 CHAPTER 17 Elizabeth Jane had perceived from Hinchard's manner that in ascending to dance she had made a mistake of some kind. In her simplicity she did not know what it was till a hint from a nodding acquaintance enlightened her. As the mayor's stepdaughter, she learnt, she had not been quite in her place in treading a measure amid such a mixed throng as filled the dancing pavilion. Thereupon her ears, cheeks, and chin glowed like live coals at the dawning of the idea that her tastes were not good enough for her position and would bring her into disgrace. This made her very miserable and she looked about for her mother, but Mrs. Hinchard, who had less idea of conventionality than Elizabeth herself, had gone away, leaving her daughter to return at her own pleasure. The latter moved on into the dark, dense old avenues, or rather vaults, of living woodwork which ran along the town boundary and stood reflecting. A man followed in a few minutes, and her face being towards the shine from the tent he recognized her. It was Farfrey, just come from the dialogue with Hinchard which had signified his dismissal. And it's you, Miss Neuson, and I've been looking for you everywhere, he said, overcoming a sadness imparted by the estrangement with the corn merchant. May I walk on with you as far as your street corner? She thought there might be something wrong in this, but did not utter any objection. So together they went on, first down the west walk, and then into the bowling walk, till Farfrey said, It's like that I'm going to leave you soon. She faltered, Why? Oh, as a mere matter of business, nothing more, but we'll not concern ourselves about it. It is for the best. I hope to have another dance with you. She said she could not dance in any proper way. Nay, but you do. It's the feeling for it rather than the learning of steps that makes pleasant dancers. I fear I offended your father by getting up this, and now perhaps I'll have to go to another part of the world altogether. This seemed such a melancholy prospect that Elizabeth Jane breathed the sigh, letting it off in fragments that he might not hear her. But darkness makes people truthful, and the Scotchman went on impulsively. Perhaps he had hurt her after all. I wish I was richer, Miss Neuson, and your stepfather had not been offended. I would ask you something in a short time. Yes, I would ask you tonight, but that's not for me. What he would have asked her he did not say, and instead of encouraging him, she remained incompetently silent. Thus, afraid one of another, they continued their promenade along the walls till they got near the bottom of the bowling-walk. Twenty steps further, and the trees would end, and the street corner and lamps appear. In consciousness of this they stopped. I never found out who it was that sent us to Dernover Granary on a fool's errand that day, said Donald in his undulating tones. Did you ever know yourself, Miss Neuson? Never, said she. I wonder why they did it. For fun, perhaps. Perhaps it was not for fun. It might have been that they thought they would like us to stay waiting there, talking to one another. Eh, well, I hope you, Caster Bridge folk, will not forget me if I go. But I'm sure we won't, she said earnestly. I wish you wouldn't go at all. They had got into the lamp-light. Now I'll think over that, said Donald Farfray, and I'll not come up to your door, but part from you here lest it make your father more angry still. They parted, Farfray returning into the dark bowling-walk, and Elizabeth Jane going up the street. Without any consciousness of what she was doing she started running with all her might till she reached her father's door. Oh, dear me, what am I at, she thought, as she pulled up breathless. In doors she fell to conjecturing the meaning of Farfray's enigmatic words about not daring to ask her what he feign would. Elizabeth, that silent observing woman, had long noted how he was rising in favor among the townspeople, and knowing henchards' nature now she had feared that Farfray's days as manager were numbered, so that the announcement gave her little surprise. Would Mr. Farfray stay in Casterbridge despite his words and her father's dismissal? His occult breathings to her might be solvable by his course in that respect. The next day was windy. So windy that walking in the garden she picked up a portion of the draft of a letter on business in Donald Farfray's writing, which had flown over the wall from the office. The useless scrap she took indoors and began to copy the calligraphy, which she much admired. The letter began, dear sir, and presently writing on a loose slip Elizabeth Jane, she laid the ladder over sir, making the phrase, dear Elizabeth Jane. When she saw the effect, a quick red ran up her face and warmed her through, though nobody was there to see what she had done. She quickly tore up the slip and threw it away. After this she grew cool and laughed at herself, walked about the room and laughed again. Not joyfully, but distressfully, rather. It was quickly known in Casterbridge that Farfray and Henschard had decided to dispense with each other. Elizabeth Jane's anxiety to know if Farfray were going away from the town reached a pitch that disturbed her, for she could no longer conceal from herself the cause. At length the news reached her that he was not going to leave the place. A man following the same trade as Henschard, but on a very small scale, had sold his business to Farfray, who was forthwith about to start his corn and hay merchant on his own account. Her heart fluttered when she heard of this step of Donald's, proving that he meant to remain. And yet, would a man who cared one little bit for her have endangered his suit by setting up a business in opposition to Mr. Henschard? Surely not, and it must have been a passing impulse only which had led him to address her so softly. To solve the problem whether her appearance on the evening of the dance were such as to inspire a fleeting love at first sight, she dressed herself up exactly as she had dressed then, the Muslim, the Spencer, the Sandals, the Parasol, and looked in the mirror. The picture glassed back was, in her opinion, precisely of such a kindness to inspire that fleeting regard. And no more. Just enough to make him silly and not enough to keep him so, she said luminously. But Elizabeth thought, in a much lower key, that by this time he had discovered how plain and homely was the informing spirit of that pretty outside. Hence, when she felt her heart going out to him, she would say to herself of the mock pleasantry that carried an ache with it. No, no, Elizabeth Jane, such dreams are not for you. She tried to prevent herself from seeing him and thinking of him, succeeding fairly well in the former attempt, in a latter not so completely. Henshard, who had been heard at finding that Farfray did not mean to put up with his temper any longer, was incensed beyond measure when he learned what the young man had done as an alternative. It was in the town hall, after a council meeting, that he first became aware of Farfray's coup for establishing himself independently in the town, and his voice might have been heard as far as the town pumped expressing his feelings to his fellow councilmen. His tones showed that, though under a long reign of self-control, he had become mayor and church warden and what not, there was still the same unruly volcanic stuff beneath the rind of Michael Henshard as when he had sold his wife at Wade and Fair. Well, he's a friend of mine, and I'm a friend of his, or if we are not, what are we? Odd sin, if I've not been his friend who has. I should like to know. Didn't he come here without a sound shoe to his foot? Didn't I keep him here, help him to a living? Didn't I help him to money or whatever he wanted? I stuck out for no terms. I said, name your own price. I'd have shared my last crust with that young fellow at one time. I liked him so well, and now he's defied me. But damn him. I'll have a tussle with him now, at fair buying and selling, mind, at fair buying and selling, and if I can't overbid such a stripling as he, then I'm not worth a vodka. We'll show that we know our business as well as one here and there. His friends of the corporation did not specially respond. Enchard was less popular now than he had been when, nearly two years before, they had voted him to the Chief Magistracy on account of his amazing energy. While they had collectively profited by this quality of the corn factors, they had been made to wince individually on more than one occasion, so he went out of the hall and down the street alone. Reaching home he seemed to recollect something with a sour satisfaction. He called Elizabeth Jane. Seeing how he looked when she entered, she appeared alarmed. Nothing to find fault with, he said, observing her concern. Only I want to caution you, my dear, that man far frayed is about him. I've seen him talking to you two or three times. He danced with he at the rejoicings and came home with he. Now, now, no blame to you, but just harken. Have you made him any foolish promise? Go on the least bit beyond sniff and snap at all? No, I have promised him nothing. Good. All's well that ends well. I particularly wish you not to see him again. Very well, sir. You promise? She hesitated for a moment and then said, Yes, if you much wish it. I do. He's an enemy to our house. When she had gone he sat down and rowed in a heavy hand to far fray thus, Sir, I make request that henceforth you and my stepdaughter be as strangers to each other. She, on her part, has promised to welcome no more addresses from you, and I trust therefore you will not attempt to force them upon her. Am henchard. One would almost have supposed henchard to have had policy to see that no better Movis Favendi could be arrived at with far fray than by encouraging him to become his son-in-law. For such a scheme for buying over a rival had nothing to recommend it to the mayor's headstrong faculties. Was all domestic finesse of that kind he was hopelessly at variance. Loving a man or hating him his diplomacy was as wrong-headed as a buffalo's, and his wife had not ventured to suggest a course which she, for many reasons, would have welcomed gladly. Meanwhile, Donald Farfay had opened the gates of commerce on his own account at a spot on Dernover Hill, as far as possible from henchard's stores, and with every intention of keeping clear of his former friend and employer's customers. There was, it seemed, to the younger man room for both of them, and to spare. The town was small, but the corn and hay trade was proportionately large, and with his native sagacity he saw opportunity for a share of it. So determined was he to do nothing which should seem like trade antagonism to the mayor, that he refused his first customer, a large farmer of good repute, because henchard and this man had dealt together within the proceedings three months. He was once my friend, said Farfay, and it's not for me to take business from him. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I cannot hurt the trade of a man who's been so kind to me. In spite of this praiseworthy course, the Scotchman's trade increased. Whether it were that his northern energy was an overmastering force among the easygoing Wessex worthies, or whether it was sheer luck, the fact remained that whatever he touched he prospered in. Like Jacob and Padden Aram, he would no sooner humbly limit himself to the ring-straight and spotted exceptions of trade than the ring-straight and spotted would multiply and prevail. But most probably luck had little to do with it. Character is fate, said Novalis, and Farfay's character was just the reverse of henchards, who might not in aptly be described as foul as has been described, as a vehement, gloomy being who had quitted the ways of vulgar men without light to guide him on a better way. Farfay duly received the request to discontinue attentions to Elizabeth Jane. His acts of that kind had been so slight that the request was almost superfluous. Yet he had felt a considerable interest in her, and after some cogitation he decided that it would be as well to enact no Romeo part just then for the young girl's sake no less than his own. Thus the incipient attachment was stifled down. A time came when, avoid collision with his former friend as he might, Farfay was compelled in sheer self-defense to close with henchard in mortal commercial combat. He could no longer parry the fierce attacks of the latter by simple avoidance. As soon as their war of prices began, everybody was interested, and some few guessed the end. It was, in some degree, northern insight matched against southern doggedness, the dirk against the cudgel, and henchard's weapon was one which, if it did not deal ruin at the first or second stroke, left him afterwards well nigh at his antagonist's mercy. Almost every Saturday they encountered each other amid the crowd of farmers which thronged about the marketplace in the weekly course of their business. Donald was always ready and even anxious to say a few friendly words, but the mayor invariably gazed stormfully past him like one who had endured and lost on his account and could in no sense forgive the wrong. Nor did Farfay's snub manner of perplexity at all appease him. The large farmers, corn merchants, millers, auctioneers, and others had each an official stall in the