The Mayor of Casterbridge de Thomas Hardy : une soif d’amour tragiquement (in)assouvie.

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. (p. 77)

The whole land ahead of him was as darkness itself ; there was nothing to come, nothing to wait for. Yet in the natural course of life he might possibly have to linger on earth another thirty or forty years—scoffed at ; at best pitied. The thought of it was unendurable. (p. 286)

           Loin de l’image que l’on pourrait avoir d’un auteur naturaliste volontiers porté vers un noir et absolu pessimisme (image prévalant dans l’imaginaire collectif au sujet d’Hardy, ainsi que l’illustrent les deux citations ci-dessus), la lecture de The Mayor of Casterbridge se révèle beaucoup plus attachante et émouvante, le roman se caractérisant davantage par son intense lyrisme (Hardy était également un poète lyrique de grand talent, en témoignent ses Poèmes du Wessex) et son aspect tragique (dans la lignée des normes tragiques théorisées par Aristote dans sa Poétique) que par les préjugés susmentionnés.

       Parmi les figures tragiques qui peuplent ce roman, quatre se distinguent particulièrement : le personnage-éponyme, le maire de Casterbridge, Michael Henchard ; sa femme Susan ; Lucetta, promise à être la seconde femme d’Henchard, mais qui se mariera à l’écossais Donald Farfrae ; et enfin Elizabeth-Jane, la fille du couple Henchard. Tous partagent, dans ce qui semble être le cœur émotionnel du roman, une profonde aspiration à être aimé, liée étroitement à leur solitude affective, aspiration qui les conduira à l’assouvir au prix de décisions lourdes de conséquences.

He took her hand at parting, and held it so warmly that she, who had known so little friendship, was much affected, and tears rose to her aerial-grey eyes. (p. 67)

His bitter disappointment […] had left an emotional void in Henchard that he unconsciously craved to fill. (p. 143)

But it is amusing to look for somebody one knows in a crowd, even if one does not want him. It takes off the terrible oppressiveness of being surrounded by a throng, and having no point of junction with it through a single individual."

"Ay ! Maybe you'll be very lonely, ma'am ?"

"Nobody knows how lonely." (p. 154)

Her heart longed for some ark into which it could fly and be at rest. Rough or smooth she did not care, so long as it was warm. (p. 159)

        Dans la scène la plus célèbre sans doute du roman, Susan quitte son mari qui ne cesse de la maltraiter moins physiquement que par sa froide indifférence et ses moqueries cruelles, en particulier lorsqu’il est sous l’emprise de l’alcool, dans une « vente aux enchères » improvisée par son mari, dont l’objet n'est autre qu'elle-même ! Humiliée pour ce qui semble être une énième fois, Susan décide de prendre au sérieux cette vente grotesque, et vivra vingt années durant environ une vie qui ne sera certes guère confortable et aisée avec son « nouveau mari » (le marin Newson), mais où elle sera du moins aimée, avant que sa faute ne lui apparaisse clairement et ne la pousse à revenir vers son premier mari.

C’est ce dernier qui, après s’être montré sous un visage particulièrement odieux au début du roman, sera sans doute le personnage le plus émouvant du roman, et alors même que d’autres actes de sa part dans le reste du roman ne pourront manquer de susciter notre répréhension. Et pourtant, sa fin profondément pathétique, qui n'est pas sans rappeler celle du roi Lear, ne pourra manquer d’émouvoir le lecteur. Car dans la lignée des principes énoncés par Aristote au sujet du personnage tragique, Henchard au final n’est ni entièrement bon, ni entièrement mauvais, et ce sont des égarements liés à ses passions, et non une nature profondément vicieuse et perverse, qui le conduisent à son destin tragique. C’est en particulier son caractère brusque, rude, impulsif (que l'ébriété ne fait qu'accentuer), tel un lion (animal auquel il est régulièrement associé dans la description qu’Hardy fait de lui), qui le mènera à la ruine financière, le faisant choir de sa position de pouvoir et de puissance, après des spéculations hasardeuses motivées par son côté superstitieux. Enfin, c’est surtout son besoin d’amour, et sa peur concomitante de la solitude, qui l'entraîne à faire chanter Lucetta pour qu'elle l'épouse (avant qu'il ne se laisse émouvoir et décide au final d'abandonner ses menaces), puis vers la fin du roman à proférer un mensonge qui finira par lui aliéner l'amour d’Elizabeth-Jane. Car si Henchard s’est montré si méprisable aux yeux du lecteur en raison de sa faute initiale qui le séparera longuement de sa femme et de sa fille, et si contre toute attente il a atteint la réussite sociale et matérielle à laquelle il aspirait tant (c'est ce qui explique en grande partie son aigreur envers Susan, au point de provoquer son départ), il n’en reste pas moins qu’il est profondément malheureux, souffrant d’une profonde solitude et d’une absence de chaleur humaine qui lui seront de plus en plus insupportables. C'est la raison pour laquelle Henchard se prend soudain d'une exubérante affection pour le jeune écossais Farfrae qu’il prendra sous son aile au début du roman, puis son amour quelque peu déraisonnable par son ampleur et son exclusivité pour sa fille Elizabeth-Jane, au point de proférer un mensonge spontané mais monstrueux qui causera sa solitude finale. Les pages dans lesquelles Henchard appréhende la terrible solitude lorsqu’il anticipe le mépris et sa séparation d’avec Elizabeth-Jane, son exil volontaire et solitaire suivi rapidement de sa mort, sont sans doute les pages les plus émouvantes du roman, et ne sont pas sans rappeler l’intense émotion qui nous étreint dans les plus belles pages du Roi Lear de Shakespeare, avec qui Henchard partage quelques traits communs, dans le total abandon et dénuement auxquels ils sont tous deux réduits :

[…] finding that she dozed he would not call her; he waited on, looking into the fire and keeping the kettle boiling with house-wifely care, as if it were an honour to have her in his house. In truth, a great change had come over him with regard to her, and he was developing the dream of a future lit by her filial presence, as though that way alone could happiness lie. (p. 281)

His mood was no longer that of the rebellious, ironical, reckless misadventurer ; but the leaden gloom of one who has lost all that can make life interesting, or even tolerable. There would remain nobody for him to be proud of, nobody to fortify him ; for Elizabeth-Jane would soon be but as a stranger, and worse. Susan, Farfrae, Lucetta, Elizabeth—all had gone from him, one after one, either by his fault or by his misfortune. (p. 285-286)

The whole land ahead of him was as darkness itself ; there was nothing to come, nothing to wait for. Yet in the natural course of life he might possibly have to linger on earth another thirty or forty years—scoffed at ; at best pitied. The thought of it was unendurable. (p. 286)

But he could not help thinking of Elizabeth, and the quarter of the horizon in which she lived. Out of this it happened that the centrifugal tendency imparted by weariness of the world was counteracted by the centripetal influence of his love for his stepdaughter. As a consequence, instead of following a straight course yet further away from Casterbridge, Henchard gradually, almost unconsciously, deflected from that right line of his first intention ; till, by degrees, his wandering, like that of the Canadian woodsman, became part of a circle of which Casterbridge formed the centre. In ascending any particular hill he ascertained the bearings as nearly as he could by means of the sun, moon, or stars, and settled in his mind the exact direction in which Casterbridge and Elizabeth-Jane lay. Sneering at himself for his weakness he yet every hour—nay, every few minutes—conjectured her actions for the time being—her sitting down and rising up, her goings and comings, till thought of Newson's and Farfrae's counter-influence would pass like a cold blast over a pool, and efface her image. And then he would say to himself, "O you fool ! All this about a daughter who is no daughter of thine !" (p. 308)

Very often, as his hay-knife crunched down among the sweet-smelling grassy stems, he would survey mankind and say to himself : "Here and everywhere be folk dying before their time like frosted leaves, though wanted by their families, the country, and the world ; while I, an outcast, an encumberer of the ground, wanted by nobody, and despised by all, live on against my will !" (p. 309)

Lucetta, qui apparaît quelque peu tardivement dans le roman, est l’autre grande figure tragique du roman, aux côtés d’Henchard à qui elle était promise. Elle partage avec ce dernier la peur d’être abandonnée, d’être seule à nouveau, alors qu’elle cache un secret à Farfrae, l’homme qui a transformé sa vie depuis qu’elle en est tombée amoureuse dans des circonstances fatales, mais dont elle craint la perte si par aventure il apprenait son passé avec Henchard. Sa mort constitue certes un moment crucial et émouvant du roman, mais un autre passage révèle peut-être mieux le dilemme, la situation tragique dans laquelle elle se trouve et qui conduira à sa perte, alors qu’elle se marie précipitamment avec Farfrae, pour parer la menace d’Henchard de révéler leur passé commun à Farfrae. S’il est vrai que des généralisations dans le roman peuvent paraître « sexistes » au premier abord (on pense notamment au Henchard ivre du début du roman), les personnages féminins du roman ne sont nullement présentés sous une lumière négative, bien au contraire : et Lucetta, davantage peut-être que Susan et Elizabeth-Jane, incarne la difficile condition féminine de son époque, et pour laquelle Hardy éprouve une visible sympathie. Elle qui se résigne quelque peu à épouser Henchard pour sauver sa réputation ternie, de qui elle s’est trop « rapprochée » d’après les convenances de l’époque, se rebelle ensuite à l’idée de l’épouser lorsqu'elle rencontre Farfrae et en tombe amoureuse. Partagée entre un mariage qui restaurera sa réputation à Jersey et qui la préservera aux yeux des habitants de Casterbridge, et un mariage d’amour réciproque, elle choisit de manière téméraire et fatale ce dernier, bien qu’une menace constante pèsera sur elle, telle une épée de Damoclès.

