THE RETORT of the furmity-woman before the magistrates had spread, and in four-
and-twenty hours there was not a person in Casterbridge who remained unacquainted
with the story of Henchard's mad freak at Weydon-Priors Fair, long years before. The
amends he had made in after life were lost sight of in the dramatic glare of the original
act. Had the incident been well-known of old and always, it might by this time have
grown to be lightly regarded as the rather tall wild oat, but well-nigh the single one, of
a young man with whom the steady and mature (if somewhat headstrong) burgher of
today had scarcely a point in common. But the act having lain as dead and buried ever
since, the interspace of years was unperceived; and the black spot of his youth wore the
aspect of a recent crime.
Small as the court incident had been in itself, it formed the edge or turn in the incline of
Henchard's fortunes. On that day- almost at that minute- he passed the ridge of
prosperity and honour, and began to descend rapidly on the other side. It was strange
how soon he sank in esteem. Socially he had received a startling fillip downwards; and,
having already lost commercial buoyancy from rash transactions, the velocity of his
descent in both aspects became accelerated every hour.
He now gazed more at the pavements, and less at the house-fronts, when he walked
about; more at the feet and leggings of men, and less into the pupils of their eyes with
the blazing regard which formerly had made them blink.
New events combined to undo him. It had been a bad year for others besides himself,
and the heavy failure of a debtor whom he had trusted generously completed the
overthrow of his tottering credit. And now, in his desperation, he failed to preserve that
strict correspondence between bulk and sample, which is the soul of commerce in
grain. For this, one of his men was mainly to blame; that worthy, in his great
unwisdom, having picked over the sample of an enormous quantity of second-rate corn
which Henchard had in hand, and removed the pinched, blasted, and smutted grains
in great numbers. The produce, if honestly offered, would have created no scandal; but
the blunder of misrepresentation, coming at such a moment, dragged Henchard's name
into the ditch.
The details of his failure were of the ordinary kind. One day Elizabeth-Jane was
passing the King's Arms, when she saw people bustling in and out more than usual
when there was no market. A bystander informed her, with some surprise at her
ignorance, that it was a meeting of the Commissioners under Mr. Henchard's
bankruptcy. She felt quite tearful, and when she heard that he was present in the hotel
she wished to go in and see him, but was advised not to intrude that day.
The room in which debtor and creditors has assembled was a front one, and Henchard,
looking out of the window, had caught sight of Elizabeth-Jane through the wire blind.
His examination had closed, and the creditors were leaving. The appearance of Elizabeth threw him into a reverie; till, turning his face from the window, and towering
above all the rest, he called their attention for a moment more. His countenance had
somewhat changed from its flush of prosperity; the black hair and whiskers were the
same as ever, but a film of ash was over the rest.
"Gentlemen," he said, "over and above the assets that we've been talking about, and
that appear on the balance-sheet, there be these. It all belongs to ye, as much as
everything else I've got, and I don't wish to keep it from you, not I." Saying this, he
took his gold watch from his pocket, and laid it on the table; then his purse- the yellow
canvas money-bag, such as was carried by all farmers and dealers- untying it, and
shaking the money out upon the table beside the watch. The latter he drew back
quickly for an instant, to remove the hair-guard made and given him by Lucetta.
"There, now you have all I've got in the world," he said.
"And I wish for your sakes 'twas more." The creditors, farmers almost to a man, looked
at the watch, and at the money, and into the street; when Farmer James Everdene
spoke.
"No, no, Henchard," he said warmly. "We don't want that. 'Tis honourable in ye; but
keep it. What do you say, neighbours-do ye agree?" "Ay, sure: we don't wish it at all,"
said Grower, another creditor.
"Let him keep it, of course," murmured another in the background- a silent, reserved
young man, named Boldwood; and the rest responded unanimously.
"Well," said the senior Commissioner, addressing Henchard, "though the case is a
desperate one, I am bound to admit that I have never met a debtor who behaved more
fairly. I've proved the balance-sheet to be as honestly made out as it could possibly be;
we have had no trouble; there have been no evasions and no concealments. The
rashness of dealing which led to this unhappy situation is obvious enough; but as far as
I can see every attempt has been made to avoid wronging anybody." Henchard was
more affected by this than he cared to let them perceive, and he turned aside to the
window again. A general murmur of agreement followed the Commissioners' words;
and the meeting dispersed. When they were gone Henchard regarded the watch they
had returned to him. "'Tisn't mine by rights," he said to himself. "Why the devil didn't
they take it?- I don't want what don't belong to me!' Moved by a recollection he took
the watch to the maker's just opposite, sold it there and then for what the tradesman
offered, and went with the proceeds to one among the smaller of his creditors, a
cottager of Durnover, in straitened circumstances, to whom he handed the money.
When everything was ticketed that Henchard had owned, and the auctions were in
progress, there was quite a sympathetic reaction in the town, which till then for some
time past had done nothing but condemn him. Now that Henchard's whole career was
pictured distinctly to his neighbours, and they could see how admirably he had used
his one talent of energy to create a position of affluence out of absolutely nothing-
which was really all he could show when he came to the town as a journeyman hay-
trusser, with his wimble and knife in his basket- they wondered and regretted his fall. Try as she might, Elizabeth could never meet with him. She believed in him still,
though nobody else did; and she wanted to be allowed to forgive him for his roughness
to her, and to help him in his trouble.
She wrote to him; he did not reply. She then went to his house- the great house she had
lived in so happily for a time- with its front of dun brick, vitrified here and there, and
its heavy sash-bars- but Henchard was to be found there no more. The ex-Mayor had
left the home of his prosperity, and gone into Jopp's cottage by the Priory Mill- the sad
purlieu to which he had wandered on the night of his discovery that she was not his
daughter. Thither she went.
Elizabeth thought it odd that he had fixed on this spot to retire to, but assumed that
necessity had no choice. Trees which seemed old enough to have been planted by the
friars still stood around, and the back hatch of the original mill yet formed a cascade
which had raised its terrific roar for centuries. The cottage itself was built of old stones
from the long dismantled Priory, scraps of tracery, moulded window-jambs, and arch-
labels, being mixed in with the rubble of the walls.
In this cottage he occupied a couple of rooms, Jopp, whom Henchard had employed,
abused, cajoled, and dismissed by turns, being the householder. But even here her
stepfather could not be seen.
"Not by his daughter?" pleaded Elizabeth.
"By nobody- at present: that's his order," she was informed.
Afterwards she was passing by the corn-stores and hay-barns which had been the
headquarters of his business. She knew that he ruled there no longer; but it was with
amazement that she regarded the familiar gateway. A smear of decisive lead-coloured
paint had been laid on to obliterate Henchard's name, though its letters dimly loomed
through like ships in a fog. Over these, in fresh white, spread the name of Farfrae.
Abel Whittle was edging his skeleton in at the wicket, and she said, "Mr. Farfrae is
master here?" "Yaas, Miss Henchet," he said, "Mr. Farfrae have bought the concern and
all of we work-folk with it; and 'tis better for us than 'twas- though I shouldn't say that
to you as a daughter-law. We work harder, but we bain't made afeard now. It was fear
made my few poor hairs so thin! No busting out, no slamming of doors, no meddling
with yer eternal soul and all that; and though 'tis a shilling a week less I'm the richer
man; for what's all the world if yer mind is always in a larry, Miss Henchet?" The
intelligence was in a general sense true; and Henchard's stores, which had remained in
a paralyzed condition during the settlement of his bankruptcy, were stirred into
activity again when the new tenant had possession. Thenceforward the full sacks,
looped with the shining chain, went scurrying up and down under the cat-head, hairy
arms were thrust out from the different door-ways, and the grain was hauled in;
trusses of hay were tossed anew in and out of the barns, and the wimbles creaked;
while the scales and steelyards began to be busy where guess-work had formerly been
the rule. TWO BRIDGES stood near the lower part of Casterbridge town. The first, of weather-
stained brick, was immediately at the end of High Street, where a diverging branch
from that thoroughfare ran round to the low-lying Durnover lanes; so that the precincts
of the bridge formed the merging point of respectability and indigence. The second
bridge, of stone, was further out on the highway- in fact, fairly in the meadows, though
still within the town boundary.
