The Mayor of Casterbridge

by Thomas Hardy

  “Are you particularly interested in anybody out there?” said Lucetta.

  “O, no,” said her companion, a quick red shooting over her face.

  Luckily Farfrae’s figure was immediately covered by the apple-tree.

  Lucetta looked hard at her. “Quite sure?” she said.

  “O yes,” said Elizabeth-Jane.

  Again Lucetta looked out. “They are all farmers, I suppose?” she said.

  “No. There’s Mr. Bulge—he’s a wine merchant; there’s Benjamin Brownlet—a horse dealer; and Kitson, the pig breeder; and Yopper, the auctioneer; besides maltsters, and millers—and so on.” Farfrae stood out quite distinctly now; but she did not mention him.

  The Saturday afternoon slipped on thus desultorily. The market changed from the sample-showing 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 it—to right her position—which 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 Elizabeth-Jane quite coolly: “I imagine your father may call to see you to-day. I suppose he stands close by in the market-place with the rest of the corn-dealers?”

  She shook her head. “He won’t come.”

  “Why?”

  “He has taken against me,” she said in a husky voice.

  “You have quarreled more deeply than I know of.”

  Elizabeth, wishing to shield the man she believed to be her father from any charge of unnatural dislike, said “Yes.”

  “Then where you are is, of all places, the one he will avoid?”

  Elizabeth nodded sadly.

  Lucetta looked blank, twitched up her lovely eyebrows and lip, and burst into hysterical sobs. Here was a disaster— her ingenious scheme completely stultified.

  “O, my dear Miss Templeman—what’s the matter?” cried her companion.

  “I like your company much!” said Lucetta, as soon as she could speak.

  “Yes, yes—and so do I yours!” Elizabeth chimed in soothingly.

  “But—but—” 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, Elizabeth-Jane would have to be got rid of—a disagreeable necessity.

  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.

  “And have you ever seen the Museum?”

  Elizabeth-Jane had not.

  “Then you should do so at once. You can finish the morning by going there. It is an old house in a back street—I forget where—but you’ll find out—and there are crowds of interesting things—skeletons, teeth, old pots and pans, ancient boots and shoes, birds’ eggs—all charmingly instructive. You’ll be sure to stay till you get quite hungry.”

  Elizabeth hastily put on her things and departed. “I wonder why she wants to get rid of me to-day!” she said sorrowfully as she went. That her absence, rather than her services or instruction, was in request, had been readily apparent to Elizabeth-Jane, simple as she seemed, and difficult as it was to attribute a motive for the desire.

  She had not been gone ten minutes when one of Lucetta’s servants was sent to Henchard’s with a note. The contents were briefly:—

  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 business—I shall be quite alone.

  LUCETTA.

  When the messenger returned her mistress gave directions that if a gentleman called he was to be admitted at once, and sat down to await results.

  Sentimentally she did not much care to see him—his 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 cyma-recta 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 window-curtains in a freak of timidity. In spite of the waning of passion the situation was an agitating one—she had not seen Henchard since his (supposed) temporary parting from her in Jersey.

  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 not Henchard.

  23.

  A conjecture that her visitor might be some other person had, indeed, flashed through Lucetta’s mind when she was on the point of bursting out; but it was just too late to recede.

  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 silver-topped switch in his hand. Lucetta blushed, and said with a curious mixture of pout and laugh on her face—”O, I’ve made a mistake!”

  The visitor, on the contrary, did not laugh half a wrinkle.

  “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!”

  “I was the unmannerly one,” she said.

  “But is it that I have come to the wrong house, madam?” said Mr. Farfrae, blinking a little in his bewilderment and nervously tapping his legging with his switch.

  “O no, sir,—sit down. You must come and sit down now you are here,” replied Lucetta kindly, to relieve his embarrassment. “Miss Henchard will be here directly.”

  Now this was not strictly true; but that something about the young man—that hyperborean crispness, stringency, and charm, as of a well-braced musical instrument, which had awakened the interest of Henchard, and of Elizabeth-Jane 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 (though there was), and sat down.

  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 Elizabeth-Jane? 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 th
e 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 waiting—so fanciful are men!—he hastened on to High-Place Hall to encounter no Elizabeth but its mistress herself.

  “The fair to-day 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 from here!”

  He seemed in doubt how to answer, and the babble without reached them as they sat—voices as of wavelets on a looping sea, one ever and anon rising above the rest. “Do you look out often?” he asked.

  “Yes—very often.”