He had hardly gone down the staircase when she dropped upon the sofa and jumped up again in a fit of desperation. "I will love him !" she cried passionately; "as for him—he's hot-tempered and stern, and it would be madness to bind myself to him knowing that. I won't be a slave to the past—I'll love where I choose ! " (p. 173)

"O, my Elizabeth-Jane !" cried Lucetta distressfully. "'Tis somebody else that I have married ! I was so desperate—so afraid of being forced to anything else—so afraid of 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 !" (p. 209)

Quant à Elizabeth-Jane, bien qu’elle ne connaîtra pas le même destin tragique que les trois autres personnages développés précédemment, la jeune femme souffre aussi à sa manière d’un manque d’amour et d’affection, en particulier après la mort de sa mère. Un secret (encore un énième !, dans un roman qui s’est vu reproché un nombre quelque peu invraisemblable de rebondissements) lui fera aussi perdre l’affection de son père, Henchard, qu’elle ne retrouvera que vers la fin du roman. Et Farfrae, dont elle s’est éprise, tombera amoureux et épousera Lucetta, l'abandonnant au passage. Bien qu’elle soit moins développée que les deux grandes figures tragiques du roman que sont Henchard et Lucetta, la solitude d’Elizabeth-Jane n’en est pas moins émouvante, elle qui parvient à ne pas sombrer dans le désespoir ou le ressentiment jaloux et envieux après s’être vue abandonnée par Henchard et Farfrae, puis négligée par Lucetta dont elle est, ironiquement, la dame de compagnie d’une certaine manière. Elle est tour à tour cruellement moquée par Henchard pour ses manières rustiques, malgré ses progrès dans son éducation autodidacte, puis presque complètement ignorée lors des entrevues à trois avec Lucetta et Farfrae. Et malgré cette situation si difficile, cet isolement affectif dans lequel elle se trouve bien malgré elle, Elizabeth-Jane garde sa sensibilité et sa bonté, même envers ceux qu’elle pourrait de manière compréhensible haïr et mépriser, grâce à une force intérieure peu commune qui force quelque peu l’admiration du lecteur, à l’instar du personnage de Anne Elliot dans le Persuasion de Jane Austen, avec qui, en sus de partager les qualités et la force intérieure, elle semble également partager le difficile isolement affectif dans lequel elle vit. Sur un autre plan, sa sensibilité se manifeste également par sa constante défiance envers elle-même, elle qui ne comprend guère l’admiration que sa beauté suscite, elle qui malgré son érudition croissante doute toujours de ses capacités intellectuelles, ou qui volontiers rejette sur ses propres imperfections, ses propres fautes, le désamour dans lequel elle tombe auprès de Henchard et Farfrae successivement.

When she had thought it over, her usual fear of exaggerating appearances engendered a deep sadness. "There is something wrong in all this," she mused. "If they only knew what an unfinished girl I am—that I can't talk Italian, or use globes, or show any of the accomplishments they learn at boarding schools, how they would despise me ! Better sell all this finery and buy myself grammar-books and dictionaries and a history of all the philosophies !" (p. 94)

To solve the problem whether her appearance on the evening of the dance were such as to inspire a fleeting love at first sight, she dressed herself up exactly as she had dressed then—the muslin, the spencer, the sandals, the para-sol—and looked in the mirror. The picture glassed back was in her opinion, precisely of such a kind as to inspire that fleeting regard, and no more—"just enough to make him silly, and not enough to keep him so," she said luminously ; and Elizabeth thought, in a much lower key, that by this time he had discovered how plain and homely was the informing spirit of that pretty outside.

Hence, when she felt her heart going out to him, she would say to herself with a mock pleasantry that carried an ache with it, "No, no, Elizabeth-Jane—such dreams are not for you!" She tried to prevent herself from seeing him, and thinking of him ; succeeding fairly well in the former attempt, in the latter not so completely. (p. 109)

Could he have seen how she made use of those silent hours he might have found reason to reserve his judgment on her quality. She read and took notes incessantly, mastering facts with painful laboriousness, but never flinching from her self-imposed task. She began the study of Latin, incited by the Roman characteristics of the town she lived in. "If I am not well-informed it shall be by no fault of my own," she would say to herself through the tears that would occasionally glide down her peachy cheeks when she was fairly baffled by the portentous obscurity of many of these educational works.

Thus she lived on, a dumb, deep-feeling, great-eyed creature, construed by not a single contiguous being ; quenching with patient fortitude her incipient interest in Farfrae, because it seemed to be one-sided, unmaidenly, and unwise. True, that for reasons best known to herself, she had, since Farfrae's dismissal, shifted her quarters from the back room affording a view of the yard (which she had occupied with such zest) to a front chamber overlooking the street ; but as for the young man, whenever he passed the house he seldom or never turned his head. (p. 129)

Conventionally speaking he conversed with both Miss Templeman and her companion ; but in fact it was rather that Elizabeth sat invisible in the room. Donald appeared not to see her at all, and answered her wise little remarks with curtly indifferent monosyllables, his looks and faculties hanging on the woman who could boast of a more Protean variety in her phases, moods, opinions, and also principles, than could Elizabeth. Lucetta had persisted in dragging her into the circle ; but she had remained like an awkward third point which that circle would not touch. (p. 169)

She had learnt the lesson of renunciation, and was as familiar with the wreck of each day's wishes as with the diurnal setting of the sun. If her earthly career had taught her few book philosophies it had at least well practised her in this. Yet her experience had consisted less in a series of pure disappointments than in a series of substitutions. Continually it had happened that what she had desired had not been granted her, and that what had been granted her she had not desired. So she viewed with an approach to equanimity the new cancelled days when Donald had been her undeclared lover, and wondered what unwished-for thing Heaven might send her in place of him. (p. 175)

         Enfin, en sus de cet aspect tragique et lyrique que nous venons de développer relativement aux quatre personnages tragiques du roman, soulignons que The Mayor of Casterbridge ne se réduit pas à un roman naturaliste (dans le sens souvent péjoratif qu’il a communément) au ton sombre et désespéré. Si le roman n’est certes pas dépourvu de maximes, de sentences portant un regard il est vrai très critique sur les mœurs humaines, en bon moraliste qu’Hardy semble avoir été, de rares moments de bonheur, de joie, de bonté, ou au ton humoristique, sans oublier les magnifiques descriptions poétiques de la nature et des lieux, parsèment çà et là le roman, apportant le nécessaire contrepoint dont l'absence eût rendu le roman étouffant à lire. Que l’on songe par exemple aux divers rassemblements et fêtes organisés par Farfrae, dont le caractère est le miroir inverse d’Henchard, sombre et mélancolique, et qui sont l'occasion de discussions, de commérages, entre les habitants ordinaires de la ville, apportant un regard distancié, amusé, sur les événements touchant les personnages principaux du roman. Ou encore aux scènes pittoresques et amoureuses entre Farfrae et Elizabeth-Jane, puis avec Lucetta, d'où se dégagent une certaine tendresse teintée d'ironie de la part de son auteur dans leur description.

The evening sun seemed to shine more yellowly there than anywhere else this autumn—stretching its rays, as the hours grew later, under the lowest sycamore boughs, and steeping the ground-floor of the dwelling, with its green shutters, in a substratum of radiance which the foliage screened from the upper parts. Beneath these sycamores on the town walls could be seen from the sitting-room the tumuli and earth forts of the distant uplands ; making it altogether a pleasant spot, with the usual touch of melancholy that a past-marked prospect lends. (p. 79)

As Elizabeth neither assented nor dissented Donald Farfrae began blowing her back hair, and her side hair, and her neck, and the crown of her bonnet, and the fur of her victorine, Elizabeth saying, "O, thank you," at every puff. At last she was fairly clean, though Farfrae, having got over his first concern at the situation, seemed in no manner of hurry to be gone. (p. 92-93)

Du roman se dégage globalement une vision mélancolique de la vie, perçue comme essentiellement souffrante, soumise aux aléas capricieux de la Fortune, où le bonheur n’est certes pas nié, mais occupe une place mineure, bien moindre par rapport aux souffrances qu’elle engendre, à l’instar des lignes qui le concluent. Une vision de la vie également où perce davantage la compassion que le mépris pour l’homme, où le destin malheureux de tant de protagonistes est moins dû à leur nature profondément viciée, que leur égarement occasionnel (lié surtout, rappelons-le, à leur soif d'amour, d'affection) et aux circonstances fatidiques auxquelles ils sont soumis.

He seemed to feel exactly as she felt about life and its surroundings—that they were a tragical rather than a comical thing ; that though one could be gay on occasion, moments of gaiety were interludes, and no part of the actual drama. It was extraordinary how similar their views were. (p. 54)

Her experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or wrongly, that the doubtful honour of a brief transmit through a sorry world hardly called for effusiveness, even when the path was suddenly irradiated at some half-way point by daybeams rich as hers. But her strong sense that neither she nor any human being deserved less than was given, did not blind her to the fact that there were others receiving less who had deserved much more. And in being forced to class herself among the fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the persistence of the unforeseen, when the one to whom such unbroken tranquility had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth had seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.  (p. 322-323)

Ci-dessous, un catalogue de citations remarquables du roman, classées par chapitre :

Chapter 1

The chief—almost the only—attraction of the young woman's face was its mobility. When she looked down sideways to the girl she became pretty, and even handsome, particularly that in the action her features caught slantwise the rays of the strongly coloured sun, which made transparencies of her eyelids and nostrils and set fire on her lips. When she plodded on in the shade of the hedge, silently thinking, she had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of Time and Chance except, perhaps, fair play. The first phase was the work of Nature, the second probably of civilization. (p. 4)

For a long time there was none, beyond the voice of a weak bird singing a trite old evening song that might doubtless have been heard on the hill at the same hour, and with the self-same trills, quavers, and breves, at any sunset of that season for centuries untold. (p. 5)

At the end of the first basin the man had risen to serenity ; at the second he was jovial ; at the third, argumentative, at the fourth, the qualities signified by the shape of his face, the occasional clench of his mouth, and the fiery spark of his dark eye, began to tell in his conduct; he was overbearing—even brilliantly quarrelsome.

