The Mayor of Casterbridge
adversary’s attention, and a man appeared. He ran forward towards the
leading-staff, seized it, and wrenched the animal’s head as if he would
snap it off. The wrench was in reality so violent that the thick neck
seemed to have lost its stiffness and to become half-paralyzed, whilst
the nose dropped blood. The premeditated human contrivance of the
nose-ring was too cunning for impulsive brute force, and the creature
flinched.
The man was seen in the partial gloom to be large-framed and
unhesitating. He led the bull to the door, and the light revealed
Henchard. He made the bull fast without, and re-entered to the succour
of Lucetta; for he had not perceived Elizabeth, who had climbed on to
the clover-heap. Lucetta was hysterical, and Henchard took her in his
arms and carried her to the door.
“You—have saved me!” she cried, as soon as she could speak.
“I have returned your kindness,” he responded tenderly. “You once saved
me.”
“How—comes it to be you—you?” she asked, not heeding his reply.
“I came out here to look for you. I have been wanting to tell you
something these two or three days; but you have been away, and I could
not. Perhaps you cannot talk now?”
“Oh—no! Where is Elizabeth?”
“Here am I!” cried the missing one cheerfully; and without waiting for
the ladder to be placed she slid down the face of the clover-stack to
the floor.
Henchard supporting Lucetta on one side, and Elizabeth-Jane on the
other, they went slowly along the rising road. They had reached the top
and were descending again when Lucetta, now much recovered, recollected
that she had dropped her muff in the barn.
“I’ll run back,” said Elizabeth-Jane. “I don’t mind it at all, as I am
not tired as you are.” She thereupon hastened down again to the barn,
the others pursuing their way.
Elizabeth soon found the muff, such an article being by no means small
at that time. Coming out she paused to look for a moment at the bull,
now rather to be pitied with his bleeding nose, having perhaps rather
intended a practical joke than a murder. Henchard had secured him by
jamming the staff into the hinge of the barn-door, and wedging it there
with a stake. At length she turned to hasten onward after her
contemplation, when she saw a green-and-black gig approaching from the
contrary direction, the vehicle being driven by Farfrae.
His presence here seemed to explain Lucetta’s walk that way. Donald saw
her, drew up, and was hastily made acquainted with what had occurred.
At Elizabeth-Jane mentioning how greatly Lucetta had been jeopardized,
he exhibited an agitation different in kind no less than in intensity
from any she had seen in him before. He became so absorbed in the
circumstance that he scarcely had sufficient knowledge of what he was
doing to think of helping her up beside him.
“She has gone on with Mr. Henchard, you say?” he inquired at last.
“Yes. He is taking her home. They are almost there by this time.”
“And you are sure she can get home?”
Elizabeth-Jane was quite sure.
“Your stepfather saved her?”
“Entirely.”
Farfrae checked his horse’s pace; she guessed why. He was thinking that
it would be best not to intrude on the other two just now. Henchard had
saved Lucetta, and to provoke a possible exhibition of her deeper
affection for himself was as ungenerous as it was unwise.
The immediate subject of their talk being exhausted she felt more
embarrassed at sitting thus beside her past lover; but soon the two
figures of the others were visible at the entrance to the town. The
face of the woman was frequently turned back, but Farfrae did not whip
on the horse. When these reached the town walls Henchard and his
companion had disappeared down the street; Farfrae set down
Elizabeth-Jane on her expressing a particular wish to alight there, and
drove round to the stables at the back of his lodgings.
On this account he entered the house through his garden, and going up
to his apartments found them in a particularly disturbed state, his
boxes being hauled out upon the landing, and his bookcase standing in
three pieces. These phenomena, however, seemed to cause him not the
least surprise. “When will everything be sent up?” he said to the
mistress of the house, who was superintending.
“I am afraid not before eight, sir,” said she. “You see we wasn’t aware
till this morning that you were going to move, or we could have been
forwarder.”
“A—well, never mind, never mind!” said Farfrae cheerily. “Eight o’clock
will do well enough if it be not later. Now, don’t ye be standing here
talking, or it will be twelve, I doubt.” Thus speaking he went out by
the front door and up the street.
During this interval Henchard and Lucetta had had experiences of a
different kind. After Elizabeth’s departure for the muff the
corn-merchant opened himself frankly, holding her hand within his arm,
though she would fain have withdrawn it. “Dear Lucetta, I have been
very, very anxious to see you these two or three days,” he said, “ever
since I saw you last! I have thought over the way I got your promise
that night. You said to me, ‘If I were a man I should not insist.’ That
cut me deep. I felt that there was some truth in it. I don’t want to
make you wretched; and to marry me just now would do that as nothing
else could—it is but too plain. Therefore I agree to an indefinite
engagement—to put off all thought of marriage for a year or two.”
“But—but—can I do nothing of a different kind?” said Lucetta. “I am
full of gratitude to you—you have saved my life. And your care of me is
like coals of fire on my head! I am a monied person now. Surely I can
do something in return for your goodness—something practical?”
Henchard remained in thought. He had evidently not expected this.
“There is one thing you might do, Lucetta,” he said. “But not exactly
of that kind.”
“Then of what kind is it?” she asked with renewed misgiving.
