The Mayor of Casterbridge

Chapter 12

On entering his own door after watching his wife out of

sight, the Mayor walked on through the tunnel-shaped passage

into the garden, and thence by the back door towards the

stores and granaries. A light shone from the office-window,

and there being no blind to screen the interior Henchard

could see Donald Farfrae still seated where he had left him,

initiating himself into the managerial work of the house by

overhauling the books. Henchard entered, merely observing,

"Don't let me interrupt you, if ye will stay so late."

He stood behind Farfrae's chair, watching his dexterity in

clearing up the numerical fogs which had been allowed to

grow so thick in Henchard's books as almost to baffle even

the Scotchman's perspicacity. The corn-factor's mien was

half admiring, and yet it was not without a dash of pity for

the tastes of any one who could care to give his mind to

such finnikin details. Henchard himself was mentally and

physically unfit for grubbing subtleties from soiled paper;

he had in a modern sense received the education of Achilles,

and found penmanship a tantalizing art.

"You shall do no more to-night," he said at length,

spreading his great hand over the paper. "There's time

enough to-morrow. Come indoors with me and have some

supper. Now you shall! I am determined on't." He shut the

account-books with friendly force.

Donald had wished to get to his lodgings; but he already saw

that his friend and employer was a man who knew no

moderation in his requests and impulses, and he yielded

gracefully. He liked Henchard's warmth, even if it

inconvenienced him; the great difference in their characters

adding to the liking.

They locked up the office, and the young man followed his

companion through the private little door which, admitting

directly into Henchard's garden, permitted a passage from

the utilitarian to the beautiful at one step. The garden

was silent, dewy, and full of perfume. It extended a long

way back from the house, first as lawn and flower-beds, then

as fruit-garden, where the long-tied espaliers, as old as

the old house itself, had grown so stout, and cramped, and

gnarled that they had pulled their stakes out of the ground

and stood distorted and writhing in vegetable agony, like

leafy Laocoons. The flowers which smelt so sweetly were not

discernible; and they passed through them into the house.

The hospitalities of the morning were repeated, and when

they were over Henchard said, "Pull your chair round to the

fireplace, my dear fellow, and let's make a blaze--there's

nothing I hate like a black grate, even in September." He

applied a light to the laid-in fuel, and a cheerful radiance

spread around.

"It is odd," said Henchard, "that two men should meet as we

have done on a purely business ground, and that at the end

of the first day I should wish to speak to 'ee on a family

matter. But, damn it all, I am a lonely man, Farfrae: I

have nobody else to speak to; and why shouldn't I tell it to

'ee?"

"I'll be glad to hear it, if I can be of any service," said

Donald, allowing his eyes to travel over the intricate wood-

carvings of the chimney-piece, representing garlanded lyres,

shields, and quivers, on either side of a draped ox-skull,

and flanked by heads of Apollo and Diana in low relief.

"I've not been always what I am now," continued Henchard,

his firm deep voice being ever so little shaken. He was

plainly under that strange influence which sometimes prompts

men to confide to the new-found friend what they will not

tell to the old. "I began life as a working hay-trusser,

and when I was eighteen I married on the strength o' my

calling. Would you think me a married man?"

"I heard in the town that you were a widower."

"Ah, yes--you would naturally have heard that. Well, I lost

my wife nineteen years ago or so--by my own fault....This is

how it came about. One summer evening I was travelling for

employment, and she was walking at my side, carying the

baby, our only child. We came to a booth in a country fair.

I was a drinking man at that time."

Henchard paused a moment, threw himself back so that his

elbow rested on the table, his forehead being shaded by his

hand, which, however, did not hide the marks of

introspective inflexibility on his features as he narrated

in fullest detail the incidents of the transaction with the

sailor. The tinge of indifference which had at first been

visible in the Scotchman now disappeared.

Henchard went on to describe his attempts to find his wife;

the oath he swore; the solitary life he led during the years

which followed. "I have kept my oath for nineteen years,"

he went on; "I have risen to what you see me now."

"Ay!"

"Well--no wife could I hear of in all that time; and being

by nature something of a woman-hater, I have found it no

hardship to keep mostly at a distance from the s*x. No wife

could I hear of, I say, till this very day. And now--she

has come back."

"Come back, has she!"

"This morning--this very morning. And what's to be done?"

"Can ye no' take her and live with her, and make some

amends?"

"That's what I've planned and proposed. But, Farfrae," said

Henchard gloomily, "by doing right with Susan I wrong

another innocent woman."

"Ye don't say that?"

