NOW THE group outside the window had within the last few minutes been reinforced
by new arrivals, some of them respectable shopkeepers and their assistants, who had
come out for a whiff of air after putting up the shutters for the night; some of them of a
lower class. Distinct from either there appeared a stranger- a young man of remarkably
pleasant aspect- who carried in his hand a carpet-bag of the smart floral patterns
prevalent in such articles at that time.
He was fair and ruddy, bright-eyed, and slight in build. He might possibly have passed
by without stopping at all, or at most for half a minute to glance in at the scene, had not
his advent coincided with the discussion on corn and bread; in which event this history
had never been enacted. But the subject seemed to arrest him, and he whispered some
inquiries of the other bystanders, and remained listening.
When he heard Henchard's closing words, "It can't be done," he smiled impulsively,
drew out his pocketbook, and wrote down a few words by the aid of the light in the
window. He tore out the leaf, folded and directed it, and seemed about to throw it in
through the open sash upon the dining-table; but, on second thoughts, edged himself
through the loiterers, till he reached the door of the hotel, where one of the waiters who
had been serving inside was now idly leaning against the door-post.
"Give this to the Mayor at once," he said, handing in his hasty note.
Elizabeth-Jane had seen his movements and heard the words, which attracted her both
by their subject and by their accent- a strange one for those parts. It was quaint and
northerly.
The waiter took the note, while the young stranger continued"And can ye tell me of a
respectable hotel that's a little, more moderate than this?" The waiter glanced
indifferently up and down the street.
"They say the Three Mariners, just below here, is a very good place," he languidly
answered; "but I have never stayed there myself." The Scotchman, as he seemed to be,
thanked him, and strolled on in the direction of the Three Mariners aforesaid,
apparently more concerned about the question of an inn than about the fate of his note,
now that the momentary impulse of writing it was over. While he was disappearing
slowly down the street the waiter left the door, and Elizabeth-Jane saw with some
interest the note brought into the dining-room and handed to the Mayor.
Henchard looked at it carelessly, unfolded it with one hand, and glanced it through.
Thereupon it was curious to note an unexpected effect. The nettled, clouded aspect
which had held possession of his face since the subject of his corndealings had been
broached, changed itself into one of arrested attention. He read the note slowly, and fell
into thought, not moody, but fitfully intense, as that of a man who has been captured
by an idea.
By this time toasts and speeches had given place to songs, the wheat subject being quite
forgotten. Men were putting their heads together in twos and threes, telling good
stories, with pantomimic laughter which reached convulsive grimace. Some were beginning to look as if they did not know how they had come there, what
they had come for, or how they were going to get home again; and provisionally sat on
with a dazed smile. Square-built men showed a tendency to become hunchbacks; men
with a dignified presence lost it in a curious obliquity of figure, in which their features
grew disarranged and one-sided; whilst the heads of a few who had dined with
extreme thoroughness were somehow sinking into their shoulders, the corners of their
mouth and eyes being bent upwards by the subsidence. Only Henchard did not
conform to these flexuous changes; he remained stately and vertical, silently thinking.
The clock struck nine. Elizabeth-Jane turned to her companion. "The evening is
drawing on, mother," she said. "What do you propose to do?" She was surprised to
find how irresolute her mother had become. "We must get a place to lie down in," she
murmured. "I have seen- Mr. Henchard; and that's all I wanted do." "That's enough for
tonight, at any rate," Elizabeth-Jane replied soothingly.
"We can think tomorrow what is best to do about him. The question now is- is it not?-
how shall we find a lodging?" As her mother did not reply, Elizabeth-Jane's mind
reverted to the words of the waiter, that the Three Mariners was an inn of moderate
charges. A recommendation good for one person was probably good for another. "Let's
go where the young man has gone to," she said. "He is respectable. What do you say?"
Her mother assented, and down the street they went.
In the meantime the Mayor's thoughtfulness, engendered by the note as stated,
continued to hold him in abstraction; till, whispering to his neighbour to take his place,
he found opportunity to leave the chair. This was just after the departure of his wife
and Elizabeth.
Outside the door of the assembly-room he saw the waiter, and beckoning to him, asked
who brought the note which had been handed in a quarter of an hour before.
"A young man, sir- a sort of traveller. He was a Scotchman seemingly." "Did he say
how he had got it?" "He wrote it himself, sir, as he stood outside the window." "Oh-
wrote it himself.... Is the young man in the hotel?" "No, sir. He went to the Three
Mariners, I believe." The Mayor walked up and down the vestibule of the hotel with
his hands under his coat tails, as if he were merely seeking a cooler atmosphere than
that of the room he had quitted. But there could be no doubt that he was in reality still
possessed to the full by the new idea, whatever that might be. At length he went back
to the door of the dining-room, paused, and found that the songs, toasts, and
conversation were proceeding quite satisfactorily without his presence. The
Corporation, private residents, and major and minor tradesmen had, in fact gone in for
comforting beverages to such an extent, that they had quite forgotten, not only the
Mayor, but all those vast political, religious, and social differences which they felt
necessary to maintain in the daytime, and which separated them like iron grills. Seeing
this, the Mayor took his hat, and when the waiter had helped him on with a thin
holland overcoat, went out and stood under the portico.
Very few persons were now in the street; and his eyes, by a sort of attraction, turned
and dwelt upon a spot about a hundred yards further down. It was the house to which
the writer of the note had gone- the Three Mariners- whose two prominent gables, bow-window, and passage-light could be seen from where he stood. Having kept his
eyes on it for a while, he strolled in that direction.
This ancient house of accommodation for man and beast, now, unfortunately, pulled
down, was built of mellow sandstone, with mullioned windows of the same material,
markedly out of perpendicular from the settlement of foundations.
The bay window projecting into the street, whose interior was so popular among the
frequenters of the inn, was closed with shutters, in each of which appeared a heart-
shaped aperture, somewhat more attenuated in the right and left ventricles than is seen
in Nature. Inside these illuminated holes, at a distance of about three inches, were
ranged at this hour, as every passer knew, the ruddy polls of Billy Wills the glazier,
Smart the shoemaker, Buzzford the general dealer, and others of a secondary set of
worthies, of a grade somewhat below that of the diners at the King's Arms, each with
his yard of clay.
A four-centered Tudor arch was over the entrance, and over the arch the signboard,
now visible in the rays of an opposite lamp. Hereon the Mariners, who had been
represented by the artist as persons of two dimensions only- in other words, flat as a
shadow- were standing in a row in paralyzed attitudes. Being on the sunny side of the
street, the three comrades had suffered largely from warping, splitting, fading, and
shrinkage, so that they were but a half-invisible film upon the reality of the grain, and
knots, and nails, which composed the signboard. As a matter of fact, this state of things
was not so much owing to Stannidge the landlord's neglect, as from the lack of a
painter in Casterbridge who would undertake to reproduce the features of men so
traditional.
A long, narrow, dimly-lit passage gave access to the inn, within which passage the
horses going to their stalls at the back, and the coming and departing human guests,
rubbed shoulders indiscriminately, the latter running no slight risk of having their toes
trodden upon by the animals. The good stabling and the good ale of the Mariners,
though somewhat difficult to reach on account of there being but this narrow way to
both, were nevertheless perseveringly sought out by the sagacious old heads who knew
what was what in Casterbridge.
Henchard stood without the inn for a few instants; then lowering the dignity of his
presence as much as possible by buttoning the brown-holland coat over his shirt-front,
and in other ways toning himself down to his ordinary everyday appearance, he
entered the inn door. ELIZABETH-JANE and her mother had arrived some twenty minutes earlier.
