"I am again out of a foreman," said the corn-factor. "Are you in a
place?"
"Not so much as a beggar's, sir."
"How much do you ask?"
Jopp named his price, which was very moderate.
"When can you come?"
"At this hour and moment, sir," said Jopp, who, standing hands-pocketed
at the street corner till the sun had faded the shoulders of his coat
to scarecrow green, had regularly watched Henchard in the market-place,
measured him, and learnt him, by virtue of the power which the still
man has in his stillness of knowing the busy one better than he knows
himself. Jopp too, had had a convenient experience; he was the only one
in Casterbridge besides Henchard and the close-lipped Elizabeth who knew
that Lucetta came truly from Jersey, and but proximately from Bath. "I
know Jersey too, sir," he said. "Was living there when you used to do
business that way. O yes - have often seen ye there."
"Indeed! Very good. Then the thing is settled. The testimonials you
showed me when you first tried for't are sufficient."
That characters deteriorated in time of need possibly did not occur
to Henchard. Jopp said, "Thank you," and stood more firmly, in the
consciousness that at last he officially belonged to that spot.
"Now," said Henchard, digging his strong eyes into Jopp's face, "one
thing is necessary to me, as the biggest corn-and-hay dealer in these
parts. The Scotchman, who's taking the town trade so bold into
his hands, must be cut out. D'ye hear? We two can't live side by
side - that's clear and certain."
"I've seen it all," said Jopp.
"By fair competition I mean, of course," Henchard continued. "But as
hard, keen, and unflinching as fair - rather more so. By such a desperate
bid against him for the farmers' custom as will grind him into the
ground - starve him out. I've capital, mind ye, and I can do it."
"I'm all that way of thinking," said the new foreman. Jopp's dislike of
Farfrae as the man who had once ursurped his place, while it made him
a willing tool, made him, at the same time, commercially as unsafe a
colleague as Henchard could have chosen.
"I sometimes think," he added, "that he must have some glass that he
sees next year in. He has such a knack of making everything bring him
fortune."
"He's deep beyond all honest men's discerning, but we must make him
shallower. We'll undersell him, and over-buy him, and so snuff him out."
They then entered into specific details of the process by which this
would be accomplished, and parted at a late hour.
Elizabeth-Jane heard by accident that Jopp had been engaged by her
stepfather. She was so fully convinced that he was not the right man for
the place that, at the risk of making Henchard angry, she expressed
her apprehension to him when they met. But it was done to no purpose.
Henchard shut up her argument with a sharp rebuff.
The season's weather seemed to favour their scheme. The time was in
the years immediately before foreign competition had revolutionized
the trade in grain; when still, as from the earliest ages, the wheat
quotations from month to month depended entirely upon the home harvest.
A bad harvest, or the prospect of one, would double the price of corn in
a few weeks; and the promise of a good yield would lower it as rapidly.
Prices were like the roads of the period, steep in gradient, reflecting
in their phases the local conditions, without engineering, levellings,
or averages.
The farmer's income was ruled by the wheat-crop within his own horizon,
and the wheat-crop by the weather. Thus in person, he became a sort of
flesh-barometer, with feelers always directed to the sky and wind around
him. The local atmosphere was everything to him; the atmospheres of
other countries a matter of indifference. The people, too, who were
not farmers, the rural multitude, saw in the god of the weather a
more important personage than they do now. Indeed, the feeling of the
peasantry in this matter was so intense as to be almost unrealizable in
these equable days. Their impulse was well-nigh to prostrate themselves
in lamentation before untimely rains and tempests, which came as the
Alastor of those households whose crime it was to be poor.
After midsummer they watched the weather-cocks as men waiting in
antechambers watch the lackey. Sun elated them; quiet rain sobered them;
weeks of watery tempest stupefied them. That aspect of the sky which
they now regard as disagreeable they then beheld as maleficent.
It was June, and the weather was very unfavourable. Casterbridge, being
as it were the bell-board on which all the adjacent hamlets and villages
sounded their notes, was decidedly dull. Instead of new articles in the
shop-windows those that had been rejected in the foregoing summer were
brought out again; superseded reap-hooks, badly-shaped rakes, shop-worn
leggings, and time-stiffened water-tights reappeared, furbished up as
near to new as possible.
