To satisfy his conscience somewhat
Henchard repeated to himself that the lie which had retained for him
the coveted treasure had not been deliberately told to that end, but
had come from him as the last defiant word of a despair which took no
thought of consequences. Furthermore he pleaded within himself that no
Newson could love her as he loved her, or would tend her to his life's
extremity as he was prepared to do cheerfully.
Thus they lived on in the shop overlooking the churchyard, and nothing
occurred to mark their days during the remainder of the year. Going out
but seldom, and never on a marketday, they saw Donald Farfrae only at
rarest intervals, and then mostly as a transitory object in the distance
of the street. Yet he was pursuing his ordinary avocations, smiling
mechanically to fellow-tradesmen, and arguing with bargainers--as
bereaved men do after a while.
Time, "in his own grey style," taught Farfrae how to estimate his
experience of Lucetta--all that it was, and all that it was not. There
are men whose hearts insist upon a dogged fidelity to some image or
cause thrown by chance into their keeping, long after their judgment has
pronounced it no rarity--even the reverse, indeed, and without them the
band of the worthy is incomplete. But Farfrae was not of those. It
was inevitable that the insight, briskness, and rapidity of his nature
should take him out of the dead blank which his loss threw about him.
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