Chapter 9 - EP: 9 THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE

BUT THE emotional conviction that he was in Somebody's hand began to die out of

Henchard's breast as time slowly removed into distance the event which had given that

feeling birth. The apparition of Newson haunted him. He would surely return.

Yet Newson did not arrive. Lucetta had been borne along the churchyard path;

Casterbridge had for the last time turned its regard upon her, before proceeding to its

work as if she had never lived. But Elizabeth remained undisturbed in the belief of her

relationship to Henchard, and now shared his home. Perhaps, after all, Newson was

gone for ever.

In due time the bereaved Farfrae had learnt the, at least, proximate cause of Lucetta's

illness and death; and his first impulse was naturally enough to wreak vengeance in the

name of the law upon the perpetrators of the mischief. He resolved to wait till the

funeral was over ere he moved in the matter. The time having come he reflected.

Disastrous as the result had been, it was obviously in no way foreseen or intended by

the thoughtless crew who arranged the motley procession. The tempting prospect of

putting to the blush people who stand at the head of affairs- that supreme and piquant

enjoyment of those who writhe under the heel of the same- had alone animated them,

so far as he could see; for he knew nothing of Jopp's incitements. Other considerations

were also involved. Lucetta had confessed everything to him before her death, and it

was not altogether desirable to make much ado about her history, alike for her sake, for

Henchard's, and for his own. To regard the event as an untoward accident seemed, to

Farfrae, truest consideration for the dead one's memory, as well as best philosophy.

Henchard and himself mutually forbore to meet. For Elizabeth's sake the former had

fettered his pride sufficiently to accept the small seed business which some of the Town

Council, headed by Farfrae, had purchased, to afford him a new opening. Had he been

only personally concerned, Henchard, without doubt, would have declined assistance

even remotely brought about by the man whom he had so fiercely assailed. But the

sympathy of the girl seemed necessary to his very existence; and on her account pride

itself wore the garments of humility.

Here they settled themselves; and on each day of their lives Henchard anticipated her

every wish with a watchfulness in which paternal regard was heightened by a burning

jealous dread of rivalry. Yet that Newson would ever now return to Casterbridge to

claim her as a daughter there was little reason to suppose. He was a wanderer and a

stranger, almost an alien; he had not seen his daughter for several years; his affection

for her could not in the nature of things be keen; other interests would probably soon

obscure his recollections of her, and prevent any such renewal of inquiry into the past

as would lead to a discovery that she was still a creature of the present. To satisfy his

conscience somewhat, Henchard repeated to himself that the lie which had retained for

him the coveted treasure had not been deliberately told to that end, but had come from

him as the last defiant word of an irony which took no thought of consequences.Further more he pleaded within himself that no Newson could love her as he loved her,

or would tend her to his life's extremity as he was prepared to do cheerfully.

Thus they lived on in the shop overlooking the churchyard, and nothing occurred to

mark their days during the remainder of the year. Going out but seldom, and never on

a market-day, they saw Donald Farfrae only at rarest intervals, and then mostly as a

transitory object in the distance of the street. Yet he was pursuing his ordinary

avocations, smiling mechanically to fellow-tradesmen, and arguing with bargainers- as

bereaved men do after a while.

"Time, in his own grey style," taught Farfrae how to estimate his experience of Lucetta-

all that it was, and all that it was not. There are men whose hearts insist upon a dogged

fidelity to some image or cause, thrown by chance into their keeping, long after their

judgment has pronounced it no rarity- even the reverse, indeed; and without them the

band of the worthy is incomplete. But Farfrae was not of those. It was inevitable that

the insight, briskness, and rapidity of his nature should take him out of the dead blank

which his loss threw about him. He could not but perceive that by the death of Lucetta

he had exchanged a looming misery for a simple sorrow. After that revelation of her

history, which must have come sooner or later in any circumstances, it was hard to

believe that life with her would have been productive of further happiness.

But as a memory, notwithstanding such conditions, Lucetta's image still lived on with

him, her weaknesses provoking only the gentlest. criticism, and her sufferings

attenuating wrath at her concealments to a momentary spark now and then.

By the end of a year Henchard's little retail seed and grain shop, not much larger than a

cupboard, had developed its trade considerably, and the stepfather and daughter

enjoyed much serenity in the pleasant, sunny corner in which it stood. The quiet

bearing of one who brimmed with an inner activity characterized Elizabeth-Jane at this

period. She took long walks into the country two or three times a week, mostly in the

direction of Budmouth. Sometimes it occurred to him that when she sat with him in the

evening after these invigorating walks she was civil rather than affectionate; and he

was troubled; one more bitter regret being added to those he had already experienced

at having, by his severe censorship, frozen up her precious affection when originally

offered.

She had her own way in everything now. In going and coming, in buying and selling,

her word was law.

"You have got a new muff, Elizabeth," he said to her one day quite humbly.

"Yes; I bought it," she said.

He looked at it again as it lay on an adjoining table. The fur was of a glossy brown,

and, though he was no judge of such articles, he thought it seemed an unusually good

one for her to possess.

"Rather costly, I suppose, my dear, was it not?" he hazarded."It was rather above my figure," she said quietly. "But it is not showy." "Oh no," said

the netted lion, anxious not to pique her in the least.

Some little time after, when the year had advanced into another spring, he paused

opposite her empty bedroom in passing it. He thought of the time when she had

cleared out of his then large and handsome house in Corn Street, in consequence of his

dislike and harshness, and he had looked into her chamber in just the same way. The

present room was much humbler, but what struck him about it was the abundance of

books lying everywhere. Their number and quality made the meagre furniture that

supported them seem absurdly disproportionate. Some, indeed many, must have been

recently purchased; and though he encouraged her to buy in reason, he had no notion

that she indulged her innate passion so extensively in proportion to the narrowness of

their income. For the first time he felt a little hurt by what he thought, her

extravagance, and resolved to say a word to her about it. But, before he had found the

courage to speak, an event happened which set his thoughts flying in quite another

direction.

The busy time of the seed trade was over; and the quiet weeks that preceded the hay-

season had come- setting their special stamp upon Casterbridge by thronging the

market with wood rakes, new waggons in yellow, green, and red, formidable scythes,

and pitchforks of prong sufficient to skewer up a small family.

Henchard, contrary to his wont, went out one Saturday afternoon towards the market-

place, from a curious feeling that he would like to pass a few minutes on the spot of his

former triumphs. Farfrae, to whom he was still a comparative stranger, stood a few

steps below the Corn Exchange door- a usual position with him at this hour- and he

appeared lost in thought about something he was looking at a little way off.

Henchard's eyes followed Farfrae's, and he saw that the object of his gaze was no

sample-showing farmer, but his own stepdaughter, who had just come out of a shop

over the way. She, on her part, was quite unconscious of his attention, and in this was

less fortunate than those young women whose very plumes, like those of Juno's bird,

are set with Argus eyes whenever possible admirers are within ken.

Henchard went away, thinking that perhaps there was nothing significant after all in

Farfrae's look at Elizabeth-Jane at that juncture. Yet he could not forget that the

Scotchman had once shown a tender interest in her, of a fleeting kind. Thereupon

promptly came to the surface that idiosyncrasy of Henchard's which had ruled his

courses from the beginning, and had mainly made him what he was. Instead of

thinking that a union between his cherished stepdaughter and the energetic thriving

Donald was a thing to be desired for her good and his own, he hated the very

possibility.

Time had been when such instinctive opposition would have taken shape in action. But

he was not now the Henchard of former days. He schooled himself to accept her will, in

this as in other matters, as absolute and unquestionable. He dreaded lest an

antagonistic word should lose for him such regard as he had regained from her by hisdevotion, feeling that to retain this under separation was better than to incur her dislike

by keeping her near.

But the mere thought of such separation fevered his spirit much, and in the evening he

said, with the stillness of suspense: "Have you seen Mr. Farfrae today, Elizabeth?"

Elizabeth-Jane started at the question; and it was with some confusion that she replied

"No." "Oh- that's right- that's right.... It was only that I saw him in the street when we

both were there." He was wondering if her embarrassment justified him in a new

suspicion- that the long walks which she had latterly been taking, that the new books

which had so surprised him, had anything to do with the young man.

She did not enlighten him, and lest silence should allow her to shape thoughts

unfavourable to their present friendly relations, he diverted the discourse into another

channel.

Henchard was, by original make, the last man to act stealthily, for good or for evil. But

the solicitus timor of his love- the dependence upon Elizabeth's regard into which he

had declined (or, in another sense, to which he had advanced)- denaturalized him. He

would often weigh and consider for hours together the meaning of such and such a

deed or phrase of hers, when a blunt settling question would formerly have been his

first instinct. And now, uneasy at the thought of a passion for Farfrae which should

entirely displace her mild filial sympathy with himself, he observed her going and

coming more narrowly.

