The Mayor of Casterbridge ................................................................................................................................1

Thomas Hardy ..........................................................................................................................................1

One evening of late summer, before the nineteenth century had reached onethird of its span, a young man

and woman, the latter carrying a child, were approaching the large village of WeydonPriors, in Upper

Wessex, on foot. They were plainly but not ill clad, though the thick hoar of dust which had accumulated on

their shoes and garments from an obviously long journey lent a disadvantageous shabbiness to their

The man was of fine figure, swarthy, and stern in aspect; and he showed in profile a facial angle so slightly

inclined as to be almost perpendicular. He wore a short jacket of brown corduroy, newer than the remainder

of his suit, which was a fustian waistcoat with white horn buttons, breeches of the same, tanned leggings, and

a straw hat overlaid with black glazed canvas. At his back he carried by a looped strap a rush basket, from

which protruded at one end the crutch of a hayknife, a wimble for haybonds being also visible in the

aperture. His measured, springless walk was the walk of the skilled countryman as distinct from the desultory

shamble of the general labourer; while in the turn and plant of each foot there was, further, a dogged and

cynical indifference personal to himself, showing its presence even in the regularly interchanging fustian

What was really peculiar, however, in this couple's progress, and would have attracted the attention of any

casual observer otherwise disposed to overlook them, was the perfect silence they preserved. They walked

side by side in such a way as to suggest afar off the low, easy, confidential chat of people full of reciprocity;

but on closer view it could be discerned that the man was reading, or pretending to read, a ballad sheet which

he kept before his eyes with some difficulty by the hand that was passed through the basket strap. Whether

this apparent cause were the real cause, or whether it were an assumed one to escape an intercourse that

would have been irksome to him, nobody but himself could have said precisely; but his taciturnity was

unbroken, and the woman enjoyed no society whatever from his presence. Virtually she walked the highway

alone, save for the child she bore. Sometimes the man's bent elbow almost touched her shoulder, for she kept

as close to his side as was possible without actual contact, but she seemed to have no idea of taking his arm,

nor he of offering it; and far from exhibiting surprise at his ignoring silence she appeared to receive it as a

natural thing. If any word at all were uttered by the little group, it was an occasional whisper of the woman to

the childa tiny girl in short clothes and blue boots of knitted yarnand the murmured babble of the child

The chiefalmost the onlyattraction of the young woman's face was its mobility. When she looked down

sideways to the girl she became pretty, and even handsome, particularly that in the action her features caught

slantwise the rays of the strongly coloured sun, which made transparencies of her eyelids and nostrils and set

fire on her lips. When she plodded on in the shade of the hedge, silently thinking, she had the hard,

halfapathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of Time and Chance except,

perhaps, fair play. The first phase was the work of Nature, the second probably of civilization.

That the man and woman were husband and wife, and the parents of the girl in arms there could be little

doubt. No other than such relationship would have accounted for the atmosphere of stale familiarity which

The wife mostly kept her eyes fixed ahead, though with little interestthe scene for that matter being one

that might have been matched at almost any spot in any county in England at this time of the year; a road

neither straight nor crooked, neither level nor hilly, bordered by hedges, trees, and other vegetation, which

had entered the blackenedgreen stage of colour that the doomed leaves pass through on their way to dingy,

and yellow, and red. The grassy margin of the bank, and the nearest hedgerow boughs, were powdered by the

dust that had been stirred over them by hasty vehicles, the same dust as it lay on the road deadening their

footfalls like a carpet; and this, with the aforesaid total absence of conversation, allowed every extraneous

For a long time there was none, beyond the voice of a weak bird singing a trite old evening song that might

doubtless have been heard on the hill at the same hour, and with the selfsame trills, quavers, and breves, at

any sunset of that season for centuries untold. But as they approached the village sundry distant shouts and

rattles reached their ears from some elevated spot in that direction, as yet screened from view by foliage.

When the outlying houses of Weydon Priors could just be described, the family group was met by a

turniphoer with his hoe on his shoulder, and his dinner bag suspended from it. The reader promptly

"Any trade doing here?" he asked phlegmatically, designating the village in his van by a wave of the

broadsheet. And thinking the labourer did not understand him, he added, "Anything in the haytrussing line?"

The turniphoer had already begun shaking his head. "Why, save the man, what wisdom's in him that 'a

"Then is there any house to leta little small new cottage just a builded, or such like?" asked the other.

The pessimist still maintained a negative. "Pulling down is more the nater of Weydon. There were five

houses cleared away last year, and three this; and the volk nowhere to go no, not so much as a thatched

The haytrusser, which he obviously was, nodded with some superciliousness. Looking towards the village,

"Ay. 'Tis Fair Day. Though what you hear now is little more than the clatter and scurry of getting away the

money o' children and fools, for the real business is done earlier than this. I've been working within sound o't

The trusser and his family proceeded on their way, and soon entered the Fairfield, which showed

standingplaces and pens where many hundreds of horses and sheep had been exhibited and sold in the

forenoon, but were now in great part taken away. At present, as their informant had observed, but little real

business remained on hand, the chief being the sale by auction of a few inferior animals, that could not

otherwise be disposed of, and had been absolutely refused by the better class of traders, who came and went

early. Yet the crowd was denser now than during the morning hours, the frivolous contingent of visitors,

including journeymen out for a holiday, a stray soldier or two come on furlough, village shopkeepers, and the

like, having latterly flocked in; persons whose activities found a congenial field among the peepshows,

toystands, waxworks, inspired monsters, disinterested medical men who travelled for the public good,

Neither of our pedestrians had much heart for these things, and they looked around for a refreshment tent

among the many which dotted the down. Two, which stood nearest to them in the ochreous haze of expiring

sunlight, seemed almost equally inviting. One was formed of new, milkhued canvas, and bore red flags on

its summit; it announced "Good Home brewed Beer, Ale, and Cyder." The other was less new; a little iron

stovepipe came out of it at the back and in front appeared the placard, "Good Furmity Sold Hear." The man

"Nonothe other one," said the woman. "I always like furmity; and so does ElizabethJane; and so will

"I've never tasted it," said the man. However, he gave way to her representations, and they entered the

A rather numerous company appeared within, seated at the long narrow tables that ran down the tent on each

side. At the upper end stood a stove, containing a charcoal fire, over which hung a large threelegged crock,

sufficiently polished round the rim to show that it was made of bell metal. A haggish creature of about fifty

presided, in a white apron, which as it threw an air of respectability over her as far as it extended, was made

so wide as to reach nearly round her waist. She slowly stirred the contents of the pot. The dull scrape of her

large spoon was audible throughout the tent as she thus kept from burning the mixture of corn in the grain,

flour, milk, raisins, currants, and what not, that composed the antiquated slop in which she dealt. Vessels

holding the separate ingredients stood on a whiteclothed table of boards and trestles close by.

The young man and woman ordered a basin each of the mixture, steaming hot, and sat down to consume it at

leisure. This was very well so far, for furmity, as the woman had said, was nourishing, and as proper a food

as could be obtained within the four seas; though, to those not accustomed to it, the grains of wheat swollen

as large as lemonpips, which floated on its surface, might have a deterrent effect at first.

But there was more in that tent than met the cursory glance; and the man, with the instinct of a perverse

character, scented it quickly. After a mincing attack on his bowl, he watched the hag's proceedings from the

corner of his eye, and saw the game she played. He winked to her, and passed up his basin in reply to her

nod; when she took a bottle from under the table, slily measured out a quantity of its contents, and tipped the

same into the man's furmity. The liquor poured in was rum. The man as slily sent back money in payment.

He found the concoction, thus strongly laced, much more to his satisfaction than it had been in its natural

state. His wife had observed the proceeding with much uneasiness; but he persuaded her to have hers laced

The man finished his basin, and called for another, the rum being signalled for in yet stronger proportion. The

effect of it was soon apparent in his manner, and his wife but too sadly perceived that in strenuously steering

off the rocks of the licensed liquortent she had only got into maelstrom depths here amongst the smugglers.

The child began to prattle impatiently, and the wife more than once said to her husband, "Michael, how about

But he turned a deaf ear to those birdlike chirpings. He talked loud to the company. The child's black eyes,

after slow, round, ruminating gazes at the candles when they were lighted, fell together; then they opened,

At the end of the first basin the man had risen to serenity; at the second he was jovial; at the third,

argumentative, at the fourth, the qualities signified by the shape of his face, the occasional clench of his

mouth, and the fiery spark of his dark eye, began to tell in his conduct; he was overbearingeven brilliantly

The conversation took a high turn, as it often does on such occasions. The ruin of good men by bad wives,

and, more particularly, the frustration of many a promising youth's high aims and hopes and the extinction of

"I did for myself that way thoroughly," said the trusser with a contemplative bitterness that was wellnight

resentful. "I married at eighteen, like the fool that I was; and this is the consequence o't." He pointed at

himself and family with a wave of the hand intended to bring out the penuriousness of the exhibition.

The young woman his wife, who seemed accustomed to such remarks, acted as if she did not hear them, and

continued her intermittent private words of tender trifles to the sleeping and waking child, who was just big

enough to be placed for a moment on the bench beside her when she wished to ease her arms. The man

"I haven't more than fifteen shillings in the world, and yet I am a good experienced hand in my line. I'd

challenge England to beat me in the fodder business; and if I were a free man again I'd be worth a thousand

pound before I'd done o't. But a fellow never knows these little things till all chance of acting upon 'em is

The auctioneer selling the old horses in the field outside could be heard saying, "Now this is the last

lotnow who'll take the last lot for a song? Shall I say forty shillings? 'Tis a very promising broodmare, a

trifle over five years old, and nothing the matter with the hoss at all, except that she's a little holler in the back

and had her left eye knocked out by the kick of another, her own sister, coming along the road."

"For my part I don't see why men who have got wives and don't want 'em, shouldn't get rid of 'em as these

gipsy fellows do their old horses," said the man in the tent. "Why shouldn't they put 'em up and sell 'em by

auction to men who are in need of such articles? Hey? Why, begad, I'd sell mine this minute if anybody

"There's them that would do that," some of the guests replied, looking at the woman, who was by no means

"True," said a smoking gentleman, whose coat had the fine polish about the collar, elbows, seams, and

shoulderblades that longcontinued friction with grimy surfaces will produce, and which is usually more

desired on furniture than on clothes. From his appearance he had possibly been in former time groom or

coachman to some neighbouring county family. "I've had my breedings in as good circles, I may say, as any

man," he added, "and I know true cultivation, or nobody do; and I can declare she's got itin the bone, mind

ye, I sayas much as any female in the fairthough it may want a little bringing out." Then, crossing his

The fuddled young husband stared for a few seconds at this unexpected praise of his wife, half in doubt of the

wisdom of his own attitude towards the possessor of such qualities. But he speedily lapsed into his former

"Well, then, now is your chance; I am open to an offer for this gem o' creation."

She turned to her husband and murmured, "Michael, you have talked this nonsense in public places before. A

At the moment a swallow, one among the last of the season, which had by chance found its way through an

opening into the upper part of the tent, flew to and from quick curves above their heads, causing all eyes to

follow it absently. In watching the bird till it made its escape the assembled company neglected to respond to

But a quarter of an hour later the man, who had gone on lacing his furmity more and more heavily, though he

was either so strongminded or such an intrepid toper that he still appeared fairly sober, recurred to the old

strain, as in a musical fantasy the instrument fetches up the original theme. "HereI am waiting to know

The company had by this time decidedly degenerated, and the renewed inquiry was received with a laugh of

appreciation. The woman whispered; she was imploring and anxious: "Come, come, it is getting dark, and

She waited and waited; yet he did not move. In ten minutes the man broke in upon the desultory conversation

of the furmity drinkers with. "I asked this question, and nobody answered to 't. Will any Jack Rag or Tom

The woman's manner changed, and her face assumed the grim shape and colour of which mention has been

"I wish somebody would," said she firmly. "Her present owner is not at all to her liking!"

"Nor you to mine," said he. "So we are agreed about that. Gentlemen, you hear? It's an agreement to part. She

shall take the girl if she wants to, and go her ways. I'll take my tools, and go my ways. 'Tis simple as

"Don't, my chiel," whispered a buxom staylace dealer in voluminous petticoats, who sat near the woman; "yer

The woman, however, did stand up. "Now, who's auctioneer?" cried the haytrusser.

"I be," promptly answered a short man, with a nose resembling a copper knob, a damp voice, and eyes like

The woman looked on the ground, as if she maintained her position by a supreme effort of will.

"Behave yerself moral, good man, for Heaven's love! Ah, what a cruelty is the poor soul married to! Bed and

"If they don't take her for that, in ten seconds they'll have to give more," said the husband. "Very well. Now

"No bid?" said the husband. "Good Lord, why she's cost me fifty times the money, if a penny. Go on."

"I'll tell ye whatI won't sell her for less than five," said the husband, bringing down his fist so that the

basins danced. "I'll sell her for five guineas to any man that will pay me the money, and treat her well; and he

shall have her for ever, and never hear aught o' me. But she shan't go for less. Now thenfive guineasand

"Five guineas," said the auctioneer, "or she'll be withdrawn. Do anybody give it? The last time. Yes or no?"

All eyes were turned. Standing in the triangular opening which formed the door of the tent was a sailor, who,

unobserved by the rest, had arrived there within the last two or three minutes. A dead silence followed his

The sailor hesitated a moment, looked anew at the woman, came in, unfolded five crisp pieces of paper, and

threw them down upon the tablecloth. They were BankofEngland notes for five pounds. Upon the face of

The sight of real money in full amount, in answer to a challenge for the same till then deemed slightly

hypothetical had a great effect upon the spectators. Their eyes became riveted upon the faces of the chief

actors, and then upon the notes as they lay, weighted by the shillings, on the table.

Up to this moment it could not positively have been asserted that the man, in spite of his tantalizing

declaration, was really in earnest. The spectators had indeed taken the proceedings throughout as a piece of

mirthful irony carried to extremes; and had assumed that, being out of work, he was, as a consequence, out of

temper with the world, and society, and his nearest kin. But with the demand and response of real cash the

jovial frivolity of the scene departed. A lurid colour seemed to fill the tent, and change the aspect of all

therein. The mirthwrinkles left the listeners' faces, and they waited with parting lips.

"Now," said the woman, breaking the silence, so that her low dry voice sounded quite loud, "before you go

further, Michael, listen to me. If you touch that money, I and this girl go with the man. Mind, it is a joke no

"A joke? Of course it is not a joke!" shouted her husband, his resentment rising at her suggestion. "I take the

money; the sailor takes you. That's plain enough. It has been done elsewhereand why not here?"

"'Tis quite on the understanding that the young woman is willing," said the sailor blandly. "I wouldn't hurt her

"Faith, nor I," said her husband. "But she is willing, provided she can have the child. She said so only the

"I do," said she, after glancing at her husband's face and seeing no repentance there.

"Very well, she shall have the child, and the bargain's complete," said the trusser. He took the sailor's notes

and deliberately folded them, and put them with the shillings in a high remote pocket, with an air of finality.

The sailor looked at the woman and smiled. "Come along!" he said kindly. "The little one toothe more the

merrier!" She paused for an instant, with a close glance at him. Then dropping her eyes again, and saying

nothing, she took up the child and followed him as he made towards the door. On reaching it, she turned, and

pulling off her weddingring, flung it across the booth in the haytrusser's face.

"Mike," she said, "I've lived with thee a couple of years, and had nothing but temper! Now I'm no more to 'ee;

I'll try my luck elsewhere. 'Twill be better for me and Elizabeth Jane, both. So goodbye!"

Seizing the sailor's arm with her right hand, and mounting the little girl on her left, she went out of the tent

A stolid look of concern filled the husband's face, as if, after all, he had not quite anticipated this ending; and

He rose and walked to the entrance with the careful tread of one conscious of his alcoholic load. Some others

followed, and they stood looking into the twilight. The difference between the peacefulness of inferior nature

and the wilful hostilities of mankind was very apparent at this place. In contrast with the harshness of the act

just ended within the tent was the sight of several horses crossing their necks and rubbing each other lovingly

as they waited in patience to be harnessed for the homeward journey. Outside the fair, in the valleys and

woods, all was quiet. The sun had recently set, and the west heaven was hung with rosy cloud, which seemed

permanent, yet slowly changed. To watch it was like looking at some grand feat of stagery from a darkened

auditorium. In presence of this scene after the other there was a natural instinct to abjure man as the blot on

an otherwise kindly universe; till it was remembered that all terrestrial conditions were intermittent, and that

mankind might some night be innocently sleeping when these quiet objects were raging loud.

"Where do the sailor live?" asked a spectator, when they had vainly gazed around.

"God knows that," replied the man who had seen high life. "He's without doubt a stranger here."

"He came in about five minutes ago," said the furmity woman, joining the rest with her hands on her hips.

"And then 'a stepped back, and then 'a looked in again. I'm not a penny the better for him."

"Serves the husband well beright," said the staylace vendor. "A comely respectable body like herwhat

can a man want more? I glory in the woman's sperrit. I'd ha' done it myselfod send if I wouldn't, if a

husband had behaved so to me! I'd go, and 'a might call, and call, till his keacorn was raw; but I'd never come

"Well, the woman will be better off," said another of a more deliberative turn. "For seafaring natures be very

good shelter for shorn lambs, and the man do seem to have plenty of money, which is what she's not been

"Mark meI'll not go after her!" said the trusser, returning doggedly to his seat. "Let her go! If she's up to

such vagaries she must suffer for 'em. She'd no business to take the maid'tis my maid; and if it were the

Perhaps from some little sense of having countenanced an indefensible proceeding, perhaps because it was

late, the customers thinned away from the tent shortly after this episode. The man stretched his elbows

forward on the table leant his face upon his arms, and soon began to snore. The furmity seller decided to

close for the night, and after seeing the rumbottles, milk, corn, raisins, etc., that remained on hand, loaded

into the cart, came to where the man reclined. She shook him, but could not wake him. As the tent was not to

be struck that night, the fair continuing for two or three days, she decided to let the sleeper, who was

obviously no tramp, stay where he was, and his basket with him. Extinguishing the last candle, and lowering

The morning sun was streaming through the crevices of the canvas when the man awoke. A warm glow

pervaded the whole atmosphere of the marquee, and a single big blue fly buzzed musically round and round

it. Besides the buzz of the fly there was not a sound. He looked aboutat the benchesat the table

supported by trestlesat his basket of toolsat the stove where the furmity had been boiledat the empty

basinsat some shed grains of wheatat the corks which dotted the grassy floor. Among the odds and ends

A confused picture of the events of the previous evening seemed to come back to him, and he thrust his hand

into his breastpocket. A rustling revealed the sailor's banknotes thrust carelessly in.

This second verification of his dim memories was enough; he knew now they were not dreams. He remained

seated, looking on the ground for some time. "I must get out of this as soon as I can," he said deliberately at

last, with the air of one who could not catch his thoughts without pronouncing them. "She's goneto be sure

she isgone with that sailor who bought her, and little ElizabethJane. We walked here, and I had the

furmity, and rum in itand sold her. Yes, that's what's happened and here am I. Now, what am I to do am

I sober enough to walk, I wonder?" He stood up, found that he was in fairly good condition for progress,

unencumbered. Next he shouldered his tool basket, and found he could carry it. Then lifting the tent door he

Here the man looked around with gloomy curiosity. The freshness of the September morning inspired and

braced him as he stood. He and his family had been weary when they arrived the night before, and they had

observed but little of the place; so that he now beheld it as a new thing. It exhibited itself as the top of an

open down, bounded on one extreme by a plantation, and approached by a winding road. At the bottom stood

the village which lent its name to the upland and the annual fair that was held thereon. The spot stretched

downward into valleys, and onward to other uplands, dotted with barrows, and trenched with the remains of

prehistoric forts. The whole scene lay under the rays of a newly risen sun, which had not as yet dried a single

blade of the heavily dewed grass, whereon the shadows of the yellow and red vans were projected far away,

those thrown by the felloe of each wheel being elongated in shape to the orbit of a comet. All the gipsies and

showmen who had remained on the ground lay snug within their carts and tents or wrapped in horsecloths

under them, and were silent and still as death, with the exception of an occasional snore that revealed their

presence. But the Seven Sleepers had a dog; and dogs of the mysterious breeds that vagrants own, that are as

much like cats as dogs and as much like foxes as cats also lay about here. A little one started up under one of

the carts, barked as a matter of principle, and quickly lay down again. He was the only positive spectator of

This seemed to accord with his desire. He went on in silent thought, unheeding the yellowhammers which

flitted about the hedges with straws in their bills, the crowns of the mushrooms, and the tinkling of local

sheepbells, whose wearer had had the good fortune not to be included in the fair. When he reached a lane, a

good mile from the scene of the previous evening, the man pitched his basket and leant upon a gate. A

"Did I tell my name to anybody last night, or didn't I tell my name?" he said to himself; and at last concluded

that he did not. His general demeanour was enough to show how he was surprised and nettled that his wife

had taken him so literallyas much could be seen in his face, and in the way he nibbled a straw which he

pulled from the hedge. He knew that she must have been somewhat excited to do this; moreover, she must

have believed that there was some sort of binding force in the transaction. On this latter point he felt almost

certain, knowing her freedom from levity of character, and the extreme simplicity of her intellect. There may,

too, have been enough recklessness and resentment beneath her ordinary placidity to make her stifle any

momentary doubts. On a previous occasion when he had declared during a fuddle that he would dispose of

her as he had done, she had replied that she would not hear him say that many times more before it happened,

in the resigned tones of a fatalist...."Yet she knows I am not in my senses when I do that!" he exclaimed.

"Well, I must walk about till I find her....Seize her, why didn't she know better than bring me into this

disgrace!" he roared out. "She wasn't queer if I was. 'Tis like Susan to show such idiotic simplicity.

When he was calmer he turned to his original conviction that he must somehow find her and his little

ElizabethJane, and put up with the shame as best he could. It was of his own making, and he ought to bear

it. But first he resolved to register an oath, a greater oath than he had ever sworn before: and to do it properly

he required a fit place and imagery; for there was something fetichistic in this man's beliefs.

He shouldered his basket and moved on, casting his eyes inquisitively round upon the landscape as he

walked, and at the distance of three or four miles perceived the roofs of a village and the tower of a church.

He instantly made towards the latter object. The village was quite still, it being that motionless hour of rustic

daily life which fills the interval between the departure of the fieldlabourers to their work, and the rising of

their wives and daughters to prepare the breakfast for their return. Hence he reached the church without

observation, and the door being only latched he entered. The haytrusser deposited his basket by the font,

went up the nave till he reached the altarrails, and opening the gate entered the sacrarium, where he seemed

to feel a sense of the strangeness for a moment; then he knelt upon the footpace. Dropping his head upon the

"I, Michael Henchard, on this morning of the sixteenth of September, do take an oath before God here in this

solemn place that I will avoid all strong liquors for the space of twentyone years to come, being a year for

every year that I have lived. And this I swear upon the book before me; and may I be strook dumb, blind, and

When he had said it and kissed the big book, the haytrusser arose, and seemed relieved at having made a

start in a new direction. While standing in the porch a moment he saw a thick jet of wood smoke suddenly

start up from the red chimney of a cottage near, and knew that the occupant had just lit her fire. He went

round to the door, and the housewife agreed to prepare him some breakfast for a trifling payment, which was

The perplexing nature of the undertaking became apparent soon enough. Though he examined and inquired,

and walked hither and thither day after day, no such characters as those he described had anywhere been seen

since the evening of the fair. To add to the difficulty he could gain no sound of the sailor's name. As money

was short with him he decided, after some hesitation, to spend the sailor's money in the prosecution of this

search; but it was equally in vain. The truth was that a certain shyness of revealing his conduct prevented

Michael Henchard from following up the investigation with the loud hueandcry such a pursuit demanded

to render it effectual; and it was probably for this reason that he obtained no clue, though everything was

done by him that did not involve an explanation of the circumstances under which he had lost her.

Weeks counted up to months, and still he searched on, maintaining himself by small jobs of work in the

intervals. By this time he had arrived at a seaport, and there he derived intelligence that persons answering

somewhat to his description had emigrated a little time before. Then he said he would search no longer, and

that he would go and settle in the district which he had had for some time in his mind.

Next day he started, journeying southwestward, and did not pause, except for nights' lodgings, till he

The highroad into the village of WeydonPriors was again carpeted with dust. The trees had put on as of yore

their aspect of dingy green, and where the Henchard family of three had once walked along, two persons not

The scene in its broad aspect had so much of its previous character, even to the voices and rattle from the

neighbouring village down, that it might for that matter have been the afternoon following the previously

recorded episode. Change was only to be observed in details; but here it was obvious that a long procession

of years had passed by. One of the two who walked the road was she who had figured as the young wife of

Henchard on the previous occasion; now her face had lost much of its rotundity; her skin had undergone a

textural change; and though her hair had not lost colour it was considerably thinner than heretofore. She was

dressed in the mourning clothes of a widow. Her companion, also in black, appeared as a well formed

young woman about eighteen, completely possessed of that ephemeral precious essence youth, which is itself

A glance was sufficient to inform the eye that this was Susan Henchard's grownup daughter. While life's

middle summer had set its hardening mark on the mother's face, her former springlike specialities were

transferred so dexterously by Time to the second figure, her child, that the absence of certain facts within her

mother's knowledge from the girl's mind would have seemed for the moment, to one reflecting on those facts,

They walked with joined hands, and it could be perceived that this was the act of simple affection. The

daughter carried in her outer hand a withy basket of oldfashioned make; the mother a blue bundle, which

Reaching the outskirts of the village they pursued the same track as formerly, and ascended to the fair. Here,

too it was evident that the years had told. Certain mechanical improvements might have been noticed in the

roundabouts and highfliers, machines for testing rustic strength and weight, and in the erections devoted to

shooting for nuts. But the real business of the fair had considerably dwindled. The new periodical great

markets of neighbouring towns were beginning to interfere seriously with the trade carried on here for

centuries. The pens for sheep, the tieropes for horses, were about half as long as they had been. The stalls of

tailors, hosiers, coopers, linendrapers, and other such trades had almost disappeared, and the vehicles were

far less numerous. The mother and daughter threaded the crowd for some little distance, and then stood still.

"Why did we hinder our time by coming in here? I thought you wished to get onward?" said the maiden.

"Yes, my dear ElizabethJane," explained the other. "But I had a fancy for looking up here."

"First met with father here? Yes, you have told me so before. And now he's drowned and gone from us!" As

she spoke the girl drew a card from her pocket and looked at it with a sigh. It was edged with black, and

inscribed within a design resembling a mural tablet were the words, "In affectionate memory of Richard

Newson, mariner, who was unfortunately lost at sea, in the month of November 184, aged fortyone

"And it was here," continued her mother, with more hesitation, "that I last saw the relation we are going to

"He is, or wasfor he may be deada connection by marriage," said her mother deliberately.

"That's exactly what you have said a score of times before!" replied the young woman, looking about her

Mrs. Henchard paused for a moment, and answered uneasily, "Of course not, ElizabethJane. But come this

"It is not much use inquiring here for anybody, I should think," the daughter observed, as she gazed round

about. "People at fairs change like the leaves of trees; and I daresay you are the only one here today who

"I am not so sure of that," said Mrs. Newson, as she now called herself, keenly eyeing something under a

The daughter looked in the direction signified. The object pointed out was a tripod of sticks stuck into the

earth, from which hung a threelegged crock, kept hot by a smouldering wood fire beneath. Over the pot

stooped an old woman haggard, wrinkled, and almost in rags. She stirred the contents of the pot with a large

It was indeed the former mistress of the furmity tentonce thriving, cleanly, whiteaproned, and chinking

with money now tentless, dirty, owning no tables or benches, and having scarce any customers except two

small whitybrown boys, who came up and asked for "A ha'p'orth, pleasegood measure," which she served

"She was here at that time," resumed Mrs. Newson, making a step as if to draw nearer.

The girl was not loth, and turned to some stalls of coloured prints while her mother went forward. The old

woman begged for the latter's custom as soon as she saw her, and responded to Mrs. HenchardNewson's

request for a penny worth with more alacrity than she had shown in selling six pennyworths in her younger

days. When the soidisant widow had taken the basin of thin poor slop that stood for the rich concoction of

the former time, the hag opened a little basket behind the fire, and looking up slily, whispered, "Just a thought

o' rum in it?smuggled, you knowsay two penn'orth'twill make it slip down like cordial!"

Her customer smiled bitterly at this survival of the old trick, and shook her head with a meaning the old

woman was far from translating. She pretended to eat a little of the furmity with the leaden spoon offered,

"Ah, ma'amwell ye may say it!" responded the old woman, opening the sluices of her heart forthwith. "I've

stood in this fairground, maid, wife, and widow, these nineand thirty years, and in that time have known

what it was to do business with the richest stomachs in the land! Ma'am you'd hardly believe that I was once

the owner of a great paviliontent that was the attraction of the fair. Nobody could come, nobody could go,

without having a dish of Mrs. Goodenough's furmity. I knew the clergy's taste, the dandy gent's taste; I knew

the town's taste, the country's taste. I even knowed the taste of the coarse shameless females. But Lord's my

lifethe world's no memory; straightforward dealings don't bring profit'tis the sly and the underhand that

Mrs. Newson glanced roundher daughter was still bending over the distant stalls. "Can you call to mind,"

she said cautiously to the old woman, "the sale of a wife by her husband in your tent eighteen years ago

The hag reflected, and half shook her head. "If it had been a big thing I should have minded it in a moment,"

she said. "I can mind every serious fight o' married parties, every murder, every manslaughter, even every

pocketpicking leastwise large onesthat 't has been my lot to witness. But a selling? Was it done

The furmity woman half shook her head again. "And yet," she said, "I do. At any rate, I can mind a man

doing something o' the sorta man in a cord jacket, with a basket of tools; but, Lord bless ye, we don't gi'e it

headroom, we don't, such as that. The only reason why I can mind the man is that he came back here to the

next year's fair, and told me quite privatelike that if a woman ever asked for him I was to say he had gone

towhere?Casterbridgeyesto Casterbridge, said he. But, Lord's my life, I shouldn't ha' thought of it

Mrs. Newson would have rewarded the old woman as far as her small means afforded had she not discreetly

borne in mind that it was by that unscrupulous person's liquor her husband had been degraded. She briefly

thanked her informant, and rejoined Elizabeth, who greeted her with, "Mother, do let's get onit was hardly

"I have learned what I wanted, however," said her mother quietly. "The last time our relative visited this fair

he said he was living at Casterbridge. It is a long, long way from here, and it was many years ago that he said

With this they descended out of the fair, and went onward to the village, where they obtained a night's

Henchard's wife acted for the best, but she had involved herself in difficulties. A hundred times she had been

upon the point of telling her daughter ElizabethJane the true story of her life, the tragical crisis of which had

been the transaction at Weydon Fair, when she was not much older than the girl now beside her. But she had

refrained. An innocent maiden had thus grown up in the belief that the relations between the genial sailor and

her mother were the ordinary ones that they had always appeared to be. The risk of endangering a child's

strong affection by disturbing ideas which had grown with her growth was to Mrs. Henchard too fearful a

thing to contemplate. It had seemed, indeed folly to think of making ElizabethJane wise.

But Susan Henchard's fear of losing her dearly loved daughter's heart by a revelation had little to do with any

sense of wrongdoing on her own part. Her simplicitythe original ground of Henchard's contempt for

herhad allowed her to live on in the conviction that Newson had acquired a morally real and justifiable

right to her by his purchase though the exact bearings and legal limits of that right were vague. It may

seem strange to sophisticated minds that a sane young matron could believe in the seriousness of such a

transfer; and were there not numerous other instances of the same belief the thing might scarcely be credited.

But she was by no means the first or last peasant woman who had religiously adhered to her purchaser, as too

The history of Susan Henchard's adventures in the interim can be told in two or three sentences. Absolutely

helpless she had been taken off to Canada where they had lived several years without any great worldly

success, though she worked as hard as any woman could to keep their cottage cheerful and wellprovided.

When ElizabethJane was about twelve years old the three returned to England, and settled at Falmouth,

where Newson made a living for a few years as boatman and general handy shoreman.

He then engaged in the Newfoundland trade, and it was during this period that Susan had an awakening. A

friend to whom she confided her history ridiculed her grave acceptance of her position; and all was over with

her peace of mind. When Newson came home at the end of one winter he saw that the delusion he had so

There was then a time of sadness, in which she told him her doubts if she could live with him longer. Newson

left home again on the Newfoundland trade when the season came round. The vague news of his loss at sea a

little later on solved a problem which had become torture to her meek conscience. She saw him no more.

Of Henchard they heard nothing. To the liege subjects of Labour, the England of those days was a continent,

ElizabethJane developed early into womanliness. One day a month or so after receiving intelligence of

Newson's death off the Bank of Newfoundland, when the girl was about eighteen, she was sitting on a willow

chair in the cottage they still occupied, working twine nets for the fishermen. Her mother was in a back

corner of the same room engaged in the same labour, and dropping the heavy wood needle she was filling she

surveyed her daughter thoughtfully. The sun shone in at the door upon the young woman's head and hair,

which was worn loose, so that the rays streamed into its depths as into a hazel copse. Her face, though

somewhat wan and incomplete, possessed the raw materials of beauty in a promising degree. There was an

underhandsomeness in it, struggling to reveal itself through the provisional curves of immaturity, and the

casual disfigurements that resulted from the straitened circumstances of their lives. She was handsome in the

bone, hardly as yet handsome in the flesh. She possibly might never be fully handsome, unless the carking

accidents of her daily existence could be evaded before the mobile parts of her countenance had settled to

The sight of the girl made her mother sadnot vaguely but by logical inference. They both were still in that

strait waistcoat of poverty from which she had tried so many times to be delivered for the girl's sake. The

woman had long perceived how zealously and constantly the young mind of her companion was struggling

for enlargement; and yet now, in her eighteenth year, it still remained but little unfolded. The desiresober

and repressedof ElizabethJane's heart was indeed to see, to hear, and to understand. How could she

become a woman of wider knowledge, higher repute "better," as she termed itthis was her constant

inquiry of her mother. She sought further into things than other girls in her position ever did, and her mother

The sailor, drowned or no, was probably now lost to them; and Susan's staunch, religious adherence to him as

her husband in principle, till her views had been disturbed by enlightenment, was demanded no more. She

asked herself whether the present moment, now that she was a free woman again, were not as opportune a

one as she would find in a world where everything had been so inopportune, for making a desperate effort to

advance Elizabeth. To pocket her pride and search for the first husband seemed, wisely or not, the best

initiatory step. He had possibly drunk himself into his tomb. But he might, on the other hand, have had too

much sense to do so; for in her time with him he had been given to bouts only, and was not a habitual

At any rate, the propriety of returning to him, if he lived, was unquestionable. The awkwardness of searching

for him lay in enlightening Elizabeth, a proceeding which her mother could not endure to contemplate. She

finally resolved to undertake the search without confiding to the girl her former relations with Henchard,

leaving it to him if they found him to take what steps he might choose to that end. This will account for their

conversation at the fair and the halfinformed state at which Elizabeth was led onward.

In this attitude they proceeded on their journey, trusting solely to the dim light afforded of Henchard's

whereabouts by the furmity woman. The strictest economy was indispensable. Sometimes they might have

been seen on foot, sometimes on farmers' waggons, sometimes in carriers' vans; and thus they drew near to

Casterbridge. ElizabethJane discovered to her alarm that her mother's health was not what it once had been,

and there was ever and anon in her talk that renunciatory tone which showed that, but for the girl, she would

It was on a Friday evening, near the middle of September and just before dusk, that they reached the summit

of a hill within a mile of the place they sought. There were high banked hedges to the coachroad here, and

they mounted upon the green turf within, and sat down. The spot commanded a full view of the town and its

"What an oldfashioned place it seems to be!" said ElizabethJane, while her silent mother mused on other

things than topography. "It is huddled all together; and it is shut in by a square wall of trees, like a plot of

Its squareness was, indeed, the characteristic which most struck the eye in this antiquated borough, the

borough of Casterbridgeat that time, recent as it was, untouched by the faintest sprinkle of modernism. It

was compact as a box of dominoes. It had no suburbsin the ordinary sense. Country and town met at a

To birds of the more soaring kind Casterbridge must have appeared on this fine evening as a mosaicwork of

subdued reds, browns, greys, and crystals, held together by a rectangular frame of deep green. To the level

eye of humanity it stood as an indistinct mass behind a dense stockade of limes and chestnuts, set in the midst

of miles of rotund down and concave field. The mass became gradually dissected by the vision into towers,

gables, chimneys, and casements, the highest glazings shining bleared and bloodshot with the coppery fire

From the centre of each side of this treebound square ran avenues east, west, and south into the wide

expanse of corn land and coomb to the distance of a mile or so. It was by one of these avenues that the

pedestrians were about to enter. Before they had risen to proceed two men passed outside the hedge, engaged

"Why, surely," said Elizabeth, as they receded, "those men mentioned the name of Henchard in their

"No, no, no! Not for the world just yet. He may be in the workhouse, or in the stocks, for all we know."

Having sufficiently rested they proceeded on their way at evenfall. The dense trees of the avenue rendered the

road dark as a tunnel, though the open land on each side was still under a faint daylight, in other words, they

passed down a midnight between two gloamings. The features of the town had a keen interest for Elizabeth's

mother, now that the human side came to the fore. As soon as they had wandered about they could see that

the stockade of gnarled trees which framed in Casterbridge was itself an avenue, standing on a low green

bank or escarpment, with a ditch yet visible without. Within the avenue and bank was a wall more or less

Though the two women did not know it these external features were but the ancient defences of the town,

The lamplights now glimmered through the engirdling trees, conveying a sense of great smugness and

comfort inside, and rendering at the same time the unlighted country without strangely solitary and vacant in

aspect, considering its nearness to life. The difference between burgh and champaign was increased, too, by

sounds which now reached them above othersthe notes of a brass band. The travellers returned into the

High Street, where there were timber houses with overhanging stories, whose smallpaned lattices were

screened by dimity curtains on a drawing string, and under whose bargeboards old cobwebs waved in the

breeze. There were houses of bricknogging, which derived their chief support from those adjoining. There

were slate roofs patched with tiles, and tile roofs patched with slate, with occasionally a roof of thatch.

The agricultural and pastoral character of the people upon whom the town depended for its existence was

shown by the class of objects displayed in the shop windows. Scythes, reaphooks, sheepshears, billhooks,

spades, mattocks, and hoes at the ironmonger's; beehives, butterfirkins, churns, milking stools and pails,

hayrakes, fieldflagons, and seedlips at the cooper's; cartropes and ploughharness at the saddler's; carts,

wheelbarrows, and millgear at the wheelwright's and machinist's, horseembrocations at the chemist's; at

the glover's and leathercutter's, hedging gloves, thatchers' kneecaps, ploughmen's leggings, villagers'

They came to a grizzled church, whose massive square tower rose unbroken into the darkening sky, the lower

parts being illuminated by the nearest lamps sufficiently to show how completely the mortar from the joints

of the stonework had been nibbled out by time and weather, which had planted in the crevices thus made little

tufts of stonecrop and grass almost as far up as the very battlements. From this tower the clock struck eight,

and thereupon a bell began to toll with a peremptory clang. The curfew was still rung in Casterbridge, and it

was utilized by the inhabitants as a signal for shutting their shops. No sooner did the deep notes of the bell

throb between the housefronts than a clatter of shutters arose through the whole length of the High Street. In

Other clocks struck eight from time to timeone gloomily from the gaol, another from the gable of an

almshouse, with a preparative creak of machinery, more audible than the note of the bell; a row of tall,

varnished caseclocks from the interior of a clockmaker's shop joined in one after another just as the

shutters were enclosing them, like a row of actors delivering their final speeches before the fall of the curtain;

then chimes were heard stammering out the Sicilian Mariners' Hymn; so that chronologists of the advanced

school were appreciably on their way to the next hour before the whole business of the old one was

In an open space before the church walked a woman with her gownsleeves rolled up so high that the edge of

her underlinen was visible, and her skirt tucked up through her pocket hole. She carried a load under her arm

from which she was pulling pieces of bread, and handing them to some other women who walked with her,

which pieces they nibbled critically. The sight reminded Mrs. HenchardNewson and her daughter that they

"Ye may as well look for mannafood as good bread in Casterbridge just now," she said, after directing them.

"They can blare their trumpets and thump their drums, and have their roaring dinners"waving her hand

towards a point further along the street, where the brass band could be seen standing in front of an

illuminated building"but we must needs be putto for want of a wholesome crust. There's less good bread

"Oh, 'tis the cornfactorhe's the man that our millers and bakers all deal wi', and he has sold 'em growed

wheat, which they didn't know was growed, so they SAY, till the dough ran all over the ovens like

quicksilver; so that the loaves be as fiat as toads, and like suet pudden inside. I've been a wife, and I've been a

mother, and I never see such unprincipled bread in Casterbridge as this before.But you must be a real

stranger here not to know what's made all the poor volks' insides plim like blowed bladders this week?"

Not wishing to be observed further till she knew more of her future in this place, she withdrew with her

daughter from the speaker's side. Getting a couple of biscuits at the shop indicated as a temporary substitute

for a meal, they next bent their steps instinctively to where the music was playing.

A few score yards brought them to the spot where the town band was now shaking the windowpanes with

The building before whose doors they had pitched their musicstands was the chief hotel in

Casterbridgenamely, the King's Arms. A spacious bowwindow projected into the street over the main

portico, and from the open sashes came the babble of voices, the jingle of glasses, and the drawing of corks.

The blinds, moreover, being left unclosed, the whole interior of this room could be surveyed from the top of a

flight of stone steps to the roadwaggon office opposite, for which reason a knot of idlers had gathered there.

"We might, perhaps, after all, make a few inquiries about our relation Mr. Henchard," whispered Mrs.

Newson who, since her entry into Casterbridge, had seemed strangely weak and agitated, "And this, I think,

would be a good place for trying itjust to ask, you know, how he stands in the town if he is here, as I

think he must be. You, ElizabethJane, had better be the one to do it. I'm too worn out to do anythingpull

She sat down upon the lowest step, and ElizabethJane obeyed her directions and stood among the idlers.

"What's going on tonight?" asked the girl, after singling out an old man and standing by him long enough to

"Well, ye must be a stranger sure," said the old man, without taking his eyes from the window. "Why, 'tis a

great public dinner of the gentlepeople and such like leading volkwi' the Mayor in the chair. As we

plainer fellows bain't invited, they leave the windershutters open that we may get jist a sense o't out here. If

you mount the steps you can see em. That's Mr. Henchard, the Mayor, at the end of the table, a facing ye; and

that's the Council men right and left....Ah, lots of them when they begun life were no more than I be now!"

"Henchard!" said ElizabethJane, surprised, but by no means suspecting the whole force of the revelation.

Her mother, though her head was bowed, had already caught from the innwindow tones that strangely

riveted her attention, before the old man's words, "Mr. Henchard, the Mayor," reached her ears. She arose,

and stepped up to her daughter's side as soon as she could do so without showing exceptional eagerness.

The interior of the hotel diningroom was spread out before her, with its tables, and glass, and plate, and

inmates. Facing the window, in the chair of dignity, sat a man about forty years of age; of heavy frame, large

features, and commanding voice; his general build being rather coarse than compact. He had a rich

complexion, which verged on swarthiness, a flashing black eye, and dark, bushy brows and hair. When he

indulged in an occasional loud laugh at some remark among the guests, his large mouth parted so far back as

to show to the rays of the chandelier a full score or more of the twoandthirty sound white teeth that he

That laugh was not encouraging to strangers, and hence it may have been well that it was rarely heard. Many

theories might have been built upon it. It fell in well with conjectures of a temperament which would have no

pity for weakness, but would be ready to yield ungrudging admiration to greatness and strength. Its producer's

personal goodness, if he had any, would be of a very fitful castan occasional almost oppressive generosity

Susan Henchard's husbandin law, at leastsat before them, matured in shape, stiffened in line,

exaggerated in traits; disciplined, thoughtmarkedin a word, older. Elizabeth, encumbered with no

recollections as her mother was, regarded him with nothing more than the keen curiosity and interest which

the discovery of such unexpected social standing in the longsought relative naturally begot. He was dressed

in an oldfashioned evening suit, an expanse of frilled shirt showing on his broad breast; jewelled studs, and

a heavy gold chain. Three glasses stood at his right hand; but, to his wife's surprise, the two for wine were

When last she had seen him he was sitting in a corduroy jacket, fustian waistcoat and breeches, and tanned

leather leggings, with a basin of hot furmity before him. Time, the magician, had wrought much here.

Watching him, and thus thinking of past days, she became so moved that she shrank back against the jamb of

the waggonoffice doorway to which the steps gave access, the shadow from it conveniently hiding her

features. She forgot her daughter till a touch from ElizabethJane aroused her. "Have you seen him, mother?"

"Yes, yes," answered her companion hastily. "I have seen him, and it is enough for me! Now I only want to

"WhyO what?" She drew closer, and whispered in her mother's ear, "Does he seem to you not likely to

befriend us? I thought he looked a generous man. What a gentleman he is, isn't he? and how his diamond

studs shine! How strange that you should have said he might be in the stocks, or in the workhouse, or dead!

Did ever anything go more by contraries! Why do you feel so afraid of him? I am not at all;I'll call upon

"Don't be that, mother, now we have got here and all! Rest there where you be a little whileI will look on

"I don't think I can ever meet Mr. Henchard. He is not how I thought he would behe overpowers me! I

ElizabethJane had never been so much interested in anything in her life as in their present position, partly

from the natural elation she felt at discovering herself akin to a coach; and she gazed again at the scene. The

younger guests were talking and eating with animation; their elders were searching for titbits, and sniffing

and grunting over their plates like sows nuzzling for acorns. Three drinks seemed to be sacred to the

companyport, sherry, and rum; outside which oldestablished trinity few or no palates ranged.

A row of ancient rummers with ground figures on their sides, and each primed with a spoon, was now placed

down the table, and these were promptly filled with grog at such high temperatures as to raise serious

considerations for the articles exposed to its vapours. But ElizabethJane noticed that, though this filling

went on with great promptness up and down the table, nobody filled the Mayor's glass, who still drank large

quantities of water from the tumbler behind the clump of crystal vessels intended for wine and spirits.

"They don't fill Mr. Henchard's wineglasses," she ventured to say to her elbow acquaintance, the old man.

"Ah, no; don't ye know him to be the celebrated abstaining worthy of that name? He scorns all tempting

liquors; never touches nothing. O yes, he've strong qualities that way. I have heard tell that he sware a gospel

oath in bygone times, and has bode by it ever since. So they don't press him, knowing it would be

Another elderly man, hearing this discourse, now joined in by inquiring, "How much longer have he got to

"Another two year, they say. I don't know the why and the wherefore of his fixing such a time, for 'a never

has told anybody. But 'tis exactly two calendar years longer, they say. A powerful mind to hold out so long!"

"True....But there's great strength in hope. Knowing that in fourandtwenty months' time ye'll be out of your

bondage, and able to make up for all you've suffered, by partaking without stintwhy, it keeps a man up, no

"No doubt, Christopher Coney, no doubt. And 'a must need such reflectionsa lonely widow man," said

"I never knowed her. 'Twas afore he came to Casterbridge," Solomon Longways replied with terminative

emphasis, as if the fact of his ignorance of Mrs. Henchard were sufficient to deprive her history of all interest.

"But I know that 'a's a banded teetotaller, and that if any of his men be ever so little overtook by a drop he's

"Many! Why, my good maid, he's the powerfullest member of the Town Council, and quite a principal man

in the country round besides. Never a big dealing in wheat, barley, oats, hay, roots, and suchlike but

Henchard's got a hand in it. Ay, and he'll go into other things too; and that's where he makes his mistake. He

worked his way up from nothing when 'a came here; and now he's a pillar of the town. Not but what he's been

shaken a little toyear about this bad corn he has supplied in his contracts. I've seen the sun rise over

Durnover Moor these nineandsixty year, and though Mr. Henchard has never cussed me unfairly ever

since I've worked for'n, seeing I be but a little small man, I must say that I have never before tasted such

rough bread as has been made from Henchard's wheat lately. 'Tis that growed out that ye could a'most call it

malt, and there's a list at bottom o' the loaf as thick as the sole of one's shoe."

The band now struck up another melody, and by the time it was ended the dinner was over, and speeches

began to be made. The evening being calm, and the windows still open, these orations could be distinctly

heard. Henchard's voice arose above the rest; he was telling a story of his hay dealing experiences, in which

"Hahaha!" responded his audience at the upshot of the story; and hilarity was general till a new voice arose

It came from the lower end of the table, where there sat a group of minor tradesmen who, although part of the

company, appeared to be a little below the social level of the others; and who seemed to nourish a certain

independence of opinion and carry on discussions not quite in harmony with those at the head; just as the

west end of a church is sometimes persistently found to sing out of time and tune with the leading spirits in

This interruption about the bad bread afforded infinite satisfaction to the loungers outside, several of whom

were in the mood which finds its pleasure in others' discomfiture; and hence they echoed pretty freely, "Hey!

How about the bad bread, Mr. Mayor?" Moreover, feeling none of the restraints of those who shared the

feast, they could afford to add, "You rather ought to tell the story o' that, sir!"

"Well, I admit that the wheat turned out badly," he said. "But I was taken in in buying it as much as the

"And the poor folk who had to eat it whether or no," said the inharmonious man outside the window.

Henchard's face darkened. There was temper under the thin bland surfacethe temper which, artificially

"You must make allowances for the accidents of a large business," he said. "You must bear in mind that the

weather just at the harvest of that corn was worse than we have known it for years. However, I have mended

my arrangements on account o't. Since I have found my business too large to be well looked after by myself

alone, I have advertised for a thorough good man as manager of the corn department. When I've got him you

will find these mistakes will no longer occurmatters will be better looked into."

"But what are you going to do to repay us for the past?" inquired the man who had before spoken, and who

seemed to be a baker or miller. "Will you replace the grown flour we've still got by sound grain?"

Henchard's face had become still more stern at these interruptions, and he drank from his tumbler of water as

if to calm himself or gain time. Instead of vouchsafing a direct reply, he stiffly observed

"If anybody will tell me how to turn grown wheat into wholesome wheat I'll take it back with pleasure. But it

Now the group outside the window had within the last few minutes been reinforced by new arrivals, some of

them respectable shopkeepers and their assistants, who had come out for a whiff of air after putting up the

shutters for the night; some of them of a lower class. Distinct from either there appeared a strangera young

man of remarkably pleasant aspectwho carried in his hand a carpetbag of the smart floral pattern

He was ruddy and of a fair countenance, brighteyed, and slight in build. He might possibly have passed by

without stopping at all, or at most for half a minute to glance in at the scene, had not his advent coincided

with the discussion on corn and bread, in which event this history had never been enacted. But the subject

seemed to arrest him, and he whispered some inquiries of the other bystanders, and remained listening.

When he heard Henchard's closing words, "It can't be done," he smiled impulsively, drew out his pocketbook,

and wrote down a few words by the aid of the light in the window. He tore out the leaf, folded and directed it,

and seemed about to throw it in through the open sash upon the diningtable; but, on second thoughts, edged

himself through the loiterers, till he reached the door of the hotel, where one of the waiters who had been

ElizabethJane had seen his movements and heard the words, which attracted her both by their subject and by

"And can ye tell me of a respectable hotel that's a little more moderate than this?"

"They say the Three Mariners, just below here, is a very good place," he languidly answered; "but I have

The Scotchman, as he seemed to be, thanked him, and strolled on in the direction of the Three Mariners

aforesaid, apparently more concerned about the question of an inn than about the fate of his note, now that the

momentary impulse of writing it was over. While he was disappearing slowly down the street the waiter left

the door, and ElizabethJane saw with some interest the note brought into the diningroom and handed to the

Henchard looked at it carelessly, unfolded it with one hand, and glanced it through. Thereupon it was curious

to note an unexpected effect. The nettled, clouded aspect which had held possession of his face since the

subject of his corn dealings had been broached, changed itself into one of arrested attention. He read the

note slowly, and fell into thought, not moody, but fitfully intense, as that of a man who has been captured by

By this time toasts and speeches had given place to songs, the wheat subject being quite forgotten. Men were

putting their heads together in twos and threes, telling good stories, with pantomimic laughter which reached

convulsive grimace. Some were beginning to look as if they did not know how they had come there, what

they had come for, or how they were going to get home again; and provisionally sat on with a dazed smile.

Squarebuilt men showed a tendency to become hunchbacks; men with a dignified presence lost it in a

curious obliquity of figure, in which their features grew disarranged and onesided, whilst the heads of a few

who had dined with extreme thoroughness were somehow sinking into their shoulders, the corners of their

mouth and eyes being bent upwards by the subsidence. Only Henchard did not conform to these flexuous

The clock struck nine. ElizabethJane turned to her companion. "The evening is drawing on, mother," she

She was surprised to find how irresolute her mother had become. "We must get a place to lie down in," she

"That's enough for tonight, at any rate," ElizabethJane replied soothingly. "We can think tomorrow what

is best to do about him. The question now isis it not?how shall we find a lodging?"

As her mother did not reply ElizabethJane's mind reverted to the words of the waiter, that the Three

Mariners was an inn of moderate charges. A recommendation good for one person was probably good for

another. "Let's go where the young man has gone to," she said. "He is respectable. What do you say?"

