This made her very miserable, and she looked about for her mother; but Mrs.
Henchard, who had less idea of conventionality than Elizabeth herself, had gone away,
leaving her daughter to return at her own pleasure. The latter moved on into the dark
dense old avenues, or rather vaults of living woodwork, which ran along the town
boundary, and stood reflecting.
A man followed in a few minutes, and her face being towards the shine from the tent,
he recognized her. It was Farfrae- just come from the dialogue with Henchard which
had signified his dismissal.
"And it's you, Miss Newson?- and I've been looking for ye everywhere!" he said,
overcoming a sadness imparted by the estrangement with the corn-merchant.
"May I walk on with you as far as your street-corner?"
She thought there might be something wrong in this, but did not utter any objection. So
together they went on, first down the West Walk, and then into the Bowling Walk, till
Farfrae said, "It's like that I'm going to leave you soon." "Oh- as a mere matter of
business- nothing more. But we'll not concern ourselves about it- it is for the best. I
hoped to have another dance with you." She said she could not dance- in any proper
way.
"Oh, but you do! It's the feeling for it rather than the learning of steps that makes
pleasant dancers.... I fear I offended your father by getting up this! And now, perhaps,
I'll have to go to another part o' the warrld altogether!" This seemed such a melancholy
prospect that Elizabeth-Jane breathed a sighletting it off in fragments that he might not
hear her. But darkness makes people truthful, and the Scotchman went on impulsively-
perhaps he had heard her after all: "I wish I was richer, Miss Newson; and your step-
father had not been offended; I would ask you something in a short time- yes, I would
ask you tonight.
But that's not for me!" What he would have asked her he did not say; and instead of
encouraging him she remained incompetently silent. Thus afraid one of another, they
continued their promenade along the walls till they got near the bottom of the Bowling
Walk; twenty steps further and the trees would end, and the street-corner and lamps
appear. In consciousness of this they stopped.
"I never found out who it was that sent us to Durnover granary on a fool's errand that
day," said Donald, in his undulating tones. "Did ye ever know yourself, Miss
Newson?" "Never," said she."I wonder why they did it!" "For fun, perhaps." "Perhaps it was not for fun. It might
have been that they thought they would like us to stay waiting there, talking to one
another? Ay, well! I hope you Casterbridge folk will no forget me if I go." "That I'm
sure we won't!" she said earnestly. "I- wish you wouldn't go at all." They had got into
the lamplight. "Now, I'll think over that," said Donald Farfrae. "And I'll not come up
to your door; but part from you here; lest it make your father more angry still." They
parted, Farfrae returning into the dark Bowling Walk, and ElizabethJane going up the
street. Without any consciousness of what she was doing she started running with all
her might till she reached her father's door. "Oh dear mewhat am I at?" she thought, as
she pulled up breathless.
Indoors she fell to conjecturing the meaning of Farfrae's enigmatic words about not
daring to ask her what he fain would. Elizabeth, that silent observing woman, had long
noted how he was rising in favour among the townspeople; and knowing Henchard's
nature now, she had feared that Farfrae's days as manager were numbered; so that the
announcement gave her little surprise. Would Mr. Farfrae stay in Casterbridge despite
his words and her father's dismissal? His occult breathings to her might be solvable by
his course in that respect.
The next day was windy- so windy that walking in the garden she picked up a portion
of the draft of a letter on business in Donald Farfrae's writing, which had flown over
the wall from the office. The useless scrap she took indoors, and began to copy the
caligraphy, which she much admired. The letter began "Dear Sir," and presently
writing on a loose slip "Elizabeth-Jane," she laid the latter over "Sir," making the
phrase "Dear Elizabeth-Jane." When she saw the effect a quick red ran up her face and
warmed her through, though nobody was there to see what she had done. She quickly
tore up the slip, and threw it away. After this she grew cool, and laughed at herself,
walked about the room, and laughed again; not joyfully, but distressfully rather.
It was quickly known in Casterbridge that Farfrae and Henchard had decided to
dispense with each other. Elizabeth-Jane's anxiety to know if Farfrae were going away
from the town reached a pitch that disturbed her, for she could no longer conceal from
herself the cause. At length the news reached her that he was not going to leave the
place. A man following the same trade as Henchard, but on a very small scale, had sold
his business to Farfrae, who was forthwith about to start as corn and hay-merchant on
his own account.
Her heart fluttered when she heard of this step of Donald's, proving that he meant to
remain; and yet, would a man who cared one little bit for her have endangered his suit
by setting up a business in opposition to Mr. Henchard's? Surely not; and it must have
been a passing impulse only which had led him to address her so softly.
To solve the problem whether her appearance on the evening of the dance were such as
to inspire a fleeting love at first sight, she dressed herself up exactly as she had dressed
then- the muslin, the spencer, the sandals, the parasol- and looked in the mirror. The
picture glassed back was, in her opinion, precisely of such a kind as to inspire that
fleeting regard, and no more- "just enough to make him silly, and not enough to keep
him so," she said luminously; and Elizabeth thought, in a much lower key, that by thistime he had discovered how plain and homely was the informing spirit of that pretty
outside.
Hence, when she felt her heart going out to him, she would say to herself with a mock
pleasantry that carried an ache with it, "No, no, Elizabeth-Jane- such dreams are not for
you!" She tried to prevent herself from seeing him, and thinking of him; succeeding
fairly well in the former attempt, in the latter not so completely.
Henchard, who had been hurt at finding that Farfrae did not mean to put up with his
temper any longer, was incensed beyond measure when he learnt what the young man
had done as an alternative. It was in the town-hall, after a council meeting, that he first
became aware of Farfrae's coup for establishing himself independently in the town;
and his voice might have been heard as far as the townpump expressing his feelings to
his fellow council-men. Those tones showed that, though under a long reign of self-
control he had become Mayor and churchwarden and what not, there was still the same
unruly volcanic stuff beneath the rind of Michael Henchard as when he had sold his
wife at Weydon Fair.
"Well, he's a friend of mine, and I'm a friend of his- or if we are not, what are we? 'Od
send, if I've not been his friend, who has, I should like to know? Didn't he come here
without a sound shoe to his voot? Didn't I keep him here- help him to a living? Didn't I
help him to money, or whatever he wanted? I stuck out for no terms- I said, 'Name
your own price.' I'd have shared my last crust with that young fellow at one time, I
liked him so well. And now he's defied me! But damn him, I'll have a tussle with him
now- at fair buying and selling, mind- at fair buying and selling! And if I can't overbid
such a stripling as he, then I'm not wo'th a varden! We'll show that we know our
business as well as one here and there!" His friends of the Corporation did not specially
respond. Henchard was less popular now than he had been when, nearly two years
before, they had voted him to the chief magistracy on account of his amazing energy.
While they had collectively profited by this quality of the corn-factor's, they had been
made to wince individually on more than one occasion. So he went out of the hall and
down the street alone.
Reaching home he seemed to recollect something with a sour satisfaction. He called
Elizabeth-Jane. Seeing how he looked when she entered she appeared alarmed.
"Nothing to find fault with," he said, observing her concern. "Only I want to caution
you, my dear. That man, Farfrae- it is about him. I've seen him talking to you two or
three times- he danced with 'ee at the rejoicings, and came home with 'ee. Now, now,
no blame to you. But just hearken: Have you made him any foolish promise? Gone the
least bit beyond sniff and snaff at all?" "No. I have promised him nothing." "Good.
All's well that ends well. I particularly wish you not to see him again." "Very well, sir."
"You promise?" She hesitated for a moment, and then said: "Yes, if you much wish it."
"I do. He's an enemy to our house!" When she had gone he sat down, and wrote in a
heavy hand to Farfrae thus:-
"Sir- I make request that henceforth you and my step-daughter be as strangers to each
other. She on her part has promised to welcome no more addresses from you; and I
trust, therefore, you will not attempt to force them upon her.One would almost have supposed Henchard to have had policy to see that no better
modus vivendi could be arrived at with Farfrae than by encouraging him to become his
son-in-law. But such a scheme for buying over a rival had nothing to recommend to it
the Mayor's headstrong faculties. With all domestic finesse of that kind he was
hopelessly at variance. Loving a man or hating him, his diplomacy was as
wrongheaded as a buffalo's; and his wife had not ventured to suggest the course which
she, for many reasons, would have welcomed gladly.
