"Ah," she said apologetically, "that's what we keep here to use when
there's a little quiet dancing. You see damp weather spoils it, so I put
it there to keep it dry."
The constable nodded knowingly, but what he knew was nothing. Nohow
could anything be elicited from this mute and inoffensive assembly. In
a few minutes the investigators went out, and joining those of their
auxiliaries who had been left at the door they pursued their way
elsewhither.
40.
Long before this time Henchard, weary of his ruminations on the bridge,
had repaired towards the town. When he stood at the bottom of the street
a procession burst upon his view, in the act of turning out of an alley
just above him. The lanterns, horns, and multitude startled him; he saw
the mounted images, and knew what it all meant.
They crossed the way, entered another street, and disappeared. He turned
back a few steps and was lost in grave reflection, finally wending his
way homeward by the obscure river-side path. Unable to rest there he
went to his step-daughter's lodging, and was told that Elizabeth-Jane
had gone to Mr. Farfrae's. Like one acting in obedience to a charm, and
with a nameless apprehension, he followed in the same direction in the
hope of meeting her, the roysterers having vanished. Disappointed in
this he gave the gentlest of pulls to the door-bell, and then learnt
particulars of what had occurred, together with the doctor's imperative
orders that Farfrae should be brought home, and how they had set out to
meet him on the Budmouth Road.
"But he has gone to Mellstock and Weatherbury!" exclaimed Henchard, now
unspeakably grieved. "Not Budmouth way at all."
But, alas! for Henchard; he had lost his good name. They would
not believe him, taking his words but as the frothy utterances of
recklessness. Though Lucetta's life seemed at that moment to depend upon
her husband's return (she being in great mental agony lest he should
never know the unexaggerated truth of her past relations with Henchard),
no messenger was despatched towards Weatherbury. Henchard, in a state of
bitter anxiety and contrition, determined to seek Farfrae himself.
To this end he hastened down the town, ran along the eastern road over
Durnover Moor, up the hill beyond, and thus onward in the moderate
darkness of this spring night till he had reached a second and almost
a third hill about three miles distant. In Yalbury Bottom, or Plain,
at the foot of the hill, he listened. At first nothing, beyond his own
heart-throbs, was to be heard but the slow wind making its moan among
the masses of spruce and larch of Yalbury Wood which clothed the heights
on either hand; but presently there came the sound of light wheels
whetting their felloes against the newly stoned patches of road,
accompanied by the distant glimmer of lights.
He knew it was Farfrae's gig descending the hill from an indescribable
personality in its noise, the vehicle having been his own till bought
by the Scotchman at the sale of his effects. Henchard thereupon retraced
his steps along Yalbury Plain, the gig coming up with him as its driver
slackened speed between two plantations.
It was a point in the highway near which the road to Mellstock branched
off from the homeward direction. By diverging to that village, as he had
intended to do, Farfrae might probably delay his return by a couple of
hours. It soon appeared that his intention was to do so still, the
light swerving towards Cuckoo Lane, the by-road aforesaid. Farfrae's off
gig-lamp flashed in Henchard's face. At the same time Farfrae discerned
his late antagonist.
"Farfrae - Mr. Farfrae!" cried the breathless Henchard, holding up his
hand.
Farfrae allowed the horse to turn several steps into the branch lane
before he pulled up. He then drew rein, and said "Yes?" over his
shoulder, as one would towards a pronounced enemy.
"Come back to Casterbridge at once!" Henchard said. "There's something
wrong at your house - requiring your return. I've run all the way here on
purpose to tell ye."
Farfrae was silent, and at his silence Henchard's soul sank within him.
Why had he not, before this, thought of what was only too obvious? He
who, four hours earlier, had enticed Farfrae into a deadly wrestle stood
now in the darkness of late night-time on a lonely road, inviting him
to come a particular way, where an assailant might have confederates,
instead of going his purposed way, where there might be a better
opportunity of guarding himself from attack. Henchard could almost feel
this view of things in course of passage through Farfrae's mind.
"I have to go to Mellstock," said Farfrae coldly, as he loosened his
reins to move on.
"But," implored Henchard, "the matter is more serious than your business
at Mellstock. It is - your wife! She is ill. I can tell you particulars
as we go along."