corn market room with their names painted there on. And when, to the familiar series of henchard, everdeen, shiner, dartin, and so on, was added one inscribed Farfray in staring new letters, henchard was stung into bitterness, like Balerophon. He wandered away from the crowd, cankered in soul. From that day, Donald Farfray's name was seldom mentioned in henchard's house. If at breakfast or dinner Elizabeth Jane's mother inadvertently alluded to her favorite's movements, the girl would implore her by a look to be silent, and her husband would say, what? Are you too, my enemy? End of chapter 17. Chapter 18 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 18. There came a shock which had been foreseen for some time by Elizabeth as the Vox passenger foresees the approaching jerk from some channel across the highway. Her mother was ill, too unwell to leave her room. Henchard, who treated her kindly except in moments of irritation, sent it once for the richest, busiest doctor whom he's supposed to be the best. Bedtime came and they burnt a light all night. In a day or two she rallied. Elizabeth, who had been staying up, did not appear at breakfast on the second morning, and Henchard sat down alone. He was startled to see a letter for him from Jersey and a writing he knew too well and had expected least to behold again. He took it up in his hands and looked at it as at a picture, a vision, a vista of past enactments, and then he read it as an unimportant finale to conjecture. The writer said that she at length perceived how impossible it would be for any further communications to proceed between them now that his remarriage had taken place. That such reunion had been the only straightforward course open to him she was bound to admit. On calm reflection, therefore, she went on, I quite forgive you for landing me in such a dilemma, remembering that you concealed nothing before our ill-advised acquaintance and that you really did set before me in your grim way the fact of there being a certain risk in intimacy with you, slight as it seemed to be after fifteen or sixteen years of silence on your wife's part. I thus look upon the whole as a misfortune of mine and not a fault of yours. So that, Michael, I must ask you to overlook those letters with which I pestered you day after day in the heat of my feelings. They were written whilst I thought your conduct to me cruel, but now I know more particulars of the position you were in I see how inconsiderate my reproaches were. Now you will, I am sure, perceive that the one condition which will make any future happiness possible for me is that the past connection between our lives be kept secret outside this isle. Speak of it, I know you will not and I can trust you not to write of it. One safeguard more remains to be mentioned that no writings of mine or trifling articles belonging to me should be left in your possession through neglect or forgetfulness. To this end may I request you to return to me any such you may have, particularly the letters written in the first abandonment of feeling. For the handsome sum you forwarded to me as a plaster to the wound I heartily thank you. I am now on my way to Bristol to see my only relative. She is rich and I hope will do something for me. I shall return through Caster Bridge in Budmouth where I shall take the packet boat. Can you meet me with the letters and other trifles? I shall be in the coach which changes horses at the Antelope Hotel at half past five Wednesday evening. I shall be wearing a paisley shawl with a red center and thus may easily be found. I should prefer this plan of receiving them to having them sent. I remain still yours ever Lucetta. Henschard breathed heavily. Poor thing, better you had not known me. Upon my heart and soul, if ever I should be left in a position to carry out that marriage with thee, I ought to do it. I ought to do it indeed. The contingency that he had in his mind was, of course, the death of Mrs. Henschard. As requested, he sealed up Lucetta's letters and put the parcel aside till the day she had appointed. This plan of returning them by hand, being apparently a little ruse of the young lady for exchanging a word or two with him on past times, he would have preferred not to see her, but deeming that there could be no great harm in acquiescing thus far, he went at dusk and stood opposite the coach office. The evening was chilly and the coach was late. Henschard crossed over to it while the horses were being changed, but there was no Lucetta inside or out. Seeing that something had happened to modify her arrangements, he gave the matter up and went home, not without a sense of relief. Meanwhile, Mrs. Henschard was weakening visibly. She could not go out of doors any more. One day, after much thinking, which seemed to distress her, she said she wanted to write something. A desk was put upon her bed with pen and paper, and at her request she was left alone. She remained writing for a short time, folded her paper carefully, called Elizabeth Jane to bring a taper and wax, and then, still refusing assistance, sealed up the sheet, directed it, and locked it in her desk. She had directed it in these words. Mr. Michael Henschard, not to be open till Elizabeth Jane's wedding day. The latter sat up with her mother to the utmost of her strength night after night. To learn to take the universe seriously, there is no quicker way than to watch, to be a waker, as the country people call it. Between the hours at which the last toss-pot went by, and the first sparrow shook himself, the silence in Casterbridge, barring the rare sound of the watchman, was broken in Elizabeth's ear, only by the timepiece in the bedroom, ticking frantically against the clock on the stairs. Ticking harder and harder till it seemed to clang like a glong, and all this while the subtle soul's girl asking herself why she was born, why sitting in a room and blinking at the candle, why things around her had taken the shape they wore in preference to every other possible shape, why they stared at her so helplessly as if waiting for the touch of some wand that should release them from terrestrial constraint, what that chaos called consciousness which spun in her at this moment like a top tended to and began in. Her eyes fell together. She was awake, yet she was asleep. A word from her mother roused her. Without preface, and as the continuation of a scene already progressing in her mind, Mrs. Henchard said, You remember the note sent to you and Mr. Farfray asking you to meet someone in Dernover Barton, and that you thought it was a trick to make fools of you? Yes. It was not to make fools of you. It was done to bring you together. Twas I did it. Why? said Elizabeth with a start. I wanted you to marry Mr. Farfray. Oh, mother! Elizabeth Jane bent down her head so much that she looked quite into her own lap. But as her mother did not go on, she said, What reason? Well, I had a reason, twill out one day. I wish it could have been in my time, but there, nothing is as you wish it. Henchard hates him. Perhaps they'll be friends again, murmured the girl. I don't know. I don't know. After this her mother was silent and dozed, and she spoke on the subject no more. Some little time later on Farfray was passing Henchard's house on a Sunday morning when he observed that the blinds were all down. He rang the bell so softly that it only sounded a single full note and a small one, and then he was informed that Mrs. Henchard was dead, just dead, that very hour. At the town pomp there were gathered when he passed a few old inhabitants who came there for water whenever they had, as at present, spare time to fetch it, because it was pure from that original fount than from their own wells. Mrs. Cuxham, who had been standing there for an indefinite time with her pitcher, was describing the incidents of Mrs. Henchard's death as she had learnt them from the nurse. And she was white as marble stone, said Mrs. Cuxham, and likewise such a thoughtful woman, too. Ah! Poor soul! Every little thing that wanted tending. Yes, as she, when I'm gone and my last breath's blowed, look in the top drawer of the chest in the back room by the window, and you'll find all my coffin-clothes, a piece of flannel that's to put under me, and the little pieces to put under my head. And my new stockings for my feet, they are folded alongside in all my other things. And those four-ounce pennies, the heaviest I could find, are tied up in bits of linen for weights, two for my right eye and two for my left, she said. And when you've used them and my eyes don't open no more, bury the pennies, good souls, and don't you go spending them, for I shouldn't like it, and open the windows, as soon as I am carried out, and make it as cheerful as you can, for Elizabeth Jane. Ah! Poor heart! Well, and Martha did it, and buried the ounce pennies in the garden. But if you'll believe words that man Christopher Coney went and dug them up and spent them at the three mariners. Face, he said, why should death rob life of four pence? That's not of such good report, that we should respect him to that extent, says he. It was a cannibal deed, deprecated her listeners. Gad, then I won't quite had, said Solomon long ways. I say it today, and it is a Sunday morning, and I wouldn't speak wrongfully for a silver six pence at such a time. I don't see new harm in it. To respect the dead is sound doxology, and I wouldn't sell skeletons, these wise respectable skeletons, to be varnished for anatomies, except I were out of work. But money is scarce and throats get dry. Why should death rob life of four pence? I say there was no treason in it. Well, poor soul, she's helpless to hinder that or anything now, answered Mother Cuxham, and all her shining keys will be took from her, and her cupboards opened, and little things that didn't wish seen in anybody will see, and her wishes and ways will all be as nothing. CHAPTER XIX Henschard and Elizabeth sat conversing by the fire. It was three weeks after Mrs. Henschard's funeral. The candles were not lighted, and a restless, acrobatic flame, poised on a coal, called from the shady walls the smiles of all shapes that could respond. The old pier glass was gilt columns and huge entablature, the picture frames, sundry knobs and handles, and the brass rosette at the bottom of each ribbon bell-pull on either side of the chimney piece. Elizabeth, do you think much of old times, said Henschard? Yes, sir, often, she said. Who do you put in your pictures of them? Mother and father, nobody else hardly. Henschard always looked like one bent on resisting pain when Elizabeth Jane spoke of Richard Neuson as father. Ah, I am out of all that, am I not? He said. Was Neuson a kind father? Yes, sir, very. Henschard's face settled into an expression of stolid loneliness which gradually modulated into something softer. Suppose I had been your real father, he said. Would you have cared for me as much as you cared for Richard Neuson? I can't think it, she said quickly. I can think of no other as my father, except my father. Henschard's wife was diseavored from him by death, his friend and helper Farfray by estrangement, Elizabeth Jane by ignorance. It seemed to him that only one of them could possibly be recalled, and that was the girl. His mind began vibrating between the wish to reveal himself to her and the policy of leaving while alone till he could no longer sit still. He walked up and down, and then he came and stood behind her chair, looking down upon the top of her head. He could no longer restrain his impulse. What did your mother tell you about me, my history? he asked. That you were related by marriage? She should have told more before you knew me. Then my task would not have been such a hard one. Elizabeth, it is I who am your father and not Richard Neuson. Shame alone prevented your wretched parents from owning this to you while both of them were alive. The back of Elizabeth's head remained still, and her shoulders did not denote even the movements of breathing. Henschard went on. I'd rather have your scorn, your fear, anything than your ignorance. Just that I hate. Your mother and I were man and wife when we were young. What you saw was our second marriage. Your mother was too honest. We had thought each other dead, and Neuson became her husband. This was the nearest approach Henschard could make to the full truth. As far as he personally was concerned he would have screened nothing, but he showed a respect for the young girl's sex and years worthy of a better man. When he had gone on to give details, which a whole series of slight and unregarded incidents in her past life strangely corroborated, when in short she believed his story to be true, she became greatly agitated, and turning round to the table, flung her face upon it, weeping. Don't cry. Don't cry, said Henschard, with vehement pathos. I can't bear it. I won't bear it. I am your father. Why should you cry? Am I so dreadful, so hateful to him? Don't take against me, Elizabeth Jane, he cried, grasping her wet hand. Don't take against me, though I was a drinking man once, and used your mother roughly. I'll be kinder to you than he was. I'll do anything, if you will only look upon me as your father. She tried to stand up and comfort him trustfully, but she could not. She was troubled at his presence, like the brethren at the avowal of Joseph. I don't want you