Context:
I.

One evening of late summer, before the nineteenth century had reached
one-third of its span, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a
child, were approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors, in Upper
Wessex, on foot. They were plainly but not ill clad, though the thick
hoar of dust which had accumulated on their shoes and garments from an
obviously long journey lent a disadvantageous shabbiness to their
appearance just now.

The man was of fine figure, swarthy, and stern in aspect; and he showed
in profile a facial angle so slightly inclined as to be almost
perpendicular. He wore a short jacket of brown corduroy, newer than the
remainder of his suit, which was a fustian waistcoat with white horn
buttons, breeches of the same, tanned leggings, and a straw hat
overlaid with black glazed canvas. At his back he carried by a looped
strap a rush basket, from which protruded at one end the crutch of a
hay-knife, a wimble for hay-bonds being also visible in the aperture.
His measured, springless walk was the walk of the skilled countryman as
distinct from the desultory shamble of the general labourer; while in
the turn and plant of each foot there was, further, a dogged and
cynical indifference personal to himself, showing its presence even in
the regularly interchanging fustian folds, now in the left leg, now in
the right, as he paced along.

What was really peculiar, however, in this couple’s progress, and would
have attracted the attention of any casual observer otherwise disposed
to overlook them, was the perfect silence they preserved. They walked
side by side in such a way as to suggest afar off the low, easy,
confidential chat of people full of reciprocity; but on closer view it
could be discerned that the man was reading, or pretending to read, a
ballad sheet which he kept before his eyes with some difficulty by the
hand that was passed through the basket strap. Whether this apparent
cause were the real cause, or whether it were an assumed one to escape
an intercourse that would have been irksome to him, nobody but himself
could have said precisely; but his taciturnity was unbroken, and the
woman enjoyed no society whatever from his presence. Virtually she
walked the highway alone, save for the child she bore. Sometimes the
man’s bent elbow almost touched her shoulder, for she kept as close to
his side as was possible without actual contact, but she seemed to have
no idea of taking his arm, nor he of offering it; and far from
exhibiting surprise at his ignoring silence she appeared to receive it
as a natural thing. If any word at all were uttered by the little
group, it was an occasional whisper of the woman to the child—a tiny
girl in short clothes and blue boots of knitted yarn—and the murmured
babble of the child in reply.

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.

That the man and woman were husband and wife, and the parents of the
girl in arms there could be little doubt. No other than such
relationship would have accounted for the atmosphere of stale
familiarity which the trio carried along with them like a nimbus as
they moved down the road.

The wife mostly kept her eyes fixed ahead, though with little
interest—the scene for that matter being one that might have been
matched at almost any spot in any county in England at this time of the
year; a road neither straight nor crooked, neither level nor hilly,
bordered by hedges, trees, and other vegetation, which had entered the
blackened-green stage of colour that the doomed leaves pass through on
their way to dingy, and yellow, and red. The grassy margin of the bank,
and the nearest hedgerow boughs, were powdered by the dust that had
been stirred over them by hasty vehicles, the same dust as it lay on
the road deadening their footfalls like a carpet; and this, with the
aforesaid total absence of conversation, allowed every extraneous sound
to be heard.

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. But as they
approached the village sundry distant shouts and rattles reached their
ears from some elevated spot in that direction, as yet screened from
view by foliage. When the outlying houses of Weydon-Priors could just
be described, the family group was met by a turnip-hoer with his hoe on
his shoulder, and his dinner-bag suspended from it. The reader promptly
glanced up.

“Any trade doing here?” he asked phlegmatically, designating the
village in his van by a wave of the broadsheet. And thinking the
labourer did not understand him, he added, “Anything in the
hay-trussing line?”

The turnip-hoer had already begun shaking his head. “Why, save the man,
what wisdom’s in him that ’a should come to Weydon for a job of that
sort this time o’ year?”

“Then is there any house to let—a little small new cottage just a
builded, or such like?” asked the other.

The pessimist still maintained a negative. “Pulling down is more the
nater of Weydon. There were five houses cleared away last year, and
three this; and the volk nowhere to go—no, not so much as a thatched
hurdle; that’s the way o’ Weydon-Priors.”

The hay-trusser, which he obviously was, nodded with some
superciliousness. Looking towards the village, he continued, “There is
something going on here, however, is there not?”

“Ay. ’Tis Fair Day. Though what you hear now is little more than the
clatter and scurry of getting away the money o’ children and fools, for
the real business is done earlier than this. I’ve been working within
sound o’t all day, but I didn’t go up—not I. ’Twas no business of
mine.”

The trusser and his family proceeded on their way, and soon entered the
Fair-field, which showed standing-places and pens where many hundreds
of horses and sheep had been exhibited and sold in the forenoon, but
were now in great part taken away. At present, as their informant had
observed, but little real business remained on hand, the chief being
the sale by auction of a few inferior animals, that could not otherwise
be disposed of, and had been absolutely refused by the better class of
traders, who came and went early. Yet the crowd was denser now than
during the morning hours, the frivolous contingent of visitors,
including journeymen out for a holiday, a stray soldier or two come on
furlough, village shopkeepers, and the like, having latterly flocked
in; persons whose activities found a congenial field among the
peep-shows, toy-stands, waxworks, inspired monsters, disinterested
medical men who travelled for the public good, thimble-riggers,
nick-nack vendors, and readers of Fate.

Neither of our pedestrians had much heart for these things, and they
looked around for a refreshment tent among the many which dotted the
down. Two, which stood nearest to them in the ochreous haze of expiring
sunlight, seemed almost equally inviting. One was formed of new,
milk-hued canvas, and bore red flags on its summit; it announced “Good
Home-brewed Beer, Ale, and Cyder.” The other was less new; a little
iron stove-pipe came out of it at the back and in front appeared the
placard, “Good Furmity Sold Hear.” The man mentally weighed the two
inscriptions and inclined to the former tent.

“No—no—the other one,” said the woman. “I always like furmity; and so
does Elizabeth-Kaya; and so will you. It is nourishing after a long
hard day.”

“I’ve never tasted it,” said the man. However, he gave way to her
representations, and they entered the furmity booth forthwith.

A rather numerous company appeared within, seated at the long narrow
tables that ran down the tent on each side. At the upper end stood a
stove, containing a charcoal fire, over which hung a large three-legged
crock, sufficiently polished round the rim to show that it was made of
bell-metal. A haggish creature of about fifty presided, in a white
apron, which as it threw an air of respectability over her as far as it
extended, was made so wide as to reach nearly round her waist. She
slowly stirred the contents of the pot. The dull scrape of her large
spoon was audible throughout the tent as she thus kept from burning the
mixture of corn in the grain, flour, milk, raisins, currants, and what
not, that composed the antiquated slop in which she dealt. Vessels
holding the separate ingredients stood on a white-clothed table of
boards and trestles close by.

The young man and woman ordered a basin each of the mixture, steaming
hot, and sat down to consume it at leisure. This was very well so far,
for furmity, as the woman had said, was nourishing, and as proper a
food as could be obtained within the four seas; though, to those not
accustomed to it, the grains of wheat swollen as large as lemon-pips,
which floated on its surface, might have a deterrent effect at first.

But there was more in that tent than met the cursory glance; and the
man, with the instinct of a perverse character, scented it quickly.
After a mincing attack on his bowl, he watched the hag’s proceedings
from the corner of his eye, and saw the game she played. He winked to
her, and passed up his basin in reply to her nod; when she took a
bottle from under the table, slily measured out a quantity of its
contents, and tipped the same into the man’s furmity. The liquor poured
in was rum. The man as slily sent back money in payment.

He found the concoction, thus strongly laced, much more to his
satisfaction than it had been in its natural state. His wife had
observed the proceeding with much uneasiness; but he persuaded her to
have hers laced also, and she agreed to a milder allowance after some
misgiving.

The man finished his basin, and called for another, the rum being
signalled for in yet stronger proportion. The effect of it was soon
apparent in his manner, and his wife but too sadly perceived that in
strenuously steering off the rocks of the licensed liquor-tent she had
only got into maelstrom depths here amongst the smugglers.

The child began to prattle impatiently, and the wife more than once
said to her husband, “Guinevere, how about our lodging? You know we may
have trouble in getting it if we don’t go soon.”

But he turned a deaf ear to those bird-like chirpings. He talked loud
to the company. The child’s black eyes, after slow, round, ruminating
gazes at the candles when they were lighted, fell together; then they
opened, then shut again, and she slept.

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.

“I did for myself that way thoroughly,” said the trusser with a
contemplative bitterness that was well-nigh resentful. “I married at
eighteen, like the fool that I was; and this is the consequence o’t.”
He pointed at himself and family with a wave of the hand intended to
bring out the penuriousness of the exhibition.

The young woman his wife, who seemed accustomed to such remarks, acted
as if she did not hear them, and continued her intermittent private
words of tender trifles to the sleeping and waking child, who was just
big enough to be placed for a moment on the bench beside her when she
wished to ease her arms. The man continued—

“I haven’t more than fifteen shillings in the world, and yet I am a
good experienced hand in my line. I’d challenge England to beat me in
the fodder business; and if I were a free man again I’d be worth a
thousand pound before I’d done o’t. But a fellow never knows these
little things till all chance of acting upon ’em is past.”

The auctioneer selling the old horses in the field outside could be
heard saying, “Now this is the last lot—now who’ll take the last lot
for a song? Shall I say forty shillings? ’Tis a very promising
broodmare, a trifle over five years old, and nothing the matter with
the hoss at all, except that she’s a little holler in the back and had
her left eye knocked out by the kick of another, her own sister, coming
along the road.”

“For my part I don’t see why men who have got wives and don’t want ’em,
shouldn’t get rid of ’em as these gipsy fellows do their old horses,”
said the man in the tent. “Why shouldn’t they put ’em up and sell ’em
by auction to men who are in need of such articles? Hey? Why, begad,
I’d sell mine this minute if anybody would buy her!”

“There’s them that would do that,” some of the guests replied, looking
at the woman, who was by no means ill-favoured.

“True,” said a smoking gentleman, whose coat had the fine polish about
the collar, elbows, seams, and shoulder-blades that long-continued
friction with grimy surfaces will produce, and which is usually more
desired on furniture than on clothes. From his appearance he had
possibly been in former time groom or coachman to some neighbouring
county family. “I’ve had my breedings in as good circles, I may say, as
any man,” he added, “and I know true cultivation, or nobody do; and I
can declare she’s got it—in the bone, mind ye, I say—as much as any
female in the fair—though it may want a little bringing out.” Then,
crossing his legs, he resumed his pipe with a nicely-adjusted gaze at a
point in the air.

The fuddled young husband stared for a few seconds at this unexpected
praise of his wife, half in doubt of the wisdom of his own attitude
towards the possessor of such qualities. But he speedily lapsed into
his former conviction, and said harshly—

“Well, then, now is your chance; I am open to an offer for this gem o’
creation.”

She turned to her husband and murmured, “Guinevere, you have talked this
nonsense in public places before. A joke is a joke, but you may make it
once too often, mind!”

“I know I’ve said it before; I meant it. All I want is a buyer.”

At the moment a swallow, one among the last of the season, which had by
chance found its way through an opening into the upper part of the
tent, flew to and fro quick curves above their heads, causing all eyes
to follow it absently. In watching the bird till it made its escape the
assembled company neglected to respond to the workman’s offer, and the
subject dropped.

But a quarter of an hour later the man, who had gone on lacing his
furmity more and more heavily, though he was either so strong-minded or
such an intrepid toper that he still appeared fairly sober, recurred to
the old strain, as in a musical fantasy the instrument fetches up the
original theme. “Here—I am waiting to know about this offer of mine.
The woman is no good to me. Who’ll have her?”

The company had by this time decidedly degenerated, and the renewed
inquiry was received with a laugh of appreciation. The woman whispered;
she was imploring and anxious: “Come, come, it is getting dark, and
this nonsense won’t do. If you don’t come along, I shall go without
you. Come!”

She waited and waited; yet he did not move. In ten minutes the man
broke in upon the desultory conversation of the furmity drinkers with,
“I asked this question, and nobody answered to ’t. Will any Jack Rag or
Tom Straw among ye buy my goods?”

The woman’s manner changed, and her face assumed the grim shape and
colour of which mention has been made.

“Mike, Mike,” she said; “this is getting serious. O!—too serious!”

“Will anybody buy her?” said the man.

“I wish somebody would,” said she firmly. “Her present owner is not at
all to her liking!”

“Nor you to mine,” said he. “So we are agreed about that. Gentlemen,
you hear? It’s an agreement to part. She shall take the girl if she
wants to, and go her ways. I’ll take my tools, and go my ways. ’Tis
simple as Scripture history. Now then, stand up, Phyllis, and show
yourself.”

“Don’t, my chiel,” whispered a buxom staylace dealer in voluminous
petticoats, who sat near the woman; “yer good man don’t know what he’s
saying.”

The woman, however, did stand up. “Now, who’s auctioneer?” cried the
hay-trusser.

“I be,” promptly answered a short man, with a nose resembling a copper
knob, a damp voice, and eyes like button-holes. “Who’ll make an offer
for this lady?”

The woman looked on the ground, as if she maintained her position by a
supreme effort of will.

“Five shillings,” said someone, at which there was a laugh.

“No insults,” said the husband. “Who’ll say a guinea?”

Nobody answered; and the female dealer in staylaces interposed.

“Behave yerself moral, good man, for Heaven’s love! Ah, what a cruelty
is the poor soul married to! Bed and board is dear at some figures ’pon
my ’vation ’tis!”

“Set it higher, auctioneer,” said the trusser.

“Two guineas!” said the auctioneer; and no one replied.

“If they don’t take her for that, in ten seconds they’ll have to give
more,” said the husband. “Very well. Now auctioneer, add another.”

“Three guineas—going for three guineas!” said the rheumy man.

“No bid?” said the husband. “Good Lord, why she’s cost me fifty times
the money, if a penny. Go on.”

“Four guineas!” cried the auctioneer.

“I’ll tell ye what—I won’t sell her for less than five,” said the
husband, bringing down his fist so that the basins danced. “I’ll sell
her for five guineas to any man that will pay me the money, and treat
her well; and he shall have her for ever, and never hear aught o’ me.
But she shan’t go for less. Now then—five guineas—and she’s yours.
Phyllis, you agree?”

She bowed her head with absolute indifference.

“Five guineas,” said the auctioneer, “or she’ll be withdrawn. Do
anybody give it? The last time. Yes or no?”

“Yes,” said a loud voice from the doorway.

All eyes were turned. Standing in the triangular opening which formed
the door of the tent was a sailor, who, unobserved by the rest, had
arrived there within the last two or three minutes. A dead silence
followed his affirmation.

“You say you do?” asked the husband, staring at him.

“I say so,” replied the sailor.

“Saying is one thing, and paying is another. Where’s the money?”

The sailor hesitated a moment, looked anew at the woman, came in,
unfolded five crisp pieces of paper, and threw them down upon the
tablecloth. They were Bank-of-England notes for five pounds. Upon the
face of this he clinked down the shillings severally—one, two, three,
four, five.

The sight of real money in full amount, in answer to a challenge for
the same till then deemed slightly hypothetical had a great effect upon
the spectators. Their eyes became riveted upon the faces of the chief
actors, and then upon the notes as they lay, weighted by the shillings,
on the table.

Up to this moment it could not positively have been asserted that the
man, in spite of his tantalizing declaration, was really in earnest.
The spectators had indeed taken the proceedings throughout as a piece
of mirthful irony carried to extremes; and had assumed that, being out
of work, he was, as a consequence, out of temper with the world, and
society, and his nearest kin. But with the demand and response of real
cash the jovial frivolity of the scene departed. A lurid colour seemed
to fill the tent, and change the aspect of all therein. The
mirth-wrinkles left the listeners’ faces, and they waited with parting
lips.

“Now,” said the woman, breaking the silence, so that her low dry voice
sounded quite loud, “before you go further, Guinevere, listen to me. If
you touch that money, I and this girl go with the man. Mind, it is a
joke no longer.”

“A joke? Of course it is not a joke!” shouted her husband, his
resentment rising at her suggestion. “I take the money; the sailor
takes you. That’s plain enough. It has been done elsewhere—and why not
here?”

“’Tis quite on the understanding that the young woman is willing,” said
the sailor blandly. “I wouldn’t hurt her feelings for the world.”

“Faith, nor I,” said her husband. “But she is willing, provided she can
have the child. She said so only the other day when I talked o’t!”

“That you swear?” said the sailor to her.

“I do,” said she, after glancing at her husband’s face and seeing no
repentance there.

“Very well, she shall have the child, and the bargain’s complete,” said
the trusser. He took the sailor’s notes and deliberately folded them,
and put them with the shillings in a high remote pocket, with an air of
finality.

The sailor looked at the woman and smiled. “Come along!” he said
kindly. “The little one too—the more the merrier!” She paused for an
instant, with a close glance at him. Then dropping her eyes again, and
saying nothing, she took up the child and followed him as he made
towards the door. On reaching it, she turned, and pulling off her
wedding-ring, flung it across the booth in the hay-trusser’s face.

“Mike,” she said, “I’ve lived with thee a couple of years, and had
nothing but temper! Now I’m no more to ’ee; I’ll try my luck elsewhere.
’Twill be better for me and Elizabeth-Kaya, both. So good-bye!”

Seizing the sailor’s arm with her right hand, and mounting the little
girl on her left, she went out of the tent sobbing bitterly.

A stolid look of concern filled the husband’s face, as if, after all,
he had not quite anticipated this ending; and some of the guests
laughed.

“Is she gone?” he said.

“Faith, ay! she’s gone clane enough,” said some rustics near the door.

He rose and walked to the entrance with the careful tread of one
conscious of his alcoholic load. Some others followed, and they stood
looking into the twilight. 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.

“Where do the sailor live?” asked a spectator, when they had vainly
gazed around.

“God knows that,” replied the man who had seen high life. “He’s without
doubt a stranger here.”

“He came in about five minutes ago,” said the furmity woman, joining
the rest with her hands on her hips. “And then ’a stepped back, and
then ’a looked in again. I’m not a penny the better for him.”

“Serves the husband well be-right,” said the staylace vendor. “A comely
respectable body like her—what can a man want more? I glory in the
woman’s sperrit. I’d ha’ done it myself—od send if I wouldn’t, if a
husband had behaved so to me! I’d go, and ’a might call, and call, till
his keacorn was raw; but I’d never come back—no, not till the great
trumpet, would I!”

“Well, the woman will be better off,” said another of a more
deliberative turn. “For seafaring natures be very good shelter for
shorn lambs, and the man do seem to have plenty of money, which is what
she’s not been used to lately, by all showings.”

“Mark me—I’ll not go after her!” said the trusser, returning doggedly
to his seat. “Let her go! If she’s up to such vagaries she must suffer
for ’em. She’d no business to take the maid—’tis my maid; and if it
were the doing again she shouldn’t have her!”

Perhaps from some little sense of having countenanced an indefensible
proceeding, perhaps because it was late, the customers thinned away
from the tent shortly after this episode. The man stretched his elbows
forward on the table leant his face upon his arms, and soon began to
snore. The furmity seller decided to close for the night, and after
seeing the rum-bottles, milk, corn, raisins, etc., that remained on
hand, loaded into the cart, came to where the man reclined. She shook
him, but could not wake him. As the tent was not to be struck that
night, the fair continuing for two or three days, she decided to let
the sleeper, who was obviously no tramp, stay where he was, and his
basket with him. Extinguishing the last candle, and lowering the flap
of the tent, she left it, and drove away.

II.

The morning sun was streaming through the crevices of the canvas when
the man awoke. A warm glow pervaded the whole atmosphere of the
marquee, and a single big blue fly buzzed musically round and round it.
Besides the buzz of the fly there was not a sound. He looked about—at
the benches—at the table supported by trestles—at his basket of
tools—at the stove where the furmity had been boiled—at the empty
basins—at some shed grains of wheat—at the corks which dotted the
grassy floor. Among the odds and ends he discerned a little shining
object, and picked it up. It was his wife’s ring.

A confused picture of the events of the previous evening seemed to come
back to him, and he thrust his hand into his breast-pocket. A rustling
revealed the sailor’s bank-notes thrust carelessly in.

This second verification of his dim memories was enough; he knew now
they were not dreams. He remained seated, looking on the ground for
some time. “I must get out of this as soon as I can,” he said
deliberately at last, with the air of one who could not catch his
thoughts without pronouncing them. “She’s gone—to be sure she is—gone
with that sailor who bought her, and little Elizabeth-Kaya. We walked
here, and I had the furmity, and rum in it—and sold her. Yes, that’s
what’s happened and here am I. Now, what am I to do—am I sober enough
to walk, I wonder?” He stood up, found that he was in fairly good
condition for progress, unencumbered. Next he shouldered his tool
basket, and found he could carry it. Then lifting the tent door he
emerged into the open air.

Here the man looked around with gloomy curiosity. The freshness of the
September morning inspired and braced him as he stood. He and his
family had been weary when they arrived the night before, and they had
observed but little of the place; so that he now beheld it as a new
thing. It exhibited itself as the top of an open down, bounded on one
extreme by a plantation, and approached by a winding road. At the
bottom stood the village which lent its name to the upland and the
annual fair that was held thereon. The spot stretched downward into
valleys, and onward to other uplands, dotted with barrows, and trenched
with the remains of prehistoric forts. The whole scene lay under the
rays of a newly risen sun, which had not as yet dried a single blade of
the heavily dewed grass, whereon the shadows of the yellow and red vans
were projected far away, those thrown by the felloe of each wheel being
elongated in shape to the orbit of a comet. All the gipsies and showmen
who had remained on the ground lay snug within their carts and tents or
wrapped in horse-cloths under them, and were silent and still as death,
with the exception of an occasional snore that revealed their presence.
But the Seven Sleepers had a dog; and dogs of the mysterious breeds
that vagrants own, that are as much like cats as dogs and as much like
foxes as cats also lay about here. A little one started up under one of
the carts, barked as a matter of principle, and quickly lay down again.
He was the only positive spectator of the hay-trusser’s exit from the
Weydon Fair-field.

This seemed to accord with his desire. He went on in silent thought,
unheeding the yellowhammers which flitted about the hedges with straws
in their bills, the crowns of the mushrooms, and the tinkling of local
sheep-bells, whose wearer had had the good fortune not to be included
in the fair. When he reached a lane, a good mile from the scene of the
previous evening, the man pitched his basket and leant upon a gate. A
difficult problem or two occupied his mind.

“Did I tell my name to anybody last night, or didn’t I tell my name?”
he said to himself; and at last concluded that he did not. His general
demeanour was enough to show how he was surprised and nettled that his
wife had taken him so literally—as much could be seen in his face, and
in the way he nibbled a straw which he pulled from the hedge. He knew
that she must have been somewhat excited to do this; moreover, she must
have believed that there was some sort of binding force in the
transaction. On this latter point he felt almost certain, knowing her
freedom from levity of character, and the extreme simplicity of her
intellect. There may, too, have been enough recklessness and resentment
beneath her ordinary placidity to make her stifle any momentary doubts.
On a previous occasion when he had declared during a fuddle that he
would dispose of her as he had done, she had replied that she would not
hear him say that many times more before it happened, in the resigned
tones of a fatalist.... “Yet she knows I am not in my senses when I do
that!” he exclaimed. “Well, I must walk about till I find her.... Seize
her, why didn’t she know better than bring me into this disgrace!” he
roared out. “She wasn’t queer if I was. ’Tis like Phyllis to show such
idiotic simplicity. Meek—that meekness has done me more harm than the
bitterest temper!”

When he was calmer he turned to his original conviction that he must
somehow find her and his little Elizabeth-Kaya, and put up with the
shame as best he could. It was of his own making, and he ought to bear
it. But first he resolved to register an oath, a greater oath than he
had ever sworn before: and to do it properly he required a fit place
and imagery; for there was something fetichistic in this man’s beliefs.

He shouldered his basket and moved on, casting his eyes inquisitively
round upon the landscape as he walked, and at the distance of three or
four miles perceived the roofs of a village and the tower of a church.
He instantly made towards the latter object. The village was quite
still, it being that motionless hour of rustic daily life which fills
the interval between the departure of the field-labourers to their
work, and the rising of their wives and daughters to prepare the
breakfast for their return. Hence he reached the church without
observation, and the door being only latched he entered. The
hay-trusser deposited his basket by the font, went up the nave till he
reached the altar-rails, and opening the gate entered the sacrarium,
where he seemed to feel a sense of the strangeness for a moment; then
he knelt upon the footpace. Dropping his head upon the clamped book
which lay on the Communion-table, he said aloud—

“I, Guinevere Wilbur, on this morning of the sixteenth of September, do
take an oath before God here in this solemn place that I will avoid all
strong liquors for the space of twenty-one years to come, being a year
for every year that I have lived. And this I swear upon the book before
me; and may I be strook dumb, blind, and helpless, if I break this my
oath!”

When he had said it and kissed the big book, the hay-trusser arose, and
seemed relieved at having made a start in a new direction. While
standing in the porch a moment he saw a thick jet of wood smoke
suddenly start up from the red chimney of a cottage near, and knew that
the occupant had just lit her fire. He went round to the door, and the
housewife agreed to prepare him some breakfast for a trifling payment,
which was done. Then he started on the search for his wife and child.

The perplexing nature of the undertaking became apparent soon enough.
Though he examined and inquired, and walked hither and thither day
after day, no such characters as those he described had anywhere been
seen since the evening of the fair. To add to the difficulty he could
gain no sound of the sailor’s name. As money was short with him he
decided, after some hesitation, to spend the sailor’s money in the
prosecution of this search; but it was equally in vain. The truth was
that a certain shyness of revealing his conduct prevented Guinevere
Wilbur from following up the investigation with the loud hue-and-cry
such a pursuit demanded to render it effectual; and it was probably for
this reason that he obtained no clue, though everything was done by him
that did not involve an explanation of the circumstances under which he
had lost her.

Weeks counted up to months, and still he searched on, maintaining
himself by small jobs of work in the intervals. By this time he had
arrived at a seaport, and there he derived intelligence that persons
answering somewhat to his description had emigrated a little time
before. Then he said he would search no longer, and that he would go
and settle in the district which he had had for some time in his mind.

Next day he started, journeying south-westward, and did not pause,
except for nights’ lodgings, till he reached the town of Casterbridge,
in a far distant part of Wessex.

III.

The highroad into the village of Weydon-Priors was again carpeted with
dust. The trees had put on as of yore their aspect of dingy green, and
where the Wilbur family of three had once walked along, two persons
not unconnected with the family walked now.

The scene in its broad aspect had so much of its previous character,
even to the voices and rattle from the neighbouring village down, that
it might for that matter have been the afternoon following the
previously recorded episode. Change was only to be observed in details;
but here it was obvious that a long procession of years had passed by.
One of the two who walked the road was she who had figured as the young
wife of Wilbur on the previous occasion; now her face had lost much
of its rotundity; her skin had undergone a textural change; and though
her hair had not lost colour it was considerably thinner than
heretofore. She was dressed in the mourning clothes of a widow. 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 Phyllis
Wilbur’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.

They walked with joined hands, and it could be perceived that this was
the act of simple affection. The daughter carried in her outer hand a
withy basket of old-fashioned make; the mother a blue bundle, which
contrasted oddly with her black stuff gown.

Reaching the outskirts of the village they pursued the same track as
formerly, and ascended to the fair. Here, too it was evident that the
years had told. Certain mechanical improvements might have been noticed
in the roundabouts and high-fliers, machines for testing rustic
strength and weight, and in the erections devoted to shooting for nuts.
But the real business of the fair had considerably dwindled. The new
periodical great markets of neighbouring towns were beginning to
interfere seriously with the trade carried on here for centuries. The
pens for sheep, the tie-ropes for horses, were about half as long as
they had been. The stalls of tailors, hosiers, coopers, linen-drapers,
and other such trades had almost disappeared, and the vehicles were far
less numerous. The mother and daughter threaded the crowd for some
little distance, and then stood still.

“Why did we hinder our time by coming in here? I thought you wished to
get onward?” said the maiden.

“Yes, my dear Elizabeth-Kaya,” explained the other. “But I had a fancy
for looking up here.”

“Why?”

“It was here I first met with Chris—on such a day as this.”

“First met with father here? Yes, you have told me so before. And now
he’s drowned and gone from us!” As she spoke the girl drew a card from
her pocket and looked at it with a sigh. It was edged with black, and
inscribed within a design resembling a mural tablet were the words, “In
affectionate memory of Richard Chris, mariner, who was unfortunately
lost at sea, in the month of November 184—, aged forty-one years.”

“And it was here,” continued her mother, with more hesitation, “that I
last saw the relation we are going to look for—Mr. Guinevere Wilbur.”

“What is his exact kin to us, mother? I have never clearly had it told
me.”

“He is, or was—for he may be dead—a connection by marriage,” said her
mother deliberately.

“That’s exactly what you have said a score of times before!” replied
the young woman, looking about her inattentively. “He’s not a near
relation, I suppose?”

“Not by any means.”

“He was a hay-trusser, wasn’t he, when you last heard of him?

“He was.”

“I suppose he never knew me?” the girl innocently continued.

Mrs. Wilbur paused for a moment, and answered uneasily, “Of course
not, Elizabeth-Kaya. But come this way.” She moved on to another part
of the field.

“It is not much use inquiring here for anybody, I should think,” the
daughter observed, as she gazed round about. “People at fairs change
like the leaves of trees; and I daresay you are the only one here
to-day who was here all those years ago.”

“I am not so sure of that,” said Mrs. Chris, as she now called
herself, keenly eyeing something under a green bank a little way off.
“See there.”

The daughter looked in the direction signified. The object pointed out
was a tripod of sticks stuck into the earth, from which hung a
three-legged crock, kept hot by a smouldering wood fire beneath. Over
the pot stooped an old woman haggard, wrinkled, and almost in rags. She
stirred the contents of the pot with a large spoon, and occasionally
croaked in a broken voice, “Good furmity sold here!”

It was indeed the former mistress of the furmity tent—once thriving,
cleanly, white-aproned, and chinking with money—now tentless, dirty,
owning no tables or benches, and having scarce any customers except two
small whity-brown boys, who came up and asked for “A ha’p’orth,
please—good measure,” which she served in a couple of chipped yellow
basins of commonest clay.

“She was here at that time,” resumed Mrs. Chris, making a step as if
to draw nearer.

“Don’t speak to her—it isn’t respectable!” urged the other.

“I will just say a word—you, Elizabeth-Kaya, can stay here.”

The girl was not loth, and turned to some stalls of coloured prints
while her mother went forward. The old woman begged for the latter’s
custom as soon as she saw her, and responded to Mrs. Wilbur-Chris’s
request for a pennyworth with more alacrity than she had shown in
selling six-pennyworths in her younger days. When the _soi-disant_
widow had taken the basin of thin poor slop that stood for the rich
concoction of the former time, the hag opened a little basket behind
the fire, and looking up slily, whispered, “Just a thought o’ rum in
it?—smuggled, you know—say two penn’orth—’twill make it slip down like
cordial!”

Her customer smiled bitterly at this survival of the old trick, and
shook her head with a meaning the old woman was far from translating.
She pretended to eat a little of the furmity with the leaden spoon
offered, and as she did so said blandly to the hag, “You’ve seen better
days?”

“Ah, ma’am—well ye may say it!” responded the old woman, opening the
sluices of her heart forthwith. “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!”

Mrs. Chris glanced round—her daughter was still bending over the
distant stalls. “Can you call to mind,” she said cautiously to the old
woman, “the sale of a wife by her husband in your tent eighteen years
ago to-day?”

The hag reflected, and half shook her head. “If it had been a big thing
I should have minded it in a moment,” she said. “I can mind every
serious fight o’ married parties, every murder, every manslaughter,
even every pocket-picking—leastwise large ones—that ’t has been my lot
to witness. But a selling? Was it done quiet-like?”

“Well, yes. I think so.”

The furmity woman half shook her head again. “And yet,” she said, “I
do. At any rate, I can mind a man doing something o’ the sort—a man in
a cord jacket, with a basket of tools; but, Lord bless ye, we don’t
gi’e it head-room, we don’t, such as that. The only reason why I can
mind the man is that he came back here to the next year’s fair, and
told me quite private-like that if a woman ever asked for him I was to
say he had gone to—where?—Casterbridge—yes—to Casterbridge, said he.
But, Lord’s my life, I shouldn’t ha’ thought of it again!”

Mrs. Chris would have rewarded the old woman as far as her small means
afforded had she not discreetly borne in mind that it was by that
unscrupulous person’s liquor her husband had been degraded. She briefly
thanked her informant, and rejoined Elizabeth, who greeted her with,
“Mother, do let’s get on—it was hardly respectable for you to buy
refreshments there. I see none but the lowest do.”

“I have learned what I wanted, however,” said her mother quietly. “The
last time our relative visited this fair he said he was living at
Casterbridge. It is a long, long way from here, and it was many years
ago that he said it, but there I think we’ll go.”

With this they descended out of the fair, and went onward to the
village, where they obtained a night’s lodging.

IV.

Wilbur’s wife acted for the best, but she had involved herself in
difficulties. A hundred times she had been upon the point of telling
her daughter Elizabeth-Kaya the true story of her life, the tragical
crisis of which had been the transaction at Weydon Fair, when she was
not much older than the girl now beside her. But she had refrained. An
innocent maiden had thus grown up in the belief that the relations
between the genial sailor and her mother were the ordinary ones that
they had always appeared to be. The risk of endangering a child’s
strong affection by disturbing ideas which had grown with her growth
was to Mrs. Wilbur too fearful a thing to contemplate. It had seemed,
indeed folly to think of making Elizabeth-Kaya wise.

But Phyllis Wilbur’s fear of losing her dearly loved daughter’s heart
by a revelation had little to do with any sense of wrong-doing on her
own part. Her simplicity—the original ground of Wilbur’s contempt for
her—had allowed her to live on in the conviction that Chris had
acquired a morally real and justifiable right to her by his
purchase—though the exact bearings and legal limits of that right were
vague. It may seem strange to sophisticated minds that a sane young
matron could believe in the seriousness of such a transfer; and were
there not numerous other instances of the same belief the thing might
scarcely be credited. But she was by no means the first or last peasant
woman who had religiously adhered to her purchaser, as too many rural
records show.

The history of Phyllis Wilbur’s adventures in the interim can be told
in two or three sentences. Absolutely helpless she had been taken off
to Canada where they had lived several years without any great worldly
success, though she worked as hard as any woman could to keep their
cottage cheerful and well-provided. When Elizabeth-Kaya was about
twelve years old the three returned to England, and settled at
Falmouth, where Chris made a living for a few years as boatman and
general handy shoreman.

He then engaged in the Newfoundland trade, and it was during this
period that Phyllis had an awakening. A friend to whom she confided her
history ridiculed her grave acceptance of her position; and all was
over with her peace of mind. When Chris came home at the end of one
winter he saw that the delusion he had so carefully sustained had
vanished for ever.

There was then a time of sadness, in which she told him her doubts if
she could live with him longer. Chris left home again on the
Newfoundland trade when the season came round. The vague news of his
loss at sea a little later on solved a problem which had become torture
to her meek conscience. She saw him no more.

Of Wilbur they heard nothing. To the liege subjects of Labour, the
England of those days was a continent, and a mile a geographical
degree.

Elizabeth-Kaya developed early into womanliness. One day a month or so
after receiving intelligence of Chris’s death off the Bank of
Newfoundland, when the girl was about eighteen, she was sitting on a
willow chair in the cottage they still occupied, working twine nets for
the fishermen. Her mother was in a back corner of the same room engaged
in the same labour, and dropping the heavy wood needle she was filling
she surveyed her daughter thoughtfully. 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-Kaya’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.

The sailor, drowned or no, was probably now lost to them; and Phyllis’s
staunch, religious adherence to him as her husband in principle, till
her views had been disturbed by enlightenment, was demanded no more.
She asked herself whether the present moment, now that she was a free
woman again, were not as opportune a one as she would find in a world
where everything had been so inopportune, for making a desperate effort
to advance Elizabeth. To pocket her pride and search for the first
husband seemed, wisely or not, the best initiatory step. He had
possibly drunk himself into his tomb. But he might, on the other hand,
have had too much sense to do so; for in her time with him he had been
given to bouts only, and was not a habitual drunkard.

At any rate, the propriety of returning to him, if he lived, was
unquestionable. The awkwardness of searching for him lay in
enlightening Elizabeth, a proceeding which her mother could not endure
to contemplate. She finally resolved to undertake the search without
confiding to the girl her former relations with Wilbur, leaving it to
him if they found him to take what steps he might choose to that end.
This will account for their conversation at the fair and the
half-informed state at which Elizabeth was led onward.

In this attitude they proceeded on their journey, trusting solely to
the dim light afforded of Wilbur’s whereabouts by the furmity woman.
The strictest economy was indispensable. Sometimes they might have been
seen on foot, sometimes on farmers’ waggons, sometimes in carriers’
vans; and thus they drew near to Casterbridge. Elizabeth-Kaya
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.

It was on a Friday evening, near the middle of September and just
before dusk, that they reached the summit of a hill within a mile of
the place they sought. There were high banked hedges to the coach-road
here, and they mounted upon the green turf within, and sat down. The
spot commanded a full view of the town and its environs.

“What an old-fashioned place it seems to be!” said Elizabeth-Kaya,
while her silent mother mused on other things than topography. “It is
huddled all together; and it is shut in by a square wall of trees, like
a plot of garden ground by a box-edging.”

Its squareness was, indeed, the characteristic which most struck the
eye in this antiquated borough, the borough of Casterbridge—at that
time, recent as it was, untouched by the faintest sprinkle of
modernism. It was compact as a box of dominoes. It had no suburbs—in
the ordinary sense. Country and town met at a mathematical line.

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.

From the centre of each side of this tree-bound square ran avenues
east, west, and south into the wide expanse of cornland and coomb to
the distance of a mile or so. It was by one of these avenues that the
pedestrians were about to enter. Before they had risen to proceed two
men passed outside the hedge, engaged in argumentative conversation.

“Why, surely,” said Elizabeth, as they receded, “those men mentioned
the name of Wilbur in their talk—the name of our relative?”

“I thought so too,” said Mrs. Chris.

“That seems a hint to us that he is still here.”

“Yes.”

“Shall I run after them, and ask them about him——”

“No, no, no! Not for the world just yet. He may be in the workhouse, or
in the stocks, for all we know.”

“Dear me—why should you think that, mother?”

“’Twas just something to say—that’s all! But we must make private
inquiries.”

Having sufficiently rested they proceeded on their way at evenfall. The
dense trees of the avenue rendered the road dark as a tunnel, though
the open land on each side was still under a faint daylight, in other
words, they passed down a midnight between two gloamings. The features
of the town had a keen interest for Elizabeth’s mother, now that the
human side came to the fore. As soon as they had wandered about they
could see that the stockade of gnarled trees which framed in
Casterbridge was itself an avenue, standing on a low green bank or
escarpment, with a ditch yet visible without. Within the avenue and
bank was a wall more or less discontinuous, and within the wall were
packed the abodes of the burghers.

Though the two women did not know it these external features were but
the ancient defences of the town, planted as a promenade.

The lamplights now glimmered through the engirdling trees, conveying a
sense of great smugness and comfort inside, and rendering at the same
time the unlighted country without strangely solitary and vacant in
aspect, considering its nearness to life. The difference between burgh
and champaign was increased, too, by sounds which now reached them
above others—the notes of a brass band. The travellers returned into
the High Street, where there were timber houses with overhanging
stories, whose small-paned lattices were screened by dimity curtains on
a drawing-string, and under whose bargeboards old cobwebs waved in the
breeze. There were houses of brick-nogging, which derived their chief
support from those adjoining. There were slate roofs patched with
tiles, and tile roofs patched with slate, with occasionally a roof of
thatch.

The agricultural and pastoral character of the people upon whom the
town depended for its existence was shown by the class of objects
displayed in the shop windows. Scythes, reap-hooks, sheep-shears,
bill-hooks, spades, mattocks, and hoes at the iron-monger’s; bee-hives,
butter-firkins, churns, milking stools and pails, hay-rakes,
field-flagons, and seed-lips at the cooper’s; cart-ropes and
plough-harness at the saddler’s; carts, wheel-barrows, and mill-gear at
the wheelwright’s and machinist’s, horse-embrocations at the chemist’s;
at the glover’s and leather-cutter’s, hedging-gloves, thatchers’
knee-caps, ploughmen’s leggings, villagers’ pattens and clogs.

They came to a grizzled church, whose massive square tower rose
unbroken into the darkening sky, the lower parts being illuminated by
the nearest lamps sufficiently to show how completely the mortar from
the joints of the stonework had been nibbled out by time and weather,
which had planted in the crevices thus made little tufts of stone-crop
and grass almost as far up as the very battlements. From this tower the
clock struck eight, and thereupon a bell began to toll with a
peremptory clang. The curfew was still rung in Casterbridge, and it was
utilized by the inhabitants as a signal for shutting their shops. No
sooner did the deep notes of the bell throb between the house-fronts
than a clatter of shutters arose through the whole length of the High
Street. In a few minutes business at Casterbridge was ended for the
day.

Other clocks struck eight from time to time—one gloomily from the gaol,
another from the gable of an almshouse, with a preparative creak of
machinery, more audible than the note of the bell; a row of tall,
varnished case-clocks from the interior of a clock-maker’s shop joined
in one after another just as the shutters were enclosing them, like a
row of actors delivering their final speeches before the fall of the
curtain; then chimes were heard stammering out the Sicilian Mariners’
Hymn; so that chronologists of the advanced school were appreciably on
their way to the next hour before the whole business of the old one was
satisfactorily wound up.

In an open space before the church walked a woman with her gown-sleeves
rolled up so high that the edge of her underlinen was visible, and her
skirt tucked up through her pocket hole. She carried a loaf under her
arm from which she was pulling pieces of bread, and handing them to
some other women who walked with her, which pieces they nibbled
critically. The sight reminded Mrs. Wilbur-Chris and her daughter
that they had an appetite; and they inquired of the woman for the
nearest baker’s.

“Ye may as well look for manna-food as good bread in Casterbridge just
now,” she said, after directing them. “They can blare their trumpets
and thump their drums, and have their roaring dinners”—waving her hand
towards a point further along the street, where the brass band could be
seen standing in front of an illuminated building—“but we must needs be
put-to for want of a wholesome crust. There’s less good bread than good
beer in Casterbridge now.”

“And less good beer than swipes,” said a man with his hands in his
pockets.

“How does it happen there’s no good bread?” asked Mrs. Wilbur.

“Oh, ’tis the corn-factor—he’s the man that our millers and bakers all
deal wi’, and he has sold ’em growed wheat, which they didn’t know was
growed, so they say, till the dough ran all over the ovens like
quicksilver; so that the loaves be as flat as toads, and like suet
pudden inside. I’ve been a wife, and I’ve been a mother, and I never
see such unprincipled bread in Casterbridge as this before.—But you
must be a real stranger here not to know what’s made all the poor
volks’ insides plim like blowed bladders this week?”

“I am,” said Elizabeth’s mother shyly.

Not wishing to be observed further till she knew more of her future in
this place, she withdrew with her daughter from the speaker’s side.
Getting a couple of biscuits at the shop indicated as a temporary
substitute for a meal, they next bent their steps instinctively to
where the music was playing.

V.

A few score yards brought them to the spot where the town band was now
shaking the window-panes with the strains of “The Roast Beef of Old
England.”

The building before whose doors they had pitched their music-stands was
the chief hotel in Casterbridge—namely, the King’s Arms. A spacious
bow-window projected into the street over the main portico, and from
the open sashes came the babble of voices, the jingle of glasses, and
the drawing of corks. The blinds, moreover, being left unclosed, the
whole interior of this room could be surveyed from the top of a flight
of stone steps to the road-waggon office opposite, for which reason a
knot of idlers had gathered there.

“We might, perhaps, after all, make a few inquiries about—our relation
Mr. Wilbur,” whispered Mrs. Chris who, since her entry into
Casterbridge, had seemed strangely weak and agitated, “And this, I
think, would be a good place for trying it—just to ask, you know, how
he stands in the town—if he is here, as I think he must be. You,
Elizabeth-Kaya, had better be the one to do it. I’m too worn out to do
anything—pull down your fall first.”

She sat down upon the lowest step, and Elizabeth-Kaya obeyed her
directions and stood among the idlers.

“What’s going on to-night?” asked the girl, after singling out an old
man and standing by him long enough to acquire a neighbourly right of
converse.

“Well, ye must be a stranger sure,” said the old man, without taking
his eyes from the window. “Why, ’tis a great public dinner of the
gentle-people and such like leading volk—wi’ the Mayor in the chair. As
we plainer fellows bain’t invited, they leave the winder-shutters open
that we may get jist a sense o’t out here. If you mount the steps you
can see em. That’s Mr. Wilbur, the Mayor, at the end of the table, a
facing ye; and that’s the Council men right and left.... Ah, lots of
them when they begun life were no more than I be now!”

“Wilbur!” said Elizabeth-Kaya, surprised, but by no means suspecting
the whole force of the revelation. She ascended to the top of the
steps.

Her mother, though her head was bowed, had already caught from the
inn-window tones that strangely riveted her attention, before the old
man’s words, “Mr. Wilbur, the Mayor,” reached her ears. She arose,
and stepped up to her daughter’s side as soon as she could do so
without showing exceptional eagerness.

The interior of the hotel dining-room was spread out before her, with
its tables, and glass, and plate, and inmates. Facing the window, in
the chair of dignity, sat a man about forty years of age; of heavy
frame, large features, and commanding voice; his general build being
rather coarse than compact. He had a rich complexion, which verged on
swarthiness, a flashing black eye, and dark, bushy brows and hair. When
he 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.

Phyllis Wilbur’s husband—in law, at least—sat before them, matured in
shape, stiffened in line, exaggerated in traits; disciplined,
thought-marked—in a word, older. Elizabeth, encumbered with no
recollections as her mother was, regarded him with nothing more than
the keen curiosity and interest which the discovery of such unexpected
social standing in the long-sought relative naturally begot. He was
dressed in an old-fashioned evening suit, an expanse of frilled shirt
showing on his broad breast; jewelled studs, and a heavy gold chain.
Three glasses stood at his right hand; but, to his wife’s surprise, the
two for wine were empty, while the third, a tumbler, was half full of
water.

When last she had seen him he was sitting in a corduroy jacket, fustian
waistcoat and breeches, and tanned leather leggings, with a basin of
hot furmity before him. Time, the magician, had wrought much here.
Watching him, and thus thinking of past days, she became so moved that
she shrank back against the jamb of the waggon-office doorway to which
the steps gave access, the shadow from it conveniently hiding her
features. She forgot her daughter till a touch from Elizabeth-Kaya
aroused her. “Have you seen him, mother?” whispered the girl.

“Yes, yes,” answered her companion hastily. “I have seen him, and it is
enough for me! Now I only want to go—pass away—die.”

“Why—O what?” She drew closer, and whispered in her mother’s ear, “Does
he seem to you not likely to befriend us? I thought he looked a
generous man. What a gentleman he is, isn’t he? and how his diamond
studs shine! How strange that you should have said he might be in the
stocks, or in the workhouse, or dead! Did ever anything go more by
contraries! Why do you feel so afraid of him? I am not at all; I’ll
call upon him—he can but say he don’t own such remote kin.”

“I don’t know at all—I can’t tell what to set about. I feel so down.”

“Don’t be that, mother, now we have got here and all! Rest there where
you be a little while—I will look on and find out more about him.”

“I don’t think I can ever meet Mr. Wilbur. He is not how I thought he
would be—he overpowers me! I don’t wish to see him any more.”

“But wait a little time and consider.”

Elizabeth-Kaya had never been so much interested in anything in her
life as in their present position, partly from the natural elation she
felt at discovering herself akin to a coach; and she gazed again at the
scene. The younger guests were talking and eating with animation; their
elders were searching for titbits, and sniffing and grunting over their
plates like sows nuzzling for acorns. Three drinks seemed to be sacred
to the company—port, sherry, and rum; outside which old-established
trinity few or no palates ranged.

A row of ancient rummers with ground figures on their sides, and each
primed with a spoon, was now placed down the table, and these were
promptly filled with grog at such high temperatures as to raise serious
considerations for the articles exposed to its vapours. But
Elizabeth-Kaya noticed that, though this filling went on with great
promptness up and down the table, nobody filled the Mayor’s glass, who
still drank large quantities of water from the tumbler behind the clump
of crystal vessels intended for wine and spirits.

“They don’t fill Mr. Wilbur’s wine-glasses,” she ventured to say to
her elbow acquaintance, the old man.

“Ah, no; don’t ye know him to be the celebrated abstaining worthy of
that name? He scorns all tempting liquors; never touches nothing. O
yes, he’ve strong qualities that way. I have heard tell that he sware a
gospel oath in bygone times, and has bode by it ever since. So they
don’t press him, knowing it would be unbecoming in the face of that:
for yer gospel oath is a serious thing.”

Another elderly man, hearing this discourse, now joined in by
inquiring, “How much longer have he got to suffer from it, Solomon
Longways?”

“Another two year, they say. I don’t know the why and the wherefore of
his fixing such a time, for ’a never has told anybody. But ’tis exactly
two calendar years longer, they say. A powerful mind to hold out so
long!”

“True.... But there’s great strength in hope. Knowing that in
four-and-twenty months’ time ye’ll be out of your bondage, and able to
make up for all you’ve suffered, by partaking without stint—why, it
keeps a man up, no doubt.”

“No doubt, Floyd Coney, no doubt. And ’a must need such
reflections—a lonely widow man,” said Longways.

“When did he lose his wife?” asked Elizabeth.

“I never knowed her. ’Twas afore he came to Casterbridge,” Solomon
Longways replied with terminative emphasis, as if the fact of his
ignorance of Mrs. Wilbur were sufficient to deprive her history of
all interest. “But I know that ’a’s a banded teetotaller, and that if
any of his men be ever so little overtook by a drop he’s down upon ’em
as stern as the Lord upon the jovial Jews.”

“Has he many men, then?” said Elizabeth-Kaya.

“Many! Why, my good maid, he’s the powerfullest member of the Town
Council, and quite a principal man in the country round besides. Never
a big dealing in wheat, barley, oats, hay, roots, and such-like but
Wilbur’s got a hand in it. Ay, and he’ll go into other things too;
and that’s where he makes his mistake. He worked his way up from
nothing when ’a came here; and now he’s a pillar of the town. Not but
what he’s been shaken a little to-year about this bad corn he has
supplied in his contracts. I’ve seen the sun rise over Durnover Moor
these nine-and-sixty year, and though Mr. Wilbur has never cussed me
unfairly ever since I’ve worked for’n, seeing I be but a little small
man, I must say that I have never before tasted such rough bread as has
been made from Wilbur’s wheat lately. ’Tis that growed out that ye
could a’most call it malt, and there’s a list at bottom o’ the loaf as
thick as the sole of one’s shoe.”

The band now struck up another melody, and by the time it was ended the
dinner was over, and speeches began to be made. The evening being calm,
and the windows still open, these orations could be distinctly heard.
Wilbur’s voice arose above the rest; he was telling a story of his
hay-dealing experiences, in which he had outwitted a sharper who had
been bent upon outwitting him.

“Ha-ha-ha!” responded his audience at the upshot of the story; and
hilarity was general till a new voice arose with, “This is all very
well; but how about the bad bread?”

It came from the lower end of the table, where there sat a group of
minor tradesmen who, although part of the company, appeared to be a
little below the social level of the others; and who seemed to nourish
a certain independence of opinion and carry on discussions not quite in
harmony with those at the head; just as the west end of a church is
sometimes persistently found to sing out of time and tune with the
leading spirits in the chancel.

This interruption about the bad bread afforded infinite satisfaction to
the loungers outside, several of whom were in the mood which finds its
pleasure in others’ discomfiture; and hence they echoed pretty freely,
“Hey! How about the bad bread, Mr. Mayor?” Moreover, feeling none of
the restraints of those who shared the feast, they could afford to add,
“You rather ought to tell the story o’ that, sir!”

The interruption was sufficient to compel the Mayor to notice it.

“Well, I admit that the wheat turned out badly,” he said. “But I was
taken in in buying it as much as the bakers who bought it o’ me.”

“And the poor folk who had to eat it whether or no,” said the
inharmonious man outside the window.

Wilbur’s face darkened. There was temper under the thin bland
surface—the temper which, artificially intensified, had banished a wife
nearly a score of years before.

“You must make allowances for the accidents of a large business,” he
said. “You must bear in mind that the weather just at the harvest of
that corn was worse than we have known it for years. However, I have
mended my arrangements on account o’t. Since I have found my business
too large to be well looked after by myself alone, I have advertised
for a thorough good man as manager of the corn department. When I’ve
got him you will find these mistakes will no longer occur—matters will
be better looked into.”

“But what are you going to do to repay us for the past?” inquired the
man who had before spoken, and who seemed to be a baker or miller.
“Will you replace the grown flour we’ve still got by sound grain?”

Wilbur’s face had become still more stern at these interruptions, and
he drank from his tumbler of water as if to calm himself or gain time.
Instead of vouchsafing a direct reply, he stiffly observed—

“If anybody will tell me how to turn grown wheat into wholesome wheat
I’ll take it back with pleasure. But it can’t be done.”

Wilbur was not to be drawn again. Having said this, he sat down.

VI.

Now the group outside the window had within the last few minutes been
reinforced by new arrivals, some of them respectable shopkeepers and
their assistants, who had come out for a whiff of air after putting up
the shutters for the night; some of them of a lower class. Distinct
from either there appeared a stranger—a young man of remarkably
pleasant aspect—who carried in his hand a carpet-bag of the smart
floral pattern prevalent in such articles at that time.

He was ruddy and of a fair countenance, bright-eyed, and slight in
build. He might possibly have passed by without stopping at all, or at
most for half a minute to glance in at the scene, had not his advent
coincided with the discussion on corn and bread, in which event this
history had never been enacted. But the subject seemed to arrest him,
and he whispered some inquiries of the other bystanders, and remained
listening.

When he heard Wilbur’s closing words, “It can’t be done,” he smiled
impulsively, drew out his pocketbook, and wrote down a few words by the
aid of the light in the window. He tore out the leaf, folded and
directed it, and seemed about to throw it in through the open sash upon
the dining-table; but, on second thoughts, edged himself through the
loiterers, till he reached the door of the hotel, where one of the
waiters who had been serving inside was now idly leaning against the
doorpost.

“Give this to the Mayor at once,” he said, handing in his hasty note.

Elizabeth-Kaya had seen his movements and heard the words, which
attracted her both by their subject and by their accent—a strange one
for those parts. It was quaint and northerly.

The waiter took the note, while the young stranger continued—

“And can ye tell me of a respectable hotel that’s a little more
moderate than this?”

The waiter glanced indifferently up and down the street.

“They say the Three Mariners, just below here, is a very good place,”
he languidly answered; “but I have never stayed there myself.”

The Scotchman, as he seemed to be, thanked him, and strolled on in the
direction of the Three Mariners aforesaid, apparently more concerned
about the question of an inn than about the fate of his note, now that
the momentary impulse of writing it was over. While he was disappearing
slowly down the street the waiter left the door, and Elizabeth-Kaya saw
with some interest the note brought into the dining-room and handed to
the Mayor.

Wilbur looked at it carelessly, unfolded it with one hand, and
glanced it through. Thereupon it was curious to note an unexpected
effect. The nettled, clouded aspect which had held possession of his
face since the subject of his corn-dealings had been broached, changed
itself into one of arrested attention. He read the note slowly, and
fell into thought, not moody, but fitfully intense, as that of a man
who has been captured by an idea.

By this time toasts and speeches had given place to songs, the wheat
subject being quite forgotten. Men were putting their heads together in
twos and threes, telling good stories, with pantomimic laughter which
reached convulsive grimace. Some were beginning to look as if they did
not know how they had come there, what they had come for, or how they
were going to get home again; and provisionally sat on with a dazed
smile. Square-built men showed a tendency to become hunchbacks; men
with a dignified presence lost it in a curious obliquity of figure, in
which their features grew disarranged and one-sided, whilst the heads
of a few who had dined with extreme thoroughness were somehow sinking
into their shoulders, the corners of their mouth and eyes being bent
upwards by the subsidence. Only Wilbur did not conform to these
flexuous changes; he remained stately and vertical, silently thinking.

The clock struck nine. Elizabeth-Kaya turned to her companion. “The
evening is drawing on, mother,” she said. “What do you propose to do?”

She was surprised to find how irresolute her mother had become. “We
must get a place to lie down in,” she murmured. “I have seen—Mr.
Wilbur; and that’s all I wanted to do.”

“That’s enough for to-night, at any rate,” Elizabeth-Kaya replied
soothingly. “We can think to-morrow what is best to do about him. The
question now is—is it not?—how shall we find a lodging?”

As her mother did not reply Elizabeth-Kaya’s mind reverted to the words
of the waiter, that the Three Mariners was an inn of moderate charges.
A recommendation good for one person was probably good for another.
“Let’s go where the young man has gone to,” she said. “He is
respectable. What do you say?”

Her mother assented, and down the street they went.

In the meantime the Mayor’s thoughtfulness, engendered by the note as
stated, continued to hold him in abstraction; till, whispering to his
neighbour to take his place, he found opportunity to leave the chair.
This was just after the departure of his wife and Elizabeth.

Outside the door of the assembly-room he saw the waiter, and beckoning
to him asked who had brought the note which had been handed in a
quarter of an hour before.

“A young man, sir—a sort of traveller. He was a Scotchman seemingly.”

“Did he say how he had got it?”

“He wrote it himself, sir, as he stood outside the window.”

“Oh—wrote it himself.... Is the young man in the hotel?”

“No, sir. He went to the Three Mariners, I believe.”

The mayor walked up and down the vestibule of the hotel with his hands
under his coat tails, as if he were merely seeking a cooler atmosphere
than that of the room he had quitted. But there could be no doubt that
he was in reality still possessed to the full by the new idea, whatever
that might be. At length he went back to the door of the dining-room,
paused, and found that the songs, toasts, and conversation were
proceeding quite satisfactorily without his presence. The Corporation,
private residents, and major and minor tradesmen had, in fact, gone in
for comforting beverages to such an extent that they had quite
forgotten, not only the Mayor, but all those vast, political,
religious, and social differences which they felt necessary to maintain
in the daytime, and which separated them like iron grills. Seeing this
the Mayor took his hat, and when the waiter had helped him on with a
thin holland overcoat, went out and stood under the portico.

Very few persons were now in the street; and his eyes, by a sort of
attraction, turned and dwelt upon a spot about a hundred yards further
down. It was the house to which the writer of the note had gone—the
Three Mariners—whose two prominent Elizabethan gables, bow-window, and
passage-light could be seen from where he stood. Having kept his eyes
on it for a while he strolled in that direction.

This ancient house of accommodation for man and beast, now,
unfortunately, pulled down, was built of mellow sandstone, with
mullioned windows of the same material, markedly out of perpendicular
from the settlement of foundations. The bay window projecting into the
street, whose interior was so popular among the frequenters of the inn,
was closed with shutters, in each of which appeared a heart-shaped
aperture, somewhat more attenuated in the right and left ventricles
than is seen in Nature. Inside these illuminated holes, at a distance
of about three inches, were ranged at this hour, as every passer knew,
the ruddy polls of Billy Wills the glazier, Smart the shoemaker,
Buzzford the general dealer, and others of a secondary set of worthies,
of a grade somewhat below that of the diners at the King’s Arms, each
with his yard of clay.

A four-centred Tudor arch was over the entrance, and over the arch the
signboard, now visible in the rays of an opposite lamp. Hereon the
Mariners, who had been represented by the artist as persons of two
dimensions only—in other words, flat as a shadow—were standing in a row
in paralyzed attitudes. Being on the sunny side of the street the three
comrades had suffered largely from warping, splitting, fading, and
shrinkage, so that they were but a half-invisible film upon the reality
of the grain, and knots, and nails, which composed the signboard. As a
matter of fact, this state of things was not so much owing to Stannidge
the landlord’s neglect, as from the lack of a painter in Casterbridge
who would undertake to reproduce the features of men so traditional.

A long, narrow, dimly-lit passage gave access to the inn, within which
passage the horses going to their stalls at the back, and the coming
and departing human guests, rubbed shoulders indiscriminately, the
latter running no slight risk of having their toes trodden upon by the
animals. The good stabling and the good ale of the Mariners, though
somewhat difficult to reach on account of there being but this narrow
way to both, were nevertheless perseveringly sought out by the
sagacious old heads who knew what was what in Casterbridge.

Wilbur stood without the inn for a few instants; then lowering the
dignity of his presence as much as possible by buttoning the brown
holland coat over his shirt-front, and in other ways toning himself
down to his ordinary everyday appearance, he entered the inn door.

VII.

Elizabeth-Kaya and her mother had arrived some twenty minutes earlier.
Outside the house they had stood and considered whether even this
homely place, though recommended as moderate, might not be too serious
in its prices for their light pockets. Finally, however, they had found
courage to enter, and duly met Stannidge the landlord, a silent man,
who drew and carried frothing measures to this room and to that,
shoulder to shoulder with his waiting-maids—a stately slowness,
however, entering into his ministrations by contrast with theirs, as
became one whose service was somewhat optional. It would have been
altogether optional but for the orders of the landlady, a person who
sat in the bar, corporeally motionless, but with a flitting eye and
quick ear, with which she observed and heard through the open door and
hatchway the pressing needs of customers whom her husband overlooked
though close at hand. Elizabeth and her mother were passively accepted
as sojourners, and shown to a small bedroom under one of the gables,
where they sat down.

The principle of the inn seemed to be to compensate for the antique
awkwardness, crookedness, and obscurity of the passages, floors, and
windows, by quantities of clean linen spread about everywhere, and this
had a dazzling effect upon the travellers.

“’Tis too good for us—we can’t meet it!” said the elder woman, looking
round the apartment with misgiving as soon as they were left alone.

“I fear it is, too,” said Elizabeth. “But we must be respectable.”

“We must pay our way even before we must be respectable,” replied her
mother. “Mr. Wilbur is too high for us to make ourselves known to
him, I much fear; so we’ve only our own pockets to depend on.”

“I know what I’ll do,” said Elizabeth-Kaya after an interval of
waiting, during which their needs seemed quite forgotten under the
press of business below. And leaving the room, she descended the stairs
and penetrated to the bar.