The very agitation and abruptness of Henchard increased Farfrae's
suspicion that this was a ruse to decoy him on to the next wood, where
might be effectually compassed what, from policy or want of nerve,
Henchard had failed to do earlier in the day. He started the horse.
"I know what you think," deprecated Henchard running after, almost bowed
down with despair as he perceived the image of unscrupulous villainy
that he assumed in his former friend's eyes. "But I am not what you
think!" he cried hoarsely. "Believe me, Farfrae; I have come entirely on
your own and your wife's account. She is in danger. I know no more; and
they want you to come. Your man has gone the other way in a mistake. O
Farfrae! don't mistrust me - I am a wretched man; but my heart is true to
you still!"
Farfrae, however, did distrust him utterly. He knew his wife was
with child, but he had left her not long ago in perfect health; and
Henchard's treachery was more credible than his story. He had in his
time heard bitter ironies from Henchard's lips, and there might be
ironies now. He quickened the horse's pace, and had soon risen into the
high country lying between there and Mellstock, Henchard's spasmodic run
after him lending yet more substance to his thought of evil purposes.
The gig and its driver lessened against the sky in Henchard's eyes;
his exertions for Farfrae's good had been in vain. Over this repentant
sinner, at least, there was to be no joy in heaven. He cursed himself
like a less scrupulous Job, as a vehement man will do when he loses
self-respect, the last mental prop under poverty. To this he had come
after a time of emotional darkness of which the adjoining woodland shade
afforded inadequate illustration. Presently he began to walk back again
along the way by which he had arrived. Farfrae should at all events have
no reason for delay upon the road by seeing him there when he took his
journey homeward later on.
Arriving at Casterbridge Henchard went again to Farfrae's house to make
inquiries. As soon as the door opened anxious faces confronted his
from the staircase, hall, and landing; and they all said in grievous
disappointment, "O - it is not he!" The manservant, finding his mistake,
had long since returned, and all hopes had centred upon Henchard.
"But haven't you found him?" said the doctor.
"Yes....I cannot tell 'ee!" Henchard replied as he sank down on a chair
within the entrance. "He can't be home for two hours."
"H'm," said the surgeon, returning upstairs.
"How is she?" asked Henchard of Elizabeth, who formed one of the group.
"In great danger, father. Her anxiety to see her husband makes her
fearfully restless. Poor woman - I fear they have killed her!"
Henchard regarded the sympathetic speaker for a few instants as if she
struck him in a new light, then, without further remark, went out of
the door and onward to his lonely cottage. So much for man's rivalry,
he thought. Death was to have the oyster, and Farfrae and himself the
shells. But about Elizabeth-lane; in the midst of his gloom she seemed
to him as a pin-point of light. He had liked the look on her face as she
answered him from the stairs. There had been affection in it, and above
all things what he desired now was affection from anything that was good
and pure. She was not his own, yet, for the first time, he had a faint
dream that he might get to like her as his own, - if she would only
continue to love him.
Jopp was just going to bed when Henchard got home. As the latter entered
the door Jopp said, "This is rather bad about Mrs. Farfrae's illness."
"Yes," said Henchard shortly, though little dreaming of Jopp s
complicity in the night's harlequinade, and raising his eyes just
sufficiently to observe that Jopp's face was lined with anxiety.
"Somebody has called for you," continued Jopp, when Henchard was
shutting himself into his own apartment. "A kind of traveller, or
sea-captain of some sort."
"Oh? - who could he be?"
"He seemed a well-be-doing man - had grey hair and a broadish face; but
he gave no name, and no message."
"Nor do I gi'e him any attention." And, saying this, Henchard closed his
door.
The divergence to Mellstock delayed Farfrae's return very nearly the
two hours of Henchard's estimate. Among the other urgent reasons for his
presence had been the need of his authority to send to Budmouth for a
second physician; and when at length Farfrae did come back he was in
a state bordering on distraction at his misconception of Henchard's
motives.
A messenger was despatched to Budmouth, late as it had grown; the night
wore on, and the other doctor came in the small hours. Lucetta had been
much soothed by Donald's arrival; he seldom or never left her side; and
when, immediately after his entry, she had tried to lisp out to him the
secret which so oppressed her, he checked her feeble words, lest talking
should be dangerous, assuring her there was plenty of time to tell him
everything.