Meanwhile, Donald Farfrae had opened the gates of commerce on his own account at a
spot on Durnover Hill- as far as possible from Henchard's stores, and with every
intention of keeping clear of his former friend and employer's customers. There was, it
seemed to the young man, room for both of them and to spare.
The town was small, but the corn and hay-trade was proportionately large, and with
his native sagacity he saw opportunity for a share of it.
So determined was he to do nothing which should seem like trade-antagonism to the
Mayor that he refused his first customer- a large farmer of good repute- because
Henchard and this man had dealt together within the preceding three months.
"He was once my friend," said Farfrae, "and it's not for me to take business from him. I
am sorry to disappoint you, but I cannot hurt the trade of a man who's been so kind to
me." In spite of this praiseworthy course the Scotchman's trade increased. Whether it
were that his northern energy was an over-mastering force among the easy-going
Wessex worthies, or whether it was sheer luck, the fact remained that whatever he
touched he prospered in. Like Jacob in Padan-Aram, he would no sooner humbly limit
himself to the ringstraked-and-spotted exceptions of trade, than the ringstraked-and-
spotted would multiply and prevail.
But most probably luck had little to do with it. Character is Fate, said Novalis, and
Farfrae's character was just the reverse of Henchard's, who might not inaptly be
described as Faust has been described- as a vehement gloomy being, who had quitted
the ways of vulgar men, without light to guide him on a better way.
Farfrae duly received the request to discontinue attentions to Elizabeth-Jane.
His acts of that kind had been so slight that the request was almost superfluous.
Yet he had felt a considerable interest in her, and after some cogitation he decided that
it would be as well to enact no Romeo part just then- for the young girl's sake no less
than his own. Thus the incipient attachment was stifled down.
A time came when, avoid collision with his former friend as he might, Farfrae was
compelled, in sheer self-defence, to close with Henchard in mortal commercial combat.
He could no longer parry the fierce attacks of the latter by simple avoidance. As soon as
their war of prices began everybody was interested, and some few guessed the end. It
was, in some degree, Northern insight matched against Southron doggedness- the dirk
against the cudgel- and Henchard's weapon was one which, if it did not deal ruin at
the first or second stroke, left him afterwards well-nigh at his antagonist's mercy.
Almost every Saturday they encountered each other amid the crowd of farmers which
thronged about the market-place in the weekly course of their business.
Donald was always ready, and even anxious, to say a few friendly words; but the
Mayor invariably gazed stormfully past him, like one who had endured and lost on hisaccount, and could in no sense forgive the wrong; nor did Farfrae's snubbed manner of
perplexity at all appease him. The large farmers, corn-merchants, millers, auctioneers,
and others had each an official stall in the corn-market room, with their names painted
thereon; and when to the familiar series of "Henchard," "Everdene," "Shinar,"
"Darton," and so on, was added one inscribed "Farfrae," in staring new letters,
Henchard was stung into bitterness; like Bellerophon, he wandered away from the
crowd, cankered in soul.
From that day Donald Farfrae's name was seldom mentioned in Henchard's house. If at
breakfast or dinner Elizabeth-Jane's mother inadvertently alluded to her favourite's
movements, the girl would implore her by a look to be silent; and her husband would
say, "What- are you, too, my enemy?"
THERE CAME a shock which had been foreseen for some time by Elizabeth, as the box
passenger foresees the approaching jerk from some channel across the highway.
Her mother was ill- too unwell to leave her room. Henchard, who treated her kindly,
except in moments of irritation, sent at once for the richest, busiest doctor, whom he
supposed to be the best. Bedtime came, and they burnt a light all night.
In a day or two she rallied.
Elizabeth, who had been staying up, did not appear at breakfast on the second
morning, and Henchard sat down alone. He was startled to see a letter for him from
Jersey in a writing he knew too well, and had expected least to behold again.
He took it up in his hands and looked at it as at a picture, a vision, a vista of past
enactments; and then he read it as an unimportant finale to conjecture.
The writer said that she at length perceived how impossible it would be for any further
communications to proceed between them now that his re-marriage had taken place.
That such re-union had been the only straightforward course open to him she was
bound to admit. "On calm reflection, therefore," she went on, "I quite forgive you for
landing me in such a dilemma, remembering that you concealed nothing before our ill-
advised acquaintance; and that you really did set before me in your grim way the fact
of there being a certain risk in intimacy with you, slight as it seemed to be after
eighteen years of silence on your wife's part. I thus look upon the whole as a
misfortune of mine, and not a fault of yours.
"So that, Michael, I must ask you to overlook those letters with which I pestered you
day after day in the heat of my feelings. They were written whilst I thought your
conduct to me cruel; but now I know more particulars of the position you were in I see
how inconsiderate my reproaches were.
"Now you will, I am sure, perceive that the one condition which will make any future
happiness possible for me, is that the past connection between our lives be kept secret
outside this isle. Speak of it I know you will not; and I can trust you not to write of it.
One safeguard more remains to be mentioned- that no writings of mine, or trifling
articles belonging to me, should be left in your possession through neglect or
forgetfulness. To this end may I request you to return to me any such you may have,
particularly the letters written in the first abandonment of feeling.
"For the handsome sum you forwarded to me as a plaster to the wound, I heartily
thank you.
"I am now on my way to Bristol, to see my only relative. She is rich, and I hope will do
something for me. I shall return through Casterbridge and Budmouth, where I shall
take the packet-boat. Can you meet me with the letters and other trifles? I shall be in the
coach which changes horses at the Antelope Hotel at half-past five Wednesday evening;
I shall be wearing a Paisley shawl with a red centre, and thus may easily be found. I
should prefer this plan of receiving them to having them sent.- I remain still, yours
ever, "LUCETTA." Henchard breathed heavily. "Poor thing- better you had not known
me! Upon my heart and soul, if ever I should be left in a position to carry out thatmarriage with thee, I ought to do it- I ought to do it, indeed!" The contingency that he
had in his mind was, of course, the death of Mrs. Henchard.
As requested, he sealed up Lucetta's letters, and put the parcel aside till the day she
had appointed; this plan of returning them by hand being apparently a little ruse of the
young lady for exchanging a word or two with him on past times.
He would have preferred not to see her; but deeming that there could be no great harm
in acquiescing thus far, he went at dusk and stood opposite the coach-office.
The evening was chilly, and the coach was late. Henchard crossed over to it while the
horses were being changed; but there was no Lucetta inside or out. Concluding that
something had happened to modify her arrangements he gave the matter up and went
home, not without a sense of relief.
Meanwhile Mrs. Henchard was weakening visibly. She could not go out of doors any
more. One day, after much thinking which seemed to distress her, she said she wanted
to write something. A desk was put upon her bed with pen and paper, and at her
request she was left alone. She remained writing for a short time, folded her paper
carefully, called Elizabeth-Jane to bring a taper and wax, and then, still refusing
assistance, sealed up the sheet, directed it, and locked it in her desk. She had directed it
in these words: "Mr. Michael Henchard. Not to be opened till Elizabeth-Jane's
wedding-day." The latter sat up with her mother to the utmost of her strength night
after night. To learn to take the universe seriously there is no quicker way than to
watch- to be a "waker," as the country-people call it. Between the hours at which the
last toss-pot went by and the first sparrow shook himself, the silence in Casterbridge-
barring the rare sound of the watchman- was broken in Elizabeth's ear only by the
time-piece in the bedroom ticking frantically against the clock on the stairs; ticking
harder and harder till it seemed to clang like a gong; and all this while the subtle-
souled girl asking herself why she was born, why sitting in a room, and blinking at the
candle; why things around her had taken the shape they wore in preference to every
other possible shape. Why they stared at her so helplessly, as if waiting for the touch of
some wand that should release them from terrestrial constraint; what that chaos called
consciousness, which spun in her at this moment like a top, tended to, and began in.
