The Mayor of Casterbridge
the tongue. To express satisfaction the Casterbridge market-man added
to his utterance a broadening of the cheeks, a crevicing of the eyes, a
throwing back of the shoulders, which was intelligible from the other
end of the street. If he wondered, though all Henchard’s carts and
waggons were rattling past him, you knew it from perceiving the inside
of his crimson mouth, and a target-like circling of his eyes.
Deliberation caused sundry attacks on the moss of adjoining walls with
the end of his stick, a change of his hat from the horizontal to the
less so; a sense of tediousness announced itself in a lowering of the
person by spreading the knees to a lozenge-shaped aperture and
contorting the arms. Chicanery, subterfuge, had hardly a place in the
streets of this honest borough to all appearance; and it was said that
the lawyers in the Court House hard by occasionally threw in strong
arguments for the other side out of pure generosity (though apparently
by mischance) when advancing their own.
Thus Casterbridge was in most respects but the pole, focus, or
nerve-knot of the surrounding country life; differing from the many
manufacturing towns which are as foreign bodies set down, like boulders
on a plain, in a green world with which they have nothing in common.
Casterbridge lived by agriculture at one remove further from the
fountainhead than the adjoining villages—no more. The townsfolk
understood every fluctuation in the rustic’s condition, for it affected
their receipts as much as the labourer’s; they entered into the
troubles and joys which moved the aristocratic families ten miles
round—for the same reason. And even at the dinner-parties of the
professional families the subjects of discussion were corn,
cattle-disease, sowing and reaping, fencing and planting; while
politics were viewed by them less from their own standpoint of
burgesses with rights and privileges than from the standpoint of their
country neighbours.
All the venerable contrivances and confusions which delighted the eye
by their quaintness, and in a measure reasonableness, in this rare old
market-town, were metropolitan novelties to the unpractised eyes of
Elizabeth-Jane, fresh from netting fish-seines in a seaside cottage.
Very little inquiry was necessary to guide her footsteps. Henchard’s
house was one of the best, faced with dull red-and-grey old brick. The
front door was open, and, as in other houses, she could see through the
passage to the end of the garden—nearly a quarter of a mile off.
Mr. Henchard was not in the house, but in the store-yard. She was
conducted into the mossy garden, and through a door in the wall, which
was studded with rusty nails speaking of generations of fruit-trees
that had been trained there. The door opened upon the yard, and here
she was left to find him as she could. It was a place flanked by
hay-barns, into which tons of fodder, all in trusses, were being packed
from the waggons she had seen pass the inn that morning. On other sides
of the yard were wooden granaries on stone staddles, to which access
was given by Flemish ladders, and a store-house several floors high.
Wherever the doors of these places were open, a closely packed throng
of bursting wheat-sacks could be seen standing inside, with the air of
awaiting a famine that would not come.
She wandered about this place, uncomfortably conscious of the impending
interview, till she was quite weary of searching; she ventured to
inquire of a boy in what quarter Mr. Henchard could be found. He
directed her to an office which she had not seen before, and knocking
at the door she was answered by a cry of “Come in.”
Elizabeth turned the handle; and there stood before her, bending over
some sample-bags on a table, not the corn-merchant, but the young
Scotchman Mr. Farfrae—in the act of pouring some grains of wheat from
one hand to the other. His hat hung on a peg behind him, and the roses
of his carpet-bag glowed from the corner of the room.
Having toned her feelings and arranged words on her lips for Mr.
Henchard, and for him alone, she was for the moment confounded.
“Yes, what it is?” said the Scotchman, like a man who permanently ruled
there.
She said she wanted to see Mr. Henchard.
“Ah, yes; will you wait a minute? He’s engaged just now,” said the
young man, apparently not recognizing her as the girl at the inn. He
handed her a chair, bade her sit down and turned to his sample-bags
again. While Elizabeth-Jane sits waiting in great amaze at the young
man’s presence we may briefly explain how he came there.
When the two new acquaintances had passed out of sight that morning
towards the Bath and Bristol road they went on silently, except for a
few commonplaces, till they had gone down an avenue on the town walls
called the Chalk Walk, leading to an angle where the North and West
escarpments met. From this high corner of the square earthworks a vast
extent of country could be seen. A footpath ran steeply down the green
slope, conducting from the shady promenade on the walls to a road at
the bottom of the scarp. It was by this path the Scotchman had to
descend.
“Well, here’s success to ’ee,” said Henchard, holding out his right
hand and leaning with his left upon the wicket which protected the
descent. In the act there was the inelegance of one whose feelings are
nipped and wishes defeated. “I shall often think of this time, and of
how you came at the very moment to throw a light upon my difficulty.”
Still holding the young man’s hand he paused, and then added
deliberately: “Now I am not the man to let a cause be lost for want of
a word. And before ye are gone for ever I’ll speak. Once more, will ye
stay? There it is, flat and plain. You can see that it isn’t all
selfishness that makes me press ’ee; for my business is not quite so
scientific as to require an intellect entirely out of the common.
Others would do for the place without doubt. Some selfishness perhaps
there is, but there is more; it isn’t for me to repeat what. Come bide
with me—and name your own terms. I’ll agree to ’em willingly and
’ithout a word of gainsaying; for, hang it, Farfrae, I like thee well!”
