Chapter Chapter 30 · Chapter XXX

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 briefly informed by letter a few hours

earlier.

At the last moment of leaving Port-Bredy, 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 two-days’ 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 High-Place 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. Half-an-hour 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

Elizabeth-Jane.”

“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 from shyness, and all that.”

“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 on with me just the same as

before? She is so quiet and unassuming.”

“O no, indeed I don’t,” Farfrae answered with, perhaps, a faint

awkwardness. “But I wonder if she would care to?”

“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 your house, not you to mine.”

“I’ll run and speak to her,” said Lucetta.

When she got upstairs to Elizabeth-Jane’s room the latter had taken off

her out-door things, and was resting over a book. Lucetta found in a

moment that she had not yet learnt the news.

“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.”

Elizabeth-Jane said she was so glad, and made herself receptive.

“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 ago—about the first lover and the

second lover?” She let out in jerky phrases a leading word or two of

the story she had told.

“O yes—I 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 lovers—the old one and the new: how she wanted to marry

the second, but felt she ought to marry the first; so that the good she

would have done she did not, and the evil that she would not, that she

did—exactly like the Apostle Paul.”

“O no; she didn’t do evil exactly!” said Lucetta hastily.

“But you said that she—or as I may say _you_”—answered Elizabeth,

dropping the mask, “were in honour and conscience bound to marry the

first?”

Lucetta’s blush at being seen through came and went again before she

replied anxiously, “You will never breathe this, will you,

Elizabeth-Jane?”

“Certainly not, if you say not.

“Then I will tell you that the case is more complicated—worse, in

fact—than 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, Elizabeth-Jane,

all this amounts to a new courtship of me by him; I was absolved from

all vows by the return of the other woman.”

“Have you not lately renewed your promise?” said the younger with quiet

surmise. She had divined Man Number One.

“That was wrung from me by a threat.”

“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. “Really afraid! And it was not

till after my renewed promise that I knew it.”

“Then there is only one course left to honesty. You must remain a

single woman.”

“But think again! Do consider——”

“I am certain,” interrupted her companion hardily. “I have guessed very

well who the man is. My father; and I say it is him or nobody for you.”

Any suspicion of impropriety was to Elizabeth-Jane 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 nobody—certainly not another man!” she went on with a

quivering lip in whose movement two passions shared.

“I don’t admit that!” said Lucetta passionately.

“Admit it or not, it is true!”

Lucetta covered her eyes with her right hand, as if she could plead no

more, holding out her left to Elizabeth-Jane.

“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 are the woman he will adore, and we shall all

three be happy together now!”

“O, my Elizabeth-Jane!” cried Lucetta distressfully. “’Tis somebody

else that I have married! I was so desperate—so afraid of being forced

to anything else—so 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!”

“You—have—married Mr. Farfrae!” cried Elizabeth-Jane, in Nathan tones

Lucetta bowed. She had recovered herself.

“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.

“You shall. I am sure we shall be happy together.”

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 Elizabeth-Jane’s

emotions she had not the least suspicion; but on Henchard’s alone.

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 could not abide there.

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 drawing-room with Farfrae; and then

Elizabeth-Jane called a man with a wheel-barrow; and seeing her boxes

put into it she trotted off down the street to her rooms. They were in

the street in which Henchard lived, and almost opposite his door.

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 sorts—acquired in

childhood by making seines in Newson’s home—might serve her in good

stead; and her studies, which were pursued unremittingly, might serve

her in still better.

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.