The next morning he went to the corn-yard as usual, and about eleven o'clock Donald entered through the green door, with no trace of the worshipful about him. The yet more emphatic change of places between him and Henchard which this election had established renewed a slight embarrassment in the manner of the modest younger man; but Henchard showed the front of one who had overlooked all this; and Farfrae met his amenities half-way at once.
"I was going to ask you," said Henchard, "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 Farfrae. "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 Henchard. "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.
Farfrae invited him into the dining-room, where he at once unlocked the iron safe built into the wall, his , Henchard's safe, made by an ingenious locksmith under his direction. Farfrae drew thence the parcel, and other papers, with apologies for not having returned them.
"Never mind," said Henchard drily. "The fact is they are letters mostly...
Yes," he went on, sitting down and unfolding Lucetta's passionate bundle, "here they be. That ever I should see 'em again! I hope Mrs Farfrae is well after her exertions of yesterday?""She has felt a bit weary; and has gone to bed airly on that account."Henchard returned to the letters, sorting them over with interest, Farfrae 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 Farfrae.
"Luckily she married, and married well," said Henchard. "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!"Farfrae, willing to humour Henchard, though quite uninterested, and bursting with yawns, gave well mannered attention.
"""For me,""" Henchard read, """there is practically no future. A creature too unconventionally devoted to you - who feels it impossible that she can be 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 Henchard, "acres of words like that, when what had happened was what I could not cure.""Yes," said Farfrae absently, "it is the way wi' women." But the fact was that he knew very little of the sex; yet detecting a sort of resemblance in style between the effusions of the woman he worshipped and those of the supposed stranger, he concluded that Aphrodite ever spoke thus, whosoever the personality she assumed.
Henchard 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 Farfrae. "But why didn't you marry her when your wife Susan died?" Farfrae 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 Henchard, 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?"
Henchard 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 Henchard 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 there 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.
HARDY: The Mayor of Casterbridge - * XXXV *