There was nothing secret in Elizabeth-Jane's movements beyond what habitual reserve

induced; and it may at once be owned on her account that she was guilty of occasional

conversations with Donald when they chanced to meet. Whatever the origin of her

walks on the Budmouth Road, her return from those walks was often coincident with

Farfrae's emergence from Corn Street for a twenty minutes' blow on that rather windy

highway- just to winnow the seeds and chaff out of him before sitting down to tea, as

he said. Henchard became aware of this by going to the Ring, and, screened by its

enclosure, keeping his eye upon the road till he saw them meet. His face assumed an

expression of extreme anguish.

"Of her, too, he means to rob me!" he whispered. "But he has the right. I do not wish to

interfere." The meeting in truth, was of a very innocent kind, and matters were by no

means so far advanced between the young people as Henchard's jealous grief inferred.

Could he have heard such conversation as passed he would have been enlightened thus

much:He.- "You like walking this way, Miss Henchard- and is it not so?" (uttered in his

undulatory accents, and with an appraising, pondering gaze at her).

She.- "Oh, yes. I have chosen this road latterly I have no great reason for it." He.- "But

that may make a reason for others." She (reddening).- "I don't know that. My reason,

however, such as it is, is that I wish to get a glimpse of the sea every day." He.- "Is it a

secret, why?" She (reluctantly).- "Yes."

He (with the pathos of one of his native ballads).- "Ah, I doubt there will be any good

in secrets! A secret cast a deep shadow over my life. And well you know what it was."Elizabeth admitted that she did, but she refrained from confessing why the sea

attracted her. She could not herself account for it fully, not knowing the secret possibly

to be that, in addition to early marine associations, her blood was a sailor's.

"Thank you for those new books, Mr. Farfrae," she added shyly. "I wonder if I ought to

accept so many!" "Ay! why not? It gives me more pleasure to get them for you, than

you to have them!" "It cannot!" They proceeded along the road together till they

reached the town, and their paths diverged.

Henchard vowed that he would leave them to their own devices, put nothing in the

way of their courses, whatever they might mean. If he were doomed to be bereft of her,

so it must be. In the situation which their marriage would create he could see no locus

standi for himself at all. Farfrae would never recognize him more than superciliously,

his poverty ensured that, no less than his past conduct.

And so Elizabeth would grow to be a stranger to him, and the end of his life would be

friendless solitude.

With such a possibility impending he could not help watchfulness. Indeed, within

certain lines, he had the right to keep an eye upon her as his charge. The meetings

seemed to become matters of course with them on special days of the week.

At last full proof was given him. He was standing behind a wall close to the place at

which Farfrae encountered her. He heard the young man address her as "Dearest

Elizabeth-Jane," and then kiss her, the girl looking quickly round to assure herself that

nobody was near.

When they were gone their way Henchard came out from the wall, and mournfully

followed them to Casterbridge. The chief looming trouble in this engagement had not

decreased. Both Farfrae and Elizabeth-Jane, unlike the rest of the people, must suppose

Elizabeth to be his actual daughter, from his own assertion while he himself had the

same belief; and though Farfrae must have so far forgiven him as to have no objection

to own him as a father-in-law, intimate they could never be. Thus would the girl, who

was his only friend, be withdrawn from him by degrees through her husband's

influence, and learn to despise him.

Had she lost her heart to any other man in the world than the one he had rivalled,

cursed, wrestled with for life in days before his spirit was broken, Henchard would

have said, "I am content." But content with the prospect as now depicted was hard to

acquire.

There is an outer chamber of the brain in which thoughts unowned, unsolicited, and of

noxious kind, are sometimes allowed to wander for a moment prior to being sent off

whence they came. One of these thoughts sailed into Henchard's ken now.

Suppose he were to communicate to Farfrae the fact that his betrothed was not the child

of Michael Henchard at all- legally, nobody's child; how would that correct and leading

townsman receive the information? He might possibly forsake Elizabeth-Jane, and then

she would be her stepsire's own again.Henchard shuddered, and exclaimed, "God forbid such a thing! Why should I still be

subject to these visitations of the devil, when I try so hard to keep him away?"WHAT HENCHARD saw thus early was, naturally enough, seen at a little later date by

other people. That Mr. Farfrae "walked with that bankrupt Henchard's stepdaughter,

of all women," became a common topic in the town, the simple perambulating term

being used hereabout to signify a wooing; and the nineteen superior young ladies of

Casterbridge, who had each looked upon herself as the only woman capable of making

the merchant Councilman happy, indignantly left off going to the church Farfrae

attended, left off conscious mannerisms, left off putting him in their prayers at night

amongst their blood relations; in short, reverted to their natural courses.

Perhaps the only inhabitants of the town to whom this looming choice of the

Scotchman's gave unmixed satisfaction were the members of the philosophic party,

which included Longways, Christopher Coney, Billy Wills, Mr. Buzzford, and the like.

The Three Mariners having been, years before, the house in which they had witnessed

the young man and woman's first and humble appearance on the Casterbridge stage,

they took a kindly interest in their career, not unconnected, perhaps, with visions of

festive treatment at their hands hereafter. Mrs. Stannidge having rolled into the large

parlour one evening, and said that it was a wonder such a man as Mr. Farfrae, "a

pillow of the town," who might have chosen one of the daughters of the professional

men, or private residents, should stoop so low, Coney ventured to disagree with her.

"No, ma'am, no wonder at all. 'Tis she that's a stooping to he- that's my opinion. A

widow man- whose first wife was no credit to him- what is it for a young perusing

woman, that's her own mistress and well-liked? But as a neat patching up of things I

see much good in it. When a man have put up a tomb of best marble-stone to the other

one, as he've done, and weeped his fill, and thought it all over, and said to hisself,

'T'other took me in; I knowed this one first; she's a sensible piece for a partner, and

there's no faithful woman in high life now;'- well, he may do worse than not to take

her, if she's tender-inclined." Thus they talked at the Mariners. But we must guard

against a too liberal use of the conventional declaration that a great sensation was

caused by the prospective event, that all the gossips' tongues were set wagging thereby,

and so on, even though such a declaration might lend some eclat to the career of our

poor only heroine. When all has been said about busy rumourers, a superficial and

temporary thing is the interest of anybody in affairs which do not directly touch them.

It would be a truer representation to say that Casterbridge (ever excepting the nineteen

young ladies) looked up for a moment at the news, and withdrawing its attention, went

on labouring and victualling, bringing up its children, and burying its dead, without

caring a little for Farfrae's domestic plans.

Not a hint of the matter was thrown out to her stepfather by Elizabeth herself or by

Farfrae either. Reasoning on the cause of their reticence he concluded that, estimating

him by his past, the throbbing pair were afraid to broach the subject, and looked upon

him as an irksome obstacle whom they would be heartily glad to get out of the way.Embittered as he was against society, this moody view of himself took deeper and

deeper hold of Henchard, till the daily necessity of facing mankind, and of them

particularly Elizabeth-Jane, became well-nigh more than he could endure. His health

declined; he became morbidly sensitive. He wished he could escape those who did not

want him, and hide his head for ever.

But what if he were mistaken in his views, and there were no necessity that his own

absolute separation from her should be involved in the incident of her marriage? He

proceeded to draw a picture of the alternative- himself living like a fangless lion about

the back rooms of a house in which his stepdaughter was mistress; an inoffensive old

man, tenderly smiled on by Elizabeth, and good-naturedly tolerated by her husband. It

was terrible to his pride to think of descending so low; and yet, for the girl's sake he

might put up with anything; even from Farfrae; even snubbings and masterful tongue

scourgings. The privilege of being in the house she occupied would almost outweigh

the personal humiliation.

Whether this were a dim possibility or the reverse, the courtship- which it evidently

now was- had an absorbing interest for him.

Elizabeth, as has been said, often took her walks on the Budmouth Road, and Farfrae as

often made it convenient to create an accidental meeting with her there.

A quarter of a mile from the highway was the pre-historic fort called Mai Dun, of huge

dimensions and many ramparts, within or upon whose enclosures a human being, as

seen from the road, was but an insignificant speck. Hither Henchard often resorted,

glass in hand, and scanned the hedgeless Via- for it was the original track laid out by

the legions of the Empire- to a distance of two or three miles, his object being to read

the progress of affairs between Farfrae and his charmer.

One day Henchard was at this spot when a masculine figure came along the road from

Budmouth, and lingered. Applying his telescope to his eye Henchard expected that

Farfrae's features would be disclosed as usual. But the lenses revealed that today the

man was not Elizabeth-Jane's lover.

It was one clothed as a merchant captain; and as he turned in his scrutiny of the road he

revealed his face. Henchard lived a lifetime the moment he saw it.

The face was Newson's.

Henchard dropped the glass, and for some seconds made no other movement.

Newson waited, and Henchard waited- if that could be called a waiting which was a

transfixture. But Elizabeth-Jane did not come. Something or other had caused her to

neglect her customary walk that day. Perhaps Farfrae and she had chosen another road

for variety's sake. But what did that amount to? She might be here tomorrow, and in

any case Newson, if bent on a private meeting and a revelation of the truth to her,

would soon make his opportunity.

