The Mayor of Casterbridge

Chapter 7

Elizabeth-Jane and her mother had arrived some twenty

minutes earlier. Outside the house they had stood and

considered whether even this homely place, though

recommended as moderate, might not be too serious in its

prices for their light pockets. Finally, however, they had

found courage to enter, and duly met Stannidge the landlord,

a silent man, who drew and carried frothing measures to this

room and to that, shoulder to shoulder with his waiting-

maids--a stately slowness, however, entering into his

ministrations by contrast with theirs, as became one whose

service was somewhat optional. It would have been

altogether optional but for the orders of the landlady, a

person who sat in the bar, corporeally motionless, but with

a flitting eye and quick ear, with which she observed and

heard through the open door and hatchway the pressing needs

of customers whom her husband overlooked though close at

hand. Elizabeth and her mother were passively accepted as

sojourners, and shown to a small bedroom under one of the

gables, where they sat down.

The principle of the inn seemed to be to compensate for the

antique awkwardness, crookedness, and obscurity of the

passages, floors, and windows, by quantities of clean linen

spread about everywhere, and this had a dazzling effect upon

the travellers.

"'Tis too good for us--we can't meet it!" said the elder

woman, looking round the apartment with misgiving as soon as

they were left alone.

"I fear it is, too," said Elizabeth. "But we must be

respectable."

"We must pay our way even before we must be respectable,"

replied her mother. "Mr. Henchard is too high for us to

make ourselves known to him, I much fear; so we've only our

own pockets to depend on."

"I know what I'll do," said Elizabeth-Jane after an interval

of waiting, during which their needs seemed quite forgotten

under the press of business below. And leaving the room,

she descended the stairs and penetrated to the bar.

If there was one good thing more than another which

characterized this single-hearted girl it was a willingness

to sacrifice her personal comfort and dignity to the common

weal.

"As you seem busy here to-night, and mother's not well off,

might I take out part of our accommodation by helping?" she

asked of the landlady.

The latter, who remained as fixed in the arm-chair as if she

had been melted into it when in a liquid state, and could

not now be unstuck, looked the girl up and down inquiringly,

with her hands on the chair-arms. Such arrangements as the

one Elizabeth proposed were not uncommon in country

villages; but, though Casterbridge was old-fashioned, the

custom was well-nigh obsolete here. The mistress of the

house, however, was an easy woman to strangers, and she made

no objection. Thereupon Elizabeth, being instructed by nods

and motions from the taciturn landlord as to where she could

find the different things, trotted up and down stairs with

materials for her own and her parent's meal.

While she was doing this the wood partition in the centre of

the house thrilled to its centre with the tugging of a bell-

pull upstairs. A bell below tinkled a note that was feebler

in sound than the twanging of wires and cranks that had

produced it.

"'Tis the Scotch gentleman," said the landlady omnisciently;

and turning her eyes to Elizabeth, "Now then, can you go and

see if his supper is on the tray? If it is you can take it

up to him. The front room over this."

Elizabeth-Jane, though hungry, willingly postponed serving

herself awhile, and applied to the cook in the kitchen

whence she brought forth the tray of supper viands, and

proceeded with it upstairs to the apartment indicated. The

accommodation of the Three Mariners was far from spacious,

despite the fair area of ground it covered. The room

demanded by intrusive beams and rafters, partitions,

passages, staircases, disused ovens, settles, and four-

posters, left comparatively small quarters for human beings.

Moreover, this being at a time before home-brewing was

abandoned by the smaller victuallers, and a house in which

the twelve-bushel strength was still religiously adhered to

by the landlord in his ale, the quality of the liquor was

the chief attraction of the premises, so that everything had

to make way for utensils and operations in connection

therewith. Thus Elizabeth found that the Scotchman was

located in a room quite close to the small one that had been

allotted to herself and her mother.

When she entered nobody was present but the young man

himself--the same whom she had seen lingering without the

windows of the King's Arms Hotel. He was now idly reading a

copy of the local paper, and was hardly conscious of her

entry, so that she looked at him quite coolly, and saw how

his forehead shone where the light caught it, and how nicely

his hair was cut, and the sort of velvet-pile or down that

was on the skin at the back of his neck, and how his cheek

was so truly curved as to be part of a globe, and how

clearly drawn were the lids and lashes which hid his bent

eyes.