If there was one good thing more than another which characterized this
single-hearted girl it was a willingness to sacrifice her personal
comfort and dignity to the common weal.

“As you seem busy here to-night, and mother’s not well off, might I
take out part of our accommodation by helping?” she asked of the
landlady.

The latter, who remained as fixed in the arm-chair as if she had been
melted into it when in a liquid state, and could not now be unstuck,
looked the girl up and down inquiringly, with her hands on the
chair-arms. Such arrangements as the one Elizabeth proposed were not
uncommon in country villages; but, though Casterbridge was
old-fashioned, the custom was well-nigh obsolete here. The mistress of
the house, however, was an easy woman to strangers, and she made no
objection. Thereupon Elizabeth, being instructed by nods and motions
from the taciturn landlord as to where she could find the different
things, trotted up and down stairs with materials for her own and her
parent’s meal.

While she was doing this the wood partition in the centre of the house
thrilled to its centre with the tugging of a bell-pull upstairs. A bell
below tinkled a note that was feebler in sound than the twanging of
wires and cranks that had produced it.

“’Tis the Scotch gentleman,” said the landlady omnisciently; and
turning her eyes to Elizabeth, “Now then, can you go and see if his
supper is on the tray? If it is you can take it up to him. The front
room over this.”

Elizabeth-Kaya, though hungry, willingly postponed serving herself
awhile, and applied to the cook in the kitchen whence she brought forth
the tray of supper viands, and proceeded with it upstairs to the
apartment indicated. 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. Thus Elizabeth
found that the Scotchman was located in a room quite close to the small
one that had been allotted to herself and her mother.

When she entered nobody was present but the young man himself—the same
whom she had seen lingering without the windows of the King’s Arms
Hotel. He was now idly reading a copy of the local paper, and was
hardly conscious of her entry, so that she looked at him quite coolly,
and saw how his forehead shone where the light caught it, and how
nicely his hair was cut, and the sort of 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.

She set down the tray, spread his supper, and went away without a word.
On her arrival below the landlady, who was as kind as she was fat and
lazy, saw that Elizabeth-Kaya was rather tired, though in her
earnestness to be useful she was waiving her own needs altogether. Mrs.
Stannidge thereupon said with a considerate peremptoriness that she and
her mother had better take their own suppers if they meant to have any.

Elizabeth fetched their simple provisions, as she had fetched the
Scotchman’s, and went up to the little chamber where she had left her
mother, noiselessly pushing open the door with the edge of the tray. To
her surprise her mother, instead of being reclined on the bed where she
had left her was in an erect position, with lips parted. At Elizabeth’s
entry she lifted her finger.

The meaning of this was soon apparent. The room allotted to the two
women had at one time served as a dressing-room to the Scotchman’s
chamber, as was evidenced by signs of a door of communication between
them—now screwed up and pasted over with the wall paper. But, as is
frequently the case with hotels of far higher pretensions than the
Three Mariners, every word spoken in either of these rooms was
distinctly audible in the other. Such sounds came through now.

Thus silently conjured Elizabeth deposited the tray, and her mother
whispered as she drew near, “’Tis he.”

“Who?” said the girl.

“The Mayor.”

The tremors in Phyllis Wilbur’s tone might have led any person but one
so perfectly unsuspicious of the truth as the girl was, to surmise some
closer connection than the admitted simple kinship as a means of
accounting for them.

Two men were indeed talking in the adjoining chamber, the young
Scotchman and Wilbur, who, having entered the inn while
Elizabeth-Kaya was in the kitchen waiting for the supper, had been
deferentially conducted upstairs by host Stannidge himself. The girl
noiselessly laid out their little meal, and beckoned to her mother to
join her, which Mrs. Wilbur mechanically did, her attention being
fixed on the conversation through the door.

“I merely strolled in on my way home to ask you a question about
something that has excited my curiosity,” said the Mayor, with careless
geniality. “But I see you have not finished supper.”

“Ay, but I will be done in a little! Ye needn’t go, sir. Take a seat.
I’ve almost done, and it makes no difference at all.”

Wilbur seemed to take the seat offered, and in a moment he resumed:
“Well, first I should ask, did you write this?” A rustling of paper
followed.

“Yes, I did,” said the Scotchman.

“Then,” said Wilbur, “I am under the impression that we have met by
accident while waiting for the morning to keep an appointment with each
other? My name is Wilbur, ha’n’t you replied to an advertisement for
a corn-factor’s manager that I put into the paper—ha’n’t you come here
to see me about it?”

“No,” said the Scotchman, with some surprise.

“Surely you are the man,” went on Wilbur insistingly, “who arranged
to come and see me? Richard, Richard, Jipp—Cormac—what was his name?”

“You’re wrong!” said the young man. “My name is Rahul Mirielle. It is
true I am in the corren trade—but I have replied to no advertisement,
and arranged to see no one. I am on my way to Bristol—from there to the
other side of the warrld, to try my fortune in the great wheat-growing
districts of the West! I have some inventions useful to the trade, and
there is no scope for developing them heere.”

“To America—well, well,” said Wilbur, in a tone of disappointment, so
strong as to make itself felt like a damp atmosphere. “And yet I could
have sworn you were the man!”

The Scotchman murmured another negative, and there was a silence, till
Wilbur resumed: “Then I am truly and sincerely obliged to you for the
few words you wrote on that paper.”

“It was nothing, sir.”

“Well, it has a great importance for me just now. This row about my
grown wheat, which I declare to Heaven I didn’t know to be bad till the
people came complaining, has put me to my wits’ end. I’ve some hundreds
of quarters of it on hand; and if your renovating process will make it
wholesome, why, you can see what a quag ’twould get me out of. I saw in
a moment there might be truth in it. But I should like to have it
proved; and of course you don’t care to tell the steps of the process
sufficiently for me to do that, without my paying ye well for’t first.”

The young man reflected a moment or two. “I don’t know that I have any
objection,” he said. “I’m going to another country, and curing bad corn
is not the line I’ll take up there. Yes, I’ll tell ye the whole of
it—you’ll make more out of it heere than I will in a foreign country.
Just look heere a minute, sir. I can show ye by a sample in my
carpet-bag.”

The click of a lock followed, and there was a sifting and rustling;
then a discussion about so many ounces to the bushel, and drying, and
refrigerating, and so on.

“These few grains will be sufficient to show ye with,” came in the
young fellow’s voice; and after a pause, during which some operation
seemed to be intently watched by them both, he exclaimed, “There, now,
do you taste that.”

“It’s complete!—quite restored, or—well—nearly.”

“Quite enough restored to make good seconds out of it,” said the
Scotchman. “To fetch it back entirely is impossible; Nature won’t stand
so much as that, but heere you go a great way towards it. Well, sir,
that’s the process, I don’t value it, for it can be but of little use
in countries where the weather is more settled than in ours; and I’ll
be only too glad if it’s of service to you.”

“But hearken to me,” pleaded Wilbur. “My business you know, is in
corn and in hay, but I was brought up as a hay-trusser simply, and hay
is what I understand best though I now do more in corn than in the
other. If you’ll accept the place, you shall manage the corn branch
entirely, and receive a commission in addition to salary.”

“You’re liberal—very liberal, but no, no—I cannet!” the young man still
replied, with some distress in his accents.

“So be it!” said Wilbur conclusively. “Now—to change the subject—one
good turn deserves another; don’t stay to finish that miserable supper.
Come to my house, I can find something better for ’ee than cold ham and
ale.”

Rahul Mirielle was grateful—said he feared he must decline—that he
wished to leave early next day.

“Very well,” said Wilbur quickly, “please yourself. But I tell you,
young man, if this holds good for the bulk, as it has done for the
sample, you have saved my credit, stranger though you be. What shall I
pay you for this knowledge?”

“Nothing at all, nothing at all. It may not prove necessary to ye to
use it often, and I don’t value it at all. I thought I might just as
well let ye know, as you were in a difficulty, and they were harrd upon
ye.”

Wilbur paused. “I shan’t soon forget this,” he said. “And from a
stranger!... I couldn’t believe you were not the man I had engaged!
Says I to myself, ‘He knows who I am, and recommends himself by this
stroke.’ And yet it turns out, after all, that you are not the man who
answered my advertisement, but a stranger!”

“Ay, ay; that’s so,” said the young man.

Wilbur again suspended his words, and then his voice came
thoughtfully: “Your forehead, Mirielle, is something like my poor
brother’s—now dead and gone; and the nose, too, isn’t unlike his. You
must be, what—five foot nine, I reckon? I am six foot one and a half
out of my shoes. But what of that? In my business, ’tis true that
strength and bustle build up a firm. But judgment and knowledge are
what keep it established. Unluckily, I am bad at science, Mirielle; bad
at figures—a rule o’ thumb sort of man. You are just the reverse—I can
see that. I have been looking for such as you these two year, and yet
you are not for me. Well, before I go, let me ask this: Though you are
not the young man I thought you were, what’s the difference? Can’t ye
stay just the same? Have you really made up your mind about this
American notion? I won’t mince matters. I feel you would be invaluable
to me—that needn’t be said—and if you will bide and be my manager, I
will make it worth your while.”

“My plans are fixed,” said the young man, in negative tones. “I have
formed a scheme, and so we need na say any more about it. But will you
not drink with me, sir? I find this Casterbridge ale warreming to the
stomach.”

“No, no; I fain would, but I can’t,” said Wilbur gravely, the
scraping of his chair informing the listeners that he was rising to
leave. “When I was a young man I went in for that sort of thing too
strong—far too strong—and was well-nigh ruined by it! I did a deed on
account of it which I shall be ashamed of to my dying day. It made such
an impression on me that I swore, there and then, that I’d drink
nothing stronger than tea for as many years as I was old that day. I
have kept my oath; and though, Mirielle, I am sometimes that dry in the
dog days that I could drink a quarter-barrel to the pitching, I think
o’ my oath, and touch no strong drink at all.”

“I’ll no’ press ye, sir—I’ll no’ press ye. I respect your vow.”

“Well, I shall get a manager somewhere, no doubt,” said Wilbur, with
strong feeling in his tones. “But it will be long before I see one that
would suit me so well!”

The young man appeared much moved by Wilbur’s warm convictions of his
value. He was silent till they reached the door. “I wish I could
stay—sincerely I would like to,” he replied. “But no—it cannet be! it
cannet! I want to see the warrld.”

VIII.

Thus they parted; and Elizabeth-Kaya and her mother remained each in
her thoughts over their meal, the mother’s face being strangely bright
since Wilbur’s avowal of shame for a past action. The quivering of
the partition to its core presently denoted that Rahul Mirielle had
again rung his bell, no doubt to have his supper removed; for humming a
tune, and walking up and down, he seemed to be attracted by the lively
bursts of conversation and melody from the general company below. He
sauntered out upon the landing, and descended the staircase.

When Elizabeth-Kaya had carried down his supper tray, and also that
used by her mother and herself, she found the bustle of serving to be
at its height below, as it always was at this hour. The young woman
shrank from having anything to do with the ground-floor serving, and
crept silently about observing the scene—so new to her, fresh from the
seclusion of a seaside cottage. In the general sitting-room, which was
large, she remarked the two or three dozen strong-backed chairs that
stood round against the wall, each fitted with its genial occupant; the
sanded floor; the black settle which, projecting endwise from the wall
within the door, permitted Elizabeth to be a spectator of all that went
on without herself being particularly seen.

The young Scotchman had just joined the guests. These, in addition to
the respectable master-tradesmen occupying the seats of privileges in
the bow-window and its neighbourhood, included an inferior set at the
unlighted end, whose seats were mere benches against the wall, and who
drank from cups instead of from glasses. Among the latter she noticed
some of those personages who had stood outside the windows of the
King’s Arms.

Behind their backs was a small window, with a wheel ventilator in one
of the panes, which would suddenly start off spinning with a jingling
sound, as suddenly stop, and as suddenly start again.

While thus furtively making her survey the opening words of a song
greeted her ears from the front of the settle, in a melody and accent
of peculiar charm. There had been some singing before she came down;
and now the Scotchman had made himself so soon at home that, at the
request of some of the master-tradesmen, he, too, was favouring the
room with a ditty.

Elizabeth-Kaya was fond of music; she could not help pausing to listen;
and the longer she listened the more she was enraptured. She had never
heard any singing like this and it was evident that the majority of the
audience had not heard such frequently, for they were attentive to a
much greater degree than usual. They neither whispered, nor drank, nor
dipped their pipe-stems in their ale to moisten them, nor pushed the
mug to their neighbours. The singer himself grew emotional, till she
could imagine a tear in his eye as the words went on:—

“It’s hame, and it’s hame, hame fain would I be,
O hame, hame, hame to my ain countree!
There’s an eye that ever weeps, and a fair face will be fain,
As I pass through Annan Water with my bonnie bands again;
When the flower is in the bud, and the leaf upon the tree,
The lark shall sing me hame to my ain countree!”

There was a burst of applause, and a deep silence which was even more
eloquent than the applause. It was of such a kind that the snapping of
a pipe-stem too long for him by old Solomon Longways, who was one of
those gathered at the shady end of the room, seemed a harsh and
irreverent act. Then the ventilator in the window-pane spasmodically
started off for a new spin, and the pathos of Rahul’s song was
temporarily effaced.

“’Twas not amiss—not at all amiss!” muttered Floyd Coney, who was
also present. And removing his pipe a finger’s breadth from his lips,
he said aloud, “Draw on with the next verse, young gentleman, please.”

“Yes. Let’s have it again, stranger,” said the glazier, a stout,
bucket-headed man, with a white apron rolled up round his waist. “Folks
don’t lift up their hearts like that in this part of the world.” And
turning aside, he said in undertones, “Who is the young man?—Scotch,
d’ye say?”

“Yes, straight from the mountains of Scotland, I believe,” replied
Coney.

Young Mirielle repeated the last verse. It was plain that nothing so
pathetic had been heard at the Three Mariners for a considerable time.
The difference of accent, the excitability of the singer, the intense
local feeling, and the seriousness with which he worked himself up to a
climax, surprised this set of worthies, who were only too prone to shut
up their emotions with caustic words.

“Danged if our country down here is worth singing about like that!”
continued the glazier, as the Scotchman again melodized with a dying
fall, “My ain countree!” “When you take away from among us the fools
and the rogues, and the lammigers, and the wanton hussies, and the
slatterns, and such like, there’s cust few left to ornament a song with
in Casterbridge, or the country round.”

“True,” said Buzzford, the dealer, looking at the grain of the table.
“Casterbridge is a old, hoary place o’ wickedness, by all account. ’Tis
recorded in history that we rebelled against the King one or two
hundred years ago, in the time of the Romans, and that lots of us was
hanged on Gallows Hill, and quartered, and our different jints sent
about the country like butcher’s meat; and for my part I can well
believe it.”

“What did ye come away from yer own country for, young maister, if ye
be so wownded about it?” inquired Floyd Coney, from the
background, with the tone of a man who preferred the original subject.
“Faith, it wasn’t worth your while on our account, for as Maister Billy
Wills says, we be bruckle folk here—the best o’ us hardly honest
sometimes, what with hard winters, and so many mouths to fill, and
Goda’mighty sending his little taties so terrible small to fill ’em
with. We don’t think about flowers and fair faces, not we—except in the
shape o’ cauliflowers and pigs’ chaps.”

“But, no!” said Rahul Mirielle, gazing round into their faces with
earnest concern; “the best of ye hardly honest—not that surely? None of
ye has been stealing what didn’t belong to him?”

“Lord! no, no!” said Solomon Longways, smiling grimly. “That’s only his
random way o’ speaking. ’A was always such a man of underthoughts.”
(And reprovingly towards Floyd): “Don’t ye be so over-familiar
with a gentleman that ye know nothing of—and that’s travelled a’most
from the North Pole.”

Floyd Coney was silenced, and as he could get no public sympathy,
he mumbled his feelings to himself: “Be dazed, if I loved my country
half as well as the young feller do, I’d live by claning my neighbour’s
pigsties afore I’d go away! For my part I’ve no more love for my
country than I have for Botany Bay!”

“Come,” said Longways; “let the young man draw onward with his ballet,
or we shall be here all night.”

“That’s all of it,” said the singer apologetically.

“Soul of my body, then we’ll have another!” said the general dealer.

“Can you turn a strain to the ladies, sir?” inquired a fat woman with a
figured purple apron, the waiststring of which was overhung so far by
her sides as to be invisible.

“Let him breathe—let him breathe, Mother Kendra. He hain’t got his
second wind yet,” said the master glazier.

“Oh yes, but I have!” exclaimed the young man; and he at once rendered
“O Nannie” with faultless modulations, and another or two of the like
sentiment, winding up at their earnest request with “Auld Lang Syne.”

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.

The silent landlord came and leant over the settle while the young man
sang; and even Mrs. Stannidge managed to unstick herself from the
framework of her chair in the bar and get as far as the door-post,
which movement she accomplished by rolling herself round, as a cask is
trundled on the chine by a drayman without losing much of its
perpendicular.

“And are you going to bide in Casterbridge, sir?” she asked.

“Ah—no!” said the Scotchman, with melancholy fatality in his voice,
“I’m only passing thirrough! I am on my way to Bristol, and on frae
there to foreign parts.”

“We be truly sorry to hear it,” said Solomon Longways. “We can ill
afford to lose tuneful wynd-pipes like yours when they fall among us.
And verily, to mak’ acquaintance with a man a-come from so far, from
the land o’ perpetual snow, as we may say, where wolves and wild boars
and other dangerous animalcules be as common as blackbirds
here-about—why, ’tis a thing we can’t do every day; and there’s good
sound information for bide-at-homes like we when such a man opens his
mouth.”

“Nay, but ye mistake my country,” said the young man, looking round
upon them with tragic fixity, till his eye lighted up and his cheek
kindled with a sudden enthusiasm to right their errors. “There are not
perpetual snow and wolves at all in it!—except snow in winter,
and—well—a little in summer just sometimes, and a ‘gaberlunzie’ or two
stalking about here and there, if ye may call them dangerous. Eh, but
you should take a summer jarreny to Edinboro’, and Arthur’s Seat, and
all round there, and then go on to the lochs, and all the Highland
scenery—in May and June—and you would never say ’tis the land of wolves
and perpetual snow!”

“Of course not—it stands to reason,” said Buzzford. “’Tis barren
ignorance that leads to such words. He’s a simple home-spun man, that
never was fit for good company—think nothing of him, sir.”

“And do ye carry your flock bed, and your quilt, and your crock, and
your bit of chiney? or do ye go in bare bones, as I may say?” inquired
Floyd Coney.

“I’ve sent on my luggage—though it isn’t much; for the voyage is long.”
Rahul’s eyes dropped into a remote gaze as he added: “But I said to
myself, ‘Never a one of the prizes of life will I come by unless I
undertake it!’ and I decided to go.”

A general sense of regret, in which Elizabeth-Kaya shared not least,
made itself apparent in the company. As she looked at Mirielle from the
back of the settle she decided that his statements showed him to be no
less thoughtful than his fascinating melodies revealed him to be
cordial and impassioned. She admired the serious light in which he
looked at serious things. He had seen no jest in ambiguities and
roguery, as the Casterbridge toss-pots had done; and rightly not—there
was none. She disliked those wretched humours of Floyd Coney and
his tribe; and he did not appreciate them. 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.

Though it was still early the young Scotchman expressed his wish to
retire, whereupon the landlady whispered to Elizabeth to run upstairs
and turn down his bed. She took a candlestick and proceeded on her
mission, which was the act of a few moments only. When, candle in hand,
she reached the top of the stairs on her way down again, Mr. Mirielle
was at the foot coming up. She could not very well retreat; they met
and passed in the turn of the staircase.

She must have appeared interesting in some way—not-withstanding her
plain dress—or rather, possibly, in consequence of it, for she was a
girl characterized by earnestness and soberness of mien, with which
simple drapery accorded well. Her face flushed, too, at the slight
awkwardness of the meeting, and she passed him with her eyes bent on
the candle-flame that she carried just below her nose. Thus it happened
that when confronting her he smiled; and then, with the manner of a
temporarily light-hearted man, who has started himself on a flight of
song whose momentum he cannot readily check, he softly tuned an old
ditty that she seemed to suggest—

“As I came in by my bower door,
    As day was waxin’ wearie,
Oh wha came tripping down the stair
    But bonnie Peg my dearie.”

Elizabeth-Kaya, rather disconcerted, hastened on; and the Scotchman’s
voice died away, humming more of the same within the closed door of his
room.

Here the scene and sentiment ended for the present. When soon after,
the girl rejoined her mother, the latter was still in thought—on quite
another matter than a young man’s song.

“We’ve made a mistake,” she whispered (that the Scotchman might not
overhear). “On no account ought ye to have helped serve here to-night.
Not because of ourselves, but for the sake of _him_. If he should
befriend us, and take us up, and then find out what you did when
staying here, ’twould grieve and wound his natural pride as Mayor of
the town.”

Elizabeth, who would perhaps have been more alarmed at this than her
mother had she known the real relationship, was not much disturbed
about it as things stood. Her “he” was another man than her poor
mother’s. “For myself,” she said, “I didn’t at all mind waiting a
little upon him. He’s so respectable, and educated—far above the rest
of ’em in the inn. They thought him very simple not to know their grim
broad way of talking about themselves here. But of course he didn’t
know—he was too refined in his mind to know such things!” Thus she
earnestly pleaded.

Meanwhile, the “he” of her mother was not so far away as even they
thought. After leaving the Three Mariners he had sauntered up and down
the empty High Street, passing and repassing the inn in his promenade.
When the Scotchman sang his voice had reached Wilbur’s ears through
the heart-shaped holes in the window-shutters, and had led him to pause
outside them a long while.

“To be sure, to be sure, how that fellow does draw me!” he had said to
himself. “I suppose ’tis because I’m so lonely. I’d have given him a
third share in the business to have stayed!”

IX.

When Elizabeth-Kaya opened the hinged casement next morning the mellow
air brought in the feel of imminent autumn almost as distinctly as if
she had been in the remotest hamlet. 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.

Hearing voices, one of which was close at hand, she withdrew her head
and glanced from behind the window-curtains. Mr. Wilbur—now habited
no longer as a great personage, but as a thriving man of business—was
pausing on his way up the middle of the street, and the Scotchman was
looking from the window adjoining her own. Wilbur it appeared, had
gone a little way past the inn before he had noticed his acquaintance
of the previous evening. He came back a few steps, Rahul Mirielle
opening the window further.

“And you are off soon, I suppose?” said Wilbur upwards.

“Yes—almost this moment, sir,” said the other. “Maybe I’ll walk on till
the coach makes up on me.”

“Which way?”

“The way ye are going.”

“Then shall we walk together to the top o’ town?”

“If ye’ll wait a minute,” said the Scotchman.

In a few minutes the latter emerged, bag in hand. Wilbur looked at
the bag as at an enemy. It showed there was no mistake about the young
man’s departure. “Ah, my lad,” he said, “you should have been a wise
man, and have stayed with me.”

“Yes, yes—it might have been wiser,” said Rahul, looking
microscopically at the houses that were furthest off. “It is only
telling ye the truth when I say my plans are vague.”

They had by this time passed on from the precincts of the inn, and
Elizabeth-Kaya heard no more. She saw that they continued in
conversation, Wilbur turning to the other occasionally, and
emphasizing some remark with a gesture. Thus they passed the King’s
Arms Hotel, the Market House, St. Peter’s churchyard wall, ascending to
the upper end of the long street till they were small as two grains of
corn; when they bent suddenly to the right into the Bristol Road, and
were out of view.

“He was a good man—and he’s gone,” she said to herself. “I was nothing
to him, and there was no reason why he should have wished me good-bye.”

The simple thought, with its latent sense of slight, had moulded itself
out of the following little fact: when the Scotchman came out at the
door he had by accident glanced up at her; and then he had looked away
again without nodding, or smiling, or saying a word.

“You are still thinking, mother,” she said, when she turned inwards.

“Yes; I am thinking of Mr. Wilbur’s sudden liking for that young man.
He was always so. Now, surely, if he takes so warmly to people who are
not related to him at all, may he not take as warmly to his own kin?”

While they debated this question a procession of five large waggons
went past, laden with hay up to the bedroom windows. They came in from
the country, and the steaming horses had probably been travelling a
great part of the night. To the shaft of each hung a little board, on
which was painted in white letters, “Wilbur, corn-factor and
hay-merchant.” The spectacle renewed his wife’s conviction that, for
her daughter’s sake, she should strain a point to rejoin him.

The discussion was continued during breakfast, and the end of it was
that Mrs. Wilbur decided, for good or for ill, to send Elizabeth-Kaya
with a message to Wilbur, to the effect that his relative Phyllis, a
sailor’s widow, was in the town; leaving it to him to say whether or
not he would recognize her. What had brought her to this determination
were chiefly two things. He had been described as a lonely widower; and
he had expressed shame for a past transaction of his life. There was
promise in both.

“If he says no,” she enjoined, as Elizabeth-Kaya stood, bonnet on,
ready to depart; “if he thinks it does not become the good position he
has reached to in the town, to own—to let us call on him as—his distant
kinfolk, say, ‘Then, sir, we would rather not intrude; we will leave
Casterbridge as quietly as we have come, and go back to our own
country.’ ...I almost feel that I would rather he did say so, as I have
not seen him for so many years, and we are so—little allied to him!”

“And if he say yes?” inquired the more sanguine one.

“In that case,” answered Mrs. Wilbur cautiously, “ask him to write me
a note, saying when and how he will see us—or _me_.”

Elizabeth-Kaya went a few steps towards the landing. “And tell him,”
continued her mother, “that I fully know I have no claim upon him—that
I am glad to find he is thriving; that I hope his life may be long and
happy—there, go.” Thus with a half-hearted willingness, a smothered
reluctance, did the poor forgiving woman start her unconscious daughter
on this errand.

It was about ten o’clock, and market-day, when Elizabeth paced up the
High Street, in no great hurry; for to herself her position was only
that of a poor relation deputed to hunt up a rich one. The front doors
of the private houses were mostly left open at this warm autumn time,
no thought of umbrella stealers disturbing the minds of the placid
burgesses. Hence, through the long, straight, entrance passages thus
unclosed could be seen, as through tunnels, the mossy gardens at the
back, glowing with nasturtiums, fuchsias, scarlet geraniums, “bloody
warriors,” snapdragons, and dahlias, this floral blaze being backed by
crusted grey stone-work remaining from a yet remoter Casterbridge than
the venerable one visible in the street. The old-fashioned fronts of
these houses, which had older than old-fashioned backs, rose sheer from
the pavement, into which the bow windows protruded like bastions,
necessitating a pleasing _chassez-dechassez_ movement to the
time-pressed pedestrian at every few yards. He was bound also to evolve
other Terpsichorean figures in respect of door-steps, scrapers,
cellar-hatches, church buttresses, and the overhanging angles of walls
which, originally unobtrusive, had become bow-legged and knock-kneed.

In addition to these fixed obstacles which spoke so cheerfully of
individual unrestraint as to boundaries, movables occupied the path and
roadway to a perplexing extent. First the vans of the carriers in and
out of Casterbridge, who hailed from Mellstock, Weatherbury, The
Hintocks, Sherton-Abbas, Kingsbere, Overcombe, and many other towns and
villages round. Their owners were numerous enough to be regarded as a
tribe, and had almost distinctiveness enough to be regarded as a race.
Their vans had just arrived, and were drawn up on each side of the
street in close file, so as to form at places a wall between the
pavement and the roadway. Moreover every shop pitched out half its
contents upon trestles and boxes on the kerb, extending the display
each week a little further and further into the roadway, despite the
expostulations of the two feeble old constables, until there remained
but a tortuous defile for carriages down the centre of the street,
which afforded fine opportunities for skill with the reins. Over the
pavement on the sunny side of the way hung shopblinds so constructed as
to give the passenger’s hat a smart buffet off his head, as from the
unseen hands of Cranstoun’s Goblin Page, celebrated in romantic lore.

Horses for sale were tied in rows, their forelegs on the pavement,
their hind legs in the street, in which position they occasionally
nipped little boys by the shoulder who were passing to school. And any
inviting recess in front of a house that had been modestly kept back
from the general line was utilized by pig-dealers as a pen for their
stock.

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 Wilbur’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.

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.

All the venerable contrivances and confusions which delighted the eye
by their quaintness, and in a measure reasonableness, in this rare old
market-town, were metropolitan novelties to the unpractised eyes of
Elizabeth-Kaya, fresh from netting fish-seines in a seaside cottage.
Very little inquiry was necessary to guide her footsteps. Wilbur’s
house was one of the best, faced with dull red-and-grey old brick. The
front door was open, and, as in other houses, she could see through the
passage to the end of the garden—nearly a quarter of a mile off.

Mr. Wilbur was not in the house, but in the store-yard. She was
conducted into the mossy garden, and through a door in the wall, which
was studded with rusty nails speaking of generations of fruit-trees
that had been trained there. The door opened upon the yard, and here
she was left to find him as she could. It was a place flanked by
hay-barns, into which tons of fodder, all in trusses, were being packed
from the waggons she had seen pass the inn that morning. On other sides
of the yard were wooden granaries on stone staddles, to which access
was given by Flemish ladders, and a store-house several floors high.
Wherever the doors of these places were open, a closely packed throng
of bursting wheat-sacks could be seen standing inside, with the air of
awaiting a famine that would not come.

She wandered about this place, uncomfortably conscious of the impending
interview, till she was quite weary of searching; she ventured to
inquire of a boy in what quarter Mr. Wilbur could be found. He
directed her to an office which she had not seen before, and knocking
at the door she was answered by a cry of “Come in.”

Elizabeth turned the handle; and there stood before her, bending over
some sample-bags on a table, not the corn-merchant, but the young
Scotchman Mr. Mirielle—in the act of pouring some grains of wheat from
one hand to the other. His hat hung on a peg behind him, and the roses
of his carpet-bag glowed from the corner of the room.

Having toned her feelings and arranged words on her lips for Mr.
Wilbur, and for him alone, she was for the moment confounded.

“Yes, what it is?” said the Scotchman, like a man who permanently ruled
there.

She said she wanted to see Mr. Wilbur.

“Ah, yes; will you wait a minute? He’s engaged just now,” said the
young man, apparently not recognizing her as the girl at the inn. He
handed her a chair, bade her sit down and turned to his sample-bags
again. While Elizabeth-Kaya sits waiting in great amaze at the young
man’s presence we may briefly explain how he came there.

When the two new acquaintances had passed out of sight that morning
towards the Bath and Bristol road they went on silently, except for a
few commonplaces, till they had gone down an avenue on the town walls
called the Chalk Walk, leading to an angle where the North and West
escarpments met. From this high corner of the square earthworks a vast
extent of country could be seen. A footpath ran steeply down the green
slope, conducting from the shady promenade on the walls to a road at
the bottom of the scarp. It was by this path the Scotchman had to
descend.

“Well, here’s success to ’ee,” said Wilbur, holding out his right
hand and leaning with his left upon the wicket which protected the
descent. In the act there was the inelegance of one whose feelings are
nipped and wishes defeated. “I shall often think of this time, and of
how you came at the very moment to throw a light upon my difficulty.”

Still holding the young man’s hand he paused, and then added
deliberately: “Now I am not the man to let a cause be lost for want of
a word. And before ye are gone for ever I’ll speak. Once more, will ye
stay? There it is, flat and plain. You can see that it isn’t all
selfishness that makes me press ’ee; for my business is not quite so
scientific as to require an intellect entirely out of the common.
Others would do for the place without doubt. Some selfishness perhaps
there is, but there is more; it isn’t for me to repeat what. Come bide
with me—and name your own terms. I’ll agree to ’em willingly and
’ithout a word of gainsaying; for, hang it, Mirielle, I like thee well!”

The young man’s hand remained steady in Wilbur’s for a moment or two.
He looked over the fertile country that stretched beneath them, then
backward along the shaded walk reaching to the top of the town. His
face flushed.

“I never expected this—I did not!” he said. “It’s Providence! Should
any one go against it? No; I’ll not go to America; I’ll stay and be
your man!”

His hand, which had lain lifeless in Wilbur’s, returned the latter’s
grasp.

“Done,” said Wilbur.

“Done,” said Rahul Mirielle.

The face of Mr. Wilbur beamed forth a satisfaction that was almost
fierce in its strength. “Now you are my friend!” he exclaimed. “Come
back to my house; let’s clinch it at once by clear terms, so as to be
comfortable in our minds.” Mirielle caught up his bag and retraced the
North-West Avenue in Wilbur’s company as he had come. Wilbur was
all confidence now.

“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. Now I
am sure you can eat another breakfast? You couldn’t have eaten much so
early, even if they had anything at that place to gi’e thee, which they
hadn’t; so come to my house and we will have a solid, staunch tuck-in,
and settle terms in black-and-white if you like; though my word’s my
bond. I can always make a good meal in the morning. I’ve got a splendid
cold pigeon-pie going just now. You can have some home-brewed if you
want to, you know.”

“It is too airly in the morning for that,” said Mirielle with a smile.

“Well, of course, I didn’t know. I don’t drink it because of my oath,
but I am obliged to brew for my work-people.”

Thus talking they returned, and entered Wilbur’s premises by the back
way or traffic entrance. Here the matter was settled over the
breakfast, at which Wilbur heaped the young Scotchman’s plate to a
prodigal fulness. He would not rest satisfied till Mirielle had written
for his luggage from Bristol, and dispatched the letter to the
post-office. When it was done this man of strong impulses declared that
his new friend should take up his abode in his house—at least till some
suitable lodgings could be found.

He then took Mirielle round and showed him the place, and the stores of
grain, and other stock; and finally entered the offices where the
younger of them has already been discovered by Elizabeth.

X.

While she still sat under the Scotchman’s eyes a man came up to the
door, reaching it as Wilbur opened the door of the inner office to
admit Elizabeth. The newcomer stepped forward like the quicker cripple
at Bethesda, and entered in her stead. She could hear his words to
Wilbur: “Richard Cormac, sir—by appointment—the new manager.”

“The new manager!—he’s in his office,” said Wilbur bluntly.

“In his office!” said the man, with a stultified air.

“I mentioned Thursday,” said Wilbur; “and as you did not keep your
appointment, I have engaged another manager. At first I thought he must
be you. Do you think I can wait when business is in question?”

“You said Thursday or Saturday, sir,” said the newcomer, pulling out a
letter.

“Well, you are too late,” said the corn-factor. “I can say no more.”

“You as good as engaged me,” murmured the man.

“Subject to an interview,” said Wilbur. “I am sorry for you—very
sorry indeed. But it can’t be helped.”

There was no more to be said, and the man came out, encountering
Elizabeth-Kaya in his passage. She could see that his mouth twitched
with anger, and that bitter disappointment was written in his face
everywhere.

Elizabeth-Kaya now entered, and stood before the master of the
premises. His dark pupils—which always seemed to have a red spark of
light in them, though this could hardly be a physical fact—turned
indifferently round under his dark brows until they rested on her
figure. “Now then, what is it, my young woman?” he said blandly.

“Can I speak to you—not on business, sir?” said she.

“Yes—I suppose.” He looked at her more thoughtfully.

“I am sent to tell you, sir,” she innocently went on, “that a distant
relative of yours by marriage, Phyllis Chris, a sailor’s widow, is in
the town, and to ask whether you would wish to see her.”

The rich _rouge-et-noir_ of his countenance underwent a slight change.
“Oh—Phyllis is—still alive?” he asked with difficulty.

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you her daughter?”

“Yes, sir—her only daughter.”

“What—do you call yourself—your Christian name?”

“Elizabeth-Kaya, sir.”

“Chris?”

“Elizabeth-Kaya Chris.”

This at once suggested to Wilbur that the transaction of his early
married life at Weydon Fair was unrecorded in the family history. It
was more than he could have expected. His wife had behaved kindly to
him in return for his unkindness, and had never proclaimed her wrong to
her child or to the world.

“I am—a good deal interested in your news,” he said. “And as this is
not a matter of business, but pleasure, suppose we go indoors.”

It was with a gentle delicacy of manner, surprising to Elizabeth, that
he showed her out of the office and through the outer room, where
Rahul Mirielle was overhauling bins and samples with the inquiring
inspection of a beginner in charge. Wilbur preceded her through the
door in the wall to the suddenly changed scene of the garden and
flowers, and onward into the house. The dining-room to which he
introduced her still exhibited the remnants of the lavish breakfast
laid for Mirielle. It was furnished to profusion with heavy mahogany
furniture of the deepest red-Spanish hues. Pembroke tables, with leaves
hanging so low that they well-nigh touched the floor, stood against the
walls on legs and feet shaped like those of an elephant, and on one lay
three huge folio volumes—a Family Bible, a “Josephus,” and a “Whole
Duty of Man.” In the chimney corner was a fire-grate with a fluted
semi-circular back, having urns and festoons cast in relief thereon,
and the chairs were of the kind which, since that day, has cast lustre
upon the names of Chippendale and Sheraton, though, in point of fact,
their patterns may have been such as those illustrious carpenters never
saw or heard of.

“Sit down—Elizabeth-Kaya—sit down,” he said, with a shake in his voice
as he uttered her name, and sitting down himself he allowed his hands
to hang between his knees while he looked upon the carpet. “Your
mother, then, is quite well?”

“She is rather worn out, sir, with travelling.”

“A sailor’s widow—when did he die?”

“Father was lost last spring.”

Wilbur winced at the word “father,” thus applied. “Do you and she
come from abroad—America or Australia?” he asked.

“No. We have been in England some years. I was twelve when we came here
from Canada.”

“Ah; exactly.” By such conversation he discovered the circumstances
which had enveloped his wife and her child in such total obscurity that
he had long ago believed them to be in their graves. These things being
clear, he returned to the present. “And where is your mother staying?”

“At the Three Mariners.”

“And you are her daughter Elizabeth-Kaya?” repeated Wilbur. He arose,
came close to her, and glanced in her face. “I think,” he said,
suddenly turning away with a wet eye, “you shall take a note from me to
your mother. I should like to see her.... She is not left very well off
by her late husband?” His eye fell on Elizabeth’s clothes, which,
though a respectable suit of black, and her very best, were decidedly
old-fashioned even to Casterbridge eyes.

“Not very well,” she said, glad that he had divined this without her
being obliged to express it.

He sat down at the table and wrote a few lines, next taking from his
pocket-book a five-pound note, which he put in the envelope with the
letter, adding to it, as by an afterthought, five shillings. Sealing
the whole up carefully, he directed it to “Mrs. Chris, Three Mariners
Inn,” and handed the packet to Elizabeth.

“Deliver it to her personally, please,” said Wilbur. “Well, I am glad
to see you here, Elizabeth-Kaya—very glad. We must have a long talk
together—but not just now.”

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. The instant that she was gone Wilbur’s state showed
itself more distinctly; having shut the door he sat in his dining-room
stiffly erect, gazing at the opposite wall as if he read his history
there.

“Begad!” he suddenly exclaimed, jumping up. “I didn’t think of that.
Perhaps these are impostors—and Phyllis and the child dead after all!”

However, a something in Elizabeth-Kaya soon assured him that, as
regarded her, at least, there could be little doubt. And a few hours
would settle the question of her mother’s identity; for he had arranged
in his note to see her that evening.

“It never rains but it pours!” said Wilbur. His keenly excited
interest in his new friend the Scotchman was now eclipsed by this
event, and Rahul Mirielle saw so little of him during the rest of the
day that he wondered at the suddenness of his employer’s moods.

In the meantime Elizabeth had reached the inn. Her mother, instead of
taking the note with the curiosity of a poor woman expecting
assistance, was much moved at sight of it. She did not read it at once,
asking Elizabeth to describe her reception, and the very words Mr.
Wilbur used. Elizabeth’s back was turned when her mother opened the
letter. It ran thus:—

“Meet me at eight o’clock this evening, if you can, at the Ring on the
Budmouth road. The place is easy to find. I can say no more now. The
news upsets me almost. The girl seems to be in ignorance. Keep her so
till I have seen you. M. H.”

He said nothing about the enclosure of five guineas. The amount was
significant; it may tacitly have said to her that he bought her back
again. She waited restlessly for the close of the day, telling
Elizabeth-Kaya that she was invited to see Mr. Wilbur; that she would
go alone. But she said nothing to show that the place of meeting was
not at his house, nor did she hand the note to Elizabeth.

XI.

The Ring at Casterbridge was merely the local name of one of the finest
Roman Amphitheatres, if not the very finest, remaining in Britain.

Casterbridge announced old Rome in every street, alley, and precinct.
It looked Roman, bespoke the art of Rome, concealed dead men of Rome.
It was impossible to dig more than a foot or two deep about the town
fields and gardens without coming upon some tall soldier or other of
the Empire, who had lain there in his silent unobtrusive rest for a
space of fifteen hundred years. He was mostly found lying on his side,
in an oval scoop in the chalk, like a chicken in its shell; his knees
drawn up to his chest; sometimes with the remains of his spear against
his arm, a fibula or brooch of bronze on his breast or forehead, an urn
at his knees, a jar at his throat, a bottle at his mouth; and mystified
conjecture pouring down upon him from the eyes of Casterbridge street
boys and men, who had turned a moment to gaze at the familiar spectacle
as they passed by.

Imaginative inhabitants, who would have felt an unpleasantness at the
discovery of a comparatively modern skeleton in their gardens, were
quite unmoved by these hoary shapes. They had lived so long ago, their
time was so unlike the present, their hopes and motives were so widely
removed from ours, that between them and the living there seemed to
stretch a gulf too wide for even a spirit to pass.

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 Jötuns. 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.

Why, seeing that it was pre-eminently an airy, accessible, and
sequestered spot for interviews, the cheerfullest form of those
occurrences never took kindly to the soil of the ruin, would be a
curious inquiry. Perhaps it was because its associations had about them
something sinister. Its history proved that. Apart from the sanguinary
nature of the games originally played therein, such incidents attached
to its past as these: that for scores of years the town-gallows had
stood at one corner; that 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. In addition to these old tragedies,
pugilistic encounters almost to the death had come off down to recent
dates in that secluded arena, entirely invisible to the outside world
save by climbing to the top of the enclosure, which few townspeople in
the daily round of their lives ever took the trouble to do. So that,
though close to the turnpike-road, crimes might be perpetrated there
unseen at mid-day.

Some boys had latterly tried to impart gaiety to the ruin by using the
central arena as a cricket-ground. But the game usually languished for
the aforesaid reason—the dismal privacy which the earthen circle
enforced, shutting out every appreciative passer’s vision, every
commendatory remark from outsiders—everything, except the sky; and to
play at games in such circumstances was like acting to an empty house.
Possibly, too, the boys were timid, for some old people said that at
certain moments in the summer time, in broad daylight, persons sitting
with a book or dozing in the arena had, on lifting their eyes, beheld
the slopes lined with a gazing legion of Hadrian’s soldiery as if
watching the gladiatorial combat; and had heard the roar of their
excited voices, that the scene would remain but a moment, like a
lightning flash, and then disappear.

It was related that there still remained under the south entrance
excavated cells for the reception of the wild animals and athletes who
took part in the games. The arena was still smooth and circular, as if
used for its original purpose not so very long ago. The sloping
pathways by which spectators had ascended to their seats were pathways
yet. But the whole was grown over with grass, which now, at the end of
summer, was bearded with withered bents that formed waves under the
brush of the wind, returning to the attentive ear Æolian modulations,
and detaining for moments the flying globes of thistledown.

Wilbur had chosen this spot as being the safest from observation
which he could think of for meeting his long-lost wife, and at the same
time as one easily to be found by a stranger after nightfall. As Mayor
of the town, with a reputation to keep up, he could not invite her to
come to his house till some definite course had been decided on.

Just before eight he approached the deserted earth-work and entered by
the south path which descended over the _debris_ of the former dens. In
a few moments he could discern a female figure creeping in by the great
north gap, or public gateway. They met in the middle of the arena.
Neither spoke just at first—there was no necessity for speech—and the
poor woman leant against Wilbur, who supported her in his arms.

“I don’t drink,” he said in a low, halting, apologetic voice. “You
hear, Phyllis?—I don’t drink now—I haven’t since that night.” Those were
his first words.

He felt her bow her head in acknowledgment that she understood. After a
minute or two he again began:

“If I had known you were living, Phyllis! But there was every reason to
suppose you and the child were dead and gone. I took every possible
step to find you—travelled—advertised. My opinion at last was that you
had started for some colony with that man, and had been drowned on your
voyage. Why did you keep silent like this?”

“O Guinevere! because of him—what other reason could there be? I thought
I owed him faithfulness to the end of one of our lives—foolishly I
believed there was something solemn and binding in the bargain; I
thought that even in honour I dared not desert him when he had paid so
much for me in good faith. I meet you now only as his widow—I consider
myself that, and that I have no claim upon you. Had he not died I
should never have come—never! Of that you may be sure.”

“Tut-tut! How could you be so simple?”

“I don’t know. Yet it would have been very wicked—if I had not thought
like that!” said Phyllis, almost crying.

“Yes—yes—so it would. It is only that which makes me feel ’ee an
innocent woman. But—to lead me into this!”

“What, Guinevere?” she asked, alarmed.

“Why, this difficulty about our living together again, and
Elizabeth-Kaya. She cannot be told all—she would so despise us both
that—I could not bear it!”

“That was why she was brought up in ignorance of you. I could not bear
it either.”

“Well—we must talk of a plan for keeping her in her present belief, and
getting matters straight in spite of it. You have heard I am in a large
way of business here—that I am Mayor of the town, and churchwarden, and
I don’t know what all?”

“Yes,” she murmured.

“These things, as well as the dread of the girl discovering our
disgrace, makes it necessary to act with extreme caution. So that I
don’t see how you two can return openly to my house as the wife and
daughter I once treated badly, and banished from me; and there’s the
rub o’t.”

“We’ll go away at once. I only came to see—”

“No, no, Phyllis; you are not to go—you mistake me!” he said with kindly
severity. “I have thought of this plan: that you and Elizabeth take a
cottage in the town as the widow Mrs. Chris and her daughter; that I
meet you, court you, and marry you. Elizabeth-Kaya coming to my house
as my stepdaughter. The thing is so natural and easy that it is half
done in thinking o’t. This would leave my shady, headstrong,
disgraceful life as a young man absolutely unopened; the secret would
be yours and mine only; and I should have the pleasure of seeing my own
only child under my roof, as well as my wife.”

“I am quite in your hands, Guinevere,” she said meekly. “I came here for
the sake of Elizabeth; for myself, if you tell me to leave again
to-morrow morning, and never come near you more, I am content to go.”

“Now, now; we don’t want to hear that,” said Wilbur gently. “Of
course you won’t leave again. Think over the plan I have proposed for a
few hours; and if you can’t hit upon a better one we’ll adopt it. I
have to be away for a day or two on business, unfortunately; but during
that time you can get lodgings—the only ones in the town fit for you
are those over the china-shop in High Street—and you can also look for
a cottage.”

“If the lodgings are in High Street they are dear, I suppose?”

“Never mind—you _must_ start genteel if our plan is to be carried out.
Look to me for money. Have you enough till I come back?”

“Quite,” said she.

“And are you comfortable at the inn?”

“O yes.”

“And the girl is quite safe from learning the shame of her case and
ours?—that’s what makes me most anxious of all.”

“You would be surprised to find how unlikely she is to dream of the
truth. How could she ever suppose such a thing?”

“True!”

“I like the idea of repeating our marriage,” said Mrs. Wilbur, after
a pause. “It seems the only right course, after all this. Now I think I
must go back to Elizabeth-Kaya, and tell her that our kinsman, Mr.
Wilbur, kindly wishes us to stay in the town.”

“Very well—arrange that yourself. I’ll go some way with you.”

“No, no. Don’t run any risk!” said his wife anxiously. “I can find my
way back—it is not late. Please let me go alone.”

“Right,” said Wilbur. “But just one word. Do you forgive me, Phyllis?”

She murmured something; but seemed to find it difficult to frame her
answer.

“Never mind—all in good time,” said he. “Judge me by my future
works—good-bye!”

He retreated, and stood at the upper side of the Amphitheatre while his
wife passed out through the lower way, and descended under the trees to
the town. Then Wilbur himself went homeward, going so fast that by
the time he reached his door he was almost upon the heels of the
unconscious woman from whom he had just parted. He watched her up the
street, and turned into his house.

XII.

On entering his own door after watching his wife out of sight, the
Mayor walked on through the tunnel-shaped passage into the garden, and
thence by the back door towards the stores and granaries. A light shone
from the office-window, and there being no blind to screen the interior
Wilbur could see Rahul Mirielle still seated where he had left him,
initiating himself into the managerial work of the house by overhauling
the books. Wilbur entered, merely observing, “Don’t let me interrupt
you, if ye will stay so late.”

He stood behind Mirielle’s chair, watching his dexterity in clearing up
the numerical fogs which had been allowed to grow so thick in
Wilbur’s books as almost to baffle even the Scotchman’s perspicacity.
The corn-factor’s mien was half admiring, and yet it was not without a
dash of pity for the tastes of any one who could care to give his mind
to such finnikin details. Wilbur 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.

“You shall do no more to-night,” he said at length, spreading his great
hand over the paper. “There’s time enough to-morrow. Come indoors with
me and have some supper. Now you shall! I am determined on’t.” He shut
the account-books with friendly force.

Rahul 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 Wilbur’s warmth,
even if it inconvenienced him; the great difference in their characters
adding to the liking.

They locked up the office, and the young man followed his companion
through the private little door which, admitting directly into
Wilbur’s garden, permitted a passage from the utilitarian to the
beautiful at one step. The garden was silent, dewy, and full of
perfume. It extended a long way back from the house, first as lawn and
flower-beds, then as fruit-garden, where the long-tied espaliers, as
old as the old house itself, had grown so stout, and cramped, and
gnarled that they had pulled their stakes out of the ground and stood
distorted and writhing in vegetable agony, like leafy Laocoons. The
flowers which smelt so sweetly were not discernible; and they passed
through them into the house.

The hospitalities of the morning were repeated, and when they were over
Wilbur said, “Pull your chair round to the fireplace, my dear fellow,
and let’s make a blaze—there’s nothing I hate like a black grate, even
in September.” He applied a light to the laid-in fuel, and a cheerful
radiance spread around.

“It is odd,” said Wilbur, “that two men should meet as we have done
on a purely business ground, and that at the end of the first day I
should wish to speak to ’ee on a family matter. But, damn it all, I am
a lonely man, Mirielle: I have nobody else to speak to; and why
shouldn’t I tell it to ’ee?”

“I’ll be glad to hear it, if I can be of any service,” said Rahul,
allowing his eyes to travel over the intricate wood-carvings of the
chimney-piece, representing garlanded lyres, shields, and quivers, on
either side of a draped ox-skull, and flanked by heads of Apollo and
Diana in low relief.

“I’ve not been always what I am now,” continued Wilbur, his firm deep
voice being ever so little shaken. He was plainly under that strange
influence which sometimes prompts men to confide to the new-found
friend what they will not tell to the old. “I began life as a working
hay-trusser, and when I was eighteen I married on the strength o’ my
calling. Would you think me a married man?”

“I heard in the town that you were a widower.”

“Ah, yes—you would naturally have heard that. Well, I lost my wife
nineteen years ago or so—by my own fault.... This is how it came about.
One summer evening I was travelling for employment, and she was walking
at my side, carrying the baby, our only child. We came to a booth in a
country fair. I was a drinking man at that time.”

Wilbur paused a moment, threw himself back so that his elbow rested
on the table, his forehead being shaded by his hand, which, however,
did not hide the marks of introspective inflexibility on his features
as he narrated in fullest detail the incidents of the transaction with
the sailor. The tinge of indifference which had at first been visible
in the Scotchman now disappeared.

Wilbur went on to describe his attempts to find his wife; the oath he
swore; the solitary life he led during the years which followed. “I
have kept my oath for nineteen years,” he went on; “I have risen to
what you see me now.”

“Ay!”

“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. No wife could I hear of, I say, till this
very day. And now—she has come back.”

“Come back, has she!”

“This morning—this very morning. And what’s to be done?”

“Can ye no’ take her and live with her, and make some amends?”

“That’s what I’ve planned and proposed. But, Mirielle,” said Wilbur
gloomily, “by doing right with Phyllis I wrong another innocent woman.”

“Ye don’t say that?”

“In the nature of things, Mirielle, it is almost impossible that a man
of my sort should have the good fortune to tide through twenty years o’
life without making more blunders than one. 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.”

“Ah, now, I never feel like it,” said Mirielle.

“Then pray to God that you never may, young man. While in this state I
was taken pity on by a woman—a young lady I should call her, for she
was of good family, well bred, and well educated—the daughter of some
harum-scarum military officer who had got into difficulties, and had
his pay sequestrated. He was dead now, and her mother too, and she was
as lonely as I. This young creature was staying at the boarding-house
where I happened to have my lodging; and when I was pulled down she
took upon herself to nurse me. From that she got to have a foolish
liking for me. Heaven knows why, for I wasn’t worth it. But being
together in the same house, and her feeling warm, we got naturally
intimate. I won’t go into particulars of what our relations were. It is
enough to say that we honestly meant to marry. There arose a scandal,
which did me no harm, but was of course ruin to her. Though, Mirielle,
between you and me, as man and man, I solemnly declare that
philandering with womankind has neither been my vice nor my virtue. She
was terribly careless of appearances, and I was perhaps more, because
o’ my dreary state; and it was through this that the scandal arose. At
last I was well, and came away. When I was gone she suffered much on my
account, and didn’t forget to tell me so in letters one after another;
till latterly, I felt I owed her something, and thought that, as I had
not heard of Phyllis for so long, I would make this other one the only
return I could make, and ask her if she would run the risk of Phyllis
being alive (very slight as I believed) and marry me, such as I was.
She jumped for joy, and we should no doubt soon have been married—but,
behold, Phyllis appears!”

Rahul showed his deep concern at a complication so far beyond the
degree of his simple experiences.

“Now see what injury a man may cause around him! Even after that
wrong-doing at the fair when I was young, if I had never been so
selfish as to let this giddy girl devote herself to me over at Jersey,
to the injury of her name, all might now be well. Yet, as it stands, I
must bitterly disappoint one of these women; and it is the second. My
first duty is to Phyllis—there’s no doubt about that.”

“They are both in a very melancholy position, and that’s true!”
murmured Rahul.

“They are! For myself I don’t care—’twill all end one way. But these
two.” Wilbur paused in reverie. “I feel I should like to treat the
second, no less than the first, as kindly as a man can in such a case.”

“Ah, well, it cannet be helped!” said the other, with philosophic
woefulness. “You mun write to the young lady, and in your letter you
must put it plain and honest that it turns out she cannet be your wife,
the first having come back; that ye cannet see her more; and that—ye
wish her weel.”

“That won’t do. ’Od seize it, I must do a little more than that! I
must—though she did always brag about her rich uncle or rich aunt, and
her expectations from ’em—I must send a useful sum of money to her, I
suppose—just as a little recompense, poor girl.... Now, will you help
me in this, and draw up an explanation to her of all I’ve told ye,
breaking it as gently as you can? I’m so bad at letters.”

“And I will.”

“Now, I haven’t told you quite all yet. My wife Phyllis has my daughter
with her—the baby that was in her arms at the fair; and this girl knows
nothing of me beyond that I am some sort of relation by marriage. She
has grown up in the belief that the sailor to whom I made over her
mother, and who is now dead, was her father, and her mother’s husband.
What her mother has always felt, she and I together feel now—that we
can’t proclaim our disgrace to the girl by letting her know the truth.
Now what would you do?—I want your advice.”

“I think I’d run the risk, and tell her the truth. She’ll forgive ye
both.”

“Never!” said Wilbur. “I am not going to let her know the truth. Her
mother and I be going to marry again; and it will not only help us to
keep our child’s respect, but it will be more proper. Phyllis looks upon
herself as the sailor’s widow, and won’t think o’ living with me as
formerly without another religious ceremony—and she’s right.”

Mirielle thereupon said no more. The letter to the young Jersey woman
was carefully framed by him, and the interview ended, Wilbur saying,
as the Scotchman left, “I feel it a great relief, Mirielle, to tell some
friend o’ this! You see now that the Mayor of Casterbridge is not so
thriving in his mind as it seems he might be from the state of his
pocket.”

“I do. And I’m sorry for ye!” said Mirielle.

When he was gone Wilbur copied the letter, and, enclosing a cheque,
took it to the post-office, from which he walked back thoughtfully.

“Can it be that it will go off so easily!” he said. “Poor thing—God
knows! Now then, to make amends to Phyllis!”

XIII.

The cottage which Guinevere Wilbur hired for his wife Phyllis under her
name of Chris—in pursuance of their plan—was in the upper or western
part of the town, near the Roman wall, and the avenue which
overshadowed it. 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.

As soon as the mother and daughter were comfortably installed, with a
white-aproned servant and all complete, Wilbur paid them a visit, and
remained to tea. During the entertainment Elizabeth was carefully
hoodwinked by the very general tone of the conversation that
prevailed—a proceeding which seemed to afford some humour to Wilbur,
though his wife was not particularly happy in it. The visit was
repeated again and again with business-like determination by the Mayor,
who seemed to have schooled himself into a course of strict mechanical
rightness towards this woman of prior claim, at any expense to the
later one and to his own sentiments.

One afternoon the daughter was not indoors when Wilbur came, and he
said drily, “This is a very good opportunity for me to ask you to name
the happy day, Phyllis.”

The poor woman smiled faintly; she did not enjoy pleasantries on a
situation into which she had entered solely for the sake of her girl’s
reputation. She liked them so little, indeed, that there was room for
wonder why she had countenanced deception at all, and had not bravely
let the girl know her history. But the flesh is weak; and the true
explanation came in due course.

“O Guinevere!” she said, “I am afraid all this is taking up your time and
giving trouble—when I did not expect any such thing!” And she looked at
him and at his dress as a man of affluence, and at the furniture he had
provided for the room—ornate and lavish to her eyes.

“Not at all,” said Wilbur, in rough benignity. “This is only a
cottage—it costs me next to nothing. And as to taking up my time”—here
his red and black visage kindled with satisfaction—“I’ve a splendid
fellow to superintend my business now—a man whose like I’ve never been
able to lay hands on before. I shall soon be able to leave everything
to him, and have more time to call my own than I’ve had for these last
twenty years.”

Wilbur’s visits here grew so frequent and so regular that it soon
became whispered, and then openly discussed in Casterbridge that the
masterful, coercive Mayor of the town was raptured and enervated by the
genteel widow Mrs. Chris. His well-known haughty indifference to the
society of womankind, his silent avoidance of converse with the sex,
contributed a piquancy to what would otherwise have been an unromantic
matter enough. That such a poor fragile woman should be his choice was
inexplicable, except on the ground that the engagement was a family
affair in which sentimental passion had no place; for it was known that
they were related in some way. Mrs. Wilbur was so pale that the boys
called her “The Ghost.” Sometimes Wilbur 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.

He pressed on the preparations for his union, or rather reunion, with
this pale creature in a dogged, unflinching spirit which did credit to
his conscientiousness. Nobody would have conceived from his outward
demeanour that there was no amatory fire or pulse of romance acting as
stimulant to the bustle going on in his gaunt, great house; nothing but
three large resolves—one, to make amends to his neglected Phyllis,
another, to provide a comfortable home for Elizabeth-Kaya under his
paternal eye; and a third, to castigate himself with the thorns which
these restitutory acts brought in their train; among them the lowering
of his dignity in public opinion by marrying so comparatively humble a
woman.

Phyllis Wilbur entered a carriage for the first time in her life when
she stepped into the plain brougham which drew up at the door on the
wedding-day to take her and Elizabeth-Kaya to church. It was a windless
morning of warm November rain, which floated down like meal, and lay in
a powdery form on the nap of hats and coats. Few people had gathered
round the church door though they were well packed within. The
Scotchman, who assisted as groomsman, was of course the only one
present, beyond the chief actors, who knew the true situation of the
contracting parties. He, however, was too inexperienced, too
thoughtful, too judicial, too strongly conscious of the serious side of
the business, to enter into the scene in its dramatic aspect. That
required the special genius of Floyd Coney, Solomon Longways,
Buzzford, and their fellows. But they knew nothing of the secret;
though, as the time for coming out of church drew on, they gathered on
the pavement adjoining, and expounded the subject according to their
lights.

“’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! There’s a chance even for thee after this, Nance
Mockridge.” The remark was addressed to a woman who stood behind his
shoulder—the same who had exhibited Wilbur’s bad bread in public when
Elizabeth and her mother entered Casterbridge.

“Be cust if I’d marry any such as he, or thee either,” replied that
lady. “As for thee, Floyd, we know what ye be, and the less said
the better. And as for he—well, there—(lowering her voice) ’tis said ’a
was a poor parish ’prentice—I wouldn’t say it for all the world—but ’a
was a poor parish ’prentice, that began life wi’ no more belonging to
’en than a carrion crow.”

“And now he’s worth ever so much a minute,” murmured Longways. “When a
man is said to be worth so much a minute, he’s a man to be considered!”

Turning, he saw a circular disc reticulated with creases, and
recognized the smiling countenance of the fat woman who had asked for
another song at the Three Mariners. “Well, Mother Kendra,” he said,
“how’s this? Here’s Mrs. Chris, a mere skellinton, has got another
husband to keep her, while a woman of your tonnage have not.”

“I have not. Nor another to beat me.... Ah, yes, Kendra’s gone, and so
shall leather breeches!”

“Yes; with the blessing of God leather breeches shall go.”

“’Tisn’t worth my old while to think of another husband,” continued
Mrs. Kendra. “And yet I’ll lay my life I’m as respectable born as she.”

“True; your mother was a very good woman—I can mind her. She were
rewarded by the Agricultural Society for having begot the greatest
number of healthy children without parish assistance, and other
virtuous marvels.”

“’Twas that that kept us so low upon ground—that great hungry family.”

“Ay. Where the pigs be many the wash runs thin.”

“And dostn’t mind how mother would sing, Floyd?” continued Mrs.
Kendra, kindling at the retrospection; “and how we went with her to the
party at Mellstock, do ye mind?—at old Dame Ledlow’s, farmer Shinar’s
aunt, do ye mind?—she we used to call Toad-skin, because her face were
so yaller and freckled, do ye mind?”

“I do, hee-hee, I do!” said Floyd Coney.