to come to me all of a sudden, said Henschard, and jerked, and moving like a great tree in the wind. No, Elizabeth, I don't. I'll go away and not see you till tomorrow, or when you like, and then I'll show you papers to prove my words. There I am gone and won't disturb you any more. Twas I that chose your name, my daughter, your mother wanted it, Susan. There, don't forget, Twas I gave you your name. He went out at the door and shut her softly in, and she heard him go away into the garden. But he had not done. Before she had moved, or in any way recovered from the effect of his disclosure, he reappeared. One word more, Elizabeth, he said. You'll take my surname now, hey? Your mother was against it, but it will be much more pleasant to me. Just legally yours, you know. But nobody need know that. You shall take it as if by choice. I'll talk to my lawyer. I don't know the law of it exactly. But will you do this? Let me put a few lines into the newspaper that's such as to be your name. If it is my name, I must have it, mustn't I? She asked. Well, well, usage is everything in these matters. I wonder why mother didn't wish it. Oh, some whim of the poor souls. Now get a bit of paper and draw up a paragraph as I shall tell you. But let's have a light. I can see by the firelight she answered. Yes, I'd rather. Very well. She got a piece of paper, and bending over the fender wrote at his dictation words which he had evidently got by heart from some advertisement or other, words to the effect that she, the writer, hitherto known as Elizabeth Jane Neuson, was going to call herself Elizabeth Jane Henschard forthwith. It was done and fastened up and directed to the office of the Caster Bridge Chronicle. Now, said Henschard, with the blaze of satisfaction that he always emitted when he had carried his point, though tenderness softened it this time, I'll go upstairs and hunt for some documents that will prove it all to you. But I won't trouble you with them till tomorrow. Good night, my Elizabeth Jane. He was gone before the bewildered girl could realize what it all meant, or adjust her filial sense to the new center of gravity. She was thankful that he had left her to herself for the evening and sat down over the fire. Here she remained in silence and wept, not for her mother now, but for the genial sailor Richard Neuson to whom she seemed doing a wrong. But in the meantime had gone upstairs. Papers of a domestic nature he kept in a drawer in his bedroom, in this he unlocked. Before turning them over, he lent back and indulged in reposeful thought. Elizabeth was his at last, and she was a girl of such good sense and kind heart that she would be sure to like him. He was the kind of man to whom some human object for pouring out his heart upon were at emotive or were at caloric was almost a necessity. The craving for his heart for the re-establishment of this tenderest human tie had been great during his wife's lifetime, and now he had submitted to its mastery without reluctance and without fear. He bent over the drawer again and proceeded in his search. Among the other papers had been placed the contents of his wife's little desk, the keys of which had been handed to him at her request. Here was the letter addressed to him with the restriction not to be opened till Elizabeth Jane's wedding day. Mrs. Henschard, though more patient than her husband, had been no practical hand at anything. In sealing up the sheet which was folded and tucked in without an envelope in the old-fashioned way, she had overlaid the junction with a large mass of wax without the requisite under-touch of the same. The seal had cracked and the letter was open. Henschard had no reason to suppose the restriction one of serious weight and his feeling for his late wife had not been of the nature of deep respect. Some trifling fancy or other poor Susan's, I suppose, he said, and without curiosity he allowed his eyes to scan the letter. My dear Michael, for the good of all three of us I have kept one thing a secret from you till now. I hope you will understand why. I think you will, though perhaps you may not forgive me. But dear Michael, I have done it for the best. I shall be in my grave when you read this, and Elizabeth Jane will have a home. Don't curse me, Mike. Think of how I was situated. I can hardly write it, but here it is. Elizabeth Jane is not your Elizabeth Jane, the child who was in my arms when you sold me. No. She died three months after that, and this living one is my other husband's. I christened her by the same name we had given to the first, and she filled up the ache I felt at the other's loss. Michael I am dying, and I might have held my tongue, but I could not. Tell her husband of this or not, as you may judge, and forgive, if you can, a woman you once deeply wronged, as she forgives you. Susan Henschard. Her husband regarded the paper as if it were a windowpane through which he saw for miles. His lips twitched, and he seemed to compress his frame as if to bear better. His usual habit was not to consider whether destiny were hard upon him or not. The shape of his ideals entailed his little affliction, being simply a moody I am to suffer, I perceive. This much scourging, then, it is for me. But now, through his passionate head, there stormed this thought that the blasting disclosure was what he had deserved. His wife's extreme reluctance to have the girl's name altered from nuisance to Henschard was now accounted for fully. It furnished another illustration of that honesty in dishonesty which had characterized her in other things. He remained unnerved and purposeless for near a couple of hours, till he suddenly said, Ah, I wonder if it is true? He jumped up in an impulse, kicked off his slippers, and went with the candle to the door of Elizabeth Jane's room, where he put his ear to the keyhole and listened. She was breathing profoundly. Henschard softly turned the handle, entered, and shading the light approached the bedside. Gradually bringing the light from behind a screening curtain, he held it in such a manner that it fell slant-wise on her face without shining on her eyes. He steadfastly regarded her features. They were fair, his were dark, but this was an unimportant preliminary. In sleep there come to the surface buried genealogical facts, ancestral curves, dead men's traits which the mobility of daytime animation screens and overwhelms. In the present statuesque repose of the young girl's countenance Richard Nussans was unmistakably reflected. He could not endure the sight of her and hastened away. She taught him nothing more than defiant endurance of it. His wife was dead, and the first impulse for revenge died with the thought that she was beyond him. He looked out at the night as at a fiend. Henschard, like all his kind, was superstitious, and he could not help thinking that the concatenation of events this evening had produced was the scheme of some sinister intelligence bent on punishing him. Yet they had developed naturally. If he had not revealed his past history to Elizabeth, he would not have searched the drawer for papers and so on. The mockery was that he should have no sooner taught a girl to claim the shelter of his paternity than he discovered her to have no kinship with him. This ironical sequence of things angered him like an impish trick from a fellow creature. Like Prestor Johns his table had been spread and infernal harpies had snatched up the food. He went out of the house and moved sullenly onward down the pavement till he came to the bridge at the bottom of the High Street. Here he turned in upon a bypass on the riverbank, skirting the northeastern limits of the town. These precincts embodied the mournful phases of Caster Bridge life as the south avenues embodied its cheerful moods. The whole way along here was sunless, even in summertime. In spring, white frost slingered here when other places were steaming with warmth. While in winter it was the seed field of all the aches, rheumatisms, and torturing cramps of the year. The Caster Bridge doctors must have pined away for want of sufficient nourishment but for the configuration of the landscape on the northeastern side. The river, slow, noiseless and dark, the Swartzwasser of Caster Bridge ran beneath a low cliff, the two together forming a defense which had rendered walls and artificial earthworks on this side unnecessary. Here were ruins of a Franciscan priory and a mill attached to the same, the water of which roared down a back hatch like the voice of desolation. Above the cliff and behind the river rose a pile of buildings and in the front of the pile a square mass cut into the sky. It was like a pedestal lacking its statue. This missing feature, without which the design remained incomplete, was in truth the corpse of a man, for the square mass formed the base of the gallows, the extensive buildings at the back being the county jail. In the meadow where Henschard now walked the mob were want to gather whenever an execution took place, and there to the tune of the roaring weir they stood and watched the spectacle. The exaggeration which darkness imparted to the glooms of this region impressed Henschard more than he had expected. The lugubrious harmony of the spot with his domestic situation was too perfect for him, impatient of effects, scenes and adumbrations. It reduced his heart burning to melancholy and he exclaimed, Why the deuce did I come here? He went on past the cottage in which the old local hangman had lived and died in times before that calling was monopolized over all England by a single gentleman and climbed up by a steep back lane into the town. For the sufferings of that night engendered by his bitter disappointment he might well have been pitied. He was like one who had half fainted and could neither recover nor complete the swoon. In words he could blame his wife but not in his heart. And had he obeyed the wise directions outside her letter this pain would have been spared him for long, possibly forever. Elizabeth Jane seemed to show no ambition to quit her safe and secluded maiden courses for the speculative path of matrimony. The morning came after this night of unrest and with it the necessity for a plan. He was far too self-willed to recede from a position especially as it would involve humiliation. His daughter he had asserted her to be and his daughter she should always think herself no matter what hypocrisy it involved. But he was ill-prepared for the first step in this new situation. The moment he came into the breakfast-room Elizabeth advanced with open confidence to him and took him by the arm. I have thought and thought all night of it, she said frankly, and I see that everything must be as you say, and I am going to look upon you as the father that you are and not to call you Mr. Henschard any more. It is so plain to me now, indeed, Father, it is, for, of course, you would not have done half the things you have done for me and let me have my own ways so entirely and bought me presents if I had only been your step-daughter. He, Mr. Newson, whom my poor mother married by such a strange mistake, Henschard was glad that he had disguised matters here, was very kind, oh, so kind, she spoke with tears in her eyes. But that is not the same thing as being one's real father after all. Now, Father, breakfast is ready, she said cheerfully. Henschard bent and kissed her cheek. The moment and the act he had prefigured for weeks was a thrill of pleasure, yet it was no less than a miserable insipidity to him now that it had come. His reinstation of her mother had been chiefly for the girl's sake, and the fruition of the whole scheme was such dust and ashes as this. CHAPTER 20 Of all the enigmas which ever confronted a girl, there can have been seldom one like that which followed Henschard's announcement of himself to Elizabeth as her father. He had done it in an ardor and an agitation which had half carried the point of affection with her, yet, behold, from the next morning onwards his manner was constrained as she had never seen it before. The coldness soon broke out into open chiding. One grievous failing of Elizabeth was her occasional pretty and picturesque use of dialect words. It was terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel. It was dinnertime, they never met except at meals, and she happened to say when he was rising from table wishing to show him something, if you'll bide where you be a minute, Father, I'll get it. Bide where you be, he echoed sharply, good God, are you only fit to carry wash to a pig trough that you use such words as those? She reddened with shame and sadness. I meant stay where you are, Father, she said in a low humble voice. I ought to have been more careful. He made no reply and went out of the room. The sharp reprimand was not lost upon her, and in time it came to pass that for say, she said, succeed, that she no longer spoke of dumbledores but of bumblebees, no longer said of young men and women that they walked together but that they were engaged, that she grew to talk of gregles as wild hyacinths, that when she had not slept she did not quaintly tell the servants next morning that she had been haggred but that she had suffered from indigestion. These improvements, however, are somewhat in advance of the story. Henshaw, being uncultivated himself, was the bitterest critic the fair girl could possibly have had of her