The Mayor of Casterbridge

T >> Thomas Hardy >> The Mayor of Casterbridge


As on the Sunday, so on the week-days, Farfrae and Lucetta might have
been seen flitting about the town like two butterflies--or rather like
a bee and a butterfly in league for life. She seemed to take no pleasure
in going anywhere except in her husband's company; and hence when
business would not permit him to waste an afternoon she remained indoors
waiting for the time to pass till his return, her face being visible to
Elizabeth-Jane from her window aloft. The latter, however, did not say
to herself that Farfrae should be thankful for such devotion, but,
full of her reading, she cited Rosalind's exclamation: "Mistress, know
yourself; down on your knees and thank Heaven fasting for a good man's
love."

She kept her eye upon Henchard also. One day he answered her inquiry
for his health by saying that he could not endure Abel Whittle's pitying
eyes upon him while they worked together in the yard. "He is such a
fool," said Henchard, "that he can never get out of his mind the time
when I was master there."

"I'll come and wimble for you instead of him, if you will allow me,"
said she. Her motive on going to the yard was to get an opportunity of
observing the general position of affairs on Farfrae's premises now that
her stepfather was a workman there. Henchard's threats had alarmed her
so much that she wished to see his behaviour when the two were face to
face.

For two or three days after her arrival Donald did not make any
appearance. Then one afternoon the green door opened, and through came,
first Farfrae, and at his heels Lucetta. Donald brought his wife forward
without hesitation, it being obvious that he had no suspicion whatever
of any antecedents in common between her and the now journeyman
hay-trusser.

Henchard did not turn his eyes toward either of the pair, keeping them
fixed on the bond he twisted, as if that alone absorbed him. A feeling
of delicacy, which ever prompted Farfrae to avoid anything that might
seem like triumphing over a fallen rivel, led him to keep away from the
hay-barn where Henchard and his daughter were working, and to go on to
the corn department. Meanwhile Lucetta, never having been informed that
Henchard had entered her husband's service, rambled straight on to the
barn, where she came suddenly upon Henchard, and gave vent to a little
"Oh!" which the happy and busy Donald was too far off to hear. Henchard,
with withering humility of demeanour, touched the brim of his hat to
her as Whittle and the rest had done, to which she breathed a dead-alive
"Good afternoon."

"I beg your pardon, ma'am?" said Henchard, as if he had not heard.

"I said good afternoon," she faltered.

"O yes, good afternoon, ma'am," he replied, touching his hat again. "I
am glad to see you, ma'am." Lucetta looked embarrassed, and Henchard
continued: "For we humble workmen here feel it a great honour that a
lady should look in and take an interest in us."

She glanced at him entreatingly; the sarcasm was too bitter, too
unendurable.

"Can you tell me the time, ma'am?" he asked.

"Yes," she said hastily; "half-past four."

"Thank 'ee. An hour and a half longer before we are released from work.
Ah, ma'am, we of the lower classes know nothing of the gay leisure that
such as you enjoy!"

As soon as she could do so Lucetta left him, nodded and smiled
to Elizabeth-Jane, and joined her husband at the other end of the
enclosure, where she could be seen leading him away by the outer gates,
so as to avoid passing Henchard again. That she had been taken by
surprise was obvious. The result of this casual rencounter was that the
next morning a note was put into Henchard's hand by the postman.

"Will you," said Lucetta, with as much bitterness as she could put into
a small communication, "will you kindly undertake not to speak to me in
the biting undertones you used to-day, if I walk through the yard at
any time? I bear you no ill-will, and I am only too glad that you should
have employment of my dear husband; but in common fairness treat me as
his wife, and do not try to make me wretched by covert sneers. I have
committed no crime, and done you no injury.

"Poor fool!" said Henchard with fond savagery, holding out the note. "To
know no better than commit herself in writing like this! Why, if I were
to show that to her dear husband--pooh!" He threw the letter into the
fire.

Lucetta took care not to come again among the hay and corn. She would
rather have died than run the risk of encountering Henchard at such
close quarters a second time. The gulf between them was growing wider
every day. Farfrae was always considerate to his fallen acquaintance;
but it was impossible that he should not, by degrees, cease to regard
the ex-corn-merchant as more than one of his other workmen. Henchard saw
this, and concealed his feelings under a cover of stolidity, fortifying
his heart by drinking more freely at the Three Mariners every evening.

