The Mayor of Casterbridge
for renewing an attempt upon it now. Her heart longed for some ark into
which it could fly and be at rest. Rough or smooth she did not care so
long as it was warm.
Farfrae was shown 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, knocks, 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
to-day.”
The message was taken down, and she heard the door close.
Lucetta had come to Casterbridge to quicken Henchard’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 stepfather’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 as a watch-dog to keep her father off—what a new idea. Yet it
was not unpleasing. Henchard 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 at
their suddenness; and so passed Lucetta’s experiences of that day.
XXIV.
Poor Elizabeth-Jane, little thinking what her malignant star had done
to blast the budding attentions she had won from Donald Farfrae, was
glad to hear Lucetta’s words about remaining.
For in addition to Lucetta’s house being a home, that raking view of
the market-place which it afforded had as much attraction for her as
for Lucetta. The _carrefour_ was like the regulation Open Place in
spectacular dramas, where the incidents that occur always happen to
bear on the lives of the adjoining residents. Farmers, merchants,
dairymen, quacks, hawkers, appeared there from week to week, and
disappeared as the afternoon wasted away. It was the node of all
orbits.
From Saturday to Saturday was as from day to day with the two young
women now. In an emotional sense they did not live at all during the
intervals. Wherever they might go wandering on other days, on
market-day they were sure to be at home. Both stole sly glances out of
the window at Farfrae’s shoulders and poll. His face they seldom saw,
for, either through shyness, or not to disturb his mercantile mood, he
avoided looking towards their quarters.
Thus things went on, till a certain market-morning brought a new
sensation. Elizabeth and Lucetta were sitting at breakfast when a
parcel containing two dresses arrived for the latter from London. She
called Elizabeth from her breakfast, and entering her friend’s bedroom
Elizabeth saw the gowns spread out on the bed, one of a deep cherry
colour, the other lighter—a glove lying at the end of each sleeve, a
bonnet at the top of each neck, and parasols across the gloves, Lucetta
standing beside the suggested human figure in an attitude of
contemplation.
“I wouldn’t think so hard about it,” said Elizabeth, marking the
intensity with which Lucetta was alternating the question whether this
or that would suit best.
“But settling upon new clothes is so trying,” said Lucetta. “You are
that person” (pointing to one of the arrangements), “or you are _that_
totally different person” (pointing to the other), “for the whole of
the coming spring and one of the two, you don’t know which, may turn
out to be very objectionable.”
It was finally decided by Miss Templeman that she would be the
cherry-coloured person at all hazards. The dress was pronounced to be a
fit, and Lucetta walked with it into the front room, Elizabeth
following her.
The morning was exceptionally bright for the time of year. The sun fell
so flat on the houses and pavement opposite Lucetta’s residence that
they poured their brightness into her rooms. Suddenly, after a rumbling
of wheels, there were added to this steady light a fantastic series of
circling irradiations upon the ceiling, and the companions turned to
the window. Immediately opposite a vehicle of strange description had
come to a standstill, as if it had been placed there for exhibition.
It was the new-fashioned agricultural implement called a horse-drill,
till then unknown, in its modern shape, in this part of the country,
where the venerable seed-lip was still used for sowing as in the days
of the Heptarchy. Its arrival created about as much sensation in the
corn-market as a flying machine would create at Charing Cross. The
farmers crowded round it, women drew near it, children crept under and
into it. The machine was painted in bright hues of green, yellow, and
red, and it resembled as a whole a compound of hornet, grasshopper, and
shrimp, magnified enormously. Or it might have been likened to an
upright musical instrument with the front gone. That was how it struck
Lucetta. “Why, it is a sort of agricultural piano,” she said.
“It has something to do with corn,” said Elizabeth.
“I wonder who thought of introducing it here?”
Donald Farfrae was in the minds of both as the innovator, for though
not a farmer he was closely leagued with farming operations. And as if
in response to their thought he came up at that moment, looked at the
machine, walked round it, and handled it as if he knew something about
its make. The two watchers had inwardly started at his coming, and
Elizabeth left the window, went to the back of the room, and stood as
if absorbed in the panelling of the wall. She hardly knew that she had
done this till Lucetta, animated by the conjunction of her new attire
with the sight of Farfrae, spoke out: “Let us go and look at the
instrument, whatever it is.”
Elizabeth-Jane’s bonnet and shawl were pitchforked on in a moment, and
they went out. Among all the agriculturists gathered round the only
appropriate possessor of the new machine seemed to be Lucetta, because
she alone rivalled it in colour.
