 CHAPTER XXXIX. When Farfay descended out of the loft, breathless from his encounter with Henschard, he paused at the bottom to recover himself. He arrived at the yard with the intention of putting the horse into the gig himself, all the men having a holiday, and driving to a village on the Budmouth Road. Despite the fearful struggle, he decided still to persevere in his journey so as to recover himself before going indoors and meeting the eyes of Lucetta. He wished to consider his course in a case so serious. When he was just on the point of driving off, Whittle arrived with a note badly addressed and varying the word immediate upon the outside. On opening it, he was surprised to see that it was unsigned. It contained a brief request that he would go to Weatherbury that evening about some business which he was conducting there. Farfay knew nothing that could make it pressing, but as he was bent upon going out, he yielded to the anonymous request, particularly as he had a call to make it Melstock, which could be included in the same tour. Whereupon he told Whittle of his change of direction in words which Henschard had overheard and set out on his way, Farfay had not directed his man to take the message indoors, and Whittle had not been supposed to do so on his own responsibility. The anonymous letter was a well-intentioned but clumsy contrivance of long ways and other of Farfay's men to get him out of the way for the evening in order that the satirical mummary should fall flat if it were attempted. By giving open information they would have brought down upon their heads the vengeance of those among their comrades who enjoyed these boisterous old games, and therefore the plan of sending a letter recommended itself by its indirectness. For poor Lucetta they took no protective measure, believing with the majority there was some truth in the scandal which she would have to bear as she best might. It was about eight o'clock, and Lucetta was sitting in the drawing-room alone. It had set in for more than half an hour, but she had not had the candles lighted. For when Farfay was away she preferred waiting for him by the fire-light, and if it were not too cold keeping one of the windows sashes a little way open that the sound of his wheels might reach her ears early. She was leaning back in the chair in a more hopeful mood than she had enjoyed since her marriage. The day had been such a success, and the temporary uneasiness which Henschard's show of effrontery had wrought in her disappeared with the quiet disappearance of Henschard himself under her husband's reproof. The floating evidences of her absurd passion for him and its consequences had been destroyed, and she really seemed to have no cause for fear. The reverie in which these and other subjects mingled was disturbed by a hubbub in the distance that increased moment by moment. It did not greatly surprise her, the afternoon having been given up to recreation by a majority of the populace since the passage of the royal lequipages, but her attention was at once riveted to the matter by the voice of a maid-servant next door, who spoke from an upper window across the street to some other maid even more elevated than she. Which way be they going now? inquired the first with interest. I can't be sure for a moment, said the second, because of the molters' chimbly. Oh, yes, I can see them. Well, I declare, I declare. What, what, from the first, more enthusiastically? They are coming up Corn Street after all. They sit back to back. What, two of them? Are there two figures? Yes, two images on a donkey, back to back, their elbows tied to one another's. She's facing the head and he's facing the tail. Is it meant for anybody in particular? Well, it may be. The man has got on a blue coat and cursey-mere leggings. He has black whiskers and a reddish face, just a stuffed figure with a false face. The din was increasing now, then it lessened a little. There, I shan't see after all, cried the disappointed first maid. They've gone into a back street, that's all, said the one who occupied the enviable position in the attic. There, now I have got them all in ways nicely. What's the woman like? Just say, and I can tell in a moment if it's meant for one I've in mind. I—why? To stress just as she dressed when she sat in the front seat at the time the play actors came to the town hall. Luceta started to her feet, and almost at the instant the door of the room was quickly and softly opened. Elizabeth Jane advanced into the fire-light. I have come to see you, she said breathlessly. I did not stop to knock. Forgive me. I see you have not shut your shutters and the window is open. About waiting for Luceta's reply she crossed quickly to the window and pulled out one of the shutters. Luceta glided to her side. Let it be, hush! she said, peremptorily, in a dry voice, while she seized Elizabeth Jane by the hand and held up her finger. Their intercourse had been so low and hurried that not a word had been lost of the conversation without, which had thus proceeded. Her neck is uncovered and her hair in bands and her back comb in place she's got on a piece of silk and white stockings and colored shoes. And Elizabeth Jane attempted to close the window, but Luceta held her by main force. "'Tis me,' she said, with a face pale as death, a procession, a scandal, an energy of me and him. The look of Elizabeth betrayed that the latter knew it already. Let us shut it out,' coaxed Elizabeth Jane, noting that the rigid wildness of Luceta's features was growing yet more rigid and wild, with the meaning of the noise and laughter. Let us shut it out. "'It is of no use,' she shrieked. "'He will see it, won't he? Donald will see it. He is just coming home, and it will break his heart. He will never love me any more, and oh, it will kill me, kill me!' Elizabeth Jane was frantic now. "'Well, can't something be done to stop it?' She cried. Is there nobody to do it, not one?' She relinquished Luceta's hands and ran to the door. Luceta herself, saying recklessly, I will see it. Into the window threw up the sash and went out upon the balcony. Elizabeth immediately followed and put her arm round her to pull her in. Luceta's eyes were straight upon the spectacle of the uncanny rebel, now dancing rapidly. The numerous lights round the two effigies, threw them up into lurid distinctness. It was impossible to mistake the pair for other than the intended victims. "'Come in, come in,' implored Elizabeth, and let me shut the window. "'She's me! She's me, even to the parasol, my green parasol!' cried Luceta with a wild laugh as she stepped in. She stood motionless for one second, then fell heavily to the floor. Almost at the instant of her fall the rude music of the skimmington ceased. The roars of sarcastic laughter went off in ripples, and the trampling died out like the rustle of a spent wind. Elizabeth was only indirectly conscious of this. She had rung the bell and was bending over Luceta, who remained convulsed on the carpet in the paroxysms of an epileptic seizure. She rang again and again in vain, the probability being that the servants had all run out of the house to see more of the demonic Sabbath than they could see within. At last Farfrae's man, who had been agape on the doorstep, came up, then the cook. The shutters, hastily pushed to by Elizabeth, were quite closed. A light was obtained, Luceta carried to her room, and the man sent off for a doctor. While Elizabeth was undressing her, she recovered consciousness, but as soon as she remembered what had passed the fit returned. The doctor arrived with unhoped for promptitude. He had been standing at his door like others, wondering what the uproar meant. As soon as he saw the unhappy sufferer, he said, in answer to Elizabeth's mute appeal. This is serious. It is a fit, Elizabeth said. Yes, but a fit in the present state of her health means mischief. You must send it once for Mr. Farfrae. Where is he? He has driven into the country, sir, said the parlor maid, to some place on the Budmouth Road. He is likely to be back soon. Never mind, he must be sent for in case he should not hurry. The doctor returned to the bedside again. The man was dispatched, and they soon heard him clattering out of the yard at the back. Meanwhile, Mr. Benjamin Grower, that prominent burgess of whom mentioned has been already made, hearing the din of cleavers, tongs, tambourines, kits, crowds, humstrums, serpents, ramshorns, and other historical kinds of music as he sat indoors in the high street, had put on his hat and gone out to learn the cause. He came to the corner above Farfrae's and soon guessed the nature of the proceedings. For being a native of the town he had witnessed such rough jests before. His first move was to search hither and thither for the constables. There were two in the town, shriveled men whom he ultimately found in hiding up an alley, yet more shriveled than usual, having some not ungrounded fears that they might be roughly handled, if seen. What can we two poor lammagers do against such a multitude, expostulated stubborn, in answer to Mr. Grower's chiding? Just tempting him to commit fellow deceit upon us, and that would be the death of the perpetrator, and we wouldn't be the cause of a fellow creature's death on no account, not we. Get some help, then. Here, I'll come with you. We'll see what a few words of authority can do. Quick, now, have you got your staves? We didn't want the folk to notice us as law officers, being so