These bridges had speaking countenances. Every projection in each was worn down to
obtuseness, partly by weather, more by friction from generations of loungers, whose
toes and heels had from year to year made restless movements against these parapets,
as they had stood there meditating on the aspect of affairs.
In the case of the more friable bricks and stones even the flat faces were worn into
hollows by the same mixed mechanism. The masonry of the top was clamped with iron
at each joint; since it had been no uncommon thing for desperate men to wrench the
coping off and throw it down the river, in reckless defiance of the magistrates.
For to this pair of bridges gravitated all the failures of the town; those who had failed
in business, in love, in sobriety, in crime. Why the unhappy hereabout usually chose
the bridges for their meditations in preference to a railing, a gate, or a stile, was not so
clear.
There was a marked difference of quality between the personages who haunted the
near bridge of brick, and the personages who haunted the far one of stone. Those of
lowest character preferred the former, adjoining the town; they did not mind the glare
of the public eye. They had been of comparatively no account during their successes;
and, though they might feel dispirited, they had no particular sense of shame in their
ruin. Their hands were mostly kept in their pockets; they wore a leather strap round
their waists, and boots that required a great deal of lacing, but seemed never to get any.
Instead of sighing at their adversities they spat, and instead of saying the iron had
entered into their souls, they said they were down on their luck. Jopp in his times of
distress had often stood here; so had Mother Cuxsom, Christopher Coney, and poor
Abel Whittle.
The miserables who would pause on the remoter bridge were of a politer stamp. They
included bankrupts, hypochondriacs, persons who were what is called "out of a
situation" from fault or lucklessness, the inefficient of the professional class- shabby-
genteel men, who did not know how to get rid of the weary time between breakfast
and dinner, and the yet more weary time between dinner and dark. The eyes of this
species were mostly directed over the parapet upon the running water below. A man
seen there looking thus fixedly into the river was pretty sure to be one whom the world
did not treat kindly for some reason or other. While one in straits on the townward
bridge did not mind who saw him so, and kept his back to the parapet to survey thepassers-by, one in straits on this never faced the road, never turned his head at coming
footsteps, but, sensitive to his own condition, watched the current whenever a stranger
approached, as if some strange fish interested him, though every finned thing had been
poached out of the river years before.
There and thus they would muse; if their grief were the grief of oppression they would
wish themselves kings; if their grief were poverty, wish themselves millionaires; if sin,
they would wish they were saints or angels; if despised love, that they were some
much-courted Adonis of county fame. Some had been known to stand and think so
long with this fixed gaze downward, that eventually they had allowed their poor
carcases to follow that gaze; and they were discovered the next morning in the pool
beneath out of reach of their troubles.
To this bridge came Henchard, as other unfortunates had come before him, his way
thither being by the riverside path on the chilly edge of the town. Here he was standing
one windy afternoon when Durnover church clock struck five.
While the gusts were bringing the notes to his ears across the damp intervening flat a
man passed behind him, and greeted Henchard by name. Henchard turned slightly,
and saw that the comer was Jopp, his old foreman, now employed elsewhere, to whom,
though he hated him, he had gone for lodgings because Jopp was the one man in
Casterbridge whose observation and opinion the fallen cornmerchant despised to the
point of indifference.
Henchard returned him a scarcely perceptible nod, and Jopp stopped.
"He and she are gone into their new house today," said Jopp.
"Oh," said Henchard absently. "Which house is that?" "Your old one." "Gone into my
house?" And, starting up, Henchard added, "My house of all others in the town!"
"Well, as somebody was sure to live there, and you couldn't, it can do ye no harm that
he's the man." It was quite true: he felt that it was doing him no harm. Farfrae, who
had already taken in the yards and stores, had acquired possession of the house for the
obvious convenience of its contiguity. And yet this act of his taking up residence within
those roomy chambers while he, their former tenant, lived in a cottage, galled
Henchard indescribably.
Jopp continued: "And you heard of that fellow who bought all the best furniture at
your sale? He was bidding for no other than Farfrae all the while! It has never been
moved out of the house, as he'd already got the lease." "My furniture too! Surely he'll
buy my body and soul likewise!" "There's no saying he won't, if you be willing to sell."
And having planted these wounds in the heart of his once imperious master, Jopp went
on his way; while Henchard stared and stared into the racing river till the bridge
seemed moving backward with him.
The low land grew blacker, and the sky a deeper grey. When the landscape looked like
a picture blotted in with ink, another traveller approached the great stone bridge. He
was driving a gig, his direction being also townwards. On the round of the middle of the arch the gig stopped. "Mr. Henchard?" came from it in the voice of Farfrae.
Henchard turned his face.
Finding that he had guessed rightly, Farfrae told the man who accompanied him to
drive home; while he alighted, and went up to his former friend.
"I have heard that you think of emigrating, Mr. Henchard," he said. "Is it true? I have a
real reason for asking." Henchard withheld his answer for several instants, and then
said, "Yes; it is true. I am going where you were going to a few years ago, when I
prevented you and got you to bide here. 'Tis turn and turn about, isn't it! Do ye mind
how we stood like this in the Chalk Walk when I persuaded ye to stay? You then stood
without a chattel to your name, and I was the master of the house in Corn Street.
But now I stand without a stick or a rag, and the master of that house is you." "Yes, yes;
that's so! It's the way o' the warrld," said Farfrae.
"Ha, ha, true!" cried Henchard, throwing himself into a mood of jocularity.
"Up and down! I'm used to it. What's the odds after all!" "Now listen to me, if it's no
taking up your time," said Farfrae, "just as I listened to you. Don't go. Stay at home."
"But I can do nothing else, man!" said Henchard scornfully. "The little money I have
will just keep body and soul together for a few weeks, and no more. I have not felt
inclined to go back to journey-work yet; but I can't stay doing nothing, and my best
chance is elsewhere." "No; but what I propose is this- if ye will listen. Come and live in
your old house. We can spare some rooms very well- I am sure my wife would not
mind it at all- until there's an opening for ye." Henchard started. Probably the picture
drawn by the unsuspecting Donald of himself under the same roof with Lucetta was
too striking to be received with equanimity. "No, no," he said gruffly; "we should
quarrel." "You should hae a part to yourself," said Farfrae; "and nobody to interfere
wi' you. It will be a deal healthier than down there by the river where you live now."
Still Henchard refused. "You don't know what you ask," he said. "However, I can do
no less than thank 'ee." They walked into the town together side by side, as they had
done when Henchard persuaded the young Scotchman to remain. "Will you come in
and have some supper?" said Farfrae, when they reached the middle of the town,
where their paths diverged right and left.
"No, no." "By-the-bye, I had nearly forgot. I bought a good deal of your furniture." "So
I have heard."
"Well, it was no that I wanted it so very much for myself; but I wish ye to pick out all
that you care to have- such things as may be endeared to ye by associations, or
particularly suited to your use. And take them to your own house- it will not be
depriving me; we can do with less very well, and I will have plenty of opportunities of
getting more." "What- give it to me for nothing?" said Henchard. "But you paid the
creditors for it!" "Ah, yes; but maybe it's worth more to you than it is to me." Henchard
was a little moved. "I- sometimes think I've wronged ye!" he said, in tones which
showed the disquietude that the night shades hid in his face. He shook Farfrae abruptly
by the hand, and hastened away as if unwilling to betray himself further. Farfrae saw him turn through the thoroughfare into Bull Stake and vanish down towards the Priory
Mill.
Meanwhile Elizabeth-Jane, in an upper room no larger than the Prophet's chamber, and
with the silk attire of her palmy days packed away in a box, was netting with great
industry between the hours which she devoted to studying such books as she could get
hold of.
