The Mayor of Casterbridge

Chapter 18

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!"