Bab Bab 22 · Chapter XXII

We go back for a moment to the preceding night, to account for

Henchard’s attitude.

At the hour when Elizabeth-Jane 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

well-known characters. The self-repression, 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.

HIGH-PLACE HALL

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 Casterbridge—for how long I

cannot tell. That depends upon another; and he is a man, and a

merchant, and a Mayor, and one who has the first right to my

affections.

Seriously, _mon ami_, I am not so light-hearted as I may seem to be

from this. I have come here in consequence of hearing of the death

of your wife—whom 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 _étourderie_ 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,

LUCETTA.

_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 High-Place Hall was being prepared for

a tenant. He said with a puzzled air to the first person he

encountered, “Who is coming to live at the Hall?”

“A lady of the name of Templeman, I believe, sir,” said his informant.

Henchard thought it over. “Lucetta is related to her, I suppose,” he

said to himself. “Yes, I must put her in her proper position,

undoubtedly.”

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

Elizabeth-Jane 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 High-Place 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 Lucetta—or “Lucette,” as she had called herself at that

time.

The man replied in the negative; that Miss Templeman only had come.

Henchard went away, concluding that Lucetta had not as yet settled in.

He was in this interested stage of the inquiry when he witnessed

Elizabeth-Jane’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 increasingly possess the

mind.

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 when another note came to the Mayor’s house from High-Place Hall.

“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 name—as a means

of escape from mine, and its wrongs.

“I am now my own mistress, and have chosen to reside in Casterbridge—to

be tenant of High-Place 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 the—what 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,

“LUCETTA.”

The excitement which these announcements produced in Henchard’s gloomy

soul was to him most pleasurable. He sat over his dining-table long and

dreamily, and by an almost mechanical transfer the sentiments which had

run to waste since his estrangement from Elizabeth-Jane and Donald

Farfrae gathered around Lucetta before they had grown dry. She was

plainly in a very coming-on 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

whole he did not blame her.

“The artful little woman!” he said, smiling (with reference to

Lucetta’s adroit and pleasant manœuvre with Elizabeth-Jane).

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 cursed women—there’s not an inch of straight grain in ’em!” he

said.

Let us follow the train of Mr. Henchard’s thought as if it were a clue

line, and view the interior of High-Place Hall on this particular

evening.

On Elizabeth-Jane’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 landing, and left to

find her way further alone.

The room disclosed was prettily furnished as a boudoir or small

drawing-room, and on a sofa with two cylindrical pillows reclined a

dark-haired, large-eyed, 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 grace only prevented from being

boisterous.

“Why, you are late,” she said, taking hold of Elizabeth-Jane’s hands.

“There were so many little things to put up.”

“And you seem dead-alive 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 to deal them rapidly, telling Elizabeth to choose some.

“Well, have you chosen?” she asked flinging down the last card.

“No,” stammered Elizabeth, arousing herself from a reverie. “I forgot,

I was thinking of—you, and me—and how strange it is that I am here.”

Miss Templeman looked at Elizabeth-Jane with interest, and laid down

the cards. “Ah! never mind,” she said. “I’ll lie here while you sit by

me; and we’ll talk.”

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 brow—somewhat in the

pose of a well-known conception of Titian’s—talked up at Elizabeth-Jane

invertedly across her forehead and arm.

“I must tell you something,” she said. “I wonder if you have suspected

it. I have only been mistress of a large house and fortune a little

while.”

“Oh—only a little while?” murmured Elizabeth-Jane, 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 truth.”

“Yes, yes.” She looked thoughtfully round the room—at the little square

piano with brass inlayings, at the window-curtains, at the lamp, at the

fair and dark kings and queens on the card-table, 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.”

“Where is your native isle?”

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 person in my feelings

and tastes.”

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 free, and a deliberately formed resolve had been broken.

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 thee!”

Expectancy sat visibly upon Lucetta the next morning. She dressed

herself for Mr. Henchard, and restlessly awaited his call before

mid-day; as he did not come she waited on through the afternoon. But

she did not tell Elizabeth that the person expected was the girl’s

stepfather.

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 ant-hill; elsewhere more reposeful, and broken

up by stalls of fruit and vegetables. 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 market-room provided for them. Here they surged on this one

day of the week, forming a little world of leggings, switches, and

sample-bags; 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

market-faces all the year round were glowing little fires.

All over-clothes 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, sun-scorchings, and daily struggles

for many years past. Yet many carried ruffled cheque-books 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 money—money insistently ready—not ready next year

like a nobleman’s—often not merely ready at the bank like a

professional man’s, but ready in their large plump hands.

It happened that to-day there rose in the midst of them all two or

three tall apple-trees standing as if they grew on the spot; till it

was perceived that they were held by men from the cider-districts who

came here to sell them, bringing the clay of their county on their

boots. Elizabeth-Jane, who had often observed them, said, “I wonder if

the same trees come every week?”

“What trees?” said Lucetta, absorbed in watching for Henchard.

Elizabeth replied vaguely, for an incident checked her. Behind one of

the trees stood Farfrae, briskly discussing a sample-bag with a farmer.

Henchard had come up, accidentally encountering the young man, whose

face seemed to inquire, “Do we speak to each other?”

She saw her stepfather throw a shine into his eye which answered “No!”

Elizabeth-Jane sighed.

“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.