They examined it curiously; observing the rows of trumpet-shaped tubes
one within the other, the little scoops, like revolving salt-spoons,
which tossed the seed into the upper ends of the tubes that conducted
it to the ground; till somebody said, “Good morning, Elizabeth-Jane.”
She looked up, and there was her stepfather.
His greeting had been somewhat dry and thunderous, and Elizabeth-Jane,
embarrassed out of her equanimity, stammered at random, “This is the
lady I live with, father—Miss Templeman.”
Henchard put his hand to his hat, which he brought down with a great
wave till it met his body at the knee. Miss Templeman bowed. “I am
happy to become acquainted with you, Mr. Henchard,” she said. “This is
a curious machine.”
“Yes,” Henchard replied; and he proceeded to explain it, and still more
forcibly to ridicule it.
“Who brought it here?” said Lucetta.
“Oh, don’t ask me, ma’am!” said Henchard. “The thing—why ’tis
impossible it should act. ’Twas brought here by one of our machinists
on the recommendation of a jumped-up jackanapes of a fellow who
thinks——” His eye caught Elizabeth-Jane’s imploring face, and he
stopped, probably thinking that the suit might be progressing.
He turned to go away. Then something seemed to occur which his
stepdaughter fancied must really be a hallucination of hers. A murmur
apparently came from Henchard’s lips in which she detected the words,
“You refused to see me!” reproachfully addressed to Lucetta. She could
not believe that they had been uttered by her stepfather; unless,
indeed, they might have been spoken to one of the yellow-gaitered
farmers near them. Yet Lucetta seemed silent, and then all thought of
the incident was dissipated by the humming of a song, which sounded as
though from the interior of the machine. Henchard had by this time
vanished into the market-house, and both the women glanced towards the
corn-drill. They could see behind it the bent back of a man who was
pushing his head into the internal works to master their simple
secrets. The hummed song went on—
“’Tw—s on a s—m—r aftern—n,
A wee be—re the s—n w—nt d—n,
When Kitty wi’ a braw n—w g—wn
C—me ow’re the h—lls to Gowrie.”
Elizabeth-Jane had apprehended the singer in a moment, and looked
guilty of she did not know what. Lucetta next recognized him, and more
mistress of herself said archly, “The ‘Lass of Gowrie’ from inside of a
seed-drill—what a phenomenon!”
Satisfied at last with his investigation the young man stood upright,
and met their eyes across the summit.
“We are looking at the wonderful new drill,” Miss Templeman said. “But
practically it is a stupid thing—is it not?” she added, on the strength
of Henchard’s information.
“Stupid? O no!” said Farfrae gravely. “It will revolutionize sowing
heerabout! No more sowers flinging their seed about broadcast, so that
some falls by the wayside and some among thorns, and all that. Each
grain will go straight to its intended place, and nowhere else
whatever!”
“Then the romance of the sower is gone for good,” observed
Elizabeth-Jane, who felt herself at one with Farfrae in Bible-reading
at least. “‘He that observeth the wind shall not sow,’ so the Preacher
said; but his words will not be to the point any more. How things
change!”
“Ay; ay.... It must be so!” Donald admitted, his gaze fixing itself on
a blank point far away. “But the machines are already very common in
the East and North of England,” he added apologetically.
Lucetta seemed to be outside this train of sentiment, her acquaintance
with the Scriptures being somewhat limited. “Is the machine yours?” she
asked of Farfrae.
“O no, madam,” said he, becoming embarrassed and deferential at the
sound of her voice, though with Elizabeth-Jane he was quite at his
ease. “No, no—I merely recommended that it should be got.”
In the silence which followed Farfrae appeared only conscious of her;
to have passed from perception of Elizabeth into a brighter sphere of
existence than she appertained to. Lucetta, discerning that he was much
mixed that day, partly in his mercantile mood and partly in his
romantic one, said gaily to him—
“Well, don’t forsake the machine for us,” and went indoors with her
companion.
The latter felt that she had been in the way, though why was
unaccountable to her. Lucetta explained the matter somewhat by saying
when they were again in the sitting-room—
“I had occasion to speak to Mr. Farfrae the other day, and so I knew
him this morning.”
Lucetta was very kind towards Elizabeth that day. Together they saw the
market thicken, and in course of time thin away with the slow decline
of the sun towards the upper end of town, its rays taking the street
endways and enfilading the long thoroughfare from top to bottom. The
gigs and vans disappeared one by one till there was not a vehicle in
the street. The time of the riding world was over; the pedestrian world
held sway. Field labourers and their wives and children trooped in from
the villages for their weekly shopping, and instead of a rattle of