Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 54, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1899 — THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE

BY THOMAS HARDY.

CHAPTER XXII. Lucetta met Henchard by accident a day or two later. It was in the bustle of the market, when no one could readily notice their discourse. “Michael,” said she, ‘1 must again ask you, what I asked you years ago, to return me any letters or papers of mine that you may have —unless you have destroyed them. You must see how desirable it is that the time at Jersey should be blotted out, for the good of all parties.” “I have returned the whole lot of your letters.” “I think not,” she said, timidly. “I tell ye I returned every scrap of your handwriting—returned ’em long ago.” “Then I never received them.” “I sent them up to you in a packet by Elizabeth Jane, to be put into your hands when you were passing through Casterbridge by coach —exactly as you requested.” “Ah! I did not take that journey till some days later.” “Then what did Elizabeth Jane do with them?” said he. “You had better find out.” ' Lueetta’s anxiety was now to see Elizabeth Jane, which there was not much difficulty in doing. She called by request, and-then Lucetta learned how Farfrae, as may be remembered, had offered to deliver the packet to relieve Elizabeth from the tedium of waiting at the coach office. Henchard’s thoughts were running on a parallel line with those of poor Lucetta’s. As soon as his work was over, he, too, went to Elizabeth Jane, to make the inquiry in which Lucetta had preceded him. To him also Elizabeth confessed that she had been relieved of the parcel by Farfrae. A grotesque grin shaped itself on Henchard’s face. The next morning he went to the corn yard as usual, and_ about eleven o’clock Donald entered through the green door, with no trace of the worshipful about him. The yet more emphatic change of places between him and Henchard which this election had established renewed a slight embarrassment in the manner of tjie modest younger man; but Henchard showed the front of one who had overlooked all this, and Farfrae met him amenities half-way at once. “I was going to ask ye,” said Henchard, “about a packet that I once gave my stepdaughter to hand to a lady in the Bath coach.” And he added the particulars. “Ah!” said Farfrae; “I do remember my faults this day. I could find no lady in any coach; I called at your house to give back the parcel; it was the very hour of Mrs. Henchard’s death. I took it home, the packet being undone, wrapped it up again, and there it is now.” “It was not of much consequence—to me,” said Henchard. “But I’ll call for it this evening, if you don’t mind.” It was quite late when he fulfilled his promise. A curl of sardonic humor hung on his lip as he approached the house, as though he were contemplating some terrible form of amusement. Whatever it was, the incident of his entry did not diminish its force, this being his first visit to the house since he had lived there as owner. Farfrae invited him into the dining room, where he at once unlocked an iron safe built into the wall, his, Henchard’s safe, made by an ingenious locksmith under his direction. Farfrae drew thence the parcel, with a repetition of his honest apologies. “Never mind,” said Henchard, dryly. The fact is, they are letters mostly— Yes,” he went on, sitting down and unfolding them, “here they be. That I should ever see ’em again! I hope Mrs. Farfrae is well after her exertions of yesterday?” “She has felt a bit weary, and has gone to bed on that account.” Henchard returned to the letters, sorting them over with interest, Farfrae being seated at the other end of the dining table. “You don’t forget, of course,” he resumed, “that curious chapter in the history of my past, which I told you of, and that you gave me some assistance in by taking a journey to Budmouth? These letters are, in fact, related to that unhappy business.” "What became of the poor girl?” asked Farfrae. “Luckily, she married, and married well,” said Henchard. “So that these reproaches she poured out on me do not now cause me any twinges, as they might otherwise have done. Just listen to what an angry woman will say.” Farfrae, willing to humor Henchard, though quite uninterested, and bursting with yawns, gave well-mannered attention. "For me,” the letter went on, “there is practically no future. A wife whose husband has vanished into thin air, wbp feels It morally impossible that she can be wife of any other man after going to the altar with you, and who is yet no more your wife than, the first woman you meet in the street. I quite acquit you of any intention to deceive me, yet you are the door through which wrong has come to me. That in the event of your present wife’s death you will restore me to my true position is a consolation as far as it goes; but how far does it go? Thus I sit here, a widow without the melancholy satisfaction of a husband’s tomb.” He opened a third and fourth letter, and read. This time he approached the conclusion as if the signature were indeed coming with the rest. But again he stdpped short. The truth was that, as may be divined, he had quite intended to effect a grand catastrophe at the end of this drama by reading out the name; he had come to the house with no other thought. But sitting here in cold blood he could not do it Such a wrecking, of hearts appalled even him. His quality was such that he could have annihilated them both in the heat of action; but to accomplish the deed by oral poison was beyond the nerve of his enmity. Lucetta leaned upon the baluster with hcyhcek against the hand-raft

