdess followed him.

  ‘Why should you do this?’ she said reproachfully, as soon as they were alone. ‘He’s emptied it once, though it held enough for ten people; and now he’s not contented wi’ the small, but must needs call for more o’ the strong! And a stranger unbeknown to any of us. For my part, I don’t like the look o’ the man at all.’

  ‘But he’s in the house, my honey; and ’tis a wet night, and a christening. Daze it, what’s a cup of mead more or less? there’ll be plenty more next bee-burning.’

  ‘Very well – this time, then,’ she answered, looking wistfully at the barrel. ‘But what is the man’s calling, and where is he one of, that he should come in and join us like this?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll ask him again.’

  The catastrophe of having the mug drained dry at one pull by the stranger in cinder-grey was effectually guarded against this time by Mrs Fennel. She poured out his allowance in a small cup, keeping the large one at a discreet distance from him. When he had tossed off his portion the shepherd renewed his inquiry about the stranger’s occupation. />
  The latter did not immediately reply, and the man in the chimney-corner, with sudden demonstrativeness, said, ‘Anybody may know my trade – I’m a wheelwright.’

  ‘A very good trade for these parts,’ said the shepherd.

  ‘And anybody may know mine – if they’ve the sense to find it out,’ said the stranger in cinder-grey.

  ‘You may generally tell what a man is by his claws,’ observed the hedge-carpenter, looking at his own hands. ‘My fingers be as full of thorns as an old pin-cushion is of pins.’

  The hands of the man in the chimney-corner instinctively sought the shade, and he gazed into the fire as he resumed his pipe. The man at the table took up the hedge-carpenter’s remark, and added smartly, ‘True; but the oddity of my trade is that, instead of setting a mark upon me, it sets a mark upon my customers.’

  No observation being offered by anybody in elucidation of this enigma, the shepherd’s wife once more called for a song. The same obstacles presented themselves as at the former time – one had no voice, another had forgotten the first verse. The stranger at the table, whose soul had now risen to a good working temperature, relieved the difficulty by exclaiming that, to start the company, he would sing himself. Thrusting one thumb into the arm-hole of his waistcoat, he waved the other hand in the air, and, with an extemporizing gaze at the shining sheep-crooks above the mantelpiece, began: –

  Oh my trade it is the rarest one,

  Simple shepherds all –

  My trade is a sight to see;

  For my customers I tie, and take them up on high,

  And waft ’em to a far countree!

  The room was silent when he had finished the verse – with one exception, that of the man in the chimney-corner, who, at the singer’s word, ‘Chorus!’ joined him in a deep bass voice of musical relish –

  And waft ’em to a far countree!

  Oliver Giles, John Pitcher the dairyman, the parish-clerk, the engaged man of fifty, the row of young women against the wall, seemed lost in thought not of the gayest kind. The shepherd looked meditatively on the ground, the shepherdess gazed keenly at the singer, and with some suspicion; she was doubting whether this stranger were merely singing an old song from recollection, or was composing one there and then for the occasion. All were as perplexed at the obscure revelation as the guests at Belshazzar’s Feast, except the man in the chimney-corner, who quietly said, ‘Second verse, stranger,’ and smoked on.

  The singer thoroughly moistened himself from his lips inwards, and went on with the next stanza as requested: –

  My tools are but common ones,

  Simple shepherds all,

  My tools are no sight to see:

  A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing,

  Are implements enough for me!

  Shepherd Fennel glanced round. There was no longer any doubt that the stranger was answering his question rhythmically. The guests one and all started back with suppressed exclamations. The young woman engaged to the man of fifty fainted half-way, and would have proceeded, but finding him wanting in alacrity for catching her she sat down trembling.

  ‘Oh, he’s the ——!’ whispered the people in the background, mentioning the name of an ominous public officer. ‘He’s come to do it. ’Tis to be at Casterbridge jail tomorrow – the man for sheep-stealing – the poor clock-maker we heard of, who used to live away at Shottsford and had no work to do – Timothy Sommers, whose family were a-starving, and so he went out of Shottsford by the high-road, and took a sheep in open daylight, defying the farmer and the farmer’s wife and the farmer’s lad, and every man jack among ’em. He’ (and they nodded towards the stranger of the deadly trade) ‘is come from up the country to do it because there’s not enough to do in his own country-town, and he’s got the place here now our own county man’s dead; he’s going to live in the same cottage under the prison wall.’

  The stranger in cinder-grey took no notice of this whispered string of observations, but again wetted his lips. Seeing that his friend in the chimney-corner was the only one who reciprocated his joviality in any way, he held out his cup towards that appreciative comrade, who also held out his own. They clinked together, the eyes of the rest of the room hanging upon the singer’s actions. He parted his lips for the third verse; but at that moment another knock was audible upon the door. This time the knock was faint and hesitating.