In the meantime the Mayor's thoughtfulness, engendered by the note as stated, continued to hold him in

abstraction; till, whispering to his neighbour to take his place, he found opportunity to leave the chair. This

Outside the door of the assemblyroom he saw the waiter, and beckoning to him asked who had brought the

The mayor walked up and down the vestibule of the hotel with his hands under his coat tails, as if he were

merely seeking a cooler atmosphere than that of the room he had quitted. But there could be no doubt that he

was in reality still possessed to the full by the new idea, whatever that might be. At length he went back to the

door of the diningroom, paused, and found that the songs, toasts, and conversation were proceeding quite

satisfactorily without his presence. The Corporation, private residents, and major and minor tradesmen had,

in fact, gone in for comforting beverages to such an extent that they had quite forgotten, not only the Mayor,

but all those vast, political, religious, and social differences which they felt necessary to maintain in the

daytime, and which separated them like iron grills. Seeing this the Mayor took his hat, and when the waiter

had helped him on with a thin holland overcoat, went out and stood under the portico.

Very few persons were now in the street; and his eyes, by a sort of attraction, turned and dwelt upon a spot

about a hundred yards further down. It was the house to which the writer of the note had gonethe Three

Marinerswhose two prominent Elizabethan gables, bowwindow, and passagelight could be seen from

where he stood. Having kept his eyes on it for a while he strolled in that direction.

This ancient house of accommodation for man and beast, now, unfortunately, pulled down, was built of

mellow sandstone, with mullioned windows of the same material, markedly out of perpendicular from the

settlement of foundations. The bay window projecting into the street, whose interior was so popular among

the frequenters of the inn, was closed with shutters, in each of which appeared a heartshaped aperture,

somewhat more attenuated in the right and left ventricles than is seen in Nature. Inside these illuminated

holes, at a distance of about three inches, were ranged at this hour, as every passer knew, the ruddy polls of

Billy Wills the glazier, Smart the shoemaker, Buzzford the general dealer, and others of a secondary set of

worthies, of a grade somewhat below that of the diners at the King's Arms, each with his yard of clay.

A fourcentred Tudor arch was over the entrance, and over the arch the signboard, now visible in the rays of

an opposite lamp. Hereon the Mariners, who had been represented by the artist as persons of two dimensions

only in other words, flat as a shadowwere standing in a row in paralyzed attitudes. Being on the sunny

side of the street the three comrades had suffered largely from warping, splitting, fading, and shrinkage, so

that they were but a halfinvisible film upon the reality of the grain, and knots, and nails, which composed

the signboard. As a matter of fact, this state of things was not so much owing to Stannidge the landlord's

neglect, as from the lack of a painter in Casterbridge who would undertake to reproduce the features of men

A long, narrow, dimlylit passage gave access to the inn, within which passage the horses going to their stalls

at the back, and the coming and departing human guests, rubbed shoulders indiscriminately, the latter running

no slight risk of having their toes trodden upon by the animals. The good stabling and the good ale of the

Mariners, though somewhat difficult to reach on account of there being but this narrow way to both, were

nevertheless perseveringly sought out by the sagacious old heads who knew what was what in Casterbridge.

Henchard stood without the inn for a few instants; then lowering the dignity of his presence as much as

possible by buttoning the brown holland coat over his shirtfront, and in other ways toning himself down to

ElizabethJane and her mother had arrived some twenty minutes earlier. Outside the house they had stood

and considered whether even this homely place, though recommended as moderate, might not be too serious

in its prices for their light pockets. Finally, however, they had found courage to enter, and duly met Stannidge

the landlord, a silent man, who drew and carried frothing measures to this room and to that, shoulder to

shoulder with his waiting maidsa stately slowness, however, entering into his ministrations by contrast

with theirs, as became one whose service was somewhat optional. It would have been altogether optional but

for the orders of the landlady, a person who sat in the bar, corporeally motionless, but with a flitting eye and

quick ear, with which she observed and heard through the open door and hatchway the pressing needs of

customers whom her husband overlooked though close at hand. Elizabeth and her mother were passively

accepted as sojourners, and shown to a small bedroom under one of the gables, where they sat down.

The principle of the inn seemed to be to compensate for the antique awkwardness, crookedness, and obscurity

of the passages, floors, and windows, by quantities of clean linen spread about everywhere, and this had a

"'Tis too good for uswe can't meet it!" said the elder woman, looking round the apartment with misgiving

"We must pay our way even before we must be respectable," replied her mother. "Mr. Henchard is too high

for us to make ourselves known to him, I much fear; so we've only our own pockets to depend on."

"I know what I'll do," said ElizabethJane after an interval of waiting, during which their needs seemed quite

forgotten under the press of business below. And leaving the room, she descended the stairs and penetrated to

If there was one good thing more than another which characterized this singlehearted girl it was a

"As you seem busy here tonight, and mother's not well off, might I take out part of our accommodation by

The latter, who remained as fixed in the armchair as if she had been melted into it when in a liquid state, and

could not now be unstuck, looked the girl up and down inquiringly, with her hands on the chairarms. Such

arrangements as the one Elizabeth proposed were not uncommon in country villages; but, though

Casterbridge was oldfashioned, the custom was wellnigh obsolete here. The mistress of the house,

however, was an easy woman to strangers, and she made no objection. Thereupon Elizabeth, being instructed

by nods and motions from the taciturn landlord as to where she could find the different things, trotted up and

While she was doing this the wood partition in the centre of the house thrilled to its centre with the tugging of

a bell pull upstairs. A bell below tinkled a note that was feebler in sound than the twanging of wires and

"'Tis the Scotch gentleman," said the landlady omnisciently; and turning her eyes to Elizabeth, "Now then,

can you go and see if his supper is on the tray? If it is you can take it up to him. The front room over this."

ElizabethJane, though hungry, willingly postponed serving herself awhile, and applied to the cook in the

kitchen whence she brought forth the tray of supper viands, and proceeded with it upstairs to the apartment

indicated. The accommodation of the Three Mariners was far from spacious, despite the fair area of ground it

covered. The room demanded by intrusive beams and rafters, partitions, passages, staircases, disused ovens,

settles, and four posters, left comparatively small quarters for human beings. Moreover, this being at a time

before homebrewing was abandoned by the smaller victuallers, and a house in which the twelvebushel

strength was still religiously adhered to by the landlord in his ale, the quality of the liquor was the chief

attraction of the premises, so that everything had to make way for utensils and operations in connection

therewith. Thus Elizabeth found that the Scotchman was located in a room quite close to the small one that

When she entered nobody was present but the young man himselfthe same whom she had seen lingering

without the windows of the King's Arms Hotel. He was now idly reading a copy of the local paper, and was

hardly conscious of her entry, so that she looked at him quite coolly, and saw how his forehead shone where

the light caught it, and how nicely his hair was cut, and the sort of velvetpile or down that was on the skin at

the back of his neck, and how his cheek was so truly curved as to be part of a globe, and how clearly drawn

She set down the tray, spread his supper, and went away without a word. On her arrival below the landlady,

who was as kind as she was fat and lazy, saw that ElizabethJane was rather tired, though in her earnestness

to be useful she was waiving her own needs altogether. Mrs. Stannidge thereupon said with a considerate

peremptoriness that she and her mother had better take their own suppers if they meant to have any.

Elizabeth fetched their simple provisions, as she had fetched the Scotchman's, and went up to the little

chamber where she had left her mother, noiselessly pushing open the door with the edge of the tray. To her

surprise her mother, instead of being reclined on the bed where she had left her was in an erect position, with

The meaning of this was soon apparent. The room allotted to the two women had at one time served as a

dressingroom to the Scotchman's chamber, as was evidenced by signs of a door of communication between

themnow screwed up and pasted over with the wall paper. But, as is frequently the case with hotels of far

higher pretensions than the Three Mariners, every word spoken in either of these rooms was distinctly audible

Thus silently conjured Elizabeth deposited the tray, and her mother whispered as she drew near, "'Tis he."

The tremors in Susan Henchard's tone might have led any person but one so perfectly unsuspicious of the

truth as the girl was, to surmise some closer connection than the admitted simple kinship as a means of

Two men were indeed talking in the adjoining chamber, the young Scotchman and Henchard, who, having

entered the inn while ElizabethJane was in the kitchen waiting for the supper, had been deferentially

conducted upstairs by host Stannidge himself. The girl noiselessly laid out their little meal, and beckoned to

her mother to join her, which Mrs. Henchard mechanically did, her attention being fixed on the conversation

"I merely strolled in on my way home to ask you a question about something that has excited my curiosity,"

said the Mayor, with careless geniality. "But I see you have not finished supper."

"Ay, but I will be done in a little! Ye needn't go, sir. Take a seat. I've almost done, and it makes no difference

Henchard seemed to take the seat offered, and in a moment he resumed: "Well, first I should ask, did you

"Then," said Henchard, "I am under the impression that we have met by accident while waiting for the

morning to keep an appointment with each other? My name is Henchard, ha'n't you replied to an

advertisement for a cornfactor's manager that I put into the paperha'n't you come here to see me about it?"

"Surely you are the man," went on Henchard insistingly, "who arranged to come and see me? Joshua, Joshua,

"You're wrong!" said the young man. "My name is Donald Farfrae. It is true I am in the corren tradebut I

have replied to no advertisement, and arranged to see no one. I am on my way to Bristolfrom there to the

other side of the warrld, to try my fortune in the great wheatgrowing districts of the West! I have some

inventions useful to the trade, and there is no scope for developing them heere."

"To Americawell, well," said Henchard, in a tone of disappointment, so strong as to make itself felt like a

The Scotchman murmured another negative, and there was a silence, till Henchard resumed: "Then I am truly

"Well, it has a great importance for me just now. This row about my grown wheat, which I declare to Heaven

I didn't know to be bad till the people came complaining, has put me to my wits' end. I've some hundreds of

quarters of it on hand; and if your renovating process will make it wholesome, why, you can see what a quag

'twould get me out of. I saw in a moment there might be truth in it. But I should like to have it proved; and of

course you don't care to tell the steps of the process sufficiently for me to do that, without my paying ye well

The young man reflected a moment or two. "I don't know that I have any objection," he said. "I'm going to

another country, and curing bad corn is not the line I'll take up there. Yes, I'll tell ye the whole of ityou'll

make more out of it heere than I will in a foreign country. Just look heere a minute, sir. I can show ye by a

The click of a lock followed, and there was a sifting and rustling; then a discussion about so many ounces to

"These few grains will be sufficient to show ye with," came in the young fellow's voice; and after a pause,

during which some operation seemed to be intently watched by them both, he exclaimed, "There, now, do

"Quite enough restored to make good seconds out of it," said the Scotchman. "To fetch it back entirely is

impossible; Nature won't stand so much as that, but heere you go a great way towards it. Well, sir, that's the

process, I don't value it, for it can be but of little use in countries where the weather is more settled than in

"But hearken to me," pleaded Henchard. "My business you know, is in corn and in hay, but I was brought up

as a hay trusser simply, and hay is what I understand best though I now do more in corn than in the other. If

you'll accept the place, you shall manage the corn branch entirely, and receive a commission in addition to

"You're liberalvery liberal, but no, noI cannet!" the young man still replied, with some distress in his

"So be it!" said Henchard conclusively. "Nowto change the subjectone good turn deserves another; don't

stay to finish that miserable supper. Come to my house, I can find something better for 'ee than cold ham and

Donald Farfrae was gratefulsaid he feared he must decline that he wished to leave early next day.

"Very well," said Henchard quickly, "please yourself. But I tell you, young man, if this holds good for the

bulk, as it has done for the sample, you have saved my credit, stranger though you be. What shall I pay you

"Nothing at all, nothing at all. It may not prove necessary to ye to use it often, and I don't value it at all. I

thought I might just as well let ye know, as you were in a difficulty, and they were harrd upon ye."

Henchard paused. "I shan't soon forget this," he said. "And from a stranger!...I couldn't believe you were not

the man I had engaged! Says I to myself, 'He knows who I am, and recommends himself by this stroke.' And

yet it turns out, after all, that you are not the man who answered my advertisement, but a stranger!"

Henchard again suspended his words, and then his voice came thoughtfully: "Your forehead, Farfrae, is

something like my poor brother'snow dead and gone; and the nose, too, isn't unlike his. You must be,

whatfive foot nine, I reckon? I am six foot one and a half out of my shoes. But what of that? In my

business, 'tis true that strength and bustle build up a firm. But judgment and knowledge are what keep it

established. Unluckily, I am bad at science, Farfrae; bad at figuresa rule o' thumb sort of man. You are just

the reverseI can see that. I have been looking for such as you these two year, and yet you are not for me.

Well, before I go, let me ask this: Though you are not the young man I thought you were, what's the

difference? Can't ye stay just the same? Have you really made up your mind about this American notion? I

won't mince matters. I feel you would be invaluable to methat needn't be saidand if you will bide and be

"My plans are fixed," said the young man, in negative tones. "I have formed a scheme, and so we need na say

any more about it. But will you not drink with me, sir? I find this Casterbridge ale warreming to the

"No, no; I fain would, but I can't," said Henchard gravely, the scraping of his chair informing the listeners

that he was rising to leave. "When I was a young man I went in for that sort of thing too strongfar too

strongand was well nigh ruined by it! I did a deed on account of it which I shall be ashamed of to my

dying day. It made such an impression on me that I swore, there and then, that I'd drink nothing stronger than

tea for as many years as I was old that day. I have kept my oath; and though, Farfrae, I am sometimes that dry

in the dog days that I could drink a quarterbarrel to the pitching, I think o' my oath, and touch no strong

"Well, I shall get a manager somewhere, no doubt," said Henchard, with strong feeling in his tones. "But it

The young man appeared much moved by Henchard's warm convictions of his value. He was silent till they

reached the door. "I wish I could staysincerely I would like to," he replied. "But noit cannet be! it

Thus they parted; and ElizabethJane and her mother remained each in her thoughts over their meal, the

mother's face being strangely bright since Henchard's avowal of shame for a past action. The quivering of the

partition to its core presented denoted that Donald Farfrae had again rung his bell, no doubt to have his

supper removed; for humming a tune, and walking up and down, he seemed to be attracted by the lively

bursts of conversation and melody from the general company below. He sauntered out upon the landing, and

When ElizabethJane had carried down his supper tray, and also that used by her mother and herself, she

found the bustle of serving to be at its height below, as it always was at this hour. The young woman shrank

from having anything to do with the groundfloor serving, and crept silently about observing the sceneso

new to her, fresh from the seclusion of a seaside cottage. In the general sittingroom, which was large, she

remarked the two or three dozen strongbacked chairs that stood round against the wall, each fitted with its

genial occupant; the sanded floor; the black settle which, projecting endwise from the wall within the door,

permitted Elizabeth to be a spectator of all that went on without herself being particularly seen.

The young Scotchman had just joined the guests. These, in addition to the respectable mastertradesmen

occupying the seats of privileges in the bowwindow and its neighbourhood, included an inferior set at the

unlighted end, whose seats were mere benches against the wall, and who drank from cups instead of from

glasses. Among the latter she noticed some of those personages who had stood outside the windows of the

Behind their backs was a small window, with a wheel ventilator in one of the panes, which would suddenly

start off spinning with a jingling sound, as suddenly stop, and as suddenly start again.

While thus furtively making her survey the opening words of a song greeted her ears from the front of the

settle, in a melody and accent of peculiar charm. There had been some singing before she came down; and

now the Scotchman had made himself so soon at home that, at the request of some of the mastertradesmen,

ElizabethJane was fond of music; she could not help pausing to listen; and the longer she listened the more

she was enraptured. She had never heard any singing like this and it was evident that the majority of the

audience had not heard such frequently, for they were attentive to a much greater degree than usual. They

neither whispered, nor drank, nor dipped their pipestems in their ale to moisten them, nor pushed the mug to

their neighbours. The singer himself grew emotional, till she could imagine a tear in his eye as the words

"It's hame, and it's hame, hame fain would I be, O hame, hame, hame to my ain countree! There's an eye that

ever weeps, and a fair face will be fain, As I pass through Annan Water with my bonnie bands again; When

the flower is in the bud, and the leaf upon the tree, The lark shall sing me hame to my ain countree!"

There was a burst of applause, and a deep silence which was even more eloquent than the applause. It was of

such a kind that the snapping of a pipestem too long for him by old Solomon Longways, who was one of

those gathered at the shady end of the room, seemed a harsh and irreverent act. Then the ventilator in the

windowpane spasmodically started off for a new spin, and the pathos of Donald's song was temporarily

"'Twas not amissnot at all amiss!" muttered Christopher Coney, who was also present. And removing his

pipe a finger's breadth from his lips, he said aloud, "Draw on with the next verse, young gentleman, please."

"Yes. Let's have it again, stranger," said the glazier, a stout, bucketheaded man, with a white apron rolled up

round his waist. "Folks don't lift up their hearts like that in this part of the world." And turning aside, he said

Young Farfrae repeated the last verse. It was plain that nothing so pathetic had been heard at the Three

Mariners for a considerable time. The difference of accent, the excitability of the singer, the intense local

feeling, and the seriousness with which he worked himself up to a climax, surprised this set of worthies, who

"Danged if our country down here is worth singing about like that!" continued the glazier, as the Scotchman

again melodized with a dying fall, "My ain countree!" "When you take away from among us the fools and the

rogues, and the lammigers, and the wanton hussies, and the slatterns, and such like, there's cust few left to

"True," said Buzzford, the dealer, looking at the grain of the table. "Casterbridge is a old, hoary place o'

wickedness, by all account. 'Tis recorded in history that we rebelled against the King one or two hundred

years ago, in the time of the Romans, and that lots of us was hanged on Gallows Hill, and quartered, and our

different jints sent about the country like butcher's meat; and for my part I can well believe it."

"What did ye come away from yer own country for, young maister, if ye be so wownded about it?" inquired

Christopher Coney, from the background, with the tone of a man who preferred the original subject. "Faith, it

wasn't worth your while on our account, for as Maister Billy Wills says, we be bruckle folk herethe best o'

us hardly honest sometimes, what with hard winters, and so many mouths to fill, and Goda'mighty sending

his little taties so terrible small to fill 'em with. We don't think about flowers and fair faces, not weexcept

"But, no!" said Donald Farfrae, gazing round into their faces with earnest concern; "the best of ye hardly

honest not that surely? None of ye has been stealing what didn't belong to him?"

"Lord! no, no!" said Solomon Longways, smiling grimly. "That's only his random way o' speaking. 'A was

always such a man of underthoughts." (And reprovingly towards Christopher): "Don't ye be so overfamiliar

with a gentleman that ye know nothing ofand that's travelled a'most from the North Pole."

Christopher Coney was silenced, and as he could get no public sympathy, he mumbled his feelings to

himself: "Be dazed, if I loved my country half as well as the young feller do, I'd live by claning my

neighbour's pigsties afore I'd go away! For my part I've no more love for my country than I have for Botany

"Come," said Longways; "let the young man draw onward with his ballet, or we shall be here all night."

"Can you turn a strain to the ladies, sir?" inquired a fat woman with a figured purple apron, the waiststring of

"Let him breathelet him breathe, Mother Cuxsom. He hain't got his second wind yet," said the master

"Oh yes, but I have!" exclaimed the young man; and he at once rendered "O Nannie" with faultless

modulations, and another or two of the like sentiment, winding up at their earnest request with "Auld Lang

By this time he had completely taken possession of the hearts of the Three Mariners' inmates, including even

old Coney. Notwithstanding an occasional odd gravity which awoke their sense of the ludicrous for the

moment, they began to view him through a golden haze which the tone of his mind seemed to raise around

him. Casterbridge had sentimentCasterbridge had romance; but this stranger's sentiment was of differing

quality. Or rather, perhaps, the difference was mainly superficial; he was to them like the poet of a new

school who takes his contemporaries by storm; who is not really new, but is the first to articulate what all his

The silent landlord came and leant over the settle while the young man sang; and even Mrs. Stannidge

managed to unstick herself from the framework of her chair in the bar and get as far as the doorpost, which

movement she accomplished by rolling herself round, as a cask is trundled on the chine by a drayman without

"Ahno!" said the Scotchman, with melancholy fatality in his voice, "I'm only passing thirrough! I am on

"We be truly sorry to hear it," said Solomon Longways. "We can ill afford to lose tuneful wyndpipes like

yours when they fall among us. And verily, to mak' acquaintance with a man acome from so far, from the

land o' perpetual snow, as we may say, where wolves and wild boars and other dangerous animalcules be as

common as blackbirds hereaboutwhy, 'tis a thing we can't do every day; and there's good sound

"Nay, but ye mistake my country," said the young man, looking round upon them with tragic fixity, till his

eye lighted up and his cheek kindled with a sudden enthusiasm to right their errors. "There are not perpetual

snow and wolves at all in it!except snow in winter, andwella little in summer just sometimes, and a

'gaberlunzie' or two stalking about here and there, if ye may call them dangerous. Eh, but you should take a

summer jarreny to Edinboro', and Arthur's Seat, and all round there, and then go on to the lochs, and all the

Highland sceneryin May and Juneand you would never say 'tis the land of wolves and perpetual snow!"

"Of course notit stands to reason," said Buzzford. "'Tis barren ignorance that leads to such words. He's a

simple homespun man, that never was fit for good companythink nothing of him, sir."

"And do ye carry your flock bed, and your quilt, and your crock, and your bit of chiney? or do ye go in bare

"I've sent on my luggagethough it isn't much; for the voyage is long." Donald's eyes dropped into a remote

gaze as he added: "But I said to myself, 'Never a one of the prizes of life will I come by unless I undertake it!'

A general sense of regret, in which ElizabethJane shared not least, made itself apparent in the company. As

she looked at Farfrae from the back of the settle she decided that his statements showed him to be no less

thoughtful than his fascinating melodies revealed him to be cordial and impassioned. She admired the serious

light in which he looked at serious things. He had seen no jest in ambiguities and roguery, as the Casterbridge

tosspots had done; and rightly notthere was none. She disliked those wretched humours of Christopher

Coney and his tribe; and he did not appreciate them. He seemed to feel exactly as she felt about life and its

surroundingsthat they were a tragical rather than a comical thing; that though one could be gay on

occasion, moments of gaiety were interludes, and no part of the actual drama. It was extraordinary how

Though it was still early the young Scotchman expressed his wish to retire, whereupon the landlady

whispered to Elizabeth to run upstairs and turn down his bed. She took a candlestick and proceeded on her

mission, which was the act of a few moments only. When, candle in hand, she reached the top of the stairs on

her way down again, Mr. Farfrae was at the foot coming up. She could not very well retreat; they met and

She must have appeared interesting in some waynot withstanding her plain dressor rather, possibly, in

consequence of it, for she was a girl characterized by earnestness and soberness of mien, with which simple

drapery accorded well. Her face flushed, too, at the slight awkwardness of the meeting, and she passed him

with her eyes bent on the candleflame that she carried just below her nose. Thus it happened that when

confronting her he smiled; and then, with the manner of a temporarily lighthearted man, who has started

himself on a flight of song whose momentum he cannot readily check, he softly tuned an old ditty that she

"As I came in by my bower door, As day was waxin' wearie, Oh wha came tripping down the stair But bonnie

ElizabethJane, rather disconcerted, hastened on; and the Scotchman's voice died away, humming more of

Here the scene and sentiment ended for the present. When soon after, the girl rejoined her mother, the latter

"We've made a mistake," she whispered (that the Scotchman might not overhear). "On no account ought ye

to have helped serve here tonight. Not because of ourselves, but for the sake of him. If he should befriend

us, and take us up, and then find out what you did when staying here, 'twould grieve and wound his natural

Elizabeth, who would perhaps have been more alarmed at this than her mother had she known the real

relationship, was not much disturbed about it as things stood. Her "he" was another man than her poor

mother's. "For myself," she said, "I didn't at all mind waiting a little upon him. He's so respectable, and

educatedfar above the rest of 'em in the inn. They thought him very simple not to know their grim broad

way of talking about themselves here. But of course he didn't knowhe was too refined in his mind to know

Meanwhile, the "he" of her mother was not so far away as even they thought. After leaving the Three

Mariners he had sauntered up and down the empty High Street, passing and repassing the inn in his

promenade. When the Scotchman sang his voice had reached Henchard's ears through the heart shaped

holes in the windowshutters, and had led him to pause outside them a long while.

"To be sure, to be sure, how that fellow does draw me!" he had said to himself. "I suppose 'tis because I'm so

When ElizabethJane opened the hinged casement next morning the mellow air brought in the feel of

imminent autumn almost as distinctly as if she had been in the remotest hamlet. Casterbridge was the

complement of the rural life around, not its urban opposite. Bees and butterflies in the cornfields at the top of

the town, who desired to get to the meads at the bottom, took no circuitous course, but flew straight down

High Street without any apparent consciousness that they were traversing strange latitudes. And in autumn

airy spheres of thistledown floated into the same street, lodged upon the shop fronts, blew into drains, and

innumerable tawny and yellow leaves skimmed along the pavement, and stole through people's doorways into

their passages with a hesitating scratch on the floor, like the skirts of timid visitors.

Hearing voices, one of which was close at hand, she withdrew her head and glanced from behind the

windowcurtains. Mr. Henchardnow habited no longer as a great personage, but as a thriving man of

businesswas pausing on his way up the middle of the street, and the Scotchman was looking from the

window adjoining her own. Henchard it appeared, had gone a little way past the inn before he had noticed his

acquaintance of the previous evening. He came back a few steps, Donald Farfrae opening the window further.

"Yesalmost this moment, sir," said the other. "Maybe I'll walk on till the coach makes up on me."

In a few minutes the latter emerged, bag in hand. Henchard looked at the bag as at an enemy. It showed there

was no mistake about the young man's departure. "Ah, my lad," he said, "you should have been a wise man,

"Yes, yesit might have been wiser," said Donald, looking microscopically at the houses that were furthest

They had by this time passed on from the precincts of the inn, and ElizabethJane heard no more. She saw

that they continued in conversation, Henchard turning to the other occasionally, and emphasizing some

remark with a gesture. Thus they passed the King's Arms Hotel, the Market House, St. Peter's churchyard

wall, ascending to the upper end of the long street till they were small as two grains of corn; when they bent

"He was a good manand he's gone," she said to herself. "I was nothing to him, and there was no reason

The simple thought, with its latent sense of slight, had moulded itself out of the following little fact: when the

Scotchman came out at the door he had by accident glanced up at her; and then he had looked away again

"Yes; I am thinking of Mr. Henchard's sudden liking for that young man. He was always so. Now, surely, if

he takes so warmly to people who are not related to him at all, may he not take as warmly to his own kin?"

While they debated this question a procession of five large waggons went past, laden with hay up to the

bedroom windows. They came in from the country, and the steaming horses had probably been travelling a

great part of the night. To the shaft of each hung a little board, on which was painted in white letters,

"Henchard, cornfactor and haymerchant." The spectacle renewed his wife's conviction that, for her

The discussion was continued during breakfast, and the end of it was that Mrs. Henchard decided, for good or

for ill, to send ElizabethJane with a message to Henchard, to the effect that his relative Susan, a sailor's

widow, was in the town; leaving it to him to say whether or not he would recognize her. What had brought

her to this determination were chiefly two things. He had been described as a lonely widower; and he had

"If he says no," she enjoined, as ElizabethJane stood, bonnet on, ready to depart; "if he thinks it does not

become the good position he has reached to in the town, to ownto let us call on him ashis distant

kinfolk, say, 'Then, sir, we would rather not intrude; we will leave Casterbridge as quietly as we have come,

and go back to our own country.'...I almost feel that I would rather he did say so, as I have not seen him for so

"In that case," answered Mrs. Henchard cautiously, "ask him to write me a note, saying when and how he will

ElizabethJane went a few steps towards the landing. "And tell him," continued her mother, "that I fully

know I have no claim upon himthat I am glad to find he is thriving; that I hope his life may be long and

happythere, go." Thus with a halfhearted willingness, a smothered reluctance, did the poor forgiving

It was about ten o'clock, and marketday, when Elizabeth paced up the High Street, in no great hurry; for to

herself her position was only that of a poor relation deputed to hunt up a rich one. The front doors of the

private houses were mostly left open at this warm autumn time, no thought of umbrella stealers disturbing the

minds of the placid burgesses. Hence, through the long, straight, entrance passages thus unclosed could be

seen, as through tunnels, the mossy gardens at the back, glowing with nasturtiums, fuchsias, scarlet

geraniums, "bloody warriors," snapdragons, and dahlias, this floral blaze being backed by crusted grey

stonework remaining from a yet remoter Casterbridge than the venerable one visible in the street. The

oldfashioned fronts of these houses, which had older than oldfashioned backs, rose sheer from the

pavement, into which the bow windows protruded like bastions, necessitating a pleasing chassezdechassez

movement to the timepressed pedestrian at every few yards. He was bound also to evolve other

Terpsichorean figures in respect of doorsteps, scrapers, cellarhatches, church buttresses, and the

overhanging angles of walls which, originally unobtrusive, had become bowlegged and knockkneed.

In addition to these fixed obstacles which spoke so cheerfully of individual unrestraint as to boundaries,

movables occupied the path and roadway to a perplexing extent. First the vans of the carriers in and out of

Casterbridge, who hailed from Mellstock, Weatherbury, The Hintocks, ShertonAbbas, Kingsbere,

Overcombe, and many other towns and villages round. Their owners were numerous enough to be regarded

as a tribe, and had almost distinctiveness enough to be regarded as a race. Their vans had just arrived, and

were drawn up on each side of the street in close file, so as to form at places a wall between the pavement and

the roadway. Moreover every shop pitched out half its contents upon trestles and boxes on the kerb,

extending the display each week a little further and further into the roadway, despite the expostulations of the

two feeble old constables, until there remained but a tortuous defile for carriages down the centre of the

street, which afforded fine opportunities for skill with the reins. Over the pavement on the sunny side of the

way hung shopblinds so constructed as to give the passenger's hat a smart buffet off his head, as from the

Horses for sale were tied in rows, their forelegs on the pavement, their hind legs in the street, in which

position they occasionally nipped little boys by the shoulder who were passing to school. And any inviting

recess in front of a house that had been modestly kept back from the general line was utilized by pigdealers

The yeomen, farmers, dairymen, and townsfolk, who came to transact business in these ancient streets, spoke

in other ways than by articulation. Not to hear the words of your interlocutor in metropolitan centres is to

know nothing of his meaning. Here the face, the arms, the hat, the stick, the body throughout spoke equally

with the tongue. To express satisfaction the Casterbridge marketman added to his utterance a broadening of

the cheeks, a crevicing of the eyes, a throwing back of the shoulders, which was intelligible from the other

end of the street. If he wondered, though all Henchard's carts and waggons were rattling past him, you knew

it from perceiving the inside of his crimson mouth, and a targetlike circling of his eyes. Deliberation caused

sundry attacks on the moss of adjoining walls with the end of his stick, a change of his hat from the

horizontal to the less so; a sense of tediousness announced itself in a lowering of the person by spreading the

knees to a lozengeshaped aperture and contorting the arms. Chicanery, subterfuge, had hardly a place in the

streets of this honest borough to all appearance; and it was said that the lawyers in the Court House hard by

occasionally threw in strong arguments for the other side out of pure generosity (though apparently by

Thus Casterbridge was in most respects but the pole, focus, or nerveknot of the surrounding country life;

differing from the many manufacturing towns which are as foreign bodies set down, like boulders on a plain,

in a green world with which they have nothing in common. Casterbridge lived by agriculture at one remove

further from the fountainhead than the adjoining villagesno more. The townsfolk understood every

fluctuation in the rustic's condition, for it affected their receipts as much as the labourer's; they entered into

the troubles and joys which moved the aristocratic families ten miles roundfor the same reason. And even

at the dinnerparties of the professional families the subjects of discussion were corn, cattledisease, sowing

and reaping, fencing and planting; while politics were viewed by them less from their own standpoint of

burgesses with rights and privileges than from the standpoint of their country neighbours.

All the venerable contrivances and confusions which delighted the eye by their quaintness, and in a measure

reasonableness, in this rare old markettown, were metropolitan novelties to the unpractised eyes of

Elizabeth Jane, fresh from netting fishseines in a seaside cottage. Very little inquiry was necessary to guide

her footsteps. Henchard's house was one of the best, faced with dull red andgrey old brick. The front door

was open, and, as in other houses, she could see through the passage to the end of the gardennearly a

Mr. Henchard was not in the house, but in the storeyard. She was conducted into the mossy garden, and

through a door in the wall, which was studded with rusty nails speaking of generations of fruittrees that had

been trained there. The door opened upon the yard, and here she was left to find him as she could. It was a

place flanked by haybarns, into which tons of fodder, all in trusses, were being packed from the waggons

she had seen pass the inn that morning. On other sides of the yard were wooden granaries on stone staddles,

to which access was given by Flemish ladders, and a storehouse several floors high. Wherever the doors of

these places were open, a closely packed throng of bursting wheatsacks could be seen standing inside, with

She wandered about this place, uncomfortably conscious of the impending interview, till she was quite weary

of searching; she ventured to inquire of a boy in what quarter Mr. Henchard could be found. He directed her

to an office which she had not seen before, and knocking at the door she was answered by a cry of "Come

Elizabeth turned the handle; and there stood before her, bending over some samplebags on a table, not the

corn merchant, but the young Scotchman Mr. Farfraein the act of pouring some grains of wheat from one

hand to the other. His hat hung on a peg behind him, and the roses of his carpetbag glowed from the corner

Having toned her feelings and arranged words on her lips for Mr. Henchard, and for him alone, she was for

"Ah, yes; will you wait a minute? He's engaged just now," said the young man, apparently not recognizing

her as the girl at the inn. He handed her a chair, bade her sit down and turned to his samplebags again.

While ElizabethJane sits waiting in great amaze at the young man's presence we may briefly explain how he

When the two new acquaintances had passed out of sight that morning towards the Bath and Bristol road they

went on silently, except for a few commonplaces, till they had gone down an avenue on the town walls called

the Chalk Walk, leading to an angle where the North and West escarpments met. From this high corner of the

square earthworks a vast extent of country could be seen. A footpath ran steeply down the green slope,

conducting from the shady promenade on the walls to a road at the bottom of the scarp. It was by this path the

"Well, here's success to 'ee," said Henchard, holding out his right hand and leaning with his left upon the

wicket which protected the descent. In the act there was the inelegance of one whose feelings are nipped and

wishes defeated. "I shall often think of this time, and of how you came at the very moment to throw a light

Still holding the young man's hand he paused, and then added deliberately: "Now I am not the man to let a

cause be lost for want of a word. And before ye are gone for ever I'll speak. Once more, will ye stay? There it

is, flat and plain. You can see that it isn't all selfishness that makes me press 'ee; for my business is not quite

so scientific as to require an intellect entirely out of the common. Others would do for the place without

doubt. Some selfishness perhaps there is, but there is more; it isn't for me to repeat what. Come bide with

meand name your own terms. I'll agree to 'em willingly and 'ithout a word of gainsaying; for, hang it,

The young man's hand remained steady in Henchard's for a moment or two. He looked over the fertile

country that stretched beneath them, then backward along the shaded walk reaching to the top of the town.

"I never expected thisI did not!" he said. "It's Providence! Should any one go against it? No; I'll not go to

The face of Mr. Henchard beamed forth a satisfaction that was almost fierce in its strength. "Now you are my

friend!" he exclaimed. "Come back to my house; let's clinch it at once by clear terms, so as to be comfortable

in our minds." Farfrae caught up his bag and retraced the NorthWest Avenue in Henchard's company as he

"I am the most distant fellow in the world when I don't care for a man," he said. "But when a man takes my

fancy he takes it strong. Now I am sure you can eat another breakfast? You couldn't have eaten much so

early, even if they had anything at that place to gi'e thee, which they hadn't; so come to my house and we will

have a solid, staunch tuckin, and settle terms in blackandwhite if you like; though my word's my bond. I

can always make a good meal in the morning. I've got a splendid cold pigeonpie going just now. You can

"Well, of course, I didn't know. I don't drink it because of my oath, but I am obliged to brew for my

Thus talking they returned, and entered Henchard's premises by the back way or traffic entrance. Here the

matter was settled over the breakfast, at which Henchard heaped the young Scotchman's plate to a prodigal

fulness. He would not rest satisfied till Farfrae had written for his luggage from Bristol, and dispatched the

letter to the postoffice. When it was done this man of strong impulses declared that his new friend should

take up his abode in his houseat least till some suitable lodgings could be found.

He then took Farfrae round and showed him the place, and the stores of grain, and other stock; and finally

entered the offices where the younger of them has already been discovered by Elizabeth.

While she still sat under the Scotchman's eyes a man came up to the door, reaching it as Henchard opened the

door of the inner office to admit Elizabeth. The newcomer stepped forward like the quicker cripple at

Bethesda, and entered in her stead. She could hear his words to Henchard: "Joshua Jopp, sirby

"I mentioned Thursday," said Henchard; "and as you did not keep your appointment, I have engaged another

manager. At first I thought he must be you. Do you think I can wait when business is in question?"

"Subject to an interview," said Henchard. "I am sorry for youvery sorry indeed. But it can't be helped."

There was no more to be said, and the man came out, encountering ElizabethJane in his passage. She could

see that his mouth twitched with anger, and that bitter disappointment was written in his face everywhere.

ElizabethJane now entered, and stood before the master of the premises. His dark pupilswhich always

seemed to have a red spark of light in them, though this could hardly be a physical factturned indifferently

round under his dark brows until they rested on her figure. "Now then, what is it, my young woman?" he said

"I am sent to tell you, sir," she innocently went on, "that a distant relative of yours by marriage, Susan

Newson, a sailor's widow, is in the town, and to ask whether you would wish to see her."

The rich rougeetnoir of his countenance underwent a slight change. "OhSusan isstill alive?" he asked

This at once suggested to Henchard that the transaction of his early married life at Weydon Fair was

unrecorded in the family history. It was more than he could have expected. His wife had behaved kindly to

him in return for his unkindness, and had never proclaimed her wrong to her child or to the world.

"I ama good deal interested in your news," he said. "And as this is not a matter of business, but pleasure,

It was with a gentle delicacy of manner, surprising to Elizabeth, that he showed her out of the office and

through the outer room, where Donald Farfrae was overhauling bins and samples with the inquiring

inspection of a beginner in charge. Henchard preceded her through the door in the wall to the suddenly

changed scene of the garden and flowers, and onward into the house. The diningroom to which he

introduced her still exhibited the remnants of the lavish breakfast laid for Farfrae. It was furnished to

profusion with heavy mahogany furniture of the deepest redSpanish hues. Pembroke tables, with leaves

hanging so low that they wellnigh touched the floor, stood against the walls on legs and feet shaped like

those of an elephant, and on one lay three huge folio volumesa Family Bible, a "Josephus," and a "Whole

Duty of Man." In the chimney comer was a firegrate with a fluted semicircular back, having urns and

festoons cast in relief thereon, and the chairs were of the kind which, since that day, has cast lustre upon the

names of Chippendale and Sheraton, though, in point of fact, their patterns may have been such as those

"Sit downElizabethJanesit down," he said, with a shake in his voice as he uttered her name, and sitting

down himself he allowed his hands to hang between his knees while he looked upon the carpet. "Your

Henchard winced at the word "father," thus applied. "Do you and she come from abroadAmerica or

"No. We have been in England some years. I was twelve when we came here from Canada."

"Ah; exactly." By such conversation he discovered the circumstances which had enveloped his wife and her

child in such total obscurity that he had long ago believed them to be in their graves. These things being

"And you are her daughter ElizabethJane?" repeated Henchard. He arose, came close to her, and glanced in

her face. "I think," he said, suddenly turning away with a wet eye, "you shall take a note from me to your

mother. I should like to see her....She is not left very well off by her late husband?" His eye fell on Elizabeth's

clothes, which, though a respectable suit of black, and her very best, were decidedly oldfashioned even to

"Not very well," she said, glad that he had divined this without her being obliged to express it.

He sat down at the table and wrote a few lines, next taking from his pocketbook a fivepound note, which

he put in the envelope with the letter, adding to it, as by an afterthought, five shillings. Sealing the whole up

carefully, he directed it to "Mrs. Newson, Three Mariners Inn," and handed the packet to Elizabeth.

"Deliver it to her personally, please," said Henchard. "Well, I am glad to see you here, ElizabethJanevery

He took her hand at parting, and held it so warmly that she, who had known so little friendship, was much

affected, and tears rose to her aerialgrey eyes. The instant that she was gone Henchard's state showed itself

more distinctly; having shut the door he sat in his diningroom stiffly erect, gazing at the opposite wall as if

"Begad!" he suddenly exclaimed, jumping up. "I didn't think of that. Perhaps these are impostorsand Susan

However, a something in ElizabethJane soon assured him that, as regarded her, at least, there could be little

doubt. And a few hours would settle the question of her mother's identity; for he had arranged in his note to

"It never rains but it pours!" said Henchard. His keenly excited interest in his new friend the Scotchman was

now eclipsed by this event, and Donald Farfrae saw so little of him during the rest of the day that he

In the meantime Elizabeth had reached the inn. Her mother, instead of taking the note with the curiosity of a

poor woman expecting assistance, was much moved at sight of it. She did not read it at once, asking

Elizabeth to describe her reception, and the very words Mr. Henchard used. Elizabeth's back was turned when

"Meet me at eight o'clock this evening, if you can, at the Ring on the Budmouth road. The place is easy to

find. I can say no more now. The news upsets me almost. The girl seems to be in ignorance. Keep her so till I

He said nothing about the enclosure of five guineas. The amount was significant; it may tacitly have said to

her that he bought her back again. She waited restlessly for the close of the day, telling ElizabethJane that

she was invited to see Mr. Henchard; that she would go alone. But she said nothing to show that the place of

The Ring at Casterbridge was merely the local name of one of the finest Roman Amphitheatres, if not the

Casterbridge announced old Rome in every street, alley, and precinct. It looked Roman, bespoke the art of

Rome, concealed dead men of Rome. It was impossible to dig more than a foot or two deep about the town

fields and gardens without coming upon some tall soldier or other of the Empire, who had lain there in his

silent unobtrusive rest for a space of fifteen hundred years. He was mostly found lying on his side, in an oval

scoop in the chalk, like a chicken in its shell; his knees drawn up to his chest; sometimes with the remains of

his spear against his arm, a fibula or brooch of bronze on his breast or forehead, an urn at his knees, a jar at

his throat, a bottle at his mouth; and mystified conjecture pouring down upon him from the eyes of

Casterbridge street boys and men, who had turned a moment to gaze at the familiar spectacle as they passed

Imaginative inhabitants, who would have felt an unpleasantness at the discovery of a comparatively modern

skeleton in their gardens, were quite unmoved by these hoary shapes. They had lived so long ago, their time

was so unlike the present, their hopes and motives were so widely removed from ours, that between them and

The Amphitheatre was a huge circular enclosure, with a notch at opposite extremities of its diameter north

and south. From its sloping internal form it might have been called the spittoon of the Jotuns. It was to

Casterbridge what the ruined Coliseum is to modern Rome, and was nearly of the same magnitude. The dusk

of evening was the proper hour at which a true impression of this suggestive place could be received.

Standing in the middle of the arena at that time there by degrees became apparent its real vastness, which a

cursory view from the summit at noonday was apt to obscure. Melancholy, impressive, lonely, yet

accessible from every part of the town, the historic circle was the frequent spot for appointments of a furtive

kind. Intrigues were arranged there; tentative meetings were there experimented after divisions and feuds. But

one kind of appointmentin itself the most common of anyseldom had place in the Amphitheatre: that of

Why, seeing that it was preeminently an airy, accessible, and sequestered spot for interviews, the

cheerfullest form of those occurrences never took kindly to the soil of the ruin, would be a curious inquiry.

Perhaps it was because its associations had about them something sinister. Its history proved that. Apart from

the sanguinary nature of the games originally played therein, such incidents attached to its past as these: that

for scores of years the town gallows had stood at one corner; that in 1705 a woman who had murdered her

husband was halfstrangled and then burnt there in the presence of ten thousand spectators. Tradition reports

that at a certain stage of the burning her heart burst and leapt out of her body, to the terror of them all, and

that not one of those ten thousand people ever cared particularly for hot roast after that. In addition to these

old tragedies, pugilistic encounters almost to the death had come off down to recent dates in that secluded

arena, entirely invisible to the outside world save by climbing to the top of the enclosure, which few

townspeople in the daily round of their lives ever took the trouble to do. So that, though close to the

Some boys had latterly tried to impart gaiety to the ruin by using the central arena as a cricketground. But

the game usually languished for the aforesaid reasonthe dismal privacy which the earthen circle enforced,

shutting out every appreciative passer's vision, every commendatory remark from outsiderseverything,

except the sky; and to play at games in such circumstances was like acting to an empty house. Possibly, too,

the boys were timid, for some old people said that at certain moments in the summer time, in broad daylight,

persons sitting with a book or dozing in the arena had, on lifting their eyes, beheld the slopes lined with a

gazing legion of Hadrian's soldiery as if watching the gladiatorial combat; and had heard the roar of their

excited voices, that the scene would remain but a moment, like a lightning flash, and then disappear.

It was related that there still remained under the south entrance excavated cells for the reception of the wild

animals and athletes who took part in the games. The arena was still smooth and circular, as if used for its

original purpose not so very long ago. The sloping pathways by which spectators had ascended to their seats

were pathways yet. But the whole was grown over with grass, which now, at the end of summer, was bearded

with withered bents that formed waves under the brush of the wind, returning to the attentive ear aeolian

Henchard had chosen this spot as being the safest from observation which he could think of for meeting his

long lost wife, and at the same time as one easily to be found by a stranger after nightfall. As Mayor of the

town, with a reputation to keep up, he could not invite her to come to his house till some definite course had

Just before eight he approached the deserted earthwork and entered by the south path which descended over

the debris of the former dens. In a few moments he could discern a female figure creeping in by the great

north gap, or public gateway. They met in the middle of the arena. Neither spoke just at firstthere was no

necessity for speechand the poor woman leant against Henchard, who supported her in his arms.

"I don't drink," he said in a low, halting, apologetic voice. "You hear, Susan?I don't drink nowI haven't

He felt her bow her head in acknowledgment that she understood. After a minute or two he again began:

"If I had known you were living, Susan! But there was every reason to suppose you and the child were dead

and gone. I took every possible step to find youtravelledadvertised. My opinion at last was that you had

started for some colony with that man, and had been drowned on your voyage. Why did you keep silent like

"O Michael! because of himwhat other reason could there be? I thought I owed him faithfulness to the end

of one of our livesfoolishly I believed there was something solemn and binding in the bargain; I thought

that even in honour I dared not desert him when he had paid so much for me in good faith. I meet you now

only as his widowI consider myself that, and that I have no claim upon you. Had he not died I should

"I don't know. Yet it would have been very wickedif I had not thought like that!" said Susan, almost

"Yesyesso it would. It is only that which makes me feel 'ee an innocent woman. Butto lead me into

"Why, this difficulty about our living together again, and ElizabethJane. She cannot be told allshe would

"That was why she was brought up in ignorance of you. I could not bear it either."

"Wellwe must talk of a plan for keeping her in her present belief, and getting matters straight in spite of it.

You have heard I am in a large way of business herethat I am Mayor of the town, and churchwarden, and I

"These things, as well as the dread of the girl discovering our disgrace, makes it necessary to act with

extreme caution. So that I don't see how you two can return openly to my house as the wife and daughter I

"No, no, Susan; you are not to goyou mistake me!" he said with kindly severity. "I have thought of this

plan: that you and Elizabeth take a cottage in the town as the widow Mrs. Newson and her daughter; that I

meet you, court you, and marry you. ElizabethJane coming to my house as my stepdaughter. The thing is

so natural and easy that it is half done in thinking o't. This would leave my shady, head strong, disgraceful

life as a young man absolutely unopened; the secret would be yours and mine only; and I should have the

"I am quite in your hands, Michael," she said meekly. "I came here for the sake of Elizabeth; for myself, if

you tell me to leave again tomorrow morning, and never come near you more, I am content to go."

"Now, now; we don't want to hear that," said Henchard gently. "Of course you won't leave again. Think over

the plan I have proposed for a few hours; and if you can't hit upon a better one we'll adopt it. I have to be

away for a day or two on business, unfortunately; but during that time you can get lodgingsthe only ones in

the town fit for you are those over the chinashop in High Streetand you can also look for a cottage."

"Never mindyou MUST start genteel if our plan is to be carried out. Look to me for money. Have you

"And the girl is quite safe from learning the shame of her case and ours?that's what makes me most

"You would be surprised to find how unlikely she is to dream of the truth. How could she ever suppose such

"I like the idea of repeating our marriage," said Mrs. Henchard, after a pause. "It seems the only right course,

after all this. Now I think I must go back to Elizabeth Jane, and tell her that our kinsman, Mr. Henchard,

"No, no. Don't run any risk!" said his wife anxiously. "I can find my way backit is not late. Please let me

He retreated, and stood at the upper side of the Amphitheatre while his wife passed out through the lower

way, and descended under the trees to the town. Then Henchard himself went homeward, going so fast that

by the time he reached his door he was almost upon the heels of the unconscious woman from whom he had

On entering his own door after watching his wife out of sight, the Mayor walked on through the

tunnelshaped passage into the garden, and thence by the back door towards the stores and granaries. A light

shone from the officewindow, and there being no blind to screen the interior Henchard could see Donald

Farfrae still seated where he had left him, initiating himself into the managerial work of the house by

overhauling the books. Henchard entered, merely observing, "Don't let me interrupt you, if ye will stay so

He stood behind Farfrae's chair, watching his dexterity in clearing up the numerical fogs which had been

allowed to grow so thick in Henchard's books as almost to baffle even the Scotchman's perspicacity. The

cornfactor's mien was half admiring, and yet it was not without a dash of pity for the tastes of any one who

could care to give his mind to such finnikin details. Henchard himself was mentally and physically unfit for

grubbing subtleties from soiled paper; he had in a modern sense received the education of Achilles, and found

"You shall do no more tonight," he said at length, spreading his great hand over the paper. "There's time

enough tomorrow. Come indoors with me and have some supper. Now you shall! I am determined on't." He

Donald had wished to get to his lodgings; but he already saw that his friend and employer was a man who

knew no moderation in his requests and impulses, and he yielded gracefully. He liked Henchard's warmth,

even if it inconvenienced him; the great difference in their characters adding to the liking.

They locked up the office, and the young man followed his companion through the private little door which,

admitting directly into Henchard's garden, permitted a passage from the utilitarian to the beautiful at one step.

The garden was silent, dewy, and full of perfume. It extended a long way back from the house, first as lawn

and flowerbeds, then as fruitgarden, where the longtied espaliers, as old as the old house itself, had

grown so stout, and cramped, and gnarled that they had pulled their stakes out of the ground and stood

distorted and writhing in vegetable agony, like leafy Laocoons. The flowers which smelt so sweetly were not

The hospitalities of the morning were repeated, and when they were over Henchard said, "Pull your chair

round to the fireplace, my dear fellow, and let's make a blazethere's nothing I hate like a black grate, even

in September." He applied a light to the laidin fuel, and a cheerful radiance spread around.

"It is odd," said Henchard, "that two men should meet as we have done on a purely business ground, and that

at the end of the first day I should wish to speak to 'ee on a family matter. But, damn it all, I am a lonely man,

"I'll be glad to hear it, if I can be of any service," said Donald, allowing his eyes to travel over the intricate

wood carvings of the chimneypiece, representing garlanded lyres, shields, and quivers, on either side of a

"I've not been always what I am now," continued Henchard, his firm deep voice being ever so little shaken.

He was plainly under that strange influence which sometimes prompts men to confide to the newfound

friend what they will not tell to the old. "I began life as a working haytrusser, and when I was eighteen I

"Ah, yesyou would naturally have heard that. Well, I lost my wife nineteen years ago or soby my own

fault....This is how it came about. One summer evening I was travelling for employment, and she was

walking at my side, carying the baby, our only child. We came to a booth in a country fair. I was a drinking

Henchard paused a moment, threw himself back so that his elbow rested on the table, his forehead being

shaded by his hand, which, however, did not hide the marks of introspective inflexibility on his features as he

narrated in fullest detail the incidents of the transaction with the sailor. The tinge of indifference which had at

Henchard went on to describe his attempts to find his wife; the oath he swore; the solitary life he led during

the years which followed. "I have kept my oath for nineteen years," he went on; "I have risen to what you see

"Wellno wife could I hear of in all that time; and being by nature something of a womanhater, I have

found it no hardship to keep mostly at a distance from the sex. No wife could I hear of, I say, till this very

"That's what I've planned and proposed. But, Farfrae," said Henchard gloomily, "by doing right with Susan I

"In the nature of things, Farfrae, it is almost impossible that a man of my sort should have the good fortune to

tide through twenty years o' life without making more blunders than one. It has been my custom for many

years to run across to Jersey in the the way of business, particularly in the potato and root season. I do a large

trade wi' them in that line. Well, one autumn when stopping there I fell quite ill, and in my illness I sank into

one of those gloomy fits I sometimes suffer from, on account o' the loneliness of my domestic life, when the

world seems to have the blackness of hell, and, like Job, I could curse the day that gave me birth."

"Then pray to God that you never may, young man. While in this state I was taken pity on by a womana

young lady I should call her, for she was of good family, well bred, and well educatedthe daughter of some

harumscarum military officer who had got into difficulties, and had his pay sequestrated. He was dead now,

and her mother too, and she was as lonely as I. This young creature was staying at the boardinghouse where

I happened to have my lodging; and when I was pulled down she took upon herself to nurse me. From that

she got to have a foolish liking for me. Heaven knows why, for I wasn't worth it. But being together in the

same house, and her feeling warm, we got naturally intimate. I won't go into particulars of what our relations

were. It is enough to say that we honestly meant to marry. There arose a scandal, which did me no harm, but

was of course ruin to her. Though, Farfrae, between you and me, as man and man, I solemnly declare that

philandering with womankind has neither been my vice nor my virtue. She was terribly careless of

appearances, and I was perhaps more, because o' my dreary state; and it was through this that the scandal

arose. At last I was well, and came away. When I was gone she suffered much on my account, and didn't

forget to tell me so in letters one after another; till latterly, I felt I owed her something, and thought that, as I

had not heard of Susan for so long, I would make this other one the only return I could make, and ask her if

she would run the risk of Susan being alive (very slight as I believed) and marry me, such as I was. She

jumped for joy, and we should no doubt soon have been marriedbut, behold, Susan appears!"

