green-and-black gig approaching from the contrary direction, the vehicle being driven by Farfrae.
His presence here seemed to explain Lucetta’s walk that way. Donald saw her, drew up, and was hastily made acquainted with what had occurred. At Elizabeth-Jane mentioning how greatly Lucetta had been jeopardized, he exhibited an agitation different in kind no less than in intensity from any she had seen in him before. He became so absorbed in the circumstance that he scarcely had sufficient knowledge of what he was doing to think of helping her up beside him.
“She has gone on with Mr. Henchard, you say?” he inquired at last.
“Yes. He is taking her home. They are almost there by this time.”
“And you are sure she can get home?”
Elizabeth-Jane was quite sure.
“Your stepfather saved her?”
“Entirely.”
Farfrae checked his horse’s pace; she guessed why. He was thinking that it would be best not to intrude on the other two just now. Henchard had saved Lucetta, and to provoke a possible exhibition of her deeper affection for himself was as ungenerous as it was unwise.
The immediate subject of their talk being exhausted she felt more embarrassed at sitting thus beside her past lover; but soon the two figures of the others were visible at the entrance to the town. The face of the woman was frequently turned back, but Farfrae did not whip on the horse. When these reached the town walls Henchard and his companion had disappeared down the street; Farfrae set down Elizabeth-Jane on her expressing a particular wish to alight there, and drove round to the stables at the back of his lodgings.
On this account he entered the house through his garden, and going up to his apartments found them in a particularly disturbed state, his boxes being hauled out upon the landing, and his bookcase standing in three pieces. These phenomena, however, seemed to cause him not the least surprise. “When will everything be sent up?” he said to the mistress of the house, who was superintending.
“I am afraid not before eight, sir,” said she. “You see we wasn’t aware till this morning that you were going to move, or we could have been forwarder.”
“A—well, never mind, never mind!” said Farfrae cheerily. “Eight o’clock will do well enough if it be not later. Now, don’t ye be standing here talking, or it will be twelve, I doubt.” Thus speaking he went out by the front door and up the street.
During this interval Henchard and Lucetta had had experiences of a different kind. After Elizabeth’s departure for the muff the corn-merchant opened himself frankly, holding her hand within his arm, though she would fain have withdrawn it. “Dear Lucetta, I have been very, very anxious to see you these two or three days,” he said, “ever since I saw you last! I have thought over the way I got your promise that night. You said to me, ‘If I were a man I should not insist.’ That cut me deep. I felt that there was some truth in it. I don’t want to make you wretched; and to marry me just now would do that as nothing else could—it is but too plain. Therefore I agree to an indefinite engagement—to put off all thought of marriage for a year or two.”
“But—but—can I do nothing of a different kind?” said Lucetta. “I am full of gratitude to you—you have saved my life. And your care of me is like coals of fire on my head! I am a monied person now. Surely I can do something in return for your goodness—something practical?”
Henchard remained in thought. He had evidently not expected this. “There is one thing you might do, Lucetta,” he said. “But not exactly of that kind.”
“Then of what kind is it?” she asked with renewed misgiving.
“I must tell you a secret to ask it.—You may have heard that I have been unlucky this year? I did what I have never done before—speculated rashly; and I lost. That’s just put me in a strait.
“And you would wish me to advance some money?”
“No, no!” said Henchard, almost in anger. “I’m not the man to sponge on a woman, even though she may be so nearly my own as you. No, Lucetta; what you can do is this and it would save me. My great creditor is Grower, and it is at his hands I shall suffer if at anybody’s; while a fortnight’s forbearance on his part would be enough to allow me to pull through. This may be got out of him in one way— that you would let it be known to him that you are my intended—that we are to be quietly married in the next fortnight.—Now stop, you haven’t heard all! Let him have this story, without, of course, any prejudice to the fact that the actual engagement between us is to be a long one. Nobody else need know: you could go with me to Mr. Grower and just let me speak to ‘ee before him as if we were on such terms. We’ll ask him to keep it secret. He will willingly wait then. At the fortnight’s end I shall be able to face him; and I can coolly tell him all is postponed between us for a year or two. Not a soul in the town need know how you’ve helped me. Since you wish to be of use, there’s your way.”
It being now what the people called the “pinking in” of the day, that is, the quarter-hour just before dusk, he did not at first observe the result of his own words upon her.
“If it were anything else,” she began, and the dryness of her lips was represented in her voice.
“But it is such a little thing!” he said, with a deep reproach. “Less than you have offered—just the beginning of what you have so lately promised! I could have told him as much myself, but he would not have believed me.”
“It is not because I won’t—it is because I absolutely can’t,” she said, with rising distress.
“You are provoking!” he burst out. “It is enough to make me force you to carry out at once what you have promised.”
“I cannot!” she insisted desperately.
“Why? When I have only within these few minutes released you from your promise to do the thing offhand.”
“Because—he was a witness!”
“Witness? Of what?
“If I must tell you–-. Don’t, don’t upbraid me!”
