The Mayor of Casterbridge
power of consistent action which we never find in ourselves or in our
friends; and forget that abortive efforts from want of heart are as
possible to revenge as to generosity.
Next morning Lucetta remained in bed, meditating how to parry this
incipient attack. The bold stroke of telling Donald the truth, dimly
conceived, was yet too bold; for she dreaded lest in doing so he, like
the rest of the world, should believe that the episode was rather her
fault than her misfortune. She decided to employ persuasion—not with
Donald but with the enemy himself. It seemed the only practicable
weapon left her as a woman. Having laid her plan she rose, and wrote to
him who kept her on these tenterhooks:—
“I overheard your interview with my husband last night, and saw the
drift of your revenge. The very thought of it crushes me! Have pity on
a distressed woman! If you could see me you would relent. You do not
know how anxiety has told upon me lately. I will be at the Ring at the
time you leave work—just before the sun goes down. Please come that
way. I cannot rest till I have seen you face to face, and heard from
your mouth that you will carry this horse-play no further.”
To herself she said, on closing up her appeal: “If ever tears and
pleadings have served the weak to fight the strong, let them do so
now!”
With this view she made a toilette which differed from all she had ever
attempted before. To heighten her natural attraction had hitherto been
the unvarying endeavour of her adult life, and one in which she was no
novice. But now she neglected this, and even proceeded to impair the
natural presentation. Beyond a natural reason for her slightly drawn
look, she had not slept all the previous night, and this had produced
upon her pretty though slightly worn features the aspect of a
countenance ageing prematurely from extreme sorrow. She selected—as
much from want of spirit as design—her poorest, plainest and longest
discarded attire.
To avoid the contingency of being recognized she veiled herself, and
slipped out of the house quickly. The sun was resting on the hill like
a drop of blood on an eyelid by the time she had got up the road
opposite the amphitheatre, which she speedily entered. The interior was
shadowy, and emphatic of the absence of every living thing.
She was not disappointed in the fearful hope with which she awaited
him. Henchard came over the top, descended and Lucetta waited
breathlessly. But having reached the arena she saw a change in his
bearing: he stood still at a little distance from her; she could not
think why.
Nor could any one else have known. The truth was that in appointing
this spot, and this hour, for the rendezvous, Lucetta had unwittingly
backed up her entreaty by the strongest argument she could have used
outside words, with this man of moods, glooms, and superstitions. Her
figure in the midst of the huge enclosure, the unusual plainness of her
dress, her attitude of hope and appeal, so strongly revived in his soul
the memory of another ill-used woman who had stood there and thus in
bygone days, and had now passed away into her rest, that he was
unmanned, and his heart smote him for having attempted reprisals on one
of a sex so weak. When he approached her, and before she had spoken a
word, her point was half gained.
His manner as he had come down had been one of cynical carelessness;
but he now put away his grim half-smile, and said, in a kindly subdued
tone, “Goodnight t’ye. Of course I’m glad to come if you want me.”
“O, thank you,” she said apprehensively.
“I am sorry to see ’ee looking so ill,” he stammered with unconcealed
compunction.
She shook her head. “How can you be sorry,” she asked, “when you
deliberately cause it?”
“What!” said Henchard uneasily. “Is it anything I have done that has
pulled you down like that?”
“It is all your doing,” she said. “I have no other grief. My happiness
would be secure enough but for your threats. O Michael! don’t wreck me
like this! You might think that you have done enough! When I came here
I was a young woman; now I am rapidly becoming an old one. Neither my
husband nor any other man will regard me with interest long.”
Henchard was disarmed. His old feeling of supercilious pity for
womankind in general was intensified by this suppliant appearing here
as the double of the first. Moreover that thoughtless want of foresight
which had led to all her trouble remained with poor Lucetta still; she
had come to meet him here in this compromising way without perceiving
the risk. Such a woman was very small deer to hunt; he felt ashamed,
lost all zest and desire to humiliate Lucetta there and then, and no
longer envied Farfrae his bargain. He had married money, but nothing
more. Henchard was anxious to wash his hands of the game.
“Well, what do you want me to do?” he said gently. “I am sure I shall
be very willing. My reading of those letters was only a sort of
practical joke, and I revealed nothing.”
“To give me back the letters and any papers you may have that breathe
of matrimony or worse.”
“So be it. Every scrap shall be yours.... But, between you and me,
Lucetta, he is sure to find out something of the matter, sooner or
later.”
“Ah!” she said with eager tremulousness; “but not till I have proved
myself a faithful and deserving wife to him, and then he may forgive me
everything!”
Henchard silently looked at her: he almost envied Farfrae such love as
that, even now. “H’m—I hope so,” he said. “But you shall have the
letters without fail. And your secret shall be kept. I swear it.”
“How good you are!—how shall I get them?”
He reflected, and said he would send them the next morning. “Now don’t
doubt me,” he added. “I can keep my word.”
XXXVI.
Returning from her appointment Lucetta saw a man waiting by the lamp
nearest to her own door. When she stopped to go in he came and spoke to
her. It was Jopp.
He begged her pardon for addressing her. But he had heard that Mr.