short-handed, sir, so we pushed our government staves up this water-pipe. Out with them, and come along for heaven's sake. Ah, here's Mr. Blow-Buddy. That's lucky. Mr. Blow-Buddy was the third of the three borough magistrates. Well, what's the row, said Blow-Buddy? Got their names, hey? No. Now, said Grower to one of the constables, you go with Mr. Blow-Buddy round by the old walk and come up the street, and I'll go with Stubbard straightforward. By this plan we shall have him between us, get their names only, no attack or interruption. Thus they started. But as Stubbard, with Mr. Grower, advanced into Corn Street, once the sounds had preceded, they were surprised that no procession could be seen. They passed far-phrase and looked to the end of the street. The lamp-flames waved, the walk-trees sowed. A few loungers stood about with their hands in their pockets. Everything was as usual. Have you seen a motley crowd making a disturbance, Grower said majestereally, to one of these in a fustian jacket, who smoked a short pipe and wore straps round his knees? Beg your pardon, sir? Landly, said the person addressed, who was no other than Charles of Peter's finger. Mr. Grower repeated the words. Charles shook his head to the zero of childlike ignorance. No, we haven't seen anything, have we, Joe? And you was here for I. Joseph was quite as blank as the other in his reply. Hmm, that's odd, said Mr. Grower. Ah, here's a respectable man coming that I know by sight. Have you, he inquired, addressing the nearing shape of Job? Have you seen any gang of fellows making a devil of a noise, skimmington-riding, or something of the sort? Oh, no, nothing, sir, Job replied, as if receiving the most singular news. But I've not been far tonight, so perhaps. Oh, it was here, just here, said the magistrate. Now, I've noticed, come to think of it, that the wind in the walk-trees makes a peculiar poetical like murmur tonight, sir, more than common, so perhaps just that, perhaps suggested, as he rearranged his hand in his great coat pocket, where it ingeniously supported a pair of kitchen tongs and a cow's horn thrust up under his waistcoat. No, no, no, do you think I'm a fool? Constable, come this way. They must have gone into the back street. Neither in back street nor in front street, however, could the disturbers be perceived, and blow-body and the second constable, who came up at this time, brought similar intelligence. Effigy's, donkey, Lantern's band, all had disappeared like the crew of Comus. Now, said Mr. Grower, there's only one thing more we can do. Get ye half a dozen helpers and go in a body to mix and lane and into Peter's finger. I'm much mistaken if you don't find a clue to the perpetrators there. The rusty-jointed executors of the law mustered assistance as soon as they could, and the whole party marched off to the lane of notoriety. It was no rapid matter to get there at night, not a lamp or glimmer of any sort offering itself to light the way except an occasional pale radiance through some window curtain, or through the chink of some door which could not be closed because of the smoky chimney within. At last they entered the inn boldly by the till-then-bolted front door, after a prolonged knocking of loudness commensurate with the importance of their standing. In the settles of the large room, guide to the ceiling by cords as usual for accountability, an ordinary group set drinking and smoking with statuesque quiet of demeanor. The landlady looked mildly at the invaders, saying in honest accents, Good evening, gentlemen, there's plenty of room. I hope there's nothing amiss. They looked round the room. Surely, said Stubbard to one of the men, I saw you by now in Corn Street. Mr. Grower spoke to ye? The man, who was Charles, shook his head absently. I've been here this last hour hand I dance, he said to the woman, who meditatively sipped her ale near him. Faith that you have, I came in for my quiet suppertime half-point, and you were here then as well as all the rest. The other constable was facing the clock case, where he saw reflected in the glass a quick motion by the landlady, turning sharply he caught her closing the oven door. Something curious about that oven, ma'am, he observed advancing, opening it and drawing out a tambourine. 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. Know-how 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 else wither. CHAPTER 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 multitudes 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 winding his way homeward by the obscure riverside path. Unable to rest there, he went to his step-daughter's lodging and was told that Elizabeth Jane had gone to Mr. Farfrey's, like one acting in obedience to a charm and with the nameless apprehension he followed in the same direction in the hope of meeting her, the roisterers having vanished. Disappointed in this he gave the gentlest of pulls to the doorbell and then alert particulars of what had occurred, together with the doctor's imperative orders that Farfrey should be brought home and how they had set out to meet him on the Budmouth Road. But he is going to mel-stuck in Weatherbury, exclaimed Henshard, now unspeakably grieved, not Budmouth Way at all. But alas, for Henshard he had lost his good name. They would not believe him, taking his words but as the fraughtly utterances of recklessness. Though Lucette'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 Henshard, no messenger was dispatched towards Weatherbury. Henshard, in a state of bitter anxiety and contrition, determined to seek Farfrey himself. To this end he hastened down the town, ran along the eastern road over Dernevermore, 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 were 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 wetting their fellows against the newly stoned patches of road accompanied by the distant glimmer of lights. He knew it was Farfrey's gig descending the hill from an indescribable personality in its noise, the vehicle having been his own till bought by the scotchmen at the sale of his effect. Thereupon retraced his steps along Yalbury Plain, the gig coming up with him at its driver's slack and speed between two plantations. It was a point in the highway near which the road to Melstock branched off from the homeward direction. By diverging to that village as he had intended to do, Farfrey might probably delay his return by a couple of hours. It soon appeared that his intention was to do so still, the lights moving towards Cuckoo Lane the by-road aforesaid. Farfrey's off-gig lamp flashed in Henshard's face. At the same time Farfrey discerned his late antagonist. Farfrey, Mr. Farfrey, cried the breathless Henshard, holding up his hand. Farfrey allowed the horse to turn several steps into the branch lane before he pulled up. He then drew rain and said, Yes, over his shoulder as one would towards a pronounced enemy. Come back to Caster Bridge at once, Henshard said. There's nothing wrong at your house requiring your return. I've run all the way here on purpose to tell you. Farfrey was silent, and at his silence Henshard'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 Farfrey into a deadly wrestle, stood now in the darkness of late night time on a lonely road, inviting him to come a particular way wherein assailants might have confederates, instead of going his purposed way where there might be a better opportunity of guarding himself from attack. Henshard could almost feel this view of things in course of passage through Farfrey's mind. I have to go to Melstock, said Farfrey, coldly, as he loosened his range to move on. But, implored Henshard, the matter is more serious than your business at Melstock. It is your wife. She is ill. I can tell you particulars as we go along. The very agitation and abruptness of Henshard increased Farfrey'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, Henshard had failed to do earlier in the day. He started the horse. I know what you think, deprecated Henshard 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, Farfrey, I have come entirely on your own in 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. Oh, Farfrey, don't mistrust me. I am a wretched man, but my heart is true to you still. Farfrey, however, did distrust him utterly. He knew his wife was with child, but he had left her not long ago in perfect health. And Henshard's treachery was more credible than his story. He had, in his time, heard bitter ironies from Henshard'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 the Melstock. Henshard's spesmotic run after him lending yet more substance to his thought of evil purposes. The gig and its driver lessened against the sky in Henshard's eyes. His exertions for Farfrey'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. Farfrey 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, Henshard went again to Farfrey'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, Oh, it is not he! The manservant, finding his mistake, had long since returned, and all hopes had centered upon Henshard. But haven't you found him? said the doctor. Yes, I cannot tell he. Henshard replied as he sank down on a chair within the entrance. He can't be home for two hours. Huh! said the surgeon, returning upstairs. How is she? asked Henshard 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. Henshard regarded the sympathetic speaker for a few instance 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 