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Updated: June 20, 2025
Then Abel Whittle left, and Henchard and Farfrae; and Elizabeth saw no more of them. Now there was good reason for this command on Henchard's part. Poor Abel, as he was called, had an inveterate habit of over-sleeping himself and coming late to his work.
Afterwards she was passing by the corn-stores and hay-barns which had been the headquarters of his business. She knew that he ruled there no longer; but it was with amazement that she regarded the familiar gateway. A smear of decisive lead-coloured paint had been laid on to obliterate Henchard's name, though its letters dimly loomed through like ships in a fog.
"My name is Henchard." "Then I've caught 'ee at home that's right. Morning's the time for business, says I. Can I have a few words with you?" "By all means," Henchard answered, showing the way in. "You may remember me?" said his visitor, seating himself. Henchard observed him indifferently, and shook his head. "Well perhaps you may not. My name is Newson." Henchard's face and eyes seemed to die.
"There never will be in Casterbridge," declared Henchard decisively. "You must roam further afield." He said goodnight to Jopp, and returned to his own part of the house. Jopp sat on till his eyes were attracted by the shadow of the candle-snuff on the wall, and looking at the original he found that it had formed itself into a head like a red-hot cauliflower. Henchard's packet next met his gaze.
He looked towards Donald, who had come near. "Mr. Farfrae's time as my manager is drawing to a close isn't it, Farfrae?" The young man, who could now read the lines and folds of Henchard's strongly-traced face as if they were clear verbal inscriptions, quietly assented; and when people deplored the fact, and asked why it was, he simply replied that Mr. Henchard no longer required his help.
Elizabeth-Jane, surveying the position of Lucetta between her two lovers from the crystalline sphere of a straightforward mind, did not fail to perceive that her father, as she called him, and Donald Farfrae became more desperately enamoured of her friend every day. On Farfrae's side it was the unforced passion of youth. On Henchard's the artificially stimulated coveting of maturer age.
He stood behind Farfrae's chair, watching his dexterity in clearing up the numerical fogs which had been allowed to grow so thick in Henchard's books as almost to baffle even the Scotchman's perspicacity. The corn-factor's mien was half admiring, and yet it was not without a dash of pity for the tastes of any one who could care to give his mind to such finnikin details.
That her absence, rather than her services or instruction, was in request, had been readily apparent to Elizabeth-Jane, simple as she seemed, and difficult as it was to attribute a motive for the desire. She had not been gone ten minutes when one of Lucetta's servants was sent to Henchard's with a note. The contents were briefly:
Councillor Farfrae with Lucetta upon his arm, the observed and imitated of all the smaller tradesmen's womankind. Henchard's mouth changed a little, and he continued to turn over the leaves. "Now then," he said, "Psalm the Hundred-and-Ninth, to the tune of Wiltshire: verses ten to fifteen.
Among the other urgent reasons for his presence had been the need of his authority to send to Budmouth for a second physician; and when at length Farfrae did come back he was in a state bordering on distraction at his misconception of Henchard's motives. A messenger was despatched to Budmouth, late as it had grown; the night wore on, and the other doctor came in the small hours.
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