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. He wore genteel cloth leggings with white buttons, polished boots with infinite lace holes, light cord breeches under a black velveteen coat and waistcoat; and he had a silver-topped switch in his hand. Lucetta blushed, and said with a curious mixture of pout and laugh on her face - "O, I've made a mistake!"The visitor, on the contrary, did not laugh half a wrinkle.
"But I'm very sorry!" he said, in deprecating tones. "I came and I inquired for Miss Henchard, and they showed me up heere, and in no case would Ihave caught ye so unmannerly if I had known!""I was the unmannerly one," said she.
"But is it that I have come to the wrong house, madam?" said Mr Farfrae, blinking a little in his bewilderment and nervously tapping his legging with his switch.
"O no, sir, - sit down. You must come and sit down now you are here,"replied Lucetta kindly, to relieve his embarrassment. "Miss Henchard will be here directly."Now this was not strictly true; but that something about the young man - that hyperborean crispness, stringency, and charm, as of a well-braced musical instrument, which had awakened the interest of Henchard, and of Elizabeth-Jane, and of the Three Mariners' jovial crew, at sight, made his unexpected presence here attractive to Lucetta. He hesitated, looked at the chair, thought there was no danger in it (though there was), and sat down.
Farfrae's sudden entry was simply the result of Henchard's permission to him to see Elizabeth if he were minded to woo her. At first he had taken no notice of Henchard's brusque letter; but an exceptionally fortunate business transaction put him on good terms with everybody, and revealed to him that he could undeniably marry if he chose. Then who so pleasing, thrifty, and satisfactory in every way as Elizabeth-Jane? Apart from her personal recommendations a reconciliation with his former friend Henchard would, in the natural course of things, flow from such a union. He therefore forgave the Mayor his curtness; and this morning on his way to the fair he had called at her house, where he learnt that she was staying at Miss Templeman's. A little stimulated at not finding her ready and waiting -so fanciful are men! - he hastened on to HighPlace Hall to encounter not Elizabeth but its mistress herself.
"The fair today seems a large one," she said when, by a natural deviation, their eyes sought the busy scene without. "Your numerous fairs and markets keep me interested. How many things I think of while I watch from here!"He seemed in doubt how to answer, and the babble without reached them as they sat - voices as of wavelets on a lopping sea, one ever and anon rising above the rest. "Do you look out often?" he asked.
"Yes - very often."
"Do you look for any one you know?"
Why should she have answered as she did?
"I look as at a picture merely. But," she went on, turning pleasantly to him, "I may do so now - I may look for you. You are always there, are you not? Ah - I don't mean it seriously!But it is amusing to look for somebody one knows in a crowd, even if one does not want him. It takes off the terrible oppressiveness of being surrounded by a throng, and having no point of junction with it through a single individual.""Ah! Maybe you'll be very lonely, ma'am?"
"Nobody knows how lonely."
"But you are rich, they say?"
"If so, I don't know how to enjoy my riches. I came to Casterbridge thinking I should like to live here. But I wonder if I shall.""Where did ye come from, ma'am?"
"The neighbourhood of Bath."
"And I from near Edinboro'," he murmured. "It's better to stay at home, and that's true; but a man must live where his money is made. It is a great pity, but it's always so! Yet I've done very well this year. O yes," he went on with ingenuous enthusiasm. "You see that man with the drab kerseymere coat? I bought largely of him in the autumn when wheat was down, and then afterwards when it rose a little I sold off all I had! It brought only a small profit to me; while the farmers kept theirs, expecting higher figures - yes, though the rats were gnawing the ricks hollow. Just when I sold the markets went lower, and I bought up the corn of those who had been holding back at less price than my first purchases. And then," cried Farfrae impetuously, his face alight, "I sold it a few weeks after, when it happened to go up again! And so, by contenting mysel' with small profits frequently repeated, I soon made five hundred pounds - yes!" - (bringing down his hand upon the table, and quite forgetting where he was) - "while the others by keeping theirs in hand made nothing at all!"Lucetta regarded him with a critical interest. He was quite a new type of person to her. At last his eye fell upon the lady's and their glances met.
"Ay, now, I'm wearying you!" he exclaimed.
She said, "No, indeed," colouring a shade.
"What then?"
"Quite otherwise. You are most interesting."
It was now Farfrae who showed the modest pink.
"I mean all you Scotchmen," she added in hasty correction. "So free from Southern extremes. We common people are all one way or the other -warm or cold, passionate or frigid. You have both temperatures going on in you at the same time.""But how do you mean that? Ye were best to explain clearly, ma'am.""You are animated - then you are thinking of getting on. You are sad the next moment - then you are thinking of Scotland and friends.""Yes. I think of home sometimes!" he said simply.
"So do I - as far as I can. But it was an old house where I was born, and they pulled it down for improvements, so I seem hardly to have any home to think of now."Lucetta did not add, as she might have done, that the house was in St Helier, and not in Bath.
"But the mountains, and the mists and the rocks, they are there! And don't they seem like home?"She shook her head.