Elizabeth’s face, as soon as she recognized her friend, shaped itself into affectionate lines while yet beyond speaking distance.
“I suddenly thought I would come and meet you,” she said, smiling.
Lucetta’s reply was taken from her lips by an unexpected diversion.
A by-road on her right hand descended from the fields into the highway at the point where she stood, and down the track a bull was rambling uncertainly towards her and Elizabeth, who, facing the other way, did not observe him.
In the latter quarter of each year cattle were at once the mainstay and the terror of families about Casterbridge and its neighbourhood, where breeding was carried on with Abrahamic success.
The head of stock driven into and out of the town at this season to be sold by the local auctioneer was very large; and all these horned beasts, in travelling to and fro, sent women and children to shelter as nothing else could do.
In the main the animals would have walked along quietly enough; but the Casterbridge tradition was that to drive stock it was indispensable that hideous cries, coupled with Yahoo antics and gestures, should be used, large sticks flourished, stray dogs called in, and in general everything done that was likely to infuriate the viciously disposed and terrify the mild.
Nothing was commoner than for a house-holder on going out of his parlour to find his hall or passage full of little children, nursemaids, aged women, or a ladies’ school, who apologized for their presence by saying, “A bull passing down street from the sale.”
Lucetta and Elizabeth regarded the animal in doubt, he meanwhile drawing vaguely towards them.
It was a large specimen of the breed, in colour rich dun, though disfigured at present by splotches of mud about his seamy sides.
His horns were thick and tipped with brass; his two nostrils like the Thames Tunnel as seen in the perspective toys of yore.
Between them, through the gristle of his nose, was a stout copper ring, welded on, and irremovable as Gurth’s collar of brass.
To the ring was attached an ash staff about a yard long, which the bull with the motions of his head flung about like a flail.
It was not till they observed this dangling stick that the young women were really alarmed; for it revealed to them that the bull was an old one, too savage to be driven, which had in some way escaped, the staff being the means by which the drover controlled him and kept his horns at arms’ length.
They looked round for some shelter or hiding-place, and thought of the barn hard by.
As long as they had kept their eyes on the bull he had shown some deference in his manner of approach; but no sooner did they turn their backs to seek the barn than he tossed his head and decided to thoroughly terrify them.
This caused the two helpless girls to run wildly, whereupon the bull advanced in a deliberate charge.
The barn stood behind a green slimy pond, and it was closed save as to one of the usual pair of doors facing them, which had been propped open by a hurdle-stick, and for this opening they made.
The interior had been cleared by a recent bout of threshing except at one end, where there was a stack of dry clover.
Elizabeth-Jane took in the situation.
“We must climb up there,” she said.
But before they had even approached it they heard the bull scampering through the pond without, and in a second he dashed into the barn, knocking down the hurdle-stake in passing; the heavy door slammed behind him; and all three were imprisoned in the barn together.
The mistaken creature saw them, and stalked towards the end of the barn into which they had fled.
The girls doubled so adroitly that their pursuer was against the wall when the fugitives were already half way to the other end.
By the time that his length would allow him to turn and follow them thither they had crossed over; thus the pursuit went on, the hot air from his nostrils blowing over them like a sirocco, and not a moment being attainable by Elizabeth or Lucetta in which to open the door.
What might have happened had their situation continued cannot be said; but in a few moments a rattling of the door distracted their adversary’s attention, and a man appeared.
He ran forward towards the leading-staff, seized it, and wrenched the animal’s head as if he would snap it off.
The wrench was in reality so violent that the thick neck seemed to have lost its stiffness and to become half-paralyzed, whilst the nose dropped blood.
The premeditated human contrivance of the nose-ring was too cunning for impulsive brute force, and the creature flinched.
The man was seen in the partial gloom to be large-framed and unhesitating.
He led the bull to the door, and the light revealed Henchard.
He made the bull fast without, and re-entered to the succour of Lucetta; for he had not perceived Elizabeth, who had climbed on to the clover-heap.
Lucetta was hysterical, and Henchard took her in his arms and carried her to the door.
“You—have saved me!” she cried, as soon as she could speak.
“I have returned your kindness,” he responded tenderly. “You once saved me.”
“How—comes it to be you—you?” she asked, not heeding his reply.
“I came out here to look for you.
I have been wanting to tell you something these two or three days; but you have been away, and I could not.
Perhaps you cannot talk now?”
“Oh—no!
Where is Elizabeth?”
“Here am I!” cried the missing one cheerfully; and without waiting for the ladder to be placed she slid down the face of the clover-stack to the floor.
Henchard supporting Lucetta on one side, and Elizabeth-Jane on the other, they went slowly along the rising road.
They had reached the top and were descending again when Lucetta, now much recovered, recollected that she had dropped her muff in the barn.
“I’ll run back,” said Elizabeth-Jane. “I don’t mind it at all, as I am not tired as you are.”
She thereupon hastened down again to the barn, the others pursuing their way.
Elizabeth soon found the muff, such an article being by no means small at that time.
Coming out she paused to look for a moment at the bull, now rather to be pitied with his bleeding nose, having perhaps rather intended a practical joke than a murder. Henchard had secured him by jamming the staff into the hinge of the barn-door, and wedging it there with a stake.
At length she turned to hasten onward after her contemplation, when she saw a green-and-black gig approaching from the contrary direction, the vehicle being driven by Farfrae.
His presence here seemed to explain Lucetta’s walk that way.