Donald showed his deep concern at a complication so far beyond the degree of his simple experiences.

"Now see what injury a man may cause around him! Even after that wrongdoing at the fair when I was

young, if I had never been so selfish as to let this giddy girl devote herself to me over at Jersey, to the injury

of her name, all might now be well. Yet, as it stands, I must bitterly disappoint one of these women; and it is

"They are both in a very melancholy position, and that's true!" murmured Donald.

"They are! For myself I don't care'twill all end one way. But these two." Henchard paused in reverie. "I

feel I should like to treat the second, no less than the first, as kindly as a man can in such a case."

"Ah, well, it cannet be helped!" said the other, with philosophic woefulness. "You mun write to the young

lady, and in your letter you must put it plain and honest that it turns out she cannet be your wife, the first

"That won't do. 'Od seize it, I must do a little more than that! I mustthough she did always brag about her

rich uncle or rich aunt, and her expectations from 'emI must send a useful sum of money to her, I

supposejust as a little recompense, poor girl....Now, will you help me in this, and draw up an explanation

to her of all I've told ye, breaking it as gently as you can? I'm so bad at letters."

"Now, I haven't told you quite all yet. My wife Susan has my daughter with herthe baby that was in her

arms at the fair; and this girl knows nothing of me beyond that I am some sort of relation by marriage. She

has grown up in the belief that the sailor to whom I made over her mother, and who is now dead, was her

What her mother has always felt, she and I together feel nowthat we can't proclaim our disgrace to the girl

"Never!" said Henchard. "I am not going to let her know the truth. Her mother and I be going to marry again;

and it will not only help us to keep our child's respect, but it will be more proper. Susan looks upon herself as

the sailor's widow, and won't think o' living with me as formerly without another religious ceremonyand

Farfrae thereupon said no more. The letter to the young Jersey woman was carefully framed by him, and the

interview ended, Henchard saying, as the Scotchman left, "I feel it a great relief, Farfrae, to tell some friend o'

this! You see now that the Mayor of Casterbridge is not so thriving in his mind as it seems he might be from

When he was gone Henchard copied the letter, and, enclosing a cheque, took it to the postoffice, from which

"Can it be that it will go off so easily!" he said. "Poor thingGod knows! Now then, to make amends to

The cottage which Michael Henchard hired for his wife Susan under her name of Newsonin pursuance of

their planwas in the upper or western part of the town, near the Roman wall, and the avenue which

overshadowed it. The evening sun seemed to shine more yellowly there than anywhere else this autumn

stretching its rays, as the hours grew later, under the lowest sycamore boughs, and steeping the groundfloor

of the dwelling, with its green shutters, in a substratum of radiance which the foliage screened from the upper

parts. Beneath these sycamores on the town walls could be seen from the sittingroom the tumuli and earth

forts of the distant uplands; making it altogether a pleasant spot, with the usual touch of melancholy that a

As soon as the mother and daughter were comfortably installed, with a whiteaproned servant and all

complete, Henchard paid them a visit, and remained to tea. During the entertainment Elizabeth was carefully

hoodwinked by the very general tone of the conversation that prevaileda proceeding which seemed to

afford some humour to Henchard, though his wife was not particularly happy in it. The visit was repeated

again and again with businesslike determination by the Mayor, who seemed to have schooled himself into a

course of strict mechanical rightness towards this woman of prior claim, at any expense to the later one and to

One afternoon the daughter was not indoors when Henchard came, and he said drily, "This is a very good

The poor woman smiled faintly; she did not enjoy pleasantries on a situation into which she had entered

solely for the sake of her girl's reputation. She liked them so little, indeed, that there was room for wonder

why she had countenanced deception at all, and had not bravely let the girl know her history. But the flesh is

"O Michael!" she said, "I am afraid all this is taking up your time and giving troublewhen I did not expect

any such thing!" And she looked at him and at his dress as a man of affluence, and at the furniture he had

"Not at all," said Henchard, in rough benignity. "This is only a cottageit costs me next to nothing. And as

to taking up my time"here his red and black visage kindled with satisfaction"I've a splendid fellow to

superintend my business nowa man whose like I've never been able to lay hands on before. I shall soon be

able to leave everything to him, and have more time to call my own than I've had for these last twenty years."

Henchard's visits here grew so frequent and so regular that it soon became whispered, and then openly

discussed in Casterbridge that the masterful, coercive Mayor of the town was raptured and enervated by the

genteel widow Mrs. Newson. His wellknown haughty indifference to the society of womankind, his silent

avoidance of converse with the sex, contributed a piquancy to what would otherwise have been an

unromantic matter enough. That such a poor fragile woman should be his choice was inexplicable, except on

the ground that the engagement was a family affair in which sentimental passion had no place; for it was

known that they were related in some way. Mrs. Henchard was so pale that the boys called her "The Ghost."

Sometimes Henchard overheard this epithet when they passed together along the Walksas the avenues on

the walls were namedat which his face would darken with an expression of destructiveness towards the

He pressed on the preparations for his union, or rather reunion, with this pale creature in a dogged,

unflinching spirit which did credit to his conscientiousness. Nobody would have conceived from his outward

demeanour that there was no amatory fire or pulse of romance acting as stimulant to the bustle going on in his

gaunt, great house; nothing but three large resolvesone, to make amends to his neglected Susan, another, to

provide a comfortable home for ElizabethJane under his paternal eye; and a third, to castigate himself with

the thorns which these restitutory acts brought in their train; among them the lowering of his dignity in public

Susan Henchard entered a carriage for the first time in her life when she stepped into the plain brougham

which drew up at the door on the weddingday to take her and Elizabeth Jane to church. It was a windless

morning of warm November rain, which floated down like meal, and lay in a powdery form on the nap of

hats and coats. Few people had gathered round the church door though they were well packed within. The

Scotchman, who assisted as groomsman, was of course the only one present, beyond the chief actors, who

knew the true situation of the contracting parties. He, however, was too inexperienced, too thoughtful, too

judicial, too strongly conscious of the serious side of the business, to enter into the scene in its dramatic

aspect. That required the special genius of Christopher Coney, Solomon Longways, Buzzford, and their

fellows. But they knew nothing of the secret; though, as the time for coming out of church drew on, they

gathered on the pavement adjoining, and expounded the subject according to their lights.

"'Tis fiveandforty years since I had my settlement in this here town," said Coney; "but daze me if I ever

see a man wait so long before to take so little! There's a chance even for thee after this, Nance Mockridge."

The remark was addressed to a woman who stood behind his shoulderthe same who had exhibited

Henchard's bad bread in public when Elizabeth and her mother entered Casterbridge.

"Be cust if I'd marry any such as he, or thee either," replied that lady. "As for thee, Christopher, we know

what ye be, and the less said the better. And as for hewell, there(lowering her voice) 'tis said 'a was a

poor parish 'prenticeI wouldn't say it for all the worldbut 'a was a poor parish 'prentice, that began life

"And now he's worth ever so much a minute," murmured Longways. "When a man is said to be worth so

Turning, he saw a circular disc reticulated with creases, and recognized the smiling countenance of the fat

woman who had asked for another song at the Three Mariners. "Well, Mother Cuxsom," he said, "how's this?

Here's Mrs. Newson, a mere skellinton, has got another husband to keep her, while a woman of your tonnage

"I have not. Nor another to beat me....Ah, yes, Cuxsom's gone, and so shall leather breeches!"

"'Tisn't worth my old while to think of another husband," continued Mrs. Cuxsom. "And yet I'll lay my life

"True; your mother was a very good womanI can mind her. She were rewarded by the Agricultural Society

for having begot the greatest number of healthy children without parish assistance, and other virtuous

"And dostn't mind how mother would sing, Christopher?" continued Mrs. Cuxsom, kindling at the

retrospection; "and how we went with her to the party at Mellstock, do ye mind? at old Dame Ledlow's,

farmer Shinar's aunt, do ye mind? she we used to call Toadskin, because her face were so yaller and

"And well do Ifor I was getting up husbandhigh at that timeonehalf girl, and t'other half woman, as

one may say. And canst mind"she prodded Solomon's shoulder with her fingertip, while her eyes

twinkled between the crevices of their lids"canst mind the sherrywine, and the zilver snuffers, and how

Joan Dummett was took bad when we were coming home, and Jack Griggs was forced to carry her through

the mud; and how 'a let her fall in Dairyman Sweetapple's cowbarton, and we had to clane her gown wi'

"Aythat I doheehee, such doggery as there was in them ancient days, to be sure! Ah, the miles I used

Their reminiscences were cut short by the appearance of the reunited pairHenchard looking round upon the

idlers with that ambiguous gaze of his, which at one moment seemed to mean satisfaction, and at another

"Wellthere's a difference between 'em, though he do call himself a teetotaller," said Nance Mockridge.

"She'll wish her cake dough afore she's done of him. There's a blue beardy look about 'en; and 'twill out in

"Stuffhe's well enough! Some folk want their luck buttered. If I had a choice as wide as the ocean sea I

wouldn't wish for a better man. A poor twanking woman like her'tis a godsend for her, and hardly a pair of

The plain little brougham drove off in the mist, and the idlers dispersed. "Well, we hardly know how to look

at things in these times!" said Solomon. "There was a man dropped down dead yesterday, not so very many

miles from here; and what wi' that, and this moist weather, 'tis scarce worth one's while to begin any work o'

consequence today. I'm in such a low key with drinking nothing but small table ninepenny this last week or

"I don't know but that I may as well go with 'ee, Solomon," said Christopher; "I'm as clammy as a

A Martinmas summer of Mrs. Henchard's life set in with her entry into her husband's large house and

respectable social orbit; and it was as bright as such summers well can be. Lest she should pine for deeper

affection than he could give he made a point of showing some semblance of it in external action. Among

other things he had the iron railings, that had smiled sadly in dull rust for the last eighty years, painted a

bright green, and the heavybarred, smallpaned Georgian sash windows enlivened with three coats of white.

He was as kind to her as a man, mayor, and churchwarden could possibly be. The house was large, the rooms

lofty, and the landings wide; and the two unassuming women scarcely made a perceptible addition to its

To ElizabethJane the time was a most triumphant one. The freedom she experienced, the indulgence with

which she was treated, went beyond her expectations. The reposeful, easy, affluent life to which her mother's

marriage had introduced her was, in truth, the beginning of a great change in Elizabeth. She found she could

have nice personal possessions and ornaments for the asking, and, as the mediaeval saying puts it, "Take,

have, and keep, are pleasant words." With peace of mind came development, and with development beauty.

Knowledgethe result of great natural insightshe did not lack; learning, accomplishment those, alas,

she had not; but as the winter and spring passed by her thin face and figure filled out in rounder and softer

curves; the lines and contractions upon her young brow went away; the muddiness of skin which she had

looked upon as her lot by nature departed with a change to abundance of good things, and a bloom came upon

her cheek. Perhaps, too, her grey, thoughtful eyes revealed an arch gaiety sometimes; but this was infrequent;

the sort of wisdom which looked from their pupils did not readily keep company with these lighter moods.

Like all people who have known rough times, lightheartedness seemed to her too irrational and

inconsequent to be indulged in except as a reckless dram now and then; for she had been too early habituated

to anxious reasoning to drop the habit suddenly. She felt none of those ups and downs of spirit which beset so

many people without cause; neverto paraphrase a recent poetnever a gloom in ElizabethJane's soul but

she well knew how it came there; and her present cheerfulness was fairly proportionate to her solid

It might have been supposed that, given a girl rapidly becoming goodlooking, comfortably circumstanced,

and for the first time in her life commanding ready money, she would go and make a fool of herself by dress.

But no. The reasonableness of almost everything that Elizabeth did was nowhere more conspicuous than in

this question of clothes. To keep in the rear of opportunity in matters of indulgence is as valuable a habit as to

keep abreast of opportunity in matters of enterprise. This unsophisticated girl did it by an innate

perceptiveness that was almost genius. Thus she refrained from bursting out like a waterflower that spring,

and clothing herself in puffings and knickknacks, as most of the Casterbridge girls would have done in her

circumstances. Her triumph was tempered by circumspection, she had still that fieldmouse fear of the

coulter of destiny despite fair promise, which is common among the thoughtful who have suffered early from

"I won't be too gay on any account," she would say to herself. "It would be tempting Providence to hurl

We now see her in a black silk bonnet, velvet mantle or silk spencer, dark dress, and carrying a sunshade. In

this latter article she drew the line at fringe, and had it plain edged, with a little ivory ring for keeping it

closed. It was odd about the necessity for that sunshade. She discovered that with the clarification of her

complexion and the birth of pink cheeks her skin had grown more sensitive to the sun's rays. She protected

Henchard had become very fond of her, and she went out with him more frequently than with her mother

"I happened to have the ribbon by me, so I made it up," she faltered, thinking him perhaps dissatisfied with

"Ayof courseto be sure," he replied in his leonine way. "Do as you likeor rather as your mother

Indoors she appeared with her hair divided by a parting that arched like a white rainbow from ear to ear. All

in front of this line was covered with a thick encampment of curls; all behind was dressed smoothly, and

The three members of the family were sitting at breakfast one day, and Henchard was looking silently, as he

often did, at this head of hair, which in colour was brownrather light than dark. "I thought ElizabethJane's

hairdidn't you tell me that ElizabethJane's hair promised to be black when she was a baby?" he said to his

As soon as Elizabeth was gone to her own room Henchard resumed. "Begad, I nearly forgot myself just now!

What I meant was that the girl's hair certainly looked as if it would be darker, when she was a baby."

"O yes." And the same uneasy expression came out on her face, to which the future held the key. It passed as

"Well, so much the better. Now Susan, I want to have her called Miss Henchardnot Miss Newson. Lots o'

people do it already in carelessnessit is her legal nameso it may as well be made her usual nameI

don't like t'other name at all for my own flesh and blood. I'll advertise it in the Casterbridge paperthat's the

"Well, then, I shall do it," he said, peremptorily. "Surely, if she's willing, you must wish it as much as I?"

Then Mrs. Henchard acted somewhat inconsistently; it might have been called falsely, but that her manner

was emotional and full of the earnestness of one who wishes to do right at great hazard. She went to

ElizabethJane, whom she found sewing in her own sittingroom upstairs, and told her what had been

proposed about her surname. "Can you agreeis it not a slight upon Newsonnow he's dead and gone?"

When, later in the day, she saw Henchard, she adverted to the matter at once, in a way which showed that the

line of feeling started by her mother had been persevered in. "Do you wish this change so very much, sir?"

"Wish it? Why, my blessed fathers, what an ado you women make about a trifle! I proposed itthat's all.

Now, 'LizabethJane, just please yourself. Curse me if I care what you do. Now, you understand, don't 'ee go

Here the subject dropped, and nothing more was said, and nothing was done, and Elizabeth still passed as

Meanwhile the great corn and hay traffic conducted by Henchard throve under the management of Donald

Farfrae as it had never thriven before. It had formerly moved in jolts; now it went on oiled casters. The old

crude viva voce system of Henchard, in which everything depended upon his memory, and bargains were

made by the tongue alone, was swept away. Letters and ledgers took the place of "I'll do't," and "you shall

hae't"; and, as in all such cases of advance, the rugged picturesqueness of the old method disappeared with its

The position of ElizabethJane's roomrather high in the house, so that it commanded a view of the

haystores and granaries across the gardenafforded her opportunity for accurate observation of what went

on there. She saw that Donald and Mr. Henchard were inseparables. When walking together Henchard would

lay his arm familiarly on his manager's shoulder, as if Farfrae were a younger brother, bearing so heavily that

his slight frame bent under the weight. Occasionally she would hear a perfect cannonade of laughter from

Henchard, arising from something Donald had said, the latter looking quite innocent and not laughing at all.

In Henchard's somewhat lonely life he evidently found the young man as desirable for comradeship as he was

useful for consultations. Donald's brightness of intellect maintained in the cornfactor the admiration it had

won at the first hour of their meeting. The poor opinion, and but illconcealed, that he entertained of the slim

Farfrae's physical girth, strength, and dash was more than counterbalanced by the immense respect he had for

Her quiet eye discerned that Henchard's tigerish affection for the younger man, his constant liking to have

Farfrae near him, now and then resulted in a tendency to domineer, which, however, was checked in a

moment when Donald exhibited marks of real offence. One day, looking down on their figures from on high,

she heard the latter remark, as they stood in the doorway between the garden and yard, that their habit of

walking and driving about together rather neutralized Farfrae's value as a second pair of eyes, which should

be used in places where the principal was not. "'Od damn it," cried Henchard, "what's all the world! I like a

fellow to talk to. Now come along and hae some supper, and don't take too much thought about things, or

When she walked with her mother, on the other hand, she often beheld the Scotchman looking at them with a

curious interest. The fact that he had met her at the Three Mariners was insufficient to account for it, since on

the occasions on which she had entered his room he had never raised his eyes. Besides, it was at her mother

more particularly than at herself that he looked, to Elizabeth Jane's halfconscious, simpleminded, perhaps

pardonable, disappointment. Thus she could not account for this interest by her own attractiveness, and she

decided that it might be apparent onlya way of turning his eyes that Mr. Farfrae had.

She did not divine the ample explanation of his manner, without personal vanity, that was afforded by the fact

of Donald being the depositary of Henchard's confidence in respect of his past treatment of the pale,

chastened mother who walked by her side. Her conjectures on that past never went further than faint ones

based on things casually heard and seenmere guesses that Henchard and her mother might have been

Casterbridge, as has been hinted, was a place deposited in the block upon a cornfield. There was no suburb

in the modern sense, or transitional intermixture of town and down. It stood, with regard to the wide fertile

land adjoining, cleancut and distinct, like a chessboard on a green tablecloth. The farmer's boy could sit

under his barleymow and pitch a stone into the officewindow of the townclerk; reapers at work among

the sheaves nodded to acquaintances standing on the pavementcorner; the redrobed judge, when he

condemned a sheepstealer, pronounced sentence to the tune of Baa, that floated in at the window from the

remainder of the flock browsing hard by; and at executions the waiting crowd stood in a meadow

immediately before the drop, out of which the cows had been temporarily driven to give the spectators room.

The corn grown on the upland side of the borough was garnered by farmers who lived in an eastern purlieu

called Durnover. Here wheatricks overhung the old Roman street, and thrust their eaves against the church

tower; green thatched barns, with doorways as high as the gates of Solomon's temple, opened directly upon

the main thoroughfare. Barns indeed were so numerous as to alternate with every halfdozen houses along

the way. Here lived burgesses who daily walked the fallow; shepherds in an intramural squeeze. A street of

farmers' homesteadsa street ruled by a mayor and corporation, yet echoing with the thump of the flail, the

flutter of the winnowingfan, and the purr of the milk into the pailsa street which had nothing urban in it

Henchard, as was natural, dealt largely with this nursery or bed of small farmers close at handand his

waggons were often down that way. One day, when arrangements were in progress for getting home corn

from one of the aforesaid farms, ElizabethJane received a note by hand, asking her to oblige the writer by

coming at once to a granary on Durnover Hill. As this was the granary whose contents Henchard was

removing, she thought the request had something to do with his business, and proceeded thither as soon as

she had put on her bonnet. The granary was just within the farmyard, and stood on stone staddles, high

enough for persons to walk under. The gates were open, but nobody was within. However, she entered and

waited. Presently she saw a figure approaching the gatethat of Donald Farfrae. He looked up at the church

clock, and came in. By some unaccountable shyness, some wish not to meet him there alone, she quickly

ascended the stepladder leading to the granary door, and entered it before he had seen her. Farfrae advanced,

imagining himself in solitude, and a few drops of rain beginning to fall he moved and stood under the shelter

where she had just been standing. Here he leant against one of the staddles, and gave himself up to patience.

He, too, was plainly expecting some one; could it be herself? If so, why? In a few minutes he looked at his

watch, and then pulled out a note, a duplicate of the one she had herself received.

This situation began to be very awkward, and the longer she waited the more awkward it became. To emerge

from a door just above his head and descend the ladder, and show she had been in hiding there, would look so

very foolish that she still waited on. A winnowing machine stood close beside her, and to relieve her suspense

she gently moved the handle; whereupon a cloud of wheat husks flew out into her face, and covered her

clothes and bonnet, and stuck into the fur of her victorine. He must have heard the slight movement for he

"Ahit's Miss Newson," he said as soon as he could see into the granary. "I didn't know you were there. I

"O Mr. Farfrae," she faltered, "so have I. But I didn't know it was you who wished to see me, otherwise I"

"I wished to see you? O noat least, that is, I am afraid there may be a mistake."

"Didn't you ask me to come here? Didn't you write this?" Elizabeth held out her note.

"No. Indeed, at no hand would I have thought of it! And for youdidn't you ask me? This is not your

"And is that really so! Then it's somebody wanting to see us both. Perhaps we would do well to wait a little

Acting on this consideration they lingered, ElizabethJane's face being arranged to an expression of

preternatural composure, and the young Scot, at every footstep in the street without, looking from under the

granary to see if the passer were about to enter and declare himself their summoner. They watched individual

drops of rain creeping down the thatch of the opposite rickstraw after straw till they reached the bottom;

"The person is not likely to be coming," said Farfrae. "It's a trick perhaps, and if so, it's a great pity to waste

"It's true, Miss Newson. We'll hear news of this some day depend on't, and who it was that did it. I wouldn't

They lapsed again into silence. "You are anxious to get back to Scotland, I suppose, Mr. Farfrae?" she

"I only supposed you might be from the song you sang at the Three Marinersabout Scotland and home, I

meanwhich you seemed to feel so deep down in your heart; so that we all felt for you."

"Ayand I did sing thereI didBut, Miss Newson"and Donald's voice musically undulated

between two semitones as it always did when he became earnest"it's well you feel a song for a few

minutes, and your eyes they get quite tearful; but you finish it, and for all you felt you don't mind it or think

of it again for a long while. O no, I don't want to go back! Yet I'll sing the song to you wi' pleasure whenever

"Ay! Then, Miss Newson, ye had better say nothing about this hoax, and take no heed of it. And if the person

should say anything to you, be civil to him or her, as if you did not mind itso you'll take the clever person's

laugh away." In speaking his eyes became fixed upon her dress, still sown with wheat husks. "There's husks

and dust on you. Perhaps you don't know it?" he said, in tones of extreme delicacy. "And it's very bad to let

rain come upon clothes when there's chaff on them. It washes in and spoils them. Let me help youblowing

As Elizabeth neither assented nor dissented Donald Farfrae began blowing her back hair, and her side hair,

and her neck, and the crown of her bonnet, and the fur of her victorine, Elizabeth saying, "O, thank you," at

every puff. At last she was fairly clean, though Farfrae, having got over his first concern at the situation,

She declined the offer, stepped out and was gone. Farfrae walked slowly after, looking thoughtfully at her

diminishing figure, and whistling in undertones, "As I came down through Cannobie."

At first Miss Newson's budding beauty was not regarded with much interest by anybody in Casterbridge.

Donald Farfrae's gaze, it is true, was now attracted by the Mayor's socalled stepdaughter, but he was only

one. The truth is that she was but a poor illustrative instance of the prophet Baruch's sly definition: "The

When she walked abroad she seemed to be occupied with an inner chamber of ideas, and to have slight need

for visible objects. She formed curious resolves on checking gay fancies in the matter of clothes, because it

was inconsistent with her past life to blossom gaudily the moment she had become possessed of money. But

nothing is more insidious than the evolution of wishes from mere fancies, and of wants from mere wishes.

Henchard gave ElizabethJane a box of delicatelytinted gloves one spring day. She wanted to wear them to

show her appreciation of his kindness, but she had no bonnet that would harmonize. As an artistic indulgence

she thought she would have such a bonnet. When she had a bonnet that would go with the gloves she had no

dress that would go with the bonnet. It was now absolutely necessary to finish; she ordered the requisite

article, and found that she had no sunshade to go with the dress. In for a penny in for a pound; she bought the

Everybody was attracted, and some said that her bygone simplicity was the art that conceals art, the "delicate

imposition" of Rochefoucauld; she had produced an effect, a contrast, and it had been done on purpose. As a

matter of fact this was not true, but it had its result; for as soon as Casterbridge thought her artful it thought

her worth notice. "It is the first time in my life that I have been so much admired," she said to herself;

But Donald Farfrae admired her, too; and altogether the time was an exciting one; sex had never before

asserted itself in her so strongly, for in former days she had perhaps been too impersonally human to be

distinctively feminine. After an unprecedented success one day she came indoors, went upstairs, and leant

upon her bed face downwards quite forgetting the possible creasing and damage. "Good Heaven," she

When she had thought it over, her usual fear of exaggerating appearances engendered a deep sadness. "There

is something wrong in all this," she mused. "If they only knew what an unfinished girl I amthat I can't talk

Italian, or use globes, or show any of the accomplishments they learn at boarding schools, how they would

despise me! Better sell all this finery and buy myself grammarbooks and dictionaries and a history of all the

She looked from the window and saw Henchard and Farfrae in the hayyard talking, with that impetuous

cordiality on the Mayor's part, and genial modesty on the younger man's, that was now so generally

observable in their intercourse. Friendship between man and man; what a rugged strength there was in it, as

evinced by these two. And yet the seed that was to lift the foundation of this friendship was at that moment

It was about six o'clock; the men were dropping off homeward one by one. The last to leave was a

roundshouldered, blinking young man of nineteen or twenty, whose mouth fell ajar on the slightest

provocation, seemingly because there was no chin to support it. Henchard called aloud to him as he went out

Whittle turned, and ran back a few steps. "Yes, sir," he said, in breathless deprecation, as if he knew what

"Once morebe in time tomorrow morning. You see what's to be done, and you hear what I say, and you

"Yes, sir." Then Abel Whittle left, and Henchard and Farfrae; and Elizabeth saw no more of them.

Now there was good reason for this command on Henchard's part. Poor Abel, as he was called, had an

inveterate habit of oversleeping himself and coming late to his work. His anxious will was to be among the

earliest; but if his comrades omitted to pull the string that he always tied round his great toe and left hanging

out the window for that purpose, his will was as wind. He did not arrive in time.

As he was often second hand at the hayweighing, or at the crane which lifted the sacks, or was one of those

who had to accompany the waggons into the country to fetch away stacks that had been purchased, this

affliction of Abel's was productive of much inconvenience. For two mornings in the present week he had kept

the others waiting nearly an hour; hence Henchard's threat. It now remained to be seen what would happen

Six o'clock struck, and there was no Whittle. At halfpast six Henchard entered the yard; the waggon was

horsed that Abel was to accompany; and the other man had been waiting twenty minutes. Then Henchard

swore, and Whittle coming up breathless at that instant, the cornfactor turned on him, and declared with an

oath that this was the last time; that if he were behind once more, by God, he would come and drag him out o'

"There is sommit wrong in my make, your worshipful!" said Abel, "especially in the inside, whereas my poor

dumb brain gets as dead as a clot afore I've said my few scrags of prayers. Yesit came on as a stripling, just

afore I'd got man's wages, whereas I never enjoy my bed at all, for no sooner do I lie down than I be asleep,

and afore I be awake I be up. I've fretted my gizzard green about it, maister, but what can I do? Now last

"I don't want to hear it!" roared Henchard. "Tomorrow the waggons must start at four, and if you're not here,

"He asked me and he questioned me, and then 'a wouldn't hear my points!" said Abel, to the yard in general.

The journey to be taken by the waggons next day was a long one into Blackmoor Vale, and at four o'clock

lanterns were moving about the yard. But Abel was missing. Before either of the other men could run to

Abel's and warn him Henchard appeared in the garden doorway. "Where's Abel Whittle? Not come after all

I've said? Now I'll carry out my word, by my blessed fathersnothing else will do him any good! I'm going

Henchard went off, entered Abel's house, a little cottage in Back Street, the door of which was never locked

because the inmates had nothing to lose. Reaching Whittle's bedside the cornfactor shouted a bass note so

vigorously that Abel started up instantly, and beholding Henchard standing over him, was galvanized into

"Out of bed, sir, and off to the granary, or you leave my employ today! 'Tis to teach ye a lesson. March on;

The unhappy Whittle threw on his sleeve waistcoat, and managed to get into his boots at the bottom of the

stairs, while Henchard thrust his hat over his head. Whittle then trotted on down Back Street, Henchard

Just at this time Farfrae, who had been to Henchard's house to look for him, came out of the back gate, and

saw something white fluttering in the morning gloom, which he soon perceived to be part of Abel's shirt that

"For maircy's sake, what object's this?" said Farfrae, following Abel into the yard, Henchard being some way

"Ye see, Mr. Farfrae," gibbered Abel with a resigned smile of terror, "he said he'd mortify my flesh if so be I

didn't get up sooner, and now he's adoing on't! Ye see it can't be helped, Mr. Farfrae; things do happen

queer sometimes! Yes I'll go to Blackmoor Vale half naked as I be, since he do command; but I shall kill

myself afterwards; I can't outlive the disgrace, for the womenfolk will be looking out of their winders at my

mortification all the way along, and laughing me to scorn as a man 'ithout breeches! You know how I feel

such things, Maister Farfrae, and how forlorn thoughts get hold upon me. YesI shall do myself harmI

"Get back home, and slip on your breeches, and come to wark like a man! If ye go not, you'll ha'e your death

"I don't care what Mr. Henchard said, nor anybody else! 'Tis simple foolishness to do this. Go and dress

"Not if I am manager," said Farfrae. "He either goes home, or I march out of this yard for good."

Henchard looked at him with a face stern and red. But he paused for a moment, and their eyes met. Donald

"Come," said Donald quietly, "a man o' your position should ken better, sir! It is tyrannical and no worthy of

"'Tis not tyrannical!" murmured Henchard, like a sullen boy. "It is to make him remember!" He presently

added, in a tone of one bitterly hurt: "Why did you speak to me before them like that, Farfrae? You might

have stopped till we were alone. AhI know why! I've told ye the secret o' my life fool that I was to

Henchard looked on the ground, said nothing more, and turned away. During the day Farfrae learnt from the

men that Henchard had kept Abel's old mother in coals and snuff all the previous winter, which made him

less antagonistic to the cornfactor. But Henchard continued moody and silent, and when one of the men

inquired of him if some oats should be hoisted to an upper floor or not, he said shortly, "Ask Mr. Farfrae.

Morally he was; there could be no doubt of it. Henchard, who had hitherto been the most admired man in his

circle, was the most admired no longer. One day the daughters of a deceased farmer in Durnover wanted an

opinion of the value of their haystack, and sent a messenger to ask Mr. Farfrae to oblige them with one. The

"I am going that way....Why Mr. Farfrae?" said Henchard, with the fixed look of thought. "Why do people

"OhI seethat's what they sayhey? They like him because he's cleverer than Mr. Henchard, and

because he knows more; and, in short, Mr. Henchard can't hold a candle to him hey?"

"Oh, there's more? Of course there's more! What besides? Come, here's a sixpence for a fairing."

"'And he's better tempered, and Henchard's a fool to him,' they say. And when some of the women were

awalking home they said, 'He's a dimenthe's a chap o' waxhe's the besthe's the horse for my money,'

says they. And they said, 'He's the most understanding man o' them two by long chalks. I wish he was the

"They'll talk any nonsense," Henchard replied with covered gloom. "Well, you can go now. And I am coming

to value the hay, d'ye hear?I." The boy departed, and Henchard murmured, "Wish he were master here, do

He went towards Durnover. On his way he overtook Farfrae. They walked on together, Henchard looking

"But ye are a bit downsurely ye are down? Why, there's nothing to be angry about! 'Tis splendid stuff that

we've got from Blackmoor Vale. By the by, the people in Durnover want their hay valued."

As Henchard did not reply Donald practised a piece of music sotto voce, till, getting near the bereaved

"Ah, as their father is dead I won't go on with such as that. How could I forget?"

"Do you care so very much about hurting folks' feelings?" observed Henchard with a half sneer. "You do, I

"I am sorry if I have hurt yours, sir," replied Donald, standing still, with a second expression of the same

The cloud lifted from Henchard's brow, and as Donald finished the cornmerchant turned to him, regarding

"I have been hearing things that vexed me," he said. "'Twas that made me short in my mannermade me

overlook what you really are. Now, I don't want to go in here about this hay Farfrae, you can do it better

than I. They sent for 'ee, too. I have to attend a meeting of the Town Council at eleven, and 'tis drawing on

They parted thus in renewed friendship, Donald forbearing to ask Henchard for meanings that were not very

plain to him. On Henchard's part there was now again repose; and yet, whenever he thought of Farfrae, it was

with a dim dread; and he often regretted that he had told the young man his whole heart, and confided to him

On this account Henchard's manner towards Farfrae insensibly became more reserved. He was

courteoustoo courteousand Farfrae was quite surprised at the good breeding which now for the first time

showed itself among the qualities of a man he had hitherto thought undisciplined, if warm and sincere. The

cornfactor seldom or never again put his arm upon the young man's shoulder so as to nearly weigh him

down with the pressure of mechanized friendship. He left off coming to Donald's lodgings and shouting into

the passage. "Hoy, Farfrae, boy, come and have some dinner with us! Don't sit here in solitary confinement!"

Thus their lives rolled on till a day of public rejoicing was suggested to the country at large in celebration of a

For some time Casterbridge, by nature slow, made no response. Then one day Donald Farfrae broached the

subject to Henchard by asking if he would have any objection to lend some rickcloths to himself and a few

others, who contemplated getting up an entertainment of some sort on the day named, and required a shelter

for the same, to which they might charge admission at the rate of so much a head.

When his manager had gone about the business Henchard was fired with emulation. It certainly had been

very remiss of him, as Mayor, he thought, to call no meeting ere this, to discuss what should be done on this

holiday. But Farfrae had been so cursed quick in his movements as to give old fashioned people in authority

no chance of the initiative. However, it was not too late; and on second thoughts he determined to take upon

his own shoulders the responsibility of organizing some amusements, if the other Councilmen would leave

the matter in his hands. To this they quite readily agreed, the majority being fine old crusted characters who

So Henchard set about his preparations for a really brilliant thingsuch as should be worthy of the venerable

town. As for Farfrae's little affair, Henchard nearly forgot it; except once now and then when, on it coming

into his mind, he said to himself, "Charge admission at so much a headjust like a Scotchman!who is

going to pay anything a head?" The diversions which the Mayor intended to provide were to be entirely free.

He had grown so dependent upon Donald that he could scarcely resist calling him in to consult. But by sheer

self coercion he refrained. No, he thought, Farfrae would be suggesting such improvements in his damned

luminous way that in spite of himself he, Henchard, would sink to the position of second fiddle, and only

Everybody applauded the Mayor's proposed entertainment, especially when it became known that he meant

Close to the town was an elevated green spot surrounded by an ancient square earthworkearthworks square

and not square, were as common as blackberries hereabouta spot whereon the Casterbridge people usually

held any kind of merrymaking, meeting, or sheepfair that required more space than the streets would

afford. On one side it sloped to the river Froom, and from any point a view was obtained of the country round

He advertised about the town, in long posters of a pink colour, that games of all sorts would take place here;

and set to work a little battalion of men under his own eye. They erected greasypoles for climbing, with

smoked hams and local cheeses at the top. They placed hurdles in rows for jumping over; across the river

they laid a slippery pole, with a live pig of the neighbourhood tied at the other end, to become the property of

the man who could walk over and get it. There were also provided wheelbarrows for racing, donkeys for the

same, a stage for boxing, wrestling, and drawing blood generally; sacks for jumping in. Moreover, not

forgetting his principles, Henchard provided a mammoth tea, of which everybody who lived in the borough

was invited to partake without payment. The tables were laid parallel with the inner slope of the rampart, and

Passing to and fro the Mayor beheld the unattractive exterior of Farfrae's erection in the West Walk,

rickcloths of different sizes and colours being hung up to the arching trees without any regard to

appearance. He was easy in his mind now, for his own preparations far transcended these.

The morning came. The sky, which had been remarkably clear down to within a day or two, was overcast,

and the weather threatening, the wind having an unmistakable hint of water in it. Henchard wished he had not

been quite so sure about the continuance of a fair season. But it was too late to modify or postpone, and the

proceedings went on. At twelve o'clock the rain began to fall, small and steady, commencing and increasing

so insensibly that it was difficult to state exactly when dry weather ended or wet established itself. In an hour

the slight moisture resolved itself into a monotonous smiting of earth by heaven, in torrents to which no end

A number of people had heroically gathered in the field but by three o'clock Henchard discerned that his

project was doomed to end in failure. The hams at the top of the poles dripped watered smoke in the form of a

brown liquor, the pig shivered in the wind, the grain of the deal tables showed through the sticking

tablecloths, for the awning allowed the rain to drift under at its will, and to enclose the sides at this hour

seemed a useless undertaking. The landscape over the river disappeared; the wind played on the tentcords in

aeolian improvisations, and at length rose to such a pitch that the whole erection slanted to the ground those

But towards six the storm abated, and a drier breeze shook the moisture from the grass bents. It seemed

possible to carry out the programme after all. The awning was set up again; the band was called out from its

shelter, and ordered to begin, and where the tables had stood a place was cleared for dancing.

"But where are the folk?" said Henchard, after the lapse of halfanhour, during which time only two men

and a woman had stood up to dance. "The shops are all shut. Why don't they come?"

"They are at Farfrae's affair in the West Walk," answered a Councilman who stood in the field with the

Henchard walked away moodily. One or two young fellows gallantly came to climb the poles, to save the

hams from being wasted; but as there were no spectators, and the whole scene presented the most melancholy

appearance Henchard gave orders that the proceedings were to be suspended, and the entertainment closed,

the food to be distributed among the poor people of the town. In a short time nothing was left in the field but

Henchard returned to his house, had tea with his wife and daughter, and then walked out. It was now dusk.

He soon saw that the tendency of all promenaders was towards a particular spot in the Walks, and eventually

proceeded thither himself. The notes of a stringed band came from the enclosure that Farfrae had

erectedthe pavilion as he called itand when the Mayor reached it he perceived that a gigantic tent had

been ingeniously constructed without poles or ropes. The densest point of the avenue of sycamores had been

selected, where the boughs made a closely interlaced vault overhead; to these boughs the canvas had been

hung, and a barrel roof was the result. The end towards the wind was enclosed, the other end was open.

In form it was like the nave of a cathedral with one gable removed, but the scene within was anything but

devotional. A reel or fling of some sort was in progress; and the usually sedate Farfrae was in the midst of the

other dancers in the costume of a wild Highlander, flinging himself about and spinning to the tune. For a

moment Henchard could not help laughing. Then he perceived the immense admiration for the Scotchman

that revealed itself in the women's faces; and when this exhibition was over, and a new dance proposed, and

Donald had disappeared for a time to return in his natural garments, he had an unlimited choice of partners,

every girl being in a comingon disposition towards one who so thoroughly understood the poetry of motion

All the town crowded to the Walk, such a delightful idea of a ballroom never having occurred to the

inhabitants before. Among the rest of the onlookers were Elizabeth and her motherthe former thoughtful

yet much interested, her eyes beaming with a longing lingering light, as if Nature had been advised by

Correggio in their creation. The dancing progressed with unabated spirit, and Henchard walked and waited

till his wife should be disposed to go home. He did not care to keep in the light, and when he went into the

dark it was worse, for there he heard remarks of a kind which were becoming too frequent:

"Mr. Henchard's rejoicings couldn't say good morning to this," said one. "A man must be a headstrong

The other answered that people said it was not only in such things as those that the Mayor was wanting.

"Where would his business be if it were not for this young fellow? 'Twas verily Fortune sent him to

Henchard. His accounts were like a bramblewood when Mr. Farfrae came. He used to reckon his sacks by

chalk strokes all in a row like gardenpalings, measure his ricks by stretching with his arms, weigh his

trusses by a lift, judge his hay by a chaw, and settle the price with a curse. But now this accomplished young

man does it all by ciphering and mensuration. Then the wheat that sometimes used to taste so strong o'

mice when made into bread that people could fairly tell the breedFarfrae has a plan for purifying, so that

nobody would dream the smallest fourlegged beast had walked over it once. O yes, everybody is full of him,

and the care Mr. Henchard has to keep him, to be sure!" concluded this gentleman.

"No!" said Henchard to himself behind the tree. "Or if he do, he'll be honeycombed clean out of all the

He went back to the dancing pavilion. Farfrae was footing a quaint little dance with ElizabethJanean old

country thing, the only one she knew, and though he considerately toned down his movements to suit her

demurer gait, the pattern of the shining little nails in the soles of his boots became familiar to the eyes of

every bystander. The tune had enticed her into it; being a tune of a busy, vaulting, leaping sortsome low

notes on the silver string of each fiddle, then a skipping on the small, like running up and down

ladders"Miss M'Leod of Ayr" was its name, so Mr. Farfrae had said, and that it was very popular in his

It was soon over, and the girl looked at Henchard for approval; but he did not give it. He seemed not to see

her. "Look here, Farfrae," he said, like one whose mind was elsewhere, "I'll go to PortBredy Great Market

tomorrow myself. You can stay and put things right in your clothes box, and recover strength to your

knees after your vagaries." He planted on Donald an antagonistic glare that had begun as a smile.

Some other townsmen came up, and Donald drew aside. "What's this, Henchard," said Alderman Tubber,

applying his thumb to the cornfactor like a cheesetaster. "An opposition randy to yours, eh? Jack's as good

"You see, Mr. Henchard," said the lawyer, another good natured friend, "where you made the mistake was

in going so far afield. You should have taken a leaf out of his book, and have had your sports in a sheltered

place like this. But you didn't think of it, you see; and he did, and that's where he's beat you."

"He'll be topsawyer soon of you two, and carry all afore him," added jocular Mr. Tubber.

"No," said Henchard gloomily. "He won't be that, because he's shortly going to leave me." He looked towards

Donald, who had come near. "Mr. Farfrae's time as my manager is drawing to a closeisn't it, Farfrae?"

The young man, who could now read the lines and folds of Henchard's stronglytraced face as if they were

clear verbal inscriptions, quietly assented; and when people deplored the fact, and asked why it was, he

Henchard went home, apparently satisfied. But in the morning, when his jealous temper had passed away, his

heart sank within him at what he had said and done. He was the more disturbed when he found that this time

ElizabethJane had perceived from Henchard's manner that in assenting to dance she had made a mistake of

some kind. In her simplicity she did not know what it was till a hint from a nodding acquaintance enlightened

her. As the Mayor's stepdaughter, she learnt, she had not been quite in her place in treading a measure amid

Thereupon her ears, cheeks, and chin glowed like live coals at the dawning of the idea that her tastes were not

This made her very miserable, and she looked about for her mother; but Mrs. Henchard, who had less idea of

conventionality than Elizabeth herself, had gone away, leaving her daughter to return at her own pleasure.

The latter moved on into the dark dense old avenues, or rather vaults of living woodwork, which ran along

A man followed in a few minutes, and her face being towards the shine from the tent he recognized her. It

was Farfrae just come from the dialogue with Henchard which had signified his dismissal.

"And it's you, Miss Newson?and I've been looking for ye everywhere!" he said, overcoming a sadness

imparted by the estrangement with the cornmerchant. "May I walk on with you as far as your

She thought there might be something wrong in this, but did not utter any objection. So together they went

on, first down the West Walk, and then into the Bowling Walk, till Farfrae said, "It's like that I'm going to

"Ohas a mere matter of businessnothing more. But we'll not concern ourselves about itit is for the

"Nay, but you do! It's the feeling for it rather than the learning of steps that makes pleasant dancers....I fear I

offended your father by getting up this! And now, perhaps, I'll have to go to another part o' the warrld

This seemed such a melancholy prospect that ElizabethJane breathed a sighletting it off in fragments that

he might not hear her. But darkness makes people truthful, and the Scotchman went on impulsivelyperhaps

"I wish I was richer, Miss Newson; and your stepfather had not been offended, I would ask you something in

What he would have asked her he did not say, and instead of encouraging him she remained incompetently

silent. Thus afraid one of another they continued their promenade along the walls till they got near the bottom

of the Bowling Walk; twenty steps further and the trees would end, and the streetcorner and lamps appear.

"I never found out who it was that sent us to Durnover granary on a fool's errand that day," said Donald, in

"Perhaps it was not for fun. It might have been that they thought they would like us to stay waiting there,

talking to one another? Ay, well! I hope you Casterbridge folk will not forget me if I go."

They had got into the lamplight. "Now, I'll think over that," said Donald Farfrae. "And I'll not come up to

They parted, Farfrae returning into the dark Bowling Walk, and ElizabethJane going up the street. Without

any consciousness of what she was doing she started running with all her might till she reached her father's

Indoors she fell to conjecturing the meaning of Farfrae's enigmatic words about not daring to ask her what he

fain would. Elizabeth, that silent observing woman, had long noted how he was rising in favour among the

townspeople; and knowing Henchard's nature now she had feared that Farfrae's days as manager were

numbered, so that the announcement gave her little surprise. Would Mr. Farfrae stay in Casterbridge despite

his words and her father's dismissal? His occult breathings to her might be solvable by his course in that

The next day was windyso windy that walking in the garden she picked up a portion of the draft of a letter

on business in Donald Farfrae's writing, which had flown over the wall from the office. The useless scrap she

took indoors, and began to copy the calligraphy, which she much admired. The letter began "Dear Sir," and

presently writing on a loose slip "ElizabethJane," she laid the latter over "Sir," making the phrase "Dear

ElizabethJane." When she saw the effect a quick red ran up her face and warmed her through, though

nobody was there to see what she had done. She quickly tore up the slip, and threw it away. After this she

grew cool and laughed at herself, walked about the room, and laughed again; not joyfully, but distressfully

It was quickly known in Casterbridge that Farfrae and Henchard had decided to dispense with each other.

ElizabethJane's anxiety to know if Farfrae were going away from the town reached a pitch that disturbed

her, for she could no longer conceal from herself the cause. At length the news reached her that he was not

going to leave the place. A man following the same trade as Henchard, but on a very small scale, had sold his

business to Farfrae, who was forthwith about to start as corn and hay merchant on his own account.

Her heart fluttered when she heard of this step of Donald's, proving that he meant to remain; and yet, would a

man who cared one little bit for her have endangered his suit by setting up a business in opposition to Mr.

Henchard's? Surely not; and it must have been a passing impulse only which had led him to address her so

To solve the problem whether her appearance on the evening of the dance were such as to inspire a fleeting

love at first sight, she dressed herself up exactly as she had dressed thenthe muslin, the spencer, the

sandals, the parasoland looked in the mirror The picture glassed back was in her opinion, precisely of

such a kind as to inspire that fleeting regard, and no more"just enough to make him silly, and not enough

to keep him so," she said luminously; and Elizabeth thought, in a much lower key, that by this time he had

discovered how plain and homely was the informing spirit of that pretty outside.

Hence, when she felt her heart going out to him, she would say to herself with a mock pleasantry that carried

an ache with it, "No, no, ElizabethJanesuch dreams are not for you!" She tried to prevent herself from

seeing him, and thinking of him; succeeding fairly well in the former attempt, in the latter not so completely.

Henchard, who had been hurt at finding that Farfrae did not mean to put up with his temper any longer, was

incensed beyond measure when he learnt what the young man had done as an alternative. It was in the

townhall, after a council meeting, that he first became aware of Farfrae's coup for establishing himself

independently in the town; and his voice might have been heard as far as the townpump expressing his

feelings to his fellow councilmen. These tones showed that, though under a long reign of selfcontrol he had

become Mayor and churchwarden and what not, there was still the same unruly volcanic stuff beneath the

"Well, he's a friend of mine, and I'm a friend of hisor if we are not, what are we? 'Od send, if I've not been

his friend, who has, I should like to know? Didn't he come here without a sound shoe to his voot? Didn't I

keep him here help him to a living? Didn't I help him to money, or whatever he wanted? I stuck out for no

termsI said 'Name your own price.' I'd have shared my last crust with that young fellow at one time, I liked

him so well. And now he's defied me! But damn him, I'll have a tussle with him nowat fair buying and

selling, mindat fair buying and selling! And if I can't overbid such a stripling as he, then I'm not wo'th a

His friends of the Corporation did not specially respond. Henchard was less popular now than he had been

when nearly two years before, they had voted him to the chief magistracy on account of his amazing energy.

While they had collectively profited by this quality of the cornfactor's they had been made to wince

individually on more than one occasion. So he went out of the hall and down the street alone.

Reaching home he seemed to recollect something with a sour satisfaction. He called ElizabethJane. Seeing

"Nothing to find fault with," he said, observing her concern. "Only I want to caution you, my dear. That man,

Farfraeit is about him. I've seen him talking to you two or three timeshe danced with 'ee at the

rejoicings, and came home with 'ee. Now, now, no blame to you. But just harken: Have you made him any

"Good. All's well that ends well. I particularly wish you not to see him again."

SIR,I make request that henceforth you and my step daughter be as strangers to each other. She on her

part has promised to welcome no more addresses from you; and I trust, therefore, you will not attempt to

One would almost have supposed Henchard to have had policy to see that no better modus vivendi could be

arrived at with Farfrae than by encouraging him to become his sonin law. But such a scheme for buying

over a rival had nothing to recommend it to the Mayor's headstrong faculties. With all domestic finesse of

that kind he was hopelessly at variance. Loving a man or hating him, his diplomacy was as wrongheaded as a

buffalo's; and his wife had not ventured to suggest the course which she, for many reasons, would have

Meanwhile Donald Farfrae had opened the gates of commerce on his own account at a spot on Durnover

Hillas far as possible from Henchard's stores, and with every intention of keeping clear of his former friend

and employer's customers. There was, it seemed to the younger man, room for both of them and to spare. The

town was small, but the corn and haytrade was proportionately large, and with his native sagacity he saw

So determined was he to do nothing which should seem like tradeantagonism to the Mayor that he refused

his first customera large farmer of good reputebecause Henchard and this man had dealt together within

"He was once my friend," said Farfrae, "and it's not for me to take business from him. I am sorry to

In spite of this praiseworthy course the Scotchman's trade increased. Whether it were that his northern energy

was an overmastering force among the easygoing Wessex worthies, or whether it was sheer luck, the fact

remained that whatever he touched he prospered in. Like Jacob in PadanAram, he would no sooner humbly

limit himself to the ringstrakedand spotted exceptions of trade than the ringstrakedandspotted would

But most probably luck had little to do with it. Character is Fate, said Novalis, and Farfrae's character was

just the reverse of Henchard's, who might not inaptly be described as Faust has been describedas a

vehement gloomy being who had quitted the ways of vulgar men without light to guide him on a better way.

Farfrae duly received the request to discontinue attentions to ElizabethJane. His acts of that kind had been

so slight that the request was almost superfluous. Yet he had felt a considerable interest in her, and after some

cogitation he decided that it would be as well to enact no Romeo part just thenfor the young girl's sake no

A time came when, avoid collision with his former friend as he might, Farfrae was compelled, in sheer

selfdefence, to close with Henchard in mortal commercial combat. He could no longer parry the fierce

attacks of the latter by simple avoidance. As soon as their war of prices began everybody was interested, and

some few guessed the end. It was, in some degree, Northern insight matched against Southern

doggednessthe dirk against the cudgeland Henchard's weapon was one which, if it did not deal ruin at

the first or second stroke, left him afterwards wellnigh at his antagonist's mercy.

Almost every Saturday they encountered each other amid the crowd of farmers which thronged about the

marketplace in the weekly course of their business. Donald was always ready, and even anxious, to say a

few friendly words, but the Mayor invariably gazed stormfully past him, like one who had endured and lost

on his account, and could in no sense forgive the wrong; nor did Farfrae's snubbed manner of perplexity at all

appease him. The large farmers, corn merchants, millers, auctioneers, and others had each an official stall in

the cornmarket room, with their names painted thereon; and when to the familiar series of "Henchard,"

"Everdene," "Shiner," "Darton," and so on, was added one inscribed "Farfrae," in staring new letters,

Henchard was stung into bitterness; like Bellerophon, he wandered away from the crowd, cankered in soul.

From that day Donald Farfrae's name was seldom mentioned in Henchard's house. If at breakfast or dinner

Elizabeth Jane's mother inadvertently alluded to her favourite's movements, the girl would implore her by a

There came a shock which had been foreseen for some time by Elizabeth, as the box passenger foresees the

Her mother was illtoo unwell to leave her room. Henchard, who treated her kindly, except in moments of

irritation, sent at once for the richest, busiest doctor, whom he supposed to be the best. Bedtime came, and

Elizabeth, who had been staying up, did not appear at breakfast on the second morning, and Henchard sat

down alone. He was startled to see a letter for him from Jersey in a writing he knew too well, and had

expected least to behold again. He took it up in his hands and looked at it as at a picture, a vision, a vista of

The writer said that she at length perceived how impossible it would be for any further communications to

proceed between them now that his remarriage had taken place. That such reunion had been the only

"On calm reflection, therefore," she went on, "I quite forgive you for landing me in such a dilemma,

remembering that you concealed nothing before our illadvised acquaintance; and that you really did set

before me in your grim way the fact of there being a certain risk in intimacy with you, slight as it seemed to

be after fifteen or sixteen years of silence on your wife's part. I thus look upon the whole as a misfortune of

"So that, Michael, I must ask you to overlook those letters with which I pestered you day after day in the heat

of my feelings. They were written whilst I thought your conduct to me cruel; but now I know more

particulars of the position you were in I see how inconsiderate my reproaches were.