Her lodgings being nearly opposite her stepfather's former residence, now Farfrae's,
she could see Donald and Lucetta speeding in and out of their door with all the
bounding enthusiasm of their situation. She avoided looking that way as much as
possible; but it was hardly in human nature to keep the eyes averted when the door
slammed.
While living on thus quietly she heard the news that Henchard had caught cold and
was confined to his room- possibly a result of standing about the meads in damp
weather. She went off to his house at once. This time she was determined not to be
denied admittance, and made her way upstairs. He was sitting up in the bed with a
greatcoat round him, and at first resented her intrusion. "Go away- go away," he said.
"I don't like to see ye." "But, father-" "I don't like to see ye," he repeated.
However, the ice was broken, and she remained. She made the room more comfortable,
gave directions to the people below, and by the time she went away had reconciled her
stepfather to her visiting him.
The effect, either of her ministrations or of her mere presence, was a rapid recovery. He
soon was well enough to go out; and now things seemed to wear a new colour in his
eyes. He no longer thought of emigration, and thought more of Elizabeth. The having
nothing to do made him more dreary than any other circumstance; and one day, with
better views of Farfrae than he had held for some time, and a sense that honest work
was not a thing to be ashamed of, he stoically went down to Farfrae's yard and asked to
be taken on as a journeyman hay-trusser. He was engaged at once. This hiring of
Henchard was done through a foreman, Farfrae feeling that it was undesirable to come
personally in contact with the ex-cornfactor more than was absolutely necessary. While
anxious to help him he was well aware by this time of his uncertain temper, and
thought reserved relations best. For the same reason his orders to Henchard to proceed
to this and that country farm trussing in the usual way were always given through a
third person.
For a time these arrangements worked well, it being the custom to truss in the
respective stack-yards, before bringing it away, the hay bought at the different farms
about the neighbourhood; so that Henchard was often absent at such places the whole
week long. When this was all done, and Henchard had become in a measure broken in,
he came to work daily on the home premises like the rest.
And thus the once flourishing merchant and Mayor and what not stood as a
daylabourer in the barns and granaries he formerly had owned. him turn through the thoroughfare into Bull Stake and vanish down towards the Priory
Mill.
Meanwhile Elizabeth-Jane, in an upper room no larger than the Prophet's chamber, and
with the silk attire of her palmy days packed away in a box, was netting with great
industry between the hours which she devoted to studying such books as she could get
hold of.
Her lodgings being nearly opposite her stepfather's former residence, now Farfrae's,
she could see Donald and Lucetta speeding in and out of their door with all the
bounding enthusiasm of their situation. She avoided looking that way as much as
possible; but it was hardly in human nature to keep the eyes averted when the door
slammed.
While living on thus quietly she heard the news that Henchard had caught cold and
was confined to his room- possibly a result of standing about the meads in damp
weather. She went off to his house at once. This time she was determined not to be
denied admittance, and made her way upstairs. He was sitting up in the bed with a
greatcoat round him, and at first resented her intrusion. "Go away- go away," he said.
"I don't like to see ye." "But, father-" "I don't like to see ye," he repeated.
However, the ice was broken, and she remained. She made the room more comfortable,
gave directions to the people below, and by the time she went away had reconciled her
stepfather to her visiting him.
The effect, either of her ministrations or of her mere presence, was a rapid recovery. He
soon was well enough to go out; and now things seemed to wear a new colour in his
eyes. He no longer thought of emigration, and thought more of Elizabeth. The having
nothing to do made him more dreary than any other circumstance; and one day, with
better views of Farfrae than he had held for some time, and a sense that honest work
was not a thing to be ashamed of, he stoically went down to Farfrae's yard and asked to
be taken on as a journeyman hay-trusser. He was engaged at once. This hiring of
Henchard was done through a foreman, Farfrae feeling that it was undesirable to come
personally in contact with the ex-cornfactor more than was absolutely necessary. While
anxious to help him he was well aware by this time of his uncertain temper, and
thought reserved relations best. For the same reason his orders to Henchard to proceed
to this and that country farm trussing in the usual way were always given through a
third person.
For a time these arrangements worked well, it being the custom to truss in the
respective stack-yards, before bringing it away, the hay bought at the different farms
about the neighbourhood; so that Henchard was often absent at such places the whole
week long. When this was all done, and Henchard had become in a measure broken in,
he came to work daily on the home premises like the rest.
And thus the once flourishing merchant and Mayor and what not stood as a
daylabourer in the barns and granaries he formerly had owned.him turn through the thoroughfare into Bull Stake and vanish down towards the Priory
Mill.
Meanwhile Elizabeth-Jane, in an upper room no larger than the Prophet's chamber, and
with the silk attire of her palmy days packed away in a box, was netting with great
industry between the hours which she devoted to studying such books as she could get
hold of.
Her lodgings being nearly opposite her stepfather's former residence, now Farfrae's,
she could see Donald and Lucetta speeding in and out of their door with all the
bounding enthusiasm of their situation. She avoided looking that way as much as
possible; but it was hardly in human nature to keep the eyes averted when the door
slammed.
While living on thus quietly she heard the news that Henchard had caught cold and
was confined to his room- possibly a result of standing about the meads in damp
weather. She went off to his house at once. This time she was determined not to be
denied admittance, and made her way upstairs. He was sitting up in the bed with a
greatcoat round him, and at first resented her intrusion. "Go away- go away," he said.
"I don't like to see ye." "But, father-" "I don't like to see ye," he repeated.
However, the ice was broken, and she remained. She made the room more comfortable,
gave directions to the people below, and by the time she went away had reconciled her
stepfather to her visiting him.
The effect, either of her ministrations or of her mere presence, was a rapid recovery. He
soon was well enough to go out; and now things seemed to wear a new colour in his
eyes. He no longer thought of emigration, and thought more of Elizabeth. The having
nothing to do made him more dreary than any other circumstance; and one day, with
better views of Farfrae than he had held for some time, and a sense that honest work
was not a thing to be ashamed of, he stoically went down to Farfrae's yard and asked to
be taken on as a journeyman hay-trusser. He was engaged at once. This hiring of
Henchard was done through a foreman, Farfrae feeling that it was undesirable to come
personally in contact with the ex-cornfactor more than was absolutely necessary. While
anxious to help him he was well aware by this time of his uncertain temper, and
thought reserved relations best. For the same reason his orders to Henchard to proceed
to this and that country farm trussing in the usual way were always given through a
third person.
For a time these arrangements worked well, it being the custom to truss in the
respective stack-yards, before bringing it away, the hay bought at the different farms
about the neighbourhood; so that Henchard was often absent at such places the whole
week long. When this was all done, and Henchard had become in a measure broken in,
he came to work daily on the home premises like the rest.
And thus the once flourishing merchant and Mayor and what not stood as a
daylabourer in the barns and granaries he formerly had owned. him turn through the thoroughfare into Bull Stake and vanish down towards the Priory
Mill.
Meanwhile Elizabeth-Jane, in an upper room no larger than the Prophet's chamber, and
with the silk attire of her palmy days packed away in a box, was netting with great
industry between the hours which she devoted to studying such books as she could get
hold of.
Her lodgings being nearly opposite her stepfather's former residence, now Farfrae's,
she could see Donald and Lucetta speeding in and out of their door with all the
bounding enthusiasm of their situation. She avoided looking that way as much as
possible; but it was hardly in human nature to keep the eyes averted when the door
slammed.
While living on thus quietly she heard the news that Henchard had caught cold and
was confined to his room- possibly a result of standing about the meads in damp
weather. She went off to his house at once. This time she was determined not to be
denied admittance, and made her way upstairs. He was sitting up in the bed with a
greatcoat round him, and at first resented her intrusion. "Go away- go away," he said.
"I don't like to see ye." "But, father-" "I don't like to see ye," he repeated.
However, the ice was broken, and she remained. She made the room more comfortable,
gave directions to the people below, and by the time she went away had reconciled her
stepfather to her visiting him.
