The awkwardness of searching for him lay in enlightening Elizabeth, a proceeding which her mother could not endure to contemplate. She finally resolved to undertake the search without confiding to the girl her former relations with Henchard, leaving it to him if they found him to take what steps he might choose to that end. This will account for their conversation at the fair and the half-informed state in which Elizabeth was led onward.
In this attitude they proceeded on their journey, trusting solely to the dim light afforded to Henchard's whereabouts by the furmity woman.
The strictest economy was indispensable. Sometimes they might have been seen on foot, sometimes on farmers' waggons, sometimes in carriers' vans;and thus they drew near to Casterbridge. Elizabeth-Jane discovered to her alarm that her mother's health was not what it once had been, and there was ever and anon in her talk that renunciatory tone which showed that, but for the girl, she would not be very sorry to quit a life she was growing thoroughly weary of.
It was on a Friday evening, near the middle of September, and just before dusk, that they reached the summit of a hill within a mile of the place they sought. There were highbanked hedges to the coach-road here, and they mounted upon the green turf within, and sat down. The spot commanded a full view of the town and its environs.
``What an old-fashioned place it seems to be!'' said Elizabeth-Jane, while her silent mother mused on other things than topography. ``It is huddled all together; and it is shut in by a square wall of trees, like a plot of garden ground by a boxedging.''
Its squareness was, indeed, the characteristic which most struck the eye in this antiquated borough, the borough of Casterbridge - at that time, recent as it was, untouched by the faintest sprinkle of modernism. It was compact as a box of dominoes. It had no suburbs - in the ordinary sense.
Country and town met at a mathematical line.
To birds of the more soaring kind Casterbridge must have appeared on this fine evening as a mosaic-work of subdued reds, browns, greys, and crystals, held together by a rectangular frame of deep green. To the level eye of humanity it stood as an indistinct mass behind a dense stockade of limes and chestnuts, set in the midst of miles of rotund down and concave field. The mass became gradually dissected by the vision into towers, gables, chimneys, and casements, the highest glazings shining bleared and bloodshot with the coppery fire they caught from the belt of sunlit cloud in the west.
From the centre of each side of this tree-bound square ran avenues east, west, and south into the wide expanse of cornland and coomb to the distance of a mile or so. It was by one of these avenues that the pedestrians were about to enter. Before they had risen to proceed two men passed outside the hedge, engaged in argumentative conversation.
``Why, surely,'' said Elizabeth, as they receded, ``those men mentioned the name of Henchard in their talk - the name of our relative?''
``I thought so too,'' said Mrs Newson.
``That seems a hint to us that he is still here.''
``Yes.''
``Shall I run after them, and ask them about him--''
``No, no, no! Not for the world just yet. He may be in the workhouse, or in the stocks, for all we know.''
``Dear me - why should you think that, mother?''
``'Twas just something to say - that's all! But we must make private inquiries.''
Having sufficiently rested they proceeded on their way at even-fall.