The Mayor of Casterbridge
It was partly Lucetta’s ignorance of the circumstances of Donald’s
arrival which led her to speak thus, partly the sensation that
everybody seemed bent on snubbing her at this triumphant time. The
incident had occupied but a few moments, but it was necessarily
witnessed by the Royal Personage, who, however, with practised tact
affected not to have noticed anything unusual. He alighted, the Mayor
advanced, the address was read; the Illustrious Personage replied, then
said a few words to Farfrae, and shook hands with Lucetta as the
Mayor’s wife. The ceremony occupied but a few minutes, and the
carriages rattled heavily as Pharaoh’s chariots down Corn Street and
out upon the Budmouth Road, in continuation of the journey coastward.
In the crowd stood Coney, Buzzford, and Longways. “Some difference
between him now and when he zung at the Dree Mariners,” said the first.
“’Tis wonderful how he could get a lady of her quality to go snacks wi’
en in such quick time.”
“True. Yet how folk do worship fine clothes! Now there’s a
better-looking woman than she that nobody notices at all, because she’s
akin to that hontish fellow Henchard.”
“I could worship ye, Buzz, for saying that,” remarked Nance Mockridge.
“I do like to see the trimming pulled off such Christmas candles. I am
quite unequal to the part of villain myself, or I’d gi’e all my small
silver to see that lady toppered.... And perhaps I shall soon,” she
added significantly.
“That’s not a noble passiont for a ’oman to keep up,” said Longways.
Nance did not reply, but every one knew what she meant. The ideas
diffused by the reading of Lucetta’s letters at Peter’s Finger had
condensed into a scandal, which was spreading like a miasmatic fog
through Mixen Lane, and thence up the back streets of Casterbridge.
The mixed assemblage of idlers known to each other presently fell apart
into two bands by a process of natural selection, the frequenters of
Peter’s Finger going off Mixen Lanewards, where most of them lived,
while Coney, Buzzford, Longways, and that connection remained in the
street.
“You know what’s brewing down there, I suppose?” said Buzzford
mysteriously to the others.
Coney looked at him. “Not the skimmity-ride?”
Buzzford nodded.
“I have my doubts if it will be carried out,” said Longways. “If they
are getting it up they are keeping it mighty close.
“I heard they were thinking of it a fortnight ago, at all events.”
“If I were sure o’t I’d lay information,” said Longways emphatically.
“’Tis too rough a joke, and apt to wake riots in towns. We know that
the Scotchman is a right enough man, and that his lady has been a right
enough ’oman since she came here, and if there was anything wrong about
her afore, that’s their business, not ours.”
Coney reflected. Farfrae was still liked in the community; but it must
be owned that, as the Mayor and man of money, engrossed with affairs
and ambitions, he had lost in the eyes of the poorer inhabitants
something of that wondrous charm which he had had for them as a
light-hearted penniless young man, who sang ditties as readily as the
birds in the trees. Hence the anxiety to keep him from annoyance showed
not quite the ardour that would have animated it in former days.
“Suppose we make inquiration into it, Christopher,” continued Longways;
“and if we find there’s really anything in it, drop a letter to them
most concerned, and advise ’em to keep out of the way?”
This course was decided on, and the group separated, Buzzford saying to
Coney, “Come, my ancient friend; let’s move on. There’s nothing more to
see here.”
These well-intentioned ones would have been surprised had they known
how ripe the great jocular plot really was. “Yes, to-night,” Jopp had
said to the Peter’s party at the corner of Mixen Lane. “As a wind-up to
the Royal visit the hit will be all the more pat by reason of their
great elevation to-day.”
To him, at least, it was not a joke, but a retaliation.
XXXVIII.
The proceedings had been brief—too brief—to Lucetta whom an
intoxicating _Weltlust_ had fairly mastered; but they had brought her a
great triumph nevertheless. The shake of the Royal hand still lingered
in her fingers; and the chit-chat she had overheard, that her husband
might possibly receive the honour of knighthood, though idle to a
degree, seemed not the wildest vision; stranger things had occurred to
men so good and captivating as her Scotchman was.
After the collision with the Mayor, Henchard had withdrawn behind the
ladies’ stand; and there he stood, regarding with a stare of
abstraction the spot on the lapel of his coat where Farfrae’s hand had
seized it. He put his own hand there, as if he could hardly realize
such an outrage from one whom it had once been his wont to treat with
ardent generosity. While pausing in this half-stupefied state the
conversation of Lucetta with the other ladies reached his ears; and he
distinctly heard her deny him—deny that he had assisted Donald, that he
was anything more than a common journeyman.
He moved on homeward, and met Jopp in the archway to the Bull Stake.
“So you’ve had a snub,” said Jopp.
“And what if I have?” answered Henchard sternly.
“Why, I’ve had one too, so we are both under the same cold shade.” He
briefly related his attempt to win Lucetta’s intercession.
Henchard merely heard his story, without taking it deeply in. His own
relation to Farfrae and Lucetta overshadowed all kindred ones. He went
on saying brokenly to himself, “She has supplicated to me in her time;
and now her tongue won’t own me nor her eyes see me!... And he—how
angry he looked. He drove me back as if I were a bull breaking
fence.... I took it like a lamb, for I saw it could not be settled
there. He can rub brine on a green wound!... But he shall pay for it,
and she shall be sorry. It must come to a tussle—face to face; and then
we’ll see how a coxcomb can front a man!”
