第65章 Chapter XXIII(3)

"Have you seen young Mr Farfrae this morning?" asked one. "He promised to meet me here at the stroke of twelve; but I've gone athwart and about the fair half-a-dozen times, and never a sign of him: though he's mostly a man to his word.""I quite forgot the engagement," murmured Farfrae.

"Now you must go," said she; "must you not?"

"Yes," he replied. But he still remained.

"You had better go," she urged. "You will lose a customer.""Now, Miss Templeman, you will make me angry," exclaimed Farfrae.

"Then suppose you don't go; but stay a little longer?"He looked anxiously at the farmer who was seeking him, and who just then ominously walked across to where Henchard was standing, and he looked into the room and at her. "I like staying; but I fear I must go!" he said.

"Business ought not to be neglected, ought it?""Not for a single minute."

"It's true. I'll come another time - if I may, ma'am?""Certainly," she said. "What has happened to us today is very curious.""Something to think over when we are alone, it's like to be?""Oh, I don't know that. It is commonplace after all.""No, I'll not say that. O no!"

"Well, whatever it has been, it is now over, and the market calls you to be gone.""Yes, yes. Market - business! I wish there were no business in the warrld."Lucetta almost laughed - she would quite have laughed - but that there was a little emotion going in her at the time. "How you change!" she said.

"You should not change like this."

"I have never wished such things before," said the Scotchman, with a simple, shamed, apologetic look for his weakness. "It is only since coming heere and seeing you!""If that's the case, you had better not look at me any longer. Dear me, I feel I have demoralized you!""But look or look not, I will see you in my thoughts. Well, I'll go - thank you for the pleasure of this visit.""Thank you for staying."

"Maybe I'll get into my market-mind when I've been out a few minutes,"he murmured. "But I don't know - I don't know!"As he went she said eagerly, "You may hear them speak of me in Casterbridge as time goes on. If they tell you I'm a coquette, which some may, because of the incidents of my life, don't believe it, for I am not.""I swear I will not!" he said fervidly.

Thus the two. She had enkindled the young man's enthusiasm till he was quite brimming with sentiment; while he, from merely affording her a new form of idleness, had gone on to wake her serious solicitude. Why was this?

They could not have told.

Lucetta as a young girl would hardly have looked at a tradesman. But her ups and downs, capped by her indiscretions with Henchard, had made her uncritical as to station. In her poverty she had met with repulse from the society to which she had belonged, and she had no great zest for renewing an attempt upon it now. Her heart longed for some ark into which it could fly and be at rest. Rough or smooth she did not care so long as it was warm.

Farfrae was shown out, it having entirely escaped him that he had called to see Elizabeth. Lucetta at the window watched him threading the maze of farmers and farmers' men. She could see by his gait that he was conscious of her eyes, and her heart went out to him for his modesty - pleaded with her sense of his unfitness that he might be allowed to come again. He entered the market-house, and she could see him no more.

Three minutes later, when she had left the window, knocks, not of multitude but of strength, sounded through the house, and the waiting-maid tripped up.

"The Mayor," she said.

Lucetta had reclined herself, and was looking dreamily through her fingers.

She did not answer at once, and the maid repeated the information with the addition, "And he's afraid he hasn't much time to spare, he says.""Oh! Then tell him that as I have a headache I won't detain him today."The message was taken down, and she heard the door close.

Lucetta had come to Casterbridge to quicken Henchard's feelings with regard to her. She had quickened them, and now she was indifferent to the achievement.

Her morning view of Elizabeth-Jane as a disturbing element changed, and she no longer felt strongly the necessity of getting rid of the girl for her stepfather's sake. When the young woman came in, sweetly unconscious of the turn in the tide, Lucetta went up to her, and said quite sincerely--"I'm so glad you've come. You'll live with me a long time, won't you?"Elizabeth as a watch-dog to keep her father off - what a new idea. Yet it was not unpleasing. Henchard had neglected her all these days, after compromising her indescribably in the past. The least he could have done when he found himself free, and herself affluent, would have been to respond heartily and promptly to her invitation.

Her emotions rose, fell, undulated, filled her with wild surmise at their suddenness; and so passed Lucetta's experiences of that day.

HARDY: The Mayor of Casterbridge - * XXIV *