Farfrey and himself the shells. But about Elizabeth Jane, in the midst of his gloom, she seemed to him as a pinpoint of light. He had liked to 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. Job was just going to bed when Henshard got home. As Valadr entered the door, Job said, This is rather bad about Mrs. Farfrey's illness. Yes, said Henshard shortly, though little dreaming of Job's complicity in the night's harlequin aid, and raising his eyes just sufficiently to observe that Job's face was lined with anxiety. Somebody has called for you, continued Job, when Henshard was shutting himself into his own apartment, a kind of traveler or sea captain of some sort. Oh, who could he be? He seemed a well-be-doing man, had gray hair and a broadish face, but he gave no name and no message. Nor do I give him any attention, and, saying this, Henshard closed his door. The divergence to Melstock delayed Farfrey's return very nearly the two hours of Henshard's estimate. Among the other urgent reasons for his presence had been the need of his authority to send a budmouth for a second physician, and when at length Farfrey did come back he was in a state bordering on distraction at his misconception of Henshard's motives. The messenger was dispatched 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 list out to him the secret which so oppressed her, he checked her feeble words, less 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. Farfrey was soon rumored 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 orgy, while those immediately around Lucetta would not venture to add to her husband's distress by alluding to the subject. What and how much Farfrey's wife ultimately explained to him of her past entanglement with Henshard 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 Farfrey's own statements. But in respect of her subsequent conduct, her motive in coming to Casterbridge to unite herself with Henshard, 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 Farfrey's secret alone. Besides the watchmen who called the hours and weather in Casterbridge that night, they walked a figure up and down Corn Street hardly less frequently. It was Henshard 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 Farfrey'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 centering 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 in today across Dernovermoor. The sparrows were just alighting into the street and the hens had begun to cackle from the outhouses. When within a few yards of Farfrey's he saw the door gently opened and a servant raised 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 Henshard. 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. End of Chapter 40 Chapter 41 of the Mayor of Caster Bridge. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. The Mayor of Caster Bridge by Thomas Hardy Chapter 41 Henshard went home. The morning, having now fully broke, he lit his fire and sat abstractly 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. Henshard's face brightened for he knew the motions to be Elizabeth's. She came into his room looking one and sad. Have you heard? She asked. Mrs. Farfrey, she is dead. Yes, indeed, about an hour ago. I know it, said Henshard. I have but lately come in from there. It is so very good of you Elizabeth to come and tell me. You must be so tired out, too, with sitting up. Now, do you abide here with me this morning? You can go and rest in the other room and I will call you 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 Henshard had rigged up out of a saddle 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 fullness 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 dosed he would not call her. He waited on, looking into the fire and keeping the kettle boiling with housewifely care as if it were an honor to have her in his house. In truth the 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. Henshard nodded and looked inquiry. Good morning, good morning, said the stranger with profuse heartiness. Is it Mr. Henshard I am talking to? My name is Henshard. Then I've caught him at home. That's right. Morning's the time for business, says I. Can I have a few words with you? By all means, Henshard answered, showing the way in. You may remember me, said his visitor, seating himself. Henshard observed him indifferently and shook his head. Well, perhaps you may not. My name is Nussan. Henshard's face and eyes seemed to die. The other did not notice it. I know the name well, Henshard said at last, looking on the floor. I make no doubt of that. Well, the fact is, I've been looking for you this fortnight past. I landed at Havenpool and went through Castor Bridge on my way to Falmouth, and when I got there they told me you had some years before been living at Castor Bridge. That 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 ago on, tis that I've called about. It was 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, tis 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, homespun 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 a wrong doing in that particular as a saint in the clouds. I know it. I know it. I found it out directly, said Henschard, still with averted eyes. Dare lay the stinglet 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 none in my heart to un-deceive 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 un-deceived 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 a short Newfoundland, and then I asked myself what I should do. Since I'm here, here I'll bide, I thought to myself. It will 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 Henshard 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, and what's the use of my money to me? Henshard, 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 Henshard, in the same stolid tones, when did she die? A year ago and more replied the other without hesitation. The sailor continued standing. Henshard 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, and has served me right. I'll trouble you no longer. Henshard 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 balked or dejected man. But he did not turn his head. Newson's shadow passed the window. He was gone. Then, Henshard, 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 Bullsteak. Henshard 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 Henshard's words, faith so simple as to be almost sublime. The young sailor who had taken Susan Henshard 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 Henshard's words on trust so absolutist to shame him as he stood. Was Elizabeth Jane to remain his by virtue of this hearty invention of a moment? Perhaps not for long, said he. Newson might converse with his fellow travellers, some of whom might be cast to bridge people, and the trick would be discovered. This probability threw Henshard into a defensive attitude, and instead of considering how best to write the wrong and to quaint Elizabeth's father with the truth at once, he bethought himself a 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, Henshard, 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. A 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. Farfrey after thinking of her so, but I did not. How strange it is that we did 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 and 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 accountants whose beauty had ever lain in its meditative soberness. Father, she said, as soon as she recalls herself to the outspread meal, it is so kind of you to get this nice breakfast with your own hands that 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? Eh, 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 his daughter, he would not ask her to do so now. Nussin 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 step-daughter 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, Farfay, 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 born, 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 his 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 Castor Bridge 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 cymbaling, and at Derniver 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 nightfall, human beings receled and found going that way, the path leading only to a deep reach of the stream called Blackwater, and the passage being dangerous. Ten Shard, 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 luster that still lingered in the west. In a second or two he stood beside the weir-hole where the water was at its steepest. 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 deathbed. 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 whole. 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. Newsom, 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 devines things. Yet she had not devined their whole extremity. He said to her, are miracles still work, do you think, Elizabeth? I am not a red 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 you 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 in troubled his glance. She would gladly have talked to 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 Henschard, and looked 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 Henschard. Well, they are. Dear me, I wonder—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 Henschard, 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 of 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 a 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, tense forward. 