The Mayor of Casterbridge

Chapter 6

Now the group outside the window had within the last few

minutes been reinforced by new arrivals, some of them

respectable shopkeepers and their assistants, who had come

out for a whiff of air after putting up the shutters for the

night; some of them of a lower class. Distinct from either

there appeared a stranger--a young man of remarkably

pleasant aspect--who carried in his hand a carpet-bag of the

smart floral pattern prevalent in such articles at that

time.

He was ruddy and of a fair countenance, bright-eyed, and

slight in build. He might possibly have passed by without

stopping at all, or at most for half a minute to glance in

at the scene, had not his advent coincided with the

discussion on corn and bread, in which event this history

had never been enacted. But the subject seemed to arrest

him, and he whispered some inquiries of the other

bystanders, and remained listening.

When he heard Henchard's closing words, "It can't be done,"

he smiled impulsively, drew out his pocketbook, and wrote

down a few words by the aid of the light in the window. He

tore out the leaf, folded and directed it, and seemed about

to throw it in through the open sash upon the dining-table;

but, on second thoughts, edged himself through the

loiterers, till he reached the door of the hotel, where one

of the waiters who had been serving inside was now idly

leaning against the doorpost.

"Give this to the Mayor at once," he said, handing in his

hasty note.

Elizabeth-Jane had seen his movements and heard the words,

which attracted her both by their subject and by their

accent--a strange one for those parts. It was quaint and

northerly.

The waiter took the note, while the young stranger

continued--

"And can ye tell me of a respectable hotel that's a little

more moderate than this?"

The waiter glanced indifferently up and down the street.

"They say the Three Mariners, just below here, is a very

good place," he languidly answered; "but I have never stayed

there myself."

The Scotchman, as he seemed to be, thanked him, and strolled

on in the direction of the Three Mariners aforesaid,

apparently more concerned about the question of an inn than

about the fate of his note, now that the momentary impulse

of writing it was over. While he was disappearing slowly

down the street the waiter left the door, and Elizabeth-Jane

saw with some interest the note brought into the dining-room

and handed to the Mayor.

Henchard looked at it carelessly, unfolded it with one hand,

and glanced it through. Thereupon it was curious to note an

unexpected effect. The nettled, clouded aspect which had

held possession of his face since the subject of his corn-

dealings had been broached, changed itself into one of

arrested attention. He read the note slowly, and fell into

thought, not moody, but fitfully intense, as that of a man

who has been captured by an idea.

By this time toasts and speeches had given place to songs,

the wheat subject being quite forgotten. Men were putting

their heads together in twos and threes, telling good

stories, with pantomimic laughter which reached convulsive

grimace. Some were beginning to look as if they did not

know how they had come there, what they had come for, or how

they were going to get home again; and provisionally sat on

with a dazed smile. Square-built men showed a tendency to

become hunchbacks; men with a dignified presence lost it in

a curious obliquity of figure, in which their features grew

disarranged and one-sided, whilst the heads of a few who had

dined with extreme thoroughness were somehow sinking into

their shoulders, the corners of their mouth and eyes being

bent upwards by the subsidence. Only Henchard did not

conform to these flexuous changes; he remained stately and

vertical, silently thinking.

The clock struck nine. Elizabeth-Jane turned to her

companion. "The evening is drawing on, mother," she said.

"What do you propose to do?"

She was surprised to find how irresolute her mother had

become. "We must get a place to lie down in," she murmured.

"I have seen--Mr. Henchard; and that's all I wanted to do."

"That's enough for to-night, at any rate," Elizabeth-Jane

replied soothingly. "We can think to-morrow what is best to

do about him. The question now is--is it not?--how shall we

find a lodging?"

As her mother did not reply Elizabeth-Jane's mind reverted

to the words of the waiter, that the Three Mariners was an

inn of moderate charges. A recommendation good for one

person was probably good for another. "Let's go where the

young man has gone to," she said. "He is respectable. What

do you say?"

