The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
Chapters 1-10

Hardy Chapters 1-10
Chapters 11-20
Chapters 21-30
Chapters 31-40
Chapters 41-45

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The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy.
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[1]         1.
[2]         
[3]         
[4]         One evening of late summer, before the nineteenth century
[5]         had reached one-third of its span, a young man and woman,
[6]         the latter carrying a child, were approaching the large
[7]         village of Weydon-Priors, in Upper Wessex, on foot. They
[8]         were plainly but not ill clad, though the thick hoar of dust
[9]         which had accumulated on their shoes and garments from an
[10]        obviously long journey lent a disadvantageous shabbiness to
[11]        their appearance just now.
[12]        
[13]        The man was of fine figure, swarthy, and stern in aspect;
[14]        and he showed in profile a facial angle so slightly inclined
[15]        as to be almost perpendicular. He wore a short jacket of
[16]        brown corduroy, newer than the remainder of his suit, which
[17]        was a fustian waistcoat with white horn buttons, breeches of
[18]        the same, tanned leggings, and a straw hat overlaid with
[19]        black glazed canvas. At his back he carried by a looped
[20]        strap a rush basket, from which protruded at one end the
[21]        crutch of a hay-knife, a wimble for hay-bonds being also
[22]        visible in the aperture. His measured, springless walk was
[23]        the walk of the skilled countryman as distinct from the
[24]        desultory shamble of the general labourer; while in the turn
[25]        and plant of each foot there was, further, a dogged and
[26]        cynical indifference personal to himself, showing its
[27]        presence even in the regularly interchanging fustian folds,
[28]        now in the left leg, now in the right, as he paced along.
[29]        
[30]        What was really peculiar, however, in this couple's
[31]        progress, and would have attracted the attention of any
[32]        casual observer otherwise disposed to overlook them, was the
[33]        perfect silence they preserved. They walked side by side in
[34]        such a way as to suggest afar off the low, easy,
[35]        confidential chat of people full of reciprocity; but on
[36]        closer view it could be discerned that the man was reading,
[37]        or pretending to read, a ballad sheet which he kept before
[38]        his eyes with some difficulty by the hand that was passed
[39]        through the basket strap. Whether this apparent cause were
[40]        the real cause, or whether it were an assumed one to escape
[41]        an intercourse that would have been irksome to him, nobody
[42]        but himself could have said precisely; but his taciturnity
[43]        was unbroken, and the woman enjoyed no society whatever from
[44]        his presence. Virtually she walked the highway alone, save
[45]        for the child she bore. Sometimes the man's bent elbow
[46]        almost touched her shoulder, for she kept as close to his
[47]        side as was possible without actual contact, but she seemed
[48]        to have no idea of taking his arm, nor he of offering it;
[49]        and far from exhibiting surprise at his ignoring silence she
[50]        appeared to receive it as a natural thing. If any word at
[51]        all were uttered by the little group, it was an occasional
[52]        whisper of the woman to the child--a tiny girl in short
[53]        clothes and blue boots of knitted yarn--and the murmured
[54]        babble of the child in reply.
[55]        
[56]        The chief--almost the only--attraction of the young woman's
[57]        face was its mobility. When she looked down sideways to the
[58]        girl she became pretty, and even handsome, particularly that
[59]        in the action her features caught slantwise the rays of the
[60]        strongly coloured sun, which made transparencies of her
[61]        eyelids and nostrils and set fire on her lips. When she
[62]        plodded on in the shade of the hedge, silently thinking, she
[63]        had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems
[64]        anything possible at the hands of Time and Chance except,
[65]        perhaps, fair play. The first phase was the work of Nature,
[66]        the second probably of civilization.
[67]        
[68]        That the man and woman were husband and wife, and the
[69]        parents of the girl in arms there could be little doubt. No
[70]        other than such relationship would have accounted for the
[71]        atmosphere of stale familiarity which the trio carried along
[72]        with them like a nimbus as they moved down the road.
[73]        
[74]        The wife mostly kept her eyes fixed ahead, though with
[75]        little interest--the scene for that matter being one that
[76]        might have been matched at almost any spot in any county in
[77]        England at this time of the year; a road neither straight
[78]        nor crooked, neither level nor hilly, bordered by hedges,
[79]        trees, and other vegetation, which had entered the
[80]        blackened-green stage of colour that the doomed leaves pass
[81]        through on their way to dingy, and yellow, and red. The
[82]        grassy margin of the bank, and the nearest hedgerow boughs,
[83]        were powdered by the dust that had been stirred over them by
[84]        hasty vehicles, the same dust as it lay on the road
[85]        deadening their footfalls like a carpet; and this, with the
[86]        aforesaid total absence of conversation, allowed every
[87]        extraneous sound to be heard.
[88]        
[89]        For a long time there was none, beyond the voice of a weak
[90]        bird singing a trite old evening song that might doubtless
[91]        have been heard on the hill at the same hour, and with the
[92]        self-same trills, quavers, and breves, at any sunset of that
[93]        season for centuries untold. But as they approached the
[94]        village sundry distant shouts and rattles reached their ears
[95]        from some elevated spot in that direction, as yet screened
[96]        from view by foliage. When the outlying houses of Weydon-
[97]        Priors could just be described, the family group was met by
[98]        a turnip-hoer with his hoe on his shoulder, and his dinner-
[99]        bag suspended from it. The reader promptly glanced up.
[100]       
[101]       "Any trade doing here?" he asked phlegmatically, designating
[102]       the village in his van by a wave of the broadsheet. And
[103]       thinking the labourer did not understand him, he added,
[104]       "Anything in the hay-trussing line?"
[105]       
[106]       The turnip-hoer had already begun shaking his head. "Why,
[107]       save the man, what wisdom's in him that 'a should come to
[108]       Weydon for a job of that sort this time o' year?"
[109]       
[110]       "Then is there any house to let--a little small new cottage
[111]       just a builded, or such like?" asked the other.
[112]       
[113]       The pessimist still maintained a negative. "Pulling down is
[114]       more the nater of Weydon. There were five houses cleared
[115]       away last year, and three this; and the volk nowhere to go--
[116]       no, not so much as a thatched hurdle; that's the way o'
[117]       Weydon-Priors."
[118]       
[119]       The hay-trusser, which he obviously was, nodded with some
[120]       superciliousness. Looking towards the village, he
[121]       continued, "There is something going on here, however, is
[122]       there not?"
[123]       
[124]       "Ay. 'Tis Fair Day. Though what you hear now is little
[125]       more than the clatter and scurry of getting away the money
[126]       o' children and fools, for the real business is done earlier
[127]       than this. I've been working within sound o't all day, but
[128]       I didn't go up--not I. 'Twas no business of mine."
[129]       
[130]       The trusser and his family proceeded on their way, and soon
[131]       entered the Fair-field, which showed standing-places and
[132]       pens where many hundreds of horses and sheep had been
[133]       exhibited and sold in the forenoon, but were now in great
[134]       part taken away. At present, as their informant had
[135]       observed, but little real business remained on hand, the
[136]       chief being the sale by auction of a few inferior animals,
[137]       that could not otherwise be disposed of, and had been
[138]       absolutely refused by the better class of traders, who came
[139]       and went early. Yet the crowd was denser now than during
[140]       the morning hours, the frivolous contingent of visitors,
[141]       including journeymen out for a holiday, a stray soldier or
[142]       two come on furlough, village shopkeepers, and the like,
[143]       having latterly flocked in; persons whose activities found a
[144]       congenial field among the peep-shows, toy-stands, waxworks,
[145]       inspired monsters, disinterested medical men who travelled
[146]       for the public good, thimble-riggers, nick-nack vendors, and
[147]       readers of Fate.
[148]       
[149]       Neither of our pedestrians had much heart for these things,
[150]       and they looked around for a refreshment tent among the many
[151]       which dotted the down. Two, which stood nearest to them in
[152]       the ochreous haze of expiring sunlight, seemed almost
[153]       equally inviting. One was formed of new, milk-hued canvas,
[154]       and bore red flags on its summit; it announced "Good Home-
[155]       brewed Beer, Ale, and Cyder." The other was less new; a
[156]       little iron stove-pipe came out of it at the back and in
[157]       front appeared the placard, "Good Furmity Sold Hear." The
[158]       man mentally weighed the two inscriptions and inclined to
[159]       the former tent.
[160]       
[161]       "No--no--the other one," said the woman. "I always like
[162]       furmity; and so does Elizabeth-Jane; and so will you. It is
[163]       nourishing after a long hard day."
[164]       
[165]       "I've never tasted it," said the man. However, he gave way
[166]       to her representations, and they entered the furmity booth
[167]       forthwith.
[168]       
[169]       A rather numerous company appeared within, seated at the
[170]       long narrow tables that ran down the tent on each side. At
[171]       the upper end stood a stove, containing a charcoal fire,
[172]       over which hung a large three-legged crock, sufficiently
[173]       polished round the rim to show that it was made of bell-
[174]       metal. A haggish creature of about fifty presided, in a
[175]       white apron, which as it threw an air of respectability over
[176]       her as far as it extended, was made so wide as to reach
[177]       nearly round her waist. She slowly stirred the contents of
[178]       the pot. The dull scrape of her large spoon was audible
[179]       throughout the tent as she thus kept from burning the
[180]       mixture of corn in the grain, flour, milk, raisins,
[181]       currants, and what not, that composed the antiquated slop in
[182]       which she dealt. Vessels holding the separate ingredients
[183]       stood on a white-clothed table of boards and trestles close by.
[184]       
[185]       The young man and woman ordered a basin each of the mixture,
[186]       steaming hot, and sat down to consume it at leisure. This
[187]       was very well so far, for furmity, as the woman had said, was
[188]       nourishing, and as proper a food as could be obtained within
[189]       the four seas; though, to those not accustomed to it, the grains
[190]       of wheat swollen as large as lemon-pips, which floated on its
[191]       surface, might have a deterrent effect at first.
[192]       
[193]       But there was more in that tent than met the cursory glance;
[194]       and the man, with the instinct of a perverse character,
[195]       scented it quickly. After a mincing attack on his bowl, he
[196]       watched the hag's proceedings from the corner of his eye,
[197]       and saw the game she played. He winked to her, and passed
[198]       up his basin in reply to her nod; when she took a bottle
[199]       from under the table, slily measured out a quantity of its
[200]       contents, and tipped the same into the man's furmity. The
[201]       liquor poured in was rum. The man as slily sent back money
[202]       in payment.
[203]       
[204]       He found the concoction, thus strongly laced, much more to
[205]       his satisfaction than it had been in its natural state. His
[206]       wife had observed the proceeding with much uneasiness; but
[207]       he persuaded her to have hers laced also, and she agreed to
[208]       a milder allowance after some misgiving.
[209]       
[210]       The man finished his basin, and called for another, the rum
[211]       being signalled for in yet stronger proportion. The effect
[212]       of it was soon apparent in his manner, and his wife but too
[213]       sadly perceived that in strenuously steering off the rocks
[214]       of the licensed liquor-tent she had only got into maelstrom
[215]       depths here amongst the smugglers.
[216]       
[217]       The child began to prattle impatiently, and the wife more
[218]       than once said to her husband, "Michael, how about our
[219]       lodging? You know we may have trouble in getting it if we
[220]       don't go soon."
[221]       
[222]       But he turned a deaf ear to those bird-like chirpings. He
[223]       talked loud to the company. The child's black eyes, after
[224]       slow, round, ruminating gazes at the candles when they were
[225]       lighted, fell together; then they opened, then shut again,
[226]       and she slept.
[227]       
[228]       At the end of the first basin the man had risen to serenity;
[229]       at the second he was jovial; at the third, argumentative, at
[230]       the fourth, the qualities signified by the shape of his
[231]       face, the occasional clench of his mouth, and the fiery
[232]       spark of his dark eye, began to tell in his conduct; he was
[233]       overbearing--even brilliantly quarrelsome.
[234]       
[235]       The conversation took a high turn, as it often does on such
[236]       occasions. The ruin of good men by bad wives, and, more
[237]       particularly, the frustration of many a promising youth's
[238]       high aims and hopes and the extinction of his energies by an
[239]       early imprudent marriage, was the theme.
[240]       
[241]       "I did for myself that way thoroughly," said the trusser
[242]       with a contemplative bitterness that was well-night
[243]       resentful. "I married at eighteen, like the fool that I
[244]       was; and this is the consequence o't." He pointed at himself
[245]       and family with a wave of the hand intended to bring out the
[246]       penuriousness of the exhibition.
[247]       
[248]       The young woman his wife, who seemed accustomed to such
[249]       remarks, acted as if she did not hear them, and continued
[250]       her intermittent private words of tender trifles to the
[251]       sleeping and waking child, who was just big enough to be
[252]       placed for a moment on the bench beside her when she wished
[253]       to ease her arms. The man continued--
[254]       
[255]       "I haven't more than fifteen shillings in the world, and yet
[256]       I am a good experienced hand in my line. I'd challenge
[257]       England to beat me in the fodder business; and if I were a
[258]       free man again I'd be worth a thousand pound before I'd done
[259]       o't. But a fellow never knows these little things till all
[260]       chance of acting upon 'em is past."
[261]       
[262]       The auctioneer selling the old horses in the field outside
[263]       could be heard saying, "Now this is the last lot--now who'll
[264]       take the last lot for a song? Shall I say forty shillings?
[265]       'Tis a very promising broodmare, a trifle over five years
[266]       old, and nothing the matter with the hoss at all, except
[267]       that she's a little holler in the back and had her left eye
[268]       knocked out by the kick of another, her own sister, coming
[269]       along the road."
[270]       
[271]       "For my part I don't see why men who have got wives and
[272]       don't want 'em, shouldn't get rid of 'em as these gipsy
[273]       fellows do their old horses," said the man in the tent.
[274]       "Why shouldn't they put 'em up and sell 'em by auction to
[275]       men who are in need of such articles? Hey? Why, begad, I'd
[276]       sell mine this minute if anybody would buy her!"
[277]       
[278]       "There's them that would do that," some of the guests
[279]       replied, looking at the woman, who was by no means ill-favoured.
[280]       
[281]       "True," said a smoking gentleman, whose coat had the fine
[282]       polish about the collar, elbows, seams, and shoulder-blades
[283]       that long-continued friction with grimy surfaces will
[284]       produce, and which is usually more desired on furniture than
[285]       on clothes. From his appearance he had possibly been in
[286]       former time groom or coachman to some neighbouring county
[287]       family. "I've had my breedings in as good circles, I may
[288]       say, as any man," he added, "and I know true cultivation, or
[289]       nobody do; and I can declare she's got it--in the bone, mind
[290]       ye, I say--as much as any female in the fair--though it may
[291]       want a little bringing out." Then, crossing his legs, he
[292]       resumed his pipe with a nicely-adjusted gaze at a point in
[293]       the air.
[294]       
[295]       The fuddled young husband stared for a few seconds at this
[296]       unexpected praise of his wife, half in doubt of the wisdom of
[297]       his own attitude towards the possessor of such qualities. But
[298]       he speedily lapsed into his former conviction, and said harshly--
[299]       
[300]       "Well, then, now is your chance; I am open to an offer for
[301]       this gem o' creation."
[302]       
[303]       She turned to her husband and murmured, "Michael, you have
[304]       talked this nonsense in public places before. A joke is a
[305]       joke, but you may make it once too often, mind!"
[306]       
[307]       "I know I've said it before; I meant it. All I want is a
[308]       buyer."
[309]       
[310]       At the moment a swallow, one among the last of the season,
[311]       which had by chance found its way through an opening into
[312]       the upper part of the tent, flew to and from quick curves
[313]       above their heads, causing all eyes to follow it absently.
[314]       In watching the bird till it made its escape the assembled
[315]       company neglected to respond to the workman's offer, and the
[316]       subject dropped.
[317]       
[318]       But a quarter of an hour later the man, who had gone on
[319]       lacing his furmity more and more heavily, though he was
[320]       either so strong-minded or such an intrepid toper that he
[321]       still appeared fairly sober, recurred to the old strain, as
[322]       in a musical fantasy the instrument fetches up the original
[323]       theme. "Here--I am waiting to know about this offer of
[324]       mine. The woman is no good to me. Who'll have her?"
[325]       
[326]       The company had by this time decidedly degenerated, and the
[327]       renewed inquiry was received with a laugh of appreciation.
[328]       The woman whispered; she was imploring and anxious: "Come,
[329]       come, it is getting dark, and this nonsense won't do. If
[330]       you don't come along, I shall go without you. Come!"
[331]       
[332]       She waited and waited; yet he did not move. In ten minutes
[333]       the man broke in upon the desultory conversation of the
[334]       furmity drinkers with. "I asked this question, and nobody
[335]       answered to 't. Will any Jack Rag or Tom Straw among ye buy
[336]       my goods?"
[337]       
[338]       The woman's manner changed, and her face assumed the grim
[339]       shape and colour of which mention has been made.
[340]       
[341]       "Mike, Mike," she said; "this is getting serious. O!--too
[342]       serious!"
[343]       
[344]       "Will anybody buy her?" said the man.
[345]       
[346]       "I wish somebody would," said she firmly. "Her present
[347]       owner is not at all to her liking!"
[348]       
[349]       "Nor you to mine," said he. "So we are agreed about that.
[350]       Gentlemen, you hear? It's an agreement to part. She shall
[351]       take the girl if she wants to, and go her ways. I'll take
[352]       my tools, and go my ways. 'Tis simple as Scripture history.
[353]       Now then, stand up, Susan, and show yourself."
[354]       
[355]       "Don't, my chiel," whispered a buxom staylace dealer in
[356]       voluminous petticoats, who sat near the woman; "yer good man
[357]       don't know what he's saying."
[358]       
[359]       The woman, however, did stand up. "Now, who's auctioneer?"
[360]       cried the hay-trusser.
[361]       
[362]       "I be," promptly answered a short man, with a nose
[363]       resembling a copper knob, a damp voice, and eyes like
[364]       button-holes. "Who'll make an offer for this lady?"
[365]       
[366]       The woman looked on the ground, as if she maintained her
[367]       position by a supreme effort of will.
[368]       
[369]       "Five shillings," said someone, at which there was a laugh.
[370]       
[371]       "No insults," said the husband. "Who'll say a guinea?"
[372]       
[373]       Nobody answered; and the female dealer in staylaces
[374]       interposed.