Up to this time he knew nothing of the skimmington-ride. The dangerous
illness and miscarriage of Mrs. Farfrae was soon rumoured through the
town, and an apprehensive guess having been given as to its cause by the
leaders in the exploit, compunction and fear threw a dead silence over
all particulars of their orgie; while those immediately around Lucetta
would not venture to add to her husband's distress by alluding to the
subject.
What, and how much, Farfrae's wife ultimately explained to him of her
past entanglement with Henchard, when they were alone in the solitude of
that sad night, cannot be told. That she informed him of the bare
facts of her peculiar intimacy with the corn-merchant became plain from
Farfrae's own statements. But in respect of her subsequent conduct - her
motive in coming to Casterbridge to unite herself with Henchard - her
assumed justification in abandoning him when she discovered reasons for
fearing him (though in truth her inconsequent passion for another man
at first sight had most to do with that abandonment) - her method of
reconciling to her conscience a marriage with the second when she was
in a measure committed to the first: to what extent she spoke of these
things remained Farfrae's secret alone.
Besides the watchman who called the hours and weather in Casterbridge
that night there walked a figure up and down corn Street hardly less
frequently. It was Henchard's, whose retiring to rest had proved itself
a futility as soon as attempted; and he gave it up to go hither and
thither, and make inquiries about the patient every now and then.
He called as much on Farfrae's account as on Lucetta's, and on
Elizabeth-Jane's even more than on either's. Shorn one by one of all
other interests, his life seemed centring on the personality of the
stepdaughter whose presence but recently he could not endure. To see her
on each occasion of his inquiry at Lucetta's was a comfort to him.
The last of his calls was made about four o'clock in the morning, in the
steely light of dawn. Lucifer was fading into day across Durnover Moor,
the sparrows were just alighting into the street, and the hens had begun
to cackle from the outhouses. When within a few yards of Farfrae's he
saw the door gently opened, and a servant raise her hand to the knocker,
to untie the piece of cloth which had muffled it. He went across, the
sparrows in his way scarcely flying up from the road-litter, so little
did they believe in human aggression at so early a time.
"Why do you take off that?" said Henchard.
She turned in some surprise at his presence, and did not answer for an
instant or two. Recognizing him, she said, "Because they may knock as
loud as they will; she will never hear it any more."
41.
Henchard went home. The morning having now fully broke he lit his fire,
and sat abstractedly beside it. He had not sat there long when a gentle
footstep approached the house and entered the passage, a finger tapping
lightly at the door. Henchard's face brightened, for he knew the motions
to be Elizabeth's. She came into his room, looking wan and sad.
"Have you heard?" she asked. "Mrs. Farfrae! She is - dead! Yes,
indeed - about an hour ago!"
"I know it," said Henchard. "I have but lately come in from there. It
is so very good of 'ee, Elizabeth, to come and tell me. You must be
so tired out, too, with sitting up. Now do you bide here with me this
morning. You can go and rest in the other room; and I will call 'ee when
breakfast is ready."
To please him, and herself - for his recent kindliness was winning a
surprised gratitude from the lonely girl - she did as he bade her, and
lay down on a sort of couch which Henchard had rigged up out of a
settle in the adjoining room. She could hear him moving about in his
preparations; but her mind ran most strongly on Lucetta, whose death
in such fulness of life and amid such cheerful hopes of maternity was
appallingly unexpected. Presently she fell asleep.
Meanwhile her stepfather in the outer room had set the breakfast in
readiness; but finding that she dozed he would not call her; he
waited on, looking into the fire and keeping the kettle boiling with
house-wifely care, as if it were an honour to have her in his house. In
truth, a great change had come over him with regard to her, and he was
developing the dream of a future lit by her filial presence, as though
that way alone could happiness lie.
He was disturbed by another knock at the door, and rose to open it,
rather deprecating a call from anybody just then. A stoutly built man
stood on the doorstep, with an alien, unfamiliar air about his figure
and bearing - an air which might have been called colonial by people of
cosmopolitan experience. It was the man who had asked the way at Peter's
finger. Henchard nodded, and looked inquiry.
