Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1899 — THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE

BY THOMAS HARDY.

H | CHAPTER V.—(Continued.) \P. 'clock struck nine; Elizabeth Jane tKprtted to her companion. “The evening on, mother,” she said. “What propose to do ?” ;p6he was surprised to find how irresolute Brt toother had become. “We must get to lie down in.” she murmured. "I fKftve seen —Mr. Henchard; and that's all to do.” [ RfThat’s enough for to-night at any IBfefce.’’ Elizabeth Jane replied soothingly, fiffe'ean think to-morrow what is best about him. The question now is—- ■ Sit not? —how shall we find a lodging?” I fAs her mother did not reply, Elizabeth mind reverted to the words of the that the King of Prussia was an |B|i of moderate charges. A recommenda|Kuk good for one person was probably Hptf for another. “Let’s go where the I .■King man has gone,” she said. “He is What do you say?” fi BpEfchr mother assented, and down the they went. I gin the meantime the Mayor's thoughtengendered by the note as stated, to hold him in abstraction; till, HEroing *° h* s ne ishb°r *° take his IK|fcce, he found opportunity to leave the IShair. This was just after the departure his wife and Elizabeth. I KtOutside the door of the assembly room Hw aaw the waiter, and beckoning to him, ■deed who brought the note which had landed in a quarter of an hour be--1;B|&? ’young man, sir—a sort of traveler. ■Be was a Scotchman seemingly.” I B*** 8 young man in the hotel?” |P I Ko, sir. He went to the King of PrusBla, I believe.” IRpChe Mayor took his hat, and, when the had helped him on with a thin ■Holland overcoat, went out and stood un■jter tiie portico. I jpyery few persons were now in the and his eyes, by a sort of attracBnop, turned and dwelt upon a spot about yards further down. It was house to which the writer of the note ■ild gone—the King of Prussia —whose ■k prominent gables, bow-window and fßlwsage light could be seen from where Be stood. Having kept his eyes on it for he strolled in that direction. I.Blfclong, narrow, dimly lit passage gave Bjecess to the inn, within which passage horses going to their stalls at the and the coming and departing huBan guests rubbed shoulders indiscrimiHpttely. the latter running no slight risk ■R-having their toes trodden upon by the ■talmals. The good stabling, and the good Hper, of the King of Prussia, though difficult to reach on account of being but this narrow way to both, ■Here nevertheless perseveringly sought by the sagacious old heads who knew |Hhat was in Casterbridge. ■ BSenchard stood without the inn for a ■Sew instants; then, lowering the dignity presence as much as possible by butBung the brown-holland coat over his front, and in other ways toning himBis down to his ordinary every-day ap■fcarance, he entered the inn door. I CHAPTER VI. pHnabeth Jane and her mother had arBpved some twenty minutes earlier. OutBde the house they had stood and considered whether even this homely place, recommended as moderate, might Bpst be too serious in its prices for their Bpght pockets. Finally, however, they had jßnmd courage to enter, and duly met Hjfcnnidge. the landlord, a silent man, who and carried frothing measure to this ißtoom and to that, on a par with his waitHog mams. Elizabeth and her mother Btoere passively accepted as sojourners, Ktad shown to a small bedroom under one ■it the gables, where they sat down. too good for us —we can't meet ■j|]” said the elder woman, looking round Bhe apartment with misgiving as soon as ■■iey were left alone. ■ ■P* fear if is, too,” said Elizabeth. "Rut Hre roust be respectable.” ■ |R|ie principle of the inn seemed to be to ■pom pen sate for the antique awkwardness, and obscurity of the pasWge*. doors, walls and windows, by of clean linen spread abotit evand this had a dazzling effect ■non the travelers. “We must pay our even before we must be respectable,” her mother. "Mr. Henchard is ■too high for us to make ourselves known Bp> him, I much fear; we've only our own ■rockets to depend on.” lip. know what I'll do,” said Elizabeth EBpß&e, after an interval of waiting, during ■Kigv their needs seemed quite forgotten ■Bpier the press of business below. And ■leaving the room, she descended the stairs ■fcnd penetrated to the bar. ItHpjf'there was one good thing more than which characterized this singlcgirl, it was a willingness to sacriHpee her personal comfort and dignity to BBr common weal.