[375]       
[376]       "Behave yerself moral, good man, for Heaven's love! Ah, what
[377]       a cruelty is the poor soul married to! Bed and board is dear
[378]       at some figures 'pon my 'vation 'tis!"
[379]       
[380]       "Set it higher, auctioneer," said the trusser.
[381]       
[382]       "Two guineas!" said the auctioneer; and no one replied.
[383]       
[384]       "If they don't take her for that, in ten seconds they'll
[385]       have to give more," said the husband. "Very well. Now
[386]       auctioneer, add another."
[387]       
[388]       "Three guineas--going for three guineas!" said the rheumy
[389]       man.
[390]       
[391]       "No bid?" said the husband. "Good Lord, why she's cost me
[392]       fifty times the money, if a penny. Go on."
[393]       
[394]       "Four guineas!" cried the auctioneer.
[395]       
[396]       "I'll tell ye what--I won't sell her for less than five,"
[397]       said the husband, bringing down his fist so that the basins
[398]       danced. "I'll sell her for five guineas to any man that
[399]       will pay me the money, and treat her well; and he shall have
[400]       her for ever, and never hear aught o' me. But she shan't go
[401]       for less. Now then--five guineas--and she's yours. Susan,
[402]       you agree?"
[403]       
[404]       She bowed her head with absolute indifference.
[405]       
[406]       "Five guineas," said the auctioneer, "or she'll be
[407]       withdrawn. Do anybody give it? The last time. Yes or no?"
[408]       
[409]       "Yes," said a loud voice from the doorway.
[410]       
[411]       All eyes were turned. Standing in the triangular opening
[412]       which formed the door of the tent was a sailor, who,
[413]       unobserved by the rest, had arrived there within the last
[414]       two or three minutes. A dead silence followed his
[415]       affirmation.
[416]       
[417]       "You say you do?" asked the husband, staring at him.
[418]       
[419]       "I say so," replied the sailor.
[420]       
[421]       "Saying is one thing, and paying is another. Where's the
[422]       money?"
[423]       
[424]       The sailor hesitated a moment, looked anew at the woman,
[425]       came in, unfolded five crisp pieces of paper, and threw them
[426]       down upon the tablecloth. They were Bank-of-England notes
[427]       for five pounds. Upon the face of this he clinked down the
[428]       shillings severally--one, two, three, four, five.
[429]       
[430]       The sight of real money in full amount, in answer to a
[431]       challenge for the same till then deemed slightly
[432]       hypothetical had a great effect upon the spectators. Their
[433]       eyes became riveted upon the faces of the chief actors, and
[434]       then upon the notes as they lay, weighted by the shillings,
[435]       on the table.
[436]       
[437]       Up to this moment it could not positively have been asserted
[438]       that the man, in spite of his tantalizing declaration, was
[439]       really in earnest. The spectators had indeed taken the
[440]       proceedings throughout as a piece of mirthful irony carried
[441]       to extremes; and had assumed that, being out of work, he
[442]       was, as a consequence, out of temper with the world, and
[443]       society, and his nearest kin. But with the demand and
[444]       response of real cash the jovial frivolity of the scene
[445]       departed. A lurid colour seemed to fill the tent, and
[446]       change the aspect of all therein. The mirth-wrinkles left
[447]       the listeners' faces, and they waited with parting lips.
[448]       
[449]       "Now," said the woman, breaking the silence, so that her low
[450]       dry voice sounded quite loud, "before you go further,
[451]       Michael, listen to me. If you touch that money, I and this
[452]       girl go with the man. Mind, it is a joke no longer."
[453]       
[454]       "A joke? Of course it is not a joke!" shouted her husband,
[455]       his resentment rising at her suggestion. "I take the money;
[456]       the sailor takes you. That's plain enough. It has been
[457]       done elsewhere--and why not here?"
[458]       
[459]       "'Tis quite on the understanding that the young woman is
[460]       willing," said the sailor blandly. "I wouldn't hurt her
[461]       feelings for the world."
[462]       
[463]       "Faith, nor I," said her husband. "But she is willing,
[464]       provided she can have the child. She said so only the other
[465]       day when I talked o't!"
[466]       
[467]       "That you swear?" said the sailor to her.
[468]       
[469]       "I do," said she, after glancing at her husband's face and
[470]       seeing no repentance there.
[471]       
[472]       "Very well, she shall have the child, and the bargain's
[473]       complete," said the trusser. He took the sailor's notes and
[474]       deliberately folded them, and put them with the shillings in
[475]       a high remote pocket, with an air of finality.
[476]       
[477]       The sailor looked at the woman and smiled. "Come along!" he
[478]       said kindly. "The little one too--the more the merrier!"
[479]       She paused for an instant, with a close glance at him. Then
[480]       dropping her eyes again, and saying nothing, she took up the
[481]       child and followed him as he made towards the door. On
[482]       reaching it, she turned, and pulling off her wedding-ring,
[483]       flung it across the booth in the hay-trusser's face.
[484]       
[485]       "Mike," she said, "I've lived with thee a couple of years,
[486]       and had nothing but temper! Now I'm no more to 'ee; I'll try
[487]       my luck elsewhere. 'Twill be better for me and Elizabeth-
[488]       Jane, both. So good-bye!"
[489]       
[490]       Seizing the sailor's arm with her right hand, and mounting
[491]       the little girl on her left, she went out of the tent
[492]       sobbing bitterly.
[493]       
[494]       A stolid look of concern filled the husband's face, as if,
[495]       after all, he had not quite anticipated this ending; and
[496]       some of the guests laughed.
[497]       
[498]       "Is she gone?" he said.
[499]       
[500]       "Faith, ay! she's gone clane enough," said some rustics near
[501]       the door.
[502]       
[503]       He rose and walked to the entrance with the careful tread of
[504]       one conscious of his alcoholic load. Some others followed,
[505]       and they stood looking into the twilight. The difference
[506]       between the peacefulness of inferior nature and the wilful
[507]       hostilities of mankind was very apparent at this place. In
[508]       contrast with the harshness of the act just ended within the
[509]       tent was the sight of several horses crossing their necks
[510]       and rubbing each other lovingly as they waited in patience
[511]       to be harnessed for the homeward journey. Outside the fair,
[512]       in the valleys and woods, all was quiet. The sun had
[513]       recently set, and the west heaven was hung with rosy cloud,
[514]       which seemed permanent, yet slowly changed. To watch it was
[515]       like looking at some grand feat of stagery from a darkened
[516]       auditorium. In presence of this scene after the other there
[517]       was a natural instinct to abjure man as the blot on an
[518]       otherwise kindly universe; till it was remembered that all
[519]       terrestrial conditions were intermittent, and that mankind
[520]       might some night be innocently sleeping when these quiet
[521]       objects were raging loud.
[522]       
[523]       "Where do the sailor live?" asked a spectator, when they had
[524]       vainly gazed around.
[525]       
[526]       "God knows that," replied the man who had seen high life.
[527]       "He's without doubt a stranger here."
[528]       
[529]       "He came in about five minutes ago," said the furmity woman,
[530]       joining the rest with her hands on her hips. "And then 'a
[531]       stepped back, and then 'a looked in again. I'm not a penny
[532]       the better for him."
[533]       
[534]       "Serves the husband well be-right," said the staylace
[535]       vendor. "A comely respectable body like her--what can a man
[536]       want more? I glory in the woman's sperrit. I'd ha' done it
[537]       myself--od send if I wouldn't, if a husband had behaved so
[538]       to me! I'd go, and 'a might call, and call, till his keacorn
[539]       was raw; but I'd never come back--no, not till the great
[540]       trumpet, would I!"
[541]       
[542]       "Well, the woman will be better off," said another of a more
[543]       deliberative turn. "For seafaring natures be very good
[544]       shelter for shorn lambs, and the man do seem to have plenty
[545]       of money, which is what she's not been used to lately, by
[546]       all showings."
[547]       
[548]       "Mark me--I'll not go after her!" said the trusser,
[549]       returning doggedly to his seat. "Let her go! If she's up to
[550]       such vagaries she must suffer for 'em. She'd no business to
[551]       take the maid--'tis my maid; and if it were the doing again
[552]       she shouldn't have her!"
[553]       
[554]       Perhaps from some little sense of having countenanced an
[555]       indefensible proceeding, perhaps because it was late, the
[556]       customers thinned away from the tent shortly after this
[557]       episode. The man stretched his elbows forward on the table
[558]       leant his face upon his arms, and soon began to snore. The
[559]       furmity seller decided to close for the night, and after
[560]       seeing the rum-bottles, milk, corn, raisins, etc., that
[561]       remained on hand, loaded into the cart, came to where the
[562]       man reclined. She shook him, but could not wake him. As
[563]       the tent was not to be struck that night, the fair
[564]       continuing for two or three days, she decided to let the
[565]       sleeper, who was obviously no tramp, stay where he was, and
[566]       his basket with him. Extinguishing the last candle, and
[567]       lowering the flap of the tent, she left it, and drove away.
[568]       
[569]       
[570]       
[571]       2.
[572]       
[573]       
[574]       The morning sun was streaming through the crevices of the
[575]       canvas when the man awoke. A warm glow pervaded the whole
[576]       atmosphere of the marquee, and a single big blue fly buzzed
[577]       musically round and round it. Besides the buzz of the fly
[578]       there was not a sound. He looked about--at the benches--at
[579]       the table supported by trestles--at his basket of tools--at
[580]       the stove where the furmity had been boiled--at the empty
[581]       basins--at some shed grains of wheat--at the corks which
[582]       dotted the grassy floor. Among the odds and ends he
[583]       discerned a little shining object, and picked it up. It was
[584]       his wife's ring.
[585]       
[586]       A confused picture of the events of the previous evening
[587]       seemed to come back to him, and he thrust his hand into his
[588]       breast-pocket. A rustling revealed the sailor's bank-notes
[589]       thrust carelessly in.
[590]       
[591]       This second verification of his dim memories was enough; he
[592]       knew now they were not dreams. He remained seated, looking
[593]       on the ground for some time. "I must get out of this as
[594]       soon as I can," he said deliberately at last, with the air
[595]       of one who could not catch his thoughts without pronouncing
[596]       them. "She's gone--to be sure she is--gone with that sailor
[597]       who bought her, and little Elizabeth-Jane. We walked here,
[598]       and I had the furmity, and rum in it--and sold her. Yes,
[599]       that's what's happened and here am I. Now, what am I to do--
[600]       am I sober enough to walk, I wonder?" He stood up, found
[601]       that he was in fairly good condition for progress,
[602]       unencumbered. Next he shouldered his tool basket, and found
[603]       he could carry it. Then lifting the tent door he emerged
[604]       into the open air.
[605]       
[606]       Here the man looked around with gloomy curiosity. The
[607]       freshness of the September morning inspired and braced him
[608]       as he stood. He and his family had been weary when they
[609]       arrived the night before, and they had observed but little
[610]       of the place; so that he now beheld it as a new thing. It
[611]       exhibited itself as the top of an open down, bounded on one
[612]       extreme by a plantation, and approached by a winding road.
[613]       At the bottom stood the village which lent its name to the
[614]       upland and the annual fair that was held thereon. The spot
[615]       stretched downward into valleys, and onward to other
[616]       uplands, dotted with barrows, and trenched with the remains
[617]       of prehistoric forts. The whole scene lay under the rays of
[618]       a newly risen sun, which had not as yet dried a single blade
[619]       of the heavily dewed grass, whereon the shadows of the
[620]       yellow and red vans were projected far away, those thrown by
[621]       the felloe of each wheel being elongated in shape to the
[622]       orbit of a comet. All the gipsies and showmen who had
[623]       remained on the ground lay snug within their carts and tents
[624]       or wrapped in horse-cloths under them, and were silent and
[625]       still as death, with the exception of an occasional snore
[626]       that revealed their presence. But the Seven Sleepers had a
[627]       dog; and dogs of the mysterious breeds that vagrants own,
[628]       that are as much like cats as dogs and as much like foxes as
[629]       cats also lay about here. A little one started up under one
[630]       of the carts, barked as a matter of principle, and quickly
[631]       lay down again. He was the only positive spectator of the
[632]       hay-trusser's exit from the Weydon Fair-field.
[633]       
[634]       This seemed to accord with his desire. He went on in silent
[635]       thought, unheeding the yellowhammers which flitted about the
[636]       hedges with straws in their bills, the crowns of the
[637]       mushrooms, and the tinkling of local sheep-bells, whose
[638]       wearer had had the good fortune not to be included in the
[639]       fair. When he reached a lane, a good mile from the scene of
[640]       the previous evening, the man pitched his basket and leant
[641]       upon a gate. A difficult problem or two occupied his mind.
[642]       
[643]       "Did I tell my name to anybody last night, or didn't I tell
[644]       my name?" he said to himself; and at last concluded that he
[645]       did not. His general demeanour was enough to show how he
[646]       was surprised and nettled that his wife had taken him so
[647]       literally--as much could be seen in his face, and in the way
[648]       he nibbled a straw which he pulled from the hedge. He knew
[649]       that she must have been somewhat excited to do this;
[650]       moreover, she must have believed that there was some sort of
[651]       binding force in the transaction. On this latter point he
[652]       felt almost certain, knowing her freedom from levity of
[653]       character, and the extreme simplicity of her intellect.
[654]       There may, too, have been enough recklessness and resentment
[655]       beneath her ordinary placidity to make her stifle any
[656]       momentary doubts. On a previous occasion when he had
[657]       declared during a fuddle that he would dispose of her as he
[658]       had done, she had replied that she would not hear him say
[659]       that many times more before it happened, in the resigned
[660]       tones of a fatalist...."Yet she knows I am not in my senses
[661]       when I do that!" he exclaimed. "Well, I must walk about
[662]       till I find her....Seize her, why didn't she know better
[663]       than bring me into this disgrace!" he roared out. "She
[664]       wasn't queer if I was. 'Tis like Susan to show such idiotic
[665]       simplicity. Meek--that meekness has done me more harm than
[666]       the bitterest temper!"
[667]       
[668]       When he was calmer he turned to his original conviction that
[669]       he must somehow find her and his little Elizabeth-Jane, and
[670]       put up with the shame as best he could. It was of his own
[671]       making, and he ought to bear it. But first he resolved to
[672]       register an oath, a greater oath than he had ever sworn
[673]       before: and to do it properly he required a fit place and
[674]       imagery; for there was something fetichistic in this man's
[675]       beliefs.
[676]       
[677]       He shouldered his basket and moved on, casting his eyes
[678]       inquisitively round upon the landscape as he walked, and at
[679]       the distance of three or four miles perceived the roofs of a
[680]       village and the tower of a church. He instantly made
[681]       towards the latter object. The village was quite still, it
[682]       being that motionless hour of rustic daily life which fills
[683]       the interval between the departure of the field-labourers to
[684]       their work, and the rising of their wives and daughters to
[685]       prepare the breakfast for their return. Hence he reached
[686]       the church without observation, and the door being only
[687]       latched he entered. The hay-trusser deposited his basket by
[688]       the font, went up the nave till he reached the altar-rails,
[689]       and opening the gate entered the sacrarium, where he seemed
[690]       to feel a sense of the strangeness for a moment; then he
[691]       knelt upon the footpace. Dropping his head upon the clamped
[692]       book which lay on the Communion-table, he said aloud--
[693]       
[694]       "I, Michael Henchard, on this morning of the sixteenth of
[695]       September, do take an oath before God here in this solemn
[696]       place that I will avoid all strong liquors for the space of
[697]       twenty-one years to come, being a year for every year that I
[698]       have lived. And this I swear upon the book before me; and
[699]       may I be strook dumb, blind, and helpless, if I break this
[700]       my oath!"
[701]       
[702]       When he had said it and kissed the big book, the hay-trusser
[703]       arose, and seemed relieved at having made a start in a new
[704]       direction. While standing in the porch a moment he saw a
[705]       thick jet of wood smoke suddenly start up from the red
[706]       chimney of a cottage near, and knew that the occupant had
[707]       just lit her fire. He went round to the door, and the
[708]       housewife agreed to prepare him some breakfast for a
[709]       trifling payment, which was done. Then he started on the
[710]       search for his wife and child.
[711]       
[712]       The perplexing nature of the undertaking became apparent
[713]       soon enough. Though he examined and inquired, and walked
[714]       hither and thither day after day, no such characters as
[715]       those he described had anywhere been seen since the evening
[716]       of the fair. To add to the difficulty he could gain no
[717]       sound of the sailor's name. As money was short with him he
[718]       decided, after some hesitation, to spend the sailor's money
[719]       in the prosecution of this search; but it was equally in
[720]       vain. The truth was that a certain shyness of revealing his
[721]       conduct prevented Michael Henchard from following up the
[722]       investigation with the loud hue-and-cry such a pursuit
[723]       demanded to render it effectual; and it was probably for
[724]       this reason that he obtained no clue, though everything was
[725]       done by him that did not involve an explanation of the
[726]       circumstances under which he had lost her.
[727]       
[728]       Weeks counted up to months, and still he searched on,
[729]       maintaining himself by small jobs of work in the intervals.
[730]       By this time he had arrived at a seaport, and there he
[731]       derived intelligence that persons answering somewhat to his
[732]       description had emigrated a little time before. Then he
[733]       said he would search no longer, and that he would go and
[734]       settle in the district which he had had for some time in his
[735]       mind.
[736]       
[737]       Next day he started, journeying south-westward, and did not
[738]       pause, except for nights' lodgings, till he reached the town
[739]       of Casterbridge, in a far distant part of Wessex.
[740]       
[741]       
[742]       
[743]       3.
[744]       
[745]       
[746]       The highroad into the village of Weydon-Priors was again
[747]       carpeted with dust. The trees had put on as of yore their
[748]       aspect of dingy green, and where the Henchard family of
[749]       three had once walked along, two persons not unconnected
[750]       with the family walked now.
[751]       
[752]       The scene in its broad aspect had so much of its previous
[753]       character, even to the voices and rattle from the
[754]       neighbouring village down, that it might for that matter
[755]       have been the afternoon following the previously recorded
[756]       episode. Change was only to be observed in details; but
[757]       here it was obvious that a long procession of years had
[758]       passed by. One of the two who walked the road was she who
[759]       had figured as the young wife of Henchard on the previous
[760]       occasion; now her face had lost much of its rotundity; her
[761]       skin had undergone a textural change; and though her hair
[762]       had not lost colour it was considerably thinner than
[763]       heretofore. She was dressed in the mourning clothes of a
[764]       widow. Her companion, also in black, appeared as a well-
[765]       formed young woman about eighteen, completely possessed of
[766]       that ephemeral precious essence youth, which is itself
[767]       beauty, irrespective of complexion or contour.
