The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy [short novels in english .TXT] 📗

the stepladder leading to the granary door, and entered it before he had seen her. Farfrae advanced, imagining himself in solitude, and a few drops of rain beginning to fall he moved and stood under the shelter where she had just been standing. Here he leant against one of the staddles, and gave himself up to patience. He, too, was plainly expecting someone; could it be herself? If so, why? In a few minutes he looked at his watch, and then pulled out a note, a duplicate of the one she had herself received.

This situation began to be very awkward, and the longer she waited the more awkward it became. To emerge from a door just above his head and descend the ladder, and show she had been in hiding there, would look so very foolish that she still waited on. A winnowing machine stood close beside her, and to relieve her suspense she gently moved the handle; whereupon a cloud of wheat husks flew out into her face, and covered her clothes and bonnet, and stuck into the fur of her victorine. He must have heard the slight movement for he looked up, and then ascended the steps.

“Ah⁠—it’s Miss Newson,” he said as soon as he could see into the granary. “I didn’t know you were there. I have kept the appointment, and am at your service.”

“O Mr. Farfrae,” she faltered; “so have I. But I didn’t know it was you who wished to see me, otherwise I⁠—”

“I wished to see you? O no⁠—at least, that is, I am afraid there may be a mistake.”

“Didn’t you ask me to come here? Didn’t you write this?” Elizabeth held out her note.

“No. Indeed, at no hand would I have thought of it! And for you⁠—didn’t you ask me? This is not your writing?” And he held up his.

“By no means.”

“And is that really so! Then it’s somebody wanting to see us both. Perhaps we would do well to wait a little longer.”

Acting on this consideration they lingered, Elizabeth-Jane’s face being arranged to an expression of preternatural composure, and the young Scot, at every footstep in the street without, looking from under the granary to see if the passer were about to enter and declare himself their summoner. They watched individual drops of rain creeping down the thatch of the opposite rick⁠—straw after straw⁠—till they reached the bottom; but nobody came, and the granary roof began to drip.

“The person is not likely to be coming,” said Farfrae. “It’s a trick perhaps, and if so, it’s a great pity to waste our time like this, and so much to be done.”

“ ’Tis a great liberty,” said Elizabeth.

“It’s true, Miss Newson. We’ll hear news of this some day depend on’t, and who it was that did it. I wouldn’t stand for it hindering myself; but you, Miss Newson⁠—”

“I don’t mind⁠—much,” she replied.

“Neither do I.”

They lapsed again into silence. “You are anxious to get back to Scotland, I suppose, Mr. Farfrae?” she inquired.

“O no, Miss Newson. Why would I be?”

“I only supposed you might be from the song you sang at the Three Mariners⁠—about Scotland and home, I mean⁠—which you seemed to feel so deep down in your heart; so that we all felt for you.”

“Ay⁠—and I did sing there⁠—I did⁠—But, Miss Newson”⁠—and Donald’s voice musically undulated between two semitones as it always did when he became earnest⁠—“it’s well you feel a song for a few minutes, and your eyes they get quite tearful; but you finish it, and for all you felt you don’t mind it or think of it again for a long while. O no, I don’t want to go back! Yet I’ll sing the song to you wi’ pleasure whenever you like. I could sing it now, and not mind at all!”

“Thank you, indeed. But I fear I must go⁠—rain or no.”

“Ay! Then, Miss Newson, ye had better say nothing about this hoax, and take no heed of it. And if the person should say anything to you, be civil to him or her, as if you did not mind it⁠—so you’ll take the clever person’s laugh away.” In speaking his eyes became fixed upon her dress, still sown with wheat husks. “There’s husks and dust on you. Perhaps you don’t know it?” he said, in tones of extreme delicacy. “And it’s very bad to let rain come upon clothes when there’s chaff on them. It washes in and spoils them. Let me help you⁠—blowing is the best.”

As Elizabeth neither assented nor dissented Donald Farfrae began blowing her back hair, and her side hair, and her neck, and the crown of her bonnet, and the fur of her victorine, Elizabeth saying, “O, thank you,” at every puff. At last she was fairly clean, though Farfrae, having got over his first concern at the situation, seemed in no manner of hurry to be gone.

“Ah⁠—now I’ll go and get ye an umbrella,” he said.

She declined the offer, stepped out and was gone. Farfrae walked slowly after, looking thoughtfully at her diminishing figure, and whistling in undertones, “As I came down through Cannobie.”

XV

At first Miss Newson’s budding beauty was not regarded with much interest by anybody in Casterbridge. Donald Farfrae’s gaze, it is true, was now attracted by the Mayor’s so-called stepdaughter, but he was only one. The truth is that she was but a poor illustrative instance of the prophet Baruch’s sly definition: “The virgin that loveth to go gay.”

When she walked abroad she seemed to be occupied with an inner chamber of ideas, and to have slight need for visible objects. She formed curious resolves on checking gay fancies in the matter of clothes, because it was inconsistent with her past life to blossom gaudily the moment she had become possessed of money. But nothing is more insidious than the evolution of wishes from mere fancies, and of wants from mere wishes. Henchard gave Elizabeth-Jane a box of delicately-tinted gloves one spring day. She wanted to wear them to