Chương Chương 28 · Chapter XXVIII

The next morning Henchard went to the Town Hall below Lucetta’s house,

to attend Petty Sessions, being still a magistrate for the year by

virtue of his late position as Mayor. In passing he looked up at her

windows, but nothing of her was to be seen.

Henchard as a Justice of the Peace may at first seem to be an even

greater incongruity than Shallow and Silence themselves. But his rough

and ready perceptions, his sledge-hammer directness, had often served

him better than nice legal knowledge in despatching such simple

business as fell to his hands in this Court. To-day Dr. Chalkfield, the

Mayor for the year, being absent, the corn-merchant took the big chair,

his eyes still abstractedly stretching out of the window to the ashlar

front of High-Place Hall.

There was one case only, and the offender stood before him. She was an

old woman of mottled countenance, attired in a shawl of that nameless

tertiary hue which comes, but cannot be made—a hue neither tawny,

russet, hazel, nor ash; a sticky black bonnet that seemed to have been

worn in the country of the Psalmist where the clouds drop fatness; and

an apron that had been white in time so comparatively recent as still

to contrast visibly with the rest of her clothes. The steeped aspect of

the woman as a whole showed her to be no native of the country-side or

even of a country-town.

She looked cursorily at Henchard and the second magistrate, and

Henchard looked at her, with a momentary pause, as if she had reminded

him indistinctly of somebody or something which passed from his mind as

quickly as it had come. “Well, and what has she been doing?” he said,

looking down at the charge sheet.

“She is charged, sir, with the offence of disorderly female and

nuisance,” whispered Stubberd.

“Where did she do that?” said the other magistrate.

“By the church, sir, of all the horrible places in the world!—I caught

her in the act, your worship.”

“Stand back then,” said Henchard, “and let’s hear what you’ve got to

say.”

Stubberd was sworn in, the magistrate’s clerk dipped his pen, Henchard

being no note-taker himself, and the constable began—

“Hearing a’ illegal noise I went down the street at twenty-five minutes

past eleven P.M. on the night of the fifth instinct, Hannah Dominy.

When I had—

“Don’t go so fast, Stubberd,” said the clerk.

The constable waited, with his eyes on the clerk’s pen, till the latter

stopped scratching and said, “yes.” Stubberd continued: “When I had

proceeded to the spot I saw defendant at another spot, namely, the

gutter.” He paused, watching the point of the clerk’s pen again.

“Gutter, yes, Stubberd.”

“Spot measuring twelve feet nine inches or thereabouts from where I—”

Still careful not to outrun the clerk’s penmanship Stubberd pulled up

again; for having got his evidence by heart it was immaterial to him

whereabouts he broke off.

“I object to that,” spoke up the old woman, “‘spot measuring twelve

feet nine or thereabouts from where I,’ is not sound testimony!”

The magistrates consulted, and the second one said that the bench was

of opinion that twelve feet nine inches from a man on his oath was

admissible.

Stubberd, with a suppressed gaze of victorious rectitude at the old

woman, continued: “Was standing myself. She was wambling about quite

dangerous to the thoroughfare and when I approached to draw near she

committed the nuisance, and insulted me.”

“‘Insulted me.’ ...Yes, what did she say?”

“She said, ‘Put away that dee lantern,’ she says.”

“Yes.”

“Says she, ‘Dost hear, old turmit-head? Put away that dee lantern. I

have floored fellows a dee sight finer-looking than a dee fool like

thee, you son of a bee, dee me if I haint,’ she says.

“I object to that conversation!” interposed the old woman. “I was not

capable enough to hear what I said, and what is said out of my hearing

is not evidence.”

There was another stoppage for consultation, a book was referred to,

and finally Stubberd was allowed to go on again. The truth was that the

old woman had appeared in court so many more times than the magistrates

themselves, that they were obliged to keep a sharp look-out upon their

procedure. However, when Stubberd had rambled on a little further

Henchard broke out impatiently, “Come—we don’t want to hear any more of

them cust dees and bees! Say the words out like a man, and don’t be so

modest, Stubberd; or else leave it alone!” Turning to the woman, “Now

then, have you any questions to ask him, or anything to say?”