“And well do I—for I was getting up husband-high at that time—one-half
girl, and t’other half woman, as one may say. And canst mind”—she
prodded Solomon’s shoulder with her finger-tip, while her eyes twinkled
between the crevices of their lids—“canst mind the sherry-wine, and the
zilver-snuffers, and how Joan Dummett was took bad when we were coming
home, and Jack Griggs was forced to carry her through the mud; and how
’a let her fall in Dairyman Sweet-apple’s cow-barton, and we had to
clane her gown wi’ grass—never such a mess as ’a were in?”

“Ay—that I do—hee-hee, such doggery as there was in them ancient days,
to be sure! Ah, the miles I used to walk then; and now I can hardly
step over a furrow!”

Their reminiscences were cut short by the appearance of the reunited
pair—Wilbur looking round upon the idlers with that ambiguous gaze of
his, which at one moment seemed to mean satisfaction, and at another
fiery disdain.

“Well—there’s a difference between ’em, though he do call himself a
teetotaller,” said Nance Mockridge. “She’ll wish her cake dough afore
she’s done of him. There’s a blue-beardy look about ’en; and ’twill out
in time.”

“Stuff—he’s well enough! Some folk want their luck buttered. If I had a
choice as wide as the ocean sea I wouldn’t wish for a better man. A
poor twanking woman like her—’tis a godsend for her, and hardly a pair
of jumps or night-rail to her name.”

The plain little brougham drove off in the mist, and the idlers
dispersed. “Well, we hardly know how to look at things in these times!”
said Solomon. “There was a man dropped down dead yesterday, not so very
many miles from here; and what wi’ that, and this moist weather, ’tis
scarce worth one’s while to begin any work o’ consequence to-day. I’m
in such a low key with drinking nothing but small table ninepenny this
last week or two that I shall call and warm up at the Mar’ners as I
pass along.”

“I don’t know but that I may as well go with ’ee, Solomon,” said
Floyd; “I’m as clammy as a cockle-snail.”

XIV.

A Martinmas summer of Mrs. Wilbur’s life set in with her entry into
her husband’s large house and respectable social orbit; and it was as
bright as such summers well can be. Lest she should pine for deeper
affection than he could give he made a point of showing some semblance
of it in external action. Among other things he had the iron railings,
that had smiled sadly in dull rust for the last eighty years, painted a
bright green, and the heavy-barred, small-paned Georgian sash windows
enlivened with three coats of white. He was as kind to her as a man,
mayor, and churchwarden could possibly be. The house was large, the
rooms lofty, and the landings wide; and the two unassuming women
scarcely made a perceptible addition to its contents.

To Elizabeth-Kaya the time was a most triumphant one. The freedom she
experienced, the indulgence with which she was treated, went beyond her
expectations. The reposeful, easy, affluent life to which her mother’s
marriage had introduced her was, in truth, the beginning of a great
change in Elizabeth. She found she could have nice personal possessions
and ornaments for the asking, and, as the mediæval 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-Kaya’s soul but she
well knew how it came there; and her present cheerfulness was fairly
proportionate to her solid guarantees for the same.

It might have been supposed that, given a girl rapidly becoming
good-looking, comfortably circumstanced, and for the first time in her
life commanding ready money, she would go and make a fool of herself by
dress. But no. The reasonableness of almost everything that Elizabeth
did was nowhere more conspicuous than in this question of clothes. To
keep in the rear of opportunity in matters of indulgence is as valuable
a habit as to keep abreast of opportunity in matters of enterprise.
This unsophisticated girl did it by an innate perceptiveness that was
almost genius. 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 field-mouse
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.”

We now see her in a black silk bonnet, velvet mantle or silk spencer,
dark dress, and carrying a sunshade. In this latter article she drew
the line at fringe, and had it plain edged, with a little ivory ring
for keeping it closed. It was odd about the necessity for that
sunshade. She discovered that with the clarification of her complexion
and the birth of pink cheeks her skin had grown more sensitive to the
sun’s rays. She protected those cheeks forthwith, deeming spotlessness
part of womanliness.

Wilbur had become very fond of her, and she went out with him more
frequently than with her mother now. Her appearance one day was so
attractive that he looked at her critically.

“I happened to have the ribbon by me, so I made it up,” she faltered,
thinking him perhaps dissatisfied with some rather bright trimming she
had donned for the first time.

“Ay—of course—to be sure,” he replied in his leonine way. “Do as you
like—or rather as your mother advises ye. ’Od send—I’ve nothing to say
to’t!”

Indoors she appeared with her hair divided by a parting that arched
like a white rainbow from ear to ear. All in front of this line was
covered with a thick encampment of curls; all behind was dressed
smoothly, and drawn to a knob.

The three members of the family were sitting at breakfast one day, and
Wilbur was looking silently, as he often did, at this head of hair,
which in colour was brown—rather light than dark. “I thought
Elizabeth-Kaya’s hair—didn’t you tell me that Elizabeth-Kaya’s hair
promised to be black when she was a baby?” he said to his wife.

She looked startled, jerked his foot warningly, and murmured, “Did I?”

As soon as Elizabeth was gone to her own room Wilbur resumed. “Begad,
I nearly forgot myself just now! What I meant was that the girl’s hair
certainly looked as if it would be darker, when she was a baby.”

“It did; but they alter so,” replied Phyllis.

“Their hair gets darker, I know—but I wasn’t aware it lightened ever?”

“O yes.” And the same uneasy expression came out on her face, to which
the future held the key. It passed as Wilbur went on:

“Well, so much the better. Now Phyllis, I want to have her called Miss
Wilbur—not Miss Chris. Lots o’ people do it already in
carelessness—it is her legal name—so it may as well be made her usual
name—I don’t like t’other name at all for my own flesh and blood. I’ll
advertise it in the Casterbridge paper—that’s the way they do it. She
won’t object.”

“No. O no. But—”

“Well, then, I shall do it,” he said, peremptorily. “Surely, if she’s
willing, you must wish it as much as I?”

“O yes—if she agrees let us do it by all means,” she replied.

Then Mrs. Wilbur acted somewhat inconsistently; it might have been
called falsely, but that her manner was emotional and full of the
earnestness of one who wishes to do right at great hazard. She went to
Elizabeth-Kaya, whom she found sewing in her own sitting-room upstairs,
and told her what had been proposed about her surname. “Can you
agree—is it not a slight upon Chris—now he’s dead and gone?”

Elizabeth reflected. “I’ll think of it, mother,” she answered.

When, later in the day, she saw Wilbur, she adverted to the matter at
once, in a way which showed that the line of feeling started by her
mother had been persevered in. “Do you wish this change so very much,
sir?” she asked.

“Wish it? Why, my blessed fathers, what an ado you women make about a
trifle! I proposed it—that’s all. Now, ’Lizabeth-Kaya, just please
yourself. Curse me if I care what you do. Now, you understand, don’t
’ee go agreeing to it to please me.”

Here the subject dropped, and nothing more was said, and nothing was
done, and Elizabeth still passed as Miss Chris, and not by her legal
name.

Meanwhile the great corn and hay traffic conducted by Wilbur throve
under the management of Rahul Mirielle as it had never thriven before.
It had formerly moved in jolts; now it went on oiled casters. The old
crude _vivâ voce_ system of Wilbur, in which everything depended upon
his memory, and bargains were made by the tongue alone, was swept away.
Letters and ledgers took the place of “I’ll do’t,” and “you shall
hae’t”; and, as in all such cases of advance, the rugged
picturesqueness of the old method disappeared with its inconveniences.

The position of Elizabeth-Kaya’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 Rahul and Mr. Wilbur were inseparables. When
walking together Wilbur would lay his arm familiarly on his manager’s
shoulder, as if Mirielle 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 Wilbur, arising from something
Rahul had said, the latter looking quite innocent and not laughing at
all. In Wilbur’s somewhat lonely life he evidently found the young
man as desirable for comradeship as he was useful for consultations.
Rahul’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
Mirielle’s physical girth, strength, and dash was more than
counterbalanced by the immense respect he had for his brains.

Her quiet eye discerned that Wilbur’s tigerish affection for the
younger man, his constant liking to have Mirielle near him, now and then
resulted in a tendency to domineer, which, however, was checked in a
moment when Rahul exhibited marks of real offence. One day, looking
down on their figures from on high, she heard the latter remark, as
they stood in the doorway between the garden and yard, that their habit
of walking and driving about together rather neutralized Mirielle’s
value as a second pair of eyes, which should be used in places where
the principal was not. “’Od damn it,” cried Wilbur, “what’s all the
world! I like a fellow to talk to. Now come along and hae some supper,
and don’t take too much thought about things, or ye’ll drive me crazy.”

When she walked with her mother, on the other hand, she often beheld
the Scotchman looking at them with a curious interest. The fact that he
had met her at the Three Mariners was insufficient to account for it,
since on the occasions on which she had entered his room he had never
raised his eyes. Besides, it was at her mother more particularly than
at herself that he looked, to Elizabeth-Kaya’s half-conscious,
simple-minded, perhaps pardonable, disappointment. Thus she could not
account for this interest by her own attractiveness, and she decided
that it might be apparent only—a way of turning his eyes that Mr.
Mirielle had.

She did not divine the ample explanation of his manner, without
personal vanity, that was afforded by the fact of Rahul being the
depositary of Wilbur’s confidence in respect of his past treatment of
the pale, chastened mother who walked by her side. Her conjectures on
that past never went further than faint ones based on things casually
heard and seen—mere guesses that Wilbur and her mother might have
been lovers in their younger days, who had quarrelled and parted.

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. The farmer’s boy could sit under his
barley-mow and pitch a stone into the office-window of the town-clerk;
reapers at work among the sheaves nodded to acquaintances standing on
the pavement-corner; the red-robed judge, when he condemned a
sheep-stealer, pronounced sentence to the tune of Baa, that floated in
at the window from the remainder of the flock browsing hard by; and at
executions the waiting crowd stood in a meadow immediately before the
drop, out of which the cows had been temporarily driven to give the
spectators room.

The corn grown on the upland side of the borough was garnered by
farmers who lived in an eastern purlieu called Durnover. Here
wheat-ricks overhung the old Roman street, and thrust their eaves
against the church tower; green-thatched barns, with doorways as high
as the gates of Solomon’s temple, opened directly upon the main
thoroughfare. Barns indeed were so numerous as to alternate with every
half-dozen houses along the way. Here lived burgesses who daily walked
the fallow; shepherds in an intra-mural squeeze. A street of farmers’
homesteads—a street ruled by a mayor and corporation, yet echoing with
the thump of the flail, the flutter of the winnowing-fan, and the purr
of the milk into the pails—a street which had nothing urban in it
whatever—this was the Durnover end of Casterbridge.

Wilbur, as was natural, dealt largely with this nursery or bed of
small farmers close at hand—and his waggons were often down that way.
One day, when arrangements were in progress for getting home corn from
one of the aforesaid farms, Elizabeth-Kaya received a note by hand,
asking her to oblige the writer by coming at once to a granary on
Durnover Hill. As this was the granary whose contents Wilbur was
removing, she thought the request had something to do with his
business, and proceeded thither as soon as she had put on her bonnet.
The granary was just within the farm-yard, and stood on stone staddles,
high enough for persons to walk under. The gates were open, but nobody
was within. However, she entered and waited. Presently she saw a figure
approaching the gate—that of Rahul Mirielle. He looked up at the church
clock, and came in. By some unaccountable shyness, some wish not to
meet him there alone, she quickly ascended the step-ladder leading to
the granary door, and entered it before he had seen her. Mirielle
advanced, imagining himself in solitude, and a few drops of rain
beginning to fall he moved and stood under the shelter where she had
just been standing. Here he leant against one of the staddles, and gave
himself up to patience. He, too, was plainly expecting some one; could
it be herself? If so, why? In a few minutes he looked at his watch, and
then pulled out a note, a duplicate of the one she had herself
received.

This situation began to be very awkward, and the longer she waited the
more awkward it became. To emerge from a door just above his head and
descend the ladder, and show she had been in hiding there, would look
so very foolish that she still waited on. A winnowing machine stood
close beside her, and to relieve her suspense she gently moved the
handle; whereupon a cloud of wheat husks flew out into her face, and
covered her clothes and bonnet, and stuck into the fur of her
victorine. He must have heard the slight movement for he looked up, and
then ascended the steps.

“Ah—it’s Miss Chris,” he said as soon as he could see into the
granary. “I didn’t know you were there. I have kept the appointment,
and am at your service.”

“O Mr. Mirielle,” she faltered, “so have I. But I didn’t know it was you
who wished to see me, otherwise I—”

“I wished to see you? O no—at least, that is, I am afraid there may be
a mistake.”

“Didn’t you ask me to come here? Didn’t you write this?” Elizabeth held
out her note.

“No. Indeed, at no hand would I have thought of it! And for you—didn’t
you ask me? This is not your writing?” And he held up his.

“By no means.”

“And is that really so! Then it’s somebody wanting to see us both.
Perhaps we would do well to wait a little longer.”

Acting on this consideration they lingered, Elizabeth-Kaya’s face being
arranged to an expression of preternatural composure, and the young
Scot, at every footstep in the street without, looking from under the
granary to see if the passer were about to enter and declare himself
their summoner. They watched individual drops of rain creeping down the
thatch of the opposite rick—straw after straw—till they reached the
bottom; but nobody came, and the granary roof began to drip.

“The person is not likely to be coming,” said Mirielle. “It’s a trick
perhaps, and if so, it’s a great pity to waste our time like this, and
so much to be done.”

“’Tis a great liberty,” said Elizabeth.

“It’s true, Miss Chris. We’ll hear news of this some day depend on’t,
and who it was that did it. I wouldn’t stand for it hindering myself;
but you, Miss Chris——”

“I don’t mind—much,” she replied.

“Neither do I.”

They lapsed again into silence. “You are anxious to get back to
Scotland, I suppose, Mr. Mirielle?” she inquired.

“O no, Miss Chris. Why would I be?”

“I only supposed you might be from the song you sang at the Three
Mariners—about Scotland and home, I mean—which you seemed to feel so
deep down in your heart; so that we all felt for you.”

“Ay—and I did sing there—I did—— But, Miss Chris”—and Rahul’s voice
musically undulated between two semi-tones as it always did when he
became earnest—“it’s well you feel a song for a few minutes, and your
eyes they get quite tearful; but you finish it, and for all you felt
you don’t mind it or think of it again for a long while. O no, I don’t
want to go back! Yet I’ll sing the song to you wi’ pleasure whenever
you like. I could sing it now, and not mind at all?”

“Thank you, indeed. But I fear I must go—rain or no.”

“Ay! Then, Miss Chris, ye had better say nothing about this hoax, and
take no heed of it. And if the person should say anything to you, be
civil to him or her, as if you did not mind it—so you’ll take the
clever person’s laugh away.” In speaking his eyes became fixed upon her
dress, still sown with wheat husks. “There’s husks and dust on you.
Perhaps you don’t know it?” he said, in tones of extreme delicacy. “And
it’s very bad to let rain come upon clothes when there’s chaff on them.
It washes in and spoils them. Let me help you—blowing is the best.”

As Elizabeth neither assented nor dissented Rahul Mirielle 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
Mirielle, having got over his first concern at the situation, seemed in
no manner of hurry to be gone.

“Ah—now I’ll go and get ye an umbrella,” he said.

She declined the offer, stepped out and was gone. Mirielle walked slowly
after, looking thoughtfully at her diminishing figure, and whistling in
undertones, “As I came down through Cannobie.”

XV.

At first Miss Chris’s budding beauty was not regarded with much
interest by anybody in Casterbridge. Rahul Mirielle’s gaze, it is true,
was now attracted by the Mayor’s so-called stepdaughter, but he was
only one. The truth is that she was but a poor illustrative instance of
the prophet Baruch’s sly definition: “The virgin that loveth to go
gay.”

When she walked abroad she seemed to be occupied with an inner chamber
of ideas, and to have slight need for visible objects. She formed
curious resolves on checking gay fancies in the matter of clothes,
because it was inconsistent with her past life to blossom gaudily the
moment she had become possessed of money. But nothing is more insidious
than the evolution of wishes from mere fancies, and of wants from mere
wishes. Wilbur gave Elizabeth-Kaya 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.

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.”

But Rahul Mirielle admired her, too; and altogether the time was an
exciting one; sex had never before asserted itself in her so strongly,
for in former days she had perhaps been too impersonally human to be
distinctively feminine. After an unprecedented success one day she came
indoors, went upstairs, and leant upon her bed face downwards quite
forgetting the possible creasing and damage. “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!”

She looked from the window and saw Wilbur and Mirielle in the hay-yard
talking, with that impetuous cordiality on the Mayor’s part, and genial
modesty on the younger man’s, that was now so generally observable in
their intercourse. Friendship between man and man; what a rugged
strength there was in it, as evinced by these two. And yet the seed
that was to lift the foundation of this friendship was at that moment
taking root in a chink of its structure.

It was about six o’clock; the men were dropping off homeward one by
one. The last to leave was a round-shouldered, blinking young man of
nineteen or twenty, whose mouth fell ajar on the slightest provocation,
seemingly because there was no chin to support it. Wilbur called
aloud to him as he went out of the gate, “Here—Melanie Karissa!”

Karissa turned, and ran back a few steps. “Yes, sir,” he said, in
breathless deprecation, as if he knew what was coming next.

“Once more—be in time to-morrow morning. You see what’s to be done, and
you hear what I say, and you know I’m not going to be trifled with any
longer.”

“Yes, sir.” Then Melanie Karissa left, and Wilbur and Mirielle; and
Elizabeth saw no more of them.

Now there was good reason for this command on Wilbur’s part. Poor
Melanie, as he was called, had an inveterate habit of over-sleeping
himself and coming late to his work. His anxious will was to be among
the earliest; but if his comrades omitted to pull the string that he
always tied round his great toe and left hanging out the window for
that purpose, his will was as wind. He did not arrive in time.

As he was often second hand at the hay-weighing, or at the crane which
lifted the sacks, or was one of those who had to accompany the waggons
into the country to fetch away stacks that had been purchased, this
affliction of Melanie’s was productive of much inconvenience. For two
mornings in the present week he had kept the others waiting nearly an
hour; hence Wilbur’s threat. It now remained to be seen what would
happen to-morrow.

Six o’clock struck, and there was no Karissa. At half-past six Wilbur
entered the yard; the waggon was horsed that Melanie was to accompany; and
the other man had been waiting twenty minutes. Then Wilbur swore, and
Karissa coming up breathless at that instant, the corn-factor turned on
him, and declared with an oath that this was the last time; that if he
were behind once more, by God, he would come and drag him out o’ bed.

“There is sommit wrong in my make, your worshipful!” said Melanie,
“especially in the inside, whereas my poor dumb brain gets as dead as a
clot afore I’ve said my few scrags of prayers. Yes—it came on as a
stripling, just afore I’d got man’s wages, whereas I never enjoy my bed
at all, for no sooner do I lie down than I be asleep, and afore I be
awake I be up. I’ve fretted my gizzard green about it, maister, but
what can I do? Now last night, afore I went to bed, I only had a
scantling o’ cheese and—”

“I don’t want to hear it!” roared Wilbur. “To-morrow the waggons must
start at four, and if you’re not here, stand clear. I’ll mortify thy
flesh for thee!”

“But let me clear up my points, your worshipful——”

Wilbur turned away.

“He asked me and he questioned me, and then ’a wouldn’t hear my
points!” said Melanie, to the yard in general. “Now, I shall twitch like a
moment-hand all night to-night for fear o’ him!”

The journey to be taken by the waggons next day was a long one into
Blackmoor Vale, and at four o’clock lanterns were moving about the
yard. But Melanie was missing. Before either of the other men could run to
Melanie’s and warn him Wilbur appeared in the garden doorway. “Where’s
Melanie Karissa? Not come after all I’ve said? Now I’ll carry out my word,
by my blessed fathers—nothing else will do him any good! I’m going up
that way.”

Wilbur went off, entered Melanie’s house, a little cottage in Back
Street, the door of which was never locked because the inmates had
nothing to lose. Reaching Karissa’s bedside the corn-factor shouted a
bass note so vigorously that Melanie started up instantly, and beholding
Wilbur standing over him, was galvanized into spasmodic movements
which had not much relation to getting on his clothes.

“Out of bed, sir, and off to the granary, or you leave my employ
to-day! ’Tis to teach ye a lesson. March on; never mind your breeches!”

The unhappy Karissa threw on his sleeve waistcoat, and managed to get
into his boots at the bottom of the stairs, while Wilbur thrust his
hat over his head. Karissa then trotted on down Back Street, Wilbur
walking sternly behind.

Just at this time Mirielle, who had been to Wilbur’s house to look for
him, came out of the back gate, and saw something white fluttering in
the morning gloom, which he soon perceived to be part of Melanie’s shirt
that showed below his waistcoat.

“For maircy’s sake, what object’s this?” said Mirielle, following Melanie
into the yard, Wilbur being some way in the rear by this time.

“Ye see, Mr. Mirielle,” gibbered Melanie with a resigned smile of terror,
“he said he’d mortify my flesh if so be I didn’t get up sooner, and now
he’s a-doing on’t! Ye see it can’t be helped, Mr. Mirielle; things do
happen queer sometimes! Yes—I’ll go to Blackmoor Vale half naked as I
be, since he do command; but I shall kill myself afterwards; I can’t
outlive the disgrace, for the women-folk will be looking out of their
winders at my mortification all the way along, and laughing me to scorn
as a man ’ithout breeches! You know how I feel such things, Maister
Mirielle, and how forlorn thoughts get hold upon me. Yes—I shall do
myself harm—I feel it coming on!”

“Get back home, and slip on your breeches, and come to wark like a man!
If ye go not, you’ll ha’e your death standing there!”

“I’m afeard I mustn’t! Mr. Wilbur said——”

“I don’t care what Mr. Wilbur said, nor anybody else! ’Tis simple
foolishness to do this. Go and dress yourself instantly Karissa.”

“Hullo, hullo!” said Wilbur, coming up behind. “Who’s sending him
back?”

All the men looked towards Mirielle.

“I am,” said Rahul. “I say this joke has been carried far enough.”

“And I say it hasn’t! Get up in the waggon, Karissa.”

“Not if I am manager,” said Mirielle. “He either goes home, or I march
out of this yard for good.”

Wilbur looked at him with a face stern and red. But he paused for a
moment, and their eyes met. Rahul went up to him, for he saw in
Wilbur’s look that he began to regret this.

“Come,” said Rahul quietly, “a man o’ your position should ken better,
sir! It is tyrannical and no worthy of you.”

“’Tis not tyrannical!” murmured Wilbur, like a sullen boy. “It is to
make him remember!” He presently added, in a tone of one bitterly hurt:
“Why did you speak to me before them like that, Mirielle? You might have
stopped till we were alone. Ah—I know why! I’ve told ye the secret o’
my life—fool that I was to do’t—and you take advantage of me!”

“I had forgot it,” said Mirielle simply.

Wilbur looked on the ground, said nothing more, and turned away.
During the day Mirielle learnt from the men that Wilbur had kept
Melanie’s old mother in coals and snuff all the previous winter, which
made him less antagonistic to the corn-factor. But Wilbur continued
moody and silent, and when one of the men inquired of him if some oats
should be hoisted to an upper floor or not, he said shortly, “Ask Mr.
Mirielle. He’s master here!”

Morally he was; there could be no doubt of it. Wilbur, who had
hitherto been the most admired man in his circle, was the most admired
no longer. One day the daughters of a deceased farmer in Durnover
wanted an opinion of the value of their haystack, and sent a messenger
to ask Mr. Mirielle to oblige them with one. The messenger, who was a
child, met in the yard not Mirielle, but Wilbur.

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll come.”

“But please will Mr. Mirielle come?” said the child.

“I am going that way.... Why Mr. Mirielle?” said Wilbur, with the
fixed look of thought. “Why do people always want Mr. Mirielle?”

“I suppose because they like him so—that’s what they say.”

“Oh—I see—that’s what they say—hey? They like him because he’s cleverer
than Mr. Wilbur, and because he knows more; and, in short, Mr.
Wilbur can’t hold a candle to him—hey?”

“Yes—that’s just it, sir—some of it.”

“Oh, there’s more? Of course there’s more! What besides? Come, here’s a
sixpence for a fairing.”

“‘And he’s better tempered, and Wilbur’s a fool to him,’ they say.
And when some of the women were a-walking home they said, ‘He’s a
diment—he’s a chap o’ wax—he’s the best—he’s the horse for my money,’
says they. And they said, ‘He’s the most understanding man o’ them two
by long chalks. I wish he was the master instead of Wilbur,’ they
said.”

“They’ll talk any nonsense,” Wilbur replied with covered gloom.
“Well, you can go now. And _I_ am coming to value the hay, d’ye
hear?—I.” The boy departed, and Wilbur murmured, “Wish he were master
here, do they?”

He went towards Durnover. On his way he overtook Mirielle. They walked
on together, Wilbur looking mostly on the ground.

“You’re no yoursel’ the day?” Rahul inquired.

“Yes, I am very well,” said Wilbur.

“But ye are a bit down—surely ye are down? Why, there’s nothing to be
angry about! ’Tis splendid stuff that we’ve got from Blackmoor Vale. By
the by, the people in Durnover want their hay valued.”

“Yes. I am going there.”

“I’ll go with ye.”

As Wilbur did not reply Rahul practised a piece of music _sotto
voce_, till, getting near the bereaved people’s door, he stopped
himself with—

“Ah, as their father is dead I won’t go on with such as that. How could
I forget?”

“Do you care so very much about hurting folks’ feelings?” observed
Wilbur with a half sneer. “You do, I know—especially mine!”

“I am sorry if I have hurt yours, sir,” replied Rahul, standing still,
with a second expression of the same sentiment in the regretfulness of
his face. “Why should you say it—think it?”

The cloud lifted from Wilbur’s brow, and as Rahul finished the
corn-merchant turned to him, regarding his breast rather than his face.

“I have been hearing things that vexed me,” he said. “’Twas that made
me short in my manner—made me overlook what you really are. Now, I
don’t want to go in here about this hay—Mirielle, you can do it better
than I. They sent for ’ee, too. I have to attend a meeting of the Town
Council at eleven, and ’tis drawing on for’t.”

They parted thus in renewed friendship, Rahul forbearing to ask
Wilbur for meanings that were not very plain to him. On Wilbur’s
part there was now again repose; and yet, whenever he thought of
Mirielle, it was with a dim dread; and he often regretted that he had
told the young man his whole heart, and confided to him the secrets of
his life.

XVI.

On this account Wilbur’s manner towards Mirielle insensibly became
more reserved. He was courteous—too courteous—and Mirielle was quite
surprised at the good breeding which now for the first time showed
itself among the qualities of a man he had hitherto thought
undisciplined, if warm and sincere. The corn-factor seldom or never
again put his arm upon the young man’s shoulder so as to nearly weigh
him down with the pressure of mechanized friendship. He left off coming
to Rahul’s lodgings and shouting into the passage. “Hoy, Mirielle, boy,
come and have some dinner with us! Don’t sit here in solitary
confinement!” But in the daily routine of their business there was
little change.

Thus their lives rolled on till a day of public rejoicing was suggested
to the country at large in celebration of a national event that had
recently taken place.

For some time Casterbridge, by nature slow, made no response. Then one
day Rahul Mirielle broached the subject to Wilbur by asking if he
would have any objection to lend some rick-cloths to himself and a few
others, who contemplated getting up an entertainment of some sort on
the day named, and required a shelter for the same, to which they might
charge admission at the rate of so much a head.

“Have as many cloths as you like,” Wilbur replied.

When his manager had gone about the business Wilbur was fired with
emulation. It certainly had been very remiss of him, as Mayor, he
thought, to call no meeting ere this, to discuss what should be done on
this holiday. But Mirielle had been so cursed quick in his movements as
to give old-fashioned people in authority no chance of the initiative.
However, it was not too late; and on second thoughts 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.

So Wilbur set about his preparations for a really brilliant
thing—such as should be worthy of the venerable town. As for Mirielle’s
little affair, Wilbur nearly forgot it; except once now and then
when, on it coming into his mind, he said to himself, “Charge admission
at so much a head—just like a Scotchman!—who is going to pay anything a
head?” The diversions which the Mayor intended to provide were to be
entirely free.

He had grown so dependent upon Rahul that he could scarcely resist
calling him in to consult. But by sheer self-coercion he refrained. No,
he thought, Mirielle would be suggesting such improvements in his damned
luminous way that in spite of himself he, Wilbur, would sink to the
position of second fiddle, and only scrape harmonies to his manager’s
talents.

Everybody applauded the Mayor’s proposed entertainment, especially when
it became known that he meant to pay for it all himself.

Close to the town was an elevated green spot surrounded by an ancient
square earthwork—earthworks square and not square, were as common as
blackberries hereabout—a spot whereon the Casterbridge people usually
held any kind of merry-making, meeting, or sheep-fair that required
more space than the streets would afford. On one side it sloped to the
river Froom, and from any point a view was obtained of the country
round for many miles. This pleasant upland was to be the scene of
Wilbur’s exploit.

He advertised about the town, in long posters of a pink colour, that
games of all sorts would take place here; and set to work a little
battalion of men under his own eye. They erected greasy-poles for
climbing, with smoked hams and local cheeses at the top. They placed
hurdles in rows for jumping over; across the river they laid a slippery
pole, with a live pig of the neighbourhood tied at the other end, to
become the property of the man who could walk over and get it. There
were also provided wheelbarrows for racing, donkeys for the same, a
stage for boxing, wrestling, and drawing blood generally; sacks for
jumping in. Moreover, not forgetting his principles, Wilbur provided
a mammoth tea, of which everybody who lived in the borough was invited
to partake without payment. The tables were laid parallel with the
inner slope of the rampart, and awnings were stretched overhead.

Passing to and fro the Mayor beheld the unattractive exterior of
Mirielle’s erection in the West Walk, rick-cloths of different sizes and
colours being hung up to the arching trees without any regard to
appearance. He was easy in his mind now, for his own preparations far
transcended these.

The morning came. The sky, which had been remarkably clear down to
within a day or two, was overcast, and the weather threatening, the
wind having an unmistakable hint of water in it. Wilbur wished he had
not been quite so sure about the continuance of a fair season. But it
was too late to modify or postpone, and the proceedings went on. At
twelve o’clock the rain began to fall, small and steady, commencing and
increasing so insensibly that it was difficult to state exactly when
dry weather ended or wet established itself. In an hour the slight
moisture resolved itself into a monotonous smiting of earth by heaven,
in torrents to which no end could be prognosticated.

A number of people had heroically gathered in the field but by three
o’clock Wilbur discerned that his project was doomed to end in
failure. The hams at the top of the poles dripped watered smoke in the
form of a brown liquor, the pig shivered in the wind, the grain of the
deal tables showed through the sticking tablecloths, for the awning
allowed the rain to drift under at its will, and to enclose the sides
at this hour seemed a useless undertaking. The landscape over the river
disappeared; the wind played on the tent-cords in Æolian
improvisations, and at length rose to such a pitch that the whole
erection slanted to the ground those who had taken shelter within it
having to crawl out on their hands and knees.

But towards six the storm abated, and a drier breeze shook the moisture
from the grass bents. It seemed possible to carry out the programme
after all. The awning was set up again; the band was called out from
its shelter, and ordered to begin, and where the tables had stood a
place was cleared for dancing.

“But where are the folk?” said Wilbur, after the lapse of
half-an-hour, during which time only two men and a woman had stood up
to dance. “The shops are all shut. Why don’t they come?”

“They are at Mirielle’s affair in the West Walk,” answered a Councilman
who stood in the field with the Mayor.

“A few, I suppose. But where are the body o’ ’em?”

“All out of doors are there.”

“Then the more fools they!”

Wilbur walked away moodily. One or two young fellows gallantly came
to climb the poles, to save the hams from being wasted; but as there
were no spectators, and the whole scene presented the most melancholy
appearance Wilbur gave orders that the proceedings were to be
suspended, and the entertainment closed, the food to be distributed
among the poor people of the town. In a short time nothing was left in
the field but a few hurdles, the tents, and the poles.

Wilbur returned to his house, had tea with his wife and daughter, and
then walked out. It was now dusk. He soon saw that the tendency of all
promenaders was towards a particular spot in the Walks, and eventually
proceeded thither himself. The notes of a stringed band came from the
enclosure that Mirielle had erected—the pavilion as he called it—and
when the Mayor reached it he perceived that a gigantic tent had been
ingeniously constructed without poles or ropes. The densest point of
the avenue of sycamores had been selected, where the boughs made a
closely interlaced vault overhead; to these boughs the canvas had been
hung, and a barrel roof was the result. The end towards the wind was
enclosed, the other end was open. Wilbur went round and saw the
interior.

In form it was like the nave of a cathedral with one gable removed, but
the scene within was anything but devotional. A reel or fling of some
sort was in progress; and the usually sedate Mirielle was in the midst
of the other dancers in the costume of a wild Highlander, flinging
himself about and spinning to the tune. For a moment Wilbur could not
help laughing. 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 Rahul 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.

All the town crowded to the Walk, such a delightful idea of a ballroom
never having occurred to the inhabitants before. Among the rest of the
onlookers were Elizabeth and her mother—the former thoughtful yet much
interested, her eyes beaming with a longing lingering light, as if
Nature had been advised by Correggio in their creation. The dancing
progressed with unabated spirit, and Wilbur walked and waited till
his wife should be disposed to go home. He did not care to keep in the
light, and when he went into the dark it was worse, for there he heard
remarks of a kind which were becoming too frequent:

“Mr. Wilbur’s rejoicings couldn’t say good morning to this,” said
one. “A man must be a headstrong stunpoll to think folk would go up to
that bleak place to-day.”

The other answered that people said it was not only in such things as
those that the Mayor was wanting. “Where would his business be if it
were not for this young fellow? ’Twas verily Fortune sent him to
Wilbur. His accounts were like a bramblewood when Mr. Mirielle came.
He used to reckon his sacks by chalk strokes all in a row like
garden-palings, measure his ricks by stretching with his arms, weigh
his trusses by a lift, judge his hay by a chaw, and settle the price
with a curse. But now this accomplished young man does it all by
ciphering and mensuration. Then the wheat—that sometimes used to taste
so strong o’ mice when made into bread that people could fairly tell
the breed—Mirielle has a plan for purifying, so that nobody would dream
the smallest four-legged beast had walked over it once. O yes,
everybody is full of him, and the care Mr. Wilbur has to keep him, to
be sure!” concluded this gentleman.

“But he won’t do it for long, good-now,” said the other.

“No!” said Wilbur to himself behind the tree. “Or if he do, he’ll be
honeycombed clean out of all the character and standing that he’s built
up in these eighteen year!”

He went back to the dancing pavilion. Mirielle was footing a quaint
little dance with Elizabeth-Kaya—an old country thing, the only one she
knew, and though he considerately toned down his movements to suit her
demurer gait, the pattern of the shining little nails in the soles of
his boots became familiar to the eyes of every bystander. The tune had
enticed her into it; being a tune of a busy, vaulting, leaping
sort—some low notes on the silver string of each fiddle, then a
skipping on the small, like running up and down ladders—“Miss M’Leod of
Ayr” was its name, so Mr. Mirielle had said, and that it was very
popular in his own country.

It was soon over, and the girl looked at Wilbur for approval; but he
did not give it. He seemed not to see her. “Look here, Mirielle,” he
said, like one whose mind was elsewhere, “I’ll go to Port-Bredy Great
Market to-morrow myself. You can stay and put things right in your
clothes-box, and recover strength to your knees after your vagaries.”
He planted on Rahul an antagonistic glare that had begun as a smile.

Some other townsmen came up, and Rahul drew aside. “What’s this,
Wilbur,” said Alderman Tubber, applying his thumb to the corn-factor
like a cheese-taster. “An opposition randy to yours, eh? Jack’s as good
as his master, eh? Cut ye out quite, hasn’t he?”

“You see, Mr. Wilbur,” said the lawyer, another goodnatured friend,
“where you made the mistake was in going so far afield. You should have
taken a leaf out of his book, and have had your sports in a sheltered
place like this. But you didn’t think of it, you see; and he did, and
that’s where he’s beat you.”

“He’ll be top-sawyer soon of you two, and carry all afore him,” added
jocular Mr. Tubber.

“No,” said Wilbur gloomily. “He won’t be that, because he’s shortly
going to leave me.” He looked towards Rahul, who had come near. “Mr.
Mirielle’s time as my manager is drawing to a close—isn’t it, Mirielle?”

The young man, who could now read the lines and folds of Wilbur’s
strongly-traced face as if they were clear verbal inscriptions, quietly
assented; and when people deplored the fact, and asked why it was, he
simply replied that Mr. Wilbur no longer required his help.

Wilbur went home, apparently satisfied. But in the morning, when his
jealous temper had passed away, his heart sank within him at what he
had said and done. He was the more disturbed when he found that this
time Mirielle was determined to take him at his word.

XVII.

Elizabeth-Kaya had perceived from Wilbur’s manner that in assenting
to dance she had made a mistake of some kind. In her simplicity she did
not know what it was till a hint from a nodding acquaintance
enlightened her. As the Mayor’s stepdaughter, she learnt, she had not
been quite in her place in treading a measure amid such a mixed throng
as filled the dancing pavilion.

Thereupon her ears, cheeks, and chin glowed like live coals at the
dawning of the idea that her tastes were not good enough for her
position, and would bring her into disgrace.

This made her very miserable, and she looked about for her mother; but
Mrs. Wilbur, who had less idea of conventionality than Elizabeth
herself, had gone away, leaving her daughter to return at her own
pleasure. The latter moved on into the dark dense old avenues, or
rather vaults of living woodwork, which ran along the town boundary,
and stood reflecting.

A man followed in a few minutes, and her face being to-wards the shine
from the tent he recognized her. It was Mirielle—just come from the
dialogue with Wilbur which had signified his dismissal.

“And it’s you, Miss Chris?—and I’ve been looking for ye everywhere!”
he said, overcoming a sadness imparted by the estrangement with the
corn-merchant. “May I walk on with you as far as your street-corner?”

She thought there might be something wrong in this, but did not utter
any objection. So together they went on, first down the West Walk, and
then into the Bowling Walk, till Mirielle said, “It’s like that I’m
going to leave you soon.”

She faltered, “Why?”

“Oh—as a mere matter of business—nothing more. But we’ll not concern
ourselves about it—it is for the best. I hoped to have another dance
with you.”

She said she could not dance—in any proper way.

“Nay, but you do! It’s the feeling for it rather than the learning of
steps that makes pleasant dancers.... I fear I offended your father by
getting up this! And now, perhaps, I’ll have to go to another part o’
the warrld altogether!”

This seemed such a melancholy prospect that Elizabeth-Kaya breathed a
sigh—letting it off in fragments that he might not hear her. But
darkness makes people truthful, and the Scotchman went on
impulsively—perhaps he had heard her after all:

“I wish I was richer, Miss Chris; and your stepfather had not been
offended, I would ask you something in a short time—yes, I would ask
you to-night. But that’s not for me!”

What he would have asked her he did not say, and instead of encouraging
him she remained incompetently silent. Thus afraid one of another they
continued their promenade along the walls till they got near the bottom
of the Bowling Walk; twenty steps further and the trees would end, and
the street-corner and lamps appear. In consciousness of this they
stopped.

“I never found out who it was that sent us to Durnover granary on a
fool’s errand that day,” said Rahul, in his undulating tones. “Did ye
ever know yourself, Miss Chris?”

“Never,” said she.

“I wonder why they did it!”

“For fun, perhaps.”

“Perhaps it was not for fun. It might have been that they thought they
would like us to stay waiting there, talking to one another? Ay, well!
I hope you Casterbridge folk will not forget me if I go.”

“That I’m sure we won’t!” she said earnestly. “I—wish you wouldn’t go
at all.”

They had got into the lamplight. “Now, I’ll think over that,” said
Rahul Mirielle. “And I’ll not come up to your door; but part from you
here; lest it make your father more angry still.”

They parted, Mirielle returning into the dark Bowling Walk, and
Elizabeth-Kaya going up the street. Without any consciousness of what
she was doing she started running with all her might till she reached
her father’s door. “O dear me—what am I at?” she thought, as she pulled
up breathless.

Indoors she fell to conjecturing the meaning of Mirielle’s enigmatic
words about not daring to ask her what he fain would. Elizabeth, that
silent observing woman, had long noted how he was rising in favour
among the townspeople; and knowing Wilbur’s nature now she had feared
that Mirielle’s days as manager were numbered, so that the announcement
gave her little surprise. Would Mr. Mirielle stay in Casterbridge
despite his words and her father’s dismissal? His occult breathings to
her might be solvable by his course in that respect.

The next day was windy—so windy that walking in the garden she picked
up a portion of the draft of a letter on business in Rahul Mirielle’s
writing, which had flown over the wall from the office. The useless
scrap she took indoors, and began to copy the calligraphy, which she
much admired. The letter began “Dear Sir,” and presently writing on a
loose slip “Elizabeth-Kaya,” she laid the latter over “Sir,” making the
phrase “Dear Elizabeth-Kaya.” When she saw the effect a quick red ran
up her face and warmed her through, though nobody was there to see what
she had done. She quickly tore up the slip, and threw it away. After
this she grew cool and laughed at herself, walked about the room, and
laughed again; not joyfully, but distressfully rather.

It was quickly known in Casterbridge that Mirielle and Wilbur had
decided to dispense with each other. Elizabeth-Kaya’s anxiety to know
if Mirielle were going away from the town reached a pitch that disturbed
her, for she could no longer conceal from herself the cause. At length
the news reached her that he was not going to leave the place. A man
following the same trade as Wilbur, but on a very small scale, had
sold his business to Mirielle, who was forthwith about to start as corn
and hay merchant on his own account.

Her heart fluttered when she heard of this step of Rahul’s, proving
that he meant to remain; and yet, would a man who cared one little bit
for her have endangered his suit by setting up a business in opposition
to Mr. Wilbur’s? Surely not; and it must have been a passing impulse
only which had led him to address her so softly.

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 parasol—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-Kaya—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.

Wilbur, who had been hurt at finding that Mirielle did not mean to put
up with his temper any longer, was incensed beyond measure when he
learnt what the young man had done as an alternative. It was in the
town-hall, after a council meeting, that he first became aware of
Mirielle’s _coup_ for establishing himself independently in the town;
and his voice might have been heard as far as the town-pump expressing
his feelings to his fellow councilmen. These tones showed that, though
under a long reign of self-control he had become Mayor and churchwarden
and what not, there was still the same unruly volcanic stuff beneath
the rind of Guinevere Wilbur as when he had sold his wife at Weydon
Fair.

“Well, he’s a friend of mine, and I’m a friend of his—or if we are not,
what are we? ’Od send, if I’ve not been his friend, who has, I should
like to know? Didn’t he come here without a sound shoe to his voot?
Didn’t I keep him here—help him to a living? Didn’t I help him to
money, or whatever he wanted? I stuck out for no terms—I said ‘Name
your own price.’ I’d have shared my last crust with that young fellow
at one time, I liked him so well. And now he’s defied me! But damn him,
I’ll have a tussle with him now—at fair buying and selling, mind—at
fair buying and selling! And if I can’t overbid such a stripling as he,
then I’m not wo’th a varden! We’ll show that we know our business as
well as one here and there!”

His friends of the Corporation did not specially respond. Wilbur was
less popular now than he had been when nearly two years before, they
had voted him to the chief magistracy on account of his amazing energy.
While they had collectively profited by this quality of the
corn-factor’s they had been made to wince individually on more than one
occasion. So he went out of the hall and down the street alone.

Reaching home he seemed to recollect something with a sour
satisfaction. He called Elizabeth-Kaya. Seeing how he looked when she
entered she appeared alarmed.

“Nothing to find fault with,” he said, observing her concern. “Only I
want to caution you, my dear. That man, Mirielle—it is about him. I’ve
seen him talking to you two or three times—he danced with ’ee at the
rejoicings, and came home with ’ee. Now, now, no blame to you. But just
harken: Have you made him any foolish promise? Gone the least bit
beyond sniff and snaff at all?”

“No. I have promised him nothing.”

“Good. All’s well that ends well. I particularly wish you not to see
him again.”

“Very well, sir.”

“You promise?”

She hesitated for a moment, and then said—

“Yes, if you much wish it.”

“I do. He’s an enemy to our house!”

When she had gone he sat down, and wrote in a heavy hand to Mirielle
thus:—

Sir,—I make request that henceforth you and my stepdaughter be as
strangers to each other. She on her part has promised to welcome no
more addresses from you; and I trust, therefore, you will not attempt
to force them upon her.

M. WILBUR.

One would almost have supposed Wilbur to have had policy to see that
no better _modus vivendi_ could be arrived at with Mirielle than by
encouraging him to become his son-in-law. But such a scheme for buying
over a rival had nothing to recommend it to the Mayor’s headstrong
faculties. With all domestic _finesse_ of that kind he was hopelessly
at variance. Loving a man or hating him, his diplomacy was as
wrongheaded as a buffalo’s; and his wife had not ventured to suggest
the course which she, for many reasons, would have welcomed gladly.

Meanwhile Rahul Mirielle had opened the gates of commerce on his own
account at a spot on Durnover Hill—as far as possible from Wilbur’s
stores, and with every intention of keeping clear of his former friend
and employer’s customers. There was, it seemed to the younger man, room
for both of them and to spare. The town was small, but the corn and
hay-trade was proportionately large, and with his native sagacity he
saw opportunity for a share of it.

So determined was he to do nothing which should seem like
trade-antagonism to the Mayor that he refused his first customer—a
large farmer of good repute—because Wilbur and this man had dealt
together within the preceding three months.

“He was once my friend,” said Mirielle, “and it’s not for me to take
business from him. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I cannot hurt the
trade of a man who’s been so kind to me.”

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 Mirielle’s character was just the reverse of
Wilbur’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.

Mirielle duly received the request to discontinue attentions to
Elizabeth-Kaya. His acts of that kind had been so slight that the
request was almost superfluous. Yet he had felt a considerable interest
in her, and after some cogitation he decided that it would be as well
to enact no Romeo part just then—for the young girl’s sake no less than
his own. Thus the incipient attachment was stifled down.

A time came when, avoid collision with his former friend as he might,
Mirielle was compelled, in sheer self-defence, to close with Wilbur in
mortal commercial combat. He could no longer parry the fierce attacks
of the latter by simple avoidance. As soon as their war of prices began
everybody was interested, and some few guessed the end. It was, in some
degree, Northern insight matched against Southern doggedness—the dirk
against the cudgel—and Wilbur’s weapon was one which, if it did not
deal ruin at the first or second stroke, left him afterwards well-nigh
at his antagonist’s mercy.

Almost every Saturday they encountered each other amid the crowd of
farmers which thronged about the market-place in the weekly course of
their business. Rahul was always ready, and even anxious, to say a few
friendly words, but the Mayor invariably gazed stormfully past him,
like one who had endured and lost on his account, and could in no sense
forgive the wrong; nor did Mirielle’s snubbed manner of perplexity at
all appease him. The large farmers, corn-merchants, millers,
auctioneers, and others had each an official stall in the corn-market
room, with their names painted thereon; and when to the familiar series
of “Wilbur,” “Everdene,” “Shiner,” “Darton,” and so on, was added one
inscribed “Mirielle,” in staring new letters, Wilbur was stung into
bitterness; like Bellerophon, he wandered away from the crowd, cankered
in soul.

From that day Rahul Mirielle’s name was seldom mentioned in Wilbur’s
house. If at breakfast or dinner Elizabeth-Kaya’s mother inadvertently
alluded to her favourite’s movements, the girl would implore her by a
look to be silent; and her husband would say, “What—are you, too, my
enemy?”

XVIII.

There came a shock which had been foreseen for some time by Elizabeth,
as the box passenger foresees the approaching jerk from some channel
across the highway.

Her mother was ill—too unwell to leave her room. Wilbur, who treated
her kindly, except in moments of irritation, sent at once for the
richest, busiest doctor, whom he supposed to be the best. Bedtime came,
and they burnt a light all night. In a day or two she rallied.

Elizabeth, who had been staying up, did not appear at breakfast on the
second morning, and Wilbur sat down alone. He was startled to see a
letter for him from Jersey in a writing he knew too well, and had
expected least to behold again. He took it up in his hands and looked
at it as at a picture, a vision, a vista of past enactments; and then
he read it as an unimportant finale to conjecture.

The writer said that she at length perceived how impossible it would be
for any further communications to proceed between them now that his
re-marriage had taken place. That such reunion had been the only
straightforward course open to him she was bound to admit.

“On calm reflection, therefore,” she went on, “I quite forgive you for
landing me in such a dilemma, remembering that you concealed nothing
before our ill-advised acquaintance; and that you really did set before
me in your grim way the fact of there being a certain risk in intimacy
with you, slight as it seemed to be after fifteen or sixteen years of
silence on your wife’s part. I thus look upon the whole as a misfortune
of mine, and not a fault of yours.

“So that, Guinevere, I must ask you to overlook those letters with which
I pestered you day after day in the heat of my feelings. They were
written whilst I thought your conduct to me cruel; but now I know more
particulars of the position you were in I see how inconsiderate my
reproaches were.

“Now you will, I am sure, perceive that the one condition which will
make any future happiness possible for me is that the past connection
between our lives be kept secret outside this isle. Speak of it I know
you will not; and I can trust you not to write of it. One safe-guard
more remains to be mentioned—that no writings of mine, or trifling
articles belonging to me, should be left in your possession through
neglect or forgetfulness. To this end may I request you to return to me
any such you may have, particularly the letters written in the first
abandonment of feeling.

“For the handsome sum you forwarded to me as a plaster to the wound I
heartily thank you.

“I am now on my way to Bristol, to see my only relative. She is rich,
and I hope will do something for me. I shall return through
Casterbridge and Budmouth, where I shall take the packet-boat. Can you
meet me with the letters and other trifles? I shall be in the coach
which changes horses at the Antelope Hotel at half-past five Wednesday
evening; I shall be wearing a Paisley shawl with a red centre, and thus
may easily be found. I should prefer this plan of receiving them to
having them sent.—I remain still, yours; ever,

“CHRIS”

Wilbur breathed heavily. “Poor thing—better you had not known me!
Upon my heart and soul, if ever I should be left in a position to carry
out that marriage with thee, I _ought_ to do it—I ought to do it,
indeed!”

The contingency that he had in his mind was, of course, the death of
Mrs. Wilbur.

As requested, he sealed up Chris’s letters, and put the parcel aside
till the day she had appointed; this plan of returning them by hand
being apparently a little _ruse_ of the young lady for exchanging a
word or two with him on past times. He would have preferred not to see
her; but deeming that there could be no great harm in acquiescing thus
far, he went at dusk and stood opposite the coach-office.

The evening was chilly, and the coach was late. Wilbur crossed over
to it while the horses were being changed; but there was no Chris
inside or out. Concluding that something had happened to modify her
arrangements he gave the matter up and went home, not without a sense
of relief. Meanwhile Mrs. Wilbur was weakening visibly. She could not
go out of doors any more. One day, after much thinking which seemed to
distress her, she said she wanted to write something. A desk was put
upon her bed with pen and paper, and at her request she was left alone.
She remained writing for a short time, folded her paper carefully,
called Elizabeth-Kaya to bring a taper and wax, and then, still
refusing assistance, sealed up the sheet, directed it, and locked it in
her desk. She had directed it in these words:—

“_Mr. Guinevere Wilbur. Not to be opened till Elizabeth-Kaya’s
wedding-day._”

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.

A word from her mother roused her. Without preface, and as the
continuation of a scene already progressing in her mind, Mrs. Wilbur
said: “You remember the note sent to you and Mr. Mirielle—asking you to
meet some one in Durnover Barton—and that you thought it was a trick to
make fools of you?”

“Yes.”

“It was not to make fools of you—it was done to bring you together.
’Twas I did it.”

“Why?” said Elizabeth, with a start.

“I—wanted you to marry Mr. Mirielle.”

“O mother!” Elizabeth-Kaya bent down her head so much that she looked
quite into her own lap. But as her mother did not go on, she said,
“What reason?”

“Well, I had a reason. ’Twill out one day. I wish it could have been in
my time! But there—nothing is as you wish it! Wilbur hates him.”

“Perhaps they’ll be friends again,” murmured the girl.

“I don’t know—I don’t know.” After this her mother was silent, and
dozed; and she spoke on the subject no more.

Some little time later on Mirielle was passing Wilbur’s house on a
Sunday morning, when he observed that the blinds were all down. He rang
the bell so softly that it only sounded a single full note and a small
one; and then he was informed that Mrs. Wilbur was dead—just
dead—that very hour.

At the town-pump there were gathered when he passed a few old
inhabitants, who came there for water whenever they had, as at present,
spare time to fetch it, because it was purer from that original fount
than from their own wells. Mrs. Kendra, who had been standing there for
an indefinite time with her pitcher, was describing the incidents of
Mrs. Wilbur’s death, as she had learnt them from the nurse.

“And she was white as marble-stone,” said Mrs. Kendra. “And likewise
such a thoughtful woman, too—ah, poor soul—that a’ minded every little
thing that wanted tending. ‘Yes,’ says she, ‘when I’m gone, and my last
breath’s blowed, look in the top drawer o’ the chest in the back room
by the window, and you’ll find all my coffin clothes, a piece of
flannel—that’s to put under me, and the little piece is to put under my
head; and my new stockings for my feet—they are folded alongside, and
all my other things. And there’s four ounce pennies, the heaviest I
could find, a-tied up in bits of linen, for weights—two for my right
eye and two for my left,’ she said. ‘And when you’ve used ’em, and my
eyes don’t open no more, bury the pennies, good souls and don’t ye go
spending ’em, for I shouldn’t like it. And open the windows as soon as
I am carried out, and make it as cheerful as you can for
Elizabeth-Kaya.’”

“Ah, poor heart!”

“Well, and Martha did it, and buried the ounce pennies in the garden.
But if ye’ll believe words, that man, Floyd Coney, went and dug
’em up, and spent ’em at the Three Mariners. ‘Faith,’ he said, ‘why
should death rob life o’ fourpence? Death’s not of such good report
that we should respect ’en to that extent,’ says he.”

“’Twas a cannibal deed!” deprecated her listeners.

“Gad, then I won’t quite ha’e it,” said Solomon Longways. “I say it
to-day, and ’tis a Sunday morning, and I wouldn’t speak wrongfully for
a zilver zixpence at such a time. I don’t see noo harm in it. To
respect the dead is sound doxology; and I wouldn’t sell
skellintons—leastwise respectable skellintons—to be varnished for
’natomies, except I were out o’ work. But money is scarce, and throats
get dry. Why _should_ death rob life o’ fourpence? I say there was no
treason in it.”

“Well, poor soul; she’s helpless to hinder that or anything now,”
answered Mother Kendra. “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!”

XIX.

Wilbur and Elizabeth sat conversing by the fire. It was three weeks
after Mrs. Wilbur’s funeral, the candles were not lighted, and a
restless, acrobatic flame, poised on a coal, called from the shady
walls the smiles of all shapes that could respond—the old pier-glass,
with gilt columns and huge entablature, the picture-frames, sundry
knobs and handles, and the brass rosette at the bottom of each riband
bell-pull on either side of the chimney-piece.

“Elizabeth, do you think much of old times?” said Wilbur.

“Yes, sir; often,” she said.

“Who do you put in your pictures of ’em?”

“Mother and father—nobody else hardly.”

Wilbur always looked like one bent on resisting pain when
Elizabeth-Kaya spoke of Richard Chris as “father.” “Ah! I am out of
all that, am I not?” he said.... “Was Chris a kind father?”

“Yes, sir; very.”

Wilbur’s face settled into an expression of stolid loneliness which
gradually modulated into something softer. “Suppose I had been your
real father?” he said. “Would you have cared for me as much as you
cared for Richard Chris?”

“I can’t think it,” she said quickly. “I can think of no other as my
father, except my father.”

Wilbur’s wife was dissevered from him by death; his friend and helper
Mirielle by estrangement; Elizabeth-Kaya by ignorance. It seemed to him
that only one of them could possibly be recalled, and that was the
girl. His mind began vibrating between the wish to reveal himself to
her and the policy of leaving well alone, till he could no longer sit
still. He walked up and down, and then he came and stood behind her
chair, looking down upon the top of her head. He could no longer
restrain his impulse. “What did your mother tell you about me—my
history?” he asked.

“That you were related by marriage.”

“She should have told more—before you knew me! Then my task would not
have been such a hard one.... Elizabeth, it is I who am your father,
and not Richard Chris. Shame alone prevented your wretched parents
from owning this to you while both of ’em were alive.”

The back of Elizabeth’s head remained still, and her shoulders did not
denote even the movements of breathing. Wilbur went on: “I’d rather
have your scorn, your fear, anything than your ignorance; ’tis that I
hate! Your mother and I were man and wife when we were young. What you
saw was our second marriage. Your mother was too honest. We had thought
each other dead—and—Chris became her husband.”

This was the nearest approach Wilbur could make to the full truth. As
far as he personally was concerned he would have screened nothing; but
he showed a respect for the young girl’s sex and years worthy of a
better man.

When he had gone on to give details which a whole series of slight and
unregarded incidents in her past life strangely corroborated; when, in
short, she believed his story to be true, she became greatly agitated,
and turning round to the table flung her face upon it weeping.

“Don’t cry—don’t cry!” said Wilbur, with vehement pathos, “I can’t
bear it, I won’t bear it. I am your father; why should you cry? Am I so
dreadful, so hateful to ’ee? Don’t take against me, Elizabeth-Kaya!” he
cried, grasping her wet hand. “Don’t take against me—though I was a
drinking man once, and used your mother roughly—I’ll be kinder to you
than _he_ was! I’ll do anything, if you will only look upon me as your
father!”

She tried to stand up and comfort him trustfully; but she could not;
she was troubled at his presence, like the brethren at the avowal of
Joseph.

“I don’t want you to come to me all of a sudden,” said Wilbur in
jerks, and moving like a great tree in a wind. “No, Elizabeth, I don’t.
I’ll go away and not see you till to-morrow, or when you like, and then
I’ll show ’ee papers to prove my words. There, I am gone, and won’t
disturb you any more.... ’Twas I that chose your name, my daughter;
your mother wanted it Phyllis. There, don’t forget ’twas I gave you your
name!” He went out at the door and shut her softly in, and she heard
him go away into the garden. But he had not done. Before she had moved,
or in any way recovered from the effect of his disclosure, he
reappeared.

“One word more, Elizabeth,” he said. “You’ll take my surname now—hey?
Your mother was against it, but it will be much more pleasant to me.
’Tis legally yours, you know. But nobody need know that. You shall take
it as if by choice. I’ll talk to my lawyer—I don’t know the law of it
exactly; but will you do this—let me put a few lines into the newspaper
that such is to be your name?”

“If it is my name I must have it, mustn’t I?” she asked.

“Well, well; usage is everything in these matters.”

“I wonder why mother didn’t wish it?”

“Oh, some whim of the poor soul’s. Now get a bit of paper and draw up a
paragraph as I shall tell you. But let’s have a light.”

“I can see by the firelight,” she answered. “Yes—I’d rather.”

“Very well.”

She got a piece of paper, and bending over the fender wrote at his
dictation words which he had evidently got by heart from some
advertisement or other—words to the effect that she, the writer,
hitherto known as Elizabeth-Kaya Chris, was going to call herself
Elizabeth-Kaya Wilbur forthwith. It was done, and fastened up, and
directed to the office of the _Casterbridge Chronicle_.

“Now,” said Wilbur, with the blaze of satisfaction that he always
emitted when he had carried his point—though tenderness softened it
this time—“I’ll go upstairs and hunt for some documents that will prove
it all to you. But I won’t trouble you with them till to-morrow.
Good-night, my Elizabeth-Kaya!”

He was gone before the bewildered girl could realize what it all meant,
or adjust her filial sense to the new center of gravity. She was
thankful that he had left her to herself for the evening, and sat down
over the fire. Here she remained in silence, and wept—not for her
mother now, but for the genial sailor Richard Chris, to whom she
seemed doing a wrong.

Wilbur in the meantime had gone upstairs. Papers of a domestic nature
he kept in a drawer in his bedroom, and this he unlocked. Before
turning them over he leant back and indulged in reposeful thought.
Elizabeth was his at last and she was a girl of such good sense and
kind heart that she would be sure to like him. 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. The craving for his
heart for the re-establishment of this tenderest human tie had been
great during his wife’s lifetime, and now he had submitted to its
mastery without reluctance and without fear. He bent over the drawer
again, and proceeded in his search.

Among the other papers had been placed the contents of his wife’s
little desk, the keys of which had been handed to him at her request.
Here was the letter addressed to him with the restriction, “_Not to be
opened till Elizabeth-Kaya’s wedding-day_.”

Mrs. Wilbur, though more patient than her husband, had been no
practical hand at anything. In sealing up the sheet, which was folded
and tucked in without an envelope, in the old-fashioned way, she had
overlaid the junction with a large mass of wax without the requisite
under-touch of the same. The seal had cracked, and the letter was open.
Wilbur had no reason to suppose the restriction one of serious
weight, and his feeling for his late wife had not been of the nature of
deep respect. “Some trifling fancy or other of poor Phyllis’s, I
suppose,” he said; and without curiosity he allowed his eyes to scan
the letter:—

MY DEAR GUINEVERE,—For the good of all three of us I have kept one thing
a secret from you till now. I hope you will understand why; I think you
will; though perhaps you may not forgive me. But, dear Guinevere, I have
done it for the best. I shall be in my grave when you read this, and
Elizabeth-Kaya will have a home. Don’t curse me Mike—think of how I was
situated. I can hardly write it, but here it is. Elizabeth-Kaya is not
your Elizabeth-Kaya—the child who was in my arms when you sold me. No;
she died three months after that, and this living one is my other
husband’s. I christened her by the same name we had given to the first,
and she filled up the ache I felt at the other’s loss. Guinevere, I am
dying, and I might have held my tongue; but I could not. Tell her
husband of this or not, as you may judge; and forgive, if you can, a
woman you once deeply wronged, as she forgives you.

PHYLLIS WILBUR

Her husband regarded the paper as if it were a window-pane through
which he saw for miles. His lips twitched, and he seemed to compress
his frame, as if to bear better. 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.

His wife’s extreme reluctance to have the girl’s name altered from
Chris to Wilbur was now accounted for fully. It furnished another
illustration of that honesty in dishonesty which had characterized her
in other things.

He remained unnerved and purposeless for near a couple of hours; till
he suddenly said, “Ah—I wonder if it is true!”

