“I—wanted you to marry Mr. Farfrae.”
“O mother!” Elizabeth-Jane bent down her head so much that she looked quite into her own lap. But as her mother did not go on, she said, “What reason?”
“Well, I had a reason. ’Twill out one day. I wish it could have been in my time! But there—nothing is as you wish it! Henchard hates him.”
“Perhaps they’ll be friends again,” murmured the girl.
“I don’t know—I don’t know.” After this her mother was silent, and dozed; and she spoke on the subject no more.
Some little time later on Farfrae was passing Henchard’s house on a Sunday morning, when he observed that the blinds were all down. He rang the bell so softly that it only sounded a single full note and a small one; and then he was informed that Mrs. Henchard was dead—just dead—that very hour.
At the town-pump there were gathered when he passed a few old inhabitants, who came there for water whenever they had, as at present, spare time to fetch it, because it was purer from that original fount than from their own wells. Mrs. Cuxsom, who had been standing there for an indefinite time with her pitcher, was describing the incidents of Mrs. Henchard’s death, as she had learnt them from the nurse.
“And she was white as marble-stone,” said Mrs. Cuxsom. “And likewise such a thoughtful woman, too—ah, poor soul—that a’ minded every little thing that wanted tending. ‘Yes,’ says she, ‘when I’m gone, and my last breath’s blowed, look in the top drawer o’ the chest in the back room by the window, and you’ll find all my coffin clothes, a piece of flannel—that’s to put under me, and the little piece is to put under my head; and my new stockings for my feet—they are folded alongside, and all my other things. And there’s four ounce pennies, the heaviest I could find, a-tied up in bits of linen, for weights—two for my right eye and two for my left,’ she said. ‘And when you’ve used ’em, and my eyes don’t open no more, bury the pennies, good souls and don’t ye go spending ’em, for I shouldn’t like it. And open the windows as soon as I am carried out, and make it as cheerful as you can for Elizabeth-Jane.’”
“Ah, poor heart!”
“Well, and Martha did it, and buried the ounce pennies in the garden. But if ye’ll believe words, that man, Christopher Coney, went and dug ’em up, and spent ’em at the Three Mariners. ‘Faith,’ he said, ‘why should death rob life o’ fourpence? Death’s not of such good report that we should respect ’en to that extent,’ says he.”