"Now you will, I am sure, perceive that the one condition which will make any future happiness possible for

me is that the past connection between our lives be kept secret outside this isle. Speak of it I know you will

not; and I can trust you not to write of it. One safeguard more remains to be mentionedthat no writings of

mine, or trifling articles belonging to me, should be left in your possession through neglect or forgetfulness.

To this end may I request you to return to me any such you may have, particularly the letters written in the

"For the handsome sum you forwarded to me as a plaster to the wound I heartily thank you.

"I am now on my way to Bristol, to see my only relative. She is rich, and I hope will do something for me. I

shall return through Casterbridge and Budmouth, where I shall take the packetboat. Can you meet me with

the letters and other trifles? I shall be in the coach which changes horses at the Antelope Hotel at halfpast

five Wednesday evening; I shall be wearing a Paisley shawl with a red centre, and thus may easily be found. I

should prefer this plan of receiving them to having them sent.I remain still, yours; ever,

Henchard breathed heavily. "Poor thingbetter you had not known me! Upon my heart and soul, if ever I

should be left in a position to carry out that marriage with thee, I OUGHT to do itI ought to do it, indeed!"

The contingency that he had in his mind was, of course, the death of Mrs. Henchard.

As requested, he sealed up Lucetta's letters, and put the parcel aside till the day she had appointed; this plan

of returning them by hand being apparently a little ruse of the young lady for exchanging a word or two with

him on past times. He would have preferred not to see her; but deeming that there could be no great harm in

The evening was chilly, and the coach was late. Henchard crossed over to it while the horses were being

changed; but there was no Lucetta inside or out. Concluding that something had happened to modify her

arrangements he gave the matter up and went home, not without a sense of relief. Meanwhile Mrs. Henchard

was weakening visibly. She could not go out of doors any more. One day, after much thinking which seemed

to distress her, she said she wanted to write something. A desk was put upon her bed with pen and paper, and

at her request she was left alone. She remained writing for a short time, folded her paper carefully, called

ElizabethJane to bring a taper and wax, and then, still refusing assistance, sealed up the sheet, directed it,

The latter sat up with her mother to the utmost of her strength night after night. To learn to take the universe

seriously there is no quicker way than to watchto be a "waker," as the countrypeople call it. Between the

hours at which the last tosspot went by and the first sparrow shook himself, the silence in

Casterbridgebarring the rare sound of the watchmanwas broken in Elizabeth's ear only by the

timepiece in the bedroom ticking frantically against the clock on the stairs; ticking harder and harder till it

seemed to clang like a gong; and all this while the subtle souled girl asking herself why she was born, why

sitting in a room, and blinking at the candle; why things around her had taken the shape they wore in

preference to every other possible shape. Why they stared at her so helplessly, as if waiting for the touch of

some wand that should release them from terrestrial constraint; what that chaos called consciousness, which

spun in her at this moment like a top, tended to, and began in. Her eyes fell together; she was awake, yet she

A word from her mother roused her. Without preface, and as the continuation of a scene already progressing

in her mind, Mrs. Henchard said: "You remember the note sent to you and Mr. Farfraeasking you to meet

some one in Durnover Barton and that you thought it was a trick to make fools of you?"

"It was not to make fools of youit was done to bring you together. 'Twas I did it."

"O mother!" ElizabethJane bent down her head so much that she looked quite into her own lap. But as her

"Well, I had a reason. 'Twill out one day. I wish it could have been in my time! But therenothing is as you

"I don't knowI don't know." After this her mother was silent, and dozed; and she spoke on the subject no

Some little time later on Farfrae was passing Henchard's house on a Sunday morning, when he observed that

the blinds were all down. He rang the bell so softly that it only sounded a single full note and a small one; and

At the townpump there were gathered when he passed a few old inhabitants, who came there for water

whenever they had, as at present, spare time to fetch it, because it was purer from that original fount than

from their own wells. Mrs. Cuxsom, who had been standing there for an indefinite time with her pitcher, was

describing the incidents of Mrs. Henchard's death, as she had learnt them from the nurse.

"And she was white as marblestone," said Mrs. Cuxsom. "And likewise such a thoughtful woman, tooah,

poor soulthat a' minded every little thing that wanted tending. 'Yes,' says she, 'when I'm gone, and my last

breath's blowed, look in the top drawer o' the chest in the back room by the window, and you'll find all my

coffin clothes, a piece of flannelthat's to put under me, and the little piece is to put under my head; and my

new stockings for my feetthey are folded alongside, and all my other things. And there's four ounce

pennies, the heaviest I could find, atied up in bits of linen, for weightstwo for my right eye and two for

my left,' she said. 'And when you've used 'em, and my eyes don't open no more, bury the pennies, good souls

and don't ye go spending 'em, for I shouldn't like it. And open the windows as soon as I am carried out, and

"Well, and Martha did it, and buried the ounce pennies in the garden. But if ye'll believe words, that man,

Christopher Coney, went and dug 'em up, and spent 'em at the Three Mariners. 'Faith,' he said, 'why should

death rob life o' fourpence? Death's not of such good report that we should respect 'en to that extent,' says he."

"Gad, then I won't quite ha'e it," said Solomon Longways. "I say it today, and 'tis a Sunday morning, and I

wouldn't speak wrongfully for a zilver zixpence at such a time. I don't see noo harm in it. To respect the dead

is sound doxology; and I wouldn't sell skellintonsleastwise respectable skellintonsto be varnished for

'natomies, except I were out o' work. But money is scarce, and throats get dry. Why SHOULD death rob life

"Well, poor soul; she's helpless to hinder that or anything now," answered Mother Cuxsom. "And all her

shining keys will be took from her, and her cupboards opened; and little things a' didn't wish seen, anybody

Henchard and Elizabeth sat conversing by the fire. It was three weeks after Mrs. Henchard's funeral, the

candles were not lighted, and a restless, acrobatic flame, poised on a coal, called from the shady walls the

smiles of all shapes that could respondthe old pierglass, with gilt columns and huge entablature, the

pictureframes, sundry knobs and handles, and the brass rosette at the bottom of each riband bellpull on

Henchard always looked like one bent on resisting pain when ElizabethJane spoke of Richard Newson as

"father." "Ah! I am out of all that, am I not?" he said...."Was Newson a kind father?"

Henchard's face settled into an expression of stolid loneliness which gradually modulated into something

softer. "Suppose I had been your real father?" he said. "Would you have cared for me as much as you cared

"I can't think it," she said quickly. "I can think of no other as my father, except my father."

Henchard's wife was dissevered from him by death; his friend and helper Farfrae by estrangement;

ElizabethJane by ignorance. It seemed to him that only one of them could possibly be recalled, and that was

the girl. His mind began vibrating between the wish to reveal himself to her and the policy of leaving well

alone, till he could no longer sit still. He walked up and down, and then he came and stood behind her chair,

looking down upon the top of her head. He could no longer restrain his impulse. "What did your mother tell

"She should have told morebefore you knew me! Then my task would not have been such a hard

one....Elizabeth, it is I who am your father, and not Richard Newson. Shame alone prevented your wretched

The back of Elizabeth's head remained still, and her shoulders did not denote even the movements of

breathing. Henchard went on: "I'd rather have your scorn, your fear, anything than your ignorance; 'tis that I

hate! Your mother and I were man and wife when we were young. What you saw was our second marriage.

Your mother was too honest. We had thought each other deadandNewson became her husband."

This was the nearest approach Henchard could make to the full truth. As far as he personally was concerned

he would have screened nothing; but he showed a respect for the young girl's sex and years worthy of a better

When he had gone on to give details which a whole series of slight and unregarded incidents in her past life

strangely corroborated; when, in short, she believed his story to be true, she became greatly agitated, and

"Don't crydon't cry!" said Henchard, with vehement pathos, "I can't bear it, I won't bear it. I am your

father; why should you cry? Am I so dreadful, so hateful to 'ee? Don't take against me, ElizabethJane!" he

cried, grasping her wet hand. "Don't take against methough I was a drinking man once, and used your

mother roughlyI'll be kinder to you than HE was! I'll do anything, if you will only look upon me as your

She tried to stand up and comfort him trustfully; but she could not; she was troubled at his presence, like the

"I don't want you to come to me all of a sudden," said Henchard in jerks, and moving like a great tree in a

wind. "No, Elizabeth, I don't. I'll go away and not see you till tomorrow, or when you like, and then I'll

show 'ee papers to prove my words. There, I am gone, and won't disturb you any more....'Twas I that chose

your name, my daughter; your mother wanted it Susan. There, don't forget 'twas I gave you your name!" He

went out at the door and shut her softly in, and she heard him go away into the garden. But he had not done.

Before she had moved, or in any way recovered from the effect of his disclosure, he reappeared.

"One word more, Elizabeth," he said. "You'll take my surname nowhey? Your mother was against it, but it

will be much more pleasant to me. 'Tis legally yours, you know. But nobody need know that. You shall take

it as if by choice. I'll talk to my lawyerI don't know the law of it exactly; but will you do thislet me put a

"Oh, some whim of the poor soul's. Now get a bit of paper and draw up a paragraph as I shall tell you. But

She got a piece of paper, and bending over the fender wrote at his dictation words which he had evidently got

by heart from some advertisement or otherwords to the effect that she, the writer, hitherto known as

ElizabethJane Newson, was going to call herself ElizabethJane Henchard forthwith. It was done, and

"Now," said Henchard, with the blaze of satisfaction that he always emitted when he had carried his

pointthough tenderness softened it this time"I'll go upstairs and hunt for some documents that will prove

it all to you. But I won't trouble you with them till tomorrow. Goodnight, my ElizabethJane!"

He was gone before the bewildered girl could realize what it all meant, or adjust her filial sense to the new

center of gravity. She was thankful that he had left her to herself for the evening, and sat down over the fire.

Here she remained in silence, and weptnot for her mother now, but for the genial sailor Richard Newson,

Henchard in the meantime had gone upstairs. Papers of a domestic nature he kept in a drawer in his bedroom,

and this he unlocked. Before turning them over he leant back and indulged in reposeful thought. Elizabeth

was his at last and she was a girl of such good sense and kind heart that she would be sure to like him. He

was the kind of man to whom some human object for pouring out his heart uponwere it emotive or were it

cholericwas almost a necessity. The craving for his heart for the reestablishment of this tenderest human

tie had been great during his wife's lifetime, and now he had submitted to its mastery without reluctance and

Among the other papers had been placed the contents of his wife's little desk, the keys of which had been

handed to him at her request. Here was the letter addressed to him with the restriction, "NOT TO BE

Mrs. Henchard, though more patient than her husband, had been no practical hand at anything. In sealing up

the sheet, which was folded and tucked in without an envelope, in the oldfashioned way, she had overlaid

the junction with a large mass of wax without the requisite undertouch of the same. The seal had cracked,

and the letter was open. Henchard had no reason to suppose the restriction one of serious weight, and his

feeling for his late wife had not been of the nature of deep respect. "Some trifling fancy or other of poor

Susan's, I suppose," he said; and without curiosity he allowed his eyes to scan the letter:

MY DEAR MICHAEL,For the good of all three of us I have kept one thing a secret from you till now. I

hope you will understand why; I think you will; though perhaps you may not forgive me. But, dear Michael, I

have done it for the best. I shall be in my grave when you read this, and Elizabeth Jane will have a home.

Don't curse me Mikethink of how I was situated. I can hardly write it, but here it is. ElizabethJane is not

your ElizabethJanethe child who was in my arms when you sold me. No; she died three months after that,

and this living one is my other husband's. I christened her by the same name we had given to the first, and she

filled up the ache I felt at the other's loss. Michael, I am dying, and I might have held my tongue; but I could

not. Tell her husband of this or not, as you may judge; and forgive, if you can, a woman you once deeply

Her husband regarded the paper as if it were a windowpane through which he saw for miles. His lips

twitched, and he seemed to compress his frame, as if to bear better. His usual habit was not to consider

whether destiny were hard upon him or notthe shape of his ideals in cases of affliction being simply a

moody "I am to suffer, I perceive." "This much scourging, then, it is for me." But now through his passionate

head there stormed this thought that the blasting disclosure was what he had deserved.

His wife's extreme reluctance to have the girl's name altered from Newson to Henchard was now accounted

for fully. It furnished another illustration of that honesty in dishonesty which had characterized her in other

He remained unnerved and purposeless for near a couple of hours; till he suddenly said, "AhI wonder if it

He jumped up in an impulse, kicked off his slippers, and went with a candle to the door of ElizabethJane's

room, where he put his ear to the keyhole and listened. She was breathing profoundly. Henchard softly turned

the handle, entered, and shading the light, approached the bedside. Gradually bringing the light from behind a

screening curtain he held it in such a manner that it fell slantwise on her face without shining on her eyes. He

They were fair: his were dark. But this was an unimportant preliminary. In sleep there come to the surface

buried genealogical facts, ancestral curves, dead men's traits, which the mobility of daytime animation

screens and overwhelms. In the present statuesque repose of the young girl's countenance Richard Newson's

was unmistakably reflected. He could not endure the sight of her, and hastened away.

Misery taught him nothing more than defiant endurance of it. His wife was dead, and the first impulse for

revenge died with the thought that she was beyond him. He looked out at the night as at a fiend. Henchard,

like all his kind, was superstitious, and he could not help thinking that the concatenation of events this

evening had produced was the scheme of some sinister intelligence bent on punishing him. Yet they had

developed naturally. If he had not revealed his past history to Elizabeth he would not have searched the

drawer for papers, and so on. The mockery was, that he should have no sooner taught a girl to claim the

This ironical sequence of things angered him like an impish trick from a fellowcreature. Like Prester John's,

his table had been spread, and infernal harpies had snatched up the food. He went out of the house, and

moved sullenly onward down the pavement till he came to the bridge at the bottom of the High Street. Here

he turned in upon a bypath on the river bank, skirting the northeastern limits of the town.

These precincts embodied the mournful phases of Casterbridge life, as the south avenues embodied its

cheerful moods. The whole way along here was sunless, even in summer time; in spring, white frosts lingered

here when other places were steaming with warmth; while in winter it was the seedfield of all the aches,

rheumatisms, and torturing cramps of the year. The Casterbridge doctors must have pined away for want of

sufficient nourishment but for the configuration of the landscape on the northeastern side.

The riverslow, noiseless, and darkthe Schwarzwasser of Casterbridgeran beneath a low cliff, the two

together forming a defence which had rendered walls and artificial earthworks on this side unnecessary. Here

were ruins of a Franciscan priory, and a mill attached to the same, the water of which roared down a

backhatch like the voice of desolation. Above the cliff, and behind the river, rose a pile of buildings, and in

the front of the pile a square mass cut into the sky. It was like a pedestal lacking its statue. This missing

feature, without which the design remained incomplete, was, in truth, the corpse of a man, for the square

mass formed the base of the gallows, the extensive buildings at the back being the county gaol. In the

meadow where Henchard now walked the mob were wont to gather whenever an execution took place, and

The exaggeration which darkness imparted to the glooms of this region impressed Henchard more than he

had expected. The lugubrious harmony of the spot with his domestic situation was too perfect for him,

impatient of effects scenes, and adumbrations. It reduced his heartburning to melancholy, and he exclaimed,

"Why the deuce did I come here!" He went on past the cottage in which the old local hangman had lived and

died, in times before that calling was monopolized over all England by a single gentleman; and climbed up

For the sufferings of that night, engendered by his bitter disappointment, he might well have been pitied. He

was like one who had half fainted, and could neither recover nor complete the swoon. In words he could

blame his wife, but not in his heart; and had he obeyed the wise directions outside her letter this pain would

have been spared him for longpossibly for ever, ElizabethJane seeming to show no ambition to quit her

The morning came after this night of unrest, and with it the necessity for a plan. He was far too selfwilled to

recede from a position, especially as it would involve humiliation. His daughter he had asserted her to be, and

his daughter she should always think herself, no matter what hyprocrisy it involved.

But he was illprepared for the first step in this new situation. The moment he came into the breakfastroom

"I have thought and thought all night of it," she said frankly. "And I see that everything must be as you say.

And I am going to look upon you as the father that you are, and not to call you Mr. Henchard any more. It is

so plain to me now. Indeed, father, it is. For, of course, you would not have done half the things you have

done for me, and let me have my own way so entirely, and bought me presents, if I had only been your

stepdaughter! HeMr. Newsonwhom my poor mother married by such a strange mistake" (Henchard

was glad that he had disguised matters here), "was very kindO so kind!" (she spoke with tears in her eyes);

"but that is not the same thing as being one's real father after all. Now, father, breakfast is ready!" she said

Henchard bent and kissed her cheek. The moment and the act he had prefigured for weeks with a thrill of

pleasure; yet it was no less than a miserable insipidity to him now that it had come. His reinstation of her

mother had been chiefly for the girl's sake, and the fruition of the whole scheme was such dust and ashes as

Of all the enigmas which ever confronted a girl there can have been seldom one like that which followed

Henchard's announcement of himself to Elizabeth as her father. He had done it in an ardour and an agitation

which had half carried the point of affection with her; yet, behold, from the next morning onwards his manner

The coldness soon broke out into open chiding. One grievous failing of Elizabeth's was her occasional pretty

and picturesque use of dialect wordsthose terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.

It was dinnertimethey never met except at mealsand she happened to say when he was rising from

table, wishing to show him something, "If you'll bide where you be a minute, father, I'll get it."

"'Bide where you be,'" he echoed sharply, "Good God, are you only fit to carry wash to a pigtrough, that ye

"I meant 'Stay where you are,' father," she said, in a low, humble voice. "I ought to have been more careful."

The sharp reprimand was not lost upon her, and in time it came to pass that for "fay" she said "succeed"; that

she no longer spoke of "dumbledores" but of "humble bees"; no longer said of young men and women that

they "walked together," but that they were "engaged"; that she grew to talk of "greggles" as "wild hyacinths";

that when she had not slept she did not quaintly tell the servants next morning that she had been "hagrid,"

These improvements, however, are somewhat in advance of the story. Henchard, being uncultivated himself,

was the bitterest critic the fair girl could possibly have had of her own lapsesreally slight now, for she read

omnivorously. A gratuitous ordeal was in store for her in the matter of her handwriting. She was passing the

dining room door one evening, and had occasion to go in for something. It was not till she had opened the

door that she knew the Mayor was there in the company of a man with whom he transacted business.

"Here, ElizabethJane," he said, looking round at her, "just write down what I tell youa few words of an

"Now then'An agreement entered into this sixteenth day of October'write that first."

She started the pen in an elephantine march across the sheet. It was a splendid round, bold hand of her own

conception, a style that would have stamped a woman as Minerva's own in more recent days. But other ideas

reigned then: Henchard's creed was that proper young girls wrote ladies'handnay, he believed that

bristling characters were as innate and inseparable a part of refined womanhood as sex itself. Hence when,

"In such a hand as when a field of corn Bows all its ears before the roaring East,"

ElizabethJane produced a line of chainshot and sandbags, he reddened in angry shame for her, and,

Her considerate disposition became a pitfall to her now. She was, it must be admitted, sometimes

provokingly and unnecessarily willing to saddle herself with manual labours. She would go to the kitchen

instead of ringing, "Not to make Phoebe come up twice." She went down on her knees, shovel in hand, when

the cat overturned the coalscuttle; moreover, she would persistently thank the parlourmaid for everything,

till one day, as soon as the girl was gone from the room, Henchard broke out with, "Good God, why dostn't

leave off thanking that girl as if she were a goddessborn! Don't I pay her a dozen pound a year to do things

for 'ee?" Elizabeth shrank so visibly at the exclamation that he became sorry a few minutes after, and said

These domestic exhibitions were the small protruding needlerocks which suggested rather than revealed what

was underneath. But his passion had less terror for her than his coldness. The increasing frequency of the

latter mood told her the sad news that he disliked her with a growing dislike. The more interesting that her

appearance and manners became under the softening influences which she could now command, and in her

wisdom did command, the more she seemed to estrange him. Sometimes she caught him looking at her with a

louring invidiousness that she could hardly bear. Not knowing his secret it was cruel mockery that she should

But the most terrible ordeal was to come. Elizabeth had latterly been accustomed of an afternoon to present a

cup of cider or ale and breadandcheese to Nance Mockridge, who worked in the yard wimbling

haybonds. Nance accepted this offering thankfully at first; afterwards as a matter of course. On a day when

Henchard was on the premises he saw his stepdaughter enter the haybarn on this errand; and, as there was

no clear spot on which to deposit the provisions, she at once set to work arranging two trusses of hay as a

table, Mockridge meanwhile standing with her hands on her hips, easefully looking at the preparations on her

"Why do you lower yourself so confoundedly?" he said with suppressed passion. "Haven't I told you o't fifty

times? Hey? Making yourself a drudge for a common workwoman of such a character as hers! Why, ye'll

Now these words were uttered loud enough to reach Nance inside the barn door, who fired up immediately at

the slur upon her personal character. Coming to the door she cried regardless of consequences, "Come to that,

"O no, she hadn't. 'Twere not for charity but for hire; and at a publichouse in this town!"

"Just ask her," said Nance, folding her naked arms in such a manner that she could comfortably scratch her

Henchard glanced at ElizabethJane, whose complexion, now pink and white from confinement, lost nearly

all of the former colour. "What does this mean?" he said to her. "Anything or nothing?"

"At the Three Mariners; one evening for a little while, when we were staying there."

Nance glanced triumphantly at Henchard, and sailed into the barn; for assuming that she was to be discharged

on the instant she had resolved to make the most of her victory. Henchard, however, said nothing about

discharging her. Unduly sensitive on such points by reason of his own past, he had the look of one

completely ground down to the last indignity. Elizabeth followed him to the house like a culprit; but when

Convinced of the scathing damage to his local repute and position that must have been caused by such a fact,

though it had never before reached his own ears, Henchard showed a positive distaste for the presence of this

girl not his own, whenever he encountered her. He mostly dined with the farmers at the marketroom of one

of the two chief hotels, leaving her in utter solitude. Could he have seen how she made use of those silent

hours he might have found reason to reserve his judgment on her quality. She read and took notes incessantly,

mastering facts with painful laboriousness, but never flinching from her selfimposed task. She began the

study of Latin, incited by the Roman characteristics of the town she lived in. "If I am not wellinformed it

shall be by no fault of my own," she would say to herself through the tears that would occasionally glide

down her peachy cheeks when she was fairly baffled by the portentous obscurity of many of these

Thus she lived on, a dumb, deepfeeling, greateyed creature, construed by not a single contiguous being;

quenching with patient fortitude her incipient interest in Farfrae, because it seemed to be onesided,

unmaidenly, and unwise. True, that for reasons best known to herself, she had, since Farfrae's dismissal,

shifted her quarters from the back room affording a view of the yard (which she had occupied with such zest)

to a front chamber overlooking the street; but as for the young man, whenever he passed the house he seldom

Winter had almost come, and unsettled weather made her still more dependent upon indoor resources. But

there were certain early winter days in Casterbridgedays of firmamental exhaustion which followed angry

southwesterly tempestswhen, if the sun shone, the air was like velvet. She seized on these days for her

periodical visits to the spot where her mother lay buriedthe stillused burial ground of the old

RomanBritish city, whose curious feature was this, its continuity as a place of sepulture. Mrs. Henchard's

dust mingled with the dust of women who lay ornamented with glass hairpins and amber necklaces, and

Halfpast ten in the morning was about her hour for seeking this spota time when the town avenues were

deserted as the avenues of Karnac. Business had long since passed down them into its daily cells, and Leisure

had not arrived there. So ElizabethJane walked and read, or looked over the edge of the book to think, and

There, approaching her mother's grave she saw a solitary dark figure in the middle of the gravelwalk. This

figure, too, was reading; but not from a book: the words which engrossed it being the inscription on Mrs.

Henchard's tombstone. The personage was in mourning like herself, was about her age and size, and might

have been her wraith or double, but for the fact that it was a lady much more beautifully dressed than she.

Indeed, comparatively indifferent as ElizabethJane was to dress, unless for some temporary whim or

purpose, her eyes were arrested by the artistic perfection of the lady's appearance. Her gait, too, had a

flexuousness about it, which seemed to avoid angularity. It was a revelation to Elizabeth that human beings

could reach this stage of external developmentshe had never suspected it. She felt all the freshness and

grace to be stolen from herself on the instant by the neighbourhood of such a stranger. And this was in face of

the fact that Elizabeth could now have been writ handsome, while the young lady was simply pretty.

Had she been envious she might have hated the woman; but she did not do thatshe allowed herself the

pleasure of feeling fascinated. She wondered where the lady had come from. The stumpy and practical walk

of honest homeliness which mostly prevailed there, the two styles of dress thereabout, the simple and the

mistaken, equally avouched that this figure was no Casterbridge woman's, even if a book in her hand

The stranger presently moved from the tombstone of Mrs. Henchard, and vanished behind the corner of the

wall. Elizabeth went to the tomb herself; beside it were two foot prints distinct in the soil, signifying that the

lady had stood there a long time. She returned homeward, musing on what she had seen, as she might have

Interesting as things had been out of doors, at home it turned out to be one of her bad days. Henchard, whose

two years' mayoralty was ending, had been made aware that he was not to be chosen to fill a vacancy in the

list of aldermen; and that Farfrae was likely to become one of the Council. This caused the unfortunate

discovery that she had played the waitingmaid in the town of which he was Mayor to rankle in his mind yet

more poisonously. He had learnt by personal inquiry at the time that it was to Donald Farfraethat

treacherous upstartthat she had thus humiliated herself. And though Mrs. Stannidge seemed to attach no

great importance to the incidentthe cheerful souls at the Three Mariners having exhausted its aspects long

agosuch was Henchard's haughty spirit that the simple thrifty deed was regarded as little less than a social

Ever since the evening of his wife's arrival with her daughter there had been something in the air which had

changed his luck. That dinner at the King's Arms with his friends had been Henchard's Austerlitz: he had had

his successes since, but his course had not been upward. He was not to be numbered among the

aldermenthat Peerage of burghersas he had expected to be, and the consciousness of this soured him

"I've been strolling in the Walks and churchyard, father, till I feel quite leery." She clapped her hand to her

This was just enough to incense Henchard after the other crosses of the day. "I WON'T have you talk like

that!" he thundered. "'Leery,' indeed. One would think you worked upon a farm! One day I learn that you lend

a hand in public houses. Then I hear you talk like a clodhopper. I'm burned, if it goes on, this house can't

The only way of getting a single pleasant thought to go to sleep upon after this was by recalling the lady she

Meanwhile Henchard was sitting up, thinking over his jealous folly in forbidding Farfrae to pay his addresses

to this girl who did not belong to him, when if he had allowed them to go on he might not have been

encumbered with her. At last he said to himself with satisfaction as he jumped up and went to the

writingtable: "Ah! he'll think it means peace, and a marriage portionnot that I don't want my house to be

Sir,On consideration, I don't wish to interfere with your courtship of ElizabethJane, if you care for her. I

therefore withdraw my objection; excepting in thisthat the business be not carried on in my house.

The morrow, being fairly fine, found ElizabethJane again in the churchyard, but while looking for the lady

she was startled by the apparition of Farfrae, who passed outside the gate. He glanced up for a moment from

a pocketbook in which he appeared to be making figures as he went; whether or not he saw her he took no

Unduly depressed by a sense of her own superfluity she thought he probably scorned her; and quite broken in

spirit sat down on a bench. She fell into painful thought on her position, which ended with her saying quite

Behind the bench was a little promenade under the wall where people sometimes walked instead of on the

gravel. The bench seemed to be touched by something, she looked round, and a face was bending over her,

ElizabethJane looked confounded for a moment, knowing she had been overheard, though there was

pleasure in her confusion. "Yes, I heard you," said the lady, in a vivacious voice, answering her look. "What

"I don'tI can't tell you," said Elizabeth, putting her hand to her face to hide a quick flush that had come.

There was no movement or word for a few seconds; then the girl felt that the young lady was sitting down

"I guess how it is with you," said the latter. "That was your mother." She waved her hand towards the

tombstone. Elizabeth looked up at her as if inquiring of herself whether there should be confidence. The

lady's manner was so desirous, so anxious, that the girl decided there should be confidence. "It was my

"I wasin many ways," sighed the meek Elizabeth. "I swept up the coals when the servants ought to have

The lady seemed to warm towards her for that reply. "Do you know the impression your words give me?" she

said ingenuously. "That he is a hottempered mana little proudperhaps ambitious; but not a bad man."

"O no; certainly not BAD," agreed the honest girl. "And he has not even been unkind to me till latelysince

mother died. But it has been very much to bear while it has lasted. All is owing to my defects, I daresay; and

ElizabethJane looked wistfully at her questioner. She found that her questioner was looking at her, turned

her eyes down; and then seemed compelled to look back again. "My history is not gay or attractive," she said.

The lady assured her that she did want to know; whereupon ElizabethJane told the tale of her life as she

understood it, which was in general the true one, except that the sale at the fair had no part therein.

Contrary to the girl's expectation her new friend was not shocked. This cheered her; and it was not till she

thought of returning to that home in which she had been treated so roughly of late that her spirits fell.

"I don't know how to return," she murmured. "I think of going away. But what can I do? Where can I go?"

"Perhaps it will be better soon," said her friend gently. "So I would not go far. Now what do you think of this:

I shall soon want somebody to live in my house, partly as housekeeper, partly as companion; would you mind

"O yes," cried Elizabeth, with tears in her eyes. "I would, indeedI would do anything to be independent;

"AndO, I know I shan't do!"she cried with a distressful laugh. "I accidentally learned to write round

hand instead of ladies'hand. And, of course, you want some one who can write that?"

"I have been staying at Budmouth for a few days while my house was getting ready. The house I am going

into is that one they call HighPlace Hallthe old stone one looking down the lane to the market. Two or

three rooms are fit for occupation, though not all: I sleep there tonight for the first time. Now will you think

over my proposal, and meet me here the first fine day next week, and say if you are still in the same mind?"

Elizabeth, her eyes shining at this prospect of a change from an unbearable position, joyfully assented; and

As a maxim glibly repeated from childhood remains practically unmarked till some mature experience

enforces it, so did this HighPlace Hall now for the first time really show itself to ElizabethJane, though her

Her mind dwelt upon nothing else but the stranger, and the house, and her own chance of living there, all the

rest of the day. In the afternoon she had occasion to pay a few bills in the town and do a little shopping when

she learnt that what was a new discovery to herself had become a common topic about the streets.

HighPlace Hall was undergoing repair; a lady was coming there to live shortly; all the shoppeople knew it,

ElizabethJane could, however, add a capping touch to information so new to her in the bulk. The lady, she

When the lamps were lighted, and it was yet not so dark as to render chimneys, attics, and roofs invisible,

Elizabeth, almost with a lover's feeling, thought she would like to look at the outside of HighPlace Hall. She

The Hall, with its grey facade and parapet, was the only residence of its sort so near the centre of the town. It

had, in the first place, the characteristics of a country mansionbirds' nests in its chimneys, damp nooks

where fungi grew and irregularities of surface direct from Nature's trowel. At night the forms of passengers

This evening motes of straw lay around, and other signs of the premises having been in that lawless condition

which accompanies the entry of a new tenant. The house was entirely of stone, and formed an example of

dignity without great size. It was not altogether aristocratic, still less consequential, yet the oldfashioned

stranger instinctively said "Blood built it, and Wealth enjoys it" however vague his opinions of those

Yet as regards the enjoying it the stranger would have been wrong, for until this very evening, when the new

lady had arrived, the house had been empty for a year or two while before that interval its occupancy had

been irregular. The reason of its unpopularity was soon made manifest. Some of its rooms overlooked the

marketplace; and such a prospect from such a house was not considered desirable or seemly by its

Elizabeth's eyes sought the upper rooms, and saw lights there. The lady had obviously arrived. The

impression that this woman of comparatively practised manner had made upon the studious girl's mind was

so deep that she enjoyed standing under an opposite archway merely to think that the charming lady was

inside the confronting walls, and to wonder what she was doing. Her admiration for the architecture of that

front was entirely on account of the inmate it screened. Though for that matter the architecture deserved

admiration, or at least study, on its own account. It was Palladian, and like most architecture erected since the

Gothic age was a compilation rather than a design. But its reasonableness made it impressive. It was not rich,

but rich enough. A timely consciousness of the ultimate vanity of human architecture, no less than of other

Men had still quite recently been going in and out with parcels and packingcases, rendering the door and

hall within like a public thoroughfare. Elizabeth trotted through the open door in the dusk, but becoming

alarmed at her own temerity she went quickly out again by another which stood open in the lofty wall of the

back court. To her surprise she found herself in one of the littleused alleys of the town. Looking round at the

door which had given her egress, by the light of the solitary lamp fixed in the alley, she saw that it was arched

and oldolder even than the house itself. The door was studded, and the keystone of the arch was a mask.

Originally the mask had exhibited a comic leer, as could still be discerned; but generations of Casterbridge

boys had thrown stones at the mask, aiming at its open mouth; and the blows thereon had chipped off the lips

and jaws as if they had been eaten away by disease. The appearance was so ghastly by the weakly

lampglimmer that she could not bear to look at itthe first unpleasant feature of her visit.

The position of the queer old door and the odd presence of the leering mask suggested one thing above all

others as appertaining to the mansion's past historyintrigue. By the alley it had been possible to come

unseen from all sorts of quarters in the townthe old playhouse, the old bull stake, the old cockpit, the

pool wherein nameless infants had been used to disappear. HighPlace Hall could boast of its conveniences

She turned to come away in the nearest direction homeward, which was down the alley, but hearing footsteps

approaching in that quarter, and having no great wish to be found in such a place at such a time she quickly

retreated. There being no other way out she stood behind a brick pier till the intruder should have gone his

Had she watched she would have been surprised. She would have seen that the pedestrian on coming up made

straight for the arched doorway: that as he paused with his hand upon the latch the lamplight fell upon the

But ElizabethJane clung so closely to her nook that she discerned nothing of this. Henchard passed in, as

ignorant of her presence as she was ignorant of his identity, and disappeared in the darkness. Elizabeth came

Henchard's chiding, by begetting in her a nervous fear of doing anything definable as unladylike, had

operated thus curiously in keeping them unknown to each other at a critical moment. Much might have

resulted from recognition at the least a query on either side in one and the self same form: What could he

Henchard, whatever his business at the lady's house, reached his own home only a few minutes later than

ElizabethJane. Her plan was to broach the question of leaving his roof this evening; the events of the day

had urged her to the course. But its execution depended upon his mood, and she anxiously awaited his

manner towards her. She found that it had changed. He showed no further tendency to be angry; he showed

something worse. Absolute indifference had taken the place of irritability; and his coldness was such that it

She thought it undesirable and unnecessary to say anything at present about her destination to one who took

so little interest in her. He would know that soon enough. "I have heard of an opportunity of getting more

cultivated and finished, and being less idle," she answered, with hesitation. "A chance of a place in a

"Then make the best of it, in Heaven's nameif you can't get cultivated where you are."

"ObjectI? Hono! Not at all." After a pause he said, "But you won't have enough money for this lively

scheme without help, you know? If you like I should be willing to make you an allowance, so that you not be

"It had better be done properly," he added after a pause. "A small annuity is what I should like you to

haveso as to be independent of meand so that I may be independent of you. Would that please ye?"

"Then I'll see about it this very day." He seemed relieved to get her off his hands by this arrangement, and as

far as they were concerned the matter was settled. She now simply waited to see the lady again.

The day and the hour came; but a drizzling rain fell. ElizabethJane having now changed her orbit from one

of gay independence to laborious selfhelp, thought the weather good enough for such declined glory as hers,

if her friend would only face ita matter of doubt. She went to the bootroom where her pattens had hung

ever since her apotheosis; took them down, had their mildewed leathers blacked, and put them on as she had

done in old times. Thus mounted, and with cloak and umbrella, she went off to the place of

One side of the churchyardthe side towards the weather was sheltered by an ancient thatched mud wall

whose eaves overhung as much as one or two feet. At the back of the wall was a cornyard with its granary

and barnsthe place wherein she had met Farfrae many months earlier. Under the projection of the thatch

Her presence so exceptionally substantiated the girl's utmost hopes that she almost feared her good fortune.

Fancies find rooms in the strongest minds. Here, in a churchyard old as civilization, in the worst of weathers,

was a strange woman of curious fascinations never seen elsewhere: there might be some devilry about her

presence. However, Elizabeth went on to the church tower, on whose summit the rope of a flagstaff rattled in

The lady had such a cheerful aspect in the drizzle that Elizabeth forgot her fancy. "Well," said the lady, a

little of the whiteness of her teeth appearing with the word through the black fleece that protected her face,

"Nowas soon as you like. I had a good mind to send to you to come to my house, thinking you might not

venture up here in the wind. But as I like getting out of doors, I thought I would come and see first."

"That shows we shall agree. Then can you come today? My house is so hollow and dismal that I want some

Voices were borne over to them at that instant on the wind and raindrops from the other side of the wall.

There came such words as "sacks," "quarters," "threshing," "tailing," "next Saturday's market," each sentence

being disorganized by the gusts like a face in a cracked mirror. Both the women listened.

The lady seemed to forget the immediate business in listening to the technicalities of the corn trade. At last

"Perhaps you are right....Besides, I have never told you my name. It is Miss Templeman....Are they

"Well, it is getting damp here. I shall expect you today this evening, say, at six."

"Perhaps, as you have not mentioned your destination, you may as well keep silent upon it till you are clear

ElizabethJane shook her head. "On consideration I don't fear it," she said sadly. "He has grown quite cold to

When they had emerged upon the open road and parted, they found enough to do in holding their bowed

umbrellas to the wind. Nevertheless the lady looked in at the cornyard gates as she passed them, and paused

on one foot for a moment. But nothing was visible there save the ricks, and the humpbacked barn cushioned

with moss, and the granary rising against the churchtower behind, where the smacking of the rope against

Now Henchard had not the slightest suspicion that Elizabeth Jane's movement was to be so prompt. Hence

when, just before six, he reached home and saw a fly at the door from the King's Arms, and his

stepdaughter, with all her little bags and boxes, getting into it, he was taken by surprise.

"Said!yes. But I thought you meant next month, or next year. 'Od, seize ityou take time by the forelock!

"O father! how can you speak like that? It is unjust of you!" she said with spirit.

"Well, well, have your own way," he replied. He entered the house, and, seeing that all her things had not yet

been brought down, went up to her room to look on. He had never been there since she had occupied it.

Evidences of her care, of her endeavours for improvement, were visible all around, in the form of books,

sketches, maps, and little arrangements for tasteful effects. Henchard had known nothing of these efforts. He

"Look here," he said, in an altered voicehe never called her by name now"don't 'ee go away from me. It

may be I've spoke roughly to youbut I've been grieved beyond everything by youthere's something that

"I can't tell you now. But if you'll stop, and go on living as my daughter, I'll tell you all in time."

But the proposal had come ten minutes too late. She was in the flywas already, in imagination, at the house

of the lady whose manner had such charms for her. "Father," she said, as considerately as she could, "I think

it best for us that I go on now. I need not stay long; I shall not be far away, and if you want me badly I can

He nodded ever so slightly, as a receipt of her decision and no more. "You are not going far, you say. What

She repeated the words. He neither moved nor spoke, and waving her hand to him in utmost friendliness she

We go back for a moment to the preceding night, to account for Henchard's attitude.

At the hour when ElizabethJane was contemplating her stealthy reconnoitring excursion to the abode of the

lady of her fancy, he had been not a little amazed at receiving a letter by hand in Lucetta's wellknown

characters. The selfrepression, the resignation of her previous communication had vanished from her mood;

she wrote with some of the natural lightness which had marked her in their early acquaintance.

MY DEAR MR. HENCHARD,Don't be surprised. It is for your good and mine, as I hope, that I have

come to live at Casterbridgefor how long I cannot tell. That depends upon another; and he is a man, and a

Seriously, mon ami, I am not so lighthearted as I may seem to be from this. I have come here in

consequence of hearing of the death of your wifewhom you used to think of as dead so many years before!

Poor woman, she seems to have been a sufferer, though uncomplaining, and though weak in intellect not an

imbecile. I am glad you acted fairly by her. As soon as I knew she was no more, it was brought home to me

very forcibly by my conscience that I ought to endeavour to disperse the shade which my etourderie flung

over my name, by asking you to carry out your promise to me. I hope you are of the same mind, and that you

will take steps to this end. As, however, I did not know how you were situated, or what had happened since

our separation, I decided to come and establish myself here before communicating with you.

You probably feel as I do about this. I shall be able to see you in a day or two. Till then, farewell.Yours,

P.S.I was unable to keep my appointment to meet you for a moment or two in passing through

Casterbridge the other day. My plans were altered by a family event, which it will surprise you to hear of.

Henchard had already heard that HighPlace Hall was being prepared for a tenant. He said with a puzzled air

Henchard thought it over. "Lucetta is related to her, I suppose," he said to himself. "Yes, I must put her in her

It was by no means with the oppression that would once have accompanied the thought that he regarded the

moral necessity now; it was, indeed, with interest, if not warmth. His bitter disappointment at finding

ElizabethJane to be none of his, and himself a childless man, had left an emotional void in Henchard that he

unconsciously craved to fill. In this frame of mind, though without strong feeling, he had strolled up the alley

and into HighPlace Hall by the postern at which Elizabeth had so nearly encountered him. He had gone on

thence into the court, and inquired of a man whom he saw unpacking china from a crate if Miss Le Sueur was

living there. Miss Le Sueur had been the name under which he had known Lucettaor "Lucette," as she had

The man replied in the negative; that Miss Templeman only had come. Henchard went away, concluding that

He was in this interested stage of the inquiry when he witnessed ElizabethJane's departure the next day. On

hearing her announce the address there suddenly took possession of him the strange thought that Lucetta and

Miss Templeman were one and the same person, for he could recall that in her season of intimacy with him

the name of the rich relative whom he had deemed somewhat a mythical personage had been given as

Templeman. Though he was not a fortune hunter, the possibility that Lucetta had been sublimed into a lady

of means by some munificent testament on the part of this relative lent a charm to her image which it might

not otherwise have acquired. He was getting on towards the dead level of middle age, when material things

But Henchard was not left long in suspense. Lucetta was rather addicted to scribbling, as had been shown by

the torrent of letters after the fiasco in their marriage arrangements, and hardly had Elizabeth gone away

"I am in residence," she said, "and comfortable, though getting here has been a wearisome undertaking. You

probably know what I am going to tell you, or do you not? My good Aunt Templeman, the banker's widow,

whose very existence you used to doubt, much more her affluence, has lately died, and bequeathed some of

her property to me. I will not enter into details except to say that I have taken her nameas a means of

"I am now my own mistress, and have chosen to reside in Casterbridgeto be tenant of HighPlace Hall,

that at least you may be put to no trouble if you wish to see me. My first intention was to keep you in

ignorance of the changes in my life till you should meet me in the street; but I have thought better of this.

"You probably are aware of my arrangement with your daughter, and have doubtless laughed at thewhat

shall I call it?practical joke (in all affection) of my getting her to live with me. But my first meeting with

her was purely an accident. Do you see, Michael, partly why I have done it?why, to give you an excuse for

coming here as if to visit HER, and thus to form my acquaintance naturally. She is a dear, good girl, and she

thinks you have treated her with undue severity. You may have done so in your haste, but not deliberately, I

am sure. As the result has been to bring her to me I am not disposed to upbraid you.In haste, yours always,

The excitement which these announcements produced in Henchard's gloomy soul was to him most

pleasurable. He sat over his diningtable long and dreamily, and by an almost mechanical transfer the

sentiments which had run to waste since his estrangement from ElizabethJane and Donald Farfrae gathered

around Lucetta before they had grown dry. She was plainly in a very comingon disposition for marriage.

But what else could a poor woman be who had given her time and her heart to him so thoughtlessly, at that

former time, as to lose her credit by it? Probably conscience no less than affection had brought her here. On

"The artful little woman!" he said, smiling (with reference to Lucetta's adroit and pleasant manoeuvre with

To feel that he would like to see Lucetta was with Henchard to start for her house. He put on his hat and

went. It was between eight and nine o'clock when he reached her door. The answer brought him was that

Miss Templeman was engaged for that evening; but that she would be happy to see him the next day.

"That's rather like giving herself airs!" he thought. "And considering what we" But after all, she plainly

had not expected him, and he took the refusal quietly. Nevertheless he resolved not to go next day. "These

Let us follow the train of Mr. Henchard's thought as if it were a clue line, and view the interior of HighPlace

On ElizabethJane's arrival she had been phlegmatically asked by an elderly woman to go upstairs and take

off her things. She replied with great earnestness that she would not think of giving that trouble, and on the

instant divested herself of her bonnet and cloak in the passage. She was then conducted to the first floor on

The room disclosed was prettily furnished as a boudoir or small drawingroom, and on a sofa with two

cylindrical pillows reclined a darkhaired, largeeyed, pretty woman, of unmistakably French extraction on

one side or the other. She was probably some years older than Elizabeth, and had a sparkling light in her eye.

In front of the sofa was a small table, with a pack of cards scattered upon it faces upward.

The attitude had been so full of abandonment that she bounded up like a spring on hearing the door open.

Perceiving that it was Elizabeth she lapsed into ease, and came across to her with a reckless skip that innate

"And you seem deadalive and tired. Let me try to enliven you by some wonderful tricks I have learnt, to kill

time. Sit there and don't move." She gathered up the pack of cards, pulled the table in front of her, and began

"No," stammered Elizabeth, arousing herself from a reverie. "I forgot, I was thinking ofyou, and meand

Miss Templeman looked at ElizabethJane with interest, and laid down the cards. "Ah! never mind," she

Elizabeth drew up silently to the head of the sofa, but with obvious pleasure. It could be seen that though in

years she was younger than her entertainer in manner and general vision she seemed more of the sage. Miss

Templeman deposited herself on the sofa in her former flexuous position, and throwing her arm above her

browsomewhat in the pose of a wellknown conception of Titian'stalked up at ElizabethJane

"I must tell you something," she said. "I wonder if you have suspected it. I have only been mistress of a large

"Ohonly a little while?" murmured ElizabethJane, her countenance slightly falling.

"As a girl I lived about in garrison towns and elsewhere with my father, till I was quite flighty and unsettled.

He was an officer in the army. I should not have mentioned this had I not thought it best you should know the

"Yes, yes." She looked thoughtfully round the roomat the little square piano with brass inlayings, at the

window curtains, at the lamp, at the fair and dark kings and queens on the cardtable, and finally at the

inverted face of Lucetta Templeman, whose large lustrous eyes had such an odd effect upside down.

Elizabeth's mind ran on acquirements to an almost morbid degree. "You speak French and Italian fluently, no

doubt," she said. "I have not been able to get beyond a wretched bit of Latin yet."

"Well, for that matter, in my native isle speaking French does not go for much. It is rather the other way."

It was with rather more reluctance that Miss Templeman said, "Jersey. There they speak French on one side

of the street and English on the other, and a mixed tongue in the middle of the road. But it is a long time since

I was there. Bath is where my people really belong to, though my ancestors in Jersey were as good as

anybody in England. They were the Le Sueurs, an old family who have done great things in their time. I went

back and lived there after my father's death. But I don't value such past matters, and am quite an English

Lucetta's tongue had for a moment outrun her discretion. She had arrived at Casterbridge as a Bath lady, and

there were obvious reasons why Jersey should drop out of her life. But Elizabeth had tempted her to make

It could not, however, have been broken in safer company. Lucetta's words went no further, and after this day

she was so much upon her guard that there appeared no chance of her identification with the young Jersey

woman who had been Henchard's dear comrade at a critical time. Not the least amusing of her safeguards was

her resolute avoidance of a French word if one by accident came to her tongue more readily than its English

equivalent. She shirked it with the suddenness of the weak Apostle at the accusation, "Thy speech bewrayeth

Expectancy sat visibly upon Lucetta the next morning. She dressed herself for Mr. Henchard, and restlessly

awaited his call before midday; as he did not come she waited on through the afternoon. But she did not tell

They sat in adjoining windows of the same room in Lucetta's great stone mansion, netting, and looking out

upon the market, which formed an animated scene. Elizabeth could see the crown of her stepfather's hat

among the rest beneath, and was not aware that Lucetta watched the same object with yet intenser interest. He

moved about amid the throng, at this point lively as an anthill; elsewhere more reposeful, and broken up by

The farmers as a rule preferred the open carrefour for their transactions, despite its inconvenient jostlings and

the danger from crossing vehicles, to the gloomy sheltered marketroom provided for them. Here they surged

on this one day of the week, forming a little world of leggings, switches, and samplebags; men of extensive

stomachs, sloping like mountain sides; men whose heads in walking swayed as the trees in November gales;

who in conversing varied their attitudes much, lowering themselves by spreading their knees, and thrusting

their hands into the pockets of remote inner jackets. Their faces radiated tropical warmth; for though when at

home their countenances varied with the seasons, their marketfaces all the year round were glowing little

All overclothes here were worn as if they were an inconvenience, a hampering necessity. Some men were

well dressed; but the majority were careless in that respect, appearing in suits which were historical records

of their wearer's deeds, sunscorchings, and daily struggles for many years past. Yet many carried ruffled

chequebooks in their pockets which regulated at the bank hard by a balance of never less than four figures.

In fact, what these gibbous human shapes specially represented was ready moneymoney insistently

readynot ready next year like a nobleman's often not merely ready at the bank like a professional man's,

It happened that today there rose in the midst of them all two or three tall appletrees standing as if they

grew on the spot; till it was perceived that they were held by men from the ciderdistricts who came here to

sell them, bringing the clay of their county on their boots. ElizabethJane, who had often observed them,

Elizabeth replied vaguely, for an incident checked her. Behind one of the trees stood Farfrae, briskly

discussing a samplebag with a farmer. Henchard had come up, accidentally encountering the young man,

She saw her stepfather throw a shine into his eye which answered "No!" ElizabethJane sighed.

"No. There's Mr. Bulgehe's a wine merchant; there's Benjamin Brownleta horse dealer; and Kitson, the

pig breeder; and Yopper, the auctioneer; besides maltsters, and millersand so on." Farfrae stood out quite

The Saturday afternoon slipped on thus desultorily. The market changed from the sampleshowing hour to

the idle hour before starting homewards, when tales were told. Henchard had not called on Lucetta though he

had stood so near. He must have been too busy, she thought. He would come on Sunday or Monday.

The days came but not the visitor, though Lucetta repeated her dressing with scrupulous care. She got

disheartened. It may at once be declared that Lucetta no longer bore towards Henchard all that warm

allegiance which had characterized her in their first acquaintance, the then unfortunate issue of things had

chilled pure love considerably. But there remained a conscientious wish to bring about her union with him,

now that there was nothing to hinder itto right her positionwhich in itself was a happiness to sigh for.

With strong social reasons on her side why their marriage should take place there had ceased to be any

worldly reason on his why it should be postponed, since she had succeeded to fortune.

Tuesday was the great Candlemas fair. At breakfast she said to ElizabethJane quite coolly: "I imagine your

father may call to see you today. I suppose he stands close by in the marketplace with the rest of the

Elizabeth, wishing to shield the man she believed to be her father from any charge of unnatural dislike, said

Lucetta looked blank, twitched up her lovely eyebrows and lip, and burst into hysterical sobs. Here was a

"Butbut" She could not finish the sentence, which was, naturally, that if Henchard had such a rooted

dislike for the girl as now seemed to be the case, ElizabethJane would have to be got rid ofa disagreeable

A provisional resource suggested itself. "Miss Henchard will you go on an errand for me as soon as

breakfast is over?Ah, that's very good of you. Will you go and order " Here she enumerated several

commissions at sundry shops, which would occupy Elizabeth's time for the next hour or two, at least.

"Then you should do so at once. You can finish the morning by going there. It is an old house in a back

streetI forget wherebut you'll find outand there are crowds of interesting thingsskeletons, teeth, old

pots and pans, ancient boots and shoes, birds' eggsall charmingly instructive. You'll be sure to stay till you

Elizabeth hastily put on her things and departed. "I wonder why she wants to get rid of me today!" she said

sorrowfully as she went. That her absence, rather than her services or instruction, was in request, had been

readily apparent to ElizabethJane, simple as she seemed, and difficult as it was to attribute a motive for the

She had not been gone ten minutes when one of Lucetta's servants was sent to Henchard's with a note. The

DEAR MICHAEL,You will be standing in view of my house to day for two or three hours in the course

of your business, so do please call and see me. I am sadly disappointed that you have not come before, for

can I help anxiety about my own equivocal relation to you?especially now my aunt's fortune has brought

me more prominently before society? Your daughter's presence here may be the cause of your neglect; and I

have therefore sent her away for the morning. Say you come on businessI shall be quite alone.

When the messenger returned her mistress gave directions that if a gentleman called he was to be admitted at

Sentimentally she did not much care to see himhis delays had wearied her, but it was necessary; and with a

sigh she arranged herself picturesquely in the chair; first this way, then that; next so that the light fell over her

head. Next she flung herself on the couch in the cymarecta curve which so became her, and with her arm

over her brow looked towards the door. This, she decided, was the best position after all, and thus she

remained till a man's step was heard on the stairs. Whereupon Lucetta, forgetting her curve (for Nature was

too strong for Art as yet), jumped up and ran and hid herself behind one of the windowcurtains in a freak of

timidity. In spite of the waning of passion the situation was an agitating oneshe had not seen Henchard

She could hear the servant showing the visitor into the room, shutting the door upon him, and leaving as if to

go and look for her mistress. Lucetta flung back the curtain with a nervous greeting. The man before her was

A conjecture that her visitor might be some other person had, indeed, flashed through Lucetta's mind when

He was years younger than the Mayor of Casterbridge; fair, fresh, and slenderly handsome. He wore genteel

cloth leggings with white buttons, polished boots with infinite lace holes, light cord breeches under a black

velveteen coat and waistcoat; and he had a silvertopped switch in his hand. Lucetta blushed, and said with a

"But I'm very sorry!" he said, in deprecating tones. "I came and I inquired for Miss Henchard, and they

showed me up here, and in no case would I have caught ye so unmannerly if I had known!"