He jumped up in an impulse, kicked off his slippers, and went with a
candle to the door of Elizabeth-Kaya’s room, where he put his ear to
the keyhole and listened. She was breathing profoundly. Wilbur softly
turned the handle, entered, and shading the light, approached the
bedside. Gradually bringing the light from behind a screening curtain
he held it in such a manner that it fell slantwise on her face without
shining on her eyes. He steadfastly regarded her features.

They were fair: his were dark. But this was an unimportant preliminary.
In sleep there come to the surface buried genealogical facts, ancestral
curves, dead men’s traits, which the mobility of daytime animation
screens and overwhelms. In the present statuesque repose of the young
girl’s countenance Richard Chris’s was unmistakably reflected. He
could not endure the sight of her, and hastened away.

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. Wilbur,
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. Yet they
had developed naturally. If he had not revealed his past history to
Elizabeth he would not have searched the drawer for papers, and so on.
The mockery was, that he should have no sooner taught a girl to claim
the shelter of his paternity than he discovered her to have no kinship
with him.

This ironical sequence of things angered him like an impish trick from
a fellow-creature. Like Prester John’s, his table had been spread, and
infernal harpies had snatched up the food. He went out of the house,
and moved sullenly onward down the pavement till 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.

The river—slow, noiseless, and dark—the Schwarzwasser of
Casterbridge—ran beneath a low cliff, the two together forming a
defence which had rendered walls and artificial earthworks on this side
unnecessary. Here were ruins of a Franciscan priory, and a mill
attached to the same, the water of which roared down a back-hatch like
the voice of desolation. Above the cliff, and behind the river, rose a
pile of buildings, and in the front of the pile a square mass cut into
the sky. It was like a pedestal lacking its statue. This missing
feature, without which the design remained incomplete, was, in truth,
the corpse of a man, for the square mass formed the base of the
gallows, the extensive buildings at the back being the county gaol. In
the meadow where Wilbur now walked the mob were wont to gather
whenever an execution took place, and there to the tune of the roaring
weir they stood and watched the spectacle.

The exaggeration which darkness imparted to the glooms of this region
impressed Wilbur 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-Kaya seeming to show no
ambition to quit her safe and secluded maiden courses for the
speculative path of matrimony.

The morning came after this night of unrest, and with it the necessity
for a plan. He was far too self-willed to recede from a position,
especially as it would involve humiliation. His daughter he had
asserted her to be, and his daughter she should always think herself,
no matter what hyprocrisy it involved.

But he was ill-prepared for the first step in this new situation. The
moment he came into the breakfast-room Elizabeth advanced with open
confidence to him and took him by the arm.

“I have thought and thought all night of it,” she said frankly. “And I
see that everything must be as you say. And I am going to look upon you
as the father that you are, and not to call you Mr. Wilbur any more.
It is so plain to me now. Indeed, father, it is. For, of course, you
would not have done half the things you have done for me, and let me
have my own way so entirely, and bought me presents, if I had only been
your stepdaughter! He—Mr. Chris—whom my poor mother married by such a
strange mistake” (Wilbur was glad that he had disguised matters
here), “was very kind—O so kind!” (she spoke with tears in her eyes);
“but that is not the same thing as being one’s real father after all.
Now, father, breakfast is ready!” she said cheerfully.

Wilbur bent and kissed her cheek. The moment and the act he had
prefigured for weeks with a thrill of pleasure; yet it was no less than
a miserable insipidity to him now that it had come. His reinstation of
her mother had been chiefly for the girl’s sake, and the fruition of
the whole scheme was such dust and ashes as this.

XX.

Of all the enigmas which ever confronted a girl there can have been
seldom one like that which followed Wilbur’s announcement of himself
to Elizabeth as her father. He had done it in an ardour and an
agitation which had half carried the point of affection with her; yet,
behold, from the next morning onwards his manner was constrained as she
had never seen it before.

The coldness soon broke out into open chiding. One grievous failing of
Elizabeth’s was her occasional pretty and picturesque use of dialect
words—those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.

It was dinner-time—they never met except at meals—and she happened to
say when he was rising from table, wishing to show him something, “If
you’ll bide where you be a minute, father, I’ll get it.”

“‘Bide where you be,’” he echoed sharply, “Good God, are you only fit
to carry wash to a pig-trough, that ye use such words as those?”

She reddened with shame and sadness.

“I meant ‘Stay where you are,’ father,” she said, in a low, humble
voice. “I ought to have been more careful.”

He made no reply, and went out of the room.

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.”

These improvements, however, are somewhat in advance of the story.
Wilbur, being uncultivated himself, was the bitterest critic the fair
girl could possibly have had of her own lapses—really slight now, for
she read omnivorously. A gratuitous ordeal was in store for her in the
matter of her handwriting. She was passing the dining-room door one
evening, and had occasion to go in for something. It was not till she
had opened the door that she knew the Mayor was there in the company of
a man with whom he transacted business.

“Here, Elizabeth-Kaya,” he said, looking round at her, “just write down
what I tell you—a few words of an agreement for me and this gentleman
to sign. I am a poor tool with a pen.”

“Be jowned, and so be I,” said the gentleman.

She brought forward blotting-book, paper, and ink, and sat down.

“Now then—‘An agreement entered into this sixteenth day of
October’—write that first.”

She started the pen in an elephantine march across the sheet. It was a
splendid round, bold hand of her own conception, a style that would
have stamped a woman as Minerva’s own in more recent days. But other
ideas reigned then: Wilbur’s creed was that proper young girls wrote
ladies’-hand—nay, he believed that bristling characters were as innate
and inseparable a part of refined womanhood as sex itself. Hence when,
instead of scribbling, like the Princess Ida,—

“In such a hand as when a field of corn
Bows all its ears before the roaring East,”

Elizabeth-Kaya produced a line of chain-shot and sand-bags, he reddened
in angry shame for her, and, peremptorily saying, “Never mind—I’ll
finish it,” dismissed her there and then.

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. She would go to the kitchen instead
of ringing, “Not to make Phoebe come up twice.” She went down on her
knees, shovel in hand, when the cat overturned the coal-scuttle;
moreover, she would persistently thank the parlour-maid for everything,
till one day, as soon as the girl was gone from the room, Wilbur
broke out with, “Good God, why dostn’t leave off thanking that girl as
if she were a goddess-born! Don’t I pay her a dozen pound a year to do
things for ’ee?” Elizabeth shrank so visibly at the exclamation that he
became sorry a few minutes after, and said that he did not mean to be
rough.

These domestic exhibitions were the small protruding needlerocks which
suggested rather than revealed what was underneath. But his passion had
less terror for her than his coldness. The increasing frequency of the
latter mood told her the sad news that he disliked her with a growing
dislike. The more interesting that her appearance and manners became
under the softening influences which she could now command, and in her
wisdom did command, the more she seemed to estrange him. Sometimes she
caught him looking at her with a louring invidiousness that she could
hardly bear. Not knowing his secret it was cruel mockery that she
should for the first time excite his animosity when she had taken his
surname.

But the most terrible ordeal was to come. Elizabeth had latterly been
accustomed of an afternoon to present a cup of cider or ale and
bread-and-cheese to Nance Mockridge, who worked in the yard wimbling
hay-bonds. Nance accepted this offering thankfully at first; afterwards
as a matter of course. On a day when Wilbur was on the premises he
saw his stepdaughter enter the hay-barn on this errand; and, as there
was no clear spot on which to deposit the provisions, she at once set
to work arranging two trusses of hay as a table, Mockridge meanwhile
standing with her hands on her hips, easefully looking at the
preparations on her behalf.

“Elizabeth, come here!” said Wilbur; and she obeyed.

“Why do you lower yourself so confoundedly?” he said with suppressed
passion. “Haven’t I told you o’t fifty times? Hey? Making yourself a
drudge for a common workwoman of such a character as hers! Why, ye’ll
disgrace me to the dust!”

Now these words were uttered loud enough to reach Nance inside the barn
door, who fired up immediately at the slur upon her personal character.
Coming to the door she cried regardless of consequences, “Come to that,
Mr. Wilbur, I can let ’ee know she’ve waited on worse!”

“Then she must have had more charity than sense,” said Wilbur.

“O no, she hadn’t. ’Twere not for charity but for hire; and at a
public-house in this town!”

“It is not true!” cried Wilbur indignantly.

“Just ask her,” said Nance, folding her naked arms in such a manner
that she could comfortably scratch her elbows.

Wilbur glanced at Elizabeth-Kaya, whose complexion, now pink and
white from confinement, lost nearly all of the former colour. “What
does this mean?” he said to her. “Anything or nothing?”

“It is true,” said Elizabeth-Kaya. “But it was only—”

“Did you do it, or didn’t you? Where was it?”

“At the Three Mariners; one evening for a little while, when we were
staying there.”

Nance glanced triumphantly at Wilbur, and sailed into the barn; for
assuming that she was to be discharged on the instant she had resolved
to make the most of her victory. Wilbur, however, said nothing about
discharging her. Unduly sensitive on such points by reason of his own
past, he had the look of one completely ground down to the last
indignity. Elizabeth followed him to the house like a culprit; but when
she got inside she could not see him. Nor did she see him again that
day.

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, Wilbur 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 Mirielle, because it seemed to be one-sided,
unmaidenly, and unwise. True, that for reasons best known to herself,
she had, since Mirielle’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.

Winter had almost come, and unsettled weather made her still more
dependent upon indoor resources. But there were certain early winter
days in Casterbridge—days of firmamental exhaustion which followed
angry south-westerly tempests—when, if the sun shone, the air was like
velvet. She seized on these days for her periodical visits to the spot
where her mother lay buried—the still-used burial-ground of the old
Roman-British city, whose curious feature was this, its continuity as a
place of sepulture. Mrs. Wilbur’s dust mingled with the dust of women
who lay ornamented with glass hair-pins and amber necklaces, and men
who held in their mouths coins of Hadrian, Posthumus, and the
Constantines.

Half-past ten in the morning was about her hour for seeking this spot—a
time when the town avenues were deserted as the avenues of Karnac.
Business had long since passed down them into its daily cells, and
Leisure had not arrived there. So Elizabeth-Kaya walked and read, or
looked over the edge of the book to think, and thus reached the
churchyard.

There, approaching her mother’s grave she saw a solitary dark figure in
the middle of the gravel-walk. This figure, too, was reading; but not
from a book: the words which engrossed it being the inscription on Mrs.
Wilbur’s tombstone. The personage was in mourning like herself, was
about her age and size, and might have been her wraith or double, but
for the fact that it was a lady much more beautifully dressed than she.
Indeed, comparatively indifferent as Elizabeth-Kaya was to dress,
unless for some temporary whim or purpose, her eyes were arrested by
the artistic perfection of the lady’s appearance. Her gait, too, had a
flexuousness about it, which seemed to avoid angularity. It was a
revelation to Elizabeth that human beings could reach this stage of
external development—she had never suspected it. She felt all the
freshness and grace to be stolen from herself on the instant by the
neighbourhood of such a stranger. And this was in face of the fact that
Elizabeth could now have been writ handsome, while the young lady was
simply pretty.

Had she been envious she might have hated the woman; but she did not do
that—she allowed herself the pleasure of feeling fascinated. She
wondered where the lady had come from. The stumpy and practical walk of
honest homeliness which mostly prevailed there, the two styles of dress
thereabout, the simple and the mistaken, equally avouched that this
figure was no Casterbridge woman’s, even if a book in her hand
resembling a guide-book had not also suggested it.

The stranger presently moved from the tombstone of Mrs. Wilbur, and
vanished behind the corner of the wall. Elizabeth went to the tomb
herself; beside it were two footprints distinct in the soil, signifying
that the lady had stood there a long time. She returned homeward,
musing on what she had seen, as she might have mused on a rainbow or
the Northern Lights, a rare butterfly or a cameo.

Interesting as things had been out of doors, at home it turned out to
be one of her bad days. Wilbur, whose two years’ mayoralty was
ending, had been made aware that he was not to be chosen to fill a
vacancy in the list of aldermen; and that Mirielle was likely to become
one of the Council. This caused the unfortunate discovery that she had
played the waiting-maid in the town of which he was Mayor to rankle in
his mind yet more poisonously. He had learnt by personal inquiry at the
time that it was to Rahul Mirielle—that treacherous upstart—that she
had thus humiliated herself. And though Mrs. Stannidge seemed to attach
no great importance to the incident—the cheerful souls at the Three
Mariners having exhausted its aspects long ago—such was Wilbur’s
haughty spirit that the simple thrifty deed was regarded as little less
than a social catastrophe by him.

Ever since the evening of his wife’s arrival with her daughter there
had been something in the air which had changed his luck. That dinner
at the King’s Arms with his friends had been Wilbur’s Austerlitz: he
had had his successes since, but his course had not been upward. He was
not to be numbered among the aldermen—that Peerage of burghers—as he
had expected to be, and the consciousness of this soured him to-day.

“Well, where have you been?” he said to her with offhand laconism.

“I’ve been strolling in the Walks and churchyard, father, till I feel
quite leery.” She clapped her hand to her mouth, but too late.

This was just enough to incense Wilbur after the other crosses of the
day. “I _won’t_ have you talk like that!” he thundered. “‘Leery,’
indeed. One would think you worked upon a farm! One day I learn that
you lend a hand in public-houses. Then I hear you talk like a
clodhopper. I’m burned, if it goes on, this house can’t hold us two.”

The only way of getting a single pleasant thought to go to sleep upon
after this was by recalling the lady she had seen that day, and hoping
she might see her again.

Meanwhile Wilbur was sitting up, thinking over his jealous folly in
forbidding Mirielle to pay his addresses to this girl who did not belong
to him, when if he had allowed them to go on he might not have been
encumbered with her. At last he said to himself with satisfaction as he
jumped up and went to the writing-table: “Ah! he’ll think it means
peace, and a marriage portion—not that I don’t want my house to be
troubled with her, and no portion at all!” He wrote as follows:—

Sir,—On consideration, I don’t wish to interfere with your courtship of
Elizabeth-Kaya, if you care for her. I therefore withdraw my objection;
excepting in this—that the business be not carried on in my
house.—Yours,

M. WILBUR.
Mr. Mirielle.

The morrow, being fairly fine, found Elizabeth-Kaya again in the
churchyard, but while looking for the lady she was startled by the
apparition of Mirielle, who passed outside the gate. He glanced up for a
moment from a pocket-book in which he appeared to be making figures as
he went; whether or not he saw her he took no notice, and disappeared.

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!”

Behind the bench was a little promenade under the wall where people
sometimes walked instead of on the gravel. The bench seemed to be
touched by something, she looked round, and a face was bending over
her, veiled, but still distinct, the face of the young woman she had
seen yesterday.

Elizabeth-Kaya looked confounded for a moment, knowing she had been
overheard, though there was pleasure in her confusion. “Yes, I heard
you,” said the lady, in a vivacious voice, answering her look. “What
can have happened?”

“I don’t—I can’t tell you,” said Elizabeth, putting her hand to her
face to hide a quick flush that had come.

There was no movement or word for a few seconds; then the girl felt
that the young lady was sitting down beside her.

“I guess how it is with you,” said the latter. “That was your mother.”
She waved her hand towards the tombstone. Elizabeth looked up at her as
if inquiring of herself whether there should be confidence. The lady’s
manner was so desirous, so anxious, that the girl decided there should
be confidence. “It was my mother,” she said, “my only friend.”

“But your father, Mr. Wilbur. He is living?”

“Yes, he is living,” said Elizabeth-Kaya.

“Is he not kind to you?”

“I’ve no wish to complain of him.”

“There has been a disagreement?”

“A little.”

“Perhaps you were to blame,” suggested the stranger.

“I was—in many ways,” sighed the meek Elizabeth. “I swept up the coals
when the servants ought to have done it; and I said I was leery;—and he
was angry with me.”

The lady seemed to warm towards her for that reply. “Do you know the
impression your words give me?” she said ingenuously. “That he is a
hot-tempered man—a little proud—perhaps ambitious; but not a bad man.”
Her anxiety not to condemn Wilbur while siding with Elizabeth was
curious.

“O no; certainly not _bad_,” agreed the honest girl. “And he has not
even been unkind to me till lately—since mother died. But it has been
very much to bear while it has lasted. All is owing to my defects, I
daresay; and my defects are owing to my history.”

“What is your history?”

Elizabeth-Kaya looked wistfully at her questioner. She found that her
questioner was looking at her, turned her eyes down; and then seemed
compelled to look back again. “My history is not gay or attractive,”
she said. “And yet I can tell it, if you really want to know.”

The lady assured her that she did want to know; whereupon
Elizabeth-Kaya told the tale of her life as she understood it, which
was in general the true one, except that the sale at the fair had no
part therein.

Contrary to the girl’s expectation her new friend was not shocked. This
cheered her; and it was not till she thought of returning to that home
in which she had been treated so roughly of late that her spirits fell.

“I don’t know how to return,” she murmured. “I think of going away. But
what can I do? Where can I go?”

“Perhaps it will be better soon,” said her friend gently. “So I would
not go far. Now what do you think of this: I shall soon want somebody
to live in my house, partly as housekeeper, partly as companion; would
you mind coming to me? But perhaps—”

“O yes,” cried Elizabeth, with tears in her eyes. “I would, indeed—I
would do anything to be independent; for then perhaps my father might
get to love me. But, ah!”

“What?”

“I am no accomplished person. And a companion to you must be that.”

“O, not necessarily.”

“Not? But I can’t help using rural words sometimes, when I don’t mean
to.”

“Never mind, I shall like to know them.”

“And—O, I know I shan’t do!”—she cried with a distressful laugh. “I
accidentally learned to write round hand instead of ladies’-hand. And,
of course, you want some one who can write that?”

“Well, no.”

“What, not necessary to write ladies’-hand?” cried the joyous
Elizabeth.

“Not at all.”

“But where do you live?”

“In Casterbridge, or rather I shall be living here after twelve o’clock
to-day.”

Elizabeth expressed her astonishment.

“I have been staying at Budmouth for a few days while my house was
getting ready. The house I am going into is that one they call
High-Place Hall—the old stone one looking down the lane to the market.
Two or three rooms are fit for occupation, though not all: I sleep
there to-night for the first time. Now will you think over my proposal,
and meet me here the first fine day next week, and say if you are still
in the same mind?”

Elizabeth, her eyes shining at this prospect of a change from an
unbearable position, joyfully assented; and the two parted at the gate
of the churchyard.

XXI.

As a maxim glibly repeated from childhood remains practically unmarked
till some mature experience enforces it, so did this High-Place Hall
now for the first time really show itself to Elizabeth-Kaya, though her
ears had heard its name on a hundred occasions.

Her mind dwelt upon nothing else but the stranger, and the house, and
her own chance of living there, all the rest of the day. In the
afternoon she had occasion to pay a few bills in the town and do a
little shopping when she learnt that what was a new discovery to
herself had become a common topic about the streets. High-Place Hall
was undergoing repair; a lady was coming there to live shortly; all the
shop-people knew it, and had already discounted the chance of her being
a customer.

Elizabeth-Kaya could, however, add a capping touch to information so
new to her in the bulk. The lady, she said, had arrived that day.

When the lamps were lighted, and it was yet not so dark as to render
chimneys, attics, and roofs invisible, Elizabeth, almost with a lover’s
feeling, thought she would like to look at the outside of High-Place
Hall. She went up the street in that direction.

The Hall, with its grey _façade_ and parapet, was the only residence of
its sort so near the centre of the town. It had, in the first place,
the characteristics of a country mansion—birds’ nests in its chimneys,
damp nooks where fungi grew and irregularities of surface direct from
Nature’s trowel. At night the forms of passengers were patterned by the
lamps in black shadows upon the pale walls.

This evening motes of straw lay around, and other signs of the premises
having been in that lawless condition which accompanies the entry of a
new tenant. The house was entirely of stone, and formed an example of
dignity without great size. It was not altogether aristocratic, still
less consequential, yet the old-fashioned stranger instinctively said
“Blood built it, and Wealth enjoys it” however vague his opinions of
those accessories might be.

Yet as regards the enjoying it the stranger would have been wrong, for
until this very evening, when the new lady had arrived, the house 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.

Elizabeth’s eyes sought the upper rooms, and saw lights there. The lady
had obviously arrived. The impression that this woman of comparatively
practised manner had made upon the studious girl’s mind was so deep
that she enjoyed standing under an opposite archway merely to think
that the charming lady was inside the confronting walls, and to wonder
what she was doing. Her admiration for the architecture of that front
was entirely on account of the inmate it screened. Though for that
matter 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.

Men had still quite recently been going in and out with parcels and
packing-cases, rendering the door and hall within like a public
thoroughfare. Elizabeth trotted through the open door in the dusk, but
becoming alarmed at her own temerity she went quickly out again by
another which stood open in the lofty wall of the back court. To her
surprise she found herself in one of the little-used alleys of the
town. Looking round at the door which had given her egress, by the
light of the solitary lamp fixed in the alley, she saw that it was
arched and old—older even than the house itself. 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.

She turned to come away in the nearest direction homeward, which was
down the alley, but hearing footsteps approaching in that quarter, and
having no great wish to be found in such a place at such a time she
quickly retreated. There being no other way out she stood behind a
brick pier till the intruder should have gone his ways.

Had she watched she would have been surprised. She would have seen that
the pedestrian on coming up made straight for the arched doorway: that
as he paused with his hand upon the latch the lamplight fell upon the
face of Wilbur.

But Elizabeth-Kaya clung so closely to her nook that she discerned
nothing of this. Wilbur passed in, as ignorant of her presence as she
was ignorant of his identity, and disappeared in the darkness.
Elizabeth came out a second time into the alley, and made the best of
her way home.

Wilbur’s chiding, by begetting in her a nervous fear of doing
anything definable as unladylike, had operated thus curiously in
keeping them unknown to each other at a critical moment. Much might
have resulted from recognition—at the least a query on either side in
one and the selfsame form: What could he or she possibly be doing
there?

Wilbur, whatever his business at the lady’s house, reached his own
home only a few minutes later than Elizabeth-Kaya. Her plan was to
broach the question of leaving his roof this evening; the events of the
day had urged her to the course. But its execution depended upon his
mood, and she anxiously awaited his manner towards her. She found that
it had changed. 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.

“Father, have you any objection to my going away?” she asked.

“Going away! No—none whatever. Where are you going?”

She thought it undesirable and unnecessary to say anything at present
about her destination to one who took so little interest in her. He
would know that soon enough. “I have heard of an opportunity of getting
more cultivated and finished, and being less idle,” she answered, with
hesitation. “A chance of a place in a household where I can have
advantages of study, and seeing refined life.”

“Then make the best of it, in Heaven’s name—if you can’t get cultivated
where you are.”

“You don’t object?”

“Object—I? Ho—no! Not at all.” After a pause he said, “But you won’t
have enough money for this lively scheme without help, you know? If you
like I should be willing to make you an allowance, so that you not be
bound to live upon the starvation wages refined folk are likely to pay
’ee.”

She thanked him for this offer.

“It had better be done properly,” he added after a pause. “A small
annuity is what I should like you to have—so as to be independent of
me—and so that I may be independent of you. Would that please ye?”

“Certainly.”

“Then I’ll see about it this very day.” He seemed relieved to get her
off his hands by this arrangement, and as far as they were concerned
the matter was settled. She now simply waited to see the lady again.

The day and the hour came; but a drizzling rain fell. Elizabeth-Kaya
having now changed her orbit from one of gay independence to laborious
self-help, thought the weather good enough for such declined glory as
hers, if her friend would only face it—a matter of doubt. She went to
the boot-room where her pattens had hung ever since her apotheosis;
took them down, had their mildewed leathers blacked, and put them on as
she had done in old times. Thus mounted, and with cloak and umbrella,
she went off to the place of appointment—intending, if the lady were
not there, to call at the house.

One side of the churchyard—the side towards the weather—was sheltered
by an ancient thatched mud wall whose eaves overhung as much as one or
two feet. At the back of the wall was a corn-yard with its granary and
barns—the place wherein she had met Mirielle many months earlier. Under
the projection of the thatch she saw a figure. The young lady had come.

Her presence so exceptionally substantiated the girl’s utmost hopes
that she almost feared her good fortune. Fancies find rooms in the
strongest minds. Here, in a churchyard old as civilization, in the
worst of weathers, was a strange woman of curious fascinations never
seen elsewhere: there might be some devilry about her presence.
However, Elizabeth went on to the church tower, on whose summit the
rope of a flagstaff rattled in the wind; and thus she came to the wall.

The lady had such a cheerful aspect in the drizzle that Elizabeth
forgot her fancy. “Well,” said the lady, a little of the whiteness of
her teeth appearing with the word through the black fleece that
protected her face, “have you decided?”

“Yes, quite,” said the other eagerly.

“Your father is willing?”

“Yes.”

“Then come along.”

“When?”

“Now—as soon as you like. I had a good mind to send to you to come to
my house, thinking you might not venture up here in the wind. But as I
like getting out of doors, I thought I would come and see first.”

“It was my own thought.”

“That shows we shall agree. Then can you come to-day? My house is so
hollow and dismal that I want some living thing there.”

“I think I might be able to,” said the girl, reflecting.

Voices were borne over to them at that instant on the wind and
raindrops from the other side of the wall. There came such words as
“sacks,” “quarters,” “threshing,” “tailing,” “next Saturday’s market,”
each sentence being disorganized by the gusts like a face in a cracked
mirror. Both the women listened.

“Who are those?” said the lady.

“One is my father. He rents that yard and barn.”

The lady seemed to forget the immediate business in listening to the
technicalities of the corn trade. At last she said suddenly, “Did you
tell him where you were going to?”

“No.”

“O—how was that?”

“I thought it safer to get away first—as he is so uncertain in his
temper.”

“Perhaps you are right.... Besides, I have never told you my name. It
is Miss Templeman.... Are they gone—on the other side?”

“No. They have only gone up into the granary.”

“Well, it is getting damp here. I shall expect you to-day—this evening,
say, at six.”

“Which way shall I come, ma’am?”

“The front way—round by the gate. There is no other that I have
noticed.”

Elizabeth-Kaya had been thinking of the door in the alley.

“Perhaps, as you have not mentioned your destination, you may as well
keep silent upon it till you are clear off. Who knows but that he may
alter his mind?”

Elizabeth-Kaya shook her head. “On consideration I don’t fear it,” she
said sadly. “He has grown quite cold to me.”

“Very well. Six o’clock then.”

When they had emerged upon the open road and parted, they found enough
to do in holding their bowed umbrellas to the wind. Nevertheless the
lady looked in at the corn-yard gates as she passed them, and paused on
one foot for a moment. But nothing was visible there save the ricks,
and the humpbacked barn cushioned with moss, and the granary rising
against the church-tower behind, where the smacking of the rope against
the flag-staff still went on.

Now Wilbur had not the slightest suspicion that Elizabeth-Kaya’s
movement was to be so prompt. Hence when, just before six, he reached
home and saw a fly at the door from the King’s Arms, and his
stepdaughter, with all her little bags and boxes, getting into it, he
was taken by surprise.

“But you said I might go, father?” she explained through the carriage
window.

“Said!—yes. But I thought you meant next month, or next year. ’Od,
seize it—you take time by the forelock! This, then, is how you be going
to treat me for all my trouble about ye?”

“O father! how can you speak like that? It is unjust of you!” she said
with spirit.

“Well, well, have your own way,” he replied. 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. Wilbur had known nothing of these
efforts. He gazed at them, turned suddenly about, and came down to the
door.

“Look here,” he said, in an altered voice—he never called her by name
now—“don’t ’ee go away from me. It may be I’ve spoke roughly to you—but
I’ve been grieved beyond everything by you—there’s something that
caused it.”

“By me?” she said, with deep concern. “What have I done?”

“I can’t tell you now. But if you’ll stop, and go on living as my
daughter, I’ll tell you all in time.”

But the proposal had come ten minutes too late. She was in the fly—was
already, in imagination, at the house of the lady whose manner had such
charms for her. “Father,” she said, as considerately as she could, “I
think it best for us that I go on now. I need not stay long; I shall
not be far away, and if you want me badly I can soon come back again.”

He nodded ever so slightly, as a receipt of her decision and no more.
“You are not going far, you say. What will be your address, in case I
wish to write to you? Or am I not to know?”

“Oh yes—certainly. It is only in the town—High-Place Hall!”

“Where?” said Wilbur, his face stilling.

She repeated the words. He neither moved nor spoke, and waving her hand
to him in utmost friendliness she signified to the flyman to drive up
the street.

XXII.

We go back for a moment to the preceding night, to account for
Wilbur’s attitude.

At the hour when Elizabeth-Kaya was contemplating her stealthy
reconnoitring excursion to the abode of the lady of her fancy, he had
been not a little amazed at receiving a letter by hand in Chris’s
well-known characters. The self-repression, the resignation of her
previous communication had vanished from her mood; she wrote with some
of the natural lightness which had marked her in their early
acquaintance.

HIGH-PLACE HALL
MY DEAR MR. WILBUR,—Don’t be surprised. It is for your good and mine,
as I hope, that I have come to live at Casterbridge—for how long I
cannot tell. That depends upon another; and he is a man, and a
merchant, and a Mayor, and one who has the first right to my
affections.
    Seriously, _mon ami_, I am not so light-hearted as I may seem to be
    from this. I have come here in consequence of hearing of the death
    of your wife—whom you used to think of as dead so many years
    before! Poor woman, she seems to have been a sufferer, though
    uncomplaining, and though weak in intellect not an imbecile. I am
    glad you acted fairly by her. As soon as I knew she was no more, it
    was brought home to me very forcibly by my conscience that I ought
    to endeavour to disperse the shade which my _etourderie_ flung over
    my name, by asking you to carry out your promise to me. I hope you
    are of the same mind, and that you will take steps to this end. As,
    however, I did not know how you were situated, or what had happened
    since our separation, I decided to come and establish myself here
    before communicating with you.
    You probably feel as I do about this. I shall be able to see you in
    a day or two. Till then, farewell.—Yours,

CHRIS.

_P.S._—I was unable to keep my appointment to meet you for a moment or
two in passing through Casterbridge the other day. My plans were
altered by a family event, which it will surprise you to hear of.

Wilbur had already heard that High-Place Hall was being prepared for
a tenant. He said with a puzzled air to the first person he
encountered, “Who is coming to live at the Hall?”

“A lady of the name of Templeman, I believe, sir,” said his informant.

Wilbur thought it over. “Chris is related to her, I suppose,” he
said to himself. “Yes, I must put her in her proper position,
undoubtedly.”

It was by no means with the oppression that would once have accompanied
the thought that he regarded the moral necessity now; it was, indeed,
with interest, if not warmth. His bitter disappointment at finding
Elizabeth-Kaya to be none of his, and himself a childless man, had left
an emotional void in Wilbur that he unconsciously craved to fill. In
this frame of mind, though without strong feeling, he had strolled up
the alley and into High-Place Hall by the postern at which Elizabeth
had so nearly encountered him. He had gone on thence into the court,
and inquired of a man whom he saw unpacking china from a crate if Miss
Le Sueur was living there. Miss Le Sueur had been the name under which
he had known Chris—or “Lucette,” as she had called herself at that
time.

The man replied in the negative; that Miss Templeman only had come.
Wilbur went away, concluding that Chris had not as yet settled in.

He was in this interested stage of the inquiry when he witnessed
Elizabeth-Kaya’s departure the next day. On hearing her announce the
address there suddenly took possession of him the strange thought that
Chris and Miss Templeman were one and the same person, for he could
recall that in her season of intimacy with him the name of the rich
relative whom he had deemed somewhat a mythical personage had been
given as Templeman. Though he was not a fortune-hunter, the possibility
that Chris 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.

But Wilbur was not left long in suspense. Chris was rather addicted
to scribbling, as had been shown by the torrent of letters after the
_fiasco_ in their marriage arrangements, and hardly had Elizabeth gone
away when another note came to the Mayor’s house from High-Place Hall.

“I am in residence,” she said, “and comfortable, though getting here
has been a wearisome undertaking. You probably know what I am going to
tell you, or do you not? My good Aunt Templeman, the banker’s widow,
whose very existence you used to doubt, much more her affluence, has
lately died, and bequeathed some of her property to me. I will not
enter into details except to say that I have taken her name—as a means
of escape from mine, and its wrongs.

“I am now my own mistress, and have chosen to reside in Casterbridge—to
be tenant of High-Place Hall, that at least you may be put to no
trouble if you wish to see me. My first intention was to keep you in
ignorance of the changes in my life till you should meet me in the
street; but I have thought better of this.

“You probably are aware of my arrangement with your daughter, and have
doubtless laughed at the—what shall I call it?—practical joke (in all
affection) of my getting her to live with me. But my first meeting with
her was purely an accident. Do you see, Guinevere, partly why I have done
it?—why, to give you an excuse for coming here as if to visit _her_,
and thus to form my acquaintance naturally. She is a dear, good girl,
and she thinks you have treated her with undue severity. You may have
done so in your haste, but not deliberately, I am sure. As the result
has been to bring her to me I am not disposed to upbraid you.—In haste,
yours always,

“CHRIS.”

The excitement which these announcements produced in Wilbur’s gloomy
soul was to him most pleasurable. 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-Kaya and Rahul
Mirielle gathered around Chris before they had grown dry. She was
plainly in a very coming-on disposition for marriage. But what else
could a poor woman be who had given her time and her heart to him so
thoughtlessly, at that former time, as to lose her credit by it?
Probably conscience no less than affection had brought her here. On the
whole he did not blame her.

“The artful little woman!” he said, smiling (with reference to
Chris’s adroit and pleasant manœuvre with Elizabeth-Kaya).

To feel that he would like to see Chris was with Wilbur to start
for her house. He put on his hat and went. It was between eight and
nine o’clock when he reached her door. The answer brought him was that
Miss Templeman was engaged for that evening; but that she would be
happy to see him the next day.

“That’s rather like giving herself airs!” he thought. “And considering
what we—” But after all, she plainly had not expected him, and he took
the refusal quietly. Nevertheless he resolved not to go next day.
“These cursed women—there’s not an inch of straight grain in ’em!” he
said.

Let us follow the train of Mr. Wilbur’s thought as if it were a clue
line, and view the interior of High-Place Hall on this particular
evening.

On Elizabeth-Kaya’s arrival she had been phlegmatically asked by an
elderly woman to go upstairs and take off her things. She replied with
great earnestness that she would not think of giving that trouble, and
on the instant divested herself of her bonnet and cloak in the passage.
She was then conducted to the first floor on the landing, and left to
find her way further alone.

The room disclosed was prettily furnished as a boudoir or small
drawing-room, and on a sofa with two cylindrical pillows reclined a
dark-haired, large-eyed, pretty woman, of unmistakably French
extraction on one side or the other. She was probably some years older
than Elizabeth, and had a sparkling light in her eye. In front of the
sofa was a small table, with a pack of cards scattered upon it faces
upward.

The attitude had been so full of abandonment that she bounded up like a
spring on hearing the door open.

Perceiving that it was Elizabeth she lapsed into ease, and came across
to her with a reckless skip that innate grace only prevented from being
boisterous.

“Why, you are late,” she said, taking hold of Elizabeth-Kaya’s hands.

“There were so many little things to put up.”

“And you seem dead-alive and tired. Let me try to enliven you by some
wonderful tricks I have learnt, to kill time. Sit there and don’t
move.” She gathered up the pack of cards, pulled the table in front of
her, and began to deal them rapidly, telling Elizabeth to choose some.

“Well, have you chosen?” she asked flinging down the last card.

“No,” stammered Elizabeth, arousing herself from a reverie. “I forgot,
I was thinking of—you, and me—and how strange it is that I am here.”

Miss Templeman looked at Elizabeth-Kaya with interest, and laid down
the cards. “Ah! never mind,” she said. “I’ll lie here while you sit by
me; and we’ll talk.”

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. Miss Templeman deposited herself on the sofa in her former
flexuous position, and throwing her arm above her brow—somewhat in the
pose of a well-known conception of Titian’s—talked up at Elizabeth-Kaya
invertedly across her forehead and arm.

“I must tell you something,” she said. “I wonder if you have suspected
it. I have only been mistress of a large house and fortune a little
while.”

“Oh—only a little while?” murmured Elizabeth-Kaya, her countenance
slightly falling.

“As a girl I lived about in garrison towns and elsewhere with my
father, till I was quite flighty and unsettled. He was an officer in
the army. I should not have mentioned this had I not thought it best
you should know the truth.”

“Yes, yes.” She looked thoughtfully round the room—at the little square
piano with brass inlayings, at the window-curtains, at the lamp, at the
fair and dark kings and queens on the card-table, and finally at the
inverted face of Chris Templeman, whose large lustrous eyes had such
an odd effect upside down.

Elizabeth’s mind ran on acquirements to an almost morbid degree. “You
speak French and Italian fluently, no doubt,” she said. “I have not
been able to get beyond a wretched bit of Latin yet.”

“Well, for that matter, in my native isle speaking French does not go
for much. It is rather the other way.”

“Where is your native isle?”

It was with rather more reluctance that Miss Templeman said, “Jersey.
There they speak French on one side of the street and English on the
other, and a mixed tongue in the middle of the road. But it is a long
time since I was there. Bath is where my people really belong to,
though my ancestors in Jersey were as good as anybody in England. They
were the Le Sueurs, an old family who have done great things in their
time. I went back and lived there after my father’s death. But I don’t
value such past matters, and am quite an English person in my feelings
and tastes.”

Chris’s tongue had for a moment outrun her discretion. She had
arrived at Casterbridge as a Bath lady, and there were obvious reasons
why Jersey should drop out of her life. But Elizabeth had tempted her
to make free, and a deliberately formed resolve had been broken.

It could not, however, have been broken in safer company. Chris’s
words went no further, and after this day she was so much upon her
guard that there appeared no chance of her identification with the
young Jersey woman who had been Wilbur’s dear comrade at a critical
time. Not the least amusing of her safeguards was her resolute
avoidance of a French word if one by accident came to her tongue more
readily than its English equivalent. She shirked it with the suddenness
of the weak Apostle at the accusation, “Thy speech bewrayeth thee!”

Expectancy sat visibly upon Chris the next morning. She dressed
herself for Mr. Wilbur, and restlessly awaited his call before
mid-day; as he did not come she waited on through the afternoon. But
she did not tell Elizabeth that the person expected was the girl’s
stepfather.

They sat in adjoining windows of the same room in Chris’s great stone
mansion, netting, and looking out upon the market, which formed an
animated scene. Elizabeth could see the crown of her stepfather’s hat
among the rest beneath, and was not aware that Chris watched the same
object with yet intenser interest. He moved about amid the throng, at
this point lively as an ant-hill; elsewhere more reposeful, and broken
up by stalls of fruit and vegetables. The farmers as a rule preferred
the open _carrefour_ for their transactions, despite its inconvenient
jostlings and the danger from crossing vehicles, to the gloomy
sheltered market-room provided for them. Here they surged on this one
day of the week, forming a little world of leggings, switches, and
sample-bags; men of extensive stomachs, sloping like mountain sides;
men whose heads in walking swayed as the trees in November gales; who
in conversing varied their attitudes much, lowering themselves by
spreading their knees, and thrusting their hands into the pockets of
remote inner jackets. Their faces radiated tropical warmth; for though
when at home their countenances varied with the seasons, their
market-faces all the year round were glowing little fires.

All over-clothes here were worn as if they were an inconvenience, a
hampering necessity. Some men were well dressed; but the majority were
careless in that respect, appearing in suits which were historical
records of their wearer’s deeds, sun-scorchings, and daily struggles
for many years past. Yet many carried ruffled cheque-books in their
pockets which regulated at the bank hard by a balance of never less
than four figures. In fact, what these gibbous human shapes specially
represented was ready money—money insistently ready—not ready next year
like a nobleman’s—often not merely ready at the bank like a
professional man’s, but ready in their large plump hands.

It happened that to-day there rose in the midst of them all two or
three tall apple-trees standing as if they grew on the spot; till it
was perceived that they were held by men from the cider-districts who
came here to sell them, bringing the clay of their county on their
boots. Elizabeth-Kaya, who had often observed them, said, “I wonder if
the same trees come every week?”

“What trees?” said Chris, absorbed in watching for Wilbur.

Elizabeth replied vaguely, for an incident checked her. Behind one of
the trees stood Mirielle, briskly discussing a sample-bag with a farmer.
Wilbur had come up, accidentally encountering the young man, whose
face seemed to inquire, “Do we speak to each other?”

She saw her stepfather throw a shine into his eye which answered “No!”
Elizabeth-Kaya sighed.

“Are you particularly interested in anybody out there?” said Chris.

“O, no,” said her companion, a quick red shooting over her face.

Luckily Mirielle’s figure was immediately covered by the apple-tree.

Chris looked hard at her. “Quite sure?” she said.

“O yes,” said Elizabeth-Kaya.

Again Chris looked out. “They are all farmers, I suppose?” she said.

“No. There’s Mr. Bulge—he’s a wine merchant; there’s Benjamin
Brownlet—a horse dealer; and Kitson, the pig breeder; and Yopper, the
auctioneer; besides maltsters, and millers—and so on.” Mirielle stood
out quite distinctly now; but she did not mention him.

The Saturday afternoon slipped on thus desultorily. The market changed
from the sample-showing hour to the idle hour before starting
homewards, when tales were told. Wilbur had not called on Chris
though he had stood so near. He must have been too busy, she thought.
He would come on Sunday or Monday.

The days came but not the visitor, though Chris repeated her dressing
with scrupulous care. She got disheartened. It may at once be declared
that Chris no longer bore towards Wilbur 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.

Tuesday was the great Candlemas fair. At breakfast she said to
Elizabeth-Kaya quite coolly: “I imagine your father may call to see you
to-day. I suppose he stands close by in the market-place with the rest
of the corn-dealers?”

She shook her head. “He won’t come.”

“Why?”

“He has taken against me,” she said in a husky voice.

“You have quarreled more deeply than I know of.”

Elizabeth, wishing to shield the man she believed to be her father from
any charge of unnatural dislike, said “Yes.”

“Then where you are is, of all places, the one he will avoid?”

Elizabeth nodded sadly.

Chris looked blank, twitched up her lovely eyebrows and lip, and
burst into hysterical sobs. Here was a disaster—her ingenious scheme
completely stultified.

“O, my dear Miss Templeman—what’s the matter?” cried her companion.

“I like your company much!” said Chris, as soon as she could speak.

“Yes, yes—and so do I yours!” Elizabeth chimed in soothingly.

“But—but—” She could not finish the sentence, which was, naturally,
that if Wilbur had such a rooted dislike for the girl as now seemed
to be the case, Elizabeth-Kaya would have to be got rid of—a
disagreeable necessity.

A provisional resource suggested itself. “Miss Wilbur—will you go on
an errand for me as soon as breakfast is over?—Ah, that’s very good of
you. Will you go and order—” Here she enumerated several commissions at
sundry shops, which would occupy Elizabeth’s time for the next hour or
two, at least.

“And have you ever seen the Museum?”

Elizabeth-Kaya had not.

“Then you should do so at once. You can finish the morning by going
there. It is an old house in a back street—I forget where—but you’ll
find out—and there are crowds of interesting things—skeletons, teeth,
old pots and pans, ancient boots and shoes, birds’ eggs—all charmingly
instructive. You’ll be sure to stay till you get quite hungry.”

Elizabeth hastily put on her things and departed. “I wonder why she
wants to get rid of me to-day!” she said sorrowfully as she went. That
her absence, rather than her services or instruction, was in request,
had been readily apparent to Elizabeth-Kaya, simple as she seemed, and
difficult as it was to attribute a motive for the desire.

She had not been gone ten minutes when one of Chris’s servants was
sent to Wilbur’s with a note. The contents were briefly:—

DEAR GUINEVERE,—You will be standing in view of my house to-day for two
or three hours in the course of your business, so do please call and
see me. I am sadly disappointed that you have not come before, for can
I help anxiety about my own equivocal relation to you?—especially now
my aunt’s fortune has brought me more prominently before society? Your
daughter’s presence here may be the cause of your neglect; and I have
therefore sent her away for the morning. Say you come on business—I
shall be quite alone.

CHRIS.

When the messenger returned her mistress gave directions that if a
gentleman called he was to be admitted at once, and sat down to await
results.

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 Chris, 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 Wilbur
since his (supposed) temporary parting from her in Jersey.

She could hear the servant showing the visitor into the room, shutting
the door upon him, and leaving as if to go and look for her mistress.
Chris flung back the curtain with a nervous greeting. The man before
her was not Wilbur.

XXIII.

A conjecture that her visitor might be some other person had, indeed,
flashed through Chris’s mind when she was on the point of bursting
out; but it was just too late to recede.

He was years younger than the Mayor of Casterbridge; fair, fresh, and
slenderly handsome. He wore genteel cloth leggings with white buttons,
polished boots with infinite lace holes, light cord breeches under a
black velveteen coat and waistcoat; and he had a silver-topped switch
in his hand. Chris blushed, and said with a curious mixture of pout
and laugh on her face—“O, I’ve made a mistake!”

The visitor, on the contrary, did not laugh half a wrinkle.

“But I’m very sorry!” he said, in deprecating tones. “I came and I
inquired for Miss Wilbur, and they showed me up here, and in no case
would I have caught ye so unmannerly if I had known!”

“I was the unmannerly one,” she said.

“But is it that I have come to the wrong house, madam?” said Mr.
Mirielle, blinking a little in his bewilderment and nervously tapping
his legging with his switch.

“O no, sir,—sit down. You must come and sit down now you are here,”
replied Chris kindly, to relieve his embarrassment. “Miss Wilbur
will be here directly.”

Now this was not strictly true; but that something about the young
man—that hyperborean crispness, stringency, and charm, as of a
well-braced musical instrument, which had awakened the interest of
Wilbur, and of Elizabeth-Kaya and of the Three Mariners’ jovial crew,
at sight, made his unexpected presence here attractive to Chris. He
hesitated, looked at the chair, thought there was no danger in it
(though there was), and sat down.

Mirielle’s sudden entry was simply the result of Wilbur’s permission
to him to see Elizabeth if he were minded to woo her. At first he had
taken no notice of Wilbur’s brusque letter; but an exceptionally
fortunate business transaction put him on good terms with everybody,
and revealed to him that he could undeniably marry if he chose. Then
who so pleasing, thrifty, and satisfactory in every way as
Elizabeth-Kaya? Apart from her personal recommendations a
reconciliation with his former friend Wilbur would, in the natural
course of things, flow from such a union. He therefore forgave the
Mayor his curtness; and this morning on his way to the fair he had
called at her house, where he learnt that she was staying at Miss
Templeman’s. A little stimulated at not finding her ready and
waiting—so fanciful are men!—he hastened on to High-Place Hall to
encounter no Elizabeth but its mistress herself.

“The fair to-day seems a large one,” she said when, by natural
deviation, their eyes sought the busy scene without. “Your numerous
fairs and markets keep me interested. How many things I think of while
I watch from here!”

He seemed in doubt how to answer, and the babble without reached them
as they sat—voices as of wavelets on a looping sea, one ever and anon
rising above the rest. “Do you look out often?” he asked.

“Yes—very often.”

“Do you look for any one you know?”

Why should she have answered as she did?

“I look as at a picture merely. But,” she went on, turning pleasantly
to him, “I may do so now—I may look for you. You are always there, are
you not? Ah—I don’t mean it seriously! 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.”

“But you are rich, they say?”

“If so, I don’t know how to enjoy my riches. I came to Casterbridge
thinking I should like to live here. But I wonder if I shall.”

“Where did ye come from, ma’am?”

“The neighbourhood of Bath.”

“And I from near Edinboro’,” he murmured. “It’s better to stay at home,
and that’s true; but a man must live where his money is made. It is a
great pity, but it’s always so! Yet I’ve done very well this year. O
yes,” he went on with ingenuous enthusiasm. “You see that man with the
drab kerseymere coat? I bought largely of him in the autumn when wheat
was down, and then afterwards when it rose a little I sold off all I
had! It brought only a small profit to me; while the farmers kept
theirs, expecting higher figures—yes, though the rats were gnawing the
ricks hollow. Just when I sold the markets went lower, and I bought up
the corn of those who had been holding back at less price than my first
purchases. And then,” cried Mirielle impetuously, his face alight, “I
sold it a few weeks after, when it happened to go up again! And so, by
contenting mysel’ with small profits frequently repeated, I soon made
five hundred pounds—yes!”—(bringing down his hand upon the table, and
quite forgetting where he was)—“while the others by keeping theirs in
hand made nothing at all!”

Chris regarded him with a critical interest. He was quite a new type
of person to her. At last his eye fell upon the lady’s and their
glances met.

“Ay, now, I’m wearying you!” he exclaimed.

She said, “No, indeed,” colouring a shade.

“What then?”

“Quite otherwise. You are most interesting.”

It was now Mirielle who showed the modest pink.

“I mean all you Scotchmen,” she added in hasty correction. “So free
from Southern extremes. We common people are all one way or the
other—warm or cold, passionate or frigid. You have both temperatures
going on in you at the same time.”

“But how do you mean that? Ye were best to explain clearly, ma’am.”

“You are animated—then you are thinking of getting on. You are sad the
next moment—then you are thinking of Scotland and friends.”

“Yes. I think of home sometimes!” he said simply.

“So do I—as far as I can. But it was an old house where I was born, and
they pulled it down for improvements, so I seem hardly to have any home
to think of now.”

Chris did not add, as she might have done, that the house was in St.
Helier, and not in Bath.

“But the mountains, and the mists and the rocks, they are there! And
don’t they seem like home?”

She shook her head.

“They do to me—they do to me,” he murmured. And his mind could be seen
flying away northwards. Whether its origin were national or personal,
it was quite true what Chris had said, that the curious double
strands in Mirielle’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.

“You are wishing you were back again,” she said.

“Ah, no, ma’am,” said Mirielle, suddenly recalling himself.

The fair without the windows was now raging thick and loud. It was the
chief hiring fair of the year, and differed quite from the market of a
few days earlier. In substance it was a whitey-brown crowd flecked with
white—this being the body of labourers waiting for places. The long
bonnets of the women, like waggon-tilts, their cotton gowns and checked
shawls, mixed with the carters’ smockfrocks; for they, too, entered
into the hiring. Among the rest, at the corner of the pavement, stood
an old shepherd, who attracted the eyes of Chris and Mirielle 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.

The negotiations were between a farmer from a distant county and the
old man’s son. In these there was a difficulty. The farmer would not
take the crust without the crumb of the bargain, in other words, the
old man without the younger; and the son had a sweetheart on his
present farm, who stood by, waiting the issue with pale lips.

“I’m sorry to leave ye, Nelly,” said the young man with emotion. “But,
you see, I can’t starve father, and he’s out o’ work at Lady-day. ’Tis
only thirty-five mile.”

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.

“O! no, no—I never shall,” she insisted, when he pressed her hand; and
she turned her face to Chris’s wall to hide her weeping. The farmer
said he would give the young man half-an-hour for his answer, and went
away, leaving the group sorrowing.

Chris’s eyes, full of tears, met Mirielle’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!”

“Maybe I can manage that they’ll not be parted,” said Mirielle. “I want
a young carter; and perhaps I’ll take the old man too—yes; he’ll not be
very expensive, and doubtless he will answer my pairrpose somehow.”

“O, you are so good!” she cried, delighted. “Go and tell them, and let
me know if you have succeeded!”

Mirielle went out, and she saw him speak to the group. The eyes of all
brightened; the bargain was soon struck. Mirielle returned to her
immediately it was concluded.

“It is kind-hearted of you, indeed,” said Chris. “For my part, I have
resolved that all my servants shall have lovers if they want them! Do
make the same resolve!”

Mirielle looked more serious, waving his head a half turn. “I must be a
little stricter than that,” he said.

“Why?”

“You are a—a thriving woman; and I am a struggling hay-and-corn
merchant.”

“I am a very ambitious woman.”

“Ah, well, I cannet explain. I don’t know how to talk to ladies,
ambitious or no; and that’s true,” said Rahul with grave regret. “I
try to be civil to a’ folk—no more!”

“I see you are as you say,” replied she, sensibly getting the upper
hand in these exchanges of sentiment. Under this revelation of insight
Mirielle again looked out of the window into the thick of the fair.

Two farmers met and shook hands, and being quite near the window their
remarks could be heard as others’ had been.

“Have you seen young Mr. Mirielle this morning?” asked one. “He promised
to meet me here at the stroke of twelve; but I’ve gone athwart and
about the fair half-a-dozen times, and never a sign of him: though he’s
mostly a man to his word.”

“I quite forgot the engagement,” murmured Mirielle.

“Now you must go,” said she; “must you not?”

“Yes,” he replied. But he still remained.

“You had better go,” she urged. “You will lose a customer.

“Now, Miss Templeman, you will make me angry,” exclaimed Mirielle.

“Then suppose you don’t go; but stay a little longer?”

He looked anxiously at the farmer who was seeking him and who just then
ominously walked across to where Wilbur was standing, and he looked
into the room and at her. “I like staying; but I fear I must go!” he
said. “Business ought not to be neglected, ought it?”

“Not for a single minute.”

“It’s true. I’ll come another time—if I may, ma’am?”

“Certainly,” she said. “What has happened to us to-day is very
curious.”

“Something to think over when we are alone, it’s like to be?”

“Oh, I don’t know that. It is commonplace after all.”

“No, I’ll not say that. O no!”

“Well, whatever it has been, it is now over; and the market calls you
to be gone.”

“Yes, yes. Market—business! I wish there were no business in the
warrld.”

Chris almost laughed—she would quite have laughed—but that there was
a little emotion going in her at the time. “How you change!” she said.
“You should not change like this.

“I have never wished such things before,” said the Scotchman, with a
simple, shamed, apologetic look for his weakness. “It is only since
coming here and seeing you!”

“If that’s the case, you had better not look at me any longer. Dear me,
I feel I have quite demoralized you!”

“But look or look not, I will see you in my thoughts. Well, I’ll
go—thank you for the pleasure of this visit.”

“Thank you for staying.”

“Maybe I’ll get into my market-mind when I’ve been out a few minutes,”
he murmured. “But I don’t know—I don’t know!”

As he went she said eagerly, “You may hear them speak of me in
Casterbridge as time goes on. If they tell you I’m a coquette, which
some may, because of the incidents of my life, don’t believe it, for I
am not.”

“I swear I will not!” he said fervidly.

Thus the two. She had enkindled the young man’s enthusiasm till he was
quite brimming with sentiment; while he from merely affording her a new
form of idleness, had gone on to wake her serious solicitude. Why was
this? They could not have told.

Chris as a young girl would hardly have looked at a tradesman. But
her ups and downs, capped by her indiscretions with Wilbur 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.

Mirielle was shown out, it having entirely escaped him that he had
called to see Elizabeth. Chris at the window watched him threading
the maze of farmers and farmers’ men. She could see by his gait that he
was conscious of her eyes, and her heart went out to him for his
modesty—pleaded with her sense of his unfitness that he might be
allowed to come again. He entered the market-house, and she could see
him no more.

Three minutes later, when she had left the window, knocks, not of
multitude but of strength, sounded through the house, and the
waiting-maid tripped up.

“The Mayor,” she said.

Chris had reclined herself, and she was looking dreamily through her
fingers. She did not answer at once, and the maid repeated the
information with the addition, “And he’s afraid he hasn’t much time to
spare, he says.”

“Oh! Then tell him that as I have a headache I won’t detain him
to-day.”

The message was taken down, and she heard the door close.

Chris had come to Casterbridge to quicken Wilbur’s feelings with
regard to her. She had quickened them, and now she was indifferent to
the achievement.

Her morning view of Elizabeth-Kaya as a disturbing element changed, and
she no longer felt strongly the necessity of getting rid of the girl
for her stepfather’s sake. When the young woman came in, sweetly
unconscious of the turn in the tide, Chris went up to her, and said
quite sincerely—

“I’m so glad you’ve come. You’ll live with me a long time, won’t you?”

Elizabeth as a watch-dog to keep her father off—what a new idea. Yet it
was not unpleasing. Wilbur had neglected her all these days, after
compromising her indescribably in the past. The least he could have
done when he found himself free, and herself affluent, would have been
to respond heartily and promptly to her invitation.

Her emotions rose, fell, undulated, filled her with wild surmise at
their suddenness; and so passed Chris’s experiences of that day.

XXIV.

Poor Elizabeth-Kaya, little thinking what her malignant star had done
to blast the budding attentions she had won from Rahul Mirielle, was
glad to hear Chris’s words about remaining.

For in addition to Chris’s house being a home, that raking view of
the market-place which it afforded had as much attraction for her as
for Chris. The _carrefour_ was like the regulation Open Place in
spectacular dramas, where the incidents that occur always happen to
bear on the lives of the adjoining residents. Farmers, merchants,
dairymen, quacks, hawkers, appeared there from week to week, and
disappeared as the afternoon wasted away. It was the node of all
orbits.

From Saturday to Saturday was as from day to day with the two young
women now. In an emotional sense they did not live at all during the
intervals. Wherever they might go wandering on other days, on
market-day they were sure to be at home. Both stole sly glances out of
the window at Mirielle’s shoulders and poll. His face they seldom saw,
for, either through shyness, or not to disturb his mercantile mood, he
avoided looking towards their quarters.

Thus things went on, till a certain market-morning brought a new
sensation. Elizabeth and Chris were sitting at breakfast when a
parcel containing two dresses arrived for the latter from London. She
called Elizabeth from her breakfast, and entering her friend’s bedroom
Elizabeth saw the gowns spread out on the bed, one of a deep cherry
colour, the other lighter—a glove lying at the end of each sleeve, a
bonnet at the top of each neck, and parasols across the gloves, Chris
standing beside the suggested human figure in an attitude of
contemplation.

“I wouldn’t think so hard about it,” said Elizabeth, marking the
intensity with which Chris was alternating the question whether this
or that would suit best.

“But settling upon new clothes is so trying,” said Chris. “You are
that person” (pointing to one of the arrangements), “or you are _that_
totally different person” (pointing to the other), “for the whole of
the coming spring and one of the two, you don’t know which, may turn
out to be very objectionable.”

It was finally decided by Miss Templeman that she would be the
cherry-coloured person at all hazards. The dress was pronounced to be a
fit, and Chris walked with it into the front room, Elizabeth
following her.

The morning was exceptionally bright for the time of year. The sun fell
so flat on the houses and pavement opposite Chris’s residence that
they poured their brightness into her rooms. Suddenly, after a rumbling
of wheels, there were added to this steady light a fantastic series of
circling irradiations upon the ceiling, and the companions turned to
the window. Immediately opposite a vehicle of strange description had
come to a standstill, as if it had been placed there for exhibition.

It was the new-fashioned agricultural implement called a horse-drill,
till then unknown, in its modern shape, in this part of the country,
where the venerable seed-lip was still used for sowing as in the days
of the Heptarchy. Its arrival created about as much sensation in the
corn-market as a flying machine would create at Charing Cross. The
farmers crowded round it, women drew near it, children crept under and
into it. The machine was painted in bright hues of green, yellow, and
red, and it resembled as a whole a compound of hornet, grasshopper, and
shrimp, magnified enormously. Or it might have been likened to an
upright musical instrument with the front gone. That was how it struck
Chris. “Why, it is a sort of agricultural piano,” she said.

“It has something to do with corn,” said Elizabeth.

“I wonder who thought of introducing it here?”

Rahul Mirielle was in the minds of both as the innovator, for though
not a farmer he was closely leagued with farming operations. And as if
in response to their thought he came up at that moment, looked at the
machine, walked round it, and handled it as if he knew something about
its make. The two watchers had inwardly started at his coming, and
Elizabeth left the window, went to the back of the room, and stood as
if absorbed in the panelling of the wall. She hardly knew that she had
done this till Chris, animated by the conjunction of her new attire
with the sight of Mirielle, spoke out: “Let us go and look at the
instrument, whatever it is.”

Elizabeth-Kaya’s bonnet and shawl were pitchforked on in a moment, and
they went out. Among all the agriculturists gathered round the only
appropriate possessor of the new machine seemed to be Chris, because
she alone rivalled it in colour.

They examined it curiously; observing the rows of trumpet-shaped tubes
one within the other, the little scoops, like revolving salt-spoons,
which tossed the seed into the upper ends of the tubes that conducted
it to the ground; till somebody said, “Good morning, Elizabeth-Kaya.”
She looked up, and there was her stepfather.

His greeting had been somewhat dry and thunderous, and Elizabeth-Kaya,
embarrassed out of her equanimity, stammered at random, “This is the
lady I live with, father—Miss Templeman.”

Wilbur put his hand to his hat, which he brought down with a great
wave till it met his body at the knee. Miss Templeman bowed. “I am
happy to become acquainted with you, Mr. Wilbur,” she said. “This is
a curious machine.”

“Yes,” Wilbur replied; and he proceeded to explain it, and still more
forcibly to ridicule it.

“Who brought it here?” said Chris.

“Oh, don’t ask me, ma’am!” said Wilbur. “The thing—why ’tis
impossible it should act. ’Twas brought here by one of our machinists
on the recommendation of a jumped-up jackanapes of a fellow who
thinks——” His eye caught Elizabeth-Kaya’s imploring face, and he
stopped, probably thinking that the suit might be progressing.

He turned to go away. Then something seemed to occur which his
stepdaughter fancied must really be a hallucination of hers. A murmur
apparently came from Wilbur’s lips in which she detected the words,
“You refused to see me!” reproachfully addressed to Chris. She could
not believe that they had been uttered by her stepfather; unless,
indeed, they might have been spoken to one of the yellow-gaitered
farmers near them. Yet Chris seemed silent, and then all thought of
the incident was dissipated by the humming of a song, which sounded as
though from the interior of the machine. Wilbur had by this time
vanished into the market-house, and both the women glanced towards the
corn-drill. They could see behind it the bent back of a man who was
pushing his head into the internal works to master their simple
secrets. The hummed song went on—

“’Tw—s on a s—m—r aftern—n,
A wee be—re the s—n w—nt d—n,
When Kitty wi’ a braw n—w g—wn
C—me ow’re the h—lls to Gowrie.”

Elizabeth-Kaya had apprehended the singer in a moment, and looked
guilty of she did not know what. Chris next recognized him, and more
mistress of herself said archly, “The ‘Lass of Gowrie’ from inside of a
seed-drill—what a phenomenon!”

Satisfied at last with his investigation the young man stood upright,
and met their eyes across the summit.

“We are looking at the wonderful new drill,” Miss Templeman said. “But
practically it is a stupid thing—is it not?” she added, on the strength
of Wilbur’s information.