Her eyes fell together; she was awake, yet she was asleep.
A word from her mother roused her. Without preface, and as the continuation of a
scene already progressing in her mind, Mrs. Henchard said: "You remember the note
sent to you and Mr. Farfrae- asking you to meet some one in Durnover Barton- and that
you thought it was a trick to make fools of you?" "Yes." "It was not to make fools of
you- it was done to bring you together. 'Twas I did it." "Why?" said Elizabeth, with a
start.
"I- wanted you to marry Mr. Farfrae." "O mother!" Elizabeth-Jane bent down her head
so much that she looked quite into her own lap. But as her mother did not go on, she
said, "What reason?" "Well, I had a reason. 'Twill out one day. I wish it could have
been in my time! But there- nothing is as you wish it! Henchard hates him." "Perhaps
they'll be friends again," murmured the girl.
"I don't know- I don't know." After this her mother was silent, and dozed, and she
spoke on the subject no more.
This made her very miserable, and she looked about for her mother; but Mrs.
Henchard, who had less idea of conventionality than Elizabeth herself, had gone away,
leaving her daughter to return at her own pleasure. The latter moved on into the dark
dense old avenues, or rather vaults of living woodwork, which ran along the town
boundary, and stood reflecting.
A man followed in a few minutes, and her face being towards the shine from the tent,
he recognized her. It was Farfrae- just come from the dialogue with Henchard which
had signified his dismissal.
"And it's you, Miss Newson?- and I've been looking for ye everywhere!" he said,
overcoming a sadness imparted by the estrangement with the corn-merchant.
"May I walk on with you as far as your street-corner?"
She thought there might be something wrong in this, but did not utter any objection. So
together they went on, first down the West Walk, and then into the Bowling Walk, till
Farfrae said, "It's like that I'm going to leave you soon." "Oh- as a mere matter of
business- nothing more. But we'll not concern ourselves about it- it is for the best. I
hoped to have another dance with you." She said she could not dance- in any proper
way.
"Oh, but you do! It's the feeling for it rather than the learning of steps that makes
pleasant dancers.... I fear I offended your father by getting up this! And now, perhaps,
I'll have to go to another part o' the warrld altogether!" This seemed such a melancholy
prospect that Elizabeth-Jane breathed a sighletting it off in fragments that he might not
hear her. But darkness makes people truthful, and the Scotchman went on impulsively-
perhaps he had heard her after all: "I wish I was richer, Miss Newson; and your step-
father had not been offended; I would ask you something in a short time- yes, I would
ask you tonight.
But that's not for me!" What he would have asked her he did not say; and instead of
encouraging him she remained incompetently silent. Thus afraid one of another, they
continued their promenade along the walls till they got near the bottom of the Bowling
Walk; twenty steps further and the trees would end, and the street-corner and lamps
appear. In consciousness of this they stopped.
"I never found out who it was that sent us to Durnover granary on a fool's errand that
day," said Donald, in his undulating tones. "Did ye ever know yourself, Miss
Newson?" "Never," said she."I wonder why they did it!" "For fun, perhaps." "Perhaps it was not for fun. It might
have been that they thought they would like us to stay waiting there, talking to one
another? Ay, well! I hope you Casterbridge folk will no forget me if I go." "That I'm
sure we won't!" she said earnestly. "I- wish you wouldn't go at all." They had got into
the lamplight. "Now, I'll think over that," said Donald Farfrae. "And I'll not come up
to your door; but part from you here; lest it make your father more angry still." They
parted, Farfrae returning into the dark Bowling Walk, and ElizabethJane going up the
street. Without any consciousness of what she was doing she started running with all
her might till she reached her father's door. "Oh dear mewhat am I at?" she thought, as
she pulled up breathless.
Indoors she fell to conjecturing the meaning of Farfrae's enigmatic words about not
daring to ask her what he fain would. Elizabeth, that silent observing woman, had long
noted how he was rising in favour among the townspeople; and knowing Henchard's
nature now, she had feared that Farfrae's days as manager were numbered; so that the
announcement gave her little surprise. Would Mr. Farfrae stay in Casterbridge despite
his words and her father's dismissal? His occult breathings to her might be solvable by
his course in that respect.
The next day was windy- so windy that walking in the garden she picked up a portion
of the draft of a letter on business in Donald Farfrae's writing, which had flown over
the wall from the office. The useless scrap she took indoors, and began to copy the
caligraphy, which she much admired. The letter began "Dear Sir," and presently
writing on a loose slip "Elizabeth-Jane," she laid the latter over "Sir," making the
phrase "Dear Elizabeth-Jane." When she saw the effect a quick red ran up her face and
warmed her through, though nobody was there to see what she had done. She quickly
tore up the slip, and threw it away. After this she grew cool, and laughed at herself,
walked about the room, and laughed again; not joyfully, but distressfully rather.
It was quickly known in Casterbridge that Farfrae and Henchard had decided to
dispense with each other. Elizabeth-Jane's anxiety to know if Farfrae were going away
from the town reached a pitch that disturbed her, for she could no longer conceal from
herself the cause. At length the news reached her that he was not going to leave the
place. A man following the same trade as Henchard, but on a very small scale, had sold
his business to Farfrae, who was forthwith about to start as corn and hay-merchant on
his own account.
Her heart fluttered when she heard of this step of Donald's, proving that he meant to
remain; and yet, would a man who cared one little bit for her have endangered his suit
by setting up a business in opposition to Mr. Henchard's? Surely not; and it must have
been a passing impulse only which had led him to address her so softly.
To solve the problem whether her appearance on the evening of the dance were such as
to inspire a fleeting love at first sight, she dressed herself up exactly as she had dressed
then- the muslin, the spencer, the sandals, the parasol- and looked in the mirror. The
picture glassed back was, in her opinion, precisely of such a kind as to inspire that
fleeting regard, and no more- "just enough to make him silly, and not enough to keep
him so," she said luminously; and Elizabeth thought, in a much lower key, that by thistime he had discovered how plain and homely was the informing spirit of that pretty
outside.
Hence, when she felt her heart going out to him, she would say to herself with a mock
pleasantry that carried an ache with it, "No, no, Elizabeth-Jane- such dreams are not for
you!" She tried to prevent herself from seeing him, and thinking of him; succeeding
fairly well in the former attempt, in the latter not so completely.
Henchard, who had been hurt at finding that Farfrae did not mean to put up with his
temper any longer, was incensed beyond measure when he learnt what the young man
had done as an alternative. It was in the town-hall, after a council meeting, that he first
became aware of Farfrae's coup for establishing himself independently in the town;
and his voice might have been heard as far as the townpump expressing his feelings to
his fellow council-men. Those tones showed that, though under a long reign of self-
control he had become Mayor and churchwarden and what not, there was still the same
unruly volcanic stuff beneath the rind of Michael Henchard as when he had sold his
wife at Weydon Fair.
"Well, he's a friend of mine, and I'm a friend of his- or if we are not, what are we? 'Od
send, if I've not been his friend, who has, I should like to know? Didn't he come here
without a sound shoe to his voot? Didn't I keep him here- help him to a living? Didn't I
help him to money, or whatever he wanted? I stuck out for no terms- I said, 'Name
your own price.' I'd have shared my last crust with that young fellow at one time, I
liked him so well. And now he's defied me! But damn him, I'll have a tussle with him
now- at fair buying and selling, mind- at fair buying and selling! And if I can't overbid
such a stripling as he, then I'm not wo'th a varden! We'll show that we know our
business as well as one here and there!" His friends of the Corporation did not specially
respond. Henchard was less popular now than he had been when, nearly two years
before, they had voted him to the chief magistracy on account of his amazing energy.
While they had collectively profited by this quality of the corn-factor's, they had been
made to wince individually on more than one occasion. So he went out of the hall and
down the street alone.