Her mother assented, and down the street they went.

In the meantime the Mayor's thoughtfulness, engendered by

the note as stated, continued to hold him in abstraction;

till, whispering to his neighbour to take his place, he

found opportunity to leave the chair. This was just after

the departure of his wife and Elizabeth.

Outside the door of the assembly-room he saw the waiter, and

beckoning to him asked who had brought the note which had

been handed in a quarter of an hour before.

"A young man, sir--a sort of traveller. He was a Scotchman

seemingly."

"Did he say how he had got it?"

"He wrote it himself, sir, as he stood outside the window."

"Oh--wrote it himself....Is the young man in the hotel?"

"No, sir. He went to the Three Mariners, I believe."

The mayor walked up and down the vestibule of the hotel with

his hands under his coat tails, as if he were merely seeking

a cooler atmosphere than that of the room he had quitted.

But there could be no doubt that he was in reality still

possessed to the full by the new idea, whatever that might

be. At length he went back to the door of the dining-room,

paused, and found that the songs, toasts, and conversation

were proceeding quite satisfactorily without his presence.

The Corporation, private residents, and major and minor

tradesmen had, in fact, gone in for comforting beverages to

such an extent that they had quite forgotten, not only the

Mayor, but all those vast, political, religious, and social

differences which they felt necessary to maintain in the

daytime, and which separated them like iron grills. Seeing

this the Mayor took his hat, and when the waiter had helped

him on with a thin holland overcoat, went out and stood

under the portico.

Very few persons were now in the street; and his eyes, by a

sort of attraction, turned and dwelt upon a spot about a

hundred yards further down. It was the house to which the

writer of the note had gone--the Three Mariners--whose two

prominent Elizabethan gables, bow-window, and passage-light

could be seen from where he stood. Having kept his eyes on

it for a while he strolled in that direction.

This ancient house of accommodation for man and beast, now,

unfortunately, pulled down, was built of mellow sandstone,

with mullioned windows of the same material, markedly out of

perpendicular from the settlement of foundations. The bay

window projecting into the street, whose interior was so

popular among the frequenters of the inn, was closed with

shutters, in each of which appeared a heart-shaped aperture,

somewhat more attenuated in the right and left ventricles

than is seen in Nature. Inside these illuminated holes, at

a distance of about three inches, were ranged at this hour,

as every passer knew, the ruddy polls of Billy Wills the

glazier, Smart the shoemaker, Buzzford the general dealer,

and others of a secondary set of worthies, of a grade

somewhat below that of the diners at the King's Arms, each

with his yard of clay.

A four-centred Tudor arch was over the entrance, and over

the arch the signboard, now visible in the rays of an

opposite lamp. Hereon the Mariners, who had been

represented by the artist as persons of two dimensions only--

in other words, flat as a shadow--were standing in a row in

paralyzed attitudes. Being on the sunny side of the street

the three comrades had suffered largely from warping,

splitting, fading, and shrinkage, so that they were but a

half-invisible film upon the reality of the grain, and

knots, and nails, which composed the signboard. As a matter

of fact, this state of things was not so much owing to

Stannidge the landlord's neglect, as from the lack of a

painter in Casterbridge who would undertake to reproduce the

features of men so traditional.

A long, narrow, dimly-lit passage gave access to the inn,

within which passage the horses going to their stalls at the

back, and the coming and departing human guests, rubbed

shoulders indiscriminately, the latter running no slight

risk of having their toes trodden upon by the animals. The

good stabling and the good ale of the Mariners, though

somewhat difficult to reach on account of there being but

this narrow way to both, were nevertheless perseveringly

sought out by the sagacious old heads who knew what was what

in Casterbridge.

Henchard stood without the inn for a few instants; then

lowering the dignity of his presence as much as possible by

buttoning the brown holland coat over his shirt-front, and

in other ways toning himself down to his ordinary everyday

appearance, he entered the inn door.