Then he would tell her not only of his paternity, but of the ruse by which he had been

once sent away. Elizabeth's strict nature would cause her for the first time to despiseher stepfather, would root out his image as that of an arch-deceiver, and Newson

would reign in her heart in his stead.

But Newson did not see anything of her that morning. Having stood still awhile he at

last retraced his steps, and Henchard felt like a condemned man who has a few hours'

respite. When he reached his own house he found her there.

"O father!" she said innocently, "I have had a letter- a strange one- not signed.

Somebody has asked me to meet him, either on the Budmouth Road at noon today, or

in the evening at Mr. Farfrae's. He says he came to see me some time ago, but a trick

was played him, so that he did not. I don't understand it; but between you and me I

think Donald is at the bottom of the mystery, and that it is a relation of his who wants

to pass an opinion on his choice. But I did not like to go till I had seen you. Shall I go?"

Henchard replied heavily, "Yes; go." The question of his remaining in Casterbridge

was for ever disposed of by this closing in of Newson on the scene. Henchard was not

the man to stand the certainty of condemnation on a matter so near his heart. And

being an old hand at bearing anguish in silence, and haughty withal, he resolved to

make as light as he could of his intention, while immediately taking his measures.

He surprised the young woman, whom he had looked upon as his all in this world, by

saying to her, as if he did not care about her more: "I am going to leave Casterbridge,

Elizabeth-Jane." "Leave Casterbridge!" she cried, "and leave- me?" "Yes, this little shop

can be managed by you alone as well as by us both; I don't care about shops and streets

and folk- I would rather get into the country by myself, out of sight, and follow my

own ways, and leave you to yours." She looked down, and her tears fell silently. It

naturally seemed to her that this resolve of his had come on account of her attachment,

and its probable result.

She showed her devotion to Farfrae, however, by mastering her emotion and speaking

out.

"I am sorry you have decided on this," she said with difficult firmness. "For I thought

it probable- possible- that I might marry Mr. Farfrae some little time hence, and I did

not know that you disapproved of the step!" "I approve of anything you desire to do,

Izzy," said Henchard huskily. "If I did not approve, it would be no matter! I wish to go

away. My presence might make things awkward in the future; and, in short, it is best

that I go." Nothing that her affection could urge would induce him to reconsider his

determination; for she could not urge what she did not know- that when she should

learn he was not related to her other than as a step-parent she would refrain from

despising him, and that when she knew what he had done to keep her in ignorance she

would refrain from hating him. It was his conviction that she would not so refrain; and

there existed as yet neither word nor event which could argue it away.

"Then," she said at last, "you will not be able to come to my wedding; and that is not as

it ought to be." "I don't want to see it- I don't want to see it!" he exclaimed; adding

more softly, "but think of me sometimes in your future life- you'll do that, Izzy?- think

of me when you are living as the wife of the richest, the foremost man in the town, anddon't let my sins, when you know them all, cause 'ee to quite forget that though I loved

'ee late I loved 'ee well." "It is because of Donald!" she sobbed.

"I don't forbid you to marry him," said Henchard. "Promise not to quite forget me

when-" He meant when Newson should come.

She promised mechanically, in her agitation; and the same evening at dusk Henchard

left the town, to whose development he had been one of the chief stimulants for many

years. During the day he had bought a new tool-basket, cleaned up his old hay-knife

and wimble, set himself up in fresh leggings, knee-naps and corduroys, and in other

ways gone back to the working clothes of his young manhood, discarding for ever the

shabby-genteel suit of cloth and rusty silk hat that since his decline had characterized

him in the Casterbridge street as a man who had seen better days.

He went secretly and alone, not a soul of the many who had known him being aware of

his departure. Elizabeth-Jane accompanied him as far as the second bridge on the

highway- for the hour of her appointment with the unguessed visitor at Farfrae's had

not yet arrived- and parted from him with unfeigned wonder and sorrow- keeping him

back a minute or two before finally letting him go. She watched his form diminish

across the moor, the yellow straw basket at his back moving up and down with each

tread, and the creases behind his knees coming and going alternately till she could no

longer see them. Though she did not know it, Henchard formed at this moment much

the same picture as he had presented entering Casterbridge for the first time nearly a

quarter of a century before; except, to be sure, that the serious addition to his years had

considerably lessened the spring of his stride, that his state of hopelessness had

weakened him, and imparted to his shoulders, as weighted by the basket, a perceptible

bend.

He went on till he came to the first milestone, which stood in the bank, half way up a

steep hill. He rested his basket on the top of the stone, placed his elbows on it, and gave

way to a convulsive twitch, which was worse than a sob, because it was so hard and so

dry.

"If I had only got her with me- if I only had!" he said. "Hard work would be nothing to

me then! But that was not to be. I- Cain- go alone as I deserve- an outcast and a

vagabond. But my punishment is not greater than I can bear!" He sternly subdued his

anguish, shouldered his basket, and went on.

Elizabeth, in the meantime, had breathed him a sigh, recovered her equanimity, and

turned her face to Casterbridge. Before she had reached the first house she was met in

her walk by Donald Farfrae. This was evidently not their first meeting that day; they

joined hands without ceremony, and Farfrae anxiously asked, "And is he gone- and did

you tell him?- I mean of the other matter- not of ours." "He is gone; and I told him all I

knew of your friend. Donald, who is he?" "Well, well, dearie; you will know soon

about that. And Mr. Henchard will hear of it if he does not go far." "He will go far- he's

bent upon getting out of sight and sound!" She walked beside her lover, and when theyreached the Town Pump turned with him into Corn Street, instead of going straight on

to her own door. At Farfrae's house they stopped and went in.

Farfrae flung open the door of the ground-floor sitting-room, saying, "There he is

waiting for you," and Elizabeth entered. In the arm-chair sat the broad-faced genial

man who had called on Henchard on a memorable morning between one and two

years before this time, and whom the latter had seen mount the coach and depart

within half-an-hour of his arrival. It was Richard Newson. The meeting with the light-

hearted father from whom she had been separated half-a-dozen years, as if by death,

need hardly be detailed. It was an affecting one, apart from the question of paternity.

Henchard's departure was in a moment explained. When the true facts came to be

handled, the difficulty of restoring her to her old belief in Newson was not so great as

might have seemed likely, for Henchard's conduct itself was a proof that those facts

were true. Moreover, she had grown up under Newson's paternal care; and even had

Henchard been her father in nature, this father in early domiciliation might almost

have carried the point against him, when the incidents of her parting with Henchard

had a little worn off.

Newson's pride in what she had grown up to be was more than he could express. He

kissed her again and again.

"I've saved you the trouble to come and meet me- ha-ha!" said Newson. "The fact is

that Mr. Farfrae here, he said, 'Come up and stop with me for a day or two, Captain

Newson, and I'll bring her round.' 'Faith,' says I, 'so I will;' and here I am." "Well,

Henchard is gone," said Farfrae, shutting the door. "He has done it all voluntarily, and,

as I gather from Elizabeth, he has been very nice with her. I was got rather uneasy; but

all is as it should be, and we will have no more difficulties at all." "Now, that's very

much as I thought," said Newson, looking into the face of each by turns. "I said to

myelf, ay, a hundred times, when I tried to get a peep at her unknown to herself-

'Depend upon it, 'tis best that I should live on quiet for a few days like this till

something turns up for the better.' I now know you are all right, and what can I wish

for more?" "Well, Captain Newson, I will be glad to see ye here every day now, since it

can do no harm," said Farfrae. "And what I've been thinking is, that the wedding may

as well be kept under my own roof, the house being large, and you being in lodgings

by yourself- so that a great deal of trouble and expense would be saved ye?- and 'tis a

convenience when a couple's married not to hae far to go to get home!" "With all my

heart," said Captain Newson; "since, as ye say, it can do no harm, now poor

Henchard's gone; though I wouldn't have done it otherwise, or put myself in his way at

all; for I've already in my lifetime been an intruder into his family quite as far as

politeness can be expected to put up with. But what do the young woman say herself

about it? Elizabeth, my child, come and hearken to what we be talking about, and not

bide staring out o' the window as if ye didn't hear." "Donald and you must settle it,"

murmured Elizabeth, still keeping up a scrutinizing gaze at some small object in the

street."Well, then," continued Newson, turning anew to Farfrae with a face expressing

thorough entry into the subject, "that's how we'll have it. And, Mr. Farfrae, as you

provide so much, and houseroom, and all that, I'll do my part in the drinkables, and

see to the rum and schiedam- maybe a dozen jars will be sufficient, as many of the folk

will be ladies, and perhaps they won't drink hard enough to make a high average in

the reckoning? But you know best. I've provided for men and shipmates times enough,

but I'm as ignorant as a child how many glasses of grog a woman that's not a drinking

woman, is expected to consume at these ceremonies?" "Oh, none- we'll no want much

of that- oh no!" said Farfrae, shaking his head with appalled gravity. "Do you leave all

to me."

