Bab Bab 9 · Chapter IX

When Elizabeth-Jane opened the hinged casement next morning the mellow

air brought in the feel of imminent autumn almost as distinctly as if

she had been in the remotest hamlet. Casterbridge was the complement of

the rural life around, not its urban opposite. Bees and butterflies in

the cornfields at the top of the town, who desired to get to the meads

at the bottom, took no circuitous course, but flew straight down High

Street without any apparent consciousness that they were traversing

strange latitudes. And in autumn airy spheres of thistledown floated

into the same street, lodged upon the shop fronts, blew into drains,

and innumerable tawny and yellow leaves skimmed along the pavement, and

stole through people’s doorways into their passages with a hesitating

scratch on the floor, like the skirts of timid visitors.

Hearing voices, one of which was close at hand, she withdrew her head

and glanced from behind the window-curtains. Mr. Henchard—now habited

no longer as a great personage, but as a thriving man of business—was

pausing on his way up the middle of the street, and the Scotchman was

looking from the window adjoining her own. Henchard it appeared, had

gone a little way past the inn before he had noticed his acquaintance

of the previous evening. He came back a few steps, Donald Farfrae

opening the window further.

“And you are off soon, I suppose?” said Henchard upwards.

“Yes—almost this moment, sir,” said the other. “Maybe I’ll walk on till

the coach makes up on me.”

“Which way?”

“The way ye are going.”

“Then shall we walk together to the top o’ town?”

“If ye’ll wait a minute,” said the Scotchman.

In a few minutes the latter emerged, bag in hand. Henchard looked at

the bag as at an enemy. It showed there was no mistake about the young

man’s departure. “Ah, my lad,” he said, “you should have been a wise

man, and have stayed with me.”

“Yes, yes—it might have been wiser,” said Donald, looking

microscopically at the houses that were furthest off. “It is only

telling ye the truth when I say my plans are vague.”

They had by this time passed on from the precincts of the inn, and

Elizabeth-Jane heard no more. She saw that they continued in

conversation, Henchard turning to the other occasionally, and

emphasizing some remark with a gesture. Thus they passed the King’s

Arms Hotel, the Market House, St. Peter’s churchyard wall, ascending to

the upper end of the long street till they were small as two grains of

corn; when they bent suddenly to the right into the Bristol Road, and

were out of view.

“He was a good man—and he’s gone,” she said to herself. “I was nothing

to him, and there was no reason why he should have wished me good-bye.”

The simple thought, with its latent sense of slight, had moulded itself

out of the following little fact: when the Scotchman came out at the

door he had by accident glanced up at her; and then he had looked away

again without nodding, or smiling, or saying a word.

“You are still thinking, mother,” she said, when she turned inwards.

“Yes; I am thinking of Mr. Henchard’s sudden liking for that young man.

He was always so. Now, surely, if he takes so warmly to people who are

not related to him at all, may he not take as warmly to his own kin?”

While they debated this question a procession of five large waggons

went past, laden with hay up to the bedroom windows. They came in from

the country, and the steaming horses had probably been travelling a

great part of the night. To the shaft of each hung a little board, on

which was painted in white letters, “Henchard, corn-factor and

hay-merchant.” The spectacle renewed his wife’s conviction that, for

her daughter’s sake, she should strain a point to rejoin him.

The discussion was continued during breakfast, and the end of it was

that Mrs. Henchard decided, for good or for ill, to send Elizabeth-Jane

with a message to Henchard, to the effect that his relative Susan, a

sailor’s widow, was in the town; leaving it to him to say whether or

not he would recognize her. What had brought her to this determination

were chiefly two things. He had been described as a lonely widower; and

he had expressed shame for a past transaction of his life. There was

promise in both.

“If he says no,” she enjoined, as Elizabeth-Jane stood, bonnet on,

ready to depart; “if he thinks it does not become the good position he

has reached to in the town, to own—to let us call on him as—his distant

kinfolk, say, ‘Then, sir, we would rather not intrude; we will leave

Casterbridge as quietly as we have come, and go back to our own

country.’ ...I almost feel that I would rather he did say so, as I have

not seen him for so many years, and we are so—little allied to him!”

“And if he say yes?” inquired the more sanguine one.

“In that case,” answered Mrs. Henchard cautiously, “ask him to write me

a note, saying when and how he will see us—or _me_.”

Elizabeth-Jane went a few steps towards the landing. “And tell him,”

continued her mother, “that I fully know I have no claim upon him—that

I am glad to find he is thriving; that I hope his life may be long and

happy—there, go.” Thus with a half-hearted willingness, a smothered

reluctance, did the poor forgiving woman start her unconscious daughter

on this errand.