The conversation took a high turn, as it often does on such occasions. The ruin of good men by bad wives, and, more particularly, the frustration of many a promising youth's high aims and hopes and the extinction of his energies by an early imprudent marriage, was the theme. (p. 8)

The difference between the peacefulness of inferior nature and the wilful hostilities of mankind was very apparent at this place. In contrast with the harshness of the act just ended within the tent was the sight of several horses crossing their necks and rubbing each other lovingly as they waited in patience to be harnessed for the homeward journey. Outside the fair, in the valleys and woods, all was quiet. The sun had recently set, and the west heaven was hung with rosy cloud, which seemed permanent, yet slowly changed. To watch it was like looking at some grand feat of stagery from a darkened auditorium. In presence of this scene after the other there was a natural instinct to abjure man as the blot on an otherwise kindly universe ; till it was remembered that all terrestrial conditions were intermittent, and that mankind might some night be innocently sleeping when these quiet objects were raging loud. (p. 13-14)

               Chapter 3

Her companion, also in black, appeared as a well-formed young woman about eighteen, completely possessed of that ephemeral precious essence youth, which is itself beauty, irrespective of complexion or contour. A glance was sufficient to inform the eye that this was Susan Henchard's grown-up daughter. While life's middle summer had set its hardening mark on the mother's face, her former spring-like specialities were transferred so dexterously by Time to the second figure, her child, that the absence of certain facts within her mother's knowledge from the girl's mind would have seemed for the moment, to one reflecting on those facts, to be a curious imperfection in Nature's powers of continuity. (p. 19-20)

I've stood in this fair-ground, maid, wife, and widow, these nine-and-thirty years, and in that time have known what it was to do business with the richest stomachs in the land ! Ma'am you'd hardly believe that I was once the owner of a great pavilion-tent that was the attraction of the fair. Nobody could come, nobody could go, without having a dish of Mrs. Goodenough's furmity. I knew the clergy's taste, the dandy gent's taste; I knew the town's taste, the country's taste. I even knowed the taste of the coarse shameless females. But Lord's my life—the world's no memory ; straightforward dealings don't bring profit—'tis the sly and the underhand that get on in these times ! (p. 23)

 

               Chapter 4

The sun shone in at the door upon the young woman's head and hair, which was worn loose, so that the rays streamed into its depths as into a hazel copse. Her face, though somewhat wan and incomplete, possessed the raw materials of beauty in a promising degree. There was an under-handsomeness in it, struggling to reveal itself through the provisional curves of immaturity, and the casual disfigurements that resulted from the straitened circumstances of their lives. She was handsome in the bone, hardly as yet handsome in the flesh. She possibly might never be fully handsome, unless the carking accidents of her daily existence could be evaded before the mobile parts of her countenance had settled to their final mould.

The sight of the girl made her mother sad—not vaguely but by logical inference. They both were still in that strait-waistcoat of poverty from which she had tried so many times to be delivered for the girl's sake. The woman had long perceived how zealously and constantly the young mind of her companion was struggling for enlargement ; and yet now, in her eighteenth year, it still remained but little unfolded. The desire—sober and repressed—of Elizabeth-Jane's heart was indeed to see, to hear, and to understand. How could she become a woman of wider knowledge, higher repute—"better," as she termed it—this was her constant inquiry of her mother. She sought further into things than other girls in her position ever did, and her mother groaned as she felt she could not aid in the search. (p. 25-26)

Elizabeth-Jane discovered to her alarm that her mother's health was not what it once had been, and there was ever and anon in her talk that renunciatory tone which showed that, but for the girl, she would not be very sorry to quit a life she was growing thoroughly weary of. (p. 27)

To birds of the more soaring kind Casterbridge must have appeared on this fine evening as a mosaic-work of subdued reds, browns, greys, and crystals, held together by a rectangular frame of deep green. To the level eye of humanity it stood as an indistinct mass behind a dense stockade of limes and chestnuts, set in the midst of miles of rotund down and concave field. The mass became gradually dissected by the vision into towers, gables, chimneys, and casements, the highest glazings shining bleared and bloodshot with the coppery fire they caught from the belt of sunlit cloud in the west. (p. 27)

 

               Chapter 5

When [Henchard] indulged in an occasional loud laugh at some remark among the guests, his large mouth parted so far back as to show to the rays of the chandelier a full score or more of the two-and-thirty sound white teeth that he obviously still could boast of.

That laugh was not encouraging to strangers, and hence it may have been well that it was rarely heard. Many theories might have been built upon it. It fell in well with conjectures of a temperament which would have no pity for weakness, but would be ready to yield ungrudging admiration to greatness and strength. Its producer's personal goodness, if he had any, would be of a very fitful cast—an occasional almost oppressive generosity rather than a mild and constant kindness. (p. 32-33)

 

               Chapter 7

If there was one good thing more than another which characterized this single-hearted girl [Elizabeth-Jane] it was a willingness to sacrifice her personal comfort and dignity to the common weal. (p. 42)

The accommodation of the Three Mariners was far from spacious, despite the fair area of ground it covered. The room demanded by intrusive beams and rafters, partitions, passages, staircases, disused ovens, settles, and four-posters, left comparatively small quarters for human beings. Moreover, this being at a time before home-brewing was abandoned by the smaller victuallers, and a house in which the twelve-bushel strength was still religiously adhered to by the landlord in his ale, the quality of the liquor was the chief attraction of the premises, so that everything had to make way for utensils and operations in connection therewith. (p. 44)

He [Farfrae] was now idly reading a copy of the local paper, and was hardly conscious of her entry, so that she [Elizabeth-Jane] 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 velvet-pile or down that was on the skin at the back of his neck, and how his cheek 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. (p. 44)

 

               Chapter 8

By this time he had completely taken possession of the hearts of the Three Mariners' inmates, including even old Coney. Notwithstanding an occasional odd gravity which awoke their sense of the ludicrous for the moment, they began to view him through a golden haze which the tone of his mind seemed to raise around him. Casterbridge had sentiment—Casterbridge had romance ; but this stranger's sentiment was of differing quality. Or rather, perhaps, the difference was mainly superficial ; he was to them like the poet of a new school who takes his contemporaries by storm ; who is not really new, but is the first to articulate what all his listeners have felt, though but dumbly till then. (p. 53)

He seemed to feel exactly as she felt about life and its surroundings—that they were a tragical rather than a comical thing ; that though one could be gay on occasion, moments of gaiety were interludes, and no part of the actual drama. It was extraordinary how similar their views were. (p. 54)

 

               Chapter 9

Casterbridge was the complement of the rural life around, not its urban opposite. Bees and butterflies in the cornfields at the top of the town, who desired to get to the meads at the bottom, took no circuitous course, but flew straight down High Street without any apparent consciousness that they were traversing strange latitudes. And in autumn airy spheres of thistledown floated into the same street, lodged upon the shop fronts, blew into drains, and innumerable tawny and yellow leaves skimmed along the pavement, and stole through people's doorways into their passages with a hesitating scratch on the floor, like the skirts of timid visitors. (p. 56)

The yeomen, farmers, dairymen, and townsfolk, who came to transact business in these ancient streets, spoke in other ways than by articulation. Not to hear the words of your interlocutor in metropolitan centres is to know nothing of his meaning. Here the face, the arms, the hat, the stick, the body throughout spoke equally with the tongue. To express satisfaction the Casterbridge market-man added to his utterance a broadening of the cheeks, a crevicing of the eyes, a throwing back of the shoulders, which was intelligible from the other end of the street. If he wondered, though all Henchard's carts and waggons were rattling past him, you knew it from perceiving the inside of his crimson mouth, and a target-like circling of his eyes. Deliberation caused sundry attacks on the moss of adjoining walls with the end of his stick, a change of his hat from the horizontal to the less so ; a sense of tediousness announced itself in a lowering of the person by spreading the knees to a lozenge-shaped aperture and contorting the arms. Chicanery, subterfuge, had hardly a place in the streets of this honest borough to all appearance ; and it was said that the lawyers in the Court House hard by occasionally threw in strong arguments for the other side out of pure generosity (though apparently by mischance) when advancing their own. (p. 60)

Thus Casterbridge was in most respects but the pole, focus, or nerve-knot of the surrounding country life ; differing from the many manufacturing towns which are as foreign bodies set down, like boulders on a plain, in a green world with which they have nothing in common. Casterbridge lived by agriculture at one remove further from the fountainhead than the adjoining villages—no more. The townsfolk understood every fluctuation in the rustic's condition, for it affected their receipts as much as the labourer's ; they entered into the troubles and joys which moved the aristocratic families ten miles round—for the same reason. And even at the dinner-parties of the professional families the subjects of discussion were corn, cattle-disease, sowing and reaping, fencing and planting ; while politics were viewed by them less from their own standpoint of burgesses with rights and privileges than from the standpoint of their country neighbours. (p. 60-61)

"I am the most distant fellow in the world when I don't care for a man," he said. "But when a man takes my fancy he takes it strong. (p. 63)

 

               Chapter 10

He took her hand at parting, and held it so warmly that she, who had known so little friendship, was much affected, and tears rose to her aerial-grey eyes. (p. 67)

 

               Chapter 11

The Amphitheatre was a huge circular enclosure, with a notch at opposite extremities of its diameter north and south. From its sloping internal form it might have been called the spittoon of the Jotuns. It was to Casterbridge what the ruined Coliseum is to modern Rome, and was nearly of the same magnitude. The dusk of evening was the proper hour at which a true impression of this suggestive place could be received. Standing in the middle of the arena at that time there by degrees became apparent its real vastness, which a cursory view from the summit at noon-day was apt to obscure. Melancholy, impressive, lonely, yet accessible from every part of the town, the historic circle was the frequent spot for appointments of a furtive kind. Intrigues were arranged there; tentative meetings were there experimented after divisions and feuds. But one kind of appointment—in itself the most common of any—seldom had place in the Amphitheatre: that of happy lovers. (p. 69)

[…] in 1705 a woman who had murdered her husband was half-strangled and then burnt there in the presence of ten thousand spectators. Tradition reports that at a certain stage of the burning her heart burst and leapt out of her body, to the terror of them all, and that not one of those ten thousand people ever cared particularly for hot roast after that. (p. 70)