Outside the house they had stood and considered whether even this homely place,
though recommended as moderate, might not be too serious in its prices for their light
pockets. Finally, however, they had found courage to enter, and duly met Stannidge,
the landlord; a silent man, who drew and carried frothing measures to this room and to
that, shoulder to shoulder with his waiting-maids- a stately slowness, however,
entering into his ministrations by contrast with theirs, as became one whose service was
somewhat optional. It would have been altogether optional but for the orders of the
landlady, a person who sat in the bar, corporeally motionless, but with a flitting eye
and quick ear, with which she observed and heard through the open door and
hatchway the pressing needs of customers whom her husband overlooked though close
at hand. Elizabeth and her mother were passively accepted as sojourners, and shown to
a small bedroom under one of the gables, where they sat down.
The principle of the inn seemed to be to compensate for the antique awkwardness,
crookedness, and obscurity of the passages, floors, and windows, by quantities of clean
linen spread about everywhere, and this had a dazzling effect upon the travellers.
"'Tis too good for us- we can't meet it!" said the elder woman, looking round the
apartment with misgiving as soon as they were left alone.
"I fear it is, too," said Elizabeth. "But we must be respectable." "We must pay our way
even before we must be respectable," replied her mother. "Mr. Henchard is too high for
us to make ourselves known to him, I much fear; so we've only our own pockets to
depend on." "I know what I'll do," said Elizabeth-Jane, after an interval of waiting,
during which their needs seemed quite forgotten under the press of business below.
And leaving the rooms, she descended the stairs and penetrated to the bar.
If there was one good thing more than another which characterized this singlehearted
girl, it was a willingness to sacrifice her personal comfort and dignity to the common
weal.
"As you seem busy here tonight, and mother's not well off, might I take out part of our
accommodation by helping?" she asked of the landlady.
The latter, who remained as fixed in the arm-chair as if she had been melted into it
when in a liquid state, and could not now be unstuck, looked the girl up and down
inquiringly, with her hands on the chair-arms. Such arrangements as the one Elizabeth
proposed were not uncommon in country villages; but, though Casterbridge was old-
fashioned, the custom was well-nigh obsolete here. The mistress of the house, however,
was an easy woman to strangers, and she made no objection. Thereupon Elizabeth,
being instructed by nods and motions from the taciturn landlord as to where she could
find the different things, trotted up and down stairs with materials for her own and her
parent's meal.
While she was doing this, the wood partition in the centre of the house thrilled to its
centre with the tugging of a bell-pull upstairs. A bell below tinkled a note that was
feebler in sound than the twanging of wires and cranks that had produced it. "'Tis the Scotch gentleman," said the landlady omnisciently; and turning her eyes to
Elizabeth, "Now then, can you go and see if his supper is on the tray? If it is, you can
take it up to him. The front room over this." Elizabeth-Jane, though hungry, willingly
postponed serving herself awhile, and applied to the cook in the kitchen, whence she
brought forth the tray of supper viands, and proceeded with it upstairs to the
apartment indicated. The accommodation of the Three Mariners was far from spacious,
despite the fair area of ground it covered. The room demanded by intrusive beams and
rafters, partitions, passages, staircases, disused ovens, settles, and four-posters, left
comparatively small quarters for human beings. Moreover, this being at a time before
homebrewing was abandoned by the smaller victuallers, and a house in which the
twelve-bushel strength was still religiously adhered to by the landlord in his ale, the
quality of the liquor was the chief attraction of the premises, so that everything had to
make way for utensils and operations in connection therewith. Thus Elizabeth found
that the Scotchman was located in a room quite close to the small one that had been
allotted to herself and her mother.
When she entered, nobody was present but the young man himself- the same whom
she had seen lingering without the windows of the King's Arms Hotel. He was now
idly reading a copy of the local paper, and was hardly conscious of her entry, so that
she looked at him quite coolly, and saw how his forehead shone where the light caught
it, and how nicely his hair was cut, and the sort of velvetpile or down that was on the
skin at the back of his neck, and how his cheek was so truly curved as to be part of a
globe, and how clearly drawn were the lids and lashes which hid his bent eyes.
She set down the tray, spread his supper, and went away without a word. On her
arrival below, the landlady, who was as kind as she was fat and lazy, saw that
Elizabeth-Jane was rather tired, though in her earnestness to be useful she was waiving
her own needs altogether. Mrs. Stannidge thereupon said, with a considerate
peremptoriness, that she and her mother had better take their own supper if they meant
to have any.
Elizabeth fetched their simple provisions, as she had fetched the Scotchman's, and went
up to the little chamber where she had left her mother, noiselessly pushing open the
door with the edge of the tray. To her surprise her mother, instead of being reclined on
the bed where she had left her, was in an erect position, with lips parted. At Elizabeth's
entry she lifted her finger.
The meaning of this was soon apparent. The room allotted to the two women had at
one time served as a dressing-room to the Scotchman's chamber, as was evidenced by
signs of a door of communication between them- now screwed up, and pasted over
with the wall paper. But, as is frequently the case with hotels of far higher pretensions
than the Three Mariners, every word spoken in either of these rooms was distinctly
audible in the other. Such sounds came through now.
Thus silently conjured, Elizabeth deposited the tray, and her mother whispered as she
drew near, "'Tis he." "Who?" said the girl.
The tremors in Susan Henchard's tone might have led any person, but one so perfectly
unsuspicious of the truth as the girl was, to surmise some closer connection than the
admitted simple kinship, as a means of accounting for them.Two men were indeed talking in the adjoining chamber, the young Scotchman and
Henchard, who, having entered the inn while Elizabeth-Jane was in the kitchen waiting
for the supper, had been deferentially conducted upstairs by host Stannidge himself.
The girl noiselessly laid out their little meal, and beckoned to her mother to join her,
which Mrs. Henchard mechanically did, her attention being fixed on the conversation
through the door.
"I merely strolled in on my way home to ask you a question about something that has
excited my curiosity," said the Mayor, with careless geniality. "But I see you have not
finished supper." "Ay, but I will be done in a little! Ye needn't go, sir. Take a seat. I've
almost done, and it makes no difference at all." Henchard seemed to take the seat
offered, and in a moment he resumed: "Well, first I should ask, did you write this?" A
rustling of paper followed.
"Yes, I did," said the Scotchman.
"Then," said Henchard, "I am under the impression that we have met by accident
while waiting for the morning to keep an appointment with each other? My name is
Henchard; ha'n't you replied to an advertisement for a corn-factor's manager that I put
into the paper- ha'n't you come here to see me about it?" "No," said the Scotchman,
with some surprise.
"Surely you are the man," went on Henchard insistingly, "who arranged to come and
see me? Joshua, Joshua, Jipp- Jopp- what was his name?" "You're wrong!" said the
young man. "My name is Donald Farfrae. It is true I am in the corren trade- but I have
replied to no advairrtisement and arranged to see no one. I am on my way to Bristol-
from there to the other side of the warrld, to try my fortune in the great wheat-growing
districts of the West! I have some inventions useful to the trade, and there is no scope
for developing them heere." "To America- well, well," said Henchard, in a tone of
disappointment, so strong as to make itself felt like a damp atmosphere. "And yet I
could have sworn you were the man!" The Scotchman murmured another negative,
and there was a silence, till Henchard resumed: "Then I am truly and sincerely obliged
to you for the few words you wrote on that paper." "It was nothing, sir."
"Well, it has a great importance for me just now. This row about my grown wheat,
which I declare to Heaven I didn't know to be bad till the people came complaining,
has put me to my wit's end. I've some hundreds of quarters of it on hand; and if your
renovating process will make it wholesome, why, you can see what a quag 'twould get
me out of. I saw in a moment there might be truth in it.
But I should like to have it proved; and of course you don't care to tell the steps of the
process sufficiently for me to do that, without my paying ye well for't first." The young
man reflected a moment or two. "I don't know that I have any objection," he said. "I'm
going to another country, and curing bad corn is not the line I'll take up there. Yes, I'll
tell ye the whole of it- you'll make more out of it here than I will in a foreign country.