own lapses, really slight now, for she read omnivorously. A gratuitous ordeal was in store for her in the matter of her handwriting. She was passing the dining-room door one evening and had occasion to go in for something. It was not till she had opened the door that she knew the mayor was there and the company of a man with whom he transacted business. Here, Elizabeth Jane, he said, looking round at her, just write down what I tell you, a few words of an agreement for me and this gentleman to sign. I am a poor tool with a pen. Be drowned in soby eyes, said the gentleman. She brought forward blotting-book paper and ink and sat down. Now then, an agreement entered into this sixteenth's day of October, right that first. She started the pen in an elephantine march across the sheet. It was a splendid round, bold hand of her own conception, a style that would have stamped a woman as menerva's own in more recent days. But other ideas reigned then. Henchard's creed was that proper young girls wrote ladies' hand. Nay, he believed that writhling characters were as inate and inseparable a part of refined womanhood as sex itself. Hence, when instead of scribbling like the Princess Ida, in such a hand as when a field of corn bowels all its ears before the roaring east, Elizabeth Jane produced a line of chain-shot and sand-bags, he reddened an angry shame for her and peremptorily saying, Never mind, I'll finish it. Dismissed her there and then. Her considerate disposition became a pitfall to her now. She was, it must be admitted, sometimes provokingly and unnecessarily willing to saddle herself with manual labours. She would go to the kitchen instead of ringing, not to make Phoebe come up twice. She went down on her knees, shoveling hand when the cat overturned the coal-scuttle. Moreover, she would persistently thank the parlormaid for everything. Till one day, as soon as the girl was gone from the room, Henchard broke out with, Good God, why just leave off thanking that girl as if she were a goddess born? Don't I pay her a dozen pound a year to do things for her? Elizabeth shrank so visibly at the exclamation that he became sorry a few minutes later and said that he did not need to be rough. These domestic exhibitions were the small protruding needle-rock which suggested, rather than revealed, what was underneath. But his passion had less terror for her than his coldness. The increasing frequency of the latter mood told her the sad news that he disliked her with a growing dislike. The more interesting that her appearance and manners became under the softening influences which she could now command, and in her wisdom did command, the more she seemed to estrange him. Sometimes she caught him looking at her with a lowering invidiousness that she could hardly bear. Not knowing his secret, it was cruel mockery that she should, for the first time, excite his animosity when she had taken his surname. But the most terrible ordeal was to come. Elizabeth had latterly been accustomed of an afternoon to present a cup of cider or ale and bread and cheese to Nance Mockridge, who worked in the yard wimbling hay-bonds. Nance accepted this offering thankfully at first, afterwards as a matter of course. On a day when Henshard was on the premises he saw his step-daughter enter the hay-bond on this errand, and, as there was no clear spot on which to deposit the provisions, she at once set to work arranging two trusses of hay as a table. Mockridge, meanwhile, standing with her hands on her hips, peacefully looking at the preparations on her behalf. "'Elizabeth, come here,' said Henshard, and she obeyed. "'Why do you lower yourself so confoundedly?' he said, with suppressed passion. "'Haven't I told you out fifty times, hey, making yourself a drudge for a common workwoman of such a character as hers? Why, you'll disgrace me to the dust!' Now these words were uttered loud enough to reach Nance inside the barn door, who fired up immediately at the slur upon her personal character. Coming to the door she cried, regardless of consequences, "'Come to that, Mr. Henshard, I can let you know she waited on worse.' "'Then she must have had more charity than sense,' said Henshard. "'Oh, no, she hadn't, for not for charity, but for hire, and at a public house in this town.' "'It is not true,' cried Henshard indignantly. "'Just ask her,' said Nance, folding her naked arms in such a manner that she could comfortably scratch her elbows. Henshard glanced at Elizabeth Jane, whose complexion, now pink and white from confinement, lost nearly all of the former color. "'What does this mean?' he said to her, anything or nothing. "'It is true,' said Elizabeth Jane, but it was only—'Did you do it or didn't you? Where was it?' At the three mariners, one evening, for a little while, when we were staying there. Nance glanced triumphantly at Henshard and sailed into the barn, for assuming that she was to be discharged on the instant she had resolved to make the most of her victory. Henshard, however, said nothing about discharging her. Unduly sensitive on such points, by reason of his own past, he had the look of one completely ground down to the last indignity. Elizabeth followed him to the house like a culprit, but when she got inside she could not see him, nor did she see him again that day. Convinced of the scathing damage to his local repute and position that must have been caused by such a fact, though it had never before reached his own ears, Henshard showed a positive distaste for the presence of this girl not his own whenever he encountered her. He mostly dined with the farmers at the market room of one of the two chief hotels, leaving her an utter solitude. Could he have seen how she made use of those silent hours he might have found reason to reserve his judgment on her quality. She read and took notes incessantly, mastering facts with painful laboriousness but never flinching from her self-imposed task. She began the study of Latin incited by the Roman characteristics of the town she lived in. If I am not well informed it shall be by no fault of my own, she would say to herself, through the tears that would occasionally glide down her peachy cheeks when she was fairly baffled by the portentous obscurity of many of these educational works. Thus she lived on, a dumb, deep-filling, great-eyed creature construed by not a single contiguous being, quenching with patient fortitude her incipient interest in farfay because it seemed to be one-sided, unmaidingly and unwise. True, that for reasons best known to herself she had, since farfay's dismissal, shifted her quarters from the back room affording a view of the yard, which she had occupied with such zest, to a front chamber overlooking the street. But as for the young man, whenever he passed the house he seldom or never turned his head. Winter had almost come and unsettled weather made her still more dependent upon indoor resources. But there were certain early winter days in Casterbridge, days of firmamental exhaustion which followed angry southwesterly tempests, when, if the sun shone, the air was like velvet. She seized on these days for her periodical visits to the spot where her mother lay buried, the still-used burial-ground of the old Roman British city whose curious feature was this, its continuity as a place of sepulcher. Mrs. Henchard's dust mingled with the dust of women who lay ornamented with glass hairpins and amber necklaces, and men who held in their mouths coins of Hadrian, posthumous, and the Constantine's. Half past ten in the morning was about her hour for seeking the spot, a time when the town venues were deserted as the avenues of Karnak. Business had long since passed down them into its daily cells and leisure had not arrived there. So Elizabeth Jane walked and read, or looked over the edge of the book to think, and thus reached the churchyard. There approaching her mother's grave she saw a solitary dark figure in the middle of the gravel walk. This figure too was reading, but not from a book, the words which engrossed it being the inscription on Mrs. Henchard's tombstone. The personage was in mourning, like herself, was about her age and size and might have been her wraith or double but for the fact that it was a lady much more beautifully dressed than she. Indeed comparatively indifferent as Elizabeth Jane was to dress unless for some temporary whim or purpose, her eyes were arrested by the artistic perfection of the lady's appearance. Her gait too had a flexivousness about it which seemed to avoid angularity. It was a revelation to Elizabeth that human beings could reach this stage of external development. She had never suspected it. She felt all the freshness and grace to be stolen from herself on the instant by the neighborhood of such a stranger. And this was in face of the fact that Elizabeth could now have been writ handsome while the young lady was simply pretty. Had she been envious she might have hated the woman, but she did not do that. She allowed herself the pleasure of feeling fascinated. She wondered where the lady had come from. The stumpy and practical walk of honest homeliness which mostly prevailed there, the two styles of dress thereabout, the simple and the mistaken, equally avouched that this figure was no castor bridge woman, even if a book in her hand resembling a guidebook had not also suggested it. The stranger presently moved from the tombstone of Mrs. Henschard and vanished behind the corner of the wall. Elizabeth went to the tomb herself. Beside it were two footprints distinct in the soil signifying that the lady had stood there a long time. She returned homeward musing on what she had seen as she might have mused on a rainbow or the northern lights, a rare butterfly or a cameo. Interesting as things had been out of doors, at home it turned out to be one of her bad days. Henschard, whose two years' mayoralty was ending, had been made aware that he was not to be chosen to fill a vacancy in the list of aldermen, and that Farfay was likely to become one of the council. This caused the unfortunate discovery that she had played the waiting maid in the town of which he was mayor to wrinkle in his mind yet more poisonously. He had learnt by personal inquiry at the time that it was to Donald Farfay that treacherous upstart that she had thus humiliated herself, and though Mrs. Stannage seemed to attach no great importance to the incident, the cheerful souls of the three mariners having exhausted its aspects long ago, such was Henschard's haughty spirit that the simplest rifty deed was regarded as little less than a social catastrophe by him. Ever since the evening of his wife's arrival with her daughter, there had been something in the air which had changed his luck. That dinner at the king's arms with his friends had been Henschard's Austerlitz. He had had his successes since, but his course had not been upward. He was not to be numbered among the aldermen, that peerage of burgers as he had expected to be, and the consciousness of this soured him to-day. Well, where have you been? he said to her with offhand lacanism. I've been strolling in the walks in Henschard, father, till I feel quite leery. She clapped her hand to her mouth, but too late. This was just enough to incense Henschard after the other crosses of the day. I won't have you talk like that, he thundered, leery, indeed. One would think you worked upon a farm. One day I learned that you lend a hand in public houses, then I hear you talk like a cloud-hopper. I'm burned if it goes on. This house can't hold us, too. The only way of getting a single pleasant thought to go to sleep upon after this was by recalling the lady she had seen that day and hoping she might see her again. Meanwhile, Henschard was sitting up, thinking over his jealous folly and forbidding Farfay to pay his addresses to this girl who did not belong to him, when, if he had allowed them to go on, he might not have been encumbered with her. At last he said to himself with satisfaction as he jumped up and went to the writing-table, ah, he'll think it means peace and a marriage portion, not that I don't want my house to be troubled with her in no portion at all. He wrote as follows, Sir, on consideration I don't wish to interfere with your courtship of Elizabeth Jane if you care for her. I therefore withdraw my objection, accepting in this, that the business be not carried on in my house. Yours, M. Henschard, Mr. Farfay. The morrow, being fairly fine, found Elizabeth Jane again in the churchyard, but while looking for the lady she was startled by the apparition of Farfay who passed outside the gate. He glanced up for a moment from a pocket-book in which he appeared to be making figures as he went, whether or not he saw her he took no notice, and disappeared. Unduly depressed by a sense of her own surfer fluidity, she thought he probably scorned her, and quite broken in spirit sat down on a bench. She fell into painful thought on her position, which ended with her saying quite loud, Oh, I wish I was dead with dear mother. Behind the bench was a little promenade under the wall where people sometimes walked instead of on the gravel. The bench seemed to be touched by something. She looked round, and a face was bending over her, veiled but still distinct, the face of the young woman she had seen yesterday. Elizabeth Jane looked confounded for a moment, knowing she had been