 

               Chapter 12

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. (p. 74)

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. (p. 74)

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 sex. (p. 76)

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. (p. 77)

 

               Chapter 13

The evening sun seemed to shine more yellowly there than anywhere else this autumn—stretching its rays, as the hours grew later, under the lowest sycamore boughs, and steeping the ground-floor of the dwelling, with its green shutters, in a substratum of radiance which the foliage screened from the upper parts. Beneath these sycamores on the town walls could be seen from the sitting-room the tumuli and earth forts of the distant uplands ; making it altogether a pleasant spot, with the usual touch of melancholy that a past-marked prospect lends. (p. 79)

Mrs. Henchard was so pale that the boys called her "The Ghost." Sometimes Henchard overheard this epithet when they passed together along the Walks—as the avenues on the walls were named—at which his face would darken with an expression of destructiveness towards the speakers ominous to see ; but he said nothing. (p. 81)

‘Tis five-and-forty years since I had my settlement in this here town," said Coney; "but daze me if I ever see a man wait so long before to take so little ! (p. 82)

 

Chapter 14

[…] as the mediaeval saying puts it, "Take, have, and keep, are pleasant words." With peace of mind came development, and with development beauty. Knowledge—the result of great natural insight—she did not lack; learning, accomplishment—those, alas, she had not; but as the winter and spring passed by her thin face and figure filled out in rounder and softer curves; the lines and contractions upon her young brow went away; the muddiness of skin which she had looked upon as her lot by nature departed with a change to abundance of good things, and a bloom came upon her cheek. Perhaps, too, her grey, thoughtful eyes revealed an arch gaiety sometimes ; but this was infrequent ; the sort of wisdom which looked from their pupils did not readily keep company with these lighter moods. Like all people who have known rough times, light-heartedness seemed to her too irrational and inconsequent to be indulged in except as a reckless dram now and then ; for she had been too early habituated to anxious reasoning to drop the habit suddenly. She felt none of those ups and downs of spirit which beset so many people without cause ; never —to paraphrase a recent poet — never a gloom in Elizabeth-Jane's soul but she well knew how it came there ; and her present cheerfulness was fairly proportionate to her solid guarantees for the same. […] Thus she refrained from bursting out like a water-flower that spring, and clothing herself in puffings and knick-knacks, as most of the Casterbridge girls would have done in her circumstances. Her triumph was tempered by circumspection ; she had still that fieldmouse fear of the coulter of destiny despite fair promise, which is common among the thoughtful who have suffered early from poverty and oppression.

‘I won't be too gay on any account,’ she would say to herself. ‘It would be tempting Providence to hurl mother and me down, and afflict us again as He used to do.’ (p. 85-86)

The position of Elizabeth-Jane's room—rather high in the house, so that it commanded a view of the hay-stores and granaries across the garden—afforded her opportunity for accurate observation of what went on there. She saw that Donald and Mr. Henchard were inseparables. When walking together Henchard would lay his arm familiarly on his manager's shoulder, as if Farfrae were a younger brother, bearing so heavily that his slight frame bent under the weight. Occasionally she would hear a perfect cannonade of laughter from Henchard, arising from something Donald had said, the latter looking quite innocent and not laughing at all. In Henchard's somewhat lonely life he evidently found the young man as desirable for comradeship as he was useful for consultations. Donald's brightness of intellect maintained in the corn-factor the admiration it had won at the first hour of their meeting. The poor opinion, and but ill-concealed, that he entertained of the slim Farfrae's physical girth, strength, and dash was more than counterbalanced by the immense respect he had for his brains. (p. 88)

Casterbridge, as has been hinted, was a place deposited in the block upon a corn-field. There was no suburb in the modern sense, or transitional intermixture of town and down. It stood, with regard to the wide fertile land adjoining, clean-cut and distinct, like a chess-board on a green tablecloth. (p. 89)

As Elizabeth neither assented nor dissented Donald Farfrae began blowing her back hair, and her side hair, and her neck, and the crown of her bonnet, and the fur of her victorine, Elizabeth saying, "O, thank you," at every puff. At last she was fairly clean, though Farfrae, having got over his first concern at the situation, seemed in no manner of hurry to be gone. (p. 92-93)

 

               Chapter 15

But nothing is more insidious than the evolution of wishes from mere fancies, and of wants from mere wishes. Henchard gave Elizabeth-Jane a box of delicately-tinted gloves one spring day. She wanted to wear them to show her appreciation of his kindness, but she had no bonnet that would harmonize. As an artistic indulgence she thought she would have such a bonnet. When she had a bonnet that would go with the gloves she had no dress that would go with the bonnet. It was now absolutely necessary to finish; she ordered the requisite article, and found that she had no sunshade to go with the dress. In for a penny in for a pound ; she bought the sunshade, and the whole structure was at last complete. (p. 93)

Everybody was attracted, and some said that her bygone simplicity was the art that conceals art, the "delicate imposition" of Rochefoucauld ; she had produced an effect, a contrast, and it had been done on purpose. As a matter of fact this was not true, but it had its result ; for as soon as Casterbridge thought her artful it thought her worth notice. "It is the first time in my life that I have been so much admired," she said to herself; "though perhaps it is by those whose admiration is not worth having." (p. 93-94)

"Good Heaven," she whispered, "can it be? Here am I setting up as the town beauty!"

When she had thought it over, her usual fear of exaggerating appearances engendered a deep sadness. "There is something wrong in all this," she mused. "If they only knew what an unfinished girl I am—that I can't talk Italian, or use globes, or show any of the accomplishments they learn at boarding schools, how they would despise me ! Better sell all this finery and buy myself grammar-books and dictionaries and a history of all the philosophies !" (p. 94)

"Do you care so very much about hurting folks' feelings ?" observed Henchard with a half sneer. "You do, I know—especially mine !"

"I am sorry if I have hurt yours, sir," replied Donald, standing still, with a second expression of the same sentiment in the regretfulness of his face. (p. 99)

 

Chapter 16

[…] he determined to take upon his own shoulders the responsibility of organizing some amusements, if the other Councilmen would leave the matter in his hands. To this they quite readily agreed, the majority being fine old crusted characters who had a decided taste for living without worry. (p. 101)

Everybody applauded the Mayor's proposed entertainment, especially when it became known that he meant to pay for it all himself. (p. 101)

Then he perceived the immense admiration for the Scotchman that revealed itself in the women's faces ; and when this exhibition was over, and a new dance proposed, and Donald had disappeared for a time to return in his natural garments, he had an unlimited choice of partners, every girl being in a coming-on disposition towards one who so thoroughly understood the poetry of motion as he. (p. 104)

 

               Chapter 17

To solve the problem whether her appearance on the evening of the dance were such as to inspire a fleeting love at first sight, she dressed herself up exactly as she had dressed then—the muslin, the spencer, the sandals, the para-sol—and looked in the mirror. The picture glassed back was in her opinion, precisely of such a kind as to inspire that fleeting regard, and no more—"just enough to make him silly, and not enough to keep him so," she said luminously ; and Elizabeth thought, in a much lower key, that by this time he had discovered how plain and homely was the informing spirit of that pretty outside.

Hence, when she felt her heart going out to him, she would say to herself with a mock pleasantry that carried an ache with it, "No, no, Elizabeth-Jane—such dreams are not for you !" She tried to prevent herself from seeing him, and thinking of him ; succeeding fairly well in the former attempt, in the latter not so completely. (p. 109)

In spite of this praiseworthy course the Scotchman's trade increased. Whether it were that his northern energy was an overmastering force among the easy-going Wessex worthies, or whether it was sheer luck, the fact remained that whatever he touched he prospered in. Like Jacob in Padan-Aram, he would no sooner humbly limit himself to the ringstraked-and-spotted exceptions of trade than the ringstraked-and-spotted would multiply and prevail.

But most probably luck had little to do with it. Character is Fate, said Novalis, and Farfrae's character was just the reverse of Henchard's, who might not inaptly be described as Faust has been described—as a vehement gloomy being who had quitted the ways of vulgar men without light to guide him on a better way. (p. 112)

 

               Chapter 18

The latter sat up with her mother to the utmost of her strength night after night. To learn to take the universe seriously there is no quicker way than to watch—to be a ‘waker,’ as the country-people call it. Between the hours at which the last toss-pot went by and the first sparrow shook himself, the silence in Casterbridge—barring the rare sound of the watchman—was broken in Elizabeth's ear only by the time-piece in the bedroom ticking frantically against the clock on the stairs ; ticking harder and harder till it seemed to clang like a gong ; and all this while the subtle-souled girl asking herself why she was born, why sitting in a room, and blinking at the candle ; why things around her had taken the shape they wore in preference to every other possible shape. Why they stared at her so helplessly, as if waiting for the touch of some wand that should release them from terrestrial constraint ; what that chaos called consciousness, which spun in her at this moment like a top, tended to, and began in. Her eyes fell together ; she was awake, yet she was asleep. (p. 115)

"Well, poor soul ; she's helpless to hinder that or anything now," answered Mother Cuxsom. "And all her shining keys will be took from her, and her cupboards opened ; and little things a' didn't wish seen, anybody will see ; and her wishes and ways will all be as nothing !" (p. 118)

 

               Chapter 19

He was the kind of man to whom some human object for pouring out his heart upon—were it emotive or were it choleric—was almost a necessity. (p. 121)

His usual habit was not to consider whether destiny were hard upon him or not—the shape of his ideals in cases of affliction being simply a moody "I am to suffer, I perceive." "This much scourging, then, it is for me." But now through his passionate head there stormed this thought—that the blasting disclosure was what he had deserved. (p. 122)

Misery taught him nothing more than defiant endurance of it. His wife was dead, and the first impulse for revenge died with the thought that she was beyond him. He looked out at the night as at a fiend. Henchard, like all his kind, was superstitious, and he could not help thinking that the concatenation of events this evening had produced was the scheme of some sinister intelligence bent on punishing him. (p. 122-123)

[…] he came to the bridge at the bottom of the High Street. Here he turned in upon a bypath on the river bank, skirting the north-eastern limits of the town.

