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The scourge of cholera had been laid on the suffering country, and the low- lying purlieus of this ancient borough had more than their share of the infliction. Mixen Lane, in the Durnover quarter, and in Maumbry's parish, was where the blow fell most heavily. Yet there was a certain mercy in its choice of a date, for Maumbry was the man for such an hour.
A street of farmers' homesteads a street ruled by a mayor and corporation, yet echoing with the thump of the flail, the flutter of the winnowing-fan, and the purr of the milk into the pails a street which had nothing urban in it whatever this was the Durnover end of Casterbridge.
This plan they followed, and walked briskly through the dull gloom till they neared Casterbridge, which place they avoided by turning to the right at the Roman Amphitheatre and bearing round to Durnover Cross. Thence the way was solitary and open across the moor to the hill whereon the Ivell fly awaited them.
But there was the insistent shadow of that unconscious one; the thin figure of him, moving to and fro in front of the ghastly furnace in the gloom of Durnover Moor. Yet Vannicock called upon Laura when he was in the neighbourhood, which was not often; but in two years, as if on purpose to further the marriage which everybody was expecting, the -st Foot returned to Budmouth Regis.
The Casterbridge populace still retained the primitive habit of helping one another in time of need; and thus, though the corn belonged to the farming section of the little community that inhabiting the Durnover quarter the remainder was no less interested in the labour of getting it home.
Without preface, and as the continuation of a scene already progressing in her mind, Mrs. Henchard said: "You remember the note sent to you and Mr. Farfrae asking you to meet some one in Durnover Barton and that you thought it was a trick to make fools of you?" "Yes." "It was not to make fools of you it was done to bring you together. 'Twas I did it." "Why?" said Elizabeth, with a start.
Morally he was; there could be no doubt of it. Henchard, who had hitherto been the most admired man in his circle, was the most admired no longer. One day the daughters of a deceased farmer in Durnover wanted an opinion of the value of their haystack, and sent a messenger to ask Mr. Farfrae to oblige them with one. The messenger, who was a child, met in the yard not Farfrae, but Henchard.
'I have noticed for some time, she said, 'a lurid glare over the Durnover end of the town. It seems to come from somewhere about Mixen Lane. 'The lamps, he suggested. 'There's not a lamp as big as a rushlight in the whole lane. It is where the cholera is worst. By Standfast Corner, a little beyond the Cross, they suddenly obtained an end view of the lane.
One was the note from herself to Maumbry, informing him that she was unable to endure life with him any longer and was about to elope with Vannicock. Having read the letter she took it upstairs to where the dead man was, and slipped it into his coffin. The next day she buried him. She was now free. She shut up his house at Durnover Cross and returned to her lodgings at Creston.
To this end he hastened down the town, ran along the eastern road over Durnover Moor, up the hill beyond, and thus onward in the moderate darkness of this spring night till he had reached a second and almost a third hill about three miles distant. In Yalbury Bottom, or Plain, at the foot of the hill, he listened.
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