Chapter 37 - Page 2

it would be proper, Mr. Henchard," said
he. "The Council are the Council, and as ye are no longer
one of the body, there would be an irregularity in the
proceeding. If ye were included, why not others?"

"I have a particular reason for wishing to assist at the
ceremony."

Farfrae looked round. "I think I have expressed the feeling
of the Council," he said.

"Yes, yes," from Dr. Bath, Lawyer Long, Alderman Tubber, and
several more.

"Then I am not to be allowed to have anything to do with it
officially?"

"I am afraid so; it is out of the question, indeed. But of
course you can see the doings full well, such as they are to
be, like the rest of the spectators."

Henchard did not reply to that very obvious suggestion, and,
turning on his heel, went away.

It had been only a passing fancy of his, but opposition
crystallized it into a determination. "I'll welcome his
Royal Highness, or nobody shall!" he went about saying. "I
am not going to be sat upon by Farfrae, or any of the rest
of the paltry crew! You shall see."

The eventful morning was bright, a full-faced sun
confronting early window-gazers eastward, and all perceived
(for they were practised in weather-lore) that there was
permanence in the glow. Visitors soon began to flock in
from county houses, villages, remote copses, and lonely
uplands, the latter in oiled boots and tilt bonnets, to see
the reception, or if not to see it, at any rate to be near
it. There was hardly a workman in the town who did not put
a clean shirt on. Solomon Longways, Christopher Coney,
Buzzford, and the rest of that fraternity, showed their
sense of the occasion by advancing their customary eleven
o'clock pint to half-past ten; from which they found a
difficulty in getting back to the proper hour for several
days.

Henchard had determined to do no work that day. He primed
himself in the morning with a glass of rum, and walking down
the street met Elizabeth-Jane, whom he had not seen for
a week. "It was lucky," he said to her, "my twenty-one
years had expired before this came on, or I should never
have had the nerve to carry it out."

"Carry out what?" said she, alarmed.

"This welcome I am going to give our Royal visitor."

She was perplexed. "Shall we go and see it together?" she
said.

"See it! I have other fish to fry. You see it. It will be
worth seeing!"

She could do nothing to elucidate this, and decked herself
out with a heavy heart. As the appointed time drew near she
got sight again of her stepfather. She thought he was going
to the Three Mariners; but no, he elbowed his way through
the gay throng to the shop of Woolfrey, the draper. She