"Good morning, good morning," said the stranger with profuse heartiness.
"Is it Mr. Henchard I am talking to?"
"My name is Henchard."
"Then I've caught 'ee at home - that's right. Morning's the time for
business, says I. Can I have a few words with you?"
"By all means," Henchard answered, showing the way in.
"You may remember me?" said his visitor, seating himself.
Henchard observed him indifferently, and shook his head.
"Well - perhaps you may not. My name is Newson."
Henchard's face and eyes seemed to die. The other did not notice it. "I
know the name well," Henchard said at last, looking on the floor.
"I make no doubt of that. Well, the fact is, I've been looking for 'ee
this fortnight past. I landed at Havenpool and went through Casterbridge
on my way to Falmouth, and when I got there, they told me you had some
years before been living at Casterbridge. Back came I again, and by long
and by late I got here by coach, ten minutes ago. 'He lives down by the
mill,' says they. So here I am. Now - that transaction between us
some twenty years agone - 'tis that I've called about. 'Twas a curious
business. I was younger then than I am now, and perhaps the less said
about it, in one sense, the better."
"Curious business! 'Twas worse than curious. I cannot even allow that
I'm the man you met then. I was not in my senses, and a man's senses are
himself."
"We were young and thoughtless," said Newson. "However, I've come to
mend matters rather than open arguments. Poor Susan - hers was a strange
experience."
"She was a warm-hearted, home-spun woman. She was not what they call
shrewd or sharp at all - better she had been."
"She was not."
"As you in all likelihood know, she was simple-minded enough to think
that the sale was in a way binding. She was as guiltless o' wrong-doing
in that particular as a saint in the clouds."
"I know it, I know it. I found it out directly," said Henchard, still
with averted eyes. "There lay the sting o't to me. If she had seen it as
what it was she would never have left me. Never! But how should she be
expected to know? What advantages had she? None. She could write her own
name, and no more.
"Well, it was not in my heart to undeceive her when the deed was done,"
said the sailor of former days. "I thought, and there was not much
vanity in thinking it, that she would be happier with me. She was fairly
happy, and I never would have undeceived her till the day of her
death. Your child died; she had another, and all went well. But a time
came - mind me, a time always does come. A time came - it was some while
after she and I and the child returned from America - when somebody she
had confided her history to, told her my claim to her was a mockery, and
made a jest of her belief in my right. After that she was never happy
with me. She pined and pined, and socked and sighed. She said she must
leave me, and then came the question of our child. Then a man advised
me how to act, and I did it, for I thought it was best. I left her
at Falmouth, and went off to sea. When I got to the other side of
the Atlantic there was a storm, and it was supposed that a lot of
us, including myself, had been washed overboard. I got ashore at
Newfoundland, and then I asked myself what I should do.
"'Since I'm here, here I'll bide,' I thought to myself; ''twill be most
kindness to her, now she's taken against me, to let her believe me lost,
for,' I thought, 'while she supposes us both alive she'll be miserable;
but if she thinks me dead she'll go back to him, and the child will have
a home.' I've never returned to this country till a month ago, and I
found that, as I supposed, she went to you, and my daughter with
her. They told me in Falmouth that Susan was dead. But my
Elizabeth-Jane - where is she?"
"Dead likewise," said Henchard doggedly. "Surely you learnt that too?"
The sailor started up, and took an enervated pace or two down the room.
"Dead!" he said, in a low voice. "Then what's the use of my money to
me?"
Henchard, without answering, shook his head as if that were rather a
question for Newson himself than for him.
"Where is she buried?" the traveller inquired.
"Beside her mother," said Henchard, in the same stolid tones.
"When did she die?"
"A year ago and more," replied the other without hesitation.
The sailor continued standing. Henchard never looked up from the floor.
At last Newson said: "My journey hither has been for nothing! I may as
well go as I came! It has served me right. I'll trouble you no longer."
Henchard heard the retreating footsteps of Newson upon the sanded floor,
the mechanical lifting of the latch, the slow opening and closing of the
door that was natural to a baulked or dejected man; but he did not turn
his head. Newson's shadow passed the window. He was gone.