When they had gone a little further in these particulars Newson, leaning back in his

chair and smiling reflectively at the ceiling said, "I've never told ye, or have I, Mr.

Farfrae, how Henchard put me off the scent that time?" He expressed ignorance of

what the Captain alluded to.

"Ah, I thought I hadn't. I resolved that I would not, I remember, not to hurt the man's

name. But now he's gone I can tell ye. Why, I came to Casterbridge nine or ten months

before that day last week that I found ye out. I had been here twice before then. The

first time I passed through the town on my way westward, not knowing Elizabeth lived

here. Then hearing at some place- I forget wherethat a man of the name of Henchard

had been mayor here, I came back, and called at his house one morning. The joker!- he

said Elizabeth-Jane had died years ago." Elizabeth now gave earnest heed to his story.

"Now, it never crossed my mind that the man was selling me a packet," continued

Newson. "And, if you'll believe me, I was that upset, that I went back to the coach that

had brought me, and took passage onward without lying in the town half-an-hour. Ha-

ha!- 'twas a good joke, and well carried out, and I give the man credit for't!" Elizabeth-

Jane was amazed at the intelligence. "A joke?- oh, no!" she cried.

"Then he kept you from me, father, all those months, when you might have been here?"

The father admitted that such was the case.

"He ought not to have done it!" said Farfrae.

Elizabeth sighed. "I said I would never forget him. But oh! I think I ought to forget him

now!" Newson, like a good many rovers and sojourners among strange men and

strange moralities, failed to perceive the enormity of Henchard's crime,

notwithstanding that he himself had been the chief sufferer therefrom. Indeed. the

attack upon the absent culprit waxing serious, he began to take Henchard's part.

"Well 'twas not ten words that he said, after all," Newson pleaded. "And how could he

know that I should be such a simpleton as to believe him? 'Twas as much my fault as

his, poor fellow!" "No," said Elizabeth-Jane firmly, in her revulsion of feeling. "He

knew your disposition- you always were so trusting, father; I've heard my mother say

so hundreds of times- and he did it to wrong you. After weaning me from you these

five years by saying he was my father, he should not have done this." Thus they

conversed; and there was nobody to set before Elizabeth any extenuation of the absentone's deceit. Even had he been present Henchard might scarce have pleaded it, so little

did he value himself or his good name.

"Well, well- never mind- it is all over and past," said Newson good-naturedly.

"Now, about this wedding again."MEANWHILE, the man of their talk had pursued his solitary way eastward till

weariness overtook him, and he looked about for a place of rest. His heart was so

exacerbated at parting from the girl that he could not face an inn, or even a household

of the most humble kind; and entering a field he lay down under a wheatrick, feeling

no want of food. The very heaviness of his soul caused him to sleep profoundly.

The bright autumn sun shining into his eyes across the stubble awoke him the next

morning early. He opened his basket, and ate for his breakfast what he had packed for

his supper; and in doing so overhauled the remainder of his kit. Although everything

he brought necessitated carriage at his own back, he had secreted among his tools a few

of Elizabeth-Jane's cast-off belongings, in the shape of gloves, shoes, a scrap of her

handwriting, and the like; and in his pocket he carried a curl of her hair. Having looked

at these things he closed them up again, and went onward.

During five consecutive days Henchard's rush basket rode along upon his shoulder

between the highway hedges, the new yellow of the rushes catching the eye of an

occasional field-labourer as he glanced over the quickset, together with the wayfarer's

hat and head, and downturned face, over which the twig shadows moved in endless

procession. It now became apparent that the direction of his journey was Weydon-

Priors, which he reached on the afternoon of the sixth day.

The renowned hill, whereon the annual fair had been held for so many generations,

was now bare of human beings, and almost of aught besides. A few sheep grazed

thereabout, but these ran off when Henchard halted upon the summit. He deposited his

basket upon the turf, and looked about with sad curiosity; till he discovered the road

by which his wife and himself had entered, on the upland so memorable to both, two

or three-and-twenty years before.

"Yes, we came up that way," he said, after ascertaining his bearings. "She was carrying

the baby, and I was reading a ballet-sheet. Then we crossed about hereshe so sad and

weary, and I speaking to her hardly at all, because of my cursed pride and

mortification at being poor. Then we saw the tent- that must have stood more this

way." He walked to another spot; it was not really where the tent had stood, but it

seemed so to him. "Here we went in, and here we sat down. I faced this way. Then I

drank, and committed my crime. It must have been just on that very pixy-ring that she

was standing when she said her last words to me before going off with him; I can hear

their sound now, and the sound of her sobs. 'O Mike! I've lived with thee all this while,

and had nothing but temper. Now I'm no more to 'ee- I'll try my luck elsewhere.'" He

experienced not only the bitterness of a man who finds, in looking back upon an

ambitious course, that what he has sacrificed in sentiment was worth as much as what

he has gained in substance; but the superadded bitterness of seeing his very recantation

nullified. He had been sorry for all this long ago; but his attempts to replace ambition

by love had been as fully foiled as his ambition itself.His wronged wife had foiled them by a fraud so grandly simple as to be almost a

virtue. It was an odd sequence that out of all this wronging of social law came that

flower of Nature, Elizabeth. Part of his wish to wash his hands of life arose from his

perceptions of its contrarious inconsistencies- of Nature's jaunty readiness to support

unorthodox social principles.

He intended to go on from this place- visited as an act of penance- into another part of

the country altogether. But he could not help thinking of Elizabeth, and the quarter of

the horizon in which she lived. Out of this it happened that the centrifugal tendency

imparted by weariness of the world was counteracted by the centripetal influence of his

love for his stepdaughter. As a consequence, instead of following a straight course yet

further away from Casterbridge, Henchard gradually, almost unconsciously, deflected

from that right line of his first intention; till, by degrees, his path, like that of the

Canadian woodsman, became part of a circle, of which Casterbridge formed the centre.

In ascending any particular hill, he ascertained the bearings as nearly as he could by

means of the sun, moon, or stars, and settled in his mind the exact direction in which

Casterbridge and ElizabethJane lay. Sneering at himself for his weakness, he yet every

hour- nay, every few minutes- conjectured her actions for the time being- her sitting

down and rising up, her goings and comings, till thought of Newson's and Farfrae's

counter-influence would pass like a cold blast over a pool, and efface her image. And

then he would say of himself, "O you fool! All this about a daughter who is no

daughter of thine!"

At length he obtained employment at his own occupation of hay-trusser, work of that

sort being in demand at this autumn time. The scene of his hiring was a pastoral farm

near the old western highway, whose course was the channel of all such

communications as passed between the busy centres of novelty and the remote Wessex

boroughs. He had chosen the neighborhood of this artery from a sense that, situated

here, though at a distance of fifty miles, he was virtually nearer to her whose welfare

was so dear than he would be at a roadless spot only half as remote.

And thus Henchard found himself again on the precise standing which he had

occupied five-and-twenty years before. Externally there was nothing to hinder his

making another start on the upward slope, and by his new lights achieving higher

things than his soul in its half- formed state had been able to accomplish. But the

ingenious machinery contrived by the Gods for reducing human possibilities of

amelioration to a minimum- which arranges that wisdom to do shall come pari passu

with the departure of zest for doing- stood in the way of all that. He had no wish to

make an arena a second time of a world that had become a mere painted scene to him.

Very often, as his hay-knife crunched down among the sweet-smelling grassy stems, he

would survey mankind and say to himself: "Here and everywhere be folk dying before

their time like frosted leaves, though wanted by their families, the country, and the

world; while I, an outcast, an encumberer of the ground, wanted by nobody, and

despised by all, live on against my will!"He often kept an eager ear upon the conversation of those who passed along the road-

not from a general curiosity by any means- but in the hope that among these travellers

to and from Casterbridge some would, sooner or later, speak of that place. The

distance, however, was too great to lend much probability to his desire; and the highest

result of his attention to wayside words was that he did indeed hear the name

"Casterbridge" uttered one day by the driver of a road-waggon. Henchard ran to the

gate of the field he worked in, and hailed the speaker, who was a stranger.

"Yes- I've come from there, maister," he said, in answer to Henchard's inquiry. "I trade

up and down, ye know; though, what with this travelling without horses that's getting

so common, my work will soon be done." "Anything moving in the old place, mid I

ask?" "All the same as usual." "I've heard that Mr. Farfrae, the late Mayor, is thinking

of getting married.

Now is that true or not?" "I couldn't say for the life o' me. Oh no, I should think not"

"But yes, John- you forget," said a woman inside the waggon-tilt. "What were them

packages we carr'd there at the beginning o' the week? Surely they said a wedding was

coming off soon- on Martin's Day?" The man declared he remembered nothing about

it; and the waggon went on jangling over the hill.