[768]       
[769]       A glance was sufficient to inform the eye that this was
[770]       Susan Henchard's grown-up daughter. While life's middle
[771]       summer had set its hardening mark on the mother's face, her
[772]       former spring-like specialities were transferred so
[773]       dexterously by Time to the second figure, her child, that
[774]       the absence of certain facts within her mother's knowledge
[775]       from the girl's mind would have seemed for the moment, to
[776]       one reflecting on those facts, to be a curious imperfection
[777]       in Nature's powers of continuity.
[778]       
[779]       They walked with joined hands, and it could be perceived
[780]       that this was the act of simple affection. The daughter
[781]       carried in her outer hand a withy basket of old-fashioned
[782]       make; the mother a blue bundle, which contrasted oddly with
[783]       her black stuff gown.
[784]       
[785]       Reaching the outskirts of the village they pursued the same
[786]       track as formerly, and ascended to the fair. Here, too it
[787]       was evident that the years had told. Certain mechanical
[788]       improvements might have been noticed in the roundabouts and
[789]       high-fliers, machines for testing rustic strength and
[790]       weight, and in the erections devoted to shooting for nuts.
[791]       But the real business of the fair had considerably dwindled.
[792]       The new periodical great markets of neighbouring towns were
[793]       beginning to interfere seriously with the trade carried on
[794]       here for centuries. The pens for sheep, the tie-ropes for
[795]       horses, were about half as long as they had been. The
[796]       stalls of tailors, hosiers, coopers, linen-drapers, and
[797]       other such trades had almost disappeared, and the vehicles
[798]       were far less numerous. The mother and daughter threaded
[799]       the crowd for some little distance, and then stood still.
[800]       
[801]       "Why did we hinder our time by coming in here? I thought you
[802]       wished to get onward?" said the maiden.
[803]       
[804]       "Yes, my dear Elizabeth-Jane," explained the other. "But I
[805]       had a fancy for looking up here."
[806]       
[807]       "Why?"
[808]       
[809]       "It was here I first met with Newson--on such a day as
[810]       this."
[811]       
[812]       "First met with father here? Yes, you have told me so
[813]       before. And now he's drowned and gone from us!" As she
[814]       spoke the girl drew a card from her pocket and looked at it
[815]       with a sigh. It was edged with black, and inscribed within
[816]       a design resembling a mural tablet were the words, "In
[817]       affectionate memory of Richard Newson, mariner, who was
[818]       unfortunately lost at sea, in the month of November 184--,
[819]       aged forty-one years."
[820]       
[821]       "And it was here," continued her mother, with more
[822]       hesitation, "that I last saw the relation we are going to
[823]       look for--Mr. Michael Henchard."
[824]       
[825]       "What is his exact kin to us, mother? I have never clearly
[826]       had it told me."
[827]       
[828]       "He is, or was--for he may be dead--a connection by
[829]       marriage," said her mother deliberately.
[830]       
[831]       "That's exactly what you have said a score of times before!"
[832]       replied the young woman, looking about her inattentively.
[833]       "He's not a near relation, I suppose?"
[834]       
[835]       "Not by any means."
[836]       
[837]       "He was a hay-trusser, wasn't he, when you last heard of
[838]       him?
[839]       
[840]       "He was."
[841]       
[842]       "I suppose he never knew me?" the girl innocently continued.
[843]       
[844]       Mrs. Henchard paused for a moment, and answered un-easily,
[845]       "Of course not, Elizabeth-Jane. But come this way." She
[846]       moved on to another part of the field.
[847]       
[848]       "It is not much use inquiring here for anybody, I should
[849]       think," the daughter observed, as she gazed round about.
[850]       "People at fairs change like the leaves of trees; and I
[851]       daresay you are the only one here to-day who was here all
[852]       those years ago."
[853]       
[854]       "I am not so sure of that," said Mrs. Newson, as she now
[855]       called herself, keenly eyeing something under a green bank a
[856]       little way off. "See there."
[857]       
[858]       The daughter looked in the direction signified. The object
[859]       pointed out was a tripod of sticks stuck into the earth,
[860]       from which hung a three-legged crock, kept hot by a
[861]       smouldering wood fire beneath. Over the pot stooped an old
[862]       woman haggard, wrinkled, and almost in rags. She stirred
[863]       the contents of the pot with a large spoon, and occasionally
[864]       croaked in a broken voice, "Good furmity sold here!"
[865]       
[866]       It was indeed the former mistress of the furmity tent--once
[867]       thriving, cleanly, white-aproned, and chinking with money--
[868]       now tentless, dirty, owning no tables or benches, and having
[869]       scarce any customers except two small whity-brown boys, who
[870]       came up and asked for "A ha'p'orth, please--good measure,"
[871]       which she served in a couple of chipped yellow basins of
[872]       commonest clay.
[873]       
[874]       "She was here at that time," resumed Mrs. Newson, making a
[875]       step as if to draw nearer.
[876]       
[877]       "Don't speak to her--it isn't respectable!" urged the other.
[878]       
[879]       "I will just say a word--you, Elizabeth-Jane, can stay
[880]       here."
[881]       
[882]       The girl was not loth, and turned to some stalls of coloured
[883]       prints while her mother went forward. The old woman begged
[884]       for the latter's custom as soon as she saw her, and
[885]       responded to Mrs. Henchard-Newson's request for a penny-
[886]       worth with more alacrity than she had shown in selling six-
[887]       pennyworths in her younger days. When the soi-disant
[888]       widow had taken the basin of thin poor slop that stood for
[889]       the rich concoction of the former time, the hag opened a
[890]       little basket behind the fire, and looking up slily,
[891]       whispered, "Just a thought o' rum in it?--smuggled, you
[892]       know--say two penn'orth--'twill make it slip down like
[893]       cordial!"
[894]       
[895]       Her customer smiled bitterly at this survival of the old
[896]       trick, and shook her head with a meaning the old woman was
[897]       far from translating. She pretended to eat a little of the
[898]       furmity with the leaden spoon offered, and as she did so
[899]       said blandly to the hag, "You've seen better days?"
[900]       
[901]       "Ah, ma'am--well ye may say it!" responded the old woman,
[902]       opening the sluices of her heart forthwith. "I've stood in
[903]       this fair-ground, maid, wife, and widow, these nine-and-
[904]       thirty years, and in that time have known what it was to do
[905]       business with the richest stomachs in the land! Ma'am you'd
[906]       hardly believe that I was once the owner of a great
[907]       pavilion-tent that was the attraction of the fair. Nobody
[908]       could come, nobody could go, without having a dish of Mrs.
[909]       Goodenough's furmity. I knew the clergy's taste, the dandy
[910]       gent's taste; I knew the town's taste, the country's taste.
[911]       I even knowed the taste of the coarse shameless females.
[912]       But Lord's my life--the world's no memory; straightforward
[913]       dealings don't bring profit--'tis the sly and the underhand
[914]       that get on in these times!"
[915]       
[916]       Mrs. Newson glanced round--her daughter was still bending
[917]       over the distant stalls. "Can you call to mind," she said
[918]       cautiously to the old woman, "the sale of a wife by her
[919]       husband in your tent eighteen years ago to-day?"
[920]       
[921]       The hag reflected, and half shook her head. "If it had been
[922]       a big thing I should have minded it in a moment," she said.
[923]       "I can mind every serious fight o' married parties, every
[924]       murder, every manslaughter, even every pocket-picking--
[925]       leastwise large ones--that 't has been my lot to witness.
[926]       But a selling? Was it done quiet-like?"
[927]       
[928]       "Well, yes. I think so."
[929]       
[930]       The furmity woman half shook her head again. "And yet," she
[931]       said, "I do. At any rate, I can mind a man doing something
[932]       o' the sort--a man in a cord jacket, with a basket of tools;
[933]       but, Lord bless ye, we don't gi'e it head-room, we don't,
[934]       such as that. The only reason why I can mind the man is
[935]       that he came back here to the next year's fair, and told me
[936]       quite private-like that if a woman ever asked for him I was
[937]       to say he had gone to--where?--Casterbridge--yes--to
[938]       Casterbridge, said he. But, Lord's my life, I shouldn't ha'
[939]       thought of it again!"
[940]       
[941]       Mrs. Newson would have rewarded the old woman as far as her
[942]       small means afforded had she not discreetly borne in mind
[943]       that it was by that unscrupulous person's liquor her husband
[944]       had been degraded. She briefly thanked her informant, and
[945]       rejoined Elizabeth, who greeted her with, "Mother, do let's
[946]       get on--it was hardly respectable for you to buy
[947]       refreshments there. I see none but the lowest do."
[948]       
[949]       "I have learned what I wanted, however," said her mother
[950]       quietly. "The last time our relative visited this fair he
[951]       said he was living at Casterbridge. It is a long, long way
[952]       from here, and it was many years ago that he said it, but
[953]       there I think we'll go."
[954]       
[955]       With this they descended out of the fair, and went onward to
[956]       the village, where they obtained a night's lodging.
[957]       
[958]       
[959]       
[960]       4.
[961]       
[962]       
[963]       Henchard's wife acted for the best, but she had involved
[964]       herself in difficulties. A hundred times she had been upon
[965]       the point of telling her daughter Elizabeth-Jane the true
[966]       story of her life, the tragical crisis of which had been the
[967]       transaction at Weydon Fair, when she was not much older than
[968]       the girl now beside her. But she had refrained. An
[969]       innocent maiden had thus grown up in the belief that the
[970]       relations between the genial sailor and her mother were the
[971]       ordinary ones that they had always appeared to be. The risk
[972]       of endangering a child's strong affection by disturbing
[973]       ideas which had grown with her growth was to Mrs. Henchard
[974]       too fearful a thing to contemplate. It had seemed, indeed
[975]       folly to think of making Elizabeth-Jane wise.
[976]       
[977]       But Susan Henchard's fear of losing her dearly loved
[978]       daughter's heart by a revelation had little to do with any
[979]       sense of wrong-doing on her own part. Her simplicity--the
[980]       original ground of Henchard's contempt for her--had allowed
[981]       her to live on in the conviction that Newson had acquired a
[982]       morally real and justifiable right to her by his purchase--
[983]       though the exact bearings and legal limits of that right
[984]       were vague. It may seem strange to sophisticated minds that
[985]       a sane young matron could believe in the seriousness of such
[986]       a transfer; and were there not numerous other instances of
[987]       the same belief the thing might scarcely be credited. But
[988]       she was by no means the first or last peasant woman who had
[989]       religiously adhered to her purchaser, as too many rural
[990]       records show.
[991]       
[992]       The history of Susan Henchard's adventures in the interim
[993]       can be told in two or three sentences. Absolutely helpless
[994]       she had been taken off to Canada where they had lived
[995]       several years without any great worldly success, though she
[996]       worked as hard as any woman could to keep their cottage
[997]       cheerful and well-provided. When Elizabeth-Jane was about
[998]       twelve years old the three returned to England, and settled
[999]       at Falmouth, where Newson made a living for a few years as
[1000]      boatman and general handy shoreman.
[1001]      
[1002]      He then engaged in the Newfoundland trade, and it was during
[1003]      this period that Susan had an awakening. A friend to whom
[1004]      she confided her history ridiculed her grave acceptance of
[1005]      her position; and all was over with her peace of mind. When
[1006]      Newson came home at the end of one winter he saw that the
[1007]      delusion he had so carefully sustained had vanished for
[1008]      ever.
[1009]      
[1010]      There was then a time of sadness, in which she told him her
[1011]      doubts if she could live with him longer. Newson left home
[1012]      again on the Newfoundland trade when the season came round.
[1013]      The vague news of his loss at sea a little later on solved a
[1014]      problem which had become torture to her meek conscience.
[1015]      She saw him no more.
[1016]      
[1017]      Of Henchard they heard nothing. To the liege subjects of
[1018]      Labour, the England of those days was a continent, and a
[1019]      mile a geographical degree.
[1020]      
[1021]      Elizabeth-Jane developed early into womanliness. One day a
[1022]      month or so after receiving intelligence of Newson's death
[1023]      off the Bank of Newfoundland, when the girl was about
[1024]      eighteen, she was sitting on a willow chair in the cottage
[1025]      they still occupied, working twine nets for the fishermen.
[1026]      Her mother was in a back corner of the same room engaged in
[1027]      the same labour, and dropping the heavy wood needle she was
[1028]      filling she surveyed her daughter thoughtfully. The sun
[1029]      shone in at the door upon the young woman's head and hair,
[1030]      which was worn loose, so that the rays streamed into its
[1031]      depths as into a hazel copse. Her face, though somewhat wan
[1032]      and incomplete, possessed the raw materials of beauty in a
[1033]      promising degree. There was an under-handsomeness in it,
[1034]      struggling to reveal itself through the provisional curves
[1035]      of immaturity, and the casual disfigurements that resulted
[1036]      from the straitened circumstances of their lives. She was
[1037]      handsome in the bone, hardly as yet handsome in the flesh.
[1038]      She possibly might never be fully handsome, unless the
[1039]      carking accidents of her daily existence could be evaded
[1040]      before the mobile parts of her countenance had settled to
[1041]      their final mould.
[1042]      
[1043]      The sight of the girl made her mother sad--not vaguely but
[1044]      by logical inference. They both were still in that strait-
[1045]      waistcoat of poverty from which she had tried so many times
[1046]      to be delivered for the girl's sake. The woman had long
[1047]      perceived how zealously and constantly the young mind of her
[1048]      companion was struggling for enlargement; and yet now, in
[1049]      her eighteenth year, it still remained but little unfolded.
[1050]      The desire--sober and repressed--of Elizabeth-Jane's heart
[1051]      was indeed to see, to hear, and to understand. How could
[1052]      she become a woman of wider knowledge, higher repute--
[1053]      "better," as she termed it--this was her constant inquiry of
[1054]      her mother. She sought further into things than other girls
[1055]      in her position ever did, and her mother groaned as she felt
[1056]      she could not aid in the search.
[1057]      
[1058]      The sailor, drowned or no, was probably now lost to them;
[1059]      and Susan's staunch, religious adherence to him as her
[1060]      husband in principle, till her views had been disturbed by
[1061]      enlightenment, was demanded no more. She asked herself
[1062]      whether the present moment, now that she was a free woman
[1063]      again, were not as opportune a one as she would find in a
[1064]      world where everything had been so inopportune, for making a
[1065]      desperate effort to advance Elizabeth. To pocket her pride
[1066]      and search for the first husband seemed, wisely or not, the
[1067]      best initiatory step. He had possibly drunk himself into
[1068]      his tomb. But he might, on the other hand, have had too
[1069]      much sense to do so; for in her time with him he had been
[1070]      given to bouts only, and was not a habitual drunkard.
[1071]      
[1072]      At any rate, the propriety of returning to him, if he lived,
[1073]      was unquestionable. The awkwardness of searching for him
[1074]      lay in enlightening Elizabeth, a proceeding which her mother
[1075]      could not endure to contemplate. She finally resolved to
[1076]      undertake the search without confiding to the girl her
[1077]      former relations with Henchard, leaving it to him if they
[1078]      found him to take what steps he might choose to that end.
[1079]      This will account for their conversation at the fair and the
[1080]      half-informed state at which Elizabeth was led onward.
[1081]      
[1082]      In this attitude they proceeded on their journey, trusting
[1083]      solely to the dim light afforded of Henchard's whereabouts
[1084]      by the furmity woman. The strictest economy was
[1085]      indispensable. Sometimes they might have been seen on foot,
[1086]      sometimes on farmers' waggons, sometimes in carriers' vans;
[1087]      and thus they drew near to Casterbridge. Elizabeth-Jane
[1088]      discovered to her alarm that her mother's health was not
[1089]      what it once had been, and there was ever and anon in her
[1090]      talk that renunciatory tone which showed that, but for the
[1091]      girl, she would not be very sorry to quit a life she was
[1092]      growing thoroughly weary of.
[1093]      
[1094]      It was on a Friday evening, near the middle of September and
[1095]      just before dusk, that they reached the summit of a hill
[1096]      within a mile of the place they sought. There were high
[1097]      banked hedges to the coach-road here, and they mounted upon
[1098]      the green turf within, and sat down. The spot commanded a
[1099]      full view of the town and its environs.
[1100]      
[1101]      "What an old-fashioned place it seems to be!" said
[1102]      Elizabeth-Jane, while her silent mother mused on other
[1103]      things than topography. "It is huddled all together; and it
[1104]      is shut in by a square wall of trees, like a plot of garden
[1105]      ground by a box-edging."
[1106]      
[1107]      Its squareness was, indeed, the characteristic which most
[1108]      struck the eye in this antiquated borough, the borough of
[1109]      Casterbridge--at that time, recent as it was, untouched by
[1110]      the faintest sprinkle of modernism. It was compact as a box
[1111]      of dominoes. It had no suburbs--in the ordinary sense.
[1112]      Country and town met at a mathematical line.
[1113]      
[1114]      To birds of the more soaring kind Casterbridge must have
[1115]      appeared on this fine evening as a mosaic-work of subdued
[1116]      reds, browns, greys, and crystals, held together by a
[1117]      rectangular frame of deep green. To the level eye of
[1118]      humanity it stood as an indistinct mass behind a dense
[1119]      stockade of limes and chestnuts, set in the midst of miles
[1120]      of rotund down and concave field. The mass became gradually
[1121]      dissected by the vision into towers, gables, chimneys, and
[1122]      casements, the highest glazings shining bleared and
[1123]      bloodshot with the coppery fire they caught from the belt of
[1124]      sunlit cloud in the west.
[1125]      
[1126]      From the centre of each side of this tree-bound square ran
[1127]      avenues east, west, and south into the wide expanse of corn-
[1128]      land and coomb to the distance of a mile or so. It was by
[1129]      one of these avenues that the pedestrians were about to
[1130]      enter. Before they had risen to proceed two men passed
[1131]      outside the hedge, engaged in argumentative conversation.
[1132]      
[1133]      "Why, surely," said Elizabeth, as they receded, "those men
[1134]      mentioned the name of Henchard in their talk--the name of
[1135]      our relative?"
[1136]      
[1137]      "I thought so too," said Mrs. Newson.
[1138]      
[1139]      "That seems a hint to us that he is still here."
[1140]      
[1141]      "Yes."
