by Thomas Hardy
Thus she lived on, a dumb, deep-feeling, great-eyed creature, construed by not a single contiguous being; quenching with patient fortitude her incipient interest in Farfrae, because it seemed to be one-sided, 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 or never turned his head.
Winter had almost come, and unsettled weather made her still more dependent upon indoor resources. But there were certain early winter days in Casterbridge — days of firmamental exhaustion which followed angry south-westerly tempests — when, 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 buried — the still-used burial-ground of the old Roman-British 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 hair-pins and amber necklaces, and men who held in their mouths coins of Hadrian, Posthumus, and the Constantines.
Half-past ten in the morning was about her hour for seeking this spot — a 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 Elizabeth-Jane walked and read, or looked over the edge of the book to think, and thus reached the churchyard.
There, approaching her mother’s grave she saw a solitary dark figure in the middle of the gravel-walk. 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 Elizabeth-Jane 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 development — she 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 that — she 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 resembling a guide-book had not also suggested it.
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 footprints 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 mused on a rainbow or the Northern Lights, a rare butterfly or a cameo.
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 waiting-maid 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 Farfrae — that treacherous upstart — that she had thus humiliated herself. And though Mrs. Stannidge seemed to attach no great importance to the incident — the cheerful souls at the Three Mariners having exhausted its aspects long ago — such was Henchard’s haughty spirit that the simple thrifty deed was regarded as little less than a social catastrophe by him.
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 aldermen — that Peerage of burghers — as he had expected to be, and the consciousness of this soured him to-day.
“Well, where have you been?” he said to her with offhand laconism.
“I’ve been strolling in the Walks and churchyard, father, till I feel quite leery.” She clapped her hand to her mouth, but too late.
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 hold us two.”
The only way of getting a single pleasant thought to go to sleep upon after this was by recalling the lady she had seen that day, and hoping she might see her again.
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 writing-table: “Ah! he’ll think it means peace, and a marriage portion — not that I don’t want my house to be troubled with her, and no portion at all!” He wrote as follows: —
Sir, — On consideration, I don’t wish to interfere with your courtship of Elizabeth-Jane, if you care for her. I therefore withdraw my objection; excepting in this — that the business be not carried on in my house. —
Yours, M. HENCHARD Mr. Farfrae.
The morrow, being fairly fine, found Elizabeth-Jane 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 pocket-book in which he appeared to be making figures as he went; whether or not he saw her he took no notice, and disappeared.
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 loud, “O, I wish I was dead with dear mother!”
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, veiled, but still distinct, the face of the young woman she had seen yesterday.
Elizabeth-Jane 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 can have happened?”
“I don’t — I 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 beside her.
“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 mother,” she said, “my only friend.”
“But your father, Mr. Henchard. He is living?”
“Yes, he is living,” said Elizabeth-Jane.
“Is he not kind to you?”
“I’ve no wish to complain of him.”
“There has been a disagreement?”
“A little.”
“Perhaps you were to blame,” suggested the stranger.
“I was — in many ways,” sighed the meek
Elizabeth. “I swept up the coals when the servants ought to have done it; and I said I was leery; — and he was angry with me.”
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 hot-tempered man — a little proud — perhaps ambitious; but not a bad man.” Her anxiety not to condemn Henchard while siding with Elizabeth was curious.
“O no; certainly not BAD,” agreed the honest girl. “And he has not even been unkind to me till lately — since mother died. But it has been very much to bear while it has lasted. All is owing to my defects, I daresay; and my defects are owing to my history.”
“What is your history?”
Elizabeth-Jane 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. “And yet I can tell it, if you really want to know.”
The lady assured her that she did want to know; whereupon Elizabeth-Jane 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 coming to me? But perhaps — ”
“O yes,” cried Elizabeth, with tears in her eyes. “I would, indeed — I would do anything to be independent; for then perhaps my father might get to love me. But, ah!”
“What?”
“I am no accomplished person. And a companion to you must be that.”
“O, not necessarily.”
“Not? But I can’t help using rural words sometimes, when I don’t mean to.”
“Never mind, I shall like to know them.”
“And — O, 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?”
“Well, no.”
“What, not necessary to write ladies’-hand?” cried the joyous Elizabeth.
“Not at all.”
“But where do you live?”
“In Casterbridge, or rather I shall be living here after twelve o’clock to-day.”
Elizabeth expressed her astonishment.
“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 High-Place Hall — the old stone one looking down the lane to the market. Two or three rooms are fit for occupation, though not all: I sleep there to-night 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 the two parted at the gate of the churchyard.
CHAPTER 21.
As a maxim glibly repeated from childhood remains practically unmarked till some mature experience enforces it, so did this High-Place Hall now for the first time really show itself to Elizabeth-Jane, though her ears had heard its name on a hundred occasions.
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. High-Place Hall was undergoing repair; a lady was coming there to live shortly; all the shop-people knew it, and had already discounted the chance of her being a customer.
Elizabeth-Jane could, however, add a capping touch to information so new to her in the bulk. The lady, she said, had arrived that day.
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 High-Place Hall. She went up the street in that direction.
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 mansion — birds’ nests in its chimneys, damp nooks where fungi grew and irregularities of surface direct from Nature’s trowel. At night the forms of passengers were patterned by the lamps in black shadows upon the pale walls.
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 old-fashioned stranger instinctively said “Blood built it, and Wealth enjoys it” however vague his opinions of those accessories might be.
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 market-place; and such a prospect from such a house was not considered desirable or seemly by its would-be occupiers.
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 human things, had prevented artistic superfluity.
Men had still quite recently been going in and out with parcels and packing-cases, 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 little-used 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 old — older 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 lamp-glimmer that she could not bear to look at it — the 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 history — intrigue. By the alley it had been possible to come unseen from all sorts of quarters in the town — the old play-house, the old bull-stake, the old cock-pit, the pool wherein nameless infants had been used to disappear. High-Place Hall could boast of its conveniences undoubtedly.
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 ways.
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 face of Henchard.
But Elizabeth-Jane 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 out a second time into the alley, and made the best of her way home.
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 selfsame form: What could he or she possibly be doing there?
Henchard, whatever his business at the lady’s house, reached his own home only a few minutes later than Elizabeth-Jane. 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 encouraged her to departure, even more than hot temper could have done.
“Father, have you any objection to my going away?” she asked.
“Going away! No — none whatever. Where are you going?”
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 household where I can have advantages of study, and seeing refined life.”