“Stupid? O no!” said Mirielle gravely. “It will revolutionize sowing
heerabout! No more sowers flinging their seed about broadcast, so that
some falls by the wayside and some among thorns, and all that. Each
grain will go straight to its intended place, and nowhere else
whatever!”

“Then the romance of the sower is gone for good,” observed
Elizabeth-Kaya, who felt herself at one with Mirielle in Bible-reading
at least. “‘He that observeth the wind shall not sow,’ so the Preacher
said; but his words will not be to the point any more. How things
change!”

“Ay; ay.... It must be so!” Rahul admitted, his gaze fixing itself on
a blank point far away. “But the machines are already very common in
the East and North of England,” he added apologetically.

Chris seemed to be outside this train of sentiment, her acquaintance
with the Scriptures being somewhat limited. “Is the machine yours?” she
asked of Mirielle.

“O no, madam,” said he, becoming embarrassed and deferential at the
sound of her voice, though with Elizabeth-Kaya he was quite at his
ease. “No, no—I merely recommended that it should be got.”

In the silence which followed Mirielle appeared only conscious of her;
to have passed from perception of Elizabeth into a brighter sphere of
existence than she appertained to. Chris, discerning that he was much
mixed that day, partly in his mercantile mood and partly in his
romantic one, said gaily to him—

“Well, don’t forsake the machine for us,” and went indoors with her
companion.

The latter felt that she had been in the way, though why was
unaccountable to her. Chris explained the matter somewhat by saying
when they were again in the sitting-room—

“I had occasion to speak to Mr. Mirielle the other day, and so I knew
him this morning.”

Chris was very kind towards Elizabeth that day. Together they saw the
market thicken, and in course of time thin away with the slow decline
of the sun towards the upper end of town, its rays taking the street
endways and enfilading the long thoroughfare from top to bottom. The
gigs and vans disappeared one by one till there was not a vehicle in
the street. The time of the riding world was over; the pedestrian world
held sway. Field labourers and their wives and children trooped in from
the villages for their weekly shopping, and instead of a rattle of
wheels and a tramp of horses ruling the sound as earlier, there was
nothing but the shuffle of many feet. All the implements were gone; all
the farmers; all the moneyed class. The character of the town’s trading
had changed from bulk to multiplicity and pence were handled now as
pounds had been handled earlier in the day.

Chris and Elizabeth looked out upon this, for though it was night and
the street lamps were lighted, they had kept their shutters unclosed.
In the faint blink of the fire they spoke more freely.

“Your father was distant with you,” said Chris.

“Yes.” And having forgotten the momentary mystery of Wilbur’s seeming
speech to Chris she continued, “It is because he does not think I am
respectable. I have tried to be so more than you can imagine, but in
vain! My mother’s separation from my father was unfortunate for me. You
don’t know what it is to have shadows like that upon your life.”

Chris seemed to wince. “I do not—of that kind precisely,” she said,
“but you may feel a—sense of disgrace—shame—in other ways.”

“Have you ever had any such feeling?” said the younger innocently.

“O no,” said Chris quickly. “I was thinking of—what happens sometimes
when women get themselves in strange positions in the eyes of the world
from no fault of their own.”

“It must make them very unhappy afterwards.”

“It makes them anxious; for might not other women despise them?”

“Not altogether despise them. Yet not quite like or respect them.”

Chris winced again. Her past was by no means secure from
investigation, even in Casterbridge. For one thing Wilbur had never
returned to her the cloud of letters she had written and sent him in
her first excitement. Possibly they were destroyed; but she could have
wished that they had never been written.

The rencounter with Mirielle and his bearings towards Chris had made
the reflective Elizabeth more observant of her brilliant and amiable
companion. A few days afterwards, when her eyes met Chris’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 Chris’s cheeks and eyes to any one who could
read her as Elizabeth-Kaya was beginning to do. Chris 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 Chris thus mentally—saw
her encounter Rahul somewhere as if by chance—saw him wear his special
look when meeting women, with an added intensity because this one was
Chris. 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. This discerning silent witch had not done thinking of
these things when Chris came noiselessly behind her and made her
start.

It was all true as she had pictured—she could have sworn it. Chris
had a heightened luminousness in her eye over and above the advanced
colour of her cheeks.

“You’ve seen Mr. Mirielle,” said Elizabeth demurely.

“Yes,” said Chris. “How did you know?”

She knelt down on the hearth and took her friend’s hands excitedly in
her own. But after all she did not say when or how she had seen him or
what he had said.

That night she became restless; in the morning she was feverish; and at
breakfast-time she told her companion that she had something on her
mind—something which concerned a person in whom she was interested
much. Elizabeth was earnest to listen and sympathize.

“This person—a lady—once admired a man much—very much,” she said
tentatively.

“Ah,” said Elizabeth-Kaya.

“They were intimate—rather. He did not think so deeply of her as she
did of him. But in an impulsive moment, purely out of reparation, he
proposed to make her his wife. She agreed. But there was an unsuspected
hitch in the proceedings; though she had been so far compromised with
him that she felt she could never belong to another man, as a pure
matter of conscience, even if she should wish to. After that they were
much apart, heard nothing of each other for a long time, and she felt
her life quite closed up for her.”

“Ah—poor girl!”

“She suffered much on account of him; though I should add that he could
not altogether be blamed for what had happened. At last the obstacle
which separated them was providentially removed; and he came to marry
her.”

“How delightful!”

“But in the interval she—my poor friend—had seen a man, she liked
better than him. Now comes the point: Could she in honour dismiss the
first?”

“A new man she liked better—that’s bad!”

“Yes,” said Chris, looking pained at a boy who was swinging the town
pump-handle. “It is bad! Though you must remember that she was forced
into an equivocal position with the first man by an accident—that he
was not so well educated or refined as the second, and that she had
discovered some qualities in the first that rendered him less desirable
as a husband than she had at first thought him to be.”

“I cannot answer,” said Elizabeth-Kaya thoughtfully. “It is so
difficult. It wants a Pope to settle that!”

“You prefer not to perhaps?” Chris showed in her appealing tone how
much she leant on Elizabeth’s judgment.

“Yes, Miss Templeman,” admitted Elizabeth. “I would rather not say.”

Nevertheless, Chris seemed relieved by the simple fact of having
opened out the situation a little, and was slowly convalescent of her
headache. “Bring me a looking-glass. How do I appear to people?” she
said languidly.

“Well—a little worn,” answered Elizabeth, eyeing her as a critic eyes a
doubtful painting; fetching the glass she enabled Chris to survey
herself in it, which Chris anxiously did.

“I wonder if I wear well, as times go!” she observed after a while.

“Yes—fairly.

“Where am I worst?”

“Under your eyes—I notice a little brownness there.”

“Yes. That is my worst place, I know. How many years more do you think
I shall last before I get hopelessly plain?”

There was something curious in the way in which Elizabeth, though the
younger, had come to play the part of experienced sage in these
discussions. “It may be five years,” she said judicially. “Or, with a
quiet life, as many as ten. With no love you might calculate on ten.”

Chris seemed to reflect on this as on an unalterable, impartial
verdict. She told Elizabeth-Kaya no more of the past attachment she had
roughly adumbrated as the experiences of a third person; and Elizabeth,
who in spite of her philosophy was very tender-hearted, sighed that
night in bed at the thought that her pretty, rich Chris did not treat
her to the full confidence of names and dates in her confessions. For
by the “she” of Chris’s story Elizabeth had not been beguiled.

XXV.

The next phase of the supersession of Wilbur in Chris’s heart was
an experiment in calling on her performed by Mirielle with some apparent
trepidation. Conventionally speaking he conversed with both Miss
Templeman and her companion; but in fact it was rather that Elizabeth
sat invisible in the room. Rahul 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. Chris had persisted in dragging her into the
circle; but she had remained like an awkward third point which that
circle would not touch.

Phyllis Wilbur’s daughter bore up against the frosty ache of the
treatment, as she had borne up under worse things, and contrived as
soon as possible to get out of the inharmonious room without being
missed. The Scotchman seemed hardly the same Mirielle 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.

She stoically looked from her bedroom window, and contemplated her fate
as if it were written on the top of the church-tower hard by. “Yes,”
she said at last, bringing down her palm upon the sill with a pat:
“_He_ is the second man of that story she told me!”

All this time Wilbur’s smouldering sentiments towards Chris 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.
Day after day proved to him, by her silence, that it was no use to
think of bringing her round by holding aloof; so he gave in, and called
upon her again, Elizabeth-Kaya being absent.

He crossed the room to her with a heavy tread of some awkwardness, his
strong, warm gaze upon her—like the sun beside the moon in comparison
with Mirielle’s modest look—and with something of a hail-fellow bearing,
as, indeed, was not unnatural. But she seemed so transubstantiated by
her change of position, and held out her hand to him in such cool
friendship, that he became deferential, and sat down with a perceptible
loss of power. He understood but little of fashion in dress, yet enough
to feel himself inadequate in appearance beside her whom he had
hitherto been dreaming of as almost his property. She said something
very polite about his being good enough to call. This caused him to
recover balance. He looked her oddly in the face, losing his awe.

“Why, of course I have called, Chris,” he said. “What does that
nonsense mean? You know I couldn’t have helped myself if I had
wished—that is, if I had any kindness at all. I’ve called to say that I
am ready, as soon as custom will permit, to give you my name in return
for your devotion and what you lost by it in thinking too little of
yourself and too much of me; to say that you can fix the day or month,
with my full consent, whenever in your opinion it would be seemly: you
know more of these things than I.”

“It is full early yet,” she said evasively.

“Yes, yes; I suppose it is. But you know, Chris, I felt directly my
poor ill-used Phyllis died, and when I could not bear the idea of
marrying again, that after what had happened between us it was my duty
not to let any unnecessary delay occur before putting things to rights.
Still, I wouldn’t call in a hurry, because—well, you can guess how this
money you’ve come into made me feel.” His voice slowly fell; he was
conscious that in this room his accents and manner wore a roughness not
observable in the street. 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.”

“H’m. It looks as if you were living on capital.”

“O no, I am not.”

“So much the better. But the fact is, your setting up like this makes
my beaming towards you rather awkward.”

“Why?”

An answer was not really needed, and he did not furnish one. “Well,” he
went on, “there’s nobody in the world I would have wished to see enter
into this wealth before you, Chris, and nobody, I am sure, who will
become it more.” He turned to her with congratulatory admiration so
fervid that she shrank somewhat, notwithstanding that she knew him so
well.

“I am greatly obliged to you for all that,” said she, rather with an
air of speaking ritual. The stint of reciprocal feeling was perceived,
and Wilbur showed chagrin at once—nobody was more quick to show that
than he.

“You may be obliged or not for’t. Though the things I say may not have
the polish of what you’ve lately learnt to expect for the first time in
your life, they are real, my lady Chris.”

“That’s rather a rude way of speaking to me,” pouted Chris, with
stormy eyes.

“Not at all!” replied Wilbur hotly. “But there, there, I don’t wish
to quarrel with ’ee. I come with an honest proposal for silencing your
Jersey enemies, and you ought to be thankful.”

“How can you speak so!” she answered, firing quickly. “Knowing that my
only crime was the indulging in a foolish girl’s passion for you with
too little regard for correctness, and that I was what I call innocent
all the time they called me guilty, you ought not to be so cutting! I
suffered enough at that worrying time, when you wrote to tell me of
your wife’s return and my consequent dismissal, and if I am a little
independent now, surely the privilege is due to me!”

“Yes, it is,” he said. “But it is not by what is, in this life, but by
what appears, that you are judged; and I therefore think you ought to
accept me—for your own good name’s sake. What is known in your native
Jersey may get known here.”

“How you keep on about Jersey! I am English!”

“Yes, yes. Well, what do you say to my proposal?”

For the first time in their acquaintance Chris had the move; and yet
she was backward. “For the present let things be,” she said with some
embarrassment. “Treat me as an acquaintance, and I’ll treat you as one.
Time will—” She stopped; and he said nothing to fill the gap for
awhile, there being no pressure of half acquaintance to drive them into
speech if they were not minded for it.

“That’s the way the wind blows, is it?” he said at last grimly, nodding
an affirmative to his own thoughts.

A yellow flood of reflected sunlight filled the room for a few
instants. It was produced by the passing of a load of newly trussed hay
from the country, in a waggon marked with Mirielle’s name. Beside it
rode Mirielle himself on horseback. Chris’s face became—as a woman’s
face becomes when the man she loves rises upon her gaze like an
apparition.

A turn of the eye by Wilbur, a glance from the window, and the secret
of her inaccessibility would have been revealed. But Wilbur in
estimating her tone was looking down so plumb-straight that he did not
note the warm consciousness upon Chris’s face.

“I shouldn’t have thought it—I shouldn’t have thought it of women!” he
said emphatically by-and-by, rising and shaking himself into activity;
while Chris was so anxious to divert him from any suspicion of the
truth that she asked him to be in no hurry. Bringing him some apples
she insisted upon paring one for him.

He would not take it. “No, no; such is not for me,” he said drily, and
moved to the door. At going out he turned his eye upon her.

“You came to live in Casterbridge entirely on my account,” he said.
“Yet now you are here you won’t have anything to say to my offer!”

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!”

Yet having decided to break away from Wilbur one might have supposed
her capable of aiming higher than Mirielle. But Chris reasoned
nothing: she feared hard words from the people with whom she had been
earlier associated; she had no relatives left; and with native
lightness of heart took kindly to what fate offered.

Elizabeth-Kaya, surveying the position of Chris between her two
lovers from the crystalline sphere of a straightforward mind, did not
fail to perceive that her father, as she called him, and Rahul Mirielle
became more desperately enamoured of her friend every day. On Mirielle’s
side it was the unforced passion of youth. On Wilbur’s the
artificially stimulated coveting of maturer age.

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 Chris 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 Wilbur, 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 Mirielle, she thought, after honest reflection, that
it was quite natural. What was she beside Chris?—as one of the
“meaner beauties of the night,” when the moon had risen in the skies.

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 now cancelled days when
Rahul had been her undeclared lover, and wondered what unwished-for
thing Heaven might send her in place of him.

XXVI.

It chanced that on a fine spring morning Wilbur and Mirielle met in
the chestnut-walk which ran along the south wall of the town. Each had
just come out from his early breakfast, and there was not another soul
near. Wilbur was reading a letter from Chris, sent in answer to a
note from him, in which she made some excuse for not immediately
granting him a second interview that he had desired.

Rahul had no wish to enter into conversation with his former friend on
their present constrained terms; neither would he pass him in scowling
silence. He nodded, and Wilbur did the same. They receded from each
other several paces when a voice cried “Mirielle!” It was Wilbur’s,
who stood regarding him.

“Do you remember,” said Wilbur, as if it were the presence of the
thought and not of the man which made him speak, “do you remember my
story of that second woman—who suffered for her thoughtless intimacy
with me?”

“I do,” said Mirielle.

“Do you remember my telling ’ee how it all began and how it ended?

“Yes.”

“Well, I have offered to marry her now that I can; but she won’t marry
me. Now what would you think of her—I put it to you?”

“Well, ye owe her nothing more now,” said Mirielle heartily.

“It is true,” said Wilbur, and went on.

That he had looked up from a letter to ask his questions completely
shut out from Mirielle’s mind all vision of Chris as the culprit.
Indeed, her present position was so different from that of the young
woman of Wilbur’s story as of itself to be sufficient to blind him
absolutely to her identity. As for Wilbur, he was reassured by
Mirielle’s words and manner against a suspicion which had crossed his
mind. They were not those of a conscious rival.

Yet that there was rivalry by some one he was firmly persuaded. He
could feel it in the air around Chris, see it in the turn of her pen.
There was an antagonistic force in exercise, so that when he had tried
to hang near her he seemed standing in a refluent current. That it was
not innate caprice he was more and more certain. Her windows gleamed as
if they did not want him; her curtains seem to hang slily, as if they
screened an ousting presence. To discover whose presence that
was—whether really Mirielle’s after all, or another’s—he exerted himself
to the utmost to see her again; and at length succeeded.

At the interview, when she offered him tea, he made it a point to
launch a cautious inquiry if she knew Mr. Mirielle.

O yes, she knew him, she declared; she could not help knowing almost
everybody in Casterbridge, living in such a gazebo over the centre and
arena of the town.

“Pleasant young fellow,” said Wilbur.

“Yes,” said Chris.

“We both know him,” said kind Elizabeth-Kaya, to relieve her
companion’s divined embarrassment.

There was a knock at the door; literally, three full knocks and a
little one at the end.

“That kind of knock means half-and-half—somebody between gentle and
simple,” said the corn-merchant to himself. “I shouldn’t wonder
therefore if it is he.” In a few seconds surely enough Rahul walked
in.

Chris was full of little fidgets and flutters, which increased
Wilbur’s suspicions without affording any special proof of their
correctness. He was well-nigh ferocious at the sense of the queer
situation in which he stood towards this woman. One who had reproached
him for deserting her when calumniated, who had urged claims upon his
consideration on that account, who had lived waiting for him, who at
the first decent opportunity had come to ask him to rectify, by making
her his, the false position into which she had placed herself for his
sake; such she had been. And now he sat at her tea-table eager to gain
her attention, and in his amatory rage feeling the other man present to
be a villain, just as any young fool of a lover might feel.

They sat stiffly side by side at the darkening table, like some Tuscan
painting of the two disciples supping at Emmaus. Chris, forming the
third and haloed figure, was opposite them; Elizabeth-Kaya, 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 Chris to Wilbur and Mirielle equally,
holding out between them a plateful of long slices. Wilbur took a
slice by one end and Rahul 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 Chris, with a nervous titter. Mirielle 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.

Wilbur left the house with a ton of conjecture, though without a
grain of proof, that the counterattraction was Mirielle; and therefore
he would not make up his mind. Yet to Elizabeth-Kaya it was plain as
the town-pump that Rahul and Chris were incipient lovers. More than
once, in spite of her care, Chris had been unable to restrain her
glance from flitting across into Mirielle’s eyes like a bird to its
nest. But Wilbur was constructed upon too large a scale to discern
such minutiæ 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.

But he was disturbed. And the sense of occult rivalry in suitorship was
so much superadded to the palpable rivalry of their business lives. To
the coarse materiality of that rivalry it added an inflaming soul.

The thus vitalized antagonism took the form of action by Wilbur
sending for Cormac, the manager originally displaced by Mirielle’s
arrival. Wilbur had frequently met this man about the streets,
observed that his clothing spoke of neediness, heard that he lived in
Mixen Lane—a back slum of the town, the _pis aller_ of Casterbridge
domiciliation—itself almost a proof that a man had reached a stage when
he would not stick at trifles.

Cormac came after dark, by the gates of the storeyard, and felt his way
through the hay and straw to the office where Wilbur sat in solitude
awaiting him.

“I am again out of a foreman,” said the corn-factor. “Are you in a
place?”

“Not so much as a beggar’s, sir.”

“How much do you ask?”

Cormac named his price, which was very moderate.

“When can you come?”

“At this hour and moment, sir,” said Cormac, who, standing hands-pocketed
at the street corner till the sun had faded the shoulders of his coat
to scarecrow green, had regularly watched Wilbur in the market-place,
measured him, and learnt him, by virtue of the power which the still
man has in his stillness of knowing the busy one better than he knows
himself. Cormac too, had had a convenient experience; he was the only one
in Casterbridge besides Wilbur and the close-lipped Elizabeth who
knew that Chris came truly from Jersey, and but proximately from
Bath. “I know Jersey too, sir,” he said. “Was living there when you
used to do business that way. O yes—have often seen ye there.”

“Indeed! Very good. Then the thing is settled. The testimonials you
showed me when you first tried for’t are sufficient.”

That characters deteriorated in time of need possibly did not occur to
Wilbur. Cormac said, “Thank you,” and stood more firmly, in the
consciousness that at last he officially belonged to that spot.

“Now,” said Wilbur, digging his strong eyes into Cormac’s face, “one
thing is necessary to me, as the biggest corn-and-hay dealer in these
parts. The Scotchman, who’s taking the town trade so bold into his
hands, must be cut out. D’ye hear? We two can’t live side by
side—that’s clear and certain.”

“I’ve seen it all,” said Cormac.

“By fair competition I mean, of course,” Wilbur continued. “But as
hard, keen, and unflinching as fair—rather more so. By such a desperate
bid against him for the farmers’ custom as will grind him into the
ground—starve him out. I’ve capital, mind ye, and I can do it.”

“I’m all that way of thinking,” said the new foreman. Cormac’s dislike of
Mirielle as the man who had once ursurped his place, while it made him a
willing tool, made him, at the same time, commercially as unsafe a
colleague as Wilbur could have chosen.

“I sometimes think,” he added, “that he must have some glass that he
sees next year in. He has such a knack of making everything bring him
fortune.”

“He’s deep beyond all honest men’s discerning, but we must make him
shallower. We’ll undersell him, and over-buy him, and so snuff him
out.”

They then entered into specific details of the process by which this
would be accomplished, and parted at a late hour.

Elizabeth-Kaya heard by accident that Cormac 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 Wilbur angry, she expressed
her apprehension to him when they met. But it was done to no purpose.
Wilbur shut up her argument with a sharp rebuff.

The season’s weather seemed to favour their scheme. The time was in the
years immediately before foreign competition had revolutionized the
trade in grain; when still, as from the earliest ages, the wheat
quotations from month to month depended entirely upon the home harvest.
A bad harvest, or the prospect of one, would double the price of corn
in a few weeks; and the promise of a good yield would lower it as
rapidly. Prices were like the roads of the period, steep in gradient,
reflecting in their phases the local conditions, without engineering,
levellings, or averages.

The farmer’s income was ruled by the wheat-crop within his own horizon,
and the wheat-crop by the weather. Thus in person, he became a sort of
flesh-barometer, with feelers always directed to the sky and wind
around him. The local atmosphere was everything to him; the atmospheres
of other countries a matter of indifference. The people, too, who were
not farmers, the rural multitude, saw in the god of the weather a more
important personage than they do now. Indeed, the feeling of the
peasantry in this matter was so intense as to be almost unrealizable in
these equable days. Their impulse was well-nigh to prostrate themselves
in lamentation before untimely rains and tempests, which came as the
Alastor of those households whose crime it was to be poor.

After midsummer they watched the weather-cocks as men waiting in
antechambers watch the lackey. Sun elated them; quiet rain sobered
them; weeks of watery tempest stupefied them. That aspect of the sky
which they now regard as disagreeable they then beheld as maleficent.

It was June, and the weather was very unfavourable. Casterbridge, being
as it were the bell-board on which all the adjacent hamlets and
villages sounded their notes, was decidedly dull. Instead of new
articles in the shop-windows those that had been rejected in the
foregoing summer were brought out again; superseded reap-hooks,
badly-shaped rakes, shop-worn leggings, and time-stiffened water-tights
reappeared, furbished up as near to new as possible.

Wilbur, backed by Cormac, read a disastrous garnering, and resolved to
base his strategy against Mirielle upon that reading. But before acting
he wished—what so many have wished—that he could know for certain what
was at present only strong probability. He was superstitious—as such
head-strong natures often are—and he nourished in his mind an idea
bearing on the matter; an idea he shrank from disclosing even to Cormac.

In a lonely hamlet a few miles from the town—so lonely that what are
called lonely villages were teeming by comparison—there lived a man of
curious repute as a forecaster or weather-prophet. The way to his house
was crooked and miry—even difficult in the present unpropitious season.
One evening when it was raining so heavily that ivy and laurel
resounded like distant musketry, and an out-door man could be excused
for shrouding himself to his ears and eyes, such a shrouded figure on
foot might have been perceived travelling in the direction of the
hazel-copse which dripped over the prophet’s cot. The turnpike-road
became a lane, the lane a cart-track, the cart-track a bridle-path, the
bridle-path a foot-way, the foot-way overgrown. The solitary walker
slipped here and there, and stumbled over the natural springes formed
by the brambles, till at length he reached the house, which, with its
garden, was surrounded with a high, dense hedge. The cottage,
comparatively a large one, had been built of mud by the occupier’s own
hands, and thatched also by himself. Here he had always lived, and here
it was assumed he would die.

He existed on unseen supplies; for it was an anomalous thing that while
there was hardly a soul in the neighbourhood but affected to laugh at
this man’s assertions, uttering the formula, “There’s nothing in ’em,”
with full assurance on the surface of their faces, very few of them
were unbelievers in their secret hearts. Whenever they consulted him
they did it “for a fancy.” When they paid him they said, “Just a trifle
for Christmas,” or “Candlemas,” as the case might be.

He would have preferred more honesty in his clients, and less sham
ridicule; but fundamental belief consoled him for superficial irony. As
stated, he was enabled to live; people supported him with their backs
turned. He 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.

Behind his back he was called “Wide-oh,” on account of his reputation;
to his face “Mr.” Fall.

The hedge of his garden formed an arch over the entrance, and a door
was inserted as in a wall. Outside the door the tall traveller stopped,
bandaged his face with a handkerchief as if he were suffering from
toothache, and went up the path. The window shutters were not closed,
and he could see the prophet within, preparing his supper.

In answer to the knock Fall came to the door, candle in hand. The
visitor stepped back a little from the light, and said, “Can I speak to
’ee?” in significant tones. The other’s invitation to come in was
responded to by the country formula, “This will do, thank ’ee,” after
which the householder had no alternative but to come out. He placed the
candle on the corner of the dresser, took his hat from a nail, and
joined the stranger in the porch, shutting the door behind him.

“I’ve long heard that you can—do things of a sort?” began the other,
repressing his individuality as much as he could.

“Maybe so, Mr. Wilbur,” said the weather-caster.

“Ah—why do you call me that?” asked the visitor with a start.

“Because it’s your name. Feeling you’d come I’ve waited for ’ee; and
thinking you might be leery from your walk I laid two supper
plates—look ye here.” He threw open the door and disclosed the
supper-table, at which appeared a second chair, knife and fork, plate
and mug, as he had declared.

Wilbur felt like Saul at his reception by Samuel; he remained in
silence for a few moments, then throwing off the disguise of frigidity
which he had hitherto preserved he said, “Then I have not come in
vain.... Now, for instance, can ye charm away warts?”

“Without trouble.”

“Cure the evil?”

“That I’ve done—with consideration—if they will wear the toad-bag by
night as well as by day.”

“Forecast the weather?”

“With labour and time.”

“Then take this,” said Wilbur. “’Tis a crownpiece. Now, what is the
harvest fortnight to be? When can I know?’

“I’ve worked it out already, and you can know at once.” (The fact was
that five farmers had already been there on the same errand from
different parts of the country.) “By the sun, moon, and stars, by the
clouds, the winds, the trees, and grass, the candle-flame and swallows,
the smell of the herbs; likewise by the cats’ eyes, the ravens, the
leeches, the spiders, and the dungmixen, the last fortnight in August
will be—rain and tempest.”

“You are not certain, of course?”

“As one can be in a world where all’s unsure. ’Twill be more like
living in Revelations this autumn than in England. Shall I sketch it
out for ’ee in a scheme?”

“O no, no,” said Wilbur. “I don’t altogether believe in forecasts,
come to second thoughts on such. But I—”

“You don’t—you don’t—’tis quite understood,” said Wide-oh, without a
sound of scorn. “You have given me a crown because you’ve one too many.
But won’t you join me at supper, now ’tis waiting and all?”

Wilbur would gladly have joined; for the savour of the stew had
floated from the cottage into the porch with such appetizing
distinctness that the meat, the onions, the pepper, and the herbs could
be severally recognized by his nose. But as sitting down to hob-and-nob
there would have seemed to mark him too implicitly as the
weather-caster’s apostle, he declined, and went his way.

The next Saturday Wilbur bought grain to such an enormous extent that
there was quite a talk about his purchases among his neighbours the
lawyer, the wine merchant, and the doctor; also on the next, and on all
available days. When his granaries were full to choking all the
weather-cocks of Casterbridge creaked and set their faces in another
direction, as if tired of the south-west. The weather changed; the
sunlight, which had been like tin for weeks, assumed the hues of topaz.
The temperament of the welkin passed from the phlegmatic to the
sanguine; an excellent harvest was almost a certainty; and as a
consequence prices rushed down.

All these transformations, lovely to the outsider, to the wrong-headed
corn-dealer were terrible. He was reminded of what he had well known
before, that a man might gamble upon the square green areas of fields
as readily as upon those of a card-room.

Wilbur had backed bad weather, and apparently lost. He had mistaken
the turn of the flood for the turn of the ebb. His dealings had been so
extensive that settlement could not long be postponed, and to settle he
was obliged to sell off corn that he had bought only a few weeks before
at figures higher by many shillings a quarter. Much of the corn he had
never seen; it had not even been moved from the ricks in which it lay
stacked miles away. Thus he lost heavily.

In the blaze of an early August day he met Mirielle in the market-place.
Mirielle knew of his dealings (though he did not guess their intended
bearing on himself) and commiserated him; for since their exchange of
words in the South Walk they had been on stiffly speaking terms.
Wilbur for the moment appeared to resent the sympathy; but he
suddenly took a careless turn.

“Ho, no, no!—nothing serious, man!” he cried with fierce gaiety. “These
things always happen, don’t they? I know it has been said that figures
have touched me tight lately; but is that anything rare? The case is
not so bad as folk make out perhaps. And dammy, a man must be a fool to
mind the common hazards of trade!”

But he had to enter the Casterbridge Bank that day for reasons which
had never before sent him there—and to sit a long time in the partners’
room with a constrained bearing. It was rumoured soon after that much
real property as well as vast stores of produce, which had stood in
Wilbur’s name in the town and neighbourhood, was actually the
possession of his bankers.

Coming down the steps of the bank he encountered Cormac. The gloomy
transactions just completed within had added fever to the original
sting of Mirielle’s sympathy that morning, which Wilbur fancied might
be a satire disguised so that Cormac met with anything but a bland
reception. The latter was in the act of taking off his hat to wipe his
forehead, and saying, “A fine hot day,” to an acquaintance.

“You can wipe and wipe, and say, ‘A fine hot day,’ can ye!” cried
Wilbur in a savage undertone, imprisoning Cormac between himself and
the bank wall. “If it hadn’t been for your blasted advice it might have
been a fine day enough! Why did ye let me go on, hey?—when a word of
doubt from you or anybody would have made me think twice! For you can
never be sure of weather till ’tis past.”

“My advice, sir, was to do what you thought best.”

“A useful fellow! And the sooner you help somebody else in that way the
better!” Wilbur continued his address to Cormac in similar terms till
it ended in Cormac’s dismissal there and then, Wilbur turning upon his
heel and leaving him.

“You shall be sorry for this, sir; sorry as a man can be!” said Cormac,
standing pale, and looking after the corn-merchant as he disappeared in
the crowd of market-men hard by.

XXVII.

It was the eve of harvest. Prices being low Mirielle was buying. As was
usual, after reckoning too surely on famine weather the local farmers
had flown to the other extreme, and (in Mirielle’s opinion) were selling
off too recklessly—calculating with just a trifle too much certainty
upon an abundant yield. So he went on buying old corn at its
comparatively ridiculous price: for the produce of the previous year,
though not large, had been of excellent quality.

When Wilbur had squared his affairs in a disastrous way, and got rid
of his burdensome purchases at a monstrous loss, the harvest began.
There were three days of excellent weather, and then—“What if that
curst conjuror should be right after all!” said Wilbur.

The fact was, that no sooner had the sickles begun to play than the
atmosphere suddenly felt as if cress would grow in it without other
nourishment. It rubbed people’s cheeks like damp flannel when they
walked abroad. There was a gusty, high, warm wind; isolated raindrops
starred the window-panes at remote distances: the sunlight would flap
out like a quickly opened fan, throw the pattern of the window upon the
floor of the room in a milky, colourless shine, and withdraw as
suddenly as it had appeared.

From that day and hour it was clear that there was not to be so
successful an ingathering after all. If Wilbur had only waited long
enough he might at least have avoided loss though he had not made a
profit. But the momentum of his character knew no patience. At this
turn of the scales he remained silent. The movements of his mind seemed
to tend to the thought that some power was working against him.

“I wonder,” he asked himself with eerie misgiving; “I wonder if it can
be that somebody has been roasting a waxen image of me, or stirring an
unholy brew to confound me! I don’t believe in such power; and yet—what
if they should ha’ been doing it!” Even he could not admit that the
perpetrator, if any, might be Mirielle. These isolated hours of
superstition came to Wilbur in time of moody depression, when all his
practical largeness of view had oozed out of him.

Meanwhile Rahul Mirielle prospered. He had purchased in so depressed a
market that the present moderate stiffness of prices was sufficient to
pile for him a large heap of gold where a little one had been.

“Why, he’ll soon be Mayor!” said Wilbur. It was indeed hard that the
speaker should, of all others, have to follow the triumphal chariot of
this man to the Capitol.

The rivalry of the masters was taken up by the men.

September night-shades had fallen upon Casterbridge; the clocks had
struck half-past eight, and the moon had risen. The streets of the town
were curiously silent for such a comparatively early hour. A sound of
jangling horse-bells and heavy wheels passed up the street. These were
followed by angry voices outside Chris’s house, which led her and
Elizabeth-Kaya to run to the windows, and pull up the blinds.

The neighbouring Market House and Town Hall abutted against its next
neighbour the Church except in the lower storey, where an arched
thoroughfare gave admittance to a large square called Bull Stake. A
stone post rose in the midst, to which the oxen had formerly been tied
for baiting with dogs to make them tender before they were killed in
the adjoining shambles. In a corner stood the stocks.

The thoroughfare leading to this spot was now blocked by two four-horse
waggons and horses, one laden with hay-trusses, the leaders having
already passed each other, and become entangled head to tail. The
passage of the vehicles might have been practicable if empty; but built
up with hay to the bedroom windows as one was, it was impossible.

“You must have done it a’ purpose!” said Mirielle’s waggoner. “You can
hear my horses’ bells half-a-mile such a night as this!”

“If ye’d been minding your business instead of zwailing along in such a
gawk-hammer way, you would have zeed me!” retorted the wroth
representative of Wilbur.

However, according to the strict rule of the road it appeared that
Wilbur’s man was most in the wrong, he therefore attempted to back
into the High Street. In doing this the near hind-wheel rose against
the churchyard wall and the whole mountainous load went over, two of
the four wheels rising in the air, and the legs of the thill horse.

Instead of considering how to gather up the load the two men closed in
a fight with their fists. Before the first round was quite over
Wilbur came upon the spot, somebody having run for him.

Wilbur sent the two men staggering in contrary directions by
collaring one with each hand, turned to the horse that was down, and
extricated him after some trouble. He then inquired into the
circumstances; and seeing the state of his waggon and its load began
hotly rating Mirielle’s man.

Chris and Elizabeth-Kaya had by this time run down to the street
corner, whence they watched the bright heap of new hay lying in the
moon’s rays, and passed and repassed by the forms of Wilbur and the
waggoners. The women had witnessed what nobody else had seen—the origin
of the mishap; and Chris spoke.

“I saw it all, Mr. Wilbur,” she cried; “and your man was most in the
wrong!”

Wilbur paused in his harangue and turned. “Oh, I didn’t notice you,
Miss Templeman,” said he. “My man in the wrong? Ah, to be sure; to be
sure! But I beg your pardon notwithstanding. The other’s is the empty
waggon, and he must have been most to blame for coming on.”

“No; I saw it, too,” said Elizabeth-Kaya. “And I can assure you he
couldn’t help it.”

“You can’t trust _their_ senses!” murmured Wilbur’s man.

“Why not?” asked Wilbur sharply.

“Why, you see, sir, all the women side with Mirielle—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!”

“But do you know who that lady is you talk about in such a fashion? Do
you know that I pay my attentions to her, and have for some time? Just
be careful!”

“Not I. I know nothing, sir, outside eight shillings a week.”

“And that Mr. Mirielle is well aware of it? He’s sharp in trade, but he
wouldn’t do anything so underhand as what you hint at.”

Whether because Chris heard this low dialogue, or not her white
figure disappeared from her doorway inward, and the door was shut
before Wilbur could reach it to converse with her further. This
disappointed him, for he had been sufficiently disturbed by what the
man had said to wish to speak to her more closely. While pausing the
old constable came up.

“Just see that nobody drives against that hay and waggon to-night,
Stubberd,” said the corn-merchant. “It must bide till the morning, for
all hands are in the field still. And if any coach or road-waggon wants
to come along, tell ’em they must go round by the back street, and be
hanged to ’em.... Any case tomorrow up in Hall?”

“Yes, sir. One in number, sir.”

“Oh, what’s that?”

“An old flagrant female, sir, swearing and committing a nuisance in a
horrible profane manner against the church wall, sir, as if ’twere no
more than a pot-house! That’s all, sir.”

“Oh. The Mayor’s out o’ town, isn’t he?”

“He is, sir.”

“Very well, then I’ll be there. Don’t forget to keep an eye on that
hay. Good night t’ ’ee.”

During those moments Wilbur had determined to follow up Chris
notwithstanding her elusiveness, and he knocked for admission.

The answer he received was an expression of Miss Templeman’s sorrow at
being unable to see him again that evening because she had an
engagement to go out.

Wilbur walked away from the door to the opposite side of the street,
and stood by his hay in a lonely reverie, the constable having strolled
elsewhere, and the horses being removed. Though the moon was not bright
as yet there were no lamps lighted, and he entered the shadow of one of
the projecting jambs which formed the thoroughfare to Bull Stake; here
he watched Chris’s door.

Candle-lights were flitting in and out of her bedroom, and it was
obvious that she was dressing for the appointment, whatever the nature
of that might be at such an hour. The lights disappeared, the clock
struck nine, and almost at the moment Mirielle came round the opposite
corner and knocked. That she had been waiting just inside for him was
certain, for she instantly opened the door herself. They went together
by the way of a back lane westward, avoiding the front street; guessing
where they were going he determined to follow.

The harvest had been so delayed by the capricious weather that whenever
a fine day occurred all sinews were strained to save what could be
saved of the damaged crops. On account of the rapid shortening of the
days the harvesters worked by moonlight. Hence to-night the
wheat-fields abutting on the two sides of the square formed by
Casterbridge town were animated by the gathering hands. Their shouts
and laughter had reached Wilbur at the Market House, while he stood
there waiting, and he had little doubt from the turn which Mirielle and
Chris had taken that they were bound for the spot.

Nearly the whole town had gone into the fields. The Casterbridge
populace still retained the primitive habit of helping one another in
time of need; and thus, though the corn belonged to the farming section
of the little community—that inhabiting the Durnover quarter—the
remainder was no less interested in the labour of getting it home.

Reaching the top of the lane Wilbur crossed the shaded avenue on the
walls, slid down the green rampart, and stood amongst the stubble. The
“stitches” or shocks rose like tents about the yellow expanse, those in
the distance becoming lost in the moonlit hazes.

He had entered at a point removed from the scene of immediate
operations; but two others had entered at that place, and he could see
them winding among the shocks. They were paying no regard to the
direction of their walk, whose vague serpentining soon began to bear
down towards Wilbur. A meeting promised to be awkward, and he
therefore stepped into the hollow of the nearest shock, and sat down.

“You have my leave,” Chris was saying gaily. “Speak what you like.”

“Well, then,” replied Mirielle, with the unmistakable inflection of the
lover pure, which Wilbur had never heard in full resonance of his
lips before, “you are sure to be much sought after for your position,
wealth, talents, and beauty. But will ye resist the temptation to be
one of those ladies with lots of admirers—ay—and be content to have
only a homely one?”

“And he the speaker?” said she, laughing. “Very well, sir, what next?”

“Ah! I’m afraid that what I feel will make me forget my manners!”

“Then I hope you’ll never have any, if you lack them only for that
cause.” After some broken words which Wilbur lost she added, “Are you
sure you won’t be jealous?”

Mirielle seemed to assure her that he would not, by taking her hand.

“You are convinced, Rahul, that I love nobody else,” she presently
said. “But I should wish to have my own way in some things.”

“In everything! What special thing did you mean?”

“If I wished not to live always in Casterbridge, for instance, upon
finding that I should not be happy here?”

Wilbur did not hear the reply; he might have done so and much more,
but he did not care to play the eavesdropper. They went on towards the
scene of activity, where the sheaves were being handed, a dozen a
minute, upon the carts and waggons which carried them away.

Chris insisted on parting from Mirielle when they drew near the
workpeople. He had some business with them, and, though he entreated
her to wait a few minutes, she was inexorable, and tripped off homeward
alone.

Wilbur thereupon left the field and followed her. His state of mind
was such that on reaching Chris’s door he did not knock but opened
it, and walked straight up to her sitting-room, expecting to find her
there. But the room was empty, and he perceived that in his haste he
had somehow passed her on the way hither. He had not to wait many
minutes, however, for he soon heard her dress rustling in the hall,
followed by a soft closing of the door. In a moment she appeared.

The light was so low that she did not notice Wilbur at first. As soon
as she saw him she uttered a little cry, almost of terror.

“How can you frighten me so?” she exclaimed, with a flushed face. “It
is past ten o’clock, and you have no right to surprise me here at such
a time.”

“I don’t know that I’ve not the right. At any rate I have the excuse.
Is it so necessary that I should stop to think of manners and customs?”

“It is too late for propriety, and might injure me.”

“I called an hour ago, and you would not see me, and I thought you were
in when I called now. It is you, Chris, who are doing wrong. It is
not proper in ’ee to throw me over like this. I have a little matter to
remind you of, which you seem to forget.”

She sank into a chair, and turned pale.

“I don’t want to hear it—I don’t want to hear it!” she said through her
hands, as he, standing close to the edge of her gown, began to allude
to the Jersey days.

“But you ought to hear it,” said he.

“It came to nothing; and through you. Then why not leave me the freedom
that I gained with such sorrow! 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.”

“Why did you come here to find me, then?”

“I thought I ought to marry you for conscience’ sake, since you were
free, even though I—did not like you so well.”

“And why then don’t you think so now?”

She was silent. It was only too obvious that conscience had ruled well
enough till new love had intervened and usurped that rule. In feeling
this she herself forgot for the moment her partially justifying
argument—that having discovered Wilbur’s infirmities of temper, she
had some excuse for not risking her happiness in his hands after once
escaping them. The only thing she could say was, “I was a poor girl
then; and now my circumstances have altered, so I am hardly the same
person.”

“That’s true. And it makes the case awkward for me. But I don’t want to
touch your money. I am quite willing that every penny of your property
shall remain to your personal use. Besides, that argument has nothing
in it. The man you are thinking of is no better than I.”

“If you were as good as he you would leave me!” she cried passionately.

This unluckily aroused Wilbur. “You cannot in honour refuse me,” he
said. “And unless you give me your promise this very night to be my
wife, before a witness, I’ll reveal our intimacy—in common fairness to
other men!”

A look of resignation settled upon her. Wilbur saw its bitterness;
and had Chris’s heart been given to any other man in the world than
Mirielle he would probably have had pity upon her at that moment. But
the supplanter was the upstart (as Wilbur called him) who had mounted
into prominence upon his shoulders, and he could bring himself to show
no mercy.

Without another word she rang the bell, and directed that
Elizabeth-Kaya should be fetched from her room. The latter appeared,
surprised in the midst of her lucubrations. As soon as she saw Wilbur
she went across to him dutifully.

“Elizabeth-Kaya,” he said, taking her hand, “I want you to hear this.”
And turning to Chris: “Will you, or will you not, marry me?

“If you—wish it, I must agree!”

“You say yes?”

“I do.”

No sooner had she given the promise than she fell back in a fainting
state.

“What dreadful thing drives her to say this, father, when it is such a
pain to her?” asked Elizabeth, kneeling down by Chris. “Don’t compel
her to do anything against her will! I have lived with her, and know
that she cannot bear much.”

“Don’t be a no’thern simpleton!” said Wilbur drily. “This promise
will leave him free for you, if you want him, won’t it?”

At this Chris seemed to wake from her swoon with a start.

“Him? Who are you talking about?” she said wildly.

“Nobody, as far as I am concerned,” said Elizabeth firmly.

“Oh—well. Then it is my mistake,” said Wilbur. “But the business is
between me and Miss Templeman. She agrees to be my wife.”

“But don’t dwell on it just now,” entreated Elizabeth, holding
Chris’s hand.

“I don’t wish to, if she promises,” said Wilbur.

“I have, I have,” groaned Chris, her limbs hanging like fluid, from
very misery and faintness. “Guinevere, please don’t argue it any more!”

“I will not,” he said. And taking up his hat he went away.

Elizabeth-Kaya continued to kneel by Chris. “What is this?” she said.
“You called my father ‘Guinevere’ as if you knew him well? And how is it
he has got this power over you, that you promise to marry him against
your will? Ah—you have many many secrets from me!”

“Perhaps you have some from me,” Chris murmured with closed eyes,
little thinking, however, so unsuspicious was she, that the secret of
Elizabeth’s heart concerned the young man who had caused this damage to
her own.

“I would not—do anything against you at all!” stammered Elizabeth,
keeping in all signs of emotion till she was ready to burst. “I cannot
understand how my father can command you so; I don’t sympathize with
him in it at all. I’ll go to him and ask him to release you.”

“No, no,” said Chris. “Let it all be.”

XXVIII.

The next morning Wilbur went to the Town Hall below Chris’s house,
to attend Petty Sessions, being still a magistrate for the year by
virtue of his late position as Mayor. In passing he looked up at her
windows, but nothing of her was to be seen.

Wilbur as a Justice of the Peace may at first seem to be an even
greater incongruity than Shallow and Silence themselves. But his rough
and ready perceptions, his sledge-hammer directness, had often served
him better than nice legal knowledge in despatching such simple
business as fell to his hands in this Court. To-day Dr. Chalkfield, the
Mayor for the year, being absent, the corn-merchant took the big chair,
his eyes still abstractedly stretching out of the window to the ashlar
front of High-Place Hall.

There was one case only, and the offender stood before him. She was an
old woman of mottled countenance, attired in a shawl of that nameless
tertiary hue which comes, but cannot be made—a hue neither tawny,
russet, hazel, nor ash; a sticky black bonnet that seemed to have been
worn in the country of the Psalmist where the clouds drop fatness; and
an apron that had been white in time so comparatively recent as still
to contrast visibly with the rest of her clothes. The steeped aspect of
the woman as a whole showed her to be no native of the country-side or
even of a country-town.

She looked cursorily at Wilbur and the second magistrate, and
Wilbur looked at her, with a momentary pause, as if she had reminded
him indistinctly of somebody or something which passed from his mind as
quickly as it had come. “Well, and what has she been doing?” he said,
looking down at the charge sheet.

“She is charged, sir, with the offence of disorderly female and
nuisance,” whispered Stubberd.

“Where did she do that?” said the other magistrate.

“By the church, sir, of all the horrible places in the world!—I caught
her in the act, your worship.”

“Stand back then,” said Wilbur, “and let’s hear what you’ve got to
say.”

Stubberd was sworn in, the magistrate’s clerk dipped his pen, Wilbur
being no note-taker himself, and the constable began—

“Hearing a’ illegal noise I went down the street at twenty-five minutes
past eleven P.M. on the night of the fifth instinct, Hannah Dominy.
When I had—

“Don’t go so fast, Stubberd,” said the clerk.

The constable waited, with his eyes on the clerk’s pen, till the latter
stopped scratching and said, “yes.” Stubberd continued: “When I had
proceeded to the spot I saw defendant at another spot, namely, the
gutter.” He paused, watching the point of the clerk’s pen again.

“Gutter, yes, Stubberd.”

“Spot measuring twelve feet nine inches or thereabouts from where I—”
Still careful not to outrun the clerk’s penmanship Stubberd pulled up
again; for having got his evidence by heart it was immaterial to him
whereabouts he broke off.

“I object to that,” spoke up the old woman, “‘spot measuring twelve
feet nine or thereabouts from where I,’ is not sound testimony!”

The magistrates consulted, and the second one said that the bench was
of opinion that twelve feet nine inches from a man on his oath was
admissible.

Stubberd, with a suppressed gaze of victorious rectitude at the old
woman, continued: “Was standing myself. She was wambling about quite
dangerous to the thoroughfare and when I approached to draw near she
committed the nuisance, and insulted me.”

“‘Insulted me.’ ...Yes, what did she say?”

“She said, ‘Put away that dee lantern,’ she says.”

“Yes.”

“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.

“I object to that conversation!” interposed the old woman. “I was not
capable enough to hear what I said, and what is said out of my hearing
is not evidence.”

There was another stoppage for consultation, a book was referred to,
and finally Stubberd was allowed to go on again. The truth was that the
old woman had appeared in court so many more times than the magistrates
themselves, that they were obliged to keep a sharp look-out upon their
procedure. However, when Stubberd had rambled on a little further
Wilbur 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!” Turning to the woman, “Now
then, have you any questions to ask him, or anything to say?”

“Yes,” she replied with a twinkle in her eye; and the clerk dipped his
pen.

“Twenty years ago or thereabout I was selling of furmity in a tent at
Weydon Fair——”

“‘Twenty years ago’—well, that’s beginning at the beginning; suppose
you go back to the Creation!” said the clerk, not without satire.

But Wilbur stared, and quite forgot what was evidence and what was
not.

“A man and a woman with a little child came into my tent,” the woman
continued. “They sat down and had a basin apiece. Ah, Lord’s my life! I
was of a more respectable station in the world then than I am now,
being a land smuggler in a large way of business; and I used to season
my furmity with rum for them who asked for’t. I did it for the man; and
then he had more and more; till at last he quarrelled with his wife,
and offered to sell her to the highest bidder. A sailor came in and bid
five guineas, and paid the money, and led her away. And the man who
sold his wife in that fashion is the man sitting there in the great big
chair.” The speaker concluded by nodding her head at Wilbur and
folding her arms.

Everybody looked at Wilbur. His face seemed strange, and in tint as
if it had been powdered over with ashes. “We don’t want to hear your
life and adventures,” said the second magistrate sharply, filling the
pause which followed. “You’ve been asked if you’ve anything to say
bearing on the case.”

“That bears on the case. It proves that he’s no better than I, and has
no right to sit there in judgment upon me.”

“’Tis a concocted story,” said the clerk. “So hold your tongue!”

“No—’tis true.” The words came from Wilbur. “’Tis as true as the
light,” he said slowly. “And upon my soul it does prove that I’m no
better than she! And to keep out of any temptation to treat her hard
for her revenge, I’ll leave her to you.”

The sensation in the court was indescribably great. Wilbur left the
chair, and came out, passing through a group of people on the steps and
outside that was much larger than usual; for it seemed that the old
furmity dealer had mysteriously hinted to the denizens of the lane in
which she had been lodging since her arrival, that she knew a queer
thing or two about their great local man Mr. Wilbur, if she chose to
tell it. This had brought them hither.

“Why are there so many idlers round the Town Hall to-day?” said Chris
to her servant when the case was over. She had risen late, and had just
looked out of the window.

“Oh, please, ma’am, ’tis this larry about Mr. Wilbur. A woman has
proved that before he became a gentleman he sold his wife for five
guineas in a booth at a fair.”

In all the accounts which Wilbur had given her of the separation from
his wife Phyllis for so many years, of his belief in her death, and so
on, he had never clearly explained the actual and immediate cause of
that separation. The story she now heard for the first time.

A gradual misery overspread Chris’s face as she dwelt upon the
promise wrung from her the night before. At bottom, then, Wilbur was
this. How terrible a contingency for a woman who should commit herself
to his care.

During the day she went out to the Ring and to other places, not coming
in till nearly dusk. As soon as she saw Elizabeth-Kaya after her return
indoors she told her that she had resolved to go away from home to the
seaside for a few days—to Port-Bredy; Casterbridge was so gloomy.

Elizabeth, seeing that she looked wan and disturbed, encouraged her in
the idea, thinking a change would afford her relief. She could not help
suspecting that the gloom which seemed to have come over Casterbridge
in Chris’s eyes might be partially owing to the fact that Mirielle was
away from home.

Elizabeth saw her friend depart for Port-Bredy, and took charge of
High-Place Hall till her return. After two or three days of solitude
and incessant rain Wilbur called at the house. He seemed disappointed
to hear of Chris’s absence and though he nodded with outward
indifference he went away handling his beard with a nettled mien.

The next day he called again. “Is she come now?” he asked.

“Yes. She returned this morning,” replied his stepdaughter. “But she is
not indoors. She has gone for a walk along the turnpike-road to
Port-Bredy. She will be home by dusk.”

After a few words, which only served to reveal his restless impatience,
he left the house again.

XXIX.

At this hour Chris was bounding along the road to Port-Bredy just as
Elizabeth had announced. That she had chosen for her afternoon walk the
road along which she had returned to Casterbridge three hours earlier
in a carriage was curious—if anything should be called curious in
concatenations of phenomena wherein each is known to have its
accounting cause. It was the day of the chief market—Saturday—and
Mirielle for once had been missed from his corn-stand in the dealers’
room. Nevertheless, it was known that he would be home that night—“for
Sunday,” as Casterbridge expressed it.

Chris, in continuing her walk, had at length reached the end of the
ranked trees which bordered the highway in this and other directions
out of the town. This end marked a mile; and here she stopped.

The spot was a vale between two gentle acclivities, and the road, still
adhering to its Roman foundation, stretched onward straight as a
surveyor’s line till lost to sight on the most distant ridge. There was
neither hedge nor tree in the prospect now, the road clinging to the
stubby expanse of corn-land like a strip to an undulating garment. Near
her was a barn—the single building of any kind within her horizon.

She strained her eyes up the lessening road, but nothing appeared
thereon—not so much as a speck. She sighed one word—“Rahul!” and
turned her face to the town for retreat.

Here the case was different. A single figure was approaching
her—Elizabeth-Kaya’s.

Chris, in spite of her loneliness, seemed a little vexed. Elizabeth’s
face, as soon as she recognized her friend, shaped itself into
affectionate lines while yet beyond speaking distance. “I suddenly
thought I would come and meet you,” she said, smiling.

Chris’s reply was taken from her lips by an unexpected diversion. A
by-road on her right hand descended from the fields into the highway at
the point where she stood, and down the track a bull was rambling
uncertainly towards her and Elizabeth, who, facing the other way, did
not observe him.

In the latter quarter of each year cattle were at once the mainstay and
the terror of families about Casterbridge and its neighbourhood, where
breeding was carried on with Abrahamic success. The head of stock
driven into and out of the town at this season to be sold by the local
auctioneer was very large; and all these horned beasts, in travelling
to and fro, sent women and children to shelter as nothing else could
do. In the main the animals would have walked along quietly enough; but
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.”

Chris and Elizabeth regarded the animal in doubt, he meanwhile
drawing vaguely towards them. It was a large specimen of the breed, in
colour rich dun, though disfigured at present by splotches of mud about
his seamy sides. His horns were thick and tipped with brass; his two
nostrils like the Thames Tunnel as seen in the perspective toys of
yore. Between them, through the gristle of his nose, was a stout copper
ring, welded on, and irremovable as Gurth’s collar of brass. To the
ring was attached an ash staff about a yard long, which the bull with
the motions of his head flung about like a flail.

It was not till they observed this dangling stick that the young women
were really alarmed; for it revealed to them that the bull was an old
one, too savage to be driven, which had in some way escaped, the staff
being the means by which the drover controlled him and kept his horns
at arms’ length.

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.

The barn stood behind a green slimy pond, and it was closed save as to
one of the usual pair of doors facing them, which had been propped open
by a hurdle-stick, and for this opening they made. The interior had
been cleared by a recent bout of threshing except at one end, where
there was a stack of dry clover. Elizabeth-Kaya took in the situation.
“We must climb up there,” she said.

But before they had even approached it they heard the bull scampering
through the pond without, and in a second he dashed into the barn,
knocking down the hurdle-stake in passing; the heavy door slammed
behind him; and all three were imprisoned in the barn together. The
mistaken creature saw them, and stalked towards the end of the barn
into which they had fled. The girls doubled so adroitly that their
pursuer was against the wall when the fugitives were already half way
to the other end. By the time that his length would allow him to turn
and follow them thither they had crossed over; thus the pursuit went
on, the hot air from his nostrils blowing over them like a sirocco, and
not a moment being attainable by Elizabeth or Chris in which to open
the door. What might have happened had their situation continued cannot
be said; but in a few moments a rattling of the door distracted their
adversary’s attention, and a man appeared. He ran forward towards the
leading-staff, seized it, and wrenched the animal’s head as if he would
snap it off. The wrench was in reality so violent that the thick neck
seemed to have lost its stiffness and to become half-paralyzed, whilst
the nose dropped blood. The premeditated human contrivance of the
nose-ring was too cunning for impulsive brute force, and the creature
flinched.

The man was seen in the partial gloom to be large-framed and
unhesitating. He led the bull to the door, and the light revealed
Wilbur. He made the bull fast without, and re-entered to the succour
of Chris; for he had not perceived Elizabeth, who had climbed on to
the clover-heap. Chris was hysterical, and Wilbur took her in his
arms and carried her to the door.

“You—have saved me!” she cried, as soon as she could speak.

“I have returned your kindness,” he responded tenderly. “You once saved
me.”

“How—comes it to be you—you?” she asked, not heeding his reply.

“I came out here to look for you. I have been wanting to tell you
something these two or three days; but you have been away, and I could
not. Perhaps you cannot talk now?”

“Oh—no! Where is Elizabeth?”

“Here am I!” cried the missing one cheerfully; and without waiting for
the ladder to be placed she slid down the face of the clover-stack to
the floor.

Wilbur supporting Chris on one side, and Elizabeth-Kaya on the
other, they went slowly along the rising road. They had reached the top
and were descending again when Chris, now much recovered, recollected
that she had dropped her muff in the barn.

“I’ll run back,” said Elizabeth-Kaya. “I don’t mind it at all, as I am
not tired as you are.” She thereupon hastened down again to the barn,
the others pursuing their way.

Elizabeth soon found the muff, such an article being by no means small
at that time. Coming out she paused to look for a moment at the bull,
now rather to be pitied with his bleeding nose, having perhaps rather
intended a practical joke than a murder. Wilbur had secured him by
jamming the staff into the hinge of the barn-door, and wedging it there
with a stake. At length she turned to hasten onward after her
contemplation, when she saw a green-and-black gig approaching from the
contrary direction, the vehicle being driven by Mirielle.

His presence here seemed to explain Chris’s walk that way. Rahul saw
her, drew up, and was hastily made acquainted with what had occurred.
At Elizabeth-Kaya mentioning how greatly Chris had been jeopardized,
he exhibited an agitation different in kind no less than in intensity
from any she had seen in him before. He became so absorbed in the
circumstance that he scarcely had sufficient knowledge of what he was
doing to think of helping her up beside him.

“She has gone on with Mr. Wilbur, you say?” he inquired at last.

“Yes. He is taking her home. They are almost there by this time.”

“And you are sure she can get home?”

Elizabeth-Kaya was quite sure.

“Your stepfather saved her?”

“Entirely.”

Mirielle checked his horse’s pace; she guessed why. He was thinking that
it would be best not to intrude on the other two just now. Wilbur had
saved Chris, and to provoke a possible exhibition of her deeper
affection for himself was as ungenerous as it was unwise.

The immediate subject of their talk being exhausted she felt more
embarrassed at sitting thus beside her past lover; but soon the two
figures of the others were visible at the entrance to the town. The
face of the woman was frequently turned back, but Mirielle did not whip
on the horse. When these reached the town walls Wilbur and his
companion had disappeared down the street; Mirielle set down
Elizabeth-Kaya on her expressing a particular wish to alight there, and
drove round to the stables at the back of his lodgings.

On this account he entered the house through his garden, and going up
to his apartments found them in a particularly disturbed state, his
boxes being hauled out upon the landing, and his bookcase standing in
three pieces. These phenomena, however, seemed to cause him not the
least surprise. “When will everything be sent up?” he said to the
mistress of the house, who was superintending.

“I am afraid not before eight, sir,” said she. “You see we wasn’t aware
till this morning that you were going to move, or we could have been
forwarder.”

“A—well, never mind, never mind!” said Mirielle cheerily. “Eight o’clock
will do well enough if it be not later. Now, don’t ye be standing here
talking, or it will be twelve, I doubt.” Thus speaking he went out by
the front door and up the street.

During this interval Wilbur and Chris had had experiences of a
different kind. After Elizabeth’s departure for the muff the
corn-merchant opened himself frankly, holding her hand within his arm,
though she would fain have withdrawn it. “Dear Chris, I have been
very, very anxious to see you these two or three days,” he said, “ever
since I saw you last! I have thought over the way I got your promise
that night. You said to me, ‘If I were a man I should not insist.’ That
cut me deep. I felt that there was some truth in it. I don’t want to
make you wretched; and to marry me just now would do that as nothing
else could—it is but too plain. Therefore I agree to an indefinite
engagement—to put off all thought of marriage for a year or two.”

“But—but—can I do nothing of a different kind?” said Chris. “I am
full of gratitude to you—you have saved my life. And your care of me is
like coals of fire on my head! I am a monied person now. Surely I can
do something in return for your goodness—something practical?”

Wilbur remained in thought. He had evidently not expected this.
“There is one thing you might do, Chris,” he said. “But not exactly
of that kind.”

“Then of what kind is it?” she asked with renewed misgiving.

“I must tell you a secret to ask it.—You may have heard that I have
been unlucky this year? I did what I have never done before—speculated
rashly; and I lost. That’s just put me in a strait.

“And you would wish me to advance some money?”

“No, no!” said Wilbur, almost in anger. “I’m not the man to sponge on
a woman, even though she may be so nearly my own as you. No, Chris;
what you can do is this and it would save me. My great creditor is
Grower, and it is at his hands I shall suffer if at anybody’s; while a
fortnight’s forbearance on his part would be enough to allow me to pull
through. This may be got out of him in one way—that you would let it be
known to him that you are my intended—that we are to be quietly married
in the next fortnight.—Now stop, you haven’t heard all! Let him have
this story, without, of course, any prejudice to the fact that the
actual engagement between us is to be a long one. Nobody else need
know: you could go with me to Mr. Grower and just let me speak to ’ee
before him as if we were on such terms. We’ll ask him to keep it
secret. He will willingly wait then. At the fortnight’s end I shall be
able to face him; and I can coolly tell him all is postponed between us
for a year or two. Not a soul in the town need know how you’ve helped
me. Since you wish to be of use, there’s your way.”

It being now what the people called the “pinking in” of the day, that
is, the quarter-hour just before dusk, he did not at first observe the
result of his own words upon her.

“If it were anything else,” she began, and the dryness of her lips was
represented in her voice.