[1142]      
[1143]      "Shall I run after them, and ask them about him----"
[1144]      
[1145]      "No, no, no! Not for the world just yet. He may be in the
[1146]      workhouse, or in the stocks, for all we know."
[1147]      
[1148]      "Dear me--why should you think that, mother?"
[1149]      
[1150]      "'Twas just something to say--that's all! But we must make
[1151]      private inquiries."
[1152]      
[1153]      Having sufficiently rested they proceeded on their way at
[1154]      evenfall. The dense trees of the avenue rendered the road
[1155]      dark as a tunnel, though the open land on each side was
[1156]      still under a faint daylight, in other words, they passed
[1157]      down a midnight between two gloamings. The features of the
[1158]      town had a keen interest for Elizabeth's mother, now that
[1159]      the human side came to the fore. As soon as they had
[1160]      wandered about they could see that the stockade of gnarled
[1161]      trees which framed in Casterbridge was itself an avenue,
[1162]      standing on a low green bank or escarpment, with a ditch yet
[1163]      visible without. Within the avenue and bank was a wall more
[1164]      or less discontinuous, and within the wall were packed the
[1165]      abodes of the burghers.
[1166]      
[1167]      Though the two women did not know it these external features
[1168]      were but the ancient defences of the town, planted as a
[1169]      promenade.
[1170]      
[1171]      The lamplights now glimmered through the engirdling trees,
[1172]      conveying a sense of great smugness and comfort inside, and
[1173]      rendering at the same time the unlighted country without
[1174]      strangely solitary and vacant in aspect, considering its
[1175]      nearness to life. The difference between burgh and
[1176]      champaign was increased, too, by sounds which now reached
[1177]      them above others--the notes of a brass band. The
[1178]      travellers returned into the High Street, where there were
[1179]      timber houses with overhanging stories, whose small-paned
[1180]      lattices were screened by dimity curtains on a drawing-
[1181]      string, and under whose bargeboards old cobwebs waved in the
[1182]      breeze. There were houses of brick-nogging, which derived
[1183]      their chief support from those adjoining. There were slate
[1184]      roofs patched with tiles, and tile roofs patched with slate,
[1185]      with occasionally a roof of thatch.
[1186]      
[1187]      The agricultural and pastoral character of the people upon
[1188]      whom the town depended for its existence was shown by the
[1189]      class of objects displayed in the shop windows. Scythes,
[1190]      reap-hooks, sheep-shears, bill-hooks, spades, mattocks, and
[1191]      hoes at the iron-monger's; bee-hives, butter-firkins,
[1192]      churns, milking stools and pails, hay-rakes, field-flagons,
[1193]      and seed-lips at the cooper's; cart-ropes and plough-harness
[1194]      at the saddler's; carts, wheel-barrows, and mill-gear at the
[1195]      wheelwright's and machinist's, horse-embrocations at the
[1196]      chemist's; at the glover's and leather-cutter's, hedging-
[1197]      gloves, thatchers' knee-caps, ploughmen's leggings,
[1198]      villagers' pattens and clogs.
[1199]      
[1200]      They came to a grizzled church, whose massive square tower
[1201]      rose unbroken into the darkening sky, the lower parts being
[1202]      illuminated by the nearest lamps sufficiently to show how
[1203]      completely the mortar from the joints of the stonework had
[1204]      been nibbled out by time and weather, which had planted in
[1205]      the crevices thus made little tufts of stone-crop and grass
[1206]      almost as far up as the very battlements. From this tower
[1207]      the clock struck eight, and thereupon a bell began to toll
[1208]      with a peremptory clang. The curfew was still rung in
[1209]      Casterbridge, and it was utilized by the inhabitants as a
[1210]      signal for shutting their shops. No sooner did the deep
[1211]      notes of the bell throb between the house-fronts than a
[1212]      clatter of shutters arose through the whole length of the
[1213]      High Street. In a few minutes business at Casterbridge was
[1214]      ended for the day.
[1215]      
[1216]      Other clocks struck eight from time to time--one gloomily
[1217]      from the gaol, another from the gable of an almshouse, with
[1218]      a preparative creak of machinery, more audible than the note
[1219]      of the bell; a row of tall, varnished case-clocks from the
[1220]      interior of a clock-maker's shop joined in one after another
[1221]      just as the shutters were enclosing them, like a row of
[1222]      actors delivering their final speeches before the fall of
[1223]      the curtain; then chimes were heard stammering out the
[1224]      Sicilian Mariners' Hymn; so that chronologists of the
[1225]      advanced school were appreciably on their way to the next
[1226]      hour before the whole business of the old one was
[1227]      satisfactorily wound up.
[1228]      
[1229]      In an open space before the church walked a woman with her
[1230]      gown-sleeves rolled up so high that the edge of her
[1231]      underlinen was visible, and her skirt tucked up through her
[1232]      pocket hole. She carried a load under her arm from which
[1233]      she was pulling pieces of bread, and handing them to some
[1234]      other women who walked with her, which pieces they nibbled
[1235]      critically. The sight reminded Mrs. Henchard-Newson and her
[1236]      daughter that they had an appetite; and they inquired of the
[1237]      woman for the nearest baker's.
[1238]      
[1239]      "Ye may as well look for manna-food as good bread in
[1240]      Casterbridge just now," she said, after directing them.
[1241]      "They can blare their trumpets and thump their drums, and
[1242]      have their roaring dinners"--waving her hand towards a point
[1243]      further along the street, where the brass band could be seen
[1244]      standing in front of an illuminated building--"but we must
[1245]      needs be put-to for want of a wholesome crust. There's less
[1246]      good bread than good beer in Casterbridge now."
[1247]      
[1248]      "And less good beer than swipes," said a man with his hands
[1249]      in his pockets.
[1250]      
[1251]      "How does it happen there's no good bread?" asked Mrs.
[1252]      Henchard.
[1253]      
[1254]      "Oh, 'tis the corn-factor--he's the man that our millers and
[1255]      bakers all deal wi', and he has sold 'em growed wheat, which
[1256]      they didn't know was growed, so they SAY, till the dough
[1257]      ran all over the ovens like quicksilver; so that the loaves
[1258]      be as fiat as toads, and like suet pudden inside. I've been
[1259]      a wife, and I've been a mother, and I never see such
[1260]      unprincipled bread in Casterbridge as this before.--But you
[1261]      must be a real stranger here not to know what's made all the
[1262]      poor volks' insides plim like blowed bladders this week?"
[1263]      
[1264]      "I am," said Elizabeth's mother shyly.
[1265]      
[1266]      Not wishing to be observed further till she knew more of her
[1267]      future in this place, she withdrew with her daughter from
[1268]      the speaker's side. Getting a couple of biscuits at the
[1269]      shop indicated as a temporary substitute for a meal, they
[1270]      next bent their steps instinctively to where the music was
[1271]      playing.
[1272]      
[1273]      
[1274]      
[1275]      5.
[1276]      
[1277]      
[1278]      A few score yards brought them to the spot where the town
[1279]      band was now shaking the window-panes with the strains of
[1280]      "The Roast Beef of Old England."
[1281]      
[1282]      The building before whose doors they had pitched their
[1283]      music-stands was the chief hotel in Casterbridge--namely,
[1284]      the King's Arms. A spacious bow-window projected into the
[1285]      street over the main portico, and from the open sashes came
[1286]      the babble of voices, the jingle of glasses, and the drawing
[1287]      of corks. The blinds, moreover, being left unclosed, the
[1288]      whole interior of this room could be surveyed from the top
[1289]      of a flight of stone steps to the road-waggon office
[1290]      opposite, for which reason a knot of idlers had gathered
[1291]      there.
[1292]      
[1293]      "We might, perhaps, after all, make a few inquiries about--
[1294]      our relation Mr. Henchard," whispered Mrs. Newson who, since
[1295]      her entry into Casterbridge, had seemed strangely weak and
[1296]      agitated, "And this, I think, would be a good place for
[1297]      trying it--just to ask, you know, how he stands in the town--
[1298]      if he is here, as I think he must be. You, Elizabeth-Jane,
[1299]      had better be the one to do it. I'm too worn out to do
[1300]      anything--pull down your fall first."
[1301]      
[1302]      She sat down upon the lowest step, and Elizabeth-Jane obeyed
[1303]      her directions and stood among the idlers.
[1304]      
[1305]      "What's going on to-night?" asked the girl, after singling
[1306]      out an old man and standing by him long enough to acquire a
[1307]      neighbourly right of converse.
[1308]      
[1309]      "Well, ye must be a stranger sure," said the old man,
[1310]      without taking his eyes from the window. "Why, 'tis a great
[1311]      public dinner of the gentle-people and such like leading
[1312]      volk--wi' the Mayor in the chair. As we plainer fellows
[1313]      bain't invited, they leave the winder-shutters open that we
[1314]      may get jist a sense o't out here. If you mount the steps
[1315]      you can see em. That's Mr. Henchard, the Mayor, at the end
[1316]      of the table, a facing ye; and that's the Council men right
[1317]      and left....Ah, lots of them when they begun life were no
[1318]      more than I be now!"
[1319]      
[1320]      "Henchard!" said Elizabeth-Jane, surprised, but by no means
[1321]      suspecting the whole force of the revelation. She ascended
[1322]      to the top of the steps.
[1323]      
[1324]      Her mother, though her head was bowed, had already caught
[1325]      from the inn-window tones that strangely riveted her
[1326]      attention, before the old man's words, "Mr. Henchard, the
[1327]      Mayor," reached her ears. She arose, and stepped up to her
[1328]      daughter's side as soon as she could do so without showing
[1329]      exceptional eagerness.
[1330]      
[1331]      The interior of the hotel dining-room was spread out before
[1332]      her, with its tables, and glass, and plate, and inmates.
[1333]      Facing the window, in the chair of dignity, sat a man about
[1334]      forty years of age; of heavy frame, large features, and
[1335]      commanding voice; his general build being rather coarse than
[1336]      compact. He had a rich complexion, which verged on
[1337]      swarthiness, a flashing black eye, and dark, bushy brows and
[1338]      hair. When he indulged in an occasional loud laugh at some
[1339]      remark among the guests, his large mouth parted so far back
[1340]      as to show to the rays of the chandelier a full score or
[1341]      more of the two-and-thirty sound white teeth that he
[1342]      obviously still could boast of.
[1343]      
[1344]      That laugh was not encouraging to strangers, and hence it
[1345]      may have been well that it was rarely heard. Many theories
[1346]      might have been built upon it. It fell in well with
[1347]      conjectures of a temperament which would have no pity for
[1348]      weakness, but would be ready to yield ungrudging admiration
[1349]      to greatness and strength. Its producer's personal
[1350]      goodness, if he had any, would be of a very fitful cast--an
[1351]      occasional almost oppressive generosity rather than a mild
[1352]      and constant kindness.
[1353]      
[1354]      Susan Henchard's husband--in law, at least--sat before them,
[1355]      matured in shape, stiffened in line, exaggerated in traits;
[1356]      disciplined, thought-marked--in a word, older. Elizabeth,
[1357]      encumbered with no recollections as her mother was, regarded
[1358]      him with nothing more than the keen curiosity and interest
[1359]      which the discovery of such unexpected social standing in
[1360]      the long-sought relative naturally begot. He was dressed in
[1361]      an old-fashioned evening suit, an expanse of frilled shirt
[1362]      showing on his broad breast; jewelled studs, and a heavy
[1363]      gold chain. Three glasses stood at his right hand; but, to
[1364]      his wife's surprise, the two for wine were empty, while the
[1365]      third, a tumbler, was half full of water.
[1366]      
[1367]      When last she had seen him he was sitting in a corduroy
[1368]      jacket, fustian waistcoat and breeches, and tanned leather
[1369]      leggings, with a basin of hot furmity before him. Time, the
[1370]      magician, had wrought much here. Watching him, and thus
[1371]      thinking of past days, she became so moved that she shrank
[1372]      back against the jamb of the waggon-office doorway to which
[1373]      the steps gave access, the shadow from it conveniently
[1374]      hiding her features. She forgot her daughter till a touch
[1375]      from Elizabeth-Jane aroused her. "Have you seen him,
[1376]      mother?" whispered the girl.
[1377]      
[1378]      "Yes, yes," answered her companion hastily. "I have seen
[1379]      him, and it is enough for me! Now I only want to go--pass
[1380]      away--die."
[1381]      
[1382]      "Why--O what?" She drew closer, and whispered in her
[1383]      mother's ear, "Does he seem to you not likely to befriend
[1384]      us? I thought he looked a generous man. What a gentleman he
[1385]      is, isn't he? and how his diamond studs shine! How strange
[1386]      that you should have said he might be in the stocks, or in
[1387]      the workhouse, or dead! Did ever anything go more by
[1388]      contraries! Why do you feel so afraid of him? I am not at
[1389]      all;I'll call upon him--he can but say he don't own such
[1390]      remote kin."
[1391]      
[1392]      "I don't know at all--I can't tell what to set about. I
[1393]      feel so down."
[1394]      
[1395]      "Don't be that, mother, now we have got here and all! Rest
[1396]      there where you be a little while--I will look on and find
[1397]      out more about him."
[1398]      
[1399]      "I don't think I can ever meet Mr. Henchard. He is not how
[1400]      I thought he would be--he overpowers me! I don't wish to see
[1401]      him any more."
[1402]      
[1403]      "But wait a little time and consider."
[1404]      
[1405]      Elizabeth-Jane had never been so much interested in anything
[1406]      in her life as in their present position, partly from the
[1407]      natural elation she felt at discovering herself akin to a
[1408]      coach; and she gazed again at the scene. The younger guests
[1409]      were talking and eating with animation; their elders were
[1410]      searching for titbits, and sniffing and grunting over their
[1411]      plates like sows nuzzling for acorns. Three drinks seemed
[1412]      to be sacred to the company--port, sherry, and rum; outside
[1413]      which old-established trinity few or no palates ranged.
[1414]      
[1415]      A row of ancient rummers with ground figures on their sides,
[1416]      and each primed with a spoon, was now placed down the table,
[1417]      and these were promptly filled with grog at such high
[1418]      temperatures as to raise serious considerations for the
[1419]      articles exposed to its vapours. But Elizabeth-Jane noticed
[1420]      that, though this filling went on with great promptness up
[1421]      and down the table, nobody filled the Mayor's glass, who
[1422]      still drank large quantities of water from the tumbler
[1423]      behind the clump of crystal vessels intended for wine and
[1424]      spirits.
[1425]      
[1426]      "They don't fill Mr. Henchard's wine-glasses," she ventured
[1427]      to say to her elbow acquaintance, the old man.
[1428]      
[1429]      "Ah, no; don't ye know him to be the celebrated abstaining
[1430]      worthy of that name? He scorns all tempting liquors; never
[1431]      touches nothing. O yes, he've strong qualities that way. I
[1432]      have heard tell that he sware a gospel oath in bygone times,
[1433]      and has bode by it ever since. So they don't press him,
[1434]      knowing it would be unbecoming in the face of that: for yer
[1435]      gospel oath is a serious thing."
[1436]      
[1437]      Another elderly man, hearing this discourse, now joined in
[1438]      by inquiring, "How much longer have he got to suffer from
[1439]      it, Solomon Longways?"
[1440]      
[1441]      "Another two year, they say. I don't know the why and the
[1442]      wherefore of his fixing such a time, for 'a never has told
[1443]      anybody. But 'tis exactly two calendar years longer, they
[1444]      say. A powerful mind to hold out so long!"
[1445]      
[1446]      "True....But there's great strength in hope. Knowing that
[1447]      in four-and-twenty months' time ye'll be out of your
[1448]      bondage, and able to make up for all you've suffered, by
[1449]      partaking without stint--why, it keeps a man up, no doubt."
[1450]      
[1451]      "No doubt, Christopher Coney, no doubt. And 'a must need
[1452]      such reflections--a lonely widow man," said Longways.
[1453]      
[1454]      "When did he lose his wife?" asked Elizabeth.
[1455]      
[1456]      "I never knowed her. 'Twas afore he came to Casterbridge,"
[1457]      Solomon Longways replied with terminative emphasis, as if
[1458]      the fact of his ignorance of Mrs. Henchard were sufficient
[1459]      to deprive her history of all interest. "But I know that
[1460]      'a's a banded teetotaller, and that if any of his men be
[1461]      ever so little overtook by a drop he's down upon 'em as
[1462]      stern as the Lord upon the jovial Jews."
[1463]      
[1464]      "Has he many men, then?" said Elizabeth-Jane.
[1465]      
[1466]      "Many! Why, my good maid, he's the powerfullest member of
[1467]      the Town Council, and quite a principal man in the country
[1468]      round besides. Never a big dealing in wheat, barley, oats,
[1469]      hay, roots, and such-like but Henchard's got a hand in it.
[1470]      Ay, and he'll go into other things too; and that's where he
[1471]      makes his mistake. He worked his way up from nothing when
[1472]      'a came here; and now he's a pillar of the town. Not but
[1473]      what he's been shaken a little to-year about this bad corn
[1474]      he has supplied in his contracts. I've seen the sun rise
[1475]      over Durnover Moor these nine-and-sixty year, and though Mr.
[1476]      Henchard has never cussed me unfairly ever since I've worked
[1477]      for'n, seeing I be but a little small man, I must say that I
[1478]      have never before tasted such rough bread as has been made
[1479]      from Henchard's wheat lately. 'Tis that growed out that ye
[1480]      could a'most call it malt, and there's a list at bottom o'
[1481]      the loaf as thick as the sole of one's shoe."
[1482]      
[1483]      The band now struck up another melody, and by the time it
[1484]      was ended the dinner was over, and speeches began to be
[1485]      made. The evening being calm, and the windows still open,
[1486]      these orations could be distinctly heard. Henchard's voice
[1487]      arose above the rest; he was telling a story of his hay-
[1488]      dealing experiences, in which he had outwitted a sharper who
[1489]      had been bent upon outwitting him.
[1490]      
[1491]      "Ha-ha-ha!" responded his audience at the upshot of the
[1492]      story; and hilarity was general till a new voice arose with,
[1493]      "This is all very well; but how about the bad bread?"
[1494]      
[1495]      It came from the lower end of the table, where there sat a
[1496]      group of minor tradesmen who, although part of the company,
[1497]      appeared to be a little below the social level of the
[1498]      others; and who seemed to nourish a certain independence of
[1499]      opinion and carry on discussions not quite in harmony with
[1500]      those at the head; just as the west end of a church is
[1501]      sometimes persistently found to sing out of time and tune
[1502]      with the leading spirits in the chancel.