KsSjks you seem busy here to-night, an (i Egjgber’s not well off. might I take out Hpjct of our accommodation by helping?” ■fa* asked of the landlady. pThe latter looked the girl up and down fnriiigly. She was an easy woman to 'ttHplagers, and she made no objection, ijjiareopon Elizabeth Jane, being instructmKfaf nods and motions from the taciturn Hpdlord as to where she could find the things, trotted up and down ■plKitb materials for her own and her meal. While she was doing this, partition in the center of the to its center with the tugWEfUg p bell-pull upstairs. A bell below •Hfljd anote that was feebler in sound BB|| the twanging of wires and cranks ghat had produced it. fe. *ISS« 'the Scotch gentleman." said the omnisciently: and, turning her "Now. then, can you If his supper is on the tray? cat) take it up to him. The t - •> roopi over this.” ff ISlizabeth Jane, though hungry, willingfMßptMrtpoaed serving herself awhile, and to the cook ill the kill hen. wlienee Jtrought forth the tray of supper vi'proceeded with it upstairs to indicated. She found that Ini' Scotchman was located in a room Maffiv-' WwL'V'« ■-.

quite close to the small one that had been allotted to herself and her mother. 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 velvetpile or down that was on the skin at the back of his neck, and how his check 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. Sbe 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 Jane fetched their simple provisions, as she had fetched the Scotchman’s, and went up to the little chamber \yhere 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 King of Prussia, every word spoken in either of these rooms was distinctly audible in the other. Such sounds came through now. Thus silently conjured, Elizabeth Jane 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 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 ye 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 have done in a few minutes! Ye needn’t go, sir. Take a seat. I’ve almost done, and it makes na 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 wi’ 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 —what was his name?” “No, indeed,” said the young man. “My name is Donald Farfrae. It is true I am in the corn 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 world to try my fortune in the great wheat-growing districts of the West. 1 have inventions useful to the trade, and there is no scope for developing them here.” “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.”

“Well, it has a great importance for me just now. This row about my grown wheat, which I declare 1 didn't know to be bad till the people came complaining, has put me to my wits’ end. I’ve some Sundreds of quarters of it ou baud; and if your renovating process will make it wholesome, why you can see what a quag ’twould get me out of. 1 saw in a moment there might be truth in it. But 1 should like to have it proved; aud of course you don’t care to tell the stops 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 of it here than I will in a foreign country. Just look here 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, aud drying and refrigerating, and so on. “These few grains will be sufficient to show ye with,” came in the young fellow’s voice; aud, after a pause, during which some operation seemed to be intently watched by them both, he exclaimed: “There, now taste that.” “It’s complete!—quite restored, of—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 mach as that, but here you go a great way toward 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 accent the situation, you shall manage the corn branch entirely, and receive a commission in addition to salary.” “It is liberal—very liberal; but no, no— I cannot!” the young man still replied, with some distress in his accents. “So be it!” said Henchard conclusively. “Now—to change the subject-—one goqjl turn deserves another; don’t stay to finish that miserable supper. Come to my house; I can find something better for ye 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 ye, 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, aud I don’t value it at all. I thought I might just as well let ye know, as ye were in a difficulty, and they were hard upon ye." Henchard paused. “I sha’n’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; ’tis so,” said the young man simply. “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 wish it,” he replied. “But, no —it cannot be; it cannot! I want to see the warrld.” CHAPTER VII. When Elizabeth Jane opened the hinged casement next morning the mellow air brought in the feel of imminent autumn almost as distinctly as if she had been in the remotest hamlet. Hearing voices, One of which was close at hand, she withdrew her head and glanced from behind the window curtains. Mr. Henchard —now habited no longer as a great personage, but as a thriving man of business—was pausing on his way up the middle of the street, and the Scotchman was looking from the window' adjoining her own. Henchard, it appeared, had gone a little way past the inn before he noticed his acquaintance of the previous eveniug. Ho came back a few' steps, Donald Farfrae opening the window wider. “And you are off soon, I suppose?” said Henchard upward. “Yes —almost this moment, sir,” said the other downward. “I’ll walk on, and the coach will overtake me.” “Which way?” “The way ye are going.” “Then shall we walk together to the top o’ town?” “If ye’ll wait a minute,” said the Scotchman. In a few minutes the latter emerged, bag in hand. Henchard looked at the bag as at an enemy. It showed there was no mistake about the young man’s departure. "Ah, my lad,” he said, “you should have been a wise man and have stayed with me.” “Yes, yes—it might have been wiser,” said Donald, looking microscopically at the houses that were furthest off. “It is only telling ye the truth when I say my plans are vague.” They had by this time passed on from the precincts of the inn. aud Elizabeth Jane heard no more. She saw that they continued in conversation, Henchard turning to the other occasionally and emphasizing some remark with a gesture. Thns they passed the Golden Crown Hotel, the Market House, the churchyard wall, ascending to the upper end of the long street till they were small as two grains of corn, when they bent suddenly to the right into the Bristol Road and were out of view. “He was a good man —and he’s gone,” she said to herself. “I was nothing to him, and there was no reason why he should have wished me good-by.” The simple thought, with its latent sense of slight, had molded itself out of the following little fact: 'When the Scotchman came out at the door he had by accident glanced up at her. aud then he had looked away again without nodding, or smiling, or saying a word. “You are still thinking, mother,” she said when she turned inward. “Yes; I afn thinking of Mr. Henchard's sudden liking for that young man. He was always so. Now. surely, if he takes so warmly to people who are not related to him at all. may he not take as warmly to his own kin?” The discussion was continued during breakfast, and the end of it was that Mrs. Henchard decided, for good or for ill, to send Elizabeth Jane with a message to Henchard to the effect that his relative Susan, a sailor’s widow, was in the town, leaving it to him to say whether or not he would recognize her. What had brought her to this determination were chiefly two things. He had been described as a lonely widower, and he had expressed shame for a past transaction of his life. There was promise in both. “If he says no.” she enjoined, as Elizabeth Jane stood, bonnet .on, ready to depart: “if he-thinks it does not become the good position he has reached to in the town, to own —to let us call on him as — as his distant kinsfolk say, ‘Then, sir, we would rather not intrude; we will leave Casterbridge as quietly as we have come, aud go back to our owu country.’ I almost feel that I would rather he did say so. as I have not seen him for so many years, and we are so—little allied to him!” “And if he says yes?” inquired the more sanguine one. “In that case,” answered Mrs. Henchard cautiously, “ask him to write me a note, saying when and how he will see us —or the.” Very little inquiry was necessary to guide the girl’s footsteps. Ilenchard’s house was. one of the best, fronted with inurrey-colored old brick with chimneys of the same that showed arched recesses in their sides. The front door was open