Henchard, backed by Jopp, read a disastrous garnering, and resolved to
base his strategy against Farfrae upon that reading. But before acting
he wished - what so many have wished - that he could know for certain what
was at present only strong probability. He was superstitious - as such
head-strong natures often are - and he nourished in his mind an idea
bearing on the matter; an idea he shrank from disclosing even to Jopp.
In a lonely hamlet a few miles from the town - so lonely that what are
called lonely villages were teeming by comparison - there lived a man of
curious repute as a forecaster or weather-prophet. The way to his house
was crooked and miry - even difficult in the present unpropitious season.
One evening when it was raining so heavily that ivy and laurel resounded
like distant musketry, and an out-door man could be excused for
shrouding himself to his ears and eyes, such a shrouded figure on foot
might have been perceived travelling in the direction of the hazel-copse
which dripped over the prophet's cot. The turnpike-road became a lane,
the lane a cart-track, the cart-track a bridle-path, the bridle-path a
foot-way, the foot-way overgrown. The solitary walker slipped here and
there, and stumbled over the natural springes formed by the brambles,
till at length he reached the house, which, with its garden, was
surrounded with a high, dense hedge. The cottage, comparatively a large
one, had been built of mud by the occupier's own hands, and thatched
also by himself. Here he had always lived, and here it was assumed he
would die.
He existed on unseen supplies; for it was an anomalous thing that while
there was hardly a soul in the neighbourhood but affected to laugh at
this man's assertions, uttering the formula, "There's nothing in 'em,"
with full assurance on the surface of their faces, very few of them were
unbelievers in their secret hearts. Whenever they consulted him they
did it "for a fancy." When they paid him they said, "Just a trifle for
Christmas," or "Candlemas," as the case might be.
He would have preferred more honesty in his clients, and less sham
ridicule; but fundamental belief consoled him for superficial irony. As
stated, he was enabled to live; people supported him with their backs
turned. He was sometimes astonished that men could profess so little and
believe so much at his house, when at church they professed so much and
believed so little.
Behind his back he was called "Wide-oh," on account of his reputation;
to his face "Mr." Fall.
The hedge of his garden formed an arch over the entrance, and a door
was inserted as in a wall. Outside the door the tall traveller stopped,
bandaged his face with a handkerchief as if he were suffering from
toothache, and went up the path. The window shutters were not closed,
and he could see the prophet within, preparing his supper.
In answer to the knock Fall came to the door, candle in hand. The
visitor stepped back a little from the light, and said, "Can I speak
to 'ee?" in significant tones. The other's invitation to come in was
responded to by the country formula, "This will do, thank 'ee," after
which the householder had no alternative but to come out. He placed
the candle on the corner of the dresser, took his hat from a nail, and
joined the stranger in the porch, shutting the door behind him.
"I've long heard that you can - do things of a sort?" began the other,
repressing his individuality as much as he could.
"Maybe so, Mr. Henchard," said the weather-caster.
"Ah - why do you call me that?" asked the visitor with a start.
"Because it's your name. Feeling you'd come I've waited for 'ee;
and thinking you might be leery from your walk I laid two supper
plates - look ye here." He threw open the door and disclosed the
supper-table, at which appeared a second chair, knife and fork, plate
and mug, as he had declared.
Henchard felt like Saul at his reception by Samuel; he remained in
silence for a few moments, then throwing off the disguise of frigidity
which he had hitherto preserved he said, "Then I have not come in
vain....Now, for instance, can ye charm away warts?"
"Without trouble."
"Cure the evil?"
"That I've done - with consideration - if they will wear the toad-bag by
night as well as by day."
"Forecast the weather?"
"With labour and time."
"Then take this," said Henchard. "'Tis a crownpiece. Now, what is the
harvest fortnight to be? When can I know?'
"I've worked it out already, and you can know at once." (The fact
was that five farmers had already been there on the same errand from
different parts of the country.) "By the sun, moon, and stars, by the
clouds, the winds, the trees, and grass, the candle-flame and swallows,
the smell of the herbs; likewise by the cats' eyes, the ravens, the
leeches, the spiders, and the dungmixen, the last fortnight in August
will be - rain and tempest."
"You are not certain, of course?"