overheard, though there was pleasure in her confusion. Yes, I heard you, said the lady, in a vivacious voice, answering her look. What can have happened? I don't—I can't tell you, said Elizabeth, putting her hand to her face to hide a quick flush that had come. There was no movement or word for a few seconds. Then the girl felt that the young lady was sitting down beside her. I guess how it is with you, said the latter. That was your mother. She waved her hand towards the tombstone. Elizabeth looked up at her as if inquiring of herself whether there should be confidence. The lady's manner was so desirous, so anxious, that the girl decided there should be confidence. It was my mother, she said, my only friend. But your father, Mr. Henschard, he is living. Yes, he is living, said Elizabeth Jane. Is he not kind to you? I've no wish to complain of him. There has been a disagreement. A little. Perhaps you were to blame, suggested the stranger. I was, in many ways, beside the meek Elizabeth. I swept up the coals when the servants ought to have done it, and I said I was leery, and he was angry with me. The lady seemed to warmth towards her for that reply. Do you know the impression your words give me, she said ingenuously? But he is a hot-tempered man, a little proud, perhaps ambitious, but not a bad man. Her anxiety not to condemn Henschard while siding with Elizabeth was curious. Oh, no, certainly not bad, agreed the honest girl. And he has not even been unkind to me till lately, since mother died. But it has been very much to bear while it has lasted. All is owing to my defects, I dare say, and my defects are owing to my history. What is your history? Elizabeth Jane looked wistfully at her questioner. She found that her questioner was looking at her, turned her eyes down, and then seemed compelled to look back again. My history is not gay or attractive, she said, and yet I can tell it if you really want to know. The lady assured her that she did want to know, whereupon Elizabeth Jane told the tale of her life as she understood it, which was, in general, the true one, except that the sale at the fair had no part therein. Contrary to the girl's expectation, her new friend was not shocked. This cheered her, and it was not till she thought of returning to that home in which she had been treated so roughly a late that her spirits fell. I don't know how to return, she murmured. I think of going away, but what can I do? Where can I go? Perhaps it will be better soon, said her friend gently. So I would not go far. Now what do you think of this? I shall soon want somebody to live in my house, partly as housekeeper, partly as companion. Would you mind coming to me? But perhaps— Oh, yes, credulism is with tears in her eyes. I would indeed, I would do anything to be independent, for then perhaps my father might get to love me. But, ah, what? I am no accomplished person, and a companion to you must be that. Oh, not necessarily. Not? But I can't help using rural words sometimes, when I don't mean to. Never mind, I shall like to know them. And oh, I know I shan't do, she cried as a distrustful laugh. I accidentally learned to write roundhand, instead of lady's hand. And of course you want someone who can write that. Well, no. What? Not necessary to write lady's hand? Cried the joyous Elizabeth? Not at all. But where do you live? In Casterbridge, or rather I shall be living here after twelve o'clock today. Elizabeth expressed her astonishment. I have been staying at Budmouth for a few days while my house was getting ready. The house I am going into is that one they call High Place Hall, the old stone one looking down a lane to the market. Two or three rooms are fit for occupation, though not all. I sleep there to-night for the first time. Now will you think over my proposal and meet me here the first fine day next week and say if you are still in the same mind? Elizabeth, her eyes shining at this prospect of a change from an unbearable position, joyfully assented, and the two parted at the gate of the churchyard. CHAPTER XXI As a maxim glibly repeated from childhood remains practically unmarked till some mature experience enforces it, so did this High Place Hall now for the first time really show itself to Elizabeth Jane, though her ears had heard its name on a hundred occasions. Her mind dwelt upon nothing else but the stranger and the house and her own chance of living there all the rest of the day. In the afternoon she had occasion to pay a few bills in the town and do a little shopping when she learned that what was a new discovery to herself had become a common topic about the streets. High Place Hall was undergoing repair. A lady was coming there to live shortly. All the shop people knew it and had already discounted the chance of her being a customer. Elizabeth Jane could, however, add a capping touch to information so new to her in the vault. The lady, she said, had arrived that day. When the lamps were lighted, and it was yet not so dark as to render chimneys, attics, and roofs invisible, Elizabeth, almost with a lover's feeling, thought she would like to look at the outside of High Place Hall. She went up the street in that direction. The hall, with its gray facade and parapet, was the only residence of its sort so near the center of the town. It had, in the first place, the characteristics of a country mansion. Birds' nests in its chimneys, damp nooks where fungi grew, and irregularities of surface direct from nature's trowel. At night the forms of passengers were patterned by the lamps in black shadows upon the pale walls. This evening moats of straw lay around, and other signs of the premises having been in that lawless condition which accompanies the entry of a new tenant. The house was entirely of stone and formed an example of dignity without great size. It was not altogether aristocratic, still less consequential. Yet the old-fashioned stranger instinctively said, Blood built it and welts and joys it, however vague his opinions of those accessories might be. Yet as regards the enjoying it the stranger would have been wrong, for until this very evening when the new lady had arrived the house had been empty for a year or two while before that interval its occupancy had been irregular. The reason of its unpopularity was soon made manifest. Some of its rooms overlooked the marketplace, and such a prospect from such a house was not considered desirable or seemingly by its would-be occupiers. Elizabeth's eyes sought the upper rooms and saw lights there. The lady had obviously arrived. The impression that this woman of comparatively practiced manner had made upon the studious girl's mind was so deep that she enjoyed standing under an opposite archway merely to think that the charming lady was inside the confronting walls and to wonder what she was doing. Her admiration for the architecture of that front was entirely on account of the inmate it screened, though for that matter the architecture deserved admiration or at least study on its own account. It was Palladian, and like most architecture erected since the Gothic age, was a compilation rather than a design, but its reasonableness made it impressive. It was not rich, but rich enough. A timely consciousness of the ultimate vanity of human architecture, no less than of other human things, had prevented artistic superfluity. Men had still quite recently been going in and out with parcels and packing cases, rendering the door and hall within like a public thoroughfare. The woman trotted through the open door in the dusk, but becoming alarmed at her own temerity she went quickly out again by another which stood open in the lofty wall of the back court. To her surprise she found herself in one of the little-used alleys of the town. Looking round at the door which had given her egress, by the light of the solitary lamp fixed in the alley she saw that it was arched and old, older even than the house itself. The door was studded and the keystone of the arch was a mask. Originally the mask had exhibited a comic leer as could still be discerned, but generations of castor-bridge boys had thrown stones at the mask, aiming at its open mouth, and the blows thereon had chipped off the lips and jaws as if they had been eaten away by disease. The appearance was so ghastly by the weakly lamp glimmer that she could not bear to look at it, the first unpleasant feature of her visit. The position of the queer old door and the odd presence of the leering mask suggested one thing above all others as appertaining to the mansion's past history—intrigue. By the alley it had been possible to come unseen from all sorts of quarters in the town. The old playhouse, the old bullsteak, the old cockpit, the pool wherein nameless infants had been used to disappear, high- place hall could boast of its conveniences undoubtedly. They turned to come away in the nearest direction homeward, which was down the alley, but hearing footsteps approaching in that quarter and having no great wish to be found in such a place at such a time, she quickly retreated. There being no other way out, she stood behind a brick pier till the intruder should have gone his ways. Had she watched, she would have been surprised. She would have seen that the pedestrian on coming up made straight for the arched doorway. That as he paused with his hand upon the latch, the lamp light fell upon the face of Henschard. But Elizabeth Jane clung so closely to her nook that she discerned nothing of this. Henschard passed in as ignorant of her presence as she was ignorant of his identity, and disappeared in the darkness. Elizabeth came out a second time into the alley and made the best of her way home. Henschard's chiding, by begetting in her a nervous fear of doing anything definable as unladylike, had operated thus curiously in keeping them unknown to each other at a critical moment. Much might have resulted from recognition, at the least a query on either side in one in the self-same form. What could he or she possibly be doing there? Henschard, whatever his business at the lady's house, reached his own home only a few minutes later than Elizabeth Jane. Her plan was to broach the question of leaving his roof this evening. The events of the day had urged her to the course, but its execution depended upon his mood, and she anxiously awaited his manner towards her. She found that it had changed. He showed no further tendency to be angry. He showed something worse. Absolute indifference had taken the place of irritability, and his coldness was such that it encouraged her to depart her even more than hot temper could have done. Father, have you any objection to my going away? she asked. Going away? No, none whatever. Where are you going? She thought it undesirable and unnecessary to say anything at present about her destination to one who took so little interest in her. He would know that soon enough. I have heard of an opportunity of getting more cultivated and finished and being less idle, she answered with hesitation. A chance of a place in a household where I can have advantages of study and seeing refined life. To make the best of it in heaven's name, if you can't get cultivated where you are, you don't object? Object I? Oh, no, not at all. After pause he said, but you won't have enough money for this lively scheme without help, you know. If you like, I should be willing to make you an allowance so that you're not bound to live upon the starvation wages refined folk are likely to pay. She thanked him for this offer. It had better be done properly, he added after a pause. A small annuity is what I should like you to have, so as to be independent of me and so that I may be independent of you. Would that please you? Certainly. Then I'll see about it this very day. He seemed relieved to get her off his hands by this arrangement, and as far as they were concerned the matter was settled. She now simply waited to see the lady again. The day and the hour came, but a drizzling rain fell. Elizabeth Jane, having now changed her orbit from one of gay independence to laborious self-help, thought the weather good enough for such declined glorious hers if her friend would only face it, a matter of doubt. She went to the boot room where her patents had hung ever since her apotheosis, took them down, had their mildewed leathers blacked, and put them on as she had done in old times. Thus mounted, and with cloak and umbrella, she went off to the place of appointment, intending, if the lady were not there, to call it the house. One side of the churchyard, the side towards the weather, was sheltered by an ancient, thatched mud wall whose eaves overhung as much as one or two feet. At the back of the wall was a corn yard with its granary and barns, the place wherein she had met farfrey many months earlier. Under the projection of the thatch, she saw a figure. The young lady had come. Her presence so exceptionally substantiated the girl's utmost hopes that she almost feared her good fortune. Fancies find rooms in the strongest mines. Here in a churchyard, oldest civilization, in the worst of weathers, was a strange woman of curious fascinations never seen elsewhere. There might be some devilry about her presence. However, Elizabeth went on to the church tower, on whose summit the rope of a flagstaff rattled in the wind, and thus she came to the wall. The lady had such a cheerful