The effect, either of her ministrations or of her mere presence, was a rapid recovery. He
soon was well enough to go out; and now things seemed to wear a new colour in his
eyes. He no longer thought of emigration, and thought more of Elizabeth. The having
nothing to do made him more dreary than any other circumstance; and one day, with
better views of Farfrae than he had held for some time, and a sense that honest work
was not a thing to be ashamed of, he stoically went down to Farfrae's yard and asked to
be taken on as a journeyman hay-trusser. He was engaged at once. This hiring of
Henchard was done through a foreman, Farfrae feeling that it was undesirable to come
personally in contact with the ex-cornfactor more than was absolutely necessary. While
anxious to help him he was well aware by this time of his uncertain temper, and
thought reserved relations best. For the same reason his orders to Henchard to proceed
to this and that country farm trussing in the usual way were always given through a
third person.
For a time these arrangements worked well, it being the custom to truss in the
respective stack-yards, before bringing it away, the hay bought at the different farms
about the neighbourhood; so that Henchard was often absent at such places the whole
week long. When this was all done, and Henchard had become in a measure broken in,
he came to work daily on the home premises like the rest.
And thus the once flourishing merchant and Mayor and what not stood as a
daylabourer in the barns and granaries he formerly had owned"I have worked as a journeyman before now, ha'n't I?" he would say in his defiant
way; "and why shouldn't I do it again?" But he looked a far different journeyman from
the one he had been in his earlier days. Then he had worn clean, suitable clothes, light
and cheerful in hue; leggings yellow as marigolds, corduroys immaculate as new flax,
and a neckerchief like a flower-garden. Now he wore the remains of an old blue cloth
suit of his gentlemanly times, a rusty silk hat, and a once black satin stock, soiled and
shabby. Clad thus, he went to and fro, still comparatively an active man- for he was not
much over forty- and saw with the other men in the yard Donald Farfrae going in and
out the green door that led to the garden, and the big house, and Lucetta.
At the beginning of the winter it was rumoured about Casterbridge that Mr. Farfrae,
already in the Town Council, was to be proposed for Mayor in a year or two.
"Yes; she was wise, she was wise in her generation!" said Henchard to himself when he
heard of this one day on his way to Farfrae's hay-barn. He thought it over as he
wimbled his bonds, and the piece of news acted as a reviviscent breath to that old view
of his- of Donald Farfrae as his triumphant rival who rode roughshod over him.
"A fellow of his age going to be Mayor, indeed!" he murmured with a cornerdrawn
smile on his mouth. "But 'tis her money that floats 'en upward. Ha-hahow cust odd it
is! Here be I, his former master, working for him as man, and he the man standing as
master, with my house and my furniture and my what-youmay-call wife all his own."
He repeated these things a hundred times a day. During the whole period of his
acquaintance with Lucetta he had never wished to claim her as his own so desperately
as he now regretted her loss. It was no mercenary hankering after her fortune that
moved him; though that fortune had been the means of making her so much the more
desired by giving her the air of independence and sauciness which attracts men of his
composition. It had given her servants, house, and fine clothing- a setting that invested
Lucetta with a startling novelty in the eyes of him who had known her in her narrow
days.
He accordingly lapsed into moodiness, and at every allusion to the possibility of
Farfrae's near election to the municipal chair his former hatred of the Scotchman
returned. Concurrently with this he underwent a moral change. It resulted in his
significantly saying every now and then, in tones of recklessness, "Only a fortnight
more!" -"Only a dozen days!" and so forth, lessening his figures day by day.
"Why d'ye say only a dozen days?" asked Solomon Longways as he worked beside
Henchard in the granary weighing oats.
"Because in twelve days I shall be released from my oath." "What oath?" "The oath to
drink no spirituous liquid. In twelve days it will be twenty years since I swore it, and
then I mean to enjoy myself, please God!" Elizabeth-Jane sat at her window one
Sunday, and while there she heard in the street below a conversation which introduced
Henchard's name. She was wondering what was the matter, when a third person who
was passing by asked the question in her mind. Michael Henchard have busted out drinking after taking nothing for twenty years!"
Elizabeth-Jane jumped up, put on her things, and went out. AT THIS date there prevailed in Casterbridge a convivial custom- scarcely recognized
as such, yet none the less established. On the afternoon of every Sunday a large
contingent of the Casterbridge journeymen- steady churchgoers and sedate characters-
having attended service, filed from the church doors across the way to the Three
Mariners Inn. The rear was usually brought up by the choir, with their bass-viols,
fiddles, and flutes under their arms.
The great point, the point of honour, on these sacred occasions was for each man to
strictly limit himself to half-a-pint of liquor. This scrupulosity was so well understood
by the landlord, that the whole company was served in cups of that measure. They
were all exactly alike- straight-sided, with leafless lime-trees done in eel-brown on the
sides- one towards the drinker's lips, the other confronting his comrade. To wonder
how many of these cups the landlord possessed altogether was a favourite exercise of
children in the marvellous. Forty at least might have been seen at these times in the
large room, forming a ring round the margin of the great sixteen-legged oak table, like
the monolithic circle at Stonehenge in its pristine days. Outside and above the forty
cups came a circle of forty smoke-jets from forty clay pipes; outside the pipes the
countenances of the forty church-goers, supported at the back by a circle of forty chairs.
The conversation was not the conversation of week-days, but a thing altogether finer in
point and higher in tone. They invariably discussed the sermon, dissecting it, weighing
it, as above or below the average- the general tendency being to regard it as a scientific
feat or performance which had no relation to their own lives, except as between critics
and the thing criticized. The bass-viol player and the clerk usually spoke with more
authority than the rest on account of their official connection with the preacher.
Now the Three Mariners was the inn chosen by Henchard as the place for closing his
long term of dramless years. He had so timed his entry as to be well established in the
large room by the time the forty church-goers entered to their customary cups. The
flush upon his face proclaimed at once that the vow of twenty years had lapsed, and
the era of recklessness begun anew. He was seated on a small table, drawn up to the
side of the massive oak board reserved for the churchmen, a few of whom nodded to
him as they took their places, and said, "How be ye, Mr. Henchard? Quite a stranger
here." Henchard did not take the trouble to reply for a few moments, and his eyes
rested on his stretched-out legs and boots. "Yes," he said at length;" that's true.
I've been down in spirit for weeks; some of ye know the cause. I am better now; but not
quite serene. I want you fellows of the choir to strike up a tune; and what with that and
this brew of Stannidge's, I am in hopes of getting altogether out of my minor key.
"With all my heart," said the first fiddle. "We've let back our strings, that's true; but we
can soon pull 'em up again. Sound 'A,' neighbours, and give the man a stave." "I don't care a curse what the words be," said Henchard. "Hymns, ballets, or rantipole
rubbish; the Rogue's March or the cherubim's warble- 'tis all the same to me if 'tis good
harmony, and well put out." "Well- heh, heh- it may be we can do that, and not a man
among us that have sat in the gallery less than twenty years," said the leader of the
band. "As 'tis Sunday, neighbours, suppose we raise the Fourth Psa'am, to Samuel
Wakely's tune, as improved by me?" "Hang Samuel Wakely's tune, as improved by
thee!" said Henchard. "Chuck across one of your psalters- old Wiltshire is the only tune
worth singing- the psalm-tune that would make my blood ebb and flow like the sea
when I was a steady chap. I'll find some words to fit 'en." He took one of the psalters,
and began turning over the leaves.
Chancing to look out of the window at that moment he saw a flock of people passing
by, and perceived them to be the congregation of the upper church, now just dismissed,
their sermon having been a longer one than the lower parish was favoured with.
Among the rest of the leading inhabitants walked Mr. Councillor Farfrae, with Lucetta
upon his arm, the observed and imitated of all the smaller tradesmen's womankind.
Henchard's mouth changed a little, and he continued to turn over the leaves.