"In the nature of things, Farfrae, it is almost impossible

that a man of my sort should have the good fortune to tide

through twenty years o' life without making more blunders

than one. It has been my custom for many years to run

across to Jersey in the the way of business, particularly in

the potato and root season. I do a large trade wi' them in

that line. Well, one autumn when stopping there I fell

quite ill, and in my illness I sank into one of those gloomy

fits I sometimes suffer from, on account o' the loneliness

of my domestic life, when the world seems to have the

blackness of hell, and, like Job, I could curse the day that

gave me birth."

"Ah, now, I never feel like it," said Farfrae.

"Then pray to God that you never may, young man. While in

this state I was taken pity on by a woman--a young lady I

should call her, for she was of good family, well bred, and

well educated--the daughter of some harum-scarum military

officer who had got into difficulties, and had his pay

sequestrated. He was dead now, and her mother too, and she

was as lonely as I. This young creature was staying at the

boarding-house where I happened to have my lodging; and when

I was pulled down she took upon herself to nurse me. From

that she got to have a foolish liking for me. Heaven knows

why, for I wasn't worth it. But being together in the same

house, and her feeling warm, we got naturally intimate. I

won't go into particulars of what our relations were. It is

enough to say that we honestly meant to marry. There arose

a scandal, which did me no harm, but was of course ruin to

her. Though, Farfrae, between you and me, as man and man, I

solemnly declare that philandering with womankind has

neither been my vice nor my virtue. She was terribly

careless of appearances, and I was perhaps more, because o'

my dreary state; and it was through this that the scandal

arose. At last I was well, and came away. When I was gone

she suffered much on my account, and didn't forget to tell

me so in letters one after another; till latterly, I felt I

owed her something, and thought that, as I had not heard of

Susan for so long, I would make this other one the only

return I could make, and ask her if she would run the risk

of Susan being alive (very slight as I believed) and marry

me, such as I was. She jumped for joy, and we should no

doubt soon have been married--but, behold, Susan appears!"

Donald showed his deep concern at a complication so far

beyond the degree of his simple experiences.

"Now see what injury a man may cause around him! Even after

that wrong-doing at the fair when I was young, if I had

never been so selfish as to let this giddy girl devote

herself to me over at Jersey, to the injury of her name, all

might now be well. Yet, as it stands, I must bitterly

disappoint one of these women; and it is the second. My

first duty is to Susan--there's no doubt about that."

"They are both in a very melancholy position, and that's

true!" murmured Donald.

"They are! For myself I don't care--'twill all end one way.

But these two." Henchard paused in reverie. "I feel I

should like to treat the second, no less than the first, as

kindly as a man can in such a case."

"Ah, well, it cannet be helped!" said the other, with

philosophic woefulness. "You mun write to the young lady,

and in your letter you must put it plain and honest that it

turns out she cannet be your wife, the first having come

back; that ye cannet see her more; and that--ye wish her

weel."

"That won't do. 'Od seize it, I must do a little more than

that! I must--though she did always brag about her rich

uncle or rich aunt, and her expectations from 'em--I must

send a useful sum of money to her, I suppose--just as a

little recompense, poor girl....Now, will you help me in

this, and draw up an explanation to her of all I've told ye,

breaking it as gently as you can? I'm so bad at letters."

"And I will."

"Now, I haven't told you quite all yet. My wife Susan has

my daughter with her--the baby that was in her arms at the

fair; and this girl knows nothing of me beyond that I am

some sort of relation by marriage. She has grown up in the

belief that the sailor to whom I made over her mother, and

who is now dead, was her father, and her mother's husband.

What her mother has always felt, she and I together feel

now--that we can't proclaim our disgrace to the girl by

letting her know the truth. Now what would you do?--I want

your advice."

"I think I'd run the risk, and tell her the truth. She'll

forgive ye both."

"Never!" said Henchard. "I am not going to let her know the

truth. Her mother and I be going to marry again; and it

will not only help us to keep our child's respect, but it

will be more proper. Susan looks upon herself as the

sailor's widow, and won't think o' living with me as

formerly without another religious ceremony--and she's

right."

Farfrae thereupon said no more. The letter to the young

Jersey woman was carefully framed by him, and the interview

ended, Henchard saying, as the Scotchman left, "I feel it a

great relief, Farfrae, to tell some friend o' this! You see

now that the Mayor of Casterbridge is not so thriving in his

mind as it seems he might be from the state of his pocket."

"I do. And I'm sorry for ye!" said Farfrae.

When he was gone Henchard copied the letter, and, enclosing

a cheque, took it to the post-office, from which he walked

back thoughtfully.

"Can it be that it will go off so easily!" he said. "Poor

thing--God knows! Now then, to make amends to Susan!"