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 figures should have been floating there. Elizabeth Jane heard him say, Who is such a reprobated eye? And yet it seems that even I be in somebody's hand. End of Chapter 41 Chapter 42 of the Mayor of Casterbridge This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy Chapter 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 Nussan haunted him. He would surely return. Yet Nussan did not arrive. Lucetta had been born 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 Nussan was gone forever. In due time the bereaved farfray had learned 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 pecanth 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 job'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 farfray truest consideration for the dead one's memory as well as best philosophy. Henchard and himself mutually forebore to meet. For Elizabeth's sake the former had bettered his pride sufficiently to accept the small seed and root business which some of the town council headed by farfray 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 watchfulness in which paternal regard was heightened by a burning jealous dread of rivalry, yet that Nussan 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 Nussan 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 church yard and nothing occurred to mark their days during the remainder of the year. Going out but seldom and never on a market day they saw Donald Farfray 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 gray style, taught Farfray 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 in orarity, even the reverse, indeed. And without them the band of the worthy is incomplete. But Farfray was not one of those. It was inevitable that the insight, riskiness, and rapidity of his nature should take him out of the dead blank which is lost through 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, notwithstanding such conditions, Lucetta's image still lived on with him, her weaknesses provoking only the generalist criticism and her sufferings attenuating wrath at her concealments to a momentary spark now and then. By the end of a year, Hanchar'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 interactivity 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 and 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. Oh no, said the netted lion, anxious not to peek her in the least. Some little time after, when the year had advanced into another spring, he paused opposite her empty bedroom and 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 meager 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 first time he felt a little hurt by what he thought her extravagance, and resolved to say a word to her about it. But before he had found the courage to speak, an event happened which set his thoughts flying in quite another direction. The busy time of the seed trade was over, and the quiet weeks that preceded the hay season had come, setting their special stamp upon Castor Bridge by thronging the market with wood rakes, new wagons in yellow, green, and red, formidable size, and pitchforks of prong sufficient to skewer up a small family. Handschard, contrary to his want, went out one Saturday afternoon towards the marketplace from a curious feeling that he would like to pass a few minutes on the spot of his former triumphs. Farfray, to whom he was still a comparative stranger, stood a few steps below the corn exchange door, a usual position with him at this hour, and he appeared lost in thought about something he was looking at a little way off. Handschard's eyes followed Farfray's, and he saw that the object of his gaze was no sample showing farmer, but his own stepdaughter, who had just come out of a shop over the way. She, on her part, was quite unconscious of his attention, and in this was less fortunate than those young women whose very plumes, like those of Juno's bird, are set with Argus's eyes whenever possible admirers are within Ken. Handschard went away, thinking that perhaps there was nothing significant after all in Farfray's look at Elizabeth Jane at that juncture. Yet he could not forget that the Scotchman had once shown a tender interest in her of a fleeting kind. Thereupon promptly came to the surface that idiosyncrasy of Handschard's which had ruled his courses from the beginning and had mainly made him what he was. Instead of thinking that a union between his cherished stepdaughter and the energetic thriving Donald was a thing to be desired for her good and his own, he hated the very possibility. Time had been when such instinctive opposition would have taken shape in action, but he was not now the Handschard of former days. He schooled himself to accept her will in this, as in other matters, as absolute and unquestionable. He dreaded lest an antagonistic word should lose for him such regard as he had regained from her by his devotion, feeling that to retain this under separation was better than to incur her dislike by keeping her near. But the mere thought of such separation fevered his spirit much, and in the evening he said with the stillness of suspense, Have you seen Mr. Farfray today, Elizabeth? Elizabeth Jane started at the question, and it was with some confusion that she replied, No. Oh, that's right, that's right. It was only that I saw him in the street when we both were there. He was wondering if her embarrassment justified him in a new suspicion, that the long walks which she had laterally been taking, that the new books which had so surprised him had anything to do with the young man. She did not enlighten him, and lest silence should allow her to shape thoughts unfavorable to their present friendly relations, he diverted the discourse into another channel. Handschard was, by original make, the last man to act stealthily, for good or for evil. But the solicitous timmer of his love, the dependence upon Elizabeth's regard into which he had declined, or in another sense to which he had advanced, denaturalized him. He would often weigh and consider for hours together the meaning of such and such a deed or phrase of hers, when a blunt settling question would formerly have been his first instinct. And now, uneasy at the thought of a passion for Farfray, which should entirely displace her mild filial sympathy with himself, he observed her going and coming more narrowly. There was nothing secret in Elizabeth Jane's movements beyond what habitual reserve induced, and it may at once be owned on her account that she was guilty of occasional conversations with Donald when they chanced to meet. Whatever the origin of her walks on the Budmouth Road, her return from those walks was often coincident with Farfray's emergence from Corn Street for a twenty minutes blow on that rather windy highway. Just to winnow the seeds and chaff out of him before sitting down to tea, as he said, Henshawd became aware of this by going to the ring and screamed by its enclosure, keeping his eye upon the road till he saw them meet. His face assumed an expression of extreme anguish. Of her too he means to rob me, he whispered. But he has the right I do not wish to interfere. The meeting and truth was of a very innocent kind, and matters were by no means so far advanced between the young people as Henshawd's jealous grief inferred. Could he have heard such conversation as past he would have been enlightened thus much? He. You like walking this way, Miss Henshawd? And is it not so, uttered in his undulatory accent and with an appraising, pondering gaze at her? She. Oh, yes, I have chosen this road latterly. I have no great reason for it. He. But that may make a reason for others. She. Reddening. I don't know that. My reason, however, such as it is, is that I wish to get a glimpse of the sea every day. He. Is it a secret why? She. Reluctantly. Yes. He. With the pathos of one of his native ballads, I doubt there will be any good in secrets. A secret cast a deep shadow over my life, and well, you know what it was. Elizabeth admitted that she did, but she refrained from confessing why the sea attracted her. She could not herself account for it fully, not knowing the secret possibly to be that in addition to early marine associations, her blood was a sailor's. Thank you for those new books, Mr. Farfray, she added, Shiley. I wonder if I ought to accept so many. Hey, why not? It gives me more pleasure to get them for you than you to have them. It cannot. They proceeded along the road together till they reached the town in their paths diverged. Henshawd vowed that he would leave them to their own devices, put nothing in the way of their courses, whatever they might mean. If he were doomed to be bereft of her, so it must be. In the situation which their marriage would create, he could see no locus stendai for himself at all. Farfray would never recognize him more than superciliously. His poverty ensured that no less than his past conduct. And so Elizabeth would grow to be a stranger to him, and the end of his life would be friendless solitude. With such a possibility impending, he could not help watchfulness. Indeed, within certain lines, he had the right to keep an eye upon her as his charge. The meetings seemed to become matters of course with them on special days of the week. At last, full proof was given him. He was standing behind a wall, close to the place at which Farfray encountered her. He heard the young