Just look heere a minute, sir. I can show ye by a sample in my carpet-bag." The click of
a lock followed, and there was a sifting and rustling; then a discussion about so many
ounces to the bushel, and drying, and refrigerating, and so on.
"These few grains will be sufficient to show ye with," came in the young fellow's voice;
and after a pause, during which some operations seemed to be intently watched bythem both, he exclaimed, "There, now, do you taste that." "It's complete!- quite
restored, or- well- nearly." "Quite enough restored to make good seconds out of it,"
said the Scotchman.
"To fetch it back entirely- is impossible; Nature won't stand so much as that, but heere
you go a great way towards it. Well, sir, that's the process; I don't value it, for it can be
but of little use in countries where the weather is more settled than in ours; and I'll be
only too glad if it's of service to you." "But hearken to me," pleaded Henchard. "My
business, you know, is in corn and in hay; but I was brought up as a hay-trusser
simply, and hay is what I understand best, though I now do more in corn than in the
other. If you'll accept the place, you shall manage the corn branch entirely, and receive
a commission in addition to salary." "You're liberal- very liberal; but no, no- I cannet!"
the young man still replied, with some distress in his accents.
"So be it!" said Henchard conclusively. "Now- to change the subject- one good turn
deserves another; don't stay to finish that miserable supper. Come to my house; I can
find something better for ye than cold ham and ale." Donald Farfrae was grateful- said
he feared he must decline- that he wished to leave early next day.
"Very well" said Henchard quickly, "please yourself. But I tell you, young man, if this
holds good for the bulk, as it has done for the sample, you have saved my credit,
stranger though you be. What shall I pay you for this knowledge?" "Nothing at all,
nothing at all. It may not prove necessary to ye to use it often, and I don't value it at all.
I thought I might just as well let ye know, as you were in a difficulty, and they were
harrd upon ye."
Henchard paused. "I shan't soon forget this," he said. "And from a stranger!...
I couldn't believe you were not the man I had engaged! Says I to myself, 'He knows
who I am, and recommends himself by this stroke.' And yet it turns out, after all, that
you are not the man who answered my advertisement, but a stranger!" "Ay, ay; that's
so," said the young man.
Henchard again suspended his words, and then his voice came thoughtfully: "Your
forehead, Farfrae, is something like my poor brother's- now dead and gone; and the
nose, too, isn't unlike his. You must be, what-five foot nine, I reckon? I am six foot one
and a half out of my shoes. But what of that? In my business, 'tis true that strength and
bustle build up a firm. But judgment and knowledge are what keep it established.
Unluckily, I am bad at science, Farfrae; bad at figures- a rule o' thumb sort of man. You
are just the reverse- I can see that. I have been looking for such as you these two year,
and yet you are not for me. Well, before I go, let me ask this: Though you are not the
young man I thought you were, what's the difference? Can't ye stay just the same?
Have you really made up your mind about this American notion? I won't mince
matters. I feel you would be invaluable to me- that needn't be said- and if you will bide
and be my manager, I will make it worth your while." "My plans are fixed," said the
young man, in negative tones. "I have formed a scheme, and so we need na say any
more about it. But will you not drink with me, sir? I find this Casterbridge ale
warreming to the stomach." "No, no; I fain would, but I can't," said Henchard gravely,
the scraping of his chair informing the listeners that he was rising to leave. "When I
was a young man I went in for that sort of thing too strong- far too strong- and was well-nigh ruined by it! I did a deed on account of it which I shall be ashamed of to my
dying day. It made such an impression on me that I swore, there and then, that I'd
drink nothing stronger than tea for as many years as I was old that day. I have kept my
oath; and though, Farfrae, I am sometimes that dry in the dog days that I could drink a
quarter-barrel to the pitching, I think o' my oath, and touch no strong drink at all." "I'll
no' press ye, sir- I'll no' press ye. I respect your vow." "Well, I shall get a manager
somewhere, no doubt," said Henchard, with strong feeling in his tones. "But it will be
long before I see one that would suit me so well!" The young man appeared much
moved by Henchard's warm convictions of his value. He was silent till they reached
the door. "I wish I could stay- sincerely I would like to," he replied. "But no- it cannet
be! it cannet! I want to see the warrld." THUS THEY parted; and Elizabeth-Jane and her mother remained each in her thoughts
over their meal, the mother's face being strangely bright since Henchard's avowal of
shame for a past action. The quivering of the partition to its core presently denoted that
Donald Farfrae had again rung his bell, no doubt to have his supper removed; for
humming a tune, and walking up and down, he seemed to be attracted by the lively
bursts of conversation and melody from the general company below. He sauntered out
upon the landing, and descended the staircase.
When Elizabeth-Jane had carried down his supper tray, and also that used by her
mother and herself, she found the bustle of serving to be at its height below, as it
always was at this hour. The young woman shrank from having anything to do with
the ground-floor serving, and crept silently about observing the scene- so new to her,
fresh from the seclusion of a seaside cottage. In the general sittingroom, which was
large, she remarked the two or three dozen strong-backed chairs that stood round
against the wall, each fitted with its genial occupant; the sanded floor; the black settle
which, projecting endwise from the wall within the door, permitted Elizabeth to be a
spectator of all that went on, without herself being particularly seen.
The young Scotchman had just joined the guests. These, in addition to the respectable
master-tradesmen occupying the seats of privilege in the bow-window and its
neighbourhood, included an inferior set at the unlighted end, whose seats were mere
benches against the wall, and who drank from cups instead of from glasses. Among the
latter she noticed some of those personages who had stood outside the windows of the
King's Arms.
Behind their backs was a small window, with a wheel ventilator in one of the panes,
which would suddenly start off spinning with a jingling sound, as suddenly stop, and
as suddenly start again.
While thus furtively making her survey, the opening words of a song greeted her ears
from behind the settle, in a melody and accent of peculiar charm. There had been some
singing before she came down; and now the Scotchman had made himself so soon at
home that, at the request of some of the master-tradesmen, he, too, was favouring the
room with a ditty.
Elizabeth-Jane was fond of music; she could not help pausing to listen; and the longer
she listened the more she was enraptured. She had never heard any singing like this;
and it was evident that the majority of the audience had not heard such frequently, for
they were attentive to a much greater degree than usual.
They neither whispered, nor drank, nor dipped their pipe-stems in their ale to moisten
them, nor pushed the mug to their neighbours.
The singer himself grew emotional, till she could imagine a tear in his eye as the words
went on:"It's hame, and it's hame, hame fain would I be, Oh hame, hame, hame to my
ain countree! There's an eye that ever weeps, and a fair face will be fain, As I pass
through Annan Water with my bonnie bands again; When the flower is in the bud, and
the leaf upon the tree, The lark shall sing me hame to my ain countree!"There was a burst of applause, and a deep silence which was even more eloquent than
the applause. It was of such a kind that the snapping of a pipe-stem too long for him by
old Solomon Longways, who was one of those gathered at the shady end of the room,
seemed a harsh and irreverent act. Then the ventilator in the window-pane
spasmodically started off for a new spin, and the pathos of Donald's song was
temporarily effaced.
"'Twas not amiss- not at all amiss!" muttered Christopher Coney, who was also
present. And removing his pipe a finger's breadth from his lips, he said aloud, "Draw
on with the next verse, young gentleman, please." "Yes. Let's have it again, stranger,"
said the glazier, a stout, bucket-headed man, with a white apron rolled up round his
waist. "Folks don't lift up their hearts like that in this part of the world." And turning
aside, he said in undertones, "Who is the young man- Scotch, d'ye say?" "Yes, straight
from the mountains of Scotland, I believe," replied Coney.
