Chapter 45 - Page 2

revived.

"Oh, please ma'am, we know how the bird-cage came there.
That farmer's man who called on the evening of the wedding--
he was seen wi' it in his hand as he came up the street; and
'tis thoughted that he put it down while he came in with his
message, and then went away forgetting where he had left
it."

This was enough to set Elizabeth thinking, and in thinking
she seized hold of the idea, at one feminine bound, that the
caged bird had been brought by Henchard for her as a wedding
gift and token of repentance. He had not expressed to her
any regrets or excuses for what he had done in the past; but
it was a part of his nature to extenuate nothing, and live
on as one of his own worst accusers. She went out, looked
at the cage, buried the starved little singer, and from that
hour her heart softened towards the self-alienated man.

When her husband came in she told him her solution of the
bird-cage mystery; and begged Donald to help her in finding
out, as soon as possible, whither Henchard had banished
himself, that she might make her peace with him; try to do
something to render his life less that of an outcast, and
more tolerable to him. Although Farfrae had never so
passionately liked Henchard as Henchard had liked him, he
had, on the other hand, never so passionately hated in the
same direction as his former friend had done, and he was
therefore not the least indisposed to assist Elizabeth-Jane
in her laudable plan.

But it was by no means easy to set about discovering
Henchard. He had apparently sunk into the earth on leaving
Mr. and Mrs. Farfrae's door. Elizabeth-Jane remembered what
he had once attempted; and trembled.

But though she did not know it Henchard had become a changed
man since then--as far, that is, as change of emotional
basis can justify such a radical phrase; and she needed not
to fear. In a few days Farfrae's inquiries elicited that
Henchard had been seen by one who knew him walking steadily
along the Melchester highway eastward, at twelve o'clock at
night--in other words, retracing his steps on the road by
which he had come.

This was enough; and the next morning Farfrae might have
been discovered driving his gig out of Casterbridge in that
direction, Elizabeth-Jane sitting beside him, wrapped in a
thick flat fur--the victorine of the period--her complexion
somewhat richer than formerly, and an incipient matronly
dignity, which the serene Minerva-eyes of one "whose
gestures beamed with mind" made becoming, settling on her
face. Having herself arrived at a promising haven from at
least the grosser troubles of her life, her object was to
place Henchard in some similar quietude before he should
sink into