man address her as, dearest Elizabeth Jane, and then kiss her, the girl looking quickly round to assure herself that nobody was near. When they were gone their way, Henshire came out from the wall and mournfully followed them to Casterbridge. The chief looming trouble in this engagement had not decreased. Both Farfray and Elizabeth Jane, unlike the rest of the people, must suppose Elizabeth to be his actual daughter, from his own assertion while he himself had the same belief. And though Farfray must have so far forgiven him as to have no objection to own him as a father-in-law, intimate they could never be. Thus would the girl, who was his only friend, be withdrawn from him by degrees through her husband's influence and learn to despise him. Had she lost her heart to any other man in the world than the one he had rivaled, cursed, wrestled with for life in days before his spirit was broken, Henshire would have said, I am content. But content with the prospect as now depicted was hard to acquire. There is an outer chamber of the brain in which thoughts, unowned, unsolicited, and obnoxious kind, are sometimes allowed to wander for a moment prior to being sent off once they came. One of these thoughts sailed into Henshire's kin now. Suppose he were to communicate to Farfray the fact that his betrothed was not the child of Michael Henshire at all. Legally, nobody's child. How would that correct and leading townsman receive the information? He might possibly forsake Elizabeth Jane, and then she would be her step-sire's own again. Henshire shuddered and exclaimed, God forbid such a thing! Why should I still be subject to these visitations of the devil when I try so hard to keep him away? End of Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Of the Mayor of Casterbridge This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy Chapter 43 What Henshire saw, thus early was, naturally enough, seen at a little later date by other people, that Mr. Farfray walked with that bankrupt Henshire's stepdaughter of all women, became a common topic in the town. The simple, perambulating term being used here about to signify a wooing, and the nineteen superior young ladies of Casterbridge, who had each looked upon herself as the only woman capable of making the merchant councilmen happy, indignantly left off going to the church Farfray attended, left off conscious mannerisms, left off putting him in their prayers at night amongst their blood relations, in short, reverted to their normal courses. Perhaps the only inhabitants of the town, whom this looming choice of the Scotchmans gave unmixed satisfaction, were the members of the Philosophic Party, which included Longways, Christopher Coney, Billy Wills, Mr. Buzzford, and the like. The three mariners, having been years before, the house in which they had witnessed the young man and woman's first and humble appearance on the Casterbridge stage, they took a kindly interest in their career, not unconnected perhaps, with visions of festive treatment at their hands hereafter. Mrs. Stannage, having rolled into the large parlor one evening, and said that it was a wonder such a man as Mr. Farfray, a pillow of the town, who might have chosen one of the daughters of the professional men of private residence, should stoop so low, Coney then should disagree with her. No, ma'am, no wonder at all, to she that's a stooping to he, that's my opinion, a widow man whose first wife was no credit to him, what is it for a young pursuing woman that's her own mistress and well-liked, but as a neat patching up of things I see much good in it, when a man have put up a tomb of best marble stone to the other one, as he'd done, and weaved his fill and thought it all over, and said to his self, Tother took me in, I know this one first, she's a sensible piece for a partner, and there's no faithful woman in high life now, while he may do worse than not to take her, if she's tender and kind. Thus they talked at the mariners, but we must guard against the too liberal use of the conventional declaration that a great sensation was caused by the prospective event, that all the gossip's tongues were set wagging thereby and so on, even though such a declaration might lend some eclat to the career of our poor only heroine, when all has been said about busy rumours, a superficial and temporary thing is the interest of anybody in affairs which do not directly touch them. It would be a truer representation to say that Casterbridge, ever accepting the nineteen young ladies, looked up for a moment at the news and withdrawing its attention when on laboring and vittling, bringing up its children and burying its dead without carrying a tittle for Farfray's domestic plans. Not a hint of the matter was thrown out to her stepfather by Elizabeth herself or by Farfray either. Reasoning on the cause of their reticence, he concluded that estimating him by his past, the throbbing pair were afraid to broach the subject and looked upon him as an irksome obstacle whom they would be hardly glad to get out of the way. And bittered as he was against society, this moody view of himself took deeper and deeper hold of Henschard till the daily necessity of facing mankind and of them, particularly Elizabeth Jane, became well nigh more than he could endure. His health declined, he became morbidly sensitive, he wished he could escape those who did not want him and hide his head forever. But what if he were mistaken in his views and there were no necessity that his own absolute separation from her should be involved in the incident of her marriage? He proceeded to draw a picture of the alternative, himself living like a fangless lion about the back rooms of a house in which his stepdaughter was mistressed, an inoffensive old man tenderly smiled on by Elizabeth and good-naturedly tolerated by her husband. It was terrible to his pride to think of descending so low, and yet for the girl's sake he might put up with anything, even from Farfray, even snubbings and masterful tongue scourges. The privilege of being in the house she occupied would almost outweigh the personal humiliation. Whether this were a dim possibility or the reverse, the courtship, which it evidently now was, had an absorbing interest for him. Elizabeth, as has been said, often took her walks on the Budmouth Road, and Farfray has often made it convenient to create an accidental meeting with her there. Two miles out, a quarter of a mile from the highway, was the prehistoric fort called Maidun, of huge dimensions and many ramparts, within or upon whose enclosures a human being, as seen from the road, was but an insignificant speck. Here the word, henceherred often resorted, glass in hand, and scanned the hedgeleth via, for it was the original track laid out by the legions of the empire to a distance of two or three miles, his object being to read the progress of affairs between Farfray and his charmer. One day, henceherred was at this spot when a masculine figure came along the road from Budmouth and lingered. Applying his telescope to his eye, henceherred expected that Farfray's features would be disclosed as usual, but the lenses revealed that today the man was not Elizabeth Jane's lover. It was Mawn clothed as a merchant captain, and as he turned in the scrutiny of the road he revealed his face. Henceherred lived a lifetime the moment he saw it. The face was nuisance. Henceherred dropped the glass, and for some seconds made no other movement. Nussin waited, and henceherred waited, if that could be called a waiting, which was a trans fixture. But Elizabeth Jane did not come. Something or other had caused her to neglect her customary walk that day. Perhaps Farfray and she had chosen another road for a variety's sake. But what did that amount to? She might be here tomorrow, and in any case Nussin, if bent on a private meeting and a revelation of the truth to her, would soon make his opportunity. Then he would tell her not only of his paternity, but of the roost by which he had been once sent away. Elizabeth's strict nature would cause her for the first time to despise her stepfather, would root out his image as that of an archdeceiver, and Nussin would reign in her heart in his stead. But Nussin did not see anything of her that morning. Having stood still a while, he at last retraced his steps, and henceherred felt like a condemned man who has a few hours' respite. When he reached his own house, he found her there. Oh, Father, she said innocently, I have had a letter, a strange one, not signed. Somebody has asked me to meet him, either on the Budmouth Road at noon today, or in the evening at Mr. Farfray's. He says he came to see me some time ago, but a trick was played on him so that he did not see me. I don't understand it, but between you and me I think Donald is at the bottom of the mystery, and that it is a relation of his who wants to pass an opinion on his choice. But I did not like to go till I had seen you. Shall I go? Henschard replied heavily, Yes, go. The question of his remaining in Casterbridge was forever disposed of by this closing in of Nussin on the scene. Henschard was not the man to stand the certainty of condemnation on a matter so near his heart. And being an old hand at bearing anguish and silence and haughty with awe, he resolved to make as light as he could of his intentions, while immediately taking his measures. He surprised the young woman whom he had looked upon as his all in this world by saying to her, as if he did