Ch. 5: Enter A Dragoon - Page 2

together.
From their words any casual listener might have gathered information of
what had occurred.

The woodman who lived nearest the site of the story told most of the
tale. Selina, the daughter of the Paddocks opposite, had been surprised
that afternoon by receiving a letter from her once intended husband, then
a corporal, but now a sergeant-major of dragoons, whom she had hitherto
supposed to be one of the slain in the Battle of the Alma two or three
years before.

'She picked up wi'en against her father's wish, as we know, and before he
got his stripes,' their informant continued. 'Not but that the man was
as hearty a feller as you'd meet this side o' London. But Jacob, you
see, wished her to do better, and one can understand it. However, she
was determined to stick to him at that time; and for what happened she
was not much to blame, so near as they were to matrimony when the war
broke out and spoiled all.'

'Even the very pig had been killed for the wedding,' said a woman, 'and
the barrel o' beer ordered in. O, the man meant honourable enough. But
to be off in two days to fight in a foreign country--'twas natural of her
father to say they should wait till he got back.'

'And he never came,' murmured one in the shade.

'The war ended but her man never turned up again. She was not sure he
was killed, but was too proud, or too timid, to go and hunt for him.'

'One reason why her father forgave her when he found out how matters
stood was, as he said plain at the time, that he liked the man, and could
see that he meant to act straight. So the old folks made the best of
what they couldn't mend, and kept her there with 'em, when some wouldn't.
Time has proved seemingly that he did mean to act straight, now that he
has writ to her that he's coming. She'd have stuck to him all through
the time, 'tis my belief; if t'other hadn't come along.'

'At the time of the courtship,' resumed the woodman, 'the regiment was
quartered in Casterbridge Barracks, and he and she got acquainted by his
calling to buy a penn'orth of rathe-ripes off that tree yonder in her
father's orchard--though 'twas said he seed her over hedge as well as the
apples. He declared 'twas a kind of apple he much fancied; and he called
for a penn'orth every day till the tree was cleared. It ended in his
calling for her.'

"Twas a thousand pities they didn't jine up at once and ha' done wi' it.

'Well; better late than never, if so be he'll have her now. But, Lord,
she'd that faith in 'en that she'd no more belief that he was alive, when
a' didn't come, than that the undermost man in our churchyard was alive.
She'd never have thought of another but for that--O no!'

"Tis awkward, altogether, for her now.'