"But is it that I have come to the wrong house, madam?" said Mr. Farfrae, blinking a little in his

"O no, sir,sit down. You must come and sit down now you are here," replied Lucetta kindly, to relieve his

Now this was not strictly true; but that something about the young manthat hyperborean crispness,

stringency, and charm, as of a wellbraced musical instrument, which had awakened the interest of

Henchard, and of ElizabethJane and of the Three Mariners' jovial crew, at sight, made his unexpected

presence here attractive to Lucetta. He hesitated, looked at the chair, thought there was no danger in it

Farfrae's sudden entry was simply the result of Henchard's permission to him to see Elizabeth if he were

minded to woo her. At first he had taken no notice of Henchard's brusque letter; but an exceptionally

fortunate business transaction put him on good terms with everybody, and revealed to him that he could

undeniably marry if he chose. Then who so pleasing, thrifty, and satisfactory in every way as

ElizabethJane? Apart from her personal recommendations a reconciliation with his former friend Henchard

would, in the natural course of things, flow from such a union. He therefore forgave the Mayor his curtness;

and this morning on his way to the fair he had called at her house, where he learnt that she was staying at

Miss Templeman's. A little stimulated at not finding her ready and waitingso fanciful are men!he

hastened on to HighPlace Hall to encounter no Elizabeth but its mistress herself.

"The fair today seems a large one," she said when, by natural deviation, their eyes sought the busy scene

without. "Your numerous fairs and markets keep me interested. How many things I think of while I watch

He seemed in doubt how to answer, and the babble without reached them as they satvoices as of wavelets

on a looping sea, one ever and anon rising above the rest. "Do you look out often?" he asked.

"I look as at a picture merely. But," she went on, turning pleasantly to him, "I may do so nowI may look

for you. You are always there, are you not? AhI don't mean it seriously! But it is amusing to look for

somebody one knows in a crowd, even if one does not want him. It takes off the terrible oppressiveness of

being surrounded by a throng, and having no point of junction with it through a single individual."

"If so, I don't know how to enjoy my riches. I came to Casterbridge thinking I should like to live here. But I

"And I from near Edinboro'," he murmured. "It's better to stay at home, and that's true; but a man must live

where his money is made. It is a great pity, but it's always so! Yet I've done very well this year. O yes," he

went on with ingenuous enthusiasm. "You see that man with the drab kerseymere coat? I bought largely of

him in the autumn when wheat was down, and then afterwards when it rose a little I sold off all I had! It

brought only a small profit to me; while the farmers kept theirs, expecting higher figures yes, though the

rats were gnawing the ricks hollow. Just when I sold the markets went lower, and I bought up the corn of

those who had been holding back at less price than my first purchases. And then," cried Farfrae impetuously,

his face alight, "I sold it a few weeks after, when it happened to go up again! And so, by contenting mysel'

with small profits frequently repeated, I soon made five hundred poundsyes!"(bringing down his hand

upon the table, and quite forgetting where he was)"while the others by keeping theirs in hand made

Lucetta regarded him with a critical interest. He was quite a new type of person to her. At last his eye fell

"I mean all you Scotchmen," she added in hasty correction. "So free from Southern extremes. We common

people are all one way or the otherwarm or cold, passionate or frigid. You have both temperatures going

"You are animatedthen you are thinking of getting on. You are sad the next momentthen you are

"So do Ias far as I can. But it was an old house where I was born, and they pulled it down for

Lucetta did not add, as she might have done, that the house was in St. Helier, and not in Bath.

"But the mountains, and the mists and the rocks, they are there! And don't they seem like home?"

"They do to methey do to me," he murmured. And his mind could be seen flying away northwards.

Whether its origin were national or personal, it was quite true what Lucetta had said, that the curious double

strands in Farfrae's thread of lifethe commercial and the romanticwere very distinct at times. Like the

colours in a variegated cord those contrasts could be seen intertwisted, yet not mingling.

The fair without the windows was now raging thick and loud. It was the chief hiring fair of the year, and

differed quite from the market of a few days earlier. In substance it was a whiteybrown crowd flecked with

whitethis being the body of labourers waiting for places. The long bonnets of the women, like

waggontilts, their cotton gowns and checked shawls, mixed with the carters' smockfrocks; for they, too,

entered into the hiring. Among the rest, at the corner of the pavement, stood an old shepherd, who attracted

the eyes of Lucetta and Farfrae by his stillness. He was evidently a chastened man. The battle of life had been

a sharp one with him, for, to begin with, he was a man of small frame. He was now so bowed by hard work

and years that, approaching from behind, a person could hardly see his head. He had planted the stem of his

crook in the gutter and was resting upon the bow, which was polished to silver brightness by the long friction

of his hands. He had quite forgotten where he was, and what he had come for, his eyes being bent on the

ground. A little way off negotiations were proceeding which had reference to him; but he did not hear them,

and there seemed to be passing through his mind pleasant visions of the hiring successes of his prime, when

The negotiations were between a farmer from a distant county and the old man's son. In these there was a

difficulty. The farmer would not take the crust without the crumb of the bargain, in other words, the old man

without the younger; and the son had a sweetheart on his present farm, who stood by, waiting the issue with

"I'm sorry to leave ye, Nelly," said the young man with emotion. "But, you see, I can't starve father, and he's

The girl's lips quivered. "Thirtyfive mile!" she murmured. "Ah! 'tis enough! I shall never see 'ee again!" It

was, indeed, a hopeless length of traction for Dan Cupid's magnet; for young men were young men at

"O! no, noI never shall," she insisted, when he pressed her hand; and she turned her face to Lucetta's wall

to hide her weeping. The farmer said he would give the young man halfanhour for his answer, and went

Lucetta's eyes, full of tears, met Farfrae's. His, too, to her surprise, were moist at the scene.

"It is very hard," she said with strong feelings. "Lovers ought not to be parted like that! O, if I had my wish,

"Maybe I can manage that they'll not be parted," said Farfrae. "I want a young carter; and perhaps I'll take the

old man tooyes; he'll not be very expensive, and doubtless he will answer my pairrpose somehow."

"O, you are so good!" she cried, delighted. "Go and tell them, and let me know if you have succeeded!"

Farfrae went out, and she saw him speak to the group. The eyes of all brightened; the bargain was soon

"It is kindhearted of you, indeed," said Lucetta. "For my part, I have resolved that all my servants shall have

Farfrae looked more serious, waving his head a half turn. "I must be a little stricter than that," he said.

"Ah, well, I cannet explain. I don't know how to talk to ladies, ambitious or no; and that's true," said Donald

"I see you are as you say," replied she, sensibly getting the upper hand in these exchanges of sentiment.

Under this revelation of insight Farfrae again looked out of the window into the thick of the fair.

Two farmers met and shook hands, and being quite near the window their remarks could be heard as others'

"Have you seen young Mr. Farfrae this morning?" asked one. "He promised to meet me here at the stroke of

twelve; but I've gone athwart and about the fair halfadozen times, and never a sign of him: though he's

He looked anxiously at the farmer who was seeking him and who just then ominously walked across to where

Henchard was standing, and he looked into the room and at her. "I like staying; but I fear I must go!" he said.

"Well, whatever it has been, it is now over; and the market calls you to be gone."

Lucetta almost laughedshe would quite have laughedbut that there was a little emotion going in her at

"I have never wished such things before," said the Scotchman, with a simple, shamed, apologetic look for his

"If that's the case, you had better not look at me any longer. Dear me, I feel I have quite demoralized you!"

"But look or look not, I will see you in my thoughts. Well, I'll gothank you for the pleasure of this visit."

"Maybe I'll get into my marketmind when I've been out a few minutes," he murmured. "But I don't knowI

As he went she said eagerly, "You may hear them speak of me in Casterbridge as time goes on. If they tell

you I'm a coquette, which some may, because of the incidents of my life, don't believe it, for I am not."

Thus the two. She had enkindled the young man's enthusiasm till he was quite brimming with sentiment;

while he from merely affording her a new form of idleness, had gone on to wake her serious solicitude. Why

Lucetta as a young girl would hardly have looked at a tradesman. But her ups and downs, capped by her

indiscretions with Henchard had made her uncritical as to station. In her poverty she had met with repulse

from the society to which she had belonged, and she had no great zest for renewing an attempt upon it now.

Her heart longed for some ark into which it could fly and be at rest. Rough or smooth she did not care so long

Farfrae was shown out, it having entirely escaped him that he had called to see Elizabeth. Lucetta at the

window watched him threading the maze of farmers and farmers' men. She could see by his gait that he was

conscious of her eyes, and her heart went out to him for his modestypleaded with her sense of his unfitness

that he might be allowed to come again. He entered the markethouse, and she could see him no more.

Three minutes later, when she had left the window, knocks, not of multitude but of strength, sounded through

Lucetta had reclined herself, and she was looking dreamily through her fingers. She did not answer at once,

and the maid repeated the information with the addition, "And he's afraid he hasn't much time to spare, he

Lucetta had come to Casterbridge to quicken Henchard's feelings with regard to her. She had quickened them,

Her morning view of ElizabethJane as a disturbing element changed, and she no longer felt strongly the

necessity of getting rid of the girl for her stepfather's sake. When the young woman came in, sweetly

unconscious of the turn in the tide, Lucetta went up to her, and said quite sincerely

Elizabeth as a watchdog to keep her father offwhat a new idea. Yet it was not unpleasing. Henchard had

neglected her all these days, after compromising her indescribably in the past. The least he could have done

when he found himself free, and herself affluent, would have been to respond heartily and promptly to her

Her emotions rose, fell, undulated, filled her with wild surmise at their suddenness; and so passed Lucetta's

Poor ElizabethJane, little thinking what her malignant star had done to blast the budding attentions she had

For in addition to Lucetta's house being a home, that raking view of the marketplace which it afforded had

as much attraction for her as for Lucetta. The carrefour was like the regulation Open Place in spectacular

dramas, where the incidents that occur always happen to bear on the lives of the adjoining residents. Farmers,

merchants, dairymen, quacks, hawkers, appeared there from week to week, and disappeared as the afternoon

From Saturday to Saturday was as from day to day with the two young women now. In an emotional sense

they did not live at all during the intervals. Wherever they might go wandering on other days, on marketday

they were sure to be at home. Both stole sly glances out of the window at Farfrae's shoulders and poll. His

face they seldom saw, for, either through shyness, or not to disturb his mercantile mood, he avoided looking

Thus things went on, till a certain marketmorning brought a new sensation. Elizabeth and Lucetta were

sitting at breakfast when a parcel containing two dresses arrived for the latter from London. She called

Elizabeth from her breakfast, and entering her friend's bedroom Elizabeth saw the gowns spread out on the

bed, one of a deep cherry colour, the other lightera glove lying at the end of each sleeve, a bonnet at the

top of each neck, and parasols across the gloves, Lucetta standing beside the suggested human figure in an

"I wouldn't think so hard about it," said Elizabeth, marking the intensity with which Lucetta was alternating

"But settling upon new clothes is so trying," said Lucetta. "You are that person" (pointing to one of the

arrangements), "or you are THAT totally different person" (pointing to the other), "for the whole of the

coming spring and one of the two, you don't know which, may turn out to be very objectionable."

It was finally decided by Miss Templeman that she would be the cherrycoloured person at all hazards. The

dress was pronounced to be a fit, and Lucetta walked with it into the front room, Elizabeth following her.

The morning was exceptionally bright for the time of year. The sun fell so flat on the houses and pavement

opposite Lucetta's residence that they poured their brightness into her rooms. Suddenly, after a rumbling of

wheels, there were added to this steady light a fantastic series of circling irradiations upon the ceiling, and the

companions turned to the window. Immediately opposite a vehicle of strange description had come to a

It was the newfashioned agricultural implement called a horsedrill, till then unknown, in its modern shape,

in this part of the country, where the venerable seedlip was still used for sowing as in the days of the

Heptarchy. Its arrival created about as much sensation in the cornmarket as a flying machine would create at

Charing Cross. The farmers crowded round it, women drew near it, children crept under and into it. The

machine was painted in bright hues of green, yellow, and red, and it resembled as a whole a compound of

hornet, grasshopper, and shrimp, magnified enormously. Or it might have been likened to an upright musical

instrument with the front gone. That was how it struck Lucetta. "Why, it is a sort of agricultural piano," she

Donald Farfrae was in the minds of both as the innovator, for though not a farmer he was closely leagued

with farming operations. And as if in response to their thought he came up at that moment, looked at the

machine, walked round it, and handled it as if he knew something about its make. The two watchers had

inwardly started at his coming, and Elizabeth left the window, went to the back of the room, and stood as if

absorbed in the panelling of the wall. She hardly knew that she had done this till Lucetta, animated by the

conjunction of her new attire with the sight of Farfrae, spoke out: "Let us go and look at the instrument,

ElizabethJane's bonnet and shawl were pitchforked on in a moment, and they went out. Among all the

agriculturists gathered round the only appropriate possessor of the new machine seemed to be Lucetta,

They examined it curiously; observing the rows of trumpet shaped tubes one within the other, the little

scoops, like revolving saltspoons, which tossed the seed into the upper ends of the tubes that conducted it to

the ground; till somebody said, "Good morning, ElizabethJane." She looked up, and there was her

His greeting had been somewhat dry and thunderous, and ElizabethJane, embarrassed out of her equanimity,

Henchard put his hand to his hat, which he brought down with a great wave till it met his body at the knee.

Miss Templeman bowed. "I am happy to become acquainted with you, Mr. Henchard," she said. "This is a

"Yes," Henchard replied; and he proceeded to explain it, and still more forcibly to ridicule it.

"Oh, don't ask me, ma'am!" said Henchard. "The thingwhy 'tis impossible it should act. 'Twas brought here

by one of our machinists on the recommendation of a jumpedup jackanapes of a fellow who thinks"

His eye caught ElizabethJane's imploring face, and he stopped, probably thinking that the suit might be

He turned to go away. Then something seemed to occur which his stepdaughter fancied must really be a

hallucination of hers. A murmur apparently came from Henchard's lips in which she detected the words,

"You refused to see me!" reproachfully addressed to Lucetta. She could not believe that they had been uttered

by her stepfather; unless, indeed, they might have been spoken to one of the yellow gaitered farmers near

them. Yet Lucetta seemed silent, and then all thought of the incident was dissipated by the humming of a

song, which sounded as though from the interior of the machine. Henchard had by this time vanished into the

markethouse, and both the women glanced towards the corn drill. They could see behind it the bent back

of a man who was pushing his head into the internal works to master their simple secrets. The hummed song

ElizabethJane had apprehended the singer in a moment, and looked guilty of she did not know what. Lucetta

next recognized him, and more mistress of herself said archly, "The 'Lass of Gowrie' from inside of a

Satisfied at last with his investigation the young man stood upright, and met their eyes across the summit.

"We are looking at the wonderful new drill," Miss Templeman said. "But practically it is a stupid thingis it

"Stupid? O no!" said Farfrae gravely. "It will revolutionize sowing heerabout! No more sowers flinging their

seed about broadcast, so that some falls by the wayside and some among thorns, and all that. Each grain will

"Then the romance of the sower is gone for good," observed ElizabethJane, who felt herself at one with

Farfrae in Biblereading at least. "'He that observeth the wind shall not sow,' so the Preacher said; but his

"Ay; ay....It must be so!" Donald admitted, his gaze fixing itself on a blank point far away. "But the machines

are already very common in the East and North of England," he added apologetically.

Lucetta seemed to be outside this train of sentiment, her acquaintance with the Scriptures being somewhat

"O no, madam," said he, becoming embarrassed and deferential at the sound of her voice, though with

Elizabeth Jane he was quite at his ease. No, noI merely recommended that it should be got."

In the silence which followed Farfrae appeared only conscious of her; to have passed from perception of

Elizabeth into a brighter sphere of existence than she appertained to. Lucetta, discerning that he was much

mixed that day, partly in his mercantile mood and partly in his romantic one, said gaily to him

The latter felt that she had been in the way, though why was unaccountable to her. Lucetta explained the

"I had occasion to speak to Mr. Farfrae the other day, and so I knew him this morning."

Lucetta was very kind towards Elizabeth that day. Together they saw the market thicken, and in course of

time thin away with the slow decline of the sun towards the upper end of town, its rays taking the street

endways and enfilading the long thoroughfare from top to bottom. The gigs and vans disappeared one by one

till there was not a vehicle in the street. The time of the riding world was over the pedestrian world held

sway. Field labourers and their wives and children trooped in from the villages for their weekly shopping, and

instead of a rattle of wheels and a tramp of horses ruling the sound as earlier, there was nothing but the

shuffle of many feet. All the implements were gone; all the farmers; all the moneyed class. The character of

the town's trading had changed from bulk to multiplicity and pence were handled now as pounds had been

Lucetta and Elizabeth looked out upon this, for though it was night and the street lamps were lighted, they

had kept their shutters unclosed. In the faint blink of the fire they spoke more freely.

"Yes." And having forgotten the momentary mystery of Henchard's seeming speech to Lucetta she continued,

"It is because he does not think I am respectable. I have tried to be so more than you can imagine, but in vain!

My mother's separation from my father was unfortunate for me. You don't know what it is to have shadows

Lucetta seemed to wince. "I do notof that kind precisely," she said, "but you may feel asense of

"O no," said Lucetta quickly. "I was thinking ofwhat happens sometimes when women get themselves in

Lucetta winced again. Her past was by no means secure from investigation, even in Casterbridge. For one

thing Henchard had never returned to her the cloud of letters she had written and sent him in her first

excitement. Possibly they were destroyed; but she could have wished that they had never been written.

The rencounter with Farfrae and his bearings towards Lucetta had made the reflective Elizabeth more

observant of her brilliant and amiable companion. A few days afterwards, when her eyes met Lucetta's as the

latter was going out, she somehow knew that Miss Templeman was nourishing a hope of seeing the attractive

Scotchman. The fact was printed large all over Lucetta's cheeks and eyes to any one who could read her as

ElizabethJane was beginning to do. Lucetta passed on and closed the street door.

A seer's spirit took possession of Elizabeth, impelling her to sit down by the fire and divine events so surely

from data already her own that they could be held as witnessed. She followed Lucetta thus mentallysaw

her encounter Donald somewhere as if by chancesaw him wear his special look when meeting women,

with an added intensity because this one was Lucetta. She depicted his impassioned manner; beheld the

indecision of both between their lothness to separate and their desire not to be observed; depicted their

shaking of hands; how they probably parted with frigidity in their general contour and movements, only in

the smaller features showing the spark of passion, thus invisible to all but themselves. This discerning silent

witch had not done thinking of these things when Lucetta came noiselessly behind her and made her start.

It was all true as she had picturedshe could have sworn it. Lucetta had a heightened luminousness in her

She knelt down on the hearth and took her friend's hands excitedly in her own. But after all she did not say

That night she became restless; in the morning she was feverish; and at breakfasttime she told her

companion that she had something on her mindsomething which concerned a person in whom she was

"They were intimaterather. He did not think so deeply of her as she did of him. But in an impulsive

moment, purely out of reparation, he proposed to make her his wife. She agreed. But there was an

unsuspected hitch in the proceedings; though she had been so far compromised with him that she felt she

could never belong to another man, as a pure matter of conscience, even if she should wish to. After that they

were much apart, heard nothing of each other for a long time, and she felt her life quite closed up for her."

"She suffered much on account of him; though I should add that he could not altogether be blamed for what

had happened. At last the obstacle which separated them was providentially removed; and he came to marry

"But in the interval shemy poor friendhad seen a man, she liked better than him. Now comes the point:

"Yes," said Lucetta, looking pained at a boy who was swinging the town pumphandle. "It is bad! Though

you must remember that she was forced into an equivocal position with the first man by an accidentthat he

was not so well educated or refined as the second, and that she had discovered some qualities in the first that

rendered him less desirable as a husband than she had at first thought him to be."

"I cannot answer," said ElizabethJane thoughtfully. "It is so difficult. It wants a Pope to settle that!"

"You prefer not to perhaps?" Lucetta showed in her appealing tone how much she leant on Elizabeth's

Nevertheless, Lucetta seemed relieved by the simple fact of having opened out the situation a little, and was

slowly convalescent of her headache. "Bring me a lookingglass. How do I appear to people?" she said

"Wella little worn," answered Elizabeth, eyeing her as a critic eyes a doubtful painting; fetching the glass

"Yes. That is my worst place, I know. How many years more do you think I shall last before I get hopelessly

There was something curious in the way in which Elizabeth, though the younger, had come to play the part of

experienced sage in these discussions. "It may be five years," she said judicially. "Or, with a quiet life, as

Lucetta seemed to reflect on this as on an unalterable, impartial verdict. She told ElizabethJane no more of

the past attachment she had roughly adumbrated as the experiences of a third person; and Elizabeth, who in

spite of her philosophy was very tenderhearted, sighed that night in bed at the thought that her pretty, rich

Lucetta did not treat her to the full confidence of names and dates in her confessions. For by the "she" of

The next phase of the supersession of Henchard in Lucetta's heart was an experiment in calling on her

performed by Farfrae with some apparent trepidation. Conventionally speaking he conversed with both Miss

Templeman and her companion; but in fact it was rather that Elizabeth sat invisible in the room. Donald

appeared not to see her at all, and answered her wise little remarks with curtly indifferent monosyllables, his

looks and faculties hanging on the woman who could boast of a more Protean variety in her phases, moods,

opinions, and also principles, than could Elizabeth. Lucetta had persisted in dragging her into the circle; but

Susan Henchard's daughter bore up against the frosty ache of the treatment, as she had borne up under worse

things, and contrived as soon as possible to get out of the inharmonious room without being missed. The

Scotchman seemed hardly the same Farfrae who had danced with her and walked with her in a delicate poise

between love and friendshipthat period in the history of a love when alone it can be said to be unalloyed

She stoically looked from her bedroom window, and contemplated her fate as if it were written on the top of

the churchtower hard by. "Yes," she said at last, bringing down her palm upon the sill with a pat: "HE is the

All this time Henchard's smouldering sentiments towards Lucetta had been fanned into higher and higher

inflammation by the circumstances of the case. He was discovering that the young woman for whom he once

felt a pitying warmth which had been almost chilled out of him by reflection, was, when now qualified with a

slight inaccessibility and a more matured beauty, the very being to make him satisfied with life. Day after day

proved to him, by her silence, that it was no use to think of bringing her round by holding aloof; so he gave

He crossed the room to her with a heavy tread of some awkwardness, his strong, warm gaze upon herlike

the sun beside the moon in comparison with Farfrae's modest look and with something of a hailfellow

bearing, as, indeed, was not unnatural. But she seemed so transubstantiated by her change of position, and

held out her hand to him in such cool friendship, that he became deferential, and sat down with a perceptible

loss of power. He understood but little of fashion in dress, yet enough to feel himself inadequate in

appearance beside her whom he had hitherto been dreaming of as almost his property. She said something

very polite about his being good enough to call. This caused him to recover balance. He looked her oddly in

"Why, of course I have called, Lucetta," he said. "What does that nonsense mean? You know I couldn't have

helped myself if I had wishedthat is, if I had any kindness at all. I've called to say that I am ready, as soon

as custom will permit, to give you my name in return for your devotion and what you lost by it in thinking

too little of yourself and too much of me; to say that you can fix the day or month, with my full consent,

whenever in your opinion it would be seemly: you know more of these things than I."

"Yes, yes; I suppose it is. But you know, Lucetta, I felt directly my poor illused Susan died, and when I

could not bear the idea of marrying again, that after what had happened between us it was my duty not to let

any unnecessary delay occur before putting things to rights. Still, I wouldn't call in a hurry, becausewell,

you can guess how this money you've come into made me feel." His voice slowly fell; he was conscious that

in this room his accents and manner wore a roughness not observable in the street. He looked about the room

at the novel hangings and ingenious furniture with which she had surrounded herself.

"Upon my life I didn't know such furniture as this could be bought in Casterbridge," he said.

"Nor can it be " said she. "Nor will it till fifty years more of civilization have passed over the town. It took a

"So much the better. But the fact is, your setting up like this makes my beaming towards you rather

An answer was not really needed, and he did not furnish one. "Well," he went on, "there's nobody in the

world I would have wished to see enter into this wealth before you, Lucetta, and nobody, I am sure, who will

become it more." He turned to her with congratulatory admiration so fervid that she shrank somewhat,

"I am greatly obliged to you for all that," said she, rather with an air of speaking ritual. The stint of reciprocal

feeling was perceived, and Henchard showed chagrin at once nobody was more quick to show that than he.

"You may be obliged or not for't. Though the things I say may not have the polish of what you've lately learnt

"Not at all!" replied Henchard hotly. "But there, there, I don't wish to quarrel with 'ee. I come with an honest

"How can you speak so!" she answered, firing quickly. "Knowing that my only crime was the indulging in a

foolish girl's passion for you with too little regard for correctness, and that I was what I call innocent all the

time they called me guilty, you ought not to be so cutting! I suffered enough at that worrying time, when you

wrote to tell me of your wife's return and my consequent dismissal, and if I am a little independent now,

"Yes, it is," he said. "But it is not by what is, in this life, but by what appears, that you are judged; and I

therefore think you ought to accept mefor your own good name's sake. What is known in your native

For the first time in their acquaintance Lucetta had the move; and yet she was backward. "For the present let

things be," she said with some embarrassment. "Treat me as an acquaintance, and I'll treat you as one. Time

will" She stopped; and he said nothing to fill the gap for awhile, there being no pressure of half

"That's the way the wind blows, is it?" he said at last grimly, nodding an affirmative to his own thoughts.

A yellow flood of reflected sunlight filled the room for a few instants. It was produced by the passing of a

load of newly trussed hay from the country, in a waggon marked with Farfrae's name. Beside it rode Farfrae

himself on horse back. Lucetta's face becameas a woman's face becomes when the man she loves rises

A turn of the eye by Henchard, a glance from the window, and the secret of her inaccessibility would have

been revealed. But Henchard in estimating her tone was looking down so plumbstraight that he did not note

"I shouldn't have thought itI shouldn't have thought it of women!" he said emphatically byandby, rising

and shaking himself into activity; while Lucetta was so anxious to divert him from any suspicion of the truth

that she asked him to be in no hurry. Bringing him some apples she insisted upon paring one for him.

He would not take it. "No, no; such is not for me," he said drily, and moved to the door. At going out he

"You came to live in Casterbridge entirely on my account," he said. "Yet now you are here you won't have

He had hardly gone down the staircase when she dropped upon the sofa and jumped up again in a fit of

desperation. "I WILL love him!" she cried passionately; "as for HIM he's hottempered and stern, and it

would be madness to bind myself to him knowing that. I won't be a slave to the past I'll love where I

Yet having decided to break away from Henchard one might have supposed her capable of aiming higher

than Farfrae. But Lucetta reasoned nothing: she feared hard words from the people with whom she had been

earlier associated; she had no relatives left; and with native lightness of heart took kindly to what fate offered.

ElizabethJane, surveying the position of Lucetta between her two lovers from the crystalline sphere of a

straightforward mind, did not fail to perceive that her father, as she called him, and Donald Farfrae became

more desperately enamoured of her friend every day. On Farfrae's side it was the unforced passion of youth.

The pain she experienced from the almost absolute obliviousness to her existence that was shown by the pair

of them became at times half dissipated by her sense of its humourousness. When Lucetta had pricked her

finger they were as deeply concerned as if she were dying; when she herself had been seriously sick or in

danger they uttered a conventional word of sympathy at the news, and forgot all about it immediately. But, as

regarded Henchard, this perception of hers also caused her some filial grief; she could not help asking what

she had done to be neglected so, after the professions of solicitude he had made. As regarded Farfrae, she

thought, after honest reflection, that it was quite natural. What was she beside Lucetta?as one of the

She had learnt the lesson of renunciation, and was as familiar with the wreck of each day's wishes as with the

diurnal setting of the sun. If her earthly career had taught her few book philosophies it had at least well

practised her in this. Yet her experience had consisted less in a series of pure disappointments than in a series

of substitutions. Continually it had happened that what she had desired had not been granted her, and that

what had been granted her she had not desired. So she viewed with an approach to equanimity the new

cancelled days when Donald had been her undeclared lover, and wondered what unwished for thing Heaven

It chanced that on a fine spring morning Henchard and Farfrae met in the chestnutwalk which ran along the

south wall of the town. Each had just come out from his early breakfast, and there was not another soul near.

Henchard was reading a letter from Lucetta, sent in answer to a note from him, in which she made some

Donald had no wish to enter into conversation with his former friend on their present constrained terms;

neither would he pass him in scowling silence. He nodded, and Henchard did the same. They receded from

each other several paces when a voice cried "Farfrae!" It was Henchard's, who stood regarding him.

"Do you remember," said Henchard, as if it were the presence of the thought and not of the man which made

him speak, "do you remember my story of that second womanwho suffered for her thoughtless intimacy

"Well, I have offered to marry her now that I can; but she won't marry me. Now what would you think of

That he had looked up from a letter to ask his questions completely shut out from Farfrae's mind all vision of

Lucetta as the culprit. Indeed, her present position was so different from that of the young woman of

Henchard's story as of itself to be sufficient to blind him absolutely to her identity. As for Henchard, he was

reassured by Farfrae's words and manner against a suspicion which had crossed his mind. They were not

Yet that there was rivalry by some one he was firmly persuaded. He could feel it in the air around Lucetta,

see it in the turn of her pen. There was an antagonistic force in exercise, so that when he had tried to hang

near her he seemed standing in a refluent current. That it was not innate caprice he was more and more

certain. Her windows gleamed as if they did not want him; her curtains seem to hang slily, as if they screened

an ousting presence. To discover whose presence that waswhether really Farfrae's after all, or

another'she exerted himself to the utmost to see her again; and at length succeeded.

At the interview, when she offered him tea, he made it a point to launch a cautious inquiry if she knew Mr.

O yes, she knew him, she declared; she could not help knowing almost everybody in Casterbridge, living in

"We both know him," said kind ElizabethJane, to relieve her companion's divined embarrassment.

There was a knock at the door; literally, three full knocks and a little one at the end.

"That kind of knock means halfandhalfsomebody between gentle and simple," said the cornmerchant

to himself. "I shouldn't wonder therefore if it is he." In a few seconds surely enough Donald walked in.

Lucetta was full of little fidgets and flutters, which increased Henchard's suspicions without affording any

special proof of their correctness. He was wellnigh ferocious at the sense of the queer situation in which he

stood towards this woman. One who had reproached him for deserting her when calumniated, who had urged

claims upon his consideration on that account, who had lived waiting for him, who at the first decent

opportunity had come to ask him to rectify, by making her his, the false position into which she had placed

herself for his sake; such she had been. And now he sat at her teatable eager to gain her attention, and in his

amatory rage feeling the other man present to be a villain, just as any young fool of a lover might feel.

They sat stiffly side by side at the darkening table, like some Tuscan painting of the two disciples supping at

Emmaus. Lucetta, forming the third and haloed figure, was opposite them; ElizabethJane, being out of the

game, and out of the group, could observe all from afar, like the evangelist who had to write it down: that

there were long spaces of taciturnity, when all exterior circumstances were subdued to the touch of spoons

and china, the click of a heel on the pavement under the window, the passing of a wheelbarrow or cart, the

whistling of the carter, the gush of water into householders' buckets at the townpump opposite, the exchange

of greetings among their neighbours, and the rattle of the yokes by which they carried off their evening

"More breadandbutter?" said Lucetta to Henchard and Farfrae equally, holding out between them a plateful

of long slices. Henchard took a slice by one end and Donald by the other; each feeling certain he was the man

"OhI am so sorry!" cried Lucetta, with a nervous titter. Farfrae tried to laugh; but he was too much in love

Henchard left the house with a ton of conjecture, though without a grain of proof, that the counterattraction

was Farfrae; and therefore he would not make up his mind. Yet to ElizabethJane it was plain as the

townpump that Donald and Lucetta were incipient lovers. More than once, in spite of her care, Lucetta had

been unable to restrain her glance from flitting across into Farfrae's eyes like a bird to its nest. But Henchard

was constructed upon too large a scale to discern such minutiae as these by an evening light, which to him

But he was disturbed. And the sense of occult rivalry in suitorship was so much superadded to the palpable

rivalry of their business lives. To the coarse materiality of that rivalry it added an inflaming soul.

The thus vitalized antagonism took the form of action by Henchard sending for Jopp, the manager originally

displaced by Farfrae's arrival. Henchard had frequently met this man about the streets, observed that his

clothing spoke of neediness, heard that he lived in Mixen Lanea back slum of the town, the pis aller of

Casterbridge domiciliation itself almost a proof that a man had reached a stage when he would not stick at

Jopp came after dark, by the gates of the storeyard, and felt his way through the hay and straw to the office

"At this hour and moment, sir," said Jopp, who, standing handspocketed at the street corner till the sun had

faded the shoulders of his coat to scarecrow green, had regularly watched Henchard in the marketplace,

measured him, and learnt him, by virtue of the power which the still man has in his stillness of knowing the

busy one better than he knows himself. Jopp too, had had a convenient experience; he was the only one in

Casterbridge besides Henchard and the closelipped Elizabeth who knew that Lucetta came truly from

Jersey, and but proximately from Bath. "I know Jersey too, sir," he said. "Was living there when you used to

"Indeed! Very good. Then the thing is settled. The testimonials you showed me when you first tried for't are

That characters deteriorated in time of need possibly did not occur to, Henchard. Jopp said, "Thank you," and

stood more firmly, in the consciousness that at last he officially belonged to that spot.

"Now," said Henchard, digging his strong eyes into Jopp's face, "one thing is necessary to me, as the biggest

corn andhay dealer in these parts. The Scotchman, who's taking the town trade so bold into his hands, must

"By fair competition I mean, of course," Henchard continued. "But as hard, keen, and unflinching as

fairrather more so. By such a desperate bid against him for the farmers' custom as will grind him into the

"I'm all that way of thinking," said the new foreman. Jopp's dislike of Farfrae as the man who had once

ursurped his place, while it made him a willing tool, made him, at the same time, commercially as unsafe a

"I sometimes think," he added, "that he must have some glass that he sees next year in. He has such a knack

"He's deep beyond all honest men's discerning, but we must make him shallower. We'll undersell him, and

They then entered into specific details of the process by which this would be accomplished, and parted at a

ElizabethJane heard by accident that Jopp had been engaged by her stepfather. She was so fully convinced

that he was not the right man for the place that, at the risk of making Henchard angry, she expressed her

apprehension to him when they met. But it was done to no purpose. Henchard shut up her argument with a

The season's weather seemed to favour their scheme. The time was in the years immediately before foreign

competition had revolutionized the trade in grain; when still, as from the earliest ages, the wheat quotations

from month to month depended entirely upon the home harvest. A bad harvest, or the prospect of one, would

double the price of corn in a few weeks; and the promise of a good yield would lower it as rapidly. Prices

were like the roads of the period, steep in gradient, reflecting in their phases the local conditions, without

The farmer's income was ruled by the wheatcrop within his own horizon, and the wheatcrop by the

weather. Thus in person, he became a sort of fleshbarometer, with feelers always directed to the sky and

wind around him. The local atmosphere was everything to him; the atmospheres of other countries a matter of

indifference. The people, too, who were not farmers, the rural multitude, saw in the god of the weather a

more important personage than they do now. Indeed, the feeling of the peasantry in this matter was so intense

as to be almost unrealizable in these equable days. Their impulse was wellnigh to prostrate themselves in

lamentation before untimely rains and tempests, which came as the Alastor of those households whose crime

After midsummer they watched the weathercocks as men waiting in antechambers watch the lackey. Sun

elated them; quiet rain sobered them; weeks of watery tempest stupefied them. That aspect of the sky which

It was June, and the weather was very unfavourable. Casterbridge, being as it were the bellboard on which

all the adjacent hamlets and villages sounded their notes, was decidedly dull. Instead of new articles in the

shopwindows those that had been rejected in the foregoing summer were brought out again; superseded

reaphooks, badlyshaped rakes, shopworn leggings, and timestiffened watertights reappeared, furbished

Henchard, backed by Jopp, read a disastrous garnering, and resolved to base his strategy against Farfrae upon

that reading. But before acting he wishedwhat so many have wishedthat he could know for certain what

was at present only strong probability. He was superstitiousas such headstrong natures often areand he

nourished in his mind an idea bearing on the matter; an idea he shrank from disclosing even to Jopp.

In a lonely hamlet a few miles from the townso lonely that what are called lonely villages were teeming by

comparison there lived a man of curious repute as a forecaster or weatherprophet. The way to his house

was crooked and miry even difficult in the present unpropitious season. One evening when it was raining

so heavily that ivy and laurel resounded like distant musketry, and an outdoor man could be excused for

shrouding himself to his ears and eyes, such a shrouded figure on foot might have been perceived travelling

in the direction of the hazelcopse which dripped over the prophet's cot. The turnpikeroad became a lane,

the lane a carttrack, the carttrack a bridlepath, the bridlepath a footway, the footway overgrown. The

solitary walker slipped here and there, and stumbled over the natural springes formed by the brambles, till at

length he reached the house, which, with its garden, was surrounded with a high, dense hedge. The cottage,

comparatively a large one, had been built of mud by the occupier's own hands, and thatched also by himself.

He existed on unseen supplies; for it was an anomalous thing that while there was hardly a soul in the

neighbourhood but affected to laugh at this man's assertions, uttering the formula, "There's nothing in 'em,"

with full assurance on the surface of their faces, very few of them were unbelievers in their secret hearts.

Whenever they consulted him they did it "for a fancy." When they paid him they said, "Just a trifle for

He would have preferred more honesty in his clients, and less sham ridicule; but fundamental belief consoled

him for superficial irony. As stated, he was enabled to live; people supported him with their backs turned. He

was sometimes astonished that men could profess so little and believe so much at his house, when at church

Behind his back he was called "Wideoh," on account of his reputation; to his face "Mr." Fall.

The hedge of his garden formed an arch over the entrance, and a door was inserted as in a wall. Outside the

door the tall traveller stopped, bandaged his face with a handkerchief as if he were suffering from toothache,

and went up the path. The window shutters were not closed, and he could see the prophet within, preparing

In answer to the knock Fall came to the door, candle in hand. The visitor stepped back a little from the light,

and said, "Can I speak to 'ee?" in significant tones. The other's invitation to come in was responded to by the

country formula, "This will do, thank 'ee," after which the householder had no alternative but to come out. He

placed the candle on the corner of the dresser, took his hat from a nail, and joined the stranger in the porch,

"I've long heard that you cando things of a sort?" began the other, repressing his individuality as much as

"Because it's your name. Feeling you'd come I've waited for 'ee; and thinking you might be leery from your

walk I laid two supper plateslook ye here." He threw open the door and disclosed the suppertable, at

which appeared a second chair, knife and fork, plate and mug, as he had declared.

Henchard felt like Saul at his reception by Samuel; he remained in silence for a few moments, then throwing

off the disguise of frigidity which he had hitherto preserved he said, "Then I have not come in vain....Now,

"That I've donewith considerationif they will wear the toadbag by night as well as by day."

"Then take this," said Henchard. "'Tis a crownpiece. Now, what is the harvest fortnight to be? When can I

"I've worked it out already, and you can know at once." (The fact was that five farmers had already been

there on the same errand from different parts of the country.) "By the sun, moon, and stars, by the clouds, the

winds, the trees, and grass, the candleflame and swallows, the smell of the herbs; likewise by the cats' eyes,

the ravens, the leeches, the spiders, and the dungmixen, the last fortnight in August will berain and

"As one can be in a world where all's unsure. 'Twill be more like living in Revelations this autumn than in

"O no, no," said Henchard. "I don't altogether believe in forecasts, come to second thoughts on such. But I"

"You don'tyou don't'tis quite understood," said Wideoh, without a sound of scorn. "You have given me

a crown because you've one too many. But won't you join me at supper, now 'tis waiting and all?"

Henchard would gladly have joined; for the savour of the stew had floated from the cottage into the porch

with such appetizing distinctness that the meat, the onions, the pepper, and the herbs could be severally

recognized by his nose. But as sitting down to hobandnob there would have seemed to mark him too

The next Saturday Henchard bought grain to such an enormous extent that there was quite a talk about his

purchases among his neighbours the lawyer, the wine merchant, and the doctor; also on the next, and on all

available days. When his granaries were full to choking all the weathercocks of Casterbridge creaked and

set their faces in another direction, as if tired of the southwest. The weather changed; the sunlight, which

had been like tin for weeks, assumed the hues of topaz. The temperament of the welkin passed from the

phlegmatic to the sanguine; an excellent harvest was almost a certainty; and as a consequence prices rushed

All these transformations, lovely to the outsider, to the wrongheaded corndealer were terrible. He was

reminded of what he had well known before, that a man might gamble upon the square green areas of fields

Henchard had backed bad weather, and apparently lost. He had mistaken the turn of the flood for the turn of

the ebb. His dealings had been so extensive that settlement could not long be postponed, and to settle he was

obliged to sell off corn that he had bought only a few weeks before at figures higher by many shillings a

quarter. Much of the corn he had never seen; it had not even been moved from the ricks in which it lay

In the blaze of an early August day he met Farfrae in the marketplace. Farfrae knew of his dealings (though

he did not guess their intended bearing on himself) and commiserated him; for since their exchange of words

in the South Walk they had been on stiffly speaking terms. Henchard for the moment appeared to resent the

"Ho, no, no!nothing serious, man!" he cried with fierce gaiety. "These things always happen, don't they? I

know it has been said that figures have touched me tight lately; but is that anything rare? The case is not so

bad as folk make out perhaps. And dammy, a man must be a fool to mind the common hazards of trade!"

But he had to enter the Casterbridge Bank that day for reasons which had never before sent him thereand

to sit a long time in the partners' room with a constrained bearing. It was rumoured soon after that much real

property as well as vast stores of produce, which had stood in Henchard's name in the town and

Coming down the steps of the bank he encountered Jopp. The gloomy transactions just completed within had

added fever to the original sting of Farfrae's sympathy that morning, which Henchard fancied might be a

satire disguised so that Jopp met with anything but a bland reception. The latter was in the act of taking off

"You can wipe and wipe, and say, 'A fine hot day,' can ye!" cried Henchard in a savage undertone,

imprisoning Jopp between himself and the bank wall. "If it hadn't been for your blasted advice it might have

been a fine day enough! Why did ye let me go on, hey?when a word of doubt from you or anybody would

"A useful fellow! And the sooner you help somebody else in that way the better!" Henchard continued his

address to Jopp in similar terms till it ended in Jopp s dismissal there and then, Henchard turning upon his

"You shall be sorry for this, sir; sorry as a man can be!" said Jopp, standing pale, and looking after the corn

It was the eve of harvest. Prices being low Farfrae was buying. As was usual, after reckoning too surely on

famine weather the local farmers had flown to the other extreme, and (in Farfrae's opinion) were selling off

too recklessly calculating with just a trifle too much certainty upon an abundant yield. So he went on

buying old corn at its comparatively ridiculous price: for the produce of the previous year, though not large,

When Henchard had squared his affairs in a disastrous way, and got rid of his burdensome purchases at a

monstrous loss, the harvest began. There were three days of excellent weather, and then"What if that curst

The fact was, that no sooner had the sickles begun to play than the atmosphere suddenly felt as if cress would

grow in it without other nourishment. It rubbed people's cheeks like damp flannel when they walked abroad.

There was a gusty, high, warm wind; isolated raindrops starred the windowpanes at remote distances: the

sunlight would flap out like a quickly opened fan, throw the pattern of the window upon the floor of the room

From that day and hour it was clear that there was not to be so successful an ingathering after all. If Henchard

had only waited long enough he might at least have avoided loss though he had not made a profit. But the

momentum of his character knew no patience. At this turn of the scales he remained silent. The movements

of his mind seemed to tend to the thought that some power was working against him.

"I wonder," he asked himself with eerie misgiving; "I wonder if it can be that somebody has been roasting a

waxen image of me, or stirring an unholy brew to confound me! I don't believe in such power; and yetwhat

if they should ha' been doing it!" Even he could not admit that the perpetrator, if any, might be Farfrae. These

isolated hours of superstition came to Henchard in time of moody depression, when all his practical largeness

Meanwhile Donald Farfrae prospered. He had purchased in so depressed a market that the present moderate

stiffness of prices was sufficient to pile for him a large heap of gold where a little one had been.

"Why, he'll soon be Mayor!" said Henchard. It was indeed hard that the speaker should, of all others, have to

Septembernight shades had fallen upon Casterbridge; the clocks had struck halfpast eight, and the moon

had risen. The streets of the town were curiously silent for such a comparatively early hour. A sound of

jangling horsebells and heavy wheels passed up the street. These were followed by angry voices outside

Lucetta's house, which led her and ElizabethJane to run to the windows, and pull up the blinds.

The neighbouring Market House and Town Hall abutted against its next neighbour the Church except in the

lower storey, where an arched thoroughfare gave admittance to a large square called Bull Stake. A stone post

rose in the midst, to which the oxen had formerly been tied for baiting with dogs to make them tender before

The thoroughfare leading to this spot was now blocked by two fourhorse waggons and horses, one laden

with haytrusses, the leaders having already passed each other, and become entangled head to tail. The

passage of the vehicles might have been practicable if empty; but built up with hay to the bedroom windows

"You must have done it a' purpose!" said Farfrae's waggoner. "You can hear my horses' bells halfamile

"If ye'd been minding your business instead of zwailing along in such a gawkhammer way, you would have

However, according to the strict rule of the road it appeared that Henchard's man was most in the wrong, he

therefore attempted to back into the High Street. In doing this the near hindwheel rose against the

churchyard wall and the whole mountainous load went over, two of the four wheels rising in the air, and the

Instead of considering how to gather up the load the two men closed in a fight with their fists. Before the first

Henchard sent the two men staggering in contrary directions by collaring one with each hand, turned to the

horse that was down, and extricated him after some trouble. He then inquired into the circumstances; and

Lucetta and ElizabethJane had by this time run down to the street corner, whence they watched the bright

heap of new hay lying in the moon's rays, and passed and repassed by the forms of Henchard and the

waggoners. The women had witnessed what nobody else had seenthe origin of the mishap; and Lucetta

Henchard paused in his harangue and turned. "Oh, I didn't notice you, Miss Templeman," said he. "My man

in the wrong? Ah, to be sure; to be sure! But I beg your pardon notwithstanding. The other's is the empty

"No; I saw it, too," said ElizabethJane. "And I can assure you he couldn't help it."

"Why, you see, sir, all the women side with Farfraebeing a damn young dandof the sort that he isone

that creeps into a maid's heart like the giddying worm into a sheep's brainmaking crooked seem straight to

"But do you know who that lady is you talk about in such a fashion? Do you know that I pay my attentions to

"And that Mr. Farfrae is well aware of it? He's sharp in trade, but he wouldn't do anything so underhand as

Whether because Lucetta heard this low dialogue, or not her white figure disappeared from her doorway

inward, and the door was shut before Henchard could reach it to converse with her further. This disappointed

him, for he had been sufficiently disturbed by what the man had said to wish to speak to her more closely.

"Just see that nobody drives against that hay and waggon to night, Stubberd," said the cornmerchant. "It

must bide till the morning, for all hands are in the field still. And if any coach or roadwaggon wants to come

along, tell 'em they must go round by the back street, and be hanged to 'em....Any case tomorrow up in Hall?"

"An old flagrant female, sir, swearing and committing a nuisance in a horrible profane manner against the

"Very well, then I'll be there. Don't forget to keep an eye on that hay. Good night t' 'ee."

During those moments Henchard had determined to follow up Lucetta notwithstanding her elusiveness, and

The answer he received was an expression of Miss Templeman's sorrow at being unable to see him again that

Henchard walked away from the door to the opposite side of the street, and stood by his hay in a lonely

reverie, the constable having strolled elsewhere, and the horses being removed. Though the moon was not

bright as yet there were no lamps lighted, and he entered the shadow of one of the projecting jambs which

Candlelights were flitting in and out of her bedroom, and it was obvious that she was dressing for the

appointment, whatever the nature of that might be at such an hour. The lights disappeared, the clock struck

nine, and almost at the moment Farfrae came round the opposite corner and knocked. That she had been

waiting just inside for him was certain, for she instantly opened the door herself. They went together by the

way of a back lane westward, avoiding the front street; guessing where they were going he determined to

The harvest had been so delayed by the capricious weather that whenever a fine day occurred all sinews were

strained to save what could be saved of the damaged crops. On account of the rapid shortening of the days the

harvesters worked by moonlight. Hence tonight the wheatfields abutting on the two sides of the square

formed by Casterbridge town were animated by the gathering hands. Their shouts and laughter had reached

Henchard at the Market House, while he stood there waiting, and he had little doubt from the turn which

Nearly the whole town had gone into the fields. The Casterbridge populace still retained the primitive habit of

helping one another in time of need; and thus, though the corn belonged to the farming section of the little

communitythat inhabiting the Durnover quarterthe remainder was no less interested in the labour of

Reaching the top of the lane Henchard crossed the shaded avenue on the walls, slid down the green rampart,

and stood amongst the stubble. The "stitches" or shocks rose like tents about the yellow expanse, those in the

He had entered at a point removed from the scene of immediate operations; but two others had entered at that

place, and he could see them winding among the shocks. They were paying no regard to the direction of their

walk, whose vague serpentining soon began to bear down towards Henchard. A meeting promised to be

awkward, and he therefore stepped into the hollow of the nearest shock, and sat down.

"Well, then," replied Farfrae, with the unmistakable inflection of the lover pure, which Henchard had never

heard in full resonance of his lips before, "you are sure to be much sought after for your position, wealth,

talents, and beauty. But will ye resist the temptation to be one of those ladies with lots of admirersayand

"Then I hope you'll never have any, if you lack them only for that cause." After some broken words which

"You are convinced, Donald, that I love nobody else," she presently said. "But I should wish to have my own

"If I wished not to live always in Casterbridge, for instance, upon finding that I should not be happy here?"

Henchard did not hear the reply; he might have done so and much more, but he did not care to play the

eavesdropper. They went on towards the scene of activity, where the sheaves were being handed, a dozen a

Lucetta insisted on parting from Farfrae when they drew near the workpeople. He had some business with

them and, thought he entreated her to wait a few minutes, she was inexorable, and tripped off homeward

Henchard thereupon left the field and followed her. His state of mind was such that on reaching Lucetta's

door he did not knock but opened it, and walked straight up to her sittingroom, expecting to find her there.

But the room was empty, and he perceived that in his haste he had somehow passed her on the way hither. He

had not to wait many minutes, however, for he soon heard her dress rustling in the hall, followed by a soft

The light was so low that she did not notice Henchard at first. As soon as she saw him she uttered a little cry,

"How can you frighten me so?" she exclaimed, with a flushed face. "It is past ten o'clock, and you have no

"I don't know that I've not the right. At any rate I have the excuse. Is it so necessary that I should stop to think

"I called an hour ago, and you would not see me, and I thought you were in when I called now. It is you,

Lucetta, who are doing wrong. It is not proper in 'ee to throw me over like this. I have a little matter to remind

"I don't want to hear itI don't want to hear it!" she said through her hands, as he, standing close to the edge

"It came to nothing; and through you. Then why not leave me the freedom that I gained with such sorrow!

Had I found that you proposed to marry me for pure love I might have felt bound now. But I soon learnt that

you had planned it out of mere charityalmost as an unpleasant dutybecause I had nursed you, and

compromised myself, and you thought you must repay me. After that I did not care for you so deeply as

"I thought I ought to marry you for conscience' sake, since you were free, even though Idid not like you so

She was silent. It was only too obvious that conscience had ruled well enough till new love had intervened

and usurped that rule. In feeling this she herself forgot for the moment her partially justifying argumentthat

having discovered Henchard's infirmities of temper, she had some excuse for not risking her happiness in his

hands after once escaping them. The only thing she could say was, "I was a poor girl then; and now my

"That's true. And it makes the case awkward for me. But I don't want to touch your money. I am quite willing

that every penny of your property shall remain to your personal use. Besides, that argument has nothing in it.

This unluckily aroused Henchard. "You cannot in honour refuse me," he said. "And unless you give me your

promise this very night to be my wife, before a witness, I'll reveal our intimacyin common fairness to other

A look of resignation settled upon her. Henchard saw its bitterness; and had Lucetta's heart been given to any

other man in the world than Farfrae he would probably have had pity upon her at that moment. But the

supplanter was the upstart (as Henchard called him) who had mounted into prominence upon his shoulders,

Without another word she rang the bell, and directed that ElizabethJane should be fetched from her room.

The latter appeared, surprised in the midst of her lucubrations. As soon as she saw Henchard she went across

"ElizabethJane," he said, taking her hand, "I want you to hear this." And turning to Lucetta: "Will you, or

"What dreadful thing drives her to say this, father, when it is such a pain to her?" asked Elizabeth, kneeling

down by Lucetta. "Don't compel her to do anything against her will! I have lived with her, and know that she

"Don't be a no'thern simpleton!" said Henchard drily. "This promise will leave him free for you, if you want

"Ohwell. Then it is my mistake," said Henchard. "But the business is between me and Miss Templeman.