It was about ten o’clock, and market-day, when Elizabeth paced up the

High Street, in no great hurry; for to herself her position was only

that of a poor relation deputed to hunt up a rich one. The front doors

of the private houses were mostly left open at this warm autumn time,

no thought of umbrella stealers disturbing the minds of the placid

burgesses. Hence, through the long, straight, entrance passages thus

unclosed could be seen, as through tunnels, the mossy gardens at the

back, glowing with nasturtiums, fuchsias, scarlet geraniums, “bloody

warriors,” snapdragons, and dahlias, this floral blaze being backed by

crusted grey stone-work remaining from a yet remoter Casterbridge than

the venerable one visible in the street. The old-fashioned fronts of

these houses, which had older than old-fashioned backs, rose sheer from

the pavement, into which the bow windows protruded like bastions,

necessitating a pleasing _chassez-déchassez_ movement to the

time-pressed pedestrian at every few yards. He was bound also to evolve

other Terpsichorean figures in respect of door-steps, scrapers,

cellar-hatches, church buttresses, and the overhanging angles of walls

which, originally unobtrusive, had become bow-legged and knock-kneed.

In addition to these fixed obstacles which spoke so cheerfully of

individual unrestraint as to boundaries, movables occupied the path and

roadway to a perplexing extent. First the vans of the carriers in and

out of Casterbridge, who hailed from Mellstock, Weatherbury, The

Hintocks, Sherton-Abbas, Kingsbere, Overcombe, and many other towns and

villages round. Their owners were numerous enough to be regarded as a

tribe, and had almost distinctiveness enough to be regarded as a race.

Their vans had just arrived, and were drawn up on each side of the

street in close file, so as to form at places a wall between the

pavement and the roadway. Moreover every shop pitched out half its

contents upon trestles and boxes on the kerb, extending the display

each week a little further and further into the roadway, despite the

expostulations of the two feeble old constables, until there remained

but a tortuous defile for carriages down the centre of the street,

which afforded fine opportunities for skill with the reins. Over the

pavement on the sunny side of the way hung shopblinds so constructed as

to give the passenger’s hat a smart buffet off his head, as from the

unseen hands of Cranstoun’s Goblin Page, celebrated in romantic lore.

Horses for sale were tied in rows, their forelegs on the pavement,

their hind legs in the street, in which position they occasionally

nipped little boys by the shoulder who were passing to school. And any

inviting recess in front of a house that had been modestly kept back

from the general line was utilized by pig-dealers as a pen for their

stock.

The yeomen, farmers, dairymen, and townsfolk, who came to transact

business in these ancient streets, spoke in other ways than by

articulation. Not to hear the words of your interlocutor in

metropolitan centres is to know nothing of his meaning. Here the face,

the arms, the hat, the stick, the body throughout spoke equally with

the tongue. To express satisfaction the Casterbridge market-man added

to his utterance a broadening of the cheeks, a crevicing of the eyes, a

throwing back of the shoulders, which was intelligible from the other

end of the street. If he wondered, though all Henchard’s carts and

waggons were rattling past him, you knew it from perceiving the inside

of his crimson mouth, and a target-like circling of his eyes.

Deliberation caused sundry attacks on the moss of adjoining walls with

the end of his stick, a change of his hat from the horizontal to the

less so; a sense of tediousness announced itself in a lowering of the

person by spreading the knees to a lozenge-shaped aperture and

contorting the arms. Chicanery, subterfuge, had hardly a place in the

streets of this honest borough to all appearance; and it was said that

the lawyers in the Court House hard by occasionally threw in strong

arguments for the other side out of pure generosity (though apparently

by mischance) when advancing their own.

Thus Casterbridge was in most respects but the pole, focus, or

nerve-knot of the surrounding country life; differing from the many

manufacturing towns which are as foreign bodies set down, like boulders

on a plain, in a green world with which they have nothing in common.

Casterbridge lived by agriculture at one remove further from the

fountainhead than the adjoining villages—no more. The townsfolk

understood every fluctuation in the rustic’s condition, for it affected

their receipts as much as the labourer’s; they entered into the

troubles and joys which moved the aristocratic families ten miles

round—for the same reason. And even at the dinner-parties of the

professional families the subjects of discussion were corn,

cattle-disease, sowing and reaping, fencing and planting; while

politics were viewed by them less from their own standpoint of

burgesses with rights and privileges than from the standpoint of their

country neighbours.

All the venerable contrivances and confusions which delighted the eye

by their quaintness, and in a measure reasonableness, in this rare old

market-town, were metropolitan novelties to the unpractised eyes of

Elizabeth-Jane, fresh from netting fish-seines in a seaside cottage.

Very little inquiry was necessary to guide her footsteps. Henchard’s

house was one of the best, faced with dull red-and-grey old brick. The

front door was open, and, as in other houses, she could see through the

passage to the end of the garden—nearly a quarter of a mile off.

Mr. Henchard was not in the house, but in the store-yard. She was

conducted into the mossy garden, and through a door in the wall, which

was studded with rusty nails speaking of generations of fruit-trees

that had been trained there. The door opened upon the yard, and here

she was left to find him as she could. It was a place flanked by

hay-barns, into which tons of fodder, all in trusses, were being packed

from the waggons she had seen pass the inn that morning. On other sides

of the yard were wooden granaries on stone staddles, to which access

was given by Flemish ladders, and a store-house several floors high.

