“May you come to me?” he cried bitterly.  “Elizabeth, don’t mock me!  If you only would come!”

“I will,” said she.

“How will you forgive all my roughness in former days?  You cannot!”

“I have forgotten it.  Talk of that no more.”

Thus she assured him, and arranged their plans for reunion; and at length each went home.  Then Henchard shaved for the first time during many days, and put on clean linen, and combed his hair; and was as a man resuscitated thenceforward.

The next morning the fact turned out to be as Elizabeth-Jane had stated; the effigy was discovered by a cowherd, and that of Lucetta a little higher up in the same stream.  But as little as possible was said of the matter, and the figures were privately destroyed.

Despite this natural solution of the mystery Henchard no less regarded it as an intervention that the figure should have been floating there.  Elizabeth-Jane heard him say, “Who is such a reprobate as I!  And yet it seems that even I be in Somebody’s hand!”

42.

But the emotional conviction that he was in Somebody’s hand began to die out of Henchard’s breast as time slowly removed into distance the event which had given that feeling birth.  The apparition of Newson haunted him.  He would surely return.

Yet Newson did not arrive.  Lucetta had been borne along the churchyard path; Casterbridge had for the last time turned its regard upon her, before proceeding to its work as if she had never lived.  But Elizabeth remained undisturbed in the belief of her relationship to Henchard, and now shared his home.  Perhaps, after all, Newson was gone for ever.

In due time the bereaved Farfrae had learnt the, at least, proximate cause of Lucetta’s illness and death, and his first impulse was naturally enough to wreak vengeance in the name of the law upon the perpetrators of the mischief.  He resolved to wait till the funeral was over ere he moved in the matter.  The time having come he reflected.  Disastrous as the result had been, it was obviously in no way foreseen or intended by the thoughtless crew who arranged the motley procession.  The tempting prospect of putting to the blush people who stand at the head of affairs—­that supreme and piquant enjoyment of those who writhe under the heel of the same—­had alone animated them, so far as he could see; for he knew nothing of Jopp’s incitements.  Other considerations were also involved.  Lucetta had confessed everything to him before her death, and it was not altogether desirable to make much ado about her history, alike for her sake, for Henchard’s, and for his own.  To regard the event as an untoward accident seemed, to Farfrae, truest consideration for the dead one’s memory, as well as best philosophy.

Henchard and himself mutually forbore to meet.  For Elizabeth’s sake the former had fettered his pride sufficiently to accept the small seed and root business which some of the Town Council, headed by Farfrae, had purchased to afford him a new opening.  Had he been only personally concerned Henchard, without doubt, would have declined assistance even remotely brought about by the man whom he had so fiercely assailed.  But the sympathy of the girl seemed necessary to his very existence; and on her account pride itself wore the garments of humility.