Hope Republican, Volume 2, Number 48, Hope, Bartholomew County, 22 March 1894 — Page 6

THE MRYOR OF MSTERBRliE BY THOMAS HARDYCHAPTER XXXV— Continued

“Ah! it is Henchard, I think?” laid Donald. “Yes,” said Henchard. “I have been looking for you; I have some news to tell you. But no; I won't, interrupt you now,” Farfrae said, his eyes for the first time falling on the female figure. ‘‘It don’t matter,” said Henchard, quietly perceiving that Donald had no suspicion of the personality of his companion, owing to the unusual wrappings she wore. “Is the news serious?” “ Tis good news,” said Farfrae, cheerfully. “News I’m right glad to have to tell ye, man. About the seed business, you know. We shall be able to arrange it for ye, after all.” They had walked on together through the gloom, Henchard drawing Lucetta’s arm through his own to lend a delusive aspect to the rendezvous he had been surprised in, and keeping her on the outside. Fartrae proceeded to state the details of the proposal, which he did without reserve, being under the impression that if, as .t seemed, Henchard was about to contract another marriage he could have no secrets from his future partner. “Well, an’ will ye accept?” he asked. Henchard, feeling how deeply he had wronged Farfrae in suspecting him of enmity to the scheme, could not reply at once, and a certain pride kept him from jumping at the offer. He thanked Donald for his exertions in his behalf and said he would think the matter over; adding, “I have still strong arms, you know, and can keep myself without assistance, as far as that goes.” “And will add another to yourself •oon, apparently,’’said Farfrae playfully, nodding to Henchard's companion. Henchard made no answer to this, and feeling himself one too many in such circumstances, Farfrae bade them good night and wept his way. Lucetta and Henchard parted immediately Donald had left them, Lucetta passionately longing to get back to her husband, whose bearing toward Henchard had so moved her during her enforced silence as almost to lead her to fling her arms around his neck regardless of .consequences. Shq crept in doors like, a shade and ascended to her room. When she had restored herself to her natural hues she went down and found her husband in the dining room “Well. Lucetta, I’ve a bit of news for ye,” he said, gaylv. “I think poor Heuchard is going to console himself by speculating in A wife once more. I met him courting just now. ” CHAPTER XXXVI. Returning from her appointment Lucetta had seen a man waiting by the lamp nearest her own door. When she stopped to go in he came and spoke to her. It was Jopp. He begged her pardon for addressing her. But he had heard that Mr. Farfrae had been applied to by a neighboring corn merchant to recommend a working partner: if so, he wished to offer himself. He could give good security, and had stated as much to Mr. Farfrae in a letter; but he would feel much obliged if Lucetta would say a word in his favor to her husband. “It is a thing I know nothing about.” said Lucetta, coldly. “But you can testify to my trustworthiness better than anybody, ma’am,” said Jopp. “I was in Jersey several years,, and knew you there by sight.” ‘ “Indeed,” she replied. But I knew nothing of you.” “I think, ma’am, that a word or two from you would secure for me what I covet very much,” he persisted. . . , She steadily refused to have anything to do with the affair, and cutting him short because of her anxiety to get indoors before her husband should miss her, left him on the pavement. „ . , , He watched her till she had vanished. and then he went home. When he got there he sat down iu the fireless chimney-corner, looking at the iron dogs, and the wood laid across them for heating the morning kettle. A movement upstairs disturbed him. and Henchard came down from his bedroom, where he seemed to have been rumaging boxes. . ., , , k “I wish,” said Henchard, you would do me a service, Jopp—now, to-night, I mean, if you can. Leave this at Mrs. Farfrae’s for her. 1 should take it myself, of course, but I don’t wish to be seen there. He handed a package in brown paper, sealed. Henchard had been m good as his word. Immediately on coming indoors he had searched over his few belongings, auT every scrap of Lucetta’s writing that he

