Chapter Chapter 6 · Chapter VI

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 stranger—a young man of remarkably

pleasant aspect—who carried in his hand a carpet-bag of the smart

floral pattern prevalent in such articles at that time.

He was ruddy and of a fair countenance, bright-eyed, 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 dining-table; 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 serving inside was now idly leaning against the

doorpost.

“Give this to the Mayor at once,” he said, handing in his hasty note.

Elizabeth-Jane had seen his movements and heard the words, which

attracted her both by their subject and by their accent—a strange one

for those parts. It was quaint and northerly.

The waiter took the note, while the young stranger continued—

“And can ye tell me of a respectable hotel that’s a little more

moderate than this?”

The waiter glanced indifferently up and down the street.

“They say the Three Mariners, just below here, is a very good place,”

he languidly answered; “but I have never stayed there myself.”

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 Elizabeth-Jane saw

with some interest the note brought into the dining-room and handed to

the Mayor.

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 an idea.

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. Square-built 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 one-sided, 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 changes; he remained stately and vertical, silently thinking.

The clock struck nine. Elizabeth-Jane turned to her companion. “The

evening is drawing on, mother,” she said. “What do you propose to do?”

She was surprised to find how irresolute her mother had become. “We

must get a place to lie down in,” she murmured. “I have seen—Mr.

Henchard; and that’s all I wanted to do.”

“That’s enough for to-night, at any rate,” Elizabeth-Jane replied

soothingly. “We can think to-morrow what is best to do about him. The

question now is—is it not?—how shall we find a lodging?”

As her mother did not reply Elizabeth-Jane’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?”

Her mother assented, and down the street they went.

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 was just after the departure of his wife and Elizabeth.

Outside the door of the assembly-room he saw the waiter, and beckoning

to him asked who had brought the note which had been handed in a

quarter of an hour before.

“A young man, sir—a sort of traveller. He was a Scotchman seemingly.”

“Did he say how he had got it?”

“He wrote it himself, sir, as he stood outside the window.”

“Oh—wrote it himself.... Is the young man in the hotel?”

“No, sir. He went to the Three Mariners, I believe.”

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 dining-room,

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 gone—the

Three Mariners—whose two prominent Elizabethan gables, bow-window, and

passage-light 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 heart-shaped

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 four-centred 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 shadow—were 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 half-invisible 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 so traditional.

A long, narrow, dimly-lit 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 shirt-front, and in other ways toning himself

down to his ordinary everyday appearance, he entered the inn door.