"As one can be in a world where all's unsure. 'Twill be more like living
in Revelations this autumn than in England. Shall I sketch it out for
'ee in a scheme?"
"O no, no," said Henchard. "I don't altogether believe in forecasts,
come to second thoughts on such. But I - "
"You don't - you don't - 'tis quite understood," said Wide-oh, without a
sound of scorn. "You have given me a crown because you've one too many.
But won't you join me at supper, now 'tis waiting and all?"
Henchard would gladly have joined; for the savour of the stew
had floated from the cottage into the porch with such appetizing
distinctness that the meat, the onions, the pepper, and the herbs could
be severally recognized by his nose. But as sitting down to
hob-and-nob there would have seemed to mark him too implicitly as the
weather-caster's apostle, he declined, and went his way.
The next Saturday Henchard bought grain to such an enormous extent that
there was quite a talk about his purchases among his neighbours the
lawyer, the wine merchant, and the doctor; also on the next, and on
all available days. When his granaries were full to choking all the
weather-cocks of Casterbridge creaked and set their faces in another
direction, as if tired of the south-west. The weather changed; the
sunlight, which had been like tin for weeks, assumed the hues of
topaz. The temperament of the welkin passed from the phlegmatic to
the sanguine; an excellent harvest was almost a certainty; and as a
consequence prices rushed down.
All these transformations, lovely to the outsider, to the wrong-headed
corn-dealer were terrible. He was reminded of what he had well known
before, that a man might gamble upon the square green areas of fields as
readily as upon those of a card-room.
Henchard had backed bad weather, and apparently lost. He had mistaken
the turn of the flood for the turn of the ebb. His dealings had been so
extensive that settlement could not long be postponed, and to settle he
was obliged to sell off corn that he had bought only a few weeks before
at figures higher by many shillings a quarter. Much of the corn he had
never seen; it had not even been moved from the ricks in which it lay
stacked miles away. Thus he lost heavily.
In the blaze of an early August day he met Farfrae in the market-place.
Farfrae knew of his dealings (though he did not guess their intended
bearing on himself) and commiserated him; for since their exchange
of words in the South Walk they had been on stiffly speaking terms.
Henchard for the moment appeared to resent the sympathy; but he suddenly
took a careless turn.
"Ho, no, no! - nothing serious, man!" he cried with fierce gaiety. "These
things always happen, don't they? I know it has been said that figures
have touched me tight lately; but is that anything rare? The case is not
so bad as folk make out perhaps. And dammy, a man must be a fool to mind
the common hazards of trade!"
But he had to enter the Casterbridge Bank that day for reasons which
had never before sent him there - and to sit a long time in the partners'
room with a constrained bearing. It was rumoured soon after that much
real property as well as vast stores of produce, which had stood
in Henchard's name in the town and neighbourhood, was actually the
possession of his bankers.
Coming down the steps of the bank he encountered Jopp. The gloomy
transactions just completed within had added fever to the original sting
of Farfrae's sympathy that morning, which Henchard fancied might be a
satire disguised so that Jopp met with anything but a bland reception.
The latter was in the act of taking off his hat to wipe his forehead,
and saying, "A fine hot day," to an acquaintance.
"You can wipe and wipe, and say, 'A fine hot day,' can ye!" cried
Henchard in a savage undertone, imprisoning Jopp between himself and the
bank wall. "If it hadn't been for your blasted advice it might have been
a fine day enough! Why did ye let me go on, hey? - when a word of doubt
from you or anybody would have made me think twice! For you can never be
sure of weather till 'tis past."
"My advice, sir, was to do what you thought best."
"A useful fellow! And the sooner you help somebody else in that way the
better!" Henchard continued his address to Jopp in similar terms till it
ended in Jopp s dismissal there and then, Henchard turning upon his heel
and leaving him.
"You shall be sorry for this, sir; sorry as a man can be!" said Jopp,
standing pale, and looking after the corn-merchant as he disappeared in
the crowd of market-men hard by.
27.
It was the eve of harvest. Prices being low Farfrae was buying. As was
usual, after reckoning too surely on famine weather the local farmers
had flown to the other extreme, and (in Farfrae's opinion) were selling
off too recklessly - calculating with just a trifle too much certainty
upon an abundant yield. So he went on buying old corn at its
comparatively ridiculous price: for the produce of the previous year,
though not large, had been of excellent quality.