Young Farfrae repeated the last verse. It was plain that nothing so pathetic had been
heard at the Three Mariners for a considerable time. The difference of accent, the
excitability of the singer, the intense local feeling, and the seriousness with which he
worked himself up to a climax, surprised this set of worthies, who were only too prone
to shut up their emotions with caustic words.
"Danged if our country down here is worth singing about like that!" continued the
glazier, as the Scotchman again melodized with a dying fall, "My ain countree!" "When
you take away from among us the fools and the rogues, and the lammigers, and the
wanton hussies, and the slatterns, and such like, there's cust few left to ornament a
song with in Casterbridge, or the country round." "True," said Buzzford, the dealer,
looking at the grain of the table. "Casterbridge is a old, hoary place o' wickedness, by
all account. 'Tis recorded in history that we rebelled against the King one or two
hundred years ago, in the time of the Romans, and that lots of us was hanged on
Gallows Hill, and quartered, and our different jints sent about the country like
butcher's meat; and for my part I can well believe it." "What did ye come away from
yer own country for, young maister, if ye be so wownded about it?" inquired
Christopher Coney, from the background, with the tone of a man who preferred the
original subject. "Faith, it wasn't worth your while on our account, for, as Maister Billy
Wills says, we be bruckle folk herethe best o' us hardly honest sometimes, what with
hard winters, and so many mouths to fill, and God a'mighty sending his little taties so
terrible small to fill 'em with. We don't think about flowers and fair faces, not we-
except in the shape o' cauliflowers and pigs' chaps." "But, no!" said Donald Farfrae,
gazing round into their faces with earnest concern; "the best of ye hardly honest- not
that surely? None of ye has been stealing what didn't belong to him?" "Lord! no, no!"
said Solomon Longways, smiling grimly. "That's only his random way o' speaking. 'A
was always such a man of under-thoughts." (And reprovingly towards Christopher):
"Don't ye be so over-familiar with a gentleman that ye know nothing of- and that's
travelled a'most from the North Pole." Christopher Coney was silenced, and as he
could get no public sympathy, he mumbled his feelings to himself: "Be dazed, if I loved
my country half as well as the young feller do, I'd live by claning my neighbour's
pigsties afore I'd go away! For my part I've no more love for my country than I have forBotany Bay!" "Come," said Longways; "let the young man draw onward with his
ballet, or we shall be here all night." "That's all of it," said the singer apologetically.
"Soul of my body, then we'll have another!" said the general dealer.
"Can you turn a strain to the ladies, sir?" inquired a fat woman with a figured purple
apron, the waist-string of which was overhung so far by her sides as to be invisible.
"Let him breathe- let him breathe, Mother Cuxsom. He hain't got his second wind yet,"
said the master glazier.
"Oh yes, but I have!" exclaimed the young man; and he at once rendered "O Nannie"
with faultless modulations, and another or two of the like sentiment, winding up at
their earnest request with "Auld Lang Syne." By this time he had completely taken
possession of the hearts of the Three Mariners' inmates, including even old Coney.
Notwithstanding an occasional odd gravity which awoke their sense of the ludicrous
for the moment, they began to view him through a golden haze- which the tone of his
mind seemed to raise around him. Casterbridge had sentiment- Casterbridge had
romance; but this stranger's sentiment was of differing quality. Or rather, perhaps, the
difference was mainly superficial; he was to them like the poet of a new school who
takes his contemporaries by storm; who is not really new, but is the first to articulate
what all his listeners have felt, though but dumbly till then.
The silent landlord came and leant over the settle while the young man sang; and even
Mrs. Stannidge managed to unstick herself from the framework of her chair in the bar,
and get as far as the door-post, which movement she accomplished by rolling herself
round, as a cask is trundled on the chine by a drayman without losing the
perpendicular.
"And are you going to bide in Casterbridge, sir?" she asked.
"Ah- no!" said the Scotchman, with melancholy fatality in his voice, "I'm only passing
thirrough! I am on my way to Bristol, and on frae there to foreign parts." "We be truly
sorry to hear it," said Solomon Longways. "We can ill afford to lose tuneful wynd-
pipes like yours when they fall among us. And verily, to mak' acquaintance with a man
a come from so far, from the land o' perpetual snow, as we may say, where wolves and
wild boars and other dangerous animalcules be as common as blackbirds hereabout-
why, 'tis a thing we can't do every day; and there's good sound information for bide-
at-homes like we when such a man opens his mouth." "Nay, but ye mistake my
country," said the young man, looking round upon them with tragic fixity, till his eye
lighted up and his cheek kindled with a sudden enthusiasm to right their errors. "There
are not perpetual snow and wolves at all in it!- except snow in winter, and- well- a little
in summer just sometimes, and a 'gaberlunzie' or two stalking about here and there, if
ye may call them dangerous.
Eh, but you should take a summer jarreny to Edinboro' and Arthur's Seat, and all
round there, and then go on to the lochs, and all the Highland scenery- in May and
June- and you would never say 'tis the land of wolves and perpetual snow?" "Of
course not- it stands to reason," said Buzzford. "'Tis barren ignorance that leads to such
words. He's a simple home-spun man, that never was fit for good company- think
nothing of him, sir.""And do ye carry your flock bed, and your quilt, and your crock, and your bit of
chiney? or do ye go in bare bones, as I may say?" inquired Christopher Coney.
"I've sent on my luggage- though it isn't much; for the voyage is long." Donald's eyes
dropped into a remote gaze as he added: "But I said to myself, 'Never a one of the
prizes of life will I come by unless I undertake it!' and I decided to go." A general sense
of regret, in which Elizabeth-Jane shared not least, made itself apparent in the
company. As she looked at Farfrae from the back of the settle, she decided that his
statements showed him to be no less thoughtful than his fascinating melodies revealed
him to be cordial and impassioned. She admired the serious light which in he looked at
serious things. He had seen no jest in ambiguities and roguery, as the Casterbridge
toss-pots had done; and rightly not- there was none. She disliked those wretched
humours of Christopher Coney and his tribe; and he did not appreciate them. He
seemed to feel exactly as she felt about life and its surroundings- that they were a
tragical, rather than a comical, thing; that though one could be gay on occasion,
moments of gaiety were interludes, and no part of the actual drama. It was
extraordinary how similar their views were.
Though it was still early, the young Scotchman expressed his wish to retire, whereupon
the landlady whispered to Elizabeth to run upstairs and turn down his bed. She took a
candlestick and proceeded on her missions, which was the act of a few moments only.
When, candle in hand, she reached the top of the stairs on her way down again, Mr.
Farfrae was at the foot coming up. She could not very well retreat; they met and passed
in the turn of the staircase.
She must have appeared interesting in some way- notwithstanding her plain dress- or
rather, possibly, in consequence of it, for she was a girl characterized by earnestness
and soberness of mien, with which simple drapery accorded well. Her face flushed,
too, at the slight awkwardness of the meeting and she passed him with her eyes bent on
the candle-flame that she carried just below her nose. Thus it happened that when
confronting her he smiled; and then, with the manner of a temporarily light-hearted
man, who has started himself on a flight of song whose momentum he cannot readily
check, he softly tuned an old ditty that she seemed to suggest"As I come in by my
bower door, As day was waxin' wearie, Oh wha came tripping down the stair But
bonnie Peg my dearie."
Elizabeth-Jane, rather disconcerted, hastened on; and the Scotchman's voice died away,
humming more of the same within the closed door of his room.
Here the scene and sentiment ended for the present. When, soon after, the girl rejoined
her mother, the latter was still in thought- on quite another matter than a young man's
song.
