ON CASTERBRIDGE HIGHWAY
FOR a considerable time the woman walked on. Hersteps became feebler, and she strained her eyes to lookafar upon the naked road, now indistinct amid thepenumbrae of night. At length her onward walkdwindled to the merest totter, and she opened a gatewithin which was a haystack. Underneath this she satdown and presently slept.When the woman awoke it was to find herself in thedepths of a moonless and starless night. A heavy un-broken crust of cloud stretched across the sky, shuttingout every speck of heaven; and a distant halo whichhung over the town of Casterbridge was visible againstthe black concave, the luminosity appearing thebrighter by its great contrast with the circumscribingdarkness. Towards this weak, soft glow the womanturned her eyes.If I could only get there! she said. Meet himthe day after to-morrow: God help me! Perhaps Ishall be in my grave before then.A manor-house clock from the far depths of shadowstruck the hour, one, in a small, attenuated tone. Aftermidnight the voice of a clock seems to lose in breadthas much as in length, and to diminish its sonorousnessto a thin falsetto.Afterwards a light -- two lights -- arose from the re-mote shade, and grew larger. A carriage rolled alongthe road, and passed the gate. It probably containedsome late diners-out. The beams from one lamp shonefor a moment upon the crouching woman, and threwher face into vivid relieff. The face was young in thegroundwork, old in the finish; the general contourswere flexuous and childlike, but the finer lineamentshad begun to be sharp and thin.The pedestrian stood up, apparently with reviveddetermination, and looked around. The road appearedto be familiar to her, and she carefully scanned the fenceas she slowly walked along. Presently there becamevisible 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 pursuedher way. For a slight distance she bore up bravely,afterwards flagging as before. This was beside a lonecopsewood, wherein heaps of white chips strewn uponthe leafy ground showed that woodmen had beenfaggoting and making hurdles during the day. Nowthere was not a rustle, not a breeze, not the faintestclash of twigs to keep her company. The womanlooked over the gate, opened it, and went in. Closeto 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 tensestillness which signifies itself to be not the end butmerely the suspension, of a previous motion. Herattitude was that of a person who listens, either to theexternal world of sound, or to the imagined discourse ofthought. A close criticism might have detected signsproving that she was intent on the latter alternative.Moreover, as was shown by what followed, she wasoddly exercising the faculty of invention upon the spe-ciality of the clever Jacquet Droz, the designer of auto-matic substitutes for human limbs.By the aid of the Casterbridge aurora, and by feelingwith her hands, the woman selected two sticks from theheaps. These sticks were nearly straight to the heightof three or four feet, where each branched into a forklike the letter Y. She sat down, snapped off the smallupper twigs, and carried the remainder with her intothe road. She placed one of these forks under eacharm as a crutch, tested them, timidly threw her wholeweight upon them -- so little that it was -- and swungherself forward. The girl had made for herself amaterial aid.The crutches answered well. The pat of her feet,and the tap of her sticks upon the highway, were all thesounds that came from the traveller now. She hadpassed the last milestone by a good long distance, andbegan to look wistfully towards the bank as if calculatingupon another milestone soon. The crutches, thoughso very useful, had their limits of power. Mechanismonly transfers labour, being powerless to supersede it,and the original amount of exertion was not clearedaway; it was thrown into the body and arms. She wasexhausted, and each swing forward became fainter. Atlast she swayed sideways, and fell.Here she lay, a shapeless heap, for ten minutes andmore. The morning wind began to boom dully overthe flats, and to move afresh dead leaves which hadlain still since yesterday. The woman desperatelyturned round upon her knees, and next rose to herfeet. Steadying herself by the help of one crutch, sheessayed a step, then another, then a third, using thecrutches now as walking-sticks only. Thus she pro-gressed till descending Mellstock Hill another milestoneappeared, and soon the beginning of an iron-railed fencecame 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 behoped for, if not expected soon. She listened. Therewas not a sound of life save that acme and sublimationof all dismal sounds, the hark of a fox, its three hollownotes being rendered at intervals of a minute with theprecision of a funeral bell.Less than a mile! the woman murmured. No;more. she added, after a pause. The mile is to thecounty hall, and my resting-place is on the other sideCasterbridge. A little over a mile, and there I am!After an interval she again spoke. Five or six steps toa yard -- six perhaps. I have to go seventeen hundredyards. A hundred times six, six hundred. Seventeentimes that. O pity me, Lord!Holding to the rails, she advanced, thrusting onehand forward upon the rail, then the other, then leaningover it whilst she dragged her feet on beneath.This woman was not given to soliloquy; but ex-tremity of feeling lessens the individuality of the weak,as it increases that of the strong. She said again in thesame tone, I'll believe that the end lies five posts for-ward, and no further, and so get strength to pass them.This was a practical application of the principle thata half-feigned and fictitious faith is better than no faithat all.She passed five posts and held on to the fifth.I'll pass five more by believing my longed-for spotis 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. shesaid, when the bridge over the Froom was in view.She crawled to the bridge. During the effort eachbreath of the woman went into the air as if never toreturn again.Now for the truth of the matter. she said, sittingdown. The truth