  “Do you look for any one you know?”

  Why should she have answered as she did?

  “I look as at a picture merely. But,” she went on, turning pleasantly to him, “I may do so now—I may look for you. You are always there, are you not? Ah—I 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.”

  “Ay! Maybe you’ll be very lonely, ma’am?”

  “Nobody knows how lonely.”

  “But you are rich, they say?”

  “If so, I don’t know how to enjoy my riches. I came to Casterbridge thinking I should like to live here. But I wonder if I shall.”

  “Where did ye come from, ma’am?”

  “The neighbourhood of Bath.”

  “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 pounds—yes!”—(bringing down his hand upon the table, and quite forgetting where he was)—”while the others by keeping theirs in hand made nothing at all!”

  Lucetta regarded him with a critical interest. He was quite a new type of person to her. At last his eye fell upon the lady’s and their glances met.

  “Ay, now, I’m wearying you!” he exclaimed.

  She said, “No, indeed,” colouring a shade.

  “What then?”

  “Quite otherwise. You are most interesting.”

  It was now Farfrae who showed the modest pink.

  “I mean all you Scotchmen,” she added in hasty correction. “So free from Southern extremes. We common people are all one way or the other—warm or cold, passionate or frigid. You have both temperatures going on in you at the same time.”

  “But how do you mean that? Ye were best to explain clearly, ma’am.”

  “You are animated—then you are thinking of getting on. You are sad the next moment—then you are thinking of Scotland and friends.”

  “Yes. I think of home sometimes!” he said simply.

  “So do I—as far as I can. But it was an old house where I was born, and they pulled it down for improvements, so I seem hardly to have any home to think of now.”

  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?”

  She shook her head.

  “They do to me—they 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 life—the commercial and the romantic—were very distinct at times. Like the colours in a variegated cord those contrasts could be seen intertwisted, yet not mingling.

  “You are wishing you were back again,” she said.

  “Ah, no, ma’am,” said Farfrae, suddenly recalling himself.

  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 whitey-brown crowd flecked with white—this being the body of labourers waiting for places. The long bonnets of the women, like waggon-tilts, 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 his skill laid open to him any farm for the asking.

  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 pale lips.

  “I’m sorry to leave ye, Nelly,” said the young man with emotion. “But, you see, I can’t starve father, and he’s out o’ work at Lady-day. ‘Tis only thirty-five mile.”

  The girl’s lips quivered. “Thirty-five 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 Casterbridge as elsewhere.

  “O! no, no—I 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 half-an-hour for his answer, and went away, leaving the group sorrowing.

  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, I’d let people live and love at their pleasure!”

  “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 too—yes; 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 struck. Farfrae returned to her immediately it was concluded.

  “It is kind-hearted of you, indeed,” said Lucetta. “For my part, I have resolved that all my servants shall have lovers if they want them! Do make the same resolve!”

  Farfrae looked more serious, waving his head a half turn. “I must be a little stricter than that,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “You are a—a thriving woman; and I am a struggling hay-and- corn merchant.”

  “I am a very ambitious woman.”

  “Ah, well, I cannet explain. I don’t know how to talk to ladies, ambitious or no; and that’s true,
” said Donald with grave regret. “I try to be civil to a’ folk—no more!”

  “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’ had been.

  “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 half-a-dozen times, and never a sign of him: though he’s mostly a man to his word.”

  “I quite forgot the engagement,” murmured Farfrae.

  “Now you must go,” said she; “must you not?”

  “Yes,” he replied. But he still remained.

  “You had better go,” she urged. “You will lose a customer.

  “Now, Miss Templeman, you will make me angry,” exclaimed Farfrae.

  “Then suppose you don’t go; but stay a little longer?”

  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. “Business ought not to be neglected, ought it?

  “Not for a single minute.”

  “It’s true. I’ll come another time—if I may, ma’am?”

  “Certainly,” she said. “What has happened to us to-day is very curious.”

  “Something to think over when we are alone, it’s like to be?”

  “Oh, I don’t know that. It is commonplace after all.”

  “No, I’ll not say that. O no!”

  “Well, whatever it has been, it is now over; and the market calls you to be gone.”

  “Yes, yes. Market—business! I wish there were no business in the warrld.”

  Lucetta almost laughed—she would quite have laughed—but that there was a little emotion going in her at the time. “How you change!” she said. “You should not change like this.

  “I have never wished such things before,” said the Scotchman, with a simple, shamed, apologetic look for his weakness. “It is only since coming here and seeing you!”