Hope Republican, Volume 2, Number 45, Hope, Bartholomew County, 1 March 1894 — Page 6

m mn immnnKE BY THOMAS HARDYCHAPTER XXX— Continued

“I must go rather a Ion" way back,” said Lucetta, the difficulty of explaining herself satisfactorily to the pondering one beside her growing more apparent at each syllabic. “You remember that trying case of conscience! told you of some time ago—about the first lover and the second lover.” She let out in jerky phrases a leading word or two o f the story she had told. “Oh, yes, I remember; the story of your friend,” said Elizabeth, dryly- regarding the irises of Lucetta’s eyes as though to catch their exact shade. “The two lovers—the old and the new; how she wanted to marry the second, but felt she ought to marry the first; so that the good she would not, that she did—exactly like ihe Apostle Paul.” “Oh, no; she didn’t do evil,” said Lucetta, hastily. “But you said that she —or, as I may say, you”—answered Elizabeth, dropping the mask, “were in honor and truth bound to 'marry the first.” Lucetta’s blush at being seen through came and went again as she replied, “You will never breathe this, will you, Elizabeth Jane?” “Certainly not, if you say not.” “Then I will tell you that the case is more complicated—worse in fact—than it seemed in my story. I and the first went to be married, and thought we were married. He was a widower, as we supposed. He had not heard of his first wife for many years. But the wife returned and we parted. She is now dead, and the husband comes paying me addresses again, saying, “Now, we’ll complete our marriage.’ But, Elizabeth Jane, all this amounts to a new courtship of me by him; I was absolved from all points by the return of the other woman.” “Have you not lately renewed your promise?” said the other, with quiet surmise. She had divined Man Number One.

“That was wrung from me by a threat of revelation.” “Yes, it was. But I think when any one gets coupled up with a man in the past so unfortunately as you have done, she ought to become his wife.” Lucetta’s countenance lost its sparkle. “He turned out to be a man I should be afraid to marry,’! she pleaded. “Really afraid. And it was not till after my renewed promise that I knew it.” “Then there is only one course left to decency and honesty. You must remain a single woman.” “But think again. Do consider “I am certain,” interrupted her companion, hardily. “I have guessed very well who the man is. My father; and I say it is him or nobody for you.” Any suspicion of lack of respectability was to Elizabeth Jane like a red rag to a bull, Her craving for correctness of environment was, indeed, almost vicious. Owing to her early troubles with .regard to her mother, a semblance of irregularity had terrors for her which those whose names are safeguarded from suspicion know nothing of. “You ought to marry Mr. Henchard or nobody—certainly not another man,” she went on, with a quivering lip, in whose movement two passions shared. “I don’t admit that,” said Lucetta, passionately. “Admit or not, it is true.” Lucetta covered her eyes with her right hand, as if she could plead_ no more, holding out her left to Elizabeth Jane.

■ “Why, you have married him,’' cried the latter, jumping up with pleasure after a glance at Lucetta’s fingers. “When did you do , it? Why did you not tell me,* instead of teasing me like this/ How very honorable of you! He did treat ray mother badly once, it seems, in a moment of intoxication. And it is true that he is stern sometimes. But you will rule him entirely, I am sure, with your beauty and wealth and accomplishments. You are the woman he will adore, ana we shall all three be happv together now. “Oh, my Elizabeth Jane!” cried Lucetta, distressfully. “’Tis somebody else that I have married! 1 was so desperate —so afraid of being forced to anything else—so afraid of any revelations that would quench his love for me, that I resolved to do it off-hand, come what might, and purchase a week of happiness at any cost. ” “You —have —married Mr. i’ arfrae!” cried Elizabeth Jane. Lucetta bowed. She had recovered herself. . “The bells are ringing on that account,” she said. “My husband is down-stairs. He will live here till a more suitable house is ready for us: and I have told him that I you to stay with me, just as before. “Let me think of it alone, the

girl quickly replied, corking up the turmoil of her feeling with great control. “ Yau shall. I am sure we shall be happy together.” Lucetta departed to join Donald below, a vague uneasiness floating over her joy at seeing him quite at home there. Not on account of her friend Elizabeth did she feel it; for of the bearings of Elizabeth Jane’s emotions she had not the least suspicion; but on Henchard’s alone. Now the instant decision of Susan Henchard’s daughter was to dwell in that house no more. Apart from her estimate of the propriety of Lu.cetta’s conduct, Parfrae had been so nearly her avowed lover that she felt she could not live there. It was still early in the evening when she hastily put on her things and went out. In a few minutes, knowing the ground, she had found a suitable lodging, and arranged to enter it that night. Returning and entering noiselessly, she took off her pretty dress,and arrayed herself in a plain one, packing up the other to keep as her best; for she would have to bo very economical now. She wrote a note to leave for Lucetta, who was closely shut up in the draw-ing-room with Parfrae; and then Elizabeth Jane called a man with a wheelbarrow; and seeing her boxes put into it, she trotted off down the street to her rooms. They were in the street in which Henchard lived, and almost opposite his door. Fere she sat down and considered the means of subsistence. The little annual sum settled on her by her stepfather would keep body and soul together. A wonderful skill in net-ting-of all sorts—acquired in childhood by making seines in Newson’s home —might serve her in good stead; and her studies, which she pursued unremittingly, might serve her in still better, o By this time the marriage that had taken place was known throughout Casterbridge; had been discussed noisily on curb stones, confidentially behind counters, and jovially at the King of Prussia. Whether Parfrae would pell his business and set up for a gentleman on his wife’s money, or whether he would show independence enough to stick to his trade in spite of his brilliant alliance, was a great point of interest. 1