Reaching home he seemed to recollect something with a sour satisfaction. He called
Elizabeth-Jane. Seeing how he looked when she entered she appeared alarmed.
"Nothing to find fault with," he said, observing her concern. "Only I want to caution
you, my dear. That man, Farfrae- it is about him. I've seen him talking to you two or
three times- he danced with 'ee at the rejoicings, and came home with 'ee. Now, now,
no blame to you. But just hearken: Have you made him any foolish promise? Gone the
least bit beyond sniff and snaff at all?" "No. I have promised him nothing." "Good.
All's well that ends well. I particularly wish you not to see him again." "Very well, sir."
"You promise?" She hesitated for a moment, and then said: "Yes, if you much wish it."
"I do. He's an enemy to our house!" When she had gone he sat down, and wrote in a
heavy hand to Farfrae thus:-
"Sir- I make request that henceforth you and my step-daughter be as strangers to each
other. She on her part has promised to welcome no more addresses from you; and I
trust, therefore, you will not attempt to force them upon her.One would almost have supposed Henchard to have had policy to see that no better
modus vivendi could be arrived at with Farfrae than by encouraging him to become his
son-in-law. But such a scheme for buying over a rival had nothing to recommend to it
the Mayor's headstrong faculties. With all domestic finesse of that kind he was
hopelessly at variance. Loving a man or hating him, his diplomacy was as
wrongheaded as a buffalo's; and his wife had not ventured to suggest the course which
she, for many reasons, would have welcomed gladly.
Meanwhile, Donald Farfrae had opened the gates of commerce on his own account at a
spot on Durnover Hill- as far as possible from Henchard's stores, and with every
intention of keeping clear of his former friend and employer's customers. There was, it
seemed to the young man, room for both of them and to spare.
The town was small, but the corn and hay-trade was proportionately large, and with
his native sagacity he saw opportunity for a share of it.
So determined was he to do nothing which should seem like trade-antagonism to the
Mayor that he refused his first customer- a large farmer of good repute- because
Henchard and this man had dealt together within the preceding three months.
"He was once my friend," said Farfrae, "and it's not for me to take business from him. I
am sorry to disappoint you, but I cannot hurt the trade of a man who's been so kind to
me." In spite of this praiseworthy course the Scotchman's trade increased. Whether it
were that his northern energy was an over-mastering force among the easy-going
Wessex worthies, or whether it was sheer luck, the fact remained that whatever he
touched he prospered in. Like Jacob in Padan-Aram, he would no sooner humbly limit
himself to the ringstraked-and-spotted exceptions of trade, than the ringstraked-and-
spotted would multiply and prevail.
But most probably luck had little to do with it. Character is Fate, said Novalis, and
Farfrae's character was just the reverse of Henchard's, who might not inaptly be
described as Faust has been described- as a vehement gloomy being, who had quitted
the ways of vulgar men, without light to guide him on a better way.
Farfrae duly received the request to discontinue attentions to Elizabeth-Jane.
His acts of that kind had been so slight that the request was almost superfluous.
Yet he had felt a considerable interest in her, and after some cogitation he decided that
it would be as well to enact no Romeo part just then- for the young girl's sake no less
than his own. Thus the incipient attachment was stifled down.
A time came when, avoid collision with his former friend as he might, Farfrae was
compelled, in sheer self-defence, to close with Henchard in mortal commercial combat.
He could no longer parry the fierce attacks of the latter by simple avoidance. As soon as
their war of prices began everybody was interested, and some few guessed the end. It
was, in some degree, Northern insight matched against Southron doggedness- the dirk
against the cudgel- and Henchard's weapon was one which, if it did not deal ruin at
the first or second stroke, left him afterwards well-nigh at his antagonist's mercy.
Almost every Saturday they encountered each other amid the crowd of farmers which
thronged about the market-place in the weekly course of their business.
Donald was always ready, and even anxious, to say a few friendly words; but the
Mayor invariably gazed stormfully past him, like one who had endured and lost on hisaccount, and could in no sense forgive the wrong; nor did Farfrae's snubbed manner of
perplexity at all appease him. The large farmers, corn-merchants, millers, auctioneers,
and others had each an official stall in the corn-market room, with their names painted
thereon; and when to the familiar series of "Henchard," "Everdene," "Shinar,"
"Darton," and so on, was added one inscribed "Farfrae," in staring new letters,
Henchard was stung into bitterness; like Bellerophon, he wandered away from the
crowd, cankered in soul.
From that day Donald Farfrae's name was seldom mentioned in Henchard's house. If at
breakfast or dinner Elizabeth-Jane's mother inadvertently alluded to her favourite's
movements, the girl would implore her by a look to be silent; and her husband would
say, "What- are you, too, my enemy?"
THERE CAME a shock which had been foreseen for some time by Elizabeth, as the box
passenger foresees the approaching jerk from some channel across the highway.
Her mother was ill- too unwell to leave her room. Henchard, who treated her kindly,
except in moments of irritation, sent at once for the richest, busiest doctor, whom he
supposed to be the best. Bedtime came, and they burnt a light all night.
In a day or two she rallied.
Elizabeth, who had been staying up, did not appear at breakfast on the second
morning, and Henchard sat down alone. He was startled to see a letter for him from
Jersey in a writing he knew too well, and had expected least to behold again.
He took it up in his hands and looked at it as at a picture, a vision, a vista of past
enactments; and then he read it as an unimportant finale to conjecture.
The writer said that she at length perceived how impossible it would be for any further
communications to proceed between them now that his re-marriage had taken place.
That such re-union had been the only straightforward course open to him she was
bound to admit. "On calm reflection, therefore," she went on, "I quite forgive you for
landing me in such a dilemma, remembering that you concealed nothing before our ill-
advised acquaintance; and that you really did set before me in your grim way the fact
of there being a certain risk in intimacy with you, slight as it seemed to be after
eighteen years of silence on your wife's part. I thus look upon the whole as a
misfortune of mine, and not a fault of yours.
"So that, Michael, I must ask you to overlook those letters with which I pestered you
day after day in the heat of my feelings. They were written whilst I thought your
conduct to me cruel; but now I know more particulars of the position you were in I see
how inconsiderate my reproaches were.
"Now you will, I am sure, perceive that the one condition which will make any future
happiness possible for me, is that the past connection between our lives be kept secret
outside this isle. Speak of it I know you will not; and I can trust you not to write of it.
One safeguard more remains to be mentioned- that no writings of mine, or trifling
articles belonging to me, should be left in your possession through neglect or
forgetfulness. To this end may I request you to return to me any such you may have,
particularly the letters written in the first abandonment of feeling.
"For the handsome sum you forwarded to me as a plaster to the wound, I heartily
thank you.
"I am now on my way to Bristol, to see my only relative. She is rich, and I hope will do
something for me. I shall return through Casterbridge and Budmouth, where I shall
take the packet-boat. Can you meet me with the letters and other trifles? I shall be in the
coach which changes horses at the Antelope Hotel at half-past five Wednesday evening;
I shall be wearing a Paisley shawl with a red centre, and thus may easily be found. I
should prefer this plan of receiving them to having them sent.- I remain still, yours
ever, "LUCETTA." Henchard breathed heavily. "Poor thing- better you had not known
me! Upon my heart and soul, if ever I should be left in a position to carry out thatmarriage with thee, I ought to do it- I ought to do it, indeed!" The contingency that he
had in his mind was, of course, the death of Mrs. Henchard.
As requested, he sealed up Lucetta's letters, and put the parcel aside till the day she
had appointed; this plan of returning them by hand being apparently a little ruse of the
young lady for exchanging a word or two with him on past times.
He would have preferred not to see her; but deeming that there could be no great harm
in acquiescing thus far, he went at dusk and stood opposite the coach-office.
The evening was chilly, and the coach was late. Henchard crossed over to it while the
horses were being changed; but there was no Lucetta inside or out. Concluding that
something had happened to modify her arrangements he gave the matter up and went
home, not without a sense of relief.