not care about her more, I am going to leave Casterbridge, Elizabeth Jane. Leave Casterbridge, she cried, and leave me? Yes, this little shop can be managed by you alone as well as by us both. I don't care about shops and streets and folk. I would rather get into the country by myself, out of sight, and follow my own ways and leave you to yours. She looked down and her tears fell silently. It seemed to her that this resolve of his had come on account of her attachment and its probable result. She showed her devotion to Farfay, however, by mastering her emotion and speaking out. I am sorry you have decided on this, she said with difficult firmness, for I thought it probable, possible, that I might marry Mr. Farfay some little time hence, and I did not know that you disapproved of the step. I approve of anything you desire to do, is he, said henchard huskily, if I did not approve it would be no matter. I wish to go away. My presence might make things awkward in the future, and in short it is best that I go. Nothing that her affection could urge would induce him to reconsider his determination, for she could not urge what she did not know, that when she should learn he was not related to her other than as a step-parent she would refrain from despising him, and that when she knew what he had done to keep her in ignorance she would refrain from hating him. It was his conviction that she would not so refrain, and there existed as yet neither word nor event which could argue it away. Then, she said at last, you will not be able to come to my wedding, and that is not as it ought to be. I don't want to see it, I don't want to see it, he exclaimed, adding more softly, but think of me, sometimes in your future life, you'll do that, is he? Think of me, when you are living as the wife of the richest, the foremost man in the town, and don't let my sins, when you know them all, cause thee to quite forget that though I loved thee late, I loved thee well. It is because of Donald, she sobbed. I don't forbid you to marry him, said Henshard. Promise not to quite forget me when he meant, when nuisance should come. She promised mechanically in her agitation, and the same evening it does, Henshard left the town, to whose development he had been one of the chief stimulants for many years. During the day he had bought a new tool-basket, cleaned up his old hay knife and wimble, set himself up in fresh leggings, knee-naps, and corduroys, and in other ways gone back to the working clothes of his young manhood, discarding forever the shabby gentile suit of cloth and rusty silk hat that since his decline had characterized him in the castor-bridge street as a man who had seen better days. He went secretly and alone, not a soul of the many who had known him being aware of his departure. Elizabeth Jane accompanied him as far as the second bridge on the highway, for the hour of her appointment with the unguessed visitor Farfress had not yet arrived, and parted from him with unsaned wonder and sorrow, keeping him back a minute or two before finally letting him go. She watched his form diminish across the moor, the yellow rush-basket at his back moving up and down with each tread, and decreases behind his knees coming and going alternately till she could no longer see them. Though she did not know it, Henshard formed at this moment much the same picture as he had presented when entering castor-bridge for the first time nearly a quarter of a century before, except to be sure that the serious addition to his years had considerably lessened the spring to his stride, that his state of hopelessness had weakened him and imparted to his shoulders as weighted by the basket, a perceptible bend. He went on till he came to the first milestone, which stood in the bank, halfway up a steep hill. He rested his basket on the top of the stone, placed his elbows on it, and gave way to a convulsive twitch, which was worse than a sob because it was so hard and so dry. If I had only got her with me, if I only had, he said, hard work would be nothing to me then, but that was not to be. I, Cain, go alone as I deserve, an outcast and a vagabond, but my punishment is not greater than I can bear. He sternly subdued his anguish, shouldered his basket, and went on. Elizabeth, in the meantime, had breathed him a sigh, recovered her equanimity, and turned her face to castor-bridge. Before she had reached the first house, she was met in her walk by Donald Farfray. This was evidently not their first meeting that day. They joined hands without ceremony, and Farfray anxiously asked, and is he gone? And did you tell him? I mean, of the other matter, not of ours? He is gone, and I told him all I knew of your friend, Donald. Who is he? Well, dear, you will know soon about that, and Mr. Henschard will hear of it if he does not go far. He will go far. He's bent upon getting out of sight and sound. She walked beside her lover, and when they reached the crossways or bow, turned with him into Corn Street, instead of going straight on to her own door. At Farfray's house they stopped and went in. Farfray flung open the door of the ground floor sitting room, saying, There he is, waiting for you. And Elizabeth entered. In the armchair sat the broad-faced, genial man who had called on Henschard on a memorable morning between one and two years before this time, and whom the latter had seen mount the coach and depart within half an hour of his arrival. It was Richard Nusson. The meeting with the light-hearted father from whom she had been separated half a dozen years, as if by death need hardly be detailed. It was an affecting one, apart from the question of paternity. Henschard's departure was in a moment explained. When the true facts came to be handled, the difficulty of restoring her to her old belief in Nusson was not so great as might have seemed likely, for Henschard's conduct itself was a proof that those facts were true. Moreover, she had grown up under Nusson's paternal care, and even as Henschard had been her father in nature, this father in early domiciliation might almost have carried the point against him when the incidents of her parting with Henschard had a little worn off. Nusson's pride in what she had grown up to be was more than he could express. He kissed her again and again. I've saved you the trouble to come and meet me, ha-ha, said Nusson. The fact is that Mr. Farfray here, he said, Come up and stop with me for a day or two, Captain Nusson, and I'll bring her round. Face says I, so I will, and here I am. Well, Henschard is gone, said Farfray, shutting the door. He has done it all voluntarily, and as I gather from Elizabeth he has been very nice with her. I was got rather uneasy, but all is as it should be, and we will have no more difficulties at all. Now that's very much as I thought, said Nusson, looking into the face of each by turns. I said to myself, A, a hundred times, when I tried to get a peep at her unknown to herself, depend upon it just best that I should live on quiet for a few days like this till something turns up for the better. I now know you are all right, and what can I wish for more? Well, Captain Nusson, I will be glad to see you here every day now, since it can do no harm, said Farfray. And what I've been thinking is that the wedding may as well be kept under my own roof, the house being large and you being in lodgings by yourself, so that a great deal of trouble and expense would be saved ye. Anticipate convenience when a couple is married not to have far to go to get home. With all my heart, said Captain Nusson, since, as ye say, it can do no harm, now poor handshards gone, though I wouldn't have done it otherwise or put myself in his way at all. For I've already in my lifetime been an intruder into his family quite as far as politeness can be expected to put up with. But what do the young woman say herself about it? Elizabeth, my child, come and hearken to what we be talking about and not bide staring out of the window as if he didn't hear. Donald and you must settle it, murmured Elizabeth, still keeping up a scrutinizing gaze with some small object in the street. Well, then, continued Nusson, turning anew to Farfray, with a face expressing thorough entry into the subject, that's how we'll have it. And Mr. Farfray, as you provide so much, and house, room, and all that, I'll do my part in the drinkables, and seat of the room and shite them, maybe a dozen jars will be sufficient, as many of the folk will be ladies, and perhaps they won't drink hard enough to make a high average in the reckoning. But you know best, I've provided for men and shipmates times enough, but I'm as ignorant as a child how many glasses of grog a woman that's not a drinking woman is expected to consume at these ceremonies. Oh, none. We'll know what much of that. Oh, no, said Farfray, shaking his head with appalled gravity. Do you leave all to me? When they had gone a little further in these particulars, Nusson, leaning back in his chair and smiling reflectively at the ceiling, said, I've never told you, or have I, Mr. Farfray, how henchard put me off the scent that time. He expressed ignorance of what the captain alluded to. Ah, I thought I hadn't. I resolved that I would not. I remember not to hurt the man's name. But now he's gone, I can tell you. While I came to Casterbridge nine or ten months before that day last week that I found he out, I had been here twice before then, the first time I passed through the town on my way westward, not