"We've made a mistake," she whispered (that the Scotchman might not overhear). "On
no account ought ye to have helped serve here tonight. Not because of ourselves, but
for the sake of him. If he should befriend us, and take us up, and then find out what
you did when staying here, 'twould grieve and wound his natural pride as Mayor of
the town." Elizabeth, who would perhaps have been more alarmed at this than her
mother had she known the real relationship, was not much disturbed about it as things
stood. Her "he" was another man than her poor mother's. "For myself," she said, " didn't at all mind waiting a little upon him. He's so respectable, and educated- far
above the rest of 'em in the inn. They thought him very simple not to know their grim
broad way of talking about themselves here. But of course he didn't know- he was too
refined in his mind to know such things!" Thus she earnestly pleaded.
Meanwhile, the "he" of her mother was not so far away as even they thought.
After leaving the Three Mariners he had sauntered up and down the empty High
Street, passing and repassing the inn in his promenade. When the Scotchman sang, his
voice had reached Henchard's ears through the heart-shaped holes in the window-
shutters, and had led him to pause outside them a long while.
"To be sure, to be sure, how that fellow does draw me!" he had said to himself. "I
suppose 'tis because I'm so lonely. I'd have given him a third share in the business to
have stayed!" WHEN ELIZABETH-JANE opened the hinged casement next morning, the mellow air
brought in the feel of imminent autumn almost as distinctly as if she had been in the
remotest hamlet. Casterbridge was the complement of the rural life around; not its
urban opposite. Bees and butterflies in the corn-fields at the top of the town, who
desired to get to the meads at the bottom, took no circuitous course, but flew straight
down High Street without any apparent consciousness that they were traversing
strange latitudes. And in autumn airy spheres of thistledown floated into the same
street, lodged upon the shop fronts, blew into drains; and innumerable tawny and
yellow leaves skimmed along the pavement, and stole through people's doorways into
their passages, with a hesitating scratch on the floor, like the skirts of timid visitors.
Hearing voices, one of which was close at hand, she withdrew her head, and glanced
from behind the window-curtains. Mr. Henchard- now habited no longer as a great
personage, but as a thriving man of business- was pausing on his way up the middle of
the street, and the Scotchman was looking from the window adjoining her own.
Henchard, it appeared, had gone a little way past the inn before he had noticed his
acquaintance of the previous evening. He came back a few steps, Donald Farfrae
opening the window further.
"And you are off soon, I suppose?" said Henchard upwards.
"Yes- almost this moment, sir," said the other. "Maybe I'll walk on till the coach makes
up on me." "Which way?" "The way ye are going." "Then shall we walk together to the
top o' town?" "If ye'll wait a minute," said the Scotchman.
In a few minutes the latter emerged, bag in hand. Henchard looked at the bag as at an
enemy. It showed there was no mistake about the young man's departure.
"Ah, my lad," he said, "you should have been a wise man, and have stayed with me."
"Yes, yes- it might have been wiser," said Donald, looking microscopically at the
houses that were furthest off. "It is only telling ye the truth when I say my plans are
vague." They had by this time passed on from the precincts of the inn, and
ElizabethJane heard no more. She saw that they continued in conversation, Henchard
turning to the other occasionally, and emphasizing some remark with a gesture. Thus
they passed the King's Arms Hotel, the Market House, the churchyard wall, ascending
to the upper end of the long street till they were small as two grains of corn; when they
bent suddenly to the right into the Bristol Road, and were out of view.
"He was a good man- and he's gone," she said to herself. I was nothing to him, and
there was no reason why he should have wished me good-bye." The simple thought,
with its latent sense of slight, had moulded itself out of the following little fact: When
the Scotchman came out at the door he had by accident glanced up at her; and then he
had looked away again without nodding, or smiling, or saying a word.
"You are still thinking, mother," she said, when she turned inwards.
"Yes; I am thinking of Mr. Henchard's sudden liking for that young man. He was
always so. Now, surely, if he takes so warmly to people who are not related to him at
all, may he not take as warmly to his own kin?" While they debated this question aprocession of five large waggons went past, laden with hay up to the bedroom
windows. They came in from the country, and the steaming horses had probably been
travelling a great part of the night. To the shaft of each hung a little board, on which
was painted in white letters, "Henchard, corn-factor and hay-merchant." The spectacle
renewed his wife's conviction that, for her daughter's sake, she should strain a point to
rejoin him.
The discussion was continued during breakfast, and the end of it was that Mrs.
Henchard decided, for good or ill, to send Elizabeth-Jane with a message to Henchard,
to the effect that his relative Susan, a sailor's widow, was in the town; leaving it to him
to say whether or not he would recognize her. What had brought her to this
determination were chiefly two things. He had been described as a lonely widower;
and he had expressed shame for a past transaction of his life.
There was promise in both.
"If he says no," she enjoined, as Elizabeth-Jane stood, bonnet on, ready to depart; "if he
thinks it does not become the good position he has reached to in the town, to own- to
let us call on him as- his distant kinsfolk, say, 'Then, sir, we would rather not intrude;
we will leave Casterbridge as quietly as we have come, and go back to our own
country.'... I almost feel that I would rather he did say so, as I have not seen him for so
many years, and we are so- little allied to him!" "And if he say yes?" inquired the more
sanguine one.
"In that case," answered Mrs. Henchard cautiously, "ask him to write me a note, saying
when and how he will see us- or me." Elizabeth-Jane went a few steps towards the
landing. "And tell him," continued her mother, "that I fully know I have no claim upon
him- that I am glad to find he is thriving; that I hope his life may be long and happy-
there, go." Thus with a half-hearted willingness, a smothered reluctance, did the poor
forgiving woman start her unconscious daughter on this errand.
It was about ten o'clock, and market-day, when Elizabeth paced up the High Street, in
no great hurry; for to herself her position was only that of a poor relation deputed to
hunt up a rich one. The front doors of the private houses were mostly left open at this
warm autumn time, no thought of umbrella stealers disturbing the minds of the placid
burgesses. Hence, through the long, straight, entrance passages thus unclosed could be
seen, as through tunnels, the mossy gardens at the back, glowing with nasturtiums,
fuchsias, scarlet geraniums, "bloody warriors," snapdragons, and dahlias, this floral
blaze being backed by crusted grey stone-work remaining from a yet remoter
Casterbridge than the venerable one visible in the street. The old-fashioned fronts of
these houses, which had older than old-fashioned backs, rose sheer from the pavement,
into which the bow-windows protruded like bastions, necessitating a pleasing chassez-
dechassez movement to the time-pressed pedestrian at every few yards. He was bound
also to evolve other Terpsichorean figures in respect of door-steps, scrapers,
cellarhatches, church buttresses, and the overhanging angles of walls which, originally
unobtrusive, had become bow-legged and knock-kneed.
In addition to these fixed obstacles which spoke so cheerfully of individual unrestraint
as to boundaries, movables occupied the path and roadway to a perplexing extent. First
the vans of the carriers in and out of Casterbridge, who hailed from Mellstock,Weatherbury, The Hintocks, Sherton-Abbas, Kingsbere, Overcombe, and many other
towns and villages round. Their owners were numerous enough to be regarded as a
tribe, and had almost distinctiveness enough to be regarded as a race. Their vans had
just arrived, and were drawn up on each side of the street in close file, so as to form at
places a wall between the pavement and the roadway. Moreover, every shop pitched
out half its contents upon trestles and boxes on the kerb, extending the display each
week a little further and further into the roadway, despite the expostulations of the two
feeble old constables, until there remained but a tortuous defile for carriages down the
centre of the street, which afforded fine opportunities for skill with the reins. Over the
pavement on the sunny side of the way hung shop-blinds so constructed as to give the
passenger's hat a smart buffet off his head, as from the unseen hands of Cranstoun's
Goblin Page, celebrated in romantic lore.