Meanwhile Mrs. Henchard was weakening visibly. She could not go out of doors any
more. One day, after much thinking which seemed to distress her, she said she wanted
to write something. A desk was put upon her bed with pen and paper, and at her
request she was left alone. She remained writing for a short time, folded her paper
carefully, called Elizabeth-Jane to bring a taper and wax, and then, still refusing
assistance, sealed up the sheet, directed it, and locked it in her desk. She had directed it
in these words: "Mr. Michael Henchard. Not to be opened till Elizabeth-Jane's
wedding-day." The latter sat up with her mother to the utmost of her strength night
after night. To learn to take the universe seriously there is no quicker way than to
watch- to be a "waker," as the country-people call it. Between the hours at which the
last toss-pot went by and the first sparrow shook himself, the silence in Casterbridge-
barring the rare sound of the watchman- was broken in Elizabeth's ear only by the
time-piece in the bedroom ticking frantically against the clock on the stairs; ticking
harder and harder till it seemed to clang like a gong; and all this while the subtle-
souled girl asking herself why she was born, why sitting in a room, and blinking at the
candle; why things around her had taken the shape they wore in preference to every
other possible shape. Why they stared at her so helplessly, as if waiting for the touch of
some wand that should release them from terrestrial constraint; what that chaos called
consciousness, which spun in her at this moment like a top, tended to, and began in.
Her eyes fell together; she was awake, yet she was asleep.
A word from her mother roused her. Without preface, and as the continuation of a
scene already progressing in her mind, Mrs. Henchard said: "You remember the note
sent to you and Mr. Farfrae- asking you to meet some one in Durnover Barton- and that
you thought it was a trick to make fools of you?" "Yes." "It was not to make fools of
you- it was done to bring you together. 'Twas I did it." "Why?" said Elizabeth, with a
start.
"I- wanted you to marry Mr. Farfrae." "O mother!" Elizabeth-Jane bent down her head
so much that she looked quite into her own lap. But as her mother did not go on, she
said, "What reason?" "Well, I had a reason. 'Twill out one day. I wish it could have
been in my time! But there- nothing is as you wish it! Henchard hates him." "Perhaps
they'll be friends again," murmured the girl.
"I don't know- I don't know." After this her mother was silent, and dozed, and she
spoke on the subject no more...!!!!HENCHARD AND Elizabeth sat conversing by the fire. It was three weeks after Mrs.
Henchard's funeral; the candles were not lighted, and a restless, acrobatic flame, poised
on a coal, called from the shady walls the smiles of all shapes that could respond- the
old pier- glass, with gilt columns and huge entablature, the picture-frames, sundry
knobs and handles, and the brass rosette at the bottom of each riband bell-pull on either
side of the chimney-piece.
"Elizabeth, do you think much of old times?" said Henchard.
"Yes, sir; often," said she.
"Who do you put in your pictures of 'em?" "Mother and father- nobody else hardly."
Henchard always looked like one bent on resisting pain when Elizabeth-Jane spoke of
Richard Newson as "father." "Ah! I am out of all that, am I not?" he said.... "Was
Newson a kind father?" "Yes, sir; very." Henchard's face settled into an expression of
stolid loneliness which gradually modulated into something softer. "Suppose I had
been your real father?" he said. "Would you have cared for me as much as you cared
for Richard Newson?" "I can't think it," she said quickly. "I can think of no other as my
father, except my father." Henchard's wife was dissevered from him by death; his
friend and helper Farfrae by estrangement; Elizabeth-Jane by ignorance. It seemed to
him that only one of them could possibly be recalled, and that was the girl. His mind
began vibrating between the wish to reveal himself to her, and the policy of leaving
well alone, till he could no longer sit still. He walked up and down, and then he came
and stood behind her chair, looking down upon the top of her head. He could no
longer restrain his impulse. "What did your mother tell you about me- my history?" he
asked.
"That you were related by marriage." "She should have told more- before you knew
me! Then my task would not have been such a hard one.... Elizabeth, it is I who am
your father, and not Richard Newson. Shame alone prevented your wretched parents
from owning this to you while both of 'em were alive." The back of Elizabeth's head
remained still, and her shoulders did not denote even the movements of breathing.
Henchard went on: "I'd rather have your scorn, your fear, anything than your
ignorance; 'tis that I hate! Your mother and I were man and wife when we were young.
What you saw was our second marriage.
Your mother was too honest. We had thought each other dead- and- Newson became
her husband."
This was the nearest approach Henchard could make to the full truth. As far as he
personally was concerned he would have screened nothing; but he showed a respect
for the young girl's sex and years worthy of a better man.
When he had gone on to give details which a whole series of slight and unregarded
incidents in her past life strangely corroborated; when, in short, she believed his story
to be true, she became greatly agitated, and, turning round to the table, flung her face
upon it weeping."Don't cry- don't cry!" said Henchard, with vehement pathos, "I can't bear it, I won't
bear it. I am your father; why should you cry? Am I so dreadful, so hateful to 'ee? Don't
take against me, Elizabeth-Jane!" he cried, grasping her wet hand. "Don't take against
me- though I was a drinking man once, and used your mother roughly- I'll be kinder to
you than, he was! I'll do anything, if you will only look upon me as your father!" She
tried to stand up and confront him trustfully; but she could not; she was troubled at his
presence, like the brethren at the avowal of Joseph.
"I don't want you to come to me all of a sudden," said Henchard in jerks, and moving
like a great tree in a wind. "No, Elizabeth, I don't. I'll go away and not see you till
tomorrow, or when you like; and then I'll show 'ee papers to prove my words. There, I
am gone, and won't disturb you any more.... 'Twas I that chose your name, my
daughter; your mother wanted it Susan. There, don't forget 'twas I gave you your
name!" He went out at the door and shut her softly in, and she heard him go away into
the garden. But he had not done. Before she had moved, or in any way recovered from
the effect of his disclosure, he reappeared.
"One word more, Elizabeth," he said. "You'll take my surname now- hey? Your mother
was against it; but it will be much more pleasant to me. 'Tis legally yours, you know.
But nobody need know that. You shall take it as if by choice.
I'll talk to my lawyer- I don't know the law of it exactly; but will you do this- let me put
a few lines into the newspaper that such is to be your name?" "If it is my name I must
have it, mustn't I?" she asked.
"Well, well; usage is everything in these matters." "I wonder why mother didn't wish
it?" "Oh, some whim of the poor soul's. Now get a bit of paper and draw up a
paragraph, as I shall tell you. But let's have a light." "I can see by the firelight," she
answered. "Yes- I'd rather." "Very well." She got a piece of paper, and bending over
the fender, wrote at his dictation words which he had evidently got by heart from some
advertisement or otherwords to the effect that she, the writer, hitherto known as
Elizabeth-Jane Newson, was going to call herself Elizabeth-Jane Henchard forthwith. It
was done, and fastened up, and directed to the office of the "Casterbridge Chronicle."
"Now," said Henchard, with the blaze of satisfaction that he always emitted when he
had carried his point- though tenderness softened it this time- "I'll go upstairs and hunt
for some documents that will prove it all to you. But I won't trouble you with them till
tomorrow. Good night, my Elizabeth-Jane!" He was gone before the bewildered girl
could realize what it all meant, or adjust her filial sense to the new centre of gravity.
She was thankful that he had left her to herself for the evening, and sat down over the
fire. Here she remained in silence, and wept- not for her mother now, but for the genial
sailor, Richard Newson, to whom she seemed doing a wrong.
Henchard, in the meantime, had gone upstairs. Papers of a domestic nature he kept in a
drawer in his bedroom, and this he unlocked. Before turning them over he leant back
and indulged in reposeful thought. Elizabeth was his at last, and she was a girl of such
good sense and kind heart that she would be sure to like him.
He was the kind of man to whom some human object for pouring out his heat upon-
were it emotive or were it choleric- was almost a necessity. The craving of his heart for
the re-establishment of this tenderest human tie had been great during his wife'slifetime, and now he had submitted to its mastery without reluctance and without fear.