possessed was here. Jopp indifferently expressed his willingness. “Well, how have ye got on today?” ids lodger asked. “Any prospect of an opening?” “I am afraid not,” said Jopp, who had not told the other of his application to Farfrae. “There never will be in Casterbridge,” declared Henchard,decisively. “You must roam further afield.” He said good night to Jopp, and returned to his own part of the house. Jopp sat on till his eyes were attracted by the shadow of the candlesnuff on the wait, and looking at the original, he found that it had formed itself into a head like a red-hot cauliflower. Henchard's packet next met his gaze. He knew there had been something of the nature of wooingbetween Henchard and the now Mrs. Farfrao, and his vague ideas on the subject narrowed themselves down to these: Henchard had a parcel belonging to Mrs. Farfrae, and ho had reasons for not returning that parcel to her in person. What could be inside it? So he went on and on, till, animated by resentment at Lucetta’s haughtiness, as he thought it, and curiosity to learn if there were any weak sides to this transaction with Henchard, he examined the package. The pen and all its relations being awkward tools in Henchard's hands, he had affixed the seals without an impression, it never occurring to him that the efficacy of such a fastening depended on this. Jopp was far less of a tyro; he lifted one of the seals with his penknife, peeped in at the end again by simply softening the wax with the candle, and went off with the parcel,as requested. His path was by the riverside at the foot of the town. Coming into the light at the bridge which stood at the end of High street, he beheld lounging there Mother Cuxsom and Nance Mockridge. “We be just going down Mixen Lane way, to look into Peter’s Finger afore creeping to bed,” said Mrs. Cuxsdtn. “There’s a fiddle and tambourine going on there. Lord, what’s all the world —do ye come along too. Jopp?—’twon’t hinder ye five minutes.” Jopp had. mostly kept himself out of this company, but present circumstances made him somewhat more reckless than usual, and without many words fie decided to go to his destination that way. Though the upper part of Dummerford was mainly composed of a curious congeries of barns and farmsteads, there_ was a less picturesque side to the parish. This was Mixen Lane, now in great part pulled down. Mixen Lane was the Adullam of all the surrounding villages. It was the biding place of those who were in distress and in debt, and \ trouble of every kind. Farm laborers and other peasants who combined a little poaching with their farming, and a little brawling and bibbing with their poaching, found themselves sooner or later in Mixen Lane. Rural mechanics too idle to mechanize, i-ural servants too rebellious to serve, drifted or were forced into Mixen Lane.' The lane and it surrounding thick- 1 et of thatched cottages stretched out; like a spit into the moist and misty [ lowland. Penury, as may be sup- j posed, was no stranger here. Much ! that was poor, much that was low, some things that were shameful, could be seen in Mixen Lane. Vice ran freely in and out certain of the doors of the neighborhood; recklessness dwelt under the roof with the crooked chimney, shame in some bay windows; theft (in times of privation) in the thatched and mudwalled houses by the sallows. Even slaughter had not been altogether unknown here. In a block of cottages up an alley there might have been erected an altar to disease in times gone by. Such was Mixen Lane in the years when Henchard and were mayors. Yet this mildewed leaf in the sturdy -and flourishing Casterbridge plant lay close to the open country, not a hundred yards from a row of noble elms, and commanding, a view across the moor of airy uplands and corn-fields. A brook divided the moor frorp the tenements, and to outward view there was no way across it —no way to the houseis but round about by the road. ■ But under every household’s stairs there was kept a mysterious plank nine inches wide, which plank was a secret bridge. If ,you, as one of those refugee housholders, came in from business after dark —and this was the business time here —you stealthily crossed the moor, a, proached the border of the aforesaid brook, and whistled opposite the house to which you belonged. A shape thereupon made its appear* ance on the other side bearing the bridge on end against the sky; it was