Often did Elizabeth-Jane, in her endeavours to prevent his taking other
liquor, carry tea to him in a little basket at five o'clock. Arriving
one day on this errand she found her stepfather was measuring up
clover-seed and rape-seed in the corn-stores on the top floor, and she
ascended to him. Each floor had a door opening into the air under a
cat-head, from which a chain dangled for hoisting the sacks.

When Elizabeth's head rose through the trap she perceived that the upper
door was open, and that her stepfather and Farfrae stood just within it
in conversation, Farfrae being nearest the dizzy edge, and Henchard
a little way behind. Not to interrupt them she remained on the steps
without raising her head any higher. While waiting thus she saw--or
fancied she saw, for she had a terror of feeling certain--her stepfather
slowly raise his hand to a level behind Farfrae's shoulders, a curious
expression taking possession of his face. The young man was quite
unconscious of the action, which was so indirect that, if Farfrae had
observed it, he might almost have regarded it as an idle outstretching
of the arm. But it would have been possible, by a comparatively light
touch, to push Farfrae off his balance, and send him head over heels
into the air.

Elizabeth felt quite sick at heart on thinking of what this MIGHT have
meant. As soon as they turned she mechanically took the tea to Henchard,
left it, and went away. Reflecting, she endeavoured to assure herself
that the movement was an idle eccentricity, and no more. Yet, on the
other hand, his subordinate position in an establishment where he once
had been master might be acting on him like an irritant poison; and she
finally resolved to caution Donald.




34.


Next morning, accordingly, she rose at five o'clock and went into the
street. It was not yet light; a dense fog prevailed, and the town was
as silent as it was dark, except that from the rectangular avenues which
framed in the borough there came a chorus of tiny rappings, caused by
the fall of water-drops condensed on the boughs; now it was wafted from
the West Walk, now from the South Walk; and then from both quarters
simultaneously. She moved on to the bottom of corn Street, and, knowing
his time well, waited only a few minutes before she heard the familiar
bang of his door, and then his quick walk towards her. She met him at
the point where the last tree of the engirding avenue flanked the last
house in the street.

He could hardly discern her till, glancing inquiringly, he said,
"What--Miss Henchard--and are ye up so airly?"

She asked him to pardon her for waylaying him at such an unseemly time.
"But I am anxious to mention something," she said. "And I wished not to
alarm Mrs. Farfrae by calling."

"Yes?" said he, with the cheeriness of a superior. "And what may it be?
It's very kind of ye, I'm sure."

She now felt the difficulty of conveying to his mind the exact aspect
of possibilities in her own. But she somehow began, and introduced
Henchard's name. "I sometimes fear," she said with an effort, "that he
may be betrayed into some attempt to--insult you, sir.

"But we are the best of friends?"

"Or to play some practical joke upon you, sir. Remember that he has been
hardly used."

"But we are quite friendly?"

"Or to do something--that would injure you--hurt you--wound you." Every
word cost her twice its length of pain. And she could see that Farfrae
was still incredulous. Henchard, a poor man in his employ, was not to
Farfrae's view the Henchard who had ruled him. Yet he was not only the
same man, but that man with his sinister qualities, formerly latent,
quickened into life by his buffetings.

Farfrae, happy, and thinking no evil, persisted in making light of her
fears. Thus they parted, and she went homeward, journeymen now being in
the street, waggoners going to the harness-makers for articles left to
be repaired, farm-horses going to the shoeing-smiths, and the sons of
labour showing themselves generally on the move. Elizabeth entered her
lodging unhappily, thinking she had done no good, and only made herself
appear foolish by her weak note of warning.

But Donald Farfrae was one of those men upon whom an incident is never
absolutely lost. He revised impressions from a subsequent point of view,
and the impulsive judgment of the moment was not always his permanent
one. The vision of Elizabeth's earnest face in the rimy dawn came
back to him several times during the day. Knowing the solidity of her
character he did not treat her hints altogether as idle sounds.

But he did not desist from a kindly scheme on Henchard's account that
engaged him just then; and when he met Lawyer Joyce, the town-clerk,
later in the day, he spoke of it as if nothing had occurred to damp it.

"About that little seedsman's shop," he said, "the shop overlooking the
churchyard, which is to let. It is not for myself I want it, but for our
unlucky fellow-townsman Henchard. It would be a new beginning for him,
if a small one; and I have told the Council that I would head a private
subscription among them to set him up in it--that I would be fifty
pounds, if they would make up the other fifty among them."