Farfrae had been applied to by a neighbouring corn-merchant to
recommend a working partner; if so he wished to offer himself. He could
give good security, and had stated as much to Mr. Farfrae in a letter;
but he would feel much obliged if Lucetta would say a word in his
favour to her husband.
“It is a thing I know nothing about,” said Lucetta coldly.
“But you can testify to my trustworthiness better than anybody, ma’am,”
said Jopp. “I was in Jersey several years, and knew you there by
sight.”
“Indeed,” she replied. “But I knew nothing of you.”
“I think, ma’am, that a word or two from you would secure for me what I
covet very much,” he persisted.
She steadily refused to have anything to do with the affair, and
cutting him short, because of her anxiety to get indoors before her
husband should miss her, left him on the pavement.
He watched her till she had vanished, and then went home. When he got
there he sat down in the fireless chimney corner looking at the iron
dogs, and the wood laid across them for heating the morning kettle. A
movement upstairs disturbed him, and Henchard came down from his
bedroom, where he seemed to have been rummaging boxes.
“I wish,” said Henchard, “you would do me a service, Jopp,
now—to-night, I mean, if you can. Leave this at Mrs. Farfrae’s for her.
I should take it myself, of course, but I don’t wish to be seen there.”
He handed a package in brown paper, sealed. Henchard had been as good
as his word. Immediately on coming indoors he had searched over his few
belongings, and every scrap of Lucetta’s writing that he possessed was
here. Jopp indifferently expressed his willingness.
“Well, how have ye got on to-day?” his lodger asked. “Any prospect of
an opening?”
“I am afraid not,” said Jopp, who had not told the other of his
application to Farfrae.
“There never will be in Casterbridge,” declared Henchard decisively.
“You must roam further afield.” He said goodnight to Jopp, and returned
to his own part of the house.
Jopp sat on till his eyes were attracted by the shadow of the
candle-snuff on the wall, and looking at the original he found that it
had formed itself into a head like a red-hot cauliflower. Henchard’s
packet next met his gaze. He knew there had been something of the
nature of wooing between Henchard and the now Mrs. Farfrae; and his
vague ideas on the subject narrowed themselves down to these: Henchard
had a parcel belonging to Mrs. Farfrae, and he had reasons for not
returning that parcel to her in person. What could be inside it? So he
went on and on till, animated by resentment at Lucetta’s haughtiness,
as he thought it, and curiosity to learn if there were any weak sides
to this transaction with Henchard, he examined the package. The pen and
all its relations being awkward tools in Henchard’s hands he had
affixed the seals without an impression, it never occurring to him that
the efficacy of such a fastening depended on this. Jopp was far less of
a tyro; he lifted one of the seals with his penknife, peeped in at the
end thus opened, saw that the bundle consisted of letters; and, having
satisfied himself thus far, sealed up the end again by simply softening
the wax with the candle, and went off with the parcel as requested.
His path was by the river-side at the foot of the town. Coming into the
light at the bridge which stood at the end of High Street he beheld
lounging thereon Mother Cuxsom and Nance Mockridge.
“We be just going down Mixen Lane way, to look into Peter’s Finger
afore creeping to bed,” said Mrs. Cuxsom. “There’s a fiddle and
tambourine going on there. Lord, what’s all the world—do ye come along
too, Jopp—’twon’t hinder ye five minutes.”
Jopp had mostly kept himself out of this company, but present
circumstances made him somewhat more reckless than usual, and without
many words he decided to go to his destination that way.
Though the upper part of Durnover was mainly composed of a curious
congeries of barns and farm-steads, there was a less picturesque side
to the parish. This was Mixen Lane, now in great part pulled down.
Mixen Lane was the Adullam of all the surrounding villages. It was the
hiding-place of those who were in distress, and in debt, and trouble of
every kind. Farm-labourers and other peasants, who combined a little
poaching with their farming, and a little brawling and bibbing with
their poaching, found themselves sooner or later in Mixen Lane. Rural
mechanics too idle to mechanize, rural servants too rebellious to
serve, drifted or were forced into Mixen Lane.
The lane and its surrounding thicket of thatched cottages stretched out
like a spit into the moist and misty lowland. Much that was sad, much
that was low, some things that were baneful, could be seen in Mixen
Lane. Vice ran freely in and out certain of the doors in the
neighbourhood; recklessness dwelt under the roof with the crooked
chimney; shame in some bow-windows; theft (in times of privation) in
the thatched and mud-walled houses by the sallows. Even slaughter had
not been altogether unknown here. In a block of cottages up an alley
there might have been erected an altar to disease in years gone by.
Such was Mixen Lane in the times when Henchard and Farfrae were Mayors.
Yet this mildewed leaf in the sturdy and flourishing Casterbridge plant
lay close to the open country; not a hundred yards from a row of noble
elms, and commanding a view across the moor of airy uplands and
corn-fields, and mansions of the great. A brook divided the moor from
the tenements, and to outward view there was no way across it—no way to
the houses but round about by the road. But under every householder’s
stairs there was kept a mysterious plank nine inches wide; which plank
was a secret bridge.
If you, as one of those refugee householders, came in from business