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CHAPTER XL - ON CASTERBRIDGE HIGHWAY
FOR a considerable time the woman walked on. Her steps
became feebler, and she strained her eyes to look afar upon
the naked road, now indistinct amid the penumbrae of night.
At length her onward walk dwindled to the merest totter, and
she opened a gate within which was a haystack. Underneath
this she sat down and presently slept.
When the woman awoke it was to find herself in the depths of
a moonless and starless night. A heavy unbroken crust of
cloud stretched across the sky, shutting out every speck of
heaven; and a distant halo which hung over the town of
Casterbridge was visible against the black concave, the
luminosity appearing the brighter by its great contrast with
the circumscribing darkness. Towards this weak, soft glow
the woman turned her eyes.
"If I could only get there!" she said. "Meet him the day
after to-morrow: God help me! Perhaps I shall be in my
grave before then."
A manor-house clock from the far depths of shadow struck the
hour, one, in a small, attenuated tone. After midnight the
voice of a clock seems to lose in breadth as much as in
length, and to diminish its sonorousness to a thin falsetto.
Afterwards a light -- two lights -- arose from the remote
shade, and grew larger. A carriage rolled along the toad,
and passed the gate. It probably contained some late
diners-out. The beams from one lamp shone for a moment upon
the crouching woman, and threw her face into vivid relief.
The face was young in the groundwork, old in the finish; the
general contours were flexuous and childlike, but the finer
lineaments had begun to be sharp and thin.
The pedestrian stood up, apparently with revived
determination, and looked around. The road appeared to be
familiar to her, and she carefully scanned the fence as she
slowly walked along. Presently there became visible a dim
white shape; it was another milestone. She drew her fingers
across its face to feel the marks.
"Two more!" she said.
She leant against the stone as a means of rest for a short
interval, then bestirred herself, and again pursued her way.
For a slight distance she bore up bravely, afterwards
flagging as before. This was beside a lone copsewood,
wherein heaps of white chips strewn upon the leafy ground
showed that woodmen had been faggoting and making hurdles
during the day. Now there was not a rustle, not a breeze,
not the faintest clash of twigs to keep her company. The
woman looked over the gate, opened it, and went in. Close
to the entrance stood a row of faggots, bound and un-bound,
together with stakes of all sizes.
For a few seconds the wayfarer stood with that tense
stillness which signifies itself to be not the end but
merely the suspension, of a previous motion. Her attitude
was that of a person who listens, either to the external
world of sound, or to the imagined discourse of thought. A
close criticism might have detected signs proving that she
was intent on the latter alternative. Moreover, as was
shown by what followed, she was oddly exercising the faculty
of invention upon the speciality of the clever Jacquet Droz,
the designer of automatic substitutes for human limbs.
By the aid of the Casterbridge aurora, and by feeling with
her hands, the woman selected two sticks from the heaps.
These sticks were nearly straight to the height of three or
four feet, where each branched into a fork like the letter
Y. She sat down, snapped off the small upper twigs, and
carried the remainder with her into the road. She placed
one of these forks under each arm as a crutch, tested them,
timidly threw her whole weight upon them -- so little that
it was -- and swung herself forward. The girl had made for
herself a material aid.
The crutches answered well. The pat of her feet, and the
tap of her sticks upon the highway, were all the sounds that
came from the traveller now. She had passed the last
milestone by a good long distance, and began to look
wistfully towards the bank as if calculating upon another
milestone soon. The crutches, though so very useful, had
their limits of power. Mechanism only transfers labour,
being powerless to supersede it, and the original amount of
exertion was not cleared away; it was thrown into the body
and arms. She was exhausted, and each swing forward became
fainter. At last she swayed sideways, and fell.
Here she lay, a shapeless heap, for ten minutes and more.