She set down the tray, spread his supper, and went away

without a word. On her arrival below the landlady, who was

as kind as she was fat and lazy, saw that Elizabeth-Jane was

rather tired, though in her earnestness to be useful she was

waiving her own needs altogether. Mrs. Stannidge thereupon

said with a considerate peremptoriness that she and her

mother had better take their own suppers if they meant to

have any.

Elizabeth fetched their simple provisions, as she had

fetched the Scotchman's, and went up to the little chamber

where she had left her mother, noiselessly pushing open the

door with the edge of the tray. To her surprise her mother,

instead of being reclined on the bed where she had left her

was in an erect position, with lips parted. At Elizabeth's

entry she lifted her finger.

The meaning of this was soon apparent. The room allotted to

the two women had at one time served as a dressing-room to

the Scotchman's chamber, as was evidenced by signs of a door

of communication between them--now screwed up and pasted

over with the wall paper. But, as is frequently the case

with hotels of far higher pretensions than the Three

Mariners, every word spoken in either of these rooms was

distinctly audible in the other. Such sounds came through

now.

Thus silently conjured Elizabeth deposited the tray, and her

mother whispered as she drew near, "'Tis he."

"Who?" said the girl.

"The Mayor."

The tremors in Susan Henchard's tone might have led any

person but one so perfectly unsuspicious of the truth as the

girl was, to surmise some closer connection than the

admitted simple kinship as a means of accounting for them.

Two men were indeed talking in the adjoining chamber, the

young Scotchman and Henchard, who, having entered the inn

while Elizabeth-Jane was in the kitchen waiting for the

supper, had been deferentially conducted upstairs by host

Stannidge himself. The girl noiselessly laid out their

little meal, and beckoned to her mother to join her, which

Mrs. Henchard mechanically did, her attention being fixed on

the conversation through the door.

"I merely strolled in on my way home to ask you a question

about something that has excited my curiosity," said the

Mayor, with careless geniality. "But I see you have not

finished supper."

"Ay, but I will be done in a little! Ye needn't go, sir.

Take a seat. I've almost done, and it makes no difference

at all."

Henchard seemed to take the seat offered, and in a moment he

resumed: "Well, first I should ask, did you write this?" A

rustling of paper followed.

"Yes, I did," said the Scotchman.

"Then," said Henchard, "I am under the impression that we

have met by accident while waiting for the morning to keep

an appointment with each other? My name is Henchard, ha'n't

you replied to an advertisement for a corn-factor's manager

that I put into the paper--ha'n't you come here to see me

about it?"

"No," said the Scotchman, with some surprise.

"Surely you are the man," went on Henchard insistingly, "who

arranged to come and see me? Joshua, Joshua, Jipp--Jopp--

what was his name?"

"You're wrong!" said the young man. "My name is Donald

Farfrae. It is true I am in the corren trade--but I have

replied to no advertisement, and arranged to see no one. I

am on my way to Bristol--from there to the other side of the

warrld, to try my fortune in the great wheat-growing

districts of the West! I have some inventions useful to the

trade, and there is no scope for developing them heere."

"To America--well, well," said Henchard, in a tone of

disappointment, so strong as to make itself felt like a damp

atmosphere. "And yet I could have sworn you were the man!"

The Scotchman murmured another negative, and there was a

silence, till Henchard resumed: "Then I am truly and

sincerely obliged to you for the few words you wrote on that

paper."

"It was nothing, sir."

"Well, it has a great importance for me just now. This row

about my grown wheat, which I declare to Heaven I didn't

know to be bad till the people came complaining, has put me

to my wits' end. I've some hundreds of quarters of it on

hand; and if your renovating process will make it wholesome,

why, you can see what a quag 'twould get me out of. I saw

in a moment there might be truth in it. But I should like

to have it proved; and of course you don't care to tell the

steps of the process sufficiently for me to do that, without

my paying ye well for't first."

The young man reflected a moment or two. "I don't know that

I have any objection," he said. "I'm going to another

country, and curing bad corn is not the line I'll take up

there. Yes, I'll tell ye the whole of it--you'll make more

out of it heere than I will in a foreign country. Just look

heere a minute, sir. I can show ye by a sample in my

carpet-bag."