lowered; you crossed, and a hand helped you to land yourself, together with the pheasants and hare gathered from neighboring manors. You sold theravslyly next morning, and the day after you stood before the magistrates, with the eyes of all your sympathizing neighbors concentrated on your back. You disappeared for a time; then you were again found quietly living in Mixen Lane. Walking along the lane at dusk, the stranger was struck by two or three peculiar features therein. One was an intermittent rumbling from the back premises of the inn situate there; this meant a skittle-alley. Another was the extensive prevalence of whistling in the various domiciles, a piped note of some kind coming from nearly every open door. Another was the frequency of white aprons over dingy gowns among the women around the doorways. A white apron is a suspicious vesture in situations where spotlessness is difficult; moreover the industry and cleanliness which the white apron expressed were belied by the postures and gaits of the women who wore it, their knuckles being mostly on their hips (in an attitude which lent them the aspect of two-handled mugs), and their shoulders against door-posts, while there was a curious alacrity in the turn of each honest woman’s head upon her neck and in the twirl of her honest eyes at any noise resembling a masculine footfall along the lane. Yet amid so much that was bad, needy respectability also found a home. Under some of the roofs abode pure and virtuous souls whose presence there was due to necessity, and to that alone. Families from decayed villages—families of that once bulky, but now nearly extinct, section of village society called “liviers,” or life-holders —those whose roof-trees had fallenwith the expiring of their term of holding, compelling them to quit the rural spot that had been their home for generations—came here, unless they chose to lie under a hedge by the wayside. The inn called Peter’s Finger was the church of Mixen Lane. It was centrally situate, as such places should be, and bore about the same social relation to the King of Prussia as the latter bore to the Golden Crown. At first sight the inn was so respectable as to be puzzling. The front door was kept shut, and the step was so clean that evi. dently but few persons entered over its sanded surface. But at the corner of the public-house was a slit, dividing it from the next building. Half way up the slit was a narrow door, shiny and paintless from the rub of infinite hands and shoulders. This was the actual entrance to Peter's Finger, A pedestrian would be seen abstractedly passing along Mixen Lane; and then, in a moment, he would vanish, causing the gazer to blink like Colonel Ashton at the disappearance of Ravenswood. That abstracted pedestrian had edged into the slit by the adroit fillip of his person sideways; from the slit he edged into the tavern by a similar exercise of skill. The,company at the King of Prussia were persons of quality in comparison with the company which gathered here; though it must be admitted that the lowest fringe of the King’s party touched the crest of Peter’s at all points. Waifs and strays of all sorts loitered about there. The landlady was a virtuous woman,who had been unjustly sent to jail as an accessory to something or other after the fact. She underwent her year, and had worn a martyr’s countenance ever since, except at times of meeting the constable who took her, when she winked her eye. To this house Jopp and his acquaintance had arrived. The settles on which they sat down wore thin and tall, their tops being guyed by pieces of twine to hooks in the ceiling; for when the guests grew boisterous the settles would rock and overturn without some such security. The thunder of bowls echoed from the back yard; swingles hung behind the blower of the chimney; and expoachers and ex-gamekeepers whom princes had persecuted without a cause (in their own view), sat elbowing each other —men who in past times had met in fights under the moon, till lapse of sentences on the one part, and loss of favor and expulsion on the other, brought them here together to a common level, where they sat calmly together discussing old times. “Dost mind how you could chuck a trout ashore with a bramble, and not ruffle the stream, Chari?” a deposed keeper was saying. “ ’Twas at that I caught ’ee once, if you can mind?” “Ay; that can I. But- the worst larry for me was that pheasant business at Horewood. The wife sweared false that time, Joe—oh, by gad she did! —there’s no denying it.” “How was that?” asked Jopp. “Why, Joe collared me, and wo rolled down together, close to his garden hedge. Hearing the noise out ran his wife with the oven pyle, and it being dark under the trees she couldn’t see which was uppermost. ‘Where beest thee, Joe,