Without further reflection the fallen merchant, bent on some wild
purpose, ate a hasty dinner and went forth to find Farfrae. After being
injured by him as a rival, and snubbed by him as a journeyman, the
crowning degradation had been reserved for this day—that he should be
shaken at the collar by him as a vagabond in the face of the whole
town.
The crowds had dispersed. But for the green arches which still stood as
they were erected Casterbridge life had resumed its ordinary shape.
Henchard went down Corn Street till he came to Farfrae’s house, where
he knocked, and left a message that he would be glad to see his
employer at the granaries as soon as he conveniently could come there.
Having done this he proceeded round to the back and entered the yard.
Nobody was present, for, as he had been aware, the labourers and
carters were enjoying a half-holiday on account of the events of the
morning—though the carters would have to return for a short time later
on, to feed and litter down the horses. He had reached the granary
steps and was about to ascend, when he said to himself aloud, “I’m
stronger than he.”
Henchard returned to a shed, where he selected a short piece of rope
from several pieces that were lying about; hitching one end of this to
a nail, he took the other in his right hand and turned himself bodily
round, while keeping his arm against his side; by this contrivance he
pinioned the arm effectively. He now went up the ladders to the top
floor of the corn-stores.
It was empty except of a few sacks, and at the further end was the door
often mentioned, opening under the cathead and chain that hoisted the
sacks. He fixed the door open and looked over the sill. There was a
depth of thirty or forty feet to the ground; here was the spot on which
he had been standing with Farfrae when Elizabeth-Jane had seen him lift
his arm, with many misgivings as to what the movement portended.
He retired a few steps into the loft and waited. From this elevated
perch his eyes could sweep the roofs round about, the upper parts of
the luxurious chestnut trees, now delicate in leaves of a week’s age,
and the drooping boughs of the lines; Farfrae’s garden and the green
door leading therefrom. In course of time—he could not say how
long—that green door opened and Farfrae came through. He was dressed as
if for a journey. The low light of the nearing evening caught his head
and face when he emerged from the shadow of the wall, warming them to a
complexion of flame-colour. Henchard watched him with his mouth firmly
set, the squareness of his jaw and the verticality of his profile being
unduly marked.
Farfrae came on with one hand in his pocket, and humming a tune in a
way which told that the words were most in his mind. They were those of
the song he had sung when he arrived years before at the Three
Mariners, a poor young man, adventuring for life and fortune, and
scarcely knowing witherward:—
“And here’s a hand, my trusty fiere,
And gie’s a hand o’ thine.”
Nothing moved Henchard like an old melody. He sank back. “No; I can’t
do it!” he gasped. “Why does the infernal fool begin that now!”
At length Farfrae was silent, and Henchard looked out of the loft door.
“Will ye come up here?” he said.
“Ay, man,” said Farfrae. “I couldn’t see ye. What’s wrang?”
A minute later Henchard heard his feet on the lowest ladder. He heard
him land on the first floor, ascend and land on the second, begin the
ascent to the third. And then his head rose through the trap behind.
“What are you doing up here at this time?” he asked, coming forward.
“Why didn’t ye take your holiday like the rest of the men?” He spoke in
a tone which had just severity enough in it to show that he remembered
the untoward event of the forenoon, and his conviction that Henchard
had been drinking.
Henchard said nothing; but going back he closed the stair hatchway, and
stamped upon it so that it went tight into its frame; he next turned to
the wondering young man, who by this time observed that one of
Henchard’s arms was bound to his side.
“Now,” said Henchard quietly, “we stand face to face—man and man. Your
money and your fine wife no longer lift ’ee above me as they did but
now, and my poverty does not press me down.”
“What does it all mean?” asked Farfrae simply.
“Wait a bit, my lad. You should ha’ thought twice before you affronted
to extremes a man who had nothing to lose. I’ve stood your rivalry,
which ruined me, and your snubbing, which humbled me; but your
hustling, that disgraced me, I won’t stand!”
Farfrae warmed a little at this. “Ye’d no business there,” he said.
“As much as any one among ye! What, you forward stripling, tell a man
of my age he’d no business there!” The anger-vein swelled in his
forehead as he spoke.
“You insulted Royalty, Henchard; and ’twas my duty, as the chief
magistrate, to stop you.”
“Royalty be damned,” said Henchard. “I am as loyal as you, come to
that!”
“I am not here to argue. Wait till you cool doon, wait till you cool;
and you will see things the same way as I do.”
“You may be the one to cool first,” said Henchard grimly. “Now this is
the case. Here be we, in this four-square loft, to finish out that
little wrestle you began this morning. There’s the door, forty foot
above ground. One of us two puts the other out by that door—the master
stays inside. If he likes he may go down afterwards and give the alarm
that the other has fallen out by accident—or he may tell the
truth—that’s his business. As the strongest man I’ve tied one arm to
take no advantage of ’ee. D’ye understand? Then here’s at ’ee!”
There was no time for Farfrae to do aught but one thing, to close with
Henchard, for the latter had come on at once. It was a wrestling match,
the object of each being to give his antagonist a back fall; and on