knowing Elizabeth lived here. Then, hearing at some place, I forget where, that a man of the name of henchard had been mayor here, I came back and called at his house one morning. The old rascal, he said Elizabeth Jane had died years ago. Elizabeth now gave Ernest heed to his story. Now it never crossed my mind that the man was selling me a packet, continued Nusson, and if you'll believe me, I was that upset that I went back to the coach that had brought me and took passage onward without lying in the town half an hour. Ha-ha! It was a good joke and well carried out, and I give the man credit for it. Elizabeth Jane was amazed at the intelligence. A joke? Oh, no! she cried. Then he kept you from me, father, all those months when you might have been here. The father admitted that such was the case. He ought not to have done it, said Farfay. Elizabeth sighed. I said I would never forget him, but oh, I think I ought to forget him now. Nusson, like a good many rovers and sojourners among strange men and strange moralities, failed to perceive the enormity of Henschard's crime, notwithstanding that he himself had been the chief sufferer therefrom. Indeed, the attack upon the absent culprit waxing serious, he began to take Henschard's part. Well, it was not ten words that he said after all, Nusson pleaded, and how could he know that I should be such a simpleton as to believe him? It was as much my fault as his, poor fellow. No, said Elizabeth Jane firmly in her revulsion of feeling. He knew your disposition. You always were so trusting, father. I've heard my mother say so hundreds of times, and he did it to wrong you. After weaning me from you these five years by saying he was my father, he should not have done this. Thus they conversed, and there was nobody to set before Elizabeth any extenuation of the absent one's deceit. Even had he been present, Henschard might scarce have pleaded it, so little did he value himself or his good name. Well, well, never mind. It is all over and past, said Nusson, good-naturedly. Now about this wedding again. Thomas Hardy Chapter 44 Meanwhile the man of their talk had pursued his solitary way eastward till weariness overtook him, and he looked about for a place of rest. His heart was so exacerbated at parting from the girl that he could not face and in, or even a household of the most humble kind. And entering a field he lay down under a wheat-wreck, feeling no want of food. The very heaviness of his soul caused him to sleep profoundly. The bright autumn sun shining into his eyes across the stubble awoke him the next morning early. He opened his basket and ate for his breakfast what he had packed for his supper, and in doing so overhauled the remainder of his kit. Although everything he brought necessitated carriage at his own back, he had secreted among his tools a few of Elizabeth Jane's cast-off belongings in the shape of gloves, shoes, a scrap of her handwriting, and the like. And in his pocket he carried a curl of her hair. Having looked at these things, he closed them up again and went onward. During five consecutive days, Henshawd's rush basket rode along upon his shoulder. Between the highway hedges, the new yellow of the rushes catching the eye of an occasional field laborer, as he glanced through the quick-set, together with the wayfarer's hat and head and downturned face, over which the twig shadows moved in endless procession. It now became apparent that the direction of his journey was weighed in priors, which he reached on the afternoon of the sixth day. The renowned hill, whereon the annual fair had been held for so many generations, was now bare of human beings and almost bought besides. A few sheep grazed there about, but these ran off when Henshawd halted upon the summit. He deposited his basket upon the turf and looked about with sad curiosity, till he discovered the road by which his wife and himself had entered on the upland so memorable to both, five and twenty years before. Yes, we came up that way, he said, after ascertaining his bearings. She was carrying the baby, and I was reading a ballot sheet. Then we crossed about here. She is so sad and weary, and I, speaking to her hardly at all, because of my cursed pride and mortification at being poor. Then we saw the tent. That must have stood more this way. He walked to another spot. It was not really where the tent had stood, but it seemed so to him. Here we went in, and here we sat down. I faced this way. Then I drank and committed my crime. It must have been just on that very pixie ring that she was standing when she said her last words to me before going off with him. I can hear their sounds now and the sound of her sobs. Oh, Mike, I lived with thee all this while and had nothing but temper. Now I'm no more to eat. I'll try my luck elsewhere. He experienced not only the bitterness of a man who finds in looking back upon an ambitious course, but what he has sacrificed in sentiment was worth as much as what he has gained in substance. But the super-added bitterness of seeing his very recantation nullified. He had been sorry for all this long ago, but his attempts to replace ambition by love had been as fully foiled as his ambition itself. His wrong wife had foiled them by a fraud so grandly simple as to be almost a virtue. It was an odd sequence that, out of all this tampering with social law, came that flower of nature, Elizabeth. Part of his wish to wash his hands of life arose from his perception of his contrarious inconsistencies of nature's jaunty readiness to support unorthodox social principles. He intended to go on from this place, visited, as an act of penance, into another part of the country altogether. But he could not help thinking of Elizabeth and the quarter of the horizon in which she lived. Out of this it happened that the centrifugal tendency imparted by weariness of the world was counteracted by the centripetal influence of his love for his step-daughter. As a consequence, instead of following a straight course yet further away from Castor Bridge, Henschard gradually, almost unconsciously, deflected from that right line of his first intention, till by degrees his wandering, like that of the Canadian woodsman, became part of a circle of which Castor Bridge formed the centre. In ascending any particular hill he ascertained the bearings as nearly as he could by means of the sun, moon or stars, and settled in his mind the exact direction in which Castor Bridge and Elizabeth Jane lay. Sneering at himself for his weakness, he yet, every hour, nay every few minutes, conjectured her actions for the time being. Her sitting down and rising up, her goings and comings, till thought of nuisance and far-phrase counter-influence, would pass like a cold blast over a pool, and deface her image. And then he would say to himself, oh, you fool, all this about a daughter who is no daughter of thine. At length he obtained employment at his own occupation of Haytrusser, work of that sort being in demand at this autumn time. The scene of his hiring was a pastoral farm near the Old Western Highway, whose course was the channel of all such communications that passed between the busy centres of novelty and the remote Westick's boroughs. He had chosen the neighbourhood of this artery from a sense that, situated here, though at a distance of fifty miles, he was virtually nearer to her whose welfare was so dear that he would be at a roadless spot only half as remote. And thus Henschard found himself again on the precise standing which he had occupied a quarter of a century before. Externally there was nothing to hinder his making another start on the upward slope, and by his new lights achieving higher things than his soul in its half-formed state had been able to accomplish. But the ingenious machinery contrived by the gods for reducing human possibilities of amelioration to a minimum, which arranges that wisdom to do shall come pari pasu with the departure of zest for doing, stood in the way of all that. He had no wish to make an arena a second time of a world that had become a mere painted scene to him. Very often, as his hay knife crunched down among the sweet-smelling grassy stems, he would survey mankind and say to himself, Here and everywhere be folk dying before their time like frosted leaves, though wanted by their families, the country and the world, while I, an outcast, an encumberer of the ground, wanted by nobody and despised by all, live on against my will. He often kept an eager ear upon the conversations of those who passed along the road, not from a general curiosity by any means, but in the hope that among these travelers between Casterbridge and London some would sooner or later speak of the former place. The distance, however, was too great to lend much probability to his desire, and the highest result of his attention to wayside words was that he did indeed hear the name Casterbridge uttered one day by the driver of a road wagon. Henshard ran to the gate of the field he worked in and hailed the speaker, who was a stranger. Yes, I've come from there, maester, he said, in answer to Henshard's inquiry. I trade up and down, you know, though, what with this travelling without horses that's getting so common my work will soon be done. Anything moving in the old place, that I asked? All the same as usual. I've heard that Mr. Farfray, the late mayor, is thinking of getting married, and was that true or not? I couldn't say for the life of me. Oh, no, I should think