He knew it was Farfrae’s gig descending the hill from an indescribable personality in its noise, the vehicle having been his own till bought by the Scotchman at the sale of his effects. Henchard thereupon retraced his steps along Yalbury Plain, the gig coming up with him as its driver slackened speed between two plantations.
It was a point in the highway near which the road to Mellstock branched off from the homeward direction. By diverging to that village, as he had intended to do, Farfrae might probably delay his return by a couple of hours. It soon appeared that his intention was to do so still, the light swerving towards Cuckoo Lane, the by-road aforesaid. Farfrae’s off gig-lamp flashed in Henchard’s face. At the same time Farfrae discerned his late antagonist.
“Farfrae—Mr. Farfrae!” cried the breathless Henchard, holding up his hand.
Farfrae allowed the horse to turn several steps into the branch lane before he pulled up. He then drew rein, and said “Yes?” over his shoulder, as one would towards a pronounced enemy.
“Come back to Casterbridge at once!” Henchard said. “There’s something wrong at your house—requiring your return. I’ve run all the way here on purpose to tell ye.”
Farfrae was silent, and at his silence Henchard’s soul sank within him. Why had he not, before this, thought of what was only too obvious? He who, four hours earlier, had enticed Farfrae into a deadly wrestle stood now in the darkness of late night-time on a lonely road, inviting him to come a particular way, where an assailant might have confederates, instead of going his purposed way, where there might be a better opportunity of guarding himself from attack. Henchard could almost feel this view of things in course of passage through Farfrae’s mind.
“I have to go to Mellstock,” said Farfrae coldly, as he loosened his reins to move on.
“But,” implored Henchard, “the matter is more serious than your business at Mellstock. It is—your wife! She is ill. I can tell you particulars as we go along.”
The very agitation and abruptness of Henchard increased Farfrae’s suspicion that this was a ruse to decoy him on to the next wood, where might be effectually compassed what, from policy or want of nerve, Henchard had failed to do earlier in the day. He started the horse.
“I know what you think,” deprecated Henchard running after, almost bowed down with despair as he perceived the image of unscrupulous villainy that he assumed in his former friend’s eyes. “But I am not what you think!” he cried hoarsely. “Believe me, Farfrae; I have come entirely on your own and your wife’s account. She is in danger. I know no more; and they want you to come. Your man has gone the other way in a mistake. O Farfrae! don’t mistrust me—I am a wretched man; but my heart is true to you still!”
Farfrae, however, did distrust him utterly. He knew his wife was with child, but he had left her not long ago in perfect health; and Henchard’s treachery was more credible than his story. He had in his time heard bitter ironies from Henchard’s lips, and there might be ironies now. He quickened the horse’s pace, and had soon risen into the high country lying between there and Mellstock, Henchard’s spasmodic run after him lending yet more substance to his thought of evil purposes.
The gig and its driver lessened against the sky in Henchard’s eyes; his exertions for Farfrae’s good had been in vain. Over this repentant sinner, at least, there was to be no joy in heaven. He cursed himself like a less scrupulous Job, as a vehement man will do when he loses self-respect, the last mental prop under poverty. To this he had come after a time of emotional darkness of which the adjoining woodland shade afforded inadequate illustration. Presently he began to walk back again along the way by which he had arrived. Farfrae should at all events have no reason for delay upon the road by seeing him there when he took his journey homeward later on.
Arriving at Casterbridge Henchard went again to Farfrae’s house to make inquiries. As soon as the door opened anxious faces confronted his from the staircase, hall, and landing; and they all said in grievous disappointment, “O—it is not he!” The manservant, finding his mistake, had long since returned, and all hopes had centred upon Henchard.
“But haven’t you found him?” said the doctor.
“Yes….I cannot tell ‘ee!” Henchard replied as he sank down on a chair within the entrance. “He can’t be home for two hours.”
“H’m,” said the surgeon, returning upstairs.
“How is she?” asked Henchard of Elizabeth, who formed one of the group.
“In great danger, father. Her anxiety to see her husband makes her fearfully restless. Poor woman—I fear they have killed her!”
Henchard regarded the sympathetic speaker for a few instants as if she struck him in a new light, then, without further remark, went out of the door and onward to his lonely cottage. So much for man’s rivalry, he thought. Death was to have the oyster, and Farfrae and himself the shells. But about Elizabeth-lane; in the midst of his gloom she seemed to him as a pin-point of light. He had liked the look on her face as she answered him from the stairs. There had been affection in it, and above all things what he desired now was affection from anything that was good and pure. She was not his own, yet, for the first time, he had a faint dream that he might get to like her as his own,—if she would only continue to love him.
Jopp was just going to bed when Henchard got home. As the latter entered the door Jopp said, “This is rather bad about Mrs. Farfrae’s illness.”
“Yes,” said Henchard shortly, though little dreaming of Jopp s complicity in the night’s harlequinade, and raising his eyes just sufficiently to observe that Jopp’s face was lined with anxiety.
“Somebody has called for you,” continued Jopp, when Henchard was shutting himself into his own apartment. “A kind of traveller, or sea-captain of some sort.”
“Oh?—who could he be?”
“He seemed a well-be-doing man—had grey hair and a broadish face; but he gave no name, and no message.”
“Nor do I gi’e him any attention.” And, saying this, Henchard closed his door.
The divergence to Mellstock delayed Farfrae’s return very nearly the two hours of Henchard’s estimate. Among the other urgent reasons for his presence had been the need of his authority to send to Budmouth for a second physician; and when at length Farfrae did come back he was in a state bordering on distraction at his misconception of Henchard’s motives.
A messenger was despatched to Budmouth, late as it had grown; the night wore on, and the other doctor came in the small hours. Lucetta had been much soothed by Donald’s arrival; he seldom or never left her side; and when, immediately after his entry, she had tried to lisp out to him the secret which so oppressed her, he checked her feeble words, lest talking should be dangerous, assuring her there was plenty of time to tell him everything.
Up to this time he knew nothing of the skimmington-ride. The dangerous illness and miscarriage of Mrs. Farfrae was soon rumoured through the town, and an apprehensive guess having been given as to its cause by the leaders in the exploit, compunction and fear threw a dead silence over all particulars of their orgie; while those immediately around Lucetta would not venture to add to her husband’s distress by alluding to the subject.
What, and how much, Farfrae’s wife ultimately explained to him of her past entanglement with Henchard, when they were alone in the solitude of that sad night, cannot be told. That she informed him of the bare facts of her peculiar intimacy with the corn-merchant became plain from Farfrae’s own statements. But in respect of her subsequent conduct— her motive in coming to Casterbridge to unite herself with Henchard—her assumed justification in abandoning him when she discovered reasons for fearing him (though in truth her inconsequent passion for another man at first sight had most to do with that abandonment)—her method of reconciling to her conscience a marriage with the second when she was in a measure committed to the first: to what extent she spoke of these things remained Farfrae’s secret alone.