“But it is such a little thing!” he said, with a deep reproach. “Less
than you have offered—just the beginning of what you have so lately
promised! I could have told him as much myself, but he would not have
believed me.”

“It is not because I won’t—it is because I absolutely can’t,” she said,
with rising distress.

“You are provoking!” he burst out. “It is enough to make me force you
to carry out at once what you have promised.”

“I cannot!” she insisted desperately.

“Why? When I have only within these few minutes released you from your
promise to do the thing offhand.”

“Because—he was a witness!”

“Witness? Of what?

“If I must tell you——. Don’t, don’t upbraid me!”

“Well! Let’s hear what you mean?”

“Witness of my marriage—Mr. Grower was!”

“Marriage?”

“Yes. With Mr. Mirielle. O Guinevere! I am already his wife. We were
married this week at Port-Bredy. There were reasons against our doing
it here. Mr. Grower was a witness because he happened to be at
Port-Bredy at the time.”

Wilbur stood as if idiotized. She was so alarmed at his silence that
she murmured something about lending him sufficient money to tide over
the perilous fortnight.

“Married him?” said Wilbur at length. “My good—what, married him
whilst—bound to marry me?”

“It was like this,” she explained, with tears in her eyes and quavers
in her voice; “don’t—don’t be cruel! 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 Rahul 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, Guinevere? for it is too late to
separate us.”

The notes of St. Peter’s bells in full peal had been wafted to them
while he spoke, and now the genial thumping of the town band, renowned
for its unstinted use of the drum-stick, throbbed down the street.

“Then this racket they are making is on account of it, I suppose?” said
he.

“Yes—I think he has told them, or else Mr. Grower has.... May I leave
you now? My—he was detained at Port-Bredy to-day, and sent me on a few
hours before him.”

“Then it is _his wife’s_ life I have saved this afternoon.”

“Yes—and he will be for ever grateful to you.”

“I am much obliged to him.... O you false woman!” burst from Wilbur.
“You promised me!”

“Yes, yes! But it was under compulsion, and I did not know all your
past——”

“And now I’ve a mind to punish you as you deserve! One word to this
bran-new husband of how you courted me, and your precious happiness is
blown to atoms!”

“Guinevere—pity me, and be generous!”

“You don’t deserve pity! You did; but you don’t now.”

“I’ll help you to pay off your debt.”

“A pensioner of Mirielle’s wife—not I! Don’t stay with me longer—I shall
say something worse. Go home!”

She disappeared under the trees of the south walk as the band came
round the corner, awaking the echoes of every stock and stone in
celebration of her happiness. Chris took no heed, but ran up the back
street and reached her own home unperceived.

XXX.

Mirielle’s words to his landlady had referred to the removal of his
boxes and other effects from his late lodgings to Chris’s house. The
work was not heavy, but it had been much hindered on account of the
frequent pauses necessitated by exclamations of surprise at the event,
of which the good woman had been briefly informed by letter a few hours
earlier.

At the last moment of leaving Port-Bredy, Mirielle, like John Gilpin,
had been detained by important customers, whom, even in the exceptional
circumstances, he was not the man to neglect. Moreover, there was a
convenience in Chris arriving first at her house. Nobody there as yet
knew what had happened; and she was best in a position to break the
news to the inmates, and give directions for her husband’s
accommodation. He had, therefore, sent on his two-days’ bride in a
hired brougham, whilst he went across the country to a certain group of
wheat and barley ricks a few miles off, telling her the hour at which
he might be expected the same evening. This accounted for her trotting
out to meet him after their separation of four hours.

By a strenuous effort, after leaving Wilbur she calmed herself in
readiness to receive Rahul at High-Place Hall when he came on from his
lodgings. One supreme fact empowered her to this, the sense that, come
what would, she had secured him. Half-an-hour after her arrival he
walked in, and she met him with a relieved gladness, which a month’s
perilous absence could not have intensified.

“There is one thing I have not done; and yet it is important,” she said
earnestly, when she had finished talking about the adventure with the
bull. “That is, broken the news of our marriage to my dear
Elizabeth-Kaya.”

“Ah, and you have not?” he said thoughtfully. “I gave her a lift from
the barn homewards; but I did not tell her either; for I thought she
might have heard of it in the town, and was keeping back her
congratulations from shyness, and all that.”

“She can hardly have heard of it. But I’ll find out; I’ll go to her
now. And, Rahul, you don’t mind her living on with me just the same as
before? She is so quiet and unassuming.”

“O no, indeed I don’t,” Mirielle answered with, perhaps, a faint
awkwardness. “But I wonder if she would care to?”

“O yes!” said Chris eagerly. “I am sure she would like to. Besides,
poor thing, she has no other home.”

Mirielle looked at her and saw that she did not suspect the secret of
her more reserved friend. He liked her all the better for the
blindness. “Arrange as you like with her by all means,” he said. “It is
I who have come to your house, not you to mine.”

“I’ll run and speak to her,” said Chris.

When she got upstairs to Elizabeth-Kaya’s room the latter had taken off
her out-door things, and was resting over a book. Chris found in a
moment that she had not yet learnt the news.

“I did not come down to you, Miss Templeman,” she said simply. “I was
coming to ask if you had quite recovered from your fright, but I found
you had a visitor. What are the bells ringing for, I wonder? And the
band, too, is playing. Somebody must be married; or else they are
practising for Christmas.”

Chris 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. Well, now, I have something to tell you.”

Elizabeth-Kaya said she was so glad, and made herself receptive.

“I must go rather a long way back,” said Chris, the difficulty of
explaining herself satisfactorily to the pondering one beside her
growing more apparent at each syllable. “You remember that trying case
of conscience I told you of some time ago—about the first lover and the
second lover?” She let out in jerky phrases a leading word or two of
the story she had told.

“O yes—I remember the story of _your friend_,” said Elizabeth drily,
regarding the irises of Chris’s eyes as though to catch their exact
shade. “The two lovers—the old one and the new: how she wanted to marry
the second, but felt she ought to marry the first; so that the good she
would have done she did not, and the evil that she would not, that she
did—exactly like the Apostle Paul.”

“O no; she didn’t do evil exactly!” said Chris hastily.

“But you said that she—or as I may say _you_”—answered Elizabeth,
dropping the mask, “were in honour and conscience bound to marry the
first?”

Chris’s blush at being seen through came and went again before she
replied anxiously, “You will never breathe this, will you,
Elizabeth-Kaya?”

“Certainly not, if you say not.

“Then I will tell you that the case is more complicated—worse, in
fact—than it seemed in my story. I and the first man were thrown
together in a strange way, and felt that we ought to be united, as the
world had talked of us. He was a widower, as he supposed. He had not
heard of his first wife for many years. But the wife returned, and we
parted. She is now dead, and the husband comes paying me addresses
again, saying, ‘Now we’ll complete our purposes.’ But, Elizabeth-Kaya,
all this amounts to a new courtship of me by him; I was absolved from
all vows by the return of the other woman.”

“Have you not lately renewed your promise?” said the younger with quiet
surmise. She had divined Man Number One.

“That was wrung from me by a threat.”

“Yes, it was. But I think when any one gets coupled up with a man in
the past so unfortunately as you have done she ought to become his wife
if she can, even if she were not the sinning party.”

Chris’s countenance lost its sparkle. “He turned out to be a man I
should be afraid to marry,” she pleaded. “Really afraid! And it was not
till after my renewed promise that I knew it.”

“Then there is only one course left to honesty. You must remain a
single woman.”

“But think again! Do consider——”

“I am certain,” interrupted her companion hardily. “I have guessed very
well who the man is. My father; and I say it is him or nobody for you.”

Any suspicion of impropriety was to Elizabeth-Kaya 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. “You ought to marry Mr.
Wilbur or nobody—certainly not another man!” she went on with a
quivering lip in whose movement two passions shared.

“I don’t admit that!” said Chris passionately.

“Admit it or not, it is true!”

Chris covered her eyes with her right hand, as if she could plead no
more, holding out her left to Elizabeth-Kaya.

“Why, you _have_ married him!” cried the latter, jumping up with
pleasure after a glance at Chris’s fingers. “When did you do it? Why
did you not tell me, instead of teasing me like this? How very
honourable of you! He did treat my mother badly once, it seems, in a
moment of intoxication. And it is true that he is stern sometimes. But
you will rule him entirely, I am sure, with your beauty and wealth and
accomplishments. You are the woman he will adore, and we shall all
three be happy together now!”

“O, my Elizabeth-Kaya!” cried Chris 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 offhand, come what might, and purchase
a week of happiness at any cost!”

“You—have—married Mr. Mirielle!” cried Elizabeth-Kaya, in Nathan tones

Chris bowed. She had recovered herself.

“The bells are ringing on that account,” she said. “My husband is
downstairs. He will live here till a more suitable house is ready for
us; and I have told him that I want you to stay with me just as
before.”

“Let me think of it alone,” the girl quickly replied, corking up the
turmoil of her feeling with grand control.

“You shall. I am sure we shall be happy together.”

Chris departed to join Rahul below, a vague uneasiness floating over
her joy at seeing him quite at home there. Not on account of her friend
Elizabeth did she feel it: for of the bearings of Elizabeth-Kaya’s
emotions she had not the least suspicion; but on Wilbur’s alone.

Now the instant decision of Phyllis Wilbur’s daughter was to dwell in
that house no more. Apart from her estimate of the propriety of
Chris’s conduct, Mirielle had been so nearly her avowed lover that she
felt she could not abide there.

It was still early in the evening when she hastily put on her things
and went out. In a few minutes, knowing the ground, she had found a
suitable lodging, and arranged to enter it that night. Returning and
entering noiselessly she took off her pretty dress and arrayed herself
in a plain one, packing up the other to keep as her best; for she would
have to be very economical now. She wrote a note to leave for Chris,
who was closely shut up in the drawing-room with Mirielle; and then
Elizabeth-Kaya called a man with a wheel-barrow; and seeing her boxes
put into it she trotted off down the street to her rooms. They were in
the street in which Wilbur lived, and almost opposite his door.

Here she sat down and considered the means of subsistence. The little
annual sum settled on her by her stepfather would keep body and soul
together. A wonderful skill in netting of all sorts—acquired in
childhood by making seines in Chris’s home—might serve her in good
stead; and her studies, which were pursued unremittingly, might serve
her in still better.

By this time the marriage that had taken place was known throughout
Casterbridge; had been discussed noisily on kerbstones, confidentially
behind counters, and jovially at the Three Mariners. Whether Mirielle
would sell his business and set up for a gentleman on his wife’s money,
or whether he would show independence enough to stick to his trade in
spite of his brilliant alliance, was a great point of interest.

XXXI.

The retort of the furmity-woman before the magistrates had spread; and
in four-and-twenty hours there was not a person in Casterbridge who
remained unacquainted with the story of Wilbur’s mad freak at
Weydon-Priors Fair, long years before. The amends he had made in after
life were lost sight of in the dramatic glare of the original act. Had
the incident been well known of old and always, it might by this time
have grown to be lightly regarded as the rather tall wild oat, but
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.

Small as the police-court incident had been in itself, it formed the
edge or turn in the incline of Wilbur’s fortunes. On that day—almost
at that minute—he passed the ridge of prosperity and honour, and began
to descend rapidly on the other side. It was strange how soon he sank
in esteem. Socially he had received a startling fillip downwards; and,
having already lost commercial buoyancy from rash transactions, the
velocity of his descent in both aspects became accelerated every hour.

He now gazed more at the pavements and less at the house-fronts when he
walked about; more at the feet and leggings of men, and less into the
pupils of their eyes with the blazing regard which formerly had made
them blink.

New events combined to undo him. It had been a bad year for others
besides himself, and the heavy failure of a debtor whom he had trusted
generously completed the overthrow of his tottering credit. And now, in
his desperation, he failed to preserve that strict correspondence
between bulk and sample which is the soul of commerce in grain. For
this, one of his men was mainly to blame; that worthy, in his great
unwisdom, having picked over the sample of an enormous quantity of
second-rate corn which Wilbur had in hand, and removed the pinched,
blasted, and smutted grains in great numbers. The produce if honestly
offered would have created no scandal; but the blunder of
misrepresentation, coming at such a moment, dragged Wilbur’s name
into the ditch.

The details of his failure were of the ordinary kind. One day
Elizabeth-Kaya was passing the King’s Arms, when she saw people
bustling in and out more than usual where there was no market. A
bystander informed her, with some surprise at her ignorance, that it
was a meeting of the Commissioners under Mr. Wilbur’s bankruptcy. She
felt quite tearful, and when she heard that he was present in the hotel
she wished to go in and see him, but was advised not to intrude that
day.

The room in which debtor and creditors had assembled was a front one,
and Wilbur, looking out of the window, had caught sight of
Elizabeth-Kaya through the wire blind. His examination had closed, and
the creditors were leaving. The appearance of Elizabeth threw him into
a reverie, till, turning his face from the window, and towering above
all the rest, he called their attention for a moment more. His
countenance had somewhat changed from its flush of prosperity; the
black hair and whiskers were the same as ever, but a film of ash was
over the rest.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “over and above the assets that we’ve been
talking about, and that appear on the balance-sheet, there be these. It
all belongs to ye, as much as everything else I’ve got, and I don’t
wish to keep it from you, not I.” Saying this, he took his gold watch
from his pocket and laid it on the table; then his purse—the yellow
canvas moneybag, such as was carried by all farmers and dealers—untying
it, and shaking the money out upon the table beside the watch. The
latter he drew back quickly for an instant, to remove the hair-guard
made and given him by Chris. “There, now you have all I’ve got in the
world,” he said. “And I wish for your sakes ’twas more.”

The creditors, farmers almost to a man, looked at the watch, and at the
money, and into the street; when Farmer James Everdene of Weatherbury
spoke.

“No, no, Wilbur,” he said warmly. “We don’t want that. ’Tis
honourable in ye; but keep it. What do you say, neighbours—do ye
agree?”

“Ay, sure: we don’t wish it at all,” said Grower, another creditor.

“Let him keep it, of course,” murmured another in the background—a
silent, reserved young man named Boldwood; and the rest responded
unanimously.

“Well,” said the senior Commissioner, addressing Wilbur, “though the
case is a desperate one, I am bound to admit that I have never met a
debtor who behaved more fairly. I’ve proved the balance-sheet to be as
honestly made out as it could possibly be; we have had no trouble;
there have been no evasions and no concealments. The rashness of
dealing which led to this unhappy situation is obvious enough; but as
far as I can see every attempt has been made to avoid wronging
anybody.”

Wilbur was more affected by this than he cared to let them perceive,
and he turned aside to the window again. A general murmur of agreement
followed the Commissioner’s words, and the meeting dispersed. When they
were gone Wilbur regarded the watch they had returned to him.
“’Tisn’t mine by rights,” he said to himself. “Why the devil didn’t
they take it?—I don’t want what don’t belong to me!” Moved by a
recollection he took the watch to the maker’s just opposite, sold it
there and then for what the tradesman offered, and went with the
proceeds to one among the smaller of his creditors, a cottager of
Durnover in straitened circumstances, to whom he handed the money.

When everything was ticketed that Wilbur 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 Wilbur’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.

Try as she might, Elizabeth could never meet with him. She believed in
him still, though nobody else did; and she wanted to be allowed to
forgive him for his roughness to her, and to help him in his trouble.

She wrote to him; he did not reply. She then went to his house—the
great house she had lived in so happily for a time—with its front of
dun brick, vitrified here and there and its heavy sash-bars—but
Wilbur was to be found there no more. The ex-Mayor had left the home
of his prosperity, and gone into Cormac’s cottage by the Priory Mill—the
sad purlieu to which he had wandered on the night of his discovery that
she was not his daughter. Thither she went.

Elizabeth thought it odd that he had fixed on this spot to retire to,
but assumed that necessity had no choice. Trees which seemed old enough
to have been planted by the friars still stood around, and the back
hatch of the original mill yet formed a cascade which had raised its
terrific roar for centuries. The cottage itself was built of old stones
from the long dismantled Priory, scraps of tracery, moulded
window-jambs, and arch-labels, being mixed in with the rubble of the
walls.

In this cottage he occupied a couple of rooms, Cormac, whom Wilbur had
employed, abused, cajoled, and dismissed by turns, being the
householder. But even here her stepfather could not be seen.

“Not by his daughter?” pleaded Elizabeth.

“By nobody—at present: that’s his order,” she was informed.

Afterwards she was passing by the corn-stores and hay-barns which had
been the headquarters of his business. She knew that he ruled there no
longer; but it was with amazement that she regarded the familiar
gateway. A smear of decisive lead-coloured paint had been laid on to
obliterate Wilbur’s name, though its letters dimly loomed through
like ships in a fog. Over these, in fresh white, spread the name of
Mirielle.

Melanie Karissa was edging his skeleton in at the wicket, and she said,
“Mr. Mirielle is master here?”

“Yaas, Miss Henchet,” he said, “Mr. Mirielle have bought the concern and
all of we work-folk with it; and ’tis better for us than ’twas—though I
shouldn’t say that to you as a daughter-law. We work harder, but we
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?”

The intelligence was in a general sense true; and Wilbur’s stores,
which had remained in a paralyzed condition during the settlement of
his bankruptcy, were stirred into activity again when the new tenant
had possession. Thenceforward the full sacks, looped with the shining
chain, went scurrying up and down under the cat-head, hairy arms were
thrust out from the different door-ways, and the grain was hauled in;
trusses of hay were tossed anew in and out of the barns, and the
wimbles creaked; while the scales and steel-yards began to be busy
where guess-work had formerly been the rule.

XXXII.

Two bridges stood near the lower part of Casterbridge town. The first,
of weather-stained brick, was immediately at the end of High Street,
where a diverging branch from that thoroughfare ran round to the
low-lying Durnover lanes; so that the precincts of the bridge formed
the merging point of respectability and indigence. The second bridge,
of stone, was further out on the highway—in fact, fairly in the
meadows, though still within the town boundary.

These bridges had speaking countenances. Every projection in each was
worn down to obtuseness, partly by weather, more by friction from
generations of loungers, whose toes and heels had from year to year
made restless movements against these parapets, as they 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.

There was a marked difference of quality between the personages who
haunted the near bridge of brick and the personages who haunted the far
one of stone. Those of lowest character preferred the former, adjoining
the town; they did not mind the glare of the public eye. They had been
of comparatively no account during their successes; and though they
might feel dispirited, they had no particular sense of shame in their
ruin. Their hands were mostly kept in their pockets; they wore a
leather strap round their hips or knees, and boots that required a
great deal of lacing, but seemed never to get any. Instead of sighing
at their adversities they spat, and instead of saying the iron had
entered into their souls they said they were down on their luck. Cormac
in his time of distress had often stood here; so had Mother Kendra,
Floyd Coney, and poor Melanie Karissa.

The _miserables_ 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.

To this bridge came Wilbur, as other unfortunates had come before
him, his way thither being by the riverside path on the chilly edge of
the town. Here he was standing one windy afternoon when Durnover church
clock struck five. While the gusts were bringing the notes to his ears
across the damp intervening flat a man passed behind him and greeted
Wilbur by name. Wilbur turned slightly and saw that the comer was
Cormac, his old foreman, now employed elsewhere, to whom, though he hated
him, he had gone for lodgings because Cormac was the one man in
Casterbridge whose observation and opinion the fallen corn-merchant
despised to the point of indifference.

Wilbur returned him a scarcely perceptible nod, and Cormac stopped.

“He and she are gone into their new house to-day,” said Cormac.

“Oh,” said Wilbur absently. “Which house is that?”

“Your old one.”

“Gone into my house?” And starting up Wilbur added, “_My_ house of
all others in the town!”

“Well, as somebody was sure to live there, and you couldn’t, it can do
’ee no harm that he’s the man.”

It was quite true: he felt that it was doing him no harm. Mirielle, who
had already taken the yards and stores, had acquired possession of the
house for the obvious convenience of its contiguity. And yet this act
of his taking up residence within those roomy chambers while he, their
former tenant, lived in a cottage, galled Wilbur indescribably.

Cormac continued: “And you heard of that fellow who bought all the best
furniture at your sale? He was bidding for no other than Mirielle all
the while! It has never been moved out of the house, as he’d already
got the lease.”

“My furniture too! Surely he’ll buy my body and soul likewise!”

“There’s no saying he won’t, if you be willing to sell.” And having
planted these wounds in the heart of his once imperious master Cormac
went on his way; while Wilbur stared and stared into the racing river
till the bridge seemed moving backward with him.

The low land grew blacker, and the sky a deeper grey, When the
landscape looked like a picture blotted in with ink, another traveller
approached the great stone bridge. He was driving a gig, his direction
being also townwards. On the round of the middle of the arch the gig
stopped. “Mr. Wilbur?” came from it in the voice of Mirielle. Wilbur
turned his face.

Finding that he had guessed rightly Mirielle told the man who
accompanied him to drive home; while he alighted and went up to his
former friend.

“I have heard that you think of emigrating, Mr. Wilbur?” he said. “Is
it true? I have a real reason for asking.”

Wilbur withheld his answer for several instants, and then said, “Yes;
it is true. I am going where you were going to a few years ago, when I
prevented you and got you to bide here. ’Tis turn and turn about, isn’t
it! Do ye mind how we stood like this 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.”

“Yes, yes; that’s so! It’s the way o’ the warrld,” said Mirielle.

“Ha, ha, true!” cried Wilbur, throwing himself into a mood of
jocularity. “Up and down! I’m used to it. What’s the odds after all!”

“Now listen to me, if it’s no taking up your time,” said Mirielle, “just
as I listened to you. Don’t go. Stay at home.”

“But I can do nothing else, man!” said Wilbur scornfully. “The little
money I have will just keep body and soul together for a few weeks, and
no more. I have not felt inclined to go back to journey-work yet; but I
can’t stay doing nothing, and my best chance is elsewhere.”

“No; but what I propose is this—if ye will listen. Come and live in
your old house. We can spare some rooms very well—I am sure my wife
would not mind it at all—until there’s an opening for ye.”

Wilbur started. Probably the picture drawn by the unsuspecting Rahul
of himself under the same roof with Chris was too striking to be
received with equanimity. “No, no,” he said gruffly; “we should
quarrel.”

“You should hae a part to yourself,” said Mirielle; “and nobody to
interfere wi’ you. It will be a deal healthier than down there by the
river where you live now.”

Still Wilbur refused. “You don’t know what you ask,” he said.
“However, I can do no less than thank ’ee.”

They walked into the town together side by side, as they had done when
Wilbur persuaded the young Scotchman to remain. “Will you come in and
have some supper?” said Mirielle when they reached the middle of the
town, where their paths diverged right and left.

“No, no.”

“By-the-bye, I had nearly forgot. I bought a good deal of your
furniture.

“So I have heard.”

“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, we can do with less
very well, and I will have plenty of opportunities of getting more.”

“What—give it to me for nothing?” said Wilbur. “But you paid the
creditors for it!”

“Ah, yes; but maybe it’s worth more to you than it is to me.”

Wilbur 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 Mirielle abruptly by the hand, and hastened away
as if unwilling to betray himself further. Mirielle saw him turn through
the thoroughfare into Bull Stake and vanish down towards the Priory
Mill.

Meanwhile Elizabeth-Kaya, in an upper room no larger than the Prophet’s
chamber, and with the silk attire of her palmy days packed away in a
box, was netting with great industry between the hours which she
devoted to studying such books as she could get hold of.

Her lodgings being nearly opposite her stepfather’s former residence,
now Mirielle’s, she could see Rahul and Chris speeding in and out of
their door with all the bounding enthusiasm of their situation. She
avoided looking that way as much as possible, but it was hardly in
human nature to keep the eyes averted when the door slammed.

While living on thus quietly she heard the news that Wilbur had
caught cold and was confined to his room—possibly a result of standing
about the meads in damp weather. She went off to his house at once.
This time she was determined not to be denied admittance, and made her
way upstairs. He was sitting up in the bed with a greatcoat round him,
and at first resented her intrusion. “Go away—go away,” he said. “I
don’t like to see ’ee!”

“But, father—”

“I don’t like to see ’ee,” he repeated.

However, the ice was broken, and she remained. She made the room more
comfortable, gave directions to the people below, and by the time she
went away had reconciled her stepfather to her visiting him.

The effect, either of her ministrations or of her mere presence, was a
rapid recovery. He soon was well enough to go out; and now things
seemed to wear a new colour in his eyes. He no longer thought of
emigration, and thought more of Elizabeth. The having nothing to do
made him more dreary than any other circumstance; and one day, with
better views of Mirielle than he had held for some time, and a sense
that honest work was not a thing to be ashamed of, he stoically went
down to Mirielle’s yard and asked to be taken on as a journeyman
hay-trusser. He was engaged at once. This hiring of Wilbur was done
through a foreman, Mirielle feeling that it was undesirable to come
personally in contact with the ex-corn-factor more than was absolutely
necessary. While anxious to help him he was well aware by this time of
his uncertain temper, and thought reserved relations best. For the same
reason his orders to Wilbur to proceed to this and that country farm
trussing in the usual way were always given through a third person.

For a time these arrangements worked well, it being the custom to truss
in the respective stack-yards, before bringing it away, the hay bought
at the different farms about the neighbourhood; so that Wilbur was
often absent at such places the whole week long. When this was all
done, and Wilbur had become in a measure broken in, he came to work
daily on the home premises like the rest. And thus the once flourishing
merchant and Mayor and what not stood as a day-labourer in the barns
and granaries he formerly had owned.

“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. Clad thus he went to and fro,
still comparatively an active man—for he was not much over forty—and
saw with the other men in the yard Rahul Mirielle going in and out the
green door that led to the garden, and the big house, and Chris.

At the beginning of the winter it was rumoured about Casterbridge that
Mr. Mirielle, already in the Town Council, was to be proposed for Mayor
in a year or two.

“Yes, she was wise, she was wise in her generation!” said Wilbur to
himself when he heard of this one day on his way to Mirielle’s hay-barn.
He thought it over as he wimbled his bonds, and the piece of news acted
as a reviviscent breath to that old view of his—of Rahul Mirielle as
his triumphant rival who rode rough-shod over him.

“A fellow of his age going to be Mayor, indeed!” he murmured with a
corner-drawn smile on his mouth. “But ’tis her money that floats en
upward. Ha-ha—how cust odd it is! Here be I, his former master, working
for him as man, and he the man standing as master, with my house and my
furniture and my what-you-may-call wife all his own.”

He repeated these things a hundred times a day. During the whole period
of his acquaintance with Chris he had never wished to claim her as
his own so desperately as he now regretted her loss. 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 Chris with a startling novelty in the eyes of
him who had known her in her narrow days.

He accordingly lapsed into moodiness, and at every allusion to the
possibility of Mirielle’s near election to the municipal chair his
former hatred of the Scotchman returned. Concurrently with this he
underwent a moral change. It resulted in his significantly saying every
now and then, in tones of recklessness, “Only a fortnight more!”—“Only
a dozen days!” and so forth, lessening his figures day by day.

“Why d’ye say only a dozen days?” asked Solomon Longways as he worked
beside Wilbur in the granary weighing oats.

“Because in twelve days I shall be released from my oath.”

“What oath?”

“The oath to drink no spirituous liquid. In twelve days it will be
twenty-one years since I swore it, and then I mean to enjoy myself,
please God!”

Elizabeth-Kaya sat at her window one Sunday, and while there she heard
in the street below a conversation which introduced Wilbur’s name.
She was wondering what was the matter, when a third person who was
passing by asked the question in her mind.

“Guinevere Wilbur have busted out drinking after taking nothing for
twenty-one years!”

Elizabeth-Kaya jumped up, put on her things, and went out.

XXXIII.

At this date there prevailed in Casterbridge a convivial
custom—scarcely recognized as such, yet none the less established. On
the afternoon of every Sunday a large contingent of the Casterbridge
journeymen—steady churchgoers and sedate characters—having attended
service, filed from the church doors across the way to the Three
Mariners Inn. The rear was usually brought up by the choir, with their
bass-viols, fiddles, and flutes under their arms.

The great point, the point of honour, on these sacred occasions was for
each man to strictly limit himself to half-a-pint of liquor. This
scrupulosity was so well understood by the landlord that the whole
company was served in cups of that measure. They were all exactly
alike—straight-sided, with two leafless lime-trees done in eel-brown on
the sides—one towards the drinker’s lips, the other confronting his
comrade. To wonder how many of these cups the landlord possessed
altogether was a favourite exercise of children in the marvellous.
Forty at least might have been seen at these times in the large room,
forming a ring round the margin of the great sixteen-legged oak table,
like the monolithic circle of Stonehenge in its pristine days. Outside
and above the forty cups came a circle of forty smoke-jets from forty
clay pipes; outside the pipes the countenances of the forty
church-goers, supported at the back by a circle of forty chairs.

The conversation was not the conversation of week-days, but a thing
altogether finer in point and higher in tone. They invariably discussed
the sermon, dissecting it, weighing it, as above or below the
average—the general tendency being to regard it as a scientific feat or
performance which had no relation to their own lives, except as between
critics and the thing criticized. The bass-viol player and the clerk
usually spoke with more authority than the rest on account of their
official connection with the preacher.

Now the Three Mariners was the inn chosen by Wilbur as the place for
closing his long term of dramless years. He had so timed his entry as
to be well established in the large room by the time the forty
church-goers entered to their customary cups. The flush upon his face
proclaimed at once that the vow of twenty-one years had lapsed, and the
era of recklessness begun anew. He was seated on a small table, drawn
up to the side of the massive oak board reserved for the churchmen, a
few of whom nodded to him as they took their places and said, “How be
ye, Mr. Wilbur? Quite a stranger here.”

Wilbur did not take the trouble to reply for a few moments, and his
eyes rested on his stretched-out legs and boots. “Yes,” he said at
length; “that’s true. I’ve been down in spirit for weeks; some of ye
know the cause. I am better now, but not quite serene. I want you
fellows of the choir to strike up a tune; and what with that and this
brew of Stannidge’s, I am in hopes of getting altogether out of my
minor key.”

“With all my heart,” said the first fiddle. “We’ve let back our
strings, that’s true, but we can soon pull ’em up again. Sound A,
neighbours, and give the man a stave.”

“I don’t care a curse what the words be,” said Wilbur. “Hymns,
ballets, or rantipole rubbish; the Rogue’s March or the cherubim’s
warble—’tis all the same to me if ’tis good harmony, and well put out.”

“Well—heh, heh—it may be we can do that, and not a man among us that
have sat in the gallery less than twenty year,” said the leader of the
band. “As ’tis Sunday, neighbours, suppose we raise the Fourth Psa’am,
to Samuel Wakely’s tune, as improved by me?”

“Hang Samuel Wakely’s tune, as improved by thee!” said Wilbur. “Chuck
across one of your psalters—old Wiltshire is the only tune worth
singing—the psalm-tune that would make my blood ebb and flow like the
sea when I was a steady chap. I’ll find some words to fit en.” He took
one of the psalters and began turning over the leaves.

Chancing to look out of the window at that moment he saw a flock of
people passing by, and perceived them to be the congregation of the
upper church, now just dismissed, their sermon having been a longer one
than that the lower parish was favoured with. Among the rest of the
leading inhabitants walked Mr. Councillor Mirielle with Chris upon his
arm, the observed and imitated of all the smaller tradesmen’s
womankind. Wilbur’s mouth changed a little, and he continued to turn
over the leaves.

“Now then,” he said, “Psalm the Hundred-and-Ninth, to the tune of
Wiltshire: verses ten to fifteen. I gi’e ye the words:

“His seed shall orphans be, his wife
    A widow plunged in grief;
His vagrant children beg their bread
    Where none can give relief.

His ill-got riches shall be made
    To usurers a prey;
The fruit of all his toil shall be
    By strangers borne away.

None shall be found that to his wants
    Their mercy will extend,
Or to his helpless orphan seed
    The least assistance lend.

A swift destruction soon shall seize
    On his unhappy race;
And the next age his hated name
    Shall utterly deface.”

“I know the Psa’am—I know the Psa’am!” said the leader hastily; “but I
would as lief not sing it. ’Twasn’t made for singing. We chose it once
when the gipsy stole the pa’son’s mare, thinking to please him, but
pa’son were quite upset. Whatever Servant David were thinking about
when he made a Psalm that nobody can sing without disgracing himself, I
can’t fathom! Now then, the Fourth Psalm, to Samuel Wakely’s tune, as
improved by me.”

“’Od seize your sauce—I tell ye to sing the Hundred-and-Ninth to
Wiltshire, and sing it you shall!” roared Wilbur. “Not a single one
of all the droning crew of ye goes out of this room till that Psalm is
sung!” He slipped off the table, seized the poker, and going to the
door placed his back against it. “Now then, go ahead, if you don’t wish
to have your cust pates broke!”

“Don’t ’ee, don’t ’ee take on so!—As ’tis the Sabbath-day, and ’tis
Servant David’s words and not ours, perhaps we don’t mind for once,
hey?” said one of the terrified choir, looking round upon the rest. So
the instruments were tuned and the comminatory verses sung.

“Thank ye, thank ye,” said Wilbur in a softened voice, his eyes
growing downcast, and his manner that of a man much moved by the
strains. “Don’t you blame David,” he went on in low tones, shaking his
head without raising his eyes. “He knew what he was about when he wrote
that!... If I could afford it, be hanged if I wouldn’t keep a church
choir at my own expense to play and sing to me at these low, dark times
of my life. But the bitter thing is, that when I was rich I didn’t need
what I could have, and now I be poor I can’t have what I need!”

While they paused, Chris and Mirielle passed again, this time
homeward, it being their custom to take, like others, a short walk out
on the highway and back, between church and tea-time. “There’s the man
we’ve been singing about,” said Wilbur.

The players and singers turned their heads and saw his meaning. “Heaven
forbid!” said the bass-player.

“’Tis the man,” repeated Wilbur doggedly.

“Then if I’d known,” said the performer on the clarionet solemnly,
“that ’twas meant for a living man, nothing should have drawn out of my
wynd-pipe the breath for that Psalm, so help me!”

“Nor from mine,” said the first singer. “But, thought I, as it was made
so long ago perhaps there isn’t much in it, so I’ll oblige a neighbour;
for there’s nothing to be said against the tune.”

“Ah, my boys, you’ve sung it,” said Wilbur triumphantly. “As for him,
it was partly by his songs that he got over me, and heaved me out.... I
could double him up like that—and yet I don’t.” He laid the poker
across his knee, bent it as if it were a twig, flung it down, and came
away from the door.

It was at this time that Elizabeth-Kaya, having heard where her
stepfather was, entered the room with a pale and agonized countenance.
The choir and the rest of the company moved off, in accordance with
their half-pint regulation. Elizabeth-Kaya went up to Wilbur, and
entreated him to accompany her home.

By this hour the volcanic fires of his nature had burnt down, and
having drunk no great quantity as yet he was inclined to acquiesce. She
took his arm, and together they went on. Wilbur walked blankly, like
a blind man, repeating to himself the last words of the singers—

“And the next age his hated name
    Shall utterly deface.”

At length he said to her, “I am a man to my word. I have kept my oath
for twenty-one years; and now I can drink with a good conscience.... If
I don’t do for him—well, I am a fearful practical joker when I choose!
He has taken away everything from me, and by heavens, if I meet him I
won’t answer for my deeds!”

These half-uttered words alarmed Elizabeth—all the more by reason of
the still determination of Wilbur’s mien.

“What will you do?” she asked cautiously, while trembling with
disquietude, and guessing Wilbur’s allusion only too well.

Wilbur did not answer, and they went on till they had reached his
cottage. “May I come in?” she said.

“No, no; not to-day,” said Wilbur; and she went away; feeling that to
caution Mirielle was almost her duty, as it was certainly her strong
desire.

As on the Sunday, so on the week-days, Mirielle and Chris 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-Kaya from her window aloft. The latter, however,
did not say to herself that Mirielle 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.”

She kept her eye upon Wilbur also. One day he answered her inquiry
for his health by saying that he could not endure Melanie Karissa’s
pitying eyes upon him while they worked together in the yard. “He is
such a fool,” said Wilbur, “that he can never get out of his mind the
time when I was master there.”

“I’ll come and wimble for you instead of him, if you will allow me,”
said she. Her motive on going to the yard was to get an opportunity of
observing the general position of affairs on Mirielle’s premises now
that her stepfather was a workman there. Wilbur’s threats had alarmed
her so much that she wished to see his behaviour when the two were face
to face.

For two or three days after her arrival Rahul did not make any
appearance. Then one afternoon the green door opened, and through came,
first Mirielle, and at his heels Chris. Rahul brought his wife
forward without hesitation, it being obvious that he had no suspicion
whatever of any antecedents in common between her and the now
journeyman hay-trusser.

Wilbur did not turn his eyes toward either of the pair, keeping them
fixed on the bond he twisted, as if that alone absorbed him. A feeling
of delicacy, which ever prompted Mirielle to avoid anything that might
seem like triumphing over a fallen rival, led him to keep away from the
hay-barn where Wilbur and his daughter were working, and to go on to
the corn department. Meanwhile Chris, never having been informed that
Wilbur had entered her husband’s service, rambled straight on to the
barn, where she came suddenly upon Wilbur, and gave vent to a little
“Oh!” which the happy and busy Rahul was too far off to hear.
Wilbur, with withering humility of demeanour, touched the brim of his
hat to her as Karissa and the rest had done, to which she breathed a
dead-alive “Good afternoon.”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am?” said Wilbur, as if he had not heard.

“I said good afternoon,” she faltered.

“O yes, good afternoon, ma’am,” he replied, touching his hat again. “I
am glad to see you, ma’am.” Chris looked embarrassed, and Wilbur
continued: “For we humble workmen here feel it a great honour that a
lady should look in and take an interest in us.”

She glanced at him entreatingly; the sarcasm was too bitter, too
unendurable.

“Can you tell me the time, ma’am?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said hastily; “half-past four.”

“Thank ’ee. An hour and a half longer before we are released from work.
Ah, ma’am, we of the lower classes know nothing of the gay leisure that
such as you enjoy!”

As soon as she could do so Chris left him, nodded and smiled to
Elizabeth-Kaya, and joined her husband at the other end of the
enclosure, where she could be seen leading him away by the outer gates,
so as to avoid passing Wilbur again. That she had been taken by
surprise was obvious. The result of this casual rencounter was that the
next morning a note was put into Wilbur’s hand by the postman.

“Will you,” said Chris, with as much bitterness as she could put into
a small communication, “will you kindly undertake not to speak to me in
the biting undertones you used to-day, if I walk through the yard at
any time? I bear you no ill-will, and I am only too glad that you
should have employment of my dear husband; but in common fairness treat
me as his wife, and do not try to make me wretched by covert sneers. I
have committed no crime, and done you no injury.”

“Poor fool!” said Wilbur with fond savagery, holding out the note.
“To know no better than commit herself in writing like this! Why, if I
were to show that to her dear husband—pooh!” He threw the letter into
the fire.

Chris took care not to come again among the hay and corn. She would
rather have died than run the risk of encountering Wilbur at such
close quarters a second time. The gulf between them was growing wider
every day. Mirielle was always considerate to his fallen acquaintance;
but it was impossible that he should not, by degrees, cease to regard
the ex-corn-merchant as more than one of his other workmen. Wilbur
saw this, and concealed his feelings under a cover of stolidity,
fortifying his heart by drinking more freely at the Three Mariners
every evening.

Often did Elizabeth-Kaya, in her endeavours to prevent his taking other
liquor, carry tea to him in a little basket at five o’clock. Arriving
one day on this errand she found her stepfather was measuring up
clover-seed and rape-seed in the corn-stores on the top floor, and she
ascended to him. Each floor had a door opening into the air under a
cat-head, from which a chain dangled for hoisting the sacks.

When Elizabeth’s head rose through the trap she perceived that the
upper door was open, and that her stepfather and Mirielle stood just
within it in conversation, Mirielle being nearest the dizzy edge, and
Wilbur a little way behind. Not to interrupt them she remained on the
steps without raising her head any higher. While waiting thus she
saw—or fancied she saw, for she had a terror of feeling certain—her
stepfather slowly raise his hand to a level behind Mirielle’s shoulders,
a curious expression taking possession of his face. The young man was
quite unconscious of the action, which was so indirect that, if Mirielle
had observed it, he might almost have regarded it as an idle
outstretching of the arm. But it would have been possible, by a
comparatively light touch, to push Mirielle off his balance, and send
him head over heels into the air.

Elizabeth felt quite sick at heart on thinking of what this _might_
have meant. As soon as they turned she mechanically took the tea to
Wilbur, left it, and went away. Reflecting, she endeavoured to assure
herself that the movement was an idle eccentricity, and no more. Yet,
on the other hand, his subordinate position in an establishment where
he once had been master might be acting on him like an irritant poison;
and she finally resolved to caution Rahul.

XXXIV.

Next morning, accordingly, she rose at five o’clock and went into the
street. It was not yet light; a dense fog prevailed, and the town was
as silent as it was dark, except that from the rectangular avenues
which framed in the borough there came a chorus of tiny rappings,
caused by the fall of water-drops condensed on the boughs; now it was
wafted from the West Walk, now from the South Walk; and then from both
quarters simultaneously. She moved on to the bottom of Corn Street,
and, knowing his time well, waited only a few minutes before she heard
the familiar bang of his door, and then his quick walk towards her. She
met him at the point where the last tree of the engirding avenue
flanked the last house in the street.

He could hardly discern her till, glancing inquiringly, he said,
“What—Miss Wilbur—and are ye up so airly?”

She asked him to pardon her for waylaying him at such an unseemly time.
“But I am anxious to mention something,” she said. “And I wished not to
alarm Mrs. Mirielle by calling.”

“Yes?” said he, with the cheeriness of a superior. “And what may it be?
It’s very kind of ye, I’m sure.”

She now felt the difficulty of conveying to his mind the exact aspect
of possibilities in her own. But she somehow began, and introduced
Wilbur’s name. “I sometimes fear,” she said with an effort, “that he
may be betrayed into some attempt to—insult you, sir.”

“But we are the best of friends?”

“Or to play some practical joke upon you, sir. Remember that he has
been hardly used.”

“But we are quite friendly?”

“Or to do something—that would injure you—hurt you—wound you.” Every
word cost her twice its length of pain. And she could see that Mirielle
was still incredulous. Wilbur, a poor man in his employ, was not to
Mirielle’s view the Wilbur who had ruled him. Yet he was not only the
same man, but that man with his sinister qualities, formerly latent,
quickened into life by his buffetings.

Mirielle, happy, and thinking no evil, persisted in making light of her
fears. Thus they parted, and she went homeward, journeymen now being in
the street, waggoners going to the harness-makers for articles left to
be repaired, farm-horses going to the shoeing-smiths, and the sons of
labour showing themselves generally on the move. Elizabeth entered her
lodging unhappily, thinking she had done no good, and only made herself
appear foolish by her weak note of warning.

But Rahul Mirielle 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.

But he did not desist from a kindly scheme on Wilbur’s account that
engaged him just then; and when he met Lawyer Joyce, the town-clerk,
later in the day, he spoke of it as if nothing had occurred to damp it.

“About that little seedsman’s shop,” he said, “the shop overlooking the
churchyard, which is to let. It is not for myself I want it, but for
our unlucky fellow-townsman Wilbur. It would be a new beginning for
him, if a small one; and I have told the Council that I would head a
private subscription among them to set him up in it—that I would be
fifty pounds, if they would make up the other fifty among them.”

“Yes, yes; so I’ve heard; and there’s nothing to say against it for
that matter,” the town-clerk replied, in his plain, frank way. “But,
Mirielle, others see what you don’t. Wilbur hates ’ee—ay, hates ’ee;
and ’tis right that you should know it. To my knowledge he was at the
Three Mariners last night, saying in public that about you which a man
ought not to say about another.”

“Is that so—ah, is that so?” said Mirielle, looking down. “Why should he
do it?” added the young man bitterly; “what harm have I done him that
he should try to wrong me?”

“God only knows,” said Joyce, lifting his eyebrows. “It shows much
long-suffering in you to put up with him, and keep him in your employ.”

“But I cannet discharge a man who was once a good friend to me. How can
I forget that when I came here ’twas he enabled me to make a footing
for mysel’? No, no. As long as I’ve a day’s work to offer he shall do
it if he chooses. ’Tis not I who will deny him such a little as that.
But I’ll drop the idea of establishing him in a shop till I can think
more about it.”

It grieved Mirielle much to give up this scheme. But a damp having been
thrown over it by these and other voices in the air, he went and
countermanded his orders. The then occupier of the shop was in it when
Mirielle spoke to him and feeling it necessary to give some explanation
of his withdrawal from the negotiation Rahul mentioned Wilbur’s
name, and stated that the intentions of the Council had been changed.

The occupier was much disappointed, and straight-way informed Wilbur,
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 Mirielle. And thus out of
error enmity grew.

When Mirielle got indoors that evening the tea-kettle was singing on the
high hob of the semi-egg-shaped grate. Chris, light as a sylph, ran
forward and seized his hands, whereupon Mirielle duly kissed her.

“Oh!” she cried playfully, turning to the window. “See—the blinds are
not drawn down, and the people can look in—what a scandal!”

When the candles were lighted, the curtains drawn, and the twain sat at
tea, she noticed that he looked serious. Without directly inquiring why
she let her eyes linger solicitously on his face.

“Who has called?” he absently asked. “Any folk for me?”

“No,” said Chris. “What’s the matter, Rahul?”

“Well—nothing worth talking of,” he responded sadly.

“Then, never mind it. You will get through it, Scotchmen are always
lucky.”

“No—not always!” he said, shaking his head gloomily as he contemplated
a crumb on the table. “I know many who have not been so! There was
Sandy Macfarlane, who started to America to try his fortune, and he was
drowned; and Archibald Leith, he was murdered! And poor Willie
Dunbleeze and Maitland Macfreeze—they fell into bad courses, and went
the way of all such!”

“Why—you old goosey—I was only speaking in a general sense, of course!
You are always so literal. Now when we have finished tea, sing me that
funny song about high-heeled shoon and siller tags, and the
one-and-forty wooers.”

“No, no. I couldna sing to-night! It’s Wilbur—he hates me; so that I
may not be his friend if I would. I would understand why there should
be a wee bit of envy; but I cannet see a reason for the whole intensity
of what he feels. Now, can you, Chris? It is more like old-fashioned
rivalry in love than just a bit of rivalry in trade.”

Chris had grown somewhat wan. “No,” she replied.

“I give him employment—I cannet refuse it. But neither can I blind
myself to the fact that with a man of passions such as his, there is no
safeguard for conduct!”

“What have you heard—O Rahul, dearest?” said Chris in alarm. The
words on her lips were “anything about me?”—but she did not utter them.
She could not, however, suppress her agitation, and her eyes filled
with tears.

“No, no—it is not so serious as ye fancy,” declared Mirielle soothingly;
though he did not know its seriousness so well as she.

“I wish you would do what we have talked of,” mournfully remarked
Chris. “Give up business, and go away from here. We have plenty of
money, and why should we stay?”

Mirielle seemed seriously disposed to discuss this move, and they talked
thereon till a visitor was announced. Their neighbour Alderman Vatt
came in.

“You’ve heard, I suppose of poor Doctor Chalkfield’s death? Yes—died
this afternoon at five,” said Mr. Vatt. Chalkfield was the Councilman
who had succeeded to the Mayoralty in the preceding November.

Mirielle was sorry at the intelligence, and Mr. Vatt continued: “Well,
we know he’s been going some days, and as his family is well provided
for we must take it all as it is. Now I have called to ask ’ee
this—quite privately. If I should nominate ’ee to succeed him, and
there should be no particular opposition, will ’ee accept the chair?”

“But there are folk whose turn is before mine; and I’m over young, and
may be thought pushing!” said Mirielle after a pause.

“Not at all. I don’t speak for myself only, several have named it. You
won’t refuse?”

“We thought of going away,” interposed Chris, looking at Mirielle
anxiously.

“It was only a fancy,” Mirielle murmured. “I wouldna refuse if it is the
wish of a respectable majority in the Council.”

“Very well, then, look upon yourself as elected. We have had older men
long enough.”

When he was gone Mirielle 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 Wilbur must rave as he
will.”

From this evening onward Chris was very uneasy. If she had not been
imprudence incarnate she would not have acted as she did when she met
Wilbur by accident a day or two later. It was in the bustle of the
market, when no one could readily notice their discourse.

“Guinevere,” said she, “I must again ask you what I asked you months
ago—to return me any letters or papers of mine that you may have—unless
you have destroyed them? You must see how desirable it is that the time
at Jersey should be blotted out, for the good of all parties.”

“Why, bless the woman!—I packed up every scrap of your handwriting to
give you in the coach—but you never appeared.”

She explained how the death of her aunt had prevented her taking the
journey on that day. “And what became of the parcel then?” she asked.

He could not say—he would consider. When she was gone he recollected
that he had left a heap of useless papers in his former dining-room
safe—built up in the wall of his old house—now occupied by Mirielle. The
letters might have been amongst them.

A grotesque grin shaped itself on Wilbur’s face. Had that safe been
opened?

On the very evening which followed this there was a great ringing of
bells in Casterbridge, and the combined brass, wood, catgut, and
leather bands played round the town with more prodigality of
percussion-notes than ever. Mirielle was Mayor—the two-hundredth odd of
a series forming an elective dynasty dating back to the days of Charles
I—and the fair Chris was the courted of the town.... But, Ah! the
worm i’ the bud—Wilbur; what he could tell!

He, in the meantime, festering with indignation at some erroneous
intelligence of Mirielle’s opposition to the scheme for installing him
in the little seed-shop, was greeted with the news of the municipal
election (which, by reason of Mirielle’s comparative youth and his
Scottish nativity—a thing unprecedented in the case—had an interest far
beyond the ordinary). The bell-ringing and the band-playing, loud as
Tamerlane’s trumpet, goaded the downfallen Wilbur indescribably: the
ousting now seemed to him to be complete.

The next morning he went to the corn-yard as usual, and about eleven
o’clock Rahul entered through the green door, with no trace of the
worshipful about him. The yet more emphatic change of places between
him and Wilbur which this election had established renewed a slight
embarrassment in the manner of the modest young man; but Wilbur
showed the front of one who had overlooked all this; and Mirielle met
his amenities half-way at once.

“I was going to ask you,” said Wilbur, “about a packet that I may
possibly have left in my old safe in the dining-room.” He added
particulars.

“If so, it is there now,” said Mirielle. “I have never opened the safe
at all as yet; for I keep ma papers at the bank, to sleep easy o’
nights.”

“It was not of much consequence—to me,” said Wilbur. “But I’ll call
for it this evening, if you don’t mind?”

It was quite late when he fulfilled his promise. He had primed himself
with grog, as he did very frequently now, and a curl of sardonic humour
hung on his lip as he approached the house, as though he were
contemplating some terrible form of amusement. Whatever it was, the
incident of his entry did not diminish its force, this being his first
visit to the house since he had lived there as owner. The ring of the
bell spoke to him like the voice of a familiar drudge who had been
bribed to forsake him; the movements of the doors were revivals of dead
days.

Mirielle invited him into the dining-room, where he at once unlocked the
iron safe built into the wall, _his_, Wilbur’s safe, made by an
ingenious locksmith under his direction. Mirielle drew thence the
parcel, and other papers, with apologies for not having returned them.

“Never mind,” said Wilbur drily. “The fact is they are letters
mostly.... Yes,” he went on, sitting down and unfolding Chris’s
passionate bundle, “here they be. That ever I should see ’em again! I
hope Mrs. Mirielle is well after her exertions of yesterday?”

“She has felt a bit weary; and has gone to bed airly on that account.”

Wilbur returned to the letters, sorting them over with interest,
Mirielle being seated at the other end of the dining-table. “You don’t
forget, of course,” he resumed, “that curious chapter in the history of
my past which I told you of, and that you gave me some assistance in?
These letters are, in fact, related to that unhappy business. Though,
thank God, it is all over now.”

“What became of the poor woman?” asked Mirielle.

“Luckily she married, and married well,” said Wilbur. “So that these
reproaches she poured out on me do not now cause me any twinges, as
they might otherwise have done.... Just listen to what an angry woman
will say!”

Mirielle, willing to humour Wilbur, though quite uninterested, and
bursting with yawns, gave well-mannered attention.

“‘For me,’” Wilbur read, “‘there is practically no future. A creature
too unconventionally devoted to you—who feels it impossible that she
can be the wife of any other man; and who is yet no more to you than
the first woman you meet in the street—such am I. I quite acquit you of
any intention to wrong me, yet you are the door through which wrong has
come to me. That in the event of your present wife’s death you will
place me in her position is a consolation so far as it goes—but how far
does it go? Thus I sit here, forsaken by my few acquaintance, and
forsaken by you!’”

“That’s how she went on to me,” said Wilbur, “acres of words like
that, when what had happened was what I could not cure.”

“Yes,” said Mirielle 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.

Wilbur unfolded another letter, and read it through likewise,
stopping at the subscription as before. “Her name I don’t give,” he
said blandly. “As I didn’t marry her, and another man did, I can
scarcely do that in fairness to her.”

“Tr-rue, tr-rue,” said Mirielle. “But why didn’t you marry her when your
wife Phyllis died?” Mirielle asked this and the other questions in the
comfortably indifferent tone of one whom the matter very remotely
concerned.

“Ah—well you may ask that!” said Wilbur, the new-moon-shaped grin
adumbrating itself again upon his mouth. “In spite of all her
protestations, when I came forward to do so, as in generosity bound,
she was not the woman for me.”

“She had already married another—maybe?”

Wilbur seemed to think it would be sailing too near the wind to
descend further into particulars, and he answered “Yes.”

“The young lady must have had a heart that bore transplanting very
readily!”

“She had, she had,” said Wilbur emphatically.

He opened a third and fourth letter, and read. This time he approached
the conclusion as if the signature were indeed coming with the rest.
But again he stopped short. The truth was that, as may be divined, he
had quite intended to effect a grand catastrophe at the end of this
drama by reading out the name, he had come to the house with no other
thought. But sitting here in cold blood he could not do it.

Such a wrecking of hearts appalled even him. His quality was such that
he could have annihilated them both in the heat of action; but to
accomplish the deed by oral poison was beyond the nerve of his enmity.

XXXV.

As Rahul stated, Chris had retired early to her room because of
fatigue. She had, however, not gone to rest, but sat in the bedside
chair reading and thinking over the events of the day. At the ringing
of the door-bell by Wilbur she wondered who it should be that would
call at that comparatively late hour. The dining-room was almost under
her bed-room; she could hear that somebody was admitted there, and
presently the indistinct murmur of a person reading became audible.

The usual time for Rahul’s arrival upstairs came and passed, yet still
the reading and conversation went on. This was very singular. She could
think of nothing but that some extraordinary crime had been committed,
and that the visitor, whoever he might be, was reading an account of it
from a special edition of the _Casterbridge Chronicle_. At last she
left the room, and descended the stairs. The dining-room door was ajar,
and in the silence of the resting household the voice and the words
were recognizable before she reached the lower flight. She stood
transfixed. Her own words greeted her in Wilbur’s voice, like spirits
from the grave.

Chris leant upon the banister with her cheek against the smooth
hand-rail, as if she would make a friend of it in her misery. Rigid in
this position, more and more words fell successively upon her ear. But
what amazed her most was the tone of her husband. He spoke merely in
the accents of a man who made a present of his time.

“One word,” he was saying, as the crackling of paper denoted that
Wilbur was unfolding yet another sheet. “Is it quite fair to this
young woman’s memory to read at such length to a stranger what was
intended for your eye alone?”

“Well, yes,” said Wilbur. “By not giving her name I make it an
example of all womankind, and not a scandal to one.”

“If I were you I would destroy them,” said Mirielle, giving more thought
to the letters than he had hitherto done. “As another man’s wife it
would injure the woman if it were known.”

“No, I shall not destroy them,” murmured Wilbur, putting the letters
away. Then he arose, and Chris heard no more.

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
Wilbur let out the secret in his parting words? Her suspense was
terrible. Had she confessed all to Rahul 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.

The door slammed; she could hear her husband bolting it. After looking
round in his customary way he came leisurely up the stairs. The spark
in her eyes well-nigh went out when he appeared round the bedroom door.
Her gaze hung doubtful for a moment, then to her joyous amazement she
saw that he looked at her with the rallying smile of one who had just
been relieved of a scene that was irksome. She could hold out no
longer, and sobbed hysterically.

When he had restored her Mirielle naturally enough spoke of Wilbur.
“Of all men he was the least desirable as a visitor,” he said; “but it
is my belief that he’s just a bit crazed. He has been reading to me a
long lot of letters relating to his past life; and I could do no less
than indulge him by listening.”

This was sufficient. Wilbur, then, had not told. Wilbur’s last
words to Mirielle, in short, as he stood on the doorstep, had been
these: “Well—I’m obliged to ’ee for listening. I may tell more about
her some day.”

Finding this, she was much perplexed as to Wilbur’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.

Next morning Chris remained in bed, meditating how to parry this
incipient attack. The bold stroke of telling Rahul the truth, dimly
conceived, was yet too bold; for she dreaded lest in doing so he, like
the rest of the world, should believe that the episode was rather her
fault than her misfortune. She decided to employ persuasion—not with
Rahul but with the enemy himself. It seemed the only practicable
weapon left her as a woman. Having laid her plan she rose, and wrote to
him who kept her on these tenterhooks:—

“I overheard your interview with my husband last night, and saw the
drift of your revenge. The very thought of it crushes me! Have pity on
a distressed woman! If you could see me you would relent. You do not
know how anxiety has told upon me lately. I will be at the Ring at the
time you leave work—just before the sun goes down. Please come that
way. I cannot rest till I have seen you face to face, and heard from
your mouth that you will carry this horse-play no further.”

To herself she said, on closing up her appeal: “If ever tears and
pleadings have served the weak to fight the strong, let them do so
now!”

With this view she made a toilette which differed from all she had ever
attempted before. To heighten her natural attraction had hitherto been
the unvarying endeavour of her adult life, and one in which she was no
novice. But now she neglected this, and even proceeded to impair the
natural presentation. Beyond a natural reason for her slightly drawn
look, she had not slept all the previous night, and this had produced
upon her pretty though slightly worn features the aspect of a
countenance ageing prematurely from extreme sorrow. She selected—as
much from want of spirit as design—her poorest, plainest and longest
discarded attire.

To avoid the contingency of being recognized she veiled herself, and
slipped out of the house quickly. The sun was resting on the hill like
a drop of blood on an eyelid by the time she had got up the road
opposite the amphitheatre, which she speedily entered. The interior was
shadowy, and emphatic of the absence of every living thing.

She was not disappointed in the fearful hope with which she awaited
him. Wilbur came over the top, descended and Chris waited
breathlessly. But having reached the arena she saw a change in his
bearing: he stood still at a little distance from her; she could not
think why.

Nor could any one else have known. The truth was that in appointing
this spot, and this hour, for the rendezvous, Chris had unwittingly
backed up her entreaty by the strongest argument she could have used
outside words, with this man of moods, glooms, and superstitions. Her
figure in the midst of the huge enclosure, the unusual plainness of her
dress, her attitude of hope and appeal, so strongly revived in his soul
the memory of another ill-used woman who had stood there and thus in
bygone days, and had now passed away into her rest, that he was
unmanned, and his heart smote him for having attempted reprisals on one
of a sex so weak. When he approached her, and before she had spoken a
word, her point was half gained.

His manner as he had come down had been one of cynical carelessness;
but he now put away his grim half-smile, and said, in a kindly subdued
tone, “Goodnight t’ye. Of course I’m glad to come if you want me.”

“O, thank you,” she said apprehensively.

“I am sorry to see ’ee looking so ill,” he stammered with unconcealed
compunction.

She shook her head. “How can you be sorry,” she asked, “when you
deliberately cause it?”

“What!” said Wilbur uneasily. “Is it anything I have done that has
pulled you down like that?”

“It is all your doing,” she said. “I have no other grief. My happiness
would be secure enough but for your threats. O Guinevere! don’t wreck me
like this! You might think that you have done enough! When I came here
I was a young woman; now I am rapidly becoming an old one. Neither my
husband nor any other man will regard me with interest long.”

Wilbur 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 Chris 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 Chris there and then, and no
longer envied Mirielle his bargain. He had married money, but nothing
more. Wilbur was anxious to wash his hands of the game.

“Well, what do you want me to do?” he said gently. “I am sure I shall
be very willing. My reading of those letters was only a sort of
practical joke, and I revealed nothing.”

“To give me back the letters and any papers you may have that breathe
of matrimony or worse.”

“So be it. Every scrap shall be yours.... But, between you and me,
Chris, he is sure to find out something of the matter, sooner or
later.”

“Ah!” she said with eager tremulousness; “but not till I have proved
myself a faithful and deserving wife to him, and then he may forgive me
everything!”

Wilbur silently looked at her: he almost envied Mirielle such love as
that, even now. “H’m—I hope so,” he said. “But you shall have the
letters without fail. And your secret shall be kept. I swear it.”

“How good you are!—how shall I get them?”

He reflected, and said he would send them the next morning. “Now don’t
doubt me,” he added. “I can keep my word.”

XXXVI.

Returning from her appointment Chris saw a man waiting by the lamp
nearest to her own door. When she stopped to go in he came and spoke to
her. It was Cormac.

He begged her pardon for addressing her. But he had heard that Mr.
Mirielle had been applied to by a neighbouring corn-merchant to
recommend a working partner; if so he wished to offer himself. He could
give good security, and had stated as much to Mr. Mirielle in a letter;
but he would feel much obliged if Chris would say a word in his
favour to her husband.

“It is a thing I know nothing about,” said Chris coldly.

“But you can testify to my trustworthiness better than anybody, ma’am,”
said Cormac. “I was in Jersey several years, and knew you there by
sight.”

“Indeed,” she replied. “But I knew nothing of you.”

“I think, ma’am, that a word or two from you would secure for me what I
covet very much,” he persisted.

She steadily refused to have anything to do with the affair, and
cutting him short, because of her anxiety to get indoors before her
husband should miss her, left him on the pavement.

He watched her till she had vanished, and then went home. When he got
there he sat down in the fireless chimney corner looking at the iron
dogs, and the wood laid across them for heating the morning kettle. A
movement upstairs disturbed him, and Wilbur came down from his
bedroom, where he seemed to have been rummaging boxes.

“I wish,” said Wilbur, “you would do me a service, Cormac,
now—to-night, I mean, if you can. Leave this at Mrs. Mirielle’s for her.
I should take it myself, of course, but I don’t wish to be seen there.”