He bent over the drawer again, and proceeded in his search.
Among the other papers had been placed the contents of his wife's little desk, the keys
of which had been handed to him at her request. Here was the letter addressed to him
with the restriction, "Not to be opened till Elizabeth-Jane's wedding-day." Mrs.
Henchard, though more patient than her husband, had been no practical hand at
anything. In sealing up the sheet, which was folded and tucked in without an envelope
in the old-fashioned way, she had overlaid the junction with a large mass of wax
without the requisite under-touch of the same. The seal had cracked, and the letter was
open. Henchard had no reason to suppose the restriction one of serious weight, and his
feelings for his late wife had not been of the nature of deep respect. "Some trifling
fancy or other of poor Susan's, I suppose," he said; and without curiosity he allowed
his eyes to scan the letter:"MY DEAR MICHAEL: For the good of all three of us, I have
kept one thing a secret from you till now. I hope you will understand why; I think you
will; though perhaps you may not forgive me. But, dear Michael, I have done it for the
best. I shall be in my grave when you read this, and ElizabethJane will have a home.
Don't curse me, Mike- think of how I was situated. I can hardly write it, but here it is.
Elizabeth-Jane is not your Elizabeth-Jane- the child who was in my arms when you sold
me.
No; she died three months after that, and this living one is my other husband's. I
christened her by the same name we had given to the first, and she filled up the ache I
felt at the other's loss. Michael, I am dying, and I might have held my tongue; but I
could not. Tell her husband of this or not, as you may judge; and forgive, if you can, a
woman you once deeply wronged, as she forgives you.
SUSAN HENCHARD."
Her husband regarded the paper as if it were a window-pane through which he saw
for miles. His lip twitched, and he seemed to compress his frame, as if to bear better.
His usual habit was not to consider whether destiny were hard upon him or not- the
shape of his ideas in cases of affliction being simply a moody "I am to suffer, I
perceive." "So much scourging as this, then, is it for me?" But now through his
passionate head there stormed this thought- that the blasting disclosure was what he
had deserved.
His wife's extreme reluctance to have the girl's name altered from Newson to
Henchard was now accounted for fully. It furnished another illustration of that honesty
in dishonesty which had characterized her in other things.
He remained unnerved and purposeless for near a couple of hours; till he suddenly
said, "Ah- I wonder if it is true!" He jumped up in an impulse, kicked off his slippers,
and went with a candle to the door of Elizabeth-Jane's room, where he put his ear to
the keyhole and listened. She was breathing profoundly. Henchard softly turned the
handle, entered, and shading the light, approached the bedside. Gradually bringing the
light from behind a screening curtain he held it in such a manner that it fell slantwise
on her face without shining on her eyes. He steadfastly regarded her features.
They were fair; his were dark. But this was an unimportant preliminary. In sleep there
come to the surface buried genealogical facts, ancestral curves, dead men's traits, whichthe mobility of daytime animation screen and overwhelms. In the present statuesque
repose of the young girl's countenance Richard Newson's was unmistakably reflected.
He could not endure the sight of her, and hastened away.
Misery taught him nothing more than defiant endurance of it. His wife was dead, and
the first impulse for revenge died with the thought that she was beyond him. He
looked out at the night as at a fiend. Henchard, like all his kind, was superstitious, and
he could not help thinking that the concatenation of events this evening had produced
was the scheme of some sinister intelligence bent on punishing him. Yet they had
developed naturally. If he had not revealed his past history to Elizabeth he would not
have searched the drawer for papers, and so on.
The mockery was, that he should have no sooner taught a girl to claim the shelter of his
paternity than he discovered her to have no kinship with him.
This ironical sequence of things angered him like an impish trick from a fellow-
creature. Like Prester John's, his table had been spread, and infernal harpies had
snatched up the food. He went out of the house, and moved sullenly onward down the
pavement till he came to the bridge at the bottom of the High Street.
Here he turned in upon a bypath on the river bank, skirting the north-eastern limits of
the town.
These precincts embodied the mournful phases of Casterbridge life, as the south
avenues embodied its cheerful moods. The whole way along here was sunless, even in
summer time; in spring, white frosts lingered here when other places were steaming
with warmth; while in winter it was the seed-field of all the aches, rheumatisms, and
torturing cramps of the year. The Casterbridge doctors must have pined away for want
of sufficient nourishment, but for the configuration of the landscape on the north-
eastern side.
The river- slow, noiseless, and dark- the Schwarzwasser of Casterbridge- ran beneath a
low cliff, the two together forming a defence which had rendered walls and artificial
earthworks on this side unnecessary. Here were ruins of a Franciscan priory, and a mill
attached to the same, the water of which roared down a backhatch like the voice of
desolation. Above the cliff, and behind the river, rose a pile of buildings, and in the
front of the pile a square mass cut into the sky. It was like a pedestal lacking its statue.
This missing feature, without which the design remained incomplete, was, in truth, the
corpse of a man; for the square mass formed the base of the gallows, the extensive
buildings at the back being the county goal. In the meadow where Henchard now
walked the mob were wont to gather whenever an execution took place, and there to
the tune of the roaring weir they stood and watched the spectacle.
The exaggeration which darkness imparted to the glooms of this region impressed
Henchard more than he had expected. The lugubrious harmony of the spot with his
domestic situation was too perfect for him, impatient of effects, scenes, and
adumbrations. It reduced his heartburning to melancholy, and he exclaimed, "Why the
deuce did I come here!" He went on past the cottage in which the old local hangman
had lived and died, in times before that calling was monopolized over all England by a
single gentleman; and climbed up by a steep back lane into the town.For the sufferings of that night, engendered by his bitter disappointment, he might well
have been pitied. He was like one who had half fainted, and could neither recover nor
complete the swoon. In words he could blame his wife, but not in his heart; and had he
obeyed the wise directions outside her letter this pain would have been spared him for
long- possibly for ever, Elizabeth-Jane seeming to show no ambition to quit her safe
and secluded maiden courses for the speculative path of matrimony.
The morning came after this night of unrest, and with it the necessity for a plan. He
was far too self-willed to recede from a position, especially as it would involve
humiliation. His daughter he had asserted her to be, and his daughter she should
always think herself, no matter what hypocrisy it involved.
But he was ill- prepared for the first step in this new situation. The moment he came
into the breakfast-room Elizabeth advanced with open confidence to him and took him
by the arm.
"I have thought and thought all night of it," she said frankly. "And I see that
everything must be as you say. And I am going to look upon you as the father that you
are, and not to call you Mr. Henchard any more. It is so plain to me now. Indeed,
father, it is. For, of course, you would not have done half the things you have done for
me, and let me have my own way so entirely, and bought me presents, if I had only
been your step-daughter! He- Mr. Newson- whom my poor mother married by such a
strange mistake" (Henchard was glad that he had disguised matters here), "was very
kind- oh, so kind!" (she spoke with tears in her eyes); "but that is not the same thing as
being one's real father after all. Now, father, breakfast is ready!" said she cheerfully.
Henchard bent and kissed her cheek. The moment and the act he had contemplated for
weeks with a thrill of pleasure; yet it was no less than a miserable insipidity to him
now that it had come. His reinstation of her mother had been chiefly for the girl's sake,
and the fruition of the whole scheme was such dust and ashes as this.
OF ALL the enigmas which ever confronted a girl there can have been seldom one like
that which followed Henchard's announcement of himself to Elizabeth as her father.
He had done it in an ardour and an agitation which had half carried the point of
affection with her; yet, behold, from the next morning onwards his manner was
constrained as she had never seen it before.
The coldness soon broke out into open chiding. One grievous failing of Elizabeth's was
her occasional pretty and picturesque use of dialect words- those terrible marks of the
beasts to the truly genteel.
It was dinner-time- they never met except at meals- and she happened to say when he
was rising from table, wishing to show him something, "If you'll bide where you be a
minute, father, I'll get it." "'Bide where you be,'" he echoed sharply. "Good God, are
you only fit to carry wash to a pig-trough, that ye use such words as those?" She
reddened with shame and sadness.