"I have, I have," groaned Lucetta, her limbs hanging like fluid, from very misery and faintness. "Michael,

ElizabethJane continued to kneel by Lucetta. "What is this?" she said. "You called my father 'Michael' as if

you knew him well? And how is it he has got this power over you, that you promise to marry him against

"Perhaps you have some from me," Lucetta murmured with closed eyes, little thinking, however, so

unsuspicious was she, that the secret of Elizabeth's heart concerned the young man who had caused this

"I would notdo anything against you at all!" stammered Elizabeth, keeping in all signs of emotion till she

was ready to burst. "I cannot understand how my father can command you so; I don't sympathize with him in

The next morning Henchard went to the Town Hall below Lucetta's house, to attend Petty Sessions, being

still a magistrate for the year by virtue of his late position as Mayor. In passing he looked up at her windows,

Henchard as a Justice of the Peace may at first seem to be an even greater incongruity than Shallow and

Silence themselves. But his rough and ready perceptions, his sledgehammer directness, had often served

him better than nice legal knowledge in despatching such simple business as fell to his hands in this Court.

Today Dr. Chalkfield, the Mayor for the year, being absent, the cornmerchant took the big chair, his eyes

still abstractedly stretching out of the window to the ashlar front of HighPlace Hall.

There was one case only, and the offender stood before him. She was an old woman of mottled countenance,

attired in a shawl of that nameless tertiary hue which comes, but cannot be madea hue neither tawny,

russet, hazel, nor ash; a sticky black bonnet that seemed to have been worn in the country of the Psalmist

where the clouds drop fatness; and an apron that had been white in time so comparatively recent as still to

contrast visibly with the rest of her clothes. The steeped aspect of the woman as a whole showed her to be no

She looked cursorily at Henchard and the second magistrate, and Henchard looked at her, with a momentary

pause, as if she had reminded him indistinctly of somebody or something which passed from his mind as

quickly as it had come. "Well, and what has she been doing?" he said, looking down at the charge sheet.

"She is charged, sir, with the offence of disorderly female and nuisance," whispered Stubberd.

"By the church, sir, of all the horrible places in the world!I caught her in the act, your worship."

Stubberd was sworn in, the magistrate's clerk dipped his pen, Henchard being no notetaker himself, and the

"Hearing a' illegal noise I went down the street at twenty five minutes past eleven P.M. on the night of the

The constable waited, with his eyes on the clerk's pen, till the latter stopped scratching and said, "yes."

Stubberd continued: "When I had proceeded to the spot I saw defendant at another spot, namely, the gutter."

"Spot measuring twelve feet nine inches or thereabouts from where I" Still careful not to outrun the clerk's

penmanship Stubberd pulled up again; for having got his evidence by heart it was immaterial to him

"I object to that," spoke up the old woman, "'spot measuring twelve feet nine or thereabouts from where I,' is

The magistrates consulted, and the second one said that the bench was of opinion that twelve feet nine inches

Stubberd, with a suppressed gaze of victorious rectitude at the old woman, continued: "Was standing myself.

She was wambling about quite dangerous to the thoroughfare and when I approached to draw near she

"Says she, 'Dost hear, old turmithead? Put away that dee lantern. I have floored fellows a dee sight

finerlooking than a dee fool like thee, you son of a bee, dee me if I haint,' she says.

"I object to that conversation!" interposed the old woman. "I was not capable enough to hear what I said, and

There was another stoppage for consultation, a book was referred to, and finally Stubberd was allowed to go

on again. The truth was that the old woman had appeared in court so many more times than the magistrates

themselves, that they were obliged to keep a sharp lookout upon their procedure. However, when Stubberd

had rambled on a little further Henchard broke out impatiently, "Comewe don't want to hear any more of

them cust dees and bees! Say the words out like a man, and don't be so modest, Stubberd; or else leave it

alone!" Turning to the woman, "Now then, have you any questions to ask him, or anything to say?"

"Twenty years ago or thereabout I was selling of furmity in a tent at Weydon Fair"

"'Twenty years ago'well, that's beginning at the beginning; suppose you go back to the Creation!" said the

"A man and a woman with a little child came into my tent," the woman continued. "They sat down and had a

basin apiece. Ah, Lord's my life! I was of a more respectable station in the world then than I am now, being a

land smuggler in a large way of business; and I used to season my furmity with rum for them who asked for't.

I did it for the man; and then he had more and more; till at last he quarrelled with his wife, and offered to sell

her to the highest bidder. A sailor came in and bid five guineas, and paid the money, and led her away. And

the man who sold his wife in that fashion is the man sitting there in the great big chair." The speaker

Everybody looked at Henchard. His face seemed strange, and in tint as if it had been powdered over with

ashes. "We don't want to hear your life and adventures," said the second magistrate sharply, filling the pause

which followed. "You've been asked if you've anything to say bearing on the case."

"That bears on the case. It proves that he's no better than I, and has no right to sit there in judgment upon me."

"No'tis true." The words came from Henchard. "'Tis as true as the light," he said slowly. "And upon my

soul it does prove that I'm no better than she! And to keep out of any temptation to treat her hard for her

The sensation in the court was indescribably great. Henchard left the chair, and came out, passing through a

group of people on the steps and outside that was much larger than usual; for it seemed that the old furmity

dealer had mysteriously hinted to the denizens of the lane in which she had been lodging since her arrival,

that she knew a queer thing or two about their great local man Mr. Henchard, if she chose to tell it. This had

"Why are there so many idlers round the Town Hall today?" said Lucetta to her servant when the case was

"Oh, please, ma'am, 'tis this larry about Mr. Henchard. A woman has proved that before he became a

In all the accounts which Henchard had given her of the separation from his wife Susan for so many years, of

his belief in her death, and so on, he had never clearly explained the actual and immediate cause of that

A gradual misery overspread Lucetta's face as she dwelt upon the promise wrung from her the night before.

At bottom, then, Henchard was this. How terrible a contingency for a woman who should commit herself to

During the day she went out to the Ring and to other places, not coming in till nearly dusk. As soon as she

saw ElizabethJane after her return indoors she told her that she had resolved to go away from home to the

Elizabeth, seeing that she looked wan and disturbed, encouraged her in the idea, thinking a change would

afford her relief. She could not help suspecting that the gloom which seemed to have come over Casterbridge

in Lucetta's eyes might be partially owing to the fact that Farfrae was away from home.

Elizabeth saw her friend depart for PortBredy, and took charge of HighPlace Hall till her return. After two

or three days of solitude and incessant rain Henchard called at the house. He seemed disappointed to hear of

Lucetta's absence and though he nodded with outward indifference he went away handling his beard with a

"Yes. She returned this morning," replied his step daughter. "But she is not indoors. She has gone for a walk

After a few words, which only served to reveal his restless impatience, he left the house again.

At this hour Lucetta was bounding along the road to Port Bredy just as Elizabeth had announced. That she

had chosen for her afternoon walk the road along which she had returned to Casterbridge three hours earlier

in a carriage was curiousif anything should be called curious in concatenations of phenomena wherein

each is known to have its accounting cause. It was the day of the chief market Saturdayand Farfrae for

once had been missed from his cornstand in the dealers' room. Nevertheless, it was known that he would be

Lucetta, in continuing her walk, had at length reached the end of the ranked trees which bordered the

highway in this and other directions out of the town. This end marked a mile; and here she stopped.

The spot was a vale between two gentle acclivities, and the road, still adhering to its Roman foundation,

stretched onward straight as a surveyor's line till lost to sight on the most distant ridge. There was neither

hedge nor tree in the prospect now, the road clinging to the stubby expanse of cornland like a strip to an

undulating garment. Near her was a barnthe single building of any kind within her horizon.

She strained her eyes up the lessening road, but nothing appeared thereonnot so much as a speck. She

Here the case was different. A single figure was approaching herElizabethJane's.

Lucetta, in spite of her loneliness, seemed a little vexed. Elizabeth's face, as soon as she recognized her

friend, shaped itself into affectionate lines while yet beyond speaking distance. "I suddenly thought I would

Lucetta's reply was taken from her lips by an unexpected diversion. A byroad on her right hand descended

from the fields into the highway at the point where she stood, and down the track a bull was rambling

uncertainly towards her and Elizabeth, who, facing the other way, did not observe him.

In the latter quarter of each year cattle were at once the mainstay and the terror of families about Casterbridge

and its neighbourhood, where breeding was carried on with Abrahamic success. The head of stock driven into

and out of the town at this season to be sold by the local auctioneer was very large; and all these horned

beasts, in travelling to and fro, sent women and children to shelter as nothing else could do. In the main the

animals would have walked along quietly enough; but the Casterbridge tradition was that to drive stock it was

indispensable that hideous cries, coupled with Yahoo antics and gestures, should be used, large sticks

flourished, stray dogs called in, and in general everything done that was likely to infuriate the viciously

disposed and terrify the mild. Nothing was commoner than for a householder on going out of his parlour to

find his hall or passage full of little children, nursemaids, aged women, or a ladies' school, who apologized

Lucetta and Elizabeth regarded the animal in doubt, he meanwhile drawing vaguely towards them. It was a

large specimen of the breed, in colour rich dun, though disfigured at present by splotches of mud about his

seamy sides. His horns were thick and tipped with brass; his two nostrils like the Thames Tunnel as seen in

the perspective toys of yore. Between them, through the gristle of his nose, was a stout copper ring, welded

on, and irremovable as Gurth's collar of brass. To the ring was attached an ash staff about a yard long, which

It was not till they observed this dangling stick that the young women were really alarmed; for it revealed to

them that the bull was an old one, too savage to be driven, which had in some way escaped, the staff being

the means by which the drover controlled him and kept his horns at arms' length.

They looked round for some shelter or hidingplace, and thought of the barn hard by. As long as they had

kept their eyes on the bull he had shown some deference in his manner of approach; but no sooner did they

turn their backs to seek the barn than he tossed his head and decided to thoroughly terrify them. This caused

the two helpless girls to run wildly, whereupon the bull advanced in a deliberate charge.

The barn stood behind a green slimy pond, and it was closed save as to one of the usual pair of doors facing

them, which had been propped open by a hurdlestick, and for this opening they made. The interior had been

cleared by a recent bout of threshing except at one end, where there was a stack of dry clover. ElizabethJane

But before they had even approached it they heard the bull scampering through the pond without, and in a

second he dashed into the barn, knocking down the hurdlestake in passing; the heavy door slammed behind

him; and all three were imprisoned in the barn together. The mistaken creature saw them, and stalked towards

the end of the barn into which they had fled. The girls doubled so adroitly that their pursuer was against the

wall when the fugitives were already half way to the other end. By the time that his length would allow him

to turn and follow them thither they had crossed over; thus the pursuit went on, the hot air from his nostrils

blowing over them like a sirocco, and not a moment being attainable by Elizabeth or Lucetta in which to open

the door. What might have happened had their situation continued cannot be said; but in a few moments a

rattling of the door distracted their adversary's attention, and a man appeared. He ran forward towards the

leadingstaff, 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 nosering was too cunning for impulsive brute

The man was seen in the partial gloom to be largeframed 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 cloverheap. Lucetta was hysterical, and Henchard

"I came out here to look for you. I have been wanting to tell you something these two or three days; but you

"Here am I!" cried the missing one cheerfully; and without waiting for the ladder to be placed she slid down

Henchard supporting Lucetta on one side, and ElizabethJane 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

"I'll run back," said ElizabethJane. "I don't mind it at all, as I am not tired as you are." She thereupon

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

barndoor, and wedging it there with a stake. At length she turned to hasten onward after her contemplation,

when she saw a greenandblack gig approaching from the contrary direction, the vehicle being driven by

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 ElizabethJane 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

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

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 ElizabethJane 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

"I am afraid not before eight, sir," said she. "You see we wasn't aware till this morning that you were going to

"Awell, 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

During this interval Henchard and Lucetta had had experiences of a different kind. After Elizabeth's departure

for the muff the cornmerchant 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 couldit is but too plain. Therefore I

agree to an indefinite engagementto put off all thought of marriage for a year or two."

"Butbutcan I do nothing of a different kind?" said Lucetta. "I am full of gratitude to youyou 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

Henchard remained in thought. He had evidently not expected this. "There is one thing you might do,

"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

"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 intendedthat 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

It being now what the people called the "pinking in" of the day, that is, the quarterhour just before dusk, he

"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 offeredjust the beginning

of what you have so lately promised! I could have told him as much myself, but he would not have believed

"It is not because I won'tit 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

"Why? When I have only within these few minutes released you from your promise to do the thing offhand."

"Yes. With Mr. Farfrae. O Michael! I am already his wife. We were married this week at PortBredy. There

were reasons against our doing it here. Mr. Grower was a witness because he happened to be at PortBredy at

Henchard stood as if idiotized. She was so alarmed at his silence that she murmured something about lending

"Married him?" said Henchard at length. "My goodwhat, married him whilstbound to marry me?"

"It was like this," she explained, with tears in her eyes and quavers in her voice; "don'tdon'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 hadsold 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 oncefor 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

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 drumstick, throbbed down the street.

"YesI think he has told them, or else Mr. Grower has....May I leave you now? Myhe was detained at

"I am much obliged to him....O you false woman!" burst from Henchard. "You promised me!"

"And now I've a mind to punish you as you deserve! One word to this brannew husband of how you courted

"A pensioner of Farfrae's wifenot I! Don't stay with me longerI 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

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

At the last moment of leaving PortBredy, 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 twodays' bride in a hired brougham, whilst he went across the country to a

certain group of wheat and barley ricks a few miles off, telling her the hour at which he might be expected the

same evening. This accounted for her trotting out to meet him after their separation of four hours.

By a strenuous effort, after leaving Henchard she calmed herself in readiness to receive Donald at

HighPlace Hall when he came on from his lodgings. One supreme fact empowered her to this, the sense

that, come what would, she had secured him. Halfanhour after her arrival he walked in, and she met him

with a relieved gladness, which a month's perilous absence could not have intensified.

"There is one thing I have not done; and yet it is important," she said earnestly, when she had finished talking

about the adventure with the bull. "That is, broken the news of our marriage to my dear ElizabethJane."

"Ah, and you have not?" he said thoughtfully. "I gave her a lift from the barn homewards; but I did not tell

her either; for I thought she might have heard of it in the town, and was keeping back her congratulations

"She can hardly have heard of it. But I'll find out; I'll go to her now. And, Donald, you don't mind her living

"O no, indeed I don't," Farfrae answered with, perhaps, a faint awkwardness. "But I wonder if she would care

"O yes!" said Lucetta eagerly. "I am sure she would like to. Besides, poor thing, she has no other home."

Farfrae looked at her and saw that she did not suspect the secret of her more reserved friend. He liked her all

the better for the blindness. "Arrange as you like with her by all means," he said. "It is I who have come to

When she got upstairs to ElizabethJane's room the latter had taken off her outdoor things, and was resting

"I did not come down to you, Miss Templeman," she said simply. "I was coming to ask if you had quite

recovered from your fright, but I found you had a visitor. What are the bells ringing for, I wonder? And the

band, too, is playing. Somebody must be married; or else they are practising for Christmas."

Lucetta uttered a vague "Yes," and seating herself by the other young woman looked musingly at her. "What

a lonely creature you are," she presently said; "never knowing what's going on, or what people are talking

about everywhere with keen interest. You should get out, and gossip about as other women do, and then you

wouldn't be obliged to ask me a question of that kind. Well, now, I have something to tell you.

"I must go rather a long way back," said Lucetta, the difficulty of explaining herself satisfactorily to the

pondering one beside her growing more apparent at each syllable. "You remember that trying case of

conscience I told you of some time agoabout the first lover and the second lover?" She let out in jerky

"O yesI remember the story of YOUR FRIEND," said Elizabeth drily, regarding the irises of Lucetta's eyes

as though to catch their exact shade. "The two loversthe old one and the new: how she wanted to marry the

second, but felt she ought to marry the first; so that she neglected the better course to follow the evil, like the

poet Ovid I've just been construing: 'Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor.'"

"But you said that sheor as I may say you"answered Elizabeth, dropping the mask, "were in honour and

Lucetta's blush at being seen through came and went again before she replied anxiously, "You will never

"Then I will tell you that the case is more complicated worse, in factthan it seemed in my story. I and

the first man were thrown together in a strange way, and felt that we ought to be united, as the world had

talked of us. He was a widower, as he supposed. He had not heard of his first wife for many years. But the

wife returned, and we parted. She is now dead, and the husband comes paying me addresses again, saying,

'Now we'll complete our purposes.' But, ElizabethJane, all this amounts to a new courtship of me by him; I

"Have you not lately renewed your promise?" said the younger with quiet surmise. She had divined Man

"Yes, it was. But I think when any one gets coupled up with a man in the past so unfortunately as you have

done she ought to become his wife if she can, even if she were not the sinning party."

Lucetta's countenance lost its sparkle. "He turned out to be a man I should be afraid to marry," she pleaded.

"Then there is only one course left to honesty. You must remain a single woman."

"I am certain," interrupted her companion hardily. "I have guessed very well who the man is. My father; and I

Any suspicion of impropriety was to ElizabethJane like a red rag to a bull. Her craving for correctness of

procedure was, indeed, almost vicious. Owing to her early troubles with regard to her mother a semblance of

irregularity had terrors for her which those whose names are safeguarded from suspicion know nothing of.

"You ought to marry Mr. Henchard or nobodycertainly not another man!" she went on with a quivering lip

Lucetta covered her eyes with her right hand, as if she could plead no more, holding out her left to

"Why, you HAVE married him!" cried the latter, jumping up with pleasure after a glance at Lucetta's fingers.

"When did you do it? Why did you not tell me, instead of teasing me like this? How very honourable of you!

He did treat my mother badly once, it seems, in a moment of intoxication. And it is true that he is stern

sometimes. But you will rule him entirely, I am sure, with your beauty and wealth and accomplishments. You

"O, my ElizabethJane!" cried Lucetta distressfully. "'Tis somebody else that I have married! I was so

desperateso afraid of being forced to anything elseso afraid of revelations that would quench his love

for me, that I resolved to do it offhand, come what might, and purchase a week of happiness at any cost!"

"The bells are ringing on that account," she said. "My husband is downstairs. He will live here till a more

suitable house is ready for us; and I have told him that I want you to stay with me just as before."

"Let me think of it alone," the girl quickly replied, corking up the turmoil of her feeling with grand control.

Lucetta departed to join Donald below, a vague uneasiness floating over her joy at seeing him quite at home

there. Not on account of her friend Elizabeth did she feel it: for of the bearings of ElizabethJane's emotions

Now the instant decision of Susan Henchard's daughter was to dwell in that house no more. Apart from her

estimate of the propriety of Lucetta's conduct, Farfrae had been so nearly her avowed lover that she felt she

It was still early in the evening when she hastily put on her things and went out. In a few minutes, knowing

the ground, she had found a suitable lodging, and arranged to enter it that night. Returning and entering

noiselessly she took off her pretty dress and arrayed herself in a plain one, packing up the other to keep as her

best; for she would have to be very economical now. She wrote a note to leave for Lucetta, who was closely

shut up in the drawingroom with Farfrae; and then ElizabethJane called a man with a wheelbarrow; and

seeing her boxes put into it she trotted off down the street to her rooms. They were in the street in which

Here she sat down and considered the means of subsistence. The little annual sum settled on her by her

stepfather would keep body and soul together. A wonderful skill in netting of all sortsacquired in

childhood by making seines in Newson's homemight serve her in good stead; and her studies, which were

By this time the marriage that had taken place was known throughout Casterbridge; had been discussed

noisily on kerbstones, confidentially behind counters, and jovially at the Three Mariners. Whether Farfrae

would sell his business and set up for a gentleman on his wife's money, or whether he would show

independence enough to stick to his trade in spite of his brilliant alliance, was a great point of interest.

The retort of the furmitywoman before the magistrates had spread; and in fourandtwenty hours there was

not a person in Casterbridge who remained unacquainted with the story of Henchard's mad freak at

WeydonPriors Fair, long years before. The amends he had made in after life were lost sight of in the

dramatic glare of the original act. Had the incident been well known of old and always, it might by this time

have grown to be lightly regarded as the rather tall wild oat, but wellnigh the single one, of a young man

with whom the steady and mature (if somewhat headstrong) burgher of today had scarcely a point in

common. But the act having lain as dead and buried ever since, the interspace of years was unperceived; and

Small as the policecourt incident had been in itself, it formed the edge or turn in the incline of Henchard's

fortunes. On that dayalmost at that minutehe passed the ridge of prosperity and honour, and began to

descend rapidly on the other side. It was strange how soon he sank in esteem. Socially he had received a

startling fillip downwards; and, having already lost commercial buoyancy from rash transactions, the velocity

He now gazed more at the pavements and less at the house fronts when he walked about; more at the feet

and leggings of men, and less into the pupils of their eyes with the blazing regard which formerly had made

New events combined to undo him. It had been a bad year for others besides himself, and the heavy failure of

a debtor whom he had trusted generously completed the overthrow of his tottering credit. And now, in his

desperation, he failed to preserve that strict correspondence between bulk and sample which is the soul of

commerce in grain. For this, one of his men was mainly to blame; that worthy, in his great unwisdom, having

picked over the sample of an enormous quantity of secondrate corn which Henchard had in hand, and

removed the pinched, blasted, and smutted grains in great numbers. The produce if honestly offered would

have created no scandal; but the blunder of misrepresentation, coming at such a moment, dragged Henchard's

The details of his failure were of the ordinary kind. One day ElizabethJane was passing the King's Arms,

when she saw people bustling in and out more than usual where there was no market. A bystander informed

her, with some surprise at her ignorance, that it was a meeting of the Commissioners under Mr. Henchard's

bankruptcy. She felt quite tearful, and when she heard that he was present in the hotel she wished to go in and

The room in which debtor and creditors had assembled was a front one, and Henchard, looking out of the

window, had caught sight of ElizabethJane through the wire blind. His examination had closed, and the

creditors were leaving. The appearance of Elizabeth threw him into a reverie, till, turning his face from the

window, and towering above all the rest, he called their attention for a moment more. His countenance had

somewhat changed from its flush of prosperity; the black hair and whiskers were the same as ever, but a film

"Gentlemen," he said, "over and above the assets that we've been talking about, and that appear on the

balancesheet, there be these. It all belongs to ye, as much as everything else I've got, and I don't wish to

keep it from you, not I." Saying this, he took his gold watch from his pocket and laid it on the table; then his

pursethe yellow canvas money bag, such as was carried by all farmers and dealersuntying it, and

shaking the money out upon the table beside the watch. The latter he drew back quickly for an instant, to

remove the hairguard made and given him by Lucetta. "There, now you have all I've got in the world," he

The creditors, farmers almost to a man, looked at the watch, and at the money, and into the street; when

"No, no, Henchard," he said warmly. "We don't want that. 'Tis honourable in ye; but keep it. What do you

"Let him keep it, of course," murmured another in the backgrounda silent, reserved young man named

"Well," said the senior Commissioner, addressing Henchard, "though the case is a desperate one, I am bound

to admit that I have never met a debtor who behaved more fairly. I've proved the balancesheet to be as

honestly made out as it could possibly be; we have had no trouble; there have been no evasions and no

concealments. The rashness of dealing which led to this unhappy situation is obvious enough; but as far as I

Henchard was more affected by this than he cared to let them perceive, and he turned aside to the window

again. A general murmur of agreement followed the Commissioner's words, and the meeting dispersed. When

they were gone Henchard regarded the watch they had returned to him. "'Tisn't mine by rights," he said to

himself. "Why the devil didn't they take it?I don't want what don't belong to me!" Moved by a recollection

he took the watch to the maker's just opposite, sold it there and then for what the tradesman offered, and went

with the proceeds to one among the smaller of his creditors, a cottager of Durnover in straitened

When everything was ticketed that Henchard had owned, and the auctions were in progress, there was quite a

sympathetic reaction in the town, which till then for some time past had done nothing but condemn him. Now

that Henchard's whole career was pictured distinctly to his neighbours, and they could see how admirably he

had used his one talent of energy to create a position of affluence out of absolutely nothing which was

really all he could show when he came to the town as a journeyman haytrusser, with his wimble and knife in

Try as she might, Elizabeth could never meet with him. She believed in him still, though nobody else did; and

she wanted to be allowed to forgive him for his roughness to her, and to help him in his trouble.

She wrote to him; he did not reply. She then went to his housethe great house she had lived in so happily

for a timewith its front of dun brick, vitrified here and there and its heavy sashbarsbut Henchard was

to be found there no more. The exMayor had left the home of his prosperity, and gone into Jopp's cottage by

the Priory Millthe sad purlieu to which he had wandered on the night of his discovery that she was not his

Elizabeth thought it odd that he had fixed on this spot to retire to, but assumed that necessity had no choice.

Trees which seemed old enough to have been planted by the friars still stood around, and the back hatch of

the original mill yet formed a cascade which had raised its terrific roar for centuries. The cottage itself was

built of old stones from the long dismantled Priory, scraps of tracery, moulded windowjambs, and

In this cottage he occupied a couple of rooms, Jopp, whom Henchard had employed, abused, cajoled, and

dismissed by turns, being the householder. But even here her stepfather could not be seen.

Afterwards she was passing by the cornstores and haybarns which had been the headquarters of his

business. She knew that he ruled there no longer; but it was with amazement that she regarded the familiar

gateway. A smear of decisive leadcoloured paint had been laid on to obliterate Henchard's name, though its

letters dimly loomed through like ships in a fog. Over these, in fresh white, spread the name of Farfrae.

Abel Whittle was edging his skeleton in at the wicket, and she said, "Mr. Farfrae is master here?"

"Yaas, Miss Henchet," he said, "Mr. Farfrae have bought the concern and all of we workfolk with it; and 'tis

better for us than 'twasthough I shouldn't say that to you as a daughterlaw. We work harder, but we bain't

made afeard now. It was fear made my few poor hairs so thin! No busting out, no slamming of doors, no

meddling with yer eternal soul and all that; and though 'tis a shilling a week less I'm the richer man; for

The intelligence was in a general sense true; and Henchard's stores, which had remained in a paralyzed

condition during the settlement of his bankruptcy, were stirred into activity again when the new tenant had

possession. Thenceforward the full sacks, looped with the shining chain, went scurrying up and down under

the cathead, hairy arms were thrust out from the different doorways, and the grain was hauled in; trusses of

hay were tossed anew in and out of the barns, and the wimbles creaked; while the scales and steelyards

Two bridges stood near the lower part of Casterbridge town. The first, of weatherstained brick, was

immediately at the end of High Street, where a diverging branch from that thoroughfare ran round to the

lowlying Durnover lanes; so that the precincts of the bridge formed the merging point of respectability and

indigence. The second bridge, of stone, was further out on the highwayin fact, fairly in the meadows,

These bridges had speaking countenances. Every projection in each was worn down to obtuseness, partly by

weather, more by friction from generations of loungers, whose toes and heels had from year to year made

restless movements against these parapets, as they had stood there meditating on the aspect of affairs. In the

case of the more friable bricks and stones even the flat faces were worn into hollows by the same mixed

mechanism. The masonry of the top was clamped with iron at each joint; since it had been no uncommon

thing for desperate men to wrench the coping off and throw it down the river, in reckless defiance of the

For to this pair of bridges gravitated all the failures of the town; those who had failed in business, in love, in

sobriety, in crime. Why the unhappy hereabout usually chose the bridges for their meditations in preference

There was a marked difference of quality between the personages who haunted the near bridge of brick and

the personages who haunted the far one of stone. Those of lowest character preferred the former, adjoining

the town; they did not mind the glare of the public eye. They had been of comparatively no account during

their successes; and though they might feel dispirited, they had no particular sense of shame in their ruin.

Their hands were mostly kept in their pockets; they wore a leather strap round their hips or knees, and boots

that required a great deal of lacing, but seemed never to get any. Instead of sighing at their adversities they

spat, and instead of saying the iron had entered into their souls they said they were down on their luck. Jopp

in his time of distress had often stood here; so had Mother Cuxsom, Christopher Coney, and poor Abel

The miserables who would pause on the remoter bridge were of a politer stamp. They included bankrupts,

hypochondriacs, persons who were what is called "out of a situation" from fault or lucklessness, the

inefficient of the professional classshabbygenteel men, who did not know how to get rid of the weary

time between breakfast and dinner, and the yet more weary time between dinner and dark. The eye of this

species were mostly directed over the parapet upon the running water below. A man seen there looking thus

fixedly into the river was pretty sure to be one whom the world did not treat kindly for some reason or other.

While one in straits on the townward bridge did not mind who saw him so, and kept his back to the parapet to

survey the passersby, one in straits on this never faced the road, never turned his head at coming footsteps,

but, sensitive to his own condition, watched the current whenever a stranger approached, as if some strange

fish interested him, though every finned thing had been poached out of the river years before.

There and thus they would muse; if their grief were the grief of oppression they would wish themselves

kings; if their grief were poverty, wish themselves millionaires; if sin, they would wish they were saints or

angels; if despised love, that they were some muchcourted Adonis of county fame. Some had been known to

stand and think so long with this fixed gaze downward that eventually they had allowed their poor carcases to

follow that gaze; and they were discovered the next morning out of reach of their troubles, either here or in

To this bridge came Henchard, as other unfortunates had come before him, his way thither being by the

riverside path on the chilly edge of the town. Here he was standing one windy afternoon when Durnover

church clock struck five. While the gusts were bringing the notes to his ears across the damp intervening flat

a man passed behind him and greeted Henchard by name. Henchard turned slightly and saw that the corner

was Jopp, his old foreman, now employed elsewhere, to whom, though he hated him, he had gone for

lodgings because Jopp was the one man in Casterbridge whose observation and opinion the fallen

"Gone into my house?" And starting up Henchard added, " MY house of all others in the town!"

"Well, as somebody was sure to live there, and you couldn't, it can do 'ee no harm that he's the man."

It was quite true: he felt that it was doing him no harm. Farfrae, who had already taken the yards and stores,

had acquired possession of the house for the obvious convenience of its contiguity. And yet this act of his

taking up residence within those roomy chambers while he, their former tenant, lived in a cottage, galled

Jopp continued: "And you heard of that fellow who bought all the best furniture at your sale? He was bidding

for no other than Farfrae all the while! It has never been moved out of the house, as he'd already got the

"There's no saying he won't, if you be willing to sell." And having planted these wounds in the heart of his

once imperious master Jopp went on his way; while Henchard stared and stared into the racing river till the

The low land grew blacker, and the sky a deeper grey, When the landscape looked like a picture blotted in

with ink, another traveller approached the great stone bridge. He was driving a gig, his direction being also

townwards. On the round of the middle of the arch the gig stopped. "Mr Henchard?" came from it in the

Finding that he had guessed rightly Farfrae told the man who accompanied him to drive home; while he

"I have heard that you think of emigrating, Mr. Henchard?" he said. "Is it true? I have a real reason for

Henchard withheld his answer for several instants, and then said, "Yes; it is true. I am going where you were

going to a few years ago, when I prevented you and got you to bide here. 'Tis turn and turn about, isn't it! Do

ye mind how we stood like this in the Chalk Walk when I persuaded 'ee to stay? You then stood without a

chattel to your name, and I was the master of the house in corn Street. But now I stand without a stick or a

"Ha, ha, true!" cried Henchard, throwing himself into a mood of jocularity. "Up and down! I'm used to it.

"Now listen to me, if it's no taking up your time," said Farfrae, "just as I listened to you. Don't go. Stay at

"But I can do nothing else, man!" said Henchard scornfully. "The little money I have will just keep body and

soul together for a few weeks, and no more. I have not felt inclined to go back to journeywork yet; but I

"No; but what I propose is thisif ye will listen. Come and live in your old house. We can spare some rooms

very wellI am sure my wife would not mind it at alluntil there's an opening for ye."

Henchard started. Probably the picture drawn by the unsuspecting Donald of himself under the same roof

with Lucetta was too striking to be received with equanimity. "No, no," he said gruffly; "we should quarrel."

"You should hae a part to yourself," said Farfrae; "and nobody to interfere wi' you. It will be a deal healthier

Still Henchard refused. "You don't know what you ask," he said. "However, I can do no less than thank 'ee."

They walked into the town together side by side, as they had done when Henchard persuaded the young

Scotchman to remain. "Will you come in and have some supper?" said Farfrae when they reached the middle

"Well, it was no that I wanted it so very much for myself; but I wish ye to pick out all that you care to

havesuch things as may be endeared to ye by associations, or particularly suited to your use. And take

them to your own houseit will not be depriving me, we can do with less very well, and I will have plenty

"Whatgive it to me for nothing?" said Henchard. "But you paid the creditors for it!"

Henchard was a little moved. "Isometimes think I've wronged 'ee!" he said, in tones which showed the

disquietude that the night shades hid in his face. He shook Farfrae abruptly by the hand, and hastened away as

if unwilling to betray himself further. Farfrae saw him turn through the thoroughfare into Bull Stake and

Meanwhile ElizabethJane, in an upper room no larger than the Prophet's chamber, and with the silk attire of

her palmy days packed away in a box, was netting with great industry between the hours which she devoted

Her lodgings being nearly opposite her stepfather's former residence, now Farfrae's, she could see Donald and

Lucetta speeding in and out of their door with all the bounding enthusiasm of their situation. She avoided

looking that way as much as possible, but it was hardly in human nature to keep the eyes averted when the

While living on thus quietly she heard the news that Henchard had caught cold and was confined to his

room possibly a result of standing about the meads in damp weather. She went off to his house at once.

This time she was determined not to be denied admittance, and made her way upstairs. He was sitting up in

the bed with a greatcoat round him, and at first resented her intrusion. "Go away go away," he said. "I

However, the ice was broken, and she remained. She made the room more comfortable, gave directions to the

people below, and by the time she went away had reconciled her stepfather to her visiting him.

The effect, either of her ministrations or of her mere presence, was a rapid recovery. He soon was well

enough to go out; and now things seemed to wear a new colour in his eyes. He no longer thought of

emigration, and thought more of Elizabeth. The having nothing to do made him more dreary than any other

circumstance; and one day, with better views of Farfrae than he had held for some time, and a sense that

honest work was not a thing to be ashamed of, he stoically went down to Farfrae's yard and asked to be taken

on as a journeyman haytrusser. He was engaged at once. This hiring of Henchard was done through a

foreman, Farfrae feeling that it was undesirable to come personally in contact with the excornfactor more

than was absolutely necessary. While anxious to help him he was well aware by this time of his uncertain

temper, and thought reserved relations best. For the same reason his orders to Henchard to proceed to this and

that country farm trussing in the usual way were always given through a third person.

For a time these arrangements worked well, it being the custom to truss in the respective stackyards, before

bringing it away, the hay bought at the different farms about the neighbourhood; so that Henchard was often

absent at such places the whole week long. When this was all done, and Henchard had become in a measure

broken in, he came to work daily on the home premises like the rest. And thus the once flourishing merchant

and Mayor and what not stood as a daylabourer in the barns and granaries he formerly had owned.

"I have worked as a journeyman before now, ha'n't I?" he would say in his defiant way; "and why shouldn't I

do it again?" But he looked a far different journeyman from the one he had been in his earlier days. Then he

had worn clean, suitable clothes, light and cheerful in hue; leggings yellow as marigolds, corduroys

immaculate as new flax, and a neckerchief like a flowergarden. Now he wore the remains of an old blue

cloth suit of his gentlemanly times, a rusty silk hat, and a once black satin stock, soiled and shabby. Clad thus

he went to and fro, still comparatively an active manfor he was not much over fortyand saw with the

other men in the yard Donald Farfrae going in and out the green door that led to the garden, and the big

At the beginning of the winter it was rumoured about Casterbridge that Mr. Farfrae, already in the Town

"Yes, she was wise, she was wise in her generation!" said Henchard to himself when he heard of this one day

on his way to Farfrae's haybarn. He thought it over as he wimbled his bonds, and the piece of news acted as

a reviviscent breath to that old view of hisof Donald Farfrae as his triumphant rival who rode roughshod

"A fellow of his age going to be Mayor, indeed!" he murmured with a cornerdrawn smile on his mouth.

"But 'tis her money that floats en upward. Hahahow cust odd it is! Here be I, his former master, working

for him as man, and he the man standing as master, with my house and my furniture and my

He repeated these things a hundred times a day. During the whole period of his acquaintance with Lucetta he

had never wished to claim her as his own so desperately as he now regretted her loss. It was no mercenary

hankering after her fortune that moved him, though that fortune had been the means of making her so much

the more desired by giving her the air of independence and sauciness which attracts men of his composition.

It had given her servants, house, and fine clothinga setting that invested Lucetta with a startling novelty in

He accordingly lapsed into moodiness, and at every allusion to the possibility of Farfrae's near election to the

municipal chair his former hatred of the Scotchman returned. Concurrently with this he underwent a moral

change. It resulted in his significantly saying every now and then, in tones of recklessness, "Only a fortnight

"Why d'ye say only a dozen days?" asked Solomon Longways as he worked beside Henchard in the granary

"The oath to drink no spirituous liquid. In twelve days it will be twentyone years since I swore it, and then I

ElizabethJane sat at her window one Sunday, and while there she heard in the street below a conversation

which introduced Henchard's name. She was wondering what was the matter, when a third person who was

"Michael Henchard have busted out drinking after taking nothing for twentyone years!"

At this date there prevailed in Casterbridge a convivial customscarcely recognized as such, yet none the

less established. On the afternoon of every Sunday a large contingent of the Casterbridge

journeymensteady church goers and sedate charactershaving attended service, filed from the church

doors across the way to the Three Mariners Inn. The rear was usually brought up by the choir, with their

The great point, the point of honour, on these sacred occasions was for each man to strictly limit himself to

halfapint of liquor. This scrupulosity was so well understood by the landlord that the whole company was

served in cups of that measure. They were all exactly alike straightsided, with two leafless limetrees

done in eel brown on the sidesone towards the drinker's lips, the other confronting his comrade. To

wonder how many of these cups the landlord possessed altogether was a favourite exercise of children in the

marvellous. Forty at least might have been seen at these times in the large room, forming a ring round the

margin of the great sixteenlegged oak table, like the monolithic circle of Stonehenge in its pristine days.

Outside and above the forty cups came a circle of forty smokejets from forty clay pipes; outside the pipes

the countenances of the forty churchgoers, supported at the back by a circle of forty chairs.

The conversation was not the conversation of weekdays, but a thing altogether finer in point and higher in

tone. They invariably discussed the sermon, dissecting it, weighing it, as above or below the averagethe

general tendency being to regard it as a scientific feat or performance which had no relation to their own

lives, except as between critics and the thing criticized. The bassviol player and the clerk usually spoke with

more authority than the rest on account of their official connection with the preacher.

Now the Three Mariners was the inn chosen by Henchard as the place for closing his long term of dramless

years. He had so timed his entry as to be well established in the large room by the time the forty

churchgoers entered to their customary cups. The flush upon his face proclaimed at once that the vow of

twentyone years had lapsed, and the era of recklessness begun anew. He was seated on a small table, drawn

up to the side of the massive oak board reserved for the churchmen, a few of whom nodded to him as they

Henchard did not take the trouble to reply for a few moments, and his eyes rested on his stretchedout legs

and boots. "Yes," he said at length; "that's true. I've been down in spirit for weeks; some of ye know the

cause. I am better now, but not quite serene. I want you fellows of the choir to strike up a tune; and what with

that and this brew of Stannidge's, I am in hopes of getting altogether out of my minor key."

"With all my heart," said the first fiddle. "We've let back our strings, that's true, but we can soon pull 'em up

"I don't care a curse what the words be," said Henchard. "Hymns, ballets, or rantipole rubbish; the Rogue's

March or the cherubim's warble'tis all the same to me if 'tis good harmony, and well put out."

"Wellheh, hehit may be we can do that, and not a man among us that have sat in the gallery less than

twenty year," said the leader of the band. "As 'tis Sunday, neighbours, suppose we raise the Fourth Psa'am, to

"Hang Samuel Wakely's tune, as improved by thee!" said Henchard. "Chuck across one of your psaltersold

Wiltshire is the only tune worth singingthe psalmtune that would make my blood ebb and flow like the

sea when I was a steady chap. I'll find some words to fit en." He took one of the psalters and began turning

Chancing to look out of the window at that moment he saw a flock of people passing by, and perceived them

to be the congregation of the upper church, now just dismissed, their sermon having been a longer one than

that the lower parish was favoured with. Among the rest of the leading inhabitants walked Mr. Councillor

Farfrae with Lucetta upon his arm, the observed and imitated of all the smaller tradesmen's womankind.

"Now then," he said, "Psalm the HundredandNinth, to the tune of Wiltshire: verses ten to fifteen. I gi'e ye

"His seed shall orphans be, his wife A widow plunged in grief; His vagrant children beg their bread Where

His illgot riches shall be made To usurers a prey; The fruit of all his toil shall be By strangers borne away.

None shall be found that to his wants Their mercy will extend, Or to his helpless orphan seed The least

A swift destruction soon shall seize On his unhappy race; And the next age his hated name Shall utterly

"I know the Psa'amI know the Psa'am!" said the leader hastily; "but I would as lief not sing it. 'Twasn't

made for singing. We chose it once when the gipsy stole the pa'son's mare, thinking to please him, but pa'son

were quite upset. Whatever Servant David were thinking about when he made a Psalm that nobody can sing

without disgracing himself, I can't fathom! Now then, the Fourth Psalm, to Samuel Wakely's tune, as

"'Od seize your sauceI tell ye to sing the Hundredand Ninth to Wiltshire, and sing it you shall!" roared

Henchard. "Not a single one of all the droning crew of ye goes out of this room till that Psalm is sung!" He

slipped off the table, seized the poker, and going to the door placed his back against it. "Now then, go ahead,

"Don't 'ee, don't'ee take on so!As 'tis the Sabbathday, and 'tis Servant David's words and not ours, perhaps

we don't mind for once, hey?" said one of the terrified choir, looking round upon the rest. So the instruments

"Thank ye, thank ye," said Henchard in a softened voice, his eyes growing downcast, and his manner that of a

man much moved by the strains. "Don't you blame David," he went on in low tones, shaking his head without

raising his eyes. "He knew what he was about when he wrote that!...If I could afford it, be hanged if I

wouldn't keep a church choir at my own expense to play and sing to me at these low, dark times of my life.

But the bitter thing is, that when I was rich I didn't need what I could have, and now I be poor I can't have

While they paused, Lucetta and Farfrae passed again, this time homeward, it being their custom to take, like

others, a short walk out on the highway and back, between church and teatime. "There's the man we've been

The players and singers turned their heads and saw his meaning. "Heaven forbid!" said the bassplayer.

"Then if I'd known," said the performer on the clarionet solemnly, "that 'twas meant for a living man, nothing

"Nor from mine," said the first singer. "But, thought I, as it was made so long ago perhaps there isn't much in

it, so I'll oblige a neighbour; for there's nothing to be said against the tune."

"Ah, my boys, you've sung it," said Henchard triumphantly. "As for him, it was partly by his songs that he

got over me, and heaved me out....I could double him up like thatand yet I don't." He laid the poker across

his knee, bent it as if it were a twig, flung it down, and came away from the door.

It was at this time that ElizabethJane, having heard where her stepfather was, entered the room with a pale

and agonized countenance. The choir and the rest of the company moved off, in accordance with their

halfpint regulation. ElizabethJane went up to Henchard, and entreated him to accompany her home.

By this hour the volcanic fires of his nature had burnt down, and having drunk no great quantity as yet he was

inclined to acquiesce. She took his arm, and together they went on. Henchard walked blankly, like a blind

At length he said to her, "I am a man to my word. I have kept my oath for twentyone years; and now I can

drink with a good conscience....If I don't do for himwell, I am a fearful practical joker when I choose! He

has taken away everything from me, and by heavens, if I meet him I won't answer for my deeds!"

These halfuttered words alarmed Elizabethall the more by reason of the still determination of Henchard's

"What will you do?" she asked cautiously, while trembling with disquietude, and guessing Henchard's

Henchard did not answer, and they went on till they had reached his cottage. "May I come in?" she said.

"No, no; not today," said Henchard; and she went away; feeling that to caution Farfrae was almost her duty,

As on the Sunday, so on the weekdays, Farfrae and Lucetta might have been seen flitting about the town

like two butterfliesor rather like a bee and a butterfly in league for life. She seemed to take no pleasure in

going anywhere except in her husband's company; and hence when business would not permit him to waste

an afternoon she remained indoors waiting for the time to pass till his return, her face being visible to

ElizabethJane from her window aloft. The latter, however, did not say to herself that Farfrae should be

thankful for such devotion, but, full of her reading, she cited Rosalind's exclamation: "Mistress, know

She kept her eye upon Henchard also. One day he answered her inquiry for his health by saying that he could

not endure Abel Whittle's pitying eyes upon him while they worked together in the yard. "He is such a fool,"

said Henchard, "that he can never get out of his mind the time when I was master there."

"I'll come and wimble for you instead of him, if you will allow me," said she. Her motive on going to the yard

was to get an opportunity of observing the general position of affairs on Farfrae's premises now that her

stepfather was a workman there. Henchard's threats had alarmed her so much that she wished to see his

For two or three days after her arrival Donald did not make any appearance. Then one afternoon the green

door opened, and through came, first Farfrae, and at his heels Lucetta. Donald brought his wife forward

without hesitation, it being obvious that he had no suspicion whatever of any antecedents in common

Henchard did not turn his eyes toward either of the pair, keeping them fixed on the bond he twisted, as if that

alone absorbed him. A feeling of delicacy, which ever prompted Farfrae to avoid anything that might seem

like triumphing over a fallen rivel, led him to keep away from the haybarn where Henchard and his daughter

were working, and to go on to the corn department. Meanwhile Lucetta, never having been informed that

Henchard had entered her husband's service, rambled straight on to the barn, where she came suddenly upon

Henchard, and gave vent to a little "Oh!" which the happy and busy Donald was too far off to hear. Henchard,

with withering humility of demeanour, touched the brim of his hat to her as Whittle and the rest had done, to

"O yes, good afternoon, ma'am," he replied, touching his hat again. "I am glad to see you, ma'am." Lucetta

looked embarrassed, and Henchard continued: "For we humble workmen here feel it a great honour that a

"Thank 'ee. An hour and a half longer before we are released from work. Ah, ma'am, we of the lower classes

As soon as she could do so Lucetta left him, nodded and smiled to ElizabethJane, and joined her husband at

the other end of the enclosure, where she could be seen leading him away by the outer gates, so as to avoid

passing Henchard again. That she had been taken by surprise was obvious. The result of this casual

rencounter was that the next morning a note was put into Henchard's hand by the postman.

"Will you," said Lucetta, with as much bitterness as she could put into a small communication, "will you

kindly undertake not to speak to me in the biting undertones you used today, if I walk through the yard at

any time? I bear you no illwill, and I am only too glad that you should have employment of my dear

husband; but in common fairness treat me as his wife, and do not try to make me wretched by covert sneers. I

"Poor fool!" said Henchard with fond savagery, holding out the note. "To know no better than commit herself

in writing like this! Why, if I were to show that to her dear husband pooh!" He threw the letter into the

Lucetta took care not to come again among the hay and corn. She would rather have died than run the risk of

encountering Henchard at such close quarters a second time. The gulf between them was growing wider

every day. Farfrae was always considerate to his fallen acquaintance; but it was impossible that he should not,

by degrees, cease to regard the excornmerchant as more than one of his other workmen. Henchard saw

this, and concealed his feelings under a cover of stolidity, fortifying his heart by drinking more freely at the

Often did ElizabethJane, in her endeavours to prevent his taking other liquor, carry tea to him in a little

basket at five o'clock. Arriving one day on this errand she found her stepfather was measuring up cloverseed

and rapeseed in the cornstores on the top floor, and she ascended to him. Each floor had a door opening

into the air under a cathead, from which a chain dangled for hoisting the sacks.

When Elizabeth's head rose through the trap she perceived that the upper door was open, and that her

stepfather and Farfrae stood just within it in conversation, Farfrae being nearest the dizzy edge, and Henchard

a little way behind. Not to interrupt them she remained on the steps without raising her head any higher.

While waiting thus she sawor fancied she saw, for she had a terror of feeling certain her stepfather

slowly raise his hand to a level behind Farfrae's shoulders, a curious expression taking possession of his face.

The young man was quite unconscious of the action, which was so indirect that, if Farfrae had observed it, he

might almost have regarded it as an idle outstretching of the arm. But it would have been possible, by a

comparatively light touch, to push Farfrae off his balance, and send him head over heels into the air.

Elizabeth felt quite sick at heart on thinking of what this MIGHT have meant. As soon as they turned she

mechanically took the tea to Henchard, left it, and went away. Reflecting, she endeavoured to assure herself

that the movement was an idle eccentricity, and no more. Yet, on the other hand, his subordinate position in

an establishment where he once had been master might be acting on him like an irritant poison; and she

Next morning, accordingly, she rose at five o'clock and went into the street. It was not yet light; a dense fog

prevailed, and the town was as silent as it was dark, except that from the rectangular avenues which framed in

the borough there came a chorus of tiny rappings, caused by the fall of waterdrops condensed on the

boughs; now it was wafted from the West Walk, now from the South Walk; and then from both quarters

simultaneously. She moved on to the bottom of corn Street, and, knowing his time well, waited only a few

minutes before she heard the familiar bang of his door, and then his quick walk towards her. She met him at

the point where the last tree of the engirding avenue flanked the last house in the street.

He could hardly discern her till, glancing inquiringly, he said, "WhatMiss Henchardand are ye up so

She asked him to pardon her for waylaying him at such an unseemly time. "But I am anxious to mention

"Yes?" said he, with the cheeriness of a superior. "And what may it be? It's very kind of ye, I'm sure."

She now felt the difficulty of conveying to his mind the exact aspect of possibilities in her own. But she

somehow began, and introduced Henchard's name. "I sometimes fear," she said with an effort, "that he may

"Or to play some practical joke upon you, sir. Remember that he has been hardly used."

"Or to do somethingthat would injure youhurt youwound you." Every word cost her twice its length

of pain. And she could see that Farfrae was still incredulous. Henchard, a poor man in his employ, was not to

Farfrae's view the Henchard who had ruled him. Yet he was not only the same man, but that man with his

Farfrae, happy, and thinking no evil, persisted in making light of her fears. Thus they parted, and she went

homeward, journeymen now being in the street, waggoners going to the harnessmakers for articles left to be

repaired, farmhorses going to the shoeingsmiths, and the sons of labour showing themselves generally on

the move. Elizabeth entered her lodging unhappily, thinking she had done no good, and only made herself

But Donald Farfrae was one of those men upon whom an incident is never absolutely lost. He revised

impressions from a subsequent point of view, and the impulsive judgment of the moment was not always his

permanent one. The vision of Elizabeth's earnest face in the rimy dawn came back to him several times

during the day. Knowing the solidity of her character he did not treat her hints altogether as idle sounds.

But he did not desist from a kindly scheme on Henchard's account that engaged him just then; and when he

met Lawyer Joyce, the townclerk, later in the day, he spoke of it as if nothing had occurred to damp it.

"About that little seedsman's shop," he said, "the shop overlooking the churchyard, which is to let. It is not for

myself I want it, but for our unlucky fellowtownsman Henchard. It would be a new beginning for him, if a

small one; and I have told the Council that I would head a private subscription among them to set him up in

itthat I would be fifty pounds, if they would make up the other fifty among them."

"Yes, yes; so I've heard; and there's nothing to say against it for that matter," the townclerk replied, in his

plain, frank way. "But, Farfrae, others see what you don't. Henchard hates 'eeay, hates 'ee; and 'tis right

that you should know it. To my knowledge he was at the Three Mariners last night, saying in public that

"Is that soah, is that so?" said Farfrae, looking down. "Why should he do it?" added the young man

"God only knows," said Joyce, lifting his eyebrows. "It shows much longsuffering in you to put up with

"But I cannet discharge a man who was once a good friend to me. How can I forget that when I came here

'twas he enabled me to make a footing for mysel'? No, no. As long as I've a day's work to offer he shall do it

if he chooses. 'Tis not I who will deny him such a little as that. But I'll drop the idea of establishing him in a

It grieved Farfrae much to give up this scheme. But a damp having been thrown over it by these and other

voices in the air, he went and countermanded his orders. The then occupier of the shop was in it when Farfrae

spoke to him and feeling it necessary to give some explanation of his withdrawal from the negotiation Donald

mentioned Henchard's name, and stated that the intentions of the Council had been changed.

The occupier was much disappointed, and straightway informed Henchard, as soon as he saw him, that a

scheme of the Council for setting him up in a shop had been knocked on the head by Farfrae. And thus out of

When Farfrae got indoors that evening the teakettle was singing on the high hob of the semieggshaped

grate. Lucetta, light as a sylph, ran forward and seized his hands, whereupon Farfrae duly kissed her.

"Oh!" she cried playfully, turning to the window. "Seethe blinds are not drawn down, and the people can

When the candles were lighted, the curtains drawn, and the twain sat at tea, she noticed that he looked

serious. Without directly inquiring why she let her eyes linger solicitously on his face.

"Nonot always!" he said, shaking his head gloomily as he contemplated a crumb on the table. "I know

many who have not been so! There was Sandy Macfarlane, who started to America to try his fortune, and he

was drowned; and Archibald Leith, he was murdered! And poor Willie Dunbleeze and Maitland

"Whyyou old gooseyI was only speaking in a general sense, of course! You are always so literal. Now

when we have finished tea, sing me that funny song about highheeled shoon and siller tags, and the

"No, no. I couldna sing tonight! It's Henchardhe hates me; so that I may not be his friend if I would. I

would understand why there should be a wee bit of envy; but I cannet see a reason for the whole intensity of

what he feels. Now, can you, Lucetta? It is more like oldfashioned rivalry in love than just a bit of rivalry in

"I give him employmentI cannet refuse it. But neither can I blind myself to the fact that with a man of

"What have you heardO Donald, dearest?" said Lucetta in alarm. The words on her lips were "anything

about me?"but she did not utter them. She could not, however, suppress her agitation, and her eyes filled

"No, noit is not so serious as ye fancy," declared Farfrae soothingly; though he did not know its

"I wish you would do what we have talked of," mournfully remarked Lucetta. "Give up business, and go

Farfrae seemed seriously disposed to discuss this move, and they talked thereon till a visitor was announced.