under or top?’ she screeched. ‘Oh j —under, by gad!' says ho. She then began to rap down upon my poor I back and ribs with the pyle. till we'd j roll over again. ‘Where beest how, i dear Joe, under or top?’ she’d scream | again. By George, ’twas through j her I was tookl And then when we 1 got up in hall she sware that the | cock-pheasant was one of her rearing, when 'twas not your bird at all, j Joe; 'twas Squire Brown’s bird — that’s whose 'twas —one that we'd picked off as we passed his wood an j hour afore. It did hurt my feelings 1 to be so wronged 1 Ah, well —’tis ! over now.” “But I might have had ye days 1 afore that,” said the keeper. “1 ( was within a few yards of 'ee dozens j of times, with a sight more of birds : than that poor one.” “Yes—’tis not our greatest doings j that the world gets wind of,” said the furmity woman, who, lately set- j tied in this purlieu, sat among the rest. Having traveled a great deal ; in her time, she spoke with cosrnop- \ olitan largeness of idea. It was she ! who presently asked Jopp what was ' the parcel he kept so snugly under ! his arm. “Ah, therein lies a grarxi aefcret,” said Jopp. “It is the passion of j love. To think that a woman should love one man so well, and hate an- ; dther so unmercifully!” “Who’s the object of your meditation, sir?” “One that chaws high in this town. | I'd like to shame her! Upon my t life ’twould be as good as a play to j read her love letters, the proud | piece of silk end wax work! For 'tis her love letters that I’ve got here.” | “Love letter? then let's hear ’em, \ good soul,” said Mother Cuxsom. t “Lord, do ye mind, Richard, what fools we used to be when we were younger? getting a school boy to write ’em for us; and giving him a penny, do ye mind, not to tell other folks what he’d put inside, do ye mind? and how you’d kiss and cole me, do ye mind?” By this time Jopp had pushed his finger under the seals, and unfastened the letters, tumbling them over and picking up one here and there at random, which he read aloud. These passages soon began to uncover the secret which Lucetta j bad so earnestly hoped to keep bur- j ied, though the epistles, being allu- | sive only, did not make it altogether plain. “Mrs. Farfrae wrote that!” said [ Nance Mockridge. “ ’Tis a humbling j thing for us, as respectable women, that one of the same sex could do it. ■ And now she's vowed herself to an- j other man!” “So much the better for her,” said j the furmity woman. “Ah. I saved her from a real bad marriage, and ■ she’s never been the one to thank I me.” “I say, what a good foundation for a skimmity ride,” said Nance. j “True,” said Mrs. Cuxsom, reflecting. “’Tis as good a ground fora skimmity ride as ever I knowed; and | it ought not to be Wasted. The last one seen in Casterbridge must have, j been ten years ago, if a day. ’Twer ■ about Jane Griddle, do ye mind,that | used to beat her husband with the ! mop stem, a well-to-do gentleman j kind of man that used to travel in i the whitey brown thread and button j line, if ye can mind.” At this moment there was a shrill whistle, and the landlady said to the \ man who had been called Chari, i “ 'Tis Jim coming in. Would ye go j and let down the bridge foi me?” Without replying, Char! and his I comrade Joe rose, and receiving a ! lantern from her, went out at the j back door and down the garden path ! which ended abruptly at the edge of I the stream already mentioned. Bo- i yond the stream was the open moor, 1 from which a clammy breeze smote j uoon their faces as they advanced, j Taking up the board that had lain in j readiness, one of them lowered it across the water, and tne instant its further end touched the ground, footsteps entered upon it, and there appeared from the shade a stalwart man with straps round his knees, a double-barreled gun under his arm, and some birds slung up behind him. They asked him if he had had much luck. “Not much,” he said, indifferently, “All safe inside?” Receiving a reply in the affirmative he went on inward, the others withdrawing the bridge and beginning to retreat in his rear. Before, however, they had entered the house a cry of “Ahoy!" from toe moor led them to pause. The cry was repeated. They pushed the lantern into an outhouse, and went back to the brink of the stream. “Ahoy!—is this the way to Cas- ; terbridge?” said someone from the ! other side. “Not in -'articular,” said Chari. | “There’s a river afore ye.” “I don’t care—here’s for through i it,” said the man in the moor. “I've I had traveling enough for to-day.” “Stop a minute, then,” said Chari, finding that the man was no enemy. “Joe, bring the plank and lantern; here’s a fellow that’s lost his way. You should have kept along the