"I meant, 'Stay where you are,' father," she said, in a low, humble voice. "I ought to
have been more careful." He made no reply, and went out of the room.
The sharp reprimand was not lost upon her, and in time it came to pass that for "fay"
she said "succeed;" that she no longer spoke of "dumbledores" but of "humble bees;"
no longer said of young men and women that they "walked together," but that they
were "engaged;" that she grew to talk of "greggles" as "wild hyacinths;" that when she
had not slept she did not quaintly tell the servants next morning that she had been
"hag-rid," but that she had "suffered from indigestion." These improvements,
however, are somewhat in advance of the story. Henchard, being uncultivated himself,
was the bitterest critic the fair girl could possibly have had of her own lapses- really
slight now, for she read omnivorously. A gratuitous ordeal was in store for her in the
matter of her handwriting. She was passing the dining-room door one evening, and
had occasion to go in for something. It was not till she had opened the door that she
knew the Mayor was there in the company of a man with whom he transacted business.
"Here, Elizabeth-Jane," he said, looking round at her, "just write down what I tell you-
a few words of an agreement for me and this gentleman to sign. I am a poor tool with a
pen." "Be jowned, and so be I," said the gentleman.
She brought forward blotting-book, paper, and ink, and sat down.
"Now then- 'An agreement entered into this sixteenth day of October'- write that first."
She started the pen in an elephantine march across the sheet. It was a splendid round,
bold hand of her own conception, a style that would have stamped a woman as
Minerva's own in more recent days. But other ideas reigned then; Henchard's creed
was that proper young girls wrote ladies'-hand- nay, he believed that bristling
characters were as innate and inseparable a part of refined womanhood as sex itself.
Hence when, instead of scribbling, like the Princess Ida,"In such a hand as when a field
of corn Bows all its ears before the roaring East,"Henchard glanced at Elizabeth-Jane, whose complexion, now pink and white from
confinement, lost nearly all of the former colour. "What does this mean?" he said to her.
"Anything or nothing?" "It is true," said Elizabeth-Jane. "But it was only-" "Did you do
it, or didn't you? Where was it?" "At the Three Mariners; one evening for a little while,
when we were staying there." Nance glanced triumphantly at Henchard, and sailed
into the barn; for, assuming that she was to be discharged on the instant, she had
resolved to make the most of her victory. Henchard, however, said nothing about
discharging her. Unduly sensitive on such points by reason of his own past, he had the
look of one completely ground down to the last indignity; Elizabeth followed him to
the house like a culprit; but when she got inside she could not see him. Nor did she see
him again that day.
Convinced of the scathing damage to his local repute and position that must have been
caused by such a fact, though it had never before reached his own ears, Henchard
showed a positive distaste for the presence of this girl not his own, whenever he
encountered her. He mostly dined with the farmers at the marketroom of one of the
two chief hotels, leaving her in utter solitude. Could he have seen how she made use of
those silent hours he might have found reason to reverse his judgment on her quality.
She read and took notes incessantly, mastering facts with painful laboriousness, but
never flinching from her self-imposed task.
She began the study of Latin, incited by the Roman characteristics of the town she lived
in. "If I am not well-informed it shall be by no fault of my own," she would say to
herself through the tears that would occasionally glide down her peachy cheeks when
she was fairly baffled by the portentous obscurity of many of these educational works.
Thus she lived on, a dumb, deep-feeling, great-eyed creature, construed by not a single
contiguous being; quenching with patient fortitude her incipient interest in Farfrae,
because it seemed to be one-sided, unmaidenly, and unwise. True, that for reasons best
known to herself, she had, since Farfrae's dismissal, shifted her quarters from the back
room affording a view of the yard (which she had occupied with such zest) to a front
chamber overlooking the street; but as for the young man, whenever he passed the
house he seldom or never turned his head.
Winter had almost come, and unsettled weather made her still more dependent upon
indoor resources. But there were certain early winter days in Casterbridgedays of
firmamental exhaustion which followed angry south-westerly tempestswhen, if the sun
shone, the air was like velvet. She seized on these days for her periodical visits to the
spot where her mother lay buried- the still-used burial-ground of the old Roman-
British city, whose curious feature was this, its continuity as a place of sepulture. Mrs.
Henchard's dust mingled with the dust of women who lay ornamented with glass
hairpins and amber necklaces, and men who held in their mouths coins of Hadrian,
Posthumus, and the Constantines.
Half-past ten in the morning was about her hour for seeking this spot- at time when the
town avenues were deserted as the avenues of Karnac. Business had long since passed
down them into its daily cells, and Leisure had not arrived there. So Elizabeth-Jane
walked and read, or looked over the edge of the book to think, and thus reached the
churchyard.Elizabeth-Jane produced a line of chain-shot and sand-bags, he reddened in angry
shame for her, and, peremptorily saying, "Never mind- I'll finish it," dismissed her
there and then.
Her considerate disposition became a pitfall to her now. She was, it must be admitted,
sometimes provokingly and unnecessarily willing to saddle herself with manual
labours. She would go to the kitchen instead of ringing, "Not to make Phoebe come up
twice." She went down on her knees, shovel in hand, when the cat overturned the coal-
scuttle; moreover, she would persistently thank the parlour-maid for everything, till
one day, as soon as the girl was gone from the room, Henchard broke out with, "Good
God, why dostn't leave off thanking that girl as if she were a goddess-born! Don't I pay
her a dozen pound a year to do things for 'ee?" Elizabeth shrank so visibly at the
exclamation that he became sorry a few minutes after, and said that he did not mean to
be so rough.
These domestic exhibitions were the small protruding needle-rocks which suggested
rather than revealed what was underneath. But his passion had less terror for her than
his coldness. The increasing frequency of the latter mood told her the sad news that he
disliked her with a growing dislike. The more interesting that her appearance and
manners became under the softening influences which she could now command, and in
her wisdom did command, the more she seemed to estrange him. Sometimes she
caught him looking at her with a louring invidiousness that she could hardly bear. Not
knowing his secret, it was a cruel mockery that she should for the first time excite his
animosity when she had taken his surname.
But the most terrible ordeal was to come. Elizabeth had latterly been accustomed of an
afternoon to present a cup of cider or ale and bread-and-cheese to Nance Mockridge,
who worked in the yard, wimbling hay bonds. Nance accepted this offering thankfully
at first; afterwards as a matter of course. On a day when Henchard was on the premises
he saw his step-daughter enter the hay-barn on this errand; and, as there was no clear
spot on which to deposit the provisions, she at once set to work arranging two trusses
of hay as a table, Mockridge meanwhile standing with her hands on her hips, easefully
looking at the preparations on her behalf.
"Elizabeth, come here!" said Henchard; and she obeyed.
"Why do you lower yourself so confoundedly?" he said with suppressed passion.
"Haven't I told you o't fifty times? Hey? Making yourself a drudge for a common
workwoman of such a character as hers! Why, ye'll disgrace me to the dust!"
Now these words were uttered loud enough to reach Nance inside the barn door, who
fired up immediately at the slur upon her personal character. Coming to the door, she
cried, regardless of consequences, "Come to that, Mr. Michael Henchard, I can let 'ee
know she've waited on worse!" "Then she must have had more charity than sense,"
said Henchard.
"Oh no, she hadn't. 'Twere not for charity but for hire; and at a public-house in this
town!" "It is not true!" cried Henchard indignantly.
"Just ask her," said Nance, folding her naked arms in such a manner that she could
comfortably scratch her elbows.There, approaching her mother's grave, she saw a solitary dark figure in the middle of
the gravel-walk. This figure, too, was reading; but not from a book; the words which
engrossed it being the inscription on Mrs. Henchard's tombstone.
