Chương Chương 40 · Chapter XL

Long before this time Henchard, weary of his ruminations on the bridge,

had repaired towards the town. When he stood at the bottom of the

street a procession burst upon his view, in the act of turning out of

an alley just above him. The lanterns, horns, and multitude startled

him; he saw the mounted images, and knew what it all meant.

They crossed the way, entered another street, and disappeared. He

turned back a few steps and was lost in grave reflection, finally

wending his way homeward by the obscure river-side path. Unable to rest

there he went to his stepdaughter’s lodging, and was told that

Elizabeth-Jane had gone to Mr. Farfrae’s. Like one acting in obedience

to a charm, and with a nameless apprehension, he followed in the same

direction in the hope of meeting her, the roysterers having vanished.

Disappointed in this he gave the gentlest of pulls to the door-bell,

and then learnt particulars of what had occurred, together with the

doctor’s imperative orders that Farfrae should be brought home, and how

they had set out to meet him on the Budmouth Road.

“But he has gone to Mellstock and Weatherbury!” exclaimed Henchard, now

unspeakably grieved. “Not Budmouth way at all.”

But, alas! for Henchard; he had lost his good name. They would not

believe him, taking his words but as the frothy utterances of

recklessness. Though Lucetta’s life seemed at that moment to depend

upon her husband’s return (she being in great mental agony lest he

should never know the unexaggerated truth of her past relations with

Henchard), no messenger was despatched towards Weatherbury. Henchard,

in a state of bitter anxiety and contrition, determined to seek Farfrae

himself.

To this end he hastened down the town, ran along the eastern road over

Durnover Moor, up the hill beyond, and thus onward in the moderate

darkness of this spring night till he had reached a second and almost a

third hill about three miles distant. In Yalbury Bottom, or Plain, at

the foot of the hill, he listened. At first nothing, beyond his own

heart-throbs, was to be heard but the slow wind making its moan among

the masses of spruce and larch of Yalbury Wood which clothed the

heights on either hand; but presently there came the sound of light

wheels whetting their felloes against the newly stoned patches of road,

accompanied by the distant glimmer of lights.

He knew it was Farfrae’s gig descending the hill from an indescribable

personality in its noise, the vehicle having been his own till bought

by the Scotchman at the sale of his effects. Henchard thereupon

retraced his steps along Yalbury Plain, the gig coming up with him as

its driver slackened speed between two plantations.

It was a point in the highway near which the road to Mellstock branched

off from the homeward direction. By diverging to that village, as he

had intended to do, Farfrae might probably delay his return by a couple

of hours. It soon appeared that his intention was to do so still, the

light swerving towards Cuckoo Lane, the by-road aforesaid. Farfrae’s

off gig-lamp flashed in Henchard’s face. At the same time Farfrae

discerned his late antagonist.

“Farfrae—Mr. Farfrae!” cried the breathless Henchard, holding up his

hand.

Farfrae allowed the horse to turn several steps into the branch lane

before he pulled up. He then drew rein, and said “Yes?” over his

shoulder, as one would towards a pronounced enemy.

“Come back to Casterbridge at once!” Henchard said. “There’s something

wrong at your house—requiring your return. I’ve run all the way here on

purpose to tell ye.”

Farfrae was silent, and at his silence Henchard’s soul sank within him.

Why had he not, before this, thought of what was only too obvious? He

who, four hours earlier, had enticed Farfrae into a deadly wrestle

stood now in the darkness of late night-time on a lonely road, inviting

him to come a particular way, where an assailant might have

confederates, instead of going his purposed way, where there might be a

better opportunity of guarding himself from attack. Henchard could

almost feel this view of things in course of passage through Farfrae’s

mind.

“I have to go to Mellstock,” said Farfrae coldly, as he loosened his

reins to move on.

“But,” implored Henchard, “the matter is more serious than your

business at Mellstock. It is—your wife! She is ill. I can tell you

particulars as we go along.”

The very agitation and abruptness of Henchard increased Farfrae’s

suspicion that this was a _ruse_ to decoy him on to the next wood,

where might be effectually compassed what, from policy or want of

nerve, Henchard had failed to do earlier in the day. He started the

horse.

“I know what you think,” deprecated Henchard running after, almost

bowed down with despair as he perceived the image of unscrupulous

villainy that he assumed in his former friend’s eyes. “But I am not

what you think!” he cried hoarsely. “Believe me, Farfrae; I have come

entirely on your own and your wife’s account. She is in danger. I know

no more; and they want you to come. Your man has gone the other way in

a mistake. O Farfrae! don’t mistrust me—I am a wretched man; but my

heart is true to you still!”

Farfrae, however, did distrust him utterly. He knew his wife was with

child, but he had left her not long ago in perfect health; and

Henchard’s treachery was more credible than his story. He had in his

time heard bitter ironies from Henchard’s lips, and there might be

ironies now. He quickened the horse’s pace, and had soon risen into the

high country lying between there and Mellstock, Henchard’s spasmodic

run after him lending yet more substance to his thought of evil

purposes.

