Bab Bab 45 · Chapter XLV

It was about a month after the day which closed as in the last chapter.

Elizabeth-Jane had grown accustomed to the novelty of her situation,

and the only difference between Donald’s movements now and formerly was

that he hastened indoors rather more quickly after business hours than

he had been in the habit of doing for some time.

Newson had stayed in Casterbridge three days after the wedding party

(whose gaiety, as might have been surmised, was of his making rather

than of the married couple’s), and was stared at and honoured as became

the returned Crusoe of the hour. But whether or not because

Casterbridge was difficult to excite by dramatic returns and

disappearances through having been for centuries an assize town, in

which sensational exits from the world, antipodean absences, and such

like, were half-yearly occurrences, the inhabitants did not altogether

lose their equanimity on his account. On the fourth morning he was

discovered disconsolately climbing a hill, in his craving to get a

glimpse of the sea from somewhere or other. The contiguity of salt

water proved to be such a necessity of his existence that he preferred

Budmouth as a place of residence, notwithstanding the society of his

daughter in the other town. Thither he went, and settled in lodgings in

a green-shuttered cottage which had a bow-window, jutting out

sufficiently to afford glimpses of a vertical strip of blue sea to any

one opening the sash, and leaning forward far enough to look through a

narrow lane of tall intervening houses.

Elizabeth-Jane was standing in the middle of her upstairs parlour,

critically surveying some re-arrangement of articles with her head to

one side, when the housemaid came in with the announcement, “Oh, please

ma’am, we know now how that bird-cage came there.”

In exploring her new domain during the first week of residence, gazing

with critical satisfaction on this cheerful room and that, penetrating

cautiously into dark cellars, sallying forth with gingerly tread to the

garden, now leaf-strewn by autumn winds, and thus, like a wise

field-marshal, estimating the capabilities of the site whereon she was

about to open her housekeeping campaign—Mrs. Donald Farfrae had

discovered in a screened corner a new bird-cage, shrouded in newspaper,

and at the bottom of the cage a little ball of feathers—the dead body

of a goldfinch. Nobody could tell her how the bird and cage had come

there, though that the poor little songster had been starved to death

was evident. The sadness of the incident had made an impression on her.

She had not been able to forget it for days, despite Farfrae’s tender

banter; and now when the matter had been nearly forgotten it was again

revived.

“Oh, please ma’am, we know how the bird-cage came there. That farmer’s

man who called on the evening of the wedding—he was seen wi’ it in his

hand as he came up the street; and ’tis thoughted that he put it down

while he came in with his message, and then went away forgetting where

he had left it.”

This was enough to set Elizabeth thinking, and in thinking she seized

hold of the idea, at one feminine bound, that the caged bird had been

brought by Henchard for her as a wedding gift and token of repentance.

He had not expressed to her any regrets or excuses for what he had done

in the past; but it was a part of his nature to extenuate nothing, and

live on as one of his own worst accusers. She went out, looked at the

cage, buried the starved little singer, and from that hour her heart

softened towards the self-alienated man.

When her husband came in she told him her solution of the bird-cage

mystery; and begged Donald to help her in finding out, as soon as

possible, whither Henchard had banished himself, that she might make

her peace with him; try to do something to render his life less that of

an outcast, and more tolerable to him. Although Farfrae had never so

passionately liked Henchard as Henchard had liked him, he had, on the

other hand, never so passionately hated in the same direction as his

former friend had done, and he was therefore not the least indisposed

to assist Elizabeth-Jane in her laudable plan.

But it was by no means easy to set about discovering Henchard. He had

apparently sunk into the earth on leaving Mr. and Mrs. Farfrae’s door.

Elizabeth-Jane remembered what he had once attempted; and trembled.

But though she did not know it Henchard had become a changed man since

then—as far, that is, as change of emotional basis can justify such a

radical phrase; and she needed not to fear. In a few days Farfrae’s

inquiries elicited that Henchard had been seen by one who knew him

walking steadily along the Melchester highway eastward, at twelve

o’clock at night—in other words, retracing his steps on the road by

which he had come.

