The Mayor of Casterbridge
“We thought of going away,” interposed Lucetta, looking at Farfrae
anxiously.
“It was only a fancy,” Farfrae murmured. “I wouldna refuse if it is the
wish of a respectable majority in the Council.”
“Very well, then, look upon yourself as elected. We have had older men
long enough.”
When he was gone Farfrae said musingly, “See now how it’s ourselves
that are ruled by the Powers above us! We plan this, but we do that. If
they want to make me Mayor I will stay, and Henchard must rave as he
will.”
From this evening onward Lucetta was very uneasy. If she had not been
imprudence incarnate she would not have acted as she did when she met
Henchard by accident a day or two later. It was in the bustle of the
market, when no one could readily notice their discourse.
“Michael,” said she, “I must again ask you what I asked you months
ago—to return me any letters or papers of mine that you may have—unless
you have destroyed them? You must see how desirable it is that the time
at Jersey should be blotted out, for the good of all parties.”
“Why, bless the woman!—I packed up every scrap of your handwriting to
give you in the coach—but you never appeared.”
She explained how the death of her aunt had prevented her taking the
journey on that day. “And what became of the parcel then?” she asked.
He could not say—he would consider. When she was gone he recollected
that he had left a heap of useless papers in his former dining-room
safe—built up in the wall of his old house—now occupied by Farfrae. The
letters might have been amongst them.
A grotesque grin shaped itself on Henchard’s face. Had that safe been
opened?
On the very evening which followed this there was a great ringing of
bells in Casterbridge, and the combined brass, wood, catgut, and
leather bands played round the town with more prodigality of
percussion-notes than ever. Farfrae was Mayor—the two-hundredth odd of
a series forming an elective dynasty dating back to the days of Charles
I—and the fair Lucetta was the courted of the town.... But, Ah! the
worm i’ the bud—Henchard; what he could tell!
He, in the meantime, festering with indignation at some erroneous
intelligence of Farfrae’s opposition to the scheme for installing him
in the little seed-shop, was greeted with the news of the municipal
election (which, by reason of Farfrae’s comparative youth and his
Scottish nativity—a thing unprecedented in the case—had an interest far
beyond the ordinary). The bell-ringing and the band-playing, loud as
Tamerlane’s trumpet, goaded the downfallen Henchard indescribably: the
ousting now seemed to him to be complete.
The next morning he went to the corn-yard as usual, and about eleven
o’clock Donald entered through the green door, with no trace of the
worshipful about him. The yet more emphatic change of places between
him and Henchard which this election had established renewed a slight
embarrassment in the manner of the modest young man; but Henchard
showed the front of one who had overlooked all this; and Farfrae met
his amenities half-way at once.
“I was going to ask you,” said Henchard, “about a packet that I may
possibly have left in my old safe in the dining-room.” He added
particulars.
“If so, it is there now,” said Farfrae. “I have never opened the safe
at all as yet; for I keep ma papers at the bank, to sleep easy o’
nights.”
“It was not of much consequence—to me,” said Henchard. “But I’ll call
for it this evening, if you don’t mind?”
It was quite late when he fulfilled his promise. He had primed himself
with grog, as he did very frequently now, and a curl of sardonic humour
hung on his lip as he approached the house, as though he were
contemplating some terrible form of amusement. Whatever it was, the
incident of his entry did not diminish its force, this being his first
visit to the house since he had lived there as owner. The ring of the
bell spoke to him like the voice of a familiar drudge who had been
bribed to forsake him; the movements of the doors were revivals of dead
days.
Farfrae invited him into the dining-room, where he at once unlocked the
iron safe built into the wall, _his_, Henchard’s safe, made by an
ingenious locksmith under his direction. Farfrae drew thence the
parcel, and other papers, with apologies for not having returned them.
“Never mind,” said Henchard drily. “The fact is they are letters
mostly.... Yes,” he went on, sitting down and unfolding Lucetta’s
passionate bundle, “here they be. That ever I should see ’em again! I
hope Mrs. Farfrae is well after her exertions of yesterday?”
“She has felt a bit weary; and has gone to bed airly on that account.”
Henchard returned to the letters, sorting them over with interest,
Farfrae being seated at the other end of the dining-table. “You don’t
forget, of course,” he resumed, “that curious chapter in the history of
my past which I told you of, and that you gave me some assistance in?
These letters are, in fact, related to that unhappy business. Though,
thank God, it is all over now.”
“What became of the poor woman?” asked Farfrae.
“Luckily she married, and married well,” said Henchard. “So that these
reproaches she poured out on me do not now cause me any twinges, as
they might otherwise have done.... Just listen to what an angry woman
will say!”
Farfrae, willing to humour Henchard, though quite uninterested, and
bursting with yawns, gave well-mannered attention.
“‘For me,’” Henchard read, “‘there is practically no future. A creature
too unconventionally devoted to you—who feels it impossible that she
can be the wife of any other man; and who is yet no more to you than
the first woman you meet in the street—such am I. I quite acquit you of
any intention to wrong me, yet you are the door through which wrong has
come to me. That in the event of your present wife’s death you will
place me in her position is a consolation so far as it goes—but how far
does it go? Thus I sit here, forsaken by my few acquaintance, and
forsaken by you!’”