"Now then," he said, "Psalm the Hundred-and-Ninth, to the time of Wiltshire: verses
ten to fifteen. I gi'e ye the words: "'His seed shall orphans be, his wife A widow
plunged in grief; His vagrant children beg their bread Where none can give relief.
"'His ill-got riches shall be made To usurers a prey; The fruit of all his toil shall be By
strangers borne away.
"'None shall be found that to his wants Their mercy will extend, Or to his helpless
orphan seed The least assistance lend.
"'A swift destruction soon shall seize On his unhappy race; And the next age his hated
name Shall utterly deface.'"
"I know the Psa'am- I know the Psa'am!" said the leader hastily; "but I would as lief
not sing it. 'Twasn't made for singing. We chose it once when the gipsy stole the
pa'son's mare, thinking to please him, but he were quite upset. Whatever Servant
David were thinking about when he made a Psalm that nobody can sing without
disgracing himself, I can't fathom! Now then, the Fourth Psalm, to Samuel Wakely's
tune, as improved by me." "'Od seize your sauce- I tell ye to sing the Hundred-and-
Ninth, to Wiltshire, and sing it you shall!" roared Henchard. "Not a single one of all the
droning crew of ye goes out of this room till that Psalm is sung!" He slipped off the
table, seized the poker, and going to the door placed his back against it. "Now then, go
ahead, if you don't wish to have your cust pates broke!" "Don't 'ee, don't 'ee take on
so!- As 'tis Sabbath-day, and 'tis Servant David's words and not ours, perhaps we don't
mind for once, hey?" said one of the terrified choir, looking round upon the rest. So the
instruments were tuned and the comminatory verses sung.
"Thank ye, thank ye," said Henchard in a softened voice, his eyes growing downcast,
and his manner that of a man much moved by the strains. "Don't you blame David," he
went on in low tones, shaking his head without raising his eyes. "He knew what he was about when he wrote that!... If I could afford it, be hanged if I
wouldn't keep a church choir at my own expense to play and sing to me at these low,
dark times of my life. But the bitter thing is, that when I was rich I didn't need what I
could have, and now I be poor I can't have what I need!" While they paused, Lucetta
and Farfrae passed again, this time homeward, it being their custom to take, like others,
a short walk out on the highway and back, between church and tea-time. "There's the
man we've been singing about," said Henchard.
The players and singers turned their heads, and saw his meaning. "Heaven forbid!"
said the bass-player.
"'Tis the man," repeated Henchard doggedly.
"Then if I'd known," said the performer on the clarionet solemnly, "that 'twas meant
for a living man, nothing should have drawn out of my wynd-pipe the breath for that
Psalm, so help me!" "Nor from mine," said the first singer. "But, thought I, as it was
made so long ago, and so far away, perhaps there isn't much in it, so I'll oblige a
neighbour; for there's nothing to be said against the tune." "Ah, my boys, you've sung
it," cried Henchard triumphantly. "As for him, it was partly by his songs that he got
over me, and heaved me out.... I could double him up like that- and yet I don't." He
laid the poker across his knee, bent it as if it were a twig, flung it down, and came away
from the door.
It was at this time that Elizabeth-Jane, having heard where her stepfather was, entered
the room with a pale and agonized countenance. The choir and the rest of the company
moved off, in accordance with their half-pint regulation. ElizabethJane went up to
Henchard, and entreated him to accompany her home.
By this hour the volcanic fires of his nature had burnt down, and having drunk no
great quantity as yet, he was inclined to acquiesce. She took his arm, and together they
went on. Henchard walked blankly, like a blind man, repeating to himself the last
words of the singers"And the next age his hated name Shall utterly deface!"
At length he said to her, "I am a man to my word. I have kept my oath for twenty
years; and now I can drink with a good conscience.... If I don't do for himwell, I am a
fearful practical joker, when I can choose! He has taken away everything from me, and
by heavens, if I meet him I won't answer for my deeds!" These half-uttered words
alarmed Elizabeth- all the more by reason of the still determination of Henchard's
mien.
"What will you do?" she asked cautiously, while trembling with disquietude, and
guessing Henchard's allusion only too well.
Henchard did not answer, and they went on till they had reached his cottage.
"May I come in?" she said.
"No, no; not today," said Henchard; and she went away; feeling that to caution Farfrae
was almost her duty, as it was certainly her strong desire. As on the Sunday, so on the week-days, Farfrae and Lucetta might have been seen
flitting about the town like two butterflies- or rather like a bee and a butterfly in league
for life. She seemed to take no pleasure in going anywhere except in her husband's
company; and hence when business would not permit him to waste an afternoon she
remained indoors, waiting for the time to pass till his return, her face being visible to
Elizabeth-Jane from her window aloft. The latter, however, did not say to herself that
Farfrae should be thankful for such devotion, but, full of her reading, she cited
Rosalind's exclamation: "Mistress, know yourself; down on your knees and thank
Heaven fasting for a good man's love." She kept her eye upon Henchard also. One day
he answered her inquiry for his health by saying that he could not endure Abel
Whittle's pitying eyes upon him while they worked together in the yard. "He is such a
fool," said Henchard, "that he can never get out of his mind the time when I was
master there." "I'll come and wimble for you instead of him, if you will allow me," said
she.
Her motive on going to the yard was to get an opportunity of observing the general
position of affairs on Farfrae's premises now that her stepfather was a workman there.
Henchard's threats had alarmed her so much, that she wished to see his behaviour
when the two were face to face.
For two or three days after her arrival Donald did not make any appearance.
Then one afternoon the green door opened, and through came, first Farfrae, and at his
heels Lucetta. Donald brought his wife forward without hesitation, it being obvious
that he had no suspicion whatever of any antecedents in common between her and the
now journeyman hay-trusser.
Henchard did not turn his eyes toward either of the pair, keeping them fixed on the
bond he twisted, as if that alone absorbed him. A feeling of delicacy, which ever
prompted Farfrae to avoid anything that might seem like triumphing over a fallen
rival, led him to keep away from the hay-barn where Henchard and his daughter were
working, and to go on to the corn department. Meanwhile Lucetta, never having been
informed that Henchard had entered her husband's service, rambled straight on to the
barn, where she came suddenly upon Henchard, and gave vent to a little "Oh!" which
the happy and busy Donald was too far off to hear. Henchard, with withering humility
of demeanour, touched the brim of his hat to her as Whittle and the rest had done, to
which she breathed a dead-alive "Good afternoon." "I beg your pardon, ma'am?" said
Henchard, as if he had not heard.
"I said good afternoon," she faltered.
"Oh, yes, good afternoon, ma'am," he replied, touching his hat again. "I am glad to see
you, ma'am." Lucetta looked embarrassed, and Henchard continued: "For we humble
workmen here feel it a great honour that a lady should look in and take an interest in
us." She glanced at him entreatingly; the sarcasm was too bitter, too unendurable.
"Can you tell me the time, ma'am?" he asked. "Yes," she said hastily; "half-past four." "Thank ye. An hour and a half longer before
we are released from work. Ah, ma'am, we of the lower classes know nothing of the
gay leisure that such as you enjoy!"
As soon as she could do so Lucetta left him, nodded and smiled to ElizabethJane, and
joined her husband at the other end of the enclosure, where she could be seen leading
him away by the outer gates, so as to avoid passing Henchard again.
That she had been taken by surprise was obvious. The result of this casual rencounter
was that the next morning a note was put into Henchard's hand by the postman.
"Will you," said Lucetta, with as much bitterness as she could put into a small
communication, "will you kindly undertake not to speak to me in the biting undertones
you used today, if I walk through the yard at any time? I bear you no illwill, and I am
only too glad that you should have employment of my dear husband; but in common
fairness treat me as his wife, and do not try to make me wretched by covert sneers. I
have committed no crime, and done you no injury." "Poor fool!" said Henchard with
fond savagery, holding out the note. "To know no better than commit herself in writing
like this! Why, if I were to show that to her dear husband- pooh!" He threw the letter
into the fire.