[1503]      
[1504]      This interruption about the bad bread afforded infinite
[1505]      satisfaction to the loungers outside, several of whom were
[1506]      in the mood which finds its pleasure in others'
[1507]      discomfiture; and hence they echoed pretty freely, "Hey! How
[1508]      about the bad bread, Mr. Mayor?" Moreover, feeling none of
[1509]      the restraints of those who shared the feast, they could
[1510]      afford to add, "You rather ought to tell the story o' that,
[1511]      sir!"
[1512]      
[1513]      The interruption was sufficient to compel the Mayor to
[1514]      notice it.
[1515]      
[1516]      "Well, I admit that the wheat turned out badly," he said.
[1517]      "But I was taken in in buying it as much as the bakers who
[1518]      bought it o' me."
[1519]      
[1520]      "And the poor folk who had to eat it whether or no," said
[1521]      the inharmonious man outside the window.
[1522]      
[1523]      Henchard's face darkened. There was temper under the thin
[1524]      bland surface--the temper which, artificially intensified,
[1525]      had banished a wife nearly a score of years before.
[1526]      
[1527]      "You must make allowances for the accidents of a large
[1528]      business," he said. "You must bear in mind that the weather
[1529]      just at the harvest of that corn was worse than we have
[1530]      known it for years. However, I have mended my arrangements
[1531]      on account o't. Since I have found my business too large to
[1532]      be well looked after by myself alone, I have advertised for
[1533]      a thorough good man as manager of the corn department. When
[1534]      I've got him you will find these mistakes will no longer
[1535]      occur--matters will be better looked into."
[1536]      
[1537]      "But what are you going to do to repay us for the past?"
[1538]      inquired the man who had before spoken, and who seemed to be
[1539]      a baker or miller. "Will you replace the grown flour we've
[1540]      still got by sound grain?"
[1541]      
[1542]      Henchard's face had become still more stern at these
[1543]      interruptions, and he drank from his tumbler of water as if
[1544]      to calm himself or gain time. Instead of vouchsafing a
[1545]      direct reply, he stiffly observed--
[1546]      
[1547]      "If anybody will tell me how to turn grown wheat into
[1548]      wholesome wheat I'll take it back with pleasure. But it
[1549]      can't be done."
[1550]      
[1551]      Henchard was not to be drawn again. Having said this, he
[1552]      sat down.
[1553]      
[1554]      
[1555]      
[1556]      6.
[1557]      
[1558]      
[1559]      Now the group outside the window had within the last few
[1560]      minutes been reinforced by new arrivals, some of them
[1561]      respectable shopkeepers and their assistants, who had come
[1562]      out for a whiff of air after putting up the shutters for the
[1563]      night; some of them of a lower class. Distinct from either
[1564]      there appeared a stranger--a young man of remarkably
[1565]      pleasant aspect--who carried in his hand a carpet-bag of the
[1566]      smart floral pattern prevalent in such articles at that
[1567]      time.
[1568]      
[1569]      He was ruddy and of a fair countenance, bright-eyed, and
[1570]      slight in build. He might possibly have passed by without
[1571]      stopping at all, or at most for half a minute to glance in
[1572]      at the scene, had not his advent coincided with the
[1573]      discussion on corn and bread, in which event this history
[1574]      had never been enacted. But the subject seemed to arrest
[1575]      him, and he whispered some inquiries of the other
[1576]      bystanders, and remained listening.
[1577]      
[1578]      When he heard Henchard's closing words, "It can't be done,"
[1579]      he smiled impulsively, drew out his pocketbook, and wrote
[1580]      down a few words by the aid of the light in the window. He
[1581]      tore out the leaf, folded and directed it, and seemed about
[1582]      to throw it in through the open sash upon the dining-table;
[1583]      but, on second thoughts, edged himself through the
[1584]      loiterers, till he reached the door of the hotel, where one
[1585]      of the waiters who had been serving inside was now idly
[1586]      leaning against the doorpost.
[1587]      
[1588]      "Give this to the Mayor at once," he said, handing in his
[1589]      hasty note.
[1590]      
[1591]      Elizabeth-Jane had seen his movements and heard the words,
[1592]      which attracted her both by their subject and by their
[1593]      accent--a strange one for those parts. It was quaint and
[1594]      northerly.
[1595]      
[1596]      The waiter took the note, while the young stranger
[1597]      continued--
[1598]      
[1599]      "And can ye tell me of a respectable hotel that's a little
[1600]      more moderate than this?"
[1601]      
[1602]      The waiter glanced indifferently up and down the street.
[1603]      
[1604]      "They say the Three Mariners, just below here, is a very
[1605]      good place," he languidly answered; "but I have never stayed
[1606]      there myself."
[1607]      
[1608]      The Scotchman, as he seemed to be, thanked him, and strolled
[1609]      on in the direction of the Three Mariners aforesaid,
[1610]      apparently more concerned about the question of an inn than
[1611]      about the fate of his note, now that the momentary impulse
[1612]      of writing it was over. While he was disappearing slowly
[1613]      down the street the waiter left the door, and Elizabeth-Jane
[1614]      saw with some interest the note brought into the dining-room
[1615]      and handed to the Mayor.
[1616]      
[1617]      Henchard looked at it carelessly, unfolded it with one hand,
[1618]      and glanced it through. Thereupon it was curious to note an
[1619]      unexpected effect. The nettled, clouded aspect which had
[1620]      held possession of his face since the subject of his corn-
[1621]      dealings had been broached, changed itself into one of
[1622]      arrested attention. He read the note slowly, and fell into
[1623]      thought, not moody, but fitfully intense, as that of a man
[1624]      who has been captured by an idea.
[1625]      
[1626]      By this time toasts and speeches had given place to songs,
[1627]      the wheat subject being quite forgotten. Men were putting
[1628]      their heads together in twos and threes, telling good
[1629]      stories, with pantomimic laughter which reached convulsive
[1630]      grimace. Some were beginning to look as if they did not
[1631]      know how they had come there, what they had come for, or how
[1632]      they were going to get home again; and provisionally sat on
[1633]      with a dazed smile. Square-built men showed a tendency to
[1634]      become hunchbacks; men with a dignified presence lost it in
[1635]      a curious obliquity of figure, in which their features grew
[1636]      disarranged and one-sided, whilst the heads of a few who had
[1637]      dined with extreme thoroughness were somehow sinking into
[1638]      their shoulders, the corners of their mouth and eyes being
[1639]      bent upwards by the subsidence. Only Henchard did not
[1640]      conform to these flexuous changes; he remained stately and
[1641]      vertical, silently thinking.
[1642]      
[1643]      The clock struck nine. Elizabeth-Jane turned to her
[1644]      companion. "The evening is drawing on, mother," she said.
[1645]      "What do you propose to do?"
[1646]      
[1647]      She was surprised to find how irresolute her mother had
[1648]      become. "We must get a place to lie down in," she murmured.
[1649]      "I have seen--Mr. Henchard; and that's all I wanted to do."
[1650]      
[1651]      "That's enough for to-night, at any rate," Elizabeth-Jane
[1652]      replied soothingly. "We can think to-morrow what is best to
[1653]      do about him. The question now is--is it not?--how shall we
[1654]      find a lodging?"
[1655]      
[1656]      As her mother did not reply Elizabeth-Jane's mind reverted
[1657]      to the words of the waiter, that the Three Mariners was an
[1658]      inn of moderate charges. A recommendation good for one
[1659]      person was probably good for another. "Let's go where the
[1660]      young man has gone to," she said. "He is respectable. What
[1661]      do you say?"
[1662]      
[1663]      Her mother assented, and down the street they went.
[1664]      
[1665]      In the meantime the Mayor's thoughtfulness, engendered by
[1666]      the note as stated, continued to hold him in abstraction;
[1667]      till, whispering to his neighbour to take his place, he
[1668]      found opportunity to leave the chair. This was just after
[1669]      the departure of his wife and Elizabeth.
[1670]      
[1671]      Outside the door of the assembly-room he saw the waiter, and
[1672]      beckoning to him asked who had brought the note which had
[1673]      been handed in a quarter of an hour before.
[1674]      
[1675]      "A young man, sir--a sort of traveller. He was a Scotchman
[1676]      seemingly."
[1677]      
[1678]      "Did he say how he had got it?"
[1679]      
[1680]      "He wrote it himself, sir, as he stood outside the window."
[1681]      
[1682]      "Oh--wrote it himself....Is the young man in the hotel?"
[1683]      
[1684]      "No, sir. He went to the Three Mariners, I believe."
[1685]      
[1686]      The mayor walked up and down the vestibule of the hotel with
[1687]      his hands under his coat tails, as if he were merely seeking
[1688]      a cooler atmosphere than that of the room he had quitted.
[1689]      But there could be no doubt that he was in reality still
[1690]      possessed to the full by the new idea, whatever that might
[1691]      be. At length he went back to the door of the dining-room,
[1692]      paused, and found that the songs, toasts, and conversation
[1693]      were proceeding quite satisfactorily without his presence.
[1694]      The Corporation, private residents, and major and minor
[1695]      tradesmen had, in fact, gone in for comforting beverages to
[1696]      such an extent that they had quite forgotten, not only the
[1697]      Mayor, but all those vast, political, religious, and social
[1698]      differences which they felt necessary to maintain in the
[1699]      daytime, and which separated them like iron grills. Seeing
[1700]      this the Mayor took his hat, and when the waiter had helped
[1701]      him on with a thin holland overcoat, went out and stood
[1702]      under the portico.
[1703]      
[1704]      Very few persons were now in the street; and his eyes, by a
[1705]      sort of attraction, turned and dwelt upon a spot about a
[1706]      hundred yards further down. It was the house to which the
[1707]      writer of the note had gone--the Three Mariners--whose two
[1708]      prominent Elizabethan gables, bow-window, and passage-light
[1709]      could be seen from where he stood. Having kept his eyes on
[1710]      it for a while he strolled in that direction.
[1711]      
[1712]      This ancient house of accommodation for man and beast, now,
[1713]      unfortunately, pulled down, was built of mellow sandstone,
[1714]      with mullioned windows of the same material, markedly out of
[1715]      perpendicular from the settlement of foundations. The bay
[1716]      window projecting into the street, whose interior was so
[1717]      popular among the frequenters of the inn, was closed with
[1718]      shutters, in each of which appeared a heart-shaped aperture,
[1719]      somewhat more attenuated in the right and left ventricles
[1720]      than is seen in Nature. Inside these illuminated holes, at
[1721]      a distance of about three inches, were ranged at this hour,
[1722]      as every passer knew, the ruddy polls of Billy Wills the
[1723]      glazier, Smart the shoemaker, Buzzford the general dealer,
[1724]      and others of a secondary set of worthies, of a grade
[1725]      somewhat below that of the diners at the King's Arms, each
[1726]      with his yard of clay.
[1727]      
[1728]      A four-centred Tudor arch was over the entrance, and over
[1729]      the arch the signboard, now visible in the rays of an
[1730]      opposite lamp. Hereon the Mariners, who had been
[1731]      represented by the artist as persons of two dimensions only--
[1732]      in other words, flat as a shadow--were standing in a row in
[1733]      paralyzed attitudes. Being on the sunny side of the street
[1734]      the three comrades had suffered largely from warping,
[1735]      splitting, fading, and shrinkage, so that they were but a
[1736]      half-invisible film upon the reality of the grain, and
[1737]      knots, and nails, which composed the signboard. As a matter
[1738]      of fact, this state of things was not so much owing to
[1739]      Stannidge the landlord's neglect, as from the lack of a
[1740]      painter in Casterbridge who would undertake to reproduce the
[1741]      features of men so traditional.
[1742]      
[1743]      A long, narrow, dimly-lit passage gave access to the inn,
[1744]      within which passage the horses going to their stalls at the
[1745]      back, and the coming and departing human guests, rubbed
[1746]      shoulders indiscriminately, the latter running no slight
[1747]      risk of having their toes trodden upon by the animals. The
[1748]      good stabling and the good ale of the Mariners, though
[1749]      somewhat difficult to reach on account of there being but
[1750]      this narrow way to both, were nevertheless perseveringly
[1751]      sought out by the sagacious old heads who knew what was what
[1752]      in Casterbridge.
[1753]      
[1754]      Henchard stood without the inn for a few instants; then
[1755]      lowering the dignity of his presence as much as possible by
[1756]      buttoning the brown holland coat over his shirt-front, and
[1757]      in other ways toning himself down to his ordinary everyday
[1758]      appearance, he entered the inn door.
[1759]      
[1760]      
[1761]      
[1762]      7.
[1763]      
[1764]      
[1765]      Elizabeth-Jane and her mother had arrived some twenty
[1766]      minutes earlier. Outside the house they had stood and
[1767]      considered whether even this homely place, though
[1768]      recommended as moderate, might not be too serious in its
[1769]      prices for their light pockets. Finally, however, they had
[1770]      found courage to enter, and duly met Stannidge the landlord,
[1771]      a silent man, who drew and carried frothing measures to this
[1772]      room and to that, shoulder to shoulder with his waiting-
[1773]      maids--a stately slowness, however, entering into his
[1774]      ministrations by contrast with theirs, as became one whose
[1775]      service was somewhat optional. It would have been
[1776]      altogether optional but for the orders of the landlady, a
[1777]      person who sat in the bar, corporeally motionless, but with
[1778]      a flitting eye and quick ear, with which she observed and
[1779]      heard through the open door and hatchway the pressing needs
[1780]      of customers whom her husband overlooked though close at
[1781]      hand. Elizabeth and her mother were passively accepted as
[1782]      sojourners, and shown to a small bedroom under one of the
[1783]      gables, where they sat down.
[1784]      
[1785]      The principle of the inn seemed to be to compensate for the
[1786]      antique awkwardness, crookedness, and obscurity of the
[1787]      passages, floors, and windows, by quantities of clean linen
[1788]      spread about everywhere, and this had a dazzling effect upon
[1789]      the travellers.
[1790]      
[1791]      "'Tis too good for us--we can't meet it!" said the elder
[1792]      woman, looking round the apartment with misgiving as soon as
[1793]      they were left alone.
[1794]      
[1795]      "I fear it is, too," said Elizabeth. "But we must be
[1796]      respectable."
[1797]      
[1798]      "We must pay our way even before we must be respectable,"
[1799]      replied her mother. "Mr. Henchard is too high for us to
[1800]      make ourselves known to him, I much fear; so we've only our
[1801]      own pockets to depend on."
[1802]      
[1803]      "I know what I'll do," said Elizabeth-Jane after an interval
[1804]      of waiting, during which their needs seemed quite forgotten
[1805]      under the press of business below. And leaving the room,
[1806]      she descended the stairs and penetrated to the bar.
[1807]      
[1808]      If there was one good thing more than another which
[1809]      characterized this single-hearted girl it was a willingness
[1810]      to sacrifice her personal comfort and dignity to the common
[1811]      weal.
[1812]      
[1813]      "As you seem busy here to-night, and mother's not well off,
[1814]      might I take out part of our accommodation by helping?" she
[1815]      asked of the landlady.
[1816]      
[1817]      The latter, who remained as fixed in the arm-chair as if she
[1818]      had been melted into it when in a liquid state, and could
[1819]      not now be unstuck, looked the girl up and down inquiringly,
[1820]      with her hands on the chair-arms. Such arrangements as the
[1821]      one Elizabeth proposed were not uncommon in country
[1822]      villages; but, though Casterbridge was old-fashioned, the
[1823]      custom was well-nigh obsolete here. The mistress of the
[1824]      house, however, was an easy woman to strangers, and she made
[1825]      no objection. Thereupon Elizabeth, being instructed by nods
[1826]      and motions from the taciturn landlord as to where she could
[1827]      find the different things, trotted up and down stairs with
[1828]      materials for her own and her parent's meal.
[1829]      
[1830]      While she was doing this the wood partition in the centre of
[1831]      the house thrilled to its centre with the tugging of a bell-
[1832]      pull upstairs. A bell below tinkled a note that was feebler
[1833]      in sound than the twanging of wires and cranks that had
[1834]      produced it.
[1835]      
[1836]      "'Tis the Scotch gentleman," said the landlady omnisciently;
[1837]      and turning her eyes to Elizabeth, "Now then, can you go and
[1838]      see if his supper is on the tray? If it is you can take it
[1839]      up to him. The front room over this."
[1840]      
[1841]      Elizabeth-Jane, though hungry, willingly postponed serving
[1842]      herself awhile, and applied to the cook in the kitchen
[1843]      whence she brought forth the tray of supper viands, and
[1844]      proceeded with it upstairs to the apartment indicated. The
[1845]      accommodation of the Three Mariners was far from spacious,
[1846]      despite the fair area of ground it covered. The room
[1847]      demanded by intrusive beams and rafters, partitions,
[1848]      passages, staircases, disused ovens, settles, and four-
[1849]      posters, left comparatively small quarters for human beings.
[1850]      Moreover, this being at a time before home-brewing was
[1851]      abandoned by the smaller victuallers, and a house in which
[1852]      the twelve-bushel strength was still religiously adhered to
[1853]      by the landlord in his ale, the quality of the liquor was
[1854]      the chief attraction of the premises, so that everything had
[1855]      to make way for utensils and operations in connection
[1856]      therewith. Thus Elizabeth found that the Scotchman was
[1857]      located in a room quite close to the small one that had been
[1858]      allotted to herself and her mother.
[1859]      
[1860]      When she entered nobody was present but the young man
[1861]      himself--the same whom she had seen lingering without the
[1862]      windows of the King's Arms Hotel. He was now idly reading a
[1863]      copy of the local paper, and was hardly conscious of her
[1864]      entry, so that she looked at him quite coolly, and saw how
[1865]      his forehead shone where the light caught it, and how nicely
[1866]      his hair was cut, and the sort of velvet-pile or down that
[1867]      was on the skin at the back of his neck, and how his cheek
[1868]      was so truly curved as to be part of a globe, and how
[1869]      clearly drawn were the lids and lashes which hid his bent
[1870]      eyes.
[1871]      
[1872]      She set down the tray, spread his supper, and went away
[1873]      without a word. On her arrival below the landlady, who was
[1874]      as kind as she was fat and lazy, saw that Elizabeth-Jane was
[1875]      rather tired, though in her earnestness to be useful she was
[1876]      waiving her own needs altogether. Mrs. Stannidge thereupon
[1877]      said with a considerate peremptoriness that she and her
[1878]      mother had better take their own suppers if they meant to
[1879]      have any.