These precincts embodied the mournful phases of Casterbridge life, as the south avenues embodied its cheerful moods. The whole way along here was sunless, even in summer time ; in spring, white frosts lingered here when other places were steaming with warmth ; while in winter it was the seed-field of all the aches, rheumatisms, and torturing cramps of the year. The Casterbridge doctors must have pined away for want of sufficient nourishment but for the configuration of the landscape on the north-eastern side. (p. 123)

The exaggeration which darkness imparted to the glooms of this region impressed Henchard more than he had expected. The lugubrious harmony of the spot with his domestic situation was too perfect for him, impatient of effects scenes, and adumbrations. It reduced his heartburning to melancholy, and he exclaimed, "Why the deuce did I come here !" He went on past the cottage in which the old local hangman had lived and died, in times before that calling was monopolized over all England by a single gentleman ; and climbed up by a steep back lane into the town. For the sufferings of that night, engendered by his bitter disappointment, he might well have been pitied. He was like one who had half fainted, and could neither recover nor complete the swoon. In words he could blame his wife, but not in his heart ; and had he obeyed the wise directions outside her letter this pain would have been spared him for long—possibly for ever, Elizabeth-Jane seeming to show no ambition to quit her safe and secluded maiden courses for the speculative path of matrimony. (p. 124)

 

               Chapter 20

The sharp reprimand was not lost upon her, and in time it came to pass that for "fay" she said "succeed" ; that she no longer spoke of "dumbledores" but of "humble bees" ; no longer said of young men and women that they "walked together," but that they were "engaged"; that she grew to talk of "greggles" as "wild hyacinths" ; that when she had not slept she did not quaintly tell the servants next morning that she had been "hag-rid," but that she had "suffered from indigestion." (p. 125)

Her considerate disposition became a pitfall to her now. She was, it must be admitted, sometimes provokingly and unnecessarily willing to saddle herself with manual labours. (p. 126)

Convinced of the scathing damage to his local repute and position that must have been caused by such a fact, though it had never before reached his own ears, Henchard showed a positive distaste for the presence of this girl not his own, whenever he encountered her. He mostly dined with the farmers at the market-room of one of the two chief hotels, leaving her in utter solitude. Could he have seen how she made use of those silent hours he might have found reason to reserve his judgment on her quality. She read and took notes incessantly, mastering facts with painful laboriousness, but never flinching from her self-imposed task. She began the study of Latin, incited by the Roman characteristics of the town she lived in. "If I am not well-informed it shall be by no fault of my own," she would say to herself through the tears that would occasionally glide down her peachy cheeks when she was fairly baffled by the portentous obscurity of many of these educational works.

Thus she lived on, a dumb, deep-feeling, great-eyed creature, construed by not a single contiguous being ; quenching with patient fortitude her incipient interest in Farfrae, because it seemed to be one-sided, unmaidenly, and unwise. True, that for reasons best known to herself, she had, since Farfrae's dismissal, shifted her quarters from the back room affording a view of the yard (which she had occupied with such zest) to a front chamber overlooking the street ; but as for the young man, whenever he passed the house he seldom or never turned his head. (p. 129)

Unduly depressed by a sense of her own superfluity she thought he probably scorned her; and quite broken in spirit sat down on a bench. She fell into painful thought on her position, which ended with her saying quite loud, "O, I wish I was dead with dear mother !" (p. 132)

I would do anything to be independent ; for then perhaps my father might get to love me. But, ah ! (p. 134)

 

               Chapter 21

[…] the house [High-Place Hall] had been empty for a year or two while before that interval its occupancy had been irregular. The reason of its unpopularity was soon made manifest. Some of its rooms overlooked the market-place; and such a prospect from such a house was not considered desirable or seemly by its would-be occupiers. […] the architecture deserved admiration, or at least study, on its own account. It was Palladian, and like most architecture erected since the Gothic age was a compilation rather than a design. But its reasonableness made it impressive. It was not rich, but rich enough. A timely consciousness of the ultimate vanity of human architecture, no less than of other human things, had prevented artistic superfluity. […] The door was studded, and the keystone of the arch was a mask. Originally the mask had exhibited a comic leer, as could still be discerned; but generations of Casterbridge boys had thrown stones at the mask, aiming at its open mouth; and the blows thereon had chipped off the lips and jaws as if they had been eaten away by disease. The appearance was so ghastly by the weakly lamp-glimmer that she could not bear to look at it—the first unpleasant feature of her visit. […] The position of the queer old door and the odd presence of the leering mask suggested one thing above all others as appertaining to the mansion's past history—intrigue. By the alley it had been possible to come unseen from all sorts of quarters in the town—the old play-house, the old bull-stake, the old cock-pit, the pool wherein nameless infants had been used to disappear. High-Place Hall could boast of its conveniences undoubtedly. (p. 136-137)

He showed no further tendency to be angry ; he showed something worse. Absolute indifference had taken the place of irritability; and his coldness was such that it encouraged her to departure, even more than hot temper could have done. (p. 138)

He entered the house, and, seeing that all her things had not yet been brought down, went up to her room to look on. He had never been there since she had occupied it. Evidences of her care, of her endeavours for improvement, were visible all around, in the form of books, sketches, maps, and little arrangements for tasteful effects. Henchard had known nothing of these efforts. He gazed at them, turned suddenly about, and came down to the door. (p. 141)

 

               Chapter 22

His bitter disappointment at finding Elizabeth-Jane to be none of his, and himself a childless man, had left an emotional void in Henchard that he unconsciously craved to fill. (p. 143)

Though he was not a fortune-hunter, the possibility that Lucetta had been sublimed into a lady of means by some munificent testament on the part of this relative lent a charm to her image which it might not otherwise have acquired. He was getting on towards the dead level of middle age, when material things increasingly possess the mind. (p. 144)

He sat over his dining-table long and dreamily, and by an almost mechanical transfer the sentiments which had run to waste since his estrangement from Elizabeth-Jane and Donald Farfrae gathered around Lucetta before they had grown dry. (p. 145)

Elizabeth drew up silently to the head of the sofa, but with obvious pleasure. It could be seen that though in years she was younger than her entertainer in manner and general vision she seemed more of the sage. (p. 146)

The days came but not the visitor, though Lucetta repeated her dressing with scrupulous care. She got disheartened. It may at once be declared that Lucetta no longer bore towards Henchard all that warm allegiance which had characterized her in their first acquaintance, the then unfortunate issue of things had chilled pure love considerably. But there remained a conscientious wish to bring about her union with him, now that there was nothing to hinder it—to right her position—which in itself was a happiness to sigh for. With strong social reasons on her side why their marriage should take place there had ceased to be any worldly reason on his why it should be postponed, since she had succeeded to fortune. (p. 150)

Sentimentally she did not much care to see him—his delays had wearied her, but it was necessary; and with a sigh she arranged herself picturesquely in the chair ; first this way, then that; next so that the light fell over her head. Next she flung herself on the couch in the cyma-recta curve which so became her, and with her arm over her brow looked towards the door. This, she decided, was the best position after all, and thus she remained till a man's step was heard on the stairs. Whereupon Lucetta, forgetting her curve (for Nature was too strong for Art as yet), jumped up and ran and hid herself behind one of the window-curtains in a freak of timidity. In spite of the waning of passion the situation was an agitating one—she had not seen Henchard since his (supposed) temporary parting from her in Jersey. (p. 152)

 

               Chapter 23

But it is amusing to look for somebody one knows in a crowd, even if one does not want him. It takes off the terrible oppressiveness of being surrounded by a throng, and having no point of junction with it through a single individual."

"Ay ! Maybe you'll be very lonely, ma'am ?"

"Nobody knows how lonely." (p. 154)

Whether its origin were national or personal, it was quite true what Lucetta had said, that the curious double strands in Farfrae's thread of life—the commercial and the romantic—were very distinct at times. Like the colours in a variegated cord those contrasts could be seen intertwisted, yet not mingling. (p. 155)

Among the rest, at the corner of the pavement, stood an old shepherd, who attracted the eyes of Lucetta and Farfrae by his stillness. He was evidently a chastened man. The battle of life had been a sharp one with him, for, to begin with, he was a man of small frame. He was now so bowed by hard work and years that, approaching from behind, a person could hardly see his head. He had planted the stem of his crook in the gutter and was resting upon the bow, which was polished to silver brightness by the long friction of his hands. He had quite forgotten where he was, and what he had come for, his eyes being bent on the ground. A little way off negotiations were proceeding which had reference to him ; but he did not hear them, and there seemed to be passing through his mind pleasant visions of the hiring successes of his prime, when his skill laid open to him any farm for the asking. (p. 156)

The girl's lips quivered. "Thirty-five mile !" she murmured. "Ah! 'tis enough ! I shall never see 'ee again !" It was, indeed, a hopeless length of traction for Dan Cupid's magnet ; for young men were young men at Casterbridge as elsewhere. (p. 157)

Lucetta's eyes, full of tears, met Farfrae's. His, too, to her surprise, were moist at the scene.

"It is very hard," she said with strong feelings. "Lovers ought not to be parted like that ! O, if I had my wish, I'd let people live and love at their pleasure !" (p. 157)

Lucetta as a young girl would hardly have looked at a tradesman. But her ups and downs, capped by her indiscretions with Henchard, had made her uncritical as to station. In her poverty she had met with repulse from the society to which she had belonged, and she had no great zest for renewing an attempt upon it now. Her heart longed for some ark into which it could fly and be at rest. Rough or smooth she did not care, so long as it was warm. (p. 159)

 

               Chapter 24

The rencounter with Farfrae and his bearings towards Lucetta had made the reflective Elizabeth more observant of her brilliant and amiable companion. A few days afterwards, when her eyes met Lucetta's as the latter was going out, she somehow knew that Miss Templeman was nourishing a hope of seeing the attractive Scotchman. The fact was printed large all over Lucetta's cheeks and eyes to any one who could read her as Elizabeth-Jane was beginning to do. Lucetta passed on and closed the street door.