tone of her husband. He spoke merely in the accents of a man who made a present of his time. “One word,” he was saying, as the crackling of paper denoted that Henchard was unfolding yet another sheet. “Is it quite fair to this young woman’s memory to read at such length to a stranger what was intended for your eye alone?” “Well, yes,” said Henchard. “By not giving her name I make it an example of all womankind, and not a scandal to one.” Next morning Lucetta remained in bed, meditating how to parry this incipient attack. The bold stroke of telling Donald the truth, dimly conceived, was yet too bold. Having laid her plan, she rose, and wrote to Henchard, who kept her on these tenter-hooks: “I overheard your interyiew with my husband last night—and saw the drift of your revenge. The very thought of it crushes me. Have pity on a wretched woman.” Thus far she wrote truly. She added: “If you could see me, you would relent. You do not know how anxiety has told on me lately. I will be at the Ring at the time you leave work—just before the sun goes down. Please come that way to assure me you will carry this horse-play no further.” “Well, what do you want me to do?” he asked when they met iq accordance with this appointment. “My reading of those letters was only a sort of practical joke; and I revealed nothing.” “To give me back the letters, and any paper you may have that breathes of matrimony.” “So be it. Every scrap shall be yours. But between you and me, Lucetta, he is sure to find out something of the matter, sooner or later.” “Ah!” she said, with eager tremulousness; “but not till I have proved myself a faithful and deserving wife to him, and then he may forgive me everything.” Henchard* silently looked at her; he almost envied Farfrae such love as that, even now. “H’m—l hope so,” he said. “But you Bhall have the letters "Without fail. And your secret shall be kept; I swear it.” “How good you are!—how shall I get them?” He reflected, and said he would send them by his landlord the next morning. “Now, don’t doubt me,” he added. “I can keep my word.” He watched her till she had vanished, and then went home, going up to his bedroom and rummaging his boxes. “I wish,” said Henchard to his landlord, “you would do me a service, Jopp—now, to-night, I mean, if you can. Leave this at Mrs. Farfrae’s for her. I should take it myself, of course, but I don’t wish to be seen there.”

He handed a package in brown paper, sealed. Jopp indifferently expressed his willingness. 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 thus opened, and saw that the bundle consisted of letters, and having satisfied himself thus far, sealed np the end again by simply softening the wax with the candle, and went off with the parcel as requested. His path was the river-side at the foot of the town. Coming into the light at the bridge which stood at the end of High street, he beheld lounging thereon 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. Cuxsom. “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.” Thither Jopp and his acquaintance repaired. The settees on which they sat down were thin and tall, their tops being guyed by pieces of twine to hooks in the ceiling; for when the guests grew boisterous the settees 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 ex-poachers and ex-game-keepers whom princes had persecuted without a cause 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 from service on the other, brought them here together, to a common level, where they sat calmly discussing old times. The furmity woman, who was present, asked Jopp what was in his parcel. “Ah, therein lies a grand secret,” said Jopp. “It is the passion of love. To think that a woman should love one man ao well, and hate another 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 life, ’twould be as good as a play to read her love letters, the proud piece of silk and waxwork! For ’tis her love letters that I’ve got here.” “Love letters? Then let’s hear ’em, good soul,” said Mother Cuxsom. “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 pat inside, do ye mind, and how yon’d kiss and cole me* do ye mind?” By this time Jopp had pushed his fingers 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 had so earnestly hoped to keep buried, though the epistles, being allusive only, did not make it altogether plain. “Mrs. Farfrae wrote that!” said Nance Mockridge. “ ’Tis a humbling thing for us, as respectable women, that one of thcl same sex could do it. And now she’s vowed herself to another man!” “So much the better Tor her,” said the furmity woman. “Ah, I saved her from a nad marriage. she’s never been the onetn thank me" 1

i “I say, what a good foundation for a skimmity ride,” said Nance. “True,” said Mrs. Cuxsom, reflecting. “ ’Tis as good a ground for a skimmity ride as ever I knowed; and it ought not to be wasted. The last one seen in Casterbridge must have been ten years ago, if a day. ’Twere about Jane Griddle, do ye mind, that used to beat her husband with the mop stem —a well-to-do gentleman kind of man, that used to travel in the whity-brown thread and button line, if ye can mind.” Jopp gathered up the letters, and it being now somewhat late, he did not attempt to call at Farfrae’s with them that night. He reached home, sealed them up.as before, and delivered the parcel at its address next morning. Within 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 entry in a remote parish register, remained of the unlucky episode with Henchard in her past. For, innocent as she had been of wrong-doing therein, that episode, if known, was not the less likely to operate fatally between herself and her husband.