Then Henchard, scarcely believing the evidence of his senses, rose
from his seat amazed at what he had done. It had been the impulse of a
moment. The regard he had lately acquired for Elizabeth, the new-sprung
hope of his loneliness that she would be to him a daughter of whom he
could feel as proud as of the actual daughter she still believed herself
to be, had been stimulated by the unexpected coming of Newson to a
greedy exclusiveness in relation to her; so that the sudden prospect of
her loss had caused him to speak mad lies like a child, in pure mockery
of consequences. He had expected questions to close in round him, and
unmask his fabrication in five minutes; yet such questioning had not
come. But surely they would come; Newson's departure could be but
momentary; he would learn all by inquiries in the town; and return to
curse him, and carry his last treasure away!
He hastily put on his hat, and went out in the direction that Newson had
taken. Newson's back was soon visible up the road, crossing Bull-stake.
Henchard followed, and saw his visitor stop at the King's Arms, where
the morning coach which had brought him waited half-an-hour for another
coach which crossed there. The coach Newson had come by was now about to
move again. Newson mounted, his luggage was put in, and in a few minutes
the vehicle disappeared with him.
He had not so much as turned his head. It was an act of simple faith
in Henchard's words - faith so simple as to be almost sublime. The young
sailor who had taken Susan Henchard on the spur of the moment and on the
faith of a glance at her face, more than twenty years before, was still
living and acting under the form of the grizzled traveller who had taken
Henchard's words on trust so absolute as to shame him as he stood.
Was Elizabeth-Jane to remain his by virtue of this hardy invention of a
moment? "Perhaps not for long," said he. Newson might converse with his
fellow-travellers, some of whom might be Casterbridge people; and the
trick would be discovered.
This probability threw Henchard into a defensive attitude, and instead
of considering how best to right the wrong, and acquaint Elizabeth's
father with the truth at once, he bethought himself of ways to keep the
position he had accidentally won. Towards the young woman herself his
affection grew more jealously strong with each new hazard to which his
claim to her was exposed.
He watched the distant highway expecting to see Newson return on foot,
enlightened and indignant, to claim his child. But no figure appeared.
Possibly he had spoken to nobody on the coach, but buried his grief in
his own heart.
His grief! - what was it, after all, to that which he, Henchard, would
feel at the loss of her? Newson's affection cooled by years, could not
equal his who had been constantly in her presence. And thus his jealous
soul speciously argued to excuse the separation of father and child.
He returned to the house half expecting that she would have vanished.
No; there she was - just coming out from the inner room, the marks of
sleep upon her eyelids, and exhibiting a generally refreshed air.
"O father!" she said smiling. "I had no sooner lain down than I napped,
though I did not mean to. I wonder I did not dream about poor Mrs.
Farfrae, after thinking of her so; but I did not. How strange it is that
we do not often dream of latest events, absorbing as they may be."
"I am glad you have been able to sleep," he said, taking her hand with
anxious proprietorship - an act which gave her a pleasant surprise.
They sat down to breakfast, and Elizabeth-Jane's thoughts reverted to
Lucetta. Their sadness added charm to a countenance whose beauty had
ever lain in its meditative soberness.
"Father," she said, as soon as she recalled herself to the outspread
meal, "it is so kind of you to get this nice breakfast with your own
hands, and I idly asleep the while."
"I do it every day," he replied. "You have left me; everybody has left
me; how should I live but by my own hands."
"You are very lonely, are you not?"
"Ay, child - to a degree that you know nothing of! It is my own fault.
You are the only one who has been near me for weeks. And you will come
no more."
"Why do you say that? Indeed I will, if you would like to see me."
Henchard signified dubiousness. Though he had so lately hoped that
Elizabeth-Jane might again live in his house as daughter, he would
not ask her to do so now. Newson might return at any moment, and what
Elizabeth would think of him for his deception it were best to bear
apart from her.
When they had breakfasted his stepdaughter still lingered, till the
moment arrived at which Henchard was accustomed to go to his daily work.
Then she arose, and with assurance of coming again soon went up the hill
in the morning sunlight.
