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Updated: June 21, 2025
It was produced by the passing of a load of newly trussed hay from the country, in a waggon marked with Farfrae's name. Beside it rode Farfrae himself on horseback. Lucetta's face became as a woman's face becomes when the man she loves rises upon her gaze like an apparition. A turn of the eye by Henchard, a glance from the window, and the secret of her inaccessibility would have been revealed.
"Yes, sir her only daughter." "What do you call yourself your Christian name?" "Elizabeth-Jane, sir." "Newson?" "Elizabeth-Jane Newson." This at once suggested to Henchard that the transaction of his early married life at Weydon Fair was unrecorded in the family history. It was more than he could have expected.
Henchard, without answering, shook his head as if that were rather a question for Newson himself than for him. "Where is she buried?" the traveller inquired. "Beside her mother," said Henchard, in the same stolid tones. "When did she die?" "A year ago and more," replied the other without hesitation. The sailor continued standing. Henchard never looked up from the floor.
Henchard rolled up his flag on the doorstep, put it under his arm, and went down the street. Suddenly the taller members of the crowd turned their heads, and the shorter stood on tiptoe. It was said that the Royal cortege approached.
Elizabeth saw her friend depart for Port-Bredy, and took charge of High-Place Hall till her return. After two or three days of solitude and incessant rain Henchard called at the house. He seemed disappointed to hear of Lucetta's absence and though he nodded with outward indifference he went away handling his beard with a nettled mien. The next day he called again. "Is she come now?" he asked.
Neither spoke just at first there was no necessity for speech and the poor woman leant against Henchard, who supported her in his arms. "I don't drink," he said in a low, halting, apologetic voice. "You hear, Susan? I don't drink now I haven't since that night." Those were his first words. He felt her bow her head in acknowledgment that she understood.
A light shone from the office-window, and there being no blind to screen the interior Henchard could see Donald Farfrae still seated where he had left him, initiating himself into the managerial work of the house by overhauling the books. Henchard entered, merely observing, "Don't let me interrupt you, if ye will stay so late."
Henchard turned slightly and saw that the corner was Jopp, his old foreman, now employed elsewhere, to whom, though he hated him, he had gone for lodgings because Jopp was the one man in Casterbridge whose observation and opinion the fallen corn-merchant despised to the point of indifference. Henchard returned him a scarcely perceptible nod, and Jopp stopped.
Applying his telescope to his eye Henchard expected that Farfrae's features would be disclosed as usual. But the lenses revealed that today the man was not Elizabeth-Jane's lover. It was one clothed as a merchant captain, and as he turned in the scrutiny of the road he revealed his face. Henchard lived a lifetime the moment he saw it. The face was Newson's.
He spoke in a tone which had just severity enough in it to show that he remembered the untoward event of the forenoon, and his conviction that Henchard had been drinking.
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