The personage was in mourning like herself, was about her age and size, and might
have been her wraith or double, but for the fact that it was a lady much more
beautifully dressed than she. Indeed, comparatively indifferent as ElizabethJane was to
dress, unless for some temporary whim or purpose, her eyes were arrested by the
artistic perfection of the lady's appearance. Her gait, too, had a flexuousness about it,
which seemed to avoid angularity of movement less from choice than from
predisposition. It was a revelation to Elizabeth that human beings could reach this
stage of external development- she had never suspected it. She felt all the freshness and
grace to be stolen from herself on the instant by the neighbourhood of such a stranger.
And this was in face of the fact that Elizabeth could now have been writ handsome,
while the young lady was simply pretty.
Had she been envious she might have hated the woman; but she did not do that- she
allowed herself the pleasure of feeling fascinated. She wondered where the lady had
come from. The stumpy and practical walk of honest homeliness which mostly
prevailed there, the two styles of dress thereabout, the simple and the mistaken,
equally avouched that this figure was no Casterbridge woman's, even if a book in her
hand resembling a guide-book had not also suggested it.
The stranger presently moved from the tombstone of Mrs. Henchard, and vanished
behind the corner of the wall. Elizabeth went to the tomb herself; beside it were two
footprints distinct in the soil, signifying that the lady had stood there a long time. She
returned homeward, musing on what she had seen, as she might have mused on a
rainbow or the Northern Lights, a rare butterfly or a cameo.
Interesting as things had been out of doors, at home it turned out to be one of her bad
days. Henchard, whose two years' mayoralty was ending, had been made aware that
he was not to be chosen to fill a vacancy in the list of aldermen; and that Farfrae was
likely to become one of the Council. This caused the unfortunate discovery that she had
played the waiting-maid in the town of which he was Mayor to rankle in his mind yet
more poisonously. He had learnt by personal inquiry at the time that it was to Donald
Farfrae- that treacherous upstart- that she had thus humiliated herself. And though
Mrs. Stannidge seemed to attach no great importance to the incident- the cheerful souls
at the Three Mariners having exhausted its aspects long ago- such was Henchard's
haughty spirit that the simple thrifty deed was regarded as little less than a social
catastrophe by him.
Ever since the evening of his wife's arrival with her daughter there had been something
in the air which had changed his luck. That dinner at the King's Arms with his friends
had been Henchard's Austerlitz: he had had his successes since, but his course had not
been upward. He was not to be numbered among the aldermen- that Peerage of
burghers- as he had expected to be, and the consciousness of this soured him today.
"Well, where have you been?" he said to her, with off-hand laconism.
"I've been strolling in the Walks and churchyard, father, till I feel quite leery." She
clapped her hand to her mouth, but too late.This was just enough to incense Henchard after the other crosses of the day. "I won't
have you talk like that!" he thundered. "'Leery,' indeed. One would think you worked
upon a farm! One day I learn that you lend a hand in public-houses.
Then I hear you talk like a clodhopper. I'm burned, if it goes on, this house can't hold
us two."
The only way of getting a single pleasant thought to go to sleep upon after this was by
recalling the lady she had seen that day, and hoping she might see her again.
Meanwhile Henchard was sitting up, thinking over his jealous folly in forbidding
Farfrae to pay his addresses to this girl who did not belong to him, when if he had
allowed them to go on he might not have been encumbered with her. At last he said to
himself with satisfaction as he jumped up and went to the writingtable: "Ah! he'll think
it means peace, and a marriage portion- not that I don't want my house to be troubled
with her, and no portion at all!" He wrote as follows: "Sir,- On consideration, I don't
wish to interfere with your courtship of Elizabeth-Jane, if you care for her. I therefore
withdraw my objection; excepting in this- that the business be not carried on in my
house.-
Yours, "M. HENCHARD.
"Mr. Farfrae."
The morrow, being fairly fine, found Elizabeth-Jane again in the churchyard; but while
looking for the lady she was startled by the apparition of Farfrae, who passed outside
the gate. He glanced up for a moment from a pocket-book in which he appeared to be
making figures as he went; whether or not he saw her he took no notice, and
disappeared.
Unduly depressed by a sense of her own superfluity, she thought he probably scorned
her; and quite broken in spirit, sat down on a bench. She fell into painful thought on
her position, which ended with her saying quite loud, "Oh, I wish I was dead with dear
mother!" Behind the bench was a little promenade under the wall where people
sometimes walked instead of on the gravel. The bench seemed to be touched by
something; she looked round, and a face was bending over her, veiled, but still distinct,
the face of a young woman she had seen yesterday.
Elizabeth-Jane looked confounded for a moment, knowing she had been overheard,
though there was pleasure in her confusion. "Yes, I heard you," said the lady, in a
vivacious voice, answering her look. "What can have happened?" "I don't- I can't tell
you," said Elizabeth, putting her hand to her face to hide a quick flush that had come.
There was no movement or word for a few seconds; then the girl felt that the young
lady was sitting down beside her.
"I guess how it is with you," said the latter. "That was your mother." She waved her
hand towards the tombstone. Elizabeth looked up at her as if inquiring of herself
whether there should be confidence. The lady's manner was so desirous, so anxious,
that the girl decided there should be confidence. "It was my mother," she said, "my
only friend." "But your father, Mr. Henchard. He is living?" "Yes, he is living," said
Elizabeth-Jane."Is he not kind to you?" "I've no wish to complain of him." "There has been a
disagreement?" "A little." "Perhaps you were to blame," suggested the stranger.
"I was- in many ways," sighed the meek Elizabeth. "I swept up the coals when the
servant ought to have done it; and I said I was leery;- and he was angry with me." The
lady seemed to warm towards her for that reply. "Do you know the impression your
words give me?" she said ingenuously. "That he is a hot-tempered man- a little proud-
perhaps ambitious; but not a bad man." Her anxiety not to condemn Henchard, while
siding with Elizabeth, was curious.
"Oh no: certainly not bad," agreed the honest girl. "And he has not even been unkind
to me till lately- since mother died. But it has been very much to bear while it has
lasted. All is owing to my defects, I daresay; and my defects are owing to my history."
"What is your history?" Elizabeth-Jane looked wistfully at her questioner. She found
that her questioner was looking at her; turned her eyes down; and then seemed
compelled to look back again. "My history is not gay or attractive," she said. "And yet I
can tell it, if you really want to know." The lady assured her that she did want to know,
whereupon Elizabeth-Jane told the tale of her life as she understood it, which was in
general the true one, except that the sale at the fair had no part therein.
Contrary to the girl's expectation her new friend was not shocked. This cheered her;
and it was not till she thought of returning to that home in which she had been treated
so roughly of late that her spirits fell.
"I don't know how to return," she murmured. "I think of going away. But what can I
do? Where can I go?" "Perhaps it will be better soon," said her friend gently. "So I
would not go far.
Now what do you think of this: I shall soon want somebody to live in my house, partly
as housekeeper, partly as companion; would you mind coming to me? But perhaps-"
"Oh yes," cried Elizabeth, with tears in her eyes. "I would, indeed- I would do
anything to be independent; for then perhaps my father might get to love me. But, ah!"
"What?" "I am no accomplished person. And a companion to you must be that." "Oh,
not necessarily." "Not? But I can't help using rural words sometimes, when I don't
mean to." "Never mind, I shall like to know them." "And- oh, I know I shan't do!"- she
cried with a distressful laugh. "I accidentally learned to write round hand instead of
ladies'-hand. And, of course, you want some one who can write that?" "Well, no."
"What, not necessary to write ladies'-hand?" cried the joyous Elizabeth.
"Not at all." "But where do you live?" "In Casterbridge, or rather I shall be living here
after twelve o'clock today." Elizabeth expressed her astonishment.
"I have been staying at Budmouth for a few days while my house was getting ready.
The house I am going into is that one they call High Place Hall- the old stone one
overlooking the Market. Two or three rooms are fit for occupation, though not all: I
sleep there tonight for the first time. Now will you think over my proposal, and meet
me here the first fine day next week, and say if you are still in the same mind?"Elizabeth, her eyes shining at this prospect of a change from an unbearable...!!!