"At this moment her heart is as warm towards me as mine is towards her,
she would live with me here in this humble cottage for the asking! Yet
before the evening probably he will have come, and then she will scorn
me!"
This reflection, constantly repeated by Henchard to himself, accompanied
him everywhere through the day. His mood was no longer that of the
rebellious, ironical, reckless misadventurer; but the leaden gloom of
one who has lost all that can make life interesting, or even tolerable.
There would remain nobody for him to be proud of, nobody to fortify him;
for Elizabeth-Jane would soon be but as a stranger, and worse. Susan,
Farfrae, Lucetta, Elizabeth - all had gone from him, one after one,
either by his fault or by his misfortune.
In place of them he had no interest, hobby, or desire. If he could have
summoned music to his aid his existence might even now have been borne;
for with Henchard music was of regal power. The merest trumpet or organ
tone was enough to move him, and high harmonies transubstantiated him.
But hard fate had ordained that he should be unable to call up this
Divine spirit in his need.
The whole land ahead of him was as darkness itself; there was nothing
to come, nothing to wait for. Yet in the natural course of life he might
possibly have to linger on earth another thirty or forty years - scoffed
at; at best pitied.
The thought of it was unendurable.
To the east of Casterbridge lay moors and meadows through which much
water flowed. The wanderer in this direction who should stand still
for a few moments on a quiet night, might hear singular symphonies from
these waters, as from a lampless orchestra, all playing in their sundry
tones from near and far parts of the moor. At a hole in a rotten weir
they executed a recitative; where a tributary brook fell over a stone
breastwork they trilled cheerily; under an arch they performed a
metallic cymballing, and at Durnover Hole they hissed. The spot at
which their instrumentation rose loudest was a place called Ten Hatches,
whence during high springs there proceeded a very fugue of sounds.
The river here was deep and strong at all times, and the hatches on this
account were raised and lowered by cogs and a winch. A patch led
from the second bridge over the highway (so often mentioned) to these
Hatches, crossing the stream at their head by a narrow plank-bridge. But
after night-fall human beings were seldom found going that way, the path
leading only to a deep reach of the stream called Blackwater, and the
passage being dangerous.
Henchard, however, leaving the town by the east road, proceeded to the
second, or stone bridge, and thence struck into this path of solitude,
following its course beside the stream till the dark shapes of the Ten
Hatches cut the sheen thrown upon the river by the weak lustre that
still lingered in the west. In a second or two he stood beside the
weir-hole where the water was at its deepest. He looked backwards and
forwards, and no creature appeared in view. He then took off his coat
and hat, and stood on the brink of the stream with his hands clasped in
front of him.
While his eyes were bent on the water beneath there slowly became
visible a something floating in the circular pool formed by the wash of
centuries; the pool he was intending to make his death-bed. At first
it was indistinct by reason of the shadow from the bank; but it emerged
thence and took shape, which was that of a human body, lying stiff and
stark upon the surface of the stream.
In the circular current imparted by the central flow the form was
brought forward, till it passed under his eyes; and then he perceived
with a sense of horror that it was HIMSELF. Not a man somewhat
resembling him, but one in all respects his counterpart, his actual
double, was floating as if dead in Ten Hatches Hole.
The sense of the supernatural was strong in this unhappy man, and
he turned away as one might have done in the actual presence of an
appalling miracle. He covered his eyes and bowed his head. Without
looking again into the stream he took his coat and hat, and went slowly
away.
Presently he found himself by the door of his own dwelling. To his
surprise Elizabeth-Jane was standing there. She came forward, spoke,
called him "father" just as before. Newson, then, had not even yet
returned.
"I thought you seemed very sad this morning," she said, "so I have come
again to see you. Not that I am anything but sad myself. But everybody
and everything seem against you so, and I know you must be suffering."
How this woman divined things! Yet she had not divined their whole
extremity.
He said to her, "Are miracles still worked, do ye think, Elizabeth? I
am not a read man. I don't know so much as I could wish. I have tried
to peruse and learn all my life; but the more I try to know the more
ignorant I seem."
"I don't quite think there are any miracles nowadays," she said.
"No interference in the case of desperate intentions, for instance?
Well, perhaps not, in a direct way. Perhaps not. But will you come and
walk with me, and I will show 'ee what I mean."