Lucetta took care not to come again among the hay and corn. She would rather have
died than run the risk of encountering Henchard at such close quarters a second time.
The gulf between them was growing wider every day. Farfrae was always considerate
to his fallen acquaintance; but it was impossible that he should not, by degrees, cease to
regard the ex-corn-merchant as more than one of his other workmen. Henchard saw
this, and concealed his feelings under a cover of stolidity, fortifying his heart by
drinking more freely at the Three Mariners every evening.
Often did Elizabeth-Jane, in her endeavours to prevent his taking other liquor, carry tea
to him in a little basket at five o'clock. Arriving one day on this errand, she found her
stepfather was measuring up clover-seed and rape-seed in the cornstores on the top
floor, and she ascended to him. Each floor had a door opening into the air under a cat-
head, from which a chain dangled for hoisting the sacks.
When Elizabeth's head rose through the trap she perceived that the upper door was
open, and that her stepfather and Farfrae stood just within it in conversation, Farfrae
being nearest the dizzy edge, and Henchard a little way behind. Not to interrupt them
she remained on the steps without raising her head any higher. While waiting thus she
saw- or fancied she saw, for she had a terror of feeling certainher stepfather slowly
raise his hand to a level behind Farfrae's shoulders, a curious expression taking
possession of his face. The young man was quite unconscious of the action, which was
so indirect that, if Farfrae had observed it, he might almost have regarded it as an idle
outstretching of the arm. But it would have been possible, by a comparatively light
touch, to push Farfrae off his balance, and send him head over heels into the air.
Elizabeth felt quite sick at heart on thinking of what this might have meant. As soon as they turned she mechanically took the tea to Henchard, left it, and went
away. Reflecting, she endeavoured to assure herself that the movement was an idle
eccentricity, and no more. Yet, on the other hand, his subordinate position in an
establishment where he once had been master might be acting on him like an irritant
poison; and she finally resolved to caution Donald. NEXT MORNING, accordingly, she rose at five o'clock, and went into the street. It was
not yet light; a dense fog prevailed, and the town was as silent as it was dark; except
that from the rectangular avenues which framed in the borough there came a chorus of
tiny rappings, caused by the fall of water drops condensed on the boughs; now it was
wafted from the West Walk, now from the South Walk; and then from both quarters
simultaneously. She moved on to the bottom of Corn Street, and, knowing his time
well, waited only a few minutes before she heard the familiar bang of his door, and
then his quick walk towards her. She met him at the point where the last tree of the
engirding avenue flanked the last house in the street.
He could hardly discern her till, glancing inquiringly, he said, "What- Miss Henchard-
and are ye up so early?" She asked him to pardon her for waylaying him at such an
unseemly time.
"But I am anxious to mention something," she said. "And I wished not to alarm Mrs.
Farfrae by calling." "Yes?" said he, with the cheeriness of a superior. "And what may it
be? It's very kind of ye, I'm sure." She now felt the difficulty of conveying to his mind
the exact aspect of possibilities in her own. But she somehow began, and introduced
Henchard's name. "I sometimes fear," she said with an effort, "that he may be betrayed
into some attempt to- insult you, sir." "But we are the best of friends?" "Or to play
some practical joke upon you, sir. Remember that he has been hardly used." "But we
are quite friendly?" "Or to do something- that would injure you- hurt you- wound
you." Every word cost her twice its length of pain. And she could see that Farfrae was
still incredulous. Henchard, a poor man in his employ, was not, to Farfrae's view, the
Henchard who had ruled him. Yet he was not only the same man, but that man, with
his sinister qualities, formerly latent, quickened into life by his buffetings.
Farfrae, happy, and thinking no evil, persisted in making light of her fears.
Thus they parted, and she went homeward, journeymen now being in the street,
waggoners going to the harness-makers for articles left to be repaired, farmhorses
going to the shoeing-smiths, and the sons of labour being generally on the move.
Elizabeth entered her lodging unhappily, thinking she had done no good, and only
made herself appear foolish by her weak note of warning.
But Donald Farfrae was one of those men upon whom an incident is never absolutely
lost. He revised impressions from a subsequent point of view, and the impulsive
judgment of the moment was not always his permanent one. The vision of Elizabeth's
earnest face in the rimy dawn came back to him several times during the day. Knowing
the solidity of her character, he did not treat her hints altogether as idle sounds.
But he did not desist from a kindly scheme on Henchard's account that engaged him
just then; and when he met Lawyer Joyce, the town-clerk, later in the day, he spoke of it
as if nothing had occurred to damp it. "About that little seedsman's shop," he said; "the shop overlooking the churchyard,
which is to let. It is not for myself I want it, but for our unlucky fellow-townsman,
Henchard. It would be a new beginning for him, if a small one; and I have told the
Council that I would head a private subscription among them to set him up in it- that I
would be fifty pounds, if they would make up the other fifty among them." "Yes, yes;
so I've heard; and there's nothing to say against it for that matter," the town clerk
replied, in his plain, frank way. "But, Farfrae, others see what you don't. Henchard
hates ye- ay, hates ye; and 'tis right that you should know it. To my knowledge he was
at the Three Mariners last night, saying in public that about you which a man ought not
to say about another." "Is that so- and is that so?" said Farfrae, looking down. "Why
should he do it?" added the young man bitterly; "what harm have I done him that he
should try to wrong me?" "God only knows," said Joyce, lifting his eyebrows. "It
shows much long-suffering in you to put up with him, and keep him in your employ."
"But I cannet discharge a man who was once a good friend to me? How can I forget
that when I came here 'twas he enabled me to make a footing for mysel'? No, no. As
long as I've a day's wark to offer he shall do it if he chooses. 'Tis not I who will deny
him such a little as that. But I'll drop the idea of establishing him in a shop till I can
think more about it." It grieved Farfrae much to give up this scheme. But a damp
having been thrown over it by these and other voices in the air, he went and
countermanded his orders. The then occupier of the shop was in it when Farfrae spoke
to him, and feeling it necessary to give some explanation of his withdrawal from the
negotiation, Donald mentioned Henchard's name, and stated that the intentions of the
Council had been changed.
The occupier was much disappointed, and straightway informed Henchard, as soon as
he saw him, that a scheme of the Council for setting him up in a shop had been
knocked on the head by Farfrae. And thus out of error enmity grew.
When Farfrae got indoors that evening the teakettle was singing on the high bob of the
semi-egg-shaped grate. Lucetta, light as a sylph, ran forward and seized his hands,
whereupon Farfrae duly kissed her.
"Oh!" she cried playfully, turning to the window. "See- the blinds are not drawn down,
and the people can look in- what a scandal!"
When the candles were lighted, the curtains drawn, and the twain, sat at tea, she
noticed that he looked serious. Without directly inquiring why, she let her eyes linger
solicitously on his face.
"Who has called?" he absently asked. "Any folk for me?" "No," said Lucetta. "What's
the matter, Donald?" "Well-nothing worth talking of," he responded sadly.
"Then, never mind it. You will get through it. Scotchmen are always lucky." "No- not
always!" he said, shaking his head gloomily as he contemplated a crumb on the table.
"I know many who have not been so! There was Sandy Macfarlane, who started to
America to try his fortune, and he was drowned; and Archibald Leith, he was
murdered! And poor Willie Dumbleeze and Maitland Macfreeze- they fell into bad courses, and went the way of all such!" "Why- you old goosey- I was only speaking in
a general sense, of course! You are always so literal. Now when we have finished tea,
sing me that funny song about high-heeled shoon and siller tags, and the one-and-forty
wooers." "No, no. I couldna sing tonight! It's Henchard- he hates me; so that I may not
be his friend if I would. I would understand why there should be a wee bit envy; but I
cannet see a reason for the whole intensity of what he feels. Now, can you, Lucetta? It is
more like old-fashioned rivalry in love than just a bit of rivalry in trade." Lucetta had
grown somewhat wan. "No," she replied.
