Life's Little Ironies by Thomas Hardy (most popular novels of all time TXT) 📖

herself as a stranger among us, though she lived so long.’

* * * * *

‘Longpuddle has had her sad experiences as well as her sunny ones,’ said Mr. Lackland.

‘Yes, yes.  But I am thankful to say not many like that, though good and bad have lived among us.’

‘There was Georgy Crookhill—he was one of the shady sort, as I have reason to know,’ observed the registrar, with the manner of a man who would like to have his say also.

‘I used to hear what he was as a boy at school.’

‘Well, as he began so he went on.  It never got so far as a hanging matter with him, to be sure; but he had some narrow escapes of penal servitude; and once it was a case of the biter bit.’

INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF MR. GEORGE CROOKHILL

‘One day,’ the registrar continued, ‘Georgy was ambling out of Melchester on a miserable screw, the fair being just over, when he saw in front of him a fine-looking young farmer riding out of the town in the same direction.  He was mounted on a good strong handsome animal, worth fifty guineas if worth a crown.  When they were going up Bissett Hill, Georgy made it his business to overtake the young farmer.  They passed the time o’ day to one another; Georgy spoke of the state of the roads, and jogged alongside the well-mounted stranger in very friendly conversation.  The farmer had not been inclined to say much to Georgy at first, but by degrees he grew quite affable too—as friendly as Georgy was toward him.  He told Crookhill that he had been doing business at Melchester fair, and was going on as far as Shottsford-Forum that night, so as to reach Casterbridge market the next day.  When they came to Woodyates Inn they stopped to bait their horses, and agreed to drink together; with this they got more friendly than ever, and on they went again.  Before they had nearly reached Shottsford it came on to rain, and as they were now passing through the village of Trantridge, and it was quite dark, Georgy persuaded the young farmer to go no further that night; the rain would most likely give them a chill.  For his part he had heard that the little inn here was comfortable, and he meant to stay.  At last the young farmer agreed to put up there also; and they dismounted, and entered, and had a good supper together, and talked over their affairs like men who had known and proved each other a long time.  When it was the hour for retiring they went upstairs to a double-bedded room which Georgy Crookhill had asked the landlord to let them share, so sociable were they.

‘Before they fell asleep they talked across the room about one thing and another, running from this to that till the conversation turned upon disguises, and changing clothes for particular ends.  The farmer told Georgy that he had often heard tales of people doing it; but Crookhill professed to be very ignorant of all such tricks; and soon the young farmer sank into slumber.

‘Early in the morning, while the tall young farmer was still asleep (I tell the story as ’twas told me), honest Georgy crept out of his bed by stealth, and dressed himself in the farmer’s clothes, in the pockets of the said clothes being the farmer’s money.  Now though Georgy particularly wanted the farmer’s nice clothes and nice horse, owing to a little transaction at the fair which made it desirable that he should not be too easily recognized, his desires had their bounds: he did not wish to take his young friend’s money, at any rate more of it than was necessary for paying his bill.  This he abstracted, and leaving the farmer’s purse containing the rest on the bedroom table, went downstairs.  The inn folks had not particularly noticed the faces of their customers, and the one or two who were up at this hour had no thought but that Georgy was the farmer; so when he had paid the bill very liberally, and said he must be off, no objection was made to his getting the farmer’s horse saddled for himself; and he rode away upon it as if it were his own.

‘About half an hour after the young farmer awoke, and looking across the room saw that his friend Georgy had gone away in clothes which didn’t belong to him, and had kindly left for himself the seedy ones worn by Georgy.  At this he sat up in a deep thought for some time, instead of hastening to give an alarm.  “The money, the money is gone,” he said to himself, “and that’s bad.  But so are the clothes.”

‘He then looked upon the table and saw that the money, or most of it, had been left behind.

‘“Ha, ha, ha!” he cried, and began to dance about the room.  “Ha, ha, ha!” he said again, and made beautiful smiles to himself in the shaving glass and in the brass candlestick; and then swung about his arms for all the world as if he were going through the sword exercise.

‘When he had dressed himself in Georgy’s clothes and gone downstairs, he did not seem to mind at all that they took him for the other; and even when he saw that he had been left a bad horse for a good one, he was not inclined to cry out.  They told him his friend had paid the bill, at which he seemed much pleased, and without waiting for breakfast he mounted Georgy’s horse and rode away likewise, choosing the nearest by-lane in preference to the high-road, without knowing that Georgy had chosen that by-lane also.

‘He had not trotted more than two miles in the personal character of Georgy Crookhill when, suddenly rounding a bend that the lane made thereabout, he came upon a man struggling in the hands of two village constables.  It was his friend Georgy, the borrower of his clothes and horse.  But so far was the young farmer from showing any alacrity in rushing forward to claim his property that he would have turned the poor beast he rode into the wood adjoining, if he had not been already perceived.