"Yes, yes; so I've heard; and there's nothing to say against it for that
matter," the town-clerk replied, in his plain, frank way. "But, Farfrae,
others see what you don't. Henchard hates 'ee--ay, hates 'ee; and 'tis
right that you should know it. To my knowledge he was at the Three
Mariners last night, saying in public that about you which a man ought
not to say about another."

"Is that so--ah, is that so?" said Farfrae, looking down. "Why should he
do it?" added the young man bitterly; "what harm have I done him that he
should try to wrong me?"

"God only knows," said Joyce, lifting his eyebrows. "It shows much
long-suffering in you to put up with him, and keep him in your employ."

"But I cannet discharge a man who was once a good friend to me. How can
I forget that when I came here 'twas he enabled me to make a footing for
mysel'? No, no. As long as I've a day's work to offer he shall do it if
he chooses. 'Tis not I who will deny him such a little as that. But I'll
drop the idea of establishing him in a shop till I can think more about
it."

It grieved Farfrae much to give up this scheme. But a damp having
been thrown over it by these and other voices in the air, he went and
countermanded his orders. The then occupier of the shop was in it when
Farfrae spoke to him and feeling it necessary to give some explanation
of his withdrawal from the negotiation Donald mentioned Henchard's name,
and stated that the intentions of the Council had been changed.

The occupier was much disappointed, and straight-way informed Henchard,
as soon as he saw him, that a scheme of the Council for setting him up
in a shop had been knocked on the head by Farfrae. And thus out of error
enmity grew.

When Farfrae got indoors that evening the tea-kettle was singing on the
high hob of the semi-egg-shaped grate. Lucetta, light as a sylph, ran
forward and seized his hands, whereupon Farfrae duly kissed her.

"Oh!" she cried playfully, turning to the window. "See--the blinds are
not drawn down, and the people can look in--what a scandal!"

When the candles were lighted, the curtains drawn, and the twain sat at
tea, she noticed that he looked serious. Without directly inquiring why
she let her eyes linger solicitously on his face.

"Who has called?" he absently asked. "Any folk for me?"

"No," said Lucetta. "What's the matter, Donald?"

"Well--nothing worth talking of," he responded sadly.

"Then, never mind it. You will get through it, Scotchmen are always
lucky."

"No--not always!" he said, shaking his head gloomily as he contemplated
a crumb on the table. "I know many who have not been so! There was
Sandy Macfarlane, who started to America to try his fortune, and he was
drowned; and Archibald Leith, he was murdered! And poor Willie Dunbleeze
and Maitland Macfreeze--they fell into bad courses, and went the way of
all such!"

"Why--you old goosey--I was only speaking in a general sense, of course!
You are always so literal. Now when we have finished tea, sing me
that funny song about high-heeled shoon and siller tags, and the
one-and-forty wooers."

"No, no. I couldna sing to-night! It's Henchard--he hates me; so that I
may not be his friend if I would. I would understand why there should be
a wee bit of envy; but I cannet see a reason for the whole intensity
of what he feels. Now, can you, Lucetta? It is more like old-fashioned
rivalry in love than just a bit of rivalry in trade."

Lucetta had grown somewhat wan. "No," she replied.

"I give him employment--I cannet refuse it. But neither can I blind
myself to the fact that with a man of passions such as his, there is no
safeguard for conduct!"

"What have you heard--O Donald, dearest?" said Lucetta in alarm. The
words on her lips were "anything about me?"--but she did not utter them.
She could not, however, suppress her agitation, and her eyes filled with
tears.

"No, no--it is not so serious as ye fancy," declared Farfrae soothingly;
though he did not know its seriousness so well as she.

"I wish you would do what we have talked of," mournfully remarked
Lucetta. "Give up business, and go away from here. We have plenty of
money, and why should we stay?"

Farfrae seemed seriously disposed to discuss this move, and they talked
thereon till a visitor was announced. Their neighbour Alderman Vatt came
in.

"You've heard, I suppose of poor Doctor Chalkfield's death? Yes--died
this afternoon at five," said Mr. Vatt Chalkfield was the Councilman who
had succeeded to the Mayoralty in the preceding November.