aspect in the drizzle that Elizabeth forgot her fancy. Well, said the lady, a little of the whiteness of her teeth appearing with the word through the black fleece that protected her face. Have you decided? Yes, quite, said the other eagerly. Your father is willing? Yes. Then come along. Come in. Now, as soon as you like. I had a good mind to send to you to come to my house, thinking you might not venture up here in the wind, but as I like getting out of doors I thought I would come and see first. It was my own thought. That shows we shall agree. Then can you come today? My house is so hollow and dismal that I want some living thing there. I think I might be able to, said the girl, reflecting. Voices were born over to them at that instant on the wind, and raindrops from the other side of the wall. There came such words as sacks, quarters, threshing, tailing, next Saturday's market, each sentence being disorganized by the gusts, like a face in a cracked mirror. Both the women listened. Who are those, said the lady? One is my father. He rents that yard and barn. The ladies seemed to forget the immediate business in listening to the technicalities of the corn trade. At last, she said suddenly, did you tell him where you were going to? No. Oh, how was that? I thought it safer to get away first, as he is so uncertain in his temper. Perhaps you are right. Besides, I have never told you my name. It is Miss Templeman. Are they gone on the other side? No. They have only gone up into the greenery. Well, it is getting damp here. I shall expect you to-day this evening, say, at six. Which way shall I come, ma'am? The front way, round by the gate. There is no other that I have noticed. Elizabeth Jane had been thinking of the door in the alley. Perhaps as you have not mentioned your destination, you may as well keep silent upon it, till you are clear off. Who knows but that he may alter his mind? Elizabeth Jane shook her head. Unconsideration, I do not fear it, she said sadly. He has grown quite cold to me. Very well, six o'clock then. When they had emerged upon the open road and parted, they found enough to do in holding their bowed umbrellas to the wind. Nevertheless the lady looked in at the cornyard gates as she passed them and paused on one foot for a moment. But nothing was visible there save the ricks and the humpback barn cushioned with moss and the grainery rising against the church tower behind, where the smacking of the rope against the flagstaff still went on. Now Henshard had not the slightest suspicion that Elizabeth Jane's movement was to be so prompt. Hence, when just before six he reached home and saw a fly at the door from the king's arms and his stepdaughter with all her little bags and boxes getting into it, he was taken by surprise. You said I might go, father, she explained through the carriage window. Said, yes, but I thought you meant next month or next year. I'd see that you'd take time by the forelock. This then is how you be going to treat me for all my trouble about ye. Oh, father, how can you speak like that? It is unjust of you, she said with spirit. Well, well, have your own way, he replied. He entered the house and seeing that all her things had not yet been brought down went up to her room to look on. He had never been there since she had occupied it. Evidences of her care, of her endeavors for improvement, were visible all around, in the form of books, sketches, maps, and little arrangements for tasteful effects. Henshard had known nothing of these efforts. He gazed at them, turned suddenly about, and came down to the door. Look here, he said in an altered voice. He never called her by name now. Don't go away from me. It may be I've spoke roughly to you, but I've been grieved beyond everything by you. There's something that caused it. By me, she said, with deep concern, what have I done? I can't tell you now, but if you'll stop and go on living as my daughter I'll tell you all in time. But the proposal had come ten minutes too late. She was in the fly, was already in imagination, at the house of the lady whose manner had touched charms for her. Father, she said, as considerably as she could, I think it best for us that I go on now. I need not stay long, I shall not be far away, and if you want me badly I can soon come back again. He nodded ever so slightly as a receipt of her decision and no more. You are not going far, you say? That will be your address in case I wish to write to you, or am I not to know? Oh, yes, certainly, it is only in the town High Place Hall. Where? Said Henschard, his face stilling. She repeated the words. He neither moved nor spoke, and waving her hand to him in utmost friendliness she signified to the flyman to drive up the street. Chapter 21 We go back for a moment to the preceding night to account for Henschard's attitude. At the hour when Elizabeth Jane was contemplating her stealthy reconnoitering excursion to the abode of the lady of her fancy, he had been not a little amazed at receiving the letter by hand in Lucetta's well-known characters. The self-repression, the resignation of her previous communication, had vanished from her mood. She wrote with some of the natural lightness which had marked her in their early acquaintance. High Place Hall. My dear Mr. Henschard, don't be surprised. It is for your good and mine, as I hope, that I have come to live at Casterbridge, for how long I cannot tell. That depends upon another, and he is a man and a merchant and a mayor, and one who has the first right to my affections. Seriously, mon ami, I am not so lighthearted as I may seem to be from this. I have come here in consequence of hearing of the death of your wife whom you used to think of as dead so many years before. Poor woman, she seems to have been a sufferer, though un-complaining, and though weak and intellect, not an imbecile. I am glad you acted fairly by her. As soon as I knew she was no more, it was brought home to me very forcibly by my conscience, that I ought to endeavor to disperse the shade which my entour-de-ri flung over my name by asking you to carry out your promise to me. I hope you are of the same mind, and that you will take steps to this end. As however, I did not know how you were situated or what had happened since our separation, I decided to come and establish myself here before communicating with you. You probably feel as I do about this. I shall be able to see you in a day or two. Till then, farewell, yours, Lucetta. P.S. I was unable to keep my appointment to meet you for a moment or two in passing through Casterbridge the other day. My plans were altered by a family event which it will surprise you to hear of. Henchard had already heard that High Place Hall was being prepared for a tenant. He said, with a puzzled air to the first person he encountered, who was coming to live at the hall. A lady of the name of Templeman, I believe, sir, said his informant, Henchard thought it over. Lucetta is related to her, I suppose, he said to himself, Yes, I must put her in her proper position, undoubtedly. It was by no means with the oppression that would once have accompanied the thought that he regarded the moral necessity now. It was indeed with interest, if not warmth. His bitter disappointment of finding Elizabeth Jane to be none of his, and himself a childless man, had left an emotional void in Henchard that he unconsciously craved to fill. In this frame of mind, though without strong feeling, he had strolled up the alley and into High Place Hall by the posture in which Elizabeth had so nearly encountered him. He had gone on fence into the court and inquired of a man whom he saw unpacking China from a crate if Miss Lassour was living there. Miss Lassour had been the name under which he had known Lucetta or Lucette, as she had called herself at that time. The man replied in the negative that Miss Templeman only had come. Henchard went away concluding that Lucetta had not as yet settled in. He was in this interested stage of the inquiry when he witnessed Elizabeth Jane's departure the next day. On hearing her announce the address, there suddenly took possession of him the strange thought that Lucetta and Miss Templeman were one and the same person, for he could recall that in her season of intimacy with him the name of the rich relative whom he had deemed somewhat a mythical personage had been given as Templeman. Though he was not a fortune-hunter, the possibility that Lucetta had been sublimed into a lady of means by some munificent testament on the part of this relative lent a charm to her image which it might not otherwise have acquired. He was getting on towards the dead level of middle age when material things increasingly possessed the mind. But Henchard was not left long in suspense. Lucetta was rather addicted to scribbling, as had been shown by the torrent of letters after the fiasco in their marriage arrangements, and hardly had Elizabeth gone away when another note came to the mayor's house from High Place Hall. I am in residence, she said, and comfortable, though getting here has been a wearisome undertaking. You probably know what I am going to tell you or do you not. My good Aunt Templeman, the banker's widow whose very existence you used to doubt much more her affluence, has lately died and be queased some of her property to me. I will not enter into details except to say that I have taken her name as a means of escape from mine and its wrongs. I am now my own mistress, and have chosen to reside in Caster Bridge, to be tenant of High Place Hall, that at least you may be put to no trouble if you wish to see me. My first intention was to keep you in ignorance of the changes in my life till you should meet me in the street, but I have thought better of this. You probably are aware of my arrangement with your daughter, and have doubtless laughed at the—what shall I call it—practical joke in all affection of my getting her to live with me. But my first meeting with her was purely an accident. Do you see, Michael, partly why I have done it? Why, to give you an excuse for coming here, as if to visit her, and thus to form my acquaintance naturally. She is a dear good girl, and she thinks you have treated her with undue severity. You may have done so in your haste, but not deliberately, I am sure. As the result has been to bring her to me, I am not disposed to upgrade you. In haste yours always, Lucetta. The excitement which these announcements produced in Henchard's gloomy soul was to him most pleasurable. He sat over his dining-table long and dreamily, and by an almost mechanical transfer the sentiments which had run to waste since his estrangement from Elizabeth Jane and Donald Farfray gathered around Lucetta before they had grown dry. She was plainly in a very coming-on disposition for marriage. But what else could a poor woman be who had given her time and her heart to him so thoughtlessly at that former time as to lose her credit by it? Probably conscience no less than affection had brought her here. On the whole he did not blame her. The artful little woman, he said, smiling, with reference to Lucetta's adroit and pleasant maneuver with Elizabeth Jane, to feel that he would like to see Lucetta was with Henchard to start for her house. He put on his hat and went. It was between eight and nine o'clock when he reached her door. The answer brought him was that Miss Templeman was engaged for that evening but that she would be happy to see him the next day. That's rather like giving herself airs, he thought, and considering what we—but after all she plainly had not expected him, and he took the refusal quietly. Nevertheless he resolved not to go next day. These cursed women there's not an inch of straight grain in them, he said. Let us follow the train of Mr. Henchard's thought as if it were a clue line and view the interior of High Place Hall on this particular evening. On Elizabeth Jane's arrival she had been phlegmatically asked by an elderly woman to go upstairs and take off her things. She replied with great earnestness that she would not think of giving that trouble, and on the instant divested herself of her bonnet and cloak in the passage. She was then conducted to the first floor on the landing and left to find her way further alone. The room disclosed was prettily furnished as a boudoir or small drawing-room, and on a sofa with two cylindrical pillows reclined a dark-haired, large-eyed, pretty woman of unmistakably French extraction on one side or the other. She was probably some years older than Elizabeth and had a sparkling light in her eye. In front of the sofa was a small table with a pack of cards scattered upon it faces upward. The attitude had been so full of abandonment that she bounded up like a spring on hearing the door open. Perceiving that it was Elizabeth, she lapsed into ease and came across to her with a reckless skip that innate grace only prevented from being boisterous. "'Why, you are late,' she said, taking hold of Elizabeth Jane's hands. There were so many little things to put up. And you seemed dead alive and tired. Let me try to enliven you by some wonderful tricks I have learnt to kill time. Sit there and don't move.' She gathered up a pack of cards, pulled the table in front of her, and began to deal them rapidly, telling Elizabeth to choose some. "'Well, have you chosen?' she asked, flinging down the last card. "'No,' stammered