The morning wind began to boom dully over the flats, and to
move afresh dead leaves which had lain still since
yesterday. The woman desperately turned round upon her
knees, and next rose to her feet. Steadying herself by the
help of one crutch, she essayed a step, then another, then a
third, using the crutches now as walking-sticks only. Thus
she progressed till descending Mellstock Hill another
milestone appeared, and soon the beginning of an iron-railed
fence came into view. She staggered across to the first
post, clung to it, and looked around.
The Casterbridge lights were now individually visible, It
was getting towards morning, and vehicles might be hoped
for, if not expected soon. She listened. There was not a
sound of life save that acme and sublimation of all dismal
sounds, the bark of a fox, its three hollow notes being
rendered at intervals of a minute with the precision of a
funeral bell.
"Less than a mile!" the woman murmured. "No; more," she
added, after a pause. "The mile is to the county hall, and
my resting-place is on the other side Casterbridge. A
little over a mile, and there I am!" After an interval she
again spoke. "Five or six steps to a yard -- six perhaps.
I have to go seventeen hundred yards. A hundred times six,
six hundred. Seventeen times that. O pity me, Lord!"
Holding to the rails, she advanced, thrusting one hand
forward upon the rail, then the other, then leaning over it
whilst she dragged her feet on beneath.
This woman was not given to soliloquy; but extremity of
feeling lessens the individuality of the weak, as it
increases that of the strong. She said again in the same
tone, "I'll believe that the end lies five posts forward,
and no further, and so get strength to pass them."
This was a practical application of the principle that a
half-feigned and fictitious faith is better than no faith at
all.
She passed five posts and held on to the fifth.
"I'll pass five more by believing my longed-for spot is at
the next fifth. I can do it."
She passed five more.
"It lies only five further."
She passed five more.
"But it is five further."
She passed them.
"That stone bridge is the end of my journey," she said, when
the bridge over the Froom was in view.
She crawled to the bridge. During the effort each breath of
the woman went into the air as if never to return again.
"Now for the truth of the matter," she said, sitting down.
"The truth is, that I have less than half a mile." Self-
beguilement with what she had known all the time to be false
had given her strength to come over half a mile that she
would have been powerless to face in the lump. The artifice
showed that the woman, by some mysterious intuition, had
grasped the paradoxical truth that blindness may operate
more vigorously than prescience, and the short-sighted
effect more than the far-seeing; that limitation, and not
comprehensiveness, is needed for striking a blow.
The half-mile stood now before the sick and weary woman like
a stolid Juggernaut. It was an impassive King of her world.
The road here ran across Durnover Moor, open to the road on
either side. She surveyed the wide space, the lights,
herself, sighed, and lay down against a guard-stone of the
bridge.
Never was ingenuity exercised so sorely as the traveller
here exercised hers. Every conceivable aid, method,
stratagem, mechanism, by which these last desperate eight
hundred yards could be overpassed by a human being
unperceived, was revolved in her busy brain, and dismissed
as impracticable. She thought of sticks, wheels, crawling --
she even thought of rolling. But the exertion demanded by
either of these latter two was greater than to walk erect.
The faculty of contrivance was worn out, Hopelessness had
come at last.
"No further!" she whispered, and closed her eyes.
From the stripe of shadow on the opposite side of the bridge
a portion of shade seemed to detach itself and move into
isolation upon the pale white of the road. It glided
noiselessly towards the recumbent woman.
She became conscious of something touching her hand; it was
softness and it was warmth. She opened her eye's, and the
substance touched her face. A dog was licking her cheek.
He was a huge, heavy, and quiet creature, standing darkly
against the low horizon, and at least two feet higher than
the present position of her eyes. Whether Newfoundland,
mastiff, bloodhound, or what not, it was impossible to say.
He seemed to be of too strange and mysterious a nature to
belong to any variety among those of popular nomenclature.