[1880]      
[1881]      Elizabeth fetched their simple provisions, as she had
[1882]      fetched the Scotchman's, and went up to the little chamber
[1883]      where she had left her mother, noiselessly pushing open the
[1884]      door with the edge of the tray. To her surprise her mother,
[1885]      instead of being reclined on the bed where she had left her
[1886]      was in an erect position, with lips parted. At Elizabeth's
[1887]      entry she lifted her finger.
[1888]      
[1889]      The meaning of this was soon apparent. The room allotted to
[1890]      the two women had at one time served as a dressing-room to
[1891]      the Scotchman's chamber, as was evidenced by signs of a door
[1892]      of communication between them--now screwed up and pasted
[1893]      over with the wall paper. But, as is frequently the case
[1894]      with hotels of far higher pretensions than the Three
[1895]      Mariners, every word spoken in either of these rooms was
[1896]      distinctly audible in the other. Such sounds came through
[1897]      now.
[1898]      
[1899]      Thus silently conjured Elizabeth deposited the tray, and her
[1900]      mother whispered as she drew near, "'Tis he."
[1901]      
[1902]      "Who?" said the girl.
[1903]      
[1904]      "The Mayor."
[1905]      
[1906]      The tremors in Susan Henchard's tone might have led any
[1907]      person but one so perfectly unsuspicious of the truth as the
[1908]      girl was, to surmise some closer connection than the
[1909]      admitted simple kinship as a means of accounting for them.
[1910]      
[1911]      Two men were indeed talking in the adjoining chamber, the
[1912]      young Scotchman and Henchard, who, having entered the inn
[1913]      while Elizabeth-Jane was in the kitchen waiting for the
[1914]      supper, had been deferentially conducted upstairs by host
[1915]      Stannidge himself. The girl noiselessly laid out their
[1916]      little meal, and beckoned to her mother to join her, which
[1917]      Mrs. Henchard mechanically did, her attention being fixed on
[1918]      the conversation through the door.
[1919]      
[1920]      "I merely strolled in on my way home to ask you a question
[1921]      about something that has excited my curiosity," said the
[1922]      Mayor, with careless geniality. "But I see you have not
[1923]      finished supper."
[1924]      
[1925]      "Ay, but I will be done in a little! Ye needn't go, sir.
[1926]      Take a seat. I've almost done, and it makes no difference
[1927]      at all."
[1928]      
[1929]      Henchard seemed to take the seat offered, and in a moment he
[1930]      resumed: "Well, first I should ask, did you write this?" A
[1931]      rustling of paper followed.
[1932]      
[1933]      "Yes, I did," said the Scotchman.
[1934]      
[1935]      "Then," said Henchard, "I am under the impression that we
[1936]      have met by accident while waiting for the morning to keep
[1937]      an appointment with each other? My name is Henchard, ha'n't
[1938]      you replied to an advertisement for a corn-factor's manager
[1939]      that I put into the paper--ha'n't you come here to see me
[1940]      about it?"
[1941]      
[1942]      "No," said the Scotchman, with some surprise.
[1943]      
[1944]      "Surely you are the man," went on Henchard insistingly, "who
[1945]      arranged to come and see me? Joshua, Joshua, Jipp--Jopp--
[1946]      what was his name?"
[1947]      
[1948]      "You're wrong!" said the young man. "My name is Donald
[1949]      Farfrae. It is true I am in the corren trade--but I have
[1950]      replied to no advertisement, and arranged to see no one. I
[1951]      am on my way to Bristol--from there to the other side of the
[1952]      warrld, to try my fortune in the great wheat-growing
[1953]      districts of the West! I have some inventions useful to the
[1954]      trade, and there is no scope for developing them heere."
[1955]      
[1956]      "To America--well, well," said Henchard, in a tone of
[1957]      disappointment, so strong as to make itself felt like a damp
[1958]      atmosphere. "And yet I could have sworn you were the man!"
[1959]      
[1960]      The Scotchman murmured another negative, and there was a
[1961]      silence, till Henchard resumed: "Then I am truly and
[1962]      sincerely obliged to you for the few words you wrote on that
[1963]      paper."
[1964]      
[1965]      "It was nothing, sir."
[1966]      
[1967]      "Well, it has a great importance for me just now. This row
[1968]      about my grown wheat, which I declare to Heaven I didn't
[1969]      know to be bad till the people came complaining, has put me
[1970]      to my wits' end. I've some hundreds of quarters of it on
[1971]      hand; and if your renovating process will make it wholesome,
[1972]      why, you can see what a quag 'twould get me out of. I saw
[1973]      in a moment there might be truth in it. But I should like
[1974]      to have it proved; and of course you don't care to tell the
[1975]      steps of the process sufficiently for me to do that, without
[1976]      my paying ye well for't first."
[1977]      
[1978]      The young man reflected a moment or two. "I don't know that
[1979]      I have any objection," he said. "I'm going to another
[1980]      country, and curing bad corn is not the line I'll take up
[1981]      there. Yes, I'll tell ye the whole of it--you'll make more
[1982]      out of it heere than I will in a foreign country. Just look
[1983]      heere a minute, sir. I can show ye by a sample in my
[1984]      carpet-bag."
[1985]      
[1986]      The click of a lock followed, and there was a sifting and
[1987]      rustling; then a discussion about so many ounces to the
[1988]      bushel, and drying, and refrigerating, and so on.
[1989]      
[1990]      "These few grains will be sufficient to show ye with," came
[1991]      in the young fellow's voice; and after a pause, during which
[1992]      some operation seemed to be intently watched by them both,
[1993]      he exclaimed, "There, now, do you taste that."
[1994]      
[1995]      "It's complete!--quite restored, or--well--nearly."
[1996]      
[1997]      "Quite enough restored to make good seconds out of it," said
[1998]      the Scotchman. "To fetch it back entirely is impossible;
[1999]      Nature won't stand so much as that, but heere you go a great
[2000]      way towards it. Well, sir, that's the process, I don't
[2001]      value it, for it can be but of little use in countries where
[2002]      the weather is more settled than in ours; and I'll be only
[2003]      too glad if it's of service to you."
[2004]      
[2005]      "But hearken to me," pleaded Henchard. "My business you
[2006]      know, is in corn and in hay, but I was brought up as a hay-
[2007]      trusser simply, and hay is what I understand best though I
[2008]      now do more in corn than in the other. If you'll accept the
[2009]      place, you shall manage the corn branch entirely, and
[2010]      receive a commission in addition to salary."
[2011]      
[2012]      "You're liberal--very liberal, but no, no--I cannet!" the
[2013]      young man still replied, with some distress in his accents.
[2014]      
[2015]      "So be it!" said Henchard conclusively. "Now--to change the
[2016]      subject--one good turn deserves another; don't stay to
[2017]      finish that miserable supper. Come to my house, I can find
[2018]      something better for 'ee than cold ham and ale."
[2019]      
[2020]      Donald Farfrae was grateful--said he feared he must decline--
[2021]      that he wished to leave early next day.
[2022]      
[2023]      "Very well," said Henchard quickly, "please yourself. But I
[2024]      tell you, young man, if this holds good for the bulk, as it
[2025]      has done for the sample, you have saved my credit, stranger
[2026]      though you be. What shall I pay you for this knowledge?"
[2027]      
[2028]      "Nothing at all, nothing at all. It may not prove necessary
[2029]      to ye to use it often, and I don't value it at all. I
[2030]      thought I might just as well let ye know, as you were in a
[2031]      difficulty, and they were harrd upon ye."
[2032]      
[2033]      Henchard paused. "I shan't soon forget this," he said.
[2034]      "And from a stranger!...I couldn't believe you were not the
[2035]      man I had engaged! Says I to myself, 'He knows who I am, and
[2036]      recommends himself by this stroke.' And yet it turns out,
[2037]      after all, that you are not the man who answered my
[2038]      advertisement, but a stranger!"
[2039]      
[2040]      "Ay, ay; that's so," said the young man.
[2041]      
[2042]      Henchard again suspended his words, and then his voice came
[2043]      thoughtfully: "Your forehead, Farfrae, is something like my
[2044]      poor brother's--now dead and gone; and the nose, too, isn't
[2045]      unlike his. You must be, what--five foot nine, I reckon? I
[2046]      am six foot one and a half out of my shoes. But what of
[2047]      that? In my business, 'tis true that strength and bustle
[2048]      build up a firm. But judgment and knowledge are what keep
[2049]      it established. Unluckily, I am bad at science, Farfrae;
[2050]      bad at figures--a rule o' thumb sort of man. You are just
[2051]      the reverse--I can see that. I have been looking for such
[2052]      as you these two year, and yet you are not for me. Well,
[2053]      before I go, let me ask this: Though you are not the young
[2054]      man I thought you were, what's the difference? Can't ye stay
[2055]      just the same? Have you really made up your mind about this
[2056]      American notion? I won't mince matters. I feel you would be
[2057]      invaluable to me--that needn't be said--and if you will bide
[2058]      and be my manager, I will make it worth your while."
[2059]      
[2060]      "My plans are fixed," said the young man, in negative tones.
[2061]      "I have formed a scheme, and so we need na say any more
[2062]      about it. But will you not drink with me, sir? I find this
[2063]      Casterbridge ale warreming to the stomach."
[2064]      
[2065]      "No, no; I fain would, but I can't," said Henchard gravely,
[2066]      the scraping of his chair informing the listeners that he
[2067]      was rising to leave. "When I was a young man I went in for
[2068]      that sort of thing too strong--far too strong--and was well-
[2069]      nigh ruined by it! I did a deed on account of it which I
[2070]      shall be ashamed of to my dying day. It made such an
[2071]      impression on me that I swore, there and then, that I'd
[2072]      drink nothing stronger than tea for as many years as I was
[2073]      old that day. I have kept my oath; and though, Farfrae, I
[2074]      am sometimes that dry in the dog days that I could drink a
[2075]      quarter-barrel to the pitching, I think o' my oath, and
[2076]      touch no strong drink at all."
[2077]      
[2078]      "I'll no' press ye, sir--I'll no' press ye. I respect your
[2079]      vow.
[2080]      
[2081]      "Well, I shall get a manager somewhere, no doubt," said
[2082]      Henchard, with strong feeling in his tones. "But it will be
[2083]      long before I see one that would suit me so well!"
[2084]      
[2085]      The young man appeared much moved by Henchard's warm
[2086]      convictions of his value. He was silent till they reached
[2087]      the door. "I wish I could stay--sincerely I would like to,"
[2088]      he replied. "But no--it cannet be! it cannet! I want to see
[2089]      the warrld."
[2090]      
[2091]      
[2092]      
[2093]      8.
[2094]      
[2095]      
[2096]      Thus they parted; and Elizabeth-Jane and her mother remained
[2097]      each in her thoughts over their meal, the mother's face
[2098]      being strangely bright since Henchard's avowal of shame for
[2099]      a past action. The quivering of the partition to its core
[2100]      presented denoted that Donald Farfrae had again rung his
[2101]      bell, no doubt to have his supper removed; for humming a
[2102]      tune, and walking up and down, he seemed to be attracted by
[2103]      the lively bursts of conversation and melody from the
[2104]      general company below. He sauntered out upon the landing,
[2105]      and descended the staircase.
[2106]      
[2107]      When Elizabeth-Jane had carried down his supper tray, and
[2108]      also that used by her mother and herself, she found the
[2109]      bustle of serving to be at its height below, as it always
[2110]      was at this hour. The young woman shrank from having
[2111]      anything to do with the ground-floor serving, and crept
[2112]      silently about observing the scene--so new to her, fresh
[2113]      from the seclusion of a seaside cottage. In the general
[2114]      sitting-room, which was large, she remarked the two or three
[2115]      dozen strong-backed chairs that stood round against the
[2116]      wall, each fitted with its genial occupant; the sanded
[2117]      floor; the black settle which, projecting endwise from the
[2118]      wall within the door, permitted Elizabeth to be a spectator
[2119]      of all that went on without herself being particularly seen.
[2120]      
[2121]      The young Scotchman had just joined the guests. These, in
[2122]      addition to the respectable master-tradesmen occupying the
[2123]      seats of privileges in the bow-window and its neighbourhood,
[2124]      included an inferior set at the unlighted end, whose seats
[2125]      were mere benches against the wall, and who drank from cups
[2126]      instead of from glasses. Among the latter she noticed some
[2127]      of those personages who had stood outside the windows of the
[2128]      King's Arms.
[2129]      
[2130]      Behind their backs was a small window, with a wheel
[2131]      ventilator in one of the panes, which would suddenly start
[2132]      off spinning with a jingling sound, as suddenly stop, and as
[2133]      suddenly start again.
[2134]      
[2135]      While thus furtively making her survey the opening words of
[2136]      a song greeted her ears from the front of the settle, in a
[2137]      melody and accent of peculiar charm. There had been some
[2138]      singing before she came down; and now the Scotchman had made
[2139]      himself so soon at home that, at the request of some of the
[2140]      master-tradesmen, he, too, was favouring the room with a
[2141]      ditty.
[2142]      
[2143]      Elizabeth-Jane was fond of music; she could not help pausing
[2144]      to listen; and the longer she listened the more she was
[2145]      enraptured. She had never heard any singing like this and
[2146]      it was evident that the majority of the audience had not
[2147]      heard such frequently, for they were attentive to a much
[2148]      greater degree than usual. They neither whispered, nor
[2149]      drank, nor dipped their pipe-stems in their ale to moisten
[2150]      them, nor pushed the mug to their neighbours. The singer
[2151]      himself grew emotional, till she could imagine a tear in his
[2152]      eye as the words went on:--
[2153]      
[2154]      
[2155]        "It's hame, and it's hame, hame fain would I be,
[2156]         O hame, hame, hame to my ain countree!
[2157]         There's an eye that ever weeps, and a fair face will be fain,
[2158]         As I pass through Annan Water with my bonnie bands again;
[2159]         When the flower is in the bud, and the leaf upon the tree,
[2160]         The lark shall sing me hame to my ain countree!"
[2161]      
[2162]      
[2163]      There was a burst of applause, and a deep silence which was
[2164]      even more eloquent than the applause. It was of such a kind
[2165]      that the snapping of a pipe-stem too long for him by old
[2166]      Solomon Longways, who was one of those gathered at the shady
[2167]      end of the room, seemed a harsh and irreverent act. Then
[2168]      the ventilator in the window-pane spasmodically started off
[2169]      for a new spin, and the pathos of Donald's song was
[2170]      temporarily effaced.
[2171]      
[2172]      "'Twas not amiss--not at all amiss!" muttered Christopher
[2173]      Coney, who was also present. And removing his pipe a
[2174]      finger's breadth from his lips, he said aloud, "Draw on with
[2175]      the next verse, young gentleman, please."
[2176]      
[2177]      "Yes. Let's have it again, stranger," said the glazier, a
[2178]      stout, bucket-headed man, with a white apron rolled up round
[2179]      his waist. "Folks don't lift up their hearts like that in
[2180]      this part of the world." And turning aside, he said in
[2181]      undertones, "Who is the young man?--Scotch, d'ye say?"
[2182]      
[2183]      "Yes, straight from the mountains of Scotland, I believe,"
[2184]      replied Coney.
[2185]      
[2186]      Young Farfrae repeated the last verse. It was plain that
[2187]      nothing so pathetic had been heard at the Three Mariners for
[2188]      a considerable time. The difference of accent, the
[2189]      excitability of the singer, the intense local feeling, and
[2190]      the seriousness with which he worked himself up to a climax,
[2191]      surprised this set of worthies, who were only too prone to
[2192]      shut up their emotions with caustic words.
[2193]      
[2194]      "Danged if our country down here is worth singing about like
[2195]      that!" continued the glazier, as the Scotchman again
[2196]      melodized with a dying fall, "My ain countree!" "When you
[2197]      take away from among us the fools and the rogues, and the
[2198]      lammigers, and the wanton hussies, and the slatterns, and
[2199]      such like, there's cust few left to ornament a song with in
[2200]      Casterbridge, or the country round."
[2201]      
[2202]      "True," said Buzzford, the dealer, looking at the grain of
[2203]      the table. "Casterbridge is a old, hoary place o'
[2204]      wickedness, by all account. 'Tis recorded in history that
[2205]      we rebelled against the King one or two hundred years ago,
[2206]      in the time of the Romans, and that lots of us was hanged on
[2207]      Gallows Hill, and quartered, and our different jints sent
[2208]      about the country like butcher's meat; and for my part I can
[2209]      well believe it."
[2210]      
[2211]      "What did ye come away from yer own country for, young
[2212]      maister, if ye be so wownded about it?" inquired Christopher
[2213]      Coney, from the background, with the tone of a man who
[2214]      preferred the original subject. "Faith, it wasn't worth
[2215]      your while on our account, for as Maister Billy Wills says,
[2216]      we be bruckle folk here--the best o' us hardly honest
[2217]      sometimes, what with hard winters, and so many mouths to
[2218]      fill, and Goda'mighty sending his little taties so terrible
[2219]      small to fill 'em with. We don't think about flowers and
[2220]      fair faces, not we--except in the shape o' cauliflowers and
[2221]      pigs' chaps."
[2222]      
[2223]      "But, no!" said Donald Farfrae, gazing round into their
[2224]      faces with earnest concern; "the best of ye hardly honest--
[2225]      not that surely? None of ye has been stealing what didn't
[2226]      belong to him?"
[2227]      
[2228]      "Lord! no, no!" said Solomon Longways, smiling grimly.
[2229]      "That's only his random way o' speaking. 'A was always such
[2230]      a man of underthoughts." (And reprovingly towards
[2231]      Christopher): "Don't ye be so over-familiar with a gentleman
[2232]      that ye know nothing of--and that's travelled a'most from
[2233]      the North Pole."
[2234]      
[2235]      Christopher Coney was silenced, and as he could get no
[2236]      public sympathy, he mumbled his feelings to himself: "Be
[2237]      dazed, if I loved my country half as well as the young
[2238]      feller do, I'd live by claning my neighbour's pigsties afore
[2239]      I'd go away! For my part I've no more love for my country
[2240]      than I have for Botany Bay!"
[2241]      
[2242]      "Come," said Longways; "let the young man draw onward with
[2243]      his ballet, or we shall be here all night."
