บทที่ บทที่ 7 · Chapter VII

Elizabeth-Jane and her mother had arrived some twenty minutes earlier.

Outside the house they had stood and considered whether even this

homely place, though recommended as moderate, might not be too serious

in its prices for their light pockets. Finally, however, they had found

courage to enter, and duly met Stannidge the landlord, a silent man,

who drew and carried frothing measures to this room and to that,

shoulder to shoulder with his waiting-maids—a stately slowness,

however, entering into his ministrations by contrast with theirs, as

became one whose service was somewhat optional. It would have been

altogether optional but for the orders of the landlady, a person who

sat in the bar, corporeally motionless, but with a flitting eye and

quick ear, with which she observed and heard through the open door and

hatchway the pressing needs of customers whom her husband overlooked

though close at hand. Elizabeth and her mother were passively accepted

as sojourners, and shown to a small bedroom under one of the gables,

where they sat down.

The principle of the inn seemed to be to compensate for the antique

awkwardness, crookedness, and obscurity of the passages, floors, and

windows, by quantities of clean linen spread about everywhere, and this

had a dazzling effect upon the travellers.

“’Tis too good for us—we can’t meet it!” said the elder woman, looking

round the apartment with misgiving as soon as they were left alone.

“I fear it is, too,” said Elizabeth. “But we must be respectable.”

“We must pay our way even before we must be respectable,” replied her

mother. “Mr. Henchard is too high for us to make ourselves known to

him, I much fear; so we’ve only our own pockets to depend on.”

“I know what I’ll do,” said Elizabeth-Jane after an interval of

waiting, during which their needs seemed quite forgotten under the

press of business below. And leaving the room, she descended the stairs

and penetrated to the bar.

If there was one good thing more than another which characterized this

single-hearted girl it was a willingness to sacrifice her personal

comfort and dignity to the common weal.

“As you seem busy here to-night, and mother’s not well off, might I

take out part of our accommodation by helping?” she asked of the

landlady.

The latter, who remained as fixed in the arm-chair as if she had been

melted into it when in a liquid state, and could not now be unstuck,

looked the girl up and down inquiringly, with her hands on the

chair-arms. Such arrangements as the one Elizabeth proposed were not

uncommon in country villages; but, though Casterbridge was

old-fashioned, the custom was well-nigh obsolete here. The mistress of

the house, however, was an easy woman to strangers, and she made no

objection. Thereupon Elizabeth, being instructed by nods and motions

from the taciturn landlord as to where she could find the different

things, trotted up and down stairs with materials for her own and her

parent’s meal.

While she was doing this the wood partition in the centre of the house

thrilled to its centre with the tugging of a bell-pull upstairs. A bell

below tinkled a note that was feebler in sound than the twanging of

wires and cranks that had produced it.

“’Tis the Scotch gentleman,” said the landlady omnisciently; and

turning her eyes to Elizabeth, “Now then, can you go and see if his

supper is on the tray? If it is you can take it up to him. The front

room over this.”

Elizabeth-Jane, though hungry, willingly postponed serving herself

awhile, and applied to the cook in the kitchen whence she brought forth

the tray of supper viands, and proceeded with it upstairs to the

apartment indicated. The accommodation of the Three Mariners was far

from spacious, despite the fair area of ground it covered. The room

demanded by intrusive beams and rafters, partitions, passages,

staircases, disused ovens, settles, and four-posters, left

comparatively small quarters for human beings. Moreover, this being at

a time before home-brewing was abandoned by the smaller victuallers,

and a house in which the twelve-bushel strength was still religiously

adhered to by the landlord in his ale, the quality of the liquor was

the chief attraction of the premises, so that everything had to make

way for utensils and operations in connection therewith. Thus Elizabeth

found that the Scotchman was located in a room quite close to the small

one that had been allotted to herself and her mother.

When she entered nobody was present but the young man himself—the same

whom she had seen lingering without the windows of the King’s Arms

Hotel. He was now idly reading a copy of the local paper, and was

hardly conscious of her entry, so that she looked at him quite coolly,

and saw how his forehead shone where the light caught it, and how

nicely his hair was cut, and the sort of velvet-pile or down that was

on the skin at the back of his neck, and how his cheek was so truly

curved as to be part of a globe, and how clearly drawn were the lids

and lashes which hid his bent eyes.