She agreed willingly, and he took her over the highway, and by the
lonely path to Ten Hatches. He walked restlessly, as if some haunting
shade, unseen of her, hovered round him and troubled his glance. She
would gladly have talked of Lucetta, but feared to disturb him. When
they got near the weir he stood still, and asked her to go forward and
look into the pool, and tell him what she saw.
She went, and soon returned to him. "Nothing," she said.
"Go again," said Henchard, "and look narrowly."
She proceeded to the river brink a second time. On her return, after
some delay, she told him that she saw something floating round and round
there; but what it was she could not discern. It seemed to be a bundle
of old clothes.
"Are they like mine?" asked Henchard.
"Well - they are. Dear me - I wonder if - Father, let us go away!"
"Go and look once more; and then we will get home."
She went back, and he could see her stoop till her head was close to the
margin of the pool. She started up, and hastened back to his side.
"Well," said Henchard; "what do you say now?"
"Let us go home."
"But tell me - do - what is it floating there?"
"The effigy," she answered hastily. "They must have thrown it into the
river higher up amongst the willows at Blackwater, to get rid of it in
their alarm at discovery by the magistrates, and it must have floated
down here."
"Ah - to be sure - the image o' me! But where is the other? Why that one
only?... That performance of theirs killed her, but kept me alive!"
Elizabeth-Jane thought and thought of these words "kept me alive," as
they slowly retraced their way to the town, and at length guessed their
meaning. "Father! - I will not leave you alone like this!" she cried.
"May I live with you, and tend upon you as I used to do? I do not mind
your being poor. I would have agreed to come this morning, but you did
not ask me."
"May you come to me?" he cried bitterly. "Elizabeth, don't mock me! If
you only would come!"
"I will," said she.
"How will you forgive all my roughness in former days? You cannot!"
"I have forgotten it. Talk of that no more."
Thus she assured him, and arranged their plans for reunion; and at
length each went home. Then Henchard shaved for the first time during
many days, and put on clean linen, and combed his hair; and was as a man
resuscitated thenceforward.
The next morning the fact turned out to be as Elizabeth-Jane had stated;
the effigy was discovered by a cowherd, and that of Lucetta a little
higher up in the same stream. But as little as possible was said of the
matter, and the figures were privately destroyed.
Despite this natural solution of the mystery Henchard no less regarded
it as an intervention that the figure should have been floating there.
Elizabeth-Jane heard him say, "Who is such a reprobate as I! And yet it
seems that even I be in Somebody's hand!"
42.
But the emotional conviction that he was in Somebody's hand began to die
out of Henchard's breast as time slowly removed into distance the event
which had given that feeling birth. The apparition of Newson haunted
him. He would surely return.
Yet Newson did not arrive. Lucetta had been borne along the churchyard
path; Casterbridge had for the last time turned its regard upon her,
before proceeding to its work as if she had never lived. But Elizabeth
remained undisturbed in the belief of her relationship to Henchard, and
now shared his home. Perhaps, after all, Newson was gone for ever.
In due time the bereaved Farfrae had learnt the, at least, proximate
cause of Lucetta's illness and death, and his first impulse was
naturally enough to wreak vengeance in the name of the law upon the
perpetrators of the mischief. He resolved to wait till the funeral was
over ere he moved in the matter. The time having come he reflected.
Disastrous as the result had been, it was obviously in no way foreseen
or intended by the thoughtless crew who arranged the motley procession.
The tempting prospect of putting to the blush people who stand at the
head of affairs - that supreme and piquant enjoyment of those who writhe
under the heel of the same - had alone animated them, so far as he could
see; for he knew nothing of Jopp's incitements. Other considerations
were also involved. Lucetta had confessed everything to him before her
death, and it was not altogether desirable to make much ado about her
history, alike for her sake, for Henchard's, and for his own. To
regard the event as an untoward accident seemed, to Farfrae, truest
consideration for the dead one's memory, as well as best philosophy.
Henchard and himself mutually forbore to meet. For Elizabeth's sake the
former had fettered his pride sufficiently to accept the small seed and
root business which some of the Town Council, headed by Farfrae, had
purchased to afford him a new opening. Had he been only personally
concerned Henchard, without doubt, would have declined assistance even
remotely brought about by the man whom he had so fiercely assailed. But
the sympathy of the girl seemed necessary to his very existence; and on
her account pride itself wore the garments of humility.