[2244]      
[2245]      "That's all of it," said the singer apologetically.
[2246]      
[2247]      "Soul of my body, then we'll have another!" said the general
[2248]      dealer.
[2249]      
[2250]      "Can you turn a strain to the ladies, sir?" inquired a fat
[2251]      woman with a figured purple apron, the waiststring of which
[2252]      was overhung so far by her sides as to be invisible.
[2253]      
[2254]      "Let him breathe--let him breathe, Mother Cuxsom. He hain't
[2255]      got his second wind yet," said the master glazier.
[2256]      
[2257]      "Oh yes, but I have!" exclaimed the young man; and he at
[2258]      once rendered "O Nannie" with faultless modulations, and
[2259]      another or two of the like sentiment, winding up at their
[2260]      earnest request with "Auld Lang Syne."
[2261]      
[2262]      By this time he had completely taken possession of the
[2263]      hearts of the Three Mariners' inmates, including even old
[2264]      Coney. Notwithstanding an occasional odd gravity which
[2265]      awoke their sense of the ludicrous for the moment, they
[2266]      began to view him through a golden haze which the tone of
[2267]      his mind seemed to raise around him. Casterbridge had
[2268]      sentiment--Casterbridge had romance; but this stranger's
[2269]      sentiment was of differing quality. Or rather, perhaps, the
[2270]      difference was mainly superficial; he was to them like the
[2271]      poet of a new school who takes his contemporaries by storm;
[2272]      who is not really new, but is the first to articulate what
[2273]      all his listeners have felt, though but dumbly till then.
[2274]      
[2275]      The silent landlord came and leant over the settle while the
[2276]      young man sang; and even Mrs. Stannidge managed to unstick
[2277]      herself from the framework of her chair in the bar and get
[2278]      as far as the door-post, which movement she accomplished by
[2279]      rolling herself round, as a cask is trundled on the chine by
[2280]      a drayman without losing much of its perpendicular.
[2281]      
[2282]      "And are you going to bide in Casterbridge, sir?" she asked.
[2283]      
[2284]      "Ah--no!" said the Scotchman, with melancholy fatality in
[2285]      his voice, "I'm only passing thirrough! I am on my way to
[2286]      Bristol, and on frae there to foreign parts."
[2287]      
[2288]      "We be truly sorry to hear it," said Solomon Longways. "We
[2289]      can ill afford to lose tuneful wynd-pipes like yours when
[2290]      they fall among us. And verily, to mak' acquaintance with a
[2291]      man a-come from so far, from the land o' perpetual snow, as
[2292]      we may say, where wolves and wild boars and other dangerous
[2293]      animalcules be as common as blackbirds here-about--why, 'tis
[2294]      a thing we can't do every day; and there's good sound
[2295]      information for bide-at-homes like we when such a man opens
[2296]      his mouth."
[2297]      
[2298]      "Nay, but ye mistake my country," said the young man,
[2299]      looking round upon them with tragic fixity, till his eye
[2300]      lighted up and his cheek kindled with a sudden enthusiasm to
[2301]      right their errors. "There are not perpetual snow and
[2302]      wolves at all in it!--except snow in winter, and--well--a
[2303]      little in summer just sometimes, and a 'gaberlunzie' or two
[2304]      stalking about here and there, if ye may call them
[2305]      dangerous. Eh, but you should take a summer jarreny to
[2306]      Edinboro', and Arthur's Seat, and all round there, and then
[2307]      go on to the lochs, and all the Highland scenery--in May and
[2308]      June--and you would never say 'tis the land of wolves and
[2309]      perpetual snow!"
[2310]      
[2311]      "Of course not--it stands to reason," said Buzzford. "'Tis
[2312]      barren ignorance that leads to such words. He's a simple
[2313]      home-spun man, that never was fit for good company--think
[2314]      nothing of him, sir."
[2315]      
[2316]      "And do ye carry your flock bed, and your quilt, and your
[2317]      crock, and your bit of chiney? or do ye go in bare bones, as
[2318]      I may say?" inquired Christopher Coney.
[2319]      
[2320]      "I've sent on my luggage--though it isn't much; for the
[2321]      voyage is long." Donald's eyes dropped into a remote gaze as
[2322]      he added: "But I said to myself, 'Never a one of the prizes
[2323]      of life will I come by unless I undertake it!' and I decided
[2324]      to go."
[2325]      
[2326]      A general sense of regret, in which Elizabeth-Jane shared
[2327]      not least, made itself apparent in the company. As she
[2328]      looked at Farfrae from the back of the settle she decided
[2329]      that his statements showed him to be no less thoughtful than
[2330]      his fascinating melodies revealed him to be cordial and
[2331]      impassioned. She admired the serious light in which he
[2332]      looked at serious things. He had seen no jest in
[2333]      ambiguities and roguery, as the Casterbridge toss-pots had
[2334]      done; and rightly not--there was none. She disliked those
[2335]      wretched humours of Christopher Coney and his tribe; and he
[2336]      did not appreciate them. He seemed to feel exactly as she
[2337]      felt about life and its surroundings--that they were a
[2338]      tragical rather than a comical thing; that though one could
[2339]      be gay on occasion, moments of gaiety were interludes, and
[2340]      no part of the actual drama. It was extraordinary how
[2341]      similar their views were.
[2342]      
[2343]      Though it was still early the young Scotchman expressed his
[2344]      wish to retire, whereupon the landlady whispered to
[2345]      Elizabeth to run upstairs and turn down his bed. She took a
[2346]      candlestick and proceeded on her mission, which was the act
[2347]      of a few moments only. When, candle in hand, she reached
[2348]      the top of the stairs on her way down again, Mr. Farfrae was
[2349]      at the foot coming up. She could not very well retreat;
[2350]      they met and passed in the turn of the staircase.
[2351]      
[2352]      She must have appeared interesting in some way--not-
[2353]      withstanding her plain dress--or rather, possibly, in
[2354]      consequence of it, for she was a girl characterized by
[2355]      earnestness and soberness of mien, with which simple drapery
[2356]      accorded well. Her face flushed, too, at the slight
[2357]      awkwardness of the meeting, and she passed him with her eyes
[2358]      bent on the candle-flame that she carried just below her
[2359]      nose. Thus it happened that when confronting her he smiled;
[2360]      and then, with the manner of a temporarily light-hearted
[2361]      man, who has started himself on a flight of song whose
[2362]      momentum he cannot readily check, he softly tuned an old
[2363]      ditty that she seemed to suggest--
[2364]      
[2365]      
[2366]          "As I came in by my bower door,
[2367]             As day was waxin' wearie,
[2368]          Oh wha came tripping down the stair
[2369]             But bonnie Peg my dearie."
[2370]      
[2371]      
[2372]      Elizabeth-Jane, rather disconcerted, hastened on; and the
[2373]      Scotchman's voice died away, humming more of the same within
[2374]      the closed door of his room.
[2375]      
[2376]      Here the scene and sentiment ended for the present. When
[2377]      soon after, the girl rejoined her mother, the latter was
[2378]      still in thought--on quite another matter than a young man's
[2379]      song.
[2380]      
[2381]      "We've made a mistake," she whispered (that the Scotch-man
[2382]      might not overhear). "On no account ought ye to have helped
[2383]      serve here to-night. Not because of ourselves, but for the
[2384]      sake of him. If he should befriend us, and take us up, and
[2385]      then find out what you did when staying here, 'twould grieve
[2386]      and wound his natural pride as Mayor of the town."
[2387]      
[2388]      Elizabeth, who would perhaps have been more alarmed at this
[2389]      than her mother had she known the real relationship, was not
[2390]      much disturbed about it as things stood. Her "he" was
[2391]      another man than her poor mother's. "For myself," she said,
[2392]      "I didn't at all mind waiting a little upon him. He's so
[2393]      respectable, and educated--far above the rest of 'em in the
[2394]      inn. They thought him very simple not to know their grim
[2395]      broad way of talking about themselves here. But of course
[2396]      he didn't know--he was too refined in his mind to know such
[2397]      things!" Thus she earnestly pleaded.
[2398]      
[2399]      Meanwhile, the "he" of her mother was not so far away as
[2400]      even they thought. After leaving the Three Mariners he had
[2401]      sauntered up and down the empty High Street, passing and
[2402]      repassing the inn in his promenade. When the Scotchman sang
[2403]      his voice had reached Henchard's ears through the heart-
[2404]      shaped holes in the window-shutters, and had led him to
[2405]      pause outside them a long while.
[2406]      
[2407]      "To be sure, to be sure, how that fellow does draw me!" he
[2408]      had said to himself. "I suppose 'tis because I'm so lonely.
[2409]      I'd have given him a third share in the business to have
[2410]      stayed!"
[2411]      
[2412]      
[2413]      
[2414]      9.
[2415]      
[2416]      
[2417]      When Elizabeth-Jane opened the hinged casement next morning
[2418]      the mellow air brought in the feel of imminent autumn almost
[2419]      as distinctly as if she had been in the remotest hamlet.
[2420]      Casterbridge was the complement of the rural life around,
[2421]      not its urban opposite. Bees and butterflies in the
[2422]      cornfields at the top of the town, who desired to get to the
[2423]      meads at the bottom, took no circuitous course, but flew
[2424]      straight down High Street without any apparent consciousness
[2425]      that they were traversing strange latitudes. And in autumn
[2426]      airy spheres of thistledown floated into the same street,
[2427]      lodged upon the shop fronts, blew into drains, and
[2428]      innumerable tawny and yellow leaves skimmed along the
[2429]      pavement, and stole through people's doorways into their
[2430]      passages with a hesitating scratch on the floor, like the
[2431]      skirts of timid visitors.
[2432]      
[2433]      Hearing voices, one of which was close at hand, she withdrew
[2434]      her head and glanced from behind the window-curtains. Mr.
[2435]      Henchard--now habited no longer as a great personage, but as
[2436]      a thriving man of business--was pausing on his way up the
[2437]      middle of the street, and the Scotchman was looking from the
[2438]      window adjoining her own. Henchard it appeared, had gone a
[2439]      little way past the inn before he had noticed his
[2440]      acquaintance of the previous evening. He came back a few
[2441]      steps, Donald Farfrae opening the window further.
[2442]      
[2443]      "And you are off soon, I suppose?" said Henchard upwards.
[2444]      
[2445]      "Yes--almost this moment, sir," said the other. "Maybe I'll
[2446]      walk on till the coach makes up on me."
[2447]      
[2448]      "Which way?"
[2449]      
[2450]      "The way ye are going."
[2451]      
[2452]      "Then shall we walk together to the top o' town?"
[2453]      
[2454]      "If ye'll wait a minute," said the Scotchman.
[2455]      
[2456]      In a few minutes the latter emerged, bag in hand. Henchard
[2457]      looked at the bag as at an enemy. It showed there was no
[2458]      mistake about the young man's departure. "Ah, my lad," he
[2459]      said, "you should have been a wise man, and have stayed with
[2460]      me."
[2461]      
[2462]      "Yes, yes--it might have been wiser," said Donald, looking
[2463]      microscopically at the houses that were furthest off. "It
[2464]      is only telling ye the truth when I say my plans are vague."
[2465]      
[2466]      They had by this time passed on from the precincts of the
[2467]      inn, and Elizabeth-Jane heard no more. She saw that they
[2468]      continued in conversation, Henchard turning to the other
[2469]      occasionally, and emphasizing some remark with a gesture.
[2470]      Thus they passed the King's Arms Hotel, the Market House,
[2471]      St. Peter's churchyard wall, ascending to the upper end of
[2472]      the long street till they were small as two grains of corn;
[2473]      when they bent suddenly to the right into the Bristol Road,
[2474]      and were out of view.
[2475]      
[2476]      "He was a good man--and he's gone," she said to herself. "I
[2477]      was nothing to him, and there was no reason why he should
[2478]      have wished me good-bye."
[2479]      
[2480]      The simple thought, with its latent sense of slight, had
[2481]      moulded itself out of the following little fact: when the
[2482]      Scotchman came out at the door he had by accident glanced up
[2483]      at her; and then he had looked away again without nodding,
[2484]      or smiling, or saying a word.
[2485]      
[2486]      "You are still thinking, mother," she said, when she turned
[2487]      inwards.
[2488]      
[2489]      "Yes; I am thinking of Mr. Henchard's sudden liking for that
[2490]      young man. He was always so. Now, surely, if he takes so
[2491]      warmly to people who are not related to him at all, may he
[2492]      not take as warmly to his own kin?"
[2493]      
[2494]      While they debated this question a procession of five large
[2495]      waggons went past, laden with hay up to the bedroom windows.
[2496]      They came in from the country, and the steaming horses had
[2497]      probably been travelling a great part of the night. To the
[2498]      shaft of each hung a little board, on which was painted in
[2499]      white letters, "Henchard, corn-factor and hay-merchant." The
[2500]      spectacle renewed his wife's conviction that, for her
[2501]      daughter's sake, she should strain a point to rejoin him.
[2502]      
[2503]      The discussion was continued during breakfast, and the end
[2504]      of it was that Mrs. Henchard decided, for good or for ill,
[2505]      to send Elizabeth-Jane with a message to Henchard, to the
[2506]      effect that his relative Susan, a sailor's widow, was in the
[2507]      town; leaving it to him to say whether or not he would
[2508]      recognize her. What had brought her to this determination
[2509]      were chiefly two things. He had been described as a lonely
[2510]      widower; and he had expressed shame for a past transaction
[2511]      of his life. There was promise in both.
[2512]      
[2513]      "If he says no," she enjoined, as Elizabeth-Jane stood,
[2514]      bonnet on, ready to depart; "if he thinks it does not become
[2515]      the good position he has reached to in the town, to own--to
[2516]      let us call on him as--his distant kinfolk, say, 'Then, sir,
[2517]      we would rather not intrude; we will leave Casterbridge as
[2518]      quietly as we have come, and go back to our own
[2519]      country.'...I almost feel that I would rather he did say so,
[2520]      as I have not seen him for so many years, and we are so--
[2521]      little allied to him!"
[2522]      
[2523]      "And if he say yes?" inquired the more sanguine one.
[2524]      
[2525]      "In that case," answered Mrs. Henchard cautiously, "ask him
[2526]      to write me a note, saying when and how he will see us--or ME."
[2527]      
[2528]      Elizabeth-Jane went a few steps towards the landing. "And
[2529]      tell him," continued her mother, "that I fully know I have
[2530]      no claim upon him--that I am glad to find he is thriving;
[2531]      that I hope his life may be long and happy--there, go." Thus
[2532]      with a half-hearted willingness, a smothered reluctance, did
[2533]      the poor forgiving woman start her unconscious daughter on
[2534]      this errand.
[2535]      
[2536]      It was about ten o'clock, and market-day, when Elizabeth
[2537]      paced up the High Street, in no great hurry; for to herself
[2538]      her position was only that of a poor relation deputed to
[2539]      hunt up a rich one. The front doors of the private houses
[2540]      were mostly left open at this warm autumn time, no thought
[2541]      of umbrella stealers disturbing the minds of the placid
[2542]      burgesses. Hence, through the long, straight, entrance
[2543]      passages thus unclosed could be seen, as through tunnels,
[2544]      the mossy gardens at the back, glowing with nasturtiums,
[2545]      fuchsias, scarlet geraniums, "bloody warriors," snapdragons,
[2546]      and dahlias, this floral blaze being backed by crusted grey
[2547]      stone-work remaining from a yet remoter Casterbridge than
[2548]      the venerable one visible in the street. The old-fashioned
[2549]      fronts of these houses, which had older than old-fashioned
[2550]      backs, rose sheer from the pavement, into which the bow
[2551]      windows protruded like bastions, necessitating a pleasing
[2552]      chassez-dechassez movement to the time-pressed pedestrian
[2553]      at every few yards. He was bound also to evolve other
[2554]      Terpsichorean figures in respect of door-steps, scrapers,
[2555]      cellar-hatches, church buttresses, and the overhanging
[2556]      angles of walls which, originally unobtrusive, had become
[2557]      bow-legged and knock-kneed.
[2558]      
[2559]      In addition to these fixed obstacles which spoke so
[2560]      cheerfully of individual unrestraint as to boundaries,
[2561]      movables occupied the path and roadway to a perplexing
[2562]      extent. First the vans of the carriers in and out of
[2563]      Casterbridge, who hailed from Mellstock, Weatherbury, The
[2564]      Hintocks, Sherton-Abbas, Kingsbere, Overcombe, and many
[2565]      other towns and villages round. Their owners were numerous
[2566]      enough to be regarded as a tribe, and had almost
[2567]      distinctiveness enough to be regarded as a race. Their vans
[2568]      had just arrived, and were drawn up on each side of the
[2569]      street in close file, so as to form at places a wall between
[2570]      the pavement and the roadway. Moreover every shop pitched
[2571]      out half its contents upon trestles and boxes on the kerb,
[2572]      extending the display each week a little further and further
[2573]      into the roadway, despite the expostulations of the two
[2574]      feeble old constables, until there remained but a tortuous
[2575]      defile for carriages down the centre of the street, which
[2576]      afforded fine opportunities for skill with the reins. Over
[2577]      the pavement on the sunny side of the way hung shopblinds so
[2578]      constructed as to give the passenger's hat a smart buffet
[2579]      off his head, as from the unseen hands of Cranstoun's Goblin
[2580]      Page, celebrated in romantic lore.
[2581]      
[2582]      Horses for sale were tied in rows, their forelegs on the
[2583]      pavement, their hind legs in the street, in which position
[2584]      they occasionally nipped little boys by the shoulder who
[2585]      were passing to school. And any inviting recess in front of
[2586]      a house that had been modestly kept back from the general
[2587]      line was utilized by pig-dealers as a pen for their stock.
[2588]      
[2589]      The yeomen, farmers, dairymen, and townsfolk, who came to
[2590]      transact business in these ancient streets, spoke in other
[2591]      ways than by articulation. Not to hear the words of your
[2592]      interlocutor in metropolitan centres is to know nothing of
[2593]      his meaning. Here the face, the arms, the hat, the stick,
[2594]      the body throughout spoke equally with the tongue. To
[2595]      express satisfaction the Casterbridge market-man added to
[2596]      his utterance a broadening of the cheeks, a crevicing of the
[2597]      eyes, a throwing back of the shoulders, which was
[2598]      intelligible from the other end of the street. If he
[2599]      wondered, though all Henchard's carts and waggons were
[2600]      rattling past him, you knew it from perceiving the inside of
[2601]      his crimson mouth, and a target-like circling of his eyes.