"You've heard, I suppose of poor Doctor Chalkfield's death? Yesdied this afternoon at five," said Mr. Vatt

Chalkfield was the Councilman who had succeeded to the Mayoralty in the preceding November.

Farfrae was sorry at the intelligence, and Mr. Vatt continued: "Well, we know he's been going some days,

and as his family is well provided for we must take it all as it is. Now I have called to ask 'ee thisquite

privately. If I should nominate 'ee to succeed him, and there should be no particular opposition, will 'ee

"But there are folk whose turn is before mine; and I'm over young, and may be thought pushing!" said Farfrae

"Not at all. I don't speak for myself only, several have named it. You won't refuse?"

"It was only a fancy," Farfrae murmured. "I wouldna refuse if it is the wish of a respectable majority in the

"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

"Michael," said she, "I must again ask you what I asked you months agoto return me any letters or papers

of mine that you may haveunless you have destroyed them? You must see how desirable it is that the time

"Why, bless the woman!I packed up every scrap of your handwriting to give you in the coachbut you

She explained how the death of her aunt had prevented her taking the journey on that day. "And what became

He could not sayhe would consider. When she was gone he recollected that he had left a heap of useless

papers in his former diningroom safebuilt up in the wall of his old housenow occupied by Farfrae. The

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 percussionnotes than

ever. Farfrae was Mayorthe twohundredth odd of a series forming an elective dynasty dating back to the

days of Charles Iand the fair Lucetta was the courted of the town....But, Ah! the worm i' the

He, in the meantime, festering with indignation at some erroneous intelligence of Farfrae's opposition to the

scheme for installing him in the little seedshop, was greeted with the news of the municipal election (which,

by reason of Farfrae's comparative youth and his Scottish nativitya thing unprecedented in the casehad

an interest far beyond the ordinary). The bellringing and the bandplaying, 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 cornyard 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

"I was going to ask you," said Henchard, "about a packet that I may possibly have left in my old safe in the

"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

"It was not of much consequenceto me," said Henchard. "But I'll call for it this evening, if you don't

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

Farfrae invited him into the diningroom, 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

"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

Henchard returned to the letters, sorting them over with interest, Farfrae being seated at the other end of the

diningtable. "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

"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

Farfrae, willing to humour Henchard, though quite uninterested, and bursting with yawns, gave

"'For me,'" Henchard read, "'there is practically no future. A creature too unconventionally devoted to

youwho 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 streetsuch 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 goesbut how far does it go? Thus I sit here, forsaken

"That's how she went on to me," said Henchard, "acres of words like that, when what had happened was what

"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

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

"Trrue, trrue," 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.

"Ahwell you may ask that!" said Henchard, the newmoon 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

Henchard seemed to think it would be sailing too near the wind to descend further into particulars, and he

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

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.

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

doorbell by Henchard she wondered who it should be that would call at that comparatively late hour. The

diningroom was almost under her bedroom; she could hear that somebody was admitted there, and

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 diningroom 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 handrail, 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

"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

"Well, yes," said Henchard. "By not giving her name I make it an example of all womankind, and not a

"If I were you I would destroy them," said Farfrae, giving more thought to the letters than he had hitherto

"No, I shall not destroy them," murmured Henchard, putting the letters away. Then he arose, and Lucetta

She went back to her bedroom in a semiparalyzed 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 sameunlikely 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 wellnigh 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,

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: "WellI'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 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

persuasionnot 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 workjust 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

To herself she said, on closing up her appeal: "If ever tears and pleadings have served the weak to fight the

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 selectedas much from want of spirit as designher 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

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

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 illused 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

halfsmile, and said in a kindly subdued tone, "Goodnight t'ye. Of course I in glad to come if you want me."

"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

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,

"Well, what do you want me to do?" he said gently. "I am sure I shall be very willing. My reading of those

"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

"Ah!" she said with eager tremulousness; "but not till I have proved myself a faithful and deserving wife to

Henchard silently looked at her: he almost envied Farfrae such love as that, even now. "H'mI hope so," he

said. "But you shall have the letters without fail. And your secret shall be kept. I swear it."

He reflected, and said he would send them the next morning. "Now don't doubt me," he added. "I can keep

Returning from her appointment Lucetta saw a man waiting by the lamp nearest to her own door. When she

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

"But you can testify to my trustworthiness better than anybody, ma'am," said Jopp. "I was in Jersey several

"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

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

"I wish," said Henchard, "you would do me a service, Jopp, nowtonight, 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

"Well, how have ye got on today?" 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

Jopp sat on till his eyes were attracted by the shadow of the candlesnuff on the wall, and looking at the

original he found that it had formed itself into a head like a redhot 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

His path was by the riverside 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 worlddo ye come along too,

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 farmsteads,

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 hidingplace of those who were in

distress, and in debt, and trouble of every kind. Farmlabourers 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

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 bowwindows; theft (in times of privation) in the thatched and

mudwalled 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

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

cornfields, 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 after darkand this was the business

time here you stealthily crossed the moor, approached the border of the aforesaid brook, and whistled

opposite the house to which you belonged. A shape thereupon made its appearance on the other side bearing

the bridge on end against the sky; it was lowered; you crossed, and a hand helped you to land yourself,

together with the pheasants and hares gathered from neighbouring manors. You sold them slily the next

morning, and the day after you stood before the magistrates with the eyes of all your sympathizing

neighbours concentrated on your back. You disappeared for a time; then you were again found quietly living

Walking along the lane at dusk the stranger was struck by two or three peculiar features therein. One was an

intermittent rumbling from the back premises of the inn halfway up; this meant a skittle alley. Another was

the extensive prevalence of whistling in the various domicilesa piped note of some kind coming from

nearly every open door. Another was the frequency of white aprons over dingy gowns among the women

around the doorways. A white apron is a suspicious vesture in situations where spotlessness is difficult;

moreover, the industry and cleanliness which the white apron expressed were belied by the postures and gaits

of the women who wore ittheir knuckles being mostly on their hips (an attitude which lent them the aspect

of twohandled mugs), and their shoulders against doorposts; while there was a curious alacrity in the turn

of each honest woman's head upon her neck and in the twirl of her honest eyes, at any noise resembling a

Yet amid so much that was bad needy respectability also found a home. Under some of the roofs abode pure

and virtuous souls whose presence there was due to the iron hand of necessity, and to that alone. Families

from decayed villagesfamilies of that once bulky, but now nearly extinct, section of village society called

"liviers," or lifeholderscopyholders and others, whose rooftrees had fallen for some reason or other,

compelling them to quit the rural spot that had been their home for generationscame here, unless they

It was centrally situate, as such places should be, and bore about the same social relation to the Three

Mariners as the latter bore to the King's Arms. At first sight the inn was so respectable as to be puzzling. The

front door was kept shut, and the step was so clean that evidently but few persons entered over its sanded

surface. But at the corner of the publichouse was an alley, a mere slit, dividing it from the next building.

Halfway up the alley was a narrow door, shiny and paintless from the rub of infinite hands and shoulders.

A pedestrian would be seen abstractedly passing along Mixen Lane; and then, in a moment, he would vanish,

causing the gazer to blink like Ashton at the disappearance of Ravenswood. That abstracted pedestrian had

edged into the slit by the adroit fillip of his person sideways; from the slit he edged into the tavern by a

The company at the Three Mariners were persons of quality in comparison with the company which gathered

here; though it must be admitted that the lowest fringe of the Mariner's party touched the crest of Peter's at

points. Waifs and strays of all sorts loitered about here. The landlady was a virtuous woman who years ago

had been unjustly sent to gaol as an accessory to something or other after the fact. She underwent her

twelvemonth, and had worn a martyr's countenance ever since, except at times of meeting the constable who

To this house Jopp and his acquaintances had arrived. The settles on which they sat down were thin and tall,

their tops being guyed by pieces of twine to hooks in the ceiling; for when the guests grew boisterous the

settles would rock and overturn without some such security. The thunder of bowls echoed from the backyard;

swingels hung behind the blower of the chimney; and expoachers and exgamekeepers, whom squires had

persecuted without a cause, sat elbowing each othermen who in past times had met in fights under the

moon, till lapse of sentences on the one part, and loss of favour and expulsion from service on the other,

brought them here together to a common level, where they sat calmly discussing old times.

"Dost mind how you could jerk a trout ashore with a bramble, and not ruffle the stream, Charl?" a deposed

"That I can. But the worst larry for me was that pheasant business at Yalbury Wood. Your wife swore false

"WhyJoe closed wi' me, and we rolled down together, close to his garden hedge. Hearing the noise, out ran

his wife with the oven pyle, and it being dark under the trees she couldn't see which was uppermost. 'Where

beest thee, Joe, under or top?' she screeched. 'Ounder, by Gad!' says he. She then began to rap down upon

my skull, back, and ribs with the pyle till we'd roll over again. 'Where beest now, dear Joe, under or top?'

she'd scream again. By George, 'twas through her I was took! And then when we got up in hall she sware that

the cock pheasant was one of her rearing, when 'twas not your bird at all, Joe; 'twas Squire Brown's

birdthat's whose 'twasone that we'd picked off as we passed his wood, an hour afore. It did hurt my

"I might have had 'ee days afore that," said the keeper. "I was within a few yards of 'ee dozens of times, with

"Yes'tis not our greatest doings that the world gets wind of," said the furmitywoman, who, lately settled

in this purlieu, sat among the rest. Having travelled a great deal in her time she spoke with cosmopolitan

largeness of idea. It was she who presently asked Jopp what was the parcel he kept so snugly under his arm.

"Ah, therein lies a grand secret," said Jopp. "It is the passion of love. To think that a woman should love one

"One that stands high in this town. I'd like to shame her! Upon my life, 'twould be as good as a play to read

her love letters, the proud piece of silk and waxwork! For 'tis her loveletters that I've got here."

"Love letters? then let's hear 'em, good soul," said Mother Cuxsom. "Lord, do ye mind, Richard, what fools

we used to be when we were younger? Getting a schoolboy to write ours for us; and giving him a penny, do

By this time Jopp had pushed his finger under the seals, and unfastened the letters, tumbling them over and

picking up one here and there at random, which he read aloud. These passages soon began to uncover the

secret which Lucetta had so earnestly hoped to keep buried, though the epistles, being allusive only, did not

"Mrs. Farfrae wrote that!" said Nance Mockridge. "'Tis a humbling thing for us, as respectable women, that

"So much the better for her," said the aged furmitywoman. "Ah, I saved her from a real bad marriage, and

"True," said Mrs. Cuxsom, reflecting. "'Tis as good a ground for a skimmityride as ever I knowed; and it

ought not to be wasted. The last one seen in Casterbridge must have been ten years ago, if a day."

At this moment there was a shrill whistle, and the landlady said to the man who had been called Charl, "'Tis

Without replying Charl and his comrade Joe rose, and receiving a lantern from her went out at the back door

and down the gardenpath, which ended abruptly at the edge of the stream already mentioned. Beyond the

stream was the open moor, from which a clammy breeze smote upon their faces as they advanced. Taking up

the board that had lain in readiness one of them lowered it across the water, and the instant its further end

touched the ground footsteps entered upon it, and there appeared from the shade a stalwart man with straps

round his knees, a doublebarrelled gun under his arm and some birds slung up behind him. They asked him

Receiving a reply in the affirmative he went on inwards, the others withdrawing the bridge and beginning to

retreat in his rear. Before, however, they had entered the house a cry of "Ahoy" from the moor led them to

The cry was repeated. They pushed the lantern into an outhouse, and went back to the brink of the stream.

"I don't carehere's for through it!" said the man in the moor. "I've had travelling enough for today."

"Stop a minute, then," said Charl, finding that the man was no enemy. "Joe, bring the plank and lantern;

here's somebody that's lost his way. You should have kept along the turnpike road, friend, and not have

"I shouldas I see now. But I saw a light here, and says I to myself, that's an outlying house, depend on't."

The plank was now lowered; and the stranger's form shaped itself from the darkness. He was a middleaged

man, with hair and whiskers prematurely grey, and a broad and genial face. He had crossed on the plank

without hesitation, and seemed to see nothing odd in the transit. He thanked them, and walked between them

"Ah, perhaps it will suit me to put up at. Now then, come in and wet your whistle at my expense for the lift

They followed him into the inn, where the increased light exhibited him as one who would stand higher in an

estimate by the eye than in one by the ear. He was dressed with a certain clumsy richnesshis coat being

furred, and his head covered by a cap of sealskin, which, though the nights were chilly, must have been

warm for the daytime, spring being somewhat advanced. In his hand he carried a small mahogany case,

Apparently surprised at the kind of company which confronted him through the kitchen door, he at once

abandoned his idea of putting up at the house; but taking the situation lightly, he called for glasses of the best,

paid for them as he stood in the passage, and turned to proceed on his way by the front door. This was barred,

and while the landlady was unfastening it the conversation about the skimmington was continued in the

"O, sir!" said the landlady, swinging her long earrings with deprecating modesty; "'tis a' old foolish thing they

do in these parts when a man's wife iswell, not too particularly his own. But as a respectable householder I

"Well, sir!" she simpered. And then, bursting into naturalness, and glancing from the corner of her eye, "'Tis

"Ah! I remember hearing of some such thing. Now I shall be in Casterbridge for two or three weeks to come,

and should not mind seeing the performance. Wait a moment." He turned back, entered the sittingroom, and

said, "Here, good folks; I should like to see the old custom you are talking of, and I don't mind being

something towards it take that." He threw a sovereign on the table and returned to the landlady at the door,

"There were more where that one came from," said Charl when the sovereign had been taken up and handed

to the landlady for safe keeping. "By George! we ought to have got a few more while we had him here."

"No, no," answered the landlady. "This is a respectable house, thank God! And I'll have nothing done but

"Well," said Jopp; "now we'll consider the business begun, and will soon get it in train."

"We will!" said Nance. "A good laugh warms my heart more than a cordial, and that's the truth on't."

Jopp gathered up the letters, and it being now somewhat late he did not attempt to call at Farfrae's with them

that night. He reached home, sealed them up as before, and delivered the parcel at its address next morning.

Within an hour its contents were reduced to ashes by Lucetta, who, poor soul! was inclined to fall down on

her knees in thankfulness that at last no evidence remained of the unlucky episode with Henchard in her past.

For though hers had been rather the laxity of inadvertence than of intention, that episode, if known, was not

Such was the state of things when the current affairs of Casterbridge were interrupted by an event of such

magnitude that its influence reached to the lowest social stratum there, stirring the depths of its society

simultaneously with the preparations for the skimmington. It was one of those excitements which, when they

move a country town, leave permanent mark upon its chronicles, as a warm summer permanently marks the

A Royal Personage was about to pass through the borough on his course further west, to inaugurate an

immense engineering work out that way. He had consented to halt halfanhour or so in the town, and to

receive an address from the corporation of Casterbridge, which, as a representative centre of husbandry,

wished thus to express its sense of the great services he had rendered to agricultural science and economics,

by his zealous promotion of designs for placing the art of farming on a more scientific footing.

Royalty had not been seen in Casterbridge since the days of the third King George, and then only by

candlelight for a few minutes, when that monarch, on a nightjourney, had stopped to change horses at the

King's Arms. The inhabitants therefore decided to make a thorough fete carillonee of the unwonted occasion.

Halfanhour's pause was not long, it is true; but much might be done in it by a judicious grouping of

The address was prepared on parchment by an artist who was handy at ornamental lettering, and was laid on

with the best goldleaf and colours that the signpainter had in his shop. The Council had met on the

Tuesday before the appointed day, to arrange the details of the procedure. While they were sitting, the door of

the Council Chamber standing open, they heard a heavy footstep coming up the stairs. It advanced along the

passage, and Henchard entered the room, in clothes of frayed and threadbare shabbiness, the very clothes

"I have a feeling," he said, advancing to the table and laying his hand upon the green cloth, "that I should like

to join ye in this reception of our illustrious visitor. I suppose I could walk with the rest?"

Embarrassed glances were exchanged by the Council and Grower nearly ate the end of his quillpen off, so

gnawed he it during the silence. Farfrae the young Mayor, who by virtue of his office sat in the large chair,

intuitively caught the sense of the meeting, and as spokesman was obliged to utter it, glad as he would have

"I hardly see that it would be proper, Mr. Henchard," said he. "The Council are the Council, and as ye are no

longer one of the body, there would be an irregularity in the proceeding. If ye were included, why not

Farfrae looked round. "I think I have expressed the feeling of the Council," he said.

"I am afraid so; it is out of the question, indeed. But of course you can see the doings full well, such as they

Henchard did not reply to that very obvious suggestion, and, turning on his heel, went away.

It had been only a passing fancy of his, but opposition crystallized it into a determination. "I'll welcome his

Royal Highness, or nobody shall!" he went about saying. "I am not going to be sat upon by Farfrae, or any of

The eventful morning was bright, a fullfaced sun confronting early windowgazers eastward, and all

perceived (for they were practised in weatherlore) that there was permanence in the glow. Visitors soon

began to flock in from county houses, villages, remote copses, and lonely uplands, the latter in oiled boots

and tilt bonnets, to see the reception, or if not to see it, at any rate to be near it. There was hardly a workman

in the town who did not put a clean shirt on. Solomon Longways, Christopher Coney, Buzzford, and the rest

of that fraternity, showed their sense of the occasion by advancing their customary eleven o'clock pint to

halfpast ten; from which they found a difficulty in getting back to the proper hour for several days.

Henchard had determined to do no work that day. He primed himself in the morning with a glass of rum, and

walking down the street met ElizabethJane, whom he had not seen for a week. "It was lucky," he said to her,

"my twentyone years had expired before this came on, or I should never have had the nerve to carry it out."

She could do nothing to elucidate this, and decked herself out with a heavy heart. As the appointed time drew

near she got sight again of her stepfather. She thought he was going to the Three Mariners; but no, he

elbowed his way through the gay throng to the shop of Woolfrey, the draper. She waited in the crowd

In a few minutes he emerged, wearing, to her surprise, a brilliant rosette, while more surprising still, in his

hand he carried a flag of somewhat homely construction, formed by tacking one of the small Union Jacks,

which abounded in the town today, to the end of a deal wandprobably the roller from a piece of calico.

Henchard rolled up his flag on the doorstep, put it under his arm, and went down the street.

Suddenly the taller members of the crowd turned their heads, and the shorter stood on tiptoe. It was said that

the Royal cortege approached. The railway had stretched out an arm towards Casterbridge at this time, but

had not reached it by several miles as yet; so that the intervening distance, as well as the remainder of the

journey, was to be traversed by road in the old fashion. People thus waited the county families in their

carriages, the masses on foot and watched the farstretching London highway to the ringing of bells and

From the background ElizabethJane watched the scene. Some seats had been arranged from which ladies

could witness the spectacle, and the front seat was occupied by Lucetta, the Mayor's wife, just at present. In

the road under her eyes stood Henchard. She appeared so bright and pretty that, as it seemed, he was

experiencing the momentary weakness of wishing for her notice. But he was far from attractive to a woman's

eye, ruled as that is so largely by the superficies of things. He was not only a journeyman, unable to appear as

he formerly had appeared, but he disdained to appear as well as he might. Everybody else, from the Mayor to

the washerwoman, shone in new vesture according to means; but Henchard had doggedly retained the fretted

Hence, alas, this occurred: Lucetta's eyes slid over him to this side and to that without anchoring on his

featuresas gaily dressed women's eyes will too often do on such occasions. Her manner signified quite

But she was never tired of watching Donald, as he stood in animated converse with his friends a few yards

off, wearing round his young neck the official gold chain with great square links, like that round the Royal

unicorn. Every trifling emotion that her husband showed as he talked had its reflex on her face and lips,

which moved in little duplicates to his. She was living his part rather than her own, and cared for no one's

At length a man stationed at the furthest turn of the high road, namely, on the second bridge of which

mention has been made, gave a signal, and the Corporation in their robes proceeded from the front of the

Town Hall to the archway erected at the entrance to the town. The carriages containing the Royal visitor and

his suite arrived at the spot in a cloud of dust, a procession was formed, and the whole came on to the Town

This spot was the centre of interest. There were a few clear yards in front of the Royal carriage, sanded; and

into this space a man stepped before any one could prevent him. It was Henchard. He had unrolled his private

flag, and removing his hat he staggered to the side of the slowing vehicle, waving the Union Jack to and fro

with his left hand while he blandly held out his right to the Illustrious Personage.

All the ladies said with bated breath, "O, look there!" and Lucetta was ready to faint. ElizabethJane peeped

through the shoulders of those in front, saw what it was, and was terrified; and then her interest in the

Farfrae, with Mayoral authority, immediately rose to the occasion. He seized Henchard by the shoulder,

dragged him back, and told him roughly to be off. Henchard's eyes met his, and Farfrae observed the fierce

light in them despite his excitement and irritation. For a moment Henchard stood his ground rigidly; then by

an unaccountable impulse gave way and retired. Farfrae glanced to the ladies' gallery, and saw that his

"Whyit is your husband's old patron!" said Mrs. Blowbody, a lady of the neighbourhood who sat beside

"Do you say the man is an acquaintance of Mr. Farfrae's?" observed Mrs. Bath, the physician's wife, a

"Ohis that all? They have been saying to me that it was through him your husband first got a footing in

"They will indeed. It was not so at all. Donald's genius would have enabled him to get a footing anywhere,

without anybody's help! He would have been just the same if there had been no Henchard in the world!"

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

"True. Yet how folk do worship fine clothes! Now there's a betterlooking woman than she that nobody

"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

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

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 Lane wards, where most of them lived,

"You know what's brewing down there, I suppose?" said Buzzford mysteriously to the others.

"I have my doubts if it will be carried out," said Longways. "If they are getting it up they are keeping it

"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 lighthearted 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

"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;

These wellintentioned ones would have been surprised had they known how ripe the great jocular plot really

was. "Yes, tonight," Jopp had said to the Peter's party at the corner of Mixen Lane. "As a windup to the

Royal visit the hit will be all the more pat by reason of their great elevation today."

The proceedings had been brieftoo briefto 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

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 halfstupefied state the conversation of Lucetta

with the other ladies reached his ears; and he distinctly heard her deny himdeny that he had assisted

He moved on homeward, and met Jopp in the archway to the Bull Stake. "So you've had a snub," said Jopp.

"Why, I've had one too, so we are both under the same cold shade." He briefly related his attempt to win

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 hehow 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 tussleface to

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 daythat he should be shaken at the collar by him as a vagabond in

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 halfholiday on

account of the events of the morningthough 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

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

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

ElizabethJane 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 timehe 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

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:

Nothing moved Henchard like an old melody. He sank back. "No; I can't do it!" he gasped. "Why does the

At length Farfrae was silent, and Henchard looked out of the loft door. "Will ye come up here?" he said.

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

"Now," said Henchard quietly, "we stand face to faceman 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."

"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

"As much as any one among ye! What, you forward stripling, tell a man of my age he'd no business there!"

"You insulted Royalty, Henchard; and 'twas my duty, as the chief magistrate, to stop you."

"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

"You may be the one to cool first," said Henchard grimly. "Now this is the case. Here be we, in this

foursquare 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 doorthe master stays inside. If he likes he may go down

afterwards and give the alarm that the other has fallen out by accidentor he may tell the truththat'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

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 Henchard's

At the outset Henchard's hold by his only free hand, the right, was on the left side of Farfrae's collar, which

he firmly grappled, the latter holding Henchard by his collar with the contrary hand. With his right he

endeavoured to get hold of his antagonist's left arm, which, however, he could not do, so adroitly did

Henchard keep it in the rear as he gazed upon the lowered eyes of his fair and slim antagonist.

Henchard planted the first toe forward, Farfrae crossing him with his; and thus far the struggle had very much

the appearance of the ordinary wrestling of those parts. Several minutes were passed by them in this attitude,

the pair rocking and writhing like trees in a gale, both preserving an absolute silence. By this time their

breathing could be heard. Then Farfrae tried to get hold of the other side of Henchard's collar, which was

resisted by the larger man exerting all his force in a wrenching movement, and this part of the struggle ended

by his forcing Farfrae down on his knees by sheer pressure of one of his muscular arms. Hampered as he was,

however, he could not keep him there, and Farfrae finding his feet again the struggle proceeded as before.

By a whirl Henchard brought Donald dangerously near the precipice; seeing his position the Scotchman for

the first time locked himself to his adversary, and all the efforts of that infuriated Prince of Darknessas he

might have been called from his appearance just nowwere inadequate to lift or loosen Farfrae for a time.

By an extraordinary effort he succeeded at last, though not until they had got far back again from the fatal

door. In doing so Henchard contrived to turn Farfrae a complete somersault. Had Henchard's other arm been

free it would have been all over with Farfrae then. But again he regained his feet, wrenching Henchard's arm

considerably, and causing him sharp pain, as could be seen from the twitching of his face. He instantly

delivered the younger man an annihilating turn by the left forehip, as it used to be expressed, and following

up his advantage thrust him towards the door, never loosening his hold till Farfrae's fair head was hanging

"Now," said Henchard between his gasps, "this is the end of what you began this morning. Your life is in my

Henchard looked down upon him in silence, and their eyes met. "O Farfrae!that's not true!" he said

bitterly. "God is my witness that no man ever loved another as I did thee at one time....And nowthough I

came here to kill 'ee, I cannot hurt thee! Go and give me in chargedo what you willI care nothing for

He withdrew to the back part of the loft, loosened his arm, and flung himself in a corner upon some sacks, in

the abandonment of remorse. Farfrae regarded him in silence; then went to the hatch and descended through

it. Henchard would fain have recalled him, but his tongue failed in its task, and the young man's steps died on

Henchard took his full measure of shame and selfreproach. The scenes of his first acquaintance with Farfrae

rushed back upon himthat time when the curious mixture of romance and thrift in the young man's

composition so commanded his heart that Farfrae could play upon him as on an instrument. So thoroughly

subdued was he that he remained on the sacks in a crouching attitude, unusual for a man, and for such a man.

Its womanliness sat tragically on the figure of so stern a piece of virility. He heard a conversation below, the

opening of the coachhouse door, and the putting in of a horse, but took no notice.

Here he stayed till the thin shades thickened to opaque obscurity, and the loftdoor became an oblong of gray

light the only visible shape around. At length he arose, shook the dust from his clothes wearily, felt his

"He thought highly of me once," he murmured. "Now he'll hate me and despise me for ever!"

He became possessed by an overpowering wish to see Farfrae again that night, and by some desperate

pleading to attempt the wellnigh impossible task of winning pardon for his late mad attack. But as he

walked towards Farfrae's door he recalled the unheeded doings in the yard while he had lain above in a sort of

stupor. Farfrae he remembered had gone to the stable and put the horse into the gig; while doing so Whittle

had brought him a letter; Farfrae had then said that he would not go towards Budmouth as he had

intendedthat he was unexpectedly summoned to Weatherbury, and meant to call at Mellstock on his way

He must have come prepared for a journey when he first arrived in the yard, unsuspecting enmity; and he

must have driven off (though in a changed direction) without saying a word to any one on what had occurred

There was no help for it but to wait till his return, though waiting was almost torture to his restless and

selfaccusing soul. He walked about the streets and outskirts of the town, lingering here and there till he

reached the stone bridge of which mention has been made, an accustomed haltingplace with him now. Here

he spent a long time, the purl of waters through the weirs meeting his ear, and the Casterbridge lights

While leaning thus upon the parapet his listless attention was awakened by sounds of an unaccustomed kind

from the town quarter. They were a confusion of rhythmical noises, to which the streets added yet more

confusion by encumbering them with echoes. His first incurious thought that the clangour arose from the

town band, engaged in an attempt to round off a memorable day in a burst of evening harmony, was

contradicted by certain peculiarities of reverberation. But inexplicability did not rouse him to more than a

cursory heed; his sense of degradation was too strong for the admission of foreign ideas; and he leant against

When Farfrae descended out of the loft breathless from his encounter with Henchard, he paused at the bottom

to recover himself. He arrived at the yard with the intention of putting the horse into the gig himself (all the

men having a holiday), and driving to a village on the Budmouth Road. Despite the fearful struggle he

decided still to persevere in his journey, so as to recover himself before going indoors and meeting the eyes

When he was just on the point of driving off Whittle arrived with a note badly addressed, and bearing the

word "immediate" upon the outside. On opening it he was surprised to see that it was unsigned. It contained a

brief request that he would go to Weatherbury that evening about some business which he was conducting

there. Farfrae knew nothing that could make it pressing; but as he was bent upon going out he yielded to the

anonymous request, particularly as he had a call to make at Mellstock which could be included in the same

tour. Thereupon he told Whittle of his change of direction, in words which Henchard had overheard, and set

out on his way. Farfrae had not directed his man to take the message indoors, and Whittle had not been

Now the anonymous letter was a wellintentioned but clumsy contrivance of Longways and other of Farfrae's

men to get him out of the way for the evening, in order that the satirical mummery should fall flat, if it were

attempted. By giving open information they would have brought down upon their heads the vengeance of

those among their comrades who enjoyed these boisterous old games; and therefore the plan of sending a

For poor Lucetta they took no protective measure, believing with the majority there was some truth in the

It was about eight o'clock, and Lucetta was sitting in the drawingroom alone. Night had set in for more than

half an hour, but she had not had the candles lighted, for when Farfrae was away she preferred waiting for

him by the firelight, and, if it were not too cold, keeping one of the windowsashes a little way open that the

sound of his wheels might reach her ears early. She was leaning back in the chair, in a more hopeful mood

than she had enjoyed since her marriage. The day had been such a success, and the temporary uneasiness

which Henchard's show of effrontery had wrought in her disappeared with the quiet disappearance of

Henchard himself under her husband's reproof. The floating evidences of her absurd passion for him, and its

consequences, had been destroyed, and she really seemed to have no cause for fear.

The reverie in which these and other subjects mingled was disturbed by a hubbub in the distance, that

increased moment by moment. It did not greatly surprise her, the afternoon having been given up to

recreation by a majority of the populace since the passage of the Royal equipages. But her attention was at

once riveted to the matter by the voice of a maidservant next door, who spoke from an upper window across

"I can't be sure for a moment," said the second, "because of the malter's chimbley. O yesI can see 'em.

"Yes. Two images on a donkey, back to back, their elbows tied to one another's! She's facing the head, and

"Wellit mid be. The man has got on a blue coat and kerseymere leggings; he has black whiskers, and a

"They have gone into a back streetthat's all," said the one who occupied the enviable position in the attic.

"What's the woman like? Just say, and I can tell in a moment if 'tis meant for one I've in mind."

"Mywhy'tis dressed just as SHE dressed when she sat in the front seat at the time the playactors came

Lucetta started to her feet, and almost at the instant the door of the room was quickly and softly opened.

"I have come to see you," she said breathlessly. "I did not stop to knockforgive me! I see you have not shut

Without waiting for Lucetta's reply she crossed quickly to the window and pulled out one of the shutters.

Lucetta glided to her side. "Let it behush!" she said perempority, in a dry voice, while she seized

ElizabethJane by the hand, and held up her finger. Their intercourse had been so low and hurried that not a

"Her neck is uncovered, and her hair in bands, and her back comb in place; she's got on a puce silk, and

Again ElizabethJane attempted to close the window, but Lucetta held her by main force.

"'Tis me!" she said, with a face pale as death. "A processiona scandalan effigy of me, and him!"

"Let us shut it out," coaxed ElizabethJane, noting that the rigid wildness of Lucetta's features was growing

yet more rigid and wild with the meaning of the noise and laughter. "Let us shut it out!"

"It is of no use!" she shrieked. "He will see it, won't he? Donald will see it! He is just coming homeand it

will break his hearthe will never love me any moreand O, it will kill mekill me!"

ElizabethJane was frantic now. "O, can't something be done to stop it?" she cried. "Is there nobody to do

She relinquished Lucetta's hands, and ran to the door. Lucetta herself, saying recklessly "I will see it!" turned

to the window, threw up the sash, and went out upon the balcony. Elizabeth immediately followed, and put

her arm round her to pull her in. Lucetta's eyes were straight upon the spectacle of the uncanny revel, now

dancing rapidly. The numerous lights round the two effigies threw them up into lurid distinctness; it was

"She's meshe's meeven to the parasolmy green parasol!" cried Lucetta with a wild laugh as she

Almost at the instant of her fall the rude music of the skimmington ceased. The roars of sarcastic laughter

went off in ripples, and the trampling died out like the rustle of a spent wind. Elizabeth was only indirectly

conscious of this; she had rung the bell, and was bending over Lucetta, who remained convulsed on the carpet

in the paroxysms of an epileptic seizure. She rang again and again, in vain; the probability being that the

servants had all run out of the house to see more of the Daemonic Sabbath than they could see within.

At last Farfrae's man, who had been agape on the door step, came up; then the cook. The shutters, hastily

pushed to by Elizabeth, were quite closed, a light was obtained, Lucetta carried to her room, and the man sent

off for a doctor. While Elizabeth was undressing her she recovered consciousness; but as soon as she

The doctor arrived with unhopedfor promptitude; he had been standing at his door, like others, wondering

what the uproar meant. As soon as he saw the unhappy sufferer he said, in answer to Elizabeth's mute appeal,

"Yes. But a fit in the present state of her health means mischief. You must send at once for Mr. Farfrae.

"He has driven into the country, sir," said the parlour maid; "to some place on the Budmouth Road. He's

"Never mind, he must be sent for, in case he should not hurry." The doctor returned to the bedside again. The

man was despatched, and they soon heard him clattering out of the yard at the back.

Meanwhile Mr. Benjamin Grower, that prominent burgess of whom mention has been already made, hearing

the din of cleavers, tongs, tambourines, kits, crouds, humstrums, serpents, rams'horns, and other historical

kinds of music as he sat indoors in the High Street, had put on his hat and gone out to learn the cause. He

came to the corner above Farfrae's, and soon guessed the nature of the proceedings; for being a native of the

town he had witnessed such rough jests before. His first move was to search hither and thither for the

constables, there were two in the town, shrivelled men whom he ultimately found in hiding up an alley yet

more shrivelled than usual, having some not ungrounded fears that they might be roughly handled if seen.

"What can we two poor lammigers do against such a multitude!" expostulated Stubberd, in answer to Mr.

Grower's chiding. "'Tis tempting 'em to commit felodese upon us, and that would be the death of the

perpetrator; and we wouldn't be the cause of a fellowcreature's death on no account, not we!"

"Get some help, then! Here, I'll come with you. We'll see what a few words of authority can do. Quick now;

"We didn't want the folk to notice us as law officers, being so shorthanded, sir; so we pushed our

"Out with 'em, and come along, for Heaven's sake! Ah, here's Mr. Blowbody; that's lucky." (Blowbody was

"No. Now," said Grower to one of the constables, "you go with Mr. Blowbody round by the Old Walk and

come up the street; and I'll go with Stubberd straight forward. By this plan we shall have 'em between us. Get

Thus they started. But as Stubberd with Mr. Grower advanced into Corn Street, whence the sounds had

proceeded, they were surprised that no procession could be seen. They passed Farfrae's, and looked to the end

of the street. The lamp flames waved, the Walk trees soughed, a few loungers stood about with their hands in

"Have you seen a motley crowd making a disturbance?" Grower said magisterially to one of these in a fustian

"Beg yer pardon, sir?" blandly said the person addressed, who was no other than Charl, of Peter's finger. Mr.

Charl shook his head to the zero of childlike ignorance. "No; we haven't seen anything; have we, Joe? And

"H'mthat's odd," said Mr. Grower. "Ahhere's a respectable man coming that I know by sight. Have

you," he inquired, addressing the nearing shape of Jopp, "have you seen any gang of fellows making a devil

"O nonothing, sir," Jopp replied, as if receiving the most singular news. "But I've not been far tonight, so

"Now I've noticed, come to think o't that the wind in the Walk trees makes a peculiar poeticallike murmur

tonight, sir; more than common; so perhaps 'twas that?" Jopp suggested, as he rearranged his hand in his

greatcoat pocket (where it ingeniously supported a pair of kitchen tongs and a cow's horn, thrust up under his

"No, no, nod'ye think I'm a fool? Constable, come this way. They must have gone into the back street."

Neither in back street nor in front street, however, could the disturbers be perceived, and Blowbody and the

second constable, who came up at this time, brought similar intelligence. Effigies, donkey, lanterns, band, all

"Now," said Mr. Grower, "there's only one thing more we can do. Get ye halfadozen helpers, and go in a

body to Mixen Lane, and into Peter's finger. I'm much mistaken if you don't find a clue to the perpetrators

The rustyjointed executors of the law mustered assistance as soon as they could, and the whole party

marched off to the lane of notoriety. It was no rapid matter to get there at night, not a lamp or glimmer of any

sort offering itself to light the way, except an occasional pale radiance through some windowcurtain, or

through the chink of some door which could not be closed because of the smoky chimney within. At last they

entered the inn boldly, by the till then bolted frontdoor, after a prolonged knocking of loudness

In the settles of the large room, guyed to the ceiling by cords as usual for stability, an ordinary group sat

drinking and smoking with statuesque quiet of demeanour. The landlady looked mildly at the invaders,

saying in honest accents, "Good evening, gentlemen; there's plenty of room. I hope there's nothing amiss?"

They looked round the room. "Surely," said Stubberd to one of the men, "I saw you by now in Corn

The man, who was Charl, shook his head absently. "I've been here this last hour, hain't I, Nance?" he said to

"Faith, that you have. I came in for my quiet supper time halfpint, and you were here then, as well as all

The other constable was facing the clockcase, where he saw reflected in the glass a quick motion by the

"Something curious about that oven, ma'am!" he observed advancing, opening it, and drawing out a

"Ah," she said apologetically, "that's what we keep here to use when there's a little quiet dancing. You see

The constable nodded knowingly, but what he knew was nothing. Nohow could anything be elicited from this

mute and inoffensive assembly. In a few minutes the investigators went out, and joining those of their

Long before this time Henchard, weary of his ruminations on the bridge, had repaired towards the town.

When he stood at the bottom of the street a procession burst upon his view, in the act of turning out of an

alley just above him. The lanterns, horns, and multitude startled him; he saw the mounted images, and knew

They crossed the way, entered another street, and disappeared. He turned back a few steps and was lost in

grave reflection, finally wending his way homeward by the obscure riverside path. Unable to rest there he

went to his stepdaughter's lodging, and was told that Elizabeth Jane had gone to Mr. Farfrae's. Like one

acting in obedience to a charm, and with a nameless apprehension, he followed in the same direction in the

hope of meeting her, the roysterers having vanished. Disappointed in this he gave the gentlest of pulls to the

doorbell, and then learnt particulars of what had occurred, together with the doctor's imperative orders that

Farfrae should be brought home, and how they had set out to meet him on the Budmouth Road.

"But he has gone to Mellstock and Weatherbury!" exclaimed Henchard, now unspeakably grieved. "Not

But, alas! for Henchard; he had lost his good name. They would not believe him, taking his words but as the

frothy utterances of recklessness. Though Lucetta's life seemed at that moment to depend upon her husband's

return (she being in great mental agony lest he should never know the unexaggerated truth of her past

relations with Henchard), no messenger was despatched towards Weatherbury. Henchard, in a state of bitter

To this end he hastened down the town, ran along the eastern road over Durnover Moor, up the hill beyond,

and thus onward in the moderate darkness of this spring night till he had reached a second and almost a third

hill about three miles distant. In Yalbury Bottom, or Plain, at the foot of the hill, he listened. At first nothing,

beyond his own heart throbs, was to be heard but the slow wind making its moan among the masses of

spruce and larch of Yalbury Wood which clothed the heights on either hand; but presently there came the

sound of light wheels whetting their felloes against the newly stoned patches of road, accompanied by the

He knew it was Farfrae's gig descending the hill from an indescribable personality in its noise, the vehicle

having been his own till bought by the Scotchman at the sale of his effects. Henchard thereupon retraced his

steps along Yalbury Plain, the gig coming up with him as its driver slackened speed between two plantations.

It was a point in the highway near which the road to Mellstock branched off from the homeward direction. By

diverging to that village, as he had intended to do, Farfrae might probably delay his return by a couple of

hours. It soon appeared that his intention was to do so still, the light swerving towards Cuckoo Lane, the

byroad aforesaid. Farfrae's off giglamp flashed in Henchard's face. At the same time Farfrae discerned his

Farfrae allowed the horse to turn several steps into the branch lane before he pulled up. He then drew rein,

"Come back to Casterbridge at once!" Henchard said. "There's something wrong at your houserequiring

Farfrae was silent, and at his silence Henchard's soul sank within him. Why had he not, before this, thought

of what was only too obvious? He who, four hours earlier, had enticed Farfrae into a deadly wrestle stood

now in the darkness of late nighttime on a lonely road, inviting him to come a particular way, where an

assailant might have confederates, instead of going his purposed way, where there might be a better

opportunity of guarding himself from attack. Henchard could almost feel this view of things in course of

"I have to go to Mellstock," said Farfrae coldly, as he loosened his reins to move on.

"But," implored Henchard, "the matter is more serious than your business at Mellstock. It isyour wife! She

The very agitation and abruptness of Henchard increased Farfrae's suspicion that this was a ruse to decoy him

on to the next wood, where might be effectually compassed what, from policy or want of nerve, Henchard

"I know what you think," deprecated Henchard running after, almost bowed down with despair as he

perceived the image of unscrupulous villainy that he assumed in his former friend's eyes. "But I am not what

you think!" he cried hoarsely. "Believe me, Farfrae; I have come entirely on your own and your wife's

account. She is in danger. I know no more; and they want you to come. Your man has gone the other way in a

mistake. O Farfrae! don't mistrust meI am a wretched man; but my heart is true to you still!"

Farfrae, however, did distrust him utterly. He knew his wife was with child, but he had left her not long ago

in perfect health; and Henchard's treachery was more credible than his story. He had in his time heard bitter

ironies from Henchard's lips, and there might be ironies now. He quickened the horse's pace, and had soon

risen into the high country lying between there and Mellstock, Henchard's spasmodic run after him lending

The gig and its driver lessened against the sky in Henchard's eyes; his exertions for Farfrae's good had been

in vain. Over this repentant sinner, at least, there was to be no joy in heaven. He cursed himself like a less

scrupulous Job, as a vehement man will do when he loses selfrespect, the last mental prop under poverty. To

this he had come after a time of emotional darkness of which the adjoining woodland shade afforded

inadequate illustration. Presently he began to walk back again along the way by which he had arrived. Farfrae

should at all events have no reason for delay upon the road by seeing him there when he took his journey

Arriving at Casterbridge Henchard went again to Farfrae's house to make inquiries. As soon as the door

opened anxious faces confronted his from the staircase, hall, and landing; and they all said in grievous

disappointment, "Oit is not he!" The manservant, finding his mistake, had long since returned, and all

"Yes....I cannot tell 'ee!" Henchard replied as he sank down on a chair within the entrance. "He can't be home

"In great danger, father. Her anxiety to see her husband makes her fearfully restless. Poor womanI fear

Henchard regarded the sympathetic speaker for a few instants as if she struck him in a new light, then,

without further remark, went out of the door and onward to his lonely cottage. So much for man's rivalry, he

thought. Death was to have the oyster, and Farfrae and himself the shells. But about Elizabethlane; in the

midst of his gloom she seemed to him as a pinpoint of light. He had liked the look on her face as she

answered him from the stairs. There had been affection in it, and above all things what he desired now was

affection from anything that was good and pure. She was not his own, yet, for the first time, he had a faint

dream that he might get to like her as his own,if she would only continue to love him.

Jopp was just going to bed when Henchard got home. As the latter entered the door Jopp said, "This is rather

"Yes," said Henchard shortly, though little dreaming of Jopp s complicity in the night's harlequinade, and

raising his eyes just sufficiently to observe that Jopp's face was lined with anxiety.

"Somebody has called for you," continued Jopp, when Henchard was shutting himself into his own

"He seemed a wellbedoing manhad grey hair and a broadish face; but he gave no name, and no

The divergence to Mellstock delayed Farfrae's return very nearly the two hours of Henchard's estimate.

Among the other urgent reasons for his presence had been the need of his authority to send to Budmouth for a

second physician; and when at length Farfrae did come back he was in a state bordering on distraction at his

A messenger was despatched to Budmouth, late as it had grown; the night wore on, and the other doctor came

in the small hours. Lucetta had been much soothed by Donald's arrival; he seldom or never left her side; and

when, immediately after his entry, she had tried to lisp out to him the secret which so oppressed her, he

checked her feeble words, lest talking should be dangerous, assuring her there was plenty of time to tell him

Up to this time he knew nothing of the skimmingtonride. The dangerous illness and miscarriage of Mrs.

Farfrae was soon rumoured through the town, and an apprehensive guess having been given as to its cause by

the leaders in the exploit, compunction and fear threw a dead silence over all particulars of their orgie; while

those immediately around Lucetta would not venture to add to her husband's distress by alluding to the

What, and how much, Farfrae's wife ultimately explained to him of her past entanglement with Henchard,

when they were alone in the solitude of that sad night, cannot be told. That she informed him of the bare facts

of her peculiar intimacy with the cornmerchant became plain from Farfrae's own statements. But in respect

of her subsequent conduct her motive in coming to Casterbridge to unite herself with Henchardher

assumed justification in abandoning him when she discovered reasons for fearing him (though in truth her

inconsequent passion for another man at first sight had most to do with that abandonment)her method of

reconciling to her conscience a marriage with the second when she was in a measure committed to the first: to

Besides the watchman who called the hours and weather in Casterbridge that night there walked a figure up

and down corn Street hardly less frequently. It was Henchard's, whose retiring to rest had proved itself a

futility as soon as attempted; and he gave it up to go hither and thither, and make inquiries about the patient

every now and then. He called as much on Farfrae's account as on Lucetta's, and on ElizabethJane's even

more than on either's. Shorn one by one of all other interests, his life seemed centring on the personality of

the stepdaughter whose presence but recently he could not endure. To see her on each occasion of his inquiry

The last of his calls was made about four o'clock in the morning, in the steely light of dawn. Lucifer was

fading into day across Durnover Moor, the sparrows were just alighting into the street, and the hens had

begun to cackle from the outhouses. When within a few yards of Farfrae's he saw the door gently opened, and

a servant raise her hand to the knocker, to untie the piece of cloth which had muffled it. He went across, the

sparrows in his way scarcely flying up from the roadlitter, so little did they believe in human aggression at

She turned in some surprise at his presence, and did not answer for an instant or two. Recognizing him, she

said, "Because they may knock as loud as they will; she will never hear it any more."

Henchard went home. The morning having now fully broke he lit his fire, and sat abstractedly beside it. He

had not sat there long when a gentle footstep approached the house and entered the passage, a finger tapping

lightly at the door. Henchard's face brightened, for he knew the motions to be Elizabeth's. She came into his

"Have you heard?" she asked. "Mrs. Farfrae! She isdead! Yes, indeedabout an hour ago!"

"I know it," said Henchard. "I have but lately come in from there. It is so very good of 'ee, Elizabeth, to come

and tell me. You must be so tired out, too, with sitting up. Now do you bide here with me this morning. You

can go and rest in the other room; and I will call 'ee when breakfast is ready."

To please him, and herselffor his recent kindliness was winning a surprised gratitude from the lonely

girlshe did as he bade her, and lay down on a sort of couch which Henchard had rigged up out of a settle in

the adjoining room. She could hear him moving about in his preparations; but her mind ran most strongly on

Lucetta, whose death in such fulness of life and amid such cheerful hopes of maternity was appallingly

Meanwhile her stepfather in the outer room had set the breakfast in readiness; but finding that she dozed he

would not call her; he waited on, looking into the fire and keeping the kettle boiling with housewifely care,

as if it were an honour to have her in his house. In truth, a great change had come over him with regard to her,

and he was developing the dream of a future lit by her filial presence, as though that way alone could

He was disturbed by another knock at the door, and rose to open it, rather deprecating a call from anybody

just then. A stoutly built man stood on the doorstep, with an alien, unfamiliar air about his figure and

bearingan air which might have been called colonial by people of cosmopolitan experience. It was the man

"Good morning, good morning," said the stranger with profuse heartiness. "Is it Mr. Henchard I am talking

"Then I've caught 'ee at homethat's right. Morning's the time for business, says I. Can I have a few words

Henchard's face and eyes seemed to die. The other did not notice it. "I know the name well," Henchard said at

"I make no doubt of that. Well, the fact is, I've been looking for 'ee this fortnight past. I landed at Havenpool

and went through Casterbridge on my way to Falmouth, and when I got there, they told me you had some

years before been living at Casterbridge. Back came I again, and by long and by late I got here by coach, ten

minutes ago. 'He lives down by the mill,' says they. So here I am. Nowthat transaction between us some

twenty years agone'tis that I've called about. 'Twas a curious business. I was younger then than I am now,

"Curious business! 'Twas worse than curious. I cannot even allow that I'm the man you met then. I was not in

"We were young and thoughtless," said Newson. "However, I've come to mend matters rather than open

"She was a warmhearted, homespun woman. She was not what they call shrewd or sharp at allbetter she

"As you in all likelihood know, she was simpleminded enough to think that the sale was in a way binding.

She was as guiltless o' wrongdoing in that particular as a saint in the clouds."

"I know it, I know it. I found it out directly," said Henchard, still with averted eyes. "There lay the sting o't to

me. If she had seen it as what it was she would never have left me. Never! But how should she be expected to

"Well, it was not in my heart to undeceive her when the deed was done," said the sailor of former days. "I

thought, and there was not much vanity in thinking it, that she would be happier with me. She was fairly

happy, and I never would have undeceived her till the day of her death. Your child died; she had another, and

all went well. But a time came mind me, a time always does come. A time cameit was some while after

she and I and the child returned from America when somebody she had confided her history to, told her

my claim to her was a mockery, and made a jest of her belief in my right. After that she was never happy with

me. She pined and pined, and socked and sighed. She said she must leave me, and then came the question of

our child. Then a man advised me how to act, and I did it, for I thought it was best. I left her at Falmouth, and

went off to sea. When I got to the other side of the Atlantic there was a storm, and it was supposed that a lot

of us, including myself, had been washed overboard. I got ashore at Newfoundland, and then I asked myself

"'Since I'm here, here I'll bide,' I thought to myself; ''twill be most kindness to her, now she's taken against

me, to let her believe me lost, for,' I thought, 'while she supposes us both alive she'll be miserable; but if she

thinks me dead she'll go back to him, and the child will have a home.' I've never returned to this country till a

month ago, and I found that, as I supposed, she went to you, and my daughter with her. They told me in

The sailor started up, and took an enervated pace or two down the room. "Dead!" he said, in a low voice.

Henchard, without answering, shook his head as if that were rather a question for Newson himself than for

The sailor continued standing. Henchard never looked up from the floor. At last Newson said: "My journey

hither has been for nothing! I may as well go as I came! It has served me right. I'll trouble you no longer."

Henchard heard the retreating footsteps of Newson upon the sanded floor, the mechanical lifting of the latch,

the slow opening and closing of the door that was natural to a baulked or dejected man; but he did not turn his

Then Henchard, scarcely believing the evidence of his senses, rose from his seat amazed at what he had done.

It had been the impulse of a moment. The regard he had lately acquired for Elizabeth, the newsprung hope

of his loneliness that she would be to him a daughter of whom he could feel as proud as of the actual daughter

she still believed herself to be, had been stimulated by the unexpected coming of Newson to a greedy

exclusiveness in relation to her; so that the sudden prospect of her loss had caused him to speak mad lies like

a child, in pure mockery of consequences. He had expected questions to close in round him, and unmask his

fabrication in five minutes; yet such questioning had not come. But surely they would come; Newson's

departure could be but momentary; he would learn all by inquiries in the town; and return to curse him, and

He hastily put on his hat, and went out in the direction that Newson had taken. Newson's back was soon

visible up the road, crossing Bullstake. Henchard followed, and saw his visitor stop at the King's Arms,

where the morning coach which had brought him waited halfanhour for another coach which crossed there.

The coach Newson had come by was now about to move again. Newson mounted, his luggage was put in,

He had not so much as turned his head. It was an act of simple faith in Henchard's wordsfaith so simple as

to be almost sublime. The young sailor who had taken Susan Henchard on the spur of the moment and on the

faith of a glance at her face, more than twenty years before, was still living and acting under the form of the

grizzled traveller who had taken Henchard's words on trust so absolute as to shame him as he stood.

Was ElizabethJane to remain his by virtue of this hardy invention of a moment? "Perhaps not for long," said

he. Newson might converse with his fellowtravellers, some of whom might be Casterbridge people; and the

This probability threw Henchard into a defensive attitude, and instead of considering how best to right the

wrong, and acquaint Elizabeth's father with the truth at once, he bethought himself of ways to keep the

position he had accidentally won. Towards the young woman herself his affection grew more jealously strong

He watched the distant highway expecting to see Newson return on foot, enlightened and indignant, to claim

his child. But no figure appeared. Possibly he had spoken to nobody on the coach, but buried his grief in his

His grief!what was it, after all, to that which he, Henchard, would feel at the loss of her? Newson's

affection cooled by years, could not equal his who had been constantly in her presence. And thus his jealous

He returned to the house half expecting that she would have vanished. No; there she wasjust coming out

from the inner room, the marks of sleep upon her eyelids, and exhibiting a generally refreshed air.