Being thus assignable to no breed, he was the ideal
embodiment of canine greatness -- a generalization from what
was common to all. Night, in its sad, solemn, and
benevolent aspect, apart from its stealthy and cruel side,
was personified in this form. Darkness endows the small and
ordinary ones among mankind with poetical power, and even
the suffering woman threw her idea into figure.
In her reclining position she looked up to him just as in
earlier times she had, when standing, looked up to a man.
The animal, who was as homeless as she, respectfully
withdrew a step or two when the woman moved, and, seeing
that she did not repulse him, he licked her hand again.
A thought moved within her like lightning. "Perhaps I can
make use of him -- I might do it then!"
She pointed in the direction of Casterbridge, and the dog
seemed to misunderstand: he trotted on. Then, finding she
could not follow, he came back and whined.
The ultimate and saddest singularity of woman's effort and
invention was reached when, with a quickened breathing, she
rose to a stooping posture, and, resting her two little arms
upon the shoulders of the dog, leant firmly thereon, and
murmured stimulating words. Whilst she sorrowed in her
heart she cheered with her voice, and what was stranger than
that the strong should need encouragement from the weak was
that cheerfulness should be so well stimulated by such utter
dejection. Her friend moved forward slowly, and she with
small mincing steps moved forward beside him, half her
weight being thrown upon the animal. Sometimes she sank as
she had sunk from walking erect, from the crutches, from the
rails. The dog, who now thoroughly understood her desire
and her incapacity, was frantic in his distress on these
occasions; he would tug at her dress and run forward. She
always called him back, and it was now to be observed that
the woman listened for human sounds only to avoid them. It
was evident that she had an object in keeping her presence
on the road and her forlorn state unknown.
Their progress was necessarily very slow. They reached the
bottom of the town, and the Casterbridge lamps lay before
them like fallen Pleiads as they turned to the left into the
dense shade of a deserted avenue of chestnuts, and so
skirted the borough. Thus the town was passed, and the goal
was reached.
On this much-desired spot outside the town rose a
picturesque building. Originally it had been a mere case to
hold people. The shell had been so thin, so devoid of
excrescence, and so closely drawn over the accommodation
granted, that the grim character of what was beneath showed
through it, as the shape of a body is visible under a
winding-sheet.
Then Nature, as if offended, lent a hand. Masses of ivy
grew up, completely covering the walls, till the place
looked like an abbey; and it was discovered that the view
from the front, over the Casterbridge chimneys, was one of
the most magnificent in the county. A neighbouring earl
once said that he would give up a year's rental to have at
his own door the view enjoyed by the inmates from theirs --
and very probably the inmates would have given up the view
for his year's rental.
This stone edifice consisted of a central mass and two
wings, whereon stood as sentinels a few slim chimneys, now
gurgling sorrowfully to the slow wind. In the wall was a
gate, and by the gate a bellpull formed of a hanging wire.
The woman raised herself as high as possible upon her knees,
and could just reach the handle. She moved it and fell
forwards in a bowed attitude, her face upon her bosom.
It was getting on towards six o'clock, and sounds of
movement were to be heard inside the building which was the
haven of rest to this wearied soul. A little door by the
large one was opened, and a man appeared inside. He
discerned the panting heap of clothes, went back for a
light, and came again. He entered a second time, and
returned with two women.
These lifted the prostrate figure and assisted her in
through the doorway. The man then closed the door.
How did she get here?" said one of the women.
"The Lord knows," said the other.
"There is a dog outside," murmured the overcome traveller.
"Where is he gone? He helped me."
"I stoned him away," said the man.
The little procession then moved forward -- the man in front
bearing the light, the two bony women next, supporting
between them the small and supple one. Thus they entered
the house and disappeared.
Content of CHAPTER XL - ON CASTERBRIDGE HIGHWAY [Thomas Hardy's novel: Far From The Madding Crowd]
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Read next: CHAPTER XLI - SUSPICION -- FANNY IS SENT FOR
Read previous: CHAPTER XXXIX - COMING HOME -- A CRY
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