This was enough; and the next morning Farfrae might have been

discovered driving his gig out of Casterbridge in that direction,

Elizabeth-Jane sitting beside him, wrapped in a thick flat fur—the

victorine of the period—her complexion somewhat richer than formerly,

and an incipient matronly dignity, which the serene Minerva-eyes of one

“whose gestures beamed with mind” made becoming, settling on her face.

Having herself arrived at a promising haven from at least the grosser

troubles of her life, her object was to place Henchard in some similar

quietude before he should sink into that lower stage of existence which

was only too possible to him now.

After driving along the highway for a few miles they made further

inquiries, and learnt of a road-mender, who had been working

thereabouts for weeks, that he had observed such a man at the time

mentioned; he had left the Melchester coachroad at Weatherbury by a

forking highway which skirted the north of Egdon Heath. Into this road

they directed the horse’s head, and soon were bowling across that

ancient country whose surface never had been stirred to a finger’s

depth, save by the scratchings of rabbits, since brushed by the feet of

the earliest tribes. The tumuli these had left behind, dun and shagged

with heather, jutted roundly into the sky from the uplands, as though

they were the full breasts of Diana Multimammia supinely extended

there.

They searched Egdon, but found no Henchard. Farfrae drove onward, and

by the afternoon reached the neighbourhood of some extension of the

heath to the north of Anglebury, a prominent feature of which, in the

form of a blasted clump of firs on a summit of a hill, they soon passed

under. That the road they were following had, up to this point, been

Henchard’s track on foot they were pretty certain; but the

ramifications which now began to reveal themselves in the route made

further progress in the right direction a matter of pure guess-work,

and Donald strongly advised his wife to give up the search in person,

and trust to other means for obtaining news of her stepfather. They

were now a score of miles at least from home, but, by resting the horse

for a couple of hours at a village they had just traversed, it would be

possible to get back to Casterbridge that same day, while to go much

further afield would reduce them to the necessity of camping out for

the night, “and that will make a hole in a sovereign,” said Farfrae.

She pondered the position, and agreed with him.

He accordingly drew rein, but before reversing their direction paused a

moment and looked vaguely round upon the wide country which the

elevated position disclosed. While they looked a solitary human form

came from under the clump of trees, and crossed ahead of them. The

person was some labourer; his gait was shambling, his regard fixed in

front of him as absolutely as if he wore blinkers; and in his hand he

carried a few sticks. Having crossed the road he descended into a

ravine, where a cottage revealed itself, which he entered.

“If it were not so far away from Casterbridge I should say that must be

poor Whittle. ’Tis just like him,” observed Elizabeth-Jane.

“And it may be Whittle, for he’s never been to the yard these three

weeks, going away without saying any word at all; and I owing him for

two days’ work, without knowing who to pay it to.”

The possibility led them to alight, and at least make an inquiry at the

cottage. Farfrae hitched the reins to the gate-post, and they

approached what was of humble dwellings surely the humblest. The walls,

built of kneaded clay originally faced with a trowel, had been worn by

years of rain-washings to a lumpy crumbling surface, channelled and

sunken from its plane, its gray rents held together here and there by a

leafy strap of ivy which could scarcely find substance enough for the

purpose. The rafters were sunken, and the thatch of the roof in ragged

holes. Leaves from the fence had been blown into the corners of the

doorway, and lay there undisturbed. The door was ajar; Farfrae knocked;

and he who stood before them was Whittle, as they had conjectured.

His face showed marks of deep sadness, his eyes lighting on them with

an unfocused gaze; and he still held in his hand the few sticks he had

been out to gather. As soon as he recognized them he started.

“What, Abel Whittle; is it that ye are heere?” said Farfrae.

“Ay, yes sir! You see he was kind-like to mother when she wer here

below, though ’a was rough to me.”

“Who are you talking of?”

“O sir—Mr. Henchet! Didn’t ye know it? He’s just gone—about

half-an-hour ago, by the sun; for I’ve got no watch to my name.”

“Not—dead?” faltered Elizabeth-Jane.

“Yes, ma’am, he’s gone! He was kind-like to mother when she wer here

below, sending her the best ship-coal, and hardly any ashes from it at

all; and taties, and such-like that were very needful to her. I seed en

go down street on the night of your worshipful’s wedding to the lady at

yer side, and I thought he looked low and faltering. And I followed en

over Grey’s Bridge, and he turned and zeed me, and said, ‘You go back!’