Farfrae was sorry at the intelligence, and Mr. Vatt continued: "Well, we
know he's been going some days, and as his family is well provided for
we must take it all as it is. Now I have called to ask 'ee this--quite
privately. If I should nominate 'ee to succeed him, and there should be
no particular opposition, will 'ee accept the chair?"

"But there are folk whose turn is before mine; and I'm over young, and
may be thought pushing!" said Farfrae after a pause.

"Not at all. I don't speak for myself only, several have named it. You
won't refuse?"

"We thought of going away," interposed Lucetta, looking at Farfrae
anxiously.

"It was only a fancy," Farfrae murmured. "I wouldna refuse if it is the
wish of a respectable majority in the Council."

"Very well, then, look upon yourself as elected. We have had older men
long enough."

When he was gone Farfrae said musingly, "See now how it's ourselves that
are ruled by the Powers above us! We plan this, but we do that. If they
want to make me Mayor I will stay, and Henchard must rave as he will."

From this evening onward Lucetta was very uneasy. If she had not been
imprudence incarnate she would not have acted as she did when she met
Henchard by accident a day or two later. It was in the bustle of the
market, when no one could readily notice their discourse.

"Michael," said she, "I must again ask you what I asked you months
ago--to return me any letters or papers of mine that you may
have--unless you have destroyed them? You must see how desirable it
is that the time at Jersey should be blotted out, for the good of all
parties."

"Why, bless the woman!--I packed up every scrap of your handwriting to
give you in the coach--but you never appeared."

She explained how the death of her aunt had prevented her taking the
journey on that day. "And what became of the parcel then?" she asked.

He could not say--he would consider. When she was gone he recollected
that he had left a heap of useless papers in his former dining-room
safe--built up in the wall of his old house--now occupied by Farfrae.
The letters might have been amongst them.

A grotesque grin shaped itself on Henchard's face. Had that safe been
opened?

On the very evening which followed this there was a great ringing of
bells in Casterbridge, and the combined brass, wood, catgut, and leather
bands played round the town with more prodigality of percussion-notes
than ever. Farfrae was Mayor--the two-hundredth odd of a series forming
an elective dynasty dating back to the days of Charles I--and the
fair Lucetta was the courted of the town....But, Ah! the worm i' the
bud--Henchard; what he could tell!

He, in the meantime, festering with indignation at some erroneous
intelligence of Farfrae's opposition to the scheme for installing him
in the little seed-shop, was greeted with the news of the municipal
election (which, by reason of Farfrae's comparative youth and his
Scottish nativity--a thing unprecedented in the case--had an interest
far beyond the ordinary). The bell-ringing and the band-playing, loud as
Tamerlane's trumpet, goaded the downfallen Henchard indescribably: the
ousting now seemed to him to be complete.

The next morning he went to the corn-yard as usual, and about eleven
o'clock Donald entered through the green door, with no trace of the
worshipful about him. The yet more emphatic change of places between
him and Henchard which this election had established renewed a slight
embarrassment in the manner of the modest young man; but Henchard
showed the front of one who had overlooked all this; and Farfrae met his
amenities half-way at once.

"I was going to ask you," said Henchard, "about a packet that I
may possibly have left in my old safe in the dining-room." He added
particulars.

"If so, it is there now," said Farfrae. "I have never opened the safe at
all as yet; for I keep ma papers at the bank, to sleep easy o' nights."

"It was not of much consequence--to me," said Henchard. "But I'll call
for it this evening, if you don't mind?"

It was quite late when he fulfilled his promise. He had primed himself
with grog, as he did very frequently now, and a curl of sardonic
humour hung on his lip as he approached the house, as though he were
contemplating some terrible form of amusement. Whatever it was, the
incident of his entry did not diminish its force, this being his first
visit to the house since he had lived there as owner. The ring of the
bell spoke to him like the voice of a familiar drudge who had been
bribed to forsake him; the movements of the doors were revivals of dead
days.

Farfrae invited him into the dining-room, where he at once unlocked
the iron safe built into the wall, HIS, Henchard's safe, made by an
ingenious locksmith under his direction. Farfrae drew thence the parcel,
and other papers, with apologies for not having returned them.

"Never mind," said Henchard drily. "The fact is they are letters
mostly....Yes," he went on, sitting down and unfolding Lucetta's
passionate bundle, "here they be. That ever I should see 'em again! I
hope Mrs. Farfrae is well after her exertions of yesterday?"

"She has felt a bit weary; and has gone to bed airly on that account."