  The company seemed scared; the shepherd looked with consternation towards the entrance, and it was with some effort that he resisted his alarmed wife’s deprecatory glance, and uttered for the third time the welcoming words, ‘Walk in!’

  The door was gently opened, and another man stood upon the mat. He, like those who had preceded him, was a stranger. This time it was a short, small personage, of fair complexion, and dressed in a decent suit of dark clothes.

  ‘Can you tell me the way to —— ?’ he began; when, gazing round the room to observe the nature of the company amongst whom he had fallen, his eyes lighted on the stranger in cinder-grey. It was just at the instant when the latter, who had thrown his mind into his song with such a will that he scarcely heeded the interruption, silenced all whispers and inquiries by bursting into his third verse: –

  Tomorrow is my working day,

  Simple shepherds all –

  Tomorrow is a working day for me:

  For the farmer’s sheep is slain, and the lad who did it ta’en,

  And on his soul may God ha’ merc-y!

  The stranger in the chimney-corner, waving cups with the singer so heartily that his mead splashed over on the hearth, repeated in his bass voice as before: –

  And on his soul may God ha’ merc-y!

  All this time the third stranger had been standing in the doorway. Finding now that he did not come forward or go on speaking, the guests particularly regarded him. They noticed to their surprise that he stood before them the picture of abject terror – his knees trembling, his hand shaking so violently that the door-latch by which he supported himself rattled audibly; his white lips were parted, and his eyes fixed on the merry officer of justice in the middle of the room. A moment more and he had turned, closed the door, and fled.

  ‘What a man can it be?’ said the shepherd.

  The rest, between the awfulness of their late discovery and the odd conduct of this third visitor, looked as if they knew not what to think, and said nothing. Instinctively they withdrew farther and farther from the grim gentleman in their midst, whom some of them seemed to take for the Prince of Darkness himself, till they formed a remote circle, an empty space of floor being left between them and him –

  … circulus, cujus centrum diabolus

  The room was so silent – though there were more than twenty people in it – that nothing could be heard but the patter of the rain against the window-shutters, accompanied by the occasional hiss of a stray drop that fell down the chimney into the fire, and the steady puffing of the man in the corner, who had now resumed his pipe of long clay.

  The stillness was unexpectedly broken. The distant sound of a gun reverberated through the air – apparently from the direction of the county-town.

  ‘Be jiggered!’ cried the stranger who had sung the song, jumping up.

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked several.

  ‘A prisoner escaped from the jail – that’s what it means.’

  All listened. The sound was repeated, and none of them spoke but the man in the chimney-corner, who said quietly, ‘I’ve often been told that in this county they fire a gun at such times; but I never heard it till now.’

  ‘I wonder if it is my man?’ murmured the personage in cinder-gray.

  ‘Surely it is!’ said the shepherd involuntarily. ‘And surely we’ve seen him! That little man who looked in at the door by now, and quivered like a leaf when he seed ye and heard your song!’

  ‘His teeth chattered, and the breath went out of his body,’ said the dairyman.

  ‘And his heart seemed to sink within him like a sto
ne,’ said Oliver Giles.

  ‘And he bolted as if he’d been shot at,’ said the hedge-carpenter.

  ‘True – his teeth chattered, and his heart seemed to sink; and he bolted as if he’s been shot at,’ slowly summed up the man in the chimney-corner.

  ‘I didn’t notice it,’ remarked the hangman.

  ‘We were all a-wondering what made him run off in such a fright,’ faltered one of the women against the wall, ‘and now ’tis explained.’

  The firing of the alarm-gun went on at intervals, low and sullenly, and their suspicions became a certainty. The sinister gentleman in cinder-grey roused himself. ‘Is there a constable here?’ he asked in thick tones. ‘If so, let him step forward.’

  The engaged man of fifty stepped quavering out of the corner, his betrothed beginning to sob on the back of the chair.

  ‘You are a sworn constable?’

  ‘I be, sir.’

  ‘Then pursue the criminal at once, with assistance, and bring him back here. He can’t have gone far.’

  ‘I will, sir, I will – when I’ve got my staff. I’ll go home and get it, and come sharp here, and start in a body.’

  ‘Staff! – never mind your staff; the man ’ll be gone!’

  ‘But I can’t do nothing without my staff – can I, William, and John, and Charles Jake? No; for there’s the king’s royal crown a painted on en in yaller and gold, and the lion and the unicorn, so as when I raise en up and hit my prisoner, ’tis made a lawful blow thereby. I wouldn’t ’tempt to take up a man without my staff – no, not I. If I hadn’t the law to gie me courage, why, instead o’ my taking up him he might take up me!’

  ‘Now, I’m a king’s man myself, and can give you authority enough for this,’ said the formidable officer in grey. ‘Now then, all of ye, be ready. Have ye any lanterns?’

  ‘Yes – have ye any lanterns? – I demand it!’ said the constable.

  ‘And the rest of you able-bodied—’

  ‘Able-bodied men – yes – the rest of ye!’ said the constable.