The Mayor of Casterbridge
“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 Le Sueurs, 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 bewrayeth thee!”
Expectancy sat visibly upon Lucetta the next morning. She dressed
herself for Mr. Henchard, and restlessly awaited his call before
mid-day; 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 intenser interest. He moved about amid the throng, at
this point lively as an ant-hill; elsewhere more reposeful, and broken
up by stalls of fruit and vegetables. The farmers as a rule preferred
the open _carrefour_ 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 countenances 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 an 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, sun-scorchings, and daily struggles
for many years past. Yet many carried ruffled cheque-books in their
pockets which regulated at the bank hard by a balance of never less
than four figures. In fact, what these gibbous 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 to-day 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 county 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 Henchard.
Elizabeth replied vaguely, for an incident checked her. Behind one of
the trees stood Farfrae, briskly discussing a sample-bag with a farmer.
Henchard 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.
“O, no,” said her companion, a quick red shooting over her face.
Luckily Farfrae’s figure was immediately covered by the apple-tree.
Lucetta looked hard at her. “Quite sure?” she said.
“O 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
Brownlet—a horse dealer; and Kitson, the pig breeder; and Yopper, the
auctioneer; besides maltsters, and millers—and so on.” Farfrae stood
out quite distinctly now; but she did not mention him.
The Saturday afternoon slipped on thus desultorily. The market changed
from the sample-showing hour to the idle hour before starting
homewards, when tales were told. Henchard 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 Henchard 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 right her position—which in
itself was a happiness to sigh for. With strong social reasons on her
side why 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
to-day. I suppose he stands close by in the market-place 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, twitched up her lovely eyebrows and lip, and
burst into hysterical sobs. Here was a disaster—her ingenious scheme
completely stultified.
“O, 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—but—” She could not finish the sentence, which was, naturally,
that if Henchard 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 Henchard—will you go on
an errand for me as soon as breakfast is over?—Ah, that’s very good of
you. Will you go and 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, birds’ 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 to-day!” 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 Henchard’s with a note. The contents were briefly:—
DEAR MICHAEL,—You will be standing in view of my house to-day 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. Say 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 herself on the couch in the
cyma-recta 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
Art as yet), jumped up and ran and hid herself behind one of the
window-curtains in a freak of timidity. In spite of the waning of
passion the situation was an agitating one—she had not seen Henchard
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 Henchard.
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 genteel 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—“O, 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 and I
inquired for Miss Henchard, and they showed me up here, and in no case
would I have caught ye so unmannerly if I had known!”
“I was the unmannerly one,” she said.
“But is it that I have come to the wrong house, madam?” said Mr.
Farfrae, blinking a little in his bewilderment and nervously tapping
his legging with his switch.
“O no, sir,—sit down. You must come and sit down now you are here,”
replied Lucetta kindly, to relieve his embarrassment. “Miss Henchard
will be here directly.”
Now this was not strictly true; but that something about the young
man—that hyperborean crispness, stringency, and charm, as of a
well-braced musical instrument, which had awakened the interest of
Henchard, 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