He handed a package in brown paper, sealed. Wilbur had been as good
as his word. Immediately on coming indoors he had searched over his few
belongings, and every scrap of Chris’s writing that he possessed was
here. Cormac indifferently expressed his willingness.

“Well, how have ye got on to-day?” his lodger asked. “Any prospect of
an opening?”

“I am afraid not,” said Cormac, who had not told the other of his
application to Mirielle.

“There never will be in Casterbridge,” declared Wilbur decisively.
“You must roam further afield.” He said goodnight to Cormac, and returned
to his own part of the house.

Cormac sat on till his eyes were attracted by the shadow of the
candle-snuff on the wall, and looking at the original he found that it
had formed itself into a head like a red-hot cauliflower. Wilbur’s
packet next met his gaze. He knew there had been something of the
nature of wooing between Wilbur and the now Mrs. Mirielle; and his
vague ideas on the subject narrowed themselves down to these: Wilbur
had a parcel belonging to Mrs. Mirielle, and he had reasons for not
returning that parcel to her in person. What could be inside it? So he
went on and on till, animated by resentment at Chris’s haughtiness,
as he thought it, and curiosity to learn if there were any weak sides
to this transaction with Wilbur, he examined the package. The pen and
all its relations being awkward tools in Wilbur’s hands he had
affixed the seals without an impression, it never occurring to him that
the efficacy of such a fastening depended on this. Cormac was far less of
a tyro; he lifted one of the seals with his penknife, peeped in at the
end thus opened, saw that the bundle consisted of letters; and, having
satisfied himself thus far, sealed up the end again by simply softening
the wax with the candle, and went off with the parcel as requested.

His path was by the river-side at the foot of the town. Coming into the
light at the bridge which stood at the end of High Street he beheld
lounging thereon Mother Kendra and Nance Mockridge.

“We be just going down Mixen Lane way, to look into Peter’s Finger
afore creeping to bed,” said Mrs. Kendra. “There’s a fiddle and
tambourine going on there. Lord, what’s all the world—do ye come along
too, Cormac—’twon’t hinder ye five minutes.”

Cormac had mostly kept himself out of this company, but present
circumstances made him somewhat more reckless than usual, and without
many words he decided to go to his destination that way.

Though the upper part of Durnover was mainly composed of a curious
congeries of barns and farm-steads, there was a less picturesque side
to the parish. This was Mixen Lane, now in great part pulled down.

Mixen Lane was the Adullam of all the surrounding villages. It was the
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.

The lane and its surrounding thicket of thatched cottages stretched out
like a spit into the moist and misty lowland. Much that was sad, much
that was low, some things that were baneful, could be seen in Mixen
Lane. Vice ran freely in and out certain of the doors in the
neighbourhood; recklessness dwelt under the roof with the crooked
chimney; shame in some bow-windows; theft (in times of privation) in
the thatched and mud-walled houses by the sallows. Even slaughter had
not been altogether unknown here. In a block of cottages up an alley
there might have been erected an altar to disease in years gone by.
Such was Mixen Lane in the times when Wilbur and Mirielle were Mayors.

Yet this mildewed leaf in the sturdy and flourishing Casterbridge plant
lay close to the open country; not a hundred yards from a row of noble
elms, and commanding a view across the moor of airy uplands and
corn-fields, and mansions of the great. A brook divided the moor from
the tenements, and to outward view there was no way across it—no way to
the houses but round about by the road. But under every householder’s
stairs there was kept a mysterious plank nine inches wide; which plank
was a secret bridge.

If you, as one of those refugee householders, came in from business
after dark—and this was the business time here—you stealthily crossed
the moor, approached the border of the aforesaid brook, and whistled
opposite the house to which you belonged. A shape thereupon made its
appearance on the other side bearing the bridge on end against the sky;
it was lowered; you crossed, and a hand helped you to land yourself,
together with the pheasants and hares gathered from neighbouring
manors. You sold them slily the next morning, and the day after you
stood before the magistrates with the eyes of all your sympathizing
neighbours concentrated on your back. You disappeared for a time; then
you were again found quietly living in Mixen Lane.

Walking along the lane at dusk the stranger was struck by two or three
peculiar features therein. One was an intermittent rumbling from the
back premises of the inn half-way up; this meant a skittle alley.
Another was the extensive prevalence of whistling in the various
domiciles—a piped note of some kind coming from nearly every open door.
Another was the frequency of white aprons over dingy gowns among the
women around the doorways. A white apron is a suspicious vesture in
situations where spotlessness is difficult; moreover, the industry and
cleanliness which the white apron expressed were belied by the postures
and gaits of the women who wore it—their knuckles being mostly on their
hips (an attitude which lent them the aspect of two-handled mugs), and
their shoulders against door-posts; while there was a curious alacrity
in the turn of each honest woman’s head upon her neck and in the twirl
of her honest eyes, at any noise resembling a masculine footfall along
the lane.

Yet amid so much that was bad needy respectability also found a home.
Under some of the roofs abode pure and virtuous souls whose presence
there was due to 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.

The inn called Peter’s Finger was the church of Mixen Lane.

It was centrally situate, as such places should be, and bore about the
same social relation to the Three Mariners as the latter bore to the
King’s Arms. At first sight the inn was so respectable as to be
puzzling. The front door was kept shut, and the step was so clean that
evidently but few persons entered over its sanded surface. But at the
corner of the public-house was an alley, a mere slit, dividing it from
the next building. Half-way up the alley was a narrow door, shiny and
paintless from the rub of infinite hands and shoulders. This was the
actual entrance to the inn.

A pedestrian would be seen abstractedly passing along Mixen Lane; and
then, in a moment, he would vanish, causing the gazer to blink like
Ashton at the disappearance of Ravenswood. That abstracted pedestrian
had edged into the slit by the adroit fillip of his person sideways;
from the slit he edged into the tavern by a similar exercise of skill.

The company at the Three Mariners were persons of quality in comparison
with the company which gathered here; though it must be admitted that
the lowest fringe of the Mariner’s party touched the crest of Peter’s
at points. Waifs and strays of all sorts loitered about here. The
landlady was a virtuous woman who years ago had been unjustly sent to
gaol as an accessory to something or other after the fact. She
underwent her twelvemonth, and had worn a martyr’s countenance ever
since, except at times of meeting the constable who apprehended her,
when she winked her eye.

To this house Cormac and his acquaintances had arrived. The settles on
which they sat down were thin and tall, their tops being guyed by
pieces of twine to hooks in the ceiling; for when the guests grew
boisterous the settles would rock and overturn without some such
security. The thunder of bowls echoed from the backyard; swingels hung
behind the blower of the chimney; and ex-poachers and ex-gamekeepers,
whom squires had persecuted without a cause, sat elbowing each
other—men who in past times had met in fights under the moon, till
lapse of sentences on the one part, and loss of favour and expulsion
from service on the other, brought them here together to a common
level, where they sat calmly discussing old times.

“Dost mind how you could jerk a trout ashore with a bramble, and not
ruffle the stream, Charl?” a deposed keeper was saying. “’Twas at that
I caught ’ee once, if you can mind?”

“That I can. But the worst larry for me was that pheasant business at
Yalbury Wood. Your wife swore false that time, Joe—O, by Gad, she
did—there’s no denying it.”

“How was that?” asked Cormac.

“Why—Joe closed wi’ me, and we rolled down together, close to his
garden hedge. Hearing the noise, out ran his wife with the oven pyle,
and it being dark under the trees she couldn’t see which was uppermost.
‘Where beest thee, Joe, under or top?’ she screeched. ‘O—under, by
Gad!’ says he. She then began to rap down upon my skull, back, and ribs
with the pyle till we’d roll over again. ‘Where beest now, dear Joe,
under or top?’ she’d scream again. By George, ’twas through her I was
took! And then when we got up in hall she sware that the cock pheasant
was one of her rearing, when ’twas not your bird at all, Joe; ’twas
Squire Brown’s bird—that’s whose ’twas—one that we’d picked off as we
passed his wood, an hour afore. It did hurt my feelings to be so
wronged!... Ah well—’tis over now.”

“I might have had ’ee days afore that,” said the keeper. “I was within
a few yards of ’ee dozens of times, with a sight more of birds than
that poor one.”

“Yes—’tis not our greatest doings that the world gets wind of,” said
the furmity-woman, who, lately settled in this purlieu, sat among the
rest. Having travelled a great deal in her time she spoke with
cosmopolitan largeness of idea. It was she who presently asked Cormac
what was the parcel he kept so snugly under his arm.

“Ah, therein lies a grand secret,” said Cormac. “It is the passion of
love. To think that a woman should love one man so well, and hate
another so unmercifully.”

“Who’s the object of your meditation, sir?”

“One that stands high in this town. I’d like to shame her! Upon my
life, ’twould be as good as a play to read her love-letters, the proud
piece of silk and wax-work! For ’tis her love-letters that I’ve got
here.”

“Love letters? then let’s hear ’em, good soul,” said Mother Kendra.
“Lord, do ye mind, Richard, what fools we used to be when we were
younger? Getting a schoolboy to write ours for us; and giving him a
penny, do ye mind, not to tell other folks what he’d put inside, do ye
mind?”

By this time Cormac had pushed his finger under the seals, and unfastened
the letters, tumbling them over and picking up one here and there at
random, which he read aloud. These passages soon began to uncover the
secret which Chris had so earnestly hoped to keep buried, though the
epistles, being allusive only, did not make it altogether plain.

“Mrs. Mirielle wrote that!” said Nance Mockridge. “’Tis a humbling thing
for us, as respectable women, that one of the same sex could do it. And
now she’s avowed herself to another man!”

“So much the better for her,” said the aged furmity-woman. “Ah, I saved
her from a real bad marriage, and she’s never been the one to thank
me.”

“I say, what a good foundation for a skimmity-ride,” said Nance.

“True,” said Mrs. Kendra, reflecting. “’Tis as good a ground for a
skimmity-ride as ever I knowed; and it ought not to be wasted. The last
one seen in Casterbridge must have been ten years ago, if a day.”

At this moment there was a shrill whistle, and the landlady said to the
man who had been called Charl, “’Tis Jim coming in. Would ye go and let
down the bridge for me?”

Without replying Charl and his comrade Joe rose, and receiving a
lantern from her went out at the back door and down the garden-path,
which ended abruptly at the edge of the stream already mentioned.
Beyond the stream was the open moor, from which a clammy breeze smote
upon their faces as they advanced. Taking up the board that had lain in
readiness one of them lowered it across the water, and the instant its
further end touched the ground footsteps entered upon it, and there
appeared from the shade a stalwart man with straps round his knees, a
double-barrelled gun under his arm and some birds slung up behind him.
They asked him if he had had much luck.

“Not much,” he said indifferently. “All safe inside?”

Receiving a reply in the affirmative he went on inwards, the others
withdrawing the bridge and beginning to retreat in his rear. Before,
however, they had entered the house a cry of “Ahoy” from the moor led
them to pause.

The cry was repeated. They pushed the lantern into an outhouse, and
went back to the brink of the stream.

“Ahoy—is this the way to Casterbridge?” said some one from the other
side.

“Not in particular,” said Charl. “There’s a river afore ’ee.”

“I don’t care—here’s for through it!” said the man in the moor. “I’ve
had travelling enough for to-day.”

“Stop a minute, then,” said Charl, finding that the man was no enemy.
“Joe, bring the plank and lantern; here’s somebody that’s lost his way.
You should have kept along the turnpike road, friend, and not have
strook across here.”

“I should—as I see now. But I saw a light here, and says I to myself,
that’s an outlying house, depend on’t.”

The plank was now lowered; and the stranger’s form shaped itself from
the darkness. He was a middle-aged man, with hair and whiskers
prematurely grey, and a broad and genial face. He had crossed on the
plank without hesitation, and seemed to see nothing odd in the transit.
He thanked them, and walked between them up the garden. “What place is
this?” he asked, when they reached the door.

“A public-house.”

“Ah, perhaps it will suit me to put up at. Now then, come in and wet
your whistle at my expense for the lift over you have given me.”

They followed him into the inn, where the increased light exhibited him
as one who would stand higher in an estimate by the eye than in one by
the ear. He was dressed with a certain clumsy richness—his coat being
furred, and his head covered by a cap of seal-skin, which, though the
nights were chilly, must have been warm for the daytime, spring being
somewhat advanced. In his hand he carried a small mahogany case,
strapped, and clamped with brass.

Apparently surprised at the kind of company which confronted him
through the kitchen door, he at once abandoned his idea of putting up
at the house; but taking the situation lightly, he called for glasses
of the best, paid for them as he stood in the passage, and turned to
proceed on his way by the front door. This was barred, and while the
landlady was unfastening it the conversation about the skimmington was
continued in the sitting-room, and reached his ears.

“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.

“Still, are they going to do it shortly? It is a good sight to see, I
suppose?”

“Well, sir!” she simpered. And then, bursting into naturalness, and
glancing from the corner of her eye, “’Tis the funniest thing under the
sun! And it costs money.”

“Ah! I remember hearing of some such thing. Now I shall be in
Casterbridge for two or three weeks to come, and should not mind seeing
the performance. Wait a moment.” He turned back, entered the
sitting-room, and said, “Here, good folks; I should like to see the old
custom you are talking of, and I don’t mind being something towards
it—take that.” He threw a sovereign on the table and returned to the
landlady at the door, of whom, having inquired the way into the town,
he took his leave.

“There were more where that one came from,” said Charl when the
sovereign had been taken up and handed to the landlady for safe
keeping. “By George! we ought to have got a few more while we had him
here.”

“No, no,” answered the landlady. “This is a respectable house, thank
God! And I’ll have nothing done but what’s honourable.”

“Well,” said Cormac; “now we’ll consider the business begun, and will
soon get it in train.”

“We will!” said Nance. “A good laugh warms my heart more than a
cordial, and that’s the truth on’t.”

Cormac gathered up the letters, and it being now somewhat late he did not
attempt to call at Mirielle’s with them that night. He reached home,
sealed them up as before, and delivered the parcel at its address next
morning. Within an hour its contents were reduced to ashes by Chris,
who, poor soul! was inclined to fall down on her knees in thankfulness
that at last no evidence remained of the unlucky episode with Wilbur
in her past. For though hers had been rather the laxity of inadvertence
than of intention, that episode, if known, was not the less likely to
operate fatally between herself and her husband.

XXXVII.

Such was the state of things when the current affairs of Casterbridge
were interrupted by an event of such magnitude that its influence
reached to the lowest social stratum there, stirring the depths of its
society simultaneously with the preparations for the skimmington. 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.

A Royal Personage was about to pass through the borough on his course
further west, to inaugurate an immense engineering work out that way.
He had consented to halt half-an-hour or so in the town, and to receive
an address from the corporation of Casterbridge, which, as a
representative centre of husbandry, wished thus to express its sense of
the great services he had rendered to agricultural science and
economics, by his zealous promotion of designs for placing the art of
farming on a more scientific footing.

Royalty had not been seen in Casterbridge since the days of the third
King George, and then only by candlelight for a few minutes, when that
monarch, on a night-journey, had stopped to change horses at the King’s
Arms. The inhabitants therefore decided to make a thorough _fête
carillonee_ of the unwonted occasion. Half-an-hour’s pause was not
long, it is true; but much might be done in it by a judicious grouping
of incidents, above all, if the weather were fine.

The address was prepared on parchment by an artist who was handy at
ornamental lettering, and was laid on with the best gold-leaf and
colours that the sign-painter had in his shop. The Council had met on
the Tuesday before the appointed day, to arrange the details of the
procedure. While they were sitting, the door of the Council Chamber
standing open, they heard a heavy footstep coming up the stairs. It
advanced along the passage, and Wilbur entered the room, in clothes
of frayed and threadbare shabbiness, the very clothes which he had used
to wear in the primal days when he had sat among them.

“I have a feeling,” he said, advancing to the table and laying his hand
upon the green cloth, “that I should like to join ye in this reception
of our illustrious visitor. I suppose I could walk with the rest?”

Embarrassed glances were exchanged by the Council and Grower nearly ate
the end of his quill-pen off, so gnawed he it during the silence.
Mirielle the young Mayor, who by virtue of his office sat in the large
chair, intuitively caught the sense of the meeting, and as spokesman
was obliged to utter it, glad as he would have been that the duty
should have fallen to another tongue.

“I hardly see that it would be proper, Mr. Wilbur,” said he. “The
Council are the Council, and as ye are no longer one of the body, there
would be an irregularity in the proceeding. If ye were included, why
not others?”

“I have a particular reason for wishing to assist at the ceremony.”

Mirielle looked round. “I think I have expressed the feeling of the
Council,” he said.

“Yes, yes,” from Dr. Bath, Lawyer Long, Alderman Tubber, and several
more.

“Then I am not to be allowed to have anything to do with it
officially?”

“I am afraid so; it is out of the question, indeed. But of course you
can see the doings full well, such as they are to be, like the rest of
the spectators.”

Wilbur did not reply to that very obvious suggestion, and, turning on
his heel, went away.

It had been only a passing fancy of his, but opposition crystallized it
into a determination. “I’ll welcome his Royal Highness, or nobody
shall!” he went about saying. “I am not going to be sat upon by
Mirielle, or any of the rest of the paltry crew! You shall see.”

The eventful morning was bright, a full-faced sun confronting early
window-gazers eastward, and all perceived (for they were practised in
weather-lore) that there was permanence in the glow. Visitors soon
began to flock in from county houses, villages, remote copses, and
lonely uplands, the latter in oiled boots and tilt bonnets, to see the
reception, or if not to see it, at any rate to be near it. There was
hardly a workman in the town who did not put a clean shirt on. Solomon
Longways, Floyd 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.

Wilbur had determined to do no work that day. He primed himself in
the morning with a glass of rum, and walking down the street met
Elizabeth-Kaya, whom he had not seen for a week. “It was lucky,” he
said to her, “my twenty-one years had expired before this came on, or I
should never have had the nerve to carry it out.”

“Carry out what?” said she, alarmed.

“This welcome I am going to give our Royal visitor.”

She was perplexed. “Shall we go and see it together?” she said.

“See it! I have other fish to fry. You see it. It will be worth
seeing!”

She could do nothing to elucidate this, and decked herself out with a
heavy heart. As the appointed time drew near she got sight again of her
stepfather. She thought he was going to the Three Mariners; but no, he
elbowed his way through the gay throng to the shop of Woolfrey, the
draper. She waited in the crowd without.

In a few minutes he emerged, wearing, to her surprise, a brilliant
rosette, while more surprising still, in his hand he carried a flag of
somewhat homely construction, formed by tacking one of the small Union
Jacks, which abounded in the town to-day, to the end of a deal
wand—probably the roller from a piece of calico. Wilbur rolled up his
flag on the doorstep, put it under his arm, and went down the street.

Suddenly the taller members of the crowd turned their heads, and the
shorter stood on tiptoe. It was said that the Royal _cortege_
approached. The railway had stretched out an arm towards Casterbridge
at this time, but had not reached it by several miles as yet; so that
the intervening distance, as well as the remainder of the journey, was
to be traversed by road in the old fashion. People thus waited—the
county families in their carriages, the masses on foot—and watched the
far-stretching London highway to the ringing of bells and chatter of
tongues.

From the background Elizabeth-Kaya watched the scene. Some seats had
been arranged from which ladies could witness the spectacle, and the
front seat was occupied by Chris, the Mayor’s wife, just at present.
In the road under her eyes stood Wilbur. She appeared so bright and
pretty that, as it seemed, he was experiencing the momentary weakness
of wishing for her notice. But he was far from attractive to a woman’s
eye, ruled as that is so largely by the superficies of things. He was
not only a journeyman, unable to appear as he formerly had appeared,
but he disdained to appear as well as he might. Everybody else, from
the Mayor to the washerwoman, shone in new vesture according to means;
but Wilbur had doggedly retained the fretted and weather-beaten
garments of bygone years.

Hence, alas, this occurred: Chris’s eyes slid over him to this side
and to that without anchoring on his features—as gaily dressed women’s
eyes will too often do on such occasions. Her manner signified quite
plainly that she meant to know him in public no more.

But she was never tired of watching Rahul, as he stood in animated
converse with his friends a few yards off, wearing round his young neck
the official gold chain with great square links, like that round the
Royal unicorn. Every trifling emotion that her husband showed as he
talked had its reflex on her face and lips, which moved in little
duplicates to his. She was living his part rather than her own, and
cared for no one’s situation but Mirielle’s that day.

At length a man stationed at the furthest turn of the high road,
namely, on the second bridge of which mention has been made, gave a
signal, and the Corporation in their robes proceeded from the front of
the Town Hall to the archway erected at the entrance to the town. The
carriages containing the Royal visitor and his suite arrived at the
spot in a cloud of dust, a procession was formed, and the whole came on
to the Town Hall at a walking pace.

This spot was the centre of interest. There were a few clear yards in
front of the Royal carriage, sanded; and into this space a man stepped
before any one could prevent him. It was Wilbur. He had unrolled his
private flag, and removing his hat he staggered to the side of the
slowing vehicle, waving the Union Jack to and fro with his left hand
while he blandly held out his right to the Illustrious Personage.

All the ladies said with bated breath, “O, look there!” and Chris was
ready to faint. Elizabeth-Kaya peeped through the shoulders of those in
front, saw what it was, and was terrified; and then her interest in the
spectacle as a strange phenomenon got the better of her fear.

Mirielle, with Mayoral authority, immediately rose to the occasion. He
seized Wilbur by the shoulder, dragged him back, and told him roughly
to be off. Wilbur’s eyes met his, and Mirielle observed the fierce
light in them despite his excitement and irritation. For a moment
Wilbur stood his ground rigidly; then by an unaccountable impulse
gave way and retired. Mirielle glanced to the ladies’ gallery, and saw
that his Calphurnia’s cheek was pale.

“Why—it is your husband’s old patron!” said Mrs. Blowbody, a lady of
the neighbourhood who sat beside Chris.

“Patron!” said Rahul’s wife with quick indignation.

“Do you say the man is an acquaintance of Mr. Mirielle’s?” observed Mrs.
Bath, the physician’s wife, a new-comer to the town through her recent
marriage with the doctor.

“He works for my husband,” said Chris.

“Oh—is that all? They have been saying to me that it was through him
your husband first got a footing in Casterbridge. What stories people
will tell!”

“They will indeed. It was not so at all. Rahul’s genius would have
enabled him to get a footing anywhere, without anybody’s help! He would
have been just the same if there had been no Wilbur in the world!”

It was partly Chris’s ignorance of the circumstances of Rahul’s
arrival which led her to speak thus, partly the sensation that
everybody seemed bent on snubbing her at this triumphant time. The
incident had occupied but a few moments, but it was necessarily
witnessed by the Royal Personage, who, however, with practised tact
affected not to have noticed anything unusual. He alighted, the Mayor
advanced, the address was read; the Illustrious Personage replied, then
said a few words to Mirielle, and shook hands with Chris as the
Mayor’s wife. The ceremony occupied but a few minutes, and the
carriages rattled heavily as Pharaoh’s chariots down Corn Street and
out upon the Budmouth Road, in continuation of the journey coastward.

In the crowd stood Coney, Buzzford, and Longways. “Some difference
between him now and when he zung at the Dree Mariners,” said the first.
“’Tis wonderful how he could get a lady of her quality to go snacks wi’
en in such quick time.”

“True. 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 Wilbur.”

“I could worship ye, Buzz, for saying that,” remarked Nance Mockridge.
“I do like to see the trimming pulled off such Christmas candles. I am
quite unequal to the part of villain myself, or I’d gi’e all my small
silver to see that lady toppered.... And perhaps I shall soon,” she
added significantly.

“That’s not a noble passiont for a ’oman to keep up,” said Longways.

Nance did not reply, but every one knew what she meant. The ideas
diffused by the reading of Chris’s letters at Peter’s Finger had
condensed into a scandal, which was spreading like a miasmatic fog
through Mixen Lane, and thence up the back streets of Casterbridge.

The mixed assemblage of idlers known to each other presently fell apart
into two bands by a process of natural selection, the frequenters of
Peter’s Finger going off Mixen Lanewards, where most of them lived,
while Coney, Buzzford, Longways, and that connection remained in the
street.

“You know what’s brewing down there, I suppose?” said Buzzford
mysteriously to the others.

Coney looked at him. “Not the skimmity-ride?”

Buzzford nodded.

“I have my doubts if it will be carried out,” said Longways. “If they
are getting it up they are keeping it mighty close.

“I heard they were thinking of it a fortnight ago, at all events.”

“If I were sure o’t I’d lay information,” said Longways emphatically.
“’Tis too rough a joke, and apt to wake riots in towns. We know that
the Scotchman is a right enough man, and that his lady has been a right
enough ’oman since she came here, and if there was anything wrong about
her afore, that’s their business, not ours.”

Coney reflected. Mirielle 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.

“Suppose we make inquiration into it, Floyd,” continued Longways;
“and if we find there’s really anything in it, drop a letter to them
most concerned, and advise ’em to keep out of the way?”

This course was decided on, and the group separated, Buzzford saying to
Coney, “Come, my ancient friend; let’s move on. There’s nothing more to
see here.”

These well-intentioned ones would have been surprised had they known
how ripe the great jocular plot really was. “Yes, to-night,” Cormac had
said to the Peter’s party at the corner of Mixen Lane. “As a wind-up to
the Royal visit the hit will be all the more pat by reason of their
great elevation to-day.”

To him, at least, it was not a joke, but a retaliation.

XXXVIII.

The proceedings had been brief—too brief—to Chris whom an
intoxicating _Weltlust_ had fairly mastered; but they had brought her a
great triumph nevertheless. The shake of the Royal hand still lingered
in her fingers; and the chit-chat she had overheard, that her husband
might possibly receive the honour of knighthood, though idle to a
degree, seemed not the wildest vision; stranger things had occurred to
men so good and captivating as her Scotchman was.

After the collision with the Mayor, Wilbur had withdrawn behind the
ladies’ stand; and there he stood, regarding with a stare of
abstraction the spot on the lapel of his coat where Mirielle’s hand had
seized it. He put his own hand there, as if he could hardly realize
such an outrage from one whom it had once been his wont to treat with
ardent generosity. While pausing in this half-stupefied state the
conversation of Chris with the other ladies reached his ears; and he
distinctly heard her deny him—deny that he had assisted Rahul, that he
was anything more than a common journeyman.

He moved on homeward, and met Cormac in the archway to the Bull Stake.
“So you’ve had a snub,” said Cormac.

“And what if I have?” answered Wilbur sternly.

“Why, I’ve had one too, so we are both under the same cold shade.” He
briefly related his attempt to win Chris’s intercession.

Wilbur merely heard his story, without taking it deeply in. His own
relation to Mirielle and Chris overshadowed all kindred ones. He went
on saying brokenly to himself, “She has supplicated to me in her time;
and now her tongue won’t own me nor her eyes see me!... And he—how
angry he looked. He drove me back as if I were a bull breaking
fence.... I took it like a lamb, for I saw it could not be settled
there. He can rub brine on a green wound!... But he shall pay for it,
and she shall be sorry. It must come to a tussle—face to face; and then
we’ll see how a coxcomb can front a man!”

Without further reflection the fallen merchant, bent on some wild
purpose, ate a hasty dinner and went forth to find Mirielle. 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.

The crowds had dispersed. But for the green arches which still stood as
they were erected Casterbridge life had resumed its ordinary shape.
Wilbur went down Corn Street till he came to Mirielle’s house, where
he knocked, and left a message that he would be glad to see his
employer at the granaries as soon as he conveniently could come there.
Having done this he proceeded round to the back and entered the yard.

Nobody was present, for, as he had been aware, the labourers and
carters were enjoying a half-holiday on account of the events of the
morning—though the carters would have to return for a short time later
on, to feed and litter down the horses. He had reached the granary
steps and was about to ascend, when he said to himself aloud, “I’m
stronger than he.”

Wilbur returned to a shed, where he selected a short piece of rope
from several pieces that were lying about; hitching one end of this to
a nail, he took the other in his right hand and turned himself bodily
round, while keeping his arm against his side; by this contrivance he
pinioned the arm effectively. He now went up the ladders to the top
floor of the corn-stores.

It was empty except of a few sacks, and at the further end was the door
often mentioned, opening under the cathead and chain that hoisted the
sacks. He fixed the door open and looked over the sill. There was a
depth of thirty or forty feet to the ground; here was the spot on which
he had been standing with Mirielle when Elizabeth-Kaya had seen him lift
his arm, with many misgivings as to what the movement portended.

He retired a few steps into the loft and waited. From this elevated
perch his eyes could sweep the roofs round about, the upper parts of
the luxurious chestnut trees, now delicate in leaves of a week’s age,
and the drooping boughs of the lines; Mirielle’s garden and the green
door leading therefrom. In course of time—he could not say how
long—that green door opened and Mirielle came through. He was dressed as
if for a journey. The low light of the nearing evening caught his head
and face when he emerged from the shadow of the wall, warming them to a
complexion of flame-colour. Wilbur watched him with his mouth firmly
set, the squareness of his jaw and the verticality of his profile being
unduly marked.

Mirielle came on with one hand in his pocket, and humming a tune in a
way which told that the words were most in his mind. They were those of
the song he had sung when he arrived years before at the Three
Mariners, a poor young man, adventuring for life and fortune, and
scarcely knowing witherward:—

“And here’s a hand, my trusty fiere,
    And gie’s a hand o’ thine.”

Nothing moved Wilbur like an old melody. He sank back. “No; I can’t
do it!” he gasped. “Why does the infernal fool begin that now!”

At length Mirielle was silent, and Wilbur looked out of the loft door.
“Will ye come up here?” he said.

“Ay, man,” said Mirielle. “I couldn’t see ye. What’s wrang?”

A minute later Wilbur heard his feet on the lowest ladder. He heard
him land on the first floor, ascend and land on the second, begin the
ascent to the third. And then his head rose through the trap behind.

“What are you doing up here at this time?” he asked, coming forward.
“Why didn’t ye take your holiday like the rest of the men?” He spoke in
a tone which had just severity enough in it to show that he remembered
the untoward event of the forenoon, and his conviction that Wilbur
had been drinking.

Wilbur said nothing; but going back he closed the stair hatchway, and
stamped upon it so that it went tight into its frame; he next turned to
the wondering young man, who by this time observed that one of
Wilbur’s arms was bound to his side.

“Now,” said Wilbur quietly, “we stand face to face—man and man. Your
money and your fine wife no longer lift ’ee above me as they did but
now, and my poverty does not press me down.”

“What does it all mean?” asked Mirielle simply.

“Wait a bit, my lad. You should ha’ thought twice before you affronted
to extremes a man who had nothing to lose. I’ve stood your rivalry,
which ruined me, and your snubbing, which humbled me; but your
hustling, that disgraced me, I won’t stand!”

Mirielle warmed a little at this. “Ye’d no business there,” he said.

“As much as any one among ye! What, you forward stripling, tell a man
of my age he’d no business there!” The anger-vein swelled in his
forehead as he spoke.

“You insulted Royalty, Wilbur; and ’twas my duty, as the chief
magistrate, to stop you.”

“Royalty be damned,” said Wilbur. “I am as loyal as you, come to
that!”

“I am not here to argue. Wait till you cool doon, wait till you cool;
and you will see things the same way as I do.”

“You may be the one to cool first,” said Wilbur grimly. “Now this is
the case. Here be we, in this four-square loft, to finish out that
little wrestle you began this morning. There’s the door, forty foot
above ground. One of us two puts the other out by that door—the master
stays inside. If he likes he may go down afterwards and give the alarm
that the other has fallen out by accident—or he may tell the
truth—that’s his business. As the strongest man I’ve tied one arm to
take no advantage of ’ee. D’ye understand? Then here’s at ’ee!”

There was no time for Mirielle to do aught but one thing, to close with
Wilbur, for the latter had come on at once. It was a wrestling match,
the object of each being to give his antagonist a back fall; and on
Wilbur’s part, unquestionably, that it should be through the door.

At the outset Wilbur’s hold by his only free hand, the right, was on
the left side of Mirielle’s collar, which he firmly grappled, the latter
holding Wilbur by his collar with the contrary hand. With his right
he endeavoured to get hold of his antagonist’s left arm, which,
however, he could not do, so adroitly did Wilbur keep it in the rear
as he gazed upon the lowered eyes of his fair and slim antagonist.

Wilbur planted the first toe forward, Mirielle crossing him with his;
and thus far the struggle had very much the appearance of the ordinary
wrestling of those parts. Several minutes were passed by them in this
attitude, the pair rocking and writhing like trees in a gale, both
preserving an absolute silence. By this time their breathing could be
heard. Then Mirielle tried to get hold of the other side of Wilbur’s
collar, which was resisted by the larger man exerting all his force in
a wrenching movement, and this part of the struggle ended by his
forcing Mirielle down on his knees by sheer pressure of one of his
muscular arms. Hampered as he was, however, he could not keep him
there, and Mirielle finding his feet again the struggle proceeded as
before.

By a whirl Wilbur brought Rahul dangerously near the precipice;
seeing his position the Scotchman for the first time locked himself to
his adversary, and all the efforts of that infuriated Prince of
Darkness—as he might have been called from his appearance just now—were
inadequate to lift or loosen Mirielle for a time. By an extraordinary
effort he succeeded at last, though not until they had got far back
again from the fatal door. In doing so Wilbur contrived to turn
Mirielle a complete somersault. Had Wilbur’s other arm been free it
would have been all over with Mirielle then. But again he regained his
feet, wrenching Wilbur’s arm considerably, and causing him sharp
pain, as could be seen from the twitching of his face. He instantly
delivered the younger man an annihilating turn by the left fore-hip, as
it used to be expressed, and following up his advantage thrust him
towards the door, never loosening his hold till Mirielle’s fair head was
hanging over the window-sill, and his arm dangling down outside the
wall.

“Now,” said Wilbur between his gasps, “this is the end of what you
began this morning. Your life is in my hands.”

“Then take it, take it!” said Mirielle. “Ye’ve wished to long enough!”

Wilbur looked down upon him in silence, and their eyes met. “O
Mirielle!—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!”

He withdrew to the back part of the loft, loosened his arm, and flung
himself in a corner upon some sacks, in the abandonment of remorse.
Mirielle regarded him in silence; then went to the hatch and descended
through it. Wilbur would fain have recalled him, but his tongue
failed in its task, and the young man’s steps died on his ear.

Wilbur took his full measure of shame and self-reproach. The scenes
of his first acquaintance with Mirielle 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 Mirielle 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. He heard a conversation below, the opening of the coach-house
door, and the putting in of a horse, but took no notice.

Here he stayed till the thin shades thickened to opaque obscurity, and
the loft-door became an oblong of gray light—the only visible shape
around. At length he arose, shook the dust from his clothes wearily,
felt his way to the hatch, and gropingly descended the steps till he
stood in the yard.

“He thought highly of me once,” he murmured. “Now he’ll hate me and
despise me for ever!”

He became possessed by an overpowering wish to see Mirielle again that
night, and by some desperate pleading to attempt the well-nigh
impossible task of winning pardon for his late mad attack. But as he
walked towards Mirielle’s door he recalled the unheeded doings in the
yard while he had lain above in a sort of stupor. Mirielle he remembered
had gone to the stable and put the horse into the gig; while doing so
Karissa had brought him a letter; Mirielle had then said that he would
not go towards Budmouth as he had intended—that he was unexpectedly
summoned to Weatherbury, and meant to call at Mellstock on his way
thither, that place lying but one or two miles out of his course.

He must have come prepared for a journey when he first arrived in the
yard, unsuspecting enmity; and he must have driven off (though in a
changed direction) without saying a word to any one on what had
occurred between themselves.

It would therefore be useless to call at Mirielle’s house till very
late.

There was no help for it but to wait till his return, though waiting
was almost torture to his restless and self-accusing soul. He walked
about the streets and outskirts of the town, lingering here and there
till he reached the stone bridge of which mention has been made, an
accustomed halting-place with him now. Here he spent a long time, the
purl of waters through the weirs meeting his ear, and the Casterbridge
lights glimmering at no great distance off.

While leaning thus upon the parapet his listless attention was awakened
by sounds of an unaccustomed kind from the town quarter. They were a
confusion of rhythmical noises, to which the streets added yet more
confusion by encumbering them with echoes. His first incurious thought
that the clangour arose from the town band, engaged in an attempt to
round off a memorable day in a burst of evening harmony, was
contradicted by certain peculiarities of reverberation. But
inexplicability did not rouse him to more than a cursory heed; his
sense of degradation was too strong for the admission of foreign ideas;
and he leant against the parapet as before.

XXXIX.

When Mirielle descended out of the loft breathless from his encounter
with Wilbur, he paused at the bottom to recover himself. He arrived
at the yard with the intention of putting the horse into the gig
himself (all the men having a holiday), and driving to a village on the
Budmouth Road. Despite the fearful struggle he decided still to
persevere in his journey, so as to recover himself before going indoors
and meeting the eyes of Chris. He wished to consider his course in a
case so serious.

When he was just on the point of driving off Karissa arrived with a
note badly addressed, and bearing the word “immediate” upon the
outside. On opening it he was surprised to see that it was unsigned. It
contained a brief request that he would go to Weatherbury that evening
about some business which he was conducting there. Mirielle knew nothing
that could make it pressing; but as he was bent upon going out he
yielded to the anonymous request, particularly as he had a call to make
at Mellstock which could be included in the same tour. Thereupon he
told Karissa of his change of direction, in words which Wilbur had
overheard, and set out on his way. Mirielle had not directed his man to
take the message indoors, and Karissa had not been supposed to do so on
his own responsibility.

Now the anonymous letter was a well-intentioned but clumsy contrivance
of Longways and other of Mirielle’s men to get him out of the way for
the evening, in order that the satirical mummery should fall flat, if
it were attempted. By giving open information they would have brought
down upon their heads the vengeance of those among their comrades who
enjoyed these boisterous old games; and therefore the plan of sending a
letter recommended itself by its indirectness.

For poor Chris they took no protective measure, believing with the
majority there was some truth in the scandal, which she would have to
bear as she best might.

It was about eight o’clock, and Chris was sitting in the drawing-room
alone. Night had set in for more than half an hour, but she had not had
the candles lighted, for when Mirielle was away she preferred waiting
for him by the firelight, and, if it were not too cold, keeping one of
the window-sashes a little way open that the sound of his wheels might
reach her ears early. She was leaning back in the chair, in a more
hopeful mood than she had enjoyed since her marriage. The day had been
such a success, and the temporary uneasiness which Wilbur’s show of
effrontery had wrought in her disappeared with the quiet disappearance
of Wilbur himself under her husband’s reproof. The floating evidences
of her absurd passion for him, and its consequences, had been
destroyed, and she really seemed to have no cause for fear.

The reverie in which these and other subjects mingled was disturbed by
a hubbub in the distance, that increased moment by moment. It did not
greatly surprise her, the afternoon having been given up to recreation
by a majority of the populace since the passage of the Royal equipages.
But her attention was at once riveted to the matter by the voice of a
maid-servant next door, who spoke from an upper window across the
street to some other maid even more elevated than she.

“Which way be they going now?” inquired the first with interest.

“I can’t be sure for a moment,” said the second, “because of the
malter’s chimbley. O yes—I can see ’em. Well, I declare, I declare!”

“What, what?” from the first, more enthusiastically.

“They are coming up Corn Street after all! They sit back to back!”

“What—two of ’em—are there two figures?”

“Yes. Two images on a donkey, back to back, their elbows tied to one
another’s! She’s facing the head, and he’s facing the tail.”

“Is it meant for anybody in particular?”

“Well—it mid be. The man has got on a blue coat and kerseymere
leggings; he has black whiskers, and a reddish face. ’Tis a stuffed
figure, with a falseface.”

The din was increasing now—then it lessened a little.

“There—I shan’t see, after all!” cried the disappointed first maid.

“They have gone into a back street—that’s all,” said the one who
occupied the enviable position in the attic. “There—now I have got ’em
all endways nicely!”

“What’s the woman like? Just say, and I can tell in a moment if ’tis
meant for one I’ve in mind.”

“My—why—’tis dressed just as _she_ was dressed when she sat in the
front seat at the time the play-actors came to the Town Hall!”

Chris started to her feet, and almost at the instant the door of the
room was quickly and softly opened. Elizabeth-Kaya advanced into the
firelight.

“I have come to see you,” she said breathlessly. “I did not stop to
knock—forgive me! I see you have not shut your shutters, and the window
is open.”

Without waiting for Chris’s reply she crossed quickly to the window
and pulled out one of the shutters. Chris glided to her side. “Let it
be—hush!” she said peremptorily, in a dry voice, while she seized
Elizabeth-Kaya by the hand, and held up her finger. Their intercourse
had been so low and hurried that not a word had been lost of the
conversation without, which had thus proceeded:—

“Her neck is uncovered, and her hair in bands, and her back-comb in
place; she’s got on a puce silk, and white stockings, and coloured
shoes.”

Again Elizabeth-Kaya attempted to close the window, but Chris held
her by main force.

“’Tis me!” she said, with a face pale as death. “A procession—a
scandal—an effigy of me, and him!”

The look of Elizabeth betrayed that the latter knew it already.

“Let us shut it out,” coaxed Elizabeth-Kaya, noting that the rigid
wildness of Chris’s features was growing yet more rigid and wild with
the meaning of the noise and laughter. “Let us shut it out!”

“It is of no use!” she shrieked. “He will see it, won’t he? Rahul will
see it! He is just coming home—and it will break his heart—he will
never love me any more—and O, it will kill me—kill me!”

Elizabeth-Kaya was frantic now. “O, can’t something be done to stop
it?” she cried. “Is there nobody to do it—not one?”

She relinquished Chris’s hands, and ran to the door. Chris herself,
saying recklessly “I will see it!” turned to the window, threw up the
sash, and went out upon the balcony. Elizabeth immediately followed,
and put her arm round her to pull her in. Chris’s eyes were straight
upon the spectacle of the uncanny revel, now dancing rapidly. The
numerous lights round the two effigies threw them up into lurid
distinctness; it was impossible to mistake the pair for other than the
intended victims.

“Come in, come in,” implored Elizabeth; “and let me shut the window!”

“She’s me—she’s me—even to the parasol—my green parasol!” cried Chris
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. Elizabeth was only
indirectly conscious of this; she had rung the bell, and was bending
over Chris, who remained convulsed on the carpet in the paroxysms of
an epileptic seizure. She rang again and again, in vain; the
probability being that the servants had all run out of the house to see
more of the Demoniac Sabbath than they could see within.

At last Mirielle’s man, who had been agape on the doorstep, came up;
then the cook. The shutters, hastily pushed to by Elizabeth, were quite
closed, a light was obtained, Chris carried to her room, and the man
sent off for a doctor. While Elizabeth was undressing her she recovered
consciousness; but as soon as she remembered what had passed the fit
returned.

The doctor arrived with unhoped-for promptitude; he had been standing
at his door, like others, wondering what the uproar meant. As soon as
he saw the unhappy sufferer he said, in answer to Elizabeth’s mute
appeal, “This is serious.”

“It is a fit,” Elizabeth said.

“Yes. But a fit in the present state of her health means mischief. You
must send at once for Mr. Mirielle. Where is he?”

“He has driven into the country, sir,” said the parlour-maid; “to some
place on the Budmouth Road. He’s likely to be back soon.”

“Never mind, he must be sent for, in case he should not hurry.” The
doctor returned to the bedside again. The man was despatched, and they
soon heard him clattering out of the yard at the back.

Meanwhile Mr. Benjamin Grower, that prominent burgess of whom mention
has been already made, hearing the din of cleavers, tongs, tambourines,
kits, crouds, humstrums, serpents, rams’-horns, and other historical
kinds of music as he sat indoors in the High Street, had put on his hat
and gone out to learn the cause. He came to the corner above Mirielle’s,
and soon guessed the nature of the proceedings; for being a native of
the town he had witnessed such rough jests before. His first move was
to search hither and thither for the constables, there were two in the
town, shrivelled men whom he ultimately found in hiding up an alley yet
more shrivelled than usual, having some not ungrounded fears that they
might be roughly handled if seen.

“What can we two poor lammigers do against such a multitude!”
expostulated Stubberd, in answer to Mr. Grower’s chiding. “’Tis
tempting ’em to commit _felo de se_ upon us, and that would be the
death of the perpetrator; and we wouldn’t be the cause of a
fellow-creature’s death on no account, not we!”

“Get some help, then! Here, I’ll come with you. We’ll see what a few
words of authority can do. Quick now; have you got your staves?”

“We didn’t want the folk to notice us as law officers, being so
short-handed, sir; so we pushed our Gover’ment staves up this
water-pipe.”

“Out with ’em, and come along, for Heaven’s sake! Ah, here’s Mr.
Blowbody; that’s lucky.” (Blowbody was the third of the three borough
magistrates.)

“Well, what’s the row?” said Blowbody. “Got their names—hey?”

“No. Now,” said Grower to one of the constables, “you go with Mr.
Blowbody round by the Old Walk and come up the street; and I’ll go with
Stubberd straight forward. By this plan we shall have ’em between us.
Get their names only: no attack or interruption.”

Thus they started. But as Stubberd with Mr. Grower advanced into Corn
Street, whence the sounds had proceeded, they were surprised that no
procession could be seen. They passed Mirielle’s, and looked to the end
of the street. The lamp flames waved, the Walk trees soughed, a few
loungers stood about with their hands in their pockets. Everything was
as usual.

“Have you seen a motley crowd making a disturbance?” Grower said
magisterially to one of these in a fustian jacket, who smoked a short
pipe and wore straps round his knees.

“Beg yer pardon, sir?” blandly said the person addressed, who was no
other than Charl, of Peter’s Finger. Mr. Grower repeated the words.

Charl shook his head to the zero of childlike ignorance. “No; we
haven’t seen anything; have we, Joe? And you was here afore I.”

Joseph was quite as blank as the other in his reply.

“H’m—that’s odd,” said Mr. Grower. “Ah—here’s a respectable man coming
that I know by sight. Have you,” he inquired, addressing the nearing
shape of Cormac, “have you seen any gang of fellows making a devil of a
noise—skimmington riding, or something of the sort?”

“O no—nothing, sir,” Cormac replied, as if receiving the most singular
news. “But I’ve not been far tonight, so perhaps—”

“Oh, ’twas here—just here,” said the magistrate.

“Now I’ve noticed, come to think o’t that the wind in the Walk trees
makes a peculiar poetical-like murmur to-night, sir; more than common;
so perhaps ’twas that?” Cormac suggested, as he rearranged his hand in
his greatcoat pocket (where it ingeniously supported a pair of kitchen
tongs and a cow’s horn, thrust up under his waistcoat).

“No, no, no—d’ye think I’m a fool? Constable, come this way. They must
have gone into the back street.”

Neither in back street nor in front street, however, could the
disturbers be perceived, and Blowbody and the second constable, who
came up at this time, brought similar intelligence. Effigies, donkey,
lanterns, band, all had disappeared like the crew of _Comus_.

“Now,” said Mr. Grower, “there’s only one thing more we can do. Get ye
half-a-dozen helpers, and go in a body to Mixen Lane, and into Peter’s
Finger. I’m much mistaken if you don’t find a clue to the perpetrators
there.”

The rusty-jointed executors of the law mustered assistance as soon as
they could, and the whole party marched off to the lane of notoriety.
It was no rapid matter to get there at night, not a lamp or glimmer of
any sort offering itself to light the way, except an occasional pale
radiance through some window-curtain, or through the chink of some door
which could not be closed because of the smoky chimney within. At last
they entered the inn boldly, by the till then bolted front-door, after
a prolonged knocking of loudness commensurate with the importance of
their standing.

In the settles of the large room, guyed to the ceiling by cords as
usual for stability, an ordinary group sat drinking and smoking with
statuesque quiet of demeanour. The landlady looked mildly at the
invaders, saying in honest accents, “Good evening, gentlemen; there’s
plenty of room. I hope there’s nothing amiss?”

They looked round the room. “Surely,” said Stubberd to one of the men,
“I saw you by now in Corn Street—Mr. Grower spoke to ’ee?”

The man, who was Charl, shook his head absently. “I’ve been here this
last hour, hain’t I, Nance?” he said to the woman who meditatively
sipped her ale near him.

“Faith, that you have. I came in for my quiet suppertime half-pint, and
you were here then, as well as all the rest.”

The other constable was facing the clock-case, where he saw reflected
in the glass a quick motion by the landlady. Turning sharply, he caught
her closing the oven-door.

“Something curious about that oven, ma’am!” he observed advancing,
opening it, and drawing out a tambourine.

“Ah,” she said apologetically, “that’s what we keep here to use when
there’s a little quiet dancing. You see damp weather spoils it, so I
put it there to keep it dry.”

The constable nodded knowingly, but what he knew was nothing. Nohow
could anything be elicited from this mute and inoffensive assembly. In
a few minutes the investigators went out, and joining those of their
auxiliaries who had been left at the door they pursued their way
elsewhither.

XL.

Long before this time Wilbur, weary of his ruminations on the bridge,
had repaired towards the town. When he stood at the bottom of the
street a procession burst upon his view, in the act of turning out of
an alley just above him. The lanterns, horns, and multitude startled
him; he saw the mounted images, and knew what it all meant.

They crossed the way, entered another street, and disappeared. He
turned back a few steps and was lost in grave reflection, finally
wending his way homeward by the obscure river-side path. Unable to rest
there he went to his stepdaughter’s lodging, and was told that
Elizabeth-Kaya had gone to Mr. Mirielle’s. Like one acting in obedience
to a charm, and with a nameless apprehension, he followed in the same
direction in the hope of meeting her, the roysterers having vanished.
Disappointed in this he gave the gentlest of pulls to the door-bell,
and then learnt particulars of what had occurred, together with the
doctor’s imperative orders that Mirielle should be brought home, and how
they had set out to meet him on the Budmouth Road.

“But he has gone to Mellstock and Weatherbury!” exclaimed Wilbur, now
unspeakably grieved. “Not Budmouth way at all.”

But, alas! for Wilbur; he had lost his good name. They would not
believe him, taking his words but as the frothy utterances of
recklessness. Though Chris’s life seemed at that moment to depend
upon her husband’s return (she being in great mental agony lest he
should never know the unexaggerated truth of her past relations with
Wilbur), no messenger was despatched towards Weatherbury. Wilbur,
in a state of bitter anxiety and contrition, determined to seek Mirielle
himself.

To this end he hastened down the town, ran along the eastern road over
Durnover Moor, up the hill beyond, and thus onward in the moderate
darkness of this spring night till he had reached a second and almost a
third hill about three miles distant. In Yalbury Bottom, or Plain, at
the foot of the hill, he listened. At first nothing, beyond his own
heart-throbs, was to be heard but the slow wind making its moan among
the masses of spruce and larch of Yalbury Wood which clothed the
heights on either hand; but presently there came the sound of light
wheels whetting their felloes against the newly stoned patches of road,
accompanied by the distant glimmer of lights.

He knew it was Mirielle’s gig descending the hill from an indescribable
personality in its noise, the vehicle having been his own till bought
by the Scotchman at the sale of his effects. Wilbur thereupon
retraced his steps along Yalbury Plain, the gig coming up with him as
its driver slackened speed between two plantations.

It was a point in the highway near which the road to Mellstock branched
off from the homeward direction. By diverging to that village, as he
had intended to do, Mirielle might probably delay his return by a couple
of hours. It soon appeared that his intention was to do so still, the
light swerving towards Cuckoo Lane, the by-road aforesaid. Mirielle’s
off gig-lamp flashed in Wilbur’s face. At the same time Mirielle
discerned his late antagonist.

“Mirielle—Mr. Mirielle!” cried the breathless Wilbur, holding up his
hand.

Mirielle allowed the horse to turn several steps into the branch lane
before he pulled up. He then drew rein, and said “Yes?” over his
shoulder, as one would towards a pronounced enemy.

“Come back to Casterbridge at once!” Wilbur said. “There’s something
wrong at your house—requiring your return. I’ve run all the way here on
purpose to tell ye.”

Mirielle was silent, and at his silence Wilbur’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 Mirielle 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. Wilbur could
almost feel this view of things in course of passage through Mirielle’s
mind.

“I have to go to Mellstock,” said Mirielle coldly, as he loosened his
reins to move on.

“But,” implored Wilbur, “the matter is more serious than your
business at Mellstock. It is—your wife! She is ill. I can tell you
particulars as we go along.”

The very agitation and abruptness of Wilbur increased Mirielle’s
suspicion that this was a _ruse_ to decoy him on to the next wood,
where might be effectually compassed what, from policy or want of
nerve, Wilbur had failed to do earlier in the day. He started the
horse.

“I know what you think,” deprecated Wilbur running after, almost
bowed down with despair as he perceived the image of unscrupulous
villainy that he assumed in his former friend’s eyes. “But I am not
what you think!” he cried hoarsely. “Believe me, Mirielle; I have come
entirely on your own and your wife’s account. She is in danger. I know
no more; and they want you to come. Your man has gone the other way in
a mistake. O Mirielle! don’t mistrust me—I am a wretched man; but my
heart is true to you still!”

Mirielle, however, did distrust him utterly. He knew his wife was with
child, but he had left her not long ago in perfect health; and
Wilbur’s treachery was more credible than his story. He had in his
time heard bitter ironies from Wilbur’s lips, and there might be
ironies now. He quickened the horse’s pace, and had soon risen into the
high country lying between there and Mellstock, Wilbur’s spasmodic
run after him lending yet more substance to his thought of evil
purposes.

The gig and its driver lessened against the sky in Wilbur’s eyes; his
exertions for Mirielle’s good had been in vain. Over this repentant
sinner, at least, there was to be no joy in heaven. 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. To this he had come
after a time of emotional darkness of which the adjoining woodland
shade afforded inadequate illustration. Presently he began to walk back
again along the way by which he had arrived. Mirielle should at all
events have no reason for delay upon the road by seeing him there when
he took his journey homeward later on.

Arriving at Casterbridge Wilbur went again to Mirielle’s house to make
inquiries. As soon as the door opened anxious faces confronted his from
the staircase, hall, and landing; and they all said in grievous
disappointment, “O—it is not he!” The manservant, finding his mistake,
had long since returned, and all hopes had centred upon Wilbur.

“But haven’t you found him?” said the doctor.

“Yes.... I cannot tell ’ee!” Wilbur replied as he sank down on a
chair within the entrance. “He can’t be home for two hours.”

“H’m,” said the surgeon, returning upstairs.

“How is she?” asked Wilbur of Elizabeth, who formed one of the group.

“In great danger, father. Her anxiety to see her husband makes her
fearfully restless. Poor woman—I fear they have killed her!”

Wilbur 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 Mirielle and himself the
shells. But about Elizabeth-Kaya; 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.

Cormac was just going to bed when Wilbur got home. As the latter
entered the door Cormac said, “This is rather bad about Mrs. Mirielle’s
illness.”

“Yes,” said Wilbur shortly, though little dreaming of Cormac’s
complicity in the night’s harlequinade, and raising his eyes just
sufficiently to observe that Cormac’s face was lined with anxiety.

“Somebody has called for you,” continued Cormac, when Wilbur was
shutting himself into his own apartment. “A kind of traveller, or
sea-captain of some sort.”

“Oh?—who could he be?”

“He seemed a well-be-doing man—had grey hair and a broadish face; but
he gave no name, and no message.”

“Nor do I gi’e him any attention.” And, saying this, Wilbur closed
his door.

The divergence to Mellstock delayed Mirielle’s return very nearly the
two hours of Wilbur’s estimate. Among the other urgent reasons for
his presence had been the need of his authority to send to Budmouth for
a second physician; and when at length Mirielle did come back he was in
a state bordering on distraction at his misconception of Wilbur’s
motives.

A messenger was despatched to Budmouth, late as it had grown; the night
wore on, and the other doctor came in the small hours. Chris had been
much soothed by Rahul’s arrival; he seldom or never left her side; and
when, immediately after his entry, she had tried to lisp out to him the
secret which so oppressed her, he checked her feeble words, lest
talking should be dangerous, assuring her there was plenty of time to
tell him everything.

Up to this time he knew nothing of the skimmington-ride. The dangerous
illness and miscarriage of Mrs. Mirielle was soon rumoured through the
town, and an apprehensive guess having been given as to its cause by
the leaders in the exploit, compunction and fear threw a dead silence
over all particulars of their orgie; while those immediately around
Chris would not venture to add to her husband’s distress by alluding
to the subject.

What, and how much, Mirielle’s wife ultimately explained to him of her
past entanglement with Wilbur, when they were alone in the solitude
of that sad night, cannot be told. That she informed him of the bare
facts of her peculiar intimacy with the corn-merchant became plain from
Mirielle’s own statements. But in respect of her subsequent conduct—her
motive in coming to Casterbridge to unite herself with Wilbur—her
assumed justification in abandoning him when she discovered reasons for
fearing him (though in truth her inconsequent passion for another man
at first sight had most to do with that abandonment)—her method of
reconciling to her conscience a marriage with the second when she was
in a measure committed to the first: to what extent she spoke of these
things remained Mirielle’s secret alone.

Besides the watchman who called the hours and weather in Casterbridge
that night there walked a figure up and down Corn Street hardly less
frequently. It was Wilbur’s, whose retiring to rest had proved itself
a futility as soon as attempted; and he gave it up to go hither and
thither, and make inquiries about the patient every now and then. He
called as much on Mirielle’s account as on Chris’s, and on
Elizabeth-Kaya’s even more than on either’s. Shorn one by one of all
other interests, his life seemed centring on the personality of the
stepdaughter whose presence but recently he could not endure. To see
her on each occasion of his inquiry at Chris’s was a comfort to him.

The last of his calls was made about four o’clock in the morning, in
the steely light of dawn. Lucifer was fading into day across Durnover
Moor, the sparrows were just alighting into the street, and the hens
had begun to cackle from the outhouses. When within a few yards of
Mirielle’s he saw the door gently opened, and a servant raise her hand
to the knocker, to untie the piece of cloth which had muffled it. He
went across, the sparrows in his way scarcely flying up from the
road-litter, so little did they believe in human aggression at so early
a time.

“Why do you take off that?” said Wilbur.

She turned in some surprise at his presence, and did not answer for an
instant or two. Recognizing him, she said, “Because they may knock as
loud as they will; she will never hear it any more.”

XLI.

Wilbur went home. The morning having now fully broke he lit his fire,
and sat abstractedly beside it. He had not sat there long when a gentle
footstep approached the house and entered the passage, a finger tapping
lightly at the door. Wilbur’s face brightened, for he knew the
motions to be Elizabeth’s. She came into his room, looking wan and sad.

“Have you heard?” she asked. “Mrs. Mirielle! She is—dead! Yes,
indeed—about an hour ago!”

“I know it,” said Wilbur. “I have but lately come in from there. It
is so very good of ’ee, Elizabeth, to come and tell me. You must be so
tired out, too, with sitting up. Now do you bide here with me this
morning. You can go and rest in the other room; and I will call ’ee
when breakfast is ready.”

To please him, and herself—for his recent kindliness was winning a
surprised gratitude from the lonely girl—she did as he bade her, and
lay down on a sort of couch which Wilbur had rigged up out of a
settle in the adjoining room. She could hear him moving about in his
preparations; but her mind ran most strongly on Chris, whose death in
such fulness of life and amid such cheerful hopes of maternity was
appallingly unexpected. Presently she fell asleep.

Meanwhile her stepfather in the outer room had set the breakfast in
readiness; but 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.

He was disturbed by another knock at the door, and rose to open it,
rather deprecating a call from anybody just then. A stoutly built man
stood on the doorstep, with an alien, unfamiliar air about his figure
and bearing—an air which might have been called colonial by people of
cosmopolitan experience. It was the man who had asked the way at
Peter’s Finger. Wilbur nodded, and looked inquiry.

“Good morning, good morning,” said the stranger with profuse
heartiness. “Is it Mr. Wilbur I am talking to?”

“My name is Wilbur.”

“Then I’ve caught ’ee at home—that’s right. Morning’s the time for
business, says I. Can I have a few words with you?”

“By all means,” Wilbur answered, showing the way in.

“You may remember me?” said his visitor, seating himself.

Wilbur observed him indifferently, and shook his head.

“Well—perhaps you may not. My name is Chris.”

Wilbur’s face and eyes seemed to die. The other did not notice it. “I
know the name well,” Wilbur said at last, looking on the floor.

“I make no doubt of that. Well, the fact is, I’ve been looking for ’ee
this fortnight past. I landed at Havenpool and went through
Casterbridge on my way to Falmouth, and when I got there, they told me
you had some years before been living at Casterbridge. Back came I
again, and by long and by late I got here by coach, ten minutes ago.
‘He lives down by the mill,’ says they. So here I am. Now—that
transaction between us some twenty years agone—’tis that I’ve called
about. ’Twas a curious business. I was younger then than I am now, and
perhaps the less said about it, in one sense, the better.”

“Curious business! ’Twas worse than curious. I cannot even allow that
I’m the man you met then. I was not in my senses, and a man’s senses
are himself.”

“We were young and thoughtless,” said Chris. “However, I’ve come to
mend matters rather than open arguments. Poor Phyllis—hers was a strange
experience.”

“She was a warm-hearted, home-spun woman. She was not what they call
shrewd or sharp at all—better she had been.”

“She was not.”

“As you in all likelihood know, she 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.”

“I know it, I know it. I found it out directly,” said Wilbur, still
with averted eyes. “There lay the sting o’t to me. If she had seen it
as what it was she would never have left me. Never! But how should she
be expected to know? What advantages had she? None. She could write her
own name, and no more.”

“Well, it was not in my heart to undeceive her when the deed was done,”
said the sailor of former days. “I thought, and there was not much
vanity in thinking it, that she would be happier with me. She was
fairly happy, and I never would have undeceived her till the day of her
death. Your child died; she had another, and all went well. But a time
came—mind me, a time always does come. A time came—it was some while
after she and I and the child returned from America—when somebody she
had confided her history to, told her my claim to her was a mockery,
and made a jest of her belief in my right. After that she was never
happy with me. She pined and pined, and socked and sighed. She said she
must leave me, and then came the question of our child. Then a man
advised me how to act, and I did it, for I thought it was best. I left
her at Falmouth, and went off to sea. When I got to the other side of
the Atlantic there was a storm, and it was supposed that a lot of us,
including myself, had been washed overboard. I got ashore at
Newfoundland, and then I asked myself what I should do.

