The Mayor of Casterbridge

T >> Thomas Hardy >> The Mayor of Casterbridge


Henchard dusted his boots, washed his hands at the riverside, and
proceeded up the town under the feeble lamps. He need have made no
inquiries beforehand, for on drawing near Farfrae's residence it was
plain to the least observant that festivity prevailed within, and that
Donald himself shared it, his voice being distinctly audible in the
street, giving strong expression to a song of his dear native country
that he loved so well as never to have revisited it. Idlers were
standing on the pavement in front; and wishing to escape the notice of
these Henchard passed quickly on to the door.

It was wide open, the hall was lighted extravagantly, and people were
going up and down the stairs. His courage failed him; to enter footsore,
laden, and poorly dressed into the midst of such resplendency was to
bring needless humiliation upon her he loved, if not to court repulse
from her husband. Accordingly he went round into the street at the back
that he knew so well, entered the garden, and came quietly into the
house through the kitchen, temporarily depositing the bird and cage
under a bush outside, to lessen the awkwardness of his arrival.

Solitude and sadness had so emolliated Henchard that he now feared
circumstances he would formerly have scorned, and he began to wish that
he had not taken upon himself to arrive at such a juncture. However,
his progress was made unexpectedly easy by his discovering alone in
the kitchen an elderly woman who seemed to be acting as provisional
housekeeper during the convulsions from which Farfrae's establishment
was just then suffering. She was one of those people whom nothing
surprises, and though to her, a total stranger, his request must have
seemed odd, she willingly volunteered to go up and inform the master and
mistress of the house that "a humble old friend" had come.

On second thought she said that he had better not wait in the kitchen,
but come up into the little back-parlour, which was empty. He thereupon
followed her thither, and she left him. Just as she got across the
landing to the door of the best parlour a dance was struck up, and she
returned to say that she would wait till that was over before announcing
him--Mr. and Mrs. Farfrae having both joined in the figure.

The door of the front room had been taken off its hinges to give more
space, and that of the room Henchard sat in being ajar, he could see
fractional parts of the dancers whenever their gyrations brought them
near the doorway, chiefly in the shape of the skirts of dresses and
streaming curls of hair; together with about three-fifths of the band in
profile, including the restless shadow of a fiddler's elbow, and the tip
of the bass-viol bow.

The gaiety jarred upon Henchard's spirits; and he could not quite
understand why Farfrae, a much-sobered man, and a widower, who had had
his trials, should have cared for it all, notwithstanding the fact that
he was quite a young man still, and quickly kindled to enthusiasm by
dance and song. That the quiet Elizabeth, who had long ago appraised
life at a moderate value, and who knew in spite of her maidenhood that
marriage was as a rule no dancing matter, should have had zest for this
revelry surprised him still more. However, young people could not be
quite old people, he concluded, and custom was omnipotent.

With the progress of the dance the performers spread out somewhat,
and then for the first time he caught a glimpse of the once despised
daughter who had mastered him, and made his heart ache. She was in a
dress of white silk or satin, he was not near enough to say which--snowy
white, without a tinge of milk or cream; and the expression of her face
was one of nervous pleasure rather than of gaiety. Presently Farfrae
came round, his exuberant Scotch movement making him conspicuous in a
moment. The pair were not dancing together, but Henchard could discern
that whenever the chances of the figure made them the partners of a
moment their emotions breathed a much subtler essence than at other
times.

By degrees Henchard became aware that the measure was trod by some one
who out-Farfraed Farfrae in saltatory intenseness. This was strange,
and it was stranger to find that the eclipsing personage was
Elizabeth-Jane's partner. The first time that Henchard saw him he was
sweeping grandly round, his head quivering and low down, his legs in the
form of an X and his back towards the door. The next time he came round
in the other direction, his white waist-coat preceding his face, and his
toes preceding his white waistcoat. That happy face--Henchard's complete
discomfiture lay in it. It was Newson's, who had indeed come and
supplanted him.

Henchard pushed to the door, and for some seconds made no other
movement. He rose to his feet, and stood like a dark ruin, obscured by
"the shade from his own soul up-thrown."

But he was no longer the man to stand these reverses unmoved. His
agitation was great, and he would fain have been gone, but before
he could leave the dance had ended, the housekeeper had informed
Elizabeth-Jane of the stranger who awaited her, and she entered the room
immediately.

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

"What, Elizabeth?" he cried, as she seized her hand. "What do you
say?--Mr. Henchard? Don't, don't scourge me like that! Call me worthless
old Henchard--anything--but don't 'ee be so cold as this! O my maid--I
see you have another--a real father in my place. Then you know all; but
don't give all your thought to him! Do ye save a little room for me!"