A seer's spirit took possession of Elizabeth, impelling her to sit down by the fire and divine events so surely from data already her own that they could be held as witnessed. She followed Lucetta thus mentally—saw her encounter Donald somewhere as if by chance—saw him wear his special look when meeting women, with an added intensity because this one was Lucetta. She depicted his impassioned manner ; beheld the indecision of both between their lothness to separate and their desire not to be observed ; depicted their shaking of hands ; how they probably parted with frigidity in their general contour and movements, only in the smaller features showing the spark of passion, thus invisible to all but themselves. (p. 166)

Nevertheless, Lucetta seemed relieved by the simple fact of having opened out the situation a little, and was slowly convalescent of her headache. (p. 168)

 

               Chapter 25

Conventionally speaking he conversed with both Miss Templeman and her companion ; but in fact it was rather that Elizabeth sat invisible in the room. Donald appeared not to see her at all, and answered her wise little remarks with curtly indifferent monosyllables, his looks and faculties hanging on the woman who could boast of a more Protean variety in her phases, moods, opinions, and also principles, than could Elizabeth. Lucetta had persisted in dragging her into the circle ; but she had remained like an awkward third point which that circle would not touch. (p. 169)

The Scotchman seemed hardly the same Farfrae who had danced with her and walked with her in a delicate poise between love and friendship—that period in the history of a love when alone it can be said to be unalloyed with pain. (p. 169)

All this time Henchard's smouldering sentiments towards Lucetta had been fanned into higher and higher inflammation by the circumstances of the case. He was discovering that the young woman for whom he once felt a pitying warmth which had been almost chilled out of him by reflection, was, when now qualified with a slight inaccessibility and a more matured beauty, the very being to make him satisfied with life. (p. 169)

He looked about the room at the novel hangings and ingenious furniture with which she had surrounded herself.

"Upon my life I didn't know such furniture as this could be bought in Casterbridge," he said.

"Nor can it be," said she. "Nor will it till fifty years more of civilization have passed over the town. It took a waggon and four horses to get it here." (p. 170)

it is not by what is, in this life, but by what appears, that you are judged. (p. 171)

He had hardly gone down the staircase when she dropped upon the sofa and jumped up again in a fit of desperation. "I will love him !" she cried passionately; "as for him—he's hot-tempered and stern, and it would be madness to bind myself to him knowing that. I won't be a slave to the past—I'll love where I choose ! " (p. 173)

The pain she experienced from the almost absolute obliviousness to her existence that was shown by the pair of them became at times half dissipated by her sense of its humourousness. When Lucetta had pricked her finger they were as deeply concerned as if she were dying ; when she herself had been seriously sick or in danger they uttered a conventional word of sympathy at the news, and forgot all about it immediately. But, as regarded Henchard, this perception of hers also caused her some filial grief ; she could not help asking what she had done to be neglected so, after the professions of solicitude he had made. As regarded Farfrae, she thought, after honest reflection, that it was quite natural. What was she beside Lucetta ?—as one of the "meaner beauties of the night," when the moon had risen in the skies. (p. 173-174)

She had learnt the lesson of renunciation, and was as familiar with the wreck of each day's wishes as with the diurnal setting of the sun. If her earthly career had taught her few book philosophies it had at least well practised her in this. Yet her experience had consisted less in a series of pure disappointments than in a series of substitutions. Continually it had happened that what she had desired had not been granted her, and that what had been granted her she had not desired. So she viewed with an approach to equanimity the new cancelled days when Donald had been her undeclared lover, and wondered what unwished-for thing Heaven might send her in place of him. (p. 175)

 

               Chapter 26

They sat stiffly side by side at the darkening table, like some Tuscan painting of the two disciples supping at Emmaus. Lucetta, forming the third and haloed figure, was opposite them ; Elizabeth-Jane, being out of the game, and out of the group, could observe all from afar, like the evangelist who had to write it down : that there were long spaces of taciturnity, when all exterior circumstances were subdued to the touch of spoons and china, the click of a heel on the pavement under the window, the passing of a wheelbarrow or cart, the whistling of the carter, the gush of water into householders' buckets at the town-pump opposite, the exchange of greetings among their neighbours, and the rattle of the yokes by which they carried off their evening supply.

"More bread-and-butter ?" said Lucetta to Henchard and Farfrae equally, holding out between them a plateful of long slices. Henchard took a slice by one end and Donald by the other ; each feeling certain he was the man meant ; neither let go, and the slice came in two.

"Oh—I am so sorry !" cried Lucetta, with a nervous titter. Farfrae tried to laugh ; but he was too much in love to see the incident in any but a tragic light.

"How ridiculous of all three of them !" said Elizabeth to herself. (p. 176)

Yet to Elizabeth-Jane it was plain as the town-pump that Donald and Lucetta were incipient lovers. More than once, in spite of her care, Lucetta had been unable to restrain her glance from flitting across into Farfrae's eyes like a bird to its nest. But Henchard was constructed upon too large a scale to discern such minutiae as these by an evening light, which to him were as the notes of an insect that lie above the compass of the human ear. (p. 176-177)

That characters deteriorated in time of need possibly did not occur to Henchard. (p. 178)

Elizabeth-Jane heard by accident that Jopp had been engaged by her stepfather. She was so fully convinced that he was not the right man for the place that, at the risk of making Henchard angry, she expressed her apprehension to him when they met. But it was done to no purpose. Henchard shut up her argument with a sharp rebuff. (p. 178)

He [Wide-oh, the forecaster or weather-prophet] was sometimes astonished that men could profess so little and believe so much at his house, when at church they professed so much and believed so little. (p. 181)

 

               Chapter 27

Why, you see, sir, all the women side with Farfrae—being a damn young dand—of the sort that he is—one that creeps into a maid's heart like the giddying worm into a sheep's brain—making crooked seem straight to their eyes ! (p. 187)

Had I found that you proposed to marry me for pure love I might have felt bound now. But I soon learnt that you had planned it out of mere charity—almost as an unpleasant duty—because I had nursed you, and compromised myself, and you thought you must repay me. After that I did not care for you so deeply as before. (p. 191)

 

               Chapter 28

"Says she, 'Dost hear, old turmit-head ? Put away that dee lantern. I have floored fellows a dee sight finer-looking than a dee fool like thee, you son of a bee, dee me if I haint,' she says. […] However, when Stubberd had rambled on a little further Henchard broke out impatiently, "Come—we don't want to hear any more of them cust dees and bees ! Say the words out like a man, and don't be so modest, Stubberd; or else leave it alone !" (p. 195)

 

               Chapter 29

[…] the Casterbridge tradition was that to drive stock it was indispensable that hideous cries, coupled with Yahoo antics and gestures, should be used, large sticks flourished, stray dogs called in, and in general everything done that was likely to infuriate the viciously disposed and terrify the mild. Nothing was commoner than for a house-holder on going out of his parlour to find his hall or passage full of little children, nursemaids, aged women, or a ladies' school, who apologized for their presence by saying, "A bull passing down street from the sale." (p. 198-199)

They looked round for some shelter or hiding-place, and thought of the barn hard by. As long as they had kept their eyes on the bull he had shown some deference in his manner of approach; but no sooner did they turn their backs to seek the barn than he tossed his head and decided to thoroughly terrify them. This caused the two helpless girls to run wildly, whereupon the bull advanced in a deliberate charge. (p. 199)

I loved him so much, and I thought you might tell him of the past—and that grieved me ! And then, when I had promised you, I learnt of the rumour that you had—sold your first wife at a fair like a horse or cow ! How could I keep my promise after hearing that ? I could not risk myself in your hands ; it would have been letting myself down to take your name after such a scandal. But I knew I should lose Donald if I did not secure him at once—for you would carry out your threat of telling him of our former acquaintance, as long as there was a chance of keeping me for yourself by doing so. But you will not do so now, will you, Michael ? for it is too late to separate us. (p. 204-205)

 

               Chapter 30

Lucetta uttered a vague "Yes," and seating herself by the other young woman looked musingly at her. "What a lonely creature you are," she presently said ; "never knowing what's going on, or what people are talking about everywhere with keen interest. You should get out, and gossip about as other women do, and then you wouldn't be obliged to ask me a question of that kind. (p. 207)

Any suspicion of impropriety was to Elizabeth-Jane like a red rag to a bull. Her craving for correctness of procedure 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. (p. 208-209)

 

               Chapter 31

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 well-nigh 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 a recent crime. (p. 211)

His countenance had somewhat changed from its flush of prosperity ; the black hair and whiskers were the same as ever, but a film of ash was over the rest. (p. 212)

When 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 time past had done nothing but condemn him. Now that Henchard's whole career was pictured distinctly to his neighbours, 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 wimble and knife in his basket—they wondered and regretted his fall. (p. 213-214)

We work harder, but we bain't made afeard 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 ? (p. 215)

 

               Chapter 32

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 had 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 joint ; 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. (p. 215-216)

The misérables who would pause 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 or lucklessness, the inefficient of the professional class—shabby-genteel men, who did not know how to get rid of the weary time between breakfast and dinner, and the yet more weary time between dinner and dark. The eye of this species were mostly directed over the parapet upon the running water below. A man seen there looking thus fixedly into the river was pretty sure to be one whom the world did not treat kindly for some reason or other. While one in straits on the townward bridge did not mind who saw him so, and kept his back to the parapet to survey the passers-by, one in straits on this never faced the road, never turned his head at coming footsteps, but, sensitive to his own condition, watched the current whenever a stranger approached, as if some strange fish interested him, 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 some much-courted Adonis of county fame. Some had been known to stand and think so long with this fixed gaze downward that eventually they had allowed their poor carcases to follow that gaze ; and they were discovered the next morning out of reach of their troubles, either here or in the deep pool called Blackwater, a little higher up the river. (p. 216-217)

'Tis turn and turn about, isn't it ! Do ye mind how we stood like this in the Chalk Walk when I persuaded 'ee 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. (p. 218-219)

Well, it was no that I wanted it so very much for myself; but I wish ye to pick out all that you care to have—such things as may be endeared to ye by associations, or particularly suited to your use. And take them to your own house—it will not be depriving me.

