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6 The blood turns
At half past twelve on Saturday Gertrude Lodge walked up the hill to the jail.
She went there by the small back streets, because there were so many people in the town.
They were there for a holiday, to watch the hanging.
At one o’clock she was inside the jail.
The hangman took her to a long dark room with a table.
‘Wait there,’ he told her. ‘Two or three minutes, no more.’
He went away, and Gertrude waited.
She had a veil over her face, and her left arm was uncovered, ready.
She stood still, with her eyes closed, listening, and shivering with terror.
Soon she heard noises, and could hear heavy feet on the stairs.
The heavy feet came nearer, and four men came into the room with a long box.
It was open, and in it was the body of a young man, with a cover over his face.
The men put the box down on the table.
‘Now!’ said a voice in Gertrude's ear. ‘Now!’
But the young woman was half-dead with terror, and at first she could not move.
Then she opened her eyes and came up to the table.
She could hear other noises outside the room. There were more people coming.
Davies the hangman was by her side.
He uncovered the body's face, took Gertrude's hand, and put her arm across the dead man's neck.
Gertrude screamed. And at once there was a second scream.
A woman's scream, but not Gertrude's. Gertrude turned round.
Behind her stood Rhoda Brook, her face pale, and her eyes red with crying.
Behind Rhoda stood Gertrude's husband.
He looked old and sad, but there were no tears in his eyes.
‘You! What in God's name are you doing here?’ he whispered angrily.
‘Oh, cruel, cruel woman!’ cried Rhoda. ‘Why do you come between us and our child now?
‘This is the true meaning of my dream! You are like that cruel phantom at last!’
When Gertrude saw her husband with Rhoda, she knew at once that the dead young man was Rhoda's son.
She stared at Rhoda, with terror in her eyes.
Then Rhoda ran to Gertrude, closed her hand round the younger woman's arm, and pulled her away from the table.
When she let go of the arm, the young wife fell down, at her husband's feet.
She never opened her eyes again.
They carried her out of the jail into the town, but she never got home alive.
Perhaps it was the ‘turning of the blood’,
perhaps it was her withered arm,
perhaps it was her terror in the jail when she turned and saw Rhoda behind her.
Doctors came and looked at her,
but they could do nothing to help her, and three days later she died.
In those days the unhappy parents of a hanged man came and took the body away after the hanging.
That was why Farmer Lodge was at the jail with Rhoda that day.
It was not his first visit to the jail.
With Rhoda, he went many times to visit his son that summer,
and that was why he was away from the farm so often.
But after his young wife died, nobody ever saw Farmer Lodge in Casterbridge again.
He went home to his farm, but he did not stay there long.
After a short time he sold the farm and the farmhouse, and all the cows and sheep and horses.
Then he went away to live in a small town by the sea.
He lived very quietly, without any friends or family near him.
When he died two years later, he left a lot of money.
Most of it went to a home for poor boys, but there was money for Rhoda Brook too.
For some time nobody could find Rhoda.
Then one day she came back to her old house near the dairy.
But she never took a penny of Farmer Lodge's money.
She went back to work in the dairy, and worked there for many long years,
milking the cows in the morning, and again in the evening.
Her dark hair turned white, and her sad pale face looked thin and old.
Most people knew Rhoda's story, and sometimes they watched her at milking time.
What did she think about, all those long days, at morning and evening milking?
But nobody ever asked her, and nobody ever knew the answer.