‘“Help, help, help!” cried the constables.  “Assistance in the name of the Crown!”

‘The young farmer could do nothing but ride forward.  “What’s the matter?” he inquired, as coolly as he could.

‘“A deserter—a deserter!” said they.  “One who’s to be tried by court-martial and shot without parley.  He deserted from the Dragoons at Cheltenham some days ago, and was tracked; but the search-party can’t find him anywhere, and we told ’em if we met him we’d hand him on to ’em forthwith.  The day after he left the barracks the rascal met a respectable farmer and made him drunk at an inn, and told him what a fine soldier he would make, and coaxed him to change clothes, to see how well a military uniform would become him.  This the simple farmer did; when our deserter said that for a joke he would leave the room and go to the landlady, to see if she would know him in that dress.  He never came back, and Farmer Jollice found himself in soldier’s clothes, the money in his pockets gone, and, when he got to the stable, his horse gone too.”

‘“A scoundrel!” says the young man in Georgy’s clothes.  “And is this the wretched caitiff?” (pointing to Georgy).

‘“No, no!” cries Georgy, as innocent as a babe of this matter of the soldier’s desertion.  “He’s the man!  He was wearing Farmer Jollice’s suit o’ clothes, and he slept in the same room wi’ me, and brought up the subject of changing clothes, which put it into my head to dress myself in his suit before he was awake.  He’s got on mine!”

‘“D’ye hear the villain?” groans the tall young man to the constables.  “Trying to get out of his crime by charging the first innocent man with it that he sees!  No, master soldier—that won’t do!”

‘“No, no!  That won’t do!” the constables chimed in.  “To have the impudence to say such as that, when we caught him in the act almost!  But, thank God, we’ve got the handcuffs on him at last.”

‘“We have, thank God,” said the tall young man.  “Well, I must move on.  Good luck to ye with your prisoner!”  And off he went, as fast as his poor jade would carry him.

‘The constables then, with Georgy handcuffed between ’em, and leading the horse, marched off in the other direction, toward the village where they had been accosted by the escort of soldiers sent to bring the deserter back, Georgy groaning: “I shall be shot, I shall be shot!”  They had not gone more than a mile before they met them.

‘“Hoi, there!” says the head constable.

‘“Hoi, yerself!” says the corporal in charge.

‘“We’ve got your man,” says the constable.

‘“Where?” says the corporal.

‘“Here, between us,” said the constable.  “Only you don’t recognize him out o’ uniform.”

‘The corporal looked at Georgy hard enough; then shook his head and said he was not the absconder.

‘“But the absconder changed clothes with Farmer Jollice, and took his horse; and this man has ’em, d’ye see!”

‘“’Tis not our man,” said the soldiers.  “He’s a tall young fellow with a mole on his right cheek, and a military bearing, which this man decidedly has not.”

‘“I told the two officers of justice that ’twas the other!” pleaded Georgy.  “But they wouldn’t believe me.”

‘And so it became clear that the missing dragoon was the tall young farmer, and not Georgy Crookhill—a fact which Farmer Jollice himself corroborated when he arrived on the scene.  As Georgy had only robbed the robber, his sentence was comparatively light.  The deserter from the Dragoons was never traced: his double shift of clothing having been of the greatest advantage to him in getting off; though he left Georgy’s horse behind him a few miles ahead, having found the poor creature more hindrance than aid.’

* * * * *

The man from abroad seemed to be less interested in the questionable characters of Longpuddle and their strange adventures than in the ordinary inhabitants and the ordinary events, though his local fellow-travellers preferred the former as subjects of discussion.  He now for the first time asked concerning young persons of the opposite sex—or rather those who had been young when he left his native land.  His informants, adhering to their own opinion that the remarkable was better worth telling than the ordinary, would not allow him to dwell upon the simple chronicles of those who had merely come and gone.  They asked him if he remembered Netty Sargent.

‘Netty Sargent—I do, just remember her.  She was a young woman living with her uncle when I left, if my childish recollection may be trusted.’

‘That was the maid.  She was a oneyer, if you like, sir.  Not any harm in her, you know, but up to everything.  You ought to hear how she got the copyhold of her house extended.  Oughtn’t he, Mr. Day?’

‘He ought,’ replied the world-ignored old painter.

‘Tell him, Mr. Day.  Nobody can do it better than you, and you know the legal part better than some of us.’

Day apologized, and began:—

NETTY SARGENT’S COPYHOLD

‘She continued to live with her uncle, in the lonely house by the copse, just as at the time you knew her; a tall spry young woman.  Ah, how well one can remember her black hair and dancing eyes at that time, and her sly way of screwing up her mouth when she meant to tease ye!  Well, she was hardly out of short frocks before the chaps were after her, and by long and by late she was courted by a young man whom perhaps you did not know—Jasper Cliff was his name—and, though she might have had many a better fellow, he so greatly took her fancy that ’twas Jasper or nobody for her.  He was a