"O father!" she said smiling. "I had no sooner lain down than I napped, though I did not mean to. I wonder I

did not dream about poor Mrs. Farfrae, after thinking of her so; but I did not. How strange it is that we do not

"I am glad you have been able to sleep," he said, taking her hand with anxious proprietorshipan act which

They sat down to breakfast, and ElizabethJane's thoughts reverted to Lucetta. Their sadness added charm to

"Father," she said, as soon as she recalled herself to the outspread meal, "it is so kind of you to get this nice

"I do it every day," he replied. "You have left me; everybody has left me; how should I live but by my own

"Ay, childto a degree that you know nothing of! It is my own fault. You are the only one who has been

Henchard signified dubiousness. Though he had so lately hoped that ElizabethJane might again live in his

house as daughter, he would not ask her to do so now. Newson might return at any moment, and what

Elizabeth would think of him for his deception it were best to bear apart from her.

When they had breakfasted his stepdaughter still lingered, till the moment arrived at which Henchard was

accustomed to go to his daily work. Then she arose, and with assurance of coming again soon went up the hill

"At this moment her heart is as warm towards me as mine is towards her, she would live with me here in this

humble cottage for the asking! Yet before the evening probably he will have come, and then she will scorn

This reflection, constantly repeated by Henchard to himself, accompanied him everywhere through the day.

His mood was no longer that of the rebellious, ironical, reckless misadventurer; but the leaden gloom of one

who has lost all that can make life interesting, or even tolerable. There would remain nobody for him to be

proud of, nobody to fortify him; for ElizabethJane would soon be but as a stranger, and worse. Susan,

Farfrae, Lucetta, Elizabeth all had gone from him, one after one, either by his fault or by his misfortune.

In place of them he had no interest, hobby, or desire. If he could have summoned music to his aid his

existence might even now have been borne; for with Henchard music was of regal power. The merest trumpet

or organ tone was enough to move him, and high harmonies transubstantiated him. But hard fate had ordained

The whole land ahead of him was as darkness itself; there was nothing to come, nothing to wait for. Yet in

the natural course of life he might possibly have to linger on earth another thirty or forty yearsscoffed at; at

To the east of Casterbridge lay moors and meadows through which much water flowed. The wanderer in this

direction who should stand still for a few moments on a quiet night, might hear singular symphonies from

these waters, as from a lampless orchestra, all playing in their sundry tones from near and far parts of the

moor. At a hole in a rotten weir they executed a recitative; where a tributary brook fell over a stone

breastwork they trilled cheerily; under an arch they performed a metallic cymballing, and at Durnover Hole

they hissed. The spot at which their instrumentation rose loudest was a place called Ten Hatches, whence

The river here was deep and strong at all times, and the hatches on this account were raised and lowered by

cogs and a winch. A patch led from the second bridge over the highway (so often mentioned) to these

Hatches, crossing the stream at their head by a narrow plankbridge. But after nightfall human beings were

seldom found going that way, the path leading only to a deep reach of the stream called Blackwater, and the

Henchard, however, leaving the town by the east road, proceeded to the second, or stone bridge, and thence

struck into this path of solitude, following its course beside the stream till the dark shapes of the Ten Hatches

cut the sheen thrown upon the river by the weak lustre that still lingered in the west. In a second or two he

stood beside the weir hole where the water was at its deepest. He looked backwards and forwards, and no

creature appeared in view. He then took off his coat and hat, and stood on the brink of the stream with his

While his eyes were bent on the water beneath there slowly became visible a something floating in the

circular pool formed by the wash of centuries; the pool he was intending to make his deathbed. At first it

was indistinct by reason of the shadow from the bank; but it emerged thence and took shape, which was that

In the circular current imparted by the central flow the form was brought forward, till it passed under his

eyes; and then he perceived with a sense of horror that it was HIMSELF. Not a man somewhat resembling

him, but one in all respects his counterpart, his actual double, was floating as if dead in Ten Hatches Hole.

The sense of the supernatural was strong in this unhappy man, and he turned away as one might have done in

the actual presence of an appalling miracle. He covered his eyes and bowed his head. Without looking again

Presently he found himself by the door of his own dwelling. To his surprise ElizabethJane was standing

there. She came forward, spoke, called him "father" just as before. Newson, then, had not even yet returned.

"I thought you seemed very sad this morning," she said, "so I have come again to see you. Not that I am

anything but sad myself. But everybody and everything seem against you so, and I know you must be

He said to her, "Are miracles still worked, do ye think, Elizabeth? I am not a read man. I don't know so much

as I could wish. I have tried to peruse and learn all my life; but the more I try to know the more ignorant I

"No interference in the case of desperate intentions, for instance? Well, perhaps not, in a direct way. Perhaps

She agreed willingly, and he took her over the highway, and by the lonely path to Ten Hatches. He walked

restlessly, as if some haunting shade, unseen of her, hovered round him and troubled his glance. She would

gladly have talked of Lucetta, but feared to disturb him. When they got near the weir he stood still, and asked

She proceeded to the river brink a second time. On her return, after some delay, she told him that she saw

something floating round and round there; but what it was she could not discern. It seemed to be a bundle of

She went back, and he could see her stoop till her head was close to the margin of the pool. She started up,

"The effigy," she answered hastily. "They must have thrown it into the river higher up amongst the willows at

Blackwater, to get rid of it in their alarm at discovery by the magistrates, and it must have floated down

"Ahto be surethe image o' me! But where is the other? Why that one only?...That performance of theirs

ElizabethJane thought and thought of these words "kept me alive," as they slowly retraced their way to the

town, and at length guessed their meaning. "Father!I will not leave you alone like this!" she cried. "May I

live with you, and tend upon you as I used to do? I do not mind your being poor. I would have agreed to

"May you come to me?" he cried bitterly. "Elizabeth, don't mock me! If you only would come!"

Thus she assured him, and arranged their plans for reunion; and at length each went home. Then Henchard

shaved for the first time during many days, and put on clean linen, and combed his hair; and was as a man

The next morning the fact turned out to be as ElizabethJane had stated; the effigy was discovered by a

cowherd, and that of Lucetta a little higher up in the same stream. But as little as possible was said of the

Despite this natural solution of the mystery Henchard no less regarded it as an intervention that the figure

should have been floating there. ElizabethJane heard him say, "Who is such a reprobate as I! And yet it

But the emotional conviction that he was in Somebody's hand began to die out of Henchard's breast as time

slowly removed into distance the event which had given that feeling birth. The apparition of Newson haunted

Yet Newson did not arrive. Lucetta had been borne along the churchyard path; Casterbridge had for the last

time turned its regard upon her, before proceeding to its work as if she had never lived. But Elizabeth

remained undisturbed in the belief of her relationship to Henchard, and now shared his home. Perhaps, after

In due time the bereaved Farfrae had learnt the, at least, proximate cause of Lucetta's illness and death, and

his first impulse was naturally enough to wreak vengeance in the name of the law upon the perpetrators of the

mischief. He resolved to wait till the funeral was over ere he moved in the matter. The time having come he

reflected. Disastrous as the result had been, it was obviously in no way foreseen or intended by the

thoughtless crew who arranged the motley procession. The tempting prospect of putting to the blush people

who stand at the head of affairsthat supreme and piquant enjoyment of those who writhe under the heel of

the samehad alone animated them, so far as he could see; for he knew nothing of Jopp's incitements. Other

considerations were also involved. Lucetta had confessed everything to him before her death, and it was not

altogether desirable to make much ado about her history, alike for her sake, for Henchard's, and for his own.

To regard the event as an untoward accident seemed, to Farfrae, truest consideration for the dead one's

Henchard and himself mutually forbore to meet. For Elizabeth's sake the former had fettered his pride

sufficiently to accept the small seed and root business which some of the Town Council, headed by Farfrae,

had purchased to afford him a new opening. Had he been only personally concerned Henchard, without

doubt, would have declined assistance even remotely brought about by the man whom he had so fiercely

assailed. But the sympathy of the girl seemed necessary to his very existence; and on her account pride itself

Here they settled themselves; and on each day of their lives Henchard anticipated her every wish with a

watchfulness in which paternal regard was heightened by a burning jealous dread of rivalry. Yet that Newson

would ever now return to Casterbridge to claim her as a daughter there was little reason to suppose. He was a

wanderer and a stranger, almost an alien; he had not seen his daughter for several years; his affection for her

could not in the nature of things be keen; other interests would probably soon obscure his recollections of her,

and prevent any such renewal of inquiry into the past as would lead to a discovery that she was still a creature

of the present. To satisfy his conscience somewhat Henchard repeated to himself that the lie which had

retained for him the coveted treasure had not been deliberately told to that end, but had come from him as the

last defiant word of a despair which took no thought of consequences. Furthermore he pleaded within himself

that no Newson could love her as he loved her, or would tend her to his life's extremity as he was prepared to

Thus they lived on in the shop overlooking the churchyard, and nothing occurred to mark their days during

the remainder of the year. Going out but seldom, and never on a market day, they saw Donald Farfrae only

at rarest intervals, and then mostly as a transitory object in the distance of the street. Yet he was pursuing his

ordinary avocations, smiling mechanically to fellowtradesmen, and arguing with bargainersas bereaved

Time, "in his own grey style," taught Farfrae how to estimate his experience of Lucettaall that it was, and

all that it was not. There are men whose hearts insist upon a dogged fidelity to some image or cause thrown

by chance into their keeping, long after their judgment has pronounced it no rarityeven the reverse, indeed,

and without them the band of the worthy is incomplete. But Farfrae was not of those. It was inevitable that

the insight, briskness, and rapidity of his nature should take him out of the dead blank which his loss threw

about him. He could not but perceive that by the death of Lucetta he had exchanged a looming misery for a

simple sorrow. After that revelation of her history, which must have come sooner or later in any

circumstances, it was hard to believe that life with her would have been productive of further happiness.

But as a memory, nothwithstanding such conditions, Lucetta's image still lived on with him, her weaknesses

provoking only the gentlest criticism, and her sufferings attenuating wrath at her concealments to a

By the end of a year Henchard's little retail seed and grain shop, not much larger than a cupboard, had

developed its trade considerably, and the stepfather and daughter enjoyed much serenity in the pleasant,

sunny corner in which it stood. The quiet bearing of one who brimmed with an inner activity characterized

ElizabethJane at this period. She took long walks into the country two or three times a week, mostly in the

direction of Budmouth. Sometimes it occurred to him that when she sat with him in the evening after those

invigorating walks she was civil rather than affectionate; and he was troubled; one more bitter regret being

added to those he had already experienced at having, by his severe censorship, frozen up her precious

She had her own way in everything now. In going and coming, in buying and selling, her word was law.

He looked at it again as it lay on an adjoining table. The fur was of a glossy brown, and, though he was no

judge of such articles, he thought it seemed an unusually good one for her to possess.

Some little time after, when the year had advanced into another spring, he paused opposite her empty

bedroom in passing it. He thought of the time when she had cleared out of his then large and handsome house

in corn Street, in consequence of his dislike and harshness, and he had looked into her chamber in just the

same way. The present room was much humbler, but what struck him about it was the abundance of books

lying everywhere. Their number and quality made the meagre furniture that supported them seem absurdly

disproportionate. Some, indeed many, must have been recently purchased; and though he encouraged her to

buy in reason, he had no notion that she indulged her innate passion so extensively in proportion to the

narrowness of their income. For the first time he felt a little hurt by what he thought her extravagance, and

resolved to say a word to her about it. But, before he had found the courage to speak an event happened

The busy time of the seed trade was over, and the quiet weeks that preceded the hayseason had

comesetting their special stamp upon Casterbridge by thronging the market with wood rakes, new

waggons in yellow, green, and red, formidable scythes, and pitchforks of prong sufficient to skewer up a

small family. Henchard, contrary to his wont, went out one Saturday afternoon towards the marketplace

from a curious feeling that he would like to pass a few minutes on the spot of his former triumphs. Farfrae, to

whom he was still a comparative stranger, stood a few steps below the Corn Exchange doora usual

position with him at this hourand he appeared lost in thought about something he was looking at a little

Henchard's eyes followed Farfrae's, and he saw that the object of his gaze was no sampleshowing farmer,

but his own stepdaughter, who had just come out of a shop over the way. She, on her part, was quite

unconscious of his attention, and in this was less fortunate than those young women whose very plumes, like

those of Juno's bird, are set with Argus eyes whenever possible admirers are within ken.

Henchard went away, thinking that perhaps there was nothing significant after all in Farfrae's look at

ElizabethJane at that juncture. Yet he could not forget that the Scotchman had once shown a tender interest

in her, of a fleeting kind. Thereupon promptly came to the surface that idiosyncrasy of Henchard's which had

ruled his courses from the beginning and had mainly made him what he was. Instead of thinking that a union

between his cherished stepdaughter and the energetic thriving Donald was a thing to be desired for her good

Time had been when such instinctive opposition would have taken shape in action. But he was not now the

Henchard of former days. He schooled himself to accept her will, in this as in other matters, as absolute and

unquestionable. He dreaded lest an antagonistic word should lose for him such regard as he had regained

from her by his devotion, feeling that to retain this under separation was better than to incur her dislike by

But the mere thought of such separation fevered his spirit much, and in the evening he said, with the stillness

ElizabethJane started at the question; and it was with some confusion that she replied "No."

"Ohthat's rightthat's right....It was only that I saw him in the street when we both were there." He was

wondering if her embarrassment justified him in a new suspicionthat the long walks which she had latterly

been taking, that the new books which had so surprised him, had anything to do with the young man. She did

not enlighten him, and lest silence should allow her to shape thoughts unfavourable to their present friendly

Henchard was, by original make, the last man to act stealthily, for good or for evil. But the solicitus timor of

his lovethe dependence upon Elizabeth's regard into which he had declined (or, in another sense, to which

he had advanced)denaturalized him. He would often weigh and consider for hours together the meaning of

such and such a deed or phrase of hers, when a blunt settling question would formerly have been his first

instinct. And now, uneasy at the thought of a passion for Farfrae which should entirely displace her mild filial

There was nothing secret in ElizabethJane's movements beyond what habitual reserve induced, and it may at

once be owned on her account that she was guilty of occasional conversations with Donald when they

chanced to meet. Whatever the origin of her walks on the Budmouth Road, her return from those walks was

often coincident with Farfrae's emergence from corn Street for a twenty minutes' blow on that rather windy

highwayjust to winnow the seeds and chaff out of him before sitting down to tea, as he said. Henchard

became aware of this by going to the Ring, and, screened by its enclosure, keeping his eye upon the road till

"Of her, too, he means to rob me!" he whispered. "But he has the right. I do not wish to interfere."

The meeting, in truth, was of a very innocent kind, and matters were by no means so far advanced between

the young people as Henchard's jealous grief inferred. Could he have heard such conversation as passed he

HE."You like walking this way, Miss Henchardand is it not so?" (uttered in his undulatory accents, and

SHE (reddening)."I don't know that. My reason, however, such as it is, is that I wish to get a glimpse of the

HE (with the pathos of one of his native ballads)."Ah, I doubt there will be any good in secrets! A secret

Elizabeth admitted that she did, but she refrained from confessing why the sea attracted her. She could not

herself account for it fully, not knowing the secret possibly to be that, in addition to early marine

"Thank you for those new books, Mr. Farfrae," she added shyly. "I wonder if I ought to accept so many!"

"Ay! why not? It gives me more pleasure to get them for you, than you to have them!"

They proceeded along the road together till they reached the town, and their paths diverged.

Henchard vowed that he would leave them to their own devices, put nothing in the way of their courses,

whatever they might mean. If he were doomed to be bereft of her, so it must be. In the situation which their

marriage would create he could see no locus standi for himself at all. Farfrae would never recognize him

more than superciliously; his poverty ensured that, no less than his past conduct. And so Elizabeth would

grow to be a stranger to him, and the end of his life would be friendless solitude.

With such a possibility impending he could not help watchfulness. Indeed, within certain lines, he had the

right to keep an eye upon her as his charge. The meetings seemed to become matters of course with them on

At last full proof was given him. He was standing behind a wall close to the place at which Farfrae

encountered her. He heard the young man address her as "Dearest Elizabeth Jane," and then kiss her, the girl

When they were gone their way Henchard came out from the wall, and mournfully followed them to

Casterbridge. The chief looming trouble in this engagement had not decreased. Both Farfrae and

ElizabethJane, unlike the rest of the people, must suppose Elizabeth to be his actual daughter, from his own

assertion while he himself had the same belief; and though Farfrae must have so far forgiven him as to have

no objection to own him as a fatherinlaw, intimate they could never be. Thus would the girl, who was his

only friend, be withdrawn from him by degrees through her husband's influence, and learn to despise him.

Had she lost her heart to any other man in the world than the one he had rivalled, cursed, wrestled with for

life in days before his spirit was broken, Henchard would have said, "I am content." But content with the

There is an outer chamber of the brain in which thoughts unowned, unsolicited, and of noxious kind, are

sometimes allowed to wander for a moment prior to being sent off whence they came. One of these thoughts

Suppose he were to communicate to Farfrae the fact that his betrothed was not the child of Michael Henchard

at all legally, nobody's child; how would that correct and leading townsman receive the information? He

might possibly forsake ElizabethJane, and then she would be her stepsire's own again.

Henchard shuddered, and exclaimed, "God forbid such a thing! Why should I still be subject to these

What Henchard saw thus early was, naturally enough, seen at a little later date by other people. That Mr.

Farfrae "walked with that bankrupt Henchard's stepdaughter, of all women," became a common topic in the

town, the simple perambulating term being used hereabout to signify a wooing; and the nineteen superior

young ladies of Casterbridge, who had each looked upon herself as the only woman capable of making the

merchant Councilman happy, indignantly left off going to the church Farfrae attended, left off conscious

mannerisms, left off putting him in their prayers at night amongst their blood relations; in short, reverted to

Perhaps the only inhabitants of the town to whom this looming choice of the Scotchman's gave unmixed

satisfaction were the members of the philosophic party, which included Longways, Christopher Coney, Billy

Wills, Mr. Buzzford, and the like. The Three Mariners having been, years before, the house in which they had

witnessed the young man and woman's first and humble appearance on the Casterbridge stage, they took a

kindly interest in their career, not unconnected, perhaps, with visions of festive treatment at their hands

hereafter. Mrs. Stannidge, having rolled into the large parlour one evening and said that it was a wonder such

a man as Mr. Farfrae, "a pillow of the town," who might have chosen one of the daughters of the professional

men or private residents, should stoop so low, Coney ventured to disagree with her.

"No, ma'am, no wonder at all. 'Tis she that's a stooping to hethat's my opinion. A widow manwhose first

wife was no credit to himwhat is it for a young perusing woman that's her own mistress and well liked?

But as a neat patching up of things I see much good in it. When a man have put up a tomb of best

marblestone to the other one, as he've done, and weeped his fill, and thought it all over, and said to hisself,

'T'other took me in, I knowed this one first; she's a sensible piece for a partner, and there's no faithful woman

in high life now';well, he may do worse than not to take her, if she's tenderinclined."

Thus they talked at the Mariners. But we must guard against a too liberal use of the conventional declaration

that a great sensation was caused by the prospective event, that all the gossips' tongues were set wagging

thereby, and so on, even though such a declaration might lend some eclat to the career of our poor only

heroine. When all has been said about busy rumourers, a superficial and temporary thing is the interest of

anybody in affairs which do not directly touch them. It would be a truer representation to say that

Casterbridge (ever excepting the nineteen young ladies) looked up for a moment at the news, and

withdrawing its attention, went on labouring and victualling, bringing up its children, and burying its dead,

Not a hint of the matter was thrown out to her stepfather by Elizabeth herself or by Farfrae either. Reasoning

on the cause of their reticence he concluded that, estimating him by his past, the throbbing pair were afraid to

broach the subject, and looked upon him as an irksome obstacle whom they would be heartily glad to get out

of the way. Embittered as he was against society, this moody view of himself took deeper and deeper hold of

Henchard, till the daily necessity of facing mankind, and of them particularly ElizabethJane, became

wellnigh more than he could endure. His health declined; he became morbidly sensitive. He wished he

But what if he were mistaken in his views, and there were no necessity that his own absolute separation from

He proceeded to draw a picture of the alternativehimself living like a fangless lion about the back rooms of

a house in which his stepdaughter was mistress, an inoffensive old man, tenderly smiled on by Elizabeth, and

goodnaturedly tolerated by her husband. It was terrible to his pride to think of descending so low; and yet,

for the girl's sake he might put up with anything; even from Farfrae; even snubbings and masterful

tonguescourgings. The privilege of being in the house she occupied would almost outweigh the personal

Whether this were a dim possibility or the reverse, the courtshipwhich it evidently now washad an

Elizabeth, as has been said, often took her walks on the Budmouth Road, and Farfrae as often made it

convenient to create an accidental meeting with her there. Two miles out, a quarter of a mile from the

highway, was the prehistoric fort called Mai Dun, of huge dimensions and many ramparts, within or upon

whose enclosures a human being as seen from the road, was but an insignificant speck. Hitherward Henchard

often resorted, glass in hand, and scanned the hedgeless Viafor it was the original track laid out by the

legions of the Empireto a distance of two or three miles, his object being to read the progress of affairs

One day Henchard was at this spot when a masculine figure came along the road from Budmouth, and

lingered. Applying his telescope to his eye Henchard expected that Farfrae's features would be disclosed as

usual. But the lenses revealed that today the man was not ElizabethJane's lover.

It was one clothed as a merchant captain, and as he turned in the scrutiny of the road he revealed his face.

Henchard dropped the glass, and for some seconds made no other movement. Newson waited, and Henchard

waitedif that could be called a waiting which was a transfixture. But ElizabethJane did not come.

Something or other had caused her to neglect her customary walk that day. Perhaps Farfrae and she had

chosen another road for variety's sake. But what did that amount to? She might be here to morrow, and in

any case Newson, if bent on a private meeting and a revelation of the truth to her, would soon make his

Then he would tell her not only of his paternity, but of the ruse by which he had been once sent away.

Elizabeth's strict nature would cause her for the first time to despise her stepfather, would root out his image

But Newson did not see anything of her that morning. Having stood still awhile he at last retraced his steps,

and Henchard felt like a condemned man who has a few hours' respite. When he reached his own house he

"O father!" she said innocently. "I have had a lettera strange onenot signed. Somebody has asked me to

meet him, either on the Budmouth Road at noon today, or in the evening at Mr. Farfrae's. He says he came to

see me some time ago, but a trick was played him, so that he did not see me. I don't understand it; but

between you and me I think Donald is at the bottom of the mystery, and that it is a relation of his who wants

to pass an opinion on his choice. But I did not like to go till I had seen you. Shall I go?"

The question of his remaining in Casterbridge was for ever disposed of by this closing in of Newson on the

scene. Henchard was not the man to stand the certainty of condemnation on a matter so near his heart. And

being an old hand at bearing anguish in silence, and haughty withal, he resolved to make as light as he could

He surprised the young woman whom he had looked upon as his all in this world by saying to her, as if he did

"Yes, this little shop can be managed by you alone as well as by us both; I don't care about shops and streets

and folkI would rather get into the country by myself, out of sight, and follow my own ways, and leave

She looked down and her tears fell silently. It seemed to her that this resolve of his had come on account of

her attachment and its probable result. She showed her devotion to Farfrae, however, by mastering her

"I am sorry you have decided on this," she said with difficult firmness. "For I thought it

probablepossible that I might marry Mr. Farfrae some little time hence, and I did not know that you

"I approve of anything you desire to do, Izzy," said Henchard huskily. "If I did not approve it would be no

matter! I wish to go away. My presence might make things awkward in the future, and, in short, it is best that

Nothing that her affection could urge would induce him to reconsider his determination; for she could not

urge what she did not knowthat when she should learn he was not related to her other than as a stepparent

she would refrain from despising him, and that when she knew what he had done to keep her in ignorance she

would refrain from hating him. It was his conviction that she would not so refrain; and there existed as yet

"Then," she said at last, "you will not be able to come to my wedding; and that is not as it ought to be."

"I don't want to see itI don't want to see it!" he exclaimed; adding more softly, "but think of me sometimes

in your future lifeyou'll do that, Izzy?think of me when you are living as the wife of the richest, the

foremost man in the town, and don't let my sins, WHEN YOU KNOW THEM ALL, cause 'ee to quite forget

"I don't forbid you to marry him," said Henchard. "Promise not to quite forget me when" He meant

She promised mechanically, in her agitation; and the same evening at dusk Henchard left the town, to whose

development he had been one of the chief stimulants for many years. During the day he had bought a new

toolbasket, cleaned up his old hayknife and wimble, set himself up in fresh leggings, kneenaps and

corduroys, and in other ways gone back to the working clothes of his young manhood, discarding for ever the

shabbygenteel suit of cloth and rusty silk hat that since his decline had characterized him in the Casterbridge

He went secretly and alone, not a soul of the many who had known him being aware of his departure.

ElizabethJane accompanied him as far as the second bridge on the highway for the hour of her

appointment with the unguessed visitor at Farfrae's had not yet arrivedand parted from him with unfeigned

wonder and sorrow, keeping him back a minute or two before finally letting him go. She watched his form

diminish across the moor, the yellow rushbasket at his back moving up and down with each tread, and the

creases behind his knees coming and going alternately till she could no longer see them. Though she did not

know it Henchard formed at this moment much the same picture as he had presented when entering

Casterbridge for the first time nearly a quarter of a century before; except, to be sure, that the serious addition

to his years had considerably lessened the spring to his stride, that his state of hopelessness had weakened

him, and imparted to his shoulders, as weighted by the basket, a perceptible bend.

He went on till he came to the first milestone, which stood in the bank, half way up a steep hill. He rested his

basket on the top of the stone, placed his elbows on it, and gave way to a convulsive twitch, which was worse

"If I had only got her with meif I only had!" he said. "Hard work would be nothing to me then! But that

was not to be. ICaingo alone as I deservean outcast and a vagabond. But my punishment is not

Elizabeth, in the meantime, had breathed him a sigh, recovered her equanimity, and turned her face to

Casterbridge. Before she had reached the first house she was met in her walk by Donald Farfrae. This was

evidently not their first meeting that day; they joined hands without ceremony, and Farfrae anxiously asked,

"Well, well, dearie; you will know soon about that. And Mr. Henchard will hear of it if he does not go far."

She walked beside her lover, and when they reached the Crossways, or Bow, turned with him into Corn Street

instead of going straight on to her own door. At Farfrae's house they stopped and went in.

Farfrae flung open the door of the groundfloor sitting room, saying, "There he is waiting for you," and

Elizabeth entered. In the armchair sat the broadfaced genial man who had called on Henchard on a

memorable morning between one and two years before this time, and whom the latter had seen mount the

coach and depart within halfanhour of his arrival. It was Richard Newson. The meeting with the

lighthearted father from whom she had been separated half adozen years, as if by death, need hardly be

detailed. It was an affecting one, apart from the question of paternity. Henchard's departure was in a moment

explained. When the true facts came to be handled the difficulty of restoring her to her old belief in Newson

was not so great as might have seemed likely, for Henchard's conduct itself was a proof that those facts were

true. Moreover, she had grown up under Newson's paternal care; and even had Henchard been her father in

nature, this father in early domiciliation might almost have carried the point against him, when the incidents

Newson's pride in what she had grown up to be was more than he could express. He kissed her again and

"I've saved you the trouble to come and meet mehaha!" said Newson. "The fact is that Mr. Farfrae here,

he said, 'Come up and stop with me for a day or two, Captain Newson, and I'll bring her round.' 'Faith,' says I,

"Well, Henchard is gone," said Farfrae, shutting the door. "He has done it all voluntarily, and, as I gather

from Elizabeth, he has been very nice with her. I was got rather uneasy; but all is as it should be, and we will

"Now, that's very much as I thought," said Newson, looking into the face of each by turns. "I said to myself,

ay, a hundred times, when I tried to get a peep at her unknown to herself'Depend upon it, 'tis best that I

should live on quiet for a few days like this till something turns up for the better.' I now know you are all

"Well, Captain Newson, I will be glad to see ye here every day now, since it can do no harm," said Farfrae.

"And what I've been thinking is that the wedding may as well be kept under my own roof, the house being

large, and you being in lodgings by yourselfso that a great deal of trouble and expense would be saved

ye?and 'tis a convenience when a couple's married not to hae far to go to get home!"

"With all my heart," said Captain Newson; "since, as ye say, it can do no harm, now poor Henchard's gone;

though I wouldn't have done it otherwise, or put myself in his way at all; for I've already in my lifetime been

an intruder into his family quite as far as politeness can be expected to put up with. But what do the young

woman say herself about it? Elizabeth, my child, come and hearken to what we be talking about, and not bide

"Donald and you must settle it," murmured Elizabeth, still keeping up a scrutinizing gaze at some small

"Well, then," continued Newson, turning anew to Farfrae with a face expressing thorough entry into the

subject, "that's how we'll have it. And, Mr. Farfrae, as you provide so much, and houseroom, and all that, I'll

do my part in the drinkables, and see to the rum and schiedammaybe a dozen jars will be sufficient?as

many of the folk will be ladies, and perhaps they won't drink hard enough to make a high average in the

reckoning? But you know best. I've provided for men and shipmates times enough, but I'm as ignorant as a

child how many glasses of grog a woman, that's not a drinking woman, is expected to consume at these

"Oh, nonewe'll no want much of thatO no!" said Farfrae, shaking his head with appalled gravity. "Do

When they had gone a little further in these particulars Newson, leaning back in his chair and smiling

reflectively at the ceiling, said, "I've never told ye, or have I, Mr. Farfrae, how Henchard put me off the scent

"Ah, I thought I hadn't. I resolved that I would not, I remember, not to hurt the man's name. But now he's

gone I can tell ye. Why, I came to Casterbridge nine or ten months before that day last week that I found ye

out. I had been here twice before then. The first time I passed through the town on my way westward, not

knowing Elizabeth lived here. Then hearing at some placeI forget wherethat a man of the name of

Henchard had been mayor here, I came back, and called at his house one morning. The old rascal!he said

"Now, it never crossed my mind that the man was selling me a packet," contiued Newson. "And, if you'll

believe me, I was that upset, that I went back to the coach that had brought me, and took passage onward

without lying in the town half anhour. Haha!'twas a good joke, and well carried out, and I give the

ElizabethJane was amazed at the intelligence. "A joke?O no!" she cried. "Then he kept you from me,

Elizabeth sighed. "I said I would never forget him. But O! I think I ought to forget him now!"

Newson, like a good many rovers and sojourners among strange men and strange moralities, failed to

perceive the enormity of Henchard's crime, notwithstanding that he himself had been the chief sufferer

therefrom. Indeed, the attack upon the absent culprit waxing serious, he began to take Henchard's part.

"Well, 'twas not ten words that he said, after all," Newson pleaded. "And how could he know that I should be

such a simpleton as to believe him? 'Twas as much my fault as his, poor fellow!"

"No," said ElizabethJane firmly, in her revulsion of feeling. "He knew your dispositionyou always were

so trusting, father; I've heard my mother say so hundreds of timesand he did it to wrong you. After

weaning me from you these five years by saying he was my father, he should not have done this."

Thus they conversed; and there was nobody to set before Elizabeth any extenuation of the absent one's deceit.

Even had he been present Henchard might scarce have pleaded it, so little did he value himself or his good

"Well, wellnever mindit is all over and past," said Newson goodnaturedly. "Now, about this wedding

Meanwhile, the man of their talk had pursued his solitary way eastward till weariness overtook him, and he

looked about for a place of rest. His heart was so exacerbated at parting from the girl that he could not face an

inn, or even a household of the most humble kind; and entering a field he lay down under a wheatrick, feeling

The bright autumn sun shining into his eyes across the stubble awoke him the next morning early. He opened

his basket and ate for his breakfast what he had packed for his supper; and in doing so overhauled the

remainder of his kit. Although everything he brought necessitated carriage at his own back, he had secreted

among his tools a few of ElizabethJane's castoff belongings, in the shape of gloves, shoes, a scrap of her

handwriting, and the like, and in his pocket he carried a curl of her hair. Having looked at these things he

During five consecutive days Henchard's rush basket rode along upon his shoulder between the highway

hedges, the new yellow of the rushes catching the eye of an occasional fieldlabourer as he glanced through

the quickset, together with the wayfarer's hat and head, and downturned face, over which the twig shadows

moved in endless procession. It now became apparent that the direction of his journey was Weydon Priors,

The renowned hill whereon the annual fair had been held for so many generations was now bare of human

beings, and almost of aught besides. A few sheep grazed thereabout, but these ran off when Henchard halted

upon the summit. He deposited his basket upon the turf, and looked about with sad curiosity; till he

discovered the road by which his wife and himself had entered on the upland so memorable to both,

"Yes, we came up that way," he said, after ascertaining his bearings. "She was carrying the baby, and I was

reading a balletsheet. Then we crossed about hereshe so sad and weary, and I speaking to her hardly at

all, because of my cursed pride and mortification at being poor. Then we saw the tentthat must have stood

more this way." He walked to another spot, it was not really where the tent had stood but it seemed so to him.

"Here we went in, and here we sat down. I faced this way. Then I drank, and committed my crime. It must

have been just on that very pixyring that she was standing when she said her last words to me before going

off with him; I can hear their sound now, and the sound of her sobs: 'O Mike! I've lived with thee all this

while, and had nothing but temper. Now I'm no more to 'ee I'll try my luck elsewhere.'"

He experienced not only the bitterness of a man who finds, in looking back upon an ambitious course, that

what he has sacrificed in sentiment was worth as much as what he has gained in substance; but the

superadded bitterness of seeing his very recantation nullified. He had been sorry for all this long ago; but his

attempts to replace ambition by love had been as fully foiled as his ambition itself. His wronged wife had

foiled them by a fraud so grandly simple as to be almost a virtue. It was an odd sequence that out of all this

tampering with social law came that flower of Nature, Elizabeth. Part of his wish to wash his hands of life

arose from his perception of its contrarious inconsistenciesof Nature's jaunty readiness to support

He intended to go on from this placevisited as an act of penanceinto another part of the country

altogether. But he could not help thinking of Elizabeth, and the quarter of the horizon in which she lived. Out

of this it happened that the centrifugal tendency imparted by weariness of the world was counteracted by the

centripetal influence of his love for his stepdaughter. As a consequence, instead of following a straight course

yet further away from Casterbridge, Henchard gradually, almost unconsciously, deflected from that right line

of his first intention; till, by degrees, his wandering, like that of the Canadian woodsman, became part of a

circle of which Casterbridge formed the centre. In ascending any particular hill he ascertained the bearings as

nearly as he could by means of the sun, moon, or stars, and settled in his mind the exact direction in which

Casterbridge and ElizabethJane lay. Sneering at himself for his weakness he yet every hournay, every

few minutesconjectured her actions for the time beingher sitting down and rising up, her goings and

comings, till thought of Newson's and Farfrae's counter influence would pass like a cold blast over a pool,

and efface her image. And then he would say to himself, "O you fool! All this about a daughter who is no

At length he obtained employment at his own occupation of haytrusser, work of that sort being in demand at

this autumn time. The scene of his hiring was a pastoral farm near the old western highway, whose course

was the channel of all such communications as passed between the busy centres of novelty and the remote

Wessex boroughs. He had chosen the neighbourhood of this artery from a sense that, situated here, though at

a distance of fifty miles, he was virtually nearer to her whose welfare was so dear than he would be at a

And thus Henchard found himself again on the precise standing which he had occupied a quarter of a century

before. Externally there was nothing to hinder his making another start on the upward slope, and by his new

lights achieving higher things than his soul in its half formed state had been able to accomplish. But the

ingenious machinery contrived by the Gods for reducing human possibilities of amelioration to a

minimumwhich arranges that wisdom to do shall come pari passu with the departure of zest for

doingstood in the way of all that. He had no wish to make an arena a second time of a world that had

Very often, as his hayknife crunched down among the sweet smelling grassy stems, he would survey

mankind and say to himself: "Here and everywhere be folk dying before their time like frosted leaves, though

wanted by their families, the country, and the world; while I, an outcast, an encumberer of the ground, wanted

He often kept an eager ear upon the conversation of those who passed along the roadnot from a general

curiosity by any meansbut in the hope that among these travellers between Casterbridge and London some

would, sooner or later, speak of the former place. The distance, however, was too great to lend much

probability to his desire; and the highest result of his attention to wayside words was that he did indeed hear

the name "Casterbridge" uttered one day by the driver of a roadwaggon. Henchard ran to the gate of the

"YesI've come from there, maister," he said, in answer to Henchard's inquiry. "I trade up and down, ye

know; though, what with this travelling without horses that's getting so common, my work will soon be

"I've heard that Mr. Farfrae, the late mayor, is thinking of getting married. Now is that true or not?"

"But yes, Johnyou forget," said a woman inside the waggon tilt. "What were them packages we carr'd

there at the beginning o' the week? Surely they said a wedding was coming off soonon Martin's Day?"

The man declared he remembered nothing about it; and the waggon went on jangling over the hill.

Henchard was convinced that the woman's memory served her well. The date was an extremely probable one,

there being no reason for delay on either side. He might, for that matter, write and inquire of Elizabeth; but

his instinct for sequestration had made the course difficult. Yet before he left her she had said that for him to

The remembrance would continually revive in him now that it was not Elizabeth and Farfrae who had driven

him away from them, but his own haughty sense that his presence was no longer desired. He had assumed the

return of Newson without absolute proof that the Captain meant to return; still less that ElizabethJane would

welcome him; and with no proof whatever that if he did return he would stay. What if he had been mistaken

in his views; if there had been no necessity that his own absolute separation from her he loved should be

involved in these untoward incidents? To make one more attempt to be near her: to go back, to see her, to

plead his cause before her, to ask forgiveness for his fraud, to endeavour strenuously to hold his own in her

But how to initiate this reversal of all his former resolves without causing husband and wife to despise him

He cut and cut his trusses two days more, and then he concluded his hesitancies by a sudden reckless

determination to go to the wedding festivity. Neither writing nor message would be expected of him. She had

regretted his decision to be absenthis unanticipated presence would fill the little unsatisfied corner that

To intrude as little of his personality as possible upon a gay event with which that personality could show

nothing in keeping, he decided not to make his appearance till evening when stiffness would have worn

off, and a gentle wish to let bygones be bygones would exercise its sway in all hearts.

He started on foot, two mornings before St. Martin'stide, allowing himself about sixteen miles to perform

for each of the three days' journey, reckoning the weddingday as one. There were only two towns,

Melchester and Shottsford, of any importance along his course, and at the latter he stopped on the second

Possessing no clothes but the working suit he stood innow stained and distorted by their two months of

hard usage, he entered a shop to make some purchases which should put him, externally at any rate, a little in

harmony with the prevailing tone of the morrow. A rough yet respectable coat and hat, a new shirt and

neckcloth, were the chief of these; and having satisfied himself that in appearance at least he would not now

offend her, he proceeded to the more interesting particular of buying her some present.

What should that present be? He walked up and down the street, regarding dubiously the display in the shop

windows, from a gloomy sense that what he might most like to give her would be beyond his miserable

pocket. At length a caged goldfinch met his eye. The cage was a plain and small one, the shop humble, and

on inquiry he concluded he could afford the modest sum asked. A sheet of newspaper was tied round the little

creature's wire prison, and with the wrapped up cage in his hand Henchard sought a lodging for the night.

Next day he set out upon the last stage, and was soon within the district which had been his dealing ground in

bygone years. Part of the distance he travelled by carrier, seating himself in the darkest corner at the back of

that trader's van; and as the other passengers, mainly women going short journeys, mounted and alighted in

front of Henchard, they talked over much local news, not the least portion of this being the wedding then in

course of celebration at the town they were nearing. It appeared from their accounts that the town band had

been hired for the evening party, and, lest the convivial instincts of that body should get the better of their

skill, the further step had been taken of engaging the string band from Budmouth, so that there would be a

He heard, however, but few particulars beyond those known to him already, the incident of the deepest

interest on the journey being the soft pealing of the Casterbridge bells, which reached the travellers' ears

while the van paused on the top of Yalbury Hill to have the drag lowered. The time was just after twelve

Those notes were a signal that all had gone well; that there had been no slip 'twixt cup and lip in this case;

Henchard did not care to ride any further with his chattering companions after hearing this sound. Indeed, it

quite unmanned him; and in pursuance of his plan of not showing himself in Casterbridge street till evening,

lest he should mortify Farfrae and his bride, he alighted here, with his bundle and birdcage, and was soon

It was the hill near which he had waited to meet Farfrae, almost two years earlier, to tell him of the serious

illness of his wife Lucetta. The place was unchanged; the same larches sighed the same notes; but Farfrae had

another wife and, as Henchard knew, a better one. He only hoped that ElizabethJane had obtained a better

He passed the remainder of the afternoon in a curious high strung condition, unable to do much but think of

the approaching meeting with her, and sadly satirize himself for his emotions thereon, as a Samson shorn.

Such an innovation on Casterbridge customs as a flitting of bridegroom and bride from the town immediately

after the ceremony, was not likely, but if it should have taken place he would wait till their return. To assure

himself on this point he asked a marketman when near the borough if the newlymarried couple had gone

away, and was promptly informed that they had not; they were at that hour, according to all accounts,

Henchard dusted his boots, washed his hands at the riverside, and proceeded up the town under the feeble

lamps. He need have made no inquiries beforehand, for on drawing near Farfrae's residence it was plain to the

least observant that festivity prevailed within, and that Donald himself shared it, his voice being distinctly

audible in the street, giving strong expression to a song of his dear native country that he loved so well as

never to have revisited it. Idlers were standing on the pavement in front; and wishing to escape the notice of

It was wide open, the hall was lighted extravagantly, and people were going up and down the stairs. His

courage failed him; to enter footsore, laden, and poorly dressed into the midst of such resplendency was to

bring needless humiliation upon her he loved, if not to court repulse from her husband. Accordingly he went

round into the street at the back that he knew so well, entered the garden, and came quietly into the house

through the kitchen, temporarily depositing the bird and cage under a bush outside, to lessen the

Solitude and sadness had so emolliated Henchard that he now feared circumstances he would formerly have

scorned, and he began to wish that he had not taken upon himself to arrive at such a juncture. However, his

progress was made unexpectedly easy by his discovering alone in the kitchen an elderly woman who seemed

to be acting as provisional housekeeper during the convulsions from which Farfrae's establishment was just

then suffering. She was one of those people whom nothing surprises, and though to her, a total stranger, his

request must have seemed odd, she willingly volunteered to go up and inform the master and mistress of the

On second thought she said that he had better not wait in the kitchen, but come up into the little backparlour,

which was empty. He thereupon followed her thither, and she left him. Just as she got across the landing to

the door of the best parlour a dance was struck up, and she returned to say that she would wait till that was

over before announcing himMr. and Mrs. Farfrae having both joined in the figure.

The door of the front room had been taken off its hinges to give more space, and that of the room Henchard

sat in being ajar, he could see fractional parts of the dancers whenever their gyrations brought them near the

doorway, chiefly in the shape of the skirts of dresses and streaming curls of hair; together with about

threefifths of the band in profile, including the restless shadow of a fiddler's elbow, and the tip of the

The gaiety jarred upon Henchard's spirits; and he could not quite understand why Farfrae, a muchsobered

man, and a widower, who had had his trials, should have cared for it all, notwithstanding the fact that he was

quite a young man still, and quickly kindled to enthusiasm by dance and song. That the quiet Elizabeth, who

had long ago appraised life at a moderate value, and who knew in spite of her maidenhood that marriage was

as a rule no dancing matter, should have had zest for this revelry surprised him still more. However, young

With the progress of the dance the performers spread out somewhat, and then for the first time he caught a

glimpse of the once despised daughter who had mastered him, and made his heart ache. She was in a dress of

white silk or satin, he was not near enough to say whichsnowy white, without a tinge of milk or cream; and

the expression of her face was one of nervous pleasure rather than of gaiety. Presently Farfrae came round,

his exuberant Scotch movement making him conspicuous in a moment. The pair were not dancing together,

but Henchard could discern that whenever the chances of the figure made them the partners of a moment their

By degrees Henchard became aware that the measure was trod by some one who outFarfraed Farfrae in

saltatory intenseness. This was strange, and it was stranger to find that the eclipsing personage was

ElizabethJane's partner. The first time that Henchard saw him he was sweeping grandly round, his head

quivering and low down, his legs in the form of an X and his back towards the door. The next time he came

round in the other direction, his white waistcoat preceding his face, and his toes preceding his white

waistcoat. That happy faceHenchard's complete discomfiture lay in it. It was Newson's, who had indeed

Henchard pushed to the door, and for some seconds made no other movement. He rose to his feet, and stood

But he was no longer the man to stand these reverses unmoved. His agitation was great, and he would fain

have been gone, but before he could leave the dance had ended, the housekeeper had informed

ElizabethJane of the stranger who awaited her, and she entered the room immediately.

"What, Elizabeth?" he cried, as she seized her hand. "What do you say?Mr. Henchard? Don't, don't

scourge me like that! Call me worthless old Henchardanythingbut don't 'ee be so cold as this! O my

maidI see you have anothera real father in my place. Then you know all; but don't give all your thought

She flushed up, and gently drew her hand away. "I could have loved you alwaysI would have, gladly," she

said. "But how can I when I know you have deceived me soso bitterly deceived me! You persuaded me

that my father was not my fatherallowed me to live on in ignorance of the truth for years; and then when

he, my warmhearted real father, came to find me, cruelly sent him away with a wicked invention of my

death, which nearly broke his heart. O how can I love as I once did a man who has served us like this!"

Henchard's lips half parted to begin an explanation. But he shut them up like a vice, and uttered not a sound.

How should he, there and then, set before her with any effect the palliatives of his great faultsthat he had

himself been deceived in her identity at first, till informed by her mother's letter that his own child had died;

that, in the second accusation, his lie had been the last desperate throw of a gamester who loved her affection

better than his own honour? Among the many hindrances to such a pleading not the least was this, that he did

not sufficiently value himself to lessen his sufferings by strenuous appeal or elaborate argument.

Waiving, therefore, his privilege of selfdefence, he regarded only his discomposure. "Don't ye distress

yourself on my account," he said, with proud superiority. "I would not wish itat such a time, too, as this. I

have done wrong in coming to 'eeI see my error. But it is only for once, so forgive it. I'll never trouble 'ee

Then, before she could collect her thoughts, Henchard went out from her rooms, and departed from the house

It was about a month after the day which closed as in the last chapter. ElizabethJane had grown accustomed

to the novelty of her situation, and the only difference between Donald's movements now and formerly was

that he hastened indoors rather more quickly after business hours than he had been in the habit of doing for

Newson had stayed in Casterbridge three days after the wedding party (whose gaiety, as might have been

surmised, was of his making rather than of the married couple's), and was stared at and honoured as became

the returned Crusoe of the hour. But whether or not because Casterbridge was difficult to excite by dramatic

returns and disappearances through having been for centuries an assize town, in which sensational exits from

the world, antipodean absences, and such like, were halfyearly occurrences, the inhabitants did not

altogether lose their equanimity on his account. On the fourth morning he was discovered disconsolately

climbing a hill, in his craving to get a glimpse of the sea from somewhere or other. The contiguity of salt

water proved to be such a necessity of his existence that he preferred Budmouth as a place of residence,

notwithstanding the society of his daughter in the other town. Thither he went, and settled in lodgings in a

greenshuttered cottage which had a bowwindow, jutting out sufficiently to afford glimpses of a vertical

strip of blue sea to any one opening the sash, and leaning forward far enough to look through a narrow lane of

ElizabethJane was standing in the middle of her upstairs parlour, critically surveying some rearrangement

of articles with her head to one side, when the housemaid came in with the announcement, "Oh, please

In exploring her new domain during the first week of residence, gazing with critical satisfaction on this

cheerful room and that, penetrating cautiously into dark cellars, sallying forth with gingerly tread to the

garden, now leafstrewn by autumn winds, and thus, like a wise fieldmarshal, estimating the capabilities of

the site whereon she was about to open her housekeeping campaign Mrs. Donald Farfrae had discovered in

a screened corner a new birdcage, shrouded in newspaper, and at the bottom of the cage a little ball of

feathersthe dead body of a goldfinch. Nobody could tell her how the bird and cage had come there, though

that the poor little songster had been starved to death was evident. The sadness of the incident had made an

impression on her. She had not been able to forget it for days, despite Farfrae's tender banter; and now when

"Oh, please ma'am, we know how the birdcage came there. That farmer's man who called on the evening of

the wedding he was seen wi' it in his hand as he came up the street; and 'tis thoughted that he put it down

while he came in with his message, and then went away forgetting where he had left it."

This was enough to set Elizabeth thinking, and in thinking she seized hold of the idea, at one feminine bound,

that the caged bird had been brought by Henchard for her as a wedding gift and token of repentance. He had

not expressed to her any regrets or excuses for what he had done in the past; but it was a part of his nature to

extenuate nothing, and live on as one of his own worst accusers. She went out, looked at the cage, buried the

starved little singer, and from that hour her heart softened towards the selfalienated man.

When her husband came in she told him her solution of the birdcage mystery; and begged Donald to help

her in finding out, as soon as possible, whither Henchard had banished himself, that she might make her

peace with him; try to do something to render his life less that of an outcast, and more tolerable to him.

Although Farfrae had never so passionately liked Henchard as Henchard had liked him, he had, on the other

hand, never so passionately hated in the same direction as his former friend had done, and he was therefore

But it was by no means easy to set about discovering Henchard. He had apparently sunk into the earth on

leaving Mr. and Mrs. Farfrae's door. ElizabethJane remembered what he had once attempted; and trembled.

But though she did not know it Henchard had become a changed man since thenas far, that is, as change of

emotional basis can justify such a radical phrase; and she needed not to fear. In a few days Farfrae's inquiries

elicited that Henchard had been seen by one who knew him walking steadily along the Melchester highway

eastward, at twelve o'clock at nightin other words, retracing his steps on the road by which he had come.

This was enough; and the next morning Farfrae might have been discovered driving his gig out of

Casterbridge in that direction, ElizabethJane sitting beside him, wrapped in a thick flat furthe victorine of

the periodher complexion somewhat richer than formerly, and an incipient matronly dignity, which the

serene Minervaeyes of one "whose gestures beamed with mind" made becoming, settling on her face.

Having herself arrived at a promising haven from at least the grosser troubles of her life, her object was to

place Henchard in some similar quietude before he should sink into that lower stage of existence which was

After driving along the highway for a few miles they made further inquiries, and learnt of a roadmender,

who had been working thereabouts for weeks, that he had observed such a man at the time mentioned; he had

left the Melchester coachroad at Weatherbury by a forking highway which skirted the north of Egdon Heath.

Into this road they directed the horse's head, and soon were bowling across that ancient country whose

surface never had been stirred to a finger's depth, save by the scratchings of rabbits, since brushed by the feet

of the earliest tribes. The tumuli these had left behind, dun and shagged with heather, jutted roundly into the

sky from the uplands, as though they were the full breasts of Diana Multimammia supinely extended there.

They searched Egdon, but found no Henchard. Farfrae drove onward, and by the afternoon reached the

neighbourhood of some extension of the heath to the north of Anglebury, a prominent feature of which, in the

form of a blasted clump of firs on a summit of a hill, they soon passed under. That the road they were

following had, up to this point, been Henchard's track on foot they were pretty certain; but the ramifications

which now began to reveal themselves in the route made further progress in the right direction a matter of

pure guesswork, and Donald strongly advised his wife to give up the search in person, and trust to other

means for obtaining news of her stepfather. They were now a score of miles at least from home, but, by

resting the horse for a couple of hours at a village they had just traversed, it would be possible to get back to

Casterbridge that same day, while to go much further afield would reduce them to the necessity of camping

out for the night, "and that will make a hole in a sovereign," said Farfrae. She pondered the position, and

He accordingly drew rein, but before reversing their direction paused a moment and looked vaguely round

upon the wide country which the elevated position disclosed. While they looked a solitary human form came

from under the clump of trees, and crossed ahead of them. The person was some labourer; his gait was

shambling, his regard fixed in front of him as absolutely as if he wore blinkers; and in his hand he carried a

few sticks. Having crossed the road he descended into a ravine, where a cottage revealed itself, which he

"If it were not so far away from Casterbridge I should say that must be poor Whittle. 'Tis just like him,"

"And it may be Whittle, for he's never been to the yard these three weeks, going away without saying any

word at all; and I owing him for two days' work, without knowing who to pay it to."

The possibility led them to alight, and at least make an inquiry at the cottage. Farfrae hitched the reins to the

gatepost, and they approached what was of humble dwellings surely the humblest. The walls, built of

kneaded clay originally faced with a trowel, had been worn by years of rainwashings to a lumpy crumbling

surface, channelled and 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

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.

"Ay, yes sir! You see he was kindlike to mother when she wer here below, though 'a was rough to me."

"O sirMr. Henchet! Didn't ye know it? He's just gone about halfanhour ago, by the sun; for I've got

"Yes, ma'am, he's gone! He was kindlike to mother when she wer here below, sending her the best

shipcoal, and hardly any ashes from it at all; and taties, and suchlike 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 kindlike to mother if ye wer rough

to me, and I would fain be kindlike 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 alland he got weaker; and today

"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

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

What Henchard had written in the anguish of his dying was respected as far as practicable by ElizabethJane,

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

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 ElizabethJane

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 live cohered into an equable serenity, the finer movements of her nature found scope in discovering

to the narrowlived 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 transmit through a sorry

world hardly called for effusiveness, even when the path was suddenly irradiated at some halfway 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.