is, that I have less than half a mile.Self-beguilement with what she had known all the timeto be false had given her strength to come over halfa mile that she would have been powerless to face inthe lump. The artifice showed that the woman, bysome mysterious intuition, had grasped the paradoxicaltruth that blindness may operate more vigorously thanprescience, and the short-sighted effect more than thefar-seeing; that limitation, and not comprehensiveness,is needed for striking a blow.The half-mile stood now before the sick and wearywoman like a stolid Juggernaut. It was an impassiveKing of her world. The road here ran across DurnoverMoor, open to the road on either side. She surveyedthe wide space, the lights, herself, sighed, and lay downagainst a guard-stone of the bridge.Never was ingenuity exercised so sorely as thetraveller here exercised hers. Every conceivable aid,method, stratagem, mechanism, by which these lastdesperate eight hundred yards could be overpassed by ahuman being unperceived, was revolved in her busybrain, and dismissed as impracticable. She thought ofsticks, wheels, crawling -- she even thought of rolling.But the exertion demanded by either of these latter twowas greater than to walk erect. The faculty of con-trivance was worn out, Hopelessness had come atlast.No further! she whispered, and closed her eyes.From the stripe of shadow on the opposite side ofthe bridge a portion of shade seemed to detach itselfand move into isolation upon the pale white of the road.It glided noiselessly towards the recumbent woman.She became conscious of something touching herhand; it was softness and it was warmth. Sheopened her eye's, and the substance touched her face.A dog was licking her cheek.He was huge, heavy, and quiet creature, standingdarkly against the low horizon, and at least two feethigher than the present position of her eyes. WhetherNewfoundland, mastiff, bloodhound, or what not, it wasimpossible to say. He seemed to be of too strange andmysterious a nature to belong to any variety among thoseof popular nomenclature. Being thus assignable to nobreed, 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 itsstealthy and cruel side, was personified in this formDarkness endows the small and ordinary ones amongmankind with poetical power, and even the sufferingwoman threw her idea into figure.In her reclining position she looked up to him justas in earlier times she had, when standing, looked upto a man. The animal, who was as homeless as she,respectfully withdrew a step or two when the womanmoved, and, seeing that she did not repulse him, helicked her hand again.A thought moved within her like lightning. PerhapsI can make use of him -- I might do it then!She pointed in the direction of Casterbridge, andthe 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 effortand invention was reached when, with a quickened breath-ing, she rose to a stooping posture, and, resting her twolittle arms upon the shoulders of the dog, leant firmlythereon, and murmured stimulating words. Whilst shesorrowed in her heart she cheered with her voice, andwhat was stranger than that the strong should needencouragement from the weak was that cheerfulnessshould be so well stimulated by such utter dejection.Her friend moved forward slowly, and she with smallmincing steps moved forward beside him, half herweight being thrown upon the animal. Sometimesshe sank as she had sunk from walking erect, fromthe crutches, from the rails. The dog, who nowthoroughly understood her desire and her incapacity,was frantic in his distress on these occasions; he wouldtug at her dress and run forward. She always calledhim back, and it was now to be observed that thewoman listened for human sounds only to avoid them.It was evident that she had an object in keeping herpresence on the road and her forlorn state unknown.Their progress was necessarily very slow. Theyreached the bottom of the town, and the Casterbridgelamps lay before them like fallen Pleiads as they turnedto the left into the dense shade of a deserted avenue ofchestnuts, and so skirted the borough. Thus the townwas passed, and the goal was reached.On this much-desired spot outside the town rose apicturesque building. Originally it had been a merecase to hold people. The shell had been so thin, sodevoid of excrescence, and so closely drawn over theaccommodation granted, that the grim character ofwhat was beneath showed through it, as the shape ofa body is visible under a winding-sheet.Then Nature, as if offended, lent a hand. Massesof ivy grew up, completely covering the walls, till theplace looked like an abbey; and it was discovered thatthe view from the front, over the Casterbridge chimneys,was one of the most magnificent in the county. Aneighbouring earl once said that he would give up ayear's rental to have at his own door the view enjoyedby the inmates from theirs -- and very probably theinmates would have given up the view for his year'srental.This stone edifice consisted of a central mass andtwo wings, whereon stood as sentinels a few slimchimneys, now gurgling sorrowfully to the slow wind.In the wall was a gate, and by the gate a bellpullformed of a hanging wire. The woman raised herselfas high as possible upon her knees, and could justreach the handle. She moved it and fell forwards ina bowed attitude, her face upon her bosom.It was getting on towards six o'clock, and sounds ofmovement were to be heard inside the building whichwas the haven of rest to this wearied soul. A little doorby the large one was opened, and a man appeared inside.He discerned the panting heap of clothes, went backfor a light, and came again. He entered a secondtime, and returned with two women.These lifted the prostrate figure and assisted her inthrough 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 overcometraveller. Where is he gone? He helped me.I stoned him away. said the man.The little procession then moved forward -- the manin front bearing the light, the two bony women next,supporting between them the small and supple one.Thus they entered the house and disappeared.
CHAPTER XLI