She set down the tray, spread his supper, and went away without a word.

On her arrival below the landlady, who was as kind as she was fat and

lazy, saw that Elizabeth-Jane was rather tired, though in her

earnestness to be useful she was waiving her own needs altogether. Mrs.

Stannidge thereupon said with a considerate peremptoriness that she and

her mother had better take their own suppers if they meant to have any.

Elizabeth fetched their simple provisions, as she had fetched the

Scotchman’s, and went up to the little chamber where she had left her

mother, noiselessly pushing open the door with the edge of the tray. To

her surprise her mother, instead of being reclined on the bed where she

had left her was in an erect position, with lips parted. At Elizabeth’s

entry she lifted her finger.

The meaning of this was soon apparent. The room allotted to the two

women had at one time served as a dressing-room to the Scotchman’s

chamber, as was evidenced by signs of a door of communication between

them—now screwed up and pasted over with the wall paper. But, as is

frequently the case with hotels of far higher pretensions than the

Three Mariners, every word spoken in either of these rooms was

distinctly audible in the other. Such sounds came through now.

Thus silently conjured Elizabeth deposited the tray, and her mother

whispered as she drew near, “’Tis he.”

“Who?” said the girl.

“The Mayor.”

The tremors in Susan Henchard’s tone might have led any person but one

so perfectly unsuspicious of the truth as the girl was, to surmise some

closer connection than the admitted simple kinship as a means of

accounting for them.

Two men were indeed talking in the adjoining chamber, the young

Scotchman and Henchard, who, having entered the inn while

Elizabeth-Jane was in the kitchen waiting for the supper, had been

deferentially conducted upstairs by host Stannidge himself. The girl

noiselessly laid out their little meal, and beckoned to her mother to

join her, which Mrs. Henchard mechanically did, her attention being

fixed on the conversation through the door.

“I merely strolled in on my way home to ask you a question about

something that has excited my curiosity,” said the Mayor, with careless

geniality. “But I see you have not finished supper.”

“Ay, but I will be done in a little! Ye needn’t go, sir. Take a seat.

I’ve almost done, and it makes no difference at all.”

Henchard seemed to take the seat offered, and in a moment he resumed:

“Well, first I should ask, did you write this?” A rustling of paper

followed.

“Yes, I did,” said the Scotchman.

“Then,” said Henchard, “I am under the impression that we have met by

accident while waiting for the morning to keep an appointment with each

other? My name is Henchard, ha’n’t you replied to an advertisement for

a corn-factor’s manager that I put into the paper—ha’n’t you come here

to see me about it?”

“No,” said the Scotchman, with some surprise.

“Surely you are the man,” went on Henchard insistingly, “who arranged

to come and see me? Joshua, Joshua, Jipp—Jopp—what was his name?”

“You’re wrong!” said the young man. “My name is Donald Farfrae. It is

true I am in the corren trade—but I have replied to no advertisement,

and arranged to see no one. I am on my way to Bristol—from there to the

other side of the warrld, to try my fortune in the great wheat-growing

districts of the West! I have some inventions useful to the trade, and

there is no scope for developing them heere.”

“To America—well, well,” said Henchard, in a tone of disappointment, so

strong as to make itself felt like a damp atmosphere. “And yet I could

have sworn you were the man!”

The Scotchman murmured another negative, and there was a silence, till

Henchard resumed: “Then I am truly and sincerely obliged to you for the

few words you wrote on that paper.”

“It was nothing, sir.”

“Well, it has a great importance for me just now. This row about my

grown wheat, which I declare to Heaven I didn’t know to be bad till the

people came complaining, has put me to my wits’ end. I’ve some hundreds

of quarters of it on hand; and if your renovating process will make it

wholesome, why, you can see what a quag ’twould get me out of. I saw in

a moment there might be truth in it. But I should like to have it

proved; and of course you don’t care to tell the steps of the process

sufficiently for me to do that, without my paying ye well for’t first.”

The young man reflected a moment or two. “I don’t know that I have any

objection,” he said. “I’m going to another country, and curing bad corn

is not the line I’ll take up there. Yes, I’ll tell ye the whole of

it—you’ll make more out of it heere than I will in a foreign country.

Just look heere a minute, sir. I can show ye by a sample in my

carpet-bag.”