Henchard was a little moved. "I—sometimes think I've wronged 'ee !" he said, in tones which showed the disquietude that the night shades hid in his face. He shook Farfrae abruptly by the hand, and hastened away as if unwilling to betray himself further. (p. 220)

"I have worked as a journeyman before now, ha'n't I ?" he would say in his defiant way ; "and why shouldn't I do it again ?" But he looked a far different journeyman from the one he had been in his earlier days. Then he had worn clean, suitable clothes, light and cheerful in hue ; leggings yellow as marigolds, corduroys immaculate as new flax, and a neckerchief like a flower-garden. Now he wore the remains of an old blue cloth suit of his gentlemanly times, a rusty silk hat, and a once black satin stock, soiled and shabby. (p. 221)

It was no mercenary hankering after her fortune that moved him, though that fortune had been the means of making her so much the more desired by giving her the air of independence and sauciness which attracts men of his composition. It had given her servants, house, and fine clothing—a setting that invested Lucetta with a startling novelty in the eyes of him who had known her in her narrow days. (p. 222)

 

               Chapter 33

As on the Sunday, so on the week-days, Farfrae and Lucetta might have been seen flitting about the town like two butterflies—or rather like a bee and a butterfly in league for life. She seemed to take no pleasure in going anywhere except in her husband's company ; and hence when business would not permit him to waste an afternoon she remained indoors waiting for the time to pass till his return, her face being visible to Elizabeth-Jane from her window aloft. The latter, however, did not say to herself that Farfrae should be thankful for such devotion, but, full of her reading, she cited Rosalind's exclamation: "Mistress, know yourself ; down on your knees and thank Heaven fasting for a good man's love." [dans As You Like It, acte III, scène 5] (p. 228)

 

               Chapter 34

But Donald Farfrae was one of those men upon whom an incident is never absolutely lost. He revised impressions from a subsequent point of view, and the impulsive judgment of the moment was not always his permanent one. The vision of Elizabeth's earnest face in the rimy dawn came back to him several times during the day. Knowing the solidity of her character he did not treat her hints altogether as idle sounds. (p. 232)

The occupier was much disappointed, and straight-way informed Henchard, as soon as he saw him, that a scheme of the Council for setting him up in a shop had been knocked on the head by Farfrae. And thus out of error enmity grew. (p. 233)

When he was gone Farfrae said musingly, "See now how it's ourselves that are ruled by the Powers above us ! We plan this, but we do that. If they want to make me Mayor I will stay, and Henchard must rave as he will." (p. 235)

"That's how she went on to me," said Henchard, "acres of words like that, when what had happened was what I could not cure."

"Yes," said Farfrae absently, "it is the way wi' women." But the fact was that he knew very little of the sex ; yet detecting a sort of resemblance in style between the effusions of the woman he worshipped and those of the supposed stranger, he concluded that Aphrodite ever spoke thus, whosesoever the personality she assumed. (p. 238)

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. (p. 239)

 

               Chapter 35

She went back to her bedroom in a semi-paralyzed state. For very fear she could not undress, but sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. Would Henchard let out the secret in his parting words ? Her suspense was terrible. Had she confessed all to Donald in their early acquaintance he might possibly have got over it, and married her just the same—unlikely as it had once seemed ; but for her or any one else to tell him now would be fatal. (p. 240)

Finding this, she was much perplexed as to Henchard's motives in opening the matter at all ; for in such cases we attribute to an enemy a power of consistent action which we never find in ourselves or in our friends ; and forget that abortive efforts from want of heart are as possible to revenge as to generosity. (p. 241)

The sun was resting on the hill like a drop of blood on an eyelid… (p. 242)

Henchard was disarmed. His old feeling of supercilious pity for womankind in general was intensified by this suppliant appearing here as the double of the first. Moreover that thoughtless want of foresight which had led to all her trouble remained with poor Lucetta still ; she had come to meet him here in this compromising way without perceiving the risk. Such a woman was very small deer to hunt ; he felt ashamed, lost all zest and desire to humiliate Lucetta there and then, and no longer envied Farfrae his bargain. He had married money, but nothing more. Henchard was anxious to wash his hands of the game. (p. 243)

 

               Chapter 36

Mixen Lane was the Adullam of all the surrounding villages. It was the hiding-place of those who were in distress, and in debt, and trouble of every kind. Farm-labourers 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, rural servants too rebellious to serve, drifted or were forced into Mixen Lane. (p. 246)

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 (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. (p. 247)

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 the iron hand of 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 lifeholders—copyholders and others, whose roof-trees had fallen for some reason or other, 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. (p. 247)

"What do they mean by a 'skimmity-ride' ?" he asked.

"O, sir !" said the landlady, swinging her long earrings with deprecating modesty ; "'tis a' old foolish thing they do in these parts when a man's wife is—well, not too particularly his own. But as a respectable householder I don't encourage it. (p. 252)

 

               Chapter 37

It was one of those excitements which, when they move a country town, leave permanent mark upon its chronicles, as a warm summer permanently marks the ring in the tree-trunk corresponding to its date. (p. 253)

Solomon Longways, Christopher Coney, Buzzford, and the rest of that fraternity, showed their sense of the occasion by advancing their customary eleven o'clock pint to half-past ten ; from which they found a difficulty in getting back to the proper hour for several days. (p. 255)

Yet how folk do worship fine clothes ! Now there's a better-looking woman than she that nobody notices at all, because she's akin to that hontish fellow Henchard. (p. 258)

Coney reflected. Farfrae was still liked in the community ; but it must be owned that, as the Mayor and man of money, engrossed with affairs and ambitions, he had lost in the eyes of the poorer inhabitants something of that wondrous charm which he had had for them as a light-hearted penniless young man, who sang ditties as readily as the birds in the trees. Hence the anxiety to keep him from annoyance showed not quite the ardour that would have animated it in former days. (p. 259)

 

               Chapter 38

After being injured by him as a rival, and snubbed by him as a journeyman, the crowning degradation had been reserved for this day—that he should be shaken at the collar by him as a vagabond in the face of the whole town. (p. 261)

Henchard looked down upon him in silence, and their eyes met. "O Farfrae !—that's not true !" he said bitterly. "God is my witness that no man ever loved another as I did thee at one time....And now—though I came here to kill 'ee, I cannot hurt thee ! Go and give me in charge—do what you will—I care nothing for what comes of me !" (p. 265)

Henchard took his full measure of shame and self-reproach. The scenes of his first acquaintance with Farfrae rushed back upon him—that time when the curious mixture of romance and thrift in the young man's composition so commanded his heart that Farfrae could play upon him as on an instrument. So thoroughly subdued was he that he remained on the sacks in a crouching attitude, unusual for a man, and for such a man. Its womanliness sat tragically on the figure of so stern a piece of virility. (p. 265)

 

               Chapter 39

"She's me—she's me—even to the parasol—my green parasol !" cried Lucetta with a wild laugh as she stepped in. She stood motionless for one second—then fell heavily to the floor.

Almost at the instant of her fall the rude music of the skimmington ceased. The roars of sarcastic laughter went off in ripples, and the trampling died out like the rustle of a spent wind. (p. 270)

 

               Chapter 40

But, alas ! for Henchard; he had lost his good name. They would not believe him, taking his words but as the frothy utterances of recklessness. (p. 275)

Farfrae was silent, and at his silence Henchard's soul sank within him. Why had he not, before this, thought of what was only too obvious ? He who, four hours earlier, had enticed Farfrae into a deadly wrestle stood now in the darkness of late night-time on a lonely road, inviting him to come a particular way, where an assailant might have confederates, instead of going his purposed way, where there might be a better opportunity of guarding himself from attack. Henchard could almost feel this view of things in course of passage through Farfrae's mind. (p. 276)

He cursed himself like a less scrupulous Job, as a vehement man will do when he loses self-respect, the last mental prop under poverty. (p. 277)

Henchard regarded the sympathetic speaker for a few instants as if she struck him in a new light, then, without further remark, went out of the door and onward to his lonely cottage. So much for man's rivalry, he thought. Death was to have the oyster, and Farfrae and himself the shells. But about Elizabeth-Jane ; in the midst of his gloom she seemed to him as a pin-point of light. He had liked the look on her face as she answered him from the stairs. There had been affection in it, and above all things what he desired now was affection from anything that was good and pure. She was not his own, yet, for the first time, he had a faint dream that he might get to like her as his own,—if she would only continue to love him. (p. 278)

 

               Chapter 41

[…] finding that she dozed he would not call her; he waited on, looking into the fire and keeping the kettle boiling with house-wifely care, as if it were an honour to have her in his house. In truth, a great change had come over him with regard to her, and he was developing the dream of a future lit by her filial presence, as though that way alone could happiness lie. (p. 281)

[Susan] was simple-minded enough to think that the sale was in a way binding. She was as guiltless o' wrong-doing in that particular as a saint in the clouds. (p. 282)

The regard he had lately acquired for Elizabeth, the new-sprung hope of his loneliness that she would be to him a daughter of whom he could feel as proud as of the actual daughter she still believed herself to be, had been stimulated by the unexpected coming of Newson to a greedy exclusiveness in relation to her ; so that the sudden prospect of her loss had caused him to speak mad lies like a child, in pure mockery of consequences. (p. 283)

"Father," she said, as soon as she recalled herself to the outspread meal, "it is so kind of you to get this nice breakfast with your own hands, and I idly asleep the while."

"I do it every day," he replied. "You have left me ; everybody has left me ; how should I live but by my own hands."

"You are very lonely, are you not ?"