Horses for sale were tied in rows, their forelegs on the pavement, their hind legs in the
street, in which position they occasionally nipped little boys by the shoulder who, were
passing to school. And any inviting recess in front of a house that had been modestly
kept back from the general line was utilized by pig-dealers as a pen for their stock.
The yoemen, farmers, dairymen, and townsfolk, who came to transact business in these
ancient streets, spoke in other ways than by articulation. Not to hear the words of your
interlocutor in metropolitan centres is to know nothing of his meaning. Here the face,
the arms, the hat, the stick, the body throughout spoke equally with the tongue. To
express satisfaction the Casterbridge market-man added to his utterance a broadening
of the cheeks, a crevicing of the eyes, a throwing back of the shoulders, which was
intelligible from the other end of the street.
If he wondered, though all Henchard's carts and waggons were rattling past him, you
knew it from perceiving the inside of his crimson mouth, and a target-like circling of
his eyes. Deliberation caused sundry attacks on the moss of adjoining walls with the
end of his stick, a change of his hat from the horizontal to the less so; a sense of
tediousness announced itself in a lowering of the person by spreading the knees to a
lozenge-shaped aperture and contorting the arms. Chicanery, subterfuge, had hardly a
place in the streets of this honest borough to all appearance; and it was said that the
lawyers in the Court House hard by occasionally threw in strong arguments for the
other side out of pure generosity (though apparently by mischance) when advancing
their own.
Thus Casterbridge was in most respects but the pole, focus, or nerve-knot of the
surrounding country life; differing from the many manufacturing towns which are as
foreign bodies set down, like boulders on a plain, in a green world with which they
have nothing in common. Casterbridge lived by agriculture at one remove further from
the fountain-head than the adjoining villages- no more. The townsfolk understood
every fluctuation in the rustic's condition, for it affected their receipts as much as the
labourer's; they entered into the troubles and joys which moved the aristocratic families
ten miles round- for the same reason. And even at the dinner parties of the professional
families the subjects of discussion were corn, cattle-disease, sowing and reaping,
fencing and planting; while politics were viewed by them less from their ownstandpoint of burgesses with rights and privileges than from the standpoint of their
county neighbours.
All the venerable contrivances and confusions which delighted the eye by their
quaintness, and in a measure reasonableness, in this rare old market-town, were
metropolitan novelties to the unpractised eyes of Elizabeth-Jane, fresh from netting
fish-seines in a sea-side cottage. Very little inquiry was necessary to guide her
footsteps. Henchard's house was one of the best, faced with dull red-and-grey old
brick. The front door was open, and, as in other houses, she could see through the
passage to the end of the garden- nearly a quarter of a mile off.
Mr. Henchard was not in the house, but in the store-yard. She was conducted into the
mossy garden, and through a door in the wall, which was studded with rusty nails
speaking of generations of fruit-trees that had been trained there. The door opened
upon the yard, and here she was left to find him as she could. It was a place flanked by
hay-barns, into which tons of fodder, all in trusses, were being packed from the
waggons she had seen pass the inn that morning. On other sides of the yard were
wooden granaries on stone staddles, to which access was given by Flemish ladders, and
a store-house several floors high. Wherever the doors of these places were open, a
closely packed throng of bursting wheat-sacks could be seen standing inside, with the
air of awaiting a famine that would not come.
She wandered about this place, uncomfortably conscious of the impending interview,
till she was quite weary of searching; she ventured to inquire of a boy in what quarter
Mr. Henchard could be found. He directed her to an office which she had not seen
before, and knocking at the door she was answered by a cry of "Come in." Elizabeth
turned the handle; and there stood before her, bending over some sample-bags on a
table, not the corn-merchant, but the young Scotchman Mr. Farfrae- in the act of
pouring some grains of wheat from one hand to the other. His hat hung on a peg
behind him, and the roses of his carpet-bag glowed from the corner of the room.
Having toned her feelings and arranged words on her lips for Mr. Henchard, and for
him alone, she was for the moment confounded.
"Yes, what is it?" said the Scotchman, like a man who permanently ruled there.
She said she wanted to see Mr. Henchard.
"Ah, yes; will you wait a minute? He's engaged just now," said the young man,
apparently not recognizing her as the girl at the inn. He handed her a chair, bade her sit
down, and turned to his sample-bags again. While Elizabeth-Jane sits waiting in great
amaze at the young man's presence we may briefly explain how he came there.
When the two new acquaintances had passed out of sight that morning towards the
Bath and Bristol road they went on silently, except for a few commonplaces, till they
had gone down an avenue on the town walls called the Chalk Walk, leading to an angle
where the North and West escarpments met. From this high corner of the square
earthworks a vast extent of country could be seen. A footpath ran steeply down the
green slope, conducting from the shady promenade on the walls to a road at the bottom
of the scarp. It was by this path the Scotchman had to descend.
"Well, here's success to ye," said Henchard, holding out his right hand and leaning
with his left upon the wicket which protected the descent. In the act there was the inelegance of one whose feelings are nipped and wishes defeated. "I shall often think of
this time, and of how you came at the very moment to throw a light upon my
difficulty." Still holding the young man's hand he paused, and then added deliberately:
"Now I am not the man to let a cause be lost for want of a word. And before ye are
gone for ever I'll speak. Once more, will ye stay? There it is, flat and plain.
You can see that it isn't all selfishness that makes me press 'ee; for my business is not
quite so scientific as to require an intellect entirely out of the common. Others would do
for the place without doubt. Some selfishness perhaps there is, but there is more; it isn't
for me to repeat what. Come bide with me- and name your own terms. I'll agree to 'em
willingly and 'ithout a word of gainsaying; for, hand it, Farfrae, I like thee well!" The
young man's hand remained steady in Henchard's for a moment or two.
He looked over the fertile country that stretched beneath them, then backward along
the shaded walk reaching to the top of the town. His face flushed.
"I never expected this- I did not!" he said. "It's Providence! Should any one go against
it? No; I'll not go to America; I'll stay and be your man!" His hand, which had lain
lifeless in Henchard's, returned the latter's grasp.
"Done," said Henchard.
"Done," said Donald Farfrae.
The face of Mr. Henchard beamed forth a satisfaction that was almost fierce in its
strength. "Now you are my friend!" he exclaimed. "Come back to my house; let's clinch
it at once by clear terms, so as to be comfortable in our minds." Farfrae caught up his
bag and retraced the North-West Avenue in Henchard's company as he had come.
Henchard was all confidence now.
"I am the most distant fellow in the world when I don't care for a man," he said. "But
when a man takes my fancy he takes it strong. Now I am sure you can eat another
breakfast? You couldn't have eaten much so early, even if they had anything at that
place to gi'e thee, which they hadn't; so come to my house and we will have a solid,
staunch tuck-in, and settle terms in black-and-white if you like; though my word's my
bond. I can always make a good meal in the morning.
I've got a splendid cold pigeon-pie going just now. You can have some homebrewed if
you want to, you know." "It is too airly in the morning for that," said Farfrae with a
smile.
"Well, of course I didn't know. I don't drink it because of my oath; but I am obliged to
brew for my work-people." Thus talking they returned, and entered Henchard's
premises by the back way or traffic entrance. Here the matter was settled over the
breakfast, at which Henchard heaped the young Scotchman's plate to a prodigal
fulness. He would not rest satisfied till Farfrae had written for his luggage from Bristol,
and despatched the letter to the post-office. When it was done this man of strong
impulses declared that his new friend should take up his abode in his house- at least till
some suitable lodgings could be found.
He then took Farfrae round and showed him the place, and the stores of grain, and
other stock; and finally entered the offices where the younger of them had already been
discovered by Elizabeth. WHILE SHE still sat under the Scotchman's eyes a man came up to the door, reaching it
as Henchard opened the door of the inner office to admit Elizabeth.
