The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy (books under 200 pages .txt) 📕

“Oh, 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 Henchard 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 Michael! 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.”

Henchard 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 Lucetta 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 Lucetta there and then, and no longer envied Farfrae his bargain. He had married money, but nothing more. Henchard 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, Lucetta, 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!”

Henchard silently looked at her: he almost envied Farfrae 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.”

Returning from her appointment Lucetta 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 Jopp.

He begged her pardon for addressing her. But he had heard that Mr. Farfrae 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. Farfrae in a letter; but he would feel much obliged if Lucetta would say a word in his favour to her husband.

“It is a thing I know nothing about,” said Lucetta coldly.

“But you can testify to my trustworthiness better than anybody, ma’am,” said Jopp. “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 Henchard came down from his bedroom, where he seemed to have been rummaging boxes.

“I wish,” said Henchard, “you would do me a service, Jopp, now⁠—tonight, I mean, if you can. Leave this at Mrs. Farfrae’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. Henchard had been as good as his word. Immediately on coming indoors he had searched over his few belongings, and every scrap of Lucetta’s writing that he possessed was here. Jopp indifferently expressed his willingness.

“Well, how have ye got on today?” his lodger asked. “Any prospect of an opening?”

“I am afraid not,” said Jopp, who had not told the other of his application to Farfrae.

“There never will be in Casterbridge,” declared Henchard decisively. “You must roam further afield.” He said goodnight to Jopp, and returned to his own part of the house.

Jopp 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. Henchard’s packet next met his gaze. He knew there had been something of the nature of wooing between Henchard and the now Mrs. Farfrae; and his vague ideas on the subject narrowed themselves down to these: Henchard had a parcel belonging to Mrs. Farfrae, 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 Lucetta’s haughtiness, as he thought it, and curiosity to learn if there were any weak sides to this transaction with Henchard, he examined the package. The pen and all its relations being awkward tools in Henchard’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. Jopp 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