The click of a lock followed, and there was a sifting and rustling;

then a discussion about so many ounces to the bushel, and drying, and

refrigerating, and so on.

“These few grains will be sufficient to show ye with,” came in the

young fellow’s voice; and after a pause, during which some operation

seemed to be intently watched by them both, he exclaimed, “There, now,

do you taste that.”

“It’s complete!—quite restored, or—well—nearly.”

“Quite enough restored to make good seconds out of it,” said the

Scotchman. “To fetch it back entirely is impossible; Nature won’t stand

so much as that, but heere you go a great way towards it. Well, sir,

that’s the process, I don’t value it, for it can be but of little use

in countries where the weather is more settled than in ours; and I’ll

be only too glad if it’s of service to you.”

“But hearken to me,” pleaded Henchard. “My business you know, is in

corn and in hay, but I was brought up as a hay-trusser simply, and hay

is what I understand best though I now do more in corn than in the

other. If you’ll accept the place, you shall manage the corn branch

entirely, and receive a commission in addition to salary.”

“You’re liberal—very liberal, but no, no—I cannet!” the young man still

replied, with some distress in his accents.

“So be it!” said Henchard conclusively. “Now—to change the subject—one

good turn deserves another; don’t stay to finish that miserable supper.

Come to my house, I can find something better for ’ee than cold ham and

ale.”

Donald Farfrae was grateful—said he feared he must decline—that he

wished to leave early next day.

“Very well,” said Henchard quickly, “please yourself. But I tell you,

young man, if this holds good for the bulk, as it has done for the

sample, you have saved my credit, stranger though you be. What shall I

pay you for this knowledge?”

“Nothing at all, nothing at all. It may not prove necessary to ye to

use it often, and I don’t value it at all. I thought I might just as

well let ye know, as you were in a difficulty, and they were harrd upon

ye.”

Henchard paused. “I shan’t soon forget this,” he said. “And from a

stranger!... I couldn’t believe you were not the man I had engaged!

Says I to myself, ‘He knows who I am, and recommends himself by this

stroke.’ And yet it turns out, after all, that you are not the man who

answered my advertisement, but a stranger!”

“Ay, ay; that’s so,” said the young man.

Henchard again suspended his words, and then his voice came

thoughtfully: “Your forehead, Farfrae, is something like my poor

brother’s—now dead and gone; and the nose, too, isn’t unlike his. You

must be, what—five foot nine, I reckon? I am six foot one and a half

out of my shoes. But what of that? In my business, ’tis true that

strength and bustle build up a firm. But judgment and knowledge are

what keep it established. Unluckily, I am bad at science, Farfrae; bad

at figures—a rule o’ thumb sort of man. You are just the reverse—I can

see that. I have been looking for such as you these two year, and yet

you are not for me. Well, before I go, let me ask this: Though you are

not the young man I thought you were, what’s the difference? Can’t ye

stay just the same? Have you really made up your mind about this

American notion? I won’t mince matters. I feel you would be invaluable

to me—that needn’t be said—and if you will bide and be my manager, I

will make it worth your while.”

“My plans are fixed,” said the young man, in negative tones. “I have

formed a scheme, and so we need na say any more about it. But will you

not drink with me, sir? I find this Casterbridge ale warreming to the

stomach.”

“No, no; I fain would, but I can’t,” said Henchard gravely, the

scraping of his chair informing the listeners that he was rising to

leave. “When I was a young man I went in for that sort of thing too

strong—far too strong—and was well-nigh ruined by it! I did a deed on

account of it which I shall be ashamed of to my dying day. It made such

an impression on me that I swore, there and then, that I’d drink

nothing stronger than tea for as many years as I was old that day. I

have kept my oath; and though, Farfrae, I am sometimes that dry in the

dog days that I could drink a quarter-barrel to the pitching, I think

o’ my oath, and touch no strong drink at all.”

“I’ll no’ press ye, sir—I’ll no’ press ye. I respect your vow.”

“Well, I shall get a manager somewhere, no doubt,” said Henchard, with

strong feeling in his tones. “But it will be long before I see one that

would suit me so well!”

The young man appeared much moved by Henchard’s warm convictions of his

value. He was silent till they reached the door. “I wish I could

stay—sincerely I would like to,” he replied. “But no—it cannet be! it

cannet! I want to see the warrld.”