The gig and its driver lessened against the sky in Henchard’s eyes; his

exertions for Farfrae’s good had been in vain. Over this repentant

sinner, at least, there was to be no joy in heaven. He cursed himself

like a less scrupulous Job, as a vehement man will do when he loses

self-respect, the last mental prop under poverty. To this he had come

after a time of emotional darkness of which the adjoining woodland

shade afforded inadequate illustration. Presently he began to walk back

again along the way by which he had arrived. Farfrae should at all

events have no reason for delay upon the road by seeing him there when

he took his journey homeward later on.

Arriving at Casterbridge Henchard went again to Farfrae’s house to make

inquiries. As soon as the door opened anxious faces confronted his from

the staircase, hall, and landing; and they all said in grievous

disappointment, “O—it is not he!” The manservant, finding his mistake,

had long since returned, and all hopes had centred upon Henchard.

“But haven’t you found him?” said the doctor.

“Yes.... I cannot tell ’ee!” Henchard replied as he sank down on a

chair within the entrance. “He can’t be home for two hours.”

“H’m,” said the surgeon, returning upstairs.

“How is she?” asked Henchard of Elizabeth, who formed one of the group.

“In great danger, father. Her anxiety to see her husband makes her

fearfully restless. Poor woman—I fear they have killed her!”

Henchard regarded the sympathetic speaker for a few instants as if she

struck him in a new light, then, without further remark, went out of

the door and onward to his lonely cottage. So much for man’s rivalry,

he thought. Death was to have the oyster, and Farfrae and himself the

shells. But about Elizabeth-Jane; in the midst of his gloom she seemed

to him as a pin-point of light. He had liked the look on her face as

she answered him from the stairs. There had been affection in it, and

above all things what he desired now was affection from anything that

was good and pure. She was not his own, yet, for the first time, he had

a faint dream that he might get to like her as his own,—if she would

only continue to love him.

Jopp was just going to bed when Henchard got home. As the latter

entered the door Jopp said, “This is rather bad about Mrs. Farfrae’s

illness.”

“Yes,” said Henchard shortly, though little dreaming of Jopp’s

complicity in the night’s harlequinade, and raising his eyes just

sufficiently to observe that Jopp’s face was lined with anxiety.

“Somebody has called for you,” continued Jopp, when Henchard was

shutting himself into his own apartment. “A kind of traveller, or

sea-captain of some sort.”

“Oh?—who could he be?”

“He seemed a well-be-doing man—had grey hair and a broadish face; but

he gave no name, and no message.”

“Nor do I gi’e him any attention.” And, saying this, Henchard closed

his door.

The divergence to Mellstock delayed Farfrae’s return very nearly the

two hours of Henchard’s estimate. Among the other urgent reasons for

his presence had been the need of his authority to send to Budmouth for

a second physician; and when at length Farfrae did come back he was in

a state bordering on distraction at his misconception of Henchard’s

motives.

A messenger was despatched to Budmouth, late as it had grown; the night

wore on, and the other doctor came in the small hours. Lucetta had been

much soothed by Donald’s arrival; he seldom or never left her side; and

when, immediately after his entry, she had tried to lisp out to him the

secret which so oppressed her, he checked her feeble words, lest

talking should be dangerous, assuring her there was plenty of time to

tell him everything.

Up to this time he knew nothing of the skimmington-ride. The dangerous

illness and miscarriage of Mrs. Farfrae was soon rumoured through the

town, and an apprehensive guess having been given as to its cause by

the leaders in the exploit, compunction and fear threw a dead silence

over all particulars of their orgie; while those immediately around

Lucetta would not venture to add to her husband’s distress by alluding

to the subject.

What, and how much, Farfrae’s wife ultimately explained to him of her

past entanglement with Henchard, when they were alone in the solitude

of that sad night, cannot be told. That she informed him of the bare

facts of her peculiar intimacy with the corn-merchant became plain from

Farfrae’s own statements. But in respect of her subsequent conduct—her

motive in coming to Casterbridge to unite herself with Henchard—her

assumed justification in abandoning him when she discovered reasons for

fearing him (though in truth her inconsequent passion for another man

at first sight had most to do with that abandonment)—her method of

reconciling to her conscience a marriage with the second when she was

in a measure committed to the first: to what extent she spoke of these

things remained Farfrae’s secret alone.

Besides the watchman who called the hours and weather in Casterbridge

that night there walked a figure up and down Corn Street hardly less

frequently. It was Henchard’s, whose retiring to rest had proved itself

a futility as soon as attempted; and he gave it up to go hither and

thither, and make inquiries about the patient every now and then. He

called as much on Farfrae’s account as on Lucetta’s, and on

Elizabeth-Jane’s even more than on either’s. Shorn one by one of all

other interests, his life seemed centring on the personality of the

stepdaughter whose presence but recently he could not endure. To see

her on each occasion of his inquiry at Lucetta’s was a comfort to him.

The last of his calls was made about four o’clock in the morning, in

the steely light of dawn. Lucifer was fading into day across Durnover

Moor, the sparrows were just alighting into the street, and the hens

had begun to cackle from the outhouses. When within a few yards of

Farfrae’s he saw the door gently opened, and a servant raise her hand

to the knocker, to untie the piece of cloth which had muffled it. He

went across, the sparrows in his way scarcely flying up from the

road-litter, so little did they believe in human aggression at so early

a time.

“Why do you take off that?” said Henchard.

She turned in some surprise at his presence, and did not answer for an

instant or two. Recognizing him, she said, “Because they may knock as

loud as they will; she will never hear it any more.”