“That’s how she went on to me,” said Henchard, “acres of words like
that, when what had happened was what I could not cure.”
“Yes,” said Farfrae absently, “it is the way wi’ women.” But the fact
was that he knew very little of the sex; yet detecting a sort of
resemblance in style between the effusions of the woman he worshipped
and those of the supposed stranger, he concluded that Aphrodite ever
spoke thus, whosesoever the personality she assumed.
Henchard unfolded another letter, and read it through likewise,
stopping at the subscription as before. “Her name I don’t give,” he
said blandly. “As I didn’t marry her, and another man did, I can
scarcely do that in fairness to her.”
“Tr-rue, tr-rue,” said Farfrae. “But why didn’t you marry her when your
wife Susan died?” Farfrae asked this and the other questions in the
comfortably indifferent tone of one whom the matter very remotely
concerned.
“Ah—well you may ask that!” said Henchard, the new-moon-shaped grin
adumbrating itself again upon his mouth. “In spite of all her
protestations, when I came forward to do so, as in generosity bound,
she was not the woman for me.”
“She had already married another—maybe?”
Henchard seemed to think it would be sailing too near the wind to
descend further into particulars, and he answered “Yes.”
“The young lady must have had a heart that bore transplanting very
readily!”
“She had, she had,” said Henchard emphatically.
He opened a third and fourth letter, and read. This time he approached
the conclusion as if the signature were indeed coming with the rest.
But again he stopped short. The truth was that, as may be divined, he
had quite intended to effect a grand catastrophe at the end of this
drama by reading out the name, he had come to the house with no other
thought. But sitting here in cold blood he could not do it.
Such a wrecking of hearts appalled even him. His quality was such that
he could have annihilated them both in the heat of action; but to
accomplish the deed by oral poison was beyond the nerve of his enmity.
XXXV.
As Donald stated, Lucetta had retired early to her room because of
fatigue. She had, however, not gone to rest, but sat in the bedside
chair reading and thinking over the events of the day. At the ringing
of the door-bell by Henchard she wondered who it should be that would
call at that comparatively late hour. The dining-room was almost under
her bed-room; she could hear that somebody was admitted there, and
presently the indistinct murmur of a person reading became audible.
The usual time for Donald’s arrival upstairs came and passed, yet still
the reading and conversation went on. This was very singular. She could
think of nothing but that some extraordinary crime had been committed,
and that the visitor, whoever he might be, was reading an account of it
from a special edition of the _Casterbridge Chronicle_. At last she
left the room, and descended the stairs. The dining-room door was ajar,
and in the silence of the resting household the voice and the words
were recognizable before she reached the lower flight. She stood
transfixed. Her own words greeted her in Henchard’s voice, like spirits
from the grave.
Lucetta leant upon the banister with her cheek against the smooth
hand-rail, as if she would make a friend of it in her misery. Rigid in
this position, more and more words fell successively upon her ear. But
what amazed her most was the tone of her husband. He spoke merely in
the accents of a man who made a present of his time.
“One word,” he was saying, as the crackling of paper denoted that
Henchard was unfolding yet another sheet. “Is it quite fair to this
young woman’s memory to read at such length to a stranger what was
intended for your eye alone?”
“Well, yes,” said Henchard. “By not giving her name I make it an
example of all womankind, and not a scandal to one.”
“If I were you I would destroy them,” said Farfrae, giving more thought
to the letters than he had hitherto done. “As another man’s wife it
would injure the woman if it were known.”
“No, I shall not destroy them,” murmured Henchard, putting the letters
away. Then he arose, and Lucetta heard no more.
She went back to her bedroom in a semi-paralyzed state. For very fear
she could not undress, but sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. Would
Henchard let out the secret in his parting words? Her suspense was
terrible. Had she confessed all to Donald in their early acquaintance
he might possibly have got over it, and married her just the
same—unlikely as it had once seemed; but for her or any one else to
tell him now would be fatal.
The door slammed; she could hear her husband bolting it. After looking
round in his customary way he came leisurely up the stairs. The spark
in her eyes well-nigh went out when he appeared round the bedroom door.
Her gaze hung doubtful for a moment, then to her joyous amazement she
saw that he looked at her with the rallying smile of one who had just
been relieved of a scene that was irksome. She could hold out no
longer, and sobbed hysterically.
When he had restored her Farfrae naturally enough spoke of Henchard.
“Of all men he was the least desirable as a visitor,” he said; “but it
is my belief that he’s just a bit crazed. He has been reading to me a
long lot of letters relating to his past life; and I could do no less
than indulge him by listening.”
This was sufficient. Henchard, then, had not told. Henchard’s last
words to Farfrae, in short, as he stood on the doorstep, had been
these: “Well—I’m obliged to ’ee for listening. I may tell more about
her some day.”
Finding this, she was much perplexed as to Henchard’s motives in
opening the matter at all; for in such cases we attribute to an enemy a