The click of a lock followed, and there was a sifting and

rustling; then a discussion about so many ounces to the

bushel, and drying, and refrigerating, and so on.

"These few grains will be sufficient to show ye with," came

in the young fellow's voice; and after a pause, during which

some operation seemed to be intently watched by them both,

he exclaimed, "There, now, do you taste that."

"It's complete!--quite restored, or--well--nearly."

"Quite enough restored to make good seconds out of it," said

the Scotchman. "To fetch it back entirely is impossible;

Nature won't stand so much as that, but heere you go a great

way towards it. Well, sir, that's the process, I don't

value it, for it can be but of little use in countries where

the weather is more settled than in ours; and I'll be only

too glad if it's of service to you."

"But hearken to me," pleaded Henchard. "My business you

know, is in corn and in hay, but I was brought up as a hay-

trusser simply, and hay is what I understand best though I

now do more in corn than in the other. If you'll accept the

place, you shall manage the corn branch entirely, and

receive a commission in addition to salary."

"You're liberal--very liberal, but no, no--I cannet!" the

young man still replied, with some distress in his accents.

"So be it!" said Henchard conclusively. "Now--to change the

subject--one good turn deserves another; don't stay to

finish that miserable supper. Come to my house, I can find

something better for 'ee than cold ham and ale."

Donald Farfrae was grateful--said he feared he must decline--

that he wished to leave early next day.

"Very well," said Henchard quickly, "please yourself. But I

tell you, young man, if this holds good for the bulk, as it

has done for the sample, you have saved my credit, stranger

though you be. What shall I pay you for this knowledge?"

"Nothing at all, nothing at all. It may not prove necessary

to ye to use it often, and I don't value it at all. I

thought I might just as well let ye know, as you were in a

difficulty, and they were harrd upon ye."

Henchard paused. "I shan't soon forget this," he said.

"And from a stranger!...I couldn't believe you were not the

man I had engaged! Says I to myself, 'He knows who I am, and

recommends himself by this stroke.' And yet it turns out,

after all, that you are not the man who answered my

advertisement, but a stranger!"

"Ay, ay; that's so," said the young man.

Henchard again suspended his words, and then his voice came

thoughtfully: "Your forehead, Farfrae, is something like my

poor brother's--now dead and gone; and the nose, too, isn't

unlike his. You must be, what--five foot nine, I reckon? I

am six foot one and a half out of my shoes. But what of

that? In my business, 'tis true that strength and bustle

build up a firm. But judgment and knowledge are what keep

it established. Unluckily, I am bad at science, Farfrae;

bad at figures--a rule o' thumb sort of man. You are just

the reverse--I can see that. I have been looking for such

as you these two year, and yet you are not for me. Well,

before I go, let me ask this: Though you are not the young

man I thought you were, what's the difference? Can't ye stay

just the same? Have you really made up your mind about this

American notion? I won't mince matters. I feel you would be

invaluable to me--that needn't be said--and if you will bide

and be my manager, I will make it worth your while."

"My plans are fixed," said the young man, in negative tones.

"I have formed a scheme, and so we need na say any more

about it. But will you not drink with me, sir? I find this

Casterbridge ale warreming to the stomach."

"No, no; I fain would, but I can't," said Henchard gravely,

the scraping of his chair informing the listeners that he

was rising to leave. "When I was a young man I went in for

that sort of thing too strong--far too strong--and was well-

nigh ruined by it! I did a deed on account of it which I

shall be ashamed of to my dying day. It made such an

impression on me that I swore, there and then, that I'd

drink nothing stronger than tea for as many years as I was

old that day. I have kept my oath; and though, Farfrae, I

am sometimes that dry in the dog days that I could drink a

quarter-barrel to the pitching, I think o' my oath, and

touch no strong drink at all."

"I'll no' press ye, sir--I'll no' press ye. I respect your

vow.

"Well, I shall get a manager somewhere, no doubt," said

Henchard, with strong feeling in his tones. "But it will be

long before I see one that would suit me so well!"

The young man appeared much moved by Henchard's warm

convictions of his value. He was silent till they reached

the door. "I wish I could stay--sincerely I would like to,"

he replied. "But no--it cannet be! it cannet! I want to see

the warrld."