Henchard and Elizabeth sat conversing by the fire. It was three weeks
after Mrs. Henchard’s funeral, the candles were not lighted, and a
restless, acrobatic flame, poised on a coal, called from the shady
walls the smiles of all shapes that could respond—the old pier-glass,
with gilt columns and huge entablature, the picture-frames, sundry
knobs and handles, and the brass rosette at the bottom of each riband
bell-pull on either side of the chimney-piece.
“Elizabeth, do you think much of old times?” said Henchard.
“Yes, sir; often,” she said.
“Who do you put in your pictures of ’em?”
“Mother and father—nobody else hardly.”
Henchard always looked like one bent on resisting pain when
Elizabeth-Jane spoke of Richard Newson as “father.” “Ah! I am out of
all that, am I not?” he said.... “Was Newson a kind father?”
“Yes, sir; very.”
Henchard’s face settled into an expression of stolid loneliness which
gradually modulated into something softer. “Suppose I had been your
real father?” he said. “Would you have cared for me as much as you
cared for Richard Newson?”
“I can’t think it,” she said quickly. “I can think of no other as my
father, except my father.”
Henchard’s wife was dissevered from him by death; his friend and helper
Farfrae by estrangement; Elizabeth-Jane by ignorance. It seemed to him
that only one of them could possibly be recalled, and that was the
girl. His mind began vibrating between the wish to reveal himself to
her and the policy of leaving well alone, till he could no longer sit
still. He walked up and down, and then he came and stood behind her
chair, looking down upon the top of her head. He could no longer
restrain his impulse. “What did your mother tell you about me—my
history?” he asked.
“That you were related by marriage.”
“She should have told more—before you knew me! Then my task would not
have been such a hard one.... Elizabeth, it is I who am your father,
and not Richard Newson. Shame alone prevented your wretched parents
from owning this to you while both of ’em were alive.”
The back of Elizabeth’s head remained still, and her shoulders did not
denote even the movements of breathing. Henchard went on: “I’d rather
have your scorn, your fear, anything than your ignorance; ’tis that I
hate! Your mother and I were man and wife when we were young. What you
saw was our second marriage. Your mother was too honest. We had thought
each other dead—and—Newson became her husband.”
This was the nearest approach Henchard could make to the full truth. As
far as he personally was concerned he would have screened nothing; but
he showed a respect for the young girl’s sex and years worthy of a
better man.
When he had gone on to give details which a whole series of slight and
unregarded incidents in her past life strangely corroborated; when, in
short, she believed his story to be true, she became greatly agitated,
and turning round to the table flung her face upon it weeping.
“Don’t cry—don’t cry!” said Henchard, with vehement pathos, “I can’t
bear it, I won’t bear it. I am your father; why should you cry? Am I so
dreadful, so hateful to ’ee? Don’t take against me, Elizabeth-Jane!” he
cried, grasping her wet hand. “Don’t take against me—though I was a
drinking man once, and used your mother roughly—I’ll be kinder to you
than _he_ was! I’ll do anything, if you will only look upon me as your
father!”
She tried to stand up and comfort him trustfully; but she could not;
she was troubled at his presence, like the brethren at the avowal of
Joseph.
“I don’t want you to come to me all of a sudden,” said Henchard in
jerks, and moving like a great tree in a wind. “No, Elizabeth, I don’t.
I’ll go away and not see you till to-morrow, or when you like, and then
I’ll show ’ee papers to prove my words. There, I am gone, and won’t
disturb you any more.... ’Twas I that chose your name, my daughter;
your mother wanted it Susan. There, don’t forget ’twas I gave you your
name!” He went out at the door and shut her softly in, and she heard
him go away into the garden. But he had not done. Before she had moved,
or in any way recovered from the effect of his disclosure, he
reappeared.
“One word more, Elizabeth,” he said. “You’ll take my surname now—hey?
Your mother was against it, but it will be much more pleasant to me.
’Tis legally yours, you know. But nobody need know that. You shall take
it as if by choice. I’ll talk to my lawyer—I don’t know the law of it
exactly; but will you do this—let me put a few lines into the newspaper
that such is to be your name?”
“If it is my name I must have it, mustn’t I?” she asked.
“Well, well; usage is everything in these matters.”
“I wonder why mother didn’t wish it?”
“Oh, some whim of the poor soul’s. Now get a bit of paper and draw up a
paragraph as I shall tell you. But let’s have a light.”
“I can see by the firelight,” she answered. “Yes—I’d rather.”
“Very well.”
She got a piece of paper, and bending over the fender wrote at his
dictation words which he had evidently got by heart from some
advertisement or other—words to the effect that she, the writer,
hitherto known as Elizabeth-Jane Newson, was going to call herself
Elizabeth-Jane Henchard forthwith. It was done, and fastened up, and
directed to the office of the _Casterbridge Chronicle_.
“Now,” said Henchard, with the blaze of satisfaction that he always
emitted when he had carried his point—though tenderness softened it
this time—“I’ll go upstairs and hunt for some documents that will prove
it all to you. But I won’t trouble you with them till to-morrow.
Good-night, my Elizabeth-Jane!”
He was gone before the bewildered girl could realize what it all meant,
or adjust her filial sense to the new center of gravity. She was
thankful that he had left her to herself for the evening, and sat down
over the fire. Here she remained in silence, and wept—not for her
mother now, but for the genial sailor Richard Newson, to whom she
seemed doing a wrong.
Henchard in the meantime had gone upstairs. Papers of a domestic nature
he kept in a drawer in his bedroom, and this he unlocked. Before
turning them over he leant back and indulged in reposeful thought.
Elizabeth was his at last and she was a girl of such good sense and
kind heart that she would be sure to like him. He was the kind of man
to whom some human object for pouring out his heart upon—were it
emotive or were it choleric—was almost a necessity. The craving for his
heart for the re-establishment of this tenderest human tie had been
great during his wife’s lifetime, and now he had submitted to its
mastery without reluctance and without fear. He bent over the drawer
again, and proceeded in his search.
Among the other papers had been placed the contents of his wife’s
little desk, the keys of which had been handed to him at her request.
Here was the letter addressed to him with the restriction, “_Not to be
opened till Elizabeth-Jane’s wedding-day_.”
Mrs. Henchard, though more patient than her husband, had been no
practical hand at anything. In sealing up the sheet, which was folded
and tucked in without an envelope, in the old-fashioned way, she had
overlaid the junction with a large mass of wax without the requisite
under-touch of the same. The seal had cracked, and the letter was open.
Henchard had no reason to suppose the restriction one of serious
weight, and his feeling for his late wife had not been of the nature of
deep respect. “Some trifling fancy or other of poor Susan’s, I
suppose,” he said; and without curiosity he allowed his eyes to scan
the letter:—
MY DEAR MICHAEL,—For the good of all three of us I have kept one thing
a secret from you till now. I hope you will understand why; I think you
will; though perhaps you may not forgive me. But, dear Michael, I have
done it for the best. I shall be in my grave when you read this, and
Elizabeth-Jane will have a home. Don’t curse me Mike—think of how I was
situated. I can hardly write it, but here it is. Elizabeth-Jane is not
your Elizabeth-Jane—the child who was in my arms when you sold me. No;
she died three months after that, and this living one is my other
husband’s. I christened her by the same name we had given to the first,
and she filled up the ache I felt at the other’s loss. Michael, I am
dying, and I might have held my tongue; but I could not. Tell her
husband of this or not, as you may judge; and forgive, if you can, a
woman you once deeply wronged, as she forgives you.