The Mayor of Casterbridge
again; for having got his evidence by heart it was immaterial to him
whereabouts he broke off.
“I object to that,” spoke up the old woman, “‘spot measuring twelve
feet nine or thereabouts from where I,’ is not sound testimony!”
The magistrates consulted, and the second one said that the bench was
of opinion that twelve feet nine inches from a man on his oath was
admissible.
Stubberd, with a suppressed gaze of victorious rectitude at the old
woman, continued: “Was standing myself. She was wambling about quite
dangerous to the thoroughfare and when I approached to draw near she
committed the nuisance, and insulted me.”
“‘Insulted me.’ ...Yes, what did she say?”
“She said, ‘Put away that dee lantern,’ she says.”
“Yes.”
“Says she, ‘Dost hear, old turmit-head? Put away that dee lantern. I
have floored fellows a dee sight finer-looking than a dee fool like
thee, you son of a bee, dee me if I haint,’ she says.
“I object to that conversation!” interposed the old woman. “I was not
capable enough to hear what I said, and what is said out of my hearing
is not evidence.”
There was another stoppage for consultation, a book was referred to,
and finally Stubberd was allowed to go on again. The truth was that the
old woman had appeared in court so many more times than the magistrates
themselves, that they were obliged to keep a sharp look-out upon their
procedure. However, when Stubberd had rambled on a little further
Henchard broke out impatiently, “Come—we don’t want to hear any more of
them cust dees and bees! Say the words out like a man, and don’t be so
modest, Stubberd; or else leave it alone!” Turning to the woman, “Now
then, have you any questions to ask him, or anything to say?”
“Yes,” she replied with a twinkle in her eye; and the clerk dipped his
pen.
“Twenty years ago or thereabout I was selling of furmity in a tent at
Weydon Fair——”
“‘Twenty years ago’—well, that’s beginning at the beginning; suppose
you go back to the Creation!” said the clerk, not without satire.
But Henchard stared, and quite forgot what was evidence and what was
not.
“A man and a woman with a little child came into my tent,” the woman
continued. “They sat down and had a basin apiece. Ah, Lord’s my life! I
was of a more respectable station in the world then than I am now,
being a land smuggler in a large way of business; and I used to season
my furmity with rum for them who asked for’t. I did it for the man; and
then he had more and more; till at last he quarrelled with his wife,
and offered to sell her to the highest bidder. A sailor came in and bid
five guineas, and paid the money, and led her away. And the man who
sold his wife in that fashion is the man sitting there in the great big
chair.” The speaker concluded by nodding her head at Henchard and
folding her arms.
Everybody looked at Henchard. His face seemed strange, and in tint as
if it had been powdered over with ashes. “We don’t want to hear your
life and adventures,” said the second magistrate sharply, filling the
pause which followed. “You’ve been asked if you’ve anything to say
bearing on the case.”
“That bears on the case. It proves that he’s no better than I, and has
no right to sit there in judgment upon me.”
“’Tis a concocted story,” said the clerk. “So hold your tongue!”
“No—’tis true.” The words came from Henchard. “’Tis as true as the
light,” he said slowly. “And upon my soul it does prove that I’m no
better than she! And to keep out of any temptation to treat her hard
for her revenge, I’ll leave her to you.”
The sensation in the court was indescribably great. Henchard left the
chair, and came out, passing through a group of people on the steps and
outside that was much larger than usual; for it seemed that the old
furmity dealer had mysteriously hinted to the denizens of the lane in
which she had been lodging since her arrival, that she knew a queer
thing or two about their great local man Mr. Henchard, if she chose to
tell it. This had brought them hither.
“Why are there so many idlers round the Town Hall to-day?” said Lucetta
to her servant when the case was over. She had risen late, and had just
looked out of the window.
“Oh, please, ma’am, ’tis this larry about Mr. Henchard. A woman has
proved that before he became a gentleman he sold his wife for five
guineas in a booth at a fair.”
In all the accounts which Henchard had given her of the separation from
his wife Susan for so many years, of his belief in her death, and so
on, he had never clearly explained the actual and immediate cause of
that separation. The story she now heard for the first time.
A gradual misery overspread Lucetta’s face as she dwelt upon the
promise wrung from her the night before. At bottom, then, Henchard was
this. How terrible a contingency for a woman who should commit herself
to his care.
During the day she went out to the Ring and to other places, not coming
in till nearly dusk. As soon as she saw Elizabeth-Jane after her return
indoors she told her that she had resolved to go away from home to the
seaside for a few days—to Port-Bredy; Casterbridge was so gloomy.
Elizabeth, seeing that she looked wan and disturbed, encouraged her in
the idea, thinking a change would afford her relief. She could not help
suspecting that the gloom which seemed to have come over Casterbridge
in Lucetta’s eyes might be partially owing to the fact that Farfrae was
away from home.
Elizabeth saw her friend depart for Port-Bredy, and took charge of
High-Place Hall till her return. After two or three days of solitude
and incessant rain Henchard called at the house. He seemed disappointed
to hear of Lucetta’s absence and though he nodded with outward
indifference he went away handling his beard with a nettled mien.