But I followed, and he turned again, and said, ‘Do you hear, sir? Go

back!’ But I zeed that he was low, and I followed on still. Then ’a

said, ‘Whittle, what do ye follow me for when I’ve told ye to go back

all these times?’ And I said, ‘Because, sir, I see things be bad with

’ee, and ye wer kind-like to mother if ye wer rough to me, and I would

fain be kind-like to you.’ Then he walked on, and I followed; and he

never complained at me no more. We walked on like that all night; and

in the blue o’ the morning, when ’twas hardly day, I looked ahead o’

me, and I zeed that he wambled, and could hardly drag along. By the

time we had got past here, but I had seen that this house was empty as

I went by, and I got him to come back; and I took down the boards from

the windows, and helped him inside. ‘What, Whittle,’ he said, ‘and can

ye really be such a poor fond fool as to care for such a wretch as I!’

Then I went on further, and some neighbourly woodmen lent me a bed, and

a chair, and a few other traps, and we brought ’em here, and made him

as comfortable as we could. But he didn’t gain strength, for you see,

ma’am, he couldn’t eat—no appetite at all—and he got weaker; and to-day

he died. One of the neighbours have gone to get a man to measure him.”

“Dear me—is that so!” said Farfrae.

As for Elizabeth, she said nothing.

“Upon the head of his bed he pinned a piece of paper, with some writing

upon it,” continued Abel Whittle. “But not being a man o’ letters, I

can’t read writing; so I don’t know what it is. I can get it and show

ye.”

They stood in silence while he ran into the cottage; returning in a

moment with a crumpled scrap of paper. On it there was pencilled as

follows:—

MICHAEL HENCHARD’S WILL.

“That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made to grieve

on account of me.

“& that I be not bury’d in consecrated ground.

“& that no sexton be asked to toll the bell.

“& that nobody is wished to see my dead body.

“& that no murners walk behind me at my funeral.

“& that no flours be planted on my grave.

“& that no man remember me.

“To this I put my name.

“MICHAEL HENCHARD.”

“What are we to do?” said Donald, when he had handed the paper to her.

She could not answer distinctly. “O Donald!” she cried at last through

her tears, “what bitterness lies there! O I would not have minded so

much if it had not been for my unkindness at that last parting!... But

there’s no altering—so it must be.”

What Henchard had written in the anguish of his dying was respected as

far as practicable by Elizabeth-Jane, though less from a sense of the

sacredness of last words, as such, than from her independent knowledge

that the man who wrote them meant what he said. She knew the directions

to be a piece of the same stuff that his whole life was made of, and

hence were not to be tampered with to give herself a mournful pleasure,

or her husband credit for large-heartedness.

All was over at last, even her regrets for having misunderstood him on

his last visit, for not having searched him out sooner, though these

were deep and sharp for a good while. From this time forward

Elizabeth-Jane found herself in a latitude of calm weather, kindly and

grateful in itself, and doubly so after the Capharnaum in which some of

her preceding years had been spent. As the lively and sparkling

emotions of her early married life cohered into an equable serenity,

the finer movements of her nature found scope in discovering to the

narrow-lived ones around her the secret (as she had once learnt it) of

making limited opportunities endurable; which she deemed to consist in

the cunning enlargement, by a species of microscopic treatment, of

those minute forms of satisfaction that offer themselves to everybody

not in positive pain; which, thus handled, have much of the same

inspiring effect upon life as wider interests cursorily embraced.

Her teaching had a reflex action upon herself, insomuch that she

thought she could perceive no great personal difference between being

respected in the nether parts of Casterbridge and glorified at the

uppermost end of the social world. Her position was, indeed, to a

marked degree one that, in the common phrase, afforded much to be

thankful for. That she was not demonstratively thankful was no fault of

hers. Her experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or

wrongly, that the doubtful honour of a brief transit through a sorry

world hardly called for effusiveness, even when the path was suddenly

irradiated at some half-way point by daybeams rich as hers. But her

strong sense that neither she nor any human being deserved less than

was given, did not blind her to the fact that there were others

receiving less who had deserved much more. And in being forced to class

herself among the fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the

persistence of the unforeseen, when the one to whom such unbroken

tranquility had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth

had seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a

general drama of pain.