Henchard was convinced that the woman's memory served her well. The date was an

extremely probable one, there being no reason for delay on either side. He might, for

that matter, write and inquire of Elizabeth; but his instinct for sequestration had made

the course difficult. Yet before he left her, she had said that for him to be absent from

her wedding was not as she wished it to be.

The remembrance would continually revive in him now that it was not Elizabeth and

Farfrae who had driven him away from them, but his own haughty sense that his

presence was no longer desired. He had assumed the return of Newson, without

absolute proof that the Captain meant to return; still less that ElizabethJane would

welcome him; and with no proof whatever that if he did return he would stay. What if

he had been mistaken in his view; if there had been no necessity that his own absolute

separation from her he loved should be involved in these untoward incidents? To make

one more attempt to be near her: to go back; to see her, to plead his cause before her, to

ask forgiveness for his fraud, to endeavour strenuously to hold his own in her love; it

was worth the risk of repulse, ay, of life itself.

But how to initiate this reversal of all his former resolves, without causing husband and

wife to despise him for his inconsistency, was a question which made him tremble and

brood.

He cut and cut his trusses two days more, and then he concluded his hesitancies by a

sudden reckless determination to go to the wedding festivity. Neither writing nor

message would be expected of him. She had regretted his decision to be absent- his

unanticipated presence would fill the little unsatisfied corner that would probably have

place in her just heart without him.To intrude as little of his personality as possible upon a gay event with which that

personality could show nothing in keeping, he decided not to make his appearance till

evening- when stiffness would have worn off, and a gentle wish to let bygones be

bygones would exercise its sway in all hearts.

He started on foot, two mornings before St. Martin's-tide, allowing himself about

sixteen miles to perform for each of the three days' journey, reckoning the wedding-

day as one. There was only one town, Shottsford, of any importance along his course,

and here he stopped on the second night, not only to rest, but to prepare himself for the

next evening.

Possessing no clothes but the working suit he stood in- now stained and distorted by

their two months of hard usage, he entered a shop to make some purchases which

should put him, externally at any rate, a little in harmony with the prevailing tone of

the morrow. A rough yet respectable coat and hat, a new shirt and neck-cloth, were the

chief of these; and having satisfied himself that in appearance at least he would not

now offend her, he proceeded to the more interesting particular of buying her some

present.

What should that present be? He walked up and down the street, regarding dubiously

the display in the shop windows, from a gloomy sense that what he might most like to

give her would be beyond his miserable pocket. At length a caged goldfinch met his

eye. The cage was a plain and small one, the shop humble, and on inquiry he

concluded he could afford the modest sum asked. A sheet of newspaper was tied round

the little creature's wire prison, and with the wrapped up cage in his hand Henchard

sought a lodging for the night.

Next day he set out upon the last stage, and was soon within the district which had

been his trading-ground in bygone years. Part of the distance he travelled by carrier,

seating himself in the darkest corner at the back of that trader's van; and as the other

passengers, mainly women going short journeys, mounted and alighted in front of

Henchard, they talked over much local news, not the least portion of this being the

wedding then in course of celebration at the town they were nearing. It appeared from

their accounts that the town band had been hired for the evening party, and, lest the

convivial instincts of that body should get the better of their skill, the further step had

been taken of engaging the string band from Budmouth, so that there would be a

reserve of harmony to fall back upon in case of need.

He heard, however, but few particulars beyond those known to him already, the

incident of the deepest interest on the journey being the soft pealing of the Casterbridge

bells, which reached the travellers' ears while the van paused on the top of Yalbury Hill

to have the drag lowered. The time was just after twelve o'clock.

Those notes were a signal that all had gone well; that there had been no slip 'twixt cup

and lip in this case; that Elizabeth-Jane and Donald Farfrae were man and wife,.

Henchard did not care to ride any further with his chattering companions after hearing

this sound. Indeed, it quite unmanned him; and in pursuance of his plan of notshowing himself in Casterbridge street till evening, lest he should mortify Farfrae and

his bride, he alighted here, with his bundle and bird-cage, and was soon left as a lonely

figure on the broad white highway.

It was the hill near which he had waited to meet Farfrae, almost two years earlier, to

tell him of the serious illness of his wife Lucetta. The place was unchanged, the same

larches sighed the same notes; but Farfrae had another wifeand, as Henchard knew, a

better one. He only hoped that Elizabeth-Jane had obtained a better home than had

been hers at the former time.

He passed the remainder of the afternoon in a curious high-strung condition, unable to

do much but think of the approaching meeting with her, and sadly satirize himself for

his emotions thereon, as a Samson shorn. Such an innovation on Casterbridge customs

as a flitting of bridegroom and bride from the town immediately after the ceremony,

was not likely, but if it should have taken place he would wait till their return. To

assure himself on this point he asked a market-man when near the borough if the

newly-married couple had gone away, and was promptly informed that they had not;

they were at that hour, according to all accounts, entertaining a houseful of guests at

their home in Corn Street.

Henchard dusted his boots, washed his hands at the riverside, and proceeded up the

town under the feeble lamps. He need have made no inquiries beforehand, for on

drawing near Farfrae's residence it was plain to the least observant that festivity

prevailed within, and that Donald himself shared it, his voice being distinctly audible

in the street, giving strong expression to a song of his dear native country, that he loved

so well as never to have revisited it. Idlers were standing on the pavement in front; and

wishing to escape the notice of these Henchard passed quickly on to the door.

It was wide open; the hall was lighted extravagantly, and people were going up and

down the stairs. His courage failed him; to enter footsore, laden, and poorly dressed

into the midst of such resplendency, was to bring needless humiliation upon her he

loved, if not to court repulse from her husband. Accordingly he went round into the

street at the back that he knew so well, entered the garden, and came quietly into the

house through the kitchen, temporarily depositing the bird and cage under a bush

outside, to lessen the awkwardness of his arrival.

Solitude and sadness had so emolliated Henchard that he now feared circumstances he

would formerly have scorned, and he began to wish that he had not taken upon himself

to arrive at such a juncture. However, his progress was made unexpectedly easy by his

discovering alone in the kitchen an elderly woman who seemed to be acting as

provisional housekeeper during the convulsions from which Farfrae's establishment

was just then suffering. She was one of those people whom nothing surprises, and

though to her, a total stranger, his request must have seemed odd, she willingly

volunteered to go up and inform the master and mistress of the house that "a humble

old friend had come."On second thoughts she said that he had better not wait in the kitchen, but come up

into the little back-parlour, which was empty. He thereupon followed her thither, and

she left him. Just as she had got across the landing to the door of the best parlour a

dance was struck up, and she returned to say that she would wait till that was over

before announcing him- Mr. and Mrs. Farfrae having both joined in the figure.

The door of the front room had been taken off its hinges to give more space, and that of

the room Henchard sat in being ajar, he could see fractional parts of the dancers

whenever their gyrations brought them near the doorway, chiefly in the shape of the

skirts of dresses and steaming curls of hair; together with about three-fifths of the band,

in profile, including the restless shadow of a fiddler's elbow, and the tip of the bass-

viol bow.

The gaiety jarred upon Henchard's spirits; and he could not quite understand why

Farfrae, a much-sobered man, and a widower, who had had his trials, should have

cared for it all, notwithstanding the fact that he was quite a young man still, and

quickly kindled to enthusiasm by dance and song. That the quiet Elizabeth, who had

long ago appraised life at a moderate value, and who knew, in spite of her

maidenhood, that marriage was as a rule no dancing matter, should have had zest for

this revelry surprised him still more. However, young people could not be quite old

people, he concluded, and custom was omnipotent.

With the progress of the dance the performers spread out somewhat, and then for the

first time he caught a glimpse of the once despised daughter who had mastered him,

and made his heart ache. She was in a dress of white silk or satin, he was not near

enough to say which- snowy white, without a tinge of milk or cream; and the

expression of her face was one of nervous pleasure rather than of gaiety. Presently

Farfrae came round, his exuberant Scotch movement making him conspicuous in a

moment. The pair were not dancing together, but Henchard could discern that

whenever the changes of the figure made them the partners of a moment, their

emotions breathed a much subtler essence than at other times.

By degrees Henchard became aware that the measure was trod by some one who out-

Farfraed Farfrae in saltatory intenseness. This was strange, and it was stranger to find

that the eclipsing personage was Elizabeth-Jane's partner. The first time that Henchard

saw him he was sweeping grandly round, his head quivering and low down, his legs in

the form of an X and his back towards the door.

The. next time he came round in the other direction, his white waistcoat preceding his

face, and his toes preceding his white waistcoat. That happy face- Henchard's complete

discomfiture lay in it. It was Newson's, who had indeed come and supplanted him.

Henchard pushed to the door, and for some seconds made no other movement.