Elizabeth, arousing herself from a reverie. "'I forgot. I was thinking of you and me and how strange it is that I am here.' The templeman looked at Elizabeth Jane with interest and laid down the cards. "'Ah, never mind,' she said. "'I'll lie here while you sit by me and we'll talk.' Elizabeth drew up silently to the head of the sofa, but with obvious pleasure. It could be seen that though in years she was younger than her entertainer, in manner and general vision she seemed more of the sage. This templeman deposited herself on the sofa in her former fluctuous position, and throwing her arm above her brow, somewhat in the pose of a well-known conception of T. Shans, talked up at Elizabeth Jane invertingly across her forehead and arm. "'I must tell you something,' she said. "'I wonder if you have suspected it. I have only been mistress of a large house and fortune a little while.' "'Oh! Only a little while?' murmured Elizabeth Jane, her countenance slightly falling. As a girl I lived about in garrison towns and elsewhere with my father, till I was quite flighty and unsettled. He was an officer in the army. I should not have mentioned this had I not thought it best you should know the truth.' "'Yes, yes.' She looked thoughtfully round the room at the little square piano with brass inlays, at the window-curtains, at the lamp, at the fair and dark kings and queens on the card table, and finally at the inverted face of Lucetta Templeman, whose large lustrous eyes had such an odd effect upside down. Elizabeth's mind ran on acquirements to an almost morbid degree. "'You speak French and Italian fluently, no doubt,' she said. "'I have not been able to get beyond a wretched bit of Latin yet.' "'Well, for that matter, in my native isle, speaking French does not go for much. It is rather the other way.' "'Where is your native isle?' It was with rather more reluctance that Miss Templeman said. "'Jersey. There they speak French on one side of the street and English on the other, and a mixed tongue in the middle of the road. But it is a long time since I was there. Bath is where my people really belong to, though my ancestors in Jersey were as good as anybody in England. They were the LaSours, an old family who have done great things in their time. I went back and lived there after my father's death, but I don't value such past matters, and am quite an English person in my feelings and tastes.' Lucetta's tongue had for a moment outrun her discretion. She had arrived at Casterbridge as a bath-lady, and there were obvious reasons why Jersey should drop out of her life. But Elizabeth had tempted her to make free, and a deliberately formed resolve had been broken. It could not, however, have been broken in safer company. Lucetta's words went no further, and after this day she was so much upon her guard that there appeared no chance of her identification with the young Jersey woman who had been henchard's dear comrade at a critical time. Not the least amusing of her safeguards was her resolute avoidance of a French word if one by accident came to her tongue more readily than its English equivalent. She shirked it with the suddenness of the weak apostle at the accusation. Thy speech betrayeth thee. Expectancy sat visibly upon Lucetta the next morning. She dressed herself for Mr. Henchard, and restlessly awaited his call before midday. As he did not come she waited on through the afternoon, but she did not tell Elizabeth that the person expected was the girl's stepfather. They sat in adjoining windows of the same room in Lucetta's great stone mansion, netting and looking out upon the market which formed an animated scene. Elizabeth could see the crown of her stepfather's hat among the rest beneath, and was not aware that Lucetta watched the same object with yet intense her interest. He moved about amid the throng at this point lively as an ant hill elsewhere more reposable and broken up by stalls of fruit and vegetables. The farmers as a rule preferred the open car for for their transactions, despite its inconvenient jostlings and the danger from crossing vehicles, to the gloomy sheltered market room provided for them. Here they surged on this one day of the week, forming a little world of leggings, switches, and sample bags, men of extensive stomachs sloping like mountain sides, men whose heads in walking swayed as the trees in November gales, who in conversing varied their attitudes much, lowering themselves by spreading their knees and thrusting their hands into the pockets of remote inner jackets. Their faces radiated tropical warmth, for though when at home their countenance has varied with the seasons, their market faces all the year round were glowing little fires. All over clothes here were worn as if they were in inconvenience, a hampering necessity. Some men were well-dressed, but the majority were careless in that respect, appearing in suits which were historical records of their wearer's deeds, sunscorchings and daily struggles for many years past. Yet many carried ruffled checkbooks in their pockets which regulated at the bank hard by a balance of never less than four figures. In fact, what these givest human shapes specially represented was ready money, money insistently ready, not ready next year like a nobleman's, often not merely ready at the bank like a professional man's, but ready in their large plump hands. It happened that today there rose in the midst of them all two or three tall apple trees standing as if they grew on the spot till it was perceived that they were held by men from the cider districts who came here to sell them, bringing the clay of their country on their boots. Elizabeth Jane, who had often observed them, said, I wonder if the same trees come every week. What trees, said Lucetta, absorbed in watching for Hinchard? Elizabeth replied vaguely for an incident checked her. Behind one of the trees stood Farfrey, briskly discussing a sample bag with a farmer. Hinchard had come up accidentally encountering the young man whose face seemed to inquire, do we speak to each other? She saw her stepfather throw a shine into his eye which answered, No. Elizabeth Jane sighed. Are you particularly interested in anybody out there? said Lucetta. Oh, no, said her companion, a quick red shooting over her face. Luckily Farfrey's figure was immediately covered by the apple tree. Lucetta looked hard at her. Quite sure, she said. Oh, yes, said Elizabeth Jane. Again Lucetta looked out. They are all farmers, I suppose, she said. No, there's Mr. Bulge, he's a wine merchant, there's Benjamin Brownlett, a horse dealer, and Kitson, the pig-breeder, and the hopper, the auctioneer, besides maltsters and millers and so on. Farfrey stood out quite distinctly now, but she did not mention him. The Saturday afternoon slipped on thus desultrally. The market changed from the sample-showing hour to the idle hour before starting homewards when tales were told. Hinchard had not called on Lucetta, though he had stood so near. He must have been too busy, she thought. He would come on Sunday or Monday. The days came but not the visitor, though Lucetta repeated her dressing with scrupulous care. She got disheartened. It may at once be declared that Lucetta no longer bore towards Hinchard all that warm allegiance which had characterized her in their first acquaintance. The then unfortunate issue of things had chilled pure love considerably. But there remained a conscientious wish to bring about her union with him now that there was nothing to hinder it. To write her position which in itself was a happiness to sigh for. With strong social reasons on her side while their marriage should take place there had ceased to be any worldly reason on his why it should be postponed since she had succeeded to fortune. Tuesday was the great Candlemas fair. At breakfast she said to Elizabeth Jane quite coolly, I imagine your father may call to see you today. I suppose he stands close by in the marketplace with the rest of the corn dealers. She shook her head. He won't come. Why? He has taken against me, she said in a husky voice. You have quarreled more deeply than I know of. Elizabeth, wishing to shield the man she believed to be her father from any charge of unnatural dislike, said, yes. Then where you are is of all places the one he will avoid? Elizabeth nodded sadly. Lucetta looked blank. She reached up her lovely eyebrows and lip and burst into hysterical sobs. Here was a disaster, her ingenious scheme completely stultified. Oh, my dear Miss Templeman, what's the matter? cried her companion. I like your company much, said Lucetta, as soon as she could speak. Yes, yes, and so do I, yours, Elizabeth chimed in soothingly. But she could not finish the sentence, which was naturally that if Henschard had such a rooted dislike for the girl as now seemed to be the case, Elizabeth Jane would have to be got rid of, a disagreeable necessity. A provisional resource suggested itself. Miss Henschard, will you go on and errand for me as soon as breakfast is over? Ah, that's very good of you. Will you go into order? Here she enumerated several commissions at sundry shops which would occupy Elizabeth's time for the next hour or two at least. And have you ever seen the museum? Elizabeth Jane had not. Then you should do so at once. You can finish the morning by going there. It is an old house in a back street, I forget where, but you'll find out, and there are crowds of interesting things. Skeletons, teeth, old pots and pans, ancient boots and shoes, bird's eggs, all charmingly instructive. You'll be sure to stay till you get quite hungry. Elizabeth hastily put on her things and departed. I wonder why she wants to get rid of me today, she said sorrowfully as she went. That her absence, rather than her services or instruction, was in request, had been readily apparent to Elizabeth Jane, simple as she seemed, and difficult as it was to attribute a motive for the desire. She had not been gone ten minutes when one of Lucetta's servants was sent to hen-charge with a note. The contents were briefly. Dear Michael, you will be standing in view of my house today for two or three hours in the course of your business, so do please call and see me. I am sadly disappointed that you have not come before, for can I help anxiety about my own equivocal relation to you, especially now my aunt's fortune has brought me more prominently before society? Your daughter's presence here may be the cause of your neglect, and I have therefore sent her away for the morning. May you come on business, I shall be quite alone. Lucetta. When the messenger returned, her mistress gave directions that if a gentleman called he was to be admitted at once, and sat down to await results. Sentimentally she did not much care to see him. His delays had wearied her. But it was necessary, and with a sigh she arranged herself picturesquely in the chair, first this way, then that, next so that the light fell over her head, next she flung her self on the couch in the similar ruptured curve which so became her, and with her arm over her brow looked towards the door. This she decided was the best position after all, and thus she remained till a man's step was heard on the stairs. Whereupon Lucetta, forgetting her curve, for nature was too strong for artist yet, jumped up and ran and hid herself behind one of the window curtains in a freak of timidity. Despite of the waning of passion the situation was an agitating one. She had not seen Henshard since his supposed temporary parting from her in Jersey. She could hear the servant showing the visitor into the room, shutting the door upon him, and leaving as if to go and look for her mistress. Lucetta flung back the curtain with a nervous greeting. The man before her was not Henshard. CHAPTER XXIII A conjecture that her visitor might be some other person had indeed flashed through Lucetta's mind when she was on the point of bursting out, but it was just too late to recede. He was years younger than the mayor of Casterbridge, fair, fresh and slenderly handsome. He wore gentile cloth leggings with white buttons, polished boots with infinite lace holes, light cord breeches under a black velveteen coat and waistcoat, and he had a silver-topped switch in his hand. Lucetta blushed and said with a curious mixture of pout and laugh on her face, oh, I've made a mistake. The visitor, on the contrary, did not laugh half a wrinkle. But I'm very sorry, he said, in deprecating tones. I came as I inquired from his Henshard, and they showed me up here, and in no case would I have caught you so unmanorly if I had known. I was the unmanorly one, she said. But is it that I have come to the wrong house, madam? said Mr. Farfray, making a little in his bewilderment and nervously tapping his legging with his switch. Oh, no, sir, sit down. You must come and sit down now you are here, replied Lucetta kindly, to relieve his embarrassment. Miss Henshard will be here directly. Now this was not strictly true, but that something above the young man, that hyperborean crispness, stringency and charm, as of a well-braced musical instrument, which had awakened the interest of Henshard and of Elizabeth Jane, and of the three mariners' jovial crew at sight, made his unexpected presence here attractive to Lucetta. He hesitated, looked at the chair, thought there was no danger in it, though there was, and sat down. Farfray's