When Henchard had squared his affairs in a disastrous way, and got rid
of his burdensome purchases at a monstrous loss, the harvest began.
There were three days of excellent weather, and then - "What if that
curst conjuror should be right after all!" said Henchard.
The fact was, that no sooner had the sickles begun to play than the
atmosphere suddenly felt as if cress would grow in it without other
nourishment. It rubbed people's cheeks like damp flannel when they
walked abroad. There was a gusty, high, warm wind; isolated raindrops
starred the window-panes at remote distances: the sunlight would flap
out like a quickly opened fan, throw the pattern of the window upon the
floor of the room in a milky, colourless shine, and withdraw as suddenly
as it had appeared.
From that day and hour it was clear that there was not to be so
successful an ingathering after all. If Henchard had only waited long
enough he might at least have avoided loss though he had not made a
profit. But the momentum of his character knew no patience. At this turn
of the scales he remained silent. The movements of his mind seemed to
tend to the thought that some power was working against him.
"I wonder," he asked himself with eerie misgiving; "I wonder if it can
be that somebody has been roasting a waxen image of me, or stirring an
unholy brew to confound me! I don't believe in such power; and yet - what
if they should ha' been doing it!" Even he could not admit that
the perpetrator, if any, might be Farfrae. These isolated hours of
superstition came to Henchard in time of moody depression, when all his
practical largeness of view had oozed out of him.
Meanwhile Donald Farfrae prospered. He had purchased in so depressed a
market that the present moderate stiffness of prices was sufficient to
pile for him a large heap of gold where a little one had been.
"Why, he'll soon be Mayor!" said Henchard. It was indeed hard that the
speaker should, of all others, have to follow the triumphal chariot of
this man to the Capitol.
The rivalry of the masters was taken up by the men.
September-night shades had fallen upon Casterbridge; the clocks had
struck half-past eight, and the moon had risen. The streets of the town
were curiously silent for such a comparatively early hour. A sound of
jangling horse-bells and heavy wheels passed up the street. These were
followed by angry voices outside Lucetta's house, which led her and
Elizabeth-Jane to run to the windows, and pull up the blinds.
The neighbouring Market House and Town Hall abutted against its next
neighbour the Church except in the lower storey, where an arched
thoroughfare gave admittance to a large square called Bull Stake. A
stone post rose in the midst, to which the oxen had formerly been tied
for baiting with dogs to make them tender before they were killed in the
adjoining shambles. In a corner stood the stocks.
The thoroughfare leading to this spot was now blocked by two four-horse
waggons and horses, one laden with hay-trusses, the leaders having
already passed each other, and become entangled head to tail. The
passage of the vehicles might have been practicable if empty; but built
up with hay to the bedroom windows as one was, it was impossible.
"You must have done it a' purpose!" said Farfrae's waggoner. "You can
hear my horses' bells half-a-mile such a night as this!"
"If ye'd been minding your business instead of zwailing along in such
a gawk-hammer way, you would have zeed me!" retorted the wroth
representative of Henchard.
However, according to the strict rule of the road it appeared that
Henchard's man was most in the wrong, he therefore attempted to back
into the High Street. In doing this the near hind-wheel rose against
the churchyard wall and the whole mountainous load went over, two of the
four wheels rising in the air, and the legs of the thill horse.
Instead of considering how to gather up the load the two men closed in
a fight with their fists. Before the first round was quite over Henchard
came upon the spot, somebody having run for him.
Henchard sent the two men staggering in contrary directions by collaring
one with each hand, turned to the horse that was down, and extricated
him after some trouble. He then inquired into the circumstances; and
seeing the state of his waggon and its load began hotly rating Farfrae's
man.
Lucetta and Elizabeth-Jane had by this time run down to the street
corner, whence they watched the bright heap of new hay lying in the
moon's rays, and passed and repassed by the forms of Henchard and the
waggoners. The women had witnessed what nobody else had seen - the origin
of the mishap; and Lucetta spoke.
"I saw it all, Mr. Henchard," she cried; "and your man was most in the
wrong!"
Henchard paused in his harangue and turned. "Oh, I didn't notice you,
Miss Templeman," said he. "My man in the wrong? Ah, to be sure; to be
sure! But I beg your pardon notwithstanding. The other's is the empty
waggon, and he must have been most to blame for coming on."
