He heard, however, but few particulars beyond those known to him
already, the incident of the deepest interest on the journey being the
soft pealing of the Casterbridge bells, which reached the travellers'
ears while the van paused on the top of Yalbury Hill to have the drag
lowered. The time was just after twelve o'clock.
Those notes were a signal that all had gone well; that there had been
no slip 'twixt cup and lip in this case; that Elizabeth-Jane and Donald
Farfrae were man and wife.
Henchard did not care to ride any further with his chattering companions
after hearing this sound. Indeed, it quite unmanned him; and in
pursuance of his plan of not showing himself in Casterbridge street till
evening, lest he should mortify Farfrae and his bride, he alighted here,
with his bundle and bird-cage, and was soon left as a lonely figure on
the broad white highway.
It was the hill near which he had waited to meet Farfrae, almost two
years earlier, to tell him of the serious illness of his wife Lucetta.
The place was unchanged; the same larches sighed the same notes; but
Farfrae had another wife--and, as Henchard knew, a better one. He only
hoped that Elizabeth-Jane had obtained a better home than had been hers
at the former time.
He passed the remainder of the afternoon in a curious highstrung
condition, unable to do much but think of the approaching meeting with
her, and sadly satirize himself for his emotions thereon, as a Samson
shorn.
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