not. But yes, John, you forget, said a woman inside the wagon tilped. What were them packages we carried there at the beginning of the week? Surely they said a wedding was coming off soon, on Martin's Day? The man declared he remembered nothing about it, and the wagon went on jangling over the hill. Henshard was convinced that the woman's memory served her well. The date was an extremely probable one, there being no reason for delay on either side. He might for that matter write an inquire of Elizabeth, but his instinct for sequestration had made the course difficult. Yet before he left her she had said that for him to be absent from her wedding was not, as she wished it to be. The remembrance would continually revive in him now that it was not Elizabethan Farfray who had driven him away from them, but his own haughty sense that his presence was no longer desired. He had assumed the return of Newson without absolute proof that the captain meant to return. Still less that Elizabeth Jane would welcome him, and was no proof whatever that if he did return he would stay. What if he had been mistaken in his views? If there had been no necessity that his own absolute separation from her he loved should be involved in these untoward incidents. To make one more attempt to be near her, to go back, to see her, to plead his cause before her, to ask forgiveness for his fraud, to endeavor strenuously to hold his own in her love it was worth the risk of repulse, a. of life itself. But how to initiate this reversal of all his former resolves without causing husband and wife to despise him for his inconsistency was a question which made him tremble and brood. He cut and cut his trust as two days more, and then he concluded his hesitancies by a sudden reckless determination to go to the wedding festivity. Neither writing nor message would be expected of him. She had regretted his decision to be absent. His unanticipated presence would fill the little unsatisfied corner that would probably have place in her just heart without him. To intrude as little of his personality as possible upon a gay event with which that personality could show nothing in keeping, he decided not to make his appearance till evening when stiffness would have worn off, and a gentle wish to let bygones be bygones would exercise its sway in all hearts. He started on foot two mornings before St. Martin's tide, allowing himself about sixteen miles to perform for each of the three days' journey, reckoning the wedding day as one. There were only two towns, Melchester and Shotsford of any importance along his course, and at the latter he stopped on the second night not only to rash but to prepare himself for the next evening. Possessing no clothes but the working suit he stood in, now stained and distorted by their two months of hard usage, he entered a shop to make some purchases which should put him, externally at any rate, a little in harmony with the prevailing tone of the morrow. A rough yet respectable coat and hat, a new shirt and neckcloth were the chief of these, and having satisfied himself that in appearance at least he would not now offend her, he proceeded to the more interesting particular of buying her some present. What should that present be? He walked up and down the street, regarding dubiously the display in the shop windows, from a gloomy sense that what he might most like to give her would be beyond his miserable pocket. At length a caged goldfinch met his eye. The cage was a plain and small one, the shop humble, and on inquiry he concluded he could afford the modest some asked. A sheet of newspapers tied round the little creature's wire prison, and with the wrapped up cage in his hand Henschard sought a lodging for the night. Next day he set out upon the last stage, and was soon within the district which had been his dealing ground in bygone years. Part of the distance he traveled by carrier, seating himself in the darkest corner at the back of that trader's van. And as the other passengers, mainly women, going short journeys, mounted and alighted in front of Henschard, they talked over much local news, not the least portion of this being the wedding, then in course of celebration at the town they were nearing. It appeared from their accounts that the town band had been hired for the evening party, and lest the convivial instincts of that body should get the better of their skill, the further step had been taken of engaging the string band from Budmouth, so that there would be a reserve of harmony to fall back upon in case of need. He heard, however, but few particulars beyond those known to him already, the incident of the deepest interest on the journey being the soft peeling of the castor bridge bells, which reached the traveller's ears while the van paused on the top of Yalbury Hill to have the drag lowered. The time was just after twelve o'clock. Those notes were a signal that all had gone well, that there had been no slip, twist, cup, and lip in this case, that Elizabeth Jane and Donald Farfray were man and wife. Tenchard did not care to ride any further with his chattering companions after hearing this sound. Indeed, it quite unmanned him, and in pursuance of his plan of not showing himself in castor bridge street till evening, lest he should mortify Farfray and his bride, he alighted here with his bundle and bird cage, and was soon left as a lonely figure on the broad White Highway. It was the hill near which he had waited to meet Farfray almost two years earlier to tell him of the serious illness of his wife Lucetta. The place was unchanged. The same larches sighed the same notes, but Farfray had another wife, and, as Hinchard knew, a better one. He only hoped that Elizabeth Jane had obtained a better home than had been hers at the former time. He passed the remainder of the afternoon in a curious high strung condition, unable to do much but think of the approaching meeting with her, and sadly satirized himself for his emotions thereon as a Samson shorn. Such an innovation on castor bridge customs as a flitting of bridegroom and bride from the town immediately after the ceremony was not likely. But if it should have taken place, he would wait till their return. To assure himself on this point, he asked the market man, when near the borough, if the newly married couple had gone away, and was promptly informed that they had not. They were at that hour, according to all accounts, entertaining a house full of guests at their home in Corn Street. Hinchard 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 Farfray'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, Hinchard 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 amniated, Hinchard, 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 Farfay'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 parlor 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 parlor, a dance was struck up, and she returned to say that she would wait till that was over before announcing him, Mr. and Mrs. Farfay 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 Henschard said in being a jar 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 vase-file bow. The gayity jarred upon Henschard's spirits, and he could not quite understand why Farfay, 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 performer 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 gayity. Presently Farfay came round, his exuberant scotch movement making him conspicuous in a moment. The pair were not dancing together, but Henschard could discern that whenever the chances of the figure made them the partners of a moment, their emotions breathed the much subtler essence than at other times. By degrees, Henschard became aware that the measure was trod by someone who outfarfrayed Farfray in salvatore intenseness. This was strange, and it was stranger to find that the eclipsing personage was Elizabeth Jane's partner. The first time that Henschard 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 waistcoat preceding his face, and his toes preceding his white waistcoat. That happy face, Henschard's completeness comforts her lay in it. It was nuisance, who had indeed come and supplanted him. Henschard 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 upthrown. But he was no longer the man to stand these reverses unmoved. His agitation was great, and he would feign 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. Henschard, she said, starting back. What Elizabeth, he cried as he seized her hand. What do you say, Mr. Henschard? Don't, don't scourge me like that. Call me worthless old Henschard, anything, but don't he be so cold as this? Oh, 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 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. Oh, how can I love as I once did a man who has served us like this? Henschard'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 fault, 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 game-ster who loved her affection better than his own honor? 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. Waving, therefore, his privilege of self-defense, 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 ye, I see my error, but it is only for once, so forgive it. I'll never trouble ye again, Elizabeth Jane. No, not to my dying day. Good night. Goodbye. Then, before she could collect her thoughts, Henschard went out from her rooms and departed from the house by the back way as he had come, and she saw him no more.