He rose to his feet, and stood like a dark rain, obscured by "the shade from his own

soul upthrown." But he was no longer the man to stand these reverses unmoved. His

agitation was great, and he would fain have been gone, but before he could leave thedance had ended, the housekeeper had informed Elizabeth-Jane of the stranger who

awaited her, and she entered the room immediately.

"Oh- it is- Mr. Henchard!" she said, starting back.

"What; Elizabeth?" he cried, as he seized her hand. "What do you say?- Mr. Henchard?

Don't, don't scourge me like that! Call me worthless old Henchardanything- but don't

'ee be so cold as this! Oh, my maid- I see you have another- a real father in my place.

Then you know all; but don't give all your thought to him! Do ye save a little room for

me!" She flushed up, and gently drew her hand away. "I could have loved you always-

I would have, gladly," said she. "But how can I when I know you have deceived me so-

so bitterly deceived me! You persuaded me that my father was not my father- allowed

me to live on in ignorance of the truth for years; and then when he, my warm-hearted

real father, came to find me, cruelly sent him away with a wicked invention of my

death, which nearly broke his heart. Oh how can I love, or do anything more for, a man

who has served us like this!" Henchard's lips half parted to begin an explanation. But

he shut them up like a vice, and uttered not a sound. How should he, there and then,

set before her with any effect the palliatives of his great faults- that he had himself been

deceived in her identify at first, till informed by her mother's letter than his own child

had died; that, in the second accusation, his lie had been the last desperate throw of a

gamester who loved her affection better than his own honour? Among the many

hindrances to such a pleading, not the least was this, that he did not sufficiently value

himself to lessen his sufferings by strenuous appeal or elaborate argument.

Waiving, therefore, his privilege of self-defence, he regarded only her discomposure.

"Don't ye distress yourself on my account," he said, with proud superiority. "I would

not wish it- at such a time, too, as this. I have done wrong in coming to 'ee- I see my

error. But it is only for once, so forgive it. I'll never trouble 'ee again, Elizabeth-Jane-

no, not to my dying day! Good-night. Goodbye!" Then, before she could collect her

thoughts, Henchard went out from her rooms, and departed from the house by the

back way as he had come; and she saw him no more. IT WAS about a month after the day which closed as in the last @CHAPTER # =

chapter. Elizabeth-Jane had grown accustomed to the novelty of her situation, and the

only difference between Donald's movements now and formerly was, that he hastened

indoors rather more quickly after business hours than he had been in the habit of doing

for some time.

Newson had stayed in Casterbridge three days after the wedding party (whose gaiety,

as might have been surmised, was of his making rather than of the married couple's),

and was stared at and honoured as became the returned Crusoe of the hour. But

whether or not because Casterbridge was difficult to excite by dramatic returns and

disappearances, through having been for centuries an assized town, in which

sensational exits from the world, antipodean absences, and such like, were half-yearly

occurrences, the inhabitants did not altogether lose their equanimity on his account. On

the fourth morning he was discovered disconsolately climbing a hill, in his craving to

get a glimpse of the sea from somewhere or other. The contiguity of salt water proved

to be such a necessity of his existence that he preferred Budmouth as a place of

residence, notwithstanding the society of his daughter in the other town. Thither he

went, and settled in lodgings in a greenshuttered cottage which had a bow-window,

jutting out sufficiently to afford glimpses of a vertical strip of blue sea to any one

opening the sash, and leaning forward far enough to look through a narrow lane of tall

intervening houses.

Elizabeth-Jane was standing in the middle of her upstairs parlour, critically surveying

some re-arrangement of articles, with her head to one side, when the housemaid came

in with the announcement, "Oh, please, ma'am, we know now how that bird-cage came

there." In exploring her new domain during the first week of residence, gazing with

critical satisfaction on this cheerful room and that, penetrating cautiously into dark

cellars, sallying forth with gingerly tread to the garden, now leaf-strewn with autumn

winds, and thus, like a wise field-marshal, estimating the capabilities of the site

whereon she was about to open her housekeeping campaign- Mrs. Donald Farfrae had

discovered in a screened corner a new bird-cage, shrouded in newspaper, and at the

bottom of the cage a little ball of feathers- the dead body of a goldfinch. Nobody could

tell her how the bird and cage had come there; though that the poor little songster had

been starved to death was evident. The sadness of the incident had made an impression

on her. She had not been able to forget it for days, despite Farfrae's tender banter; and

now when the matter had been nearly forgotten it was again revived.

"Oh, please ma'am, we know how that bird-cage came there. That farmer's man who

called on the evening of the wedding- he was seen wi' it in his hand as he came up the

street; and 'tis thoughted that he put it down while he came in with his message, and

then went away forgetting where he had left it." This was enough to set Elizabeth

thinking, and in thinking she seized hold of the idea, at one feminine bound, that thecaged bird had been brought by Henchard for her, as a wedding gift and token of

repentance. He had not expressed to her any regrets or excuses for what he had done in

the past; but it was a part of his nature to extenuate nothing, and live on as one of his

own worst accusers. She went out, looked at the cage, buried the starved little singer,

and from that hour her heart softened towards the self-alienated man.

When her husband came in she told him her solution of the bird-cage mystery; and

begged Donald to help her in finding out, as soon as possible, whither Henchard had

banished himself, that she might make her peace with him; try to do something to

render his life less than that of an, outcast, and more tolerable to him. Although Farfrae

had never so passionately liked Henchard as Henchard had liked him, he had, on the

other hand, never so passionately hated in the same direction as his former friend had

done; and he was therefore not the least indisposed to assist Elizabeth-Jane in her

laudable plan.

But it was by no means easy to set about discovering Henchard. He had apparently

sunk into the earth on leaving Mr. and Mrs. Farfrae's door. Elizabeth-Jane remembered

what he had once attempted; and trembled.

But though she did not know it, Henchard had become a changed man since then- as

far, that is, as change of emotional basis can justify such a radical phrase; and she

needed not to fear. In a few days Farfrae's inquiries elicited that Henchard had been

seen, by one who knew him, walking steadily along the Melchester highway eastward,

at twelve o'clock at night- in other words, retracing his steps on the road by which he

had come.

This was enough; and the next morning Farfrae might have been discovered driving his

gig out of Casterbridge in that direction, Elizabeth-Jane sitting beside him, wrapped in

a thick flat fur- the victorine of the period- her complexion somewhat richer than

formerly, and an incipient matronly dignity, which the serene Minerva-eyes of one

"whose gestures beamed with mind" made becoming, settling on her face. Having

herself arrived at a promising haven from at least the grosser troubles of her life, her

object was to place Henchard in some similar quietude before he should sink into that

lower stage of existence which was only too possible to him now.

After driving along the highway for a few miles they made further inquiries, and learnt

of a road-mender, who had been working thereabouts for weeks, that he had observed

such a man at the time mentioned; he had left the Melchester coach-road at

Weatherbury by a forking highway which skirted the north of Egdon Heath. Into this

road they directed the horse's head, and soon were bowling across that ancient country,

whose surface never had been stirred to a finger's depth, save by the scratchings of

rabbits, since brushed by the feet of the earliest tribes. The tumuli these had left behind,

dun and shagged with heather, jutted roundly into the sky from the uplands, as though

they were the full breasts of Diana Multimammia supinely extended there.

They searched Egdon, but found no Henchard. Farfrae drove onward, and by the

afternoon reached the neighbourhood of some extension of the heath to the north ofAnglebury, a prominent feature of which, in the form of a blasted clump of firs on the

summit of a hill, they soon passed under. That the road they were following had, up to

this point, been Henchard's track on foot they were pretty certain; but the ramifications

which now began to reveal themselves in the route made further progress in the right

direction a matter of pure guess-work; and Donald strongly advised his wife to give up

the search in person, and trust to other means for obtaining news of her stepfather.

They were now a score of miles at least from home, but, by resting the horse for a

couple of hours at a village they had just traversed, it would be possible to get back to

Casterbridge that same day; while to go much further afield would reduce them to the

necessity of camping out for the night; "and that will make a hole in a sovereign," said

Farfrae. She pondered the position, and agreed with him.

He accordingly drew rein, but before reversing their direction paused a moment, and

looked vaguely round upon the wide country which the elevated position disclosed.

While they looked, a solitary human form came from under the clump of trees, and

crossed ahead of them. The person was some labourer; his gait was shambling, his

regard fixed in front of him as absolutely as if he wore blinkers; and in his hand he

carried a few sticks. Having crossed the road he descended into a ravine, where a

cottage revealed itself, which he entered.

"If it were not so far away from Casterbridge, I should say that must be poor Whittle.

'Tis just like him," observed Elizabeth-Jane.

"And it may be Whittle, for he's never been to the yard these three weeks, going away

without saying any word at all; and I owing him for two days' work, without knowing

who to pay it to." The possibility led them to alight, and at least make an inquiry at the

cottage.