Here they settled themselves; and on each day of their lives Henchard
anticipated her every wish with a watchfulness in which paternal regard
was heightened by a burning jealous dread of rivalry. Yet that Newson
would ever now return to Casterbridge to claim her as a daughter there
was little reason to suppose. He was a wanderer and a stranger, almost
an alien; he had not seen his daughter for several years; his affection
for her could not in the nature of things be keen; other interests would
probably soon obscure his recollections of her, and prevent any such
renewal of inquiry into the past as would lead to a discovery that she
was still a creature of the present. To satisfy his conscience somewhat
Henchard repeated to himself that the lie which had retained for him
the coveted treasure had not been deliberately told to that end, but
had come from him as the last defiant word of a despair which took no
thought of consequences. Furthermore he pleaded within himself that no
Newson could love her as he loved her, or would tend her to his life's
extremity as he was prepared to do cheerfully.
Thus they lived on in the shop overlooking the churchyard, and nothing
occurred to mark their days during the remainder of the year. Going out
but seldom, and never on a marketday, they saw Donald Farfrae only at
rarest intervals, and then mostly as a transitory object in the distance
of the street. Yet he was pursuing his ordinary avocations, smiling
mechanically to fellow-tradesmen, and arguing with bargainers - as
bereaved men do after a while.
Time, "in his own grey style," taught Farfrae how to estimate his
experience of Lucetta - all that it was, and all that it was not. There
are men whose hearts insist upon a dogged fidelity to some image or
cause thrown by chance into their keeping, long after their judgment has
pronounced it no rarity - even the reverse, indeed, and without them the
band of the worthy is incomplete. But Farfrae was not of those. It
was inevitable that the insight, briskness, and rapidity of his nature
should take him out of the dead blank which his loss threw about him. He
could not but perceive that by the death of Lucetta he had exchanged
a looming misery for a simple sorrow. After that revelation of her
history, which must have come sooner or later in any circumstances, it
was hard to believe that life with her would have been productive of
further happiness.
But as a memory, nothwithstanding such conditions, Lucetta's image still
lived on with him, her weaknesses provoking only the gentlest criticism,
and her sufferings attenuating wrath at her concealments to a momentary
spark now and then.
By the end of a year Henchard's little retail seed and grain shop, not
much larger than a cupboard, had developed its trade considerably, and
the stepfather and daughter enjoyed much serenity in the pleasant, sunny
corner in which it stood. The quiet bearing of one who brimmed with an
inner activity characterized Elizabeth-Jane at this period. She took
long walks into the country two or three times a week, mostly in the
direction of Budmouth. Sometimes it occurred to him that when she sat
with him in the evening after those invigorating walks she was civil
rather than affectionate; and he was troubled; one more bitter regret
being added to those he had already experienced at having, by his severe
censorship, frozen up her precious affection when originally offered.
She had her own way in everything now. In going and coming, in buying
and selling, her word was law.
"You have got a new muff, Elizabeth," he said to her one day quite
humbly.
"Yes; I bought it," she said.
He looked at it again as it lay on an adjoining table. The fur was of a
glossy brown, and, though he was no judge of such articles, he thought
it seemed an unusually good one for her to possess.
"Rather costly, I suppose, my dear, was it not?" he hazarded.
"It was rather above my figure," she said quietly. "But it is not
showy."
"O no," said the netted lion, anxious not to pique her in the least.
Some little time after, when the year had advanced into another spring,
he paused opposite her empty bedroom in passing it. He thought of the
time when she had cleared out of his then large and handsome house in
corn Street, in consequence of his dislike and harshness, and he had
looked into her chamber in just the same way. The present room was much
humbler, but what struck him about it was the abundance of books lying
everywhere. Their number and quality made the meagre furniture that
supported them seem absurdly disproportionate. Some, indeed many, must
have been recently purchased; and though he encouraged her to buy
in reason, he had no notion that she indulged her innate passion so
extensively in proportion to the narrowness of their income. For the