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. Henchard, 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 Henchard 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 re-union had been the only straighforward 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, Michael, 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 safeguard 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 others 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, LUCETTA"Henchard 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 Henchard.
As requested, he sealed up Lucetta's letters, and put the parcel aside till the day she had appointed; this play of returning them by hand being apparently a little ruse of the young lady for exchanging a word of 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. Henchard crossed over to it while the horses were being changed; but there was no Lucetta 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.