turnpike road, friend, and not havt struck across here.” •‘I should—as I see now. But J saw a light here, and says I to rayself, there’s a short cut, depend on’t.” The plank was now lowered, and the stranger's form shaped itself from the darkness. He was a mid-dle-aged man, with hair and whiskers prematurely gray, and a broad and genial face. He had crossed on the plank without hesitation, and seemed to see nothing odd in the, transit. He thanked them, and walked between them up the garden. “What place is this?” he asked, when they reached the door. “A public-house.” “Oh! Perhaps it will suit me to put up at. Now, then, come in and wet your whistle at my expense for the lift over you have given me.” They followed him into the inn, where the. increased light exhibited him as one who would stand - higher in an estimate by the eye than in one by the ear. He was dressed with a certain clumsy richness —his coat being furred/ and his head being covered with a cap of Sealskin, which, though the nights were cool, must have been warm for the day - time, spring being somewhat advanced. In his hand he carried a small mahogany case, strapped, and clamped with brass. A ‘ . , • 1 .. A. it. _ I.* J

Apparently surprised at the kind of company which confronted him through the kitchen door, he at once abandoned his idea ot putting up at the house; but talcing the situation lightly, he called for glasses of the best, paid for them as he stood in the passage, and turned to proceed on his way by the front door. This was barred, and while the landlady was unfastening it the conversation about the skirnmington was continued in the sitting room, and reached his ears. “What do they mean by a ‘skim-mity-ridei’ ” he asked. “Oh, sir,” said the landlady, shaking her long earrings with deprecating modesty, “ ’tis a old foolish thing they do in these parts when a man’s wife is—-well, a bad bargain in any way. But, as a respectable householder, I don’t encourage it.” “Still, are they going to do it shortly? ft is a good sight to see, I suppose?” “Well, sir,” she simpered. And then, bursting into naturalness, and glancing from the corner of her eye: “ ‘Tis the funniest thing under the sun. And it costs money.” “Ah! I remember hearing ot some guch thing. Now I shall be in Casterbridge for two or three weeks to come, and should not mind seeing the performance. Wait a moment.” He turned back, entered the sittingroom, and said; “Here, good folks; I should like to see the old custom you are talking of, and I don’t mind being something toward it—take that.” He threw a sovereign on the table and returned to the landlady at the door, of whom, having inquired the way into the town, he took his leave.

“There were more where that one came from,” said Chari, when the sovereign had been taken up and handed to the landlady for safe-keep-ing. “By George! weought to have got a few more while we had him here." “No, no.” answered the landlady. “This is a respectable house, thank God! and I’ll have nothing done but what's honorable." “Well,’ said Jopp; “now we’ll consider the business begun, and we’ll soon get it in train.” “We will," said Nance. “A good laugh warms the cockles of my heart more than a cordial, and that's the truth on’t.” Jopp gathered up the letters, and it being now somewhat late, he did not attempt to call at Farfrae’s that night. He reached home, sealed them up as before, and delivered the parcel at its address next morninoWithin an hour its contents were reduced to ashes by Lucetta, who poor soul, was inclined to fall down on her knees in thankfulness that at last no evidence, beyond the simple evidence in a remote parish register, remained of the unlucky episode with in her past. For innocent as she had been of wrongdoing therein, that episode, if known was not the less likely to operate disastrously between herself and her husband. CHAPTER XXX Vll. Such was the state of things when the current affairs of Casterbridcm were interrupted by an event of such | magnitude, that its influence reached to the lowest social stratum there stirring the depths of its society so sensibly as to cut into the midst of i the preparations for the skimmingj ton. It was one of those cxcitei meats which, when' they move a j country town, leave a permanent ; mark upon its chronicles, as a warm ! summer permanently marks the ring j in the tree trunk corresponding to its date. , *■ A royal personage was about to pass through the borough on his course farther West to inaugurate an immense engineering work out that way. He