Hatfield

Hatfield is a quiet English village that becomes a temporary but deeply revealing refuge for the fugitive murderer Bill Sikes after he kills Nancy. It is here, in a small public-house and on the surrounding roads, that Sikes's psychological disintegration is laid bare and the impossibility of escape from his crime is made manifest. The village functions not as a sanctuary but as a stage for the murderer's unraveling, where the ordinary life of the community throws his monstrous isolation into stark relief.

Sikes's Arrival and the Public-House

It was nine o'clock at night when Sikes, quite tired out, and his dog, limping and lame from the unaccustomed exercise, turned down the hill by the church of the quiet village and plodded along the little street. He crept into a small public-house whose scanty light had guided them to the spot. There was a fire in the tap-room, and some country-labourers were drinking before it. They made room for the stranger, but he sat down in the furthest corner and ate and drank alone, or rather with his dog, to whom he cast a morsel of food from time to time. The conversation of the men assembled there turned upon the neighboring land and farmers, and when those topics were exhausted, upon the age of some old man who had been buried on the previous Sunday. There was nothing to attract attention or excite alarm in this. The robber, after paying his reckoning, sat silent and unnoticed in his corner and had almost dropped asleep.

The Mountebank and the Stain

Sikes was half wakened by the noisy entrance of a new comer, an antic fellow, half pedlar and half mountebank, who traveled about the country on foot to vend hones, strops, razors, washballs, harness-paste, medicine for dogs and horses, cheap perfumery, cosmetics, and such-like wares. His entrance was the signal for various homely jokes with the countrymen. The fellow produced one of his composition-cakes and proclaimed it the infallible and invaluable composition for removing all sorts of stain, rust, dirt, mildew, spick, speck, spot, or spatter from silk, satin, linen, cambric, cloth, crape, stuff, carpet, merino, muslin, bombazeen, or woollen stuff. He boasted that he could take a stain out of the hat of a gentleman in company before the gentleman could order him a pint of ale. Sikes started up and cried, "Give that back." The man, winking to the company, said he would take it clean out before Sikes could come across the room to get it, and began to enumerate the types of stain, concluding with "blood-stain." The man got no further, for Sikes, with a hideous imprecation, overthrew the table, tore the hat from him, and burst out of the house.

The Mail Coach and the News of the Murder

With the same perversity of feeling and irresolution that had fastened upon him despite himself all day, the murderer, finding that he was not followed and that they most probably considered him some drunken sullen fellow, turned back up the town. Getting out of the glare of the lamps of a stage-coach that was standing in the street, he was walking past when he recognized the mail from London and saw that it was standing at the little post-office. He almost knew what was to come, but he crossed over and listened. The guard was standing at the door, waiting for the letter-bag. A man dressed like a game-keeper came up at the moment, and the guard handed him a basket. The guard told the game-keeper there was nothing new up in town except corn being up a little, and added, "I heerd talk of a murder, too, down Spitalfields way, but I don't reckon much upon it." A gentleman inside the coach, looking out of the window, confirmed that it was quite true and a dreadful murder it was. When the guard asked whether it was a man or a woman, the gentleman replied, "A woman." Sikes remained standing in the street, apparently unmoved by what he had just heard and agitated by no stronger feeling than a doubt where to go. At length he went back again and took the road which leads from Hatfield to St. Albans.

The Road from Hatfield: Psychological Collapse

As Sikes left the town behind him and plunged into the solitude and darkness of the road, he felt a dread and awe creeping upon him which shook him to the core. Every object before him, substance or shadow, still or moving, took the semblance of some fearful thing. But these fears were nothing compared to the sense that haunted him of that morning's ghastly figure following at his heels. He could trace its shadow in the gloom, supply the smallest item of the outline, and note how stiff and solemn it seemed to stalk along. He could hear its garments rustling in the leaves, and every breath of wind came laden with that last low cry. If he stopped it did the same. If he ran, it followed—not running too: that would have been a relief—but like a corpse endowed with the mere machinery of life, and borne on one slow melancholy wind that never rose or fell. At times, he turned with desperate determination, resolved to beat this phantom off, though it should look him dead; but the hair rose on his head, and his blood stood still, for it had turned with him and was behind him then. He had kept it before him that morning, but it was behind now—always. He leaned his back against a bank, and felt that it stood above him, visibly out against the cold night-sky. He threw himself upon the road—on his back upon the road. At his head it stood, silent, erect, and still—a living grave-stone, with its epitaph in blood. The narrator declares that there were twenty score of violent deaths in one long minute of that agony of fear. Hatfield thus marks the threshold of Sikes's final, inescapable descent into the horror of his own conscience.