The next day he called again. “Is she come now?” he asked.
“Yes. She returned this morning,” replied his stepdaughter. “But she is
not indoors. She has gone for a walk along the turnpike-road to
Port-Bredy. She will be home by dusk.”
After a few words, which only served to reveal his restless impatience,
he left the house again.
XXIX.
At this hour Lucetta was bounding along the road to Port-Bredy just as
Elizabeth had announced. That she had chosen for her afternoon walk the
road along which she had returned to Casterbridge three hours earlier
in a carriage was curious—if anything should be called curious in
concatenations of phenomena wherein each is known to have its
accounting cause. It was the day of the chief market—Saturday—and
Farfrae for once had been missed from his corn-stand in the dealers’
room. Nevertheless, it was known that he would be home that night—“for
Sunday,” as Casterbridge expressed it.
Lucetta, in continuing her walk, had at length reached the end of the
ranked trees which bordered the highway in this and other directions
out of the town. This end marked a mile; and here she stopped.
The spot was a vale between two gentle acclivities, and the road, still
adhering to its Roman foundation, stretched onward straight as a
surveyor’s line till lost to sight on the most distant ridge. There was
neither hedge nor tree in the prospect now, the road clinging to the
stubby expanse of corn-land like a strip to an undulating garment. Near
her was a barn—the single building of any kind within her horizon.
She strained her eyes up the lessening road, but nothing appeared
thereon—not so much as a speck. She sighed one word—“Donald!” and
turned her face to the town for retreat.
Here the case was different. A single figure was approaching
her—Elizabeth-Jane’s.
Lucetta, in spite of her loneliness, seemed a little vexed. Elizabeth’s
face, as soon as she recognized her friend, shaped itself into
affectionate lines while yet beyond speaking distance. “I suddenly
thought I would come and meet you,” she said, smiling.
Lucetta’s reply was taken from her lips by an unexpected diversion. A
by-road on her right hand descended from the fields into the highway at
the point where she stood, and down the track a bull was rambling
uncertainly towards her and Elizabeth, who, facing the other way, did
not observe him.
In the latter quarter of each year cattle were at once the mainstay and
the terror of families about Casterbridge and its neighbourhood, where
breeding was carried on with Abrahamic success. The head of stock
driven into and out of the town at this season to be sold by the local
auctioneer was very large; and all these horned beasts, in travelling
to and fro, sent women and children to shelter as nothing else could
do. In the main the animals would have walked along quietly enough; but
the Casterbridge tradition was that to drive stock it was indispensable
that hideous cries, coupled with Yahoo antics and gestures, should be
used, large sticks flourished, stray dogs called in, and in general
everything done that was likely to infuriate the viciously disposed and
terrify the mild. Nothing was commoner than for a house-holder on going
out of his parlour to find his hall or passage full of little children,
nursemaids, aged women, or a ladies’ school, who apologized for their
presence by saying, “A bull passing down street from the sale.”
Lucetta and Elizabeth regarded the animal in doubt, he meanwhile
drawing vaguely towards them. It was a large specimen of the breed, in
colour rich dun, though disfigured at present by splotches of mud about
his seamy sides. His horns were thick and tipped with brass; his two
nostrils like the Thames Tunnel as seen in the perspective toys of
yore. Between them, through the gristle of his nose, was a stout copper
ring, welded on, and irremovable as Gurth’s collar of brass. To the
ring was attached an ash staff about a yard long, which the bull with
the motions of his head flung about like a flail.
It was not till they observed this dangling stick that the young women
were really alarmed; for it revealed to them that the bull was an old
one, too savage to be driven, which had in some way escaped, the staff
being the means by which the drover controlled him and kept his horns
at arms’ length.
They looked round for some shelter or hiding-place, and thought of the
barn hard by. As long as they had kept their eyes on the bull he had
shown some deference in his manner of approach; but no sooner did they
turn their backs to seek the barn than he tossed his head and decided
to thoroughly terrify them. This caused the two helpless girls to run
wildly, whereupon the bull advanced in a deliberate charge.
The barn stood behind a green slimy pond, and it was closed save as to
one of the usual pair of doors facing them, which had been propped open
by a hurdle-stick, and for this opening they made. The interior had
been cleared by a recent bout of threshing except at one end, where
there was a stack of dry clover. Elizabeth-Jane took in the situation.
“We must climb up there,” she said.
But before they had even approached it they heard the bull scampering
through the pond without, and in a second he dashed into the barn,
knocking down the hurdle-stake in passing; the heavy door slammed
behind him; and all three were imprisoned in the barn together. The
mistaken creature saw them, and stalked towards the end of the barn
into which they had fled. The girls doubled so adroitly that their
pursuer was against the wall when the fugitives were already half way
to the other end. By the time that his length would allow him to turn
and follow them thither they had crossed over; thus the pursuit went
on, the hot air from his nostrils blowing over them like a sirocco, and
not a moment being attainable by Elizabeth or Lucetta in which to open
the door. What might have happened had their situation continued cannot
be said; but in a few moments a rattling of the door distracted their