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 Susan Henchard's tone might have led any person but one so perfectly unsuspicious of the truth as the girl was to surmise some closer connection than the admitted simple kinship as a means of accounting for them.
Two men were indeed talking in the adjoining chamber, the young Scotchman and Henchard, who, having entered the inn while Elizabeth-Jane was in the kitchen waiting for the supper, had been deferentially conducted upstairs by host Stannidge himself. The girl noiselessly laid out their little meal, and beckoned to her mother to join her, which Mrs Henchard mechanically did, her attention being fixed on the conversation through the door.
"I merely strolled in on my way home to ask 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."Henchard seemed to take the seat offered, and in a moment he resumed:
"Well, first I should ask, did you write this?" A rustling of paper followed.
"Yes, I did," said the Scotchman.
"Then," said Henchard, "I am under the impression that we have met by accident while waiting for the morning to keep an appointment with each other? My name is Henchard; ha'n't you replied to an advertisement for a corn-factor's manager that I put into the paper - ha'n't you come here to see me about it?""No," said the Scotchman, with some surprise.
"Surely you are the man," went on Henchard insistingly, "who arranged to come and see me? Joshua, Joshua, Jipp - Jopp - what was his name?""You're wrong!" said the young man. "My name is Donald Farfrae. It is true I am in the corren trade - but I have replied to no advairrtisement, 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 Henchard, in a tone of disappointment, so strong as to make itself felt like a damp atmosphere. "And yet I could have sworn you were the man!"The Scotchman murmured another negative, and there was a silence, till Henchard resumed: "Then I am truly and sincerely obliged to you for the few words you wrote on that paper.""It was nothing, 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.
