The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy (feel good novels .TXT) 📗

Besides, that argument has nothing in it. The man you are thinking of is no better than I.”

“If you were as good as he you would leave me!” she cried passionately.

This unluckily aroused Henchard. “You cannot in honour refuse me,” he said. “And unless you give me your promise this very night to be my wife, before a witness, I’ll reveal our intimacy⁠—in common fairness to other men!”

A look of resignation settled upon her. Henchard saw its bitterness; and had Lucetta’s heart been given to any other man in the world than Farfrae he would probably have had pity upon her at that moment. But the supplanter was the upstart (as Henchard called him) who had mounted into prominence upon his shoulders, and he could bring himself to show no mercy.

Without another word she rang the bell, and directed that Elizabeth-Jane should be fetched from her room. The latter appeared, surprised in the midst of her lucubrations. As soon as she saw Henchard she went across to him dutifully.

“Elizabeth-Jane,” he said, taking her hand, “I want you to hear this.” And turning to Lucetta: “Will you, or will you not, marry me?

“If you⁠—wish it, I must agree!”

“You say yes?”

“I do.”

No sooner had she given the promise than she fell back in a fainting state.

“What dreadful thing drives her to say this, father, when it is such a pain to her?” asked Elizabeth, kneeling down by Lucetta. “Don’t compel her to do anything against her will! I have lived with her, and know that she cannot bear much.”

“Don’t be a no’thern simpleton!” said Henchard drily. “This promise will leave him free for you, if you want him, won’t it?”

At this Lucetta seemed to wake from her swoon with a start.

“Him? Who are you talking about?” she said wildly.

“Nobody, as far as I am concerned,” said Elizabeth firmly.

“Oh⁠—well. Then it is my mistake,” said Henchard. “But the business is between me and Miss Templeman. She agrees to be my wife.”

“But don’t dwell on it just now,” entreated Elizabeth, holding Lucetta’s hand.

“I don’t wish to, if she promises,” said Henchard.

“I have, I have,” groaned Lucetta, her limbs hanging like fluid, from very misery and faintness. “Michael, please don’t argue it any more!”

“I will not,” he said. And taking up his hat he went away.

Elizabeth-Jane continued to kneel by Lucetta. “What is this?” she said. “You called my father ‘Michael’ as if you knew him well? And how is it he has got this power over you, that you promise to marry him against your will? Ah⁠—you have many many secrets from me!”

“Perhaps you have some from me,” Lucetta murmured with closed eyes, little thinking, however, so unsuspicious was she, that the secret of Elizabeth’s heart concerned the young man who had caused this damage to her own.

“I would not⁠—do anything against you at all!” stammered Elizabeth, keeping in all signs of emotion till she was ready to burst. “I cannot understand how my father can command you so; I don’t sympathize with him in it at all. I’ll go to him and ask him to release you.”

“No, no,” said Lucetta. “Let it all be.”

XXVIII

The next morning Henchard went to the Town Hall below Lucetta’s house, to attend Petty Sessions, being still a magistrate for the year by virtue of his late position as Mayor. In passing he looked up at her windows, but nothing of her was to be seen.

Henchard as a Justice of the Peace may at first seem to be an even greater incongruity than Shallow and Silence themselves. But his rough and ready perceptions, his sledgehammer directness, had often served him better than nice legal knowledge in despatching such simple business as fell to his hands in this Court. Today Dr. Chalkfield, the Mayor for the year, being absent, the corn-merchant took the big chair, his eyes still abstractedly stretching out of the window to the ashlar front of High-Place Hall.

There was one case only, and the offender stood before him. She was an old woman of mottled countenance, attired in a shawl of that nameless tertiary hue which comes, but cannot be made⁠—a hue neither tawny, russet, hazel, nor ash; a sticky black bonnet that seemed to have been worn in the country of the Psalmist where the clouds drop fatness; and an apron that had been white in time so comparatively recent as still to contrast visibly with the rest of her clothes. The steeped aspect of the woman as a whole showed her to be no native of the countryside or even of a country-town.

She looked cursorily at Henchard and the second magistrate, and Henchard looked at her, with a momentary pause, as if she had reminded him indistinctly of somebody or something which passed from his mind as quickly as it had come. “Well, and what has she been doing?” he said, looking down at the charge sheet.

“She is charged, sir, with the offence of disorderly female and nuisance,” whispered Stubberd.

“Where did she do that?” said the other magistrate.

“By the church, sir, of all the horrible places in the world!⁠—I caught her in the act, your worship.”

“Stand back then,” said Henchard, “and let’s hear what you’ve got to say.”

Stubberd was sworn in, the magistrate’s clerk dipped his pen, Henchard being no note-taker himself, and the constable began⁠—

“Hearing a’ illegal noise I went down the street at twenty-five minutes past eleven p.m. on the night of the fifth instinct, Hannah Dominy. When I had⁠—”

“Don’t go so fast, Stubberd,” said the clerk.

The constable waited, with his eyes on the clerk’s pen, till the latter stopped scratching and said, “yes.” Stubberd continued: “When I had proceeded to the spot I saw defendant at another spot, namely, the gutter.” He paused, watching the point of the clerk’s pen again.

“Gutter, yes, Stubberd.”

“Spot measuring twelve feet nine inches or thereabouts from where I⁠—” Still careful not to outrun the clerk’s penmanship Stubberd pulled up again; for having got his evidence by heart it was immaterial to him whereabouts