第 十八 章 · Chapter XVIII

There came a shock which had been foreseen for some time by Elizabeth,

as the box passenger foresees the approaching jerk from some channel

across the highway.

Her mother was ill—too unwell to leave her room. Henchard, who treated

her kindly, except in moments of irritation, sent at once for the

richest, busiest doctor, whom he supposed to be the best. Bedtime came,

and they burnt a light all night. In a day or two she rallied.

Elizabeth, who had been staying up, did not appear at breakfast on the

second morning, and Henchard sat down alone. He was startled to see a

letter for him from Jersey in a writing he knew too well, and had

expected least to behold again. He took it up in his hands and looked

at it as at a picture, a vision, a vista of past enactments; and then

he read it as an unimportant finale to conjecture.

The writer said that she at length perceived how impossible it would be

for any further communications to proceed between them now that his

re-marriage had taken place. That such reunion had been the only

straightforward course open to him she was bound to admit.

“On calm reflection, therefore,” she went on, “I quite forgive you for

landing me in such a dilemma, remembering that you concealed nothing

before our ill-advised acquaintance; and that you really did set before

me in your grim way the fact of there being a certain risk in intimacy

with you, slight as it seemed to be after fifteen or sixteen years of

silence on your wife’s part. I thus look upon the whole as a misfortune

of mine, and not a fault of yours.

“So that, Michael, I must ask you to overlook those letters with which

I pestered you day after day in the heat of my feelings. They were

written whilst I thought your conduct to me cruel; but now I know more

particulars of the position you were in I see how inconsiderate my

reproaches were.

“Now you will, I am sure, perceive that the one condition which will

make any future happiness possible for me is that the past connection

between our lives be kept secret outside this isle. Speak of it I know

you will not; and I can trust you not to write of it. One safe-guard

more remains to be mentioned—that no writings of mine, or trifling

articles belonging to me, should be left in your possession through

neglect or forgetfulness. To this end may I request you to return to me

any such you may have, particularly the letters written in the first

abandonment of feeling.

“For the handsome sum you forwarded to me as a plaster to the wound I

heartily thank you.

“I am now on my way to Bristol, to see my only relative. She is rich,

and I hope will do something for me. I shall return through

Casterbridge and Budmouth, where I shall take the packet-boat. Can you

meet me with the letters and other trifles? I shall be in the coach

which changes horses at the Antelope Hotel at half-past five Wednesday

evening; I shall be wearing a Paisley shawl with a red centre, and thus

may easily be found. I should prefer this plan of receiving them to

having them sent.—I remain still, yours; ever,

“LUCETTA”

Henchard breathed heavily. “Poor thing—better you had not known me!

Upon my heart and soul, if ever I should be left in a position to carry

out that marriage with thee, I _ought_ to do it—I ought to do it,

indeed!”

The contingency that he had in his mind was, of course, the death of

Mrs. Henchard.

As requested, he sealed up Lucetta’s letters, and put the parcel aside

till the day she had appointed; this plan of returning them by hand

being apparently a little _ruse_ of the young lady for exchanging a

word or two with him on past times. He would have preferred not to see

her; but deeming that there could be no great harm in acquiescing thus

far, he went at dusk and stood opposite the coach-office.

The evening was chilly, and the coach was late. Henchard crossed over

to it while the horses were being changed; but there was no Lucetta

inside or out. Concluding that something had happened to modify her

arrangements he gave the matter up and went home, not without a sense

of relief. Meanwhile Mrs. Henchard was weakening visibly. She could not

go out of doors any more. One day, after much thinking which seemed to

distress her, she said she wanted to write something. A desk was put

upon her bed with pen and paper, and at her request she was left alone.

