“Can I speak to ‘ee?” in significant tones.
The other’s invitation to come in was responded to by the country formula,
“This will do, thank ‘ee,” after which the householder had no alternative but to come out.
He placed the candle on the corner of the dresser, took his hat from a nail, and joined the stranger in the porch, shutting the door behind him.
“I’ve long heard that you can—do things of a sort?” began the other, repressing his individuality as much as he could.
“Maybe so, Mr. Henchard,” said the weather-caster. “Ah—why do you call me that?” asked the visitor with a start.
“Because it’s your name.
Feeling you’d come I’ve waited for ‘ee; and thinking you might be leery from your walk I laid two supper plates—look ye here.”
He threw open the door and disclosed the supper-table, at which appeared a second chair, knife and fork, plate and mug, as he had declared.
Henchard felt like Saul at his reception by Samuel; he remained in silence for a few moments, then throwing off the disguise of frigidity which he had hitherto preserved he said,
“Then I have not come in vain....Now, for instance, can ye charm away warts?”
“Without trouble.”
“Cure the evil?”
“That I’ve done—with consideration—if they will wear the toad-bag by night as well as by day.”
“Forecast the weather?”
“With labour and time.”
“Then take this,” said Henchard. “‘Tis a crownpiece.
Now, what is the harvest fortnight to be?
When can I know?’
“I’ve worked it out already, and you can know at once.” (The fact was that five farmers had already been there on the same errand from different parts of the country.) “By the sun, moon, and stars, by the clouds, the winds, the trees, and grass, the candle-flame and swallows, the smell of the herbs; likewise by the cats’ eyes, the ravens, the leeches, the spiders, and the dungmixen, the last fortnight in August will be—rain and tempest.”
“You are not certain, of course?”
“As one can be in a world where all’s unsure.
‘Twill be more like living in Revelations this autumn than in England.
Shall I sketch it out for ‘ee in a scheme?”
“O no, no,” said Henchard. “I don’t altogether believe in forecasts, come to second thoughts on such.
But I—”
“You don’t—you don’t—‘tis quite understood,” said Wide-oh, without a sound of scorn. “You have given me a crown because you’ve one too many.
But won’t you join me at supper, now ‘tis waiting and all?”
Henchard would gladly have joined; for the savour of the stew had floated from the cottage into the porch with such appetizing distinctness that the meat, the onions, the pepper, and the herbs could be severally recognized by his nose.
But as sitting down to hob-and-nob there would have seemed to mark him too implicitly as the weather-caster’s apostle, he declined, and went his way.
The next Saturday Henchard bought grain to such an enormous extent that there was quite a talk about his purchases among his neighbours the lawyer, the wine merchant, and the doctor; also on the next, and on all available days.
When his granaries were full to choking all the weather-cocks of Casterbridge creaked and set their faces in another direction, as if tired of the south-west.
The weather changed; the sunlight, which had been like tin for weeks, assumed the hues of topaz.
The temperament of the welkin passed from the phlegmatic to the sanguine; an excellent harvest was almost a certainty; and as a consequence prices rushed down.
All these transformations, lovely to the outsider, to the wrong-headed corn-dealer were terrible.
He was reminded of what he had well known before, that a man might gamble upon the square green areas of fields as readily as upon those of a card-room.
Henchard had backed bad weather, and apparently lost.
He had mistaken the turn of the flood for the turn of the ebb.
His dealings had been so extensive that settlement could not long be postponed, and to settle he was obliged to sell off corn that he had bought only a few weeks before at figures higher by many shillings a quarter.
Much of the corn he had never seen; it had not even been moved from the ricks in which it lay stacked miles away.
Thus he lost heavily.
In the blaze of an early August day he met Farfrae in the market-place.
Farfrae knew of his dealings (though he did not guess their intended bearing on himself) and commiserated him; for since their exchange of words in the South Walk they had been on stiffly speaking terms.
Henchard for the moment appeared to resent the sympathy; but he suddenly took a careless turn.
“Ho, no, no!—nothing serious, man!” he cried with fierce gaiety. “These things always happen, don’t they?
I know it has been said that figures have touched me tight lately; but is that anything rare?
The case is not so bad as folk make out perhaps.
And dammy, a man must be a fool to mind the common hazards of trade!”
But he had to enter the Casterbridge Bank that day for reasons which had never before sent him there—and to sit a long time in the partners’ room with a constrained bearing.
It was rumoured soon after that much real property as well as vast stores of produce, which had stood in Henchard’s name in the town and neighbourhood, was actually the possession of his bankers.