sudden entry was simply the result of Henshard's permission to him to see Elizabeth, if he were minded to woo her. At first he had taken no notice of Henshard's brusque letter. But an exceptionally fortunate business transaction put him on good terms with everybody, and revealed to him that he could undeniably marry if he chose. Then whoso pleasing, thrifty, and satisfactory in every way is Elizabeth Jane. Apart from her personal recommendation, a reconciliation with his former friend Henshard would, in the natural course of things, flow from such a union. He therefore forgave the mayor his curtness, and this morning on his way to the fair he had called at her house, where he learned that she was staying at Miss Templeman's. A little stimulated at not finding her ready and waiting, so fancy full our men, he hastened on to High Place Hall to encounter no Elizabeth but its mistress herself. The fair today seems a large one, she said, when by natural deviation their eyes sought the busy scene without. Your numerous fairs and markets keep me interested. How many things I think of while I watch from here? He seemed in doubt how to answer, and the babble without reached them as they sat, voices as a wavelet on a looping sea, one ever and anon rising above the rest. Do you look out often, he asked? Yes, very often. Do you look for anyone you know? Why should she have answered as she did? I look as at a picture merely, but she went on turning pleasantly to him. I may do so now, I may look for you. You are always there, are you not? I don't mean it seriously, but it is amusing to look for somebody one knows in a crowd, even if one does not want him. It takes off the terrible oppressiveness of being surrounded by a throng and having no point of junction with it through a single individual. Eh, maybe you'll be very lonely, ma'am. Nobody knows how lonely. But you are rich, they say. If so, I don't know how to enjoy my riches. I came to Casterbridge thinking I should like to live here, but I wonder if I shall. Where did you come from, ma'am? The neighborhood of Bath. And I from near Edinburgh, he murmured. It's better to stay at home, and that's true, but a man must live where his money is made. It is a great pity, but it's always so. Yet I've done very well this year. Oh, yes. He went on with ingenuous enthusiasm. You see that man with a drab, cursey, more coat? I bought largely of him in the autumn when wheat was down, and then afterwards when it rose a little I sold off all I had. It brought only a small profit to me while the farmers kept theirs, expecting higher figures. Yes, though the rats were gnawing the ricks hollow. Just when I sold, the markets went lower, and I bought up the corn of those who had been holding back at less price than my first purchases. And then, cried far for impetuously, his face alight, I sold it a few weeks after when it happened to go up again. And so, by contenting myself with small profits frequently repeated, I soon made 500 pounds. Yes, bringing down his hand upon the table and quite forgetting where he was. While the others, by keeping theirs in hand, made nothing at all. Lucetta regarded him with a critical interest. He was quite a new type of person to her. At last as I fell upon the ladies and their glances met. Eh, now I'm wearing you, he exclaimed. She said, no indeed, coloring a shade. What then? Quite otherwise you are most interesting. It was now Farfay who showed the modest pink. I mean all you Scotchmen, she added in hasty correction, so free from southern extremes. The common people are all one way or the other, warm or cold, passionate or frigid. You have both temperatures going on and you at the same time. But how do you mean that? You were best to explain clearly, ma'am. You are animated, then you were thinking of getting on. You were sad the next moment. Then you were thinking of Scotland and friends. Yes, I think of home sometimes, he said simply. So do I, as far as I can, but it was an old house where I was born and they pulled it down for improvement, so I seem hardly to have any home to think of now. Lucetta did not add, as she might have done, that the house was in St. Helier and not in Bath. But the mountains and the mists and the rocks, they are there, and don't they seem like home? She shook her head. They do to me, they do to me, he murmured, and his mind could be seen flying away northwards. Whether its origin were national or personal, it was quite true what Lucetta had said, that the curious double strands and Farfray's thread of life, the commercial and the romantic, were very distinct at times, like the colors in a variegated cord, those contrasts could be seen intertwisted, yet not mingling. You are wishing you were back again, she said. Ah, no, ma'am, said Farfray, suddenly recalling himself. The fair without the windows was now raging sick and loud. It was the chief hiring fair of the year and differed quite from the market of a few days earlier. In substance it was a whitey-brown crowd, black with white, this being the body of laborers waiting for places. The long bonnets of the women, like wagon tilts, their cotton gowns and checked shawls mixed with the Carter's smock-frocks, for they too entered into the hiring. Among the rest at the corner of the pavement stood an old shepherd who attracted the eyes of Lucetta and Farfray by his stillness. He was evidently a chastened man. The battle of life had been a sharp one with him, for to begin with he was a man of small frame. He was now so bowed by hard work in years that approaching from behind a person could hardly see his head. He had planted the stem of his crook in the gutter and was resting upon the bowl, which was polished to silver brightness by the long friction of his hands. He had quite forgotten where he was and what he had come for, his eyes being bent on the ground. A little way off negotiations were proceeding, which had reference to him, but he did not hear them. And there seemed to be passing through his mind pleasant visions of the hiring successes of his prime, when his skill laid open to him any farm for the asking. The negotiations were between a farmer from a distant county and the old man's son. In these there was a difficulty. The farmer would not take the crust without the crumb of the bargain. In other words, the old man without the younger and the son had a sweetheart on his present farm who stood by waiting the issue with pale lips. I'm sorry to leave you Nellie, said the young man with emotion, but you see I can't starve father and he's out of work at lay day. It's only 35 mile. The girl's lips quivered, 35 mile, she murmured, Ah, it's enough. I shall never see you again. It was indeed a hopeless length of traction for Dan Cupid's magnet, for young men were young men at Casterbridge as elsewhere. Oh no, no, I never shall. She insisted when he pressed her hand and she turned her face to Lucetta's wall to hide her weeping. The farmer said he would give the young man half an hour for his answer and went away leaving the group sorrowing. Lucetta's eyes full of tears met Farfrey's. His two, to her surprise, were moist at the scene. It was very hard, she said, with strong feelings. Lovers ought not to be parted like that. Oh, if I had my wish, I'd let people live and love at their pleasure. Maybe I can manage that they'll not be parted, said Farfrey. I want a young Carter and perhaps I'll take the old man too. Yes, he'll not be very expensive and doubtless he will answer my parapet somehow. Oh, you were so good, she cried, delighted. Go and tell them and let me know if you have succeeded. Farfrey went out and she saw him speak to the group. The eyes of all brightened. The bargain was soon struck. Farfrey returned to her immediately, it was concluded. This kind hearted of you indeed, said Lucetta. For my part I have resolved that all my servants shall have lovers if they want them. You do make the same resolve. Farfrey looked more serious, waving his head a half turn. I must be a little stricter than that, he said. Why? You are a thriving woman and I am a struggling hay and corn merchant. I am a very ambitious woman. Well, I cannot explain. I don't know how to talk to ladies, ambitious or no, and that's true, said Donald with grave regret. You tried to be civil to awful, no more. I see you are, as you say, replied she, sensibly getting the upper hand in these exchanges of sentiment. Under this revelation of insight, Farfrey again looked out of the window into the thick of the fair. Two farmers met and shook hands and, being quite near the window, their remarks could be heard as others had been. Have you seen young Mr. Farfrey this morning, asked one. He promised to meet me here at the stroke of twelve, but have gone a thwart in about the fair half a dozen times and never a sign of him, though he's mostly a man to his word. I quite forgot the engagement, murmured Farfrey. Now you must go, said she, must you not? Yes, he replied, but he still remained. You had better go, she urged. You will lose a customer. Now, Miss Templeman, you will make me angry, exclaimed Farfrey. Then suppose you don't go, but stay a little longer. He looked anxiously at the farmer who was seeking him and who just then ominously walked across to where handchild was standing and he looked into the room and at her. I like staying, but I fear I must go, he said. Business ought not to be neglected, audit. Not for a single minute. It's true, I'll come another time, if I may, ma'am. Certainly, she said, what has happened to us today is very curious. Something to think over when we are alone, it's like to be. Oh, I don't know that, it is commonplace after all. No, I'll not say that, oh no. Well, whatever it has been, it is now over and the market calls you to be gone. Yes, yes, market, business. I wish there were no business in the world. Liz said I almost laughed. She would quite have laughed, but that there was a little emotion going in her at the time. How you change, she said, you should not change like this. I have never wished such things before, said this catchman, with a simple shamed apologetic look for his weakness. It is only since coming here and seeing you. If that's the case, you had better not look at me any longer. Dear me, I feel I have quite demoralized you. But look or look not, I will see you in my thoughts. Well, I'll go. Thank you for the pleasure of this visit. Thank you for staying. Maybe I'll get into my market mind when I've been out a few minutes, he murmured. But I don't know, I don't know. As he went, she said eagerly, you may hear them speak of me in Casterbridge as time goes on. If they tell you I'm a coquette, which some may, because of the incidents of my life, don't believe it, for I am not. I swear I will not, he said fervently. Thus the two. She had incandled the young man's enthusiasm till he was quite brimming with sentiment, while he, from merely affording her a new form of idleness, had gone on to wake her serious solicitude. Why was this? They could not have told. Lucetta, as a young girl, would hardly have looked at a tradesman, but her ups and downs, capped by her indiscretions with henchard, had made her uncritical as to station. In her poverty, she had met with repulse from the society to which she had belonged, and she had no great zest for renewing an attempt upon it now. Her heart longs for some arc into which it could fly and be at rest. Rough or smooth, she did not care, so long as it was warm. Farfay was shone out, it having entirely escaped him that he had called to see Elizabeth. Lucetta, at the window, watched him threading the maze of farmers and farmers' men. She could see by his gait that he was conscious of her eyes, and her heart went out to him for his modesty, pleaded with her sense of his unfitness that he might be allowed to come again. He entered the market-house, and she could see him no more. Three minutes later, when she had left the window, knocked, not of multitude but of strength, sounded through the house, and the waiting-maid tripped up. The mayor, she said. Lucetta had reclined herself, and she was looking dreamily through her fingers. She did not answer at once, and the maid repeated the information with the addition, and he's afraid he hasn't much time to spare, he says. Oh! Then tell him that as I have a headache I won't detain him today. The message was taken down, and she heard the door close. Lucetta had come to Casterbridge to quickenhand Charred's feelings with regard to her. She had quickened them, and now she was indifferent to the achievement. Her morning view of Elizabeth Jane as a disturbing element changed, and she no longer felt strongly the necessity of getting rid of the girl for her step-father's sake. When the young woman came in, sweetly unconscious of the turn in the tide, Lucetta went up to her and said quite sincerely, I'm so glad you've come. You'll live with me a long time, won't you? Elizabeth has a watchdog to keep her father off. What a new idea. Yet it was not unpleasing. Jane Charred had neglected her all these days after compromising her indescribably in the past. The least he could have done when he found himself free and herself affluent would have been to respond heartily and promptly to her invitation. Her emotions rose, fell, undulated, filled her with wild surmise of their suddenness, and so passed Lucetta's experiences of that day.