The newcomer stepped forward like the quicker cripple at Bethesda, and entered in her
stead. She could hear his words to Henchard: "Joshua Jopp, sir- by appointment- the
manager!" "The new manager!- he's in his office," said Henchard bluntly.
"In his office!" said the man, with a stultified air.
"I mentioned Thursday," said Henchard; "and as you did not keep your appointment, I
have engaged another manager. At first I thought he must be you. Do you think I can
wait when business is in question?" "You said Thursday or Saturday, sir," said the
new-comer, pulling out a letter.
"Well, you are too late," said the corn-factor. "I can say no more." "You as good as
engaged me," murmured the man.
"Subject to an interview," said Henchard. "I am sorry for you- very sorry indeed. But it
can't be helped." There was no more to be said, and the man came out, encountering
ElizabethJane in his passage. She could see that his mouth twitched with anger, and
that bitter disappointment was written in his face everywhere.
Elizabeth-Jane now entered, and stood before the master of the premises. His dark
pupils- which always seemed to have a red spark of light in them, though this could
hardly be a physical fact- turned indifferently round under his dark brows until they
rested on her figure. "Now then, what is it, my young woman?" he said blandly.
"Can I speak to you- not on business, sir?" said she.
"Yes- I suppose." He looked at her more thoughtfully.
"I am sent to tell you, sir," she innocently went on, "that a distant relative of yours by
marriage, Susan Newson, a sailor's widow, is in the town; and to ask whether you
would wish to see her." The rich rouge-et-noir of his countenance underwent a slight
change. "OhSusan is- still alive?" he asked with difficulty.
"Yes, sir." "Are you her daughter?" "Yes, sir- her only daughter." "What- do you call
yourself- your Christian name?" "Elizabeth-Jane, sir." "Newson?" "Elizabeth-Jane
Newson."
This at once suggested to Henchard that the transaction of his early married life at
Weydon Fair was unrecorded in the family history. It was more than he could have
expected. His wife had behaved kindly to him in return for his unkindness, and had
never proclaimed her wrong to her child or to the world.
"I am- a good deal interested in your news," he said "And as this is not a matter of
business, but pleasure, suppose we go indoors." It was with a gentle delicacy of
manner, surprising to Elizabeth, that he showed her out of the office, and through the
outer room, where Donald Farfrae was overhauling bins and samples with the
inquiring inspection of a beginner in charge. Henchard preceded her through the door
in the wall to the suddenly changed scene of the garden and flowers, and onward into
the house. The diningroom to which he introduced her still exhibited the remnants of
the lavish breakfast laid for Farfrae. It was furnished to profusion with heavymahogany furniture of the deepest red-Spanish hues; Pembroke tables, with leaves
hanging so low that they well-nigh touched the floor, stood against the walls on legs
and feet shaped like those of an elephant, and on one lay three huge folio volumes- a
Family Bible, a "Josephus," and a "Whole Duty of Man." In the chimney corner was a
fire-grate with a fluted semi-circular back, having urns and festoons cast in relief
thereon; and the chairs were of the kind which, since that day, has cast lustre upon the
names of Chippendale and Sheraton, though, in point of fact, their patterns may have
been such as those illustrious carpenters never saw or heard of.
"Sit down- Elizabeth-Jane- sit down," he said, with a shake in his voice as he uttered
her name; and sitting down himself he allowed his hands to hang between his knees,
while be looked upon the carpet. "Your mother, then, is quite well?" "She is rather
worn out, sir, with travelling." "A sailor's widow- when did he die?" "Father was lost
last spring." Henchard winced at the word "father," thus applied. "Do you and she
come from abroad- America or Australia?" he asked.
"No. We have been in England some years. I was twelve when we came here from
Canada." "Ah; exactly." By such conversation he discovered the circumstances which
had enveloped his wife and her child in such total obscurity that he had long ago
believed them to be in their graves. These things being clear, he returned to the present.
"And where is your mother staying?" "At the Three Mariners." "And you are her
daughter Elizabeth-Jane?" repeated Henchard. He arose, came close to her, and glanced
in her face. "I think," he said, suddenly turning away with a wet eye, you shall take a
note from me to your mother. "I should like to see her.... She is not left very well off by
her late husband?" His eye fell on Elizabeth's clothes, which, though a respectable suit
of black, and her very best, were decidedly old-fashioned, even to Casterbridge eyes.
"Not very well," she said, glad that he had divined this without her being obliged to
express it.
He sat down at the table and wrote a few lines; next taking from his pocketbook a five-
pound note, which he put in the envelope with the letter, adding to it, as by an after-
thought, five shillings. Sealing the whole up carefully, he directed it to "Mrs. Newson,
Three Mariners Inn," and handed the packet to Elizabeth.
"Deliver it to her personally, please," said Henchard. "Well, I am glad to see you here,
Elizabeth-Jane- very glad. We must have a long talk together- but not just now." He
took her hand at parting, and held it so warmly that she, who had known so little
friendship, was much affected, and tears rose to her aerial-grey eyes. The instant that
she was gone Henchard's state showed itself more distinctly; having shut the door, he
sat in his dining-room stiffly erect, gazing at the opposite wall as if he read his history
there.
"Begad!" he suddenly exclaimed, jumping up. "I didn't think of that. Perhaps these are
impostors-and Susan and the child dead after all!" However, a something in Elizabeth-
Jane soon assured him that, as regarded her, at least, there could be little doubt. And a
few hours would settle the question of her mother's identity; for he had arranged in his
note to see her that evening.
"It never rains but it pours!" said Henchard. His keenly excited interest in his new
friend the Scotchman was now eclipsed by this event; and Donald Farfrae saw so littleof him during the rest of the day that he wondered at the suddenness of his employer's
moods.
In the meantime Elizabeth had reached the inn. Her mother, instead of taking the note
with the curiosity of a poor woman expecting assistance, was much moved at sight of
it. She did not read it at once, asking Elizabeth to describe her reception, and the very
words Mr. Henchard used. Elizabeth's back was turned when her mother opened the
letter. It ran thus:"Meet me at eight o'clock this evening, if you can, at the Ring on the
Budmouth road. The place is easy to find. I can say no more now.
The news upsets me almost. The girl seems to be in ignorance. Keep her so till I have
seen you.
M. H."
He said nothing about the enclosure of five guineas. The amount was significant; it may
tacitly have said to her that he bought her back again. She waited restlessly for the close
of the day, telling Elizabeth-Jane that she was invited to see Mr. Henchard; that she
would go alone. But she said nothing to show that the place of meeting was not at his
house, nor did she hand the note to Elizabeth. THE RING at Casterbridge was merely the local name of one of the finest Roman
Amphitheatres, if not the very finest, remaining in Britain.
Casterbridge announced old Rome in every street, alley, and precinct. It looked Roman,
bespoke the art of Rome, concealed dead men of Rome. It was impossible to dig more
than a foot or two deep about the town fields and gardens without coming upon some
tall soldier or other of the Empire, who had lain there in his silent unobtrusive rest for a
space of fifteen hundred years. He was mostly found lying on his side, in an oval scoop
in the chalk, like a chicken in its shell; his knees drawn up to his chest; sometimes with
the remains of his spear against his arm; a fibula or brooch of bronze on his breast or
forehead; an urn at his knees, a jar at his throat, a bottle at his mouth; and mystified
conjecture pouring down upon him from the eyes of Casterbridge street boys and men,
who had turned a moment to gaze at the familiar spectacle as they passed by.
Imaginative inhabitants, who would have felt an unpleasantness at the discovery of a
comparatively modern skeleton in their gardens, were quite unmoved by these hoary
shapes. They had lived so long ago, their time was so unlike the present, their hopes
and motives were so widely removed from ours, that between them and the living
there seemed to stretch a gulf too wide for even a spirit to pass.