She flushed up, and gently drew her hand away. "I could have loved you
always--I would have, gladly," she said. "But how can I when I know you
have deceived me so--so bitterly deceived me! You persuaded me that
my father was not my father--allowed me to live on in ignorance of the
truth for years; and then when he, my warm-hearted real father, came
to find me, cruelly sent him away with a wicked invention of my death,
which nearly broke his heart. O how can I love as I once did a man who
has served us like this!"

Henchard's lips half parted to begin an explanation. But he shut them up
like a vice, and uttered not a sound. How should he, there and then, set
before her with any effect the palliatives of his great faults--that he
had himself been deceived in her identity at first, till informed by
her mother's letter that his own child had died; that, in the second
accusation, his lie had been the last desperate throw of a gamester
who loved her affection better than his own honour? Among the many
hindrances to such a pleading not the least was this, that he did not
sufficiently value himself to lessen his sufferings by strenuous appeal
or elaborate argument.

Waiving, therefore, his privilege of self-defence, he regarded only his
discomposure. "Don't ye distress yourself on my account," he said, with
proud superiority. "I would not wish it--at such a time, too, as this.
I have done wrong in coming to 'ee--I see my error. But it is only for
once, so forgive it. I'll never trouble 'ee again, Elizabeth-Jane--no,
not to my dying day! Good-night. Good-bye!"

Then, before she could collect her thoughts, Henchard went out from her
rooms, and departed from the house by the back way as he had come; and
she saw him no more.




45.


It was about a month after the day which closed as in the last chapter.
Elizabeth-Jane had grown accustomed to the novelty of her situation, and
the only difference between Donald's movements now and formerly was that
he hastened indoors rather more quickly after business hours than he had
been in the habit of doing for some time.

Newson had stayed in Casterbridge three days after the wedding party
(whose gaiety, as might have been surmised, was of his making rather
than of the married couple's), and was stared at and honoured as became
the returned Crusoe of the hour. But whether or not because Casterbridge
was difficult to excite by dramatic returns and disappearances through
having been for centuries an assize town, in which sensational exits
from the world, antipodean absences, and such like, were half-yearly
occurrences, the inhabitants did not altogether lose their equanimity
on his account. On the fourth morning he was discovered disconsolately
climbing a hill, in his craving to get a glimpse of the sea from
somewhere or other. The contiguity of salt water proved to be such a
necessity of his existence that he preferred Budmouth as a place of
residence, notwithstanding the society of his daughter in the other
town. Thither he went, and settled in lodgings in a green-shuttered
cottage which had a bow-window, jutting out sufficiently to afford
glimpses of a vertical strip of blue sea to any one opening the sash,
and leaning forward far enough to look through a narrow lane of tall
intervening houses.

Elizabeth-Jane was standing in the middle of her upstairs parlour,
critically surveying some re-arrangement of articles with her head to
one side, when the housemaid came in with the announcement, "Oh, please
ma'am, we know now how that bird-cage came there."

In exploring her new domain during the first week of residence, gazing
with critical satisfaction on this cheerful room and that, penetrating
cautiously into dark cellars, sallying forth with gingerly tread to
the garden, now leaf-strewn by autumn winds, and thus, like a wise
field-marshal, estimating the capabilities of the site whereon she
was about to open her housekeeping campaign--Mrs. Donald Farfrae had
discovered in a screened corner a new bird-cage, shrouded in newspaper,
and at the bottom of the cage a little ball of feathers--the dead body
of a goldfinch. Nobody could tell her how the bird and cage had come
there, though that the poor little songster had been starved to death
was evident. The sadness of the incident had made an impression on her.
She had not been able to forget it for days, despite Farfrae's tender
banter; and now when the matter had been nearly forgotten it was again
revived.

"Oh, please ma'am, we know how the bird-cage came there. That farmer's
man who called on the evening of the wedding--he was seen wi' it in his
hand as he came up the street; and 'tis thoughted that he put it down
while he came in with his message, and then went away forgetting where
he had left it."

This was enough to set Elizabeth thinking, and in thinking she seized
hold of the idea, at one feminine bound, that the caged bird had been
brought by Henchard for her as a wedding gift and token of repentance.
He had not expressed to her any regrets or excuses for what he had done
in the past; but it was a part of his nature to extenuate nothing, and
live on as one of his own worst accusers. She went out, looked at the
cage, buried the starved little singer, and from that hour her heart
softened towards the self-alienated man.