"No; I saw it, too," said Elizabeth-Jane. "And I can assure you he
couldn't help it."
"You can't trust THEIR senses!" murmured Henchard's man.
"Why not?" asked Henchard sharply.
"Why, you see, sir, all the women side with Farfrae - being a damn young
dand - of the sort that he is - one that creeps into a maid's heart like
the giddying worm into a sheep's brain - making crooked seem straight to
their eyes!"
"But do you know who that lady is you talk about in such a fashion? Do
you know that I pay my attentions to her, and have for some time? Just
be careful!"
"Not I. I know nothing, sir, outside eight shillings a week."
"And that Mr. Farfrae is well aware of it? He's sharp in trade, but he
wouldn't do anything so underhand as what you hint at."
Whether because Lucetta heard this low dialogue, or not her white
figure disappeared from her doorway inward, and the door was shut before
Henchard could reach it to converse with her further. This disappointed
him, for he had been sufficiently disturbed by what the man had said to
wish to speak to her more closely. While pausing the old constable came
up.
"Just see that nobody drives against that hay and waggon to-night,
Stubberd," said the corn-merchant. "It must bide till the morning, for
all hands are in the field still. And if any coach or road-waggon wants
to come along, tell 'em they must go round by the back street, and be
hanged to 'em....Any case tomorrow up in Hall?"
"Yes, sir. One in number, sir."
"Oh, what's that?"
"An old flagrant female, sir, swearing and committing a nuisance in a
horrible profane manner against the church wall, sir, as if 'twere no
more than a pot-house! That's all, sir."
"Oh. The Mayor's out o' town, isn't he?"
"He is, sir."
"Very well, then I'll be there. Don't forget to keep an eye on that hay.
Good night t' 'ee."
During those moments Henchard had determined to follow up Lucetta
notwithstanding her elusiveness, and he knocked for admission.
The answer he received was an expression of Miss Templeman's sorrow at
being unable to see him again that evening because she had an engagement
to go out.
Henchard walked away from the door to the opposite side of the street,
and stood by his hay in a lonely reverie, the constable having strolled
elsewhere, and the horses being removed. Though the moon was not bright
as yet there were no lamps lighted, and he entered the shadow of one of
the projecting jambs which formed the thoroughfare to Bull Stake; here
he watched Lucetta's door.
Candle-lights were flitting in and out of her bedroom, and it was
obvious that she was dressing for the appointment, whatever the nature
of that might be at such an hour. The lights disappeared, the clock
struck nine, and almost at the moment Farfrae came round the opposite
corner and knocked. That she had been waiting just inside for him was
certain, for she instantly opened the door herself. They went together
by the way of a back lane westward, avoiding the front street; guessing
where they were going he determined to follow.
The harvest had been so delayed by the capricious weather that whenever
a fine day occurred all sinews were strained to save what could be saved
of the damaged crops. On account of the rapid shortening of the days the
harvesters worked by moonlight. Hence to-night the wheat-fields abutting
on the two sides of the square formed by Casterbridge town were animated
by the gathering hands. Their shouts and laughter had reached Henchard
at the Market House, while he stood there waiting, and he had little
doubt from the turn which Farfrae and Lucetta had taken that they were
bound for the spot.
Nearly the whole town had gone into the fields. The Casterbridge
populace still retained the primitive habit of helping one another in
time of need; and thus, though the corn belonged to the farming section
of the little community - that inhabiting the Durnover quarter - the
remainder was no less interested in the labour of getting it home.
Reaching the top of the lane Henchard crossed the shaded avenue on the
walls, slid down the green rampart, and stood amongst the stubble. The
"stitches" or shocks rose like tents about the yellow expanse, those in
the distance becoming lost in the moonlit hazes.
He had entered at a point removed from the scene of immediate
operations; but two others had entered at that place, and he could
see them winding among the shocks. They were paying no regard to the
direction of their walk, whose vague serpentining soon began to
bear down towards Henchard. A meeting promised to be awkward, and he
therefore stepped into the hollow of the nearest shock, and sat down.
"You have my leave," Lucetta was saying gaily. "Speak what you like."