The young man’s hand remained steady in Henchard’s for a moment or two.
He looked over the fertile country that stretched beneath them, then
backward along the shaded walk reaching to the top of the town. His
face flushed.
“I never expected this—I did not!” he said. “It’s Providence! Should
any one go against it? No; I’ll not go to America; I’ll stay and be
your man!”
His hand, which had lain lifeless in Henchard’s, returned the latter’s
grasp.
“Done,” said Henchard.
“Done,” said Donald Farfrae.
The face of Mr. Henchard beamed forth a satisfaction that was almost
fierce in its strength. “Now you are my friend!” he exclaimed. “Come
back to my house; let’s clinch it at once by clear terms, so as to be
comfortable in our minds.” Farfrae caught up his bag and retraced the
North-West Avenue in Henchard’s company as he had come. Henchard was
all confidence now.
“I am the most distant fellow in the world when I don’t care for a
man,” he said. “But when a man takes my fancy he takes it strong. Now I
am sure you can eat another breakfast? You couldn’t have eaten much so
early, even if they had anything at that place to gi’e thee, which they
hadn’t; so come to my house and we will have a solid, staunch tuck-in,
and settle terms in black-and-white if you like; though my word’s my
bond. I can always make a good meal in the morning. I’ve got a splendid
cold pigeon-pie going just now. You can have some home-brewed if you
want to, you know.”
“It is too airly in the morning for that,” said Farfrae with a smile.
“Well, of course, I didn’t know. I don’t drink it because of my oath,
but I am obliged to brew for my work-people.”
Thus talking they returned, and entered Henchard’s premises by the back
way or traffic entrance. Here the matter was settled over the
breakfast, at which Henchard heaped the young Scotchman’s plate to a
prodigal fulness. He would not rest satisfied till Farfrae had written
for his luggage from Bristol, and dispatched the letter to the
post-office. When it was done this man of strong impulses declared that
his new friend should take up his abode in his house—at least till some
suitable lodgings could be found.
He then took Farfrae round and showed him the place, and the stores of
grain, and other stock; and finally entered the offices where the
younger of them has already been discovered by Elizabeth.
X.
While she still sat under the Scotchman’s eyes a man came up to the
door, reaching it as Henchard opened the door of the inner office to
admit Elizabeth. The newcomer stepped forward like the quicker cripple
at Bethesda, and entered in her stead. She could hear his words to
Henchard: “Joshua Jopp, sir—by appointment—the new manager.”
“The new manager!—he’s in his office,” said Henchard bluntly.
“In his office!” said the man, with a stultified air.
“I mentioned Thursday,” said Henchard; “and as you did not keep your
appointment, I have engaged another manager. At first I thought he must
be you. Do you think I can wait when business is in question?”
“You said Thursday or Saturday, sir,” said the newcomer, pulling out a
letter.
“Well, you are too late,” said the corn-factor. “I can say no more.”
“You as good as engaged me,” murmured the man.
“Subject to an interview,” said Henchard. “I am sorry for you—very
sorry indeed. But it can’t be helped.”
There was no more to be said, and the man came out, encountering
Elizabeth-Jane in his passage. She could see that his mouth twitched
with anger, and that bitter disappointment was written in his face
everywhere.
Elizabeth-Jane now entered, and stood before the master of the
premises. His dark pupils—which always seemed to have a red spark of
light in them, though this could hardly be a physical fact—turned
indifferently round under his dark brows until they rested on her
figure. “Now then, what is it, my young woman?” he said blandly.
“Can I speak to you—not on business, sir?” said she.
“Yes—I suppose.” He looked at her more thoughtfully.
“I am sent to tell you, sir,” she innocently went on, “that a distant
relative of yours by marriage, Susan Newson, a sailor’s widow, is in
the town, and to ask whether you would wish to see her.”
The rich _rouge-et-noir_ of his countenance underwent a slight change.
“Oh—Susan is—still alive?” he asked with difficulty.
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you her daughter?”
“Yes, sir—her only daughter.”
“What—do you call yourself—your Christian name?”
“Elizabeth-Jane, sir.”
“Newson?”
“Elizabeth-Jane Newson.”
This at once suggested to Henchard that the transaction of his early
married life at Weydon Fair was unrecorded in the family history. It
was more than he could have expected. His wife had behaved kindly to
him in return for his unkindness, and had never proclaimed her wrong to
her child or to the world.
“I am—a good deal interested in your news,” he said. “And as this is
not a matter of business, but pleasure, suppose we go indoors.”
It was with a gentle delicacy of manner, surprising to Elizabeth, that
he showed her out of the office and through the outer room, where
Donald Farfrae was overhauling bins and samples with the inquiring
inspection of a beginner in charge. Henchard preceded her through the
door in the wall to the suddenly changed scene of the garden and
flowers, and onward into the house. The dining-room to which he
introduced her still exhibited the remnants of the lavish breakfast
laid for Farfrae. It was furnished to profusion with heavy mahogany
furniture of the deepest red-Spanish hues. Pembroke tables, with leaves
hanging so low that they well-nigh touched the floor, stood against the