The Mayor of Casterbridge
sunken from its plane, its gray rents held together here and there by a
leafy strap of ivy which could scarcely find substance enough for the
purpose. The rafters were sunken, and the thatch of the roof in ragged
holes. Leaves from the fence had been blown into the corners of the
doorway, and lay there undisturbed. The door was ajar; Farfrae knocked;
and he who stood before them was Whittle, as they had conjectured.
His face showed marks of deep sadness, his eyes lighting on them with
an unfocused gaze; and he still held in his hand the few sticks he had
been out to gather. As soon as he recognized them he started.
“What, Abel Whittle; is it that ye are heere?” said Farfrae.
“Ay, yes sir! You see he was kind-like to mother when she wer here
below, though ’a was rough to me.”
“Who are you talking of?”
“O sir—Mr. Henchet! Didn’t ye know it? He’s just gone—about
half-an-hour ago, by the sun; for I’ve got no watch to my name.”
“Not—dead?” faltered Elizabeth-Jane.
“Yes, ma’am, he’s gone! He was kind-like to mother when she wer here
below, sending her the best ship-coal, and hardly any ashes from it at
all; and taties, and such-like that were very needful to her. I seed en
go down street on the night of your worshipful’s wedding to the lady at
yer side, and I thought he looked low and faltering. And I followed en
over Grey’s Bridge, and he turned and zeed me, and said, ‘You go back!’
But I followed, and he turned again, and said, ‘Do you hear, sir? Go
back!’ But I zeed that he was low, and I followed on still. Then ’a
said, ‘Whittle, what do ye follow me for when I’ve told ye to go back
all these times?’ And I said, ‘Because, sir, I see things be bad with
’ee, and ye wer kind-like to mother if ye wer rough to me, and I would
fain be kind-like to you.’ Then he walked on, and I followed; and he
never complained at me no more. We walked on like that all night; and
in the blue o’ the morning, when ’twas hardly day, I looked ahead o’
me, and I zeed that he wambled, and could hardly drag along. By the
time we had got past here, but I had seen that this house was empty as
I went by, and I got him to come back; and I took down the boards from
the windows, and helped him inside. ‘What, Whittle,’ he said, ‘and can
ye really be such a poor fond fool as to care for such a wretch as I!’
Then I went on further, and some neighbourly woodmen lent me a bed, and
a chair, and a few other traps, and we brought ’em here, and made him
as comfortable as we could. But he didn’t gain strength, for you see,
ma’am, he couldn’t eat—no appetite at all—and he got weaker; and to-day
he died. One of the neighbours have gone to get a man to measure him.”
“Dear me—is that so!” said Farfrae.
As for Elizabeth, she said nothing.
“Upon the head of his bed he pinned a piece of paper, with some writing
upon it,” continued Abel Whittle. “But not being a man o’ letters, I
can’t read writing; so I don’t know what it is. I can get it and show
ye.”
They stood in silence while he ran into the cottage; returning in a
moment with a crumpled scrap of paper. On it there was pencilled as
follows:—
MICHAEL HENCHARD’S WILL.
“That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made to grieve
on account of me.
“& that I be not bury’d in consecrated ground.
“& that no sexton be asked to toll the bell.
“& that nobody is wished to see my dead body.
“& that no murners walk behind me at my funeral.
“& that no flours be planted on my grave.
“& that no man remember me.
“To this I put my name.
“MICHAEL HENCHARD.”
“What are we to do?” said Donald, when he had handed the paper to her.
She could not answer distinctly. “O Donald!” she cried at last through
her tears, “what bitterness lies there! O I would not have minded so
much if it had not been for my unkindness at that last parting!... But
there’s no altering—so it must be.”
What Henchard had written in the anguish of his dying was respected as
far as practicable by Elizabeth-Jane, though less from a sense of the
sacredness of last words, as such, than from her independent knowledge
that the man who wrote them meant what he said. She knew the directions
to be a piece of the same stuff that his whole life was made of, and
hence were not to be tampered with to give herself a mournful pleasure,
or her husband credit for large-heartedness.
All was over at last, even her regrets for having misunderstood him on
his last visit, for not having searched him out sooner, though these
were deep and sharp for a good while. From this time forward
Elizabeth-Jane found herself in a latitude of calm weather, kindly and
grateful in itself, and doubly so after the Capharnaum in which some of
her preceding years had been spent. As the lively and sparkling
emotions of her early married life cohered into an equable serenity,
the finer movements of her nature found scope in discovering to the
narrow-lived ones around her the secret (as she had once learnt it) of
making limited opportunities endurable; which she deemed to consist in
the cunning enlargement, by a species of microscopic treatment, of
those minute forms of satisfaction that offer themselves to everybody
not in positive pain; which, thus handled, have much of the same
inspiring effect upon life as wider interests cursorily embraced.
Her teaching had a reflex action upon herself, insomuch that she
thought she could perceive no great personal difference between being
respected in the nether parts of Casterbridge and glorified at the
uppermost end of the social world. Her position was, indeed, to a
marked degree one that, in the common phrase, afforded much to be
thankful for. That she was not demonstratively thankful was no fault of
hers. Her experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or
wrongly, that the doubtful honour of a brief transit through a sorry
world hardly called for effusiveness, even when the path was suddenly
irradiated at some half-way point by daybeams rich as hers. But her
strong sense that neither she nor any human being deserved less than
was given, did not blind her to the fact that there were others
receiving less who had deserved much more. And in being forced to class
herself among the fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the
persistence of the unforeseen, when the one to whom such unbroken
tranquility had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth
had seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a
general drama of pain.