She was passing the dining-room door one evening, and had occasion to go in for something.
It was not till she had opened the door that she knew the Mayor was there in the company of a man with whom he transacted business.
“Here, Elizabeth-Jane,” he said, looking round at her, “just write down what I tell you—a few words of an agreement for me and this gentleman to sign.
I am a poor tool with a pen.”
“Be jowned, and so be I,” said the gentleman.
She brought forward blotting-book, paper, and ink, and sat down.
“Now then—‘An agreement entered into this sixteenth day of October’—write that first.”
She started the pen in an elephantine march across the sheet.
It was a splendid round, bold hand of her own conception, a style that would have stamped a woman as Minerva’s own in more recent days.
But other ideas reigned then: Henchard’s creed was that proper young girls wrote ladies’-hand—nay, he believed that bristling characters were as innate and inseparable a part of refined womanhood as sex itself.
Hence when, instead of scribbling, like the Princess Ida,—
“In such a hand as when a field of corn
Bows all its ears before the roaring East,” Elizabeth-Jane produced a line of chain-shot and sand-bags, he reddened in angry shame for her, and, peremptorily saying,
“Never mind—I’ll finish it,” dismissed her there and then.
Her considerate disposition became a pitfall to her now.
She was, it must be admitted, sometimes provokingly and unnecessarily willing to saddle herself with manual labours.
She would go to the kitchen instead of ringing, “Not to make Phoebe come up twice.”
She went down on her knees, shovel in hand, when the cat overturned the coal-scuttle; moreover, she would persistently thank the parlour-maid for everything, till one day, as soon as the girl was gone from the room, Henchard broke out with,
“Good God, why dostn’t leave off thanking that girl as if she were a goddess-born!
Don’t I pay her a dozen pound a year to do things for ‘ee?”
Elizabeth shrank so visibly at the exclamation that he became sorry a few minutes after, and said that he did not mean to be rough.
These domestic exhibitions were the small protruding needlerocks which suggested rather than revealed what was underneath.
But his passion had less terror for her than his coldness.
The increasing frequency of the latter mood told her the sad news that he disliked her with a growing dislike.
The more interesting that her appearance and manners became under the softening influences which she could now command, and in her wisdom did command, the more she seemed to estrange him.
Sometimes she caught him looking at her with a louring invidiousness that she could hardly bear.
Not knowing his secret it was cruel mockery that she should for the first time excite his animosity when she had taken his surname.
But the most terrible ordeal was to come.
Elizabeth had latterly been accustomed of an afternoon to present a cup of cider or ale and bread-and-cheese to Nance Mockridge, who worked in the yard wimbling hay-bonds.
Nance accepted this offering thankfully at first; afterwards as a matter of course.
On a day when Henchard was on the premises he saw his step-daughter enter the hay-barn on this errand; and, as there was no clear spot on which to deposit the provisions, she at once set to work arranging two trusses of hay as a table, Mockridge meanwhile standing with her hands on her hips, easefully looking at the preparations on her behalf.
“Elizabeth, come here!” said Henchard; and she obeyed.
“Why do you lower yourself so confoundedly?” he said with suppressed passion. “Haven’t I told you o’t fifty times?
Hey?
Making yourself a drudge for a common workwoman of such a character as hers!
Why, ye’ll disgrace me to the dust!”
Now these words were uttered loud enough to reach Nance inside the barn door, who fired up immediately at the slur upon her personal character.
Coming to the door she cried regardless of consequences,
“Come to that, Mr. Henchard, I can let ‘ee know she’ve waited on worse!”
“Then she must have had more charity than sense,” said Henchard.
“O no, she hadn’t.
‘Twere not for charity but for hire; and at a public-house in this town!”
“It is not true!” cried Henchard indignantly.
“Just ask her,” said Nance, folding her naked arms in such a manner that she could comfortably scratch her elbows.
Henchard glanced at Elizabeth-Jane, whose complexion, now pink and white from confinement, lost nearly all of the former colour.
“What does this mean?” he said to her. “Anything or nothing?”
“It is true,” said Elizabeth-Jane. “But it was only—”
“Did you do it, or didn’t you?
Where was it?”
“At the Three Mariners; one evening for a little while, when we were staying there.”