CHAPTER XXIII. Such was the state of things when the current affairs of Casterbridge 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 the preparations for the skimmington* It was one of those excitements which, when they move a country town, leave a permanent mark upon its chronicles, as a warm summer permanently marks the ring in the tree trunk corresponding to its date. A royal personage was about to pass through the borough on his course further west to inaugurate an immense engineering work out that way. He had consented to halt half an hour or so in the town, and to receive an address from the corporation of Casterbridge, which, as a representative center of husbandry, wished thus to express its sense of the great services he had rendered to agricultural science and economics by his zealous promotion of designs for placing the art of farming on a more scientific footing. The eventful morning was bright, a fullfaced sun confronting early window-gaz-ers eastward, and all perceived that there was permanence in the glow. Visitors soon began to flock in from country houses, villages, remote copses, and lonely uplands, the latter in oiled boots and tilt bonnets, to see the reception, or if not to see it, at any rate to be near it. Henchard had determined to do no work that day. He primed himself in the morning with a glass of rum, and walking down the street met Elizabeth Jane, whom he had not seen for a week. “It was lucky,” he said to her, “my twenty years had expired before this came on, or I should never have had the nerve to carry it out.” “Carry out what?” said she, alarmed. “This welcome I am going to give our royal visitor.” She was perplexed. “Shall we go and see it together?” she said. “See it! I have other fish to fry. You see it. It will be worth seeing!” She could do nothing to elucidate this, and decked herself out with a heavy heart. As the appointed time drew near she got sight again of her stepfather. She thought he was going to the King of Prussia; but no, he elbowed his way through the gay throng to the shop of Woolfrey the draper. She waited in the crowd without. In a few minutes he emerged, wearing, to her surprise, a brilliant rosette, while, more surprising still, in his hand he carried a flag, of somewhat homely construction, formed by tacking one of the small Union Jacks, which abounded in the town to-day, to the end of a deal wand—probably the roller from a piece of calico. Henchard rolled up his flag on the door step, put it under his arm, and went down the street. At length a man stationed at the furthest turn of the high road gave a signal, and the corporation in their robes proceeded from the front of the Town Hall to the archway erected at the entrance to the town. The carriages containing the royal visitor and his suite arrived at the spot in a cloud of dust, a procession was formed, and the whole came on to the Town Hall at a walking pace. This spot was the center of interest. There were a few clear yards in front of the royal carriage, and into this space a man stepped before any one conld prevent him. It was Henchard. He had unrolled his private flag, and removing his hat, he advanced to the side of the slowing carriage, waving the Union Jack to and fro with his left hana, while he blandly held out his right to the illustrious personage. Farfrae immediately rose to the occasion. He seized Henchard by the shoulder, dragged him back, and told him roughly to be off. Henchard’s eyes met his, and Farfrae observed the fierce light in them, despite his excitement and irritation. For a moment Henchard stood his ground rigidly, then by an unaccountable impulse gave way and retired. Farfrae glanced to the ladies’ gallery, and saw that his wife’s cheek was pale. “Why, it is your husband’s old patron!” said Mrs. Blowbody, a lady of the neighborhood, who sat beside Lucetta. “Patron!” said Donald’s wife, with quick indignation. “Do you say the man is an acquaintance of Mr. Farfrae’s?” observed Mrs. Bath, the physician’s wife, a newcomer to the town. “He works for my husband,” said Lucetta. * “Oh, is that all? They have been saying to me that it was through him your husband first got a footing in Casterbridge. What stories people will tell!” “They will indeed. It was not so at all. Donald’s genius would have enabled him to get a footing anywhere, without anybody’s help! He would have been just the same if there had been no Henchard in the world.” It was partly Lucetta’s ignorance of the circumstances of Donald’s arrival which led her to speak thus; partly the sensation that everybody seemed bent on snubbing her at this triumphant time. The incident had occupied but a few moments, but it was necessarily witnessed by the royal personage, who, however, with practiced tact, affected not to have noticed anything unusual. He alighted, the Mayor advanced, the address was read, the visitor replied, then said a few words to Farfrae, and shook bands with Lucetta, as the Mayor’s wife. The ceremony occupied but a few minutes, and the carriages rattled up the straight High street, and out unon the great open road, in continuation but* th^hadlrougbt ■■ - : r i n " . <• > V -*» " . ' ■ - ■ .. Vt I 1 T. t. ~

' her a great triumph, nevertheless. The I shake of-the royal hand still lingered in i her fingers, and the chit-chat she had overI heard, that her husband might possibly I receive the honor of knighthood, though idle to a degree, seemed not the wildest vision; stranger things had occurred to men so good and captivating as her Scotchman was. After the collision with the Mayor, Henchard had withdrawn behind the ladies’ rostrum and there he stood, regarding with a stare of abstraction the spot on the lapel of his coat where Farfrae’s hand had rested. He put his own hand there, as if he could hardly realise such an outrage from one whom it had once been his wont to treat with ardent generosity. While pausing in this half-stupe-fied state, the conversation of Lucetta with the other ladies reached his ears, and he distinctly heard her deny him—deny that he had assisted Donald, that he was anything more than a common journeyman. v He moved on homeward, and met Jopp in the archway to the bull stake. “So you’ve had a snub,” said Jopp. “And what if I have?” answered Henchard, sternly. (To be continued.)