"I give him employment- I cannet refuse it. But neither can I blind myself to the fact
that with a man of passions such as his, there is no safeguard for conduct!" "What have
you heard- O Donald, dearest?" said Lucetta in alarm. The words on her lips were
"anything about me?"- but she did not utter them. She could not, however, suppress
her agitation, and her eyes filled with tears.
"No, no- it is not so serious as ye fancy," declared Farfrae soothingly; though he did not
know its seriousness so well as she.
"I wish you would do what we have talked of," mournfully remarked Lucetta.
"Give up business, and go away from here. We have plenty of money, and why should
we stay?" Farfrae seemed seriously disposed to discuss this move, and they talked
thereon till a visitor was announced. Their neighbour Alderman Vatt came in.
"You've heard, I suppose, of poor Doctor Chalkfield's death? Yes- died this afternoon
at five," said Mr. Vatt. Chalkfield was the Councilman who had succeeded to the
Mayoralty in the preceding November.
Farfrae was sorry at the intelligence, and Mr. Vatt continued: "Well, we know he's been
going some days, and as his family is well provided for we must take it all as it is. Now
I have called to ask ye this- quite privately. If I should nominate 'ee to succeed him, and
there should be no particular opposition, will 'ee accept the chair?" "But there are folk
whose turn is before mine; and I'm over young, and may be thought pushing!" said
Farfrae after a pause.
"Not at all. I don't speak for myself only, several have named it. You won't refuse?"
"We thought of going away," interposed Lucetta, looking at Farfrae anxiously.
"It was only a fancy," Farfrae murmured. "I wouldna refuse it if it is the wish of a
respectable majority in the Council." "Very well, then, look upon yourself as elected.
We have had older men long enough." When he was gone Farfrae said musingly, "See
now how it's ourselves that are ruled by the powers above us! We plan this, but we do
that. If they want to make me Mayor I will stay, and Henchard must rave as he will."
From this evening onward Lucetta was very uneasy. If she had not been imprudence
incarnate, she would not have acted as she did when she met Henchard by accident a
day or two later. It was in the bustle of the market, when no one could readily notice
their discourse. "Michael," said she, "I must again ask you what I asked you months ago- to return me
any letters or papers of mine that you may have- unless you have destroyed them! You
must see how desirable it is that the time at Jersey should be blotted out, for the good of
all parties."
"Why, bless the woman!- I packed up every scrap of your handwriting to give you in
the coach- but you never appeared." She explained how the death of her aunt had
prevented her taking the journey on that day. "And what became of the parcel then?"
she asked.
He could not say- he would consider. When she was gone he recollected that he had
left a heap of useless papers in his former dining-room safe- built up in the wall of his
old house- now occupied by Farfrae. The letters might have been amongst them.
A grotesque grin shaped itself on Henchard's face. Had that safe been opened? On the
very evening which followed this there was a great ringing of bells in Casterbridge,
and the combined brass, wood, catgut, and leather bands played round the town with
more prodigality of percussion-notes than ever. Farfrae was Mayor- the two-hundredth
odd of a series forming an elective dynasty dating back to the days of Charles I.- and
the fair Lucetta was the courted of the town....
But, ah! that worm i' the bud- Henchard; what he could tell!
He, in the meantime, festering with indignation at some erroneous intelligence of
Farfrae's opposition to the scheme for installing him in the little seed-shop, was greeted
with the news of the municipal election (which, by reason of Farfrae's comparatively
youth and his Scottish nativity- a thing unprecedented in the case- had an interest far
beyond the ordinary). The bell-ringing and the band-playing, loud as Tamerlane's
trumpet, goaded the downfallen Henchard indescribably; the ousting now seemed to
him to be complete.
The next morning he went to the corn-yard as usual, and about eleven o'clock Donald
entered through the green door, with no trace of the worshipful about him. The yet
more emphatic change of places between him and Henchard which this election had
established renewed a slight embarrassment in the manner of the modest younger man;
but Henchard showed the front of one who had overlooked all this; and Farfrae met his
amenities half-way at once.
"I was going to ask you," said Henchard, "about a packet that I may possibly have left
in my old safe in the dining-room." He added particulars.
"If so, it is there now," said Farfrae. "I have never opened the safe at all as yet; for I
keep ma papers at the bank, to sleep easy o' nights." "It was not of much consequence-
to me," said Henchard. "But I'll call for it this evening, if you don't mind?" It was quite
late when he fulfilled his promise. He had primed himself with grog, as he did very
frequently now, and a curl of sardonic humour hung on his lip as he approached the
house, as though he were contemplating some terrible form of amusement. Whatever it
was, the incident of his entry did not diminish its force, this being his first visit to the house since he had lived there as owner. The ring of the bell spoke to him like the voice
of a familiar drudge who had been bribed to forsake him; the movements of the doors
were revivals of dead days.
Farfrae invited him into the dining-room, where he at once unlocked the iron safe built
into the wall, his, Henchard's safe, made by an ingenious locksmith under his direction.
Farfrae drew thence the parcel, and other papers, with apologies for not having
returned them.
"Never mind," said Henchard drily. "The fact is they are letters mostly....
Yes," he went on, sitting down and unfolding Lucetta's passionate bundle, "here they
be. That ever I should see 'em again. I hope Mrs. Farfrae is well after her exertions of
yesterday?" "She has felt a bit weary; and has gone to bed early on that account."
Henchard returned to the letters, sorting them over with interest, Farfrae being seated
at the other end of the dining-table. "You don't forget, of course," he resumed, "that
curious chapter in the history of my past, which I told you of, and that you gave me
some assistance in? These letters are, in fact, related to that unhappy business. Though,
thank God, it is all over now." "What became of the poor woman?" asked Farfrae.
"Luckily she married, and married well," said Henchard. "So that these reproaches she
poured out on me do not now cause me any twinges, as they might otherwise have
done.... just listen to what an angry woman will say!" Farfrae, willing to humour
Henchard, though quite uninterested, and bursting with yawns, gave well-mannered
attention.
"'For me,'" Henchard read, "'there is practically no future. A creature too
unconventionally devoted to you- who feels it impossible that she can be wife of any
other man; and who is yet no more to you than the first woman you meet in the street-
such am I. I quite acquit you of any intention to wrong me, yet you are the door
through which wrong has come to me. That in the event of your present wife's death
you will place me in her position is a consolation so far as it goesbut how far does it go?
Thus I sit here, forsaken by my few acquaintance, and forsaken by you!'" "That's how
she went on to me," said Henchard, "acres of words like that, when what had
happened was what I could not cure." "Yes," said Farfrae absently, "it is the way wi'
women." But the fact was that he knew very little of the sex; yet detecting a sort of
resemblance in style between the effusions of the woman he worshipped and those of
the supposed stranger, he concluded that Aphrodite ever spoke thus, whosesoever the
personality she assumed.
Henchard unfolded another letter, and read it through likewise, stopping at the
subscription as before. "Her name I don't give," he said blandly. "As I didn't marry
her, and another man did, I can scarcely do that in fairness to her." "Tr-rue, tr-rue,"
said Farfrae. "But why didn't you marry her when your wife Susan died?" Farfrae
asked this, and the other questions, in the comfortably indifferent tone of one whom the
matter very remotely concerned. "Ah- well you may ask that!" said Henchard, the new-moon-shaped grin adumbrating
itself again upon his mouth. "In spite of all her protestations, when I came forward to
do so, as in generosity bound, she was not the woman for me." "She had already
married another- maybe?" Henchard seemed to think it would be sailing too near the
wind to descend further into particulars, and he answered "Yes." "The young lady
must have had a heart that bore transplanting very readily!" "She had, she had," said
Henchard emphatically.
