Chapter 40

Long before this time Henchard, weary of his ruminations on
the bridge, had repaired towards the town. When he stood at
the bottom of the street a procession burst upon his view,
in the act of turning out of an alley just above him. The
lanterns, horns, and multitude startled him; he saw the
mounted images, and knew what it all meant.

They crossed the way, entered another street, and
disappeared. He turned back a few steps and was lost in
grave reflection, finally wending his way homeward by the
obscure river-side path. Unable to rest there he went to
his step-daughter's lodging, and was told that Elizabeth-
Jane had gone to Mr. Farfrae's. Like one acting in
obedience to a charm, and with a nameless apprehension, he
followed in the same direction in the hope of meeting her,
the roysterers having vanished. Disappointed in this he
gave the gentlest of pulls to the door-bell, and then learnt
particulars of what had occurred, together with the doctor's
imperative orders that Farfrae should be brought home, and
how they had set out to meet him on the Budmouth Road.

"But he has gone to Mellstock and Weatherbury!" exclaimed
Henchard, now unspeakably grieved. "Not Budmouth way at
all."

But, alas! for Henchard; he had lost his good name. They
would not believe him, taking his words but as the frothy
utterances of recklessness. Though Lucetta's life seemed at
that moment to depend upon her husband's return (she being
in great mental agony lest he should never know the
unexaggerated truth of her past relations with Henchard), no
messenger was despatched towards Weatherbury. Henchard, in
a state of bitter anxiety and contrition, determined to seek
Farfrae himself.

To this end he hastened down the town, ran along the eastern
road over Durnover Moor, up the hill beyond, and thus onward
in the moderate darkness of this spring night till he had
reached a second and almost a third hill about three miles
distant. In Yalbury Bottom, or Plain, at the foot of the
hill, he listened. At first nothing, beyond his own heart-
throbs, was to be heard but the slow wind making its moan
among the masses of spruce and larch of Yalbury Wood which
clothed the heights on either hand; but presently there came
the sound of light wheels whetting their felloes against the
newly stoned patches of road, accompanied by the distant
glimmer of lights.

He knew it was Farfrae's gig descending the hill from an
indescribable personality in its noise, the vehicle having
been his own till bought by the Scotchman at the sale of his
effects. Henchard thereupon retraced his steps along
Yalbury Plain, the gig coming up with him as its driver
slackened speed between two plantations.