Henchard returned to the letters, sorting them over with interest,
Farfrae being seated at the other end of the dining-table. "You don't
forget, of course," he resumed, "that curious chapter in the history of
my past which I told you of, and that you gave me some assistance in?
These letters are, in fact, related to that unhappy business. Though,
thank God, it is all over now."

"What became of the poor woman?" asked Farfrae.

"Luckily she married, and married well," said Henchard. "So that these
reproaches she poured out on me do not now cause me any twinges, as they
might otherwise have done....Just listen to what an angry woman will
say!"

Farfrae, willing to humour Henchard, though quite uninterested, and
bursting with yawns, gave well-mannered attention.

"'For me,'" Henchard read, "'there is practically no future. A creature
too unconventionally devoted to you--who feels it impossible that she
can be the wife of any other man; and who is yet no more to you than the
first woman you meet in the street--such am I. I quite acquit you of any
intention to wrong me, yet you are the door through which wrong has come
to me. That in the event of your present wife's death you will place me
in her position is a consolation so far as it goes--but how far does it
go? Thus I sit here, forsaken by my few acquaintance, and forsaken by
you!'"

"That's how she went on to me," said Henchard, "acres of words like
that, when what had happened was what I could not cure."

"Yes," said Farfrae absently, "it is the way wi' women." But the
fact was that he knew very little of the sex; yet detecting a sort of
resemblance in style between the effusions of the woman he worshipped
and those of the supposed stranger, he concluded that Aphrodite ever
spoke thus, whosesoever the personality she assumed.

Henchard unfolded another letter, and read it through likewise, stopping
at the subscription as before. "Her name I don't give," he said blandly.
"As I didn't marry her, and another man did, I can scarcely do that in
fairness to her."

"Tr-rue, tr-rue," said Farfrae. "But why didn't you marry her when your
wife Susan died?" Farfrae asked this and the other questions in the
comfortably indifferent tone of one whom the matter very remotely
concerned.

"Ah--well you may ask that!" said Henchard, the new-moon-shaped
grin adumbrating itself again upon his mouth. "In spite of all her
protestations, when I came forward to do so, as in generosity bound, she
was not the woman for me."

"She had already married another--maybe?"

Henchard seemed to think it would be sailing too near the wind to
descend further into particulars, and he answered "Yes."

"The young lady must have had a heart that bore transplanting very
readily!"

"She had, she had," said Henchard emphatically.

He opened a third and fourth letter, and read. This time he approached
the conclusion as if the signature were indeed coming with the rest. But
again he stopped short. The truth was that, as may be divined, he had
quite intended to effect a grand catastrophe at the end of this drama
by reading out the name, he had come to the house with no other thought.
But sitting here in cold blood he could not do it.

Such a wrecking of hearts appalled even him. His quality was such
that he could have annihilated them both in the heat of action; but to
accomplish the deed by oral poison was beyond the nerve of his enmity.




35.


As Donald stated, Lucetta had retired early to her room because of
fatigue. She had, however, not gone to rest, but sat in the bedside
chair reading and thinking over the events of the day. At the ringing of
the door-bell by Henchard she wondered who it should be that would call
at that comparatively late hour. The dining-room was almost under her
bed-room; she could hear that somebody was admitted there, and presently
the indistinct murmur of a person reading became audible.

The usual time for Donald's arrival upstairs came and passed, yet still
the reading and conversation went on. This was very singular. She could
think of nothing but that some extraordinary crime had been committed,
and that the visitor, whoever he might be, was reading an account of it
from a special edition of the Casterbridge Chronicle. At last she left
the room, and descended the stairs. The dining-room door was ajar, and
in the silence of the resting household the voice and the words were
recognizable before she reached the lower flight. She stood transfixed.
Her own words greeted her in Henchard's voice, like spirits from the
grave.

Lucetta leant upon the banister with her cheek against the smooth
hand-rail, as if she would make a friend of it in her misery. Rigid in
this position, more and more words fell successively upon her ear. But
what amazed her most was the tone of her husband. He spoke merely in the
accents of a man who made a present of his time.

"One word," he was saying, as the crackling of paper denoted that
Henchard was unfolding yet another sheet. "Is it quite fair to this
young woman's memory to read at such length to a stranger what was
intended for your eye alone?"

"Well, yes," said Henchard. "By not giving her name I make it an example
of all womankind, and not a scandal to one."