“Yes,” she replied with a twinkle in her eye; and the clerk dipped his

pen.

“Twenty years ago or thereabout I was selling of furmity in a tent at

Weydon Fair——”

“‘Twenty years ago’—well, that’s beginning at the beginning; suppose

you go back to the Creation!” said the clerk, not without satire.

But Henchard stared, and quite forgot what was evidence and what was

not.

“A man and a woman with a little child came into my tent,” the woman

continued. “They sat down and had a basin apiece. Ah, Lord’s my life! I

was of a more respectable station in the world then than I am now,

being a land smuggler in a large way of business; and I used to season

my furmity with rum for them who asked for’t. I did it for the man; and

then he had more and more; till at last he quarrelled with his wife,

and offered to sell her to the highest bidder. A sailor came in and bid

five guineas, and paid the money, and led her away. And the man who

sold his wife in that fashion is the man sitting there in the great big

chair.” The speaker concluded by nodding her head at Henchard and

folding her arms.

Everybody looked at Henchard. His face seemed strange, and in tint as

if it had been powdered over with ashes. “We don’t want to hear your

life and adventures,” said the second magistrate sharply, filling the

pause which followed. “You’ve been asked if you’ve anything to say

bearing on the case.”

“That bears on the case. It proves that he’s no better than I, and has

no right to sit there in judgment upon me.”

“’Tis a concocted story,” said the clerk. “So hold your tongue!”

“No—’tis true.” The words came from Henchard. “’Tis as true as the

light,” he said slowly. “And upon my soul it does prove that I’m no

better than she! And to keep out of any temptation to treat her hard

for her revenge, I’ll leave her to you.”

The sensation in the court was indescribably great. Henchard left the

chair, and came out, passing through a group of people on the steps and

outside that was much larger than usual; for it seemed that the old

furmity dealer had mysteriously hinted to the denizens of the lane in

which she had been lodging since her arrival, that she knew a queer

thing or two about their great local man Mr. Henchard, if she chose to

tell it. This had brought them hither.

“Why are there so many idlers round the Town Hall to-day?” said Lucetta

to her servant when the case was over. She had risen late, and had just

looked out of the window.

“Oh, please, ma’am, ’tis this larry about Mr. Henchard. A woman has

proved that before he became a gentleman he sold his wife for five

guineas in a booth at a fair.”

In all the accounts which Henchard had given her of the separation from

his wife Susan for so many years, of his belief in her death, and so

on, he had never clearly explained the actual and immediate cause of

that separation. The story she now heard for the first time.

A gradual misery overspread Lucetta’s face as she dwelt upon the

promise wrung from her the night before. At bottom, then, Henchard was

this. How terrible a contingency for a woman who should commit herself

to his care.

During the day she went out to the Ring and to other places, not coming

in till nearly dusk. As soon as she saw Elizabeth-Jane after her return

indoors she told her that she had resolved to go away from home to the

seaside for a few days—to Port-Bredy; Casterbridge was so gloomy.

Elizabeth, seeing that she looked wan and disturbed, encouraged her in

the idea, thinking a change would afford her relief. She could not help

suspecting that the gloom which seemed to have come over Casterbridge

in Lucetta’s eyes might be partially owing to the fact that Farfrae was

away from home.

Elizabeth saw her friend depart for Port-Bredy, and took charge of

High-Place Hall till her return. After two or three days of solitude

and incessant rain Henchard called at the house. He seemed disappointed

to hear of Lucetta’s absence and though he nodded with outward

indifference he went away handling his beard with a nettled mien.

The next day he called again. “Is she come now?” he asked.

“Yes. She returned this morning,” replied his stepdaughter. “But she is

not indoors. She has gone for a walk along the turnpike-road to

Port-Bredy. She will be home by dusk.”

After a few words, which only served to reveal his restless impatience,

he left the house again.