Wherever the doors of these places were open, a closely packed throng

of bursting wheat-sacks could be seen standing inside, with the air of

awaiting a famine that would not come.

She wandered about this place, uncomfortably conscious of the impending

interview, till she was quite weary of searching; she ventured to

inquire of a boy in what quarter Mr. Henchard could be found. He

directed her to an office which she had not seen before, and knocking

at the door she was answered by a cry of “Come in.”

Elizabeth turned the handle; and there stood before her, bending over

some sample-bags on a table, not the corn-merchant, but the young

Scotchman Mr. Farfrae—in the act of pouring some grains of wheat from

one hand to the other. His hat hung on a peg behind him, and the roses

of his carpet-bag glowed from the corner of the room.

Having toned her feelings and arranged words on her lips for Mr.

Henchard, and for him alone, she was for the moment confounded.

“Yes, what it is?” said the Scotchman, like a man who permanently ruled

there.

She said she wanted to see Mr. Henchard.

“Ah, yes; will you wait a minute? He’s engaged just now,” said the

young man, apparently not recognizing her as the girl at the inn. He

handed her a chair, bade her sit down and turned to his sample-bags

again. While Elizabeth-Jane sits waiting in great amaze at the young

man’s presence we may briefly explain how he came there.

When the two new acquaintances had passed out of sight that morning

towards the Bath and Bristol road they went on silently, except for a

few commonplaces, till they had gone down an avenue on the town walls

called the Chalk Walk, leading to an angle where the North and West

escarpments met. From this high corner of the square earthworks a vast

extent of country could be seen. A footpath ran steeply down the green

slope, conducting from the shady promenade on the walls to a road at

the bottom of the scarp. It was by this path the Scotchman had to

descend.

“Well, here’s success to ’ee,” said Henchard, holding out his right

hand and leaning with his left upon the wicket which protected the

descent. In the act there was the inelegance of one whose feelings are

nipped and wishes defeated. “I shall often think of this time, and of

how you came at the very moment to throw a light upon my difficulty.”

Still holding the young man’s hand he paused, and then added

deliberately: “Now I am not the man to let a cause be lost for want of

a word. And before ye are gone for ever I’ll speak. Once more, will ye

stay? There it is, flat and plain. You can see that it isn’t all

selfishness that makes me press ’ee; for my business is not quite so

scientific as to require an intellect entirely out of the common.

Others would do for the place without doubt. Some selfishness perhaps

there is, but there is more; it isn’t for me to repeat what. Come bide

with me—and name your own terms. I’ll agree to ’em willingly and

’ithout a word of gainsaying; for, hang it, Farfrae, I like thee well!”

The young man’s hand remained steady in Henchard’s for a moment or two.

He looked over the fertile country that stretched beneath them, then

backward along the shaded walk reaching to the top of the town. His

face flushed.

“I never expected this—I did not!” he said. “It’s Providence! Should

any one go against it? No; I’ll not go to America; I’ll stay and be

your man!”

His hand, which had lain lifeless in Henchard’s, returned the latter’s

grasp.

“Done,” said Henchard.

“Done,” said Donald Farfrae.

The face of Mr. Henchard beamed forth a satisfaction that was almost

fierce in its strength. “Now you are my friend!” he exclaimed. “Come

back to my house; let’s clinch it at once by clear terms, so as to be

comfortable in our minds.” Farfrae caught up his bag and retraced the

North-West Avenue in Henchard’s company as he had come. Henchard was

all confidence now.

“I am the most distant fellow in the world when I don’t care for a

man,” he said. “But when a man takes my fancy he takes it strong. Now I

am sure you can eat another breakfast? You couldn’t have eaten much so

early, even if they had anything at that place to gi’e thee, which they

hadn’t; so come to my house and we will have a solid, staunch tuck-in,

and settle terms in black-and-white if you like; though my word’s my

bond. I can always make a good meal in the morning. I’ve got a splendid

cold pigeon-pie going just now. You can have some home-brewed if you

want to, you know.”

“It is too airly in the morning for that,” said Farfrae with a smile.

“Well, of course, I didn’t know. I don’t drink it because of my oath,

but I am obliged to brew for my work-people.”

Thus talking they returned, and entered Henchard’s premises by the back

way or traffic entrance. Here the matter was settled over the

breakfast, at which Henchard heaped the young Scotchman’s plate to a

prodigal fulness. He would not rest satisfied till Farfrae had written

for his luggage from Bristol, and dispatched the letter to the

post-office. When it was done this man of strong impulses declared that

his new friend should take up his abode in his house—at least till some

suitable lodgings could be found.

He then took Farfrae round and showed him the place, and the stores of

grain, and other stock; and finally entered the offices where the

younger of them has already been discovered by Elizabeth.