Farfrae hitched the reins to the gate-post, and they approached what was of humble

dwellings surely the humblest. The walls, built of kneaded clay originally faced with a

trowel, had been worn by years of rain-washings to a lumpy crumbling surface,

channelled and sunken from its plane, its gray rents held together here and there by a

leafy strap of ivy which could scarcely find substance enough for the purpose. Leaves

from the fence had been blown into the corners of the doorway, and lay there

undisturbed. The door was ajar; Farfrae knocked; and he who stood before them was

Whittle, as they had conjectured.

His face showed marks of deep sadness, his eyes lighting on them with an unfocused

gaze; and he still held in his hand the few sticks he had been out to gather. As soon as

he recognized them he started.

"What, Abel Whittle; is it that ye are here?" said Farfrae.

"Ay, yes, sir! You see he was kind-like to mother when she wer here below, though a'

was rough to me." "Who are you talking of?" "Oh, sir- Mr. Henchet! Didn't ye know it?

He's just gone- about half-an-hour ago, by the sun; for I've got no watch to my name."

"Not- dead?" faltered Elizabeth-Jane."Yes, ma-am, he's gone! He was kind-like to mother when she wer here below, sending

her the best ship-coal, and hardly any ashes from it at all; and taties, and such-like that

were very needful to her. I seed 'en go down street on the night of your worshipful's

wedding to the lady at yer side, and I thought he looked low and faltering. And I

followed 'en over the road, and he turned and zeed me, and said 'You go back!' But I

followed, and he turned again, and said, 'Do you hear, sir? Go back!' But I zeed that he

was low, and I followed on still. Then 'a said, 'Whittle, what do ye follow me for when

I've told ye to go back all these times?' And I said, 'Because, sir, I see things be bad

with 'ee, and ye wer kind-like to mother if ye were rough to me, and I would fain be

kind-like to you.' Then he walked on, and I followed; and he never complained at me

no more. We walked on like that all night; and in the blue o' the morning, when 'twas

hardly day, I looked ahead o' me, and I zeed that he wambled, and could hardly drag

along. By that time we had got past here, but I had seen that this house was empty as I

went by, and I got him to come back; and I took down the boards from the windows,

and helped him inside. 'What, Whittle,' he said, 'and can ye really be such a poor fond

fool as to care for such a wretch as I!' Then I went on further, and some neighbourly

woodman lent me a bed, and a chair, and a few other traps, and we brought 'em here,

and made him as comfortable as we could. But he didn't gain strength, for you see,

ma'am, he couldn't eat- no, no appetite at all- and he got weaker; and today he died.

One of the neighbours have gone to get a man to measure him." "Dear me- is that so!"

said Farfrae.

As for Elizabeth, she said nothing.

"Upon the head of his bed he pinned a piece of paper, with some writing upon it,"

continued Abel Whittle. "But not being a man o' letters, I can't read writing; so I don't

know what it is. I can get it and show ye." They stood in silence while he ran into the

cottage; returning in a moment with a crumpled scrap of paper. On it there was

pencilled as follows:"MICHAEL HENCHARD'S WILL.

"That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made to grieve on account of

me.

"& that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground.

"& that no sexton be asked to toll the bell.

"& that nobody is wished to see my dead body.

"& that no murners walk behind me at my funeral.

"& that no flours be planted on my grave.

"& that no man remember me.

"To this I put my name.

MICHAEL HENCHARD."

"What are we to do?" said Donald, when he had handed the paper to her.

She could not answer distinctly. "O Donald!" she said at last through her tears, "what

bitterness lies there! Oh I would not have minded so much if it had not been for that

last parting!... But there's no altering- so it must be." What Henchard had written in theanguish of his dying was respected as far as practicable by Elizabeth-Jane, though less

from a sense of the sacredness of last words, as such, than from her independent

knowledge that the man who wrote them meant what he said. She knew the directions

to be a piece of the same stuff that his whole life was made of, and hence were not to be

tampered with to give herself a mournful pleasure, or her husband credit for large-

heartedness.

All was over at last, even her regrets for having misunderstood him on his last visit, for

not having searched him out sooner, though these were deep and sharp for a good,

while. From this time forward Elizabeth-Jane found herself in a latitude of calm

weather, kindly and grateful in itself, and doubly so after the Capharnaum in which

some of her preceding years had been spent. As the lively and sparkling emotions of

her early married life cohered into an equable serenity, the finer movements of her

nature found scope in discovering to the narrow-lived ones around her the secret (as

she had once learnt it) of making limited opportunities endurable; which she deemed

to consist in the cunning enlargement, by a species of microscopic treatment, of those

minute forms of satisfaction that offer themselves to everybody not in positive pain;

which, thus handled, have much of the same inspiriting effect upon life as wider

interests cursorily embraced.

Her teaching had a reflex action upon herself, insomuch that she thought she could

perceive no great personal difference between being respected in the nether parts of

Casterbridge, and glorified at the uppermost end of the social world. Her position was,

indeed, to a marked degree one that, in the common phrase, afforded much to be

thankful for. That she was not demonstratively thankful was no fault of hers. Her

experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or wrongly, that the doubtful

honour of a brief transit through a sorry world hardly called for effusiveness, even

when the path was suddenly irradiated at some halfway point by daybeams rich as

hers. But her strong sense that neither she nor any human being deserved less than was

given, did not blind her to the fact that there were others receiving less who had

deserved much more. And in being forced to class herself among the fortunate she did

not cease to wonder at the persistence of the unforeseen, when the one to whom such

unbroken tranquility had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth had

seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of

pain. Young, poor Michael Henchard feels trapped by his wife

and child and one night gets drunk at a fair and sells

them to a stranger called Newson. Horrified by what

he has done, he swears not to touch alcohol for twenty

years. Eighteen years later he is the mayor of Casterbridge

and a successful businessman. Believing Newson is dead,

his wife, Susan, and daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, arrive in

Casterbridge to find Henchard because she has no money.

He marries her again and they have a short happy life

together. Farfrae, a young man with modern business

ideas, arrives at the same time and becomes Henchard's

farm manager. Susan dies, and Henchard learns that

Elizabeth-Jane is really Newson's daughter. Henchard falls

out with Farfrae, who sets up a rival business, and soon

outdoes him. A woman from Henchard's past, Lucetta,

comes to Casterbridge. Henchard now wants to marry

her, but she and Farfrae fall in love. Henchard's business

fails and he loses his house so he starts drinking again.

Lucetta dies of shock after the local people make fun of

her and Henchard in public. He sees that he will now

lose his 'daughter' as well as everything else. He leaves

Casterbridge on foot. He is penniless and has lost his

family – just as at the beginning of the story. Elizabeth-

Jane remains loyal to Henchard, but he dies before she can

find him.

Chapter 1: Henchard, a farm worker aged twenty, has a

family, no job and no home. He gets drunk and sells his

wife and child for five guineas to a sailor named Newson

at a fair. Devastated at what he has done, he looks for

them without success. Henchard makes a solemn promise

not to touch alcohol for twenty years.

Chapter 2: Susan, widowed and poor, and her eighteen-

year-old daughter, Elizabeth-Jane arrive in Casterbridge to

find Henchard. She is relieved to find he is now the Mayor

and a businessman who needs a corn manager for his

growing business.

Chapter 3: Henchard employs Farfrae, a handsome

innovative Scotsman as corn manager and the business

improves. He also meets Susan and devises a plan so

that the townspeople do not find their marriage strange.

He draws closer to Farfrae and tells him about his past;

including a woman in Jersey he promised to marry.

Chapter 4: Henchard marries Susan, but she is reluctant

to have her daughter's last name changed. He and Farfrae

disagree publicly over a worker. Henchard is jealous and

organises a rival entertainment day to Farfrae's, but it fails.

Farfrae leaves him and sets up a rival business. Susan dies

but leaves a letter with the truth about her daughter.

Chapter 5: Henchard tells Elizabeth-Jane what happened

at the fair twenty years ago but reads in Susan's letter that

she is really Newson's daughter. He begins to treat her

coldly, and even encourages Farfrae to see her. Elizabeth-

Jane meets a woman at her mother's grave who is friendly

and offers her to share her house. : Lucetta, the woman from Jersey, has inherited

property in Casterbridge and has employed Elizabeth-Jane

as a housekeeper. Henchard tries to see her but they fail to

meet. Farfrae calls in to see Elizabeth-Jane, who is out. He

likes Lucetta and she loses interest in Henchard.

Chapter 7: Henchard goes bankrupt because of the

weather and his own impatience while Farfrae's business

succeeds. Henchard realises he and Farfrae compete for

Lucetta's love, so he threatens her with making their past

public so that she accepts his proposal of marriage.

Chapter 8: Henchard agrees to postpone their wedding

if Lucetta helps him buy some time to repay a debt to

Grower. She can't because she has secretly married Farfrae

and Grower acted as witness.

Chapter 9: Henchard claims the letters from his safe, and

reads them out to Farfrae without disclosing the sender.