and, as !□ other honses, she could see through the passage to the end of the garden—nearly a quarter of a mile off. Mr. Henchard was not in the house, but in the store-yard. She was conducted into the mossy garden, and through a side-door in the wall, which was studded with rusty nails speaking of generations of fruit trees that had been trained there. The door opened upon the yard, and here she was left to find him as she could. It was a place flanked by hay-barns, into which tons of fodder, all in trusses, were being packed from the wagons she had seen pass the inn that morning. On other sides of the yard were wooden granaries on stone staddles, to which access was given by short Flemish ladders, and a tall storehouse several stories high. ’Wherever the doors of these places were open, a closely packed throng of bursting wheat sacks could be seen standing, with the air of waiting for a famine that would not come. She wandered about this place, uncomfortably conscious of the impending interview, till she was quite weary of searching; she ventured to inquire of a boy in what quarter of the labyrinth Mr. Henchard could be found. He directed her to an office which she had not seen beforehand knocking at the door she was answered by a cry of “Come in.” Elizabeth turned the handle; and there stood before her, bending over some sam-ple-bags on a table, not the corn merchant, but the young Scotchman, Mr. Farfrae—in the act of pouring some grains of wheat from one hand to the other. His hat hung on a peg behind him, and the roses of his carpet bag glowed from the corner of the room. He had finally been persuaded by Mr. Henchard to enter his employ. Having toned her feelings to meet Mr. Henchard, and him alone, she was for the moment confounded by this apparition in place of him. She had come to say definite words held in suspense on the tip of her tongue, and being confronted by the wrong auditor she could say nothing at all. .“Yes, what is it?” said the Scotchman, like a man who permanently ruled there. She said she wanted to sec Mr. Henchard. “Ah, yes; will ye wait a minute? He’s engaged just now,” said the young man, smiling, for he now recognized her as the young girl at the inn. He handed her a chair, bade her sit down, and turned to his sample bags again. (To be continued.)