"Well, then," replied Farfrae, with the unmistakable inflection of the
lover pure, which Henchard had never heard in full resonance of his lips
before, "you are sure to be much sought after for your position, wealth,
talents, and beauty. But will ye resist the temptation to be one of
those ladies with lots of admirers - ay - and be content to have only a
homely one?"
"And he the speaker?" said she, laughing. "Very well, sir, what next?"
"Ah! I'm afraid that what I feel will make me forget my manners!"
"Then I hope you'll never have any, if you lack them only for that
cause." After some broken words which Henchard lost she added, "Are you
sure you won't be jealous?"
Farfrae seemed to assure her that he would not, by taking her hand.
"You are convinced, Donald, that I love nobody else," she presently
said. "But I should wish to have my own way in some things."
"In everything! What special thing did you mean?"
"If I wished not to live always in Casterbridge, for instance, upon
finding that I should not be happy here?"
Henchard did not hear the reply; he might have done so and much more,
but he did not care to play the eavesdropper. They went on towards
the scene of activity, where the sheaves were being handed, a dozen a
minute, upon the carts and waggons which carried them away.
Lucetta insisted on parting from Farfrae when they drew near the
workpeople. He had some business with them and, thought he entreated
her to wait a few minutes, she was inexorable, and tripped off homeward
alone.
Henchard thereupon left the field and followed her. His state of mind
was such that on reaching Lucetta's door he did not knock but opened it,
and walked straight up to her sitting-room, expecting to find her
there. But the room was empty, and he perceived that in his haste he had
somehow passed her on the way hither. He had not to wait many minutes,
however, for he soon heard her dress rustling in the hall, followed by a
soft closing of the door. In a moment she appeared.
The light was so low that she did not notice Henchard at first. As soon
as she saw him she uttered a little cry, almost of terror.
"How can you frighten me so?" she exclaimed, with a flushed face. "It
is past ten o'clock, and you have no right to surprise me here at such a
time."
"I don't know that I've not the right. At any rate I have the excuse. Is
it so necessary that I should stop to think of manners and customs?"
"It is too late for propriety, and might injure me."
"I called an hour ago, and you would not see me, and I thought you were
in when I called now. It is you, Lucetta, who are doing wrong. It is
not proper in 'ee to throw me over like this. I have a little matter to
remind you of, which you seem to forget."
She sank into a chair, and turned pale.
"I don't want to hear it - I don't want to hear it!" she said through her
hands, as he, standing close to the edge of her gown, began to allude to
the Jersey days.
"But you ought to hear it," said he.
"It came to nothing; and through you. Then why not leave me the freedom
that I gained with such sorrow! Had I found that you proposed to marry
me for pure love I might have felt bound now. But I soon learnt that
you had planned it out of mere charity - almost as an unpleasant
duty - because I had nursed you, and compromised myself, and you thought
you must repay me. After that I did not care for you so deeply as
before."
"Why did you come here to find me, then?"
"I thought I ought to marry you for conscience' sake, since you were
free, even though I - did not like you so well."
"And why then don't you think so now?"
She was silent. It was only too obvious that conscience had ruled well
enough till new love had intervened and usurped that rule. In feeling
this she herself forgot for the moment her partially justifying
argument - that having discovered Henchard's infirmities of temper, she
had some excuse for not risking her happiness in his hands after once
escaping them. The only thing she could say was, "I was a poor girl
then; and now my circumstances have altered, so I am hardly the same
person."
"That's true. And it makes the case awkward for me. But I don't want to
touch your money. I am quite willing that every penny of your property
shall remain to your personal use. Besides, that argument has nothing in
it. The man you are thinking of is no better than I."
"If you were as good as he you would leave me!" she cried passionately.
This unluckily aroused Henchard. "You cannot in honour refuse me," he
said. "And unless you give me your promise this very night to be my
wife, before a witness, I'll reveal our intimacy - in common fairness to
other men!"
A look of resignation settled upon her. Henchard saw its bitterness;
and had Lucetta's heart been given to any other man in the world than
Farfrae he would probably have had pity upon her at that moment. But the
supplanter was the upstart (as Henchard called him) who had mounted into
prominence upon his shoulders, and he could bring himself to show no
mercy.
