At length a man stationed at the furthest turn of the high road, namely, on the second bridge of which mention has been made, gave a signal, and the Corporation in their robes proceeded from the front of the Town Hall to the archway erected at the entrance to the town. The carriages containing the Royal visitor and his suite arrived at the spot in a cloud of dust, a procession was formed, and the whole came on to the Town Hall at a walking pace.
This spot was the centre of interest. There were a few clear yards in front of the Royal carriage, sanded; and into this space a man stepped before any one could prevent him. It was Henchard. He had unrolled his private flag, and removing his hat he staggered to the side of the slowing vehicle, waving the Union Jack to and fro with his left hand while he blandly held out his right to the Illustrious Personage.
All the ladies said with bated breath, “O, look there!” and Lucetta was ready to faint. Elizabeth-Jane peeped through the shoulders of those in front, saw what it was, and was terrified; and then her interest in the spectacle as a strange phenomenon got the better of her fear.
Farfrae, with Mayoral authority, immediately rose to the occasion. He seized Henchard by the shoulder, dragged him back, and told him roughly to be off. Henchard’s eyes met his, and Farfrae observed the fierce light in them despite his excitement and irritation. For a moment Henchard stood his ground rigidly; then by an unaccountable impulse gave way and retired. Farfrae glanced to the ladies’ gallery, and saw that his Calphurnia’s cheek was pale.
“Why—it is your husband’s old patron!” said Mrs. Blowbody, a lady of the neighbourhood who sat beside Lucetta.
“Patron!” said Donald’s wife with quick indignation.
“Do you say the man is an acquaintance of Mr. Farfrae’s?” observed Mrs. Bath, the physician’s wife, a newcomer to the town through her recent marriage with the doctor.
“He works for my husband,” said Lucetta.
“Oh—is that all? They have been saying to me that it was through him your husband first got a footing in Casterbridge. What stories people will tell!”
“They will indeed. It was not so at all. Donald’s genius would have enabled him to get a footing anywhere, without anybody’s help! He would have been just the same if there had been no Henchard in the world!”
It was partly Lucetta’s ignorance of the circumstances of Donald’s arrival which led her to speak thus, partly the sensation that everybody seemed bent on snubbing her at this triumphant time. The incident had occupied but a few moments, but it was necessarily witnessed by the Royal Personage, who, however, with practised tact affected not to have noticed anything unusual. He alighted, the Mayor advanced, the address was read; the Illustrious Personage replied, then said a few words to Farfrae, and shook hands with Lucetta as the Mayor’s wife. The ceremony occupied but a few minutes, and the carriages rattled heavily as Pharaoh’s chariots down Corn Street and out upon the Budmouth Road, in continuation of the journey coastward.
In the crowd stood Coney, Buzzford, and Longways “Some difference between him now and when he zung at the Dree Mariners,” said the first. “‘Tis wonderful how he could get a lady of her quality to go snacks wi’ en in such quick time.”
“True. Yet how folk do worship fine clothes! Now there’s a better-looking woman than she that nobody notices at all, because she’s akin to that hontish fellow Henchard.”
“I could worship ye, Buzz, for saying that,” remarked Nance Mockridge. “I do like to see the trimming pulled off such Christmas candles. I am quite unequal to the part of villain myself, or I’d gi’e all my small silver to see that lady toppered….And perhaps I shall soon,” she added significantly.
“That’s not a noble passiont for a ‘oman to keep up,” said Longways.
Nance did not reply, but every one knew what she meant. The ideas diffused by the reading of Lucetta’s letters at Peter’s finger had condensed into a scandal, which was spreading like a miasmatic fog through Mixen Lane, and thence up the back streets of Casterbridge.
The mixed assemblage of idlers known to each other presently fell apart into two bands by a process of natural selection, the frequenters of Peter’s Finger going off Mixen Lane-wards, where most of them lived, while Coney, Buzzford, Longways, and that connection remained in the street.
“You know what’s brewing down there, I suppose?” said Buzzford mysteriously to the others.
Coney looked at him. “Not the skimmity-ride?”
Buzzford nodded.
“I have my doubts if it will be carried out,” said Longways. “If they are getting it up they are keeping it mighty close.
“I heard they were thinking of it a fortnight ago, at all events.”
“If I were sure o’t I’d lay information,” said Longways emphatically. “‘Tis too rough a joke, and apt to wake riots in towns. We know that the Scotchman is a right enough man, and that his lady has been a right enough ‘oman since she came here, and if there was anything wrong about her afore, that’s their business, not ours.”
Coney reflected. Farfrae was still liked in the community; but it must be owned that, as the Mayor and man of money, engrossed with affairs and ambitions, he had lost in the eyes of the poorer inhabitants something of that wondrous charm which he had had for them as a light-hearted penniless young man, who sang ditties as readily as the birds in the trees. Hence the anxiety to keep him from annoyance showed not quite the ardour that would have animated it in former days.
“Suppose we make inquiration into it, Christopher,” continued Longways; “and if we find there’s really anything in it, drop a letter to them most concerned, and advise ‘em to keep out of the way?”
This course was decided on, and the group separated, Buzzford saying to Coney, “Come, my ancient friend; let’s move on. There’s nothing more to see here.”
These well-intentioned ones would have been surprised had they known how ripe the great jocular plot really was. “Yes, tonight,” Jopp had said to the Peter’s party at the corner of Mixen Lane. “As a wind-up to the Royal visit the hit will be all the more pat by reason of their great elevation to-day.”
To him, at least, it was not a joke, but a retaliation.
38.