She remained writing for a short time, folded her paper carefully,

called Elizabeth-Jane to bring a taper and wax, and then, still

refusing assistance, sealed up the sheet, directed it, and locked it in

her desk. She had directed it in these words:—

“_Mr. Michael Henchard. Not to be opened till Elizabeth-Jane’s

wedding-day._”

The latter sat up with her mother to the utmost of her strength night

after night. To learn to take the universe seriously there is no

quicker way than to watch—to be a “waker,” as the country-people call

it. Between the hours at which the last toss-pot went by and the first

sparrow shook himself, the silence in Casterbridge—barring the rare

sound of the watchman—was broken in Elizabeth’s ear only by the

time-piece in the bedroom ticking frantically against the clock on the

stairs; ticking harder and harder till it seemed to clang like a gong;

and all this while the subtle-souled girl asking herself why she was

born, why sitting in a room, and blinking at the candle; why things

around her had taken the shape they wore in preference to every other

possible shape. Why they stared at her so helplessly, as if waiting for

the touch of some wand that should release them from terrestrial

constraint; what that chaos called consciousness, which spun in her at

this moment like a top, tended to, and began in. Her eyes fell

together; she was awake, yet she was asleep.

A word from her mother roused her. Without preface, and as the

continuation of a scene already progressing in her mind, Mrs. Henchard

said: “You remember the note sent to you and Mr. Farfrae—asking you to

meet some one in Durnover Barton—and that you thought it was a trick to

make fools of you?”

“Yes.”

“It was not to make fools of you—it was done to bring you together.

’Twas I did it.”

“Why?” said Elizabeth, with a start.

“I—wanted you to marry Mr. Farfrae.”

“O mother!” Elizabeth-Jane bent down her head so much that she looked

quite into her own lap. But as her mother did not go on, she said,

“What reason?”

“Well, I had a reason. ’Twill out one day. I wish it could have been in

my time! But there—nothing is as you wish it! Henchard hates him.”

“Perhaps they’ll be friends again,” murmured the girl.

“I don’t know—I don’t know.” After this her mother was silent, and

dozed; and she spoke on the subject no more.

Some little time later on Farfrae was passing Henchard’s house on a

Sunday morning, when he observed that the blinds were all down. He rang

the bell so softly that it only sounded a single full note and a small

one; and then he was informed that Mrs. Henchard was dead—just

dead—that very hour.

At the town-pump there were gathered when he passed a few old

inhabitants, who came there for water whenever they had, as at present,

spare time to fetch it, because it was purer from that original fount

than from their own wells. Mrs. Cuxsom, who had been standing there for

an indefinite time with her pitcher, was describing the incidents of

Mrs. Henchard’s death, as she had learnt them from the nurse.

“And she was white as marble-stone,” said Mrs. Cuxsom. “And likewise

such a thoughtful woman, too—ah, poor soul—that a’ minded every little

thing that wanted tending. ‘Yes,’ says she, ‘when I’m gone, and my last

breath’s blowed, look in the top drawer o’ the chest in the back room

by the window, and you’ll find all my coffin clothes, a piece of

flannel—that’s to put under me, and the little piece is to put under my

head; and my new stockings for my feet—they are folded alongside, and

all my other things. And there’s four ounce pennies, the heaviest I

could find, a-tied up in bits of linen, for weights—two for my right

eye and two for my left,’ she said. ‘And when you’ve used ’em, and my

eyes don’t open no more, bury the pennies, good souls and don’t ye go

spending ’em, for I shouldn’t like it. And open the windows as soon as

I am carried out, and make it as cheerful as you can for

Elizabeth-Jane.’”

“Ah, poor heart!”

“Well, and Martha did it, and buried the ounce pennies in the garden.

But if ye’ll believe words, that man, Christopher Coney, went and dug

’em up, and spent ’em at the Three Mariners. ‘Faith,’ he said, ‘why

should death rob life o’ fourpence? Death’s not of such good report

that we should respect ’en to that extent,’ says he.”

“’Twas a cannibal deed!” deprecated her listeners.

“Gad, then I won’t quite ha’e it,” said Solomon Longways. “I say it

to-day, and ’tis a Sunday morning, and I wouldn’t speak wrongfully for

a zilver zixpence at such a time. I don’t see noo harm in it. To

respect the dead is sound doxology; and I wouldn’t sell

skellintons—leastwise respectable skellintons—to be varnished for

’natomies, except I were out o’ work. But money is scarce, and throats

get dry. Why _should_ death rob life o’ fourpence? I say there was no

treason in it.”

“Well, poor soul; she’s helpless to hinder that or anything now,”

answered Mother Cuxsom. “And all her shining keys will be took from

her, and her cupboards opened; and little things a’ didn’t wish seen,

anybody will see; and her wishes and ways will all be as nothing!”