[2602]      Deliberation caused sundry attacks on the moss of adjoining
[2603]      walls with the end of his stick, a change of his hat from
[2604]      the horizontal to the less so; a sense of tediousness
[2605]      announced itself in a lowering of the person by spreading
[2606]      the knees to a lozenge-shaped aperture and contorting the
[2607]      arms. Chicanery, subterfuge, had hardly a place in the
[2608]      streets of this honest borough to all appearance; and it was
[2609]      said that the lawyers in the Court House hard by
[2610]      occasionally threw in strong arguments for the other side
[2611]      out of pure generosity (though apparently by mischance) when
[2612]      advancing their own.
[2613]      
[2614]      Thus Casterbridge was in most respects but the pole, focus,
[2615]      or nerve-knot of the surrounding country life; differing
[2616]      from the many manufacturing towns which are as foreign
[2617]      bodies set down, like boulders on a plain, in a green world
[2618]      with which they have nothing in common. Casterbridge lived
[2619]      by agriculture at one remove further from the fountainhead
[2620]      than the adjoining villages--no more. The townsfolk
[2621]      understood every fluctuation in the rustic's condition, for
[2622]      it affected their receipts as much as the labourer's; they
[2623]      entered into the troubles and joys which moved the
[2624]      aristocratic families ten miles round--for the same reason.
[2625]      And even at the dinner-parties of the professional families
[2626]      the subjects of discussion were corn, cattle-disease, sowing
[2627]      and reaping, fencing and planting; while politics were
[2628]      viewed by them less from their own standpoint of burgesses
[2629]      with rights and privileges than from the standpoint of their
[2630]      country neighbours.
[2631]      
[2632]      All the venerable contrivances and confusions which
[2633]      delighted the eye by their quaintness, and in a measure
[2634]      reasonableness, in this rare old market-town, were
[2635]      metropolitan novelties to the unpractised eyes of Elizabeth-
[2636]      Jane, fresh from netting fish-seines in a seaside cottage.
[2637]      Very little inquiry was necessary to guide her footsteps.
[2638]      Henchard's house was one of the best, faced with dull red-
[2639]      and-grey old brick. The front door was open, and, as in
[2640]      other houses, she could see through the passage to the end
[2641]      of the garden--nearly a quarter of a mile off.
[2642]      
[2643]      Mr. Henchard was not in the house, but in the store-yard.
[2644]      She was conducted into the mossy garden, and through a door
[2645]      in the wall, which was studded with rusty nails speaking of
[2646]      generations of fruit-trees that had been trained there. The
[2647]      door opened upon the yard, and here she was left to find him
[2648]      as she could. It was a place flanked by hay-barns, into
[2649]      which tons of fodder, all in trusses, were being packed from
[2650]      the waggons she had seen pass the inn that morning. On
[2651]      other sides of the yard were wooden granaries on stone
[2652]      staddles, to which access was given by Flemish ladders, and
[2653]      a store-house several floors high. Wherever the doors of
[2654]      these places were open, a closely packed throng of bursting
[2655]      wheat-sacks could be seen standing inside, with the air of
[2656]      awaiting a famine that would not come.
[2657]      
[2658]      She wandered about this place, uncomfortably conscious of
[2659]      the impending interview, till she was quite weary of
[2660]      searching; she ventured to inquire of a boy in what quarter
[2661]      Mr. Henchard could be found. He directed her to an office
[2662]      which she had not seen before, and knocking at the door she
[2663]      was answered by a cry of "Come in."
[2664]      
[2665]      Elizabeth turned the handle; and there stood before her,
[2666]      bending over some sample-bags on a table, not the corn-
[2667]      merchant, but the young Scotchman Mr. Farfrae--in the act of
[2668]      pouring some grains of wheat from one hand to the other.
[2669]      His hat hung on a peg behind him, and the roses of his
[2670]      carpet-bag glowed from the corner of the room.
[2671]      
[2672]      Having toned her feelings and arranged words on her lips for
[2673]      Mr. Henchard, and for him alone, she was for the moment
[2674]      confounded.
[2675]      
[2676]      "Yes, what it is?" said the Scotchman, like a man who
[2677]      permanently ruled there.
[2678]      
[2679]      She said she wanted to see Mr. Henchard.
[2680]      
[2681]      "Ah, yes; will you wait a minute? He's engaged just now,"
[2682]      said the young man, apparently not recognizing her as the
[2683]      girl at the inn. He handed her a chair, bade her sit down
[2684]      and turned to his sample-bags again. While Elizabeth-Jane
[2685]      sits waiting in great amaze at the young man's presence we
[2686]      may briefly explain how he came there.
[2687]      
[2688]      When the two new acquaintances had passed out of sight that
[2689]      morning towards the Bath and Bristol road they went on
[2690]      silently, except for a few commonplaces, till they had gone
[2691]      down an avenue on the town walls called the Chalk Walk,
[2692]      leading to an angle where the North and West escarpments
[2693]      met. From this high corner of the square earthworks a vast
[2694]      extent of country could be seen. A footpath ran steeply
[2695]      down the green slope, conducting from the shady promenade on
[2696]      the walls to a road at the bottom of the scarp. It was by
[2697]      this path the Scotchman had to descend.
[2698]      
[2699]      "Well, here's success to 'ee," said Henchard, holding out
[2700]      his right hand and leaning with his left upon the wicket
[2701]      which protected the descent. In the act there was the
[2702]      inelegance of one whose feelings are nipped and wishes
[2703]      defeated. "I shall often think of this time, and of how you
[2704]      came at the very moment to throw a light upon my
[2705]      difficulty."
[2706]      
[2707]      Still holding the young man's hand he paused, and then added
[2708]      deliberately: "Now I am not the man to let a cause be lost
[2709]      for want of a word. And before ye are gone for ever I'll
[2710]      speak. Once more, will ye stay? There it is, flat and
[2711]      plain. You can see that it isn't all selfishness that makes
[2712]      me press 'ee; for my business is not quite so scientific as
[2713]      to require an intellect entirely out of the common. Others
[2714]      would do for the place without doubt. Some selfishness
[2715]      perhaps there is, but there is more; it isn't for me to
[2716]      repeat what. Come bide with me--and name your own terms.
[2717]      I'll agree to 'em willingly and 'ithout a word of
[2718]      gainsaying; for, hang it, Farfrae, I like thee well!"
[2719]      
[2720]      The young man's hand remained steady in Henchard's for a
[2721]      moment or two. He looked over the fertile country that
[2722]      stretched beneath them, then backward along the shaded walk
[2723]      reaching to the top of the town. His face flushed.
[2724]      
[2725]      "I never expected this--I did not!" he said. "It's
[2726]      Providence! Should any one go against it? No; I'll not go to
[2727]      America; I'll stay and be your man!"
[2728]      
[2729]      His hand, which had lain lifeless in Henchard's, returned
[2730]      the latter's grasp.
[2731]      
[2732]      "Done," said Henchard.
[2733]      
[2734]      "Done," said Donald Farfrae.
[2735]      
[2736]      The face of Mr. Henchard beamed forth a satisfaction that
[2737]      was almost fierce in its strength. "Now you are my friend!"
[2738]      he exclaimed. "Come back to my house; let's clinch it at
[2739]      once by clear terms, so as to be comfortable in our minds."
[2740]      Farfrae caught up his bag and retraced the North-West Avenue
[2741]      in Henchard's company as he had come. Henchard was all
[2742]      confidence now.
[2743]      
[2744]      "I am the most distant fellow in the world when I don't care
[2745]      for a man," he said. "But when a man takes my fancy he
[2746]      takes it strong. Now I am sure you can eat another
[2747]      breakfast? You couldn't have eaten much so early, even if
[2748]      they had anything at that place to gi'e thee, which they
[2749]      hadn't; so come to my house and we will have a solid,
[2750]      staunch tuck-in, and settle terms in black-and-white if you
[2751]      like; though my word's my bond. I can always make a good
[2752]      meal in the morning. I've got a splendid cold pigeon-pie
[2753]      going just now. You can have some home-brewed if you want
[2754]      to, you know."
[2755]      
[2756]      "It is too airly in the morning for that," said Farfrae with
[2757]      a smile.
[2758]      
[2759]      "Well, of course, I didn't know. I don't drink it because
[2760]      of my oath, but I am obliged to brew for my work-people."
[2761]      
[2762]      Thus talking they returned, and entered Henchard's premises
[2763]      by the back way or traffic entrance. Here the matter was
[2764]      settled over the breakfast, at which Henchard heaped the
[2765]      young Scotchman's plate to a prodigal fulness. He would not
[2766]      rest satisfied till Farfrae had written for his luggage from
[2767]      Bristol, and dispatched the letter to the post-office. When
[2768]      it was done this man of strong impulses declared that his
[2769]      new friend should take up his abode in his house--at least
[2770]      till some suitable lodgings could be found.
[2771]      
[2772]      He then took Farfrae round and showed him the place, and the
[2773]      stores of grain, and other stock; and finally entered the
[2774]      offices where the younger of them has already been
[2775]      discovered by Elizabeth.
[2776]      
[2777]      
[2778]      
[2779]      10.
[2780]      
[2781]      
[2782]      While she still sat under the Scotchman's eyes a man came up
[2783]      to the door, reaching it as Henchard opened the door of the
[2784]      inner office to admit Elizabeth. The newcomer stepped
[2785]      forward like the quicker cripple at Bethesda, and entered in
[2786]      her stead. She could hear his words to Henchard: "Joshua
[2787]      Jopp, sir--by appointment--the new manager."
[2788]      
[2789]      "The new manager!--he's in his office," said Henchard
[2790]      bluntly.
[2791]      
[2792]      "In his office!" said the man, with a stultified air.
[2793]      
[2794]      "I mentioned Thursday," said Henchard; "and as you did not
[2795]      keep your appointment, I have engaged another manager. At
[2796]      first I thought he must be you. Do you think I can wait
[2797]      when business is in question?"
[2798]      
[2799]      "You said Thursday or Saturday, sir," said the newcomer,
[2800]      pulling out a letter.
[2801]      
[2802]      "Well, you are too late," said the corn-factor. "I can say
[2803]      no more."
[2804]      
[2805]      "You as good as engaged me," murmured the man.
[2806]      
[2807]      "Subject to an interview," said Henchard. "I am sorry for
[2808]      you--very sorry indeed. But it can't be helped."
[2809]      
[2810]      There was no more to be said, and the man came out,
[2811]      encountering Elizabeth-Jane in his passage. She could see
[2812]      that his mouth twitched with anger, and that bitter
[2813]      disappointment was written in his face everywhere.
[2814]      
[2815]      Elizabeth-Jane now entered, and stood before the master of
[2816]      the premises. His dark pupils--which always seemed to have
[2817]      a red spark of light in them, though this could hardly be a
[2818]      physical fact--turned indifferently round under his dark
[2819]      brows until they rested on her figure. "Now then, what is
[2820]      it, my young woman?" he said blandly.
[2821]      
[2822]      "Can I speak to you--not on business, sir?" said she.
[2823]      
[2824]      "Yes--I suppose." He looked at her more thoughtfully.
[2825]      
[2826]      "I am sent to tell you, sir," she innocently went on, "that
[2827]      a distant relative of yours by marriage, Susan Newson, a
[2828]      sailor's widow, is in the town, and to ask whether you would
[2829]      wish to see her."
[2830]      
[2831]      The rich rouge-et-noir of his countenance underwent a
[2832]      slight change. "Oh--Susan is--still alive?" he asked with
[2833]      difficulty.
[2834]      
[2835]      "Yes, sir."
[2836]      
[2837]      "Are you her daughter?"
[2838]      
[2839]      "Yes, sir--her only daughter."
[2840]      
[2841]      "What--do you call yourself--your Christian name?"
[2842]      
[2843]      "Elizabeth-Jane, sir."
[2844]      
[2845]      "Newson?"
[2846]      
[2847]      "Elizabeth-Jane Newson."
[2848]      
[2849]      This at once suggested to Henchard that the transaction of
[2850]      his early married life at Weydon Fair was unrecorded in the
[2851]      family history. It was more than he could have expected.
[2852]      His wife had behaved kindly to him in return for his
[2853]      unkindness, and had never proclaimed her wrong to her child
[2854]      or to the world.
[2855]      
[2856]      "I am--a good deal interested in your news," he said. "And
[2857]      as this is not a matter of business, but pleasure, suppose
[2858]      we go indoors."
[2859]      
[2860]      It was with a gentle delicacy of manner, surprising to
[2861]      Elizabeth, that he showed her out of the office and through
[2862]      the outer room, where Donald Farfrae was overhauling bins
[2863]      and samples with the inquiring inspection of a beginner in
[2864]      charge. Henchard preceded her through the door in the wall
[2865]      to the suddenly changed scene of the garden and flowers, and
[2866]      onward into the house. The dining-room to which he
[2867]      introduced her still exhibited the remnants of the lavish
[2868]      breakfast laid for Farfrae. It was furnished to profusion
[2869]      with heavy mahogany furniture of the deepest red-Spanish
[2870]      hues. Pembroke tables, with leaves hanging so low that they
[2871]      well-nigh touched the floor, stood against the walls on legs
[2872]      and feet shaped like those of an elephant, and on one lay
[2873]      three huge folio volumes--a Family Bible, a "Josephus," and
[2874]      a "Whole Duty of Man." In the chimney comer was a fire-grate
[2875]      with a fluted semicircular back, having urns and festoons
[2876]      cast in relief thereon, and the chairs were of the kind
[2877]      which, since that day, has cast lustre upon the names of
[2878]      Chippendale and Sheraton, though, in point of fact, their
[2879]      patterns may have been such as those illustrious carpenters
[2880]      never saw or heard of.
[2881]      
[2882]      "Sit down--Elizabeth-Jane--sit down," he said, with a shake
[2883]      in his voice as he uttered her name, and sitting down
[2884]      himself he allowed his hands to hang between his knees while
[2885]      he looked upon the carpet. "Your mother, then, is quite
[2886]      well?"
[2887]      
[2888]      "She is rather worn out, sir, with travelling."
[2889]      
[2890]      "A sailor's widow--when did he die?"
[2891]      
[2892]      "Father was lost last spring."
[2893]      
[2894]      Henchard winced at the word "father," thus applied. "Do you
[2895]      and she come from abroad--America or Australia?" he asked.
[2896]      
[2897]      "No. We have been in England some years. I was twelve when
[2898]      we came here from Canada."
[2899]      
[2900]      "Ah; exactly." By such conversation he discovered the
[2901]      circumstances which had enveloped his wife and her child in
[2902]      such total obscurity that he had long ago believed them to
[2903]      be in their graves. These things being clear, he returned
[2904]      to the present. "And where is your mother staying?"
[2905]      
[2906]      "At the Three Mariners."
[2907]      
[2908]      "And you are her daughter Elizabeth-Jane?" repeated
[2909]      Henchard. He arose, came close to her, and glanced in her
[2910]      face. "I think," he said, suddenly turning away with a wet
[2911]      eye, "you shall take a note from me to your mother. I
[2912]      should like to see her....She is not left very well off by
[2913]      her late husband?" His eye fell on Elizabeth's clothes,
[2914]      which, though a respectable suit of black, and her very
[2915]      best, were decidedly old-fashioned even to Casterbridge
[2916]      eyes.
[2917]      
[2918]      "Not very well," she said, glad that he had divined this
[2919]      without her being obliged to express it.
[2920]      
[2921]      He sat down at the table and wrote a few lines, next taking
[2922]      from his pocket-book a five-pound note, which he put in the
[2923]      envelope with the letter, adding to it, as by an
[2924]      afterthought, five shillings. Sealing the whole up
[2925]      carefully, he directed it to "Mrs. Newson, Three Mariners
[2926]      Inn," and handed the packet to Elizabeth.
[2927]      
[2928]      "Deliver it to her personally, please," said Henchard.
[2929]      "Well, I am glad to see you here, Elizabeth-Jane--very glad.
[2930]      We must have a long talk together--but not just now."
[2931]      
[2932]      He took her hand at parting, and held it so warmly that she,
[2933]      who had known so little friendship, was much affected, and
[2934]      tears rose to her aerial-grey eyes. The instant that she
[2935]      was gone Henchard's state showed itself more distinctly;
[2936]      having shut the door he sat in his dining-room stiffly
[2937]      erect, gazing at the opposite wall as if he read his history
[2938]      there.
[2939]      
[2940]      "Begad!" he suddenly exclaimed, jumping up. "I didn't think
[2941]      of that. Perhaps these are impostors--and Susan and the
[2942]      child dead after all!"
[2943]      
[2944]      However, a something in Elizabeth-Jane soon assured him
[2945]      that, as regarded her, at least, there could be little
[2946]      doubt. And a few hours would settle the question of her
[2947]      mother's identity; for he had arranged in his note to see
[2948]      her that evening.
[2949]      
[2950]      "It never rains but it pours!" said Henchard. His keenly
[2951]      excited interest in his new friend the Scotchman was now
[2952]      eclipsed by this event, and Donald Farfrae saw so little of
[2953]      him during the rest of the day that he wondered at the
[2954]      suddenness of his employer's moods.
[2955]      
[2956]      In the meantime Elizabeth had reached the inn. Her mother,
[2957]      instead of taking the note with the curiosity of a poor
[2958]      woman expecting assistance, was much moved at sight of it.
[2959]      She did not read it at once, asking Elizabeth to describe
[2960]      her reception, and the very words Mr. Henchard used.
[2961]      Elizabeth's back was turned when her mother opened the
[2962]      letter. It ran thus:--
[2963]      
[2964]      
[2965]      "Meet me at eight o'clock this evening, if you can, at the
[2966]      Ring on the Budmouth road. The place is easy to find. I
[2967]      can say no more now. The news upsets me almost. The girl
[2968]      seems to be in ignorance. Keep her so till I have seen you.
[2969]      M. H."
[2970]      
[2971]      
[2972]      He said nothing about the enclosure of five guineas. The
[2973]      amount was significant; it may tacitly have said to her that
[2974]      he bought her back again. She waited restlessly for the
[2975]      close of the day, telling Elizabeth-Jane that she was
[2976]      invited to see Mr. Henchard; that she would go alone. But
[2977]      she said nothing to show that the place of meeting was not
[2978]      at his house, nor did she hand the note to Elizabeth.
[2979]      
[2980]      
[2981]