One would almost have supposed Henchard to have had policy to see that
no better _modus vivendi_ could be arrived at with Farfrae than by
encouraging him to become his son-in-law. But such a scheme for buying
over a rival had nothing to recommend it to the Mayor’s headstrong
faculties. With all domestic _finesse_ of that kind he was hopelessly
at variance. Loving a man or hating him, his diplomacy was as
wrongheaded as a buffalo’s; and his wife had not ventured to suggest
the course which she, for many reasons, would have welcomed gladly.
Meanwhile Donald Farfrae had opened the gates of commerce on his own
account at a spot on Durnover Hill—as far as possible from Henchard’s
stores, and with every intention of keeping clear of his former friend
and employer’s customers. There was, it seemed to the younger man, room
for both of them and to spare. The town was small, but the corn and
hay-trade was proportionately large, and with his native sagacity he
saw opportunity for a share of it.
So determined was he to do nothing which should seem like
trade-antagonism to the Mayor that he refused his first customer—a
large farmer of good repute—because Henchard and this man had dealt
together within the preceding three months.
“He was once my friend,” said Farfrae, “and it’s not for me to take
business from him. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I cannot hurt the
trade of a man who’s been so kind to me.”
In spite of this praiseworthy course the Scotchman’s trade increased.
Whether it were that his northern energy was an overmastering force
among the easy-going Wessex worthies, or whether it was sheer luck, the
fact remained that whatever he touched he prospered in. Like Jacob in
Padan-Aram, he would no sooner humbly limit himself to the
ringstraked-and-spotted exceptions of trade than the
ringstraked-and-spotted would multiply and prevail.
But most probably luck had little to do with it. Character is Fate,
said Novalis, and Farfrae’s character was just the reverse of
Henchard’s, who might not inaptly be described as Faust has been
described—as a vehement gloomy being who had quitted the ways of vulgar
men without light to guide him on a better way.
Farfrae duly received the request to discontinue attentions to
Elizabeth-Jane. His acts of that kind had been so slight that the
request was almost superfluous. Yet he had felt a considerable interest
in her, and after some cogitation he decided that it would be as well
to enact no Romeo part just then—for the young girl’s sake no less than
his own. Thus the incipient attachment was stifled down.
A time came when, avoid collision with his former friend as he might,
Farfrae was compelled, in sheer self-defence, to close with Henchard in
mortal commercial combat. He could no longer parry the fierce attacks
of the latter by simple avoidance. As soon as their war of prices began
everybody was interested, and some few guessed the end. It was, in some
degree, Northern insight matched against Southern doggedness—the dirk
against the cudgel—and Henchard’s weapon was one which, if it did not
deal ruin at the first or second stroke, left him afterwards well-nigh
at his antagonist’s mercy.
Almost every Saturday they encountered each other amid the crowd of
farmers which thronged about the market-place in the weekly course of
their business. Donald was always ready, and even anxious, to say a few
friendly words, but the Mayor invariably gazed stormfully past him,
like one who had endured and lost on his account, and could in no sense
forgive the wrong; nor did Farfrae’s snubbed manner of perplexity at
all appease him. The large farmers, corn-merchants, millers,
auctioneers, and others had each an official stall in the corn-market
room, with their names painted thereon; and when to the familiar series
of “Henchard,” “Everdene,” “Shiner,” “Darton,” and so on, was added one
inscribed “Farfrae,” in staring new letters, Henchard was stung into
bitterness; like Bellerophon, he wandered away from the crowd, cankered
in soul.
From that day Donald Farfrae’s name was seldom mentioned in Henchard’s
house. If at breakfast or dinner Elizabeth-Jane’s mother inadvertently
alluded to her favourite’s movements, the girl would implore her by a
look to be silent; and her husband would say, “What—are you, too, my
enemy?”