"Ay, child—to a degree that you know nothing of ! It is my own fault. (p. 285)

His mood was no longer that of the rebellious, ironical, reckless misadventurer ; but the leaden gloom of one who has lost all that can make life interesting, or even tolerable. There would remain nobody for him to be proud of, nobody to fortify him ; for Elizabeth-Jane would soon be but as a stranger, and worse. Susan, Farfrae, Lucetta, Elizabeth—all had gone from him, one after one, either by his fault or by his misfortune. (p. 285-286)

The whole land ahead of him was as darkness itself ; there was nothing to come, nothing to wait for. Yet in the natural course of life he might possibly have to linger on earth another thirty or forty years—scoffed at ; at best pitied. The thought of it was unendurable. (p. 286)

I have tried to peruse and learn all my life; but the more I try to know the more ignorant I seem. (p. 288)

Despite this natural solution of the mystery Henchard no less regarded it as an intervention that the figure should have been floating there. Elizabeth-Jane heard him say, "Who is such a reprobate as I ! And yet it seems that even I be in Somebody's hand !" (p. 289)

 

               Chapter 42

But the sympathy of the girl seemed necessary to his very existence ; and on her account pride itself wore the garments of humility. (p. 291)

Time, "in his own grey style," taught Farfrae how to estimate his experience of Lucetta—all that it was, and all that it was not. There are men whose hearts insist upon a dogged fidelity to some image or cause thrown by chance into their keeping, long after their judgment has pronounced it no rarity—even the reverse, indeed, and without them the band of the worthy is incomplete. But Farfrae was not of those. It was inevitable that the insight, briskness, and rapidity of his nature should take him out of the dead blank which his loss threw about him. He could not but perceive that by the death of Lucetta he had exchanged a looming misery for a simple sorrow. After that revelation of her history, which must have come sooner or later in any circumstances, it was hard to believe that life with her would have been productive of further happiness. But as a memory, nothwithstanding such conditions, Lucetta's image still lived on with him, her weaknesses provoking only the gentlest criticism, and her sufferings attenuating wrath at her concealments to a momentary spark now and then. (p. 291-292)

[…] he had looked into her chamber in just the same way. The present room was much humbler, but what struck him about it was the abundance of books lying everywhere. Their number and quality made the meagre furniture that supported them seem absurdly disproportionate. Some, indeed many, must have been recently purchased ; and though he encouraged her to buy in reason, he had no notion that she indulged her innate passion so extensively in proportion to the narrowness of their income. For the first time he felt a little hurt by what he thought her extravagance, and resolved to say a word to her about it. (p. 293)

Henchard's eyes followed Farfrae's, and he saw that the object of his gaze was no sample-showing farmer, but his own stepdaughter, who had just come out of a shop over the way. She, on her part, was quite unconscious of his attention, and in this was less fortunate than those young women whose very plumes, like those of Juno's bird, are set with Argus eyes whenever possible admirers are within ken. (p. 293)

Henchard was, by original make, the last man to act stealthily, for good or for evil. But the solicitus timor of his love—the dependence upon Elizabeth's regard into which he had declined (or, in another sense, to which he had advanced)—denaturalized him. He would often weigh and consider for hours together the meaning of such and such a deed or phrase of hers, when a blunt settling question would formerly have been his first instinct. And now, uneasy at the thought of a passion for Farfrae which should entirely displace her mild filial sympathy with himself, he observed her going and coming more narrowly. (p. 294)

Elizabeth would grow to be a stranger to him, and the end of his life would be friendless solitude. (p. 296)

There is an outer chamber of the brain in which thoughts unowned, unsolicited, and of noxious kind, are sometimes allowed to wander for a moment prior to being sent off whence they came. One of these thoughts sailed into Henchard's ken now. […] Henchard shuddered, and exclaimed, "God forbid such a thing ! Why should I still be subject to these visitations of the devil, when I try so hard to keep him away ?" (p. 296-297)

 

               Chapter 43

That Mr. Farfrae "walked with that bankrupt Henchard's step-daughter, of all women," became a common topic in the town, the simple perambulating term being used hereabout to signify a wooing ; and the nineteen superior young ladies of Casterbridge, who had each looked upon herself as the only woman capable of making the merchant Councilman happy, indignantly left off going to the church Farfrae attended, left off conscious mannerisms, left off putting him in their prayers at night amongst their blood relations ; in short, reverted to their normal courses. (p. 297)

It would be a truer representation to say that Casterbridge (ever excepting the nineteen young ladies) looked up for a moment at the news, and withdrawing its attention, went on labouring and victualling, bringing up its children, and burying its dead, without caring a tittle for Farfrae's domestic plans. (p. 298)

Embittered as he was against society, this moody view of himself took deeper and deeper hold of Henchard, till the daily necessity of facing mankind, and of them particularly Elizabeth-Jane, became well-nigh more than he could endure. His health declined; he became morbidly sensitive. He wished he could escape those who did not want him, and hide his head for ever. (p. 298)

Henchard was not the man to stand the certainty of condemnation on a matter so near his heart. And being an old hand at bearing anguish in silence, and haughty withal, he resolved to make as light as he could of his intentions, while immediately taking his measures. (p. 300)

[…] think of me sometimes in your future life—you'll do that, Izzy?—think of me when you are living as the wife of the richest, the foremost man in the town, and don't let my sins, when you know them all, cause 'ee to quite forget that though I loved 'ee late I loved 'ee well." (p. 301)

Though she did not know it Henchard formed at this moment much the same picture as he had presented when entering Casterbridge for the first time nearly a quarter of a century before ; except, to be sure, that the serious addition to his years had considerably lessened the spring to his stride, that his state of hopelessness had weakened him, and imparted to his shoulders, as weighted by the basket, a perceptible bend. (p. 302)

He rested his basket on the top of the stone, placed his elbows on it, and gave way to a convulsive twitch, which was worse than a sob, because it was so hard and so dry.

"If I had only got her with me—if I only had !" he said. "Hard work would be nothing to me then! But that was not to be. I—Cain—go alone as I deserve—an outcast and a vagabond. But my punishment is not greater than I can bear !"

He sternly subdued his anguish, shouldered his basket, and went on. (p. 302-303)

Thus they conversed ; and there was nobody to set before Elizabeth any extenuation of the absent one's deceit. Even had he been present Henchard might scarce have pleaded it, so little did he value himself or his good name. (p. 306)

 

               Chapter 44

He experienced not only the bitterness of a man who finds, in looking back upon an ambitious course, that what he has sacrificed in sentiment was worth as much as what he has gained in substance ; but the superadded bitterness of seeing his very recantation nullified. He had been sorry for all this long ago ; but his attempts to replace ambition by love had been as fully foiled as his ambition itself. His wronged wife had foiled them by a fraud so grandly simple as to be almost a virtue. It was an odd sequence that out of all this tampering with social law came that flower of Nature, Elizabeth. Part of his wish to wash his hands of life arose from his perception of its contrarious inconsistencies—of Nature's jaunty readiness to support unorthodox social principles. (p. 307-308)

But he could not help thinking of Elizabeth, and the quarter of the horizon in which she lived. Out of this it happened that the centrifugal tendency imparted by weariness of the world was counteracted by the centripetal influence of his love for his stepdaughter. As a consequence, instead of following a straight course yet further away from Casterbridge, Henchard gradually, almost unconsciously, deflected from that right line of his first intention ; till, by degrees, his wandering, like that of the Canadian woodsman, became part of a circle of which Casterbridge formed the centre. In ascending any particular hill he ascertained the bearings as nearly as he could by means of the sun, moon, or stars, and settled in his mind the exact direction in which Casterbridge and Elizabeth-Jane lay. Sneering at himself for his weakness he yet every hour—nay, every few minutes—conjectured her actions for the time being—her sitting down and rising up, her goings and comings, till thought of Newson's and Farfrae's counter-influence would pass like a cold blast over a pool, and efface her image. And then he would say to himself, "O you fool ! All this about a daughter who is no daughter of thine !" (p. 308)

But the ingenious machinery contrived by the Gods for reducing human possibilities of amelioration to a minimum—which arranges that wisdom to do shall come pari passu with the departure of zest for doing—stood in the way of all that. He had no wish to make an arena a second time of a world that had become a mere painted scene to him. (p. 309)

Very often, as his hay-knife crunched down among the sweet-smelling grassy stems, he would survey mankind and say to himself : "Here and everywhere be folk dying before their time like frosted leaves, though wanted by their families, the country, and the world ; while I, an outcast, an encumberer of the ground, wanted by nobody, and despised by all, live on against my will !" (p. 309)

Among the many hindrances to such a pleading not the least was this, that he did not sufficiently value himself to lessen his sufferings by strenuous appeal or elaborate argument. (p. 316)

 

               Chapter 45

Mrs. Donald Farfrae had discovered in a screened corner a new bird-cage, shrouded in newspaper, and at the bottom of the cage a little ball of feathers—the dead body of a goldfinch. Nobody could tell her how the bird and cage had come there, though that the poor little songster had been starved to death was evident. The sadness of the incident had made an impression on her. She had not been able to forget it for days, despite Farfrae's tender banter ; and now when the matter had been nearly forgotten it was again revived. (p. 317)

Michael Henchard's Will

"That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made to grieve on account of me.

"& that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground.

"& that no sexton be asked to toll the bell.

"& that nobody is wished to see my dead body.

"& that no murners walk behind me at my funeral.

"& that no flours be planted on my grave.

"& that no man remember me.

"To this I put my name.

"Michael Henchard" (p. 321)

[…] the finer movements of her nature found scope in discovering to the narrow-lived ones around her the secret (as she had once learnt it) of making limited opportunities endurable; which she deemed to consist in the cunning enlargement, by a species of microscopic treatment, of those minute forms of satisfaction that offer themselves to everybody not in positive pain; which, thus handled, have much of the same inspiring effect upon life as wider interests cursorily embraced. (p. 322)

Her experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or wrongly, that the doubtful honour of a brief transmit through a sorry world hardly called for effusiveness, even when the path was suddenly irradiated at some half-way point by daybeams rich as hers. But her strong sense that neither she nor any human being deserved less than was given, did not blind her to the fact that there were others receiving less who had deserved much more. And in being forced to class herself among the fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the persistence of the unforeseen, when the one to whom such unbroken tranquility had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth had seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.  (p. 322-323)