“I must tell you a secret to ask it.—You may have heard that I have
been unlucky this year? I did what I have never done before—speculated
rashly; and I lost. That’s just put me in a strait.
“And you would wish me to advance some money?”
“No, no!” said Henchard, almost in anger. “I’m not the man to sponge on
a woman, even though she may be so nearly my own as you. No, Lucetta;
what you can do is this and it would save me. My great creditor is
Grower, and it is at his hands I shall suffer if at anybody’s; while a
fortnight’s forbearance on his part would be enough to allow me to pull
through. This may be got out of him in one way—that you would let it be
known to him that you are my intended—that we are to be quietly married
in the next fortnight.—Now stop, you haven’t heard all! Let him have
this story, without, of course, any prejudice to the fact that the
actual engagement between us is to be a long one. Nobody else need
know: you could go with me to Mr. Grower and just let me speak to ’ee
before him as if we were on such terms. We’ll ask him to keep it
secret. He will willingly wait then. At the fortnight’s end I shall be
able to face him; and I can coolly tell him all is postponed between us
for a year or two. Not a soul in the town need know how you’ve helped
me. Since you wish to be of use, there’s your way.”
It being now what the people called the “pinking in” of the day, that
is, the quarter-hour just before dusk, he did not at first observe the
result of his own words upon her.
“If it were anything else,” she began, and the dryness of her lips was
represented in her voice.
“But it is such a little thing!” he said, with a deep reproach. “Less
than you have offered—just the beginning of what you have so lately
promised! I could have told him as much myself, but he would not have
believed me.”
“It is not because I won’t—it is because I absolutely can’t,” she said,
with rising distress.
“You are provoking!” he burst out. “It is enough to make me force you
to carry out at once what you have promised.”
“I cannot!” she insisted desperately.
“Why? When I have only within these few minutes released you from your
promise to do the thing offhand.”
“Because—he was a witness!”
“Witness? Of what?
“If I must tell you——. Don’t, don’t upbraid me!”
“Well! Let’s hear what you mean?”
“Witness of my marriage—Mr. Grower was!”
“Marriage?”
“Yes. With Mr. Farfrae. O Michael! I am already his wife. We were
married this week at Port-Bredy. There were reasons against our doing
it here. Mr. Grower was a witness because he happened to be at
Port-Bredy at the time.”
Henchard stood as if idiotized. She was so alarmed at his silence that
she murmured something about lending him sufficient money to tide over
the perilous fortnight.
“Married him?” said Henchard at length. “My good—what, married him
whilst—bound to marry me?”
“It was like this,” she explained, with tears in her eyes and quavers
in her voice; “don’t—don’t be cruel! I loved him so much, and I thought
you might tell him of the past—and that grieved me! And then, when I
had promised you, I learnt of the rumour that you had—sold your first
wife at a fair like a horse or cow! How could I keep my promise after
hearing that? I could not risk myself in your hands; it would have been
letting myself down to take your name after such a scandal. But I knew
I should lose Donald if I did not secure him at once—for you would
carry out your threat of telling him of our former acquaintance, as
long as there was a chance of keeping me for yourself by doing so. But
you will not do so now, will you, Michael? for it is too late to
separate us.”
The notes of St. Peter’s bells in full peal had been wafted to them
while he spoke, and now the genial thumping of the town band, renowned
for its unstinted use of the drum-stick, throbbed down the street.
“Then this racket they are making is on account of it, I suppose?” said
he.
“Yes—I think he has told them, or else Mr. Grower has.... May I leave
you now? My—he was detained at Port-Bredy to-day, and sent me on a few
hours before him.”
“Then it is _his wife’s_ life I have saved this afternoon.”
“Yes—and he will be for ever grateful to you.”
“I am much obliged to him.... O you false woman!” burst from Henchard.
“You promised me!”
“Yes, yes! But it was under compulsion, and I did not know all your
past——”
“And now I’ve a mind to punish you as you deserve! One word to this
bran-new husband of how you courted me, and your precious happiness is
blown to atoms!”
“Michael—pity me, and be generous!”
“You don’t deserve pity! You did; but you don’t now.”
“I’ll help you to pay off your debt.”
“A pensioner of Farfrae’s wife—not I! Don’t stay with me longer—I shall
say something worse. Go home!”
She disappeared under the trees of the south walk as the band came
round the corner, awaking the echoes of every stock and stone in
celebration of her happiness. Lucetta took no heed, but ran up the back
street and reached her own home unperceived.
XXX.
Farfrae’s words to his landlady had referred to the removal of his
boxes and other effects from his late lodgings to Lucetta’s house. The
work was not heavy, but it had been much hindered on account of the
frequent pauses necessitated by exclamations of surprise at the event,
of which the good woman had been briefly informed by letter a few hours
earlier.
At the last moment of leaving Port-Bredy, Farfrae, like John Gilpin,
had been detained by important customers, whom, even in the exceptional
circumstances, he was not the man to neglect. Moreover, there was a
convenience in Lucetta arriving first at her house. Nobody there as yet
knew what had happened; and she was best in a position to break the
news to the inmates, and give directions for her husband’s
accommodation. He had, therefore, sent on his two-days’ bride in a