CHAPTER XXXI, The retort of the furmity woman before the magistrates had spread; and in four-and-twenty hours there was not a person in Casterbridge who remained unacquainted with the story of Henchard’s mad freak at Weydon Priors Fair, long years before. The amends he had made in after-life were lost sight of in the dramatic glare, of the original act. Had the incident been well known of old and always, it might by this time have grown to be lightly regarded as the rather tall wild oat, but the single one, of a young man with whom the steady and mature (if somewhat headstrong) burgher of to-day had scarcely a point in common. But the act having lain as dead and buried ever since, the interspace of years was unperceived; and the black spot of his youth wore the aspect of ar recent crime. Small as the court incident had been in itself, it formed the edge or turn in the incline of Henchard’s fortunes. On that day —almost at that minute —he passed the ridue of prosperity and honor, and began to descend rapidly on the other side. It was strange how soon he sunk in esteem. Socially he had received a startling fillip downward; and having already lost commercial buoyancy from rash transactions, the velocity of his descent in both aspects became accelerated every hour. He now gazed more at the pavements, and less at the house fronts, when he walked about; more at the feet and legginsof men,and less into the pupils of their eyes with the blazing regard which formerly had made them blink. New events combined to undo him. It had been a bad r'ear for others besides himself, and the heavy failure of a debtor whom he had trusted implicitly completed the overthrow of his tottering credit. And now, in his desperation he failed to preserve that strict correspondence between bulk and sample, which is the soul of commerce in grain, For this one of his men was mainly to blame; that ■worthy, in his great unwisdom, having picked over the sample of an enormous quantity of second-rate corn which Henchard had in hand, and removed the pinched, blasted and smutted grains in great numbers. The produce, if honestly offered, would have created no scandal; but tho-'blunder of misrepresentation, coming at such a moment, dragged Henchard’s name into the ditch. The details of his failure were of

the ordinary kind. One day Elizabeth Jane was passing the Golden Crown, when she saw people bustling in and out more than usual when there was no market. A bystander informed her, with some surprise at her ignorance, that it was a meeting of the commissioners under Mr. Henchard’s bankruptcy. She felt quite tearful, and when she heard that he was present in the hotel, she wished to go in and see him, but was advised not to intrude that day. The room in which debtor and creditors had assembled was a front one, and Henchard, looking out oc the window, had caught sight of Elizabeth Jane through the wire blind. His examination had closed, and the creditors were leaving. The appearance of Elizabeth threw him into a reverie, till, turning his face from the window, and towering above all the rest, he called their attention for a moment more. His countenance had somewhat changed from the flush of prosperity; the black hair and whiskers were the same as ever, but a film of ash was over the rest. “Gentlemen,” he said, “over and above the assets that we’ve been talking about, and that appear on the balance sheet, there be these. It all belongs to ye, as much as everything else I’ve got, and I don't wish to keep it from you, not I.” Saying this, he took his gold watch from his pocket, and laid it on the table; then his purse—the yellow canvas money-bag, such as was carried by all farmers and dealers —untying it, and shaking the money out upon the table beside the watch. The latter he drew back quickly for an instant to remove the hair guard made and given him by Lucetta. “There, now you have all,” he said. “And I wish for your sakes ’twas more.” The creditors, farmers almost to a man, looked at the watch, and at the money, and into the street; when Parmer James Everdene spoke. “No, no, Henchard, he said, warmly. “We don’t want that. ’Tis honorable in ye, but keep it. What do you say, neighbors—do ye agree?” “Ay, sure; we don’t wish it at all," said Grower, another creditor. “Let him keep it, of course,” murmured another, in the background —a silent, reserved young man, named Boldwood, and the rest responded unanimously. “Well,” said the senior commissioner, addressing Henchard, “though the case is a desperate one, I am bound to admit that I have never met a debtor who behaved more fairly. I’ve proved the balance-sheet to be as honestly made out as it could possibly be; we have had no trouble; there have been no evasions and no concealments. The rashness of dealing which led to this unhappy situation is obvious enough; but as far as I can see, every attempt has been made to avoid wronging anybody.” Henchard was more affected by this than he cared to let them perceive, and he turned to the window again. A general murmur of agreement followed the commissioner’s words, and the meeting dispersed. When they were gone, Henchard regarded the watch they had returned to him. “’Tisn’t mine by rights,” he said to himself. “Why the devil didn’t they take it? I don’t want what don’t belong to me.” Moved by a recollection, he took the watch to the maker’s just opposite, and sold it there and then for what the tradesman offei’ed, and went with the proceeds to one among the smaller of his creditors, a cottager of Dummerford, in straitened circumstances, to whom he handed the money. Wheln everything was ticketed that Henchard had owned, and the auctions were in progress, there was quite a sympathetic reaction in the town, which till then for some timp past had done nothing but condemn him. Now that Henchard’s whole career was pictured distinctly to his neighbors, and they could see how admirably he had used his one talent of energy to create a position of affluence out of absolutely nothing—which was really all he could show when he came to the town as a journeyman hay-trusser, with his whimble and knife in his basket—they wondered, and regretted his fall. Try as she might, Elizabeth Jane could never meet with him. She believed in him still, though nobody else did; and she wanted to be allowed to forgive him for his roughness toward her, and to help him in his trouble. She wrote to him; he did not reply. She then went to the house ; — the great house she had lived in so happily for a time—with its front of dun brick, vitrified here and there, and its heavy sash bars: but Henchard was to be found there no more. The ex-Mayor had left the house of his prosperity and gone into Jopp’s house by the Priory Mill —the sad purlieu to which he had wandered on the night of his discovery that she was not his daughter. Thither she went. Elizabeth thought it odd that he had fixed on this spot to retire to. but assumed that necessity had no