Without another word she rang the bell, and directed that Elizabeth-Jane
should be fetched from her room. The latter appeared, surprised in the
midst of her lucubrations. As soon as she saw Henchard she went across
to him dutifully.
"Elizabeth-Jane," he said, taking her hand, "I want you to hear this."
And turning to Lucetta: "Will you, or will you not, marry me?
"If you - wish it, I must agree!"
"You say yes?"
"I do."
No sooner had she given the promise than she fell back in a fainting
state.
"What dreadful thing drives her to say this, father, when it is such a
pain to her?" asked Elizabeth, kneeling down by Lucetta. "Don't compel
her to do anything against her will! I have lived with her, and know
that she cannot bear much."
"Don't be a no'thern simpleton!" said Henchard drily. "This promise will
leave him free for you, if you want him, won't it?"
At this Lucetta seemed to wake from her swoon with a start.
"Him? Who are you talking about?" she said wildly.
"Nobody, as far as I am concerned," said Elizabeth firmly.
"Oh - well. Then it is my mistake," said Henchard. "But the business is
between me and Miss Templeman. She agrees to be my wife."
"But don't dwell on it just now," entreated Elizabeth, holding Lucetta's
hand.
"I don't wish to, if she promises," said Henchard.
"I have, I have," groaned Lucetta, her limbs hanging like fluid, from
very misery and faintness. "Michael, please don't argue it any more!"
"I will not," he said. And taking up his hat he went away.
Elizabeth-Jane continued to kneel by Lucetta. "What is this?" she said.
"You called my father 'Michael' as if you knew him well? And how is it
he has got this power over you, that you promise to marry him against
your will? Ah - you have many many secrets from me!"
"Perhaps you have some from me," Lucetta murmured with closed eyes,
little thinking, however, so unsuspicious was she, that the secret of
Elizabeth's heart concerned the young man who had caused this damage to
her own.
"I would not - do anything against you at all!" stammered Elizabeth,
keeping in all signs of emotion till she was ready to burst. "I cannot
understand how my father can command you so; I don't sympathize with him
in it at all. I'll go to him and ask him to release you."
"No, no," said Lucetta. "Let it all be."
28.
The next morning Henchard went to the Town Hall below Lucetta's house,
to attend Petty Sessions, being still a magistrate for the year by
virtue of his late position as Mayor. In passing he looked up at her
windows, but nothing of her was to be seen.
Henchard as a Justice of the Peace may at first seem to be an even
greater incongruity than Shallow and Silence themselves. But his rough
and ready perceptions, his sledge-hammer directness, had often served
him better than nice legal knowledge in despatching such simple business
as fell to his hands in this Court. To-day Dr. Chalkfield, the Mayor for
the year, being absent, the corn-merchant took the big chair, his eyes
still abstractedly stretching out of the window to the ashlar front of
High-Place Hall.
There was one case only, and the offender stood before him. She was an
old woman of mottled countenance, attired in a shawl of that nameless
tertiary hue which comes, but cannot be made - a hue neither tawny,
russet, hazel, nor ash; a sticky black bonnet that seemed to have been
worn in the country of the Psalmist where the clouds drop fatness; and
an apron that had been white in time so comparatively recent as still to
contrast visibly with the rest of her clothes. The steeped aspect of the
woman as a whole showed her to be no native of the country-side or even
of a country-town.
She looked cursorily at Henchard and the second magistrate, and Henchard
looked at her, with a momentary pause, as if she had reminded him
indistinctly of somebody or something which passed from his mind as
quickly as it had come. "Well, and what has she been doing?" he said,
looking down at the charge sheet.
"She is charged, sir, with the offence of disorderly female and
nuisance," whispered Stubberd.
"Where did she do that?" said the other magistrate.
"By the church, sir, of all the horrible places in the world! - I caught
her in the act, your worship."
"Stand back then," said Henchard, "and let's hear what you've got to
say."
Stubberd was sworn in, the magistrate's clerk dipped his pen, Henchard
being no note-taker himself, and the constable began -
"Hearing a' illegal noise I went down the street at twenty-five minutes
past eleven P.M. on the night of the fifth instinct, Hannah Dominy. When
I had -
"Don't go so fast, Stubberd," said the clerk.
The constable waited, with his eyes on the clerk's pen, till the latter
stopped scratching and said, "yes." Stubberd continued: "When I had
proceeded to the spot I saw defendant at another spot, namely, the
gutter." He paused, watching the point of the clerk's pen again.