When her husband came in she told him her solution of the bird-cage
mystery; and begged Donald to help her in finding out, as soon as
possible, whither Henchard had banished himself, that she might make her
peace with him; try to do something to render his life less that of
an outcast, and more tolerable to him. Although Farfrae had never so
passionately liked Henchard as Henchard had liked him, he had, on the
other hand, never so passionately hated in the same direction as his
former friend had done, and he was therefore not the least indisposed to
assist Elizabeth-Jane in her laudable plan.

But it was by no means easy to set about discovering Henchard. He had
apparently sunk into the earth on leaving Mr. and Mrs. Farfrae's door.
Elizabeth-Jane remembered what he had once attempted; and trembled.

But though she did not know it Henchard had become a changed man since
then--as far, that is, as change of emotional basis can justify such
a radical phrase; and she needed not to fear. In a few days Farfrae's
inquiries elicited that Henchard had been seen by one who knew him
walking steadily along the Melchester highway eastward, at twelve
o'clock at night--in other words, retracing his steps on the road by
which he had come.

This was enough; and the next morning Farfrae might have been discovered
driving his gig out of Casterbridge in that direction, Elizabeth-Jane
sitting beside him, wrapped in a thick flat fur--the victorine of the
period--her complexion somewhat richer than formerly, and an incipient
matronly dignity, which the serene Minerva-eyes of one "whose gestures
beamed with mind" made becoming, settling on her face. Having herself
arrived at a promising haven from at least the grosser troubles of her
life, her object was to place Henchard in some similar quietude before
he should sink into that lower stage of existence which was only too
possible to him now.

After driving along the highway for a few miles they made further
inquiries, and learnt of a road-mender, who had been working thereabouts
for weeks, that he had observed such a man at the time mentioned; he had
left the Melchester coachroad at Weatherbury by a forking highway which
skirted the north of Egdon Heath. Into this road they directed the
horse's head, and soon were bowling across that ancient country
whose surface never had been stirred to a finger's depth, save by
the scratchings of rabbits, since brushed by the feet of the earliest
tribes. The tumuli these had left behind, dun and shagged with heather,
jutted roundly into the sky from the uplands, as though they were the
full breasts of Diana Multimammia supinely extended there.

They searched Egdon, but found no Henchard. Farfrae drove onward, and by
the afternoon reached the neighbourhood of some extension of the heath
to the north of Anglebury, a prominent feature of which, in the form of
a blasted clump of firs on a summit of a hill, they soon passed under.
That the road they were following had, up to this point, been Henchard's
track on foot they were pretty certain; but the ramifications which now
began to reveal themselves in the route made further progress in the
right direction a matter of pure guess-work, and Donald strongly advised
his wife to give up the search in person, and trust to other means for
obtaining news of her stepfather. They were now a score of miles at
least from home, but, by resting the horse for a couple of hours at a
village they had just traversed, it would be possible to get back to
Casterbridge that same day, while to go much further afield would reduce
them to the necessity of camping out for the night, "and that will make
a hole in a sovereign," said Farfrae. She pondered the position, and
agreed with him.

He accordingly drew rein, but before reversing their direction paused a
moment and looked vaguely round upon the wide country which the elevated
position disclosed. While they looked a solitary human form came from
under the clump of trees, and crossed ahead of them. The person was some
labourer; his gait was shambling, his regard fixed in front of him as
absolutely as if he wore blinkers; and in his hand he carried a few
sticks. Having crossed the road he descended into a ravine, where a
cottage revealed itself, which he entered.

"If it were not so far away from Casterbridge I should say that must be
poor Whittle. 'Tis just like him," observed Elizabeth-Jane.

"And it may be Whittle, for he's never been to the yard these three
weeks, going away without saying any word at all; and I owing him for
two days' work, without knowing who to pay it to."

The possibility led them to alight, and at least make an inquiry at the
cottage. Farfrae hitched the reins to the gate-post, and they approached
what was of humble dwellings surely the humblest. The walls, built of
kneaded clay originally faced with a trowel, had been worn by years of
rain-washings to a lumpy crumbling surface, channelled and sunken from
its plane, its gray rents held together here and there by a leafy strap
of ivy which could scarcely find substance enough for the purpose. The
rafters were sunken, and the thatch of the roof in ragged holes. Leaves
from the fence had been blown into the corners of the doorway, and lay
there undisturbed. The door was ajar; Farfrae knocked; and he who stood
before them was Whittle, as they had conjectured.

His face showed marks of deep sadness, his eyes lighting on them with an
unfocused gaze; and he still held in his hand the few sticks he had been
out to gather. As soon as he recognized them he started.

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

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

"Who are you talking of?"