choice. Trees which seemed old enough to have been planted by the friars still stoocj around, and the back-hatch of the original mill yet formed a cascade which had raised its terrific roar for centuries. The cottage itself was built of old stones from the long-dismantled priory, scraps of tracery, molded windowjambs and arch-labels being mixed in with the rubble of the walls. In this cottage he occupied a couple of rooms, Jopp, whom Henchard had previously employed, abused, cajoled and dismissed by turns being the householder. But even here her stepfather could not be seen. “Not by his daughter?” pleaded Elizabeth Jane. “By nobody—at present; that’s his order,” she was informed. Afterward she was passing by the corn stores and hay-barns which had been the headquarters of his business. She knew that he ruled there no longer, but it was with amazement that she regarded the familiar gateway. A smear of decisive leadcolored paint had been laid on to obliterate Henchard’s name, though its letters dimly loomed through like ships in a fog. Over these, in fresh white, spread the name of Parfrae. Abel Whittle was edging his skeleton in at the wicket, and she said; “Mr. Parfrae is master here?” “Ya-as, Miss Henchot,” he said. “Mr. Parfrae have bought the concern and all of we work-folk with it; and ’tis better for us than ’twas, though I shouldn’t say that to you as a daughter-law- We work harder, but we bean’t made afearecl now. It was fear made my few poor hairs so thin. No busting out, no slamming of doors, no meddling with yer eternal soul and all that; and though ’tis a shilling a week less, I’m the richer man; for what’s all the world if yer mind is always in a larry, Miss Henchet?” The intelligence was in a general sense true, and Henchard’s stores, which had remained in a paralyzed condition during the settlement of his bankruptcy, were stirred into activity again when the new tenant had possession. Thenceforward the full sacks, looped with the shining chain, went scurrying up and down under the cat-head; hairv arms were thrust out from the different doorways, and the grain was hauled in, trusses of hay were tossed anew in and out of the barns, and the wimbles creaked, while the scales and steelyards began to be busy where guess-work had formerly been the rule.

CHAPTER XXXII, Two bridges stood near the lower part of Casterbridge town. The first, of weather - stained brick, was at the end of High street, where a diverging branch of that thoroughfare ran round to the lowlying Hurnrnerford lanes, so that the precincts of the bridge formed the merging point of respectability and indigence. The second bridge of stone, was farther out on the highway; in fact, fairly in the meadows, though still within the town boundary. These bridges had speaking countenances. Every projection in each was worn down to obtuseness, partly by weather, more by friction from generations of loungers, whose toes and heels had from year to year made restless movements against these parapets as they stood there meditating on the aspect of affairs. In the case of the more friable bricks and stones even the flat faces were worn into hollows by the same mixed mechanism. The masonry of the top was clamped with iron at each point, since it had been no uncommon thing for desperate, men to wrench the coping off and throw it down the river, in reckless defiance of the magistrates. For to this pair of bridges gravitated all the failures of the town; those who had failed in business, in love, in sobriety, in crime. Why the unhappy hereabout usually chose the bridges for their meditations in preference to a railing, a gate, or a stile, was not so clear. There was a marked difference of quality between the personages who haunted the near bridge of brick and the personages who haunted the far one of stone. Those of lowest character preferred the former, adjoining the town; they did not mind the glare of the public eye. They had been of comparatively no account during their successes, and, though they might feel dispirited, they had no particular sense of shame in their ruin. Their hands were mostly kept in their pockets; they wore a leather strap round their waists, and boots that required a great deal of lacing, but seemed never to get any. Instead of saying the iron had entered into their souls, they said they were down on their luck. Jopp in his times of distress had often stood here; so had Mother Ouxsom, Christopher Coney, and poor Abel Whittle. The miserables who stood on the remoter bridge were of a politer stamp. They included bankrupts, hypochondriacs, persons who were what is called ‘‘out of a situation” from fault of lucklessness the inefficient of the professional class—

