One would almost have supposed Henchard to have had policy to see that no better modus vivendi could be arrived at with Farfrae 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 Donald Farfrae had opened the gates of commerce on his own account at a spot on Durnover Hill - as far as possible from Henchard'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 haytrade 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 Henchard and this man had dealt together within the preceding three months.
"He was once my friend," said Farfrae, "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 over-mastering force among the easy-going Wessex worthies, or whether it was sheer luck, the fact remained that whatever he touched he prospered in. Like Jacob in Padan-Aram, he would no sooner humbly limit himself to the ringstraked-and-spotted exceptions of trade than the ringstraked-and-spotted would multiply and prevail.
But most probably luck had little to do with it. Character is Fate, said Novalis, and Farfrae's character was just the reverse of Henchard's, who might 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.
Farfrae duly received the request to discontinue attentions to Elizabeth-Jane.
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, Farfrae was compelled, in sheer self-defence, to close with Henchard 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 Southron doggedness - the dirk against the cudgel - and Henchard'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. Donald 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 Farfrae'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 cornmarket room, with their names painted thereon; and when to the familiar series of "Henchard", "Everdene", "Shiner", "Darton", and so on, was added one inscribed "Farfrae", in staring new letters, Henchard was stung into bitterness; like Bellerophon, he wandered away from the crowd, cankered in soul.
From that day Donald Farfrae's name was seldom mentioned in Henchard's house. If at breakfast or dinner Elizabeth-Jane'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?"HARDY: The Mayor of Casterbridge - * XVIII *