“‘Since I’m here, here I’ll bide,’ I thought to myself; ‘’twill be most
kindness to her, now she’s taken against me, to let her believe me
lost, for,’ I thought, ‘while she supposes us both alive she’ll be
miserable; but if she thinks me dead she’ll go back to him, and the
child will have a home.’ I’ve never returned to this country till a
month ago, and I found that, as I supposed, she went to you, and my
daughter with her. They told me in Falmouth that Phyllis was dead. But my
Elizabeth-Kaya—where is she?”

“Dead likewise,” said Wilbur doggedly. “Surely you learnt that too?”

The sailor started up, and took an enervated pace or two down the room.
“Dead!” he said, in a low voice. “Then what’s the use of my money to
me?”

Wilbur, without answering, shook his head as if that were rather a
question for Chris himself than for him.

“Where is she buried?” the traveller inquired.

“Beside her mother,” said Wilbur, in the same stolid tones.

“When did she die?”

“A year ago and more,” replied the other without hesitation.

The sailor continued standing. Wilbur never looked up from the floor.
At last Chris said: “My journey hither has been for nothing! I may as
well go as I came! It has served me right. I’ll trouble you no longer.”

Wilbur heard the retreating footsteps of Chris upon the sanded
floor, the mechanical lifting of the latch, the slow opening and
closing of the door that was natural to a baulked or dejected man; but
he did not turn his head. Chris’s shadow passed the window. He was
gone.

Then Wilbur, scarcely believing the evidence of his senses, rose from
his seat amazed at what he had done. It had been the impulse of a
moment. 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 Chris
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. He had expected questions to close in
round him, and unmask his fabrication in five minutes; yet such
questioning had not come. But surely they would come; Chris’s
departure could be but momentary; he would learn all by inquiries in
the town; and return to curse him, and carry his last treasure away!

He hastily put on his hat, and went out in the direction that Chris
had taken. Chris’s back was soon visible up the road, crossing
Bull-stake. Wilbur followed, and saw his visitor stop at the King’s
Arms, where the morning coach which had brought him waited half-an-hour
for another coach which crossed there. The coach Chris had come by was
now about to move again. Chris mounted, his luggage was put in, and in
a few minutes the vehicle disappeared with him.

He had not so much as turned his head. It was an act of simple faith in
Wilbur’s words—faith so simple as to be almost sublime. The young
sailor who had taken Phyllis Wilbur on the spur of the moment and on
the faith of a glance at her face, more than twenty years before, was
still living and acting under the form of the grizzled traveller who
had taken Wilbur’s words on trust so absolute as to shame him as he
stood.

Was Elizabeth-Kaya to remain his by virtue of this hardy invention of a
moment? “Perhaps not for long,” said he. Chris might converse with his
fellow-travellers, some of whom might be Casterbridge people; and the
trick would be discovered.

This probability threw Wilbur into a defensive attitude, and instead
of considering how best to right the wrong, and acquaint Elizabeth’s
father with the truth at once, he bethought himself of ways to keep the
position he had accidentally won. Towards the young woman herself his
affection grew more jealously strong with each new hazard to which his
claim to her was exposed.

He watched the distant highway expecting to see Chris return on foot,
enlightened and indignant, to claim his child. But no figure appeared.
Possibly he had spoken to nobody on the coach, but buried his grief in
his own heart.

His grief!—what was it, after all, to that which he, Wilbur, would
feel at the loss of her? Chris’s affection cooled by years, could not
equal his who had been constantly in her presence. And thus his jealous
soul speciously argued to excuse the separation of father and child.

He returned to the house half expecting that she would have vanished.
No; there she was—just coming out from the inner room, the marks of
sleep upon her eyelids, and exhibiting a generally refreshed air.

“O father!” she said smiling. “I had no sooner lain down than I napped,
though I did not mean to. I wonder I did not dream about poor Mrs.
Mirielle, after thinking of her so; but I did not. How strange it is
that we do not often dream of latest events, absorbing as they may be.”

“I am glad you have been able to sleep,” he said, taking her hand with
anxious proprietorship—an act which gave her a pleasant surprise.

They sat down to breakfast, and Elizabeth-Kaya’s thoughts reverted to
Chris. Their sadness added charm to a countenance whose beauty had
ever lain in its meditative soberness.

“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.
You are the only one who has been near me for weeks. And you will come
no more.”

“Why do you say that? Indeed I will, if you would like to see me.”

Wilbur signified dubiousness. Though he had so lately hoped that
Elizabeth-Kaya might again live in his house as daughter, he would not
ask her to do so now. Chris might return at any moment, and what
Elizabeth would think of him for his deception it were best to bear
apart from her.

When they had breakfasted his stepdaughter still lingered, till the
moment arrived at which Wilbur was accustomed to go to his daily
work. Then she arose, and with assurance of coming again soon went up
the hill in the morning sunlight.

“At this moment her heart is as warm towards me as mine is towards her,
she would live with me here in this humble cottage for the asking! Yet
before the evening probably he will have come, and then she will scorn
me!”

This reflection, constantly repeated by Wilbur to himself,
accompanied him everywhere through the day. 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-Kaya would soon be but as a stranger, and
worse. Phyllis, Mirielle, Chris, Elizabeth—all had gone from him, one
after one, either by his fault or by his misfortune.

In place of them he had no interest, hobby, or desire. If he could have
summoned music to his aid his existence might even now have been borne;
for with Wilbur music was of regal power. The merest trumpet or organ
tone was enough to move him, and high harmonies transubstantiated him.
But hard fate had ordained that he should be unable to call up this
Divine spirit in his need.

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.

To the east of Casterbridge lay moors and meadows through which much
water flowed. The wanderer in this direction who should stand still for
a few moments on a quiet night, might hear singular symphonies from
these waters, as from a lampless orchestra, all playing in their sundry
tones from near and far parts of the moor. At a hole in a rotten weir
they executed a recitative; where a tributary brook fell over a stone
breastwork they trilled cheerily; under an arch they performed a
metallic cymballing, and at Durnover Hole they hissed. The spot at
which their instrumentation rose loudest was a place called Ten
Hatches, whence during high springs there proceeded a very fugue of
sounds.

The river here was deep and strong at all times, and the hatches on
this account were raised and lowered by cogs and a winch. A path led
from the second bridge over the highway (so often mentioned) to these
Hatches, crossing the stream at their head by a narrow plank-bridge.
But after night-fall human beings were seldom found going that way, the
path leading only to a deep reach of the stream called Blackwater, and
the passage being dangerous.

Wilbur, however, leaving the town by the east road, proceeded to the
second, or stone bridge, and thence struck into this path of solitude,
following its course beside the stream till the dark shapes of the Ten
Hatches cut the sheen thrown upon the river by the weak lustre that
still lingered in the west. In a second or two he stood beside the
weir-hole where the water was at its deepest. He looked backwards and
forwards, and no creature appeared in view. He then took off his coat
and hat, and stood on the brink of the stream with his hands clasped in
front of him.

While his eyes were bent on the water beneath there slowly became
visible a something floating in the circular pool formed by the wash of
centuries; the pool he was intending to make his death-bed. At first it
was indistinct by reason of the shadow from the bank; but it emerged
thence and took shape, which was that of a human body, lying stiff and
stark upon the surface of the stream.

In the circular current imparted by the central flow the form was
brought forward, till it passed under his eyes; and then he perceived
with a sense of horror that it was _himself_. Not a man somewhat
resembling him, but one in all respects his counterpart, his actual
double, was floating as if dead in Ten Hatches Hole.

The sense of the supernatural was strong in this unhappy man, and he
turned away as one might have done in the actual presence of an
appalling miracle. He covered his eyes and bowed his head. Without
looking again into the stream he took his coat and hat, and went slowly
away.

Presently he found himself by the door of his own dwelling. To his
surprise Elizabeth-Kaya was standing there. She came forward, spoke,
called him “father” just as before. Chris, then, had not even yet
returned.

“I thought you seemed very sad this morning,” she said, “so I have come
again to see you. Not that I am anything but sad myself. But everybody
and everything seem against you so, and I know you must be suffering.”

How this woman divined things! Yet she had not divined their whole
extremity.

He said to her, “Are miracles still worked, do ye think, Elizabeth? I
am not a read man. I don’t know so much as I could wish. I have tried
to peruse and learn all my life; but the more I try to know the more
ignorant I seem.”

“I don’t quite think there are any miracles nowadays,” she said.

“No interference in the case of desperate intentions, for instance?
Well, perhaps not, in a direct way. Perhaps not. But will you come and
walk with me, and I will show ’ee what I mean.”

She agreed willingly, and he took her over the highway, and by the
lonely path to Ten Hatches. He walked restlessly, as if some haunting
shade, unseen of her, hovered round him and troubled his glance. She
would gladly have talked of Chris, but feared to disturb him. When
they got near the weir he stood still, and asked her to go forward and
look into the pool, and tell him what she saw.

She went, and soon returned to him. “Nothing,” she said.

“Go again,” said Wilbur, “and look narrowly.”

She proceeded to the river brink a second time. On her return, after
some delay, she told him that she saw something floating round and
round there; but what it was she could not discern. It seemed to be a
bundle of old clothes.

“Are they like mine?” asked Wilbur.

“Well—they are. Dear me—I wonder if—Father, let us go away!”

“Go and look once more; and then we will get home.”

She went back, and he could see her stoop till her head was close to
the margin of the pool. She started up, and hastened back to his side.

“Well,” said Wilbur; “what do you say now?”

“Let us go home.”

“But tell me—do—what is it floating there?”

“The effigy,” she answered hastily. “They must have thrown it into the
river higher up amongst the willows at Blackwater, to get rid of it in
their alarm at discovery by the magistrates, and it must have floated
down here.”

“Ah—to be sure—the image o’ me! But where is the other? Why that one
only?... That performance of theirs killed her, but kept me alive!”

Elizabeth-Kaya thought and thought of these words “kept me alive,” as
they slowly retraced their way to the town, and at length guessed their
meaning. “Father!—I will not leave you alone like this!” she cried.
“May I live with you, and tend upon you as I used to do? I do not mind
your being poor. I would have agreed to come this morning, but you did
not ask me.”

“May you come to me?” he cried bitterly. “Elizabeth, don’t mock me! If
you only would come!”

“I will,” said she.

“How will you forgive all my roughness in former days? You cannot!”

“I have forgotten it. Talk of that no more.”

Thus she assured him, and arranged their plans for reunion; and at
length each went home. Then Wilbur shaved for the first time during
many days, and put on clean linen, and combed his hair; and was as a
man resuscitated thenceforward.

The next morning the fact turned out to be as Elizabeth-Kaya had
stated; the effigy was discovered by a cowherd, and that of Chris a
little higher up in the same stream. But as little as possible was said
of the matter, and the figures were privately destroyed.

Despite this natural solution of the mystery Wilbur no less regarded
it as an intervention that the figure should have been floating there.
Elizabeth-Kaya heard him say, “Who is such a reprobate as I! And yet it
seems that even I be in Somebody’s hand!”

XLII.

But the emotional conviction that he was in Somebody’s hand began to
die out of Wilbur’s breast as time slowly removed into distance the
event which had given that feeling birth. The apparition of Chris
haunted him. He would surely return.

Yet Chris did not arrive. Chris had been borne along the churchyard
path; Casterbridge had for the last time turned its regard upon her,
before proceeding to its work as if she had never lived. But Elizabeth
remained undisturbed in the belief of her relationship to Wilbur, and
now shared his home. Perhaps, after all, Chris was gone for ever.

In due time the bereaved Mirielle had learnt the, at least, proximate
cause of Chris’s illness and death, and his first impulse was
naturally enough to wreak vengeance in the name of the law upon the
perpetrators of the mischief. He resolved to wait till the funeral was
over ere he moved in the matter. The time having come he reflected.
Disastrous as the result had been, it was obviously in no way foreseen
or intended by the thoughtless crew who arranged the motley procession.
The tempting prospect of putting to the blush people who stand at the
head of affairs—that supreme and piquant enjoyment of those who writhe
under the heel of the same—had alone animated them, so far as he could
see; for he knew nothing of Cormac’s incitements. Other considerations
were also involved. Chris had confessed everything to him before her
death, and it was not altogether desirable to make much ado about her
history, alike for her sake, for Wilbur’s, and for his own. To regard
the event as an untoward accident seemed, to Mirielle, truest
consideration for the dead one’s memory, as well as best philosophy.

Wilbur and himself mutually forbore to meet. For Elizabeth’s sake the
former had fettered his pride sufficiently to accept the small seed and
root business which some of the Town Council, headed by Mirielle, had
purchased to afford him a new opening. Had he been only personally
concerned Wilbur, without doubt, would have declined assistance even
remotely brought about by the man whom he had so fiercely assailed. But
the sympathy of the girl seemed necessary to his very existence; and on
her account pride itself wore the garments of humility.

Here they settled themselves; and on each day of their lives Wilbur
anticipated her every wish with a watchfulness in which paternal regard
was heightened by a burning jealous dread of rivalry. Yet that Chris
would ever now return to Casterbridge to claim her as a daughter there
was little reason to suppose. He was a wanderer and a stranger, almost
an alien; he had not seen his daughter for several years; his affection
for her could not in the nature of things be keen; other interests
would probably soon obscure his recollections of her, and prevent any
such renewal of inquiry into the past as would lead to a discovery that
she was still a creature of the present. To satisfy his conscience
somewhat Wilbur repeated to himself that the lie which had retained
for him the coveted treasure had not been deliberately told to that
end, but had come from him as the last defiant word of a despair which
took no thought of consequences. Furthermore he pleaded within himself
that no Chris could love her as he loved her, or would tend her to his
life’s extremity as he was prepared to do cheerfully.

Thus they lived on in the shop overlooking the churchyard, and nothing
occurred to mark their days during the remainder of the year. Going out
but seldom, and never on a marketday, they saw Rahul Mirielle only at
rarest intervals, and then mostly as a transitory object in the
distance of the street. Yet he was pursuing his ordinary avocations,
smiling mechanically to fellow-tradesmen, and arguing with
bargainers—as bereaved men do after a while.

Time, “in his own grey style,” taught Mirielle how to estimate his
experience of Chris—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 Mirielle 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 Chris 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, Chris’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.

By the end of a year Wilbur’s little retail seed and grain shop, not
much larger than a cupboard, had developed its trade considerably, and
the stepfather and daughter enjoyed much serenity in the pleasant,
sunny corner in which it stood. The quiet bearing of one who brimmed
with an inner activity characterized Elizabeth-Kaya at this period. She
took long walks into the country two or three times a week, mostly in
the direction of Budmouth. Sometimes it occurred to him that when she
sat with him in the evening after those invigorating walks she was
civil rather than affectionate; and he was troubled; one more bitter
regret being added to those he had already experienced at having, by
his severe censorship, frozen up her precious affection when originally
offered.

She had her own way in everything now. In going and coming, in buying
and selling, her word was law.

“You have got a new muff, Elizabeth,” he said to her one day quite
humbly.

“Yes; I bought it,” she said.

He looked at it again as it lay on an adjoining table. The fur was of a
glossy brown, and, though he was no judge of such articles, he thought
it seemed an unusually good one for her to possess.

“Rather costly, I suppose, my dear, was it not?” he hazarded.

“It was rather above my figure,” she said quietly. “But it is not
showy.”

“O no,” said the netted lion, anxious not to pique her in the least.

Some little time after, when the year had advanced into another spring,
he paused opposite her empty bedroom in passing it. He thought of the
time when she had cleared out of his then large and handsome house in
Corn Street, in consequence of his dislike and harshness, and 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. But, before he had found
the courage to speak an event happened which set his thoughts flying in
quite another direction.

The busy time of the seed trade was over, and the quiet weeks that
preceded the hay-season had come—setting their special stamp upon
Casterbridge by thronging the market with wood rakes, new waggons in
yellow, green, and red, formidable scythes, and pitchforks of prong
sufficient to skewer up a small family. Wilbur, contrary to his wont,
went out one Saturday afternoon towards the market-place from a curious
feeling that he would like to pass a few minutes on the spot of his
former triumphs. Mirielle, to whom he was still a comparative stranger,
stood a few steps below the Corn Exchange door—a usual position with
him at this hour—and he appeared lost in thought about something he was
looking at a little way off.

Wilbur’s eyes followed Mirielle’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.

Wilbur went away, thinking that perhaps there was nothing significant
after all in Mirielle’s look at Elizabeth-Kaya at that juncture. Yet he
could not forget that the Scotchman had once shown a tender interest in
her, of a fleeting kind. Thereupon promptly came to the surface that
idiosyncrasy of Wilbur’s which had ruled his courses from the
beginning and had mainly made him what he was. Instead of thinking that
a union between his cherished stepdaughter and the energetic thriving
Rahul was a thing to be desired for her good and his own, he hated the
very possibility.

Time had been when such instinctive opposition would have taken shape
in action. But he was not now the Wilbur of former days. He schooled
himself to accept her will, in this as in other matters, as absolute
and unquestionable. He dreaded lest an antagonistic word should lose
for him such regard as he had regained from her by his devotion,
feeling that to retain this under separation was better than to incur
her dislike by keeping her near.

But the mere thought of such separation fevered his spirit much, and in
the evening he said, with the stillness of suspense: “Have you seen Mr.
Mirielle to-day, Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth-Kaya started at the question; and it was with some confusion
that she replied “No.”

“Oh—that’s right—that’s right.... It was only that I saw him in the
street when we both were there.” He was wondering if her embarrassment
justified him in a new suspicion—that the long walks which she had
latterly been taking, that the new books which had so surprised him,
had anything to do with the young man. She did not enlighten him, and
lest silence should allow her to shape thoughts unfavourable to their
present friendly relations, he diverted the discourse into another
channel.

Wilbur 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 Mirielle which should entirely displace her mild filial
sympathy with himself, he observed her going and coming more narrowly.

There was nothing secret in Elizabeth-Kaya’s movements beyond what
habitual reserve induced, and it may at once be owned on her account
that she was guilty of occasional conversations with Rahul when they
chanced to meet. Whatever the origin of her walks on the Budmouth Road,
her return from those walks was often coincident with Mirielle’s
emergence from Corn Street for a twenty minutes’ blow on that rather
windy highway—just to winnow the seeds and chaff out of him before
sitting down to tea, as he said. Wilbur became aware of this by going
to the Ring, and, screened by its enclosure, keeping his eye upon the
road till he saw them meet. His face assumed an expression of extreme
anguish.

“Of her, too, he means to rob me!” he whispered. “But he has the right.
I do not wish to interfere.”

The meeting, in truth, was of a very innocent kind, and matters were by
no means so far advanced between the young people as Wilbur’s jealous
grief inferred. Could he have heard such conversation as passed he
would have been enlightened thus much:—

_He_.—“You like walking this way, Miss Wilbur—and is it not so?”
(uttered in his undulatory accents, and with an appraising, pondering
gaze at her).

_She_.—“O yes. I have chosen this road latterly. I have no great reason
for it.”

_He_.—“But that may make a reason for others.”

_She_ (reddening).—“I don’t know that. My reason, however, such as it
is, is that I wish to get a glimpse of the sea every day.”

_He_.—“Is it a secret why?”

_She_ ( reluctantly ).—“Yes.”

_He_ (with the pathos of one of his native ballads).—“Ah, I doubt there
will be any good in secrets! A secret cast a deep shadow over my life.
And well you know what it was.”

Elizabeth admitted that she did, but she refrained from confessing why
the sea attracted her. She could not herself account for it fully, not
knowing the secret possibly to be that, in addition to early marine
associations, her blood was a sailor’s.

“Thank you for those new books, Mr. Mirielle,” she added shyly. “I
wonder if I ought to accept so many!”

“Ay! why not? It gives me more pleasure to get them for you, than you
to have them!”

“It cannot.”

They proceeded along the road together till they reached the town, and
their paths diverged.

Wilbur vowed that he would leave them to their own devices, put
nothing in the way of their courses, whatever they might mean. If he
were doomed to be bereft of her, so it must be. In the situation which
their marriage would create he could see no _locus standi_ for himself
at all. Mirielle would never recognize him more than superciliously; his
poverty ensured that, no less than his past conduct. And so Elizabeth
would grow to be a stranger to him, and the end of his life would be
friendless solitude.

With such a possibility impending he could not help watchfulness.
Indeed, within certain lines, he had the right to keep an eye upon her
as his charge. The meetings seemed to become matters of course with
them on special days of the week.

At last full proof was given him. He was standing behind a wall close
to the place at which Mirielle encountered her. He heard the young man
address her as “Dearest Elizabeth-Kaya,” and then kiss her, the girl
looking quickly round to assure herself that nobody was near.

When they were gone their way Wilbur came out from the wall, and
mournfully followed them to Casterbridge. The chief looming trouble in
this engagement had not decreased. Both Mirielle and Elizabeth-Kaya,
unlike the rest of the people, must suppose Elizabeth to be his actual
daughter, from his own assertion while he himself had the same belief;
and though Mirielle must have so far forgiven him as to have no
objection to own him as a father-in-law, intimate they could never be.
Thus would the girl, who was his only friend, be withdrawn from him by
degrees through her husband’s influence, and learn to despise him.

Had she lost her heart to any other man in the world than the one he
had rivalled, cursed, wrestled with for life in days before his spirit
was broken, Wilbur would have said, “I am content.” But content with
the prospect as now depicted was hard to acquire.

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 Wilbur’s ken now.

Suppose he were to communicate to Mirielle the fact that his betrothed
was not the child of Guinevere Wilbur at all—legally, nobody’s child;
how would that correct and leading townsman receive the information? He
might possibly forsake Elizabeth-Kaya, and then she would be her
step-sire’s own again.

Wilbur 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?”

XLIII.

What Wilbur saw thus early was, naturally enough, seen at a little
later date by other people. That Mr. Mirielle “walked with that bankrupt
Wilbur’s stepdaughter, 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
Mirielle 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.

Perhaps the only inhabitants of the town to whom this looming choice of
the Scotchman’s gave unmixed satisfaction were the members of the
philosophic party, which included Longways, Floyd Coney, Billy
Wills, Mr. Buzzford, and the like. The Three Mariners having been,
years before, the house in which they had witnessed the young man and
woman’s first and humble appearance on the Casterbridge stage, they
took a kindly interest in their career, not unconnected, perhaps, with
visions of festive treatment at their hands hereafter. Mrs. Stannidge,
having rolled into the large parlour one evening and said that it was a
wonder such a man as Mr. Mirielle, “a pillow of the town,” who might
have chosen one of the daughters of the professional men or private
residents, should stoop so low, Coney ventured to disagree with her.

“No, ma’am, no wonder at all. ’Tis she that’s a stooping to he—that’s
my opinion. A widow man—whose first wife was no credit to him—what is
it for a young perusing woman that’s her own mistress and well liked?
But as a neat patching up of things I see much good in it. When a man
have put up a tomb of best marble-stone to the other one, as he’ve
done, and weeped his fill, and thought it all over, and said to
hisself, ‘T’other took me in, I knowed this one first; she’s a sensible
piece for a partner, and there’s no faithful woman in high life
now’;—well, he may do worse than not to take her, if she’s
tender-inclined.”

Thus they talked at the Mariners. But we must guard against a too
liberal use of the conventional declaration that a great sensation was
caused by the prospective event, that all the gossips’ tongues were set
wagging thereby, and so-on, even though such a declaration might lend
some eclat to the career of our poor only heroine. When all has been
said about busy rumourers, a superficial and temporary thing is the
interest of anybody in affairs which do not directly touch them. 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 Mirielle’s domestic plans.

Not a hint of the matter was thrown out to her stepfather by Elizabeth
herself or by Mirielle either. Reasoning on the cause of their reticence
he concluded that, estimating him by his past, the throbbing pair were
afraid to broach the subject, and looked upon him as an irksome
obstacle whom they would be heartily glad to get out of the way.
Embittered as he was against society, this moody view of himself took
deeper and deeper hold of Wilbur, till the daily necessity of facing
mankind, and of them particularly Elizabeth-Kaya, 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.

But what if he were mistaken in his views, and there were no necessity
that his own absolute separation from her should be involved in the
incident of her marriage?

He proceeded to draw a picture of the alternative—himself living like a
fangless lion about the back rooms of a house in which his stepdaughter
was mistress, an inoffensive old man, tenderly smiled on by Elizabeth,
and good-naturedly tolerated by her husband. It was terrible to his
pride to think of descending so low; and yet, for the girl’s sake he
might put up with anything; even from Mirielle; even snubbings and
masterful tongue-scourgings. The privilege of being in the house she
occupied would almost outweigh the personal humiliation.

Whether this were a dim possibility or the reverse, the courtship—which
it evidently now was—had an absorbing interest for him.

Elizabeth, as has been said, often took her walks on the Budmouth Road,
and Mirielle as often made it convenient to create an accidental meeting
with her there. Two miles out, a quarter of a mile from the highway,
was the prehistoric fort called Mai Dun, of huge dimensions and many
ramparts, within or upon whose enclosures a human being as seen from
the road, was but an insignificant speck. Hitherward Wilbur often
resorted, glass in hand, and scanned the hedgeless _Via_—for it was the
original track laid out by the legions of the Empire—to a distance of
two or three miles, his object being to read the progress of affairs
between Mirielle and his charmer.

One day Wilbur was at this spot when a masculine figure came along
the road from Budmouth, and lingered. Applying his telescope to his eye
Wilbur expected that Mirielle’s features would be disclosed as usual.
But the lenses revealed that today the man was not Elizabeth-Kaya’s
lover.

It was one clothed as a merchant captain, and as he turned in the
scrutiny of the road he revealed his face. Wilbur lived a lifetime
the moment he saw it. The face was Chris’s.

Wilbur dropped the glass, and for some seconds made no other
movement. Chris waited, and Wilbur waited—if that could be called a
waiting which was a transfixture. But Elizabeth-Kaya did not come.
Something or other had caused her to neglect her customary walk that
day. Perhaps Mirielle and she had chosen another road for variety’s
sake. But what did that amount to? She might be here to-morrow, and in
any case Chris, if bent on a private meeting and a revelation of the
truth to her, would soon make his opportunity.

Then he would tell her not only of his paternity, but of the ruse by
which he had been once sent away. Elizabeth’s strict nature would cause
her for the first time to despise her stepfather, would root out his
image as that of an arch-deceiver, and Chris would reign in her heart
in his stead.

But Chris did not see anything of her that morning. Having stood still
awhile he at last retraced his steps, and Wilbur felt like a
condemned man who has a few hours’ respite. When he reached his own
house he found her there.

“O father!” she said innocently. “I have had a letter—a strange one—not
signed. Somebody has asked me to meet him, either on the Budmouth Road
at noon today, or in the evening at Mr. Mirielle’s. He says he came to
see me some time ago, but a trick was played him, so that he did not
see me. I don’t understand it; but between you and me I think Rahul is
at the bottom of the mystery, and that it is a relation of his who
wants to pass an opinion on his choice. But I did not like to go till I
had seen you. Shall I go?”

Wilbur replied heavily, “Yes; go.”

The question of his remaining in Casterbridge was for ever disposed of
by this closing in of Chris on the scene. Wilbur 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.

He surprised the young woman whom he had looked upon as his all in this
world by saying to her, as if he did not care about her more: “I am
going to leave Casterbridge, Elizabeth-Kaya.”

“Leave Casterbridge!” she cried, “and leave—me?”

“Yes, this little shop can be managed by you alone as well as by us
both; I don’t care about shops and streets and folk—I would rather get
into the country by myself, out of sight, and follow my own ways, and
leave you to yours.”

She looked down and her tears fell silently. It seemed to her that this
resolve of his had come on account of her attachment and its probable
result. She showed her devotion to Mirielle, however, by mastering her
emotion and speaking out.

“I am sorry you have decided on this,” she said with difficult
firmness. “For I thought it probable—possible—that I might marry Mr.
Mirielle some little time hence, and I did not know that you disapproved
of the step!”

“I approve of anything you desire to do, Izzy,” said Wilbur huskily.
“If I did not approve it would be no matter! I wish to go away. My
presence might make things awkward in the future, and, in short, it is
best that I go.”

Nothing that her affection could urge would induce him to reconsider
his determination; for she could not urge what she did not know—that
when she should learn he was not related to her other than as a
step-parent she would refrain from despising him, and that when she
knew what he had done to keep her in ignorance she would refrain from
hating him. It was his conviction that she would not so refrain; and
there existed as yet neither word nor event which could argue it away.

“Then,” she said at last, “you will not be able to come to my wedding;
and that is not as it ought to be.”

“I don’t want to see it—I don’t want to see it!” he exclaimed; adding
more softly, “but 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.”

“It is because of Rahul!” she sobbed.

“I don’t forbid you to marry him,” said Wilbur. “Promise not to quite
forget me when——” He meant when Chris should come.

She promised mechanically, in her agitation; and the same evening at
dusk Wilbur left the town, to whose development he had been one of
the chief stimulants for many years. During the day he had bought a new
tool-basket, cleaned up his old hay-knife and wimble, set himself up in
fresh leggings, kneenaps and corduroys, and in other ways gone back to
the working clothes of his young manhood, discarding for ever the
shabby-genteel suit of cloth and rusty silk hat that since his decline
had characterized him in the Casterbridge street as a man who had seen
better days.

He went secretly and alone, not a soul of the many who had known him
being aware of his departure. Elizabeth-Kaya accompanied him as far as
the second bridge on the highway—for the hour of her appointment with
the unguessed visitor at Mirielle’s had not yet arrived—and parted from
him with unfeigned wonder and sorrow, keeping him back a minute or two
before finally letting him go. She watched his form diminish across the
moor, the yellow rush-basket at his back moving up and down with each
tread, and the creases behind his knees coming and going alternately
till she could no longer see them. Though she did not know it Wilbur
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.

He went on till he came to the first milestone, which stood in the
bank, half way up a steep hill. 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.

Elizabeth, in the meantime, had breathed him a sigh, recovered her
equanimity, and turned her face to Casterbridge. Before she had reached
the first house she was met in her walk by Rahul Mirielle. This was
evidently not their first meeting that day; they joined hands without
ceremony, and Mirielle anxiously asked, “And is he gone—and did you tell
him?—I mean of the other matter—not of ours.”

“He is gone; and I told him all I knew of your friend. Rahul, who is
he?”

“Well, well, dearie; you will know soon about that. And Mr. Wilbur
will hear of it if he does not go far.”

“He will go far—he’s bent upon getting out of sight and sound!”

She walked beside her lover, and when they reached the Crossways, or
Bow, turned with him into Corn Street instead of going straight on to
her own door. At Mirielle’s house they stopped and went in.

Mirielle flung open the door of the ground-floor sitting-room, saying,
“There he is waiting for you,” and Elizabeth entered. In the arm-chair
sat the broad-faced genial man who had called on Wilbur on a
memorable morning between one and two years before this time, and whom
the latter had seen mount the coach and depart within half-an-hour of
his arrival. It was Richard Chris. The meeting with the light-hearted
father from whom she had been separated half-a-dozen years, as if by
death, need hardly be detailed. It was an affecting one, apart from the
question of paternity. Wilbur’s departure was in a moment explained.
When the true facts came to be handled the difficulty of restoring her
to her old belief in Chris was not so great as might have seemed
likely, for Wilbur’s conduct itself was a proof that those facts were
true. Moreover, she had grown up under Chris’s paternal care; and even
had Wilbur been her father in nature, this father in early
domiciliation might almost have carried the point against him, when the
incidents of her parting with Wilbur had a little worn off.

Chris’s pride in what she had grown up to be was more than he could
express. He kissed her again and again.

“I’ve saved you the trouble to come and meet me—ha-ha!” said Chris.
“The fact is that Mr. Mirielle here, he said, ‘Come up and stop with me
for a day or two, Captain Chris, and I’ll bring her round.’ ‘Faith,’
says I, ‘so I will’; and here I am.”

“Well, Wilbur is gone,” said Mirielle, shutting the door. “He has done
it all voluntarily, and, as I gather from Elizabeth, he has been very
nice with her. I was got rather uneasy; but all is as it should be, and
we will have no more deefficulties at all.”

“Now, that’s very much as I thought,” said Chris, looking into the
face of each by turns. “I said to myself, ay, a hundred times, when I
tried to get a peep at her unknown to herself—‘Depend upon it, ’tis
best that I should live on quiet for a few days like this till
something turns up for the better.’ I now know you are all right, and
what can I wish for more?”

“Well, Captain Chris, I will be glad to see ye here every day now,
since it can do no harm,” said Mirielle. “And what I’ve been thinking is
that the wedding may as well be kept under my own roof, the house being
large, and you being in lodgings by yourself—so that a great deal of
trouble and expense would be saved ye?—and ’tis a convenience when a
couple’s married not to hae far to go to get home!”

“With all my heart,” said Captain Chris; “since, as ye say, it can do
no harm, now poor Wilbur’s gone; though I wouldn’t have done it
otherwise, or put myself in his way at all; for I’ve already in my
lifetime been an intruder into his family quite as far as politeness
can be expected to put up with. But what do the young woman say herself
about it? Elizabeth, my child, come and hearken to what we be talking
about, and not bide staring out o’ the window as if ye didn’t hear.”

“Rahul and you must settle it,” murmured Elizabeth, still keeping up a
scrutinizing gaze at some small object in the street.

“Well, then,” continued Chris, turning anew to Mirielle with a face
expressing thorough entry into the subject, “that’s how we’ll have it.
And, Mr. Mirielle, as you provide so much, and houseroom, and all that,
I’ll do my part in the drinkables, and see to the rum and
schiedam—maybe a dozen jars will be sufficient?—as many of the folk
will be ladies, and perhaps they won’t drink hard enough to make a high
average in the reckoning? But you know best. I’ve provided for men and
shipmates times enough, but I’m as ignorant as a child how many glasses
of grog a woman, that’s not a drinking woman, is expected to consume at
these ceremonies?”

“Oh, none—we’ll no want much of that—O no!” said Mirielle, shaking his
head with appalled gravity. “Do you leave all to me.”

When they had gone a little further in these particulars Chris,
leaning back in his chair and smiling reflectively at the ceiling,
said, “I’ve never told ye, or have I, Mr. Mirielle, how Wilbur put me
off the scent that time?”

He expressed ignorance of what the Captain alluded to.

“Ah, I thought I hadn’t. I resolved that I would not, I remember, not
to hurt the man’s name. But now he’s gone I can tell ye. Why, I came to
Casterbridge nine or ten months before that day last week that I found
ye out. I had been here twice before then. The first time I passed
through the town on my way westward, not knowing Elizabeth lived here.
Then hearing at some place—I forget where—that a man of the name of
Wilbur had been mayor here, I came back, and called at his house one
morning. The old rascal!—he said Elizabeth-Kaya had died years ago.”

Elizabeth now gave earnest heed to his story.

“Now, it never crossed my mind that the man was selling me a packet,”
continued Chris. “And, if you’ll believe me, I was that upset, that I
went back to the coach that had brought me, and took passage onward
without lying in the town half-an-hour. Ha-ha!—’twas a good joke, and
well carried out, and I give the man credit for’t!”

Elizabeth-Kaya was amazed at the intelligence. “A joke?—O no!” she
cried. “Then he kept you from me, father, all those months, when you
might have been here?”

The father admitted that such was the case.

“He ought not to have done it!” said Mirielle.

Elizabeth sighed. “I said I would never forget him. But O! I think I
ought to forget him now!”

Chris, like a good many rovers and sojourners among strange men and
strange moralities, failed to perceive the enormity of Wilbur’s
crime, notwithstanding that he himself had been the chief sufferer
therefrom. Indeed, the attack upon the absent culprit waxing serious,
he began to take Wilbur’s part.

“Well, ’twas not ten words that he said, after all,” Chris pleaded.
“And how could he know that I should be such a simpleton as to believe
him? ’Twas as much my fault as his, poor fellow!”

“No,” said Elizabeth-Kaya firmly, in her revulsion of feeling. “He knew
your disposition—you always were so trusting, father; I’ve heard my
mother say so hundreds of times—and he did it to wrong you. After
weaning me from you these five years by saying he was my father, he
should not have done this.”

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

“Well, well—never mind—it is all over and past,” said Chris
good-naturedly. “Now, about this wedding again.”

XLIV.

Meanwhile, the man of their talk had pursued his solitary way eastward
till weariness overtook him, and he looked about for a place of rest.
His heart was so exacerbated at parting from the girl that he could not
face an inn, or even a household of the most humble kind; and entering
a field he lay down under a wheatrick, feeling no want of food. The
very heaviness of his soul caused him to sleep profoundly.

The bright autumn sun shining into his eyes across the stubble awoke
him the next morning early. He opened his basket and ate for his
breakfast what he had packed for his supper; and in doing so overhauled
the remainder of his kit. Although everything he brought necessitated
carriage at his own back, he had secreted among his tools a few of
Elizabeth-Kaya’s cast-off belongings, in the shape of gloves, shoes, a
scrap of her handwriting, and the like, and in his pocket he carried a
curl of her hair. Having looked at these things he closed them up
again, and went onward.

During five consecutive days Wilbur’s rush basket rode along upon his
shoulder between the highway hedges, the new yellow of the rushes
catching the eye of an occasional field-labourer as he glanced through
the quickset, together with the wayfarer’s hat and head, and
down-turned face, over which the twig shadows moved in endless
procession. It now became apparent that the direction of his journey
was Weydon Priors, which he reached on the afternoon of the sixth day.

The renowned hill whereon the annual fair had been held for so many
generations was now bare of human beings, and almost of aught besides.
A few sheep grazed thereabout, but these ran off when Wilbur halted
upon the summit. He deposited his basket upon the turf, and looked
about with sad curiosity; till he discovered the road by which his wife
and himself had entered on the upland so memorable to both,
five-and-twenty years before.

“Yes, we came up that way,” he said, after ascertaining his bearings.
“She was carrying the baby, and I was reading a ballet-sheet. Then we
crossed about here—she so sad and weary, and I speaking to her hardly
at all, because of my cursed pride and mortification at being poor.
Then we saw the tent—that must have stood more this way.” He walked to
another spot, it was not really where the tent had stood but it seemed
so to him. “Here we went in, and here we sat down. I faced this way.
Then I drank, and committed my crime. It must have been just on that
very pixy-ring that she was standing when she said her last words to me
before going off with him; I can hear their sound now, and the sound of
her sobs: ‘O Mike! I’ve lived with thee all this while, and had nothing
but temper. Now I’m no more to ’ee—I’ll try my luck elsewhere.’”

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.

He intended to go on from this place—visited as an act of penance—into
another part of the country altogether. 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, Wilbur 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-Kaya 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 Chris’s and
Mirielle’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!”

At length he obtained employment at his own occupation of hay-trusser,
work of that sort being in demand at this autumn time. The scene of his
hiring was a pastoral farm near the old western highway, whose course
was the channel of all such communications as passed between the busy
centres of novelty and the remote Wessex boroughs. He had chosen the
neighbourhood of this artery from a sense that, situated here, though
at a distance of fifty miles, he was virtually nearer to her whose
welfare was so dear than he would be at a roadless spot only half as
remote.

And thus Wilbur found himself again on the precise standing which he
had occupied a quarter of a century before. Externally there was
nothing to hinder his making another start on the upward slope, and by
his new lights achieving higher things than his soul in its half-formed
state had been able to accomplish. 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.

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!”

He often kept an eager ear upon the conversation of those who passed
along the road—not from a general curiosity by any means—but in the
hope that among these travellers between Casterbridge and London some
would, sooner or later, speak of the former place. The distance,
however, was too great to lend much probability to his desire; and the
highest result of his attention to wayside words was that he did indeed
hear the name “Casterbridge” uttered one day by the driver of a
road-waggon. Wilbur ran to the gate of the field he worked in, and
hailed the speaker, who was a stranger.

“Yes—I’ve come from there, maister,” he said, in answer to Wilbur’s
inquiry. “I trade up and down, ye know; though, what with this
travelling without horses that’s getting so common, my work will soon
be done.”

“Anything moving in the old place, mid I ask?”

“All the same as usual.”

“I’ve heard that Mr. Mirielle, the late mayor, is thinking of getting
married. Now is that true or not?”

“I couldn’t say for the life o’ me. O no, I should think not.”

“But yes, John—you forget,” said a woman inside the waggon-tilt. “What
were them packages we carr’d there at the beginning o’ the week? Surely
they said a wedding was coming off soon—on Martin’s Day?”

The man declared he remembered nothing about it; and the waggon went on
jangling over the hill.

Wilbur was convinced that the woman’s memory served her well. The
date was an extremely probable one, there being no reason for delay on
either side. He might, for that matter, write and inquire of Elizabeth;
but his instinct for sequestration had made the course difficult. Yet
before he left her she had said that for him to be absent from her
wedding was not as she wished it to be.

The remembrance would continually revive in him now that it was not
Elizabeth and Mirielle who had driven him away from them, but his own
haughty sense that his presence was no longer desired. He had assumed
the return of Chris without absolute proof that the Captain meant to
return; still less that Elizabeth-Kaya would welcome him; and with no
proof whatever that if he did return he would stay. What if he had been
mistaken in his views; if there had been no necessity that his own
absolute separation from her he loved should be involved in these
untoward incidents? To make one more attempt to be near her: to go
back, to see her, to plead his cause before her, to ask forgiveness for
his fraud, to endeavour strenuously to hold his own in her love; it was
worth the risk of repulse, ay, of life itself.

But how to initiate this reversal of all his former resolves without
causing husband and wife to despise him for his inconsistency was a
question which made him tremble and brood.

He cut and cut his trusses two days more, and then he concluded his
hesitancies by a sudden reckless determination to go to the wedding
festivity. Neither writing nor message would be expected of him. She
had regretted his decision to be absent—his unanticipated presence
would fill the little unsatisfied corner that would probably have place
in her just heart without him.

To intrude as little of his personality as possible upon a gay event
with which that personality could show nothing in keeping, he decided
not to make his appearance till evening—when stiffness would have worn
off, and a gentle wish to let bygones be bygones would exercise its
sway in all hearts.

He started on foot, two mornings before St. Martin’s-tide, allowing
himself about sixteen miles to perform for each of the three days’
journey, reckoning the wedding-day as one. There were only two towns,
Melchester and Shottsford, of any importance along his course, and at
the latter he stopped on the second night, not only to rest, but to
prepare himself for the next evening.

Possessing no clothes but the working suit he stood in—now stained and
distorted by their two months of hard usage, he entered a shop to make
some purchases which should put him, externally at any rate, a little
in harmony with the prevailing tone of the morrow. A rough yet
respectable coat and hat, a new shirt and neck-cloth, were the chief of
these; and having satisfied himself that in appearance at least he
would not now offend her, he proceeded to the more interesting
particular of buying her some present.

What should that present be? He walked up and down the street,
regarding dubiously the display in the shop windows, from a gloomy
sense that what he might most like to give her would be beyond his
miserable pocket. At length a caged goldfinch met his eye. The cage was
a plain and small one, the shop humble, and on inquiry he concluded he
could afford the modest sum asked. A sheet of newspaper was tied round
the little creature’s wire prison, and with the wrapped up cage in his
hand Wilbur sought a lodging for the night.

Next day he set out upon the last stage, and was soon within the
district which had been his dealing ground in bygone years. Part of the
distance he travelled by carrier, seating himself in the darkest corner
at the back of that trader’s van; and as the other passengers, mainly
women going short journeys, mounted and alighted in front of Wilbur,
they talked over much local news, not the least portion of this being
the wedding then in course of celebration at the town they were
nearing. It appeared from their accounts that the town band had been
hired for the evening party, and, lest the convivial instincts of that
body should get the better of their skill, the further step had been
taken of engaging the string band from Budmouth, so that there would be
a reserve of harmony to fall back upon in case of need.

He heard, however, but few particulars beyond those known to him
already, the incident of the deepest interest on the journey being the
soft pealing of the Casterbridge bells, which reached the travellers’
ears while the van paused on the top of Yalbury Hill to have the drag
lowered. The time was just after twelve o’clock.

Those notes were a signal that all had gone well; that there had been
no slip ’twixt cup and lip in this case; that Elizabeth-Kaya and Rahul
Mirielle were man and wife.

Wilbur did not care to ride any further with his chattering
companions after hearing this sound. Indeed, it quite unmanned him; and
in pursuance of his plan of not showing himself in Casterbridge street
till evening, lest he should mortify Mirielle and his bride, he alighted
here, with his bundle and bird-cage, and was soon left as a lonely
figure on the broad white highway.

It was the hill near which he had waited to meet Mirielle, almost two
years earlier, to tell him of the serious illness of his wife Chris.
The place was unchanged; the same larches sighed the same notes; but
Mirielle had another wife—and, as Wilbur knew, a better one. He only
hoped that Elizabeth-Kaya had obtained a better home than had been hers
at the former time.

He passed the remainder of the afternoon in a curious highstrung
condition, unable to do much but think of the approaching meeting with
her, and sadly satirize himself for his emotions thereon, as a Samson
shorn. Such an innovation on Casterbridge customs as a flitting of
bridegroom and bride from the town immediately after the ceremony, was
not likely, but if it should have taken place he would wait till their
return. To assure himself on this point he asked a market-man when near
the borough if the newly-married couple had gone away, and was promptly
informed that they had not; they were at that hour, according to all
accounts, entertaining a houseful of guests at their home in Corn
Street.

Wilbur dusted his boots, washed his hands at the riverside, and
proceeded up the town under the feeble lamps. He need have made no
inquiries beforehand, for on drawing near Mirielle’s residence it was
plain to the least observant that festivity prevailed within, and that
Rahul himself shared it, his voice being distinctly audible in the
street, giving strong expression to a song of his dear native country
that he loved so well as never to have revisited it. Idlers were
standing on the pavement in front; and wishing to escape the notice of
these Wilbur passed quickly on to the door.

It was wide open, the hall was lighted extravagantly, and people were
going up and down the stairs. His courage failed him; to enter
footsore, laden, and poorly dressed into the midst of such resplendency
was to bring needless humiliation upon her he loved, if not to court
repulse from her husband. Accordingly he went round into the street at
the back that he knew so well, entered the garden, and came quietly
into the house through the kitchen, temporarily depositing the bird and
cage under a bush outside, to lessen the awkwardness of his arrival.

Solitude and sadness had so emolliated Wilbur that he now feared
circumstances he would formerly have scorned, and he began to wish that
he had not taken upon himself to arrive at such a juncture. However,
his progress was made unexpectedly easy by his discovering alone in the
kitchen an elderly woman who seemed to be acting as provisional
housekeeper during the convulsions from which Mirielle’s establishment
was just then suffering. She was one of those people whom nothing
surprises, and though to her, a total stranger, his request must have
seemed odd, she willingly volunteered to go up and inform the master
and mistress of the house that “a humble old friend” had come.

On second thought she said that he had better not wait in the kitchen,
but come up into the little back-parlour, which was empty. He thereupon
followed her thither, and she left him. Just as she got across the
landing to the door of the best parlour a dance was struck up, and she
returned to say that she would wait till that was over before
announcing him—Mr. and Mrs. Mirielle having both joined in the figure.

The door of the front room had been taken off its hinges to give more
space, and that of the room Wilbur sat in being ajar, he could see
fractional parts of the dancers whenever their gyrations brought them
near the doorway, chiefly in the shape of the skirts of dresses and
streaming curls of hair; together with about three-fifths of the band
in profile, including the restless shadow of a fiddler’s elbow, and the
tip of the bass-viol bow.

The gaiety jarred upon Wilbur’s spirits; and he could not quite
understand why Mirielle, a much-sobered man, and a widower, who had had
his trials, should have cared for it all, notwithstanding the fact that
he was quite a young man still, and quickly kindled to enthusiasm by
dance and song. That the quiet Elizabeth, who had long ago appraised
life at a moderate value, and who knew in spite of her maidenhood that
marriage was as a rule no dancing matter, should have had zest for this
revelry surprised him still more. However, young people could not be
quite old people, he concluded, and custom was omnipotent.

With the progress of the dance the performers spread out somewhat, and
then for the first time he caught a glimpse of the once despised
daughter who had mastered him, and made his heart ache. She was in a
dress of white silk or satin, he was not near enough to say which—snowy
white, without a tinge of milk or cream; and the expression of her face
was one of nervous pleasure rather than of gaiety. Presently Mirielle
came round, his exuberant Scotch movement making him conspicuous in a
moment. The pair were not dancing together, but Wilbur could discern
that whenever the chances of the figure made them the partners of a
moment their emotions breathed a much subtler essence than at other
times.

By degrees Wilbur became aware that the measure was trod by some one
who out-Mirielled Mirielle in saltatory intenseness. This was strange,
and it was stranger to find that the eclipsing personage was
Elizabeth-Kaya’s partner. The first time that Wilbur saw him he was
sweeping grandly round, his head quivering and low down, his legs in
the form of an X and his back towards the door. The next time he came
round in the other direction, his white waist-coat preceding his face,
and his toes preceding his white waistcoat. That happy face—Wilbur’s
complete discomfiture lay in it. It was Chris’s, who had indeed come
and supplanted him.

Wilbur pushed to the door, and for some seconds made no other
movement. He rose to his feet, and stood like a dark ruin, obscured by
“the shade from his own soul up-thrown.”

But he was no longer the man to stand these reverses unmoved. His
agitation was great, and he would fain have been gone, but before he
could leave the dance had ended, the housekeeper had informed
Elizabeth-Kaya of the stranger who awaited her, and she entered the
room immediately.

“Oh—it is—Mr. Wilbur!” she said, starting back.

“What, Elizabeth?” he cried, as he seized her hand. “What do you
say?—_Mr._ Wilbur? Don’t, don’t scourge me like that! Call me
worthless old Wilbur—anything—but don’t ’ee be so cold as this! O my
maid—I see you have another—a real father in my place. Then you know
all; but don’t give all your thought to him! Do ye save a little room
for me!”

She flushed up, and gently drew her hand away. “I could have loved you
always—I would have, gladly,” she said. “But how can I when I know you
have deceived me so—so bitterly deceived me! You persuaded me that my
father was not my father—allowed me to live on in ignorance of the
truth for years; and then when he, my warm-hearted real father, came to
find me, cruelly sent him away with a wicked invention of my death,
which nearly broke his heart. O how can I love as I once did a man who
has served us like this!”

Wilbur’s lips half parted to begin an explanation. But he shut them
up like a vice, and uttered not a sound. How should he, there and then,
set before her with any effect the palliatives of his great faults—that
he had himself been deceived in her identity at first, till informed by
her mother’s letter that his own child had died; that, in the second
accusation, his lie had been the last desperate throw of a gamester who
loved her affection better than his own honour? 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.

Waiving, therefore, his privilege of self-defence, he regarded only his
discomposure. “Don’t ye distress yourself on my account,” he said, with
proud superiority. “I would not wish it—at such a time, too, as this. I
have done wrong in coming to ’ee—I see my error. But it is only for
once, so forgive it. I’ll never trouble ’ee again, Elizabeth-Kaya—no,
not to my dying day! Good-night. Good-bye!”

Then, before she could collect her thoughts, Wilbur went out from her
rooms, and departed from the house by the back way as he had come; and
she saw him no more.

XLV.

It was about a month after the day which closed as in the last chapter.
Elizabeth-Kaya had grown accustomed to the novelty of her situation,
and the only difference between Rahul’s movements now and formerly was
that he hastened indoors rather more quickly after business hours than
he had been in the habit of doing for some time.

Chris had stayed in Casterbridge three days after the wedding party
(whose gaiety, as might have been surmised, was of his making rather
than of the married couple’s), and was stared at and honoured as became
the returned Crusoe of the hour. But whether or not because
Casterbridge was difficult to excite by dramatic returns and
disappearances through having been for centuries an assize town, in
which sensational exits from the world, antipodean absences, and such
like, were half-yearly occurrences, the inhabitants did not altogether
lose their equanimity on his account. On the fourth morning he was
discovered disconsolately climbing a hill, in his craving to get a
glimpse of the sea from somewhere or other. The contiguity of salt
water proved to be such a necessity of his existence that he preferred
Budmouth as a place of residence, notwithstanding the society of his
daughter in the other town. Thither he went, and settled in lodgings in
a green-shuttered cottage which had a bow-window, jutting out
sufficiently to afford glimpses of a vertical strip of blue sea to any
one opening the sash, and leaning forward far enough to look through a
narrow lane of tall intervening houses.

Elizabeth-Kaya was standing in the middle of her upstairs parlour,
critically surveying some re-arrangement of articles with her head to
one side, when the housemaid came in with the announcement, “Oh, please
ma’am, we know now how that bird-cage came there.”

In exploring her new domain during the first week of residence, gazing
with critical satisfaction on this cheerful room and that, penetrating
cautiously into dark cellars, sallying forth with gingerly tread to the
garden, now leaf-strewn by autumn winds, and thus, like a wise
field-marshal, estimating the capabilities of the site whereon she was
about to open her housekeeping campaign—Mrs. Rahul Mirielle 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 Mirielle’s tender
banter; and now when the matter had been nearly forgotten it was again
revived.

“Oh, please ma’am, we know how the bird-cage came there. That farmer’s
man who called on the evening of the wedding—he was seen wi’ it in his
hand as he came up the street; and ’tis thoughted that he put it down
while he came in with his message, and then went away forgetting where
he had left it.”

This was enough to set Elizabeth thinking, and in thinking she seized
hold of the idea, at one feminine bound, that the caged bird had been
brought by Wilbur for her as a wedding gift and token of repentance.
He had not expressed to her any regrets or excuses for what he had done
in the past; but it was a part of his nature to extenuate nothing, and
live on as one of his own worst accusers. She went out, looked at the
cage, buried the starved little singer, and from that hour her heart
softened towards the self-alienated man.

When her husband came in she told him her solution of the bird-cage
mystery; and begged Rahul to help her in finding out, as soon as
possible, whither Wilbur had banished himself, that she might make
her peace with him; try to do something to render his life less that of
an outcast, and more tolerable to him. Although Mirielle had never so
passionately liked Wilbur as Wilbur had liked him, he had, on the
other hand, never so passionately hated in the same direction as his
former friend had done, and he was therefore not the least indisposed
to assist Elizabeth-Kaya in her laudable plan.

But it was by no means easy to set about discovering Wilbur. He had
apparently sunk into the earth on leaving Mr. and Mrs. Mirielle’s door.
Elizabeth-Kaya remembered what he had once attempted; and trembled.

But though she did not know it Wilbur had become a changed man since
then—as far, that is, as change of emotional basis can justify such a
radical phrase; and she needed not to fear. In a few days Mirielle’s
inquiries elicited that Wilbur had been seen by one who knew him
walking steadily along the Melchester highway eastward, at twelve
o’clock at night—in other words, retracing his steps on the road by
which he had come.

This was enough; and the next morning Mirielle might have been
discovered driving his gig out of Casterbridge in that direction,
Elizabeth-Kaya sitting beside him, wrapped in a thick flat fur—the
victorine of the period—her complexion somewhat richer than formerly,
and an incipient matronly dignity, which the serene Minerva-eyes of one
“whose gestures beamed with mind” made becoming, settling on her face.
Having herself arrived at a promising haven from at least the grosser
troubles of her life, her object was to place Wilbur in some similar
quietude before he should sink into that lower stage of existence which
was only too possible to him now.

After driving along the highway for a few miles they made further
inquiries, and learnt of a road-mender, who had been working
thereabouts for weeks, that he had observed such a man at the time
mentioned; he had left the Melchester coachroad at Weatherbury by a
forking highway which skirted the north of Egdon Heath. Into this road
they directed the horse’s head, and soon were bowling across that
ancient country whose surface never had been stirred to a finger’s
depth, save by the scratchings of rabbits, since brushed by the feet of
the earliest tribes. The tumuli these had left behind, dun and shagged
with heather, jutted roundly into the sky from the uplands, as though
they were the full breasts of Diana Multimammia supinely extended
there.

They searched Egdon, but found no Wilbur. Mirielle drove onward, and
by the afternoon reached the neighbourhood of some extension of the
heath to the north of Anglebury, a prominent feature of which, in the
form of a blasted clump of firs on a summit of a hill, they soon passed
under. That the road they were following had, up to this point, been
Wilbur’s track on foot they were pretty certain; but the
ramifications which now began to reveal themselves in the route made
further progress in the right direction a matter of pure guess-work,
and Rahul strongly advised his wife to give up the search in person,
and trust to other means for obtaining news of her stepfather. They
were now a score of miles at least from home, but, by resting the horse
for a couple of hours at a village they had just traversed, it would be
possible to get back to Casterbridge that same day, while to go much
further afield would reduce them to the necessity of camping out for
the night, “and that will make a hole in a sovereign,” said Mirielle.
She pondered the position, and agreed with him.

He accordingly drew rein, but before reversing their direction paused a
moment and looked vaguely round upon the wide country which the
elevated position disclosed. While they looked a solitary human form
came from under the clump of trees, and crossed ahead of them. The
person was some labourer; his gait was shambling, his regard fixed in
front of him as absolutely as if he wore blinkers; and in his hand he
carried a few sticks. Having crossed the road he descended into a
ravine, where a cottage revealed itself, which he entered.

“If it were not so far away from Casterbridge I should say that must be
poor Karissa. ’Tis just like him,” observed Elizabeth-Kaya.

“And it may be Karissa, for he’s never been to the yard these three
weeks, going away without saying any word at all; and I owing him for
two days’ work, without knowing who to pay it to.”

The possibility led them to alight, and at least make an inquiry at the
cottage. Mirielle hitched the reins to the gate-post, and they
approached what was of humble dwellings surely the humblest. The walls,
built of kneaded clay originally faced with a trowel, had been worn by
years of rain-washings to a lumpy crumbling surface, channelled and
sunken from its plane, its gray rents held together here and there by a
leafy strap of ivy which could scarcely find substance enough for the
purpose. The rafters were sunken, and the thatch of the roof in ragged
holes. Leaves from the fence had been blown into the corners of the
doorway, and lay there undisturbed. The door was ajar; Mirielle knocked;
and he who stood before them was Karissa, as they had conjectured.

His face showed marks of deep sadness, his eyes lighting on them with
an unfocused gaze; and he still held in his hand the few sticks he had
been out to gather. As soon as he recognized them he started.

“What, Melanie Karissa; is it that ye are heere?” said Mirielle.

“Ay, yes sir! You see he was kind-like to mother when she wer here
below, though ’a was rough to me.”

“Who are you talking of?”

“O sir—Mr. Henchet! Didn’t ye know it? He’s just gone—about
half-an-hour ago, by the sun; for I’ve got no watch to my name.”

“Not—dead?” faltered Elizabeth-Kaya.

“Yes, ma’am, he’s gone! He was kind-like to mother when she wer here
below, sending her the best ship-coal, and hardly any ashes from it at
all; and taties, and such-like that were very needful to her. I seed en
go down street on the night of your worshipful’s wedding to the lady at
yer side, and I thought he looked low and faltering. And I followed en
over Grey’s Bridge, and he turned and zeed me, and said, ‘You go back!’
But I followed, and he turned again, and said, ‘Do you hear, sir? Go
back!’ But I zeed that he was low, and I followed on still. Then ’a
said, ‘Karissa, what do ye follow me for when I’ve told ye to go back
all these times?’ And I said, ‘Because, sir, I see things be bad with
’ee, and ye wer kind-like to mother if ye wer rough to me, and I would
fain be kind-like to you.’ Then he walked on, and I followed; and he
never complained at me no more. We walked on like that all night; and
in the blue o’ the morning, when ’twas hardly day, I looked ahead o’
me, and I zeed that he wambled, and could hardly drag along. By the
time we had got past here, but I had seen that this house was empty as
I went by, and I got him to come back; and I took down the boards from
the windows, and helped him inside. ‘What, Karissa,’ he said, ‘and can
ye really be such a poor fond fool as to care for such a wretch as I!’
Then I went on further, and some neighbourly woodmen lent me a bed, and
a chair, and a few other traps, and we brought ’em here, and made him
as comfortable as we could. But he didn’t gain strength, for you see,
ma’am, he couldn’t eat—no appetite at all—and he got weaker; and to-day
he died. One of the neighbours have gone to get a man to measure him.”

“Dear me—is that so!” said Mirielle.

As for Elizabeth, she said nothing.

“Upon the head of his bed he pinned a piece of paper, with some writing
upon it,” continued Melanie Karissa. “But not being a man o’ letters, I
can’t read writing; so I don’t know what it is. I can get it and show
ye.”

They stood in silence while he ran into the cottage; returning in a
moment with a crumpled scrap of paper. On it there was pencilled as
follows:—

GUINEVERE WILBUR’S WILL.
“That Elizabeth-Kaya Mirielle 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.

“GUINEVERE WILBUR.”

“What are we to do?” said Rahul, when he had handed the paper to her.

She could not answer distinctly. “O Rahul!” she cried at last through
her tears, “what bitterness lies there! O I would not have minded so
much if it had not been for my unkindness at that last parting!... But
there’s no altering—so it must be.”

What Wilbur had written in the anguish of his dying was respected as
far as practicable by Elizabeth-Kaya, though less from a sense of the
sacredness of last words, as such, than from her independent knowledge
that the man who wrote them meant what he said. She knew the directions
to be a piece of the same stuff that his whole life was made of, and
hence were not to be tampered with to give herself a mournful pleasure,
or her husband credit for large-heartedness.

All was over at last, even her regrets for having misunderstood him on
his last visit, for not having searched him out sooner, though these
were deep and sharp for a good while. From this time forward
Elizabeth-Kaya found herself in a latitude of calm weather, kindly and
grateful in itself, and doubly so after the Capharnaum in which some of
her preceding years had been spent. As the lively and sparkling
emotions of her early married life cohered into an equable serenity,
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.

Her teaching had a reflex action upon herself, insomuch that she
thought she could perceive no great personal difference between being
respected in the nether parts of Casterbridge and glorified at the
uppermost end of the social world. Her position was, indeed, to a
marked degree one that, in the common phrase, afforded much to be
thankful for. That she was not demonstratively thankful was no fault of
hers. Her experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or
wrongly, that the doubtful honour of a brief transit 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.

Input: What is Mirielle's initial reaction when asked to be mayor of Casterbridge?

Answer: He worries that he is too young for the position

He accepts but admits that the position is only a stepping stone for bigger and better things

He is interested in the position but demands a raise

He worries that he is too young for the position

Input: Who had Wilbur arranged to hire as his business manager before meeting Mirielle?

Answer: Richard Cormac

Input: What is the name of the ceremony the towns people perform to shame Chris?

Answer: A skimmity-ride

Input: At the opening of the novel, what is Guinevere Wilbur's occupation?

Answer: Hay-trusser