He promises Lucetta to give tham back to her and asks

Jopp to deliver them.

Chapter 10: Jopp asks Lucetta to help him become her

husband's manager but she refuses. In a pub, he reads out

the letters to two women and they plan a skimmity-ride in

town to scorn Lucetta and Henchard.

Chapter 11: A member of the Royal family visits the

town but Henchard is not allowed to greet him. Hurt,

Henchard fights Farfrae in a barn but cannot bring himself

to kill him.

Chapter 12: Henchard is back in town to see the ride.

Farfrae does not see the ride because he is lured away from

town but Lucetta dies of the shock.

Chapter 13: Henchard and Elizabeth-Jane live

together happily. Elizabeth-Jane and Farfrae renew their

relationship and get married. Newson returns and tells his

daughter the truth, which makes her very happy.

Henchard leaves the town.

Chapter 14: Elizabeth-Jane marries Farfrae and tries to

find her father to take care of him but he dies before she

can find him.

The original text

The novel first appeared serially, in twenty instalments,

in 1886 in The Graphic, an English periodical and

simultaneously in the United States. The book appeared

as soon as the serial publication was complete but it differs

a lot from the serial novel. It has been adapted for TV as a

miniseries.

Background and themes

Where the story came from: Hardy claims the story

was inspired by three actual events: the sale of a wife

by her husband reported in a local newspaper, the

uncertain harvests and the visit of Prince Albert, Queen

Victoria's husband, to Dorchester, the town upon which

Casterbridge is based, in 1849.

Fight with self: The main theme of the book is

Henchard's fight against two things: his own character

and chance. As he fights with himself, his actions and

decisions affect other people's lives, usually badly. He

often allows negative feelings to overwhelm him – at the

beginning when things seem so bad he sells his wife. He is

always honest in business, but not always kind; he is often

impatient and quick to anger, but he is capable of great

love and great loneliness. His complex character creates

uncertainty in the reader – should we feel sorry for him or

does he deserve everything that happens to him?

Chance: Chance plays an important part throughout the

story: the chance appearance of Newson in the tent when

Henchard is trying to sell his wife; the rain that spoils

Henchard's fair; the August weather that ruins Henchard's

business; the chance meeting between Farfrae and Lucetta

when they fall in love. Hardy believes that although

Henchard is a powerful character, he is never fully in

control of his life.

Alcohol also has a role here. Henchard's life improves

when he stops drinking; as he devotes himself to work,

builds a successful business and eventually becomes mayor.

Once he starts again, he loses his pride and his judgement.

Traditional versus modern: The two men represent

contrasting ways of life in the country. Henchard is

traditional and old-fashioned. Farfrae is young and

modern. Hardy was always fascinated by country customs

and ways. He often includes strange country rituals like

the skimmity-ride in his novels. They make useful plot

devices and allow him to paint pictures of colourful but

less important characters. He also uses them to reveal the

conservative side of society, which can be very cruel to

people who fall outside its strict rules of moral behaviour.

Lucetta dies because of the skimmity joke. This breaking

of the moral code becomes a very important theme in

Hardy's later novels, which shocked the reading public

and ended Hardy's novel-writing career. What has Providence done to Mr Hardy

that he should rise up in the arable land of

Wessex and shake his fist at his Creator?

So wrote Hardy's friend Edmund Gosse at

the end of a review of Jude the Obscure.

It's a fair question. What made Hardy see

the world as such a dark and unforgiving

place? He grew up in a loving family,

studied and worked at a job he enjoyed,

lived in a part of the country he loved,

went on to make his living as a writer, and

became (and remains) one of the greatest

English novelists. His life had its tragedies

– the suicide of a close friend, a childless

and ultimately unhappy marriage – as well

as its philosophical darknesses (he found

the conventional notion of a benevolent

God impossible). But surely these are not

sufficient to explain an almost malevolentlydisinterested Fate that wreaks its heedless

damage upon the central characters of

his books. For Hardy, coincidences are not

merely plot devices: they are the wheels

of a Juggernaut that will crush everything

that has any association with it; and to

which the characters seem tied by virtue

of their flawed human-ness.

Hardy was compulsively interested in

how people's characteristics shaped their

lives; in local history; and in recognising

the social shifts that were changing the

landscape, workscape, philosophy and

very tenor of the world he knew. As a

writer, he bridged the span between the

high Victorian of the 1860s and the era

of Modernism in the 1920s. Around him,

the rigorous certainties of the former gave

way to the intellectual and spiritual doubtsof the latter, and the shift was registered

everywhere, from the literary cliques

of London to the labourers in Dorset –

everything was undergoing a profound

upheaval. And Hardy was caught between

the two extremes.

He was born to a builder and master

stonemason in Bockhampton, Dorset, and

although educated at home until he was

eight, he was a capable student and by

the time he was 13 was learning French

and Latin. He was also a lover of music,

something he shared with his father,

playing the violin and joining the choir.

But his family's social status and lack of

funds meant any further education was

out of the question, so at 16 he went

to study under the architect John Hicks,

and at about the same time, met Horatio

(Horace) Moule. For the next 15 years or

so, Moule was to be a friend and mentor,

introducing Hardy to the contemporary

authors and the Greek writers, whose

sense of the tragic was to be echoed in

much of Hardy's work. Moule was a man

of profound charm, charisma, intellect

and personality, blighted with melancholia

and a tendency to alcohol. He eventually

committed suicide in 1873. There is no

evidence to suggest a sexual element to

their closeness, but Moule's life (and death)

had the same depth of effect on Thomas

Hardy as Arthur Hallam's had on Tennyson

– something at the very root of life was

expressed by the friendship; something

crushingly destroyed by the death.

Before that tragedy, however, Hardy

was making a living as an architect, and

in 1862 he took a post in a practice in

London. Here his pained sensitivity to

the niceties of the English class system

and his belief that reform in all areas of

English social life (philosophical, religious

and political) was necessary were honed

by his exposure to wider culture and to

other writers and philosophers. But his

health was never strong; and the urge to

live in the countryside he loved so much

meant he returned to Dorset five years

later. He had been writing poetry for some

time, but it was felt that the publishers

wanted prose. So he started writing

novels, though at first the publishers didn't

want them, either. He destroyed his first

one, but was persuaded to carry on, and

between 1872 (Under the GreenwoodTree) and 1898 (The Well-Beloved) he

wrote 18 novels, including six or seven of

the greatest works in English fiction. These

are tragedies that bring together strong

characters and an implacable Fate (often

one that seems to pass judgement on the

basis of conventional morality) in an area

of south-west England that Hardy knew,

loved, understood – and mythologised as

Wessex. One of these was The Mayor of

Casterbridge.

It explores many of his core themes:

the traps of convention; the ramifications

of character; class and social structure; the

conflicts between love and loyalty, self and

the greater good; fate; religion; and many

other issues, all laced within a story that

– for all its apparent improbability – has

its starting point in fact. Hardy collected

items that matched his view of the way

life treated people, and incorporated them

in his works; and he noticed a story in a

local paper about a man selling his wife at

a fair. It seemed a perfect springboard for

the characters he had in mind. Henchard

is not just a victim of circumstance – his

fate is rooted in his inherent characteristics

and the decisions he makes are based on

his nature. The same is true of Farfrae,

Elizabeth-Jane (although she was

somewhat softened in later editions, which

rather reduced her strength of character)

and even Susan and Newson. This is why

the novel has the subtitle A Story of a

Man of Character (although which man is

meant by this is not completely clear). The

lives that are played out are not merely at

the whim of fate, God or even, to some

extent, the novelist. They are the natural

extensions of the characters themselves.

The novel was serialised in the Graphic

with some trepidation, since Hardy was

developing a reputation for controversy

that would only grow over the remaining

10 years of his life as a novelist. His

opposition to many of the standard mores

put him at odds with the establishment,

and the reception afforded his later works

– one Bishop actually burned a copy of

Jude the Obscure and, as Hardy pointed

out, that was probably only because he

couldn't burn the novelist – decided him

to give up the form altogether and return

to his first love, poetry.

Between 1898 and the end of his

life, Hardy published no more novels, butconcentrated on poems and epic verse. He

was awarded the Order of Merit in 1910,

having earlier refused a knighthood, and a

major edition of his works was published

in 1912. But the same year, his wife – from

whom he had been essentially estranged

for almost two decades – died; and her

death proved a wellspring of profound

emotion and inspiration as he remembered

their earlier happiness. He married his

secretary Florence Dugdale two years

later, and continued to publish verse and

autobiography until his death in 1928.

So what had Providence done to Mr

Hardy? Nothing of itself, perhaps. It was

his fate to be gifted with a sense of the

effects of character on life, of the capacity

for unhappiness, of the shifts undermining

the social world; his fate to have a poetic

imagination, a deep understanding of

irony and a mind that could not accept a

conventional theology. And it was his fate

to act upon these inherent gifts and flaws,

just as his heroes and heroines did....!!!!