"O sir--Mr. Henchet! Didn't ye know it? He's just gone--about
half-an-hour ago, by the sun; for I've got no watch to my name."

"Not--dead?" faltered Elizabeth-Jane.

"Yes, ma'am, he's gone! He was kind-like to mother when she wer here
below, sending her the best ship-coal, and hardly any ashes from it at
all; and taties, and such-like that were very needful to her. I seed en
go down street on the night of your worshipful's wedding to the lady at
yer side, and I thought he looked low and faltering. And I followed en
over Grey's Bridge, and he turned and zeed me, and said, 'You go back!'
But I followed, and he turned again, and said, 'Do you hear, sir? Go
back!' But I zeed that he was low, and I followed on still. Then 'a
said, 'Whittle, what do ye follow me for when I've told ye to go back
all these times?' And I said, 'Because, sir, I see things be bad with
'ee, and ye wer kind-like to mother if ye wer rough to me, and I would
fain be kind-like to you.' Then he walked on, and I followed; and he
never complained at me no more. We walked on like that all night; and
in the blue o' the morning, when 'twas hardly day, I looked ahead o' me,
and I zeed that he wambled, and could hardly drag along. By the time we
had got past here, but I had seen that this house was empty as I went
by, and I got him to come back; and I took down the boards from the
windows, and helped him inside. 'What, Whittle,' he said, 'and can ye
really be such a poor fond fool as to care for such a wretch as I!' Then
I went on further, and some neighbourly woodmen lent me a bed, and a
chair, and a few other traps, and we brought 'em here, and made him
as comfortable as we could. But he didn't gain strength, for you see,
ma'am, he couldn't eat--no appetite at all--and he got weaker; and
to-day he died. One of the neighbours have gone to get a man to measure
him."

"Dear me--is that so!" said Farfrae.

As for Elizabeth, she said nothing.

"Upon the head of his bed he pinned a piece of paper, with some writing
upon it," continued Abel Whittle. "But not being a man o' letters, I
can't read writing; so I don't know what it is. I can get it and show
ye."

They stood in silence while he ran into the cottage; returning in a
moment with a crumpled scrap of paper. On it there was pencilled as
follows:--


MICHAEL HENCHARD'S WILL

"That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made to grieve
on account of me.
"& that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground.
"& that no sexton be asked to toll the bell.
"& that nobody is wished to see my dead body.
"& that no murners walk behind me at my funeral.
"& that no flours be planted on my grave,
"& that no man remember me.
"To this I put my name.

"MICHAEL HENCHARD"


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

She could not answer distinctly. "O Donald!" she cried at last through
her tears, "what bitterness lies there! O I would not have minded so
much if it had not been for my unkindness at that last parting!... But
there's no altering--so it must be."

What Henchard had written in the anguish of his dying was respected as
far as practicable by Elizabeth-Jane, though less from a sense of the
sacredness of last words, as such, than from her independent knowledge
that the man who wrote them meant what he said. She knew the directions
to be a piece of the same stuff that his whole life was made of, and
hence were not to be tampered with to give herself a mournful pleasure,
or her husband credit for large-heartedness.

All was over at last, even her regrets for having misunderstood him on
his last visit, for not having searched him out sooner, though
these were deep and sharp for a good while. From this time forward
Elizabeth-Jane found herself in a latitude of calm weather, kindly and
grateful in itself, and doubly so after the Capharnaum in which some of
her preceding years had been spent. As the lively and sparkling emotions
of her early married live cohered into an equable serenity, the finer
movements of her nature found scope in discovering to the narrow-lived
ones around her the secret (as she had once learnt it) of making limited
opportunities endurable; which she deemed to consist in the cunning
enlargement, by a species of microscopic treatment, of those minute
forms of satisfaction that offer themselves to everybody not in positive
pain; which, thus handled, have much of the same inspiring effect upon
life as wider interests cursorily embraced.

Her teaching had a reflex action upon herself, insomuch that she thought
she could perceive no great personal difference between being respected
in the nether parts of Casterbridge and glorified at the uppermost end
of the social world. Her position was, indeed, to a marked degree one
that, in the common phrase, afforded much to be thankful for. That she
was not demonstratively thankful was no fault of hers. Her experience
had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or wrongly, that the doubtful
honour of a brief transmit through a sorry world hardly called for
effusiveness, even when the path was suddenly irradiated at some
half-way point by daybeams rich as hers. But her strong sense that
neither she nor any human being deserved less than was given, did not
blind her to the fact that there were others receiving less who had
deserved much more. And in being forced to class herself among the
fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the persistence of the
unforeseen, when the one to whom such unbroken tranquility had been
accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth had seemed to teach that
happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.