"Gutter, yes, Stubberd."
"Spot measuring twelve feet nine inches or thereabouts from where I - "
Still careful not to outrun the clerk's penmanship Stubberd pulled up
again; for having got his evidence by heart it was immaterial to him
whereabouts he broke off.
"I object to that," spoke up the old woman, "'spot measuring twelve feet
nine or thereabouts from where I,' is not sound testimony!"
The magistrates consulted, and the second one said that the bench was
of opinion that twelve feet nine inches from a man on his oath was
admissible.
Stubberd, with a suppressed gaze of victorious rectitude at the old
woman, continued: "Was standing myself. She was wambling about quite
dangerous to the thoroughfare and when I approached to draw near she
committed the nuisance, and insulted me."
"'Insulted me.'...Yes, what did she say?"
"She said, 'Put away that dee lantern,' she says."
"Yes."
"Says she, 'Dost hear, old turmit-head? Put away that dee lantern. I
have floored fellows a dee sight finer-looking than a dee fool like
thee, you son of a bee, dee me if I haint,' she says.
"I object to that conversation!" interposed the old woman. "I was not
capable enough to hear what I said, and what is said out of my hearing
is not evidence."
There was another stoppage for consultation, a book was referred to, and
finally Stubberd was allowed to go on again. The truth was that the
old woman had appeared in court so many more times than the magistrates
themselves, that they were obliged to keep a sharp look-out upon their
procedure. However, when Stubberd had rambled on a little further
Henchard broke out impatiently, "Come - we don't want to hear any more of
them cust dees and bees! Say the words out like a man, and don't be so
modest, Stubberd; or else leave it alone!" Turning to the woman, "Now
then, have you any questions to ask him, or anything to say?"
"Yes," she replied with a twinkle in her eye; and the clerk dipped his
pen.
"Twenty years ago or thereabout I was selling of furmity in a tent at
Weydon Fair - - "
"'Twenty years ago' - well, that's beginning at the beginning; suppose
you go back to the Creation!" said the clerk, not without satire.
But Henchard stared, and quite forgot what was evidence and what was
not.
"A man and a woman with a little child came into my tent," the woman
continued. "They sat down and had a basin apiece. Ah, Lord's my life! I
was of a more respectable station in the world then than I am now, being
a land smuggler in a large way of business; and I used to season my
furmity with rum for them who asked for't. I did it for the man; and
then he had more and more; till at last he quarrelled with his wife, and
offered to sell her to the highest bidder. A sailor came in and bid five
guineas, and paid the money, and led her away. And the man who sold his
wife in that fashion is the man sitting there in the great big chair."
The speaker concluded by nodding her head at Henchard and folding her
arms.
Everybody looked at Henchard. His face seemed strange, and in tint as if
it had been powdered over with ashes. "We don't want to hear your life
and adventures," said the second magistrate sharply, filling the pause
which followed. "You've been asked if you've anything to say bearing on
the case."
"That bears on the case. It proves that he's no better than I, and has
no right to sit there in judgment upon me."
"'Tis a concocted story," said the clerk. "So hold your tongue!"
"No - 'tis true." The words came from Henchard. "'Tis as true as the
light," he said slowly. "And upon my soul it does prove that I'm no
better than she! And to keep out of any temptation to treat her hard for
her revenge, I'll leave her to you."
The sensation in the court was indescribably great. Henchard left the
chair, and came out, passing through a group of people on the steps
and outside that was much larger than usual; for it seemed that the old
furmity dealer had mysteriously hinted to the denizens of the lane in
which she had been lodging since her arrival, that she knew a queer
thing or two about their great local man Mr. Henchard, if she chose to
tell it. This had brought them hither.
"Why are there so many idlers round the Town Hall to-day?" said Lucetta
to her servant when the case was over. She had risen late, and had just
looked out of the window.
"Oh, please, ma'am, 'tis this larry about Mr. Henchard. A woman has
proved that before he became a gentleman he sold his wife for five
guineas in a booth at a fair."
In all the accounts which Henchard had given her of the separation from
his wife Susan for so many years, of his belief in her death, and so on,
he had never clearly explained the actual and immediate cause of that