He opened a third and fourth letter, and read. This time he approached the conclusion
as if the signature were indeed coming with the rest. But again he stopped short. The
truth was that, as may be divined, he had quite intended to effect a grand catastrophe
at the end of this drama by reading out the name; he had come to the house with no
other thought. But sitting here in cold blood he could not do it. Such a wrecking of
hearts appalled even him. His quality was such that he could have annihilated them
both in the beat of action; but to accomplish the deed by oral poison was beyond the
nerve of his enmity. AS DONALD stated, Lucetta had retired early to her room because of fatigue.
She had, however, not gone to rest, but sat in the bedside chair reading, and thinking
over the events of the day. At the ringing of the door-bell by Henchard she wondered
who it should be that would call at that comparatively late hour. The dining-room was
almost under her bed-room; she could hear that somebody was admitted there, and
presently the indistinct murmur of a person reading became audible.
The usual time for Donald's arrival upstairs came and passed, yet still the reading and
conversation went on. This was very singular. She could think of nothing but that some
extraordinary crime had been committed, and that the visitor, whoever he might be,
was reading an account of it from a special edition of the "Casterbridge Chronicle." At
last she left the room, and descended the stairs.
The dining-room door was ajar, and in the silence of the resting household the voice
and the words were recognizable before she reached the lower flight. She stood
transfixed. Her own words greeted her, in Henchard's voice, like spirits from the grave.
Lucetta leant upon the banister with her cheek against the smooth hand-rail, as if she
would make a friend of it in her misery. Rigid in this position, more and more words
fell successively upon her. But what amazed her most was the tone of her husband. He
spoke merely in the accents of a man who made a present of his time.
"One word," he was saying, as the crackling of paper denoted that Henchard was
unfolding yet another sheet. "Is it quite fair to this young woman's memory to read at
such length to a stranger what was intended for your eye alone?" "Well, yes," said
Henchard. "By not giving her name I make it an example of all womankind, and not a
scandal to one." "If I were you I would destroy them," said Farfrae, giving more
thought to the letters than he had hitherto done. "As another man's wife it would injure
the woman if it were known." "No, I shall not destroy them," murmured Henchard,
putting the letters away.
Then he arose, and Lucetta heard no more.
She went back to her bedroom in a semi-paralyzed state. For very fear she could not
undress, but sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. Would Henchard let out the secret in
his parting words? Her suspense was terrible. Had she confessed all to Donald in their
early acquaintance he might possibly have got over it, and married her just the same-
unlikely as it had once seemed; but for her or any one else to tell him now would be
fatal.
The door slammed; she could hear her husband bolting it. After looking round in his
customary way he came leisurely up the stairs. The spark in her eyes wellnigh went out
when he appeared round the bed-room door. Her gaze hung doubtful for a moment,
then to her joyous amazement she saw that he looked at her with the rallying smile ofone who had just been relieved of a scene that was irksome. She could hold out no
longer, and sobbed hysterically.
When he had restored her Farfrae naturally enough spoke of Henchard. "Of all men he
was the least desirable as a visitor," he said; "but it is my belief that he's just a bit
crazed. He has been reading to me a long lot of letters relating to his past life; and I
could do no less than indulge him by listening." This was sufficient. Henchard, then,
had not told. Henchard's last words to Farfrae, in short, as he stood on the door-step,
had been these: "Well- I'm much obliged to 'ee for listening. I may tell more about her
some day." Finding this, she was much perplexed as to Henchard's motives in opening
the matter at all; for in such cases we attribute to an enemy a power of consistent action
which we never find in ourselves or in our friends; and forget that abortive efforts from
want of heart are as possible to revenge as to generosity.
Next morning Lucetta remained in bed, meditating how to parry this incipient attack.
The bold stroke of telling Donald the truth, dimly conceived, was yet too bold; for she
dreaded lest, in doing so, he, like the rest of the world, should believe that the episode
was rather her fault than her misfortune. She decided to employ persuasion- not with
Donald, but with the enemy himself. It seemed the only practicable weapon left her as a
woman. Having laid her plan she rose, and wrote to him who kept her on these
tenterhooks:-
"I overheard your interview with my husband last night, and saw the drift of your
revenge. The very thought of it crushes me! Have pity on a distressed woman! If you
could see me you would relent. You do not know how anxiety has told upon me lately.
I will be at the Ring at the time you leave work- just before the sun goes down. Please
come that way. I cannot rest till I have seen you face to face, and heard from your
mouth that you will carry this horse-play no further." To herself she said, on closing up
this appeal: "If ever tears and pleadings have served the weak to fight the strong, let
them do so now!" With this view she made a toilette which differed from all she had
ever attempted before. To heighten her natural attractions had hitherto been the
unvarying endeavour of her adult life, and one in which she was no novice. But now
she neglected this, and even proceeded to impair the natural presentation. She had not
slept all the previous night, and this produced upon her naturally pretty though
slightly worn features the aspect of a countenance ageing prematurely from extreme
sorrow. She selected- as much from want of spirit as design- her poorest, plainest, and
longest discarded attire.
To avoid the contingency of being recognized she veiled herself, and slipped out of the
house quickly. The sun was resting on the hill like a drop of blood on an eyelid by the
time she had got up the road opposite the amphitheatre, which she speedily entered.
The interior was shadowy, and emphatic of the absence of every living thing.
She was not disappointed in the fearful hope with which she awaited him.Henchard came over the top, descended, and Lucetta waited breathlessly. But having
reached the arena she saw a change in his bearing; he stood still, at a little distance
from her; she could not think why.
Nor could any one else have known. The truth was that in appointing this spot, and
this hour, for the rendezvous, Lucetta had unwittingly backed up her entreaty by the
strongest argument she could have used outside words, with this man of moods,
glooms, and superstitions. Her figure in the midst of the huge enclosure, the unusual
plainness of her dress, her attitude of hope and appeal, so strongly revived in his soul
the memory of another ill-used woman who had stood there and thus in bygone days,
and had now passed away into her rest, that he was unmanned, and his heart smote
him for having attempted reprisals on one of a sex so weak. When he approached her,
and before she had spoken a word, her point was half gained.
His manner as he had come down had been one of cynical carelessness; but he now put
away his grim half-smile, and said, in a kindly subdued tone, "Goodnight t'ye. Of
course I'm glad to come if you want me." "Oh, thank you," she said apprehensively.
"I am sorry to see 'ee looking so ill," he stammered, with unconcealed compunction.
She shook her head. "How can you be sorry," she asked, "when you deliberately cause
it?" "What!" said Henchard uneasily. "Is it anything I have done that has pulled you
down like that?" "It is all your doing," said she. "I have no other grief. My happiness
would be secure enough but for your threats. O Michael! don't wreck me like this! You
might think that you have done enough! When I came here I was a young woman; now
I am rapidly becoming an old one. Neither my husband nor any other man will regard
me with interest long." Henchard was disarmed. His old feeling of supercilious pity for
womankind in general was intensified by this suppliant appearing here as the double
of the first. Moreover, that thoughtless want of foresight which had led to all her
trouble remained with poor Lucetta still; she had come to meet him here in this
compromising way without perceiving the risk. Such a woman was very small deer to
hunt; he felt ashamed, lost all zest and desire to humiliate Lucetta there and then, and
no longer envied Farfrae his bargain. He had married money, but nothing more.
Henchard was anxious to wash his hands of the game.
"Well, what do you want me to do?" he said gently. "I am sure I shall be very willing.
My reading of those letters was only a sort of practical joke, and I revealed nothing."
"To give me back the letters and any papers you may have that breathe of matrimony
or worse." "So be it. Every scrap shall be yours.... But, between you and me, Lucetta, he
is sure to find out something of the matter, sooner or later." "Ah!" she said with eager
tremulousness; "but not till I have proved myself a faithful and deserving wife to him,
and then he may forgive me everything!" Henchard silently looked at her: he almost
envied Farfrae such love as that, even now. "H'm- I hope so," he said. "But you shall
have the letters without fail.And your secret shall be kept. I swear it." "How good you are!- how shall I get them?"
He reflected, and said he would send them the next morning. "Now don't doubt me,"
he added. "I can keep my word....!!!!!