shabby-genteel men, who did not know ho v to get rid of the weary time between breakfast and dinnei, and the yet more weary time between dinner and dark. The eyes of this group were mostly directed over the parapet upon the running water below. A man seen there lookinging thus fixedly into the river was prettv sure to be one whom the world did not treat kindly for some reason or other. While those in straits on'the townward bridge did not mind who saw them so, and kept their backs to the parapet to survey the passers-by, those in straits on this never faced the road, never turned their heads at coming footsteps, but, sensitive to their condition, watched the current whenever a stranger approached, as if some strange fish interested them, though every finned thing had been poached out of the river years before. There and thus they would muse. If their grief were the grief of oppression, they would wish themselves kings; if their grief were poverty, wish themselves millionaires; if sin, they would wish they were saints or angels; if despised love, that they were one of the courted Adonises in the country round. Some had been known to stand and think so long with this fixed gaze downward that eventually they had allowed their poor carcasses to follow that gaze, and they were discovered the next morning in the pool beneath, out of reach of their troubles. To this bridge came Henchard, as the other unfortunates had come before him, his way thither being by the riverside path on the chilly edge of the town. Hero he was standing one windy afternoon when Hummerford church clock struck five. While the gusts were bringing the notes to his ears across the damp intervening flat, a man passed behind him, and greeted Henchard by name. Henchard turned slightly, and saw that tlie comer was Jopp, his old foreman, now employed elsewhere, to whom, though he hated him,' he had gone for lodgings, because Jopp was the one man in Casterbridge whose observation and opinion the fallen corn-merchant despised to the point of indifference. Henchard returned him a scarcely perceptible nod, and Jopp stopped. “He and she are gone into their new house to-dav,” said Jopp, “Oh,” said Henchard, absently. “Which house is that?” “Your old one.” “Gone into my house?” And starting up, Henchard added. “My house, of all others in the town!” “Well, as somebody was ,sure to live there, and you couldn’t it can do yo no harm that he’s the man.” It was quite true; he felt that it was doing him no harm. Farfrae, who had already taken yards and stores, had acquired possession of the house for the obvious convenience of its contiguity. And yet this act of his taking up residence within those roomy chambers while he, their former tenant, lived in a cottage, galled him indescribably. Jopp continued: “And you heard of that fellow who bought all of the best furniture at yonrsale? He was bidding for no other than Farfrae all the while. It has never been moved out of the house, and he’s already got the lease.”

“My furniture too! Surely he’ll buy my body and soul likewise.” “There's no saying he won’t, if you be willing to sell.” And having planted those wounds in the heart of his once imperious master, Jopp went on his way, while Henchard stared and stared into the racing river till the bridge seemed moving backward with him. The low land grew blacker, and the sky a deeper gray. When the landscape looked like a picture, blotted in with ink, another traveler approached the great stone bridge. He was driving a gig, his direction' being also townward. On the round of the middle of the arch the crifr stopped. “Mr. Henchard?” came from it in the voice of Farfrae. Henchard turned his face. _ Finding that he had guessed rightly, Farfrae told the man who accompanied him to drive home, while he alighted, and went up to his former friend. “I have heard that vou think ol emigrating, Mr. Henhcard,” he said. “Is it tr-rue? I have a real X’eason for asking.” Henchard withheld his answer for several instants, and then said: “Yes, it is true. I am going to where you were going to a few years ago, when I prevented you and got you to bide here. ‘Tis turn and turn about isn t it? Do ye mind how we stood like this on the bridge when I persuaded ye to stay? You then stood without a chattel to your name, and I was the master of the house in Corn Street. But now I stand without a stick or a rag, and the master of that house is you.” “Yes, yes; and it is so. Such is the course of things!” said Farfrae, arresting his facial movements. “Ha, ha, true!” cried Henchard, throwing himself into a mood cf jocularity. “Up and down! I’m