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Updated: June 25, 2025
"But don't dwell on it just now," entreated Elizabeth, holding Lucetta's hand. "I don't wish to, if she promises," said Henchard. "I have, I have," groaned Lucetta, her limbs hanging like fluid, from very misery and faintness. "Michael, please don't argue it any more!" "I will not," he said. And taking up his hat he went away. Elizabeth-Jane continued to kneel by Lucetta. "What is this?" she said.
Farfrae drew thence the parcel, and other papers, with apologies for not having returned them. "Never mind," said Henchard drily. "The fact is they are letters mostly....Yes," he went on, sitting down and unfolding Lucetta's passionate bundle, "here they be. That ever I should see 'em again! I hope Mrs. Farfrae is well after her exertions of yesterday?"
Elizabeth-Jane was frantic now. "O, can't something be done to stop it?" she cried. "Is there nobody to do it not one?" She relinquished Lucetta's hands, and ran to the door. Lucetta herself, saying recklessly "I will see it!" turned to the window, threw up the sash, and went out upon the balcony. Elizabeth immediately followed, and put her arm round her to pull her in.
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.
"Let us shut it out," coaxed Elizabeth-Jane, noting that the rigid wildness of Lucetta's features was growing yet more rigid and wild with the meaning of the noise and laughter. "Let us shut it out!" "It is of no use!" she shrieked. "He will see it, won't he? Donald will see it! He is just coming home and it will break his heart he will never love me any more and O, it will kill me kill me!"
Everybody else, from the Mayor to the washerwoman, shone in new vesture according to means; but Henchard had doggedly retained the fretted and weather-beaten garments of bygone years. Hence, alas, this occurred: Lucetta's eyes slid over him to this side and to that without anchoring on his features as gaily dressed women's eyes will too often do on such occasions.
Elizabeth, seeing that she looked wan and disturbed, encouraged her in the idea, thinking a change would afford her relief. She could not help suspecting that the gloom which seemed to have come over Casterbridge in Lucetta's eyes might be partially owing to the fact that Farfrae was away from home.
Farfrae's words to his landlady had referred to the removal of his boxes and other effects from his late lodgings to Lucetta's house. The work was not heavy, but it had been much hindered on account of the frequent pauses necessitated by exclamations of surprise at the event, of which the good woman had been briefly informed by letter a few hours earlier.
Lucetta's eyes were straight upon the spectacle of the uncanny revel, now dancing rapidly. The numerous lights round the two effigies threw them up into lurid distinctness; it was impossible to mistake the pair for other than the intended victims. "Come in, come in," implored Elizabeth; "and let me shut the window!"
A conjecture that her visitor might be some other person had, indeed, flashed through Lucetta's mind when she was on the point of bursting out; but it was just too late to recede. He was years younger than the Mayor of Casterbridge; fair, fresh, and slenderly handsome.
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