The Amphitheatre was a huge circular enclosure, with a notch at opposite extremities
of its diameter north and south. From its sloping internal form it might have been
called the spittoon of the Jotuns. It was to Casterbridge what the ruined Coliseum is to
modern Rome, and was nearly of the same magnitude. The dusk of evening was the
proper hour at which a true impression of this suggestive place could be received.
Standing in the middle of the arena at that time there by degrees became apparent its
real vastness, which a cursory view from the summit at noon-day was apt to obscure.
Melancholy, impressive, lonely, yet accessible from every part of the town, the historic
circle was the frequent spot for appointments of a furtive kind. Intrigues were arranged
there; tentative meetings were there experimented after divisions and feuds. But one
kind of appointment- in itself the most common of any- seldom had place in the
Amphitheatre: that of happy lovers.
Why, seeing that it was pre-eminently an airy, accessible, and sequestered spot for
interviews, the cheerfullest form of those occurrences never took kindly to the soil of
the ruin, would be a curious inquiry. Perhaps it was because its associations had about
them something sinister. Its history proved that. Apart from the sanguinary nature of
the games originally played therein, such incidents attached to its past as these: that for
scores of years the town-gallows had stood at one corner; that in 1705 a woman who
had murdered her husband was half-strangled and then burnt there in the presence of
ten thousand spectators. Tradition reports that a certain stage of the burning her heart
burst and leapt out of her body, to the terror of them all, and that not one of those ten
thousand people ever cared particularly for hot roast after that. In addition to these old
tragedies, pugilistic encounters almost to the death had come off down to recent dates
in that secluded arena, entirely invisible to the outside world, save by climbing to thetop of the enclosure, which few townspeople in the daily round of their lives ever took
the trouble to do. So that, though close to the turnpike-road, crimes might be
perpetrated there unseen at mid-day.
Some boys had latterly tried to impart gaiety to the ruin by using the central arena as a
cricket-ground. But the game usually languished, for the aforesaid reason- the dismal
privacy which the earthen circle enforced, shutting out every appreciative passer's
vision, every commendatory remark from outsiderseverything, except the sky; and to
play at games in such circumstances was like acting to an empty house. Possibly, too,
the boys were timid, for some old people said that at certain moments in the summer
time, in broad daylight, persons sitting with a book, or dozing in the arena, had, on
lifting their eyes, beheld the slopes lined with a gazing legion of Hadrian's soldiery as
if watching the gladiatorial combat; and had heard the roar of their excited voices; that
the scene would remain but a moment, like a lightning flash, and then disappear.
It was related that there still remained under the south entrance arched cells for the
reception of the wild animals and athletes who took part in the games. The arena was
still smooth and circular, as if used for its original purpose not so very long ago. The
sloping pathways by which spectators had ascended to their seats were pathways yet.
But the whole was grown over with grass, which now, at the end of summer, was
bearded with withered bents that formed waves under the brush of the wind, returning
to the attentive ear Aeolian modulations, and detaining for moments the flying globes
of thistledown.
Henchard had chosen this spot as being the safest from observation which he could
think of for meeting his long-lost wife, and at the same time as one easily to be found
by a stranger after nightfall. As Mayor of the town, with a reputation to keep up, he
could not invite her to come to his house till some definite course had been decided on.
Just before eight he approached the deserted earthwork, and entered by the south path
which descended over the debris of the former dens. In a few moments he could
discern a female figure creeping in by the great north gap, or public gateway. They met
in the middle of the arena. Neither spoke just at first- there was no necessity for speech-
and the poor woman leant against Henchard, who supported her in his arms.
"I don't drink," he said in a low, halting, apologetic voice. "You hear, Susan?I don't
drink now- I haven't since that night." Those were his first words.
He felt her bow her head in acknowledgment that she understood. After a minute or
two he again began: "If I had known you were living, Susan! But there was every
reason to suppose you and the child were dead and gone. I took every possible step to
find youtravelled- advertised. My opinion at last was that you had started for some
colony with that man, and had been drowned on your voyage out. Why did you keep
silent like this?" "O Michael! because of him- what other reason could there be? I
thought I owed him faithfulness to the end of one of our lives- foolishly I believed there
was something solemn and binding in the bargain; I thought that even in honour I
dared not desert him when he had paid so much for me in good faith. I meet you now
only as his widow- I consider myself that, and that I have no claim upon you. Had he
not died, I should never have come- never! Of that you may be sure." "Tut-tut! Howcould you be so simple?" "I don't know. Yet it would have been very wicked- if I had
not thought like that!" said Susan, almost crying.
"Yes- yes- so it would. It is only that which makes me feel ye an innocent woman. But-
to lead me into this?" "What, Michael?" she asked, alarmed.
"Why, this difficulty about our living together again, and Elizabeth-Jane. She cannot be
told all- she would so despise us both that- I could not bear it!" "That was why she was
brought up in ignorance of you. I could not bear it either." "Well- we must talk of a
plan for keeping her in her present belief, and getting matters straight in spite of it. You
have heard I am in a large way of business herethat I am Mayor of the town, and
churchwarden, and I don't know what all?"
"Yes," she murmured.
"These things, as well as the dread of the girl discovering our disgrace, makes it
necessary to act with extreme caution. So that I don't see how you two can return
openly to my house as the wife and daughter I once treated badly, and banished from
me; and there's the rub o't." "We'll go away at once. I only came to see-" "No, no,
Susan; you are not to go- you mistake me!" he said, with kindly severity. "I have
thought of this plan: that you and Elizabeth take a cottage in the town as the widow
Mrs. Newson and her daughter; that I meet you, court you, and marry you, Elizabeth-
Jane coming to my house as my step-daughter. The thing is so natural and easy that it is
half done in thinking o't. This would leave my shady, headstrong, disgraceful life as a
young man absolutely unopened; the secret would be yours and mine only; and I
should have the pleasure of seeing my own only child under my roof, as well as my
wife." "I am quite in your hands, Michael," she said meekly.
"I came here for the sake of Elizabeth; for myself, if you tell me to leave again
tomorrow morning, and never come near you more, I am content to go." "Now, now;
we don't want to hear that," said Henchard gently. "Of course you won't leave again.
Think over the plan I have proposed for a few hours; and if you can't hit upon a better
one we'll adopt it. I have to be away for a day or two on business, unfortunately; but
during that time you can get lodgings- the only ones in the town fit for you are those
over the china-shop in High Street- and you can also look for a cottage." "If the
lodgings are in High Street they are dear, I suppose?" "Never mind- you must start
genteel if our plan is to be carried out. Look to me for money. Have you enough till I
come back?" "Quite," said she.
"And are you comfortable at the inn?" "O yes." "And the girl is quite safe from
learning the shame of her case and ours?that's what makes me most anxious of all."
"You would be surprised to find how unlikely she is to dream of the truth.
How could she ever suppose such a thing?" "True!" "I like the idea of repeating our
marriage," said Mrs. Henchard, after a pause.
"It seems the only right course, after all this. Now I think I must go back to Elizabeth-
Jane, and tell her that our kinsman, Mr. Henchard, kindly wishes us to stay in the
town." "Very well- arrange that yourself. I'll go some way with you." "No, no. Don't
run any risk!" said his wife anxiously. "I can find my way back- it is not late. Please let
me go alone.""Right," said Henchard. "But just one word. Do you forgive me, Susan?" She
murmured something; but seemed to find it difficult to frame her answer.
"Never mind- all in good time," said he. "Judge me by my future works- goodbye!" He
retreated, and stood at the upper side of the Amphitheatre while his wife passed out
through the lower way, and descended under the trees to the town.
Then Henchard himself went homeward, going so fast, that by the time he reached his
door he was almost upon the heels of the unconscious woman from whom he had just
parted. He watched her up the street, and turned into his house.